Dean's World

I completely oppose any form of socialized medicine, regardless of whether it is called "single payer", "mandatory universal coverage", or anything else, because I believe it would be bad for both patients and doctors. Years of experience in the US and other countries have shown that these programs will hurt patients and even cause their deaths. As costs inevitably spiral upward, bureaucrats will ration medical services. Eventually, physicians will be forced to practice against their best medical judgment. This is a violation of the fundamental rights of both doctors and patients.
...
Although I agree that there are genuine problems with the current system, more government interference in medicine can only make things worse. One basic principle we all learned in medical school was, "First, do no harm". This applies as well to politics as it does to clinical practice. Most of the problems of the current system have been the result of bad government policies. Adding more government bureaucrats to the mix will only make things worse.

In my opinion, it is not the government's role to guarantee health care for all Coloradoans, any more than it is the government's job to guarantee all citizens a car or a job. It is morally wrong and economically unsustainable. Doctors and patients ought to be able to freely contract for medical services to their mutual benefit without interference from the government. It is precisely the attempts by the governments in Canada and Great Britain (or states like Tennessee) to guarantee universal "cradle-to-grave" coverage that has led to the runaway costs and rapidly deteriorating health care in those places.

Everything Dave Price mentions below about massive screwups during World War II is quite historically true. One incident I usually find worth adding to that is the case of Operation Tiger: a joint Army/Navy training exercise wherein 749 men died in one day.

749 dead in a training exercise.

Every war--every one of significant size anyway--has its share of SNAFUs (hey, remember who invented that acronym???) and embarrassments and frustrations and nasty surprises.

This is why I often say that concentrating on failures to the point of obsession is terribly counterproductive. Acknowledging mistakes and asking what's being done to correct them (including making suggestions) is totally relevant. Endlessly harping on the negative is defeatist and selfish and irresponsible in my view.

My view does get me in trouble a lot, granted, but...

My colleague Patrick Lasswell and I interviewed on camera Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga Colonel Salahdin Ahmad Ameen in his office in Suleimaniya, Kurdistan, Northern Iraq.

Colonel Salahdin spoke to us about his experience as an anti-Baathist guerilla fighter during Saddam Hussein’s genocidal Anfal Campaign – when 200,000 people were killed and more than 5,000 villages were destroyed. In one fight he recounts for us, 300 Peshmerga beat an entire Iraqi brigade of slave soldiers in battle and suffered only one casualty.

He also told us about the notorious Abu Ghraib prison – where he was beaten and tortured by the agents of Saddam’s regime – about the Peshmerga’s doctrine of human rights during war time, Henry Kissinger’s betrayal in 1974, why the Kurds have not yet declared independence from Baghdad, and what may happen if the United States withdraws its armed forces from his country.

click here to watch the video

No, not our own dear Rosemary, who has nothing to whatsoever to apologize for, but Elizabeth II. Seems some Indian activists are wanting her to apologize for the early bad relationship between them and the Brits. My guess is she won't -- after all, it didn't happen on her watch. But I could be wrong. After all, the Archbishop of Canterbury apologized for Christianity last year.

Speaking of the indigenous tribes, you may have heard about the latest silly study from Amnesty International. Here in Yuma, our local Cocopah tribe is not impressed.

By December 31, 2007 the U. S. will continue to have 80,000 or more troops in Iraq.

Actually I lied. I have another assertion for comment. Whomever is elected president in 2008, regardless of the platform on which he or she runs, will continue to leave our military in Iraq.

Dean's World welcomes G. Willow Wilson as a new front page contributor.

Man, I'm geeked. Willow is the coolest.

A lot of people really, really don't want us to build this wiki.

Truth of the matter is that it upsets them. They know it can make a real difference in the public debate. They know that policymakers and other influential people will read it.

And frankly, they know they've accepted (and sometimes spread) a lot of very questionable assertions as if they are fact, and they really don't like the idea that someone might actually call them out on it.

Message for you guys:

We know we had very good and legitimate reasons for going to Iraq. We have very good and legitimate reasons for being there now. It is a noble cause. We will not be silenced by your mocking, your defeatism, or your crass insults.

We should be ready to start accepting editorial accounts in the next day or so.

From the guy who brought us the lie about Iran's yellow star for Jews, here is another one exposed.

Here's his two previous ones.

You know, every single post on the frontpage here is dogmatic in some way. Bush bad, Iraq good, media evil, no hope, yes hope, blah blah blah.

You know what? none of it matters. Iraq will be that which it will be. The simple truth is that we are in all likelihood going to withdraw no matter who gets elected in 2008. Dean will blame "people like Ali" and Ali will blame "people like Dean" and everyone else will have their choice of fingers to blame.

but the biggest tragedy - yes even bigger than the fireball of even worse sectarian bloodshed that withdrawal will ignite, even bigger than the coming kurdish explosion regardless of whether we withdraw (but even more likely if we DONT withdraw), is that the very idea of American multi-pole power applied in the service of activist intervention for the purpose of increasing liberty (NOT NOT NOT democracy! cart before frakin horse!!) has been deeply tarnished. And for that j'accuse all of you with your axes to grind and your pointed fingers of blame and your wikis and scoop blogs and whatever.

