Not Now Hitch, We're Busy

Was going to get all bitchy on Hitchy about the recent Slate column, but, as a result of aforementioned traveling I am way behind. I recommend this.

Home Again Home Again

The past few days I've been out of town at a developers seminar which discussed this new fangled piece of entertainment hardware that will be coming down the pike in about a year. The presentations were cool; being surrounded by 300 other programmers was not.

The worst thing about my kind is how on the one hand we(as a demographic) assume we're so goldarned smart, but when we open our mouths it's clear we're total idiots who do not deserve the salaries we are paid and the respect we receive. For example, the Q&A session following the seminar took it's usual pattern for these events. The questions fell into one of three categories. First, there's "the answer to your question is totally obvious if you've been paying attention". Then there's "your question makes absolutely no sense and you'd know that if you were paying attention". Finally there's the "hey! I'm here at this seminar talkin'! Look at me!" Watching the faces of the presenters - all of them engineers who spent a great deal of time and effort to clearly disseminate this important information - fall in disappointment and consternation made me embarassed for my industry. If this is truly the best we have to offer it's no wonder the Japanese are kicking our asses.

On the upside, if photo-realism(and the unfortunate attendant hyper-violence) are your thing, this new hardware will rock your world. It's also a programmers dream if you like to program the sorts of things I like to program.

Stop The Insanity

I really hope they are. Is this some new form of "strong diplomacy"?

Lost In The Shuffle

Yesterday, for some reason, I subscribed to the OxBlog RSS feed. There, in a longish post attacking the credibility of Joe Wilson, I read the following:

But the media seems to cover the inaccuracies of George Bush's statements quite well, leaving it to us bloggers to expose the small fry like Joe Wilson.

While I disagree with the specific point about exposing small fry - especially Joe Wilson since Rove and Co have done a wonderful job on him, as has Somerby - I do agree with the general point: the media covers big events just fine, and bloggers can and should bring "smaller" stories to light. So...

Lost in the shuffle of Rovegate and the introductory chapter in The Saga of Mr. Roberts, two stories surfaced yesterday and today that need a little more attention. The first is that we appear to have attempted to influence the Iraqi elections. The second is that the current draft of the Iraqi constitution contains seriously regressive measures against women. What are we to make of these events? If the goal of influencing the elections was to prevent Sharia Law from prevailing then we should have done a better job of it. Leave it to the neo-cons to screw up fixing an election when said fixing would have done some good. I can hear the proponents of the war protesting already:"But wait! We should respect their wishes! If Sharia is what they want, they should have it - they're a democracy now!" I would, however, reply: "Please recall that you, sir, are not a cultural relativist."

Mondays Are Bad Days For Hangovers

I'm going to Monday Morning Quarterback this Moving of the Goalposts and suggest that if they kept their Eye On The Ball they might be able to Win One For The Gipper. Instead it appears they've Fumbled The Ball and will Be Forced To Punt.

Friday Map Blogging

Baltimore heads and head-haters may get a chuckle out of this.

What Jeb Will Reap

I heard this story this morning. The form of "voluntary" employment detailed in the piece is exactly what spawned the original labor movement. The company store and old fashioned wage slavery in 21st century America. ARE YOU EFFIN' KIDDING ME? Molly Ivins warned that if George became president we'd get Texas in the USA. If this is any indicator of how things are run in Florida, I'd say we got the good brother.

This Is All Just Getting So Dumb

Maybe I'm committing a Howler but...Look, I would be more than happy to see Rove go down, but I don't think the Senate should be used to go after him. It's a waste of my money on political infighting, it's counter productive and it leads directly to garbage like this. Before you say "But they do it all the time and we need to fight back!1!1!1!!1!" take note it's not a tactic that'll work for the party in the minority, and it's not effective fighting back. Progressives ought to be showing America that we are the responsible sensible good-government team. Introducing legislation geared at targeting a political operative is not responsible, sensible or good government. Remember what happened when they used the legislature to attack Clinton - they lost it.

If one wants to go on the attack, low-blow style, there's an opportunity coming in the 2006 mid-terms.

Update for clarification: When I say "it's not effective fighting back", I did in fact committ a Howler. I wasn't saying "it's not effective TO fight back when you're the minority" I was saying "This kind of politics isn't an effective form of fighting back".

Fair And Balanced Update: JDNOF offers gentle corrections in comments, and David Corn thinks it was a brilliant ploy.

