Please Don't Eat the Cluster Bombs

Let Them Be Offended

2006-03-25T15:46:00.000-07:00

Anyone who knows me only from this blog might be surprised to discover that I am a fan of South Park. I am. There's no denying it.

Cue Stan Marsh:

Daaaaaad, Tom Cruise won't come out of the closet!

The whole business of whether or not Isaac Hayes actually quit South Park raises a point or two. Most of all in my mind is the question of whether Scientology is a cult. I'm pretty unambiguous on that question but people I respect argue that saying so is offensive.

Here's my spin on it: If people in your religion feel comfortable speaking on your behalf in a legal or business matter as though they had power of attorney, then you belong to a cult. Now it's not clear who is speaking for Isaac Hayes, but I'll bet ten dollars to a doughnut that that's what happened.

It occurred to me right after discussing this with a friend that the more publicly prominent sects of the religion of the alleged prophet Mohammed are also cults. Is that offensive? Well, then let them be offended.

Gumbo of the Mind

2006-03-12T00:24:00.000-07:00

I like gumbo, really I do, especially Emeril Lagasse's recipe which I have cooked up dozens of times. It's mmm mmm good. Gumbo involves throwing a lot of differnt things in a pot and applying heat. This is a great way to make food, it is a terrible way bring enlightenment to consumers of news.

This article: Negative Perception Of Islam Increasing is intellectual gumbo, and it doesn't have any of the charm of the other kind. [Cascading hat tips to Charles at Little Green Footballs and his referrer.] In fact it is as bland as store-brand mac and cheese.

Seriously, given what's been in the news for the last 4 years, who expected that the American people's impression of islam was going to become more positive? Should we expect it to inspire respect that islam's adherents commit barbaric acts around the world on a daily basis? The hate-America crowd has proffered the thesis that if Americans understood islam they would be more accepting of it. I have found the opposite to be true, except among leftists and muslims.

Polling data is so easily manipulated that this number is effectively arbitrary, and by throwing "all" Americans [well... the pollsters proprietary sample] in to the pot you get a sort of bland mix whose movements are difficult to interpret.

Here are some polls I suggest be taken and which I argue would give a more revealing portrait:

Poll Sikhs in America and report what percentage agree that islam is a "religion of peace".

Poll Hindus in America and report what percentage agree that islam is a "religion of peace".

Poll Thai and Indian Buddhists in America and report what percentage agree that islam is a "religion of peace".

Poll Zoroastrians in America and report what percentage agree that islam is a "religion of peace".

Poll Pakistani Christians in America and report what percentage agree that islam is a "religion of peace".

Poll Assyrian, Maronite and Coptic Christians in America and report what percentage agree that islam is a "religion of peace".

Poll Armenian Christians in America and report what percentage agree that islam is a "religion of peace".

Poll Nigerian and Sudanese Christians in America and report what percentage agree that islam is a "religion of peace".

Poll first-generation Serb and Croat Christians in America and report what percentage agree that islam is a "religion of peace".

Poll first-generation Greek Orthodox Christians in America and report what percentage agree that islam is a "religion of peace".

Poll American Jews with immediate family members living in Isreal and report what percentage agree that islam is a "religion of peace".

Since the US Department of State has recently condemned deeds "offensive to the beliefs of Muslims", poll female employees of the US Department of State and report the percentage who have started wearing burkas to work in order to avoid offending muslims.

For info on world opinion I would also:

Poll Christians on Mindanao and report what percentage agree that islam is a "religion of peace".

Poll London tube riders and report what percentage agree that islam is a "religion of peace".

Poll Madrid commuter-train riders and report what percentage agree that islam is a "religion of peace".

Poll non-muslim Australian beachgoers and report what percentage agree that islam is a "religion of peace".

Poll Balinese night-club employees [well ok, ex-employees] and report what percentage agree that islam is a "religion of peace".

Poll Timorese Christians and report what percentage agree that islam is a "religion of peace".

Poll Dutch MP's and report what percentage agree that islam is a "religion of peace".

Poll French auto-insurance claims adjusters and report what percentage agree that islam is a "religion of peace".

Poll Danish cartoonists and report what percentage agree that islam is a "religion of peace".

When I see some of these reported I might start believing that the news-show-business is interested in understanding the issue.

John Zogby Can Go Sit on a Poll

2006-03-11T23:57:00.000-07:00

The pollster who gave us the '04 presidental polling data from the planet Bizzaro recently released a poll which the news show biz was quick to trumpet as some sort of evidence that American soldiers are demoralised and need to be withdrawn immediately.

If you've not read my previous entries on the subject of opinion polling, now is the time for some background reading: Part I, Part II and Part III.

Hugh Hewitt had John-of-a-hundred-evasions on his program when that story was in the headlines. Here is the transcript and audio. When you read that you should be thinking "proprietary data reduction" and "who is the customer?" When the customer is an America-must-lose individual or organisation and Zogby is the keeper of the secret data reduction method we have every reason to be very very very skeptical. Hugh tries to shine light on this, but doesn't get past square one. JZ's evasiveness only compounds my suspicion that this is yet another of his Bizzaro-world data sets.

Pollsters have to please their customers. That much I believe we can confidently say Zogby understands. I suggest that he also approaches this sort of fraud with enthusiasm.

The Gitmo Project

2006-03-08T18:42:00.000-07:00

I would like to thank Captain Ed for the opportunity to be involved in his blogswarm. I read one section of these documents and learned a number of things about the detainees as well as about al-Quaeda and the Taliban. If my sample can be taken as representative then:
1. Everyone in Gitmo is apparently a driver or cook. There are no actual Taliban nor al-Quaeda fighters there. So clearly we let all the ones with the guns and the hostile intent get away.
2. No one ever joins the Taliban or al-Quaeda voluntarily. It operates entirely by impressment of innocent drivers and cooks.
3. Lots and lots of people from arab countries travel to the northern border of Pakistan with no intent whatever to ever cross in to Afghanistan. That only ever occurs by accident and besides no one really knows where the border is up there.
4. Muslim brotherhood only extends to other racial groups in times of peace. The rest of the time muslims of one race will enthusiastically deliver muslims of other races over to the local authorities who will, in turn, enthusiastically torture same and force confessions out of them.

The big problem with these documents is that they are mostly the detainee's statements. Overall the experience I would compare to reading only the defense arguments in a court case. If you only read defense arguments you are likely to decide that most defendants are innocent. Only some of those detainees are foolish or ignorant enough to incriminate themselves. The remainder at least seem to know what to deny.

Nevertheless, 9 out of 10 of the cases I studied were of a sort that I am confident in saying that the US was wholly within its rights to detain them as enemy combatants at the time of capture. Whether they continue to represent a danger is a more difficult subject and I would not like to have to give an assessment of that without seeing the equivalent of the case for the prosecution.

We mustn't forget is that these are not domestic civilian criminal cases. Detention of enemy combatants is not criminal justice. The rules are different and the purpose is different. The standards for releasing them have to be different as a consequence.

One last thought: there is a recurring theme in these cases that could go unnoticed, but it is along the lines of "whatever you do don't turn me back over to the Pakistani/Iranian/Algerian authorities. You don't understand what they're like." What do you think that could mean?

Corporate Cost Savings

2006-03-03T10:52:00.000-07:00

To: Board of Directors
The Big-Stupid Corporation
Chicago, Illinois

From: A. Engineer
Systems Engineer
The Big-Stupid Corporation
Government Widgets Division
Phoenix, Arizona

Re: Enterprise-wide Cost Savings Proposal, "Rule #1 Training"

Dear Sirs,

I would like to propose a consolidation of our Enterprise mandatory training programs. There are currently 31 such courses with titles such as "Laptop Security", "Safe, Smart and Secure", "Industrial Security Refresher", "Computing Security", "Acceptance of Business Courtesies, Anti-Kickback", "Truth in Negotiations", "Procurement Integrity", "Trade Secrets and Proprietary Information", "Offering Gratuities", "Compliance with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA)", "Foreign Office Export & Import Compliance Guidelines", "U.S. Import Compliance Awareness", "Export Awareness Overview Training", "Antitrust Compliance", "Insider Trading", "Fair Disclosure Awareness", "Lobbying Awareness and Reporting", "Recruiting and Hiring Government Employees - Conflict of Interest (COI)', "Privacy Directions Awareness", "Ethics Code of Conduct", "Ethics Challenge", "Ethics Recommitment", "Ethics and our Business", "Ethics Orientation" and so on. The structure of these courses is very much the same. Employees are shown the guidlines, and then some hypothetical scenarios and then asked what the correct behavior is to deal with that scenario in a manner consistent with the policies of The Big-Stupid Corporation.

