House of Eratosthenes

At 2 TV Stations in Maine, What Al Gore’s Movie Says Isn’t News
By JOSEPH B. TREASTER

How important is global warming in Maine? Not important enough for local television.

Michael Palmer, the general manager of television stations WVII and WFVX, ABC and Fox affiliates in Bangor, has told his joint staff of nine men and women that when “Bar Harbor is underwater, then we can do global warming stories.”

“Until then,” he added. “No more.”

Mr. Palmer laid out his policy in an e-mail message sent out during the summer. A copy was sent to The New York Times. Mr. Palmer did not respond to a phone message left with an employee of the stations nor to an e-mail message. But a former staff member confirmed the e-mail message that went out during the summer after the stations broadcast a live report from a movie theater in Maine where Al Gore’s movie on global warming, “An Inconvenient Truth,” was opening.

Mr. Palmer began his e-mail message: “I was wondering where we should send the bill for the live shot Friday at the theater for the Al Gore commercial we aired.”

Mr. Palmer said he wanted no more stories broadcast on global warming because: “a) we do local news, b) the issue evolved from hard science into hard politics and c) despite what you may have heard from the mainstream media, this science is far from conclusive.” Mr. Palmer said in his e-mail message to his operations manager and two women who served as a news anchor and a reporter that he placed “global warming stories in the same category as ‘the killer African bee scare’ from the 1970s or, more recently, the Y2K scare when everyone’s computer was going to self-destruct.”

H/T: Boortz.

Article goes on to cite Dr. James Hansen as a neutral, authoritative source. Good for Dr. Hansen. And therein lies the trouble with things like neutrality, objectivity, centrism: Someone has to define these things. A lot of people are walking around, bragging about how well-informed they are because they read NYT. Not only will they stop short of saying they let the Old Gray Lady tell them what they’re supposed to think, they’ll vigorously argue against that very concept — and yet — the Paper of Record sticks a microphone into the face of James Hansen, not bothering to collect any other dissenting scientific opinion or counterpoint, and hey it’s all good.

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Whiskey…Tango…Foxtrot… VII
Saturday, October 28th, 2006

Whiskey…Tango…Foxtrot… VII

Like they say. “They’re at it again.” In January I had recorded some thoughts about the exchange between Bill O’Reilly and David Letterman…in which I think both sides would agree, the following sums things up accurately. O’Reilly shared some coherent thoughts after accumulating a serviceable knowledge about the given subject, and Letterman responded by freely admitting his ignorance, and being a smartass. Five months later, I had opined grandiloquently about what heap-big trouble we had made for ourselves, now that we had a discourse going in which half of us were irreversibly convinced Letterman had somehow won this thing. I mean, I was just stunned. Like I said, I come from Earth…a place where keeping the argument going, after ‘fessing up “I’m not smart enough to debate this with you point by point” is unthinkable. Keeping it going is unthinkable — calling victory on it is even moreso. Silly me. That’s the way things are on Earth. My home. Guess I should be more tolerant of people who come from other places.

Well. Everything that was old is new again. O’Reilly asked Letterman, point-blank, if Letterman wants the United States to win the war in Iraq. Simple question — Letterman can’t answer it — and woontcha know it, the weird purple-blooded aliens out on Planet “You Win An Argument By Talking Around The Issue,” otherwise known as Planet-Blue-State, think — once again — Letterman handed O’Reilly his own ass.

Well, very impressive. But if it’s not clarified what, exactly, the goal is — what does it even matter if Letterman “won” by whatever definitions his deranged fans may choose to put in place? Who CARES? Do you want the United States to win, Dave, or don’t you?

My thoughtfulness demands an answer before pursuing your argument any further.

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Bumper Sticker
Saturday, October 28th, 2006

Bumper Sticker

Being “pithy” is a real challenge for me. At an age when most kids were learning how to give off the right “vibe” with each other, I was reading the encyclopedia to pass the time. When it came time to get a job, when other kids were learning the fine points of customer service at the fast food restaurant or the shoe store, I was a software developer.

As a result of that, I may have some strengths figuring out what must be communicated, but I’m handicapped in figuring out what could be left out. I look at such things the way a software developer looks at them: If something’s in need of definition, and it goes undefined, that is a “bug” waiting to happen.

So I get a lot of criticism for the length of what I have to say. Most of it’s deserved. In fact, the high compliments that go with it about “good writing” or “great writing” or whatever…I’m mostly convinced that’s undeserved. A writer is supposed to know something about his audience’s mindset. And in the final analysis, I really haven’t got a God damned clue. I’m always the last to know.

