House of Eratosthenes

Guess what folks, employees in an agency of the federal government now have to follow some rules, which in certain cases make little-to-no sense at all. Have you ever heard of such a thing?

Scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Goddard Space Flight Center are up in arms over a new requirement by NASA that they submit to detailed FBI scrutiny of their backgrounds in order to obtain clearance to go to work. They are claiming that the agency may be trying to control or silence them about issues like global warming.

The new security clearance requirement, which involves interviews of neighbors and checks into the distant background activities of scientists, many of whom have worked at JPL and Goddard for as long as thirty years, is puzzling because both locations have little or no involvement in secret or national security research. Indeed, by law, NASA’s activities and the research its scientists engage in are required to be publicly available.

“Almost nobody at NASA does classified work,” says Robert Nelson, a veteran scientist at JPL who heads up the photo analysis unit on the Cassini-Huygens space probe project exploring Saturn and its moons. “I think this is really all about NASA director [Michael] Griffin putting a security wrap around us.”

Yup, throughout modern history enormous, leviathan government agencies have imposed rules on the people who work for them, rules that run contrary to common sense, or to the notions of lots of people about the way things ought to work. Through all the decades hearing about such boondoggles, I had no idea President Bush was responsible for all the red tape, or that it was being wielded to put a choke-hold on global warming alarmist research.

Why, now that you point it out to me, it makes perfect sense.

I got my own idea of what this is about. The latest “Everyone Else Is Linking It, I Might As Well Too” story on global warming, of which you and I could have read just about anywhere yesterday (but my hat tip goes to Buck), does sufficient damage to the Chicken Little dogma that you just knew a backlash was inevitable.

In 2004, history professor Naomi Oreskes performed a survey of research papers on climate change. Examining peer-reviewed papers published on the ISI Web of Science database from 1993 to 2003, she found a majority supported the “consensus view,” defined as humans were having at least some effect on global climate change. Oreskes’ work has been repeatedly cited, but as some of its data is now nearly 15 years old, its conclusions are becoming somewhat dated.

Medical researcher Dr. Klaus-Martin Schulte recently updated this research. Using the same database and search terms as Oreskes, he examined all papers published from 2004 to February 2007. The results have been submitted to the journal Energy and Environment, of which DailyTech has obtained a pre-publication copy. The figures are surprising.

Of 528 total papers on climate change, only 38 (7%) gave an explicit endorsement of the consensus. If one considers “implicit” endorsement (accepting the consensus without explicit statement), the figure rises to 45%. However, while only 32 papers (6%) reject the consensus outright, the largest category (48%) are neutral papers, refusing to either accept or reject the hypothesis. This is no “consensus.”

The figures are even more shocking when one remembers the watered-down definition of consensus here. Not only does it not require supporting that man is the “primary” cause of warming, but it doesn’t require any belief or support for “catastrophic” global warming. In fact of all papers published in this period (2004 to February 2007), only a single one makes any reference to climate change leading to catastrophic results.

One out of 528.

That came out on a WEDNESDAY.

This National Agency Check stuff — being breathlessly reported for the benefit of a paranoid-liberal readership that has never heard of NAC before and suspects Bush skullduggery anytime they encounter something they don’t understand — came out on a THURSDAY.

Wednesday…Thursday. Discharge, ricochet. Action, reaction. Push-me, pull-you. Once again, the global warming mindset tries like the dickens to look like “science,” and ends up looking more like a religion. I’m not the first to point it out, and I won’t be the last.

As for Bush Derangement Syndrome, in three decades it will look just like pet rocks and mutton-chop sideburns do today.

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Instant Karma
Thursday, August 30th, 2007

Right now, the federal government hasn’t got anything more important to do than to deliver us the bodies of dead terrorists, the more the better. Maybe some inside don’t realize it, and some outside don’t realize it…and it doesn’t sound very pleasant when you say it out loud…but it’s true. More dead terrorists. More every month, than you brought in the month before. Drop ‘em at our feet like a cat with a dead mouse, then run off and go get another. All other endeavors are trivial by comparison.

It’s nice to see the bad guys helping out in that enterprise.

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It’s a Dry Heat
Thursday, August 30th, 2007

I’d like to see a news story about the weather being hot somewhere…without even once mentioning global warming or climate change.

Yes, the public is more receptive to the global climate change scam when it’s hotter, or when they’re thinking about a local climate being hotter. That doesn’t mean the two are related. Because they simply aren’t.

