Michael Savage Fired

Shock jock Michael Savage went one stupid rant too far and has been fired by his bosses at MSNBC. From where I sit, the folks who run MSNBC hate his politics, but hired him anyway after Donohue was such a flop. Rather than hiring a thoughtful Conservative, they dug up thus sorry excuse for a political thinker, and got what they deserved. I think perhaps that this is exactly what some of the leftie execs at the network wanted in the first place.

This is no idle surmise. In my real life, I promote television shows, and have been spotted in MSNBCland more than a few times. Many of the execs there suffer from a particularly rabid form of leftie thinking, so, when Savage was hired, I wondered about the choice. That they picked the single person most likely to say something that would offend SOME protected group was clearly obvious at the time. Now that he has been fired, I think I know what they were thinking. They WANTED him to fail.

Don't be surprised if the network goes back to their usual tricks, now that the programming department has PROVED that these Conservatives are no good. Meanwhile, in the real world, most, if not ALL, thoughtful conservatives and libertarians hated Savage and his vile pronouncements at least as much as the lefties did. His TV show was an abomination, and I for one will not miss it. I am sure that I am in good company.

On the other hand, this debacle shows that the nets, or at least this one, really don't get it. With the explosion of outlets for programming, in a world where a half million viewers make for a SMASHING success, niche programming like the Savage Nation is exactly what is called for. I believe that Savage got almost that on his best day. Watch and see - that slot will NEVER see so many viewers again. Erik Sorenson, MSNBC President, should realize that it is all about ratings, not content. In a world where a 0.2 rating is considered to be acceptable and a 1.0 is a world-beating hit, there is no need for mainstream content, dumbed down like the offerings on the broadcast nets, where they need to see REAL numbers. In fairness to Savage, he claims that he thought the caller had been cut from the air, and that he was making private comments to the fellow, who he regarded as a plant from "a competitive talk show."

Sorry Mike, it's too late for an apology. They were waiting for you to slip up from the start. And maybe for you, just like for Rush Limbaugh, television may not be your best medium. Stick to radio, where you are a big success, and the bosses understand that insulting members of fringe groups is an acceptable route to attain that success.

Cigarettes

I confess. I've been a smoker for almost forty years. While it's not very cool anymore, and not very wise, it is a pleasure that I won't (or can't) give up. While this pleasure may be becoming unfashionable, smoking puts me in the mainstream of human behavior. Tobacco use has been a popular pastime everywhere on this planet, when it has been available for human consumption. And even though health authorities have claimed that it is dangerous, even deadly, for over four hundred years, it continues as a popular human activity even today. No less a personage than King James of England, in 1604, declared in his treatise A Counterblaste to Tobacco:

Smoking is a custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black, stinking fume thereof nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless.

In his treatise, James also noted that autopsies found smokers' "inward parts" were "infected with an oily kind of soot." James also said if he ever had the Devil to dinner, he'd offer him a pipe. With regards to second-hand smoke, James said, "The wife must either take up smoking or resolve to live in a perpetual stinking torment." As early as 1586, in Germany "De plantis epitome utilissima" offers one of the first cautions to the use of tobacco, calling it a "violent herb". And of course, since 1950 our own AMA has held that tobacco smoking was dangerous, since they found that cigarette smokers were twice as likely to get lung cancer than were non-smokers.

So, why do I smoke? Is it the pleasure, or the addiction? There is no doubt that I am addicted to the weed, but that can not completely explain why I smoke it. My addiction may explain why I smoke an entire pack of cigarettes right after I buy it, but does not explain why I buy a pack in the first place. So, understanding, as I do, that almost anything, done in moderation, is OK to do, how does one feed the pleasure while keeping the addiction at bay?

While pondering this question, it struck me that the biggest part of the problem was the 19 cigarettes left in the pack after I had smoked the first one... The one that had spurred me to buy the pack in the first place. There are not, in this country at least, packs of less than 20 available. In other countries I have seen 10-packs and 4-packs, and singles are available here and there, but not in my neighborhood. Then I discovered the modern roll-your-own movement. They reside online at Roll Your Own Magazine. The tobacco industry, aside from being the inventor of modern advertising, is ingenious in the enterprise of fulfilling demand for tobacco products. There are available today supplies that render a person such as myself able to fashion an (almost) perfect, filtered cigarette, light or full-flavor, from raw materials. After smoking this way for a few weeks, I have come to believe that it is possible that my problem has been solved.

With my little rolling device, a filter tube, and some tobacco I can, in a minute or two, fashion a cigarette that is satisfying in every way, without presenting me with a pack of nineteen cigarettes all begging to be smoked. In Confucian fashion I get to appreciate each tiny filament of tobacco, to feel and smell it, to pack it into the little rolling block, and finally to insert the tobacco into the filter tube. After a bit of tamping, the filter cigarette is ready to smoke. I have never enjoyed a cigarette as much as I do now. They taste better, and smell better. They should, as they are made from the finest, freshest tobacco. As a bonus, they cost less than a third of their previous price. But best of all, there are no extra cigarettes lying there, begging to be smoked. Each smoke is a little experience; a ritual of appreciation that I truly enjoy. I suppose that I could roll nineteen more if I felt like it, but so far, I haven't felt like it.

So now I smoke about five cigarettes a day, instead of twenty. I spend less than a half a dollar instead of five dollars. I might even live a little longer, since I smoke so much less. But, best of all, I do not have to give up one of life's little pleasures. Instead, it has become even more of a pleasure than it once was. And, with the money I am saving, I can put my sons through college.

Terminator 3 Rocks!

I don't make a habit of posting movie reviews, but after seeing Terminator 3, I just had to let y'all know that this flick is a hoot. Definitely the funniest action movie ever. The Terminator franchise has always had more than its fair share of humor, since no one can make fun of himself the way Arnold can. But this movie had me hysterical at times. I even missed some of the dialog, I was laughing so hard.

There are plenty of conventional reviews available online, and you can view the trailer here. But if you want to see a genuinely funny flick, with more than its share of (apparently bloodless) violence, see T3.

No Criminal Penalty

In a stunning victory of justice over politics, the Air Force dropped homicide and assault charges Thursday against two fighter pilots who mistakenly bombed Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan last year, killing four. The pilots, Majs. Harry Schmidt and William Umbach, had been charged with involuntary manslaughter, aggravated assault and dereliction of duty and faced up to 64 years in prison if convicted in a court-martial. One of the men, Maj. Harry Schmidt, who released the 500-pound bomb, still faces two counts of dereliction of duty.

