House of Eratosthenes

I mean, think this through. Take a look at this. This person chose to drive an enormous vehicle and then, when it came time to park, found the truck was too large to park any which way except half-assed. Unless, that is, some extra maneuvers werer executed, which apparently were inconvenient enough to be discarded altogether, in spite of the fact that this left all four corners exposed to danger.

What does that tell us? Well, the truck was probably borrowed, most likely from a parent. That is by no means proven…but there are a lot of borrowed vehicles out there on the roads, and something tells me people tend not to park their own cars like this.

So we have someone here, who is driving a car much larger than they can handle, whether they’re willing to admit it or not. Some would protest that driving a large car is an exercise in big-movement, not itty-bitty-movement, and thus requires no finesse or delicacy. Excuse the hell out of me, folks. You know how big the blind spots are on these things? Ever drive a moving truck?

“Aw, fuck it, that’s good enough” is a sentiment that has no place here. But that’s the message that permeates this sucky parking job. It qualifies for my gallery even though there is ample space in the slot to the left, since, well, would you really park your car there?

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To Be Explained II
Friday, September 30th, 2005

To Be Explained II

A month and a half ago Intelligent Design (ID) was in the news only because President Bush had publicly offered some further supposed evidence of his dimwittedness and his doltishness, by stating that he thought ID should be taught in our public schools. At that time I made a comment that didn’t endorse ID nor argue against it; I simply offered my own list of things I would like to have explained if ID is to be solidly blockaded from any discussion in science classes or in scientific pursuit. This isn’t a comprehensive list, by any means, nor does it even represent a collection of arguments against “Darwinism.” Indeed, this bit about goosebumps is touted elsewhere as strong evidence against the existence of any intelligent designer. As an aside, there’s a lesson in there, and it’s a grave warning to anybody who makes their livelihood in science: Humans being what they are, two people can look at exactly the same thing and come away “convinced” of the “proof” of two polar-opposite theories.

ID-versus-evolution is in the news for a different reason now. In Dover, PA our judicial system is in the process of being used to figure out what “science” is. That’s kind of nuts. At issue is the First Amendment with its prohibition against the establishment of a national church, so that will be the vehicle to figure out what science has successfully “proven” and what it has not. That’s nuts, too. What is rabit-wombat-crazy, is the use of propaganda to sway the public opinion on this, as if public opinion should ever have much to do with science OR constitutional interpretation. Going by the sound bites, it seems settled that “the weight of the evidence is overwhelming” in favor of evolution, and that “Intelligent Design has no place in the classroom.”

I’m not going to comment on the first of those two, since I have no idea what “evidence” actually “weighs”. But I take strong issue with the second of those two, if for no other reason, than because the debate between natural selection and Intelligent Design has been so valuable in illuminating important things. It has shown us how scientists work, how some theories go about being discredited and how other theories go about accumulating credibility. Those who would expunge Intelligent Design permanently from the classroom, are in effect asking me to believe that science students could be exposed to all that good stuff, and come away from the experience consistently without any discernible benefit to their education. Well, based on what I know now that I didn’t know two months ago, that’s difficult for me to do.

What impresses me the most over the last couple of months, is the epiphany that science appears to work by discrediting theories by the identities of the advocates behind the theories, and by slandering those advocates by supposing other theories were advanced by them, even when that is not the case. There are several quotes in the news insisting that “Intelligent Design is just creationism with a new label,” when the evidence emerging from the Dover lawsuit doesn’t seem to support this. That doesn’t seem to be very scientific, to me.

Much of the argument for rejecting ID appears to be rooted in the truism that evolutionary theory has labored under a heavier burden, and yet has proven so much more. That seems, to me, to be a natural result of what each theory alleges. ID is simply a problem for established evolutionary theory, or rather a catalog of such problems. On the other hand, “evolutionary theory” as we know it today, in a venue in which we consider excluding all other explanations, is so much more absolute, stringent, radical and uncompromising than what “evolutionary theory” is supposed to be. Evolutionary Fundamentalists today argue that evolutionary forces can account for everything we see! Every little bit of it. Any living thing you care to pick out, a credible explanation can be found for how evolution produced it.

And not only is that untrue, but nobody with any reputation to defend is actually saying it. In fact, the Evolutionary Fundamentalists with real scientific credentials, readily concede that evolutionary theory is incomplete by this standard. There are many things for which evolutionary theory is a process of finding a plausible explanation, and hasn’t completed this process yet. However, the scientists who are best acquainted with the current state of evolutionary theory, are confident this will successfully happen, and if I knew what they knew, I’d be confident too.

Okay, I believe them.

