Maybe by the time I write this, things
will have changed a lot more; but as of an hour ago, the vote in
congress about bombing Syria has been postponed. I assume this is
because of the news from earlier, where John Kerry was asked if
there was anything that could prevent the strike from happening; he
said that if the Syrians relinquished their chemical weapons within a
week, that would be sufficient. The message was quickly related to
Moscow, and they are willing to mediate the situation. There was a
woman being interviewed on NPR, she has years of experience in the
region. She was convinced that this is mere political posturing, but
I have my doubts. Normally, I too would think the same thing, but not
in this particular situation, and the delayed vote looks to me as
though others have the same perception. Somewhere, John McCain is
furious over the possibility of not going to war.
It's based on the current ongoing
tensions between Presidents Obama and Putin. It appears to me that
President Obama does whatever he can to insult President Putin. Maybe
it started with the Snowden incident, but who knows how far it will
go. Normally, it wouldn't escalate, but with someone as inexperienced
as President Obama, who knows? There's one incident I haven't seen
mentioned in the news or comments; but it was possibly taken as an
insult to President Putin: using the G20 summit to gather support for
the above military strike. It seems that considering President
Putin's position on Syria, President Obama should have sought that
support at a separate meeting. Typical liberal mindset; we've decided
that you're one of the bad people, so we can treat you any way we
want.
All that leads me to think that major
pressure will be put on Syria by Russia, just to make the chemical
turnover happen. Why shouldn't Syria's leader go along with it? He
can't be 100 percent sure that President Obama's efforts to get
attack approval are backpedaling his red line. So his choices are:
Maybe get bombed, maybe not get bombed if congress disapproves, or
hand a major slight to the one making the threat. I think it is very
likely that Syria will hand its chemical weapons over to Russia.
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A government agency, the CDC,did a
detailed investigation into youth using e-cigarettes, and some of the
results were talked about on public radio. If you owned an
e-cigarette company, would you find the survey helpful?
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I need to sit down and contemplate
the parameters of denial, or the factors of denial, however it should
be said. I'm wondering if there's a loose formula along the lines of:
the worse the change required is; and the more residual evidence of
the former situation remains, the harder it will be to convince
someone that a change is needed, regardless of how strong the
evidence is that the previous situation is ending. Which reminds me,
if the topic of zombies is so popular, maybe someone could make a
drawing of a zombie Uncle Sam. The government you once had is not
what you have now.
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Once in awhile, I get an interesting
mental cross reference. I wonder if part of my image of God is One
who has the perfect answer for every gray area. But what if He
doesn't want to do lengthy internal debate over trivial decisions?
What if He regards it like the verse where Jesus said: Man who made
me a divider or judge over you? (Two brothers wanted Him to
arbitrate an inheritance) He will judge sin, and many decisions
aren't trivial, I'm not talking about those.
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Here's another interesting sky picture; this was from the front yard. I guess the sunlight is coming through a couple breaks in the clouds at the horizon, then casting these bars of light on to the upper layer of clouds?
