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Monday, January 14, 2008NIE, AF, Gitmo, AF the Movie, and More. . . including a lawnmower analogy and the phrase, "if headlines were fishes" . . . My apologies. I'm not dead or anything. I just haven't blogged in two weeks. For that matter, I haven't blogged a lot since the week of the November election. Lately, I've been spending my three or four spare minutes every day deciphering presidential primary rules and the like, of which more very soon -- tomorrow, I hope. Meanwhile, a few items requiring my brief comment have accumulated in the last several weeks. (The requirement is merely psychological, perhaps.) First, two or three of you will remember a blog post from about a year and a half ago, entitled, "How Many David Rodebacks Are Too Many?" For what it's worth, David Rodeback the Half-Wit Moral Cripple, a resident of Ohio, has been arrested again, according to the Canton [Ohio] Repository. He and his good buddy Karen were stealing shiny metal things, again. This time, they turned a police dog on him. I'm definitely ready to attribute his continuing failures at his chosen occupation to incompetence, not mere inexperience. If he turns up again, I'll make him his own acronym, for ease of reference here at the blog. Second, and locally, if American Fork City let my equestrian club use some land the City isn't using for a few years, for the symbolic rent of one dollar per year, would it then be unjust of the City to cancel the generous arrangement, once the City actually needed the land for, shall we say, a reservoir? I don't think so, but, then, it's not my equestrian club. If I let my neighbor use my lawnmower for a couple of days, because I'm not using it, is it somehow unjust of me to reclaim the lawnmower next week, when my own lawn needs to be mowed? (Be advised that this link won't work unless you're a registered user of the Daily Herald's newly-revised Web site. Here's a follow-up article, of which the same is true, and another, which so far doesn't require a login.) Third, we turn to the renewed discussion of closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where we are holding prisoners of war. (You know, the war?) I hope it stays open, not so much to keep the inmates out of the continental United States or to make them harder to get to for every political ambulance-chasing ACLU lawyer -- both happy outcomes, to be sure -- but because closing it would reward a massive anti-war misinformation campaign with success. I know the Democrats, the BMA, and some opportunistic Republicans will use similar tactics in the future, anyway, but why encourage them with success this time? Fourth, I enjoyed this Variety review of American Fork (the movie, not the city), and this one in Pasadena Weekly. I haven't seen the movie. I don't know anyone who has. I suppose I'm waiting for the DVD. Fifth, do you remember -- how could you forget? -- all the fuss about errors in several nations' intelligence estimates about prewar Iraq? You know, the weapons of mass destruction we thought were there, but then actually weren't (apparently)? Does it strike anyone strange that the same crowd has been so eager and uncritical in embracing a new National Intelligence Estimate that says Iran isn't building nukes? Shouldn't more people be wondering if this one will turn out to be wrong, too? (If you want to get deeper than the news reports, read pages six through nine of the report, and page five if the terminology isn't already familiar to you.) Sixth, I know the real subject was the recent construction on the I-15 overpass at Main Street in American Fork, but this Thanksgiving headline in The Deseret Morning News seemed to promise much more. Alas, I didn't believe it then -- the larger promise, that is -- and don't expect to believe it in the foreseeable future. It said, "Delays in American Fork just about over." If headlines were fishes . . . Coming soon -- I hope -- are more substantive comments on education, the primaries, and that Mitt Romney speech most people have forgotten by now. Copyright 2008 by David Rodeback. |
