I Got Served

Wednesday night I got an e-mail from one “godstool.” It was one of those auto-generated e-mails I get when people attach comments to this blog, and contents of the message consisted of five simple words.

Oh snap, you got served:

Following thereafter was a link to a blog called “Hammer of Truth.” Now, where have I heard that name before?

Ah…this weekend past, I took that blog to task for conferring a certain amount of credibility (I thought) on Capitol Hill Blue, using the word “endorsing” to describe what they were doing, and for this I called them “Hammer of Bullshit.” Apparently, even though this is the blog nobody reads, Hammer of Truth has been reading it. My comments were noticed by them, and/or brought to their attention, and several among their fans had some things to say about it. Somehow this has become the post that people actually read, within the blog nobody reads.

I note that one Stephen VanDyke, author of the original post that earned my disaffection, was also the author of my “servicing.”

We get Blogbashed

It�s not often we here at Hammer of Truth are on the receiving end of negative criticism for the types of stories we post about (well, differing of opinions is a whole other beast). I like to think most of our readers are smart enough to realize that simply posting (even mocking) something doesn�t automatically translate into endorsement.

Apparently not so much with this blogger, who chooses to call us Hammer of Bullshit (which, incidentally, is where the cleverness of his exhaustive post ended) in regard to my writeup on the dubious quote of Bush calling the Constitution “just a GD piece of paper.”

I suppose I endorsed the veracity of the reporting when I called Capitol Hill Blue “the political rag that doubles as a tin foil hat” or when I used finger-quotes around the word “reporting” or when I followed up with an update pointing out the credibility gaps of CHB and a prior acknowledgement of being conned. No, indeed� let me fess up now and say I was indeed “endorsing” the article.

You caught me, Mr. blogger who�s schtick is to rip on the credibility of a post that�s ripping on the credibility of a news story. I�m betting you�d be a riot to take to the comedy club, I can only imagine the insightful 3000-word critique on how you didn�t get any of the jokes.

I’m inferring Mr. VanDyke’s intentions, here, are to confuse and intimidate me from saying anything further with any meaningful amount of confidence. Assuming I’m right about that, he has succeeded. I’m thoroughly confused. I have little idea what to make of this.

I am cowed, I freely confess, from commenting on this with certainty.

The only thing left for me to do is speculate, with as much of an open mind as can be mustered by a thick-headed ogre like me.

My first impression is that his response is sort of peculiar. Putting myself in his shoes, if someone makes some observations on my comments and posts an article saying something about those observations, to the effect of “this guy is some kind of bullshitter!” — the last thing I’d do, whether I was innocent or guilty of the bullshitting, would be to hide behind the centuries-old “but I was only kidding!” defense.

That’s the timeless refuge of bullshitters, isn’t it?

I suppose some may doubt that. I would refer them to the Andy Savage Greg-in-Duluth phone clip, in the unlikely event they haven’t heard it already. If the point of your defense is “no, no, I’m not a bullshitter, and you’re a clueless dolt for thinking I am one,” you’re poorly served by the I-was-only-joking defense. As you can tell, listening to the Greg Clip all the way to the very end, this is what people have been known to say when their hand is caught in the cookie jar.

Now, it could very well be Mr. VanDyke really was having a joke at Capitol Hill Blue’s expense, and putting no credibility on the report whatsoever, in fact, renouncing it before I “hammered” him just as forcefully he renounces it after that I have done so. And, of course, that I’m a big, stupid doo-doo head for having failed to notice this.

Uh, gee that must be nice. Being a fan of subtle humor myself, I’ve had my share of readers misunderstand me from time to time. I always took that as a sign that the author (me) failed to anticipate and accommodate the attention span and intellectual/emotional state of his reader. From his indictment that my critique was 3,000 words long, I’m gathering Mr. VanDyke agrees that when I write things, this is indeed one of my responsibilities.

Odd that it is not one of his.

What to conclude? Well, we know Mr. VanDyke speaks for the entire “Hammer of Truth” blog — he says so — and, where he comes from, there are certain rules when you write about things. The word-count of what you write (mine was 1,391 not counting the quotes, Stephen, covering a lot of other things besides just you) is critically important to assessing what you’ve written and how well you’ve written it. The point you are trying to make, on the other hand, is a fairly trivial matter — as is the substance of what you have drawn upon in order to substantiate that point. The similarity of your thesis, as inferred by your audience, to the thesis you intended to argue, matters not one bit. The fault for any substantial difference between those two is on the audience, not on the author.

Yawning chasm between those two? No problem. Call the reader a raging idiot.

Interesting.

Capitol Hill Blue supplied “evidence” that our President has a low regard of the Constitution. VanDyke’s point, which certainly doesn’t seem to be ironic or sarcastic in any way, is “we here at Hammer of Truth don�t need much convincing that previous administration actions speak louder than these reported words when it comes to Bush�s view of the Constitution.” Got that? If you buy into the idea that his primary focus was to bash CHB, instead of endorsing it, his “bashing” was an argument that CHB’s facts were — not mendacious — but unnecessary! Granted, there is a distinction to be made between “endorsing” something and saying “this is irrelevant because it proves something that is already known” — but there is also a very great difference between that latter one, and saying “this is irrelevant because it’s impossible to prove, for now, and Capitol Hill Blue, that matters because your reputation sucks ass.”

Now, I’m thinking the meaning of VanDyke’s original musings, which I’m trying so hard to puzzle out (obvious as it may be to everyone else), is narrowed down to one amongst those three. I’m still not entirely sure which of those three it is. My confidence that any great majority among his readers, would be able to offer one consistent answer out of those choices, is mediocre at best. There’s a possibility he himself isn’t altogether sure. It seems a given he wants to place some weight on the CHB report, but it’s known from experience that if someone places too much weight on it, crediting VanDyke with the inspiration for doing so, he’ll repudiate the notion and call the other party stupid.

There is an important reason why, being a latecomer to the party, I should marshall my limited mental resources to figuring out what’s going on here: There is a marginal likelihood that VanDyke is correct, and I owe him and the Hammer of Truth an apology for my use of the vulgar term more conventionally applied to bovine feces. I’m not one to duck an apology when it is owed, so to answer that, I turn to one of the most trusted reference materials I have available. On Bullshit, by Prof. Harry G. Frankfurt of Princeton University, ISBN 0-691-12294-6. This is one of the best investments have I ever made, book-wise. I bought it on Amazon, lured into doing so only because the first two paragraphs were so well-written, each noun, verb and adjective chosen with care you don’t often see nowadays:

One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it. So the phenomenon has not aroused much deliberate concern, nor attracted much sustained inquiry.

In consequence, we have no clear understanding of what bullshit is, why there is so much of it, or what functions it serves…I propose we begin the development of a theoretical understanding of bullshit, mainly by providing some tentative and exploratory philosophical analysis…My aim is simply to give a rough account of what bullshit is and how it differs from what it is not � or (putting it somewhat differently) to articulate, more or less sketchily, the structure of its concept.

This book is a very quick read — very quick. I shall not quote a single word from it beyond what is necessary, to settle this issue between Mr. VanDyke and me. To do that, what I need to do is ascertain, with pinpoint accuracy, what “bullshit” is and whether or not this overlaps with what VanDyke wrote that earned my wrath. If there’s overlap, my critique stands, and if it isn’t, obviously I should do the Teapot Dance.

The applicable paragraph begins at the bottom of page 53, I think.

What bullshit essentially misrepresents is neither the state of affairs to which it refers nor the beliefs of the speaker concerning that state of affairs. Those are what lies misrepresent, by virtue of being false. Since bullshit need not be false, it differs from lies in its misrepresentational intent. The bullshitter may not deceive us, or even intend to do so, either about the facts or about what he takes the facts to be. What he does necessarily attempt to deceive us about is his enterprise. His only indispensably distinctive characteristic is that in a certain way he misrepresents what he is up to.

This is the crux of the distinction between him and the liar…A [liar is] responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it…For the bullshitter, however, all these bets are off: he is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.

Mr. VanDyke, I’m willing to “endorse” Professor Frankfurt, at least as far as his definition of exactly what bullshit is. He has stated it competently enough that, were I to undertake to outperform him, my efforts would be prohibitively expensive and I expect I would fail. In defining bullshit for us, he has also made a case about the high importance of calling out bullshit when one sees it. In that spirit, I continue to consider it an important mental exercise, for my personal benefit if for the benefit of none other, to affix that label to your article.

Do I owe you an apology for having done so? You’ve left me unclear, I must say, so I must be as dimwitted as you imply. It has not escaped my notice that the state of affairs, and your comprehension of same, appears to have been one of the least-significant considerations here up to now. Does the Capitol Hill Blue report prove that President Bush disrespects our Constitution? Or is the veracity of the Capitol Hill Blue report substantiated, in some way, with your prior acquaintance of the President’s disregard for our Constitution? Which is it? That is a state of affairs. Do you even know which? You appear to be choosing which one it is, moment to moment, based on convenience (and criticism from a blog nobody reads).

That is a litmus test of bullshit.

But it could be, as you imply, confusion on my part and on my part alone. So to help sort out my confusion, I’d sure be in your debt if you can clear up one thing:

What is the state of affairs? What does the Capitol Hill Blue report mean? Does it prove something? Does it merely suggest something? Is it unneeded support for something already proven elsewhere? If so, then why bring it up? Is the report evidence of Capitol Hill Blue’s tinfoil-hattery? Is it really the point of your post to be “ripping on the credibility of a news story”? (When you “served” me, you said exactly that.) If that is the case, why demonstrate this with something that’s not only unprovable, but irrefutable as well, and furthermore suggesting something about our President you already believe to be true? Why not wait for CHB to come up with something demonstrably false? After all, if you’re “ripping” that news source and it is truly deserving of your “ripping on the credibility,” it should be a short wait before such a thing comes down the pike. Why didn’t you go that route?

Or is your belief about President Bush, something I’m misinterpreting as well? I’m assuming not; I’ve taken a look through your archives, and you do appear to earnestly believe in the opinion that your text stated. Conclusion: Whatever irony you put in your original post, fell short of this part.

Or is the point of your original post that President Bush really doesn’t respect the Constitution? I notice now that the story has gotten the “legs” you doubted that it would get — there are many people out there who agree with this premise, and cite Capitol Hill Blue’s report as supporting evidence to prove the point. One must wonder naturally: If “mkfreeberg” at House of Eratosthenes lacks the smarts “to realize that simply posting (even mocking) something doesn�t automatically translate into endorsement” — are these other people lacking in those smarts as well?

And if you’re not going to “endorse” Capitol Hill Blue’s report, then who will? If nobody will, then what else is out there to suggest our President shows the disrespect you seem to have decided he shows?

Is there anything out there that is so powerful, that if I say “so-and-so endorsed this as evidence of the President’s lack of respect for the Constitution” — said so-and-so won’t get all pissy and backpedal like crazy, like you did, dusting off that tried-and-true excuse of bullshitters, “I was only joking”?

If there is no such thing, then what do we REALLY know about this President?

I called you a bullshitter, taking your argument seriously as I did so. You, apparently, were not nearly as offended by the vulgarity, as you were by the notion of my simply taking your argument seriously — your repudiation of your own idea was so forceful, it became obligatory to cast doubts upon my intelligence as you did the repudiating. In so doing, you appear to be taking the “Dan Rather Memos” approach: You spoke truth because what the “proof” proves is believed to be true, even though the “proof” itself has been placed in significant doubt.

(I notice the analogy holds in another way: Just as the discovery of the forged documents was the subject of Dan Rather’s broadcast, so too was the posting of CHB’s story the event that inspired your original post.)

In short, the strength of your argument was such that once I noticed (in a blog nobody reads) you put your name to it, you renounced the argument and called me a fool for taking it seriously. Not a very strong argument! Are all of the arguments against this President’s respect for the Constitution, so feeble? Or just yours?

Just a Lot of Complaining

Democrats hate the graphic, right, which has been circulating around the “innernets” for five years now — since shortly after the Florida 2000 election melee. They can’t stand it. It offends them. You can tell this, because if you show it to them they’ll call you a pinhead, neocon, stupid idiot, jackass, Bushbot, and almost without exception they’ll go completely off-topic to bring up an example of Republican whining, to make the baby go away. Please, just make it go away.

Well, at this blog, which nobody ever reads, we never go out of our way to deliberately offend people. Because of that, we will never, ever use the baby-graphic until such time as it becomes centrally relevant to some current event.

3…2…1…Whoops! Time to pull out the baby!

Thanks to the Wall Street Journal’s Best of the Web daily, edited by James Taranto, my attention is drawn to this bizarre article in the Washington Post. Evidently, the Democratic party’s plan for the Iraq mission, or quandry, or conundrum, or quagmire or debacle or whatever you want to call it, is this: Nothing. You read that right, nothing. They don’t know what to do about it. There is no plan, and there is no plan to make a plan. There is no intention to rally around a single, blessed, party-position about what to do to solve the problem, not even later on when the midterm elections are in full swing. The official party position, is that it’s every Democrat for him- or herself.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said yesterday that Democrats should not seek a unified position on an exit strategy in Iraq, calling the war a matter of individual conscience and saying differing positions within the caucus are a source of strength for the party.

Pelosi said Democrats will produce an issue agenda for the 2006 elections but it will not include a position on Iraq. There is consensus within the party that President Bush has mismanaged the war and that a new course is needed, but House Democrats should be free to take individual positions, she sad.

“There is no one Democratic voice . . . and there is no one Democratic position,” Pelosi said in an interview with Washington Post reporters and editors.

Pelosi recently endorsed the proposal by Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) for a swift redeployment of U.S. forces from Iraq over a period of six months, but no other party leader followed, and House Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) publicly opposed her.

She said her support for Murtha was not intended to forge a Democratic position on the war, adding that she blocked an effort by some of her colleagues to put the Democrats on record backing Murtha.

Waah! Waaaaaaaah! Waah! Wah! Waaah!

Well really, am I mischaracterizing something? What else do Democrats have to say about the War in Iraq? I mean, really?

