December 2004 Archives

I had seen this before (I think over at Ara's place), but Quiddity found it posted on a Yahoo Message board so I thought I'd help the meme gain some legs.

Mark, this one's for you.

JOE REPUBLICAN

Joe gets up at 6 a.m. and fills his coffeepot with water to prepare his morning coffee. The water is clean and good because some tree-hugging liberal fought for minimum water-quality standards.

With his first swallow of coffee, he takes his daily medication. His medications are safe to take because some stupid commie liberal fought to insure their safety and that they work as advertised.

All but $10 of Joe's medications are paid for by his employer's medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance - now Joe gets it too. He prepares his morning breakfast, bacon and eggs. Joe's bacon is safe to eat because some girly-man liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry.

In the morning shower, Joe reaches for his shampoo. His bottle is properly labeled with each ingredient and its amount in the total contents because some crybaby liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body and how much it contained.

Joe dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. the air he breathes is clean because some environmentalist wacko liberal fought for laws to stop industries from polluting our air.

He walks to the subway station for his government-subsidized ride to work. It saves him considerable money in parking and transportation fees because some fancy-pants liberal fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a contributor.

Joe begins his work day. He has a good job with excellent pay, medical benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some lazy liberal union members fought and died for these working standards.

Joe's employer pays these standards because Joe's employer doesn't want his employees to call the union. If Joe is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed, he'll get a worker compensation or unemployment check because some stupid liberal didn't think he should lose his home because of his temporary misfortune.

Its noontime and Joe needs to make a bank deposit so the can pay some bills. Joe's deposit is federally insured by the FSLIC because some godless liberal wanted to protect Joe's money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the GreatDepression.

Joe has to pay his Fannie Mae-underwritten mortgage and his below-market federal student loan because some elitist liberal decided that Joe and the government would be better off if he was educated and earned more money over his lifetime.

After work this evening, Joe plans to visit his father at his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive. His car is among the safest in the world because some America-hating liberal fought for car safety standards.

He arrives at his boyhood home. His was the third generation to live in the house financed by Farmers' Home Administration because bankers didn't want to make rural loans. The house didn't have electricity until some big-government liberal stuck his nose where it didn't belong and demanded rural electrification.

Joe is happy to see his father, who is now retired and lives on Social Security and a union pension because some wine-drinking, cheese-eating liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Joe wouldn't have to.

Joe gets back in his car for the ride home, and turns on a radio talk show. The radio host keeps saying that liberals are bad and conservatives are good. He doesn't mention that the beloved Republicans have fought against every protection and benefit Joe enjoys throughout his day.

Joe agrees: "We don't need those big-government liberals ruining our lives! After all, I'm a self-made man who believes everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have."

Anne pops back for a well deserved rant about libertarian ideals, practical reality and the vanishingly small intersection between those two sets.

I disagree with a lot of political positions, but I disagree with Libertarians the most. It seems to me that they, more than any other political sect, have a philosophy based on a complete failure to grasp the reality they live in. I've never yet talked to one who seemed to have the slightest understanding of how drastically our society would change, entirely for the worse, if they managed to put their Azaelf-baked ideas into action.

None of them have ever said so, but I get the impression they think the country would still be pretty much what it is today but we'd all be magically free from...whatever evil they think it is the Department of Commerce is doing to us, and that other than having more money in their paycheck every two weeks, nothing else would change.

In The Skeptics review of the book, there's a little delicious bit about the chapter.

Other than being an example of colossal self-deception and egoism, the debunking of a second-rate meta physician and the cult of adoration which grew up around her is of little more than historical interest. He might as well have done an essay on the Beatles and their adoring fans. Rand did not claim Objectivism is a science, but a philosophy. It's not a very interesting philosophy, nor was it innovative, despite what she and her followers believed.

So he's an unlikely candidate to rise to cult like status.

Michael Moore? I guess you could claim that there's someone on the planet who is involved in a vanishingly small Michael Moore cult. Moreover, I would postulate that the number of right wingers who complain about Michael Moore vastly outstrips the number of people who are locked in this hypothetical personality cult of Michael Moore.

And besides, isn't the entire democratic leadership offering up Michael Moore and fellow kindred like Ted Rall on the altar of political sacrifice (not to mention abortion rights - but that's the subject for another rant) in the vain hope of appeasing the all powerful moral values voter?

Pickin's are pretty slim on the democratic personality cult figures.

On the right, we have the chosen one - he who was "chosen" for this time by God. Whether this is Karl Rove or George Bush seems to depend on whether you are a cynical corporate type of republican or a evangelical theocrat kind of republican. And if George Bush isn't your type, there is always the uber father figure of God's Own Party: Ronald Reagan. I mean, the Reagan cult of personality makes Objectivists look like a seriously engineered social group of optimal human behavior.

The Cowboy and the Cross.

Or just Dale Gribble. Take your pick.