Had the Air Force gone ahead with the court martial, it would have been the first such proceeding in the history of American warfare regarding a friendly fire incident. The action was commenced, over the objections of the military leadership, by political and diplomatic operatives for the administration, in order to mollify the Canadians, whose troops were lost. Ironically, these troops were members of the Rakkasans, attached to the 101st Airborne Division, and as such were the last troops to complain or demand such an action be instituted in their behalf, although even the most elite troops have families that bleed and cry over their dead like everyone else.

Mistakes were made, although most of them were committed by members of the upper ranks, especially the fact that the pilots were not apprised that friendly forces were operating in the area. What judgement calls the pilots missed can be blamed on the fatigue that comes with being in the hot seat for over ten hours, popping uppers to stay alert. And remember that the bombing occurred on a moonless night at Tarnak Farms, a former Al Qaeda base once owned by Osama bin Laden. They were deep in Indian country, these men truly believed that they were in danger, and it was the natural response to that danger that precipitated the attack. A successful court martial on these men would have had a chilling effect on our future air operations. We place these men in harm's way to do a very dirty job for the rest of us, and we need to give them a lot of leeway in the carrying out of that job. There will be career penalties for these men, and they will never again be in a position to make such a mistake again. Under the circumstances, that is all the punishment that is warranted.

There are those who will say that these men were let off because Canada refused to back our play in Iraq. I wish that it were so, but I can't give our national leadership that much credit.

Willfully Blind?

Last night on Fox News, at the end of the Hannity and Colmes Show, they ran a live feed of a car chase (from L.A. of course), showing a car going about 30 miles per hour or so, surrounded by police cars. Just as they hit the top of the hour, and Greta Van Susteren came on, the perpetrator surrendered. Now we had Greta, Hannity, and Colmes, along with a few guests all miked up as the perp was taken into custody. He exited the vehicle, docile as could be, following instructions, lying down in the street, first here, then there, then, when all was exactly as the (unheard) police officer was evidently commanding, the LAPD moved in to cuff the fellow. As the police came upon him, I gasped, as the first cop to reach him drop-kicked his knee right into the part of the guy's back that is directly between the shoulder blades. That cop kept his entire weight on the perp for about 20 to 25 seconds, until he was all cuffed up and ready to transport. All the while, Greta and friends chatted on about what they thought they were seeing.

But they didn't see what I saw! They even commented on how gentle the cops were being to the poor misguided fellow, and how lucky he was to have been arrested by such understanding and respectful police officers. Meanwhile, this poor bastard was carrying the full, doughnut enhanced weight or one mean, husky, member of L.A.'s finest.

Where do I find my outrage? I surprised myself with the virulence of my reaction to the blithe indifference to the suffering of a fellow human being shown by the talking heads. Members of the thoughtless wing of the law and order right, like Sean Hannity, are always assumed to be insensitive to the suffering of swarthy criminal types. Committed leftists like Colmes and Van Susteren have become even more bellicose in their prescriptions for tough treatment for criminals, Van Susteren's background as a defense attorney notwithstanding. It was their blindness that outraged me. If they had said: "Good for the cops, they got that brown bastard" I would have understood, at least, where they were coming from. But they acted as if it had not even happened. They were absolutely insensitive to the suffering of a fellow human being.

I believe that this is part of a syndrome wherein a large portion of the population can not envision the possibility that such things could ever happen, to them. No cop will ever abuse them, because they will never steal a car. So investing the police with extralegal power to brutalize and otherwise undermine the rights of the accused is ok. They have never been beaten by a cop, so they never will be! Meanwhile, a teacher I know very well was once beaten to within an inch of his life for no reason other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I myself have been exposed to the tender mercies of the NYPD during the Giuliani years, and I am no swarthy criminal type. Every black person knows what I am talking about, but last night, the entire party was white.

I prescribe more Dostoyefsky, more Kafka, for the reading lists of those who are confident that "they will never come for me." If there is one thing we have learned, it is that, they just might. What would have those same voices have said on Kristallnacht?

Movable Type

There seems to be a movement among Blogspot bloggers migrating to Movable Type. A few bloggers with the resources are making it really easy (and cheap) to do so. The latest one of my favorites to move is John Dunshee of "Just Some Poor Schmuck." (I have him as J.S.P.S. on my blogroll)

John makes it look easy, although there was a period where his blog was practically unavailable, and the new site looks great. I am contemplating the move, although the idea of having to learn an entirely new way of doing things, when I had just gotten used to the Blogger way, is a bit daunting. (Cripes! I just got comments hooked up last week!) But if John can do it, maybe I can too. We are the same age and all. Then there is the consideration of losing my plethora of inbound links and having to beg and plead to get them changed to the new address, rather than just dumped (but that's just my mishegas).

Anyway, if I make the change, it won't be for a while, and I'll probably keep the Blogspot blog going anyway. But, either way, I will strive to keep you, my customers, satisfied, as always.

Living History

While it is very unlikely that I would buy Hillary Clinton's book (at least until I find it at a garage sale) I still have sought out a review of the thing, written by someone who is not struck with the sycophancy for the Clintons that consumes most of the usual suspects who write for the New york times Review of books. I have found a real gem of a review, written by Matt Labash, published in The Weekly Standard. Now, as a subscriber to The Weekly Standard, I get unrestricted access to their web site. I am not sure if just anyone can get access to the online version of this review, so, within the bounds of fair use, I shall excerpt some of the better fragments of this magnificent analysis of Hillary's latest book. It can be found here. (Hopefully a free registration will get you a copy; this piece is great reading. Buy the magazine if you have to, it's worth it.)

This book appears, as expected, to be an almost totally dishonest whitewash of the presidential years as seen through Hillary's eyes, and Labash takes great pains to point out, and prove, the depth of the mandacity present here, point by point. Hillary claims that the Lewinsky affair was the first time BJ had lied to her, which requires that she deny the truth of the Gennifer Flowers affair. Yet she must know that BJ admitted to this affair (under oath) months before the Lewinsky deal. And on and on. Yet Labash tells it in a most entertaining way. He begins:

In keeping with the children's theme, "Living History"--or as the gals in my Hillary reading circle call it, "Living Herstory"--is Hillary's first scratch'n'sniff book. Let me explain. Take a claim in this book, almost any claim, scratch it hard enough and it smells like BS.