What do Democrats think elections are for? What is it that they disagree with me about, here: 1) Elections are for electing leaders, or 2) leadership has something to do with doing something besides complaining. I mean, both of those two premises seem pretty obvious, to me. There’s nothing partisan about either one of them, and yet, somewhere within these two links, the chain has been broken.

Ms. Pelosi, you want to run an election on just bitching and nothing else? Are you for real?

One of the things that is cool about writing for a blog nobody reads, is sometimes you get to sound like a broken record, and nobody will notice. Well, I’ve said this before: Democrats have things to fix, and some of their strategists are smart people. It’s a cinch to see that, if they want to fix something fairly easily, just taking a position on this would be a pretty good first-step.

Well, someone who wants Democrats to win, and who is strategically pretty smart, has figured out this isn’t worthwhile. If they did this, the Democratic party would gain two votes, and lose three, or something like that. Had that calculation not been done somewhere, Pelosi would not be articulating this now. They are beholden to someone, or think they are beholden to someone, who would stop voting for them if they were to form certain strategies.

So who are those people? And what are those strategies?

America deserves the right to know before Democrats are allowed to take control of an ice cream truck, let alone a chamber of Congress.

Damn. Just damn. Can both sides of the aisle, at least step up and come to an agreement that what Pelosi’s party is offering, is something that falls short of leadership? Seems obvious.

From the Right Brain II

“Lightsabre” [sic] Simulator. It is exactly what it sounds like. And it even works with Mozilla Firefox 1.5.

Have fun.

Pithy and Worthy

Thought of the day is three sentences from the Best of the Web, the subject being Lindsey Graham’s interview on “Meet the Press” regarding the Republican “White Flag” ad:

…who cares if the Democrats are patriotic? If a man bullies and belittles his wife, does this mean he doesn’t love her? Not necessarily, but whatever is in his heart, his behavior is still wrong.

One Less Psycho

There are many, many people running around, just as free as you and me, even able to cast votes that are as important as the votes you and I cast, who will look upon the graphic below with a mixture of dread and disgust. They are going to cite this as evidence that the death penalty has gotten way out of hand, and people like me are using it to satisfy some kind of sick blood-lust. This, in turn, those people say, amounts to a violation of the Eighth Amendment and its prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. Accepting their premise about my blood-lust, I would agree with them about the Eighth Amendment. Although that premise is deeply flawed, and therefore the conclusion about the Eighth Amendment is also deeply flawed, we do owe a substantial debt to those people.

We owe them the debt because they illustrate starkly for the rest of us, how incredibly misguided our society’s resistance to capital punishment really is. We have the death penalty so that when the law proves a substantial danger exists to the innocent among us, when a convicted murderer is allowed to keep living, we can make an exceptionally serious decision about who is to live and who is to die. One of the most contagious arguments against the death penalty, is the arbitrary proposition that government should be encumbered from having that right. This axiom thus presumes that government, interacting with nature, should have limits placed upon what kind of nature it can recognize. Nature, after all, can sprawl into the territory of harshness — laboring under no uncumberences whatsoever as it does so. Nature has perverts, psychos, weirdos, and sickos. It is populated with killer whales that swallow cute sea otters whole, frogs that kill flies on a whim, mantises that eat the heads of their mates during the coupling, and cats that sadistically toy around with bloody, eviscerated, quivering mice.

Anti-death-penalty people, by and large, are people who like to forget that.

The pro-Tookie brigade indignantly demands to know who, exactly, would be placed in physical danger from Tookie Williams, had his death sentenced been commuted to life in prison. In asking this, not only do they demonstrate ignorance about Tookie Williams’ personal history, but they also miss the point. Williams’ plea for clemency was pumped chock-full of bullshit from the get-go. His defenders dictated to the rest of us that we were to presume Williams’ books swayed would-be gang members from lives of crime. There is little evidence to indicate this, and what evidence there is, is suggestive only; it would be extremely difficult to digest and translate into anything compelling. The lie was spread around that Tookie’s prosecutors rejected black jurors from his jury. Another lie was spread that he was “convicted by an all-white jury,” something that has been proven to be untrue.

Governor Schwarzenegger has performed a fairly comprehensive review of the claim that Tookie has “found redemption” behind bars, and found it to be, at best, a difficult assertion to maintain. Quoting from the clemency decision read just a few minutes ago on KFBK by Tom Sullivan:

Williams’ claim of redemption triggers an inquiry into his atonement for all his transgressions. Williams protests that he has no reason to apologize for these murders because he did not commit them. But he is guilty and a close look at Williams’ post-arrest and post-conviction conduct tells a story that is different from redemption.

After Williams was arrested for these crimes, and while he was awaiting trial, he conspired to escape from custody by blowing up a jail transportation bus and killing the deputies guarding the bus. There are detailed escape plans in Williams’ own handwriting. Williams never executed this plan, but his co-conspirator implicated Williams in the scheme. The fact that Williams conspired to murder several others to effectuate his escape from jail while awaiting his murder trial is consistent with guilt, not innocence. And the timing of the motel murders — less than two weeks after the murder of Albert Owens — shows a callous disregard for human life.

Williams has written books that instruct readers to avoid the gang lifestyle and to stay out of prison…The dedication of Williams’ book “Life in Prison” casts significant doubt on his personal redemption. This book was published in 1998, several years after Williams’ claimed redemptive experience. Specifically, the book is dedicated to “Nelson Mandela, Angela Davis, Malcolm X, Assata Shakur, Geronimo Ji Jaga Pratt, Ramona Africa, John Africa, Leonard Peltier, Dhoruba Al-Mujahid, George Jackson, Mumia Abu-Jamal, and the countelss other men, women, and youths who have to endure the hellish oppression of living behind bars.” The mix of individuals on this list is curious. Most have violent pasts and some have been convicted of committing heinous murders, including the killing of law enforcement. But the inclusion of George Jackson on this list defies reason and is a significant indicator that Williams is not reformed and that he still sees violence and lawlessness as a legitimate means to address societal problems.

Why does Governor Schwarzenegger say such a thing? It’s documented in a footnote within his decision, although this wouldn’t be a good fit for radio, so it’s understandable Tom Sullivan didn’t read it. But in my judgment, it fits in “great” on a blog page, although it’s certainly not the kind of thing that will add a pick-up to your day:

George Jackson was a militant activist and prison inmate who founded the violent Black Guerilla Family prison gang. Jackson was charged with the murder of a San Quentin correctional officer. In 1970, when Jackson was out to court in Marin County on the murder case, his brother stormed the courtroom with a machine gun, and along with Jackson and two other inmates, took a judge, the prosecutor and three others hostage in an escape attempt. Shooting broke out. The prosecutor was paralyzed from a police bullet, and the judge was killed by a close-range blast to his head when thet shotgun taped to his throat was fired by one of Jackson’s accomplices. Jackson’s brother was also killed. Then, three days before trial was to begin in the correctional officer murder case, Jackson was gunned down in the upper yard at San Quentin Prison in another foiled escape attempt on a day of unparalleled violence in the prison that left three officers and three inmates dead in an earlier riot that reports indicate also involved Jackson.

My take on it? This is a culture of violence. It goes beyond even a culture of anarchy — anarchy would mean, opposing law and order in our society whether that law and order is on your side, or not. This is a culture of selective anarchy, of cherry-picking what rules to follow and when. A law that compels Tookie Williams to die, is to be opposed; but if the law came up with some bullshit excuse to let him languish, enjoying days and years that his victims cannot enjoy, well then that law would have been peachy-keen. And a law that required his release? Even better.

It’s the Culture of Clinton. Say what you have to say to get-away-with-it. Just bullshit your way out of trouble when you have to.

That’s what this was all about. Just sending messages to people thinking about killing other people. Send a message that they could die for doing so? Or send a message that, with the right bunch of Hollywood celebrities and P.R. men, they can bullshit their way out of trouble?

This is why Governor Schwarzenegger’s decision should cause all intelligent people living in this state, and beyond, to “Have A Nice Day.” That doesn’t mean to smile or feel good, necessarily, because after all this is a grave, serious issue. But the lives of the weakest and most innocent among us are on the line, throughout 12:01 a.m. tomorrow and beyond. The right decision was made, this time, so that they are now a little bit safer.

To the extent you can feel “happiness” about an issue like this, involving the components of nature that are the very harshest in the human ecosystem, it certainly is justification for feeling that. And in order to get “happy,” you don’t have to be frothing at the mouth, you don’t have to have a facial tic, you don’t even have to be the kind of guy who yells at his television set during a football game. All you have to do, is to regard the collective ability of our innocent people to live out their lives, as an important thing.

Well, pardon me for saying so, but I do. I think those peoples’ lives are more important than Mr. Williams’ life — Williams has created a situation where we cannot respect their lives, and his, at the same time. They are more important than he is, and they should win. They did. I’m “happy.”

Mommy is a Democrat

I’m thinking of getting this book for my kid. “Why Mommy is a Democrat” by lifelong Democrat and political activist Jeremy Zilber, tells the story from his side. Sample page is shown below, but you can see everything the author has to say about his own book at the website that is dedicated to it.

It has become a very popular theme to question and castigate books like this, such as, for example, “Help! Mom! There are liberals under my bed!” which I bought for my son last month. I believe this is intellectually lazy thinking. I mean, apply some mental elbow-grease to this for just a minute: What really is the down-side to buying books like these for your child?

How many people do you know, who were given books like these, as children, and ended up screwed-up-in-the-head? Is this really an epidemic that is sweeping the nation? Has it happened at all?

In my experience, no.

What I see happening, is kids going to college who have never given such things even an ounce of thought, and then some patch-elbowed, Birkenstock-wearing, pony-tail professor gets ahold of ’em. He lectures to them about “Bush’s evil tax cuts,” in a room chock full of kids who have no practical idea what a “tax” is or even what an “income” is. And they become Democrats right there on the spot.

I say, if being a Democrat is such a good idea, just dispense the same lectures at age eight instead of eighteen. Because you know what will happen if everyone does it my way: The kids will get “Mommy is a Democrat” and “Help, Mom!” at exactly the same time. They’ll read both, and see that Democrats like more rules, which leads to more security and more irritation as well. They’ll decide…well, since I’m eight, I like the idea of someone looking out for me, so I think I’ll become a Democrat.

After that…between third grade, and graduation…they’ll bust their asses here and there, doing things for which other people take credit.

And they’ll be told that when they do all the fucking work on a project, it doesn’t really matter, and they should learn to share.

And they’ll wear their caps and gowns to the high school commencement ceremony, full-fledged Republicans (or Libertarians) at least 95% of the time.

And the college professors will be greeted with classes of people who have been Democrats before, and have lived the entire experience already — instead of a bunch of blank slates on which said professors can write whatever they want. Which is what we have now.

So I’m thinking about it, seriously. In my case, though, it would be a waste of some twelve bucks, because the boy’s mother would never let him read such a thing. That’s one of the reasons we’re split up. I’m very keen on telling people how to think, and certain other people are more interested in telling them what to think. Maybe I’ll go ahead and buy the book, and keep it at my house.

Just kidding.

Humans Are Retarded

Continuing with the theme stated below in “Hammer of Bullshit,” this guy lays the same case out so clearly, I need to add nothing. So I shall not.

Weapons of Mass Distraction

Its Official: Humans Are Retarded

Just look at this:

Former South African leader Nelson Mandela should rule the world � with Bill Clinton as his deputy! That�s what respondents said when a BBC Online survey asked them who they would most like to be in charge of the planet.

Gee whiz! Because, you know, the thousands that died in the Kosovo bombings weren�t real people, they were, errm�hamsters! And the half-a-million of Iraqi children were EVIL!

Shit, this is what I call Residual Concept: people tend to overestimate a former leader or VIP when they no longer/never had/have them on the office.

Because the 90s were good then Clinton and Mandela are good too, right? WRONG! The 90s are what got us in our actual situation. The Boom of the stock market turned our economies in pure speculation, the hypocrite environmentalism (recycle and then buy an SUV) destroyed our planet and with it the last chance we had to avoid global warming and worldwide pollution.

The rest is here.

Hammer of Bullshit

One of the recurring themes to this blog, which, of course, nobody reads, is: When we think, we do so as individuals, but our ability to do this critically has a certain monolothic quality to it, and that ability is currently at a nadir, or heading towards one. We puzzle things out well, in a way that makes sense, and in all likelihood we are all doing this, or most of us are. Similarly, if we run around like a bunch of Keystone Kops, unable to form opinions that make the slightest bit of sense, even when rock-solid answers are right in front of our faces — we pollute the whole culture. Even the wisest among us, determined to use the best of their intellect in their daily lives, will find new challenges in doing so.

So there is a certain “climate” to this. It’s like a tide. How high you sit in your boat has something to do with the architecture of that boat, but it has a lot more to do with a tide that affects everyone. Well, this is the time for clam-digging.

As evidence of this, I submit the following.

“Hammer of Truth” has decided to use whatever reputation it has, to spread, and therefore endorse, a claim in “Capitol Hill Blue” that President Bush called the Constitution “just a goddamned piece of paper!”

GOP leaders told Bush that his hardcore push to renew the more onerous provisions of the act could further alienate conservatives still mad at the President from his botched attempt to nominate White House Counsel Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court.

“I don�t give a goddamn,” Bush retorted. “I�m the President and the Commander-in-Chief. Do it my way.”

“Mr. President,” one aide in the meeting said. “There is a valid case that the provisions in this law undermine the Constitution.”

“Stop throwing the Constitution in my face,” Bush screamed back. “It�s just a goddamned piece of paper!”

To believe this is on the up-and-up, you have to believe the three “GOP leaders” decided to expose this nasty attitude about our nation’s charter in said nation’s highest office, by uncovering it before the harsh, scrutinizing light of — Capitol Blue. And Capitol Blue alone. And then what you have to do, is rub directly against the most reasonable inference to be drawn from this premise; namely, that the three GOP leaders have some bone to pick with someone at Capitol Blue, and fed it a red herring so that this blog could make a raging ass out of itself before its audience.

