(1) The Iraqi government should not grant amnesty to persons who have attacked, killed, or wounded members of the U.S. Armed Forces serving heroically in Iraq to provide all Iraqis a better future.
(2) President Bush should immediately notify the government of Iraq that the United States government opposes granting amnesty in the strongest possible terms.
I can understand wanting justice for the killers of our soldiers, but that has not been the Democrats' policy. They have, up until now, argued that we should pull out and forego that sort of justice. "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind" and so on.
The current Democrat position isn't that of a peacemaker. "Let's you and him fight. Hey, did I say stop? Keep fighting." The only logical end I see to the Democrats' varying positions is that the insurgents need to be fought to avenge US soldiers, but US soldiers themselves should not be a part of that fight. The Iraqis should fight our battles for us, but we should not help them fight our battles. There are essentially only two ways Iraq can end up as a stable democracy: kill enough insurgents to effectively neuter them, or make some sort of deal with them. Democrats are opposed to both. Then again, the incoherence comes from assuming the Democrats want Iraq to become a stable democracy.
On Twin Earth, a brain in a vat is at the wheel of a runaway trolley. There are only two options that the brain can take: the right side of the fork in the track or the left side of the fork. There is no way in sight of derailing or stopping the trolley and the brain is aware of this, for the brain knows trolleys. The brain is causally hooked up to the trolley such that the brain can determine the course which the trolley will take.
But then it gets ridiculously easy:
On the right side of the track there is a single railroad worker, Jones, who will definitely be killed if the brain steers the trolley to the right. If the railman on the right lives, he will go on to kill five men for the sake of killing them, but in doing so will inadvertently save the lives of thirty orphans (one of the five men he will kill is planning to destroy a bridge that the orphans' bus will be crossing later that night). One of the orphans that will be killed would have grown up to become a tyrant who would make good utilitarian men do bad things. Another of the orphans would grow up to become G.E.M. Anscombe, while a third would invent the pop-top can.
*** You can watch the first episode of the second season of the best show on TV here. Won't be there forever. (The Venture Brothers is to Johnny Quest as Futurama is to The Jetsons. Except a little dirtier. Did I mention Futurama is coming back?) It's much better if you've seen previous episodes, but there it is.
I ended up around veritable mobs of gorgeous people, some of them so beautiful that I instantly knew that my scripted opening line about Lex Luthor would fail.
Hey, we've all been there. And by "we" I of course mean "the developmentally disabled weirdos that continue to read and write for this site."
Post writers Charles Babington and Michael Abramowitz should stop pretending they're reporting news if all they're going to do is write editorials. From the headline all the way down, that's what they're serving up this morning.
The article represents a textbook case of behavioral projection by the media: "We're not spinning public opinion on the leak story, Bush is. You know, because he's a politician, and such."
*** Andrew Sullivan thinks that right-wing bloggers are doing Rove's bidding on the Times' financial-spying leak:
I'm afraid I'm underwhelmed by this story. The program seems fine enough (unlike illegal wiretapping and torture); I can't believe that key terrorists were unaware their finances might be watched and frozen until the NYT and WSJ told them; and, er, Rove needed a third week of p.r. offensive. After Zarqawi Week and "Cut and Run" Week, we are now almost through "Kill Keller" Week. He says jump. The blogosphere has sadly learned to ask: how high?
I have to admit that Sullivan is more or less right: just the other day, Lord Rove summoned me to his house and left instructions to feed newborn kittens to the demon hounds, bathe his stable of Thai slave-children, and apply a veneer of wood polish to a disturbingly "antique" lawn jockey. So how does Sullivan know so much about the warbloggers' Rovian fealty pact?
Because he used to work at our side, prepping the sponges and buckets of soapy water.
Case Type: Unknown - possible Non Family Abduction or existential quest to "find himself"
Chronological Age: 28
Emotional Age: 11
Sex: Male (give or take)
Missing Date/Last Seen: June 15, 2006
Race: Beaver Cleaver
Height: 6'
Hair Color: Dark brown
Eye Color: Brown
Case Number: INDC56TYRY89
Notes: Last seen wearing a "Hey Scully, The Truth is Right Here ... In My Pants!" X-Files t-shirt and baby blue lycra biking shorts. May or may not be in the company of circus folk or middle-aged men wearing latex ear-tips (elven or Vulcan). May have gone to Mexico. Subject has one tattoo of Orlando Bloom on his upper left buttock and a vestigial tail that twitches when excited, anxious or has to pee.
