Fulcrum Ruminations

I Don't Care

2011-10-13T19:41:00.000-04:00

Don't Ask Don't Tell has now joined many other forms of official discrimination on the ash heap of history. About time. Nonsense like that never serves a useful purpose, it simply reveals the ignorance of humanity.

The jettisoning of the policy has resulted in many hours of additional "sensitivity training" for active duty military members. Because it takes many hours of exquisitely worded lawyerspeak to say, in essence, "Don't be an asshole." But it has also led to the birth of the latest "special emphasis group," which is what the government calls a defined minority which needs protection from the rest of the drones. We already have groups for blacks, women, hispanics, asians, native americans, and the handicapped, among others. Now we've got one for gays, lesbians, transgendered, and . . . well, whatever labels the PC crowd has decided to add to that list this week. Because it's important for people to be sorted into these little boxes, so that they know their place . . . er, I mean, can be tracked for signs of possible discriminatory practices.

It also means lots of signs, notices, meetings, and other paraphernalia related to their existence. See, it's not enough that discrimination against the specified "emphasis group" is now officially Frowned Upon, but we must be made aware of their existence. Because, y'know, until now we didn't realize that such people existed. Now it has to be In Your Face that there are gay people in the world, and at your place of employment, and that they too are special and sensitive and deserving of respect and not to be mocked or bullied or . . . other stuff that any rational human being wouldn't do in the first place.

Which leads me to my point: I Don't Care. I don't care what your sexual orientation is. I don't care what your ethnicity is. I don't care what your sex is. I don't care what church you go to, or don't go to. I DON'T CARE. If you're happy with your life, great. More power to you, go forth and conquer, make of it what you can.

But don't bother me with it. Because I Don't Care.

Leave me alone. I'll return the favor. That's all I ask. If your activities interest me, I'll approach you and ask about them. If they don't, I won't. Which also means I expect you not to jump in my face screaming "I'm a Rosicrucian! Isn't it GREAT?!?" Because it may be great for you, but I. Don't. Care.

I just recently filled out a request for information form from my county for possible jury duty selection. One of the sections related to my ethnicity . . . was I white, or black, or hispanic, or a meat popsicle, or whatever. I find this highly offensive. I'm an AMERICAN, and that's the extent of what you need to know in that regard. These irrelevant labels mean nothing, and official recognition of them does more harm than good. If there'd been an option to write in a category, I would have done what I always do in such cases and written in "American." As for the rest, I DON'T CARE.

I don't want much from life, gentle reader. A comfy chair, a means of support, and some fun or interesting activities to occupy my spare time. High on the list is not being bothered by people pushing their particular take on life as the Bestest One Ever. Don't care if it's newly-liberated gays, or Mormons, or the local Democratic Candidate for Wasting My Taxes. I'll engage where I choose to engage. If I don't engage with you, it's not because I don't like you, or hate what you represent, it's because I DON'T CARE.

I have friends who fall into all of these groups, you see. I'm friends with gay people, and women, and black people, and asians, and fill-in-the-blanks. Because I see them as people, not as hyphens. I don't walk out the door in the morning thinking that today I need to make friends with a Martian so that I can check off that box. If I meet a Martian who turns out to be interesting and not annoying, then maybe we'll be friends.

That's how it's supposed to work.

A Decade Past, a Decade Passed

2011-09-11T12:31:00.000-04:00

Ten years ago this morning, a group of savages shattered a perfect day with acts of unbelievable evil. Friends and co-workers were lost, and time has not dimmed the memory.

Jerry Moran.

Angela Houtz

Lieutenant Commander Vince Tolbert.

Like it was yesterday, the memory so sharp and clear. As it always will be.

Pocky-Klips

2011-07-24T10:41:00.000-04:00

Let me sum up the entirety of the budget/debt ceiling issue for you, gentle reader. Bear with me, there are some twists and turns.

Congressman1: "We're broke!"

Congressman2: "Wait . . . I have an idea. We'll spend more! That should fix it!"

Congressman3,4,5,etc: "GENIUS!!"

Here's the real solution: 1 - Spend less money. 2 - Simplify the tax code, removing as many loopholes as possible. 3 - Return government to its Constitutional boundaries.

See? Was that hard?

Villainy Avenged

2011-05-05T19:34:00.001-04:00

Osama bin Laden is no more. I approve.

Nine Years Gone

2010-09-11T11:18:00.000-04:00

Nine years ago, a group of hate-filled savages drove airplanes into buildings and slaughtered over three thousand of our fellow Americans.

A lot has happened since then.

Jerry Moran

Angela Houtz

Lieutenant Commander Vince Tolbert

Lost in the attack on the Pentagon. Friends and co-workers.

We remember.

Good, Bad, Other

2010-07-03T16:16:00.000-04:00

Senator Robert Byrd has died. His career in Congress is highly instructive, for Byrd exemplified both the best and worst aspects of our Congress.

As both the longest serving Senator and the longest serving member of Congress, Byrd shows one of the fundamental problems with that branch of government - People who get in and essentially take root, gaming the system to make it very hard for a challenger to dislodge them. It's hard to claim with any credibility that someone who's been sitting in the same seat for fifty years can bring very many fresh ideas to the issues and problems of the day. Byrd was locked into, and epitomizes, the Washington "system".

And yet, at the same time Byrd was bringing a lot of benefits to his constituents back home in West Virginia. He was unsurpassed in the art of steering pork to his state. West Virginia saw federal benefits far out of proportion to its population or its contribution. It can be argued that West Virginia needed this level of support due to the poverty and lack of opportunity afflicting many of its residents, but one must still wonder if some of those resources might have been better expended somewhere else.

Byrd had a checkered past. In his younger days he was a member of the Ku Klux Klan and supported segregationist, if not outright racist, positions and policies. Later in his career he repudiated these positions, however, and often expressed regret for his actions. One is forced to wonder how much of that regret is for the injustice of his positions and how much is for the damage it did to his political career. Because over the course of his long service, Byrd showcased the tendency of our Congressmen to regard maintaining themselves in office as their primary responsibility.

Either way, a long and varied career has now ended, and just a few days shy of the July 4th celebration of America's birth. Fare thee well, Senator.

Memorial Day 2010

2010-05-31T17:34:00.000-04:00

On this day, as on each Memorial Day, and as we should every day, we remember those who served. We remember especially those who never made it home.

We remember . . .

Mohammed

2010-05-19T20:33:00.004-04:00

Mohammed, originally uploaded by Lanzman.

As noted in my last post, 20 May is "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day". This is an exercise in free speech and a reaction to the attempts of the retrograde barbarians of the extremist wing of Islam to inflict censorship, suffering, and death upon anyone who doesn't toe their line.

Here's my attempt. For freedom, for principle, and for the future.

2010 Everybody Draw Mohammed Day

2010-04-24T14:19:00.004-04:00

So it seems the retrograde barbarians of the Religion of Peace are at it again. This time they've threatened violence against the creators of the television show South Park, who have dared to depict the Prophet Mohammed in animated form. Except it was a guy in a bear suit which was claimed to be Mohammed. And was then later revealed to be Santa Claus. And it's a freakin' cartoon anyway!!

Enough is enough, gentle reader. On 20 May of this year, let's ALL draw the Prophet Mohammed. It's time to drag the Islamist nut-cases kicking and screaming out of the twelfth century and into the present day. Draw a picture of the Prophet and post it to your blog on that day. It doesn't have to be insulting or degrading or disrespectful (tho it can be if you want it to be - that's kinda the point). Hell, it doesn't even have to look like a person. It just needs to be labelled as Mohammed. We'll renew our commitment to freedom of speech and show that we're not going to be intimidated by a sad collection of backwards madmen.

From Across the Void of Time

2010-04-02T19:06:00.004-04:00

Is this now one of those blogs where the author (that'd be me, your modest and beloved Lanzman) comes in with a post once every six months or so, talking about how he intends to post more, always intended to post more, just doesn't have the time these days? Gosh, it sure looks like it.

Health Care "reform" has passed. Much drama, much sturm und drang. Also a lot of junk in the bill that will have destructive effects over the long term. Let's start with the obvious - the nation is trillions of dollars in debt, so the Democrats think that this is a good time to launch a massive new entitlement program. Sure, why not? President Obama swears up and down that this will be "revenue neutral". Uh-huh. Suuuuuuuure it will.

Oh, and there's apparently a provision in there that commands us all to buy health insurance or face a penalty. This will be enforced by that paragon of responsible authority, the Internal Revenue Service. What could possibly go wrong there? Leaving aside, of course, the fact that Congress has zero Constitutional authority to compel anyone to purchase a commercial product. Some of the reality-impaired are arguing that the "commerce clause" contains this authority, but it's hard for anyone with a working brain to swallow that one.

Look, obviously health care in the US needs some kind of reform. Costs are actually spiraling out of control, and insurance companies remain hives of weasels second only to the recording industry in terms of underhanded skullduggery. But another gigantic government bureaucracy, with all the attendant waste fraud and abuse, is not the answer. Immense sweeping stacks of legislation lend themselves horribly to the Law of Unintended Consequences. I think it would have been better to proceed slowly, adjusting a law here, a regulation there, jiggering things bit by bit and taking unanticipated results into account as they cropped up. But no, it's all-or-nothing. Should make for an interesting few years. If you define "interesting" as "catastrophic government overreach leading to financial ruin" anyway.

Aahhhh, what do I know? Just look at all the big government social programs that have worked exactly as promised. Social Securi . . . oh, wait. Well, Medicare and Medi . . . dang, those haven't gone quite as promised either. The War on Drugs . . . ehhh, maybe not. The income tax? Welfare? Oh well, I'm sure there must be one or two.

What Have We Become?

2009-10-24T20:34:00.003-04:00

I happened to run out to Target tonight. My wife is battling a flu (H1N1? Seasonal? Who knows any more?) and we were running low on Dayquil and those nice tissues with the lotion. She also wanted a movie on DVD to help fend off the boredom of being in bed all day. Plus my printer has run out of magenta ink, so it was time for a new set of cartridges. And we wanted some mailers suitable for sending out White House Christmas ornaments. Given the disparate nature of these odds and ends, Target seemed like a good place to go, since they have all that stuff.

There's a Target only about a block from us, so off I went. No problem getting everything. But . . .

Checking out, the girl at the register asked to see my ID before she would scan the Dayquil. I didn't see what she had in her hand at first, and when she asked for ID I said "For what?" Because many stores now try to collect information like your phone number or zip code for some obscure marketing purpose. When she told me she needed ID for me to purchase Dayquil, I was nonplussed. Couldn't quite believe it. I mean, it was one little box of "liqui-caps", twenty-four doses. It's not like I was trying to buy a case of the stuff.

If my wife hadn't been at home with a stuffy head, fever, and aches I wouldn't have bought anything at Target at that moment. The check-out girl said that it was the store's policy to ask for ID for anyone buying Dayquil (and presumably any similar over-the-counter cold medicine). Well, it's my policy not to support stupid people in the act of being stupid.

But my wife was waiting.

This is what we've come to. All the nanny-state nonsense we've had inflicted on us over the last few decades. Seat belt laws. Helmet laws. Red light cameras. Endless warning labels trying to cover every possible way people could hurt themselves by being idiots. "Zero Tolerance" policies. And now . . . now they want to see an ID before you buy cold medicine.

We are near the end of our run as a great civilization. The forces of stupidity are building, gentle reader, and this time there's no new frontier waiting for us to escape to. This time, we're stuck. We fight, or we surrender to the reality-impaired mentality drawn to the battle cry "won't someone think of the children?!?"

Housekeeping II

2009-10-04T15:30:00.003-04:00

I've decided to remove the blog Little Green Footballs from the "Right Fringe" section of my blogroll. Why, you ask? Because in keeping up with the contents of that blog, it seems less and less like the proprietor, Charles Johnson, is a knee-jerk Republican shill and more and more like he's a common-sense conservative decrying many of the same things that I do.

Which is to say, the reality-impaired rhetoric coming from the increasingly-deranged far right as exemplified by the other blogs on there. I mean, Michelle Malkin is little more than a smaller, prettier copy of Ann Coulter these days.

So I'm replacing LGF with Powerline, at least until a better candidate presents itself.

Eight Years

2009-09-11T08:07:00.004-04:00

Eight years ago. How do the years slip by so quickly?

Jerry Moran.

Angela Houtz

LCDR Vince Tolbert

Taken from us in the barbaric attack of 9/11. Taken too soon.

We remember.

Camelot's Last Watchman Departs

2009-08-30T20:47:00.002-04:00

Teddy Kennedy has died. I honestly don't know how to feel about this. Ideologically, he was on the "wrong" side of a lot of issues to me, but he was a force to be reckoned with in the Senate. And some of his major accomplishments were landmark pieces of legislation, reshaping the social and political landscape of America for the better.

But Ted Kennedy was also a virtual poster boy for the "tax and spend" school of politics. And altho his record of service in the Senate is remarkable for its length and breadth, it also stands as an example of what's wrong with American politics, where people get in to Congress (either chamber) and take root. It's hard to credibly advocate for "fresh ideas" when you've been in the same office for four decades.

All other considerations aside, Ted Kennedy's passing marks the end of an amazing political saga, from his brother John F Kennedy's rise, to Bobby Kennedy's equally tragic story, to his own phenomenal career. Teddy was the last of his generation, the final sentry on the battlements of Camelot. The family scions now in public service just don't have the gravitas of the Jack/Bobby/Ted triumvirate. Somehow, the greatness of the Senate itself seems now diminished, as if a central pillar had been removed.

Fare thee well, Senator Kennedy.

Recently, In the News

2009-08-08T18:56:00.004-04:00

Sonya Sotomayor has become the country's first Latino Justice of the Supreme Court. From what I can tell, her judicial record is unremarkable. Maybe in today's ultra-partisan soundbite-driven climate, "unremarkable" is the most we can expect.

Long time no blog, eh? Seems like I never have the time any more. All the amazing stuff going on since my last entry and not a word. Watching Obama and the Democrat-controlled Congress drive deficits into realms even George W Bush never imagined has been interesting. Government over-reach continues apace. Now they want to enact health care reform, but typically for our gubbermint they want to do it in as ill-considered and ham-fisted a manner as they can. And the Republicans, bless 'em, have adopted the Democrats' political playbook from the late 90s/early 2000s: their whole strategy seems to be pointing across the aisle while yelling "you guys suck!" Yeah, that worked out so well for the Dems, you might as well try it.

Sarah Palin has resigned the Alaska governorship for reasons best described as "unclear". Or maybe "idiotic", but what do I know?

The economy is showing signs of recovery, but it's juuuuuuuuuuuuust a wee bit early to be celebrating victory, I think. The structural problems that led to the mess have not remotely been addressed, banking and finance types continue to give themselves huge bonuses for being incompetent, Uncle Sam has prevented some big companies from going under - thereby preventing the market from learning the proper lessons from its folly - and all in all, the other shoe has yet to drop. Yeah, buddy.

This is all very superficial, I know, but my time and motivation is lacking these days. Watching the abject foolishness going on in Washington has, frankly, left me stunned.

Oh well, at least the press has its priorities straight.

Or not.

Memorials Come 'Round Again

2009-05-25T20:33:00.003-04:00

Another Memorial Day. Another reflection on those who've gone.

Angela Houtz

Lieutenant Commander Vince Tolbert

And Jerry Moran

Taken from us on 9/11. We remember.

Special thanks to Anthony Candelori, serving in Afghanistan with the US Army. Come home safe, Antny.

Torture

2009-05-02T16:37:00.004-04:00

I have an online acquaintance at Wordforge who has summed up my feelings on the issue of torture much better than I could have myself. Posted here for your edification are his words:

I'm a vet, I've been thru SERE, and I'll tell you straight up that waterboarding is torture. Is it SEVERE torture? Depends on how afraid you are of drowning, I guess.

I'll probably get flamed for this but I'll say it anyway:

It is immoral to torture prisoners, period. Ben Franklin once said that those who are willing to sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither, nor with they have either for very long.

When we torture a prisoner, even someone who RICHLY deserves it, we lower ourselves to the moral level at which they operate. It doesn't matter if we're 'only' waterboarding them and they are cutting off heads on Al Jazeera. There is no 'moral equivalency' when it comes to this sort of thing. In my view, freedom loving, God fearing Americans are better than this. "Outsourcing" prisoners to our ME 'allies' so they can be severely tortured represents a level of moral cowardice that is beyond the pale- worse than conducting the torture ourselves and taking responsibility for it.

We have a choice to make as a people: we can hold the moral high ground above our enemies, or we can become the very thing which we despise. Does that position mean that Americans may face an increased risk? Yup. Guess what? We're strong enough to handle it- that added risk is the price of freedom. People are oh so quick to say 'freedom is never free'. They're right. Sometimes being the good guy means you assume a greater degree of risk than the person who lowers themselves to the level of scum. The ends do not justify the means. Torture is wrong, and ultimately it just serves the purpose of our enemies.

Honor, Courage, and Commitment to the High Road. Not just watchwords or empty slogans, but the very principles by which our nation will endure or fall.

Recent revelations in the documents released by the Obama administration put a very troubling face on the conduct of our government. I'd given up on George W. Bush long before this, but the apparent decision to condone such tactics . . . this is not how Americans should behave.

I have a code, corny as it may be, by which I try to live. It goes thusly: Let us strive every moment of our lives to make ourselves better and better to the best of our abilities so that all may profit by it. Let us think of the right and lend our assistance to all who may need it, with no regard for anything but justice. Let us take what comes with a smile, without loss of courage. Let us be considerate of our country, our fellow citizens, and our associates in everything we say and do. Let us do right to all - and wrong no man.

The more pop-culturally aware among you may recognize this. If you don't, well, I won't spoil it for you.

Now I don't mind if our troops have to smack a bad guy around a little to get him to sit down and be quiet. That's kinda what soldiers do. But once a bad guy has been captured, rendered combat-ineffective, or (ideally) surrendered, there's no call for barbaric treatment. That's what those guys do, like when they saw people's heads off with dull knives in front of a video camera while praising God. That is not, should not, can not be what we do. And besides, the bulk of the evidence seems to indicate that results obtained via torture are not trustworthy. There are better ways.

And that's all I have to say about that.

Out Of The Past, It's Sarah Palin

2009-02-26T15:52:00.005-05:00

Found this post by Teflon over at Molten Thought, which links to a post by Thomas Sowell at the National Review Online. Sowell's short piece talks about the reaction to the candidacy of Sarah Palin for vice-president last year. I don't have a lot to say about Palin that I haven't already posted here, but I found Sowell's comments interesting. I kinda liked Palin simply for her ability to cause the reality-impaired to nearly stroke out every time they thought about her. Is she a viable candidate for President in 2012 or 2016? Who knows? There's certainly more to her than the Tina Fey caricature we got from the mainstream press during the campaign. Whether that "more" includes sufficient oomph to make her a serious contender for the post-Obama period can't really be determined yet.

But gosh, it sure was fun to watch the political Left reveal their contemptible true character when she was running.

Seismic Shift

2009-01-20T14:29:00.002-05:00

Today a fulcrum has tilted. A fulcrum which has been frozen in place for so long that it seemed it would never shift.

