I knew this was coming, but I hated to see it just the same. Kim du Toit and his wife Connie (aka The Mrs.) have stopped blogging. Both are friends, and Connie has been a regular commenter here for years.

Glenn Reynolds says, simply (about Kim),

He'll be missed.

They say all good things must come to an end, and I know that is true...

But hell, that doesn't make it fair!

I'm neglecting everything right now, simply because of the things I'm neglecting!

Tough to explain, but I haven't had much time. However, I wanted to thank the commenters to this post for offering advice on how to salvage old VHS tapes -- expecially "guy on internet" who advised me not to screw around with dedicated conversion units, but to capture the analog video to a computer, and save it in digital form on my hard drive. After many hours researching this, I discovered that by downloading the appropriate drivers and software, I could get the built in ATI card to work as a video capture card with a VCR (which it never had before; I tried in the past, but it adamantly refused to capture anything from DirecTV).

The next problem was my VCR. It had been sitting unused for over three years in a damp location, and it would only play audio with an unrecognizable zig-zaggy pattern in lieu of a picture. I didn't know whether it was broken or the head needed cleaning, but I put in a tape I was pretty sure was good, and let it play. At first I could only hear the sound, but eventually, the picture came through, and it kept getting better.

Finally, I grabbed a piece of the video at random, and I converted the huge file to the smaller mpeg-4.

This morning I uploaded it to YouTube. It's Idi Amin delivering a stern lecture about Truth and Love to his cowering ministers. Always tell the truth (because he'll find out anyway), and be sure to educate the people that they should love their leader, and everyone in the government!

"Everybody must be loved!"

In addition to the lecture from Idi Amin, I also captured and saved a vintage interview with Eric. Yes, embarrassing as it looks today, it's me in 1991, in which (following Idi's advice) I tell the truth about an accident in which a driver backed into a pole in a city-owned parking lot and then tried to involve me, because he wanted to blame someone, and I happened to drive along and park in the lot after his accident.

I didn't tell the driver I was an attorney, but he didn't ask, and I don't think he suspected anything.

The Drug War in Mexico as chronicled by Newsweek is starting to cross the US border.

Late one night in January, an ambulance escorted by five unmarked squad cars pulled up to Thomason Hospital in El Paso, Texas. Out leaped more than a dozen armed federal agents to protect the patient--Fernando Lozano Sandoval, a commander with the Chihuahua State Investigations Agency. He'd been pumped full of bullets just across the Mexican border in Ciudad Juarez by gunmen believed to have been hired by a drug cartel. Lozano Sandoval's sole hope of survival was the medical team at Thomason, the only level-one trauma center for nearly 300 miles. U.S. authorities took no chances; in Mexico, assassins regularly raid hospitals to finish off their prey. Throughout Lozano Sandoval's three-week treatment at Thomason (which proved successful), the Americans funneled visitors through metal detectors, posted guards outside the commander's room and deployed SWAT teams armed with assault rifles around the hospital's perimeter. Officers "were ready for war if it should go that route," says El Paso Police Chief Greg Allen.

Beyond those cases, 43 additional patients wounded in Juarez have been treated at Thomason this year, including a 1-year-old girl who was pinned against a wall by a truck involved in a drug-related shooting. All the patients have been dual citizens of Mexico and the United States or have had the proper documentation to enter the country, says a Thomason spokeswoman. Yet legal issues are beside the point for many El Pasoans. A recent posting in an online forum on border violence summed up the fear of many: "It is only a matter of time before the Mexican drug dealers send assassination squads over to Thomason hospital." The traffickers already occasionally kidnap Mexicans who have fled north to escape threats of violence in Juarez.

Mr. Obama has promised to take on the Taliban in Afghanistan. I don't think he was expecting to handle a similar situation just a few feet across our southern border. Is he in for a shock.

"It's almost beyond belief." Juarez looks a lot like a failed state, with no government entity capable of imposing order and a profusion of powerful organizations that kill and plunder at will. It's as if the United States faced another lawless Waziristan--except this one happens to be right at the nation's doorstep.

The cartels operate largely with impunity. Police who defy them are eliminated, as in the case of Oscar Campoya, a municipal cop who was shot dead by assassins in March as he left a local precinct. Despite the presence of several witnesses, including fellow officers, there have been no arrests (only 2 percent of violent murders in Mexico are solved, according to government figures). Mario Campoya, the victim's brother, says Oscar had been pressured relentlessly by other members of the force to cooperate with the drug gangs, but had refused.

Going back to Prohibition, Juarez has helped sate the ravenous American appetite for contraband. These days, the West Texas corridor is a key shipping and distribution center for drugs destined for various markets across the United States. According to a recent report by the Justice Department's National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC), 6 cartels, 129 midlevel organizations and 606 local groups engage in drug-trafficking activities in the binational region. As part of an elaborate, highly compartmentalized operation, some outfits specialize in transportation, others in enforcement and still others in retail sales. Guided by spotters on the Mexican side equipped with binoculars and cell phones, many shipments cross the bridges into El Paso alongside legitimate commerce. Once in the city, the goods are deposited in stash houses before being sent elsewhere.

Given the permeability of the border, it's not hard to imagine violence seeping over as well. American officials insist that's highly unlikely. The cartels "cannot operate here with impunity," says ICE's Kozak. "One reason we don't see that type of violence here is that it would never be tolerated." El Paso is crawling with federal law-enforcement agents--including representatives of ICE, the FBI, Customs and Border Protection and the Drug Enforcement Administration--and all are monitoring events to the south like hawks.

Except it looks like it has already happened here in Las Vegas.

In an early morning news conference Police captain Vince Cannito said, "Cole (Puffinburger) has been found, he is safe and in our custody," he continued "It's just a blessing that this child has been found and he's in extremely good condition."

The six year old boy was abducted by alleged drug dealers posing as police officers on October 15, 2008. Three armed men tied up Cole's mother and her fiancee, ransacked their home and then took Cole after they didn't find money in the home.

Now it is the so called social conservatives in cahoots with "progressives" who have pushed this drug war on us. But really they are not conservatives at all. They are radicals. Before 1914 and the passage of the Harrison Narcotics Act there were no national laws against drugs in America. And of course in 1937 we got the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937.

Well back to the Newsweek article.

...the United States is less insulated than some might think. According to the NDIC report, the increased bloodshed in Juarez "could spill into the [West Texas] region," since it raises the threat that drug-trafficking organizations will "confront law-enforcement officers in the United States who seek to disrupt these DTOs' smuggling operations." (The report cites several armed encounters that took place on the American side in 2006.) The cartels' tentacles already reach deep into El Paso. Local banks are full of drug money, says Claudio Morales, who heads special operations at the El Paso County Sheriff's Office. "We're one of the poorest regions along the border, yet El Paso has some of the largest cash transactions" in the country. Many cartel henchmen are known to have moved their families to the Texas city to insulate them from the carnage back home--though that still leaves the families vulnerable to kidnappers. Kids whose relatives have been killed in the violence are showing up at the Children's Grief Center of El Paso. "We have a lot of kids that are really traumatized," says executive director Laura Olague. "There's a lot of secrecy, or fear, that whoever killed their parents or loved ones would come look for them."

For now, drug organizations prefer to abduct their quarry in the United States and spirit them across the border before harming or killing them. Kozak says that in the past year, a half-dozen kidnappings tied to narcotraffickers have taken place in El Paso. One of them involved Miguel Rueda, a convicted smuggler who failed to pay a drug debt. According to a criminal complaint filed in U.S. district court, Rueda was told to meet a former accomplice, Ricardo Calleros-Godinez, at a gas station in El Paso in February. After picking up Rueda, Calleros-Godinez allegedly pulled a gun on him, duct-taped his eyes, mouth, hands and legs, and drove him to a house in Juarez. Four or five days later, Rueda reportedly settled the debt through a transfer of family land and was freed. (He's now in Texas state prison serving a sentence on cocaine charges.)

The criminal group that perhaps best illustrates the porousness of the border is the Barrio Azteca gang. Founded in the 1980s in state prison in El Paso, the organization now counts thousands of members in Mexico and the United States and is believed to be affiliated with the Juarez cartel. Authorities say the gang has a penchant for brutality and engages in everything from extortion to trafficking to assassination. The Barrio Aztecas are "the wild card in all this," says Samuel Camargo, a supervisory special agent with the FBI in El Paso. "That probably has the most potential for violence here"--and it's an American creation. In January, the U.S. Attorney's Office brought racketeering charges against more than a dozen of the gang's members, and a trial began in early November.

"The Latin American drug cartels have stretched their tentacles much deeper into our lives than most people believe. It's possible they are calling the shots at all levels of government." - William Colby, former CIA Director, 1995

Cross Posted at Power and Control

I have pretty much shown in a number of posts that government involvement in marriage, in making drugs illegal, and in running schools were the innovations of radicals. Those solutions to the problems they addressed don't seem to be working well.

So why don't we do the conservative thing and go back to the old ways? And if those don't work we can always try something radical again.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

The Swiss are giving in to the junkies.

GENEVA (AP) - Dr. Daniele Zullino keeps glass bottles full of white powder in a safe in a locked room of his office.

Patients show up each day to receive their treatment in small doses handed through a small window.

Then they gather around a table to shoot up, part of a pioneering Swiss program to curb drug abuse by providing addicts a clean, safe place to take heroin produced by a government-approved laboratory.

The program has been criticized by the United States and the U.N. narcotics board, which said it would fuel drug abuse. But governments as far away as Australia are beginning or considering their own programs modeled on the system, which is credited with reducing crime and improving the health and daily lives of addicts.

Swiss voters are expected to make the system permanent Sunday in a referendum prompted by a challenge from conservatives.

The heroin program has won wide support within Switzerland since it was begun 14 years ago to eliminate scenes of large groups of drug users shooting up openly in parks that marred Swiss cities in the 1980s and 1990s.

Zullino's office, part of the Geneva University Hospitals, is one of 23 such centers in Switzerland.

Patients among the nearly 1,300 addicts whom other therapies have failed to help take doses carefully measured to satisfy their cravings but not enough to cause a big high. Four at a time inject themselves as a nurse watches.

In a few minutes most get up and leave. Those who have jobs go back to work.

There is one small problem with the program. Crimes committed by heroin addicts have dropped 60 percent since the program began in 1994. Now think of all the police, prosecutors, lawyers, prison guards, etc. out of jobs because of that. Every junkie in America has a huge burden to bear keeping all those people working. If it were not for junkies taxpayers might not willingly pony up the dough to support all those folks. Another economic disaster in the making during hard times if this clinic idea ever caught on. As long as Americans keep hating junkies the jobs that depend on them are safe. So do your part. Hate a junkie today. A big part of the economy depends on it.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Mexico is having some success in fighting the drug traffickers that are causing so much trouble for Mexicans and their government.

President Felipe Calderon and his government defended their fight against public corruption and drug trafficking Friday, asking for greater powers to go after organized crime. They conceded that most Mexicans feel unsafe and that many police are unqualified to do their jobs.

One hundred days after calling for a sweeping overhaul of security forces, including a reorganization of the federal police into a single agency, Calderon and his cabinet cited some successes, such as the recent arrest of several drug captains and corrupt officials. But they acknowledged that the extreme violence unleashed in Mexico was daunting.

"We know the challenges are many and that the road that we have to travel is long and difficult. But we cannot and will not back down," said Calderon, who appeared with his government ministers at a day-long National Security Council meeting in which they reported on their fight against organized crime and the drug cartels.

More than 4,500 people have been killed in drug-related violence since Calderon declared war against the cartels in early 2007. The campaign has transformed border cities such as Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez into war zones, complete with 20,000 occupying troops.

Calderon touted the recent arrest of Noe Ramírez Mandujano, a former chief of the anti-organized-crime unit at Mexico's attorney general's office, who is accused of taking at least $450,000 from drug traffickers in exchange for information about police investigations.

One point of success is that kidnappings are down 18% after the government broke up 53 kidnapping gangs. A rough extrapolation tells us that there were something like 250 gangs of kidnappers before the crackdown. Now down to around 200.

And here is another huge success. They are testing the qualifications of police officers already on the force.

In written answers to questions put to him by the National Congress, Calderon reported Thursday that half of the 56,000 police officers evaluated in a federal review failed to reach minimum standards. The examinations included drug and lie detector tests, psychological profiling and reviews of personal wealth.

Almost 50 percent of the officers tested, who work at the municipal, state and federal levels, received a "not recommended" rating. In states where violence and drug trafficking are greatest, the police fared the worst.

In the state of Baja California, where Tijuana is located, almost 90 percent of the officers received failing grades. It is not known how many will be fired or retrained. There are more than 375,000 police officers in Mexico.

The revelation that so many rank-and-file police officers fail to pass scrutiny is likely to come as no surprise to most Mexicans, who harbor deep distrust of law enforcement officers. A poll released Friday by a Mexican research group found that 60 percent of Mexicans do not feel safe and that the great majority do not report crimes because they distrust the police.

It could be worse. And I'm betting that before long it will be.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

And that is just one thing you can learn from watching this video.

Part 2
Part 3

MarijuanaConversation.org

Cross Posted at Power and Control

In light of yesterday's post about drunken sex being treated as rape, I guess I shouldn't be surprised to see that the woman charged with having sex in a Minnesota men's room is now turning up the volume on the victim claim:

MINNEAPOLIS - While police say a high-profile indecent conduct case in the Minneapolis Metrodome Saturday is closed, a Carroll woman involved in it told the Daily Times Herald she believes she was a victim of foul play rather than a willing collaborator.

Lois K. Feldman, 38, of Carroll, and Ross M. Walsh, 26, of Linden, were ticketed for indecent conduct after they were reportedly caught engaging in sexual activity in a Metrodome men's restroom handicapped stall during the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers game with the Iowa Hawkeyes. More than a dozen people in the restroom were cheering Feldman and Walsh by the time authorities arrived, a University of Minnesota Police report says.

Feldman acknowledged drinking heavily before the game and says she doesn't remember being in the bathroom.

"I would never ever do that," Feldman said. "My kids are my life. I go to church every Sunday."

Information obtained in police reports and during an interview with University of Minnesota Police Chief Greg Hestness revealed no suggestion or evidence that the incident was anything but consensual on the part of both Walsh and Feldman.

But Feldman tells the Daily Times Herald she may have been drugged or otherwise victimized.

"Everybody thinks something got put in my drink," Feldman said.

She offers no further details as to how that might have happened or who may have been involved.

"Right, and that's what my attorney and I are working on," Feldman said.

Contacted this morning and asked if Feldman was planning to file a complaint or seek a reopening of the investigation in Minneapolis, Jeff Minnich of Carroll, Feldman's attorney, said he had no comment.

The Daily Times Herald sought to contact Walsh, but there is no phone listing with the address he gave police. An Avalon Security officer, Craig Andrashko, who was listed in the police report as the first witness to the incident, did not return a phone call.

But in the police report, Andrashko described what he observed as "sexual intercourse."

Hestness said the case is closed by citation.

When asked to respond to Feldman's suggestion that she is a victim of a crime, Hestness said: "All I can say is the actions went on for some period of time with many witnesses on hand and no one reported either party was objecting."

Hestness said Feldman made no allegations to the officers at the scene about the incident being non-consensual.

"If the implication is lack of consent due to intoxication, I guess that could be true for either party, however, they declined the officer's request to submit to an (alcohol test) so the extent of intoxication cannot be demonstrated," Hestness said.

Once again, I think the idea that women are less capable of consent than men is irredeemably sexist -- and degrading to women.

Philosophically, there are serious problems with the idea that one sex is more capable of saying no than the other. And saying no to what? One's own impulses? One's natural inhibitions? The other person's entreaties and advances? The effects of alcohol?

I'm just thinking out loud here, and since this might as well be satire, let me ask... Why is no one speaking up on behalf of this man as a victim of intoxication or as a possible rape victim? I notice that the woman at 38 is twelve years older than the man, who was only 26. Doesn't this indicate what is often called a "power imbalance"? (Anyone remember Mrs. Robinson? How about Dean Wormer's wife?)

But suppose the man had been 38 and the woman 26. Would the situation be viewed differently? I think it would. Why?

In terms of power imbalances, is there a difference between an older man with a younger woman, and an older woman with a younger man?

If there is, can someone please offer a non-sexist explanation?

I'm concerned that there might be an imbalance of power imbalances, and that would be unfair.

MORE: If alcohol lowers inhibitions, and if inhibitions are what normally prevent us from giving way to our sexual urges, then it would seem to follow that the presence of alcohol intoxication would make consent to sex (and therefore sexual intercourse) more likely. Yet these laws are saying that alcohol intoxication renders consent to sex legally impossible, and thus intoxicated sex equals rape. But if consent derives from lowered inhibitions, and inhibitions are lowered in both sexes, I am unable to understand -- either from a legal or scientific perspective -- how alcohol would eliminate the ability to consent in women but not men.

The rule has to stem from some strange (and IMO sexist) presupposition that men are deemed incapable of consenting to sex in the first place. Whether a man consents to sex is seen as superfluous, because he is seen as always "in charge" of the act. By committing the physical act of penetration, he is seen as inherently having consented to doing it. And alcohol, far from diminishing his ability to consent, is seen as increasing it. Under this sexist view, the drunken penetrator is analogous to a drunk driver, who cannot be heard to complain that alcohol made him unable to "consent" to drive. The woman is not seen as a participant in the driving, but as a passive victim along for the "ride."

Therefore, drunk or not, sex is always the man's "fault."

Sgt. Mom writes about some history she learned in her travels in the English countryside and its implications for the current troubles in Mumbai.

Not for the faint of heart or those with delicate sensibilities. But not much that has gone on in India the last few days is.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Well this is a very different kind of pot for archaeologists. What they found was a marijuana stash.

OTTAWA - Researchers say they have located the world's oldest stash of marijuana, in a tomb in a remote part of China.

The cache of cannabis is about 2,700 years old and was clearly "cultivated for psychoactive purposes," rather than as fibre for clothing or as food, says a research paper in the Journal of Experimental Botany.

The 789 grams of dried cannabis was buried alongside a light-haired, blue-eyed Caucasian man, likely a shaman of the Gushi culture, near Turpan in northwestern China.

The extremely dry conditions and alkaline soil acted as preservatives, allowing a team of scientists to carefully analyze the stash, which still looked green though it had lost its distinctive odour.

"To our knowledge, these investigations provide the oldest documentation of cannabis as a pharmacologically active agent," says the newly published paper, whose lead author was American neurologist Dr. Ethan B. Russo.

Remnants of cannabis have been found in ancient Egypt and other sites, and the substance has been referred to by authors such as the Greek historian Herodotus. But the tomb stash is the oldest so far that could be thoroughly tested for its properties.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

There has been a lot of back and forth at the places I post (Classical Values and Power and Control) about America becoming an immoral nation. So I have to asks a question of my readers and especially those commenting on my various posts. What can make America the moral nation that so many seem to crave?

Can government make people moral?

If so why did we give up on all the goodness that alcohol prohibition was responsible for?

OK. Scratch that. It seems that when government gets involved in the morality business it only makes things worse.

America is a mainly Christian church going nation - so can churches make people moral?

If so why are so many people who have had church weddings divorced? Why are there so many children of divorce from parents married in church?

===

OK. Government can't make people moral and churches are failing at the job as well.

Any one care to suggest fall back position?

Cross Posted at Power and Control

A few days ago I wrote a post about sex in men's rooms, and among the issues I discussed were whether or not some of the men who have sex in restrooms are "straight." (I don't think they are entirely straight, although I do think many of them are bisexuals who lead heterosexual lives but who nonetheless want to enjoy homosexual sex without having to acknowledge it, which the anonymity of the restrooms facilitates.)

However, when I wrote the post I was I was presupposing that when sex occurs in mens' rooms, it occurs between men. Perhaps I shouldn't have made that assumption, for I now see that a heterosexual couple (consisting of one man and one woman) were arrested for having sex in a men's room. The woman says that the incident has ruined her life:

A Carroll woman who was caught having sex in the men's room at an Iowa Hawkeye football game in Minneapolis last weekend says she'd had so much wine before kickoff that she doesn't remember walking into the restroom, the man she had sex with in a stall, or when the police opened the door.

What Lois Feldman, 38, will remember is the humiliation afterward.

"It's ruined my life," she said through tears today. "Not just the incident but the press."

Feldman, a married mother of three, has been the target of Internet jokes and prank telephone calls today. She was fired this morning from an assisted living center, where she had been an administrator.

Feldman said her husband, Kelly, has been supportive. She said he faults himself for not going with her when she left her seat to use the restroom before halftime.

"I don't know what happened," Lois Feldman said. "But I don't deny that it did happen because obviously there are police reports."

Police ticketed Feldman, 38, and Ross Walsh, 26, of Linden for indecent conduct Saturday night.

A security guard who said he saw the two having sex through a gap in a men's restroom stall flagged down campus police, according to the police report.

By the time an officer arrived, about a dozen people were cheering and laughing in the bathroom while Feldman and Walsh were inside the stall, the report said.

The officer pushed his way through the crowd, opened the door and separated Feldman and Walsh, the report said.

Police described both Feldman and Walsh as upset, drunk and uncooperative.

Chuck Miner, deputy chief of the University of Minnesota police department, said officers tracked down Feldman's husband.

"I'm not sure how they made contact with her husband, but they needed her husband to help identify her" because she'd given the wrong middle name.

Miner said police didn't measure the blood-alcohol level of Feldman or Walsh. Asked to respond to Feldman's claim that she was too drunk to recall the incident, Miner said: "That's probably an accurate statement."

Feldman said she'd never met Walsh.

"I don't know who this man is," she said today. "I just found out his name in the paper last night."

Walsh wasn't immediately available for comment.

Bottom line, if a girl is intoxicated she cannot consent to sex and you could be charged with rape. It does not matter whether you knew she was intoxicated, it doesn't matter if you were intoxicated too, all that matters is that she was not in a state of mind to consent and therefore it is rape. If you get a girl drunk or high and then "get together" with her you have committed a sexual assault. Again, it doesn't matter if you are drunk or high as well. Your diminished abilities do not negate your responsibilities. A good rule to follow; if you are under the influence do not have sex.

Here's what the San Diego District Attorney's Office says:

* Face the facts: If she's wasted, intoxicated, asleep, or unconscious, she cannot give legal consent, even if she said "yes"
* Face the law: Rape by intoxication is a serious felony that can carry 8 years in state prison

Obviously, if a drunken man forces himself on a woman, that's rape, right? But if a drunken woman forces herself on a man, and can later demonstrate she was drunk, he'd be chargeable with rape, under the theory that because she was drunk, she could not "consent." Well, why is it that a drunken man can consent, but a drunken woman can't?

Can a man consent to sex if he is drunk, but not a woman?

Is this fair?

Isn't it sexism?

(An attorney writing in Mens News Daily about these disturbing new rape laws thinks it is, and he looks at several outrageous scenarios.)

This Los Angeles Sex Crime Defense Lawyer take a broader look at the law, and says:

"Having sexual intercourse with a person who is intoxicated, unconscious or asleep, and therefore unable to resist, is also rape."

Should I be reassured?

Let's try these, um accusations out and see how they look, his-and-hers style.

ACCUSATION 1:

"Your honor, I was so drunk I was unable to resist her. Therefore, I was raped!"

"Your honor, I was so drunk I was unable to resist him. Therefore, I was raped!"

Certainly not in light of this FAQ propounded by a public interest organization consisting of "the San Diego County District Attorney, San Diego Police Department, Sheriff, colleges, universities, the military, the Center for Community Solutions / Rape Crisis Center, and the Sexual Assault Response Team":

5. What do I risk if I have sex with a woman who is intoxicated or "wasted"?

The penalties are severe. Rape by intoxication is a serious felony that can carry up to 8 years in state prison. In California, convicted felons are not able to vote, own firearms, or even sit on a jury. Plus, your job prospects quickly evaporate once your potential employer finds out that you're a felon. Don't forget that perpetrators of rape by intoxication, like other sex crimes, are required to register as sex offenders.

6. What does the law say about legal consent to sex?

There's a big difference between consensual sex and rape by intoxication. The California penal code clearly indicates that if a woman is wasted, intoxicated, asleep, or unconscious, she cannot give legal consent to sex. This is true even if she said "yes" to sex earlier.

To return to the men's room, while both parties committed a crime by having sex in public, given the California law, I don't think the fact that the woman committed that crime would have much bearing on whether she was raped (at least in California). There's just a kneejerk tendency (reflected in the summaries of the law) to see women who have sex with men as victims of the men who have sex with them -- especially if the woman is drunk or intoxicated. Yet men -- no matter how intoxicated -- are never seen as victims of women who have sex with them, nor would an intoxicated gay man be seen as a victim of another intoxicated gay man.

