Christian preacher arrested for saying homosexuality is a sin

Police officers are alleging that he made the remark in a voice loud enough to be overheard by others and have charged him with using abusive or insulting language, contrary to the Public Order Act.

Just remember, this is NOT persecution. Persecution does not happen hetero male honky christians, who represent the power structure in society. Thou shalt not question the power structure in society.

Roman Polanski the real victim, says Roman Polanski

In other news, Roman Polanski is a lying sack of crap with delusions of persecution.

It meets the same standards of journalistic evidence.

Movement is Standing Still, Standing Still is Retreating.

Machiavelli observed that states begin to die when they cease to grow. Over at Ace of Spaces, Monty applies this rule generally, as evolutionary biology does:

Every organism must evolve to keep pace with other organisms in their ecosystem to maintain their evolutionary fitness. In other words, you have to run very fast just to maintain you evolutionary position. Losing your evolutionary "fitness" means losing out to (or becoming lunch for) fitter organisms.

This is known as the Red Queen in ev-bio, the Thing that is to be Feared, the Thing that Keeps You Running. Our problem now is that we fend off the Red Queen not with our own efforts, but with the future labor:

In an honest society, debt is sometimes a prudent thing: debt allows for investment that builds even greater wealth. This kind of debt is an investment that society makes in the producers. (This is a contest of skill more than chance; so gambling is the wrong term.) Sometimes the investment fails, but more often it pays off splendidly. The system ends up with far more energy than it began with, and that's the name of the game. The Red Queen is defeated (if only for awhile).
But the debt our government is accruing is not that kind of debt. This is a drunkards' debt, the debt incurred by a spendthrift and wastrel.

Read the whole thing.

The Stuff We Use.

Earth Day inevitably inspires a re-assessment of our economic life; this remains the only thing about Earth Day that I respect. A few months ago, I was musing about phosphorous, food, and the remains of this cycle, suggesting that we might have to re-use what our bodies produce. And in the wake of Earth Day, Reason Magazine suggests that not just phosphorous, but a host of substances might become too costly due to current use:

“Is it realistic to predict that knowledge accumulation is so powerful as to outweigh the physical limits of physical capital services and the limited substitution possibilities for natural resources?” In other words, can increasing scientific knowledge and technological innovation overcome any limitations to economic growth posed by the depletion of non-renewable resources?
The debate over peak oil is heavily politicized, so let's set it aside and test the idea of imminent resource peaks and their consequences for economic growth on three other non-renewable resources: lithium, neodymium, and phosphorus.

 The solutions are:

• Reduce the use of Neodymium by putting AC-Induction motors in our Priuses instead.
• Re-use materials to make zinc-air or metal-air batteries instead of lithium.
• Recycle the phosphorous in our waste with NoMix toilets and improve the efficiency of fertilizer.

The key element to remember is the one truly re-usable resource: the human mind.

The Essayist # 18: Islamic Idol

I have never understood the Muslim sensitivity with regard to Mohammed. Islam finds the notion of the Incarnation ridiculous ("Far be it from His glory to have a son," saith the Quran), yet for all intents and purposes treats its human prophet as though he were divine, hence unfit for graven image. The logic behind proscriptions against idolatry dwells in confusing an image of God for His reality; a sculpture of a calf, however golden, cannot be the King of the Universe. Muslims have long accused Christianity of dancing with polytheism in regards to the Trinity, of divinizing Jesus of Nazareth; how they fail to see the degree to which they do the same escapes me.

E.J. Dionne Merits Another Fisking...

...insert your own joke here.

Things That are Not a Right.

The commonplace from the left with regard to health care is that it is, or should be, a "right" (usually with the accompanying boilerplate "In a country as rich as ours..."). The more sophisticated, such as President Obama, talk in terms of a designation between "negative" rights (free speech, religion, assembly, et al.) and "positive" rights (everything Franklin Roosevelt meant when he discussed "freedom from want"). To embrace the latter is understood as the evolved understanding.

Over at Hot Air, Ed Morrisey encounters a group of super-articulate teens claiming just that. He explains why so-called "positive rights" aren't rights. (Hat tip: Insty)

As human beings, we want to see people succeed to the point where they can feed, clothe, and care for themselves independently, as that establishes true personal freedom.  However, none of us have the right to confiscate the services of a doctor or nurse without their consent, and without their ability to set a price for their time and expertise.  We don’t have the right to walk into a grocery story to demand apples when we’re hungry, either, although we should have access to the market without bias when we can properly compensate its owner for the goods.

I can speak freely on my own, without anyone opening my mouth or putting words in it. All my right to free speech requires is that someone else not silence me. The same is true for any other so-called "negative" rights. Health care, on the other hand, requires someone else's labor to provide. To claim it as a "right" is thus to claim the labor of another. It is a difference in degree from the medieval corvee, under which a lord could take the labor of the peasants on his land without compensating them.

During the Carolingian period, the kings of France began to grant income from royal estates to lords they desired to keep well-disposed toward the crown. Unlike feudal grants of land, which were passed down from generations, and upon which the lord took up residence and possession, these gifts, or benefices, were usually in monetary form only, keeping the actual land and economic activity performed thereupon under royal control. They could be revoked at royal whim, and so encouraged obedience to royal wishes.

Freedom of speech is a right. Free Health care is a benefice. And it's only a matter of time before that benefice is denied to those deemed politically unworthy.

Confess your Whiteness!

Protein Wisdom links the usual insanity, white people are racists by virtue of being white, and any denial of this is taken as evidence of your racism. The obvious parallel is to the Inquisition, where denial of heresy was often taken as sufficient grounds to convict of heresy. A point I've made before (and been banned from web sites for saying). But commenter dicentra links a different point:

As a Canadian of Japanese ancestry, I have spent my entire adult life trying to allay the burden white people carry about their whiteness or my lack thereof. “No. I would prefer if you didn’t promote me to comply with your stupid, misguided and racist employment equity program.” Or of late: “No. I don’t find Sumo suits racist, but I find your pandering to my sensitivities very offensive.”
I have had people apologize to me for mentioning “sushi” or “Ninja” in everyday conversation. You don’t get more ridiculous than that.
So, you know what? I give up. Go ahead and knock yourselves out with guilt all you white people. In order to correct historic wrongs, all white people must hand over everything they own to me, the self-proclaimed representative of all non-white people. I will then redistribute as I see fit to all my fellow repressed non-white people. Now, maybe all you white PC, guilt-mongers will shut up and quit feeling remorse over your imagined superiority.

It's almost as though certain lefties, unable to deal with the notion that whites are not the redeemers of the world, have decided that they are the villains of the world, the "greatest murder, greatest kidnapper," in the phrase of Malcolm X. It occurs to me that this is just as racist as believing that God had ordained us to rule the world.

Earth to Honkies: WHITE PEOPLE ARE NOT SPECIAL.

Libertarians and Teh Racism

David Boaz of Cato wrote an article for Reason.com that started some pretty fierce discussions on liberties and oppressions past. A key excerpt:

Unclear on the Concept

My Pet Jawa does the best thing that can be done with aggrieved lefties. He points and laughs. (Hat tip: Ace).

When Has Counting Ever Hurt Anything?

The first thing to ask about conservatives underreporting on the census is "is this really happening?" The only noise I've seen in the wingnutosphere has been to cease the reporting of race, which, as the link notes, counterproductive to conservative goals.

Folks, there's nothing wrong with doing a head count. There's nothing wrong with the government trying to figure out how many people it has, especially as the Congress and Electoral College is determine on population. There have been censuses since 1790; this isn't a progressive evil.

I can't imagine a conservative having a problem with this. Hence, my first question.

Let's Count the Sexisms, Shall We?

Susannah Breslin sounds off on the supposed digital gender divide, and in a single paragraph managed to raise a host of dubious assertions:

But what of lady bloggers? Blogging goes against their nature, Wente asserts. “Not many women are interested enough in spitting out an opinion on current events every 20 minutes.” Blogging is little more than a glorified pissing contest, she says, and women don’t do well at competitive pissing. In fact, the fairer sex is better at listening than shouting, more invested in “relationships” than fighting. Ergo, women suck at blogging.

