Poling Place

Palin Derangement By Proxy Syndrome

2010-09-16T09:03:00.000-07:00

I just read this report wherein Mr. Hoff expresses surprise at the behavior of certain so-called conservatives like Charles Krauthammer (and by extension Karl Rove). These people have been making intemperate remarks that are supplying material to the Democrats with which to attack conservative candidates in the up-coming election.

To understand why Mssrs. Rove and Krauthammer should do this, let's look at common factors. Both targets are conservative women who have defeated the GOP establishment croniess. Both have received the endorsement of Mrs. Sarah Palin. (Mr. Scott Miller of Alaska has not received similar treatment.) Both are women.

Do Ms. O'Donnell and Ms. Angle remind Mr. Krauthammer of Sarah Palin? Do these women serve as sort of proxy that Mr. Krauthammer can safely attack and paint as nuts and sluts? I think Krauthammer does not dare say more about Mrs. Palin than that she should leave the room.

Palin Derangement By Proxy may explain a lot of recent commentary by our masters in the GOP ruling class.

Comcast did not do this to me.

2010-06-21T12:35:00.000-07:00

A friend sent me this link. This never happened to me, but I found it consistent with my experience with Comcast.

Complaints versus Results

2010-05-29T09:17:00.001-07:00

I was just struck by the difference between an unemployed housewife and the most powerful man in the world. Both have confronted intractable problems in recent weeks. A troublesome neighbor is like a stone in your shoe. And Sarah Palin has discovered that one of the herd of jackals who have viciously attacked her and her family, an accused plagiarist, has moved in next door.

A disturbing trend in American leftist political strategy is to intimidate one's targets by staging protests at his's residence (as seen here). In that case, the union thugs just wanted to shake down the bank to forgive their loans (and didn't realize the next-door neighbor could blow the whistle).

Mrs. Palin complained, but then she did something that the most powerful man in the world hasn't figured out. She did more than talk.

On the other hand, the most powerful man in the world, Barry Obama has a problem. Unlike Mrs. Palin, he is deep in the pocket of Big Oil, BP to be precise. (Incidentally, this is why the Bushies hate Palin.) Though Barry talks tough and has his minions talk about putting their boot on BP's neck, he nevertheless cashed a lot of checks from BP. The problem isn't that he sleeps with big oil and gets up greasy, it's that while the Gulf of Mexico is being polluted, he's going to Earth Day celebrations or arranging for BP to bus in props for photo ops.

Let's be fair. We have no reason to expect competence, the ability to get results, from someone who's never made payroll or produced anything of value in his life. Is a Community Organizer anything more than a professional complainer? The electorate voted for change. Competence wasn't on the ballot. Barry's talked, and organized, and instigated, and agitated. And he's never learned the lesson of King Cnut and the sea. There's a difference between having a fancy title with a lot of lackeys and getting something done.

Meanwhile, back in Alaska. Suppose you've got a troublesome neighbor who's moved in with the intent of spying on you and writing a book about it. What do you do about it after you've complained? (Aside from finding the home address of his editor at Broadway/Random House, then busing in a few hundred Palin fans.) The Palin family put up a fence.

What I've Come To Expect From Comcast

2010-03-22T15:57:00.000-07:00

You may recall that on 4 March 2010 I switched over to ATT U-verse from Comcast. My reason for leaving was that they had goofed up my analog cable tv service, deleting (though they said moving to the digital tier) my favorite channels and thereby requiring me to get an additional box. I switched over to ATT and I must admit that I'm continually amazed by the awesome coolness of ATT U-verse!

As the ATT U-verse installer lady was leaving, I immediately got on the phone (as described here) and cancelled my Comcast service.

At that time my bill was due, so I asked for a final amount. I wrote a check for that amount to Comcast and also wrote a letter explaining the situation, that I was canceling my service effective the 4th of March and I hoped they wouldn't screw up the bookkeeping AGAIN. I put it in the mail with the check.

Guess who I heard from over the weekend? Comcast sent me a bill for service through the next month and said I was past due. This exactly what I expected of Comcast. It's why I got the final billing amount from them and that's why I wrote the letter explaining that I was canceling the service that I included with the bill.

Pay heed to this kind of thing. Never give someone access to automatically draft funds from your account. You'll see offers for electronic bill payment that sound very convenient, but if you don't watch these guys like a hawk, they'll bill money from you after you've canceled.