I don't know what the law is in Minnesota, but in California, it's pretty clear that the man could be charged with rape. (With the woman seen as the victim.)

Beyond the sexism, what do you do if you're one of those nervous, timid and neurotic types (man or woman) who can only have sex when you're drunk? Is it fair for the law to declare you legally incapable of consent?

What worries me is that if they wrote and enforced the law in a fair and non-sexist manner, all drunken sex would become a criminal offense. So, if you're a timid person who needs to get drunk in order to have sex, and you found another similarly oriented person, you wouldn't even be able to protect yourselves by having drunken sex together. It wouldn't be drunken sex. It would be mutual rape.

And it would not matter whether you were doing it in a public men's room, or at home in your bedroom, or whether you're man and woman, or husband and wife. In theory, even the husband and wife who have drunken sex with each other could be sent to prison for eight years.

I guess the Minnesota men's room couple should consider themselves lucky.

As the Mumbai attacks have made crystal clear, the situation in Pakistan sucks. Big Time.

If you have the slightest doubt about this, Bridget Johnson details why in a must-read piece that Glenn Reynolds linked earlier:

As the smoke clears and the body count grows in Mumbai, in one of the most brazen and chilling terrorist attacks we've seen in a long time, the truth about the region becomes crystal clear: Pakistan is a cancer on its neighbors. And the narrow focus of the attacks has also made it clear that Pakistan, allowing its extremists to operate unchecked, is also emerging as a greater threat to us.

It pains me to say that. I've been fortunate to know good men in the Pakistani government who seemed to seriously give a damn about their country, forced to constantly fight the negative headlines in an attempt to lure industry to the country and show the side of the nation that embraces Western ideals. But those guys were in Pervez Musharraf's crew, and now there's a new sheriff in town.

Not implying, of course, in the traditional Western sense that this new sheriff has brought law and order. The ouster of Musharraf, which became a hot topic in our presidential campaign season, was supposed to enthrall lovers of democracy everywhere. But what has Asif Ali Zardari done since coming to power? Those are questions best answered by India and Afghanistan.

Even Pakistani media were acknowledging that the highly orchestrated, well-armed and well-trained attacks, with fighters coming across the sea from Karachi, indicated the involvement of Lashkar-e-Taiba, whose mouthpiece denied involvement in the attacks and amusingly went so far as to "demand an international inquiry" to clear their, ahem, good name. The group is branded as a terrorist organization by Pakistan, yet operates out of Lahore and trains fighters in Pakistan's share of Kashmir. And anyone who thinks that this week's carnage is another plug for Kashmiri independence needs to remember that the targets were Americans, Britons, and Jews. That's good ol' fashioned Islamic terrorism. That's an act of war.

Hmmm...

Actually, I should have called it a triple-pronged strategy, because the enemy is taking advantage of the fact that we have a new president, whom they regard with undisguised contempt (they were quick to insult him with the racial epithet), and they're probably hoping he's so green and weak that he won't stand up to them.

The strategy is despicably brilliant, which is why (despite much speculation) I'm sure Al Qaeda is behind it.

And what the hell, there might even be four prongs in their damned fork. With any luck, Pakistan will degenerate into complete chaos, and Al Qaeda's operatives will make off with one of their nukes.

Again, despicably brilliant.

And again, we're all in this together.

Researchers at a Hewlet Packard Laboratory have combined computer logic with at type of controllable variable resistor into a neural network that may in time be dense enough to mimic a human brain.

Also at the symposium, Snider unveiled a design that used memristors in their analog mode as synapses in a neural computing architecture. Memristor crossbars are the only technology that is dense enough to simulate the human brain, Snider claimed, adding that the HP Labs crossbars are ten times denser than synapses in the human cortex. By stacking crossbars on a CMOS logic chip, variable resistance could mimic the learning functions of synapses in neural networks.

HP Labs and Boston University were recently awarded a contract by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to build the first artificial neural network based on memristors.

Also at the conference, Massimiliano Di Ventra of the University of California at San Diego described how memristors can explain biological learning in amoebas.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Time Magazine chronicles the anti-gay movement in Florida led by Anita Briant. The year is 1977.

In the heat of the campaign, emotions have got out of hand. A gay worker was hospitalized after a beating; others have received crank calls. Urges a bumper sticker: KILL A QUEER FOR CHRIST. After receiving many telephone threats, Jack Campbell, a gay-rights leader, has installed guards around his house. Bryant has also hired security men because of phone warnings.

Meantime, Bryant has stepped up her rhetoric, telling one interviewer that God does not like homosexuality because "the male homosexual eats another man's sperm. Sperm is the most concentrated form of blood. The homosexual is eating life." During a debate with Gay Rights Activist Bob Kunst, she startled the audience by breaking into a stirring rendition of Battle Hymn of the Republic.

Many Miami homosexuals think that they will be the ultimate winners this week, even if they lose what is expected to be a close vote. Their reasoning: Bryant's spirited attack has encouraged homosexuals all over the country to come out of their closets. Already, gay groups from Boston to San Francisco are organizing as never before. Says Kunst: "We have created a national issue, and we intend to stay with it."

You spew hatred - you get hatred back. Proof that God is just. You have to wonder though. Bryant was the leader of an ostensibly Christian movement. Why did/do so many Christians have hate in their hearts? Such attitudes are hobbling the Republican Party considerably because some how the party got identified with the haters.

Of course the foundation for the hate is fear. But isn't living in fear the antithesis of having God in your heart?

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

Inspired? by this William Burroughs Thanksgiving Prayer.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

I'll be gone most of the day, so I thought I'd leave a little more "natural" art.

First, another photograph of the purely natural art that's been staring at me:

And here's some rodent art, which was carefully preserved inside a pet hobbyist book.

Finally, some VHS tapes from the late 80s and early 90s.

Most of them are unlabeled, and some have never been watched -- which makes them like newly discovered time capsules. Some of them I'm really glad to have found -- especially a bizarre 1991 interview of me during the construction of the nightclub I ran in those days, along with incredible footage of the artists at work painting the Neo-Impressionist paintings and building the gargoyles that adorned the interior. I'd share it, but it's in analog format, and I don't have the technology to convert it to DVD.

These tapes will not last forever, and they include lots of footage of people who are now dead which I recorded, so I'd like to save them. The problem is, there's a ton of stuff for sale out there, and I don't like reinventing the wheel. I was thinking of buying something which would convert VHS to DVD, and I've been looking at reasonably priced machines like this "Panasonic DMR-EZ47V Up-Converting 1080p DVD-Recorder/VCR Combo." Unfortunately, I'm not up on the technology (I don't know upconverting from downconverting, for example), and there are so many of these things with so many conflicting reviews that I don't know what to buy.

Any readers who have advice based on experience, I'm all ears. Bear in mind that some of these tapes are in bad, bad shape, and I simply want something that will save them -- in the best and hopefully simplest way possible.

If I wait too long, not only might the tapes bite the dust, but so will the VHS itself. (Once it goes the way of the Beta, it may be too late.)

For now, the best I can offer by way of "digital conversion" is the digital photograph of the analog tapes!

In light of my earlier post about terrorist attacks on Westerners in Mumbai, the idea of wishing people a Happy Thanksgiving feels a bit surreal.

However (via Glenn Reynolds), as Roger L. Simon explains, even in light of these horrific events, there is a way to say "Happy Thanksgiving" in an appropriate context:

The brutal events in Mumbai remind us all that the War on Terror is the real deal - not a police action, as the aforementioned Mr. Kerry once said - that will doubtless be with us for the rest of our lives. And that may include the young children at the table.

[...]

...It has long been my contention that the War on Terror (War on Islamofascism) will only be won if the Democratic Party owns it as well as the Republicans. Now that can happen, for better or worse. So, dear readers of this blog, when you gather around your tables today, love that family member who voted for the other side. You're going to need him or her and he or she is going to need you. We're all in this together.

Happy Thanksgiving!

So Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

I keep reading and hearing that Barack Obama is thinking of reneging on his campaign pledge to close Gitmo, and the issue came up in this often wry PJTV discussion between Glenn Reynolds and Michelle Malkin.

In light of the horrific events still unfolding in Mumbai, coupled with recently discovered plans to launch a terrorist attack against New York's Penn Station, I think shutting down Gitmo would be a distinct no-no, and is not likely to be in the offing.

For readers who want to catch up on the Mumbai attacks, José Guardia has a veritable ton of links, and I highly recommend going to his post (which Glenn Reynolds linked earlier), and checking them out.

It's a real horror show, and I hate to sound like a scold and say that America needed another wakeup call, but human nature is to forget what is unpleasant, and many Americans seem to have an emotional need to deny the war on terror out of existence the way they might use a remote to change an unappreciated TV channel. Big mistake.

Anyway, this report makes it 100% clear who it is the terrorists want dead. You and me, that's who!

The Associated Press reports one of the rescued hostages told reporters he had seen many bodies inside the hotel. He did not give his name.

Indian TV, meanwhile, reports government officials fear the death toll at the Taj Mahal hotel could be high, with as many as 80-90 bodies inside. Some of the dead appear to have been killed by the gunmen, while others may have died in subsequent explosions and fires.

Among the bodies removed are those of Australian, Japanese and British nationals.

A senior U.S. State Department official told FOX News that it could not yet confirm whether any Americans are among the casualties.

Meanwhile, Indian police reportedly are negotiating with gunmen holding hostages at the ultra-orthodox Jewish Chabad Lubavitch Center.

There were unconfirmed reports that some of the hostages at the Oberoi hotel are Israeli nationals.

The attackers specifically targeted Britons, Americans and Israelis at the hotels and restaurant, witnesses said.

On Thanksgiving?

According to this gruesome report, a lot of chef trainees were massacred:

Earlier, explosions rattled the nearby Taj Hotel, a 105-year-old city landmark on the waterfront, as the troops flushed out the last of the militants there. Fire and smoke plumed from an open window.

"The commandos are in control," Dipak Dutta told NDTV news after being rescued. As the troops escorted him through the corridors, they told him not to look down at any of the bodies.

"A lot of chef trainees were massacred in the kitchen."

At least six foreigners, including one Australian, a Briton, an Italian and a Japanese national were killed.

Those who survived told harrowing stories of close encounters.

Anyway, despite his campaign pledge (made when it was forgotten by the voters that we are at war), I don't think shutting it down will be at the top of Barack Obama's priority list.

Of course, there's always the question of what to tell the delusional anti-war activists who constitute Obama's base. As José notes, 32% of the American voters favor closing Gitmo, and while that was before the Thanksgiving reminder, there always remains that stubbornly delusional hard core of true believers in what they want to believe without regard to truth. (What are they? The True WannaBelievers?)

They're so delusional that maybe they have an emotional need to have the issues reframed for them. In that respect, I rather enjoyed the link José provided to a CNN story describing the Iraq War as a "humanitarian mission!" Said José,

YOU were right, Glenn; as soon as Obama got elected, the media would change its tune on Iraq.

My suggestion is that they do a similar reframing job with Gitmo. However, I don't think they should use the phrase "reeducation camp." That sounds too orthodox Maoist, and old-fashioned. Perhaps in line with the peace-and-love Kumbaya theme, it could be called the "Guantanamo Interfaith Outreach Center and Work Study Hostel."

Or if that's too much of a wishy-washy mouthful, maybe the "Guantanamo Sensitivity Training Center." By any standard, Islamist terrorists certainly have a lot to learn sensitivity-wise, and I think they need huge doses of um, therapy (possibly including "tough love" in recalcitrant cases). Not only are they are dreadfully sexist and ferociously anti-gay, but the number two man in Al Qaeda recently revealed deeply rooted racism when he hurled a racial insult at Barack Obama.

Furthermore, there's obviously a glut of sensitivity trainers, who are wasting valuable time forcing people into training who don't need it, like the college professor discussed here. How silly can we be, wasting such talent when the country needs them at Gitmo?

So let's get on with the reframing.

MORE: Phyllis Chesler has a comprehensive analysis of the Mumbai news so far, and asks a good question:

The West and non-Muslims around the world, have chosen to treat each attack separately, and not as part of a global war. What else will Islamic fundamentalists have to do to be dealt with as the enemy army they truly are?

UPDATE: My thanks to Glenn Reynolds for the link, and a warm welcome to all!

Your comments are appreciated.

For ongoing developments, don't miss José's latest roundup of innumerable news reports (which Glenn linked) -- including one about two Americans from Virginia being killed, as well as five hostages at the Jewish center.

Speaking of WorldNetDaily, the place has become almost a full time Birth Certificate Truther site. This morning I counted no less than eleven articles devoted to the subject at their front page.

The crux of the matter is the claim that the Hawaiian birth certificate -- which the state asserts is a legitimate record, and which states that Barack Obama was born in Honolulu -- is in fact fraudulent, and that Hawaii is lying.

The claim reveals such desperation that I'm beginning to feel sorry for the people who advance it, but once again (and I hope this is the last time), I feel obliged. After all, I'd hate to be lumped in with the cowardly sellouts condemned in this piece that WND prominently links:

Fox News: Total Silence. Did the healthy shares that Saudi Arabia bought of Fox influence the network's non-coverage of this story? After all, it's no secret which candidate the Saudis endorsed! We know that TV shows, including Fox, are on a seven-second delay, the better to bleep out offensive or inappropriate material. Doesn't it strike Fox viewers as strange that not one of their outspoken guests, even once, mentioned this story? Who warned them not to?

Rush Limbaugh: Total Silence. Why has the Excellence-in-Broadcasting's "Dr. of Democracy" - the man who eats sacred cows for breakfast - not touched this story?

Mark Levin: Total Silence. Why has this popular radio host, commonly known as "the Great One," abandoned his well-deserved reputation as a Constitutional scholar to studiously not address this Constitutional issue?

Laura Ingraham: Total Silence. Here is another radio powerhouse and former clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas taking pains not to mention this case...not a word!

Bill O'Reilly: Total Silence. Yes, the guy who claims he's "just looking out for the folks"...voiceless!

Sean Hannity: Total Silence. The iconic radio and TV host who tackles every controversial subject under the sun...missing in action!

I could go on and on, but you get the picture. The very people - the so-called loyal opposition - who should have been shouting this story from the rooftops for months on end went mute.

My repeated conclusion was that all they have is rumor based on alleged hearsay. Not enough even to come close to rebutting the legal presumption of legitimacy of a sovereign state's records.

Hawaii has officially certified that Barack Obama was born there, in Honolulu, Hawaii, on August 4, 1961, at 7:24 p.m.

That's not good enough for WND founder, editor and CEO Joseph Farah, who sees (presumably in the emanations from the Constitution's penumbra) some sort of constitutional right to know the exact name of the hospital where a candidate was born:

...the location of the hospital in which Barack Obama was born is something of a state secret.

It is information the American people should know, because it would be revealed on his birth certificate - if only we could see it.

The story, as told in Obama's ghostwritten autobiography, "Dreams of My Father," is that he was born in Hawaii Aug. 4, 1961. Yet, the only alleged birth certificate released by the Obama campaign lacks the significant details normally associated with such a document - like specifically where he was born.

A novel interpretation, but once again, it will never survive legal scrutiny. These people are whistling in the wind.

This is important constitutionally beyond proving mere citizenship. The Constitution requires presidents to be "natural born" Americans - meaning born within the United States. In Hawaii circa 1961, it was possible - even routine - to register foreign births.

Not good enough for Farah, who says that Jerome Corsi says that Obama's relatives gave him "testimony":

If, as some evidence strongly suggests, including the testimony of two Obama relatives to WND senior staff writer Jerome Corsi who say they were present when he was born in Mombasa, Kenya, in 1961, he was born abroad and merely registered in Hawaii, that would slam-dunk disqualify him from serving - unless, like John McCain, both his parents were U.S. citizens. Since Obama's autobiography also states that his mother was a minor and his father a citizen of Kenya, only the production of actual hospital records on a long-form birth certificate can provide the necessary information.

It all comes down to this: Hawaii says he was born there, and Corsi says that some relatives in Africa say he wasn't.

Where Corsi says that, I'm not sure; Farah does not provide a link.

Why?

The last time I looked at Corsi's claim, he cited an uncle who said he "was not sure... whether Barack Obama junior was born in Kenya or in Hawaii" along with a video of the step-grandmother which argues that when she said he was "a son of this village" she meant "a native of this village."

Anticipating the argument that he's wearing a tin-foil hat, Farah says he's only trying to dot every "i" and "t."

Does dotting every "i" and crossing every "t" when it comes to constitutional eligibility questions for the highest office in the land warrant being characterized as a "tin-foil hat conspiracist" as some of the self-proclaimed truth-detector sites on the Internet suggest?

I don't think so.

And I'm not afraid of being called derogatory names for defending the Constitution's literal meaning and clear standards for eligibility for office.

I know where George W. Bush was born - Grace-New Haven Community Hospital in Connecticut.

I know where Bill Clinton was born - the Julia Chester Hospital in Hope, Ark.

I even know Abraham Lincoln was born in a log cabin.

I predict that this will never go away, even if Obama happened to have in his possession and did manage to produce his "original" "hospital" "records."

After all, if the state Hawaii is lying, well, wouldn't a Hawaiian hospital lie too?

So I'm probably wasting my time. But at least no one can accuse me of being a Fox News, Limbaugh, Levin, Ingraham, O'Reilly, and Hannity sellout!

Once again, Little Green Footballs got it right:

Will this put a stop to the idiotic rumors? Of course not!

MORE: In answer to those who think I am wasting my time, I thought I should demonstrate how deadly seriously this argument is being taken at respected web sites. Just today, blogger "Joe the Farmer" at American Thinker devoted a great deal of time to the proposition "Why the Barack Obama Birth Certificate Issue Is Legitimate." Why this blogger is hesitant to put his own name on what he writes, I do not know. But he or she makes several points:

1. Under Hawaiian law, it is possible (both legally and illegally) for a person to have been born out of state, yet have a birth certificate on file in the Department of Health.

2. Contrary to what you may have read, no document made available to the public, nor any statement by Hawaiian officials, evidences conclusively that Obama was born in Hawaii.

The text that follows provides a link to an AP story headlined "State declares Obama birth certificate genuine" which says this:

HONOLULU (AP) -- State officials say there's no doubt Barack Obama was born in Hawaii.

Health Department Director Dr. Chiyome Fukino said Friday she and the registrar of vital statistics, Alvin Onaka, have personally verified that the health department holds Obama's original birth certificate.

That statement does not, however, verify that Obama was born in Hawaii, and as explained above, under Hawaiian policies and procedures it is quite possible that Hawaii may have a birth record of a person not born in Hawaii. Unlikely, but possible.

C. The document that the Obama campaign released to the public is a certified copy of Obama's birth record, which is not the best evidence since, even under Hawaiian law, the original vault copy is the better evidence. Presumably, the vault record would show whether his birth was registered by a hospital in Hawaii.

Moreover, according to Hawaiian officials, it cannot be released by the state -- even with Obama's permission:

In Hawai'i, birth, death, marriage and certain divorce documents can only be released to people with a "tangible interest," such as the people themselves, their parents, spouses, grandparents or other relatives.

As a result, Fukino said she does not believe Health Department officials could release Obama's birth certificate to the public even with his permission, although she would need to get a legal ruling to be certain.

Under this possibly erroneous assumption that all Obama needs to do is sign a release, "Joe" looks at Obama's possible reasons for refusing to provide the "long form" birth certificate:

4. Obama has refused to disclose the vault copy of his Hawaiian birth certificate. This raises the question whether he himself has established that he is eligible to be President. To date, no state or federal election official, nor any government authority, has verified that he ever established conclusively that he meets the eligibility standard under the Constitution. If the burden of proof were on him, perhaps as it should be for the highest office of any individual in America, the more-than-dozen lawsuits challenging his eligibility would be unnecessary.

...Strategically from a legal standpoint, therefore, his refusal to disclose doesn't make sense. Weighing factors such as costs, resources and complexity of disclosing versus not disclosing, he must have reason of considerable downside in disclosing, or upside in not disclosing. There may be other reasons, but one could speculate that he hasn't disclosed because:

1. He was not born in Hawaii, and may not be eligible to be President;

2. He was born in Hawaii, but facts that may be derived from his vault copy birth certificate are inconsistent with the life story he has told (and sold);

3. He was born in Hawaii, and his refusal to provide the best evidence that he is a natural born citizen is a means by which to draw criticism of him in order to make him appear to be a "victim." This would energize his supporters. This would also make other charges about him seem suspect, including his concealment about ties to Bill Ayers and others of some infamy. Such a clever yet distasteful tactic would seem to be a Machiavelli- and Saul-Alinsky-style way to manipulate public opinion. But while this tactic may energize his supporters, it would convince those who believe him to be a manipulator that he's not only just that, but a real pro at it. This would indeed be the basest reason of all, and would have repercussions about his trustworthiness (both here and abroad), which Americans know, is a characteristic sorely lacking in its leaders.

As to reason 3, I have long thought the reason was along such lines. Whether it's a "clever yet distasteful tactic" and "basest reason of all" with "repercussions about his trustworthiness," I don't know. Barack Obama might consider the behavior of the Truthers to be beneath contempt. Considering that most of them feel the same way about him and the complete absence of any substantiation of a birth in Kenya, it strikes me as more along the lines of typical political hardball on both sides than a distasteful Machiavellian ploy. As I said back in July,

If by doing nothing Obama can engender this sort of paranoia, that's probably an excellent reason for him to continue to do nothing.

Especially if he knows he's on safe ground.

Sooner or later, Obama may decide to get a court to order the State of Hawaii to release whatever they have in that vault. If he does, and if it simply proves what the short form certifies, the Truthers are going to look ridiculous.

Naturally, they'll blame Barack Obama for making them look ridiculous, and they'll say "Why did he make this hard? He could have made this easy!"

Again, the whole thing reminds me of Andrew Sullivan demanding Sarah Palin's records.

They have stated on the record that Sarah Palin is Trig's biological mother. But they refuse to provide one iota of confirming evidence.

I mean: what's the problem here? Why is this so hard?

Because Obama is making it hard!

UPDATE: Intellectual Conservative takes a common sense look at the possibility of Obama's birth in Kenya:

For Obama to have been born in Kenya, Ann Dunham and Barack Obama Sr. would have had to fly from Honolulu to Mombasa, give birth in a substandard third world hospital, fly back and then somehow arrange for a fraudulent birth certificate to be entered by the State of Hawai`i on August 8, 1961 (at the time governed by Republican William Quinn). They would have also somehow planted the phony birth announcement in the Honolulu Advertiser (at the time edited by Republican Thurston Twigg-Smith) and the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. Hawai`i's current Republican Governor Linda Lingle would also have to be complicit in the cover-up as would all of the leftist 1960s University of Hawaii friends of Ann Dunham and Barack Obama Sr - among them US Rep. Neil Abercrombie.

In 1961, the roundtrip flight to Kenya would have been a very expensive, pointless, and time consuming epic journey for two starving students. Barack Obama Sr. had only been able to come study at UH Manoa with a free ticket on a donated charter flight with other Kenyan students.

I think the whole operation (international travel, plus pointlessly sophisticated fraud) would have been pretty tough for a pregnant teenage mom to pull off.

Reflecting on Glenn Reynolds' happy reaction to the news of the Robert Gates appointment, ("I'm beginning to feel like I won this election!"), John Hawkins takes issue with the emergent view of Barack Obama as a centrist:

Obama is not a centrist and he's not filling his cabinet up with them either. Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and the overwhelming majority of staffers Obama is bringing on are hard core liberals. The Kos crowd may not always look at it like that, but the netroots think anyone who doesn't want to prosecute Bush for war crimes or deliberately lose the war in Iraq is practically a Republican.

Activists on the far left (who call themselves "progressives) are not "liberal" by any stretch of the imagination, although they get lumped together with liberals by simplistic phraseology. The Berkeley political "spectrum" is so skewed to the left that city elections pit McGovern Democrats ("the right") against Marxist activists ("the left"). McGovern Democrats in Berkeley are so used to being seen as "conservatives," or "the right" that they just take it in stride, and this leads the Marxists to imagine that they really are doing battle with right wing reactionaries.

A similar process occurs on the right -- and as I've often pointed out, to many rightists today, Barry Goldwater would a liberal. (Similarly, I've asked whether not agreeing with the Family Research Council is the new definition of RINO....)

The far reaches of the left and the right are so much louder than everyone else that the debate becomes distorted, leading many to believe that the "choice" is between the far left and the far right.

Activists on both sides like it that way, because they want the playing field to themselves.

MORE: I'm wondering what sort of outcry there might have been had McCain been elected and started behaving in a similar manner (by, say, appointing country club Republican centrists and Lieberman liberals).

Sure, he'd be getting a fierce scolding from the WorldNetDaily right.

But would he be getting any credit from the left?