Each employee must spend 1-2 hours in each of these courses which is purely an overhead charge to corporate budgets. I would like to suggest to you a means of consolidating these courses which can be enacted across the entire enterprise at a savings of at least 20 hours of labor per employee. Given our labor costs and the number of employees in this corporation I estimate the savings at roughly 100 million to 200 million dollars per year for this proposal.

Here is the point, the content of all these courses is roughly the same. There is a single priciple which, if applied diligently can answer all the quandries presented in these courses. I call this principle "Rule #1" and I suggest that we replace most or all of our existing training courses with a single, enterprise-wide course. What is Rule #1? Simply stated Rule #1 is "Don't be a dumbass". If we implement "Enterprise Don't Be a Dumbass" training we will not only save huge sums cash but we will, I suggest, enter a golden age in this corporation as the smog falls away from the eyes of employees.

Let me give you some examples from our existing training courses to illustrate the efficacy of Rule #1 training:

Example #1
You are an employee involved in a contract proposal-writing effort and you receive and anonymous letter which proports to give you proprietary information about your competitor's proposal. How do you respond? By applying Rule #1 you immediately realise, "Don't be a dumbass, that's probabaly unlawful." and take the packet directly to the legal department with an explanation of how you obtained it.

Example #2
You are an employee with access to personnel files. You are going on a trip tomorrow and you are concerned that there will be nothing for you to do while waiting at the airport. You consider downloading some of the files to your laptop to bring along to the airport. However, Rule #1 reminds you, "Don't be a dumbass, downloading personnel files to your laptop's hard drive is probably a policy violation".

Example #3
You are a program director and you spend a lot of time with your Government contract monitor. Eventually she offers to sleep with you and asks that you give her daughter a job. If you have had Rule #1 training you realise "Dont' be a dumbass, sleeping with the customer whether in exchange for contract consideration or not is probably a criminal offense."

If my proposal is of some interest to you I can offer you a more detailed course outline and arrange to teach a pilot class for demonstration purposes. Please let me know your decision.

Sincerely,
A. Engineer

Understanding BMI: Doublethink From the CDC

2005-08-25T09:43:00.000-07:00

Compare the following statements from CDC's FAQ about the statistic known as "Body Mass Index" or "BMI".

Calculating the BMI is one of the best methods for population assessment of overweight and obesity.

versus

Most studies have examined the relationship between BMI and risk of disease. Therefore we do not know whether two people with the same BMI but different amounts of fat have different risks for disease.

So while they overstate the value of this statistic in the first statement they hedge by the time they get to question 3.

Dare I ask how both of these statments can be true?

I'm working on a table to show how silly this is, but here is an example:

A man is consdered overweight with a BMI higher than 24.9.

If he is 6'0" tall that means he can weigh no more than 183.3 lbs. without being classed as "overweight" by the CDC. He is "obese" at or above 220 lbs.

Yet to weigh as little as 136.9 is considered "normal". Normal?!? that's death-camp survivor range!

A man I know is a shade over 6 feet tall and his last reliable independent body composition measurement said he had 176 lbs of lean mass. A truly healthy body-fat proportion would be 10%. That would put his net weight at roughly 195.5. Thats well in to the CDC's "overweight" range. To be at the upper borderline of CDC "normal" he'd have to be at 4% body fat. Sorry folks, that really would be unhealthy.

That was three years ago. The subject has been working out since and has put on some muscle mass, what then? This isn't a pro athlete and this isn't a guy who pumps iron for 2 or more hours a day. This is an office-worker who does 10-20 minutes of daily calesthenics and can't stand to do anything physical outdoors from April through September [in central Arizona].

The answer is that the CDC and other BMI advocates are just crazy, and they're able to hide their insanity behind a calculation for which they know they dare not publish tables.

BMI: The Lie That Keeps on Giving.

2005-08-24T10:50:00.000-07:00

Junk science fads come and go. This particular piece of trash is linked over at Hugh Hewitt's blog.

It is a pretty snazzy presentation purporting to document an "obesity epidemic" based solely on the rediculous statistic known as "Body Mass Index" or BMI. According to Mark Twain there are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics. BMI is the latter two.

BMI is a ratio of Mass to the square of Height done in [of course] SI "units" kg/meter^2. That's all it is, Mass over Area. What does that tell us about obesity? Nothing at all. Really, it makes no discrimination between fat mass and non-fat mass. Someone please explain to me how a statistic that contains zero information about the subject's quantity of body fat can be used to deduce obesity? [Don't bother, that's rhetorical.]

Let me give you an example: when Arnold won Mr. Universe he was 6'0" tall, weighed in at roughly 225 lbs. and had approximately 4% body fat. That gives him a BMI of 30.5 at the time. Was he obese? According to the proponents of BMI, emphatically YES.

See the disconnect? Ever seen the Odessa/Permian football team? Guess what? Every strapping young man in their entire line count in the alleged "obesity epidemic". I call shenanigans!

I forgive Hugh for not being a scientist, but enough with this horse dung already. It doesn't take a professional medical researcher to see what a crock it is as an obesity statistic.

The obesity crisis has become the bandwagon for people who expect the government research grant spigot to be open wide over their mouths. Worst of all there are some who use this debate to advocate that the government impose fad pseudo-science "healthy eating" uniformly across our society. Such authoritarianism goes hand in glove with socialised medicine.

Such advocates are happy to blur the reality with misleading statistics because if they didn't they couldn't credibly claim any kind of emergency (national or otherwise) exists.

A Kind of Education the Left Doesn't Like

2005-05-23T14:45:00.000-07:00

When it comes to sexual behavior, the left has a consistent message that all knowledge is good. Lives can be saved if we teach young children the importance of "safe-sex", they tell us. Education, education and more education. Sexualize children and STD's will vanish they say. Of course, their kind of education hasn't quite worked out in this area.

When it comes to firearms? Oh no... education is eeeeeeeevil.

Doritos with extra condescension

2005-05-20T11:05:00.000-07:00

PepsiCo* CFO Indra Nooyi is an amazingly stupid person. I say this because she exhibits three of the most pronounced traits of dimwits:

1. Being a dimwit, she feels the need to show off how clever she is. [As demonstrated by the text of this speech] She uses a really dumb and poor analogy to demonstrate, not only her own ethnocentrism, but also her utter contempt for the land and people which afford her the opportunity to be a high-profile dimwit.

2. Being a dimwit, she believes criticism of her remarks must be due to the inablilty of those critics to comprehend her. When people point out what a stupid, hateful, ungrateful and anti-American speech it is she first tries to say that her prepared remarks were "misconstured". She goes on to claim that her anti-American condescension is the subject of "confusion". That's right, in her addled mind we, Americans, the object of her condescension are too stupid to understand her alleged patriotism [alleged but not at all in evidence] and it is we who are confused as a consequence.

Not surprisingly that didn't fly. Being a classic dimwit she engaged in trait number three...

3. Being a dimwit who finds herself in a hole, she keeps on digging. Hence this air-headed non-apology

Following my remarks to the graduating class of Columbia University’s Business School in New York City, I have come to realize that my words and examples about America unintentionally depicted our country negatively and hurt people.

I appreciate the honest comments that have been shared with me since then, and am deeply sorry for offending anyone. I love America unshakably – without hesitation – and am extremely grateful for the opportunities and support our great nation has always provided me.

Over the years I’ve witnessed and advised others how a thoughtless gesture or comment can hurt good, caring people. Regrettably, I’ve proven my own point. Please accept my sincere apologies.

– Indra Nooyi

Note especially the transparently unsupportable line:

I love America unshakably – without hesitation – and am extremely grateful for the opportunities and support our great nation has always provided me.

Hogwash! If that were in the least bit true she wouldn't go give a speech in the public domain which defames not only the nation, but every person in it. If it were in the least bit true she would note somewhere in her speech that American VOLUNTEERS have very recently spilled their blood to free 25 million complete and total strangers from one of the most brutal dictatorships in history. If it were in the least bit true she might notice that these same volunteers are breaking their backs in 120 degree heat to build sanitation infrastructure and schools which all the UN graft on the planet couldn't supply. If it were in the least bit true she could have found ONE good thing to say about America either in her speech or in either of her follow-up statements.

It is amazing to me that a person living a life of so much privelge as an officer of a major corporation can't comprehend that when she opens her big fat mouth that she is speaking on behalf of her employer and as such she has a duty not to insult her employer's customers.

[cue Michael Palin]Easy Mongo! Never kill a customer.

One of the reasons I don't post more personal information is that I work for a corporation, and I am clear that I do not speak for them. Even in day-to-day life I don't go around saying, "As an employee of [big-stupid-corporation-X] I think..." By keeping quiet about them I avoid having to provide disclaimers constantly. But I can only get away with this policy because I am neither a manager nor an officer.

