I wonder how many check marks those last two boxes would get.

Judging by the news coverage, I’d guess they’d get all of them. But I doubt it…I really, really doubt it.

The Best Sentence I’ve Heard Or Read Lately award (BSIHORL) is inspired by events related to Earth Day, and ends up being a two-way tie. It will have to be shared by Debbie Schlussel, who managed to nail down concisely and elegantly exactly how we conduct our observances…

Wealthy celebs who waste energy ad nauseam tell us not to.

Pretty much. This thing we nowadays call “environmentalism” seems to have more to do with maintaining a social-strata lifestyle gap — promoted by those who present themselves as champions of the exact opposite — than anything that tangibly would help what we usually call the “environment.”

It will have to be shared with commenter “Georgia” over at Michelle Malkin’s place, who made her own observations known about Earth Day (commenter #11)…

Moonbat logic: Burn our food and let our fuel sit in the Earth.

Has there ever been a more potent weapon to use against poor hungry people than environmentalism?

Just read it.

Last week I posted a cropped photo from the outdoor adventures I had with my gal down in Monterey, and made the invitation for some of the nobodies who don’t read my blog, which nobody ever reads, to guess what the thing was supposed to be. Well, the response has been overwhelming. A lot of people think I bought her a fur coat. Someone thought it was a porcupine, and one guy was sure I’d somehow pointed a camera down the throat of that thing Jabba the Hutt wanted to throw Luke into…possibly a nod back to a metaphor I had admired earlier.

Well, here ya go.

It’s a stupid squirrel. He was so freakin’ oblivious to the possible danger from the tall two-legged pink things, he let me stick the camera almost in his ear. No, he wasn’t hungry. Looked kind of bored, really. I do have that effect sometimes. But if I wanted to throw a big net over him, there wasn’t anything stopping me. And he thinks he’s some kind of wild animal. What a dumb squirrel.

Looks like out on FARK, it must be “What A Way To Go” day. And so we’ll borrow from that theme over here.

This is just gross. Headline and thread here (not approved by admins, TOTALFARK subscription required for viewing, which you can buy here).

Nobody ever reads this blog, of course, but those who might trip across it from time to time would notice we have a way of pointing out stories of depraved violence, specifically targetting anti-death-penalty folks for this information. It is they who are in a position to benefit from this knowledge. It is our position, here at The Blog Nobody Reads, that there is no logical reason to oppose the death penalty.

An important justification for this position is the Doctrine of Erroneous Absolutes. When two assertions are antithetical to one another, such that they both can’t be true — one’s an absolute, the other is not — usually, the one that is an absolute is defeated. If it prevails in discourse it fails in implementation. Now, there are exceptions to this. Think about it; there have to be exceptions to the Doctrine. If there are no exceptions, the Doctrine becomes an absolute, and given it’s nature it becomes an inherent contradiction. So to sum it up, if you say “always” or “never” or “all” or “none,” there isn’t much reason to inspect the other stuff you have to say. It’s usually wrong.

The Anti-Death-Penalty movement has enjoyed, around the world, spectacular success that is based on complete and insubstantiable falsehood: To support the death penalty is an absolute, to oppose it is the essence of moderation. They don’t use the word “moderation,” what they like to use instead is something having to do with “a civilized society.” Nevertheless, moderation is the idea they want to communicate. Let’s not push the button, because you can’t reverse that later. It sounds good. It sounds moderate.

But it’s not moderate, it’s absolute. “Do away with the death penalty” means to never use it. Never, never, no matter what, it is “off the table.” That’s an absolute. On the other hand, when someone like me comes along, and says “let’s keep the death penalty,” people look at us as if we’re the absolutists. That is logically untenable. Absoute would be, let’s kill everybody. Or let’s kill everyone who is arrested. Or let’s kill all the felons. Or anyone who is convicted of murder, kill ’em, without regard to any of the circumstances involved.

And I don’t know of any pro-death-penalty who are pushing anything even remotely similar to that. Support for the death penalty, is the essence of moderation. “Let’s keep it on the books,” as they say, as a tool…just like car insurance, you have it, you hope you never need it, but if it’s needed it will be there. It’s a sensible, moderate position.

And anybody who opposes it, is simply making public policy decisions based on wishful thinking about the human condition. Said wishful thinking is, again, absolute. “There is some good in everybody.” Why, it must be true. I saw it in Return of the Jedi when Darth Vader turned out to be not such a bad dude.

It’s a funny thing about humanity as a whole. As people are inspected across localities, cultures, various living conditions…there is no quicker way to destroy absolutes. Go ahead, just name something that “nobody” does. Then give me a million people or so, which is a tiny fraction of all the people on the planet. A tiny fraction. Let me sift through ’em, and I’ll find a bunch of people who do that thing you think nobody does.

Good in everybody? I wish it were the case.

“Some good in everybody” is not only a delusional absolute, it’s also off-topic. The death penalty doesn’t exist for us to execute people once they’ve been found to contain zero, zilch, nada, butkus, no good whatsoever. That really would be asking for trouble. That really would be investing an excess of power in our lawmakers and executives and judicials. That really would be imposing the flawed decision-making of man, upon the domain of God. It would be wrong.

No, the death penalty exists to protect the innocent from those who are incapable of honoring the implied social contract required for people to live safely among each other. Some people, for whatever reason, simply don’t give a damn. To expect them not to hurt somebody else, is like expecting a ferret to make timely installment payments on a loan and not let any of the checks bounce. They just aren’t wired for it. They’re not built for it. It’s not within their capacity.

So down they go. Moderate position. It doesn’t feel like one, because of course it’s irreversible. But much of what the justice system does, is irreversible. Tossing a guy in jail for a single night is irreversible. So “irreversible” is not absolute. To say “don’t ever do that” — that’s absolute. And it’s wrong. It fails to take into account the incredible diversity of the human condition; and I’m using the “D” word as a bad thing. Some people hurt other people, and can’t stop even if they want to. And a lot of them don’t want to stop.

Now having said that, I should add the separate issue of “reasonable doubt” is a significant issue. Some people oppose the death penalty because they insist, under threat of such a sentence, all doubt is reasonable and there must always be some. I think this point is somewhat more logical, although it doesn’t hold much sway with me because it’s simply unworkable. The threshold for “reasonableness” is a static thing; the ramifications of the prosecution overcoming it, don’t change where it is. Maybe we’d all feel good if such a thing were so, but that doesn’t make it so.

And where would that put us? A speeding ticket is one or two hundred bucks — so nevermind that the radar gun lacked the proper certification or that the arresting officer has a history of perjury. The penalty is light, so the burden of proof is negligible. On the other hand, if the death penalty makes a demand of proof that can never be satisfied, then penalties that are only a little bit lighter, must make demands of proof that almost can never be satisfied. Armed robbery with a deadly weapon, with priors? Gee, that could involve twenty years; maybe more. Better make it real hard to lock the guy up, even if you know he really did it. Why not? It’s the same logic. Once you’ve wasted two decades of his life, you can never give it back. Better just turn him loose.

And that would hold for all the really bad stuff. The violent stuff. Are those the people we want to turn loose, while the innocents who gee, maybe, just might have jaywalked, are unjustly fined?

Well…without commenting further on my reservations about this “reasonable doubt” defense, I’d recommend what’s above just as something to chew on. For our anti-death-penalty types.

While they read about this…

A former jail guard testified Thursday about how a husband and wife were killed by being tied to an anchor aboard their yacht and dumped into the ocean.

Alonso Machain said he was on a boat belonging to Thomas and Jackie Hawks when they were killed in late 2004. He said he watched as they were overpowered by two men, bound by duct tape, tied to an anchor and thrown overboard off Southern California.

Machain, 23, testified Wednesday for more than two hours in the trial of Jennifer Deleon, who is charged with two counts of murder and special-circumstance allegations of committing multiple murders for financial gain.

Machain has pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder and acknowledged he hopes for leniency in exchange for his testimony.
:
Moments before they were killed, Machain said, Jackie Hawks pleaded with her captors to release them.

“She said they just had a new grandchild and she just wanted to see him,” Machain said.

The bodies of the Hawkses, of Prescott, Ariz., have not been found.

I know, I know. People say all kinds of crazy shit in exchange for leniency. It just makes sense that they will, and the “wanna see my grandchild” bit reeks of a tidbit that might have been cooked up to sway emotions.

What’s disturbing is, when you think about it, there really aren’t too many ways to get rid of a couple of human bodies to make sure they are never found. Yeah you can think of a few based on the movies. But easy logistics are involved in only one method of which I know, when there’s a boat involved.

Doesn’t exactly stand out as one of the better ways to go, huh?

ATTENTION LEATHERNECKS:

I cannot fully explain the doctrines under which the 110th Congress was just elected. It seems to me, and I know of no hard evidence to directly contradict this, that our last elections were conducted under the following auspices:

The Jean-Luc Picard paradigm is all-knowing. When two factions or forces aligned with different or oppositional interests face off, one of them malevolent, one not, the malevolent entity will yield to the cognitions and values of it’s counterpart. In short, the warrior will follow the superior example of the peacemaker. Always. You can end war forever…simply by making a unilateral decision not to fight it.