Obviously, what he'd get from the "progressive" left would be the usual cries for impeachment and war crimes tribunals. As to the mainstream media left, I wonder. I think the only credit he'd be likely to get would be from an occasional liberal blogger with integrity.

(Fortunately, there's no way to keep bloggers off the playing field....)

There is a rather long discussion going on at the post The Government IS The Devil. In that post I suggested that the government was limited to protecting public order and that its intrusion into the business of schools (currently a socialist enterprise called the Public School System) and the socialization of morality through ventures such as alcohol prohibition and drug prohibition was wrong headed and that the championing of all three by Cultural Conservatives in an attempt to bring True Morality to the American Public through the use of government guns was at minimum misguided and at worst a consorting with evil in the hopes of doing good. And we all know how bargains with the Devil usually work out. Everything is going swimmingly and then the balloon payment becomes due.

Now a commenter brought up this point.

By advocating absolute liberty as an end to itself, devoid of any contextual reality such as the role of virtue, you're asking people to ask their government to stand for...nothing.

"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual."

In any case I'm not asking the government to stand for nothing. I'm asking it to stand for Liberty.

Probably the scariest substance on earth. Also the costliest.

What a weak lot so many Americans have become to be so afraid of Liberty. Men died to give it to you and you treat it like a toxic substance. I laugh at your wretched condition. Groveling before government to protect you from Liberty. Not a man among you - those who fear Freedom.

"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquillity of servitude than the animating contest of freedom -- go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen!" Samuel Adams

Cross Posted at Power and Control

In what's becoming increasingly common, traditional children's Thanksgiving Day costumes have been banned by a school board because activists have complained:

For decades, Claremont kindergartners have celebrated Thanksgiving by dressing up as pilgrims and Native Americans and sharing a feast. But on Tuesday, when the youngsters meet for their turkey and songs, they won't be wearing their hand-made bonnets, headdresses and fringed vests.

Parents in this quiet university town are sharply divided over what these construction-paper symbols represent: A simple child's depiction of the traditional (if not wholly accurate) tale of two factions setting aside their differences to give thanks over a shared meal? Or a cartoonish stereotype that would never be allowed of other racial, ethnic or religious groups?

"It's demeaning," Michelle Raheja, the mother of a kindergartner at Condit Elementary School, wrote to her daughter's teacher. "I'm sure you can appreciate the inappropriateness of asking children to dress up like slaves (and kind slave masters), or Jews (and friendly Nazis), or members of any other racial minority group who has struggled in our nation's history."

Raheja, whose mother is a Seneca, wrote the letter upon hearing of a four-decade district tradition, where kindergartners at Condit and Mountain View elementary schools take annual turns dressing up and visiting the other school for a Thanksgiving feast. This year, the Mountain View children would have dressed as Native Americans and walked to Condit, whose students would have dressed as Pilgrims.

Raheja, an English professor at UC Riverside who specializes in Native American literature, said she met with teachers and administrators in hopes that the district could hold a public forum to discuss alternatives that celebrate thankfulness without "dehumanizing" her daughter's ancestry.

"There is nothing to be served by dressing up as a racist stereotype," she said.

She gets her way because she is an activist, and she knows how to intimidate people. As I've observed innumerable times, intimidation works, and it is why activists win.

Ordinary people (like the parents, whose kids just want to have fun) get sucked into these debates and naturally tend to focus on the issue at hand, as if that's all there is to it. Like the cowardly bureaucrats who cave to the activists, they often fail to see that activists have a much bigger picture. The goal here is not merely to prevent kids from having fun, or even to ruin Thanksgiving permanently.

Rather, it's just one small step.

These activists are relentless, and seek nothing less than the complete destruction of the enemy, which is of course white American racist imperialism. Professor Raheja's department, for example, wants Andrew Jackson taken off the 20 dollar bill.

The children's costumes are just one issue, not the issue.

Unfortunately, the only way to stop activists is to refuse to give one inch. Let them scream and yell and have their tantrums. Let them hurl insults and call people racists, call the cops if they resort to attacks on people or property, and eventually, they might give up. The problem is that politicians, bureaucrats, and corporate executives all subscribe to the philosophy of appeasement. Give them what they demand in order to make the present controversy go away. While this only emboldens them, and they'll be back later with more and more of their endless demands, it solves the apparent problem right now, so it is very appealing "solution" to those who want to avoid embarrassing confrontations.

Fortunately, parents and this local blog are fighting back at the bureaucratic appeasers:

One aspect of this affair that is entirely despicable is the cowardly cowering by Superintendent David Cash and principals Tim Northrop and Clara Arocha. According to the Times article, "Cash and the principals of Condit and Mountain View did not respond to interview requests." What's the matter? Cat got their tongues? These are public employees, and they ought to be willing and able to defend and explain their decisions.

The action starts tomorrow morning at 8 when the parents send their kids to school. At 9, the kids are scheduled to head up to Condit. We'll see if the teachers have confiscated the contraband construction-paper costumes.

A poll shows 99% support for the children's costumes.

Yet even though we think that "democracy rules," it only takes a single activist to defeat an overwhelming majority.

That's because in the real world, bureaucracy rules.

The bright side is that the bureaucrats are also intimidated by an angry majority -- even an angry majority of non-activists.

UPDATE: My thanks to Fausta for the link, and a Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Watching the sunset from this house is always a treat, and much better than television. Today was especially spectacular, because, while it was overcast all day, the sun broke through at the last minute in a most peculiar, other-worldly manner. Here's a view from inside the house.

To give an idea of how the window glass filters out the color when the camera is used, here's a view from outside the window, as the sun got lower.

And speaking of heavenly images, here's something else I found:

Yeah, I know, modern art sucks and all that. But I can't bear to throw it away.

(Hmmm.. Maybe now that it's online, it doesn't matter what happens to the original.)

MORE: By way of comparison, here's Salvador Dalí's "News of the
Lower Depths of Hell" from the Divine Comedy series.

Why the elephant-like figure is eating the woman on the right, I don't know.

I'm not sure about whether making convicted noisemakers listen to music they don't like isn't carrying "an eye for an eye" too far:

FORT LUPTON -- Barry Manilow's "I Write the Songs" may begin with the line, "I've been alive forever,'" but for noise ordinance violators, listening to Manilow may feel like forever.

Fort Lupton Municipal Judge Paul Sacco says his novel punishment of forcing noise violators to listen to music they don't like for one hour has cut down on the number of repeat offenders in this northwestern Colorado prairie town.

About four times a year, those guilty of noise ordinance violations are required to sit in a room and listen to music from the likes of Manilow, Barney the Dinosaur, and The Platters' crooning "Only You"

"These people should have to listen to music they don't like," said Judge Paul Sacco for a segment about the program that aired Friday on Denver's KUSA-TV.

Sacco began the program years ago when he noticed that many of the repeat offenders simply showed up at his courtroom to pay their fine with cash.

And might this technique backfire? I mean, suppose some of these miscreants are psychopaths, and they hate Barry Manilow so much that they get even with society by driving around blasting peaceful neighborhoods with "I write the songs"?

The problem with these things is that one man's torment is another man's joy. My favorite awful song of torment happens to be "Hamburger Lady" by Throbbing Gristle.

Seriously, it gives me the creeps to listen to it, even though I think it evokes a pretty accurate musical picture of the charbroiled woman the song is about.

The lyrics:

Hamburger Lady
Hamburger Lady

She's dying,
She is burned from the waist up,
On her arm,
Her ear is burned,
Her eyelashes are burned,
She can't hold things up,
And even with medical advances,
There's no end in sight,
For hamburger lady,
She wants me to tell you of her claim mind,
From which the double play laying,
The proping chair,
Leave her,
She's Burned from the waist down,
Has to eat her life through tubes,

I think that if you played that at concert hall pitch for a manacled and hooded prisoner, it would be pretty upsetting.

Whether it would cure him of his exhibitionistic need to blast strangers, I don't know.

I'm wondering whether a more fitting punishment might be to make them develop new and negative associations with the music they do like. You know, the way they wrecked Beethoven for Alex in "A Clockwork Orange"?

Judicially, I can't tell whether the idea of forcing Manilow on the noisemakers is along the lines of an eye for an eye or a form of aversive therapy. It reminds me of the way parents in the old days would punish a kid they caught smoking by forcing him to smoke an entire cigar -- a technique which apparently worked with golfing coach George Pinnell.

What about Barry Manilow? Has he any right to not have his music used as aversive therapy? Or does he only have a right to get the money from ASCAP from whoever plays it?

Years ago, some people who worked in a restaurant I frequented complained to me about gangster rap kids who would come in late at night and hang out at the bar without drinking and without ordering food, and who would blast the patrons with their music in the parking lot. They wondered what might discourage them, and they debated playing country music, but worried that the regulars they wanted to keep wouldn't like it. I suggested playing the Grateful Dead, and to my amazement, they tried it and later told me it worked like a charm. The gangster rap kids looked more and more bored and eventually stopped hanging out there.

But these people were free to leave. I'm partial to the Dead and I'd never want anyone to be forced to listen to it as punishment.

As to John Lennon's "Imagine," that's another matter.

Yes, in what comes as very sad news to me, apparently irony died on the day Barack Obama was elected president. So stated the now-disgruntled Joan Didion (who didn't say whether she voted for or against irony):

The week after the election, in a talk at the New York Public Library, Ms. Didion lamented that the United States in the era of Barack Obama had become an "irony-free zone," a vast Kool-Aid tank where "naïveté, translated into 'hope,' was now in" and where "innocence, even when it looked like ignorance, was now prized."

Who'd want to live in a world like that?

Can I just say "Gag me with a spoon"?

The Times goes on to point out that "no self-respecting ironist actually uses the word "ironic," except, perhaps, ironically."

What about self-dissing ironists? I don't know what the permissible categories are for anything anymore, and I'm just baffled. I wish I had not seen this piece, which I saw not because I read the Times, but only because the fearless Ann Althouse linked it. She also offers some constructive criticism of both the Times and its one-way source:

The Times -- struggling mightily to develop its theme -- tried to get Didion to explain herself:

"Basically," she said on the phone Tuesday, "I don't like to talk about anything I've written or that I'm writing. What you write down, there it is and you've done it."

Which means: Fuck you, I'm a wordsmith.

The problem with Didion's remark is that she's being disingenuous. What the Times said she said was that she was "not... willing to elaborate on her talk." And this was a talk she gave -- specifically "a talk at the New York Public Library." Am I confused, or does "a talk" now mean "something I write down"? (The article does not say that she read from a prepared text, and there's no mention of a teleprompter.)

As the Times notes, there's a piece that P.J. O'Rourke has not finished yet, with the irresistible title of "Is It Too Soon to Start Talking About the Failed Obama Presidency Just Because He Isn't President Yet?" I'd read it, but it's nowhere to be found. However, it's never too soon to start blogging about the unfinished "too soon to talk about" piece. (Many already have, so I'm just a Johnny-come-lately.) Truly, it's one of the most timely pieces I've never read.

Of course, if Joan Didion had commenters, she would soon learn that not only can you face criticism for what you have written down, but for what you haven't! Nothing could be more unfair.

If there's one thing I love to hate, it's when people criticize me for stuff I have not written about.

I mean, what you have not written down, there it isn't and you haven't done it.

MORE: Speaking of things I don't write about, I'd like to lodge a complaint here about the annoying and tyrannical umlaut the Times places over the "i" in "naïveté." I realize that it might be grammatically correct, but sheesh. I can't copy and paste an umlautted "i"; instead I have to laboriously write out "ampersand i uml" plus a semicolon, or else just scratch the umlaut and substitute an ordinary "i" -- which would constitute misquoting, wouldn't it?

Damn. Them.

MORE: While not mentioning irony by name, Glenn Reynolds links the Althouse post and quotes the O'Rourke title, while allowing that he's willing to wait:

...I'm waiting until at least February, I think. Just to be sporting. Besides, he's looking ever more hawkish and tax-cutting, so who knows -- things may work out . . . .

Especially the future of irony.

Seriously, Obama the tax-cutting hawk?

Or Obama the hawkish tax-cutter. Whatever.

Let's keep hope alive!

Scientist at DOE's Ames Laboratory in Ames, Iowa, have found a material that is very hard and slicker than teflon by a factor of 2.5X.

A superhard substance that is more slippery than Teflon could protect mechanical parts from wear and tear, and boost energy efficiency by reducing friction.

The "ceramic alloy" is created by combining a metal alloy of boron, aluminium and magnesium (AlMgB14) with titanium boride (TiB2). It is the hardest material after diamond and cubic boron nitride.

BAM, as the material is called, was discovered at the US Department of Energy Ames Laboratory in Iowa in 199, during attempts to develop a substance to generate electricity when heated.

Those chance findings have now developed into a $3-million programme at the Ames Lab to develop the BAM into a kind of eternal lubricant, a coating for moving parts to boost energy efficiency and longevity by reducing friction.

BAM is much slipperier than Teflon, with a coefficient of friction of .02 compared to .05. Lubricated steel has a friction coefficient of 0.16.

One way to exploit this slipperiness is to coat the rotor blades in everyday pumps used in everything from heating systems to aircraft, says Russel. A slick BAM coating of just 2 microns could reduce friction between the blades and their housing, meaning less power is needed to produce the same pumping power.

Bruce Cook, lead investigator on the Ames Lab project, estimates that merely coating rotors with the material could save US industry alone 330 trillion kilojoules (9 billion kilowatt hours) every year by 2030 - about $179 million a year.

BAM is also potentially attractive as a hard coating for drill bits and other cutting tools. Diamond is commonly used for this, and is harder, but it reacts chemically with steel and so degrades relatively quickly when used to cut the metal.

One of the things this article points out is that you never know what you will find when you start looking - if you are paying attention.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

I'm having a conversation with one of my social conservative friends about marriage and child welfare. This is what I had to say:

The government IS the Devil. Not metaphorically. Really.

Everything you get from government will have a price much larger than the value of the object gained. Some times the price will not be extracted from you. Sometimes it will be from your children, your grand children, or ten generations hence. But the full price the government wants will be extracted at compound interest.

We are still paying the price for trying to be a free people while holding slaves. My great great grand parents lived on another continent when all that went on. And yet the price is being extracted from me.

What I'm trying to teach you is that the only way out is Liberty. You put the government in charge of other people's children for their own good and some day the government will come after yours. Either intervene in a bad situation personally or leave it alone. There is no other way to save your Liberty.

A commenter who read this post said it was good but that he would have liked a longer exposition. So here goes:

Government IS the devil. Social conservatives of a different era got government into the marriage business to prevent race mixing. Cultural conservatives are now paying the price for their error.

The only answer that is equitable to all is to get government out of marriage: the libertarian solution. You really do not want government protecting your culture. Because some day in a way you can't imagine the protections sought will be used against your culture.

As I have been harping on since the election. The libertarian view (small limited government) is your best protection. You are now coming against Cultural Socialism. It is just as bad, maybe worse, than Economic Socialism. The answer is not more law to fix the law that created the mess. It is less law.

Government out of marriage.

How about a different example. Cultural conservatives of a different era were one of the forces behind the public school movement. They were intent on indoctrinating Catholic and Jewish immigrants into Real Americanism. Cultural Socialism at its finest. So laws were passed and now government controls the schools and you know social conservatives lost control. They instituted Cultural Socialism by passing laws and control got away from them.

Government out of the school business.

Some people wanted to use the law as a bludgeon. And now that bludgeon is being used against their offspring a number of generations down the road. The Devil will always get his due.

Government IS the Devil.

In any area that you chose to get government to do something for you it will ultimately be allowed to do something against you.

Which is why cultural conservatives have more to gain from libertarians than just their votes.

Down with Cultural Socialism.

"Any government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take it all away." And that is not just true about economics. It is true about culture as well. Take it to heart.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Via Glenn Reynolds, I read about the Gender Analyzer War. (Just plug in any blog URL at the Gender Analyzer, and it will tell you how male the blogger is.)

While the ostensible blog manliness showdown initially arose between Jules Crittenden and Gateway Pundit (the former being a whopping 95% male in contrast to the latter's "girly" 53%), they're also snarking at Glenn's 64% manliness factor. To which Glenn replies,

Personally, I'm quite comfortable with my feminine side.

We think http://www.classicalvalues.com/ is written by a man (72%).

Hmmm....

Of course, Sullivan devotes a huge amount of time (more than almost any major blogger) to obsessing about homosexuality. So I wondered.... might homosexuality increase the maleness factor?

While I don't think this blog is obsessed with homosexuality, it just so happens that yesterday I wrote a long and detailed post about sordid homosexual sex in restrooms.

So I entered the post URL in the Gender Analyzer, and sure enough, the maleness went up dramatically:

We think http://www.classicalvalues.com/archives/2008/11/part_of_the_cul.html is written by a man (81%).

Except somehow, I don't like the way that looks.

There is a really interesting discussion going on between Kelly and Edgar in the comments at the Power and Control post Sanctification. May I suggest a read?

Clayton Cramer is irritated by the loss of privacy in men's rooms, caused by the removal of doors to toilet stall doors. Apparently the door removal is being mandated by governments which want to prevent homosexual conduct.

...Ladies, you may not be aware of this, but in many public men's rooms, especially in roadside rest areas, there are no doors on the stalls. Women's restrooms don't have this indignity--and for a reason.

This is a sore subject to me today. I was driving back from Bend to Boise, and nature didn't just call--but screamed--on a lonely stretch of U.S. 20 between Bend and Burns. I pulled into a roadside rest area to use the men's room.

Having to do your business sitting down in a public restroom is stressful enough already, but without even the modicum of privacy of a door that closes makes the situation even more unpleasant. And seeing the general filth of the toilet made me just endure the scream of nature until I got to Ontario. (Yes, there's not much on that road.)

And why do men's public restrooms get this additional degradation--but not women's public restrooms? Because some gay men use public restroom stalls for casual, completely anonymous sexual assignations. Senator Larry "Wide Stance" Craig (R-ID) briefly brought this whole sordid behavior to the attention of the public, but because it didn't fit the popular culture's image of homosexuality as an enlightened alternative lifestyle, the popular media did their best to spin the story as "hypocritical conservative Republican" rather than asking why this is a depressingly common part of the culture of gay men.

Now, while there is a very vocal group of activists who lay claim to "gay culture," that does not legitimize any claim by such activists that all people of a homosexual nature belong to it. Nor does it legitimize claims by the activists' opponents that a given homosexual person belongs to any such alleged culture.

But for the umpteenth time, let me admit my bias: I abhor identity politics, and think it's unreasonable to define people by their genital conduct, much less build a culture around it.

Cramer also suspects that it isn't the majority of gay men who have sex in restrooms:

...I suspect that a majority of gay men don't have sex in public toilets. But the ones that do aren't exactly rare, and because they can't exercise enough self-control to go somewhere else for sex, they have caused this degrading loss of privacy in public restrooms--and force the rest of us exercise enormous self-control all the way from the Burns, Oregon, to Ontario, Oregon.

The next logical step, of course, would be to shut down all public restrooms. Because some people have sex in them. Does this make sense? If you're a government bureaucrat, yes. Maintenance costs go down, and revenues increase when police issue the inevitable citations for public urination. (Which can always be charged as "indecent exposure" in order to force a "deal.")

Cramer also looks at the intriguing question of what constitutes being "gay":

Over the years, I have been repeatedly told by gay activists that men who have sex with other men in public restrooms aren't necessarily gay--that they are overwhelmingly straight men. If that makes you brain start to catch fire and explode--let me explain that gay activists insist that a person's sexuality isn't defined by who they have sex with, or even who they want to have sex with--but with which sexual orientation they publicly identify themselves. So a man who is married to a woman, but cruises public restrooms for anonymous sex with another man--why, he's straight! Someone who makes an argument like that is obviously confused about more than just their sexual identity.

Is there a gay counterpart to the "man who is married to a woman, but cruises public restrooms for anonymous sex with another man"? Actually, I have known bisexual men who would have preferred women who nonetheless have functioned as lovers to gay men. I once employed an openly gay man whose lover did prefer women and who found gratification in heterosexual pornography. It was a constant struggle for the gay guy to cope with this and he was constantly worried that his lover would leave him for a woman. This is not common, but it does happen, and the otherwise "straight" guys who do this are referred to as "trade." Some gay men are immensely turned on by the whole phenomenon, and while it isn't discussed much (and is fraught with obvious contradictions) it does exist. These men are clearly not "straight" though, and they would have to be called bisexual. The relationships tend not to work out very well, and the guys I've known who have been into that run through one "straight" lover after another, usually because the initial turn-on was occasioned by the partner being "straight" -- and obviously, the more it continues, the less "straight" he becomes. (Either that or the guy finds a woman.) So the built-in half life is very short.

The reason I raised this point about "trade" was not merely to posit a counterpart to Cramer's hypothetical, but because I have noticed over the years that these "straight" men willing to have sex with gays are precisely what many of the gay men who are into restroom sex are looking for. Whether they're straight or not, the fact is that restrooms by their nature enable these men to have a furtive type of contact that they would never otherwise allow themselves to have. These types won't dare go to a gay bars and look openly for sex because that would be like admitting they're gay, and they don't want to do that. So they sit there passively in the stalls, waiting and hoping for attention. Whether they're closeted gays, occasional dabblers in bisexuality, or some strange unidentified new sexual minority is an interesting topic for debate.

Cramer wonders why this sort of conduct is still going on:

Idaho Democratic bloggers like to claim that there's something unhealthy or weird about "obssessing" about homosexuality. I'm actually obssessing about the loss of privacy. If gay men want to signal to other gay men (excuse me, "straight men who like to have random, anonymous sex with other straight men") to go somewhere in private for their actions, we wouldn't have lost the bathroom stall doors!

In 1960, or 1970, or even 1980, when homosexuality was illegal in most states, or even socially octracized in the other states, I could somewhat see the argument for why this behavior was being done in this anonymous and degrading way. But today? Or, for that matter, any time in the last ten years?

Do what you want in private. But do it in private. I want the bathroom stall doors back.

I don't think talking about this constitutes "obsessing about homosexuality," because the subject received national attention with the Larry Craig case. Craig is still married and still denies being gay. As to what he is, far be it from me to say.

However, I don't think public restrooms have much appeal to your garden variety gay man who wants to pick up another garden variety gay man. While there's probably a small amount of that, I think much of the appeal exists among those we would call "in the closet" and among those into both sides of what has long been called "trade." The fact that homosexuality is legal and there are openly gay pickup places is completely lost on such people.

As to "privacy," in what I think is an ironic twist, many of those who seek sex in restrooms do so precisely because see the restrooms as offering privacy. By privacy, I mean privacy of the mind -- the sort that is not offered by gay bars, and which is lost when a man becomes openly identified as gay. Restrooms offer anonymity, and anonymity is seen as privacy.

Like it or not, there are men who have sex with men who do not want the "gay" label, because penalties attach.

Don't blame me; I don't make these "rules."

I can't even make sense out of them.

I just got a comment at one of my blog posts on the attitude Real Republicans™ should take towards homosexuals. I ain't naming names or quoting the rest of the text but here is the gist of it:

Leviticus 18:22

[22] You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female; it is an abomination.

Romans 1:25-28

[25] For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.

[26] For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, [27] and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error.

[28] And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper

1 Corinthians 6:9-10

[9] Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals , nor sodomites, [10] nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God.

==

Well you get the idea.

Not only will them homos not get the Kingdom of God, they are to be persecuted here on earth by a True Christian Government™ which the True Christians™ of the Real Republican Party™ will bring us any day now. As soon as they get elected.

Sounds like a winner to me.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Perhaps I'm a callused and insensitive bastard, but I'm well aware that unless they are eaten alive (which happens only in certain other countries it is racist to criticize), animals have to be killed before being eaten. While animal rights activists and radical vegans do not like this, people who eat meat obviously accept the inevitable killing which is a precursor to their meal.

If they don't, well, then there's something seriously wrong with the way they think. I like to assume that normal people think in a normal manner, and that people who eat meat have to know that it came from an animal which was slaughtered.

So yesterday when I read that Governor Sarah Palin held a press conference after her annual "turkey pardon" at a turkey farm while turkeys were being slaughtered in the background, I assumed that this Huffington Post reaction (calling the turkey killings "surreal" and "gruesome") that Ann Althouse blogged about was just an example of animal rights activist fare. Anyway, I agreed with her reaction:

Deal with it, you candy-asses. If you eat meat, something like that is going on in the background for you too.

Until this morning, when Glenn Reynolds linked the Althouse post again along with this gem from Tim Blair, I had not realized that the "candy-ass" commotion was not limited to animal rights activists.

It's now mainstream.