Approach with caution and/or pizza pockets. Deliver message from co-blogger:
Hey, did you happen to see the best co-blogger in the world? And if you did, was he crying, crying? Hey, if you happen to see the most wonderful co-blogger that walked out on me ... tell him, "I'm sorry." Tell him, "I need my baby." Oh, won't you tell him ... that I ... am really busy and could use some help keeping the developmentally disabled weirdos that continue to read this site entertained, lest their sublimated attention drift and unleash a burst of nightmarish consequence on the real world. The awesome responsibility is killing me.
Things That Move Me About This Interview with Mort Kondracke
Posted by Bill
1. Its avant-garde rejection of commas and hyphens, known in some circles as "antiquated tools of the burgeoise English Establishment."
2. My hostile jealousy over the fact that a blogger other than me scored an interview with my personal pundit hero.
3. The recurring, wistful daydream it stirs: Mort and me, meeting in line at a Capitol Hill Starbucks, strike up an immediate and close friendship characterized by long debates about politics, sage advice and endless, hilarious practical jokes targeted at a sputtering Fred Barnes. Eventually, Mort legally adopts me, teaching me to fish, whittle, oil my baseball glove and tie sailor's knots during our hours upon hours of quality father-son time. We form a private stem cell research company (Mort & Bill's House of Cytotherapy), where we cure cancer, repair spinal cord injuries, virtually eliminate wasting diseases from the medical vernacular and vex both bio-luddites and hard righties into rage-induced apoplexies - the neurological damage and other complications of which we then cure with our magical stem cells!
Sigh.
Anyway, check out the interview. This bit about his relationship with Fred Barnes is interesting:
TUA: So you guys kind of over time came to respect each other and become friends.
Mort: yeah were about as close as you can get.
TUA: Now you guys don't always agree on things but you do agree quite a bit. Did you find yourselves agreeing more over time as you had both been exposed to Washington politics for so long?
Mort: no we're different. You know he's a dyed in the wool conservative. He's a born again Christian, fundamentalist; I don't know Evangelical not Fundamentalist but evangelical. I'm a moderate. I'm liberal on some things conservative on foreign policy. I'm a moderate you know serious Christian but I don't believe every last word in the bible and I think Fred almost nearly does so and I think he's much more conservative socially. I'm for stem cell research. I'm pro-choice, ya know I believe in evolution all that stuff, and he doesn't. And on economics I tend to be a little bit more liberal than he is. I'm basically a free marketer but I believe in estate taxes, I believe in raising the minimum wage. We agree on immigration, lets see, he hasn't met a tax cut he doesn't like. I think it's more important to have enough revenue for the government and not run up big deficits and have to borrow a lot of money so there are things we disagree about.
In foreign policy we tend to agree. I mean, I think he thinks that the Iraq war was the right thing to do, in view of the fact that there were no WMD found. I wonder whether it was the right thing to do, all I think now is that we need to win, so I'm for hanging in there. But weather it was the right thing to do under the circumstances I question but now we have got to win so I'm for it, I support the policy. So we have differences.
Legibility quibbles aside, it's an interesting interview featuring good questions.
1 Part Gasoline
1 Part Petroleum Jelly
Mix Vigorously!
Napalm those insect bastards straight to Hell, and let your kid roast marshmallows over their sticky-icky funeral pyre. It'll teach the boy a valuable lesson about the doctrines of massive retaliation and deterrence, as well as give him a gooey treat to assuage his noble wounds.
*** Meanwhile, Ace puts a stopper on certain nasty elements infecting his comments section.
(WARNING: Sexually suggestive music video! WARNING: Slightly catchy Europop Techno! Safe for work? Maybe. Though INDC Journal XO Dorkafork privately admitted that he spontaneously, finally developed secondary sexual characteristics after only one viewing.)
Harry Potter may perish in the final installment of the boy wizard series in which two main characters die, author J.K. Rowling hinted in a television interview.
Speaking on Monday evening, Joanne Kathleen Rowling, 40, said she was well on the way to finishing the eagerly-awaited seventh Potter book.
My money is on Hagrid and his giantess lover, Madame Maxine, found dead in a squalid scene of auto-erotic asphyxiation gone tragically wrong.
Murtha-NYT Notes (The Bush Admin Asked Murtha to Intervene?)
Posted by Bill
I've seen a few things get buried in quick analysis of Wolf Blitzer's interview with NYT Executive Editor Bill Keller, and I'd like to highlight a very odd aspect of his statements. As I e-mailed Allah at Hot Air, Wolf Blitzer explicitly asked Keller, "who were the three outside of the administration who asked you not to report this information," and Keller named "Murtha" as one of the three.