But beyond the mere lies, there's Hillary the incorrigibly arrogant bitch-princess, as in:

And then there's the least attractive Hillary, Hillary the Martyr, who in her eagerness to reach for grandiosity after her life had been turned into a sex farce, draws strength from the examples set by Harriet Tubman, Nelson Mandela, and Elie Wiesel. Wiesel survived a Nazi death camp and Mandela survived 27 years of imprisonment for opposing an unjust, racist government. Hillary survived having her husband turned into a Jay Leno monologue because he received blowjobs from an intern and lied about it. It's all the same in Hillaryland--as her staffers called their workspace.

But beyond anything else, this review is entertaining... no doubt much more entertaining than its subject. An example:

To label "Living History" as being merely boring would be to owe a groveling apology to Bill Bradley. By the third time I read Hillary assert that she doesn't take herself too seriously, I knew that I was seriously in for it. By the tenth time I tripped over a paragraph that read like it had been wrenched from a bad alumni magazine ("What I valued most about Wellesley were the lifelong friends I made and the opportunity that a women's college offers us to stretch our wings and minds in the ongoing journey toward self-definition and identity"), I was praying to be struck with blindness. By the fiftieth description of a meaningless foreign trip that she took, such as the one to Dhaka, Bangladesh, a place she "long wanted to visit" because of attractions like the International Center for Diarrheal Disease Research--I was begging for death. Just as you would be too, the seventieth time you read her introduce a person as if they were a State of the Union prop, a person like "Ryan Moore, a seven-year-old from South Sioux City, Nebraska, who had been born with a rare form of dwarfism," and whose story "kept our eyes on the prize throughout our struggle to bring health care coverage to all Americans."

Who talks like this, you ask? Hillary, that's who.

But, quintessential Labash, we get to the point, as in:

The conservative caricature of Hillary Clinton has always hinged on painting her as a bloodless, calculating shrew who pulled Bill's strings and regularly packed the dirty laundry off to the dry cleaners. But there is a much more prosaic explanation for why so many detractors find her even less appealing than her husband. He, for all his faults and nods to political expedience, exhibited an anti-political impulse: a scampish charm and an insatiable, often reckless appetite to live life for it's own pleasures, consequences be damned. While Bill's detractors would call this his hedonistic side and his boosters would call it his human one, Hillary, as revealed by her own ghostwriters' words, is pretty much a one-sided affair. "Living History" paints her as a purely political creature.

Everything she does--no matter how pedestrian--seems to contain some golden moral or noble expression, which almost always rings false. Since it's not officially a campaign book, and contains next to no policy prescriptions, one could reasonably expect her to throw open the window and let out some of the hot air. The memoir gives the impression that you are never being allowed a glimpse into her true world. Or more troubling perhaps, that you are--that Hillary's artificial world is also her real one.

Consequently, you never get the sense that she is trying to seriously arrive at the truth, but rather, that she's merely shining up her resume. She is a joiner, and an apple-polisher, the teacher's pet and the queen of the spelling bee--every twit you knew in school that was begging to be taken behind the gym for a game of full-contact dodge ball. Thus, we learn that she was president of her high school fan club for Fabian, and served as well on the Cultural Values Committee. After running successfully for student council and junior class vice-president, she tried to join NASA's astronaut training program. At the time NASA wasn't accepting girls--and even though Hillary was still in high school and wore coke-bottle glasses, this "blanket rejection" made her "more sympathetic later to anyone confronted with discrimination of any kind."

Without quoting the entire thing, you will need to find your own copy. Don't miss this one!

Road Map to Hell

I don't want to seem like a Bush hater, but I can not fail to notice that the President is contradicting many promises he has made. For instance, back on June 24, 2002 Bush claimed to have had a "vision" of the route to peace in the Middle East. He premised his vision on four axioms. They were:

1) the Palestinians must select and empower through democratic means a "new leadership"? untainted by terror";

2) "the United States will not support the establishment of a Palestinian state until its leaders engage in a sustained fight against the terrorists and dismantle their infrastructure";

3) there has to be an end to Palestinian (and other Arab regimes') "incitement" via such outlets as government-controlled media, propaganda and mosques; and

4) "progress" (read, Israeli concessions) must be a function of (Palestinian) performance, not an artificial timetable.

Now Bush has revealed his "Road Map" and it renounces all four premises. He insists that Israel deal with Arafat's puppet and Holocaust denier, the unelected Abbas. In spite of the fact that Abbas has declared that he will take no forceful action against the terrorists, Bush and Powell have reiterated their support for "the process." And, worst of all, Bush and Co. have insisted in the "Road Map" that Israeli concessions be made by the calendar, rather than any meaningful achievements.

No doubt about it, Bush talks a good game at times. And he has a few inner strengths that are laudable in a leader, like self esteem, which is so preferable to the ego that our last poor excuse for a President had. But in the end, he is just another pol. The Jews can not bring much pressure to bear against this pol, since they were only, at best, a hopeful, possible, vote for him to win, if he played his cards right. He is not playing them right just yet. There is one possible hope, and that is that he is saving his strongest support for the Israel situation until election time. It is incumbent upon American Jews to offer him support that he believes can be his, but not unless and until he turns back around on Israel. This Jew is not yet committed to voting against Bush. But if the President intends to rely on his father's strategy, which was that we will vote for him because we can't countenance the alternative, we will have another alternative in the White House, sooner rather than later.

Tip of the hat to Frank Gaffney, Jr.

Blix vs Sawyer

Yesterday (Wednesday) Hans Blix appeared on Good Morning America, and an amazing colloquy ensued. It seems that Mr. Blix, famous lover of President Bush and all things American (NOT!), is more supportive of the American President and his veracity than Ms. Sawyer is. She tried and tried to get Hans to accuse Bush of lying to the UN, the American people, anyone at all, but he wouldn't, quite, say that. He pointed out that Saddam Hussein certainly acted like a dictator who was guilty of craving, building, storing, and actually using weapons of mass destruction.

DIANE SAWYER: So your hunch is they won't find anything [weapons of mass destruction]?