Update: Since every one else is linking to this stinky log squeezed out by David Holcberg over at the Ayn Rand institute, I thought I would as well: U.S. Should Not Help Tsunami Victims.

It's a touching look into the mind of a research associate at the institute.

The reason politicians can get away with doling out money that they have no right to and that does not belong to them is that they have the morality of altruism on their side. According to altruism--the morality that most Americans accept and that politicians exploit for all it's worth--those who have more have the moral obligation to help those who have less. This is why Americans--the wealthiest people on earth--are expected to sacrifice (voluntarily or by force) the wealth they have earned to provide for the needs of those who did not earn it. It is Americans' acceptance of altruism that renders them morally impotent to protest against the confiscation and distribution of their wealth. It is past time to question--and to reject--such a vicious morality that demands that we sacrifice our values instead of holding on to them.

Next time a politician gives away money taken from you to show what a good, compassionate altruist he is, ask yourself: By what right?

______________
* Note. This is not a criticism of your particular phenotype of libertarianism. No one would ever suggest that this strain wasn't anything but the most pure and virulent meme strain that can stand up to the trickiest of problems encountered in the wild and wacky real world.

You know the kind of people I'm talking about. Them. Not you. They are Dale Gribble. You are a soaring Icarus amongst the clouds. Gliding through the lofty ethical heights on glorious wings of pure, unassailable reason.

Seems like only yesterday that I was talking about the whole war on terror and how preventable, natural disasters dwarfed the risk, carnage and property damage that could be done by terrorists - not to mention the preventable, man-made disasters.

At the time, those on the right (and left) pretty much scoffed at my thoughts - something about 30,000 attempted murders on 9/11. So I guess that now we're over 50,000 dead (and still climbing) and lord only knows how much more injured and homeless that this line of attack against my thesis is officially over. We have yet to see the fallout from the inevitable disease fallout from just simply having all those dead bodies around - much less all the pollution and biological contamination that happens when that much water flushes through human civilization.

It's truly astounding how the human mind works and how we evaluate risk. 3200 people dead over 2 decades by terrorism. 50,000+ dead in the space of a day for the want of figuring out the obvious fact that a 8.9 earthquake under water is almost certainly going to produce a Tsunami.

Sure glad all those Asian countries have spent billions tracking down terrorists for the US instead of updating their emergency communications and preparedness. Seems like money truly well spent now, doesn't it?

No, not that kind of honeypot, you dirty minded person, you. This is a fantastic little project aimed at stopping all those email spammers by charging them $0.50 per email.

Check out Project Honeypot and join in the fun. I've donated a couple of mail domains that I have lying around, and have instituted my own honeypot on this blog. The whole process was very simple and if enough blog owners start their own honeypots these parasites will be in serious trouble.

So get off your good intentions and start sucking them in.

(HT to ogged)

Roth Plot II

This is how my mind works. No, really. I make shit up out of whole cloth and paint a terrifying picture that other people use to scare children. And you can't argue with me for the same reason you can't grasp smoke with your hand.

This report is, unfortunately, not satire.

Survey finds support for restricting Muslim-Americans' freedoms (emphasis mine)

Nearly one in two Americans believe the U.S. government should restrict civil liberties for Muslim-Americans, according to a nationwide Cornell University poll on terrorism fears.

The survey also found respondents who identified themselves as highly religious supported restrictions on Muslim-Americans more strongly than those less religious.

Curtailing civil liberties for Muslim-Americans also was supported more by Republicans than Democrats, the survey found. The amount of attention paid to TV news also had a bearing on how strongly a respondent favored restrictions.

"The more attention paid to television news, the more you fear terrorism, and you are more likely to favor restrictions on civil liberties," said Erik Nisbet, a senior research associate with Cornell's Survey Research Institute who helped design the survey.

"It's sad news. It's disturbing news. But it's not unpredictable," Mahdi Bray, executive director of the Virginia-based Muslim American Society, said of the survey results.

"It's not the first time in this country's history we've seen sentiment for restricting the civil liberties of a group of people. It's a sign of the times. The nation is at war, even if it's not a traditional war. We just have to remain vigilant and continue to interface," Bray said.

Perhaps it's just my liberal rose colored glasses, but I do see a blatant correlation between the elimination of high progressive taxes at the top end and two very disturbing trends we've seen since they have been eliminated.

The first trend is the most visible - the stratospheric increase in executive compensation. When you eliminate all the disincentives for shoveling money into the hands of the executives, it's pretty clear that the money will flow down these corridors. High progressive rates provide a strong incentive for companies not to fund the additional twelve yachts for the corporate executives and to take these funds and invest them else where in the companies interest - for example, in worker's salaries or - shudder - research and development.