But earlier in the conversation, Keller said, "I'm happy to tell you who I spoke to, but I'll leave it to them to tell you what they actually said," and prior to that he said "Three people outside of the administration were asked by the administration to call us ... all of them spoke, they thought in confidence, and I don't think I'll, I don't think I'll breach the confidence of what they said, um, uh, although I will say that not all of them urged us not to publish."
There are two major pieces of information to take from this:
1. Not all of the 3 individuals who spoke to the Times urged them not to publish. Since two of them are essentially on the record as asking the Times not to publish via the word of Treasury Secretary Snow, Murtha was the one who "did not urge them not to publish."
2. Keller states that the three individuals "were asked by the administration to call us," essentially stating that someone in the Executive briefed John Murtha about the impending publication and asked him to call the Times to intervene.
Assuming that Keller's statement is accurate, I don't know who's crazier: John Murtha, for urging Keller to expose the program (or at least not trying to stop him), or the fool in the Bush Administration who assumed that Murtha would be a rational advocate, prioritizing national security over his very severe case of BDS.
Of course, my assessment wholly relies on the accuracy of an editor of the New York Times, so, apply massive grains of salt to taste.
UPDATE: Re: "massive grains of salt." A Freeper commenter makes a valid point:
Has anybody considered that Keller is flat out lying and just trying to cover his pathetic ass for this travesty. I think Keller and the Times are taking enormous heat on this.
Or implicitly distorting the nature of the conversation with Murtha ...
That is a consideration. Note that he did not say that one of the three urged him to run the story, rather that "not all of them urged us not to publish." This is a mildly relevant distinction. Not having been there nor being omniscient, I can't say for certain.
The 9/11 Commission, over which the Times has endlessly fawned, demanded that the US implement "vigorous efforts" to track terrorist financing in order to prevent another attack. As Bush points out, the Swift project did just that, without breaking laws or endangering civil liberties, according to the Times' own reporting. Bill Keller blew the program and tipped the terrorists anyway, in order to improve the finances of the Times.
*** Despite his strange affinity for Al Gore, Dean's World contributor Aziz P is a pretty smart guy with a presumably healthy survival instinct ... which makes his quite reasonable, brave entrance into the HIV-AIDS causality debate over at DW all the more surprising. In a follow-up post, he observes:
To be honest, I am dumbfounded at the reaction I received from my earlier (and probably ill-advised) foray into the HIV debate. What I thought was an easy pitch to the HIV-skeptic camp devolved into a total farce.
I'd empathize with Aziz, but I'm becoming less and less "dumbfounded," over anything.
*** To wit: my post condemning chest-thumping enthusiasm for retaliatory nuclear genocide of a religious group earns me condemnation for prancing on a moral "high-horse," as well as arguments mischaracterizing my skepticism of the utility of nuclear force in the GWoT as a more general rejection of the utility of "massive force." For those of you keeping score, Bill Quick is still at it, executing a "Sherman's March to the Sea" of stupid.
If nothing else, you have to admire his confidence and eye-pleasing web site design.
In order to stop speculation in the press which was helping the Axis, in 1943 General Eisenhower gave a press briefing confirming to the reporters in the American press that Sicily was the next target of allied invasion. He explained to them that if they printed it, it would result in the deaths of many American and allied soldiers. Not one reporter said a word, even to their superiors in the newsroom. The invasion of Sicily was a whirlwind success, capturing the island in less than forty days, and many papers were sold reporting the successes.
If a WWII teaser doesn't rope you, I don't know what will.
*** As highlighted in the previous link, Rep. Peter King is calling for criminal charges against the newspapers responsible for exposing the latest top secret program aimed at disrupting and dismantling the financial networks of terrorists:
The chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee urged the Bush administration on Sunday to seek criminal charges against newspapers that reported on a secret financial-monitoring program used to trace terrorists.
Rep. Peter King cited The New York Times in particular for publishing a story last week that the Treasury Department was working with the CIA to examine messages within a massive international database of money-transfer records.
This course of action was also advocated by Patterico. Allahpundit is skeptical:
I think he's kidding himself. Not on the law, but as a political matter. However disgusting and adversarial the media has become, Americans will blanch at the slippery-slope potential of busting newspapers unless/until it can be shown that terrorists benefited from the information being publicized. We can assume they've benefited, but without concrete proof most people will take the "no harm, no foul" approach.
I'm undecided, though I lean towards Allah's take. As a political matter, whether publishing the story constitutes outright treason or muckraking-as-usual by the Fourth Estate will depend on who gains control of the narrative over the next few days. And given that the media outlets that would sit at the defense table have a disproportionate impact on shaping the narrative, I'm not sure that the Bush Administration will be able to accumulate the necessary political capital to sell the idea. We'll see.