I guess I'll just indulge my male need to piss on things, mark my territory, and such, and state quite bluntly that this barely qualifies as a mass (such thin gruel it is) of unsupported prejudice. Women aren't interested in "spitting" (note the verb) out an opinion every 20 minutes? Has she met any? Maybe around other women, the fairer sex is reticent to speak up, but ask a man, any man, whether his experience is that women can't "spit" an opinion with regularity.

Then there's the linkage of blogging with pissing, which froths with sour grapes on several levels, sweetened with the widely-shared (among women) belief that the ladies are better at listening than shouting. It's a trifecta of non-thought.

I realize that I have laid myself well open to the charge of misogyny even by saying these things, but I am continually amazed at people who write about the sexes without recognizing the basic fact that there are two of them, and each has an opinion on the other. No man of education ever assumes that his view of his own gender is shared by women. I wonder why I so rarely find women who are aware of it, or who respect it.

Oh, THAT Liberal Media...

Channel One is lame. It's on during homeroom and I usually pay no attention. But today's broadcast featured their "coverage" of the outrage against Democratic Congressmen, and a more biased account could hardly have been offered. All the victims were Democrats, all the perps, Tea Partiers. No mention of the bullet in Cantor's office, no mention of the voicemail Jean Schmidt (R-OH) received. And obviously, no mention of this.

Why can't Lefties be honest?

Good ol' Belmont...

Giving us good cheer in these happy times:

Fear is probably the last thing that needs selling. It’s already creeping like a vast shadow. The real problem now is not whether there’s something to worry about, but how to get out from under. The terrible skeins are all coming together: the accumulated fecklessness, the foreign policy misjudgements, the deception and the unkeepable promises are gathering like a terrible storm. An entire era has come to the end of a joy-ride. The bill has come due; and everyone is doing a courtesy reach-around for his empty wallet hoping that someone else can pay for what they can’t.

Enjoy the weekend.

Why We're Screwed.

China's going to blow:

Unlike Western democracies, whose central banks can pump a lot of money into the financial system but can’t force banks to lend or consumers and corporations to spend, China can achieve both at lightning speed.
The government controls the banks, so it can make them lend, and it can force state-owned enterprises (one-third of the economy) to borrow and to spend. Also, because the rule of law and human and property rights are still underdeveloped, China can spend infrastructure project money very fast – if a school is in the way of a road the government wants to build, it becomes a casualty for the greater good.
Government is horrible at allocating large amounts of capital, especially at the speed it is done in China. Political decisions (driven by the goal of full employment) are often uneconomical, and corruption and cronyism result in projects that destroy value.
To maintain high employment, China has poured money into infrastructure and real estate projects. This explains why, in 2009, new floor space doubled and residential real estate prices surged 25 percent. This also explains why the Chinese keep building new skyscrapers even though existing ones are still vacant.
The enormous stimulus has exacerbated problems that already existed, threatening to turn China into a less shiny but more drastic version of debt-riddled Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

The Problem With ObamaCare

Over at Protein Wisdom, dicentra issues a pretty solid denunciation of what Pelosi's bill is and what it will accomplish:

"I Hope You Die," is not a threat.

This morning, the radio played what it described as "death threats" left  on the voicemails of various Democrat Congressman who voted for ObamaCare, especially Bart Stupak, who got played like a cheap fiddle by the President and Speaker.

Not one of them actually constituted a death threat. The worst of them was "I hope you die!", a hot-headed and uncivil thing to hear, to be sure. You could call it a "death wish" if you want, and you could call it a narrow distinction. But the reason language exists is so that distinctions can be made. And wishing that someone would drop dead, however morally lacking, is leagues away from promising to kill them, even unseriously.

What I don't understand is the media and Left clutching their fans and smelling salts as though this did not happen during the Bush Years. Politics is a sport played by the passionate. People lose their minds and shout hyperbole. Why can't we have a media that either decides it's all horrific rudeness and a threat to the republic, or it's all bold speaking-truth-to-power? Pick a standard and apply it equally.

What's the problem with that?

UPDATE: See this, this is a threat:

Cantor said "a bullet was shot through the window" of his campaign office. The incident happened Monday, Fox News has learned, the latest in a rash of apparent threats and acts of intimidation against members of Congress. Most of the threats so far have been reported by Democrats, but Cantor -- the No. 2 Republican in the House -- is one of about 10 lawmakers who has asked for increased security protection, Fox News has learned.

Matthews: Refusing to buy Health Insurance is like Refusing to Serve Blacks

Bwah?

Oh, it's all "interstate commerce." If you can make people sell products to black people, then you can make people buy health insurance.

That is so exactly what James Madison had in mind about "interstate commerce."

Waste in Baltimore City Government.

In other news, Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.

Why do I get the feeling that Parks & Rec has been laden with the city's sins?

Especially given that the city government is getting a pay raise? 

On We Blindly Stumble...

The Health care bill is a sham. It won't work. It can't work. When has the government ever reduced costs on anything? I can't imagine being one of the people who believes otherwise. They're like battered wives; oh, this time he really means it. No, he doesn't. He means to take whatever you have and that you should feel grateful for having him take it. None of your backtalk, woman. Now get the slop on the table.

In America, the scope and size of government is the issue. It's always been the issue. What else could a free people argue about, but how far their freedom goes? And now, thanks to the desire of progressives to insure equal outcomes from unequal incomes, we will watch freedom go very far away.

The Essayist #17: The Oppressor is Named.

Back when I was in college, I thought long and hard about the inherent oddities of my position: there I was, the military brat, the second of my surname to go to a university, and I was studying to become...what, exactly? A Foreign Service Agent? A perma-student? What was my productive work? Where did I belong? With my leftyish friends, embracing Derrida and Foucault, or with the kids in the College Republicans who tended to hold me at arm's length, and at any case never got drunk on Monday nights playing Diplomacy while extensively quoting Monty Python?

Twelve years, 7-8 jobs, and a long time earning my living as a teacher later, and I know what I am; precisely the term Lenin used when he arrived at Finland Station: a man of letters. An intellectual. But this discovery has not lessened the tension of my life one bit.  I am, as I was then, a rebel against my class.

But can such a class actually exist? Have not the intelligensia existed since the rise of the Sumerian scribes? Yes, and yes. And I'm not the first to say so. The Volokh Conspiracy here quotes the critical-theory journal Telos on the rise of New Class theory:

Service is Our Priority. Customers, Not So Much.

The Daily Caller, like any good wadi o'wingnuts, never misses an opportunity to compare the current congressional clusterf--- of a bill with what government health care looks like. Digging into the Daily Mail yields no information on the supposed 21 billion pounds sterling spent on "failed schemes to tackle inequality" but does yield that 487 million was spent on consultants.

But At Least They'll Have the Spotted Owl.

Nothing in this world is secure. There is no such thing as an endless supply of anything. Environmentalists know this, but routinely forget it when it comes to shackling economics to serve their ends. Behold the results (Hat tip: Insty):

"You keep using that Word. I do not think that word means what you think it means."

Now it's possible that Tom Hanks intended something other than to say our war against Japan was motivated entirely by racism and terror (at about the 3:35 mark), but frankly the segment is so fluffy that one can read anything into it (via Big Hollywood):

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Much Ado About Schools

Investigative Voice covers the kabuki about closing one school or another in Baltimore, in which two grown men argue about a term that has no business belonging in an argument about schools. Education is a process, and it will inevitably be a process with unequal outcomes. To treat it as a right is to use it as a political football, when it ought to transcend politics.

This *IS* Cable News

I don't know how I missed this -- but I did. It's the greatest thing ever:


Breaking News: Some Bullshit Happening Somewhere

No Gang of 14, Says Current Majority

...as the cycle of hypocrisy spins (Hat Tip: Insty)

I await E.J. Dionne's learned commentary on how we "need those guys to watch those other guys," or something.

Golly Goshers! A Person of Color!

At a Tea Party Rally!



You may say it's one lone black man, but that's still one more than MSNBC has hosting its news lineup, if you care about that sort of thing.

And Your Farts Smell Bad, Too...

The Clean Car Myth, exploded.

It Explains the Whole Anakin = Chosen One Thing.

(Hat tip: Ace)

Politics is Retarded.

Somewhere in Massachusetts a committee of like-minded citizens gathered yesterday to deal with one of the most grave issues affecting the state:

The word "retarded." (Hat tip: Jules Crittenden)

"Never saw a rich man go to jail..."

