House of Eratosthenes

I live in Sacramento. Due to certain events in my personal life this year, during the period from about Christmas to right about now, I have not gotten out much. I live about a mile from work, so I get to see developments on the road within that mile on a daily basis. I have to pick up my boy and drop him off again, so I get to supervise events on the freeway and backroads within, oh, twenty miles — about weekly. Outside of that, my motoring has been entirely occasional.

Which, I think, puts me in a great position to comment on trends. So, on the chattering away on cell phones by my fellow motorists: From my perspective, within the Big Tomato, it has been on a rise I can only fairly call meteoric. I would say three years ago it was one out of ten drivers, two years ago it was two out of ten, last year it was three out of ten, now it’s nearly half of them. Chatting away, 75 miles an hour, maybe 85, maybe more, blah, blah, blah.

Item!

I have gotten really pissy about drivers texting away, not necessarily blabbing away, behind the wheel. Although I’ve done it, plenty of times. It’s one of those things that is so wrong, it doesn’t matter if I’ve done it or not. But while maintaining my laser-like focus on the subject at hand, as any decent writer does, I allowed myself to wander down a bunny trail…

One more thing. When time and space permit, I’d like to expound on my little rant about talking on cell phones, without the benefit of hands-free devices.

We have studies that say when you talk on a hands-free device, your level of distraction is on par with what you’d be experiencing if you held the cell phone up to your face. Those studies are bullshit, you hear me? I live in the Big Tomato. I see people talking on their cell phones all the time — not-hands-free. Up to their faces.

It is…let me stress this properly…it is PHYSICALLY FREAKIN’ IMPOSSIBLE to do a check to your blind spot, before a lane change, while talking on a cell phone, without being completely absolutely no-mistakingly obvious that you’re doing a head-check. It is a deeply conspicuous movement you have to do. Those fuckers are not doing it, I guaran-damn-tee you. It is up to everybody else to get the hell out of their way, they know not what the hell they’re doing. I can personally vouch for this, swearing an oath to that effect, just by watching them. They are glancing in their passing mirrors — if they’re even doing that — and then breezily just sliding on over. Hope you’re not there when they do.

Item!

The Sacramento state assembly has passed a bill that would impose a $50 fine on drivers caught blah, blah, blah-ing away on their cell phones behind the wheel.

Item!

The morning guys on the radio, who — deeply distrust liberals, but aren’t all about promoting Republicans, just want to find the common-sense solution, and on the way do as decent a job as they can spotting the crooks, liars and charlatans and talking-point-peddlers — thereby ending up agreeing with me a whole lot of the time — blasted the bill, which, by the way, has my whole-hearted support. Their position is that anyone who believes hands-free devices make your phone conversation safer, such as myself, is being duped by a bunch of crooks. My position is that he who believes hands-free devices don’t make the conversation safe, is the one getting duped by a bunch of crooks.

Item!

The guys and I had a brief water-cooler conversation about this yesterday, following the radio program…the following points came up.

This is one of those deals where I keep hearing “studies say” or “all the studies say” but it’s a little difficult to get someone to actually trot out the study or studies…and this kind of situation comes up a lot more than most people think.

What could very well be happening, is the studies say “you’re still distracted when you talk on a hands-free device” and people interpret it to say “the level of distraction is just as big when you’re on a hands-free device” which is technically a far-different thing, although to the layman, it might not seem to be.

The consensus came to rest on a position agreeing with mine: It is wombat-rabies bollywonkers crazy to say, when you’re holding a cell phone up to your ear, and about to make a lane change, you’re no more distracted than you would be talking on a headset. Physically, this cannot possibly be true, and it doesn’t matter how many studies say otherwise.

Some of these “studies” have been said to conclude the level of distraction involved in using a cell phone, is on par with the level of distraction involved in being drunk, and man, you know that’s gotta be a pile of crap.

So anyhoo…we live in the Age of Google. I don’t have to speculate on this stuff. I don’t have to form my prejudices on extremely short-sighted and under-informed opinions like some guy living a hundred years ago. I’m a twenty-first century search-engine-literate man. I can draw upon a tiny sampling of items, and form my short-sighted and under-informed prejudices based on those.

So let’s get to it.

Actually, I wasn’t too surprised by what I found. Let’s take the biggest group first…I found, in reverse chronological order, this and this and this and this and this. Just what was promised; “lots of studies,” maybe even, “all the studies.” One problem: The same names keep popping up. Frank Drews. David Strayer. William Johnson. Human Events.