Such a doctrine must necessarily declare the United States Marines, ultimately, to be useless.

Well, you’re not useless. We owe our lives and our freedoms to the United States fighting forces, and especially, to you.

Happy birthday.

How does this all square with our new make-love-not-war Congress? I don’t know. You’ll have to ask the fuckheads who voted them in. Or…stayed home, to allow it to happen.

Real Americans stand behind you, with a support that is, in the words of Commandant M. W. Hagee, “unconditional and firm” (PDF). We understand your mission is a necessary one, and we are thankful you are there to see it through to the end. And be back for the next one. Happy 231st!

Some of the more reasonable among the Bush-bashing leftists…just some…will start to regret the thumpin’ with this news item. Trust me on this one, it’s the first chunk of ice to melt off the shelf.

Bolton’s days at U.N. are likely numbered
By Anne Plummer Flaherty
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON — John Bolton’s prospects for winning Senate approval to stay on as U.N. ambassador essentially died Thursday as Democrats and a pivotal Republican said they would continue to oppose his nomination.

On Thursday, the White House resubmitted Bolton’s nomination to the Senate, where the appointment has languished for more than a year.

President Bush appointed him to the job temporarily in August 2005 while Congress was in recess, an appointment that will expire when the Congress adjourns, no later than January.

Bush could not make a second recess appointment of Bolton for the same job, though there was some speculation that the administration might try to keep the ambassador at the U.N. in some fashion.

Okay, I understand what the typical left-winger’s reaction to this is going to be: Good riddance. Yelling at subordinates, wants to take floors off the U.N., bushy eyebrows, blah blah blah.

Well if not Bolton, then who?

Don’t forget, this “unpopular war in Iraq” was authorized by the United Nations. They authorized it…Bush and the coalition followed through. To object to the follow-through without objecting to the authorization is illogical — and to object to the authorization, and hope for more of it, while excoriating anyone who follows through subsequently “just like we did in that disaster over in Iraq,” would be patently absurd. To say the U.N. needs reform, is to state a decidedly reasonable and middle-of-the-road viewpoint. Hell, it’s to stand guilty of stating the obvious.

I fully expect this is simple and straightforward enough that even the most slobbery, rabid lefty will have to surrender the argument or, maybe a bit more likely, simply change the subject. You want a change of course? John Bolton was the change of course, where it would have done the most good. To get rid of him may make some Hollywood actors happy, but it’s a pronounced nod toward the status quo. Meaningless paperwork passed by the U.N.S.C. condemning this and renouncing that and deploring some other silly damn thing…while nobody responds in the language spoken by those who justify the U.N.’s existence, with menacing and thuggish behavior in the international arena.

Maybe some leftists like that. But the point is, it’s not uncharted territory, not even close. The Blair Witch is coming after us and we’re walking in circles. We’ve been here many, many times before. When’s this “change of course” start?

I really like this metaphor from, of all people, John Stewart. One of my gloating liberal Democrat co-workers turned me on to it, and a quick Google search netted me only this blogger comment. Nothing further.

Maybe in the next couple days I’ll be able to find video. I expect if I could find it in context, I’d like it even more.

I think Jon Stewart said, “The democrats quietly walk backwards out of the room as their older brother gets yelled at for burning down the garage”

I have to hand it to the left-wingers, or at least the ones with whom I work. It’s like a little bit of victory has temporarily reacquainted them with reality. Just to put it to the test, I actually began a sentence with “I think Rush Limbaugh was right when he said…” and wouldja believe it? They all agreed. Or arrived at a consensus…you know, in the way blue-staters do. Whoever speaks first speaks for the group, and anyone who disagrees just shuts up. So as near as I could tell, they all agreed — with Rush.

I think the observation was that Republicans win elections when they act like Republicans, and lose them when they start this bullcrap of “reaching across the aisle,” etc.

A month ago I had passed out a citation for best sentence and, by implication, made a resolution to keep on doing it. I have a lot of habits; some are good, some are bad. This strikes me as one of my better ones. It has not escaped my notice that when I take on a new habit, the more it has to do with absorbing lessons from others, the more likely I am to look back on the habit and regard it as a good one.

Today I am confronted with a philosophical question. Or a set of philosophical questions. Ethical dilemmas, you might say.

Is it alright for me to recognize a “best sentence” because it arouses me to — not think deeply, but — to chuckle?

What if it’s not in the best of taste?

What if it’s in downright poor taste?

What if it makes me cringe? And giggle at the same time?

Well…I guess I’ll leave that to the philosophers. As a TOTALFARK subscriber, I must confess, I have never, never, not ever, submitted a headline quite as, aw, sheesh. I’m not sure what the adjective is. I’m not even sure if I want to make it a positive adjective. Anyway…it deserves a bookmarking.

Not saying I approve…I just think it deserves a bookmarking. That’s all. C’mon, lighten up.

I expect I’ll be referring back to this bizarre little phenomenon in the years ahead, although I wish it were not so.

This article purports to present to me a diverse sampling of worldwide viewpoints about the midterm elections yesterday. It’s supposed to present that. What Ahmed thinks over here, what Vijay thinks over there, what Franz and Elisabeth and Pierre think over there. That’s supposed to be the point. And it actually delivers…halfway…and it leaves something else out. In that sense, it is a microcosm of all the commentary on this election I’ve been hearing today. All of it.

Echoing the sentiment of many in Muslim countries, Indonesian lawmaker Ahmad Sumargono hoped that the results would prompt a reassessment of American policies in Iraq and elsewhere.

“I am optimistic that American people have now realized the mistakes made by Bush in foreign policy. We hope this leads to significant changes, especially toward the Middle East,” he said.

Do you think — for one second — Sumargono went on to expound on the stuff that you’d want, y’know, upon which you’d logically wish for him to expound? Like…what mistakes are those? What changes are those supposed to be?

Well, if the person shoving a microphone into the face of Ahmad Sumargono got all uppity and bumptious about this, asking hard-hitting questions, insisting on meaningful answers…the ensuing exchange didn’t make it in to print.

The whole article reads like that. “I think this means President Bush’s butt cheeks got handed to him on a platter — YAY!!!” So-and-so says it, such-and-such says it, lather, rinse, repeat. But what is to be changed now? For what are they hoping? Nobody tries to address that. First word, last word, every word in between.

And I just think that’s odd. “What changes are going to come about?” seems to me an important question. “What changes do you hope to see coming about?” strikes me as a question to which I would like some answers. I’d like to know who’s out there, watching our elections. I’d like to know who’s in here, voting, and what changes they want.

Regardless of your political leanings, I think you’d agree there’s an awful lot riding on this.

Strange that nobody’s answering it. We’ve got a lot of people who just plain hate Republicans, and have waited six years for this to happen. If I was them, I’d feel cheated if the elected leaders went this long without bellying-up to the bar talking about why, in their minds, I bothered to put them in.

So now you can start to see my point. It’s really weird they’re not seizing the opportunity specifying it. And it’s even stranger, nobody anywhere is insisting on it.

Okay, donks. You’re in charge now. Show us how that “fiscal discipline” stuff works.

Let’s regroup in two years and count how many terrorists have been killed because of our wonderful, “respected around the world” Democratic Congress. Hopefully, records will have been broken. I hope that. I really do hope for it.

The Joint Army/Navy Phonetic Alphabet was in official use until 1956. It’s the one that starts out “Able, Baker, Charlie, Dog” and if you’re watching a World War II era movie, they should be using that one. Which most of them are.

It’s been replaced by the NATO Phonetic Alphabet which starts out “Alfa Bravo Charlie Delta,” and nowadays military folks will snicker at you if you’re reading something over the phone with the letter “A” and you use the phonetic “Able.” That isn’t correct anymore.

Both phonetic alphabets pronounce the number 9 as “niner.” That sounds cool in any decade. I’m so glad my license plate number has two niners in it. Almost makes me wish I got pulled over more often.

This is a big deal out here. The morning Deputy Mitchell gave the ultimate sacrifice in the line of duty, I was driving my son back to his Mom’s place. I heard the first announcement about “officer down” right after I drove within just a few miles of where it happened. Kinda freaky.

Anyway, this story is the last I’ve seen of it. I dunno what kind of DNA they’re talking about. Don’t know if I wanna know. Don’t know if the whole thing is a bluff. But I hope they catch this depraved sonofabitch and I hope public-square executions are somehow allowable again when they administer the justice he so richly deserves.

If you see a cop today, metro, county, state or anything else…thank him. Maybe that’s a little awkward if he’s handing you a ticket, but think about it for a second or two. He walks up to car windows for a living, hour-to-hour, day-to-day. He really doesn’t know what’s going to happen when he approaches a window…EACH window. All day, all week, all year. Could you do his job? Would you want to? Think about that.

Okay, it’s Election Day and whatever effect Kerry’s “botched joke” will have on things, has played out.

But this remix is still really funny. Heh heh heh…he apologized, right before he didn’t.