But I would like to know about these issues. In the greatest detail I can, with whatever background I possess. It’s my nature. I’m curious.

It hasn’t escaped my attention, some of these conundrums can be dismissed with an ease far greater than what we would expect, as laymen, without a fairly comprehensive understanding of what evolutionary forces can do. And other conundrums are a little bit trickier. Pardon me for saying so, but that’s interesting.

Evolutionary theory is supposed to explain everything. ID, as I know it, simply points out that where evolution fails, the presence of a Designer remains standing as the most plausible explanation. That seems to be just logical. Selection can be natural, or it can be artificial; if it isn’t one, it must be the other. There is no in-between.

Michael Behe’s theory of Irreducible Complexity has been assaulted repeatedly, apparently not by the “weight” of directly-contradicting evidence but by what amounts to academic snobbery. The publication of Darwin’s Black Box in 1996, for example, was not preceded with the traditional peer-review process one would expect with regard to any scientific work. Well, what of it? If Dr. Behe wants to publish his ideas in a book without peer review, and because of that he gets nailed on something the peer-review process would have caught, that’s going to be an embarrassing problem for Dr. Behe. If some non-scientist reads something wrong in there and starts repeating it, making an ass out of himself, then that’s an embarrassment for that guy too. What skin is it off the nose of those peers? How does it reflect on the scientific community as a whole? It doesn’t.

It’s troubling that the peer-review process has been proposed as a way to stop certain theories, not-disproven theories, from seeing the light of day. Why shouldn’t we unwashed peons know about those? We can read about Elvis Presley having a space alien’s baby from a supermarket tabloid any time we like. When did science get in the business of filtering out what we can read?

Some of what has been learned, in light of this trial, is helpful to the Evolutionary Fundamentalists, or at least to evolutionary theory. One of the elegant attacks placed against the ID people, is that whales have “fingers”. The bone structure inside the flippers, resembles that of a human hand. This is a difficulty for Design Theory, because why would that designer give the whale something the whale doesn’t need? Dr. Daniel Dennett makes another case in Show Me the Science that the retina strongly assults ID theory:

The retina is inside out. The nerve fibers that carry the signals from the eye’s rods and cones (which sense light and color) lie on top of them, and have to plunge through a large hole in the retina to get to the brain, creating the blind spot. No intelligent designer would put such a clumsy arrangement in a camcorder, and this is just one of hundreds of accidents frozen in evolutionary history that confirm the mindlessness of the historical process.

To get a good idea of the ID counter-argument, all you have to do is play Lieutenant Columbo and flip this whole process around. You say, okay, the notion of an Intelligent Designer has been soundly defeated, now walk me through this. It’s tens of millions ago and we’re not evolved yet, we’re just a bunch of blind fish. We’re going to grow eyes through a series of entirely random mutations. The mutations produce what we know as “evolution” through a progression of exceedingly rare events in which those mutations become “fortunate”. They provide a feature or two, that allow the hosting organism to gain an advantage in the competition for finite resources in the host environment.

Clearly, being able to see, is an advantage. But wait, you don’t have that yet. A lens without a retina, is useless; a retina without a lens, is also useless. “Evolution” does not occur until the advantage is enjoyed. How many mutations do you have to have before the advantage is enjoyed?

Evolutionists explain this in a way that I find pretty credible. They say, you need a lens and a retina today, but this complicated arrangement is in itself an example of evolution. Back then, the mechanism could have been a whole lot simpler. It would have to have been a simple photoreceptor. They point to living organisms, as well as fossils, providing a spectrum of links between that photoreceptor and the complicated arrangement we have embedded in our skulls today. Is there not a bundle of optic nerves? A hole in the skull allowing that nerve to get to the brain? A cortex in the brain arranged so that this nerve can easily get someplace that will do some good? All of this is achieved through one lucky mutation at a time, the evolutionists say.

And I suppose I can buy that, since I’ve been convinced of evolution since the first time I saw a series of skulls in a fourth-grade textbook, starting with something ape-like but lacking much brain-space at all, and ending with Homo Sapiens.

The problem emerges with that very first stage. Even in the most primitive forerunner to the eyeball you could possibly propose, there must be several parts. The photoreceptor must be exposed to light. A nerve must be attached. It must run to a cortex in the brain, and the brain has to understand how to deal with the resulting information. This is important. The “mutation” will survive and propagate because of the Darwinian advantage. To propose some feature appears on the skin that may evolve into a photoreceptor — it just isn’t hooked up yet — seems to contradict the theory of evolution that you’re trying to support. How many more generations until the nerve appears? What keeps that blotch there, throughout those generations?

