Manifest Content

go with it

2005-12-08T12:35:00.000-08:00

okay. so the thing i don't get about companies who are morally bankrupt? why not just admit you're the anti-christ and move on? why pretend to be something you're not? these companies spend millions of dollars, millions of dollars that could be given to...oh, i don't know...ME, on spin control when it's discovered the yummy breakfast sandwich they marketed directly to kids not only causes ebola, but was also manufactured by convincted sex offenders. poor, destitute sex offenders. in third world nations. who knows what a poor, destitute sex offender from a third world nation is desperate enough to do to your breakfast sandwich!

but i digress. the point is, if you're evil and you know it, if you can virtually feel the flames of hell licking at your very soul because of the evil, evilocity that resides in the dark underbelly of your company's soon to be shredded document vault, if your company screws the dog every chance it gets, you should embrace it -- don't shun it! take advantage of it. use it in your favor. "yeah, we screwed the pooch on that one. so what? wanna fight about it?"

that's what i'd do if i were starbucks and accused of unfair trade practices, adding genetically engineered ingredients to my coffee, and making huuuuuuge profits by raping every damn street corner in the world with one my over-priced coffee shacks.

but, you know, that's just me.

Starbucks Brand Coffee: The Official Beverage of Evil.

kinky kinky

2005-12-07T15:16:00.000-08:00

i read this article over at bookslut on kinky friedman and his run for governor of texas. i'm not against him running. i'm not even sure i'm against him winning. i've pretty much given up on believing anything politicians say anymore so, win - lose - whatever. makes me no nevermind cause they're going to get in there and do whatever the hell they want anyway.

the question i have is this: isn't there at least a requirement for a semblance of sanity anymore? no, i'm asking. seriously. check it out:

You’ve talked about your “anti-wussification” campaign for Texas. What does that involve?

Making it okay to say “Merry Christmas.” Making it okay to smoke where you want to. Bringing back the Ten Commandments. I may have to change their name to the Ten Suggestions. I want to bring them back to the public schools. They were taken out not because of church and state, but because of political correctness. Some atheist came up and said he didn’t like the Ten Commandments. We all know what happens when an atheist dies. His tombstone reads “All dressed up and no place to go.” By the way, I’ve written my own epitaph, Mike, which is: “If you can read this, you’re standing on my head.” It’s a good one, ain’t it?

it sure ain, kinky! i'm all for making it okay to say merry christmas. and smoke em if you got em, boys. but jesus h christ, he sounds like his doo rag's on a little tight there. despite this, he has plans. big plans for the great lone star state:

Do you think you’d be able to work with the Democrats and the Republicans in the state legislature?

Absolutely. I will charm their pants off. Invite ‘em over, we’ll have some barbecue, smoke some cigars together, and we’ll get this thing rolling. And a lot of things can be done without the legislature, by the way. I’ll tell you five things a governor could do right now. One, have a listed telephone number, so during certain hours, he could talk to the people, because I think this governor is out of touch with the people of Texas, not to mention the spirit of Texas. Two, biodiesel. Put that in all the school buses and all the state police (cars). You can do that by decree. Three, I plan to open the Indian casinos that have been closed down -- the Tigua and the Alabama Coushata. Four, the (state university) Boards of Regents. I want to fill them with the best, brightest young people, not old farts that have given the most money. Let’s get college students (on the Boards) who are really passionate about education. And finally, I’d like to rename four state highways after Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Bob Wills, and Buddy Holly. Not toll roads, by the way.

well. paint me white and call me cotton. i've been saying for years that texas needs a new governor. a governor with a listed phone number who'll invite me over for barbecue while we chaw the fat. they need a governor who is *in touch* and ...uh, biodiesel! also. come on, who wouldn't be excited to drive down willie nelson highway sangin' "owwwn the road agin, ah jes cain't wait ta git on the road agin!" --without paying a toll, by the way?

i don't know. maybe i'm being too harsh. i like kinky. i do. i like his books and his fast livin' freewill lifestyle. hell, come to think of it, maybe he's just what texas needs. crazy as a bed bug or not.

owwwwwwwn the roooad agin'

R.I.P.C.

2005-12-05T14:19:00.000-08:00

They are killing Christmas. Do you hear me?

killing it!

A Kansan asks "What's the matter with Harvard?"

2004-11-04T11:27:00.000-08:00

Well, not really. But he is a Kansan who writes for the Harvard Crimson about the stereotypes the Ivy League intellectuals level against the group they claim is responsible for relying on prejudicial stereotypes for their bigotry and dogmatism:

My experience with people at Harvard is that they apply stereotypes to the Midwest in ways that they would be outrageously offended by if the same kind of simple-minded stereotypes were applied to people of a particular race or religion or what-have-you. For shame. Everyone knows that the South is where America keeps its imbeciles. I suppose the Midwest receives a lot of flak because of the notion that its inhabitants are close minded. What irony! The people who dis my homies from the Great Plains are the close minded ones. They claim to be cultured because they have studied abroad in Italy for a semester, but they neglect to accept that the Midwest has anything to offer besides wheat, boredom and fanatic Protestantism. In my art class, the lecturer mentioned that a particular painting was located in a museum in Kansas City and people in the crowd snickered as if the idea was preposterous. “Kansas City?!?! It must have been placed next to the cow patties and the photo of Dorothy and Toto.”

Good stuff, read the whole thing

The beast stirs...

2004-11-04T09:38:00.000-08:00

Hillary Clinton was mentioned in the New York Times yesterday. They are already trying to launch the good ship Hillary on its way to the White House in '08. Don't expect Hillary to say anything about it until after her re-election to the Senate in New York, as the article says. The RNC hasn't got anyone picked to run against her that I've heard. In the Senate race in '06, I mean. So sayeth the article:

Finally, Democrats say that a danger for Mrs. Clinton is that if she is seen as the top contender at this point, her Democratic rivals have nearly four years to try to undercut her.

But it is not just Democrats who will look to undermine her if she widely perceived as a leading presidential contender, political analysts say. It is also Republicans, particularly those in New York, who are certainly going to argue during her re-election campaign in 2006 that she is simply using the state as a launching pad for her national ambitions.

"If she runs for re-election in New York, that will bring the inevitable question of whether she will serve out her full term in the Senate," said one person who is close to the Clintons.

President giving one finger victory salute in press conference

2004-11-04T09:30:00.000-08:00

The President was in the Q & A period of his live press conference just now...He has been ribbing the press good naturedly, and showing that he is both game and unwilling to be bullied now that he's got a second term. At the same time, he is friendly and gracious. He seems to be respectful even as he points out the press violating the "one question rule". He points it out, and then answers the whole question. He's got breathing room now, and this time around is already looking different. There are several cabinet changes coming, and W seems to be setting up a front of unifying outreach, at least politically.

Speaking of unifying...does anyone think Arlen Specter's "warning" was an unexpected slap at the president? No, I think it was a mutually beneficial political statement. Specter is one of Bush's bridges to the middle. The fact that Bush was a prime mover in Specter's political career, by most conservative accounts at least, tells me that they have some sort of prearranged agreement. I am not suggesting disingenuous behavior here, but I am suggesting political compromise that counterintuitively helps Bush by allowing for public display of both dissent from and tacit support for these so-called RINOs. Bush knows when it comes down to it Specter owes him but it helps Bush more politically to have an ally restraining him than an enemy, even knowing that his enemies will publicly use the dissent of the ally against him. He knows that allowing for the Specters and the McHaGar(lately just HaGar, but post-election look for McCain to reappear in the triumvirate) costs him no real capital, and creates a political buffer between himself and the people he *can't* make deals with. The second tier *can*, and he's already spoken to them behind closed doors about this, betcher bottom dollar.

More on that later maybe, but just hearing that Arafat is dead! That's what the radio is saying, anyway. Nothing on Google news yet. No one knows really. Bush said "God bless his soul." in his press conference. French doctors are saying he is not dead, so it's up in the air.

Anyway, that was a big gripe of conservatives during the election, right? Laura Ingraham was always angry at McHaGar, because they were being used against the Bush campaign. They seemed like traitors to her, especially after all Bush did for them! Well that's true on one level...it bugged me too. It's hard to watch that, and perhaps our rankling at it was part of the benefit of having three. The left ran with every quote from the dissenters, the ones who suddenly appeared to break with their party. But not one of them endorsed Kerry did they? In fact, that's why McCain had to disengage and support Bush. He was in it to build capital for a presidential run in '08, or get a Sec Def job in a possible Kerry presidency but he was too valuable to Bush, and had to take sides in the end. So now that he can't really hurt Bush, he can go back to building his credit for the primary in '08. Fair enough, and the Dems can keep howling all they want, if they want, that there is dissent in the Republican party. The fact is, it's political genius judo-chess.

So on the Iraq war, the bridge people was McCain, Lugar and Chuck Hagel. On the judicial committee in the Senate, putting in a guy who owes Bush big and who first thing after a Bush win comes out and "slaps" Bush in the press on the abortion issue is such judo-chess! The premise is that whomever he appoints will be opposed most fervently by the Democrat minority. They will probably try to be mature about it this time around(It might get dirty but it will start out reasoned) but really this is the big fight coming in D.C., don't fool yourself.

The big thing I saw at the RNC this year was the appearance of compromise between divisions. Lots of people showed willingness to show a big tent of reasonably conflicting points under a general ideological agreement around the middle of conservatism. I assumed this was mostly political expedience for the election campaign, and I still assume that. But looking down the road, and knowing that I'm certainly not the furthest sighted guy in the party I am also assuming that some of these compromises were made for after the election season too. There are real political divisions among these conservatives, and that's why Specter isn't being disingenuous, nor were any of the McHaGar triumvirate. But Specter won't be selling out the president when it comes down to it.

Ah, and Specter is now compiling a transcript of what was actually said from a tape and is preparing a clarifying statement. Rush is saying this now on the radio, and is leading in to the tendency of the left to hail any sign of disunity. We'll see what he says...I agree with Rush when he says that he doesn't trust Specter to be a Republican. But that's where the Judo comes in, I think. If the Democrats present a responsible party to switch to, it's possible the Rhode Island Republican would turn for his own political interests. That's the game, but meantime Bush will be using him for the party as a strength that looks like a weakness. Very Sun Tzu, very Judo.

I'm just sayin'

Red/Blue

2004-11-04T07:18:00.001-08:00

This map here shows the red.blue breakdown by county. Red state/Blue state just doesn't cut it.

And Yasser Arafat is in a coma. Hmm, this means Arafat could already be dead. Well how's about them apples...Right after Bush wins a second term...

And the Belgravia Dispatch notes some sour grapes writing from Adam Nagourney in the NYT...I don't think this is the only example, but I'm not looking for the stuff. It's not all peaces and cream, post-jubilation. Still, amazing how a respected guy like Nagourney could have such a subtly misleading take on Kerry's concession. This kind of journalism won't rebuild any credibility, and it won't help the country move forward. But then, maybe that's exactly the intent.

W stands for "Winner"

2004-11-03T16:54:00.000-08:00

I feel...SO good. All kinds of good news, and I didn't post once during what was likely a high traffic time. I am feeling great, but I'm also ready to move on.

I'm also getting ready to move this weblog to a new domain, and was out all night watching returns. I'll be back around shortly, but I am taking a quick jubilant break so that I don't gloat. I feel more relieved than anything. The perspective I've got on the whole process is improved and I like the way I see my side acting, and encouraged at most of how I see the other side acting. We are two sides of the same country, and that's the most important thing.

I failed this quiz

2004-11-01T23:22:00.000-08:00

See how well you do on this "Who said it?" quiz

Foomp went the Universe

2004-11-01T21:25:00.000-08:00

Universe Today has an article on new paper about an idea that's been floated around for a while, and is pretty interesting. I don't know how well the idea that entropy can be infinite will go over, but I'm not the guy that's gonna shoot it down. It was a cool idea when I read it in a Kip Thorne book, at least.

Ah, that makes more sense

2004-11-01T17:21:00.000-08:00

I was not alone in my surprise that Slate listed Christopher Hitchens as having endorsed Kerry for president. And my surprise was well founded, it turns out. Hitchens leads off his column of today in Slate with an editorial correction by Slate apologizing for the mischaracterization:

Correction, Nov. 1, 2004: Due to an editing error, Christopher Hitchens' entry in the "Slate Votes" survey was mistakenly classified as an endorsement of John Kerry. As Hitchens explains below, he did not intend his contribution as a statement of support for either candidate. Slate apologizes to Hitchens for this error. Click here to read the corrected survey.

Of course, supporting neither candidate is not quite what I'd hoped for but you can also read this article at the Nation if you'd like to console yourself that he actually has endorsed Bush in print.

(hat tip to Bitsblog and Michael Totten)

Full of crow, and still smart

2004-11-01T14:31:00.000-08:00

Eject! Eject! Eject! was one of the bloggers that posted about being wrong that Osama was dead, and he has a final thought before the election tomorrow. He spells out some good reasons for voting Bush, not that anyone is around to have their mind changed by this point. Still worth a read, I thought:

I will be able to live with a Kerry Presidency. But what tortures me is the thought that this country is no longer capable of doing hard, dirty work -- that we have reached the point where nothing difficult is attainable because the cost is something less than free.

I believe, from a reading of the history and the very words of the leaders of North Vietnam, that John Kerry was instrumental in convincing them that if they were able to hang on and inflict enough American casualties, eventually we would tire and go home.

I further believe that history shows that the Ayatollah Khomeini had our number in this regard, and I regard the start of this current conflict as the day they overran the US Embassy in Tehran, to which our response was...what?

Think this is as divided as we've ever been?

2004-11-01T12:36:00.000-08:00

Jennifer Nelson pokes a hole in that balloon. In '84 Reagan v. Mondale, and in '60 Kennedy v. Nixon...we've seen this before. She even points out that Nixon lost due to obvious voter fraud in two key states, yet declined to challenge the results:

That year, John F. Kennedy beat Richard M. Nixon by 113,000 votes out of 68 million cast. The two deciding states were Texas, where Kennedy beat Nixon by 9,000 votes, and Illinois, where he won by 46,000 votes. Reports of election fraud surfaced in both states, but, despite urging by his staff and others, Nixon refused to call for a recount. In his 1962 memoir, "Six Crises," he wrote that he did not challenge the result, because he felt that the nation would be harmed by the notion that "the presidency itself could be stolen by thievery at the ballot box."

In November 2000, former Nixon White House official Pete Flanigan told John H. Taylor, executive director of the Nixon Foundation, "Within a couple days after the election, Nixon emphatically said he would not challenge the results. And he did more than that. He told all of us on the staff to have no part of any challenge, and he sent back donations, all of them unsolicited, which were sent to finance a challenge.

And was there voter fraud? Oh yes...yes there was. The irony of Democrats claiming that Bush stole the '00 election or that he will steal this one is nothing more than infuriating to anyone who thinks Bush defended and will defend a victory against fraud. The fact is, those of you who don't like to hear the truth can look away now, it is the Left that has a history of stealing elections:

"There was a cemetery where the names on the tombstones were registered and voted," Mazo told The Washington Post in 2000. "I remember a house. It was completely gutted. There was nobody there. But there were 56 votes for Kennedy in that house."

Mazo also uncovered fraud in Texas and was planning an investigative series on the episode. However, Nixon found out about it and called Mazo, and later his editors, to squash the story. Again, Nixon believed fueling the fire of what many people thought was a fraudulent election would do more harm than good for the nation.

I don't think we're seeing anything different this time around. Massive efforts at registration fraud by the left are already out there in the news. The Daly machine is humming right along, people. It might not end up being pretty but I'm not willing to let this keep going on and you shouldn't be either. Kennedy, sure lots of people were genuinely behind him but I'm just not going to buy that all of you are hot for a Kerry presidency. Bush may not set you on fire, but you know very well that Kerry is a convictionless panderer with an arrogant mean streak besides. Is this the guy you want to strangle your morals over? Think about it hard, because it's almost time to calm everyone down. You might have to make a hard decision after November 2. Are you going to support the legal challenges that are levelled to try to force the Dem's guy in? Are you going to be complicit in voter fraud ruining the legitimacy of the voting process yet again? Think hard, because it's a real possibility.

Last call

2004-11-01T11:54:00.000-08:00

It's the last day to be undecided...and after reading the new translations of the Osama Bin Laden video, which now has him saying 'states that go for Kerry are safe, and states that go for Bush are asking for it' I want you to think about that when deciding. At least I hope you do. The guy is saying 'We'll leave the weak and cowardly alone'. So which are you? I live in a state that's going for Bush anyway, but this makes me wish even more that I lived in a blue state so that I could vote my defiance against OBL.

This is a good opportunity to restate what we all said after 9/11: WE ARE ALL AMERICANS. Don't let them split us up like that...The message of this tape is clear, that after the election there will be more attacks no matter what. The only matter to be decided for Al Qaeda is in which states they will attack. When that happens it will be an attack on America, not Bush states. It's time to be an American NOW. The world is watching...

Update: Jonah Goldberg has this point over at the Corner:

FOR THE NOSE-HOLDERS [Jonah Goldberg]

I have a lot of friends who are holding their noses when they vote for Bush. I have sympathy for their views, I really do. Much of what Bush has done -- and hasn't -- bugs me too. But I ask you folks to look at it from a slightly different perspective. If thinking in terms of who the better candidate is doesn't work for you, think of it in terms of which candidate's victory will cause the most happiness among the worst people. If Kerry wins some truly horrible people will be happy. Some perfectly fine and decent folks will be happy too, of course. But if Bush wins, Michael Moore won't be on the Today Show the next day cheering and hugging his friends. Katie Couric will wear black. Alec Baldwin won't give interviews. P Diddy will go away. Susan Sarandon will mope. Al Franken still won't be funny, but it will be easier to laugh at him. Jon Stewart will go back to comedy. Terry McAuliffe will go down in history as the most disastrous DNC Chair in modern history.

