Dean's World

Summer is ending, or so they say.

5:54 pm Eastern: Open thread go!

Dean's right — it really is like déjà vu.

The order of the trial court invalidating the no-same-sex law was just stayed.

Some excellent reading.

It's amazing how many people will willingly believe the worst about the US military under almost any circumstances.

I suspect there's going to be more than one lawsuit out of this.

Eric wonders if it's ever possible to permanently debunk something.

Well, you could always start a wiki!

Oh God, here we go again.

This will, I predict, just hurt the gay community and the cause of simple fairness, just like it did during the last couple of election cycles.

Using the courts this way is so foolishly destructive.

Instapundit has some good links this AM!

The other day when the news was All-Katrina-Retrospective-All-the-Time, (before they switched to All-Diana-Retrospective-All-the-Time), I had the TV on in the other room while I worked. While I wandered in to retrieve my coffee cup, they were showing a lady who lived in what appeared to be a new 12x70 mobile with a nice redwood deck, and I was thinking that was a good example of somebody recovering.

Noooo…

Later on, I went in to sit down and have some lunch, and there she was again. Only this time they were talking about some anonymous donor who’d provided this poor, downtrodden woman with $100,000+ to rebuild her house.

Oh boy, talk about weird standards! Here I am working two jobs so I can ultimately get what this other lady has already been handed for free, just because she lives in New Orleans. Hundreds, if not thousands of families in Arizona and elsewhere would give their eye teeth for that rejected single-wide.

I’m done feeling sorry for those people, that’s fer sure!

The Watcher's Council has announced its picks for the most outstanding posts of the preceding week. The winning Council post was Big Lizard's post, “NYT: Analogies Are Meaningless (Unless They Favor the Left)”. Second place honors went to Soccer Dad's “Separate But Unequal” Soccer Dad compares the reactions to two charter schools.

The winning non-Council post was The Dissident Frogman's Like a Suppository, Only a Bit Stronger". The Frogman is the blogosphere's outstanding visual communicator and his treatment of a Reuter's report on Coalition attacks on Iraqi civilians is effective, telling, and hysterically funny. Second place honors went to Confederate Yankee's “Misfire: AP's Bogus Ammo Shortage Story”.

The complete results are here.

If you would like to have your post considered by the Council, the rules for doing so are here.

Had a visit with my family physician today. Best doctor I ever had. And I mean that without reservation: she's the best doc ever ever. She really listens, she's respectful, she cares, and she's not a wimp. She really knows her sh*t, she can disagree with me but respect my disagreement, and she really cares. God I love her.

She's also maybe ten years my senior. And I caught her today in a "senior moment." We were sitting there after the office visit and she was talking to her staff, and she said, "OK so check me on this, tomorrow is July 31, right?"

I immediately said, "Uh, no."

"OK, tomorrow is September 1?"

"Uh, no?"

Now, see, a really stupid person would say "wow, this doctor is totally addled and can't find up from down." But the intelligent person says, "This is my very intelligent doc, who just made a fencepost error."

If you think you're above a fencepost error, you're an idiot.

And you know how I know she is one of the best family physicians ever? When she asked that question, I said, "Do you know what year it is? Do you know who is the President of the United States? Can you follow my finger?" as I waved it in front of her face.

See, now, you think I was being sarcastic and snotty. But this is the moment in which I knew I loved her:

She busted out laughing and said, "Hahahaa, you got me!"

That, my friend, is a family physician you want forever.

I wouldn't just trust my life with this woman. I'd trust my wife and children with this woman. Not that she's perfect (she ain't, no one is) but she knows her calling.

Media Research Center (a conservative research group) concluded a six month study of bias on...

...all campaign stories on the three broadcast network morning programs from January 1 to July 31, 2007. Compared to cable news, ABC’s Good Morning America, CBS’s The Early Show and NBC’s Today have a much larger combined audience — 13.7 million viewers during the first three months of this year, nine times as many as watch CNN, FNC and MSNBC combined at the same hours.

What they found is, well, unsurprising to everyone with an open mind.

Here's just a sampling of the blatant bias shown in favor of the liberal agenda and Democrats in general:

#1

More than half of all campaign segments (284, or 55%) focused on the Democrats, compared with just 152 (29%) devoted to the Republican candidates. Another 13 percent (66 stories) contained discussions of both parties, while 15 stories (3% of the total) focused on a possible independent candidacy of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

#2 Democrats are spoken of in positive terms while Republicans are spoken of in negative terms.

#3

When it came to airtime, the Democratic advantage was even more pronounced. Interviews with the various Democratic campaigns totaled 275 minutes of coverage, or roughly four and a half hours. In contrast, the Republicans garnered only 104 minutes of morning show airtime (1 hour, 44 minutes), a greater than two-to-one disparity.

#4 Hillary Clinton ranked 1st with on-air face time at nearly 90 minutes. Her nearest Republican rival ranked 5th at 40 minutes. Al Gore, not even an announced candidate, ranked 4th at 48 minutes.

#5

Of the 111 agenda questions posed to Democrats, more than twice as many reflected liberal priorities (77, or 69%) as confronted the candidate with a conservative point (34, or 31%).

Of the 45 agenda questions posed to the GOP candidates, 37 of them (82%) were predicated on liberal ideas, compared to just eight questions (18%) that reflected a conservative agenda.

And on and on. Read the report yourself.

Again, this is nothing surprising to a person with an open mind - liberal or conservative. It's just sickening to think the media doesn't think we notice. Or worse. They actually believe it's not there.

I don't like John Edwards. It's not because he's a Democrat. There are quite a few Dems I like including Virginia's Jim Webb and Montana's Jon Tester. It's not because he ran under John Kerry, or drops more money on a haircut than I do on four years worth of them.

I don't like John Edwards for a multitude of reasons but the biggest by far is the fact that he made his fortune by suing doctors out of business. He blamed psychiatrists for the suicide of their patients, and cases of cerebral palsy on the obstetricians who delivered the kids suffering from it.