Does this start at the brain first, perhaps? Do we have a nerve wandering aimlessly, perhaps taking several generations to breech the skin and become something that can feed images? How long does that take, then? Maybe the skull developed last? That would certainly explain the convenient openings. Suppose there wasn’t even any skin? What if the photoreceptor was actually on the brain, and the skin, optic nerve, and surrounding skull came later?

If that’s the case, shouldn’t I be able to search for creatures that have skulls but no eyes, and come up empty? Don’t salamanders have skulls? How did that happen?

I freely admit it is possible, even likely, that all I’m proving is my own ignorance. I’m not trying to demonstrate I know my biology. My point is simply that no matter which piece you put in the puzzle first, they never quite seem to fit. Columbo is never quite finished saying “Oh, and one more little thing.”

Does this all make sense inside the labs? Once I get my biology degree, will the questions all magically go away? Show me how, then. Science is democratic by definition; it belongs to us; it is the study of “nature” which is something not only in contact with, but surrounding, all of us. Scientists my be inspired to explain this in a way we understand it, after they have successfully buried Intelligent Design and made it deader than King Tut. But they’re much more likely to enlighten us while they’re in the process of trying to do that burying. It doesn’t hurt to examine what the problems are with evolutionary theory, and to periodically re-visit from time to time to see what evolutionary theory has figured out about them.

That is, it doesn’t hurt what we conventionally call science. It doesn’t bring a lot of arguing and heated invective from someone we conventionally call a scientist

It would only be injurious to an effort to invest atheism as an official religion of science, and thus as an official religion in the United States.

And that’s the only logical explanation I can see for what’s going on. After all, if you’re trying to find a way evolution can explain something it hasn’t explained yet, you shouldn’t be the least bit bothered by someone saying “A designer makes sense, at least until you’ve got your theory figured out.” You would be agitated only if you had an emotional belief, running counter to the proposal of a designer, that you were trying to prop up with your “scientific” efforts.

I’m in the camp that fails to understand the mutual-exclusivity between theism and evolution. Obviously we have grown; we may have been put here; there is nothing inherently wrong with supposing that were were put here and we grew here.

I can probably explain that concern best with the parable of the tomato seeds. A little old lady buys tomato seeds and puts them in her garden — when you prove the tomatoes grow from seeds, this does nothing to refute the existence of the little old lady. Discovering the glass wall of the greenhouse, poses no problems to the theory of “growing” tomatoes. It only poses a problem to someone who has posited the tomatoes are out in the wilds, and the little old lady is a figment of someone’s imagination — that is the only faction left with some explaining to do.

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Your Condoleeza Reading Assignments
Thursday, September 29th, 2005

Your Condoleeza Reading Assignments

Condoleeza Rice is the most powerful woman in the world, and has been fiercely determined in all her personal goals since the age of three. ++yawn++ You know what? Those two items represent the least remarkable things about her.

Thanks in no small part to liberal women, over the last third-of-a-century that act has gotten kind of tired. I mean, who, with a vagina, isn’t trying out for the ferociously-unstoppable-woman role? We’re up to our armpits in unstoppable women, and our culture has unstoppable-woman fatigue. Dr. Rice adds a twist, though, and it’s a good one. She is not an attention whore. People are watching her, or they’re not. It doesn’t seem to matter to Secretary Rice whether she is, or is not, the center of attention. She still just plows forward. One inch at a time maybe, but she goes.

Condoleezza Rice was staying away from politics during her early years. Condi’s parents were tuning a blind eye on the issue of racial discrimination in the USA and simply preferred not to pay any attention to it. African Americans did not have any voting rights back then, but Mr. Rice would persistently tell his daughter that she would be able to become the president of the United States if only she had a wish to work hard for it. Little Condi was doing her best.

That’s pretty tough to find now: What’s this? My civil rights are being trampled on. Oh well, I’m just going to do my thing. What’s that, I should start a revolution? Why should I, anyone discriminating against me is just a loser, and I’m going to be President someday, so let’em do whatever they want.

Kind of a Laura Ingalls Wilder meets Rosa Parks meets…Howard Roark.

Yeah yeah, I can hear the liberals now: Without a civil rights revolution, Condoleeza Rice would just be a maid somewhere, nothing more. Hey, you wanna bet? How much do you want to bet?

A lot of observers say that Ms. Rice has a very good chance to amaze the whole world in 2008 and become the USA’s first female president.

Condoleeza against Hillary in ‘08 would be like Jason Voorhees versus the stupid slut with big tits: Definite outcome, over quickly, a little bit of fun to watch, maybe not as much suspense as it should have. Oh, there’d be a smidgen of difference. If you rent a zillion Friday the Thirteenth movies, every now and then Jason will slaughter a cheerleader, and via flashback or something, you’ll see something of the slut later in the movie. Every once in a great while.