No, you have to presume this is on the up-and-up. Bush really said it, and so as a consequence, the GOP leaders ran running off to Capitol Blue, perhaps missing lunch with, or phone conferences with, or bumping into on the rainy sidewalk of our nation’s capitol, several of the most prestigious reporters from the Washington Post, New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal.

No, for a scandal of this size, only Capitol Blue will do. None of those hick-town backwoods tobaccy-rags like The Post.

And then you have to believe that a guy who is now in his eleventh consecutive year in office as an executive, would tell his associates they can get around the Constitution because it’s just a piece of paper. The problem with that is, if you’re that guy, once you have leveraged your office to engage in looming challenges in the legal arena based on a “piece of paper,” the piece of paper ceases to be just a piece of paper.

Think about it. Let’s say the problem isn’t the Constitution, but something else. A Memorandum of Agreement signed by your pinhead boss. Or your boss’ pinhead predecessor. Now everyone in the office wants to do something so badly, they would piss on an outlet to be able to do it, but they can’t do it because of the MOA. You assemble your finest legal minds to find a way to do it, and a great atmosphere of frustration consumes all of you. Of course, everyone in your office has the same visceral reaction to the MOA, that our President is supposed to have to the Constitution.

Now who, in their right mind, would say something like “Stop it! It’s just a piece of paper!” Even the boss wouldn’t do that. You’ve been working all hours for two solid weeks, ordering in from take-out restaurants to fight this piece of paper…anyone who called it “just a piece of paper,” even the boss, would forfeit whatever credibility he had. And people don’t go to offices to forfeit credibility. Even people who hate their jobs don’t do that, not on purpose.

So no, I don’t believe even Franklin Roosevelt said anything like that. And incidentaly, there is a President who really and truly used the Constitution as toilet paper. He actually fought the letter and spirit of that document, spending his political capital and seriously eroding his popularity to do so. But can you really envision him saying something like “C’mon, it’s easy! What the hell am I paying you guys for? Find a way around it, it’s just a piece of paper!”

So does it do sufficient damage to one’s own believability, to simply pass this rumor along with your masthead on top of it? Or is there some frosting that should be put on top of that cake? Hammer of Truth apparently favors the latter.

Regardless, we here at Hammer of Truth don�t need much convincing that previous administration actions speak louder than these reported words when it comes to Bush�s view of the Constitution.

Hey that’s great. Here’s an opinion of George Bush, that he thinks the Constitution is nothing more than toilet paper. We base this opinion on the “fact” that Capitol Blue has dug up this dubious quote. To verify the fact, we turn to our preconceived opinions, which, in turn, are based on who-knows-what kinds of facts, since, now you know how ironclad and reinforced a “fact” has to be to earn our faith.

It’s like some kind of bizarre chicken-and-egg story. Well, that’s exactly what it is.

“Hammer of Truth” is in great company here. You can see that in the thread beneath the article — one poster issues the caution that the Capitol Blue reporter “is usually pretty meticulous, but care is advised in spreading this one.” Care is advised? How do you go about doing that? “I heard from some dubious blog that I personally don’t care to trust, that so-and-so said such-and-such. There’s no point for me to tell you this, save for the hope that you tell a few other people. Go out and do it. But be careful.”

Another poster says “Anyways, I don�t really doubt that Bush said this. If he did indeed, it is scary as all hell.” Great job. Let’s all vote on whether it’s authentic or not. I never liked that water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit, so let’s vote on that too.

But you know, any loudmouth can ramble away in the forum on a blog. To figure out if there’s a nationalized ability to think critically, which is suffering from deterioration, we should go to more reasoned minds to see what they have to say. Someplace like FARK.

• “I’d love to hear the Bushbots explain this one.”
• “Time to get back on the short bus Dubya.”
• “I don’t believe this capitolhillblue guy’s story, but since when have you ever considered *any* journalist objective? Other than the idiots on Fox News who basically reprint Pentagon and White House press releases, that is?”
• “This is a very unconfirmed quote… But at the same time, its quite obvious its probably true.”
• “Whether he said it or not (I believe he very likely did), his actions tell you that he doesn’t care about the Constitution. Just that someone caught him admitting it.”
• “Remember US Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill? How about Richard Clarke? There have been credible sources going back for years suggesting Bush is a loose cannon.”

There’s a lesson here on how the human mind is inclined to think. We want to think something, we get ahold of a “fact” that has very little evidenciary power, and we are tempted accord the evidence weight proportional to its friendliness with our prejudices. Those of us who can think powerfully, at least to the extent that our minds can assist us in the matter of survival, have to grow out of this. A lot of people don’t grow out of it. As our standard-of-living gets higher, and survival is more of an assured thing, fewer and fewer people grow out of it.

Hammer of Truth wonders “who knows if this will have legs (I have my doubts).” I don’t have too many doubts, myself, in fact I hope to help it along. This strikes me, after all, as one of those ridiculous things that survives when it is merely whispered about, but does devastating things to itself when it is taken too seriously. And hey, if there’s something to it, then it will only be helped along if it is taken seriously, something that will be of benefit to us all.

So shout it from the highest friggin’ rooftops. I don’t have to endorse it in order to do that. C’mon, all you “Bush lied, people died” liberals, you’ve been trying to prove for years that Bush doesn’t respect the Constitution, and here’s your “proof.”

He said it, he said it, he said it. Let’s all demand an investigation, until it gets printed on the New York Times on the front page, above the fold, for a whole month and a half in a row. I’m sure if it’s true, the ensuing events will come as an embarrassment to no one, except the guy who is guilty.

Update 12/12/05: Capitol Blue stands by the story.

We get tips about Bush�s temper and his comments all the time. Most of the tips don�t get used because we don�t go with information from just one source. The tip about �the goddamned piece of paper� seemed destined for the byte bin until a second aide, in casual conversation, mentioned the comment.

So I called a third source who has confirmed information in the past. At first he was defensive.

�Who told you about that?� I told him I�d picked it up from two other sources.

�Look, you know how the President is,� he said. �He gets agitated when people challenge him.�

All I wanted to know was did the President of the United States call the Constitution a �goddamned piece of paper.�

�Yeah. He did.�

So I went with the story. To me it was just another example of a President who too often lets his anger get the better of him, particularly with anyone who dares disagree.

Sounds pretty convincing, huh? Boy, I’m really going to be sorry for my smarmy, cutting comments, above, when this thing gets proven true, right?

I got three words for you: Bring it on. I could delete the post, above, with a few keystrokes. I won’t. Of course, nobody reads this blog, but nevertheless keeping the post intact, is the act of someone who genuinely believes the “piece of paper” quote is a myth. Conversely, the act of someone who genuinely believes the quote is true, would be to take it seriously. Give it some profile, well above some urban legend breezing its way around e-mail servers. Demand an investigation. And don’t take no for an answer.

Anyone gonna do that?

From the Right Brain

Okay, let’s take a break from this left-brain bullcrap of trying to figure out what’s wrong with world & national politics and trying to teach everybody how to think straight. There’s an old saying about leading a horse to water. Besides, some of the things that go on in this world have little to do with figuring things out and fixing them; some of the things that entice our brains, do exactly that and nothing more. It’s one of the pleasures of life, like good food, fine wine, great sex, and …well, some other things that can be pleasurable, but you don’t want me mentioning them in the same sentence as good food.

“Google Blogoscoped” has come up, as of some nine months ago, with a list of the ten types of movie villains. There’s nothing earth-shattering or surprising here, but it does take some organizational skill to put the list together, and this commentator has done the work for everybody else. The last paragraph is particularly entertaining.

Schadenfreude

Here’s a traffic report which somehow saw the light of day without any help from me, whatsoever, in any way, shape, form, matter or regard.

For that, I am thankful (language unsafe for work).

Too Good for the National Security Vote

I’m a “National Security” voter. To me, this issue takes a back seat only to the Constitution. Not “civil liberties,” since I notice those are created, sustained and fortified by advocacy groups, and written nowhere — but the Constitution. This seems to me to not only make sense, but to apply across the board, to all intelligent, living things.

A thing that survives, must have an instinct to survive, plus a conscious determination to do so. And a thing that survives for a stated purpose, must have an internal definition of that purpose, and live according to the service of that purpose. So if the United States promotes a value system that is ultimately destructive to its own continued existence, the United States becomes a pointless exercise. Likewise, if the United States creates a policy supportive of its continued existence, but contrary to the Constitution, again, the United States becomes a pointless exercise.

Ergo: Upholding the Constitution, in letter and spirit, is the supreme consideration that takes a back seat to none other. Immediately subordinate to this, and to nothing else, is the principle of self-preservation.

This is why I would have been opposed to Executive Order 9066 which authorized the internment of Japanese-American citizens — even if the threat was credible, and no other way could be found to counter the threat. And, until someone can create a case that the Patriot Act actually violates the Constitution, I’m in favor of the Patriot Act.

I don’t like what the Republican Party is doing with us National Security voters. That party is taking us for granted, just like the Democratic party is taking black and jewish voters for granted. Where else are we gonna go? We got nowhere else to go.

So the Republican party screws around with us.

The border-control issue, particularly on the Mexican border, has become a disgrace. It’s so bad, that it has become a laughable, silly, wholly implausible idea to suppose there’s any protection left. Think for a moment about what that means. Agents of Al Qaeda, or one of America’s many, many other enemies, living among us? There really are some? More like, how many? How many hundreds? Thousands? Tens of thousands?

Of course, in the purely technical sense, all I’m doing in the paragraph above is speculating — I have no proof. My point is, that it’s irresponsibly extravagant to think otherwise. And what’s truly exasperating, is that the people who disagree with me don’t really argue the point. I don’t see them telling me “oh you silly thing, terrorists don’t want to do that” or something similar. They simply want to change the subject. So I take this as an uncontested fact.

Why are the Republicans so complacent on the issue of border control, and other issues directly related to national security? They have no competition, that’s why. Between a political party that does only some of the things necessary to safeguard the nation, while ignoring other things — and another party that would just as soon change the subject to how our rich old people can swindle more money out of thirty-something apartment rats — I to support the party that does some of the things necessary.

Now the Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Howard Dean, has said there is no way we can win the war in Iraq. “The idea that we are going to win this war is an idea that unfortunately is just plain wrong.” Those are his words. He calls it a “failed strategy.” What is his alternative? Something to do with “redeployment,” as he puts it, which means, withdrawal.

Okay, then what? I don’t know. If he did have some fully flushed-out alternative strategy, some “winning strategy,” what would be the objective of this strategy? I don’t know that either. In fact, does he even see a threat? Certain luminaries celebrated by his party, even embraced by his party, have been heard to say “there is no terrorist threat” at all! So does Chairman Dean even recognize a terrorist threat? I don’t even know that! What’s even worse, is, if I was a gambling guy and I was laying a big fat wage on Howard Dean’s ultimate public position on this, once he’s really painted into a corner, my smart money would have to say no!

And most Democrats would agree!

Republicans have made the most out of this asinine quote about “we can’t win,” even releasing a new video called Retreat and Defeat. This new ad is going to be devastating to the Democratic party. And when the time comes to do the damage control, the position of the Democrats is going to be…well, you shouldn’t be paying attention to that. Think about your grandma choosing between her next can of cat food and her meds.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

Howard Dean’s party just doesn’t care about national security. It doesn’t even care about rational thinking — it could care less about reasoned opinions based on solid, established facts, the processes involved in forming those opinions from those facts, and what those reasoned opinions say about the future of our country and what is needed to secure it. His party just cares about demagoguery; what you have to say to get people rattled about old people, cat food and pills. What that means is, when the issue becomes one of national security, they have settled on a habit of changing the subject by insulting the intelligence of anyone who chooses to discuss it.

In short, as a concerned voter who cares about national security, his party regards itself as “too good” for my vote. If you, likewise, are concerned about national security, Howard Dean and his minions just think they are all too smart for you, and they don’t want your vote.

They get their asses kicked in one election after another. Their meaning in life, right now, is to find ways to win elections. Logically, this would have to mean they are looking for large groups of people they have been alienating, intentionally or otherwise, and find a way to bring those groups into the fold. Their refusal to do that, here, can only mean this: If they showed concern about national security, they would win some voters, and alienate a great many more. There are people voting for democrats, now, who don’t want the United States to protect itself.

Yes, I understand the democrats have created a stigma against saying that in any public form. But logic cannot support any other conclusion. That’s just the way it is.

Not a month goes by that the Democratic party isn’t presented with a good-sized handful of opportunities to dispel the notion that their platform is apathetic about national security.

They haven’t done it. They won’t do it. It would be one step forward, and two steps back. If that were not true, they would have done it by now.

We Need More Adjectives!

Suspending no less than twenty officers in the San Francisco Police Department, Police Chief Heather Fong commented in a joint statement with Mayor Gavin Newsom that the punishment was being taken in response to a video whose content was “immature and vulgar to sexist, racist and homophobic.” Newsom commented separately that the videos were “a series of vignettes, skits, that are some of the most egregious skits I’ve seen.”

It seems the home video was made without any intention of airing it outside of the department. Someone within the department, “snitched.” That last word is mine. Nobody in the story has used it, to my knowledge, but it does seem to be an apt description of what happened here.

Here at House of Eratosthenes, when the time is right, we call things immature and egregious and sexist and vulgar, and even racist and homophobic. But we don’t form such opinions because others have told us to. We form opinions, here, based on facts, which means we like to see the raw data for ourselves.

Therefore, leaving uncommented-upon the question of whether or not the video is egregi– oh, hell, you know, all them fancy adjectives up there — I’d just like to say this. It is of great concern to me, how much easier it is to dig up this denunciation of the videos, which the officials of San Francisco would obviously like every two-legged mammal within broadcast distance to adopt as their own. Compared to, how breathtakingly difficult it is to find the actual footage, which, obviously, you need to do if you want to form your own opinion.