Mrs. Nooyi, being a complete dimwit, gave her speech as PepsiCo CFO.

Indra Nooyi, President and CFO, PepsiCo

It is difficult to separate any comments of PepsiCo's CFO from official PepsiCo corporate policy. But Miss Management here gave this speech in an official capacity. By that fact it is [I argue] an official Corporate statement.

For those who don't know the history, the gesture Mrs. Nooyi builds her speech around evolved from a taunt used by Welsh and English yeomen (longbowmen) toward the French during the Hundred Year's War. It involved holding up the first two fingers of the right hand to demonstrate to the enemy that they were equipped to fight (by pulling a bowstring with those fingers). This taunt is supposed to have come in to use after the French nobility adopted a policy of cutting off those fingers from captured yeomen. I call it "The Yeoman's Salute".

Well Mrs. Nooyi, I too am equipped for this fight, as are many others around the blogoshpere. I suggest you retreat in a big hurry.

________________________________________________________
*PepsiCo owns the Frito-Lay brands including [unfortunately] Doritos

Not news headline of the day.

2005-05-19T09:31:00.000-07:00

According to the geniuses at AP:

Report: Muslim World Largely Anti-American

Welcome to the party Michelson!

Last to the party

2005-05-17T15:56:00.000-07:00

The Washington Post [which owns Newsweek] has apparently just now realised that the "Iraqi Insurgents" are mostly Saudis.

[cue confused wife] Abdul never shoots infidels at home.

Welcome to the party Leibnitz!

It's settled: Newsweek has an anti-American agenda.

2005-05-16T09:11:00.000-07:00

FrontPage magazine.com has a good article here.

In short, Newsweek went forward with an uncorroborated story which would clearly damage US interests while they are blind to the scandal at the UN in which our "allies" and enemies were paid to run cover for one of the most brutal regimes ever to exist.

The next time someone tries to tell you Newsweek is a news magazine with no particular agenda, or at least not an anti-American agenda, you know you are dealing with either an idiot or someone who is purposely being obtuse.

One of those ironies that hits you like a cold fish.

2005-05-13T15:28:00.000-07:00

I continue to be obsessed with the disintegration of civil society in Sweden. Using the words of Fjordman:

Gangs of 14 - 15-year-olds raping and robbing is now common in many Stockholm suburbs.

It occurred to me today that one of my souvenirs from Sweden is a full-size Swedish-language movie poster for Stanley Kubrick's film of Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange. I had read the book just a year before going to live in suburban Stockholm. For those unfamiliar, the plot involves a nanny-state gone mad in which gangs of drug-using teenagers wontonly commit cruel assaults and rapes. It is meant as a cautionary tale and not intended as a blueprint for future society. Unfortunately it seems that the political heirs of Olaf Palme didn't get that memo.

At that time, I couldn't see the film in the US due to the rating and my age. Even the expurgated version was R-rated, whereas the original won the rating 'X' [which they now call 'NC-17']. I do believe that the original would rate no worse than 'R' by today's standards. Sweden's rating system was quite different. Nudity and even rape weren't considered as vile as beating and shooting. I could see this film in Sweden because I was over 15 and some of the beatings had been edited.

I hadn't given a thought to that poster in quite a while. It's sitting in a box somewhere untouched for at least 6 years. It hit me all the sudden a litle while ago.

Well, not all that safe, wouldn't you say?

2005-05-13T15:02:00.000-07:00

This from FoxNews.com

BAGHDAD, Iraq — American fighter jets flattened a suspected insurgent safe house

The Real "Third Way"

2005-05-12T09:51:00.000-07:00

Somewhere I found a link to this article. I've added the blog to my blog roll. Do have a look.

As long as I can remember, it has been an article of faith among the left in America that Sweden represented the ideal "balance" between government activism and individual rights and that it was a paradise for its citizens as a consequence.

In the early nineties the concept the "Third Way" became the rhetorical refuge of the American Left. This I assume was because they could themselves no longer believe that the subject peoples of the Soviet Union were happy to have lived under its boot heel. Ever pursuaded of the righteousness of Socialism they renewed their efforts to market Sweden (and ironically France) as model societies.

None of this has ever set quite well with me, but I had one advantage over the average person being told this nonsense: I had lived there. I was an exchange student living in Sweden for my Junior year of High School in the year of the Ayatollah and the Miracle on Ice (which I watched live despite the 6-hour time difference).

Sweden had its woes back then. From my perspective the destruction of the traditional family and the inescapable sense of futility among my contemporaries seemed to be the biggest. There was another problem in Sweden which troubled me, but at the time I had not imagined its consequences.

Swedes, like every other people, have a set of social mores which govern what can be said and what subjects can be discussed politely. "Culture shock" is in part the recognition and adjustment to these mores. Swedes are very polite people, and in most circumstances very reserved. This reserve is a longstanding part of their culture and it has been abused in the most ghastly of ways by its politicians.

There were and apparently are some things about Sweden that it is considered most impolite to criticise. One in particular that got me a lot of grief, is that the newspapers are all cheerleaders for various levels of Socialism. It troubled me that their newspapers each openly declared their political affiliations, although I have since come to believe we would be better served if American newspapers would be so candid.

A very broad set of taboos involve what I call "official compassion". Now let me say that this is entirely my term. I have no idea what the Swedish term for this would be in 2005. [Such a term might itself be taboo.] Any subject which is a matter of "official compassion" is beyond criticism. Such is the case with any matter of immigration in Sweden. It is a long-standing issue of "official compassion" that Sweden has a very open policy with regards to immigrants. All immigrants are effectively treated as refugees. Moreover, as Sweden is a nanny-state, every conceivable need or want of an immigrant is indulged by official policy. It would be considered exceptionally rude to ever mention a negative consequence of this policy.

What is the result? Well, if you read the article linked above you've already seen. Let me give you a little context. Nynäshamn is a small port town about 2 hours by train south of Stockholm... or at least it was in 1979. The train service has been halted because of frequent attacks on the trains by immigrant (muslim) gangs. A sensible person might ask, "why don't they lock these thugs up?" I wish I knew. Apparently the fact that these are immigrants or their children makes it politically impossible.

The other issue is that of rape. Rape in Sweden is soaring, but it is not advertised as a crisis, apparently because no one in any official capacity can bring themself to be so rude as to mention that the overwhelming majority of the perpetrators are (muslim) immigrants or their children. I have to ask, exactly what depredation upon its people will the Swedish government finally consider too much? If they could just put one-tenth of the passion in to this issue that they used to put in to the level of Barnbidrag [an allowance for children paid by the government] they'd be rounding these monsters up and disarming them.

Multiculturalism is doomed because there are some issues about which there can be no compromise. In traditional western values, rape is considered objectively evil because the victim has a right to herself. Under shari'a no such right exists for women, nor infidels. If you mix the two you get a lot of rape. In other words, shari'a cannot co-exist with a culture which forbids preying upon your fellow citizens. You can either have shari'a and lots of rape, or no shari'a and harsh punishment for rape.

I grieve for the Sweden I lived in. It is gone. The real "Third Way" turns out to be surrender to muslim thugs. I pray that the Swedes find their submerged warrior selves and take these miscreants on before there are no more Swedes. Alas it would be seen as impolite.

Still No Vertebrates in Sight

2005-05-12T09:35:00.000-07:00

More than a month since I posted on this topic (sheesh, where does the time go?) the Senate has still done nothing but dither. One of the Senators from my state announced that once again he supports neither the President nor the party to which he claims to belong. Presumably doing so would upset his real friends in the News-Show-Biz. Last I checked Senators are supposed to represent States rather than cocktail party crowds. How does ingratiating yourself to Chris Matthews like some sort of hyper-submissive dog support the interests of my State? What a disgrace!

Time for some party discipline gentlemen. If we can't have that then let's dispense with this myth that you even have a party.

Time to Buy That Monopoly Set

2005-04-12T13:30:00.000-07:00

From UPI via the Washington Times

When the Euro was first created I told my friends that I was going to buy a copy of Monopoly and replace the money with Euros. I didn't expect to be able to do it right away, and I must say, I am impressed at how long the Euro-elites have managed to keep up the charade. However, I could never make myself believe that a currency founded on the concept of "European Unity" had a future as anything but a joke. Historically, unity in Europe has always been short lived and come at a heavy cost.