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Jewell Down
Thursday, August 30th, 2007

Richard Jewell, who was falsely accused of being the Centennial Park bomber but later vindicated, has passed away.

I wonder if Ann Coulter is frustrated about that…she did a pretty comprehensive job reviewing the various episodes in the service of our nations last three Attorneys General. Jewell’s story wasn’t part of it. Deadline comes and goes on her weekly column, and almost in the minute she clicks “send” Jewell breathes his last.

Well you know what…you’ve got to conclude we’ve been sold a bill of goods when the most objective and even-handed review of Attorneys General over the last fourteen years comes from Ann Coulter. There’s just no getting around it.

On Aug. 19, 1991, rabbinical student Yankel Rosenbaum was stabbed to death in Crown Heights by a black racist mob shouting “Kill the Jew!” as retaliation for another Hasidic man killing a black child in a car accident hours earlier.

In a far clearer case of jury nullification than the first Rodney King verdict, a jury composed of nine blacks and three Puerto Ricans acquitted Lemrick Nelson Jr. of the murder — despite the fact that the police found the bloody murder weapon in his pocket and Rosenbaum’s blood on his clothes, and that Rosenbaum, as he lay dying, had identified Nelson as his assailant.

The Hasidic community immediately appealed to the attorney general for a federal civil rights prosecution of Nelson. Reno responded with utter mystification at the idea that anyone’s civil rights had been violated.

Civil rights? Where do you get that?

Because they were chanting “Kill the Jew,” Rosenbaum is a Jew, and they killed him.

Huh. That’s a weird interpretation of “civil rights.” It sounds a little harebrained to me, but I guess I could have someone look into it. It took two years from Nelson’s acquittal to get Reno to bring a civil rights case against him.
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Reno is the sort of wild-eyed zealot trampling on real civil rights that Hillary views as an ideal attorney general, unlike that brute Alberto Gonzales. At least Reno didn’t fire any U.S. attorneys!

Oh wait –

Number of U.S. attorneys fired by Ashcroft: 0

Number of U.S. attorneys fired by Gonzales: 8

Number of U.S. attorneys fired by Reno: 93

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John Edwards in Lead
Thursday, August 30th, 2007

Check out the first comment in the thread.

Go John, you are what the repugnants fear most. That is why they all crossed over in 2004 to vote for Kerry. They knew shrub would look like the idiot he is if he had to debate John in public.

Edwards is the candidate the repugnants fear most…oh yeah, if it’s up to me, I’ll take that bet. Go ahead and nominate Edwards.

Conventional wisdom says the Republicans are sure to lose the White House. And yet I can’t think of a single Republican candidate who looks what I would call “buffoonish”…or a single Democrat candidate who does not. I mean, think about it. If Edwards is nominated, it will be like the best thing that ever happened to the G.O.P. — but you could say the same about the not-quite-black guy and the not-quite-female person as well. All three of them are like Trojan horses…you could provide to me concrete proof that any one of the three of them is, or all three are, covert agents working for the Republican party. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised. All three of them have helped Republicans more than Democrats…and all three of them I project to continue with the same-ol’ same-ol’, right on through the duration.

Maybe the time has come to seek out a left-winger and make a friendly wager. There’s got to be an opportunity to make some money here.

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No Pain Ray Weapon for Iraq
Thursday, August 30th, 2007

Probably a wise decision.

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Next Intrusion
Thursday, August 30th, 2007

The next regulatory intrusion into the private lives of generally-responsible citizens, should inconvenience — absolutely nobody except — women with dogs. That needs to be the very next thing, and we should all insist on it. Leave the people chugging down on saturated fat products alone, leave the people in enormous cars alone, leave the actors smoking cigarettes in movies alone.

Just…women who own dogs. Disrupt them next, and until then, disrupt absolutely nobody else. It is their TURN.

All the ingredients are there. They’re all-freakin’-over the place, for one thing. It’s become a form of pollution. And that’s a legitimate reason to regulate things, isn’t it? Enough people start doing something, before you know it there are pain-in-the-ass rules in place that wouldn’t be there if fewer people did it…that’s become an American tradition, and I see no reason why dog-owning women should be exempt from this.

It’s a public health problem because women don’t curb their pets. Yes, that’s a crass and reckless generalization. And that’s fine. Regulation is made of crass, reckless generalizations — that’s what regulation is. They are far less likely to curb their dogs than their male counterparts…

…and now they are getting hurt. Bridget O’Keefe lost a finger walking a friend’s dog. The finger cannot be reattached.

