Halo Welt!

Yesterday our internet went out for a couple hours. Not an event in and of itself…our internet was out tonight until a few minutes ago (there was a big storm and the television reception apparently isn’t the only thing that’s water soluble). We went for a pleasant mid-day stroll, which is and event for me in that it requires leaving the apartment on a weekday during daylight hours.

It was pleasant enough. We went to the travel agent and bought our Oman tickets. We’re visiting the Gulf state for about 10 days at the end of the month. It should be a lot of fun, but I hope I am not gritting my teeth too much at how expensive it is. I may have to get more poisonous toothpaste. After paying for the tickets, we had a nice french fry and mannush (however it’s spelled) lunch.

My favorite neo-con blogger is back after taking a trip “somewhere [he] wasn’t supposed to go.” I am suspecting it was up his fundament. Actually, it was probably either Syria or Iran…neither of which are off-limits to Americans.

Speaking of fundament, Paul Krugman had some choice words in his NY Times column the other day about John McCain and his apparent reversal of sentiment on two fellas who put the “fundament” in “fundamentalist”, namely Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell.

Senator John McCain obviously believes that he can’t get the Republican
presidential nomination without Mr. Falwell’s approval. During the 2000
campaign, Mr. McCain denounced Mr. Falwell and the Rev. Pat Robertson as
“agents of intolerance.” But next month Mr. McCain will be a commencement
speaker at Liberty University, which Mr. Falwell founded.

On “Meet the Press” yesterday, Mr. McCain was asked to explain his apparent
flip-flop. “I believe,” he replied, “that the Christian right has a major
role to play in the Republican Party. One reason is because they’re so
active and their followers are. And I believe they have a right to be a part
of our party.”
…
But if you choose to make common cause with religious extremists, you are
accepting some responsibility for their extremism. By welcoming Mr. Falwell
and people like him as members of their party, Republicans are saying that
it’s O.K. – not necessarily correct, but O.K. – to declare that 9/11 was
America’s punishment for its tolerance of abortion and homosexuality, that
Islam is a terrorist religion, and that Jews can’t go to heaven. And voters
should judge the Republican Party accordingly.

As for Mr. McCain: his denunciation of Mr. Falwell and Mr. Robertson six
years ago helped give him a reputation as a moderate on social issues. Now
that he has made up with Mr. Falwell and endorsed South Dakota’s ban on
abortion even in the case of rape or incest, only two conclusions are
possible: either he isn’t a social moderate after all, or he’s a cynical
political opportunist.

McCain, man, I remember when you used to be cool.

I was going to try to tie this in with a discussion Amy and I had the other day about theocratic division of power in Lebanese government (president must be Maronite, prime minister must be Sunni, etc.) to the de facto theocratic pre-requisites in the States (the president must be a practicing Christian, preferrably not Catholic). But since I couldn’t adequately explain where I was coming from in person, I figured I couldn’t very well explain it in a blog post. I even had a sweet Joe Haldeman quote worked out about it being a shame it wasn’t policy because policy can be changed (although he was talking about the disproportionate number of minorities drafted to fight in the Vietnam War).

Anyway…

It sure is tough to come up with something to post every day.

PS: The title of this post comes from a Learn Visual Studio 2005 video I got from a co-worker several months ago but finally just watched. The first example is a “Hello World” program in multiple languages (French, Spanish, German, etc). The narrator has a hilarious accent when he does the languages…”BON-JORE MOND-AY!”