You ought to know by now, any time I see fit to send you to Miss Cellania, it’s always good. Click the first link on her page, go get a cup of coffee, come back after the 70+ megs have loaded and be prepared to be scaaaaaaaaaared……………

Yeah, it’s leftover Halloween stuff. My fault, not hers. Hey being scared is fun, right?

So, not that I care, since nobody reads this blog anyway. But among the nobodies who don’t come by to actually read it, what do you think of the new look?

We’re still in a state of transition. Much thanks to Terry for offering this platform on Webloggin, and to Phil for pointing out some of the obvious bugs that I could have seen for myself, but was a little too distracted to do so. We have a few places we can go from here. We can…get the frame content and the archive content ready for “prime time,” meaning all cleaned up so that advertising can be done. That way we can keep using Webloggin’s servers and pay (kinda sorta) for what we’re taking up. I’m not a lawyer, but I don’t think we’re quite there yet. All the other projects hither and yon, both on the computer and off — I’m not sure how to word what’s coming next. I think they’re breeding. Every time I turn around, there are more of them. Running a few loads of dishes seems to be pushing my limits lately.

Nobody is coming by to magically do this stuff for me. Something’s wrong with the way I’m doing my wishing.

At this point you can stick in the tired old “pardon the slow posting on the blog lately, folks” meme. Whatever you choose to pick up and paste in, will fit nicely. Real life has been beckoning. The Honey and I went on a drive and she re-introduced me to that big place out there with the fresh air and the big blue thing up above with that bright yellow ball in it. Hey, just for fun, what’s that off to the left?

So what other alternatives do we have. We will probably be moving to another domain, and from there continue to be part of the Webloggin’ crew, exchanging pointers and traffic. That has turned out to be a win-win. We’re certainly going to keep running on WordPress, although I’m going to be sluggish in climbing onto the “bash Blogger” bandwagon. Hey, trust me, I know how frustrating it is when Blogger’s having one of it’s little episodes. I’m the guy on the other end, actually writing this stuff. But the deal is, it’s free. You get what you pay for.

Of course, WordPress is free too. And zowee. It’s every bit as sweet as everybody was saying. Dashboard’s just as nice as I knew it would be.

So when I update the sidebar next time, I want to be sure and include this guy. I thought this was especially priceless:

As a very young man I silently swore to pursue a life that someday would be worthy of a biography. Boy, was that naive. For one thing, many biographies aren’t even worthy of being read!

Yeah, ain’t that the truth. That’s the cool thing about blogs, they’re written — mostly — by people who aren’t worthy of a biography, and just say stuff. Each blog by itself…is a guy just saying stuff. Altogether, they’re a raucous din of ordinary people saying stuff; but now and then, someone will say something worth repeating. This is in contrast to the traditional guy-who-says-stuff, which would be someone worthy of a biography, whose every word we’re supposed to honor in some way. The traditional figure has the glaring weakness that comes up when he says stupid stuff, which is nevertheless thought to be worthy of attention, as contrasted with the blogger who says stupid stuff, who is simply ignored.

So bloggers are better. Not because of the way we treat them when they bring us things worth reading…but because of the way we treat them when they bring us things that are not. Somehow, in the 21st century we’re just beginning to figure out how to ignore people who say stupid stuff, and pay attention to them again when they say worthy stuff. We’re just starting to translate that elementary and vital concept into action. Fifty years after color TV, Eighty years after air conditioning, 110 years after the car, 130 years after the phone. Kinda sad.

You might call the blogger the “Anti-Cronkite.” Not that we pay some kind of penalty for our stupid stuff that Cronkite escaped when he uttered his…but at least we’re properly ignored.

Back to the subject at hand: Anchoress has a few thoughts worth pondering on what exactly a blogroll is. She, and several other bloggers, have what I have come to perceive as kind of an “umbral” blogroll. It’s a list of resources she actually reads on a regular basis, and she feels she’s falling behind if she starts to neglect any one of them. She still has quite a few. I see a lot of other bloggers have a similar philosphy about adding other blogs to the roll.

Then again, many other bloggers have a criteria more like mine, where we maintain “penumbral” blogrolls. If you said something interesting, or simply showed promise that you might say something interesting and I wanted to bookmark you somehow, in you go. The notion that, by listing certain blogs, I’m implying “hey this guy says some really good stuff you should go read it” and you can get properly peeved at me if you so peruse, and end up disappointed…I’m just not buying into that. It’s not necessarily an endorsement. I just see the blogosphere as 99% static, and maybe, a lot more than 99%. I want to keep track of that 1%. Whether my “bandwidth” for overseeing what I’ve staked out has been exhausted, long before I’ve surveyed a hundredth of that 1% — I don’t care. I’m not really claiming responsibility for it, the way I see it. It’s just something I think is worth another look, and I’ll give it that look when I get time, and you’re welcome to take a peek yourself if you choose to do so.

So my blogroll is a lengthy thing. I use “metals” to keep it all straight, just like the Olympic games. There’s a reason for that. If you meet two athletes and one of the won a gold “medal” and the other one won a bronze, you would feel very highly honored. There’s a lot of stuff going on there, though. One one level, you would feel equally honored to have met either one of them. The honor that has been bestowed upon the bronze athlete, is just as great as that bestowed on the gold athlete. They are on par, because when you think about the staggering number of other athletes that have trained all their lives, and never win any “metal” at all, either one of those two encounters would make you feel very fortunate. It is only on a rather arcane level that the “gold” athlete’s surplus achievements are worth additional attention. And yet, on some level, they are.

I have an informal policy of linking to people who link to me, although I’d be setting myself up for failure if I were to pledge 100% follow-through on that. That is supposed to be the intention. Folks who put out things worth reading, maybe have an interesting way of phrasing things, might catch things I’m going to miss during my frequent lazy spells. That’s worth a bronze. Some of those resources, like Anchoress herself, have extremely high visibility in the blogosphere and are considered “major” players. Others are just plain old folks like me, whistling in the wilderness, but I like what they’ve had to say. Now if you’ve done something to indicate a very frequent checking-back is a worthy thing to do, and I’m pretty sure I won’t have the time to look at you as often as I should be doing, you might be worth a silver. Examples of this include the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler, IMAO, and News Blog Central which has a group of people contributing content, including me.

If you are a household name that even non-blog-people might recognize, such as Pajamas Media, Malkin and Little Green Footballs, you might get a gold medal.

And if I have had to take special steps to not look at your blog, like I’m curing some unhealthy addiction or something, that is worth a platinum. There are only two platinum blogs on my roll, and that is FARK and Neal Boortz. A lot of times left-wingers say interesting things, make good points, link to me. It is a surprisingly frequent occurrence that when they link to me, they do so non-sarcastically and are genuinely nice about it, as is the case with Alan and the Dreamer, and a lot of them like NYC Educator and Rude Pundit have some interesting facts worth pondering, and/or creative ways of wording things, and are worth perusing. They get a liberal hippy turqoise gemstone.

Don’t be mean, I consider some of them to be friends.

Note to self, Alan has moved, change the sidebar to point to his new address.

All for now. Time to jump in the shower and go vote.

Update: Want to be sure and get this guy.

Via Retrocrush…

If you’re like me, you spent countless hours as a child clipping out the crotches of your favorite superheroes and pasting them on the wall in hilarious mosaic patterns.

Eh…no…no, not quite…

Anyway, for all you inclined to identify DC and Marvel crotches, the contest awaits.

Someone had this great, great definition of “bias” and I can’t for the life of me remember if I discussed it before. Maybe I did. Nine times or more. Well, I don’t wish to become tedious but I need to define what bias is, even though just about everyone already knows, and I may be repeating myself. But the points which appear below, depend on this.

Bias is best represented by how we treat our bathroom scales — it’s a process of gathering data and cognitions already gathered, solely for the reason that you don’t like what you learned from the first go-round, such that any plan you put in place as a result of this data-gathering ends up tainted. I think I weigh 200 pounds; 185 would be a lot better, but 200 is what I weigh. I strip down to my birthday suit and I weigh in at 203. That can’t be right. So I weigh myself again. And again. And again. And again…certainly, we don’t need to get graphic about the various things I’ll try. But I might make this into quite a complicated daily weigh-in, right? I mean, who hasn’t been there before? And, of course, somewhere along the line I’m going to announce that I need a new scale because this one’s busted.

A week later, the busted scale says I weigh 199. Into the shower I jump, and I get on with my day. The weigh-in is over. Scale works great.

In sum, when I’m over, I need to weigh myself ten times or so. When I’m under, one weighing will do.

That’s bias.

Now, I’m given cause to think about this definition because loud-mouth pundits, both conservative and liberal, are offering these opinions about what is beginning to become an issue and what is no longer an issue. Thursday/Friday before an election, impresses me as an especially treacherous time to be trying to infer what the electorate is thinking. I suppose if you’re like me, you’re going to study up on some of the arcane propositions in the hours ahead, during the slow hours of Saturday morning with your “honeydew” jar emptied from the gently insistent summertime items filling said jar in the months just past. I could see how the “undecided” voter would be an important demographic. And yet, beyond that, I don’t see how we know too much about that undecided voter. Such a mystery cannot be illuminated by any light source conceived by God or man — save for the false light of bias.