Hillary, on the other hand, would be gone for good. She might get as annoying as Jimmy Carter, but it’s equally likely she’d be as quiet as Jerry Ford.

And Condi would make an awesome President.

Dr. Rice would like to see through walls:

…[Fox News Channel reporter James] Rosen was on a roll. He also asked Rice whether she would like to have any superpowers.

“Superpowers?” said Rice, the most powerful woman in the Bush administration and arguably one of the most powerful people in the world, period.

Rosen tried again, and got this response: “I’d like to be able to see through walls.”

It’s the latest Bush administration scandal: Spy-On-You-Through-Walls-gate. You read it here first.

Update: The article on FARK, from which I learned about this whole see-through-walls thing, has been greenlit for non-Totalfark-people, which means you don’t need to be a member to see this anymore. It also opens the gate to the discussion thread under the article, and wow what a lantern into the bigotted liberal mind that is (pseudonyms of liberal racist knuckleheads have been changed):

2005-09-29 11:16:13 AM Liberal-Knucklehead-1: There’s been a lot of speculation that Condi is a lesbian. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit.

2005-09-29 11:19:12 AM Inquisitive-Person: so Bush can appoint a black, gay woman to the position of Sec of state and he’s STILL a racist homophobe?

2005-09-29 11:26:34 AM Liberal-Knucklehead-2: I always thought there was a particular irony in the fact that the president who sucks more than any past president hates homosexuals.

2005-09-29 11:52:16 AM Liberal-Knucklehead-2: Powerful women don’t get facials, they give them.

2005-09-29 12:10:13 PM Liberal-Knucklehead-3: (responding to Inquisitive-Person’s question) yes. covering his ass by picking out one token woman who happens to be black (kill two birds, one stone). she’s merely for show, to sort of combat that “racist, sexist, homophobic” stuff that bush is known for. i recognize that she actually is very intelligent and accomplished, but the way it seems to me she was hired simply for being a minority. sort of how because of the equal opportunity employment/anti discrimination laws, if you only have all white people working at a place, you HAVE to hire a person of another race (qualified or not), or sex, otherwise it looks discriminatory.

2005-09-29 12:28:19 PM mkfreeberg [TotalFark]: I must be learning something new this morning about the post of Secretary of State. I guess President Washington named Thomas Jefferson to it just to make himself look good to racist, slave-owning, pot-smoking atheist Virginians.

Oh wait, don’t tell me, don’t tell me…the post of Secretary of State is for big important things managed by really competent people, but George W. Bush is too stupid to know that. Is that it?

2005-09-29 12:42:44 PM Liberal-Knucklehead-2: B I N G O !

2005-09-29 03:27:33 PM mkfreeberg [TotalFark]: And here I thought you stuck to Checkers and Twister at those Wednesday night cross-burnings.

You know, this thing about racist conservatives, I don’t think it’s been spun out of whole cloth. There definitely are some. But somewhere along the line we picked up this purely-an-article-of-faith thing that there are no racist liberals. I don’t believe in that, which is to say, I do believe there are racist left-wingers. I believe we are buried up to our belly buttons in them. Furthermore, I believe the “legends” about racist conservatives, are about twenty percent reality, and about eighty percent projection on the part of those racist liberals.

After all, where is this as-long-as-my-right-arm list of things Condoleeza Rice has done to support these inferences that she got her high position in the Cabinet as an affirmative action token? Nobody’s offered anything to support it; I don’t believe the support exists. The evidence that does exist, supports the idea that Dr. Rice is uniquely qualified for her current position. The idea she was picked for her by the color of her skin, and she’s actually some kind of dummy who would otherwise have never landed the job, is purely a matter of faith; where it isn’t faith, it’s just mental masturbation. As in, a process that requires no approval from anyone, is detatched from reality, achieves nothing, and just feels good to the person engaging in it.

In other words, racism more pure than anything ever practiced by Bull Connor (Democrat), Strom Thurmond (Democrat) or Franklin Roosevelt (Democrat).

We’re not yet at the point where all conservatives are non-racist and all liberals are racist. But we’re just a notch away from that. We’re certainly at the point where the stereotypes of the previous century are ripe for a serious re-thinking.

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Well, That Was Lame
Thursday, September 29th, 2005

Well, That Was Lame

John Roberts is expected to receive 77 votes on the Senate Floor today, and to be commissioned as the 17th Chief Justice of the United States.

I hope that with him in charge, we can gradually start to fix what’s broken.

