House of Eratosthenes

James Bond Some idjit spammer left some idjit spam on a three-year old post on Rick’s blog, but I’m glad they did because otherwise I never would have found out about something that is really a gem. Perhaps, in 2007, we’re a little bit more ready for this than we were back in ‘04 — when we were seriously thinking about electing a double-talking soldier-slanderer to be our next President in the middle of a war.

The material was originally hosted, it would seem, somewhere here. It is no longer to be found. I’m sure Rick is around for the long haul, but I thought it would be good to bring the actual text in anyway…the innernets is nuthin’, if they isn’t all about change…

Right Thinking Girl has a host of tips on being a man in 2004. 10 of them here for your reading pleasure:

* Eat meat. Real men eat meat; you need the protein and iron. It makes your muscles stronger and there’s something very sexxxy and primative about watching a guy eat a steak.

* Work out. A man doing pushups…. nothing sexier. NOTHING.

* We will expect you to defend us if someone breaks into our home. You may have to kill somebody. If you’re not prepared for that, please tell us during the dating phase, before we sleep with you, so we can reject you and find someone else with better instincts.

* Know the directions. I’m not saying you have to stop and ask for directions. Lisa and I both agree it’s very hot when a guy is lost and finds his way all by himself. We love logical brains. Don’t let bitchy women bully you into asking for directions, or into doing anything else you don’t want to do.

* Let us hit your biceps as much as we want. We’re fascinated by them because no matter how much we work out, ours aren’t going to be as big and sexy as yours. It’s comforting to just ball up our fist and gently punch that really tight muscle. It reminds us how big and strong you are.

* Own a gun. Or at least a baseball bat. Or be as big as Vin Diesel. We want to feel safe.

* Do not put up with nagging. From anyone. It’s emasculating and it never accomplishes anything. (Ladies, either learn to live with it or shut up.)

* Valentine’s Day is a great time for flowers and stuff but we know you’re doing it because of peer pressure. Better to bring the flowers on a really bad day to cheer us up, and then doing something else entirely for Valentine’s Day.

* Be nice to other women but don’t flirt. It makes us cranky and you can’t get away with it because you’re pretty much under global surveillance (yes, even you). You do it and we’ll find out and it’ll be a nasty evening. Just be a gentleman.

* Help us with unweildly grocery bags, open the door for us (every single time), and say please and thank you. Manners are important. But be careful not to be her slave. You’re a man, not a servant. You’re supposed to protect us, love us, and care for us, but not be so worshipful that your body no longer produces testosterone.

She also has a ton of tips on being a woman in 2004:

* Do not nag him. He doesn’t need to hear your whiney little voice complaining about something he doesn’t want to change. Just sssshhh!

* Dress like a girl. They like us because we’re girls, not miniature boys. Skirts are so popular in spring and summer for a reason. Not only are they much cooler than pants, it gives boys ideas. They imagine that the easier access means something.

* Don’t fall into the habit of wearing sweats and a t-shirt around the house. It can be cute but if it’s all he sees you in, he’s going to start looking at the Hooters girls a little too carefully.

* Never, ever talk badly about your man. Whatever fight you had, it’s between you two. Don’t tell your girlfriends, your boss, or God forbid, your mother.

* Don’t embarrass him in front of his friends. There’s a social order to everything and if you bitch at him in front of his friends, it emasculates him. Treat him like the prince he is, even if you’re seething with rage.

* Expect him to be kind, generous, loving, gentle and sweet, but don’t expect him to be happy about running your errands every day for a month. In other words, don’t take advantage of men’s naturally generous natures.

* Men don’t like complainers, especially if there is nothing to be done about it. Guys want to help, and if you give him a problem he can’t solve (ie, you have blisters and there’s no bandaids and you refuse to take off your shoes) it makes him feel like a failure.

* PMS is not an excuse to be mean to him. Don’t be short with him or be rude. Nicely tell him you feel bad and you’re much more likely to get what you need.

* Work out. They like our bods for a reason. Give them lots of reasons.

* Seduce him. Often. He’ll feel awesome and that can only be good for both of you.

That stuff’s just golden.

Seriously though — masculinity is a lot like fire. It can be very dangerous, but at the same time, we have life because it was here, and we have a life made enjoyable because it continues to be here. To ban masculinity is just as foolish as banning fire. Actually, if we banned fire, your car wouldn’t start.

This is why you so rarely hear anybody spewing out the actual sequence of words, “I want to ban masculinity.” They don’t have the, pardon my French, balls. It would sound as silly as it really is. But we still have people who want to do exactly that…and by carefully avoiding any discussion of what they really want, they get quite far.

