Summit III

Two years ago I placed a small wager on the Presidential elections. On the big afternoon, a conservative colleague, emotionally invested in the outcome, nervously wandered up to me with news of these exit polls. Wasn’t I worried about them? I told her no, and she shouldn’t be either. My boss asked out of curiosity what I thought the final tally was going to be. At around 3 in the afternoon pacific time, I said the President would be re-elected with about 286 electoral votes.

Like Forrest Gump, Ah’m not a smart man. It’s just that I like to keep in mind what is a fact and what is an opinion, and treat those two differently — it’s the way I think — and for reasons I have yet to discern, this way of thinking has come to be a freakish, unpopular pastime nowadays. But this election and polling and voting stuff, there is no magic to this. Remember, there were only three states in play at the time I said 286, so it wasn’t exactly like tossing a dime into a teacup from a tall building; more like eight-ball in the corner-pocket. As for the exit polls meaning nothing, it would be most accurate to call it an educated bias. A last-minute surprise, I’ve noticed, is always friendly to the left-wing side when the surprise is media-driven. And in that set of circumstances, it’s always estranged from reality. Correct in the way a stopped clock is correct every twelve hours. Essentially meaningless.

I don’t have that sense of confidence two years later, because I have come to recognize President Bush, or rather his family’s dynastic philosophy about politics, has been right all along. Politics is very much like banking. Approval is the currency of exchange. At some point, the account has to be exhausted, and the balance in the Republicans’ account is very, very low. After the Katrina disaster, it hit the “check the balance before the five dollar service charge hits” threshold of lowness — then a few more withdrawals were made, with no deposits. One overdraft statement from the bank, just one, and we’ll have House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, guaranteed…and I’m thinking we’re about $1.12 from that. With this loss of solvency, the Republicans run into a problem with flexibility. Their options are being eliminated. They need all the votes they can get. They need a constituency that is excited and energized on election day, and their constituency is a haphazard hodge-podge of voters who quote the Bible, and voters who quote Atlas Shrugged. Fun-loving grown-ups who want to go someplace with hot wings and cold beer and good-lookin’ waitresses in skimpy outfits…and concerned, married parents who’d like to stop everybody from going to such a place.

To put it more concisely, look at the record. Republicans have won three elections in a row. I have strong doubts that they can win a fourth. STRONG doubts. Their message, put into exercise, has lacked the clarity to earn such a streak. It’s contrary to human nature to put a party into power that long, in a changing world, while sustaining genuine confusion as to what that party is all about. Yes, the Democrats are an equally messy hodge-podge…but they’re not the issue. They don’t run things yet.

I haven’t placed any bets on the election. I won’t.

Well, Roger L. Simon has arrived to give me hope. It turns out that there are many reasons to believe we’ve passed a turning point, a good one; and the turning point he’d like to talk about, is a very good one indeed.

Good News for Bush and Chomsky, Bad News for the UN

Today’s Hugo Chavez ‘stemwinder’ at the UN – which saw the Venezuelan Mussolini wannabe calling Bush Satan, replete with sulphurous fumes, while waving around a tome by Noam Chomsky – was certainly a plus for both subjects … Bush, already recovering in the polls, gets a further boost from the thug’s almost comical attack (“Live in New York… it’s Hugo Chavez!”) and the the multi-millionaire marxiste gets another goose to his already copious book sales.

The big loser was, of course, the United Nations, not the least because Chavez was saluted for his efforts by a hearty round of applause. As I have written numerous times on this blog, I am a supporter of the UN. But now I wonder if it’s salvageable as do, no doubt, many Americans whose tax dollars provide the primary support for what looks increasingly like a social club for sociopaths and kleptocrats.

Pondering the idea of Republicans winning a fourth time in a row, it just hit me — you know what American politics is like? Banking isn’t quite the best analogy. It’s more like a game of Jenga. Looking back on it, 2004 was an easy call; this one is quite a bit tougher. If the Republicans do manage to pull this fat out of the fire and keep their committee chairmanships, 2008 will be an even tougher row to hoe.

Every move, while one party remains in charge, gets shakier and shakier. Every time a brick is pulled out, at this point, all who watch the game in progress let out sighs of astonishment, relief, and on the other side of the aisle, despair. Success is greated with greater and greater levels of sincere surprise, until the potential for failure approches one. Sooner or later, the tower has to come down.

I’m not suggesting Republicans purposely lose 2006 in order to have a better shot at the White House in two years. This election is far, far too important for that. I’m just pointing out reality: Democrats will have another issue for ’08, namely, “we wanted to open investigations into lying about Iraq in order to start a war for oil, and Republicans stopped us from doing it (by kicking our asses), WHAT’RE THEY TRYING TO HIDE???” Yes, they’ll say it, and yes, it’ll work. Pretty stupid device to use, but this kind of stuff works and you can bet they’ll use it.

Dead terrorists…versus, revenge for Monica-gate. That’s what this coming November is all about.

This blog, which nobody actually reads anyway, makes a habit of inspecting the ideas “we” have that make very little sense — and that means, the big “we.” “All” of us. There’s a recurring theme in the blog’s pages, in which we launch repeated attacks against the ideas borne out of “groupthink” and, instead, reserve our respect for the ideas at which people arrive in groups of one. Why do we do this? We’ve been looking around for quite awhile at ideas and how they are formed…and we can’t help but notice people tend to forget lots of things when they think in groups. Important things. “Keystone” type things, upon which entire classes of other things depend, utterly, completely. Things like — What do I know? How do I know it?

This cool new idea we all just had…who, exactly, is going to look like a raging asshole if it doesn’t work? And what’s the worst that will happen if we don’t do it?

Individuals don’t forget stuff like that. Groups do, in a hummingbird’s heartbeat. And then there is the matter of history; not to say that groups don’t think up some good ideas that help out in the long run. But if you collect for me a randomly-selected list of a hundred nice things a committee has done, I’ll show you ninety-nine cases of plagiarism in which a good idea was stolen from an individual. An individual thought of it, the committee sat to put it in motion, claim credit for it, and then adjourn. Ironically, group-thinking is at its most toxic when it admits this outright. “We’re here to arrive at a plan, and to ensure all those involved have a voice in the process,” the group might say, “and the decision of the committee will be final.” Indeed it shall. And we shall have accountability, through the involvement of the group. But not the kind of accountability people cherish right before they get something good done — more like un-accountability. The decision may be found to be counter-productive, and with the benefit of hindsight we see the decision made no sense at all. Whose idea was it? Nobody’s. The group sanctioned it. What was the rationale for the decision? No helpful answer awaits such a question, only noise. Among the participants who supported the bad decision and will cop to it, each man’s justification was his own. Nobody can authoritively state what “everybody” was thinking when they made the bad decision.

So the blog that nobody reads, hammers away at the “prevailing viewpoint” with regularity and gusto. And we haven’t done an awful lot to defend Ann Coulter. But once again, we find a lot of reason to attack those who attack her.

She came up with a column yesterday. At the same time, Hugo Chavez made a speech to the United Nations in which he called our current President “El Diablo,” meaning The Devil. And while he was at it, the Venezuelan crackpot made sure everybody knew that he’s a fan of Noam Chomsky, the M.I.T. egghead who specializes in linguistics but would rather devote his energies to political science. I’ve read enough of Chomsky to get an inkling of what he’s all about, I think. And I’ll confess, that isn’t very much. If Professor Chomsky was a presenter of fact, it would be important for me to read much more before commenting. But he isn’t. He’s a presenter of opinion. His opinion is, that United States foreign policy is bad. That’s really about all you need to know — that’s what makes Chomsky an outspoken left-wing zealot, and that’s what makes him so popular.

Now, what does “groupthink” say about Ann Coulter and Noam Chomsky? Probably something nice and palatable, like, they’re both “firebrands” and one is on the “right” and the other is on the “left.” Group-think will never deign to suggest that either one of them will have more productive things to say than the other, because of course that would be “biased.” Group-think will — and this rule has very few exceptions, I note, even across a great deal of time — labor to ensure that when a decision is made, and somehow both Coulter and Chomsky have influence upon the decision made, that there is equilibrium between the two pundits upon the decision made. We must have balance, you know.

An individual will do things better. Even an individual who disagrees with me about Ann Coulter, will do something far more sensible than what the group will do. He’ll say “Ann Coulter is a nutcase and she shouldn’t decide anything,” and make sure the decision is cleansed of the tiniest tincture of Coulter-think. Well, if you think the lady’s crazy, that just makes sense.

The group will thunder on about “balance,” but won’t even show consistency with its own dictates. Time has a way of making sure right-wingers get equal time for scolding left-wingers, and left-wingers can reciprocate against the right wingers, but in conference rooms things end up being done the left-wing way. We see it even in the last few hours, as the United Nations comes up with a new deadline for Iran. Like Diogenes searching for an honest man, I’m trying to find an individual — liberal, conservative, anarchist, I don’t care — who thinks this is a swell idea, or at least, makes sense on some level. I’m not holding my breath.

But surely the group must be wiser than the individual…who has been known to do half-cocked things, like, for example, actually agree with Ann Coulter. And Ann Coulter says such irresponsible things, like…

Never mind trusting liberals with national security. Never mind trusting them with raising kids. These people shouldn’t even be allowed to own pets.

And you see, that is just so irresponsible. I don’t know what gets into her sometimes. Why does she think such a thing? I wish I could somehow find out, but of course, that’s impossible.

Oh wait I forgot. Ann Coulter is not a committee, she’s an individual. Therefore, she knows why she thinks the things she thinks. Which a committee does not. And in this case, she even wrote it down.

The belief that we can impress the enemy with our magnanimity is an idea that just won’t die…[it] has never worked, no matter how many times liberals make us do it. It didn’t work with the Soviet Union, Imperial Japan, Hitler or the North Vietnamese � enemies notable for being more civilized than the Islamic savages we are at war with today.

By the way, how did the Geneva Conventions work out for McCain at the Hanoi Hilton?

It doesn’t even work with the Democrats, whom Bush kept sucking up to his first year in office. No more movie nights at the White House with Teddy Kennedy these days, I’m guessing.

It was this idea (Be nice!) that fueled liberals’ rage at Reagan when he vanquished the Soviet Union with his macho “cowboy diplomacy” that was going to get us all blown up. As the Times editorial page hysterically described Reagan’s first year in office: “Mr. Reagan looked at the world through gun sights.” Yes, he did! And now the Evil Empire is no more.

It was this idiotic idea of being nice to predators that drove liberal crime policies in the ’60s and ’70s � leading like night into day to unprecedented crime rates. Now these same liberal ninnies want to extend their tender mercies not just to rapists and murderers, but to Islamic terrorists.

Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Ronald Reagan and Winston Churchill had a different idea: Instead of rewarding bad behavior, punish bad behavior. How many times does punishment have to work and coddling have to fail before we never have to hear again that if we treat terrorists well, the terrorists will treat our prisoners well?

Fortunately, history always begins this morning for liberals, so they can keep flogging the same idiotic idea that has never, ever worked: Be nice to our enemies and they will reward us with good behavior.

Now, it should be noted this argument is not so strong as to be unanswerable, for there is a refutation of it circulating in American discourse. And that refutation is — let me see if I can paraphrase it — “Ann Coulter is misrepresenting liberals” and “Ann Coulter is so nasty.” But as they say, facts are stubborn things.

Ann Coulter is misrepresenting liberals, by the way. Speaking for myself, I have never, ever heard anyone advance the notion that if we’re nice, Al Qaeda “will reward us with good behavior.” Not conservatives, not liberals, not as individuals, not in groups. Things do have to make a certain amount of sense in order to be spoken by somebody with a name, and that little strategy always seems to be lopped off from the end of the argument being advanced. Words are reserved for the stuff leading up to that conclusion. We must, we ought, we shall, we’re better than them, blah blah blah. That’s the kind of nonsense that makes just enough sense to find its way through the voiceboxes of people with reputations and microphones.

