BuzzMachine

What we stopped
: That’s Andrew Sullivan’s headline for the story of the Taliban’s torture of a Red Cross worker found with two Bibles. Sullivan points to the Washington Post version. Here is the Sunday Times of London version:

The death sentence imposed on Saed Abdullah was unusually brutal, even by the standards of the Taliban. The mullahs declared that he should be set alight and his flaming body hurled from the tallest building in Kabul.

The Red Cross workerís crime was to be caught with two Bibles on his bookshelf. But although he was accused of converting to Christianity his real sin was to have belonged to the educated elite.

It’s a big, big world
: Nick Denton, the laziest blogger (actually, he’s just the most frequently vacationing blogger and I’m jealous) has returned to the fold to take on — smartly — us war-mongering, meat-eating, culturally self-righteous Western-loving bloggers. Says Nick: “…they beg the question: how to spread the Western enlightenment to the dark and Islamic corners of the world? Conquest? Colonization? Propaganda? Hmmm. Try prosperity.”

Right. Global poverty causes instability and war and hate and all that. Fixing it would help. But that begs the question: How?

Charity? No, that fixes starvation, temporarily and sporadically.

This requires robost trade. It requires starting real businesses in these countries with real employment and real profit. So globalization is a good thing.

But how do you start those businesses? You need skills, which means you need education. You need investment.

Should we invest? Oh, we could. But there are other, better candidates to start this bidding.

Now let us return to our Saudi friends (if this were Fox News, my favorite channel now, and I were a star there, which I’d die to be, you’d enjoy my ironic smirk and rolling eyes cued to the word “friends”) and those in other oil-rich Arab nations.

They are already getting our money and lots of it from selling us oil and investing in our world-class economy and technology and innovation.

They should be using that money to create the world’s greatest universities. They should be targeting areas of the world economy where they can win by doing something other than digging up the natural resources nature happened to give them. They should be investing in new industry in their backyard.

Look at Finland for an example. I’m reading (slowly) a story in Focus magazine (it’s not online and anyway, it’s in German) about their economic miracle. In a very short time, they found that they could be world leaders in mobile phone technology. It’s making them rich. And they’re using those riches to build their educational system and invest in new companies.

Dare I say it: Look at Israel, too, for an example of what can be done. I’ve been working with great technology companies coming from there; this is something they have built in very recent history. It doesn’t take centuries.

Trade. Education. Investment.

The Arab world can and must start to build itself using the many resources it has.

Instead, those resources are being wasted on war.

It doesn’t pay to waste your GNP buying wowy weapons from those Westerners you hate.

And of course, it doesn’t help to attack us. Bin Laden and Iraq and Iran hurt the cause of Arab advancement in thousands of ways but among them: If you tear down the American economy, you tear down your own customer and possibly underwriter. That’s not just evil, it’s stupid.

Is this our responsibility? Not first, it’s not. We didn’t cause their problems and they’re causing lots of our problems today. We can help but first they must — pardon me for sounding like my father — they must help themselves… and stop hurting us.

Behind the Buddhas
: The Irish Times has a wonderful piece traveling to the destroyed Buddhas of Bamiyan in Afghanistan: “It is a 10-hour drive from Kabul through some of the most magnificent and forboding landscape imaginable; picture God and Picasso having an argument.” There, writer Elaine Lafferty gets a tour of the ruins with the poor who live in caves there, showing her where the Buddhas were:

“That was the shoulder,” he says, or “there is a foot.” It seems as though he can name every stone, every mound of debris. He was intimate with these ancient wonders and it as though they still exist in his mind’s eye….

“Those black holes, those were the arms,” he says. “And the doves are gone. The white doves used to come here, but now there is only one. Maybe we will see it today.”

We walk a quarter of a mile to the place where the female Buddha stood. “It was so beautiful, beautiful like a girl,” Sayeed says.