This creates two issues. Issue One, whether the effort is deliberate or not, the public is being programmed. It isn’t hard to find people who consider themselves to be well-educated on this issue, willing to chirp up — even taking the initiative to chirp up — and chime in with that “independent” thought, “all the studies say talking on a headset is just as distracting as holding the cell up to your face.” Well, it really isn’t “all” the studies…although to be fair to Drs. Drews, Strayer and Johnson, and Human Events, there are some other studies saying the same thing like this one and this one. So I’m not going to go so far and say “Aha! It’s just Dr. Drews, Strayer and Johnson, and Human Events, nobody else has studies saying that!” because that would not be true.

The point stands nevertheless. Unanimity amongst the “studies,” as is often the case, turns out to be purely an illusion. Those three are, intentionally or not, “flooding” the study pool. Note the timeframe. They went on a tear in 2003, again in 2004, again in June of this year, and again just now.

Which brings us to Issue Two. Why do Drs. Drews, Strayer, Johnson, and Human Events keep doing this? It really doesn’t matter what their financial ties are, when you think about it. Something is motivating them to do this. They have a bug of some kind up their collective butts, and they like to do “studies” that find a certain conclusion. Well, studies aren’t supposed to be doing that; studies are supposed to find whatever conclusion the data will tell the studies to find. Could Drs. Drew, Strayer and/or Johnson set out on one of their studies, gather the data, and, looking over it to find the patterns in the most scientific, objective, unbiased way possible — come to learn something contrary to their own biases? If so, would the conclusion make it into print? Let’s just say I have my doubts.

That you can go the other way — gather the data, look it over with a bias toward saying the opposite, and, whether influenced by the bias or not, post a conclusion compatible with that bias — has been proven. Plantronics, which makes bluetooth headsets much like the Cardo unit I use, has financial ties to yet another study two years ago that said the exact opposite.

A new study finds that drivers’ reaction time, accuracy and consistency of speed improved significantly when they used a headset with their cell phone, compared with using a handheld phone.

The study is one of the few to analyze physical impairment experienced while driving and using a mobile phone; to date most other studies have focused solely on the mental distraction of using a mobile phone while driving.

The study was commissioned by Plantronics, which manufactures headsets. It was conducted by Design Science, an independent human factors research firm that has conducted other driving-related studies for a wide range of organizations including the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Now this blog, which nobody actually reads anyway, is named after a library administrator who figured out the size of the earth before the Time of Christ, by peeking into holes in the ground. We’re all about ignoring studies…or, at least, subordinating the studies to our own observations, when studies and our observations run in directly opposite directions. And our observation is this:

People who do lane changes to the left, when they talk on cell phones held up to their left ears, do not check their blind spots. They simply don’t. It’s provable. And it’s asserted pretty substantially, to the point you could bet serious money on it with high confidence, they’re not even checking their passing mirrors.

They just move over.

It’s easily observed. It’s proven. If a study says otherwise, the study is wrong. If these chuckleheads were learning as much about their blind spots while talking on their cell phones, as well as I learn about my own blind spot when I’m on a hands-free device, their body motions would be so incredibly awkward, and so easily observed, there would be no mistaking it…and they’d probably be imposing a wholly different traffic hazard just going through that snaky body motion. It borders on the physically impossible. And to do the proper head check without me being able to see you’re doing it, protrudes well into that neighborhood of impossibility. It simply cannot be done.

And like I said the other day, those fuckers are not checking their blind spots, they’re just moving over without looking.

This is about 99% of the folks talking on cell phones without the benefit of a hands-free device. And forty percent of the folks on the road, give or take, are doing exactly that. It’s scary, scary stuff.

I’m pretty big on the libertarian, freedom-from-tyranny angle. I’m one of the “Where does it talk about fire halls in the Constitution, huh?” kinds of guys. But I know of no constitutional provision, state or federal, direct or implied, that calls up a problem with a state regulation against phone use while driving.

And, much as I hate to use those four words heralding the arrival of the nanny state, the four words do apply…the time has come.

But it should be noted, we have been here before.

Update 9/1/06: Flashback to this great piece of faux-sexist humor from Car & Driver that was brought to my attention back in May.

This morning on I-95, I looked over to my left and there was a woman in a brand new Cadillac doing 65 mph with her face up next to her rear view mirror putting on her eyeliner.

I looked away for a couple seconds and when I looked back she was halfway over in my lane, still working on that makeup.

As a man, I don’t scare easily. But she scared me so much; I dropped my electric shaver, which knocked the donut out of my other hand.

In all the confusion of trying to straighten out the car using my knees against the steering wheel, it knocked my cell phone away from my ear, which fell into the coffee between my legs, splashed and burned Big Jim and the Twins, ruined the damn phone, soaked my trousers and disconnected an important call.

Damn women drivers!