In other words, no, conservative pundit, I don’t think Mark Foley is “yesterday’s news.” No, liberal pundit, I don’t think Kerry is “off the front page.” I don’t think you can say those things — and speak from any meaningful repository of knowledge. I think such proclamations are declaration of bias, nothing more. They are examples of wishful thinking. They cannot be anything more than that.

To speak from some sphere of knowledge, I — like them — can only whittle down the subject of my statement to a sphere of commentary that retains meaning, and to do that I have to miniaturize it to marble-size and talk about just myself. That’s all I can do; all anyone can do. And to me, the Kerry episode, by itself, doesn’t change a whole lot about the things I know. It’s how people react to it that I find inspiring and educational.

Like an ocean liner doing a hairpin-turn, barrel roll and loop-the-loop in rapid succession, the left-wing has come up with some last-minute election season talking points to deflect this. They are to be commended for this agility, but the product is lackluster and betrays the haphazard, panicky construction. The product is flimsy. Here’s the essence of it.

Senator Kerry didn’t say it —

Ugh…I’ll pause here to note that if I were in that room with Democratic credentials and a desire to see the Democratic party succeed on Tuesday, I would have pulled the emergency cord. I mean, we’re one sentence into this mini-platform, and right out of the chute the facts are on one side and Democrats are on the other. Like they can’t help themselves. At step one, they’re investing everything on the premise you can’t, or won’t, get ahold of a clip and simply play it back. That’s their keystone premise…here in the Age Of YouTube.

Continuing…

Senator Kerry didn’t say it. But if he did, everybody knows he’s right. Everybody thinks what he said…which, really, he didn’t say. Senator Kerry doesn’t believe what you think he said, which he didn’t actually say, because he’s very well educated and he’s one of those troops, so it’s patently silly to think for a minute Kerry would say this thing, that he didn’t really say, which everybody knows to be true anyway. Kerry is right about this thing he didn’t really say. Everyone agrees. And he doesn’t.

Now, as I noted yesterday, Senator Kerry did say it and from watching the entire 15-minute speech it’s clear he meant exactly what he said. True, a snarky snippet about President Bush’s educational credentials would have fit in better with his “Fozzie Bear” Vaudeville routine, and if you artificially stick in a couple of words this would make his punchline fit in better. But there’s no evidence that this would be an accurate rendering of what he meant, in letter or in spirit — certainly not in spirit. Senator Kerry doesn’t act anything like a speaker who meant to say something substantially different. There’s no “Omigosh I flubbed up that line” expression, no backtracking, nothing of the like. He meant to deliver a punchline, he delivered it, and the crowd ate it up.

As far as his stated sentiment being accurate, or rather, the bias of pundits lending credibility to it…this thing he said that he didn’t really mean to say, supposedly…suddenly examples abound.

Seattle P.I. editorial page:

Was Kerry making fun of the president, or warning students against the pitfalls awaiting the undereducated in general?

It doesn’t matter. Kerry was right either way.

Kerry wasn’t saying — regardless of the Republican spin — that our troops are stupid.

Kerry’s intended point was obvious. President Bush didn’t do his homework before he ordered the invasion. He didn’t study the intricacies of Mideast religion, culture, politics and tribalism. He wasn’t smart about it and we are stuck in Iraq.

Although there are plenty of well-educated people in our armed forces — Kerry was one of them — military service has long been an opportunity employer for those with less education and fewer skills than they need to work in the private sector. Indeed, the military sells itself as a place to garner skills and to help pay for higher education.

And wars, including this one, are often fought by those less privileged — albeit no less smart — than the sons and daughters of those who lead us into them.

Rosa Brooks, writing for the LA Times:

If those grunts were half as smart as members of Congress, they’d be on Capitol Hill getting sucked up to by lobbyists instead of sucking up dust in Baghdad’s bloody alleys — right?

Most of our current political leaders didn’t waste any time serving in the military. Like Vice President Dick Cheney, they had “other priorities.” As recently as 1994, 44% of members of Congress were veterans. Today, it’s only 26%. And despite the mandatory “I adore our heroic troops” rhetoric, most on Capitol Hill aren’t steering their own children toward military service. Only about 1% of U.S. representatives and senators have a son or daughter in uniform.

For many in Congress, serving in the military is a fine thing to do — for all those poor schmoes who don’t have any better options, that is.
:
But recent studies of military demographics suggest that today’s military is neither uneducated nor poor. Statistically, the enlisted ranks of the military are drawn mainly from neighborhoods that are slightly more affluent than the norm. The very poor are actually underrepresented in the military, relative to the number of very poor people in the population.

That’s mainly because the military won’t accept the lowest academic achievers. The Army limits recruits without high school degrees to 3 1/2 % of the pool, for instance, while the Marines won’t accept recruits without high school degrees. Poverty correlates strongly with high school dropout rates, so these rules significantly limit the access of the very poor to military service.

At the same time, they ensure that enlisted members of the military are more likely than members of the general population to have high school degrees. The same pattern holds for commissioned officers. In 2004, for instance, only 4.2% of officers lacked college degrees, and a whopping 37% held an advanced degree of some sort, compared to only 10% of adults nationwide.

The myth that the military is mainly the province of the poor and the uneducated is grossly misleading, and it’s also dangerous. It obscures the far more worrisome gaps that have recently emerged between the military and civilian society.

Demographically, the military is profoundly different from civilian society. It’s drawn disproportionately from households in rural areas, for one thing. For another, the South and Southwest are substantially overrepresented within the military, while the Northeast is dramatically underrepresented.

Compared to civilians, members of the military are significantly more religious, and they’re also far more likely to be Republicans. A 2005 Military Times poll found that 56% of military personnel described themselves as Republicans, and only 13% described themselves as Democrats. Nationwide, most polls suggest that people who define themselves as Democrats outnumber those defining themselves as Republicans.

And though the average member of the military is neither poor nor uneducated, social and economic elites are dramatically underrepresented in the military.

I believe there are many others out in liberal-land who would love to speak up, but are afraid they’d reveal sentiments that the LA Times and Seattle P.I. were all too ambitious about revealing. The military, like everyone else on the receiving end of liberal benevolence, impresses them as the sludgy, thick bottom layer of a pot of stew that hasn’t been stirred. Underprivileged, unskilled, immobile — can’t succeed without their help.

But here’s the most prominent lesson I’ve learned from the Kerry episode: According to our liberals, I’m not supposed to learn lessons. That would be thinking for myself, and they don’t want me to do that, or for anybody else to do that. I call that thought-control; as Jane Hamsher at Firedoglake demonstrates, our liberals call that P.R.

I can see we’re going to have to set up some sort of “Democratic PR school” soon. There seem to be a few remedial lessons they are lacking, as the John Kerry incident demonstrates.

First of all — I don’t care if John Kerry was eating live babies on TV, one week out from an election you do not repeat GOP talking points. Ever. It makes you look like a big pussy who can’t stand up to the Republicans, even when they’re playing from an exceptionally weak hand on an issue you own. For all those anxious to be seen as the tough defenders of national security, huddling in a crouch position while they pummel you about the head and saying “yes, yes, we deserve this” is just not the best option.

Secondly — did I mention that the Democrats own the issue of Iraq? Even the WSJ acknowledges it is the #1 issue influencing people’s votes this election.

Here we are learning about this simmering resentment and inherent condescending attitude focused with laser-like precision on our military volunteers, an entirely legitimate thing to notice just before an election…and if Hamsher represents our liberals well, no reason whatsoever to think she doesn’t — we’re not supposed to be noticing this. Liberals, you see, “own the issue of Iraq.” Think about Iraq, you end up hating Bush and loving the big ol’ soldier-slandering mushbucket of liberal goodness. If things somehow go the other way, someone needs a “P.R. lesson,” facts be damned. Them’s the rules.

And although it’s fair to say, I think, millions of voters are ready to pull the lever for Democrats because they want “moderation” and “unity” and more “exchange of ideas in the Beltway” — I’m just spitballing here, but I think that’s a fair consensus — Hamsher, and liberals who agree with her, say that’s out of the question. At least before the election, that’s out of the question. You don’t repeat Republican talking points because it makes you look like a big pussy.

Another interesting thing here: Kerry made this into a hugely damaging issue by doing exactly what Hamsher, and other extreme left-wing take-no-prisoners bloggers, want. Had he gone the other direction and said “I meant to make a joke at President Bush’s expense, not yours, and I might have dropped a word or two because of my excitement and I’m sorry if the meaning was changed and/or I made anyone feel bad” — like that — the Kerry thing would have been off the front page. But he lashed out and accused the White House of trying to change the subject…as if transcripts weren’t available…as if video clips were not available. In short, he lied.

He called into question every single shred of supposedly-legitimate liberal rage, we’ve ever seen, since Fahrenheit 9/11. He made us reconsider all of it…or at least, created an intellectual necessity for us to do that. He revealed the classic liberal temper-tantrum flung toward 1600 Pennsylvania as, not something based on thought, but rather a meaningless cliche. By doing exactly what Hamsher said she wanted. He revealed the liberal plan to deal with all issues — across the board — as nothing more than blaming things on some guy who’s going back to Crawford in early 2009, and whose culpability in such matters won’t have a damn thing to do with anything. In sum, he increased the necessity for liberals to come up with a real plan, at just such a time as they can’t do it, and won’t do it.