And so it comes as no surprise to me to read the following from the Financial Times:

US must make R&D priority, business leaders warn

At a conference held to release the report, Samuel Palmisano, chairman and chief executive of IBM, said American innovation had reached “a critical juncture” and the country was “somehow losing its edge at just the wrong time, when the game was becoming dramatically more competitive.”

Again, I'm just a wanker who isn't an expert in such things, but considering the hand wringing by the liberal elite regarding corporate pay, it's probably worth someone's time to do a little investigation into why these three things are so strongly correlated.

One other note. I found this little bit deliciously rich - especially coming from corporate America.

The report noted other disturbing trends, including a long-term decline in federal funding in research. Corporate research and development in the US had dropped nearly $8bn in 2002, the biggest drop in any year since 1950.

To regain the competitive edge, the report called for increased public funding for research, including the reallocation of 3 per cent of all federal research and development budgets toward grants that invest in novel, high-risk and exploratory research.

Adultery Provision Could Stall Homosexual Marriage Amendment

When the 109th Congress convenes in the nation's capitol next month, legislators will have an awesome responsibility on their hands: defending the sanctity of marriage. Now, some pro-family groups are proposing that a constitutional amendment to protect marriage be strengthened further—by adding a provision that would ban adultery.

Their demand is simple: add two simple words to the proposed marriage amendment. "Marriage in the United States sAzaell consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution or the constitution of any State, nor state or federal law, sAzaell be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups—or adulterers."

Proving once again that the moral elite is not so much concerned about saving the family as they are concerned about punishing those that break their moral laws - even at the expense of the innocents.

Update 2: Egg on my face. Dr. Paper reminds me that the Swift report is brilliant satire, one degree from reality.

Jane Galt, that paragon of libertarian self righteousness disguised as conceit for all things liberal has thrown down the gauntlet.

I am waiting patiently for the Democrats who have been crowing over his departure to rise up in indignation at the Republicans senselessly persecuting this man over a harmless extramarital affair.

In Galt's World^tm, the correct thing to focus on is not the use of an apartment donated for the emergency responders of 9/11 (whether it was for a love nest or used to house James Dobson on his holy pilgrimages to NY city). We shouldn't be paying any attention at all to the fact that Bush's boy has seriously questionable connections with Da Mob. And we definitely shouldn't be paying attention to the fact that Herr Bernie had homicide detectives to harass TV producers after his girlfriend lost her cellphone. We even shouldn't focus on the amazing negligence shown by Alberto "Electroshock" Gonzales in his three year long vetting of Kerik.

Nope. The most important thing for Jane is to ensure that the truly unspeakable issue of the democrats not coming to Kerik's defense because of, you know, the whole affair thing, is on the front burner. Ooooohhhh, those hypocritical democrats. Not rushing to support the man. That's the real issue here.

And speaking of making sure that the democrats have their full measure of the blame appropriately affixed around their neck as they so richly deserve, the Moderate Voice pulls a a fast one out of his colon and demands that the blame should fall equally on - who else - Hillary Clinton!

What about New York's supposedly well-informed Democratic politicos, notably Senators Hillary Clinton and Senator Chuck Schumer. They backed Kerik. They also didn't know about the stuff out there?

If not for the hypocrisy, then because they should have known.

Media Matters, in concert with MoveOn.org, Liberal Assets, MediaChannel, Working Assets, Robert Greenwald, Campaign for America's Future, Free Press, and AlterNet are organizing a nationwide initiative to draw attention to Sinclair Group's use of the 62 television stations it owns or operates to systematically promote partisan political interests above all others.

Of particular concern is a nightly "news and commentary" segment titled "The Point," in which Sinclair vice president Mark Hyman espouses one-sided, conservative rhetoric without any counterpoint. The vehicle for the initiative is a new website, www.SinclairAction.com, where citizens can register concerns directly with companies that advertise on Sinclair stations.

"We believe Sinclair is abusing its stewardship of the airwaves licensed to it on beAzaelf of the American people," said David Brock, President and CEO of Media Matters for America. "The nightly commentaries offered on 'The Point' reflect a persistent pattern at Sinclair, which promotes partisan political interests even at the expense of their purported commitment to responsible news programming."

The airwaves which Sinclair is using to push their one sided viewpoint is held in common on beAzaelf of all Americans. It's about time that they started living up to their responsibility for balance.

The subtext in all the talk of binging and purging of the Democratic Party is the underlying assumption that the United States is under direct threat of Islamo-fascist terrorists. As many of you have undoubtedly heard, Peter Beinart and his flock of liberal hawks have been urging the Democratic Party to "get serious about terrorism".

So I thought I'd sit down with a couple of Mai Tais and write down some of the heretical thoughts I have about terrorism and why I don't really think it's the right focus and that the threat of terrorism really an irrational fear which is directing our focus away from the things we really should be terrified about.

Via the supremely shrill Brad DeLong.

I can't wait to see what brilliant non sequitur My Favorite Troll^tm can come up with to explain this away.

