The Everlasting Phelps

2003-07-31T17:42:00.000-05:00

I've Moved

You can find the new blog at http://www.donotremove.net

Update your bookmarks if you've got them.

2003-07-29T13:38:00.000-05:00

Gun report's worth at issue

Using government statistics, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence this month released a list of licensed gun sellers it regards as "the worst players in the gun industry - gun sellers that recklessly operate their businesses and allow criminals to get guns."
The group cited Southern Police Equipment at 7609 Midlothian Turnpike as the third-worst in the nation.

Okay, so a high number of guns sold at these places are later used in crimes. #3 on the list is a Police Supply house.

A high percentage (I remember it as the majority, but I am not certain) of police killed in the line of duty are killed with thier own weapons. I wonder if those crimes are included in these numbers? That certainly isn't beyond the Brady Bunch. After, they are the ones who make their own defintion of what an "assault weapon" is regardless of what the law says, and count 20 year old drug dealers murdering each other as "child handgun deaths."

2003-07-29T13:08:00.000-05:00

Revealed Libertarianism
Minaret of Freedom tries to square the Quran with the free market. A Reason interview

I think the positive potential far exceeds the negative potential. The problem is not that there isn't a pro-freedom trend in Islam. The problem is that western liberals—and I'm using "liberal" in the European sense—have alienated themselves from their potential Muslim counterparts by abandoning the anti-imperialism that is rightly part of the liberal tradition. When I was at a free market economics conference in Turkey recently, the students never, not once, challenged any of the economic views that were presented by the speakers. But they were turned off by the speakers' seeming indifference that the tyrants ruling most of the Muslim world were backed by one or more of the Western powers. We are confusing the issue because our actions don't match up with our words. And from their point of view it's very hard for them to see beyond whatever's currently in their faces.

RTWT.

2003-07-29T00:05:00.000-05:00

The Smoking Gun 2003 Legal Document of the Year

Read the whole fucking thing.

2003-07-28T15:11:00.000-05:00

LT SMASH - "God Willing"

Three servicemen had just finished dinner at a restaurant in Kuwait, when they were approached by a group of local women.
"Excuse me, Mister," one of the younger women said, "My Mother does not speak very good English, but she would like to say thank you for killing Uday and Qusay."
The men were taken aback both by the uncharacteristically forward nature of these Kuwaiti women, and by the sentiment that was expressed. But they nodded politely and smiled.
The youngest of the three servicemen grinned, and replied, "Tell her Saddam is next!"
She did so, and the older woman smiled, held up her hands, and cried "Inshallah!"

2003-07-28T13:44:00.000-05:00

I get weird referrals

2003-07-28T11:55:00.000-05:00

DaGoddess: Letter From The Front

via Acidman

I rarely pass up a letter from the front, but I usually don't link them. There are just too many. Some of the best are on Sgt. Stryker's blog (look left) but this one stands out.

The day did pick up when I found that the chow hall was serving porkchops for the third time in 4 days. Normally this would have been cause for complaint, but I truly believe that you should never EVER pass up the opportunity to eat pork in a muslim country. Especially one that you have defeated in battle and are currently occuppying, fuck em...
After finishing my overcooked greasy pork slab, I wandered over to the smoking area to indulge in the only vice still allowed to us here in this hellhole and fired up my customary after dinner stogie. Surveying the lay of the land I noticed two young soon-to-be sergeants talking about what they were going to do when they pinned on their stripes. Faintly amused and slightly curious, I listened in on their conversation, fully expecting that I would have to step in and straighten their young asses out on a thing or three. Much to their credit, my eavesdropping produced nothing but newfound respect for those two young soldiers. They talked of taking care of soldiers and accomplishing the mission. They talked of Duty, Honor and Country. They talked about the things that really matter in a soldiers life, not of the heat, not of recent casualty figures, not of how good they were going to have it now that they were becoming NCO's. These kids not only read the NCO Creed and The Code of Conduct, they understood them and were doing their best to LIVE them.
Finishing my stogie with a smile, I knew that things were going to be all right. The changing of the guard will go on as it has for centuries and these new centurions will keep the world safe for all decent folk. Humbled by these young warriors I smiled and thought that these past twenty years of blood and sweat were indeed well spent, not squandered. As long as young troopers like these follow in my footsteps, my daughter will be allowed to go to school and learn to read, my wife will be allowed to drive a car, my cousin will be allowed to bad mouth the president and call me a fascist pig, and old glory will still fly over the courthouse.

2003-07-28T11:08:00.000-05:00

Michael Moore, Humbug

Okay, so anyone who is hip and cool (which means you, since only hip cool people read my blog) already know that Michael Moore is an Idiot. I still can't help but marvel at the depth of his idiocy. It is like a train wreck -- you have to look.

Let's begin with his bold-faced lies. In an appearance on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" in March 2002, Mr. Moore announced that during the period that planes were grounded for two days after the September 11 attacks, the Bush administration allowed a Saudi jet to whisk away bin Laden family members over FBI objections. As Snopes.com, an Internet site devoted to tracking down urban legends, points out, the planes did pick up bin Laden family members--on Sept. 18 and 19, days after commercial flights had already begun flying again--and they did so only after the FBI had questioned the departing Saudis. At the college talk, I witnessed another stunner, when Mr. Moore announced--without so much as a blip on the polygraph line--that even though the media report that children in intact families are better off, "every study shows that's a big lie. Children of single mothers do better in life."

RTWT.

I was going to blog along these lines anyways. Idiotarians are a puzzling lot. I saw a bumper sticker on the way in to work. It said, "America's Problems Won't Be Solved In Iraq". Here is what puzzles me. I can understand someone seeing things this way before and during the shooting war. I don't agree, but it isn't something out of the realm of reason.

With the war over now, though, what is the point of this sticker? Does this person want us to just up and abandon Iraq? Are they saying that they would rather Saddam be put back in power? What is the reasoning for keeping with this stance after the fact? The facts are that a murderer has been deposed. The fact is that the Iraqi people have already started to gain a democratic vote. The fact is that huge amounts of terrorist funding have been cut off from Hezbolah and Hamas. The fact is that a lot of Americas problems have been solved in Iraq already, and more are on the way.

Saudi Arabia has lost the carrot they could use to keep us at bay diplomatically. We don't need their air bases or for them to keep their oil wells running. They have nothing left to hold over our head, and now they are cracking down on terrorists and antagonistic mullahs in their country. Iranian students have an example to point at just across the border that shows that Arabs can handle freedom. Syria sees that Stalanism is no longer viable, and the Ba'ath party is no longer the official state party.

The Michael Moore brand idiotarians don't like to think about that. They like to stick to the battle they know -- even when that battle has long been lost:

In "Downsize This!," Mr. Moore attempted to elaborate on the theme of the downsized economy where "Roger and Me" left off, but the book's description of a rust-belt dystopia of pink slips and unemployment checks was out of date long before it hit the bookstores. By 1996, the number of jobs and heft of paychecks in the Midwest had improved markedly. In 1998, the Department of Commerce was writing that "more flexible, market-oriented companies have generated hundreds of thousands of jobs" in Michigan. A 2001 Michigan Economic Development Corp. report noted that with the exception of still-depressed Flint, the state's metropolitan areas saw an increase in personal income between 1989 and 1998, with income rising more than 20% in places like Ann Arbor and Grand Rapids.
Stuck in the Walter Reuther past, Mr. Moore can make no sense of this. A while back, he was appalled when The Nation asked him to be part of a lecture cruise, "to hold seminars during the day and then dock at Saint Kitts at night!" he hissed derisively, as if it were still the era when plutocrats in tuxedos and women in gowns and diamonds dined on caviar and champagne with the ship's captain, while workingmen scrimped for a week's vacation at a dank lake bungalow. He seems not to know that plumbers from Milwaukee and secretaries from Akron fill Caribbean cruise ships these days (though probably not those sponsored by The Nation), and that factory workers often sport two cars--and a boat on a trailer--in their driveways. Our economic system has "got to go," he told Industry Central, before admitting, "Now don't ask me what to replace it with because I don't know." How convenient. He can dwell in his mythical land of Flint and never face the manifest truth that the system that downsized and restructured with such turmoil ultimately improved living standards for millions, while at the same time absorbing huge numbers of poor immigrants.

2003-07-25T10:05:00.000-05:00

Eric Roberts: Republicans to blame for 87-year old Santa Monica driver killing 10 people!

So, why were Republicans behind the wheel in Santa Monica that horrific day? Simple, says Roberts. Due to the $7 billion a day we spend on the Iraq war (his wife later corrected the figure to only $1 billion), there was no money left for programs to get older drivers off the road! Yes, he really said this.

This SOB needs to do some filming in South Park.

2003-07-24T18:50:00.000-05:00

'All Things Lebowski'

I missed it. I fucking missed it. I will be at the next one.

I think the web site will probably be going into the sidebar.

2003-07-23T10:06:00.000-05:00

Open microphone catches California Democrats talking about prolonging budget crisis

Unaware that a live microphone was broadcasting their words around the Capitol, Assembly Democrats meeting behind closed doors debated prolonging California's budget crisis for political gain.
Members of the coalition of liberal Democrats talked about slowing progress on the budget as a means of increasing pressure on Republicans.
A microphone had been left on during the closed meeting Monday, and the conversation was transmitted to about 500 "squawk boxes" that enable staff members, lobbyists and reporters to listen in on legislative meetings.
Some members of the group, including Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg, said if the budget crisis were extended, it could improve chances for a ballot initiative that would make it easier for the Democrats to raise taxes by lowering the threshold for passage from two-thirds to 55 percent.
"No one is running" for re-election, she said, according to a transcript made by Republicans. "And maybe you end up better off than you would have, and maybe you don't. But what you do is show people that you can't get to this without a 55 percent vote."

Neal Boortz has been claiming that this is one of the items on the Democratic Plan for a while. It is still shocking to see confirmation that it is a real, conscious plan.

It is disgusting and deplorable.

2003-07-21T12:04:00.000-05:00

USS Clueless - Microscopic view

A superb analysis of the entire War on Terrorism/Iraq situation in concise outline form. The best part for me:

4. Anti-American rhetoric is rapidly going out of style in the region. It's no longer fashionable to advocate picking a fight with us.

RTWT.

2003-07-19T23:58:00.000-05:00

Anyone Know What This Is?

I found this one on a newsgroup, and I have no idea where it goes back to, but it makes my pants go crazy.

"Are you ever able to watch a woman eating a banana and not think about a blowjob? Huh? I can't do it and I know why. I'm a sick evil fuck."
George Carlin, Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics

2003-07-18T11:36:00.000-05:00

Kid genius just can't get ahead

Angela Lipsman is a really smart kid, but a really, really dumb rule is keeping the 15-year-old from getting a college degree.
Angela, who skipped high school and went straight to college last year, has earned her associate's degree and is on her way to a bachelor's - but she can't have the sheepskins because she never got a high school diploma.
Even worse, the gifted girl's proud dad is being investigated by child protective services for alleged educational neglect - for letting his daughter go to college.

And people can't understand why I support the seperation of school and state?

2003-07-18T10:15:00.000-05:00

A Fight for Liberty

BY TONY BLAIR

RTWT.

There never has been a time when the power of America was so necessary or so misunderstood, or when, except in the most general sense, a study of history provides so little instruction for our present day. We were all reared on battles between great warriors, between great nations, between powerful forces and ideologies that dominated entire continents. And these were struggles for conquest, for land or money. And the wars were fought by massed armies, and the leaders were openly acknowledged, the outcomes decisive.
Today, none of us expect our soldiers to fight a war on our own territory. The immediate threat is not conflict between the world's most powerful nations. And why? Because we all have too much to lose. Because technology, communication, trade and travel are bringing us ever closer together. Because in the last 50 years, countries like yours and mine have trebled their growth and standard of living. Because even those powers like Russia, China or India can see the horizon of future wealth clearly and know they are on a steady road toward it. And because all nations that are free value that freedom, will defend it absolutely, but have no wish to trample on the freedom of others.

There is a myth that though we love freedom, others don't; that our attachment to freedom is a product of our culture; that freedom, democracy, human rights, the rule of law are American values or Western values; that Afghan women were content under the lash of the Taliban; that Saddam was somehow beloved by his people; that Milosevic was Serbia's savior. Members of Congress, ours are not Western values. They are the universal values of the human spirit, and anywhere--anywhere, anytime ordinary people are given the chance to choose, the choice is the same: freedom, not tyranny; democracy, not dictatorship; the rule of law, not the rule of the secret police.
The spread of freedom is the best security for the free. It is our last line of defense and our first line of attack.
And just as the terrorist seeks to divide humanity in hate, so we have to unify around an idea. And that idea is liberty.
We must find the strength to fight for this idea and the compassion to make it universal. Abraham Lincoln said, "Those that deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves."
And it is this sense of justice that makes moral the love of liberty.
In some cases where our security is under direct threat, we will have recourse to arms. In others it will be by force of reason. But in all cases, to the same end, that the liberty we seek is not for some, but for all, for that is the only true path to victory in this struggle.

The risk is that terrorism and states developing weapons of mass destruction come together, and when people say that risk is fanciful, I say we know the Taliban supported al Qaeda. We know Iraq, under Saddam, gave haven to and supported terrorists. We know there are states in the Middle East now actively funding and helping people who regard it as God's will in the act of suicide to take as many innocent lives with them on their way to God's judgment. Some of these states are desperately trying to acquire nuclear weapons. We know that companies and individuals with expertise sell it to the highest bidder. And we know that at least one state, North Korea, lets its people starve while spending billions of dollars on developing nuclear weapons and exporting the technology abroad. This isn't fantasy. It is 21st-century reality and it confronts us now.
Can we be sure that terrorism and weapons of mass destruction will join together? Let us say one thing: If we are wrong, we will have destroyed a threat that, at its least, is responsible for inhuman carnage and suffering. That is something I am confident history will forgive. But if our critics are wrong, if we are right, as I believe with every fiber of instinct and conviction I have that we are, and we do not act, then we will have hesitated in the face of this menace when we should have given leadership.
That is something history will not forgive.

Next year 10 new countries will join. Romania and Bulgaria will follow. Why will these new European members transform Europe? Because their scars are recent, their memories strong, their relationship with freedom still one of passion, not comfortable familiarity. They believe in the trans-Atlantic alliance. They support economic reform. They want a Europe of nations, not a superstate. They are our allies, and they are yours. So don't give up on Europe; work with it.
To be a serious partner, Europe must take on and defeat the anti-Americanism that sometimes passes for its political discourse. And what America must do is show that this is a partnership built on persuasion, not command. Then the other great nations of our world, and the small, will gather around in one place, not many, and our understanding of this threat will become theirs.
And the United Nations can then become what it should be, an instrument of action as well as debate. The Security Council should be reformed. We need a new international regime on the nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
And we need to say clearly to United Nations members: If you engage in the systematic and gross abuse of human rights in defiance of the U.N. Charter, you cannot expect to enjoy the same privileges as those that conform to it.