She was using [a retractable leash] to walk a friend’s dog, but then, the dog tried to take off.

“I was holding the leash with my right hand, and I think it was just a jerk reaction,” O’Keefe said. “I reached with my left hand to try and stop her.”

She was holding the nylon piece of string inside the leash.

“When I reached for it, I think it retracted back in,” O’Keefe said.

O’Keefe then felt a sharp pain and looked down in shock.

“My finger was gone,” O’Keefe said. “It was pulsing, spurting blood. I know that sounds horrible.”

Surprisingly, though, this isn’t the only horror story.

“My shock was that this isn’t the only case that this has happened,” O’Keefe said.

News 4 WOAI has learned that some people have even lost eyes, and have been severely burned by these types of leashes. Dozens of cases have been cited on the internet, and now O’Keefe is no longer using her retractable leash.

That’s the last straw. Don’t you dare tell me I can’t go to a Hooter’s restaurant, or buy beer on a Sunday, until we have enough rules for dog-owning-women that you could crumple them in a wad and choke a horse. You can start with When I Start Running This Place #8 and, if & when technology permits, When I Start Running This Place #32.

Yes, it’s not Bridget’s dog. That’s not the point. The point is, in all other aspects of life, when a “critical mass” of people all start doing the same thing and then some of them get hurt doing it…that’s all it takes. Rules pop up like dandelions on Easter Sunday after a good morning rain. Half of them, if not moreso, stupid. The woman-and-dog thing shouldn’t be exempt.

It’s troublesome, because dogs are capable of recognizing one, and only one, master. If that happens to be a woman and she’s a pushover, it’s misery for everybody else. Now, in 2007, Al Gore wants us to have a carbon footprint of zero — so the rest of us are struggling against “leashes” plenty short enough, in all other aspects of life. It’s well past time to reign this one in.

Just be careful doing it, don’t burn or cut yourself.

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Whiskey…Tango…Foxtrot… XVI
Thursday, August 30th, 2007

One Dubya-Tee-Eff episode rises, like Venus out of the ocean waves, from another. Must mean a Clinton is involved.

Noted “Hillraiser” Norman Hsu is a fugitive on the run from justice. No, really…

Democratic donor Norman Hsu said Wednesday that he would “refrain from all fundraising activities” until he resolved an outstanding warrant for his arrest stemming from a 1991 criminal case in San Mateo County.

Hsu, a major fundraiser over the last three years for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and other Democrats, issued the statement through his attorney after the Los Angeles Times reported that he had been a fugitive for 15 years.

Prosecutors in California said Hsu disappeared in 1992 after pleading no contest and agreeing to serve up to three years in prison for defrauding investors in a Ponzi scheme.

Meanwhile, Clinton’s campaign said Wednesday that it would donate to charity $23,000 in direct donations from Hsu, a New York apparel executive. And other recipients of his donations distanced themselves from the businessman.

Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer of California and Edward M. Kennedy and John F. Kerry of Massachusetts; Reps. Michael M. Honda of San Jose, Doris Matsui of Sacramento and Joe Sestak of Pennsylvania; and Al Franken, a Senate candidate in Minnesota, said they would divest their campaigns of Hsu’s donations.

If I jotted this down as fiction, surely no publisher would accept it. And yet, here we are.

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Memo For File XLV
Thursday, August 30th, 2007

I was watching some stupid show on cable television last night on one of those retro-channels, and nodded off.

Woke up somewhere around one in the morning. There was some other stupid family sitcom from about twenty-five years ago, give or take. The matriarch of the household was studying for her G.E.D. so she could get a better job, and the Lord of the Manor was throwing some kind of hissy-fit that she hadn’t consulted him first, and trying to stop her…to lay down the LAW. She started out all meek and submissive, and then chose to assert herself.

I nodded off again, this time until the coffeemaker went off. This time there was an entirely different family sitcom, in which the woman wore a black wig over her blond hair and the man was having some kind of conniption, once again trying to lay down the LAW. She once again, started out contrite, and then again, chose to assert herself.

