Questions for Charlie Daniels

This is just plain funny. “Thirty-Nine Questions for Charlie Daniels Upon Hearing ‘The Devil Went Down to Georgia’ for the First Time in 25 Years.”

1. The Devil won that fiddling contest, right?
2. Because isn’t that totally amazing fiddle feedback thing the Devil plays (which sounds like Hendrix gone bluegrass) a hundred times better than that high-school-band piece-of-crap tune Johnny plays?
3. I mean, come on, right?
4. And since the Devil is so clearly better, why does he lay the golden fiddle on the ground at Johnny’s feet?
5. What kind of one-sided bet was that anyway, your eternal soul for a fiddle?

Read more…

All the United Nations Men

As I type this, I’m halfway through my second viewing of All the President’s Men (1976) starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman. This is the movie that created the Government-Entertainment-Complex as we know it today. House Democrats made sure nobody could follow the news without knowing about Watergate, then Hollywood made doubly sure. An electorate that had so recently been agitated against a judicial system that flooded America’s streets with mass murderers and sexual predators, suddenly became jaded and cynical toward all sides. They ended up putting a Democrat in the White House when they were entirely unable to explain why, and the rest is history. Runaway inflation. Double-digit interest rates. An energy crisis out of control. Hostages, a demoralized military, and the birth of militant radical Islam. A bond was forged between Hollywood and the liberal side of our government. And print journalists were put on notice that if they wanted to make a name for themselves nailing someone’s hide to the wall, they’d better make sure it’s a Republican hide.

I was watching it for the first time, a couple hours ago, and near the end I had a funny thought.

Take out the word “White House” and substitute “Iraq”…

…take out the phrase “burglary at the Watergate” and substitute “Al Qaeda”…

…pretend the “Washington Post” is the “United States” and “Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein” are “the George W. Bush administration.”

Do those things, and the entire movie is a rehash of what we’ve been seeing the last two years. Guilty people hiding behind innocent people, who keep secrets on behalf of the guilty because they don’t want to be hurt. High-tension arguing about whether there is “enough meat” to run with something or not, and what the stakes are if things can’t be backed up later. Haughty and indignant spokesmen who insist there is no connection between A and B when they know there damn well is one, only, it was only almost proven and not completely proven and they think they can drive a wedge in there. Money trails that lead nowhere, until you really start to follow them. Then they lead somewhere, but by then, anybody who could tell you anything, has a stake in the status quo, so you can’t learn anything, and you can prove even less.

Right-minded and altruistic seekers of truth and defenders of liberty, being attacked by those they answer to, for exposing their institution to derision and ridicule by seeking that truth and defending that liberty.

The natural condition of uncertainty being used to defend the indefensible.

What’s worse? A President who authorizes burglary to enhance his strategic plans for re-election? Or a murdering madman, known to seek nuclear, chemical and biological weapons in the past, who thinks its worth his while to spend billions of dollars in bribes, just to get weapons inspectors to look away — while he does God Only Knows what?

What’s more precious? The national security of the United States AND the stability of the Middle East as we know it…or the competitive advantage of the Washington Post over the New York Times?

Update: Here’s the quote that really got me to thinking. Clark MacGregor, speaking about the story that broke in the Washington Post, just fifteen minutes before the end of the movie.

Using innuendo, third-person hearsay, unsubstantiated charges, anonymous sources, and huge scare headlines, the Post has maliciously sought to give the appearance of a direct connection between the White House and the Watergate. A charge which the Post knows, and half a dozen investigations have found, to be false. The hallmark of the Post’s campaign is hypocrisy, and its celebrated double-standard is today visible for all to see.

Let’s replace just a few choice words and see how close we can get to very-recent-nostalgia with just a minimum of revision, shall we.

Using innuendo, third-person hearsay, unsubstantiated charges, anonymous sources, and huge scare headlines, the PostWhite House has maliciously sought to give the appearance of a direct connection between the White HouseIraq and the WatergateAl Qaeda. A charge which the PostGeorge Bush knows, and half a dozen investigations have found, to be false. The hallmark of the PostBush Administration’s campaign is hypocrisy, and its celebrated double-standard is today visible for all to see.

Doesn’t seem to be to be at all different from what we’ve heard over the last two years. Ah, well. Maybe I’m imagining the whole thing.

One Question is Answered, Another One is Asked

Coalition troops have been in Iraq for twenty-nine months now. That’s two and a half years that there has been no practical purpose, none whatsoever, as to debating whether or not they should be there. They’re there. That there are people who still want to debate this, is meaningless. The only way out is through.

Iraq’s new Constitution has been passed through the Parliament and now goes before the voters on October 15. Logic has spent two and a half years recognizing the irrelevancy of asking whether we should, or should not, be in Iraq; I expect in the next three months popular opinion will catch up to logic. If that’s the case, we will soon stop seeking an answer to this irrelevant question. If there is bandwidth freed up for pursuing another question, and we’re still in the mood for asking them, I have a great idea.

I notice lately the anti-war left has chosen to attack any notion that our troops in Iraq are fighting for our freedom. They tell me they support the troops. Okay, so you support the troops and you think their mission has nothing to do with fighting for freedom; how much priority would you then give to this project of disavowing any notion that our troops are fighting for freedom, anytime and anyplace you encounter that notion? If I really believed the things these people say, and I thought our troops were just wasting their lives and their time, but at the same time I supported them, I wouldn’t put much priority on “getting the word out” — none at all. It would go into my file of opinions-that-aren’t-very-important. I don’t like Mustangs. The word “totally” has no use in our spoken language among honest people. Star Wars is better than Star Trek. Things I’ve absolutely made up my mind about, but probably mean nothing.

So I’m utterly unconvinced how, if our troops aren’t fighting for our freedom, it can be worth anyone’s time to disseminate that message in a propaganda campaign — if those disseminating, do indeed support our troops. But okay, the left disagrees with me, and somehow it is worthwhile to broadcast that our troops are not fighting for our freedom. My point is, now that that question’s been raised, useless as it may be while we’re in Iraq, it may be quite productive to study it after we’re done there.

I expect both sides will agree to this. Saddam Hussein’s old regime may have been connected with Al Qaeda, or it may not have been. But it’s a done deal we will have to deal with more bad guys if we want to do more damage to Al Qaeda. And we can’t leave Al Qaeda alone and hope they go away.

So I’d like to put the call out, to whoever reads this blog — nobody ever does — to rise up and request an answer to this question. These last two and a half years, this has been the star around which the “Weapons of Mass Destruction” and “Fighting for our Freedom” planets have been orbiting, although nobody has wanted to talk about it.

The question is this. And it should emphatically, categorically, unequivocally, be beyond any dissent, dispute, or disagreement whatsoever, anywhere, that this has to do with freedom.

How are resolutions, such as United Nations Resolution 1441, enforced?

What exactly does it mean when the United Nations “authorize[s] Member States to use all necessary means to uphold and implement” what is dictated in previous resolutions? Does “authorize,” in this context, mean something different than what “authorize” is supposed to mean?

Was a second resolution, after 1441, needed? If so, needed to do what? What would a second resolution have done that 1441 didn’t do?

Does the United Nations even have a role here? If so, what is it? If not, then what else should it be doing? And whether the UN is involved or not, how do we go about defining international law, what violates it, who is guilty of violating it, and what can be done to ensure there are consequences for violating it?

How do we protect ourselves when violators bribe members of the United Nations Security Council, and other lawmaking bodies tasked with legislating and enforcing international law? Link, Link, Link, Link.

After all, and as the anti-war crowd is so fond of reminding me, there are a lot of other bad guys in the world besides Saddam Hussein. Better to figure out what to do with them sooner, than later.

Scientists Unhappy Being Scientists

If anybody ever actually read this blog, which of course nobody does, they would recall a long-standing theme of challenging science, particularly the “thou shalt think…” brand of science which dutifully instructs the lowly unwashed non-scientists on what opinions they should properly have, and when pressed to back it up, replies with some variation of “that is for scientists to know and you’re not a scientist.” We’ve had an up-tick lately in this type of science, which prohibits the Little People from asking common-sense questions like How? Why? What? Where?

Scientists have begun to feed on their own, effectively excommunicating peers who don’t tow the line. Is there man-made global warming? Are homosexuals born that way? Did design play a role in the creation of the universe? Increasingly, science has been indulging in the “No True Scotsman” logical fallacy: Man is destroying the environment, and there is a homosexual gene, and intelligent design is entirely invalid, because all scientists agree this has been proven. And then if you come back with so-and-so is a scientist, and he disagrees, or he holds that it is not yet proven, then you are told so-and-so doesn’t count. All real scientists agree these things are true.

I find this to be strange, because when I was in school I was told science was all about challenging things. Now that I’m an old fart, it seems science is all about not challenging things. It’s kind of like a church. Bishops may not contradict what the Pope says, and priests may not contradict what bishops say. How do we know it to be true? Well, who in the world are you to ask such a question…you’re just showing how little you know about science.

Now I see that not only is science going through a change in method, it’s also going through a change in scope. Scientists aren’t happy being scientsts anymore. They want to do something else. Star Trek used to have episodes where the actors played characters out of Robin Hood, when they got tired of doing science-fiction. Fonzie jumped over a shark when he got tired of being a cool guy who hung around a hamburger stand. James Bond went after drug kingpins when he got tired of fighting SPECTER. It’s in the nature of all living things, called upon to do something within a constrained scope, to get tired and want to branch out eventually.

I have no qualm with that.

But if you want to become a dictator and a goo-gooder and a tut-tutter, clucking your tongue endlessly about people’s social habits, shouldn’t you renounce the scientist title?

Doesn’t it cost some money to go out and inspect how much housework men do?

Where does the money come from? Who pays it, and why? What do they want? And what was the mission statement offered when the money was requested?

The Institute for Social and Economic Research at Essex University has calculated that men, on average, do tasks for 146 minutes a day.

That is well up on the 1960s estimate of the 83 minutes.

Somebody wants something. I don’t know diddly-squat about who it is, or what exactly it is that they want, but I’ll guarantee somebody wants something, and whatever it is, we shouldn’t like it. How in the world would this possibly matter to science?

Overall, Sainsbury’s Bank estimates it would cost �11,920 to pay someone to do the jobs men carry out for free each year.

David Pickett, life insurance manager at Sainsbury’s Bank, said: “Much has been written about the rise of supermums and how they juggle careers with raising a family.

“However, there are also many superdads who as well as holding down jobs, also do a lot of work around the home – from DIY to cooking.”

I’ll tell you one way this matters. People read about a certain amount of money being needed to pay someone to do the same thing, and they get resentful. Over nothing, I might add.

If you live alone, you need to do what men in this article do, and you need to do what the women do in those other articles that bitch and piss and moan about all the housework women do. These are things that need to be done. They’re part of living. So it costs ten thousand dollars, or twenty, or thirty to pay someone for that much work. Make it a million. Who the hell cares?

It has to be done.

Here we go with the same questions I had about the “women doing lots of housework” articles. While Mister Mom is at home mopping the floor, what is his honey doing? She’s at work, probably. Is she making at least �11,920 at work in a year? Almost certainly. Okay then, she’s contributing. As is he.

Two people contributing to a household. So what’s all this bullshit about measuring things? Starting a fight where none existed previously, that’s what.

All in the name of science. I’d be willing to buy that, sure. But what kind of science? What were the researchers trying to find out?