A dozen years ago "European Unity" became a catch phrase for every American anxiety about our nation's future in the post-Soviet era. Even then I would chuckle every time someone around me would use it. It seemed to me as if grown people were discussing the virtues of the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy. The EU never seemed like a threat to me, precisely because when used to modify "Unity" or "Union" the word "European" is clearly synonymous with the word "not". The EU was and is only a symbol of the unwillingness of the Euro-elite political class to acknowledge that the Soviet Empire fell because the very concept of the socialist model was fatally and utterly corrupt.

"Mais no!" they exclaimed, there is a "third way"! We can have our Utopian fantasy if instead of tanks and torture we enforce it with the most rediculous, unresponsive, bloated bureaucracy since the Byzantine Empire. It seemed for a time that they could accomplish this by subverting the soverignty of several states in the name of the common good and thus the EU founded. It has never worked as advertised preciesly because Europeans are about a prone to unite as rams in the spring.

The bigger problem is that socialism is plainly unworkable. Even if (especially if?) staffed entirely by over-educated Gaullists the internal contradictions of socialism guarantee the system's corruption and ultimate dissolution. What troubles me most about this exercise is, what will happen to whom before "ultimately" arrives?

Anyhow, I'm looking for a Monopoly set with an appropriately-sized bank tray.

UPDATE (13-Apr-05 3:22 PM): When the New York Times is less than optimistic about a people's commitment to the socialist nostrum du jour, something is afoot.

The Last Great Man of the 20th Century

2005-04-11T22:41:00.000-07:00

That's what Mark Steyn called Pope John Paul II and I must agree.

I'd been tempted to post on this topic many times but it goes against my two primary posting guildlines and they are: 1. That I don't like to post on a topic about which I feel I have nothing new to add. I'd rather just let those who've already said it quite well have the last word, and 2. I don't blog about me and I don't want to start.

Saying anything I have to say on the topic means talking about myself (in terms of my faith) to establish appropriate context. Nevertheless, I must at least note the man's passing. The passing of so monumental a figure in world history warrants straying from the guidelines, just a little.

...and Pope John Paul II was exactly as Steyn describes. He was already a great man by the mid-eighties. He just managed to outlive his only contemporary. While I am not a Catholic, it is undeniable that having such a good man as head of the Catholic Church was to the general good of the world.

Double points for precision go to Mr. Steyn. The Pope was indeed the last great man of the 20th century; Mrs. Thatcher is still with us.

The Vertebrate Option

2005-04-08T11:48:00.000-07:00

Plenty has been written in speculation of whether senate Republicans will ever work up the personal fortitude necessary to modify Senate rules to stop the minority's denial of floor votes to conservative judicial candidates. At somepoint someone coined the term "nuclear option" to describe the majority making a change to the rules. In this view, civilization itself rests on the constancy of Senate rules, but only as long as Democrats aren't in the majority. In that case rules changes are par for the course.

I must assume that the purpose of coining the term "nuclear option" is to create a rhetorical situation in which senate Republicans are made to feel as if they must provide an extraordinary level of justification for changing what the holy Democrat party has engraved. As usual, Senate Republicans have accepted this propaganda at face value and proceeded to do just that.

I'm sick of this. Let's call it what it is. Making it explicit that judicial nominations get the benefit of a floor vote by majority consent is not "nuclear" does not destroy some foundational notion of our government, it does not undo representative government, and most of all, it in no way contradicts the letter nor the spirit of the Constitution. No, the majority setting the rules of debate in the Senate is the tradition, is an exercise of representative government and is indeed Constitutional.

The majority should eliminate this ambiguity of the Senate's rules without apologizing to the minority and without adopting their rhetoric. This I call "the vertebrate option". If we can't do that much, then I'd say Buschbaum's classic work is a prophetic description of the early 21st century Republican party.

Back at the Desk

2005-04-05T12:25:00.000-07:00

Like a lot of people, post-election I felt somewhat spent. In addition, I felt the need to go pretend the whole mess we call the political scene could go away for a while. It didn't. So I am figuratively back at the desk [and fighting the passion for using too many commas]. I won't try to catch up with everything, rather I will resume posting about things as it strikes me to do so.

Newsweek's Contribution to the Secular Jihad

2004-12-14T17:00:00.000-07:00

Not surprisingly, Newsweek's managing editor wrote a lengthy piece about the Nativity and not surprisingly he's concluded that it's silly to believe. [yawn] This is par for the course for the news-show-biz, which has, for at least the last 24 years, been peddling the idea that their brand of visceral secularist-leftism is the only rational alternative to snake-handling. I take issue with the very idea that secularist-leftism is rational. The idea that it is the only intellectual real-estate other than religious fanaticism is in itself laughable.

Hugh Hewitt took notice of this tract and has posed the following:

...read the Meacham piece and the Mohler-Roberts responses. Then write on the subject of what these articles tell us about the MSM's abilities and credibility on matters of faith and history, specifically, is the Newsweek article the religion reporting equivalent of Rathergate? What accounts for the appearance in a major news magazine of such a biased piece?

What does the article tell us about the news-show-biz's abilities and credibility of faith and history?

The piece itself is a typical recitation of the left's prejudices and their stereotypes of believing Christians. The author presents his "enlightened" view of Christianity and goes to great length to quote the full spectrum of left through far-left historians on the topic. As I said, there is nothing new here. By presenting only his personal view and the views of those who concur, the author has presented a classic piece of non-journalism. For the same reason this is not scholarship. Rather it is yet another in a several decades-long tradition of leftist self-promotion and reflexive condescension toward anyone who might disagree.

Like the Victorians, we live in an age of great belief and great doubt, and sometimes it seems as though we must choose between two extremes, the evangelical and the secular. "I don't want to be too simplistic, but our faith is somewhat childlike,"

Whoa, thank God we have the adults at Newsweek to steer us right! Here we have it again. There is nothing in Meacham's world between secularism and what he terms "evangelism". Take just about any news-show-biz story which touches on religion from the last quarter of a century and this is exactly the false dilemma they offer. Mindlessness like this is why I stopped being a consumer of TV news.

Dr. Albert Mohler's response is excellent. Read the whole thing.

In particular I would like to address two paragraphs near the end. Firstly:

Jon Meacham is the classic self-congratulatory theological liberal. He identifies himself as a devoted and believing Episcopalian, even as he assails the historical trustworthiness of the Bible and suggests that much of the faith he claims to believe is simply the product of literary invention and theological construction.

That pretty much sums it up. As I maintain, Meacham's piece is nothing new at all. The left has not just recently commenced in re-writing history and presenting their myths as truths, nor has it just today started condescending to believing Christians:

To many minds conditioned by the Enlightenment, shaped by science and all too aware of the Crusades and corruptions of the church, Christmas is a fairy tale.

This is a familiar refrain. He takes as stare decisis the left's oft-repeated claim that the Crusades were an evil rather than a response to the threat of conquest, and in the same sentence asserts that Enlightenment thinkers must necessarily take his own [leftist] view. Oddly I never got any of that out of Hume [my favorite] nor Smith, nor Locke, nor Hobbes. To believe that an oft-repeated claim is the truth is not "Enlightenment" thinking at all, rather it is something much more common to the 20th century [and not at all admirable].

On one point I have to disagree with Dr. Mohler:

Newsweek should be embarrassed by this one-sided article presented as a serious investigation of the Christmas story. The magazine's editor may brag about Meacham's extensive study as a college student, but there can be no justification for the lack of balance and the absence of credible conservative scholarship in this article. This is not a serious and balanced consideration of the Christian truth claim, but a broadside attack packaged as a condescending essay of advice...

Perhaps [well almost certainly] Dr. Mohler is a more forgiving man than I. I long ago lost the ability to say that some secular-leftist person or institution ought to be ashamed. I have been convinced, for rather a long time now, that they have no sense of shame in writing or speaking in self-congratulatory screeds and in refusing to even acknowledge the possibility of a rational disagreement with their socio-political worldview. Whether they ought to be seems almost a whimsical point anymore. Otherwise right on, Dr. Mohler!

Is the Newsweek article the religion reporting equivalent of Rathergate?

Not really no. Perhaps if Meacham had presented a fabricated "lost book" of the Bible and made his argument on the basis of the words therein it might be. Meacham's piece is more analogous to the discovery of penumbrae in the Constitution in which heretofore unknown rights are claimed to exist.

What accounts for the appearance in a major news magazine of such a biased piece?

It is reflective of the culture which dominates the news-show-biz and has done so for the quarter-century during which I have bothered to notice. This culture hasn't any comprehension of believing Christians nor of observant Jews and it doesn't want to have any*. It long ago threw out the truth about such people in favor of a set of stereotypes which it has promoted and continues to promote. The promoters of that culture have had to do this in order to preserve the beliefs which they actually hold and which the real world has offered us ample evidence are false.