We promised Iraq democratic government; we will deliver it. We promised them the chance to use their oil wealth to build prosperity for all their citizens, not a corrupt elite, and we will do so. We will stay with these people so in need of our help until the job is done.
And then reflect on this: How hollow would the charges of American imperialism be when these failed countries are and are seen to be transformed from states of terror to nations of prosperity, from governments of dictatorship to examples of democracy, from sources of instability to beacons of calm? And how risible would be the claims that these were wars on Muslims if the world could see these Muslim nations still Muslim, but with some hope for the future, not shackled by brutal regimes whose principle victims were the very Muslims they pretended to protect? It would be the most richly observed advertisement for the values of freedom we can imagine.
When we removed the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, this was not imperialism. For these oppressed people, it was their liberation.

Members of Congress, if this seems a long way from the threat of terror and weapons of mass destruction, it is only to say again that the world's security cannot be protected without the world's heart being one. So America must listen as well as lead. But, members of Congress, don't ever apologize for your values. Tell the world why you're proud of America. Tell them when "The Star-Spangled Banner" starts, Americans get to their feet--Hispanics, Irish, Italians, Central Europeans, East Europeans, Jews, Muslims, white, Asian, black, those who go back to the early settlers, and those whose English is the same as some New York cab drivers I've dealt with--but whose sons and daughters could run for this Congress. Tell them why Americans, one and all, stand upright and respectful. Not because some state official told them to, but because whatever race, color, class or creed they are, being American means being free. That's why they're proud.

2003-07-17T11:42:00.000-05:00

Bill Would Put Internet Song Swappers in Jail

"Follow the money" -- Deep Throat

Internet users who allow others to copy songs from their hard drives could face prison time under legislation introduced by two Democratic lawmakers on Wednesday. The bill is the strongest attempt yet to deter the widespread online song copying that recording companies say has led to a decline in CD sales.
Sponsored by Michigan Rep. John Conyers and California Rep. Howard Berman, the bill would make it easier to slap criminal charges on Internet users who copy music, movies and other copyrighted files over "peer-to-peer" networks.

This one is so easy as to be laughable, but someone needs to note it. Let's look at Conyers first. What was his #2 contributor by industry in the 2002 elections? TV/Movies/Music, at $49,859, which was just edged out by Lawyers/Law Firms at $50,750. What about Berman? #1 contributor by industry, TV/Movies/Music at $222,791. These two shills are bought and paid for, and should be dismissed out of hand. Unfortunately, that isn't how Congress works. Write letters to your Congressmen (real letters) and tell them what a load of crap this bill is.

2003-07-17T10:32:00.000-05:00

Power Line: What the cables say: Arafat murdered Noel

Rogers' cable states: "Question of link between Black September Organization (BSO) has been subject of much public discussion since murder of U.S. diplomats in Khartoum. Fatah leader Arafat has disavowed connection with BSO..."
The cable then attributes the following paragraphs to an intelligence brief prepared by the department and the CIA: "The Black September Organization (BSO) is a cover term for Fatah's terrorist operations executed by Fatah's intelligence organization...Fatah funds, facilities, and personnel are used in these operations...
"For all intents and purposes no siginificant distinction now can be made between the BSO and Fatah...Fatah leader Yasir Arafat has now been described in recent intelligence as having given approval to the Khartoum operation prior to its inception."

Arafat the Murdering Bastard should have been liquidated thirty years ago. He still should be liquidated now. He is the biggest roadblock to the so-called "roadmap". He serves no useful purpose, and any downside in the near-future in assassinating him is outweighed by the obvious danger of allowing him to live.

If we are at war with terrorism, then we need to fight the root of modern terrorism.

2003-07-15T19:43:00.000-05:00

Project: Free Iran

They have a petition there that I have signed. The Iranians need to get more people in America opinionated on this issue than just the Iranian expats. I could do without the immolation photos on the front page, but the news links look interesting. I'll be keeping an eye on it.

2003-07-14T17:18:00.000-05:00

Child killed by car in West Palm; crowd chases driver and beats him

A motorist who hit and killed a 3-year-old boy on Saturday was chased down and beaten by a group of men who saw the crash, the Sheriff's Office reported.
The boy, ArMante Williams, had been standing on the side of Benoist Farms Road in West Palm Beach with one of his cousins. ArMante darted into traffic and was hit about 12:40 p.m., according to the Sheriff's Office.
More than a dozen men, friends of the boy's father, saw the crash and stopped the car about a half block away, sheriff's spokesman Paul Miller said.
Miller said deputies were sorting through conflicting stories and weren't sure Saturday afternoon how the men stopped the car.
The men dragged Honorio Martinez out of the driver's seat and punched him in the head several times, Miller said.

This piece of crap gets even stupider:

After the beating, Martinez walked back to see how the child was doing, then said he was going to leave because he doesn't have a driver's license, Miller said.
The group of men pounced on him again, Miller said.

I wish they would have given him one for me.

Williams told the TV reporters that Martinez deserved the beating.
"You just run the kid over and then try to leave?" he said. "He should've gotten worse than that."

Amen.

2003-07-10T17:06:00.000-05:00

Buzz Community Standards: No Shame,For the love of money

I read the Dallas Absurder all the time. Mainly because it is free, but it is entertaining too. I like this one:

So, The Dallas Morning News is going to publish announcements of same-sex unions alongside traditional marriage and engagement announcements. Buzz, being liberal and all, can get behind that. The daily, it announced this week, also is going to be more restrictive on advertisements for firearms, only taking ads from federally licensed dealers and accepting none for "assault" weapons. Buzz owns a gun, so we're ambivalent on that one. (We're only soft on crime until someone breaks into our house.)
Finally, the News will accept no ads for "gentlemen's clubs." Being a greedy liberal, we really support that one. Woo-hoo, more money for the Dallas Observer! (We protest the use of the word "gentlemen," however. While we're in favor of nakidity among women, we don't consider stuffing bills in someone's G-string a gentlemanly act.)
But you probably already knew this, since the News announced it in print. So what's our point? This: In a memo to his staff, Publisher Jim Moroney wrote that "these new policies have been put in place in an effort to best reflect the fabric of our community and reader base. "
Oka-a-a-a-y. Work with the ol' Buzzer here. No titty bars. Fewer guns. Yes to gay unions. The fabric of our community. Hate to break it to you, Jim, but your community is Dallas. That's in Texas, in the "let's get all torqued up at the titty bar, grab our guns and go a-homo huntin' South."
Somebody buy that man a map.

2003-07-10T11:12:00.000-05:00

U.N.: Nearly 1 Gun for Every American

Via USS Clueless

"By any measure the United States is the most armed country in the world," it said. "With roughly 83 to 96 guns per 100 people, the United States is approaching a statistical level of one gun per person."

The UN -- and Euro-weenies -- think this is a bad thing. I say, "nay nay" (to borrow a phrase from John Pinnette.)

This is a basic cultural gap, and I am seeing it more and more. Euro-weenies call Bush a "cowboy". We say, "Hell yeah!" Euro-weenies lament that we have nearly a gun for everyone in America. We say, "Fucking-A!" Euro-weenies try to find new ways to lock down the internet. We look for new ways to open it up. Europe abolishes the death penalty, and my state puts in an stacks them up so we can rapid fire them.

Like Ron White says, "If you kill someone in my state... we kill you back."

2003-07-10T10:51:00.000-05:00

Suzanne Fields: Dishonor on the campus

Just when you think the politically correct clowns on the campus can't get any more ridiculous, they shoot another live white man out of a canon.

Heh. RTWT.

2003-07-09T17:01:00.000-05:00

I just got back from the funeral of a firefighter who took his own life. He was buried with all the honors and ceremony due a warrior, and rightly so. The only sound more sorrowful than piping a pall out of the church is the deafening silence when the pipes stop.

Chris White, Husband, Father and Firefighter of Gunbarrell, Texas. May God have mercy on his soul.

2003-07-08T19:28:00.000-05:00

Referendum in Iran!

That was the chant at the Free Iran demonstration I stumbled upon in Dallas today at about 6 o'clock this evening. I didn't see any media, but they may have been there earlier and done thier stand-ups. I also didn't see any police. It was a peaceful protest -- I didn't see any organized traffic blockage, and what did happen was incidental. I see more jaywalking at lunch time than at this demonstration.

I also had my (cheap) digital camera. Dig on the freedom:

That last one is the Kennedy Memorial in Dallas. I'm terrible at estimating crowds, but there were an easy 100 people here, and probably closer to 200. Some of the chants I heard (and were able to understand because they were in American):

Referendum in Iran!
Free Iraq now free Iran!
End the violence in Iran!
Free the prisoners in Iran!

Damn skippy.

2003-07-07T11:02:00.000-05:00

New Scientist: Counselling can add to post-disaster trauma

The counselling routinely offered to people in the immediate aftermath of a disaster seldom protects them from developing post-traumatic stress - and it could even delay their recovery.
This is the conclusion of a comprehensive review of the "single-session debriefings" offered to victims straight after an incident. In single-session debriefings, a counsellor talks to a victim to help them learn about and prepare for any psychological problems they might encounter later.
Such briefings are still used by mental health professionals, although less so in Europe. But the review by a British team suggests it can exacerbate stress in some individuals who might otherwise have recovered normally, either by talking with friends and family or by blocking out any recall of the incident until they felt ready.

You know the routine. Something blows up, someone gets shot up, or someone gets mashed by something. All of the sudden, there are "grief counsellors" running all over the town, helping people get through something they were perfectly able to get through 50 years ago, but apparently aren't able to handle today.

One-to-one debriefings might not always be appropriate, particularly for individuals who have undergone medical or surgical trauma, agrees George Everly, emeritus chairman of the International Critical Incident Stress Foundation based in Ellicott City, Maryland.
But he points out that group counselling, where a number of individuals who have been through a major trauma are counselled together in a structured environment, remains vitally important. The authors of the latest study accept that they have not yet been able to evaluate the validity of this alternative technique.

I happen to agree here. I think that part of the reason you do see more shellshock today than 50 years ago is because the personal support network is weakening. I come from a big extended family. Grief has never been a major issue for me. When someone dies, fifty or more people converge on the survivors. There isn't a bunch of psychobabble about "the grieving process". You have a bunch of people who take care of the everyday things -- cooking, cleaning, washing -- while the survivors do what they have to do for the funeral arrangements. Everyone sits around and talks about the dead, and you say what you need to say to put it behind you.

What I see as the problem with these one-on-one debriefings is that you segregate someone out, tell them, "Here is what is going to happen" and then you toss them right back into the everyday routine, and they don't just do this for the immediate family -- they do it for the entire support network. Where in my family someone would be preoccupied with keeping up the house for the survivors, they become one of the immediate survivors. When an uncle dies, I spend most of my time comforting the aunt, and then a little time on myself. Given the grief counseling approach, I would be spending most of my time on myself. Why should I worry about my aunt? I'm grieving too!

2003-07-01T15:41:00.000-05:00

Greenpeace e-mission accomplished

It was direct action Greenpeace style.
Shortly after 2pm yesterday protesters converged on the 187m ship Almar in runabouts as it was carrying the first imports into Tauranga Harbour of coal for Genesis' Huntly power station, to provide extra electricity this winter.
They managed to pull up alongside, threw grappling hooks and managed to get one protester on to the rope before being foiled by port security.

You know, I think they have a word for attempting to board another ship using grappling hooks -- I think that word is piracy. Greenpeace is a pack of criminals.

2003-06-30T14:50:00.000-05:00

Iraqi interim official arrested in U.S. crackdown

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- U.S. troops arrested the interim governor of Najaf on kidnapping and corruption charges Monday as they continued efforts to quell attacks on coalition troops in Iraq.
* * *
Mun'im is accused of kidnapping and holding hostages, pressuring government employees to perform financial crimes, attacking a bank official and stealing funds, the statement said. Details of the charges were not released.
He was arrested at the request of Iraqi court officials in Najaf, south of Baghdad, and will be tried under Iraqi law, according to the coalition provisional authority.

I'm not sure what exactly to think of this. I like that we are letting the Iraqis run their own country, but I am concerned about how he will be processed. If he is tried under strict Shariah I think that is a step backwards. If he is given a secular (and open) trial then I think that this is a very good sign. There is one encouraging thing:

"They have been investigating these allegations for some time before concluding that there is sufficient evidence to warrant arrest," the authority's statement said.

I hope that a fair, honest and open trial happens. That is the sort of thing Iraqis need to see to convince them that freedom is attainable.

2003-06-30T11:22:00.000-05:00

Left Lane Laggards, please do right thing

The National Motorists Association, the Wisconsin-based organization credited with the lobbying effort that ended the national 55 mph freeway speed limit, has designated June as "Lane Courtesy Month." I usually ignore such designations, but this one has merit, even as June fades into July.
How about a little lane courtesy for a change?
Lane courtesy, also known as lane discipline, had its American roots in the days when roads were almost all two lanes and curvy, and passing was difficult to impossible. In those days, motorists cared enough about their fellow man to recognize that some folks might be able to safely travel a little faster. They'd pull off to the side and let others pass.

This is a pet peeve of mine. I don't drive as fast as I used to. At one time, I was usually the fastest on the road. I'm not anymore, but I am faster than a lot of assholes in the left lane. When I am there and someone comes up behind me, I pull over. That is how it is supposed to work.

I hate being passed on the right. It isn't safe. The reason that the Autobahn is as safe as it is is because Germans follow this ideal, with the "Drive Right" habit. America would be a much safer place if people would do this.

As for the idiots who think, "I'm not getting over just so a bunch of law-breaking speeders can go on," remember that you are breaking the law too. (Unless you live in South Dakota.) If speeders are scum, staying in the left lane makes you scum too. Remember, speed doesn't kill -- sudden stops kill.

2003-06-30T10:54:00.000-05:00

Business, labor leaders call on Bush to ask GOP to drop recall

Four Democratic and Republican business leaders and a top organized labor official signed an opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times Sunday asking President Bush to call for an end to the Republican-led campaign to recall Democratic Gov. Gray Davis.
"The president should demand an end to the recall effort because the nation cannot afford to have California's economy remain stuck in reverse," the article said.

That is a non sequitur. How does one follow the other?