She talks to a woman who lives in these caves with nothing to her name and the woman told her: “We heard about September 11th and what Osama did. We began praying that this time it would be the end of the Taliban.” [via Die Zeit]

Power talks, Islam listens
: Charles Krauthammer says we’re seeing a ripple victory out of Afghanistan: Kuwait backs away from fundamentalist extremism; Somalia and Yemen go after their bad guys before we do.

How far America has come. Remember the initial post-Sept. 11 why-do-they-hate-us angst? How could we possibly defeat this powerful, fanatical, ingrained, battle-hardened, religiously grounded enemy? We discovered the answer: satellite-guided thousand-pounders with the odd daisy cutter thrown in.

Osama knows. “When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse,” he explained on that famous home video. How to win a holy war? Bomb the holy warriors — and overawe the fence-sitting spectators.

Secret Service bozo
: Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter swallows the Secret Service agent’s line, hook and sinker. Alter says that security should win out over PC sensitivies. Amen. But then he wimps out. He says he understands why Bush would be “mad as heck” if his agent’s ethnicity — Arab — kept him off the plane. I’m mad as HELL at Bush for saying that. Bush should be setting the example for caution and security; he and his Secret Service agents, of all people, should place security uber alles. Then Alter talks to the agent’s attorney, who gives him a line of bull: that they are OK with the pilot taking someone suspicious off the plane but that then he should have been allowed back on: “The agent says he gave the pilot the phone number for the Secret Service and the general White House number to verify his identity; the airline says the pilot was worried that the agent, were he a terrorist, could just have a friend or co-conspirator answer the phone. That was an overreaction.” Wrong. It was a prudent reaction. The pilot is right! The agent is a doofus! If Bush doesn’t understand that, he is a doofus! This is all about protecting US, people. No compromises accepted.

But then he talks to the agent’s lawyer, who says it’s OK for a pilot to take someone off a plane but then the

The Hindu-Muslim divide
: Beliefnet brings us a good peice on the Hindu-Muslim divide in India.

Fly almost nekkid
: Reader Anna Haynes suggests we don’t really have to fly naked. We can strip down and then wear airline-issued smocks onboard. This has possibilities. Imagine the class-consciousness we can bring to the process: First class passengers wear fashionable smocks by Armani; tourists wear scratchy, ugly paper smocks. It’s so 1984.

: Another reader writes: Duncan Fitzgerald suggests that we should restart the draft and draft only VCs. I don’t think they’d follow orders very well.

Let’s roll the videotape
: Zacarias “The Incompetent Terrorist” Moussaoui wants his trial to be televised. I say, wheel in the cameras and turn on the lights and let’s roll! Oh, I know we’ll hear that this why he should be tried by a military tribunal, because in a civilian trial, he’ll only get a platform to speak. But we don’t fear that. He will spout his fundamenalist bile and stupidity and the world will see, all the better, all the clearer what hateful, evil people these are. That is assuming, of course, that he’s guilty….

Separated at plastic surgery
: A great visual gag on Photodude. I won’t ruin it. Just go there.

What he says
: Last night, I whined about the effete PBS post-9/11 poetry special (below). Will Vehrs explains why it bothered me better than I did — more poetically, even: “Sometimes poets are best at creating images for us, or putting events in a context we can understand. Other times, they are irrelevant. It seems to me that 9/11 was a tragedy that plain, ordinary people who experienced it are best at capturing its images and feelings.”

Howard speaks the truth
: Howard Stern on the American Airlines pilot who kept an armed, Arab-American, suspicious Secret Service doofus off his plane: “I say thank God… He did the right thing. I applaud him.”

: Charles Johnson speaks the truth, too: “And the Secret Service agent! Hereís a guy who has a sacred duty to protect the life of the President, a guy who should put national security ahead of everything else (especially now!), a guy whoís in a SERVICE thatís supposed to be SECRET, for Godís sakeóand he calls in the lawyers and CAIR for something like this? Itís outrageous. Shame on George W. Bush for going for the cheap political hit, instead of disciplining this agent as he deserves.”