So I can’t write pithy stuff. And if, somehow, we escape a Democratic Congress next year, a fate which we richly deserve…and Republicans can hang on to control of Congress, which they do not deserve…whoever makes that happen, will have written some pithy stuff. Which I can’t do.

Not often.

But I did think of something.

The situation is summed up nicely, I think, by the border issue. The Republicans in Congress have approved building a third of the fence we should have had all along. Just a third. Seven hundred miles. They have authorized it…the funds are not there to pay for it. In short, they’re paying “lip service” to the fence, and to border control in general. They say they’re dedicated to it, they pass stuff that kind of goes in that direction, but they will not actually get it done.

Democrats are dedicated to “immigration reform.” They won’t even say what that is, let alone actually do some stuff consistent with whatever they’d say it is. But they’re completely united on one thing: Republicans are screwing it up, and we need to put them in charge.

And thus it is with every issue on down the line. Republicans are dedicated to an idea, and their performance in moving toward that idea is a) good b) lackluster c) poor d) disasterous e) bass-ackward. Democrats are dedicated to…some cool catchphrase that will get people a) energized b) pissed-off c) energized and pissed-off. On all issues, the catchphrase is supposed to communicate an idea, but which idea it communicates varies from noggin to noggin among the people who are getting energized and pissed-off. Nobody knows what a Democratic Congress would do about immigration, or the War on Terror, or even the finer details of any of the issues Democrats like: Universal healthcare, minimum wage, rolling back tax cuts, abortion on demand.

Democrats and the mainstream media — but I repeat myself — command us to pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. Don’t worry about what they’d do. The status quo is so bad, we need to communicate our anger…by putting them in charge.

Well, in charge of what? What they want to lead, is so massive, so important, that this whole argument makes sense only to those who tune out of the whole process. They’re talking to the folks who are so “overwhelmed” driving to soccer practice, picking up six-dollar foo-foo drinks at Starbuck’s, and bellyaching about not having enough cash for gas. They’ll just clear out that half-hour on Tuesday morning to vote how angry they are about gas prices, and couldn’t give a shit about politics.

But those are the people who decide things. People out of the reach of windbags like me, who don’t know how to express pithy ideas. And because of that, the country is about to be run by people whose agenda is…who knows what. The best information to be gathered, is that the plan for fighting the War on Terror, is going to be for our leaders to command us proles, to stop thinking about it. And almost certainly, that will be done by means of bright shiny objects. Increases in minimum wage, bold new plans for healthcare…each of them calculated to address a social issue, never quite solving it for good. It’ll be more about the noise, less about actually addressing anything. Just like the good ol’ days.

Two words for Starbuck’s-slurping, soccer-momming, gas-price-bitching myrmidons: “Congressional Material.” With a question mark afterward, and placed over this picture.

That’s what it’s all about. Most people would agree, an election isn’t about registering your angst about things. It’s about selecting leaders who are going to make important decisions about things. Most people would agree with that…even Democrats agree with it, when they try to make the election all about Mark Foley. It’s just, the folks who are going to put Democrats in Congress, aren’t following through on it. They’ll say they are voting for someone to bring about “change.” But if you ask them what the change is going to be, only 10 out of 100 will have an answer for you — and those ten answers will be all different.

Congressional Material. That’s what this election is all about. Make the candidates spell out what they plan to do, and we can have an election about who’s congressional material and who isn’t. For the challengers to say “I’m all pissed off and you should be too!” and let them get away with that…that’s not leading to an election about congressional material. That is what’s called a bitch pitch.

And it’s not the candidate’s job to prevent that. It’s the electorate’s job.

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Memo For File XXXI
Saturday, October 28th, 2006

Memo For File XXXI

Quoth our 32nd President, our “A Little Dab (o’Socialism)’ll Do Ya” President, the guy who locked up all the Japanese-American citizens — lemme repeat that, citizens — in camps simply because of the blood in their veins. The guy who prepared America for the modern world by, of all things, transforming it into a collectivist utopia; God only knows how good things could have been if it was a supply-sider carrying us across that critical bridge. We learn of this via some starry-eyed left-wing douchenozzle, via the much more venerable Fetching Jen.

President Roosevelt argues that his hybrid-socialist revolution is simply a continuation of the American Revolution; it’s the natural next-step. In fact, I think the douchenozzle hit the nail on the head here: “Our Founding Fathers had either not anticipated that need when they wrote our Constitution, or else they had felt that our fledgling country was not yet ready for that concept. But as FDR pointed out in his speech, many things had changed since then.”