HANS BLIX: Well, I shouldn't have any hunches really.

SAWYER: Oh, have one. Have one. You can afford one now.

BLIX: The more time that passes without anything being found, the more I think we should begin to ask ourselves, why did they [the Iraqi regime] behave as they did during the '90s? Because they certainly behaved in a manner that seemed ? denial of access, et cetera. They changed the numbers also.

SAWYER: Pride?

BLIX: Why was ? yes. Yes, I think you are right, but this is my first hunch. I'm not a psychologist, but I think so. I think that Saddam Hussein figured himself to be an emperor of Mesopotamia, a Nebuchadnezzar, and that he felt that 'these inspectors are imposters, little creepies around me, and I won't let them go one inch more than the Security Council resolution say, which I accepted. So if they want to go in with five people rather than four, which I've accepted, then no.' Otherwise it's very difficult to explain some of the things they did, you know.

Sawyer tried to get Blix to accuse the administration of lying about the situation in Iraq, but all she got was this:

SAWYER: Did the Bush administration tell the truth?

BLIX: Well, they interpreted things that they were seeing, and they? some of the things they saw were not real.

SAWYER: And will they pay a price for that in credibility?

BLIX: I don't know. I'm not accusing them of lack of sincerity. I think they believed, believed in what they saw, and I think [British Prime Minister] Tony Blair clearly believed in what they saw, but some of the material did not hold water.

SAWYER: And what price do you pay?

BLIX: Well, maybe the lesson is that I should be more prudent. I mean if you want to start a war on this basis, then I think the intelligence should be good, not just, 'Sorry about that. It was wrong intelligence. We've shot the wrong embassy in Belgrade.' Remember that case? Well, that was wrong intelligence. They shot at the Chinese Embassy instead of something else. This is not very good.

I can't find the entire transcript yet, but the rest of the interview was similar. Sawyer, like most American far-left ideologues, is seeking to paint our President as a lying, scheming, warmonger. The editorial in the piece on ABC's website I linked to above also seeks to portray the interview in the light most unfavorable to Bush. That's not an ideologue, but a major news organization shading the truth. Mr. Blix wouldn't quite play along, but he gave them enough grist to support a piece that follows the party line. It is a sad state of affairs when our news outlets stoop to this kind of yellow journalism. It is no wonder that they are losing viewers the way they are. The morning after they do a puff piece on Hillary Clinton, they do a hatchet job on President Bush. At least they don't put words in Blix's mouth that he didn't actually say. Next time they might have to dig up Scott Ritter again.

Where's The Compassion Now?

Mid way through the 19th century this nation established a homeland for the return of the slaves we had imported from Africa. We named this country Liberia, based uopn the Latin root meaning freedom. For various reasons, the effort was less than an unqualified success. This country survives to this day. Its people, however, may not be able to say that for much longer.

As I write this, French troops are in Liberia evacuating all of the white people who wish to leave. For the black people, however, evacuation is limited to those who can prove that they are citizens of another country. President Bush has responded to the situation, by sending 35 (!) troops to protect our embassy, and the property of our citizens there. Meanwhile, the rest of the people there, the descendents of American slaves, are being left to the tender mercies of the rebels, who are offering them a place at the table, as the main course. Those who escape becoming food for the rebels, however, are mostly facing starvation themselves.

I wonder how many Americans would support sending more than the three dozen troops that our fearless leader has spared to stop the carnage. I suspect that this would be a rather uncontroversial decision. I wonder what the political calculus is that would abandon a few million former Americans to cannibalism and starvation, while five to ten American soldiers die each week attempting to install a better government in another country whose linkage to America is much more tenuous. I guess that it's some combination of "we can't solve all the world's problems" and "the Liberian rebels are no threat to us," but it sucks just the same. Both Reagan, the hard rock conservative, and bleeding heart liberal Clinton, sent more aid to Liberia than the compassionate conservative Bush.

I hope he enjoys his retirement.

Compassionate + Conservative = Liberal

As G.W.Bush's first term has entered its second half, one would think that the administration would be looking to shore up its support for the run for a second term. Looking at recent events through that prism, one can only think that Bush believes that the margin of victory will come from Democrat voters. He is certainly alienating many conservative voters. I wonder if he can win without us, but he is surely making it difficult for conservatives to support him. While I can't see many of us voting for a Donkey, he is positioning himself to the left of almost half of the Democrat pretenders to the throne. Some examples:

Afghanistan - His support for the people of Afghanistan is embarrassingly absent. Most of the Donk candidates are ahead of him on the issue of supporting the Afghan people and the Karzai government. Beyond any compassion for the Afghan people, how about the Americans who are adversely affected by the bumper crop of Afghan Opium that this neglect is helping to cause? A new growing season has begun, and reports indicate that the new harvest will bring an unprecedented crop. This will translate into even lower prices and higher quality in American Heroin markets. Bush must shoulder at least some of the blame for this. Since Heroin is one of the drugs that almost everyone agrees is worth banning, the Donks get ahead of him on the drug war as well.

Assault Weapons Ban - in contravention of statements he made on the stump last campaign, he has supported an extention of the so-called Assault Weapons Ban. It seems that the Senate will bail him out on this one, but this was not clear until the last few days. Had he signed the extention, the NRA vote would have fled. This could still happen.

Iraq - As his father learned, the bump a pol gets for winning a war is fleeting. Now Bush and Co. must win the peace. Appointing incompetents like Margaret Tutweiler to run things, and making decisions like hiring Baath party holdovers places the looming failure of the peace squarely in Bush's lap.

Israel - The "Road Map" fiasco is proving to be even less useful a path to peace than either Oslo or Camp David... neither the Jews or the Jew-haters are happy with this attempt. When no results are forthcoming, Bush will have little support from either side. Funny, but Bush seemed well on his way to garnering a significant part of the Jewish vote. Now he looks like another pol who is willing to sell out the Jews for a tiny political advantage. At best, he is paying a debt to Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah with Jewish blood. He will need a miracle in the holy land if he expects to see any Jewish votes.

I could go on, but it is too painful. After only a third of the alphabet, Bush's prospects for re-election seem dim. Of course spinners for both sides will not admit it, but it will take some major mistakes by the Donkeys for Bush to have much of a chance. It is early, though. Arafat could die, the NRA might endorse him, Karzai could just possibly survive, and the DEA could win the war on (some) drugs. And Chickens could grow lips.