...you've never been to Baltimore, then. They guy who conspired to fix tax liens and ground rents got 18-months in the pokey and an $800,000 fine.

Now, if he'd been a connected man...

Hait & Chile, Wealth & Poverty

Economic opportunity & social justice. Funny how the latter ends up a pyramid of human skulls. (Hat Tip: Insty)

Granted, Haiti's had a dearth of any kind of justice. But even if the Haitian government was competent, it might not have made any difference:

Chile also has some of the world's strictest building codes. That makes sense for a country that straddles two massive tectonic plates. But having codes is one thing, enforcing them is another. The quality and consistency of enforcement is typically correlated to the wealth of nations. The poorer the country, the likelier people are to scrimp on rebar, or use poor quality concrete, or lie about compliance. In the Sichuan earthquake of 2008, thousands of children were buried under schools also built according to code.

The state can enforce. It cannot create, nor lift one single person from drudgery and exploitation. That requires wealth.

Olbermann = Pwn3d.

At some point I'm going to tire of Captain Integrity as much as everyone else has, but again, since he's responsible for the Essayist coming back from the dead, I am duty bound to report this story to the bitter end.

Apparently the Congressional Black Caucus is unsatisfied with Olbergruppenfuhrer's claim of diversity.

"Big Tent Libertarianism"

Enjoy libertarians accusing each other of heresy. The above phrase appears, seemingly without irony.

Bruce Bartlett: The Money Needs to Come From Somewhere

Bruce Bartlett, formerly of the Reagan administration and recent heretic on Supply Side Economics, makes a couple of serious points:

1. We've probably hit the bottom of the supply-side barrel, lowering taxes is probably not the wisest thing given our current public debt.
2. If the political will to truly reduce spending does not exist, then taxes must be raised to cover them. He suggests a VAT to pay for them.

I rather agree with the first point, and while I see the argument behind the second, I do not agree. Polticial will is not set in stone. In January of 2009 no one could possibly have seen the popularity of a bi-partisan anti-government movement, the election of a Republican to Ted Kennedy's seat. Just because no re-structuring of our public commitments has succeeded doesnt mean it is impossible.

Moreover, to raise taxes to meet public commitments is, in all bluntness, to reward bad behavior. For a century progressives have expanded the role of the state into as many aspects of private life as they could muster the votes for. At this writing, they show no sign of ever stopping that. To pay for a debt that should never have been incurred in the first place without making some effort at preventing this again is only marginally more responsible than endless deficit spending.

So, the dislocations of shutting down the government's massive role in our economy, or the slow starvation of that economy and any pretense of liberty for the sake of feeding the Progressive Leviathan. Place your bets.

Baltimore is Dying.

Last night I was the door man for Investigative Voice's 1-year anniversary party, which featured a six-person panel discussion on the state of the city. Former Mayor Sheila Dixon was on Hand, as well as a scattering of the rest of the commentariat, from police-commissioner-turned-radio-host Ed Norris to the local head of the NAACP. And they said:

Stuff

And the audience asked them keen questions, loaded with

Blah

And after a while it sounded like the same Hot Potato game, like we were looking for someone to blame and drive out of town, loaded with our sins, be it the Police Department, City Hall, or the Media. One gentleman did offer up that the communities really ought to police ourselves, and received applause, but no one picked up the train of thought.

This city is something of a sinking ship, and everyone who can is heading for the lifeboats, and the crew is too busy arguing about who was steering to think of plugging the hole.

Update: One of customers writes of the affair far more thoughtfully than I.

Barack Milhouse Diocletian Steps into the Path of History's Train

Price controls? Really?

Up until this point, he could deflect criticism of the health care plan on the grounds that it wasn't his plan. When he went to talk to the Republicans, he could say that things got into the bill that were contrary to his desires. Now he's gone and put the millstone right around his neck.

I'm so glad we elected the smart guy.

(Hat tip: Insty) 

Update: Reason.com steals my joke. Which is to say, the joke is kind of obvious, and I got my dashed-off tripe in before they could finish their researched article.

Phosphorus and the Poop Problem

In the history of civilization, cities have never been as densely populated as they are now. The reason is twofold: 1) industrialized agriculture spares human labor from needing to be on the farm, and 2) modern sewers cause the rivers of human waste that would otherwise kill everyone in cholera epidemics and the like to be kept away. Food goes into the city, poop comes out of the city, everyone wins.

Except there's a coming resource shortage that may monkey-wrench the whole cycle: Phosphorous. It's what we use to make fertilizer; it's the element that allows farmland to be used again and again. It's the stuff that runs off and causes problems in the Chesapeake. We get it largely from phosphate rock, and our use of it is incredibly innefficient:

Worldwide, according to Cordell and White, five times more phosphorus is being mined than is being consumed. Stated another way, 15 million tons of phosphorus is mined yearly to grow food, but 80 percent never reaches the dinner table: It is lost to inefficiency and waste.

Farmers use too much fertilizer and it runs off the land, polluting streams, lakes and oceans. Industrial agriculture does not plow crop residues back into the soil after the harvest. In some countries, consumers throw away a third of their food, even when much of it is still edible.

The article blames the usual culprits, meat-eating and industry, so I can already see the angle that the enviro-Left is going to take with this. If the Right had guts, they would use this as the wedge against our repulsive, quasi-Soviet agricultural subsidy system, which drives our phosphate-heavy agribusiness practices. I'm not holding my breath.

The solution: poop. Lots and lots of poop. The whole system of waste management may indeed be a waste, and the time may come, and soon, for the ultimate in personal recycling.

Andrea Tantaros on the Next Wingnut Wave

Winning elections is nice. Reforming the government is also nice. But Tantaros makes the larger point that the next pushback is cultural. Not the usual sad Custer's-Last-Stand that conservatives have called a culture war; whining about gay people and rap music is not changing the culture. If we're going to make a mark on the culture, we have to do so by actually competing in the cultural marketplace. That means our books, movies, and everything else we produce needs to not suck more than it needs to be conservative. Let the spoonful of sugar weigh more than the medicine, is my point.

The Iraq War was Won, and There Was Much Rejoicing...

yay. (Hat tip: Insty) Knife point:

Our friends died to secure this day. And here on this road in Diyala, I saw proof that the blood spilled in this backward country had value. It made the cause noble and just. This may not mean much to someone who stands in opposition to our fight, but it is the legacy of our fallen. The honor of their sacrifice. They gave their lives for others like me to come home. They died trying to preserve freedom for this woman. They confronted those who wished to dominate a people in the name of violence and religion, who wished to destroy our culture and way of life.  Even if most Americans may not understand who or what we fight, these men not only believed, many reenlisted to continue the fight until the war was won. I came home in search of that woman’s spirit in the hearts of my fellow Americans.  I came home expecting to find the sacrifice of these brave patriots revered at every turn by those who overwhelmingly sent us to war from Washington.

I’m still looking.

That's the funny thing about democracy, so noble and just in the achievement and so small and vicious in the practice. For the moment, all I can say to David Bellavia is that one day, when the fight over the war is over, and no more "gotchas" can be gotten, the real achievement of he and his comrades will be known, and the shock and awe of it will stand as solemn as the gardens of Arlington.

The Olbermann Soup

Considering it led to this blog's Lazarus-like return from oblivion, it would be remiss of me not to make mention of Daily Caller's We Watch, Because We're Paid To feature. Knife point:

Later, he replayed an old, long clip of himself as a guest on “The David Letterman Show.” Then he recycled a line about Glenn Beck — “He has the long-term memory of a Roomba” — that he had used in identical form last Friday. No one can accuse Keith Olbermann of not being a good liberal: The man loves to recycle.

The line would be better if the word "recycle" were not used twice, but rather saved to the end, but dashed off mockery is no more than this faux-Murrow deserves.

Le Scandal Sestak! Quelle Horreur!

The most scandalous thing about the Sestak Scandal is how scandalous it's not. Breathes there a soul so innocent that knows not the utter normality of such quid-pro-quoing? Deals, compromises, offers, this has been the stuff of politics since Sumer. Despite the promises of whatever Candidate of Change we elect every 16 years, it will remain the stuff of politics. That's why wingnuts like myself prefer that politics has as little stuff as possible.