John Holbo has an excellent post up on the framing of the right as the Moral Elite. It's a win/win framing of the Moral Superiority that these jokers are trying to foist on the rest of America with nary a downside for the democrats. It's a trap of their own making and it's high time we sprung it.

I, for one, welcome our new moral overlords

Now the striking thing about 'politically correct' is that it really means the same as 'moral values', as per Republican rhetoric and post-election polls, etc. Both terms denote sets of moral beliefs which are held strongly enough that believers are prepared to impose them on others, politically. Obviously the sets in question are different, but the thing that makes the term toxic to the bearer is actually the connotation. The elitist moral superiority of it. So what we need is an appropriate analog to pin on conservatives. There ought to be one, by rights, since the Republicans surely are elitists, and they surely do think they are highly morally superior.

Once you put the problem that way, the solution is obvious. Let's get in the habit of calling Republican moral elitists: 'the moral elite', 'morally elite', 'moral elitists'. Just use the terms as flat descriptors for anyone proposing to legislate morality in any of the usual ways. Just to change things up, sometimes you use: 'morally superior' to designate the attitude. And 'moral superiors' to designate the tribe. Maybe you start to distinguish, as a matter of course, between legislation that ensures 'moral superiority' and the regular stuff. Talk about Republicans taking 'necessary moral superiority measures'.

Being an architect, one of my private pet peeves is the universal tendency of humans to design systems under the assumption that everything will work perfectly. You see this a heck of a lot in the field where I work - software. Perfect users running on perfect operating systems using perfect data. The result is entirely predictable.

Engineers in the harder fields do a heck of a lot better - they understand failure. They study failure. One could almost say that they worship at the altar of failure.

Myself, I thought that I wanted to be an electrical engineer when I grew up. I spent the first 3 years of my higher academic life studying to be one before I realized that I really didn't want to design circuits for the rest of my life - even back then I could read the tea leaves and see that software and circuits were becoming one and the same (see software radio for an excellent case in point, or silicon compilers or simply ask just about any "hardware" engineer what they really do now-a-days).

Anyways, what those three and a Azaelf wonderful years in engineering school drove instilled in me was a fine appreciation for failure.

Failure has pretty much dominated a lot of my thinking since then. After another four or so years studying I eventually moved to the fabled left coast and was soon making my way in life in a career that I really had no formal training in. In the startups that I quickly found myself working for, I was thrown into working relationships with some pretty fantastic engineering consultants. Again, what I found truly amazing was the preternatural ability these people had for sniffing out failure. They were always right - not just about the failure of the project, but how and why it would fail.

Media Matters For America, the non-profit media watch dog organization founded by David Brock, is having a fund raiser. Myself, I think that this place is where the bulk of my donations will go to over the next few years. Politicians, peace organizations and environmental organizations are important, but right now, the single biggest problem we have on the left is one of message penetration and the domination of the narrative by the attack poodles on the right.

The last election proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that it doesn't matter what message liberals have. When huge chunks of the population believe verifiable false information, you can walk on water and have a choir of angels announce your party platform and it won't make a single bit of difference.

I've always been of the opinion that if you want to change people's minds, you change their environment. You can talk to someone - yell, scream and threaten - and you still stand zero chance of changing their mind. But if you change the environment, then people will spontaneously adjust their viewpoints - like magic. And you don't have to do any yelling nor screaming at all.

I remember when I first heard about David Brock. I picked up his book, Blinded by the Right, and read it with relish. My old business partner - quite the liberal himself - was naturally skeptical about Brock's "conversion". Like I think a lot of liberals are. Myself, I was more than willing to see what would become of his change of world view and I wasn't disappointed - Media Matters is quite the organization.

For a really good rundown on Brock and the hard row that he's had to hoe in the democratic party, check out this post over at BOP news by Jesse.

Oh, and if you can afford to, drop by Media Matters and drop a few dollars into their till - every bit helps. It's tax deductible and the investment we make in this organization will pay far higher dividends than any other political donation I can think of.

And the right wing really, really hates them. Any organization that can get under their skin like Media Matters does is worth every cent we can send their way.

I've had Imperial Hubris on my shelf for a number of weeks and brought it along with me for baking on the beach reading and I must say that it is not what I expected. I'm only about a third of the way through the book - hey, there's lots of distractions out here - but I am rather disturbed so far. Granted that I have zero experience or even a hobby interest in matters Afghanistan. Granted that this is only the first book I've read about Afghanistan. And even granted that while the author is an expert in such matters, it really is only one point of view that is unchecked in my mind. Still, it's a sobering read about the complete incompetence and - well - hubris involved in the Afghanistan war and our response to 9/11 as well as our continuing clown show against Al Qaeda.

One of the things I found fascinating in Anonymous' discussion of Afghanistan and the rather bone headed fashion in which we pursued the campaign is the striking similarities shown between the way Rev. Dr. Davidson Loehr described in The Fundamentalist Agenda, as the failures in framing and strategy when liberals try to deal with the Christian fundamentalists in this country.

