Kevin: After another good meal the at the Taji DFAC, I walked outside with my friends Alex and Dave to discover that my bike had been stolen from the bike rack. I didn”t lock it up before going into the mess hall because I had left it out there every night for the last few weeks and no one messed with it. That was the first night I’d gone to dinner a little late, and the…

The reason is we”ve been able to borrow so much so easily. With housing prices rising, home equity loans have financed renovations and home improvements. With credit cards raining down like manna from heaven, we”ve bought plasma TVs, new appliances, vacations.

If you think the trillion dollars in sub-prime mortgage debt carried by big banks is large, think of the record nine hundred fifteen billion dollars Americans hold in credit-card debt. Robert Reich

[Update — 1354 — My Writing On The Wal co-blogger Jonathan offers a further fisking of the Plain Dealer’s love fest.]

In what can only be seen as a condemnation of the mayoral stewardships of Jane Campbell and Frank Jackson, and the total absence of leadership from its city council members past and present, Cleveland’s only Wal-Mart turned away more than 5,700 job applicants. [Molly called at 6:40 a.m. to alert me to this page 1 story, I couldn’t wait.]

From Cleveland’s Plain Dealer:

When thousands of people compete for a few hundred ordinary jobs, trend watchers say it’s an indication not only of a less-than-stellar economy but also of a workforce short on marketable skills.

But these were regular retail jobs with low-to-average wages and benefits, not the sort of positions typically in high demand. Target wouldn’t disclose the number of people who applied to work at its Steelyard Commons store.

I love that mention of average wages and benefits. If Wal-Mart has become even close to the average then the economy is in much deeper doo-doo than I previously thought.

Amy Hanauer, executive director of Policy Matters Ohio, said she finds these ratios “deeply troubling,” reminiscent of bread lines in times of great poverty. She said the figures paint a bleak portrait of the regional job market and underscore the need for more and better employment opportunities.

“That’s Depression-era kind of imagery,” she said. “. . . You can’t have an economy that works that way. It speaks to the need to generate a different kind of employment in Cleveland.”

Last evening I watched On The Waterfront, and the image that leapt to my eye was that of the stevedores lined up in hopes of finding a day’s worth of back-breaking labor.

…Wal-Mart is a large, established company, and a job there represents stability, perhaps more than at other retailers.

“It’s security,” he said. “Wal-Mart is going to be around… and people just want to make ends meet.”

Yes, Wal-Mart will be around, until it isn’t and with an annual employee turn-over rate hovering near 50 percent, the 300 people who did find jobs shouldn’t feel all that secure.

And there there’s the tale of how Wal-Mart is not the place where people make their dreams happen, but rather where they go when their dreams have faded.

Daniel Sherman, 49, of Cleveland, is an “instock supervisor” at the Steelyard Wal-Mart. As such, he’s in charge of about 12 people on the dock.

“After four years of law school, you, too, can work at Wal-Mart,” Sherman said with a laugh. “Life’s a funny thing. . . . You may actually be Mr. Wal-Mart until it’s time for the old rocking chair.”

Shame, shame, shame on every man and woman who has the audacity to call themselves a leader in Cleveland.

Jeff Hess: Have Coffee Will Write.

I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog chuckle I present: From My Dad.

Two doctors, a psychiatrist and a proctologist, opened an office in a small town and put up a sign reading: “Dr. Smith and Dr. Jones: Hysterias and Posteriors.”

Everyone loved it.

A 14-delegate European Union parliamentary mission to the Philippines voiced its support for President Macapagal-Arroyo”s position on Myanmar and the release of Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. The EU has criticized Arroyo in the past, but chose to put it’s weight behind the president on Suu Kyi and the military dictatorship in Myanmar.

From the Philippine Daily Inquirer:

[The]…delegation visiting the Philippines called on Ms Arroyo Friday in Malacañang to convey its appreciation for the President”s forceful position on the need for democratic reforms in Burma (Myanmar).

In response, the President said she was “glad” the delegation supported her stand on the Burma issue.