If I use Meacham's piece as my measure, then I would have to conclude that the author is among those who believe that by merely being employed by an institution of the old media that his every thought is a moment of journalistic greatness [call it the Carol Simpson Doctrine if you will], that somehow his own opinions are the essence of both enlightened thought and equitable intellectual inquiry. Thoroughly repulsive? Yes. Anything new? Not by a long shot.

________________________________________________________
*It doesn't stop there, all non-leftists are anachronisms in the eyes of the news-show-biz's culture.

Glad to Be Here

2004-11-05T13:51:00.000-07:00

Hello All.

I would like to thank Crusader Rabbit for graciously inviting me to his forum. I will endeavor to be as entertaining and informative as I can.

I don't know much about blogging. I have been vaguely aware of the practice for some time through listening to the Hugh Hewitt radio program (broadcast in my area on KKNT 960 am from 3 to 6 Pacific time). I started to pay attention, along with many others I assume, during the forged document scandal perpetrated by CBS's Sixty Minutes. This incident made me realize that the blogosphere is not only an excellent method of promoting opinion, but also a potent defensive weapon system against the monolithic and increasingly manipulative "Mainstream Media". I am happy to take my place in the trench.

And I promise not to eat the cluster bombs as long as I continue to find my Humanitarian Daily Rations religiously and ethnically palatable.

Buncher

The Face of Ingratitude

2004-11-05T10:28:00.000-07:00

and its voice.

"The president is well aware of what happened when a bunch of his nominees were sent up, with the filibuster," Specter added, referring to Senate Democrats' success over the past four years in blocking the confirmation of many of Bush's conservative judicial picks. "... And I would expect the president to be mindful of the considerations which I am mentioning."

This isn't a threat, is it? No, heaven forfend!

Here's a guy who has his Senate seat today only because W backed him. He's done everyone a favor with this unintended moment of candor. Time to put the guy out to pasture. The left has made a sacrement of preventing strict-constructionists on to any federal court because, presumably, strict-constructionism is a threat to Roe v. Wade.

The real issue is what the proper role of the courts is under our constitution. Leftists want the courts to be an ersatz federal super-legislature with unlimited jurisdiction, and accountable to no one. Senator Specter wants to help them realize this goal. None of this is consistent with our constitution, therefore they must oppose all strict-constructionists. The "right" to abortion is their straw man in this fight.

The continuation of Constitutional government in this nation depends on not putting the likes of Arlen Specter in charge of approving the President's appointments to the courts. W made a mistake backing this guy. Let's hope he recognizes that now.

The Choice Behind the Choice

2004-11-04T10:18:00.000-07:00

About 9:00 PM MST on election night I was pursuaded that W had won it. At about 10:30 PM I was driving home and remembered that I had run out of Port and thus had nothing suitable with which to toast the victory. So I swung by the store.

The store and my home are both in the most thoroughly Republican precincts of the most thoroughly Republican districts of this, the most thoroughly Republican of the alleged "swing" states.

At the checkstand I greeted the checker with my standard, "How are you this evening?"

The checker, a girl in her late teens, replied to the effect that the election results would determine both that and her willingness to continue living in this country. I didn't press for specifics, because, well, let's face it, I'm not looking for political analysis from teenage grocery checkers. Really, I'm just not. My reply was meant more as a civics lesson, "If you need a ride to the airport, let me know. Have a good evening."

My read is that she was a W supporter and none too happy about the rigged exit-polling data. Nevertheless, there is something else at work here that needs to be addressed. The problem here is not restricted to the young, but so far I have personally run in to it only in people not over 25.

There are two choices Americans face in every election. One is Red vs. Blue; the other is Jeffersonian democracy vs. a dictatorship where you like the dictator.

I offer these options to anyone who is so despondent about the results of a single election they don't believe they can go on:

If it's really the end of the world, shoot yourself.
If it's just that you can't stand not getting your way in elections, move somewhere where they don't have elections. For leftists try North Korea, Cuba or Venezuela. [The latter is especially for those who want the illusion of elections, but don't want to miss out on the jailing of dissidents.] For more nationalistic facists, I suggest Russia. Either way, let me know, I will gladly take you to the airport.
If it's neither of the above, then for pity's sake, get over yourself. This is an electoral democracy. It's not all about you. Narcissists are never going to like democracy nor the free market.

This is the choice behind the choice, if you cannot love America unless it conforms to your own narrow Utopian ideal, then you are never, ever, ever going to start liking it.

Great Metaphors as Long as You Don't Visualize

2004-11-04T09:54:00.000-07:00

This from Mark Steyn:

As long as Democrats prefer phantom enemies to real ones, they will be increasingly irrelevant. If I were a Dem, I'd support any candidate who pledged to de-celebrify the party and disown the paranoid Left. That's the big lesson of this election: on Tuesday, the bottom dropped out of Moore's underpants.

I did warn you not to visualize. Full text here.

Mr. Steyn also mentions the strange case of Cameron Diaz which I treated here.

Darn Good Analysis

2004-11-04T09:23:00.000-07:00

John Podhoretz in today's NY Post:

Democrats will have to accept reality. And the reality is this: Democrats voted for Bush in large numbers because they like him. They admire him. They want him to be president. They don’t think he’s an idiot, a fascist, a warmonger, a religious fanatic, a kook, a liar, a cheat, a monster, a bad guy. They think he’s done a good job. The Democratic Party has spent four years demonizing George W. Bush, and in part because of their stupid, useless, senseless negativism, Terry McAuliffe & Co. lost 4 million voters.

Full text here.

I was asked to participate in a counter-protest 4 years ago. One of the signs I made bore this slogan: Democrats vs. Reality: the struggle never ends! I'm not betting any money on the left moderating its tone. When they get desperate they become more shrill.

A New Day in Way I Wasn't Expecting.

2004-11-03T09:57:00.000-07:00

I haven't yet found a quote that denotes Chirac crying in his vichyssois, but I got a nice surprise this morning. Putin is quoted by reuters thusly:

"I can only feel joy that the American people did not allow itself to be intimidated, and made the most sensible decision," (via yahoo)

Amazing candor from a Russian head of state.

There are also some nice plain quotes in that article from Berlusconi and Kwasniewski. Needless to say, terrorist sympathisers are not happy with the outcome. That much I was expecting.

I Take It You Haven't Been Following the News

2004-11-02T15:29:00.000-07:00

Saw this (via Real Clear Politics) at USAToday.com, dated 1-Nov-04:

More than 20 years ago, the Iowa legislature pioneered a system of turning redistricting over to technocrats instructed to create districts that are compact in shape and respect county lines as much as possible. They are barred from considering voting patterns or incumbents' political interests. It has led to more competitive races in Iowa.

Now an initiative pushed by outraged voters has forced Arizona to go that route.

I have to assume that no one at USA Today reads a newspaper. It is amazing to me how many things they can get wrong in one sentence.

The Arizona initiative in question was passed 4 years ago.
It did not put technocrats in charge. The redistricting commission is partisan by design, and its rules are guaranteed to create a majority of left and far-left among commissioners.
It did not bar the commission from considering voting patterns nor political interests, but rather commanded the commission to consider them.
It was not passed on the basis of outrage, but rather by a privately-financed campaign of misleading advertisements. The financier himself was the newly-selected chair of the Arizona Democrat Party, Jim Pedersen.
After writing the rules, packing the commission and running the proceedings according to their own tastes, Democrats sued because they were displeased with the outcome.

Yes, it is unfortunate that we have widespread incumbent protection. It is also unfortunate that the USA Today has a policy of protecting misinformed, intellectually-lazy editors.

EDIT: Fixed the chronology. Jim Pedersen became chairman of the ADP before personally financing the initiative which created the redistricting committee.

Don't Listen to Me

2004-11-02T14:59:00.000-07:00

I thought that before the first polls close I should add that my record of predicting election outcomes is ignominious. So if this prediction is off, it will be nothing new for me.

I am clearly not in tune with the masses. This is an electorate which gave the Arkansas hustler 2 terms and never took a real liking to 7-UP Gold.

On the other hand, my observation is that the block that put El Hefté over the top in both cases is one that seems to have broken for W. I call these the "Horserace Voters". They are the people who believe that the objective is to vote for the candidate you believe will win, rather like betting on a horserace. Apparently they have been given to believe that they win a piece of candy or something if they pick the winner.

Perhaps having our elections so close to Halloween is a bad idea.

As Pinkerton Was to McClellan, part 3

2004-11-02T10:32:00.000-07:00

Powerline talks about the data-massaging issue here. Most important is the link to this report by Larry Kudlow.

Two things to notice:
1. even a relatively honest pollster like Ed Goeas has to make a lot of value judgements about the electorate to produce a poll number.
2. even a professional liar like Mark Mellman needs to make his poll move toward what the data really seems to be telling him as the election draws near (but only then).

