brainrow

Cartoonist Ruben Bolling:

When President Bush was asked what sacrifices he’s called on civilian Americans to make in support of the enormous sacrifices made by those in the military in Iraq, he replied: “They sacrifice peace of mind when they see the terrible images of violence on TV every night.”

So Bolling gives us some “Posters For the Homefront.”

Yes, you’ve done enough. Now, let somebody else bear the burden of our “existential conflict.”

Speaking of memory: today is the 21st anniversary of the loss of the space shuttle Challenger and its crew of seven: Gregory Jarvis, Christa McAuliffe, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Judith Resnick, Dick Scobee and Michael Smith.

In a comment below, Adam Frix posted a link to an interview with a pad technician who was present at the Apollo 1 fire. A couple excerpts:

All professional opinions about the dangers which had been studied, hashed and rehashed, had been ignored.

The same problems came up on the Challenger. They ignored ground safety data, flight equipment test data and violated flight safety rules to make rigid flight schedules set by Congress. The needed changes were ignored, or put off because of a lack of funding. The problem with the solid rocket boosters’ seals were well known for at least 18 months before Challenger, even to many of us outside the program, but they wanted to get one more flight. It would be too expensive to make the changes and hold to the flight schedules.

Both shuttle disasters were the result of the same overall root problems.

…

I feel that [the Apollo 1 spacecraft] should be displayed at Kennedy Space Center in a special section apart from the astronaut memorial and not on Pad 34 as a reminder to America that it must never happen again.

The story of Apollo 1 should be told over and over again because its not just about three men who were killed, but it is more about the conditions that created the fire. We must always be reminded that it can happen again. Men and women who go to space deserve the best and nothing must be left to chance.

Experience, they say, is the best teacher. But the cost of tuition is very high.

Aimee Mann may have written the theme song of the Bush Administration.

It’s not
What you thought
When you first began it
You got
What you want
Now you can hardly stand it though,
By now you know
It’s not going to stop …
‘Til you wise up

Lest we forget: today is the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 1 fire that cost the lives of astronauts Gus Grissom, the second American in space, Ed White, the first American to walk in space, and Roger Chaffee.

It is said that the accident set back the Apollo program by more than a year. A thorough review of the accident put the flight schedule on hold, and revealed carelessness, sloppiness and design defects throughout the spacecraft and throughout the entire Apollo program. NASA had developed “go fever.”

It never flew, but Apollo 1 may have been the most important Apollo mission of all. Without the review and the corrective measures that followed the accident, I’m convinced that Project Apollo would never have reached the moon. After the accident, NASA faced the facts, worked to fix defects, and learned from its mistakes.

Let’s never forget that lesson, or the men who died for us to learn it.

George W. Bush on Friday:

One of the things I’ve found in Congress is that most people recognize that failure would be a disaster for the United States. And in that I’m the decision maker, I had to come up with a way forward that precluded disaster.

You’re resigning?

On Talking Points Memo, Josh Marshall cites some GOP spin, and links to an illuminating chart of the U.S. budget deficit or surplus since 1961:

[F]ormer RNC Chair Ed Gillespie … waxing poetic about President Bush’s plan to balance the budget by 2012 and claiming that the last time the budget was balanced was in 1998.

… Back on planet earth we know that the budget became balanced during the Clinton presidency and remained in balance until he left office in 2001.

You’ve got to give Bush credit for turning this country around.

In 1972, I cast my very first presidential ballot for Sen. George McGovern of South Dakota.

I was proud of that vote then, and I’m proud of it still.

Eleanor McGovern, the senator’s wife, has died at the age of 85.

“I still carry a trace of bitterness about poverty,” she wrote in [her 1974 memoir] “Uphill.” “It was not ennobling for my father and grandfather to scratch out a living on land rendered barren. The poor have few choices in life. About all they can do is persevere.”

My condolences to Sen. McGovern and his family in this time of their loss. This is a loss for all of us.

Via ScienceBlogs, Google’s Gapminder provides an interesting way to visualize statistics about wealth, life expectancies, pollution, with trends over time.

Some of the results are counter-intuitive, and sometimes you have to pay close attention to what is being mapped — for example, economic growth in the United States isn’t a steadily expanding circle, but a slowly-pulsing one, because the animated chart is tracking the rate of growth each individual year.

