From the DailyKos:

The good news — Republicans are finally starting to come around on Iraq, making noise about applying some accountability to the war effort. And more good news — Republicans are proving that Democrats are, in fact, the party of ideas and they are,in fact, bereft of them. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be stealing our ideas. And the challenge — we need to cut out the middle men in 2006.

And so you see, whilst President Bush is away in Asia (and slapping him resoundingly in the face), the entire Republican party caves in to Democratic pressure and places the party and the nation on the road to the above photograph. A rather spectacular assumptive leap to make, is it not? Allow me to explain in a moment. But first, a letter from Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D, Nevada):

November 14, 2005
TO: SENATE DEMOCRATS
FROM: SENATOR REID
SUBJECT: YEAR -END REVIEW AND OUTLOOK FOR 2006
The last few days of our session and the December recess will be an important time for our Caucus. President Bush and his Republican party are collapsing across a wide front. Voters doubt their integrity, oppose their policies, abhor their performance and differ with their priorities. And, last week’s Democratic victories confirm what we already knew – the American people want honest government and leaders who share their priorities.

Over the next several weeks, we will have tremendous opportunities to reinforce with the American people that Democrats are committed to addressing the priorities of the people, while Republicans have spent the last year enacting the agenda of special interests and the radical right. Our unity in fighting for America’s priorities such as lower gas prices, a real plan for security and a better economy — as well as our success in defeating the Republican efforts to privatize Social Security, preventing the Republican trigger on the nuclear option, forcing a real investigation into the manipulation of intelligence, and blocking the irresponsible tax cut bill — has reaped real benefits for the Democratic Party, and for America.

We can’t stop now. It’s incredibly important that we take this message home during the upcoming recess and focus on the many missed opportunities in the Republican Congress over the last year to address America’s priorities, and begin to lay out a real agenda of reform that will set the nation in a new direction.

This memo provides a brief review of activities in 2005 and important planning for 2006.

In yesterday’s vote involving every Republican:

The overall measure, adopted 98-0, shows a willingness to defy the president in several ways despite a threatened veto. It would restrict the techniques used to interrogate terrorism suspects, ban their inhuman treatment and call for the administration to provide lawmakers with quarterly reports on the status of operations in Iraq.

The Democratic proposal called for specific dates and timetables for an Iraq troop withdrawal. The Republican version called for no specific dates but “quarterly reports” on progress made. Both versions are advisory in nature but reflective of the Senate in toto. Again, Senate Republicans crossed the line and provided a wonderful Democratic victory the likes of which they are crowing about today.

The Republicans caved on ANWR; now they’ve caved on the President. In an even larger body blow not simply involving politics but the literal future of this nation:

In a mixed bag for the president, the Senate also voted to endorse the Bush administration’s military procedures for detaining and prosecuting foreign terrorism suspects at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay. But the provision approved on a 84-14 vote also would allow the detainees to appeal their detention status and punishments to a federal appeals court in Washington.

That avenue would take the place of the one tool the Supreme Court gave detainees in 2004 to fight the legality of their detentions – the right to file habeas corpus petitions in any federal court.

So in one foul stroke we have now given and confirmed enemy combatants’ access to the entire American judicial system, taken them out of the military purvey and placed them strictly under our Constitution. We have taken a massive pre-9/11 step backwards, as though those 3,000 souls crushed to pulp in the twin towers didn’t pay their ultimate mortal prices. I find this despicable to the core.

If you don’t think the Islamists completely understand the meaning of our senatorial move, the most degrading and undermining military abandonment to date, consider this from the original letter from al Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri to Iraqi insurgent leader Abu Musab Zarqawi, dated July 9, 2005 (making it clear that not only are al-Zawahiri and bin Laden symbolic leaders to the global jihad, but the two are still active in running their terror network as well):

So we must think for a long time about our next steps and how we want to attain it, and it is my humble opinion that the Jihad in Iraq requires several incremental goals:

The first stage: Expel the Americans from Iraq.

The second stage: Establish an Islamic authority or amirate, then develop it and support it until it achieves the level of a caliphate- over as much territory as you can to spread its power in Iraq, i.e., in Sunni areas, is in order to fill the void stemming from the departure of the Americans, immediately upon their exit and before unIslamic forces attempt to fill this void, whether those whom the Americans will leave behind them, or those among the un-Islamic forces who will try to jump at taking power.

