Remember old school conservatives?

Check out this speech from John R Duncan (Rep-TN) nearly two years ago.

Opens (and closes)

There is nothing conservative about the U.S policy in Iraq.

I can't support the bulk of the Liberty Committtee's views, but Mr. Duncan, who embodies what used to be the conservative movement, has a clear and reasoned argument.

It would be interesting to hear his take on Iraq now, or Delay, Shiavo, or any recent issue.

My official position on gay marriage:

Has been summed up by the first commenter on this post. Says Little Italian:

Call ‘em all civil unions and let God sort them out.

I think it was a mistake allowing the redundancy of both church and State "marriages". Let the church have one definition and let it be entirely spiritual. Let the state have one and let it be entirely legal. Sure most people will have to get both, but it allows equal treatment of homosexuals from a legal perspective, and preservation of the church's theology and social perrogatives (keeping in mind, different churches are allowed differenttheologies and perrogatives). Marriage the sacrament is different than marriage the contract.

Separation of church and state...someone should have thought of that a while ago.

Legislators with minds of their own?

First a few moderates (term given begrudgingly) in the Senate manage to prevent a terrible idea in breaking the filibuster. (And by the way, every other blog has some verdict on the Dems or Reps winning in the deal. I don't care. America won on that deal. Politicians are supposed to compromise: that's how it works when it works well)

Now it seems the House has found some independent thought and passed a stem cell research bill...one the president had said he would veto. I'll talk more about stem cells some other time...this one is about the politics. Here's the questions:

1. Can Congress finally get out of the embarassing situation of having a President who has never vetoed anything? (lackey, lackey, lackey)
2. Will the bill be killed in the Senate (or possibly filibustered?!)
3. Will the president be seen as "An obstructionist" if he vetoes the bill?

Anyway, it appears the House is occasionally willing to respond to the voice of the people.

The real power of Democracy...

It is true that the power of democracy comes from freedom. Voting is cool, and anyone who blogs or reads appreciates freedom of speech. These are fine concepts and undoubtedly required for democracy. However, while they might sustain a democracy, they don't start one. The work of starting a democracy is done by freedom's bastard children....
...I don't want to get all hippie on anyone here, but real power of freedom, the one that brought down the Iron Curtain, the one that keeps tyrants and fundamentalists awake at night is the wicked, wild, triumverate of

SEX

DRUGS

and ROCK AND ROLL

As cruel as it is to export Baywatch, it's ultimately more effective at spreading democracy than exporting tanks. (And curiously, it brings money into the country rather than out)

Pennsylvania's Senators

From last week:

Santorum: (on the Senate floor, re: Jugdes)
MEAN, IMAGINE, THE RULE HAS BEEN IN PLACE FOR 214 YEARS THAT THIS IS THE WAY WE CONFIRM JUDGES. BROKEN BY THE OTHER SIDE TWO YEARS AGO, AND THE AUDACITY OF SOME MEMBERS TO STAND UP AND SAY, HOW DARE YOU BREAK THIS RULE. IT'S THE EQUIVALENT OF ADOLF HITLER IN 1942 "I'M IN PARIS. HOW DARE YOU INVADE ME. HOW DARE YOU BOMB MY CITY? IT'S MINE." THIS IS NO MORE THE RULE OF THE SENATE THAN IT WAS THE RULE OF THE SENATE BEFORE NOT TO FILIBUSTER. IT WAS AN UNDERSTANDING AND AGREEMENT, AND IT HAS BEEN ABUSED.


Specter: (on the Senate floor, re: the nuclear impass)
So much of what we're engaged in today is really a matter of saving face. This whole controversy has been escalated so far, so far, that neither side is prepared to back down. Neither side is willing to back down, and in the wings we have all of the press conferences on the senate steps, we have the groups meeting, we have the commercials on the air perhaps starting with Gregory Peck in 1987 on the Judge Bork nomination continued until the past weekend continued to this day, hard to turn on the television without finding a commercial. Last week my state, Pennsylvania, was inundated with comercials demanding that Senator Arlen Spector vote to save the Republic. Nobody is quite sure what it means to save the Republic the way the debate is going on, but these commercials are really in my opinion counter-productive, certainly not effective, and realistically viewed insulting. But if we take away the play from the groups, take away the play from the press conferences, take away the play from the all of the opionmakers out there, all the newspapers and the editorial writers, all the so-called groups.
One group is shouting to the Democrats "Fillibuster forever! Fillibuster forever!" Another group is shouting to the Republicans "Pull the trigger! Pull the trigger! So what if it is a nuclear detonation as long as our side wins." And what I think needs to be done is that the issue ought to be returned to the Senate. It ought to be returned to the 100 members of this body. If the leaders don't release their members to vote their conscience, … then a small group of Senators will take over the Senate...what we need to do is return the decision making power to this body.