Its time to stop this endless wankery.

I am done listening to all of you. I have my sources that I respect, and I will focus on them, and I am tuning you all out. Build your wikis and marshal your comment hordes and engage in your dialouges and Scoop yourselves to nirvana. It doesn't make a lick of difference. True policy is being shaped in forums and avenues far beyond your ken - I will point you to them if you ask me. Nicely. But if you come carrying a blame agenda, then point that sucker at yourself, because YOU are the problem.

and that's all I have to say about that. My best blogging nowadays is over at Haibane.info, where I've added Food and Art categories to my existing ones about movies and TV, Anime, and various other geek and intellectual pursuits. Stop by if you're sick of the poseur crap about blogging to change the world and want to simply indulge for a change.

The domain is working, the hosting server is working. The software is almost done.

If you've ever wanted to see a true open source project and how it gets started, you might want to check out TruthAboutIraq.org. It's going to start very primitive, and it's going to get better and better as time goes on.

We thoroughly expect the site to be viciously ridiculed. We thoroughly expect it to be subject to hack attacks.

We also fully expect that some bloggers will look at the early articles in their early stages and viciously ridicule anything in those articles they don't like. This is all to the good, as it will help us hone and improve the articles over time. We need critics, the more the better.

The only expectation we'll have is that if you want to take part in editing this wiki, you respect our goals and mission. Said goals and mission statements to be forthcoming.

The site is not "officially open" yet at all. But if you want to watch it develop as it happens, and maybe even be a part of developing it, well, there it is.

Two domain names have been purchased.

The hosting has been arranged, although long-term we may look at finding an Iraqi hosting provider if possible.

The admins are beginning to install the software.

Man, I feel bad for not doing all this sooner.

If we're going to defeat the dominant media narrative, we have some work to do.

You can download a complete high resolution version right here.

500 points to B. Durbin for this gem. Don't spend them all at once!

...the nightmare being that we do the insane, evil thing and pull out of Iraq, we're going to have to educate people on all the bilgewater they've swallowed about this conflict, its history, and its current status.

We might even be able to shake people like Ali out of their delusions. There's hope, anyway.

We should have this wiki up very very soon. Stay tuned.

Rather than bury my response in the comments or fill up the front page with it, I've posted my reflections on Ali's post at The Glittering Eye.

When the Soviet Union withdrew from from Afghanistan, do you know what a boatload of average Muslims thought?

"The mujahideen defeated the world's second greatest superpower."

I expressly recall hearing about the rise of the Taliban. Politically astute Pakistani guys like my dad knew about them far sooner than American media. He told me that the Taliban's claim to fame was defeating the Soviets. Once a Muslim milita is able to say they defeated someone; their name is made.

When — it is only a matter of time — we withdraw from Iraq, the Sunnis of the world are going to say "the mujahideen defeated the world's greatest superpower." The Shi'a will say that they drove out the Americans, but only the Shi'a will hear that.

My point: in the Sunni world, it will be Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda who will get the credit for our withdrawal.

That is not good.

This empowerement of OBL and Al-Qaeda is this administration's greatest — and any American leader ever's most horrifying — failure. Shame on Bush, Cheney, Rummy. They got tricked by a scheming liar like Chalabi who told them about the street festivals and confetti in their honor. They got lied to by AEI, which only means they lied to themselves. NYTimes helped by talking about "defectors" (who all lied as well). Unlike 1991, there wasn't an alternative government ready for us to prop. There was no democratic discourse. Clinton's sanctions of Iraq, along with Saddam's sons, which killed between 100,000 and 500,000 made sure there was nothing but silent people when we arrived. Bad planning. Lying. No strategy. Nothing.

What now? Inevitable is on its way. If not in October, we pull out in 2008. Do you know why? Because a majority of Americans have accepted that we have lost. Dean's World can be the last bastion of hopeful idealists. Hope without work, though, is fruitless.

Someone needs to get to work diplomatically and convincing the Syrian PEOPLE, the Iranian PEOPLE, the Turkish PEOPLE, the Kuwaiti PEOPLE, the Saudi PEOPLE, that a partial Al-Qaeda state in Iraq, which can boast "defeating the greatest superpower" is the most horrifying thing in the world. Talking to the leaders of these nations doesn't do jack. Why? Because the PEOPLE always do the opposite of what a tyrant wants. I've lived under two dictatorships and my father six.

We have to get to the PEOPLE and make them hate al-Qaeda.

So stop b*tching that I'm un-American, that the left is wrong to withdraw, that Islam is the problem, that the anti-war people are cowards, etc. Each of those discussions are irrelevant.

There's too much intellectual self-pleasuring going on here about who was right, who wrong, about hoping for the best.

Stop hoping. We have to make a future for ourselves.

I didn't make Eteraz.Org just for American Muslims to talk among themselves. I made it so that we Americans — all of us — can talk to Muslims all over the world. We Americans have to accept their humanity, and show them ours. al-Qaeda is doing a very good job in showing them we have none. THAT is the narrative we have to counter. Not find ways to further mock them as the Islamophobes want to do; not conclude that they aren't capable of humanity as the Islamophobes want to do; not tell them that, hey don't you know, Islam is a religion of violence as the Islamophobes do.