But if Bush loses, all of these people will be gloating and skipping with joy.

Vote your fears people.

Glenn Reynolds tells the future

2004-11-01T11:24:00.000-08:00

Instapundit, run by Professor Glenn Reynolds, is one of the foremost contributors to the political blogosphere. His latest article for Tech Central Station has some good thoughts about where the whole thing is headed in the big picture. I think he's right as far as anyone can predict what the true impact of weblogs will have on our culture and society, and of course anyone who has spent much time fooling around with them probably considers most of this pretty obvious. Still, it's well said and lays it out for the uninitiated...worth a read I think:

Over the next few years, blogs will grow both more and less significant. They'll grow more significant because more people will be reading them, and -- at least as important -- more people will be writing them. That will expand their impact considerably. On the other hand, they'll grow less significant, in a way, because they'll grow more ordinary. Like other communications media, from newspapers to email, they'll just become part of the background, and their particular thread of impact will be less noticeable.

MEMRI offers a slightly different translation

2004-10-31T22:47:00.000-08:00

MEMRI.org has done its own translation of the OBL tape released yesterday and found a subtle mistranslation that has been accepted by us here in the West. Go check it out, it is interesting to note the change and its meaning...

When he [Osama Bin Laden] said, 'Every state will be determining its own security, and will be responsible for its choice,' it means that any U.S. state that will choose to vote for the white thug Bush as president has chosen to fight us, and we will consider it our enemy, and any state that will vote against Bush has chosen to make peace with us, and we will not characterize it as an enemy. By this characterization, Sheikh Osama wants to drive a wedge in the American body, to weaken it, and he wants to divide the American people itself between enemies of Islam and the Muslims, and those who fight for us, so that he doesn't treat all American people as if they're the same. This letter will have great implications inside the American society, part of which are connected to the American elections, and part of which are connected to what will come after the elections."(3)

NYT finds Nick Nolte's blog

2004-10-31T10:34:00.000-08:00

Nick Nolte caused a big stir back when he got arrested for driving under the influence. No, not the gossip pages. The stir was in the blogosphere, when people found a weblog supposedly written by Nolte which chronicled, among other things, a stint in rehab. Of course, it was both hilarious and a hoax. Greg.org, who started it all, has a bit on the subject here. Now the NYT takes a look at the phenomenon of fake celebrity blogs and focuses on this one.

SNL does OBL

2004-10-31T09:52:00.000-08:00

I was slipping in and out of consciousness last night during Saturday Night Live, but the parts I caught were pretty funny. Watcher of Weasels has transcribed the cold opening, which I thought was pretty funny:

For a time, I feared that I would not be eligible to vote in this election. But recently, praise Allah, I was tracked down by two volunteers from the Kerry campaign. They signed me up, and apparently, I am now registered in Cincinatti. Since then, I have tried hard to follow the campaign, and to study both the candidates, and the issues. This has often been frustrating, as I am constantly moving from cave to cave here in the mountains of northwestern Pakistan, and thus have very little contact with the outside world. The only person I see regularly is Michael Moore. And frankly, I'm not sure I can believe half of what he tells me. So, I am not as well-informed a voter as I would like.

I noticed the same thing he did about the audience reactions to the best lines. There was a crack about Bush early on that got laughter and applause, and two jabs at the Kerry campaign that seemed to get even more. The Teresa Heinz Kerry joke went over *really* well.

On the whole, if you ask my opinion, I don't see much difference between the two candidates, although, and I will probably get in trouble for saying this, I cannot stand Teresa Heinz Kerry. She is awful. Just awful. Our religion forbids us to strike a woman, although I admit, I do it all the time, and I know I shouldn't. But if she were my wife, with Allah as my witness, I would not stop beating her.

They also did another sketch from behind the scenes of the Kerry campaign with Clinton again overshadowing the lackluster Kerry, but I was having trouble concentrating by then. I also seem to remember a Robert Smigel cartoon that was political but I can't for the life of me remember anything about it. I was trying to stay focused but I had woken up to see the show purely by chance really.

The other thing I saw was that SNL was playing on last week's lip-syncing debacle with Ashlee Simpson. The cold opening got some good laughs with OBL cracking on it, and Kate Winslet's monologue was a demonstration of how to do a live song-and-dance number(the song was about picking yourself up and starting over again while she tap danced and sung). Weekend Update brought Horatio Sanz out as Elton John to parody "Tiny Dancer" which tore Ashlee up for blaming the mistake on her band and acid reflux, and that's about all I can really remember. If I had been more awake I might have found there was less to laugh at than I think, but those were the highlights I saw...I mostly tuned Eminem out, but he sang his anti-Bush screed "Mosh" and I couldn't tell if he was lip-syncing or not. At some point I realized that I was using up my extra hour of sleeping time and the next thing I know it was morning. This one will probably make it in to the end of season reruns...

Orson Scott Card already said it

2004-10-30T11:20:00.000-07:00

Here's something from two weeks ago that I missed...it's opinionated, but openly so and still a valid view of things. I happen to agree with it, and it's the least angry way of saying it that I've come across lately...

Fourth Rail fisks Osama

2004-10-30T09:40:00.000-07:00

This is a good fisking of the latest Al Queda tape, which was released 4 days before the election with whatever intent...and apparently in lieu of any pre-election attacks, if anything can be inferred about his ability to do so from that fact...

If I eat crow, so should they

2004-10-30T09:29:00.000-07:00

I said in the last post that a lot of us who thought OBL was dead will have to eat crow. Well I see a lot of people doing that, but so far none of the prominent people who insisted that George Bush had the man in some dank cell awaiting his use for political gain in the election. I also haven't heard anyone suggest that this new tape is a Karl Rove plot, and Bin Laden was forced to make and release this after Abu Ghraib-style torture. So...anyone willing to ask Teresa Heinz what she has to say now about the big October Surprise? Since she was so upset about "neanderthal" attacks on her husband, she really should consider saying something like 'I'm sorry I was so eager to believe the worst and say so out loud'.

And what about all of you? It wasn't just her, there were quite a few Democrats that smugly assured us that come October we would be seeing the capture of OBL with a triumphant Bush taking all the credit for fighting the war on terror. We can argue the point that Bush should have already caught him by now, and my position will be that Kerry might not have even *been* in Tora Bora to try getting OBL in the first place. And since you were superposing your points, ie Clumsy Bush let OBL go/Sneaky Bush has OBL hidden for October Surprise, you're already arguing from a disadvantage with me. We know which one you're forced to take now.

How many of you smugly commented to people out loud that Bush was merely biding his time until the political profit was going to be high enough? Come on, be honest. I really thought it was safe to assume he was dead, because the argument for it seemed reasonable. I wasn't dead sure, but I did suffer from a few outbursts of out-loud overconfidence in the opinion, this is obvious in hindsight.

So how about everyone getting in line and saying out loud "I was wrong, Bush didn't have him in his pocket all along."? I'm sure your answer will be "Oh, but he *would* have done that, if he hadn't been so inept and was able to capture the wily outlaw OBL" but then your logical deficit turns in to bankruptcy with me. Why? Because even if your premise were true(and somehow at the same time you believe Kerry is not a political opportunist to at least the same degree) your conclusion is that Kerry could have or would have done a better job of things. What would he have done? Or more devastatingly, now that we know OBL is alive, what more would he do? Come on, what? I somehow suspect he would answer the question himself by attacking what Bush "didn't" do at Tora Bora, because he doesn't. have. an. answer.

Update: Over at the Corner I see I was wrong again, prominent people are already floating the ubiquitous-no-matter-how-implausible Karl Rove theory:

ACTUALLY [KJL]
Walter Cronkite believes Rove was behind the tape; this from Larry King last night:

Cronkite: "I'm a little inclined to think that Karl Rove, the political manager at the White House, who is a very clever man, he probably set up bin Laden to this thing."

Posted at 10:41 AM

I will hold off until I'm sure he wasn't joking or suffering from an undetected aneurysm before insulting Mr. Cronkite's unwillingness to shut up and eat the crow on his plate but I really have to look my rational friends on the left in the eye and once again ask that you please help get your party's head out of its ass. You don't have to proclaim the man a genius or even like it, but a silent vote for Bush behind the curtain would be the right thing to do for some of you. For others it's a Nader vote or a Badnarik vote. Some of you, the right thing to do is just not vote and take your chances that P Diddy will get taken down before he kills you. Maybe you'll still decide to vote for Kerry but make sure you have a clear handle on the reasons why. That's all I'm asking.

To those who don't really think this stuff through: How many overt acts of absurd/ugly/violent/dishonest/wrong from people on the left do you have to see before you stop believing that Karl Rove would be the first suspect in *anything* you have concluded might be an manipulative PR stunt? Come on, Sherlock! Karl Rove's brilliant strategy is brilliant not because of his deified ability to manipulate, but because it is judo-like, if you want to know what I think. Look at yourselves! You're acting like ninnies. Sorry, but you are. Complete ninnies. You guys and gals need to do a reality check like everyone else and make it thorough. You've let yourselves become as dogmatically Fundamentalist and blind to reality as you accuse Bush and I of being, haven't you? Before ya 'cuse me...take a look atcho sef...'fore ya 'cuse me...

Gmail vulnerable to hackers?

2004-10-30T08:41:00.000-07:00

The register has a story about Gmail from Google and a new vulnerability found which makes it easy to break in and read someone's mail:

Gmail accounts 'wide open to exploit' - report
By John Leyden
Published Friday 29th October 2004 16:50 GMT

Google's high profile webmail service, Gmail, is vulnerable to a security exploit that might allow hackers full access to a user's email account simply by knowing the user name, according to reports.

The security flaw allows full access to users' accounts, with no need of a password, Israeli news site Nana says . Using a hex-encoded XSS link, the victim's cookie file can be stolen by a hacker, who can later use it to identify himself to Gmail as the original owner of an email account, regardless of whether or not the password is subsequently changed. Following up a tip from an Israeli hacker, journos from the site confirmed the attack and verified the exploit with local security firm Aladdin Knowledge Systems.

It's unclear whether the hole has been maliciously exploited. Google has been notified of the issue and is reportedly working on a fix. No-one from the company was available to update The Register on the issue at time of going to press. ®

I trust Google to get this fixed quickly, but the faster the word gets out on this the better, most likely. I don't use Gmail, but somehow I don't think that makes my e-mail any safer from a hacker who knows what the hell a hex-encoded XSS link is. It does make me a little less likely to try out Google's new hard drive search capability...

The Belmont Club responds to Bin Laden

2004-10-30T07:04:00.000-07:00

Well, Bin Laden looks like he is still alive. Lots of us were wrong, and have to eat crow now. The clips I've see looked to me like he was sitting while trying to give the impression that he was standing. He looked old. I'm sure the whole media is going to buzz about this, from whether Bush screwed up at Tora Bora to how closely his speech sounds like Kerry's talking points and Michael Moore's college speeches.

The Belmont Club posted a good bit of the transcript and a comment at the end. The fact that he is trying to influence our election with only a videotape tells me that he doesn't have quite the tactical ability he had over 3 years ago. It's also important to remember that it took 7 years to track down Eric Rudolph(remember him?) and he was hiding in *this* country. I'm confident that we'll get him eventually, and now I'm even more confident he can't do much except hobble from cave to cave planning his next videotape.

Update: The Truth Laid Bear has a good point which he calls "The Batman Effect" and also runs down commentary by the top bloggers.

more simple diagrams

2004-10-29T12:35:00.000-07:00

IMAO has a funny post up that breaks the election down. (hat tip to Instapundit)

Adventures for a Particle Man

2004-10-29T11:54:00.000-07:00

The Particle Adventure is a very good simple explanation of our standard model of particle physics. All the information is presented in the simplest terms possible, and still very extensive. Not a whole lot of math, but the concepts are covered well with some easy to follow pictures. Worth a bookmarking for me...

Repository of rhetoric

2004-10-28T08:40:00.000-07:00

Here's a good idea, a place that has great American speeches in one place. Americanrhetoric.com is worth a bookmarking, I think. A good reference tool for sure, but I just like to browse. They've got some good sound clips too, and even a good collection of speeches from movies.

Regular Read

2004-10-28T07:53:00.000-07:00

If you don't know about James Lileks and his Daily Bleat, you're missing out. His sarcasm is biting, but good naturedly so. The guy writes very very well, and invariably starts out by endearing me to him and his family and then midway through goes on to say simply and eloquently what I often think. And he says it better than I ever could:

But maybe - just maybe - many people did not want the country to be united if it meant being united behind Bush. He is a much more potent and immediate threat, after all. Who’s heard from Osama lately? Meanwhile Bush is out there every day handling snakes and speaking in tongues and supergluing parapalegics to wheelchairs, because his weird-beard God loves suffering and commands him – via text-messaging, for all we know – to kill them oily rag-heads. I mean, today I was behind a car whose bumpersticker had a picture of Bush with the slogan "American Terrorist." I know that driver was so behind Bush before he failed - in a fundamental way - to convince the driver he was not equivalent to Abu Nidal. Probably because he misprounced "Nuclear." Farking moron.

It was hard to pick just one little block to showcase here, so go read the whole thing. Then go back every day for more, like I do.

Where's Hillary?

2004-10-28T07:05:00.000-07:00

Bill Clinton is out there stumping for Kerry, but where's Hillary? Pat Hynes at Crush Kerry has some interesting stuff to say about that. He's an experienced campaign advisor, with real credentials and real connections. I don't know how high up his sources are that he is quoting, but some interesting sentiments are being expressed by at least some insider Democrat operatives. It's no big secret that Hillary will be a good bet to run strong in '08, but this gives a little bit of detail to the inside story. (Hat tip to KerryHaters)

Book Review: Porno - By Irvine Welsh

2004-10-28T06:23:00.000-07:00

I joined the sinister cabal of Blogcritics and posted my first review. I'm posting it here too, since they encourage it and I'm still absorbing the morning news over coffee. Read: Free reason to ping! It's a good idea though, and I'm planning on doing more. So I can only get better right? If you want to review my review, uh...go ahead. Everyone's a critic and it would serve me right anyway. I just realized I said *nothing* about the way the Scottish accents are written in phonetically...That's probably the best part too. Ah well, Yeah, I'll get better at this...

Porno is the sequel to Trainspotting, the highly acclaimed book(and movie) about a group of drug-addicted schemers in Edinburgh, Scotland. It rejoins the group ten years after the conclusion of Trainspotting and it is quickly clear that while the time has changed everyone, some things never change. While heroin use dominated Trainspotting, cocaine use seems to be the new drug of choice. As before, money is the prime motivator and everyone has different means toward this end.

The main scheme this time involves Sick Boy's idea to produce a pornographic film. There are twists and turns in the plot that involve other schemes and manipulations of course, and Welsh does a good job of writing each character's actions based on their own self-interest. The interplay of the goals and desires of each character is cleverly written, with each chapter written from the first person perspective of whichever character the chapter focuses on.

There are new characters brought in and all the old personalities are back. A constant theme is that everyone looks out for themselves first, while trying to balance loyalties and circumstance in order to get the biggest cut from the action. Begbie is back and serves to create tension with his predictably unpredictable rage and violence. Sick Boy is the same egotistic manipulator who conceives of the idea and plays the role of mastermind. Renton is back from Amsterdam, where he fled with the loot at the conclusion of Trainspotting and is a much more subtle manipulator. The lovable Spud is pitiful and mostly well-meaning if a bit vulnerable to the guile of his friends and his addictions. The beautiful Nikki enters as the star of the film, along with Terry the bar owner, both of whom are looking to have fun while scoring easy money. Other minor characters are woven in and affect the plot here and there which adds to the complexity of the story.

Each character remains true to their personality, with good and bad results. Everyone has specific desires and fears that are at the root of their actions, but these are not always apparent to everyone else. A common idea amongst them is that they are aging, and something must be done soon with their youth before it slips away completely. It is interesting to note that some of the diverse behavior of the individuals boil down to the exact same anxieties. There is a good study of human nature here, with two distinct levels: how we think and feel about things, and how we act on those thoughts and feelings in a group. The interplay of both serves the development well.

Wanting to belong is as big a motivator as wanting to escape from that which you belong, Welsh seems to be saying. Some characters are wrestling with inclinations towards both, and some don't question such things at all. Through all of this, everyone considers themselves the star of the story it seems, regardless of their actual standing in the plot. The result is that it is hard to fully root for or against any one character. It is easier to root for each to be true to themselves, even when this means the character is not true to anyone else.

It is hard to pick out just who had the biggest hand in the plot getting to the conclusion. A semi-directed collective of everyone's action plus chance equals the outcome of life, the book seems to say. A nice blending of chance, opportunism and forethought. Even so, the outcome seems natural, almost as if it had to be this way, given the equation.

The plot is fairly screenplay-ready and ends up tying all the diversity of storylines together pretty well. A third installment is also left open by the conclusion, which is well written but also fairly predictable. The details of the loose-end tying make it worth reading to the end, and by this time the characters are developed enough that the reader is not required to know much about the first installment of the series. While Renton is the main protagonist and Sick Boy is the main antagonist, everyone has enough to like or dislike about them that the reader can choose among their favorites to judge this for themselves.

Curse of the Bambino curse lifted, no thanks to Kerry

2004-10-27T21:55:00.000-07:00

So, after a bunch of campaign jokes made by John Kerry, even a crack about the impossibility of the Sox winning the World Series in the debates, the Boston Red Sox won it all. So nyah nyah John Kerry. I realize that maybe that's the typical Red Sox Fan pessimism, but it always seemed to me like Kerry was betting against his own team. I mean, do you think the coach was in the lockerroom giving a Kerry-like speech(Go out and try hard, men but it's a pointless struggle. We shouldn't have come here, because we're just going to lose and it costs a lot of money besides) or a Bush speech(Go out there and fight to win, and if we play hard and believe in victory, we've got a *real* chance! NOW LET'S ROLL!)? Seriously. Think about it...which kind of fan helped the Sox more? The Kerry fan(Sox always lose, I'm not getting my hopes up) or the Bush fan(We can DO it this time! Come on, PLAY BALL!)