More interesting than the substance of L'Affair Sestak is the fact of it. A Democratic candidate for Senate is publicly accusing a Democratic President of buying him off, before a primary election? Either Sestak hasn't thought this through, or Obama's in a lot more trouble than he's aware.

If Only the SDS had been Idealists!

For Mark Rudd to admit that the SDS really did evil things (Hat Tip: Insty) is not news, except insofar as it shows a glimmer of honesty in a poltical radical. What rather rises above the usual is the way the Chronicle of Higher Education attempts a demarcation between actions and motives:

The confession, a depressing postscript to the 1960s, solves a four-decade-long mystery. It offers a grim testament to just how mean things got at Columbia, and a sobering reminder that not all student radicals were starry-eyed idealists. In more than a couple of cases, they were power-hungry extremists jostling for control of the student-protest movement.

The naivete staggers: as though idealism never caused extremism and power-struggle. One is one to make of someone who believes that passion and a desire to change the world would stand in the way of cutting a few ethical corners for the greater good? Do they really mean to suggest that Mark Rudd was a cynic in 1968?

 

Starry-eyed Idealist. Murderous Bastard. Goatee Afficionado.

I don't know where people get the idea that utopian idealism and brutal calculation are mutually exclusive.  Even the New Testament advises being innocent as lambs and wise as serpents. Pol Pot did not kill millions for the hell of it. Sure, he enjoyed the exercise of power,  but fundamentally he, and Mao, and Lenin, and Stalin, and Napoleon and you-know-who believed in what they were doing. Believed that it would make the world so much better that the present savageries would be forgotten in the future symphonies of happiness and peace. 

If anything, idealism needs leavening with grim experience and that touch of cynicism that comes with the awareness of how truly broken the world is. Otherwise, one comes to believe that anything that will strengthen your power to act for righteousness' sake is a duty to undertake. And like Lady Macbeth, you will glibly pretend that the blood will not mark you.

Update and Bleg

If I intend to make a go of this, the old format needed to go, and a new format to match The Notion. And the promise of 90% more spittle needed a less sedate color.

And yes, I know the video below doesn't fit. I am a tech dweeb and unsure how to make it fit. Suggestions are of course welcome.

Update: Fixed. Blogger Help really is worth a damn.

Lick 'Em Tommorrow.

General David Petraeus quoting Ulysses S. Grant in the WaPo's On Leadership Video Series:



That's one of my favorite lines from the Civil War. It's vintage Grant, pure unperturbability in the face of chaos. Nor was it bravado: he turned his army right around the next morning and handed the rebels their ass, shoving them out of West Tennessee for the remainder of the war and establishing a safe base of operations against Vicksburg and the rest of the Western Theater. The last thing the Confederates were expecting to see on the morning of April 7, after knocking the Yankees around like tenpins the previous day, was to see those same Yankees pushing after them, full of fight. Not even Lee's masterful display at Chancellorsville the following year beats Shiloh for snatching victory from the jaws of defeat.

And that is a lesson about war that seems to need re-learning with every passing generation: it's not over until it's over. Afghanistan wasn't over in '03; Iraq wasn't over in '07. They're never over until one side stops fighting.

For The Sake of Clarity and CYA, Here's What I said About Obama then...

These, from my LiveJournal, on the Day After The Election, and the Day After the Inauguration.

So, um...yeah...

I guess this is my other undead blog now. And again, no explanation. I was ranting about Olbermann and it just felt...right.

I'll post some other stuff here later. For the moment, permitt me the intellectual honesty of saying that President Obama did one thing that I do like: he put money down to help build two new nuclear reactors (Hat tip: Insty).

Sure, I'd like it if  he did something about the regulatory mess that delays nuclear plant construction, but the guy is a Democrat. He's going to get garbage from the enviro-left as it is. So two thumbs up for him anyway.

The Essayist #16: Today's Special Comment -- Keith Olbermann is a Racist Swine.

I know, I know, fish in a barrel, cheap shot, giving him attention he doesn't deserve, yadda yadda. Don't care. For reasons passing understanding, while flipping through the channels last night, I left it on MSNBC long enough to catch Olbergruppenfuhrer's Special Comment, all about how anyone and everyone who has any affinity for the Tea Party movement is merely a Klansman in drag.

That means you, honky.

Finality

I write this with no clear purpose in mind, nor any place to arrive, as it has been a long hard few months.

Money depresses me. I have been, for most of my adult life, bad at managing it, bad at living within my means, bad at disciplining myself to fix either of these.

My career, such as it is, depresses me. I don't seem to have one. I have a part-time job that pays badly, which I took to supplement my income as a substitute teacher, and if it seems as though that is a regressive step in my career as an educator, that's because it is. Despite a year of subbing, five years experience teaching, professional certificate, and a visit to a job-fair, I am no closer to having a job in the local public school system than I did when I left my cozy but un-lucrative private school job last June.

If this all sounds un-familiar, that's because I've rarely talked about it. I do not enjoy talking about myself, because the things I do on a daily basis are deeply unsatisfying to me. I am as mum when my wife asks me how my day was as when my parents used to ask the same question in middle school. I simply can't talk about it, because it reminds me of how much I hate it (you'll note I don't mention what my part-time job involves).

And if I hate my life, isn't that my problem? Yes, it is. My problem, and my fault. I am an educated man in a free society. There is not a soul on earth who is responsible for my lot in life other than myself. If I am to fix my life, than I first must fix myself, and become the man who can get the things I want.

That means making serious decisions and sticking to them. That means cutting away the loose ends of things that do not matter. Which brings me to the subject of addressing my six readers, and telling them that it's time to kill another blog.

Okay, so I did have a purpose in mind, I guess. But when I wrote those words, I was still deciding.

As I've mentioned before, this blog has never been what I've wanted it to be. Again, this redounds to me, who either badly concieved it (a weekly blog? please) or badly executed it (might as well have kept The Notion going, for all the good the switch did me). But the fact is, I'm never going to be able to join the blogger big boys. My heart is just not in it, so why continue the charade? I haven't continued it for three months, and what, two months before that? I believe my sub-concious is trying to tell me something.

I write this after spending a couple of days re-joining the blogosphere, as it were, catching up on all the amusement that the back and forth can offer. I've called out a jihadist and threw a stone at the notion that men are traditionaly "afraid of commitment". And it was fun. But I don't really have time for the full conversation. And if that's the case, why pretend that it really means that much?

Plus, Blogger is annoying me. this is the second time I've had to reset my password through Google. Sure, it's probably an automatic 'bot employed against we lazy posters, but it's still irritating. I'm not about to support another layer of code between me and my dashboard. So stick it, Google, you commie rag-picker!

And that is that. I'll leave the beast up here, for none to enjoy. If ever I pick the digital pen up again, it will be with a narrower purpose, and perhaps with some more credential behind me. And it will probably be on typepad.

Thanks for reading. I'm going to fix a few things right now.

Oh, Piss off, I was busy...

...getting married, among other things. And taking on new projects, and every other lame excuse I could mention. I have once more been considering kicking this puppy to the curb and moving on down the road.

Instead, I'm gonna try to revive my original intent for this blog, which was to be a weekly column of considered work, rather than dashed-off tripe in the mold of other, better folks. We shall see how that happens.

Cheers.

Go Tell the Spartans

In response to posts such as this, I think it good to mention my take on 300. My short review is as follows: It's a graphic novel turned into a film, and as such, thoroughly enjoyable.

My longer review: action scenes great, alternating between the chaos of battle and the tactics which impose order on that chaos. Dialogue windy but not horrible (a shame that movie Spartans can't be, uh, laconic). Historically, the film's incomplete to off. The most accurate portrayal, aside from the intro on Spartan boyhood, was of the uniforms of the warriors, from the red cloaks to the shields with the L on them (L for, uh, Laconia). Only problem is, that the bronze breastplates seem to be missing.

Larger than that is the fact that the real heroism of Thermopylae is missing. Leonidas didn't march against the Persians alone, but with a combined Greek army, including Athenians, Corinthians, Thebans, the lot. It was outflanked, and Leonidas volunteered his boys to hold the pass so that the rest could live to fight another day. It was a sacrifice to save the military strength of Greece, not a showing-off to rally the people. Spartans did not throw their lives away so that philsophers would admire them.