Sorry for the capitals up top, but if atrios was good enough to transcribe it, then I won't fill it with typos.

Yea, verily Santorum is filled with a righteous anger. Watch the movie. Sanotorum is very much Bush's little puppet. Almost no one has sounded the privatize social security trumpet louder. He is the social conservative superman: enthusiastically dogmatic about everything from gay-hating to fillibuster busting. Note how very, very ironic it is for him to accuse Democrats of being fascist.

Specter is opposed to ending the filibuster, but notice how he asks for permission from the Senate leaders to free the members. To be fair in the "...." he reffers to a whip count on the judge vote, but he means freedom on the fillibuster vote too. I think he has somehow pledged to support First's vote in some Faustian bargain, and is trying to get out of it. Never-the-less, the Sentate is being bullied by the special-interests and by the executive. If six Republicans don't find their spines and swallow a bitter pill, the legislative branch will be weakened forever.

Fillibuster and Senate Demographics

A quick look at the senate roster shows a general male bias (yeah, not a newsflash). I count 15 women and 85 men (though if it were my call I'd give Lindsey Graham honorary ambiguous status). Put another way, the Republicans are 5/55 female and the Democrats are 10/45. Neither stat is anything to write home about, but props to the Dems for being a little better.

Here's where it gets interesting. Despite having a 9% presence in the senate Republican women are well represented in opposition to abolishing the fillibuster. Olypima Snowe (Maine) is on-the-record and one of only 3 Republicans to be so. Other key swing votes may come from Susan Collins (also Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (AK). So there you have it, 60% of female Republican senators have the capacity for independent thought...or future planning...or basic common sense...or basic ethics. For any of you who may have accused me of sexism (and yes, I believe there are intrinsic differences between the sexes) here is proof that women make better public officials. At least 11 of 15 and possibly 13 of 15 women in the Senate oppose this unorthodox rule change. Is it just these individuals? Are women better senators? Or perhaps centuries of mistreatment and the fact that they are outnumbered makes them wary of stripping minority rights.

Side note 1: Ms. Murkowski is an interesting politician. I believe her father was a senator or governor and the Democrats cried nepotism even louder than usual (cough cough Kennedy, Gore, Kerry, Clinton, Bush...whatever). The curious bit: Alaska has the lowest percentage of women of any state (48.3%) yet manages to gain a rare female senate seat. (Extremely rare for a "Red State")

Side note 2: I still love New England. I would vote for Snowe in a heartbeat.

Hipocrasy and Venezuela

It seems to me that BBC is naturally more liberal than much of the US press (I say naturally, because the UK is, on the whole, more liberal than the US). So I'm hoping that they're just being fussy with articles like this one. I think it's strange our "liberal media" isn't making an issue of it.

Venezuela is threatening to break diplomatic ties because we are holding a Cuban that they suspect of being a terrorist. Maybe we're just concerned he won't get a fair shake over there...but this doesn't sound good:

Posada is a former CIA operative and bitter opponent of Castro but has denied taking part in the downing of a Cuban jetliner off the coast of Barbados that killed 73 people. Recently declassified FBI documents quote informants as saying Posada was deeply involved in the planning.

and then there's this...

BOGOTA, Colombia -- Two U.S. soldiers detained for allegedly attempting to sell ammunition to Colombian right-wing paramilitary groups have been flown to the United States, where they were placed in custody, officials said Tuesday.

The United States has denied secretly helping the paramilitary United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC, which is on the U.S. list of terrorist organizations.

Why were they there? Well they could be involved in fighting the cartel...or could be supporting these guys. There are speculations that the US will try to use Columbian paramilitaries to oust the President of Venesuela, Hugo Chavez. No doubt that's how Chavez sees it. Let's face it, if a foriegn government denies plotting to assassinate you, 1: relations aren't good, 2: relations aren't good to the point where statistically, you may be right.

Mr Chavez has repeatedly accused the US of backing Venezuela's opposition to oust or even kill him, a charge Washington denies.