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Memo For File XXIII
Wednesday, August 30th, 2006

Memo For File XXIII

This is about knots…with an emphasis on useful stuff you need to know for sailing…

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This Is Good XX
Wednesday, August 30th, 2006

This Is Good XX

This is the paradox to writing about politics, and to writing in general as well, I think. You create something thoroughly enjoyable, and when you do, much of the time you narrow down the audience. To create material that re-opens the potential audience, oftentimes you have to water down the quality of said material.

Our blogger pal Good Lieutenant at Mein Blogovault has a hilarious post up that mirrors what he wrote for the Jawa Report. It summarizes the whole utterly ridiculous Plamegate affair for the benefit of…well, I’m afraid, for the benefit of those who are such die-hard political junkies that they don’t need to be told what happened. So as a practical matter, the audience has been narrowed down to something needle-thin. But for entertainment value, you should head on over and take a look…

…Joe Wilson is a liar and a hack. Valerie Plame is a super-secret media whore. Rove is a non-factor. Novak was doing his job. Russert is silent. Mitchell is silent. Bush is vindicated. Cheney is off the non-hook. Keith Olbermann is a jackass. Chris Matthews is in catatonic depression. Mark Ash and Jason Leopold are on suicide watch….

The whole thing reads just like that.

Comedy GOLD, Lieutenant. Your temporary field promotion to Captain is in the mail.

Now, some nice folks out there might not be political “junkies,” like I guess I am since I understood every word of the Lieutenant’s manifesto, and was laughing my ass off about it. Other folks might, similarly, understand all of it, but might have friends and family who would not. So for those who need a “primer” on this utterly ludicrous scandal-that-never-wuz, I submit this primer put together by Christopher Hitchens. Chock full of good protein, but easily digested.

In his July 12 column in the Washington Post, Robert Novak had already partly exposed this paranoid myth by stating plainly that nobody had leaked anything, or outed anyone, to him. On the contrary, it was he who approached sources within the administration and the CIA and not the other way around. But now we have the final word on who did disclose the name and occupation of Valerie Plame, and it turns out to be someone whose opposition to the Bush policy in Iraq has�like Robert Novak’s�long been a byword in Washington. It is particularly satisfying that this admission comes from two of the journalists�Michael Isikoff and David Corn�who did the most to get the story wrong in the first place and the most to keep it going long beyond the span of its natural life.

Have fun. Just don’t expect the labors of your reading to actually conclude in anything of substance. Part of the reason that the summary of this whole thing is noteworthy, is, that the substance leading to that summary, is anything but.

I guess that’s politics for ya. We keep on assuming everything will make sense in the end. From where do we get that notion? We’re constantly left asking ourselves this…and the next thing that pops up, we go right back to assuming it again.

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Imitation is the Sincerest Form XV
Wednesday, August 30th, 2006

Imitation is the Sincerest Form XV

Thing I Know #138 is: It’s very difficult to acquire good judgment without experience. It’s very difficult to acquire experience without bad judgment.

Now, I don’t know if Dr. Thomas Sowell reads my blog. I would suspect hardly anybody does. But how, then, do you explain this gem which appeared within the good doctor’s “random thoughts” yesterday on Townhall.

Someone said that good judgment comes from experience — which in turn comes from bad judgment.

I’ve been robbed, but I’m not calling the police. I’m quite flattered…besides of which, I can’t claim credit for inventing this in the first place. All I can claim to have done, is to have personally verified there’s a lot of truth in it, and I suspect many others can make the same claim.

But now we’re settling into a pattern of suspecting, with no small amount of self-deprecating humor, that perhaps Doctor Sowell is among the “nobodies” who never read my blog. Eh, perhaps it’s a remote possibility, but it’s fun to think about. And in all seriousness, it would be a high honor if it were true.

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We’re All Such Independent Thinkers
Wednesday, August 30th, 2006

We’re All Such Independent Thinkers

Everybody wants to be an independent thinker, it seems. So many people appear to think it’s easy. Well, it isn’t. Being an independent thinker takes a lot of — and you could never guess this if you were not experienced with it — humility. That’s because everyone has what it takes to digest a talking point, regurgitate it without fact-checking it, and believe against the evidence that they’ve mulled it over. You have to learn from experience to be an independent thinker. You have to admit when you’ve been duped.

And the sad fact is, most people don’t do this. Most people haven’t even spent time in an environment where they can be duped…and, subsequently, be placed in a situation where they’ll be forced to admit that’s what happened. Most people are cloistered within happy lifestyles in which they can be duped, blissfully, six different ways before breakfast, and never become aware of it.

I can prove this easily.