Commenting on this line in my post about Ace's rant on genocide ...
And if and when that day approaches, humanity's collective outlook will turn exponentially bleaker than the one we share today, and all the weirdly tolerated genocidal impulses, nukes and desert turned into fresh sheets of irradiated glass in the world won't effectively solve anything.
That's bullshit, and Bill Ardolino, as well as Carthage, the Japanese High Command, Adolf Hitler, and Saddam Hussein know it. No, I'm not advocating committing genocide upon the Muslim world. But I am advocating a moratorium on high-minded, well-meaning, vacuous bullcrap in discussing the issue.
My response: Bill, it helps if you don't superficially represent my position as one founded in hippie-dippie space love. The quoted assessment that all of the "nukes and desert turned into fresh sheets of irradiated glass in the world won't effectively solve anything" hinges on:
1. ... the flattening hierarchies of destructive technology at some point in the future. (see immediately preceding sentence: "There is a day that may come where the ubiquitization and exponential power of destructive technology starts destroying societies and calling for previously unthinkable measures"). What this effectively means is that poorly targeted, massive nuclear strikes won't do a whole lot of good if humanity is being rapidly eliminated by disparate, select maniacs pushing nanobots or an engineered virus.
2. ... the fact that nuclear strikes on "the Muslim world" of the scope required to be effective in stopping terrorist attacks - given an imprecise targeting of a religion/culture of a billion people - would likely do far more damage to the United States than the initial terrorist attack that generated the wholesale nuclear response, at least in the forms of a ruined energy supply, a destroyed global economy and the subsequent nation-state warfare over newly scarce resources. Again, especially in the context of point one.
Thus, given the fact that both my post and subsequent expositive comments don't naively prioritize any outsized moral squeamishness over even potential morally disturbing yet practical solutions, and are in fact directed at an original argument that seems to enthusiastically threaten "genocide" and the universal utility of nukes as a solution, I'm a bit surprised at Quick's response.
Especially because on this, we wholeheartedly agree: I also advocate "a moratorium on ... vacuous bullcrap in discussing the issue."
UPDATE: Bill Quick makes an appearance in the comments, and I address various specifics in response.
What do Carthage, the Japanese High Command, Adolph Hitler and Saddam Hussein have in common with a dozen nationless religious maniacs from the future, easily engineering self-replicating nanobots in their basement?
The Reality-Based Community (UPDATED with Netroots Horoscope!)
Posted by Bill
Led by ... an internet astrologer?
Yet, not so long ago, he was called the Astrologer Jerome by some. ... MyDD didn't have anything to do with democracy, direct, personal, or otherwise when it started out as an astrological tabloid, forcasting the ups and downs of the stock market based upon the stars. One only needs a Wayback machine to confirm that. And it didn't begin in June, click April to see that.
The DD was for Due Dilligence of the company evaluation kind, claimed by a low level stock touter, probably as duped by his masters, as he is now duping some number of people desperate for something in which to believe.
Depending on your priorities, at best, Armstrong was a swindler that preyed upon weak-minded investors. Alternatively, he believes in the predictive power of Astrology. Goldstein finds that less of a problem than Armstrong's whitewash of his past:
All of which, in and of itself, is not a problem per se—after all, some people throw their faith into religion, others into the stars, others into the idea that all of metaphysics itself is a sham—though it is certainly a dubious way to predict stocks, I should think. But it is a problem that once your analytical paradigm has been revealed, you begin trying to airbrush it out of existence. Using the "search and replace" function on your archives.
I might agree, as this points to Armstrong as a huckster rather than a believer; but I can't help but assume that an astrologist as head of the progressive netroots movement might present its own, equally sticky problems, seeing as his political constituency is largely comprised of individuals that excessively pride themselves in rationalism, while really subscribing to an ideology of aggressive materialism complemented by its own unshakable political mythology.
Nicely done Rhiel, nicely done:
Tellling someone what they want to hear isn't a strategy. In the real world, it's often planning for doom. And it should be pointed out that, along with strategy, it's the fund raising to which he's gravitated. I find that rather curious, don't you?
I predict the Dems will take all fifty states when Venus aligns with Jupiter and kisses Mars butt. Pardon me if I don't ask the latest Democrat wizard-kid what he has to say about that.
Another reason to go easy on the generalizations about the "Islamic world," kids:
KUWAITIS go to the polls next week to elect a new National Assembly, which will in turn approve a new prime minister and Cabinet.