He ruined the lives of highly trained professionals, and preyed upon distraught families. His actions contributed to the exodus of physicians out of his state. In 2005 Sen. Elizabeth Dole noted that North Carolina, Edwards's home state, is one of 20 considered be in a medical liability crisis.

Women in underserved rural areas have been hit particularly hard by the loss of Ob-Gyn doctors leaving their states. The loss of even one Ob-Gyn can leave these women without critical and needed care.

“Right now, because Ob-Gyns are fleeing their practice, women are being denied access to this critical specialty. This means that women aren’t receiving preventive tests that can save lives, and pregnant women must travel great distances to have their babies delivered...

Yet in front of a labor group he demanded Americans sacrifice their SUVs while he owns 3 of the things. When asked to explain this hypocrisy, he did what any oily politician does: he ignored the question and trotted out Horatio Alger.

"I have no apologies whatsoever for what I've done with my life," he said to loud cheers. "My entire life has been about the same cause, which is making sure wherever you come from, whatever your family is, whatever the color of your skin, you get a real chance to do something great in this country."

John Edwards isn't just a hypocrite who lives in a house ten times the size of the average American's yet expects us to sacrifice for the environment. He's much worse - a righteous hypocrite who truly believes that it's okay for him to live in his mansion paid for by his ill-gotten albeit completely legal gains while the rest of us drive smaller cars and lower our thermostats. In his heart he believes that this wealth, accumulated by winning 50 cases with verdicts of $1 million or more - 31 of those for medical malpractice - is a shining example of what makes America great.

Forget Oprah working her way up from a small town in Mississippi, or Bill Gates using his keen business sense and technological savvy to build and eventually redefine an entire industry; John Edwards sued his way to success. Where men like Warren Buffett amassed a fortune through creating businesses, John Edwards made his by destroying careers and lives.

The only cold comfort I can take is the fact that he will unlikely never achieve his goal of becoming president of the United States. He may serve a Democratic president in a cabinet position, but he will never hear "Hail to the Chief" played when he enters a room.

You know how you occasionally come across a movie you can just watch over and over and over again and not get tired of it? That seems to happen less and less as you get older... at least, it's sure seemed like it happens less and less as I get older. I figured I'd seen and read so much that just being captivated like that wouldn't come along again.

But then to my delight, and almost completely by accident, I stumbled upon Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. It's a humorous film noir parody with all the wit and sophistication of classic Hollywood movies like The Thin Man. The plot may be thin but the acting and dialogue and the humor are exceptional. Every time I watch it I catch a line or a moment I hadn't noticed the last time. I've probably watched it ten times in the last few weeks.

Michelle Monaghan as Harmony Faith Lane give as classic a performance as I can remember in a film like this--she reminds me of a foul-mouthed Myrna Loy. Robert Downey Jr. and Val Kilmer are exceptional. Indeed, I developed a newfound respect for Kilmer in particular.

This is definitely not a "family" moving--lots of four-letter words and such--but it's urbane, witty, clever, gritty, violent, and hilarious.

It's when I read things like this that I wonder why people on both the left and the right, as well as the center, don't feel their blood boiling.

Agricultural subsidies are dependent on one thing it seems: the romantic illusion that desperate, hard-working farmers just can't manage to continue to produce food and survive. It's ridiculous.

There is an absolutely fascinating post over at SWJ Blog from David Kilcullen on the origins of the tribal revolt in Iraq.

Some tribal leaders told me that the split started over women. This is not as odd as it sounds. One of AQ’s standard techniques, which I have seen them apply in places as diverse as Somalia, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Indonesia, is to marry leaders and key operatives to women from prominent tribal families. The strategy works by creating a bond with the community, exploiting kinship-based alliances, and so “embedding” the AQ network into the society. Over time, this makes AQ part of the social landscape, allows them to manipulate local people and makes it harder for outsiders to pry the network apart from the population. (Last year, while working in the tribal agencies along Pakistan’s North-West Frontier, a Khyber Rifles officer told me “we Punjabis are the foreigners here: al Qa’ida have been here 25 years and have married into the Pashtun hill-tribes to the point where it’s hard to tell the terrorists from everyone else.”) Well, indeed.

As I understand it Arabizing local populations through intermarriage is a practice that goes back thousands of years. Apparently, Al Qaeda has adopted the strategy themselves as a method of creating bonds with local populations. Unfortunately for AQ, the approach runs afoul of Iraqi tribal customs since they are, reportedly, endogamous with respect to tribe.

Marrying women to strangers, let alone foreigners, is just not done. AQ, with their hyper-reductionist version of “Islam” stripped of cultural content, discounted the tribes’ view as ignorant, stupid and sinful.

This led to violence, as these things do: AQI killed a sheikh over his refusal to give daughters of his tribe to them in marriage, which created a revenge obligation (tha’r) on his people, who attacked AQI. The terrorists retaliated with immense brutality, killing the children of a prominent sheikh in a particularly gruesome manner, witnesses told us. This was the last straw, they said, and the tribes rose up. Neighboring clans joined the fight, which escalated as AQI (who had generally worn out their welcome through high-handedness) tried to crush the revolt through more atrocities. Soon the uprising took off, spreading along kinship lines through Anbar and into neighboring provinces.

I guess it's not just Americans who are unsensitive to local customs.

The post goes on to describe conflicts between tribal organizations and AQ over business operations (legal and illegal), AQ's links with Iran, the form that the tribal revolt might take in Baghdad, and future prospects.

Highly recommended.

Cross-posted from The Glittering Eye

Fidel Castro endorses Hillary and Obama, and says Democrats only support democracy in Cuba because of Florida's Cuban Exile community.

I'm hoping the Clinton and Obama campaigns have a bruising response.

Dean alerted me to a pretty good discussion on domestic violence going on at Dr. Helen’s blog. Seems there’s a new study conducted by the CDC that suggests men shouldn’t be overlooked as victims of DV.

