{"id":79,"date":"2006-08-19T13:57:17","date_gmt":"2006-08-19T20:57:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/?p=79"},"modified":"2006-08-19T13:57:17","modified_gmt":"2006-08-19T20:57:17","slug":"this-is-the-world-we-live-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/2006\/08\/19\/this-is-the-world-we-live-in\/","title":{"rendered":"This is the World We Live in."},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>On Judge Anna Diggs Taylor\u2019s ruling on the NSA wiretapping, from the mouth of George W Bush: “Supporters of the decision don\u2019t understand the world we live in.”<\/i><\/p>\n

Because a man who flirts with Creationism — or “Intelligent Design” as Science, and who trust Michael Crichton as a voice against Global Warming is a man who really understands the world we live in.<\/p>\n

An interesting example of the present predictament is when George W Bush announced that Israel was the winner of that last … um… little skirmish with Hezbollah in Lebanon.<\/p>\n

“Hezbollah attacked Israel. Hezbollah started the crisis, and Hezbollah suffered a defeat in this crisis.”<\/p>\n

My first thought on why Bush believes “Hezbollah suffered a defeat” was that Bush is of the mistaken mindset that because Israel bombed away a greater percentage of Hezbollah’s stuff than Hezbollah bombed away of Israel’s, the equation must be that Israel won. But than he extrapulated away my worst bias of him, and created a new bias against him.<\/p>\n

“The first reaction, of course, of Hezbollah and its supporters is, declare victory. I guess I would have done the same thing if I were them, but sometimes it takes a while to come to the sober realization of what forces create stabiility and what don’t. Hezbollah is a force of instability.”<\/p>\n

That last statement is a mish-mash of non-sequitors, which is to say that the “Hezbollah is a force of instability” and “Sometimes it takes a while to {figure out] what forces create stability and what don’t” does not follow “Hezbollah declared victory {which is not true]”.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

At this moment, the prime minister of Israel’s approval ratings are in free fall, and recriminations are happening over how that little skirmish proceeded. Hezbollah’s approval rating in Lebanon has gone from the 30-percent range — a nice little voting block I suppose, to the 80 pecent level. The residents of Lebanon watched as Israeli rockets bombasted their homes, regardless of the bit about “human shields”, and are now watching as Hezbollah — always good with the social services part of the equation, pledges to rebuild the country. And Israel moves from the peripheal to center-stage in Lebanonese’s conciousness. It’s not much of a victory for Israel.<\/p>\n

I hear this story, and I have no idea how I am supposed to verify it (yes, I’m going to go check my sources in the Israeli government), I think from the Washington Note blog, that Israel’s strategy had included the United States pressuring early on to end the hostilities — Israel gets their point across and holds their bluff as long as they could and let them out. If this were the case, I have to wonder about the sense of the Israeli government: this is the Bush Administration we’re talking about. They’re blowhard ideolouges who don’t do nuance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Judge Anna Diggs Taylor\u2019s ruling on the NSA wiretapping, from the mouth of George W Bush: “Supporters of the decision don\u2019t understand the world we live in.” Because a man who flirts with Creationism — or “Intelligent Design” as Science, and who trust Michael Crichton as a voice against Global Warming is a man […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}