The Kuwaitis will be making history for a number of reasons. This is the first election in which women are allowed to vote. And - much to the chagrin of Islamists, who insist that women are unfit to play any role in politics - a number of women are standing, often on platforms of radial social and economic reforms.
With a native population of 1 million, Kuwait is one of the smallest states in the Arab League. Yet its election is certain to have an important impact on broader Arab politics.
This is how intertwined governments, cultures and religions change: notably yet incrementally, and not with an impossible immediacy necessary to give pause to those loudly committed to illogically general and negative narratives.
Regarding that women's health site that rattled a saber at me for (properly) excerpting and citing their material in a post about an anti-cancer treatment: I wrote them a response e-mail and received nothing in return, so I subsequently called and spoke to the woman who sent the communication. She quickly became flummoxed by my attempts to define the word "plagiarism" and referred me to her superior, who indicated that she would call me back. And hasn't. A second call on my part was met with voicemail. For the public record.
Having recently purchased both an HDTV and a home digital media center/video game system, I'll dub this the "XBox 360 Effect:"
Social Isolation Growing in U.S., Study Says
The Number of People Who Say They Have No One to Confide In Has Risen
Americans are far more socially isolated today than they were two decades ago, and a sharply growing number of people say they have no one in whom they can confide, according to a comprehensive new evaluation of the decline of social ties in the United States.
A quarter of Americans say they have no one with whom they can discuss personal troubles, more than double the number who were similarly isolated in 1985. Overall, the number of people Americans have in their closest circle of confidants has dropped from around three to about two.
Sure, maybe I've cut off all ties to the outside world, shunning fresh breezes, sunshine and human contact for hours upon hours upon hours of wild-eyed digital titillation, clad only in a holey pair of ochre jockey briefs and a slippery, thick film of my unwashed filth, finely frosted with a dusting of pretzel crumbs and dried cheese salsa. But "no one to confide in?" My fellow Ghost Recon players know all of my deepest, most sincere feelings about how I OWNED THEIR ASS LOL HOW'S THAT LEAD SAMMICH TASTE, YOU SILLY LITTLE BITCH?!
An entertaining comment by Kos contributor Hunter:
They're the enemy. They're worse than the enemy, ...
My interest grew inflamed: rogue dictators? Murdering terrorists? Had a leader of the nutroots ditched any outsized moral equivalency and boldly identified a target worthy of reptilian extermination? Well, sure:
... because they're attempting to pretend they're still on the side of progressives and liberals while publishing false innuendos and libels against us.
He's talking about the dastardly New Republic, of course.
Kos is officially advocating a boycott of the magazine - extending to retail interference - for TNR's Plank feature on Kosola, a story framed by Zuniga as a symptom of the institutional mag's desperate legacy liberal survival instinct and shift to ... the dark side:
If you still hold a subscription to that magazine, it really is time to call it quits. If you see it in a magazine rack, you might as well move it behind the National Review or even NewsMax, since that's who they want to be associated with these days.
UPDATE: While I find the reactions of Kossacks amusing (and telling), I have to admit that I'm still only half-moved by the scandal aspect of it. The tenor of Instapundit's coverage strikes me as about right, where Reynolds features Daniel Drezner's relevant assessment:
"What's going on is not illegal, or even out of the ordinary in Washington, DC. It's politics as usual. The only reason the story is noteworthy is because bloggers like Kos have persistently said that they and theirs -- a.k.a., the netroots -- are not about politics as usual. Over time, however, that claim looks less and less viable. The question is whether bloggers like Kos find that their legions of readers are turned off by these kind of revelations, or whether they comfortably adjust into being middleweight power brokers."
No, not referencing the title of Malkin's recent book, rather Ace of Spades - a blogger that I often disagree with yet generally respect for his humor and bits of considered analysis - losing his freaking mind:
There will be one more massive outrage from the Religion of Peace, and then things are going to go rather badly for them.
Okay, let me not be so coy and cute. I am just about ready to give my blessing to a genocidal nuclear strike on the majority of the Muslim world, and I suspect many of my countrymen are similarly itchy-fingered.
It stuns me that the wholesale nuclear genocide of nearly a billion (hundreds, tens of millions?) people is judged a rational response to another terrorist attack, much less retaliatory rhetoric to the rantings of a Muslim conspiracy theorist at CAIR (the spark that inspired his post).
The right wing blogosphere should run, not walk from this sort of illogical "feel-good" barbarism that treats a disparate culture, geography and governance as a monolithic, justly targeted entity - but strangely, because of a shared instinct for aggressive solutions and the applicability of military firepower, it's tolerated. Embraced, often.