There have been more of these as time goes by, and I do get a little bit of hope from them. Of course, as Alaysia, a commenter at Doc Helen’s pointed out, the DV industry is made up of many true believers who will do anything; twist any situation, to make it the fault of the man in the relationship.

At the upper echelons of the industry are many self-styled “women’s advocates” who’ve crafted lucrative careers for themselves out of the misery of families everywhere. When I’ve pointed this out in the past, I’ve often been chided by shelter workers and others who claim “nobody’s ever gotten rich off domestic violence.”

While it’s true that at the lower levels of the industry you find people working long hours for little or no pay, those same people never seem to recognize the disconnect. Nor do they ask why it is an organization such as the National Domestic Violence Hotline, which provides relatively little service, has a yearly budget in the multiple millions of dollars and can afford to pay people $37K a year to answer the phone. (This is as of 2005 – the budget has certainly increased by now.)

I’ve said much of this here before, so I won’t belabor the point.

However, what my experience in social services has taught me is that in agencies large and small, there are those who live off the power they hold over other people, and the awesome control they can exert over not only families, but entire communities. When you’re dealing with people teetering on the edge of ruin, the actions of a single individual can determine whether a family emerges from their crisis, or is destroyed. It doesn’t take long working in this field to realize how that works, and it can be seductive as any drug for those who can’t (or won’t) detach.

The scary thing for me is that so many of these people have convinced themselves they’re working for some kind of warped concept of goodness. They honestly believe the bizarre, irrational doctrine that accompanies so much of what constitutes the “conventional wisdom” regarding domestic violence.

Had the agencies providing their questionable “help” for battered women been left in the private sector, the worst of them would have closed down by now, leaving the more-egalitarian agencies to progress, and seek better solutions. In fact, what I hear is that immediately prior to the 1994 passage of the Violence Against Women Act, many agencies were poised to open their doors to male victims, and figure out what to do about the issue as a whole. But VAWA prevented them from doing that, and so what we have now are stagnated services that do little or nothing, while costing the public amazing amounts of money.

The ironic thing is that properly-run services with a balanced, and focused  perspective would cost a fraction of what’s being spent now.

But we have to somehow get past the ideologues and the profiteers first, and I’m not really sure how to do that.

UPDATE: Some interesting commentary from female abusers & feminists, etc...

A couple of the comments in this week's CotL were about Jordan and made me think back. One of the finest blog posts I've ever read was actually a comment which Michael J. Totten was prudent enough to rescue from his comments section and turn into a post. The author of the comment posted under a pseudonym, TmjUtah, and has his own blog, Three Rounds Brisk, which has been inactive for a little while now.

So check out the post and read about Jordan, Captain Abby, and one GI's reminiscenses. I don't agree with everything that TmjUtah has to say but I certainly found this post interesting.

LOL!

Hmm.

Is this something real, or one of those goofy internet "cough really hard if you think you're having a heart attack" things that float around the internets?

Don't miss Michael Totten's latest.

If this is the worst we're looking at in Iraq, as opposed to all the more positive parts, it's amazing Americans (and Iraqis) are feeling so defeatist.

Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID) denies he solicited sex in a men's bathroom at the airport in Minneapolis. This is not the first time the senator has been implicated in gay scandals. His behavior during the Congressional Page scandal raised quite a few eyebrows.

I have no sympathy for hypocritical leadership. I don't care whether its closet cases like this guy or Al Gore pumping the air full of CO2 so he can leave the lights on in his mansion.

My feeling is that this guy's identity is so twisted after years in the closet that he honestly believes he's not gay... He just likes sex with men in public bathrooms.

David Limbaugh writes a piece here that lays bare the hypocrisy of the secularist movement. There isn't a single bit I disagree with. Nor, I think it should be noted, should any secularist (or religionist for that matter) that's the least bit honest with themselves.

The secular left condemns traditionalists for "legislating morality" and invading our bedrooms. Their quasi-religious fervor apparently blinds them to their efforts to wield governmental power to impose their own values, whether on homosexual marriage, abortion, wealth redistribution or socialized medicine.

When pushing out one idea the void must be filled with another. You can't, as Limbaugh points out, complain one group is legislating morality when you yourself seek to do the same thing.

A little honesty is all we need here. Secularists seek to rewrite this nation in their image. As is their right. But to do so by dishonest means is unacceptable.

Good ideas stand under the light of honest scrutiny. Given the underhanded tactics favored by many on the left, I have to conclude they know their ideas are radical and largely unacceptable to common Americans across the nation.

Secularists have every right to advocate the adoption of their values by our society. But they are hypocritical to deny they do so and for castigating Christians for doing the same.

Indeed.

Welcome to the Carnival of the Liberated, a sampler of some of the best posts of the week from Iraqi and Afghan bloggers. It has been very, very quiet in the Iraqi blogosphere. This week we have misperceptions, a blogiversary, a history of Jordan, and much, much more.

Sanjar makes an interesting case that NATO personnel are involved in trafficking in stolen goods and drugs.

Baghdad Connect paints a somewhat different picture of Iraqi Kurdistan than the one you may have been hearing.

Short version of Roads to Iraq's take on the recently-announced “Unity Accord”: it's a plot to interfere with pan-Arab nationalism.

Speaking of pan-Arab nationalism, Iraqi Konfused Kid has a post about the lousy treatment of Iraqis by Jordanians and emphasizes two points:

a) WE ARE ALL ARAB. and most importantly
b) ARABS BEAT THE S*** OUT OF EACH OTHER ALL THE TIME.

Hammorabi has a lengthy post on the decline of America that includes the following sentence which I'll quote here for your edification and enlightenment:

It is wrong for the USA to consider its war against terrorism as a war against Islam and Muslims. This will certainly hasten its decline and America will never ever win such a war.

Last of Iraqis catalogues the perceptions of his fellow Iraqis about Westerners.

neurotic iraqi wife reflects on her third blogiversary.

The Shaqawa posts a short history of Jordan.

