Hooray For Hezbolah

I can now tell that postings from the trip will be “sparse”, the connection from the ship is just very slow, so the way the blog is set up it simply takes too long to get to the posting page. Were I to be in this mode commonly, I realize that I could post using e-mail, but my impression was that speeds even from the sea would be increasing, but at least for this cruise that is not the case. As it is, my connection time there will be limited.

Have been able to catch up with the “highlights” of the news via one source or another over the past few days. Is there a “rule of nature” that one of the US parties has to be anti-Jewish? I realize that hatred of many groups really knows no political boundaries, but historically the Republican party was successfully tagged with the anti-Semitic label until the John Birch Society was purged from the ranks by William Buckley, and now is only slightly represented by Patrick Buchanan.

The level of only mostly contained glee in the MSM as Hezbollah holds out for “longer than was supposed”, and inflicts “more casualties than expected” on Israel continues to amaze. NPR was blathering that “the people of Israel are starting to wonder what this war is about”. Apparently, since all is relative to the left, there is simply nothing in the world that is ever worth fighting for, so even if someone is raining indiscriminate rocket fire on your homeland, you would be “prone to forget” why one might take action to reduce or prevent that.

There is also the apparent liberal principle that “nothing hard is worth doing”. Since it seems that Israel isn’t going to be able to stop the rocket fire in a short period of time, they ought to give up. I’m thinking that the left ought to try to understand the other side and consider that for people that aren’t absolute cultural relativists that believe in nothing but a pessimistic future, to stop trying would be just as difficult as for a lefty to stop complaining and wringing their hands about one thing or another. It just isn’t going to happen. The “radical right” is going to keep working to secure their “life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness” with just as much fervor as the left is going to continue to “carp, bellyache, and howl in umbrage”, the tools that they see as most helpful to the good life.

Speaking of the good life, it was a very relaxing day at sea. Some rain this AM, mostly clear this PM, but very little ability to see the shore. Just cruising along at 14 knots in calm seas. At one point this AM, while reading out on the deck, dolphins started coming to the ship from all around in the sea, formed up behind and followed in the wake for longer than I cared to watch. I suppose there were 15-30 visible on my side of ship, likely many more if one looked in the wake and the other side. I’m sure it is likely a common phenomenon, but was interesting for me to watch. Saw one other cruise ship and a couple fishing trawlers, but very much open sea with an occasional glimpse of mountains on the eastern horizon.

Not a bad way to spend a day at all. Tomorrow, Ketchican.