Republicans for Voldermort

Saw a bumper sticker on the way to work today that said "Republicans for Voldermort".

I'm not the first to make the observation that liberals think conservatives are evil, while conservatives think that liberals are naive and/or misguided. We generally think their hearts are in the right place (although the relatively recent volume and intensity of the bile they spew our direction makes us wonder).... they think our hearts are in the wrong place.

Deal is, our hearts are in the right place, and our brains are fully engaged in the real world.

And Then What?

My man Sowell, talking about the question that needs to be asked of the "pull out now" crowd:

And Then What?

says:

Should American troops stay in Iraq indefinitely?

Nobody has ever wanted that. Our whole history shows that American troops have repeatedly pulled out of countries around the world when wars ended and enough order was restored to turn the country over to its own people.

The political conflict today is between people who think that pulling out should depend on conditions in Iraq, as those conditions unfold, rather than on arbitrary timetables created by politicians with no military experience, and with a time horizon that extends no further than the 2008 elections.

Extends no further than the 2008 elections is the key phrase here. It means, we want to be able to use the unpopularity of the war against our political enemies, but we don't actually have a solution to the problem. We prefer it get neatly wrapped up with this administration so that 1) it will be the fall guy for all the pre-war, war, and post-war problems, and 2) we won't have to address these important problems at all.

And this crowd is gaining a few Republican members, too. Sad.

Remember when Hillary outright complained about the possibility of inheriting the war?

"I think it's the height of irresponsibility and I really resent it." [..] "This was his decision to go to war, he went with an ill-conceived plan, an incompetently executed strategy and we should expect him to extricate our country from this before he leaves office."

No mention of what the implications for Iraq and America and the rest of the West for that matter -- would be. It's like "If we pull out, it's like a do-over. Like it never happened." except we get to say "bad! bad Bush!"

And never mind the constant encouragement she and hers give the enemy by telling them "just wait, America will prove you right and leave. We have no stomach for a fight." Just like Bin Laden has said over and over and predicted for Iraq.

This isn't about what is the best thing to do. This is about what I think will get me in to office.

I Love it When a Plan Comes Together

Chalk one up to the "A" Team.

Things I Know #13

#13 You don't get to decide when a war is over until you decide to lose it.

Al Queda understands this. The "insurgents" understand this.

Do we?

Taking America for Granted

I wanted to come up with a stirring July 4 post. I did not. I spent July 4 with family, and lots of it. Which is the way it should be, in the end.

I did, in honor of the occasion, buy a new gun - asserting my right to keep and bear arms.

However, Thomas Sowell -- who I point you guys to a lot (sorry, but he's good) -- did come up with a stirring July 4 post, which I encourage you to read.

>> Taking America for Granted <<

Live Earth

This whole event did nothing to erode my opionion that most activists are in this to feel good about themselves, and have no clue what they are talking about. They really don't care as long as they can portray themselves as morally superior on their stage which all the world makes up.

Madonna, on Saturday:

"If you want to save the planet, I want you to start jumping up and down. Come on, mother-[@*#%ers!] If you want to save the planet, let me see you jump!"

Yes, jump indeed. Jump to save the planet. Jump passionately. Make sure the cameras get a good shot of your jumpage. I wonder if anyone in the crowd thought to shout back "how high?"

Yes, Massah Madonna. (carbon footprint 92 times your average person's).

In Germany [...] newspapers were more upbeat about Saturday’s gigs designed to pressure leaders to sign a new treaty by 2009 that would cut global warming pollution by 90 percent in rich nations and more than half worldwide by 2050.

Let me clue these folks in on something. Treaties don't cut "global warming pollution". People do. And to do it, the energy that runs your computer games and your little iPods that play your Madonna songs and warms and cools your houses and lights your rooms and gets you from point A to point B will go away. From you.

They're going to pressure world governments into signing treaties that have as much chance of having any effect than your average U.N. resolution on Iraq. Then, in 2050 when the cuts have fallen far short of this ridiculously ambitious goal dispite the ink on the various papers -- they can complain "We jumped! What did you do?"

Actually the whole thing reminds me of Officer Shrift in "The Phantom Tollbooth". He was very interested in sentencing people, but the acutal carrying out of the sentence was irrelevant. When Milo, after being sentenced to 1,000 years, gets out of the very open jail the next day at the urging of the Which who tells him how to get out, Shrift sees him on the street and says "my, my, has it been 1,000 years already?" and walks on.