And so it was to win freedom from the tyranny of political autocracy that the American Revolution was fought. That victory gave the business of governing into the hands of the average man, who won the right with his neighbors to make and order his own destiny through his own Government. Political tyranny was wiped out at Philadelphia on July 4, 1776.

Since that struggle, however, man’s inventive genius released new forces in our land which reordered the lives of our people. The age of machinery, of railroads; of steam and electricity; the telegraph and the radio; mass production, mass distribution-all of these combined to bring forward a new civilization and with it a new problem for those who sought to remain free.

For out of this modern civilization economic royalists carved new dynasties. New kingdoms were built upon concentration of control over material things. Through new uses of corporations, banks and securities, new machinery of industry and agriculture, of labor and capital-all undreamed of by the fathers-the whole structure of modern life was impressed into this royal service.

There was no place among this royalty for our many thousands of small business men and merchants who sought to make a worthy use of the American system of initiative and profit. They were no more free than the worker or the farmer. Even honest and progressive-minded men of wealth, aware of their obligation to their generation, could never know just where they fitted into this dynastic scheme of things.

It was natural and perhaps human that the privileged princes of these new economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for control over Government itself. They created a new despotism and wrapped it in the robes of legal sanction. In its service new mercenaries sought to regiment the people, their labor, and their property. And as a result the average man once more confronts the problem that faced the Minute Man.

The hours men and women worked, the wages they received, the conditions of their labor-these had passed beyond the control of the people, and were imposed by this new industrial dictatorship. The savings of the average family, the capital of the small business man, the investments set aside for old age-other people’s money-these were tools which the new economic royalty used to dig itself in.

Those who tilled the soil no longer reaped the rewards which were their right. The small measure of their gains was decreed by men in distant cities. [emphasis mine]

Now if you’re sharp, you can already see the circuitous route that is being set up. Till the soil for small measure of gains decreed by men in distant cities; have a revolution to declare your independence; exploit your opportunity to the fullest by starting a business and employing several of your peers; make a profit and incur capital gains. Then…after the natural next-step revolution, the socialist upheaval — once again, see the measure of your gains decreed by men in distant cities.

Roosevelt says the circle has to do with the industrial revolution. We’ve exchanged one tyrant for another — the magnate. It’s ironic that what he’s set up here, is a situation where the government becomes the new tyrant…”small measure of their gains was decreed by men in distant cities.” How is the minimum wage determined? How is the marginal income tax rate determined? How is the capital gains tax rate determined? Who decides if we have a death tax or not?

Cyclical. Roosevelt agrees with me on this…we simply disagree as to how it’s cyclical — who the modern George III and House of Commons really is.

Quoth Eric Blair, a.k.a. George Orwell, writing as “Emmanuel Goldstein” in Nineteen Eighty-Four…about which we learn via me.

Throughout recorded time, and probably since the end of the Neolithic Age, there have been three kinds of people in the world, the High, the Middle, and the Low. They have been subdivided in many ways, they have borne countless different names, and their relative numbers, as well as their attitude towards one another, have varied from age to age: but the essential structure of society has never altered. Even after enormous upheavals and seemingly irrevocable changes, the same pattern has always reasserted itself, just as a gyroscope will always return to equilibnum, however far it is pushed one way or the other.
:
The aims of these three groups are entirely irreconcilable. The aim of the High is to remain where they are. The aim of the Middle is to change places with the High. The aim of the Low, when they have an aim…is to abolish all distinctions and create a society in which all men shall be equal.
:
Thus throughout history a struggle which is the same in its main outlines recurs over and over again. For long periods the High seem to be securely in power, but sooner or later there always comes a moment when they lose either their belief in themselves or their capacity to govern efficiently, or both. They are then overthrown by the Middle, who enlist the Low on their side by pretending to them that they are fighting for liberty and justice. As soon as they have reached their objective, the Middle thrust the Low back into their old position of servitude, and themselves become the High.
:
Presently a new Middle group splits off from one of the other groups, or from both of them, and the struggle begins over again. Of the three groups, only the Low are never even temporarily successful in achieving their aims. [emphasis mine]

I see a connection.

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We’re All Such Independent Thinkers IV
Friday, October 27th, 2006

We’re All Such Independent Thinkers IV

From One Good Move: Katie Couric interviews Michael J. Fox.

Double-irony. Michael J. Fox says he couldn’t give a damn about pity and just thinks he’s got a right to air his opinion like anybody else. “Just have a discussion about it, and see what happens.” Great idea. And yet the whole point of the interview is that if somebody is suffering, you’ve got to let them have the last word or else you are a COCK.

