Potpourri

I found the following items to be interesting, but didn't really have the desire to turn any of them into a full post. So I give you this assortment of interesting trivia -- sort of a potpourri.

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The first involves Afghanistan and Iraq. After nine years of war in Afghanistan (and nearly that lond in Iraq) it looks like the conflicts in both countries could drag on much longer. General George Casey, the Army's Chief of Staff, told an audience at the Aspen Institute's Ideas Festival that "the United States could face another 'decade or so' of persistent conflict in Iran and Afghanistan." Are the American people going to stand for another ten years of watching dead American soldiers come home? And can we even afford to do that (since in Afghanistan alone it is now costing the U.S. $1 million a year for each and every soldier we have in that country)?

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Sarah Palin's political PAC, SarahPAC, is spending a lot of money but very little of that money is being spent on what she said the purpose of establishing the PAC was -- to fund the campaigns of conservative candidates. The PAC had an "operating expenditure" for the last year of $1,057,522.72. That would help to fund a lot of conservative candidates, but that's not what the money was spent on. A full $200,000 was spent on "consulting". Another $248,057.26 was spent on postage, mailings, envelopes and printing. So how much was actually donated to the campaigns of conservative candidates? A paltry $92,000. Was this fund created to help conservative candidates or is it just another money-making venture for Palin herself?

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A Swiss court has freed convicted child-rapist Roman Polanski. He will not be extradited back to the United States to serve the sentence he skipped out on many years ago. The court said he was released because the California court had not submitted paperwork proving he had not already served his sentence. That's sounds like a pretty weak excuse to me -- an excuse invented because the Swiss wanted to release him. Frankly I'm shocked that the Swiss, who like to think of themselves as civilized, would condone the rape of a thirteen year-old girl. I'll bet if Polanski wasn't a famous movie director he would already be rotting away in a California prison.

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Let me finish with a rather good quote from Christopher Hitchens about christianity:

Let’s say that the consensus is that our species, being the higher primates, Homo Sapiens, has been on the planet for at least 100,000 years, maybe more. Francis Collins says maybe 100,000. Richard Dawkins thinks maybe a quarter-of-a-million. I’ll take 100,000. In order to be a Christian, you have to believe that for 98,000 years, our species suffered and died, most of its children dying in childbirth, most other people having a life expectancy of about 25 years, dying of their teeth. Famine, struggle, bitterness, war, suffering, misery, all of that for 98,000 years. Heaven watches this with complete indifference. And then 2000 years ago, thinks “That’s enough of that. It’s time to intervene,” and the best way to do this would be by condemning someone to a human sacrifice somewhere in the less literate parts of the Middle East. Don’t let us appeal to the Chinese, for example, where people can read and study evidence and have a civilization. Let’s go to the desert and have another revelation there. This is nonsense. It can’t be believed by a thinking person.