The bit about the Persian envoys getting tossed down the well and Leonidas telling Xerxes to "come and take" the Spartan arms appears to be legit, though. And like I said it's a comic book, with all the intensity from plot-frugality that suggests.

So check it out. There isn't much else worth seeing.

And Spank Me! And Me!

This post over at Protein Wisdom makes me ponder something I have long been pondering ("I 'fink so, Brain, but..."): the fact that victimization is the path to power in the modern age.

It isn't just that certain segments of society claim to be oppressed. Everyone does, be they of the Right or the Left, poor or middle class (and Ayn Rand even made a fair argument that the rich and powerful can be oppressed). Every rabble rouse begins with the pretense that the other side is a group of tyrannical psychotics devoted to the implementation of their hideously ill-informed social model, regardless of the real-life damage it does to those that they never see, and that the People! Must! Rise! More, that they are willing to silence ("marginalize") anyone who has the courage to stand against their madness.

Remember 1994, the year of the "Angry White Male"? Lefty chatterboxes had a pile of fun going after that one. How on earth could a white male feel oppressed in America? Ridiculous. Laughable. Yet the idea worked. The fact that some didn't think the AWM's had the right to feel oppressed changed not the fact that many of them did, and were willing to vote for those that said they would represent the AWM's feelings and redress their percieved wrongs.

Thus, the perception of oppression: making people believe that you are wronged, is a path to a place at the table, regardless of whether you bring anything to that table other than the hunger to be fed. Naked power, without expectation of restraint or result, belongs to him who sells his wretchedness with a scapegoat.

Sounds like more proof that we live in the Age of Revolution.

With Republicans Like This...

Living in the People's State of Baltimorea (which some call Maryland), generally one appreciates Republicans where one can find them, especially as I live in one of the Republican counties of that state. So you can imagine my dismay to discover that my Congressman, Wayne Gilchrest (R-1st Dystrict) voted for the Non-Binding Declarlation of Political Expediency.

Money Quote:

We need a sense of urgency to end our presence there and stop the violence
that has left over 3,100 American soldiers dead, and many more thousands
wounded. If sending more troops was the answer, I would be the first to support
that effort. But the Iraqi people have suffered enough and the military
families who have loved ones in harm’s way have sacrificed enough.

Meaning what? That we should retreat and say the hell with it? Or do something else, unnamed and so far, unpondered, but not surge?

In a war, someone wins and someone loses. Is Wayne saying we've already lost, or is he suggesting that we might have lost, pending the outcome of the surge that's happening regardless of this resolution.

This is sickening. For a man to cross the aisle like this, to vote for something that changes nothing, accomplishes nothing but a theoretically crowd-pleasing "truth to power" moment, against a war that he has thus far consistently supported, is either an act of gamesmanship or a massive act of Vietnam Syndrome flash-backing by a decorated Marine Platoon Seargent.

You can bet that there's a letter getting shot off. Will post when I compose it.

The Plan and the Problems.

Pat Dollard says the plan is multifacted, learns from mistakes, and is aggressive. A few points:

1. U.S. troops are to be gradually pulled back from all Iraqi cities and
towns and sent to seal the borders with Iran and Syria. The real insurgency is
not indigenous to Iraq, but being pumped in through Iran and Syria.

4. Generals and leaders from Saddam’s Baath party, many out of work for three years, will be encouraged to rejoin the military enticed with high-pay and bonuses designed to serve as retrograde pay for their time off. The Baath party generals will be key to victory in Al Anbar Province, as I will lay out later today or tomorrow.

9. Immediate, highly visible Infrastructure improvement first focused on the peaceful and cooperative areas of Mosul, Amara and Karbala. The idea is to make other areas around jealous of the rapidly modernizing cities, in order to incent them to tow the line of cooperation with the new Iraqi Government.

All of which begs the question of why no one thought of such before. I think that a counterinsurgency campaign is an exercise in trial-and-error; first one must accept that the insurgency exists, and second, that one can't merely blow it away either with bullets or ballots. Hopefully, this plan will yield verifiable results in a relatively quick time frame. As Lincoln in '64, we are fighting the clock as well as the enemy.

Judging by this, early signs are not promising. However, note the following:

It also appeared to fit a pattern emerging among the suspected Sunni
militants: trying to hit U.S. forces harder outside the capital rather than
confront them on the streets during a massive American-led security
operation.

Almost sounds as though the countryside was where they were coming from, don't it?

Since It's So Obvious that Iraq = Vietnam...

Let's look at the results of pulling out of that war. Lawrence Haas does, and look what he discovers:

In 1975, a Democratic Congress cut off funds for the U.S. effort in Vietnam. The public, disillusioned over Vietnam and Watergate, elected Jimmy Carter, who promised honesty and applauded the end of “our irrational fear of Communism.”

As America turned inward in the late 1970s, enemies sensed our vulnerability and dangers mounted. The fear of communism was not so irrational after all. In Ethiopia, Angola, Rhodesia and elsewhere, the Soviet Union or Cuba worked to stoke Third World revolution. The Soviets more openly laid bare their expansionist agenda in late 1979 by invading Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, the Islamic Revolution in Iran of 1979 toppled a staunch U.S. ally. The student seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran, leading to a 444-day hostage crisis, painted a picture of American impotence.

All of which resulted in the election of Ronald Reagan and a new belligerent American foreign policy, which further institutionalized the belief that Republicans are the hawk party and Democrats the dove party. Note as well the connection between the post-Vietnam era and the rise of current enemies.

The fact that this is penned by Gore's former communications director gives me hope that someone on the other side of the aisle appreciates that the post-Iraq situation will need to be handled by something other than blaming Bush for all our troubles. As I've recently been bothering the Commisar at Politburo Diktat, a conservative who's changed his mind about Iraq, I've been waiting six years for the Democrats and the Left to come up with alternative strategies to defeat the jihadis. So far, zilch. If that changes, I'll be the first to applaud it, and the courage of any Democrats to push against their extremists in doing so.

Blog Stuff

Updated a few links, and in adding Pajamas, found Camille Paglia's return to Salon. I'm nowhere near as interested in her as I was in my college days, and more or less made my departure from her obvious back in 2003 with a post at the Notion that I can't link because I can't get the archives to display (grrrrr....). Also, I'd like it if she wrote about pop culture without working over things I'm tired of hearing about (Anna Nicole Smith, Madonna), and was able to discuss the Iraq war without sounding like a Kossite (and that she would finish the second volume of Sexual Personae already), but she backs me up that Romney will be a formidable candidate and that Obama is not ready for prime time. So maybe I'll pay some more attention.

For What it's Worth...

Here's what USA Today says about civvy casualties in Iraq.

Like I've said, this is the sort of thing that's been promised before. And I think it's a bit early to talk about a monthly trend when the month isn't over. And even if it's true, we've seen things dip and peak with tedious regularity. But, there it is.

I have a problem...

This post made me actually laugh at the prospect of the Dixie Chicks being assaulted. I think I need to vent on this issue.

Al-Sadr, Where is he? I don't know, I don't know...

Not Iraq! (cheers)

I think I can pierce the mystery:

1. Sadr is one of the bulwarks of PM Maliki of Iraq.
2. Maliki has been under pressure from Bush to man up and start dealing with all the militias.
3. Sadr leaves the country before the American and Iraqi army start to bring the pain.
4. The reason we didn't wack Sadr back in 2004 was because he had the protection of the Shi'ite religious establishment, whom we did not want to offend.

Conclusion: a deal was reached with the al-Sistani, the Iraqi Ayatollah, that we would be permitted to go after Sadr's army provided that Sadr himself was not harmed. Sadr conveniently blows town and lets his lieutenants take the fall. I wouldn't be at all surprised if he returns post-surge and remains a noisy, albeit non-paramilitary force in Iraq for decades to come.

Empires Rise and Fall, Cultures Diffuse, Religions are Born and Die...

...but Chicago is still a bucket of sleaze, wrapped in a box of corruption, floating in a sewer of apathy. Gatewaypundit has the skinny.

And the comments suggest that Obama might be one of their peeps.

More Obamalamadingdong

Is the country ready to accept a black president? Probably.

Is the country ready to accept a woman president? Don't see why not.

Is the country ready to accept a Mormon president? It'll take a touch of salesmanship, but yes.

But the country is not ready to accept a smoking President. Hence, MoDo and the whole crowd now feel fully justified in sending him down the river.