Eteraz.Org is not a Muslimm site. It is an American site. My first commitment is to the security and safety of this nation. That is where you should be as well. The surge will end. When we leave, we will not be hailed. We'll be called losers. Then we — you and me — will have to show our face to millions of Muslims around the world who will call us "losers." What will we say? Give them the bird?

Saturday night open thread go. (6:50 pm Eastern)

Who will have the Link of the Night?

I came upstairs from doing laundry and found the Kid and his buddy staring intently on the laptop screen. Fearing that they had stumbled upon some ultraviolent or hypersexual site, I did a parental leap around the sofa to see where they had landed in the wasteland known as "the Web".

Instead I saw a familiar site: my own.

"You wrote this?" my son asked, his voice carrying a hint of surprise and admiration.

"Yeah," I said.

"Wow." He said. His friend nodded solemnly in agreement.

Ever since I was the Kid's age, I have dreamed of walking into a large bookstore and holding a book with my name on it. So far that dream has yet to come true, but I keep working at it.

Seeing my child read my writing and hearing his reaction gave me a sense of pride and accomplishment that I wasn't expecting today. Whether the dream ever comes true or not almost doesn't matter when you are lucky enough to experience such a sublime moment.

The Kid never ceases to amaze me.

Hi guys.

We have funds to get server space and register a domain name, and we have several eager volunteers. Great. This is all we need to establish a great wiki.

We've still got one problem: someone to install and maintain the core wiki software for us. This is not a hard job from what I understand, and hardly requires daily maintenance. Mostly it's just installing some stuff and fine tuning. But I'm not up to the task.

Can anyone volunteer to step forward? We haven't even picked out a hosting provider yet so choice of platform is still open. I prefer open source on general principles when it is available, and I like MediaWiki, because it's free, it's familiar to a lot of people, and it's PHP and SQL based, which means it should be easy to administer.

Anyone want to help? I can't believe the project would be scuttled because we can't find anyone who knows how to install and configure the software for us.

Hey, it's cool to see that apparently some people are still studying the Theremin as a classical instrument, which is what its inventor always intended.

Can anyone read Japanese well enough to tell me who that is? The YouTube description is entirely in kanji.

I really quite enjoyed this Todd Seavey article. I don't agree with all of it, but I do agree with an awful lot of it.

I found a lot of the comments pretty funny, especially all those claiming that he knows nothing about feminism. That's such a common tactic. Particularly silly was the person who left "The Male Privilege Checklist" as if that's something profound or contains anything that we haven't all heard a million times before. Does it ever occur to any of these people that you could develop quite a long and extensive Female Privilege Checklist?" For God's sake, both legally and socially women enjoy endless privileges over men. Which of course is one of Seavey's main (and irrefutably true) points.

This tied for "best link of the night" in last night's Open Thread. Tied with what? Polygamous Muslim Lesbian Escapes With Four Wives--with Islamic Legal Analysis. Which wins on title alone, let alone content. And it all seems to tie in, somehow...

The recall of pet foods that began more than a month ago continues, at this point extends to more than 300 varieties, and I continue to post on it obsessively—twice today. I've posted the latest update on the story here and my speculations about the source of the contamination here.

It would be a mistake--a *huge* mistake--to think that by posting this I am "calling out" any person. No, no, no, no, NO!

But, my friend Ali recently made a careless comment about Poland. Oh yes, as if I never made a careless comment! As if I am perfect! As if I never said anything I wished I could take back!

Spare me. He was just making a joke.

What's interesting is that his tossed-off comment drew a tidal wave of commentary, almost all of it very educational.

I mean it: every fracking comment in that thread is worth reading. Each is a history lesson in and of itself.

And by the way, although some people occasionally give me grief for respecting firebrand Arnold Harris, he had some of the most educational comments of all. Crusty old objectivist that he is.

This is one of the best threads that ever appeared on Dean's World. It's now a permanent part of the Best Discussions Archive.

Coverage starts at Eteraz.org

6:12pm Eastern--Go!

Who will have the Link of the Night this week?

For the second time in a generation, the United States faces the prospect of defeat at the hands of an insurgency. In April 1975, the U.S. fled the Republic of Vietnam, abandoning our allies to their fate at the hands of North Vietnamese communists. In 2007, Iraq’s grave and deteriorating condition offers diminishing hope for an American victory and portends risk of an even wider and more destructive regional war.

These debacles are not attributable to individual failures, but rather to a crisis in an entire institution: America’s general officer corps. America’s generals have failed to prepare our armed forces for war and advise civilian authorities on the application of force to achieve the aims of policy. The argument that follows consists of three elements. First, generals have a responsibility to society to provide policymakers with a correct estimate of strategic probabilities. Second, America’s generals in Vietnam and Iraq failed to perform this responsibility. Third, remedying the crisis in American generalship requires the intervention of Congress.

That was published today and written by an active-duty senior officer in the U.S. Army. You got a problem with that?

There was a conference on male victims of domestic violence this week. In West Virginia, no less.

Mea culpa, this is very late, but a DAHMW volunteer is on Volunteer Matches Spotlight for the month of April! Conga-rats!