This is how I ended my letter to Comcast when i sent my last bill:

ATT will no doubt disappoint in the future and whether I’ll consider returning to Comcast or not is wholly within your control. Specifically, I expect another billing error, whereupon I’ll get another bill for some ridiculous amount. I hope this low expectation will not be met.

Congratulations Comcast, you did not disappoint.

Update: Comcast replied below positing that this bogus bill was a reasonable mistake. However, this hypothesis is falsified by the two facts: The bill in question was dated after my conversation with Comcast and the bill showed receipt of my last payment.

The amount of that last payment was the figure that Comcast gave me over the phone. They could not have cashed my check without simultaneously receiving my letter notifying them in writing that I had canceled service.

The ATT UVerse Installation

2010-03-06T18:59:00.001-08:00

One advantage of difficult economic times is that vendors are more solicitous. I think that's why Comcast lost my business. Because they're sitting around with nothing to do, they accelerated their schedule of deleting channels from the analog part of their cable and moving them to something called a digital tier. This is why I lost the cable channels that I care about last Tuesday, March 2nd.

Had they given me a little more advanced warning, I might not have been so upset with them. As it happens, I DID get notice that they would be moving the channels to the digital tier as of THURSDAY, March 4th. And they did send me notice in writing of this change on FRIDAY, March 5th.

I found it amusing to receive a letter from Comcast on the 5th after having canceled my service on the 4th.

This is what happened on the 4th of March: I woke up a bit early and got a phone call from someone named Melanie of ATT asking if it would be all right to show up in 20 minutes for installation. Happily, this call had happened after I had asked ATT to come out just two days before. (Yes, it was the same night Comcast goofed up my service.) ATT had promised a service technician would be by between 9 and 11 on the 4th and she was indeed there at 9:00am. Good move.

I showed Melanie where everything was and what all had to be hooked up. It's a complicated install. I've got an extensive home network of computers and Tivos talking to various TVs upstairs and downstairs.

She had to install a new telephone network interface box on the outside of the house, too. I went into work and left Dan there to answer any questions and to give me a shout if there were anything he couldn't answer. I worked until about noon and came back to check on the install.

Sure enough Melanie was having difficulty with my firewall to my network. She understood the problem better than I did, but it took a bit of to-and-fro for me to see this. Just as well, I have to maintain my network and I have to understand how my equipment talks to (or fails to talk to) ATT's equipment.

Really sweet, too. The ATT firewall, router, wireless access point (802.11n) is a lovely bit of kit. But it wouldn't talk nice to my Linksys firewall who is in charge of doling out DHCP stuff to the computers scattered about my house. We decided to just bypass my firewall altogether and concentrate on getting Melanie's work done. After we redid some Ethernet cables, my basement computer was talking to the internet fine. After a bit more work we got Dan's laptop talking to the ATT's wireless. We had Internet!

Another gotcha. Each digital cable box now needs Ethernet going to the TV. It might make do with the coax, but I might as well go with that, right? This caused a bit of a problem with the Family Room Tivo. It has an Ethernet cable and giving another Ethernet cable to the ATT Uverse box required me to grab an Ethernet switch/hub from downstairs and press it into service. (This introduced a new problem I'll get to.)

I happened to have an Ethernet coupler and this enabled me to join two cables into something long enough to run from one end of my basement (where the ATT router was) to the other end (where my TV & 2nd Tivo was). That got the ATT cable box (and DVR) connected OK. We didn't have a cable for the basement Tivo, so that had to wait until tonight.

And then Melanie got the phones working. That was almost too easy.

With Internet, cable TV, and phones all working, I was a happy camper. But one bit of business was hanging over my head. Using my newly ATT Uverse connected telephone, I called up Comcast.

The recording came on. I didn't want to press 1 or press 2 or press 3. Finally, the recording said, "If you are considering canceling Comcast press 4." Ah, quandary. I wasn't CONSIDERING anything. That ship had sailed two days earlier. I pressed 4.

Comcast has never been so nice to me on the phone as they were that day. The girl was willing to offer a remarkably low rate to stick with them. I wondered silently why they didn't offer me this rate a long time ago? Or when they decided to move the channels I watch to the "digital tier" while giving me FOUR government access channels to enjoy.