One thing the pollsters can't hope to account for is the shenanigans that their customers, the news show biz, will engage in on election day.

Four years ago the news show biz called the election in Florida before the polls had closed in that state. By doing so they drove potential voters away from the polls and turned what would have been a 10,000-ish vote win for W in to a litigatable "tie".

Some suggest that they don't dare do something like that again. I ask, "why wouldn't they?" What consequences did they actually suffer for their interference in the democratic process? (Hint: sack of air)

UPDATE: (2-Nov-04 2:00 PM) Well it looks like the shenanigans from the news show biz this time come in the form of rigged exit polls. They apparently mean to use these as their basis for proclaiming Kerry in the lead all day long. It remains to be seen whether they will start calling states before the real polls close.

UPDATE: (2-Nov-04 4:13 PM) Now it looks like the exit polls in question are not so much "rigged" as "rumored". Not much difference there in the end.

Make Chirac Cry

2004-11-02T09:06:00.000-07:00

It's no secret that Saddam's anti-aircraft missile supplier, Jacques Chirac wants to see Kerry win and W lose. It's hard to establish a comprehensive surrender to the jihadists when those naughty Americans insist on opposing tyrrany. He loves Kerry - a man who lacks the strategic vision to win at parcheesi.

I'll make no secret that I want to see Chirac crying in his potage tomorrow

...and no, I don't want the Pentagon to award any contracts to firms from a country which was clearly on the other side in the war to liberate Iraq. Perhaps they could pony up those bribes Saddam paid them to help build some decent infrastructure for the innocent people they betrayed with their perfidy.

As Pinkerton Was to McClellan, part 2

2004-11-02T08:34:00.000-07:00

Please read the first part of this below for context.

I was having breakfast with a friend and fellow political activist on Saturday. He was expressing his confidence based on the poll averages at Real Clear Politics. I like what they've done, but when it comes to the polls I must say that the average of 8 kinds of excrement is still excrement. No matter how many you average together, all of those polls represent carefully massaged data, intended to please the people who buy the product: the news show biz.

Exhibit A in this argument is in the poll internals. While the pollsters tell us that overall the electorate is evenly divided, in moments of candor they will admit that the among women, the candidates poll about even. This must be more or less consistent through all the polls, because the news show biz has made no effort to market the "gender gap" story.

The "gender gap" is something they marketed vigorously in every election since at least 1980. They used to take glee in beating up Ronald Reagan over how his opponents polled roughly 10-15 points better among women than he did. We heard this also used as a cudgel with which to beat up W when the final polls had Gore 10 points ahead among women.

This year, there are no "gender gap" stories in the news show biz, and the polls that have gone on record show the women's vote evenly divided. So how is it, that the overall electorate is evenly divided if half the electorate has moved 10 points toward W? Shouldn't that mean that W has approximately a 5 point structural advantage over his position 4 years ago?

Well, if you're a pollster you can "adjust" your model of "likely voters" to sample another 5 percentage points of Kerry supporters, and voilà! The electorate is evenly divided. That is, after all, what your customers want to hear...

...and the customer is always right, n'est-ce pas?

As Pinkerton Was to McClellan

2004-11-01T20:29:00.000-07:00

so the various polling agencies are to the news show biz.

In 1862 George McClellan was in command of the Army of the Potamac. This force, largely organized and trained by Gen. McClellan personally, numbered some 87,000 when it marched to face Lee's Army of Northern Virgina in September of that year.

McClellan, ever the cautious general, was convinced that his enemy outnumbered him by perhaps 2 or 3 to one, and asked his spy service, the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, to reconnoiter. Certainly enough, the Pinkerton agents confirmed Gen. McClellan's assessment. Of course, the Pinkertons understood, that to tell Gen. McClellan that his enemy, in truth, numbered only 40,000 would have brought them a rubuke and probably cost them their jobs, so they told him what they believed he wanted to hear.

Modern polling agencies are no different. In this case their masters are not generals, but the various agencies of the news show biz. It is no wonder that the polls reflect an evenly divided electorate. The news show biz has been insisting that it is so for 4 years now.

Polling is not a matter of asking a set number of people the same questions and recording the responses. That is one step in the process, but those "raw" numbers are never what comes out the back end [pun intended]. Instead the polling agencies use elaborate sampling models to determine which of the respondents to count as part of a "representative sample". Now, there is good reason to use such models, but the devil is as always in the details. Like any proprietary system of data reduction, such models are subject to abuse. In this case, if your master insists vehemently that the electorate is divided exactly evenly then by George you'd better make sure your model produces that outcome.

The trouble is that there is ample evidence that this conclusion may be false. Most importantly is the outcome of the mid-term elections of 2002. As you may recall, the news agencies were quite certain that the inevitable march of history told us that the President's party loses ground in the midterm elections. All the polls we were shown seemed to confirm this idea. Unfortunately, the voters seem to have missed that memo because they handed the President's party a set of huge victories in 2002.

It didn't take long for the news show biz to forget about that and go back to the story they had previously written that the electorate was deeply and evenly divided. They've been telling this story, over and over for another 2 years since. As for the 2002 election not following the narrative: "Nothing to see here. Move along." They had the story they wanted to tell, and they've stuck to it. Their dutiful lackies, the polling agencies, seem to have fed them the numbers they wanted, just as the Pinkertons did to McClellan. When the battle is at last joined, we shall see.

Scientific Election Predictions

2004-11-01T16:27:00.000-07:00

I saw that Mark Steyn was having a contest on his website to predict the outcome of the election. So I fired up the magic 8-ball and started shaking. After that I double-checked my answers against a bag of fortune cookies.

Using my methods, I should be at least as reliable as the major polling agencies.

1. Bush 51.8 Kerry 47.1

2.Bush 330 Kerry 208

3. Last state to decide: Pennsylvania

4. Blue to red: Wisconsin
Red to blue: New Hampshire

5. Maine split: b) Three for Kerry, one for Bush

6.a) George W Bush will receive in Texas: 64.3
b) Dick Cheney will receive in Wyoming: 70.7
c) John Kerry will receive in Massachusetts: 59.8
d) John Edwards will receive in North Carolina: 38.3

7. Senate: 54 R, 44 D, 1 Ind (VT-Looney) and 1 in Louisiana not decided until December. (I predict it will go R)
House: 231 R, 203 D, 1 Ind (VT-Looney)

8. Dem incumbent senator looser: Daschle
Rep incumbent senator looser: none

9. Daschle 47.5, Thune 52.0.

10.Bush: AL(9) AK(3) AR(6) AZ(10) CO(9) GA(15) FL(27) HI(4) IA(7) ID(4) IN(11) KS(6) KY(8) LA(9) ME(1) MI(17) MN(10) MO(11) MS(6) MT(3) NC(15) NE(5) ND(3) NV(5) OH(20) OK(7) OR(7) SC(8) SD(3) TN(11) TX(34) UT(5) VA(13) WI(10) WV(5) WY(3)

Kerry: CA(55) CT(7) DC(3) DE(3) IL(21) MD(10) ME(3) MA(12) NH(4) NJ(15) NM(5) NY(31) PA(21) RI(4) VT(3) WA(11)

More on this later.

UPDATE: (2-Nov-04, 11:53AM) The smudge on the bottom of my morning coffee mug seems to support my predictions. To clarify, I would give W a larger national number and also call Pennsylvania and New Mexico for him except that I believe that both the Quaker State and the kooky banana republic on my eastern border will be decided by fraud.

AdSense Gets a Time-out

2004-11-01T13:30:00.000-07:00

I've had to put Google's AdSense ad bar in to time-out because it is being a very bad boy. At last count they had 4 pro-Kerry ads and 1 pro-jihad. This, as you may have divined, is 180 degrees out of phase with the opinions expressed here. I have contacted them about this and we'll see how it goes. If they can only advertise to the antithesis of my expected audience they won't be coming back.

The Real Global Test: Moral Courage

2004-10-31T09:03:00.000-07:00

With the election approaching I could not help the impulse to reflect on how we got to this day. Most would cite September 11, 2001 as the day that defined the times in which we live. I say it is the day on which the people of this nation learned to take our times seriously. In fact the challenge we face today is essentially the same as those we have faced throughout my lifetime and well before.

Pearl Harbor was the event by which we entered this phase of our nation's history. That day marked the beginning of an era when technology encroached on the advantage of our geography. The beginning of the space age sealed the deal. Henceforth, enemies of democracy would seek us out and test us, because we were now and forever more within their reach. Over and over Americans have been asked to face this challenge or run from it.