In the end, the point that Senator Kerry isn’t running for anything this year, only makes his comment more damaging. What it does, is encase this whole silly “did-he-mean-it” line of arguing further into the cement of irrelevance. Liberals see our soldiers as the sludge of society, the same way they see all the beneficiaries of their liberalness. They must rescue our soldiers from Iraq, the same way they must defend the right-to-vote for our ethnic minorities, or the right-to-be-hired of said minorities. None of whom, according to our liberals, are capable of helping themselves…because the whole sorry lot of them lack the education, resourcefulness or intelligence to do so.

It’s one of the few things that remain consistent about our liberals. You can receive their help, or their respect. Never, ever, both at the same time.

Update: Got a thought I can’t just let go. This particular posting has a carefully defined scope, and my thought falls well within it, is well worth noting, and has not been so noted.

I generally disapprove of what we call “psychologizing” which, in my artificially narrow definition of the word, means to postulate on what a person is going to be thinking based on what that person is already thinking. I see this as an exercise in deriving information that is mostly useless, based on other things that are not and cannot be proven. I indulge in this practice here only to make note of a political/social phenomenon that has become so chafed and festered and swollen that ignoring it has become impossible.

I’m referring to the reflexive impulse on the part of our liberals to blame things on George W. Bush.

Senator Kerry’s “botched joke” or whatever you choose to call it, has offered this beast the very most awkward specimen of pottage, one quite incompatible with said beast’s digestive tract. Senator Kerry insulted the troops stationed in Iraq, both in letter and in spirit. We may debate what his intentions were, but one thing is beyond reasonable dispute: President Bush had absolutely nothing to do with it. Neither did any Republican, anywhere. A loyal, high-profile Democrat said a dumb thing, and that’s as complicated as the situation gets.

Do our liberals say to themselves, “hopefully this will go away quickly and the next thing to come up, is something we can blame on George Bush”? No, they don’t. Whatever stinks like dog feces, must be gingerly placed on the porch of Pennsylvania & 16th, and whoever passes on the opportunity risks excoriation and ostracism from the Democratic party apparatchiks. Here is a situation where an exception to the rule would be quite reasonable; you could even go so far as to say, victory for the Democrats on Tuesday, depends utterly on such an exception being made. The party’s continuing survival, even, may depend on this exception being granted.

And yet, no such exception is forthcoming. No circuit breaker. No breakway fender.

I can’t help but notice all kinds of popular liberal leitmotifs into which such an exception would gracefully morph. The first thing that comes to mind is the “George Bush can’t admit his mistakes” thing, as in: “Kerry’s botched joke is all Sen. Kerry’s doing and none of President Bush’s, but at least with a whole week of (not-so-gentle) probing and prodding, Kerry admitted his mistake, where as President Bush has yet to admit his.” Something like that. Perhaps, somewhere, a liberal blogger is saying that very thing — without laying any blame for the joke-botching at the feet of George Bush, whatsoever. Perhaps.

I haven’t seen that anywhere. What I have seen, is lots of “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” commands that I’m not supposed to think about what John Kerry said; if that command is not obeyed, the ugliness starts immediately, and all of it has to do with our current President. I’ve seen lots of accusations that President Bush…yawn…”lied” during his own remarks about the Senator’s implosion. I’ve seen the case made, repeatedly, that when all’s said and done our mainstream press is indeed biased — toward the right! As in, those dastardly newspapers are actually mentioning that the Democrats’ 2004 champion for the presidency thinks our troops are a bunch of dummies, or at least says so. Invariably, such an observation concludes that the Bush White House has the press in it’s pocket and that they’re too “timid” to “speak truth to power.”

I’ve seen a lot of conservative bloggers and pundits make the comment, sarcastically, that Sen. Kerry’s misstep was further evidence of President Bush’s sinister plan to control the thought waves of our population — perhaps that the evil Karl Rove somehow fooled the Massachusetts Senator into saying what he said.

And I get the distinct impression that the liberals are inhaling, ready to agree with this, and halfway through the first syllable biting their tongues and thinking…eh…that’s one step forward and three steps back. Maybe if we take that to the drawing board and polish it up, we can come up with something…

…and this is what I can no longer ignore. To the Democrats, a highly-irrelevant talking point that mentions the evil deeds of George W. Bush, is distinctly preferred over a relevant talking-point that does not. Their mental adrenaline, such as it is, is directed in bridging the gap between what has caused grief to us over the last day or so…and ol’ what’s-his-name. What has aroused our angst, lately, that is not his fault? It seems they’re on a mission to prove there is no such thing.

As a Republican, I find it sadly amusing. As an American, I find it to be just sad — to say nothing of a significant security threat. I expect Democrats will be running our legislature next year. Our 110^th Congress, like few Congresses that have ever sat before it since Reconstruction, will be confronted by a huge array of challenges that can only be addressed by looking forward. And they have nothing to say about anything if they can’t talk about HIM! To somehow curtail them from mentioning that particular guy, is to deprive them, completely, of any ideas they can vocalize, anywhere. About anything.

Seldom has that been demonstrated with greater clarity, than in the last five days. President Bush is disconnected from HalpUsJonCarry-Gate, so completely, that we might as well be talking about any one of a number of other things…related to American politics, or not. Why, if I were to ask you what kind of pretzels are your favorite — even that has more to do with President Bush, than the dreaded incident from this week. What would happen if the Starbuck’s barrista asked Howard Dean, or Dianne Feinstein, or Senator Kerry or one of our other modern liberals, “May I prepare a beverage while you’re waiting in line? And please don’t mention George Bush in your answer.” Really, what would happen next? Would the line suddenly come to an abrupt stop? Would that outlet shut down for the rest of the day, while the line just snakes out the door, as the liberal tries, tries, and tries again to come up with a Bush-free answer?

Honest to God, in this day and age I think that’s exactly what would happen.

Update: If I had my way, everybody who goes to vote on Tuesday would read this and then…as a follow-up…go back and look at that 15-minute video clip I linked, with the complete Kerry speech. The one that was filmed & edited before anybody involved anticipated that this would become some kind of a big deal. Read…

You must forgive me, for there just is not a lot of room in my life for even good jokes–and there is absolutely no room for “botched jokes”–when the subject of the joke is my son who was killed in Iraq. I know exactly what came out of Sen. John Kerry’s mouth, and in those words there is no interpretation required. His attempt to convince us–and, I believe, to convince himself that that there was really a botched joke buried deep within his insult is in fact a reaffirmation of his ever-present condescending nature. He actually believes that we are stupid enough to agree with him and start laughing simply because he said it was a joke. Mr. Kerry said exactly what he meant and meant exactly what he said. In those words Mr. Kerry did in fact wash completely away the facade of his support of our magnificent troops and revealed for all to see his true colors.
:
John Kerry stands alone, to be judged by his words. He has given us the rare opportunity to look into the soul of a politician, and he has shown himself wanting, especially in view of the fact that he asked us to allow him the honor and privilege of leading our gallant military at a time of war. It is rare in life to be able to know the consequences of both sides of a decision. Mr. Kerry has clearly demonstrated what manner of president he would have been. Fortunately the American electorate denied him that high honor.

The writer is Ronald Griffin, father of Army Spc. Kyle Griffin who was killed in a truck accident in Iraq in May of 2003. Pondering the situation with Specialist Griffin, one immediately is struck by two important things missing from Sen. Kerry’s thoughtless words: Fairness and truth. Now, go back to the video clip. Look at the audience reaction right after “stuck in Iraq.”

I have been told there are gasps mixed in with the laughter and the cheering. That’s possible, and it would be difficult to assess how much of each ingredient is mixed in. I realize that’s simply the way audio information is, especially when it’s been electronically translated.

Even with all that, this whole episode says something terribly unflattering not only about Sen. Kerry, who isn’t running for anything — but about the faction that supports him, which definitely is. Whether they realize it or not, they are skullfuckingly vicious bastards and no civilized society would think of putting them in charge of so much as a vegetable cart.

Sickening.

I think that’s what we should call it. An irrational conviction, suffered mostly by people who passionately hate President Bush, that their personal opinions about things are somehow absolute in nature. That their way is the only way. That their personal preferences and subjective tastes, for reasons unexplained, are in some way measurable.

At the MTV Europe Music Awards, Kanye won some award instead of some other award, and this really cheesed him off.

Rap star Kanye West was named Best Hip Hop artist but still came off as a sore loser at the MTV Europe Music Awards.

Kanye apparently was so disappointed at not winning for Best Video that he crashed the stage Thursday in Copenhagen when the award was being presented to Justice and Simian for “We Are Your Friends.”

In a tirade riddled with expletives, Kanye said he should have won the prize for his video “Touch The Sky,” because it “cost a million dollars, Pamela Anderson was in it. I was jumping across canyons.”