Send this man a Former Pacifist T-shirt
: Salon’s David Talbot confesses — as I did a couple of months ago — that he’s a former pacifist. It’s such an important statement, he put it in the free part of Salon. There’s a lot of history here — and a Part II promised — but the gist is: When you’re right, you’re right and when you’re right you fight. [via Slotman]

David: I have a very nice Former Pacifist store offering T-shirts, mugs, and tote bags. Wear them proudly. But in San Fran, you might want to wear them over body armor.

WWW means Web, what Web?
: ABC News tells us that our nonspecific high alert has been extended to March 11. I go to various government sites trying to learn more about this. I find nothing. Tom Ridge’s White House Homeland Security site has not had anything new in a month! A month! Wake up, Tom! DItto the White House home page. The last thing on Ashcroft’s DOJ site is a Dec. 15 release regarding a meeting with the Italian foreign minister; yup, that’s helpful. Nothing on the FBI site. FEMA has a March 11 deadline for relief applications, nothing else. The most up-to-date effort is the State Department’s terror response page but, oddly, it’s mostly about Justice Department activities.

I’m amazed at this: The government could be using the Web to inform us all, easily, inexpensively, promptly. But they’re not. I see a lot of government traffic coming to my humble site: Spread the word, folks: Use the Web. It works.

Nelson Has-Been Mandela
: Muslimpundit piles on Nelson Mandela, the quisling of this war.

Oh, shut up
: The Chicago Sun-Times is taking a cue from Blogdom, delighting in ridiculing the anti-anti-war crowd under editorials headlined, “Oh, shut up.” The Reader reports that the S-T “advised that ‘we in the West’ shouldn’t squander ‘too much mental energy trying to persuade people who cannot be persuaded’ who the enemy is. Who are these unpersuadeables? The Sun-Times snickered in disgust at ‘those who hate America, whether in Bahrain or Berkeley,’ and ridiculed the unquenchable ‘demand for proof’ of Osama bin Laden’s culpability, whether it arose ‘from the Arab world, from NPR liberals in America or from cafe communists in Europe.’ ”

Let’s not be stupid: Profiling a guy with a gun is smart!
: Lots of hooha tonight regarding the Secret Service agent — a Middle-Eastern man with a gun — who was kept off a flight on Christmas day. You’ll remember that the agent whined about racial profiling, as did an Arab group that popped up immediately: the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). Shockingly — stupidly — even President Bush whined that he sure hoped they didn’t stop this man because of his ethnicity. Bush does not wear political correctness well; it’s even more awkward than his grin. The latest: The agent has hired lawyers to press his case of profiling. And today the American Airlines pilot is complaining to the Secret Service about the agent’s behavior. All the details thanks to James Taranto of Opinion Journal, the Standard, Charles Johnson, and CNN.

Now let’s get this straight, people: THE PILOT WHO KEPT THAT DAMNED DANGEROUS IDIOT TAX-SUCKING AGENT OFF THAT PLANE IS A GREAT AMERICAN FRIGGING HERO! Consider: (1) The agent was armed with a gun. (2) He’s Middle Eastern. Yes, that matters. Of course, that matters. It’s not Swedes and Swiss blowing us up. It’s relevant! (3) He’s male. That’s relevant, too. (4) His paperwork is not in order. (5) He has a bad attitude and thinks that should get him on the plane. (6) Two words: Atta and Reid. (7) Two more words: American Airlines.

The pilot was 100 percent right to keep that man off his plane. He was absolutely right to protect his passengers. The Arab club and Bush are wrong to question him.

Caution is right. Profiling is smart. Security is everything right now. If anybody should understand that, a frigging Secret Service agent should; he should have been the first to back off. Because he clearly does not understand that, the agent should be fired or given a job where he doesn’t carry a damned gun or a badge.