Since George Washington took office in April of 1789 until today, the forty-three men who have sat behind the desk of the President of the United States have been a variation on one theme - "old white guy." To be sure, a few have not been quite so old. Their politics and policies have been different, but the faces have all been of a kind.

Just after noon today, 20 January 2009, a new face joined the group. A face many thought would never find a spot in the mighty assemblage of Chief Executives. With a grinding of long-unused gears, the fulcrum of the American political landscape finally tilted away from the point where it had rested for centuries and found a new balance. Barack Hussein Obama II took the oath of office to become the forty-fourth President and the first black man to hold the post. Regardless of his political leanings, or what the future may hold for his administration, Obama's election to and assumption of the Presidency is one of those inflection points in history when everything changes. A long and unpleasant chapter of American history is now closed as a representative of a once-oppressed minority rises to the highest position an American can attain.

Well done, sir. Tho I disagree with some of your politics, I hope with all my being that you will prove my apprehensions wrong. The country needs a giant at her helm right now. You, sir, must grow beyond the limitations of party, of race, of politics and of expectations. You must guide our nation away from the decline and irrelevancy towards which the last several small men to hold your new office have turned her. You must be more than a steward. More than an executive. More than a Commander-in-Chief. More than a President.

You must be a leader.

In Flanders Fields

2008-11-11T17:20:00.001-05:00

By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army

IN FLANDERS FIELDS the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Obama Wins the Presidency

2008-11-05T07:49:00.004-05:00

As I had expected, Barack Obama has won the 2008 Presidential contest. In electoral terms, it was a gigantic victory. By the popular vote, he took 51% of voters to McCain's 46%, so it seems he reached only a bit beyond the Democratic base. At any rate, congratulations to Mr Obama on his victory. He's about to enter a job that beats men into the ground while simultaneously elevating them to the ultimate reaches of power. The challenges facing him are tremendous. I wish him all success.

Racist? Really?

2008-10-19T10:37:00.003-04:00

This is the absurb depth to which we've sunk during this campaign. A little girl wears a Sarah Palin t-shirt to school and is branded a "racist" by some of her classmates.

I could launch into a polemic about how this came to be, what it says about the current state of American politics, and bemoan the implications for the future of our country. Instead of all that, tho, I'll just say . . . sad. Very, very sad. And utterly ridiculous.

Journals, Blank Books, and the Perfect Little Black Notebook

2008-10-14T23:08:00.004-04:00

Diverting for a moment from Fulcrum Ruminations' main purpose, I'm going to talk for a bit about something that's become a minor obsession for me. Like it says in the title of the post, I'm referring to blank books, also known as anything books or journals. There's something about a blank book that strongly appeals to me. Maybe it's that they look for all the world like a finished book and lack only content. Maybe it's the endless possibilities of a blank sheet of paper magnified by the satisfaction of having it bound into the form of a book. Maybe I'm just warped and in need of counseling. Be that as it may.

My hunger for the perfect journal runs deep. Every time I'm in a book store or stationer's, I paw thru whatever versions they may have. Barnes & Noble has a very nice selection, tho most of them are not quite what I'm really looking for. Borders has a lesser selection for some reason. Books a Million is, well, pretty much hopeless. So I google for what might be there. I've found some that I quite covet at places like Aspinal of London, Journal Shelf, and Epica. These are high-end products, some quite pricey, but oh, how they call to me.

I've also found many cheap ones and of course the legendary Moleskine. I have several of these since I do have moments of weakness. I use them to draft blog posts, to write short stories, to take notes, and to do pretty much anything for which you could use a notebook. This obsession has led me to a couple blogs, linked for your convenience over there to the right. Notable here is Black Cover, a blog run by a man whose obsession for the perfect little black notebook dwarfs my own fascination with journals. I find his reviews of pocket-sized notebooks oddly intriguing, even tho I personally think his preferred size (about 3.5″x5.5″) is too small to be truly useful. But right now, he's running a contest in which you can win a new Picadilly notebook. In accordance with the rules of this contest, I've sent him an email with my blog's URL, my email, and my home mailing address. The link to his site has been here on Fulcrum Ruminations for some time already, and now I've added this post to draw further attention to the contest.

You, gentle reader, are invited to peruse Black Cover and see if you find it as interesting and entertaining as I have.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled viewing.

Fannie and Freddie Fall Down Go Boom

2008-10-11T08:51:00.004-04:00

It's been terrifying to watch the financial markets unravel these past weeks and months. Decades of bad decisions, bad policies, and bad legislation are paying off. The government is enacting a bail-out plan on a scale never before contemplated, let alone seen, with hundreds of billions of dollars in extra spending suddenly piled onto our already unbalanced budget. Debt, debt, and more debt. This money will come from where? Will be paid back how?

The bottom line is simple, gentle reader: I don't trust the buffoons in Washington to get this right. They are, in my estimation, going to make the crisis much, much worse than it needs to be with their hasty and ill-considered "rescue" plans. We are looking into an abyss. What may be on the other side is hard to determine. America could and probably will lose its preeminance in the world economic order. We're already the largest debtor nation by a huge margin. Loss of economic strength virtually ensures loss of military strength, and the Pax Americana will go the way of the Pax Britannica before it. We may be looking at several decades of world chaos.

Here's an interesting little video regarding Fannie and Freddie. While the presidential campaigns play out, the whole situation is even more politicized than it would normally be, and that's saying something. Altho there's no shortage of blame to go around for this fiasco, somehow the Republicans in general and McCain in particular are catching the worst of it. While I calculate that it's too late for anything as mundane as facts to influence the elections, I nevertheless present this for your edification. Go ahead and watch while I run out for MREs and ammunition to stock the bunker.

Unexpurgated

2008-09-14T10:37:00.002-04:00

Hmmm. That interview Sarah Palin did with Charlie Gibson a few days ago, the one that the Obama supporters keep trumpeting as demonstrating how unready to be President the Governor is, how ill-informed and out-of-touch . . . remember that? Turns out it goes a bit differently if you read the unedited transcript.

Gotta love our "unbiased" press.

Hat tip - Teflon at MoltenThought.

Seven Years Later

2008-09-11T18:15:00.002-04:00

Seven years ago today, two co-workers and a friend of mine were killed in the Pentagon by the twisted barbarians who perpetrated the 9-11 attacks.

Jerry Moran.

Angela Houtz.

LCDR Vince Tolbert.

We remember.

Conventional Wisdom

2008-09-08T21:40:00.006-04:00

The major political conventions have been and gone. Time to reflect on what we've learned.

Conventions, as the soundbite has it, are these days highly scripted events. There were no real surprises at either one. But they're still instructive, as they give us a chance to see the candidates make major speeches in front of huge audiences. You can get a glimpse of the real personalities in those moments.

Michelle Obama was very impressive. Many politicos are very obviously reading when they give speeches. Not Ms Obama. She sounded like she was talking, not speechifyin'. Her voice fairly trembled with passion in spots and she came across as very earnest. Too bad she's not actually running for anything . . .

Barack Obama demonstrated again that he gives good speech. Not quite at the Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan level, but very natural and warm. Alas, watching him in other venues suggests that he can do this only when working from prepared material. Speaking off the cuff, he tends to "umm" and "aahh" a lot and hesitate a whole lot more. He's stiff, in other words. Nevertheless, he remains well able to stir a crowd and it's not hard to see how he inspires people. Content-wise, well, it was a convention speech and as such full of boilerplate. Nothing particularly memorable, but solid and touching on just about all of the points that needed touching upon. And, as is usual these days, short on actual substance. He's going to do thus-and-such when elected, but we're not told how he'll do it, or what magic he will use to bring opposing (partisan) interests together, or where the money to fund his programs will come from.

Obama's running mate, Senator Joe Biden, brings badly needed experience to the ticket but somewhat undercuts the "hope and change" mantra due to being such a classic Washington insider. Biden's speech was the speech of a party hack, to be blunt. Gives the impression that he'll be used as the attack dog for the balance of the campaign, allowing Obama to stay at least partially above the fray. But Biden is also a known quantity in Washington, and the choice of him as running mate brings a degree of balance to the ticket . . . neophyte change agent Obama teamed with experienced knows-where-all-the-bits-go Biden makes an attractive package to many potential voters. It's something old and something new, the promise of shaking things up leavened with the reassurance of not shaking things up so much that they fall apart.

On the Republican side, the major story is of course McCain's out-of-left-field selection of Governor Sarah Palin as VP. Timed perfectly to steal Obama's momentum coming out of the Democratic convention, the Palin announcement has reportedly electrified the conservative base, something McCain on his own had almost completely failed to do.

As an aside, the impact of the announcement and the start of the Republican convention was nearly torpedoed by Hurricane Gustav in a "you can't make this stuff up" bit of nearly flawless timing. Amusing that what the McCain team did to Obama by design was almost done to them in turn by act of God.

Anyway, Palin would seem a very odd choice for VP. She takes away McCain's best weapon against Obama, which is the younger man's lack of experience. Any such charge now levelled against Obama immediately boomerangs back on Team McCain thru the obvious lack of experience of a less-than-one-term governor of a relatively small (population-wise, at least) state. The counterpoint to that, tho, is that every time Obama says "I have all the tools I need to be President", Palin can say the same thing, since she's got a good deal more executive experience than has Obama.

The McCain-Palin team is almost a mirror image of the Obama-Biden team. McCain is the Washington insider, despite his oft-repeated claim to being a maverick. Governor Palin is the brash young reformer from Outside, balancing McCain's age and political hack-ness with her youth and uncorrupted outside-the-beltway credentials. Palin is also, very likely, the future of the Republican party. She and a few other up-and-coming new faces (like Governor Bobby Jindal from Louisiana) are the emerging leaders of the next generation.

The two teams mirror in another way as well. Palin gave an outstanding speech when she accepted the Republican nomination, showing poise and sincerity. McCain gave a McCain speech, which is to say, nothing special. Except at the very end when he seemed to really reach inside for some passion. And pardon me for saying, but can the man give one speech without reminding us that he was a POW in VietNam? He mentions it every time he's in front of the cameras, it seems like. While his experiences in VietNam are undoubtedly an important part of his background, and in fact a much more telling glimpse of his character than anything any of the other major players has shown us, he's sort of beating it into the ground and robbing the story of its impact.

The selection of Palin makes the overall Presidential race much more interesting, which may be the governor's major contribution to the whole deal. Well, that and making the Vice-Presidential debate pretty much a no-win situation for Joe Biden . . . he can't attack her too harshly without seeming like he's "beating up a woman" and if he shows the least bit of defensiveness he risks looking like he's being beaten up by a woman. And so far, Palin gives an impression of confidence which suggests that Biden is going to be in for a tough time at the debate.

The real story, obviously, is still the contest between McCain and Obama, as interesting as the VP face-off might be. I personally don't think McCain has enough of a base to win, even with Palin. I think the Obama juggernaut is going to steamroller right in to the White House come November. There are just too many people out there who are sick to death of business-as-usual in Washington and hold the opinon that Obama is the guy to shake things up. So I still project Obama to be our next President.

Other Matters Command Attention

2008-08-16T20:23:00.003-04:00

If you will indulge me, gentle reader, I'm going to step outside the normal parameters of Fulcrum Ruminations for a moment. Yes, I am going to permit myself a rant. A non-political rant which will have nothing to do with who's running for what office or whether George Bush is a poopie-head.

Addressing myself to any and all food service workers who may stumble across my slice of the blogosphere, I must ask: when did the restaurant business lose the ability to cook beef to order?

Once upon a time, perhaps as recently as fifteen or twenty years ago, you could order a steak or burger by the well-known "medium, medium rare, well done" scale and get what you asked for. Those days, it would seem, are lost. Let me explain . . .

Neither my wife nor I really like to cook, so we eat out several times each week. This being the Washington DC area, there are hundreds of good restaurants from which to choose, serving almost any type of food anyone could want. Standard meat-and-potatos American all the way to exotic Ethiopian or Afghan cuisine is available. So we partake. Sometimes, tho, you just want a cheeseburger. Or a steak. No shortage of restaurants offering such fare, either. Outback Steak House, Silverado, local mom-and-pop places, everything up to five star international melt-on-your-tongue goodness.

And not one of 'em seems to know what "medium rare" means any more.

Most places we go when I'm in the mood for beef, I have to order "medium well" to get what I actually want, which is "medium rare." If I order "medium rare", I get a raw and bloody, barely cooked hunk of flesh. It's quite discouraging.

Let me spell it out for any cooks or chefs who may be reading. Here's how the scale goes:

Rare - Outside lightly browned, inside warm, red, very juicy

Medium Rare - Outside moderately browned, inside hot, red, juicy

Medium - Outside well browned, inside hot, pink, moist

Medium Well - Outside well browned and beginning to char, inside hot, barely pink, still moist

Well Done - Outside dark brown with charring, inside hot, no pink, slightly moist

That's it. "Well Done" does not mean "cooked until it looks, feels, and tastes like leather." It is actually possible to do a piece of meat "well done" and not dry it out. Conversely, "rare" does not mean "sit it where it can see the cooktop." If I want raw meat, I'll order steak tartar. Or go for sashimi.

If I understand correctly, restaurants do not cook beef visually any more. They cook strictly by time and temperature, which all but ensures that the meat is not cooked properly. I can hit any of the marks listed above when I grill over charcoal. Why can't chain restaurants get it right these days?

Along similar lines, why is it so hard for the wait staff to understand that the appetizer comes before the main course, not with it or, God forbid, after it. And that everyone in the dining party should get their food at the same time and all of it should be hot and fresh? Is this so difficult?

At the end of the meal, my favorite thing: the tip. I've sat for slow, indifferent service with poorly prepared food that I've had to send back twice before it was right, and yet I'm still expected to add a twenty percent gratuity to the bill.

I. Think. Not.

Worse still are the restaurants that arrogantly include the tip in the bill. Ah . . . no. I will decide if your service warrants a tip, and how much that tip should be. Not you. Your job is to make me happy, not to see how much money you can pry out of my wallet. Do your job and I'll be generous with the tip.

Next time will be a standard political diatribe, I promise. I just had to get this off my chest. Thanks.

It's Been Such a Long Time . . . It's Been Such a Very Long Time

2008-07-19T12:55:00.003-04:00

Quite a while since the last post. Well over a month. Much has happened.

Barack Obama is of course the presumptive Democratic nominee for President. I believe he will win. McCain has a good record of service but he feels old and tired. His moment was 2000, not 2008. Obama is putting out a message of "change" which, even tho it's not actually defined very well, is bringing people into his camp. And since he is relatively young and not fully assimilated by the Washington political culture, he may be able to deliver. We'll see in November.

Oil prices have skyrocketed. The economy, already battered by the housing industry implosion, is looking like it's headed towards a recession. President Bush announced the opening of formerly-restricted areas to oil drilling and that's having a somewhat calming effect on prices, at least for the moment. Realistically, the only long-term fix to this problem is to move off of the oil standard entirely. There are measures that can be taken, and we're seeing some stuff already happening as the market adjusts itself. The big American car manufacturers are scaling back or ceasing production of oversized, inefficient vehicles like SUVs and there are plans for more hybrids. Small cars are coming into demand again as short-sighted American consumers finally have reason to think about fuel efficiency. At least one manufacturer has announced a hydrogen-powered car for near-future production.

Of course, the more government interferes with the market, the worse things will get. One has only to look at the ethanol subisdy business to see how easily good intentions can fall victim to the Law of Unintended Consequences.

The situation in Iraq continues to improve. Only the most foaming-at-the-mouth of the reality-impaired can now deny the success of the "surge" strategy. Afghanistan, meanwhile, is not going so well. Too many resources being directed to the Iraqi theater means not enough is being done in Afghanistan. Still, the situation remains controllable. One hopes that the next President doesn't suffer an attack of extreme foolishness leading to a precipitous action like a sudden withdrawal from Iraq before things are sufficiently stable.

The recent Heller decision by the Supreme Court, altho flawed, nevertheless established the Second Amendment as an individual right. Of course, this was patently obvious to anyone with more than a sixth-grade command of the english language all along, but it's nice to have it made official. The DC government, as is the habit of entrenched liberals, is trying its best to ignore or circumvent the court's decision. I forsee several more legal challenges to DC's grossly unconstitutional gun laws in the near future. Meanwhile, it seems likely that several other cities with such rubbish on their books will also see their attempts to trample the rights of their citizens challenged on the basis of Heller.

The FISA legislation was passed by Congress. This of course is damaging to our freedoms, being yet another short-sighted attempt to provide security at the cost of essential liberties, and we all know the famous quote regarding such things. I believe it's time to show Congress that We The People aren't going to tolerate their nonsense any longer and vote the lot of them out of office. However, I have no realistic expectation that this will happen. There are too many knee-jerk voters out there who would vote for Satan so long as old Scratch had the right letter in front of his name. And everyone always seems to think that, altho Congress is doing a poor job, their own guy is just fine and they keep sending him back.

No profound insights this time, I'm afraid. Just some random thoughts and observations.

Unexpected Loss

2008-06-13T18:44:00.003-04:00

Unhappy news from NBC. Tim Russert has died. Initial reports had the veteran newsman falling victim to a sudden heart attack, but later statements are adding a question mark to that theory.

This is a great loss to the news media. Russert was even and dogged when interviewing politicians of any stripe. His Sunday show, Meet the Press, is required viewing for anyone trying to follow national politics and government affairs.

In an era of ever-increasing polarization and partisanship, Russert spoke from the center. He'll be missed.

Memorial Day Weekend, 2008

2008-05-27T11:43:00.002-04:00

We had friends in town over the holiday weekend. On Sunday we were in Washington, watching the apparently endless line of motorcycles of Rolling Thunder.

Remember and honor those who wear your country's uniform. Remember and honor those who never made it home.

Stuck in an Old Groove

2008-03-28T09:10:00.004-04:00

Some things never change. Case in point: the missile defense program the US has been pursuing since the 1980's has matured into a robust, successful effort which is now almost ready for operational deployment. But some folks apparently haven't gotten the message. This, for example, is just sad.

That Congressman Tierney and Mr. Flynn can even draft such a paen to ignorance is astonishing. The Congressman I can almost understand . . . he's simply spouting the same tired nonsense that's been coming from the Left on the topic of missile defense since Reagan first announced the program. Mr. Flynn, tho, is described as a "senior fellow for national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of "The Edge of Disaster." " Surely someone in that sort of position should be better informed.

Somehow these two have managed to overlook the multitude of successful tests conducted by the Navy over the past few years, not to mention the recent successful shoot-down of that errant satellite over the Pacific. To trot out the threadbare old line "a system that still has yet to be realistically tested and may never be operationally effective" in 2008 is to be either abysmally ignorant or willfully blind.

At least they manage to point out some things that are true - terrorists most likely wouldn't use a missile to deliver a nuke, for example - but they also ignore the very real threat from rogue states like North Korea and Iran. The claim is made that "Only Great Britain, France, Russia, and China join the United States in having intercontinental missiles." Apparently these gentlemen are unaware of the burgeoning spread of ballistic missile technology around the globe. Remember when North Korea launched one over Japan a couple years ago? Maybe not intercontinental just yet, but certainly well on the way to getting there.

I will never understand, gentle reader, why so many of our own citizens seem horrified at the idea that we might find it necessary to defend ourselves. I can but shake my head ruefully.