But back to the special ops in Columbia. Total deniability right? Super under-cover, out-on-your-own spy shit? Nope: forget what you see in the movies.

U.S. Ambassador William Wood said Friday that he would allow local investigators to question Tanquary and Hernandez, but hours later they were flown out of the country, granted diplomatic immunity under a 1974 treaty. It wasn't immediately clear whether they were questioned before boarding the plane.

No questions. No evidence. No harm, no foul. Certainly no supporting terrorist groups.

And in a hilarious twist, the Columbians think that Congress has oversight of the Executive.

BOGOTA, Colombia -- Colombian lawmakers angered over the arrests of U.S. soldiers in drug- and arms-smuggling plots said Wednesday they want Washington's ambassador to appear before Congress, even as a top U.S. military commander pledged to prevent further wrongdoing.

Not in this session, amigos. You must have us confused with parliment. Nobody here messes with el Presidente.

I don't know what to say about sheltering a plane-bomber from Venezuela's wrath. Hmm, oh yeah I do. Fuck him. Probably they're worried about old state secrets coming out. Hopefully not us involved in the bombing itself, but who knows? I'm just speculating what could be so important that we would harbor a terroist in this day and age.

As for the Columbians. Let's try the few bad apples schtick. Or whatever, it's not getting any press anyway. So we sold some guns to some shady folks...let's call them freedom fighters. That's what we did in Afghanistan, and that turned out peachy, right?

I wonder about Venezuela though. It could just be the Venezuelan leader, Hugo Chavez is just paranoid. Or it could be, a few years down the road, it is suddenly revealed that he is a very bad person, bad for democracy, gasses his own people or somesuch...you know where it goes from there....But what are the chances of that?

Oh yeah, did I mention that Venezula sells us 1.5 million barrels of oil per day?

What are the chances now?

Vionovich stands straight (tall can be debated)

Read it here: http://www.danieldrezner.com/archives/002060.html#more

Commencement

So let's start with congrats to the class of 2005. Well done.

And then on to the reason I went to commencement...Kofi Annan.

For those of you who don't know, Annan was awarded an honorary degree today at Penn. He started out the speech by saying he was nervous, becuase he knew what everyone was thinking...that his speech wouldn't be as good as Bono's...and that we were right.

After that was a pretty decent speech, full of ambiguous references to a changing world and what Penn graduates would face. He talked about internationalism, and how our grandparents saw the need to involve themselves in affairs abroad, and how recent events have caused us to deal with the world around us. He did talk about reforms and the changing goals of the UN, but it wasn't anything scandalous, radical, or memorable. I paraphrase greatly because it was one part graduation speech and 2 parts political speech, and thus not so very interesting.

I offered to keep an eye on it for TigerHawk, so here's the deal. When the degree was conferred, people applauded. Some stood, maybe 5%. After the speech more people applauded and about 85% stood. It's kinda rare to have a partial standing ovation, (people tending to be like sheep) but there you have it. I did look to see whether there were more sitters amongst the Wharton faction, but if so it wasn't obvious. One family held up a flag with a peace symbol in where the stars go and one group of people held up neon sheets of paper that said DU?? KOFI (I assume "dump" but they were in front of me and I couldn't see.) All in all most people took it for what it was: a graduation ceremony.

As a silly irony, there was someone outside pamphleting. She was from a local union and more opposed to the honorary degree for a Comcast executive than for Kofi Annan's.

Fearmongering 101: Secrets on the internet.

Those weeks immediately after 9-11-2001 were pretty emotional. I remember experiencing shock, sorrow, anger, and anxiety. I wasn't really fearful for my personal safety, because I don't live in a place I would consider a target (maybe more on that some other day), but I was certainly fearful about society in general. In the wake of the tragedy, there were hundreds of rumors, speculations, you name it. This post relates to one in particular:

The terrorists were sending coded messages over pornography sites.
Here's a rebuttal of the actual rumor.

I don't care whether the rumor is true or BS. That it could be true is enough for me.

So here's the question? How hard is it to send coded messages in images? I decided to carry out this test by finding a photo, encoding a lengthy message into it, and timing how long it took me to do. Now, I'm not much of a programmer, but I took two classes in undergrad. And the answer is, it's really not hard at all. It took me 90 minutes to write a program that encodes a message into an image. It would probably probably take me another 30 minutes to write a decoding program, but at this point I got lazy. (hey, I already know what it says). As a general measure of my techonological capabilities, it took me 40 minutes to figure out how to post pictures on Blogger. (ie. no rocket scientist here).