And the pilot should be a star on Fox News shows! Calling O’Reilly!

Let’s not be stupid, America. Let’s be safe.

: This keeps getting juicier. The organization that immediately started crying racial profiling on behalf of the agent is CAIR — the Council on American-Islamic Relations — is, according to this piece on the Middle East Forum, a front for fundamentalist Islamic organizations, including the recently raided Holy Land Foundation. This piece, by Khalid Dur·n, says that CAIR attacked him because he wrote a book about Islam for Jews, an attack that he says led to a Jordanian pol calling on Muslims to kill him. [via Metafilter]

Is all this true? I have no idea. But I at least hope that the agent involved in all this has been pulled off duty until his behavior and his association with this group can be fully investigated. This is not just a man with a gun on a plane. This is a man with a gun near the President. We should not let political correctness and polite embarrassment stop us from making sure that questionable people cannot get near the President or a plane. Let’s not be stupid.

I am the antisnob
: I hate to be a classless uncultured clod, really, I do. But I can’t keep from rolling my eyes as I watch TV (which can give you a mean headache) thanks to a WNET public TV special billed as In Our City: New Yorkers Remember September 11th.. But it’s not real New Yorkers. It’s poets and writers reciting poetry and writing. It has no immediacy, no grit, no soul. It’s all effete, so very PBS.

The sins of the son are visited upon the father
: Richard “Maxwell Stupid” Reid’s Dad gives a poignant interview to the Mirror blaming himself for what his son did. (More on parents of terrorists, below.)

Take that, you PC swine!
: Instapundit is right: Today brings us a particulary good rant/bleat/sermon from James Lileks. He has the guts to say that, yes, Western culture is superior:

As if freedom of religion, freedom of property, freedom of artistic expression, astonishing technological innovation, gender equality and democracy are somehow subjectively defined in this context. In this country, women can not only drive, but be National Security Advisor. I mean, the United States put a robot on a Martian moon, and Saudi Arabia chopped off the heads of three guys last week for being gay. I think we have the slight edge in the cultural development department, but thatís just me.

And he delivers the best and briefest statement I have yet seen on what’s wrong with politically correct thinking:

In order to respect all viewpoints, no actual viewpoints may be professed, let alone examined.

The new Sullivan
: Note the redesigned Andrew Sullivan. Much improved: no scrolling window; we can now link directly to his best bon mots; he even appears to have advertising from Amex and Dell. Capitalism, a concept.

Hell, no…
: Glenn Reynolds has the perfect reply to those calling for a draft or mandatory community service: “Let’s draft middle-aged newspaper editorialists (the chief enthusiasts for such plans) and have them spend a couple of years emptying bedpans, teaching in inner-city schools, etc. Being older and better-educated, they should have more skills. And they seem almost universally in favor of national service schemes, so they shouldn’t complain. Right?” Right. But for the grace of fate and a high number in the only lottery I’ve every played, I’d be Canadian or an ex-con now. A draft for a draft’s sake is a bad idea, wasteful of youth and talent. If there had been a draft in the last decade, we wouldn’t have had all the young people we had founding new dot.companies. Oh, on second thought….

Prodigalog
: Ken Layne is back.

Distance
: The other night, I was trying to savor the last hours of my holiday, purposely wasting them in front of the TV, when I happened to click onto a Fox News special about the first hours of the attack on Sept. 11, replaying the event using video and reporting from local stations. I didn’t want to watch but I had to, for I had never seen it because I was at the World Trade Center. (I hesitate to keep saying that since it comes to sound like a boast but I feel the need to explain myself to all the fine new readers sent this way by Instapundit).

What struck me first was the smoke. Of course, I remember the smoke; we see it in picture after picture. But seeing it on video, I remembered watching from the ground, awestruck by the huge, horrendous, deep black billows, cut only by the occassional orange flame and by all the paper floating down. I remembered how we all just stood there, mouths open, hearts racing, staring. It couldn’t get worse, we thought.