What Good Is The Truth If Nobody Knows It?

2008-03-19T16:10:00.004-04:00

I'm not one to read or rely upon The Weekly Standard for my news, but when someone gets it right, they get it right. There's a piece in the 24 March issue called Saddam's Dangerous Friends by Stephen F. Hayes which lays out a somewhat more complete picture of the recent Pentagon report on the connection between the Saddam Hussein regime and al Qaeda than you'll find in the mainstream media. The report, titled Iraqi Perspectives Project: Saddam and Terrorism: Emerging Insights from Captured Iraqi Documents, is derived from analysis of some 600,000 documents seized in Iraq since the beginning of the war.

Not surprisingly, the left-leaning media got it wrong. They seem to have seized on some partial quotes from the report's executive summary which appeared to support the "Bush Lied" meme running rampant in the reality-impaired community and pretty much ignored the rest of the thing, which actually paints a quite different picture. Saddam's regime was quietly supporting various and sundry terrorist groups, some of which were offshoots of al Qaeda and some of which were allied with it. That's a wee bit different than the glib "No smoking gun!" headline so quickly and easily swallowed by those who already leaned that way, isn't it?

Anyway, read the piece and judge for yourself. I found it interesting and thought it should get wider attention.

Smokescreen

2008-03-09T12:42:00.006-04:00

The Sunday talk shows today were all abuzz with the apparent dead heat between the campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. At the moment, I'm still thinking Obama is going to take the nomination and the general election in November, but let's put that aside for now.

Interspersed throughout the commentary from various analysts and talking heads regarding what the Democrats are going to do to sort out their primary season before the convention, or indeed if they even can sort it out and avoid a convention battle, the name of John McCain was mentioned once or twice. The Republicans have of course already settled pretty conclusively on their nominee, and so the close match on the Democrat side is drawing all the press, since that's where the story is. One commentator even mentioned as a passing joke something along the lines of "Remember McCain? You know, the Republican candidate?"

And that's the point. Since there is such a close race between Clinton and Obama, and since there is so much fascinating stuff happening in that contest with the outcome not decided (and looking like it won't be decided until the convention), the Democrats are by default getting a huge share of media attention this year. Now, this could be a problem, but to be fair the story on the Democrat side is much more intriguing than on the Republican side. We've got the first serious woman candidate for President, and the first serious black candidate for the same office. Turnout in the primaries and caucuses so far has reportedly been extremely heavy. The Republicans are running their ten trillionth variant of "old white guy" for office, so even if McCain is a solid choice, he's - let's face it - boring. He's not really news, at least not at this point.

The question in my mind is whether this situation is serving the greater public interest. Is the intense interest in the contest on the Democratic side generating extra "push" among voters to go that direction come November? In other words, is the simple fact that the battle between Clinton and Obama is both amazingly historical and intensely interesting tilting the national playing field towards the Democrats in general?

Or is this simply an artifact of the mainstream press and its well-known bias towards the Left? The chattering class and its various offshoots are, in general, much more likely to vote Democratic than Republican, and so naturally lean towards talking about the Democratic race more than the Republican one. Eight years of George Bush following eight years of Bill Clinton seems to have drastically polarized the country, due not in small measure to the emergence of twenty-four-hour cable news, talk radio, and the blogosphere during that same sixteen-year period. True? The possibility that this is not actually the case, and is a smokescreen unconsciously thrown up by the patterns of the media elites, seems real to me. The media no longer just report the news, in many cases they make the news, and if they bend to the left, the reporting will follow. Things that are barely visible in "flyover country" assume an aspect of huge importance in the media because the media is driven by a small group of interrelated interests who mostly share some common political biases.

American news coverage seems to have fallen into a subtle trap. The elites are concentrated on the coasts and in a couple of other (mostly urban) areas. In this self-created echo chamber, they constantly hear their own beliefs and opinions reinforced by those around them, leading to the conclusion that that's how everyone must feel. The "silent majority" in that dismissed-with-a-wave "flyover country" are viewed as misinformed at best and dangerously naive at worst, and also thought to be a much smaller percentage of the population than they actually are.

I don't know where the truth falls in all this. Media coverage of the Democratic race is heavy because the Democratic race is heavily interesting this time. But the biases of the press are known, documented, and actually rather obvious. Will this impact the general election in the fall? Is "media momentum" going to translate into votes? I don't even know if this can be teased out of the tremendous mass of statistical data generated by all the polling associated with an election. Especially if no-one is looking for it.

I do know that voting is still the single most important responsibility we bear as citizens. So whatever your beliefs, whoever your candidate, make sure to exercise that responsibility, gentle reader. Find the fulcrum on which your personal choice tilts and make your decision.

End of an Interval

2008-02-27T15:23:00.005-05:00

Yep, another long interval between posts. Y'know, I really intended to do more writing on this blog when I started it. That doggone "real life" stuff always gets in the way.

Item: William F. Buckley Jr. has died. Buckley was a towering presence on the Conservative side of American politics. Altho I did not always agree with his positions, I found his writing to be of a superb calibre and he was often very amusing. His passing leaves a huge void among the voices of the Right.

Item: in keeping with my previously announced new feature, I'm now predicting that Barak Obama will be the next President. I think the Democratic convention is going to be an ugly battle between the Clinton and Obama camps, but in the end Obama's momentum from the primaries will carry him. Since John McCain seems to be a dead lock for the Republicans now (barring some revelation with more substance than the muckraking New York TImes was able to muster), I think Obama's youth, ability to inspire, promises of "change" (best not analyzed too closely, since he's really just a run-of-the-mill Democrat) and the historical weight of being the first serious black candidate for President will give him the edge come November.

Item: My online buddy Generik has somehow injured himself. Best wishes and hopes for a speedy recovery.

Item: Ralph Nader is jumping in again. There is much pulling of hair and gnashing of teeth going on over Nader's announcement, altho I personally find it hard to believe that anyone but the most hard core of the reality-impaired will throw any votes his way this time. Memories of the 2000 campaign and Nader's spoiler role are too fresh. I doubt that those on the Left want to take the chance of throwing the election to the Republicans just to make a point this time.

As always, I've been wanting to comment on a lot of the stuff going on in the world, and as always, finding the time to do it is difficult. Ah well.

A Light Fades Out

2008-01-07T11:56:00.001-05:00

A poignant final post from milblogger Andrew Olmsted, killed in Iraq. A good man, gone now, leaving a void that can't be filled.

Iowa Caucus Results

2008-01-03T22:15:00.000-05:00

According to the numbers CNN is reporting it looks like Obama takes the primary for the Democrats and Huckabee for the Republicans. Edwards is in second and Clinton in third on the D side, with Romney and McCain taking those slots in the R column. And the 2008 campaign is off to a roaring start.

I find it heartening that Obama is doing so well. Think of the history being made here: a black man is a serious contender for President. If that doesn't tell you we've come a long way, baby then you're just not paying attention.

Huckabee, on the other hand, I expect to fizzle as the primaries go forward. Altho none of the Republicans are especially impressive this time around, I expect either Mitt Romney or Rudy Giuliani to eventually break out of the pack. We'll see.

New Feature

2008-01-01T16:16:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year!

Inaugurating a new feature here at Fulcrum Ruminations just in time for the 2008 elections, I'm going to toss out my prediction for President. I'll update this as events warrant. Bear in mind that this is very much a "gut feeling" and I'm not going to enumerate a long list of reasons for my pick. It's simply my take on the likely outcome based on a general reading of current media reporting.

Realizing that voting day is still 11 months away and many things can still change, right now I project that Hillary Clinton will be the next President of the United States.

What I'm Talking About

2007-12-29T14:54:00.000-05:00

This blog post illustrates my general position on the nature of political debate in the blogosphere very neatly. A book review leads to drama. Oh, the humanity!

They're all mad, gentle reader. They bark and whine and fling poo at one another day and night. Egad.

Iraq In Review

2007-12-28T12:29:00.000-05:00

The National Review Online, that is. I saw this link on Little Green Footballs today and found it interesting. It's often useful to consider something like the course of public reaction over the timespan of a given event, and this piece by Victor Davis Hanson sums up the public reaction to the vagaries of the Iraq war quite nicely.

Time Passages

2007-12-12T21:07:00.000-05:00

Yes, now it's December and I still haven't posted anything.

When I started this blog, it was because I was dismayed at the hate and anger seen in blogs on the fringes of the political spectrum and wanted to provide some kind of counterbalance. A cool voice of moderation from the middle. And yet, since I began my modest little effort, it's become clear that what I considered the fringes are actually the dominant voices in the political blogosphere. Access to a pulpit has enabled the lunatics to take over the asylum, as it were. You can watch both sides spin up over each story that comes along, one blog feeding back into another, into another, into another in a self-reinforcing cycle of apoplexy. Lost in the madness is any semblance of reality. Everything is pushed to its absurd extreme.

What's a lone voice of restraint in the midst of all that cacaphony?

The silly season is hard upon us, gentle reader. Both major political parties are trying to sort out their presidential candidates. It's almost like watching American Idol . . . you've got the ones who have a decent shot at the office, the ones who aren't quite ready, and then the hopeless dreamers. We're missing only a political Simon, Paula and Randy to sort the wheat from the chaff. I guess that's the role of the voters, but we'll see. We're watching a crop of mediocrity bloom in a field where we desperately need a harvest of greatness. I mean, really, are Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney the best we can do?

Iraq continues to make slow progress. Things are improving with the change in strategy and the surge. You have to watch this one extremely carefully to see what's actually going on, what with the spin on every event being completely off the dial, but if you pay attention you can see it happening. As I've said before, patience is the key to success.

Afghanistan, meanwhile, remains a battlefield no-one not directly involved with seems to be looking at. Progress there is slower than it should be, with Iraq distracting us from making a better effort.

Our President convinces me more every day that he's hopeless. Run out of steam. Lacking in "the vision thing." Fortunately, he's about done. It seems like he was trying to blow Iran up into some kind of crisis, but no-one is having it. Despite what you'll read in the left-leaning blogs, there's no attack on Iran coming any time soon, and that was true even before that inexplicable National Intelligence Estimate magically found Iran to be lacking in credible nuclear menace. I worry about that one . . . it's almost as if the intelligence community is overbalancing too far in the opposite direction after the Iraqi WMD debacle. I fear the price for seeing Iran in such a nonthreatening light is going to be a mushroom cloud over Tel Aviv.

I've wanted to write about all this stuff, to post my thoughts. But the motivation to actually sit here and do it, that's been hard to come by. So much stuff going on in my real life, what with renovating a house and a trip to Europe and work and everything. Blogging comes low on the priority list. This is because I, unlike some, do not view everything thru the lens of politics and I don't interpret each setback to my particular set of beliefs as The End Of The World As We Know It. I know that it's all on a pendulum. A swing one way is eventually balanced by a swing back the other, as the great levers of society pivot on their fulcrum.

Halloween Update

2007-10-31T23:33:00.000-04:00

Yes, it really has been three months since last I posted.

But, you see, there's a good reason for that. At the end of August my wife and I bought a house. The intervening months have been spent in renovations and moving. I have calluses where there should be no calluses, gentle reader. We've been falling into bed exhausted each night. We're down to the hanging curtains and arranging towels phase, but it's been a long struggle.

I've got stuff percolating in my brain pan, never fear. I'll get to it.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

2007-07-30T10:45:00.000-04:00

Michael E. O’Hanlon and Kenneth M. Pollack have an interesting piece titled "A War We Just Might Win" in the New York Times today. They're reporting on the situation in Iraq, and as suggested by my title, they've found a mix of conditions.

The good is that things in Iraq are going much better than is generally being reported here in the States (surprise, surprise). Here's a couple snippets to give you the gist of their position:

Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily “victory” but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.

And a bit later in the article:

Today, morale is high. The soldiers and marines told us they feel that they now have a superb commander in Gen. David Petraeus; they are confident in his strategy, they see real results, and they feel now they have the numbers needed to make a real difference.

This of course as congressional Democrats are salivating at the prospect of forcing a cut-n-run.

The bad is that progress on the Iraqi political front remains maddeningly slow and elusive. A quote:

In the end, the situation in Iraq remains grave. In particular, we still face huge hurdles on the political front. Iraqi politicians of all stripes continue to dawdle and maneuver for position against one another when major steps towards reconciliation — or at least accommodation — are needed. This cannot continue indefinitely. Otherwise, once we begin to downsize, important communities may not feel committed to the status quo, and Iraqi security forces may splinter along ethnic and religious lines.

Or in other words, the political situation remains fluid and fragile. Again, this illustrates that a precipitous withdrawal would be about the very worst course of action we could take. We pull out before the Iraqi leadership has properly sorted itself out, everything crumbles. Not good.

The ugly in all this is here in America, where the majority of our media still persist in seeing nothing but chaos and ruin in Iraq and our own none-too-reliable political leadership continues to demonstrate that they're much more concerned with getting themselves re-elected or scoring political points than they are with prosecuting this effort to a successful conclusion.

The reality-impaired community will of course spin any positive developments as ephemeral at best and part of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy at worst. But the bottom line is that the situation is improving and the only thing required for victory is patience on our part.

Update: Interesting. Pollack was on CNN with Wolf Blitzer yesterday afternoon. I didn't get to see the entire segment, but Pollack said that the title of the piece I reference above was not his or O'Hanlon's, but rather came from the Times' editorial staff. I wonder if the Times was trying to use the somewhat-positive tone of the piece to refute some of their cheerleader-of-defeat reputation in the conservative press.

What If . . .

2007-07-25T21:25:00.001-04:00

I like this.

It's jingoistic rubbish, but . . . there is truth in it.

Reality Impaired

2007-07-16T15:33:00.000-04:00

Ted Rall once again demonstrates the enlightened, tolerant, and progressive sensibilities of the Left.

I have no words adequate to describe the "what planet are you from?" mentality that puts forth such a clueless worldview.

The Cut-n-Run Is Looking Ever More Likely

2007-07-13T14:46:00.000-04:00

With our craven "re-election above all else" politicians growing ever more determined to ensure our defeat in Iraq regardless of the horrific consequences that would certainly follow, it's worth thinking about what our sudden withdrawal would actually mean. And this guy sums up the whole thing pretty well in a response to the latest surrender piece in the New York Times.

I'm getting awfully discouraged, gentle reader. The voices of defeat and surrender are louder and more reality-impaired than ever. I almost wish they'd get their way, just so that the inevitable disasters that would follow could unfold and discredit such empty ideas once and for all.

Final Jeopardy

2007-07-04T11:59:00.000-04:00

So President Bush has commuted "Scooter" Libby's sentence.

Yes, it's within his Presidential perogatives. No, it really, really wasn't a good idea. Really.

Other Presidents have done the same sort of thing. It is not uncommon. But prior example is not justification for a maneuver so nakedly political.

As I said in an email to a friend, it seems President Bush, in the last two years of his administration, is determined to self-destruct as spectacularly as possible. The Republican Party is coming apart (not necessarily a bad thing, since political parties do not seem to be particularly good for democracy) which will make the 08 elections easy pickings for the Democrats.

All this just as what seems to be the biggest conflict of cultures since World War II looks to be shaping up. Well done, gentlemen. Well done.

Useful Idiot Useful No Longer

2007-05-30T11:59:00.000-04:00

Going back to a post from almost two years ago, I quote myself:

"I think Ms. Sheehan is going to discover that once her utility as a stalking horse is done with, none of these people currently flocking to her banner is going to remember who she was. They'll have MoveOn.org'ed to the next "George Bush is a poopie-head" story."

The moment has arrived. Ms. Sheehan, once the darling of the anti-war left, is now apparently persona non grata in that same community. She posted a farewell letter of sorts in her diary at Daily Kos.

Poor woman. She started from grief, motivated by the death of her son Casey, and quickly found herself in a world for which she wasn't prepared. The Right had always lambasted her for her antics (and to be honest, doing things like cavorting with Hugo Chavez did not help her cause) and now the Left is done with her. She is experiencing the disdain and outright hate that the outer fringe of the Left displays for all those who fall out of step with their agenda.

I hope she finds some sort of peace once the spotlight is off.

Memorial Day 2007

2007-05-28T12:03:00.000-04:00

Jerry Moran.

Angela Houtz.

Lieutenant Commander Vince Tolbert, USN.

Killed at the Pentagon on 9/11.

Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines. Iraq. Afghanistan. Everywhere they serve.

We remember.

The Remnant

2007-05-23T14:51:00.000-04:00

Another outstanding essay by Bill Whittle. I may just replace my little blog here with a redirect to EjectEjectEject and call it good. Whittle even reiterates my own thoughts on short-term vs long-term thinking.

I've got a long piece in the works, but progress is slow. Too many distractions!

Perspective

2007-05-17T14:26:00.000-04:00

Here's a quick graph to bring some much-needed perspective to the war in Iraq. This doesn't diminish the tragedy of the casualties over there, but it does show that things could be much, much worse.

Hat tip: Teflon at MoltenThought.

Too Soon?

2007-04-18T11:24:00.000-04:00

Yet another explosion of inexplicable violence. The campus of Virginia Tech thrown into panic and chaos by a deranged gunman. Over thirty people killed in cold blood. Said to be the worst such massacre in American history.

Take a moment, gentle reader, to pause and reflect on the lives so unfairly snuffed out. When the story first broke, did you think to yourself, if only for a moment, what if it's a terrorist attack? I did, tho it quickly became apparent that this was not Al Qaeda or some other shadowy terror group launching another assault.

Students and faculty, young and old. A survivor of the Holocaust. Innocents denied their future because one individual was wracked with a pain he could not assuage. It's sad. It requires some time to absorb. To come to grips with the awful truth of it. Our minds will spin and struggle to assign some meaning to it all, to understand why, even as we know deep inside that there is no "why", because we know that sometimes evil erupts onto our world without warning.

Sadly, tho, it seems that there was warning in this case. The killer left behind at least a year's worth of suspicious behaviour. Measures were contemplated but apparently never acted upon. And now it's too late.

Strangely, sadly, maddeningly, however, it would appear that it's not too soon for the incident to be turned into grist for the activist mills. The anti-gun crowd is already beginning to clamor about this being a reason to enact strict new gun control legislation. The pro-gun lobby is already launching countermeasures. You can read the papers, watch TV, surf the blogs, and already you can see the heat of the arguments ratcheting up.

Lost already are the human faces of those killed. Already seen not as people, not as lives cut short, but as political bargaining chips. Talking points. Banners under which to rally.

Stop it. Stop it, for the love of God. Your fellow citizens are dead. Murdered as they went about their daily affairs. Put aside your canned rhetoric and spin machines long enough to recognize what's happened and allow some dignity to attend the aftermath of this horror. Let the families and friends do their mourning, let the rest of us bow our heads in prayer or contemplation or just plain shock before you make this your latest grand crusade to change the world.

Decency compells us to allow nothing less. There will be a time for the debate, but that time is not now. For now, just remember and reflect.