These are some of the headlines:

TURKEYS DIE AS GOVERNOR PALIN TAKES QUESTIONS FROM MEDIA

GOV. SARAH KEEPS TALKING WHILE TURKEYS GET SLAUGHTERED BEHIND HER

GOV. PALIN APPARENTLY OBLIVIOUS TO TURKEY CARNAGE OVER HER SHOULDER

What did they expect her to do? Intervene?

No way could all of these people be vegans or animal rights activists. Surely, the movement hasn't infiltrated that far, that fast. Have they? Or are these people living in denial, imagining that their food is manufactured in factories somewhere?

Beats me.

Here's the video that's caused all the commotion:

Under the circumstances, I find myself wondering why there was no similar outrage over this gruesome scene:

Imagine. Not only was that animal slaughtered while still alive, but its dead body was then severed into pieces, with the flesh on one of its legs finally torn apart by the teeth of a man who then swallowed it -- the latter in full view of reporters and photographers. And after all of that, he was elected president.

So where's the outrage from mainstream candy-assdom?

UPDATE: In a post three years ago, I noticed that "tasteless beheading videos used to be shown on television" (in children's cartoons made in the 1940s and recycled over the years for Thanksgiving) and I found this animated gif:

As I noted,

The country was more rural in the 40s, and rural people tend not to have as much of a problem knowing where their food comes from.

I'd hate to give Sarah Palin's candy-ass critics ideas.

UPDATE: My thanks to Glenn Reynolds for linking this post, and a warm welcome to all.

As to the gruesome Obama poultry photo which shocked Glenn, it was M. Simon who found it. (It's so damning that it might have been suppressed permanently had he not.)

All comments appreciated!

I have always wondered why Christian social conservatives have trouble with gay marriage. Most Christian social conservatives have no problem with domestic partnerships. So it can't be legal rights.

So I'm guessing here that since they are always going on about the sacredness of marriage it must be something else. Holy matrimony. And what are the words of the ceremony? "What God has joined together let no man put asunder." "What God has joined together." So the unions are considered unholy by God's laws. OK. That makes sense. At least in their eyes. But look at the contradiction. It is no longer God who decides. It is not even the Church. After all there are many things holy in one church or religion that are unholy in others and yet those things do not seem to matter in a pluralistic America. For instance communion wafers if blessed by the Catholic Church are holy in that church and in other churches they are just crackers. There is no outcry about that. So I'm trying to see what it is. It can't be the sanctification by the Church or a church.

What seems to be the problem is the not the authority of the Church. The problem is the authority of the State to confer the status of marriage. So churches are no longer the arbiter between God and man. The state is the arbiter. So let me ask my Christian social conservative friends. Isn't making the state the arbiter between God and man a Christian heresy?

Which leads me to believe that it all went wrong with the Emperor Constantine who joined Christianity with the power of the State. It has been 1,700 years and despite that passage of time Christians still have not recovered. Jefferson with his "wall of separation" is derided by most Christian social conservatives. And yet in a way not recognized he was attempting to return Christians to their roots. And their roots were definitely not in the power of the state. In fact the state was originally considered the source of much wickedness. But now the State is considered the source of holiness. Well people can believe what they want to believe. I consider it passing strange though. Secular authorities confer holiness. That would make the State a religion. Well the worship of temporal power has always had quite a following. The The Egyptians had their god king or pharaoh. The later Romans were big on that sort of thing. The Middle Ages in Europe had it in a somewhat attenuated form. The Divine Right of Kings. So there is considerable historical precedent. Why not America? Why not the Church of America which confers holiness on a given marriage? Even stranger is that America has just elected The One. Well his divinity is tethered by a rather fragile thread. He will be Holy and Righteous only so long as he does what his followers want him to do. A complete inversion of what Modern religions believe. You are supposed to get holy by following religion not by religion following you. Some one is in for a rude awakening. Either That One or his followers.

The State is my shepherd. I shall not want. The cry of Socialists from the days of Karl Marx. "A Republic if you can keep it." Of course the State as a religion was the downfall of the Roman Republic. So it looks like we can't keep it. After a 1,700 year fight get get back to republican government it took only another 200 years or so to lose it. And why is that? Because the State as a religion is always tugging at humans. They like it. They have liked it for as long as there have been States. Well most of them like it. Me? Not so much. The Emperor is naked. He is also stark raving mad. But don't tell him that. It upsets the Emperor and enrages his followers.

So now maybe some of you can get a glimmer of why I have an antipathy to the State as arbiter of economics or culture. Those are both faces of the State as religion. Worship the one true god or face punishment. And with the state having the guns the punishment need not wait until the hereafter. Of course it is no longer a matter of the State just punishing the wicked which is probably a lawful job. Now a days the State can punish the merely sinful. That will keep folks on the straight and narrow. Or else cause a rebellion. Depending.

It is rather obvious that humans are more than passing strange. Interesting to watch though. Very interesting.

Naturally, not being well versed in Christian doctrine I'm sure my social conservative friends will show me the error of my ways. Have at it guys.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Scientists are finding surpising value in the daily use of small amounts of marijuana.

Ohio State University scientists are finding that specific elements of marijuana can be good for the aging brain by reducing inflammation there and possibly even stimulating the formation of new brain cells.

Their research suggests that the development of a legal drug that contains certain properties similar to those in marijuana might help prevent or delay the onset of Alzheimer's disease. Though the exact cause of Alzheimer's remains unknown, chronic inflammation in the brain is believed to contribute to memory impairment.

Any new drug's properties would resemble those of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the main psychoactive substance in the cannabis plant, but would not share its high-producing effects. THC joins nicotine, alcohol and caffeine as agents that, in moderation, have shown some protection against inflammation in the brain that might translate to better memory late in life.

"It's not that everything immoral is good for the brain. It's just that there are some substances that millions of people for thousands of years have used in billions of doses, and we're noticing there's a little signal above all the noise," said Gary Wenk, professor of psychology at Ohio State and principal investigator on the research.

In any case to prevent memory loss - if you got 'em smoke 'em. In moderation.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Some times you can tell a lot about the future by looking at the past. The past I want to look at was the Bush/Kerry, Keyes/Obama election results in Illinois from 2004.

I'm going to repost a bit I did then in its entirety. Jack Ryan was the Republican who Obama's confederates got kicked off the ballot. I'm not going to go into the details of that - you can look it up. Any way Alan Keyes was Ryan's replacement.

So here it is: Jack Ryan Republicans.

Here is a comment I made to one of my cultural conservative friends who said cultural conservative were the new American center:

Main Stream Media think they are the middle too.

They are no more correct than you are.

Think of how the Senate/Presidential race went in Illinois. Bush got 45% of the vote - 2,313,415 votes. Keyes got 27% - 1,371,882 votes. If you parse the numbers about 130,000 voted in the Presidential race that did not vote in the Senate race (more unhappy Republicans?).

Keyes didn't get the votes of the Jack Ryan Republicans. It shows.

Have have words on the wall been written in big enough letters so you can see yet?

Well. We shall see won't we?

Cross Posted at Power and Control

In a move sure to piss off gay activists (who are already seething over the passage of Prop 8 with heavy black support), Barack Obama has decided to delay the implementation of his campaign promise to jettison the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy:

President-elect Barack Obama will not move for months, and perhaps not until 2010, to ask Congress to end the military's decades-old ban on open homosexuals in the ranks, two people who have advised the Obama transition team on this issue say.

Repealing the ban was an Obama campaign promise. However, Mr. Obama first wants to confer with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and his new political appointees at the Pentagon to reach a consensus and then present legislation to Congress, the advisers said.

The incoming administration is well aware of how President Clinton botched the same issue 15 years ago. Shortly after taking office in 1993, the president ordered the Pentagon to rescind the regulation that excluded gays.

On Capitol Hill, Republicans, and some leading Democrats, including then-Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sam Nunn of Georgia, objected. Retired military officers and a number of pro-military conservative activist groups joined the fight.

I think gays should be allowed to serve in the military and over the years I have known a number who did. Most were closeted, but not all. Few people like to talk about it, but as a practical matter (and because of the stereotypes in which many people believe), the situation is not the same for gay men as it is for lesbians. The former have a much tougher time, because homosexuality among men is seen as a threat to manhood, and the military is seen as being about manhood. Lesbianism, OTOH, is not a threat to manhood, and if anything, butch lesbians are seen as even preferable to feminine women in a military setting. These are not rules and they'd never be countenanced in terms of official policy, but they are simply observations based on realities as I have seen them over the years.

I am well aware of how sensitive this issue can be, and I realize it is not easily settled with edicts and directives. Many young men (especially those who did not grow up knowing gays) have a strong aversion to any hint of homosexuality in an all male setting, and they become extremely uncomfortable when it arises. In the military, this is exacerbated, and this means that inevitably, gay men who want to serve openly have a tough time and an uphill battle. The military is not about handholding and group sessions dedicated to eradicating "climates of homophobia"; it is about bonding in such a way as to become efficient at killing the enemy. It is the antithesis of political correctness. Barack Obama obviously understands this, and he does not want to look foolish or reckless.

It is not easy to generalize about groups of people who share little in common, but the gay men I have known who served included one gay who ended up as a drill sergeant in the Marine Corps. He was so crazy before he entered the Corps that I doubt it ever occurred to anyone that he was gay. A scary sort of person, and not the type anyone would "ask." At the opposite end of the spectrum of "obviousness" I knew a man who was such a queen that when he told me he was enlisting in the Navy, I suppressed a laugh, then gently asked him whether the fact that he was so obviously gay might become an issue. He said he assumed they knew, but this was the post-draft, post-Vietnam, mid 1970s, and even though homosexuality was verboten, things were lax because they had a tough time getting recruits, so while the policy might not have been "Don't Ask Don't Tell," there was probably a lot of looking the other way. (To not notice that this guy was gay, you'd have to be blind and deaf, though.) About a year in, he grew so bored with life in the Navy that he wanted out, so he decided to make his homosexuality an issue by announcing it. His commanding officer took him aside and told him that he was real obvious and they knew all along, and that they thought he was using his homosexuality to get out in a dishonest manner. They were pissed off at having wasted valuable training on him but had no choice other than to give him a discharge. I'll never forget it, because I didn't think a guy like that could ever make it through basic training, yet he did. I'm not quite sure why no one cared, but I suspect that in the field they placed him in (geeky electronic stuff I didn't understand), no one cared.

An incident which I witnessed in a martial arts school in San Francisco years ago might shed some light on the complexities involved in these interactions. There was a grand master, and his second in charge was a black belt who was gay, but unless you had finely attuned "gaydar," you wouldn't know it. I had known him from years before, so I knew and couldn't have cared less as I was there for physical fitness purposes (not that learning ways to disarm people and break arms and snap necks wasn't fun, but you learn these things so you won't need to do them). However, there were working class San Francisco guys there who definitely did not know, including a young black man who was an Army sergeant, and a Hispanic guy in the Navy. What I will never forget is the afternoon that an obviously gay San Francisco couple came in to inquire about training and prices. The black belt instructor told us all to practice forms while he showed them around, and the reaction of the two military guys was one of immediate outrage. The black sergeant announced to everyone, "Man, if they join, I'm outa here! I'm not changing my clothes in front of them!" The Hispanic man agreed, and grimaced. Then, when the instructor returned, the black guy asked him pointedly whether the couple had signed up. They hadn't, and he expressed great relief, while still muttering outrage. In what I considered supreme irony at the time, while the black guy wasn't looking, the instructor gave me a knowing look while rolling his eyes. Had the poor man any idea that his instructor was gay, I don't know what he would have done.

Doubtless activists like Andrew Sullivan would say that ths black belt missed his real teaching moment there, and that he should have confronted the man's homophobia.

Would that have really solved the problem?

I'm not so sure it would have. I don't think there are magical "one size fits all" solutions to these problems.

But that does not stop activists from activizing, and there are activists on both sides. Returning to Barack Obama and "Don't Ask Don't Tell," anti-gay actvist Robert Knight sees a coming "Pearl Harbor moment":

"Homosexual activists are overconfident because they have not yet seen a counterforce emerge as occurred in 1993," said Robert Knight, director of the Culture and Media Institute at the Media Research Center, an organization that seeks to balance perceived liberal bias in mainstream news coverage.

"But as the threat grows stronger, we will see groups forming and the resistance building," he said. "Americans go about their business and are not activists until they have a Pearl Harbor moment. That has yet to happen, but it will."

OTOH, he might see allowing openly gay service members as the equivalent of a Pearl Harbor attack on the United States.

Are gays really that dangerous?

Not all of the answers are clear, but I'm thinking that maybe it would be better to harness such power.

MORE: Glenn Reynolds thinks this may bode poorly for a repeal of the Defense Of Marriage Act, and he links Brian Doherty (who criticizes Obama's unwillingness to be bold), and Gay Patriot, who asks,

Just HOW many issues does the Hypocrite Rights Campaign and their fellow gay comrades have to lose before they are just laughed at and completely ignored??

Speaking of shameful things that ought to be kept in the closet, here's another oldie but a goodie...

"Distinguishing Vultures from Lawyers"

Useful to know how, isn't it?

While that print hangs proudly on my wall, it wasn't appreciated by a humor-free law firm I worked for years ago.....

During the past year, everyone saw what happened when garbage loans on overvalued real estate were misrepresented and sold as triple-A-rated securities. The bubble eventually burst.

But not quite as many people are aware that the bubble has also burst in the art world -- to the point where a series of the most important recent art auctions were dubbed "New York's 'half-price art sale'."

The biggest loser? Contemporary art:

It's post-mortem time for contemporary art, the highest flying area of the art market. After several years of unprecedented growth, which have seen prices at auction increase by an average 25 per cent each year since 2002, it experienced a definitive setback in New York last week.

In spite of spirited bidding by some of America's top collectors, the keynote auctions at Sotheby's, Christie's and Phillips de Pury & Co drummed up just $331 million (£224.6 million), far short of the low estimate of $608 million that had been set in the months before the collapse of the banking system.

The total was almost one third of that mustered in the last New York auctions in May, and we have to go back to 2005 to find comparable sales figures. The clock for contemporary art has turned back further than for Impressionist and modern art, which has fallen back to 2006 levels, because its growth curve was much steeper.

The top end of the market looked particularly vulnerable as several of the highest-valued lots by Roy Lichtenstein ($15 million to $20 million) and Francis Bacon ($40 million to $60 million) failed to attract bids.

What is not being reported much is that some art still sells. That's because what sells is art that real people like, and not art that the critics say people should like.

According to artist Robert Williams (a personal favorite whose art is selling like hotcakes), the bottom line is that:

...we're manipulated by a priestly elite of cultural directors in the art world, that's telling us what is and isn't art.

This would have probably held up into the next century, except for the fact that the economy collapsed. So these incredible pieces of artwork that these people have made-- like two railroad ties chained together, named "Untitled #14", that were going for a quarter of a million dollars-- can't even get pennies on the dollar. They can't give some of this shit away that they paid a quarter of a million dollars for. This is what's happening. New York is almost completely collapsed on the art market. They're approaching losing half of their galleries now, the big ones. Okay, so I come to New York with thirty oil paintings for a sold out show. Do you understand what kind of an effect this would have on the art community in New York? Do you comprehend that?

David: No, I'm not quite sure what you are getting at.

Robert: The very stanch and conservative and entrenched art world has collapsed, financially on its ass. It's on its knees, waiting for the storm to blow by, so it can try to crawl back up. It's lost half it's galleries. So, I come in there, and sell out a show of thirty oil paintings, before the doors even open. The opening night there's 2000 people in there. The police had barricades on the street. I had a lot of very important gallery people from around SoHo at my opening, telling me, "you're only one of ten people in all of New York that's selling." One of ten, out of 100,000 people that call themselves fine artists, in the art capital of this planet. But I'm doing ugly cartoons with naked ladies with big titties. The feminists were throwing rocks at me. (laughter ) I'm doing everything wrong, but here I am with a sold out show, and standing room only crowds, continually coming in. The first Saturday there was a thousand people in attendance, and the show was held over.

David: And this isn't because somebody with a row of fancy prestigious degrees after their name is praising it. People just look at it and really enjoy it.

Robert: That's right. Because it's a basic language of things that you're interested in. But it's not because I am so brilliant that I create it, it's just that I am a symptom of the situation. I came up with the rest of my underground buddies, reading underground comics, Hot Rod magazine, surfing, and all this stuff that people are really interested in. We've cooked it like soup, brewed it into an essence, and made art out of the things you want to fucking see-- not what's intellectually proper.

I mean, imagine for a moment a system where the people with the money to buy something get to decide what it is worth -- not based on what "experts" say, but based on whether they like it, and whether they are willing to buy it.

I'm surprised the government doesn't intervene and put a stop to such rampant freedom heresy.

My earlier post about fear of religious conservatives does not discuss something which I think is related to this fear, and that is closeted conservatism.

I've been thinking about this a lot since the drive from Ann Arbor to Berkeley. In either place, having a McCain sign in your front yard is an invitation to disastrous confrontations, if not outright vandalism. (In either place, McCain supporters would be more likely to be the ones with no signs; a Berkeley neighbor who once dared to put a Bush sign in his front yard found his house on the front page of the Berkeley Voice. It was so unusual as to be a news event.)

As I said here,

The bottom line is that intelligent, thoughtful conservatives and libertarians are in the closet.

Above all, I think it is fear.

I don't mean fear of being physically attacked, although that certainly has been known to happen. Rather, it's fear of social ostracism, fear of making waves, fear of being the subject of gossip, and ultimately, that bottom line fear of consequences in the workplace. There are no laws protecting conservatives against discrimination. The right to think what you think is something we just take for granted as a society, except that as a practical matter we're in danger of losing the right to say what we think in a public manner because people don't exercise it.

Maybe living in both Berkeley and Ann Arbor (both very closeted places for conservatives) heightens my sensitivity to these things, but I do empathize, and in much the same way that gays have this psychic thing going called "gaydar," I like to think that I can recognize people who are to the right of center. Sometimes, though, I'll be completely fooled, as I was in Ann Arbor by a trendy guy who cut my hair. Earrings, goatee, etc. But when the election came up for discussion and he sensed I was less than thrilled with Barack Obama, he looked around to see that no one was around, lowered his voice and said he was voting for McCain.

"That's not something I'd ever admit around here," were his words.

Unfortunately, one of the factors that keeps right-of-center people in the closet is that some of the people out of the closet are fiercely, defensively outspoken, and many of them are outraged social conservatives. What this means is that all too often, libertarian-minded conservatives (especially those who are friends with and work for liberals) feel a need to distance themselves from the social conservatives, and I think this might aggravate the split, and make their differences look more profound than they are.

I don't know whether anyone has done a poll on this, but I suspect that in general, religious conservatives are more likely to be "out" than are libertarian conservatives.

Of course, living in places like Berkeley and Ann Arbor, I may be getting an unbalanced view.

Any opinions?

UPDATE: Readers might be interested in my discussion of the problem of closeted conservatism on Pajamas Media TV.

The comments below were very helpful.

Jonah Goldberg is discussing his book Liberal Fascism at Salon.

I don't have any problem with liberals or conservatives criticizing stuff that goes on in the popular culture ... [I]t's when you want to dragoon the state into these things, everything from hate crimes to these early interventions in childhood. You read "It Takes a Village" and Hillary [Clinton] declares that basically we're in a crisis from the moment we're born and that justifies the helping professions from breaking into the nuclear family at the earliest possible age.

You have a lot of this stuff on the right, I agree. [George W.] Bush had his marriage counseling stuff that he wanted to propose, I didn't like that. I think Ashcroft gets a very bad rap, but one of the things I did not like was him basically having this philosophy that since the federal government was an agent for a left-wing agenda that therefore it should be an agent for a right-wing agenda. I agree with you to that extent, that that stuff is bad, and it constitutes a kind of right-wing progressivism that I really do not like....

Cross Posted at Power and Control

We have a contingent in America that wants to treat us all like children when it comes to economics and another contingent that wants to treat us like children when it comes to culture.

Two different kinds of nanny state. I'm against the nanny state.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

I came across an interesting discussion of abortion at Admiral Quixote's Round Table. This is from the comments.

I spoke with my dh who did receive smicha (Orthodox) though he is not a practicing Rabbi; he learned the law as I have earlier stated; that if any harm came it was referring to the woman and her life, not to the fetus.

I also think the concept that a woman who had been judged guilty of a capital crime was executed even if she were pregnant, The life of the fetus was secondary to the pain and suffering of the woman forced to wait for her execution. That a woman condemned to death would be given more consideration for her emotional state than a fetus where there is no issue of guilt states a lot, imho, about the rights they would enjoy in terms of abortion.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Here is a bit of text that I think many of you will find very interesting.

The Jewish distinction (rooted in the original Hebrew text) between the life of the mother and the life of the child is emphasized in a striking text of the Mishnah (Ohalot 7:6):

"If a woman has difficulty in childbirth, the embryo within her should be dismembered limb by limb, because her life takes precedence over its life. Once its head or its greater part has emerged, it may not be touched, for we do not set aside one life for another."

This text seems especially remarkable because it refers to a procedure quite like what today is called "partial-birth abortion," and which is viewed with especial horror by abortion opponents. Even if one could be sympathetic about a first-trimester abortion when the embryo is still barely formed, the killing of a full-term fetus shortly before its birth seems abominable. And yet this is precisely the gory example which the Mishnah uses to clarify its position. As long as the fetus is still enclosed within the mother, it is in some sense a "limb" of the mother, and if the hard choice must be made between the life of the mother and the life of the fetus, the life of the mother takes precedence. However highly the fetus is regarded and however fully it has formed, it does not pass the threshold where it can be regarded as a "person" with equal legal standing to the mother until its head or the greater part of its body has emerged from her womb.

This Mishnah text makes a strong argument for the legal acceptability of abortion when it is necessary for the life of the mother, but the circumstances that will actually justify an abortion are not so clear. What is a "difficulty" in childbirth, and how great must the threat to the mother's life be? What if the mother faces some serious physical injury because of the pregnancy or the childbirth, but her life itself is not in danger?

Maimonides (12th century) seemed to strictly limit the cause for abortion to a case where the mother's life itself was threatened, likening the fetus to a "pursuer," one whom we are justified in killing because it is actively seeking to kill someone else. But most rabbis since Maimonides have not interpreted so narrowly. Most have agreed that serious physical injury to the mother is also grounds for abortion.

In fact, the prevailing position in halacha (Jewish law) today, though restrictive, is rather lenient. It is the position argued by former chief rabbi of Israel, Rabbi Ben Zion Uziel. He declared that abortion is permissible even for what he calls "a very thin reason," meaning that one should give broad latitude to how a woman interprets "difficulty" or "injury," or "life-threatening," and even allowing an abortion in certain circumstances of great emotional anguish where there is no physical danger to the mother. But how thin is "thin"? What about the case where the child is known to be physically or mentally defective? What about the regrets after consensual adultery? Does a woman's shame or embarrassment at the consequences of her own actions justify the termination of a pregnancy? What about the woman whose education or career will be made difficult if she has a child to look after? Is the Jewish position simply abortion on demand?

Certainly Judaism never allows abortion for birth control purposes when having a child would be simply an inconvenience or embarrassment. But in practice there remains considerable disagreement among halachic authorities and among the various streams of Judaism concerning specific cases. For example, most Orthodox authorities do not permit abortion on the grounds that a fetus is severely defective. Conservative and Reform authorities would permit aborting a physically or mentally defective fetus.

What do I get from all this? That the various positions on abortion come out of religion and not some absolute rule that can be unequivocally applied and that the best thing the government can do is to stay out of the question and let the individual decide what is best.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

I just found a most interesting document giving in layman's terms the Jewish position on abortion [pdf]. The document is authored by Rabbi Raymond A Zwerin and Rabbi Richard A. Shapiro. It is a very interesting document and only four pages long so it is well worth a read. It also provides a basis for deeper research. However, let me quote you the conclusion.

Due to the general leniency in matters of abortion, as well as a long standing Jewish insistence of the separation of religion and government in American life all four non-Orthodox Jewish movements - Reform, Reconstructionist, Conservative, and Humanist - are on record as opposing any governmental regulation of abortion. Moreover, many Orthodox authorities take the same position. What ever their opinion of abortion in any given situation, a vast majority of Jewish thinkers agree that decision making with respect to abortion must be left in the hands of the woman involved, her husband, her physician, and her rabbi. Out of this context in consonance with her Jewish heritage she can make a decision as she is permitted to do by the US Constitution.

Now I understand my mothers insistence that I resist the abortion absolutists in the Republican Party.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

This lovely item got water-damaged, but its supreme commie kitsch shlockiness seems unaffected.

It's a combination thermometer and inexplicable calendar, plus a faux "TV screen" in the middle showing Chairman Mao being given a floral bouquet by Chou En Lai, while Comrades Chu De and Lin Piao beam radiantly. I picked it up at a souvenir stand in China for pennies back in the days before the Tiananmen Square uprising. I doubt you could find one today. The green plastic temple is unsurpassed in terms of pure shlocky loveliness.