I was struck, too, by the necessary guessing going on; these TV people were still speculating that this could have been caused by a pilot who lost his way; they were still hesitant to say “terror” or “attack.”

But I was struck most by the distance. The TV images came from the top of some building far away. On TV, you couldn’t see what we saw, the images of people. On TV, you saw two huge buildings. On TV, the horror was huge. There, it was human.

I think this helps me understand just a bit more why people feel the need to go there, to get closer, for TV put this all at a distance.

Parents in hell
: I think we all end up with some sympathy for the parents of the bad guys and bozos from our neighborhoods who went over to the wrong side of this war: the parents of John “The Rat Traitor Superdoofus” Walker and Richard “Maxwell Stupid” Reid. Yes, we all wonder for a moment whether there’s anything these parents did to turn their kids into what they became but then we can all point to the good parents of bad kids. If only we knew whose fault they are.

The Guardian examines the lives of these parents, looking to Philip Roth’s novel American Pastoral for guidance.

Meanwhile, the Times of London looks at the Tartan Taliban terrorist, the Scot just arrested at the border of war.

And in Washington, we have the mother of Zacarias Moussaoui defending her son.

Now, at the same time, let’s look at the fires in Australia. Tonight on NPR and at News.com.au, they report that two-thirds of the suspects arrested for arson are juveniles, one of them 9 years old. (Details via Tim Blair.)

Is a generation going bad? No, of course not. In every generation, some go bad. And it is hell to be their parents.

Note, too, that Walker Marin high school is complaining about the bad publicty it has had.

The upright and locked position
Since I got what I asked for and I’m now being associated with the need to fly naked as the only means to assure safe travel (whether or not it was my idea), I feel a duty to flesh out the concept with a few rules for the airline’s operation:

1. No leather seats

2. No hot coffee.

3. No hot soup.

4. Good air circulation.

5. No cameras.

6. New, softer seatbelts.

7. New, no-pinch seatbelt buckles.

8. No traveling with your boss.

9. Laptops encouraged.

10. No sexy movies.

The great Mandela keeps spinning
: Nelson Mandela backs down on his support for our war against bin Laden, according to Islam Online.

“Subsequent discussions with our family, friends and advisors have convinced us that our view may be one-sided and overstated,” Mandela’s statement said. The support for the war “gives the impression that we are insensitive to and uncaring about the suffering inflicted upon the Afghan people… We regret if the manner in which we stated our position gave any offence to Muslims in South Africa and throughout the world.”

Mr. Mandela, with this mealy-mouthed equivocating — fearful of offending any of your old allies and selling out your other allies — you put your struggle, your true freedom-fighting on the same level as bin Laden’s murder, you play a dangerous game of politics and PR and PC spin. The rest of the reasonable world and most of Afghanistan opposes bin Laden and now you’re not sure? For shame, sir, for shame.

(Link to the original South Africa Business newspaper story here.)

I keep losing their stupid knives anyway
: The Swiss allow their damned knives back onto their damned planes.

Mullah moola
: Slate finds the irony of the World Trade Center’s Muslim motif.

The value of vision
: Thomas Friedman’s column in the NY Times today is good. It’s about the need for vision.

Friedman hails President Bush for winning the war so far. But then he complains that Bush has “tried to use the tremendous upsurge in patriotism, bipartisanship and volunteerism triggered by the tragedy of Sept. 11 to drive a narrow, right-wing agenda from Sept. 10 into a Sept. 12 world. It’s wrong. It won’t work. It sells the country short and it will ultimately sell the Bush presidency short.” I don’t think Friedman is complaining about what Bush is trying to do, though; he’s complaining about what Bush is failing to do.