It’s interesting watching what passes for comedy in one eon, through the lens of history in some “future” eon. It helps to restore your perspective. Like for example — how is it an entire society got fooled, for a whole generation, into thinking this was entertainment? Some hotshot television producer who doesn’t know jack-squat about real domestic squabbles, assembles a theatrical troop to tell those filthy commoners what they are arguing about in their living rooms, and a bunch of other bigwigs who also wouldn’t know a real domestic squabble even if it bit ‘em square in what passes for their testes, get together and green-light it.

I’ve married and dated some dimwit women in my time, and it’s probably fair to say of all the tiffs you can possibly have with each other under a roof, I’ve participated in…well…probably most of them. Which is not a badge of honor by any means, but after such a sumptuous banquet I doubt there are too many dishes left from which I haven’t sampled. Trust me. TRUST me…I have never, ever, squabbled with a woman about her hair color, or thrown some kind of bitch-pitch because she wanted to acquire some new skills and make herself a better person.

This is where I get e-mail from petulant women who actually went through the experience. Save yourselves some time; I’m sure here and there, it’s happened, just like lightning strikes people sometimes, and sometimes jet planes crash into mountains. My issue is with how often such things happen — the frequency. Already, the patriarch who has some kind of beef with his wife or paramour making more money, is Number One on my list of Things I Doubt. I don’t personally know of any man who has this peeve, nor have I ever. It can’t be that common.

Why make that the point of something that is supposed to be comedy? Is this some kind of hidden agenda? Kind of a “we’ll pretend to be entertaining you, but what we’re really going to do is lecture you to be more supportive of that womens’ lib stuff.” Now and then, this can be overlooked I suppose. “Comedies” can be poignant, and every now and then they can stop being funny. I can see how this adds depth. But why should an entire generation have been defined this way?

It’s fair to say some pudgy middle-aged guy falling asleep in front of the retro-channel when he should be in bed, jolting himself awake every two hours to see what’s on the boob tube at that minute, is something of a “random sampling.” And if it’s fair to say that, what does it say that my random sampling continually ambushes me with another snotty, whimpering lecture from the Hollywood ivory-tower types, who are essentially complete strangers, that we should stop being such chauvinists and bigots? That isn’t what I call “now and then”; this is closer to what I would call “all the damn time.” And at that point, it ceases to be comedy.

It has to, right?

One more thought: If what we’re seeing here is some definition of what feminism really is, or is supposed to be, I have to ask if it was supposed to add to this assortment of other definitions, or replace them. If it is additive, well then that was quite the menagerie of agendas we went through all those years ago, wasn’t it? Given that they were all arranged under the singular banner of “feminism”? I mean, what are we up to…equal pay for equal worth; womens’ right to abort pregnancies; women going to work if they want to; smashing the glass ceiling, which is a somewhat different item from allowing women to work in the first place; coercing men into doing more chores, even if their wives are among the ones who DON’T work; promoting cultural icons of heroes who are more sensitive and less masculine, and heroines who are more caustic and unfriendly, and less feminine; making it artificially difficult to open strip bars, or to patronize them.

To that overly-complex stewpot we should toss in some other issues that seem, on the surface, to be gender neutral — but are designed to appeal to the female mindset. Things that wouldn’t have had a prayer of passage before suffrage. Nanny-state stuff. Wage and price controls, universal health care, hate crime laws, mandatory sensitivity training.

And now we have: Encouraging family squabbles about hair color and other such trivial nonsense.

Looking back on the feminist movement — if it was more sincere, wouldn’t it have been somewhat simpler?

I oppose illegal immigration. Some people agree with me, because they’re a bunch of damned racists…and people like me, are engaged in a never-ending struggle to promote our cause, while separating ourselves from people like them. That job is NEVER done. Well…some feminists support equal-pay for equal-worth, because that’s fair — and other feminists genuinely hate men. The sitcoms I saw last night, were put together to appeal to people of both sexes who genuinely hate men. People who like to indulge in extravagant fantasies about men ordering their wives around, make your hair this color, don’t get an education, don’t work. I don’t think equal-pay for equal-worth has an awful lot to do with that. This was hate, pure and simple, disguised as something that was supposed to draw laughter.

Not as bad as feeding Christians to lions…but sort of meandering off in that general direction. And we’re still tolerating it after thirty-five years.

How come equivalent pressure wasn’t put on the feminists, and still isn’t put on them to this very day, to clarify the message so the rest of us can be assured that hate isn’t part of it?

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Bloomberg: Give Poor Cash for Good Behavior
Thursday, August 30th, 2007

Yeah, why didn’t we think of this before?