I generally avoid linking to posts from ex-pats but I think you'll like Treasure of Baghdad's post, a great distillation of the immigrant experience in America.

Dave Schuler posts regularly to his own weblog, The Glittering Eye. The Carnival was originally conceived by Ryan Boots.

Does this fall under the rubric of “cruel or unusual punishment”?

Scott McCausland, who used to be an administrator of the EliteTorrents BitTorrent server before it was shut down by the FBI, pleaded guilty in 2006 to two copyright-related charges over the uploading of Star Wars: Episode III to the Internet. As a result, he was sentenced to five months in jail and five months' home confinement.

McCausland--who also goes by the name "sk0t"--has since been released from jail, but on Tuesday he reported on his blog that the terms of his sentence meant he would have to install Windows if he wanted to use a computer during his probation. "I had a meeting with my probation officer today, and he told me that he has to install monitoring software onto my PC," wrote McCausland. "No big deal to me...that is part of my sentence."

"However, their software doesn't support GNU/Linux (which is what I use)," continued McCausland. "So, he told me that if I want to use a computer, I would have to use an OS that the software can be installed on. Which basically means: Microsoft and monitoring software or no computer. I use Ubuntu 7.04 now, and they are trying to force me to switch. First they give me two felonies, then they throw me in prison, and now this."

Remember that fiction contest I mentioned earlier in the month?

Well, the first chapter of my romance novel, Dragon, is up at Gather and ready to be read and commented upon!

Remember, you need to sign in as a member to vote/comment and only the 10 votes count. Because this is me writing this, a vote for my book is also a vote for man-friendly fiction. There are no "beta" males or political correctness in my books -- just human beings, who in this case, find themselves in a strange situation and happen to fall in love while making the best of things.

Even if you don't like mainstream fiction, you might like this one!

The main prize in this contest is a contract with Simon & Schuster and a $5000 advance. I've got other books sitting on my hard drive, so this is a chance to begin making some changes in the way men are portrayed in popular fiction. Not to mention giving a fellow blogger a chance at a crossover gig!

So get over and vote -- and tell your friends!

How not to manage an Internet-based corporate embarrassment:

In case you missed it, Michael Vick took the podium this morning to publicly apologize after pleading guilty to dogfighting conspiracy. I analyze his apology here.

I don't think the apology goes far enough; it can't because there are still legal proceedings going on. But what does immaturity have to do with dog fighting?

He still doesn't get it.

Circa 1000 BCE

After Saennuz was gone life continued fairly quietly, at least for a while. The chief, Manniz, was only mildly irritated at the turn of events, cementing my certainty that he had been looking to be rid of his overbearing mate and would not be inclined to question me too closely.

My own position within the clan was still somewhat precarious, however; I had some skills as a shaman, but the shaman woman, Oskuz, viewed me as a competitor in this area. She had also been close to Saennuz and I believe she suspected me.

Worse still, everyone—men and women alike—viewed game caught by a woman as an affront to the men of the tribe. Normally I would not mind for I still enjoyed gathering and preparing foods and tending to animals, and the men in the tribe were kind to me. But it was challenging to make myself be seen as truly valuable and trusted and I found myself despondent again, wondering why I should care about anything.

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I never quite understood the strange internet phenomenon of "LOL Cats" until I read this Anil Dash essay.

Then I finally started to get it, and to enjoy this site.

I finally saw Pan's Labyrinth. This is a true fairy tale in the mold of the Brothers Grimm--i.e. quite disturbing and completely unlike sanitized Disney-style fairy tales. The director interweaves his tale with the tale of 1940s civil war Spain. What a masterpiece.

Not for young children. Also shot entirely in Spanish, and I doubt many kids would sit through the subtitles anyway. I could write a lot about this but it's a fabulous film, best fantasy piece I've seen in years.

Just despicable.

The government research-industrial establishment always acts to defend itself and to preserve the status quo, just like any big government or big corporate entity will.

Science has become horribly corrupted by this dysfuncitional system. What's the excuse that the corporate and government bureaucrats who call themselves "scientists" will use for this? Oh, right, we can only allow authorized people with millions of dollars of funding and decades of research experience to experiment with drugs that could potentially save dying people. We need tens of millions of dollars and years and years of careful research before maybe we'll let dying people with no hope at all access to things like this.

Pathetic.

A moving story.

No, really.

At least, that's what they say. The phrase is from some movie that made a lot of people very rich -- "Dirty Dancing." Never saw it, but let's consider this as a business proposition.

So as I said. The movie made a lot of money; everybody got very rich. Very rich is good, right? Well, for some folks, it's never enough. And what is the among the first refuges of the greedy scoundrel? The trademark laws. What a shame.

From the Hindustan Times

Hundreds of “harassed” husbands, including IIT and IIM grads, engineers, doctors, lawyers and NRIs, will gather at Jantar Mantar on Sunday as part of the countrywide protest against dowry harassment and the more recent domestic violence laws. "We are all victims of these biased laws,” says Swarup Sarkar of Save Indian Family Foundation, the organiser.

On National Public Radio (of which I am a daily listener), an explanation for Fred Thompson's coyness about his candidacy has been put forth a few times:

If he declares openly his candidacy, the producers of Law & Order and NBC might be legally forced to pull already-filmed but not-yet-aired episodes of off the air because of "equal time" rules from the FCC. Not just Fred, but the other actors, as well as the producers, writers, network, etc. would stand to lose all sorts of money and recognition, just because the campaign laws would force them to pull them without airing. With all sorts of people's careers being screwed simply because Fred couldn't wait to make his "official" announcement.

None of this, by the way, should be taken as evidence that I support Fred Thompson for President. Actually I don't. I like him but I don't think he's sufficiently qualified for the office. He's marginally more qualified than, say, Barak Obama, but only marginally. In terms of executive experience, his entire resume amounts to managing a small Senatorial office staff and being a mid-level prosecuting attorney. Which is a little better than Barak's experience as a state legislator-turned-Freshman-US Senator, but not a lot better. I frankly don't think either man is really qualified for the office of President of the United States, whatever their other merits as human beings.