Three weeks have passed, so it's fair to ask: Has there been any positive change in Syrian behavior -- any return gesture of goodwill, however slight?

Mr. al-Bunni might offer the best answer -- if he could. On Tuesday, one of Mr. Assad's judges sentenced him to five years in prison. His "crimes" were to speak out about the torture and persecution of regime opponents, to found the Syrian Human Rights Association and to sign the "Damascus Declaration," a pro-democracy manifesto.
...
What of the other items on the U.S. congressional agenda? Well, there has been a major surge in suicide bombings in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq this month, in what U.S. commanders describe as an attempt by al-Qaeda to defeat the new security operation in the capital. According to U.S. and Iraqi officials, almost all suicide bombers in Iraq are foreigners, and some 80 percent of them pass through Syria. The border remains as porous as ever.

It's a rude instrument, isn't it?

About three or so years ago, after having done a lot to support charitable and other causes in support of the liberation of Iraq, and having tirelessly blogged in support of the mission and the troops and the Iraqi people, I despaired of how many outright lies and distortions that many so-called "anti-war" partisans were trading in, and how widespread those lies and distortions were becoming. I proposed starting an Iraq War Wiki.

At one point a volunteer stepped forward and installed the software on my deanesmay.com domain, but then one way or another I failed to follow through on it because I was too tired and stressed and busy between blog, family, school, work, and my novel.

Now today I see the same old tired, nonsensical, bogus arguments that were so easily refuted then having taken charge in the dominant media and blogospheric space. It's terrible.

I'm tired of debunking the same old lies over and over again. Lies like:

* Most Americans believed Saddam was behind 9/11
* The invasion of Iraq was illegal
* The reason Americans were given was Weapons of Mass Destruction
* No one ever said anything about democracy or human rights until after the invasion.
* There was no plan for the occupation
* No one ever listened to the generals
* If only we'd gotten a security council resolution in our favor, we'd have had more than enough troops
* We rushed to war.

That's just a sample of the lies. There are plenty more, obviously. Obvious to those of us who were there and active in the debates anyway, but which most people seem never to have heard, or to have utterly forgotten.

It's time to start a wiki. I can't do it by myself. But I am willing to take the lead in getting it done. What we'll need is a few things: a small amount of funds for a domain and a server. Volunteers to install and maintain software, to help with design, and to help with administrators. And of course contributors, although contributors will be limited to people who support the effort and want to debunk the "anti-war" lies and propaganda.

I believe our tagline will be something like this:

"The Liberation of Iraq: We were not lied to. We were right to go there. We are right to be there now. It was, and is, a great and noble cause."

Of course, being a wiki, that could be tweaked. :-)

Will any of you step up to help? It won't take much effort--being a wiki, it's usually very easy.

Apparently, The Queen has returned.

I knew she couldn't stay away for long, and I knew she'd come around.

NSFW

Rosemary, its not for you; you've got kids.

In this thread about Gen. Petraeus resident anti-Islamophobe warrior Ali Eteraz said this:

" i opposed the war but even as i opposed it i was like: we cant do this alone. we went in with freaking poland (have they ever resisted anyone) and freaking spain (who still elect socialists). i mean, come on!"

Well, I for one appreciate learning all I can about Islam, so I don't mistakenly condemn the religion. I'd much rather condemn the fascist terrorists that are perverting it.

I'd appreciate it, if, in return people would READ HISTORY before making moronic claims about an entire group of PEOPLE that they obviously know NOTHING ABOUT.

Hypocrite!!!

For those of you that want to know about Poland and their many victories in war and their countless uprisings and resistance of Communism, Nazism and the like read it here. Better yet, you can read The History of Poland online.

Or you can just rely on the ignorance of others to guide you. But if you do, remember, I'll be waiting and I won't be this nice next time.

Update: Thanks to all of you, in the comments, for your support of Poland and her people. Your recognition of their valor and resistance in history is a soothing balm for the sting of ignorance displayed by others.

Here is a surprise:

WASHINGTON - U.S. officials who say there has been a dramatic drop in sectarian violence in Iraq since President Bush began sending more American troops into Baghdad aren't counting one of the main killers of Iraqi civilians.

Car bombs and other explosive devices have killed thousands of Iraqis in the past three years, but the administration doesn't include them in the casualty counts it has been citing as evidence that the surge of additional U.S. forces is beginning to defuse tensions between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.

President Bush explained why in a television interview on Tuesday. "If the standard of success is no car bombings or suicide bombings, we have just handed those who commit suicide bombings a huge victory," he told TV interviewer Charlie Rose.

Others, however, say that not counting bombing victims skews the evidence of how well the Baghdad security plan is protecting the civilian population - one of the surge's main goals.

"Since the administration keeps saying that failure is not an option, they are redefining success in a way that suits them," said James Denselow, an Iraq specialist at London-based Chatham House, a foreign policy think tank.

Bush administration officials have pointed to a dramatic decline in one category of deaths - the bodies dumped daily in Baghdad streets, which officials call sectarian murders - as evidence that the security plan is working. Bush said this week that that number had declined by 50 percent, a number confirmed by statistics compiled by McClatchy Newspapers.