[New York City Mayor Mike] Bloomberg says that after years of fighting poverty, the government has little to show for its efforts. Now it’s time to try something new. Why not offer incentives to poor people to do things that can benefit them, such as attend school, get a library card or go to the doctor?
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Bloomberg points to the incentives the government already offers to the rich. For instance, there are subsidies to farmers to stop planting corn or energy companies to drill — or not drill — in certain places.

“You can argue that a lot of the things Congress subsidizes, people should do anyway,” he says in an interview with NPR’s Steve Inskeep. “But the truth … is, when you have a bonus, you tend to work harder and do more.”

Bloomberg, a billionaire, says New York City will try the incentives as an experiment using private money, including some of his own.

It’s a funny thing about the nanny-state. Whenever a “bold” new idea is proposed, like this, both sides of the argument cite precedent. The protagonists point backward, the antagonists, forward.

Those who are supportive say things like, heck, we already do (such-and-such). Notice the nod back to Roosevelt’s Agricultural Adjustment Administration and the paying of farmers not to grow corn, to slaughter cattle, to pour cream into ditches, etc.

And the antagonists pose the rhetorical question: What’s next? I could ask this. Hey, I make some pretty smart decisions. Where’s my handout from Bloomberg’s personal treasure chest?

Aren’t all nanny-state initiatives, the conventional as well as the more adventurous — just like this? To make them look like great ideas you have to say 1) we’re simply following through on earlier precedent, and 2) it STOPS here. Which is essentially arguing against the scientific principle of inertia.

One thing I do find encouraging here is that the program is being sold on the strength of some of the money…just some…coming from Bloomberg’s personal checkbook, at least in the experimental phases. If he could guarantee that the program would stay this way, I could support that. Not that I would predict success, but I would at least hope for it, and I’d support the rights of persons wishing to join him, throwing their own money into the hat. Mistake? Probably. But I’d support the right to make it.

Of course that would be a “foundation,” and government wouldn’t have a single thing to do with it. So for the city government to get involved, something is going to have to go beyond volunteerism. Government is not about selection, it is about force. Opting-in to and opting-out of things, that’s what the private sector is for.

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Just An Observation III
Wednesday, August 29th, 2007

There seem to be an awful lot of young people who believe in global warming.

I should qualify that. By “believe in global warming,” what I mean is:

1. Believe that there is such a thing as a meaningful, measurable global temperature;
2. Believe that such a metric ought, properly, to stay more-or-less static;
3. Believe that it is sailing off the charts in the moment that I type this;
4. Believe that the skyrocketing global temperature spells some kind of doom;
5. Believe that the human race is mostly, almost completely, or completely responsible;
6. Believe that the global temperature change is on such apocalyptic levels, that we are now teetering on the edge of the point of no return.

And that things would be so much better if Al Gore won Florida, and the White House, in 2000.

A lot of folks think all this stuff, but a whole lot of the under-thirty crowd thinks all this stuff. I’ve gathered the impression, which I can’t verify easily that a bare majority of people-of-all-ages think all this stuff…but if you count only the folks 30-and-below, the percentage ratchets up to somewhere in the eighties or nineties.

Well. It’s a little bit difficult to know what a snail darter is when you haven’t yet blown out thirty candles, huh? Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe we need to come up with a new term…something like “Snail Darter Politics.”

Phrases are wonderful things. They aren’t like words. If you use a word, and nobody knows what the word means, that’s your fault even if the word can be found in the dictionary. Believe me, I know. Phrases are magical…if you use a phrase, and someone doesn’t know what it means, the onus is on them to go look it up. When you think about it, in a rational world that’s the way it would work with everything. You’re ignorant of something — that’s your problem. Go fix your ignorance and quit bothering people.

Snail darter politics. I like it. That’s exactly what global warming is…snail darter politics.

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Whiskey…Tango…Foxtrot… XV
Tuesday, August 28th, 2007

Democrats have received $200,000 in donations, $45k of that going to Sen. Clinton, from six individuals specifying this bungalow as their address:

The donations have been been coming in since 2005. Two hundred large over two years…that’s…eh, that’s some damn good investing. Hey, there seems to be something familiar about this…

That total ranks the house with residences in Greenwich, Conn., and Manhattan’s Upper East Side among the top addresses to donate to the Democratic presidential front-runner over the past two years, according to an analysis by The Wall Street Journal of donations listed with the Federal Election Commission.
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Kent Cooper, a former disclosure official with the Federal Election Commission, said the two-year pattern of donations justifies a probe of possible violations of campaign-finance law, which forbid one person from reimbursing another to make contributions. “There are red lights all over this one,” Mr. Cooper said.