Critical Thinking

2007-04-13T12:20:00.000-04:00

Bill Whittle over at EjectEjectEject has put up yet another excellent, incisive piece. This one deals with the disturbingly commonplace beliefs many people have in things like the Kennedy Assasination Conspiracy, faked moon landings, and the odious 9-11 fantasy that our own government was responsible for those horrible attacks. Whittle skillfully demolishes these poisonous delusions. I find it especially relevant considering the responses to this recent post at Welcome-to-Pottersville, a blog I look at from time to time in order to keep track of a particularly venomous and hateful blogger of my acquiantance.

UPDATE - Looks like Michelle Malkin has also picked up on Whittle's latest.

Short and Sweet

2007-04-03T13:40:00.000-04:00

Very quickly, there's an outstanding post up at the Daily Kos today having to do with journalists and their responsibilities in a free society. Go have a look.

Speaking Truth to Power

2007-03-13T15:07:00.000-04:00

If only I had a dime for every time I’ve run across that phrase. So many public commentators make the claim that they’re “speaking truth to power” when in fact all that they’re doing is venting their spleens. It’s a thinly-disguised claim to informational / intellectual superiority . . . “if only you were as smart as me, you’d realize that I’m right and you’re wrong.”

Rubbish, of course. People have different opinions on various matters, but holding an opinion doesn’t mean that you’re “right” or that those who disagree with you are “wrong.” You might be right, or you might be wrong, but the automatic assumption that your view is the correct view is rooted not in logic and reason, but emotion and ego. The wise man knows that he must question his own assumptions at all times. Or, as I like to put it, cynicism keeps you alive in a hostile universe. You may hold tightly to a cherished view on a given topic, but you must always be ready to jettison that view should the weight of evidence prove it wrong. This is the difference between a realist and an ideologue, and there are entirely too many people out there who don’t appreciate that difference. The blogosphere is littered with them.

The Washington Post had an interesting little article about this the other day. The author is Shankar Vedantam and the piece is titled “Disagree About Iraq? You're Not Just Wrong--You're Evil.” You’ll need a (free) registration to read the whole article, but here’s a snippet to pique your interest:

"Partisans within ideological groups tended to view themselves as atypical vis-a-vis their group: atypical in their moderation, in their freedom from bias, and in their capacity to 'see things as they are in reality' even when that reality proves to be ideologically inconvenient or 'politically incorrect,' " Harvard Business School researcher Robert J. Robinson and his colleagues concluded.

Is that not the very essence of most political bloggers, right and left? In a way, it’s similar to what soldiers do during combat. They dehumanize their enemies in order to overcome the inhibition against killing their fellow man. The venomous bloggers out there do the same thing (tho of course without the killing part . . . I hope!), castigating all those who disagree with them with such charming names as “moonbat” and “wingnut”. Hurling invective rather than reasoned arguments. Dehumanizing, belittling, excoriating by insult and foul language. It’s not debate and it’s not even about being “right”. It’s about scoring the most points off of the other guy and self-aggrandizement. Make yourself feel better by making someone else feel bad.

This is elementary school behaviour. The pseudo-anonymity of the web empowers this sort of thing, much the same way that wrapping oneself in a couple tons of rolling steel empowers so many drivers, otherwise nice people, to act like complete jerks behind the wheel.

Some, of course, take it further than mere blogging. Witness the deranged ranting of Ann Coulter, for example, or Michael Moore. These persons are handy for keeping track of the extreme fringes or as entertainment, but should certainly not have any place in informed debate.

I’ve not been cruising the blogosphere all that long, but I have found simple civility to be sadly lacking in many of its corners.

Let’s try to do better, shall we?

Housekeeping

2007-02-17T22:29:00.000-05:00

Doing some Technorati Profile type stuff. I figured I should finally get around to more fully embracing the fantabulous world of blogging.

Fire in the Hole!

2007-02-08T13:37:00.000-05:00

Well now. It seems that Presidential candidate John Edwards (D/North Carolina) decided to hire some campaign help from the blogging community. Edwards is a savvy guy and is aware of the burgeoning blogosphere and its relationship to politics at all levels. As a Democrat with a somewhat liberal outlook, he naturally went to the left side of the blogosphere in search of some professional blogging help.

Unfortunately, he found Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan. Marcotte is known from the blog Pandagon. McEwan is from the blog Shakespeare's Sister. Marcotte is a good illustration of one of the main reasons I started Fulcrum Ruminations . . . in addition to being a left-fringe blogger, she's got an unrelentingly foul "mouth". Lots of F-words and venomous slurs populate her postings. Very uncivil and ill-mannered. McEwan at least seems to be a bit more reserved and readable.

Now apparently Edwards doesn't yet take the blogosphere as seriously as he should, or he would have devoted a little more effort to checking out the people his campaign was hiring. A few moments on the internet would have revealed how offensive Marcotte's work is. It may play well in the left fringe of the blogosphere, but for someone running a national-level political campaign and therefore needing to appeal to as wide a base as possible, it's poison. Despite what's being posted in the blogs on the left side of the fence, most of Middle America really doesn't like to hear that kind of language associated with someone aspiring to that level of office. Remember the cries of outrage directed at Dick Cheney when he uttered a profanity on Capitol Hill? Same principal. You get to a certain level of achievement, you shouldn't be talking (or blogging) like a boatload of drunken sailors.

Someone named "Bryan" has a good take on this up at Hotair:

Writing is a revelatory thing. Use of ALL CAPS is a shout; use of profanity to me reflects unseriousness and lack of a vocabulary (or at least a thesaurus) and a lack of manners. Using every single issue to smear and denigrate rather than persuade, enlighten, or heck, just entertain for a second, makes the writer look like a loon. Making every post somehow All About Me and My Proclivities That You Can’t Stop exhibits paranoia. It just does. And that’s why the two bloggers have become a liability.
On this side of the aisle, it’s just a hilarious situation to watch unfold. Everyone over there, threatening Edwards and threatening bloggers on the right and styling themselves as a bunch of internet Napoleons, just look like a collection of clowns falling all over themselves to be the next one to one-up the incandescent rage of the last one. Who can take themselves so seriously? Who can take them seriously anymore?

This is very much like what I was thinking when I started this blog. The fringes of the blogosphere are overrun with this sort of thing - whiney, self-indulgent little malcontents spewing vitriol as fast as they can pound their keyboards. The right fringe is every bit as guilty of it as the left fringe. Where, gentle reader, has civil discourse gone? Some of these people are obviously very intelligent and well-informed, if somewhat reality-impaired. Why then are they unable (or unwilling) to express themselves without throwing every curse-word they can think of into the mix? Why can't they make their points without childish insults or sulking invective? Is it that hard to be creative without being obscene?

Judging by the above examples, it certainly seems so.

Can It Be True?

2007-02-05T14:09:00.000-05:00

According to Fox News, Rudy Giuliani has announced he's running for President.

Dare we think it?

Someone to vote for, instead of just voting against the bigger of two idiots? I think 2008 just got a whole lot more interesting.

Farewell to Evil

2006-12-30T16:42:00.000-05:00

Saddam Hussein no longer wastes the planet's oxygen. This is a good thing.

Saddam's victims ran into the tens of thousands at the very least. We'll probably never really know just how many innocents perished at his command.

Sic semper tyrannis.

Gerald R. Ford

2006-12-27T15:20:00.000-05:00

Former President Gerald R. Ford, the only man who ever held the office without being elected to it, has died at the age of 93.

I remember Ford mostly from those Saturday Night Live skits with Chevy Chase. His was not an administration of Great Deeds, but it was one of quiet competence.

Fair thee well, Mister President. You go to join a mighty company.

Can America Still Win Wars?

2006-12-14T15:19:00.000-05:00

Not a rhetorical question. Do we, as a nation, have the will to win wars any more?

Since the VietNam War ended, we have recast our military into a supremely lethal and effective force. The US Military is superbly designed and equipped for the task of shredding opposing militaries with frightening speed and efficiency. It's no exaggeration to say that our current armed forces probably constitute the most effective military in human history.

But what that describes is a force that wins battles, not one that wins wars. It's not enough to destroy opposing military formations. To win, one must seize and hold the enemy's territory, destroy the will to resist, and build some form of government in the defeated nation which can then maintain order. The classic example is what was done at the end of World War II, when massive armies of occupation garrisoned the defeated Axis powers as civil authority was restored and the nations were turned from enemies into allies.

Iraq is not working out that way. We kicked apart Saddam's armies easily enough (relatively speaking, of course . . . the victory was "easy" only by comparison to previous conflicts). But the force we sent was too small to effectively garrison the country once we'd destroyed the existing authority. As the conventional wisdom has it, mistakes were made. Assumptions were overly optimistic.

Now, the press would have you believe that the situation in Iraq is an unmitigated disaster, with chaos around every corner and failure the only sure outcome. But the commanders on the ground there report that efforts are succeeding, by and large, to contain the insurgency and restore the ability of self-governance. It's going slowly, there are setbacks, but the trend is towards success.

And yet the American public is turning against the effort. We're deciding that the cost in blood and treasure is too great, and the momentum for the cut-and-run continues to grow. What's needed is a larger number of troops to control the situation, continued infusions of aid in rebuilding civilian infrastructure, and training for Iraqi police and military units so that they can assume the normal duties of such organizations. All of this is in short supply.

At the end of the Cold War in the early 90s, we made the classic post-war mistake of democracies: we drew down our military too far and too fast. The result is a force that is relatively small given the size of our country and the missions we ask it to perform. As I noted above, it's an astonishingly capable force, but for the job of capturing whole countries, it's simply too small. We can destroy enemy militaries, but we can't impose order on the nations we have defeated. We have a force that wins battles and loses wars.

This is a perfectly fine arrangement so long as the missions undertaken are things like the Gulf War, or defeating a North Korean invasion of South Korea. However, when you engage in what amounts to wholesale conquest (and let's not be coy, that's what we did in Iraq and Afghanistan) you need a very large number of foot soldiers so that you can effectively police the country you've conquered. Previous empires have done this by co-opting the conquered into becoming members of the empire and policing themselves. The US, which despite the claims of the reality-impaired is in no way an empire, prefers to simply destroy or otherwise mitigate threats and then engage other nations with primarily economic means. Basically, we want to sell them our stuff and we want to buy their stuff. We tie our "empire" together with trade and mutual profit, not with armies of occupation.

Then there's our media. In the last fifty years, the world has gone from a model in which a newspaper account a day or more after the fact was the primary source of news to a model of the instantaneous communication of multimedia presentations that's omnipresent and always on. If General Patton slapped a soldier today, it would be on CNN and Fox News by lunchtime at the latest, with a variety of talking heads second-guessing every aspect of the incident and telling the rest of us what to think about it.

There's a telling statistic out there - something over eighty percent of the American press supposedly votes Democrat every election. It's therefore difficult to believe that they can be "fair and balanced" when reporting on a Republican-dominated government. However, the main game for the press is "Gotcha!" This supercedes even the most virulent partisan impulses. Witness, for example, the unprecedented feeding frenzy surrounding the Bill Clinton / Monica Lewinski story. This seems to stem from the Watergate era, when the Washington Post led the way in bringing down President Nixon. The reporters directly involved (most famously Woodward and Bernstein) viewed this not only as an extraordinary bit of journalism but as a demonstration of the power of the press. If the press collectively decides it doesn't like a politician, the press feels not just allowed, but obliged to destroy that politician. Journalists have assumed a position of tremendous arrogance, deciding that they know what's best.

The twenty-four-hour news cycle is also destructive in that it presents instant, or nearly instant, feedback on all government actions, both civilian and military. Witness the cries during the invasion of Iraq that the whole thing was a failure when a sandstorm held up the coalition advance for a few hours. Quality of reporting is sublimated to speed of reporting - it's more important to report it right now than to report it right. Fox doesn't want CNN to beat them to a report, after all, so accuracy is sacrificed to immediacy. Corrections may appear after more information comes in, or more experts are able to provide analysis, but often the first impression is the lasting one.

Military personnel in Iraq are reportedly developing an extreme dislike of the press. This is due to the perception that the press is only reporting the bad news, exaggerating it at that, and not reporting positive developments. Indeed, in some cases (the "six Sunnis burned to death" story leaps to mind) the press is actually manufacturing stories from whole cloth. There was, and is, a huge controversy around the Associated Press publishing falsified photographs of incidents that either happened differently than alleged or didn't happen at all.

This is poison to the informed debate needed to sustain a democratic government.

Then there's the blogosphere. While on one hand offering an entirely new means of reporting and commentary, blogs also allow anyone, no matter how biased or deranged, to put forth their version of an event. One has only to consider the insane conspiracy theories about the 9/11 attacks to see the horrific potential of this. A non-trivial segment of the American populace supposedly believes that our own government is responsible for 9/11. This is madness.

Blogs on the left have been beating the anti-war drums loudly and continuously since it became apparent that President Bush was going to take military action in Iraq. Although it now seems clear enough that the war was launched on false pretenses, the left is not satisfied with this and campaigns tirelessly for a cut-and-run strategy that would have disastrous long-term consequences. In opposition, you have blogs on the right that seem willing to support or excuse any action on the part of the administration in the name of "patriotism." The long-term consequences of blind obedience, although different from those of the cut-and-run, are no less disastrous to western liberal democracy.

But the upshot of all these matters is the fostering of a climate which is corrosive to the sort of sustained national unity necessary to win a major war. There must naturally be debate about the course of the effort and what constitutes victory. This is so obvious that it shouldn't need to be said. But the ultimate long-term goal, that of the survival of liberal democracy, must not be lost in the short-term struggle for political position. The essential civil liberties that make America what it is must not be sacrificed on the altar of expediency. This is what makes things like the so-called Patriot Act so unpalatable to so many people. We suffer certain tactical disadvantages from having a society as open as ours is, but closing things up takes away our national soul one little piece at a time.

Fulcrum Ruminations does not pretend to be a news blog. This blog is not about reporting specific events. This blog is nothing more than the opinions of one person, reflecting on the issues of the day. And what I see emerging from the chaos of Iraq, gentle reader, is a future in which America can destroy an enemy with devastating speed but is unable to address the longer, much more difficult issue of preventing new enemies from gaining a toe-hold. We can bulldoze entire nations but we cannot stop the next generation from going right back to the same behaviours that led to the bulldozing. We know how to win battles. We do not have the patience to win wars. Not when half of our population is more interested in portraying the other half as evil or stupid than they are in assuring the long-term survival of the social order which makes the debate possible at all.

Remembering Pearl Harbor

2006-12-07T16:00:00.000-05:00

Sixty five years ago today, the United States was thrust violently and spectacularly into the Second World War by the sneak attack on the Pacific Fleet at Pearl harbor. Casualties were heavy. Outrage was total. Victory was demanded.

We remember.

And the Results

2006-11-08T16:00:00.000-05:00

Hmmm. My predictions seem to have been of the "close but no cigar" variety.

Voter turnout seems to have been very heavy, for one thing. Many of the tight races remained tight right up until the last votes were counted. The Democrats did indeed take the House, but by a somewhat wider margin than I thought. The Senate is still in contention as I write this, with only the Virginia race still undecided, but it looks from here as tho the Dems will take a two-seat majority in the Senate.

This of course means disaster for the Bush administration, as the subpoenas will no doubt begin flowing shortly after the reins are handed over in January. Don Rumsfeld has already resigned/been fired, probably in an attempt to head off some of the venom.

Meanwhile, Joe Leiberman handily won reelection as an independent, nicely embarassing the reality-impaired lefties who forced him out of the Democratic party. The lesson there is, once again, that the mainstream of the country is nowhere near as liberal as some like to believe.

What lies ahead? Well, if I were the boss of the Republicans, I'd say that for the next two years they should let the Dems do whatever they want. Let them raise taxes, pile on the spending, pull us out of Iraq, enact whatever goofy legislation they want. Just smile and say "You got it!" Then, in 2008, the choice between the two parties should be nice and clear. Plus, there would be no charges of obstructionism or gridlock to be leveled. The Repubs could just say "Okay America, you've had two years of unrepressed Democratic leadership. How's that workin' out for ya?"

I have every confidence that the rush back to conservative principles would be seismic in its proportions. But meanwhile, I'm just going to say congratulations to the Dems. They somewhat clumsily seized the moment and are ascendent once again. Probably just the shock the Republicans needed at this point, since some twelve years after the "Republican Revolution" they have quite clearly lost their way. Time to refocus, reexamine, do some belly-button contemplation, all that good stuff.

In other news, Bill Whittle has a nice piece up on his blog that everyone should take a look at. Some good analysis there.

Day of Decision

2006-11-06T16:03:00.000-05:00

Very quickly, as we all know, tomorrow is Election Day. Many heated races, much sturm und drang, talking heads on television about to melt down from the sheer excitement. So I want to go on record with my official predictions.

The Democrats will take a slim majority in the House - maybe ten seats, maybe fifteen, but probably not more than that. They will also take a razor-thin majority in the Senate - one or two seats.

Many races will end very closely, and the lawyers will be working overtime to sue their favorite candidate into office.

Allegations of voter fraud will be rampant. No matter who wins, the other side will scream about cheating.

Dems win, taxes go up, economy slows down, investigations into/possible impeachment of the President.

Now along about Wednesday or so, we'll see how I did.

I'm also interested in seeing if any of the super-tight races (according to current polling) wind up being blow-outs for one side or the other. See, as much as we talk about the big national issues and party implications, Congressional elections tend to be very local affairs. Everyone agrees that Congress is doing a bad job . . . except for my guy, of course. So we'll see if the power of incumbency makes any sort of difference this time around.

Still, I sense a mood of profound disgust out there among the public. They don't like what's been going on, they're tired of the partisan nonsense, they want things to change. Which leads me to my final prediction: fairly low voter turn-out, even by mid-term election standards.

We'll see.

A Little Economic News

2006-10-10T16:14:00.000-04:00

Just briefly, it seems that Bush's economic policies are paying off (so to speak). One of the few things going right for this hapless administration.

Since it looks like the Republicans have adopted the Democrats' "watch us self destruct!" election playbook this year, it's likely that the Dems will take back at least the House this election. I personally expect both House and Senate to switch hands, given the Foley/Hastert meltdown, the successful media effort to portray the Iraq war as a lost cause, and the general malaise affecting the Republicans. This of course means that the Bush tax cuts will be undone, taxes will go up (because that's one of the unchanging ground truths of the Democratic Party - they like higher taxes. Only on "the rich" of course, but strangely it's always the middle class and small business that takes it in the shorts when the Dems get to pass their tax bills. But I digress), revenues will go down, spending will continue to spiral out of control and the deficit will balloon again. All of which will be blamed on Bush's "failed economic policies" once Bush is out of office.

History shows that lower taxes stimulate the economy, bringing increased revenue and sustained growth. But, as always, the reality-impaired are not interested in the lessons history has to teach, but in enacting their flawed theories. Really, how many more times does "higher taxes=poor economy" have to be proven before the lesson finally sinks in?

Five Years Later

2006-09-11T15:49:00.000-04:00

Five years ago today, a group of retrograde barbarians crashed their hijacked airplanes into buildings and killed thousands of people.

Among those killed at the Pentagon were my friend Jerry Moran and my co-workers LCDR Vince Tolbert, USN, and Angela Houtz.

We remember.

Sound and Fury Come Round Again

2006-09-09T14:37:00.000-04:00

So this week's sound and fury revolves around the ABC television movie regarding the build-up to 9/11. Democrats and the left blogosphere are outraged, outraged they tell us, due to the inaccuracies in the historical events portrayed. Republicans and the right blogosphere are outraged at the other side's outrage.