But the number of people killed in explosive attacks is rising, the same statistics show - up from 323 in March, the first full month of the security plan, to 365 through April 24.

Overall, statistics indicate that the number of violent deaths has declined significantly since December, when 1,391 people died in Baghdad, either executed and found dead on the street or killed by bomb blasts. That number was 796 in March and 691 through April 24.

Nearly all of that decline, however, can be attributed to a drop in executions, most of which were blamed on Shiite Muslim militias aligned with the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Much of the decline occurred before the security plan began on Feb. 15, and since then radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has ordered his Mahdi Army militia to stand down.

According to the statistics, which McClatchy reporters in Baghdad compile daily from Iraqi police reports, 1,030 bodies were found in December. In January, that number declined 32 percent, to 699. It declined to 596 February and again to 473 in March.

Deaths from car bombings and improvised explosive devices, however, increased from 361 in December to a peak of 520 in February before dropping to 323 in March.

In that same period, the number of bombings has increased, as well. In December, there were 65 explosive attacks. That number was unchanged in January, but it rose to 72 in February, 74 in March and 81 through April 24.

And what better proof of that than this link to the weekly Jewish blog carnival, Haveil Havalim, which contains what I'm pretty sure is the first ever link from that august traveling show to yours truly.

What can I tell you? That which is crooked cannot be made straight; and that which is wanting cannot be numbered.

I think it's all over for John McCain. Not on the merits, but on the karma.

"How can the man who failed to prepare NYC for a second attack after the first one, quit the 9/11 commission because he was too busy raking in money from sketchy business deals, can't assess if the surge is working or if Iran and North Korea have nuclear weapons claim that he will keep America safe?"

( Karen Finney)

Rudy was the guy who, in the wake of 9/11 "threatened to challenge the law imposing term limits on elected New York City officials and run for another full four-year term, if the primary candidates did not consent to permit the extension of his mayoralty" (wikipedia). Such unAmerican behaviors cannot be tolerated in a president. He can't win my vote...

Talk amongst yourselves.

The Spaghettios discussion is getting pretty good, so I bumped it up...

Ariana:

Now they are willfully ignoring Petraeus' blueprint for success — and acting like they are following it to a tee. His newly-minted counterinsurgency approach calls for a ratio of 25 soldiers per 1,000 residents — which would require 120,000 soldiers to provide the proper security for Baghdad, and roughly three times that amount for all of Iraq. But let's just focus on the 120,000 soldiers that, according to the manual written by Petraeus — "the expert on counterinsurgency," remember? — are needed to secure Baghdad. Simply put: we're not even close to that number. And never will be. Even after all of the planned 21,500 additional troops are sent to the embattled capitol, there will still only be 85,000 security forces there — and that includes significant numbers of Iraqi security forces, whose readiness and loyalty have repeatedly proven to be unreliable at best.

So Petraeus says it will take 120,000 soldiers to succeed. Instead, he's being asked to do it on the cheap — and pretend that he's getting what he needs. And this is just in terms of troops. Petraeus' manual also says that a muscular military presence is just 20 percent of what is needed for a counterinsurgency effort to succeed — the other 80 consists of establishing political and economic reform, two areas in which the United States is also failing miserably.

Despite this, Petraeus, to his eternal discredit, is going along with the charade — probably crossing his fingers behind his back — and promising to let us know how it's really going sometime this summer. But we don't need to wait until sometime this summer. We can see the news, and count the bodies, and know for ourselves that this is all just another case of prolonging the inevitable, of asking more young men and women to die for a lost cause. For the first time since the war began, we've just had five straight months with 80 or more U.S. fatalities.

This reminds me of my post: a neo-con convinces me to leave iraq.

I a) didn't want to go fight a war in Iraq, but b) once we ended up there, I felt we needed to c) leave the place better than we found it, and d) before leaving had to provide for the country, so that e) upon our leaving, the country didn't become a humanitarian sinkhole. That point e was the real kicker for me, and until very recently I was getting kicked by the progressive left for holding the position [Yglesias]. In other words, until two weeks ago, I was not ready to leave Iraq. Now, thanks to a Neo-Conservative writer, I am ready.

I think its pretty clear that at this point Petraeus is not going to get 120,000 b/c public opinion won't let him. This is not like Leonidas in 300 where a few oligarchs blocked his action b/c America is a democracy, unlike Sparta. You must do the will of the majority; good or bad.

Looks like the Wall Street Journal has noticed something's up.

I'm wondering when I'm going to get some sort of apology from some folks who obviously owe me one. Probably never. Ah well.

Note to the Wall Street Journal, or other serious news organs: why exactly is Peter Duesberg a "pariah," as Scientific American called him? What exactly did he do wrong? He published a few invited papers that were approved by respected scientific editors and editorial peer reviewers (who had no financial conflicts of interest) that questioned the role of HIV in AIDS. Was it publishing those papers?

Is it because in his call for a public debate in the pages of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Robert Gallo agreed to debate him and then declared that he was too busy saving lives to be bothered?

What is it EXACTLY that this mild-mannered professor with an unorthodox opinion did that was so bad that even though ten years ago he advanced a hugely important theory in cancer research that everyone in the industry now acknowledges, he still can't get a grant application approved to save his life?