"Mr. President, California is in a very tough spot. And a tough stand by you against the narrow wing of your party that advocates this recall would demonstrate your respect for California voters -- those who cast their ballots for governor just seven months ago," it concluded. "And by stopping the recall, you would give Californians the opportunity we need to focus our energies on revitalizing our economy -- a revitalization that is essential to our national economic recovery."

This is so disengenous as to be disgusting. I'm not one to preach about "respect for the voters" but I can't let this one go. I don't buy into the principle, but if you did, you would have to agree that if you respect the sanctity of the vote, then you have to repect the votes of those who vote for the recall, don't you? Were they smart seven months ago but morons now? This is such an insult. Gray Davis campaigned on a number of issues, and within a month of gaining office, he reneged on every substantial one. The people of California are right to recall him, and in light of that, I wouldn't say that they were stupid before or after -- they were simply defrauded. (Sure, I would have seen it coming, but I have never claimed to be average.)

2003-06-30T10:20:00.000-05:00

10 things to celebrate
Why I'm an anti-anti-American

Well worth the read. My favorite part:

They arrived at the same perception that I witnessed in an acquaintance of mine from Bombay who has been unsuccessfully trying to move to the United States. I asked him, "Why are you so eager to come to America?" He replied, "I really want to live in a country where the poor people are fat."

2003-06-30T10:07:00.000-05:00

Senate leader endorses idea of constitutional amendment to ban gay - marriage

Or, Bill Frist is an Idiot

``I very much feel that marriage is a sacrament, and that sacrament should extend and can extend to that legal entity of a union between -- what is traditionally in our Western values has been defined -- as between a man and a woman. So I would support the amendment.''

Putting aside the morality of the issue, this is a misuse of the constitution. We don't need and shouldn't add negative laws to the constitution. Setting aside one glaring example every amendment to the constitution has been added to either guarantee a freedom or to grant some regulatory authority to the Federal government, not to prohibit something.

What is the exception? Prohibition. What is the one amendment that has been repealed by an additional amendment? Prohibition. It was a failure. This would not only be a failure, in that it would have no effect on homosexuals, but it would be a slippery slope of bans that we need to stay away from. If you need an example, look at nearly any US state constitution. (I would say "any" but I haven't looked at all of them.) Frist goes on:

``Generally, I think matters such as sodomy should be addressed by the state legislatures,'' Frist said. ``That's where those decisions -- with the local norms, the local mores -- are being able to have their input in reflected.
``And that's where it should be decided, and not in the courts.''

My first reaction is to say Amen, but this is one of the instances where my knee-jerk is wrong. This is a rights issue -- the right to privacy. Frist is also quoted as saying,

``I have this fear that this zone of privacy that we all want protected in our own homes is gradually -- or I'm concerned about the potential for it gradually being encroached upon, where criminal activity within the home would in some way be condoned,'' Frist told ABC's ``This Week.''

He's all over the place with this, but what I think he is trying to say is that he doesn't want the right to privacy to become some sort of protection for criminal activity.

Too bad. Life sucks. Get a helmet.

All rights do this. That is why they are protected rights. The right to privacy is a real right -- a Ninth Amendment right, along with the right to reproduce, the right to own property, and the right to hunt game. They are the unenumerated rights, and they are rights so basic that the founders didn't think that it was necessary to enumerate them, because the couldn't imagine a government that would violate them but keep the first eight intact.

Of course, they didn't expect the Constitution to last 200 years, either.

2003-06-27T17:14:00.000-05:00

Gut Rumbles: snakes

I thought it was funny.

The Differential Theory of US Armed Forces Snake Model: upon encountering a snake in the Area of Operations (AO)
1. Infantry: Snake smells them, leaves area.
2. Airborne: Lands on and kills the snake.
3. Armor: Runs over snake, laughs, and looks for more snakes.

Joe Bob says check it out.

2003-06-27T13:25:00.000-05:00

Referral URL of the Day

I get some weird referrals. I get about as many people searching for bizzare shit hitting my blog as people who read it regularly or link from other blogs.

This one is weirder than the people looking for lactating muslims, or tobacco growers, or people searching for O'Rielley's ratings.

This one is just... googlish.

2003-06-26T16:45:00.000-05:00

G. in Baghdad

I don't know what to think about G. Salam Pax he isn't, and that is a good thing. He isn't a refined writer, but I think that if he was a little less stream-of-conciousness I might suspect what he has to say.

I like his analogy in this post:

Here in Iraq every citizen was provided -since the early days of the regime- with a whole set of lies that gradually became the foundation on which you would build your perceptions of the world outside.
Consequently you end up with two channels, a “channel reality” that is off the air most of the times and “channel rhetoric” a mixture of self-denial, conspiracy theory [apologia] and propaganda.
Of course we shouldn’t blame Saddam and his lies based tyrannical regime only, this phenomenon has its roots deep in our cultural/religious history.

I'd really like to see a plain-English look into this phenomenon, because it isn't exclusive to Iraq or totalitarian regimes. I've seen the same sort of thing from racial bigots, white and black; I've seen it is political demagogues, left and right, and I've seen it in my own family when it comes to this or that black sheep. I think this is some defense mechanism deep in our minds, and it is disturbing to see an entire culture grasping at a defense mechanism.

2003-06-26T15:24:00.000-05:00

CNN.com - Survey finds 'grueling year' and fiscal woes for states

This one piqued my interest.

In one sign of the difficult economic times, 37 states reduced already enacted budgets by almost $14.5 billion, which the organizations called the largest spending cut in the survey's 27-year history.
Also, governors in 29 states proposed tax and fee increases for fiscal year 2004, for a total tax hike of $17.5 billion. And that is the largest such hike since 1979, according to the survey. The tax and fee increases targeted, among other things, nursing homes, hotels, motor fuel, cigarettes, tobacco, alcohol and the personal incomes tax.

Those are big numbers, but I was suspicious of where that big number was coming from -- is this an across the board thing, or was there a single major culprit? You bet there was. When you look at the actual report (CNN didn't bother to link to it -- imagine that) you see one state shining through as the masters of fiscal mismanagment. California.

Let's look at that $14.5BB in cuts. California: $4.4BB. That's... uh... 30% of the total. One state.

How about those tax hikes? That $17.5BB? $8.5BB of it is in California. That's... uh... damned long division... 49% of the increase. So what we have is one state with a $4.4BB shortfall and a $8.5BB tax hike buried in a story about all 50 states. Great reporting there, CNN. Way to edit the press release.

2003-06-26T12:50:00.000-05:00

Social security imbalance sheet

This one is good for the Congressional Budget Office quotes. Check this one out:

"Assets set aside to fund future obligations are most likely to be insulated by a system in which ownership and control rest with individuals. In that circumstance, each participant has property rights and legal recourse to guard against the diversion of resources."

Translation: Congress can't take your shit if you have it in a private account. If you don't, all you can do is bend over and take it.

"An approach in which the government invests collectively on behalf of program beneficiaries is less likely to succeed. If the money did not belong to individual participants, future policymakers could find alternative uses for it — to create a new benefit, fund a new program, or perhaps cover a budget gap,"

Translation: Congress always screws up anything involving money. On top of that, if it doesn't have your name on it, Congress is going to steal that shit and spend it.

"A future Congress, confronted by war, recession, or other urgencies, could spend the invested resources or could run larger budget deficits or smaller surpluses that offset the effect of boosting savings,"

Translation: Congress steals any money they can get their hands on, like crackheads.

"No trust fund, lockbox or other accounting device has yet proved effective in protecting funds that have been set aside for future commitments from the fiscal demands that arise from one Congress to the next."

Translation: It has always been like that. If you don't see that, maybe you are a crackhead too.

2003-06-24T11:11:00.000-05:00

Philadelphia's High-Tech Courtroom

This is what I do. I set up this type of system in regular courtrooms. It is even better when it is an installed system, because you don't have tape running everywhere covering wires, and you can usually get the geometry set up better (since you can rearrange while you are installing).

I don't agree with everything here, though. I've seen a lot of these installations (the Northern District of Texas, for example, already has one at each courthouse and is working to convert every court.) The real trick comes in getting one thing into the attorney's heads -- you can practice law well, or you can run the lightshow well, but you can't do either if you try to do both.

The orientations included separate sessions for judges and attorneys. The sessions for attorneys covered everything from how to use the technology in the courtroom to the impact of the technology on trials to the mutual responsibilities the technology places on attorneys and the court.

Again, the attorney is not the one to have running the show. If you have a tiny case, yeah, the attorney can handle it alone. When you have a big case with a lot of documents, the attorney doesn't keep track of all the exhibits -- he has his paralegal do that. This is the same way. Once the trial gets to the size that justifies using this technology, it is already big enough that it is too big for the attorney to handle himself without his ability to practice law suffering.

The technological problems most attorneys are going to have to worry about are not major concerns about malfunctions and such but the tiny issues that could get a lawyer off-kilter in the middle of presenting a case, Lederer said. For example, he said, the computer screen will go blank, or "sleep," if no key is hit on the keyboard in a certain amount of time. A blank screen could cause an attorney to panic, Lederer said, so it is important to remember to program your computer in its settings to not sleep during trial.
"Your success or failure as a high-tech litigator is a matter of learning to use the system correctly," Lederer said. "The little problems can be very disruptive."

No. Your success or failure at a high-tech litigator is a matter of hiring someone else who knows how to use the system correctly.

If an attorney is going to try to use it himself, then the only way to make it work is to use the document cameras rather than a laptop. It is quick, and it looks like crap, but it is the only reliable way.

My laptop doesn't sleep. It doesn't make any noises other than the audio that I specifically play back. It doesn't use any hardware acceleration on the video. Why? Because it is a machine tuned for courtroom presentation. That makes it a terrible machine for an attorney to use. You can tune it for practicing law, or presenting information, but not both.

Maybe the most important aspect of a technology-focused trial presentation is the visual effect on the judge and jury, according to Lederer. Most people are visual learners, he said. Attorneys already take advantage of that fact using things like diagrams, but there is almost no simpler way to organize and present information than on a computer, he said.
"The best reason for using technology is that it improves the odds that your factfinder will learn and understand," Lederer said.
Lederer said that there are high-end computer programs to use for a trial but that a slideshow program such as PowerPoint could suffice in many situations.
In fact, Lederer said he did not have any evidence that the party with the most money, and therefore the highest-quality graphics, has any advantage before a jury.
"No matter how good your technology may be, you won't win if the evidence isn't there," he said. "In certain cases, you're better off with the simpler, more primitive stuff. It's clear, not confusing."

This isn't an issue of money. This is an issue of knowledge. You aren't going to get good results using a tool that isn't applicable, but you are going to get better results if you know how to use the right tool. There are lots of "click jockeys" that we hire to push buttons in the courtroom. I have my job because I know how to visually present information. It isn't true that most people are visual learners -- that is a misconception brought about by lumping kinetic learners (people who learn by watching things move around) in with visual learners. If your presentation is static, you have caught the visual and auditory learners, and missed the kinetic learners. That is the sort of thing that makes the difference.

The use of technology also brings up new variations on evidentiary issues, Lederer said. For example, labeling a graphic in a certain way, such as writing "incision that caused injury" on a medical diagram, could be considered leading, or putting the image of an expert witness in videotaped testimony on a larger-than-life screen could be considered unfair prejudice.
Lederer said it is probably time to codify the rules on digital evidence.

It is codified. If it a scan of an exhibit, it is parole evidence. If it is anything else, it is demonstrative evidence. If you put a zippy title (like that example) on it then you have to follow all the same rules as if you had put that on the top of a foamcore poster. Changing the media does not change the rules about the information.

One attorney who attended Wednesday's session, Gerald W. Spivack of Spivack & Spivack, said he found it necessary to his practice to learn about the new courtroom.
"I'm excited about the possibility of improving my ability to try a case," said Spivack, who focuses on the areas of negligence, professional liability and workers' compensation on the part of injured parties. "I feel I have to have my exhibits prepared in such a way that they can be shown on screen. In the past I've used an exhibit book. This is much better and more efficient."
But Spivack said he and almost anyone else who tries a case in Courtroom 625 will need some hands-on training beforehand.
"I've only just learned to use a computer. We're all going to need practice," he said.

He sees the issue -- that is the first step. He just needs to see that he isn't the person who needs to worry about learning it.

2003-06-23T09:35:00.000-05:00

Yahoo! News - 'Apocalypse Now' Music Fires Up U.S. Troops for Raid

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. troops psyched up on a bizarre musical reprise from Vietnam war film "Apocalypse Now" before crashing into Iraqi homes to hunt gunmen on Saturday, as Shi'ite Muslims rallied against the U.S. occupation of Iraq.
With Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" still ringing in their ears and the clatter of helicopters overhead, soldiers rammed vehicles into metal gates and hundreds of troops raided houses in the western city of Ramadi after sunrise as part of a drive to quell a spate of attacks on U.S. forces.

Funny, I always thought that "Ride of the Valkyries" was from the Ring Cycle, not Apocalypse Now.

Either I'm off on which one came first (I think Wagner beat the film by a few decades at least) or the "news agency" Rueters is indeed run by dunces.

2003-06-20T10:46:00.000-05:00

Gut Rumbles: I am tired

I do love a good rant.

I swear to Bejus. If I ever have to do this again (which I will), I'm going to bring my golf-ball retriever to every one of those meetings, and when somebody starts "multi-tasking" or going off on a tangent, I'm going to whip that sucker out, telescope it to the necessary length and BEAT THE SHIT out of whoever needs it.

2003-06-19T12:22:00.000-05:00

A liberal's condescension toward Hispanics slips out

In dealing with minorities, liberals have learned to try to keep a lid on their condescension. But sometimes it slips out.
It slipped out a few months ago when Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Lieberman, during an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press," took the liberty of crediting affirmative action for putting the highly capable Condoleezza Rice -- the first African-American woman to serve as national security adviser -- "where she is today."
And it slipped out again last week when another Democrat seeking the presidential nomination, John Edwards, dismissively boiled down the accomplishments of the highly capable Miguel Estrada, President Bush's nominee to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, to his having "the right last name."

This isn't one man's foible. This is the entire basis for affirmative action today.

Affirmative action is based on one giant insult: If you are a minority, you aren't good enough to acomplish anything on your own. You are too stupid, you're parents are too irresponsible, and you can't learn to assimilate into general society. That is what affirmative action says.

This is the natural outgrowth of where Democrats and Republicans differ. Republicans look at individuals. When Bush formed his cabinet, he picked the best people he could find. He ended up a white guy who has a dyke daughter (Cheney), a black killer (Powell), and a black woman from Alabammy (Rice). He even hired a Jew for media relations (Fleicher). You know why? Because they were the best for the job.