I talked to the girl for a few minutes as I explained as politely as I could that I have grown to despise Comcast for problems like this one and last Tuesday was the Last Straw. Finally, I said, "Lady, the ATT Uverse gal just finished the install five minutes ago. I'm canceling my Comcast service."

OK, she asked, when would I like that to be effective? Smart question. Let me think about that. How about yesterday? No, that won't be possible. Well, how about the earliest moment when it is possible? OK, she'll make it effective the 4th. Yeah, that will be good.

"Will there be anything else?"

"Yes, I've had several billing disputes with you people in the past. How much do I owe you?"

She quoted a number that corresponded to my last bill that goes through the 21st of March.

"But didn't I just cancel service effective the 4th?"

"Then we'll pro-rate the bill based on the number of days between the 4th and the 21st."

"Fair enough. How much do I owe you?"

She quoted a figure that was half the first number she had said. I repeated the number aloud for my son who was present to hear. And I wrote the figure on my whiteboard. I thanked her and rang off.

Yesterday I wrote a letter summarizing the phone conversation with a check for this amount and submitted it with my last bill from Comcast. (A word to the wise, if you expect anything promised you over the phone, commit it to writing at your first opportunity.) If I were smarter, I'd have written and dated this letter on the 4th.

What will you bet they screw up this bill, too?

Tivo IR Blaster -- The Search

2010-03-03T17:41:00.000-08:00

This post is going to be a continuing saga...

As you may know, the Tivo works quite nicely with analog cable. I've used it this way since I bought my first Tivo (I own four) when they first came out. Each time I bought a Tivo, I'd unbox it and set it up and each time I'd see this odd little bit of wire and plastic and set it aside. This gizmo is called the Tivo "IR Blaster." It's an ingenious device consisting of an IR LED a bit of plastic to hold it in place, and a wire that extends back to the Tivo and plugs in with a 1/8" phono plug. You can build one yourself, like this guy did.

I've never used them, but when I read about them I had but one thought, "what a kludge." Yet, I'm not the kind of person who likes to needlessly throw things away I might someday use, so I retained at least IR Blasters, just in case. My basement is filled with bits of junk that's retained "just in case."

Now, wait 10 years. Where exactly did I put the IR Blaster that came with my Tivos back when I bought them IN THE LAST CENTURY?

My junk-box is not as well supplied as the person mentioned above, so I went searching...

I do have some semblance of a filing system for my junk. I went through two big storage boxes labeled "Gizmos" without success. I went through bins of "Computer cables." Also without success. Then bins of "Audio/Visual cables." No joy. I went through my son's X-Box junk on the odd chance it had been misfiled. It hadn't.

This search went on during my lunch break, after work, and after supper.

I pulled out bins that held old Ethernet 10Base2 coax cables, BNC connectors and PCMCIA network-adapters respectively. Also without joy.

As I'm putting these bins back on the shelf, I note that they had been sitting on a narrow cardboard box. On it is a glossy label: Tivo.

Maybe I should look in the box marked Tivo for, like, stuff for my Tivo. I found several useless Serial cables, and 2, count-em 2, IR Blasters.

Huzzah, I cried, huzzah!

Now, will they work???

Comcast, You Blew It

2010-03-02T19:57:00.000-08:00

As you may know Comcast sells broadband internet and cable television. I have had a frustrating time with these people since 1987. They have periodically goofed up my account or otherwise annoyed me. And I've been bombarded with offers from various and sundry providers of equivalent services at reduced prices.

But I didn't budge because they were providing a service I wanted despite the annoyance and there is something to be said for inertia.

Tonight I turned on my television and when I flipped on the Tivo, it said that I had a lineup change. They added one channel. And when I looked further I noticed about 20 or 30 channels had been deleted. Not really a problem except these were the channels I normally watch.

I called Comcast and asked what happened. They said there was a service outage. My wife, Mary, gave me some paperwork from Comcast. It said that the channels in question were "available only as a component to the Digital Starter Package." And after I asked the Comcast lady what this means her story changed. Oh, they'd done a service "upgrade" in my area. I asked what kind of upgrade takes away the channels I normally watch. And why didn't you tell me this story at first? She said they'd been running notices of the changeover for the last two weeks. Where? At the bottom of the screen? I hadn't seen anything of the sort.