For the results: check out the two penguin pictures below. One of them contains a secret message. (Ok cheaters, here's the message. That entire linked page fits in 1/3 of the image.) If you look carefully at the second photo you may be able to see a faint horizontal line about 1/3 of the way into the picture. That's the boundary where the message ends. On the whole though, it would be pretty damn hard to say there is something wrong with the photo. If I posted one yesterday, and then pulled it down and reposted the other today would anyone notice? I doubt anyone would notice even on the most heavily trafficked sites.

I undertook this project free from outside information (ie ignorantly). Now that it's done, I've done some reading. Evidently, this field is called steganography.

What's the point? Anyone sophisticated enough to hijack 4 planes can easily do what I just did. (And please, no criticism for pointing out this technology exists. The press made a big enough deal out of it that I'm not compromising national security here.) Anyway, here's where I engage in the fearmongering: this has got to be nearly impossible to detect. Add to that the liklihood of the underlying message being encoded, and we're in big trouble. Is that another site with Anna Kournikova in a bikini, or is it a message to kill the infidels?

How does one counter things like this? Well the easiest way is human intel. If a source reveals the website then the images can be captured and decoded. If you catch a terrorist's laptop, that works well too. Other ways? It might be possible to spot steganography at the fringes, as with my picture...I mean, maybe if the terrorists didn't spend more than 90 minutes on it. Maybe someone could write a program that scans the web for images that are almost, but not quite identical. Way beyond me, but I bet the NSA could pull it off. Hopefully they have.


PS: The picture was downloaded from some other site I was on when I had the idea. It suddenly occurs to me the photo might be copywrighted. If anyone claims it, let me know and I'll remove. (sorry, still new at this).

Another ordinary picture? 

Testing picture post with a pretty ordinary picture. 

Power of Google...Final

Of course Blogger is run by Google. Enough said there. Evidently, there is also a ton of tools for doing things like posting pictures (come to think of it, I've seen pictures on a blog or two.) Anyway, I'm working on getting those tools running.

Power of Google II

Check out the power of the google bomb!

The power of google.

Frankly, it's intimidating.

You can now put in a phone number and have google spit back references. ..which leads to hours of fun.

It's pretty good too. It doesn't have me yet (I use my cell phone exclusively), but it's got my parents. It's got my girlfriend's home phone number and address (though under her roommate's name), but not her cell phone. I have a very old friend who I occasionally call (sorry insiders, no names, but she's the one who used to bag groceries with me). Her e-mail accounts (2 the greedy gal) and web site turned up. (nice site, btw). The US electronic paper trail is miles wide...and it goes back in time a few years too. It is not infallible though. Another friend's number turned up as a CPA office (no he's not a CPA).

In related news, I now have a site e-mail: cognitiveapostate@yahoo.com (i'll put it in a sidebar someday). Not that my routine email is a huge secret: it's out there on other blogs. Still, if I'm going to stick with this blog thing, I may as well have all the accoutrements. I tried to get a e-mail with some variant of Lanky Bastard, but evidently there are a ghastly number of Lanky Bastards out there. Google it. There is even a lanky bastard true-type font. Fortunately "cognitiveapostate" is enough of a non-sequitur that no one had taken it.

Here's where it starts getting interesting....If you google search for the above mentioned grocery bagger of lore (let's call her Jane Doe) by her full name, her website pops up inside the first 4 entries. However, if you just put "Jane" or "Jane Anythingelse"it doesn't show up. What's odd about that? Well, her last name isn't posted anywhere in the website, but somehow google knows. Trippy.

Here's another case study. I once dated a girl with a very unique last name. A google search reveals references to her, her sister and mother, and her late father: no one else. Lest my current girlfriend feel slighted...her name pulls up over 100 entries, and I found a few links to that are really her. (you're still one of a kind to me, babe). And then there's me. My first and last names pull up over 4 million hits. That cuts down to just over 100,000 if you put them in quotes. I don't have the patience to look for the real me in all that mess. (It drops to 30 is you include my middle name, but none of those are me).