When liberal visions work, it's because they have kept one foot solidly in our deep territorial impulses with the other foot free to push the margin, to expand the definition of those who belong in “our” territory.

When liberal visions fail, it is often because they fail to achieve just this kind of balance between our conservative impulses and our liberal needs.

The "Seven Pillars of Truth about Afghanistan" (with apologies to T.E. Lawrence) are quite good and provide a great summary of why we're doomed to failure in Afghanistan - despite the "glorious victory for democracy" that we recently achieved.

Pillar I: Minorities Can Rule in Kabul, but Not For Long.

Pillar II: The Afghans Who Matter Are Muslim Tribal Xenophobes.

Pillar III: Afghans Cannot Be Bought.

Pillar IV: Strong Governments in Kabul Cause War.

Pillar V: An International Cockpit Not Insular Backwater.

Pillar VI: Pakistan Must Have an Islamist, Pashtun-dominated Afghan Regime.

Pillar VII: There Will Be an Islamist Regime in Kabul.

I'm now getting into the part of the book where he's talking about Al Qaeda and their structure and how they really have hoodwinked us with a startling degree of success. He's now arguing the case that the law enforcement strategy of the fight against Al Qaeda is dead wrong and it's proving illuminating.

All in all, quite a good book and highly recommended. His writing style is crisp and quite compelling. The subject matter, quite relevant.

Now, back to the beach. . .

I had predicted this was going to happen, but I had no idea that it was going to happen so soon.

Homeless shelters getting Iraq vets

"This is what happened with the Vietnam vets. I went to Vietnam," said John Keaveney, chief operating officer of New Directions, a shelter and drug-and-alcohol treatment program for veterans in Los Angeles. "It is like watching history being repeated," Keaveney said.

Experts said the high number of Iraq vets with mental illness seems almost certain to fuel the problem.

Data from the Department of Veterans Affairs shows that as of last July, nearly 28,000 veterans from Iraq sought health care from the VA. One out of every five was diagnosed with a mental disorder, according to the VA. An Army study in the New England Journal of Medicine in July showed that 17 percent of service members returning from Iraq met screening criteria for major depression, generalized anxiety disorder or PTSD.

Ye gods. The war bloggers and other rabid right wing attack dogs make me sick with rage. This is no way to treat people who put their lives on the line for this country (and I don't even agree with this war).

I simply cannot believe this is the country that I thought I used to know.

Yesterday I had the distinct pleasure of following Morat's excellently argued comments on various blogs regarding the new purge of the democratic party of the evil "softs" that obviously lost the election and brought down civilization as we know it (oh, I forgot, we're responsible for the plummeting dollar, so throw in economic ruin as part of the albatross that we must bear).

Today he has two posts up at his blog summarizing and expanding the arguments he was making through the various blog comment conversations he was expertly engaged in.

War of Words

In short, it boils down to leadership. Kevin Drum bitches that Michael Moore has become the outspoken leader of the left. He doesn't ask himself why, probably because the answer to that question is a bit too painful. Moore has started speaking for the left, instead of being just another Hollywood liberal, because no one else was there.

The DLC -- the ironically named "Democratic Leadership Council" -- does not lead. Kerry did not lead. Howard Dean is the closest thing we have to an actual leader on the left. He's loud, unafraid, and passionate about liberal issues -- issues that actually resonate with a good chunk of the American public. Issues like living wages, access to healthcare, protecting the elderly, and being grown-up about the budget.

The fundamental lesson the DLC refuses to learn -- that Kevin Drum refuses to learn -- is that the "middle" is defined by two extremes. Without a strong left, there is no middle. Kevin wants to shut down the only extreme we've got actually talking. I say if we don't like Moore as a spokesman, we put up our own. Strong blue-state Congressmen and Senators, strong party members who can go out and push back on the right.

One More Thing. . .

And let me ask Kevin Drum and those who agree with him one question: Do you really believe the Democrats in Congress will effectively fight anything Bush does? Do you think they'll mount an effective fight anywhere -- the Senate Floor, the media, anywhere?

I voted Democrat this year because they were the other choice any anything was better than George Bush. And I'm not that much of a flaming liberal (I actually agreed with Dean on policy not rhetoric). If that isn't a sign of severe sickness within the party, I don't know what is.

And your solution is to tell me to sit down and shut up? Well fuck you. I was right about Bush, and you were wrong. And you've had a decade to make your ideas work and I note we don't control jack shit. I'm about done with voting for you idiots because you don't win anyways so what's the point? I can't vote for you based on ideals, I can't vote for you based on visions, and I can't vote for you based on leadership -- you don't offer them. And your routine incompetence is taking away the one last reason I had ("You're better than the right-wing nutcases") because you can't win....and all you do is enable the right to be more extreme year after year. I might as well just start supporting moderate Repubs in the primary. I understand some of them still have their balls. Pity about Arlen, though....