Though the Comcast lady was very polite, I didn't believe a thing she told me. And since they had already deleted the channels I watch, the inertia situation was reversed.

Five minutes after I rang off, I googled ATT U-Verse. Yeah, they'd do everything Comcast does. And they'll do it cheaper? And they'll do the install on Thursday? Hello ATT. Good bye Comcast.

Update: Comcast has responded in the comments below (their customer service is much better than it used to be) saying that the channels weren't "deleted" merely moved from the part of the cable that I can use to a "digital tier" that I cannot.

This change to the way my cable works occurred without any warning that I was aware of. I was satisfied with the service and I was willing to proceed on this basis indefinitely.

No doubt Comcast can deliver programming on this "digital tier" with the addition of a conversion box. I presume this conversion box can be integrated with my Tivo boxes using a kludge Tivo provides called an "IR Blaster" that I've never bothered with.

Avoiding these headaches was part of that "inertia" I mentioned originally. If I have to hassle with the IR blaster hookup with Comcast's box, why don't I use ATT's U-verse?

Alton Brown's Porn

2010-02-12T14:28:00.001-08:00

I figure that if Alton Brown looks at porn, it's this.

Dr. Myhrvold. faster, please.

How Books Are Bought In 2009

2009-12-31T12:42:00.000-08:00

I was minding my own business, surfing to my favorite blog. Instapundit. He linked to a SF novel twice. The second had an interesting author's story of how the novel got published.

This interested me enough to want the book. But I'm not going out and I doubted Barnes & Nobel has it on their shelves this soon after release. So, I clicked the Amazon link that Professor Reynolds helpfully provided. Sadly, I learned the book is not available on the Kindle.

My sadness was short-lived. "Hey, the publisher is Baen." Those guys aren't luddites. There's got to be an electronic copy available somewhere. So, I bypassed Amazon.com and went to see if they were selling an ebook that I could download immediately. I could.

A few mouse clicks later, I'd purchased the ebook for $6.00. A relative bargain. Moments later, I received an email with links to download the book. I clicked on the link for epub format (for my Motorola Droid and also my SONY Reader) and also mobi format (for my Kindle DX). They arrived on my hard disk and I unzipped them to a scratch directory.

Then I fired up Calibre and imported them into its database. (Think of Calibre as iTunes for ebooks.) Then I plugged in my Kindle DX and told Calibre to upload it. Then I repeated the procedure with my Motorola Droid.

Altogether satisfactory. Less time that it would take to drive to the bookstore. Cost is $6.00. And completely DRM-free. This is the way the future of books and reading should be.

Bleg: We All Make Hell In Our Own Image

2009-12-31T11:34:00.000-08:00

I was just talking to High Command about a mutual friend who's going through some unhappiness. From our perspective, it's completely incomprehensible and there's no reason why this unhappy situation should exist and persist. Mid-lament, I remarked, "We all make hell in our own image."

And this is something I've noticed about miserable people. They respond to situations to create web of perceptions that filters whatever reality gets through to them. You can think about Charles Swindoll's comment that 90% of our lives is how we respond to the 10% that actually happens. Mindful of this, I purpose to choose my response. And when I had cancer, I chose to maintain a positive mental attitude, because I knew that was the only thing I could control in that situation.

Thus I've said, "We all make hell in our own image," hundreds of times over the last couple decades. But this time, my wife said, "Did you come up with that yourself?" I remember coming to this conclusion independently, but I seriously doubt that it's original to me.

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, I am looking for any "prior art" associated with this aphorism--someone else (and I suspect that someone would be Hindu) who's said something equivalent. I'm offering a small reward, to the person or persons who contribute quotes from philosophy, religion, literature, or bumper stickers that capture this insight.

Holmes: Shaken, not stirred

2009-12-30T23:25:00.000-08:00

Once upon a time, I ran into an atheist who claimed that the Bible was untrue, because--among other things--it confuses eight-legged bugs with six-legged bugs. Everyone since Carolus Linnaeus began working on his system of biological classification, we know the former are arachnids and the latter are insects. I didn't accept this argument because the Bible was written over 1700 years before Carl Linnaeus was born. The Hebrew word used here is translated into English as "creeping things." At the time of writing, the distinction between insect and arachnid did not exist.