Since when did questioning established medical procedures make one a "pariah?" Why didn't it immediately become, "Well, Peter's just wrong here, but he's got a right to his odd opinions," which is the norm with most credible and qualified scientific dissenters? Just curious.

Why is he a pariah exactly? Some crack reporter should investigate and ask for more than the opinions of researchers who have clear financial conflicts of interest, no?

He took the time out to do African Malaria Awareness and danced with the musicians and dancers [video].

I think the CNN people laughing are retards.

Fine, whiteboy doesn't have rhythm, but you don't normally see Presidents dancing -- much less for a good cause.

There are times I believe Bush was sincere about Iraq (then I remember Rove, Cheney and Rummy).

Anyway, enjoy.

(Stolen from I Drew This)

Mark Steyn talks about the unpleasantness in Turkey — a situation that most of us have some trouble keeping score on:

For a year or more now, there’s been a steady drip of “Who lost Turkey?” stories. The modern secular Muslim state – a country that gave women the vote before Britain did and was Israel’s best friend in an otherwise hostile region – certainly, that Turkey seems to be being de-boned by the hour: it now has an Islamist government whose Prime Minister has canceled trade deals with Israel, denounced the Iraqi elections, and frosted out the US Ambassador because he was Jewish; a new edition of Mein Kampf is prominently displayed at the airport bookstore. In other words, the Zionist Entity’s best pal is starting to look like just another cookie-cutter death-to-the-Great-Satan stan-of-the-month.

What does he ascribe this to? Admitting that he has become the "in-house Demography Bore" at National Review, he says it's a matter of internal Turkish demographics:

Since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, there have been two Turkeys: the Turks of Rumelia, or European Turkey, and the Turks of Anatolia, or Asia Minor. . . Ataturk’s modern secular Turkey has simply been outbred by fiercely Islamic Turkey.

Read the rest.

I crossed into flake-land recently when I posted on global warming and its causes. However some of my readers, along with a nagging feeling in the back of my mind, convinced me that I was being too hasty jumping into Al Gore's parade.

Over the past few days I argued with my commenters, my wife and myself over the topic of global warming. During the process I realized that there were several arguments woven into the topic: Global warming is happening. Global warming is bad. Humanity is to blame for global warming. We should do something to fight global warming.

I recognized that I reject all of the arguments except for the first. I therefore had to go back to the post and admit my mistake.

I find some science issues easier than others to understand. Our climate has to be one of the most complex systems in the universe. I simply have not seen the evidence that would convince me that a) climate change is bad (it's a closed system so some people will win and others will lose) b) we are responsible for the warm-up and c) our efforts to fix the problem would not make it worse.

This doesn't mean that I will avoid buying a flex-fuel or hybrid the next time I buy a car, or that I won't use compact fluorescents in my lamps. Nor does it mean that I will never accept these arguments. However I need to be convinced that a field that can't predict the weather 2 weeks in advance can accurately forecast the weather in 50 years.

John Stossel has a good piece on divorce and parental alienation here. Of course the thing that triggered the piece was the Alec Baldwin answering machine message. If you’re interested in showing your support for “deadbolted dads,” Alec Baldwin has a court hearing  scheduled for May 4 at 8:30 a.m. at the Stanley Mosk Court House, Department CE60, 110 Grand Avenue, LA 90012. Members and supporters of NCFM, CRISPE, California Men’s Center and others will be there!

This week is National Crime Victims’ Rights Week. There are events acknowledging the week all over the country right now. It’s ironic that this week, the Yuma county attorney is having discussions with the Bill Kirkham family regarding a plea bargain for the woman charged with his murder. I’ll let you know the upshot of the discussions, but as Duane Kirkham, Bill’s brother (and BTW, pre-VAWA board member for Safe House, our local women’s shelter) said in an e-mail,  “I'm thinking the Prosecutor doesn't want to do all the work that would be required to prosecute a Complex Case like this one.”

Don't be surprised if it happens.

Is he doing it for the ratings?

This is the second in a two part article. Read Part One, Where Kurdistan Meets the Red Zone, here.

KIRKUK, IRAQ – Kirkuk, like Baghdad, is one of the most dangerous places in the world. Car bombs, suicide attacks, shootings, and massacres erupt somewhere in the city every day. It is ethnically divided between Arabs, Kurds, and Turkmens, and is a lightning rod for foreign powers (namely Turkey at this time) that interfere in the city’s politics in the hopes of staving off an ethnic unraveling of their own.

The city’s terrorists are mostly Baathists, not Islamists, and their racist ideology casts Kurds and Turkmens as enemies. They’re boxed in on all sides, though, and have a hard time operating outside their own neighborhoods. In their impotent rage they murder fellow Arabs by the dozens and hundreds. They have, in effect, strapped suicide belts around their entire community while the Kurds and Turkmens shudder and fight to keep the Baath in its box.

Kurdish and Turkmen neighborhoods are safer than the Arab quarter, but the city is out of control. Car bombs can and do explode anywhere at any time.

