The bird dropped some bread on a section of outdoor machinery, eventually leading to significant over heating in parts of the accelerator. The LHC was not operational at the time of the incident, but the spike produced so much heat that had the beam been on, automatic failsafes would have shut down the machine.

No word yet as to whether or not the bird was actually a secret agent working for particles from the future, sent back through time to prevent their own discovery. Dr. Who has been called in to investigate, but apparently the Tartus is currently in the shop for repairs.

Miss Kimberly Munley, the mother of a three-year-old daughter, and a civie policewoman, is in stable condition, with injuries to the upper leg and thigh. General Cone said her fearless response to gunman at Fort Hood, had saved countless lives. Trained in active-response tactics, she rushed into the building where Major Nidal Malik Hasan began firing on comrades as they prepared to deploy to Afghanistan and Iraq. Officials confirmed that she had continued firing even after being hit.

You can read more here.

I’ve not found what he said in the speech but, from the story on NPR, his could be construed to be a typical celebrity comeback. One difference… it’s a redo:

Blair hasn’t talked much in public about his own wrongdoing — not since he did a media tour in early 2004 for his memoir, Burning Down My Masters’ House [link]. The book started with an admission of deceit but spent much energy pointing fingers at his colleagues for their own behavior.

This go-round, the apology may be more sincere. But it also comes with the confessional illness and rehab:

Blair says he is responsible for his decisions. But he also says his behavior was influenced by depression and by bipolar disorder. And he says drug use and alcohol didn’t help.

“At every moment of potential weakness, or where I felt I couldn’t do something … it was so much easier to jump back over the ethical line,” he says.

Blair says he’s now clean and sober. He says he’s receiving successful treatment for his mental illnesses. Blair started free support groups for others with similar struggles. He now works at a psychiatric outpatient clinic in Virginia. Its director, Michael Oberschneider, told me Blair has been utterly reliable and a true boon for many clients there.

I’m reminded of the work of Carol Dweck, a Stanford Psychology Professor and author of Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. She has identified and defined two fundamental mindsets people use — a fixed mindset or a growth mindset.

People with a fixed mindset believe their talents and abilities are static; you’re born with them and they’re not able to be improved through practice. People with a fixed mindset are afraid challenges may expose innate shortcomings.

Those with a growth mindset believe intelligence, talents, and abilities can be developed over time. They believe their abilities develop through hard work and persistence. Obstacles are an opportunity to rise to the challenge. Failure is a chance to learn and grow.

I came upon Dweck’s work through a 2006 podcast interview she did with Dr. Moira Gunn on Tech Nation. I was particularly struck by their discussion of self-esteem. Says Dweck:

Self-esteem per se is just fine, but I think we have a misguided model of what it is and how to promote it. We think it’s something that you can just pump into a child the way you inflate a tire. And we think we can do that by telling them how great they are. That’s the misguided part.

In our work we’ve shown that telling children how great they are… makes them very happy for a few minutes, but it makes them completely unable to cope with setbacks. How does it do that? … Well it puts them into a fixed mindset. It tells them, “Hey, you did well on this test. That lets me read your underlying fixed ability and I think it’s pretty good.”

But it also tells children the name of the game is to look smart. So that when we then offer these students a chance to do something that stretches them and would help them learn, they say, “No thank you. I’d rather keep on looking smart.”

We also showed that when they then got something that was more difficult, they crashed. They said, “I guess I’m not smart after all.” They lost their enthusiasm for the task and their performance went way down. Incidentally this was an IQ test, so praising their intelligence made them less smart.

What’s the alternative? For other students we praised their efforts or their strategies.

You can guess that the outcome was dramatically different. “When we offered them a chance to keep on looking smart or learn something new, 90% of them wanted to learn something new, even if they would make mistakes and not look very good.”

The first time I quoted Dweck’s work was in the context of a NYTimes story on studies exposing how the dire life patterns of the huge pool of poorly educated black men means they become ever more disconnected from mainstream society.

I quote her here, now, in the context of Blair, whose age and race make it a possibility that he was subject to that misguided model of self-esteem. Dweck made that connection herself, in the context of some other notable fabricators:

There are these famous cases of Janet Cook and Stephen Glass, famous young reporters who made up stuff. Had to give back a Pulitzer Prize. Had to leave the New Republic in shame. What was that about? Were they just cheaters with deep down bad qualities? I think they were like the children in my studies who received lavish praise for their intelligence or talent and then didn’t feel that they had the luxury of learning. Maybe Janet Cook and Stephen Glass felt they had to be brilliant right away. They couldn’t take the time to learn the ropes and do the legwork and yes, they came out with these great stories right away, but they weren’t true.

Dweck’s work shows that a fixed mindset can be changed; a growth mindset learned. I am informed by her work in my own dealings with students. I’ll be watching Blair on Fox on Sunday. He is clearly an intelligent guy. I hope he’s learned.

Here is Sheryl Crow, singing “Love Is Free” with The Malloys:

Hopefully this gets resolved soon. Thank you.

The House is in the final rush toward passage of a national health care bill, and there’s one thing Speaker Nancy Pelosi absolutely, positively does not want her Democratic lawmakers to do: Go home.