For The Anti-Death-Penalty Types II

One of the arguments for capital punishment, for which it’s dang-nigh-impossible to get a reasoned, passioned, well-thought-out counter-argument from the anti-death-penalty crowd, is the premise that there are certain people who lack compassion and morals. If you’re on fire, they think nothing of pulling out a stick, putting a marshmallow on the end, and waving it around over you. They’ll even put some extra lighter fluid on you if it’s not cooking quick enough.

It makes complete sense. History proves this, and the police who get to look at the ugliest parts of our society, vouch for this. There are some among us who lack outie-belly-buttons; there are some among us who lack skin pigment; there are some among us who lack eyebrows; and, there are some among us who lack any sense of right and wrong, any sense whatsoever. I’ve been unable to ever get a response to the argument posed above. Many rejoinders are possible to articulate, but there are none among them that can be taken seriously, to the extent that I can see.

• Nah-hah! There are no people like that!
• There are people like that, but they can be rehabilitated.
• There are people like that who can’t be rehabilitated, but we can lock them up forever.
• There are people like that but we owe it to them to tolerate them just as they tolerate us.

I don’t have any idea which of those the anti-death-penalty types would like to use. I’ve never been able to get a handle on what their attitude toward this is.

If they opt for the first bullet, though, this one is for them:

Angela DeLettre returned home Thursday afternoon to find her back door open, items missing and kitchen sink overflowing with water.

She was able to find one of her dogs, a 6-year-old shi tzu named Pepper. But she was unable to find her other dog, a 1-year-old rat terrier. Police later found the dog burned to death in the oven, which had been set to 400 degrees.

Just amazing. Those people don’t scare me. But I’m terrified of the people who want to insist they don’t exist, or refuse to grapple with the logical conclusions that must be reached once you acknowledge they do indeed exist.

Can’t Make It

Today’s August 29th, and Hooters on Challenge Way is supposed to (according to the banners that were posted outside the building) have a Grand Opening today.

Nobody ever reads this blog, but I did get one concerned e-mail from a sweet young lady in Davis who — I’m taking her word for it — is not afraid of going to extra mile to make her man happy. Katharyn, your boyfriend is a very lucky man. At work, rest or play, in love and in war, attitude is everything, and your attitude seems to be one of the best ones.

I am a 23 year old female college student living in Davis and I was trying to determine whether the new restaurant was actually opening tomorrow or not. You see, unlike the unfortunate Sacramento women you have met, I do like to please the men in my life, and, regardless of men, I love Hooters. I get my boyfriend to drive me to Dublin or SF every couple of months to get those wings and enjoy a nice beer in a nice, relaxing atmosphere. I declare proudly my love for the place and bring girls there on occasion. I can’t wait for the Sacramento location to open. Maybe I’ll see you there.

I haven’t been making any updates lately because I’ve been sick as a dog. I’m in recovery mode now, probably not contagious, but I don’t want to risk it. After all, if I went down to Challenge Way and infected someone, who exactly would I be infecting? Pretty girls who look good in short-shorts and want to work at Hooter’s; women like Katharyn with good attitudes who aren’t shy about pleasing their men; men who aren’t afraid to let their women know they like to be happy, and what makes them so. Sacramento, as I’ve noted, suffers an acute shortage of all three of these. We need you people to be well.

Enjoy the hot wings. I’ll be along as soon as good health permits.

Update: Today is August 30th. Sometime within the last three days or so the 1785 Challenge Way address has been added to the company’s website. Looks like it’s official. A little bit o’honey for the Sacramento vinegar.

Regulation Is the Opposite of Science

This is good reading material for those who are opposed to Intelligent Design being considered a valid scientific theory; specifically, those in favor of using the police power of the state to ensure that it never is.

First of all, take a look at the “About” page from the official website for the New Hampshire Board of Medicine.

What is the Board of Medicine

The Board was created by the Legislature in 1897 to ensure that all physicians had the training and skills necessary to practice safe and effective medicine for the people of New Hampshire. Originally, the Board was comprised of 5 physicians. Later, a paramedical representative was added to the membership along with 2 members of the public who have no relationship to the medical profession. All members are appointed by the Governor and serve 5 year terms.

The Board is an independent decision making entity. It employs a full time administrative staff and contracts with other state agencies to provide investigation and legal support. The Board is served by an advisory committee for physician assistants as well as a disciplinary review committee. All expenses are paid for by license fees.

So for a hundred and eight years the Board has been ensuring physicians “practice safe and effective medicine.” We’re all clear on that being the mission statement, right? Well, on the recommendation of this Board, Dr. Terry Bennett is under investigation by the state attorney general’s office for counseling one of his patients that she needs to lose some weight.

Dr. Terry Bennett says he tells obese patients their weight is bad for their health and their love lives, but the lecture drove one patient to complain to the state.

“I told a fat woman she was obese,” Bennett says. “I tried to get her attention. I told her, ‘You need to get on a program, join a group of like-minded people and peel off the weight that is going to kill you.’ ”

He says he wrote a letter of apology to the woman when he found out she was offended.

Her complaint, filed about a year ago, was initially investigated by a panel of the New Hampshire Board of Medicine, which recommended that Bennett be sent a confidential letter of concern. The board rejected the suggestion in December and asked the attorney general’s office to investigate.

Bennett rejected that office’s proposal that he attend a medical education course and acknowledge that he made a mistake.

Is the Board acting in fulfillment of its mission statement? I don’t know. I’d need to review the patient’s medical chart to make that determination, and before I did that, it couldn’t hurt to get a medical degree first. But could it not be taken as a safe assumption beyond reasonable disagreement, that this kind of censuring and censoring is probably out-of-harmony with the Board’s stated purpose? And couldn’t most people agree that in all likelihood, this is a contradiction to the Board’s stated purpose? After all, when you’re a fat tub-of-lard who can inspire your doctor to say “you need to peel of the weight that is going to kill you,” it’s probably not good for you to be cloistered and sheltered from people who are going to say that.

I’m giving the Board the benefit of the doubt here, assuming that their actions are being undertaken in pursuit of their stated mission. Common sense, though, tells us this is more likely to be all about feelings. And that’s the trouble with regulation. After awhile, it tends to be pursued out of concern for people’s feelings, and when it is, nobody ever takes the trouble to write that down. Nobody ever writes a charter, or a mission statement, or a constitution, to define intensive bureaucratic endeavors to preserve and enhance people’s positive feelings. The Feelings-Mission-Statement has a way of just kind of creeping in as time goes along.

Science is not about feelings, it is about fact. And the last feelings that cause any loss-of-sleep to real science, are the feelings of scientific professionals sympathetic to whatever is being challenged. Science is also not about predictability. You buy a quart of vegetable oil or five pounds of sugar, you know exactly what you’re getting; if a dead roach is in the oil or a disembodied finger is in the sugar, then we need some regulation. You visit your doctor, and in the world I live in, things work a little different — if you’re due for a surprise, you get it. But the New Hampshire Board of Medicine apparently figures it should work more like a food product. Pay your money, go in, no surprises. Just pasteurized, filtered and overly-regulated small-talk about weather and golf. Sensible advice about your bad health habits are expunged, with penalties, reprimands, and I should assume periodic audits, just like rat turds from a bottle of ketchup.

There is an important lesson here that applies to the human-heifer, to Intelligent Design, and to anything else that has to do with scientific institutions: Epiphanies helpful to science, as common-sense and unavoidable as they look in the rear-view mirror, create a lot of discomfort when they’re first proposed. Things like “you need to lose weight or you’re gonna die.” People didn’t like to hear the world was round. They didn’t like to hear that if you mass-produce some machine parts and assemble them, you can make a horseless carriage. They didn’t necessarily like to hear that if you hook up some wires to a machine with a rotating shaft, you can light a city block without any gas. People were put out of work by inspirations like that. Those who weren’t put out of work, had to change their ways of doing business in order to survive. Those who ran factories, had to tool up. Those who purchased and re-sold goods, had to fire people they personally liked, a lot. People who were elected or appointed to run infrastructures and complicated systems, were compelled by changing technology to spend money they didn’t want to spend.

A lot of the people mentioned above, given the choice, would much rather have their bodily physiques insulted if it somehow meant everything else could have stayed the way it was. But this would be contrary to the nature of living. Life is change. Life is movement. Life is messy. Sometimes it packs a whallop, like, in the form of a doctor telling you your ass is too big.

Put another way, if we regulated at every turn by the desire of the squeamish to never be made uncomfortable, you wouldn’t have a computer on which to read this very sentence. You’d have to read a book. By candlelight. And you’d be unpleasantly surprised at how few books you’d have from which to choose.

We’re entering a new age where governments are challenging reality, and they expect to win. If that’s the case, we’re due for a Dark Age that can only be brought to an end when some talented and headstrong Men of Ability, who are truly weary of the nanny-state, pack up, disappear without a trace, and move to Galt’s Gulch.

Don’t Mess With Mom

Check out the poem below, which has three of the most important attributes that make poems what they all should be. It rhymes, and rhymes well; it possesses commentary that remains relevant over long periods of time in a changing society; and the author is unknown.

This has to do with a lot more than just a woman raising her kid. It helps to explain why, where liberal policies are ratified and bureaucracies are created hand-over-fist to protect the “little people,” the little people end up living unhappy, meaningless lives, and meander from cradle to grave confined to their roles as little people. It also explains why the happiest, healthiest, and most productive among us, tend to be religious and why atheists tend to walk around with that GQ-Magazine-Cover type of frown all the time, not really getting an awful lot accomplished from one year to the next. Cooperation and respect for others, will set you free. Litanies of endless complaints, and entirely manufactured rights, will shackle you to the floor.

DON’T MESS WITH MOM
(writer unknown)

My son came home from school one day,
With a smirk upon his face.
He decided he was smart enough,
To put me in my place.

Guess what I learned in Civics II
That’s taught by Mr. Wright?
It’s all about the laws today,
The “Children’s Bill of Rights.”

It says I need not clean my room,
Don’t have to cut my hair..
No one can tell me what to think,
Or speak, or what to wear.

I have freedom from religion,
And regardless of what you say,
I don’t have to bow my head,
And I sure don’t have to pray.

I can wear earrings if I want,
And pierce my tongue and nose.
I can read and watch what I like,
And get tattoos from head to toes..

And if you ever spank me,
I’ll charge you with a crime.
I’ll back up all my charges,
With the marks on my behind.

Don’t you ever touch me,
My body is only for my use,
Not for hugs and kisses,
That’s just more child abuse

Don’t preach about my morals,
Like your mama did to you,
That’s nothing more than mind control,
And that’s illegal too!

Mom, I have these children’s rights,
So you can’t influence me,
Or I’ll call the Children’s Services Division,
Better known as C.S.D.

Of course my first instinct was
To toss him out the door.
But the chance to teach him a lesson
Made me think a little more.

I mulled it over carefully,
I couldn’t let this go.
A smile crept upon my face,
He’s messing with a pro.

The next day, I took him shopping
At the local Good Will Store.
I told him, “pick out all you want,
There’s shirts and pants galore.”

I’ve called and checked with C.S.D.
Who said they didn’t care
If I bought you K-Mart shoes
Instead of those Nike Airs.

And I’ve cancelled that appointment
To take your driver’s test.
The C.S.D. is unconcerned
So I’ll decide what’s best.