Someone I watched on C-span, and I forget who, made a point that the biggest job of the president is to inspire people. A good leader, he reminded me, makes other leaders. The difference between the two mindsets is a huge one. Kerry never believed they'd win and said so on many occasions. In the same spot, Bush may have had his doubts but he'd have kept them to himself, because pessimism is as catching as optimism is. That's what I think.

Go here instead of listening to CBS/NYT

2004-10-27T15:43:00.000-07:00

Clifford May has posted a harsh column about Bombgate, the latest attempt by the MSM and foreign powers-that-be to derail President Bush's re-election. This story should be disheartening to anyone on the left who actually believes in truth anymore. Are there any of you left? I'm beginning to doubt. Where is all the thuggery and lying coming from? It sure doesn't seem like my side is going out of its way to strongarm things. Nope, I've been paying attention and its you guys. Sorry to paint with a broad brush, but it's the truth. Fake and misleading news stories, violence and vandalism against Republicans, Ted Kennedy...it's out of control. Take your stupid party back, why don't you? I sincerely hope any of the decent Democrats that are left and also happen to stumble in here follow this link. It's one thing to disagree, but this is getting ridiculous.

Oh look, Blogger works again...

2004-10-27T14:50:00.000-07:00

I haven't been able to even look at any blogspot blogs until just now, so I'm a-gonna try posting one up. How about some links, people?

I got this one from Kimber a few days ago, and then my sister sent it to me. Weird, this llama song.

Some smart sounding stuff about neoconservatism, if just hearing the word doesn't make you tremble in fear. Really, its not that bad a thing. You liked the Matrix right? Neo? The good guy? Has nothing to do with that, but still.

If you like System Of A Down, you'll probably like this little flash video for it that messes with the lyrics of one of their songs.

My jack-o-lanterns never turned out looking this good, and I'm not sure if they are real or not. Still neat lookin'...

Pardon my french, but you're an ahhhhhsshole!

Here's a list of Republican Celebrities, in case you want to know which ones to boycott/support. (From IMAO)

There's all kinds of stuff out there. It's backing up too, thanks to the downtime this morning. I'd link to the big news stories, but I don't want to depress anyone.

Grand Theft Auto - San Andreas

2004-10-26T13:12:00.000-07:00

So my breather involved heading over to a buddy's house and playing the new iteration of Grand Theft Auto. First of all, if you're a parent wondering if your kid should have this game...No. Everything has Eff this and Eff that, N$%$#@! coming at you. The whole premise is 'see how many crimes you can commit'. Second of all, if you are wondering if the game will live up to the hype...Yes.

The many improvements made to gameplay were impossible to try out in the short time I watched and played. The amount of vehicles and activities available is just incredible. I won't bother giving a detailed review, but go here if you're looking for more info about it. The game is just...wow. The realism and unrealism both blew me away. The hours of fun you could have with this game is incalculable. And it makes the last GTA release look kind of weak, actually.

An attempt to disengage

2004-10-26T09:14:00.000-07:00

If you got all upset that Bush let 380 tons of high explosives get loose in Iraq...hang on a minute. The damage from that story(as planned) has probably been done but it's already being debunked. Bush may very well have failed to plan the invasion to your(or my) tastes, but those explosives going missing were NOT his fault.

Dig a little deeper and you can see that on its face the story is not true. The explosives *did* go missing but, much as the NYT would like you to believe otherwise, the truth of the matter is coming out. NBC was the first to run a corrective story that tells the details NYT didn't publish. Bush didn't really have anything to do with it, and you can easily check this out for yourself. Go ahead, I dare you.

Blogger finally posted my posts, and I've got more planned. Right now I just want to go on a punching rampage though, and that's not so good for disseminating ideas. Well...it is useful sometimes. Depends on the idea, I guess.

So I'm taking a break from the world now. There aren't enough fart and booger jokes to lower my blood pressure after I sift through the news of the day, so I'm appealing to a higher level of distraction. I'll be back in a little while to post, but for now you're on your own. I need a breather.

For a (maybe) Kerry voter

2004-10-26T08:47:00.000-07:00

It's coming down to the wire. I have been trying not to let my immovable object of low opinion of John Kerry meet the irresistible force of Bush's low approval numbers. I've been trying extra hard not to lob any unreasonable bombs at the left. Especially hard though is trying not to let my partisanship push me in to preaching my view to the more centrist of my friends. It is hardest to hear a centrist friend tell me their vote is most likely going to John "Do You Know Who I AM?" Kerry, as the result of a 'lesser of two evils' calculation.

I respect my friends who feel this way, and this is how America works. But I can't just sit back and assume these people are properly informed about the man. It's much easier to just let a person keep thinking Bush is a moron who swaggers too much, and Kerry is just a rich senator. It's hard though, because I've gone and picked through all the biased(from both sides) sloganeering(that is designed for the less informed) that has had the result (thanks Jon Stewart) of convincing the uninformed that both sides are equally bad. I can understand if a person doesn't like Bush, but an arbitrary switch to the challenger on the assumption that "How could he be worse?" is just scary to me. It's important to understand that you're not just voting against someone. You're voting for someone with a record in public service long enough to get a clear idea of how the man views the world, despite the short term(and partisan spun) rhetoric being flung at you from both sides. There are measured views out there, and if you read them with a critical eye you will see for yourself.

Look at this article in the Australian by Stephen Morris. It gives a simple rundown of Kerry's history of foreign policy views. Sure, it expresses opinions and sure it's biased against John Kerry. The thing is, they aren't unreasonable opinions and they aren't irrational biases. If you're still thinking you're going to vote Kerry simply as a default, I hope you will give it an honest look:

ALTHOUGH George Bush has reopened a slight lead over John Kerry, the outcome of next week's US presidential election is far from certain. What would Kerry's election as president mean? A dangerous time for the West.

Many have correctly pointed out that Kerry is, for now, proposing an Iraq policy not very different from that of President Bush. Yet there are vital issues other than Iraq. Kerry's 34-year record in public life indicates that he never understood what the Cold War was about and that he does not understand the nature of the US's rogue-state or Islamist terrorist enemies now. Those who see in him a moderate realist replacing the idealists of the Bush administration will be disappointed. For Kerry has a world view that is also idealist, but of a different kind.

Again, yes I know that Bush is hated and blah blah. But I've studied that man too, and it wasn't just blind partisan reflex that won my support. That certainly influenced my vote too, but I'm talking about *support*. I'm not just voting for the man, he has my support as a leader because of what I've decided about him. I may be totally wrong about him, and wrong about Kerry as well, but I don't think so. Bush would get my 'lesser of two evils' vote, if that's how I was deciding things.

As if to illustrate her point...

2004-10-26T08:38:00.000-07:00

Blogger eats it. This is my third post today, and I have yet to see any of them publish. W. T. F. It shows that for all practical purposes everything published and posted fine, except they don't show up on the internets. Pffft. Changes a-comin' and soon blogger will be dead to me. Dead! Meantime, I'm out looking for links and articles. Stupid Blogger. {kick}

Clash of the Titan

2004-10-26T08:16:00.000-07:00

The Cassini probe at Saturn is going to make a fly-by of Titan, the largest moon orbiting that planet, in about 10 hours from now. This pass will be the closest ever made, from about 745 miles up. That's pretty close, considering we know next to nothing about this hunk of dirt rolling around up there. Should be a good show, if NASA got the calculations correct. So far it looks like Cassini is a success so a little optimism is not out of order...

Why you don't want to mess with a Hoosier

2004-10-25T13:23:00.000-07:00

They can take bullets in the face and still keep control of their Semi. And that's just the women. The other interesting bit about this article is:

Holder is the ninth driver since February whose window has exploded on that same stretch of road near Bourbon, Mo. Investigators want to know if the incidents are related.

Uh, maybe. I'm starting to see a pattern here...

Animated short by Don Phillips, Jr.

2004-10-25T05:58:00.000-07:00

Passing Moments is a short animated film you might enjoy if you're the romantic type. Or the lonely type. Or the type that enjoys animation that is so well done you can forget you're watching romantic animation. Maybe you're not though. Fair enough...otherwise you'll watch and you'll sigh as you would at any good art.

Because Dan Rather hasn't pulled his own weight

2004-10-25T05:31:00.000-07:00

The best of the Bush conspiracy theories haven't quite drawn the believers you think they should have? Tired of the MSM dropping the ball on "slam-dunk" stories about how vile Bush's plans for America will be on the poor and/or minority citizens? Ok, now there's a way you can tailor-make one for e-mailing to the Daily Kos or Eleanor Clift, or for intimidating early voters at the polls...

This is a funny idea by Jennifer Bishop Fulwiler...Did you know that:

George W. Bush caused the Cubs to lose to the Marlins in Game 7 of the National League Championship Series so that Republicans, Ann Coulter, gun owners, and the Jews could conquer Al Franken?

or that:

George W. Bush had Michael Jackson arrested so that white men, SUV owners, gun owners, and oil companies could steal from Al Franken?

Someone should call Al, before they make him look like a fool...

Morning in America

2004-10-25T05:04:00.000-07:00

The elder Nawtin tipped me off to KSKY 660 in Dallas online. They let you listen free and their morning line-up blows my local talk radio out of the water.

Bill Bennett from 5-8am does Morning in America. I watched him this weekend on a talk radio panel at the National Heritage Foundation and was again blown away by his way of stating principles in a simple way. I am a big fan and it's great to find out I can hear him so long as I tear my ass out of bed at 5am. Sigh.

Laura Ingraham is on right after that, and although we get her here it is a taped broadcast that doesn't play until 10pm so it's all old news by then. I like my talk radio fresh, or at least I like to be unaware that it is not.

So that's good. I'm glad I don't have to move to Dallas.

SNL - Why you should keep watching

2004-10-25T04:07:00.000-07:00

I missed Saturday Night Live last weekend. I was(strangely enough) sleeping. I woke up and the internet told me I missed a good one. I've been able to find nothing about the show except the highlight - the part where Ashlee Simpson showcased both her voice throwing skills and her virtuosity at improv dance. Or, oops. She's not that great a ventriliquist, and without choreography she looks like a boob. So there's already a website that has just about every format of video of the 'incident' before it was cleaned up for the tape-delay west coast show. Enjoy...

This is the real reason I watch SNL. To catch the live screwups. And that's the beauty of the internet. I never have to miss one again, because someone is watching. But I'm curious to know how the skits went, and if there was anything political. The only joke I've heard(besides the unintentional comedy of Ashlee) is the one from Weekend Update about Kerry going goose hunting, then later telling reporters that the other guys with him had raped, tortured and killed the geese in a manner reminiscent of Genghis Khan. I'm paraphrasing from a paraphrase so that's not going to be accurate. In any case, no one is talking about them if there were any really great jokes/skits/lines. Too bad...

Bright and early, a scoop of Marsupials

2004-10-25T03:12:00.000-07:00

I woke up pretty early this morning(after going to bed on accident) and tried to find inspiration. I didn't outsource the job to Afghan Warlords or anything, but it still could not be found. So I'm using Coffee. For the record, Maxwell House instant singles(why did it take so long for the imperialist hegemony of coffee to move in to the pacifist teabag's territory anyway?) are not as good as the ones Folgers makes. Neither are as good as coffee you made yourself.

So while I'm working on inspiration which I actually need for other things, like e-mail and a recently hatched plan to escape the gravity of my apartment, I went a little lower in the TTLB ecosystem to grab some blogs that are at least as good as mine. I tried to keep ideology *mostly* out of my choices.

Marauding Marsupials, to be exact. I don't know any of these people, but I liked their blog for whatever reason and I found them on the tier below the Large Mammals. The fact that I'm a Large Mammal might ruin your objectivity about how great Large Mammals are but this is exactly my point. I'm an underdeserving blog trying to apply 'trickle down' blogonomics to the deserving lower classes, right? Ok. If that didn't sound backhandedly elitist I'm glad. If it did, let's just leave it there because I can only dig a deeper hole by trying to explain that this is a mere whimsy born of boredom/curiosity. The chief thing I am learning is this: I need a better banner at the very least.

Go check these people out. If you got here by wandering aimlessly, pick one at random and click on it. Trust me, this is the Dirk Gently Holistic Weblog method. Pick a blog that looks like it knows where it's going and follow it.

Sharp As A Marble

Loose Coins - Whatever turns up between the couch cushions of my head

Cranky Neocon - Your Conservative Funhouse

This Fish Needs A Bicycle

Dispassionate Liberalism

HalfGeek.net

American Samizdat

Ok that's it for now. I will probably end up linking to at least one or two of these blogs for a specific story in the future, but that's just stating odds. I will also be back later today to post a few specific opinions on today's news, and hopefully some decent links to some rumors on the internets that you hear so much about.

***I just wanted to say about the above post: Blogger started playing the wrong entry, so I thought I would just do a short, goofy dance for you and then leave the stage.

Juan Pablo Montoya wins in Brazil!

2004-10-24T14:01:00.000-07:00

Go Zorro! Juan Pablo Montoya finally won a GP this season, in the last race of the season. Brazil was also his last race with the Williams team, and next year he will be racing alongside Kimi Raikkonen in a Mclaren. Kimi was just behind Juan for 2nd plance, and that is a good sign. A great way to end it too, because in 2001(his rookie year in F1) he should have won. That year he was crashed out by Jos Verstappen, and since then just hadn't been able to seal the deal in Brazil. For such a lackluster BMW Williams season, this was a good little pick-me-up of hope.

Juan Pablo in the middle of Kimi(2nd) and Rubens(3rd)

And the KC Chiefs put in a great effort against Atlanta today and routed them 56-10, making it a good day for testosterone and I. If they can play like that the rest of the season they might not have to rely on their kicking anymore...

Righting wrongs where I find them

2004-10-23T09:18:00.000-07:00

Below are blogs that I found ranked below me in the Truth Laid Bear ecosystem. I figure an informal alliance of proximity is a good off-the-cuff experiment to try for no reason at all except I can. I picked blogs with good titles and went there to make sure it was a current blog. I looked at more blogs than I'm listing, mostly because wanted to only link to good blogs that might deserve to be ranked above me. I'm just fooling around with an idea, so there's no particular standard for the blogs I chose except that I found them by scrolling down. I tried not to be particular about ideology and choose by nonspecific appeal, but hey we're all biased somehow. This isn't science, this is Saturday.

Intellectual Intercourse

Spatula City bbs - Ready. Willing. Unstable.

The Cheese Stands Alone

Semi-intelligent Thoughts - Dissent is healthy;Stupidity is deadly

Heretical Ideas - Challenging the Orthodoxy!

NotGeniuses.com

A blog doesn't need a clever name

Note-it Posts

Just a first impression scoop from me to the bottom of the Large Mammals with which I cohabitate but had never visited before that I could recall. Go check 'em out if you're looking around anyway, right? Right.

The use and misuse of voices

2004-10-23T06:28:00.000-07:00

Archie Drury is a filmmaker who went to Iraq with 150 cameras and came back with a documentary that looks really interesting called Voices of Iraq. He was on C-span with clips and he took calls about it. The film is meant to be many views of Iraq in the words of many diverse Iraqis, and has no political opinion. It does espouse the view that the US military effort in Iraq was good for the Iraqi people.

It was a very interesting discussion and he was respectful of all dissent while maintaining that his film was not to espouse a political view, but to show the humanity of the Iraqi people and let their voices be heard, whatever their opinion. I really came away from this with a great respect for Archie Drury.

And to change the subject completely, there's a 5 pager on how protesting can really screw things up for people here. An interesting point of view here with some startling examples of just what happens in real life when people mobilize against something they don't understand. I don't know a thing about the author, Sebastian Mallaby but he makes some solid points. Here's what the article says:

Sebastian Mallaby is a columnist and editorial writer for the Washington Post. This article is adapted from The World’s Banker: A Story of Failed States, Financial Crises, and the Wealth and Poverty of Nations (New York: Penguin Press, 2004).

Credit where credit is due

2004-10-23T02:17:00.000-07:00

A blog I read regularly got a mention in a Newsmax story, and it occurred to me I never backed the guy up when he originally posted his story. So to further his earned uptick of blogosphere standing, go there and check out this early brewing story. Don't misunderstand, there may be nothing suspicious at all about this line in Teresa Heinz's tax returns that Desert Rat caught and no one else really did...but no one's answering questions about it either. Of course, that was the reason CBS thought the White House was confirming the fake TANG memos, so no jumping to conclusions. I'm just sayin'

And his daughter is a thespian, too!

2004-10-23T01:42:00.000-07:00

Beldar has the *real* story about Kerry, and it's all the truth. Go find out the TRUTH about John Kerry and his family before you vote! Heheh this cracked me up, and it reminded me of the old campaign story on which this is surely based.

Too Hot for Sinclair - price for their freedom of speech too high

2004-10-23T00:00:00.000-07:00

But you can still see Stolen Honor for free. I'm not saying this is the only view of what went on or the final say on John Kerry's anti-war activities. I will say it is provocative.

It's supposed to influence you, and you'll probably see it as the polar opposite of Fahrenheit 911 if you consider all opinions to be equally valid. But the stories of the american POWs were enough to get me to watch. These are my heroes in a way John Kerry could never be. These guys deserve a say even if you don't agree with them. These men deserve my eternal gratitude and yours too.

ESPECIALLY if you disagree with them, because they have dissented in the face of brutal torture. Once you start listening, you might understand. If Michael Moore's dissenting soldier letters touched you...try these "smears" on for size. They'll touch you just the same, maybe more.

Slothmore: Dedicated to doing less

2004-10-22T22:59:00.000-07:00

Yeah yeah, it's funny 'cause it's true. The Slothmore Institute seems to have been made to poke satirical fun at me. I don't take it personally, because it's about time we tried to make things look more official.