States That Know No Peace

When will Hitchens begin the drumbeat for the United Kingdom to invade and occupy the United Kingdom? I'll admit the remark is in poor taste, but so is all the horrible cliche'd sabre-rattling and phony Churchillian stuff. It performs no function in fighting the war we're in. Now that we know at least one of the bombers was home-grown in the state which was attacked, can we please start having a discussion about how we win the battle of ideas instead of how we lose the battle of force through endless attrition?

Who controls the present...

I was talking to my cousin yesterday. He's a fighter pilot in the U.S. Navy ... flies jets off boats ... lands jets on boats.
He's a college-educated, independent thinking, smart, young man.

I bring up his commander-in-chief, the one he voted for, to see if he's still all I LOVE BUSH! and BUSH LOVES ME!

He says that a lot of people in the Navy are getting worn out. They think this war has gone on long enough, etc.

Jim asks him if there are any Democrats in his navy. He answers that there's a few but they catch a lot of shit. He tells us how people argue and the people who aren't all about Bush are berated and treated like crap.
Then he starts talking about when they get a weekend off and they stay at friends house's ... inevitably the friend has a roomate that leans to the left and arguments ensue.

"You always see fights like this," he says, "late at night, the patriot vs. the liberal..."

The patriot vs. the liberal!

He wasn't being ironic or sarcastic. He was casually describing two opposites.

The patriot believes in big brother, loves America and liberty and all things good.

The liberal can't be a patriot. The liberal hates America, scorns big brother and won't be happy 'til the party and the American way of life is destroyed.

INGSOC anyone?

Second Verse, Same As The First

Another great example of the new era of responsibility. It's great to have firm resolve, courage and optimisim. But at some point it'd be nice if they'd get the whole "doing the work" part down. The country doesn't just run itself.

Can I get a...

...witness?

I think the correct phrase...

...is "pencil-dick". But isn't Reba a girl's name? Or is this some new euphamism for girl-parts of which I was previously unaware?

Good Ol' Hank

Yeah, I was wondering too, as it didn't seem likely. Glad to see he's cleared it up.

That Explosion and Those Flies and This Paper

In the wake of the London bombings there's been some predictable but reasonable snark coming from our side of the aisle about that old "flypaper" theory. This is all fine and good and as it should be. The very suggestion that such a strategy was even remotely plausible should have been greeted with jeers of "ARE YOU EFFIN' KIDDING ME?" from the get go. This was just another convinient post-facto justification for the Iraq war that was trotted out for the presidential campaign. Any serious person who thought about it for ten seconds couldn't have bought it. This is why it's so weird that supposedly bright people actually do, or did.

We have two simple ways to refute the "flypaper" theory that are obvious to even non-wonks like me. First, the old Afghan War was supposed to serve as flypaper. Egypt, among other countries, released their jailed fanatics in the hope that those fanatics would get themselves killed in the jihad. While some certainly did get killed, the ones that survived helped to create what's now an international movement. Second, the idea of flypaper just doesn't make any effin' sense. Not every single person who wants to fight the "great satan" is going to go to Iraq. Some are going to find their way here or to Britain or anywhere else. It doesn't take an army to engage in terror attacks. It just takes a small group of people with invention enough to get through unclosable gaps in security and co-ordination enough to carry it off. As everyone is so fond of saying "they only have to get lucky once, we have to get lucky every time." So what exactly is to stop said people from going places and wreaking havok? Not much.

It seems to me that all of this polemical grandstanding about being resolute, letting them know no peace and fighting them wherever they are misses the point entirely. I have yet to hear anyone on either side of our political divide articulate a policy that makes it more difficult for people to perform terror attacks(sure this was the justification for the Patriot Act, but England is even more of a surveilence society than we are, and that didn't help). I also have yet to hear someone articulate a policy that would make it far less attractive to join up with the jihadists - something that is essential in order to win whatever this war is. To someone who's committed to die for their cause the threat of death is no threat at all.

Update: Stupid me. Did I say I hadn't heard anyone on either side articulate a policy? It's nice to have a certain former supreme allied comander prove me wrong. Granted it's more - no pun intended - general than I would ask for but it's an op-ed, not a policy paper.

If I Were Sully

I'd say that this juxtaposition shows "exactly why the right just doesn't get it." Fortunately I don't see "the right" as this giant monolithic mass of jerks-with-soot-for-brains who all hold the same opinion. I do, however, view Fox News that way.

A Uniquely Bi-Partisan Post

Ehrlich is clearly reading from the wrong script. What's all this "live free" jive? Didn't he get the memo? Whatever, even if it's by accident, I agree with him.