I said, “No Time to stop and eat,
Or pick up stuff to munch.
And tomorrow you start to learn
To make your own sack lunch.”

Just save the raging appetite,
And wait till dinner time.
We’re having liver and onions,
A favorite dish of mine.

He asked, “Can I please rent a movie
To watch on VCR?”
“Sorry, but I sold your TV,
To put new tires on my car. ”

I also rented out your room,
You’ll take the couch instead.
All the C.S.D. requires is
A roof over your head.

Your clothing won’t be trendy now,
And I’ll choose what we eat.
That allowance that you used to get,
Will buy me something neat.

I’m selling off your jet ski,
Dirt-Bike and roller blades.
Check out the Parent Bill of Rights,
It’s in effect today!

Hey, hot shot, are you crying?
And why are you on your knees?
Are you asking God to help you out,
Instead of C.S.D?

Our Evil President

Nearly two thousand good American men and women have been killed in President Bush’s illegal and unjust war to “liberate” Iraq. Much has been made of the Downing Street Memo that proves that the President had his mind made up to drive Saddam Hussein out of Iraq, as early as the summer of 2002. But people forget that the President had actually made up his mind on regime change long before then.

I have another piece of evidence of this insidious agenda that has not only been documented, but even signed into law. The American People need to understand the truth, so without further ado let’s take a look at this memorandum that has been signed by the President himself. Let’s start impeachment proceedings without waiting another minute.

Update (8-30-05): Okay a lot of folks spanked me on this one. You’re absolutely right. It turns out October of 1998 was well before there was a Bush presidency, and the name in the signature block belongs to some guy named William J. Clinton. I guess it’s a good thing that all those times I was referring to the President I actually called him “the President” instead of “President Bush.”

So when do the hearings start? I mean, if wanting to get rid of Saddam Hussein before the beginning of 2003 is an impeachable offense, which is the premise you must accept before even starting to review the Downing Street Memo — it just seems to be a natural question to ask.

Charity Softball

Just notes on this one, mostly for my own benefit, because I’ve only heard one side of the story.

Last night was the 5th annual charity softball game between California legislature Democrats and Republicans. A good recitation of the facts can be found at a recent discovery of mine which I intend to revisit often, The Irish Lass. The morning radio show Armstrong and Getty is to be credited with actually calling this stuff to my attention. All of these bullets are due to receive more homework-attention from me. Among the highlights:

The Activist Returns

There is a certain activist who has returned to Crawford, Texas.

Your reasonable, objective, agenda-free media thinks you care, or should.

I care…about this woman whose name I no longer mention, getting the help she needs. I expect such a loss is all the more devastating when the departed has nurtured political opinions sharply different from those felt by kin left behind. In this case, this activist’s son re-enlisted when he didn’t have to. Because he thought, as she does, that the war is a sham to make oilmen rich? That idea would be extravagant to the point of immediate self-implosion, so, take it as a given, he disagreed. The last time I commented on that, most people didn’t understand this fact. Now, most people do, and they understand without me pointing it out, what it means. Thank goodness nobody is plotting the “approval rating” of this certain activist, because the trend would surely show she is wearing out her welcome.

It takes a certain maturity level to reconcile with opinions different from your own, especially with relatives who are close to you who’ve been suddenly killed. This certain activist has shown over and over, she doesn’t have that level of maturity. She labors under pain felt by thousands of other grieving Iraq-KIA parents, but lacks the peace that most of them have, knowing their children died fighting for a noble cause. Have a few thoughts of sympathy for her, even as you wish her off the front page, as most people are wishing now.

Eating It

Sometimes when you “know” something with near-certainty, and it’s a bad thing, you make a complete buffoon out of yourself opining on it in the hopes that Kharma will turn things upside-down to make you look like an ass. I’ve found that usually doesn’t work.

This time it did. Sacramento will have a Hooters, on August 29th. Or at least that’s what’s written on the banners surrounding this building by Arden Way, which certainly does appear to be all gussied-up for the occasion, and even customized for it.

Does this mean I was wrong? Maybe not wrong, but a revision of my earlier comments is in order. Let us put it this way. I am firmly convinced, through 11:59 p.m. on August 28th, not a single minute earlier and perhaps much, much later, that Sacramento is guaranteed to stay Hooters-free. There is salt in the soil of this cabbage patch and I’ll believe something can grow in it when I see it grow. At that time, I’ll admit I was wrong. I’m man enough to eat it.

We have plenty of carbon-based life-forms to justify opening a Hooters. But will our brittle women allow their husbands to go & support the establishment?

It appears time will tell.

Come what may, on Monday, I’ll see you there.

“Grieving Parents” Game

I’m going to let Arthur Chrenkoff speak for himself. There is nothing further to be said after he says what he says.

Kos and the rest of the left think that exploiting Cindy Sheehan’s exploitation of her loss is the best new secret weapon in the war against George Bush. But both sides can play the “grieving parents” game -? except that it’s not a game, and it shouldn’t be played. The right has not used people like Lynn Kelly, Linda Ryan, or hundreds of others, to make their case in our current war. It would be decent if the left stopped using Cindy Sheehan to make theirs.

What is he talking about? He’s talking about the parents of our war dead — specifically, the parents of our troops killed in the Iraq operations in the last two days before he made that post, the ones who disagree with a certain other grieving parent who recently left Crawford, TX.

I don’t know why these parents get so much less press than that certain person whose name I don’t discuss anymore. Well, I do know, but I don’t know why that disparity in coverage passes by virtually unnoticed.

Must-Tards

• But what happened after 9/11 – with restrictions placed on human rights and the cycle of revenge and the allegations of human rights abuses in prisons – must also be explored. [emphasis mine]
• The Freedom Center must signal its openness to contrary ideas. [emphasis mine]

These are quotes from Sarwar Ali, the chairman of the International Coalition of Historic Site Museums of Conscience and a trustee of the Liberation War Museum in Bangladesh.

Mr. Ali must have a lot of electricity jumping across his synapses every hundredth of a second to be charmain of International Coalation of this, and trustee of War Museum of that, and grand high poobah whats-his-face of some other damn thing. But to me, he’s a ‘tard. As in retard. Because in my world, when you have an I.Q. of room-temperature or above, you don’t need to hide behind the word “must”. The word “must,” in the absence of a strong argument that supports why things must be the way you say they must be, is a refuge for idiots.

But Sarwar Ali, according to this article, hands it out like low-quality condoms to a third-world nation.

The Chairman grand high poobah whats-his-face is commenting to the International Freedom Center, or IFC, which — somehow — has the responsibility of figuring out how to commemmorate what happened at Ground Zero on September 11, 2001. He gets to exert pressure on them insofar as what story it is they are to tell. For reasons that escape me, he gets to do this “quietly.”

“Don’t feature America first,” the IFC has been advised by the consortium of 14 “museums of conscience” that quietly [emphasis mine] has been consulting with the Freedom Center for the past two years over plans for the hallowed site. “Think internationally, where America is one of the many nations of the world.”

I remember like it was last Thursday, the day my son was circumcised. He was five days old, crying like a little bitch, and had little tiny smears of blood on his inner thighs. What was left of his penis, was indeed a fully functional penis, but it looked to me like an amputation. Having ushered his mother through labor pains, cramps, screaming, moaning, lots of blood, a placenta dropping out after him, with no loss of constitution in any way, shape, matter, form or regard…I observed for the first time that mutilated penis, and practically fainted. The floor met with my butt, or vice-versa. I wanted to vomit. I lost sense of which way was up.

That’s the effect of a circumcision on a man’s man, a man who had seen his own blood meet the light of day without flinching. I don’t know whether Jack Lynch got to watch his son get circumcised, but he did get to personally carry his son’s dead body out of the wreckage of September 11. Apparently, he handled his son’s death better than I handled my son’s “bobbitting”.

“I can’t think of a greater insult than to invite museums from other countries of the world to come and exploit what should be America’s memorial,” he said.

It’s not in my nature to “feel” things about topics like these, before I “think.” But it’s quite beyond my capacity to sentence Mr. Lynch to endure the idle, perhaps entirely empty-headed rhetoric of blowhards like Mr. Ali about “must ought should ought must gotta gotta gotta” after he has personally hoisted his own son’s dead body in his arms. I have a son of my own. I can’t bring myself to do this.

Mr. Ali, you want to “must” something? How about this: You must start having one-on-one chat sessions with parents like Jack Lynch before you tell the Freedom Center what they’re supposed to do. Hear his side of the story, and the story of other parents like him, before you start dispensing these kinds of rules that affect so many people who, so far as I know, you aren’t even compelled to meet.

After that, perhaps you’ll stick to crusades that aren’t so offensive to the people who are much more personally involved in the outcome than you are. Then you won’t have to keep those crusades quite so “quiet”.

Sacramento Hooters

A former colleague brings to my attention that according to Google Maps, there is a Hooter’s Restaurant in downtown Sacramento. However, the company’s official website does not include this on the list of California locations, and the phone number given by Google Maps does not ring through. According to Hooters’ FAQ, it would not be worth my time to pester them about this, but it seems obvious the real concern is it wouldn’t be worth theirs.

Long-time readers of this blog — there are no readers at all of this blog, let alone any long-time ones, but if there were — know that this is an item of ongoing concern here. Hooters is a special place. It fosters an atmosphere conducive to family fun, through the magical process of making sure that the patriarch is happy first. This is a recipe for assured success, and indeed, it seems to work wherever it’s tried. Many a time I’ve patronized a Hooter’s establishment, by myself or in the company of others, and from wall to wall you see immediate families, apparently-extended families, couples, groups from work, groups of women, etc. just having a ball.

I’ve never seen anything to suggest oppression at Hooter’s. Certainly not some Archie Bunker type lout, yukking it up while a bored-looking double-chinned paramour looks on with feelings of inadequacy or a longing desire to leave. No, I see happy men and happy women. Make the man happy. Everybody else’s happiness will follow.

This principle is nothing new, though. Lots of women know this because they were raised knowing this, watching their mothers make their fathers happy, and a happy family was the result. A good-hearted woman wants to make her man happy. A cold-hearted, brittle bitch doesn’t care about making a man happy — she just wants to have the skinniest ass in the room, even if she measures two feet from cheek-to-cheek. Her man will, therefore, not be going to Hooter’s. In my personal experience of dating women before I moved to Sacramento, and dating women within Sacramento, & finally getting tired of it all and dating outside of Sacramento again, I’ve noticed there is something special about this town.

It’s chock full of bitter old battleaxes like this. To say Sacramento enjoys a monopoly of man-bashing harridans is probably promoting an extravagance that can’t be maintained even under the best of circumstances. But to infer that Sacramento is burdened by a disproportionate share of such testicle-cracking vinegrettes, appears to be inescapable.

Most of them actually think they’re very kind-hearted, which is a real tragedy. They’re in that “gray area”. If they know their honey would like a nice cold beer, well, in their own cloistered minds they’re really nice ladies because you know what? They won’t stop him from getting one. See where I’m going with this yet? They will allow him to have some.

But to borrow a page from the Red States, and actually get him a bottle so he doesn’t have to get up? Open it for him? Run down to the store real quick because you’re out, and it’s not productive to have him run the errand because he’s dead tired? Maybe even — gasp — take turns paying for it? What…are you NUTS???

And that by itself is certainly not a very serious problem. Just like not being able to go to a sports bar restaurant where waitresses wear skimpy shorts, is not serious at all. I’ll be the first to admit the whole concern, is actually kind of silly.