One final thought on privacy and anonymity. These are the password renewal questions on a Yahoo mail account:
1. What is your pet's name?
2. What was the name of your first school?
3. Who was your childhood hero?
4. What is your favorite pastime?
5. What is your all-time favorite sports team?
6. What is your father's middle name?
7. What was your high-school mascot?
8. What make was your first car of bike?
9. Where did you meet your spouse?

Not really the most anonymous questions ever. Anyone who knows me has a shot at getting a couple of these. If you think you know me, feel free to guess, but given the new permanence of electronic records, please do it by e-mail.

What really weakens America?

I will preface with this story from BBC and a warning to those who don't like to hear unpleasant truths: skip this post.

I wasn't blogging during the Abu Gharib scandal, and I'm glad I wasn't. Too little has been answered. There are basic questions that do not fit the facts. How does an enlisted national guardsman (a low ranking one at that) requisition a trained attack dog? Does it just take a library card? Or does it require at least a 2nd lt. to sign some form? Well, no officers were charged with a crime. Hundreds of photos were shown to the Senate, and they came out afraid. And that was after the first 8 or so that we saw. What was covered up because it was worse? A year later it comes out that secret unnamed prisoners were held there at Rummsfield's request? Isn't that coincidental for a site of so much controversy? These are questions intelligent people ask. But we don't want to know the answers.

Gitmo is worse. Abu Gharib is a hellhole in the desert, but we built Gitmo. Perhaps we only coerced people and never tortured them...but we coerced them into trying to take their own lives. At that point torture/coercion is really more a semantic argument. But really, we don't want to know.

There is plenty of data. Red Cross, photos, interviews, investigations. Those are the tip of the iceburg. We wouldn't know a tenth of this had a few people not been so stupid as to take photos. And that is good, because we don't want to know.

I don't want to know either, because I'm afraid the truth will shame us further. The failure of our society to face that fear comes at a price: it costs us the ability to fix our problems and the imperative to make things right. That weakens America more than the truth ever possibly could.

Elitism, snobbery, and petty old rivalries

My little sister has told me that I shouldn't pick on people for being elitist. Her opinion is that judging them is just another subtle way of asserting my own personal superiority complex, which in turn, is elitist. So with apologies to her, I highlight this article In which a Princeton graduate takes issue with UPenn's choice of a graduation speaker.

It doesn't take much for TigerHawk to complain about Penn, although we usually confine our snarkiest comments to its basketball team. In this case, though, we are appalled that Penn has recruited Kofi Annan, who has presided over one of the largest financial scandals in the history of the world, to speak at its commencement. Penn's president, Amy Gutmann, thinks that Annan makes an excellent role model...

(Yeah K, I may have a complex, but can we at least pick on people who refer to themselves in the third person? Please? )

[Note: the "we" in the preceeding sentence refers to myself and my sister, not the "royal we" ...which, in turn, is another reason to pick on TH.]

Aside from the traditional knee-jerk conservative reaction to Kofi Annan (and the perennial comeptition between Ivies), I propose that TigerHawk has a more subtle motive here. Perhaps he suffers some shame from not having had a graduation speaker. Only the president of Princeton is good enough to speak at their commencement. Yet, in the end, does that really serve the students well?

I argue that it does not. TigerHawk, I too share your pain. Cornell did not deign to invite speakers either and so we were serenaded by our president Hunter Rawlings III. (Hunter by the by, was the kind of person who always had a major stick up his ass...story for another time) That same year, another college in Ithaca had a graduation speaker. (Three guesses which!) I was lucky enough to be invited, and Maya Angelou had a phenomenal speech. I can recall much of that speech: how it is the nature of humans to strive to overcome adversity and despair. How the soul of a poet exists in a person who condisers herself as normal as anyone else. I don't remember anything that Hunter said.

Now, it could be that Princeton's president has far far better speeches than Cornell's (rivalry aside, I really hope they aren't worse) , but I can't help feel bad for those Cornell and Princeton graduates who run into friends at Penn. Cause I know it sucks admitting that you had a school employee give your commencement address.

And double that if your friend had the sitting head of the United Nations.

Two bits of consolation for TH:
1) Amy Gutmann (who managed to get Anann here) is actually a Princetonian (Princetonite?) herself, having just come from there this past year.
2) Princeton students continue to show extreme fortitude outside the Frist Center. Coming up on 250 hours now. Big jealousy from me, as I've said before.

Besides, if Penn jumped the shark for a big name, it was last year.