That said, it's pretty obvious to me: Thompson is waiting until the last episode of his TV series is aired before announcing that he is an "official candidate." And for that, I can't blame him: he doesn't want to screw his co-workers. Once those episodes have aired in early September, he's free to openly announce his candidacy.

By the way, would I vote for him in November 2008? 50/50. I frankly like Hillary a bit more than I like Fred. I'm just saying: Fred's coyness probably ends early September, once the last canned episode of Law & Order finally airs.

6:20pm Eastern: Go.

The folks at Babalu blog are pretty sure he is. Hit their page and just scroll.

It may be just another rumor but a lot of them seem to think it's real this time, and that the Cuban state is merely keeping a temporary lid on it.

I recently caught Red Planet. I'd heard it sucked, but I think it got kicked around too much. The acting was decent, the story was kind of standard old school science fiction, nothing spectacular but hardly awful. It has absolutely nothing to do with the Heinlein novel of the same name by the way--as in, it was never intended to be in any way an adaptation of Heinlein. No relation at all, just a shared title.

It was competently directed and well-acted. I'm really kind of surprised the director never worked again in film. No way it was that bad.

My respect for New York Times correspondents has gone up.

History is not going to be kind to the likes of profiteering demagogues like Bill Maher.

Meanwhile, much to some people's evident frustration, things continue to improve in Iraq.

Plenty happened while I was in L.A., fighting traffic and working. At least the weather cooperated this time. Everybody was complaining about the heat – 100° at times –  but I was right at home in it!

Just before I hit the road, an article in a British paper caught my eye. Check it out:

"For those who think Indonesia is a world away a recent study showed that a third of men in the UK think domestic violence is acceptable.

"Staggeringly and more than half polled said it was a domestic issue and shouldn't involve the law."

Well, those answering the poll did not say DV was “acceptable,” they just said it shouldn’t involve the law. That is something else entirely.

In fact, this piece in the NY Times suggests DV laws are beginning to have negative consequences. (Not like I didn’t know that already, but it’s good to see the light going on in other places)

While I was away, Margo Moore AKA Kirkham was sentenced here in Yuma for the death of Bill Kirkham a year ago. She got three years jail time and three years intensive probation for a drug charge. Comments on the news article in the Yuma Sun are not quite what you’d expect, BTW. Also of note is the fact the defendant’s own brother was happy to see this girl behind bars.

I was fairly pleased with the sentence, because it is the longest in recent memory for one of these cases. For example, Mary Winkler only served 67 days, and that was not even in a jail.

In the WSJ, Jeff Zaslow wonders if we’re teaching our kids to be fearful of men. (Hat tip: Instapundit) Well, duh…

The piece includes this quote:

Virginia's campaign was designed to encourage people to trust their instincts about possible abuse, says Rebecca Odor, director of sexual and domestic violence prevention for the state health department. She stands by the ads, pointing out that 89% of child sex-abuse perpetrators in Virginia are male.

What Ms. Odor doesn’t say is where her figure of 89% comes from. Most likely, it’s the number of convictions or arrests for child sex abuse crimes, which is not the same as the number of actual perpetrators of child abuse in the general population. Nobody really knows that number, but all indications are that when it comes to child abuse in general, women tend to be in the majority.

Just as “battered women’s advocates” once attempted to prove that 95% of all victims of domestic violence were female, by misrepresenting a simple reporting of the number of convictions, numbers are again being used to confuse and obscure the reality.

All of the above require more attention, but I just wanted to ease back in and note some of these things I’ve been thinking about. A teaser, as it were, for future postings.

Why hasn't this story received much, much more attention in the political blogosphere? It's potentially the biggest economic story of the year. The WTO has decided in favor of Antigua's case against the United States on gambling:

The dispute stretches back to 2003, when Mr. Mendel first persuaded officials in Antigua and Barbuda, a tiny nation in the Caribbean with a population of around 70,000, to instigate a trade complaint against the United States, claiming its ban against Americans gambling over the Internet violated Antigua and Barbuda’s rights as a member of the W.T.O.

[…]

But a W.T.O. panel ruled against the United States in 2004, and its appellate body upheld that decision one year later. In March, the organization upheld that ruling for a second time and declared Washington out of compliance with its rules.

That has placed the United States in a quandary, said John H. Jackson, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center who specializes in international trade law.

Complying with the W.T.O. ruling, Professor Jackson said, would require Congress and the Bush administration either to reverse course and permit Americans to place bets online legally with offshore casinos or, equally unlikely, impose an across-the-board ban on all forms of Internet gambling — including the online purchase of lottery tickets, participation in Web-based pro sports fantasy leagues and off-track wagering on horse racing.

But not complying with the decision presents big problems of its own for Washington. That’s because Mr. Mendel, who is claiming $3.4 billion in damages on behalf of Antigua, has asked the trade organization to grant a rare form of compensation if the American government refuses to accept the ruling: permission for Antiguans to violate intellectual property laws by allowing them to distribute copies of American music, movie and software products, among others.

Let's consider the possible outcomes of this case.

1. The U. S. could allow Americans to place bets legally with offshore casinos online.

2. The U. S. could ban all forms of Internet gambling.

3. The U. S. could refuse to comply and the WTO could impose some other penalty.

4. The U. S. could refuse to comply and the WTO could impose the penalty that's been requested.

In the first instance the U. S. would abandon its rights of sovereignty and I think it's pretty likely that all forms of gambling online and otherwise would be legalized throughout the country. Can you imagine a situation in which international online gambling concerns were able to operate freely and domestic offline ones were banned? I can't.

In the second instance all forms of Internet gambling would be banned. Besides the outcry against the move, many states have been moving towards putting their state lotteries online. That would be out. Would an implementation of this with a wink and a nod be sufficient for the WTO? If not, it would require government-mandated Internet censorship, which I suspect would cause an even bigger outcry.

If the WTO elects the third alternative it runs the risk of looking feeble.