Oh and the reverse gets a lot of press play, too. If we torture the bad guys, our troops are in danger on the battlefield. We hear that all the time from the important people who are sent out to peddle group-think ideas. But the prediction that would actually matter and would actually seal the deal — if we abide by the Geneva conventions, Al Qaeda will learn from our superior example — is never quite articulated syllable-for-syllable. It doesn’t make enough sense for that. It’s only implied.

And yet, this is the bare minimum of what would have to be asserted, to make the whole treat-em-nice school of thought strategically appealing. And don’t even get me started on the new deadline for Iran…what with that Iranian dog having eaten the homework, or whatever.

So say what you want about Ann Coulter, she makes more sense in five minutes than treat-em-nice crowd has all year long; more than the United Nations has in half a century. You need group-think to make the treat-em-nice ideas look somewhat sound. An individual will want to know what the payoff is when we’re so nice to those who want to kill us. Well, it seems there is no payoff, and Ms. Coulter has done a great job of making that point.

By the way, this is a life-and-death issue, although a lot of folks don’t want it to be seen that way. It is life-and-death, in that, there are people who want us dead. Let’s be clear: To say our lives are not at stake, is to assert 1) those people don’t want to kill us, after all; or 2) there is a significant likelihood their attempts on our lives, will everlastingly fail.

The people who try to coerce and intimidate us from thinking of terrorism as a life-and-death issue, will not say which of those two assertions receive their support. They don’t have to. Only an individual would insist that they make such a decision, and their sales pitches are designed for the group environment.

Four Types of God

Well, the Bacon-Eating Atheist Jew buttoned this one down. Others have cited it, and I’m sure others have cited it first. But his link seems to be the most substantial one, and his own thoughts are the most original ones.

Of course, anybody who’s been watching the media for any length of time at all, knows that they have their own agenda about things and it just stands to reason that they do — they’re people. And, it’s a settled pattern by now, that when “most” people agree with the media’s agenda, we’ll hear about that over and over again. George Bush is an idiot, George Bush is an idiot, George Bush is an idiot. Iraq was a mistake, Iraq was a mistake, Iraq was a mistake. Three out of four Americans agree on this, 62% of us agree on that, etc. Ever wonder what the media does when their agenda is contrary to the views of most Americans?

The God thing is a great example. It turns out over 91% of us agree there is a God…what is the media to do? They divide and conquer.

Just keep in mind how incredibly selective the media is when it comes to this dividing and conquering…like for example, I’m sure you’ll be waiting awhile before you see this. Most Americans agree Saddam Hussein was not a threat to us, but in what kind of harmless Saddam Hussein do most Americans believe? Or this…Most Americans think we did the wrong thing with Iraq, but what do they think we should have done? No, we’ll just work on God for right now thankyewverymuch.

You know, I can’t guarantee that everyone hostile to the concept of God, wants to run the world, has malicious intent in this ambition, and wants to be accountable to no one. But I can guarantee you that everyone who wants to run the world with malicious intent and desires accountability to no one…is going to be hostile to the concept of God. So speaking for myself, I’m taking this with a grain of salt. But that’s just me.

Suicidal Hand-Wringing

Dr. Sowell nailed it yet AGAIN. The subject is the treatment of captured terrorists in our custody, and whether the treatment complies with the Geneva conventions…or whether it should. The Supreme Court has already ruled on this, and so it is the law of the land that the detainees are so entitled. But is it, is it really? Because in order to assert that, you have to ignore said “law of the land.”

Article III, Section II of the Constitution gives Congress the power to limit the jurisdiction of federal courts, and Congress has specifically taken away the jurisdiction of the courts in cases involving the detention of illegal combatants, such as terrorists, who are not — repeat, not — prisoners of war covered by the Geneva convention.

The Supreme Court ignored that law.
:
The argument is made that we must respect the Geneva convention because, otherwise, our own soldiers will be at risk of mistreatment when they become prisoners of war.

Does any sane adult believe that the cutthroats we are dealing with will respect the Geneva convention? Or that our extension of Geneva convention rights to them will be seen as anything other than another sign of weakness and confusion that will encourage them in their terrorism?

Any sane adult…well, gee. To answer that, first you’d have to find someone willing to articulate that if we take the purple-paisly route, the terrorists will start liking us — then, you’d have to test their sanity. Well speaking just for myself, I’m still working on Step #1.

Oh, I can find lots of folks willing to tell me we should go the purple-paisly route and start filing court briefs when Mahmoud Al-Hoozeewotsit doesn’t get light cream cheese on his bagel. I can find lots and lots of people who will tell me we should do that…I have yet to find one who will explain the benefits to be realized when this is what we do. Evidently, the argument in which these folks have such bumptious confidence, doesn’t quite extend to this topic.

But it’s kind of interesting. We are to cease any and all debate on whether terrorists are entitled to Geneva protections, because the Supreme Court has ruled and their word is final. But…their word is final, because we are a nation of laws, and for no other reason. To hand down their word, they had to break the law.

Wimpy III

Perhaps the folks I defined in the post immediately previous, are somehow responsible for this observation made by Mark Steyn, which I’ve been noticing myself without collaborating with him in any way.

Coverage of 9/11 anniversary was too wimpy
September 17, 2006

A lot of the 9/11 anniversary coverage struck me as distastefully tasteful. On the morning of Sept. 12, I was pumping gas just off I-91 in Vermont and picked up the Valley News. Its lead headline covered the annual roll call of the dead — or, as the alliterative editor put it, “Litany of the Lost.” That would be a grand entry for Litany of the Lame, an anthology of all-time worst headlines. Sept. 11 wasn’t a shipwreck: The dead weren’t “lost,” they were murdered.

So I skipped that story. Underneath was something headlined “Half a Decade Gone By, A Reporter Still Cannot Comprehend Why.” Well, in that case maybe you shouldn’t be in the reporting business. After half a decade, it’s not that hard to “comprehend”: Osama bin Laden issued a declaration of war and then his agents carried out a big attack. He talked the talk, his boys walked the walk. If you need to flesh it out a bit, you could go to the library and look up a book.

But, of course, that’s not what the headline means: Instead, it’s “incomprehensible” in the sense that, to persons of a certain mushily “progressive” disposition, all such acts are “incomprehensible,” all violence is “senseless.” Unfortunately, it made perfect sense to the fellows who perpetrated it. Which is what that headline writer finds hard to “comprehend” — or, rather, doesn’t wish to comprehend. The piece itself was categorized as “Reflection” — dread word. No self-respecting newspaper should be running “reflections” anywhere upfront of Section G Page 27, and certainly not on the front page. But it has exactly the kind of self-regarding pseudo-sophistication the American media love. The proper tone for 9/11 commemorations is to be sad about all the dead — “the lost” — but in a very generalized soft-focus way.

You’ve seen it yourself, I’m sure. All the stories, in 2001, and 2006, carefully point out to us everything that will provoke an emotional reaction…but are carefully excised of anything that will provoke any sort of call to arms or any wish for same. Such a delicate balancing act — taken on in so many places, carried out with such delicacy and enthusiasm, repeated over and over again.

Be sad. Just don’t expect, or demand, that anything actually get done about it. Go to therapy or something. That is Big Brother’s order for you today.

Easily Slides Into Moral Relativism

Here’s a question you can ponder that’s been on my mind awhile. And by “awhile” I mean thirty years or so.

Let’s revisit American cinema in the 1970’s. The big screen. We have vigilante justice movies, we have disaster movies, we have natural predator movies. Then Star Wars comes along, and bam! Science fiction is the new hotness. Suddenly, everything has to have a spaceship. James Bond goes into outer space. Battlestar Galactica takes off. Buck Rogers and Star Trek are revived.

But nothing really has the staying power of Star Wars. We look back, and we see the astonishing success of Star Wars had very little to do with the birth of a new outer-space genre, but rather, the reincarnation of an older one: American Westerns, with the timeless confrontation between good and evil. It was always about this contrast; half a dozen characters, at the very most, represented “right” things and “wrong” things, and this was the hub around which the rest of the story revolved. Cute robots, humming swords — they were just glitter.

Not everybody will agree with me on that. But a lot of other people do “get it,” including the people who make and lose real money on this stuff.

So here is my question.

Where was, or is, the revival with regard to “Good versus Evil” movies? The demand is there; the supply is not. Some social taboo keeps getting in the way. We can’t have something like “High Noon” even when the audience wants it. Every hero, it seems, has to have a prison record and a bad attitude. Every villain, two thirds of the way through, has to deliver a monologue to the hero about “we are not so different, you and I” and the message has to be delivered that on some level, the villain is correct. And the audience loses interest.

I am frequently instructed by people more wealthy and powerful than me, that I’m supposed to believe good and evil depend greatly on one’s perspective; one man’s good, is another man’s evil. And yet, some people are evil because they target innocents. They want something, they perceive some method of acquiring it that involves putting civilians in harm’s way…civilians who have no dog in the hunt…civilians, against whom, the protagonist has no beef. And then they go about acquiring the “MacGuffin” — salvation in the next world, respect in this one, revenge, goods and services — and get innocent people killed. Is it really such a subjective thing to call that evil? Really?

Now my liberals instruct me that I’m I’m supposed to believe America’s own military operations, and those by Israel, are wonderful examples of the evil of which I speak, when & if they involve collateral damage. Bloody Palestinian babies and all that. Problem: In those examples, the “MacGuffin” would be self-defense — unless the argument advanced, seeks to simultaneously support some conspiracy theory about “Blood For Oil.” Say what you want about airstrikes for the purpose of self-defense that involve civilian casualties, either calculated, or accidental; they fall outside the scope of my statement. As for Blood-fer-Oil, should this be proven, it would fall well within said scope but disrupt nothing in the definition of evil. In other words, show me we really got people killed just to get our grubby mitts on oil, and I’m down with that — that would be evil. But my definition stands. The debate is whether or not some things are objectively evil, and so far, the opposing side in the debate has forfeited.

Some things are simply, rottenly, evil. And people are innately programmed to see it defeated — bring it down ourselves, or cheer for someone else who does so. Somehow, it seems, we have these cultural taboos against telling a story about evil being trumped by good, or to even acknowledge the existence of evil.

I don’t mind a cultural taboo or two, but I do ask that a taboo make some sense. And that it not be suicidal. These are the thoughts on my mind, as I peruse this excellent piece by Bret Stephens that appeared over the weekend in Opinion Journal. It seems to me all the huffing-and-puffing about midterm elections, and September 11, and terrorism, is all about this.

Here’s a puzzle: Why is it so frequently the case that the people who have the most at stake in the battle against Islamic extremism and the most to lose when Islamism gains–namely, liberals–are typically the most reluctant to fight it?
:
An instinct for pacifism surely goes some way toward explaining the left’s curious unwillingness to sign up for a war to defend its core values. A suspicion of black-and-white moral distinctions of the kind President Bush is fond of making about terrorism–a suspicion that easily slides into moral relativism–is another.

But there are deeper factors at work. One is appeasement: “Many Europeans feel that a confrontation with Islamism will give the Islamists more opportunities to recruit–that confronting evil is counterproductive,” says Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-born, former Dutch parliamentarian whose outspoken opposition to Islamism (and to Islam itself) forced her repeatedly into hiding and now into exile in the United States. “They think that by appeasing them–allowing them their own ghettoes, their own Muslim schools–they will win their friendship.”