A society chock full of critical thinkers…we wouldn’t have, or tolerate, anniversaries of terrible events like Hurricane Katrina. What in the BLUEFUGG is the point of an anniversary? It is nothing more than a commandment from a layer of elites way-on-high, down to the dirty-unwashed commoners, to spend lots of time thinking about a certain thing, masquerading beneath a costume of “news.”

It’s a year after Katrina. How does this affect you? Maybe pretty drastically — if you happen to be living one year ago. But you’re not. You’re here. You’re now. The hurricane isn’t happening. This is not news; it simply isn’t.

Now, how many “Katrina, One Year Later” stories have you seen this week? On the boob tube? On the “innernets”? On the radio? In newspapers? In magazines? It’s freakin’ everywhere. Those in the news, really aren’t doing an adequate job of talking about anything else. Nothing else going on? Come on, now, you can’t seriously say that. Compared to the one-year anniversary of something that happened a year ago and isn’t happening now, we got a lot of stuff going on that, quite simply, is more important.

Ah, but anniversaries affect how people feel. Yes, I’m sure that’s it. The oh-so-unbiased and oh-so-objective editors who have no political axe to grind whatsoever, are simply being sensitive and responsive to the way people feel on the first anniversary of a hurricane that’s not around anymore.

Okay, let’s go for that.

In less than six months, we’re going to have the sixty-fifth anniversary of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signing Executive Order 9066 in which thousands of Japanese-American citizens were interned in violation of their constitutional rights.

Gee, that should arouse some pretty spicy feelings, right? Especially now, in this day & age wherein President Bush is oppressing the civil liberties of American citizens by signing executive orders authorizing their intern…

Whoops, that’s right, I forgot. He’s not doing that. Nothing close to it.

Yeah, but I’ll bet he’s going to do it any day now! The Founding Fathers wanted us to be deeply suspicious of our government doing stuff like that, waking up every single morning expecting our government to encroach on our civil liberties, regardless of what a wonderful job the government did vindicating itself the day before. Right?

Right. That’s the essence of a patriotic attitude here in America.

So…a 65th anniversary of the signing of Executive Order 9066 would be pretty constructive. And patriotic. What a useful reminder that would be, of where we might be going.

Maybe even a useful reminder, for those who care to observe it, of the decent job the current administration has done balancing security against liberty — when viewed against the backdrop of history, and previous presidents who executed a far clumsier, and downright inferior job, of this delicate task.

And we’re big into the “lessons learned” thing, which is why we’re having a Katrina Plus One media orgy in the first place. That is what it’s all about. Right? Right?

So…bring on that 65th anniversary. I’m sure it’s coming. The letters G-O-O-G-L-E will be tastefully wrapped in barbed wire when you go to the search engine’s main page. Time Magazine will have a splash cover with a sinister looking FDR looking down into the camera, with the smoke from his jauntily-angled cigarette swirling maliciously in the air around him, while in the foreground a pathetic little Japanese kid peeks out from behind a fence. Editorial cartoons will pockmark the newspapers, all about this terrible thing Roosevelt did 65 years ago. Perhaps a special-issue dime will come out in 2007, with Roosevelt’s face taken off the heads-side and big letters that say “WE ARE SORRY” stamped in his place. Maybe we’ll even have a movie or two.

No…no, I don’t think so. Let’s step back in the real world for a second here. It’s not happening. That isn’t what “anniversaries” are all about. They are simply cogs carefully installed in the machinery to spin a certain way, mesh a certain way, and control what the dirty little people think about things, according to what the watchmaker has in mind.

The anniversary is just one device among money in the mystic’s toolbelt. Think on this. How many times a year are we told “everybody” is concerned about something? And what machinery do we have in place, to lift such sentiments, accurately, from the bedrock social strata that really is “everybody”? We are given messages like this constantly. Multiple times weekly, let alone annually. And on what “everybody” is really thinking, we don’t know a tenth of a percent about anything. Nor, when you think about it for a while, should you really even care.

But in a democratic society, big, important people have a great deal invested in what “everybody” is thinking. Or…what “everybody” can be fooled into thinking that “everybody” else is thinking.

And so we have anniversaries of things. That is all they are supposed to be, and that is all they are.

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Must-Tards IX
Tuesday, August 29th, 2006

Must-Tards IX

Annie Althouse has earned my respect. However, on this one…well, I’m going to have to respectfully disagree.

Yahoo News reports that Matt Stone — one of the two “South Park” creators — says that marines guarding Saddam Hussein have forced him to watch their movie “South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut,” which depicts Saddam in hell having a sexual relationship with Satan.
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Let me add that I love the movie. And I’ve always assumed the Saddam watched the movie himself on his own in the days before we invaded.