Friedman says that so far, we’ve succeeded in making the world safe for OPEC members to increase the price of oil, which they just did. So we, the taxpayers, have to pay for the billions of dollars of damage done to life, property, and the economy by these Arab terrorists and now we have to pay more for oil “because the Middle East regimes we’re protecting want to hike the price.” This, says Friedman, is “an outrage.” Amen.

He continues: “You’d think maybe the king of Saudi Arabia would say: ‘America, we’re as upset as you that Osama bin Laden and 15 Saudi youth were involved in the terrible attack on your shores. So we want to help America ó the engine of the global economy ó recover, as well as the developing world.’ ”

But that, of course, is a fairy tale. And so Friedman says that what Bush should be doing now is creating a national priority for energy independence so we are no longer hostage to these bozos. He’s right, so right.

But this is not the only pressing need competing for our attention. I’ve been writing about the need for a clear homeland security strategy (hello, Tom Ridge). Thomas Nephew and I have been writing about the need for a clear emergency health care strategy — in Nephew’s words, we should look at this as the Interstate highway project of our generation. You can list other such pressing priorities, I’m sure.

What we’re talking about here is the need for vision.

And what we’re also talking about is the difference between conservatives and liberals. Now don’t get all hinky and pissy on me about this; pay attention to the mere words (this comes right out of the Jihad vs. McWorld playbook): Conservatives protect and conserve what we have and that is just what we have needed in war. But to get us out of this ditch, to use this national unity we have to build our future, what we we need is the vision — a liberal, constructive vision — to rally us all around a pressing national priority or two and to execute that strategy. That’s what Friedman longs for. And he’s right.

: By the way, I was about to link to Friedman’s column and went to look it up on the NYT only to find out that they are charging $4.95 to get access to all his post-9/11 pieces. And what do we think of this? On the one hand, I read them already and paid for them a few times (for my home-delivery copy, for the copy I read on the overcrowded train, for my time reading the Times online). On the other hand, as a writer, hell, it’s always nice to think that we could be worth something. Vision has value.

Them ferners
: Can’t we all finally write off Pat Buchanan as a xenophobic twit? Drudge says his book will blame the problems of the world on immigrants. That’s the mirror image of the antiglobalism frenzy and the domestic version of the clash of civilizations. It’s about not being able to deal with the different.

15 Bytes of Fame
: Many thanks to Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit for his flattering link to my post on the objects I carry since Sept. 11. Thanks, too, to Will Vehrs of Quasipundit for his nice four-star review.

I saw a quick spike in traffic yesterday and guessed I was Instapundited; sure enough, I was. Glenn says he’s amazed when people tell him about the clicks he causes; he’s humbly amazed at the traffic he gets. I think that through his reliability, volume, promptness, and, of course, quality, Glenn is providing a new front page to the Web and people are clearly depending on him for that.

Numbers
: ABC News just released a poll that says:

– 91 percent believe America has changed in lasting ways since Sept. 11. Amen to that, my brothers and sisters.

– 55 percent believe their own lives have changed and — get this — 71 percent of those say it is for the better. At first, that may seem astonishing. But consider what we have all been going through and how we have changed in these momentous months. The poll doesn’t ask them how their lives have changed but I can speculate: They are glad to be alive; they are trying to take more time with their families; they may be taking more time with God; they can calculate their new priorities in life; they are living wiser. And as a country, we have found new unity and we have had to find new purpose. These give the dark cloud a lighter lining.

– Women, by the way, are more likely to say that their lives are changed and less likely to say they are optimistic. I always said women are smarter.

: Meanwhile, Steven Den Beste at USS Clueless says we should all be more optimistic because we weren’t attacked on New Year’s Eve in Times Square. I hate to be the Eyore of the Terror Age, but I have to disagree for a number of reasons. First, these terrorists don’t take obvious dates as targets; they have a smidge more subtlety. Second, they are patient; they tried to blow up the World Trade Center once and failed and waited years to try again. Third, they did try again: Shoe boy is the evidence. I’m not resting easy. And I sure don’t want our government to rest easy. Tom Ridge: What did you do this New Year’s weekend?