On the other hand, look at Clinton's "Cabinet that Looks Like America". It was the biggest bunch of race pimps and incompetents around. Why were they hired? Because Democrats know that if they put them in a few token (and I use that term intentionally) spots then he will get a few more votes.

Conservatives and libertarians look at individuals. When you look a the individual, you cannot come to the conclusion that Affirmative Action comes to. "This guy doesn't make the cut. He's black? So? Why does it matter that someone else who looks like him doesn't make the cut either?" When you look at it from the left and socialist view of seeing everyone as part of a group, you get to the Affirmative Action conclusion. "Let's see, Whitey has a lot of his people here, and we needs some more. Let's get some Darkies and some Messicans. But not those Yellow bastards. They've already got more than their share. Screw them."

2003-06-19T11:50:00.000-05:00

Michael J. Totten: Revolutions Real and Imagined

This is important, people. It is important for people who are worried about the safety of America: Iran is part of the Axis of Evil for good cause, and if it becomes a democracy, remember that democracies don't go to war with each other. It is important for the safety of anyone who isn't a hard-line Muslim, because you are the infidels and the back-sliders that they want to shackle or kill. If is important for anyone who loves freedom, because I cannot be free unless they are free.

Totten catalogs some of the lapses in the left media in covering this. As he notes, you have to go to the right side of the aisle to find anyone who wants to talk about that, and this is symptomatic of the malaise that is infesting the left.

Liberal hawks like myself, Meryl Yourish, and Jeff Jarvis pay rapt attention.
But the anti-war liberals aren't interested in the slightest. A revolution against tyranny is boring. They would rather discuss Howard Dean.
The radical left is another matter entirely. This is the crowd that says America is a fascist police state. The last thing they want to discover is that a real fascist police state exists in Iran.
Every Friday at 5:00 p.m. the Jackass Contingent marches in front of my building. They bang on drums and shriek against a war that's already over. They say dissent has been crushed, but the only thing that's crushed is the size of their rally. Look how brave and heroic I am, they proclaim. You idiots are wasting your lives in office towers while I'm taking on a dictatorship!
But they aren't taking on a dictatorship. They are wallowing in fantasy. If they pay any attention at all to Iran they'll see what dictatorship looks like. They'll see young people who really are brave in dissent, and who really are engaged in revolutionary activity. And they would look at themselves in the mirror and know they are frauds.
I feel sorry for them. I do. They live in the wrong country, and in the wrong time. They want to take a stand. They want to fight power. But there is no power to fight. America is a liberal democracy, the very sort of thing Iranians die for.
So they dream up a fight in their heads. "Welcome to Nazi Germany" is what someone scrawled on the side of my building.
The real Nazis are elsewhere. And they are fighting for their lives.

Also, image of the day (warning: immolation photo) notes the situation in France and the disconnect they have (and that we share in some part) when it comes to Middle Eastern political groups:

On Tuesday, France decided to crack down on the People's Mujahedeen of Iran, otherwise known as the Mujahedeen Khalq. This organization is listed as a terrorist organization by both the US and the EU.
Maybe they are. I don't know. I do know that they say the Iranian government has killed 120,000 of them since 1979.
On Wednesday, this man and a few others in Paris and across Europe set themselves afire to protest the French crackdown. One woman died from her burns.
The crackdown happens at a very key point in history. Iranian students are protesting nightly in every Iranian city. The rule of the Mullahs there appears to be near an end in what may, with the greatest of hope, be a bloodless revolution.
The crackdown is seen as the French taking sides with the Mullahs.
Also on Tuesday, French foreign minister de Villepin said that the EU should not list Hamas as a terrorist organization.
It seems obvious that if you light yourself on fire, you are a Ghandi-like protester; if you light yourself on fire and in the process intentionally light others on fire, you are a terrorist. This simple math seems too difficult for French politicians, and their country will suffer for it.

2003-06-19T10:40:00.000-05:00

Berlusconi slaps down France over Israel trip

Huzzah! I hope this helps Berlusconi get re-elected. Hell, I don't know enough about Italian civics to know if he was elected in the first place. Anyways:

''They missed a good opportunity to shut up,'' Berlusconi told reporters in response to French criticism of his decision not to meet Palestinian leaders during a recent trip to Israel.
French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said this week that Berlusconi had ''not satisfied the European position'' by holding talks only with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon during his June 9 visit to Jerusalem.
''I went (to Israel) as the prime minister of Italy. There's no way France can issue criticism over something that was the sole right and responsibility of the Italian prime minister,'' Berlusconi said, clearly bristling with irritation.

Someone is irritated at the French? That's unpossible! Maybe this will lead to a war between France and Italy. That would be the biggest slap-fight the world has ever seen. It would be pretty entertaining as long as we can limit it to those two countries. It is hard to tell which direction Germany would go in that one.

More realisticly, this is a symptom of the power struggle that seems to be going on in the EU. I'm hoping that it is the sort of thing that pulls the EU down around Paris' ears.

2003-06-17T10:18:00.000-05:00

Sex, Lies and Videotape on the Internet

I had originally planned to avoid this story. The reason is simple; O'Reily is writing this simply to get attention. He is too savy to actually believe this. And that is what I want to talk about.

Billy is sagging in the ratings. He's old news. Other people, like Hannity, are batter at the "Ah-HA!" interview, and people are catching on. Billy has to do something to get attention. Unfortunately for him, he is still stuck in the TV mentality of "any press is good press." Bill has decided to apply that philosophy to the blogosphere, and I think it is going to bite him in the ass.

How do you get the attention of the mythical blogosphere? You attack it. So he did. And he got the attention of the 800 lbs. gorillas, who game him a a proper fisking, and now everything is right with the world, correct?

Not quite. I think that Bill has missed the effect of reputation on the Internet. Reputation is important. The people on the internet are not TV drones. They don't remember just that a name is familiar and watch what is familiar; they remember why that person is familiar, and if they don't there is a link there to remind them. He complains that you don't get corrections on the internet; he is right. What you get is immediate editing or withdrawl of incorrect facts. If you don't, then the person screwing up gets fisked and everyone laughs at him.

Pay attention to that word. When you screw up on the internet, people remember. Robert Fisk screwed up, and he did it often enough that he has a word named after him that embodies incompetence. He's gaining company. Maureen Dowd has her own word now (Dowdification), and I'm sure that there will be more. If O'Reily wants to keep tugging this chain, he might be the next one.

2003-06-16T16:40:00.000-05:00

Why Europe still doesn't get the Internet

The all-but-final proposal draft says that Internet news organizations, individual Web sites, moderated mailing lists and even Web logs (or "blogs"), must offer a "right of reply" to those who have been criticized by a person or organization.

I think I will comply right now. This is your compliance with the "Right To Reply" asserted in this proposal for any and all responses to this site, edited for content and space:

"Waah fucking waah."

You're welcome.

2003-06-16T10:50:00.000-05:00

OrlandoSentinel.com: Income-tax code a welfare system? We should be proud

"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."

The Census Bureau reported recently that the percentage of poor children dropped during the 1990s. It's no coincidence that the working poor benefited from two Clinton administration policies during that time: an increase in the minimum wage and the expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit.

That's strange. I thought that correlation without any sort of mechanism to explain causation was coincidence. Hmm.

"Poverty" is defined by gross income. As in, "not net." That knocks the EITC out of the equation.

Most Republicans turned into Chicken Littles, predicting gloom and doom, but the economy simply kept growing. Growing despite a modest tax hike for the richest 2 percent of Americans and a hand up, through tax and wage policies, that brought living wages to workers in low-skill jobs.

She seems to have a problem using words correctly. Instead of "despite", she should have said "in spite of".

Those two policies, which the majority of Republicans rejected, coupled with welfare reform and a strong economy, did more to nudge people out of poverty than any trickle-down theory ever imagined. That rubs the GOP the wrong way.

I like that little aside, "coupled with". When it is her pet policy, "it is no coincidence", even if there is no way the pet policy had any impact at all. When it is a policy she isn't fond of, it is "coupled with" her pet program.

Even though I like welfare reform, I really don't think that it had much to do with it. It hasn't been around long enough for the effects to show fully. It is the strong economy, stupid.

If you want to talk about rubbing people the wrong way, how about this one: it takes 8 to 10 years for government policy to translate into economic effects. That means that the Clinton boom was really the Reagan-Bush boom. That means that the Bush2 slump is really the Clinton slump. The economy is pulling out now, and that is due to the welfare reforms that the Republican congress forced through in spite of the Clinton administration.

Alabama Republican Rep. Spencer Bachus says the earned income tax credit is a scam that turns "our income tax code into a welfare system."
He's right. We should be proud of that. We are rewarding people who work with a tax code that gives back to the rich and gives a little extra to the poorest, too, because they deserve it, too.

She is having problems with sentence structure, now. She says "gives a little extra to the poorest," but she seems to have mistakenly connected it to the "gives back" phrase. Surely she doesn't mean to imply that the welfare payment she is advocating gives back to the poorest, since they never paid anything in the first place. You can't give back what hasn't already been given.

Either she has a problem forming coherent, logical sentences, or she is deliberately lying to you.

Today, 40 million Americans qualify for the Earned Income Tax Credit. In Florida, one in five children lives in poverty and one in three in a single-parent home. What does that tell you about our low-paying service economy and the strains it puts on children's well-being?

How many of those children in poverty are living in single parent homes? She tries to make it sound like maybe half (notice that she doesn't say how many of that 5 lives in that 3.)

The other thing to remember is that the poverty line isn't anything but an arbitrary line adjusted for inflation. It doesn't relate to anything. Don't take my word for it. Look it up.

The political leadership's answer is ever more tax breaks for the richest because they pay most of the taxes. Well, yes, they also pay peanuts, as a percentage of their income, for housing, food and their manicured lawns.
Millionaires can sleep soundly in their mansions. This fight over the EITC isn't class warfare that seeks to punish the rich. It's about fairness.

There we go. That's her pop-shot. "Millionaires can sleep soundly in their mansions." I hate to break to you -- no, actually, it fills me with glee to break it to you. Most millionaires don't live in mansions. Most millionaires drive old cars and live in regular suburban houses. Rich people don't stay rich by living like Jed Clampett. They stay rich by living like you and me, and putting a little away every month. No one ever got rich by spending money.

Fairness. If that means a millionaire must give up a little of his take on the tax cut so that a family of four, with both working parents earning less than $26,000, can buy a refrigerator or fix the car, then, who would object?

This one is too easy. The millionaire. Does his vote count for less? If anything, I think that someone who has managed to build up a million and keep it should have a little more voice than some idiot who manages to rack up not one but two kids on less than $26,000 a year.

This concludes our fisking.

2003-06-16T01:37:00.000-05:00

FREEDOM ISN'T FREE!

Wow.

Hours and hours of fun. I might have to archive the whole site before The Man tosses it down the memory hole. (Or this nut's credit card gets cut off.)

MKULTRA history, COINTELPRO history (current-day mind control's progenitors) and unclassified and commerical devices which can carry out this torture are firmly established facts. We are not asking for anything close to a "leap of faith", as we have ample factual material to convince most people of average open-mindedness who will take the time to learn the facts.

Ooooh, boy... If nuts were cocaine, I just discovered crack.

2003-06-13T12:55:00.000-05:00

Why Do Women Have Breasts?

I really enjoyed this one, partly because it was intellectually stimulating and partly because I am a man and just enjoy listening to things about breasts.

So, now that women are obliged to carry breasts around with them all the time, it seems that many of them have taken the trouble of growing good ones.
Men, meanwhile, are stuck with a sub-optimal instinct. Their desires are fired by a pair of useless bags of fat. Men cannot afford to lose this instinct, however. Non-lactating breasts are like nuclear missiles -- we only need them or want them because other people have them.

Joe Bob says check it out.

2003-06-13T11:51:00.000-05:00

The New Republic Online: Pilgrims' Progress

A joint pilgrimage to Auschwitz by Israeli Jews, Christians and Muslims:

Inevitably, there are tensions. When a Christian Arab woman reads aloud a poem asking how God could have allowed "the people you chose" to be murdered, other Arabs are outraged at her seeming identification with Judaism. And, in coming here together, we all take emotional risks. For the Arab participants, who have been attacked by their own media as traitors, conceding the enormity of their enemy's tragedy risks diminishing their own. For Jews, coming to the place that teaches us the necessity of power, together with Arabs who threaten that power, risks weakening our will to fight for survival. The result of our mutual risk-taking is an exchange of sensibilities. Jews acknowledge that Auschwitz isn't just a Jewish but a universal wound, while our Arab partners discover Jewish outrage. "Where was the world?" they demand. And, with unintended irony, "Why didn't the Jews fight back?" Referring to the Nazis, a Bedouin social worker invokes that old Jewish curse, "Y'mach shmam" ("may their names be blotted out"), as if he were from Brooklyn.

Well worth the entire read.

2003-06-13T09:54:00.000-05:00

Free Drugs for Wizened Citizens

From Neal Boortz:

FREE DRUGS FOR WIZENED CITIZENS
Step by step ... here is how it's going to work. Print this and safe it. You can show it to your children or grandchildren to help explain why the government is taking 60% of everything they earn.
Democrats propose a grand new spending program. Senior citizens are going to be able to use someone else's money to buy their prescription drugs. Senior citizens pledge their electoral support to Democrats as thanks.
Republicans start chanting "me too!" and get on board with the free drugs for old folks plan, hoping that at least some of the wrinkled class will vote for them.
Senior citizens spend an average of $650 a year on prescription drugs right now. As soon as the drug benefit is added to Medicare the pharmaceutical companies will start marketing many more drugs to old folks. "Ask your doctor about Noasital."
Seniors will rush off to their Medicare doctors and say "Tell me about Noasital." They'll insist on a prescription for Noasital, and any other drug they happen to see advertised, and many doctors will be all too willing to go along.
The average yearly spending by seniors on prescription drugs will skyrocket from $650 a year to thousands of dollars a year.
In short order the projections for spending on the new prescription drug benefit will have been left in the dust. What was sold to us as a $40 billion a year program will be costing well over $100 billion a year ... and going nowhere but up. Politicians and bureaucrats will start expressing their "concerns" and a fix will be demanded.
The "fix" to rising spending on drugs for wrinkled class will be to put limits on what Medicare will pay for certain prescription drugs, just as Medicare has already put limits on what will be paid for certain medical services.
Pharmaceutical companies will find that they aren't making any money on selling these drugs to seniors because of the Medicare price controls. In fact, they may find that they are actually losing money. To compensate for these lost profits the pharmaceutical companies will simply increase prices for these and other drugs to their non-Medicare patients.
As the prices of prescription drugs for non-Medicare Americans go up, so will the price of health insurance coverage. Insurance companies aren’t going to suffer these increased costs without passing them off to the insured. Basically this is the same thing that has happened in many other areas of health care. Medicare institutes price controls, health care providers make up the difference by charging other patients more, health insurance companies raise premiums … and so on.
As prescription prices and health insurance premiums increase for non-Medicare Americans, so will the demand for politicians to step in and do something. Politicians, always hungry for both votes and power, will be all-too-happy to oblige.
Politicians will start demagoguing drug companies. They will be called "greedy" and will be accused of "profiteering" and "exploiting" the frail health of our precious senior citizens.
After a short period of scare-mongering the politicians will vote to institute price controls on the pharmaceutical companies. Politicians will tell us that they are doing this to reign in these greedy corporate monsters who are becoming obscenely rich on the backs of sick Americans.
With price controls the earnings figures for pharmaceutical companies will go into the toilet.
As earnings go down pharmaceutical companies will have less and less to spend on research and development for new drugs. Research into ways to treat disease will show down and, eventually, will become the province of government.
Government will be the eventual beneficiary of this mess as the masses clamor for more and more government solutions to these problems that are perceived to be the fault of the private sector.