A second factor, she says, is the superficial confluence between the bugaboos of the Chomskyite left and modern-day Islamism. “Many social democrats have this stereotype that the corporate world, the U.S. and Israel are the real evil. And [since] Islamists are also against Israel and America, [social democrats] sense an alliance with them.” [emphasis mine]

Isn’t that last bit something interesting, and haven’t we run into that an awful lot before. You talk about perverts and psychos and sickos and weirdos kidnapping little kids and chopping them up, or Islamo-fascist murderers shooting schoolgirls in the back and flying planes into buildings; many among us stumble around, insisting that evil is a matter of perspective. But then you toss in the word “corporation” and — almost as if someone yelled “Go!” — everything changes.

Last year, the Star Wars franchise was wrapped up by an episode in which the Obi-Wan Kenobi character ignited speculation that the whole story may be a screed against President Bush, with a single line: “Only a Sith deals in absolutes.” Anti-war liberals entrenched in the habit of gleaning their moral philosophies from movies — united with the anti-war liberals who instinctively grasp for compatriot arguments, perceived or imagined, wherever they can find them — clucked with glee. All year long.

Until someone pointed out Kenobi’s statement, in itself, was an absolute. Oops.

If it was an anti-Bush screed, Kenobi suffers from the cognitive dissonance of the forementioned “Chomskyite left”: There is no such thing as absolute evil, and yet, the hated corporations are absolutely evil.

But I’m much more intrigued with that first crowd, the “I don’t like comparisons between good-and-evil, and neither should you” crowd. One of the most interesting things about people, I notice, is that the instincts with which they are wired down to the marrow of their bones, tend toward consistency — no equal-and-opposite reaction, for the action. Ninety-nine of us will have an instinct not to touch a hot stove…and yet, the likelihood that you’ll find a hundredth guy with an opposite instinct, is quite remote. Ninety-nine mothers will want to see their children live and prosper. Searching for a hundredth mother who likes to kill her children, maybe you’ll find something — probably not. Such mutations of the human genome are to be found after the searcher has sifted through millions, maybe more. After such an abundance of rejections, the anomaly found can no longer be characterized as an alternative flavor of the species, but purely an aberration. In other words, we are “designed” to resemble the millions of specimens thrown away before you got that one mutant.

Yet with good and evil it’s different; people do come in flavors, like ice cream. Some of us, down to the depths of our souls, have this longing to see good triumph and evil defeated. But then there are a bunch of others among us, who, down to the depths of their souls, have this irrational phobia about ever seeing evil defined, let alone defeated. I can easily find representative instances of both classes. The aberration that can’t be found so easily, would be the fellow who falls in between the two — he is the one who doesn’t seem to exist, except as a mutation. The folks with the irrational phobia, are actually quite plentiful.

They rankle and sneer at the idea of Matt Dillon facing down a guy in a black hat in Dodge City…drawing second, shooting first, saving the town, doing his job. They act like they have a rational argument for why people shouldn’t watch “cowboy” movies — but if you ask them to articulate that argument, you quickly find out there is no such thing.

It’s fear, and a smoldering emotional resentment, nothing more. It appears such people have reached maturity with the conviction that if there is such a thing as justice, dedicated to the triumph of good over evil, then such a thing has never helped them. And if the concept of justice has not been known to bring them any tangible benefits, then it shouldn’t help anyone else either, no matter what the circumstances and no matter how desperately justice may be needed in some parts of the world.

And so…they easily slide, as Stephens said, into moral relativism. Justice is something that should benefit them, or else it should benefit nobody, and to the best they can see it has yet to benefit them.

Aslim Taslam

Thinking independently, I have noticed, is something like driving a car competently. Everybody understands there’s an issue here. Nobody’s going to ‘fess up to being part of the problem — it’s always the other guy pissing down his leg. With everyone commenting on themselves, it seems we’re all just a bunch of Indy 500 racecar drivers out there.

And yet, if we all thought independently, it wouldn’t be worth anybody’s time to bribe, blackmail, bully, intimidate, coerce, and threaten over what is presented to people, before they do that independent thinking.

My rant is inspired by the similarities between the letter from Senate Democrats over the “Path to 9/11” controversy…

The Communications Act of 1934 provides your network with a free broadcast license predicated on the fundamental understanding of your principle obligation to act as a trustee of the public airwaves in serving the public interest. Nowhere is this public interest obligation more apparent than in the duty of broadcasters to serve the civic needs of a democracy by promoting an open and accurate discussion of political ideas and events.
:
Should Disney allow this programming to proceed as planned, the factual record, millions of viewers, countless schoolchildren, and the reputation of Disney as a corporation worthy of the trust of the American people and the United States Congress will be deeply damaged. We urge you, after full consideration of the facts, to uphold your responsibilities as a respected member of American society and as a beneficiary of the free use of the public airwaves to cancel this factually inaccurate and deeply misguided program. We look forward to hearing back from you soon.

…and events in the aftermath of the Pope’s speech about Islam…

At a press conference in Gaza City, a number of Muslim clerics said the pope’s statements were “the result of his hatred for Islam and not the result of ignorance.”

One of them, Dr. Imad Hamto, called on the pope to “repent and ask for forgiveness.” He added: “We want to use the words of the Prophet Muhammad and tell the pope: ‘Aslim Taslam'” Aslim Taslam is a phrase that was taken from the letters sent by the Prophet Muhammad to the chiefs of tribes in his times in which he reportedly urged them to convert to Islam to spare their lives.

Some Muslim scholars, however, have endorsed a more moderate interpretation of the term, arguing that its real meaning was that those who surrendered to the will of God would find peace.

How come it is, both in the east half of the world and the west, it has become so commonplace for people to threaten each other for having the wrong opinions or for saying the wrong things? In a land where all are independent thinkers, this kind of control over what is said & what is thought, would be worth nothing; it, plus $3.25, would get you a foamy latte.

Well, we got here a land where every man thinks he is an independent thinker. And yet — we have the arm-twisting. So much energy being put into it. Everywhere, it seems. Why is that, if people are really capable of thinking things through? It’s like the body shops and the tow trucks and the insurance investigators — why so much demand for their services, if everyone is blessed with such great driving skills?

Aslim Taslam — if I’m understanding it right, it’s telling people what to think. It seems to have a place in the world, if we make such a place for it. And appearances being any indication, it has a place. That says something bad about everybody.

Head-in-the-Sand Liberals

Came across this via James Taranto’s Best of the Web feature in Opinion Journal. Wow.

Perhaps I should establish my liberal bone fides at the outset. I’d like to see taxes raised on the wealthy, drugs decriminalized and homosexuals free to marry. I also think that the Bush administration deserves most of the criticism it has received in the last six years � especially with respect to its waging of the war in Iraq, its scuttling of science and its fiscal irresponsibility.

But my correspondence with liberals has convinced me that liberalism has grown dangerously out of touch with the realities of our world � specifically with what devout Muslims actually believe about the West, about paradise and about the ultimate ascendance of their faith.

On questions of national security, I am now as wary of my fellow liberals as I am of the religious demagogues on the Christian right.

This may seem like frank acquiescence to the charge that “liberals are soft on terrorism.” It is, and they are.

Read the whole thing.

You Have To Watch It Now

There’s something a little disturbing in the comments beneath the video clip of Robert Novak proclaiming, or bragging, or ‘fessing up, that he doesn’t watch The Daily Show. The tone that permeates through the thread, is flavored with no small amount of viciousness.

The first time I saw TDS, I was highly entertained but somewhere in the back of my mind, I noticed this blurring of the line between news and entertainment. Then, when I noticed it was really catching on, through an election cycle or two I came to be aware of the swelling demography of people who formed their understanding of significant events through TDS. Then, I came to find out, people who learned about significant events through TDS, considered their knowledge of those events to be superior to the knowledge other people had acquired through other outlets…other outlets that aren’t quite so much “fun” to consume as TDS, not quite so carefully edited…maybe requiring a little bit longer attention span. The TDS watchers, it seems, bristle at any insinuation that maybe, just maybe, there might be something more to the story — just maybe, it could be a worthy exercise to learn about things through some other avenue.

And now it seems the circle is complete. The TDS watchers, have words of derision, ridicule, derogation and scolding for anybody who does not watch TDS. I realize this is ThinkProgress and these are left-wing bloggers and web-commenters; not exactly a kind-hearted or jolly group, certainly not a “tolerant” one.

But still. TDS is a comedy show. Jon Stewart will be the first one to point that out, the next time he is nailed for one of his segments giving a less-than-accurate impression of true-life events. Fine, so it’s a comedy show. So here we have a reporter being asked — being asked — about what he watches, and it turns out he doesn’t want to watch…this comedy show. And just look at all the bile bubbling to the surface. I mean, just read some of it. Any random sampling.

Amazing.

I can’t stand Hanna-Barbera cartoons. I’ve never liked “I Love Lucy.” Don’t let these guys find out. They might explode.

Update: I’m sure you’ve seen this trope somewhere, since it’s been repeated over and over and over and over again:

A year-long study by the University of Maryland’s Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA)[8] (http://www.pipa.org/OnlineReports/Iraq/Media_10_02_03_Report.pdf) reported that Americans who relied on the Fox News Channel for their coverage of the Iraq war were the most likely to believe misinformation about the war, whatever their political affiliation may be. Those mistaken facts, the study found, increased viewers’ support for the war.

The study found that, in general, people who watched Fox News were, more than for other sources, convinced of several untrue propositions which were actively promoted by the Bush administration and the cheerleading media led by Fox, in rallying support for the invasion of Iraq:

(percentages are of all poll respondents, not just Fox watchers)

* 57% believed the falsity that Iraq gave substantial support to Al-Qaida, or was directly involved in the September 11 attacks. (48% after invasion)
* 69% believed the falsity that Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the September 11 attacks.
* 22% believed the falsity that weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq. (21% believed that chem/bio weapons had actually been used against U.S. soldiers in Iraq during 2003)

In the composite analysis of the PIPA study, 80% of Fox news watchers had one of more of these misperceptions; in contrast to 71% for CBS and 27% who tuned to NPR/PBS. [emphasis mine]

And the question I would have, is this: Where is the similar study focused on watchers of The Daily Show?

After all, people may select Fox as their “primary” source of news, but it seems far-fetched to infer a significant chunk of that crowd rely exclusively on Fox for this…whereas, from arguing with TDS watchers, I notice it’s a little bit of a touchy subject to inquire from what other areas they may have gathered their information. There’s also the question about whether we’re seeing a cause, or an effect. People who embrace or tolerate these — ahem — “falsities,” these beliefs anti-war liberals don’t like people to have, would be much more inclined to watch Fox News in the first place. On the other hand, people watch TDS to be entertained.

Come to think of it, there’s yet another “falsity” far-flung and widespread, and carried aloft with gusto, of which I have come to be aware: A lot of people believe the “falsity” that the world is no safer with Saddam Hussein driven from power. Where’s the study probing the percentage of CNN or PBS watchers believing in that falsity? And Daily Show watchers? It would be interesting to see that statistic compared with the equivalent selection of Fox News viewers.

And I can’t wait to see the comments Fox News viewers would have for people who don’t watch Fox News. It probably wouldn’t be nearly as nasty or as personal as what I saw on the ThinkProgress site.

Morgan Favors the Nanny State

Not very often I’m on the same side of the aisle as the “nanny state.” I’m much closer to the classic libertarian guy, the “Who the hell says we need sidewalks and fire halls” kinda guy who was born 150 years too late.

Not very often the stuff I want done, gets done.