There is no doubt that this amirate will enter into a fierce struggle with the foreign infidel forces, and those supporting them among the local forces, to put it in a state of constant preoccupation with defending itself, to make it impossible for it to establish a stable state which could proclaim a caliphate, and to keep the Jihadist groups in a constant state of war, until these forces find a chance to annihilate them.

The third stage: Extend the jihad wave to the secular countries neighboring Iraq.

The fourth stage: It may coincide with what came before: the clash with Israel, because Israel was established only to challenge any new Islamic entity.

I would advise any and all visiting my blog to read the entire contents of the letter.

In a similar vein, the Wall Street Journal said: “If Osama bin Laden is alive and looking for signs of flagging U.S. will to fight the war on terror, he need look no further than our national debate about interrogating his compatriots and others who would do us harm. . . [Senator] John McCain. . .has pushed an amendment through the Senate that would effectively bar all stressful interrogation techniques. The danger for American security is that this would telegraph to every terrorist in the world that he has absolutely nothing to fear from silence should he fall into U.S. hands.”

Andrew McCarthy from the National Review Online wrote:

We should be asking this question of each and every member of Congress who claims to support the McCain Amendment: If we had credible information regarding an ongoing al Qaeda plot to detonate a nuclear weapon in the continental United States, and we had just taken into custody an al Qaeda militant who was in a position to know where and when the attack was to occur but who was refusing to cooperate, are you saying we would need to let thousands of Americans die rather than harm a hair on the terrorist’s head in an effort to extract the information that might save them?

If the answer to that question is “no,” you have no business voting for the McCain Amendment.

If the answer is “yes,” you have no business serving in a government whose first obligation is the security of the governed.

Our pulling out of Iraq and, moreover, providing a public timetable for this flies in the face of not only standard military thought and strategy but plays perfectly into the hands of al Qaeda. The Japanese, for example, were not kind enough to provide us with a timetable for the attack on Pearl Harbor; clearly an oversight on their part. On the other hand, for whatever inestimable reason the allied forces in World War II likewise failed to provide the Germans and Axis forces with a timetable for Operation Overlord.

With regard to the so-called quarterly “reports” advocated by the Senate, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said “The Department of Defense and the Department of State send literally dozens of Iraqi-related reports to Congress each year already” and that the Pentagon alone sends Congress “I don’t know, it’s something over 900 reports total every year” on an array of subjects. “I hope someone reads them,” Mr. Rumsfeld said.

Someone indeed. You wouldn’t be thinking more grandstanding now, would you? A Democratic political ploy once more? One that the Republicans bit into literally hook, line and sinker? Or would that be too jaded a thought for an entire party schooled in politics?

Now place yourself in the form of a soldier stationed in Iraq, and reading that not only has support for your presence flagged on the Democratic side, but it has flagged on the side of your former staunchest supporters, the GOP. Would you not be asking yourself: then what in the hell am I doing here, placing my future and that of my friends in harm’s way?

But let’s go a bit further. I wonder what al-Jazeera has to say about yesterday’s revelation? That would be:

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid said: “We want to change the course. We can’t stay the course.” The Senate added the Republican policy to a defence bill the Senate is hoping to complete work on as early as Tuesday.

Overall, the bill includes provisions that, taken together, mark an effort by the Senate to rein in some of the wide authority lawmakers gave Bush after the 11 September 2001 attacks. The measure includes White House-opposed language that would prohibit the cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of detainees and standardise interrogation procedures used by US troops.

The New York Post weighs in:

Et tu, Bill Frist?

It’s disturbing enough that Democrats have become so hostile to America’s efforts to fight terror, particularly in Iraq.

But now Republicans — like Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist — also seem to be peeking at the polls and going all wobbly on the Iraq campaign.

It’s pathetic.

And dangerous.

I concur and add: it’s not just dangerous; it’s playing precisely into the overall al Qaeda plans, as they realize Iraq is the global “line in the sand” for all of Islamism. AQ knows our recent history: we have little public stomach for dissonance and discontent. Witness Haita. Witness Somalia. Witness Iraq in 1991. Witness more persons’ attempts to make this Vietnam. We cut and run. We don’t have the endurance and commitment — not the military commitment, mind you — the public and, moreover, our political administrations’ commitment.

