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 Coffee: A Dark History by Anthony Wild.

If coffee is indeed the drink of revolution, then Max Havelaar, Or The Coffee Auctions Of The Dutch Trading Company is its manifesto. p. 260

My Soundtrack: Perfecting Loneliness by Jets To Brazil on WOXY.

…His swim,
compulsory as a Busby Berkeley routine, has captivated

the bear, too, or made him half captive, while the other half,
repeating his invention move for move, seeks a different
outcome: a new mercy, colder, austere; more genuine ice.

I seek more genuine ice.

From Polar Bear in the Central Park Zoo by Julie Sheehan.

Since Pike Speak and the M.A.W.B. Squad went dark I have been trying to find other conservatives in the bloggosphere to replace their voices. It’s been tough. But for the last few weeks I’ve been reading Lee at Right-Wing From The Left Coast and I like him. I don’t agree with a lot of what he writes, but that’s fine.

I think he’s a reasonable man whom I could spend a few hours over cigars and single-barrel Bourbon without blowing a gasket.

Here’s a post from today:

Look, folks, it”s real simple. I was attracted to the GOP for a few main reasons.

1) A strong, competent, near-invincible military is the best way to keep the peace.
2) A belief in American exceptionalism.
3) A belief in rugged individualism.
4) A belief in states rights.
5) A belief that government should be as small as possible.
6) A belief that there are no limits to what people can accomplish on their own if government gets out of their way.
7) Respecting all religious faith, while keeping it at arm”s length from politics.

There is nothing on that list that I could absolutely say is wrong. I may parse state’s right a little differently than Lee does. He might not agree with where I’d draw the line on how small government can be. But those are things reasonable people can disagree on and discuss.

I’m looking forward to more in the future.

My Soundtrack: I Was A Lover by TV On The Radio on WOXY.

The French Canadian presence in the NEO blogosphere has doubled with the addition of My Fellowship In Cleveland. Written by a new specialist in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation… from Quebec City, Canada… doing a one year fellowship in Spinal Cord Injury Care and Rehabilitation… in Cleveland. Please drop by and make Melanie welcome.

After typing in the Ohio Lie And Equivocate Amendment, I’ve decided to add a second name to the boondoggle: The Jacobs and Ratner Famlies Enrichment Amendment. I had to type the whole thing in from a PDF so there may be typos and it is more than possible that I have either repeated or omitted some sections.

I’ll be re-reading it today to check for those errors. Any help from readers in double checking will be greatly appreciated.

I’ve now reformatted a second copy of the Ohio Lie And Equivocate Amendement by inserting numerous paragraph breaks for the sake of clarity and by adding information in brackets.

One of those changes was to cross out the word gaming in the document and change it to gambling. Before my change, the word gambling appeared only one in the 1,912-word document. I made nine such changes.

My Soundtrack: Looking Up In Heaven by Paul Westerberg on WOXY.

From Keith Knight.

ANXIETY BOWL: Scott Bakalar vs. Craig Miller: The Beginning

Residents head back to flooded Ohio homes

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 Coffee: A Dark History by Anthony Wild.

Enormous quantities of Colombian coffees are exported to the USA and find their way into the ubiquitous, infinitely refillable American breakfast mug, where the coffee is usually so weak as to be unrecognizable, and whatever qualities it may possess are destroyed by the cream. p. 247

My Soundtrack: Divine Intervention by Matthew Sweet on WOXY.

The Jacobs family will be one of two Cleveland beneficiaries of the billions of dollars Ohioans will hand over to the owners of the 31,500 slot machines they want to dump in nine locations around the state. Of course hundreds of millions of dollars will also be redistributed to students and other worthies. Really. You can trust them.

Check out their track record:

Every so often, it takes a little time to screw the public. In the end, however, the dirty deed usually gets done.

Developer Dick Jacobs — who has taken Cleveland for more free goodies than nearly anyone in its history — has won the battle to put “big box” development into Chagrin Highlands apparently.

In other words, Jacobs has screwed the public again.