But showing it to him now is just an attempt to annoy and humiliate him. We should be above that. [emphasis mine]

It’s not that I out-and-out disagree…but I am just so gawdawful tired of that threadbare cliche. This country really isn’t “above” nuthin’, and I’ve gotten a little bit jaundiced about the idea of supposing that we “should” be “above” such things.

There is something “humiliating” about being the only entity involved in a conflict of any kind among several disparate entities, who is called upon to follow certain rules the other parties are not being called upon to follow. Now, it is true that you can embrace a certain kind of nobility by lashing yourself to a shorter leash in some situations, and inspiring your counterparts to rise to your level. Some situatoins are like that. This one is not.

There are people who hate us. And if we follow certain rules of civility and decorum and non-humiliation…guess what? They’ll keep hating us. If we put on pink tutus, they’ll keep hating us. If we bring the prisoners at gitmo a nice chocolate cupcake for breakfast every day, they’ll keep hating us. If we change the Pledge of Allegiance to “One Nation Under Allah” they’ll keep hating us.

Get my drift? It don’t matter. So…what in the hell is the point?

Anytime you use the word “should,” you should be able to define what happens if the “should” isn’t done. That remains true for all “should” sentences, including the foregoing. So, let me just say, when you start “should”-ing people to death and “must”-ing people to death, you raise the question — what happens if we don’t do what you want? And in this exercise, Prof. Althouse fails to articulate what happens if we continue to humiliate Hussein (assuming we’re doing that).

And failing to articulate that, she’s denigrated herself into simply being an unthinking mouthpiece. A mouthpiece brilliant in other areas, maybe, but a mouthpiece nonetheless. We make Saddam Hussein watch a movie…or we don’t. As a practical matter, it makes no difference one way or t’other.

Dr. Melissa Clouthier, another female whose intellect I admire (yes, they’re out there), addresses this with a handy quote from one “Sam”:

Cripes. I can’t imagine a moral universe where law professors defend the imprisoned Saddam Hussein from teasing that pales in comparison to that routinely absorbed by fat twelve-year-olds.

Actually, having his dignity defended by sissy moralists must be as least as humililiating as a South Park episode. Stop it, Ann. Your motherly coddling of Saddam cruelly mocks his swarthy manliness. Have you no decency?

Eh, I say we cut Professor Althouse some slack here. She’s probably having an off-day. Other than that, I stand with Sam.

Teasing. For a mass-murderer. Who gives a rat’s ass.

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On Karr
Tuesday, August 29th, 2006

On Karr

Thanks to Boortz, we have a theory about John Mark Karr. A theory that actually makes some sense. Well…some sense. More than any other I’ve heard so far.

Here’s Mark Karr in Thailand. He’s just been fired from a teaching job. Perhaps he feared that he was facing charges in Thailand involving his sexual obsession with children. How hard is it to figure out that you would much rather face misdemeanor charges in California than who-knows-how-many years in a Thai jail? So …. confess to JonBenet’s murder, get a taxpayer-funded ride back to the U.S. while sipping on champagne and gobbling prawns, then give up the DNA sample, watch the case fall apart, and head to California to face your misdemeanor charge. Plus .. he gets all the publicity and fame he so badly wanted! He was even talking about Johnny Depp playing him in a movie!

I find it to be really sad, and at the same time somewhat comical, that Occam’s Razor says this is the real deal. All other theories involve entities multiplied beyond their necessity. This one defines the baseline necessity. Well, so far.

So far.

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Why We Don’t Believe You
Tuesday, August 29th, 2006

Why We Don’t Believe You

Via blogger friend Buck Pennington of Exile in Portales, I come to find out about this excellent essay by Mary Katharine Ham called “Why We Don’t Believe You.” Chock full of lean, fresh meat…critiquing some stuff from the mainstream media that is supposed to be lean fresh meat, but is mostly crap. They’ve been called on this stuff already, but Ms. Ham does a better job than most. Good find, Buck.

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A Poll I’d Like To See II
Tuesday, August 29th, 2006

A Poll I’d Like To See II

Back in May, I came up with a poll I’d like to see. Now, I don’t know why none of the poll-makers, not even one, have taken the hint and put out an actual poll with some of my questions on it. The polls we do see just ask the same questions over and over again, and most of those have to do with the approval ratings of some guy who’s going to stop being President in about 28 months. The irrelevance is striking, but the lack of creativity is even moreso. So it seems, to me, the pollsters would have done well to steal a few of my questions for their polls, just to keep the polls fresh and fun, if for no other reason. But I don’t want to tell them how to do their jobs.