Actually, that’s Limbaugh’s position too. We aren’t really having a free and open discussion, we’re just pretending to do that. The new rule is that Mr. Fox has to have the last word, end of story. Make it happen, you are a Cool Person^TM. Keep it from happening, by voicing a contrary opinion, you’re a cock.

The other irony is that while the argument “these cells aren’t going to become a person anyway” is logically valid, and thus a good point, whether it is the end of the issue or not is a matter of personal belief. Well, now. It’s just awfully tough for me to comprehend the idea that as taxpayers, we have a right to stop a huge marble cross or Star of David or Crescent or statue of Buddha from being erected in our state’s Supreme Courts, simply because it contradicts our personal beliefs…but taxpayers have nothing to say about it when government is doing something they see as tantamount to murder. I’m not talking about something that can be proven to be murder, or something that can be proven not to be murder. Just something that’s up to one’s personal belief. I don’t see how this rule pertains to the cross-in-the-capitol situation, and not the embryonic stem cell situation.

The only other thing I’d have to say, and this is probably a bigger concern to me than those other two, is: If we’re going to “have a discussion about it and see what happens” let’s have a discussion about things that are true. There’s no such thing as a “embryonic stem cell research ban.” Oh, and to the best knowledge I have about the situation, Limbaugh hasn’t prevented anyone from speaking out with viewpoints contrary to his. Ever.

Update 10/28/06: As is usually the case, what I find interesting about this is not so much what has happened, and not even what is being said about it, but how these things are being said.

There’s something about the extreme left wing. They have so much to say about how things are and what should be done about those things. And it seems some among them can’t ever tell you any of it, without instructing you on what to think. Ever. How you should come to think the thing they want you to think, seems to be beyond their capacity. It seems the concept of “skepticism” is something completely foreign to them, and they’re completely, utterly, unprepared for it.

Rush Limbaugh may not be this country’s most disgusting human being, but he surely ranks among the top 10.

You’re undoubtedly familiar with his latest outrageousness - claiming that Michael J. Fox was really faking those Parkinson’s disease palsied shakes when he cut campaign ads for candidates who, like Wisconsin’s Jim Doyle, favor embryonic stem cell research.

Fox, who came down with Parkinson’s about 15 years ago and was forced to essentially retire from his acting career, thus became the latest victim of the well-honed Republican attack machine made famous by the so-called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth during the 2004 presidential election.

Limbaugh, with his audience of like-minded flame-throwers, is a key player in the well-organized cabal that uses innuendo and, more times than not, outright lies to savage anyone who dares to disagree with the right-wingers who long ago took the Republican Party hostage.

In a response to charges by conservative talk-show host Rush Limbaugh, Michael J. Fox defended his appearance in recent political campaign ads, saying he was neither acting nor off his medication for Parkinson’s disease.

You have to hand it to them - they’re very clever.

Although few of them ever served in the military themselves, they’ve been able to turn war heroes into cowards. Just ask Democrat Max Cleland or even Republican John McCain - one lost his legs and an arm because of an enemy grenade, the other was a prisoner of war for more than five years - who were targeted by a well-organized campaign that started with Karl Rove in the White House and was spread by Limbaugh and his right-wing imitators on talk radio.

And, of course, there was John Kerry, a decorated and wounded Vietnam War veteran, who was made out to be a wimp by a propaganda machine whose favorite candidate hadn’t even shown up for National Guard drills.

This year they’ve characterized an Illinois congressional candidate, Tammy Duckworth, an Army pilot who lost both legs in Iraq, as a “cut and runner.”

So Michael J. Fox is only the latest to be the target of the cruel attacks that have nothing to do with the issues, but everything to do with planting seeds of doubt and fueling the whispering campaigns.

Limbaugh, of course, always tries to leave himself a way out.

“If this was not an act,” he said of the Fox ad, “then I apologize.” All of which is nothing more than a joke, of course, since to raise the issue at all accomplishes the mission.

The pity of it all is that all too many Americans fall for these tactics of character assassination. It will never end until the people stand up and say “enough.” [emphasis mine]

I have to chuckle at that implied litmus test involving service in the military. I don’t remember things being that way at all in 1996…the year a Republican “decorated and wounded veteran” ran for President against an incumbent Democrat with lackluster military service credentials.

These people don’t communicate ideas. They tell people what to think and when to think it. They figuratively pop open the cranial cavity of the “listener,” stick the idea in, and sew things shut again, bypassing any critical inspection whatsoever. It’s not just their preference. They simply can’t do it any other way.

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Beccy Cole
Thursday, October 26th, 2006

Beccy Cole

Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler and Brutally Honest, and probably a whole lot of others, have provided me with a valuable education about that country music stuff in which you plebes like to immerse yourselves up to your necks.