Heroes for Bush

2004-10-22T22:28:00.000-07:00

The Truth Laid Bear started a Heroes-for-Bush blogburst, and there are some good entries. Lots of good stuff there, especially if you're a copyright lawyer heheh. My favorites so far are Alfred E. Neuman at Protein Wisdom, John Wayne at TheKerryFairy, and Sledge Hammer at ThisBlogIsFullOfCrap. They're all good ideas though, and worth a skim.

Interesting Site-seeing

2004-10-22T21:54:00.000-07:00

Examples of panic and some of the things we know about it...Nothing to get too excited about though. Just take a breath and read it slowly, just calm down. Freaking out about it doesn't help anything, it's only panic.

Howie Kurtz weighs in on Jon Stewart here, Nothing really groundbreaking but good to see him saying these things at least.

Paul Graham talks about hacks and hacking in a general way, without using 1337speak. That right there makes it worth reading.

Science Blog has an entry about the recent confirmation of the frame-dragging theory. I was kind of disappointed that the LIGO is just now beginning to make measurements which would have cleared this up. The data was collected in '92 for this conclusion. So, kinda makes you think about what else we've already got in the data, just waiting to be mined...

And though there is still controversy about whether the world needs more evil clowns or not, since I can't impose my strongly held beliefs on those around me I posted this link.

Galley Slaves chimes in on Stewart

2004-10-22T20:55:00.000-07:00

More on why Jon Stewart was out of line from Galley Slaves here, and I agree:

Why is Stewart getting such fawning treatment for doing what, on the civility scale, is the sort of thing you'd expect from Morton Downey Jr. or Howard Stern? Well, I've got a theory.

Read the whole thing. It's a succint but astute observation. Good question at the end,too.

Tony Kanaan - wins IRL, belongs in Champ Car

2004-10-22T19:43:00.000-07:00

Congratulations, Tony

Tony Kanaan fools around with the Dallas newspaper that celebrates his IRL championship win , but also shows why he belongs in Champ Car. I wish he hadn't jumped ship. I understand why he did, and congatulations to him for winning. He definitely deserves success and I've been rooting for him personally the whole time, even reluctantly as he chose sides between Champ Car and IRL rather suddenly and after reversing on public statements to do so. Business is business, Ok and fine. I just wish Champ Car had him. He's got one of those personalities that shine through the helmet, and IRL is lucky to have poached him.

Ya gotta trust somebody

2004-10-21T23:45:00.000-07:00

Chris Suellentrop is a writer for Slate who I have started reading lately. Here's his latest article from him, which is critical of Kerry. That's only part of why I'm linking the article. I agree with Chris here, and the very fact that he is this intellectually honest(relative to my honest assessment of reality, of course.) about Kerry is the real reason. You can find this kind of view of Kerry in other places, and the fact that Suellentrop supports Kerry(last I read) doesn't strengthen or weaken his case here for me. That's the key. In fact, if you read it closely he is actually simplifying Kerry's message to a great degree, which probably helps Kerry. I read it one way, a Kerry supporter reads it another: "Hey! Finally someone who can boil Kerry down to a single line position!" That's key too.

I want to say something good about him because a)he writes well and b)as far as I know, is at least somewhat center-left or so. I could be wrong and that's a broad label, but he is the kind of guy who I have grown to trust despite this. That's key. My first experience with him was an incident the elder Nawtin brought to my attention about a certain Kerry quote about not being able to decide what to have to eat.

Nawtin noticed a difference between meanings derived from reading the NYT version of the quote versus reading the more complete, and therefore more contextually accurate, quoting by Suellentrop. Nawtin corresponded with Suellentrop, who was at the event, and we determined that his quote was correct and the NYT had not done a great job of reporting. I did not correspond with Chris myself, but I did get the sense from the email that his sense of integrity was affronted by the suggestion that he would make up a whole clause on a quote like that. I understand that completely. But I think he understands us too.

We don't know who to trust. We think for ourselves and we'd seen enough of this election cycle's press to not rule out the possibility of someone doing exactly that. Come on, presumed integrity? What kind of idiots do these guys think we are, right? We laugh at the Daily Show, after all. I didn't know Chris Suellentrop from a snake-oil salesman. Well, so he buttressed his credibility by writing back, and also by being correct. Advantage Chris. And because he apparently does have integrity, continued to write provocative pieces that I could agree with or disagree with, but were well-written and even-handed at the same time. Advantage Chris.

That he's willing to criticize his own candidate(with the truth, mind you) means that I should be willing to listen to his criticism of Bush with a more open(while still critical) ear. Right? Right. I mean, of course I might still disagree with him, but this goes to show that he can be trusted a little more as a first premise when reading him than when reading Paul Krugman or somebody else who requires immediate Fisking after reading. He has been steadily building his credibility with me, and that means something.

Not that I trust him to vote for Bush because he criticized Kerry once. Not that I trust him to say nice things about Bush(though if there are nice things to say, I trust him more to do that as well) but to say TRUE things about Bush whether he is being critical or nice and the same with Kerry. See? That's all we ask. I don't expect him to have to say nice things about Bush, because he shouldn't have to think there is anything nice about the man. I think similar thoughts about Kerry. Fair enough. But man, we gotta stick to truth being the first rule. The truth, the WHOLE truth, and nothin' but the truth. Well done, Chris Suellentrop.

Another scoop of internet

2004-10-21T21:52:00.000-07:00

Online Pirating is getting bigger, apparently.

Fat Willie, not to be confused with One-Eyed Willie, gets the booty and shares like a good pirate should.

Here's a game where the object is to spot the booty without being spotted. Uh...Ahey!

The Wiki entry on the answer to Life, The Universe, And Everything. 42, of course. Now for figuring out the question...Don't panic!

And since that last one didn't have anything to do with pirates, I should probably stop now. I can't find any pie-rating sites. No ratemypie.com or anything. Avast me hearties...ye landline lubbers don't know what yer missin' Arrrr. Yeah, talk like a pirate day was last month, I know.

The alienate your base gambit

2004-10-21T19:29:00.000-07:00

That hunting photo-op in Ohio? Sen-uh-dur Kerry traipsing through the woods, having killed his duck(with a gun, even), and on his way to profess his Catholic faith (which he promises both guides him daily yet won't in any way be involved in his presidenting, but rest assured it is a deep, abiding faith, honest)had a press pool that was supposed to be a willing participant in the fooling of the people. Drudge was kind enough to post some impressions by an unnamed pool reporter.

I'm thinking these guys in the press pool learned a lot from Jon Stewart and others-not only do they think for themselves, they seem to want to help us do the same. No crying about how it's hurting America...no mental calculus of whether this fake event is equal to or less than the amount of spin the Bush camp is percieved to be imparting on the conventional wisdom.

It sounds like there are at least some people noting the duplicity here. It's a funny read, the pool reports. Go read them all... I'm sure it played well in some places, when it was reported by a member of the press willing to suspend his(and by extension, subverting yours) disbelief, but these are funny and seem to be based more on the idea that the press should report independent of the every intention of the campaign. Take a look:

Anyway, we realized we weren't going to see any bloodshed. Patsy flipped open her phone, dialed up Loftus and valiantly expressed the communal outrage. Rapid response went into full swing. He said we weren't included in actual hunt because the AP would object to it for some reason. Not true, said Nedra, who sat beside her. Precedent, he said. Patsy reeled off the stats from every presidential campaign hunt since Reagan. "I mean, he's going out into the woods with men who have guns. We should have someone there," she reasoned. He split hairs. Patsy explained to Loftus that your pooler very much wanted to go hunting with the next leader of the free world. But for some reason, the thought of a reporter from The Washington Times observing Mr. Kerry revealing who he really is did not sway the campaign.

A bit editorial to be sure, but simply reporting the facts as seen is a wee bit useless when it's obvious to the most passively skeptical cub reporter that the event exists merely to manufacture the facts seen and reported...Kind of like telling everyone there's this huge ad buy on a controversial new ad(that will never really have aired) so that it gets played on news shows in its entirety in segments about the affects of an ad in markets(that it never played in, except now it's riding for free in the biggest and best market-national news). At least it's funny. Observe the most popular bet in the "would he bag one or not?" press pool...uh pool, I guess you'd call it:

HE WOULD, BUT IT ISN'T A DUCK: This theory developed into the most desirous. He returns victorious, but with Osama bin Laden, who had been hiding out in the backside of the farm. Turns out that immediately after President Bush outsourced the capturing of him in Tora Bora to the Afghan warlords, Mr. Bin Laden climbed into a container of poppy gum and arrived through a port in Newark. The container, of course, went uninspected. With so few police officers on the street, Mr. Bin Laden had no problem wandering America unmolested.

Ultimately, we'll just have to wait to find out. But one thing is clear: we'll never know for certain if Mr. Kerry can shoot a bird in flight.

Heh, like I say. Go read the whole thing for a laugh. Like Rush Limbaugh has said...if he has to go out and prove he is Catholic and a gun owning hunter...there MUST be some question about it. This is akin to Bush going out with a sign and protesting in front of the White House to prove he is for Freedom of Speech, isn't it?

Gee, will you hear this one from the MSM?

2004-10-21T02:38:00.000-07:00

Hugh Hewitt, a very pro-Bush blogger and radio talk show host pointed me to this article by Howie Kurtz in the Washington Post which shows just how the game is being played by the party that never stops claiming that Republicans are evil manipulators of reality while Democrats are always honest and fair:

John F. Kerry's strategists pride themselves on the sheer speed of their advertising effort as they churn out one response after another to President Bush's attack spots.

Now it turns out that some of the Kerry commercials are being written, edited, produced and put on satellites for the purpose of generating news articles. They have not actually aired on any network or local station -- except in reports about the Democrat's campaign.

Since Sept. 1, the Kerry camp has released and publicized more than half a dozen commercials, on subjects ranging from taxes to health care to the war in Iraq, without buying time for them, either nationally or in battleground states. Others have run in only one or two markets after being unveiled with considerable fanfare. In effect, these have been video news releases purporting to be substantial paid advertising.

Do you see how they do? These ads get lots of airplay on the news talk shows, as if they are being used to influence lots of people somewhere, and the news shows are only showing you what everyone else is seeing when they sit down to watch TV. They show you the ad, and they don't tell you that THE ONLY PLACE THIS AD IS AIRING IS ON TV NEWS SHOWS!! The Kerry campaign is now...actually I should say seeming to misinform the press, who is in the business of reporting and talking about ads that are being played around the country, so that their affects can be discussed and not to get the Kerry Message out, to get the Kerry Message out.

Now what the hell am I supposed to think about that? It's all well and good to make ads you never air, focus group them and even put them on the internet at johnkerry.com if you like. But announcing them as time buys in markets...I'm not so sure. The announcement creates the buzz, which has no basis in reality except the fiat of the announcement, and the buzz then focuses on the ad which shows nowhere lest the buzz has taken it to be shown. Kind of like Hollywood. Clever, but fake.

You might not hear about it from the news reporters that have been eating this up but that's because they are either embarrassed that they've been hoodwinked or...well let's not call them liars, because it looks like they've been lied to here. Tad Devine says they certainly aren't trying to be disingenuous, for what it's worth. Call them dupes. Hopefully they will see it for the trick it is and report it so you can decide if you like the game being played like that. Or more specifically, if YOU like being played like that.

The Daily Show=Crossfire

2004-10-21T00:43:00.000-07:00

Why is it absurd for Jon Stewart to claim that the Daily Show is "just a comedy show"? Because it isn't just a comedy show. I'm not saying that it's supposed to be held to a news show standards of rigorous fact checking or reporting. It's supposed to be funny, and we all get that. But it's It's a Book and Movie selling show, that keeps your attention with comedy about news and politics. Usually this is OK, because when you are only selling books and movies for someone else, it does not highlight all the conflict inherent in the powerful and influential making fun of the powerful and influential for being...powerful and influential.

I know, I know. The show has to have commercials and Comedy Central can't be run by anything but a large corporation, and that corporation is part of a huge conglomerate of the same corporations that all the news and spin that Jon Stewart makes good jokes about. That's a given, and I'm not ready to call that a bad thing.

But that's not what I'm talking about, the capitalism of it. I'm for him making a buck from all this. I'm just very aware that whoever is sitting on the couch is selling a)a book, b)a movie/tv show or c)their campaign for office. I am suddenly lost in my argument when I try to nail down why this is worse than Kerry showing up on Leno or Letterman, or Regis. All of them are left leaning too, and I felt the same way about each appearance of Kerry. I don't like him as a politician at all, and even less as a guest on a comedy show. There are other candidates that I've enjoyed and I suppose that doesn't change that the very appearance was slippery in some way. Even so.

But those other shows aren't based on the premise that all politicians are the same, liars and fakers. Their stance on the news seems to be the same: make fun of it all, or you'll succumb to all the spin!

Well if spin is bad, what's the couch for? You're telling the god's truth about your movie being an action-packed bundle of good times if you're saying it while sitting on the couch or you don't get on this show? Is that the policy? No, anyone from any one of the many companies selling something, as well as the person sitting on the couch, who is their to sell it, and Jon Stewart who is there to help make the salesman look very good because if you like them (and we like you, Jon) then we might think they're ok. And so we know it's all spin, but we think for ourselves just like you taught us to!

And what we realize is that you can make fun of the news and the newsmakers and the news reporters all you want, but you're still there to sell me a book or a movie or a TV show or a campaign. Leno and Letterman and Regis know this, and that's why they don't show up on another book and campaign selling show, where at least everyone understands that it is meant to be two battling sets of talking points and has the ability to think for themselves, just like the Daily Show warned us to do! Maybe that's why it was so easy for me to become disgusted with John Kerry, who is probably a decent enough guy, maybe flawed but doing what he thinks best when faced with the world.

Maybe that's it. I'm sick of seeing all the same people who taught me so well...all the writers and the singers and the actors and the movies and the songs and the books and the comedians-most of all the comedians!-...to think for myself, I'm sick of seeing them saying it now but tacking "oh and vote for John Kerry because Bush is evil" on the end of it. Of ALL THE--WTF!

I'm sick of all these people getting mad that I can see what a sham a lot of it is, but because I DO think for myself, I can look at it and it won't hurt me. And that means I can also see what isn't a sham and that's what has led me to conservatism, among other things. So all these people who claimed it was all a sham and told me to watch out, thank you. I was able to tell that much of what you do is also a huge sham. Please go back to warning people to think for themselves, and making good art about being human beings.

That's really what it is for me. I don't blame Leno or Letterman for letting me just see for myself. That's valuable. I might not have minded so much about Jon doing that either. But Jay and Dave (Yes, I'm on a first-name basis with all three thanks to my television) don't muddy up the line so much. Maybe if Leno showed up on Crossfire I'd be just as mad when he called Tucker Carlson a dick(yeah, that's exactly what he's saying is wrong with the show!) but Leno was smart enough to quietly release information about his real bias and then make sure he stuck to making fun of absurdity. Well, to me once Stewart showed up on Crossfire to sell his book and started making his celebrity-with-a-cause appeal it was just as annoying to me as it is when someone does that on his show, and it made me remember that he's as big a dick as anyone and what's more if there was ever a guy ripe for the Daily Show's sharp wit...IT IS JOHN KERRY. That's the biggest hit to me.

It's the kind of thing the old Daily Show would have been the first to point out, and instead seems to want me to believe that Kerry is an exception, and that all the other politicians are lying and absurd fools, but I should Buy John Kerry's Product, sold from the couch. And all the other shows are hurting America, but the Daily show is just a comedy show, and so can't be held to that standard.

If we hang Crossfire, we must also hang the Daily Show. If The Daily Show is 'just a comedy show', then Crossfire is 'just an opinion show'. That's all I'm sayin'.

Jon Stewart: still funny, still wrong

2004-10-20T22:45:00.000-07:00

Jon Stewart made a good attempt at going back to being a comedian on monday, and did a good job. He isn't *all* wrong. Crossfire Blows.

The clip at IFILM though is titled "Jon Stewart Spins his Crossfire Appearance" and that's a good word for it. If someone can't understand what spin is, this is a good example of what it means. Taking your forum and putting your "spin" on the conventional wisdom of the reality of something. We all saw or heard about it, and we all came to independent and diverse opinions on it. Stewart is very funny here, but his view is "spinning" the conventional wisdom of what happened. It wasn't that he wasn't funny on Crossfire. That was one of the biggest clues that he's not content to sit back and make fun of everything anymore. He doesn't quiiite seem to grasp yet the reason that a good bit of the joke is on him.

I'm not saying he's wrong at any point during this, in fact he is self deprecating in parts and the jokes are zingers. And frankly this is the Stewart that I miss. But I can't unforget that he let the guys he makes fun of with his "fake news" come and hijack the "plug your product" couch. Letting Kerry come on there and helping Kerry "spin" our opinions about him with it was WRONG and it made him complicit in the very thing we look to him to help us point out-namely whats wrong with politics and the world! And when he says that it's adversarial tv and spin, I say he's right.

So anyway, I laughed. I did, and I felt less mad at Jon for the whole thing. He just needs to understand that conventional wisdom is only bad when it's wrong factually or when it is manipulated. Some spin is necessary to counter that, and vying for a spot in the conventional wisdom by competing ideas is a good thing. We are not all idiots who swallow whole spoonfuls of reality from evil manipulators without even bothering to chew. We like for you to make fun of idiocy, but you don't need to save us from it. Keep being funny, and stop letting politicians use your "product spin" couch. In fact, if you came on and pledged to not let that happen anymore, you could have me back respecting you. But maybe you don't care, because as you say you're selling a book and you've got a show that measures its audience. Money might be the only thing it's about. Oh and entertainment. Well, if so then no more making fun of that.