One Democrat who may be having visions of toast these days is Virginia Rep. Tom Perriello, who last year defeated a Republican incumbent by less than one-fifth of one percentage point. In Tuesday’s gubernatorial election, the GOP came roaring back in Perriello’s district, with Republican Bob McDonnell smashing Democrat Creigh Deeds by a 61 to 39 percent margin. The newly energized GOP will definitely be gunning for Perriello next year.

Never mind the fact that Pelosi has gone back on her promise to put any final health care bill up on line for 72 hours before a vote. Given the recent slides in public approval for this plan, combined with the fact that her flock will all be facing the voters’ wrath again next year, there are plenty of nervous nellies in the crowd.

Ed Morrissey observes:

So either they have to face down their constituents or their Speaker. It says something about the power of Congress that a lawmaker fears a party boss more than the people who elected him or her. Somehow, I’m sure that’s not what the founders had in mind for a citizen legislature and the people’s branch of government.

It’s going to be an interesting ride. Either way, stop by Mid Stream Radio tomorrow at 11 a.m. eastern and we’ll be covering the live build-up to either the vote or the lack of one. If there’s one thing worse for Nancy Pelosi than not getting a health bill, it’s calling for a vote and losing.

Get ready for another apology. GOP House bigwig Rep. Cantor has criticized conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh and says the party needs more inclusive rhetoric.

(”He must be a RINO!!”). Quick: calll your bookie and make your bets on when Cantor will apologize now:

Eric Cantor, the second-ranking Republican in the U.S. House, said his party needs to be inclusive and criticized some comments by talk-show host Rush Limbaugh as inappropriate.

“The Republican Party in its roots is a party of inclusion and we ought to be promoting that and making sure that voices are heard,” Cantor, of Virginia, said in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt,” airing today.

Cantor, when asked about Limbaugh’s comments that “Adolf Hitler, like Barack Obama, also ruled by dictate” and his comparison of the administration’s health-care logo to a swastika, said his comparisons were wrong.

“Do I condone the mention of Hitler in any discussion about politics?” Cantor said. “No, I don’t, because obviously that is something that conjures up images that frankly are not, I think, very helpful.”

He also took issue with some of the harsher rhetoric of Republican colleagues in the House.

Cantor, 46, said Republicans must stay unified if they are to win elections. “That’s the lesson learned” from the Nov. 3 Republican gubernatorial victories in New Jersey and Virginia, and the loss of a New York congressional seat in a race that divided the party, he said.

(Hope Cantor’s staff is ready to get a big case of tea bags…)

Today’s employment report came in much worse than expected. Some 190,000 rather than the projected 150,000 more Americans joined unemployment lines. The official unemployment rate of 9.8 percent rose to 10.2 percent.

Did stock prices plunge on the news? No. They actually rose a bit. The reason is that some brokerage houses today awarded upgrades to a few large companies. In other words, one kind of analyst expectation (related to employment) caused he market to soar yesterday, and another kind (related to guesses about future earnings) offset a very scary jobs number with enormous potential negative implications for the economy.

Is there any lesson here for people investing their own money in the stock market? You betcha. Basing stock market investments on real numbers or real trends of any kind today is a total waste of time. The current secret of market success involves surfing the exuberant wave of happy talk and guesswork where the news is always good if the obvious is disdained and the worrisome ignored.

center>http://www.wallstreetpoet.com ]]> http://themoderatevoice.com/52070/street-talk/feed/ 4 http://themoderatevoice.com/52070/street-talk/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/themoderatevoice/~3/0PrwuulAKKo/ http://themoderatevoice.com/52068/the-fox-in-the-hen-house/#comments Fri, 06 Nov 2009 21:07:20 +0000 JERRY REMMERS, Columnist http://themoderatevoice.com/?p=52068 I’ve given President Barack Obama a long leash in his efforts at governing and now must concede his biggest mistake in changing how Washington works is his staff’s petty feud with Fox News. This running story has legs and they must be chopped off at the knees. This dog must sit, lie down, whacked on the behind with a rolled newspaper and attend obedience school.

The latest bark from the White House is troubling because the source of the story is a third party who works for Fox and claims an anonymous Democratic consultant was threatened by an unnamed White House staffer not to appear on the Fox cable channel.

The source is Patrick Caddell, a Fox News contributor and a former pollster for President Carter. He said he has spoken to Democratic consultants who have been told by the White House to avoid appearances on Fox. He declined to give their names. Over the years, I have believed Caddell is credible even though I don’t agree with most of his policy positions.

Caddell said he had not gotten that message himself from the White House. “They know better than to tell me anything like that,” he said sounding as egomaniac as some of the opinionated anchors on Fox.

Caddell added: “I have heard that they’ve done that to others in not-too-subtle ways. I find it appalling. When the White House gets in the business of suppressing dissent and comment, particularly from its own party, it hurts itself.”

Caddell’s brief was reported this way in the Los Angeles Times:

One Democratic strategist said that shortly after an appearance on Fox, he got a phone call from a White House official telling him not to be a guest on the show again. The call had an intimidating tone, he said.