We jumped for Mother Gaia. It's up to somebody else to do something about it. And frankly, we don't care how hard that is. For you. That's not our problem. And you'd better not make it our problem, either. [turns up iPod and goes back to typing anti-Bush tirades on her computer, making a note on her calendar not to miss her appointment at the tanning salon]

I saw some chick in a news story several days ago telling us we can all cut global warming by using re-usable canvas shopping bags instead of paper or plastic disposable ones. Now I'm all for reasonable efforts to reduce pollution and sustaining our forest resources, frankly. I've got no problem with canvas bags. But cutting global warming by using them?

No. Clue.

An Announcement

Thatisall

Quote of the Day

This one from Michael Ledeen in "Stupid Terrorist"

No terrorist leader has ever blown himself up. No way, that’s not their job. Their job is to get other people to blow themselves up. The leader sends them to die, and pays off the family, having done whatever it takes to convince the martyr-to-be to go through with it.

Bush's Approval Rating Twice as High as Democratic Majority Congress

Now there's a headline you won't see.

Even though it's true.

Bush's approval rating is constantly cited as plummeting -- and it has slowly fallen over the past 3 years to around 30% or just under.

The new, open, clean Democratic congress?

14%.

Terrorism, the Military, and the Courts

This is an article well worth reading.

One thing I'd like to address in the article is this astute observation:

Put simply, I mean to argue that while meaningful, probing judicial review has a more substantial place in this war than the administration allows, it has a far more limited one than many civil libertarians and human-rights advocates imagine.

All very true -- I think in defense of the Administration, though, the reason it hasn't allowed as much judicial oversight as there is a place for is precisely because it is well aware of the rampant judicial activsm permeating the courts, and their responsiveness to the pressure civil-ibertarians and human-rights activists can bring to bear on them.

The administration is reluctant, in this judicial climate, to give up known high-value detainees to judical squeamishness.

Could You Care Less?

Something that has always bothered me.

Long ago, someone found a slightly more colorful way of expressing how little he cared about something came up with the phrase:

"I couldn't care less."

In other words, I care so little that it is impossible for me to care less than I care now.

Somehow, there are people who never really thought about how the phrase makes it's point -- and perhaps relying on the tone in which it is delivered, repeat it as:

"I could care less."

Which really doesn't say the same thing at all. Almost the opposite, one could argue. The point of the phrase is that you are at the zero-point of caring. If you could care less, you obviously care some. Which is probably not what you mean.

Let the smearing begin

First there was Fred Thompson: Another actor turned politician. Didn't stick too well since he is a politician turned actor. And he got his first part playing himself in a movie. Plus right now even the liberal press (but I repeat myself) looks back positively on Ronald Reagan.

So here's a new angle from that cesspool of progressive stew, the Huffington Post: Fred Thompson: The Philip Morris Candidate. The headline is what you're supposed to remember. That's right. A vote for Fred Thompson is a vote for cancer. For those eeeeevil tobacco industry tycoons who have little girls forced at gunpoint to smoke to get them addicted. They sit in huge chairs that you only ever see the back of -- save an arm with a big fat stogie smoldering away sticking out from one side. Those chairs are behind giant mahogany desks with huge picture windows overlooking expensive real-estate, as piles of money accumulate in their accounts while they laugh an internal, maniacal laugh.

Or so the narrative is supposed to go.

Know what? A lot of people like to smoke. They know it can be bad for them. They know it can kill them. But they like to do it. And as long as they're not blowing it in my face, I'm good with it. Although I don't call myself a smoker, I even smoke an occasional cigar or a pipe. Because I want to. Because I like the aroma and the flavor. And I live in a supposedly free country where Liberty is the by-word. Or so it used to be.

People like to smoke, and somebody has to grow the tobacco if they are going to smoke it. And like any other economic endeavor where there is demand, suppliers make money off of it. And there. is. nothing. wrong. with. that.

Nobody, but NOBODY -- forces anyone to smoke. It is a personal choice, and we all know the risks. Just as nobody forces anyone to go into a restaurant, be it a restaurant that allows smoking or a restaurant that does not.

But there are people who don't think anyone should smoke. The conservatives in that crowd still leave it up to the individual. The "progressives" in that crowd do what progessives love to do. Use government power to "solve" social behavior they have a problem with.