By doing this, in the course of one 24-hour period, we have now almost guaranteed a NBC MCE occurring on continental United States soil. Because, until a nuclear, biological or chemical mass casualty event takes place, we have conclusively proven that we did not and do not thoroughly understand the dynamics and forces playing against us on a global terrorist Islamist venue.

So yes, when the cat is away, the rats emerge. PowerLine calls it “two parts grandstanding to one part suicide.”

A commenter on DailyPundit.com wrote: “Today, four years after thousands died at the WTC, the Pentagon, and in a Pennsylvania field, unserious and posturing politicians in Washington still don’t seem to understand that this is no longer politics as usual. I think most of these bozos do understand that we either fight Islamofascism now, or fight it later. But they are making the personal calculation they’d rather make the fight later – after they have retired on fat pensions, most likely, so that somebody else will have to make the tough, necessary decisions they don’t have the spine for today.

This is a frightening turn of events on a whole host of levels and please consider this, dear people: NBC events might not just occur in New York. They can occur in your home town as well — and may involve you.

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This newest comment just in from ex-President William Jefferson Clinton:

The United States made a “big mistake” when it invaded Iraq, former President Bill Clinton said Wednesday, citing the lack of planning for what would happen after dictator Saddam Hussein was overthrown.

________________________________

Keep going, politicians, keep going.

I can hear the dosimeters starting to click from here.

I can’t see but I just had to go here, late in the day: the UN still wants control of the internet but is softening a bit of its language in hopes of ameliorating some US concerns — but make no mistake, it still believes the United States is being oppressive in its ICANN control insistence — despite the internet having been developed under a US DARPA heritage.

Tomorrow’s start of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Tunisia was originally to be about funding projects for technologically-poor nations. Instead, it will center primarily around Internet governance: oversight of the main computers that control traffic on the Internet by acting as its master directories so Web browsers and e-mail programs can find other computers.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a semi-independent group that ultimately answers to the U.S. government, “is responsible for managing and coordinating the Domain Name System (DNS) to ensure that every Internet address is unique and that all users of the Internet can find all valid addresses. It does this by overseeing the distribution of unique IP addresses and domain names. It also ensures that each domain name maps to the correct IP address.”

The UN wants to replace ICANN with a multinational group answering only to the United Nations. The new language, however, has been typified as “far less specific” than prior drafts.

Further, the National Taxpayers Union (NTU) says, in a new study, that relinquishing control to the UN could have far reaching dangers which could jeopardize freedoms and fleece taxpayers — US taxpayers.

After so many conspiracy hoaxes over the years, there is now a serious, ominous effort to replace the efficient and adaptable non-profit entity guiding the Internet with a new UN-sponsored agency,” said NTU Government Affairs Manager and Issue Brief author Kristina Rasmussen.

Censorship, bureaucratic corruption (in re the UN “oil for food” program) and taxes are all huge unanswered issues. Specifically, in terms of taxes, the NTU writes:

Since the Internet’s infancy the UN has crafted detailed proposals to tax online traffic. Rasmussen calculates that one 1999 plan for a “bit tax,” adjusted for today’s number of Internet users, would raise 12 trillion dollars this year — roughly equal to America’s Gross Domestic Product. Even less ambitious money-raising models such as the independent, Switzerland-based “Digital Solidarity Fund” could feasibly be transformed into future collectors of compulsory Internet taxes and fees.

Corruption, censorship, control and unlimited taxation — all reasons that the European Union is pushing its compromise proposal on how to govern the Internet. The EU’s executive commission said today that their new proposal is “gaining international support ahead of this week’s U.N. technology summit.”

We shall see.

There’s a lot happening in the political world, tons of things I’d like to bloviate about. Such as: the Republicans sabotaging ANWR; the Republicans doing a “end-around” on President Bush and wanting an “extrication plan” from Iraq; Republican Rick Santorum holding Bush at arms’ length (and apparently not doing well locally), and the real truth about Iraq’s WMDs. I salivate even thinking about these topics.