“If I don’t win, the awards show loses credibility,” Kanye said.

The rapper grabbed the Best Hip Hop award earlier in the night in a star-studded event hosted by Justin Timberlake in the Danish capital.

Gee, I didn’t know credibility was something measurable like…uh…heat density, kinetic energy or mass. If that’s the case, what happens to your credibility when you crash the award ceremony of the guy who kicked your ass at something?

Via Hot Air, the complete 15-minute speech by John “Fozzie Bear” Kerry, stumping for Phil Angelides, during which he made his notorious remark at the expense of…President Bush? Troops in Iraq? It’s a matter of disagreement.

My thoughts, having viewed the whole thing:

Via Ace of Spades HQ, South Park’s take on evolution.

Content warning, it contains references to monkeys having sex with squirrels and fish, I think the “F” word that rhymes with “truck” is in there. Can’t remember too clearly, I was laughing too hard.

Via News Blog Central I come to find out about this Yahoo News story with some interesting phraseology, and I’ll let the NBC proprietor, CEO, chief, cook and bottle-washer James Bostwick explain this further.

I love the tone of this article. When Republicans make their case, they’re “attacking” Democrats. When the Dems bid, it’s called “countering.” The verbage throughout the article is very enlightening. Here’s a few highlights of clever word association by author Espo.

Republicans: attack, criticizing, battle…waged, protect seats, Bush’s script, mocked, reeling, ridiculed, accusation.

Democrats: undeterred, countered, change, winning, usher in a new era of divided government, poised to win, decade of struggle, projected confidence, competitive, gained the endorsement.

You can see that the author paints a bleak outlook for Republicans almost characterizing them as cornered animals, lashing out at the establishment. Meanwhile, Democrats are valiantly fighting the fight, and striving towards victory. Shameless.

Follow the link, and you get this parting-shot at the end where several Democratic “countering” ad is analyzed…

Lacking the presidential megaphone, Democrats broadcast their message in television commercials in key districts around the country.

“Rick O’Donnell. He’s George Bush’s candidate for Congress. O’Donnell wanted to send 75,000 more troops to Iraq,” says an ad in a suburban Denver race that Democrats are particularly optimistic about winning.

“Despite a war gone wrong and no plan for victory politicians like Rob Simmons keep voting to stay the course again and again, following George Bush’s failed leadership no matter what the cost,” is the accusation against Rep. Rob Simmons of Connecticut.

Rep. Dave Reichert “just sides with Bush on Iraq,” says the announcer in the ad against the Washington state congressman. “Iraq is just a disaster. Iraq is a complete disaster. It’s heartbreaking.”

Yet another ad shows Rep. Heather Wilson, R-N.M., saying, “We need to stay the course,” followed by an announcer’s voice saying, “No, we don’t.”

I discussed this whole Iraq thing briefly last night. It’s not complicated at all, in fact, it’s even simpler than most people make it out to be.

Republicans: If we leave Iraq now, it will be a complete disaster. So let’s not do that yet.

Democrats: If we leave Iraq now, it will be a complete disaster. So…what in the hell are we waiting for?

Let’s just go ahead and call this right now. If Democrats capture one chamber of Congress, or the other…certainly, if they capture both…Iraq AND terrorism will simply be “tuned out.” Welfare, minimum wage, medicare, global warming, roll back the tax cuts, rich not paying their fair share. It will be the 1980’s all over again, all domestic issues, all the time. You will go through all of 2007 not hearing anything about terrorists, except maybe from some Republicans forcibly retired from Congress.

I’m calling it: The transformation will start during the holidays. Thanksgiving. You’ll read about poor people and homeless people having shitty Thanksgivings. Thanksgiving will become a major, major event. Microphones shoved into the faces of voluneer workers doling out the turkey and gravy in homeless shelters, so they can discuss what dire circumstances these people are in, and how many of them are going to develop medical problems because it’s going to be so cold this winter.

The drumbeat will continue for two solid years, in preparation for the 2008 presidential elections. All poor people, all the time. Not a peep about dirty little depraved animal-men who want to kill large numbers of us to make political statements. Derelicts, old people, single parents, programs, benefits, premiums, interest, mortgages, taxes.

Just get terrorism the hell OFF the front page. It’s really hard to sell new social programs when the filthy commoners are thinking about terrorists.

If Democrats win, a year from today the September 11 attacks will be as distant from our contemporary mindset as the War of 1812. The terrorists will not have gone away, by any means. We’ll just be directed from our elites to think about other things.

“Bumptious” is a word that means to be self-assertive, saliently so. If you stand up for yourself, you might be bumptious, but that by itself doesn’t do the trick. Bumptious means loud; it means to be offensive, usually, with some measure beyond what’s necessary. It means your strategy is self-preservation, and perhaps there is some nobility in that, but your tactics are unnecessarily shrill. Bumptious is a word I have to work hard to keep from overusing, for if I were to start using it, I can see myself easily wearing it out — it’s such a great word. It’s an addictive word. Besides, it’s a relevant word; we live in some very bumptious times.

I know a lot of registered Democrats. Some are reasonable, some are not, but all of them have a lot of loyalty to the “home team” above & beyond what they can logically explain. And all of them are bumptious about these loyalties they cannot explain; only on certain days, however. Monday, Wednesday and Friday they might be wisely counseling me that they’re above the fray and see no advantage to highlighting their disagreements with me, opting instead to “agree to disagree.” But such agreements go sailing out the window on Sundays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. They’re selective about their contrition and shyness. They choose, judiciously, when to be quiet and when to be loud. It all depends on what’s going on.

I notice that all the Democrats I know, are this way. The extreme ones, the moderate ones. It’s time for some in-your-face table-pounding…when it’s time for it…otherwise, now is not the time. And they always want to be the ones choosing what time it is.

Now, this Kerry thing is most peculiar. People who sympathize with John Kerry now say he was joking; those are the ones who want to talk about it. The rest of them are willing to forfeit the whole issue. Tee hee! Did I say that? No, nobody’s forfeiting anything…the ones who don’t want to talk about Kerry’s “botched joke,” are indignantly instructing the rest of us to think Kerry forgot to stick in a couple of words that would have completely changed the meaning of what he said, and we should do it for him or else we’re “misinterpreting” what he said. I think Howard Dean, Chairman of the Democratic party, summed it up best.

Howard Dean, in comments to reporters in his home state, said Sen. John Kerry had committed “a blooper,” but the reaction had given Democrats an opportunity to highlight what they describe as the Republicans’ weaknesses on the Iraq war.

“Kerry made a blooper. Bloopers happen,” Dean said at the state party’s campaign headquarters.

“I think we want to focus on the president’s intemperate rhetoric in saying to vote for a Democrat is a vote to help the terrorists win,” Dean said. “That’s clearly untrue and that’s exactly the reason why President Bush is a failed president.”

Nobody with a brain who’s been following this, Republican, Democrat, or anywhere in between, is pretending to believe Dean’s going to be consistent on this. He won’t; Democrats in general won’t; that’s my whole point. Bloopers happen? Does that mean bloopers don’t count, ever — or bloopers don’t count today? Like, next time President Bush makes one, the time-honored blooper will go right back to being an indicator of leadership material or lack thereof?

This selective bumptiousness is okay, I suppose, except for one thing. And it scares the ever-lovin’ crap out of me.

Republicans tell me if we are going to leave Iraq “before the job is done,” disaster will surely follow. They may be right, they may be wrong. But I’m much more concerned about whether this is a middle-of-the-road ponderance of likely future events, or a right-wing talking point. It doesn’t seem, to me, to be a right-wing talking point. Democrats and liberals could take issue with this any day they want to. They’re judiciously bumptious, you see. They could decide to argue with this and say “no, no, we can leave Iraq, and there won’t be a price to be paid by ANYONE for this.” They could say that.

They choose not to. Their sagacious bumptiousness tells them to let this one pass. And in my eyes, by their silence, they’re agreeing with this. Let me guess: That evil President George Bush has got us in a no-win quagmire situation, and we need to get out, but if we do so it will all go to shit. Something like that, right?

Okay. So both sides agree we can’t just pull out of Iraq without disaster following.

Democrats have a platform of doing exactly that thing. Sure, the euphemism is “redeploy.” But their plan is to leave.

So Republicans have an ominous prediction of disaster if a certain thing is done; Democrats share in that recognition of the bad things that will happen if we do that thing. They agree. They only disagree about whether it’s good to discuss it or not. But as to what will happen if we do that thing, they agree.

Well, Democrats want to do that thing — leave — and Republicans don’t.

I mean, do I have that right? That’s the platform, isn’t it…if we pull out of Iraq, the place will become a shitstorm — so let’s do it? Is this election really more complicated than that? Really? A party that wants to do what will lead to a disaster, versus another party that doesn’t? If so, what am I leaving out?

I’m sorry, I’m sorry. That’s a silly question about such a trivial matter. Er…oh wait a minute, no it isn’t.

Is anyone keeping track of all these generalities, and while we’re at it, all the unsubstantiated characterizations? Republicans are morons, the Christian Right runs everything, Republicans are drowning in scandal, white men are angry, troops in Iraq are a bunch of dimwits…Cheney is unscrupulous and Bush is a putz.