Literary works need to be interpreted in the context within which they're written. Arthur Conan Doyle wrote his Sherlock Holmes stories in the 1880s. At that time the public understood a "consulting detective" to be something different than what we understand a detective to be today.

The success of Arthur Conan Doyle inspired hundreds of subsequent mystery writers. The work of this army of scribblers has elaborated the concept of the crime-solving sleuth. The mystery genre has split into two sub-genres: the cozy and the hard-boiled. The cozy probably best typified by Agatha Christie's Miss Marple who solves crimes by her incredible brain without ever leaving her sitting room. The hardboiled is probably best typified by Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer who solves crimes with a hot gat and two fists of iron.

In the last century people have read Sherlock Holmes and they've fit him into the changing categories of thought defined by the cozy and the hard-boiled. Are the Sherlock Holmes stories cozies or hardboiled? If you look at way Basil Rathbone or Jeremy Brett played Holmes in the movies, it's obvious: The stories about the violin-playing logician residing at 221B Baker Street are cozies.

Thus I was torn when I saw the trailers for the new Sherlock Holmes movie. What's with those explosions? What's Holmes doing in a boxing ring? But, the trailers had this cool steam-punk look to them. That looks cool. I absolutely love steam-punk. But the canon. I'm a big one for a movie adaptation being true to the original literary work. This made me want to spurn the movie. But the steam-punk. I was torn.

It's rather stupid to slavishly insist on faithfulness to the canon when you haven't read any Sherlock Holmes in years (but have seen lots of movie adaptations). As it turns out, the canon is a lot more action-oriented than I'd recalled. For example, Sherlock Holmes of the novels is an expert swordsman and pugilist. Pugilist? I'd forgotten that bit.

The Sherlock Holmes of Arthur Conan Doyle's stories is neither the cozy nor the hardboiled detective. He preceeds these categories and he combines properties of each. Counter-intuitively, the fistfighting Sherlock Holmes in the movie trailers is altogether canonical.

Tonight I went to see the Sherlock Holmes movie. Negatives: that Robert Downey, Jr. has a wide face and bushy hair. I would have preferred a longer, horsey face and stringy, thining hair. Christian Bale must have been busy with his Batman gig. That's the ONLY thing I didn't like about this movie. Downey's acting made the character work.

This Sherlock Holmes is a steam-punk James Bond. It seems incongruous that he should become an action hero, but it worked. The inner dialog of Holmes during fight scenes is a delightful trick which serves to show Holmes' cerebrial side. And I thought it worked marvelously.

So, what have we? The Holmes of Arthur Conan Doyle's canon, a character created before the cozy/hardboiled split truly has elements of each. But this movie's screenplay was written in the 21st century, not the 19th. The categories of cozy and hardboiled become thesis and antithesis of a Hegelian dialectic whose synthesis is this movie. Go see it.

Secret News And Other Oxymorons

2009-12-25T07:56:00.000-08:00

I came upon this article, "McCain, GOP Secretly Courting Another Demo to Switch." And though I have no interest the activities of John McCain, this news reminded me of a pet peeve. From time to time one sees news articles about secret negotiations here, secret deals there, secret missions somewhere else, or secret treaties with foreign powers.

What bothers me is that if I'm reading about this in the news, it isn't a secret any more. And if it isn't a secret any more, why do the news guys put "secret" in the headline? Don't they realize they've let the cat out of the bag? Don't they care that they have rendered their headline false?

Have these guys always been liars?

2009-12-24T13:47:00.001-08:00

One advantage of having gray hair is that you remember ephemera from decades ago. For instance, the pet rock. It was a big hit in the early '70s. Except for the occasional wag who adds a USB port to it, they are ignored and forgotten.

Other things are ignored and forgotten. Everyone just loves Carl Sagan, the dead astrophysicist who taught PBS viewers how to pronounce "billions and billions" with reverential awe. He also used his fame to hype an idea called "nuclear winter." He did so when there was no talk of global warming, but winters had been colder than usual, and James Hansen of NASA was predicting a new Ice Age.

If you ever want to get a Ph.D. make sure you first line up a grant to do your research topic. I've known academics who languish for years in doctoral programs getting jerked around by committees. On the other hand, if you've got a fat government grant coming into the department, you can bet the chairman of the department isn't going to let the committee dilute your efforts with rabbit trail questions. The grant motivates the department to get a result, and your successful completion of your dissertation is part of that result.