What’s broken? Well you be the judge. Whether you’re a tighty-rightie or a lefty-loosie, can you read this paragraph and tell me the Founding Fathers would be pleased with what our judiciary does nowadays?

The Bush administration wants the Supreme Court to reinstate a national ban on a type of late-term abortion, and the court already has scheduled arguments on whether New Hampshire’s parental notification law is unconstitutional because it lacks an exception allowing a minor to have an abortion to protect her health in the event of a medical emergency.

Name the Founding Father to bring up out of the ground. Pick any one out of the set that you want. No sooner will the earthworms and maggots be picked out of his sockets and the eyeballs mashed into place, and he reads just that one sentence, will his jawbone hit the floor. Good heavens, he’d have have a bazillion-and-one questions for us. There are so many bone-spinning problems with that one sentence, I don’t know where to begin.

And maybe 75% of all Americans with strong opinions about the Supreme Court, and perhaps 95% of everyone-at-large, will be mostly incapable of answering those questions.

Was the Democratic party opposed to Judge Roberts’ commission? Even they wouldn’t be able to tell for sure. Kinda lame.

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Refineries
Wednesday, September 28th, 2005

Refineries

Tom Sullivan is filling in for Rush Limbaugh today. He’s arguing that if we make it profitable for the oil companies to do so, they will build more refineries. Normally I’m biased in Sullivan’s favor, but on this one I’m going to have to show some reluctance. Jerry Taylor and Peter van Doren, a few months ago, put out an argument that I thought was pretty solid in spite of my initial inclinations toward the opposition: New refineries have not been built since 1976, because the speculative profits are simply not there to justify building those refineries.

The gasoline refining market is about as close to the model of “perfect competition” as you’re going to find outside of an economics textbook. Rents are competed away and little profit is left for producers, especially when compared to the profits available from investment in oil production. Conservatives believe that environmental regulations have a lot to do with those low profits. They’re wrong. A large oil refinery costs $4 billion to $6 billion to build. The installation of “best available control technology” is a very small part of that figure.

Where I part company with Tom, is he’s saying in a capitalist model “money will flow, like magic” to wherever it is needed and this includes the refineries.

Trouble is, the gasoline market is not typical.

Suppose two gas stations are 150 feet apart from each other. Gas station A charges $3.199 for premium and is franchised by Oil Company 1, which owns (or leases, or somehow has access to) Refineries Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta and Epsilon. Gas Station B sells premium for $3.189 is franchised by Oil Company B which has access only to Refinery Omega. It can get it nowhere else.

Refineries Gamma and Omega are hit by a hurricane. In a typical market, Gas station A would raise prices to $3.299 or so, in so doing making an adjustment to the market by which supply and demand find some sort of temporary harmony. In order to do the same thing, Gas station B raises its price to eight bucks or so, since now it’s selling gas out of a strictly limited inventory that cannot be replenished. Gas station B owner gets on the phone to his wholesaler and says, I need a break because this guy next to me is selling the same stuff for half as much. Wholesaler says, it can’t be helped. Gas station A ends up being the place to go. Gas station B has to make its money by selling soda, chaw tobacco and washer fluid.

But that’s not how it works.

Both gas stations hike it to $4.50 or so. The same day. They end up, once again, within a penny or two of each other.

This doesn’t act like a capitalist market and there is little reason to anticipate it will respond to capitalist forces. What it acts like, is a collectivist market: No farmer has his own 20 acres, instead we all wake up whenever we feel like it and harvest & sow whatever chunk we feel like out of two square miles. No competition.

The scary thing is, this is much more important than the price of crude, and more vulnerable to interruption. Crude could tumble to fifteen dollars a barrel tomorrow, and with the nation’s refining operations running on 29-year-old junk, gas would stay exactly where it is.

But what I drive gets dang near 40 miles a gallon, so Hakuna Matata for me. The rest of you have a problem.

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What is a Liberal?
Tuesday, September 27th, 2005

What is a Liberal?

In response to questions from my eight-year-old son, I’ve instructed him that a liberal, in this day & age, is a person who is incapable of differentiating fact from opinion.

For the adults, I have a better definition. A liberal is someone who thinks you can have a dinner party, invite Earl Warren and Thomas Jefferson to attend, seat them next to each other, and at the end of the evening expect no glasses or plates to be broken.

They are sad, sad people, who have a connection to reality best described by the word tenuous.

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Why More?
Tuesday, September 27th, 2005

Why More?