So isn’t this suspicious. At the end of last month, I kibitzed about people in Sacramento talking on their goddamned cell phones too much…those of you who live elsewhere, come visit if you think I’m overreacting. You wouldn’t believe it. Every goddamned day you drive a car, every mile of road you gobble up, they’re all around you. Blah, blah, blah. They’re all convinced they drive better than Bo and Luke Duke combined…and Lord knows what kind of important business they’re conducting while they resentfully acknolwedge your negligible existence in their seven-ton whatevers. “Huh? What? I said, Jeezus Christ, I almost ran this mutherfucker off the road! Yeah! Huh? What? Yeah, that’s what I said! Huh? What? You’re breaking up! Not my problem, I got…uh…three bars! Yeah! So, NOW whaddya doing? Oh really? Huh? What? I said, oh really? Yeah! Huh? What? Yeah, right! Oh SHIT you wouldn’t believe how close I came to ramming that guy! Yeah that’s right! Huh? What? Yeah, right! Huh?”

Sorry, fellow libertarian guys. I can’t join you on this one…the thing of it is, what we call “hands-free” costs, like, ten to fifteen dollars now. All the cell phones, so far as I’m aware, support it in some form or another. I should not be seeing anyone, in any car, anywhere I drive, holding up an appliance next to their ears. Not if they share the road with me and the people about whom I care. Not one person. NONE.

So…John Birch type libertarian-leanings notwithstanding — since it costs about ten bucks to comply, or else, just hanging the hell up until you got where you’re going — I’m in favor of this. Accuse me of whatever you want to accuse me of, but I’m in favor of it.

California today became the fourth state to ban motorists from holding cell phones while driving, moving the issue of driver distraction to the forefront of the national agenda.

In a live webcast, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law legislation that passed in the California Assembly last month. The measure goes into effect in July 2008, imposing a minimum $20 fine for anyone caught driving and using a cell phone unless the driver uses a headset, ear bud or other technology that frees both hands.

Emergency situations are exempt.

San Francisco Chronicle has more…

Californians are going to have to put down their cell phone and use a hands-free device starting in 2008 if they want to talk and drive at the same time under a bill Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger plans to sign into law today.”Public safety is the governor’s No. 1 priority, and this bill make the streets and highways of California safer by making sure drivers have both hands available for driving,” said Margita Thompson, a spokeswoman for Schwarzenegger.

Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, said data from the California Highway Patrol showed that not only were cell phones the No. 1 cause of distracted driving accidents, but that hands-free technology substantially reduced the number of crashes.

“We’ve got this readily available technology that costs next to nothing and that saves lives. My argument has been, why not use it?” Simitian said.

“Chief Agent”

Vice President Cheney is “the nation’s foremost 9/11 conspiracy theorist.” And if you happen to believe Saddam Hussein might have had something to do with the September 11 attacks, Cheney probably put that thought in your head. You, certainly, had nothing to do with it.

It just goes to show what this is all about. All this fighting about Iraq — it doesn’t have that much to do with Iraq. Or terrorism. In the end, it’s all about thinking for yourself. Because you can write as many editorials to the contrary as you want, and through it all you can’t prove a negative. And, increasingly, we see the anti-war types gauging the success of the administration in muddying-up the public discourse, through polls that reveal X many percent of us think Saddam Hussein was dangerous and may have had something to do with the 9/11 plot.

Well, you can probably count me among those who think the potential was there. And certainly, you can count me among those who think the world’s better off without him.

In all likelihood, John Young disagrees with me. But do I bear no responsibility, personally, for forming this opinion he doesn’t want me to have? Have I not engaged in my own cognitive process in forming it? Perhaps Vice President Cheney has made the pitch, and I’ve made the decision to buy…thereby showing myself to be some kind of a big dummy. How culpable is the “chief conspiracy theorist” in that scenario? Isn’t it just the job of an administration, to sell the initiatives that it thinks should be done? Packing the Supreme Court? Japanese Internment? Korea? Medicare? Civil Rights Act? Aren’t higher-level administration officials supposed to be good salesmen?

One more little thing. I’d like to examine Mr. Young’s logic. A huge chunk of the public believes Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9/11…that’s a black eye for the administration somehow. A huge chunk of the public suffers from “distrust” which is the “hallmark of [the] adminstration” — that, too, is supposed to be a black eye. The logic behind one of those sentiments, is a hundred and eighty degrees twisted from the other one. They’re polar opposites. Nevertheless, over the next month and a half, expect to see a whole lot more of both.

Public distrust has become hallmark of administration
By John Young

THE NATION’S foremost 9/11 conspiracy theorist was on “Meet the Press” last week. And we all thought conspiracy theorists got no face time in mainstream media.

Well, it helps when you are vice president of the United States.

That would be Dick Cheney. Next possibly to Fox News, he’s the chief agent behind the belief held by so many, including many in our fighting forces, that we attacked Iraq because it had something to do with 9/11.

Why We Can’t Win

I thought this was pretty cute. Article starts out like this…

Why we can’t win the “war on terror”
A provocative new book from an expert on terrorism argues that Bush’s tough-guy stance is making things much worse — and that we should negotiate with al-Qaida.

As the midterm elections approach, the Bush administration has launched its latest propaganda campaign, claiming that it is our Churchillian duty to fight the menace of “Islamofascism” — a meaninglessly broad term that conflates secular insurgents in Iraq, al-Qaida-inspired Sunni extremists, Syrian Alawites and Baathists, Palestinian nationalists, Shiite leaders in Iran and Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon. Those who don’t sign on to this supposedly WWII-like struggle, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld charged, are “appeasers.”

It is hardly surprising that George W. Bush has revived this kind of heroic, clash-of-civilizations rhetoric, which has always worked for him. In fact, this is an insultingly simplistic formulation that, by failing to distinguish between different types of groups, not only would keep us bogged down forever in Iraq but threatens to enmesh us in new quagmires.

And then halfway down, I’m supposed to click on a sponsor logo to read the rest of it. I moved my mouse pointer toward it, but when it was halfway there I suddenly had all these thoughts going through my head about why I should not click it.

It all just seemed so futile.

So I didn’t finish reading it.

Five Reasons They Should Love Him

And yet, hating him has become their modus operandi. Apart from their profuse hatred of him, they have very little to say. Shouldn’t things be a little different?

Five Reasons Democrats Should Love George W. Bush

For the sake of argument, we all can agree that in the context of Iraq, several countries, most notably the U.S., entered into war based on faulty intelligence. But that was only one factor. Regardless of whether Saddam presently had weapons of mass death, we know that the Baghdad butcher was a mass murderer, and we know that Hussein had been in flagrant violation of his terms of surrender, violating international law. The man deserved to be removed from office, did he not? So long as certain members of the U.N. Security Council were on the payroll, however, Hussein thought he was safe.

But he wasn�t safe, thanks to the real hero of the Democrat Party, George W. Bush. You see, the Democrats tell us that they hate political corruption. But their should-be-hero saw through the corruption of the U.N. and with a modest international coalition of 49 members, he ousted a murdering rapist and ended financial kickbacks to prominent U.N. members.

So reason number one the Democrats should love Bush is because he stood up to political corruption, both at the U.N. and in Iraq. Due to his strength of character and unfaltering commitment to the Democratic ideal of ending political corruption, he was willing to �go it alone.�

Reason number two for Democrats to love Bush is the fact that human rights violations have stopped. Liberals would have us believe that they are more sensitive than Republicans when it comes to international human rights, yet they irrationally despise the man who stopped the atrocities. Reason number three (a subset of number two) would be minority and ethnic rights. The fact that the Kurds are no longer being poisoned with chemical weapons and thrown into mass graves should cause Democrats great joy, not anger.

Memo For File XXV

“Antid Odo” cracks me up.

He/she/it is the proprietor and CEO and chief-chef-cook-bottle-washer of Left Behinds which is a left-wing Blogger blog. He/she/it lacks cognitive power; or else, I am, without realizing it, a materially wealthy white/protestant/straight/male Captain of Industry without a care in the world. Both may not apply, and one or the other must.

The background is pretty simple. “Civil Rights Leaders” are upset that a white candidate is running to represent a black congressional district, specifically, the 11th district of the state of New York. Well, I fail to see the problem. I think blacks can represent whites and vice-versa.

Antid Odo says…

Based on what I can confirm cursorily, mkfreeberg is definitely male, not Jewish or black. I’m about 95% sure he’s a white guy (I’m pretty sure only a white person would so blithely identify race as a problem for other people to fix). In other words, while it’s very sad, all the unfairness and ugliness and all, we can’t ever make any progress toward fixing it, we just have to leave things as they are–which only happens to leave him on top.

What did I say to inspire this poor soul to think I identify race as “a problem for other people to fix”? Well…I’m pretty sure I let it leak that I don’t consider “race” to be a problem, per se. Because I don’t. People come from different races, they have different heights, different genders, different phobias. They are complex creatures — they have all kinds of attributes. Differentials in these attributes, are not “problems,” to my way of thinking.

It is true I do think people should be divided up along certain things, indeed, will take the initiative to divide themselves that way if no outside agent does this for them. But those things have nothing to do with race.

But it stuns me to realize that, just by opposing the idea of white congressmen for white constituents, black congressmen for black constituents — just for questioning such an arrangement — I’m instantly independently wealthy. Or “on top,” as Odo says. Actually, it does more than stun me, it cracks me up. Hey, guess what…I been talking to them black folks. Working with them. Buying things from them, selling things to ’em. Me, a white guy. Working hard to stay “on top,” I guess.

Well, God bless the liberals. They just want a decent shake for those who are born less well-off, and I for one am willing to judge their character based on this benevolent desire. Most of them, I mean. They’re just well-meaning folk with atrophied cognitive skills, that’s all. They’re nice. They just think of people in terms of, literally, “black and white”…then, they project this mindset onto others, while pretending not to engage in it themselves. Sure they create racial tension where little-to-none of it existed previously. But they don’t mean to. Their transgression is, simply, that they don’t stick to what they know best. They’re like jugglers with delerium tremens trying to branch out into brain surgery. Entertainment -wise, by-and-large, liberals tend to be very gifted, have much to contribute, and, when you get down to it, make people feel good. That’s valuable.

If they followed my advice, they’d stick to that. Leave the heavy thinking to people who can handle it.

And Antid Odo, Thursday, did just that. The results are…well, no better than I could have done if I did my own hunting on YouTube. But I did not. And this just made me laugh, so I’m going to give credit where it is due.

Or…have my butler do it. Hee hee! I just started laughing again.

The Clintonistas Don’t Want You To See It

Via blogger friend Good Lieutenant at Mein Blogovault we come to find out about this guy lady, who in turn points us to Larry Elder’s column called “Why the Clintonistas did not want you to see ‘The Path to 9/11′”.

It simply substantiates what should have been obvious to everybody: The Path to 9/11, original cut, contains lines of dialog that didn’t actually happen. The lines made the Clinton administration look pretty bad. So…Democrats in Congress wrote a letter threatening to pull a broadcast license or two — without specifically threatening to pull said license, mind you. In so doing, they struck these lines of dialog that didn’t happen, which would have made Clinton look bad. Thus advancing the notion that real lines of dialog, would have made President Clinton look good — again, without specifically going on record saying such a thing.

These are real trustworthy stewards of the public interest. Really. I’ll come out and specifically say that.

Because I’m being sarcastic.