Okay, not breathtakingly. This is the Age of Google. But the point is, for a society in which everone wants to claim credit for forming their own individual opinion, it sure is a helluva lot easier to “download” someone else’s opinion, than it is to get the raw data so you can form your own. Here is your link.

Stupid Is as Stupid Does

Nobody ever reads this blog, but if someone does trip across it I hope they appreciate what it is they found. After all, you can only get so stupid before you can’t reasonably be expected to write anything, therefore, there’s a certain threshold of stupidity where you’ll be lucky to find anything written by anyone that stupid.

I’m beneath that threshold. Well beneath it.

I know this is the case, because I’m told so, often, by the anti-war crowd. Furthermore, I know it to be true, because I know most stupid people at least understand why they are stupid, whereas I’m still trying to figure out the defining characteristics of my own stupidity. I am FAR beneath stupid. If I stand on my tippy toes and reach way up, I can almost touch the toenails of other stupid people on the Stupid Chart.

For example, there is Ann Coulter. In response to her barbed comment, “I love to engage in repartee with people who are stupider than I am,” CNN has decided to conduct a QuickVote poll. Why is it that the University of Connecticut students are thought, by Coulter, to be stupider than she is? Well, to my stupid mind, it might very well have something to do with the fact that they booed her speech, heckling her to the point that she had to cancel and hold a question-and-answer session instead. You know, maybe this is the evidence for which I’m looking that supports my own stupidity — because I’m ready to sign on to what Coulter said. There is a quote attributed to Napoleon that address this situation, “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake”; to me, that just makes good sense. It seems stupid to do this interrupting, which is exactly what the students did. Maybe Napoleon was stupid too.

Well, in CNN-World, we know this must be true, because — why else? — the poll says so. The poll! As of this writing, 63% of respondents say Coulter is stupider, compared with 37% saying the students are stupid. My stupid mind is a little confused as to what to make of this situation, where stupid people are confident enough to let the other side speak and actually respond to what they have to say, whereas intellectual giants apparently have to boo and hiss to make sure their antagonists are never allowed to get a word in edgewise. For anyone who still requires more evidence of how stupid I am, I freely confess that the soapbox-hogging never looked that brilliant or clever to me. Oh, maybe I should go to the Land of Oz and get a brain, so I can start to untangle this.

I do have something in my collection of stupid books, that I have stupidly been accumulating. It took my stupid brain only a few minutes to remember where I’d seen it, and after my stupid fingers flipped through the pages a few minutes more I managed to find it on page 121:

If liberals were prevented from ever calling Republicans dumb, they would be robbed of half their arguments…the loss of “dumb” would nearly cripple them. 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 ability to mount logical counterarguments…the “you’re stupid” riposte is part of the larger liberal tactic of refusing to engage ideas. Sometimes they evaporate in the middle of an argument and you’re left standing alone, arguing with yourself. More often, liberals withdraw figuratively by responding with ludicrous and irrelevant personal attacks.

Now, I’d love to proclaim that I’m “learning” something and getting “smarter” by insisting that the above doesn’t make any sense to me. But I’d be lying. It matches my personal experience like a hand fitting into a glove. But I read it in a book, something stupid people aren’t supposed to be able to do, so how can this be? Oh, I get it, my stupid eyes neglected to take note of the cover, which I notice is titled “Slander: Liberal Lies about the American Right, by Ann Coulter.” Noted, documented stupid person, voted that way by two-thirds of respondents to CNN’s poll (no dummies there!).

Joining Napoleon, Annie and me at the Stupid Table, I guess, is Larry Elder who began a correspondence with his intellectual superior. It took Elder just two written exchanges before he earned the following retort:

At first, I really thought I was dealing with an intellectual equal when our chats began. You have disappointed me.

And here is the most thundering, incandescent proclamation of my stupidity to date: I have scanned the passages of what Elder wrote to provoke such a reaction, scanned again, and scanned yet again. Suffice it to say Larry Elder is still fooling me, because I lack the mental acumen to get past the illusion and comprehend the full magnitude of his stupidity. In fact, I read the entire exchange, and I can’t even find any evidence of anything stupid. It appears, to my stupid mind, to be a textbook case of being given a “factoid,” and properly questioning the source from whence it came.

Dear Mr. Elder: … How you can support an illegal war waged specifically to line the pockets of rich American Republicans, a war that has killed at least a half a million innocent Iraqis and now well over 2,000 volunteer soldiers, and has made us the most hated people in the world, is beyond my comprehension. I travel the world extensively, and let me tell you that the U.S.A. is completely out of step with the rest of the planet Earth. …

Sincerely,

‘Sarah,’ retired public school administrator and university professor

Dear Sarah,

Please tell me, do you have a source for your statement about the death of ‘at least a half a million innocent Iraqis’? …

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Larry

My stupid mind is currently working on a theory. Since I’m such a raging idiot, it’s unlikely that there is anything to the theory, but hey even a stopped clock is right twice a day, so I figure it’s worth pondering. I think this threshold of stupidity is moving. After all, like I said, it is a good distance over my head, being so well established as it is, that I’m so incredibly stupid and everything. But with the passage of time, I notice this development where if you simply question the “facts” you are given, you are now stupid.

Conversely, you can base opinions on facts, and then when you are questioned about the source of those facts you simply base them on other opinions — this somehow makes you an intellectual superior.

Well. Maybe if my fat stupid head is patient enough, someone will come along and explain it so my stupid brain can comprehend it.

Update: Just for kicks, I linked to this post on FARK. If you have a TOTALFARK membership, you can view the ensuing thread Here. If you don’t, but would like a summary, I’ll just say most of the participants agreed that what I had to say, was, well…stupid.

10 Neediness, 86 Self-Confidence

I don’t think I understand this test. Seems to be on some kind of single’s web site. According to the bar charts, I’m spectacularly self-confident. Maybe they’re confusing self-confidence with apathy about other people.

You scored 10 neediness and 86 self confidence!

We’ve all had our attention whoring moments, but lets face it, some people have made a completely lifestyle out of it. My advice. Either, don’t breed, or at least bleach the gene pool before you do.

I shouldn’t breed? Too late, guys. Sorry about that.

About the time I stopped dating liberal women for good, some decade or so ago, I began to become aware of a phenomenon in which said liberal women tried to manufacture more liberal men. They did this then, and continue to do it today, with their verginers. I’m about to describe, pretty much, exactly what you think I’m going to. I saw they would put out subtle clues that, as they made the God-only-knows-how-complicated decision about whether the rooster would be allowed into the henhouse that night, said rooster’s political opinions were definitely part of the equation. How flattering it was for knight to know that his princess’ special evening with him, was just a tiny figment within a grand master plan to change the political direction of the country!

Perhaps in another time, history would have gone different for me. But Clinton was finishing his second year in office, and my mouth, which couldn’t be silenced, cost me a handful of carnal opportunities. I’m grateful for this. There are men who are much more seasoned than I am and much more intelligent than I am, who to this day don’t understand how empowering it is to tell a woman the following, and mean it: You are right, we’ll both be happier with other people, best luck to you and don’t let the doorknob hit you in the ass.

It is seldom done. Men aren’t wired for it. We’re the keymasters, they’re the gatekeepers.

And perhaps that is why there seem to be so many men, who appear to be relatively adventurous, sexually, who are well on their way to old age without having learned this: Women, by and large, don’t crave yes-men. Smart women, stupid women, blondes, brunettes, redheads — when they pick up the essence of a strong, decisive man, it’s like the most powerful pheromone. Men who are decisive about important stuff, “We aren’t buying aluminum siding from that asshole,” or silly stuff — “I like beer, I like hotwings.” I’m not talking about being a raging dickhole just for its own sake.

I’m talking about treating the lady with respect by saving her some freakin’ energy. Making a decision without checking with her, once in awhile. Women crave this, especially the ones that frequently demand the opposite. I’ve written about this before.

But once a man starts down the slope of “Pillsbury Doughboy,” molding and shaping himself into what a woman says she wants, it becomes egomaniacally important to deny what I have written above. So the men become liberals.

It must be an awful existence, because I notice liberal men seem to have dry spells now and then, just like conservative men. How else do you explain these “mating calls” wherein they are forced to advertise their pliable philosophies, in their role as slaves in search of a mistress. And what is up with THAT? Shouldn’t indentured servitude, and unemployment, be mutually-exclusive albatrosses? How badly do you have to screw up to end up wearing both of them on your neck at the same time?

One of these liberal mating-call advertisements has something to do with “appreciating a woman with spunk.”

What I find a little bit silly about this whole thing is, when “a woman with spunk” has our own values, we all appreciate that; and when she doesn’t, who the hell does this guy think he’s kidding? Locked into the timeless “when are you going to stand up to your mother” argument that has resurfaced periodically since Shakesperean times, and before, every man is going to find a spunky woman a raging pain in the ass. When a man advertises that he likes a spunky woman without reservation, what he is advertising is that he never, or seldom, has been in a position where he disagrees with his woman.

And when women have been around long enough to figure out what they like in men, and what they don’t, this doesn’t intrigue them. Not in the slightest.

But we’re all entitled to our personal tastes, so if these guys are out there in an endless search for a “Mommy” figure to tell them what to do and what to think, more power to’em. Here at this blog, however, we have a “You Go First” rule about such things. You crusade for a law against being able to watch TV from the dining room table, you should be among the first to position your dining room table so you can’t see the TV. You think more people should be driving hybrid cars, you should be among the first to buy one.

And if you think there should be more spunky, assertive women flooding our streets, lying in wait to pounce on the rest of us whether we ask for it or not, you should be married to a woman like Barbara Streisand for six months or so.

I don’t mean to complain, here, about women who are opinionated. Good heavens, no. If it were so impossible to be around opinionated people, a lot of us who are not alone, would have to be — and certainly I would be among them. But it’s a cinch that if Babs doesn’t think the Los Angeles Times should be allowed to go about its day, free to think about other things besides the recent sacking of Robert Scheer, her stud James Brolin probably isn’t free to think about too much else either.

And is he free to disagree, perhaps to think something like, for example, it’s about goddamned time the Los Angeles Times got rid of that s.o.b.? That is a private matter for the Streisand/Brolin household to hash out, of course.

But for chrissakes, don’t make me laugh.

LOS ANGELES – Barbra Streisand has canceled her subscription to the Los Angeles Times over the firing of the paper’s liberal columnist.

The newspaper dropped Robert Scheer and several other columnists last month; Scheer speculated he was let go because the Times had tired of his politics.

Perhaps the most liberal voice on the paper’s opinion pages, Scheer had been a Times columnist for 12 years. He was a reporter for the newspaper for 17 years before that.

“Robert Scheer’s column, with its often singular voice of dissent and groundbreaking expositional content, has been among the most notable features that have sustained my interest in subscribing to the LA Times for many years now,” Streisand wrote in a letter she sent to the newspaper and posted on her Web site.

Streisand, a well-known supporter of Democratic candidates and liberal causes, wrote that by firing Scheer the Times had reduced the diversity of voices on its opinion pages. A shortened version of her letter was printed in the Times Nov. 23. The full letter is posted on her Web site.

You know, it really isn’t that hard to figure Barbra Streisand out, and there are millions and millions of people who suffer from her illness, not all of them women. It’s very simple. Barbra cannot state a compelling case as to why you should think a certain thing, because she’s formed an unattractive and unproductive habit of skipping to that last part and simply telling people what to think. That’s where she was years and years ago. Her disease has metastasized, now, to the point where she can’t do anything without telling lesser people what they’re supposed to be thinking. She makes a movie, she must tell lesser people what to think. She runs a website, she must tell lesser people what to think. She writes a letter to the newspaper, she must tell lesser people what to think. She takes a shower, brushes her teeth, washes her naughty bits, takes a crap, she must tell lesser people what to think.

Not this is what I noticed and this is why I think it’s important and this is what it must mean and why…but, simply, this is what you should think. Passing out opinions like hard-candy, as opposed to the well-stated, logically-established arguments upon which those opinions rest. It is a subtle, but meaningful, difference. Barbra, and people like her, wouldn’t understand it. I pity her for that, but I pity her more, for this apparent inability to do even the most trivial things in life, without telling people what they’re supposed to be thinking.

It appears to have become something like a bad case of gas.

I have a short list of final chapters to my existence within this mortal coil, which I absolutely dread. One is burning to death in a car, from which I’m unable to extract myself. The rest of them have to do with being alienated from my own thinking apparatus: a brain tumor, like the one I watched slowly kill my mother; strokes; dementia; schizophrenia; and…

…living with some bitter old cow who wants to dictate to me what my opinions should be.

I’m probably “doomed” to never experience the last of those. For that, President Clinton has my undying gratitude.

A Little Exercise

Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, appearing before a judge following his indictment on an itty-bitty charge and a great-big ass-pounding charge, got mixed results on his defense’s motion to have the case thrown out, which is worse than his supporters had hoped. The itty-bitty charge of Conspiracy was thrown out, and the pound-me-in-the-ass charge of Money Laundering was upheld, which means of course that Mr. DeLay will be required to appear at trial. The upholding of the ass-pounding charge is much more important than the dismissal of the itty-bitty charge, because any hopes he had of resuming his House leadership position as Majority Leader, are DOA.

Texas Judge Pat Priest, who is presiding over the case against the Republican, issued the ruling after a hearing late last month in which DeLay’s attorney argued that the indictment was fatally flawed.

When he was indicted in September, DeLay was required under House rules to relinquish the leadership post he had held since 2003. While Monday’s ruling was a partial victory for DeLay, he cannot reclaim his post because he remains under indictment.

The ruling means the case will move toward a trial next year, though other defense objections to the indictments remain to be heard by the judge.
:
DeLay, 58, and two GOP fundraisers, John Colyandro and Jim Ellis, are accused of illegally funneling $190,000 in corporate donations to 2002 Republican candidates for the Texas Legislature. Under Texas law, corporate money cannot be directly used for political campaigns, but it can be used for administrative purposes.
:
The alleged campaign-finance scheme had far-reaching political effects: With DeLay’s fundraising muscle, the GOP took control of the Texas House for the first time in 130 years, then pushed through a congressional redistricting plan engineered by DeLay that resulted in more Texas Republicans going to Congress.