I remember a generation ago that a “liberal” was someone who was fighting a Good Fight against generalizations. It started out with an intellectual combat waged against half-assed unthinking statements like “black people are lazy” — the liberal would be there to say, hey, there’s lazy & hard-working white people, there’s lazy & hard-working black people, you shouldn’t be stereotyping. The liberal was right. No matter what your personal experience was, somewhere a black guy was working his ass off…somewhere else, a white guy was being lazier than any black guy you’d ever seen. Individuals are individuals, classes are classes, the two are different.

Liberals got so militant about this, that even sensible generalizations based on empirical observations, or cause-and-effect, were off-limits. “Obese people seem to buy food in large quantities,” would have gotten you a censure from our liberals…even as they indignantly noted our egghead scientists might be saying that very thing, and not enough people were paying attention to the egghead scientists. You might say our liberals, outwardly dedicated to everyone being equal, simultaneously crusaded for generalizations to be enjoyed only by our academic elites. Wage-slaves were not to indulge in this. So there’s some irony — your caste determined your license to think in certain ways. Elites could generalize, commoners could not.

Then things got even funnier and more ironic. Telling people what to think, is always easier than telling people how to think, and the liberal movement took the path of least resistance. Liberals made it known were were not allowed to have such thoughts in our heads. They effectively said, we will discipline you if you’re caught thinking Chinese people run laundromats, or Mexicans drive big old cars with messed-up suspension systems, or that women are shrill gold-diggers…and you know what? We don’t give a damn anymore if it’s stereotyping, or an honest observation of an individual. Sure enough, within a decade a man could be divorced, with his ex-wife taking everything all his material possessions because she never had a job in her life and didn’t want one…and he could state, factually, “I just got divorced and my ex-wife took all my material possessions, because she’s never had a job in her life and she doesn’t want one” — and a liberal would be right there, waggling the liberal finger in his face, tut-tutting him into obedient silence.

So there’s some more irony. Generalizations no longer had anything to do with it.

And now, as Obi-Wan Kenobi might say, our liberals have become exactly what they swore to oppose. It’s all about telling the masses what to think about this class of person or that class of person. In fact, if the stereotypes aren’t disseminated far and wide, and too many of us keep in mind that individuals are individuals and classes are classes, our liberals just aren’t happy. To simply make an observation that some Euro-centric white men (who aren’t Democrats) might have honest motives and might work hard — just some — is to create a state of war, in which the liberal must have the last word.

Senator Kerry says his line about the troops was a “botched joke” that was aimed at the White House, not at the troops. “The White House’s attempt to distort my true statement is a remarkable testament to their abject failure in making America safe…It’s a stunning statement about their willingness to reduce anything in America to raw politics.” You know, if I predicted this little exchange a year ago, it would have been clumsy political satire. Kerry says…aw hell, let’s just try to go beyond factual history and venture into outlandish, unprecedented theory — difficult as that is. Kerry says the troops in Iraq are disease-infested, raping, ignorant brutes who set dogs on fire for fun. President Bush says “that’s not fair and you owe the troops an apology” and Kerry replies…”The White House’s attempt to distort my true statement is a remarkable blah blah blah…reduce anything in America to raw politics.”

That’s a pretty poor excuse for satire, but it’s the best I can manage and that’s my point. Satire is supposed to go above and beyond the plane of reality — and that has become prohibitively difficult in the Senator’s case. He has arrived at his zenith. He can say anything…about anyone…in any context he chooses…and once called on it, he’ll accuse the accuser. He has pushed it to such outlandish extremes that you can’t even poke fun at it anymore.

So let’s take a look at what he said, although by doing so, we’re clearly excusing ourselves from Kerry’s intended audience since he doesn’t want anyone examining anything. Kerry says the White House is attempting to distort his true statement which was a “botched joke” directed at President Bush and his “failed policies.” Okay. What he said…was…

You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and do your homework, and make an effort to be smart, uh, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq. [emphasis mine]

My point is…and I’m sure others have made the same point somewhere by now, perhaps more concisely…there’s no distortion present and none required. If you don’t make an effort to be smart, you get stuck in Iraq. So those guys “stuck in Iraq” did not make the effort to be smart.

It’s what he said.

It wasn’t taken out of context. Go on, do a Google for anything you care to Google — not hard now! — and sift through the avalanche of news about Kerry’s “botched joke” here. Try to find a way he was unfairly taken out of context. Just try it.

As the Boston Herald pointed out, not only is Kerry guilty of the kind of generalization our liberals used to fight with every fiber of their being…his implications are not even factually sustainable. It’s simplemindedness and bigotry…presented to us in as pure and as acrid a form as we’ve ever seen such things.

You know, I’m just sure the pressure of campaigning the last week before the election is incredible. But it’s part of the job, and for Sen. Kerry to get in trouble over this, is just plain fair. He spoke from the heart. Central to the real platform of the Democratic party, is an axiom that our troops serving in Iraq are, not dedicated professionals trying to do a job, but just a bunch of simple-minded dolts. I see a lot of Democrats and other left-wingers getting all huffy-puffy when someone makes that observation about what they think, but I don’t see a lot of them directly contesting it. Getting huffy-puffy is where the argument starts, and where it ends.

Not News

Oh yeah…I’m good with this (link requires registration). Hopefully it’s the first raindrop of a flood, long overdue.

At 2 TV Stations in Maine, What Al Gore’s Movie Says Isn’t News
By JOSEPH B. TREASTER

How important is global warming in Maine? Not important enough for local television.

Michael Palmer, the general manager of television stations WVII and WFVX, ABC and Fox affiliates in Bangor, has told his joint staff of nine men and women that when “Bar Harbor is underwater, then we can do global warming stories.”

“Until then,” he added. “No more.”

Mr. Palmer laid out his policy in an e-mail message sent out during the summer. A copy was sent to The New York Times. Mr. Palmer did not respond to a phone message left with an employee of the stations nor to an e-mail message. But a former staff member confirmed the e-mail message that went out during the summer after the stations broadcast a live report from a movie theater in Maine where Al Gore’s movie on global warming, “An Inconvenient Truth,” was opening.

Mr. Palmer began his e-mail message: “I was wondering where we should send the bill for the live shot Friday at the theater for the Al Gore commercial we aired.”

Mr. Palmer said he wanted no more stories broadcast on global warming because: “a) we do local news, b) the issue evolved from hard science into hard politics and c) despite what you may have heard from the mainstream media, this science is far from conclusive.” Mr. Palmer said in his e-mail message to his operations manager and two women who served as a news anchor and a reporter that he placed “global warming stories in the same category as ‘the killer African bee scare’ from the 1970s or, more recently, the Y2K scare when everyone’s computer was going to self-destruct.”

H/T: Boortz.

Article goes on to cite Dr. James Hansen as a neutral, authoritative source. Good for Dr. Hansen. And therein lies the trouble with things like neutrality, objectivity, centrism: Someone has to define these things. A lot of people are walking around, bragging about how well-informed they are because they read NYT. Not only will they stop short of saying they let the Old Gray Lady tell them what they’re supposed to think, they’ll vigorously argue against that very concept — and yet — the Paper of Record sticks a microphone into the face of James Hansen, not bothering to collect any other dissenting scientific opinion or counterpoint, and hey it’s all good.

Whiskey…Tango…Foxtrot… VII

Like they say. “They’re at it again.” In January I had recorded some thoughts about the exchange between Bill O’Reilly and David Letterman…in which I think both sides would agree, the following sums things up accurately. O’Reilly shared some coherent thoughts after accumulating a serviceable knowledge about the given subject, and Letterman responded by freely admitting his ignorance, and being a smartass. Five months later, I had opined grandiloquently about what heap-big trouble we had made for ourselves, now that we had a discourse going in which half of us were irreversibly convinced Letterman had somehow won this thing. I mean, I was just stunned. Like I said, I come from Earth…a place where keeping the argument going, after ‘fessing up “I’m not smart enough to debate this with you point by point” is unthinkable. Keeping it going is unthinkable — calling victory on it is even moreso. Silly me. That’s the way things are on Earth. My home. Guess I should be more tolerant of people who come from other places.

Well. Everything that was old is new again. O’Reilly asked Letterman, point-blank, if Letterman wants the United States to win the war in Iraq. Simple question — Letterman can’t answer it — and woontcha know it, the weird purple-blooded aliens out on Planet “You Win An Argument By Talking Around The Issue,” otherwise known as Planet-Blue-State, think — once again — Letterman handed O’Reilly his own ass.

Well, very impressive. But if it’s not clarified what, exactly, the goal is — what does it even matter if Letterman “won” by whatever definitions his deranged fans may choose to put in place? Who CARES? Do you want the United States to win, Dave, or don’t you?

My thoughtfulness demands an answer before pursuing your argument any further.

Bumper Sticker

Being “pithy” is a real challenge for me. At an age when most kids were learning how to give off the right “vibe” with each other, I was reading the encyclopedia to pass the time. When it came time to get a job, when other kids were learning the fine points of customer service at the fast food restaurant or the shoe store, I was a software developer.