Arroyo gained significant international notice in Singapore. The question now is how she will capitalize on that attention.

My name is Jeff Hess and I’m a biblioholic. I own hundreds of books. Not valuable books, mostly Science Fiction paperbacks and text books, tomes rescued by the bag from library book sales. A few years ago, in the interest of not burying myself, I began reading more books from the library and taking notes. My electronic chapbook was born.

This is a passage I copied from Rational Mysticism: Dispatches from the border between science and spirituality by John Horgan.

The God Machine. <>The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes. p. 93

Today, as I go about my tasks, I’ll think about: Four techniques for reducing phone conversations:Use a stopwatch to keep you posted on where time is going.

Use body language (believe it or not, it works).

p. 133-4

Was last week’s meeting of the Association of South East Asian Nations a missed opportunity or an international hostage taking with the military dictators of Myanmar holding the gun to the collective heads of the other nine member nations? Yesterday, The Statesman pondered the questions in Time To Face Myanmar Issue.

The question is why can”t ASEAN take a tougher stance on Myanmar? Is it because some member-countries have their own economic interests in the military-ruled nation?

Myanmar can choose to walk away from ASEAN anytime it wants. The junta has the two rising economic powerhouses behind it. Myanmar has nothing to lose by leaving ASEAN if it chooses to.

While I’m aware of the importance of India, the world’s largest democratic nation and China, the world’s largest authoritarian nation, in all of this, my attention has been focused primarily on the ASEAN nations. So, I missed this sideshow during the ASEAN meeting.

[I]t was a coup for ASEAN to be able to get China and India to sign the Singapore Declaration on Climate Change, Energy and the Environment during the East Asia Summit attended by the 10 ASEAN countries, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and Japan. China and India had long resisted calls to join the efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

The significance of the declaration is that it paves the way for the United Nations climate change meeting in Bali next month, when countries are set to begin tough negotiations for a new pact on limiting greenhouse gases when the present Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012.

And this, it seems, may be a door thorugh which United Nations special envoy Ibrahim Gambari may be able to work.

So, it seems that when it is politically expedient for us to do so we will ignore the concept of sovereign immunity in certain situations. A Scottish court in the Netherlands is an international court, so we clearly have no objection to international courts when it suits our purposes.

So while I would say that Rumsfeld can and should enjoy immunity for the lawful, recognized activities of his job, there also can and should be limits on that immunity. Lee

I’m constantly tossing interesting websites into what I call my blogpile. Some of them find their way here in the form of regular posts, but more often than not they languish and get buried deeper in the pile. The end result is that I have to go back and do a bit of shoveling. Today’s item is The Camel’s Nose.

The pundits all say
we must elect people
to bring us together.

Rejects are the folks
we should elect.

From Choices by Ken Duncan.

Old Blue: In an earlier post, I mentioned that it was strange to an Afghan National Army M-113 armored personnel carrier (American made) with a Russian “Dashka” .50 caliber machine gun mounted on it, parked next to a BMP-1 Russian armored personnel carrier, painted in the same livery: Here they are. This is just bizarre. Brave new world indeed. Here are our…

On Wednesday, Ralph King left a comment here and as an aside asked me a question on another matter not related to the post. I confess that until Ralph posed the question, I was unaware of the issue, being most lax in my attention to matters of Ohio Politics. I’ve since rectified that somewhat. What he asked me was:

One thing (little of topic, hope you don”t mind), I take it you are of the Jewish faith by greeting me with Shalom… Would you agree or disagree that Marc Dann”s Good Friday remarks were offensive to Christianity?

Now that I’m back from the holiday, I’ve had time to consider what the Attorney General said and what it’s implications are.

First, just to confirm Ralph’s surmise, I am a Jew, née Congregationalist née Catholic. That is to say that I have a certain knowledge from a non-Jew’s perspective concerning the reported events of what Christianity refers to as Good Friday.

