The Decline of Polite Culture and Other Items of Interest

I started this blog for the purpose of being something of a journal so that I could look back and see what was going on in my life.  Unfortunately, between being a private person and not having much of a life, I see most of my posting being about things outside of my control.  That is, politics and world events. 

Ah well, it beats being a narcissist, I suppose.

In case anyone else is reading, a few things that caught my interest while being quite ill the past two weeks:

Victor Davis Hanson has a wonderful piece on the decline of polite behavior that is well worth reading through.

If you want good insights into the problems of the Middle East, few countries embody all the difficulties faced more than Lebanon.  That's where Michael Totten's work has been invaluable and his account of meeting Walid Jumblatt, the Druze leader is absolutely fascinating. Read the whole thing.

Drew Emmer at Wright County Republican has posted Gov. Mitch Daniels' (R-Indiana) op-ed on the coming reduction of tax revenues governors across the United States will be facing.  It is time for government to tighten their belts just like everyone else. There are a lot of people struggling financially right now, including me.

Facebook is not a secure or safe place to be, unfortunately not a lot of people know how to make it safer.  Several weeks ago, a young friend of mine had his laptop infected by a hostile ad on Facebook that took quite a bit of doing to kill.  Watch out for anything claiming to be an antivirus that spawns popups like crazy!

A Dangerous Season

Here it is, August 22, 2006. So far, the Iranians haven't blown anything up other than Kurdish villages during their "wargames". That doesn't mean Israel or the West is off the hook, though. From now until September 11th, the potential for terrorist activities and further war in Lebanon will increase. Iran is the key to this and they are doing nothing BUT saber rattling. Here's a link to excerpts from MEMRI that translate the latest from Iranian leaders in their own country's media. What's amusing is they claim that Article 11 of the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty allows countries to secretly build weapons if they fear they are threatened. Powerline shows that to be a lie by quoting Article 11, which would be hilarious if it wasn't such a serious situation. The "multi-faceted" offer Iran gave the UN today won't do a thing to stop their progress in building the bomb, not when Ahmadinejad is making statements like this:

If you want to have good relations with the Iranian people in the future, you should acknowledge the right and the might of the Iranian people, and you should bow and surrender to the might of the Iranian people. If you do not accept this, the Iranian people will force you to bow and surrender.

At least Jerusalem wasn't nuked today and there wasn't a test detonation in the hinterlands of Iran. But it is clear they plan to make the world do what they want.

Update: Iran did attack another country's property. It wasn't the Israelis, but the Romanians! This is interesting if strange, it looks like Iran is starting to flex their military muscles with an aim at controlling the oil in the Persian Gulf.