Beccy Cole. An Aussie who just might inspire me to give the genre another listen.

What kinds of people have been tearing her “posters off the wall” anyway? Well, we know the answer to that of course. Anti-war people…who shy away, Kerry-like, from the question of whether the job needs to be done, and then go on to “respect the troops” by repeating anecdotes and urban legends about rapes, naked people, flushing the Koran, over and over again — only rarely can be found to say anything else about the soldiers closest to the danger.

Well now. Since anti-war people have shown so much reluctance to arguing about whether the job needs to be done — they go right up to the “Saddam Hussein was not dangerous” thing, but not one step further — let’s use an analogy to take the emotionalism out of it. Let’s think of a job we all agree needs to be done. Um…changing a flat. Yes, that’s it. Changing a flat.

It’s a JOB, okay? The driver, or car-owner, or a gentleman, is going to take on the job upon which the other three passengers depend. It’s the left-rear tire on a busy freeway, so there’s some personal danger involved with this. Pitch-black, raining like a sonofabitch.

What would we all think of the sullen, cantankerous passenger in the back seat who is opposed to tire-changing…but whenever confronted with this realization, denies that he is opposed to tire-changing?

How seriously would we take him if he insisted — insisted! — that he’s a big fan of the guy changing the tire, but whenever the guy outside drops the lug wrench, pisses and moans about the sound it makes when it strikes the pavement?

Demanding that everyone inside the nice comfy, cushy car, get a big ol’ noisy debate going about the proper way to tighten the lug nuts, and whether the guy outside, whom he supports so much, is doing it right?

Whether the guy is changing the right tire.

Oh and he won’t let you express any opinion that changing the tire is the right thing to do — if you’re in the warm, comfy, cushy car with him. No, you should be out there if you think it’s such a swell idea, while the loudmouth “holds court” inside with his ideas left unchallenged by anyone still inside with him.

The decision has been made that the tire needs changing. The changing is underway. As of December 2003, the flat tire has been removed.

The tire-changing critic won’t EVER shut the fuck up.

How seriously would we take that guy?

How about the notion that those of us who support the tire-changing, are in the wrong place, being inside the car? Would that be a good argument? Because it seems to me, not only would it be unnecessarily dangerous to all concerned having more people outside than the job demands…not only that…but if anybody’s out-of-place sitting in the car, it’d be the tiresome complainer in the back seat who wants to talk about all the stuff the tire-changing-guy is doing that doesn’t meet his approval.

In fact, next time we go anywhere, it seems obvious the one guy who insists we should just keep on truckin’, nobody ever performing any repairs of any kind on the car, under any circumstances whatsoever, no matter what’s going on…I dunno. Seems really, really obvious that if he’s still coming with us next time, he’s riding in the trunk with duct tape over his mouth. Maybe after the tire’s changed we can get that arrangement going on the way home.

Anyway, I’m rambling. I do that when my horizons have been expanded.

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Passing Up Tips
Thursday, October 26th, 2006

Passing Up Tips

Via Boortz (you need to scroll down to “NOT SERIOUS ABOUT THE MEXICAN INVASION”, since as of right now his permalinks aren’t working for this). We get to find out how incredibly serious the feds are about illegal immigration.

A national backlash against illegal immigration has many police chiefs squirming behind their badges. They’re the faces of law enforcement in a country that doesn’t always enforce immigration laws. But Roswell Police Chief Edwin Williams has found an unlikely ally to help him feel true to his duty: the fax machine.

At least once a day his jailers fax the names of inmates suspected of being in the country illegally to immigration agents in Atlanta. It’s a practice Williams started a decade � and roughly 10,000 names � ago, long before illegal immigration grew into a front-burner issue.

Today, Roswell stands alone in the area covered by Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) regional office in Atlanta. No other jurisdiction in the Carolinas or Georgia sends such a list, said Kenneth Smith, the office’s special agent-in-charge.

The north Fulton city of 100,000 has faxed the booking sheets of 1,396 detainees to ICE in the past nine months alone, according to police department records. Immigration agents have picked up three of them, Williams said, or one out of every 465.

Don’t forget to check out the chart at the bottom of the article.

Okee dokee, I’m sure during an interview to explain this impressive lack of diligence, the feds are going to say something to the effect that this is the wrong approach, they’d follow up much better if Chief Williams followed the proper channels. Whatever. I’d just like to ask a hypothetical question about this.

What if the electorate took this much, much more seriously than whoever is on the receiving end of these faxes?