Damn straight.

Well, let’s just see what happens. If the name was “Romney” or “Thompson” instead of the C-word, I damn well know what would happen…as it is, I’m not so sure.

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Zahn Rule
Tuesday, August 28th, 2007

I’m not keen on the sole-source, especially when it deals with the private lives of celebrities and one can easily see it’s giving far more air-time to one side of a dispute than the other. So I’m inclined to ignore this…but lacking that level of dignity, I’m inclined to believe only part of the article without the customary heavy-questioning. Just two things: That Paula Zahn carried on an affair behind the back of her husband of twenty years, for a significant chunk of that time, and that she’s trying to put the screws to him in court. Seems to me if either one of those was a falsehood, there’d be little profit in spreading it and it would have been easily detected before the presses were fired up.

The illicit, years-long love affair between Zahn and business big Paul Fribourg was sizzling even as Fribourg hit the golf links with Zahn’s real-estate magnate husband, Richard Cohen, sources told The Post yesterday.
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Sources declined to discuss any details of Zahn’s “love book” or where exactly it was found, except to say, “She was indiscreet.”

The former CNN anchor’s affair with Fribourg became public knowledge in April, when it was announced that Zahn and Cohen were parting ways after 20 years.

“He’s told friends her affair just took his heart out,” the pal said.

Friends said Cohen had believed the relationship was a recent development, but Zahn’s book shows their relationship was much more “long-term” than Cohen had ever suspected.

Let me just state for the record that I am absolutely, positively opposed to criminalizing marital affairs. BUT…

Zahn, 51, and Cohen haven’t yet filed divorce papers, and Cohen’s friends said he thought they were trying to work out an amicable agreement until Friday, when Zahn socked him with a lawsuit demanding he account for the whereabouts of her estimated $25 million in earnings over the past 20 years.

The suit accused Cohen, who’s acted as Zahn’s financial manager since 1986, of putting much of her money into “highly illiquid limited liability companies.”

It also charged that “some of her earnings had been diverted to Mr. Cohen’s individual account . . . for his own use and benefit.”

…there is something especially unseemly about swimming through life like a shark, grabbing what you can, and then once the feeding frenzy comes to a stop for whatever reason suddenly insisting that everything in life should pasteurized and it all ought to be fair. Regardless of my personal preferences about what people should & shouldn’t do, I’m impressed with the realization that an institution that has degraded to this level, cannot possibly endure long. That goes for the institution of marriage, and it goes for civilization as well.

Does that mean unfaithful spouses should leave a marriage with just the clothes on their backs, and be happy they got just that? Well…yes. I guess that’s exactly what I’m saying. Husbands too.

What kind of integrity can we bring to contracts we sign in all other aspects of life — apartment leases, auto loans, mortgages, employment contracts, whatever — if it’s codified into civil law that people can enter into marriages, and just live the parts of the marriage that they happen to like, abandoning the rest? To allow that to go on, redefines adults into children.

I say, let’s start respecting choice. If adulterers want to live a life of adventure, we should let them…and make it so they can keep “their” property right up until they get caught. Seriously, what is the downside of that? Think of the alternative. The alternative is to say that one party in a contract can exploit the other party, by declaring when life is a “Lord of the Flies” chapter — and when life is to be utterly sterilized of anything that might be regarded as unfair…simply by being the first between the two parties to so declare. It would be saying whoever gets the pork chop is the first one to grab it off the plate. That is the antithesis of civilization itself. It’s NOT a private matter, it affects us all, in fact it’s a shame on all of us that we’ve put up with this.

Adulterers are scum. Unfaithful husbands, unfaithful wives — if they don’t like their lives, let them start new ones. Fresh, clean, and possession free, like the minute they were born.

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Three Point Five
Tuesday, August 28th, 2007

I think I’m gonna be sick.

This has mushroomed throughout Monday into one of those “Everyone else is linking it, I might as well do it too” things. Which isn’t sufficient to put it on my radar by itself, and at any rate my attitude was “aw, cut her a break, she’s a teenager and she had to think on her feet.” Butterflies in the tummy and all that.