So, imagine it's in the early 1980s and the Reagan Administration has no patience with greens suggesting maybe the stuff you exhale is a pollutant. However, Reagan was in the middle of winning the Cold War, and his predecessor, Jimmy Carter, slayer of killer rabbits, had hollowed out the military in western Europe. If the Ruskies came pouring through the Fulda Gap, the only alternative to surrender was to fall back to England and nuke the heck out of the Russian tanks racing through West Germany. This idea wasn't very popular with the West Germans. If you're an aspiring climate scientist, you're not going to get a government grant for global warming. But suppose you can scare the country with talk of a "Nuclear Winter."

Shortly thereafter there were OpEd in the New York Times, Parade & Scientific American magazines with Respected Scientists claiming that even a limited nuclear war would result in the end of civilization and extinction of all life on earth. At the heart of this was a paper flogged by Sagan, et al. in a paper called TTAPS.

Guess what? They lied. A Nuclear Winter won't happen. But that didn't stop a lot of aspiring climate scientists from shaking the government down for research grants to fund their Ph.D.s and Ph.D.s for their favorite students. Turns out Nuclear Winter was just lefty scare-mongering.

Now, imagine you're used to fat government paydays to investigate Nuclear Winter, and further imagine the Soviet Empire implodes making this scary scenario a lot less likely. How are you going to get tomorrow's payday? Isn't that just about the time we started hearing that Global Warming would kill us all?

If Death Panels Don't Exist...

2009-12-23T12:08:00.000-08:00

Months back Sarah Palin was widely scorned by state-controlled media, and those commentators who are wiser than us, when she used the words "death panels." They said that this was untrue. Sarah was lying, that there are no death panels in ObamaCare.

That was the refrain as this legislation made its way through that parliament of whores which is the US Congress.

Today, Mrs. Palin points out that "...the section of the bill dealing with this board can’t be repealed or amended without a 2/3 supermajority vote..."

If I am to believe the Democrats in Congress, not only do Death Panels not exist, but they don't exist so much that it will require a 2/3rds supermajority to repeal them.

Bill Shatner Gets Pwned

2009-12-12T09:54:00.000-08:00

Years back I read an article on game theory in Scientific American. It described an experiment where researchers devised a game played by computers against computers. And then they put programmers to work devising game-playing algorithms. I was surprised to learn the winning program was called "T4T" standing for tit for tat.

The algorithm didn't think at all, it just remembered whether the opponent hit him last turn and then it hit back. All sorts of fancy mathematical analysis couldn't beat this fairly simple principle of tit for tat.

We saw this a few months ago when John Kerry made some lame joke about Sarah Palin's dis-appearance. The newsies rushed to get her reaction. A little while later, she obliged by telling a joke about the senator's appearance with the punchline "John Kerry, why the long face?"

Some say the high point of the presidential campaign for Sarah Palin came when she gave her speeches at Dayton and at the GOP convention. Maybe. But I suggest it was the time that I did something I hadn't done for 20 years: watch Saturday Night Live. It was hilarious to see Sarah Palin walk up to Tina Fey goofing on her and then goof right back. Didn't she do a Tina Fey impression sometime during the show?

Mindful of this I shouldn't have been surprised last night. William Shatner has a semi-regular spot on the Conan O'Brian show doing hammed up oral interpretations of books. Last night he did, "Going Rogue." I found his excerpted sentences cringe-worthy. After he finished to everyone's surprise Sarah Palin came out carrying William Shatner's autobiography. And she read from Shatner's book.

The look on Shatner's face was priceless: surprise and apprehension. And deeper concern when he sees that she's carrying HIS book. It's easier to throw punches when you don't think you'll get hit back.

A year ago, everyone thought Sarah Palin was done as a political candidate because she'd been Quayled. Unlike the Vice President from Indiana, Mrs. Palin has devised an effective counter-strategy. Go along in a good-humored way, and then hit back in an equivalent fashion. Winston Churchill once said, "I like a man who grins when he fights."

Winston Churchill would have liked Sarah Palin.

p.s.
Do you remember when David Letterman said those nasty things about Mrs. Palin's daughters last summer? I don't think its surprising that she went on Conan O'Brian's show. There's just hitting back and there's how one hits back.