The message was, ” ‘We better not see you on again,’ ” said the strategist, who spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to run afoul of the White House. An implicit suggestion, he said, was that “clients might stop using you if you continue.”

The White House contends Fox is an extension of the Republican Party and a political opponent bent on damaging the Obama administration. They fear certain issues framed by Fox compels the other media to follow along making subjects as ACORN and so-called presidential czars legitimate news stories.

The White House’s pugnacious approach to the network leaves some Democrats troubled.

Don Fowler, a former Democratic National Committee chairman, said in an interview: “This approach is out of sync with my conception of what the Obama administration stands for and what they’re trying to do. I think they’ll think better of it and this will be a passing phase.”

The Obama administration is falling into the gutter as did the Nixon administration by placing reporters out of favor on an enemy’s list.

Say what you want about Fox, it is a legitimate news organization. Its opinions are no more or less slanted against the Obama administration than its weaker rival MSNBC slanted more favorably towards the White House.

Get over it, Mr. Obama, chief of staff Raum Emanuel, communications director Anita Dunn, and the rest of your minions. You’re fighting a foe beneath your pay grade. Just ignore the bastards.

It is said that newspapers owned by William Randolph Hearst shouted us into the Spanish-American war. Is Fox taking us in a direction we do not want to travel? Me thinks the Obama administration gives them too much credit.

This is a portrait of 21st century America, light and dark, torn by high emotions in a new Age of Anxiety, worlds away from the black-and-white vision of “High Noon” on Turner Classic Movies last night ending with a simple facedown between good and evil.

After the news of Ft. Hood yesterday, the President came forward with prayers for the victims and their families, promising to find out what happened and why but, for all his eloquence, Barack Obama is at a loss to make sense of the senseless. In the mad mosaic of our era, he is even accused of “frightening insensitivity” for that failure.

For a moment, real life has pushed political rhetoric to the background but when the confetti has been swept up and the bodies buried, America will still be torn by the fears and hatreds raging through its bloodstream as unemployment reaches double digits.

Read the rest of this entry.

Jared Stancombe is a 2009 graduate of Indiana University, where his studies focused on peace and conflict studies in Northern Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia. His other academic interests include counterinsurgency and complex military operations. He is currently an analyst for a U.S. government agency responsible for national security and is in the officer selection process for the United States Marine Corps. He lives in Washington, D.C.

**********

Critics of President Obama have continuously stated that he is hesitating in sending tens of thousands of troops to Afghanistan where they are “needed.” But Obama realizes he must be careful. He also realizes that any further deployment of military forces should be oriented around a clear strategy. He does not want to repeat the same mistakes of the previous administration. However, the strategy of the Obama Administration and the U.S. military in Afghanistan remains unclear. There are two options — counter-terrorism and counterinsurgency, and both require vastly different assets in scale and scope.

Counterinsurgency warfare is inherently costly in terms of lives, resources, and political will. Obama must calculate whether or not the American public is willing to see a counterinsurgency through. It would cost hundreds of billions of dollars in both military and non-military expenditures. Combat would take a lateral role along with humanitarian aid, economic development, and government capacity-building as the Afghan government and International Security Assistance Forces try to separate the population from the insurgents.

Counter-terrorism would require more of a fine-toothed comb rather than the coarse brush of counterinsurgency. A counter-terrorism strategy would be oriented around defeating, capturing, or killing al Qaeda insurgents wherever they reside. Special Forces would take a primary role as direct action and foreign military assistance in terms of training and assets would be primary tactics to disrupt and possibly eliminate the insurgents’ ability to operate.

Troop numbers must be allocated within a framework of strategy. Counterinsurgency takes orders of magnitude more troops than counter-terrorism. If Obama chooses to continue with the counterinsurgency strategy, he must devote any and all resources necessary to see the strategy through. The decision to send troops into harms way should never be a political decision, and if the strategy calls for 60,000 more troops, then 60,000 troops should be deployed. If Obama chooses the counter-terrorism strategy, then troop numbers should be based upon how many are needed to support security operations, direct action raids to kill or capture insurgents, and to train the Afghan National Security Forces.

Obama may take on a hybrid approach that takes into account the lack of development and the lack of population density in the country. Counterinsurgency is inherently “population-centric,” meaning that military forces seek to isolate the insurgents from the population. However, in extreme rural areas where insurgents find safe haven, counter-terrorism tactics may be necessary. Obama has recently ordered a review of all provinces in Afghanistan , and his administration is in the process of creating a winnable strategy that is based upon the situation, rather than politics or ideology.

The strategy should dictate the amount of troops needed. While the situation on the ground is becoming more dangerous seemingly by the day, U.S. policymakers should not send troops based upon knee-jerk reactions. Obama is doing the right thing by taking the whole situation in context, rather than by basing his decisions upon recent tragedies. Cool, calm leadership is needed, even as the situation becomes worse. But the situation will become increasingly worse if we have troops in Afghanistan with no clear strategy.

November 11 is Veterans Day. A day—a celebration—to honor America’s veterans for their patriotism, love of country, and willingness to serve and sacrifice for the common good.