But these issues manifest a societal concern much, much deeper. And serious, too. Serious as a heart attack.

For instance, why exactly is it so “unthinkable” to go out of your way to make a man happy? What would happen if you went and did it? Millions of wives and girlfriends are unable to fully answer these questions, and yet, they haven’t tried it. Letting a man be happy is fine once in awhile, but going out of your way to do it, well, that’s bad. It’s like a farmer with an ox-driven cart, buying the ox an iPod or a turbo-charged Porsche, when a bag of oats is all the ox should be getting. If a “gray area” kind of woman is caught trying to make her man happy, she might have to turn in her laminated angry-bitter-harpy-club membership card. And we can’t have that.

Chapter 7 of “The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands” by Dr. Laura Schlessinger is called A Man Should Be Respected In His Own Home. In her books and on her radio show, Schlessinger says some stuff that, in my opinion, doesn’t have too much pressing need to be heard. Having said that, while I hesitate to recommend the overall book as something approaching “required reading,” this particular chapter, in my opinion, definitely is required reading. It starts on page 143, ends on page 170, the pages are small, the print is huge, and frankly if you can polish off a Harlequin Romance novel in an afternoon over a cup of tea, this should be child’s play. It starts off with the story of a man, in his own home, being flipped off by his mother-in-law. The wife, curiously, was hesitant to take a position in this and even showed an inclination for siding with her mother!

The real stunner was that she turned on her husband. In the most horrible, disdainful, sarcastic manner, she imitated him saying “A man should not be disrespected in his own home.” She particularly emphasized “man” and “own home” with her snotty disregard for him.

I quietly said “You don’t think a man should be respected in his own home?” She flippantly came back with, “I think everyone should be respected everywhere.” I repeated, “You don’t think a man should be respected in his own home?” She wouldn’t answer that.

I tried to reach her, but frighteningly, she clearly saw nothing wrong with her manner or attitude. After the call, I expressed out loud that I felt deeply sorry for this man and his children.

Me too. Divorce seems not only inevitable, but merciful — for the man, for the wife, for the philistine mother-in-law, and maybe even for the kids. Until that happens, no way can that guy go to Hooter’s.

Something is terribly wrong with women like this. And something is terribly wrong with Sacramento. I’ve dated women with the “respect-for-man-ceiling,” who live every waking moment as if respect for masculine figures was some polluting agent that can only be disbursed in tiny volumes and with an eye toward strict rationing. And as I said above, I’ve dated women in Sacramento. There is a high overlap between the two groups. You’ll just have to take my word for it.

That’s Exhibit A. Exhibit B is the careful avoidance of the Sacramento area in planting any Hooter’s restaurants. Does Hooters have something against Sacramento? You would think it would be an untapped market for them. We’re the Home of the Kings! But it would appear a quick bite at Hooter’s is not on the itinerary on the way home from a Kings game. Perhaps a lot of Kings fans have wives like the one described above, and once the final buzzer has sounded, it’s “her turn” with a trip to Blockbuster to rent the latest Meg Ryan & Hugh Grant movie.

I can’t prove that at all. But perhaps the theory can be supported with Exhibit B. I managed to find a high-quality graphic depiction of the population spread in California from tip to tip, based on the 1990 census figures. When I downloaded it, I was able to rotate it left by fifteen degrees so I could angle the map toward “True North”.

This meant I could match it up with the Hooter’s restaurant locations, which the Hooter’s website is nice enough to arrange into an easy-to-read map — angled toward True North. After downloading that, I resized it so it would be as big, dot for dot, as the census map, which is actually enormous. Then I was able to convert it into a really cool transparency by dropping out anything that wasn’t either a state border, or a Hooter’s restaurant location. The result is an electronic version of a real overhead-projector-style transparent overlay (thumbnail only, due to size).

Overlaying the images one on top of the other, with minor correction for deviations for scale and skew, gives us a highly-detailed illustration of where people live, and where they can go to Hooter’s. Notice that each red blotch, which is a mass of people, has at least one blue dot, which is a Hooter’s restaurant. Everywhere there are so-many-millions of people, they must be somewhat near a location. Each and every single place that has that critical mass of population. Every single one. Every one, that is, with one notable exception:

Now, everybody has personal experiences and it’s always tempting to use those personal experiences to explain issues that aren’t personal, issues that in fact are quite public and apply in some way to everyone. So in addition to being unscientific, my exercise is not a completely valid one…but on the other hand it’s not a completely invalid one either. If you’re a woman with an ass that can’t even fit through a doorway, and your husband wants to go to Hooters, there are lots of ways to handle this. You can say “Great idea! Where are the car keys?” which may or may not work…but many women do it. You can refuse to go and refuse to allow him to go, lest he see a derriere that is more attractive than yours. This may or may not work, but many women do that. Or you can lay down a household rule that ostensibly serves “common” interests but in actuality just serves yours: An outing to Hooters must always be followed up by an evening watching the Lifetime Television Network man-bashing movie, although a Lifetime Television Network man-bashing movie does not necessarily have to be followed by a subsequent outing to Hooters.

As a fourteen-year “native” of Sacramento, I can confidently state that the area is chock full of women from the second & third of those three groups, and sorely lacking in women from the first one.

I suspect, although I can’t prove it, that this is why the map above looks the way it does. As the Hooter’s web site points out, the permit process is difficult, burdensome, complicated, and it varies from one location to the next; and as part of that process, “concerned citizens” get to register their comments about whether the franchise serves the public interest, and why or why not.

And nobody ever, ever, ever, not ever, says “I don’t want a Hooter’s restaurant nearby because my ass is as big as a balcony and I don’t want my husband to see any asses smaller than mine.” No, they invent some kind of bull-crap about community standards (while up to their armpits in check-cashing places and strip bars, incidentally), or a school being nearby, or maybe if they want to be a little on the sincere side they’ll quote some feminist tripe about “it’s not the right way to look at a woman.”

But come to the hearings, they do.

And write letters, they do.

And object to Hooters, whether under false pretenses or not, they do.

And they do it here like nowhere else.

Like I’ve said before, I’ll believe Sacramento has a Hooter’s when I’m sitting in it munching on a hot wing. Meanwhile, the closest one is a hundred and ten miles away.

They Think They Have A Plan

Some outfit called Freedom Underground has put together a slide show designed to convince anyone who is ambivalent about the question, that they should join the Good Fight and oppose the War in Iraq. Presumably, this means bringing the troops home, since the presentation as much as says that is what we should do. Of course, those opposed to bringing the troops home, those who are afraid to bring the troops home, those who would like to bring the troops home but think a huge disaster will follow if we do so, and those who are trying to make up their minds about whether we should bring the troops home, have a serious concern. What happens in Iraq if we do this? What happens here? What’s the best that can happen? What’s the worst that can happen? The video addresses that very nicely. Um…actually no. It only addresses that concern a little bit. Er, actually, it doesn’t address that at all. In any way, whatsoever.

But bring’em home!!! That’s responsible, isn’t it?

One more thing you might want to absorb before downloading. The video catalogs one of President Bush’s “lies,” his now-famous sixteen words in the State of the Union Address of 2003. Sorry, Freedom Underground. If you do a little bit of research, like pulling out your readily-available Internet encyclopedia, you can see how this all came down. Latest significant thing to happen here is the Butler Report from our friends the British. You remember the British, right? As in “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa” — the “lie” you wanted to document in your video.

Well, here is what the Brits had to say when Nigergate started to blow up on this side of The Pond. This is taken from the Wikipedia entry (as of this writing) on the “Yellowcake Forgery”.

On July 14, 2004 the British Government released a report called “A Review of Intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction” commonly referred to as the Butler Report. The report calls President Bush’s statement regarding Niger “well founded.” The Butler Review made the following conclusions on page 139:

a. It is accepted by all parties that Iraqi officials visited Niger in 1999.

b. The British Government had intelligence from several different sources indicating that this visit was for the purpose of acquiring uranium. Since uranium constitutes almost three-quarters of Niger�s exports, the intelligence was credible.

c. The evidence was not conclusive that Iraq actually purchased, as opposed to having sought, uranium and the British Government did not claim this.

d. The forged documents were not available to the British Government at the time its assessment was made, and so the fact of the forgery does not undermine it.

You can get your full copy of the Butler Review here. The text cited above is in there, as promised. If this is too dry for you, you can capture the essence of it in some comments I made last month.

We’re all educated now? Okee dokee! On with the show! And in case you’re wondering, the answer is yes. This presentation follows along in lockstep fashion with that “It’s All About Oil And Making His Buddies Rich” thing. They should come up with a tune you can hum to that someday.

Little Engine That Could

I’ve commented on Intelligent Design (ID) exactly to the extent that my expertise in the matter merits, which is admittedly not much. A great hue & cry among the evolutionist community explosively insists I’ve commented well beyond that expertise, although I think all I’ve done is raise some questions and make some observations about my failures to get answers to them. I’m taking it as a simple article of faith that I do have the learned background to do that much. I’m not inclined to go much further, but the controversy about ID refuses to go away.

Quite to the contrary, it’s getting louder and louder. Having failed thus far to instigate formal impeachment hearings on President Bush, the media and The Left have decided to hold informal hearings. The Articles are twofold: He has told lies to start an illegal and unjust war resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of human beings, and he wants to allow ID to be taught in our public schools. That’s kind of funny isn’t it? It’s like saying “he has lined up a hundred and fifty Girl Scouts and sexually molested them one by one, after which he gutted them, made them watch as their own entrails were boiled in a huge kettle, ate the entrails, burned the bodies…and then he returned a couple books to the library a whole week late.” If you take Article I as a serious indictment, worthy of even casual deliberation for a possible conviction, how in the world could Article II be relevant by comparison?

Yet both Articles are being debated loudly, and everywhere. I’ll leave this whole thing about illegal and unjust wars for elsewhere. But to rehash ID some more:

Dan Peterson, writing in the June edition of the American Spectator, offers a thirty-thousand-foot look at the arguments for and against ID in “The Little Engine That Could…Undo Darwinism.” He makes a persuasive case, undisputed as far as I know, that the marginalization of ID is based not so much on the scientific process of forming theories based on verifiable facts, but rather something quite opposite. The facts are being excluded in order to preserve established theories.

Severe difficulties with the Darwinian theory were becoming increasingly obvious by the 1980s, and some scientists began to state openly that design should be considered as an alternative theory. Then in 1991 Phillip Johnson…published a powerful critique of Darwinism entitled Darwin on Trial. In that volume Johnson marshaled the extensive scientific evidence against Darwinism. More importantly, he showed that Darwinism has essentially become a faith in naturalism that is immune to refutation by any set of facts. Arguments or conclusions that are not Darwinian are automatically ruled out of bounds by the scientific establishment. Within the Darwinian fold, wild conjectures, surmises unsupported by facts, and arguments lacking in explanatory power are accepted as legitimate, so long as they permit a “naturalistic” explanation.

I really don’t care that much whether or not Bush gets his way on the ID issue, but I’m terribly concerned about how the nature of “science” is changing so that our academics can gather munitions to resist him. Like I said before: Because science is not in the opinion business, a “theory” exists as a tool internal to science, not as a product in & of itself. It appears that our scientists have manifestly failed us here. They’ve squandered their resources toward coming up with explanations to uphold Darwinism, as each piece of evidence has trickled in over time to eather inflict assault on Darwinism, or simply pose a challenge to it. Would Darwinism still survive today if it were treated like any other theory, rather than being enshrined as a sacred cow? That is something I don’t know.