The thing of it is, though — you really can extinguish a fire if you work at it long and hard enough, and the fuel supply is exhausted. Masculinity is an eternal flame. And the dirty little secret is, it’s appealing to everybody when danger is imminent. In the right situation, everybody sounds like Right Thinking Girl. From the funny noise downstairs in the middle of the night, to the darn pickle jar that just won’t open, it turns out that keeping us around isn’t that bad of an idea…even if some of us are too savage and uncouth to ever apologize for being what we are.

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On “YouTube Debate” Questions
Friday, November 30th, 2007

Okay, so I see that CNN has released a statement about the now-scandalized “YouTube Debate” that basically says CNN doesn’t understand what all the fuss is about. “The whole point of these ground-breaking CNN/YouTube debates is to focus on substantive questions of concern to real people and to throw open the process to a wider range of Americans all around the country. CNN cared about what you asked, not who you were. This was the case for both the Democratic and the Republican CNN/YouTube debates.” This is in response to revelations that democratic “plants” fairly well saturated CNN’s selection out of the YouTube questioners, who were supposed to be representative of the much-sought-after undecided Republican voter.

My local morning radio guys, yesterday, drew an interesting analogy which I think highlights the problem quite usefully. I think this because I see the problem as being not necessarily one of bad questions; I see the problem, rather, as one of asking questions that might appear useful, but only to someone who’s made up his mind that Republicans are terrible people, and looking for reasons to think so. The analogy drawn by the radio guys involved interviewing a famous athlete and having a non-sports-fan (like yours truly) come up with the questions to ask. No one would try such an absurd thing because nobody would want to watch it, and, well, that seems to be exactly what occurred here.

Of course it is hard to get much momentum behind criticism of debate questions for being too hostile, in an age where everyone seems ready to blame our various problems on too low of a bar imposed on presidential candidates. Right now, if you come up with new and improved ways to ask embarrassing questions — the zeitgeist will be kind to you (unless, of course, you’re asking the embarrassing questions to a female candidate). But there could be a downside to embarrassing candidates just for the sake of embarrassing candidates. One thing I can think of is that in an environment where embarrassment is easy, the specimen that is left standing is the loathsome, slick, oily kind. So regardless of party leanings, I would hope we can all agree the “embarrassment for embarrassment’s sake” just might not be the magic bullet that instantly solves our national woes.

But in addition to that, there is a difference between embarrassment and inspection. David Kerr’s question (embedded) fails to inspect — or, at least, it fails to make inspection a priority over embarrassment. His primary purpose is to preach at anybody listening “you shouldn’t vote for these guys.” It makes wonderful sense if you’ve already decided not to. You could enlighten and scrutinize, every bit as productively, by asking “If you are sworn in as President, what if anything do you plan to do about the standing policy with regard to homosexuals serving in the military?” And of course, that isn’t what he asked.

This language about the situation being “the case for both the Democratic and the Republican CNN/YouTube debates” is particularly tragic, in my view. It seems to me fair to say David Kerr, LeeAnn Anderson, David Cercone and “Journey/Paperseranade” are just about as ready to vote for a Republican as I’m ready to vote for a democrat…we all have our little biases. And yet, if those questions were chosen and the objective really is to uphold symmetry between the two parties in the YouTube debate forum, I would respectfully offer these beauties for the next democrat event.

1. The Republican party was formed just before the Civil War for the express purpose of ending slavery in this country; being a dedicated democrat, do you think this was a bad thing?

2. If America is ever put under a national healthcare system and I use my personal finances to acquire specialized services not available to everybody else, how do you think I should be punished and what should happen to my doctor?

3. How much money, if any at all, do democrats think I should be allowed to keep every year?

4. Do you think there is some solid evidence worth checking out that 9/11 was an inside job?

5. If George Bush is such a freakin’ idiot, how come he continues to get his way whenever he faces off against your representatives in Congress and his dismal approval ratings run twice as high as theirs?

6. If the global warming movement fails to destroy the American economy, what do you want to try next?

7. Speaking of global warming, what do you drive?

8. How many Americans should die so that we can say America doesn’t use torture, including the infamous “waterboarding”?

9. How many little kids should be kidnapped, slaughtered and left in a field somewhere, so we can say America doesn’t allow a death penalty?

10. As blogger friend Phil points out, you need a license in the United Kingdom just to watch TV. When, in your view, should we get such a policy going here in the United States, and how big of a commission should we set aside for the busybody cops who ring the doorbells and pass out the fines?

11. When did you decide that terrorists are more deserving of these things you call “civil liberties” than, say…Republicans?

12. In what year, exactly, did the Second Amendment lose all of it’s potency and value for keeping a potentially oppressive government in check, assuming you think it ever had any in the first place?

You know, I could keep on adding to such a list all day long but I think the point is made. Questions put to candidates can be revealing, and they can be hostile; there is overlap between those two, but they’re not synonymous.

And, since we’re still in “primary” mode and Republicans are supposed to be sniffing out Republicans and donks are supposed to be sniffing out donks, the question that’s designed to open one side to inspection and appeal sympathetically to the other, it seems to me, could be postponed for awhile. But if we live in an information age and we want the political parties to reach across the aisle right-freakin’-now, it doesn’t seem to be too much to ask that the burdens imposed on them in this regard be somewhat equal. In which case, the twelve questions above or some facsimile thereof, could be seriously considered for the next go-round…and speaking for myself, I’m definitely not holding my breath waiting for that to happen.

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Seasonal
Thursday, November 29th, 2007

We’re one plate of sandwiches away from making that monster-sized Thanksgiving turkey into history. This weekend we’re going to cut ourselves a tree. Whatever autumnal allergies I’ve suffered with the annual demise of daylight savings time, have also become a memory. I can see my breath. I can’t work my day-job early enough to head home without my headlights on, and I’m just about acclimated to that.

There are three other things I notice persistently happen this time of year.

1. I get closer to car accidents. By that I mean, I see them, or I hear about them close to where I live, or relatives suffer because of them. I think I can explain this, since back in ‘96, it actually happened to me. We’ve all become accustomed to sixteen hours of daylight, and a pleasant climate to complement our driving chores/leisure activities. Mother Nature has other ideas for us and we’re sluggish in our efforts to adapt.

2. It seems year after year there are always the makings some kind of a budgetary crisis because a vehicle decided to demand attention during the Christmas shopping season. Seems every little part that can ambush me with mandatory replacement, does. I think I can explain this one too. Cars are plastic, aluminum, and…rubber. I blame this on the rubber. My sinus cavities aren’t terribly cheerful about the transition from August to December, so why should the rubber seals greet the climate change with any more enthusiasm. Things are generally chilly, and they’re also dry. Rubber doesn’t like dry and it isn’t real fond of cold.

3. For this one, I have no explanation whatsoever: I have to start hitting whocalled.us to find out what asshole is calling my home and/or cell phone and hanging up. This has slowly devolved over the years from a festering irritant to an enigmatic ritual. The turkey carcass goes in the trash, the Christmas list goes up, my phones start ringing because some dickhead programmed a computer somewhere to make ‘em ring.

I would like a logical explanation for #3, almost as much as I’d like cessation of #3…almost.

Just today, I got two new phone numbers to place on my “asshole” list. This is a real list. My cell phone is supposed to ring with an innocuous and subtle “chirp chirp chirp” sound when it gets a call from an asshole. This is a most satisfactory solution, but I still have to question the sanity of a universe in which I have to play these little games with my phone.

This is where technology gets us? It’s a powerful argument for taking up the lifestyle of a 12th-century goat farmer and living in a straw hut.

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I Am a Lieutenant
Tuesday, November 27th, 2007

NerdTests.com User Test: The Trekkie Test.

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On the Castle Doctrine, and Race
Tuesday, November 27th, 2007

The radio guys were just talking about Joe Horn’s case, our latest “Castle Doctrine” event.

Link, link, link, link.

Turns out there’s a racial angle to this. The burglars gunned down by Horn, had skin darker than his. Which gives us a lot of stuff about which to think…

Critics of the way the case has been handled say the 911 tape is proof that Horn was predetermined to shoot the men before stepping outside with his gun.

Noting that Horn is white and the suspects were dark-skinned, Quanell X, a Houston activist, has accused the authorities of bias. “Mr. Horn did not have to kill those people,” Quanell X said at a protest on the street where the men were shot. “Mr. Horn became judge, jury and executioner.”

This is just so unbelievably phony. What’s going on here is there are two kinds of people who want to see Horn strung up by his balls. There are the “veal calf state” people who want to get a cultural contract going in which nobody is authorized, or able, to provide for their own defense. With a little bit of diligent reading-of-news day to day, you’ll see this spans a number of issues: We’re supposed to wait helplessly for some state agency to provide our…childrens’ education, our medicine, our next pay raise, our home defense, a retirement plan for our parents — everything. The one thing that doesn’t get nearly as much inspection as it deserves: If the “veal calf state” folks get their way, and we get some gargantual plan going to make sure “everybody gets” whatever goody is being discussed, and you don’t think it’s enough for you and you want to use your own billfold to supplement it…that’s not allowed. This element always seems to be present in all these plans; either already here, or coming soon. I think most rational, middle-of-the-road people, open to the plan but not yet having made up their minds, would deem that worthy of prolonged discussion. But most of the folks who are in business to dish out the stuff we call “news,” tend to gloss right over it.

I can see a good argument for the “thou shalt not supplement with thine own” doctrine in home defense. I don’t sympathize with it, but I can at least see it. I can’t see it with medicine. Or education. But that doctrine is always there. This, it seems to me, ought to make people generally more suspicious than they usually are.

The other group of people who want to see Joe Horn flushed down the tubes, of course, would be the reverse-racists. You know the type. The ones who say it’s not possible to even be a racist, unless you are a caucasian. Nobody will ever admit that burglary is a way of evening up some kind of racial score, of course…but these types will never fail to act that way, when it comes time to discuss what should happen to Mr. Horn.

But here’s what I think is really interesting. In the case of Mr. Horn, these two camps of people are united. Easily and effortlessly. Seamlessly. Obviously, if they were to be divided instead of united, the thing that would bring that about would be — some white guy broke into a black guy’s house, and the black guy pulled out a shotgun and ventilated him. Or…pulled out a crowbar. Or a knife. Used some implement to enforce the Castle Doctrine.

Does this never happen in a country with three hundred million people in it? I find that to be unfathomable. For one thing, a public agency capable of responding to personal emergencies, effectively, reliably, much as a staple as that ought to be, is something more easily acquired by the affluent. And I continue to be told our minorities are generally subjugated to the lower economic strata. This is, I’ve been informed, what led to the Katrina disaster in New Orleans…”George Bush doesn’t care about black people” and all that.

Now, I know exactly where I stand on Joe Horn. I think it’s very important to everybody else, that this guy walk — and if he was black, I’d be saying exactly the same thing. Quanell X, and the people who like to carry Quanell X’s ravings to the airwaves and newspaper pages, may see this as a racial issue; I do not. Nor am I the only one disagreeing with that. Nearly everybody who agrees with me on his situation as it exists now, I daresay, would follow me in staying consistent on the issue if the skin colors were reversed. My viewpoint is simply a desire to return to the old social contract: If you kick in someone’s door to take his stuff, nobody can say what’s about to happen to you and nobody should be able to say what will happen to you, because it’s something you aren’t supposed to do. In other words, in our desire to make things safe, and working with the limited resources to make everything safe, we prioritize appropriately by making life safer for the law-abiding. Black, white, green, purple, paisly I don’t care.

But that other side…the side that favors either reverse-discrimination, to even up “historic wrongs,” or continued propagation of the “veal calf state”…would be deeply split if a story came to light about a white redneck going to the Jailhouse in the Sky when breaking into the house of someone with darker skin. That side would be split. My side would stay unified.

So where’s the story? How come every one of these vigilante episodes that make the news, is a remake of the Bernhard Goetz incident?

To dismiss this casually, you’d have to insist dark-skinned people are committing all the burglaries, and that white people have all the guns. I think we can dismiss those outright. Therefore, this means something.

See, this is strong evidence that our news is being filtered. But it’s also strong evidence of something else: The unity of that other side…this sloppy conglomeration of “payback against white people” activists, and “get rid of every smallest tincture of independence and self-sufficiency” activists…is not being challenged because someone has calculated it would not be able to survive such a challenge. The fissure would be split clean through, and the split would be fatal or near-fatal.

I guess if I’m less cynical, I’m to suppose everyone in journalism wants to win a Pulitzer over the next story that busts the racial divide wide open. And that would explain why, if Joe Horn had darker skin than the two burglars he neutralized, we would not have heard about this. Our reporters are keeping their eyes and ears open for the next Bernhard Goetz or Rodney King incident and they think this might be it.

But if I’m to allow for that, I’m to allow for something else as well. Perhaps there’s something in journalism that makes professionals in that business, sympathize with the veal-calf-state people. It’s always made sense to me that citizens of a veal-calf-state, need the stuff we call “news” a lot more than citizens who take care of themselves. People who are invested in their careers, common sense says, will sacrifice anything to keep those careers going. This theory isn’t so paranoid — it simply says journalists are no different than any other professional. They’ll become activists for whatever political movement will make their commodity more economically viable, and in greater demand from the rest of us.

The racial angle, it seems to me, is simply a powerful engine affixed to this primary agenda, to give it propulsion. It’s really about demolishing the Castle Doctrine. I struggle to remember the last time I heard of a news reporter or editor passing up a chance to show hostility to this doctrine, or any other doctrine that makes people self-sufficient, self-responsible and independent. They just don’t want it. They want a society in which people depend on something external to themselves…because that makes people hungry for this stuff we call “news.”

And so this incident that really has nothing to do with race at all — positions a microphone in front of the mouth of this Quanell character so that we can read a bunch of reverse-racist drivel. Once again, in a world wherein information travels quickly, racial disharmony is to ensue where, if information did not travel so quickly, it would not. A simple situation is about to be made glaringly complicated.

But it isn’t complicated. At all. You don’t want to get shot, don’t take people’s stuff.

Update: I find it to be patently absurd, but sadly somewhat unsurprising, that the Los Angeles Times, or whoever fed this to them, would run a story so casually inserting a quote form Quanell X without delving at least a little bit into his history. How in the world could the quote have been newsworthy and the background not?

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Hey Peaceniks, Can You Be Thankful For This?
Sunday, November 25th, 2007

Aw man, you voters had better not let the the peacenik crowd skate past this one…

As violence declines in Baghdad, the leading Democratic presidential candidates are undertaking a new and challenging balancing act on Iraq: acknowledging that success, trying to shift the focus to the lack of political progress there, and highlighting more domestic concerns like health care and the economy.
:
“The politics of Iraq are going to change dramatically in the general election, assuming Iraq continues to show some hopefulness,” said Michael E. O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who is a supporter of Mrs. Clinton’s and a proponent of the military buildup. “If Iraq looks at least partly salvageable, it will be important to explain as a candidate how you would salvage it — how you would get our troops out and not lose the war. The Democrats need to be very careful with what they say and not hem themselves in.”
:
Lately, as the killing in Baghdad and other areas has declined, the Democratic candidates have been dwelling less on the results of the troop escalation than on the lack of new government accords in Iraq — a tonal shift from last summer and fall when American military commanders were preparing to testify before Congress asking for more time to allow the surge to show results.

This is a delicate matter. By saying the effects of the troop escalation have not led to a healthier political environment, the candidates are tacitly acknowledging that the additional troops have, in fact, made a difference on the ground — a viewpoint many Democratic voters might not embrace.

What have I been telling you. This country, like any free nation, lacks the ability to withstand the existence of a party such as this one. It has gambled on our defeat. It seems to have lost, but it is foolish to think the lesson has been learned. The “hurry up and surrender or we just might win” party is deeply invested in the vision that America should be defeated and humiliated any time she tries to do…anything. Bring down a tyrant, make a profit, defend herself, express an opinion, negotiate a treaty — do anything except give money away.

This has been an amazing feat accomplished by our military. And for the last four and a half years, it has been made unnecessarily difficult for them, and deliberately so, by our flying-toaster-screensaver people and all our limp-wristed politicians and journalists pandering to them.

Those thousands of soldiers who came back home in coffins, weren’t suckered into becoming cannon fodder. They gave their lives toward a noble purpose, and were ultimately successful. Their memories, and their families, are owed a huge apology by everybody who so much as lifted a finger to give this seemingly-unstoppable “give peace a chance” juggernaut a little extra momentum.

That’s millions of people. I’ll be surprised if I see so much as one single apology from anyone. I don’t expect to see it at all. This political faction has made a point of refusing to admit it is ever wrong, while accusing the other side of exactly that. It’s truly a national disgrace.

I just hope during Thanksgiving, whatever peoples’ political biases might be, they managed to spare a thankful thought for these people who did the actual work to get our country’s efforts this far.

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Chickenhawk on the Battlefield of Truth
Saturday, November 24th, 2007

I think I just saw something remarkable on Google. I was up rattling around between 4:30 and 5:30 this morning, and I hit the search engine to find some news about T. Boone Pickens’ million-dollar challenge to disprove anything in the Swift Boat ads from three years ago, and Sen. Kerry’s acceptance of same. Then, now, 7:30 to 8:00, I did it again. I’m seeing in the first two pages of results, not less than six or seven entries are worded exactly the same: “Pickens ‘backtracks’ on SBVT dare” — I don’t think it looked like that two hours ago.

Maybe, earlier, I just went straight to the “News” link with that search term. And maybe it’s just my imagination. But the replication of this one headline is interesting. Clearly, there’s a hierarchy involved in distributing these, and clearly that hierarchy works to the benefit of The Left. It’s not news to anyone who’s been watching this kind of thing for awhile, but strangers to it might find it enlightening. And if those strangers do find it that way, they certainly need to.

But to zero in on this challenge: I was pretty intrigued when I heard about it. To refresh your memory, I’ll just dial up a news website, that polishes over the recent history with the now-customary cliches, at random…

Obama’s response accused Clinton of “Swift Boat politics” — a reference to the 2004 attacks on Kerry’s military record by a group calling itself the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Kerry stayed quiet, a decision that some advisers fought at the time and that in retrospect turned out to have devastating consequences for his image in some swing states. [emphasis mine]

The SBVT group is a 527 non-profit. What tends to be lost in the news filter is that the more controversial claims by the SBVT have to do with Sen. Kerry’s war record, and the circumstances under which he won his medals…issues which the Senator brought up in the first place when running for President.

Also lost in the mix is that there very well may be no way to prove one way or the other what actually happened, since the argument deteriorated clear back in 2004 into a he-said-she-said. It could very well be a case of Rashomon syndrome. In fact, it very well may be that among the real veterans who were actually there, everyone is being a hundred percent truthful about their recollections of events even as those various recollections conflict with each other directly.

But the SBVT used their 527 money to get the word out that Sen. Kerry’s recollection of events, was not by any means uncontested. I could be wrong, but to the extent of my knowledge that’s just about the most unkind word they had to say about him…which is a stark contrast to the Senator’s now-infamous 1971 testimony before Congress, the one where he mispronounced the name of Genghis Kahn.

It is impossible to describe to you exactly what did happen in Detroit, the emotions in the room, the feelings of the men who were reliving their experiences in Vietnam, but they did. They relived the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do.

They told the stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, tape wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the country side of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.

Kerry’s testimony-about-testimony shocked a nation back in 1971, and again, in quite a different way in 2004.

But of course, the real issue isn’t whether or not words can be used to hurt or shock people. The issue is truth. We were reminded of this with the phone-testicle-taping testimony after it was thoroughly discredited…although a lot of people, still just as passionate about that issue as they ever were, have yet to know about that. But back to the subject at hand, and the truth involved in that subject: How did John Kerry win his medals? And what did he personally know about wires from portable telephones taped to prisoners’ nut-sacks? What did he personally verify about blowing up bodies and razing villages in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Kahn? In fact, what does he personally know about Genghis Kahn?

What I found intriguing about Pickens’ challenge was that it dealt in this truth. Enough with the cheerleading; enough with the fanfare and the name-calling and the cherry-picked “eyewitnesses.” Once such an issue has deteriorated to he-said-she-said, cherry-picked witnesses bring very little value to the table. Just prove stuff. I know it’s tempting to read one’s own motives into the players who are more central to the drama one is watching, but I would like to think Mr. Pickens grew just as weary of the group-cheering and the holding-of-court as I did. Just stop appealing to emotions and prove what you’re trying to prove.

Now, that was earlier this month. A week ago Sen. Kerry made some real headlines by accepting the challenge.

No, he didn’t supply the proof Pickens demanded. That would come later. He made a show of accepting the challenge, and then he was heralded with great fanfare as if he already presented the proof.

In other words, he appealed to emotion yet again.

This is not the way I would have handled things. If someone challenges me to prove something, and I accept the challenge, I’m offering the proof. Especially if the proof exonerates me from being a purple-heart showboater and short-timer. If such an accusation was made, and I knew it to be false, that would strike me as a very personal offense — whether I was running for President or not.

I would never have dreamed of “announcing” I was accepting the challenge. I’d swat it down on the spot.

Now, I don’t know what exactly I was expecting when I heard that Pickens issued this challenge. Part of me was wishing that after spending an entire election campaign season AWOL from the battlefield of truth, in which facts actually matter more than grandstanding, and things formerly wondered about are proven — or refuted — Kerry would finally “enlist” and be seen in action on that battlefield.

Perhaps I should have known better. It’s time to prove things, and all we see out of him is more showing-off. More speeches. More aren’t I wonderful and aren’t they rotten.

I would request that your check be made payable to the Paralyzed Veterans of America which is doing incredible work every day to meet the needs of veterans returned home from Iraq and Afghanistan. My hope is that by sending this money to such a dedicated organization – founded for veterans, by veterans – some good can come out of the ugly smears and lies of the orchestrated campaign you bankrolled in 2004 in an attempt to discredit my military record and the record of the men who served alongside me on the Swift Boats of the Mekong Delta.

I would be more than happy to travel to Dallas to meet with you in a mutually agreed upon public forum, or would invite you to join me in Massachusetts for a public dialogue and then together we could visit the Paralyzed Veterans of America in Norwood and see firsthand how we can put your money to good work for our veterans.

I look forward to setting up a visit at the earliest possible, mutually convenient time. I trust that you are a man of your word, having made a very public challenge at a major Washington dinner, and look forward to taking you up on this challenge.

Yes, Kerry was in Vietnam. Yes, a lot of Republicans were not. But if he’s that stoic and fearless about running on to battlefields, I’d sure like to see him storm this one. Whatever the outcome. Just see him step onto it — for a change of pace. So far, he’s proven to be just as talented in staying out of that kind of “combat,” as anyone else, anywhere.

What do the facts actually say, Sen. Kerry? And if this isn’t the time to be answering that question, when is? Do you even have it in you?

I don’t think so. I think on the battlefield of facts and evidence and proof and disproof, Kerry has always been, and always will be, a chickenhawk. He goes through the motions of pretending to use logic and common sense and “nuanced” thinking, but I had an entire year to watch him try to persuade myself and others with his rhetoric, and he stayed on the emotional plane the entire time. Every single minute. And I should have realized this from the get-go — Sen. Kerry will throw a lot of stuff at Pickens’ challenge, but none of it is going to have any more to do with proving or refuting anything, according to reason or logic, than a day-old box of donuts.

He simply doesn’t work that way. He’s AWOL.

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On the War Between Toymakers and Parents
Saturday, November 24th, 2007

“They must hold a contest at the loonie-bin,” said my Dad, “to see who can come up with the craziest idea for a toy.” The year was somewhere between ‘72, when we moved from Arizona to Washington State, and ‘76 which was our nation’s bicentennial — I can’t pin it down any more exactly than that. The occasion was a commercial advertisement for the toy, or something very much like it, that was and is the Fisher-Price Shake ‘N Go Smashup Speedway. If memory serves, Mom actually sucked in her breath in abject horror. The cars would zip around this figure-eight track, two of them, at slightly different speeds. Sooner or later they would meet at the intersection, and — built to fall apart — both vehicles would send their respective parts flying in all directions, perhaps hundreds of them.

Now, I wanted the toy as much as any other pre-pubescent moppet kid, but I was accustomed to not getting what I wanted. “Puh-LEEZE!?!?!?!?” didn’t work too well in my childhood. And although I would never have admitted it at the time, I could see my mother’s position to a certain point. I had already gone through the heartbreak of rendering many a prized possession useless by losing this-or-that seemingly insignificant part to it. But of course this wasn’t foremost in my mother’s mind, she was worried about the vacuum cleaner.

It’s a generation later.

And I’m just in shock at what I just heard from my son. McDonald’s has this toy they’re distributing with their happy meals, and the toy is this-or-that “Shrek III” character in molded plastic. You take the top half off the bottom half, and there’s a slot in which you put these annoyingly small playing cards. Down under the ass of whatever character it is, there is this red lever, and I had been operating under the assumption that you gently press the lever down to elevate the playing cards so you could take out one at a time.

And I was dead-flatass wrong. It’s a card launcher. The red lever is a “stomp-em” type thing. You give it a good whack, and the “launcher” launches the cards up, toward the ceiling, to float down to the floor God-knows-where.

There’s no use trying to explain this to me. I’m not going to get it.

See, in my world, “cards” are things you play with. You play for fun, you try to win money out of people, you try to get them to take off their clothes. If you really want to push your limits, you use clothespins to pin them against bicycle spokes so that they make funny sounds when you ride your bike.

“Card” and “launcher” don’t have anything to do with each other…in my world. Like my father before me, I’m wondering about contests at the local loonie-bin. You spew these laminated cards up toward the ceiling…for what possible purpose? It’s time to face facts. Someone has to be trying to give someone else a migraine…on purpose.

There is this program called Fosters Home for Imaginary Friends. It has been, for three years at least, one of my son’s favorite shows. It is no longer allowed in my house — because of “Blue.” Blue used to be my favorite of all the imaginary friends. I thought that was so cool — he was so simple. A little blue imaginary friend, presumably dreamed up by a very young child who liked the color blue.

Blue We were watching it one day, and Blue started launching in with — I’ll never forget this — “I’M GOING TO THE ICE CHARADES! I’M GOING TO THE ICE CHARADES! I’M GOING TO THE ICE CHARADES!” And then Blue did the unthinkable: He repeated it…some more…six…more…times.

This was unforgivable. It was explained to me, both by my son and by my girlfriend, that the whole point to the exercise was to show that Blue was becoming annoying to the other imaginary friends. But that didn’t cut it with me. If this was the intended message, Blue could have repeated himself three times. Maybe even just two times. He did it NINE times…which had one, and only one, possible purpose. To give parents headaches.

Playing cards…ultra-miniature playing cards, no larger than the smallest size of Post-It Note…are being launched toward ceilings. This has what to do with what? Once again, our toy-makers seem to be going out of their way to give parents migraines. Giving the children something fun to do, perhaps educating them, giving them a few more angles of perspective from which to perceive the world and broaden their horizons — this is all secondary. Too many of our toy designers and toy makers seem to regard it as a primary mission, to make parents’ hair fall out of their heads.

The war is on.

Where do we go from here? Well, it seems to me that scattering little bits of laminated cardboard around the room is far too random. Not nearly destructive enough.

