Archives for October 2004

I have long thought that Arafat was a one trick pony who didn’t have the ability to truly become the leader he would need to be to bring real peace. Too many years as a terrorist and little to none as a real diplomat. But the reality is that you cannot always dictate who you want to negotiate with. Sometimes you are stuck with a pseudo-partner because that is all you have,

So you play the hand that you are dealt and deal with it.

Israel has been preparing a number of plans of action for how to deal with the Post-Arafat world for some time now. But it remains to be seen just what is going to happen and what kind of vacuum will be created in the void that he most assuredly will leave.

Who is going to step up, who will be pushed to the forefront and what impact will that have on peace. Interesting questions for interesting times.

It is no secret that I find women to be very interesting. They are so different and there are so many things that I find to be attractive and sexy about them. And they crack me up. It is so funny to listen to women discussing men and what they want. Some of it is just so ridiculous and some of it is so dead on.

The specific topic of this post comes from my elevator ride from the garage into the office building today. There was one other person in the elevator, a very tall woman. I am 5’10, so anytime I stand next to a woman and notice that she is taller than I am it is probably safe to say that she is tall.

But since I do have moments in which I am oblivious, there are times when I fail to notice that someone is standing on a step/projection/stool/chair, which clearly impacts their height in relation to me. As usual, I digress.

Most of the time women seek men who are taller/bigger than they are. So in my single days the taller women were less interested in myself and more interested in my friends many of whom are more than 6 feet tall.

Not that it matters anymore, but I never cared if a woman was taller than I am. My ego could easily handle that and I would have had not a single problem with her height in relation to mine.

Now if she were physically stronger than I am that would dent my fragile male ego, but not the height. That is not a big deal at all.

I have spent much of my life bucking the tide. If people went left, I often went right. For a while it was just a rebellious way to show my independence. At some point during my teenage years my father sat me down to discuss what it meant to have my own opinion and whether it was necessary to act out to prove it.

I don’t remember exactly what was said, but I remember the real message. It was encouragement to continue to try and think for myself and a reminder that if I was really secure in my beliefs I wouldn’t find the need to broadcast them. It made a lot of sense to me then and it makes sense to me now. Which leads me to my point.

I find it disturbing to see so many people turn off their minds and jump on the bandwagon so that they can say that they were part of “it” whatever “it” may be. In the current climate I find it distasteful to watch so many Americans jump up and down in agreement whenever “Europe” complains about the war.

They seem to think that by agreeing with them they make themselves to be more worldly and culturally aware. It is just daft.

It is no secret to “long time” readers that I have no compunction about bashing Europe, but then again I haven’t any problem bashing the US or any other country/continent either.

The fact that so many people dislike Bush is not in and of itself significant enough to warrant agreement. Your vote should not be given to someone because you like them and it should not be withheld just because you do not. The decision should be based upon their ability to do the job.

Can they get it done more effectively and efficiently than others and do you agree with their policies. Personal issues should be left out of it.

Along those lines I maintain that it is not critical for a person to be eloquent as long as they can effectively communicate their message. And even more important then the quality of their voice/elocution is what they say. Is it meaningful, is it important, is it significant.

We waste so much energy on stupid criticisms that are truly meaningless and often nonsensical.

I remember the hostage crisis quite well. I found this article to be quite interesting. Here are a couple of excerpts:

On a Sunday morning 25 years ago, U.S. diplomats in Tehran looked out the window to see hundreds of young Iranians, fired by a love of Islam and a hatred of America, spilling over the walls and through the gate of the embassy compound.

The Americans did not know it, but they were staring at the future — a militant Muslim fundamentalism that would one day replace communism as the greatest threat to their nation.

That was Nov. 4, 1979, the beginning of the Iran hostage crisis, and a date on a timeline that would stretch to Sept. 11, 2001, and beyond.

Fifty-two Americans were held captive for 444 days. Although none was seriously hurt, many were beaten, blindfolded, isolated and lined up for mock firing squads. Never had so many representatives of so powerful a nation been abused so flagrantly.

To better understand the impact of the crisis on the hostages and the nation, reporters from USA TODAY and Gannett newspapers around the nation interviewed more than half of the surviving hostages. Although they don’t agree on everything, most have reached these conclusions:

•The Iran crisis taught Americans little about Muslim extremists. “We don’t understand how they think,” says Dave Roeder, 65, who was an embassy Air Force attaché. Several hostages recall that when they came home, people were more curious about what they ate than what the crisis said about the use of Islam to compel terror.

“The very people today that are standing up and saying, ‘We’ve got to do something about this terrorism,’ are people that did not listen to those of us that had actually been out there fighting terrorists for the past 30 years,” says Alan Golacinski, 54, the embassy security chief.

•The crisis taught the extremists that terrorism works. When the crisis ended with the captors unrepentant and unpunished, “we were teaching the Middle East what could be gained through an act of terrorism,” says Rick Kupke, 57, who was an embassy communications staffer. The lesson was simple, says John Limbert, 61, an embassy political officer who later became ambassador to Mauritania: “You can break the rules and get away with it.”

As a result, many hostages say they expected a disaster like 9/11. Bill Daughtery, a CIA agent in the embassy and now a college political science professor, describes his reaction to the 2001 attacks this way: “ ‘What took them so long?’ ”

For many former hostages, Sept. 11 was particularly difficult. “It made me physically sick,” says Paul Lewis, 47, a former embassy Marine guard. “I thought, ‘They finally found a way to get here.’ ”

This weekend we are throwing a little shindig for my daughter, it is a baby naming party. We have worked hard to try and minimize the number of people and we are still looking at somewhere around 100 or so.

That includes family and friends, but not all of either. Wow, 100 people and we could have extended it higher had we sent out a few more invitations, not to mention that there were people who RSVP’d to say that they are not able to come.

My son’s Bris was similar and a little more nervewracking. It was hard because he was our first child and we were just learning what it meant to be parents, let alone that this took place a mere 8 days after his birth. But it went well and we had a great time.

So now almost four years later we are doing it again and we have run into a problem we had the last time in that we haven’t heard from a bunch of people and need to call them to find out if they are coming. The bigger problem is that I think that at least one couple were inadvertently left off of the list. Well, that is not totally accurate, the email invitation was sent out and they were definitely on it, but their email bounced.

I kept reminding myself to call and make sure that they were notified. And I did do that, but I didn’t leave a message. I meant to, but I just hung up and now here we are a couple of days away. So I have to call and make sure that they know that they were invited.

I am going to be honest and tell them the whole story and hope that they are not offended. Truth be told they can be offended and I won’t lose any sleep over it, but I’d rather that it didn’t happen. I hate dealing with nonsense.

“The float just sank.

As of today, any check you write may be posted — and the money deducted from your account — within a few hours.

Savvy consumers no longer can count on a delay of a day or two or three — the float — as a paper check moves through the banking system.

The speedup is a result of the new Check 21 law, which goes into effect today. It allows banks to make an electronic image of a check and send the electrons, not the paper, through the system. .”

Interesting stuff.