RF: The form of the hand is distressed when one is playing outside the margins of competence.

ME: But there’s no room to play within the margins of my competence.

What the president calls faith is actually nothing of the sort. It is fanaticism, pure and simple. The defining trait of the fanatic is an utter refusal to allow anything as piddling as evidence to get in the way of an unshakable belief.

This zealot’s mindset is what allows President Bush to take in the death and destruction in Iraq and see them as ‘freedom on the march.’ And it’s also what allows Abu Zarqawi and his followers to coldly put a bullet in the back of the head of four-dozen unarmed Iraqi Army recruits because they are ‘apostates.’

This is why George W. Bush is so clear-eyed about al-Qaida and the Islamic fundamentalist enemy,’ explained Bruce Bartlett, a domestic policy advisor to Reagan and Bush 41. ‘He understands them because he’s just like them.’

I pray that every American of real faith keeps this in mind when stepping into the voting booth on Election Day.

from Arianna Huffington.

Girl blog from Iraq sums it up. Even if Kerry wins, we’ve already lost. The fact that Bush is even in the running is a stamp of approval on hegemonic warefare, torture, and scores of other human rights violations. This is a national shame that will last for generations (see Germany, Japan, et. al.).

Suskind’s portrayal of our faith-based presidency is a must-read. Of course, nobody that would read an entire New York Times article needs to be told how scary these people are. Their nature has always been obvious to me. Why is he still in the running? Never underestimate the power of denial.

Here’s a big surprise: a poll of Bush supporters indicates the majority of them have demonstrably wrong beliefs about events and policies.

Even after the final report of Charles Duelfer to Congress saying that Iraq did not have a significant WMD program, 72% of Bush supporters continue to believe that Iraq had actual WMD (47%) or a major program for developing them (25%). Fifty-six percent assume that most experts believe Iraq had actual WMD and 57% also assume, incorrectly, that Duelfer concluded Iraq had at least a major WMD program. Kerry supporters hold opposite beliefs on all these points.

and that’s just for starters. I think we should start referring to this is the flat-Earth administration.

I cannot judge how many so far have really profited from my lectures but I have this consolation that one at least has learnt a great deal, namely myself. -Ludwig Boltzmann

This quote comes from a talk Boltzmann gave in 1905 originally titled Proof that Schopenhauer is a stupid, ignorant philosophaster, scribbling nonsense and dispensing hollow verbiage that fundamentally and forever rots people’s brains, but shortened to On a thesis by Schopenhauer. In his talk he first explains he lifted this phrase verbatim from Schopenhauer, as applied to Hegel. I found it in a nice collection of Boltzmann’s non technical writing called Theoretical Physics and Philosophical problems. I’ll probably be quoting from it some more, three are some hilarious takes on idealist ethics, and even Buddhism.

The realist compares the assertion that he could never imagine how the mental could be represented by the material let alone by the interactions of atoms with the opinion of an uneducated person who says that the Sun could not be 93 million miles from the Earth, since he cannot imagine it. Just as ideology is a world picture only for some but not for humanity as a whole, so I think that if we include animals and even the Universe the realist mode of expression is more appropriate than the idealist one. Ludwig Boltzmann, via Cercignani

Ambien blogging again. An interesting practice, You get to read what spewed forth just a few hours before with no recollection of it.

But, I’ve run out of any other post-A activities, so let’s see what sort of demented crap I can smear into the keyboard.

Question #47284: Why can’t I sleep?

I’m out of equilibrium. Damage report: bum left elbow. No Aikido for you. Bum left hand. No guitar craft for you. I don’t think the half-assed aikido or RH exercises are keeping my maniacal energies under wraps. Politics as a spectator sport is not helping my stress levels.

I caught most of the panel discussion with Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings, and Dan Rather at the New Yorker Festival on CSPAN a few times. The mere spectacle of those three men on the stage was interesting enough. My interest in journalist-celebrity-dom night be traced back to Bloom County, but by any fetish-meter this was nuclear.

I was brought up on Rather, but back around 9-11-2001 I gravitated to Jennings. I don’t otherwise watch news programs- I can better manage the information inflow. But I have to say, that was quite a panel, and while everyone was thoughtful and insightful about the roles and responsibilities of journalists in the changing landscape of corporate broadcasting, Dan Rather blew by nuts off. The 72 year old anchor / editor gave it to us clean.

“He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.” (Aeschylus)