Why the Clintonistas did not want you to see “The Path to 9/11”
By Larry Elder
Thursday, September 14, 2006

“I don’t want any lies in there parading as the truth, that’s all.” With that, on the fifth anniversary of 9/11, former President Bill Clinton (the man impeached by the House of Representatives for lying under oath), struck again…Implicitly threatening to yank ABC’s broadcast license, several Democratic senators wrote [to Disney CEO and President Roger Iger], “Presenting such deeply flawed and factually inaccurate misinformation to the American public and to children would be a gross miscarriage of your corporate and civic responsibility to the law. . . . ” Where’s the ACLU when you need them?
:
Regarding the Clinton administration’s efforts, the 9/11 Report (pages 350-351) reads: “Before 9/11, the United States tried to solve the al Qaeda problem with the same government institutions and capabilities it had used in the last stages of the Cold War and its immediate aftermath. These capabilities were insufficient, but little was done to expand or reform them. . . . At no point before 9/11 was the Department of Defense fully engaged in the mission of countering al Qaeda, although this was perhaps the most dangerous foreign enemy then threatening the United States. The Clinton administration effectively relied on the CIA to take the lead in preparing long-term offensive plans against an enemy sanctuary.”

Also (page 358): “Responsibility for domestic intelligence gathering on terrorism was vested solely in the FBI, yet during almost all of the Clinton administration the relationship between the FBI Director and the President was nearly nonexistent. The FBI director would not communicate directly with the President. His key personnel shared very little information with the National Security Council and the rest of the national security community. As a consequence, one of the critical working relationships in the counterterrorism effort was broken.”

So if I vote for these clowns, I guess I get to pick between burning up in a skyscraper in a puddle of jet fuel, or leaping off said skyscraper, after some dirty little weird-beards crash a plane into it.

But the Democrats in charge will make sure if a movie is made about my demise, said movie will make the Democrats look good! Or else some broadcast licenses will get pulled. Wowee! No wonder they call themselves the party of the little guy. They really are little guys. Little, selfish, greedy, pandering, obsequious guys.

Oh well, at least when I jump off the building I’ll have full Medicare benefits…and maybe some reduced premiums. And as the air goes whizzing past my ears on the way down, I’ll take comfort in the fact that my Democrat Congress and my Democrat President did everything they could to prevent such a catastrophe. Or, if they didn’t, everybody will forget about it.

Thing I Know #121. One verifiable fact can sell a whole package of unlikely speculation. One appealing opinion can sell a whole package of outright falsehood.
Thing I Know #129. Leaders; votes; clergy; academics; pundits; prevailing sentiment; political expediency. Wherever these decide what is & isn’t true, an empire will surely fall.

Looks like another Morgan Acronym…but I didn’t build it, I’m just shamelessly ripping it off. No apologies intended, none offered.

Everybody’s heard this story before, and the situations just keep popping up under which it bears repeating. But it’s hard to find a source for the story. Wouldn’t it be great to source it; even better, to find a link. Well, this one seems to be the best out of all of them, right here (PDF).

A preamble about monkeys

Start with a cage containing five monkeys. Inside the cage, hang a banana on a string and place a set of stairs under it. Before long, a monkey will go to the stairs and start to climb towards the bananas. As soon as he touches the stairs, spray all the monkeys with cold water.

After a while, another monkey makes an attempt with the same result � again all the monkeys are sprayed with cold water. This continues until pretty soon whenever another monkey tries to climb the stairs all the other monkeys will try to prevent it. Now put away the cold water. Remove one of the monkeys from the cage and replace it with a new one. The new monkey will see the banana will attempt to climb the stairs. To his surprise and horror all the of the other monkeys attack him. After another attempt, and attack, he knows that if he climbs the stairs he will be assaulted.

Next remove another of the original five monkeys and replace it with new one. The newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm! Like wise replace third original monkey with a new one, then a fourth and a fifth. Every time a new monkey takes to the stairs it is attacked. The monkeys that are beating him have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs or why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey.

After replacing all the original monkeys none of the remaining monkeys have ever been sprayed with cold water. Nevertheless no monkey ever again approaches the stairs to try for the bananas. Why not? Because as far as they know that�s the way we�ve always done it around here.

We call this TTWWADI.

Heavy Crap

Nobody ever reads this blog, of course, but when people do, they’re not in the mood for heavy crap on a weekend. So I’ll pass on commenting on these…until, like, maybe, Sunday night or something. But they look like things I don’t want to lose entirely.

Remember, the “innernets” is not a library, it’s a superhighway. Libraries stand still. Actually, it’s more like a river, with bits of driftwood drifting on by…drifting on by, forever.

I have questions about Common Article 2 of the Geneva Conventions, and how it pertains to the The Hamdan v. Rumsfeld decision. Even after reading the decision.

Why Bush’s interrogation plan will deliver what he says and why it�s a cost we can’t afford to pay.

Vice President Cheney is hard at work quashing dissent, or is he? He is to be chastised for this, says the prevailing viewpoint.

House Majority Leader John Boehner says, “I listen to my Democratic friends, and I wonder if they are more interested in protecting the terrorists than protecting the American people.” He, too, is to be chastised for this.

Looking over all this heavy crap that surfaces from the depths of the rushing river on a Friday night, I see a common thread: Very few people shy away from a dialog, but many amongst us seem to want to start a monolog: This is the way it is, and thou shalt not disagree with me. If you do, you threaten to end America.

And among those, only conservatives get crap flung in their direction for doing this. Liberals can do it all day and all night, nobody calls them on it. Vice President Cheney says, the terrorists are fighting a propaganda war as well as a physical confrontation…and a whole chorus of voices figures, if they let this pass without comment, they’ll get some kind of membership card taken away or something.

But those who attack the Vice President, do so by using exactly the same logic he’s using when they show the Bush administration as some kind of threat to our freedoms…the way the VP shows the terrorists to be a threat to same. It’s the same logic, just being pointed in different directions.

So it’s interesting, to me, that the “prevailing viewpoint” allows one side to get away with it, and not the other. Must be a lot of people watching movies like this lately.

Stuck in the 80’s

Humility is good for the soul. I like to blame the “Baby Boomers,” specifically, the oldest ones, for the sixties. Well it’s helpful to remember that by my own logic, the eighties are my fault.

How bad were they? This blogger has rounded up a list…probably the best one you’ll find.

Vinnie Barbarino! What happened? Worst movies of the 80s (Nos. 41-50)

50. Dirty Dancing (1987)
49. Quicksilver (1986)
48. Look Who’s Talking (1989)
47. Tarzan, The Ape Man (1981)
46. Going Overboard! (1989)
45. The Toy (1982)
44. Best Defense (1984)
43. Two of a Kind (1983)
42. Flash Gordon (1980)
41. Best of the Best (1989)

Everything you can imagine. Movies, videos, songs; all bad. Yeesh.

What A Great Question

What did Patrick Fitzgerald know, and when did he know it?

That’s Gonna Leave a Mark

I have nothing further to add to this.

Asked if he dreads the prospect of being “Swift-Boated” all over again, [Massachusetts Senator and 2004 Presidential contender John] Kerry counters that he would relish such a fight.

“I�m prepared to kick their ass from one end of America to the other,” he declares. “I am so confident of my abilities to address that and to demolish it and to even turn it into a positive.”

Kerry�s tough talk triggers laughter from John O�Neill, a fellow Vietnam veteran who helped found Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth and wrote a blistering 2004 book on Kerry, “Unfit for Command.”

“Well, he�s got eight times as much time to prepare for us as he spent in Vietnam,” says O�Neill, referring to Kerry�s short tour of duty.

With puff-pieces like this one, who needs Swift Boat Vets anyway?

A Tiny Bit Disturbing At First

Last week, someone said something via e-mail that disturbed me a little tiny bit…kind of like, when a fella marries a beautiful, skinny girl, sometimes during the honeymoon she gains a little tiny bit of weight. It just freakin’ snowballs from there. During the first pregnancy, she gains seventy pounds, and during the delivery, loses seven. By the time the kid is sixteen, his mother weighs more than the car he’s learning to drive, and she’s blaming it on “baby fat.” Dad’s wondering what happened to that glass-cutting ass in the Bongo shorts that inspired him to propose, although he won’t say it out loud — and the answer has something to do with that first mouthful of wedding cake frosting. An ounce here, an ounce there.

That’s how this fella’s e-mail comment disturbed me. Just a little tiny bit at first, and then, it grew. Now we’re at the point where it’s worth a mention. Past it, rather.

Dear Fellow Democrat,

Does a major national broadcast network want to stain itself by presenting an irresponsible, slanderous, fraudulent, “docu-drama” to the American public?

Not if you and I have the last word — but either way, we’re about to find out.

The ABC television network — a cog in the Walt Disney empire — unleashed a promotional blitz in the last week for a new “docudrama” called “The Path to 9/11”. ABC has thrown its corporate might behind the two-night production, and bills it as a public service: a TV event, to quote the ABC tagline, “based on the 9/11 Commission Report”.

That’s false. “The Path to 9/11” is actually a bald-faced attempt to slander Democrats and revise history right before Americans vote in a major election.

The miniseries, which was put together by right-wing conservative writers, relies on the old GOP playbook of using terrorism to scare Americans. “The Path to 9/11” mocks the truth and dishonors the memory of 9/11 victims to serve a cheap, callous political agenda. It irresponsibly misrepresents the facts and completely distorts the truth.

Yeah, a few months ago I registered as a Democrat. Heh, you know what? Let’s borrow a few words from this Democrat-writer guy: “That’s false.” I did nothing to indicate to anyone, anywhere, that I was a Democrat; I simply visited the Democrats’ official website, and when it asked me if I would like to receive updates I said, hell yes! Since then, I’ve received education after education, and I’m glad I answered the question the way I did.

There is something about being a Democrat. You know the saying, “When the facts are on your side, pound the facts, when the law is on your side, pound the law, when neither is on your side, pound the table”? Democrats…have a habit of jumping forward to those last three words.

Here, in “Path to 9/11,” we have a rather unique situation. I say this after listening to both sides, not from watching the film itself, but it doesn’t matter because I don’t have access to the information that the film would be dramatizing and/or distorting anyway. But having disclaimed that, I can’t help noticing that so far as I know — the facts are on the Democrats’ side. This really doesn’t come up very often. But the film says something happened a certain way that makes 9/11 look like the Clinton administration’s fault…Clinton and crew say “Hey, that didn’t happen and nobody said that” — and the network drops the hot rock.

Now, this letter-writer guy could have made a powerful case by articulating the following: The script plays “fast-and-loose” with the truth, it’s inserting spoken lines and events that didn’t happen, and couldn’t have happened. There are Republican-leaning people involved in the production of the movie, and the movie is coming out around Labor Day of an even-numbered year, right before a midterm election in which terrorism is seen by both sides as a lynchpin issue. These are compelling points to make.

But he said…

Does a major national broadcast network want to stain itself by presenting an irresponsible, slanderous, fraudulent, “docu-drama” to the American public? Not if you and I have the last word…

And that’s why this missive bothers me the way it does. The way a brand-new wife gains three pounds when the wedding ring goes on her finger, and four hundred pounds in the next ten years. Bothers me a little, then bothers me a lot.

I can’t help but notice, having “the last word” is what it’s all about for these people.

To the people who don’t give a rat’s ass about Democrats OR Republicans — the ones who decide our elections — the paramount question is this: The last time Democrats had power, did they do some things that made the September 11 attacks possible? Could the Democrats bear culpability in allowing this to happen? At least somewhat? And if so, does that culpability rest on policy decisions in which the Democrats are politically vested? Policy decisions they can be counted upon to decide the same way, decade after decade, anytime they are put in power? Like, for example, treating terrorism as a law enforcement problem rather than a military issue?

If there’s a way to answer those questions that makes the Democrats look good…at least kinda good…the Democrats could just address them kinda directly. But they didn’t even choose to do that, they chose to go the “last word” route.