And they protest and campaign and bring lawsuits and argue that "Big Tobbacco" is the problem and smokers are "victims". The progressive narrative. The world is made up of "Big, Powerful Bullies" and their "victims". And they are here to make it all better.

Rich, white kids and black strippers. Big Oil and the doom of Anthropogenic Global Warming. Rich business men and their poor customers. Plant owners and their slave employees. You poor, poor, people. Just turn to our government and we'll fix it all for you. Just like Stalin. Pol Pot. Mao. Castro.

Let freedom ring.

Bad Religion

I just saw this as a signature on a post on a discussion group:

"We can't do nothing and think someone else will make it right."
- Kyoto Now, Bad Religion

I was immediately struck by a couple of levels of irony in this. Number 1, Kyoto was a product of bad religion in the first place -- that is, the Enviroligion that blinds so many to the actual science in favor of finding civilization, especially western civilization and industrialization -- at fault for some impending disaster that must be averted by political action.

The other irony is in the statement itself. "We can't do nothing and think someone else will make it right". Well, if you don't know what it is you're doing, or worse -- you do know and don't care, you might just find yourself creating massive new problems in your solution to a non-existent one.

Enviroligion's solution is to halt development in the developing world, and turn back and/or severely cobble the developed world. It's got that "social justice" tag of approval on it. "We shouldn't be any better off than they are."

Only there's a few problems with that. 1: Why not? 2: They would much rather have the problem solved by elevating their standard of living to ours. 3: Do you really think people living industrialized lifestyles will actually accept going back to third-world lifestyles? hint: This is the purpose behind carbon credits. At best, in reality it would end up making things just slightly less unequal. And 4: it would end up dooming millions in the third world who might've had a chance to better their lives to more starvation, illness, and the death that accompanies them.

Human Need or Corporate Greed?

I saw a T-Shirt the other day, and here's what it said on the back:

Human Need

or

Corporate Greed?

The choice is clear.

Vote Democrat

So that's it, then. The Republicans are there solely to make rich people richer (who presumably have no "right" to be rich), while the Democrats will play Robin Hood and rob force them to happily give their money to people who have less. It's apparently that simple to these folks. Ah, to see the world with such polarized eyes. Probably one reason why that world view is so popular. It's easy to digest. But like most things that are easy to digest, eating that stuff alone is bad for you.

Now frankly, I as a Libertarian type have no use for government programs designed to outright benefit corporations for the sake of corporate benefit. Frankly, I have little use for most government programs, especially Federal ones. On the other hand, a government policy of not taxing them at exorbidant rates just because people feel it's not "fair" that they make so much money is fine by me. Your fair share is a percentage of what you make. (update: Brother Jeffmon asks "why is that even fair?" -- he has a good point. But while a flat tax rather than a flat tax rate could be argued as being more fair, progressives like the opposite approach which is decidedly less fair.) Anyway, why should that percentage go up just because you make more? And that's basically what they're saying. You don't have a right to be that rich. You must be doing something evil.

Ah, but there are people who simply can't afford to live if we tax them at all. Well, we already have exemptions for people at the low end of the income scale to ensure that we're not taking bread off of their tables.

People who really really think of the world in the terms that t-shirt put it should really read Bill Whittle's two-part essay "Trinity". (part 2 is here.) As a matter of fact, even people don't think of the world that way but have trouble expressing it to others ought to read it.

Cultural Heritages

Wow.

I bow down to the Great Thomas Sowell. A great mind, and a great gift for expressing it.

>> Cultural Heritages <<

by Thomas Sowell

Shoot Them

Just ran across this report from Sweeden. It addresses the vulnerability the West has opened itself to by worshiping tolerance in and of itself.

When it comes to the last bit, though -- when ambulances arrive on the scene to take injured Muslims to the hospital to save their lives, the residents tell them which residents to take and which to leave behind. Who will live. Who will die. Which is bad enough.

But then when a Mosque catches fire and the Sweedish firemen come to put it out and perhaps rescue Muslims in need -- the firemen are attacked with stones.

I think Sweeden should initiate a policy: You attack firemen at a fire doing their job, the police are allowed to shoot you on sight. Period. Advertise it. Back it up with teeth. And don't apologize. That's the only way this kind of behavior will stop. Anything else will only make the problem worse. Immigrants who commit a felony are up for deportation immediately. You want to live in our society you're darned sure going to follow our rules. Or stay the hell home.