Computer Models vs. Reality

It is easy to become complacent about the "Global Warming" fiasco. After all, hasn't the real science won the day over those who would use junk science to impede the economies of the Western Powers, especially the U.S.A.? Well, the scientific argument would, indeed, appear to be won, but there are still powerful forces which continue to press for a unilateral economic disarmament by the West, led by many of the same people who acted like they were appalled at the so-called unilateral warfare proposed, and subsequently undertaken, by that same Western juggernaut, led by the U.S.A.

Recently, in the journal Science (sorry, no free online copy available... yet) there has appeared a scholarly article refuting atmospheric temperature measurements in favor of a reliance of reliance on atmospheric temperature models. This is the kind of easy reliance upon junk science that the Left has become used to in this war they are waging against the great American (and other Western) economies. Yet today, we can see signs that their effort has failed. The forces of reason and truth are now organized, and within a week of the appearance of this article, in testimony before a committee on the House of Representatives, Dr John Christy, Professor of Atmospheric Science and Director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, and also Alabama's State Climatologist, pointed out the absolute foolishness of that position. His brilliantly composed remarks are online here. Some quotes:

Will increases in CO2 affect the climate significantly? Are significant changes occurring now? Climate models suggest the answer is yes, real data suggest otherwise... If in testing models one finds conflict with even the observed large scale features, this would suggest that at least some fundamental processes, for example heat transfer, are not adequately described in the models.

...

That same week, with much less fanfare, my latest paper appeared in the Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology.[2] Unlike the paper in Science magazine, I performed several rigorous tests to estimate the potential error of our UAH satellite data. I used real observations from balloon datasets created by independent organizations, some with data from as many as 400 different balloon stations. Our UAH satellite data and the balloon data corroborated each other with remarkable consistency, showing only a slow warming of the bulk of the atmosphere. This evidence indicates that the projected warming of the climate model had little consistency with the real world.

...

Using a wider range of information from new sources these studies now indicate large temperature swings have been common in the past 1000 years and that temperatures warmer than today's were common in 50-year periods about 1000 years ago. These studies suggest that the climate we see today is not unusual at all.

...

I want to encourage the committee to be suspicious of media reports in which weather extremes are given as proof of human-induced climate change. Weather extremes occur somewhere all the time. For example, in the year 2000 in the 48 conterminous states, the U.S. experienced the coldest combined November and December in 106 years. We've just again witnessed a colder than average winter in the Eastern US with some record snowfalls here and there, while the California mountains had one of the coldest and snowiest April's ever. However, looking at these events does not prove the country is experiencing global cooling any more than a hot July represents global warming.

...

One century is a relatively short time in terms of climate time scales. When looking at proxy records of the last 2000 years for drought in the Southwest, the record suggests the worst droughts occurred prior to 1600. The dust bowl of the 1930's appears as a minor event on such a time scale. This should be a warning that with or without any human influence on climate we should be prepared for a significant, multi-year drought. (Low cost energy would help mitigate the costs of transporting water to the stricken areas.)

When considering information such as indicated above, one finds it difficult to conclude that climate change is occurring in the US and that it is exceedingly difficult to conclude that part of that change might have been caused by human factors.

There is a lot more there. This is really nothing new. What is new is the speed with which a response to the junk science attack was organized. If the other side in this war refuses to concede defeat, then our side must continue to fight, and fight well. Kudos to Dr. Christy.

Vacation Over

OK, not so much a vacation as a mixed business/pleasure trip. In any case, I was out there, on a roadtrip, having a fine old time, spending money, and having more fun than an over 50 Dad with two little kids and his one and only wife is supposed to be able to have. But here it is, less than two weeks later and we are back at home base, and the old habits will surely reassert themselves. Blogging will resume later today, Blogspot willing. (For those of you who don't know this, Blogger is undergoing a reorganization, and our ability to post has been spotty at best. I actually tried to post while on the road, but it failed. Such are the pitfalls of blogging. But now that I am at home, all will be restored, I hope!)

Ruminations on the Palistinians

Recently I stumbled upon a copy of Edward Said's The Question of Palestine, and I reread parts of it. For those of you who don't know, it is Said's seminal work justifying the Palestinian cause. It established Said as a Palestinian spokesman, and established the academic study of Orientalism as a so-called mainstream course of study. I found the book at a garage sale, put on sale by a former philosophy student at University of Washington. It is a sad comment that this is the work that philosophy students are given to establish their background in Palestinian history. It is neither a history, nor is Said truly a Palestinian, if such a thing truly exists. As Said defines the type, there are about four million Palistinians, but he defines it the way the Supreme Court defines pornography. You know it when you see it. Since Said has made something of a career out of his supposed Palistinian background, we can understand his motivation. I guess it is similar to Jerry Rivers having no success in his career until he changed his appellation to Rivera and claiming Mexican status for himself.

Anyway, Said refers continually to the Zionist Entity as a colonial occupation, which begs the question of the original homeland for the colonists. No opposing view is given anywhere in the book, so the fact that the original Zionists bought the land, or the fact that the United Nations granted the land to the Jewish people is nowhere to be found. Personally, the fact that the local Arabs sided with Hitler in the war makes the choice of territory particularly sweet, but a more objective source might note that the fact of continuous Jewish habitation in the region for three thousand years before the Balfour Declaration gives the Hebrews at least as much "right" to live there as the Egyptian Said family.

What is particularly galling about the book is the complete absence of any reference to Islam, or any Islamic responsibility to provide for their co-religionists. He notes the continued status of the Palestinians in the region as refugees, without discussing the reasons for their continued status as such, when all other refugee populations assimilated somewhere over fifty years. The fact that their evacuation of the land was voluntary, all of the wars against the Jews were promulgated by the Arabs, and that the only nation in the region who gives the Palistinians a fair shake is Israel, is completely missing from the book as well.

Twenty four years after the copyright of the book, a few items stand out as portents for the future of the "Palestinian" people. First, their two best friends, Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, have gone a long way towards making the American polity an enemy of any group that wages Jihad using terrorist means, against any American ally or American electoral constituency. Another good sign is the resurgence of patriotic thought here. Funny what a mere few thousand murders of American innocents can do to change American resolve. The election of an American president who is not afraid to say, and to act on what he truly believes is refreshing as well, and a source for optimism in the heart of this conservative American Jew.