And here's a ceramic neoclassical figurine pulling a rope in front of a grimacing devil clown.

Don't ask me why; they just gather dust in the kitchen.

Finally, the ghost of the house:

No, not the girl in front; the El Greco print in back. It's a strange story (and I am of course highly skeptical about these things) but the previous owner of the house told me that the previous owner told him that "it" was or somehow contained "the ghost," and to simply leave it alone. I didn't pay much attention until one day (in the late 1980s) I raised my hand as I cursed an irritating item in the paper, when just at that moment the print flew out of the frame and hit the floor towards the middle of the room, leaving the frame still hanging (empty) on the wall. Figuring the nails had come loose, I picked up the print (which is on a stiff board) and got up on a ladder to put it back in. No way would it go back in! The nails were not loose at all, and I had to pry it apart to get the print to go back in. Ever since, I have left it alone, and treated it with respect.

I hope that picturing it in the blog is not considered a violation. No disrespect intended. This house was built by a reclusive writer in 1919, and it is my hope that the ghost (whoever or whatever it might be or represent) will understand that the idea is to keep the spirit alive.

Yeah. That is a funny spelling of potato. It is former Vice President Dan Quayle's trademark. Well Mr. Quayle is at it again. He is global investing chief of Cerberus Capital Management which owns Chrysler. And of course Chrysler wants in on the proposed auto bail out.

Let's assume that the powers in Washington -- the Bush team now, the Obama team soon -- deem GM too big to let fail. If so, it's also too big to be entrusted to the same people who have led it to its current, perilous state, and who are too tied to the past to create a different future.

In return for any direct government aid, the board and the management should go. Shareholders should lose their paltry remaining equity. And a government-appointed receiver -- someone hard-nosed and nonpolitical -- should have broad power to revamp GM with a viable business plan and return it to a private operation as soon as possible.

That will mean tearing up existing contracts with unions, dealers and suppliers, closing some operations and selling others, and downsizing the company. After all that, the company can float new shares, with taxpayers getting some of the benefits. The same basic rules should apply to Ford and Chrysler.

These are radical steps, and they wouldn't avoid significant job losses. But there isn't much alternative besides simply letting GM collapse, which isn't politically viable. At least a government-appointed receiver would help assure car buyers that GM will be around, in some form, to honor warranties on its vehicles. It would help minimize losses to the government's Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp.

The current economic crisis didn't cause the meltdown in Detroit. The car companies started losing billions of dollars several years ago when the economy was healthy and car sales stood at near-record levels. They complained that they were unfairly stuck with enormous "legacy costs," but those didn't just happen. For decades, the United Auto Workers union stoutly defended gold-plated medical benefits that virtually no one else had. UAW workers and retirees had no deductibles, copays or other facts of life in these United States.

And too big to fail? Hmmm. Too politically connected to fail. And since we are speaking of politics Chrysler is in the thick of it.

As for Ford and Chrysler, if they want similar public assistance they should pay the same price. Wiping out existing shareholders would end the Ford family's control of Ford Motor. But keeping the family in the driver's seat wouldn't be an appropriate use of tax dollars. Nor is bailing out the principals of Cerberus, who include CEO Stephen Feinberg, Chairman John Snow, the former Treasury secretary, and global investing chief Dan Quayle, former vice president.

Government loan guarantees, with stringent strings attached and new management at the helm, helped save Chrysler in 1980. But it's now 2008, 35 years since the first oil shock put Japanese cars on the map in America. "Since the mid-Seventies," one Detroit manager recently told me, "I have sat through umpteen meetings describing how we had to beat the Japanese to survive. Thirty-five years later we are still trying to figure it out."

H/T Design News

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Reform Jews speak out in favor of Medical Marijuana.

The Union Of American Hebrew Congregations favors Medical Marijuana.

Here is a short bio of one of the participants in the video.

William Martin, Ph.D. taught criminology for 35 years. He has chaired the Department of Sociology and at Rice University and is a Senior Fellow at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy. Bill has written six books, including A Prophet with Honor: The Billy Graham Story. He is writing a book on drug policy for religious and social conservatives. Bill has given hundreds of talks about public policy issues, including drug abuse and drug policy.

The Dow closed below 8,000 today and Nymex Crude Oil Futures below $53. And the outlook for the semiconductor industry is not so hot either.

"In discussions with semiconductor suppliers, equipment OEMs, and contract manufacturers, a story of fear and great uncertainty has emerged," iSuppli's Ford said. "As dramatic declines in consumer and industrial confidence began developing in late summer, order cancellations began to grow and in many cases, slowing orders degenerated into a complete stop in orders as players across the supply chain moved to extremely cautious positions in the face of increasingly negative economic news."

The psychology of many industry players now has shifted to a "survival mentality," iSuppli said, with cost-control and cash-conservation considerations driving decisions.

According to iSuppli, "it is now clear that the semiconductor industry is already in decline and the remaining questions are how deep and how long this decline will extend in 2009 and possibly 2010."

The one bright spot for consumers and manufacturing is the decline in the price of oil. For oil producers? Well they are going to be hurting.

I have a friend who cashed out of the market when the Dow was 14,000. He told his broker SELL. His broker said, "Are you nuts?" Evidently not.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

A comment piece (I'm not going to get the hackles up before the discussion starts by giving the name of the author) in The Washington Post talks about long term Republican prospects. It is not pretty.

To be more specific, the evangelical, right-wing, oogedy-boogedy branch of the GOP is what ails the erstwhile conservative party and will continue to afflict and marginalize its constituents if reckoning doesn't soon cometh.

Simply put: Armband religion is killing the Republican Party. And, the truth -- as long as we're setting ourselves free -- is that if one were to eavesdrop on private conversations among the party intelligentsia, one would hear precisely that.

The choir has become absurdly off-key, and many Republicans know it.

But they need those votes!

So it has been for the Grand Old Party since the 1980s or so, as it has become increasingly beholden to an element that used to be relegated to wooden crates on street corners.

Here's the deal, 'pubbies: Howard Dean was right.

It isn't that culture doesn't matter. It does. But preaching to the choir produces no converts. And shifting demographics suggest that the Republican Party -- and conservatism with it -- eventually will die out unless religion is returned to the privacy of one's heart where it belongs.

Religious conservatives become defensive at any suggestion that they've had something to do with the GOP's erosion. And, though the recent Democratic sweep can be attributed in large part to a referendum on Bush and the failing economy, three long-term trends identified by Emory University's Alan Abramowitz have been devastating to the Republican Party: increasing racial diversity, declining marriage rates and changes in religious beliefs.

Suffice it to say, the Republican Party is largely comprised of white, married Christians. Anyone watching the two conventions last summer can't have missed the stark differences: One party was brimming with energy, youth and diversity; the other felt like an annual Depends sales meeting.

With the exception of Miss Alaska, of course.

...like it or not, we are a diverse nation, no longer predominantly white and Christian. The change Barack Obama promised has already occurred, which is why he won.

Among Jewish voters, 78 percent went for Obama. Sixty-six percent of under-30 voters did likewise. Forty-five percent of voters ages 18-29 are Democrats compared to just 26 percent Republican; in 2000, party affiliation was split almost evenly.

The young will get older, of course. Most eventually will marry, and some will become their parents. But nonwhites won't get whiter. And the nonreligious won't get religion through external conversion. It doesn't work that way.

Given those facts, the future of the GOP looks dim and dimmer if it stays the present course. Either the Republican Party needs a new base -- or the nation may need a new party.

That is the way forward.

Let me add a couple of other points. Spending like fools. Corruption. And an inability to articulate sound economics or any thing else for that matter are killers as well. We need sound positions and some one who can give the message. And we need to distance ourselves as a party from issues that are cringe making among those not in the base. Because the base is shrinking. And even if it wasn't you can't win elections with the base alone.

I ♥ Sarah'cudda

Cross Posted at Power and Control

It seems like Mr. Obama can't buy a friend.

The No. 2 leader in Al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, is dishing out criticism and offering a warning to United States President-Elect, Barack Obama. A new audio message has surfaced online where Al-Zawahiri calls Obama a dishonorable man.

According to the SITE Institute, a U.S. organization that monitors Islamic militant groups, Al-Zawahiri said Obama is "the direct opposite of honorable black Americans" like Malcolm X. He also called the President-Elect a "house negro," a degrading term meaning he serves White people.

I support him. Why you ask? He hasn't done anything yet. Lucky for him.

H/T LGF

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Get ready for the new administration. Click on the link and see what I'm talking about.

It is not only good advice. It is funny.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

OK, this is going to sound crazy, and I know I should be writing about Barack Obama's insane plan to lay further waste to the economy with a useless "Global Warming" scheme.... Not that I'd add anything useful to that debate anyway. However, this morning I saw that Al-Qaida is insulting the president elect with the the sort of racial epithet the left normally reserves for Condoleezza Rice, so maybe that inclines me sympathetically towards him. Perhaps the Global Warming nonsense is a bone to throw at the Chavista (a Chavista who claims to have Goldwater tendencies, btw) whom Obama is said to be planning to put in charge of the EPA.

But so much for politics. I wanted to write something personal which I suspected was either a psychosomatic or downright superstitious manifestation, but now I'm not so sure. For the past week (and shortly before that in Michigan), I was fighting off what felt like the beginning of a cold. Finally, after the long drive, I arrived here, and one of the problems I need to address is water damage from a plumbing leak which in turn caused some serious mold. Sleeping two nights breathing moldy air was enough to make me lose my battle against the wannabe cold, and as of the day before yesterday, the cold had won. But none of the work I had to do would go away simply because I developed a cold, and there's a ton of yard work. In particular, extremely aggressive English Ivy has taken over much of the yard, and is killing off trees right and left. The only way to save the trees that have not yet been strangled is to do battle with the ivy. Some of the "stalks" are six inches in diameter, and have to be sawed loose, then pried, pulled and it's a huge amount of work. As anyone who has worked with ivy will confirm, when this evil plant is molested it puts out toxic ivy dust, which can make most people sneeze and cough, and really susceptible people can develop the same sort of skin eruptions that characterize poison ivy. Fortunately I'm not in that category, but what did happen was that the sort throat I already had became strangely aggravated, and I was coughing like hell. An awful scratchiness in my throat developed (something like a painful dryness), and I figured I was probably being a damned fool and asking for an even worse cold than I already had, but what the hell. For two days, I did battle with the ivy, and braved the dust.

I went to bed last night completely exhausted, and feeling ill.

To my utter amazement, this morning I woke up and the cold symptoms have vanished. The sore throat went away without following the usual pattern of rhinitis. (Sniffling, congestion, coughing, pouring out mucus, etc.) For me, this abrupt turnaround is very, very abnormal, and because the only change in my pattern was the work with ivy, naturally it occurred to me to wonder whether ivy might have curative properties. Totally unscientific, and it sounds like nonsense, but what the hell....

I Googled and lo and behold, I found a medical study from 2005 which shows that English ivy has potent anti-mold properties:

Nov. 7, 2005 -- English ivy may help you breathe easier, especially if you have allergies, new research shows.

The research shows that the plant helps clean air of allergens such as mold and animal feces.

That could make English ivy an inexpensive alternative to commercial air-cleaning devices, researchers told participants of the American College of Allergy, Asthma, & Immunology's annual meeting.

If you've got kids or pets, take care about where you place English ivy. The plant is toxic, so keep it away from animals or young children who might consume it.
Cleaner Air

English ivy's air-cleaning abilities were recently tested.

First, researchers put moldy bread and dog feces in containers. Then, they checked how much mold and feces were in the containers' air at the start of the study. Next, English ivy was added to each container and repeat measurements were taken at baseline, then six and 12 hours later.

Six hours later, 60% of the airborne-mold had vanished from the air around the ivy. Almost as much of the airborne feces were also gone from the air (58%).

After six more hours the air was even cleaner. More than three-quarters of the airborne mold was gone (78%). So were nearly all of the airborne feces (94%), the study shows.

Also, it just so happens that as an herb, ivy and its preparations are used in Europe as cold and cough remedies.

The European indications that are currently in favor are primarily for the respiratory tract. In Germany, ivy is recommended for its expectorant effect in dry cough, common cold, and chronic respiratory tract disorders. Extracts have been used as antispasmodics and as topical treatments of dermal infections and itching, as well as for weight loss. Common ivy also has been traditionally used for arthritis, scrofula, fevers, skin parasites, burns, and infections.

The main components of interest are saponins (3-6% content, including hederin and hederacosides), flavonol glycosides (including rutin and kaempferol), sterols (including stigmasterol and sitosterol), sesquiterpenes, and polyalkanes (including falcarinol). The constituents in ivy are considered to have a mucokinetic effect, and they are reported to help loosen abnormal mucus in the respiratory tree. There is some evidence from animal experiments that ivy's saponins can increase respiratory tract secretions and can prevent acetylcholine-induced bronchospasm in guinea pigs. A product containing its chief constituent, hederasaponin C (hederacoside C), has been shown to have antifungal properties and to be toxic to some parasites and bacteria.

One thing I can predict is that whether ivy is a good remedy or not, it will never be bottled and sold, because there's no money to be made mass marketing a common plant that can't be patented.

My cold issue aside, I've decided to bring some ivy inside and place it in the water damaged area.

Politics will have to wait.

Why are so many blacks aborting in comparison to the rest of the population? It is due to a lack of fathers. And why is there a lack of fathers? Well black men have been disproportionately swept up in the criminal justice system due to the drug war.

Demographics

If socons were really serious about reducing the abortion rate significantly they would be out front in calling for an end to the drug war. Crickets.

The disasters pile up and yet the faith in government solutions persists. And of course because of unintended consequences more government is required.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

It seems our government has a problem running businesses. Even businesses that should be a guaranteed profit without significant expertise required. Like selling liquor and sex.

Back in 1990, the Government seized the Mustang Ranch brothel in Nevada for tax evasion and, as required by law, tried to run it. They failed and it closed. Now we are trusting the entire economy of our country to same guys who couldn't make money running a whore house and selling booze?

They will get sold as government surplus and some one will make a profit getting them in running order and selling them to customers who want to buy them at a price they can afford. So let me ask you, if the people in the auto business in Detroit are so smart, workers and management, why can't they do it without government help? After all they have only had 30 years since the last bail out to figure it out.

Well OK. Cars are hard and whorehouses are unusual. Maybe the government would be better with medical services.

H/T Roger Kimball

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Regular readers know that I don't make too many pledges. Circumstances have a way of changing, and if you've taken a "pledge" or a vow or a resolution about something (like the "I will never vote for McCain" pledge that was going around a year ago), you've cemented yourself into something and you'll look like a flake without integrity if you break it. Moreover, many of these "pledges" are promoted by peer pressure, which always raises my hackles.

But, does that mean I have taken a pledge against ever taking a pledge? Hardly. As it happens, I have found a political pledge I'm almost 100% certain I can follow.

It's Kyle-Ann Shiver's national unity pledge!

...in the interest of national unity, I hereby resolve that I will not travel to Washington, D.C., dress up in tacky pink lingerie, and storm the halls of Congress, yelling "War criminal!" at the top of my lungs at President Obama. Even if I find every single one of his policy decisions absolutely reprehensible, I will refrain from this particular type of disunity.

(And read it all.)

I solemnly pledge that you will not see me dressed in pink lingerie screaming "War criminal" at President Obama at the top of my lungs.

As Jimmy Carter used to say, "You can depend on it!"

Fear of "The Other" is always a driving force in politics, and as it is emotional, it operates independently of positions on issues. If you can get people to fear someone or some group, what they actually say or do won't matter.

Years ago, I remember reading a long article about a lesbian mother who lived with her partner in the Bay Area (I think it was in the San Jose vicinity), who was quoted as saying she feared Newt Gingrich more than almost anyone in the world. This really got my attention, and I wondered, just what the hell kind of Svengali she thought Newt Gingrich was, that he could reach out and mess with her private life in San Jose. But I realized it was just pure fear. To her, Gingrich was a religious homophobic boogeyman with plans to take away her children, and probably force her at gunpoint to marry a sexist, Superbowl-watching, wife-beating man.

Never mind that these fears were groundless, and that Gingrich could not touch her. Nor would he dare. The point is that fear works. It's a much more powerful motivator than having someone sit down and read through Gingrich's books. Fear goes beyond disagreements, political positions, or practicality.

I recalled this woman's irrational fear of Gingrich when I saw Glenn Reynolds' link to Rand Simberg's post about "Republican religiophobia." Fear of the religious right isn't just for Bay Area lesbians anymore. Republicans now fear them too.

Fear is a weird thing, because it tends to prevent thought, and therefore make everything else irrelevant. In his post about the GOP fear of Sarah Palin, Simberg says he does not understand fear of religious conservatives:

...I really don't understand this fear of the religious right, though I am neither religious, or "right" (in the social conservative sense). I explained why in a post about six and a half years ago. I think that it's relevant today, and in fact wish that I'd reposted it before the election (not that the fate of the nation hinges in any way on my posts).

Instantman, in reference to an article about women and the sexual revolution, says:

This kind of stuff, by the way, is the reason why a lot of Democrats who are basically in agreement with the Republican party are still afraid to vote for Republicans.

This seems to be a common attitude among many libertarians (and to the degree that labels apply, I think that one fits Glenn about as well as any), particularly the ones who approached that philosophy from the left (i.e., former Democrats). I once had an extended email discussion (back during the election) with another libertarian friend (who's also a blogger, but shall remain nameless) about how as much as he disliked the socialism of the Democrats, he felt more culturally comfortable with them. Again, this is a prevalent attitude of products of the sixties. You know, Republicans were uptight fascists, and Democrats were idealistic, free-living, and hip.

The fear of the religious right is thus largely irrational -- even if you think they're loony tunes on some of these issues.

The Democrats, on the other hand, can actually do a lot of the things they threaten to do, as Simberg notes:

First, I've found many Republicans who are sympathetic to libertarian arguments, and in fact are often libertarians at heart, but see the Republican Party as the most practical means of achieving the goals. There may be some Democrats out there like that, but I've never run into them. That's the least important reason (partly because I may be mistaken, and have simply suffered from a limited sample space). But fundamentally, the Democratic Party, at least in its current form, seems to me to be utterly antithetical to free markets.

But the most important reason is this--while I find the anti-freedom strains of both parties equally dismaying, the Democrats are a lot better at implementing their big-government intrusions, and there's good reason to think that this will be the case even if the Republicans get full control of the government.

Yet even though the anti-sex people are by no means a majority in the GOP and cannot possibly implement their schemes, more people fear the Republicans.

A great con job, if you ask me.

Sometimes it helps for the hedonists, fellow travelers, and hedonist sympathizers to remember that what's mostly going on consists of little more than an occasional moralistic lecture. I liked the way this Volokh commenter (linked by Glenn not long ago) put it:

They [libertarians] also need to practise a little strategic deafness. Conservatives like to talk about values and sin a lot, and it grates on the libertarian ear, because the libertarian fears such talk leads to oppressive action. But very often it's just talk, a form of mere community bonding -- ghost stories over the campfire -- that libertarians don't quite get, not being that fond of community bonding in the first place. Frequently enough, if you merely let conservatives have their talk, and nod appreciatively I see what you mean, yes, an interesting and valuable point then they're happy enough.

But in the case of the left, their talk of values does in fact lead directly to oppressive action. They will take your money and they will give it to whoever they choose.

All the more reason that economic conservatism (or economic freedom, whichever phrase you prefer) should be brought back as the glue which once held libertarians and social conservatives together.

As Jon Henke put it,

The ascendancy of Reagan and the Right was predicated on "a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom." Reagan called it "the basis of conservatism." That idea resonated with the American public in 1980.

The Democrats do not leave people alone. They want your money, your guns, and endless restrictions on personal freedom.

Yet still, people fear the Republicans more.

That may soon change.

Steven Novella, whose Skeptics' Guide to the Universe podcast is one I never miss (also check the brief companion 5x5 podcast), is trying out a new definition for a perfectly good word that others (for some reason) don't seem too keen on, namely "skeptic":

A skeptic is one who prefers beliefs and conclusions that are reliable and valid to ones that are comforting or convenient, and therefore rigorously and openly applies the methods of science and reason to all empirical claims, especially their own. A skeptic provisionally proportions acceptance of any claim to valid logic and a fair and thorough assessment of available evidence, and studies the pitfalls of human reason and the mechanisms of deception so as to avoid being deceived by others or themselves. Skepticism values method over any particular conclusion.

I jotted some notes that I reckoned others might find interesting or informative and thought it best to reprint my comment here:

As a classicist I can tell you that the original meaning (Gk. skeptikos) was simply 'thoughtful, reflective.' It comes from a verb that describes a careful kind of looking. The idea of doubt came from a term also used to describe a certain kind of thinker: aporetikos. It isn't difficult to see how giving careful attention to philosophical questions (which in the ancient world also meant scientific questions) would lead one to be a doubter, in the same way that careful (i.e., critical) thought among modern skeptics leads us to doubt traditional explanations.

This same type of thinker could also be called ephektikos, which is something like the modern coinage agnostic. This referred to someone as suspending judgment. What it really means is that you hold yourself back and look at things impartially. This is something else that we do, and it allows us to criticize the emotional responses of others.

The three terms are closely associated, but one gave its name to a school. And as with many schools of thought through the ages, its opponents (like modern theists in the face of a resurgent atheism) took great pains to tar its practitioners.

Far from being sub-optimal, I think skeptic is about as good a word as we're likely to find, and together with its companion adjectives (which have colored its reception) covers just about everything in your definition.

Wow. Finally, after many hours of futzing around and being on hold, I got the DSL line working.

This will be a test post of sorts, as I have nothing really to say. Other than thank God the thing finally works.

The biggest problem was being asked for a user name and password in order to get signed on and get a user name and password. My DSL modem and router was getting me online, but as I'd never been online before, I couldn't get past the ATT login, which prevented me from creating the account I needed in order to login. After two hours of calling and holding (and being told that they "didn't have access" to a user name and password I didn't have) I was bumped to "Level 2" technical support, where the guy knew what to do. (He had to manually set up the account for me, and he understood the modem issue which the others hadn't.)

The sunset here makes the long drive worth it.

So does the 80 degree weather.

(By contrast, it's been snowing in Ann Arbor....)

Here is a look at why the Detroit auto industry is going down in flames.

I'm a huge fan of the US auto industry. I'm one of the last people on my street who still buys American cars (Pontiac). But I'm extremely concerned. And given what's been going on, I am surprised at the engineering priorities in Detroit. I had the privilege last week of serving as a judge for the annual Society of Plastics Engineers Automotive Innovation competition. Unlike some design competitions, this one is a very big deal, and has been around a long time. Top engineering managers (mostly from the Detroit area) show what they consider to be their most important plastic designs in new production models. Winners are announced at a huge banquet (Nov. 20 this year) and the top brass show up because of the high quality of the SPE competition. It's truly the Oscars for automotive plastics.

I didn't get a sense of the urgency in Detroit as I listened to this year's presentations. It seemed like business as usual.

For starters, there were only two finalists in the environmental category. In contrast, "body interior" had five. Ford has begun an impressive campaign to replace a small percentage (5 to 12) of oil-based polyols in foams with a soy-based alternate. GM is using recycled content in an air inlet panel in the Chevy Trailblazer, diverting 445,000 pounds of plastic from landfills. Is this all the better we can do? What about some efforts to use blends of bioplastics to reduce our carbon footprint? What about game-changing efforts to reduce weight?

One thing Detroit is pretty good at developing concept cars. Research vehicles full of innovations. What they are not good at is turning those ideas into products.

There is a lot of "we've always done it this way" in American auto manufacturing. And yet our government wants to dump $25 billion into this failed culture? I think a better idea is to let them fail. The resources could then be redeployed to companies that actually want to produce break through vehicles.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Design News reports on a new material now in the research phase that is 10 times lighter than steel and 500 times stronger.

You've heard of airplanes made from carbon-fiber reinforced (CFRP) plastics. What's next? Well there's a sheet of carbon nanotubes--called "buckypaper"--that may create structures for another generation of airplanes. Carbon nanotubes are already being used as a filler in plastics, but only in loadings of 2 or 3 percent. Buckypaper would use significantly higher loadings. The idea of nanotube reinforced composites is not new. Nanotubes are notorious because they clump and tangle, and no one has been able to produce nanotube composites outside of a lab. Researchers hope that may be changing. Rice University in Houston, for example, has been awarded three patents that advance the technology. Lockheed Martin has been awarded another.