How would the electorate be behaving now, right before a midterm election? Suppose this issue was in the top-two or top-three on the minds of nearly all voters. What kind of a climate would we have…

…well. We’d have a decidedly anti-incumbent mood. We’d have a fever mildly expressing a bias toward the minority party, and suggesting that there will be a bloodletting in twelve days. But something that, at the same time, presents some resistence to being translated to a party preference. We’d have something just nodding toward the marginal possibility that Republicans might keep both houses…but if they do, boy howdee, they’d better watch their P’s and Q’s. Just a throw-the-bastards-out kind of thing. An “If you keep your seat it’s only because we decided the other guys are worse” kind of thing.

Both parties would be worried about their respective bases staying home. Democrats would be campaigning on “we are not the other guys,” they’d slam us all with eleventh-hour sex scandals and work overtime on agitating and mobilizing the grown-up hippies. Oh and of course, they’d vigorously oppose any attempt to verify ID at the polling place. Republicans would be campaigning on “don’t forget what the issues are,” and they’d tip-toe around the observation that they’ve been negligent in standing for things, promising to do better. They’d find new and creative ways of making this pledge without going on record agreeing that things are screwed up.

Rare, of course, would be the mainstream news story that would actually talk about this.

Right? Isn’t that what we’d have?

Well. What exactly would you say is going on right now?

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Best Republican Commercials
Wednesday, October 25th, 2006

Best Republican Commercials

Right Wing News has a top-ten list, for the 2006 season, with honorable mentions.

My favorite is this one by Larry Elder.

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He…Needs To See This…
Tuesday, October 24th, 2006

He…Needs To See This…

Once again, Michael Savage made me wish I had a longer commute home.

He was opening his phone lines to a question based on two premises: 1) Republicans are far, far better than Democrats when it comes to national defense; and 2) in his personal opinion, this by itself is not an adequate reason for him to get out and vote for them. Maybe he figures it’s an adequate reason to pick Republicans over Donks, but it’s not good enough to get him off his ass over to the polling booth, to actually punch the ballot. So he was asking his listeners for a few more reasons.

I live 1.75 miles from work (of COURSE I have measured it). If I were to ring in to his switchboard the very second I turned my ignition key, I’d still be waiting to talk to him by the time I was home, cold bottle of St. Pauli Girl in hand. So…he’ll have to find a way to keep on pluggin’, without my input.

Well, he needs to see this latest ad by David Zucker.

You see, it’s not about the actual amount of money that is taxed, or that is spent. If that is the case, we need to put Democrats in charge because the Republican Congress has spent more money per year than has ever spent before. And then, we need to plan on replacing the Democratic Congress with a new Republican one in 2008 or 2010, since that Congress will surely have broken all records as well…seems like a pretty futile exercise, right?

No, it’s not about the actual dollar amounts. It’s about the relationship between the government, and the governed.

To the Democrats, the taking of the money is every bit as important as the giving of that same money. It’s not so much about gifting those stolen assets to the poor, downtrodden — um, actually, to those who live their private lives in ways upon which the bureaucracy smiles, whether those lifestyles are productive or not. No, it’s not really about that. It’s about the infliction of pain upon those groups that do not merit the approval of the bureaucracy. Smokers. Working stiffs that make more than 100k a year. Investors. Small business owners.

Republicans are all drunk on the elixir of “Buy More Votes With Public Funds.” That is true. In this sense, they are no better than Democrats. But at least, the act of taxing is a real necessity. It is a necessary evil. A means to an end.

Democrats…have become intoxicated on a wholly different elixir. And they’ve remained in their drunken stupor for a generation, or more. They’re all about…if we tax the right people, the act of taxation, has a certain nobility to it. We should work on taxing them even more.

Saving money for the taxpayer? Screw that! We’re Democrats. We’re all about targeting the correct people for taxation. We tax people who are evil…people who are evil because the “majority” has voted them that way. The more we can tax them, the better. If we can tax them into nonexistence, that’s better still.

Of course that raises the question…from whence do we get our tax revenues?

We are Democrats. We believe in big people telling little people what to think. So you are commanded, Wizard-Of-Oz style, not to worry about that.

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Whiskey…Tango…Foxtrot… VI
Tuesday, October 24th, 2006

Whiskey…Tango…Foxtrot… VI

Via Best of the Web: Why do we tolerate candidates like this. Even if you agree with them, and even if you think the other guy is so terrible. Why does anyone tolerate them?

You punch the hole next to these guys’ names, and you are part of the problem. It’s a carbuncle on the ass cheek of American politics, and it reflects poorly on us all.