Clifford May says what I've been thinking

2004-10-20T19:16:00.000-07:00

In fact what a lot of us conservatives have been thinking and saying. He makes a good concise case for a little more civility. I keep trying to remind myself that the left is comprised of good people who may or may not be right about any particular thing, but they are generally honest even when wrong. They may honestly think that Bush=Hitler but I honestly disagree. I am not a racist, a homophobe, a sexist, a liar, or a bigot and I frankly wouldn't support a man who was. I understand everyone has prejudices about certain things and incomplete information but when they state their opinion, even if they are in charge of the country and end up acting on their opinion, that doesn't allow a presumption of dishonesty.

Sometimes, people do lie. If there is proof of a lie by the president, or anyone at all really, like a DNA stained dress or something, bring it on. Liars should get caught and have consequences for lying. If it is merely proof that the person was incorrect, then assert that. But stop confusing one with the other, please. It is hurting America just as bad as you think Crossfire does. When someone says something that isn't true, that does NOT automatically make it a lie. Even if you think that the thing *is* a lie, you had better collect your DNA first because otherwise you end up washing out all the valid things you might have to say. Read the whole thing, but this is the gist of it:

What's more, those on the right could say that Senator Kerry is lying when he says that Gen. Eric Shinseki was fired (he wasn't), that he says he hasn't changed his position on Iraq (of course he has), and that he has a plan to eliminate U.S. dependence on foreign oil (no one does).

But, for the most part, those on the Right have refrained from such language.

I'd like to take this opportunity to propose to Scheer and my other friends on the left that they consider opening their minds to the possibility that those who disagree with them have come to their views honestly, that they see the world differently, that they have made alternative judgments based on sincere — if flawed, by the lights of the Left — interpretations of reality.

It is good and proper for Left and Right to ague about facts and analysis and the policies they suggest. But we can't do that if one side is calling the other side "Liars!" all the time.

This includes Bush and Kerry, me and you. We're *all* Americans. The Bush campaign sent out an e-mail asking for Republicans to go out and try to get 2 people to vote for Bush on Nov.2. There's nothing wrong with that, and it isn't wrong to try to influence people with your opinion. But maybe it's more important for our side to go out and find two Kerry voters and shake their hand and thank them for being an American. Things are deeply personal to them as much as me and while some of them are clearly over the top(see post below) they are acting on what they think is right. Fair enough, and so am I. Some people will see what Cliff is suggesting as just another cynical ploy, like they see everything I feel is genuine about Bush. But the tension is high and we need to get back to disagreeing intellectually rather than reflexively. That's all I'm saying.

Play rough, but play fair. Back off as soon as you think someone's getting hurt. Keep laughing, and keep smiling. Respect the truth, and allow for different interpretations of truth. Call anyone you want a buffoon chimpanzee if you think they are one. Make a good joke, and I'll laugh. Jon Stewart is a tool, and he doesn't even know it, if you want to know what I think. But he isn't lying. And neither is Bush, unless you have clear proof. He *might* still be lying sure. And Kerry too. And me, and you.

If this guy only knew

2004-10-20T17:17:00.000-07:00

Do you keep hearing stories about people with Bush signs or Bumperstickers getting harrassed or their property vandalized for showing their support?

The Perfesser sends in some photos of a van he worked on recently as a certified mechanic. There was no vandalism, and no harrassment. The Perfesser fixed the car as per his usual high standards of workmanship, and with a mind for customer service, even saved the guy some money. This is business as usual for The Perfesser, but when he saw the vehicle it was even more important to him to play fair. Friendly, non-partisan words were exchanged about the importance of voting. The Perfesser did not mention that he is an ardent conservative given to ranting about people like this, because he believes in freedom of speech. But still, it was a friendly meeting and the Kerry supporter profited by having The Perfesser as his Auto Surgeon.

Click on the thumbnails to check this out, as I am certain the driver intended for you to do. Be thankful you aren't having to do this while driving down the road:

Again, this man has had his freedom of speech completely respected. The Perfesser watched him drive away with a smile on his face. The Perfesser had a smile too, and with all that smiling going around I thought it would be a good time to share one with you.

Guts

2004-10-19T23:14:00.000-07:00

I'm not linking to the actual story I'm talking about, which is written by Chuck Palahniuk. If you're interested, google it or track it down from one of the links below. It's one of those things I can't give you in good conscience. You have to take the responsibility for deciding to read this yourself. The actual story...I had trouble reading it. I'm going to try to compliment it without recommending that you read it as well, and without really saying what it's about. That said, the meaning of the story was amazingly clear to me, and equally as evocative in many ways. Fair warning on both counts.

The story has apparently caused people to vomit and faint at live readings(I'm not kidding) and more about that can be found here and here and Chuck's audioblog is here.

A collection of opinions and comments about the story is here.

It's strong, strong stuff. I'm serious. I am fairly fearless when it comes to reading. I'll read the most graphic stuff ever if it is well written at the same time. This story might very well be the most graphically disturbing thing I've ever read. It fits the theme of the story to tell you that about three quarters of the way through I had to stop reading and collect myself before going back to finish reading. And when I did, I had to read it in small chunks with only the object of finishing in mind. I had to finish, because I was in the middle of it and it was too late to go back, even though truthfully I did not really feel inclined to keep feeling the way the story was making me feel.

The way it made me feel was pretty squeamish. It was an amazing piece of writing though, and the intellectual meaning I took from it was perhaps more deeply impressed on me because of the physical reaction it evoked. The fact that it was so graphically disturbing at the same time that it was...resonating personally in its theme was what disturbed me beyond the mere gross-out factor of the writing. This is something Chuck seems to come up against and challenge often in his writing, and here he has raised quite a reaction on both fronts.

This story made me think about that as much as what it personally meant to me so I will spare you my self-analysis and explore that angle a bit. The idea that in some cases an emotional response(assuming the feeling is felt to the degree that it could affect one's thinking) to writing can improve the comprehension of the meaning contained within the text of the writing.

And conversely, the idea that in some cases the emotional response can serve to completely impede the efficacy of the meaning intended by the writer to positively influence the reader. I'm sure both cases exist and it's all subjective. I probably heard this idea before, or you have. At least I'm having the decency to plagiarize by memory, and what's more such a faulty memory that I don't recall having read it before. Stay off the drugs, kids. They lead to academic misconduct. Fair warning. The whole thing ended up being a test for me of dispassionately moving beyond the physical reaction in order to critically acquire the meaning contained within, which I don't claim is the best way to do things in every case. Just that it can be done.

As I said, the story is quite literally a viscerally displeasing thing to read.

Derbyshire considers O'reilly

2004-10-19T20:30:00.000-07:00

I don't want to write much about Bill O'Reilly, and John Derbyshire posted a bit to the Corner at NRO that pretty much gives voice to my dispassionate feelings about the whole thing. I prefer to keep all the passionate stuff that the Derb refers to in making his points about the implications to conservatives less important in the scheme of things precisely because I agree with him. It's a valid assessment of some real consequences to conservatism:

MY BOY BILL [John Derbyshire]
Jonah, Ramesh: Your insouciance about the prospect of Bill O'Reilly going down in scandal is, I believe, misplaced. You may not like the guy; a lot of conservatives don't like him; any time I have put in a word for O'Reilly on this site I have got a sheaf of e-mails from conservatives telling me at great length why they don't like him.

Sure, O'Reilly's no movement conservative. Sure, his positions on actual issues are all over the place. Sure, he's way too full of himself. Sure, he thinks the feddle gummint should get into all sorts of things you and I would much rather it keeps out of. Sure, he'd split the difference between Churchill and Hitler in his efforts at "fairness." Sure, sure. Consider the following points, though.

1. My enemy's enemy is my friend. O'Reilly is a **huge** hate figure for the Left. They loathe the guy. His downfall would be immensely energizing for them. Whatever you think, *they* consider him a conservative.

2. In war, you take what allies you can get. You're not going to get Edmund Burke hosting on prime-time TV. Heck, you're not going to get William F. Buckley, Jr. This is *TV*. It's junk. If there's a junk-conservative, a sometime-kinda-conservative, a not-quite-our-kind-of-conservative running a popular prime-time TV show, go down on your knees and give thanks. It's more than we can expect. It's more than we had for 50 years.

3. Conservatives have taken too many of these lifestyle hits. If O'Reilly goes down on a lifestyle charge, it's bad for us, whether you like his program or not.
Posted at 12:25 PM

Yeah, there is still the substantive question of whether O'Reilly committed a foul simply by dallying with a subordinate. I don't know all the facts of the case, but it seems that even with all the information,a reasonable case could be made for either. But it's all the same to me really, except for the points the Derb makes here. He's smaaahhhht.

People of ze wurl, relaaaaax!

2004-10-19T09:45:00.000-07:00

The Swift Boat Vets. This whole Vietnam thing is strange, and is a lot of food for thought. I've paid plenty of attention to these guys, and it has caused me to do a lot of learning about the whole war from many other sources. The thing is, I'm 29. Wasn't born until the whole thing was over. My parents and their friends are the closest direct link I have to it, and I haven't really talked to any vets personally about how they feel about it. I should, but that kind of seems self serving- "Hey, mind if I reopen old wounds so I can mentally masturbate about something I have no real concept of but plenty of other information on which to make my judgements about the issue?".

So let me just ramble for a bit...The first real military activity by the US in my lifetime was the first Gulf War. Remember when the troops came home? That's when we were very very careful as a nation to not make one of the same mistake as was made with Vietnam, which was culturally tolerating persecution of soldiers for having fought there. The "support our troops" message was a natural sell, but it was repeated almost ad nauseum. Kind of strange, because I remember wondering "why wouldn't we?". That's what made for the nauseum. I knew about Vietnam, but I didn't see any connection and couldn't figure out why anyone would need to get the word out not to treat these guys like dirt when they came home. Sure, some few people would be against the war no matter what(I'm looking at you, John Kerry) but no one was going to blame the troops right? Well I don't recall that anyone tested that warning and spit on a soldier in an airport in '91.

OK, so flash forward to now, Gulf War II/Afghanistan/WoT and the "support our troops" message has aged well. It's not a loudly drummed message anymore. Yellow ribbons are common, and there are many organizations dedicated specifically to, well...supporting troops. It's softened because it became a part of the Conventional Wisdom. We will support our troops, because we value them as countrymen. They are separate from the wars they are sent to fight. At the uh...let's call it indoctrination point of this meme, the message was hammered extra hard partly because it was not assured of certainty in the CW right? It had to be hammered home not just to people who were alive for Vietnam and remembered(or had participated, as vets or as vet persecutors) but to people like me, who had no idea of what it was really like.

Alright, you don't have to stay with me. I'm not smashing atoms here, just making a long-winded observation. When the Swift Boat vets showed up on the election scene back in March, they amplified a part of the Kerry bio that might not have otherwise gotten much attention. I mean, no one was going to pretend it didn't happen of course, but it was going to be sort of vaguely recalled. Small clips of his '71 Senate testimony, video with no sound shown of his protesting as visuals for some pundit's narration which broadly describes the history of the anti-war Kerry. Some casual and superficial discussion of it without really more thought by the news consumer about it beyond the sort of way that people react when they find out Ben Stein was a member of the Nixon administration. Am I wrong? Maybe.

But the Swiftees caused a lot of people of my generation who only really know that it screwed up some of our family members pretty bad, so much that it was not much discussed around the dinner table, to go find out more about what exactly happened back then. So while the MSM has not given much attention to the Swift Boat vets, a lot of people actually have. The more thorough examination of Kerry's words and deeds during that time makes for a much more interesting conversation about protesting the war, and my question is whether this caused Kerry's bio to run up against the conventional wisdom he helped form in the 90s as a US senator-'support the troops'.

I'm not saying this is a verifiable thing in polls, but I do wonder how much sense this theory makes. But the conventional wisdom is not just 'support the troops'. That's the slogan. The message, of course, is 'not supporting the troops is wrong'. Subtle difference, I know. My theory is that by extension, the subconscious bias would also then be 'I don't think much of anyone who wouldn't support the troops. That's so obvious'.

But Kerry was a leader of people who did not support the troops. I am not saying that Kerry doesn't or didn't support the troops. Don't misunderstand. But clearly, lots of people didn't, and VVAW was a big part of that happening whether they orchestrated it or intended it.

VVAW members probably did support the troops, but they were going around saying that most troops were doing pretty horrible things on a regular basis. They can parse it all they want, but part of their political assault on the war was showing the bad stories they were able to tell were widespread and condoned. So naturally some people were incited to their acts of 'not supporting the troops' by the information championed and eloquently disseminated by Kerry and the other VVAW people. The VVAW was considering the assasination of sitting senators, so they were clearly willing to sacrifice a little for their ends. A few soldiers getting spit on was a small price to pay for ending the evil imperialism of western democracy, right?

So all these rabid anti-war people are filling the streets of NYC during the Republican convention, the Kerry base I mean, and anyone who is able to find history that doesn't lionize the brave protest of military capitalist hegemony can read about the orginal anti-war crowd(which are much the same crowds). Do the people around my age who go find out more than what the commercials tell them and decide for themselves if Kerry's anti-war actions actually supported the troops(though I am still presuming that he felt in his heart he was supporting the troops), or not, no matter which they decide, still somewhere have a subconscious thought somewhere that says

'not supporting the troops is wrong'

Anyone who was alive then is probably better able to judge whether it's fair to associate that amount of blame for troops who didn't get supported after Vietnam. I know this, and I also know that there was a lot- a LOT of other stuff that caused the obviously wrong acts against soldiers by war protesters. And in some ways, those were different times. If for no other reason than that Kerry was a young man then and isn't anymore. Fine. I can understand if you want to say that my theory relies on some sort of chronocentrism(heh I made a word!) but I'm talking about subconscious stuff here, psychocus-pocus type stuff, where the big message of :

'not supporting the troops is wrong'

plus the reaction of:

'I don't think much of anyone who *wouldn't* support the troops'

is squared by any particular brain with the message they watch Kerry touting from back then:

'the troops are doing no good over there, and committing all sorts of heinous crimes as well'

When thinking about the question:

'Should I vote for Kerry?'

Alright, I think that stated it confusingly enough. Ought to be enough words up there to scare away all but the most dedicated stalker from reading this, so I'll stop. I had to put it out there though because I keep thinking about it and now I can stop.

For what it's worth

2004-10-19T06:11:00.000-07:00

Beldar has a question for you if you fit this bill:

Let's say you're a yellow dog Democrat, a patriot, a thoughtful person for whom the world changed on 9/11. Zell Miller's impassioned rant at the RNC didn't strike any responsive chords for you. You supported the war in Afghanistan and you're cautiously optimistic at having seen the successful elections that just took place there. You don't like the Republican positions on social issues, but you do recognize that this election is, and ought to be, first and foremost about foreign policy and domestic security issues. You aren't an appeaser; you know and appreciate quite a bit of history; you're not reflexively against any and all use of America's military power.

You're deeply troubled, though, about Iraq; you think it is a big deal that we didn't find stockpiles of WMDs there; and something about George W. Bush just flat rubs you the wrong way. You think all the SwiftVets' stuff is irrelevant ancient history; you think there's not much difference between Kerry misspeaking about the "global test" and Bush misspeaking about the war on terror not being winnable; and besides, you take it as an article of faith that all politicians lie during campaigns

I like this approach. It might not convince you to vote for Bush, but it is still a good question to be asking yourself before you go and vote.

TV and the internets: a match made in the boardroom

2004-10-19T05:57:00.000-07:00

Buzzmachine posted a good bit about the way the internet is absorbing TV. And, at the same time TV is trying to meld with the internet. He uses the recent on-air spat between Tucker Carlson and Jon Stewart as his example. I agree, and think he is correct, but then I've been watching c-span online for a while now. The infrastructure is not in place everywhere but events like this(that draw audiences) will probably help change that.

Once we can reliably use one machine for both this is going to really kick in to gear but for now these are the kinds of revelations about which he is writing here:

In old TV, a moment like this came and if you missed it, you missed it. Tough luck. In new TV, you don't need to worry about watching it live -- live is so yesterday -- because thousands of peers will be keeping an eye out for you to let you know what you should watch (we call that metadata now) and they'll record it and distribute it.

The really stupid thing is that CNN didn't do this themselves: Hey, we had a red-hot segment with tsunami star Jon Stewart strangling our guys with a bow tie; you should watch; here, please, look at this free download because it will promote our bow-tie boy and our brand and our show and give us a little of that Stewart hip heat. That's what CNN should have done. Instead, they'll charge you to deliver a videotape (what's that?) the next day.

Kerry runs on his record: A fictional speech by me

2004-10-19T05:19:00.000-07:00

This fake Kerry speech is made from the Factcheck.org article listing Kerry's record in the Senate. I didn't cover his voting record, but there's material there too...

"My fellow Americans, we all know that I fought as a young man for this country, and I will fight for it as president. But many have asked if I fought for it in the Senate. My friends, this is simply partisan hackery of the worst sort. Smears- Smears!. I have been a distinguished member of the Senate for some 20 years and my record shows it. Labels are useless, I keep saying.

My colleague and good friend, a Republican by the way, used to call me 'Live Shot'. Heh heh...I can take it. And the reason I can is that I know what he meant. I was like live ammunition, ready to fight for the most important causes of our country. My faith carried me through a war, but my deeds have carried me through the Congress. I have passed 11 bills in the Senate, and one or two have even been signed in to law by a president. Also I claim 24 resolutions that don't carry the force of law, but which I assure you were forceful resolutions that carry the force of the heart and soul of this country, such as S.Res.123: To change the name of the Committee on Small Business to the "Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship. And then there was S.Res.216: Honoring Milton D. Stewart for his leadership and service at the Small Business Administration. Ahem. They won't tell you, but I will. If you say that even though I have fought hard for small businesses, what other strong resolutions have I composed? Well I'll just tell you in a list because I plan on continuing my distinguished record on strong rhetoric. Ahem.

S.Res.144: To encourage the European Community to vote to ban driftnets for all European Community fishing fleets.

S.Res.133: To make May 21, 1991 “National Land Trust Appreciation Day.