And this is why the comment from last week bothers me a whole lot more right now, like an 800-pound wife, when, last week, it bothered me just a tiny bit, like the first time after the wedding the wife no longer fit into her miniskirt. Democrats could have ‘fessed up and ended up looking okay. They could have gone the way the Republicans have gone, pushing the “9/11 == Wake Up Call For America” angle. They could have said, yes, we handled terrorism as a law enforcement issue instead of as a matter of life and death…because we were elected to reflect public sentiment, and that’s what the prevaililng sentiment was at the time. And since then, we’ve all learned something.

I think Krauthammer captured it best in this article from 2003:

Bracing for the Apocolypse

The domestic terror alert jumps to 9/11 levels. Heathrow Airport is ringed by tanks. Duct tape and plastic sheeting disappear from Washington store shelves. Osama resurfaces. North Korea reopens its plutonium processing plant and threatens pre-emptive attack. The Second Gulf War is about to begin. This is not the Apocalypse. But it is excellent preparation for it.

You don’t get to a place like this overnight. It takes at least, oh, a decade. We are now paying the wages of the 1990s, our holiday from history. During that decade, every major challenge to America was deferred. The chief aim of the Clinton administration was to make sure that nothing terrible happened on its watch. Accordingly, every can was kicked down the road:

Iraq: Saddam continued defying the world and building his arsenal, even as the United States acquiesced to the progressive weakening of U.N. sanctions and then to the expulsion of all weapons inspectors.

North Korea: When it threatened to go nuclear in 1993, Clinton managed to put off the reckoning with an agreement to freeze Pyongyang’s program. The agreement — surprise! — was a fraud. All the time, the North Koreans were clandestinely enriching uranium. They are now in full nuclear breakout.

Terrorism: The first World Trade Center attack occurred in 1993, followed by the blowing up of two embassies in Africa and the attack on the USS Cole. Treating terrorism as a problem of law enforcement, Clinton dispatched the FBI–and the odd cruise missile to ostentatiously kick up some desert sand. Osama was offered up by Sudan in 1996. We turned him away for lack of legal justification.

That is how one acts on holiday: Mortal enemies are dealt with not as combatants, but as defendants. Clinton flattered himself as looking beyond such mundane problems to a grander transnational vision (global warming, migration and the like), while dispatching American military might to quell “teacup wars” in places like Bosnia. On June 19, 2000, the Clinton administration solved the rogue-state problem by abolishing the term and replacing it with “states of concern.” Unconcerned, the rogues prospered, arming and girding themselves for big wars.

How much more worthy of our trust Democrats would be, if they simply stepped forward and said “we slumbered like all of you; we have learned something important like everyone else.”

But noooooooo. They chose to protect their golden-boy Clinton, who can do no wrong. Because — it’s been proven — when Clinton does something wrong, we just change the truth of what transpired so that his glorious legacy stays spit-shined and polished. Truth always makes Clinton look good…where his name is uttered, truth is pliable.

Democrats have to get in “the last word.” Were our previous President deserving of his “so shiny I can see my face in it” legacy, this would not be necessary. But that’s the way they operate. The way they think. Truth has nothing to do with it. They’ve said it themselves.

It’s massively disturbing. Gilbert-Grape’s-Mom disturbing.

Some people are still married to two-ton-Tessie. I really don’t get why.

Rancid Termagant

I really miss this show. But on the other hand, this is why I don’t have television; my “guilty pleasures,” it turns out, are all “constant drumbeat” type shows. Same thing, episode after episode, season after season. So to plunk down at the end of a day that’s four or five hours longer than I can comfortably manage, anesthetizing the awkward surplus for virtual amputation with the same intoxicating elixir year after year, remote in hand…sixty dollars a month for the privilege…it just doesn’t fit my personality.

But damn, this kind of stuff is funny. And there’s some truth to it. There are a lot of women who are golden sweethearts, but on the whole, if you compare our generation of available females with their mothers and their grandmothers…I dunno. It’s like, they used to be the fairer sex, and a large number amongst their constituents have grown tired of the role. They appreciate the respect that comes from being held to a higher standard than men, but they don’t want the work. Or they don’t even like being respected. Or they don’t respect themselves. Or they want to make damn sure, for every single bad habit men have, they themselves have an equally bad habit.

Like after six thousand years, they’re in a process of taking the apple back again.

I guess you shouldn’t generalize, especially based on dating situations…even if the generalization endures the testimony of lots of straight mens’ dating experiences. It’s dating. It’s a process of screening available people — who are available for a reason. I was available once, for about ten months…out of the last, um, what…sixteen years. I, too, was available for a reason. But a lot of the ladies I dated, boy howdee, did it ever show sometimes that they were available for a reason too. One of the problems I saw come up most frequently, was that the lady had her own idea of who her partner should be…and one way or another, the sedan of this vision came to rest on the train tracks of reality, and it got smooshed. Live-in boyfriend gave her “The Speech,” or husband cheated on her…whatever.

And so, reality dictated the lady was available again.

But there’s something about the female mind, it appears, that is a little on the slow side in accepting reality. And so the brittle ones would saturate the market of available ladies, by classifying themselves as being available, but at the same time, being determined not to act that way. Because, after all, being “available” implies being worth less than someone who is not. Not very appealing to the feminine mindset, at all.

And there are simpler factors, too. Thanks to feminism, a polite women is thought, by many, to be a subjugated, dominated woman. The simple logical extension of this is that a powerful woman must be a cantankerous bitch — and, of course, there’s some high betrayal to The Sisterhood if any woman fails to sieze “power.”

And so, out of those ten months, I saw some of the most reprehensible behavior. Perhaps, what it is, is I deliver such a high octane of carnal pleasure in bed, that women simply can’t keep a rational focus on the events at hand — I bring out the wild beast in them. Sure, I’d like to think that, it would make both of us look good. Massive ego stroke for me, desperately needed excuse for them.

But it’s far more likely, that the pool is polluted. There is something going on in dating-land. The harpie ratio is a little on the high side out there. A lot of little girls are being raised to adulthood with no manners — children of both sexes, I notice, develop the gifts they have need to develop to meet life’s challenges day-to-day, and very few others — and once these newly-minted adults swim through life like sharks, grabbing all they can…their relationships don’t last. And so the selfish ones are released into the dating scene.

And it looks to me like the women have the far bigger problem. But I know that’s an issue of perspective. A rude woman, for all of us, packs so much more “shock value” than a rude man, and is therefore more likely to be noticed, and remembered. Plus, when I date, I date women…I’m rather inexperienced going on dates with men, and therefore not in a position to notice their poor behavior on dates. I’m more than confident that if/when a woman trips across this post, she’ll comment on some equally boorish behavior she’s seen from my brethren in her dating experiences. And she’ll be right.

Just An Observation II

Someday, I should make a list of delusional people. By that I mean, delusional classes of people. A week ago, I asked, “Is there a more delusional character, anywhere, than the guy who hates blogs?” Blogs, after all, like any purely “free” communication medium, have achieved a nearly perfect balance. I can find a hundred blogs that say Republicans suck, I can find a zillion blogs that say Democrats suck; I can find a good assortment of blogs that say peanut butter sandwiches taste good with cottage cheese and tartar sauce on them, that Celine Dion is overrated and ugly, that Nepal is a great place to raise a family of cats…you just name it, I’ll find a blog that agrees with you. The “‘sphere,” it seems, is ready to chirp up and say anything about everything…which means, as a form of communication, it really has nothing to say about anything.

And I’ve answered my own question. A more delusional character: It would be the guy who hates George W. Bush, for the simple reason lots of other people do. Just peer pressure at work. Whether he’s willing to admit that’s what is going on, or not, this guy has to be the most delusional type of person walking around today. And you just know he’s out there, because people who hate George Bush for other reasons spend a lot of time and energy and money talking about the President’s approval ratings, when the ratings are on a downslide…the subject abruptly changes when said ratings are on an uptick. Why go to so much effort to saturate us in the reminder that “most” people dislike the President, unless, that message has a bearing on the decisions a lot of people will be making?

Now, there are a lot of reasons to dislike this President. Those who have identified a reason, or two, or three, and settled on those as their justification for hating him, are outside the scope of my observation. I’m just looking at the Bush-haters who have no reason aside from the impression they’ve formed, that it’s the cool thing to do. Or…those who recognize, with a more-or-less equal level of empathy, all of the available reasons — hating George Bush comes first, finding a reason for doing so is decidedly secondary. Those people. They’re delusional. More delusional than the forementioned blog-hater, I think.

I’m counting 860 days, give or take, before our current President has just as much of an influence on the events that truly impact you or I, as, let’s say, his Dad. His successor, Republican or Democrat, will appoint judges, cabinet members, diplomats, Supreme Court justices; declassify information; command the Army, Navy, Air Force and Coast Guard; issue executive orders; veto bills coming out of Congress, and approve others; restrict government funds from some programs that have to do with abortion and separation of church-and-state, and approve those funds for other such programs; and issue pardons. And make decisions about a number of other critical concerns, many of them unilaterally.

People who hate George Bush because it’s the chic thing to do, may, at that time, be responsible for electing a Democrat, a Democrat who campaigned on the “I hate George Bush too!” platform. And they have some pretty good odds, four years from now, for regretting it once the “I hate George Bush!” President starts working his magic. Americans, now and then, have shown strong support for what my media instructs me to believe were “extreme right-wing” platforms; Americans have never shown that kind of support for what I know to be extreme left-wing platforms, even if my media instructs me to believe they are “moderate” platforms. That whole sandal-wearing baby-killing soldier-slandering mediocrity-promoting rich-people-hating wundermush of liberal goodness.

So it’s more of a certainty than most other things that are called certainties: In four years, we’re going to have millions of people who voted for an “I hate Bush” President, and, should that candidate prevail in 2008, will regret it. It’s good meat for the prospectus of some new business concern aspiring, somehow, to make millions of dollars off this certainty. And when it comes to pass, and people ask themselves “Why did I vote for this guy again?” they’ll have just one answer. I voted for him, because he said nasty things about…that guy, down in Crawford Texas, about whom I never hear anymore. That guy I hated because hating him was the cool thing to do.

And so four years from now, George Bush will be what Gerald Ford is now. Hating George Bush, at that time, will be what owning a Cabbage Patch doll, or a Pet Rock, is now. To even have an opinion about George Bush, then, will be like having an opinion about William Jennings Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” speech, now. Nobody says this out loud. Everybody, Republican and Democrat, knows it to be true. We’re fighting, rather bumptiously and spittle-flingingly, about a bunch of crap due to become utterly irrelevant with a speed that is best described as somewhere between astonishing, and neck-breaking.

Hating President George Bush: It’s not a logical argument, it’s a fashion trend. Everybody knows that to be true, too. Except even as fashion trends go, this one leaves a lot undone. Fashion trends, after all, go out of style…whenever. They can burn out in the blink of an eye, like the Spice Girls, or they can smolder endlessly like that sagging pants thing. You just don’t know when it’ll happen; I suspect, for those given to following fashion trends, this is part of the appeal. This one has an actual expiration date, right down to the hour! And so — while I can understand the appeal of fashion in general, I’m really lost in understanding the appeal of this one.

It bears repeating: The above does not apply to the substantial reasons for hating George Bush. Like, for example, the Bush Doctrine with the pillar of pre-emptive action. That’s a good, solid, meaty argument with great points on both sides, having a direct bearing on our continued survival. I’m just talking about this highly fashionable practice of hating George Bush, for the simple reasons that this is what “everybody” is doing.

Yes, that’s about the most delusional class of people we have walking around right now. Until I think of another.

What Everbody Else Gets

Bless Dr. Melissa‘s golden heart, for she has taken a stab at clarifying for me what’s going on. And succeeded…partially. The subject is the Clintons’ marriage, which, before her explanation as well as after, confounds me in its covenantal ramifications as well as its meaning to the general public.