But I’m going to take a break for the rest of the week as I find proper eyesight has a great deal to do with making cogent posts. My right cornea is scratched and its subsequent irritation is absolutely maddening. I still have to attend to my “day job,” and being in bright light, wind and weather is not helping a lot. Luckily, the doc says eyes heal rapidly. But it’s certainly made me appreciate good eyesight!

It’s late Sunday afternoon on the Left Coast and, sitting on the second floor of my Sierra Nevada aerie, I’m watching the sun shoot through the branches of the conifers and onto the last remaining deciduous trees, their yellow leaves slowly settling to the rich, needle-covered earth below. I moved wood this weekend, from my big woodpile to the secondary wood source on my deck, and then stocked the pile inside the house next to the stove. Winter is coming and I need to be ready.

I know that winter is here when I remove all the chairs from the deck, the umbrella, the tables, and take them below to the shed. I did that this weekend too. I could use a propane fill; I’m at 65% and it’s time to get on the list for a topping-up — I wonder what I’ll pay?

I’m rambling and I know it. It just feels this way. I originally was going to post about the Republicans, about President Bush, and perhaps post my Moonbat of the Week award. That just went out the window. For today, for right now, I’m over politics. Don’t want to go there. I’m just going to go where the muse takes me and, for now, it takes me to cats.

I’ve had cats all my life. I have to admit I’m a cat guy and not a dog guy. Dogs are too loud, too needy, too over-the-top. Sure, I’ve had dogs but only when I left home. We always had cats at home — that’s probably why I am why I am. I didn’t have a dog as a kid. I’ve had a few dogs but they just didn’t satisfy like a good cat. How weird is that? You thought chicks only dug cats? Well, I’m guessing it’s my personality getting in the way.

Here I go with the admission: I’m pretty much the iconoclast. I am not by nature a People Person. I dislike big cities, noise, bustle, loud people, too many people, people in general. I would not do well in New York. I lived in San Francisco for a time when I was very young but couldn’t do that now. I work in Sacramento, Fornicalia. But if I stay there too long I become anxious. At the end of my work week I cannot wait to flee. I drive over the speed limit up I-80 to reach my offramp, 70+ miles away.

I get up here, amidst the pines and blue skies and clouds and wandering roads and railroad tracks and I know I am home. The weight comes off my shoulders. The second I open the door to my house I feel totally unfettered. Make no mistake; when you get home I wish you the same feeling. If you can find that feeling in a housing tract or an apartment, more power to you. I know people who could not survive if they were more than 40′ from a Starbucks or a bus line, or a mall, a theatre, a museum, a Thai restaurant, a freeway, a Pier 1 Imports.

That’s them. It sure ain’t me.

So this weekend I went looking for another cat. I found a small cat rescue facility in lower Placer County, in Auburn. I found this great place where rescued and adoptable cats are kept in little apartments where actual people could enter the actual apartments and actually touch the cats. What a concept!

That’s how old I am. Animal shelters now keep the adoptees from the potential adopters. They cite reasons like cat viruses and diseases and the like. And they’re probably right, I must admit. But you can’t touch the animals. You can maybe stick a finger into a cage but, if caught, you have to swab gross stuff over your hands and atone. Say three Hail Marys and turn around a couple times. And then they kick you out.

Because you had the actual TEMERITY to want to touch the animal you’re thinking of saving.

Yeah yeah yeah, go ahead, rag on my ass: you don’t understand, you don’t get it, they’re keeping the cats disease free, blah blah blah blah. And then they put all those cats to death and they burn them and brush their ashes into bins and they go out with the rest of that day’s trash into the green dumpster. No big deal.

Turns out this out-of-the-way shelter has a higher placement rate than all other regular shelters. I wonder why this would be?

In any event, turns out I put in my chit to be a volunteer at the shelter. Because I felt I could actually make a difference in that place. Because it is different. And it’s not smack dab in the middle of a Massive Population — so they can afford to act and be and present themselves as they are. In ancient Egypt, for example, the cat had a special place in its culture. They were highly valued, not least for the practical reason that mice and rats could destroy a town’s food supply. Cats were often given golden jewelry and allowed to eat at the human table. Killing a cat was a capital offence and when a cat died the household would go into mourning. The Egyptian god Bast was a cat-god.