Professor Ben Wang and other scientists at Florida State University say they may have the answer. Exposing the tubes to high magnetism lines up the nanotubes in the same direction. Another breakthrough: creating some roughness on the surface so the nanutubes can bond to a matrix material, such as epoxy. The nanotubes in effect take the place of carbon fiber in a composite construction.

You can make extremely thin sheets with the nanotubes--thus use of the word paper. "Bucky" comes from Buckminster Fuller who envisioned shapes now called fullerenes. Stack up hundreds of sheets of the "paper" and you have a composite material that is 10 times lighter but 500 times stronger than a similar sized piece of carbon steel sheet. It's easy to see why Lockheed Martin is interested. Unlike CFRP, carbon nanotubes conduct electricity like copper or silicon and disperse heat like steel or brass.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

From the wiki:

A marriage license (spelled licence in British English) is a document issued either by a church or state authority authorising a couple to marry. The procedure for obtaining a licence varies between countries and has changed over time. Marriage licences began to be issued in the Middle Ages to permit a marriage which would otherwise be illegal (for instance, if the necessary period of notice for the marriage had not been given).

In the early part of the twentieth century, the requirement for a marriage license was used as a mechanism to prohibit whites from marrying blacks, mulattos, Japanese, Chinese, Native Americans, Mongolians, Malays or Filipinos. By the 1920s 38 states used the mechanism. These laws have since been declared invalid by the Courts.

I take no position on the matter one way or the other. I just thought a little history was in order. Eric has also written on the subject here and here among other places.

Tom will be at the Philcon Science Fiction convention this coming Saturday, 22 Nov 2008. You can read what Tom has to say about his upcoming talk at Talk Polywell.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

I made it to Berkeley, but I have no Internet at home, so here I am in a Starbucks (where I don't have time to be, much less blog).

Well, I have so-called "dialup Internet access" for traveling, but really! 21.6 kbps? That's the rate I get with every access number on their stupid list, and it isn't fast enough to check email, much less blog.

If all goes well, I might get functional DSL service tomorrow, and I hope I do, because I'm just swamped with work, and cannot take time to get in the car, drive to Starbucks, and blog while I'm supposed to be doing countless other things. (At least on the road I had the convenience of waking up each day in a Motel 6, where you get Wifi plus privacy. For blogging, I recommend Motel 6 over Starbucks. It's hard to think in a Starbucks.)

Bandwidth. Things are getting to the point where I (and I suspect a lot of other people) take it for granted.

Lose bandwidth, and you lose the ability to communicate.

You can see the rest of the videos at Jonah

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Why Did Social Conservative Ally With Progressives?

Please discuss in the comments.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Transcript of all six parts.

Read the book: Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning

H/T Ted Belman

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Well, I drove across the country from Michigan, and I am now in Barstow, California. (No view from the room today; my camera is in the car.) I don't especially recommend driving 850, mostly mountainous, miles on the third day of a long drive, as my head was spinning and things were still moving when I went to bed last night. Fortunately, today's drive will be the shortest. (A mere 400 miles to destination.)

As it happens, I passed through only one state which had belonged to the Confederacy -- Texas. (Well, there is the complicated situation of Missouri, which was claimed by both sides and had two state governments. But it's hardly what we think of as a Confederate state.)

I hadn't really thought about the historical status of the states I drove through until this morning, when I read this piece about the "GOP=Confederacy" meme:

Win or lose, some liberal pundits seem constitutionally incapable of civility toward conservatives. Four years ago, the people and states that reelected George W. Bush were branded en masse as "dumb" and as ignorant denizens of "Jesusland" -- the kind of stereotyping supposedly only Republicans engage in. Bush won 31 states in that election, encompassing most of the interior of the continental U.S., over intense -- some might say deranged -- liberal opposition, and so perhaps their being sore losers was somewhat understandable. But even in victory liberal commentators can't seem to show any class; now the slander of the mean-spirited left is that the GOP has been relegated to the party of the Confederacy.

This vilification preemptively appeared in an electoral prognostication by Scott Horton, in Harper's on Election Day. Horton haughtily predicted that "the Republican Party will have transformed itself from the Party of Lincoln into the Party of the Old Confederacy" and that McCain would win only the South plus "a sprinkling of thinly populated states of the Plains and Mountain West." Horton then went on to tar the South as "largely a backwater" wherein "the GOP is ... weakest among the best-educated and most prosperous populations."

As the author Timothy Furnish makes clear, the Confederacy theory does not withstand either historical nor geographical analysis:

Of the 22 states that went for Senator McCain -- I'm counting Missouri as one, since he's ahead 49.5% to 49.3% with 100% of the precincts counted -- only eight are old Confederate ones. Many Americans, even those who should know otherwise like Ivy League-educated journalists, seem to assume that Kentucky, Missouri, West Virginia, and Oklahoma followed Jefferson Davis -- but actually all were Union territory. Thus, two-thirds of the red states in this election were from the Mountain West/Southwest and Midwest -- so it would probably be a better argument to say that the GOP, at least in the 2008 election, has become the party of the Empty Quarter and Breadbasket. But of course neither of those labels fits the prejudice paradigm regnant in news rooms, which delights in portraying the GOP as coterminous with the Land of Cotton where, in journalists' opinions, the good old times of slavery are still not forgotten.

I think they should have thought twice before floating this meme. Because, if you look at the national election map by county, the "Confederacy" is bigger and stronger outside the old South than it is inside!

Scary.

Except for New England, the "Confederacy" shows strength all over the country. Why, it's broken away from the South.

I can't blame them for trying, but it may be too late to stuff it back in.

MORE: As I get ready to hit the road, I looked at the map and saw that I'll be driving through large portions of Confederate California.

Hope I make it to Berkeley!

It has come to my attention that Governor Palin needs to improve her economic education. Please use these Amazon links to send her Free to Choose and The Road to Serfdom to:

Governor Sarah Palin
550 West 7th Avenue, Suite 1700
Anchorage, AK 99501

The latest entry on the Boston Globe's always fascinating picture blog, the Big Picture, ranges from portraits of Barack Obama drawn with nanotubes, to individual cancer cells, to pollen and bugs' eyes. My favorite is the picture of the squid suckers. Does that even look real?

Read this and let me know what you think.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

I'm in Tucumcari, New Mexico, and the view from my room is little more than a view of a parking lot.

However, this postcard gives a better feel for the place, which is steeped in vintage Route 66 nostalgia.

That's what the strip looks like today. Fun and partying in kitschy little 1950s motels, restaurants, and bars, when America was too innocent to acknowledge its hedonism.

As usual I have no time, but I had a very disturbing thought on the road yesterday about "economic hedonism," and rather than supplement yesterday's post I thought it belonged here.

The current economic downturn really was spun as economic hedonism for the voters. While Obama didn't use those precise words, he made clear that the economy was ruined by greedy economic hedonists run amok. The clucking eerily resembled the puritanical shamings and scoldings of the sort that are routinely directed at sexual hedonists, and it would not surprise me at all if many puritan-minded folk think that the greedy Wall Street capitalists and all of "us" who went along with it were (to borrow the AIDS/venereal disease terminology) "were asking for it" and "had it coming."

While McCain was at first only too glad to echo the theme, Barack Obama was able to better play the role of Mr. Clean -- the guy who would apply the brakes and put a stop to all the wild hedonism, and redeem this country.

So naturally, I'm wondering about something. Slowing hedonism down, applying the brakes, restraints, even crackdowns -- what image might all of this have evoked among an electorate which is supposed to be centrist to conservative?

Is it possible that (at least in economic terms) Obama was seen as the more conservative of the two candidates?

I realize how awful that looks, because Obama is anything but conservative. Still,it gave me the willies on the road, because we're not talking about conventional political litmus tests here, but emotions of ordinary voters who are not political junkies.

If Obama is a conservative, call me a hedonist.

UPDATE: Thanks for the comments! After a very long drive I made it to Barstow, California, except I feel as if I'm still moving, and when I close my eyes I see cars....

You know what I like about Sarah Palin? With respect to social conservatism she leads by example without any need for the heavy hand of government. And with respect to economic conservatism she puts her principles into action.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Did Jesus promote government solutions to moral problems?

Iran is in a world of hurt according to Dr. Nimrod Raphaeli in an article published by The Middle East Media Research Institute on October 30th.

At its two-hour emergency meeting in Vienna on October 24, the Organization of Oil Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) decided to lower crude production by 1.5 million barrels/day (b/d), effective next month.

The reduction in production was OPEC's response to plummeting crude prices, which peaked at $147 a barrel last July but are now hovering in the mid-$60s a barrel, and appear to be trending downward.

So where is Iran in all this? They are definitely price hawks and here is why:

A recent study by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has suggested that in order for Iran to balance its budget, the price of crude oil must not fall below $95 a barrel. The equivalent figure for Saudi Arabia is $50 per barrel and for the United Arab Emirates and Qatar even lower. One should keep in mind that Iranian oil sells at a discount compared with the higher quality benchmark West Texas Intermediate.

Countries whose economies rely on the production of natural resources, such as oil, generally establish a stabilization fund for retaining windfall profits, such as when oil went over $140 a barrel, to be used in time of economic shocks, such as a sharp decline in the price of the commodity.

Iran has established such a fund to be managed by its central bank. It would appear, however, that President Ahmadinejad has dipped into the till too often, causing the departure/resignation of two consecutive governors of Iran's central bank in a little over one year. The assets of the Iranian stabilization fund are kept secret; however, a member of the Majlis (parliament) recently revealed that it has a balance of $7 billion, which would just about cover the cost of imported gasoline for one year.

And how about Iran's economy? It is not doing well internally.

Oil revenues comprise 80% of Iran's foreign exchange. If oil prices continue to plummet in the face of the world's worsening economic crisis - a crisis which may be just in its early stages - Iran, unlike the Arab oil-producers with hefty sovereign wealth funds to cushion their national economies, could face politically destabilizing events that could threaten the survival of the regime.

On the economic front, Iran could resort to terminating oil subsidies and restricting the import of non-essential consumer goods to conserve foreign currency. In fact, news from Iran last week suggests that both steps are under consideration.

Iran may also seek to reintroduce a 3% value-added tax (VAT) which it was forced to suspend after shopkeepers in the politically influential bazaars closed shops in protest, arguing that the VAT would further aggravate inflation which reached 29.6% in October.

What do countries which have a history of foreign adventures typically do in a situation like that? That is pretty obvious. They engage in foreign adventures. One foreign adventure they might try is cranking up their insurgent cadres in Iraq. However, they would face an ever strengthening American trained Iraqi Army. The army that cleaned the clock of Iran's cats paw, the Mahdi "Army", in Basra this past year. In addition Iran needs its Army to maintain internal order so using it for an attack on Iraq is probably not a good idea. Not to mention that such an attack would gather the wrath of the American Army.

So really, they are stuck between a rock an a hard place. It will be interesting to watch while the rest of the world goes into an economic meltdown.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

I'm not talking elections here. I'm talking about my internet service. My isp lost power at about 8 AM local time and it has just come back at about 11PM local time.

I had a post ready to publish and a few more in mind that required some research.

Sorry for the interruption.

Oh yeah. This wasn't some small local provider. It was Comcast. They need to get some batteries and a backup generator for their plant. Like the telcos.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

A recent commenter on my last post had this to say:

I'm not so worried about the Dems handling science. But please, lets not waste any more GOP money trying to get prayer into school and evolution out.

I'll disagree on the first count, but of course I agree on the second. The Republican party should not be a vehicle for the ideology of any group, particularly on religious grounds. The commenter was clearly interested in pointing out Republican hypocrisy, a tired and indefensible claim that often reveals the bigotry of the complainant.

This may be a good time to talk about what I believe, and why I am not a hypocrite, because faith in Republican hypocrisy drives so many people, like that very commenter, who also snarked about there being a lot of "recovering homosexuals in the GOP," as though gays (like all minorities) have a moral obligation to support the democratic party.

As an atheist, a skeptic, a Darwinist, a public school teacher, and a registered Republican, am I as odious as a gay or a black Republican? What is this hypocrisy that we all share?

It's simply that we do not fit the stereotype. It's the same stereotype that had some Democrat supporters alternatively giddy and outraged at the news of Sarah Palin's daughter's pregnancy. How many times I heard it remarked that the situation didn't seem very Christian, or conservative, or even Republican! I heard it said that Christians would have to reject Palin, that Palin must be ashamed of her daughter. And then there was the disbelief that it never came to pass. How hypocritical of the evangelicals in this country to embrace a sinner!

So much of this hypocrisy hysteria comes from people who think they've got the other side all figured out, like armchair anthropologists thumbing through archaic notes on the characteristics of the tribes of man. On this page there's a diagram of Republican Man, concise notes on his beliefs, his superstitions, his customs.

But what happens when a specimen doesn't fit the diagram?

When it's a small-minded Republican making the observation he sees not Republican Man, but RINO: another species altogether.

When it's a leftist? The common hypocrite.

I'm afraid your textbook has misled you.

Neither party, Democrat or Republican, should be shackled to the ideologies of any of its constituencies. There are Christians in both parties. There are atheists in both parties.

Believe it or not there are gays in both parties.

And now we know convincingly, thanks to the passing of Prop 8 and the election of Barack Obama, that there are homophobes in both parties.

A gay Republican does not match your definition of gay? It's time to revise the definition, not denounce the man.

You will find hypocrisy everywhere, but my conscience is my own, not my party's. Consider this: what you call hypocrisy in a Republican may simply be the diversity you can not stand to part with as your party's exclusive purview.

Let it go.

Can the Republican Party become the Party of Goldwater/Reagan again?

Damn I wish I had more time. I'm in the middle of Missouri (can't remember the town, but it's halfway between St. Louis and Springfield), with huge stretches of road in front of me, and I'm running late.

About all I have time to do is show the "view from my room" (does that sound creepily familiar or what?)

I'm thrilled that Dennis appeared yesterday, and his post about the new war on science got an Instalanche!

That post and many others are reminding me that there's an IQ War going on, and Republicans are losing it. (The worst thing about it is that many of them don't realize that they're playing it.)

It would take time -- a lot of time -- to fully explain this, but I think the Dems win by convincing voters that they (and those voting for them) are smarter than the other side, by doing their best to make conservative populism -- and thereby conservatives -- look moronic. P.J. O'Rourke is a damned genius, and as a thinking person he obviously cannot understand why any thinking person would be on the left:

The South Side of Chicago is what everyplace in America will be once the Democratic administration and filibuster-resistant Democratic Congress have tackled global warming, sustainability, green alternatives to coal and oil, subprime mortgage foreclosures, consumer protection, business oversight, financial regulation, health care reform, taxes on the "rich," and urban sprawl. The Democrats will have plenty of time to do all this because conservatism, if it is ever reborn, will not come again in the lifetime of anyone old enough to be rounded up by ACORN and shipped to the polling booths.

None of this is the fault of the left. After the events of the 20th century--national socialism, international socialism, inter-species socialism from Earth First--anyone who is still on the left is obviously insane and not responsible for his or her actions. No, we on the right did it. The financial crisis that is hoisting us on our own petard is only the latest (if the last) of the petard hoistings that have issued from the hindquarters of our movement. We've had nearly three decades to educate the electorate about freedom, responsibility, and the evils of collectivism, and we responded by creating a big-city-public-school-system of a learning environment.

(And now I'm getting on a tear and sounding like a bigot while I'm supposed to be driving.)

The bottom line is that intelligent, thoughtful conservatives and libertarians are in the closet. The subject came up during this fascinating discussion between Bill Whittle and Dr. Helen, which the "Himbo" husband linked yesterday.

Anyway, to return to O'Rourke, this has set up liberals to seize the reins, because conservatives are painted as dumbly appealing to faith (or magic), while liberals promise "smarter" people behind the controls. Never mind that the controls control nothing (but they do provide power for the "controllers"):

What will destroy our country and us is not the financial crisis but the fact that liberals think the free market is some kind of sect or cult, which conservatives have asked Americans to take on faith. That's not what the free market is. The free market is just a measurement, a device to tell us what people are willing to pay for any given thing at any given moment. The free market is a bathroom scale. You may hate what you see when you step on the scale. "Jeeze, 230 pounds!" But you can't pass a law making yourself weigh 185. Liberals think you can. And voters--all the voters, right up to the tippy-top corner office of Goldman Sachs--think so too.

The O' Rourke piece (which Glenn linked yesterday, is titled "We Blew It" and it evokes the famous line from Easy Rider.

Billy and Wyatt go on to a New Orleans whorehouse that Hanson had
recommended. There, they celebrate Mardi Gras and go on an LSD trip in a
cemetery with two young prostitutes. Then they are on the open road again,
and Billy laughs triumphantly. "We've done it. We're rich, Wyatt. We did it,
man." To which Wyatt answers cryptically, "We blew it."

Critics have debated this meaning. To me, Wyatt seems to be commenting on the
futility of their nomadic life -- a life that catches up much of the
confused, aimless lives of the dissidents of their generation.

But Hopper said he really had in mind the fact that they have lost their
innocence because their wealth is corrupt. It has come from a dope sale.
"When Peter says, 'We blew it', he's talking about easy money, that we should
have used our energies to make it."

I sent an email to M. Simon in which I looked back on years of personal hedonism (which nearly killed me) and said,

...if there is one lesson I have learned from freedom, it's that there are risks and downsides, and you have to take the good and the bad.

Economies do not always thrive. The American people are acting like a bunch of babies. (Or whiners as Phil Gramm said). Like gays clamoring to shut down the bathhouses once they got AIDS (which some did).

Hedonism, the irresponsible fast lane of freedom, is a high risk activity -- whether economic, sexual, or chemical. You cannot have freedom without allowing it, and people are going to get hurt. Ditto, legal guns.

The problem is, no one wants to hear this.

Beyond that, the more the government intervenes (as they did in this economy), the greater the demand for more intervention when intervention fails, which it inevitably will.

True conservatism (at least, the old fashioned kind) involved allowing freedom and encouraging -- not mandating -- responsibility. It's AYOR (at your own risk) stuff, and it's not for children.

Failure in all these things has to be allowed, but the voters want safety nets and will not allow it.

There's tragedy in this.

Populism is a risky business.

UPDATE: My thanks to Glenn Reynolds for linking this post, and a warm welcome to all.

(I drove all day (I'm now in Tucumcari, New Mexico, on the old Route 66), and I'm delighted to see so many thoughtful comments. They're always appreciated -- agree or disagree.

Here is a funny bit I found in the comments at No Quarter.

==

The Heaviest Element Known to Science

Lawrence Livermore Laboratories has discovered the heaviest element yet known to science.

The new element, Governmentium (Gv), has one neutron, 25 assistant neutrons, 88 deputy neutrons, and 198 assistant deputy neut rons, giving it an atomic mass of 312.

These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons.

Since Governmentium has no electrons, it is inert; however, it can be detected, because it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact. A tiny amount of Governmentium can cause a reaction that would normally take less than a second, to take from 4 days to 4 years to complete.

Governmentium has a normal half-life of 2- 6 years. It does not decay, but instead undergoes a reorganization in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places.

In fact, Governmentium's mass will actually increase over time, since each reorganization will cause more morons to become neutrons, forming isodopes.

This characteristic of morons promotion leads some scientists to believe that Governmentium is formed whenever morons reach a critical concentration.
This hypothetical quantity is referred to as critical morass.

When catalysed with money, Governmentium becomes Administratium, an element that radiates just as much energy as Governmentium since it has half as many peons but twice as many morons.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Commenter Fritz in a reply to a comment by Edgar at Older Protestant White Guys had this to say about the "leave us alone" crowd in the last election.

Edgar, you state that the "leave us alone" crowd are at fault for Obama's victory. OK. I'm one of the "leave us alone" crowd and, while I did not vote for Obama, I certainly was not going to vote for McCain. As far as I could see, he was much less in favor of leaving me alone than Obama.

Social conservatives have to come up with compelling reasons for those of us who are not social conservatives to, well, put up with them anymore. And it will have to be a damn good reason because I for one am tired of them. I want a small and limited government. Social conservatives want a large and annoying one. And as long as that is true, we had might as well have socialists in charge because, for the most part (i.e. except for gun control), they are less obnoxious.

Of course the crowd coming in is no better when it comes to their hot issues and I'm tired of them already. As a commenter pointed out in another post - the only people who generally want to get into government are people who want to do something. In fact they want to do a lot of somethings. All very expensive and producing results the opposite of those claimed. That fits in very well with the first rule of politics. Get elected and once elected betray those who elected you.

You know maybe there is some truth to the old wisdom about the general crookedness of politicians and the low morals of actors. The nice thing about actors though is that you don't have to buy a ticket to the show. With politicians there is no way to opt out. They have a captive audience so to speak.

I have a few words for their kind:

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Of course I'm playing on Valerie Jarrett's remark that President Obama will be "ready to rule." And of course I'm mocking the notion that Democrats have a monopoly on reality.

But what is no laughing matter is the lack of reason and the total disregard for science in what may be the imminent appointment of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head the EPA.

I keep seeing his name bandied about among lists of potential cabinet members, but he must be barred in the name of science and reason.

In short, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has proved himself little better than Jenny McCarthy, that detestable mouthpiece of the anti-vaccine crowd who has directly contributed to declining health among children, has deluded countless parents, and has supported dubious, unscientific methods. This would be a disaster and an appointment anything but reality-based.

You can read much, much more from Steven Novella at NeuroLogica Blog or from David Gorski at Science-Based Medicine, or from the many, many science bloggers and skeptics who have blogged in opposition. Notable among these is Orac who goes into very great depth on Kennedy and why he's such a terrible choice, and also helps us to find out how to contact the president elect and to be heard.

This is no direction for the Obama administration to go after the Bush administration was so reviled for hindering science. A Kennedy selection would have far less to do with reality than with expediency and personal relationships.

MORE: And now by coincidence I find (via Drudge) that John Podesta seems to have a history of UFO quackery. Just what have we gotten ourselves into?

Yes, I'll be on the road for several days, so my blogging for the next four days will likely be nonexistent, or at best occasional and brief.

With any luck, M. Simon will be blogging up a storm. (While I drive through them!)

So keep checking in; you never know!

What is twenty-five million all about? It is the number of people who have used marijuana in any given year.

Since 1990 a reported 20.5 million people have used marijuana in an average year. From 1990 to 2005 annual usage was at its greatest reported level in 2002 at 25.9 million and its lowest level in 17.4 million in 1992. (See Table 1.)

The National Survey on Drug Use and Health and its predecessor, the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, are among the most professional, sophisticated, and reliable population surveys conducted. Nonetheless, for both practical and methodological reasons they do not provide a complete accounting of drug use in the United States. For example in 2002 the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) revised its data collection procedures and increased their estimate of annual marijuana users from 21.1 million (as reported in the 2001 survey results) to 25.7 million.(9) NSDUH is a very extensive survey, and in 2002 respondents were paid to complete the entire survey. While this improved data collection, it also calls attention to incomplete data collection in prior years. At best, NSDUH provides data on the minimum number of drug users in the country.

A report by ONDCP on drug consumption in the United States includes this explanation why surveys likely underreport drug use:

"These estimates may be low. Users are likely to under report socially disapproved behaviors, even when those behaviors are legal. They would seem to have even more incentive to under report illegal behaviors. Given under reporting rates for tobacco and alcohol use, it might be reasonable to inflate marijuana estimates by about one-third."(10)

My question is - why isn't any party actively courting their vote?

Of course the Republicans can't do it. They have a Culture War to maintain. And the Democrats? It seems like a wink and a nod is good enough while they prosecute the Drug War even more fiercely than the Republicans.

A party that went after that vote in the current climate need not go whole hog. It could make Medical Marijuana a states rights issue. It seems perfect for a Republican Party that stands for Cultural and Economic Liberty. Or heck even a Democrat Party that only stands for cultural Liberty.

Of course such a move might not be enough to win Presidential elections, after all that depends on the votes in individual States. Still, if the Republicans adopted it it would prove their bonafides in moving to end the Culture War.

And how about that map of the States just linked to above? Eleven States have decriminalized Marijuana use. One of them is Mississippi. Another is Alaska. Thirteen have medical marijuana laws. (I did a quick count so some one correct me if I made an error). The trends are obvious. And as they say in day trading - the trend is your friend.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

It looks to me like he is going to have to make a lot of decisions he is not ready for. Not surprising for a man who voted "present" 130 times in the Illinois Senate.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

I stumbled across a piece of nostalgia last night in the form of this Veterans Day column by Herb Caen -- a guy I used to read daily who deserves the title of blogger, even if he never lived to see that. From The San Francisco Chronicle, Nov. 9, 1986.