All I do know, is the things I had asked about a week ago remain unanswered as far as I’m concerned. And I’m also concerned about something else: In response to my queries, several scholars have suggested to me, with varying degrees of politeness, that I need to get an education on the impressive, awe-inspiring mountain of evidence supporting a different theory referred to as macro-evolution.

In other words, given a debate on how seriously the ID theory should be taken, there is a scattering of non-collaborating pundits who prefer to shift the debate to the soundness of macro-evolution. Maybe I do need to get that education — I don’t understand the connection. I don’t understand the mutual-exclusivity. I don’t think anybody does.

To debate whether design is involved in the origin of what we call “life,” and shift the argument to how the various species are interrelated, is like debating whether a pizza was home-baked or delivered and shifting the argument to whether that topping is properly called “ham” or “Canadian Bacon.”

Sincerity Returned Where None Was Offered

One of the most powerful arguments used by the anti-war left, to date, exists as a rhetorical question: “If you think this war has a noble cause, why don’t you enlist?” It’s an insincere question, because no answer can be offered that will soothe the anti-war passions of the person inquiring. This is easily proven.

What’s the most convincing answer that can be given? “Right you are, I’m on my way to the recruiter’s office.” Thousands upon thousands of people have already offered that very answer. They enlisted. They served. Some of them got deployed. Some of them fought, some of them died. In the face of that, the fact that the question is still being asked of others, proves that the question is immaterial.

But I’m a believer in being sincere when these arguments are explored, even if the other party isn’t so sincere. “Because they want guys half my age” would be an accurate answer, but it would not be a sincere answer.

Sincerity doesn’t simply arrive at truth; it consists of truth. And the truth here is, if I were to enlist, and somehow accepted, my enlistment would be irrelevant to the argument — as demonstrated above. The truth is, also, that we have a faction of private citizens who have the right to speak out in favor of the war, because they do not serve. We can’t win without these people. Without any opposition to the noisy, angry, bitter Government-Entertainment Complex of the Left, support for the war would evaporate overnight. The morale of our troops would deteriorate bit by bit — a pretty awful scenario, although admittedly, it’s not my job to do anything about it. However, public sentiment would turn toward bringing the troops home no matter the consequences. Then we’d leave Iraq and Afghanistan, in disgrace.

This would happen regardless of whether things went okay on the battlefield or not.

There is precedence for this in Vietnam.

So in the interest of responding to the question truthfully, with sincerity returned where none was offered, I give my answer. “I’m remaining a civilian so I can keep my right to speak out against people like you. Somebody has to.”

Follow-up: “Why is it important to you that everybody who disagrees with you, enlists, and thus abdicates their right to say anything? Is this what it takes for you to prevail?”

You’re Not Allowed To Say This

Cliff Kincaid, writing for Men’s Health Daily, speaks the unspeakable that our Government-Entertainment Complex elitist layers will not allow to be uttered in “Al Qaeda Loves Our Unpatriotic Media”. It is exactly what it sounds like.

We have to face up to the fact that the enemy has the U.S. on the run, using our own media against us. When Al Qaeda’s number two man, Ayman al-Zawahiri, recently threatened a Vietnam in Iraq, he was referring to an American defeat but it’s clear that he was not just referring to the military aspect of the conflict. The U.S. was not defeated militarily in Vietnam. We lost because our own media came to believe it was a cause not worth fighting. That caused the American people to lose heart and the Congress to cut and run. We are seeing the same thing happen in regard to Iraq. And the worst may be yet to come.

If I live to be three hundred years old I will never forget how this went down. The aforementioned Government-Entertainment Complex elitist layer of our society, has been censoring this kind of speech the way they censor everything else: Through ridicule.

They turn it around a hundred and eighty degrees. With a battle cry of “free speech for me but not for thee!” they ridicule anybody who would declare a polar difference, or even a nominal difference, between patriotism and slandering of our executive branch. Attacks on the cabinet-level officers, attacks on the generals, even attacks on enlisted men can never be called “unpatriotic,” or any synonym for same, nor can any doubt be expressed that even fallacious attacks are anything but patriotic — or else onward comes the ridicule. They even ridiculed this preliminarily, making their point by saying “my patriotism has been questioned” when the facts were not on their side.

I personally find that fascinating. It’s a kind of weird censorship-through-slander-about-alleged-censorship. Up until now, we’ve all known that the anti-war leftists in fact enjoy much greater freedom of speech than anyone else, de facto if not de jeure. Even observing that is an idea that has not been allowed to resonate, because as we observe it individually, we’re not allowed to communicate it with each other.

Weird as it may seem, you’re reading what may save us. Not this particular blog, of course, because as I keep pointing out nobody reads this blog. But the bloggers will save us.

No longer are we connected to a central authority such as Jennings/Cronkite/Rather/Brokaw, like spokes connected to a hub. News travels differently now. You read my blog, I read yours. The connections look more like the strands of a net. There is no “hub”.

I have the view that real democracy is a pipe dream, until we fully eradicate that bicycle-spokes model. With no hub, I get to write posts on my blog that say “Hey wait a minute…what reason does Tim Robbins have for thinking the White House was behind efforts to shut him up?” You can read what I write, and if you disagree, ignore it; but if you agree, now you have the same question. Now we have two people wondering the same thing, and from then on it’s like the shampoo commercial. You tell two friends, and so on, and so on.

The Robbins-Sarandon-style of censorship has every chance of success with the bicycle-spokes model. Practically guaranteed success. Tim Robbins can give a speech filled with examples of private-sector censorship — which do not infringe upon First Amendment guarantees, in any way — and gratuitously, with nothing to back up the connection at all, attach these instances to the White House, in effect manufacturing a serious constitutional transgression. The blogosphere can peel this sham like a grapefruit, as millions of us sync up asking the obvious and unanswered question: “Waitaminnit! What has this to do with the government censoring you?”

If the Brokaw/Rather/Jennings trio simply dipped a microphone into such a tirade and showed clips of it, perhaps playing the entire thing back for us, without a way for us to interconnect there’d be nothing else for us to do…except sit there and nod dutifully, “why, that George W. Bush. That dirty rat. I know you were behind all these things, Tim Robbins said so. And he’s been in way more movies than you have.”

I don’t mean to imply that Cliff Kincaid must be right simply because there is an effort to shut up people like him. That would be pretending I don’t know of one of the “Things I Know” (#20). But I do agree with Mr. Kincaid, and it’s interesting to note how much resistance such a sentiment arouses when it is spoken. Resistance, that is, with plenty of ridicule, condescension, condemnation, recoil and malicious jocularity — but lacking much, if any, persuasive argument as to why we should not agree.

Democrats Change a Mind

I’m not going to use the names “Cindy” or “Sheehan” in my headlines anymore. I may never use those names in the text of my posts, if I can get away with it. There are two reasons for this.

• A little while ago I referred to a letter to this activist as “the second-to-last thing I’ll ever have to say about this”. “This,” of course, was the extended — or never-ending — demonstration being held by this activist in Crawford, TX. The phrase “second-to-last,” you might have guessed, is a reference to the prospect that there may be an upcoming meeting between the activist and President Bush. Of course I would want to say something about that. But the Democrat Party Machine, true to form, has smelled victory where they smell blood, as opposed to catching a whiff of it where they think they have a point of principle to make. We live in a world, whether I like it or not, where princes in ivory towers get to decide what is “news”. Aliens could be attacking us with superlasers that wipe out whole cities in a single blast, and if the princes in their ivory towers decide Jessica Simpson’s divorce is what’s news, we’re all going to talk about Jessica Simpson’s divorce. So lately we’ve all been talking about the activist. My previous pledge notwithstanding, I can’t avoid this activist anymore — but I don’t have to buy into the hype about her personal connection to this war. Which brings me to…
• Her identity, and her personal life, have nothing whatsoever to do with the story. An activist is what she is. By now it is a matter of proven fact that she is not an “every-mom” who got that terrible knock-at-the-door, telling her her son was killed, and “decided” that the war was unjust, Bush is a bad man who is murdering thousands of people, etc. etc. etc. She is an activist who has been spouting some of this stuff for years, and since she’s made her new friends, is now spouting kookier and kookier stuff. Because she’s made the friends. Point being, her son dying in Iraq has little-to-nothing to do with forming the opinions she has, only, maybe, intensifying them somewhat. Her “son” might as well have been an ex-roomate’s husband’s brother’s ex-wife’s stepson killed in Iraq, for all it really has to do with the issues she wants to discuss. She’s not a product, she’s a label to slap on a previously-existing product. Democrats have found the product, which is a bottle of the same bullcrap they’ve been hawking for years now, sells better with that label. She is nothing more than this. If she’s a reminder that there are parents who have lost children in Iraq, then this has meaning only for people who forgot this in the first place. I’m not one of those people, and I don’t feel like writing anything addressed to the attention of those people.

Those bullets are not written well, because we have a lot of people who can read them a few times and look up and go “huh”? I know this. But like I said, these are issues that simply aren’t going to resonate with certain people, and no amount or quality of writing is ever going to change that.

But some people are aware of things. This guy gets it, for example. I caught wind of this via Bob Krumm, who hailed it as a “must read“. I found out about Krumm’s post, in turn, from Best of the Web.

Cindy sealed the deal.

I actually felt myself become a republican today. It was around 10am, when I read the latest update of the Cindy Sheehan saga in CNN.com. I then shot over to read some blogs about it, and perused the comments in some of them, which was nothing but a long series of petty (albeit entertaining) partisan bickering.

Then it happend. The good little democrat in me tied the little noose around his neck and jumped off the stool. He just couldn�t take it anymore.

Take what? The whining. The constant whining by the extreme left about the reasons for war, the incompetence of this administration, and how we�ve all been lied to, and how we should pull out of Iraq immediately, because, *gulp* our soldiers were in danger.

Guess what folks�.they signed up to join the Army, not the boy scouts. Anytime your orientation to a new job involves an automatic weapon, you should be smart enough to figure out there�s danger involved. I actually read some people�s comments about many of the soldiers over there being naive�.they weren�t expecting to go to war, so, they should be allowed to go home. Wow.

Soldiers know, when they enlist, that it is entirely possible they will be shipped out and never come home. It�s part of the job. The fact that people still walk in to recruiters� offices and sign that piece of paper make them heroes. To imply that they are simple kids who didn�t know what they were getting into, or even worse, that they died for no reason, or an immoral reason, does a horrible thing. It strips their sacrifice of the honor that it deserves. Even though those folks sitting out there in the Texas fields claim to honor and support the soldiers, they obviously have been blinded by their own selfishness as to the real way to support them.

Because, long story short, we can�t end this war now. That would send the message that those bastardly little terrorists have won. It doesn�t matter if the adminstration told us the desert sand was made of gold, and we are going over there to collect it in little buckets to bring home, the concrete fact that we are at war doesn�t change. We are there, and we have a job to finish. We�ve toppled a regime that was dangerous not only to its own people, but also to the rest of the world. Now, we are there fighting the same terrorists we are fighting in Afghanistan. We�ve given liberty to millions of people, and we�re trying to help create a government, in an area that is very volatile, that will be a bastion of freedom and hope for an entire race of people. I hate the fact that our boys are getting killed over there, and I wish it didn�t have to happen.