This means, without doubt, that tomorrow we should expect to be somewhat inundated with snippets about the “Republican Culture of Corruption.” After all, it was just a little over a month ago that Mister Democrat himself, Howard Screamin’ Dean, warmed us up for the Halloween season by yelling “YEEEEEAAAAAARRRRRGGGGHHHH!!!” No, I made that last part up. He warmed us up for the Halloween season by waxing poetic about the Republican Culture of Corruption:

The Bush White House is the most corrupt administration in U.S. history since President Warren G. Harding’s, said Howard Dean during his first visit to Maine as chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Dean’s comments Saturday came as top White House advisers are being investigated for their roles in the outing of a CIA operative and Tom DeLay, the former second-ranking Republican in the House of Representatives, faces conspiracy and money-laundering charges.

“The first thing we’re going to do is we’re going to have ethics come back to Washington again,” said Dean, the keynote speaker at Saturday night’s annual fundraising dinner for the Maine Democratic Party at the Lewiston Armory.
:
More than 400 party loyalists listened as Dean described Democrats as a party of moral values, while criticizing Republicans as trying to divide Americans over race, sexual orientation and country of origin.

Dean said Republicans should not have interfered in the Terri Schiavo right-to-life case.

“I’m tired of the ayatollahs of the right wing,” Dean said. “We’re fighting for freedom in Iraq. We’re going to fight for freedom in America.”

Dean urged Maine Democrats to run for state office in 2006, and to maintain Democratic control of the State House that Gov. John Baldacci needs to push through his initiatives.
:
The purpose of the annual Jefferson-Jackson Dinner was to raise money and rally the party faithful, and the event often took a light-hearted tone. Allen made one of several DeLay jokes of the night when he said he heard there was a new television show called “Desperate House Leaders.”

Okay, now fast forward to this last Friday. Ken Rudin, writing for NPR, picked up Screamin’ Dean’s line and started waxing poetic on what has come to be an undeniable trend, wherein the most powerful Republicans face indictment, come under indictment, are sentenced, have to resign their offices, or just generally have a whole lot of legal whispering about their names around the beltway. Being well aware that a big chunk of his column “looks like it was written by the Democratic National Committee, and knowing some of my regular correspondents, I will be accused of parroting the DNC line,” Rudin nevertheless blossoms forward with the stuff that was apparently written by the Democratic National Committee, and proceeds to parrot the DNC line.

So now it’s Duke Cunningham.

When Lewis Libby, the vice president’s former chief of staff, is under indictment; when the most powerful member of the House, Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX), is forced to resign his leadership post following an indictment; when his former spokesman, Michael Scanlon, pleads guilty to bribery charges and agrees to cooperate in the investigation of an associate, top Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff (and one which could also bring down Rep. Robert Ney (R-OH), chairman of the House Administration Committee); when Bill Frist (R-TN), the Senate majority leader, is under scrutiny by the Security and Exchange Commission; and when Karl Rove, the president’s top political aide, is still under investigation by a special prosecutor, the guilty plea and subsequent resignation of Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-CA) on bribery charges just adds to the party’s misery.

Let’s do a little mental exercise, shall we.

Since the facts that Rudin recites are undeniable — in fact, now, more damning than they were 72 hours ago — and since, boy-oh-boy, they sure look indicative of Mister “YEEEEEAAAAAARRRRRGGGGHHHH!!!”‘s Culture of Corruption: Let us just give him this. Let us all agree there is a Culture of Corruption in the Republican party. Being a Republican is being corrupt, and being corrupt is being Republican. Let’s just go with that for sake of argument.

Let us further suppose that I’m going to run for Congress. Yes, me. The guy who writes a blog nobody reads. I haven’t led a personal life that would withstand the anal/rectal exam through which one must go when one runs for office — don’t look so relieved — but let’s just say I go ahead and do this. And what the hell, why not run as a Republican? Republicans are filthy, after all, it’s the Culture of Corruption. I’d fit right in!

So Corrupt Mister Freeberg runs for office as Republican Congressman Freeberg. And of course I win; after all, I’m corrupt! Remember? So here comes Corrupt, Republican, Freshman Congressman Freeberg in his brand new limousine with his brand new parking spot and his brand new…aw, I haven’t the slightest clue what those guys have. I’ll bet it’s pretty sweet. My own real live starship? Whatever.

So Morgan Freeberg goes to Congress and starts being a corrupt Republican. La dee dah…boy it sure is fun, being corrupt.

And, since I’m a freshman, I don’t really know the ins and outs of things. I start trusting people I shouldn’t be trusting, because, after all, I’m a freshman. I bribe people who don’t take bribes. I talk at the wrong meetings. I threaten the wrong people. I’m sloppy.

Of course I get nailed! Stupid green little freshman Congressman Freeberg!

And there are over 220 corrupt Republican congressmen just like me, maybe over half of them fresh and stupid. Plus 55 corrupt Republican senators, let’s say, between 15 and 20 of them fresh and stupid. We all get nailed because with our inexperience, we don’t know how to avoid it. Oh, we’re seasoned at being corrupt of course — we just don’t know how to do it in Washington! We just got here!

But the law won’t give us a break. So down the river we go. All hundred and fifty or so of us stupid, inexperienced, fresh, green, gullible corrupt Republicans. We wear pinstripes, while our wiser, seasoned, more experienced corrupt mentors look upon us with a mixture of disappointment, embarrassment, disgust, and maybe some empathy for the ass-poundings the freshman class is about to get. Bye, freshmen!

Okay, let’s step back in reality now. Take a look around. This is not what has been happening.

The Vice-President’s Chief of Staff.

The House Majority Leader’s former spokesman.

The House Majority Leader himself.

A top Republican lobbyist; not one of those fly-by-night dime-a-dozen lobbyists.

The Chairman of the House Administration Committee.

The Senate Majority Leader.

The President’s top political aid.

An eight-term congressman from San Diego and Chairman of the House Intelligence Subcommittee.

Where are all the know-nothing freshmen in this Culture of Corruption? Are we being asked to believe this is a thing where the senior slimeballs keep hanging themselves out to dry, while the newcomer slimeballs who haven’t even had a chance to become dried and crusty, wisely avoid the pitfalls? What is this — you learn the ropes on your first day, and then as you get older you forget them?

Or is this a poorly-organized Culture of Corruption that continues to send its grand-high-poobahs to do the dirty work, and thus risk getting nailed? While the freshmen just sit around? Perhaps being lazy corrupt people?

Kind of like Captain Kirk beaming down to the planet to fight the lasagna-monsters, while the strong-back weak-minds stay up topside, safely scrubbing the Enterprise’s 23rd-century latrines?

Or is it just an odd coincidence that the senior figures who pose the biggest threat to the opposing party, are the ones that hafta-go-down? And someone, somewhere, is making these decisions, without accountability, exposure, or even scrutiny?

Anybody who stumbles across this blog and reads this post, can make up their own mind. I’ve made up mine.

The Torture Debate

For the nobodies who never read this blog, it may be an item of marginal interest that there is a specific reason why this blog is called “House of Eratosthenes.” It has to do with rules about how to think. Now, over the last year this blog has published a lot of posts that adhere to these rules, without a single mention about the rules; I’m not big on rules, especially rules about how to think. I think these are things we form for our own use and there’s very little value to communicating them to others — even in a blog nobody reads. But by popular demand, from the people who never read this blog, maybe I’ll describe it. Sometime.

Meanwhile, for those who really want to know, my suggestion is to load the name into Google and check out the dude who had the name. The library administrator. It has to do with finding out big things by applying critical thinking, when at first blush it might appear you lack the tools needed to find anything out. That’s all I’ll say now.

Suffice it to say the rules I have in mind about thinking, are being not only violated, and torn asunder, but shredded into fine mulch within our current Torture Debate. For one thing, we have allowed our media to define the credibility of each proposed cognition, against how much said cognition helps or hurts our current President. That’s bass-ackward; obviously, how friendly a proposed finding-of-fact is to the current administration, is completely unrelated to whether it has truthful or logical merit or not. Another problem is that the word “torture” is being used at all. The T-word has no bearing at all on what is being debated, and on this, both sides — provided they are informed and sincere — emphatically agree.

In this broadcast from NPR Talk of the Nation, November 28, the producers have done a great job of presenting both sides of the argument and just generally cutting through the bullshit. However, it concerns me mightily that some things were outside the realm of dispute four years ago, and sometime recently have been moved, for political purposes, back into that realm. This violates another one of the above-mentioned rules about critical thinking. I refer, here, to the proposition that “torture” or whatever you want to call it, actually works.

To demonstrate that, I quote from the write-up of the compassionate, progressive mindset that appeared in October of 2001 in Slate, not exactly an online mecca of neocon dittoheads:

There’s no doubt that torturing terrorists and their associates for information works. In 1995, Philippine intelligence agents tortured Abdul Hakim Murad, whom they arrested after he blew up his apartment making bombs. The agents threw a chair at Murad’s head, broke his ribs, forced water into his mouth, and put cigarettes out on his genitals, but Murad didn’t talk until agents masquerading as the Mossad threatened to take him back to Israel for some real questioning. Murad named names. His confession included details of a plot to kill Pope John Paul II, as well as plots to crash 11 U.S. airliners into the ocean and to fly an airplane into the CIA headquarters in Langley, Va. His co-conspirator Ramzi Yousef was later convicted for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Similarly unappealing methods helped the CIA uncover the millennium bomb plot of 1999, after al-Qaida terrorists were questioned in Egypt and Jordan.

[Update Oct. 23, 2001: In stating that the millennium bomb plotters were tortured prior to divulging the plot, I am guilty of over-reading an Oct. 15 article by Walter Pincus in the Washington Post. Pincus writes, “The CIA worked with Jordanian, Egyptian, Canadian and Pakistani services, picking up terrorists, some associated with al Qaeda, and moving them to either Jordan or Egypt” and that information from those sources disrupted the bombings. While Pincus did not report, and we cannot know, whether those terrorists were tortured in Egypt and Jordan, he states two paragraphs down that many foreign countries use torture and threats to family members in interrogations. Egypt and Jordan are two of the best-known users of torture in interrogations. Nevertheless, the millennium terrorists questioned there in 1999 may well have been interrogated with full regard for their personal and constitutional rights.]

The CIA has always known that torture works. According to declassified CIA interrogation manuals, the CIA has taught others how it’s done, in Nicaragua, Guatemala, and other Latin American countries. The manuals refer to using “deprivation of sensory stimuli,” “threats and fear,” “food and sleep deprivation,” and pain to extract information. The most famous case of CIA use of domestic torture was that of Yuri Nosenko, a former KGB agent who defected to the United States in 1964. Believing he was a Soviet spy, the CIA kept Nosenko in solitary confinement for more than three years in a 10-foot-square concrete cell. He was, for long periods of time, denied food, sunlight, reading materials, and human contact. He claims to have been given LSD. When he attempted to build toys out of lint, they were confiscated. The CIA freed Nosenko in 1967, finally concluding he was a bona fide defector after all. This episode and government inquiries into similar situations prompted the dismissal of many executives of the counterintelligence department in the 1970s.

A more recent case of CIA-sanctioned torture involved Efrain Bamaca Velasquez, a Guatemalan revolutionary. His widow, Jennifer Harbury, alleges in a lawsuit that the agency financed and indirectly participated in efforts to torture information out of him, leading ultimately to his death in the early 1990s. She also alleges that the Guatemalans who tortured her husband were paid by the CIA and that two had been trained in torture and interrogation techniques at the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas. Last January, in Harbury v. Deutch , the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals found that the torture had not violated Bamaca’s Fifth Amendment due process rights. Prior case law holds that noncitizens’ rights are violated only in cases of: 1) physical presence in the United States at the time; 2) their mistreatment in a country where the United States exercises de facto political control; or 3) abuse in the course of abduction for trial in an American court. The D.C. Circuit relied heavily on a Supreme Court case, U.S. v. Verdugo-Urquidez (1990), holding that evidence found during an illegal Fourth Amendment search of a nonresident alien’s property in a foreign country was admissible at trial in the United States.

Folks, we’re being snowed big-time. You can’t write an article in December of 2005, for any magazine, periodical or website, outside of perhaps the most courageous, right-wing, or just plain deliberately offsensive, that blossoms forward with a mini-thesis demonstrating “There’s no doubt that torturing for information works.” You just can’t do it. And yet between October 2001, and now, there has been no mega-scandal involving torture that demonstrably failed to work. We have had a scandal involving torture that offended people — and that’s it. Nothing to demonstrate, or even to imply, that the practice is ineffective.

So flailing around for reasons, between 2001 and now, to believe that “torture never works” or “torture very often doesn’t work,” we’re left concluding the grasping exercise empty-handed. Yet we have some media shills dictating to us that this is the opinion we are supposed to have. We don’t have access to the classified information that would demonstrate this; in most cases, neither do the shills; and applying our best, critical forensic thinking to the information we can get, the most reasoned inference we can form, is that torture works just fine and dandy.

Especially when you compare it to the alternative. Which is to just sit on your ass, make sure the prayer rugs are clean, double-check to make sure the good cream cheese is getting spread on the bagels you’re serving, and pray to whomever you want that the terrorists you’re watching didn’t somehow get ahold of anything sharp when you weren’t looking.

Something To Chew On

The time has come to have a rational debate about if, when and how the United States should pull out of Iraq. I’m happy to see our national ability to have reasoned debates — such as it is — applied for this purpose. I’m pessimistic about seeing that reasoned debate. There is very little surviving in said “national ability.” If it is a V-8 engine, it has thrown a rod or two, is mixing the oil with the coolant, and is badly in need of a new fuel pump, water pump and plugs — it just won’t go. If it is a copier machine, it reeks of burning toner and scalded mouse flesh, it shakes when it runs and makes an excruciating grinding noise, has smoke coming out of it, and the glass thing on top has been shattered by someone’s ass.