I must say that I'm in complete agreement with Morat. It's one of the nice things about the blogosphere - I can leach off of other's far greater minds and more elegant writing to make the point that I would like to make if I had a far greater mind and more elegant writing talents.

Give him a read, and if he's not on your regular blog reading list, add Skeptical Notion to your list.

Remote control of telescopes in European mountain top observatories. $49.95 for a year's worth of astro gazing fun over the Internet.

Amazing.

SLOOH

Welcome to SLOOH, the first of its kind, a live online astronomy experience that captures the rhythms and wonders of the universe. SLOOH's mission is to give people a window to the natural world. SLOOH is not a simulation or an animation or a collection of old photos--it is a real live view through a powerful telescope. You will watch light that has been traveling for 37 million years from a distant galaxy accumulate in the telescope. As you watch the light collect, you may consider its spiral arms and their similarity to our own Milky Way. You might even think about what was happening in your hometown when that light started its journey. You will view your own life from an entirely different perspective.

SLOOH is for every human being on Earth. The backyard astronomer socked in by clouds. People that believe in God. The parent with neither the time, money nor expertise required to operate a telescope. People that believe in aliens. The city dweller drenched in light pollution. Anyone who has ever looked up in wonder.

2 C.I.A. Reports Offer Warnings on Iraq's Path

No doubt the cruise missle left will lay the blame of this unmitigated disaster squarely at the feet of the "soft" anti-war left.

A classified cable sent by the Central Intelligence Agency's station chief in Baghdad has warned that the situation in Iraq is deteriorating and may not rebound any time soon, according to government officials.

The cable, sent late last month as the officer ended a yearlong tour, presented a bleak assessment on matters of politics, economics and security, the officials said. They said its basic conclusions had been echoed in briefings presented by a senior C.I.A. official who recently visited Iraq.

The officials described the two assessments as having been "mixed," saying that they did describe Iraq as having made important progress, particularly in terms of its political process, and credited Iraqis with being resilient.

But over all, the officials described the station chief's cable in particular as an unvarnished assessment of the difficulties ahead in Iraq. They said it warned that the security situation was likely to get worse, including more violence and sectarian clashes, unless there were marked improvements soon on the part of the Iraqi government, in terms of its ability to assert authority and to build the economy.

Together, the appraisals, which follow several other such warnings from officials in Washington and in the field, were much more pessimistic than the public picture being offered by the Bush administration before the elections scheduled for Iraq next month, the officials said. The cable was sent to C.I.A. headquarters after American forces completed what military commanders have described as a significant victory, with the retaking of Falluja, a principal base of the Iraqi insurgency, in mid-November.

Mark has a couple of posts up about predator-prey signaling in a Darwinian framework. Might I suggest that he simply buy the book Darwin's Cathedral which goes into great lengths about such group evolved behaviors which seem counter intuitive to those who believe that selfish behaviors are the only things that are selected for. If he wants to read a rather good review of the book before buying it, he can go here or here.

Let's get this straight. The primary reason the democrats lost in 2004 isn't because of the undermining of the party by the "softs". It was because BushCo masterfully manipulated people into believing certifiably false facts. In a time where a huge number of people still believe that Saddam and Ussama were bosom buddies and where people still believe that we found weapons of mass destruction, the issue is clear - the reality is not being presented to the vast majority of the people.

Bitch slapping the "softs" isn't the way to win. Getting the facts out is. We live in a time where the true horror of Iraq's civil war is simply off most people's radar. The sad fact is that Iraq didn't make us safer and it's provable.

The sad fact is that The New Republic and a whole flock of liberal hawks were not only wrong about Iraq, but they spent the entire war bitch slapping those who were right. They spent far, far more effort worrying their pretty little heads over the "softs" when they should have been taking their pound of flesh out of this administration. Instead, they spent all their time buttressing Karl Rove and tearing down those who actually had their heads screwed on tight.

So keep it up, fuzz balls. Just keep it up. When 2006 rolls around and we're faced with an even smaller minority than we have now, the only one's you'll have to blame is yourselves. You keep looking at the "softs" as the source of all your problems when it's clear that reality is being warped by Karl Rove with your earnest help.

Perhaps if you spent your time trying to get just 3% more people to understand the true reality of the situation rather than spending all your time bitch slapping the hippies we wouldn't be having this conversation, eh? But it's far easier to slap around the wacky anti-war pacifists - after all, they don't fight back - than it is to do the hard work of trying to reverse a reality warping field the likes of which the world has never seen.

Isn't it?

Lordy, lordy, lordy. Myself, there's nothing I like more than a rousing good discussion about how Democrats need to start getting serious about terrorism - or else! Like so many things in life, I think that this whole discussion is clearly missing the point - i.e. it's a discussion about band aids and dealing with the symptoms and not the cause.