Well it seems every time former President Jimmy Carter opens his mouth, not that I have long to wait for that to happen — he gives me more ideas for a poll I’d like to see. Now in all fairness to Jimmy, you do realize, don’t you, that he’s quite a long way from whistling in the wilderness on this stuff right? We have a lot of people who think his points about President Bush and Prime Minister Blair are right on the money. So far as I can tell, all of these people, or nearly all of them, were born sometime after we fired Carter because we couldn’t stand his policies anymore. But they’re old enough to vote now. Yeah, that’s how old you and I are, if you can remember what a terrible President he was.

Here’s something even more impressive: I have yet to hear — once! — a statement to the effect of “Former President Carter is right and the current administration needs to listen to him, because if we don’t do as he says, we have no hope of achieving the wonderful results Jimmy Carter did like for example…” I haven’t heard that one time yet. Not even in reference to the Camp David accords.

Yet Carter blabs away about what he doesn’t like. Toward what end, nobody knows; even his most ardent fans, seem unable to articulate what goals are to be reached, if we expunge our national policies of all that is offensive to him.

So here is a poll I’d like to see.

It would be more useful than handicapping a President who is going to have the same status as Jimmy Carter 875 days from now, I think. A lot more useful.

Whereas other former United States Presidents have kept their silence on national policy for purposes of civility and decorum, Jimmy Carter has been an outspoken critic of the current administration. This is a comment on a) Current President George Bush, and his unpopular policies; b) Former President Carter, and his lack of restraint and discretion; c) both; d) neither.

I mean, hey, one man’s opinion is just as legitimate as any other’s. But sometimes the nose-counts say something important about what’s going on in our society. It seems to me that question would highlight something going on. I’d really like to know how the percentages stack up. My interest in that question wouldn’t be to influence what’s happening — at least, not completely. I’d really like to see how it shakes out.

What else, what else…well, let’s take a look at some of the things Mr. Carter had to say.

“We’ve never before had an administration that would endorse pre-emptive war - that is a basic policy of going to war against another country even though our own security was not directly threatened,” he said. In his book, President Carter writes: “I have been sorely tempted to launch a military attack on foreigners.” But had he still been president, he says that he would never have considered invading Iraq in 2003.
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Asked why he thinks Mr Blair has behaved in the way that he has with President Bush’s belligerent regime, Mr Carter said he could only put it down to timidity.

That’s worthy of a poll question right there. Timidity…drives a coalition of nations to launch an attack against a filthy butcher like Saddam. Presumably, if you’ve got some real ballz, you leave the mofo right where he is so he can keep on stirring up trouble, but at least you can brag about having stood up to the big bad George W. Bush.

You know, it occurs to me that if people think the current American “regime” is a “belligerent” one, and most pointedly in comparison to Hussein’s old regime, they can jolly well come out and say so. A lot of people appear to be anxious to do exactly that. But they never quite get around to doing it, nor are they called upon to say that. Let’s have a poll question that asks.

When the Coalition of the Willing took down Saddam Hussein’s old regime, the regime that should have been changed, was the one in a) Iraq b) N. Korea c) Libya d) The United States e) Liberia f) Cuba g) None of the above — stop after Afghanistan h) None of the above — not even Afghanistan i) None of the above — just duct-tape Former President Carter’s mouth shut

Again, I really wanna know. How many people who call themselves Americans would pick d? I mean, really?

And there’s more fresh meat up at the top of the article. Let’s see a poll on this one.

Tony Blair’s lack of leadership and timid subservience to George W Bush lie behind the ongoing crisis in Iraq and the worldwide threat of terrorism, according to the former American president Jimmy Carter.

Former President Jimmy Carter knows the following about how to get rid of terrorism: a) A whole lot b) A fair amount c) Some stuff d) More than me e) Not as much as my plumber f) Not as much as my dog g) Butkus

If Great Britain were to get rid of Tony Blair, with his timid subservience to the Bush administration, worldwide terrorism would do the following: a) Nothing b) Party like it’s 1999 c) Look for a bigger victory somewhere else d) Like a cartoon character, paint a hole in the ground, jump in, and pull the hole in after itself

I mean, I’m trying to give these questions a humorous spin, but when you stop and think about them for a second or two they are deadpan, flat-ass, heart-attack serious questions.

Some folks have deadpan flat-ass heart-attack serious opinions about the answers. But I can’t help noticing, among those, the folks sympathetic to former President Carter’s point-of-view, only advance those answers in settings where there is a social benefit to be realized from doing so. Protest rallies. Move-On-Dot-Org block parties. Left-wing political conventions. I’d like to see them answer a poll, with some of the ideas they have…and then, I’d like to see the poll tabulated.