You get the point. We can’t think anymore. We may choose to as individuals, but that doesn’t help you when you try to discuss something with someone else.

What does it take to fix this national ability to think things out? Step One, as far as I’m concerned, is to do something about the dreadful bias — something that can’t be done, until you acknowledge it’s there. Here’s my proof:

Many among those who insist the Iraq invasion was a mistake, are going to further insist that they and their representatives are in favor of the War on Terror, but are simply taking the position that Iraq is a bad target. Therefore, the point of real dispute is a military action that was started in March of 2003.

Now, if and when the War on Terror is yanked off the front pages, however this may be done, we’re all set to resume our arguing about domestic issues. In this country, “domestic issues” refers to two things. 1) Old people, many of whom are not only financially solvent, but enjoy summer homes and Winnebagos, renewing their lease upon an ever-expanding assortment of free drugs and medical care, at the expense of thirty-something apartment rats who are barely making ends meet; and 2) Advoacy groups who represent “minority” classes defined by racial, gender, gender-preference, union-membership and language considerations, coming up with lower and lower thresholds of pain and grievance so they can picket, decry, libel and sue.

There are other things we think of as “domestic issues,” but most of them fall into one of those two categories.

And those two categories have a unified-common-ancestor in the New Deal.

The New Deal started in March of 1933. Exactly seven decades before the Invasion of Iraq.

So the Bush administration has been trying to bring democracy to Iraq, exactly seventy years, to the month, later than the Roosevelt administration started trying to bring socialism here.

I mean “socialism” as in absence of capitalism, and I mean capitalism as the broad, simple contract that holds our society together. “I’ll make demands on you and compensate you for fulfilling them, up to but not beyond the point where I’ve depleted the compensation others have given me for the demands I’ve satisfied of theirs.” Corruption of that simple contract. Erosion of that fragile foundation, by which our society had erected its promise that no man shall be the tyrannical master of another — with no new foundation to provide substitute support.

Capitalism has been crumbling, and with it, the promise has been slipping away — as it must. The government forces people to spend huge, and growing, chunks of their lives, for no purpose but to fulfill the needs and desires of strangers.

The white flag is now being forcefully argued as the only fitting final curtain for President Bush’s quest. His quest to spread democracy abroad — while, for seven decades longer, Democrats have labored to bring socialism here.

So here’s the something to chew on:

If surrender is a noble and fitting end to one of these campaigns, shouldn’t it be a noble and fitting end to the other as well?

Not only is our media unlikely to consider a positive answer to that, it’s highly unlikely to even seriously review the question. I open the paper every day, and I’m going to see evidence that President Bush’s mission has turned into a boondoggle. I could see a lot of evidence that President Roosevelt’s mission, likewise, has turned into a boondoggle. But I won’t.

Some argue that an uncertain or wavering objective in President Bush’s mission, is proof-positive — it’s a boondoggle. Good heavens, how many differences are there between Social Security 2005, and Social Security 1935? Could a reasonable person infer these differences make Social Security a boondoggle, or at least give it a good shove in that direction?

Some argue that Democracy is bound to die in Iraq, so why bother trying. There are other places to live where one can enjoy Democracy. Well again, good heavens. If you like socialism, there are also other places you can live. Scores of places.

And others argue that the campaign to liberate Iraq has just gotten hard to cheer on. It’s gotten boring. It’s gotten to be a pain in the ass.

So for a third time, good heavens!

The two-year-old war must be ended because it’s lost its pizazz. I would say, speaking as one of the generation that must fund it, the seventy-two-year-old war hast lost even more of this pizazz. If we’re oh-so-bored by the two-year-old campaign to create freedom where there once was none, I hope we become similarly bored by the seventy-two-year-old campaign to end that freedom where it was previously enjoyed.

Too Close For Comfort

When I was a 14- or 15-year-old and my adolescent hormones were goin’ at it like a bag of Butter Lover’s Kettle Korn in the microwave, Lydia Cornell immortalized herself in my pubescent memories by strutting around in those kootchie shorts in the first season of “Too Close For Comfort” with those silky, tanned, toned thighs whose gentle curves betrayed the childbearing shape of her goddess-like hips and ass. Whooie. Well, nowadays the silky, tanned, toned thighs are poking out of a cheerleader’s skirt, but only figuratively, and the cheerleader uniform belongs to the Democrats.

Which is okay by me. How many incredibly sexy starlets, both A-list and has-beens, are shills for Democrats? Tons of them; and nowadays, it takes a lot of A-list starlets to make a “ton”. Except Cornell, apparently, is going to plant her own fists on those childbearing hips and get all uppity and cranky with me, if I don’t immediately and uncritically buy into what she’s selling, that she is in fact a Republican:

Dear Ann [Coulter],

I was a Republican for many years, voted for Reagan and still attend Reagan’s former church, Bel Air Presbyterian. I am writing an article about the Alachua Republican Party and wanted to clarifiy something with you. I had heard about your speech in Gainesville and was troubled in regards to your comments on the First Amendment and the stifling of the free speech of Democrats. Do you stand by those remarks? Do you wish to clarify or add anything to them � and do you really feel that stifling free speech and/or violating/changing the U.S. Constitution is the best way help spread democracy to the rest of the world?

There is nothing self-contradictory here, so far. Cornell says she was a Republican, as in past-tense. So it’s logical to conclude she was a Republican when Reagan was running because she liked Reagan’s stuff, and since then has brought her interest in politics to a halt, or jumped over the fence and become a Democrat. Okay fine, I’ll buy that. Lots of “Republicans” have something different in mind for conservatism, besides of what George Bush is selling. Some days, I’m one of them.

But this screed she’s got going, which apparently she posted some eleven days after her query to Ann Coulter, sets the whole thing on its head:

I feel I�m going insane. Right after the 2004 election when You-Know-Who was elected, I actually developed a nervous tic in my left eye, like the Police chief in the Pink Panther, who was driven berserk by Inspector Clousseau. Of course there’s no comparing the lovable Peter Sellers with the witless, war-mongering leader of the free world, but I don’t want my eye twitch to come back so I’m trying to stop hating him so much. I think I figured out a way to talk to Ann Coulter: turn the other cheek and let her hit that one.
:
During my conversation with [Alachua Republican Party Vice-Chairman Bryan] Harman, I was tempted to be confrontational, but made a conscious decision to remain objective and get inside the Republican mind-set.[emphasis mine]

Waitaminnit Lydia! You don’t need to “get inside the Republican mind-set”! You are already there! Or at least you were. At the very least, you once were.

That’s what you said. I’m just taking it seriously, and look what a problem we have here.

You have a nervous tic in your left eye because “You-Know-Who” emerged victorious against Mister Massachusetts Nuance? What policy changes did you, as a former Reagan-voting Republican, want out of Mister Purple Heart Christmas-In-Cambodia Seared-In-Memory Terrorism-Is-Just-A-Nuisance?

I’d really like to know. You start with Ronald Reagan, and take away everything that does NOT look like John Kerry, you get…nothing. You start with Kerry, and remove everything that doesn’t look like Reagan, you still get…nothing.

Is there something I’m missing?

Or are you, with your perfect legs and your perky breasts that look SO appealing under those super-snug, early-eighties sweaters, ready to receive my personal judgment on whether what you have told me is COMPLETE BULLSHIT or not?

I’ll tell you something else that doesn’t quite add up. Ms. Cornell doesn’t think like a Republican, or like anyone who has ever, ever been a Reagan-voting Republican. Look at that post — the point of it is, that Ann Coulter spews hatred and is bad for the Republican party.

I know Republicans who don’t like Ann Coulter. I know Republicans who don’t like her, because they feel she’s a poor representative, a sentiment which Lydia Cornell obviously shares. They do not present their arguments this way. They say “here are the facts…this is how you can get the complete text of what she said…this is my opinion about it, although obviously you are welcome to form your own opinion…and I don’t feel this is acceptable.”

Not so with Ms. Wish-I-Was-A-European Cornell. Lydia Cornell gives us a snippet. She essentially says, like a Democrat union goon, Trust Me, this is what Ann Coulter is all about. Trust me, you don’t need to read her entire speech to make sure I got the context right. And Trust Me, this is what Jesus Christ Himself would have to say about it — it’s my interpretation, and if you’ve got a different one, that doesn’t matter, because mine is the right one.

That’s not what a Reagan-voting Republican does. And a Reagan-voting Republican damn sure doesn’t get a facial tic about politicians he or she doesn’t like. Reagan-voting Republicans, when laboring under the tenure of powerful politicians they don’t like, simply bide their time and wait for the next elections. When they post blogs about those powerful politicians and what those powerful politicians are doing, they create compelling arguments: These are the facts…this is my opinion…these are the assumptions you must make to form a different opinion, from those available facts, and I find those assumptions to be too extravagant to be maintained.

They present compelling cases for what they believe.

They do not tell their readers what they are supposed to be thinking, at least, not without providing factual support. Like some member of the French cabinet. Or some liberal black baptist preacher who violates separation-of-church-and-state at the drop of a hat during a campaign. Or a union thug.

Sorry, I don’t mean to be harsh. But ever since I cast my first vote for a Democrat, way back when Woodrow Wilson was running for re-election against Charles Evans Hughes in 1916, and all the votes I’ve cast for Democrats since then, I’ve never been able to understand this about my own Democratic party. Why, I’m even thinking of leaving it. Believe me. Please, believe me.

No, seriously. In all seriousness. I think Lydia Cornell has voted for Republicans the same way I’ve suffered from menstrual cramps.

I Speak Of…

Two hundred years after his famous letter to Nehemiah Dodge, Ephraim Robbins, Stephen Nelson and the Danbury Baptists, in which he defined a “wall of separation between Church & State,” Thomas Jefferson’s treasured wall is threatened by the rise of a fundamentalist religion in the United States of America. This religion threatens to take over this country and seize control of its government.

It is a dangerous, double-talking religion. It has lately come to hide behind science; it pretends to present its beliefs, simply by softly questioning more orthodox cognitions deemed to be contrary. The deception behind this is revealed when this religion regards anyone skeptical of their faith, as walking, breathing, unfinished tasks. Those who practice and promote the religion of which I speak, do not seek to form reasoned opinions from established facts — they seek to proselytize. In short, they pretend to participate in epistimology, but what they really want to do is grow their flock, facts be damned.

Their flock is growing like a wildfire. It is difficult to venture beyond one’s doorstep, or into cyberspace for that matter, without encountering several of these practitioners in the course of a single day. Those practitioners pretend to respect our freedom as individuals to select the religion of our choice, but very seldom do they show this respect. To sum it up, nearly all of them believe, with their faith, they are smarter than someone who practices a different faith. They think the rest of us are just big dummies, and are not afraid to say so at all. There is something about this religion that makes people stunningly rude.

Those who promote this religion, do so by simply questioning whatever doesn’t fit; like all religions that seek to find shelter and comfort in quasi-science, they insist on controling the questions. Questions that are inconvenient to contrary theories are encouraged, and when questions arise that are inconvenient to their own faith, the questions suddenly stop. Promoters of this religion, will not tolerate any hesitation, temerity or abatement in questioning what is contrary, but they also will not tolerate questions directed toward what is friendly.

They have begun to spread the canard that the United States of America was founded on their religious principles. They are frequently heard to say “The Founding Fathers were” part of their religion, as if scores of patriots who championed religious freedom as *individuals*, squabbling endlessly among themselves as they did so, must necessarily have belonged to a single faith.

Their religion pretends to simply be a question. But it is not a question at all, it is an answer. It’s a hard, brittle, absolute answer, tolerating no dissent whatsoever, about something unproven and unrefuted that cannot be proven or refuted. It is blind faith masquerading as a set of reasoned inferences.

Our legal system has been hijacked by this religion. On behalf of no other religion, can a lawsuit be filed, and expect to achieve such stellar success, upward through the judicial levels, all the way to the Supreme Court, where such lawsuits either emerge victorious or are allowed to stand. This happens nearly all the time. File a lawsuit friendly to any other religion, and if you can find a lawyer willing to take it, you should expect to see your case thrown out at the most rudimentary level. Especially if that suit can be inferred to be hostile to the religion of which I speak!

The religion of which I speak has already taken over the hallways of our academic institutions. What we now call “science” will analyze, hypothesize, test, and debate, come what may, offending whoever it must, respecting no sacred cows at all — as science should — until the time comes to potentially offend people who practice the religion of which I speak. Then, what we call “science” will come to an abrupt stop, and in so doing betray all of us. The problem is so bad, that our society has for several years now been practicing something called “science” that isn’t really science.

The religion of which I speak has already been placed at the head of several governments. This religion is more hostile to the concept of individual inalienable rights, than any other religion can be — and so, because of all the countries that have enshrined this religion in our recent history, millions of people have been killed. Perhaps as many as a hundred million men, women and children. If you’re sharp, you already know what religion I’m talking about.

I speak of atheism.

The Speech He Should Give

James Q. Wilson, author of The Moral Sense (1977), puts together a speech President Bush could and should give about what’s going on in Iraq.

To summarize, it’s just a fraction of the endless litany of good things that have taken place there, placed into a template fitting the President’s usual speaking style.

We know now that some of our information about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was wrong. But we also know now what we have always believed: That Saddam Hussein, who had already invaded both Iran and Kuwait, had the money, authority and determination to build up his stock of such weapons. When he did, he would have become the colossus of the Middle East, able to overwhelm other countries and rain rockets down on Israel.

We have created a balance of power in the Middle East in which no regime can easily threaten any other. In doing this, we and our allies have followed a long tradition: We worked to prevent Imperial Germany from dominating Europe in 1914, Hitler from doing the same in 1940, and the Soviet Union from doing this in 1945. Now we are doing it in the Middle East.