Final note. TigerHawk has a pretty good blog. I mean I find him worth reading. And for me to say that about a conservative, Princetonian, (who refers to himself in the third-person)...it must be good.


UPDATE: I am informed that Kofi backed out of a commencement at Yale in 1999. (Something about an emergency summit on genocide or somesuch). Here's to no genocide, for at least the next week.

Mindless Fluff against Mindless Fluff

The state legislature of Texas has voted to protect the public good, by reining in those frisky cheerleaders. Read it here on BBC. That's right, it is now international news that Texans feel their teenaged daughters are too scantily clothed...oh and also that they are incapable of controlling the situation without government legislation.

So who really cares about cheerleading anyway? It's a non-issue. Kinda laughable really. Right? Why is it the more I think about it, the more it bothers me?

OK. I can't hold it back. It's time to call a spade a spade. Only Republicans would pull this shit. And they have the nerve to call liberals big government. Who decides what is and isn't excessively suggestive? Local police, judges, a special comittee, the governor, a special task force? Who? Maybe make it federal? Department of Homeland Viruosity?

I see it going down something like this: Male Texas republicans get 20 hours of tape per week of nubile young cheerleaders. If what they see gives them a hard-on, then they suppress those dirty sexual urges with a clean righteous anger and issue a fine!...um, for the sake of their children, of course. (and no you can't have your tape back)

You could claim this is a waste of time, effort, and money. You could claim it is the government imposing it's morals on the people or political grandstanding. You could tear out your hair and scream "Why are you wasting time on this when there are so many more important things to work on!?". But why bother? This is a country that is more interested in congressional oversight of baseball than prisoner internment camps. Hey, it's not much worse than that.

I recently went to Austin, and rather liked it. I ended up walking past an unemployment office not far from the Capitol that was a bit sketchy (not as bad as most of Philly, but bad enough walking alone at night in a suit). I bet those folks sure are glad their officials are addressing the true injustices in life.

A few final talking points: They should allow an Up or Down vote. DeLay is innocent. Liberals are big government. Activist judges. Liberal Media. Wear your chastity belt.

Perhaps I should email the Mensa Candidate from 2 posts ago and let him know... These days, THE libertarian issue isn't drugs, or prostitution, certainly it isn't individual liberties: it's cheerleading.

Revelation

It is now 5:05 05/05/05.

I guess that also makes it Cinco de Mayo...

...hope I didn't just use up my deep thought of the day.

Which is scarier?

Today Kos sites an article from CATO (supposedly a libertarian think-tank, in my opinon more a collection of whackos) that has some fairly aggressive criticism of the Bush budgets.

President Bush has presided over the largest overall increase in inflation-adjusted federal spending since Lyndon B. Johnson. Even after excluding spending on defense and homeland security, Bush is still the biggest-spending president in 30 years. His 2006 budget doesn't cut enough spending to change his place in history, either.

Total government spending grew by 33 percent during Bush's first term. The federal budget as a share of the economy grew from 18.5 percent of GDP on Clinton's last day in office to 20.3 percent by the end of Bush's first term.

Which prompts Kos to state:

CATO is a libertarian anti-government think tank, so as far as they are concerned, just about all government spending is bad. But in truth, much of Bush's spending is not necessarily a bad thing.

Now, I don't know which is scarier: 1)Me agreeing with a crazy organization like CATO. or 2)The host of one of the most extremely liberal blogs defending Bush.

As an ironic twist, Kos supporting Bush probably causes more political damage than if he'd said something nasty.

Last quickie: silly commenter(s) of the day

From a random discussion on the war on drugs:

says one libertarian:

I'd like to take this opportunity to restate my position that opposition to prohibition is THE libertarian issue at this time....
Comment by: Warren at May
4, 2005 12:05 PM

later...

Warren,
Unfortunately, our public mouthpieces on the issue are frequently crackpots that can't state their case eloquently, and the party ends up looking like a bunch of stoned monkeys fucking a football.
Comment by: Thomas Paine's Goiter at May 4, 2005 12:07 PM

Yes, how far the libertarians would have fallen, had they ever been taken seriously. Clearly more concerned about getting high than government abuse of power, at least a few can still frame an intellectual argument.

Quikie: Smart surfing

As many scientific researchers will tell you, the fastest way to learn things is to read about them. But in the world of science there are thousands and thousands of papers. The fastest way to search for the best papers is to use keywords for a few (though you always get tons you don't want) and then use the references to get to other papers, in addition to references, you can check the citations.