There is a reason why I want to see this. From my perspective, when Former President Carter opens his big ol’ cakehole, the newsworthiness of the cakehole-opening event is completely invested in the question of how many people agree with him. What Former President Carter thinks…is something I already know. How well it works when it’s translated into policy…I know that too, and I have no desire to see it again. Whether or not we want more of that policy…that was decided in the fall of 1980.

I want America’s Democratic party to take over the U.S. Congress this year, so that a) America stops spending so much money b) America does a better job securing her borders c) America is re-submerged in the baby-killing soldier-spitting toothpaste tube of liberal goodness d) America starts doing things the JIMMY CARTER way e) I don’t want the Democrats to take over the U.S. Congress.

I think that question is the most serious one, right there. And it is pivotal in determining the relevance of Carter’s remarks. If a majority don’t pick d, then he is just one more cantankerous curmudgeon who won’t shut the hell up. Nothing more. Kind of on par with some guy writing posts for The Blog That Nobody Reads…except unlike Carter, I haven’t been fired after my one-term as President quite yet.

Former American President Jimmy Carter is a) concerned; b) foolish; c) diplomatic and tactful; d) dignified; c) partisan; d) jealous; e) grief-stricken; f) filled with rage; g) resentful; h) bored and lonely; i) just wanting some peace, like the rest of us; j) senile. Check at least one but no more than three.

I want to know: For how many of my countrymen does this bitter old fart speak?

Isn’t that what we all want to know?

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No DWTM
Monday, August 28th, 2006

No DWTM

I don’t text message behind the wheel anymore. It used to be, the whole thing made a lot of sense. I text messaged with T9 on a Seimens S46, which, also, seemed to make a lot of sense. Letters made into words. Cool. And then I upgraded to a Treo 650, and text messaging behind the wheel made even more sense. No need to double-check stuff. Except I was double-checking anyway.

A couple of times I got done sending stuff, looked back up out my windshield and thought to myself, “would I be prepared for whatever I saw here, no matter what it was?” And I had to admit, the answer was: Maybe not. And so I’d reign my bad habits back in, which is what “good” drivers do. You dance on the edge, when you make a habit of dancing further out, from time to time you should make it a point to dance further in, too. Push the envelope now-and-then…not constantly.

But then, of course, I’d get cocky again.

And I’d think to myself, you know, in my lifetime, I’ve never made it a habit of getting cockier and cockier, without disaster following. This is the one exception. How long will it stay an exception?

But, I didn’t think too much of it…until disaster happened. NOT to me, thank goodness.

And I’m so glad both of the folks involved appeared to be walking around just fine. Must’ve been a wake-up call for me. Lady in front of me, crashed into the guy two cars ahead of me. She: 50 m.p.h. Him: Zero. Yeeesh. They must have had air bags.

Here’s my whole deal. You may opt in to being her — if, and only if, you want to keep on DWTM. Driving While Text Messaging. But to be him, you don’t have to do squat. Just drive. Get into a congested situation, a parking lot, which, if you live in a major metropolis that just involves driving to work every morning.

I know from experience that my logic can sway people, but my written words, in conveying that logic, oftentimes fall short of doing this. So let’s just link to this story to help illustrate the gravity of the situation.

Allen Park Officer Hit In Crash Caused By Text-Messaging Driver
POSTED: 9:57 am EDT August 28, 2006

A suburban Detroit police officer was injured in an accident caused by a teenage motorist sending a text message on his cell phone.

Michigan State Police said a 17-year-old male driver hit the rear of an Allen Park police car, which was policing an earlier crash Sunday afternoon.

The crash caused the police car to spin around and hit the officer, who was thrown into the air on an Interstate 94 ramp.

One more thing. When time and space permit, I’d like to expound on my little rant about talking on cell phones, without the benefit of hands-free devices.

We have studies that say when you talk on a hands-free device, your level of distraction is on par with what you’d be experiencing if you held the cell phone up to your face. Those studies are bullshit, you hear me? I live in the Big Tomato. I see people talking on their cell phones all the time — not-hands-free. Up to their faces.

It is…let me stress this properly…it is PHYSICALLY FREAKIN’ IMPOSSIBLE to do a check to your blind spot, before a lane change, while talking on a cell phone, without being completely absolutely no-mistakingly obvious that you’re doing a head-check. It is a deeply conspicuous movement you have to do. Those fuckers are not doing it, I guaran-damn-tee you. It is up to everybody else to get the hell out of their way, they know not what the hell they’re doing. I can personally vouch for this, swearing an oath to that effect, just by watching them. They are glancing in their passing mirrors — if they’re even doing that — and then breezily just sliding on over. Hope you’re not there when they do.