Inquirer: Let me ask you to shift gears to the anti-terrorism initiatives. Last night in the debate, I think you said that you’d support warrantless wiretapping. How does that square with your suspicion about this White House? Why would you be willing to let them do that without judicial oversight? And on the Military Commissions Act, would that have been something you would have supported? In general, your outlook on anti terrorism initiatives.

Casey: Yeah, I think going backwards the, with regard to the detainees and interrogation, look, we’ve had people like John McCain, and you could give other examples as well, but people who have looked at this for a long time who have been very serious about making sure that we are very tough in our interrogation, that we get as much information as possible from those we detain and interrogate and also John McCain, showing the kind of independence that Rick Santorum never seems to show, took on the administration and I think they, based upon their experience, I think they got it right and I think I would have support that.

Secondly, on the question of wiretaps, my position all along has been we’ve got to do everything possible and give every tool that government agencies need, intelligence, law enforcement, give them the tools they need to fight this war on terror. And I think we, in terms of wiretapping, whether its terrorists, known terrorists, or suspected terrorists, we’ve gotta give this government all the tools it can. And I think what we’ve seen in the past is the system that has been set up when its operated according to the law, and when the administration goes and puts a wiretap in place and then comes back later and gets a warrant after the fact, the system that has been set up is a pretty solid system, but they often don’t comply with it. You can support having a lot of tough wiretapping, but also support the kind of tough oversight of the administration, which I think has been lacking. And I think we can have the two in balance at right.

Inquirer: Well, it might have been misreported this morning, but it certainly seemed to me as if you were endorsing the NSA program which is warrantless wiretapping without court oversight.

Casey: Well, I think, look, my position all along has been you’ve got to have the ability to wiretap known or suspected terrorists, and I am going to make sure that everything I do in this area is focused on anti-terrorism and making sure that we are being as tough as possible to ferret out any kind of plot or and kind of terrorist activity.

Inquirer: Bob, it’s real simple, and it seems to me you are dancing around it. Either you believe that the President or his designees need to go to the FISA court and provide some probable cause for the wiretapping, or you don’t. They say they don’t. They say they can do it on their own say so and there’s no oversight of whether the person they’re wiretapping is actually credibly a terrorist suspect or not. That’s the issue. Do they have to go through the FISA court or not? Nobody’s debating that we need to wiretap suspected terrorists.

Casey: You know very well that Senator Specter has worked very hard on this to try to get this right and I think with bipartisan cooperation, working with people like Senator Specter, as I know I can, that we can get this right. I don’t, I don’t, I don’t see what the…

Inquirer: It’s a real simple question. Do they need to go through the FISA Court as the FISA law has said since 1973 or don’t they? They say they don’t. We say they do. What do you say?

Casey: I think it’s worked well.

Inquirer: What has worked well?

Casey: I think it’s worked well when you use that system and you use it in the context of making sure that we are doing everything possible to, to…

Inquirer: So, are you saying that the president has been breaking the law since 2002, or whenever the NSA program started?

Casey: I’m saying that people like Senator Specter have a lot of questions about whether or not the law was broken. I don’t think anyone has made a determination about that. I think that’s pretty clear.

May I address the Bob Casey, Jr. loyalists for just a few seconds.

This asshole wants to make life-and-death decisions about protecting your family from terrorists who would cook their own weiners on a big hot plate just to blow your kids into so many bite-sized McNuggets.

And if you went out to buy some crummy five thousand dollar car on a Friday night, and the greaseball used-car salesman was only a quarter as evasive as the Senate hopeful is being in this interview, you’d walk the hell out of there and not look back. On the principle of the thing. To protect a crummy, stupid little five thousand dollar investment.

Versus — your…childrens’…LIVES.

Oh yeah, I know that makes me some kind of Republican scare-monger. Yeah, I get that. Well guess what. “Global Warming” is not a proven threat just yet…terrorists blowing themselves up to take out a few thousand of us, randomly-selected, IS a proven threat. Remember?

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This Is Good XXVII
Tuesday, October 24th, 2006

This Is Good XXVII

Via Boortz: Very Funny Ads.

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Professor: Faculty SHOULD Be Liberal
Tuesday, October 24th, 2006

Professor: Faculty SHOULD Be Liberal

Just something to remember next time someone forcefully denies the liberal bias in the academia. And it should lead to a question: Does the denier agree with the position of this person who says this is the way things should be? And if so, are these positions to be taken seriously? That the liberal bias ought to be existing, and the educational institution is derelict in it’s duty to bring it about?

Professor: Faculty SHOULD be liberal

Donald Lazere, a University of Iowa visiting professor, will present a lecture and discussion entitled “Two Cheers for Political Correctness: Why Higher Education SHOULD Have a Liberal Bias” from 5 to 7 p.m. Friday, Oct. 27, in Room S401 in the Pappajohn Business Building.