I am definitively a hawk. I believe in an interventionist foreign policy. I believe in the utility of military strength as a lever for deposing tyranny, the doctrine of extended deterrence, mutually assured destruction and the doctrine of preemption. I even get a naughty little tingle in my jubblies every time a terrorist meets his maker. But I do not fathom nor countenance ostensibly acceptable calls to religious genocide, nor a retaliatory nuclear strike provoked by anything less than a massive unconventional terrorist attack linked to entities within a nation state. In addition to being unrealistic and probably ineffective (contingent on the head-reeling scope), it's madness.
There is a day that may come where the ubiquitization and exponential power of destructive technology starts destroying societies and calling for previously unthinkable measures - but we're not there yet, nor at the point where drastically destructive preemption is ethically justified and practical. And if and when that day approaches, humanity's collective outlook will turn exponentially bleaker than the one we share today, and all the weirdly tolerated genocidal impulses, nukes and desert turned into fresh sheets of irradiated glass in the world won't effectively solve anything. The solutions will come from the naturally moderating, humanistic impulses common to free societies, or rely on methods of aggression and security with much more specificity and efficacy than indiscriminate massacre abetted by a fusion reaction.
UPDATE: Daily Pundit Readers, see my response to Bill Quick's post.
On the heels of a study showing a mutually beneficial relationship between terrorists and journalists ...
More ink equals more blood, claim two economists who say that newspaper coverage of terrorist incidents leads directly to more attacks.
It's a macabre example of win-win in what economists call a "common-interest game," say Bruno S. Frey of the University of Zurich and Dominic Rohner of Cambridge University.
Al Qaeda's remaining leaders in Iraq know that by murdering innocent civilians and relying on a compliant Western press, they will make it appear that despite numerous successes, U.S. and Iraqi forces are unable to control the situation in Iraq. Thus, Al Qaeda attacks the targets they can most easily attack, not the ones with any strategic value in a traditional military sense. That's because their strategy is getting headlines and winning this one not on the battlefield, but in the U.S. media. And to that end, it doesn't matter how many Iraqis they murder.
As the DC-area sniper case showed us a few years ago, a tiny number of individuals intent on causing mayhem can prey upon soft targets and easily generate gobs of fear and attention. In Iraq, there are scores to hundreds of like-minded individuals, using explosives to massacre civilian targets that can't be defended. Thus, with its non-contextual focus on insurgent violence, the press sets an implacable, distorted standard for a narrative of "not-losing:"
1. All individuals with malicious intent and means are killed or captured. Or ...
2. A reliance on the goodwill of jihadis to cease killing Iraqis.
Obviously, this standard is almost impossible to meet, and will only grow more challenging - in a variety of settings beyond Iraq - as flattening hiearchies continue to lower the barriers to obtention and use of destructive technology. Essentially, humanity's hit a curious impasse: our ability to contextually analyze events en masse has fallen behind and suffers the whims of a very few intent on manipulating narratives with easy violence. By-in-large, the most capable institutions that the public relies on for objective analysis are interested puppets, symbiotic remoras swimming with bloodthirsty sharks.
As "the mainstream media" functions not as a coherently structured organization, rather as a "lopsided market" that collectively leans towards various political and dramatic narratives, there are no easy solutions to the problem of an incessantly negative, non-contextual focus that feeds terror. But a start would consist of media opinion leaders engaging in a public self-examination of how coverage is centered and manipulated, followed by stated editorial policies that address the paradigm. These policies certainly wouldn't remove stories of violence from a rightfully prominent place in the news, rather alter how they're presented **, as well as commit to applying focus and resources to narratives contrary to the collective goals of terrorists. Essentially, a few editors in the media need to make a public commitment to prioritize humanism and civilization over political interest and false objectivity. To adapt Orwell, objectivity is false if it's objectively pro-terrorist.
Of course, none of this is bound to happen without a cultural shift or the influence of the news consumer, setting demand for change through the market. This process is happening, though instead of spurring reform in traditional news outlets, the consumer is simply shifting more share of attention to splintered outlets, creating parallel universes of information. Which would constitute a perfectly acceptable solution, if these splintered outlets actually had the news-gathering resources and practical reach of large media organizations.
** Sound vague? Editors can start with this: there is a world of difference between reporting violence and using any given incident as an equivalent, contradictory element in stories that show progress in the war.
Regarding the discovery of the remains of those two kidnapped soldiers, a bit of Dan Rhiel's post echoes my thoughts:
And it's unclear what it is that needs be said by anyone, other than how terribly sad a day today is, even without the usual suspects determined to see every tragic event as simply more fodder for the political grist mill.
Rest in peace, and sympathetic thoughts for their families.