Controversy surges back and forth over the matter. ABC protests that the final edit is not complete (which seems unlikely for a production that's supposed to air in two days) and the critics haven't even seen the thing yet.

The critics charge that the film is partly or maybe even entirely a slam at President Clinton for deliberately passing up chances at cutting Osama bin Laden off at the knees when he had the chance. Reportedly various of his administration are portrayed in a fairly negative light as well.

I find this all very curious. First up, Hollywood's track record for accuracy in portraying historical events is pretty shabby. Remember back in the mid-90s when the Disney Company (parent of ABC, btw) film Pocahontas was heavily criticized for taking liberties with real events? And about the same time, the Mel Gibson vehicle Braveheart caught flack from historians for rearranging the real-life story of William Wallace. This is what Hollywood does. Unless the film is labeled "documentary", it's going to do this sort of thing. History is rewritten to make the story more interesting, or flow better, or whatever excuse the writers use. No-one should be surprised at this.

Heck, go back to 1976's All the President's Men and you'll find a partially fictionalized account of the Watergate affair. Or even farther, to all those rah-rah World War II movies showing the brave, infallible Americans tearing up those goofy Nazis and caricatured Japanese. This is nothing new.

I think what's got the Democrats and the left in such an uproar is that Hollywood is usually on their side. It's been a cozy relationship for a good long time, what with all the left-wing causes espoused and supported by the Hollywood elite. Hollywood still loves Bill Clinton, so perhaps that's what makes this sting so much. A lover scorned and all that.

At any rate, much hate and discontent is flowing thru the Democratic Party, the Clinton camp, and the left in general. ABC seems not a little bewildered by this.

From what I understand, Clinton and Sandy Berger, among others, are blamed for things that they didn't actually do, or are protrayed as doing things in a manner totally at odds with what they actually did at the time. If this is true then they have good cause for complaint. It's one thing to rewrite the history of someone like William Wallace, dead for several centuries, but it's quite another to pull the same stunt on someone who's still around to notice how poorly they're being treated.

The real danger of this whole thing, which is being overlooked in the course of the huffing and puffing going on, is that the public imagination will take in this fictionalized account and in short order get it all confused with the genuine history of the events portrayed. Reality will no longer be what history recorded, but rather what Hollywood says it was. Hardly a new phenomenon, to be sure, but still worrisome.

I notice with some degree of amusement that many of the very same people now so outraged over this were strangely quiet - in some cases even delighted - when Michael Moore's heavily propagandized film Farenheit 9/11 was in theatres. I guess your outrage depends on whether the lies - excuse me, dramatizations - are pointed at you or at your idealogical opponents.

There are rumors and demands that ABC will either edit their film or pull it entirely due to the rancor being generated. This would be unfortunate, for as flawed as the film may be, it is still protected by the first amendment as free speech. But then, that's another thing that seems to depend on whether it's working for you or against you.

The left blogosphere is orchestrating a movement to "google bomb" the film, so that any google searches on it will be directed to left-wing blogs where interested parties will be educated as to the "correct" version of history. Or the left's version of it, at any rate. And of course where the vast right-wing conspiracy that produced the film can be properly exposed and excoriated. It wasn't terribly long ago that the left-wing blogs were full of outrage at right-wing bloggers conducting a campaign on amazon.com to artificially inflate the reviews of a conservative author's book (I forget the details of this one). Again, the degree of outrage seems curiously dependent on which side of the debate is using the tactic.

I can only point out once again that Left and Right are two sides of the same coin. They use the same tactics, mouth the same inanities, charge each other with the same sins, and generally drift further and further out of touch with reality.

Sad.

An Incovenient Truth

2006-08-26T15:39:00.000-04:00

My wife and I went to see Al Gore's movie, An Inconvenient Truth, last night. I had resisted seeing this due to my general dislike of Al Gore and what I'd heard about the alarmist nature of the film.

Imagine my surprise when it turned out to be not quite what I'd heard. One would think someone as cynical as I am would have known better than to believe the reviews, but even I, your humble voice of reason from the center, can sometimes be in thrall to preconceived notions.

First up (if I can make a somewhat trivial observation) the film has one of the best posters I've seen in a while. Check it out -

Smoke from some kind of industrial plant curling upwards to form the image of a hurricane. Pretty good design, eye-catching and summing up the basic thrust of the movie in a single picture.

This movie is not so much a documentary as it is a filmed version of a lecture Al Gore has given around the world many times. Mr. Gore apparently holds this issue to be a great personal priority and his passion for it shows as the film plays out.

I have to note that this is not the Al Gore from the 2000 presidential campaign. This Al Gore is warm, engaging, by turns serious, funny, coldly rational, and wistful. Not at all the wooden, impersonal Algore of the campaign videos. Seems plain that the guy is a much better public speaker when away from the political handlers and their blandifying advice.

Aside - this seems to often be the case with politicians at this level. You get them in a setting other than campaign politics and they are quite often very engaging and human. Two recent exceptions to this rule, tho, would be Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, both of whom were extremely effective public speakers no matter the topic.

As Mr. Gore goes thru his presentation, he quotes many scientific studies and public statements from climatologists and other scientists. He does this in a manner that makes the complex and controversial subject very understandable, and even includes a brief animated segment explaining the greenhouse effect that I would swear was done by the same studio that produces The Simpsons. I must note that this is a rare talent, making dense scientific matters comprehensible to laymen. How much of it is Mr. Gore's native ability and how much is due to assistants and speechwriters is anyone's guess, but Gore does a creditable job with it. He is also shown to use an Apple laptop for his personal work, which of course demonstrates superior taste in and knowledge of computers. *ahem*

Gore limits himself to two minor cheap shots at his political opponents, which saves this from looking like a bid for the 2008 presidential race, but he still should have left that out if he wants the issue of global warming debated on its own merits.

He does a good job showing the correlation of rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere with increases in global average temperature. The implication is that this is due to human activities, which is the majority position of the climatological community but by no means the fully settled issue that this film implies. A recent study, in fact, suggests that the Greenland ice sheet has been diminishing for at least the last hundred years, which puts the start of the phenomenon well before human industry had added any significant amount of CO2 to the atmosphere.

Gore also cites a large number of published scientific papers which support his thesis, carefully omitting mention of the large number of other scientific papers which do not. It's a classic case of choosing information which supports your starting position and ignoring that which does not, which is of course a standard debating tactic.

Overall, the movie is a bit preachy but not terribly so, presents its information in easily digestible form and shows Al Gore as a much more human figure than the Sunday talk shows ever have. I would urge anyone with any interest in either global warming or Al Gore to see it.

Now for some personal observations.

I've been to Antarctica. I've seen with my own eyes the evidence of retreating ice sheets. I've had presentations from actual scientists explaining the collapse of a large segment of the Larsen ice shelf in recent years. There is no doubt in my mind that global warming is a real, measurable, scientifically verified phenomenon. The question as I see it is how much of this phenomenon is due to human activities and how much in the way of corrective action can be done. If this is simply a normal cycle of the global climate, then interfering with it might be far, far more harmful than we can know. But if it is due to us, then we must do something.

What it boils down to is, of course, long-term thinking vs. short term thinking.

Al Gore attributes much of the problem to two main causes - pollution from human industry and transportation systems, and environmental damage like clearing rain forests. Should this be the case (and I think Gore actually has a pretty good argument) then the solutions are obvious.

They start with conservation. Protect the rain forests, change human habits so that we use less of . . . well, everything, basically . . . and invest our efforts in non-fossil-fuel energy sources.

Fortunately, there's a ready answer to much of this. Commercial power generation, for example, could be moved away from oil and coal based generating plants and much more heavily concentrated on nuclear power. This can be done now, with technology that's been well in hand for almost a half-century. Cars can be made much more fuel efficient (Detroit is once again on a downward spiral due to its emphasis on producing gas-guzzling SUVs rather than light, efficient sedans), public transit can be greatly expanded, people can turn their lights off, etc etc. This is all without even considering moving to renewable energy sources such as the familiar wind/solar/tidal/geothermal technologies we've all seen on the Discovery Channel.

The long-term solution as I see it is nuclear fusion. If we can finally crack that nut, we get cheap, pollution-free, almost limitless power. Power enough to maybe even actively clean the gunk out of the air that we've dumped into it over the last century or so.

But, knowing human nature as I do, I foresee that it will take some sort of catastrophe to finally get things moving in these directions. Al Gore's movie, useful as it may be, is not going to be enough by itself.

Some Thoughts for Mid-July

2006-07-15T17:24:00.000-04:00

Reaching back to what was only my third post in this blog, I see from recent reporting that another successful missile-defense test has occurred. Much as I hate to keep banging this particular drum, it seems fairly obvious that the critics were quite wrong and that this technology works.

Lot of recent puffery resulting from the Supreme Court’s “Hamdan vs Rumsfeld” decision. Commentators on both sides have been weighing in, with the left predictably characterizing the Court’s decision as a major defeat for President Bush and the right, equally predictably, trying to minimize the damage. The Washington Times has been running a multi-part series by David Rivkin and Lee Casey with analysis. I find Part III particularly interesting. It would appear that the Court’s decision in this matter is rather more narrowly focused than either side wants to realize. Bottom line, the opinion of the Court seems to be that while Bush overstepped his bounds in the treatment of war on terror detainees, it’s more that legal details weren’t properly seen to than anything else. The Court decision does not mean that the gates of Guantanamo must be thrown open.

A recent article by Thomas Sowell points out the negativity in the press with regard to the situation in Iraq (and to a lesser degree Afghanistan).

I have a real fear about this. More and more, the press is alienating itself from the people it’s supposed to be serving. The more the bias of the reporting becomes obvious, the more middle America is tuning it out. The country is already heading towards becoming two opposing camps of polarized reactionaries (just look at those blogs on the right of this page, or think about the Red State/Blue State nonsense) and if the supposedy “fair and balanced” press becomes perceived as serving only one side’s interest, then it loses its vital role as watchdog and guarantor of the people’s freedom. If half (or more) of the population automatically discounts whatever the press reports due to a perception of political bias, then nothing that gets reported will be taken seriously. This is a dangerous road to tread, and the press’s refusal to see the damage it’s doing to itself is all the more worrying. But then, this has always been the consequence of one group of people deciding that they know better than anyone else . . . they turn first elitist and then incestuous. Ultimately, by virtue of alienating the general population, they render themselves irrelevent. Our scandal-mongering “if it bleeds it leads” news media are blindly heading over a cliff. Then where will we be? A nation that gets all its “news” from opinion pieces in blogs? That’s a frightening possibility. Much of this can be understood as the consequences of short-term thinking. The media, like most other American businesses, has been taken over by the accountants. Their pursuit of immediate profits over all other considerations drives the sensationalistic nature of media coverage and also leads to the emergence of personality-driven reporting/opinion, as seen in the disrgaceful displays by Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Al Franken, and James Carville and their ilk. Single-issue groups like MoveOn.org or the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth add to the muck, casting everything in the light of their particular obsessions.

We here in the middle, gentle reader, must beware these trends. We must filter, consider, oh-so-carefully judge based on thorough consideration of all available information just where the real truth of any given situation might lie.

We are heading for dark times, I fear. The demogogues are taking over. Reason is being replaced by reaction.

Hold your torches firmly and keep your cynicism fully engaged, my friends. Only that will see us thru.

Which Way Are the Rafts Heading?

2006-07-01T14:02:00.000-04:00

Here's a piece I stumbled across in the course of my surfing today. Written by a guy named Bill Whittle. This may be the best summation I've yet found as to why I refer to a certain segment of our population as reality-impaired. It's well-written and makes a good point.

But, of course, probably lost on those to whom it most applies. Ah well, you can lead them to water, but you can't make them drink.

Well. Well. Well.

2006-06-21T21:28:00.000-04:00

Chemical weapons found in Iraq.

Not a lot, and not exactly in mint condition, but there they are. And of course, where there's some . . . there are quite likely more.

I wonder how this will be spun by the reality-impaired?

Long time readers of Fulcrum Ruminations will note that the left-leaning blog I had linked under the title Jurassic Pork has been replaced by the left-leaning blog firedoglake. It seems JP decided to get out of the blog business and deleted his entire site. Not just quit blogging, but actually delete the whole thing. One wonders what crisis of conscience has befallen JP, who was a reliable indicator of the more extreme fringe of the left side of the blogosphere.

I have chosen firedoglake to replace him pretty much at random. I am aware that JP had some sort of history with fdl, and that there was no love lost between them, but this did not enter into my decision. I am more concerned with putting up a link to a blog that is fairly well known, which JP's was not. We here in the center must keep a wary eye on both fringes in order to remain fully informed, and firedoglake seems to me to be a good barometer of the left side, much as is DailyKos and, to a lesser extent, the Generik Brand.

And So It Ends

2006-06-13T12:12:00.000-04:00

The news is out, and it's sort of surprising.

No indictment for Rove.

Not sure what to make of this. Liberal bloggers are already cranking up the spin machine, as are the conservative bloggers. Both, of course, according to their preconceptions.

But if Rove wasn't the source of the Plame leak, or the motivating force, or whatever relationship to it you happen to be looking for, then who was? Is there further action or investigation coming? I think this isn't quite as final an end as some are assuming.

Speaking of things ending, Bad Guy #1 in Iraq, al-Zarqawi, went to his long-overdue martyrdom last week. And it seems that a bonanza of intel was recovered from the location of the strike, as US and Iraqi forces launched a veritable blizzard of operations in the hours and days following the event. Reports are that lots of bad guys have been rounded up, shot up, blown up, and otherwise rendered combat ineffective.

But, of course, we're losing that war. Just read the papers.

One Way To Look At The World

2006-06-11T23:17:00.000-04:00

I got this in an email from one of my uncles. I think it speaks to a few things. Don't know if it was really written by the people credited or not, but it's worth reading anyway.

Gen. Dula's letter to the University of Washington Student Senate Leader, Jill Edwards. [Jill Edwards is one of the students at the University of Washington who did not want to honor Medal of Honor winner USMC Colonel Greg Boyington because she does not think those who serve in the U.S. Armed services are good role models. I think that this response is an excellent and thought provoking response. General Dula is a Retired Air Force Lt. Gen.]

To: Edwards, Jill (student, UW)
Subject: Sheep, Wolves and Sheepdogs

Miss Edwards,

I read of your 'student activity' regarding the proposed memorial to Col Greg Boyington, USMC and a Medal of Honor winner. I suspect you will receive a bellyful of angry e-mails from conservative folks like me. You may be too young to appreciate fully the sacrifices of generations of servicemen and servicewomen on whose shoulders you and your fellow students stand. I forgive you for the untutored ways of youth and your naïveté. It may be that you are, simply, a sheep. There's no dishonor in being a sheep - - as long as you know and accept what you are.
A Brett Dula
Sheepdog, retired

--------------------------------------------------------
ON SHEEP, WOLVES, AND SHEEPDOGS
By LTC(RET) Dave Grossman, RANGER, Ph.D.; author of "On Killing."

Honor never grows old, and honor rejoices the heart of age. It does so because honor is, finally, about defending those noble and worthy things that deserve defending, even if it comes at a high cost. In our time, that may mean social disapproval, public scorn, hardship,persecution, or as always, even death itself. The question remains:

What is worth defending?
What is worth dying for?
What is worth living for?

- William J. Bennett, at the US Naval Academy November 24, 1997

One Vietnam veteran, an old retired colonel, once said this to me: "Most of the people in our society are sheep. They are kind, gentle, productive creatures who can only hurt one another by accident."

This is true.

Remember, the murder rate is six per 100,000 per year, and the aggravated assault rate is four per 1,000 per year. What this means is that the vast majority of Americans are not inclined to hurt one another. Some estimates say that two million Americans are victims of violent crimes every year, a tragic, staggering number, perhaps an all-time record rate of violent crime. But there are almost 300 million Americans, which means that the odds of being a victim of violent crime is considerably less than one in a hundred on any given year. Furthermore, since many violent crimes are committed by repeat offenders, the actual number of violent citizens is considerably less than two million.

Thus there is a paradox, and we must grasp both ends of the situation: We may well be in the most violent times in history, but violence is still remarkably rare. This is because most citizens are kind, decent people who are not capable of hurting each other, except by accident or under extreme provocation. They are sheep. I mean nothing negative by calling them sheep. To me, it is like the pretty, blue robin's egg. Inside it is soft and gooey but someday it will grow into something wonderful. But the egg cannot survive without its hard blue shell. Police officers, soldiers, and other warriors are like that shell, and someday the civilization they protect will grow into something wonderful. For now, though, they need warriors to protect them from the predators.

"Then there are the wolves," the old war veteran said, "and the wolves feed on the sheep without mercy." Do you believe there are wolves out there who will feed on the flock without mercy?

You better believe it.

There are evil men in this world and they are capable of evil deeds. The moment you forget that or pretend it is not so, you become a sheep. There is no safety in denial.

"Then there are sheepdogs," he went on, "and I'm a sheepdog. I live to protect the flock and confront the wolf." If you have no capacity for violence then you are a healthy productive citizen, a sheep. If you have a capacity for violence and no empathy for your fellow citizens, then you have defined an aggressive sociopath, a wolf. But what if you have a capacity for violence, and a deep love for your fellow citizens? What do you have then? A sheepdog, a warrior, someone who is walking the hero's path. Someone who can walk into the heart of darkness, into the universal human phobia, and walk out unscathed.

Let me expand on this old soldier's excellent model of the sheep, wolves, and sheepdogs. We know that the sheep live in denial, that is what makes them sheep. They do not want to believe that there is evil in the world.

They can accept the fact that fires can happen, which is why they want fire extinguishers, fire sprinklers, fire alarms and fire exits throughout their kids' schools. But many of them are outraged at the idea of putting an armed police officer in their kid's school. Our children are thousands of times more likely to be killed or seriously injured by school violence than fire, but the sheep's only response to the possibility of violence is denial. The idea of someone coming to kill or harm their child is just too hard, and so they chose the path of denial.

The sheep generally do not like the sheepdog. He looks a lot like the wolf. He has fangs and the capacity for violence. The difference, though, is that the sheepdog must not, can not and will not ever harm the sheep. Any sheep dog who intentionally harms the lowliest little lamb will be punished and removed. The world cannot work any other way, at least not in a representative democracy or a republic such as ours. Still, the sheepdog disturbs the sheep. He is a constant reminder that there are wolves in the land. They would prefer that he didn't tell them where to go, or give them traffic tickets, or stand at the ready in our airports, in camouflage fatigues, holding an M-16. The sheep would much rather have the sheepdog cash in his fangs, spray paint himself white, and go, "Baa." Until the wolf shows up. Then the entire flock tries desperately to hide behind one lonely sheepdog.

The students, the victims at Columbine High School, were big, tough high school students, and under ordinary circumstances they would not have had the time of day for a police officer. They were not bad kids; they just had nothing to say to a cop. When the school was under attack, however, and SWAT teams were clearing the rooms and hallways, the officers had to physically peel those clinging, sobbing kids off of them. This is how the little lambs feel about their sheepdog when the wolf is at the door. Look at what happened after September 11, 2001 when the wolf pounded hard on the door. Remember how America, more than ever before, felt differently about their law enforcement officers and military personnel? Remember how many times you heard the word hero?