One Man's Inconvenient Truth...

...is another man's rebellious editorial. Further evidence to my theory that we're all revolutionaries, or think we are, nowadays.

I remember a few years ago, thinking, surely activity on the Sun would make as big an effect on global temperatures as anything we do? Had no science to back it up, though. Not sure if I have it now, either. All I know is I do not trust the people who tell me that there is no debate.

Obama vs. the Great Australian Chickenhawk

I leave the appropriateness of John Howard's remarks to another man to decipher. But it seems to me that Obama's retort is a little un-just.

Australia's population is estimated at about 20-21 million people, far less than one-tenth of the United States. Moreover, Australia's military only numbers about 51,000 full-time troops and 19,400 reservists. With this force, Howard must keep commitments in Iraq, Afghanistan, East Timor, The Solomon Islands, and Malaysia, plus, you know, defend the sixth-largest country in the world.

By comparison, the U.S. Armed Forces (all five branches) has 2,685,713 members. Our troops in Iraq thus constitutes approximately 5.2% of our total military strength. Australia's? 2.7%. Factor in the budget support (US$522 Billion vs. A$22 Billion), each military recieves, and I think it's fair to say that the Aussies are pulling their weight. At any rate, the 20,000 more that Obama suggests would be, at this juncture, an unmanageable strain.

I'm going to assume that Golden Boy just didn't know this.

Further Essayist Useless 2008 Presidential Predictions

Or, Hail the Wounded Elephants

Pollster.com:

Collectively, these results support an intriguing possibility: Both Republican frontrunners may end up with problems with conservative, religious and/or committed Republicans, leaving a huge opening for a third candidate in the early primaries.

Duh. Meaning Romney, who's been working at this for a while, will have the advantage down the stretch. Also that true-blue cons like Tancredo and Huckabee will grow stronger as the race progresses.

George I, William I, George II, Hillary I?*

Michael Barone's take on the burgeoning dynasticism of our politics offers an interesting explanation: that the politicizing of First Ladies leads increasingly to the politicizing of families, and thus, the current War of the Roses.

Not that this is the first time Powerful Families have taken the top job: Before the Bushes and the Clintons were the Adamses, the Harrisons, and the Kennedys. But both Adamses were one-term presidents (and from different parties, at that), as were both Harrisons, and the Kennedy dynasty is at best still-born. The fact that George W. became president but eight years after his father left the post, that another brother waits in the wings for his chance, that Hilary may be poised to repeat W's feat, that is a horse of rather a different color.

All of which is depended on Hillary actually winning. If she doesn't, then the spell of dynastic power will be broken. I think the revulsion to Royal Presidencies may rear its head even if Hillary should win; monarchs are something Americans enjoy other countries to have.


*I am fully aware that George I should really be George II, and George II, George III, because of George Washington. Also, Bill Clinton would really be William IV (after William Henry Harrison, William McKinley, and William Howard Taft. For that matter, we've had four Johns, six Jameses, two Andrews, and two Franklins. I am a geek.

The Essayist's Useless '08 Presidential Predictions.

Following another Instapundit link like the truffle-drunk pig I am, I happen upon this holding-of-breath over the Romney bid, which typically devolves into a WTF over the Obamalamadingdong bid. For the latter, I write this in the comments section:

Obama is running on his SuperStar! power, nothing more. As soon as he's asked a question of any weight, he'll reveal himself for the mountain of inexperience he is, and sad-eyed true believers will cherish the Lost Hope like Bobby '68ers, for decades.

For the former, I'll say that I've thought him the man to beat for at least a year, ever since I saw him on C-Span2 Late one night, talking to a Republican gathering in Iowa. In 2006. And what's more, he was an interesting and intelligent speaker. I said then, "He's way ahead of everybody in the field."

The New Tipping Point

Let's say that this article in the New York Sun is overstating it's case. We've been promised "turnaround" in Iraq a couple of times before, only to see more bombings. But note the criteria of promised victory: enemy demoralization. We have been told it is impossible to demoralize our enemy, that they are driven by an inscrutable fury. Is such an assumption truly supportable? If not, how may we convince our political class of it?

Thanks for the Day Off, Martin...

Martin Luther King Day sucks.

When I was in elementary school, every year we watched the same video about him. How he couldn't play with a white friend when he was little. About how he became a preacher. About how he stood up to the man non-violently, got arrested time and time again, and won a victory paramount to Ghandi's. And about how he was killed by a stupid little three-named cracker just because. By the time I was in fifth grade, I had it memorized.

I found out when I was in college was a player he was, and was actively nauseated. But if we can forgive Jefferson, we can forgive King and arguaby lesser offense. Nevertheless, I am weary of the noise about him, and especially about his "day".

The Examiner yesterday had an editorial about how MLK day should be a "day on," instead of a "day off." I didn't read it. I've heard that tune as many times as I heard "killing the man who said 'Love your enemies'" in elementary school. It's the same old routine every year: We mention the guy in passing and proceed to talk about his "legacy" and whether there's been "enough" "progress" since he died, and what "he would have done" had he not. I've yet to hear anything truly meaningful arouse from these. They've become ritual, an act of contrition: Bless us Martin, for we have thought insufficiently about what it means to be Black in America.

Jeff Goldstein tries to dismiss race, and raises a hydra of nonsense. What it "means" is whatever we decide it means, except we haven't decided. Unless we have.

I'm a pasty white honky with a nasal tinge to my voice. I haven't the foggiest notion of what it means to be Black in America, and I don't care either. As long as it means that you can vote and own property and sue and raise your voice like everybody else, I'm uninterested. I don't feel and particular obligation to help them, any more than I would help any other person. Whatever's "wrong" with the "black community" (euphemisms are fun!), I'm going to leave for that community to sort out for itself.

To my mind, Black Americans are in a position roughly analogous to Irish Americans, who were the original unwanted immigrant group, who also grabbed for political power as a way out of their troubles, and who also grew economically more slowly than did other groups that "came up" around their time. That's sad, but it also means that they too will have their day in the sun, to the extent that they haven't already. And it will happen from their own labor and their own freedoms, regardless of what MLK would have said or done, and regardless of what the Man thinks about it.

And if such be true, then I thank the man for his labors, and the day off.

Hip Pappy Nuh Yr

2007. This bizarre, un-nicknamed ("aughts"? Please.), decade of interesting times is running to a close. It will be 2010 before we know it.

I'm celebrating the new year by hooking up my computer at my new house to my new DSL via wireless and waving bye-bye to dial-up, hopefully forever. I plan on cleaning up this site a little, re-focusing, re-commenting, etc. but I'm still working to jobs and won't have a lot of time to post. With a bit of luck, elbow grease, and good old-fashioned frenzy, by the mid-point of the year all this will have settled down some.




Saddam strung up like a horse-thief. Huzzah. No need for the blog devoted to his trial then. Snipped lively. On we go.

"We can walk away from this enemy, but they will not walk away from us,"

That's General Abizaid talking at Harvard. The fact that I still feel the need to make that argument is suggestive either of my paranoia or my accurate sense of the coming betrayal. I dearly hope it's not the latter.

Pelosi says, "Kitchen Girl, Make Me a Dacquiri..."

More She Who Does Not Blink coverage, courtesy of Protein Wisdom.

The Dumping of Bush

Or, "All Breath Returns to the Father..."

Sniff around on some of the righty blogs, and scan the comments, and you'll see the continuing fed-up-ness with W, who, having won the second term that his father was denied, seems bent on having the second term his father would have had, which is to say, a term of rubbery befuddlement and betrayal of those that elected him (here and here are good examples).

All of which means, that if a candidate can be found who promises to fight them on the beaches, in the mountains, wherever the last dregs of them are to be found, who wants to expand the military and train it in Advanced Jihadi Scalp-Taking, then that candidate will be difficult to defeat in '08.

And if he/she delivers, we might even get somewhere. But it will be no thanks to the socialists among us, who are busily making the world safe for fascism.

And The Pelosi-Watch Begins...

A handful of my fellow wingnuts have already laid into She Who Does Not Blink, for beginning her presumptive-Speaker election with a does of Orwellian Obfuscation not seen since "the meaning of 'is'":

"The point is this isn’t a war to win, it’s a situation to solve. And you define ‘winning’ any way you want, but you must solve this problem."