And many, many others. Twenty others, in fact. And that's not even the 11 real bills, including 7 that became law. They won't count the gold medal and special day we gave posthumously to Jackie Robinson or the one where I made a slight change to an existing program. But it was for small business, so you know that I was fighting for you. I passed these bills, and the Bush campaign won't tell you that. Simply because they didn't become law is no reason to say that is not a great accomplishment by the Senate. Let me just list for you 5 bills that the Bush campaign is willing to credit me with.

S.791: Authorizes $53 million over four years to provide grants to woman-owned small businesses. Ahem. Notice that this one is not just for small businesses, but for *minority* small businesses. That's important, because the Bush campaign won't point out this accomplishment.

S.1206: Names a federal building in Waltham, Massachusetts after Frederick C. Murphy, who was killed in action during World War II and awarded (posthumously) the Medal of Honor. Ahem. I don't know if you are aware of the great deeds of my good friend Fred Murphy, but his lesbian daughter has told me that she knows that having her father's name on a building is the people's work. I fought for this country as a young man, and I fought for Republican Fred C. Murphy's gay daughter. If she owns a small business she will be happy I paid my dues in the well of the Senate.

S.1636: A save-the-dolphins measure aiming “to improve the program to reduce the incidental taking of marine mammals during the course of commercial fishing operations.” Ahem. Whooo among us does not love dolphins? Ahem.

S.1563: Funding the National Sea Grant College Program, which supports university-based research, public education, and other projects “to promote better understanding, conservation and use of America’s coastal resources.” I have a strong record on protecting the oceans that I grew up with and hold dear. I learned a lot about the ocean in the Navy, fighting for this country in Vietnam, and I live on the coast. I've long been a fighter for the coastlines of this country, which is a big part of my border control plan. If you go to johnkerry.com you'll see.

And finally, because I think immigration is so important that I am willing to give it attention on an individual level S.423: Granting a visa and admission to the U.S. as a permanent resident to Kil Joon Yu Callahan. And who among us does not love Kil Joon Yu Callahan?

And I also passed 4 joint resolutions, a true effort of bicameral bipartisanship. I worked with republicans and democrats to arrange for 4 special recognition days. First there was World Population Awareness Week in 1989, and then the second resolution was to renew “World Population Awareness Week” for 1991. That's seven days each but the Bush campaign won't even count it for two, because they don't want you to know my real record. Then there were the two days(which also carried resolutions in the senate which I voted for because of my sense of duty to this great nation), which I dedicated to the Vietnam war, in which I fought for this country.

Vietnam Veterans Memorial 10th Anniversary Day. Ahem. To celebrate the tenth anniversary of the memorial, which is sort of a constant anniversary itself. Such are the levels of my commitment to our veterans. But that's not all. I also helped pass my own National POW/MIA Recognition Day, because it's important that every event, every memorial to that event, and every citizen involved in that event, or who I personally author a bill to grant citizenship to, or small business owners, or even the coastline, can have their own special day.

And then there are the many other bills in committee that I authored and voted for, prior to voting against them. The Bush campaign won't tell you about all my votes. I will tell you honestly: when I was there, I voted. I spent a lot of time voting and being on comittees, so perhaps you will remember that if you think that twenty years of service turns on which laws I myself authored. I have voted more times, in committees and on the floor, than the difference in my net worth to the people in this audience, as I can tell from looking around the room. So don't listen to the evil and stupid Bush people, who can only screw up and hide it. They are going to do everything bad that you can possibly imagine and I'm not trying to scare you when I say that. I'm just telling you to beware of their lies and fearmongering, because that's how they do business. Thank you for listening, and I only wish I had gotten a chance to be more clear about my Senate record before this. I'm glad I've given you a chance to get to know me. God bless America."

The Bush campaign has said that I have only passed 5 laws. They won't tell you the truth. I passed over twice that, as I have said. They also won't tell you how important those laws were. The next thing you'll hear is the right wing spin machine telling you that

Democrats ready to file lawsuits to make sure every vote from space is counted

2004-10-19T04:05:00.000-07:00

Justin Feng pointed me to an article about one of the astronauts at the ISS voting from space. I don't know what kind of shenanigans are going to go on with this vote, but it's important for our voters in space to feel that their voice is heard. I hope no one tries to dispute his ballot. The Supreme Court will never be able to figure out what's constitutional up there.

Diana West says it for me

2004-10-19T03:58:00.000-07:00

I agree with the view of this article, at TownHall.com. It does not contain any factual errors but does take a side on how to view some of those facts. I agree with those perspectives on the record of Kerry, after informing myself with due diligence that I am not taking an unreasonable position. I do recognize that the same body of evidence can lead to other conclusions, and if you have the view that a summary of John Kerry spells out whoop-de-do for the world, then it shouldn't be a problem for you to click on the link and read it.

I know everything is tainted with bias, but if you think for yourself, like the songs and movies and celebrities all constantly indocrtinate you to do(heh that's a weird thought huh) then you won't be harmed by going and reading. Thinking for yourself immunizes from you from most effects of partisanship except your own. Suddenly it becomes clear that some amount of partisanship is a good thing even if too much can be bad.

Go ahead and say what you believe, too. And don't say that it is something you know unless you can honestly make the argument to yourself. There is nothing wrong with just saying 'I don't know'. There is nothing wrong with asking, being told, and still not knowing. We all believe something, so it's important to get together and compare and contrast our beliefs so it will help us to get a better idea of what is true. There's nothing wrong with being wrong in these cases on the individual level.

Just relax...no need to shudder just yet. Just step back and realize that we can disagree and not punch each other on national issues.

Also...What's with calling it 'bias' anyway. I know what it means, thanks, but it just seems a misnomer. 'Bias' makes it sound like there is a conscious manipulation of the argument to get a pre-manufactured or preferable conclusion. And yeah, that exists too. But it's too close to saying 'prejudiced' or 'blindly stupid'. What do I mean, my answer is biased? Biased from HWOT?! Yours?! Heh, Zell Miller came through for a minute there. What it means is that the core beliefs I have, that can differ among good men, lead me to consistently reach a different conclusion on certain questions than someone with different core beliefs. It's not a bias, it's a point of view. There is a statistical bias to how my conclusions will differ from those of my friends on the left, sure. But what's the use of using the word 'bias' as if there were a 'nonbias' that could be used without referring statistically to conclusions that scatter to both the left and right of the political spectrum. Does that make sense? Never mind, I'm almost to the shutting up part.

If you accept that we are all biased, or inclined towards bias as a general rule at lease...then there is no control group. There is no center of the political spectrum, just people that are less demanding of conclusions that have fidelity to core beliefs. That makes sense. So for anyone to have to go around stating that they are biased seems absurd. That someone should have to go around willing to state what their bias is seems more reasonable.

Ryan Sager says it well

2004-10-19T03:02:00.000-07:00

He's got a post here at Tech Central Station about why Kerry may be a very smart person, but still wholly unsuited to the office of President. He makes very salient points here, without really mentioning Bush. He says:

...it shows that he doesn't understand the nature of the office he seeks. Kerry seems to think that he is auditioning for the job of thinker in chief, or debater in chief -- but there's a reason the president is called the commander in chief. His job is to project the nation's strength and resolve, not its weakness and doubts.

and:

On Iraq, of course, Kerry has consistently criticized President Bush for alienating our allies (read: Germany and France), while at the same time insulting our coalition partners as a "so-called coalition of the bribed, the coerced, the bought, and the extorted." Again, it's not that Kerry doesn't have a point, it's that he's so intent on scoring it that he's willing to throw the diplomacy he so famously considers himself skilled at to the wind.

and:

Again, it's not that Kerry doesn't have the right, even responsibility, to criticize. It's that he seems to have absolutely no concept of when it's appropriate to complain versus when it's appropriate to stand steadfastly with a man leading a fledgling government under daily threat of assassination.

I agree with this. Bush is a guy who acts on his core beliefs and the key here is *acts* whereas Kerry wants to keep talking about it. That makes sense, he speaks well, and Bush does not. But let me ask you...while we all know how often Bush mangles a word here or there...how many verbal gaffes have you counted from Kerry that relate to the *meaning* of his words. Two quite different things, in my esteem. Bush expresses himself better with his actions. This is another reason he is a natural leader, whether you think he holds correct views or not.

It's the vast difference between a guy who wants to lead and a guy who just wants to be in charge. Bush strikes me as the former and Kerry strikes me as the latter. I've had bosses who fit both descriptions and I'll let you guess which ones didn't have to trick me in to following them over a cliff for a good cause...

Australian. Australian for 'good ally'

2004-10-19T02:34:00.000-07:00

Mark Steyn, who is possibly the most prolific political pundit(damn, that was unintentionally alliterate) around, writes with some glee about John Howard winning the presidency in Oz. The best part to me was this:

That's the meaning of "no point in being an 80 per cent ally". Howard isn't claiming that Australia has to do everything America does, but he is saying that real alliances are primal and instinctive. After 9/11, Howard invoked the relevant clause in the ANZUS Treaty as the Continentals did in the NATO Treaty – that an attack on one member was an attack on all – but the difference was that the Prime Minister meant it and the French and Belgians didn't.

Now this was written for an Australian paper and I'm not trying to say Belgians or French are bad allies. I'm just saying that I have friends in Australia and I have to say that their cultural imports to America barely do the people justice. Steyn seems to embody all the things about the Australians I know that I find to like about them.

John Kerry, when pressed about being a liberal, says that labels are not useful, blah blah blah. Well I'm here to tell you that labels matter a whole bunch, and not just in politics. Brains and people all work on the premise that things can be labelled according to what they are for predictive purposes. That's why. we. have. labels. To make it easier to predict what is obscured. The label goes on the outside so we know what we will find on the inside. Right? Have I missed something? Did we change the whole system?

I think it is better to say that mislabeling is a bad thing than to claim that labels are no good. Especially as you are trying to label your opponent as X, but that's another post on another blog. I'm not going to get in to whether my labeling of Kerry is accurate. So really what we should do is try to make sure we label things properly. That way we don't label something as one way on the outside for whatever reason and then find later that inside is contained something completely different. That's fair.

So I think Australians are unfairly labeled. I know a little of their pain, being from Kansas. When people from other places say something about Oz to me, I know I'm the victim of a bad label. When people talk about the real Oz(no the real Oz, not the HBO place)they use a label that just doesn't fit as well as, say, the liberal label fits Kerry.

I know several people who live there, through the magic of the internets. They are nothing like Crocodile Dundee or the Crocodile Hunter. They don't drink Foster's Beer, and if they do it is the same way you drink Budweiser in America. It's a marketing campaign, not a way of life. We need to start getting our labels right. I'm not just talking about culture here. I'm talking about not letting the few wacky cultural anomalies that escape the gravity of good taste define how we think of this country in terms of foreign policy. These people are valuable, in fact indispensible people to my country.

I know they label us too, because thats what brains and people do. But we need to do more to get our labels right. There's hardly anything known of our closest friends in the mainstream of America save a few cheeseball and cynically Americanized reasonable facsimiles that are useless as labels. Yeah, the accent will take that stuff far. I like speaking like an Australian too, ha ha. Well let's get together and laugh at each other's accents and reassure eachother that whatever else happens, the people of the United States will support Australia. If nothing else because of how they have supported us. The fact that they re-elected John Howard goes to show that it's worth our time to make that alliance deeper, and among individuals.

To my Australian pals: Thanks mates! Give a yell and we'll come running, right?

Stewart heckled by Carlson

2004-10-19T00:06:00.000-07:00

Tucker Carlson is giving out quotes on the recent Jon Stewart confrontation on Crossfire which may or may not be famous outside of the blogosphere, but Jon Stewart is not. I don't quite think he's taking the high road, since he was already well-quoted as being derisive of Crossfire.

I started to write a post about Jon Stewart being the last to know that he's a complete tool and making it evident by showing up and calling people who are at least honest about the fact that they support one side ardently and not the other...tools. I found myself going on and on and on because it's a part of something larger. I ended up being faced with writing a book or shutting up about it and posting some links. I still might make the case but I came to the conclusion that fixating on Jon Stewart for anything plays right in to the whole scheme. The hypocrisy and blind spots are ripe for a post though, and I still might be able to get one out. But for now I'm just going to do the same as I have been doing with the celebrity information culture, which is paying most of my attention somewhere else.

Without the communist party there would be no new china

2004-10-18T08:52:00.000-07:00

There's a funny article in the Telegraph about capitalism amongst the protester class written by Elizabeth Day here.

Read the whole thing, but the first paragraph hooked me with delicious irony:

Jon is standing in front of a large, shiny poster calling for the abolition of tax havens. "Generating money for social justice and development," the poster screams in heavy black type. Jon is ardent about anti-capitalism. The words "participatory budgeting" make his eyes shine as if describing the first flush of passion with a nubile young lover. "We are looking at economic alternatives to the destructive capitalist forces," says Jon happily, pausing to take a drag on a roll-up cigarette.

"Excuse me," asks a man in a duffel coat holding up a light blue pamphlet entitled Race to the Bottom: The case of the accountancy firms. "Is this free?" Jon looks at him sceptically. "No," he scowls. "It's £5."

It's funniest when people take themselves seriously, I guess...

Raising Pure Hell

2004-10-18T08:26:00.000-07:00

The story in the Oct. 25th issue of Newsweek about the 343d Quartermaster company, a reserve unit in Iraq which unanimously decided to refuse orders is not untrue. It is not a lie, but the way it is written deserves some critical thinking in my opinion. I think it is written in such a way as to leave you with a certain impression. That is fine, because that is exactly what a free society allows for and why I believe this country is great. I would like to rationally state my impressions for anyone who is interested.

This story really starts off with a Drama In Real Life Moment:

Oct. 25 issue - The first call came at 5:30 a.m., when Teresa Hill was asleep in her Dothan, Ala., home. Too groggy to move, she let the answering machine pick it up. "Hi, Mom. It's me, Amber. This is a real, real big emergency. I need you to contact someone. I mean, raise pure hell." Still half asleep, Hill listened as her daughter, a reservist with the 343d Quartermaster Company stationed in Iraq, explained in a shaking voice that she and 18 other soldiers in her platoon were being held under armed guard. All had refused to go on a dangerous mission to deliver jet fuel. "We had broken-down trucks, nonarmored vehicles ... They are holding us against our will. We are prisoners. I need you now, Mom. I need you so bad. Please, just please help me. I love you, Mom. This is very serious. I will call as soon as I can."

I defy anyone to imagine a good mother doing anything except what she did, but let's remember Amber volunteered to be in the military as an adult. Remember that recently this country has had a large debate over whether Amber should be allowed(not necessarily on the strength of how good Amber is at soldiering) to be a soldier. I don't ascribe any kind of motives to her service, because I don't know her or a thing about her military record. It is quite likely she joined like many did; for the benefits to her as much as any benefits to her country that she was willing to give when she signed up. I just think it's important to remember that in the overall scheme of things, society had decided that it was ok for Amber to be in the military, deployed in harm's way as a soldier and she did too. I'm presuming only that she did what she thought was best at the time as a good person. Remember that, because I'm about to be consistent with that presumption across the board. The mother, Teresa Hill, occupies the second paragraph:

Jolted awake, Hill reached for the phone. But the answering-machine tape had cut out, ending the call. A moment later, Hill's cell phone rang. It was Amber. She continued her story, telling her mother that she and other insubordinate soldiers were being interrogated. One officer was even scaring them with grave talk of mutiny.

Well, I am not an expert in military law. But mutiny doesn't sound like a charge I would dismiss out of hand at the early part of sorting all of this out if I were an officer trying to get to the bottom of things. I don't know how you deal with things when people who should do what you say don't do what you say, but the military has pretty sharp codes on the matter. Note that the trouble they are having with communication originated from Teresa not picking up the phone. A mere minute later Amber was ringing mom's cell phone and got in touch.

So while some officer probably did bring up possible charges of mutiny in the course of questioning the participants...be careful when you conjure up a picture in your mind upon hearing the words 'interrogated' and 'grave talk'. I don't think a military investigation of a soldier compares to an interrogation as you would think of interrogating people in Guantanamo Bay, for instance. If it really was a dumb thing to have Amber and her pals from the fightin' 343d run that mission(it seems to have been in at least a few valid ways) then I hope there is only a small penalty to pay for 'raising pure hell' instead of finding a better solution in the middle of the conflict that brought on the 'mutiny'. Again, I don't know if I can blame Amber. The only way to find this out is to investigate. The article then goes on:

Word of the incident spread quickly through the ranks—and to other relatives in the United States, who are now demanding to know exactly what happened. In a statement, the Army called the episode a "temporary breakdown in discipline," and praised the 343 as "an experienced company that has performed honorable service for nearly nine months in Iraq." The soldiers involved have been released. Some are being transferred to other units. According to relatives, others may receive undesirable general discharges and two were knocked down a peg in rank. But that isn't likely to be the end of it.

It seems to me that all parties involved want to know exactly what happened. In fact, that was what the interrogation was for, right? They were demanding to know what happened. These were human beings trying to figure out what happened so that the right action could be taken. The big picture that was going on around the action or inaction of this company which has served honorably in general is not easily graspable even for these human beings investigating. Remember that. The parents demanding to know exactly what happened are acting as good people, but I think they are asking a bit much if they want to raise pure hell while everyone is trying to calmly and rationally determine justice. The big picture I think I have might not match yours and neither of us likely know enough to pin the big picture on any one man or thing.

The story here says that all involved have had some sort of punishment for their inaction, and they don't seem to have been too horrible punishments. The 'grave talk' of mutiny charges were never brought, they were all released and the action of insubordination dealt with, the severity of which I presume to be based on responsibility in the event of insubordination. The real terror of being killed or captured by the insurgents in a mistaken clusterf*** is understandable. But the lede of this story sure made it sound like Amber wanted word to get out that she had narrowly escaped certain death and that no one cared a tiny bit, and what's worse is they decided she was an Enemy of the State. And we've all seen that movie.