TUESDAY IS another of those pesky half-holidays, with some things open, other things closed and everybody confused and/or uninterested. Now it's called Veterans Day, but when Nov. 11 was Armistice Day, it had meaning and poignancy - parades at slow time, muffled drums, black armbands, gold stars in the front windows of grieving mothers. The Civil War was a horror, but World War I was the real thing, dragging this coltish young nation into the international arena. It was all so innocent that those of our generation cannot hear "My Buddy" or "Over There" without a lump in the throat. I won't say "Happy Veterans Day" because the phrase makes no sense.

I'm saying "Happy Veterans Day" because I think we should be happy to celebrate veterans who have given us our freedom. It ought to be more than a "pesky half holiday." (Which I think is what Herb Caen meant to say.)

Glenn Reynolds linked this post from Armed Liberal, who sees a "need for a patriotic liberalism":

...in my view, liberalism had become identified with a cosmopolitan view that denied the unique place that America has in the world and that wanted badly to reduce America to a country among others.

Steve offered the notion that America is an idea, and that that idea is inherently welcoming, and I chimed in supporting him; we are not a nation of blood or land, we are a nation of an idea, and possibly the first great nation that can say that.

We need - as liberals, as Americans - to embrace those ideas which are our patrimony, to accept their greatness and the imperfections of the realizations. Just as we recognize the greatness and flaws of our children.

Mike Murburg's son Ehren was buried under an American flag, and like all of those who died and were buried under that flag wearing the uniform of our country, he died for a set of ideas. Those ideas are not liberal, not conservative - they contain American liberalism and conservatism and so are greater than either.

I am an American liberal, and as such, I owe my first loyalty to my country.

And because of that - like many modern liberals - I have no problem being grateful to those who died, were wounded, who simply or heroically served in defense of our flag and the ideals it represents.

If you know any veterans, thank them.

I'll start by saying thanks to my co-blogger M. Simon, who is a veteran.

While I couldn't find the latest horror story of radical gay anarchists invading a church in Lansing, Michigan in my daily paper, Glenn Reynolds linked it this morning (along with a more detailed account), and observed,

This strategy seems quite unwise.

Whether they were unwise depends (unfortunately) on point of view. Certainly they were unwise if the goal was to advance gay rights -- in particular gay marriage.

But was it?

Clayton Cramer observes that the group consists of anarchists and appears to be confused -- very confused:

Gay anarchism--there's a concept that someone hasn't thought through very carefully! Anarchism means the absence of government--so there's no one to call if gay bashers decide to beat up homosexuals, there's no one to punish employers that refuse to hire homosexuals, and there's no government to recognize your same-sex "marriage."

It is true that if you are a large and powerful minority of the population you may not need government to protect you--you can protect yourself. The experience of the post-Reconstruction South, however, suggests that even if your minority group is almost half the population, you need government to protect some basic human rights (such as the right to not be lynched). Homosexuals are, at most, about 3% of the population, and outside of big cities, more like 1% of the population. If this is really the fiercely homophobic society that these activists believe, anarchism is the last thing that they would want.

However, I think it might be informative to look at "Bash Back's," um, goals. Among other things (at least, according to this MySpace entry), the group opposes gay marriage, and anything that might resemble assimilation:

We are fierce as fuck radical queers, transfolk, and feminists who are not concerned with gaining access to oppressive, state-run institutions such as marriage, the military, or obtaining upward economic mobility. We want liberation, nothing less.

POINTS OF UNITY

Members of Bash Back! must agree to:

1. Fight for liberation. Nothing more, nothing less. State recognition in the form of oppressive institutions such as marriage and militarism are not steps toward liberation but rather towards heteronormative assimilation.

2. A rejection of Capitalism, Imperialism, and all forms of State power.

3. Actively oppose oppression both in and out of the "movement." All oppressive behavior is not to be tolerated.

4. Respect a diversity of tactics in the struggle for liberation. Do not solely condemn an action on the grounds that the State deems it to be illegal.

(Emphasis added.)

There's plenty of historical precedent. The Weather Underground and other radical left groups did their damnedest to alienate ordinary people, and the result was the landslide victory in 1972 of Richard Nixon. I well remember a slogan "If it takes fascism, then we'll have to have fascism!" and I think it is highly illustrative of this type of thinking. (Anarchists and fascists are closely related species, of course.)

Repression is exactly what these seemingly confused people want.

It's not a bug, but a feature.

(If I were one of those rabid anti-gay activists, I might consider sending them some money...)

UPDATE: My thanks to Glenn Reynolds for the link, and for quoting from this post.

A warm welcome to all. Comments appreciated, agree or disagree.

I especially liked what Glenn said:

Contrary to what the Sith lords say, releasing your anger isn't always the best tactic. Of course, it all depends on what you're after.

AFTERTHOUGHT: The comments are great, and while I'm on the road, a thought occurred to me. What the "Bash Back" group is really working for is blowback, right? Should they consider changing their name to a more accurate one?

Or are they too uptight and un-liberated?

Yes. The War On Drugs has turned into a shooting war. In fact it has been a shooting war for quite some time in Afghanistan. So how is that working out? Not well. Here is a bit from 2007 explaining what the DEA is doing in Afghanistan.

Working first with the D.E.A. and then with the State Department, Wankel helped create the Afghan Eradication Force, with troops of the Afghan National Police drawn from the Ministry of the Interior. Last year, an estimated four hundred thousand acres of opium poppies were planted in Afghanistan, a fifty-nine-per-cent increase over the previous year. Afghanistan now supplies more than ninety-two per cent of the world's opium, the raw ingredient of heroin. More than half the country's annual G.D.P., some $3.1 billion, is believed to come from the drug trade, and narcotics officials believe that part of the money is funding the Taliban insurgency.

Wankel was in Uruzgan to oversee a poppy-eradication campaign--the first major effort to disrupt the harvest in the province. He had brought with him a two-hundred-and-fifty-man A.E.F. contingent, including forty-odd contractors supplied by DynCorp, a Virginia-based private military company, which has a number of large U.S. government contracts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other parts of the world. In Colombia, DynCorp helps implement the multibillion-dollar Plan Colombia, to eradicate coca. The A.E.F.'s armed convoy had taken three days to drive from Kabul, and had set up a base on a plateau above a deep wadi. With open land all around, it was a good spot to ward off attacks.

Much of Uruzgan is classified by the United Nations as "Extreme Risk / Hostile Environment." The Taliban effectively controls four-fifths of the province, which, like the movement, is primarily Pashtun. Mullah Omar, the fugitive Taliban leader, was born and raised here, as were three other founders of the movement. The Taliban's seizure of Tirin Kot, in the mid-nineties, was a key stepping stone in their march to Kabul, and their loss of the town in 2001 was a decisive moment in their fall. The Taliban have made a concerted comeback in the past two years; they are the de-facto authority in much of the Pashtun south and east, and have recently spread their violence to parts of the north as well. The debilitating and corrupting effects of the opium trade on the government of President Hamid Karzai is a significant factor in the Taliban's revival.

Let us get a slightly less pro DEA look at what is going on. Here is something from The Guardian in 2001. It is the story of a smuggler.

"The cars come back and forth. I just take it to Mazar and sell it on to the guys who come in cars from Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. I do it twice a month," Zafir explains.

From there the contraband wends its way up into the Urals in Russia, takes a left turn, heads for Moscow and St Petersburg before being smuggled onward to western Europe - 90% of the heroin injected in Frankfurt, Barcelona or Edinburgh originates in Taliban Afghanistan.

"Our dear friends, the Taliban commanders, they take the stuff from Kandahar and Jalalabad to Kabul," says Zafir, an alias agreed to protect his identity. "We take it on to Mazar and to Kunduz."

For the past five years Zafir has been a bit-player in the lucrative rackets that make millionaires of Afghan warlords and keep the Taliban fighters in guns, food, and fuel. "I've been working in the heroin business since the Taliban seized Kabul [in 1996]."

Brown-haired, blue-eyed in a turban, pale pink tunic, and black trainers, Zafir sweats anxiously as he discloses the details of the Taliban's heroin trafficking after agreeing to meet at a quiet spot in the mountains north-west of Kabul.

OK it is not just America and the DEA. NATO is in on the act.

NATO is fighting a war to eradicate opium from Afghanistan. Allegedly, the goals this time around are different. According to the British government, Afghanistan's illicit drug trade poses the "gravest threat to the long term security, development, and effective governance of Afghanistan," particularly since the Taliban is believed to be the biggest beneficiary of drug sales. Convinced that this time they are doing the morally right thing, Western governments are spending hundreds of millions of dollars bulldozing poppy fields, building up counternarcotics squads and financing alternative crops in Afghanistan. Chemical spraying may begin as early as this spring. But in retrospect, might history not judge this war to be every bit as destructive and wasteful as the original Opium Wars?

Of course it isn't fashionable right now to argue for any legal form of opiate cultivation. But look at the evidence. At the moment, Afghanistan's opium exports account for somewhere between one-third and two-thirds of the country's gross domestic product, depending on whose statistics you believe. The biggest producers are in the southern provinces where the Taliban is at its strongest, and no wonder: Every time a poppy field is destroyed, a poor person becomes poorer -- and more likely to support the Taliban against the Western forces who wrecked his crops. Yet little changes: The amount of land dedicated to poppy production grew last year by more than 60 percent, as The Post reported last month.

It seems as if all this effort to recruit people for the Taliban has put the war in Afghanistan in dire straights. (cue up Money For Nothing)

WASHINGTON, Nov. 8 (UPI) -- A classified United States' review of its Afghanistan policies is likely to conclude the violence-torn country is in a dire situation, sources say.

With violence up 543 percent, opium poppy cultivation soaring and public support for U.S. intervention dwindling, unnamed sources told CNN Saturday the report's assessment of Afghanistan's future prospects will be grim.

The report, led by Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute of the U.S. National Security Council and including input from 24 government agencies, is expected conclude that even if U.S. President-elect Barack Obama follows through immediately on his campaign pledge to beef up American forces in Afghanistan, the moves will likely come too late to fight an expected spring offensive by Taliban insurgents, CNN said.

So does any one have any idea about what to do? Yes. Soldiers. British soldiers.

British military commanders in Afghanistan have privately condemned plans to use Helmand as the launch pad for Nato's controversial new anti-narcotics policy, The Independent has been told.

British forces have avoided getting involved in anti-drugs operations until now. They fear the new operation will create another tier of enemies, alongside the Taliban, among traffickers and poppy farmers. However, the recent Nato summit in Budapest agreed, on US insistence, to extend the Afghan mission to include attacking the narcotics trade.

So how about some more details about how things are going in Afghanistan.

The US and NATO military commanders who till recent were riding on a high horse have suddenly become pessimistic and some have given demoralising statements. It seems that they have begun to see the obtaining ground realities more objectively and have realised that victory through use of force is not possible. They have appreciated that the Afghan Taliban have become too formidable a force and cannot be defeated militarily.

And what is one of the key elements in the failure? I'm sure you have heard this before. But just for the sake of repetition here goes.

Afghanistan has turned into a narcotics state, which is now producing about 90% of the world opium; besides others the Taliban are making good use of opium money to fund their insurgency.

That is Afghanistan. How about a little closer to home? Mexico. It seems that Mexico is having a few drug problems too.

Mexico in some ways is the most worrying place in the Western hemisphere. A low-level civil war between the drug cartels and the federal government has been fought over the past two years, and the cartels are winning. Senior Mexican officials charged with suppression of the cartels have been moving their families quietly out of the country.

So what is the internal state of Mexico? It looks like there will soon be a civil war too keep the Mexicans occupied. That should be some fun.

More than 1,100 people have been slaughtered in a blood bath of drug-related violence in one city just south of the U.S.-Mexico border this year - that's nearly four victims each day - and some say it is just part of a large crisis that is will soon spill over the border.

"The U.S. State Department issued a travel advisory for Americans who visit Mexico, citing Ciudad Juarez as a hotbed of criminal activity. A large Mexican metropolis in Chihuahua State bordering Texas, Juarez is Mexico's deadliest narcotics-war zone with two criminal gangs fighting for power - over city streets and drug-smuggling routes into the United States.

"The State Department is warning U.S. citizens of escalating crime along the border, stating that 1,600 cars were stolen in Juarez in July alone. Public shootouts, muggings, murders and bank robberies are rampant, and Mexican criminals harass U.S. travelers along border regions."

Cold blooded murder, public shoot outs, bank robberies, muggings, drug trafficking, and car thefts are common place in this cesspool.

So how about a look at some of the recent violence? It is not pretty.

MEXICO CITY (AFP) -- Twenty three died in attacks in northern Mexico in the past two days, officials said, as the United States warned its citizens to increase vigilance when traveling south of the border.

Twelve died in northwestern Baja California State, mostly in the volatile border city of Tijuana, and 11 were killed in Chihuahua, further east.

Border areas where rival drug cartels are battling over key routes into the United States are among the worst hit in escalating violence across Mexico this year in which almost 3,500 have died, including civilians.

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico -- A beheaded man was hung from an overpass Thursday, a gruesome display even for this northern border city long used to drug-related violence.

Shortly after the grisly sighting about 5 a.m., police found the victim's head in a black bag in a nearby plaza, said state police spokesman Alejandro Pariente.

Pariente said the body was wearing black jeans, a red T-shirt and white sneakers, and was handcuffed. A banner apparently directed at rival drug-gang members was hung next to the corpse.

The victim's father identified the 23-year-old man.

Elsewhere, masked men gunned down two police officers in a convenience store in Chihuahua City, the capital of Chihuahua state, where Juarez is located, said Eduardo Esparza, spokesman for the state attorney general's office. After the killing Wednesday evening, assailants left a toy pig next to the bodies. Two shoppers also were wounded.

On Tuesday, a man wearing a pig mask was found hung in a residence in Ciudad Juarez. Near the body was a message threatening to do the same to others. Police believe the message was from drug gangs.

There is only one way to win this. Surrender you fools. The Drug War is going to destroy America if you don't. End Drug Prohibition Now. Any chance of that? No. Obama used cocaine and pot as a youth. Who would listen to an ex-druggie? The only way he could do anything is if the call to end it was bipartisan. I rate the odds of that as slim and none. Or maybe slimmer than none. We love our prohibitions in America. Besides don't criminals deserve to earn a living too? According to current policy: Yes They Do.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

In a piece titled "Minorities at war on Obamaland's Western shore," distinguished Canadian journalist Colby Cosh looks at the Proposition 8 conflict (including the latest nonsensical meme that gays who voted for McCain did so out of racism) and concludes,

It's enough to make you glad you live in a country where such matters are handled entirely undemocratically! Like it or not, we do avoid a certain amount of genuine unpleasantness that way.

Personally, I'd like to see the separation of marriage and state, taking this stuff out of the political realm entirely.

If marriage were treated as a right, it would not be subject to licensing.

In the normal scope of things, activities that are licensed -- cutting hair, flying planes, driving 18 wheelers, practicing law, medicine, etc. -- are not rights at all, but occupational choices that require training, which are regulated by the state.

I don't know much about the history of marriage licensing, but this minister claims that it's a recent (and racist) development, and that George Washington and Abraham Lincoln had no marriage licenses:

George Washington was married without a marriage license. Abraham Lincoln was married without a marriage license. So, how did we come to this place in America where marriage licenses are issued?

Historically, all the states in America had laws outlawing the marriage of blacks and whites. In the mid-1800's, certain states began allowing interracial marriages or miscegenation as long as those marrying received a license from the state. In other words they had to receive permission to do an act which without such permission would be illegal.

Blacks Law Dictionary points to this historical fact when it defines "marriage license" as, "A license or permission granted by public authority to persons who intend to intermarry." "Intermarry" is defined in Black's Law Dictionary as, "Miscegenation; mixed or interracial marriages."

Give the State an inch and they'll take a 100 miles (or as one elderly woman once said to me "10,000 miles.") Not long after these licenses were issued, some states began requiring all people who marry to obtain a marriage license. In 1923, the Federal Government established the Uniform Marriage and Marriage License Act (they later established the Uniform Marriage and Divorce Act). By 1929, every state in the Union had adopted marriage license laws.

I'd hate to think all this fuss is over a desire for official state imprimatur, but I worry that it is. Like almost everything else (soon including the auto industry), marriage is seen as something you get from the government. Maybe it would be better to see it as something that the government cannot interfere with, the way genuine rights are.

(On the other hand, if you can't be born without a birth certificate and can't die without a death certificate, maybe all things -- including life itself -- do come from the government.)

Nah, scratch that. A birth certificate is not a license to be born, nor is a death certificate a license to die.

UPDATE: My thanks to Glenn Reynolds for the link, and a warm welcome to all.

Comments appreciated, agree or disagree.

Please don't crush my hope so early, Mr. Obama.

While I didn't vote for Obama, I'm not the type to say inane things like "DON'T BLAME ME! I VOTED FOR MCCAIN!"

Slogans like that annoy me. Barack Obama is my president just as much as anyone else's, and I have just as much of a right and a duty to opine on matters of national importance.

So, what I will say is, simply, "Please, Mr. President Elect. Say it's not true!"

Gorelick is a bad choice. By any reasonable standard, she simply has too much baggage.

I've criticized Gorelick for this in the past, and in a further walk down Memory Lane I see that in another post, I defended Ann Althouse against the charge that she and Glenn Reynolds were part of a "RADICAL RIGHT-WING AGENDA," simply for raising questions about Jamie Gorelick's conflict of interest.

Bear in mind that the above concerns are old, but since then Gorelick's baggage has only grown heavier. To the existing list, The New York Times adds that she left Fannie Mae "just as it was coming under attack for huge accounting failures."

Hardly ordinary baggage, says Althouse:

Unbelievably ponderous baggage! Oh, but conservatives have attacked her. Does that somehow cancel the baggage? A better question: Why haven't liberals attacked her?

While this is a bit tedious (and I realize that I'm a hopeless pawn of the "radical right wing agenda" for saying it), here's hoping against hope that Obama won't crush the hopes of people who may have thought they were voting for change, while confirming the suspicions of those who didn't.

To be fair, Jamie Gorelick does represents change, of a sort. From the tired politics of the Bush past right back to the tired politics of the Clinton past.

But you don't have to be an Obama voter to know that this is not the sort of change Barack Obama was talking about, and hardly what his supporters voted for.

(This is the kind of the change I should be ashamed of not voting for?)

MORE: Dean Esmay suggests John McCain for Secretary of State:

You know, that would be an awfully bold move, but it would certainly signal to a lot of people that "change" and "bipartisanship" really mean things to the new President, and it would certainly be the buzz everywhere. He'd probably be awfully good at the job.

AND MORE: This better be on the level:

Obama has asked Dick Lugar to serve as SoS and he has agreed.

Via Glenn Reynolds, who says,

I don't know if it's true. But hey, he'd be better than John Kerry . . . .

Considering the nature of the debate in my previous post about gay bigotry, I'm glad we're not living in Germany. No, this is not another Nazi comparison; I'm talking about modern Germany, where it has apparently become illegal to accuse someone of anti-Semitism:

In a tortuous ruling that threatens to have a chilling effect on discussions of "new" German anti-Semitism, the District Court of Cologne recently upheld a restraining order that forbids author Henryk Broder from describing the discourse of a virulent critic of Israel as "anti-Semitic" in a post on a popular German blog.

From the perspective of the average reader, the application of the concept "anti-Semitic" is especially grave and like hardly any other well suited to depreciate [the person] connected to it in the eyes of the public. This has to do with the terrible consequences that anti-Semitism has brought about precisely in Germany.

According to the Cologne court's ruling, however, even a true statement can represent defamatory "abusive criticism," provided it is not accompanied by "sufficient" grounds. This obviously implies a sort of hyper-regulation of speech on the part of the German courts. Given, moreover, that the court has done nothing to specify the threshold for "sufficiency," the potential for arbitrariness in the application of this power is virtually unlimited. Broder himself, for example, has been accused by some of "Islamophobia." Will he now be able to obtain restraining orders against the authors of such charges?

Fortunately in the US, such political characterizations are not (not yet, at least) a suitable matter for the courts:

Of course, it could be argued that what constitutes anti-Semitism is more a matter of interpretation or opinion than what constitutes child molestation or, say, plagiarism or other more typical subjects of personal defamation suits. But this is all the more reason why in a liberal democratic society it is not a suitable matter for the courts. In any case, if there is such a thing as "anti-Zionist anti-Semitism," then there is little room for doubt that the fulminations of Evelyn Hecht-Galinski on the "Jewish-Israeli lobby" constitute an example. The similarities between the latter and the morbid phantasms of the Nazis on the power of "international Jewry" are obvious for even just a minimally historically informed observer.

Since then, the trend has not been good -- especially with younger people. While you might think that college students would be more supportive of the First Amendment than any other group, a 2006 study revealed that the number of college students who think the First Amendment goes too far has increased dramatically:

...students say they feel the First Amendment as a whole goes too far. In 2006, 45 percent said the First Amendment goes too far, versus 35 percent two years ago.

This is not to say that it's an easy thing to be accused of bigotry. I don't like it any more than anyone else, and just last night I spent quite a bit of time defending myself against a charge that I was anti-Christian, and anti-Mormon. This went back and forth, and that's the way free speech is supposed to work. Over the years I have developed a tough skin over these things, but this only makes me worry that part of the problem might be with young people who have been raised on a diet of "self esteem" -- to whom the slightest criticism gives rise to a sense of aggrieved entitlement. (Factor in identity politics, and a disagreement with an individual can become an attack on a group to which he belongs. Sorry, but ridiculing Jeremiah Wright or Pat Robertson is not ridicule of Christianity itself.)

No one enjoys being called a bigot. But the idea that calling me a bigot should be illegal -- or that I should be able to file a complaint against the accuser -- fills me with horror.

I hope it is not the way of the future.

Norman Ornstein discusses the hill Republicans have to climb to get back into power.

In so many respects -- culturally, ethnically, sociologically, internationally -- the election of Barack Obama has altered the landscape. It also has changed the political terrain, making the path for Republicans to return to majority status in the electorate daunting -- an uphill climb akin to scaling Mt. Everest. Without pitons.

Most ominous for the GOP is what has been happening with younger voters. As a share of the electorate, 18- to 29-year-olds grew only slightly, from 17% to 18%. But they grew in terms of numbers of voters by more than 2.2 million (perhaps up to 4.5 million) and gave 66% of their votes to Obama. Partisan identity tends to crystallize in this age range. If Obama succeeds over the next four or eight years, these voters may carry their Democratic identity through their lifetimes. For Republicans, the danger is that their only reliable voting bloc may remain older white guys. Make that older Protestant white guys. Ouch.

Republicans need to be more than just the only other option on the ballot in four years. They must find a message -- be it a more refined compassionate conservativism, the folksy populism of Mike Huckabee or even a fiscally conservative/environmentally conservationist fusion -- that speaks to the segments of the electorate that are growing. And then they need a leader to deliver it. At this early date after a dramatic election, there is no sign they have either.

So lets look at the Democrat's coalition and see if we can figure out the problem. Who are they? Blacks, Gays, Jews, Catholics, pro-abortion folks, illegal drug users. There are more but there are enough there to make my point. It seems like a very disparate group with nothing in common. I mean what do pro abortion people have in common with Catholics? It is pretty simple really. These groups have all, in the last 100 years or so been victims of those Protestant white guys. All you have to do is to look at the electoral map of 2008. What does the Republican Party have left? Basically they have the Old South. Home of those Older Protestant white guys. And if you look at the map closely the Democrats have even been making inroads into the home territory of the older Protestant white guys. Not a happy prospect for the future.

Here is what one academic author has to say about authoritarianism in the South.

White Southerners, always hegemonic in defining the region's history, politics and culture, frequently demonstrate, and have demonstrated, strikingly strong resistance to diversity. While Southern white party loyalties have switched from majority Democratic to majority Republican, intolerance of difference appears woven into the region's political and social fabric, more so than in other regions. This observation draws substantial support from historical studies (Goldfield 2002), and other research examining specific elements of Southern culture, i.e. the Southern culture of honor (Nisbett and Cohen 1996), Southern Baptist and other evangelical Protestant religious traditions (Rosenberg 1989; Smith 1997; Green et al. 2003)

So what is the way forward? Sarah Palin. Why her? She represents a new strain of deeply devout Protestant evangelical. The people of Alaska didn't even know her religious affiliation until this election. She did not practice the intolerance of those old Protestant white guys. No one had a clue about her stance on abortion. And that is a big clue. Basically she was fiscally conservative and socially moderate. In other words a libertarian. No surprise there. She comes from Alaska, the most libertarian state in the nation.

She represents a rebirth of the Leave Us Alone Coalition. About time.

H/T Hot Air

Cross Posted at Power and Control

The Democrat Party is a coalition of the oppressed and formerly oppressed Americans.

And who was doing the oppressing? Social conservatives of the Protestant variety.

Here is one example dealing with the public schools.