See now, all this time we thought we were fighting a war. We thought that what with the soldiers and the bombs and the death and killing and the hurting that some kind of armed conflict was going on. But that's because we're a bunch of crazy wingnuts who believe anything we're told by a guy who says he likes Jesus. These smart, post-modern, nuanced folks clearly know better: it's just a "situation." There is no "victory" or "defeat," merely a set of phenomena for which a presumably creative "solution" will be sought.

And we can define "winning" any way we want! Isn't that great? No need to worry about whether handing Iraq over to Iran will have any consequences several years down the road, why, we can just blame Bush for that! Now, back to squeezing more money out of the public fisc and doling it out, like the spoils of war, on our favorite designated victims groups!

What makes it all truly, deeply, glamorously suck is the fact that our President seems to have lost all backbone. Sure, I suppose finally accepting Rummy's resignation was in order, but did he have to dig back into his father's bullpen? Does he really believe that, at this point in the political cycle, that the wisest thing to do is to emulate the first Republican since Herbert Hoover NOT to get re-elected? That we need Jimmy Expletive Carter's National Security Adviser to guide us to mending fences with the Ayatollah?

So, by all means, let's roll out, pretend there's zero difference between the Soviet Union and Iran, and welcome those soldiers returning from that strange situation (Psst! Don't mention the war)!

So it Goes...

A right jolly spanking administered to my party. And deserved, too. Too much spending, too much pork, too little of the things we voted for two years ago delivered, et cetera, et cetera.

The loss is personally disappointing to me, because I had hoped to help turn my home state of Maryland into an actual two-party state, and instead find myself facing the the twin prospects of Cardin the Faceless growing barnacles in the Senate for the next thirty years and Pretty Boy O'Malley in the Governor's Mansion (pending absentee ballots, but that be a forlorn hope at best). Back to the People's State of Baltimorea it is then.

As for the Dems in Congress, congratulations on campaigns well run. Now...What...Are....You....Going...To...DO?

The Rub of Journalism

Instapundit linked to this Examiner Op-Ed, but he didn't post the crux of the argument:

Every year, scores of fledgling journalists pour out of liberal arts programs. Though many will need to pick through mountains of statistics in search of the truth, few have been taught the skills to do it.

They quickly become victims of advocacy groups pushing skewed statistics. Through ignorance, they may also start manufacturing their own flawed numbers. Since number-crunching beats (such as business and finance) are generally viewed as a tedious waystation en route to more interesting beats, few are enthusiastic about developing these skills. And their editors may not be in any position to help them.

The problem is compounded by the fact that journalists who do know how to read a balance sheet, run a regression, or analyze economic data, can generally get a job that pays a lot more than journalism.

If we can accept this as true for statistics, is it fair to say that the same is probably true with regard to scientific theory, history, economics, and cultural criticism?

If we can, exactly what is it that makes these people think they're so important?

The Current State of Missile Defense

Austin Bay writes in TCS DAily that we have the a missile defense system, even if thin and still emerging. This is good because a) North Korea and Iran won't really be able to threaten us, and b) they won't be able to threaten our allies, either.

I perceive a few downsides, however:

1. The system isn't flawless. This means that political pressure from the anti-ABM crowd could still dismantle or delay it past the point of usefulness.

2. Even if a robust system is developed, the result could be a strengthening rather than a weakening of the desire to hunt terrorists abroad, a false safety, if you will.

3. It does nothing to defend against a "suitcase-nuke" scenario, which, while it might not be as plausible as it once seemed, is by no means beyond the bounds of plausibility. Having an effective missile defense will, paradoxically, increase rather than decrease the need to stay on top of international terrorists, to hunt them down and damage the states that protect them, even as it potentially saps the will to do so.

Doubtless dKos has the answers to all of these.

"C'mon, Satan. Relax, Guy."

I can't have been the only one who wondered when the South Park Saddam and the real-life Saddam were going to meet.

I wonder if the movie is available in the rest of Iraq.

UPDATE: Hand-wringing here. Me, I have a hard time drumming up sympathy for the old bum, and think that after the song-and-dance he puts on at his trial, loudly claiming to still be the President and denying the validity of all around him, this is a thoroughly appropriate comeuppance.

The Devil has Been Found!

And he wants Plastic Surgery!

I knew it.

Meanwhile, in the Center Ring...

...Saddam's trials continues in the same spirit as before, and the continuing irrelevance of his antics are becoming clearer as nail after nail goes in:

The prosecution accused Saddam of ordering the Anfal campaign, and charged all the defendants with war crimes and crimes against humanity for their involvement in the Anfal campaign aimed at clearing the Kurdish along the border with Iran.

Saddam claimed that the special tribunal was illegal and refused to state his identity, only identifying himself as "the president of the republic and commander-in-chief of the armed forces."

Ken Frost, who maintains the blog, is of the opinion that "It would have been far better to conduct a Nuremberg style trial, where all crimes would have been placed before the court in one trial." And he's got a point, but that's not the way the Iraqis want it done, and I think I can understand their reasons.

Nuremberg was done for the pleasure of the conquering allies of a blasted land; Saddam's trial is being done by his own people. They apparently want every crime noted, every butchery denounced. I can't say I blame them.

Doom is Imminent. Film at Eleven.

Iraqpundit on the coninuing STORY of a nation Gone to the Dogs:

The result, according to ABC news, is “encouraging.” The network reported that in the last two weeks, there has been a significant decline in violent attacks. The Iraqi ministry of defense says that violent attacks were down 30 percent, the U.S. military says the violence was down 22 percent, and both agree the numbers are preliminary.

This comes from ABC news and the WaPo, those bastions of neocon flackery. Bet they've all got Halliburton stock.

"In the past three weeks," he writes, "the U.S. military has killed about 25 death squad leaders, and captured more than 200," according to the officer leading the sweep.

But, by all means, lets continue shouting from the rooftops that Iraq is sliding towards civil war, already in a civil war, experiencing a low-level civil war, almost nearly half-way to a declaration of the possibility of a civil war, or whatever mush-meter you please. We've got Bush to bring down, after all.

Shut Up, Hipsters. Please, Just Shut Up.

Yeah, I lied. Deal with it.

I am roused from my torpor by a variety of things, but the immediate catalyst was this typically incisive Lileks rant, especially the following:

In other words, one review talks about how the Establishment was paying people to skewer itself in the 50s, and it’s followed by another review that praises an incomprehensible 1969 “satire” for bringing hipness to the squares.

Hmm. Well. Suggestion:

It’s quite possible the squares had been hip to this long before, inasmuch as they did not believe housewives really clicked their heels when they saw what Tide could do. It’s possible the squares didn’t spend a lot of time worrying about Madison Avenue and its lies, man, its Santy-Claus lies, because it wasn’t exactly a thunderous revelation. It’s possible the squares were hip before the hipsters invented the squares.

And that, boys and girls, is the real conspiracy: the conspiracy of Hip. I happened to get my latest issue of Spin in the mail today (don't ask. long story), and the first actual article, once you made it past the bizarrely air-brushed-looking cover pic of Johnny Knoxville (hurting yourself for entertainment is AWESOME if you look good doing it), and the pages of ads for the Gap (which thunders "Long Live Individuality"), Helio Cell Phones (Yes, I called it a Cell Phone. It fits in your pocket, and you can make calls with it. It thus fits all the characteristics of a Cell Phone. I don't care if you can perform brain surgery and Play 3-D Omega Snood on it at the same time. IT'S A @%&*$##$* CELL PHONE. THANK YOU), Best Buy, Le Tigre (The shirt, I'm guessing, not the band), the Toyota Yaris (Oooh, you can play MP3's in your car! I've never done THAT before!), the MTV Video Music Awards, Meltin' Pot (presumably a jean company), some Beatle-boot manufacturer called Ben Sherman, Jeep, and Union Bay, is called "the Rebirth of Uncool". It's about a new generation of soft-rockers who want to love Hall and Oates and the Eagles proudly.

Nope. Not kidding.

This is the same magazine, purporting to be the voice of the underground, or at least to know where it could be found. This is the mag that seems to suggest by its very existence that Rolling Stone is a tool of the Establishment. And they're trying to sell us Soft-Rock. Why? Do they like Soft-Rock? Do they really think that Soft-Rock is an idea whose time has come, again?