Can you tell I'm a little peeved?

The west needs to re-discover its backbone.

Quote of the day

From Michelle Malkin:

"Sensitivity" in the jihadi world is a one-way, dead-end street.

More Gun Ownership, Please

For those of you who still don't get it:

At the height of last week's fighting in Gaza, one Palestinian in 300 carried a weapon in support of Hamas - a third of one percent of the population. Now Hamas rules 1.5 million people.

That's from the article "Why Hamas Won".

This is one big reason why free people need the right to keep and bear arms. So they can use them when a small group of people try to take it away from them -- or better yet, so a small group of people will know better than to try and take it away from them.

On Science and Theories

I was reading this excellent post over at House of Eratosthenes and I had to add my two cents. And after the fact, I thought my two cents would make a pretty good post on its own. Seeing as how I've been too busy -- and a bit weary of blogging, I might add -- in the interest of efficiency and not wasting work, here's my two cents.

Morgan in his post asks a question about scientists who basically agree on one thing disagreeing on another. That got me to thinking. Here goes:

As far as the scientists disagreeing, scientists do disagree on things. One good scientist can even disagree on something with another good scientist as well. That’s because scientists come up with theories, and then they devise tests to see if the theory holds.

They disagree on the theories and the validity of the tests for those theories for various reasons.

Here’s the sticky thing — a theory can never really be “proven” — it can only be disproven. What can be done is to show that it holds true again and again in a given set of circumstances. And when this is shown, the theory becomes useful. But all it takes is for one case to fail for the theory to be disproven. Still, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the theory is useless. Often the scientist will then come up with another theory as to why the first theory failed in that case. And then he or she tests that theory. See how this works?

If the second theory appears to hold again and again, the first theory can then be modified to account for it. But even then they are both still theories.

Another problem that can come up is that a test or series of tests might not be appropriate — and therefore are invalid, for the theory being tested. For example, “did those two ever fit together?” is a valid test to test a theory that CO2 levels are related to temperature changes. However, it is not a valid test to see whether or not CO2 levels cause temperature increases, partly because it might just be the other way around. (Now how do those two fit together and what is the relationship between the curves is a more useful — and, as it turns out, revealing — approach).

There’s another theory based on blackbody radiation theory that predicts that more CO2 will produce warmer temperatures. But it, too, is a theory. A theory which must be tested before we accept it as a useful predictor.

The question you have to ask yourself is… how has this theory been tested? Followed by, are these tests valid to show that the theory holds? And everybody’s favorite followup question is why or why not? Which basically means, “defend your answer.”

At any rate, it turns out that the CO2 –> Warming is a pretty hard thing to test on the scale we’re talking about. About the best we can do, to the extent we can do it, is go back and try to re-construct temperature and CO2 records throughout climatological history and closely observe their relationships. If they match excactly, that’s not very helpful — because it doesn’t hint at what causes what. But if they don’t … if one increase leads the other by any sort of significant amount, then you get an indicator of which one might be the cause and which one might be the effect.

And as it turns out, when we do this, we see that temperature goes up first and CO2 levels follow.

Why?

Well, there’s a theory that says that cold water absorbs more CO2 (and other gasses as well, but we’re talking about CO2 here) than warm water. And in experiment after experiment, this has never been shown not to be the case. So there’s a theory that says that the increased CO2 in the atmosphere is a result of warmer water (mostly ocean) surface temperatures because the warmer ocean can’t hold as much as it had been holding — so it must release it as gas.

Sounds like a pretty good theory. And whenever we dissolve CO2 in cold water and warm it up, it releases some. Like clockwork. Every time. That’s how real science works. Not by “graduate students, political bodies, and comedian's wives all agree”.

Science is most certainly not about voting.

Polls

If you wait long enough and read wide enough, eventually someone will come up and say something you've been wanting to say ... and say it even better. I'm going to say, before you read this example, that this applies to polls in general. Which is why I take most polls with a bag of salt -- unless I get to read the questions.

Of course, when you dig into the actual questions asked in those polls, it invariably comes down to something along the lines of “do you prefer McCain/Kennedy’s attempt to secure the borders and reform our immigration system, or are you a Nazi, child-murdering, racist who wants to round up infants in the middle of the night, Elian-style, carve them up with a flensing knife and sell their organs for medical research?”

- Misha

My observation excactly.