Said's main emphasis is the colonial nature of Israel and it's imperialist master, the United States. Recently in the Guardian's review of Said's latest book, they referred to him thus:

Said's main argument: that much of western scholarship and journalism on Asia and Africa helped, directly or not, western imperialists in "dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient" ... Said is billed mainly as the politically correct academic who accuses all western writers on the Orient of racist and imperialist bias.

If even the Guardian is growing ever so slightly apart from this academic windbag, there may be hope for the future of the Jews after all. If only the Palestinians would realize that they can not succeed in killing all of the Jews, or driving them into the sea, they might be able to make and live in peace. There is precious little evidence that such is the case. But little by little, reality seems to be appearing in the debate over the question of Palestine.

Google to Blogs: Get Lost

Well, maybe not. At least not yet. But the signs are unmistakable that the current predominance that blogs have in Google (and other search engines) results, is threatened with imminent demotion, if not actually coming to an end.

There is a pretty hot thread at Slashdot wherein many posters claim that they are tired of having results from blogs drowning out the primary sources that searchers are looking for. I never realized that so many tech-heads so dislike the blogosphere, but clearly, many of them do. This story has its origins in a statement made by Google CEO Eric Schmidt that 'Soon the company will also offer a service for searching Web logs, known as "blogs."' And logically, if Google offers a "service" that indexes blogs, the main Google index will not.

They did the same thing with Usenet, you may remember, and after a bit of an argument things are now fine with Usenet being separately indexed, but I wonder if these two things are similar at all. For one thing, how will Google, or anyone else, tell blogs from "primary sources?" Who is going to tell Andrew Sullivan or Stephen den Beste that they are not "primary sources?" What about James Lileks? Somehow I don't think that Eric Schmidt has really thought this thing out. How will he tell the difference, when the software is the same, the content is of the same type, and therefore the difference between the two sources is simply and purely subjective. Other than the economics, how is Daily Pundit different from the New York Times? Well, the Times keeps the letters page separate from the news and editorial pages, and Bill Quick works alone while the Quacks at the Times have an almost unlimited budget.

And how will this divorce be delineated? Let's look at the news aggregators, like InstaPundit and Drudge Report. Are they blogs or not? Who decides? I know to go there, but what about the newbies? How will they find blog content if it is in a separate index? How will they ever know to look there? (They have never discovered Usenet. Who searches Deja News anyway?) I guess that they will have to be satisfied with, what else? Google News!

If this comes to pass, it will be another instance of the Establishment keeping the people down, and I say that as a reactionary conservative, not some looney leftie. The great accomplishment of the Blogosphere is the freedom of writers to publish without being edited by a multinational media conglomerate, or, even worse, Howell Raines. In this marketplace of ideas, all words start out as equal. The readers, and the readers alone, decide what they will read. No editor (for better or worse) tells me what the write about, or what slant to put on the story. But now Google wants to tell the World that the body of work produced by, say, the Warbloggers, will not be mingled with the "approved" content from the editorial pages of the Times and the Guardian? Is Schmidt, a leftie kid who was a pure nobody a few short years ago, now empowered to hide our opinions behind a Google Tab? We shall see, boys and girls, but I don't think that this will come to pass, or the Blogosphere will go down without a fight. Who was it who said: "never argue with someone who buys ink by the barrel?". I think that aphorism applies to us.

Bears Under Attack

"Activists sue U.S. Wildlife Service over the killing of bears" reads the headline in a news item. Apparently an environmental group is challenging a federal agency's policy of killing black bears that strip bark from young trees in timber plantations in western Oregon. I'm serious. It may sound like a joke, but it is rather the way that some do-gooders attempt to "protect" our "environment."

The Numbers: 110 out of 25,000 bears are killed each year in order to protect "more than one million dollars" worth of timber. I am often, when I contemplate such activities, driven to note the enormous wealth of our great nation. Like the "Million Dollar Salmon*", the amount of money that is spent on the protection of wildlife here is nothing short of amazing. This extreme affluence should make us all proud. Let both sides choose their weapons, and may the best man win!

* Million dollar Salmon: I have previously written extensively on the million dollar Salmon of SeaTac airport. Apparently the airport needed an additional runway. Environmental groups sued to stop the construction. A compromise was enacted in which Two Hundred and Ten Million dollars was spent in order to provide a reservoir that would facilitate continuous flow into a stream, the natural flow of which would be adversely impacted by the construction. This reservoir would protect the lives of approximately 200 salmon, thus the "Million Dollar Salmon" sobriquet was applied to the project by yours truly. Apparently, I am the only person in the State of Washington who did the math and realized that this project would cost ONE MILLION DOLLARS PER SALMON. In the local papers it was reported that since this would be federal dollars, and that if the project was not constructed the federal government would merely not spend, and therefore keep, the $210,000,000.00, the project was, and I kid you not, the local papers reported, FREE!!! In case you care, the particular Salmon that were affected are not of a species that is on the endangered species list. These are just normal, meat salmon. You can be proud that your government is willing to spend over $40,000 per pound to preserve the habitat of these lucky fish. At about $2,000,000 per year to maintain the dams and regulate the water level in the stream, that amounts to $500 dollars per pound each year to support the lifestyles of these tasty morsels of Lox for the residents of Washington to put on their bagels. What a country!!!

Who Stands Alone

Eleven thousand soldiers lay beneath the dirt and stone,
all buried on a distant land so far away from home.
For just a strip of dismal beach they paid a hero's price,
to save a foreign nation they all made the sacrifice.

And now the shores of Normandy are lined with blocks of white,
Americans who didn't turn from someone else's plight.
Eleven thousand reasons for the French to take our side,
but in the moment of our need, they chose to run and hide.

Chirac said every war means loss, perhaps for France that's true,
for they've lost every battle since the days of Waterloo.
Without a soldier worth a damn to be found in the region,
the French became the only land to need a Foreign Legion.

You French all say we're arrogant. Well hell, we've earned the right--
We saved your sorry nation when you lacked the guts to fight.
But now you've made a big mistake, and one that you'll regret;
you took sides with our enemies, and that we won't forget.