But, it is, there�s nothing we can do about it, except for doing everything we can to offer support and hope to the folks fighting over there. Arguing and whining about the reasons we�re there, and the need to come home not only kills morale, but it is a complete waste of time.

I just re-read the above post, and I apologize for the rambling�.just needed to vent a little. Here�s a breakdown of the way I see things:
-right or wrong, we�re at war. no amount of yelling will fix that now.
-we have to finish the job. HAVE TO. it may take another 1800 soldiers, but it has to be done
-whether or not we�re there for the right reason, we�ve done something great for that country

I never was a big fan of Bush. But, one thing I do believe�.he honestly wants to make this country, and this world a better place. Think about it�the war almost cost him the election. If we hadn�t invaded Iraq, he�d have won in a landslide.

I think it�s just my personality that lead me to this decision. I think the left is too concerned with everyone�s immediate rights and needs, and refuses to sacrifice a bit of comfort and happiness in the present, for something that will make life better for everyone in the future. You can take the environmental stance on that, and I�d have no argument�but I think there enough conservatives concerned with that to make it a moot point.

Mostly, I�m just really pissed off. We�re in a crappy situation, and it�s time for all of America to stand together, put on the big boy pants, and get through the next few years.

The three bullet points are particularly enlightening. All of life is like this, folks. You can whine, or you can do.

The jug-o-rum being sold behind the label with this activist’s face printed on it, is a very simple elixir with a very simple formula: We don’t do. We whine.

The elixir says, we should not have gone into Iraq, but now that we’re in, we must get out. And George Bush is a big doo-doo head, by the way.

But getting out would be really bad. Few people dispute this, and nobody is providing a credible argument for why it wouldn’t be bad.

And having not gone in in the first place, would be really bad. Few people dispute that, and nobody is providing a credible argument for why that wouldn’t have been bad.

I’m not sure which is worse: Not going in, or getting out now. We will never really “know” the answer to that. But I join millions in welcoming Scott Randolph to the fold of those who get it.

Update: According to Mr. Krumm, there is a whole new bandwidth issue now that Rush Limbaugh has read about this post on the air.

No, no, no. Scott Randolph’s post. Not this. I keep telling you people, “nobody reads this blog.” Certainly not Rush.

For The Anti-Death-Penalty Types

There are people, out there, some of them running around free-as-a-bird, with exactly the same rights you & I have, like this.

Person County Sheriff Dennis Oakley said 27-year-old Ray Anthony Paylor was holding his son, Shawdeen, in their kitchen when two or three men broke into their Colonial Estates Road home in Hurdles Mills at about 9 a.m. and fired a gun…”We don’t know if it was a home invasion, if it was a robbery or it was a vengence thing. We don’t know yet.” Shawdeen Paylor, who would have turned 2 years in old in October, was shot in the head and was pronounced dead on arrival at UNC Hospitals. Ray Paylor was shot in the abdomen and underwent surgery at UNC Hospitals. Officials said his injuries were not life-threatening.

Something to think about when we debate whether governments have the right, upon conviction of truly hideous crimes, to take life. I’d like to know how the innocent can be protected if people like this aren’t whittled out.

Two Million Dollar Man

I am worth $1,967,460 on HumanForSale.com

Outrage!

One of the things that fascinate me about the intellectual differences between conservatives and liberals, is this tactic liberals tend to have of arguing through outrage. (Sometime later, I’ll get around to “arguing through calling the other person stupid.”) This is where you respond to the recitation of a fact, or reasonable inference, or proposition of what to do, or article of faith, by proclaiming a sense of outrage you have that properly ought to be resonating with everyone.

This allows you to save face while being non-intellectual. You don’t have to confront the fact, opinion, proposition of what to do, or article of faith.

California Assemblyman Mark Leno, from the 13th district, just managed to squeek out a textbook-case of this, and upon further research from me it emerges that this was a repeat performance. He was confronted by the following:

Gov. Schwarzenegger is going after the vigilante-justice vote. He’s announced his support for a bill to require one-time sex offenders to wear a GPS device for the rest of their lives. The bill probably won’t get much support from Democrats, since it has no Democrat co-sponsors. This is how he chose to address that:

“I think there’s certain issues that Republicans have interest in, like public safety,” he said. “Then there’s other issues that the Democrats have more interest in. That’s just the way it works here. But we’re really looking forward to working together with Democrats and Republicans.”

Okay, this is fairly simple. Republicans are interested in public safety, Democrats are interested in something that isn’t public safety. Which he’s leaving undefined. And you know, when you think about it that isn’t even a slam — Democrats could be interested in all kinds of noble things. They could be interested in the rights of the accused, they could be interested in budget, hell, they could even be interested in the environment. Those are good things.

Being bought-off or blackmailed by perverts would be a bad thing. But the Governor didn’t say anything like that.

Assemblyman Leno, now, chose to address this. Pay attention to the excerpt closely. He’s going to disagree with Governor Schwarzenegger. How does he do this? Does he refute the notion that Democrats and Republicans are interested in different things? Does he establish that Democrats are concerned about public safety? Does he attack the notion that Republicans are interested in public safety? Does he contest the statement that that’s the way it works here? Let’s take a look.

That comment drew an immediate condemnation from Assemblyman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, chairman of the Assembly Public Safety Committee.

“Of all the reckless, partisan statements he’s made the last couple of years, that’s the most egregious,” Leno said. “If they’re going forward without a single Democratic co-sponsor, they either didn’t try or they don’t care.”

The statement is reckless, partisan and egregious.

How much of it is true? How much of it is not? Why is it true? Why is it not? Ah, if you want to know such things then you’re not part of Mark Leno’s audience. You people who want to be told what you’re supposed to think about something, step right up, Leno has pre-packaged outrage for you. If you’re seeking confirmation or denial, new things to consider, reasoned dissent, you’ve come to the wrong place.

If this seems familiar, it’s probably because Assemblyman Leno was leading the charge against Governor Schwarzenegger a year ago when the Gov. referred to California’s state legislature as a bunch of “Girlie Men“. Let’s take a look at what he said back then:

Assemblyman Mark Leno, a San Francisco Democrat who is chairman of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Caucus, said the comment was “as misogynist as it is anti-gay.” “To disparage a group of law abiding tax paying citizens is just wrong,” Leno said.

There’s a fundamentally different view at work here, about how our government is supposed to work. People who think like me, think it’s up to the voters and the Constitution to determine what’s “just wrong”. People we vote into office, translate those values into positions, and then the positions into action. Mark Leno seems to think it’s the job of the noble, inspired elites to decide these things for the commoners. What politicians like those need from unwashed masses like us, I don’t know.

But the point is, when politicians do this, on average, people start to tune out. They lose interest in politics. Watching a bunch of legislators get all agitated about each other, is about as exciting as watching car salesmen or insurance executives get agitated about each other. The human brain has a natural gland built into it, that sends out a chemical carrying the thought “eh, you know what, I don’t have a dog in this hunt.” It makes us sleepy when we sense lots of angst shared by several parties, on an issue we don’t know too much about. Call it the “I think American Idol is on” enzyme.

It also makes Mark Leno look bad. But in addition to that, it makes Arnold Schwarzenegger look bad too. It’s a worthwhile exercise in an adversarial relationship, because when Mark Leno sends his own approval rating down a point, he sends the Governor’s rating down by two.

And it doesn’t address the issue.

The Governor may be right, he may be wrong. At the end of the day, the question is left unresolved. That’s a good thing, for anybody who may be damaged by the truth.

Circular Logic

Lately I notice when I part company with someone on The Left, the parting of company takes place at some point where the leftist confuses fact & opinion. There is a dizzy spell that immediately precedes this, as I follow along the case they’ve presented, trying to find the nugget of compelling argument shaping the soft opinion into a hard, established fact. A little while ago I noticed one of these arguments, a very popular one, was in fact circular, which means there was no such compelling nugget anywhere in it. A was proved by B but along the way, C was presumed; C relied on D; D was proven because A said so.

Then I noticed another leftist argument worked this way, and then another and another. “Jimmy Carter deserved his Nobel Peace Prize because he is a very smart man; he is in favor of things like getting the United States out of Iraq; we know those policies are sound, because they’re backed by noted Nobel Peace Prize recipients; such as, for example, Jimmy Carter.” Like that.

I’ve decided to start a collection.

NARAL Communications Director STWF’d

There appears to be a subtle difference between the FOX News story on the sudden departure of NARAL Communications Directory David Seldin, Friday, and the follow-up in the Washington Post that appeared Sunday. The FOX News article leaves ample room for doubt, with no spin in one direction or the other, as to whether NARAL was getting rid of Seldin or Seldin was getting rid of NARAL. The Post story gives us a good shove in the direction of presuming the latter.

Some Democrats said their side should be tougher, and one of them is David E. Seldin, who as NARAL’s communications director had defended the ad’s linking of Roberts to violent abortion opponents as “100 percent accurate.” A day after Thursday night’s announcement that the ad was being yanked, Seldin sent an e-mail to friends saying that he was leaving his job immediately.

In one job I had, it became key to the success of our enterprises to try to anticipate what was going to happen with other teams. Sometimes, someone outside would leave. Sometimes, someone on the inside would leave. Or we’d get worried someone somewhere was about to leave. Maybe someone in a key position was about to not be there anymore, or word was just getting out that someone already wasn’t there anymore.

Seasoned readers of corporate spin, which showered us with buzzwords designed to confuse whenever high-ranking executives were shown the door, we used to say “I got a feeling so-and-so is about to Spend More Time With His Family.”

So it’s kind of amusing to me, with that background in the rear-view mirror, that the following paragraph is shared between the Fox story and the Post story:

Seldin, who had held the job for just over two years, wrote in the Friday afternoon e-mail: “I’ve been thinking for a while that I would most likely leave after the Supreme Court nomination fight was over, and by leaving now I can spend the next two weeks in Cape Cod with my family relaxing, instead of trying to find a place with good cell phone reception.”

This is really encouraging. Not because I’ve got a big hard-on to outlaw abortion whenever & wherever I can, which I don’t. It’s encouraging because the ad, which is really at the heart of the matter no matter which side you believe, is a lie.

An abortion-rights group is running an attack ad accusing Supreme Court nominee John Roberts of filing legal papers �supporting . . . a convicted clinic bomber� and of having an ideology that �leads him to excuse violence against other Americans� It shows images of a bombed clinic in Birmingham, Alabama.

The ad is false.

And the ad misleads when it says Roberts supported a clinic bomber. It is true that Roberts sided with the bomber and many other defendants in a civil case, but the case didn’t deal with bombing at all.

Awhile back I had written about how incredibly, and tragically, rare it was nowadays to tell a provable falsehood and then not only get caught for it, but suffer some kind of consequence for spreading it around as well.

Twice in the last two weeks liars are suffering consequences for their lies. And both times, there is actually some coverage of the consequences in the media. This time, it is the communications director of a powerful political advocacy group. Fired, asked to resign, or resigning in disgust after being caught in a known lie.

This is real progress, in an age when we tend to show much more enthusiasm for believing known lies, than we do for debunking them or listening to somebody else debunk them.

This is the kind of thing that could eventually save our society. IF we keep it up. But that is a big “if”.

Dear Ms. Sheehan

…and hopefully, this is the second-to-last thing I’ll ever have to say about this.