As a result of that, I may have some strengths figuring out what must be communicated, but I’m handicapped in figuring out what could be left out. I look at such things the way a software developer looks at them: If something’s in need of definition, and it goes undefined, that is a “bug” waiting to happen.

So I get a lot of criticism for the length of what I have to say. Most of it’s deserved. In fact, the high compliments that go with it about “good writing” or “great writing” or whatever…I’m mostly convinced that’s undeserved. A writer is supposed to know something about his audience’s mindset. And in the final analysis, I really haven’t got a God damned clue. I’m always the last to know.

So I can’t write pithy stuff. And if, somehow, we escape a Democratic Congress next year, a fate which we richly deserve…and Republicans can hang on to control of Congress, which they do not deserve…whoever makes that happen, will have written some pithy stuff. Which I can’t do.

Not often.

But I did think of something.

The situation is summed up nicely, I think, by the border issue. The Republicans in Congress have approved building a third of the fence we should have had all along. Just a third. Seven hundred miles. They have authorized it…the funds are not there to pay for it. In short, they’re paying “lip service” to the fence, and to border control in general. They say they’re dedicated to it, they pass stuff that kind of goes in that direction, but they will not actually get it done.

Democrats are dedicated to “immigration reform.” They won’t even say what that is, let alone actually do some stuff consistent with whatever they’d say it is. But they’re completely united on one thing: Republicans are screwing it up, and we need to put them in charge.

And thus it is with every issue on down the line. Republicans are dedicated to an idea, and their performance in moving toward that idea is a) good b) lackluster c) poor d) disasterous e) bass-ackward. Democrats are dedicated to…some cool catchphrase that will get people a) energized b) pissed-off c) energized and pissed-off. On all issues, the catchphrase is supposed to communicate an idea, but which idea it communicates varies from noggin to noggin among the people who are getting energized and pissed-off. Nobody knows what a Democratic Congress would do about immigration, or the War on Terror, or even the finer details of any of the issues Democrats like: Universal healthcare, minimum wage, rolling back tax cuts, abortion on demand.

Democrats and the mainstream media — but I repeat myself — command us to pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. Don’t worry about what they’d do. The status quo is so bad, we need to communicate our anger…by putting them in charge.

Well, in charge of what? What they want to lead, is so massive, so important, that this whole argument makes sense only to those who tune out of the whole process. They’re talking to the folks who are so “overwhelmed” driving to soccer practice, picking up six-dollar foo-foo drinks at Starbuck’s, and bellyaching about not having enough cash for gas. They’ll just clear out that half-hour on Tuesday morning to vote how angry they are about gas prices, and couldn’t give a shit about politics.

But those are the people who decide things. People out of the reach of windbags like me, who don’t know how to express pithy ideas. And because of that, the country is about to be run by people whose agenda is…who knows what. The best information to be gathered, is that the plan for fighting the War on Terror, is going to be for our leaders to command us proles, to stop thinking about it. And almost certainly, that will be done by means of bright shiny objects. Increases in minimum wage, bold new plans for healthcare…each of them calculated to address a social issue, never quite solving it for good. It’ll be more about the noise, less about actually addressing anything. Just like the good ol’ days.

Two words for Starbuck’s-slurping, soccer-momming, gas-price-bitching myrmidons: “Congressional Material.” With a question mark afterward, and placed over this picture.

That’s what it’s all about. Most people would agree, an election isn’t about registering your angst about things. It’s about selecting leaders who are going to make important decisions about things. Most people would agree with that…even Democrats agree with it, when they try to make the election all about Mark Foley. It’s just, the folks who are going to put Democrats in Congress, aren’t following through on it. They’ll say they are voting for someone to bring about “change.” But if you ask them what the change is going to be, only 10 out of 100 will have an answer for you — and those ten answers will be all different.

Congressional Material. That’s what this election is all about. Make the candidates spell out what they plan to do, and we can have an election about who’s congressional material and who isn’t. For the challengers to say “I’m all pissed off and you should be too!” and let them get away with that…that’s not leading to an election about congressional material. That is what’s called a bitch pitch.

And it’s not the candidate’s job to prevent that. It’s the electorate’s job.

Memo For File XXXI

Quoth our 32nd President, our “A Little Dab (o’Socialism)’ll Do Ya” President, the guy who locked up all the Japanese-American citizens — lemme repeat that, citizens — in camps simply because of the blood in their veins. The guy who prepared America for the modern world by, of all things, transforming it into a collectivist utopia; God only knows how good things could have been if it was a supply-sider carrying us across that critical bridge. We learn of this via some starry-eyed left-wing douchenozzle, via the much more venerable Fetching Jen.

President Roosevelt argues that his hybrid-socialist revolution is simply a continuation of the American Revolution; it’s the natural next-step. In fact, I think the douchenozzle hit the nail on the head here: “Our Founding Fathers had either not anticipated that need when they wrote our Constitution, or else they had felt that our fledgling country was not yet ready for that concept. But as FDR pointed out in his speech, many things had changed since then.”

And so it was to win freedom from the tyranny of political autocracy that the American Revolution was fought. That victory gave the business of governing into the hands of the average man, who won the right with his neighbors to make and order his own destiny through his own Government. Political tyranny was wiped out at Philadelphia on July 4, 1776.

Since that struggle, however, man’s inventive genius released new forces in our land which reordered the lives of our people. The age of machinery, of railroads; of steam and electricity; the telegraph and the radio; mass production, mass distribution-all of these combined to bring forward a new civilization and with it a new problem for those who sought to remain free.

For out of this modern civilization economic royalists carved new dynasties. New kingdoms were built upon concentration of control over material things. Through new uses of corporations, banks and securities, new machinery of industry and agriculture, of labor and capital-all undreamed of by the fathers-the whole structure of modern life was impressed into this royal service.

There was no place among this royalty for our many thousands of small business men and merchants who sought to make a worthy use of the American system of initiative and profit. They were no more free than the worker or the farmer. Even honest and progressive-minded men of wealth, aware of their obligation to their generation, could never know just where they fitted into this dynastic scheme of things.

It was natural and perhaps human that the privileged princes of these new economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for control over Government itself. They created a new despotism and wrapped it in the robes of legal sanction. In its service new mercenaries sought to regiment the people, their labor, and their property. And as a result the average man once more confronts the problem that faced the Minute Man.

The hours men and women worked, the wages they received, the conditions of their labor-these had passed beyond the control of the people, and were imposed by this new industrial dictatorship. The savings of the average family, the capital of the small business man, the investments set aside for old age-other people’s money-these were tools which the new economic royalty used to dig itself in.

Those who tilled the soil no longer reaped the rewards which were their right. The small measure of their gains was decreed by men in distant cities. [emphasis mine]

Now if you’re sharp, you can already see the circuitous route that is being set up. Till the soil for small measure of gains decreed by men in distant cities; have a revolution to declare your independence; exploit your opportunity to the fullest by starting a business and employing several of your peers; make a profit and incur capital gains. Then…after the natural next-step revolution, the socialist upheaval — once again, see the measure of your gains decreed by men in distant cities.

Roosevelt says the circle has to do with the industrial revolution. We’ve exchanged one tyrant for another — the magnate. It’s ironic that what he’s set up here, is a situation where the government becomes the new tyrant…”small measure of their gains was decreed by men in distant cities.” How is the minimum wage determined? How is the marginal income tax rate determined? How is the capital gains tax rate determined? Who decides if we have a death tax or not?

Cyclical. Roosevelt agrees with me on this…we simply disagree as to how it’s cyclical — who the modern George III and House of Commons really is.

Quoth Eric Blair, a.k.a. George Orwell, writing as “Emmanuel Goldstein” in Nineteen Eighty-Four…about which we learn via me.

Throughout recorded time, and probably since the end of the Neolithic Age, there have been three kinds of people in the world, the High, the Middle, and the Low. They have been subdivided in many ways, they have borne countless different names, and their relative numbers, as well as their attitude towards one another, have varied from age to age: but the essential structure of society has never altered. Even after enormous upheavals and seemingly irrevocable changes, the same pattern has always reasserted itself, just as a gyroscope will always return to equilibnum, however far it is pushed one way or the other.
:
The aims of these three groups are entirely irreconcilable. The aim of the High is to remain where they are. The aim of the Middle is to change places with the High. The aim of the Low, when they have an aim…is to abolish all distinctions and create a society in which all men shall be equal.
:
Thus throughout history a struggle which is the same in its main outlines recurs over and over again. For long periods the High seem to be securely in power, but sooner or later there always comes a moment when they lose either their belief in themselves or their capacity to govern efficiently, or both. They are then overthrown by the Middle, who enlist the Low on their side by pretending to them that they are fighting for liberty and justice. As soon as they have reached their objective, the Middle thrust the Low back into their old position of servitude, and themselves become the High.
:
Presently a new Middle group splits off from one of the other groups, or from both of them, and the struggle begins over again. Of the three groups, only the Low are never even temporarily successful in achieving their aims. [emphasis mine]

I see a connection.