2003-06-12T15:55:00.000-05:00

lgf: These Aren't Savages?

Linked without comment.

2003-06-12T09:58:00.000-05:00

Israel News : Jerusalem Post Internet Edition

I shamed myself a little, because I had started to do what I accuse a lot of other people of doing -- I am beginning to take the slaughter of Jews as something that "just happens". This line shocked me back to reality:

"It was a barbecue, people burned like torches," he said. It was worse, he said, than anything he had seen at Yad Vashem.

This is worse than anything at Yad Vashem. The last time the Jews were being slaughtered, the world had plausible deniability. Today, anyone who can look at this and still insist on tying Israel's hands is complicit in the murder.

2003-06-11T13:04:00.000-05:00

Causus Belli

Long, and well worth the read. I don't know how to feel about this impression that I get that the left is losing its best thinkers. That impression is based on seeing more and more people who identify themselves as left disagreeing with the "mainstream" left and agreeing with me (and of course I see myself as correct, or I wouldn't advocate it, would I?) My wishy-washyness comes from not being sure if I want the left so weakened.

Libertarianism, at its root, is the distrust of pretty much everyone. I want to make everything political hard to do, and part of that is making sure that everyone has someone else who thinks that they are a complete idiot and not only isn't afraid to tell them, but can convince people that aren't complete idiots that they may be right. As it stands, it is starting to look like the only people that the left will be able to convince in a while is, well, complete idiots. They are burning all of their credibility while people like Totten (Hat tip to him on this one, by the way) and LaFreniere make rear-guard attempts to bring them to reason. (Well, as close to reason as the left gets.)

The good that I see coming is that the blogosphere is doing a good job of reforming the left and right into Idiotarian and Anti-Idiotarian. Through the harsh light that the blogosphere throws on everything, LGF and Totten are getting closer and closer to each other, and the Freepers and the IdiotMedia types are getting harder and harder to tell apart. As disgusted as I am with the Libertarian Party, maybe it is time for the Anti-Idiotarian Party. It just needs a better name; I hate being Anti- anything. That was the biggest problem with the Reform Party moniker -- it embraces a negative.

To quote Sam Elliot, "Aw shucks, I'm rambling again." Read the article. Here's a taste.

In a very real sense, even the chaos of the post war period is a "Liberal gift", self-determination. And that is more precious than any number of lives or any years of deprivation. Or, at least, that is the bedrock principle that the US itself was founded on (give me freedom or give me death).
You can disagree with this argument, but at least, finally, the US appears to be acting in accordance with our principles instead of in spite of them. And if Muslim fanatics retaliate with terrorist attacks upon the US it will be hard to argue that they are not attacking us for our principles and values.
Rich and powerful men in a rich and powerful country might make money off the war? This makes it wrong, right?
Someone always profits from a war, this is history, human nature, and politics. The demand of soldiers for bullets, bread, and uniforms can be nearly infinite. The job of sending our troops abroad and of cleaning up the messes they leave behind can be quite lucrative for related industries. And no doubt someone from one of those industries will have some insider relation to the White House.
So what? In the end I would return to my query... Is it wrong to free the oppressed and hand them their future? In the end this is the only question that matters, not whether you like the man in the White House.

Joe Bob says check it out.

2003-06-09T16:10:00.000-05:00

ThinkGeek :: LED Binary Clock

I think I am going to get one of these.

2003-06-09T10:18:00.000-05:00

Robert Novak: California's runaway recall

More on Gray Davis. He is already a lame duck. Professional petitioners will have no problem gaining that many signatures given time.

While bipartisan establishment politicians remain in denial, realists now are taking the recall movement seriously. Dave Galliard, a Sacramento-based political consultant seeking signatures for recall petitions, says 520,000 voters have signed. He is aiming for 1.2 million, providing insurance that the required 897,000 valid names are collected. If this is done by July 18, an election must be held in September or October. Gov. Davis, at 21 percent approval in a recent private labor union poll, cannot be expected to survive.

This one is going to heat up a lot for the next month or so.

2003-06-05T15:07:00.000-05:00

Senate holds final meeting

I was tipped to this one by the Best of the Web, because of the mural stuff at the end, but the whole thing is a hoot.

The anger expressed by a number of students at the meeting stemmed from the allocation and subsequent de-allocation of funds for a safe house on campus for women of color and for non-UCR affiliated security guards.
"Shame on you, whoever requested that they de-allocate this money," said an angry student addressing the senate. "I've never seen any of you do anything for the community. I'm really pissed off."

You didn't get the money. It never was your money. Walk it off, bitch!

One student organization, Que onda Queers, requested $12,000 for safety devices, including cameras, camcorders, tapes, tape recorders and security to prevent physical retaliation.

Okay, I'll admit it. I was certain this was a hoax when I read that there was an club called Que onda Queers. A quick google search dissuaded me. **sigh**

"On the real, I am very interested in funding this," said senator Ivory Parnell. "But considering there are only $10,000 in the fiscal budget, and the total request is over $27,000. What can we do?"

(That second line isn't an actual sentence, but someone forgot to add [sic] when they typed it up. I hope.) You do what you just did. Deny the request. They want $27K worth of toys. Who cares? People in Hell want ice water.

In an attempt to find some way to allocate the money, senators suggested tapping other resources.
"Aren't there other funds to be used?" asked senator Vianey Ramirez. "This is one pot, but there are other pots to smoke."

Okay, I'm hoping that this is a hoax again. "Other pots to smoke?" Dunce.

When President Sayegh informed the group that according to the constitution, only $100 could be allocated for equipment, students again expressed their discontent, saying that the senate was not willing enough to help them.

"Don't try to get all "follow the rules" on us! (See IV.9.(c)) We want money goddamnit! Gimme! And "Fiscal Duty" isn't even a real word. Quit trying to bullshit us and cut a check, dadd- I mean, chairperson."

"I definitely don't think that this is an unwillingness to help," Sayegh said. "For 28 days, every day, people have been working for you. Everybody on this board goes to class. For the past 28 days, because of this situation, I am not getting my degree."
Students did not respond well to this, saying that is the senate's job to be dedicated to their needs.
"We're not going to discriminate," Ramirez said. "We treat you like shit. We're going to treat everybody like shit."

I'd vote for Ramirez.

After some deliberation, and the decision to make it a closed ballot, the senate voted to allocate $3,025 to Que onda Queers.

And in the end, they caved. Disgraceful.

2003-06-05T13:53:00.000-05:00

Teens tutor FBI in cyber-slang

This is quite possibly the job that would drive me insane the quickest -- impersonating a 13 year old girl for 8 hours a day. I think that after a week I would be so numb it would be easier to offer myself up as the pedophile's victim.

(If you are a pedophile, you can still email me though. Include your home address.)

2003-06-05T13:24:00.000-05:00

Democratic Party -- racist?

Larry Elder takes on the DNC's outrageous stance on layoffs:

Enter Donna Brazile, the black former campaign manager of Al Gore, and the lady who once called the Republican Party "the party of the white boys." Brazile goes ballistic. "I'm just outraged," said Brazile. "They started reading me the names and I said, 'Oh, oh -- they're all black.' I went through the roof."
So, the DNC, despite its declared financial problems, cannot lay off black workers. Question: Would Ms. Brazile, or, say, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, or anybody else, for that matter, complain if the DNC issued pink slips to white staffers?

Oh, c'mon, Larry, we all know those honkey ofay suckas deserve it.

I covered this one earlier, but Larry Elder does his tradional fine job on the matter. Read on to get to the connection between this and the Uncle Tom accusations lobbed at black Republicans. (And don't forget that Elder is neither Democrat nor Republican.)

2003-06-05T13:13:00.000-05:00

Glass For Garofolo

Damn that internet! All the stupid things that you ever said keep bubbling back up! Just in case you have forgotten:

On March 6, 2003, Bill O'Reilly interviewed actress, comedianne and anti-war activist Janeane Garofalo on the Fox Network show, "The Pulse." Garofalo made the following statement:
O'Reilly: "If you are wrong, all right, and if the United States -- and they will, this is going to happen -- goes in, liberates Iraq, people in the street, American flags, hugging our soldiers, all right, we find all kinds of bad, bad stuff, all right, in Iraq, you gonna apologize to George W. Bush?"
Garofalo: "I would be so willing to say I'm sorry, I hope to God that I can be made a buffoon of, that people will say you were wrong, you were a fatalist, and I will go to the White House on my knees on cut glass and say, hey, you were right, I shouldn't have doubted you. But I think to think that is preposterous."

Well, it's been a month or so since we saw our boys go in, liberate Iraq with people in the streets holding American flags, hugging our soldiers and pointing out the rape rooms, mass graves (including one especially for children and thier toys) and mobile biological weapon labs.

I know. She is just waiting for an invitation to the White House. It's all George's fault again. Bad George!

2003-06-05T12:56:00.000-05:00

New York's Deadly Cigarette Tax

Prohibition created crime. It really is that simple. The history presented in the article:

The tax hikes also spurred crime against legal businesses. The chairman of a New York State commission that investigated the illicit tobacco trade stated that the tax hikes caused distributors and retailers to be "confronted almost daily with the risk and dangers of personal violence which are now inherent in their industry." To the dismay of other states, the crime associated with New York's illegal cigarette trade spread beyond its borders. Across the country, trucks carrying cigarettes were hijacked and businesses selling cigarettes were robbed to supply New York's black market.
State and city officials experimented with a variety of ways to control the crime, including mandatory prison sentences for cigarette bootleggers, expanded police powers of search and seizure, and more industry regulation. But none of those measures had much effect. Finally, by the mid-1970s, with tobacco-related crime rising and governments and business losing millions of dollars to bootlegging, a special state commission recommended that the city's cigarette tax be repealed. New York Governor Malcolm Wilson embraced that proposal and said, "One major incentive to organized crime is the high New York City cigarette taxes, piled on top of the state tax, which have made that city the promised land for cigarette bootleggers."
While the governor fought hard for cigarette tax repeal, parochial politics scuttled its passage. However, escalating violence, including a series of homicides resulting from turf battles and efforts to silence witnesses, discouraged policymakers from further tax hikes in the late 1970s and early 1980s. That allowed the high inflation of the era to reduce real cigarette tax rates by more than 40 percent, which sapped the profitability of bootlegging and reduced smuggling and related crime.
The lessons learned from New York's tax-induced crime wave were short-lived. By the late 1980s, New York State's cigarette taxes were again on the rise, prompting one official in the state's tax enforcement office to note that "in New York it is literally more profitable to hijack a cigarette delivery truck than an armored truck." Today, at least half of the cigarettes consumed in New York City have somehow avoided state and city excises. ATF officials report that in addition to traditional organized crime, street gangs and terrorist groups are now also involved in the city's illicit cigarette trade.

Prohibition is the same, no matter what is being prohibited, and the results are the same. Prohibition of liquor created the Mafia in America as we know it. It was a failure. Recreational drug prohibition (other than, of course, alcohol, caffeine, Viagra, and Everquest) has resulted in the largest crime growth and the greatest infringement on freedom in our short history. Cigarette prohibition (since that is what this really is an attempt to do) is causing the exact same problems.

The proof is that when ending the prohibition was tried it was a smashing success. When the prohibition was brought back, the crime came right with it. Those who do not study history are doomed to life of politics, I guess.

2003-06-05T10:11:00.000-05:00

Cox & Forkum: Ex Libris Arafat

Cartoon. Check it out.

2003-06-04T16:00:00.000-05:00

Male underarm odors soothe women

Ohhhh yeah. Come to Phelps.

Lavender and vanilla aromatherapy may be all the rage. But new research suggests that male armpit sweat may be just as soothing for women. The effect, say scientists, may have helped get early women into the mood for love.
Chemist George Preti of the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, Penn., and colleagues exposed female volunteers for six hours to a fragrance containing men's concentrated armpit sweat. The researchers then tracked levels of luteinizing hormone in the women's bloodstreams. Luteinizing hormone helps regulate the timing of the menstrual cycle.
The scientists report in the journal Biology of Reproduction that the brains of women exposed to the sweat pulsed out more luteinizing hormone faster than women who didn't get armpit whiffs. Women also reported feeling more relaxed while sniffing the sweat. Overall, the pheromones may help improve women's receptivity to sexual advances and to synchronize their fertile times with the presence of men.

And I'm hairy too. I wonder why more chicks don't dig me.

2003-06-04T13:12:00.000-05:00

A Fearful Symmetry

The first part was the most interesting to me; the same sort of mania that consumed the right during the Clinton administration is consuming the left during this administration. I think it comes from a bulletproof administration; Bush is almost guaranteed to be re-elected.

These days, all you have to do is change a few words around and the hysterical right-wing radio commentary of yesteryear becomes today's cutting-edge left-wing blog posts . . .
Bill Clinton = George W. Bush
biting the lower lip = the smirk
Hillary Clinton = Dick Cheney
the military = the children
raising taxes = despoiling the environment
Monica Bombings = Operation Iraqi Freedom
Chinese money = oil money
Halliburton = Whitewater
Clinton killed Vince Foster = Bush Knew!