I am blessed to have the attention of a woman just as patient as Dr. Mel, nearly as articulate, and who somehow puts up with me throughout much of her routine. She’s wired the same way as I am, but has strengths in relating to other people, whereas I only have handicaps. I have done my best to exploit this relationship of mine, to try to answer some of the questions the Doctor has tried to answer for me, and this continues to be a learning experience.

But it’s unfair of me to imply that this challenge of acquainting me to the enigma of “What Everybody Else Gets,” is some kind of negligible task, when it’s actually a much larger one. I’ve been keeping track of Things Everybody Else Gets, that I don’t…there are about two dozen of them, believe it or not.

Note the following:

If a lot of other people like something, and I happen to personally dislike it or disapprove of it — but I understand why they like it — it doesn’t make the list.

If lots of people like something, and as individuals, they demonstrate they don’t understand what’s going on any better than I do…they’re just going with the flow…it doesn’t make the list.

The list is what the list is called. Things everybody else gets. On an individual level, people understand — or they show the appearance of understanding — why they like the thing they seem to like. And I just…plain…don’t…get it. That part of the brain is missing.

1. The Clintons’ Marriage

Linked above. My comments speak for themselves. I just don’t get it.

2. Forrest Gump

Everybody seems to understand this movie. There is something profound going on here; something really deep. It has something to do with trying over and over again, not being intimidated, even when you’re “not a smart man.” The lesson is…well, after seeing the movie about four times, maybe more, I’m still clueless as to what the lesson is. I just don’t understand what’s going on here.

3. Krispy Kreme

Okay, I understand why people like Krispy Kreme…about as much as you’d like any old glazed donut. I’ve had Krispy Kreme. They’re decent enough, but there’s nothing special about them. They’re glazed donuts. That’s all they are. But when/if a new Krispy Kreme branch opens, traffic is stalled for miles. Why? They’re donuts. That’s all.

4. Baggy Pants

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. I don’t understand the fad. Why do you want your pants to fall down below the crack of your ass? Especially if you’re going to steal something and try to outrun somebody.

5. That scene where Wilson floats away in “Cast Away”

Oh no, this is starting to look like a “bash Tom Hanks” thing. I don’t mean for it to be, the man is a talented, dedicated actor and I admire his work very much. Even though his political opinions suck, he’s a marvelous actor. But I don’t understand the Wilson thing. The ball floats away, while he yells at it. The scene goes on and on and on, like I’m not supposed to be bored out of my skull. A man yelling at a ball? What is the point here?

6. iPod

Based on the information that has made its way to me, they seem to be able to hold a lot of data, but they can’t do a damn thing besides play music. Other appliances cost half as much, and can do much, much more. What’s the appeal?

7. Top Gun

Yes it has a lot of music in it, but as a movie it’s mediocre at best. And what is up with all the men having these long, straight white teeth? I don’t know if they’re smiling at each other or getting ready to bite each other in half.

8. Oprah

I can see why she’d have a show; I don’t understand how and why as many people have been talking about her, have been talking about her. For as long as they have.

9. Katy Couric

Now I don’t want to pile on and beat up on Katy when everybody else is at the same time…but the comments about Oprah, hold for Katy. I don’t get it. She’s a silly woman who delivers silly things that are supposed to be “news.” Cutely. Why so much praise after the delivery; and from whence arose the demand, that inspired the delivery? Who the hell wants “cute” news, and why?

10. The Big Chill

JoBeth Williams is a honey, or was back in the day. But I’ll go see this if I want to see a cute JoBeth Williams. As for the rest of the movie, well, I don’t get it. There seems to be something profound going on here, that I don’t understand.

11. One guy, sporting a goatee, and a cowboy hat…at the same time

Cowboy hats are American. Goatees aren’t. We seem to have a lot of people walking around who think the two go together like chopped nuts and chocolate sundaes. From whence does this cognition arise? And when you have a room with a hundred guys or more, and ninety-and-up of those guys have huge belt buckles, cowboy boots, bolos, ten-gallon hats and goatees…how can that possibly not look like a bunch of guys copying each other? It’s like a bunch of penguins wearing the same color of propeller-beanie or something. No way could they be getting dressed without peeking at each other.

12. Football

It’s supposed to just reach out and grab you, make you want to be a part of it, until you can’t think about anything else. It just bores the hell out of me. It looks like what it is, a bunch of other people playing a game…why would I want to watch that?

13. Bull Durham

It’s a movie. I’ve seen it three times. It’s pretty boring…mostly because, whatever is going on in it, is something I don’t get.

14. The frogs in “Magnolia”

Does anybody, anywhere, understand this?

15. Negativity about “blogging”.

I didn’t understand why this fellow hates blogs so much, and I don’t fully understand how it is that this guy hates them either. Hating blogs, is like hating telephones, books, typing paper or calligraphy.

16. Lord of the Rings

Heroes. Villains. Weird creatures. A Maguffin. The story’s been told before, in a lot less than nine hours. This movie trilogy is boring, and the nine hour length isn’t what make it boring. Half an hour of it is boring. I can feel my ass getting tired. It’s not Peter Jackson’s fault, either. King Kong went on and on and on, but it wasn’t boring. There’s something about this thing that just makes me want to fall asleep. I don’t understand why people like it so much.

17. Soccer

I don’t see why you’d want to watch it, let alone get in a fight about it. Except most female soccer players look hot. But the games that attract all the attention, have to do with male soccer players. Running around not scoring any points. I don’t understand it.

18. Barbra Streisand

Why would you want to see this woman sing?

19. Julia Roberts

She’s not a bad actress at all…but others are better.

20. “Supermodels”

They’re models.

21. Japanese Cartoons

My son and my girlfriend watched one of these. Get a load of this: Bad guy challenged good guy. Bad guy started beating the crap out of the good guy. Good guy fought back and surprised the bad guy. Then the bad guy came back and beat the good guy, real good. The good guy’s teacher started to cry. That is all that happened, I swear to God. A whole hour. With that crappy, cheap, recycled Hanna-Barbera cartoon quality from start to finish. When it was over, I told my son he needed to get his japanese-cartoon-watching friends together, and storm the offices of the people who made the cartoon, with pitchforks and torches. They were ripping him off.

22. Tennis

I really don’t understand why anyone would want to see this.

23. Jewel-encrusted cell phone and matching cases

Barf.

24. Men piercing their junk

What kind of drugs are consumed right before this lends an appearance to being a somewhat good idea?

Tribute

Life is a gift that was given to me before it was given to him, and I was left to enjoy it long after it was taken from him. Beyond that, I know very little about Joe Holland. You see it all below…

I don’t know if the man donated to charity or not. I don’t know how he voted. I don’t care. Nobody deserves to go that way. He was butchered in order to make a political statement, for those who love death more than life, but are too cowardly to show their love of death by embracing it and leaving everybody else alone. In that sense, Joe Holland represents not only the other 2,995 who shared his fate on that day, but all of us. The men who killed him, will kill us all if they can. Those of us who are on time for work, those who are late, those who don’t work at all, men who sing to their pregnant wives’ tummies, men who can’t stand their pregnant wives, the pregnant wives themselves, mothers, fathers, children, stepbrothers, grandma’s, the sky’s the limit. They have a statement to make, and the statement doesn’t have anything to do with family status…not too much to do with religion, either. It has to do with power and threats. And so, they will kill whenever the agenda says to go forward, and the opportunity has presented itself. No exceptions…save for, perhaps, when there’s a strategy that says the point can somehow be made more incandescently if the killing is done at a later time. Other than that, no exceptions.

Now, on Friday I got an e-mail, with some of the other 2,996 bloggers pledged, from The 2,996 Project itself. The request reads as follows…

This is just a thought… I have been sending releases to some of the major media to get this picked up. It’s such an amazing project and I really hope the message gets out there to the families that we haven’t forgot and their loved ones are still remembered. I think there would be more bang if each and every one of us (if you feel comfortable doing so) sending an email to their local major news media explaining what the 2996 project is. I hope this will get the exposure this deserves. Average people honoring those lost. It will take 5 minutes to do….

No big deal, right? Well, a little bit of Googlin’ raised the issue that perhaps this was more important than it would at first appear; searching for local stories on the 2,996 project, I came up with Zip. Zero. Butkus.

So on Saturday night, I sent off the following to the “Blog Lady” at the Sacramento Bee. Keep in mind, that was last night.

I’m looking for mention in the Sacramento Bee on the 2,996 Bloggers project, which is a non-partisan tribute to the victims whose lives were lost in the September 11 attacks five years ago. One blog(ger) has been matched up to each of the deceased whose life was ended in the WTC, the Pentagon, the airplanes that collided with those structures, and Flight 93, as well as the emergency responders who gave their lives in the aftermath so that others might live.

Monday is the critical turning-point of the project, of course. I could find no mention of this in the paper or on any other local news resource, but I don’t mean that as a slight toward the Bee or anybody else; it could say more about my searching efforts & facilities, than anything. At any rate, it’s high time I took the effort to direct your attention to this if it has not already been so directed, because the project is well worth your perusal and I think many Sacramento Bee readers would like to know about it. You can find out more about the 2,996 Bloggers tribute here:

http://www.dcroe.com/2996/?page_id=34

Thanks so much for your time and consideration.

Morgan K. Freeberg
House of Eratosthenes
http://mkfreeberg.blogspot.com

And so you can imagine, it was a little bit of an eyebrow-raiser to crack open the Sunday paper, I’m guessing maybe twelve hours after hitting the “Send” button, and see the write-up shown on the right. Do things work this fast? It doesn’t seem possible; this is probably an example of great minds thinking alike.

The “Surfin’ USA” column in the morning paper, seems to do much to publicize my blog, which nobody actually reads anyway — and very little to throw much-deserved traffic to the 2,996 Bloggers tribute project, which was more the focus of my intent, and which I think people would show more interest in seeing. Honestly, I don’t know why The Bee did things the way they did them. But I’m glad there was some mention made anyway, they didn’t have to do that.

That’s what I know about Joseph Francis Holland III.

Rest in peace, pal. I hope wherever you are, you know you’re not forgotten. Kathy and crew, tomorrow, we will be with you in spirit if we can’t physically be by your side. Joseph IV, I’m sure in the years ahead it may become tedious for you to hear it, but you’re an important part of our nation’s history and it’s critically important that people don’t forget who you are and what you represent. You sprang forward, after all, at a crossroads between life and death. I hope, in your lifetime, the whole battle we’re fighting now, collapses into the trash bin of history, along with the machinery and organizations of the evil men who murdered your dad.

It would be indecent of me to try to address you without your Mom saying it’s okay, and so I shall not. Should these words somehow find their way to you, I hope you consider them a message not to you, but to your generation. Your entire generation has been born into something special, the way you were born into something special. It is targeted for well-intentioned peace-people who will try to sell you on the idea that your father died of something resembling…an accident. A natural disaster. Some kind of “whoopsie!” Now, tomorrow is a sacred day for your family and I wish to keep it cleansed of any undercurrents that have to do with “politics” to the best I can…but this piece is vitally important. An accident is an accident, murder is murder. Those two are different. Forgiving your fellow man of his transgressions is one thing, and getting sold a pack of lies is another. And so I hope it is remembered, by you, that your father and people like him didn’t die in an accident. There is this huge, expansive, yawning gap between what your father deserved, and what he got. And the difference between those two is man-made.