The first step in a cure is a correct diagnosis of the disease. Big media Matt has taken a small, tiny step in this direction in his latest post about how we perhaps need a new term for the "war" on terror. As an aside, I would like to point out that many of those who Matt and others casually cast aside as the hippy left have been making this point since the phrase "war on terror" was coined in the ashes of 9/11 and it's nice to see that the great thinkers are finally coming around to this point of view. But I digress.

Check out the fine historical digital collection at the British Pathe Limited. An astounding amount of historical stills, film and sound spanning the period from 1896-1970 was digitized with help from a lottery grant. Now that's the way to spend some money.

The second most popular film bit is the rise of Hitler as the newly appointed German chancellor in 1933. The headline says: A Wondering World Awaits ... What? (footage of the launch of the Titanic in 1912 is number 1).

Anyways, check it out. This is a terrific resource that was made possible by a very selfless gift of a lucky lottery winner.

Via Majikthise, here's the superhero inside me. I know, it's silly, but the meme is strong and all can join in the fun.

BTW, that's my faithful (and quite vicious) side kick, Cairo. Chelsy is too old for the super hero business and stays home playing Alfred for the secret Hellblazer lab.

Via Digby comes this rather interesting article on the roots of conservative, fundamentalist thought. It's an excellent piece by a Rev. Dr. Davidson Loehr of the First Unitarian Universalist Church about what it actually is that conservatives are conserving.

The Fundamentalist Agenda (emphasis added)

Except for the illustrations I've added in laying out the agenda that the Fundamentalism Project discovered, you can't tell what religion, culture, or century I'm describing. The scholars discovered this a dozen years ago while they were presenting abstracts of their papers. Several noted that all their papers were sounding alike, reporting on “species” when studying the “genus” was called for, that there were strong family resemblances between all fundamentalisms, even when the religions had had no contact, no way to influence each other.

The only way all fundamentalisms can have the same agenda is if the agenda preceded all the religions. And it did. Fundamentalist behaviors are familiar because we've all seen them so many times. These men are acting the role of “alpha males” who define the boundaries of their group's territory and the norms and behaviors that define members of their in-group. These are the behaviors of territorial species in which males are stronger than females. In biological terms, these are the characteristic behaviors of sexually dimorphous territorial animals. Males set and enforce the rules, females obey the males and raise the children; there is a clear separation between the in-group and the out-group. The in-group is protected; outsiders are expelled or fought.

It is easier to account for this set of behavioral biases as part of the common evolutionary heritage of our species than to argue that it is simply a monumental coincidence that the social and behavioral agendas of all fundamentalisms and fascisms are essentially identical.

What conservatives are conserving is the biological default setting of our species, which has strong family resemblances to the default setting of thousands of other species. This means that when fundamentalists say they are obeying the word of God, they have severely understated the authority for their position. The real authority behind this behavioral scheme is millions of years older than all the religions and all the gods there have ever been. It is the picture of life that gave birth to most of the gods as its projected champions.

Fundamentalism is absolutely natural, ancient, powerful—and inadequate. It's a means of structuring relationships that evolved when we lived in troops of 150 or less. But in the modern world, it's completely incapable of the nuance or flexibility needed to structure humane societies.

Long ago I decided for myself that religion was really just an evolutionary mechanism for group control. Not that this was necessarily a bad thing - evolution isn't stupid, after all. In fact, it's these religious and quasi-religious drives and mechanisms that are inherent to our species that have allowed us to form cohesive groups that vastly expand the capabilities of singular individuals into the planet destroying powerhouse that we now understand the human species is.

Those who've known me for some time will recognize my passion for protocols and group control mechanisms - heck, I've actually managed to turn this passion into a nice career by applying these principles to the control and organization of large numbers of computers and devices in the information age - same principle, only computers are much, much dumber - although they tend to listen to me and execute my instructions with far better fidelity.

A while ago I picked up an interesting book called Darwin's Cathedral, in which the author, David Sloan Wilson, describes the mechanisms and machinations of religion and its part in our evolution as a species (I particularly liked the in depth analysis of Calvinism, seeing as how I was subjected for many years to Calvinism's harsh caress through the Dutch Reformed Church my parents were a part of). The key, argues Wilson, is to think of society as an organism. If society is an organism, we can then think of morality and religion as biologically and culturally evolved adaptations that enable human groups to function as single units rather than mere collections of individuals.

And once you buy into this argument, it becomes clear why cAzaellenging these culturally evolved adaptations produces such a visceral response in the conservatives - i.e. those who are trying to maintain the biological default state of 150 monkeys that form their tribal sphere.

Liberalism really is an evolutionary force that conservatives are fighting tooth and nail against because they simply cannot live without the certainty of their biological - not theological - programming. They are caught up in these fights precisely because they are programmed to.