Understand that there is nothing morally superior about being a sheepdog; it is just what you choose to be. Also understand that a sheepdog is a funny critter: He is always sniffing around out on the perimeter, checking the breeze, barking at things that go bump in the night, and yearning for a righteous battle. That is, the young sheepdogs yearn for a righteous battle. The old sheepdogs are a little older and wiser, but they move to the sound of the guns when needed, right along with the young ones.

Here is how the sheep and the sheepdog think differently. The sheep pretend the wolf will never come, but the sheepdog lives for that day. After the attacks on September 11, 2001, most of the sheep, that is, most citizens in America said, "Thank God I wasn't on one of those planes." The sheepdogs, the warriors, said, "Dear God, I wish I could have been on one of those planes. Maybe I could have made a difference." When you are truly transformed into a warrior and have truly invested yourself into "warriorhood", you want to be there. You want to be able to make a difference. There is nothing morally superior about the sheepdog, the warrior, but he does have one real advantage. Only one. And that is that he is able to survive and thrive in an environment that destroys 98 percent of the population.

There was research conducted a few years ago with individuals convicted of violent crimes. These cons were in prison for serious, predatory crimes of violence: assaults, murders and killing law enforcement officers. The vast majority said that they specifically targeted victims by body language:

slumped walk, passive behavior and lack of awareness. They chose their victims like big cats do in Africa, when they select one out of the herd that is least able to protect itself. Some people may be destined to be sheep and others might be genetically primed to be wolves or sheepdogs.

But I believe that most people can choose which one they want to be, and I'm proud to say that more and more Americans are choosing to become sheepdogs.

Seven months after the attack on September 11, 2001, Todd Beamer was honored in his hometown of Cranbury, New Jersey. Todd, as you recall, was the man on Flight 93 over Pennsylvania who called on his cell phone to alert an operator from United Airlines about the hijacking. When he learned of the other three passenger planes that had been used as weapons, Todd dropped his phone and uttered the words, "Let's roll," which authorities believe was a signal to the other passengers to confront the terrorist hijackers. In one hour, a transformation occurred among the passengers -- athletes, business people and parents -- from sheep to sheepdogs and together they fought the wolves, ultimately saving an unknown number of lives on the ground.

There is no safety for honest men except by believing all possible evil of evil men.

- Edmund Burke

Here is the point I like to emphasize, especially to the thousands of police officers and soldiers I speak to each year. In nature sheep-- real sheep--are born as sheep. Sheepdogs are born that way, and so are wolves. They didn't have a choice. But you are not a critter.

As a human being, you can be whatever you want to be. It is a conscious, moral decision. If you want to be a sheep, then you can be a sheep and that is okay, but you must understand the price you pay. When the wolf comes, you and your loved ones are going to die if there is not a sheepdog there to protect you. If you want to be a wolf, you can be one, but the sheepdogs are going to hunt you down and you will never have rest, safety, trust or love. But if you want to be a sheepdog and walk the warrior's path, then you must make a conscious and moral decision every day to dedicate, equip and prepare yourself to thrive in that toxic, corrosive moment when the wolf comes knocking at the door.

For example, many police officers carry their weapons in church. They are well concealed in ankle holsters, shoulder holsters or inside-the-belt holsters tucked into the small of their backs. Anytime you go to some form of religious service, there is a very good chance that a police officer in your congregation is carrying a weapon. You will never know if there is such an individual in your place of worship, until the wolf appears to massacre you and your loved ones. I was training a group of police officers in Texas, and during the break, one officer asked his friend if he carried his weapon in church. The other cop replied, "I will never be caught without my gun in church." I asked why he felt so strongly about this, and he told me about a cop he knew who was at a church massacre in Ft. Worth, Texas in 1999. In that incident, a mentally deranged individual came into the church and opened fire, gunning down fourteen people. He said that officer believed he could have saved every life that day if he had been carrying his gun. His own son was shot, and all he could do was throw himself on the boy's body and wait to die. "That cop looked me in the eye and said, 'Do you have any idea how hard it would be to live with yourself after that?'" Some individuals would be horrified if they knew this police officer was carrying a weapon in church. They might call him paranoid and would probably scorn him. Yet these same individuals would be enraged and would call for "heads to roll" if they found out that the airbags in their cars were defective, or that the fire extinguisher and fire sprinklers in their kids' school did not work.

They can accept the fact that fires and traffic accidents can happen and that there must be safeguards against them. Their only response to the wolf, though, is denial, and all too often their response to the sheepdog is scorn and disdain. But the sheepdog quietly asks himself, "Do you have any idea how hard it would be to live with yourself if your loved ones were attacked and killed, and you had to stand there helplessly because you were unprepared for that day?"

It is denial that turns people into sheep. Sheep are psychologically destroyed by combat because their only defense is denial, which is counterproductive and destructive, resulting in fear, helplessness and horror when the wolf shows up. Denial kills you twice. It kills you once, at your moment of truth when you are not physically prepared: you didn't bring your gun, you didn't train. Your only defense was wishful thinking.

Hope is not a strategy. Denial kills you a second time because even if you do physically survive, you are psychologically shattered by your fear, helplessness and horror at your moment of truth.

Gavin de Becker puts it like this in "Fear Less", his superb post-9/11 book, which should be required reading for anyone trying to come to terms with our current world situation: "...denial can be seductive, but it has an insidious side effect. For all the peace of mind deniers think they get by saying it isn't so, the fall they take when faced with new violence is all the more unsettling." Denial is a save-now-pay-later scheme, a contract written entirely in small print, for in the long run, the denying person knows the truth on some level. And so the warrior must strive to confront denial in all aspects of his life, and prepare himself for the day when evil comes. If you are warrior who is legally authorized to carry a weapon and you step outside without that weapon, then you become a sheep, pretending that the bad man will not come today. No one can be "on" 24/7, for a lifetime. Everyone needs down time. But if you are authorized to carry a weapon, and you walk outside without it, just take a deep breath, and say this to yourself..."Baa."

This business of being a sheep or a sheep dog is not a yes-no dichotomy.

It is not an all-or-nothing, either-or choice. It is a matter of degrees, a continuum. On one end is an abject, head-in-the-sand-sheep and on the other end is the ultimate warrior. Few people exist completely on one end or the other. Most of us live somewhere in between. Since 9-11 almost everyone in America took a step up that continuum, away from denial. The sheep took a few steps toward accepting and appreciating their warriors, and the warriors started taking their job more seriously. The degree to which you move up that continuum, away from "sheephood" and denial, is the degree to which you and your loved ones will survive, physically and psychologically at your moment of truth.

"If It Weren't For The United States Military, there Would Be NO United States of America"

Memorial Day

2006-05-28T20:07:00.000-04:00

Tomorrow we remember, and honor, all those who served our nation on distant shores from which they never came home. We also remember, and honor, those who served right here in the country they loved, but gave their lives in the course of that service.

I remember in particular those friends and co-workers that we lost on that terrible day of 11 September 2001. Jerry Moran, Lieutenant Commander Vince Tolbert, and Angela Houtz . . . those three were people I knew personally. Jerry was a friend and worked for the same company I did at the time. LCDR Tolbert and Angela I knew professionally, tho not very well. LCDR Tolbert I'd done some graphics for while on the ONI Watch Floor, Angela I'd spoken to once or twice in the course of my normal duties.

On 9-11 they were snatched away from us. Maybe it's been long enough now, maybe it's just that I've held it at a distance. I don't know. I just know that they're much on my mind and in my thoughts on this Memorial Day.

So tomorrow, set aside your politics, your agendas, your pointing fingers and your blame games. At 3 PM local time, take that moment of silence and remember all those men and women who served with honor. Thank whatever powers you believe in that we have people like them, willing to stand on that wall, protecting the rest of us from the barbarians outside.

Memorial Day, when our honored dead live again in our thoughts. We remember.

Mea Culpa

2006-05-21T10:07:00.000-04:00

Sorry, faithful readers. Due to my neglect of this blog I didn't realize that there had been comments submitted to previous entries that I needed to "approve" to make visible.

That's all taken care of now. From now on I'll pay better attention.

Strange, tho. When I first set this up, I got a few comments that appeared without me needing to do anything. Live and learn.

Slap Fight

2006-04-23T10:04:00.000-04:00

I've been following a sort-of story for the past few days. It's another good example of the unbalanced lunacy of the poles. You kind of have to shake your head ruefully as the usual suspects go thru their usual motions . . .

This one started with an incident at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Some recruiters for the military were forced off campus by a protest group (demonstrating again, btw, that the Left's "tolerance" and "inclusiveness" only extends to ideas they agree with). The group is called, in a fairly straightforward assertion of position, Students Against War, or SAW.

As an aside, one must point out the curious habit of protesting against the people and organizations that literally bleed to defend the right to protest, but that's a discussion for another time.

At any rate, SAW engaged in some tactics of a questionable nature - slashing tires, throwing rocks, that sort of thing.

In commenting on this story in her blog, Michelle Malkin posted the group's contact information. The information was taken from a press release (which, last I checked, made it public knowledge) and found herself under attack from the more extreme members of the Left for doing so.

One would think that those on the Left would be gratified that someone as far to the Right as Malkin was helping to spread such information and thereby assisting their cause, but of course applying logic to the actions of the reality-impaired is a futile exercise.

Another aside, if you will indulge me, gentle reader - protests are often successful only in drawing greater attention to the thing being protested against, which makes the protest largely self-defeating. One must suppose, however, that the act of protest itself fulfills the human need to do something. And some protests do in fact succeed in doing what they set out to do, so it's not always a wasted effort. Just mostly a wasted effort. Hence the ancient advice to "choose your battles carefully."

Back on topic, as noted at PajamasMedia, Malkin found herself under sudden and savage attack for >gasp!< reporting publically-available information. The attackers went so far as to publish her home address, email, phone number, and even photos of her house and members of her family. Malkin details this here.

The upshot of all of this is easily predictable: more venom, more hatred, more childish name-calling and invective coming from both sides. I personally am waiting for someone to come out with "I'm rubber, you're glue" at any moment.

In the long run, this bodes poorly for our country. One cannot conduct public discourse at this level. This is behaviour that you would expect to find in a kindergarten schoolyard. It's getting worse and worse, as bloggers engage in slanderous personal attacks that would make previous generations of political commentators hide their faces in shame. Right-wing bloggers are rushing to attack the left-wing bloggers, who attack the right-wing bloggers right back, in a never-ending cycle of tit-for-tat.

Maybe someone should turn a hose on the lot of 'em.

Crumbling Edifice

2006-04-06T14:25:00.000-04:00

"Scooter" Libby has apparently stated that the authorization to reveal classified information to reporters came from George Bush. Story

If true, this paints a very damning picture of the President and his administration. The "national security" President violating security for political purposes? Going against his own stated distaste for "leakers"?

This administration has to be the most bipolar in the nation's history. One moment they're doing stuff like quietly working behind the scenes to free a kidnapped reporter, the next moment they're leaking classified information for a transient political advantage.

Shades of Bill Clinton and his rudderless government-by-opinion-poll. Is the true nature of the Bush administration nothing more than grasping, opportunistic indulgence?

As so many times in the past, tho, I reserve judgement until more information surfaces. It's entirely possible that Libby is trying to save his own bacon at the expense of everyone else.

Credit Due

2006-04-04T22:51:00.000-04:00

The Christian Science Monitor has published a brief thank-you note to the US government for its efforts on behalf of reporter Jill Carroll. Basically, despite what people like Jurassic Pork would have you believe, the Evil and Incompetent (or Corrupt) Bush administration was quietly working behind the scenes to free the kidnapped journalist.

So while the children were throwing hissy fits, the grown-ups were getting things done. As per usual.

Democracy or Faith?

2006-04-02T19:55:00.000-04:00

I ran across this recently and wanted to make some observations. Have a read -

Have you ever thought—Can a devout Muslim be an American patriot and a loyal citizen? Is Muslim-American really an oxymoron? Consider this:

Theologically, no. Because his allegiance is to Allah, the moon god of Arabia.

Religiously, no. Because no other religion is accepted by his Allah except Islam (Quran, 2:256)

Scripturally, no. Because his allegiance is to the five pillars of Islam and the Quran (Koran).

Geographically, no. Because his allegiance is to Mecca, to which he turns in prayer five times a day.

Socially, no. Because his allegiance to Islam forbids him to make friends with Christians or Jews.

Politically, no. Because he must submit to the mullah (spiritual leaders), who teach annihilation of Israel and destruction of America, the great Satan.

Domestically, no, because he is instructed to marry four women and beat and scourge his wife when she disobeys him (Quran 4:34).

Intellectually, no, because he cannot accept the American Constitution since it is based on Biblical principles and he believes the Bible to be corrupt.

Philosophically, no, because Islam, Muhammad, and the Quran do not allow freedom of religion and expression. Democracy and Islam cannot co-exist. Every Muslim government is either dictatorial or autocratic.

Spiritually, no, because when we declare “one nation under God,” the Christian’s God is loving and kind, while Allah is NEVER referred to as “Heavenly Father,” nor is He ever called “Love” in the Quran’s 99 excellent names.

Therefore, after much study and deliberation, perhaps we should be very suspicious of MUSLIMS in this country.

They obviously cannot be both “good” Muslims and good Americans. Call it what you wish...it’s still the truth.

If you find yourself intellectually in agreement with the above statements, perhaps you will share this with your friends. The more who understand this, the better it will be for our country and our future.

First off, the author obviously has an axe to grind with Muslims. Perhaps not surprising in the climate since 9/11, but still not overly tolerant.

His main point - that slavish devotion to Islam is incompatible with democracy - is valid. But then, slavish devotion to any religion is incompatible with democracy. As soon as you decide you're God's chosen and only you have the Revealed Truth, then automatically anything your religion tells you to do is correct. No matter how it affects anyone else. Christian sects that blow up abortion clinics, for example, are demonstrating that they are placing their religious beliefs above their responsibilities as citizens. Scientology, altho more a scam than a religion, exerts draconian and non-democratic control over its adherents. Almost any religion pushed to its extreme will wind up in opposition to democratic principles.

As an example of the kind of shallow thinking coming from the poles of American politics these days, this piece is all too representative. It's populist drivel, but I can promise that there are already many right-wing drones out there nodding their heads sagely as they read the thing. There's just enough truth in it to lure in the rubes.

But, sadly, this is how debate occurs in our time.

Big Wheel Keep on Turnin'

2006-03-27T20:35:00.000-05:00

The Director of National Security, John Negroponte, has ordered the release to the public of tons of documents from Iraq. Much of this haul has not even been translated yet. But already some interesting tidbits are surfacing.

For instance, this piece in the Weekly Standard points out that there seems to be documentation supporting the existance of a link between Iraq and Al-Qaeda. Saddam and Osama. Hmmm . . . if this proves to be true, that nicely deflates one of the Left's talking points about the Iraq war. They've been harping on "no connection between Iraq and the terrorists" for some time despite the easily proven existance of such a link, namely the program Saddam had to pay benefits to the families of suicide bombers. Altho this was not a direct link to Al-Qaeda, it was pretty conclusive proof of support to terrorists.

Given the generally untrustworthy nature of a lot of information coming from Iraq, I wouldn't go betting the farm on this just yet. But like I said, there are thousands and thousands of documents in this cache of captured material. Who knows what might be hiding in there?

There were demonstrations today by people opposed to tougher illegal immigration measures in the US. I don't get it.

One of the defining attributes of a nation-state is its ability to control its own borders. Illegal immigrants are by definition breaking the law. There is a legal means of entering the US and becoming a citizen (tho it is creaky and grossly inefficient). And yet we're seeing large and growing demonstrations against any effort to stem the tide of illegals coming into the country.

Why? These people put a huge burden on our economy, sucking up welfare-state benefits while pumping money back home to support those they left behind. Some have even tried to cast any tightening of immigration restrictions as racist. This boggles my mind. They're here illegally. ILLEGALLY. This is about as cut and dried as issues get.

Last November, we here in Virginia elected Democrat Timothy Kaine as our governor. Perhaps not suprisingly, given that he is a Democrat, our new governor is now pushing for something Democrats love: higher taxes. All to alleviate our horrible traffic congestion problems, of course. Nevermind the record budget surplus we have right now. Taxes are too low and the burden must be increased. PAY, DAMN YOU!! PAY!!

*Sigh* So predictable . . .

Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, Abdul Rahman, a Muslim, faced death because he converted to Christianity. I find it interesting that blogger Jurassic Pork, who was so concerned about the fate of Jill Carroll, a hostage seized by Iraqi insurgents, had absolutely nothing to say about Rahman's case.

I guess only certain people are worthy of concern.

Still We Remember

2006-03-14T22:19:00.000-05:00

Generik was kind enough to pass along the eulogy delivered at Bert Tilley's funeral. I repost it here in further remembrance of a man taken too soon from us.

According to a legend, the exact circumstances surrounding the death of the 11th century Spanish Hebrew poet Ibn Tabirol are unknown. One version relates that a Muslim peasant, jealous of Ibn Tabirol's genius, killed him and buried his body beneath a tree. Some time after, people began to notice that a fig tree in the garden of the Muslim was bearing a particularly large, luscious fruit, unlike anything that had ever been seen in the encircling area. Curiosity was aroused, and the tree was dug up in order to discover the secret of its remarkable fertility. Then it was discovered that Ibn Tabirol was buried there.

All life grows riper and fuller when rooted in the lives of upright men and women, when its soil is enriched by deeds of loving kindness and mercy. All life becomes lovelier when it is watered by streams of memory and fed by the cool springs of recollection and remembrance. Our assembly today, to commemorate the life of a truly fabulous person, Bert Tilley, breaks through the crust of the present and preoccupation with the present and revives the past. It stirs half-forgotten memories of childhood, of innocence, of happy, unconscious acceptance of life as good. Such memories are a blessing when they are woven into the fabric of life. In all likelihood the recollections that each of you possess of your dear son, uncle, cousin and friend, Bert Tilley, are mostly joyous ones; memories of a life distinguished by goodness, memories of a wonderful person who not only accepted life as fulfilling and worthwhile, but also strove earnestly to make it better.

Another Jewish legend mentions that the world exists by reason of 36 gentle people who live in withdrawn areas, who are not known to the great multitudes, and who are themselves unaware that they are among those who, by reason of their tenderness, sustain the entire world.

I have often believed that Bert Tilley belonged to this rarefied company of spirits who helped to sustain the world. One often wonders how, through its history of convulsions and revolutions, mankind has managed to survive. Quite possibly it must be that in quiet places unrecognized, unknown, frequently uncelebrated, there live centers of tenderness that preserve the human image even in time of worldwide sturm und drang ("storm and stress"). Bert Tilley walked in the light of purity, pleasantness and performance. Those of us who were privileged to come closer and pierce the wall of reticence behind which he lived knew that we were in the presence of a vital and significant personality.