Each and every single time the news media takes a harsh look at the Bush administration, reasonable minds can disagree as to whether or not that media is functioning as a centrist, objective watchdog, beholden to The People and to nobody else, or as to whether that media is acting as a leftist shill. Now, if you want to keep arguing the point to the other side in hopes of changing minds, I think most of us would agree the justification for the arguing lies in the prospect of a solid challenge to that other side. Without that, arguing is pointless, and this is why we don’t argue it much — although certainly, there is a lot of disagreement.

Well here, then, is a challenge. You are a famous, award-winning cartoonist for the Sacramento Bee named Rex Babin. Your mission is to disseminate fresh, topical illustrations of current events so that readers can be informed in pictorial form. You relish your position as a centrist media watchdog, a shill for nobody, accountable to The People, and to The People alone.

It is September 27, 2005 and you have been bashing the Bush administration’s connections to Halliburton for years. Your readers either think there is something incriminating in this connection, or not, or else they don’t have their minds made up yet. The number of readers who are still undecided about it, has shriveled down to…well, to nothing. To the three or four people in Sacramento County who live in caves like Ted Kaczynski. Outside that handful, people have made up their minds.

And at this late date, you wish to inform. Objectively and non-partisanly, of course.

When then, why, pray tell, would you draw up this cartoon?

Babin is in excellent company. He doesn’t wish to inform, except to inform people what kind of opinions they are supposed to have.

I wouldn’t present this cartoon as evidence to back that up in 2002. Or in 2003, 2004 or in the earlier part of this year. But by now, this is not fresh and it’s not even topical. It’s propaganda pure and simple.

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Frauds
Tuesday, September 27th, 2005

Frauds

Not that I can find any examples this late in the game, but apparently this photo has been circulating and/or been published repeatedly in the San Francisco Chronicle. Link goes to the “What Are You Looking At?” blog that has the whole story.

I first noticed today via Wizbang! that this fellow has been outed, thanks to Google. His name is Jeb Eddy, and according to the list of reported contributions going back seven years, he’s about as Republican as Che Guevara. Under the comments section in Wizbang!, one of the posters had called out the fact that this is not unprecedented. At least two of the supporters for Ward Churchill, holding themselves up as “Republicans for Churchill” were outed as registered Democrats earlier this year.

There is something going on here, which may be easily understood to a whole lot of people but which makes very little sense to me. Time for me to put on the ol’ “make believe” hat. I’m a registered Democrat and I want to protest for Democrat causes, and at the last minute before I had out the door with my picket sign I get a whacky idea! I’m going to pretend I’m a Republican! What motivates me to do this?

Well, there are two answers the way I see it. One is, I am an attention whore who doesn’t give a shit about what kind of message I’ll be sending or what minds I will be changing, only that I get lots of high-fives and pats-on-the-back from my fellow liberals for deceiving those hated Republicans. Given the number of bumper-sticker sound bites I’ve heard for the last three years that state no logical case whatsoever, Mr. Donahue’s monologue on the O’Reilly Factor, for example, I think that’s pretty likely.

The other possibility is, I am strategically reaching out to conservatives and centrists who are numb to the fact that Democrats don’t like President Bush and the Republican party, but would be more receptive to the slander if they saw evidence that the G.O.P. was beginning to splinter. Liberals have made much of the talking-point that President Bush is a “divider, not a uniter,” so I think this is pretty likely, too. Link, link, link, link, link, link, link, link.

Now, don’t ask me to explain that.

In my world, if a course of action is correct but politically divisive, and an opposite course is wrong but would unite people — a sane decision-maker would prefer the correct course of action, come what may. But obviously, it is a popular talking-point.

What is to be learned from these frauds?

Simply this. A pattern has been defined. It would be extravagant, almost to the point of insanity, to presume the mother-lode has seen the light of day. There are probably many, many more “ashamed Republicans” out there, who are really lifelong Democrats, hoping they won’t be exposed.

The other thing to learn is, if you’re sitting on the fence in deciding these contentious issues, and for whatever reason you’re more receptive to Republican apostates than to Democrat die-hards, you are a scrumptious morsel. Liberal protesters, advocates and demagogues think you’re pretty yummy. Easy pickin’s. There’s a high price on your head.

Something for you to think about.

“In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.” — Thomas Jefferson

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Sacred Cow Burgers
Tuesday, September 27th, 2005

Sacred Cow Burgers

Nobody reads this blog, but if ever anybody somehow does trip across it, I think they should know about Sacred Cow Burgers.

Lots of pictures. Funny stuff. And, as you can see, pretty much a reinforced-stainless-steel riveted connection to The Truth.

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Not Alone
Monday, September 26th, 2005

Not Alone

I saw this cartoon in the paper yesterday. Not funny. But pretty thought-provoking.