Isn”t that wonderful. After some $150 million dollars in road construction, including an I-271 interchange, made the City of Cleveland”s land in the suburbs even more financially attractive, Jacobs gets what he wants — big box development — quick, easy and very profitable, no doubt.

And, once again, crumbs for all us non-family members.

My Soundtrack: Beautiful Mess by The Cloud Room on WOXY.

Like fireflies on a hot summer night the emails are flashing around the world as Jews seek some light in the darkness that is Pam Waechter’s murder. I can’t begin to understand how parents are explaining to their children that someone who looks like Naveed Haq might put a gun to their head and use them as a shield to murder people like themself.

That is a horrible world for adults. How can we grasp what it is for children?

An email I received this afternoon address this question of using innocent civilians as shields.

Dear Reader:

If you face a daily barrage of questions about Israel’s actions in Lebanon or you yourself have doubts, please read on and be better informed. It is at times like this, when every Jew must become an Ambassador for Israel.

Even if you don’t agree with everything Israel does, any decent person must stand up for Israel’s right to self-defense. We can leave the military and political issues to the experts, but we should all be clear on the moral questions raised by this war.

Let’s look at a few of the most commonly asked questions being asked in recent days:

Q: How can Israel justify killing civilians if their intent is to crush Hezbollah?

A: The death of innocents is a tragic inevitability of war. Our hearts go out to all those caught in the middle. The sad fact is that the Lebanese people are being held hostage by Hezbollah. Just as it is clear that Hezbollah is morally culpable for any harm done to the two Israeli hostages that they hold, so too are they culpable for the fate of Lebanese innocents amongst whom they hide.

A civilian who is killed while being used by a terrorist as a human shield is a victim of the terrorist, not the Israeli Army, who does not target innocent civilians.

Q: Isn’t Israel’s response a bit disproportionate?

A: If Israel were merely taking revenge, then it would need to be proportionate. But Israel is waging a defensive war. Since when is war proportionate?

In war, you don’t measure your response to the enemy by what they have done to you in the past, but rather by what needs to be done to stop them attacking in the future. Israel’s actions are proportionate to the threat, not the damage done.

Q: Doesn’t Israel understand that they are just creating more terrorists? The anger and fury at Israel, as a result of bombing Lebanon, will only make more people want to join Hezbollah.

A: Feelings of frustration, anger, fear and rage do not make you into a terrorist. A culture of death and an education of hate does. Israel doesn’t need to do anything to create terrorists — Islamic extremism does that — but Israel must act to destroy those who threaten its people.

Q: Hezbollah indeed has a militant wing, but it also does a lot of good. They are responsible for social programs, educational projects and humanitarian work in South Lebanon. By destroying Hezbollah, Israel also destroys all the good they do. Isn’t that demonizing a group that is not all bad?

A: If a serial killer also happens to volunteer for his local hospital, has donated money to an orphanage, and looks after his ailing grandmother, he is still a serial killer, and should be treated as such. The danger he poses far outweighs the concern for any good he may do.

Q: By using violence, how is Israel any better than its terrorist enemies?

A: That is as ridiculous as saying that a woman who fights off an attacker is no better than her attacker. Israel would not touch Hezbollah if it did not attack.

Israel seeks to live in peace with its neighbors; Hezbollah and its allies seek to destroy Israel, no matter what Israel does.

Look at the Hezbollah flag. It depicts a rifle lifted in the air. Violence is a part of its very identity. On the other hand, the very name of the Israeli Army defines its purpose: The Israel Defense Force. Its flag depicts an olive branch and a sword: peace is a priority, war is a last resort.

For Hezbollah, war is holy. For Israel, war can never be holy. War may be necessary, like when your citizens are being attacked unprovoked; war may be moral, like when innocent lives are being threatened; but even then, war is never holy.

There is a world of difference between a moral war and a holy war. A moral soldier fights reluctantly, while holy warriors glory in the fight. A moral soldier is burdened by the obligation, while holy warriors delight in the pain inflicted on the enemy. A moral soldier fights when there is no other option; a holy warrior seeks violence as a way of life. A moral soldier takes measures to limit innocent casualties; a holy warrior seeks to maximize them.

