Yet another sign of the end times.  Does anything like this exist for Biden, McCain or Obama?

Thanks The Return of Scipio.

"On Wednesday morning, US special forces entered Angorada in the South Waziristan tribal area where members of al-Qaeda's shura (council), Arabs and Uzbeks were believed to be operating. The rugged mountainous area is also a known launching pad for militants staging attacks on a US military post in the Birmal area in Paktika province in Afghanistan.

The special forces, who flew in by helicopter to a small village, soon realized that they did not have the numbers or air cover to conduct effective search operations. Firing broke out and about 20 civilians are believed to have been killed before the forces withdrew.

Twenty-four hours later, four militants were killed in North Waziristan, reportedly by US special forces. The dead did not include any of the senior al-Qaeda or militant leaders who were said to have been in the area."

Read the rest here.

"Autumn Leaves:"

"I often get the feeling that what's wrong with political discussion, in general, is that it's dominated by narrow malcontents who take their direction, not from images of health and happiness but from statistical suffering.  They always seem to want to eliminate something - poverty, racism, war - instead of settling for fostering other sorts of things it is beyond their power actually to produce.  Man doesn't really create anything.  We don't sit godlike above the world, omniscient and omnipotent.  We find ourselves created, placed somehow in the midst of things that were here before us, related to them in particular ways.  If we can't delight in our situation, we're off on the wrong foot."

                                                                                                                                                        Joseph Sobran
                                                                                                                                                                  Pensees

I know interviewers who like to put stress on job candidates during the interview to see how they handle tough situations.  I've never thought that was a good tactic but they swear by it.  Others try to have a conversation with the applicant but the common denominator is that no one I know particularly enjoys the interview process.

Michael Wade offers tips for the interviewee to make the task better.

Anthony Bourdain  in Mexico:

I've written previously on my opinion of "new" classical music.  It does nothing for me, so this article is a dead end as well:

"There's no reason people who listen to Beethoven can't listen to newfangled classical, but there's also no reason to necessarily expect them to. It's a little like expecting someone who listens to Hoagy Carmichael to listen to Radiohead, just because they both fall under the category of 'pop.'"

There are many reasons why a Radiohead fan might like Hoagy Carmichael.  Both offer up some good music.  There are not a lot of reasons why a Beethoven fan would like "new" classical music.

If you want to understand "great music," I highly recommend picking up a course or 12 from the Teaching Company's great music courses, taught by Robert Greenberg.  I started with "How to Listen to and Understand Great Music" years ago.  Greenberg truly appreciates great music. 

Thanks, Sounds and Fury.

Do you practice?  How many business teams regularly review "plays" and "strategies" for success?  Do "walk-throughs" before big events?  Have a plan of attack for each situation?

How many layers between the coach and players?  As a parent, I enjoy watching my son run plays directly from the head coach out to the field and think of the directness of communication involved - one layer. 

Is the "coach" involved and present?  Does he witness performance, understand decisions and participate? 

Do you change things if they don't work? 

Do team members understand where the "ball" is?  Does each player understand their role in either protecting, going after or advancing the ball?

How is success measured?  Do people understand what a success is or do they just do their job?

How immediate is feedback?  Seconds?  Minutes?  Hours?  Days?  Weeks?

Are team members cheering for the team?  Do team members celebrate the success of the team or do they think about what they could have done, why they weren't in on that play or whether something else should have occurred?

How is time measured?  Is it one, long grueling battle or are there points of break, regrouping, review and change?  Is there a time of rest?

How does your team work?

Autumn is coming.  And a great part of autumn includes listening to George Winton's works for piano solo.  Autumn is such a beautiful album, as is December, but all of the seasonal albums by Winston are worth a purchase.  There is even a compilation of the four seasonal albums.  Here is rain from from Winter Into Spring:

What a great movie.  And the coming out for so many future stars.  A classic scene.  "It's Ripley's:"

Shhh?