The good reverend also has some excellent advice for liberals who are fighting the good evolutionary fight.

When liberal visions work, it's because they have kept one foot solidly in our deep territorial impulses with the other foot free to push the margin, to expand the definition of those who belong in “our” territory.

When liberal visions fail, it is often because they fail to achieve just this kind of balance between our conservative impulses and our liberal needs.

Over the past Azaelf century, many of our liberal visions have been too narrow, too self-absorbed, too unbalanced. This imbalance has been a key factor in triggering recent fundamentalist uprisings. When liberals don't lead well, others don't follow. And when society doesn't follow liberal visions, liberals haven't led.

When liberals burned the U.S. flag during the Vietnam War rather than waving it and insisting that America live up to its great tradition, they lost the most powerful territorial symbol in our culture and with it the ability to speak for our national interests. They created another moral imbalance by defining abortion in amoral terms, as simply a matter of individual rights—where only the mother, but not the developing baby, was an “individual.” And they did the same whenever they emphasized individual rights while neglecting the need to balance rights with individual responsibilities toward the larger society.

We start by having the womens' groups decrying the Islamic FUNDAMENTALIST view of womens rights. These FUNDAMENTALISTS want to roll back the clock and make women answer to men. In AMERICA we don't believe in that. Then we have the Human Rights Campaign loudly criticizing the Islamic FUNDAMENTALISTS for it's treatment of gays. In AMERICA we believe that all people have inalienable rights. The ACLU puts out a statement about the lack of civil liberties in Islamic FUNDAMENTALIST theocracies. In AMERICA we believe in the Bill of Rights, not the word of unelected mullahs.

You got a problem with that Jerry? Pat? Karl????

Pit American liberalism against Islamic Fundamentalism. Since it's pretty much exactly like Christian fundamentalism, perhaps at least a few people will draw the obvious conclusions.

So I'm starting to see things in a different light and perhaps there's some clever ways to turn these lemons of war into the sweet lemonade of liberal values. Perhaps this really is a golden opportunity that liberals should grasp with both hands and seize the day. Perhaps this is a way that we can work with those who's faith is not based upon the evolutionary dinosaurs who are struggling to maintain their tribalistic hold upon us all. Perhaps we can start to use their own energies against them and start making some serious inroads into injecting memes that will blossom into liberal ideas even in the reddest of states.

Perhaps.

Well, if you're reading this entry, then the DNS switch for the hellblazer.com domain has wafted past your servers. This site is now hosted by the most excellent folks at Dreamhost. And what a dream it is. First and foremost, they actually have hardware built in the 21st century hosting the MySQL database upon which everything runs. Imagine that! It turns out that Movable Type is working fine over on this host. No more melting the Commodore-64 when I merely save an entry! No more bitchy, arrogant support personnel telling me that I had better get my act together quick or they're going to kill my script privileges.

Anyways, you should have a much better commenting experience now. No more timeouts, 500 errors or what have you.

And might I say that Dreamhost really is a dream. I've got more bandwidth now than God (not that I really need that much, but it's nice to have), 75 domains I can host (that'll come in handy for the various other blogs that I provide space for), oodles of disk space and all sorts of nice stuff (like running spam filters on their mail server, rather than having to run it on my laptop) - all for the same price I was paying the other jokers for. They are responsive and provide a most excellent control and administration panel. Really, I can't say enough about how great the experience has been. So if you're looking for a hosting company or - like me - looking to change hosting companies, then check out Dreamhost.

You'll be very glad you did.

People. Fucking people. I hate people.

It's enough to make me roll up my mat and go back to the "Bob" forsaken corporate sin galaxy from which I came. I mean, being an anthropologist masquerading as a productive member of the planet I'm studying is one thing. But JHCORFC! This is above and beyond the call of duty! And I can't even get my expenses reimbursed anymore. This is beyond the pale. I could be making a lot more money in any other field of employment in my home dimension and I chose this stupid career track. What a moron I am.

Whatever. So I don't know if anyone has noticed, but I haven't been blogging for a while. After laying in a dissembling pile of starch, fat and turkey protein induced coma I decided I would try my hand at an entry entitled "Whiny, Bitchy Republicans". I was inspired by the constant, non stop bitching, moaning and whining on the right - despite their total control of American politics. I mean, in my five millenia in 25,000 different incarnations I don't think I've ever seen such a pack of whiny, bitchy, total morons - ever. Seriously. I thought that my stint during the fall of the Roman empire was the high water mark of whiny, bitchy, elite right wing pompous assholes. Really, I did. You can read it in my bi-millennial report that has to be squeezed out of my by a heartless Nazi of a boss that I theoretically report to. Right there in black and white: These bitchy authoritarian tribal jokers are the worst - absolute worst - that humanity has to offer. Boy, was I ever wrong. Guess that's why they haven't sent me a fucking paycheck for the last 200 years. Geesh.

Live and learn, I suppose.