A holy warrior fears times of peace, because then he has no purpose. A moral soldier dreams of a time when peace will reign. Then, the Israel Defense Force will be made joyously redundant, as “one nation will not lift a sword against another nation, and they will no longer learn to wage war”.

Indeed, the above is what this Moral War, thrust upon Israel, is all about!

My Soundtrack: Julianna Convince Me by The Saturday Nights on WOXY.

Todd Hoffman, the director of online communications for Ohio Earn And Learn, wants to engage me in a conversation. My regular readers all know how many times I’ve typed “It’s all about the conversation,” so I told Todd I was game. The first thing I wanted to do was actually read the proposed gambing amendment.

I’ve now spent nearly half an hour on line and the only copy I can find is a PDF on OL&E’s website. And that really stinks.

I’m sure it’s out there somewhere (ideally on an ohio.gov page) but I’m not finding it. The OL&E PDF isn’t good enough for two reasons. First, I want an official, legal version, not one posted by the organization in favor of gambling. Second, I want a copy from which I can cut-and-paste quotes as I write my analysis.

I’ll keep looking. If you know where I can find one, please post a link in comments.

I’ve also set up a page here for the extended dialog.

My Soundtrack: Heaven Adores You by Earlimart on WOXY.

All my adult life I have believed that no woman is ever as beautiful as she is just before she awakens in dawn’s light. Lovers have scoffed and called me crazy, but I remember when I first opened my eyes and gasped at the play of first light on a lover’s face. I wanted to freeze time, to hold my breath forever, to die in that moment.

And I understood, finally,
what my friend John meant,
twenty years ago, when he said: Love
is keeping the lights on. And I understood
why Matisse and Bonnard and Gauguin
and Cézanne all followed the light:
Because they knew all lovers are equal
in the dark, that light defines beauty
the way longing defines desire, that
everything depends on how light falls
on a seashell, a mouth … a broken bottle.

And now, I’d like to learn
to follow light wherever it leads me,
never again to say to a woman, YOU
are beautiful, but rather to whisper:
Darling, the way light fell on your hair
this morning when we woke-God,
it was beautiful. Because, if the light is right,
then the day and the body and the faint pleasures
waiting at the window … they too are right.

From Light, At Thirty-Two by Michael Blumenthal.

My Soundtrack: Every Time by The Radio Dept. on WOXY.

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 Coffee: A Dark History by Anthony Wild.

…[roasted coffee] produces large volumes of carbon dioxide gas – 12 liters per kilo, or about six times its own size per household pack – in the 24 hours after roasting. p. 194

1 pound of coffee produces 5.5 liters of CO2; CO2 = 44 grams/mole; 231 liters of CO2 = 1 pound of CO2; 231/5.5 = 42; 42 pounds of coffee = 1 lbs. of CO2. So, a family consuming a little less than a pound of coffee/week – about .8 pounds/week – adds a pound of CO2 to the atmosphere in a year. In comparison, a car driven 18 miles a day, five days a week, dumps 4,500 pounds of CO2 into the air in a year. JH

My Soundtrack: News And Tributes by The Futureheads on WOXY.

My friend Chas warned me about this. Rolling Rock became my recreational beer of choice when I was an undergraduate at Ohio University. I liked it crispness. I liked the way it looked in a schooner. I like the way it tasted on a hot summer day. Budweiser will keep bottling Rolling Rock, at a brewery in New Jersey. It’s just not the same.

A week ago Thursday I went to the Jewish Community Center to take part in a community rally in support of Israel. As I walked from the parking lot to the Stonehill auditorium I noted the security guard on the roof and thought: How paranoid can we get? I was terribly wrong as events yesterday in Seattle proved.

From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

On the eve of the Jewish Sabbath, a 31-year-old man claiming he was upset about “what was going on in Israel” opened fire at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle building, killing one person and wounding five women, one of them pregnant.

Three of the women were in critical condition Friday night with gunshot wounds to the stomach.