With the cold war over and won, many felt that we were done. We had defeated the largest totalitarian state yet to threaten us, what else could there be? The trouble is, totalitarian philosophies know no borders, nor are they limited to the philosophies of the west.

Now we are tested again. We are faced with the same challenge as ever: do we meet those who revile the principles of Jeffersonian democracy and would destroy any government founded on them or do we cower before such tyrants? Do we believe in the principles of our system of government, and the rights we enjoy because of it, enough to fight for them or do we bow before barbarians?

Throughout the 70's the political dialogue in this country was one of temporising moral cowardice. Do we bear any burden and pay any price? No, said the popular culture. According to such as the self-proclaimed war hero John Kerry, and his sponsors in the Senate we were the barbarians, and we had to be humbled.

America failed the test of moral courage in the 70's and entered in to a period of self-absorbtion and self-flagellation. The result? Slaughter in Viet Nam, slaughter in Laos, genocide in Cambodia, millions under the totalitarian boot all over the world. Marxist goverments, some of them quite new, exist on every continent today because America wavered. In addition, jihadism returned to life after nearly a century of dormance.

For a time we found the heart to fight, and we won the cold war. We won it only because we found a man willing to lead us who never doubted this nation, its principles nor its people, and who never failed to pass that moral courage on to others. After he had done his work and passed from the scene, many in our nation felt the need to return to self-absorption and self-loathing, as though that were the more natural condition of a free people. September 11 was a cold slap in the face to that thinking. We live in a world where we can either be both brave and free, or neither.

Don't Fire Until You See Their Membership Cards?

2004-10-31T08:50:00.000-07:00

Call this the week of the videotapes. Before the Bin Laden tape came out there was another piece of jihadist propoganda to examine. Especially telling is this little gem, "allah willing, the streets of America will run red with blood, matching drop for drop the blood..." The various news agencies were all in a dither when it first came out in that they could not verify whether it was from al-Quaeda.

Um... why does that matter? When some people produce a tape threatening to kill us in the name of islam, why should we care whether they belong to al-Quaeda? If they don't, should we not seek them out? Do we only care if people with al-Quaeda membership cards want to kill us? Al-Quaeda is a convenient shorthand for our enemies, but the jihad is certainly not limited to al-Quaeda.

I can hear the crickets chirping. I can hear the coyotes yipping. I cannot hear the "peaceful muslims" denouncing this garbage.

The USPS and Good Government Don't Mix

2004-10-28T10:49:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I dropped my early ballot in the mail. I have always been uneasy about letting any unionized federal employee handle ballots, but for some reason I let myself be pursuaded about the convenience. Then I see this:

The Broward County Supervisor of Elections Office pointed a finger at the U.S. Postal Service on Tuesday for nearly 60,000 missing absentee ballots

Arrrgh!

Alright I am solidly back to the "never let the USPS touch your ballot" philosophy. Postal employees are too easily corrupted to be trusted. I might be willing to change my mind if the USPS and the Postal Workers' union were ever held responsible for any of this. They aren't.

How much do you want to bet the Broward county reports more votes counted then registered voters?

One, two, three, fourteen! ....huh?

2004-10-25T13:13:00.000-07:00

Perhaps it's an inside joke that only U2 fans will get. At the start of their latest pop release Bono counts out in Spanish, "Uno, dos, tres, catorce!" He's also hawking iTunes on TV, but I still don't get it.

I don't know much Spanish, but I learned to count to 20 when I was in first grade.

How Do I Explain?

2004-10-25T09:47:00.000-07:00

This comic strip gave me pause.

I have lately wondered how I would explain to certain acquaintances how I feel about their home country (France). It's a tough one. Without much effort I could probably write 10,000 words about what's wrong with the nation of France.

It's a shame really; I'm thankful for their chefs, their wine and their hunting dogs. From where I stand however, they seem determined to allow all that to be destroyed in order to remain not-Americans. Pride in your culture is one thing. Allowing your civil society to be destroyed from within because you can only see enemies when they are in the northern half of the Western Hemisphere isn't a way to preserve your culture.

I've run in to this before. When I was a gymnasium student in Sweden people wanted to know why we Americans thought the People's Republic of China was our enemy. I told them that it is because they openly declare their hostility and they act accordingly. The nation of France is very much the same, right down to selling advanced weapons to dictators with whom we are on the verge of war.

Aquila Non Capit Bin Ladens?

2004-10-25T09:11:00.000-07:00

The best column I read this weekend is from Mark Steyn in the Chicago Sun-Times. He sets up our choices well and denies the popular myths about Canadian health care as only a Canadian can. He also attacks one of the left's bigger foreign-policy myths:

As for this Bush-failed-to-get-bin-Laden business, 2-1/2 years ago I declared that Osama was dead and he's never written to complain. There's no more evidence for his present existence than there is for the Loch Ness monster, which at least does us the courtesy of showing up as a indistinct gray blur on a photograph every now and again. Osama is lying low because he's in no condition to get up.

I concur. I will be more than a little surprised if anyone can produce any of the man's living tissue ever again.

Do read No time for Kerry's Europhile delusions.

What's the Difference Between a "Journalist" and a Catfish?

2004-10-22T13:09:00.000-07:00

Chrenkoff gives us a portrait of one of Australia's more vocal moral relativists and speculates as to what he must advocate.

Martinkus stops just short of shilling for jihad.

A Textbook Example of Having Read Too Many Modern Textbooks

2004-10-21T13:58:00.000-07:00

Boo-yeah! I've been offered "help". One of blogosphere's many arrogant Trolls has set himself about the task of helping us poor, unsophisticated participants in Vox Bloguli IV.

http://satp.blogspot.com/ What have I been doing?

Well, one of the real (National Review, Weekly Standard, Al-Qaeda=Terrorists=Saddam) nutters is Hugh Hewitt . However, he has hit on an idea that I think other people who like to think "meta" have missed. Namely, what he calls Symposia. It's a bad name, since there is little-or-no give-or-take, but I bet Joi Ito , who is a savvy technobabbler, would like the idea.
What have I been doing? I've been going to all the blogs listed here http://www.hughhewitt.com/, and commented, where possible, trying to debunk their mysterious, and always misinformed notions about why Bush would make a good crackhead, I mean President.

You might want to read Josh's profile at this point.

...and compare for yourself my submission and his comment thereto.

There are four sections to his comment [supposedly debunking my thesis, let me know what you think -CR] each requiring separate treatment.

I'd go in order, but the most important matter is that the second section of his comment is a series of questions which deserve answers:

JN: Do the terrorists hate Japan?
CR: Yes!

JN: Do the terrorists hate France [?]
CR: Yes!

JN: and Germany?
CR: Yes!

JN: Are they slave countries?
CR: In those areas where the French police dare not go anymore, yes!

I'm grateful for the chance to further clarify my position on those points.

Unfortunately the rest of his commentary is not at all to the point. Take the first paragraph:

America has been brutal in the Middle East. We stopped the Syrian democracy in 1949. The Iranian democracy in 1953. We overthrew the Iraqi government in 1960 (the British invaded and conquered Iraq in WWI and WII).

Perhaps this is an attempt to establish credibility, but it is quite the straw man. First he asserts that America "has been brutal" in the Middle East and then goes on to cite wrongs of the waning British Empire.

What I think Josh most misses is that the fatwas against America seldom mention any of the wrongs he cites [so seldom I've never seen one -CR]. Nor does the doctrine of jihad specify that you attack only those who have previously wronged you. No, jihadists believe that all infidels are fair game for bloody conquest. Another problem I have with this litany is that it seems to ignore that the Soviet Union was ever a bad actor in the Middle East.

I'm not about to defend our pre-911 Middle East policy [I take it that baiting me to do so is the purpose of his setting up that particular straw man -CR]. Yet to deny that that policy was driven by the Cold War and the actions of the Soviet Union, as Josh seems to, is tantamount to insanity. It is a familiar form of insanity.

American neo-Marxists indulge in this particular insanity all the time. It would be hard for them to justify Marxism if they were forced to acknowledge its effects in real-world practice. I suppose I could also go in to my complete lack of guilt over policies for which I was not alive to vote on nor argue against, but we'll pass on that. The 20 years post WWII are really quite irrelevant to the modern jihadist.

In paragraph 3 we move on to some familiar clichés:

Bush lied and lied and lied about the threat from Iraq.

I hear this a lot, but before I will stipulate to it someone is going to have to supply at least one example of an actual lie.

Josh, are any of these statements lies?

Earlier today, I ordered America's armed forces to strike military and security targets in Iraq. They are joined by British forces. Their mission is to attack Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs and its military capacity to threaten its neighbors.