2003-06-04T11:37:00.000-05:00

Lessons of the War

This is a long but comprehensive look at the war, both from a micro "how did this war go" level to the macro "how does this fit into the general WW-IV west/arab conflict" level. One of the compelling parts was the spot on evaluation of the reasons the war went they way it did (and it has little to do with the US):

There is, to begin with, very little status accorded to conscript soldiers, who are poorly paid, housed, and trained. Tribalism, not merit, is more likely to govern the promotion of officers. In an age of mechanized warfare and combined land-and-air operations, most commanders have little knowledge of flexible tactical doctrine. Instead, outdated Soviet ideas from the 1970's -- like stacking armor in successive rings for massive, set-piece assaults -- still infect the thinking of the few generals who have studied military theory. When such rote practices prove suicidal in the face of a sophisticated opponent with mastery of the air, there is no mechanism for ad-hoc adjustment.
There are other deficiencies as well. Weapons, almost exclusively imported rather than manufactured at home, are often poorly maintained and are thrust into the hands of soldiers lacking either education or much experience with high technology. As American soldiers would remark in the course of Operation Iraqi Freedom, Iraqi artillery was inaccurate and slow-firing, small-arms fire was poorly directed, and armored vehicles and tanks were in obviously inferior condition.
All this is symptomatic of larger problems: the absence within Arab militaries of free discussion about operational choices, and a system that rewards obsequiousness and punishes initiative. Only in this wider context can the Baathists' otherwise bewildering tactics in the most recent conflict be understood. Here was a military clique that went to war over the possession of chemical and biological weapons that were so hidden away they could not be readily used for the very purpose for which they had been acquired; that would send an armored column into the open under the cloak of a sandstorm that provided no cloak at all against satellite-guided bombs; that would order men to swarm out of fortifications and dwellings at the sight of approaching American troops ("quail hunters"), only to see them obliterated by waiting planes; that would hurl men clad in pajamas against soldiers arrayed in ceramic body armor; that would stockpile arms and munitions in public sanctuaries that proved indefensible points of resistance.
As Pollack documents, moreover, while defeat on the battlefield can exact a bitter price for a professional Arab soldier, excellence can be no less dangerous, earning him the envy and suspicion of his peers and his political bosses. Few of the prominent Iraqi generals who fought in the Iran-Iraq war survived to fight in Kuwait, and almost none was still around for the latest conflict.

In other words, we didn't necessarily win because we are so damned good; we won because they are so damned bad. Being so damned good just ensured that we did it quickly. Also:

WHAT IS it that permits this radically dysfunctional system to perpetuate itself? The question is really political rather than military, and ultimately the answer is a state-induced terror that has its roots in the absence of consensual government and of notions of personal freedom, thus ensuring little self-criticism or accountability in matters of war-making or anything else. Helping to keep this entire edifice afloat is an ingrained (but also state-supported) habit of denial: a disavowal of just how deep, and how self-inflicted, are the deficiencies of one's own society; a rejection of every alternative view of reality that would expose these inadequacies for what they are; an unwillingness to assume any responsibility for repairing them.
During Operation Iraqi Freedom, American viewers were exasperated or convulsed at the circus-like spectacle provided by Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, the so-called Baathist information minister -- a/k/a "Baghdad Bob" -- whose daily communiques detailed an endless string of catastrophes for coalition forces. Seeming at first odious, then deranged, at last almost entertaining, al-Sahaf confidently declaimed lines like "We have killed most of the infidels, and I think we will finish the rest soon" even as split-screen television images revealed Abrams tanks looming a few miles away, or Marines resting in Saddam's Baghdad palaces.
A joke, but too bitter to be mere jest. Such state-sponsored whoppers, spread from Ramallah to Cairo and beyond, are hardly a new phenomenon. In June 1967, as Michael Oren reminds us in Six Days of War, there were triumphant broadcasts about heroic Arab armies approaching the outskirts of Tel Aviv and Egyptian jets pounding Israel even as Israeli soldiers were sweeping to victory on three fronts and Egyptian air fields were littered with the remains of that country's air force, destroyed in the first minutes of war. Such fabrications are among the intellectual legacies of the Arab regimes of the Middle East, whose homegrown proclivities toward mythmaking and braggadocio were only enhanced by decades of immersion in a Soviet-style disinformation apparatus.
Nor have international news organizations, who supposedly know better, been so immune to these ruinous exercises in falsification as the skeptical treatment of "Baghdad Bob" might suggest. Quite the contrary. Especially when baseless bragging takes the form of protestations about unprecedented Arab suffering and victimization -- and even if presented without quite the dramatic flair of the Iraqi information minister -- the press has proved all too ready to lend its credibility-enhancing energies to the Arab cause.

Joe Bob says check it out.

2003-06-04T11:15:00.000-05:00

"ASK FOR DEATH!": The Indoctrination of Palestinian Children to Seek Death for Allah -- Shahada

This is an interesting documentary. The streaming quality seemed to good, so it isn't a pain to watch -- at least not from the quality. The subject matter is another issue.

If this was my first exposure to PLO propaganda, then I would probably be disbelieving. I have seen nothing to persuade me to the opposite, however. I have seen no one -- not even the PA -- attempt to counter this with the assertion that it is an extreme, selective view of the PA media. It is part of a pattern and practice that the PLO/PA has been building for years.

If you want to know where this came from, look to Nazi Germany. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem was a Nazi ally, a student of Nazism and the Hitler Youth, and a rabid Jew-hater. Yassir Arafat was his student, and he is now the leader of the PLO/PA. That is why you see Nazi propaganda techniques in the PA -- he learned them from the horse's mouth.

2003-06-03T16:02:00.000-05:00

More Dowdism

Maureen Dowd seems to have started a fad; David Hogberg details more of the same from Paul Krugman.

2003-06-03T13:10:00.000-05:00

Rappin' with your rep

A morality play by Neal Boortz:

(As the curtain rises, we find Congressman Dewey Cheatem sitting behind his desk in his home district office. Ima Whiner, one of his constituents, has wormed her way into an appointment with Congressman Cheatem to voice some concerns.)

Check it out.

2003-06-02T17:14:00.000-05:00

A Blast From the Past

(Hat tip to Sgt. Stryker's Blog)

Posted September 2002:

CAIRO, Egypt (CNN) -- A U.S. war against Iraq would "open the gates of hell" in the Middle East, Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa said on Thursday.
Speaking at the end of an Arab League foreign ministers' meeting in Cairo, Moussa urged Iraq to allow U.N. weapons inspections to resume in a bid to head off a U.S. attack.
But he warned, "No Arab country will accept any strike on any other Arab country."

Heh.

2003-06-02T13:37:00.000-05:00

Country music in battle over patriotism, free speech

Oh, the gnashing of teeth! (Okay, this is the Tennessean. Tooth.) The rending of sackcloth! Oh, the humanity!

Some fans and observers say country music, in responding to Sept. 11 and subsequent global events, has gone beyond its traditional support of America and the armed forces and begun to cultivate an atmosphere that's intolerant of dissent from the Bush administration's strategies in the war on terror.

Country music fans being intolerant? That's unconcievable!

Rabble-rousing songs by Toby Keith and Darryl Worley have become smash hits. Widespread radio station boycotts of Dixie Chicks music after lead singer Natalie Maines' critical remark about President Bush in London left many thinking that country music was drawing ideological lines.

Okay, I call spin-alert. "Rabble-rousing" is an inherently prejudicial term. "Critical remark" is about the softest way to refer to the direct insult tossed out at the concert.

''If you were just casually listening to country radio in the last year, you would think it was the music of Republicans,'' says Beverly Keel, country music journalist and Middle Tennessee State University associate professor. ''That's (been) reinforced with the way the Dixie Chicks have been treated.''

It is the music of Republicans. So what? Rap is the music of Democrats by this reasoning. Who cares?

The environment, she says, may be leading to self-censorship on Music Row.

Here is where it gets juicy. Apparently, Bev gets her boxers in a bunch if commercial artists actually have to give their fans what they want to hear. Imagine that -- artists actually crafting their work to accommodate the wants of their buyer rather than just saying, "There it is, now buy it and shut up."

''Unfortunately, there's a climate right now that probably strikes fear in the heart of singers and songwriters who don't agree with the prevailing winds,'' she says.

'Oh, how will society survive it? The idea that if you piss off your customers they might not buy your products? Thinking like that could crush our socialist utopia!

The vast majority of songs on country radio today deal with love, nostalgia and homefront concerns, but the outsized impact of the stars-and-stripes songs and the strong divisions over the Dixie Chicks' right to be on the radio is setting a new tone, according to CMT editorial director and longtime country music chronicler Chet Flippo.

Look. No one is challenging the Dixie Chick's right to be on the radio. What is being challenged is whether it is a good business choice for a Country station to play a Dixie Chicks song. The Dixie Chicks have -- right now and in the future -- the right to be on the radio. That is a first Amendment right and I have not heard a single person say that they should lose that. By the same token, a radio station owner has the right to refuse to play any music that he chooses to exclude. It's his station, he decides what to play. If your livelihood depends on that station, don't piss that station off.

The consolidation of the radio industry, with its concentrated power and targeted demographic programming, has contributed to the new environment, Flippo says.
''When the head of Cumulus (Media) can decide single-handedly to ban the Chicks, the public is given no voice in that at all, and that's something that wouldn't have happened a dozen years ago,'' he says.

The public has a voice. Their voice is the almighty dollar. Cumulus did that because it got them listeners. When it wasn't something that was profitable anymore, the ban was lifted. This isn't a debate about free speech. It is about capitalism vs. fascism.

That could be remedied to a large degree, he notes, by getting past the Dixie Chicks controversy and getting them back on the air.

In other news, Michael Jackson is planning to get past that child molestation controversy and get back on the air, while Ike Turner is planning to get past the wife-beating controversy and get back on the air. OJ is planning to get past the double-murder controversy and get back into making Naked Gun movies.

2003-06-02T10:18:00.000-05:00

Airports Favor Private-Sector Screeners

This one is an easy one to figure out. Airlines are in the business of making money. That means moving passengers and making them happy. Government bureaucracies are in the business of getting bigger budgets. Getting a bigger budget means not meeting your stated goals and blaming it on a lack of funds. These goals are diametrically opposed. You can't get rid of the airlines, so you get rid of the government screeners.

You don't think that government has a chilling effect on free speech? You don't think that you can reach a police state through massive regulation (the M.O. of fascism, by the way:)

Many airports would not say publicly that they want to switch to private contract screeners. But an official of the nation's largest group representing airport owners said several dozen airports, including major hubs, have expressed an interest.

This is the part that really got my goat:

Peter Winch, national organizer for the American Federation of Government Employees, said privatizing airport security "sends the signal of retreat."
"It's the wrong message in the war on terror," said Winch, whose group is trying to organize TSA screeners. "For TSA, just supervising a bunch of contract operations would lead to different standards at different airports. It would get away from one national security system."

Gee, isn't that special. The guy who's goal is to make a government worker union says that if we get rid of some government jobs, the sky is falling. Well, whoop de freaking do! I think that the fact that this is the best source they can get for that view speaks volumes.

2003-05-30T12:29:00.000-05:00

DNC says minorities' firing was a mistake

Let me get this straight -- no one in the DNC is mad that there was a layoff, just that the people laid-off were ethnic minority members? I don't know about you, but that sounds like bigotry in reverse. No one in this article is arguing that there was anything wrong with the firings, just that they thought it was wrong to fire someone who was a minority.

Disgusting.

2003-05-30T12:20:00.000-05:00

Jordan Says Abbas Must 'Wage a War' on Hamas

Abu Mazen should listen to Jordan -- they had a PLO problem once. They don't anymore. (For further reading look up Black September.)

"It's very important to give the new prime minister the support that he requires in order to fight terrorism. He needs to wage a war within against Hamas and against Jihad al-Islami (Islamic Jihad)," said Jordanian ambassador Karim Kawar.
Kawar, speaking at the Israel Policy Forum, said Abbas could succeed against the militants only if Israel enhances his credibility by making gestures to the Palestinians.

This one is a no brainer, really. Israel has never been very reluctant to make concessions. Look at Sadat and Egypt -- if you agree to the basic principles, Israel will work with you. In the end, there really can't be a better ally in the Middle East for a secular government. Egypt has done well with peace with Israel. They got back the land that they wanted (Gaza tends to be more trouble than it is worth) and they have gotten tons of aid from America for it.

The Jordanian ambassador said a "power struggle" between the authority and the militants was inevitable and Palestinians must recognize Abbas as sole leader.

In other words, remember Black September.

2003-05-30T12:11:00.000-05:00

Study: Laziness Makes for Dangerous Fat

I only linked this for one reason:

Women gained fat twice as quickly as the men did, Slentz said.

Ha HA!

2003-05-30T11:10:00.000-05:00

WorldNetDaily: The bipolar nature of Middle-East diplomacy

A very good concise essay on why the so-called Roadmap to Peace in the Middle East is doomed to failure, just like Oslo. It boils down to a few points:

There can be no peace between Israelis and Palestinians without the elimination of fanatical anti-Semitism in the Arab world.
There can be no peace between Arabs and Israelis without a fundamental re-orientation of the Palestinian people toward acceptance of the Jewish people's historical and spiritual ties to the land.
There can be no peace without a Palestinian disavowal of the right of return.
There can be no peace in the Middle East without the death of Yasser Arafat.

You don't have to agree that this is the way that it should be; you just need to recognize that this is how it is.

2003-05-29T23:26:00.000-05:00

Video games boost visual skills

The general principle isn't that arcane; the correlation was noted after Desert Storm in that the pilots who grew up on Defender and Centepede were much better at handling smart weapons than the ones who just had baseball and golf. Now, they are getting hard evidence of how video game training effects the way the mind forms:

Male undergraduates who played driving or shoot-em-up games such as Grand Theft Auto and Medal of Honor several times a week for at least six months beat non-gamers in lab vision tests, found Shawn Green and Daphne Bavelier of the University of Rochester in New York state.
Game-players react to fast-moving objects more efficiently, explains Bavelier, and can track up to five objects at a time - 30% more than non-players. "They can process more information more quickly over time," she says.

GTA3 and Vice City are my two favorite games, especially Vice City. I also enjoy MoH, but it didn't hold my attention like the GTA franchise.

2003-05-29T11:37:00.000-05:00

The Washington Times: 2 trailers deemed biological arms labs

It was only a matter of time. I wish it hadn't taken so long, but this does tend to show how idiotic "you didn't find any evidence" arguments are now.

The CIA yesterday concluded that two truck trailers seized by coalition forces in northern Iraq were designed by Saddam Hussein's regime to produce biological weapons agents.
A six-page agency white paper said an examination of the trailers' equipment showed that "BW [biological weapons] agent production is the only consistent, logical purpose for these vehicles."
The assessment is the clearest indication yet that Baghdad was in violation of U.N. arms resolutions that required it to disclose all aspects of its weapons of mass destruction programs.