But it's the final alternative that's the most troubling. This goes far beyond allowing the 70,000 residents of Antigua to share DVD's legally among themselves. It would turn the tiny country, once a haven for Caribbean pirates, into a haven for legalized intellectual property piracy of all kinds. Books, video, music, software, pharmaceuticals, the list is endless. U. S. intellectual property, on which it has staked a substantial portion of its future, would be dead not merely in Antigua but everywhere.

I'm also trying to figure out how individual country restrictions, like the KSA's morals restrictions on imports (which enables them to prohibit the importation of bibles or alcohol, for example), could possibly survive.

I suppose it's possible that the U. S. would simply stonewall i.e. refuse to comply, period. In that case the WTO would be dead.

Big, big story.

Update

Here's the WTO's synopsis of events in the case.

Economist Dani Rodrik pokes into this can of worms.

Cross-posted from The Glittering Eye

Friday night open thread: Go! (6:03 pm Eastern)

Associated Press:

A Presbyterian minister was found guilty of violating church law for officiating the weddings of two lesbian couples, the minister's defense team said Friday.

A regional judicial committee of the Presbyterian Church (USA) ruled 6-2 that while the Rev. Jane Spahr of San Rafael "acted with conscience and conviction," her actions were still at odds with the church's constitution, her defense team said in a statement.

Guilty by a protestant church court. What to they do now, put her in the stocks?

Heck, it's Presbyterians we're talking about, here. Why, maybe they'll [insert punch line.]

Last night I moved my son into his apartment- he'll be attending Plymouth State University in Plymouth, NH and found an opportunity to live cheaply off-campus, so he jumped at it. As we unloaded the van and he and his roommate unpacked I reached for my cell phone to call home and let my wife know I would be later than I'd thought...

NO SERVICE.

I asked them about it and they both flipped open their phones...

NO SERVICE.

And so we finished and I headed home, trying not to giggle too hard at the thought of these two teenagers, children of the age of total connectivity, sitting in their new apartment up in the hills of Northern New Hampshire with no phone, no cable TV, no Internet, and a 30 minute drive to any place they might be able to avail themselves of such things.

The Cable and Internet won't be connected until next weekend. I figure he'll be home by tomorrow morning.

I'm on an alternative energy kick brought about by my interest in global warming - or rather my heresy towards the GW religion. This brought me back to the days when I started my morning with USS Clueless and the writings of the "blogfather" Steven Den Beste. To this day I believe that Den Beste's science and engineering writings were just as good as another Steve - Stephen Jay Gould. Den Beste had the ability to translate technical problems into a language for the rest of us. And just like Stephen Jay Gould, Den Beste's ideas stuck with me.

I revisit his ideas on alternative sources of energy, including conservation and the scale of our energy needs in a razor post here. I've also added a new category: Energy & Global Warming to keep track of related posts.

Just as a teaser, did you know that the electrical needs of the US are greater than 1 terawatt at any given moment? That's 1,000 large nuke/coal power plants. That's just for electricity and doesn't count the energy we need for transportation.

The more I realize the scale of our energy needs, and the relative pittance offered by alternative energy sources like wind and solar, the more I believe that if Al Gore's right and Global Warming is imminent, there's nothing we can do about it.

I see that the next “debate” among the Democrats aspiring to their party's candidacy for the presidency has been cancelled (or at least postponed):

Fox News and a black political group say they will not hold a Sept. 23 Democratic presidential debate in Detroit, which the leading candidates already were planning to skip.

A new date had not yet been set, Fox News spokesman Michael Murphy said Thursday.

The campaigns of U.S. Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama and former Sen. John Edwards had said they would not participate in the debate. Opponents have criticized Fox as biased against Democrats.

The debate, co-sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus Political Education and Leadership Institute, was to have been held at the Fox Theatre.

Considering what a waste of time the joint press conferences that we laughingly call “debates” have been so far, it's probably just as well. Do politicians, several of whom have been in the national public eye for decades, really need additional opportunities to give their stump speeches?

What purpose do these events serve? The audience they're reaching is dwindling.

Fuddy-duddy that I am I'd like to see some real formal debates between just four of the candidates (two affirmative, two negative). Just for fun here are some topics I'd like to see debated.

I'd like to see Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden take the affirmative and Bill Richardson and Dennis Kucinich the negative in the following proposition

Resolved: the U. S. should retain a troop presence in Iraq

I'd like to see Barack Obama take the affirmative and Chris Dodd the negative debating

Resolved: one term in the U. S. Senate is enough experience at the national level for a president.

I'd like to see any number of the Republican candidates debate whether a candidate's character as reflected in his personal life is relevant to his candidacy for the presidency.

I'd like to see a debate on whether converting to a single-payer system alone i.e. without further healthcare reforms will correct the fiscal problems posed by aging Baby Boomers participating in the Medicare system.

Got any ideas for other debate topics?

Cross-posted from The Glittering Eye

Aside from its utterly embarrassing series of bullcrap by Scott Beauchamp, it remains that The New Republic is still a magazine with great writers. I was particularly moved by this story of a Wheaton, Illinois Evangelical minister's spiritual journey, which isn't all that far from my own:

Ellsworth began reading more and more about Orthodox Christianity--eventually spending close to $10,000 on Orthodox books. By 2005, he was regularly visiting an Antiochian Orthodox Church in Chicago (the Antiochian Orthodox Church is Middle Eastern in background and the seat of its patriarchate is in Damascus). By late 2006, Ellsworth realized that he wanted to be Orthodox himself. On the first Sunday of the following February, an Orthodox priest in Chicago anointed him with holy oil and he was chrismated--or formally received--into the Orthodox Church. A month later, at the age of 62, he was ordained as an Orthodox priest himself.