It wasn't just our citizens you spit on when you turned,
but every one of ours who fell the day the towers burned.
You spit upon our soldiers, on our pilots and Marines,
and now you'll get a little sense of just what payback means.

So keep your Paris fashions and your wine and your champagne,
and find some other market that will buy your aeroplanes.
And try to find somebody else to wear your French cologne,
for you're about to find out what it means to stand alone.

You see, you need us far more than we ever needed you.
America has better friends who know how to be true.
I'd rather stand with warriors who have the will and might,
than huddle in the dark with those whose only flag is white.

I'll take the Brits, the Aussies, the Israelis and the rest,
for when it comes to valor we have seen that they're the best.
We'll count on one another as we face a moment dire,
while you sit on the sideline with a sign "friendship for hire."
We'll win this war without you and we'll total up the cost,
and take it from your foreign aid, and then you'll feel the loss.
And when your nation starts to fall, well Frenchie, you can spare us,
just call the Germans for a hand, they know the way to Paris.

Unknown Author

Gay Marriage

In today's Daily Dish entry Andrew Sullivan takes James Taranto to task for his views on Gay Marriage. Taranto makes the error of proposing a compromise over an issue dear to gays, and of course no compromise is acceptable where gays are concerned, to Mr. Sullivan. I wrote him a letter in reply but, seeing as how I expect to get no play on Andrew's blog, I print my reply here. Read his entry first, then my reply....

Andrew;

In today's blog entry on Taranto's column on gay marriage, and in previous writings, you seem to blur the distinction between conservatives and social conservatives or the religious right. There are, as you well know, all sorts of people and views that self-describe as conservatives and conservative. Clearly libertarian-leaning conservatives and neocons tend toward a more inclusive view on this and other issues. After all, you yourself are a self-described conservative.

The problem that I and others, coming from a libertarian point of view, have with same-sex marriage is that marriage is a religious, not a state function. Giving gays the civil, legal, benefits of marriage is not a problem for me/us. Calling it marriage in a legal sense crosses the border between state and religion. This is not a rhetorical difference. Why do you persist in denouncing those to whom the difference is an important one?

In your article, "Why Civil Unions Aren't Enough," linked in your post, you claim that compromise is not an option, and further claim that the difference is merely rhetorical, but then go on to make the rhetoric a deal breaker. You say, "Marriage, under any interpretation of American constitutional law, is among the most basic civil rights," but marriage is and never was a "right," it is a "rite!" Forcing the state to recognise a religious distinction when the religions themselves object is overly coercive. The state should have little power over the church.

You say that "Separate but equal" was a failed and pernicious policy with regard to race, but the truth is that this is mere racist drivel. Why is separate but equal fine for any other group, but is pernicious and evil when applied to blacks, and now gays. Separate but equal is fine for the Italians, the Jews, the Japanese, and almost any other group, but to the rascist mind, the blacks are a specially handicapped group, needing special protection. And now the gays need such special protection....

What we need is a constriction of the laws surrounding civil marriage, not a liberalization of them. You say "Many citizens adhere to no church at all. Should they be required to adhere to a religious teaching in order to be legally married?" I answer: Yes! There are religions that require no particular belief, and others that embrace any different or even bizarre beliefs you can imagine. Why shouldn't marriage be a rite granted solely by a religious institution? Civil law can then do what it does everywhere else: regulate things and ban unacceptable practices, such as polygamy and incest, and grant, in civil union status, the rights you hold dear for purposes such as inheritance, health care benefits, leaseholder rights, etc. You could join the Church of the Sincerely Gay and get married in the church. Why can't you, who self-describes as a conservative, see a solution that needs less government intrusion, rather than more?

Andrew, I've written you before and blogged this several times. Why is it that some gays, and you may be their most visible proponent, need to wear your sexuality on your sleeves. Why must I/we recognise your personal needs? If the state is willing to grant you all of the civil benefits of marriage excluding the word marriage itself, I suggest you grab it. This may be the most you could, or should, get.

Intelligent Design

Now the debate on Darwinian evolution is heating up again. The opposition chooses to use the euphemism "Intelligent Design" instead of "creationism," and is trying to state its case without using a direct reference to God. This is the same dodge used by the pro abortion folks who proclaim a right to "choice" while avoiding any reference to exactly what they wish to choose. If the design is "intelligent," who, exactly, is being intelligent?

The debate focuses upon the idea that the odds of such a complicated system as life coming into existence by random chance are impossibly long. This reminds me of a quote from one of the best books ever written, Innumeracy, by John Allen Paulos, that reads:

[r]arity by itself shouldn't necessarily be evidence of anything. When one is dealt a bridge hand of thirteen cards, the probability of being dealt that particular hand is less than one in 600 billion. Still, it would be absurd for someone to be dealt a hand, examine it carefully, calculate that the probability of getting it is less than one in 600 billion, and then conclude that he must not have been dealt that very hand because it is so very improbable.

While that is a cute bit of mathematical rhetoric, it doesn't add anything to the debate, This matter can, however, be dealt with very quickly.

Zero Base Thinking is a way to simplify many of the great questions of the day, and usually amounts to a realization that the Emperor has no clothes. That is what we have here. For, if the lifeforms in the Universe must have had a sentient designer, doesn't that just beg the question? I mean, who designed the designer? At some point, intelligence had to arise from nothing, somehow. Even God had to spring into existence at some point, didn't he? I avoid theological debate, because there is nothing logical in theological. It's all about blind faith. Those who would like to make this into a logical debate are attempting to play with a deck that is significantly short of the requisite 52 cards. Bringing the creation debate down to a debate on the complexity of DNA is a sham. Once there was nothing. Then there was something. Ergo, a means existed to create something from nothing. God herself had to be created. Darwin showed a way for pure dumb luck to improve a very complicated system. We don't know how the first bit of organization sprang forth, so it could be improved upon. That's what we know. Until something better comes along, the debate stops right here.

Miranda Warnings

Any watcher of TV police dramas knows that the police try as hard as they can to elicit confessions from suspects, and they obey precious few rules in the pursuit of same. I have had a (very) few close calls with the police myself in my storied past, and can assure those of you who don't already know this, the truth is even harder to bear. Thus, one of my favorite pastimes is to observe the way a free society must promulgate rules intended to rein in the police, and the way the police and prosecutors avoid and defeat these rules to make their jobs easier.