I expect the peace-people will be hitting you pretty hard in the years ahead, that to simply keep the above in mind is “hatred.” It isn’t hatred. It’s a decent respect to the truth and the facts, and it matters. A whole lot. Hate — that would give far too much attention to the men who did this evil thing. I hope the men who killed the 2,996 in cold blood, are brought to justice, without the bringers lowering themselves into the depths of hate. But bring the justice about, by whatever means necessary. If people of my generation fail at doing this for whatever reason, may your generation succeed.

Some people need to be asked, so go ahead and ask: Have You Forgotten?

Under Fire

Heard a guy call in to a radio show about a month or two ago. I don’t remember what the topic was, but he managed to neatly encapsulate something I’ve been thinking for a long time about people who argue. It’s nothing original, by any stretch; mystery shows have been making note of this throughout all of the twentieth century. Super-sleuth will inform the husband that he’s a widower now, his wife was found dead a few hours ago and could he explain his whereabouts? And the husband will reply “I’m telling you, I didn’t shoot her!” Super-sleuth says to the husband, or to his sidekick after husband leaves…ya know, I never said anything about her being shot.

Moral of the story is, sometimes when we say stuff, the wise listener will pay only a little bit of attention to what we’re actually saying, and a great deal more attention to the necessity that appears to have arisen for us to get it said. And what that might mean.

Or as the caller to the radio program said, “My dad always told me when you throw a rock into a pack of wild dogs, the one that yelps is the one you hit.”

Well, there’s a whole lot of yelping dogs right about now because of this new movie out, “The Path to 9/11” starring Harvey Keitel. The film purports to be an unbiased, non-partisan look at all the things that went on in the world of intelligence, subterfuge, politics, military operations, etc. before the September 11 attacks came about. Non-partisan it may be, but apparently it’s pretty tough on the Clinton administration and this has created some bad feeling in people because…well, I’ll let this commentator speak for himself, since he’s seen it and I haven’t.

Regardless of ones political leanings, I think it is despicable for 9/11 to be fictionalized and history rewritten simply for political gain. Does ABC have no shame? Are the nearly 3000 lost souls of that horrific day just political tools, now?

I have no problem with a FACTUAL documentary on the events leading up to 9/11. There is plenty of blame to go around, to both democratic and republican administrations. Telling the truth is always a great way to go. But to completely falsify information, and then LIE about falsifying it, especially about an event still so painful to many people, is just way below acceptable.

I seem to recall when CBS tried to “fictionalize” a Reagan “docudrama”, the conservatives and republicans were so incensed that the program was finally pulled. Are those same people going to be equally incensed about this “swiftboating” debacle?

Yeah, it’s fictionalized. And the one piece of fictionalizing that is causing angst more than any other piece, has to do with this…

In one scene, CIA operatives working with Ahmed Shah Masud, the charismatic Afghan mujahedin leader who fought al-Qaida and their Taliban sponsors, are assembled on a hillside above bin Laden’s residence at Tarnak Farms. “It’s perfect for us,” says “Kirk,” a composite character representing several of the CIA operatives and analysts involved in the hunt for the terrorist leader.

But the team is forced to abort the mission when Berger hangs up on them in the middle of a conference call, after telling them he cannot give the go ahead for the action. “I don’t have that authority,” he says.

“Are there any men in Washington,” Masud asks Kirk afterwards in the film, “or are they all cowards?”

See, it’s “fiction” in the sense that there’s no such thing as “Kirk”…there’s no such thing as Mel Gibson’s character in The Patriot, he was a composite of Francis Marion and Daniel Morgan. This leads to a lot of lines in the script that “didn’t happen.” Or, to take another Gibson movie as an example, Braveheart didn’t knock up Queen Isabella, nor could he have.

It’s stylization. Limited meddling with the factual events, for the sake of a better presentation. Whether the meddling goes over the top is a matter of opinion, but some meddling is necessary for the format.

That’s what Thomas Kean, Co-Chairman of the 9/11 Commission himself, said in the film’s defense.

Former New Jersey Gov. Thomas Kean, the co-chair of the Sept. 11 commission and an adviser to the miniseries, said in its defense that “for dramatic and narrative purposes, there are scenes that are fictionalized in some ways because they’re composites of what took place. You have to do that in a miniseries.”

And yet the “big” events are still consistent with the truth. And there’s no better evidence of that, than the sense of urgency in all the yelping.

But this yelp impressed me more than any other. It’s from Sandy Berger himself.

A statement from Samuel “Sandy” Berger, who was national security adviser to President Bill Clinton at the time, calls the scenes involving him “complete fabrications.”
:
“The incidents depicted did not happen,” said Berger in the statement. “They are not contained in the Sept. 11 Commission report, which is the most authoritative review of the events before and after the attack.”

Get a load of that. The man who smuggled confidential documents out of the archives in his pants…took them home, illegally…shredded who-knows-what. They can’t even find out what he shredded. He’s intoning to us we should believe only what’s in the 9/11 Commission report, and disbelieve anything that’s not in it. When, thanks to his own actions, it’s impossible to tell what couldn’t have made it in…because nobody was able to find it. It was shredded, BY HIM.

Anyway, there’s more yelping going on over here and here, and I’m also admiring the fisking job that was done over here.

It will be discussed much in the days ahead, I think. And it’s interesting how many of the headlines contain those two words “under fire.” The film is under fire. Isn’t it great to be a liberal? Liberals, it seems, get to decide what’s “under fire.” When’s the last time a hit piece on a conservative was “under fire”? Was that silly Reagan film ever “under fire”?

Update: Blogger friend Buck Pennington found, thanks to the New York Post, the biggest yelp of them all.

Update: Threat! h/t Hot Air, via Jawa.

Update: This is a must-read too.

Update: Neal Boortz has a few points to add to this. Points well worth reading.

Update 9/10/06: Thanks to the left-wing website Think Progress, I managed to trip across a copy of Sandy Berger’s letter over here.

The Other Border

I just had this pop into my head the other night, during the inky blackness long before dawn, when a man’s wakeful state calls his very sanity into question. I’m sure someone else has thought of it before, but such a rumination has not made its way to me except from between my own two ears.

Let us play devil’s advocate on the whole “border” issue, and collect every argument anyone’s ever heard before, on why we should just leave the border problem alone. Why we should go ahead and let all the illegal immigrants in. Why we should make the border more porous. A lot of people are walking around, after all, who feel that’s the right way to go.

Gather all their arguments. Let’s see, what do we have here…this is a “nation of immigrants,” and allowing immigrants easier access to our country and its resources, is consistent with our heritage. What else. There’s the “don’t be so rigid” argument that says a strong, civilized republic recognizes a time to flex a little bit on the rule of law, especially when following that law makes us bitchy and mean. Okay. What else? The “Archie Bunker” argument, intoning, correctly, that an all-or-nothing attitude about our nation’s border in some cases belies out-and-out bigotry and racism and small-mindedness. Got it. What else? There’s the “How would it make YOU feel?” argument that says, if you or I were the illegal immigrant in question, we’d hop the fence too, so we’re a bunch of hypocrites if we take extraordinary measures to keep someone else from doing so.

I’m sure the “let ’em all in” crowd has a number of other important points to make, that I may have missed.

Make your own list. Got it together?

Now…let’s turn to the subject of letting God into our schools. Do they apply, or not?

Oy.

Majority Leader We Can Spare?

President Lincoln, placed under pressure to relieve General Ulysses Grant after the battle of Shiloh, famously responded, “I can’t spare this man; he fights.”

If you need a reminder that a lot of asphalt has been put down since 1862 and we just don’t think the same way as we did back then, chew on this. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who, as it is, may not be in that position too much longer, had this to say about passing an immigration bill before the elections:

I think it would be next to impossible to pass a comprehensive bill that includes dealing with the diversity of 12 million people here in the next three weeks.

Gosh Dr. Frist, I guess what you’re saying, then, is it’s next to impossible for you to keep your job.

Can we spare this Majority Leader? It would appear from the looks of things, that thanks to his decisions and not anybody else’s, we’re going to be sparing him pretty soon.

He doesn’t fight.

Memo For File XXIV

Quoth Ann Coulter in Slander at the beginning of Chapter Seven, p. 121:

The Joy of Arguing with Liberals: You’re Stupid!

If liberals were prevented from ever calling Republicans dumb, they would be robbed of half their arguments…Like clockwork, every consequential Republican to come down the pike is instantly, invariably, always, without exception called “dumb.”

This is how six-year-olds argue: They call everything “stupid.” The left’s primary argument is the angry reaction of a helpless child deprived of the inability to mount logical counterarguments…The “you’re stupid” riposte is part of the larger liberal tactic of refusing to engage ideas.

Quoth Aristotle on the definition of an educated mind: It is “…to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”

Submitted for your approval: The FARK thread about President Bush appointing Clay Aiken to the President’s Committee for People with Intellectual Difficulties.

Huh. It would appear Annie is on to something here. So is Ari.

Any ideas on why the “dumb” ones are always Republicans?

1) It’s a false observation, Democrats are ridiculed for being stupid just as often as Republicans.

2) Because Republicans really are dumb, and somehow, there’s something at work to ensure Democrats are always smart.

3) …?

So You Hate Blogs, Do You II

Aw lookee what we have here…another person who hates blogs. How cute.

“Blog” itself is short for “weblog,” which is short for “we blog because we weren’t very popular in high school and we’re trying to gain respect and admiration without actually having to be around people.”

Creating your own blog is about as easy as creating your own urine, and you’re about as likely to find someone else interested in it. One popular technique for building readership is to send e-mail to more well-trafficked blogs offering to exchange links with them. One popular response from those blogs is to laugh derisively and hit the Delete button.

The snippet about not being very popular in high school is particularly painful, it’s like twisting the knife. Ooh, that hurt. Excuse me, I’m going to have my mom bring a cup of warm milk down here in the basement so I can curl up in my pajamas with my teddy bear and suck my thumb. A few episodes of Dawson’s Creek and I should be good as new.

Look, Sjoberg, this may come as a shock…but people who were “very popular in high school” are generally pretty fucking irritating. Truth be told, I’d much rather be shipwrecked with a bunch of people who weren’t very popular in high school, than with a bunch of people who were. I mean, ignore the problems with the stuck-up snotty valley girl bitches for a second or two — the nerds and I, would have all that cool stuff made out of bamboo. People who were popular in high school? What the fuck can they do anyway. Tell them to smash something, give them a rock, and you’ll just get back a blank stare. That’s if you can get them to put down their cell phone and hold the rock.

Is there a more delusional character, anywhere, than the guy who hates blogs? Blogging is a medium of communication; give me an idea, no matter what it is, I can find a blog in favor of that idea somewhere, and another blog arguing against it. Hating blogs, is like hating paper, or the letter “S,” or hating b-flat. Makes no sense. But people do it anyway.

I have noticed there are a lot of people walking around who have devoted their entire lives to cultivating what could be called the “gift of gab.” Placed in situations where the g.o.g. enjoys less than pivotal usefulness, they become quite emotional. They don’t need anyone to point out to them, the situations that call for something besides refined verbal delivery skills. They don’t need anyone pointing that out…just seeing it for themselves, really sets them off. Really gets ’em going. It’s like they’ve got a great big hole in their lives, a hole they can forget most of the time, and they’ve just been reminded of it.

There’s a certain fragility to them. Kind of like the woman who took her husband back after he slept with her best friend, with a promise that from this day forward we shall never mention her name ever again…and just found out he’s been having trysts with her at lunchtime every day, and got her pregnant too. It’s like a real deep-rooted insecurity has been probed, and this insecurity has something to do with their position in life itself. It seems the g.o.g. folks peaked early — like, before the high school in which they were oh-so-popular — and they damn well know it, they’d prefer to forget it, and the blogs just remind them of it.