Ralph has already posted his feelings on this quote from an email obtained under a public records request from Laura Bischoff, a reporter for the Dayton Daily News:

Jesus had it better on Good Friday.

First, I looked for the text of the complete email but had no luck. If it exists on the Internet, or if this was actually the total email, I’d appreciate it if someone would let me know.

Second, Ralph and Matt Nagle concluded that what Dann was referring to was the Christian Bible’s account of the crucification of Jesus.

I came to a different conclusion. While I’ve never met Dann, nor spoken to him, and speaking as someone who is not JD-impaired, I would think that as an attorney, the reference that Dann reached for was that the recorded account of events of Good Friday indicate that Jesus was afforded what passed as due process at the time, something the editorial in the Youngstown Vindicator did not allow Dann.

Those who know me understand that I am a rabid defender of free speech, so I don’t think the Vindicator had a due-process obligation. If it did not violate the established rules of engagement regarding political figures, then it may say what it wishes. And I think that is how it should be.

I make the above observation only to suggest how I think Dann might have been thinking when he wrote the email.

Again, I can’t know what was in Dann’s head.

I only offer the removed perspective of one Jew.

And so to answer Ralph’s original question: Would [I] agree or disagree that Marc Dann”s Good Friday remarks were offensive to Christianity? I disagree.

Christianity as I practiced and lived it during my early life, is too big to be offended by such a small statement.

What I think Ralph might have meant to ask was: Would [I] agree or disagree that Marc Dann”s Good Friday remarks were offensive to Christians? But again I have to say largely, I disagree.

No, because neither Christianity nor Christians are monolithic in either the doctrine or practice.

Those potentially offended, I would suggest, fit into a third category, the Christianists. A tag first coined by Conservative Andrew Sullivan who suggested that the Republican Party had been hijacked by a small group who deploy their faith as a political weapon.

Which renders this scuffle political and not religious at all.

And I’ll leave it there for now.

I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog chuckle I present: From My Dad.

The selection of Former Thai foreign minister Surin Pitsuwan as secretary general of the Association of South East Asian Nations could signal a change for ASEAN: from less of a club and more of an organization with a leader who is more general than secretary. Surin begins his five-year term on 1 January.

From Reuters:

The suave diplomat, a 58-year-old Muslim, faces a tense 12 months. Philippines President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has said her country might not ratify the charter unless Myanmar releases opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

“I will have to take my cue from the leadership, from the collective policy and stance of the ministers,” Surin told Reuters in an interview at the ASEAN summit in Singapore.

Comparisons to leadership shifts in the European Union were natural.

Surin is a personality more in the style of recent European Commission presidents, who have tended to have impressive political careers before taking the helm of the EU, the world’s most integrated regional organization, with far-reaching powers in the areas of trade and competition.

“His background and instincts are different. He will lead in a way none of his predecessors have before,” he added.

Yet, Surin must overcome his country’s many ties to Myanmar if he is going to lead ASEAN to regional solutions.

Despite Surin’s credentials as a Harvard graduate and diplomat, some analysts said ASEAN under the chairmanship of Thailand — a major buyer of Myanmar natural gas — over the next year might tone down criticism of the military regime.

“Constrained by various untackled border issues with Myanmar, Thailand won’t propose any drastic steps in ASEAN to upset its western neighbor,” said international relations professor Chaiwat Khamchoo at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University.

Surin declined to lay his cards down even before he had stepped into his office.

“Whether I will be a secretary or a general remains to be decided by the people of ASEAN,” he said.

Which people he’s speaking of — leaders or the common populace — is unclear.

My name is Jeff Hess and I’m a biblioholic. I own hundreds of books. Not valuable books, mostly Science Fiction paperbacks and text books, tomes rescued by the bag from library book sales. A few years ago, in the interest of not burying myself, I began reading more books from the library and taking notes. My electronic chapbook was born.

This is a passage I copied from Rational Mysticism: Dispatches from the border between science and spirituality by John Horgan.

“We must judge these visions by their philosophical and moral consequences.” p. 82