Well, don't I feel like the jackass. I didn't bother to leave you folks a post here on Independence Day to fill you with love of country and appreciation for our bountiful gifts, but that's not to suggest I wasn't feeling it. Especially when I saw this picture. This was the first thing I saw when I woke up yesterday (courtesy of wwtdd.com), and damned if it didn't fill me with 4th of July spirit right off the bat. Bob and I agree: we're not big on people wearing flags, but Jessica Simpson is sort of our nation's prize hotty, so this time we'll let it slide. Next time, though, she'll have to take it off. I'll even forgive the peace sign, because I know she's probably spent about as much time in Iraq as I have, entertaining the troops in a way only a girl of her looks and charm could.

Rather than spending my Independence Day posting here, I went with Bob down to our coworker Jimmy's house in Vienna. We discharged a multitude of firearms throughout the day, including my first two revolvers and Bob's cherry Browning pump shotgun, we drank beer, ate grilled meat and drank home-brewed wine. Then we went to Harrah's casino in Metropolis (home of Superman!) and I lost $23 while trying to win back $3. This just speaks to my fear of growing much stupider since high school. Anyways, short of watching fireworks and military parades (or sticking it to the terrorists like I was doing a few years ago on the Fourth), this was about the most American behavior I could hope for.

If you couldn't tell, Independence Day is my favorite holiday by leaps and bounds (though scantily-clad women make a strong argument for Halloween as second place). In all seriousness, I hope you all had a meaningful and inspiring Fourth, and I wish I could've been around to spend it with you.

On April 29, 1866, at Woodlawn Cemetery in Carbondale, Illinois, Gen. John A. Logan spoke in an event that likely originated his idea for a holiday commemorating the fallen soldiers of the Union, which he later proclaimed in his capacity as commander in chief of the Grand Army of the Republic. May 30th, 1866 was the first Decoration Day, which came to be called Memorial Day in 1882.

142 years later, I stood in Woodlawn Cemetery in pouring rain with fifty-some other people who saw this commemoration as more important than their comfort. Across the country, millions of others are doing the same. 4,082 Americans have died while fighting in Iraq, and 29,978 have been wounded. These gallant men and women
are the salt of the earth, brave souls who regardless of politics have advanced the cause of freedom at the highest possible expenses to themselves. An estimated 1.3 million uniformed Americans have given their lives in service to their country since its creation, and today we renew our pledge never to forget. The highest honor we can give them is to remember what they died for and why. God bless America and keep our servicemen safe.


"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself." - John Stuart Mill

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." - Thomas Jefferson

Jeeze, Facebook, you don't have to be so harsh about it.

Living, breathing Bible

Living, breathing Bible

I've heard of the concept of a "living, breathing" Constitution. Now, it seems the Bible lives and breathes just the same.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/03/10/eavatican110.xml
I wish I had the primary source of this article, so I wasn't at risk of misunderstanding the language used in these new "mortal sins" ("genetic modification, carrying out experiments on humans, polluting the environment, causing social injustice, causing poverty, becoming obscenely wealthy and taking drugs").

So many thoughts bug me about this that I don't know where to start. I guess my first problem with it is that it seems to be encoding modern political fads into the eternal moral standards of the Church. Like I said, this is just like someone reinterpreting the Constitution to mean something that fits their political purposes. It goes without saying that the Church ought to be above this kind of nonsense.

The doctrine of the Church ought to be eternal, absolute, and self-evident. What is absolute about saying that pollution is a mortal sin? Is my soul going to suffer eternal death because the lightbulbs I use aren't energy star compliant? How about using drugs? Am I to stop drinking soda and start refusing penicillin, or is it only illegal drugs that I cannot use? Illegal in what country? How wealthy can I become before it is considered obscene? Shall I cut myself off before reaching the highest tax bracket, or shall I not have any savings at all? To me, the chief virtue of the church is that its moral standards are absolute. It provides a moral foundation, a system of deciding if something is right or wrong, a bedrock of unquestionable morality. With these behaviors now considered to be mortal sins, it should be pretty important to know if I am at risk of eternal damnation, for which there doesn't seem to be any standard.

The "sins of yesteryear" - sloth, envy, gluttony, greed, lust, wrath and pride - have a "rather individualistic dimension", he told the Osservatore Romano, the official Vatican newspaper.
The new seven deadly, or mortal, sins are designed to make worshippers realise that their vices have an effect on others as well.
"The sins of today have a social resonance as well as an individual one," said Mgr Girotti. "In effect, it is more important than ever to pay attention to your sins."

So far as I'm concerned, this means that the nature of my entire relationship with God must have changed. I had considered it to be a personal one, in which He cherishes me individually and favors my personal relationship with Him, but now the Church seems to be telling me that He kind of just likes us all as a whole. Evidently not only am I to meet a minimum standard of not being bad, but I actually have to be really, really good, or I'm going straight to hell. And, so far as I can tell, all in the pursuit of political correctness. I wonder how many years it will be before the Church stipulates that to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, I have to eat organic foods and always defer my moral judgments to the United Nations.

New title banner today, and I tinkered with the size of the main body, but it was not how I'm used to tinkering with those settings, so let me know if it looks really goofy. The biggest problem I could see with it would be that it would edge out the profile and links and what have you on the right side of the screen.

Marines in Fallujah

Today I went to Fox News' website to find out when the State of the Union Address would air. While there, I caught this article about the troop levels in Fallujah having decreased from 3,000 at the end of 2006 to around 250 today. It's gone down 90% since I was there. I can't even imagine that massive base having only two or so companies on it. The point is, evidently things are pretty much cleaned up in Fallujah, and the Iraqi Police are nearly ready to take over (or whatever you want to call it...I wouldn't trust those bastards with a butter knife).

I mentioned this to my friend Karnolt, who was my best bud there, in an email after talking to him tonight. His response was "Wow, I'm very proud to say that I served in [Iraq] out of Camp Fallujah and it is practically a success." I hadn't even thought of it like that, I'd just thought it was an interesting news item. But indeed, the impending success of the Fallujah Marines' mission is in part my own success, and my efforts there helped to make this happen. And that feels pretty damn good.

"Taxes are easy to explain"

[editor's note: I got this from a friend from Fallujah on myspace.]

Ten men go out for beer. The bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing. The fifth would pay $1. The sixth would pay $3. The seventh would pay $7. The eighth would pay $12. The ninth would pay $18. The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.
So, that's what they decided to do. The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve. He said, "Since you are all such good customers, I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20. Drinks for the ten now cost just $80."

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes, so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men -- the paying customers?

How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his "fair share"? They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer. So the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay!

And so:

The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings). The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings). The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28%savings). The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings). The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings). The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).

Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.

I only got a dollar out of the $20," declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man, "but he got $10!"

"Yeah, that's right,' exclaimed the fifth man. "I only saved a dollar, too. It's unfair that he got ten times more than I!"

"That's true!!"shouted the seventh man. "Why should he get $10 back when I got only $2? The wealthy get all the breaks!"

"Wait a minute," yelled the first four men in unison. "We didn't get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!" The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.

The next night the tenth man didn't show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn't have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!

And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up any more. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.

[editor's note: Friendlier? I don't know about that. But it's still a useful analogy.]