Verily a tribute to Bert Tilley comes readily, because his life was beneficent even as his character was worthy and benign. His nature combined strength and sweetness -- the strength derived from inner stamina, from intellectual honesty, from loyalty to familial duty and a following of the voice of conscience. His sweetness was the result of innate kindliness, thoughtfulness and considerateness -- a genuine friendliness to people as people, and a real sense to be helpful to them.

Bert Tilley was a warm, devoted and loving son. Jean and Burrow, Fayette, Peggy were so blessed to have such a caring and loving son as Bert. Other family members, including LeaAnn and Derwin, Scotty and Jessica, Aunt Sandra and Uncle Jimmy and cousins -- all were profoundly impacted by Bert Tilley's loving spirit and presence.

Indeed, what was there NOT to love about Bert Tilley? He ingratiated himself easily to others. This is not surprising. By nature he was outward and gregarious. His persona, his temperament, his indomitable spirit exuded his joie de vivre, his buoyant enjoyment of life. Bert Tilley was an avowed partisan of the funnybone and could always find (or create) humor even in the most serious seriousness.

Bert Tilley was exceptionally well-read. He was conversant in history, politics, science, the world of entertainment (actors, movies, radio, television, Broadway, directors, etc.). He was knowledgeable of airplanes and transportation. His was an eclectic taste for the aesthetics, including classical music, blues and jazz. Bert Tilley was an exceptionally gifted photographer. He enjoyed art and in a real sense of his life resembled an artist's brush stroke of many pastels. No wonder he was admired by those who were acquainted with him -- his life reflected the Biblical injunction of "loving one's fellow human being as oneself." (Leviticus 19:18)

Another aspect of this most worthy person's life was his volunteer work. Bert Tilley rightfully recognized his responsibility to his surrounding society; when one lives in a community long enough, one needs to pay a form of civic rent. For well over a decade, Bert Tilley offered his talents and service to our area's Gadsden State Community College. Bert donated long hours on a weekly basis as a tutor for blind students. In addition, he devoted enormous time to the college's radio station in production and broadcasting to ensure quality programming. Bert Tilley was generous without measure. He would always do the right thing.

Bert Tilley was a sensitive, loving, kind and compassionate human being. Despite some hardships, he never complained about anything. His infectious smile brightened our darkened society. Bert Tilley was a person of initiative, courage, vision and integrity. His word was his bond. Of such an individual, the scriptures remark, "The righteous shall live by his faith." (Habakkuk 2:4)

Actually, what is life? Is it not, in the main, memory? The present passes even as I mention it. The future is an unknown factor. It is the past that is factual and historic, and that past we keep alive through memory. And when we are fortunate enough to have memories such as Bert Tilley leaves behind, we can say of him, "Blessed was his coming into the world!" Bert learned how to live significantly. He made every day count for himself and for all who knew him. A blessing, indeed, were the days of his life. As the Bible teaches, "The memory of the righteous shall be for a blessing" (Proverbs 10:7). Memories fashioned by Bert Tilley will indeed remain an everlasting blessing, and in them, you, his loving family and friends -- all of us -- will find a true source of solace and comfort. May the memory of Bert Tilley always be recalled lovingly for abiding blessing.

Amen.

Remembering a Friend

2006-03-09T19:26:00.000-05:00

Today I received the news that a friend of mine has died.

In the late 90s, when I had just gotten online, I went to the SciFi Channel's website. At the time the site was a joy to use and full of great features, unlike the bloated and bland thing it is these days.

The best part of the site was a thing called Caption This! This wonderful page ran screengrabs of whatever the SciFi Channel happened to be showing and people could write brief captions for the images which were then posted to a continuously updated display board, or "gallery." I fell right into it and passed many happy hours pursuing the activity of "capping" with a small crowd of regulars. We all came to know one another, greeting each other thru the caption gallery and forming a community.

We started an eGroup, which became a Yahoo group when Yahoo bought out eGroups. There were many and diverse personalities in that community, and I enjoyed them all immensely.

One of them was a guy who went by the handle of "144b", but we came to know him as "Uncle Bert."

Bert Tilley wasn't the best typist in the world - his typos were the stuff of legend and made him that much funnier on the caption board - but he had the soul of a storyteller. He was reliably entertaining and his posts to the Yahoo group were adventures unto themselves as Bert told us of his life. He told stories the way other people breathe. It flowed out of him and carried you away.

And now he's gone, at the unfair age of 43. His website will remain as a memorial, at least until the account runs out.

Dammit, Bert, this isn't right. You shouldn't be gone. You leave a hole in the world that won't ever be filled.

He was no less a friend because I never met him in real life. I knew him from thousands of words sent across the internet. When I got the word of his passing today, I was at work and I sat for some time with tears in my eyes.

Rest in peace, Uncle Bert. We remember . . .

Motivation?

2006-03-01T22:06:00.000-05:00

Only two posts for the whole month of February. And it's not like there isn't stuff going on that deserves comment . . . the press's total meltdown over the Dick Cheney hunting accident (how dare the VP not make running to the press his first priority after accidentally shooting his friend?), the insane "Intoonfada" by the retrograde barbarians of the Islamic world, the Dubai port take-over deal, the ever-growing disconnect between what we're doing in Iraq and what our near-worthless press is reporting, on and on and on.

But y'know what? Since I got back from Antarctica, it's just hard to make myself care about any of this. I have seen a better place, and it's cold, clean, and empty. Watching the Left and Right bloviate themselves into hysterics in this country brings only a sort of detached amusement. I spin thru the blogs I have linked on the right of this page (plus a few others I glance at) and I can't summon the energy to do more than shake my head ruefully.

I'm sorry, gentle reader, because you deserve better. You deserve to have another voice from the fulcrum helping to balance the lunacy of the poles.

It all just seems so unimportant . . .

On The Radio . . . Whoa Whoa Whoa, On The Radio

2006-02-16T18:28:00.000-05:00

So I have a Sirius satellite radio. I am an unashamed fan of Howard Stern and there's no way he was moving to satellite without me.

There's lots of channels on Sirius other than Stern, of course. Tonite on the way home from work I happened to tune over to "Talk Left" and "Talk Right". The Left channel was in commercial, so I went on to Right.

The voice sounded familiar. Eerily familiar.

Turns out it was Jerry Doyle. Doyle is perhaps best known for his character Michael Garibaldi on the cult TV show Babylon 5. He also ran for the U.S House of Representatives for California's 24th District.

Anyway. Altho Doyle was on "Talk Right", the snippet of the show I heard didn't seem Right or Left. He was talking about the way America is distracted from things that should be important (he mentioned Able Danger specifically) by trivial matters like the Entwhistle murder case or Michael Jackson's latest shenanigans. And it got me to thinking . . .

He's right. The media is in a feeding frenzy over the Dick Cheney shooting accident non-event. When it isn't that it's Entwhistle. Or Jackson. Or Madonna. Or . . . well, name the unimportant story of the moment.

We're not being served by our media. Especially by our "news" media. The void is allowing the rise of blogs, to be sure, but the blogosphere is a realm suffused with hysterical bloviating on both sides of the spectrum. There's some decent reporting going on, but the bias is off the dial.

It's television mainly at fault, I think. TV's twenty-four hour news cycle is a relentless monster devouring all before it. But it's also a very superficial medium with a short attention span. Driven by ratings, which aren't even particularly accurate.

This post is a hasty one. I wanted to get it down before I lost the train of thought. More later, I think.

Chicken Little Strikes Again

2006-02-02T15:17:00.000-05:00

So in his very first case as a Supreme Court Justice, the Evil Nazi Sith Lord Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse Samuel Alito breaks ranks with the conservative bloc on a capital punishment question.

Horrors. How dare he prove the hysterical outgassing of the Left so wrong? Doesn't he know that The Fate of Western Civilization is at stake? Shame on him. He's a day into his SCOTUS career and he hasn't even eaten one baby yet.

Cindy Sheehan got herself arrested at the State of the Union speech the other night. Apparently some overzealous security guards interpreted her anti-war tee shirt as a dire threat to the safety of the nation and removed her from the chamber. The Left is of course proclaiming this concrete evidence of the Bush Neocon Conspiracy Against Free Speech.

Somehow a lot of them are overlooking the fact that the wife of a Republican congressman was also removed for sporting a "Support the Troops" tee shirt.

Charges were filed against Sheehan, but quickly dropped on review of the circumstances. No charges were filed against the other woman. Investigations are promised and refresher training for the security force in question is already scheduled.

So another trivial incident gets blown way out of proportion by all concerned as the Left declares an assault on free speech and the Right insists that Sheehan was breaking the law, neither of which was or is true.

American politics. Sound and fury signifying very little. Sigh

Absences and Returns

2006-01-30T21:56:00.000-05:00

Wow. It's been how long since I last posted?

My wife and I have returned from our honeymoon. We went on an Antarctic cruise. If ever you have the chance, gentle reader, you must go. The landscape will overwhelm you. Air so clean, snow so white, ice so blue . . . and the wildlife. Penguins, seabirds, whales, seals, and more. I feel renewed, and more than ever distanced from these petty little matters we concern ourselves with in our everyday lives.

Like the nomination of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court. The Democrats managed to make themselves look more foolish than usual with their attempted fillibuster. Doomed before it started. The committee vote told the story, and the general vote will confirm it: there is no real objection to Alito's credentials. The vote was strictly party line. The only thing the Democrats have on Alito is that Bush nominated him. That's their real objection, and that was fully exposed by the last several days' shenanigans.

I thought it would be Judge Roberts who would get the full-on Bork treatment from the Left. Turns out they were waiting for Alito. Who knew?

Anyway, as I type this it's looking like a few Democrats have realized how silly their party is acting (election looming this year, don'cha know) and are joining the Republicans to put Alito well over the top in terms of votes. Tomorrow morning will tell the tale, but it looks fairly certain from here.

UPDATE

Like I thought, the final vote for Alito went almost perfectly along party lines. It wasn't about his qualifications or his beliefs, it was about being nominated by an unpopular Republican president. Nothing more.

Already the sad, predictable cries of The End Of The World As We Know It are coming from the Left. What rubbish.

In other news, this item in the Weekly Standard seems to me a good "alternative" view on the current state of things with regards to the War on Terror and US relations with China. Ralph Peters is playing around with long-term thinking here, which is rare for anyone in the press.

Here's a quote from the article that I like - Even in the days before mass media, assassins terrorized civilizations. Today, their deeds are amplified by a toxic, breathtakingly irresponsible communications culture that spans the globe. .

Here's another, somewhat more fiery - Those who feel no vital faith cannot comprehend faith's power. A man or woman who has never been intoxicated by belief will default to mirror-imaging when asked to describe terror's roots. He who has never experienced a soul-shaking glimpse of the divine inevitably explains religion-driven suicide bombers in terms of a lack of economic opportunity or social humiliation. But the enemies we face are burning with belief, on fire with their vision of an immanent, angry god. Our intelligentsia is less equipped to understand such men than our satellites are to find them.

I think Peters may be a bit off-base here . . . both sides of American politics certainly have their share of the blindly faithful. One has only to scan thru the political blogs I have linked to the right of this page to see that. Pay particular attention to Jurassic Pork. There's a man so consumed by his unreasoning hatred that he fills page after page with relentless venom.

And let's not overlook MoltenThought, which recently posted this sadly typical piece attacking "darwinism" (more properly known as the theory of evolution by natural selection) in a manner all too common to the religious right, demonstrating a profound lack of understanding of the scientific method and the wide acceptance by the scientific community of Darwin's essential thesis.

It's always the same, two groups of polarized children screaming at one another to no effect. We here in the middle, gentle reader, we who look askance at both sides and their ever-mounting blasts of vitriol, we are the ones who must balance all the fulcrums. We keep it all working. Even if, sometimes, it hardly seems worth the effort.

Such as is demonstrated by the Palestinian people electing the homicidal thugs of Hamas as their chosen government. Democracy in action, and living up to the old line that "we get the government we deserve" with excruciating perfection. They have dug their pit to a new level, those poor misguided people. Six thousand years and more of ceaseless violence, and still they haven't tired of killing one another in that region.

But I remember glaciers and icebergs, and take comfort from the clean cold air of Antarctica. Sooner or later, the species will either mature beyond these foolish habits or drive itself extinct. And the world will still be here.

A Major Fulcrum Tipping the Wrong Way

2006-01-02T09:39:00.000-05:00

Stumbled across this today in the course of my surfing.

Trends are important things. The lines on the graphs can give you some hint of what to expect in the future. These particular trend lines are pointing . . . rather strongly . . . in an unpleasant direction.

You can easily understand this by comparing the short-term thinking of the modern "progressive" movement to the long-term thinking of the islamist fundamentalists. A society that only thinks as far ahead as the next election cycle is unlikely to triumph against a society that thinks in terms of centuries.

Of course, that may be ascribing too much thought to both sides of this issue. It's more like the Europeans (and to a lesser degree a nontrivial segment of our own populace) are consumed with the right now while the islamists, conditioned to deferred gratification by decades of repression, are "waiting us out" as a default position.

Since I myself am pretty much at the mid-point of my life expectancy, it's likely that I'll be around to see these trend lines play out in the real world. Should be interesting in a "well, there goes western democracy" sort of way.

Good Answer!

2005-12-31T10:30:00.000-05:00

In a departure from Fulcrum Ruminations policy, I'm endorsing this item from Michelle Malkin's blog as an excellent post. It seems a teenager with a brain threw a bucket of cold water on a reality-impaired and pretentious cartoonist.

Bravo.

Self-Inflicted Wounds

2005-12-20T21:23:00.000-05:00

Well, President Bush has finally done it. After five years in office and near-constant attempts by the Left to find some horrible thing to shoot him with, he went and supplied the fatal round himself.

Illegal surveillance of American citizens by the National Security Agency. In contravention of standing executive orders from previous administrations, legislation passed by Congress, and the splendid example of Richard Nixon’s downfall.

I’m sure by now that you, gentle reader, have been exposed to plenty of huffing and puffing from the Left. A quick spin thru the blogs linked on the right side of my page here will show you the almost gleeful reaction of the Left to this bonanza of “gotcha!”-ism with which they’ve now been supplied. CNN is already asking about possible impeachment, and you can almost see Wolf Blitzer salivating at the prospect. The New York Times, with precision so incredible that it borders on supernatural, waited until Bush’s poll numbers were on an upswing and another successful election in Iraq had been achieved to release this story, which they had been sitting upon for at least a full year.

And of course the spinning of the story to make Bush look as bad as possible is well under way.

The facts as currently known: shortly after 9/11, Bush began to authorize the NSA to conduct electronic surveillance of outgoing international communications from known or suspected terrorist-related individuals, some of whom were US persons. This apparently in reaction to capturing the cell phones of known terrorists during operations in Afghanistan and a few other places, and thus gaining access to the call lists of those terrorists.

That’s a bit different from the “spying on Americans!!” headlines blazing at us from the mainstream press, of course . . . it doesn’t sound nearly as sinister when put that way . . . but it’s bad enough.

You see, the US intelligence community has very strict guidelines against collecting against US persons. Strict in the sense of go to jail and pay massive fines if you get caught doing it. Naturally, some information about US persons is bound to be swept up in the course of the various agencies routine activities, but such information is to be deleted as soon as it’s identified. This is the requirement of both the law and several Executive Orders.

Bush, being the Chief Executive, has it within his authority to overturn existing executive orders. Unfortunately, there’s still the law to contend with.

Even there, however, there’s a loophole. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act provides a special federal court at which the President (or other duly authorized agency) can obtain a warrant for such surveillance against US persons as is deemed necessary and for which at least a pretense of probable cause can be provided. The FISA court has a track record of refusing almost none of the requests for warrants sent to it.

Bush didn’t use it. He decided, on dubious pretexts, that the Constitutional powers already granted him in conjunction with the authorization Congress passed in the wake of 9/11 for taking action against the perpetrators of that horror gave him all the authority he needed to tell the NSA to go forth and collect.

And then, worst of all, last April while defending the Patriot Act he told the American people on national television that “nothing had changed” and that surveillance against US persons still required a court order and that his administration was in compliance with that requirement. While he was authorizing the NSA to conduct surveillance without warrants. He did what Clinton did: he lied to our faces.

I don’t know that this rises to the level of impeachable conduct. I do know that Bush has well and truly screwed the pooch. Despite what’s going on in those right-wing blogs I have linked over there on the side of the page, there isn’t much of a defense to be mustered here. Bush broke the law (or at least severely bent it) and lied to us about his activities.

Democrats and some Republicans are already howling for blood. And Bush has given them a damn good reason for doing so.

The next few months will be a dark time. The frenzy around this will damage the war effort in Iraq and harm our anti-terrorism efforts.

Because Bush pulled the mother of all dumb-ass moves.

I miss Ronald Reagan.

Of Tookies and Mortality

2005-12-13T20:31:00.000-05:00

Stanley "Tookie" Williams was executed last night by the state of California. The means was lethal injection. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was the aging gangster's last hope for life, but refused to overturn the court's verdict.

No, I'm not providing a link. If you need me to find a link for you, you probably shouldn't be using the internet.

I of course did not know Williams except thru the distorted lens of the media. The portrait painted of him was an ugly one, showcasing a life of violence and bloodshed. He was one of the founders of a murderous criminal gang. By all accounts he never indicated any remorse for his actions or took responsibility. My personal opinion is that the planet is better off without him on it, but that is neither here nor there.

What concerns me is the death penalty. It's one of those issues which deeply divides people. Those who are for it are generally very for it in a regrettable sort of way. Those who are against it are passionately against it. Perhaps no other issue (with the possible exception of abortion) draws such diametrically opposed positions.

It is perhaps appropriate to consider abortion and capital punishment as two of a kind . . . one deals with the beginning of life, the other deals with the end. There is symmetry, which I find to be the absolute governing principle of the universe.

But we're not going to consider abortion just now, if that's all right with you, gentle reader.

In the case of capital punishment, the state is exercising its most frightening power - the power to end the life of an individual who has been determined to be a clear and present danger to society. Which, strangely, is the fulcrum of this particular issue. Before you take a life, you have to be certain that you're taking the right one. Any doubt, no matter how slight, should take the death penalty off the table. Now, the universe being the oddball sort of place that it is, there are from time to time cases where there is no doubt that the state has the right person in its sights. Multiple witnesses, overwhelming evidence, uncoerced confession, some or all of which are combined with a particularly heinous crime. Jeffrey Dahmer springs to mind.

Tookie seems to have sat himself right on the borderline of what I'd consider appropriate use of the death penalty. The world is no worse off for his absence from it, but I think he'd have been a better example to the kids if he'd been left to rot anonymously in prison for the rest of his natural life.

There are those who argue that the death penalty is not a deterrent to crime. Those people are wrong. The death penalty is an absolute deterrent to the person upon whom it is inflicted. Removing Tookie from the world, for example, is one hundred percent effective in preventing him from murdering anyone else.

So put me down as supporting capital punishment, tho only in the case of the most clear-cut and horrific of crimes.

Kicking the Dog

2005-12-08T12:18:00.000-05:00

One of the blogs linked over there on the right is "Yep, Another Goddamned Blog" by a "colorful" character with the screen name Jurassic Pork (I use his name for the link because I find his blog name unsuitable for polite company).

Today I hold up this post as a prime example of the unbridled hatred (known to right-wing bloggers as Bush Derangement Syndrome) that suffuses virtually every post on that blog.