Ellsworth's story is hardly unique. Most of the approximately 150 members of the Orthodox parish he now leads are former evangelicals themselves. Even Ellsworth's transition from evangelical minister to Orthodox priest is not uncommon. Of the more than 250 parishes of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America, some 60 percent are led by convert priests, most of whom are from evangelical backgrounds. And, according to Bradley Nassif, a professor at North Park University and the leading academic expert on Evangelical- Orthodox dialogue, the Antiochian Archdiocese has seen over 150 percent church growth in the last 20 years, approximately 75 percent of which is attributable to converts.

Most Evangelicals know little to nothing about church history prior to the Reformation, and falsly believe that the Roman Catholic Church invented all by itself a bunch of things that it did not. Mistake #1 comes from thinking you can just read the Bible and figure it all out for yourself, and just shop around until you find a church that agrees with your own prejudices. The spiritual emptiness that so many evangelicals eventually come to feel is expressed powerfully here in the same article:

Indeed, as she continued to talk, it became clear that, as an evangelical, she had felt very small and alone. It was a surprising sentiment to hear from someone about the evangelical movement. After all, ever since the rise of the Moral Majority, American evangelicals have arguably been the most politically powerful religious group in the country. But perhaps the most telling revelation of the Orthodox conversion trend is that this political power has not translated into a sense of spiritual power--or belonging. For these converts, it seems, the Orthodox Church has solved the unbearable lightness of being evangelical. "When I was in [an evangelical church], I was thinking, This is great, I love this,'" DeRenzo said. "But I thought, and I don't mean to be morbid, but eventually some day this pastor is going to die or I'm going to move away, so if this is the only place in the world where the truth is, that's tragic." DeRenzo paused and looked around the sanctuary at the icons and the candles. She went on, "Coming to the Orthodox Church means that I am in communion with that church no matter where I am in the world, that I can go into that church wherever I am and have the same liturgy and celebrate the same way. I'll be in communion with other people. And that is so huge. That hugeness is so exciting."

2,000 years of unbroken tradition (oral and written) in direct descent from the 12 apostles is an awfully different experience from the "let's just read our favorite translation of the Bible and talk about what it means with people we agree with" folks.

Anyway, read the whole thing here. And for more on Orthodox Christianity in America, you can hardly beat the Our Life In Christ guys.

Count me as finding this very depressing. I have nothing but respect for Captain Ed, but, just reading the article itself is depressing, let alone the vitriolic comments that follow.

You know, is there any possibility here that when President Clinton remembers authorizing "use of lethal force" in apprehending bin Laden, and that at the time--or at least in his memory--that counted as authorizing killing him if necessary? Is there any possibility that President Clinton at least misremembered, or didn't fully understand at the time, what the words and limitations meant?

No. It has to be "lied" and "liar." Because the former President cannot be allowed the benefit of the doubt as a flawed human being like the rest of us.

I suppose this is a pointless argument. Democratic partisans and Bush-haters in general gave up any pretense toward civility and decency and leaving aside past mistakes, toward only saying "let's learn from our past mistakes and learn from the future," when the phrase "George Bush lied us into war" became acceptable political discourse. So hey, why not? Clinton lied. No one's ever wrong, no one ever misremembers, no one ever even allows their ego to cloud their judgment of their own past actions. No, it must be "lies" and "liars."

I guess that's why hate will always be an indelible part of politics in a democratic republic. Perhaps it must always be thus.

In the meantime, for the record: I choose to think it most likely that President Clinton remembers authorizing use of lethal force, and those receiving those orders remember getting advice from lawyers that said, "wait, that doesn't mean you can just kill the guy, even if we did just lob some missiles in his direction."

That doesn't even seem hard to understand, even if a clear "smoke this guy right now" order was never issued.

The inevitability -- sorry, Fred fans -- of Rudy Giuliani being more apparent, Time magazine has begun its attempt at softening him up for Hillary. That's fine.

But is this the best they could do? Because if so, I'm feeling pretty good about things.

I used to think the term "love handles" was cute, until I realized it was actually very... adult.

I mean, I get it now. Funny, though, how that's snuck in there, isn't it?

So, do you think the French got it from us, or vice-versa? I mean, considering.

At Nation-Building, I've got an overview of the political crisis brewing in Pakistan. Short version: the writing is on the wall for Musharraf.

Incidentally, I've also got some ruminations on Japan, sparked by a Japanese man giving the prime minister Shinzo Abe the finger. literally.

This is being posted from my livingroom. I want a Wii-compatable wireless keyboard. :]...

I found this story of an embattled sex researcher fascinating. I honestly take no opinion on his theories, except to note that I've been saying for, oh, at least 10 or 15 years now that gay people who insist that homosexuality is genetic were going to face certain arguments that they didn't like sooner or later, and that this sort of argument was long-term damaging to the community.

I also note that it's just sort of assumed in the story in passing that people who associate with this researcher are afraid they'll lose their ability to get research grants. Which goes with something I've raised so many times, which is the complete charade that is our "anonymous peer review funding" system to dole out taxpayer funds in an opaque, croney-filled system. More people should be upset about it since it's so obviously a flawed and irresponsible way of spending public funds.

*Update*: The Wikipedia entry is indeed interesting.

Oh, who am I kidding. Posting is always light. But anyway. I've now got a Wii. No, I don't have an ID yet (I am still at work), but as soon as I get home to set it up...

So, what games are people playing? For the Wii, yes, but if you've got another system, or play PC games, give a shout...

MARIJUANA: We just report the data; we don’t endorse it. A 2005 study on rats found that stimulation of the brain’s receptors for marijuana increased neurogenesis.

ALCOHOL: A 2005 study found that mice that swallowed a moderate amount of ethanol showed more neurogenesis than teetotalers. Other studies on mice have suggested that heavier drinking can be damaging to the brain.

On anti-nuclear activists at his blog on Daily Tech, where he discusses an accident at a small uranium processing plant in Tennessee. According to Asher, the spill was cleaned up, documented, reported - and the firm reprimanded appropriately by the government. But that wasn't the end of it.