I spent the day with Peshmerga General “Mam” (Uncle) Rostam and Kirkuk’s Chief of Police Major Sherzad at a house Mam Rostam uses a base in an old Arab neighborhood that now belongs to the Kurds. Just after lunch Major Sherzad’s walkie-talkie began urgently squawking.

“There has been a shooting,” he said. “Two men on a motorcycle rode down the street and fired a gun at people walking on the sidewalk. One of the men was apprehended. They are bringing him here.”

For some reason I assumed when the chief said “here” he meant the police station. He did not. He meant Mam Rostam’s.

“They will be here in two minutes,” the chief said.

“Here?” I said. “They’re bringing him here? To the house?”

“They will bring him here before taking him down to the station,” he said. “I’ll interrogate him here. I’m not going to feel good until I slap him.”

An Iraqi Police truck pulled up in front of the house and slammed on the brakes.

“Here he is,” the chief said.

I grabbed my video camera, flipped the switch to on, and ran out the door.

read the rest and watch the video at michaeltotten.com

Despite the fact that I generally swear like an angry sailor, and don't worry about language in the comments, this is why I don't allow swearing on the front page.

I've known about this for some time, having worked in company after company that locks people out of surfing sites that have certain types of language.

I hate having this site become unavailable to someone just because some corporate lackey decided that it was unacceptable for the "f" word to be seen by an employee while they're surfing the 'net on break or on lunch.

In my current and last job I've been forced to learn a lot about Sarbanes-Oxley, the legislation that increased corporate accountability in the wake of Enron and similar scandals back in the early 2000s.

I've heard a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth over it, and how it's supposedly so damaging, but the more I learn about it and see it in action the less sympathy I have for that perspective. It can be a pain in the butt to implement, but only if your corporation doesn't have a very well-defined set of business processes and controls it works under already. If it does, adding Sarb-Ox is not that big a deal. If it doesn't, Sarb-Ox requirements are likely to force you to make reforms to how you do things that you probably needed to be doing anyway, and will usually result in more efficient and streamlined operations.

I've also heard a lot about how supposedly this legislation is hurting companies that trade on the U.S. stock market, but guess what? Soon it'll be required that even if your stock is traded in a foreign market, if you want to do business in this country you must be Sarb-Ox compliant anyway. So the implementation costs are really spread pretty fairly.

(The libertarians will pipe up that it's none of the government's business to regulate corporate behavior. Bollox. These are publicly traded, artificial entities that only exist because the government allows them to exist. They are not individual entrepreneurs or a natural expression of the free market anyway. Furthermore, regulation of interstate commerce is one of the core functions of the government. We'll be in true Libertarian Land when the state stops recognizing these artificial entities and granting them rights and privileges that individuals can't hope to achieve by themselves. Until then, spare us the rhetoric if we talk about how to regulate their behavior to make them behave appropriately within our society.)

This term was invented by Charles Schulz, who has Lucy look Charlie Brown in the eye squarely one day and breaks the news to him: Charlie Brown, you have a failure face.

Schulz is gone, but I just realized -- just looking at it -- that we have once again encountered a failure face for our time.

Boy, it's good to see that it took Democrats only three months to prove that they're in no way, shape, or form better than the Republicans were.

Well, except that they want to cut the knees out from under General Petreus and stab the Iraqi people in the back.

(Via Instapundit.)

“I listen a little to the Democrats and if one of them gets elected, we are going on defense,” Giuliani continued. “We will wave the white flag on Iraq. We will cut back on the Patriot Act, electronic surveillance, interrogation and we will be back to our pre-Sept. 11 attitude of defense.”
...
“This war ends when they stop coming here to kill us!” Giuliani said in his speech.
...
Giuliani continued: “The freedoms we have are in conflict with the perverted, maniacal interpretation of their religion.” He said Americans would fight for “freedom for women, the freedom of elections, freedom of religion and the freedom of our economy.”

I may post something tomorrow before work but I'm not sure I'll have time. I'm still enjoying American Idol (and still laugh at people who smirk at that, as if enjoying a singing competition is worthy of condescension, but enjoying a sports game or something is totally okay).

Anyway, feel free to post your own thoughts here tonight one way or the other.

Me, I'm thinking of becoming a Mormon just so I can make Melinda my second wife. I'm sure The Queen won't mind....

By the way, yes, tomorrow night when the results are announced I will almost certainly post it here. If you don't want to know the results, then don't read. I hate playing the whole "hide it" game. You're adults, you make your choices.

A lot of people, including Terry Ross, the editor of our local newspaper, have been bemoaning the state of TV news as it is, the way they just keep on tossing the same stuff out to the viewers. One story is pretty much all you get these days, until you can't stand to hear any more.

Dave Winer's got a great idea. He calls it Checkbox News. (More explanation at the link.)

I like this idea, and would take it one step further, like this:

Well, two:
 
____   I would like no commercial information
 
I would like commercial information on the following products and services:
 
 ____Insurance____Drugs____Automotive____Home care products___Pet food___Financial services
 
___etc ___etc___ etc  --- you get the idea! 

This expands the range of possible advertisers far past the current shot-in-the-dark approach. I would love advertising if they'd feature things I'm interested in or looking for. Probably the only thing I'll ever agree with Gloria Steinem on is that most women's magazines — and lately most magazines of any kind — are more like catalogs than anything else, and quite often TV news programs are much the same way.