Look. The guy who ordered them to go on this mission had a big picture in mind too, and he may or may not have made a mistake in the process of trying to achieve goals. I know driving a crappy truck filled with jet fuel down an Iraqi road seems like a very dangerous thing to do to me, especially with the few circumstances given in this article.

I grant that these circumstances are not on their own, and taken together, good ones. But again, I can't think of many things a soldier is going to be told to do are going to be a)pleasant or b)under good circumstances. I know that the army is not filled with faceless robots; it is filled with good, but flawed people who grew up around you. Flawed, but generally doing the best thing they can think of doing under the circumstances. Before I commit to thinking that Amber has been a victim of malice by her government and not the incompetence of some people and some systems, I want to know more. The article begins outlining some(key word there. some.) of the circumstances here:

The trouble began early last week, when the platoon was delivering a load of jet fuel to another base 10 hours away. It's risky work. Fuel trucks are large, slow targets for insurgents, who regularly hit convoys with gunfire and roadside bombs. The troops accompanying the tankers often sit in unarmored, open-bed trucks, making them easy targets themselves

I have to say, it does sound like risky work. I don't know that insurgents regularly hit convoys. They seem to do it irregularly and without a huge amount of success relative to the number of insurgents being killed in fighting. A jet fuel convoy would be as likely as any other convoy to get targeted, and so some allowance for the risk can be made and maybe the mission wasn't 'suicide' exactly. If the troops are easy targets in those vehicles with a jet fuel truck in the mix, they are easy targets wherever they go. So there's more to the story, which complicates things.
The story lists even more complications in the next paragraph:

The troops made it to the base unharmed, but there was a problem. The fuel was rejected when tests showed it had been contaminated. So the truckers had to turn around and head back with the load. Along the way, they told family members, they were ambushed by insurgents but escaped unharmed. When they got back to base, the soldiers were told not to unload their equipment. According to relatives' accounts, they were ordered to go early the next morning and deliver the same fuel to a base in Taji, a dangerous 220-mile trip.

OK, so the contaminated fuel is a real problem here. No one has said how and why that happened, but its safe to just say that no one immediately involved in the situation is at fault here. This causes a whole lot of problem, this rejected load. It probably threw more plans out of whack than simply what 343d company had to deal with, and allowances need to be made everywhere now for human beings making decisions towards accomplishing goals in a system of rules.

While the unexpected is to be expected, when it happens human beings take over for systems, at least for some decisions. It seems unfortunate, but I can see why this single thing changed the way the big picture looked to each actor, and understand that the circumstances surrounding the decisions made were not all made with Amber's safety and comfort first in mind. Those types of decisions lie closer in the chain of command directly above Amber, and again an investigation is proper to determine if his decisions were just or not. Risky work...

Here again in the narrative there seems to be another contradiction in the narrative. The slow moving convoy was attacked by irregular insurgents, yet suffered no casualties or damage. So, it may also be said that jet fuel convoys were not 'easy targets', at least in this situation. Clearly that does not abate the danger of any mission with jet fuel involved, but it is not necessary to believe that anyone unduly discounted the risk to Amber out of any disregard for Amber. It seems more likely that certain things had to be accomplished and a good person who while commanding his people on a dangerous battlefield did not see the mission as unattainable. This may or may not have been a correct assessment.

Then the company is told that early the next morning the contaminated fuel will be needed for whatever reason(the article does not say why) at Taji. I don't know anything about the road to Tajiq except that it is a dangerous 220 mile trip. I don't know if it is more or less dangerous than the trip just taken but that trip was made with incident and no one got hurt. I am reluctant to believe that the military just arbitrarily decided to send the fuel to Taji. If it was because thats where it needed to go, pronto, so that the big picture didn't get too screwed up by the whole load being contaminated, then I could buy that. It sucks that suddenly that became necessary, but I can imagine at least the idea that it was in order to keep more chaos from reigning.

A large constraint like that needs to be solved quickly, in general terms. I mean, they can't just pour it out and be done with it. They can't set aside the truck as a storage facility either. Can't put contaminated fuel back in the tank, and I don't know much about the standards of the rejection. Was it possible that the fuel was still good, yet rejected by a cautious, by-the-book system at one base but maybe not at another? I am not suggesting this is so, but merely thinking of situations in which human decision can disagree, and the system is set up to the most cautious standards. As I hope you'll agree, cautious standards are proper but not always fully realistic.

Taji is near north Baghdad, and there have been insurgent attacks there. No doubt this was a dangerous drive. The article goes on to further erode a defense of the military:

Then came the really bad news: no helicopter escort would be available to protect them. According to family members, a few of the soldiers spoke up. They explained they were worn out, and that their truck was unsafe; it had broken down four times during the last mission. They also thought the trip didn't make sense. The fuel had already been turned down once, and would likely be refused again. But they were ordered to go anyway. The platoon—19 troops in all—refused.

This part of the article really does make the idea of going to Taji sound like a bad one. While I can't say whether the helicopter was actually crucial to the mission, I can see why the information would demoralize the unit. In fact these are all demoralizing things. If these circumstances were a bad bet for the lives of our soldiers then corrections should be made across the board. I understand why the whole thing could be demoralizing, especially to the uninformed and scared human being, like Amber. It may have looked like a dumb way to go about things. But that's not their call, in the end either.

If it turns out that waiting a bit for a more robustly armed and repaired convoy could have been an option, then a commander at some level made a bad decision. A good human being, mind you. A bad decision in an imperfect system. It may also be that insubordination was the only way to point this out. I don't know. At some point you have to trust the system again, and do your own part for your justice. The article continues on about another man involved:

In a phone call home, Spc. Justin Rogers recounted the incident to his grandfather Harold Casey: "I just kept telling them, 'I'm not going to deliver contaminated fuel that's going to cost other men their lives'," Rogers told him. Spc. Aaron Gordon e-mailed his mother, Kathy Harris, on Tuesday night, worried about his future. "He was basically asking me what could happen, the penalties that would come if he refused to accept the mission," she says.

I trust Spc. Rogers at his word that he is a good person who believed that delivering contaminated fuel would cost other men their lives and so declined to assist in its delivery. I don't know all the facts though, and I don't know if he is referring generally to people losing their lives delivering it or also to the idea that the contaminated fuel itself was going to cause loss of life down the line due to its poor quality and was therefore not worth risking his life or the lives of his comrades. It is still entirely possible that the trip would have been made not only without incident, but with incident but no casualties had they accepted the mission. But the unexpected happens, and good people make choices which have consequences. That's life all over the place. Here the article turns to examining the bigger picture of troop morale, because it is time to wrap up and give some perspective:

Battlefield "refusals" aren't uncommon in wartime, and this incident involved only a handful of soldiers out of 55,200 reservists in the country. The Army seemed to go out of its way to be conciliatory, saying the wayward soldiers raised "valid concerns." That may reflect concern among the brass that the story will resonate among reservists, who are increasingly uneasy about long deployments and high casualties. A recent study by the Annenberg Public Policy Center showed that six out of 10 regular troops say they were properly trained and equipped before going to Iraq; but only four of every 10 Guard and Reserve troops think they had what they needed. As time goes on, confidence may drop further, a problem that vexes the Pentagon. In the words of one officer, "What everyone wonders, of course, is whether this is an isolated incident or the pebble which starts the avalanche."

The first part of this paragraph seems to say that all things considered, what happened here isn't unusual. I think that unless you count the speed at which the news travelled to the outside world and forces were marshalled to justly resolve things(by all sides) this is undoubtedly true. The Army may have seemed to go out of its way to be conciliatory, but speculation as to why seems like a reach to me. That the Army actually said the soldiers raised 'valid' concerns should buy them at least credit for saying so, but the authors insert here the notion that the good human beings involved otherwise would have done...well they don't say. One hopes they aren't implying that the Army choosing a course intending to improve morale is automatically disingenuous. One hopes they allow for morale improving on its own as a result of the 'right' thing having been done.

Look. These were all Americans in a tough spot trying to get hard work done. Human beings. This article seems to humanize very heavily Amber(As frightened of the consequences of her defiance as she was of the mission from the sound of her phone call) and her worried mother(Hey, if they let you call your mom to ask her to raise pure hell against them is the situation so dire that Hell really needs to be bothered?). But it treats the other actors in this scene as a monolithic leviathan of brute fury masked by a cynicism of only doing what's right because they were found out. Found out? Since when does due process not kick in when insubordination happens? There is no question they acted insubordinately. Part of due process, like it or not, is incarceration. Luckily so is representation.

I know this has been a long bunch of blah blah, but this story is going to be the icon of discontent in the military for at least the next few weeks. This is already fodder for the election, and this article doesn't have to even mention the election. It didn't occur in a vaccuum, and neither did the incident.

The article ends wondering if it's just isolated or if it's the pebble that starts the avalanche...Avalanche of what? Mass post desertions? A giant series of books by Michael Moore with even more letters of discontent? The numbers quoted from Annenberg are interesting as well. While it shows that Guard and Reserve forces thought themselves less prepared overall than regular military(that stands to reason, I think) it leaves out that over 70 percent of the military supports being in Iraq. This number goes up slightly for those that are actually deployed in Iraq. That number includes both active fulltime military and reserve/guard units. Morale can always be improved and equipment can always be improved, and we can always learn from our mistakes.

If you're like me, you hope it starts an avalanche of support at home for keeping security in Iraq so that Amber doesn't have to worry when she's heading down the road to Tari. I know this has been a long post but it just seems that not enough actual consideration of mass media articles gets done. It is important to me that the first paragraphs of this story are quite sensational and are being more or less duplicated to give voice to the idea that things are so terrible in Iraq that these brave kids had to nearly sacrifice their lives in order to keep from having to sacrifice their lives and the evil government would have gotten away with it too, if it hadn't been for those meddling moms and reporters. I'm sorry, but it just doesn't get to be that simple. There's far more to it than I've been able to express and I've gone on twice as long as the article itself, so I'm going to cash it in. This was just an exercise in thinking critically out loud to myself. In front of you. I'm going to go look for something funny to post now...

DBSN is on the air again

2004-10-17T23:00:00.000-07:00

DBSN has an audiopost network that often makes good points that sink in a little differently than written words can. The current segment at KerryHaters by Pat is here, Kitty's segment is here, and Aaron's is here(strong language warning).

Smart people blog

2004-10-17T22:52:00.000-07:00

Observiant is 3 guys who recently graduated MIT and there is now a very thoughtful and nonpartisan post there explaining the name. I enjoyed it and thought it was very intellectually honest without a whiff of partisanship. I am sure they have political opinions that will become apparent but all the same, they've got a good foundation and I will listen to their points of view with this post in mind, if I can.

Read the whole thing.

The punchlines are getting louder

2004-10-17T21:21:00.000-07:00

Which side of the joke are you going to be on?

Over at Sean Gleeson's blog posts are flooding in from participants in the Page of Atonement. There are more here, where the new submissions should show up if you decide to bookmark it. I am laughing as I type because I just realized that the reason this page exists is also to learn you but good: NEVER, EVER EVER TAKE A PICTURE OF YOURSELF HOLDING A SIGN ON THE INTERNET!

For those of you who are not in the know, there have been a rash of people taking pictures of themselves holding handmade signs that apologize to the Iraqi people for their suffering. The Iraqi people have suffered-for a long time. And I am all for a personal apology from any US citizen who feels badly that the people we liberated suffered at all from us making them free from Saddam's tyranny. The whole batch of real apologies to Iraq can be seen here. But here's one of the originals so you can see how some of these "apologies" are worded:

So yeah, this made me mad. If you can't understand why then make yourself a sign and get a picture up at the Iraq Photo project. You've got a lot of apologizing to do, and I'm going to do my best to keep laughing. Here's one from the Page of Atonement to get you started. I might have to make one myself:

Mess with the bull...

2004-10-17T19:17:00.000-07:00

And sometimes you get the horns.

Kansas City Griefs

2004-10-17T19:05:00.000-07:00

Hey, another loss for the Chiefs today to Jacksonville. 22-16. There has been a longstanding conventional wisdom in KC that whatever chances we have to come back and win a game will be invariably dashed by a horrible kick. Normally this sort of thing happens in the last few minutes of the game deciding who gets to go to the playoffs, but this year we've started early.

And remember John Kerry promising cheap and free-flowing drug imports from Canada? Well, like many of his other promises it relied on realities that were suspect. Canada says not so fast. In this case it's because Canada subsidizes those cheap prices for its own citizens. There's more to it than that, but this fact leads inevitably to...the laws of supply and demand! Canada doesn't think that selling all their cheap drugs back to Americans (from whom lots of these drugs have been imported to their country) is a good idea in their complex system of price controls and tight inventories. Now 30 Canadian pharmacies are refusing to accept orders from the US.

But growing concern in Canada that growing exports to the US could lead to rising prices and shortages north of the border has prompted the Canadian International Pharmacy Association (Cipa), whose members include several of the biggest internet and mail-order drugstores, to act. “We don't want to give Americans the impression that we have unlimited supply for them to tap into on a commercial basis,” said David Mackay, the association's executive director. Americans, he added, “can't get everything from Canada. We can't be your complete drugstore”.

Prescription drug prices are significantly lower in Canada than the US, because of price controls and bulk buying by the 10 provinces.

And another Kerry promise is getting credit for causing more violence in Haiti. This one really might be due as much to the fact that Haiti is a jacked up country but it does offer insight to how much people are paying attention to this election elsewhere in the world. I'm not sure we can pin all of this on Kerry, but it's interesting to hear the new leader wishing Kerry hadn't deligitimized his rule before it even started. The General is speaking to Brazilian reporters trying to explain the recent upsurge of violence in Haiti. It's being reported by the BBC. I somehow doubt you will be seeing this on 'Nightline'.

Eight months ago the Bush administration withdrew all support for Mr Aristide and made it clear he should leave Haiti.

John Kerry called that "short-sighted" and said he would have sent troops to protect Mr Aristide, who was an elected leader.

Now General Heleno, says those comments have offered hope to Aristide's supporters that should Mr Kerry win the US election in November the former Haitian president might be restored to power.

Yes, I'm pretty much focusing on Kerry and why I think he does not deserve to be president. Yes, I know there are criticisms that can be made of Bush. I am certain that the John Stewart and Dan Rather will take care of those for you, so if that's what you want go look there. No, I don't think KC's kicking will be any better or worse if you elect Kerry. If I thought so, I might give the guy a second look.

MIT Technology Review...

2004-10-17T12:16:00.000-07:00

has some second thoughts about a widely published study of global warming.

A famous study done by MIT's own Michael Mann and others on the effects of humanity on global temperatures produced a pretty alarming graph that showed no real change in global temperatures until right at the start of the 20th century-the industrial revolution-where an alarming trend of warming appeared and predicted global doom for all mankind. This graph is widely used by proponents of the Kyoto Treaty to explain why the US needs to subjugate its domestic policy to a global body. Obviously, our short term political greed and evil can't stand in the way of dire emergencies with the planet's health!

Too bad Mr. Mann(I feel like Kathy Bates in Misery when I say that) apparently didn't test his methods very well, or his results. Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick have produced some compelling evidence that the study is fundamentally flawed and the results are only correct if by coincidence they accidentally got the answer right. So far they've met with resistance in their attempts to publish their critique in a peer-review journal. Hopefully this article will go a ways toward letting them state their case. It's a pretty good one:

But now a shock: Canadian scientists Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick have uncovered a fundamental mathematical flaw in the computer program that was used to produce the hockey stick. In his original publications of the stick, Mann purported to use a standard method known as principal component analysis, or PCA, to find the dominant features in a set of more than 70 different climate records.

But it wasn’t so. McIntyre and McKitrick obtained part of the program that Mann used, and they found serious problems. Not only does the program not do conventional PCA, but it handles data normalization in a way that can only be described as mistaken.

Now comes the real shocker. This improper normalization procedure tends to emphasize any data that do have the hockey stick shape, and to suppress all data that do not. To demonstrate this effect, McIntyre and McKitrick created some meaningless test data that had, on average, no trends. This method of generating random data is called “Monte Carlo” analysis, after the famous casino, and it is widely used in statistical analysis to test procedures. When McIntyre and McKitrick fed these random data into the Mann procedure, out popped a hockey stick shape!

When they say hockey stick, they mean the shape of the graph. Here's a pic of the graph itself:

If these guys are correct, it's probably not willful manipulation of the facts, but even so this kind of gross incompetence is really very bad for science, politics and you.

You can't just read the headline

2004-10-17T11:31:00.000-07:00

Here's a great example of the subtle variety of media bias. Kofi Annan, the head of the UN, gave an interview to ITV. AP news writes up the story.

The headline reads Annan: Iraq War Hasn't Made World Safer

That's also what the top three paragraphs talk about, because to the AP this is the important part of the story. The AP can't be gotten for outright bias because they even mention in the fourth paragraph that Kofi Annan has called the invasion of Iraq "illegal" and then says that the eminently concerned Mr. Annan is duty bound to speak out on any and all things that go wrong with the upcoming elections in Iraq. One wonders if he did not mention planned UN scrutiny of US elections on purpose.

And then, what some might find to be the more interesting statements of the interview come at the end. AP news thinks that Annan's opinion that the US acting to enforce 17 UN resolutions passed by the UN is 'illegal' is the lede, but doesn't want to get called for outright bias so puts the facts it would rather you didn't absorb down in the bottom(emphasis mine):

Annan also dismissed any suggestion that France, Russia and China had been prepared to ease sanctions on Saddam Hussein's Iraq in return for oil contracts.

Iraq tried to manipulate foreign governments by awarding contracts - and bribes - to foreign companies and political figures in countries that showed support for ending sanctions, in particular Russia, France and China, the final report by the U.S.-led Iraq Survey Group said earlier this month.

But Annan said it was "inconceivable" Saddam's activities could have influenced policy in the countries concerned.

"I don't think the Russian or the French or the Chinese government would allow itself to be bought..." Annan said.

"I think it's inconceivable. These are very serious and important governments. You are not dealing with banana republics."

