Apostate day

Slightly skewed reflections on a mixed bag of events:

First up, is RobertFarley’s post, “Condi”. (I still object to the trend where powerful women are called by their first names rather than their last.) He points out that Dr. Rice has not managed to quell the violence in Lebanon/Israel, (assuming that was her intent). A lot of liberals are reading into that, and finding her weak or ineffectual. All of which is possible. Mark me down as undecided. The Middle-East is tough. Still, I can’t help but wonder what Bill Clinton would have done had he been president. I’m betting he would have had his ass flown out there for peace talks by day 4. He was so a lover, not a fighter.

But really, I introduce Dr. Rice only to segue into the most bizarre link to her I’ve seen in a long time. Evidently, she keeps a hand in with the theoretical physicists, and participated in one of their little joke prognostication sessions for a conference. They have a panel to judge the most surprising discovery in the field, and she suggested “the discovery of stable black hole remnants with associated physics indicative of noncommutative spacetime”. I don’t like her politics, but I do give her credit. That's some high power intelectual bullshit. Most places she goes, she’s going to be the smartest person in the room (with increasingly better odds the closer she is to the White House).

Second, here’s credit to Congresswoman Jean Schmidt, who in the course of her unusual letter detailing why Middle-Easterners hate us, includes this tidbit:

The Iraqi's perception is that we are all powerful. We watch them from space with technology they cannot even imagine. Surely if we wanted to turn on his electricity we could do so. He has no idea how large the problem is but he knows we can do anything. He was angry. Eventually his air conditioning began running and his anger cooled.

Overall the letter is a little…um, overgeneralized? Pedantic? I hate to copy Ann Driscoll, but “sophomoric” hits the nail on the head. (Side note: Evidently it’s ok to rip on Iraqis on the internet. Probably it’s a technology they cannot even imagine.) And so while it pains me to agree with her, I must confess that I too have a pet theory that Iraq would be much better off if we’d managed to get them better electricity. I recently suffered the loss of my home air conditioning, and it made me rather pissed at the world. If I’d lost not just AC, but all power, and I lived in an equatorial region where people are shot for wearing shorts…well, I’d probably go apeshit after the first year or two. So Lanky’s pet theory on counterinsurgency: provide AC. (Also, I get mean when I have a toothache, so dentistry is also key.) Air conditioning and dentistry. It doesn’t escape me that these sound simple and stupid. And pedantic. And it’s outrageous that some asshole sitting at a computer (ie me) might suggest to a country with 14,000 casualties in the last 6 months, that the “real issue” was a lack of air conditioning. But at some level, I believe AC is really important. People do crazy shit in the heat. So whatever craziness prompted Schmidt’s epistle, that part at least resonated with the craziness in my head. (I share because I'm honest, at least I have the grace to be embarassed.)

Third. I hadn’t wanted to blog about Mel Gibson, until my girlfriend asked why everyone is talking about the bigoted nonsense coming out of Mel Gibson’s mouth, rather than the fact that he was risking people’s lives by drunk driving. Perhaps she noticed because she’s a physician. I’ve blogged before on the Draconian punishments imposed on California physicians caught with a DUI. They can lose their licenses and have their careers destroyed. Since Mel’s a celebrity, people seem to not care about irresponsible life-endangering behavior. He will probably get probation and a few weeks on a shady ranch. Yes, Mel’s worldview makes him an asshole. But it’s supposedly within his rights to be that kind of asshole if he chooses. If he wants to dress up in a white hood, or burn crosses on his lawn, that’s his individual choice. But when he decides to go twice the speed limit while drunk, it crosses the line from a simple asshole to public menace asshole (also known as a "criminal"). I have no objection to people pointing out he’s a reprehensible person, but let’s not lose sight of the fact than he was arrested for a substantial crime that goes way beyond racial slurs. (Even if he’s a psycho like Tom Cruise, at least Cruise isn’t putting people’s lives in danger.)

And finally, there’s this gem from The Hill. A Republican’s military service record is being questioned by Democrats. When conservatives do this isn’t it called “swift-boating”?