Well, screw that. The 3.5 GPA, for those who may not know, is on a scale of four. You can tell by the way the young lady draws out the word “beleeeeeve,” that over the years she’s been given mad props for so opining, which is fairly typical for attractive young women. The tendency is for attractive young people, females especially, to be given the same credit for articulating their opinions that less desirable social creatures would be given for researching and validating hard fact.

Which, of course, I’m in no position to do at the moment. I don’t know this is her history for sure. But in life, there are some things that may be presumed because most of the signs are there. And in this case, ALL of the signs are there. She’s an idiot who’s been given a free pass, and then some, because she’s gorgeous. Gorgeous, with a knockout body, blond hair, white skin, straight teeth. Her artificially sky-high grade-point is a disservice to her schools, to everybody else, and to herself especially.

Update: Heh…you’ve just gotta see this.

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Tortured Debate
Monday, August 27th, 2007

Alberto Gonzales has resigned from his post as U.S. Attorney General, as Charles Krauthammer and I thought he should’ve a long time ago.

This makes me think about something:

I was on a thread somewhere and I got into a bit of a dust-up with some rabid left-wingers on the torture thing. I was pointing out something no different from what I had pointed out in other places, before: I’m not completely sold on the idea that this is “wrong,” and I find it deceptive to lump “humiliation” together with the stuff that comes to mind when you use the T-word. Namely, bodily mutilations, fire and steel. I don’t see these as the same thing and I don’t think there are very many people, at all, who see them as the same thing. To pretend these are on the same footing, in any way, is fundamentally dishonest.

And in my assessment of the argument, the “Torture Is Wrong” doctrine depends completely on those two things being the same. Once you acknowledge they’re different, you realize something: This really is all about de-fanging the United States. It’s about making sure we can’t do anything to win the war, besides getting shot at. Just because a lot of “Torture Is Wrong” people aren’t after that, doesn’t mean there’s some other motive behind it. There isn’t. It’s about emboldening one side of this war, by putting the other side — us — on a short leash, and letting them do whatever they want.

Now, this argument doesn’t have much currency. In the dust-up in which I lowered myself to participating, the left-wingers expressed their horror at my different ideas so all the other left-wingers could see them doing it, and that was the end of it…in short, they argued from personal incredulity…

…but my argument doesn’t have currency outside of left-winger-land, either. People, to their credit, are generally very keen on the idea that governments are corrupt and it’s up to the people represented by those governments, to straighten them out and keep them straightened out. This is a noble goal. Of course, the immature mind is selective about this; he is more receptive to this when the party opposed to his, is the one in power. In other words, the dullard falls prey to the “My guy is okay, the other guy is messed up” mindset.

That’s where our left-wingers are coming from right now. The other guy is in power…so now, the government can do bad things. Alert Mode On. Once a “good guy” is in the White House, we can get back to worrying about confiscating guns, images of Moses in courthouses, price-gouging in the kids’ cereal market, not enough blacks on cable TV sitcoms, and are the taxpayers paying enough that Grandma can buy medicine and dog food for her dinner. And naturally, if any of these problems go unsolved — and trust me, all of them will remain essentially unchanged, no matter how much time is spent solving them — it won’t reflect poorly on that “good guy” in charge. He’ll be “trying.” It’ll be like the nineties all over again.

But for those of us who want the United States to win the war, one issue remains. I’m not sure what you can do to get information out of a “detainee,” if 1) Torture is wrong, and 2) Torture includes everything less-than-comfortable. What then? You’d have to just sit around waiting for him to feel talkative, wouldn’t you? I mean, what else is there?

Well, it turns out this was prophetic. Now that a successor will have to be nominated for Gonzo, we’re about to be dragged through the torture debate. The newspapers and the cable television and the alphabet-soup-network commentators have their own ideas — make that “idea” — about the angle on this story. As usual, the bloggers have a more interesting, enlightening, and multi-point perspective on the issue. Simply put, we have a few more questions about it.

I wish to contribute my own questions to the discussion. The question I thought of since the dust-up was:

What if we were to abolish torture, and not tell anybody?

You see, over the years I’ve noticed something about people. When they say “you shouldn’t do X” and the only answer they can provide as to why, is “because X is wrong” — they typically don’t give a rat’s ass whether or not X continues to be done or not. What they really want, is to be seen intoning to someone that X ought not be done because X is wrong. They’re performing. Style over substance. So my question is…what if we were to do exactly what they want, but only on the layer that deals with substance?