I have nothing to add to this, save for one thing. Documentation of these encouraging events, and many others, has been circulating around the “innernets” for years now; since shortly after the invasion in Spring 2003. This is seldom discussed, although the events are widely known. The alphabet-soup news networks which so regularly are accused of a politically-leftward tilt, who regularly fret over their eroding credibility, and who regularly get kicked in the ass by their own declining ratings as viewers desert them in droves — they could mitigate all of these problems by mentioning a handful of these things more prominently. To the best of my knowledge, very seldom does that happen.

The most bumptious among our anti-war people cite as the basis for their opposition, the mounting death toll among our brave troops. That toll is supposed to be a great concern to them, as is the mission to make it an overriding concern to the rest of us.

I call bullshit on this alleged concern. If the troops are dying for something, they are dying to make the things mentioned in Wilson’s column happen. An anti-war zealot who was concerned about the lives of these troops, would say “I don’t think freeing a nation the size of California from tyranny, capturing Saddam Hussein, giving Iraqis running water and electricity for the first time, free elections, a constitution (etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.) is worth the loss of life in our military” and then such a zealot would give reasons why his cost-benefit equation works out the way it does.

Such a zealot would give evidence that he’s taking these benefits into account, by listing them, and then actually taking them into account. They are, after all, the things for which our troops gave the ultimate sacrifice, whether that exchange was part of the original plan or not.

And the lives and welfare of those troops are supposed to be the objects of all this anti-war concern.

So, no. I don’t think the typical anti-war loudmouth gives a rat’s ass about the dead troops. I should add, of course, that every loudmouth is different. But the paucity of discussion that takes place, about benefits from this military action that are so numerous, is evidence of what I’ve been thinking all along.

Opposition to the war is all about a desired return to our status quo, where we indulge in overwhelming quantity and intensity of discourse about unimportant things. In recent history, that has meant two things: 1) wealthy old people with summer homes and Winnebagos lobbying for greater medical benefits, at the expense of thirty-something apartment rats struggling to make ends meet; and 2) special-interest organizations representing “minority” gender, ethnic and sexual-preference classes, lowering our national pain-threshold every two years so they can find something to complain and litigate about.

Body bags flying in to Dover AFB make it hard to get worked up about those. REAL hard. That is what they want to stop.

So our anti-war loudmouths are really pissed about those bags.

As a group, they generally don’t give a shit about who is IN that bag. You’ll notice they very seldom mention that person — and they mention even less often, the whole point of the noble sacrifice that put that person in there. Evidently, they have an argument that would weaken if they acknowledged anything positive coming from that sacrifice, whatsoever — nevermind that, being a signatory to that sacrifice, the person inside that bag presumably had strong feelings that it was a worthwhile trade.

Self Help

I don’t have television, by choice, so what I know about TV comes from traveling and staying in hotels.

This will come as a shock to anyone who reads my blog and regards me as a sage on all human affairs, which of course nobody does. As far as human affairs that take place on the boob tube, I am precisely as well-informed as the timeless conceptual little green man from another planet who monitors our radio and TV signals.

Maybe the little green man if he somehow had access to Google.

Anyway, I couldn’t help noticing something.

The cable TV I have decided I don’t want in my home, is fairly jam-packed with self help programs. Morning, evening, late night. Commercials, infommercials, plugs for infommercials, movie rentals. Self help up the yin yang.

Roughly half of these programs have to do with identifying what you want in life, and going after it, no holds barred, refusing to take no for an answer, and getting in the face of anyone who gets in your way.

The other half has to do with something called “Dealing With Difficult People.”

Hmmmmmm….

Thanks

Another “Mobile Blog Post” as I find myself on the road once again. This time I’m visiting family. Aren’t we all.

As we give thanks for what we have in our lives, can we all come to an agreement about the concept of “Thanks”. Like any other emotional sentiment, a Feeling of Thanks is useless until & unless it *culminates* in something — an action, or an inaction.

Let’s face it: If you have a functioning brain and a life to live, not a day goes by that you don’t feel happy, sad, angry, pleased, and grateful — maybe dozens of times. Most of these impulses come to nothing, and a scant few of them have an impact on what we do.

A successful Thanksgiving is one where your feelings of thanks have an impact on what you do.

So what do you do with this feeling of gratitude, once it’s been validated, an felt sincerely? This is an important question. This is America. We have it good — astonishingly good. Our “poor” people are obese, and have cable TV channels in the triple-digits.

In the final analysis, there are only two big possibilities: You can feel guilty, or you can start figuring out what’s going on, as a first step to making more of it happen. These are mutually exclusive. The abundance of our gifts, our commerce, our gadgets, our technology — it’s a glaring problem crying out for a solution, or it’s a manifestation of something going terribly right that calls out for propagation and multiplication. It’s fundamentally bad, or it’s fundamentally good.

There is no home for “moderates” on this question.

And those who wish to feel guilty, have a vexing conundrum to resolve: How *did* America go about getting all this wealth and abundance for which we’re supposed to feel grateful today?

If it is our desire to spread these gifts to people who don’t have them, it seems like a solid logical conclusion that answering this question is the first step.

Some will say we have this high standard of living because we stole it, somehow, from those who we notice don’t have it. Either we plundered these riches, actively, or we intercepted them passively. Either way, if you accept this premise, then the question I asked above becomes moot.

Except then, I would expect, you will not be joining in the celebration today. In which case I hope you’ll donate your turkey and canned goods to those in need.

I just love activists. Their very name is inspiring. Activist…activist…activist! Someone who takes the initiative. Who sees what needs to be done and does it. Captain of his own destiny. Righter of wrongs! Defender of the defenseless! Punisher of the punishless!

A socially inept control-freak who’s come up with a great way to get laid. By foolish left-wing sluts.

Four decades and some change after social activism became fashionable, there is evidence here and there that, by failing to stand up for itself whenever activists twiddle with its switches and knobs and rabbit-ears, society may be doing the activists more harm than the activists can be doing to it. The harm that is done to the activist, has to do with a gradual unmooring from reality. This is dangerous. Someday, the activist will have to move out of his mom’s apartment, and reality will become a bigger part of his life. His ability to reconcile with that reality, therefore, will become more important.

More important than what?

More important than it currently is to whoever wrote this e-mail to the Hagerstown, MD Herald-Mall, said e-mail appearing to take responsibility for a potentially deadly act of incendiary vandalism:

Last night we, the Earth Liberation Front, put the torch to a development of Ryan Homes in Hagerstown, Maryland (off of Route 40, behind the Wal-Mart). We did so to strike at the bottom line of this country’s most notorious serial land rapist.

We warn all developers that the people of the Earth are prepared to defend what remains of the wild and the green.

We encourage all who watch with sadness while developers sell out the future of us and our children to join us in resisting them in any and every possible way.

The Ents are going to war.

I found this to be particularly interesting where it says We warn all developers that the people of the Earth are prepared to defend what remains of the wild and the green. They took a poll?

Can people of all ideological stripes, agree on this: Activists, by and large, have an unfortunate tendency to remain oblivious to the negative consequences involved in the causes they establish, sustain and for which they recruit.

Could we therefore lend our support to the following proposal: We will find a way to allow the activists to continue with their causes, and with freedom of speech, but we will also find a way to guarantee the activists are the first among those who have to live with the consequences of what they want done. ELF, here, should live in an urban “ant farm” where housing is rare, rents have skyrocketed, homelessness is rampant, but thank goodness there are no town homes. And we will find ways to further this goal throughout all brands of activist zealotry, regardless of how pleasing those activist movements may be to whoever.

Activism, by nature, exists to tell everybody how an elite class of people has decided they all should live, and if they don’t want to live that way, well that’s just tough. It is coercion. Activism is the antithesis of democracy. It is a policy of “You Do This.” We could call my policy the “You Go First” policy.

Gun-grabbing activists get to live in a place where burglars burgle wherever they want, because they know nobody has a gun. Anti-death-penalty activists get to live in a place where murderers walk the streets, secure in the knowledge they’ll never be executed. Anti-capitalists get to live in a place where money is nonexistent, and anyplace you can get a bite to eat, looks like your elementary school cafeteria where you wait in line endlessly to get a big scoop of colorless glop.

That would be fair.

Man, I am rambling. Need to get coffee.

What Are We Arguing About?

Charles Krauthammer’s article flatly states that Intelligent Design is full of crap. Actually, what he’s saying is something I’ve been saying all along, that we’re making a mistake in assuming different theories logically have to be mutually exclusive from one another, when they don’t.

Newton’s religiosity was traditional. He was a staunch believer in Christianity and member of the Church of England. Einstein’s was a more diffuse belief in a deity who set the rules for everything that occurs in the universe.

Neither saw science as an enemy of religion. On the contrary. “He believed he was doing God’s work,” wrote James Gleick in his recent biography of Newton. Einstein saw his entire vocation – understanding the workings of the universe – as an attempt to understand the mind of God.

Krauthammer belongs to the “It Isn’t Science” crowd, those who insist that, being untestable, Intelligent Design cannot be a legitimate scientific pursuit. I’ve been reluctant to sign on to that, because if I were to do so then I’d have to support banishing the following from science:

Krauthammer has inferred that Intelligent Design proponents — all of them? most of them? some of them? I don’t know! — are pushing the theory of the constantly-intervening God. Sorry, Chuck. I find it to be dishonest to link “you have opposable thumbs because Someone designed you that way” to “when you put your right leg into your pants first this morning, it’s because God decided that six thousand years ago.”

It pains me to say this, but Krauthammer has blundered significantly in the arena of clean, organized, critical thinking, which is where he has been known to contribute the most in confounding disagreements like these. The delta between those two assertions he has welded together is not only significant, but it cuts to the quick of religio-scientific principles upon which this republic was founded. When atheists protest against “In God We Trust” being inscribed on our money, they are frequently heard to assert “The Founding Fathers were not Christians, they were Deists!” Little do the most passionate among them realize, that the most accepted definition of Deism is the proposition that the world was created by a non-intervening God.

That a Supreme Being is responsible for creating us, but not for intervening with our day-to-day operations, is absolutely critical to acceptance of the twin assertions that 1) we “are endowed by [our] Creator with certain unalienable Rights”; and 2) it is our “Right, it is [our] Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for [our] future Security.”

Which is to say, we may very well have grown here through a process unguided by any intelligent force, but if that is proven (or accepted) to be the case, then the document I have quoted has been made utterly groundless; and similarly, if we were put here by an intervening Higher Power, that decides for us if we are to part our hair on the right or the left, then it isn’t up to us to do anything at all — let alone overthrow our government — and the document is again made utterly groundless.

Krauthammer is effectively stating that a Higher Power that put us here, by definition, is a Higher Power that, as he puts it, “steps into this world of constant and accumulating change and says, ‘I think I’ll make me a lemur today.'” How can these be synonymous? He’s trying to make the argument that science and religion aren’t enemies. One of the most potent suppositions for supporting that, is the concept of a non-interfering Higher Power that uses evolution as a tool, which is put in motion and then left alone. Much like the little old lady and the tomato seeds.

I’m afraid Charles Krauthammer has lost track of what we’re arguing about. But haven’t we all? Find me a thousand loudmouth idealogues extolling their opinions of Intelligent Design, on one side or the other, and I can find large numbers therein of folks who will sign on to many, a whole bunch of, or most, of the following perceptions of the disagreement:

1. Proponents of Intelligent Design assert that the Judeo-Christian God created everything, opponents assert this is not so.
2. Proponents of Intelligent Design assert that some Higher Power created everything, opponents assert this is not so.
3. Proponents of Intelligent Design assert that some Higher Power created everything and is watching over it all now, opponents assert this is not so.
4. Proponents of Intelligent Design assert that the complexity of nature proves that some Higher Power created everything, opponents assert it does not.
5. Proponents of Intelligent Design assert that the complexity of nature surpasses what can be explained by evolutionary theory, opponents assert this is not so.
6. Opponents of Intelligent Design assert that evolution is a fact, not a theory, and proponents assert that it is a theory, not a fact.
7. Opponents of Intelligent Design assert that they can explain everything in nature with the theory of evolution, without the intervention of any designing agent, proponents assert this is not so.
8. Proponents of Intelligent Design assert that the earth is not much older than six thousand years, and opponents assert this is not so.
9. Proponents of Intelligent Design assert that man shared the earth with dinosaurs, even using them as beasts of burden like Fred Flintstone, and opponents assert this is not so.
10. Opponents of Intelligent Design assert that it is a violation of the Establishment Clause to teach Intelligent Design in the classroom, and proponents assert this is not so.
11. Opponents of Intelligent Design assert that it is outside the realm of science to even consider Intelligent Design, and proponents assert this is not so.
12. Opponents of Intelligent Design assert #11 because Intelligent Design is “untestable.”
13. Opponents of Intelligent Design assert #11 because it might prove there is a God, and religion is an enemy of science.
14. Opponents of Intelligent Design stand guilty of telling everybody else what to think, about something that is unprovable.
15. Proponents of Intelligent Design stand guilty of telling everybody else what to think, about something that is unprovable.
16. #14 and #15.
17. Proponents of Intelligent Design assert that evolution is a canard, and all species were created in the form we observe them today, opponents assert this is not so.
18. Proponents of Intelligent Design assert that evolution is at work only with non-human animals, that man was created in the form we observe him today, opponents assert this is not so.
19. Proponents of Intelligent Design assert that evolution had a hand in creating all animals, including humans, but that a Higher Power is also at work in nature, opponents assert this is not so.
20. Proponents of Intelligent Design assert that nothing in the evolutionary theory can ever be proven, opponents assert some things can be.
21. Proponents of Intelligent Design assert that some things in the evolutionary theory can be proven, and some things can’t, opponents assert all things can be.
22. Proponents of Intelligent Design assert that Intelligent Design can be proven, opponents assert that while it’s conceptually possible, it can’t be proven.
23. Proponents of Intelligent Design have a hidden agenda to inject Judeo-Christian religion into public schools.
24. Opponents of Intelligent Design have a hidden agenda to enshrine Atheism as the state-sanctioned religion.
25. Proponents of Intelligent Design do not assert Intelligent Design itself, quite so much as desire discussion about Intelligent Design.
26. Opponents of Intelligent Design do not dispute Intelligent Design itself, quite so much as desire to muzzle any discussion about Intelligent Design.
27. Proponents of Intelligent Design desire to muzzle any discussion about Natural Selection, since religion is an enemy of science.
28. Opponents of Intelligent Design assert that students should not be taught Intelligent Design if their parents don’t want them to be taught that.
29. Proponents of Intelligent Design assert that students should not be taught the Theory of Evolution if their parents don’t want them to be taught that.