Normally, I get uncontrollably cheesed-off when people tell me things they know to not be true, and after I do my research I find they’re either ignorant, or must have been hoping I wouldn’t look into the facts behind what they said. When Cindy Sheehan does this, she doesn’t make me angry, she just makes me cringe. I fear for the reputation she has on the national stage, upon which she obviously depends so much for whatever’s left of her emotional health, every time she opens her mouth. Every syllable she utters, every far-leftist cause she allows to hop into bed with her, is another opportunity for her to embarrass herself. She’s playing Russian Roulette, by herself, with three cartridges in the cylinder.

Cindy Sheehan has said one of the reasons she separated with her husband, is that he dealt with his grief by avoiding things that would remind him of Casey’s death, including moving his son’s property into the garage, while she herself has dealt with it by immersion. If that is the case, her bandwagon is a key piece to her emotional solace, and I fear it will come as another bitter blow when that bandwagon goes sailing off a cliff. We live in an age where this happens to people with some regularity…but I don’t think it was as devastating to Dan Rather, when he got STWF’d, as it will someday be to Sheehan after she is knocked off her soapbox for good.

She’s misguided, not evil. Let’s hope she burns out quietly, instead of going supernova the way the Dan-Man did.

Dear Ms. Sheehan,

During our annual August News Drought, a nation beholds your heavily-reported anticipation of a (second) meeting with President Bush, whether we want to or not. You say you have one or several questions to ask of him. Some of us are aware you met with the President and had an opportunity to ask him such questions last year. Many others are not. While it is wrong to publicize the idea that you’re waiting for this meeting, without disclosing the fact that you’ve already had a previous meeting, I see you as playing-along with this falsehood engineered by others rather than engineering it yourself.

We have not yet reached universal agreement that the purpose of your (second) visit is to embarrass President Bush, as opposed to communicating with him in some way, but we have reached the point where nobody paying attention would doubt it. With that in mind, I thought I should mention to you some ways the President could embarrass you, with or without intent, although I’m certain he doesn’t want to. At the very least, he may raise issues you haven’t considered before. Although we’re told the man is an idiot, for an idiot he has an impressive history of doing exactly that.

With all due respect, in the things you’ve written that I’ve read, you haven’t done this. You’re also a media darling. It is difficult to anticipate things when one is imbibing the elixir of media worship, or drowning in grief. You appear to be doing both, so this should be of some use to you. Ponder them in advance of your upcoming (second) hearing, so that you’re not caught considering them for the first time before the cameras that will almost certainly be there. The fame that has clearly become personally important to you, will never become greater than it would be in that instant, nor will it extend much beyond that instant. Don’t blow it. I suggest you review the following line by line. Coming up with compelling answers would be ideal; having simply given them thought, would be almost as good. Being surprised by them would be…awful. We who are opposed to your cause, don’t want to see it die THAT way.

– Your son believed in the cause for which he was fighting. It’s impossible to believe he didn’t since he willingly re-enlisted.
– You don’t speak for all bereaved parents. Proving this is easy.
– In regard to the above, it’s possible another bereaved parent will be there with views different from your own. Other than the President’s demonstrably innate good nature and reluctance to exploit people, there’s no reason to doubt this to be the case. THEY may have questions for YOU.
– Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) were found in Iraq. The fallacy that none were, has been preserved through the technique of re-defining what a WMD is, as each WMD was in fact found.
– Saddam Hussein’s regime was linked to Al-Qaeda, and through them, indirectly to the attacks of September 11, 2001 as well.
– The United States of America has a pressing national interest in stabilizing Iraq, which necessarily included a regime change.
– Regime change in Iraq has been the official United States policy since 1998. That policy, therefore, precedes this administration.
– Some of our national interest has to do with the market for petroleum, which is being consumed by your friends as they put you on film, broadcast you, blog about you, fly in to talk to you, rent cars, crank up the air conditioning when they’re with you, order supplies that have to be trucked around, bring you bottled water, film themselves bringing you bottled water, bottle the water, package up the bottles of water, and put the bottled water in electrical refrigerators to keep it cool.
– Presidents are not on “vacation” no matter where they are. Ever.
– If President Bush has told any “lies” to start this war, in spite of repeated requests from myself & others, nobody’s called out what the lie is. On the other hand, the legend being disseminated that you want to see him simply to ask a question, hardly has the ring of truth to it.
– The vast majority of us don’t think the President lied. He won the last election by a significant margin, which is thought to be a large margin by people like me, albeit perhaps a narrow one by people like you. But it’s proven that he received more votes than his opponent. A lot of people voted against him even though they thought he told the truth about Iraq — but nobody’s ready to insinuate anyone voted for him, believing he lied. We’ve had a national referendum on President Bush lying, and this country has resoundingly rejected this.
– People who want to pressure the President to meet with you (for a second time), knowing that you would rather embarrass him than truly discuss anything with him or ask any genuine questions of him, scare the rest of us. We know those people have excited themselves about their various causes, to the extent where they no longer question the moral implications of what they do.
– The idea that this President is afraid to meet with the parents of our war dead, or is afraid to appear before them without the benefit of a scripted meeting, is unsupported by the facts. It’s possible, in fact likely, that the President is refusing to meet with you to spare YOU from embarrassment.
– As the Commander in Chief, this President knows things about ties between Iraq and Al-Qaeda that you don’t know. This is important to you, because frankly you haven’t demonstrated the quality of staying silent on things you don’t know.
– The President won re-election. If you think he lied or he is an illegitimate President, back this up somehow. Remember that someone cast all those votes. If all you’re going to do is repeat the opinions you think the rest of us ought to have, your final public comments will fall on deaf ears.

I know you will never be shaken from the things you believe about this war. That is not my intent. But in one month, you will be deprived of both your child, and your celebratory status. Many other grieving parents have similarly lost the former but never had the chance to enjoy the latter. I hope wherever the next phase of your life takes you, should it involve your outspokenness or not, it gives you fulfillment, some measure of happiness, and peace.

Thank you for raising Casey, who had the courage and sense of duty to enlist twice. Millions of people like me, who do not share your beliefs, are immeasurably grateful for his sacrifice, to you & the rest of his family, as well as to his memory.

Best Wishes.

Baby Step in the Right Direction

Hat tip to Michelle Malkin for this story in the Washington Post. Air Marshalls are no longer being required to dress as, you know, um, Air Marshalls.

People who called this the “Kill Me First” policy are gleefully cheering that “Kill Me First is dead,” as Malkin headlined the story. People who didn’t call it that, i.e., public relations folks, say the reversal simply “broadens the scope” of the dress code.

The issue of what the marshals wear when flying on jetliners put a wrinkle in the public relations image of the Department of Homeland Security last year.

The 24,000-member Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association protested that the dress code could blow the cover of air marshals, making it easier for terrorists to identify them. Department officials said the concerns were overblown.

Accounts vary on what the air marshals were ordered to wear, but the department apparently wanted them to project a professional image, and some agents believed they were being forced into suit coats, ties and dress shoes. Officials said the policy did not require coats and ties.

A sense of perspective is needed on this. With my limited knowledge as a civie, I see no reason to regard the enemy with which we are engaged, as anything but extraordinarily cunning and resourceful. Sure they screw up. Their bombs go off twelve hours late because they set them to p.m. instead of a.m. They put insufficient postage on their bomb parcels and blow themselves up, almost like Yosemite Sam, when the packages come back. But they also do smart things; and they get lucky.

I don’t give a rat’s rear end what we were requiring the Air Marshalls to wear. If it was a government dress code, if I’m a terrorist and I get a year or two to sync up to what’s going on, I’ll be able to pick ’em out and train low-ranking people to do the same.

Thus, I didn’t like Kill Me First because it wasn’t consistent with a Homeland Security department that really meant business. The symptom has now been mitigated; is the underlying sickness really gone?

Time will tell.

I’m At A Loss

I’m a staunch supporter of the death penalty. In fact I’m vigorously opposed to any attempts, with very few exceptions, to make the justice system more lenient in the prosecution, conviction and sentencing of serious violent crimes. And when I say “very few exceptions” I’m referring to the processes that deal with forensics, admission and conviction…not with sentencing.

From what I’ve observed, the watering-down of our justice system is an experiment that was already tried, between the mid ’60s to the early ’70s. The results were so disastrous, so crystal-clear, and ran so contrary to the will of the well-intentioned — so incredibly simple — that further experimentation is unwarranted and unnecessary.

To bottom-line it: More innocent people got killed and we got sick of it. Duh.

One of the most persuasive arguments the anti-death-penalty people use, and it even has a compelling effect on people like me, is that the death penalty is an unjust investment of power into the government. In other words, the taking of human life is a power that a government of free men ought not have.

That makes perfect sense. By itself. But I’m at a loss to explain the following.

There are several countries sprinkled around the globe that measure the extent to which they have become “civilized,” by their readiness, willingness, ability and eagerness to create new regulation. These countries are not known for a careful balance between social good versus individual liberties — the latter of the two, is something that is simply in the way. A ban on drinking, even in the privacy of people’s homes, to curb violence and disorderly conduct? “Something must be done!” A ban on guns, including the forcible confiscation of private property? “It’s for the children!” A requirement to put health-warning bumper stickers on SUVs? “They kill!”

With increasing regularity, I see these countries indulging in risk-mitigation, perhaps up to & beyond a point of diminishing return. They regulate until threat-to-self has been lowered about as much as it practically can be, then they keep regulating. Taking away freedom, offering no benefit in return. Goo-Gooders. Guardian Angel Governments (GAG). Nanny-states.

Let ’em do it. As a yankee, I have no right to impose my will on such an enlightened society that is so eager to steamroll over the individual rights of its citizens.

Which brings me to the thing I don’t understand.

The list of countries that have abolished the death penalty unconditionally, supposedly because government ought-not-have-that-right, has an incredibly high overlap with the nanny-state countries. It seems all the nanny-states have outlawed the death penalty, and all the anti-death-penalty states are nanny-states.

They are not known for curtailing government excesses in too many other areas, any areas at all, besides taking the life of the provably homicidal. In these countries, you have the right to be alive, even if you kill people, and even if you swear that if you make it outside again you’ll kill again. But once you are kept alive, you don’t have the right to do an awful lot with that life. Everything that isn’t confiscated, is pasturized, regulated, subsidized, underwritten. And then a warning label is put on it.

This is a long list. Canada. Spain. France. Germany. Sweden. Norway. Denmark. Belgium. On and on and on.

They all supposedly respect an individual’s right to life more than the USA does — because if you kill somebody, you have an absolute guarantee, you will live. Nevermind that your victim had no such guarantee.

Now, we live in a universe that does have some contradictions — they may not be genuine contradictions, but illusory or not the contradictions are there. But this one is more troubling than most, because the resulting message is truly paradoxical. The government will champion your right to stay alive even if you kill; but if someone else kills you, the government will make sure that person cannot be executed for the crime of killing you. If someone else kills him then that person, too, will be spared execution. You are all protected by a law that outlaws killing, but that law really has no teeth.

And until all of you get killed, you have to stay within the lines. You can’t smoke. When you kill each other you must use knives because you can’t have guns. If you work and earn money, you owe whatever portion of it to the state, that the state says you owe — all of it, if the state has the desire to say so. Logically, that would have to mean whatever you’re allowed to keep, you get to keep because the state decided to let you, not because it’s your “right”.