The Gapminder requires some effort and attention, but it’s worth exploring.

Mr. Cheney must be very tired. He’s not even trying anymore. From CNN: Cheney: Talk of blunders in Iraq is “hogwash”:

Vice President Dick Cheney on Wednesday dismissed as “hogwash” the suggestion that blunders may have hurt the administration’s credibility on Iraq and led members of Congress on both sides of the aisle to question President Bush’s plan to send more troops to Baghdad.

Somewhere in America, there must be some very clean hogs.

From an email message today:

Evil (ignorance) is like a shadow — it has no real substance of its own, it is simply a lack of light. You cannot cause a shadow to disappear by trying to fight it, stamp on it, by railing against it, or any other form of emotional or physical resistance. In order to cause a shadow to disappear, you must shine light on it. — Shakti Gawain

Via This Modern World, “we need to get in touch with our more traditional values.”

Daily Kos considers George W. Bush’s declaration of “National Sanctity of Life Day” and concludes that, to this administration, “life” is just a four-letter word.

When Richard Nixon died in 1994, there were demonstrators outside his funeral.

I never cared much for Mr. Nixon, but the idea of protesters picketing a funeral just seemed disgusting. “He’s dead, you morons! It’s over!”

Oh, but that was a more innocent time, and I was young and idealistic. Now we know that it’s never over, and death is only another opportunity to pick a fight.

An anti-gay minister from Kansas has gotten himself a lot of publicity by traveling around the country and protesting outside funerals — including the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq.

James Brown’s body lies a-moulderin’ in the den.

Nearly three weeks after James Brown’s funeral, the “Godfather of Soul” is yet to be buried, and his former partner is contesting his will in a bid to receive half of his estate.

An old-time rock-n-roll star makes a comeback.

The son of “the Big Bopper” has hired a forensic anthropologist to try to answer questions about how his father died in the 1959 plane crash that also took the lives of famous rock-and-rollers Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens.

Bush signs a law to evict a dead veteran from Arlington National Cemetery.

The remains of a man convicted of murdering an elderly Hagerstown, Md., couple will be removed from Arlington National Cemetery as part of a bill signed into law by President Bush. …

The bill … requires the Secretary of the Army to remove the cremated ashes of Russell Wayne Wagner, who was convicted of murdering Daniel Davis, 84, and Wilda Davis, 80, in 1994. …

An Army private who served during the Vietnam War and was honorably discharged in 1972, Wagner was eligible for parole at the time of his death, which made him eligible for an Arlington service. He was buried with honors in August 2005.

Even in Rome:

The doors at the neighborhood church remained firmly shut … while mourners stood on the square outside at a lay funeral for a paralyzed man who had a doctor disconnect his respirator. Hundreds kissed his coffin and tossed flowers on it.

The Roman Catholic Church denied Piergiorgio Welby a religious ceremony on the grounds that he sought to end his own life…

When I was young, the old folks would sometimes scold me about goofing off and say, “There’ll be rest enough in the grave!” Hah!

Many years ago, in their fake “Letters to the Editor” column, National Lampoon ran an irate letter claiming that modern medicine was a fraud designed to keep doctors’ fees high, that the human body was not a complex system of delicate organs, but “solid clean through like a baked potato,” and that the writer’s son needed surgery, which he would do himself “and save a bundle.”

My friends and I thought it was hilarious. Nobody could possibly be that stupid. But I’m starting to think that our current Iraq war was planned by the baked potato man.

Via Crooks and Liars, Larry Johnson reviews our options in Iraq:

We have four basic choices confronting us in Iraq:

1. Fight the Sunni insurgents (there are at least 15 separate groups) and risk alienating the Saudis, the Jordanians, and the Turks.
2. Fight the Shia insurgents/militia, which means we will engage 60% of Iraq’s population (and strengthen the hand of Shia-led Iran).
3. Fight both the Sunni and Shia and put ourselves in the middle of the civil war.
4. Retire from Iraq and let the Sunni and Shia sort things out among their various sectarian factions.

There really are no other logical options.  It looks like Bush chose Option 3.

Midway through an operation by the baked potato man, even the greatest surgeon on earth couldn’t find a “way forward” with a positive outcome.

From the 1934 movie Six of a Kind, W.C. Fields tells how he got the name of “Honest John.”

Seems it would have been tough to stand by while Fields worked and keep a straight face.