The gunman, Naveed Afzal Haq, shouted I am a Muslim American, angry at Israel, before he began firing.

Well, I’m a Jewish American angry at Hamas, Syria, Hezbollah and Iran, but I’m not about to stop by a mosque in Cleveland and start banging away with a pistol.

And this from The Los Angeles Times has to be the dumbest statement I’ve ever heard from an FBI agent:

“We believe at this point it is just a lone individual acting out some kind of antagonism toward this particular organization,” said David Gomez, assistant special agent in charge of counter terrorism for the FBI’s Seattle office.

Some kind of antagonism toward this particular organization? What? The FBI thinks the guy was upset because he doesn’t think Adam Sandler is funny?

My Soundtrack: Dislocated by The Playwrights on WOXY.

This is a perfect example of how hubris bites you in the ass. I’ve been beating the Impeach Bush drum for a few years now, but I may have to swtich to become a different drummer. I know that regardless of what a court may say, which ever politician succeeds President George Bush will pardon him, but I don’t care.

It would be worth it just to see the gavel hammer down on a guilty conviction.

From the Washington Post:

An obscure law approved by a Republican-controlled Congress a decade ago has made the Bush administration nervous that officials and troops involved in handling detainee matters might be accused of committing war crimes, and prosecuted at some point in U.S. courts.

Senior officials have responded by drafting legislation that would grant U.S. personnel involved in the terrorism fight new protections against prosecution for past violations of the War Crimes Act of 1996. That law criminalizes violations of the Geneva Conventions governing conduct in war and threatens the death penalty if U.S.-held detainees die in custody from abusive treatment.

In light of a recent Supreme Court ruling that the international Conventions apply to the treatment of detainees in the terrorism fight, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales has spoken privately with Republican lawmakers about the need for such “protections,” according to someone who heard his remarks last week.,

Oh if only President Bush were as honorable and smart as President Richard Nixon, he’d resign while the resignings good.

My Soundtrack: Get Up! by The Datsuns on WOXY.

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 Coffee: A Dark History by Anthony Wild.

The idea of a police force was the creation of an archetypal Coffee House Man, Henry Fielding. He was a novelist and magistrate in the 1740s at Bow Street in Covent Garden, the heart of London”s literary scene. p. 93

Fielding had formed a group of thief takers in 1749… p. 95

… in the figure of Fielding we have a late-flowering example of Coffee House Man: energetic, self-motivated, political, practical, reformist, well-connected, cultured and philanthropic. p. 96

My Soundtrack: Naked Eye by Luscious Jackson on WOXY.

I just finished writing a nearly 1,000-word comment (this is why my posting is so thin these days) over at Bill Callahan’s Cleveland Diary. As usual I can now see I was way too verbose as this email from an Andrew Sullivan reader demonstrates. Sullivan writes of the war: This is a war Iran started. I fear it has just begun.

Its ultimate end is simple: the eradication of Israel and the murder of every Jew in the Middle East.

His reader wrote:

There are times when the truth needs to be shouted from the rooftops; when we need to declare that this is not a two-sided argument. There is a guilty party that has attacked innocent citizens in a sovereign country and has forced their own countrymen to become refugees; orphans and widows.

They need to be taken to task for it and they must not be allowed to bring disaster upon the world. Hezbollah is a scourge, and they are being aided, encouraged and armed by Syria and Iran. We need to be sure of this — for the sake of the truth and the world’s future.

Much has been written about the trials of Lebanese refugees. How much have you read about the more than 1 million Israeli refugees created by this attack?

My Soundtrack: Blah Blah Blah by Say Hi To Your Mom on WOXY.

Part of being a good citizen of the blogosphere is visiting, reading and, most importantly, taking the time to leave a comment on other’s blogs. It’s all about the conversation. In the interest of setting an example I’ve decided to link to those blog posts that have compelled me to leave a comment.

2113 Mr. Goldberg calls me an anti-Semite

My Soundtrack: Let’s Not Talk About It by The Mendoza Line on WOXY.