Which brings me to this weekend: I got my pneumonia shot and I got whacked in the eye. Both were painful.

I found, by sheer whimsy, a place that was delivering flu and pneumonia shots. I opted for the pneumonia shot for one very solid reason: the avian flu is coming. One does not die from the flu; oh no. One dies from pneumonia contracted via the flu. Hence my shot. I’ll be receiving an additional flu shot later this week. I would recommend your doing the same. A day later the injection site pulsed with a dull throb. But I’d do it all over again.

Later, whilst at the shelter I described above, a cat tagged me in the right eye with her paw. I think her claw might have been out for a moment. In any event, my eye swelled shut, teared up and is still somewhat painful. It’s sensitive to light and, 24 hours later, is red and uncomfortable. It feels precisely as my eye felt when I once contracted conjunctivitis.

So sorry. No amazing political post. Just a stream-of-consciousness post that doesn’t mean much of anything to anyone. Except to me.

I’ve always had cats and I want another cat. I’ll work for a rescue cat shelter. And what of Schrodinger’s Cat?

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Here’s Schrödinger’s (theoretical) experiment: We place a living cat into a steel chamber, along with a device containing a vial of hydrocyanic acid. There is, in the chamber, a very small amount of a radioactive substance. If even a single atom of the substance decays during the test period, a relay mechanism will trip a hammer, which will, in turn, break the vial and kill the cat. The observer cannot know whether or not an atom of the substance has decayed, and consequently, cannot know whether the vial has been broken, the hydrocyanic acid released, and the cat killed. Since we cannot know, the cat is both dead and alive according to quantum law, in a superposition of states. It is only when we break open the box and learn the condition of the cat that the superposition is lost, and the cat becomes one or the other (dead or alive). This situation is sometimes called quantum indeterminacy or the observer’s paradox: the observation or measurement itself affects an outcome, so that it can never be known what the outcome would have been if it were not observed.

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I posit: was it worth killing the cat?

From Wikipedia:

All conservatives value tradition. Tradition does not mean simply custom, habit or nostalgia for the past, though custom does inform tradition and sustain it. For a conservative, tradition is composed of standards and institutions that have been shown to promote the good, and therefore they find authority in tradition and apply it in politics. This authority, be it a person, a literature or a way of life, is rooted in the past, and thus cannot easily change .

To keep tradition alive, conservatives pass it down from generation to generation, embodied in the eternal verities or the sophia perennis.

Conservatives accept traditional values as authoritative, and judge the world around them by the standards they have come to trust. Many conservatives believe in God, and believe that He is not only the creator of the universe, but also the Author of those conservative values they espouse.

Since conservatives believe tradition supercedes the political process, the laws and constitutions of liberal democracies that permit behavior that conflict with traditional values cause friction in their eyes. Conservatives in a democracy choose to participate, separate, or resist. They often participate in liberal republican politics, using government policy to impose or preserve their values. Good examples of this are the Christian Democratic parties in Europe.

Another method of conservative reform, imposing their values on the public, is common among nationalist or religious conservatives. This can take a relatively benign form, such as Conservative Christians trying to order public school students to pray, or a more violent form, such as Islamists putting to death anyone who blasphemes. Armed conservatives who consider their tradition to be absolute for all may become revolutionary conservatives. In Europe the Catholic-nationalist-conservative regimes of Salazar and Franco are examples.

Though relatively rare, a modern example of conservatives who withdraw from society and attempt to live their lives in traditional ways is the Amish.

The above is a common thread from the internet regarding conservatism.

Some of my high points regarding Conservatism, would be:

• Self-reliance, individual responsibility
• Fiscal conservatism
• Belief in a higher power or authority
• Smaller government
• Traditional mores, values and familial structure
• Nationalism and sovereignty

There are many, many more, of course; these are but a few that come immediately to mind.

So:

In your mind, what is a Conservative? Not a Republican; a conservative.

What are your bullet points and, in addition, what is the first or most important aspect of a true conservative?

I suspect we’ll be a bit of “all over the map” but, once in, I plan to assemble the responses and see if I can list, in order, the most important points of conservatism. There’s a reason for all of this; temporarily, just humor me if you would be so kind.

Take it away: