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Tuesday, December 13, 2005
On Faith, Logic, and Other IssuesI don't usually blog on religion or religious topics, but I couldn't resist taking a poke at this argument: When we have reasons for what we believe, we have no need of faith; when we have no reasons, or bad ones, we have lost our connection to the world and to one another. Atheism is nothing more than a commitment to the most basic standard of intellectual honesty: One’s convictions should be proportional to one’s evidence. Pretending to be certain when one isn’t—indeed, pretending to be certain about propositions for which no evidence is even conceivable—is both an intellectual and a moral failing. Only the atheist has realized this. The atheist is simply a person who has perceived the lies of religion and refused to make them his own.Now, I am not a terribly religious person myself, but that strikes me as a bunch of self-congratulatory nonsense. Why? Because it seems obvious to me that there is less evidence for the absence of God than there is for his existence. Let's leave aside the question of whether individual religions are actually attuned to His thinking. What is the evidence for the non-existence of some creator? Ask an atheist and they will bring up the existence of evil. Somewhere in the world a man has abducted a little girl. Soon he will rape, torture and kill her. If an atrocity of this kind is not occurring at precisely this moment, it will happen in a few hours, or days at most. Such is the confidence we can draw from the statistical laws that govern the lives of 6 billion human beings. The same statistics also suggest that this girl’s parents believe—at this very moment—that an all-powerful and all-loving God is watching over them and their family. Are they right to believe this? Is it good that they believe this?Of course there are multiple arguments against this. The mostly commonly used one is that evil exists because God created us with the free will to choose good or evil. One could also argue, as did The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, that Earth was created by a couple of white mice to be a giant computer, and that effectively we are referring to the white mice when we say God, and that the mice included evil because it was necessary for the program to work. Okay, say the doubters, what about evolution! Hah! It exists, and therefore your God never made man in his image. But of course this doesn't rule out the white mice version of God; it was just a lot more sophisticated computer that slowly built itself from the building blocks of life. And many believers in religion have been able to accept evolution as fact without becoming atheists. One can believe in Genesis as being an allegory. Or one can throw out the entire Old Testament and just go from the teachings of Christ. Indeed, if you look hard at the arguments against God, they mostly amount to arguments against particular religions. Hindus won't eat beef, while Jews won't eat pork; hence religion must be bunkum. But of course proving contradictions between individual religions doesn't disprove God. We could easily argue that they both have it wrong, as a Christian could do when ordering a bacon cheeseburger, or that one has it right and the other wrong, or even that God makes different rules for different people. Arguments in favor of God, however, are not so easily dismissed. There is the first cause argument. Suppose we accept evolution and thus trace our ancestry back to single-celled amoebas swimming in the primordial soup, and that the Earth along with the rest of the universe, was created as a result of the Big Bang. Who or what caused the Big Bang? What existed before that? What caused that to exist? Keep tracking it back and eventually the atheist will say, "Nothing!" or "We can't fathom it." But that's not terribly logical. You don't get something (and the universe is a rather large something) out of nothing. And if you believe in a purely mechanistic universe where everything has a logical cause, you can't suddenly abandon that logic at a certain point and say "We can't fathom it". As pointed out by several of the commenters here, Atheism amounts to a faith itself--a faith in the non-existence of God. As such it has similar aspects to organized religions. First, it attempts to recruit new converts to the faith. That the referenced article is called "The Atheist Manifesto", should be clear evidence that recruitment is going on. There was a funny tune back in the 1960s by Tom Lehrer called National Brotherhood Week: Oh, the Protestants hate the Catholics
And the Catholics hate the Protestants,
And the Hindus hate the Muslims,
And everybody hates the Jews.To which I would add, "And the Atheists hate them all!" We can all agree that in the past there has been too much intolerance between religions. But, like those religions, Atheists express their intolerance at any mention of other religions. We see it all the time in current public life, but the Atheist Manifesto conveniently spells it out: It seems profoundly unlikely that we will heal the divisions in our world simply by multiplying the opportunities for interfaith dialogue. The endgame for civilization cannot be mutual tolerance of patent irrationality.Hat Tip to News Bump, which is a UK-based news service that bumps good stories and posts by blogs up to the top. It's an interesting concept; time will tell how it works out in practice.
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In Search of Murtha's Broken ArmyJed Babbin (who has performed admirably on occasional fill-ins for Hugh Hewitt) went over to Iraq to try to find the "broken, worn out," and "living hand to mouth" army that Congressman Murtha has described. Is our army broken? Not hardly, but it could be. One 4th I.D. colonel said it best: "You want to break this army? Then break your word to it." Which is precisely what the Dems want to do. President Bush was right when he said yesterday that the only way we will lose this war is if we lose our nerve. The Dems long ago lost theirs.Terrific article; highly recommended.
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How Can You Satirize the HuffPo?You can't because they're in full self-parody mode. RJ Eskow compares Tookie Williams (who took the last walk this morning) to Jesus Christ. Celebrity executions, from Jesus to Tookie Williams, have whatever meaning human actions give them. And the meaning of Tookie's? That the Religious Right, that bastion of politicized pseudo-religion and hypocritical power-grabbing, pronounced its own spiritual death by shouting hosannahs for his execution - as it has done for the anonymous dead before him.Norman Solomon decries confusing the "insurgency" in Iraq with terrorists, citing Jack Murtha: "Let's talk about terrorism versus insurgency in Iraq itself," Murtha said. "We think that foreign fighters are about 7 percent -- might be a little bit more, a little bit less. Very small proportion of the people that are involved in the insurgency are terrorists or how I would interpret them as terrorists."See, only foreigners can be terrorists. If they're Iraqi and they blow up a bus full of their fellow Iraqis, that's not what Congressman Murtha would call a terrorist.
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Monday, December 12, 2005
Moron Winter SoldierDavid Holman was in the crowd for the soldier-bashing fest of Winter Soldier. Q&A; from the audience made the panel seem moderate. The first commenter thought the panelists and the documentary are too soft on our soldiers in Vietnam and Iraq. "Several million Vietnamese killed in the Vietnam War, at least one hundred thousand Iraqis killed in the current war. And I hear these soldiers talking a great deal about their experience, their suffering, their pain....But they're telling us about the atrocities they committed. They're telling us that our conduct in the war was criminal. And I hear people coming from Iraq today telling us the same thing that they did...to the people of Iraq.... So I don't see why the three of you are focusing so much only on the soldiers, and feeling sorry for them, and being supportive of them.... I think maybe we focus on a guilt trip and saying, 'Americans are bad because we did this in Vietnam, we're bad because we're doing this in Iraq.' No. Germans did it too. Russians did it too. This is what happens in war." The gentleman was neither rebuked nor challenged.But of course. The purpose of Winter Soldier was not to demean our fighting men in Vietnam; that was just a pleasant side course for the leftists who filmed it. The real intent was to imply that anybody would be transformed into a murderous monster by the US war machine.
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Outrage Du JourThis silly article at Salon is getting a lot of attention: At a certain point in the near future, if the current oligarchy cannot be removed via the ballot, direct political action may become an urgent and compelling mission. It may then be necessary for many people in many walks of life to put their bodies on the line. For the moment, however, although pressing and profound questions have arisen about whether the current government is even legitimate, i.e., properly elected, there still remains a chance to remove this government peacefully in the 2008 election. (Or am I living in a dream world?)
I do think this regime's removal is the most urgent matter before the country today. And I do think that at a certain point the achievement of that goal might take precedence over our personal predilections for writing, teaching and the like. We might be called upon to go on general strike, for instance. We might be called upon to set up camp in the streets for weeks or months, to gather and remain in large public squares as the students in Tiananmen Square did, and dare government forces to remove us or to slaughter us in the streets.
This is all terrible and rather fantastic to contemplate. But what assurances have we that it is not all quite plausible? Having discarded the principles that Jefferson & Co. espoused, the current regime seems capable of anything. I know that my imagination is a feverish instrument. But are we not living in feverish times, in times of the unthinkable? First of all, let me say that the writer, Cary Tennis, is a world-class poseur. As always the point of the comparisons to fantastically evil regimes is not to diminish the evil of the Chinese Communists, or to exaggerate the supposed evil of the Bushitler regime. It's to exalt oneself as being the equivalent of those who fought against those evil regimes. We might be called upon to set up camp in the streets for weeks or months, to gather and remain in large public squares as the students in Tiananmen Square did, and dare government forces to remove us or to slaughter us in the streets.You can see Tennis sitting there, fantasizing himself as that lone man standing in the way of the tank....
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Of Art and Politically Correct DictatorsOur new buddy Ed over at The American Scratchpad has a terrific rant on a particularly clueless comment by a society columnist on the opening of a new museum of African art in San Francisco.
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In Case You Missed 2005James Lileks gets the jump on the end of year retrospectives with a hilarious look back at the year that was. Hurricane Katrina strikes precisely at the moment when the dynamite charges, personally installed by Karl Rove, blow up New Orleans's levees. Teams of the same ninjas the Bushies used to rig the Diebold voting machines have already disabled the buses that could be used in evacuation. Initial media reports indicate that refugees in the Superdome have resorted to murder, cannibalism, voodoo, keno, and possibly jai alai. FOX anchor Shep Smith is consumed on camera by zombies. His last words indicate that he shares their outrage, if not their desire for sweet, sweet brains. In the weeks that follow it becomes obvious that the hurricane was caused by global warming--specifically, a 0.07 percent rise in median ocean temperature that caused New Orleans police officers to snatch DVDs from Wal-Mart shelves. The destruction of New Orleans, and the attendant effect on refinery capacity, is exposed by media crusaders as part of a GOP plot to raise gas prices and cripple the economy in time for the midterm elections, so they can run on a platform of "You like that? You want some more? Well do you?"Hat Tip: Michelle Malkin
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So Stupid Even the Liberals Won't Go Along With ItI noticed this post over at HuffPo, where, believe it or not, Larry Beinhart goes to an art exhibit (in Woodstock, New York), and is offended that there was no antiwar art. 152 artists were given an opportunity to show a small piece of work. Each and every one of them, individually, made a decision not to be political, social, religions (sic) or scientific.
This is not to say the art must be “relevant.” This is not to say we should return to Soviet realism and show Heroic Workers planting new flowers on the village green.
It is to note that is this case, the artists abdicated. Universally.
No czar or commissar told them to, no corporate sponsor paid them to, nobody from Homeland Security came around and hinted that they would be taking names, no influential critic said the age of relevance is dead, no greedy gallery owner said I can’t sell anything with a political or social theme.Surprisingly, perhaps, the response of many of the commentators was negative: I'm sorry, this is a ridiculous article. You cannot dictate art. Creativity is ruled by no one, not even the artist. If this is what is coming out, then so be it. And: I wouldn't vote Republican at gunpoint. As an artist, I've lived through more than 30 years of an art world dominated by political 'art' dictated by the academy, and as a white male have been and continue to be ostracized. Art doesn't exist to serve to a liberal or conservative agenda, but a human one. Get over it.And: Well, the line-between art and agitprop is a fine one. Also, consider the artists KNOW their clients/patrons well. I'm not advocating no-response in-art, but one has to be cautious. It's tough being an artist in America.Another person point out that political cartoonists do most of our political artwork, for the simple reason that it's immediate and ephemeral.
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Iraqi Polling Shows Significant ImprovementThey really have to dig to find any negatives in these results: Surprisingly, given the insurgents' attacks on Iraqi civilians, more than six in 10 Iraqis feel very safe in their own neighborhoods, up sharply from just 40 percent in a poll in June 2004. And 61 percent say local security is good — up from 49 percent in the first ABC News poll in Iraq in February 2004.
Nonetheless, nationally, security is seen as the most pressing problem by far; 57 percent identify it as the country's top priority. Economic improvements are helping the public mood.
Average household incomes have soared by 60 percent in the last 20 months (to $263 a month), 70 percent of Iraqis rate their own economic situation positively, and consumer goods are sweeping the country. In early 2004, 6 percent of Iraqi households had cell phones; now it's 62 percent. Ownership of satellite dishes has nearly tripled, and many more families now own air conditioners (58 percent, up from 44 percent), cars, washing machines and kitchen appliances.That's a rather breathtaking improvement in conditions. Yes, they mostly want our military to leave (but not on Congressman Murtha's timetable). And there are some other clunkers in there as well, but overall it's not hard to see that some of that is the media's fault: The number of Iraqis who say things are going well in their country overall is just 44 percent, far fewer than the 71 percent who say their own lives are going well. Fifty-two percent instead say the country is doing badly.You know how it is; if 71 percent of the people are saying their lives are going well, then it's hard to buy the notion that the country's doing poorly at the same time.
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Be Sure You've Taken Your Blood Pressure MedicationBefore heading over to Right Wing News for the 40 Most Obnoxious Quotes of 2005.
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The Inevitability of McCain--Updated!Pat Hynes reports on Republicans grudgingly coming to terms with the idea of a McCain-led party in 2008. According to several sources in Washington, DC – all of whom have, at times said things drastically critical of the Arizona Senator in my presence – McCain is the GOP’s only hope in the post-Bush era.
“The national environment has gone to s—t and Republicans are going to take a beating in 2006,” one prominent Republican consultant – who is a movement conservative -- told me recently. “McCain is the only guy out there with the credibility to maintain Republican control in Washington.”There's a temptation to dismiss this post as overly pessimistic, and indeed there are reasons to believe that the Republicans are not headed for a debacle in 2006 and beyond. First, as I've pointed out on several occasions, President Bush did not have long coattails in 2004; hence it is unlikely that Republicans are holding a lot of risky seats. Second, a lot of it may be based on current conditions. But if gas prices continue to drop and things stabilize a bit in Iraq, we could see a dramatic improvement in Republican fortunes. Third, McCain will be 73 in 2008, and has had health issues in the past. He may be in no condition to run three years from now. But this is important as a snapshot in time. I don't think there's any doubt that Republicans who have access to internal polls are seeing disturbingly negative trends. I hope that our guys are urging President Bush to continue to push back against the Democrats. We can tell it's working by the way they're hollering. Update: Kitty asks in the comments about the bulge on the left side of McCain's face. I'm embarrassed to admit I hadn't noticed it before, but here it is quite noticeable:  My guess is it's just jowls. McCain did have a few melanomas (patches of skin cancer) removed from his face a few years ago; not uncommon for Arizona, which has the highest rate of melanomas in the US (due to the extraordinary amount of sunny days we get).
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Sunday, December 11, 2005
Survivor FinaleExciting episode, well worth watching. The show starts off with Lydia happy as she finds some interesting tree mail. At first, nobody seems to share her elation, but she seems to understand better that there's going to be some sort of ceremony and a native feast. Sure enough, a group of Mayans come by to do a ceremonial sacrifice of a chicken (I am thankful that it took place off-camera). I couldn't help thinking that if it were the real Mayans, it wouldn't be a chicken getting killed. They burn the chicken in the fire, then share some tamales. Steph makes Lydia ask if they can eat the chicken. No, this is a sacrifice to the gods. Up comes the penultimate immunity challenge. It's an immense maze, from which the contestants must find eight sticks. The sticks have been whittled so that they form a triangle along the axis. Each of the three sides has a piece of a puzzle, and the contestants must assemble the puzzle to win immunity. Lydia stays reasonably competitive, but predictably she arrives with the final piece just as Rafe wins immunity. They go back to the camp, where Steph gets the idea of eating the chicken now that the Mayans are gone. It turns out to be quite edible, but Rafe, who was really somewhat moved by the ceremony refuses to eat. In perhaps a little too good to be true moment, the gods respond by drenching the camp with a torrential rain. There does not seem to be much plotting and scheming going on prior to tribal council. I had assumed that whoever didn't win between Rafe and Steph would be out, but it turns out that Lydia finally draws the short straw. This shows that Rafe and Steph are thinking ahead to the finale, when neither of them want to be facing "Everybody loves Lydia". This also works for Danni, too, and is so logical that I should have realized it. One final night, then they do the mumbo jumbo with the final goodbyes to all the players they've lied to, backstabbed, and cheated to get ahead of. Mostly a device to get us to remember these people, many of whom haven't been on the show for a couple of months, and who will be shown in the reunion. Then it's the endurance challenge that always ends the season. The players have to balance on a board while holding onto two ropes. After an hour, they have to let go of one of the ropes. When that happens, Steph almost immediately gets into trouble, and it looks like she'll quickly be out. She has to dangle from the single rope while trying to get the board into a position where she can rest her feet on it. But almost immediately the other two start spinning as well. As it works out they all find the optimal position, with their backs against the frame of the challenge and their feet on the boards. Jeff warns that they can no longer touch the frame. But shortly later, that is exactly what Rafe does in a moment of forgetfulness. He's out of the challenge. And it quickly becomes obvious that for once, height is an advantage in this challenge. Danni is able to maintain a comfortable position, while Steph, with her shorter legs, is more awkard and begins to slide slowly down the frame. Finally, sobbing, she hits the deck. Danni is guaranteed a spot in the final two! Rafe, apparently moved by Steph's effort, mentions to Danni that he is releasing her from her promise to take Rafe to the finale with her. So now we've got some drama again. At tribal, Danni mentions that if she does the honorable thing, she'll take Rafe, but if she wants to win, she'll take Steph. Rafe quickly points out that he's backstabbed the same people that Steph has, perhaps not the smartest move with the jury sitting across from them. In the end, Danni votes off Rafe, and so now it's Danni versus Steph in the finale. One last day in the camp, with just the two of them, which they spend burning their hut. Then back to tribal council. I don't remember all the questions, but I think the killer question was Cindy's. She asked if the finalists could eliminate anybody from the jury, who would it be, and why. Danni gave a straight answer: Rafe, because she knew he was voting for Steph. Steph gave the weird and obviously untrue answer of Bobby Jon. Bobby Jon was about the only vote besides Rafe that Steph had a good chance at getting. The jury votes; we only see Rafe's and Judd's. Cutaway to Los Angeles, live at the CBS studios. Jeff comes back with the votes and quickly reads them. Danni. Steph. Danni. Danni. Danni! And it's all over; apparently Steph lost a 6-1 vote, with only Rafe sticking with her. Would Steph have won any of the possible matchups? I don't think so. She might have gotten another vote if she'd been up against Rafe, or she might have lost 7-0. Lydia? I think that would have been another 6-1 vote. So she probably did the best that she could on the final night given all that had come before. Interestingly, this was the second time she managed to stay in the game by crying and getting somebody to virtually give up their spot in the game for her. Of course, it is certainly arguable by what Danni at the finale that she would not have taken Rafe with her even if he had not released her from her promise. Next up: Panama, with some sort of weird island to which players will be periodically exiled from their tribes, but which contains a clue to the game.
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Two Choices on Brokeback MountainOr is it four? According to this review: When, a half-hour into the film, Gyllenhaal’s Jack Twist and Ledger’s Ennis Del Mar, both drunk, cold, and lonely on a remote Wyoming campsite, fold around each other and commence an act of sex that manages to be both rough and tender, romantically intimate and lustily intense, Brokeback Mountain achieves its own early climax: You either buy into this tale of men in love or you join the ranks of those who’ve been snickering during the movie’s prerelease trailers, and who can be divided into the insecure, the idiots, or the insecure idiots.I guess I'll take insecure. ;)
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Conservative Blogz Rool IIThe article is here. I must say, that for all the hype, this is a singularly uninteresting take on why conservative blogs are kicking the liberal blogs to the curb in terms of effectiveness. But Democrats say there's a key difference between liberals and conservatives online. Liberals use the Web to air ideas and vent grievances with one another, often ripping into Democratic leaders. (Hillary Clinton, for instance, is routinely vilified on liberal Web sites for supporting the Iraq war.) Conservatives, by contrast, skillfully use the Web to provide maximum benefit for their issues and candidates. They are generally less interested in examining every side of every issue and more focused on eliciting strong emotional responses from their supporters.
But what really makes conservatives effective is their pre-existing media infrastructure, composed of local and national talk-radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh, the Fox News Channel and sensationalist say-anything outlets like the Drudge Report - all of which are quick to pass on the latest tidbit from the blogosphere. "One blogger on the Republican side can have a real impact on a race because he can just plug right into the right-wing infrastructure that the Republicans have built," Stoller says.That's almost two of the three full paragraphs in the article, and essentially what he's saying is that we have outlets for our nonsense, whereas the poor liberal blogosphere (even though they're more careful to examine every single side of every issue), can't get their stories pushed up to the media? To which I say, bull-pucky. The story which reveals what a bunch of crap this represents, is the Jeff Gannon story. The liberal blogosphere's big scoop of 2005, it immediately got picked up by the major media and was reported endlessly. Contrast that to the Eason Jordan story which the conservative blogs picked up a few days earlier. Now remember, Gannon was a nobody, a reporter for a tiny online-only press organization, while Eason Jordan was running CNN. The mainstream media tried mightily to ignore Jordan's claim that the US military had intentionally targeted journalists during the Iraq war. it was an outrageous and outlandish claim, one so absurd that even Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd, two very liberal Democrats, chided Jordan when he said it (to their eternal credit). And the notion that Republican blogs don't vent grievances with one another, or rip into Republicans is silly. Take a look back at the Harriet Miers debacle for a good example, or see the responses to Tom Tancredo's claim that our war was with Islam itself. When Michelle Malkin saw that Mike Brown wasn't doing the job at FEMA, she blasted him, while others defended him. No, the conservative blogosphere is more effective than the liberal blogosphere for three reasons: 1. We don't represent a thin slice of the extremist wing of the party. Take the most extreme positions of the far Left in this country: Abortion on demand up till the date of birth, no handguns, much higher taxes needed especially on the rich, withdraw immediately from Iraq. How many major liberal blogs would disagree with those? Almost none. Take the most extreme positions of the far Right: No abortion ever, right to own bazookas, eliminate all taxes, and turn Fallujah to glass. How many major conservative blogs would disagree with those? Almost all. 2. We self-police better than the liberal blogs. There are numerous examples of this. Last year I was pitched a story about Kerry supposedly lying about where he was when Martin Luther King died. He'd said he was in Vietnam, when actually he'd been on the USS Gridley, off the coast of Vietnam. I ran the story but included a disclaimer that I personally thought the noton that Kerry lied about his whereabouts was nit-picking. Or how about when a recent commission released a report on the 2004 elections, highlighting malfeasance by Democrats and downplaying any shenanigans by the Republicans. The commission claimed bipartisan credentials, and seemed to have them, with one of the chairs a former leader of the DNC. But the Commissar and I looked into it and discovered that former leader had also been a leader in "Democrats for Bush" in '04. 3. We're more realistic in our goals. Pulling out of Iraq immediately is not an option, not really. Given a chance to vote on it, the House turned it down 403-3. Many liberal blogs belong to a group called the Big Brass Alliance. The Big Brass Alliance was formed in May 2005 as a collective of progressive bloggers who support After Downing Street, a coalition of veterans' groups, peace groups, and political activist groups formed to urge that the U.S. Congress launch a formal investigation into whether President Bush has committed impeachable offenses in connection with the Iraq war. The campaign focuses on evidence that recently emerged in a British memo containing minutes of a secret July 2002 meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his top national security officials.They want to impeach Bush. What do conservative bloggers want? Largely a collection of achievable goals--better border enforcement, improvement in Iraq and confirmation of Judge Alito.
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Saturday, December 10, 2005
Saddam's Connections to Al Qaeda DocumentedOur buddy Mr Ugly American does a marvelous job of gathering together an impressive amount of data on the Saddam-Al Qaeda connection that the antiwar crowd constantly denies exists.
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Gene McCarthy DiesAt age 89. My first involvement in presidential politics came with the Gene McCarthy campaign in 1968. My parents were active in the antiwar movement and they volunteered early enough to become county coordinators. We had a fundraising party at our house at which the celebrities were Richard Benjamin and Paula Prentiss. I remember wondering if anybody was going to show up in our very Republican area; as it turned out there were cars parked up and down the block for a quarter mile. I remember being a little disappointed when McCarthy didn't win New Hampshire, but my parents were elated that he came close. Shortly afterwards, President Johnson stunned the nation by dropping out of the race. Bobby Kennedy got in, as did Hubert Humphrey. I watched the Chicago convention and became radicalized at the sight of the cops beating kids. And in the end, Richard Nixon won the White House. I stayed pretty leftist until about 1982 when I began reading the Wall Street Journal on a daily basis and debating with one of the guys in the office. He always seemed to have a good answer for me, and I was still somewhat lazy about learning Democratic talking points. Reagan was a big part of the difference. His sunny optimism was refreshing after Carter, and he delivered a strong economy, something that the country hadn't seen for almost a decade. I remember when he was shot, hearing that he'd joked with the doctors that he hoped they were Republicans. That impressed the heck out of me. And so when it came time to vote in 1984, I gave the Republicans a chance.
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Globaloney RoundupHere's an article on the the extension of the Kyoto accords. Environment activists cheered, hugged and some even cried after the delegates passed what they saw as historic decisions tackling climate change.
"There were many potential points at this meeting when the world could have given up due to the tactics of the Bush administration and others but it did not," said Jennifer Morgan, climate change expert at WWF.Bill Clinton is lying again: "...If we had a serious disciplined effort to apply on a large-scale, existing clean energy and energy conservation technologies -- we could meet and surpass the Kyoto targets easily in a way that would strengthen, not weaken, our economy," said Clinton to applause from the delegates.
If these Clinton whoppers weren't enough he then took a swipe at George W. Bush. It's interesting that only Jimmy Carter, the worst president in recent history, and Bill Clinton, a president who did nothing but campaign for eight years, feel emboldened to routinely criticize a sitting president in foreign countries, usually playing to the left-wing socialists who welcome their comments.I suspect that the recent gas price spike and the current heating oil costs will do a lot to convince people to conserve, but there is a limit. Suppose I decided to replace all my windows with double-panes, and throw down another layer of insulation in the attic. That might save me some money, but what do I do the next time? My costs will undoubtedly be higher and the net savings smaller. It's the principle of diminishing returns. And the idea of reducing energy consumption, while it sounds noble, is going to be difficult to achieve. Why? Because we all have far more electonic devices than we used to back in 1990--DVD players, computers, larger-screen TVs, etc. Meanwhile, I couldn't help being amused at this article on corn stoves: Once relegated to farmhouses and cabins, corn-burning and more common wood-burning stoves began growing in popularity four years ago among environmentally-minded consumers interested in cheaper and renewable energy sources.But wait a minute! Aren't those stoves burning corn, which releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere? How can people burning stuff be considered "environmentally-minded"?
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I Don't Usually Side With Soccer HooligansBut this strikes me as a bit too PC.
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Friday, December 09, 2005
Winter Soldier Gets Adoring Review in WaPoBy a critic who is apparently unaware that the film has largely been debunked. Several of the film's subjects, chief among them a Florida native named Scott Camil, are seen grappling not only with their experiences overseas but also with the very definition of manhood, whether as constructed by cultural mores or one's own inner code.Camil, of course, received a little bit of notoriety last year when it was revealed that he had made a proposal to the VVAW executive leadership (including John Kerry) that they engage in a program of assassinating US Senators, a story that transfixed the right-wing blogosphere last March. Hat Tip: Wizbang.
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Conservative Blogz Rool!That's apparently the conclusion of a Sunday New York Times article on the blogosphere that this article (by lowlife Greg Mitchell) in E&P; attempts to debunk preemptively. In fact, Crowley admits that his argument for conservative blog supremacy may seem “counterintuitive,” noting the Howard Dean phenomenon in early 2004 and heavy Web traffic numbers for liberal blogs such as DailyKos. (He does not mention that studies of online traffic show that, overall, there are more highly-popular liberal blogs than conservative ones.) But he explains that “Democrats say there’s a key difference between liberals and conservatives online. Liberals use the Web to air ideas and vent grievances with one another, often ripping into Democratic leaders. Conservatives, by contrast, skillfully use the Web to provide maximum benefit for their issues and candidates.”
Crowley then comments that what really makes the conservative blogs allegedly more effective is the infrastructure provided by Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and others--"all of which are quick to pass on the latest tidbit from the blogosphere."It always makes me laugh when somebody brings up the Howard Dean phenomenon as an example of the liberal blogosphere's mojo. Yes, the liberal blogs were successful in raising $40 million and an army of volunteers. For a candidate who didn't win a single primary. And I don't believe for a moment that there are more highly popular liberal blogs than conservative ones. TTLB's down right now, but I'd bet that if you checked the top 20 or the top 50 or the top 100 that there would be more conservative than liberal blogs. Yes, Kos is way above everybody in traffic, but some of that is due to definitions. I suspect that if Lucianne's site were considered a blog (which it is) it would dwarf Kos. Ditto for the Drudge Report, which has about as much traffic in an hour as Kos has in a day.
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Superman to Fight CrimeShaquille O'Neill, who puts the Superman symbol on just about everything he owns, is sworn in as a Miami reserve police officer.
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Oddball Story of the DayThe Man at GOP & the City has a tale about a dumb cop taking a rather bizarre souvenir from an accident scene. Somehow he came up with a perfect illustration for the post from the Simpsons.
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Retreat and Defeat Is Not An OptionThe much-anticipated white flag video is up at the RNC. I like it but it needs a "wham" sound effect when it puts up the last line. Hat Tip: Ankle-Biters. Crazy Politico has some thoughts on the ad as well.
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Ted Rall's Latest OutrageJohn Hawkins has the details. Rall's going to roast over a slow flame after he dies. Rick Moran does a full-on fisking of Rall. As I commented over at Rick's, I read somewhere that Rall's dad abandoned the family when he was young, which goes a long way towards explaining why he's still a punk, and why he does these ridiculous "look at me" cartoons and columns.
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Survivor Update: The Alliance Eats Its OwnComing back from tribal council, Cindy notes what I commented on last week, that whoever gets caught by surprise is the next one off--happened to Jamie, happened to Judd, is Cindy next? Reward is for an SUV--a Pontiac Torrent. Weird name for a car. The challenge involves parts of earlier challenges. First up is to balance on a beam while untying knots. Second is to throw paddles through a tile. Third is to assemble a puzzle, then hop in a cart, cut the rope holding it back with a machete, and roll down the hill. Cindy and Steph make it to the final task, but Cindy does the jigsaw puzzle routine of finishing the outside before working on the inside and gets the victory ride. Then comes the twist. Cindy can take her SUV, or she can give it up, and everybody else will get an SUV. Jeff points out that nobody who's gotten a car has ever won Survivor. She could take the whammy off herself and put it on everybody else. They play it for drama, and I couldn't help thinking that the greatest good for the greatest number, but Cindy is a capitalist at heart and she took the car. This is why Survivor is so compelling compared to most of the other reality shows--they always push the chips in and force the person to make a tough decision. The next one is obvious--she can take one person along with her for a ride. Of course it is only one. Like everybody, she invites Steph along, which is a huge, glaring mistake. Cindy needed to go for the home run at that point, which means she had to get Lydia or Danni off to the side. Cindy and Steph drive off to a barbecue at an archaeological site. They enjoy quite a bit of food, and get the benefit of a lecture and discussion of the history of the Mayans from the archaeologist. That night they sleep under mosquito netting. Meanwhile Rafe and Danni are back at the campsite talking about how noble they would have been, giving up the SUV for their friends. Lydia manages to be non-committal while saying that Cindy made the right choice for her. When you combine that with the fact that everybody else was thinking "SUV for me" while Lydia was thinking "SUV for my son", I couldn't help noticing that Lydia's in a fine position. With all the paranoia around the tribe, she's the person who nobody sees as a threat. And yet she's scary in the final against anybody but (arguably) Danni. The immunity challenge is something similar to what we've seen before. The survivors are hooked into a rope and they must navigate a course, complete with handcuffs and leg-cuffs. Buncha keys, so by luck Steph gets ahead. And pretty much stays ahead, despite Jeff's enthusiastic calling. She does have to go back to untie a few knots, that finally get her to the end, which seems, shall we say, just a tad extra-dramatic? One thing is for sure, she and Cindy are not resting on their laurels and assuming they're in the alliance. Steph wins immunity and does a little sobbing at her individual win. We go back to camp and the plotting begins in earnest. But it's basically Rafe or Cindy who's in trouble here. Rafe has spent the time cultivating Danni, and so Cindy seems hosed, and so she is when the votes are finally counted. Finale prediction. It all depends on the immunity, as usual. Rafe and Steph are now suddenly the vulnerable ones. If Danni and Lydia hold, then whoever gets immunity will go along with them. Which sets up a final three of Danni, Lydia and Rafe/Steph. The last immunity is always a contest of endurance, and I suspect that here we will finally see Lydia shine. Steph and Danni are athletes, but they are sprinters; Lydia looks like a marathoner. Rafe? He's hard to judge, but I don't see him as an endurance guy. I'd see Steph as the most likely to be voted off first next week, unless she wins immunity, in which case Rafe loses. I think Lydia's going to take the endurance contest somehow--perhaps even by doing the early jump-off ala Richard Hatch. It might be a weird finale with Steph holding on for dear life and knowing she'll probably lose to whomever she picks to join her in the final tribal council. Surprises? I suspect that they are going to spring a few at least on us at the finale. I still don't believe that Judd is just a doorman at a building in New York City. Not only did he get "Ancient ruins" but he was smart enough to give it to Rafe. Is Lydia somehow a Guatemalan/Mayan?
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Thursday, December 08, 2005
A Recurring ThemeI've remarked on this tendency of the Left often: As I listen to the opinions and arguments expressed here, I am struck by the lack of interest in exactly how much (or should I say, how little?) the currently proposed policies are going to stave off any future warming trends. Instead, what seems to be the most important are the good intentions of the policy pushers-consequences be damned.Exactly. Although in this case, the topic is global warming, you can transfer this to almost any issue that the Left is pushing. Will a "living wage" end up making some people's skills uncompetitive? Will it tend to increase the number of youngsters dropping out of high school? That doesn't matter--the intent was to lift some families out of poverty. Back in the days before neocon meant "Republicans who support the war in Iraq", this was the chief difference between neoconservatives and liberals. Neocons wanted to look at the effects of policies, not just their intentions. The guiding tenet of neoconservatism was the Principle of Unintended Consequences, which states that the unintended consequences of government programs are frequently equal to and opposite from the intended consequences. To take a simple example, welfare, intended to alleviate poverty, ended up trapping them in poverty.
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The 16th Minute of FameTeri Schiavo's husband is starting up a PAC. Michael Schiavo said in a news release that the group, TerriPAC, would raise money to campaign against members of Congress, mostly Republicans, who drafted and voted for legislation to intervene in the case.
Among Republicans it is targeting are Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee, Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania and Rep. Tom DeLay of Texas.Politically savvy, he's not. For one thing, Frist isn't running for reelection.
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More Bad News on the EconomyBad news for the Democrats, that is: Economists have raised their forecasts for U.S. growth in the first half of 2006 to 3.6 percent, according to a survey conducted by the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank.
That compares with a forecast of 3.1 percent growth when the previous survey was taken six months ago, the Fed said.
Forecasts for the second half of this year edged up to 3.7 percent from 3.6 percent.
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Barack Obama A Bit Too Honest?Check out these quotes from Osama Obama (as Ted Kennedy likes to call him). This is a classic case of a politician talking about political calculations out of school. Stupid, stupid, stupid! Hat Tip: Jamie Allman
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How the ACLU Stole ChristmasMr. Right's latest piece of satire. The sad thing is that I could actually see the ACLU making this argument.
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Update on MireckiI noted my skepticism on the claim by an anti-religion professor in Kansas that he was attacked over an email he'd sent decrying the religious as "fundies". Michelle Malkin did some further digging on the story and has obtained the police report of the incident. Mirecki can't recall exactly where it was he was attacked, and there are conflicting reports of the extent of his injuries from colleagues and students who saw him on the day of the alleged attack.
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Wednesday, December 07, 2005
The Wonders of State-Paid MedicineThis is sad, but typical. As I've often remarked in the past, if you make something free, you will sooner or later have to ration it: One of the most decorated British fighter pilots of the Second World War has sold his medals, diaries and other memorabilia partly to pay for a hip replacement operation for his wife who faced at least a six-month wait on the National Health Service.
Sqn Ldr Neville Duke, 83, the Royal Air Force's top-scoring ace in the Mediterranean theatre who set a world air speed record of 728 mph in 1953, put the collection up for auction rather than subject his wife Gwen to months of pain and discomfort while she waited for an operation.
The standard waiting time for hip replacements in the orthopaedic department at the Royal Bournemouth Hospital, one of the nearest facilities to the Dukes' home, is six months.
Mrs Duke, who has been in pain with her hip for eight months, was told by her chiropractor that the wait might be 15 months.
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Barbra Writes the LA Times--UpdatedBarely coherently: I'm almost embarrassed for you in seeing the LA Times being referred to as the "Chicago LA Times" on the myriad of internet sites I've visited in the last few days. It seems, however, an aptly designated epithet, representing the feeling among many of your readers that your new leadership, especially that of Jeff Johnson, is entirely out of touch with them and their desire to be exposed to views that stretch them beyond their own paradigms. So although the number of contributors to your op-ed pages may have increased, in firing Robert Sheer and putting Jonah Goldberg in his place, the gamut of voices has undeniably been diluted, and I suspect this may ultimately decrease the number of readers of those same pages.
In light of the obvious step away from the principals of journalistic integrity, which would dictate that journalists be journalists, editors be editors and accountants be accountants, I am now forced to carefully reconsider which sources can be trusted to provide me with accurate, unbiased news and forthright opinions. Your new columnist, Jonah Goldberg, will not be one of those sources.The "gamut of voices has been diluted"? And it's "principles" of journalistic integrity. Update: The Argument Clinic has a very funny take on La Streisand's letter.
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Did Iran Cease Its Nuclear Weapons Program?This is rather interesting. London - The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has found no "smoking gun" in Iran that would indicate a nuclear weapons programme, the Jerusalem Post on Wednesday quoted IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei as telling the daily.
But ElBaradei admitted that Teheran maintained an undeclared nuclear programme for 18 years until three years ago, which the IAEA failed to detect.Until three years ago? Hmmm, that's a rather interesting detail. What was going on three years ago? Wasn't there something about a country near Iran that was about to be invaded for pursuing weapons of mass destruction in violation of UN mandates? I'm sure it's just a coincidence. Note as well that many liberals cite ElBaradei as their chief witness that Iraq was not pursuing nuclear weapons. He was wrong about Iran, why should we trust him about Iraq? There is no good news for liberals in this report. Here's the original Jerusalem Post report on this story.
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Yet More GlobaloneyThe people of the Arctic are suing the United States for causing global warming. The people of the Arctic filed a landmark human rights complaint against the United States, blaming the world's No. 1 carbon polluter for stoking the global warming that is destroying their habitat. The Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC), representing native people in the vast, sparsely-populated region girdling the Earth's far north, said they had petitioned an inter-American panel to seek relief for Canadian and US Inuit.
"For Inuit, warming is likely to disrupt or even destroy their hunting and food-sharing culture as reduced sea ice causes the animals on which they depend to decline, become less accessible, and possibly become extinct," said Robert Corell, who spearheaded an Arctic climate impact assessment.Global warming has caused the northern ice cover to retreat, making it more dangerous for the Inuit to hunt food animals such as polar bears, seals and caribou, their investigation found.No mention of the bumps on fish story which so fascinated Hillary Clinton.
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A Date That Will Live in Infamy... I'm hoping to put up some interesting radio reports of that day, but audioblogger appears to be having problems right now. Update: Here's the first news of the Pearl Harbor attack, coming as an interruption to WOR's broadcast of an NFL game between the New York Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers (yes, Brooklyn had an NFL team back then). Here's FDR's speech to Congress on December 8, 1941. It's about five minutes long, but it's highly recommended that you listen through to the end to hear a Democrat who wasn't one of the cut and run crowd.
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Is Our College Students Learning?Not much if they're listening to liar Joe Wilson: Speaking to an audience at CSU-Monterey Bay Tuesday, Wilson said he wrote the now famous editorial, titled "What I Didn't Find in Africa," not as an act of great moral courage but as an act of civic responsibility.And then in 2002, he said, he accepted a request from the CIA to travel to Africa to investigate claims that Saddam's regime had ordered up large supplies of uranium from Niger. Despite what critics have said, Wilson said, he wasn't chosen for the unpaid assignment on Plame's coattails, but because of his experiences in Africa.
Bush, in his State of the Union speech in January 2003, made the Nigerian-uranium case to the American people to bolster support for the Iraq War.
Documents related to those alleged uranium sales were later alleged to be fabricated and Wilson said he found no evidence to substantiate the claims upon his visit to Niger.And no one questioned him on that? Here's what the Senate Intelligence Committee said about Wilson's trip to Africa: 
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Betcha Hillary's Mad at Howie NowFrom the Daily News comes the word that Code Pinko, the antiwar group, is going to start dogging Hillary for her refusal to join the nutcases supporting an immediate withdrawal of US forces from Iraq. "We're calling it Bird-Dog Hillary," said Medea Benjamin of the peace group Codepink.
"I'm so mad at her," said Nancy Kricorian, Codepink's New York City coordinator. "We will dog her wherever she goes."
Kricorian's group and several others plan to show up tonight at Crobar in Manhattan, where former President Bill Clinton is the top draw at a fund-raiser for his wife.Why does this make her mad at Howie? Because he gave Code Pinko a little help and publicity this week:  What a maroon!
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The Amazing Race UpdateAlways check out Viking Pundit's summary first. First task is to drive to Turtle Creek Ranch. Brief bit of Weavers bickering over whether to get gas while they are stopped at a service station. Can you say foreshadowing? Teams arrive in the same order as they started, but there is an overnight ahead, before they are transported in SUVs they must dash across a prairie to catch. The task is a detour, where teams must choose between building a teepee or a buckboard wagon. The Bransons and Linzes choose the wagon, while the other two teams pick the teepee challenge. The Linzes finish first and take the lead, followed shortly by the Bransons. The Weavers manage to finish before the Godlewskis. Next job is to drive to Cody, Wyoming and get their picture taken at Buffalo Bill's daughter's hotel/bar. Teams of course leave here in the same order they started, but it is clear that the Godlewski family is behind because after the Linzes finish first, the Bransons and then the Weavers have to watch the team in front of them pose for the cameras. But by the time the Desperate Housewives arrive the Weavers have already left. Teams then drive to a golf course, and my pulse quickens again. Last season they had a golfing challenge, another area where I feel I could generally compete. But it turns out in this case that the challenge is to check the back nine of a golf course for balls of a certain color and collect four of them. Good old Wally again proves his worth as he insists that they check the cup on every hole (although one suspects that the minute they saw one of another color in an earlier hole, they knew to keep looking). As a result, the Bransons pull ahead of the Linzes, who have to go back to find their final ball. The Weavers finish apparently well ahead of the Godlewskis, and the only drama now is if they can find the final ranch they need to visit, and whether the gas will hold out. But it's not quite as dramatic as it sounds and the Weavers finish ahead. Prediction for the last episode: It's the Weavers. I know a lot of people don't like them, but they're a highlight reel with all the obstacles they've overcome. There was a wonderful little bit today with them driving along and passing up a Pizza Hut and the girls exclaim about getting the buffet, and it struck me--they're real Americans. Devout yet somewhat coarse and unsophisticated. Plus it would be great to see the past defeated teams have to applaud them as they jog the last couple of yard to the victory mat.
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