The Razor

Published as Guest Commentary in the Delaware State News on August 1, 2006.—————————You don’t have to be a Jew to support Israel. It’s a democracy like the United States. It has been a staunch American ally in an unfriendly neighborhood. It has strong political, social and religious ties to the United States.

However it’s more personal for me. One of my earliest memories is the destruction of airplanes sitting on the tarmac in Jordan by terrorists on September 12, 1970. I was 3 years old.

At the time my sister was a flight attendant for TWA. One of the planes hijacked happened to be a TWA flight, and my father – a physically imposing man – was driven to hand-wringing and pacing until he learned that my sister was safe.

Two years later I sat mesmerized in front of the TV watching the hostage drama in Munich unfold. There 11 Israeli athletes were held for 18 hours by Palestinian terrorists before being massacred.

The Arab-Israeli conflict became a part of my daily life when the Arab oil producing states decide to punish the Western nations for supporting Israel. Gasoline doubled overnight from 59 cents a gallon, straining my parent’s budget and ushering in a period of high inflation. Terms like ‘Misery Index’ entered my vocabulary as I watched the nightly news during dinner at home.

As I grew into adolescence I became fascinated by world history. I saw unforgettable photos of the Holocaust and read the stories of unimaginable horror in the concentration camps. I learned how Israel was founded from the ashes of the crematoria.

Since its founding, Israel has been cast into the historical role of the Jewish people: the world’s scapegoat. For decades, the Israelis have been portrayed as greedy – taking away land from the Arabs. People forgot that Israel accepted a two-state solution proposed by the United Nations at its creation. It was the neighboring Arab states, and a large proportion of the Arab population of the prospective Arab state of Palestine who refused to accept the existence of Israel. This continues to be the stand of the Palestinian Authority under the elected leadership of Hamas – a terror group explicitly founded to wipe out Israel and enslave the Jews living there.

The terror attacks continued. As the Israelis suffered, the world convinced itself that the only solution was for Israel to trade the land it had won in battle for peace.

In 2000, Israel itself believed this. It pulled out of south Lebanon. With American guarantees and assurances to both sides it offered the Palestinians all the land it had gained in the prior 33 years. But the Palestinians refused the offer.

Soon, families sitting to dinner were murdered by Hamas terrorists. Toddlers eating pizza at a Jerusalem fast food restaurant were slaughtered by Islamic Jihad attackers, their families paid by Saddam Hussein, their faces painted on walls and names bestowed on streets in Gaza and the West Bank.

Soon after this attack, America experienced 9-11 and shared in the misery of being under attack. On 9-11 the World prided itself by saying everyone had become Americans. In retrospect the truth is that on 9-11 we became Israelis.

Still, Israeli clung to the myth that by pulling out of the lands it had captured in battle, it could buy peace. It pulled out of Gaza, dragging Jewish nationalists screaming at the soldiers who carted them away. Gaza was emptied of Jews, and the first thing the Palestinians did upon taking control was to set fire to the evacuated Jewish synagogues, celebrating and dancing as the temples burned to the ground.

Now Israel finds itself at open war with its enemies. Rockets packed with ball bearings fall upon its northern cities. Hamas attacks continue in the south. Once again the Europeans and the United Nations return to their anti-Semitic roots and try to hold Israel down so that its enemies can attack her without fear of being struck back.

But as an American, I see the truth. It may be possible to talk your way out of a mugging, but you can’t negotiate with a killer. Israel has tried negotiating, has tried playing by the rules imposed on it by the United Nations and the Europeans – and what has it gotten? Dead Israelis.

I stand for Israel because I see it as a desert that has bloomed through the hard work and brilliance of its people. I see a people that has suffered unjustly for thousands of years continue to suffer today. I see a people who refuse to accept the status of victims. I see a people who value peace but aren’t willing to trade it for annihilation.

I stand for Israel because Israel is a nation where Arabs, Jews and Christians live together in peace – next to states where religions and their books are banned outright. I stand for Israel because it values everyone. It holds gay pride rallies next to nations where gays are hung from forklifts. It treats women as equals in all ways, while the women in nearby nations can’t even leave their homes alone.

I stand for Israel because it is at the frontier of civilization, an outpost of honesty in a region mired in corruption. I stand for Israel because in the fight to preserve the light from the darkness, we are all Israelis.

Link.

Those damn Catholics. It’s the Gunpowder Plot all over again…

The more I read Wikipedia, the more I like it.
Here’s a quote taken from its entry on Eddie Adams, famous for the photo of General Nguyen Ngoc Loan executing Viet Cong prisoner Nguyen Van Lem:

, “Still photographs are the most powerful weapon in the world. People believe them; but photographs do lie, even without manipulation. They are only half-truths.