Their purpose is to protect the national interest of the United States, and indeed the interests of people throughout the Middle East and around the world. "

President WJ Clinton, 16-Dec-98
full text here

We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country.

Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power.

Al Gore, 23-Sept-02
full text here

There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein's regime is a serious danger, that he is a tyrant, and that his pursuit of lethal weapons of mass destruction cannot be tolerated. He must be disarmed.

Sen. Ted Kennedy (D, MA), 27-Sep-02
full text here

It would be naive to the point of grave danger not to believe that, left to his own devices, Saddam Hussein will provoke, misjudge, or stumble into a future, more dangerous confrontation with the civilized world. He has as much as promised it.

Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), 9-Oct-02
full text here

Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation ... And now he is miscalculating America's response to his continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destructionSo the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real

Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), 23-Jan-03
full text here

Josh's follow-up to that cliché is:

You, apparently, don't care about being lied to.

[Trolling par excellence! -CR]

Au contraire mon ami. When a man lies before the Senate accusing American servicemen of being war criminals, and when he meets with enemy delegations while holding a commission in the US Navy, and later claims to have done no wrong in so doing I care very much indeed.

Josh, do you not care that you are supporting a man who is a self-admitted war criminal?

Look, when people want to say "My tax cut will make the gov't richer!" (Reagan and Bush II, based on Supply-Side Economics), it is hard to prove them wrong in the first place.

There are more straw men here than at a scarecrow convention. I'll give you a hint though: The intermediate value theorem.

Paragraph 4 is yet more of the same. Every sentence of it is disconnected from my post, so it's not a response. I suspect it is boilerplate with which he trolls blogs. It is very telling about what he has allowed himself to believe a priori about the person to whom he is responding. I am forced to the suspicion that his mind is just addled with assorted vitriol.

What I find most amusing is his apparent assertion that the real war is about protecting the "right" to engage in some unspecified ancient sexual practice. I'm utterly at a loss about how the supposed private practices of individual Athenians is related to my post. However, I am quite aware "Athens" is a favorite battlecry of isolationists.

The lesson of ancient Athens is not "never act outside your own borders". If you think it is then you need to re-read Thucydides. [perhaps several times -CR] Carter-ism has been tried. We have the festering wound on civilization known as the Islamic Republic of Iran in part because of that philosophy.

The underlying irony of this "Athens" reference, is that the left in this country was quite obsessed, throughout the cold war, with comparing ancient Athens to the US. Yet in the end, it was the Soviet Empire which collapsed due to having adventurously and arrogantly over-extended itself.

I suppose a person who's blogging (and slinging clichés harder than hosts of daytime TV talkshows do) and yet believes he is engaged in some sort of underground paleo-leftist revolutionary movement can't be expected to understand that.

UPDATE: Eh Hugh, is no one on your end is reading the entries to the symposium now? Your Thursday 4:20 PM batch includes the blog of the above described and liberally quoted leftist troll: RemainCalm. Dare I hope you are going to comment on this silliness?

Does this mean you support the President?

2004-10-20T19:01:00.000-07:00

I recently heard audiotape of Cameron Diaz on some television sob-show warning that all who do not want rape to become legal in this country had better get out and vote.

I agree wholeheartedly.

Myself and other like-minded people would crawl over broken glass, if necessary, in order to vote to keep this from happening. Re-electing President Bush is crucial to this goal. For, if we lose to the jihadists, if they achieve their ultimate goal of bringing Shari'a to America, then rape will indeed be effectively lawful here as it is in countries which currently observe Shari'a.

How is this so? It is devilishly simple: In a Shari'a court, only the testimony of muslim men is admissible. As such, in any case involving illicit sex between a muslim man and a woman (muslim or not), the outcome of the case will depend entirely on the testimony of men. If the woman happens to be muslim then her husband or father may testify on her behalf, otherwise she has no voice at all in the proceedings. So unless the man confesses, or there are muslim men who can and will testify to guilt, there is no possibility whatever of a guilty verdict in a rape case.

Given these rules of evidence, and the severity of the penalties, how often do you believe that men are convicted of rape and the women are found innocent of wrongdoing in a Shari'a court? Do you also believe in the tooth fairy? More typically the result is like this.

When a muslim man has sex with a woman, she is, under Shari'a, unable to withhold consent because she cannot offer testimony in court to that effect. This is, in function, the same as making rape legal. There is effectively no rape under Shari'a, but only because every act which would be considered rape under English common law and under American case law is not recognized as a criminal act in a Shari'a court.

As if that is not enough. In any such case under Shari'a, the woman (or girl) involved can expect to get a death sentence, if not from the court, then from her family. You see, having apparently consented to such things, the woman (or girl) brings dishonor upon her family which can only be expunged by her death. This is called honor killing and muslims practice it everywhere there is Shari'a and many places where there is not.

Clash of civilizations? No. Anything which operates under the above rules cannot rightly be called civilization.

So yes, Cameron, it is vital that we vote.... for the man who is determined to take this war to the enemy and not John Kerry: a man who doesn't possess sufficient strategic vision to win at parchesi.

...but do you have a plan that does not involve surrendering?

2004-10-19T18:23:00.000-07:00

Call me skeptical, but to hear a man proclaim over and over about having a plan, while never once describing any actions contained therein causes me to doubt that that man really has anything other than an overblown sense of himself. This is compounded by the man's history of contributing nothing to the public debate except endless criticism of this nation as though we are the primary villian in the world.

John Kerry wants to have a summit, but he will never act pre-emptively. The bridge player in me says: you will lose with that attitude, mister Kerry. In fact, you may never even win a bid. Don't take up chess either. In fact, you'd need to be quite lucky to win so much as a game of parchesi with an attitude like that.

It is at this point that the summiteers would assert that we are not playing a game and that we shouldn't be talking about winners and losers. Those who are making war on us clearly do not agree. They have defined victory as the annhilation of anything we might recognise as liberty. They have asserted that it's "on" and acted on this assertion.

At the very least even a summiteer must acknowledge that if we wish something more than surrender for ourselves then we are indeed engaged in a competitive enterprise. Perhaps the semantics are just too much for some, but if someone declares that they are at war with you and acts accordingly, are you not necessarily at war with them? Why is it even necessary to ask such a thing? [The math student in me would call this the reflexive property of war ]

Jimmy Carter had a summit with Leonid Breshnev and kissed him on the cheek not long before Breshnev's army invaded Afghanistan. What did that summit accomplish? Ok, not fair, how about, "what did that summit accomplish which was to the benefit of any free people anywhere in the world?" Oh, I have one: it showed us the utter vacuity and unrealism of Carter's dictator-smooching realpolitik.

Carter-ism has been tried mister Kerry. I don't know who you think you are going to kiss to get the jihadists to stop murdering innocent people, but it's a non-starter.

Why Bush? Why not Kerry?

2004-10-19T18:13:00.000-07:00

The two major party candidates in this election offer us fundamentally different worldviews. On the one hand we have a man who believes that bad actors in the world target America because America acts “provocatively”. The other is a man who believes that bad actors in the world target America because we are a free people, and as such, the obvious enemy of all to which they aspire.

Kerry is, of course, a proponent of the former view. This worldview is a fantasy. The reality throughout history is that nations which maintain a strong capability of and willingness for preemptive self-defense survive while those which do not vanish. Today the bad actors in the world target our citizens for death because they have received decades of affirmation of their belief that Americans, despite our material might, do not possess the strength of will to persist in the face of atrocities committed against us and others.

The only merit in the Kerry worldview is that we Americans do indeed provoke the jihadists. What Kerry and the holders of this view fail to understand is that we provoke them merely by existing as a free people, that is, by existing outside of their domination. For this the jihadists have very openly declared war on us, both by word and by deed.

The jihadists offer us the options fight or submit. Those who possess John Kerry’s worldview see Americans fighting in self-defense as provacative and so they choose submission.

Tomorrow I Stop Procrastinating

2004-10-19T17:53:00.000-07:00

So, I finally started a new blog. I could probably get away without mentioning that fact; no one seems to have read my previous attmepts.

This is the blog of two Armchair Generals living in Arizona. I would like to have named the blog accordingly but someone already got the more obvious name.

Instead I picked my favorite quote from the war on the Taliban. At one point the sympathizers of the anti-American cause had gotten all excercised that our cluster bombs were close in color to the humanitarian meals we were dropping about Afghanistan. Hugh Hewitt read an article about this on his program and came up with this line. It's stuck with me ever since.

Is this a war blog? Well, no, not really. Neither myself or my counterpart are participants. We are students of war, which is why I would have gone for a more indicative name, but for now, this will have to do.

UPDATE: No posts in 2 years at one site I found, but I suspect that if they believe what they posted back then, they are probably still upset about it.