Of course, most conservatives have precious little personal experience with the police, and tend to believe that "you have nothing to hide if you've done nothing wrong." What surprises me is the neocons: who I prefer to call "ex-liberals," who should take the middle path on this issue, but all too often take the more hard line approach to "law-and-order" issues. Recently one of my favorite neocons, Jack Rich, over at Haganah, took up the subject of the Miranda warning, and his recommendations for its future. Rather that paraphrase, I repeat here his entire post, and our colloquy issuing therefrom. Of course, you can and should go over to his site and read the original post. Or just read it right here:

Watching Miranda _{by Jack Rich}

With apologies for a near-pun, it appears that the Supremes, once again, will wade into the fray on the so-called Miranda Warning. From The Washington Post, this story, headlined "High Court to Reconsider Miranda Warnings." That warning, now enshrined in police-drama lore as a "constitutional" right against self-incrimination, has been a bane to police and prosecutors. The original 1966 decision, was, most people may not remember, a close call; a 5-4 decision by the very liberal Warren Court.

This narrow reading of what is permissible police conduct works has been falsely enshrined as a constitutional bulwark. It works against the best interests of society. Those who love it best are so-called liberals, who, correctly, note that it was, and remains, primarily the poor and uneducated who benefit. This may be a worthy goal, but the Constitution is a rather blunt and inappropriate instrument to further it.

What Miranda accomplishes is to make harder to convict the guilty while not really protecting the innocent. As for confession that is given in the absence of an attorney, this is obviously not a violation on its face of the Fifth Amendment ("...nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself..."). Absent physical or harsh psychological coercion, a confession has not been compelled. The liberal view, which I can't espouse, would likely be that the average schlub who's been arrested is too dumb to know that the Fifth Amendment exists; hence will confess just to get out of the interrogation room.

And here is the flip side of the libertarian coin -- knowledge of one's rights. Rights of citizenship come with some obligations. The simplest of these is some basic knowledge of what your rights are, and what they are not. Just as we are told that ignorance of the law is no excuse, we should be expected to know that we have the right to not bear witness against ourselves.

Beyond treating us all as ignoramuses, Miranda creates a garden of loopholes in which that notorious "fruit of a poisoned tree" may flourish. In simple English, it lets the guilty go free on technicalities rather than on questions of guilt or innocence. And hence the violence done to simple English jurisprudence.

Without Miranda warnings, it is certain that there would be some, hopefully and in my opinion few, innocents who confess. My sense, however, is that these few would be far outnumbered by the guilty perpetrators who would no longer get off on technicalities.

Let's look at what four of the Nine had to say in their dissent:

The new rules are not designed to guard against police brutality or other unmistakably banned forms of coercion. Those who use third-degree tactics and deny them in court are equally able and destined to lie as skillfully about warnings and waivers. Rather, the thrust of the new rules is to negate all pressures, to reinforce the nervous or ignorant suspect, and ultimately to discourage any confession at all. The aim in short is toward "voluntariness" in a utopian sense, or to view it from a different angle, voluntariness with a vengeance. . . .

Miranda has hampered police and the courts. It is one of the worst examples of the government telling us that we are incompetent citizens who know not our basic rights. Let's hope that this time the Court makes the right choice.

Posted by Jack Rich at 04:14 PM
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You dismiss over two hundred years of American jurisprudential experience with a glib smugness. Unlike you, I was once suspected of a crime by those myrmidons of the law, the police. Even with the Miranda protections, the amount of pressure applied to me to confess or reveal something was Kafkaesque. My demands to see an attorney were ignored and ridiculed. When my alibi panned out, I was released without apology. When I went to complain, no record of my detainment existed. This occurred in New York City.

I survived, but since then I have had an acute sensitivity to the fact that the police will abuse their power in every way possible when they believe that they have a guilty person in their grasp. And they believe almost everyone to be guilty. You smug people, who believe that you have nothing to fear if you have done nothing wrong, do no service to the pursuit of liberty. Felix Frankfurter said that it is better that one hundred guilty go free than one innocent be imprisoned. I think he went a little far, but I know for a fact that the innocent must be protected from the power of the law. As a Jew, I knew this, even before I experienced it first hand. Why don't you realize that the power of the police must be restrained? Do you really feel that, in order to avoid a guilty person's use of a "loophole," you must leave the innocent without protection?

Posted by Michael Gersh at April 22, 2003 01:40 PM
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Michael Gersh raises a fair point. Those of us who've never been in the star chamber can be smug -- it's easy to talk about what others have to endure. My apologies if that is what came across; it wasn't intended.

It brings to mind an old bromide, that a conservative is a liberal who's been mugged, and a liberal is a conservative who's been arrested.

But I dispute that I somehow "don't realize that the power of the police must be restrained." It is not for nothing that I wrote "Absent physical or harsh psychological coercion..." I also purposefully included this from the minority:
The new rules are not designed to guard against police brutality or other unmistakably banned forms of coercion.My post was not about having no fetters on the police; it was about how Miranda hampers the justice system and allows more criminals to return to the streets to deprive us of some of our liberty.

Posted by Jack Rich at April 22, 2003 04:54 PM
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The police are in the business of prosecuting the guilty, not protecting the innocent. Under our system of laws, it is up to the state to prove the guilt of those it believes to be culpable offenders. Forcing those it believes to be guilty to confess is a means that the police use to short circuit the process, and avoid having to do the more difficult part of their job.

That being the nature of things, it is up to the state to impede the police from taking control of the process, by restraining the police through a system of rules. We therefore have a system that affords rights and protections to the accused. However, until a suspect is arrested, he has very little of that protection.

Miranda is an imperfect means of restraint over the police. But it is one of the few protections that the innocent have, prior to an arrest, as I learned the hard way. It is a very weak protection at best. Before you advocate weakening or removing the Miranda rule, you must propose something to replace it. Personally, I would strengthen it. Who in their right mind would confess anyway? There are a few who truly wish to confess, and I would allow them that, once they are represented by counsel. But since almost all confessions are coerced, and therefore should be suspect, I would favor a rule that no confessions should be allowed before a suspect is represented by counsel. Once we have established such a rule, you can repeal Miranda if you so desire.

Posted by Michael Gersh at April 23, 2003 10:46 AM
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