This is the first of three articles honoring those men and women.

Two months ago, in “Leave No Man Behind—65 Years Later,” I praised the spirit and culture of our military as reflected in the creed that you don’t leave anyone behind—whether captured, injured or dead.

I also acknowledged the risks that fellow soldiers, sailors and airmen take and the heroism displayed in missions to rescue their brethren or in recovering their remains.

Finally, I commended the continuing efforts by the Department of Defense—through the dedicated actions of a 400-person unit, called the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC)—to find and bring home the remains of our fallen heroes from the Vietnam War, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and even from World War II.

These dedicated men and women will travel anywhere—whether the deserts in Iraq, the jungles of Vietnam, or a muddy cow pasture in Germany—to bring home our heroes.

The most recent, well-publicized recovery effort was the “bringing home” of Navy Capt. Michael Scott Speicher, who was shot down while flying a combat mission in an F/A-18 Hornet over Iraq during the early hours of Operation Desert Storm.

Another memorable, albeit somewhat controversial recovery effort took place on the Kronborg Glacier in Greenland in 2004, more than 40 years after an ill-fated Navy P-2V Neptune anti-submarine patrol aircraft on a Cold War mission disappeared over the North Atlantic during a routine reconnaissance mission in 1962.

Initially, the Navy presumed that the aircraft had crashed at sea. But, after a British geologic survey team in 1966 discovered wreckage on a glacier in Greenland, the Navy launched a “limited recovery effort.” According to the Navy “only 7 of the 12 air crew were recovered” then.

Also according to the Navy, in 1995, it received photographs from a helicopter pilot from Greenland Air indicating that human remains were still present. Other sources claim that “in August 1995 some exploring geologists stumbled onto the Greenland site and found the remains of at least two crew members on the surface of the snow.”

What followed was a nearly 10-year period of delay, hesitation and “bureaucratic problems,” while family members of the crew urged the Navy to send a new expedition to the crash site.

Finally, in September 2004, a 16-member team recovered the remains of the other aviators on the Kronborg Glacier in Greenland.

According to one source, “an embarrassed Navy hired a British contractor to help JPAC recover the remains, which it did without difficulty in September 2004. The cost: $239,000.”

Too risky, too far, too expensive, too difficult. These were some of the reasons for the delays in the Greenland recovery effort.

Similar reasons were also heard in another recovery case. This one, however, did not involve the recovery of our troops, but rather the recovery of an aircraft, a P-38 aptly named “Glacier Girl” afterwards.

Here is a very short version of that fascinating World War II story.

In July 1942, an Army Air Corps squadron of two B-17 Flying Fortresses and six P-38 Lightning fighter aircraft were flying the treacherous “North Atlantic Route” to Great Britain, part of a mission code-named “Operation Bolero.” After a refueling stop in Greenland the squadron hit bad weather, decided to return to Greenland and, running out of fuel, the aircraft were forced to land on the Greenland icecap.

The 25 crew members of what became known as the “Lost Squadron” survived and were rescued after ten days. The aircraft, however, were gradually covered with snow and were eventually buried under 250 feet of packed snow and ice.

As far as I can determine, the military had little interest in recovering any of the Lost Squadron aircraft. But, through the years, other organizations and individuals made several attempts to recover the aircraft.

Finally, in 1992, a “Greenland Expedition Society” (GES) expedition funded by Roy Shoffner, a Kentucky businessman and pilot, found a P-38, all in one piece. It was to be named the “Glacier Girl” The recovery of the aircraft, bringing it up piece by piece from its tomb 268 feet beneath the Greenland ice sheet surface, is an unbelievable story of risk taking, technological innovation, spectacular American ingenuity and engineering, and just pure perseverance and dedication.

But that is another story for another day.

Today, Glacier Girl, an aircraft that rested for 50 years deep under Greenland’s ice, is, after a 10-year restoration effort, the most authentic, and oldest, P-38 in the world, and regularly flies at air shows across the country.

You might ask, why I am telling you all this.

For three reasons:

1. The bureaucracy and laxity displayed by the Navy in the recovery of the remains of the P-2V crew members from the Kronborg Glacier in Greenland may be apparent once more.

2. The unique technology, techniques and skills developed during the successful recovery of Glacier Girl, can once again be used and applied to a similar, but even more important recovery effort.

3. Once more, relatives, friends and concerned Americans are pushing the envelope and pulling out all the stops to bring home with dignity three American heroes who have been buried, and preserved, for 63 years in a 150-foot deep Antarctic grave.

You see, 63 years ago, in 1946, a Martin Mariner PBM-5 flying boat, code-named “George 1,” with nine Navy souls on board was part of a classified, volunteer-only, U.S. Navy Antarctic expedition called “Operation Highjump.”

“In an unexpected whiteout, the Martin Mariner PBM-5 flying boat ‘George 1’ grazed a ridge line, ruptured a fuel cell, exploded and crashed three seconds later on Antarctica’s Thurston Island…Six crew members survived. They buried the three men who died beneath a specific and well-marked area under the starboard leading edge of the large flying boat’s wing.”