: But I’ll leaven this with a little optimism (even if it may be 50 years out): Just over a half-century ago, half of Europe was killing the other half with us in the crossfire. Now they have the same currency. Progress. Slow, but progress indeed.

Shoe Boy’s new name
: Rantburg beat me to a Maxwell Smart reference in relation to Richard Reid, the shoe terrorist. I’ve been struggling with the right name for the bozo. Shoe Boy captures his lackey stupidity but not with sufficient comic poetry. Then I saw Rantburg with a, yes, smart reference to Maxwell Smart, considering that this is all about intrigue and shoes. (To all you kids who are too young to know this — which, I fear, is probably every damned one of you — Maxwell Smart was a sitcom secret agent whose phone was in his shoe.) Well, that’s it! He’s Maxwell Stupid.

: Get me rewrite: Reid Stott came up with the Maxwell Smart reference on Dec. 23. He wins.

Gawk
: Amy Langfield wandered downtown in Manhattan and found a five-hour wait at the new viewing platform at the World Trade Center. This is still bothering me: terrorism as tourism.

Off topic
: James Lileks exposes a horrid sin: People who mix flavored coffee with real coffee in grinders and pots and then sell us the contaminated result. I HATE THAT. Now that I’m a boss, I have used my despotic authority to intimidate colleagues and tell them they would be wise not to come within nose-shot of me with any damned hazelnut or French vanilla coffee; it poisons the air for hours; it coats the senses. I have similar views of open-mouthed gum chewing. These are important issues in the workplace, you know.

: Charles Johnson has been drinking too much caffeine, too.

New look
– I have a new look — no, not because it’s a new year; nothing so trite and obvious as that! It’s because important people — Tim Blair and Jim Dwyer — told me they could not read this blog because it crashed Netscape 4.7. Now perhaps that was a convenient excuse for them but now it’s gone. I borrowed a new template from Blog*Spot, got a lot of HTML and CSS instruction from my 9-year-old Web genius son, and here’s the new look. Hope you like it. Hope it works.

Also note that I’ve added more links to the right. And I have a new email address: jeff@buzzmachine.com.

Hour Zero
: I don’t know when I’ll start marking my years from January 1 again, instead of from September 11, as I now mark my weeks and months. I don’t know when I’ll finally look back and fully calculate the impact of this date on our lives. I don’t know when I’ll measure life from “normal” again without wondering what the hell that means.

In this weblog, I have catalogued just some of the ways in which we’ve already seen changes in America and some of the ways in which I have changed. But this is just the beginning. It is the beginning of a new era in our lives.

So it is too soon to look on this new year as the start of anything truly new.

In fact, nothing is new from yesterday to today. And apart from doing the people of Afghanistan the tremendous favor of ridding them of their fanatical fundamenalist despots, the horizon is still clouded:

– We still do not have bin Laden and his key henchmen.

– We still do not know who the hell murdered our neighbors with anthrax.

– Bin Laden’s flunkies are still trying to blow up our jets.

– Our homefront security is still frightfully lax.

– India and Pakistan are still getting ready to blow each other up.

– Israel and Palestine are still getting ready to blow each other up.

– And now let’s add financial collapse (again) and its shockwaves in Argentina.

I don’t mean to be grumpy about the state of things. And don’t go accusing me of being a quagmirist just because I see the empty half of the glass. It’s just that I feel compelled to explain why I’m not celebrating the new year with lists of momentous events from the last year or predictions for the next. I tried to celebrate Christmas to look for hope. I tried to celebrate Thanksgiving to remember how thankful I had to be. But new year’s? Just another day.

One good reason to be glad for the new year is that all the vacationing (read: lazy or lucky) bloggers will be returning: Layne, Welch, Relapsed Catholic, Holy Weblog, Solent, Hartung.