I’ll tell you how this grabbed my attention. I always saw these “my wife doesn’t pay me as much attention now that the baby’s here” guys as spoiled wimps, to be honest. After all, being a real man is about taking care of people weaker than you, isn’t it? Soldiering on in spite of lost sleep, dentist bills, skin taken off your knuckles when the wrench slipped, etc. Certainly you shouldn’t be belly-aching that people aren’t paying attention to you all the time.

Except that last frame looks just like so many of my failed relationships from the past. Ouch.

Maybe now that I’m in something a whole lot better, I’ve accumulated the wisdom necessary to speak on this. Not solve all the world’s problems, but just say a thing or two about it. To the fellas. After all, all those times I was down on my hands & knees getting milkshake spilled on my head, I thought I was alone. Clearly, I wasn’t. How many other guys out there with milkshake in their hair think they’re alone? Lean forward and follow my words, guys, here comes wisdom. I’m not saying here comes perfection…I’m not even saying it will solve anything. But it needs to be said.

You know how we all think the nice guys finish last? And how the ladies deny it, deny it, deny it some more? And yet…guys who get laid pretty much whenever they want, they certainly aren’t what you call “nice.” I don’t know that many nice guys who say “please” and “thank you” and never have time for themselves, because they’re constantly juggling girlfriends. I don’t know of too many evil bastards who steal from tip jars and leave gum on bus seats, who are crying in their beers because they can’t get dates.

Having failed and succeeded, I’ve come to a conclusion.

Women don’t like guys who are dicks. They don’t like men who are nice, either. They say they like men who are “assertive, but not cocky.” This is a lie. They don’t like assertive men at all. They like cocky men more than they say they do, but they’re not extremely fond of that, either.

They like men who have preferences for things, and stand up for those preferences. Definite men.

It tells them that if they build a household with this guy, someone in that household will have a preference about things, at all times, twenty-four-seven. The woman, then, can be decisive when she feels like it, or veg out and let things be however they are, when she feels like it. The man will go right on, making wise decisions about things, until she wakes up and is ready to grab the wheel again.

That’s actually kind of silly — men have downtime, just like women do. And if a normal man has to keep making decisions, whether he wants to or not, and answer for them later, just so his better-half can space out, there will be no peaceful relinquishing-of-the-wheel at the end of his shift. In a man’s world, a ship has one captain. In a woman’s world, that stuff is based on feelings. And nobody likes to have their feelings subordinated to somebody else’s feelings.

Lately, I’ve gotten in the habit of just being definite, and it’s improved my relationships with women by leaps and bounds. I like this. I don’t like that. There’s a third answer: I don’t care, but at least I definitely don’t care. Be passionate about your apathy, in other words. Just those three answers, for anything that comes up. “I don’t know” is what’s poisonous. You’re practically breaking up with her, or divorcing her, right there & then if you tell her that.

And it’s funny, because the way guys are raised, “chivalry” is all about letting her decide everything, imposing your will only when it’s absolutely necessary, and completely off her radar, like, should your car be filled with 87 or 91 octane. Leave EVERYTHING else…up to her. And good heavens, don’t express a preference one way or the other. That might make her feel “pressured,” and we can’t have that, can we.

It’s a recipe for disaster.

What this all boils down to, is that guy in the comic strip up there, he’s already divorced. It’s a man’s patriarchal duty to stop that scenario from developing before it develops — climbing out of that hole once you’re in it, is futile. How do you avoid becoming furniture? By saying “no” sometimes. Yeah, that’s right. If you’re a married guy, and your living room is chock full of ceramic angels, candles, frilly things, and your toilet seat lid has a fuzzy cover on it that makes it impossible to leave it up…you’re divorced already.

Women can, contrary to popular belief, be told no. In fact, women love hearing no. What they can’t stand, is being told “I don’t know” about something, and then later, having an argument about something that had been left to their judgment earlier.

That’s weak. Indecisive. Womanly. There are valid evolutionary reasons why women don’t find it attractive. If you’ve got the balls to knock her up, you’ve got the balls to make up your mind about things.

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This Is Good II
Sunday, September 25th, 2005

This Is Good II

Awhile ago I had written that the salad days of the Republican party under George Bush, thanks in no small part to Hurricane Katrina, were just about over; that it had reached its summit, and from here on out it was set to plunge into a chasm, at a steeper and steeper slope downward as time went on.