Today, 63 years later, Ensign Max Lopez, Naval Aviator; Chief “Bud” Hendersin, Aviation Radio Mate 1st Class; and Chief Fred Williams, Aviation Machinists Mate 1st Class—the first American servicemen to perish in Antarctica—rest in a temporary grave, 150 feet below the Antarctic ice and, according to JPAC, “well-preserved, cocooned in parachute silk by their crewmates, frozen by the intense Antarctic cold and buried under the starboard engine nacelle.”

Today, family members of the three heroes, have formed an organization committed to bring their loved ones home, with or without the help of the U.S. Navy.

The organization, “George 1 Repatriation Project” is headed by Lou Sapienza, polar recovery expert, expedition leader (including the last three GES missions that recovered Glacier Girl) and executive director of the organization.

Sapienza says:

We owe it to the families. We owe it to the courage of these and all people who wear or who have ever worn the uniform of this country, to return them home to their families and their native soil.

In my article on the Germany recovery effort, I mentioned that time is running out for the recovery of our World War II heroes because “many elderly witnesses and local historians, crucial in helping to locate crash sites, are dying or already gone.”

In the case of the three George 1 crew members, time is certainly running out also because the Thurston Island Noville Peninsula Glacier with the George 1 site is moving out to sea, and qualifies as a high priority, “perishable site” according to JPAC criteria.

Admiral Gary Roughead, Chief of Naval Operations, wants to declare the George 1 crash site a “final resting place.”

Sapienza asks: “How can a moving glacier making its way into the sea be declared a final resting place?”

At the time of Speicher’s recovery, Roughead said: “Our Navy will never give up looking for a shipmate, regardless of how long or how difficult that search may be.”

It remains to be seen whether the case of the three aviators in the Antarctic will be an exception to the admiral’s solemn promise, to the solemn military creed of “Leave no man behind.”

In a future installment, we’ll take a look at the efforts, plans and frustrations expended and experienced by “George 1 Repatriation Project” to bring these patriots home, with or without the Navy, with or without the U.S. government, and how Americans can help.

One person was killed and at least seven others were wounded in a shooting incident inside a downtown Orlando high-rise building Friday morning, authorities said.

Quoting emergency dispatchers, NBC station WESH-TV of Orlando reported that the incident began about 11:30 a.m. ET on the fourth floor of the Gateway Center at 1000 Legion Place near Lake Ivanhoe.

All patients were taken to Orlando Regional Medical Center. At least four of the eight patients were reported to be seriously wounded.

For those interested in reading the Italian coverage of yesterday’s first ever convictions for the U.S. government’s practice of ‘renditioning,’ this is the write-thru from the Corriere Della Sera, which includes a number of interesting quotes and details not found in the wire reports.

After the verdict that found all 23 CIA defendants guilty of kidnapping a former Muslim cleric from the streets if Milan was announced, the Corriere Della Sera write-thru quotes Milan’s deputy prosecutor as saying:

“I think it’s very important for everyone that this trial has been seen through to the end. The truth of the case was reconstructed during an investigation by police and the Milano prosecutor’s office. The authors of the kidnapping of Abu Omar were all American – and the evidence proves this. As for the former officials of Sismi [the Italian intelligence service], the ruling shows that there was evidence to incriminate them.”

The write-thru then goes on to quote one of the few Italians that were convicted:

“While most of the Italians who were charged with aiding and abetting the kidnapping weren’t prosecuted due to laws protecting ’state secrecy,’ a few were convicted, including an Italian intelligence agent, Colonel Luciano Seno, who is quoted as saying: ‘How can it be that they have been cleared of the abduction and I’ve been condemned? It’s madness.’”

Translated By Enrico Del Sero

November 5, 2009

Corriere Della Sera – Italy – Original Article (Italian)
MILAN: The former head of Sismi [Military Intelligence and Security Service] Niccolò Pollari and another former official of the same agency, Marco Mancini [former chief of operations], could not be called to account in the case of the abduction of Abu Omar [aka/ Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr] due to the issue of state secrecy. Pollari faced 13 years behind bars and Mancini 10. Instead, 23 CIA agents were convicted (almost all of the accused) – 22 of them to 5 years imprisonment, while Robert Seldon Lady [former CIA station chief] was sentenced to eight years. The United States was “disappointed” by the verdict, State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said.

READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, your most trusted translator and aggregator of foreign news and views about our nation.

Last night my two little boys turned joy into a dance.  Nathaneal is seven and Samuel is three.  Each boy has his own personality.  They are not opposites, but they are by no means the same.  Rather, they express wildly unique mixtures of nature, nurture, and mystery.  They are authentically themselves, wonderfully different, and easy to love.

Although each boy exists within his own space, I love to watch them as a duo.  Yesterday was a blurry, drizzly day.  I stumbled through the day with hazy resilience, completing a list of mundane tasks in half hour intervals.  By evening, I abandoned the list, settled into the living room couch and watched as my children orbited about me.

