Lotsa Rain and Other Stuff

OK…I’m a day late and a dollar short with this. But, in case you just woke up and EIP is the first thing you read (I make a funny, eh?), the Seattle Post-Intelligencer writes that over a third of Americans believe the government had something to do with 9/11. Ah, but it’s not the article itself that’s the attraction here, all the action is taking place in the comments. While it’s possible to read all 300+ comments, it ain’t practical or even desirable…what with fruits and nuts of all stripes drawn to this article like, like, uh…a suitable analogy escapes me. But I agree with this commenter:

Posted by Sub-Odeon at 8/3/06 11:08 p.m.

I wish we had some psychotherapists working this thread. The level of mental health being displayed here is quite poor indeed. Some of you seem truly disturbed; detached either partially or totally from reality.

As with the other conspiracy thread, this one has gone down a long, dark hole to nowhere.

Scary, to think that roughly 30% of the nation might suffer similar mental instability.

Goodnight.

Conspiracy theorists never miss an opportunity. The comments thread features links to nearly every 9/11 wacko web site in existence, extensive quotes from same, Bush-bashing galore, and the odd Bush defender here and there. Bush defenders? Seattle? Ah, well, the article has had national exposure, so I’m sure Dubya’s support ain’t from the locals…

Speaking of waking up… I think it was about 0830 the first time my (internal) alarm went off this morning. It was raining (again), a steady moderate rain, and the sound of the rain on my roof put me right back to sleep for another two-plus hours. We’ve had a lot of rain lately, including a great, roaring thunder storm last night that lasted about an hour and a half and featured some very intense downpours. It looks like we’ve received anywhere from .5” to 1.5” of rain in the last 24 hours, as near as I can tell, but I’m sure this precip map hasn’t been updated to reflect this morning’s rain. (I’ve bookmarked that link, btw. Very cool.) The incredible amount of rain we’ve had lately is very good news, even though the entire eastern half of the state is under a flood watch. Sure has kept the dust down, though. And the rain has kept my car looking pretty spiffy, too, even though I haven’t washed it in ten days or more. The clean car is one of those Eastern New Mexico “you had to be there” kinda things…

Another interesting thing about our weather is the fact we’ve been relatively cool the last few days (mid-to-high 80s), waaay cooler than the East Coast. Who’d a thunk it?

I’ll leave you with links to a couple of good reads. The first is from perennial favorite Charles Krauthammer, writing in the WaPo:

America finds itself at war with radical Islam, a two-churched monster: Sunni al-Qaeda is now being challenged by Shiite Iran for primacy in its epic confrontation with the infidel West. With al-Qaeda in decline, Iran is on the march. It is intervening through proxies throughout the Arab world -- Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine, Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army in Iraq -- to subvert modernizing, Western-oriented Arab governments and bring these territories under Iranian hegemony. Its nuclear ambitions would secure these advances, give it an overwhelming preponderance of power over the Arabs and an absolute deterrent against serious counteractions by the United States, Israel or any other rival.

The moderate pro-Western Arabs understand this very clearly. Which is why Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan immediately came out against Hezbollah and privately urged the U.S. to let Israel take down Hezbollah. They know that Hezbollah is fighting Iran's proxy war not only against Israel but against them and, more generally, against the United States and the West.

Krauthammer’s very critical of the Israeli government, and justifiably so. Olmert simply doesn’t seem up to the task of leading what has become a war-time government. None the less, this op-ed captures the essence of the conflict and why it is so damned important.

The second link is an essay by Victor Davis Hanson, another favorite pundit of mine. Writing in a Real Clear Politics essay, Mr. Hanson steals a riff from Bernard Lewis (What Went Wrong?) that is none the less pertinent and timely. Excerpt:

For about the last half-century, globalization has passed most of the recalcitrant Middle East by -- economically, socially and politically. The result is that there are now few inventions and little science emanating from the Islamic world -- but a great deal of poverty, tyranny and violence. And rather than make the necessary structural changes that might end cultural impediments to progress and modernity -- such as tribalism, patriarchy, gender apartheid, polygamy, autocracy, statism and fundamentalism -- too many Middle Easterners have preferred to embrace the reactionary past and the cult of victimization.

At one time or another, they have welcomed all the bankrupt ideologies that traditionally blame others for prior self-induced failure: fascism, communism, Baathism, Pan-Arabism and, most recently, Islamic fundamentalism.

While Hanson is good, Lewis is better. But that’s simply the difference between an essay and a book. If you haven’t read What Went Wrong?, you might want to.

And now I have to attend to life. I haven’t visited the laundromat in two months (just prior to the Maine trip) and I’m down to vintage tee-shirts and other assorted odds and ends of clothing. Damn. I hate doing laundry…