I still believe this, but R. Emmett Tyrell presents a potent argument in the opposite direction. Much of his argument rests on the premise that Democrats stand for nothing right now, and without a viable, robust and potent opposition, the President can’t feel the hot breath of failure on the back of his neck without a genuine failure, recognized across partisan lines. The primary complaints against the war, thus far, are that it has been hard to predict, lethal and controversial. What war, ever, wasn’t all three of these? And the economy is doing okay. Other presidents have presided over economies that were better; but many, a majority, have seen economies that sucked big green ones next to the economy we have.

But the keystone to his argument is that President Bush labors under no coherent opposition:

The Democrats have no program, no coherent ideas, and no leader who is not perilously controversial. I have in mind the mesmeric Hillary, who mesmerizes Democrats, is repellent to Republicans, and unattractive to most independents. She is the first First Lady ever to suffer the disapproval of a majority of Americans since pollsters began polling the approval ratings for First Ladies. She is, aside from her husband, the most scandal-prone person in American politics.

A few thoughts:

This is all very encouraging for someone who simply wants Republicans to kick Democrat ass. I’m one among those who want America to become a stronger republic; let the political parties wrestle in the mud however they will.

If this republic is to be saved through further suffering among the Democrats, let that deterioration culminate in a major re-defining of the Democratic party.

Republicans still have a lot to answer for. Starting with, Republican President George W. Bush should have a much longer list of line items in the federal budget, for which he has requested a REAL cut, than he currently does.

He should also be able to state a case about how he has fortified and defended our national border, than he currently can.

Until he can establish, maintain and strengthen a program of profiling at the airports, including racial profiling, he cannot claim credibility on the War on Terror.

Nor can he claim complete credibility as a Terror Warrior, until he subordinates all diplomatic protocols to the extradition of Osama bin Laden, by military force if need be.

He can’t present himself as a fiscal conservative, until he forcefully repudiates the concept of deficit spending. Republicans who claim a federal deficit “might be a good thing” should have no home in the party the President calls his own.

The President should address head-on the criticisms against his administration for placing political cronies in high offices. President Clinton had a better-qualified head of FEMA than the Bush administration. When the Clinton administration beats you on substance, even on a singular issue, you know you are really sucking wind.

Do those six things, and I think President Bush can take Tyrell’s article to heart. If he doesn’t, he can’t. That’s just my opinion.

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Bush Selling Children Into Slavery
Saturday, September 24th, 2005

Bush Selling Children Into Slavery

I’m so grateful we have the Daily Kos to point this stuff out, Lord knows where we’d find out about it otherwise. I’ll let the post speak for itself.

On Wedneday, Bush issued a waiver exempting the Saudis from financial penalties associated with the child sex trade, prostitution, etc.

There are many missing children in the wake of Katrina.

After the tsunami there was great concern that many of the children left without families due to that disaster had disappeared into Asian, Middle Eastern sex trade rings.
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I’m sure it must have something to do with oil, but in Bushworld we can’t take anything for granted, can we?

Wow. All I can say is, Wow.

You might want to bounce this one off the next lefty type who tries to ambush you with “blood for oil” and what-not. Good litmus test to determine how much whacky tobaccy he’s been smoking.

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Left-Wing Lunatics Lose Again
Saturday, September 24th, 2005

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Look At Me, I Can’t Park For Shit VIFriday, September 30th, 2005

To Be Explained IIFriday, September 30th, 2005

Your Condoleeza Reading AssignmentsThursday, September 29th, 2005

Well, That Was LameThursday, September 29th, 2005

RefineriesWednesday, September 28th, 2005

What is a Liberal?Tuesday, September 27th, 2005

Why More?Tuesday, September 27th, 2005

FraudsTuesday, September 27th, 2005

Sacred Cow BurgersTuesday, September 27th, 2005

Not AloneMonday, September 26th, 2005

This Is Good IISunday, September 25th, 2005

Bush Selling Children Into SlaverySaturday, September 24th, 2005

Left-Wing Lunatics Lose AgainSaturday, September 24th, 2005

Look At Me, I Can’t Park For Shit VI
Friday, September 30th, 2005

To Be Explained II
Friday, September 30th, 2005

Your Condoleeza Reading Assignments
Thursday, September 29th, 2005

Well, That Was Lame
Thursday, September 29th, 2005

Refineries
Wednesday, September 28th, 2005

What is a Liberal?
Tuesday, September 27th, 2005

Why More?
Tuesday, September 27th, 2005

Frauds
Tuesday, September 27th, 2005

Sacred Cow Burgers
Tuesday, September 27th, 2005

Not Alone
Monday, September 26th, 2005

This Is Good II
Sunday, September 25th, 2005

Bush Selling Children Into Slavery
Saturday, September 24th, 2005

Left-Wing Lunatics Lose Again
Saturday, September 24th, 2005