My boys were particularly charged with an energy that defied their caloric intake.  Sam had turned a half eaten piece of toast into pure energy.  Consequently, he was running up and down the hall as if it were a race track and I was the grandstand.  Every pass he would acknowledge the crowd.  Nathan, on the other hand, would wait between laps at the coffee table, then suddenly jump out and impede Samuel’s progress.

Sam’s reaction varied with each lap and with the intensity of Nathan’s hug, tickle, or tackle.  It was one of those moments when parents have a difficult time determining whether their children are playing or fighting.  Laughter turned to screams, screams turned to giggles, and every time I intervened, both boys looked at me puzzled and confused as if I didn’t know the rules to the game.

Even so, the energy began to escalate and I was certain this ruckus of boyish fun would eventually end with someone losing their temper.  So as a preemptive intervention I disrupted their game with my favorite technique.  “Why don’t we listen to some music?”

With the click of an upbeat song, the energy in the room shifted from race track brawl to jump around dance party.  My two distinctively unique boys each thoroughly embraced the beat and began to dance.  Their untrained forms twirled, hopped, skipped, and swayed in rhythmic interpretation.  Unembarrassed, unashamed, and untouched by the lethargy of cynicism; my boys danced pure joy!

Joy!  That’s what I saw before me.  Joy, in bodily form.  Joy, in the flesh, set to music, dancing before me at the end of a blurry day.
As I sat there on the couch, reflecting the glory before me, I began to contemplate the permanence of joy.  “I wonder if that is still in me?  Do we lose our joy, forget our joy, or is it hidden deep within us?”

The scientist in me began to assess the joyless reality of so many of my contemporaries.  The poet in me began to lament the loss of such beauty.  But the fool in me momentarily entertained the possibility that this joy is still present and accessible.  Maybe there is still a dancing, hopping, skipping, twirling joy deep within this blurry man.

I quickly shook away the notion.  That’s a ridiculous thought Doug, a childish thought.  Only a silly little boy would think such things.
At that thought, my heart leapt with joy!

A pipeline explosion in the Texas Panhandle.

A grain processing plant explosion in western Missouri.

What the hell?

I’m certainly not suggeting these events are related; nor am I suggesting the explosions are comparable to what happened at Ft. Hood — not at all. It just seemed to be a disproportionate morning of bad news, and from such disparate places.

UPDATE: And now this.

Independents are herds of cats who find out what they think through a meandering process of discovery.

While that’s probably not fair to say about all independent voters, it’s a shockingly accurate description of the independent voter writing this post.

Of course, despite my decision to headline the “meandering cats” part of Brooks’ column, his primary argument is not about meandering. It’s about how independents have started trending more conservative over the last year or so; not more GOP, but more conservative — and Democrats are losing their recent grip on these swing voters.

Brooks supports his argument quite well, with multiple data points, and then concludes with a suggested, conservative-leaning argument for conservative candidates to consider, if they want to continue wooing independents.

Fair enough. I shouldn’t tell Brooks how to write his column. Hell, he’s paid to write it, and I’m writing for nothing. Still … in floating test arguments for conservatives, Brooks’ seems to forget his meandering-cats metaphor and the import of that metaphor, namely: If in 12- to 18-months’ time, the cats can skew conservative, it’s entirely possible they’ll skew liberal in another 12- to 18-months, especially if the economy continues to heal and the masses get accustomed to new, more egalitarian health care rules.

See, that’s the problem with cats and independents, including this one. We’re sometimes forgetful, and very easily distracted.

Investigators and journalists are now slowly fleshing out some details about yesterday’s Fort Hood military-base massacre that left 13 people dead and dozens wounded — and about accused shooter Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan. The big question is “why” — a question increasingly asked as more tidbits slowly emerge.

The detail that is and will get the most attention: witnesses say he yelled “Allahu akbar!” before opening fire in the multiple murders.

Officials hope more will emerge about why an an Army psychiatrist, who is supposed to treat soldiers, snapped and raided his home today to seek some answers. Some of the developments and press details:

**Witnesses said he shouted “Allahu Akbar!”(”God is great) before opening fire at the Texas post. The Houston Chronicle reports:

An Army psychiatrist about to be deployed to a combat zone overseas shouted a religious slogan in Arabic before fatally shooting 13 people — including 12 soldiers — and injuring 28 others at this sprawling Central Texas military post on Thursday.

Lt. Gen. Robert Cone, the base commander at Fort Hood, said on NBC’s Today Show that witnesses heard Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan shout “Allahu Akbar!” before opening fire. The phrase means “God is great!” in Arabic.

The death toll rose by one overnight when one of the wounded died. Today, Col. John Rossi said all the wounded were in stable condition, including the suspect and the policewoman who shot him, Sgt. Kimberly Munley.

“It was an amazing and an aggressive performance by this police officer,” said Cone, praising her for stopping the gunman despite already being wounded herself.
Here’s the MSNBC video:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

**According to the New York Times, Hasan was “mortified” about his deployment:

Born and reared in Virginia, the son of immigrant parents from a small Palestinian town near Jerusalem, he joined the Army right out of high school, against his parents’ wishes. The Army, in turn, put him through college and then medical school, where he trained to be a psychiatrist.

But Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the 39-year-old man accused of Thursday’s mass shooting at Fort Hood, Tex., started having second thoughts about his military career a few years ago after other soldiers harassed him for being a Muslim, he told relatives in Virginia.

He had also more recently expressed deep concerns about being sent to Iraq or Afghanistan. Having counseled scores of returning soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder, first at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington and more recently at Fort Hood, he knew all too well the terrifying realities of war, said a cousin, Nader Hasan

“He was mortified by the idea of having to deploy,” Mr. Hasan said. “He had people telling him on a daily basis the horrors they saw over there.”

**Hasan’s purported internet comments had raised concerns among authorities six months ago. Here are the comments via Sacramento’s Fox40:

“There was a grenade thrown amongs [sic] a group of American soldiers. One of the soldiers, feeling that it was to late for everyone to flee jumped on the grave with the intention of saving his comrades. Indeed he saved them. He inentionally [sic] took his life (suicide) for a noble cause i.e. saving the lives of his soldier. To say that this soldier committed suicide is inappropriate. Its more appropriate to say he is a brave hero that sacrificed his life for a more noble cause. Scholars have paralled [sic] this to suicide bombers whose intention, by sacrificing their lives, is to help save Muslims by killing enemy soldiers. If one suicide bomber can kill 100 enemy soldiers because they were caught off guard that would be considered a strategic victory. Their intention is not to die because of some despair. The same can be said for the Kamikazees in Japan. They died (via crashing their planes into ships) to kill the enemies for the homeland. You can call them crazy i you want but their act was not one of suicide that is despised by Islam. So the scholars main point is that “IT SEEMS AS THOUGH YOUR INTENTION IS THE MAIN ISSUE” and Allah (SWT) knows best.”
Times Online reports:

The posting was analysing rather than glorifying the actions of suicide bombers, but the distinction was lost in a slew of angry comments left after the news emerged of the slaughter in Texas.

“Not all Muslims are terrorists but all terrorists are Muslims,” one commenter wrote. “Texas will fry your ass,” wrote another.

**CNN televised surveillance footage of Hasan hours before the shooting, as he visited a 7Eleven. This good British report contains some of it:
Click here to view the embedded video.

The Huffington Post also has this slide show of photos from the scene.

UPDATE: ABC News has some Tweets sent by Salvatore “Rico” Rossi, a preventive dentist specialist, when he saw a man with blood enter the clinic. Here are a few of them:

SECOND UPDATE: A top GOP recruit says the Fort Hood murder proves that the enemy has infiltrated the U.S. military The Hill reports:

Allen West (R-Fla.), a retired military colonel who served as a commander at the Texas base, said in a release that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan’s attack may indicate a broader effort by Islamic extremists to recruit downtrodden members of the military.

“This enemy preys on downtrodden soldiers and teaches them extremism will lift them up,” West said in a statement. “Our soldiers are being brainwashed.”

The release added that West claims “the horrible tragedy at Fort Hood is proof the enemy is infiltrating our military.”

The National Republican Congressional Committee in October selected West as one of 32 new members of its “Young Guns” program designed to promote challengers and open-seat candidates in the 2010 midterm elections. West formerly served in Iraq and Afghanistan and was the 2008 Republican nominee to unseat Rep. Ron Klein (D-Fla.) in the state’s 22nd district.

“if your OFFPOST right now dont come to base, multiple shootings, several casualties, possible terrorist suspects … FT HOOD TX”

“a soldier i treated here said he was waiting in line @ SRP [the Soldier Readiness Processing Center] when another soldier stood up and started shooting.”

“wow….. umm the entire FORT HOOD just restricted all CELL PHONE usage, unless its govt authorized… twolla @ me yall…”

“GET OUT OF HERE!!!!! there were children in the theatre!!! thank God they’re fine!! We have them here in the clinic.”

“Army post is a mess right now, lots of traffic … everyone in a hurry to get off post and pick up their kids or get home to their loved ones”

And, of course, as developments come in, the new media speculates and analyzes. Here is a cross section:
–Talking Points Memo:

Later Update: The fact that the primary assailant has an Arabic name and is presumably, though we don’t know this yet, of Muslim extraction if not a practicing Muslim, is going to be the focus of attention. That is an issue that speaks for itself. And I’m sure it will be the focus of much discussion over the coming days. But in some ways what’s more shocking to me is that the assailant was an Army Major. Whatever the motivation — ideological, religious, nationalist, mental instability, etc. I would far more expect something like this to done by a young soldier, perhaps an enlisted person. Needless to say this is no knock on enlisted personnel. But a lot of people cycle through the Army. Many have only been in service for a relatively short period of time. A major though is a lifer, usually I would think someone who’s been in for a couple decades or near to it more than a decade, who’s risen very high in the ranks.

Even Later Update: Late reports suggest that Hasan was an Army psychiatrist. That changes the picture somewhat. As TPM Reader BC points out, MDs can come into the Army as Captains. If popular culture is your reference, remember the doctors on MASH were Captains, even though they were drafted in for the Korean War. What that means is that Hasan might not have been in military all that long, which changes the picture somewhat.