Reaction was swift. "Uncontrolled Nuclear Reaction Possible!" screamed news stories. "Public Kept in Dark!" "Veil of Secrecy Must Be Lifted!" Papers in London and Paris even picked up the story, repeating the alarmist calls verbatim. While some of the more responsible journalists eventually admitted there was no risk to the public, they usually did so in the final paragraph of a lengthy story, ensuring most of their readers would not be burdened by that inconvenient truth.

Environmental groups were even more shrill. The Sierra Club's anti-nuclear task force went into immediate overtime, demanding to know why the company wasn't fined, or even shut down. A SWAT team of Sierra Club activists descended upon the site, where they promptly organized public meetings for "concerned citizens," and called for the NRC to hold public hearings to explain their actions. Combining innuendo and hand-waving, they attempted to convince area residents their property and very lives were at stake.

Michael Asher raises some intelligent points, especially in the comments section of the blog post writing as masher2.

> "For example, at my old job....if we ever spilled even a small amount of it...even just 100 or less milliliters worth, we had to go through a large process..."

Did you have to notify the public, and endure calls to be shut down, simply because you spilled a little potash on the floor?

> "How is that government "manipulative fear tactics".

I'm sorry if I wasn't clear. I'm not criticizing the government at all. Their investigation and subsequent action I applaud. The problem here began once the results of that investigation were made public.

> "had the leak not been properly cleaned and if it had found its way into the water supply, you could see serious consequences"

Such as? Ground water flows through uranium-bearing rock constantly. Had all 9 gallons of this ended up in the local watertable, the resultant water would still be less radioactive than natural water coming out of most mineral springs.

> "If you are inferring because nuclear power can't be used to produce hydrogen, the hydrogen economy will never be practical that is a rather ridiculous leap. Let's see...there is solar, tidal, hydroelectric, and wind power"

All those except hydro are far too expensive today, and will be for the foreseable future. Most aren't even practical for direct energy use without heavy government subsidies. Even assuming nuclear power, hydrogen for transportation is going to be considerably more expensive than gasoline. But generating it from solar or wind would be equivalent to $100/gallon gasoline. Maybe in 30 years that won't be true; maybe not. But nuclear is a proven solution, not wishful thinking.

Yes, there is hydro. But good spots to generate hydro power are limited...and we're already using most of them.

And here:

If you live in a New England or Rocky Mountain state, you already have radioactive nuclear waste buried in your own backyard...waste left over from when Mother Nature made the planet. The first meter of topsoil in one acre alone contains 60 kg of thorium, 20 kg of uranium, 5 kg of radium, and 70,000 kg of potassium...all of it radioactive.

Asher reminds me of Steven Den Beste, and he rebuts each statement critical of nuclear power with ease and aplomb. Daily Tech isn't just a place to get geeky-info on the latest chips or software goings-on. It also keeps tabs on the latest developments in tech-related science fields. It's the way Slashdot used to be - and I consider it to be daily reading.

Well, since nobody else is willing to post today I guess it’s up to me. A couple of posts have caught my eye today, both from InstaMan.

First, there’s this by Glenn Greenwald- he opines that the low approval ratings of Congress are due to Democrat voters being upset with the lack of substantive investigations of the Bush Administration as well as the dearth of symbolic attempts to end the Iraq war. He’s got some numbers on his side and I’m inclined to agree with portions of his analysis, particularly the following:

But the reason for these low approval ratings is as clear as it is meaningful — the overall ratings for Congress are so low because Democrats disapprove of the Democratic Congress almost as much as Republicans do. There is nothing unusual about how Republicans or independents rate the Democratic Congress; the only aspect of any of this that is unusual is that Democrats rate the Congress so low even though it is controlled by their own party. Virtually every poll demonstrates this. (Emphasis is Glenn’s)

Essentially he argues that if Democrat’s approved of Congress the same way Republicans approve of Bush the numbers for congressional approval would be much better. I think he goes off the deep end when he opines that an overwhelming percentage of the population wants in-depth investigations of the Presidency, but given his ideological leanings I see why he believes it.

The comments are the real gold mine here. They remind me of Limbaugh castigating the Republican majority back in the Clinton years. Lots of déjà vu there.

This is followed up by a post at Cadillac Tight regarding a purported netroots mobilization targeting Blue Dog Democrats (or “Bush Dog” Democrats” as they are called by the folks at OpenLeft). Joe at Cadillac Tight notes:

Twenty-six out of thirty-eight (68%) of these targeted Democrats are from Southern or Southeastern regions, which makes sense, since it’s primarily Blue Dogs we’re talking about here. That makes this another netroots war against regions of the country that elect these Democrats precisely because they are Blue Dogs. It’s obvious when you read netroots diaries that there is a lot of disdain for and rage against Democratic voters who don’t identify with the progressive movement, and efforts like this one by Stoller and Bowers (Northeastern liberals both) only serve to highlight that disdain and rage. Rather than “punishing” the Blue Dogs, the New Democrats, or the voters who elect them, the Democratic party is likely to be punished itself at the polls if this effort becomes associated with the party, rather than the progressives.

Writing off the South has never proven to be a winning strategy for Democrats. Even given the results of last year’s election, it’s unlikely to be one in the future.

Now, give the guys at OpenLeft a little credit, as they are calling for criticism of the Blue Dogs and other conservative democrats in Congress as an attempt to correct their behavior; however, the threat is clear that they would like progressive candidates to challenge these Democrats in the Primaries. It worked so well in Connecticut, after all…

Wishful thinking on one side, self-destructive behavior on the other- I’m with Glenn Reynolds: the Democrats and the netroots are trying to outstrip the Republicans in stupidity and willful ignorance. I’d be laughing if this wasn’t such a critical time in need of truly rational thought from our political leadership.

Are ya lookin' for trouble?

Michael Totten has an amazing must-read report: Spying In Iraq.

Then have a look at this.

And the debate goes on. But so far as I'm concerned it remains as always: we were right to go there. We're right to be there now. Leaving would be a moral abomination and a strategic disaster, and quite foolish considering the amazing progress we've seen.

This really does make sense, you know.