Mind

There is no real difference between "inner" and "outer" experience. It's all just experience. That's not to say that the cat on my lap can't scratch me or that a cat in my imagination can.

Grade B?

So let me get this straight. Sadaam was supposed to go out of his way to prove that he has destroyed and stopped developing Weapons of Mass Destruction. Blix and his happy little band of inspectors go to Iraq, and Sadaam merely denies everything and "cooperates" which means he lets them run around with a trail of reporters and speak to people, except not to anyone that might really have information. Sadaam doesn't prove anything (except that Blix is a fool). Everyone acknowledges the report he gave the UN was useless and full of very long lies. They actually do stumble across some chemical weapons warheads. And even on Sadaam's "cooperation" they can only give him a grade "B." And we are supposed to clap our hands and yell, "Yipeee! The war is off. Give Sadaam some more time!"

Green Party

Hmmm. So the Greens like Cynthia McKinney... Probably because she's such a brilliant American. As I have said before, the radical environmentalists and ecoterrorists are the result of the failure of capitalism to manifest the "immiserized" workers predicted by Marx.

Bums

Hee, hee. We are surely in the 21st century. This is the brave new world. According to CNN, a pair of young twins from Transylvania are now stars: "Their pop-disco song, "Touch My Bum," written by their mother and dedicated to shy English men, rocketed to the No. 2 spot on the British charts last month..."

Al Qaeda and Iraq

Here is a good essay about the probable connection. The link between any given megalomaniacal middle eastern dictator and Al Qaeda would seem like a given, but some people insist on doubting it. It is one of the essential points of why it is necessary to disarm Sadaam. He's mean, he's unscrupulous, he's mad at at us and he's about to go nuclear. He's also deceitful. There is one obvious and likely way he would get back at the US for all the outrages we have perpetrated against his simple desire to dominate as many of us as possible and kill the rest. That would be to quietly make WMD available to Al Qaeda et.al. It's really important to disarm him now.

Is a War Necessary?

A friend who attended the peace march party here, argued with me against "spending our money and the lives or our children waging an unnecessary war..."

My response: The operant word there is "unnecessary." It's foolish, stupid even, to appease a tyrant while he develops more and more power. Chamberlin proved that. It's wise and prudent to get rid of the sort of danger Sadaam poses before he develops nuclear capability. Once he gets that, we are in a shit-load of trouble. On top of that, in many ways its immoral to allow him to abuse his own people the way he is doing when we have the ability to stop him. There's even a racist element to those who want to leave him alone. If some guy took over, say, the Swedish government and began genocide against some group of liberal white europeans, there would be a big outcry that we had to intervene. I thought we learned that lesson with Hitler and the Jews. But Sadaam gasses, tortures and torments certain middle-eastern groups he doesn't like and nobody wants to do more than raise an eyebrow. Does all that mean it's "necessary" to have a war with him? I think it does.

Brilliant American Thought of the Day

From Pruden's column: Cynthia McKinney, told the crowd: "In no other country on the planet do so many people have so little as they do in this country."

No, she wasn't speaking about Iraq or North Korea, but about the U.S. of A. You think maybe she has a mental problem?

Hold the straight jackets, folks.

Eugene has kindly pointed out that this ridiculous statement attributed to McKinney is a distortion of her actual words. She appears to be merely wrong but not befuddled. I think it comes down to a question of what the definition of the the word "is" is.

Brilliant European Thought of the Day

From Reuters: "Prime Minister Costas Simitis of Greece, EU president until the end of June, said a war would harm peace and stability in the Middle East."

For Peace?

Still feeling solidarity and sympathy for the "peace marchers?" Read this.

Aliens?

This looks like it may be very interesting. I have no idea whether the whole alien/ufo things is based in reality or imagination. Even if it is a combination of both, even if only one ufo sighting turns out to be real, that would be enough.