Check out his prolific output from 2:27 AM to 2:30 AM. Like, ten open threads during those three minutes alone. He's like the Steven King of empty blogging.
It's the blogging equivalent of a perfect game. No hits, no walks, no errors. No content.
I find that this is more a reflection on his readers, who:
A. Keep reading him.
B. Actually continue to hiss and natter about whatever strikes their fancy in one of a succession of open threads, filling each with hundreds of comments.
It's like he's throwing thorazine-laced meat snacks to desperate, rabid strays. Almost as if ... if he doesn't give them the open threads as a distraction ...
Researchers at I.B.M. and the Georgia Institute of Technology are set to announce today that they have broken the speed record for silicon-based chips with a semiconductor that operates 250 times faster than chips commonly used today.
The achievement is a major step in the evolution of computer semiconductor technology that could eventually lead to faster networks and more powerful electronics at lower prices, said Bernard Meyerson, vice president and chief technologist in I.B.M.'s systems and technology group. He said developments like this one typically found their way into commercial products in 12 to 24 months.
"Commercial products" like, say, completely sequencing your DNA at the CVS blood pressure station? Soon. Maybe sooner than we thought.
Rape has been in sharp decline over the past two decades (emphasis mine):
The number of rapes per capita in the United States has plunged by more than 85 percent since the 1970s, and reported rape fell last year even while other violent offenses increased, according to federal crime data.
This seemingly stunning reduction in sexual violence has been so consistent over the past two decades that some experts say they have started to believe it is accurate, even if they cannot fully explain why it is occurring.
He failed to even swing at the softball questions Russert lobbed his way (and Russert's failure to challenge Murtha's false assertions was just the latest in a disappointing string of performances from him) rambling and stumbling over his words. But when he spoke clearly, he performed even worse.
He actually cited Clinton's performance in Somalia as a model for fighting the war on terror! This is truly scary. Here is the exact quote: "like Clinton did in Somalia, you just have to say, "OK, it's time to change direction."
Provocative retreat from Somalia as a positive model of foreign policy? That's a new one.
*** I'm not sure if Kos's status as a paid consultant for certain Democrats constitutes actual corruption, unless he's backing a candidate that he wouldn't otherwise touch. For as much rightful criticism as that distasteful being receives, backing Mark Warner is one of the few smart political moves I've seen him make. That said, the lack of candor seems shady, and it's interesting to watch these charges of "Kosola" play out among the nutroots. And fun.
*** An author amusingly documents his experience with an SSRI anti-depressant:
"No matter what anyone says, we basically have no clue how this works." And that's that. He writes out the prescription, for 20 milligrams a day. "If you'd like, we've got some counselors upstairs you can talk to, but it sounds like you just want the drug," he says, and hands over the slip. "It could take a couple of weeks to kick in. Be patient."
I walk around the corner to CVS. Boom: Fifteen minutes with a doctor, $15 at the pharmacy, and I've scored a month's supply of a powerful, mood-altering substance.
Interesting how that's true for some drugs, but not others.
It's been an amusing week, witnessing the rhetorical contortions of conservatives who attempt to finely parse and explain the degree of difference between Ann Coulter and Ted Rall to the rest of us. The distilled form of the argument basically goes something like this:
"Sure, she says nasty, depraved stuff, but it's depraved stuff about LIBERALS."
Accompanied by narrowed eyes and a knowing nod at the utterance of the word "liberals," I'm sure.
Last two links via Allah at Hot Air. Speaking of which, I have to say, I find Michelle's Vent focus on the reaction of liberals to Coulter rather, erm, "odd?"
And if so, don't acid remarks about terrorism widows enjoying their grief count for 3 points?
It's fun watching Allah take that HOLY-WACKING over there. Good thing he's anonymous, lest the Hot Air Annmaniacs track him down and throw a blanket party for their erstwhile right-wing blog-deity. Yeah, pretty fun spectacle, pretty fun indeed.
But recall, that's because, as mentioned in the previous post ...
... I'm a sadist.
dorkafork adds: Seriously, the comments at Hot Air have a sort of "Stephen Colbert Effect" in action. How dare Allah criticize "Our Holy Blessed Mother of the Spluttering Bile"?
I find that Colbert's outsized smarmy act gets annoying and trite in extended doses; his show (and recent overexposure) reminds me of SNL's attempts to turn funny yet thin skits into feature-length movies. And by this point, the exaggerated arched eyebrow pic at the above link gives me the urge to savagely chuck him on the back of the head, rather than, you know, laugh. Which would make me laugh, ironically.