London, Eff Yeah

No, I am not being sarcastic. Oliver Willis has some excellent quotes from the mayor of London.

Update:Yes you can get a little solidarity:

That Didn't Take Long

No, it sure didn't. And neither did that. I've got a few longtime friends in London. I have no idea if they are ok. Glad that the 101st Fighting Keyboarders have their backs though. It makes me far less worried to know that despite the horrific events of today one group of people hasn't given up their resolve to make idiotic racist comments about British Citizens who happen to be muslim, and another group of people(Straussians) can quote Winston Churchill. Yes, racist comments and cliched platitudes are exactly what we need in the war on terror.

Update: Just heard that some of the people I was worried about are ok.

Amazing

Never judge a piece of half formed illogic by it's title. I know I have to stop reading Hitchens, but I can't. Every week I read Slate looking for signs of the combination of wit and rationality that made The Nation worth reading as anything other than agitprop only to discover there ain't no there there anymore. In fact, I'm now reduced to playing a special game I invented just for Hitch's Slate columns. Before I start reading I try to guess in what sentence of what paragraph he will either blame those against the war for some failure of the Bush administration or make snide remarks about people who actually stand something or someone to lose in this war. This week's winner, and it's a double hackpot, is paragraph 4 sentence 1. After reflecting on the tragedy of American soldiers accidently shooting civilians due to increased security measures, he begins p4 with:

But the truly sobering reflection is that crimes and blunders of this kind are committed, in effect, by popular demand. It is emphasized every day that Americans do not want to read about dead soldiers. So it is arranged that, as far as possible, they will read (or perhaps not bother to read) about dead civilians instead.

Right. It's not the fault of the general's who have designed the policy, it's not the fault of the people who put the soldiers there in the first place, it's not the fault of an incompetent civilian administration that didn't know what the eff they were doing when they went in. No. It's the American people with their weak stomaches and the New York Times that are to blame. ARE YOU EFFIN' KIDDING ME? No, he clearly isn't, especially when he goes on to say (and I promise I won't make the obvious joke that of all people Hitch needs some sobering reflection...oh crap....):

Incidentally, when is the New York Times going to start running a "Names of the Dead" regular feature from Afghanistan?

So wait. In an obvious conspiracy - or to use Hitchen's term, arrangment - to prevent Americans from reading about dead soldiers in Iraq, the New York Times is printing the names of soldiers that died in Iraq. Phew! I'm glad we imported this Brit to smoke out this subtle opinion shaping newspeak. Judith Miller sure wasn't going to do it for us.

Operation Piggy Piggy

While I've voiced some disagreement with "Operation Yellow Elephant", this at BoP is something with which I totally agree(whoa, sensible as opposed to airy). At this point you cannot be both for the war and for tax cuts. There is no mystical market force which will supply materials for the war, soldier's salaries and money to pay for all that price gouging from Haliburton. Maybe instead of sacrificing himself, O'Reilly ought to sacrifice some of his salary to the war effort.

No, Seriously

ARE YOU EFFIN' KIDDING ME? This is effin' madness. Anyone who supports this crap cannot honestly claim to also support "the culture of life". Or has that little catchphrase already been replaced by the "culture of the MBA's approach to justice" and I missed it?

Update: Now might be a good time to invite anyone who reads us to visit Abolish the Death Penalty.

Someone's Going To Be Jealous

Is YOUR blog on the first page of this search? Hah. I didn't think so. And here I thought it was someone calling us names.

Update: skippy wants a million hits by july 10th.

Update II: Google thinks of us that way too.

Things That Make You Go "Buuhhhhh...."

I suppose being in Maryland requires us to comment on this. We'll just say it's Ehrlich by numbers. On the one hand he acts like a racist jerk and on the other acts like it's repressive and over sensitive liberals who are making him out to look that way. When he "screws up" he can act like he's taking some sort of stand (or whine, depending on who you are) "on principle" when he really meant to send the message everyone got in the first place. He's not stupid; he's a master at playing the game the way the right plays it. Who could expect any less from a cohort of Gingrich?

I don't want to spread panic and alarm

Ouch.

Freaky

I don't mean to harp on the the guy who gets his Freak-On. But I wonder why someone who's made their career finding odd conculsions embedded in data would decide to make such a dismissive statment about this. I'm not endorsing the view; it looks a little too tin-foil hat for my tastes, and since I'm not a structural engineer I'll have to defer to the experts. I'm just curious why the "rogue" of all people would find it necessary to dismiss the possibility. What if the data showed otherwise?