The other day my husband left the TV on when he went to work. I was in the kitchen making potato salad for that nite's dinner, not paying much attention, and I thought he'd been watching infomercials, from the tone of it. I went to turn off the TV later, and found it was actually CNN that was on. H'mmm...

I'd like to round up every member of Congress, all the reps and senators, and put them through a 3 month course at the John A. Eddy Critical Thinking Boot Camp for The Chronically Shortsighted and Partisan.

That is all.

Interesting.

Well it's no surprise. I remember when it first came out and telling some of my geek friends it was clearly the best search engine ever, but they didn't believe me. Within 6 months they were all using it.

I also remember all the people who said Google couldn't be profitable.

Today (or so) is Israeli Independence Day — Yom Ha'atzmaut.

Chaim the Lesser — a yeshiva student in California who writes extraordinary well-researched, somewhat dense and, frequently unreadable (if you're unitiated) articles on Jewish topics — says, "In recognition of Yom Ha'atzmaut, I decided that today's Qoton Qlassic post is an old discussion about the varying points of view within traditional Judaism concerning Zionism. Excerpt:

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) categorized the U.N. proclamation [defining Zionism as racism] as “anti-Semitic;” however, this description is not necessarily accurate because Judaism and Zionism have distinct identities, for some Jews are not Zionists (e.g. anti-Zionists, a-Zionists) and some Zionists are not Jews (e.g. Christian Zionists and the waning American liberal Zionists). It is unclear exactly which flavor of Zionism was referenced in the United Nations’ referendum because of the vagueness of the United Nations’ condemnation of Zionism and the multitude of differing diverse Jewish views on Zionism.

(I have posting privileges at Reb Chaim's blog, by the way, which I have only used two or three times.)

"Chaim the Lesser" is my translation of Chaim's blog's actual name, "R' Chaim HaQoton" — literally "little Chaim," an allusion to his model, Chaim the Greater, i.e., the truly great Rabbi Chaim Soloveitchik, known as Reb Chaim Brisker. "Reb" is an informal, affectionate appellation meaning something short of "Rabbi" and something more than Mister. (Many of the most beloved orthodox rabbis are known as "Reb" even though they are very much rabbis.) "Brisker" means from the town of Brisk, i.e., Brest-Litovsk. Its most famous son, Reb Chaim Brisker was one of the greatest and influential talmudical minds and overall influential figures in orthodox Judaism of the last century or so.

My friend Reb Chaim is no Chaim Brisker — not yet. But he's klugeh yung (smart kid) in his own right and, as usual, he covers all the bases in this article to which I've linked. Just get comfortable.

Sgt. Harding, now serving his fourth tour of duty with the 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines, said things are much better than several months ago:
...
"They are calling it the Al Anbar Awakening," Sgt. Harding said. "Many sheiks have united. They realized the Americans are not leaving. At first the sheiks supported the terrorists -- this was when I was here last time and it was all-out gunbattles and [improvised explosive devices] and suicide bombings. Now sheiks realize Americans have money and power and are not leaving. So half of them, Sunnis, have decided to work with the U.S. to get rid of the terrorists."

Although half of Ramadi is a war zone, the other half is becoming secure with open schools, businesses and hospitals, he said.

"So much progress has happened! My friends who died here did not die in vain. It moves me deeply. I feel tears welling up in me as I type this." Like many deployed in Iraq, Sgt. Harding had no kind words for the press covering the war. He said he wanted people back home to know what's going on in Ramadi and Anbar and not the "if it bleeds, it leads," reporting mentality of most newspapers and television stations.

Gen Petraeus is treating the war like a counter-insurgency rather than a stability operation. For non-military personnel, there is a HUGE difference between the two. What we've been doing in Iraq since Petraeus took over is completely different than what we were doing under Gen Casey.

There's very interesting primer on Islam from Col. Patrick Lang that you might be interested in listening to. It's a commitment—over an hour—but it's well worth it.

He discusses the nature of Islam as a religion and its major sects e.g. Sunnism, Shi'ism, and Sufism.

Col. Lang was the first person to teach Arabic at West Point. He's retired now but he had a lengthy career as a Middle East expert for the Army (it was considered something of a dead-end job).

I don't think there's anything that could be worse, politically, for the Republicans — any version of reality, any story about a screwup, any spin on Iraq — that could be worse than its present political situation.

So, is there anything to this story?

The next morning, back at the hotel, I found myself thumbing through her journal entries. Like lots of personal journals, they were scattershot and rambling, although sometimes compelling.

—[Begin Journal entry]—

Why would I allow myself to love? For me love is both a selfish indulgence and an invitation to despair. It is destructive to the object of my affections, for if they return my love they make themselves a part of a relationship that can only leave them childless and in their grave. One could reasonably argue that for me to allow anyone to love me borders upon naked criminality.

In very condensed form those are the arguments I use when I find myself tempted to fall into that delusional state. They carry no small weight with me, both morally and intellectually, and I wield them as a club to destroy any hope I might foolishly allow myself to hold when it comes to the subject of love.