What the photograph didn’t say was, ‘What would you do if you were the general at that time and place on that hot day, and you caught the so-called bad guy after he blew away one, two or three American people?’”

Photographs are only half-truths. Wow.
Someone needs to grab every photo editor and cram that statement down their throats.

Here are two photos doctored by Reuters:

As presented:

Original photo:

doctored photo:

detail of original photo:

I don’t gamble. I don’t drink alcohol. I’m faithful to my wife. If I stay up too late, Adult Swim has something to do with it. My idea of a vacation is to stay home for half of it to work on the house, then go to a place of natural beauty for the rest of it. So the “What Happens in Vegas… Stays in Vegas.” ad campaign isn’t targeted to me. However, I thought the ads were cute at first.

After awhile though they start seem sleazy, don’t they? Today I saw an ad at a bus stop that read “We did it until we dropped. (Shopping can be your alibi).”

I suppose “I did it until I caught the clap” while truthful just doesn’t resonate as well. Neither does “I got so drunk I puked on the carpet after I lost my 401K at Blackjack and passed out.” – Accurate but just doesn’t have that naughty vibe to it…

or
Las Vegas: About as attractive as a coke whore in a dimly lit bar after 15 shots of Jaegermeister. – Too accurate. Way too accurate.
ditto this one:
Las Vegas: All 12 Step Programs Begin Here; Come and Learn Why That’s similar to this one:
“My name is __ and I’m a ____.” Come to Las Vegas and Fill in the ‘Blanks’.

Las Vegas: The World’s Largest BF Skinner Experiment - appeals to the logical minded. It would probably work on most college campuses – at least, those that actually teach something.

Las Vegas: What God Practiced on Saddam & Gomorrah For – nice Biblical ring. Might work with the Jewish crowd.

Like many men I hate shopping. That high-pitched whine you hear outside your window on Saturday afternoon might just be us passing by as I’m dragged whining to the mall by the Wife.

But strangely enough I enjoy shopping online. In fact I enjoy buying anything online including the same stuff I buy at department stores and shopping malls. The difference between the two experiences is that one is a chore, the other is a sport.

And like snowboarding, skateboarding and parachuting it’s an extreme sport called “Extreme Online Shopping” by those who partake in it. While not as physically demanding as most sports, it does take practice, concentration and skill developed over a long period of time.

The goal of extreme online shopping is to buy what you need while paying as little as possible using the resources available on the Internet. You start by visiting a website such as Fatwallet.com.

Fatwallet.com is an information clearinghouse for extreme shoppers. Here you will find the latest deals on everything from detergent to digital cameras and the strategies involved in getting the best deal. These strategies include using “pricematching” (where stores promise to match the price of an item sold at a competitor), rebates, coupon codes, and other tactics to score the best deal possible. With the proper strategy, people have been known to nab items FAR – “Free After Rebate” – or even better, make money on the purchase of the item. Of course YMMV – “Your Mileage May Vary” – meaning that some store managers or phone customer service reps may not agree to the strategy and thereby kill your deal.

Take for example the recent sale on a Samsung laser printer. An office supply store listed the printer at $129.99 with an $80 rebate, bringing the price down to $49.99 plus tax. While $50 for a laser printer may strike many as a pretty hot deal, most extreme shoppers viewed it as lukewarm at best.

Some shoppers noticed that a competitor had the same model printer on sale at $79 without a rebate. They took the store ad to the office supply store and demanded the store match the competitor’s price. While many store managers refused to pricematch the item (the YMMV part of the deal), others did – matching the difference by the stated policy of 110%. After the pricematch and rebate, the extreme shoppers got a laser printer for the price of sales tax with $8 left over. That made it a pretty toasty deal.

As you would expect, extreme shopping is bad for business. In a 2004 Wall Street Journal article Brad Anderson, chief executive officer of Best Buy Co, labeled such extreme shoppers as “devils” and developed strategies to discourage such shoppers from shopping at BestBuy. Other stores have tightened up their pricematching policies, for example including rebates in their calculations or refusing to pricematch stores that they do not consider direct competitors.

In the example of the laser printer, the office supply store’s corporate office began to reject the rebates of those who successfully pricematched at the stores. While some had received confirmation that their rebates were accepted, it was unclear whether everyone who jumped on the deal would receive the rebate. To make matters more confusing, an advanced copy of a BestBuy’s 7/31/06 – 8/5/06 ad circulated showing that the price of the printer would be $59. Since this was after the rebate had expired but within the 14 day low price guarantee of the office supply chain, extreme shoppers then figured out a new approach. The potential payoff? A free laser printer plus $27 before tax. But as a poster on the site pointed out, this was a “big YMMV” and it wasn’t clear how successful this plan would ultimately be.