2003-05-28T10:40:00.000-05:00

Walter Williams: Affirmative action grading

A modest proposal by a modern day Swift.

2003-05-28T10:35:00.000-05:00

Gov. Davis Scared to Death Over Recall Drive

This harkens back to this entry in my blog about the California implosion or this one about the start of the recall. It is starting to look like it is getting a good head of steam. I am absolutely giddy about the idea that California may be shaping up. It is undeniable that as California goes, the country goes.

2003-05-25T23:29:00.000-05:00

Atlanta Public Schools

A gem from Neal. The caption:

Atlanta Public Schools spend $13,000 a year per student.

2003-05-16T12:00:00.000-05:00

lgf: A Modest Proposal

This one has reportedly been making its rounds on email:

Since the Palestinians want a homeland and it doesn't seem like a good idea to chop Israel up even smaller than it already is, here is a satisfactory solution: Let's give France to the Palestinians! The French have already stated that nothing is worth fighting for. Besides, France has better irrigation and soil than the West Bank and Gaza strip. It's perfect. The French won't even fight back. And how about a new name for this Franco-Palestine?
How about Frankenstine?
Send this to all of your friends. Let there be peace on Earth and let it begin with the French.

2003-05-16T11:57:00.000-05:00

The Evidence of Things Not Seen

A study that supposedly validates "diversity" may do just the opposite.

An intersting lead on some possible academic misconduct. The "racial diversity" thing has never rang true for me, but the economic diversity thing does.

(Note the Bastiat reference. I really like that he didn't give any explaination for it, either.)

2003-05-12T07:22:00.000-05:00

A Letter to Tristero

This is the part that jumped out for me:

Two weeks after September 11 I went to New York with my soon-to-be wife, and we took a cab to Lower Manhatten at Midnight. The subway wasn’t running yet, and it was too far to walk from where we were staying. City Hall was close enough to the pit, so we got out there, too ashamed to tell the driver where we were going.
The acrid stench of burning….what?… wafted north toward Midtown. Choppers circled the smouldering ruin, barracades blocked the neighborhood streets, and soldiers manned the checkpoints. “My God,” I told Shelly. “It feels like we’re in a war zone.”
Then it hit me for the first time. I mean, it was then that it really hit me. I knew from the way I phrased that sentence that I was still in denial.
It wasn’t a joke, it wasn’t a show, it wasn’t an “incident,” and it wasn’t a “tragedy.” War had come to New York. War. In New York.
We stood at the lip of the rim of oblivion, and I never felt so old in my life.

(For the record, those were burning people, Mike.)

I've heard it said often that a liberal is a conservative who has never been mugged. I don't have a problem with the "builders and defenders" model as much as I have with the "liberals and conservatives" model. When you base your description on a flawed model, then you carry those inherent flaws over.

I've been thinking about the difference between liberals and libertarians. It is worth noting that, if you have called someone a liberal 150 years ago, you would be talking about a libertarian, not what we think of as a "liberal". The difference I see is that liberals tend to assume that people will be good when treated good, while libertarians assume that people will be bad regardless of how you treat them.

Take socialism, for instance. Few people on either side will argue that if socialism worked the way the idealists describe that it would be a bad thing. The diagreement between liberals and libertarians often comes down to this: liberals believe that if you give everyone a good life, then they will be good, and everyone will benefit. Libertarians believe that if you give people anything, then too many of them will see no reason to do any good.

The other main difference is how you see people. If you see people as groups, you are more likely to be liberal. Liberals love to classify people: black, white, rich, poor, male, female, liberal, conservative. When you classify everyone like that, then it is easy to ignore the individual and look at how things affect the groups that they belong to. Libertarians never forget the individual. We tend to believe that no group is more important than the individuals that comprise it.

The best and most topical illustration is the liberation of Iraq. The liberal viewpoint tends to be that it isn't worth American lives to free Iraqis. One group is determined to be more valuable than the other. The libertarian view (aside from the ivory tower position of the LP) is that it is worth a hundred lives to free one person in tyranny. I cannot be free if you are not free. Freedom knows no nationality.

2003-05-11T18:40:00.000-05:00

lgf: The Land of the Schtoopid

This one was too good to pass up. There is no way I could make it more succinct than LGF, so take a look.

2003-05-10T17:27:00.000-05:00

VPC - Officer Down

I hate it when someone uses footnotes on a "study" that doesn't actually follow logic. I would rather read straight bullshit than well-documented bullshit.

This study reveals the gun industry's efforts to evade the 1994 ban and documents the significant threat assault weapons still pose to law enforcement.

Whew. I'm smelling it already. "The gun industry's efforts to evade the 1994 ban..." This seem to insinuate that something illegal has been done, doesn't it? Not to VPC. To VPC, you are "evading" a ban if you comply with it. Keep up with me here: If someone passes a law that says, "You are not allowed to do A, B, and C" and you stop doing A, B, and C, and do D instead to get your job done, you are "evading" the law. "But I did what the law said" you claim? Too bad. You didn't look at whatever sort of "meta-law" VPC wanted you to.

Also, "weapons" don't threaten law enforcment. They don't even threaten law enforcement officers. Criminals threaten law enforcement officers.

In 1995, the first full year in which the ban was implemented, police continued to be victims of assault weapons. Approximately one in 10 of the 74 law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty in 1995 was slain with a banned assault weapon.

Hmm. I guess they consulted Nostradamus on that one -- the study they cite (their own in fact) was published in September 1995. I wonder where you budget crystal balls?

I can't access the study online, but I suspect that I know what sophistry they used to make this statement -- weapons that were owned before the ban are grandfathered in. Of course, they can't be bothered to be accurate and say "legally owned weapons listed in the ban" -- they have the children to lie for.

Immediately after the 1994 law was enacted, the gun industry moved quickly to make slight, cosmetic design changes in their "post-ban" guns to evade the law, a tactic the industry dubbed "sporterization." Of the nine assault weapon brand/types listed by manufacturer in the law, six of the brand/types have been re-marketed in new, "sporterized" configurations. In fact, gunmakers openly boast of their ability to circumvent the assault weapons ban.

Let's see -- you pass a law that bans guns on the way they look, and then you complain that they continue to sell after changing the way they looked? You told them, "You can't do A, B, and C." They stopped doing A, B, and C. That is called "compliance", not "evasion."

Of course, I didn't know that advertising counted as "openly boasting".

Just such a post-ban AR, the Bushmaster XM15 M4 A3 assault rifle, was used by the Washington, DC-area snipers to kill 10 and injure three in October 2002. The Bushmaster is the poster child for the industry's success at evading the ban. The snipers' Bushmaster is even marketed as a "Post-Ban Carbine."

Uhh... so? They could have easily been killed by deer rifles. I could have done the job with a .22 plinking rifle at the ranges they operated at. The type of weapon had nothing to do with the crime. This isn't advocacy; this is demagoguery.

The industry's efforts have been aided by the fact that not all assault weapons are covered by the 1994 ban. For example, assault weapons with more conventional designs, such as the Ruger Mini-14, were not covered by the 1994 law—although gun experts define them as assault weapons.

Really? Which experts? After riddling this "study" with footnotes, this one is conspicuously missing. Funny that.

The gun industry's evasion of the 1994 ban on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines continues to put law enforcement officers at extreme risk. Using data obtained from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Violence Policy Center has determined that at least 41 of the 211 law enforcement officers slain in the line of duty between January 1, 1998, and December 31, 2001, were killed with assault weapons.8 Using these figures, one in five law enforcement officers slain in the line of duty was killed with an assault weapon.

Here's the big lie. This one is the money shot. They lied by counting weapons that they say are "assault weapons" in the list, not ones that the ban says are assault weapons. 10 of the weapons they list are SKS and Mini-14 rifles -- rifles that they admit (and lament) aren't covered by the ban. That puts us at 31 of 211 -- and we have no idea how many of these rifles are legally owned from being purchased before the ban took effect.

This is the thing to keep in mind. There is no provision to confiscarte legally owned weapons. All these bans apply to future sales. There laws they are asking for in no way apply to the situations they describe.

In other words, even after lying about the evidence, they still fail to make a logical argument.

2003-05-10T16:57:00.000-05:00

Will Arabia's Reform Start in Iraq?

According to my magic 8-ball, "Signs point to 'yes'". The inflamatory Arab media is in shambles. They have very little credibility left; that credibility fell with the Baath regime in Iraq. I wanted to go to MEMRI and find some nasty things coming out of Iraq (because that is the kind of prick that I am) and I couldn't do it. Instead, I saw things like sermon from Falouja, Iraq:

"…The Prophet Muhammad signed agreements and treaties with the polytheists who worshipped idols. He signed agreements and treaties with the Christians and with the Jews. All those who honored the agreement, the Prophet Muhammad honored the agreement with them. Let the people of the New Testament and also the Torah hear: 'We are guided by the Koran and by the words of the Prophet. Anyone who harms the People of the Book harms me.' What does this mean? If you are a Muslim and in your country are Jews, Christians, and Sabians, do not harm them, because if you harm them, you are harming the Prophet Muhammad. How wonderful this tolerance is?!… When the Jews emigrated to Palestine, some families remained in one of the cities. When they witnessed the tolerance of Islam in the city… they converted to Islam, willingly and out of love for this great religion. In our city, Falouja, there are Sabians, and you all know it. When they saw that Islam is the religion of tolerance, the religion of good, the religion of love, they all converted to Islam, and became our brothers."

This is the sort of tolerance that Islam will have to develop if it is not going to force the west to destroy it like fascism and communism. Tolerance is not acceptance; we don't ask that Islam accept us. Tolerance is putting up with. You don't have to agree with us to do business with us.

Of course, I knew that an Imam wouldn't let me down and give a completely positive sermon:

"We appeal to the Christians, the People of the Book, in the east and west of the land, to look at Islam and compare it with their New Testament. All are books [sent] from Allah, and all emissaries are from Allah… Oh People of the Book, come let us reach the truth. The people of the New Testament should act according to what Allah brought down to them. You [Americans] are Christians? Then, please, read the New Testament. If it is written in it that you must oppress the wretched, then let's talk about it. But if it is written that you must act justly, then we appeal to the American forces that entered [Falouja], and quote the words of Jesus to them: 'If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the left cheek.' Wonder of wonders. America, the invading forces, struck us first, with uncalled-for and unacceptable force, in Baghdad and in other places. In our city, they struck us on the right cheek and on the left cheek and from above, from the front, and from behind, and their planes hover above our city, verily, above the houses. The tanks and armored personnel vehicles drive through the streets and aim their weapons at people. They say that America does not act with terror. By Allah, this is the gravest terror."

You would think that they would know what real terror is after decades of Saddam. Go figure.

Also worth noting is this one from a Qutari (is that the proper nomenclature?) intelectual:

"We are forever listening apprehensively to 'the other,' to him who wishes us evil. Others have had similar problems, but they have risen up and rebuilt themselves because they were able to rid themselves of the fear of 'the other.'"
"It was no wonder then when we called defeat victory in 1956 and 1967 as well as in the Mother of all Battles and Qadisiyya."
"There are still those who justify and philosophize about media partiality. They claim that it is partiality for the honor and dignity of the community. [Have] not honor and dignity been rendered miserable if the dignity of man has not been preserved? There are those who say it was to raise morale, but this is faulty reasoning: It is not necessary to raise morale by trickery and deception of the masses.""The musings of a simple Iraqi from a liberated area caught my attention. He said: 'The Arabs left us and did not liberate us. Why are they attacking the coalition which wants to liberate us?' Why is this simple fact not realized by our men of culture, our intellectuals, our men of the media and our religious leaders, the men who call for participation in 'Jihad?'"

Keep an eye on MEMRI.

2003-05-10T16:15:00.000-05:00

A tale of two Americas

This is a new analogy for a phenomenon I have seen for a while:

One of the peculiar features of our country is that we produce incompetent 18-year-olds and remarkably competent 30-year-olds. Americans at 18 typically score lower on standardized tests than 18-year-olds from other advanced countries. Watch them on their first few days working at McDonald's or behind the counter in chain drugstores, and it's obvious that they don't really know how to make change or keep the line moving. But by the time Americans are 30, they are the most competent people in the world. They produce a stronger and more vibrant private-sector economy; they produce scientific and technical advances that lead the world; they provide the world's best medical care; they create the strongest and most agile military the world has ever seen. And it's not just a few meritocrats at the top: American talent runs wide and deep.
Why? Because from the age of 6 to 18, our kids live mostly in what I call Soft America--the part of our society where there is little competition and accountability. In contrast, most Americans in the 12 years between ages 18 and 30 live mostly in Hard America--the part of American life subject to competition and accountability; the military trains under live fire. Soft America seeks to instill self-esteem. Hard America plays for keeps.

The article continues into the effect that government education plays in this, and this is one of the main reasons that I support the seperation of school and state. When schools aren't accountable -- and government schools are most certainly not accountable -- you turn into Soft America. When students into competative schools -- universities -- they start learning. No one in America is educated because of government schools, they are educated in spite of government schools.

This is an important subject in relation to individual liberty. A free America can be nothing but a Hard America. There is no way to provide for individual freedom without individual responsibility. When someone else is responsible for your needs, then that person is no longer free. The only way for everyone to be free is for everyone to responsible for themselves -- and being responsible for yourself is hard. To quote Dennis Leary: "Life sucks -- get a helmut."

2003-05-10T16:00:00.000-05:00

Rich Lowry: The shame of our prisons

When is rape a joke? When it takes place behind bars, and it is men brutalizing other men.
Our tolerance for prison rape, considered a subject fit for late-night TV humor, is a great mystery. We profess to abhor rape, to adore personal dignity, to uphold the rights of the downtrodden -- yet we sentence tens of thousands of men every year to the most bestial kind of abuse, without a second thought beyond the occasional chuckle.

I've thought about this one before. I don't think there is a magic bullet on this one. There are a lot of factors, most of them about basic humor, at play here.

One of the things to remember is that we as people tend to ridicule things that truly frighten us. By turning this fear into a mockery, we build a defense mechanism about it. I joke about buggery. Men joke about buggery. We joke about it all the time, to show that this fear of homosexuality doesn't control us.

We tell jokes about consentual buggery, but we also make fun of forced sodomy. There aren't too many places that forced sodomy happens -- and prison is one of them. If you are going to take command of this fear of forced buggery, you are going to do it by joking about "prison love".