USA Today takes pride, as it should, in its policy of keeping anonymous sources to an absolute minimum. If only the paper were as rigorous and vigilant in presenting data rather than wishful thinking when it attempts to document a new "trend."
Manufacturing dramatic "trends" from vague research seems to be a trend in media.
*** I am boycotting Ghost of a Flea again, for his continuing exercise in obnoxiously superficial idolatry.
Boston, MA: What are you advising the president to do in response to global warming?
Invest in research on technologies to produce and use energy that emits less greenhouse gases (GHGs). Fund research to improve estimates of where and how warming impacts will occur (as opposed to just knowing the Earth as a whole is warming). Work with nations like China and India where rapid development threatens to add huge new GHG sources. (More information at www.climatescience.gov.)
... Ft. Dodge, IA: Should the United States try to encourage sugarcane production for ethanol, rather than using corn? By using corn, we are taking away a foodstuff and it costs more to produce ethanol and provides a lesser yield than sugar cane.
U.S. climates are not generally ideal for sugar cane agriculture. The most promising future technology for ethanol is neither corn nor cane but the enzymatic conversion of cellulosic material, much of it currently regarded as waste.
But perhaps if we close our eyes, concentrate and direct our collective will really, really hard, we can telepathically compel dorkafork to post something.
***squinting and projecting***
UPDATE: I can't feel your energy. And if I can't, dorkafork probably can't, for all his incessant nattering on about a vaunted strength in "the force."
I passed the magazine stand at the local CVS and glimpsed Newsweek's cover story on the Z-man's dirt nap, blaring the following headline and subhead:
After Zarqawi
How we got him. What we learned ...
To which I thought: what's with the use of "WE" all of a sudden, you defeatist narrative, hypercritical, proudly impartial, Quran-baiting, analytically superficiliberal assholes?
Then I grabbed a pack of that Orbitz gum and a tin of Altoids, which I like to combine and chew into a massive crunchy ball, approximating a mentholated pressure washing of my mouth. Plus, clears the sinuses.
Date: Tues, 13 Jun 2006 02:00:05
From: Ian Thompson
To: bil@indcjournal.com
Subject: Don't be the "little guy" in the club
Thanks for the estimable advice and kind offer of "steroid-like" substances, Ian. But tell me something: where the Hell were you one sticky midsummer's night in '98, when I was hunched downwards and speed bagging a 6'5" roid-zilla's atrophied nards, while he and a fellow cro-magnon tribesman took giddy turns showering me with crushing, rock-fisted blows about the top of my melon, back, shoulders and face? It ended up a moral victory, to be sure; but two weeks on, the side of my head still looked like a splotch of roadkill that'd been ground into bloody corn-mash by the wheels of a turnip truck.
And with my current age and environs (old, alternately surrounded by DC's stark dichotomy of milquetoast nerd-sheep and wolves with guns), anabolics are about as useful to me as a home pregnancy kit.
"I turned to electronic music because I found I could not get the kinds of sounds I wanted with live players and ordinary instruments. I wanted very fast-running passages and complicated rythms which players cannot perform. I wanted pitches which lie in between the pitches of the regular instruments, and I wanted in particularly sound qualities which no instrument or combinations of instruments can readily produce."
[15:01] proteinwisdom: Accidentally shaved my head again. [15:01] proteinwisdom: I need to hop on the stair machine now [15:01] proteinwisdom: and hope my hair grows back quickly. [15:01] INDCBill: whats the point [15:02] proteinwisdom: To cover my horns, obviously. [15:02] INDCBill: meh [15:02] INDCBill: an exercise in pointlessness [15:02] INDCBill: the futility of vanity [15:02] INDCBill: not to mention life, death [15:03] INDCBill: all pointless [15:03] INDCBill: one day YOU'LL open up, share something of yourself with people [15:03] INDCBill: whether it be a newly-discovered hobby, or merely an emotion [15:04] INDCBill: and receive NOT praise, NOR scorn [15:04] INDCBill: none of your dreaded "paste eater wingnut" remarks [15:04] INDCBill: which though biting, give you confirmation and joy of being alive [15:04] INDCBill: but rather [15:05] INDCBill: silence. [15:05] INDCBill: and then you will understand the bottomless vapidity of it all [15:05] INDCBill: the utter meaninglessness [15:05] INDCBill: you will look into the void [15:05] INDCBill: and see and hear nothingness. [15:09] INDCBill: HELLO [16:20] proteinwisdom: sorry, what's this now? [16:20] proteinwisdom: I was enjoying a popsicle [16:21] proteinwisdom: GRAPE! [16:21] proteinwisdom: Like God's little frozen orgasm on a stick!