What if the world were to continue to believe we were torturing people, and meanwhile, behind the scenes, we didn’t do it? What if someone were to be completely deserving of the credit of making us stop torturing people…but not get any of the credit for stopping us? That would be like going to the golf course alone and getting a hole-in-one with nobody around to see. But if it’s about right-and-wrong, that’d be okay wouldn’t it?

Granted, this would violate the Living With Morgan Rule #1, in which, deploring false accusations, once I’m accused of something I want to be guilty of doing it. But leaving that aside. Suppose the world community is left to conclude we’re waterboarding these guys and subjecting them to the batteries-in-a-pillowcase debriefing sessions. But meanwhile, behind the scenes all we do is wait hand and foot on Ahmed and Muammar like waiters in some five-star restaurant…all day long, and then the next day we do it again. If they want to talk, we listen. If not, we serve up another banana-nut muffin and make sure there’s a good selection between grape jelly and orange marmalade.

Now, would that be okay? I mean, we wouldn’t be doing anything “wrong”; just, a lot of folks would be laboring under the misconception that we are.

I would have to expect, realistically, my plan wouldn’t get a lot of takers. It would, however, have a unifying effect on those who place more importance on reality itself, than the popular perception of that reality. Those on the “right wing” would rightfully conclude I’d be throwing in the towel on the prospect of getting any information out of these guys. They’d say, as a direct result of this, people will die. I don’t have any information that would contradict this; I don’t think anyone else does either. And those on the “left wing” who ought to be celebrating at our government somehow becoming “ethical,” would doubtless find something else that isn’t up to snuff, and start complaining about that.

Of course, for those who are concerned about image, by design the situtation would remain unchanged. I expect they’d go on and on about polls, and disapproval, and international-community this and we are seen that.

I would expect something else, though.

A lot of substance-over-image left-wingers, would hop the turnstyle. They’d start to worry more about image of what’s going on, than about what’s actually going on. I mean, that’s the part of it that would still suck…so they’d simply change what they find important.

At this point, let’s end the mental exercise. It has achieved what it was tossed out to accomplish. The torture debate has nothing to do with what is actually happening; it has to do with the public image of what is happening. It’s all about perceptions. Let me repeat: The debate is ALL about perceptions. It has butkus to do with reality.

When people say “we should not torture because it is wrong,” what they really mean is “we should not torture because it can be presented as being wrong” or “we should not torture because I can get lots of people agitated over the idea that it is wrong.”

Torture really being wrong, has nothing to do with it. That’s why nobody’s going to stick their neck out and sign on to the idea that “if we stop torturing people we will become noble.” Nobody’s saying that, and nobody will say that.

But they’ll sure as hell say the opposite. They’ll say “people despise us because we torture,” even though they’ll never say “people will start liking us if we don’t torture.”

So their argument is lacking in substance, because it isn’t about substance. It isn’t supposed to be. This is why my “solution” wouldn’t be any solution at all. It fixes the substance while leaving the image unchanged…in what is essentially a public-relations issue.

But the P.R. guys don’t have a solution either. Before we started arguing all over the world about torture, we were arguing all over the world about the invasion of Iraq. How many people do you know who have negative feelings toward the United States over this torture issue, who didn’t have negative feelings against the United States about going into Iraq before we started arguing about the torture issue? I mean, count everybody — people you know, public figures, celebrities…can you think of anyone? I can’t think of a single person.

It’s not exactly a hot news item when liberals and democrats rally around an issue that

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Nonsensical Rules…It Must Mean Bush
Friday, August 31st, 2007

Instant Karma
Thursday, August 30th, 2007

It’s a Dry Heat
Thursday, August 30th, 2007

Jewell Down
Thursday, August 30th, 2007

John Edwards in Lead
Thursday, August 30th, 2007

No Pain Ray Weapon for Iraq
Thursday, August 30th, 2007

Next Intrusion
Thursday, August 30th, 2007

Whiskey…Tango…Foxtrot… XVI
Thursday, August 30th, 2007

Memo For File XLV
Thursday, August 30th, 2007

Bloomberg: Give Poor Cash for Good Behavior
Thursday, August 30th, 2007

Just An Observation III
Wednesday, August 29th, 2007

Whiskey…Tango…Foxtrot… XV
Tuesday, August 28th, 2007

Zahn Rule
Tuesday, August 28th, 2007

Three Point Five
Tuesday, August 28th, 2007

Tortured Debate
Monday, August 27th, 2007