Rowan Manahan reminds us again.  PowerPoints are not outlines or agendas.  Use them as such and you should expect yawns or rejection.

"The most striking fact about contemporary university students is that there is no longer any canon of books which forms their tastes and their imagination.  In general, they do not look at all to books when they meet problems in life or try to think about their goals.  There are no literary models for the conceptions of virtue and of vice."

                                                                                                                                                                Harry Jaffa

I can feel it in my bones:

"One of the most powerful of Burke’s conservative arguments has always been an epistemological one – one concerned with the nature of knowledge. Burke is at his most persuasive when he’s talking about the limits of human reasoning powers. Skeptical of our abilities to determine the highest good through abstract rationality, Burke contends that we should look to the wisdom inherent in customs and tradition, rather than trying to draw up a brave new world from scratch."

Thanks, Arts and Letters Daily.

You can watch it here.

1.  Consider them marked.  I agree that this issue is not yet resolved but Joe Biden has been walking around rewriting history of late so I need to have a record of his comments a year and a half ago.  Remember dividing Iraq into sections?  Remember no plan?

I agree that there have been blunders in this war and would agree with Biden that we should have had more troops in there at the beginning.  But Biden statements in 2007 aren't quite what they are today.  They aren't even close:



2.  Another emerging theme that I have picked up on over the past few days is the idea that Iraq should pay for their own reconstruction.  Read my previous post on this subject here.

3.  John Podhoretz makes a few minor corrections to Obama's O'Reilly interview:

"First, Bush proposed the surge after three and a half years, not five. Second, his description of what Bush was asking for is almost exactly the opposite of the case. The surge was a massive shift in strategy, not a continuation."

4.  The "fact-checkers" at FactCheck need to double-check their comments on Obama's tax proposal.  They completely ignore the "phase-outs" and effect of Obama's tax plan on marginal tax rates (the rate of taxation on each additional dollar of income earned).  I previously posted on The American's analysis of Obama's tax plan:

"What accounts for the higher rates? First, Obama expands the maximum child and dependent care credit for families with one young child from $1,050 to $1,500 and phases down the credit over a longer income range, from $30,000 to $58,000. Throughout this income range, the credit is phasing out at a rate of $30 per $1,000 of income, thus raising the effective tax rate by 3 percentage points. Obama also makes certain credits refundable, which introduces a tax penalty of 10 percent or 15 percent, depending on the income bracket. 

While Obama has publicly embraced a tax rate of 40 percent for couples earning over $350,000, his tax policies would result in a staggering 45 percent effective marginal rate in the $110,000 to $120,000 income range for this family. That is 11 percentage points higher than under current law."

I got a haircut today.  I love getting a haircut.  Not only does the tapered cut make me feel good but my barbershop teaches me very important life lessons.

I usually stay quiet and listen to the conversation.  Occasionally I jump right in.  Today the topic was football and my barber, who I am certain played high school football, was debating the "morals" of sports with a barber two chairs down.  My barber's theory is that sports is about winning.  Evoking Patton, he explained that in sports winning is what it is about.  The winners are remembered; the losers forgotten.  Leave your morals in the locker room and leave your viciousness out on the field.

I don't coach football.  But in baseball I have a lecture for players and parents.  Two important things to understand: 

First, we are here to have fun (my barber might disagree).  But nothing is more fun than winning (my barber would agree).  We will be playing to win.  We will play to win this game but we will also play to win the next game.  So, no matter how far behind we are or how far ahead we are, we practice fundamentals.  We break down to field the ball, we throw properly, we run the bases smartly and we play aggressively so we are ready for the next game.

Second, sports work best when everyone knows their place.  Players should play.  Coaches should coach.  Umpires should ump.  Parents should cheer.

Now I learn that even watching sports makes me smarter.  What a haircut.  I learned about Ohio State football and got smarter.

Old, Grizzled Third-Party Candidate May Steal Support From McCain