This is the level of "thought" going on in the fringes of the blogosphere. This is also infecting the general political discourse in the US - the ultra-polarized fringes are subsuming more and more of the public debate, civility is going out the window, and it's all about who can display the vilest possible hatred of the other guy.

There is a degree of creativity involved, I suppose, but with the "moonbats" on the left and the "wing nuts" on the right clashing in ever more shrill tones of conflict, the issues that grown-ups need to worry about are being lost to the din.

The middle, the quiet real majority, need to stop being quiet. We need to remind these foaming-at-the-mouth pedagogues that politics is the art of compromise, and you can't compromise while you're busy flinging poo at one another.

Infamy

2005-12-07T15:34:00.000-05:00

Sixty-four years ago today the United States was launched violently into World War II by the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor.

We remember.

Some Updates On Random Matters

2005-12-01T20:41:00.000-05:00

Beaten to the punch! Curse the need to actually work at work!

Michelle Malkin, among others, beat me to the blog with this, but I saw it in the paper and thought it worthy of comment. It seems that evil ol' Dubya wasn't responsible for the mess in New Orleans after all. The Army Corps of Engineers had already provided for the city's peril years ago. Imagine that. Not much on this story in the mainstream press either, from what I can tell. Tho, to be fair, the guy closest to the TV in my office likes to keep it on Fox News most of the time, so I don't get to see what the other news channels are talking about until I get home.

The "America is Always Wrong" crowd has been huffing and puffing about the use of white phosphorus (or "willy pete" as it's known by the troops) by our forces in several recent battles in Iraq. Apparently it's news to them that WP is not actually a chemical weapon and that its use is not disallowed by international treaty, except by aerial bombardment against civilian targets. Our military uses it for tracer rounds, incendiary artillery rounds (high explosive and willy-pete in combo is known as "shake and bake" to the cannon-cockers) and smoke/illumination rounds. John Pike sets the record straight on this score. I suppose next we'll be reviled for using bullets in our rifles. You'd think if people were going to get all frothy about something, they'd do a little research to find out what they were talking about.

Columnist Donald Devine over at the Washington Times points out that the Iraqi army is making progress in standing up a professional combat-ready force. This of course brings the US closer to pulling out our troops, tho without the cut-n-run so desired by certain elements in Congress. President Bush actually made a decent pitch for how we should handle the withdrawal from Iraq the other day, and if you dig a little you can see that the military is pretty much following the plan. It might be ragged and uneven, but the progress is there for those willing to see it.

And finally, in brief, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's family has publically disowned him. It's tough to be a murderous homicidal lunatic these days. Even Mom and Pop are going over to the infidels . . .

As in so many things, all that's required for Iraq to come out the way we want it to is patience. See it thru. Do what's needed rather than what's expedient or what will make political hay.

We can win this latest clash of cultures if we just keep our wits about us.

Un. Bee. Leave. A. Bull.

2005-11-19T10:20:00.000-05:00

A splendid example of why politicians are all idiots.

In a transparently political move, the Republicans in Congress introduced a bill for the immediate pull-out of troops from Iraq. Obviously done to force the hands of the Democrats, and in a twisted sort of way understandable as a political gambit, this shameful display nevertheless equates to a stab in the back to our deployed forces.

Political games. Instead of taking on the Democrats directly, pointing out the foolishness of the "withdraw now!" calls, Republican leadership instead went for a hollow gesture - in effect, forcing the Democrats to vote against their own idea. It was probably to prepare the way for another accusation of Democratic intransigence somewhere down the road when a real troop-withdrawal bill is put up, but still . . .

The message to the troops was that Congress in general and the Republicans in particular are willing to play games for short-term political gain at the expense of soldiers in battle. We've given the military a mission, and they're executing that mission with typical skill and fortitude. Then Congress tells them it's all a big joke and they'll be jerked around just to make the other side of the aisle look bad.

Between the Democrats' recent absurd tactics (We voted for the war because we were confoosed! Wah! Bush is a poopie-head!) and now this horribly wrongheaded move by the Republicans, the lesson that I draw from it all is that it's time to vote all of them out of office. We need people on Capitol Hill who are aware that they're up there to do the nation's business, not play these idiotic games. It's gotten too partisan. Too much about scoring points off the other guy and nowhere near enough about "securing the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity."

I'm so disgusted I just want to heave my guts.

Hanoi Jane Must Be Proud

2005-11-17T19:59:00.000-05:00

It has begun.

As I noted some time ago, the VietNam Syndrome is slowly playing out again. A President under fire, opposition party members making political grist from it, calls to abandon the people who are depending on us . . . it's the same ugly scenario, with one big difference.

We're winning in Iraq.

Pulling out either immediately or on some arbitrary schedule would plunge Iraq into chaos, destroy US credibility for a generation, embolden the merchants of terror, and invite attacks on American interests all around the world. These things are so self-evident that statements like that issued by Congressman Murtha absolutely boggle my mind.

It doesn't matter at this point how we got into Iraq. Like Colin Powell said, we broke it so now we own it. We cannot leave until things are set to rights. That means Iraq functioning as a nation again, with the ability to police and defend itself from the retrograde insurgents who want to take it back to the twelfth century.

If you look at the situation dispassionately, checking your politics at the door, you can see that progress is being made. Slowly but surely Iraqi society is standing up and functioning again. Executing a VietNam-style cut-n-run would demolish any hope of Iraq becoming anything but a nest of vipers. It would be Taleban Times all over again, only on a larger scale and in a nation much more centrally located. Or worse, it would lead to an Iranian invasion.

Any way you cut it, pulling out now is a disastrously bad idea.

I can only pray that the American people are smart enough to understand this, and will take appropriate action in 2006. If those like Murtha get their way, the next decade will be a black one indeed.

Decision 05

2005-11-09T21:30:00.000-05:00

Yeah, I know. Every news outlet in America uses that corny "Decision XX" headline at election time. So I did an homage, leave me alone.

This was my first year voting in Virginia after twenty years of living in Maryland. We went to the polls around 0730. Not terribly crowded. We waited in line for maybe ten minutes. Virginia is using an electronic device to vote now . . . you turn a little wheel to highlight your choice and push "enter". Fairly straightforward.

So the Democratic candidate for governor won. Not suprising, as he was the lieutenant governor under the last guy. Virginia simply replaced one Democrat with another. But, strangely, they also seem to have elected Republicans to the lieutenant governor and attorney general positions. What to make of that?

The campaign veered into the disgustingly negative, as these campaigns seem to do so often these days.

In another gubernatorial race, this time in New Jersey, U.S. Senator Jon Corzine defeated Douglas Forrester to put another win in the Democrats' column. But that was another case of one Dem replacing another, so no net gain. Jersey was also a rather odd story anyway, in that the previously elected governor, James McGreevey, resigned after confessing to a gay love affair.

Meanwhile, Republican Michael Bloomberg easily won re-election as New York City's mayor. And a number of initiatives proposed by California Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger were soundly defeated, which tells me that the people out there are not yet ready to take their state's very real problems seriously.

The weirdest story of the day was the city of San Francisco voting in a ban on handguns. Yeah, don't let that pesky Second Amendment bother you at all . . . The NRA immediately sued to overturn the ban. Usually it's the Left that sues to get in the court what it can't at the ballot box. This time, however, there's an actual Constitutional right being trod upon, so the NRA has the right idea.

We must also stop and take a moment to think of the victims of the latest terrorist outrage, a series of suicide bombs in Amman, Jordan which have killed at least 23 people and injured well over a hundred more.

Some day, gentle reader, the human race will outgrow this sad habit of murdering one another. Today, it seems, is not that day.

For Your Consideration

2005-11-06T10:04:00.000-05:00

Ran across this today in the course of my blog surfing. Santy articulates some ideas that I've had rattling thru my own head for a while . . . namely, that "liberals" and "conservatives" have almost traded places on the ideological spectrum since the early to mid twentieth century.

I renew my call for a "neoliberal" movement to take back and re-engergize that school of thought. The modern Left needs desperately to come to grips with the fact that it's been hijacked by its extremist fringe. The modern Right, tho sliding in that direction, has not yet fallen completely out of touch with reality in the same manner.

Maybe it's some kind of psycho-social death throes of the failed Marxist school of thought, I don't know.

You Say You Want a Revolution

2005-11-03T22:24:00.000-05:00

Apparently there was a series of gigantic anti-war demonstrations all around the country yesterday.

Or not.

It seems this massive call to arms from the "Bush Is Evil!" bunch drew a few hundred here and there, protesting or picketing or whatever in desultory fashion.

Yeah. Tidal wave of popular sentiment. Takin' it to the streets. Stickin' it to the MAN. Even the press seemed not to notice, and usually they're up for anything that can make Bush look bad.

Oh, by the way, that's a pretty far-right fringe site in that link up there. I picked that one because I thought the captions were funny. There's a bunch more out there. If you want to google it or something. I dunno, I don't really want to give it much more effort than the protesters themselves put out. Meh.

In counterpoint, here's a piece from The National Review Online's Michael Rubin with some highlights about what's going right in Iraq. Here's a quote to tantalize you:

"Iraq's per capita gross domestic product is today almost twice that of Yemen and nearing that of Egypt and Syria, hardly a sign of failure in a country in which, just three years ago, antiwar groups insisted children were starving en masse. Statistics aside, the Iraqi economic boom is apparent to anyone who visits an Iraqi market. Not only are appliances and luxuries in the stores, but customers are actually purchasing them."

It kind of amazes me how different the stories are between what the press reports here in the States and what gets reported by people who have spent time on the ground in Iraq, outside the Green Zone. This is not to say that there aren't problems, of course . . . a lot of the money earmarked for reconstruction in Iraq has been diverted to security matters, a lot has been wasted, a lot has simply gone poofie . . . but progress continues to be made, milestones like the (barely covered) vote on the Iraqi Constitution are passed, things get better little by little.

Patience, gentle reader. Patience. We, and they, will get there.

One Strike, One Home Run

2005-11-01T09:49:00.000-05:00

Miers is out, Alito is in. Reactions to the new nominee are following sadly predictable lines. Do any of these guys actually think, or do they just jerk the ol' knee?

Here's a typical piece from the left, in this case The Daily Kos. Note the dripping vitriol and unrelentingly foul language.

Here's one from the right, this being Michelle Malkin. Not a whole lot of swear-words in this one.

Apparently Alito is near the top of the list of the right's dream choices for Supreme Court (as opposed to Miers, who came completely out of the blue). Looking over his record, he seems a solid jurist with a good respect for constitutional law. So of course the left hates him. The Democrats may be overestimating the willingness of the public to put up with their nonsense this time . . . if they filibuster, it will likely be widely perceived as pure obstructionism. Best bet is to have a couple weeks of hearings and then an up or down vote.

There's a reason I named my blog "Fulcrum Ruminations". One of the big themes in American political life I've noticed is that everything is very much on a pendulum. The country swings back and forth between being conservative and liberal (in the classic sense of those words, not the modern corrupted versions). The stuffy uptight Fifties, for example, were followed by the wild "anything goes" Sixties. The "me" decade of the Eighties is followed by the kinder, gentler Nineties. And so forth.

The Supreme Court has swung to the left in the last few decades. Now it's correcting back to the right. Ten, fifteen, twenty years from now it will go back the other way. The important thing to remember is that this is not the end of the world. Just because your particular political philosophy is not in ascendance at the moment does not mean America is about to dissolve into chaos. Get over yourself. For the side that's on the downward swing, this is the time to self-examine (which the Left desperately needs to do right now, as far out of touch as they've gotten) and reconsolidate. Get your house in order, because you need a better argument than "well, those guys suck and we're not them!" to win elections.

And for God's sake, if you ever expect to be a force in politics again, stop telling half of the electorate that they're stupid. The red state/blue state rubbish has to stop.

Free Speech

2005-10-27T14:54:00.000-04:00

It's time to consider the First Amendment.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Mostly what I'm concerned about here is the freedom of speech and, to a lesser extent, freedom of the press. For convenience I'll refer only to freedom of speech, but keep in mind that I'm actually referring to both of them.

Now, contrary to some arguments I've heard, the Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments to the Constitution of the US, for those of you unfamiliar with such things) is about the rights of individuals, not states or other constructs. It was felt at the time the Constitution was adopted that it did not spell out the rights of the people with sufficient clarity, and so the Bill of Rights was appended.

Lately the freedom of speech has seen some rather impressive swings of the pendulum. You've got magazines like Penthouse publishing explicit sex photos, you've got Dennis Franz showing his ass on television, and you've got the big one - the explosion of the World Wide Web and its "anyone can publish anything at any time and anyone else anywhere in the world can see it" magic. No medium in history has the reach of the Web, because it's the first medium that anyone can use from the comfort of their own home for a trivial cost. Witness this very blog, and those linked over there at the right side of the page, and all the others out there in the vast (and rapidly expanding) blogosphere. Ordinary folks posting their thoughts and opinions for the whole world to see and, in many cases, comment upon - in real time.

What a time to be alive, eh?

But, as with all things, there is another side to the issue.

Our government, as governments are wont to do, is making efforts to restrict this freedom of expression. For one thing, it's long been my opinion that governments in general are scared to death of the idea of a free and open flow of information. It means their spinmeisters don't get a chance to massage things, remove "incorrect" ideas, and so forth. Given the nature of the web, it also means that as soon as one web-enabled person knows something, the rest of the world knows it too. Doesn't matter if it's true or not, any idea instantly has an audience on the web. Think up the goofiest conspiracy theory you can imagine and I bet you'll find at least one website (and now a bunch of blogs) dedicated to it. Pro and con, which also doesn't matter because the idea is already out there and everything else is Monday morning quarterbacking.

The point is, we here in America have this Constitutionally protected freedom to express ourselves as we see fit. This freedom is not absolute - hence our laws covering slander, libel, and the hoary "fire in a crowded theater" thing - but the Supreme Court has historically held this freedom to as wide an interpretation as practical.

Except, of course, on broadcast media. The argument as I understand it is that since the airwaves are a public asset, the government has a responsibility to regulate that asset for the good of all. Lately that "good of all" bit has come to mean "a few large conglomerates" as the television and radio industries have undergone a wave of consolidations. You've got radio in particular now dominated by a handful of major players. ClearChannel and Infinity and their ilk. Television is going the same way, with only a couple major providers and a handful of small fry in the cable market. In both industries the rules governing who can own how many broadcast outlets in any one market have been severely weakened under former Federal Communications Commission chairman Michael Powell (son of former Secretary of State Colin Powell, and don't think Daddy's position didn't have something to do with Junior's appointment).

Now here's where we get to the meat of my essay.

It can be argued that the biggest personality in radio is Howard Stern. Stern has been a major innovator of format and content and has been hugely successful. His daily radio show draws something in the neighborhood of twelve to twenty million listeners. The televised version of the show on cable's E! Entertainment channel has consistently been that channel's largest revenue engine and ratings hit. Stern generates hundreds of millions of dollars for Infinity Broadcasting and E! He's made more millions in the book and movie industries, and even more with the television shows he's produced. Mention his name anywhere in the country and you can be reasonably certain that the people around you will know who Stern is.

The problem is that Stern's show is . . . racy. Crude. Profane.

Stern talks about stuff that some people would prefer he didn't. That their radios all have on/off switches and tuning knobs never seems to enter the calculations, oddly enough. There's a small but vocal minority who have decided that Stern is EVIL and have campaigned for years to get him removed from the airwaves.

To very little effect, at least until recently.

Sure, there've been fines imposed by the FCC, but the monetary amount has been trivial compared to the revenue Stern brings to his corporate parents. In other words, he's had economic top cover.

Recently however Congress changed the rules. Fines once in the tens of thousands of dollars and directed against corporations are now in the millions of dollars and directed against individual broadcasters and on-air personalities. Like Stern. All in the name of "decency", a highly subjective and mutable standard. This trend really exploded following Janet Jackson's infamous "wardrobe malfunction" during the Superbowl in 2004.

Wait. Let me boil that down for you.

The country went into apoplexy because someone saw a blurred booby on television for a couple seconds.

Yeah . . . ooooookay . . .

Not to get distracted from my main argument, but that's a pretty sorry response to such a trivial thing, isn't it? We really need to get over this prudish tendency in America . . . but maybe that's a topic for a future posting.

Back on topic, the amazing thing about the situation is the way the broadcast industry has rolled over and accepted the restrictions. The standards for what constitutes "indecent" content are not just blurry, but almost completely undefined. It's the "I know it when I see it" argument, which is no kind of standard to base laws upon. In some cases, stations that didn't buckle right away were threatened with not having their broadcast licenses renewed. In effect, broadcasters like Stern are being forced to exercise prior restraint to keep the FCC at bay.

That should not be how we do things in America.

As I noted above, all radios and televisions have on/off switches and tuners. If you don't like what you're getting, you can turn it off or switch to a different program. No-one is forcing you to watch or listen. And, thanks to the magic of the market, if enough people decide not to watch or listen, that program will go away. In the case of television, it will go away very quickly - within weeks.

The FCC, which after all was created simply to apportion the public airwaves so that you didn't wind up with multiple broadcasters operating on the same frequency in the same area, does not need to regulate content. Market forces will do that. And the First Amendment basically says that the government needs to keep its nose out of such things in any event, as a free press is necessary to the health of the country.

What's really scary is that certain elements both within and outside of the government are now attempting to extend this already-unconstitutional regulation to pay services such as cable television and satellite radio. In other words, these people want to dictate the content of something we make a conscious choice to purchase. Something that requires not only a positive action to access, but also requires us to spend our own hard-earned money to receive.

Imagine if someone was following you around a library and telling you that you couldn't read certain books because they thought the content was objectionable. How long would you tolerate that? Or worse, suppose they were leaning over your shoulder as you read your book, running a black marker across words, sentences, paragraphs, or whole pages so that you wouldn't see them?

This is sheer lunacy.

Many people who should know better have gone along with this. "It's only Howard Stern. I never liked him anyway" is a common sentiment. Well, what happens when the next target is someone you do like? Suppose the FCC decides that Rush Limbaugh or Al Franken are too incendiary for the public airwaves? What if some faceless government stooge decides that words like "hell" and "eternal damnation" are too caustic to our oh-so-delicate sensibilities and levies fines against your favorite television evangelist?

What if they pull the license of a television station that airs a news item about something the government would prefer to keep quiet?

At some point the public must take a stand and let the government know that we have, in fact, read the First Amendment and we know that what they're doing is unconstitutional. Frankly, I find it astonishing that prominent broadcasters have mostly ignored this story up until now. This is their bread and butter. Take away their ability to comment freely and their livelihood is destroyed.

The television news program Sixty Minutes is currently working on a piece about Howard Stern and his move from terrestrial to satellite radio. Hopefully they'll cover this angle of the story. This should be an issue that both left and right can agree upon . . . it's one of the fundamental rights enshrined in the Constitution, after all.

It's been said that the Second Amendment is the one that guarantees the rest of the Constitution. But the First Amendment is the ultimate balance point of the entire American experiment. Without the personal freedoms enumerated in the First Amendment, the character of America would be radically different . . . we'd hardly be a democracy at all. Whatever your political alignment, opinion, or point of view, this is the fulcrum upon which it balances.