I have an idea for a robot. As soon as the technology becomes available, the robot should be able to make some educated judgments about how much things cost. This loveseat is worth maybe fifty bucks…that sectional over there is brand-new, retails at $1700. Given that, it should wander over to the sectional and spew raspberry jam, or blue ink, all over the sectional. Then it could waddle out to the garage, walk straight past the $1500 Toyota, over to where the $80 thousand Porsche Targa is parked, and do a number on it with steel wool.

You know, take the randomness out of it.

Another idea I have is for “stink balls.” They’re made with fish guts. About the size of little spitwads, you add water and they’ll start stinking to high heaven forty-eight hours later. You then pack them in a cardboard tube aimed at the ceiling, put an explosive charge in the breach, and you scatter about fifty of these things all over the living room. Under the couch, behind the television set.

Again — take the randomness out of it — the mission is to get parents more stressed-out and maybe get them to drink more. Just stop pretending you’re trying to do anything different.

What is it that separates my ridiculous ideas from reality? Not much, in the Christmas season of 2007. Just a little bit of candor, maybe a touch of technology that isn’t quite here yet. An elimination of randomness, and a willingness to admit that our toymakers and our parents are not allies after all.

Seriously though. Why do we put up with this? Who made this rule that a child’s toy has to be annoying to his parents?

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Being Anti-Human
Friday, November 23rd, 2007

The Christmas season has begun. Christmas is all about Christ, and Christ is all about being pro-human. Tragically, this has come to be the time of year when the arguing really ramps up…which makes absolutely no sense at all, until you stop to consider that Christmas is a pro-human holiday.

Some folks don’t like that…

The video above is linked to VHEMT, the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement with the catchy tag-line, “May We Live Long and Die Out.” They promote zero, and negative if possible, population growth. Their philosophy is that humans are harmful to the ecosystem and therefore must go away. In other words, environmentalists that are more straight-talking than most of the others. VHEMT literature seems to like to talk about those among their membership who are parents, and therefore apparently hypocritical. Their explanation is that these people became parents before they became “aware,” and since then have pledged to not have any more.

Blogger friend Rick found out about a crazy woman who really took the initiative. I guess when we’ve multiplied just like those cancer cells and killed off the planet, at least everyone will know it wasn’t her fault! We can spend our dying moments thinking about what a good person she was.

Well, there are some trends going on that do make that look appealing. But this is exactly what people were thinking a hundred years ago with the “eugenics” movement. It was commonly thought that those among us who were the “lowest” were the ones who were breeding fastest, and something had to be done to proliferate the good strains of people and keep the bad ones in check. It hasn’t looked that appealing anymore since World War II and the purges of Stalinist Russia. You know, there’s a reason for that. This anti-human stuff has been tried before. You want to talk about metastasizing, well, it metastasized. Into something ugly. Many times.

It turns out, you can be pro-human or anti-human, there is really no in-between.

This blogger over here discovered this, and his essay is worth reading.

Beware of extremist green movements. Give them a wide, wide berth. They’re like the aliens in that “It’s A Cookbook” episode.

Update 11/25/07: A link to a profile of Toni Vernelli — living proof that some of our most hardcore environmentalists are, whether they admit it or not, simply opposed to people…being around. Living. Existing. Thanks to her big mouth, a great many more among the rest of us, are starting to wake up and see what it’s all about.

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Encoding the Personality Test
Thursday, November 22nd, 2007

Buck says Aiiieee! in response to the

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How to Be a ManFriday, November 30th, 2007

On “YouTube Debate” QuestionsFriday, November 30th, 2007

SeasonalThursday, November 29th, 2007

I Am a LieutenantTuesday, November 27th, 2007

On the Castle Doctrine, and RaceTuesday, November 27th, 2007

Hey Peaceniks, Can You Be Thankful For This?Sunday, November 25th, 2007

Chickenhawk on the Battlefield of TruthSaturday, November 24th, 2007

On the War Between Toymakers and ParentsSaturday, November 24th, 2007

Being Anti-HumanFriday, November 23rd, 2007

Encoding the Personality TestThursday, November 22nd, 2007

How to Be a Man
Friday, November 30th, 2007

On “YouTube Debate” Questions
Friday, November 30th, 2007

Seasonal
Thursday, November 29th, 2007

I Am a Lieutenant
Tuesday, November 27th, 2007

On the Castle Doctrine, and Race
Tuesday, November 27th, 2007

Hey Peaceniks, Can You Be Thankful For This?
Sunday, November 25th, 2007

Chickenhawk on the Battlefield of Truth
Saturday, November 24th, 2007

On the War Between Toymakers and Parents
Saturday, November 24th, 2007

Being Anti-Human
Friday, November 23rd, 2007

Encoding the Personality Test
Thursday, November 22nd, 2007