Blogging is very similar, you'll often find new sites through others links, and now you can even check citations! Who links to me and Blogrolling look like the main sites.

Quickie: Abortion Rights

This is a very intersting story from Florida. A 13 yr-old in foster care has become pregnant and doesn't want the baby. However, the State, as her legal guardian is trying to prevent her abortion (curiously, a right even parents aren't entitled to). Here's the story.

Even better is this excerpt from Bitch, PhD relating the conversation between the girl and the judge.

L.G.: Why can't I make my own decision?

Judge Alvarez: I don't know.

L.G.: You don't know? Aren't you the judge?

There's more, and I didn't do the story justice, but this is just a quickie...ff to follow up.



PS: for those of you with a feminist bend, I do reccomend Bitch Phd. She seems a kind of an abrasive, unapologetic, kick-ass-and-take-names type. Her byline is : "Least likely to passify social conservatives." (which I like). And in general I like her posts. I can't support the sum total of her political views, nor her generic views of men, nor her most notable accomplishments...

Administrative experience includes work organizing graduate students that led to a successful unionization effort (completed by others);

(Unionization of graduate students is an issue near and dear to my heart and very much not in agreement with Dr. Bitch. If I were blogging 2 years ago half the blog would be devoted to the issue.)

...but her posts are itelligent, educational, entertaining, and worth reading whether I agree or not. That is, in my opinion, the highest praise one blogger can give another: "I disagree with you, but you are still worth reading". Bitch away.

Quikie: Espionage

Pentagon analyst charged with disclosing secrets to Israel.

Law enforcement sources said the the information was provided to members of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

The charge of disclosing classified U.S. national defense information carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.

Questions: Why isn't this a bigger story? Will this affect Iraeli/American relations (doubt it)? Why isn't this person actually charged with espionage, or treason? Bet he would be had he given info to the PLA.

The way it should be

There is a tendency to equate anti-war rhetoric with passifist nonsense or generic weakness. Maybe that is justified, and maybe it is not. My main objection to war is that the wrong people get killed. Too many teenagers in the countries we invade, ignorant of and utterly unaccounatble for their leaders policies, get killed by our shrapnel. Too many of our young men and women, less ignorant but equally unaccountable, die to accomplish our political ends. The argument is not that killing is unjust, violates international law, or increases overall terrorist activity (and said arguments can be made). The argument it is wasteful, and that there is a better way.

I'm opening myself to critque here, because what I claim as a better way was attempted, and obviously failed. Nonetheless, this is how it should be done. Call it a hunting party, a posse, a death squad, whater you like: I wish it had succeeded. Furthermore I hope there are other CIA infiltration teams out there with guns and large stacks of cash.

News Fatigue

So there comes a point, where things just don't excite you anymore. Where revelations that might have once had you up in arms are simply shrugged at, because, well...you kinda suspected them all along and the proof isn't that shocking. Here's a sample. Maybe you believe that the war in Iraq is and always was about oil politics. Maybe you think that WMDs were just a pretext and democracy just a rationalization. If so, news from the UK that intelligence was being fixed to promote the war in July 2002 comes as no revelation. Read the link. There are a fair number of other shockers that at this late date somehow fail to be shockers.

Curiously, the memo is so openly damning that hard right advocates are claiming it is too perfect (ie fake) . We all know you can't trust Brit intel anyway, right? If they can work the cognitive dissonance thing through Abu Garib, don't expect this to be an eye-opener.

And thus it goes...stall it out...delay...postpone...by the time the truth is known, your opponents will be too tired to villify you, your admirers won't believe it, and everyone else will be too forgetful to care. Even a full post in, I can't muster the energy to be more than mildly disturbed.


UPDATE: The implication from what I wrote above is that these tactics are good policy. And they are a good policy for the party in power. The one flipside is that I have viewed this from the perspective of the US, or US citizen. An international observer, like the thousands in foreign governments, does not have a personal rage that burns itself out, nor do they have a forgiving heart. The failure to admit guilt means that you think it's ok, or at least that you can get away with it. And that can't be attractive to others. As incremental bits slip, they make for continual bad press for the US. And since the US never "comes clean" with the full story, well we just look bad. Does it matter how we look? Maybe, maybe not. That depends on whether we want to lead the world, or buy it.