I loathe nanny-state rules. I really, really do. I’m kind of iffy about motorcycle-helmet laws. But we absolutely, positively, need those two. No text messaging, and no talking on it without a hands-free.

We’ve run out of excuses for not having such laws. What does a hands free device cost now? Fifteen bucks? And are there really any cell phones that can’t accommodate them?

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Memo For File XXII
Sunday, August 27th, 2006

Memo For File XXII

One of the planks in the Democrats’ “Six for ‘06″ platform is to implement the recommendations of the 9/11 commission. Howard Dean keeps mentioning this to me in his e-mails that begin with “Dear Fellow Democrat.”

You might be wondering what the recommendations are. You might be wondering how many of them there are. Especially if you’re a Democrat. Speaking just for myself, I’ve long been wondering why Democrats don’t seem to care what exactly it is they say they want done. They’re supposed to be incredibly angry that it isn’t being done, and yet, very few of them know this item is in the platform, let alone being able to rattle off a few 9/11 commission recommendations that have not yet been done. So why so testy?

Here’s a link…

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This Is Good XIX
Sunday, August 27th, 2006

This Is Good XIX

Not everybody will find this outrageously funny. Only those among us who have lost work to a computer freezing up…ever…over, let’s say, the last twenty-five years.

Everybody else will be clueless about the humor.

My reasons for lacking any sympathy for Mr. Gates, whatsoever, have very little to do with computers. I hope he felt as uncomfortable as he looked.

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Whiskey…Tango…Foxtrot… III
Saturday, August 26th, 2006

Whiskey…Tango…Foxtrot… III

Via Caerdroia, via Instapundit, via Ace, via the notorious Huffington Post…let us allow the words of Russell Shaw to speak for themselves. Heavily edited for brevity, but the conscious sentiment is being left unchanged, I think all would agree.

I hope and pray we don’t get hit again, like we did on September 11. Even one life lost to the violence of terrorism is too much.

If I somehow knew an attack was coming, I wouldn’t pause for a second to report it in order to prevent it from occuring.

But on the other hand, I remind myself that…If the Nazis had prevailed, tens, if not hundreds of millions more would have been killed.

That realization has led my brain to launch a political calculus 180 degrees removed from my pacifist-inclined leanings…What if another terror attack just before this fall’s elections could save many thousand-times the lives lost?
:
If an attack occurred just before the elections, I have to think that at least a few of the voters who persist in this “Bush has kept us safe” thinking would realize the fallacy they have been under.

If 5% of the “he’s kept us safe” revise their thinking enough to vote Democrat, well, then, the Dems could recapture the House and the Senate and be in a position to:

Block the next Supreme Court appointment, one which would surely result in the overturning of Roe and the death of hundreds if not thousands of women from abortion-prohibiting states at the hands of back-alley abortionists;

Be in a position to elevate the party’s chances for a regime change in 2008. A regime change that would:

Save hundreds of thousands of American lives by enacting universal health care;

Save untold numbers of lives by pushing for cleaner air standards that would greatly reduce heart and lung diseases;

More enthusiastically address the need for mass transit, the greater availability of which would surely c

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On the Blah, Blah, BlahThursday, August 31st, 2006

Memo For File XXIIIWednesday, August 30th, 2006

This Is Good XXWednesday, August 30th, 2006

Imitation is the Sincerest Form XVWednesday, August 30th, 2006

We’re All Such Independent ThinkersWednesday, August 30th, 2006

Must-Tards IXTuesday, August 29th, 2006

On KarrTuesday, August 29th, 2006

Why We Don’t Believe YouTuesday, August 29th, 2006

A Poll I’d Like To See IITuesday, August 29th, 2006

No DWTMMonday, August 28th, 2006

Memo For File XXIISunday, August 27th, 2006

This Is Good XIXSunday, August 27th, 2006

Whiskey…Tango…Foxtrot… IIISaturday, August 26th, 2006

On the Blah, Blah, Blah
Thursday, August 31st, 2006

Memo For File XXIII
Wednesday, August 30th, 2006

This Is Good XX
Wednesday, August 30th, 2006

Imitation is the Sincerest Form XV
Wednesday, August 30th, 2006

We’re All Such Independent Thinkers
Wednesday, August 30th, 2006

Must-Tards IX
Tuesday, August 29th, 2006

On Karr
Tuesday, August 29th, 2006

Why We Don’t Believe You
Tuesday, August 29th, 2006

A Poll I’d Like To See II
Tuesday, August 29th, 2006

No DWTM
Monday, August 28th, 2006

Memo For File XXII
Sunday, August 27th, 2006

This Is Good XIX
Sunday, August 27th, 2006

Whiskey…Tango…Foxtrot… III
Saturday, August 26th, 2006