For many that mileage has already run out. Some extreme shoppers have stopped publicizing their finds or strategies to prevent others from abusing them. Divisions have appeared between those who enjoy the hunt for a good bargain, and small merchants who use this knowledge to buy as much of an item as they can in order to sell it for a profit, usually on eBay. As one FatWallet poster, “rctay”, complained “(Fatwallet) is a victim of its success. Unless you happen on a deal in the first few minutes it will probably be dead…There are so many resellers grabbing large volumes also. The sellers are adapting to bargain sites also…”

In the end the merchants must in order to survive, and extreme shopping will go the way of hunting bison and shooting passenger pigeons from trains. But in the meantime a bit of extreme shopping may be just what your pocketbook – and your mind – needs to beat the summer heat.

David Broder makes an interesting argument: Leave Iraq just like we left Saigon in 1975 and things will work out okay.

It is hard to remember now, but at the time, we were told that if Ho Chi Minh prevailed, communism would roll south through Malaysia and spread to the Philippines and threaten Australia—to say nothing of American influence in the Pacific. We took those warnings seriously, and so it was a bitter moment when the Viet Cong occupied the old American Embassy in Saigon.

And today the embassy is again open—in Hanoi—and the United States is trading freely with a united Vietnam.

Right… We’ll ignore the tens of thousands who were killed in South Vietnam after the fall – or the 3 million killed by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia after the US fled southeast Asia.

Hey, it’s okay. Things worked out…

The humanitarian impulse of liberals like Broder is scary.

I love the art of the deal, and so it was easy for me to imagine the following:

Rove: Howard, it is I, Lord Rove calling from the depths.
Dean: Karl, I Lord of Screams hear you. State your business.
Rove: (sound of escaping steam) I have reached what I believe to be a fair… trade of sorts… Hagel for Lieberman.
Dean: To what scheme might I apply this so-called logic of yours, Karl?
Rove: Hagel is one of yours, and Joe’s one of ours. And if Joe loses the primary, you know he’s going to win the general. So… You run Lamont against my boy Joe, you get Charles du Hagel – the French asshole.
Dean: Hmmm… A bargain methinks…
Rove: It is truly fair… It shall preserve the balance of forces which helps to maintain the balance in our 527’s.
Dean: Agreed. Make it so.

“If you hide behind your baby to shoot at my baby, you are responsible for getting children killed. You and you alone.” – Naomi Ragen, Haaretz

Qana bombing body count falls sharply

The Red Cross announced yesterday that 28 bodies, including those of 19 children, had been found at the site. Additional bodies are expected to be found over the coming days.

Yep. It takes time for Hezballah to dig up bodies from cemeteries to trot out as freshly killed by the IDF.

When a child reaches a certain age, I believe that it is a father’s duty to embarrass him. Case in point, a visit to the shopping mall last night. While waiting for the Wife, the Kid & I stood milling about outside of the store “Hot Topic.” To kill some time, I thought I’d wander in and check out the T-shirts. The display of shirts ran from floor to ceiling, and I surveyed the bands.

Dead Milkmen. My first job in technology I worked with the lead singer of that band. I also saw them play with Mojo Nixon at my university.
Dead Kennedy’s. I saw the lead singer, Jello Biafra, perform solo at my uni.
The Ramones. I saw this band play one long, frenetic set with DeeDee Ramone shouting “1-2-3-4” between songs at “Mississippi Nights” in St. Louis.
The Misfits. I dated a girl who was once big into this band.
The Clash. I listened to “London Calling” on a boombox in my garage/darkroom while teaching myself how to develop and print black & white photographs.
Red Hot Chili Peppers. My memories of seeing this band are clouded from drinking tequila with a friend before the show. Too bad given that it was early in their career.
The Vandals. I saw them at an under-21 club with 45 Grave. The lead singer of the Vandals came on stage with a rigged up phonograph that he had strapped to himself and used to scratch along to the music. The lead signer of 45 Grave seemed strung out on heroin and could barely stand up.

The Kid stood outside of the store ignoring me. When I came out to see if he would come in and look around, he shook his head quickly. No cajoling would get him to come into the store with me, not even a Green Day shirt.

So I left the store and waited outside for the Wife to return. When she did, I told her what happened.

“I’d be embarrassed to go into that store with you too,” she said, agreeing with the Kid. “You’re too old and besides, you don’t want to give money to those anti-American weasels now do you?”

She was right, of course. The Wife always is. Still, it didn’t seem right to me. I wasn’t going to wear those t-shirts, just look at them the same way one would look at photographs. But it was time to move on, and besides, I wanted to get the hell out of that mall at the first chance.