Or are they just keeping the Music Industry Double Helix going, whilst they pretend to damn the system they cash in on? Is it just me, or is this pretense the very means by which they cash in?

Somehow, I get the feeling that if these hipster doofuses (doofii?) really really wanted to change the culture, they'd do so by, oh, I don't know, changing the culture. Instead of whining about the schlockiness of our films, theater, music, etc., they'd make better films, better theater, better music. Better not in the sense that it knew what the problem was and piled anxiety upon denuncation upon glibness underlining that fact, but better in the sense that it was timeless, moving, a reflection of something good within the creator that touched something good in everyone that encountered it. But that's hard. It requires years of painstakingly learning your craft, learning your market, paying the dues to the world of business without killing your spark while managing not to become contemptuous of your fellow man enough to express something he'll understand. And bitching's not only easier, it's profitable. Denounce the Man loud enough and the Man beats a path to your door to shower you with riches.

Well, guess what. All you empty-headed truth-talkers, you poser swine, you regurgitating aliterate dingleberrys on Stephen Colbert's backside, YOU ARE THE MAN. Aaron MacGruder is the Running Dog of Madison Avenue. Public Enemy was a Lackey of the Oppressor. Hunter Thompson was the World's Greatest Capitalist (straight Horatio Alger, man).

And I don't just mean the ones we all know about. I mean the "underground" which means nothing more than "Pop Culture Farm Club" as far as I'm concerned. I mean the tools who labor to make their "indie" "scene" "real". I mean anyone who's ever subscribed to Maximum Rock n'Roll. I mean Ian MacKaye, examplar of the Free Market.

You are all aristocrats, because you are all rebels. Or, if you don't really want to shake the world, you're useful idiots for those that do. Take your pick. I don't care.

Just shut up.

I Have Been Away...

...because I have been busy, doing nothing. As anyone who's ever seriously done nothing can attest, it can keep you very busy indeed.

But within a few days, I'll be doing some more posting. There are a few things left to say, and a few things new to say as well. Bear with me.

The Essayist #15: The Real Da Vinci Hoax

Last night Family Guy had a minor minor sub-plot involving DVC, as sure a sign as any that we've hit the coveted point of over-exposure and will beging jumping sharks. What was interesting was how tame the gag was; Lois raves to some un-seen girlfriend over how much she loved it, Stewie grabs it, spends the night reading it, and falls asleep into his porridge. That's it. Gag at the people who denounce the book and then get sucked into it? Probably. But hardly a commentary. We leave that to South Park.

An entire industry has arisen in the wake of DVC by devout Christians into refuting its historical claims: that Constantine "invented" the divinity of Christ at Nicaea, that the Bible as we know it is a purged text, a fiction imposed by Constantine, and, most incredible of all, that Christ was husband to Mary Magdalene and fathered children with her, and that his descendents include the Merovingian kings of France. To this I will add no further input, except to point out that secular historians place the authorship of most of the so-called "alternative" or Gnostic Gospels as no earlier than the 2nd century, AD, and the authorship of the canonical Gospels in the latter half of the 1st century. Beyond that, the debate seems pointless.

But this is not the "Real" Da Vinci Hoax to which my title alludes. The historical claims of Brown's book are, as I said, as old as the 2nd Century, and they have had recurrences in the past, as with the Cathars in the Middle Ages. It's an enemy the Church has to deal with from time to time, in its struggle with the identity of Christ that has been with it since the beginning. Somehow, the Church finds a way to put it down.

No, the real hoax being perpetrated on the public is that Dan Brown is a good author, and that the Da Vinci Code is a good book. I cannot find an explanation for how otherwise intelligent people would not only accept this premise, but willingly transmit it to others, raving about the wonders of it. Admittedly, I came in biased, and perhaps hyper-critical, but even I was at least prepared for Brown to give me a ripping good yarn, a page-turner, if a theologically pulpy one. He did no such thing.

I could find not one element of good writing in this book. The dialogue is hackneyed, the characters one-dimensional, and the plot entirely predictable. Even the Twist at the end surprised me not at all; I had predicted it approximately halfway through the book. The main character, Robert Langdon, a professor of symbology at Harvard, serves no purpose other than to be a mouthpiece for the Brown's views of Christianity (and they are his, for he writes a sad little statement of "Fact" for a prologue, contending that the Priory of Sion exists, and thus, all the other claims of the novel are to be taken as true). Hardly a chapter goes by without Langdon, in answering a question from stock-ingenue Sophie Neveu in multi-paragraph form, until Brown stops even the pretense of dialogue and removes the quotations, lecturing directly to the reader with all the smugness of a bored adjunct professor. Nor is it ever explained how a symbology professor knows so much about the supposedly secret Priory of Sion without himself being a member. The whole novel seems to believe that the Deep, Dark, Secret Truth is something all educated people are aware of (Sire Leigh Teabing, Langdon's tag-team partner in babble, states this rather baldly) which rather undercuts the drama.

Minor characters are no better. Perhaps the most ludicrous idea in the Da Vinci Code is that there is any such thing as a devout Catholic in Paris. Brown proceeds from the notion that in France Christianity is more than a religion, it's a birthright, and as the stand-in for this notion gives us as the stubborn police captain Bezu Fache, a figure out of Beau Geste, who inexplicably says English idioms like "do something right for a change" to fellow Frenchmen.

Adding to this catalog of Don'ts for Novel Writing is the fact that Brown seems not to have done his homework. When one writes a novel about uncovering great secrets of history, it behooves one to get ones historical details accurate. Brown seems not to have bothered with simple fact-checking. For example, he describes Godefroi de Bouillon, the supposed founder of the Priory of Sion, as a "French king." He was no such thing. Godefroi the Bouillon was a count, and a leader of the First Crusade, and by all accounts a pious man. He is counted among the Kings of Jerusalem, but he did not himself bear that title, because he disdained to wear a crown of gold where Christ had worn a crown of thorns. Instead, he made do with the style of Defender of the Holy Sepulchre. To call him a French king is entirely misleading.

Another howler occurs when Brown/Langdon has the Knights Templar established by knights of the Second Crusade, after recieving their permission from Baldwin II of Jerusalem. That would have been a neat trick, inasmuch as Baldwin II(r. 1118-1131) had been dead for fifteen years when the Second Crusade (1147-1149)happened. Both military orders (Templars and Hospitallers) did come about during Baldwin's reign, true, but it had nothing to do with the Second Crusade. If Brown had taken a momentary glance at a few history books, he would know this, but as he seems to believe that the history he writes is possessed of more "truthiness" than contemporary records, he gets basic, verifiable facts wrong. All of which leads one to take all other ideas with a grain of salt.

But the final insult is the way the entire story becomes much ado about nothing at the end. I won't bore you with the details, but suffice to say that the rug gets pulled from under the readers, and the promised Holy Grail towards which the novel has been aiming evaporates into the morning mist. Such is de rigeur in Grail lore from time immemorial, of course; despite their suffering and holiness, the seekers rarely get their hands on the Grail at the end. But when it happens in Parzival it's a commentary on the sinfulness of man, and when it happens in Monty Python, it's a parody. Brown's post-modern transformation of the Grail from a world-shattering secret cache of information to an esoteric exercise in neo-paganism ("The quest for the Holy Grail is the quest to kneel before the bones of Mary Magdalene. A journey to pray at the feet of the outcast one.") is nauseatingly hollow, and a literary cop-out unseen since the days of Henry Miller.

To sum up: dull characterizations, bad dialogue, stupid factual errors, and a lame climax. And he's sold millions of copies worldwide, raided Hollywood, and been name-dropped on trendy shows.

All because we just can't accept a celibate Savior.

A Moment of Silence

It behooves us, now that the news of the death of Zarqawi has hit the lenght and breadth of the blogosphere, that we point out, in all fairness, the downside of his passing:

No more of his brilliant, witty missives to Iowahawk.

You know what they say about not appreciating someone till he's gone? Too true, too true...


UPDATE: I was wrong. I hoped I would be.

President Bush's Victories Receiving Little Attention.

So Sayeth the DC Examiner.

In other news, Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.

So it begins...

I finished the Da Vinci Code. I will write more, but to sum up: completely unimpressive book. Don't understand why its a best-seller. Well, actually I do, but that understanding brings me no peace.