Separate Roman Catholic and Jewish schools were established in the mid-nineteenth century, first in New York City, and later across the country. This was in response to the overly anti-Catholic and anti-Jewish positions presented by most textbooks used in public schools throughout the nation, in the interest of promoting Protestant homogamy throughout the United States.

My suggestion? Champion marijuana legalization. It would show that the party stands not only for Economic Liberty but also Cultural Liberty.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

I like technological breakthroughs, and the announcement in this article struck me as good news:

Nuclear power plants smaller than a garden shed and able to power 20,000 homes will be on sale within five years, say scientists at Los Alamos, the US government laboratory which developed the first atomic bomb.

The miniature reactors will be factory-sealed, contain no weapons-grade material, have no moving parts and will be nearly impossible to steal because they will be encased in concrete and buried underground.

The US government has licensed the technology to Hyperion, a New Mexico-based company which said last week that it has taken its first firm orders and plans to start mass production within five years. 'Our goal is to generate electricity for 10 cents a watt anywhere in the world,' said John Deal, chief executive of Hyperion. 'They will cost approximately $25m [£13m] each. For a community with 10,000 households, that is a very affordable $250 per home.'

It hardly inspires confidence that the CEO of a company which makes nukes would make such a blatant error in math.

I guess it's possible that the error wasn't his, but was instead that of the writer. You know, a zero got dropped. Does this indicate an "error"? I'm very forgiving of obvious errors, especially typos, but the problem with numerical errors is that the intended meanings aren't always clear the way they are when, say, the word "the" appears as "teh."

The question of whether a number is an error is compounded if we look at the possible biases that might be behind it. In that context, what is an "error"? That a number is simply wrong does not end the inquiry. If I am "just a digit off" when I tell the IRS that I made $25,000 when the number is really $250,000, it is certainly relevant whether I deliberately gave them an incorrect number as opposed to having made a mistake in math or in transcription. Yet the number is "wrong," and in that sense an "error" regardless of my intent. At that point, though, the question of "what is an error" becomes a philosophical one. In the moral and legal sense, if I deliberately gave the IRS an incorrect number, I made no error, for my act was deliberate. Lies are not errors. Yet in math, an error is an error is an error. Suppose that for some pathological reason you take a math exam, and you deliberately gave the wrong answer knowing it was wrong. It is still wrong, and good or bad faith do not affect its inherent wrongness. A wrong answer is no more wrong because it was sincerely believed to be right either. Interestingly, if by your calculations you got the wrong answer, then made a transcription error which made it right, it would still be right. Morality and intent are irrelevant.

Notice that from the facts given in the current example, it is not clear which number is in error. There are three figures:

$25 million cost per plan

10,000 customers

$250 cost per customer.

I can't be sure, but I think the $250 should be $2500. Still affordable. Anyway, the lower the price, the better the news, right?

It's a minor point, but the philosophical aspects of errors fascinate me, and in an amazing coincidence, earlier this morning I read an article dealing with precisely that subject, titled "Math students find success with philosophical route to the right answers":

It seems weird at first: Math teachers who don't care if the answer is correct.

However, it is claimed (by the proponents) that these methods work better to improve test scores:

But Wayne State University professors who teach college math at Detroit Public Schools believe that triumph is not in the answer, it's in the struggle to get there.

Now, their philosophy -- one that test scores suggest works with surprising success -- has found a bigger and more efficient home on WSU's main campus.

The Center for Excellence and Equity in Mathematics is about "creating an environment in which kids are intellectually fearless, where they're not so worried that their answers are incorrect or correct," said math Professor Leonard Boehm.

Boehm is a man in constant motion -- pacing and punching the air in the classroom, shaking students' hands and cracking really bad jokes. Four times a week, he brings college math to fifth-graders at Thurgood Marshall Elementary School, just one of the programs now served by CEEM.

On a recent morning, the wooden floor boards creaked beneath his stride and 26 students were rapt.

The lesson: If 2 raised to the second power is 4, and 2 raised to the third power is 8, what is 2 raised to the zero power?

Hands shot in the air. "My esteemed colleagues," each respondent began their answer. (The answers in Boehm's class always start this way as a sign of respect.)

The students agreed: The answer must be zero, right?

No, wait. 1? Their certainty wavered. 2?

Boehm grinned and stopped. His voice dropped.

"How come a mathematician," he asked, "might say the answer doesn't exist?"

It was Desean Washington-Jones, 11, who eventually raised his hand through the quiet.

The students began gesturing -- like a basketball referee motions for a traveling offense -- to show their support as Desean worked through the answer.

"My esteemed colleagues," he began. "The answer might not exist because there is no factor form."

Hands flew in the air and began to shake -- the sign they agreed.

"Can something come from nothing?" Boehm asked. "If a factor form doesn't exist, can the answer come from something that doesn't exist?"

And so it went -- onto existential quantifiers, the fallacy of induction, and lessons that will lead to the concepts of a limit as well as infinite geometric and harmonic series.

It's the kind of college-prep training not always available to or expected of inner-city kids, said Steve Kahn, WSU professor and director of CEEM.

"The kids in Detroit are getting screwed," said Kahn, who began his career teaching Detroit's high school dropouts.

The numbers cited are impressive:

The CEEM approach seems to be working. Before Math Corps, students answered about 30% of the answers correctly on grade-appropriate tests. By the end of the camp, they were averaging 90%, according to CEEM stats.

"The math is good and simple. ... But the real key is changing a kid's attitude about her or his expectations," said Robert Thomas, dean of WSU's College of Science.

That, and matching students with peer mentors "turns out to be magical," he said.

Assuming that the numbers are correct, I wondered if anything might explain this other than magic, so I went to the Math Corps web site, and saw this:

In reviewing applications, staff seeks indications of a serious desire to succeed in mathematics as well as evidence that the student is willing to work hard to achieve that success.

Of course, if the goal is "math equity" (a complex issue described here) what might be the implications for the test? If the goal is to improve scores to promote equity, that might not translate into real world proficiency. What I'd like to know is how they would do on a standardized test, and whether they end up being able to do things like long division. It's one thing to teach that correct math answers don't matter as an initial stage, but I'd hate to think that they never really matter. Otherwise, how is anyone supposed to make sense out of anything numerical?

But once again, maybe my hangup about accuracy reveals my own educational deficiencies. I was bad at math, and one of the reasons was that there might have been too much emphasis on finding accurate numbers. Here's how I put it before:

...appreciating how many dead bodies there might [as in victims of Hurricane Katrina] be is a highly personal process. To one person, there might be hundreds. To others, there might be thousands, and depending on social skills and psychological considerations, still others might see the answer as millions.

Aren't higher numbers more relevant to what's going on in the world? If the goal of math is to make things relevant, then the numbers have to be higher, because otherwise, people might not care as much.

What this means is that the hangup that bloggers like me have with finding accurate numbers reveals an educational deficiency which is being remedied.

I should be glad. Because it means my being bad at math really wasn't any shortcoming on my part. And my hangup about it only reflects the wrong social attitudes of the times in which I grew up.

This is all changing.

We should be glad.

If there is no accountability, then why are only some are off the hook?

Foobarista of foobarista left a comment at my post Republicans Stayed Home. This is what foo had to say:

The reason McCain lost is the Republicans lost the "Leave Me Aloners".

The problem was that small-government Republicans got swept aside by those who got used to the comforts of Washington. "Compassionate Conservatism" didn't help. Even people like me, who thought the WoT - including Iraq - were necessary had a hard time dealing with Bush's general incompetence in all things domestic.

He kept Congress funding Iraq by rolling over on everything else, which will likely end up being far more expensive to the country than the war itself, both in terms of government size and helping get Obama elected.

Now, given the choice between social-con big government and live & let live big government, any who isn't a bible-thumper chose the latter. (although I personally voted for McCain since WoT is a "voting issue" for me)

Now, the biggest danger for Republicans is to go for the Mike Huckabee "God, Guns & Butter" strategy, which will leave the large Leave-Me-Alone coalition in the Democrat camp for lack of anywhere else to go.

Obama may still overreach with his "communitarian" stuff like mandatory "volunteerism", etc and drive the Leave-Me-Aloners away, but I suspect he's smarter than that.

H/T Instapundit

Cross Posted at Power and Control

So I'm trying to figure out why the Republicans lost. And I go back to one of the stats guys who misinformed me. Yeah I know. But he is an honest guy and is trying to figure out what his error was. Here is what Paul Marston has to say:

As usual, the media has missed the huge story of this election. Their story is that Obama registered huge masses of new supporters and got them to the polls. At first, that was what I thought, but that is not the key factor. I was expecting the highest percentage turnout in 100 years amounting to 130,000,000 voters, but instead as of 5:00 PM EDT, 121,146,964 people voted for Obama or McCain. In 2004, 121,069,054 people voted for Bush or Kerry. Hence in a hotly contested election in which a fortune was spent on the race, there was no big surge in voter turnout. The population is bigger and the number of registered voters is larger than in 2004, yet just about the same number of people voted. What are we to make of this? We know that a higher than normal percentage of minorities and under 30 youths turned out pushing up the Democratic votes. We know that about 15% of Democrats who voted for Hillary Clinton voted for McCain-Palin (the PUMA voters). So how are we to explain the results? The conclusion is inescapable. The Republicans stayed home in droves. Obama did not win the election, the Republicans gave it to him by not getting out and voting.

I guess the Republicans weren't listening. Pity.

Paul goes on to say:

It goes without saying that when the results were widely different from what I predicted, I wanted to know how I could be so wrong. At first I thought it was because the PUMA voters did not turn out and vote for McCain-Palin but they clearly did. Then I thought that it was because Obama got millions of new voters to the polls and simply swamped the PUMA factor.

It was only when the turnout figures became available that I had to discard that theory. If the usual number of people voted yet more Democrats than normal turned out and there a sizable number of PUMA voters voting Republican, how could McCain-Palin have lost? When the results were staring me in the face, I was totally shocked. The smaller turnout meant that even fewer PUMA voters were required in the key states than I had calculated so McCain-Palin should have done even better than I predicted. Naturally my predictions were based on a normal Republican turnout. Who would have ever thought that the Republicans would fail to turn out in this election? While I am still busy trying to wipe the egg of my face, I am also extremely curious as to why so many Republicans stayed home. I imagine that I am not alone in wondering that at this point.

"A downturn in the number and percentage of Republican voters going to the polls seemed to be the primary explanation for the lower than predicted turnout. The percentage of eligible citizens voting Republican declined to 28.7 percent down 1.3 percentage points from 2004. Democratic turnout increased by 2.6 percentage points from 28.7 percent of eligibles to 31.3 percent. It was the seventh straight increase in the Democratic share of the eligible vote since the party's share dropped to 22.7 percent of eligibles in 1980."

WASHINGTON - For four years, Utah conservatives have proudly proclaimed they lived in the reddest state in the nation.

But no longer.

That mantle now belongs to Oklahoma and Wyoming, where Republican John McCain scored bigger victories in Tuesday's historic election of Democratic Sen. Barack Obama.

There is even anecdotal evidence relating to the recent attacks on Sarah Palin by former campaign staffers.

There was speculation that the culprits may be former aides to Mitt Romney, positioning their hero for a future presidential run.

And how about Romney himself? Was he for McCain all the way or did he have reservations?

"And as we face the very real possibility of an Obama presidency, that's the last thing we need," writes Romney. "It's more critical than ever that we have a strong Republican leader to act as a "firewall" against bad legislation, tax increases, and increased spending. And Mitch McConnell has proven he will stand up for us."

Cross Posted at Power and Control

When I wrote yesterday's post about the overwhelming black support for Prop 8, I had not read about the vile and sickening displays of racism displayed by gay demonstrators in Los Angeles.

So, when I clicked this morning on Glenn Reynolds' link from last night to Pam Spaulding's post -- "The N-bomb is dropped on black passersby at Prop 8 protests," I was shocked. I won't quote the epithets, but to see such awful hatred directed by people who obsessively claim to be against "hate" -- against members of a minority which has suffered more hate than any other group in American history -- forces me to ask some basic questions about tolerance, diversity, and humanity.

Sometimes I wonder whether the dirty little secret is that we all hate each other, and that what is often derided as "civilization" is the only thing that keeps us in line.

(Glenn has more today, including a link to this controversial statement by Dan Savage which Pam Spaulding condemns.)

By any standard, the conduct displayed by the bigoted gay demonstrators is outrageous, inexcusable, and indefensible. However, speaking as an individualist, I don't think it any more reflects on gays as a whole than it would reflect on blacks as a whole if some angry black demonstrators hurled epithets at gays or Jews. The people who do these things are the ones who do them. That they are in a crowd of demonstrators might reflect poorly on the other demonstrators, but the problem with extrapolating from angry demonstrators to the group they claim to "represent" is that they are rarely more than a small percentage of that population. So, if a half a dozen gay bigots use the N-word at a demonstration, it no more reflects on all gays than something shouted from a crowd at a McCain rally would reflect on all Republicans.

Where I must disagree with Pam Spaulding is with her view that these awful incidents somehow constitute an "escalation of the 'blame the blacks' meme that has been swirling about the blogosphere and the MSM." She also refers to "the desire to scapegoat blacks for Prop 8's defeat" as "not-so-latent racism in our movement." Well, at least she said "in our movement." Because, at least in my case, I don't see how observations based on a statistic can constitute a "blame the blacks meme."

Statistics are not memes. Saying that 70% of blacks voted for Prop 8 is no more a meme than saying that 30% of gays voted Republican. As far as blaming or scapegoating goes, while I'm against Prop 8, I'm more or less neutral where it comes to gay marriage, because I'm highly distrustful of government involvement in a minority lifestyle which, like it or not, goes to the heart of human privacy. Gay marriage advocacy is inextricably intertwined with forcing people out of what is called "the closet." The closet (as any regular reader of Andrew Sullivan knows) is said to be at the root of much evil. Therefore, closeted gays need to be liberated -- for their own good and for the good of society. Because of the nature of the hegemonic bureaucracy which surrounds family law, family courts, family services, once gay marriage is established it will inevitably have a spillover effect, and gays who want to live their lives in privacy will be unable to do so. Sure, there will continue to be sexual flings, but once lovers move in together, there will be no way to guarantee privacy, because the state will have created not merely a sense of entitlement, but legal rights of the same sort which customarily flow to heterosexuals thanks to the evolution of family law. There are many gays who want privacy and who live in the closet. While I realize that this is immoral to Andrew Sullivan's way of thinking, I think it's fair to ask, how would they opt out?

What are the implications to the right to simply to be left alone?

The closet being what it is, though, I don't think this concern is likely to be voiced. I mean, who's going to voice it other than a kooky libertarian theoretician? Angry, in-your-face, "in-the-closet-and-proud" activists. (What this means, of course, is that whatever the extent of the right to be "in the closet," it will remain largely undefended, no matter how many of its immorally discreet members are taking advantage of it. This leaves Andrew Sullivan and other activists are free to blame people who are in "the closet" for almost anything they can think of -- the latest being Prop 8.)

To return to the idea of the "blame the blacks" meme, I'm not sure blame is the right word to describe their numerical support of Prop 8. I doubt very much that supporters of the initiative would "blame the blacks"; more likely they'd say "credit the blacks." (The point of my post was not to blame or credit, but to highlight the anamoly and note that politics is all about strange bedfellows.)

But speaking of blame (and scapegoating), I noticed that in other posts, Pam Spaulding looks at Mormon and Catholic churches and sees them (unlike blacks or black churches) as proper targets of Prop 8 protests. While I don't know what she thinks of angry gay demonstrators chanting "Mormon scum!" (and I do not suggest that this compares to the use of the N-word), she does not hesitate to condemn the Mormons as bigoted:

The amount of hot air and vapid defensiveness from an institution that has a history of bigotry and oppression against black people has earned every second of this bad press brought on by this media exposure and demonstrations. That the Mormons have trained that bigotry onto gays and lesbians families only confirms that the LDS is what is erroneous and it is repeating that sorry history.

These extremist statements and positions are nothing less than a call to establish a theocracy. Americans, regardless of their sexual orientation, should be moved to name this behavior of these institutions for what it is -- and question the tax-exempt status of these institutions.

And if it is "theocracy" to invoke a religious argument against gay marriage, then why isn't Barack Obama a theocrat, as Glenn Reynolds suggested? [In ironic imitation of the left's standard.] I don't think Barack Obama is a theocrat, any more than the Mormons or the Catholics are theocrats. But you can't just draw a line and say that Mormons and Catholics who voice religious objections to gay marriage are theocrats, but Democratic United Church of Christ members who voice the same objections are not.

There's altogether too much bigotry for comfort and too many double standards for comfort.

I can't help notice that completely left out of this debate are Muslims. While an LA Times article in April noted that "U.S. Muslims share friendship, similar values with Mormons" and that "the connection is based not on theology but on shared values and a sense of isolation from mainstream America." Can there be any doubt about the Muslim position on gay marriage? While there are no statistics on the Muslim vote, I would be flabbergasted if support for gay marriage mustered more than the single digits.

Yet Mormons have been singled out as bigots.

I'm wondering whether some bigots are more equal....

MORE: There's something else worth keeping in mind that some people are forgetting. Prop 8 was not a referendum on gay marriage, but on amending the California Constitution to prohibit it. Thus, it is entirely possible that there are people (I have no way of knowing how many) who might have reservations about gay marriage -- along with some who even oppose it -- but who nonetheless do not support the Constitution being amended over it.

What that means is that voting "NO" on 8 was not necessarily a vote in favor of gay marriage.

MORE: Glenn Reynolds links some words of wisdom from Joy McCann:

There will be equality between gays and straights; let's try not to burn too many bridges on our way there.

Peace between the LGBT community and people of faith is on the way--but it requires each group to respect the other's right to exist, and a commitment to try to stay out of the other's face. Neither group has an exclusive claim upon the public square, and we are all Americans, with the right to live our own lives, free from harassment. I'm not making an argument for living in the closet, or straightening one's hair for reasons other than personal preference: just that we all calm down a bit and stop trying to force others to live according to our own moral codes.

UPDATE: My thanks to Glenn Reynolds for the link, and for quoting from this post.

Comments are always appreciated, agree or disagree.

MORE: Fascinatingly, I am being taken to task in the comments for (among other things) not condemning a threat to burn down churches by "the gay community."

Eric's "outrage" at gay racism is merely self-serving. That's why we didn't see any calls for tolerance when the gay community first called for the burning of Christian and Mormon buildings.

It turns out to have been an anonymous commenter at the JoeMyGod blog.

So, yes, of course I condemn the JoeMyGod commenter. But is he the "gay community"? He could be anyone.

This is a bit ridiculous. Like trying to identify a voice yelling in a crowd.

AND MORE: If I didn't know any better, I'd swear a lot of people don't want an alliance between libertarians and social conservatives.

MORE: Please bear in mind that there are plenty of statements floating around that I have not condemned. But my failure to condemn them does not mean I approve of them. This is a blog, and I write about things that occur to me, and occasional posts and news items of interest.

I can't believe I'm having to say this, but what I do not write about does not indicate anything about what I think about what I don't write about.

MORE: Via Glenn, Dale Carpenter notices the tendency of some religious people to confuse criticism with bigotry, which it is not:

Religious leaders and their adherents are of course free to oppose gay marriage. But when you enter the political fray, you are not exempt from public criticism and protest just because you are a religion or have religious reasons for your advocacy. It's not anti-religious bigotry to call attention, loudly and angrily, to what you have done.

Moreover, despite the focus on a few extremists whose words have indeed crossed the line into religious (and racist) bigotry over the past few days, the anti-Prop 8 rallies have been peaceful and mostly respectful. Frankly, if marriage had been denied to blacks, Mormons, Catholics, or almost any other group, it's hard to imagine the reaction would have been as mild as it's been.

Nevertheless, I am uncomfortable with pickets directed at specific places of worship like the Mormon church in Los Angeles. It's too easy for such protests to degenerate into the kinds of ugly religious intolerance this country has long endured. Mormons, in particular, have historically suffered rank prejudice and even violence.

[...]

Here's my advice to righteously furious gay-marriage supporters: Stop the focus on the Mormon Church. Stop it now. We just lost a ballot fight in which we were falsely but effectively portrayed as attacking religion. So now some of us attack a religion?

(Via Glenn Reynolds, who notes that protestors are marching against Rick Warren's church, which they wouldn't do if it were a mosque. No, they wouldn't. The double standards are appalling.)

MORE: Speaking of the double standard, check out the horrendous tactics displayed in these pictures. And the question. "How come no one is marching on this place?" (There's a picture of the King Fahd Mosque, and no one is marching, of course. For obvious reasons.)

Via Glenn Reynolds.

MORE: It seems obvious, but I think one last observation is in order. I think that the demonstrators who are abusing their First Amendment rights (as they damage their own cause) would do well to think about what would happen to angry gay demonstrators in Muslim countries. I mean, here we are, in a country where nearly half the voting public is cool with gay marriage, while in many Muslim countries, gays are routinely executed.

To say that these two cultures are not on the same page of history is an understatement.

Not even the same century.

Commenter Sue at Just One Minute had this to say:

I was reading something today that had quotes from the people of Alaska about Palin. One was a democrat who had liked her before she ran for VP. He didn't realize her religious beliefs, her abortion beliefs, her belief that marriage was between a man and a woman. She has been governor of his state for 2 years and he didn't know those things about her. And now he has doubts about her. Seems to me if she had been intent on pushing her personal beliefs on anyone, the people of Alaska would have known those things about her. Her popularity in Alaska will take a hit over things that she had no intention of pushing on them.

She was not about the social conservative agenda. She was about fiscal responsibility and sound governance. I think if the Republican Party takes that approach they can start winning National elections again.

Scaring people about your politicians and your policies is no way to win an election. And the worst part of the scaring is that the national media scares the easiest on these issues.

The Republicans are going to have to decide: are they the anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage party or are they the sound governance/low taxes party.

Note: the anti gay marriage deal in California was pushed over the top by Democrat cultural conservatives. The Republicans no longer have a lock on cultural conservatives.

BTW how long do I think it will take the Republicans to get it? If history is any guide about twenty to forty more years. Why? For one thing preaching to America is more important to them than winning elections i.e. they are not a serious political party.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

While I don't know whether Michigan is more beautiful as an overall state than Pennsylvania, the Ann Arbor area is really nice, and unlike the Philadelphia area, you don't have to drive far to see nice countryside.

The view from my driveway isn't so bad either.

That was taken as I got in my car to drive to the Huron River on Wednesday at sunset.

The first thing I saw was a forlorn-looking Halloween pumpkin that someone had thrown in the water:

A hawk (not quite certain of the species) flew low overhead, and I watched it alight on the top of a tree, where it stayed just long enough for me to get a picture before it took off.

A view along the river.

Plenty of good size fish were jumping, and these two swans were swimming along and occasionally diving in the water in hope of catching the fish.

The "swan song," by the way, is an ancient myth -- as the swan is neither mute nor does it sing one last song before dying.

No political connotation intended.

Some things are prettier than politics.

MORE: Based on this picture I'm thinking the hawk above might be a young peregrine falcon. Any raptor lovers, feel free to chime in.

Not to be a nag, but I updated my previous "building not a tent" post to include a link to Ilya Somin's discussion of a (Social) Conservative-Libertarian alliance. Also I added a link to Jonah Goldberg's post on the peripherally-related subject of conservative theory to my Prop 8 discussion.

I want to return to the general concept of economic conservatism, because I think it's quite obvious that the loss of economic conservatism is what drove these two camps apart. Once they lost the one thing that they could agree was worth fighting for, they naturally had nothing else to do than fight each other.

A pity, really. I am convinced that the a socon-libertarian alliance is the only hope of saving economic conservatism. And I wish libertarians would read between the lines and realize why I am trying to avoid the term "economic freedom."

Like it or not, "freedom" has become an inflammatory code word for hedonism. It might as well be called "freedomism." For that we have, well, certain ideologically driven social conservatives to thank.

But my purpose right now is not to scold anyone. In order to build such an alliance, I think freedom fetishists (and I'm the first to admit that I suffer from this fetish) will have to admit that some people find their fetish disgusting.

Keeping economic hedonism in the closet is a small price to pay.

Lord I can't publish this. It's FILTHY!

No, I'm running late, so I don't have time to alter the above to depict Marxist archaeologists discovering lost tracts of Hayek and Friedman.

My advice for now is just to keep the word "freedom" in the closet.

From the comments at Honest Government And Fiscal Responsibility by commenter auh2ogirl:

The fact that prop 8 was voted through, as prop 2 was here in FL, was in large part due to the black and latino vote, yet Obama won FL and CA tells me that the time for candidates to be elected on socially conservative platforms is over.

The GOP is going to get votes because they have convinced people that the R platform is better on reform, liberty, and economics. People can take care of their own souls without the help of government.

Oh ye of little faith.

Cross Posted at Power and Control