It’s so bizarre. The state cannot take your whole life but it can take chunks of it, large & small. On a whim, basically. You have an absolute, sacrosanct right to listen to your heartbeat; anything else you do is up for challenge. Pour milk on top of your cake? Swallow watermelon seeds? Read a newspaper while having breakfast with your wife? If 49 say you can and 51 say you can’t, then forget it.

I would call this a coincidence if it was a couple countries. Maybe three or four. But like I said, we’re talking like, I don’t know, something approaching twenty or so here.

Is there a nanny-state that allows its government to regulate reflexively, excessively, redundantly, on a whim, and — for sake of consistency — also allows it to impose the death penalty? With considerable deterioration to the spirit of its Constitution over the years, the United States somewhat qualifies for this. In practice; not in intent. I can’t think of another one.

Is there a state that curtails its government from executing the guilty, and also — for the sake of consistency — restricts its government from doing a lot of other things? I can’t think of one.

This means something. I’m not sure what.

A Nation Of Pussies

If this is what Title IX is all about, we have to do something about it. Kill the beast. Or starve it. Or simply clip its nails. But for God’s sakes, let us do something.

Bullies called this kid gay. I doubt like hell they said “hey, you are a gay person.” The bullies probably called him a pansy, or a pole-smoker, or a fag.

The family of Dylan Theno, 18, filed the lawsuit in May 2004 against the Tonganoxie School District. The suit claimed Theno had suffered years of brutal bullying, and that school officials didn’t attempt to stop the harassment.

He got a quarter mil. From the school. For the treatment he received at the hands of bullies who, so far as the article mentions, did not work for the school. So now I have a crystal ball showing me a place that is Our Future, where people confront any & all problems with a lawsuit. We have no hope.

When I was a kid, I got picked on by bullies a lot…although I haven’t completely forgotten, that stuff mostly took place between fifth and seventh grades, not during my junior year of high school. I haven’t been sued by anyone under Title IX lately. So based on my personal experience, I have a lot of incentive to say bullies represent a big problem, and kids like Dylan Theno, and his lawyers, do not. But I’m not going to say that. Theno is a much bigger problem for our society than his tormentors.

Why do I say so? Because bullies are part of life. Life is bullies. Life is pretty much one solid, non-stop parade of figurative “bullies,” like reverse-fairy-godmothers, waving their magic wands over you. You wake up, get dressed, run downstairs and some days you’ll find yourself blessed by the fairy-godmother-bully of dead car batteries. Or maybe the fairy-godmother-bully of being-out-of-coffee will brighten your day. Or maybe you’ll get some pixie dust sprinkled on your head by the fairy-godmother-bully of “I’m the boss and I just had a fight with my wife and I’m going to take it out on you.”

I think by now every grown man who has any character at all, can see where I’m going with this. Life is a series of challenges. And looking back on it with the wisdom and lack-of-sympathy of a 39-year-old, reviewing the days I lived a full quarter century ago, I see that besides a few cold mornings on the paper route, and some lukewarm grades I earned myself by not doing the homework I was supposed to be doing, I really didn’t have any problems in life besides bullies. Life did get rough soon after that, but the point is that Dylan Theno took the one real exigency in life we can expect during those years…the only one…and played ostrich with it.

Manhood has given me many blessings over the years, things I wouldn’t trade for the three brand new Dodge Vipers Mr. Theno can now buy any time he chooses. Not just “I have a penis” manhood, but being a real man who knows how to take a lemon and use that internal resourcefulness to turn it into lemonade. Manhood hasn’t made me any money…not that I’m aware of. People who lack my manliness don’t look at me wistfully and say “Gosh, I wish I could be a real man like that Freeberg guy,” and because I’m a real man, it wouldn’t mean a whole lot to me if they did. But my manhood is priceless.

It has solved, by itself, every single problem that it ever made for me and a whole fistful of problems that it didn’t.

Nearly everything I have that’s good, I owe to my manhood, and conversely, I only owe my manhood to a tiny handful of various things. I owe it to other manly men I had the common sense to sit back & watch & observe, at an age where I didn’t have the common sense to do too much else. And I owe it to Boy Scouts. And a good chunk of what’s left over — I owe to bullies.

Bullies are therefore, to me and a whole bunch of other real men, emblematic of what it takes for our society to survive, insofar as our society needs real men to survive. Which it undoubtedly does. You see, you’re reading this blog entry on a computer invented by a real man, running software written by a real man, downloading my remarks through transmission protocols written, tested, refined and documented by real men.

The gavel that the judge brought down when Dylan Theno was handed his 250 large was invented by a real man.

“That’s five years of my life that I had to live — just depressed, angry, scared. I can never get that back,” Theno told KMBC-TV. “I was just miserable, you know. You wake up every morning, begging my parents not to make me go to school. It was just, I didn’t want to be there; I didn’t want to walk down those halls anymore.”

I know the feeling, kiddo. It’s part of life. And the grown-ups are pretty much unsympathetic, apparently, because they don’t have to go through it everyday like you do. And that’s true — kind of like your dad only had so much sympathy for you when you got circumcised, because it wasn’t being done to him.

And that’s kind of “wrong,” so what, now all circumcised men can go back and sue over that too?

This is crap. And you know what else is crap? Take a look at this…

Mr. Theno says he was “just miserable, you know…didn’t want to be there; I didn’t want to walk down those halls anymore.” Because the bullies were offering their opinion that he was a homosexual.

Not that I’m advocating you should let bullies determine your fashion sense.

But a man’s earrings are, so far as I understand them, a known “calling card.” If you put any weight behind my personal opinion, anyway, they definitely are. Earrings are for women and mature little girls — the message they send out from masculine earlobes ranges somewhere between “confused,” “androgenous,” “weird” and — well, let’s face it — “gay.” Having it all to do over again Mr. Theno, would it not have been a tad less drastic to simply remove that metal from your earlobes, as opposed to dropping out, getting your G.E.D., and turning our tort system upside-down?

I know it would be awfully tough for me to hear a question like that while I was cashing a check for 250 grand. But the rest of us may want to take note, there’s a sensible way & a nonsensical way to address just about anything.

Update: No new news, I was just doing some more thinking about this.

The reporter-in-the-field, on the video, makes reference to vulgar slang and I believe he used the word “epithets”. Although the exact epithets used, must be in the public record somewhere, my capability of finding them falls short of what is needed.

Why would they be relevant? Well you run through the list of them in your mind, which is what I’ve been doing, and you come to realize something. Pussy. A vagina, a feline, a homosexual male, a male exhibiting traits of a homosexual, or a male lacking masculine qualities. Sissy. A homosexual male, or a male who is not manly. Fag. A small piece of wood to be used for fuel, a matchstick, a homosexual male, or a male who is thought to not be very cool. Homo. A homosexual, or a guy that other guys just wouldn’t want to spend a lot of time with. Pansy or Pansie. A homosexual male, or a male who, if you go out to do some fun stuff with this guy, will put the kibosh on it — either by not being tough enough to do it, or by threatening to snitch.

My point is — and this is based on what I know, which is not comprehensive — it’s not only within the realm of consideration, but likely, that the bullies had the intent of calling Theno something besides a homosexual. I say likely because based on what I now know about Mr. Theno, the subordinate definitions of these words apply to him, either in fact or in appearance.

In fact, I honestly can’t think of a single word you can apply to a homosexual, besides “homosexual,” that would not also be used to describe an adolescent male showing desultory development of the desirable adult male attributes.

I have an abundance of reasons to believe that this applies to Dylan Theno, or did apply to him during high school. I have no reason to doubt this. As a matter of law, I would expect this would become relevant if Theno’s standing to sue is founded on the Title IX anti-discrimination legislation. I’m not a lawyer, but if I was inclined to bet on the school’s appeal, this would have an effect on the amount I was wagering.

None of which will probably arouse much interest from anybody at all. Except for Dylan Theno himself, the school district, and Dodge Viper dealers. All you Viper dealers, if you see Mr. Theno on your lots, maybe you should make an appointment for him to come back in a few months after the appeals have been exhausted. You might be glad later.

Informing Us NOT

I was listening to the Rush Replay like any good American, and at the top of the hour the station put out one of those news-bumpers by Reuters or AP or something…think it was AP. Not sure. Can’t find a link for this.

The big news event that inspired the news bumper was that crude oil hit $67 a barrel. That’s just a simple fact, but one of the tangents that the news-bite-writer thought was really important was that “Regular Unleaded” was now demanding as much as “three dollars a gallon in some cities.”

I live in Sack-O-Tomatoes. Capital of California. Home of spoiled-brat yuppies with hummers that get three miles a gallon, pretending they’re living in Mayberry USA when they’re really living in the middle of a rocky desert. We never saw a regulation we didn’t like, so with the difficulties of trucking any product around this state, whatever gas costs anywhere, it probably costs that much here. I’m forking out $2.60 to $2.70 for premium…I’m thinking if I had to fill up this morning, it would probably run me about $2.75 or so. That is 92 octane. The anchor babe gave me the impression she was talking about 87.

Last night, the spike in crude oil inspired the posting of an apparently-unsourced “Chart of the Day” on one of my favorite stomping grounds, FARK. It’s hard to glean much useful information out of the chart, although it appears the left side of it squares with my memory: Carter messed up the market big time, Reagan fixed it again. (Hey as an aside, why is that?) Adjust for inflation, and the curve of the graph by the late-seventies-early-eighties leaps upward toward three 2003 dollars per gallon.

The thread underneath this graph is pretty informative. Some guy in Houston, TX says he paid .90 back in ’95. A young lady in Virginia says she was paying .55 to .60 in ’97. Probably the best piece of information was the inclusion of this link to all kinds of gas-price graphs, up to the beginning of August, all kinds of regions and all kinds of grades.

But the point of my complaint, is this:

How exactly am I supposed to use, in my everday life, this news tidbit of “three dollars in some cities.” If I hop in my car and drive a couple hours, I can reach the ocean. There are gas pumps out there, some of them with miles and miles and miles of empty road ahead of them, with no other gas pumps out there, anywhere. Perhaps if I take the time to head out that way today, I will find a pump that demands three dollars a gallon. I’m not willing to bet much that it would fall short of that.

So top-of-hour News Lady, is this your “some cities”? Yes? It is? Well then report THAT. Not so much because it would be truth-in-advertising — although it would, because it would disclose that the problem isn’t as bad as you’re trying to make it sound. But maybe I am heading that way today, and if that’s the case, this would be news I could use.

This kind of irritates me, because the news agencies are supposed to be servicing US. I base that on the fact that without people listening to them, they have nothing to do. But they don’t exist to provide services to “real people”, they provide services to power-brokers and movers-and-shakers who want us panicked at certain times and all-calmed-down at certain times.

Meanwhile, since “some cities” sounds like where I live…since it’s a big city, with lots of people who have reason to be here, but charges up the yin-yang for gas…I’ll keep my eyes peeled for a local signpost that says three dollars a gallon. I’ll bet the zenith is going to be $2.789 premium.

Update: I was off by a dime. Premium unleaded is $2.899, Plus is $2.799 and Regular is $2.699.

Top-Of-News-Hour-Lady says it is $3.00 “in some cities” which is thirty cents a gallon higher. So the question remains…where is this? And…why, assuming I care, is it up to me ask the question to find out when I’m supposed to have been informed?