Oh really! Well that clears it all up for me, nothing more to see *here* obviously. But we had better look out for shenanigans by the US! They conduct 'illegal' wars and 'illegitimate' elections, you know. All that stuff about Oil-For-Food must be just some kind of clerical screw-up, or something. Or not. See the Duelfur report. See the UN oil-for-food debacle, in which Mr. Annan's own son is implicated as a chief conspirator.

What the AP is subtly(and I'm not even saying intentionally here, though the question certainly seems worth raising) obscuring is the fact that Kofi Annan and the UN are mostly a joke to anyone with the stomach to keep laughing at the tragedy of the whole thing. What I'm telling you is that this is news written in a way to favor John Kerry's election to the presidency. John Kerry has already said that his first order of business is to going to be gaining back the respect of people like Mr. Annan and the French. I'm telling you that those are the kind of people you can be proud of having earned their scorn.

Blogging Tip

2004-10-17T10:43:00.000-07:00

Ground floor opportunity to snag hits from Blogrank...It's a pretty small (at the moment) blogranking service that tracks every hour and resets its rankings every 5 days. They just reset the totals and I am listed 36 out of 392 blogs. I was up to 13 before the reset. This is not to say "I kick so much blog ass" as it is to say "Look how easy it is for my lowly blog to place relatively well here".

They let you put a logo in as well, and as I say it is pretty easy to get ranked well. For anyone like me who doesn't get massive traffic this might be something worth considering. It's growing bit by bit and I *know* you check your statcounter every twenty minutes like I do. This is free, and it has gotten me at least 2 hits. 'Nuff said.

People I listen to who know better than Jon Stewart

2004-10-17T09:50:00.000-07:00

Matthew Heidt at Froggy Ruminations says that he thinks Bin Laden is dead and offers his reasoning as well as some political insights about it.

Mark Steyn just keeps the good stuff coming.

So, for all that Bush is accused of being ''stubborn,'' it's Kerry who refuses to change. He reckons that Americans are worn out by the wild ride of the Bush years and really do long to ''get back to where they were'' -- back to Sept. 10, to the summer of shark attacks and missing congressional interns. All that going back to Sept. 10 means is that you'll have to learn the lessons of the morning after all over again: I do believe that, if clueless, complacent Kerry won, more Americans -- and Britons and Canadians and Australians and Europeans -- will die in terrorist ''nuisances.''

Read the whole thing. Steyn makes several good points.

Rich Lowry points out glaring logical problems with Kerry's claim on his faith. There can be arguments made about Bush's adherence to his religion but at least he can explain simply what it is he believes.

Galley Slaves says some of what I've been trying to percolate in my head about Jon Stewart on CNN's Crossfire. It might turn in to a post for me, but it will be a long one and it's hard to come down on a comedian I think is funny and had respect for. Here's the deal:

For almost two years I've been telling people that John Stewart isn't funny anymore. Everyone I've preached to has vehemently disagreed with me. But after watching his performance on Crossfire last Friday, I think people are finally going to start coming around. (Read the full transcript here.)

Stewart's problem isn't that he's spun off into lefty-land. It's that all of his Emmy awards have gone to his head--he thinks he's a serious guy now. When Stewart self-deprecatingly calls The Daily Show Fake News, you can tell that what he really means is "Fake" News.

In other news, Kris Kobach debates Dennis Moore tonight at the local community college. I kind of have a hankering to go and a suspicion it won't be that crowded. We'll see...

If you didn't already know it...

2004-10-15T19:11:00.000-07:00

Today is the greatest day of your life.

This site lowered my blood pressure considerably. If you have the time, I recommend fooling around in there for a while. It's one of those things that you can chew on later, instead of all the craziness going on in the real world. I haven't even decided yet whether it ends happily or not. But it seemed to end peacefully. So there ya go.

Funny Fuzzy Math

2004-10-15T15:56:00.000-07:00

Since I trust all of you to think for yourselves, and I also know how much you lika the funny, I give you Fuzzy Math. Just go there and click on "View this title".

This rivals JibJab's This Land for humor value and quality of worksmanship. Too bad it's for the other guy. But it's harmless if you aren't already insane with Moore's disease. So check it out, and laugh. We better, or we're screwed.

Update: I should say I didn't like seeing the picture of coffins holding the bodies of US servicemen killed in the line of duty, but I didn't see it the first time through. That loses it some points in my book...but funny is funny if you laugh so that's only my opinion.

More armchair activism or "Saving another one from the memory hole"

2004-10-15T14:15:00.000-07:00

Well, I can't stop myself when I read stuff like this story at Winds of Change...Ok if you haven't been keeping up, Mark Halperin runs a good deal of ABC news, and recently issued a memo to his employees stating that they should, for the good of truth, not feel obligated to hold Kerry and Bush "equally accountable" because Bush clearly distorts the truth much more than Kerry, and besides Kerry doesn't distort to win the election. I'm not kidding, he really said that. The day before ABC's Charlie Gibson moderated the second presidential debate.

So the story explained at Winds of Change goes on, and then ABC issues a correction (as updated at Winds of Change). The egregious misquoting of Arnold Schwarzenegger is said to be an "inadvertent" error. Ok, their error made Arnold's words go from meaning "John Kerry weaseled on several issues and sometimes Bush did too" in the last debate to "John Kerry tells the truth, but Bush doesn't". Here are the two quotes before and after:

Before correction, as posted by ABC
SCHWARZENEGGER SAYS BOTH BUSH AND KERRY EVASIVE IN DEBATES: "Both of them did not answer some of the questions, which I think is upsetting to me. I think it is much better to be straightforward with the people.... You know like Kerry did. Bush did the same thing in some instances, not really get into it and answer it."

Actual quote after correcting for "inadvertent" bias
"Both of them did not answer some of the questions, which I think is upsetting to me," Schwarzenegger told KGO radio in San Francisco. "I think it is much better to be straightforward with the people."

"I mean if you get a question about Iran and about the nuclear power and what you are going to do in the future with this nuclear power, and you don't even answer that question, I think it's a mistake, You know like Kerry did," he continued. "Bush did the same thing in some instances, not really get into it and answer it."

Fiiiiiiine, this kind of misunderstanding happened on "Three's Company" all the tiiiiiime! But I think since they're a "leading news network" they owe us a little more. So I wrote an email to 'em. And since they won't be reading it most likely, I satisfy myself by posting it here. And it was hard not to make it angry...so hard. But I feel a little better now:

To whomever it may concern:

I would like to respectfully request that you further explain the need for your correction on the quote by Arnold Schwarzenegger that I'm sure you've begun recieving e-mails about. I believe this should be done in the same forum that the error originally occurred, ie your website.

I am prepared to listen to your explanation with a critical but fair ear the events that led to your "inadvertent" substantive misuse of ellipses, but I have to tell you I am a tad bit suspicious whether or not the word "inadvertent" is also perhaps misused. However, I feel I have the strength and integrity to influence those around me, and I would like more information from you to be able to make a fair assessment of the facts. I'm sure you're aware that this did not happen in a vaccuum. To that end, I'll admit that I'm a fairly partisan Republican, but other than as a voter in no way associated with the Bush Campaign. I'll even sign my own name at the bottom of this letter. My intent is not to throw bombs, but to document this in a do-it-yourself fashion for the admittedly small number of people who trust me and who come to my website every day.

If you have a plausible story of how this occurred without your intent to almost completely obscure the meaning of Mr. Schwarzennegger's words then a more robust accounting of the error seems to be in order in this case. The strict standards I trust that you believe in for honest and truth demand it, in my opinion. I believe credibility is earned, and by implication so is disrespect. The short correction you posted in response frankly left me scratching my head, because I assume you value your credibility, and I felt it begged several questions that might occur to any average mind.

Respectfully,
M@ (email had my real name here)

First hand account from an "Arizonian"

2004-10-15T02:05:00.000-07:00

Desert Tusk was at the last presidential debate, outside braving the crowds at the cable news sets and rallies. He's got the story here.

Sounds like there were near riots when the protestors showed up...

Like you needed another...

2004-10-14T23:43:00.000-07:00

Here's one more reason to move to Alaska, and build a dome home.

Rumors from the internets

2004-10-14T20:41:00.000-07:00

Timex had a contest to design a future watch with some nice results.

Shakeskin is collecting pictures of what it looks like when you shake your head violently for the camera.

kittenkillers.org is trying to get hard (haha) numbers on how many kittens have been lost due to the "Every time you masturbate, God kills a kitten" rule.

Hyperinflation means everyone's a millionaire! Oh, there's a downside.

Blogging

2004-10-14T15:44:00.000-07:00

is not a crime! (from K-lo at the Corner)

The more I think about it

2004-10-14T02:14:00.000-07:00

Here's the transcript, in case you wanted to check the debate out for yourself.

The more I think about it, the more I think Bush really won this one. And also, Bob Schieffer's questions were either idiotic or softballs for Kerry. I suppose there were a few hard questions for Kerry but he didn't answer them. For instance, when asked how he was going to pay for his massive health care plan, Kerry just rambled about how you're a moron if you don't want it. Not a single line about how to pay for it. I didn't really give it much thought, as Schieffer was less obviously biased than I thought he would be and that made him look a bit better I guess. Be that as it may, Kerry should have done much better. With Schieffer in there hanging 'em over the plate, and on domestic issues in the format of the first debate no less, Kerry should have trounced Bush according to the conventional wisdom.

This happened to me in every debate. I still think President Bush could have done better, but most of the questions were more tainted towards Kerry than I originally noticed and Kerry's answers were either pandering or flat wrong.

I think when it came to showing values and clarity, Bush ran away with it. He got in plenty of good shots but if he fell short anywhere it was in responding to Kerry again. Maybe that's just something he is content to let the punditry and the folks at the watercooler sort out.

I thought Kerry was pandering, waffling and tied up in logical knots, if you paid attention closely enough (it's hard to hear him drone on). Besides his weirdo hand movements, several times he used his rebuttal time to go back to a previous question.

Several times he made arrogant and irrelevant insertions of opportunistic non sequiturs. Bringing Cheney's daughter in to the question about homosexuality was bad, but mentioning Tom Daschle's hug with Bush in the well of the Senate (while paying a false tribute to Bush for his speech, which didn't fit his theme of "everything the president has done has been wrong and evil") made me almost gag. I can't imagine Daschle was too happy about it either.

The question about "marrying up" produced at least 4 real laughs from the audience, but Kerry starting his answer about his *mother* was, at best, strange. Then at the end of it he was able to crack a joke about marrying further up than anyone else, but the audience at first reacted strangely I thought. Not really laughter at first, as if they weren't really sure if he was joking or what, exactly. I might have misinterpreted it.

Bush also finally got a few of the jabs every conservative I know has wished he would. Foremost of these, Kerry's vote against the first Gulf War! Yesssss! I'm running out of steam here, but that's the main one that sticks out.

Yes, the more I think about it the more I think Bush won on style and substance tonight. Maybe not technical debate style, but the kind of style that convinces people that you're not an empty suit spouting the answer your focus group has told you will get the most votes. I just wish more people had been watching.

Best moment of the debate goes to...

2004-10-13T23:37:00.000-07:00

I wanted to wait until I had a transcript before I mentioned this, and as a joke it didn't get the crowd reaction that Bush's other good lines did, but the best part of the debate HAD to be when Kerry vaguely referenced two "leading news networks" to refute a Bush plan. I thought to myself "Hmmm, wonder if one of those is CBS?"

Bush started his response by saying something to the effect of "I don't know if it's a good idea to quote leading news organizations..." While smirking and looking at Schieffer. HA! Clearly a swipe at CBS. Bush didn't really drive the point home, but just that he had the stones to say anything was enough. I slapped my leg and pumped my fist at that. The crowd, as I said, didn't react audibly but I believe that was because they all had their mouths frozen in a little 'o'. I worried that the questions would be much more slanted after that, but I do think Schieffer did an alright job of being fair.

The last debate

2004-10-13T23:00:00.000-07:00

I think my bias for Bush should be stated again up front, because I think Bush won the 3rd debate.

I don't think he ran away with it, but to me he seemed much more personable and firm in his principles than Kerry once again. There were a few answers he gave that could be raked over the coals, and probably will be in the soundbyte war.

If you even watched it, you probably already had your mind made up about which candidate was going to get your vote. I think Bush connected with people more, but I do think he could have done better. Kerry is still a better debater, but Bush still comes across as more sincere.

Both made gaffes but in my opinion Bush's biggest mistake was non-substantive. Bush is going to get beat up over saying he never had said he wasn't concerned about Bin Laden (he said so in a press conference, but I'm still trying to find the full quote) and Kerry is going to get beat up for bringing up Cheney's gay daughter. What a slimebag Kerry is, in my never-to-be-humble opinion.

Kerry was asked by Bob Schieffer how he planned to pay for all his plans, since rolling back tax cuts wasn't going to do it and Kerry ducked the question completely. Likewise, Bush will be said to have ducked the minimum wage question, though I think he has some wiggle room. Both ducked the social security question.

All in all, it could be called a tie simply because you won't find a single Kerry supporter to say Kerry lost and I doubt you find a Bush supporter who will say Bush lost. And so you can pretty much listen to whoever you agree with and go to bed happy.

I guess it's a matter of waiting the 2 days for polling numbers to come out, and then see how the electoral map changes after that. So, on to the last three weeks of stump speeches where Bush tends to do well and Kerry tends to do badly.

I would have loved it if Bush had decimated Kerry tonight, but I don't think even the most ardent Bush supporter was fooling himself that it was going to happen that way unless Kerry came out obviously drunk and vomited on the front row. No such luck.

I'm left hoping this is hyperbole

2004-10-13T03:38:00.000-07:00

I read An American in London, an article in Front Page Magazine and could scarcely believe what Carol Gould had to say. I actually tried to find her email address (no luck) so that I could write and ask: Are you laying it on thick just for effect or what?

What she describes is a long-standing and growing anti-American, anti-Jewish movement in Britain. An apparently open movement, which considers the US and Israel to be the cause of everyone's trouble, whatever it may be. A movement that isn't just uneducated brutes acting idiotic, but otherwise rational and intellectual people of supposedly good breeding who Ms. Gould considers one nerve away from taking a swing at her at the crescendo of their indictments of who she is and from whence she came. What?! I thought these were our best allies. I thought Brits were pretty much like us. I know they look down on us from across the pond, and we Americans tend to do the same. All the brits I've met have been nice even so. But if what she says is true...Sheesh. What's happened over there?

Zell keeps it comin'

2004-10-12T23:57:00.000-07:00

Zell Miller has written a great satire piece about Iwo Jima, covered by today's media. I think Zell has got one of the best personalities out there in politics, and on the one hand I'm sorry he's a lame duck. On the other hand, it's too bad only lame ducks get to be so blunt and honest.

The Oracle of Bacon

2004-10-12T23:34:00.000-07:00

Well, whether you consider this cheating or you use this service to facilitate your Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon Tourneys, you have to admit that some poor schmuck has WAY too much time on their han--oh wait, I actually shouldn't throw stones. Never mind....

Hitting the links

2004-10-12T20:26:00.000-07:00

Another chance to use that old punchline "Oh, that liberal media" comes from an op-ed in the Washington Post, concerning the memo from ABC's Mark Halperin. In case you didn't hear about it, Mark wrote an internal memo to everyone at ABC just before Charlie Gibson moderated the second presidential debate. The memo asserted that while Kerry distorts the truth, it's not as bad as Bush. His chief rationale for this was that Kerry isn't distorting in order to win the election, while Bush is. The best thing about the memo is the unintentional humor afforded to us by a highly placed editor using horrible grammar and spelling to make his points.

John Podhoretz has some more thoughts on the matter, and I agree with him (as usual).

PJ O'Rourke has some advice for President Bush going in to Wednesday's debate. No need to convince you to read PJ, I hope.

Galley Slaves (a great blog) has some thoughts about the article, which means I only have to add "Ha! Me too! PJ rules!"

And finally, Mark Steyn had written an article for a London newspaper which declined to print it. I can see why they would be worried about it (its topic is the recent beheading of a Brit), but all the same I'm linking to it. Partly because I'm a fan, and partly because I am tired of some PC editor getting in the way of bluntly stating things that need to be said. Let's stop pretending it will just go away if we all eulogize the dead and stoke our grief to what we feel is an appropriate level. Ok? Actually, here's another one by him which focuses on the US. I haven't read it yet, but that's where I'm going now.

Croneyism in the grassroots

2004-10-12T18:23:00.000-07:00

The Perfesser just told me a great story...

He's recently gotten a couple funny T-shirts from cafepress. One that has a picture of Dick Cheney with the blunt caption "Go Fuck Yourself" emblazoned across the front, and one that has a large Kerry For President and a small (of France) underneath.

The Cheney shirt is a bit more in-your-face offensive and so hasn't gotten as much public wear, of course. It's a great shirt, but unless you're in the right company it really takes a guy looking to stir up trouble to wear it.

The Kerry for President (of France) has been good for sucking in a few liberals who don't realize it's a gag until they get close. By then they've already got the "you're one of us" smile on their face. The Perfesser says that watching the smile fade is priceless.

Anyway, today The Perfesser was on line at the local Chipotle, and the guy helping him laughed at the shirt while fixin' up the burrito. Then he asked if The Perfesser was a Democrat or a Republican.

"Proud to be Republican," The Perfesser replied.

"In that case, it's free," came the answer.

Of course, The Perfesser had his money ready and assumed that this sort of thing is against company regs. So he tried to insist on paying, but the guy would have none of it. Ha!

The moral of the story is that it pays to advertise, I guess.

for the stupid among us

2004-10-12T10:56:00.000-07:00

(and we know who we are.) finally! help in making up our minds. our intellectually lazy and addled minds. we'll just let someone else do all the work for us. why research the issues and do all that inky ready learny stuff when we can just go to president match dot com and have it done for us? hurrah! now. where's my helmet?