I think that there is another major factor at play, though. Part of this mockery is the dehumanization of the victim. By laughing about it, we are telling ourselves that the victims deserve it. We get to treat those that we fear -- convicts -- to the worst sort of humiliation we can come up with. No one says, "I'm afraid of going to jail and sitting in a jail cell all day." They say, "I'm afraid of going to a Federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison."

Don't forget that this also dehumanizes the attacker. This helps confirm in our mind that these people that we are putting in prison deserve it. "Of course he deserves it -- as soon as he gets in there, he starts buggering anyone who will stand still long enough." We get to convince ourselves that both the victim and the aggressor are subhuman, that they are animals consumed by base sexual hunger, and we feel better about putting them in prison in the first place.

I'm not saying that this is the way that it should be, only that this is the way that I see it being now. I think that we incarcerate far too many people, and we should never condone rape. Until we change this -- don't drop the soap.

2003-05-09T11:39:00.000-05:00

Mufti warns against allowing Jews onto Temple Mount

The Palestinian Authority's mufti, Ikrimah Sabri, on Thursday issued a stern warning to Israel against allowing non-Muslims to enter the Temple Mount, saying such a move would have "grave repercussions."
The mufti was responding to statements attributed to Jerusalem Police Cmdr. Micky Levy to the effect that the time is ripe for reopening the Temple Mount to Jews and non-Muslim tourists.

Let's see. We have one side who is welcoming attempts to negotiate a settlement and recognises the right of the others to exist, and we have one side who ignores virtually every agreement and refuses to accept that the other has a right to exist.

Which one is the religion of peace again?

2003-05-09T11:36:00.000-05:00

Would you like double grease with that?

"While some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius."

Sodolak makes his chicken-fried bacon by double-dipping uncooked bacon strips in milk and flour. Then he tosses the breaded strips in a Fryolator and nukes them in animal/vegetable oil for three or four minutes.
For that final touch, the chicken-fried bacon is served with a bowl of cream gravy.
Actually, it tastes pretty good. "It's crisp, flaky, has a distinct bacon flavor," said American-Statesman food editor Kitty Crider, who sampled part of a to-go order. The stuff travels well in the car. Hey. What's to go bad?

This place is too far for me to drive, and it really isn't on the way to Houston or Austin from Dallas. If I am ever in Bryan, you can bet your ass that I am travelling to Snook to try this stuff.

Until then, I think that I am going to go to the store, buy me a sack of beer batter mix, a batch of Pioneer gravy, and a pound of thick sliced bacon. I'm debating on whether or not it is time to change the grease in the fry-daddy.

2003-05-09T11:25:00.000-05:00

Tooting My Own Horn

I think this is the first time I've blogged myself, but I was walking through my archives patting myself on the back and scowling at the stories that I linked that were premature, when I saw this one. I'm going to requote General Patton's Speech at the beginning of Operation Overlord, because our Men and Women did exactly this:

When a man is lying in a shell hole, if he just stays there all day, a German will get to him eventually. The hell with that idea. The hell with taking it. My men don't dig foxholes. I don't want them to. Foxholes only slow up an offensive. Keep moving. And don't give the enemy time to dig one either. We'll win this war, but we'll win it only by fighting and by showing the Germans that we've got more guts than they have; or ever will have. We're not going to just shoot the sons-of-bitches, we're going to rip out their living Goddamned guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks. We're going to murder those lousy Hun cocksuckers by the bushel-fucking-basket. War is a bloody, killing business. You've got to spill their blood, or they will spill yours. Rip them up the belly. Shoot them in the guts. When shells are hitting all around you and you wipe the dirt off your face and realize that instead of dirt it's the blood and guts of what once was your best friend beside you, you'll know what to do!
I don't want to get any messages saying, "I am holding my position." We are not holding a Goddamned thing. Let the Germans do that. We are advancing constantly and we are not interested in holding onto anything, except the enemy's balls. We are going to twist his balls and kick the living shit out of him all of the time. Our basic plan of operation is to advance and to keep on advancing regardless of whether we have to go over, under, or through the enemy. We are going to go through him like crap through a goose; like shit through a tin horn!

2003-05-09T10:45:00.000-05:00

O'REILLY CALLS BOORTZ A "VICIOUS SON OF A BITCH!"

(and Boortz just smiles)

It comes down to whether or not a school should get the authority to sign off on how students conduct private parties. Obviously, from a libertarian standpoint, they should not.

The main reason that I blogged this is to see if we can google-bomb Boortz in as the first one to come up when someone searches on "vicious son of a bitch".

2003-05-08T18:23:00.000-05:00

TOMPAINE.com - My Country: The World

And another idiotarian is discovered. This one makes me livid, coming from the so-called "tompaine.com". Get this smidge of refuse:

As a patriot, contemplating the dead GIs, should I comfort myself (as, understandably, their families do) with the thought: "They died for their country." If so, I would be lying to myself. Those who die in this war will not die for their country. They will die for their government. They will die for Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld. And yes, they will die for the greed of the oil cartels, for the expansion of the American empire, for the political ambitions of the President. They will die to cover up the theft of the nation's wealth to pay for the machines of death.
The distinction between dying for our country and dying for your government is crucial in understanding what I believe to be the definition of patriotism in a democracy.
According to the Declaration of Independence -- the fundamental document of democracy -- governments are artificial creations, established by the people, "deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed", and charged by the people to ensure the equal right of all to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Furthermore, as the Declaration says, "whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it."

This trash insists that because he suspects that George Bush might have less than pure motives, we should discount the service that our volunteers won for the Iraqi people. In his hatred for "Bush and Cheney and Rumsfield" he ignores the very things that Paine fought against: despotism, nationalism, and tyranny. He is guilty of the very arguments that caused Paine to write "The Rights of Man":

But Mr. Burke appears to have no idea of principles when he is contemplating Governments. "Ten years ago," says he, "I could have felicitated France on her having a Government, without inquiring what the nature of that Government was, or how it was administered." Is this the language of a rational man? Is it the language of a heart feeling as it ought to feel for the rights and happiness of the human race? On this ground, Mr. Burke must compliment all the Governments in the world, while the victims who suffer under them, whether sold into slavery, or tortured out of existence, are wholly forgotten. It is power, and not principles, that Mr. Burke venerates; and under this abominable depravity he is disqualified to judge between them.

It doesn't matter what the White House had in mind. The result is that American volunteers -- men and women who loved liberty enough to pledge their lives to the Constitution, a document where the word "democracy" never appears -- fought and died to free a people suffering under a tyranny much worse than that the tyranny Paine lauded the French for throwing off.

It really disgusts me that so called libertarians are against any sort of action by the US. There is no doubt in my mind that until about a month ago, Saddam Hussain was the greatest threat to liberty in the world. Not, perhaps, American liberty, but human liberty.

Zinn praises the foreign press for giving us "the full picture of human suffering caused by our bombing". What this press fails to show is us the full picture of human suffering under the Baath regime. You don't see the mass graves that are five years old in the press he lauds; you only see the small fresh graves. To see the full picture of suffering in Iraq, you must look to the Iraqis. I'll quote Awad Nasir, who's article appears below:

The U.S. and its allies should be prepared to take a further risk, and ignore the supposedly disinterested advice of France, Russia and the Arab regimes to salvage the political and social legacy of the dictatorship. Last February, the U.S. and Britain stood firm and insisted that Iraq must be liberated, regardless of whatever anyone might say. Today, they must remain equally firm in asserting that Iraq must be democratized. They should not leave Iraq until they are asked to do so by a freely elected Iraqi regime in Baghdad.
In the meantime Jacques Chirac, Vladimir Putin, Kofi Annan and others have no authority to speak on behalf of my people.

If you truly love liberty, then there is no way that you can turn a blind eye to the tyranny that the Iraqi people lived under, and claim that it wasn't worth American lives to free those millions of people. It would be worth a million deaths to free the Iraqi people. I can only be free if you are free; Zinn seems to have forgotten this axiom.

2003-05-08T17:00:00.000-05:00

The Lemon: History Of The Internet

My favorite part is in 2001:

Cats becomes sole proprietor of all your base. Every Zig moved.

2003-05-08T15:23:00.000-05:00

An Iraqi poet celebrates the dictator's fall

I hope that this soliloquy will survive on the internet like Gordon Sinclair's speech:

Let me confess something: I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw Saddam Hussein's statue toppled in Baghdad.
I am a poet and know that eyes can, and do, deceive.
For three decades, part of them spent in prison, part in hiding and part in exile, I had often dreamed of an end to the nightmare of the Baathist-fascist regime. But I had never dreamed that the end, that is to say Iraq's liberation, would come the way it did.
Again and again, I watched the footage showing the fall of the statue. It was as if I was afraid it might slip from the realm of my memory. But it was not until my sister, whom I had not seen for years, phoned me from Baghdad that I was convinced that "The Vampire" had fallen and that we were free.
"Hello Awad," my sister said, her voice trembling. "The nightmare is over. We are free. Do you realize? We are free!"
It was not the mullahs of Tehran and their Islamic Revolutionary Guards who liberated the Iraqi Shiites.
Nor was it Turkey's army that came to rescue the Iraqi Turkomans from Saddam's clutches.
Amr Moussa, the Arab League's secretary-general, and the corrupt regimes he speaks for, did not liberate Iraqi Arab nationalists.
Iraq's democrats, now setting up their parties and publishing their newspapers, were not liberated by Jacques Chirac. Nor did the European left liberate Iraq's communists, now free to resume their activities inside Iraq.
No, believe it or not, Iraqis of all faiths, ethnic backgrounds and political persuasions were liberated by young men and women who came from the other side of the world--from California and Wyoming, from New York, Glasgow, London, Sydney and Gdansk to risk their lives, and for some to die, so that my people can live in dignity.

2003-05-08T10:47:00.000-05:00

U.S. sees proof of biolab -- The Washington Times

Hawks: 4
Doves: 0

First, the doves said that Saddam had no connection with terrorism. Now we have the Palestinian terror groups complaining that they aren't receiving millions of dollars from Iraq. We have documents linking Iraqi intelligence to Osama bin Laden. We have an aircraft mock-up designed to train terrorists for hijackings. We have terrorist leaders being killed in Iraq. We have piles and piles of evidence connecting Saddam to international terror.

The second thing that that doves claimed was that Saddam was complying with the UN Sanctions. He blew that assertion out of the water on the first night of the shooting war. The sanctions and the cease-fire required him to give up all missiles with a range greater than about 90 miles. Every SCUD variant he fired at Kuwait violated that requirement, and he proved it night after night.

The third thing they told us was that the war was going to be a Vietnam Quagmire and there were going to be thousands of American deaths and millions of Iraqi civilian deaths. Didn't happen. What is really irking is the people (the Libertarian Party included, which I am disgusted to be a member of) who claimed that it wasn't worth a single American life to free millions of Iraqis. I haven't seen any interviews with a soldier over there who makes that racist claim.

The final thing the doves told us is that Saddam never even had WMDs. Setting aside his own admissions and the UN assertions that this wasn't true, we now have a smoking gun:

The mobile lab was found April 19 at a checkpoint that had been manned by Kurdish forces near the town of Tall Kayf, in northern Iraq. It had been in a convoy of military vehicles and was painted in military olive colors.
Inside the truck, officials found a fermenter, gas cylinders to supply clean air for production, and a system to filter exhaust gas and "eliminate any signature of production," Mr. Cambone said.
"The fermenters are used for growing cultures," he said. "And the recovery systems make air filtration unnecessary ... and prevent the release of signs indicating the fermentation process." He said that the gas recovery system is not used for any commercial biological purpose.
A detailed description of the truck was given by Mr. Powell during an intelligence briefing on Iraq's weapons programs in February before the U.N. Security Council.

If I was the president, I would put this truck on a cargo plane, fly it to New York, and park it right in front of the UN building with a cordon of Ranger guards. And unlike the National Guard at half the airports, the Ranger's weapons would be locked and loaded.

2003-05-07T13:43:00.000-05:00

Byrd criticizes Bush's carrier visit -- The Washington Times

"I am loath to think of an aircraft carrier being used as an advertising backdrop for a presidential political slogan, and yet that is what I saw," he said.
Administration officials said the president went to the carrier to thank the troops for a job well done in Iraq.

Hmm. I don't seem to remember Byrd being quite this livid the last time this happened. (And for the exact same express reason, to boot.)

2003-05-07T12:44:00.000-05:00

Wave Sanctions at Them

There is no direct link to this one, so I am going to quote the whole thing before it disappears down the memory hole:

Unarmed in Afghanistan
Tuesday, May 6, 2003 --Canadian soldiers are back in Afghanistan, but this time, they don't have any weapons to help protect them. In Ottawa's rush to put Canadian troops on the ground, 25 elite Canadian soldiers arrived in Afghanistan only to find that they are not allowed to carry guns. What makes the situation particularly embarrassing is that the troops have been assigned German bodyguards to protect them. A Global National exclusive report.

2003-05-04T19:20:00.000-05:00

TIME.com: Food Fight

Hunger pains can apparently turn even the most upstanding diplomat into a looter.

That's a strange analogy. That's like saying, "The DTs can apparently turn even the most upstanding lush into a boozehound."

The decision to make the cafeterias into "no pay zones" spread through the 40-acre complex like wildfire. Soon, the hungry patrons came running. "It was chaos, wild, something out of a war scene," said one Aramark executive who was present. "They took everything, even the silverware," she said. Another witness from U.N. security said the cafeteria was "stripped bare." And another told TIME that the cafeteria raid was "unbelievable, crowds of people just taking everything in sight; they stripped the place bare." And yet another astonished witness said that "chickens, turkeys, souffles, casseroles all went out the door (unpaid)."

Am I the only one who thinks this is entirely in character for the UN?

2003-05-04T19:10:00.000-05:00

Amish Tech Support: Israeli knock knock joke

Funny funny.

2003-05-02T12:49:00.000-05:00

Targeting Tommy Franks -- The Washington Times

For the people who decryed America's refusal to participate in the ICC, this is the exact thing that was taken into account in that refusal.

Gen. Tommy Franks, who valiantly led American troops to victory in Baghdad, is now the target of a lynching by a few Iraqis. Iraqi civilians are currently lodging a criminal complaint in a Belgian court against the general and other U.S. officials, accusing them of war crimes. The civilians claim that coalition forces are responsible for the indiscriminate killing of Iraqi civilians, the bombing of a marketplace in Baghdad, the shooting of an ambulance and the failure to prevent the mass looting of hospitals.

2003-05-02T12:30:00.000-05:00

Thomas Sowell: Work pays!

Sowell is picking up a drumbeat that Neal Boortz has been banging out for years. "Tax cuts for the rich" is a perjorative phrase that rarely means what the people hearing it expect it to mean.