–Newsbusters:

Neither the CBS Evening News nor NBC Nightly News, in their East coast feeds Thursday night, noted the Muslim religious beliefs of the mass killer at the Fort Hood Army base in Texas, but ABC anchor Charles Gibson wasn’t cowed by political correctness as he teased World News, “Fort Hood tragedy: An Army officer, a Muslim convert, is the suspect in a shooting spree…” Introducing his first story, Gibson referred to how Major Nidal Malik Hasan “an army officer, a Muslim, opened fire with handguns…” (With a range of frequency, during late afternoon/early evening coverage, CNN, FNC and MSNBC all identified Hasan as a Muslim.)

Cryptically, ABC’s senior foreign affairs correspondent, Martha Raddatz, concluded a story on reaction at Fort Hood: “As for the suspect, Nadal Hasan, as one officer’s wife told me, ‘I wish his name was Smith.’” So, a concern this will lead to groundless fear of Muslims?

There’s more so read it in full.
–Crooks and Liar’s David Neiwert:

Of course, the wingnuts — led by Michelle Malkin and Pam Geller — are going ape in their campaign to paint this as a terrorist attack by a Muslim jihadi. Nothing like a big dose of the very ethnic stereotyping that appears to have driven Hasan to a murderous rage to make things better, eh?

--Michelle Malkin has a long, extensive roundup of blog posts and news stories, and she writes at one point:

Business as usual: The whitewashing of jihad by the MSM. See here and here.

I’ve said it many times over the years and it bears repeating again as cable TV talking heads ask in bewilderment how all the red flags Hasan raised could have been ignored: Political correctness is the handmaiden of terror.

–Taylor Marsh:

The sinking feeling I’ve got, and I’m sure I’m not alone, is that there is a tremendous possibility of a backlash against American Muslims, because of the actions of one very sick man. Reports across the wires say he was very upset about deployment to Iraq, considering it “his worst nightmare.”

–Glenn Reynolds:

EXPLOSIVE: Ft. Hood suspect reportedly shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’. (Via The BlogProf). On NPR I heard — I can’t find the story on their website yet — that he had given a presentation on the Koran at a professional conference where he claimed that unbelievers should be beheaded, burned, etc. to the discomfiture of the attendees.

–Andrew Sullivan in a post titled “This Remains a Religious War” He asks what some would like the U.S. to do in response to an incident to this and writes:

Michelle Malkin, remember, favored interning Japanese-Americans during the Second World War. Is that what the anti-Jihadists now want for American Muslims? Or what, exactly?

Denial of these Islamist currents, even within the military, is dangerous and foolish. But equally, over-reacting to them is dangerous and foolish. The cycle of sectarian distrust and division can happen here as well as over there. Reducing all of us to these atavistic identities only exacerbates the problem and drags us further into the cycle of medieval religious conflict. And the task of threading our way through this political minefield is immense.

If I thought we couldn’t do it, I’d despair. But I believe we can, and have since this war broke out on September 11. We need to remember that we are not fighting for Christianity over Islam or even the West over Islam. We are fighting to retain an open democracy, where all religions can coexist, where religion is separate from politics, where toleration is a civic virtue. This requires attention to the real and dangerous Islamist threat – and in that respect Bruce’s and Michelle’s warnings against p.c. denial are perfectly valid and important. But it also requires insisting that our membership in society is based on a citizenship devoted to core ideas, not a citizenship based on raw religious or ethnic identity.

I fear in an economic depression, as unemployment rises over 10 percent, we live in a tinder-box in which such passions can be ignited to divide and destroy us. The key is the self-restraint to live without denial of the threat within but without the easy recourse to baser identities that will finally devour us all.

–Jules Crittenden says the dots were “not connected”:

Not in time, anyway. The murders of 12 people and wounding of 31 others by one man with two handguns probably made a lot of things painfully obvious, and probably helped cut through a lot of clutter and red tape pretty quickly.

But when, within a matter of hours, the following facts and suspicions are widely reported, it suggests there may have been insufficient urgency in some quarters, maybe official obstacles in others, maybe reluctance to act on concerns elsewhere … maybe a desire to see the problem known as Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan go elsewhere … and in the end, a lot of dots not connected.

–Nicedeb:

From everything I’ve been hearing, I have to wonder why this dirtbag hadn’t been discharged. The feds had been tracking his posts online for six months?…How could the FBI say this was definitely not terrorism knowing this background?

–Bruce Bawer on PJ Media:

The brave soldiers who were massacred at Fort Hood had trained to fight the jihadist enemy abroad. But they seem to have ended up being murdered by the same enemy on American soil, in a place where they thought they were safe — murdered, apparently, because a series of military and medical officials recognized what was going on with this major and chose to do nothing about it.

Most of the people in the mainstream media, I suspect, could also see early on exactly what was going on — but to an outrageous degree, they, too, spent Thursday evening doing their best to turn away from the obvious truth. Throughout the evening military and other authorities kept saying, and the talking heads on CNN kept repeating, that there was no sign that this was “a terrorist act” — as if Nidal Malik Hasan had to be officially connected to al-Qaeda to be a jihadist, a pious Muslim who saw the infidel as his enemy.