Lazere’s presentation, sponsored by the UI Project on Rhetoric of Inquiry (POROI), will be free and open to the public.

Lazere will make the case that daily life in America is so saturated with conservative conventions that the resulting biases are not even perceived as such but simply assumed to be the norm of neutrality.

“It is a legitimate role for professors in liberal education to make students aware of liberal or leftist viewpoints that challenge the biases in these conservative conventions. The frequent unfortunate result, however, is that many students — as well as conservatives in the larger society, in media, and in government — are inclined only to stigmatize the challenging views as biased, not the conventions they challenge,” said Lazere.

Mmmkay. Well, look. Colleges and universities are already getting a bad rap from the business community, for failing to prepare graduates with the selection of skills needed to present resumes, pass through interviews, etc. etc. “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach” goes the maxim. I wouldn’t want to see this situation deteriorate any further. And yet, the guy does have a point. If the students graduate without a sampling of diverse points of view, the educational institution could be said by some to have failed in its mission.

So how about a disclaimer for all the liberal points of view that are presented behind the ivy walls, for diversity’s sake and for diversity’s sake alone. “Your instructor has worked hard to offer you a smorgasbord of conservative ideas that work in the real world; now, for diversity’s sake alone, we are going to give you an offering of liberal ideas that DON’T.” Just put that little preamble on the beginning, and then let the left-wing love-fest commence in that context. I’d be down with that.

Come to think of it, so should Prof. Lazere.

Oh and this other silly back-and-forth discussion on whether there’s a liberal bias in our universities, or not. That can stop now. Right?

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On Embryonic Stem Cell Research
Tuesday, October 24th, 2006

On Embryonic Stem Cell Research

It’s thrust into the news once again, as Rush Limbaugh is in hot water — somebody’s definition of “hot water,” somebody, somewhere — over his “insensitive” comments about Parkinson’s Disease sufferer Michael J. Fox.

His body visibly wracked by tremors, actor Michael J. Fox appears in a political ad that was the subject of widespread discussion on Monday after conservative radio commentator Rush Limbaugh claimed Fox was “either off his medication or acting.”

A victim of Parkinson’s disease, Fox speaks out in the ad for Missouri Democratic Senate candidate Claire McCaskill, who supports embryonic stem cell research.

“I think this is exploitative in a way that’s unbecoming of either Claire McCaskill or Michael J. Fox,” Limbaugh said on his syndicated show.

On his Web site Tuesday, Limbaugh appeared to back away from his accusation.

“All I’m saying is I’ve never seen him the way he appears in this commercial for Claire McCaskill,” says Limbaugh. “So I will bigly, hugely admit that I was wrong, and I will apologize to Michael J. Fox, if I am wrong in characterizing his behavior on this commercial as an act, especially since people are telling me they have seen him this way on other interviews and in other television appearances.”

In response to this CBS news story, I did something really funny and strange and weird. Hey, this is the House of Eratosthenes…it’s named after a guy who ran around peeking in water wells, eventually figuring out the earth is round, and how round the earth is, in an age where conventional wisdom said the earth was flat. House of Eratosthenes. Not “House of Some Guy Who Believes Everything He’s Told.”

So I did my funny thing. I clicked the button on my trackball. I clicked open Rush Limbaugh’s website to see what he had to say for himself. Yeah that’s right…I went to the place CBS said they got their information, and gave it a gander. Silly me.

Michael J. Fox Is Not Infallible;
He’s Just the Latest Victim Used by the Democrat
October 24, 2006

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: One of the big issues in the Missouri Senate race — as you know, we touched on it yesterday R

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On Embryonic Stem Cell ResearchTuesday, October 24th, 2006

Not News
Monday, October 30th, 2006

Whiskey…Tango…Foxtrot… VII
Saturday, October 28th, 2006

Bumper Sticker
Saturday, October 28th, 2006

Memo For File XXXI
Saturday, October 28th, 2006

We’re All Such Independent Thinkers IV
Friday, October 27th, 2006

Beccy Cole
Thursday, October 26th, 2006

Passing Up Tips
Thursday, October 26th, 2006

Best Republican Commercials
Wednesday, October 25th, 2006

He…Needs To See This…
Tuesday, October 24th, 2006

Whiskey…Tango…Foxtrot… VI
Tuesday, October 24th, 2006

This Is Good XXVII
Tuesday, October 24th, 2006

Professor: Faculty SHOULD Be Liberal
Tuesday, October 24th, 2006

On Embryonic Stem Cell Research
Tuesday, October 24th, 2006