So here’s my point: Isn’t it a rather abundant waste of energy, to start proselytizing one’s own point of view, or to insult and denigrate others, without first arriving at some agreement of what we’re arguing about?

Imitation is the Sincerest Form IV

While staying in New York on Monday, I made some observations about Norman Podhoretz’s column that appeared that morning in the Wall Street Journal. Mr. Podhoretz himself didn’t say as much, but I was noticing that his article was on the “hard” side. That is to say, his article fell woefully short on the “this is what I am instructing you to think about x” stuff, and ran kind of long on “This is Exhibit A, this is Exhibit B, this is Exhibit C, etc.” I was making the point that there’s a certain asymmetry to the exchange of facts vs. opinions in the debate about Should The United States Be In Iraq. The “Yes, we should” side can use facts and opinions, whereas the “No, we shouldn’t” side can only use opinions:

What if you wanted to smear President Bush’s decision to invoke military action against the old Iraq regime, and you shied away from incendiary speculation, treading only upon established, indisputable fact?

Let us give it a try:

“This administration led us into a war, based mostly (not entirely) on Iraq’s continuing efforts to acquire (not possession of) weapons of mass destruction, which, once we took control of that country, it turned out at that particular moment not to have any.”

Doesn’t have the same punch as “He LIED!!!” now, does it?

Kind of leaves something out when the next sentence is “so let’s impeach him!”, doesn’t it?

This says something. In the inflammatory debate we’re having now, one side can afford to stick to established, indisputable facts, whereas through this exercise the other side would be utterly devastated, losing the bulk of its shock value, persuasive power and emotional punch.

I don’t know if White House counselor Dan Bartlett reads my blog. I would expect hardly anybody does. But how then do you explain this gem which appeared in the Washington Post yesterday morning.

“What bothers me is when people are irresponsibly using their positions and playing politics,” [President George W.] Bush added. “That’s exactly what is taking place in America.”

[Vice President Dick] Cheney’s speech was part of a GOP effort to push back against criticism on Iraq that presidential counselor Dan Bartlett said will continue.

Traveling with Bush, Bartlett said: “There’s a bright line there that the Democrats have crossed. They have no facts on their side.”

I’ve been robbed, but I’m not calling the police. I’m quite flattered.

More Timely Than It Looks

This is a lot more timely than it looks, which doesn’t say much because it doesn’t look timely at all. It looks like a rehash. What it is, is a recital of the facts about how the United States got into the war in Iraq. And it’s a little on the long side, so why chew over it again?

To answer that, we have to get into, once again, the difference between an established, undisputed fact, and a reasoned but debatable opinion. The noisiest people who “debate” things in our society today, think they know the difference between the two. Very few of them do.

This article sticks to facts. And it does have an agenda of supporting President Bush. Some people have an agenda of attacking the President; those people don’t stick to facts, because they can’t.

Think about THAT for a minute or two. What if you wanted to smear President Bush’s decision to invoke military action against the old Iraq regime, and you shied away from incendiary speculation, treading only upon established, indisputable fact?

Let us give it a try:

“This administration led us into a war, based mostly (not entirely) on Iraq’s continuing efforts to acquire (not possession of) weapons of mass destruction, which, once we took control of that country, it turned out at that particular moment not to have any.”

Doesn’t have the same punch as “He LIED!!!” now, does it?

Kind of leaves something out when the next sentence is “so let’s impeach him!”, doesn’t it?

This says something. In the inflammatory debate we’re having now, one side can afford to stick to established, indisputable facts, whereas through this exercise the other side would be utterly devastated, losing the bulk of its shock value, persuasive power and emotional punch.

Read up, folks; this is re-emerging, again, as a heady and current topic of controversy. Congress is stepping up the pressure for withdrawal, and Democrats therein are asserting there have been shenanigans going on in selling this war. The President is fighting back, accusing his critics of rewriting history and sending mixed signals to the troops and to the terrorists. Neither side is backing off.

“Fact” means something is beyond the realm of dispute, or at least should be, unless someone is speaking out of ignorance and/or a deliberate effort to deceive. Yet the facts are what are in dispute.

So regardless of your opinion — and you’re keeping in mind what an opinion is, right? — if you want to corner that obnoxious neighbor or co-worker with a different opinion at the next cocktail party, you’d be well advised to read up. In executing the ambush without first brushing up on recent history, even if you think you have a command of what’s been happening here, you risk making a “Hugh Jass” out of yourself.

And my recommendation is that if you find Mr. Podhoretz’s litany a little too long to merit this expenditure of your time, keep your mouth shut. Because you’re the kind of person who should. That’s *my* opinion.

Veteran’s Day

Nobody ever reads this blog, but among those who happen to trip across it, consider this. If you’re part of the great crushing mass of independent thinkers who oppose the War on Terror in general, and/or the War in Iraq in particular, because you have been flabbergasted, flummoxed, overwhelmed and just plain knocked-flat-on-your-ass by the incredible personal sacrifices made by our troops who serve overseas, thank a vet today.

Some other time, we’ll pick up the debate about whether logical sincerity has been betrayed, or is being adequately serviced, by the hair-splitting exercise of “supporting the troops while opposing their mission.” We have time to do that, tomorrow, next week, next year, thanks to those folks. For today, we can agree that regardless of how that debate turns out, these people deserve thanks. Drafted or not, wounded or not, having-seen-combat or not.

For The Anti-Death-Penalty Types IV

I’m glad this girl has lived, so far, and I’m glad that she appears to have been somewhat pretty. I’ve noticed those among us who oppose the death penalty, do so out of concern that “civil liberties” be accorded to “the least among us” and respected once they are so accorded. As if, when you make sure some malt-liquor-gulping, woman-beating, puppy-kicking piece of scum can enjoy his constitutional rights, you’ve somehow ensured we all can, and every man, woman and child from sea to shining sea can rest easy. Or that, if you defend the right of a very wealthy corporate executive to keep his money, you have defended that man alone; in the fight to defend freedom for everybody else, this was just a waste of time.

Ah, except people who think that way have an unfortunate tendency to be excited into passion, action, or noisemaking only when pretty girls are abducted, beaten, raped or murdered. So maybe what happened to this poor girl, will cause our anti-death-penalty types to re-think a thing or three.

Her name is Lauren Huxley. She’s 18, and remains unconscious in critical condition after having been beaten, tied up, doused with fuel and set on fire at her home.

Lauren Huxley’s parents and sister Simone today pleaded for information about what they say is an “inexplicable” attack on the teenager.

“We have no idea who did this to her and we have even less idea as to why anyone would do this,” her mother Christine Huxley said.

“She’s turning 19 on Christmas Eve. She is the most beautiful girl, so innocent and she’s never confrontational, we are at a complete loss as to why anyone would hurt her.”

I recognize that phrases like sick twisted fucks incorporates strong language that is not fit for a diverse and uncontrolled Internet audience. But there is no phraseology suitable for mixed company, that can adequately describe what is happening here. Some people are born with the wrong wrinkles in their brains to safely exist alongside the innocent, who in turn have a God-given right to be protected. That’s not a logical leap at all, nor is the supposition that whoever did these terrible things to this poor girl, has that wrinkle.

Killing is wrong, you say, even when you kill someone for having killed? Yeah, sure. I’d like to see you say that, after someone close to you suffers a horrible attack like this, and then, God forbid, expires from it. Letting people like this live, is really no different from letting them go. And letting them go, is condemning yet more innocent people to burn to death in puddles of flaming gasoline.

Who is really in favor of that? I would hope nobody. Okay then, you people suffer from delusions. That doesn’t make you bad people, but I see no reason why the innocent have to keep suffering because of your delusions.

Update (11-11-05): For whatever it is worth, thanks to the superior writing in this article, it is seems established that Ms. Huxley is not a burn victim.

Lauren Huxley, 18, was found by fire-fighters when they were called to a blaze at her Northmead home, in Sydney’s west, about 4.30pm (AEST) on Wednesday.

They found her tied up and unconscious, with serious injuries and covered in petrol.

Ms Huxley was last seen getting off a bus, from Baulkham Hills TAFE, just around the corner from her home about 2pm on Wednesday.

Police, who are treating the attack as an attempted murder, said it was thanks to the rapid response by fire-fighters that the blaze had not spread to the garage and to Ms Huxley on the floor.

This has no bearing whatsoever on the viciousness of the attack, certainly not on the intent of the individual or individuals responsible for it. They were sick twisted fucks yesterday, they’re sick twisted fucks today, and they possess vital organs that could be put to good use in much more worthwhile individuals.

The Fifth Division

Last month I had offered my thoughts about the one-dimensional blue-state/red-state spectrum, and my opinion that it was inadequate for describing the issues that are really dividing America right now. Believing, still, that we have disagreements about principles in this country, not about whether George W. Bush is a big doo-doo head, I further offered my encapsulation of what these principles are. I came up with five, four of which I listed, the last one of which I kept under wraps with the promise I’d discuss it later. This fifth division amongst us, I said, is more important than the other four.

The fifth division is Abiding By The Contract: Should individuals in our society be bound by it, or not?

Let’s review what The Contract is.

1. You perform services and make X money;
2. You demand services of others and compensate them with Y;
3. You get to keep Z, which is the difference between X and Y;
4. If you want Z to be bigger, you provide more to others or demand less from others;
5. If Z is less than 0, you must diminish your savings, or else cede your personal decisions to other people because they are no longer entirely yours to make.

This is a gross oversimplification, because today we have all kinds of things in America that help to corrupt this contract. Taxes represent one corrupting factor; social safety nets represent another. In divining one’s political philosophies, it is a far more accurate technique to keep in mind The Contract, than to simply listen to the philosophies word-for-word. For example, a social program exists to keep people of modest means out of trouble. But we have a lot of people of modest means who get into trouble because of tax issues. So it makes little or no sense that the people who want a more robust social safety net, are the same people who like to make taxes more punitive. That is, until you keep in mind The Contract. These people simply don’t like it. They want it to be corrupted.

This is proven by the abundance of very wealthy individuals who favor more confiscatory taxes, and brag about this position in spite of their comfortable position in life — and by the paucity of these individuals who then brag about paying surplus taxes. Very few people say “The IRS didn’t charge me enough, so I cut a bigger check and that’s the end of the issue until next year as far as I’m concerned.” These people never seem to want to do that. They want everybody else along for the ride. If Bob is rich and Bob doesn’t think he’s been charged enough, and he simply leaves a “tip” to the treasury, The Contract remains relatively uncorrupted. The impact of this decision is felt only by the public treasury, and Bob. It can even stay a confidential transaction, in addition to being a private one, if Bob so chooses. Well, I can’t help but notice, there are no Bobs, none that speak up anyway.

So very, very few people who proselytize for higher taxes, really give a rat’s ass about a solvent treasury. That’s not the issue for them. The issue is The Contract under which we all live.

There are a lot of people on the other side of the wealth spectrum who don’t like The Contract. These people are weary of living a life in which Z consistently turns out to be close to, or below, zero. They’re tired of it, and who can blame them? But I’ve learned these poor people who are ready to eradicate The Contract, have their own Code of Honor: They wince, uncomfortably, when the cost for some vital service is high — but when a business opportunity comes their way, and a prospective patron offers to pay them an unexpectedly high wage, they still wince uncomfortably. So the opportunity comes their way to change Z, and they pass it up. They don’t want to pay big money out, and they don’t want to take it in either. They simply don’t want to deal with money. It makes them uncomfortable.

Now, a lot of these people work very hard, and — far from wanting to rip people off by making demands for services and not paying for them — they simply want to be spared uncertainties in life. This is a natural development from working long hours for a prolonged period of time, and having nothing to show for it. Once the spirit of Achievement Through Excellence has been fully driven from you, it’s easy to fall prey to mediocrity: Fine, I’ll punch my time clock and work my ass off. Just spare me, after my fifteen hour shift is over, from this desk with the stack of bills on it. I’m not in the mood. Every two weeks I take in seven hundred dollars and pay out eight hundred. I get it already, one number’s bigger than the other. Call me a failure, call me what you will, I’m tired of the same ol’ math problem, sick of sweating over it. Just let me do my hard work, make that phone stop ringing, and I’ll forget about Doing Something Truly Great. And by that I mean, ever.

I don’t agree with that personal decision, but I certainly understand it, and I have to question if we who abide by The Contract have the right to compel others to do the same.

Maybe the solution is to go ahead with the Two Americas, one blue, one red. America has historically been at its greatest, when it has found ways to let individuals live their lives in the way those individuals choose to live. Let’s go ahead and draw the line, but draw it first & foremost along a question regarding this Contract.

Do you want to live by it, or not? Let’s cut the crap.

And then those who want to opt-out of the Contract, can have whatever government they want. Make it look like France. Hell, make it look like Star Trek and get rid of all the money. Free chocolate sundaes on demand, work whatever hours you want, three hots and a cot, and nobody can have a gun, or a bigger house, better education, faster connection to the innernets.

After all, there’s only one political ideology that is truly economically dangerous to everyone, and it’s Thing I Know #4:

In a society where people strive for excellence based on the net of what they do, you can’t have people demanding things for free — and in a society where everybody is guaranteed the same amount & quality of stuff, you can’t have people striving for personal excellence. These are things that don’t mix.

I think that’s where America has been going wrong. We keep trying to mix it up, to create some successful “hybrid.” We do this so that we can all live together in harmony. Meanwhile, it is written nowhere that such a hybrid is possible, or even that we as a species were meant to all live together. We are, as we’ve demonstrated repeatedly, a tribal species. Maybe the time has come to form a tribal society.