Avatar: This Is Not A Review

2009-12-11T14:49:00.000-08:00

If I were a lib, I'd write a review of Avatar without having seen it. But I have read some buzz about the film that has disabused me of the notion of assembling the Usual Suspects to go see it.

It sounds to me like this movie suffers from the Hollywood Stupid Tax. And I'm not going to talk about the movie or whether it indeed does do so. Instead, I want to talk about Good Art. Don't mistake my choice of words by thinking I mean High Art. X-Men Comic Books were good art. Babylon 5 was good art. I want to contrast Good Art with Partisan Pornography.

I have a friend who wrote a story where he gave his protagonist the power to grant wishes whereupon the hero had President George W. Bush lose control of his bowels during a nationally telecast press conference. Haw, haw, haw. My friend's partisan leanings are not toward the GOP, and I classify this as Partisan Pornography. Mere wish fulfillment in contrast to the truth of what is. Another wrote a story where all the Socialists were wise and courageous while J. Edgar Hoover was venal and craven. Each depicted the world as he wanted it to be.

Were I to write about an alternate-history where Ronald Reagan served a 3rd term as President, it'd be the same kind of Porn, just different partisans. I am within epsilon of terming Sarah Palin a political pornstar for this same reason. Not that she's ever disrobed before the camera, but that she's become the vessel of so many Conservative wish-dreams. The reality is that Mrs. Palin is not an American Thatcher, though I am not unbiased enough to expect anything less of her.

When the Tigers play the Orioles, I want them to score 20 runs as the Tiger pitcher throws a no-hit shut-out. That's the sports version of Partisan Pornography. Were I a Baltimore fan, I'd prefer the roles reverse.

But the world seldom works like that. And truth is that's a good thing. It's a better game when the score tied 0-0 in the ninth with the bases loaded, two outs, and a full-count on our best clutch hitter facing their best reliever.

Understanding is a three-edged sword the Vorlon of Babylon 5 said: your side, their side, and the truth. Triangulation of this sort is what I think Good Art demands. "The line between good and evil runs through the human heart," said Solzhenitsyn. And thus you can't make plaster saints of your protagonists and utter demons of your villains. Your story must include something that subverts your own side's position and cedes what's right about the other side's position.

You can call this a Hegelian dialectic of thesis vs antithesis. Indeed that's part of my thinking. But not all of it. Mix in some intellectual humility, a recognition that your map does not always match the territory (and neither does his). I think that this is more fruitful than patting yourself on the back and reaffirming what you already know.

I first coined the term Hollywood Stupid Tax when I realized why Star Trek Enterprise had become unwatchable. The show was just too stinking PC to be interesting. It killed the franchise. The closest they came was when they put three episodes in the Spock-with-a-beard alternate universe. It was nice to show them kicking butt and taking names for a change. But that's not right either.

In the original Star Trek series episode, "The Enemy Within," Kirk has a transporter accident and he's split into two parts, a Jekyll part and a Hyde part. Yin and yang. Both are necessary to be interesting. If a writer wants to make good box office, s/he needs to embrace this tension and let the audience negotiate the balance.

Maybe Sarah Will Be The Next President

2009-11-29T19:44:00.000-08:00

If you're a moonbat. I'll let you have a few moments to scream into a pillow.

There. Better now? Let's begin.

If you look at the Republicans lining up to run against Barak Obama in the next election, the short list includes Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney. I have never thought either of them stands a chance of beating Barak Obama and I still don't. The question is whether the GOP will nominate one of them or someone else.

Tonight there was a tragic event in Washington state where a fellow murdered four policemen. The man being sought in that crime is no stranger to the legal system, having been convicted for several crimes including one with a 48 year sentence and another for a 60 year sentence. The man is 37 years old and did not pass through a time warp. Instead, Mike Huckabee, pardoned him.

I've long thought that Mike Huckabee would make a great Pastor, maybe a good Evangelist, but was a lousy Governor and would be a bigger disaster as President than Jimmy Carter. Not to worry, he'd lose as badly against Mr. Obama as Alan Keyes did.

Mike Huckabee's greatest impact in 2008 in Republican Primaries was splitting the Evangelicals from the rest of the Republican party. However, it is entirely possible that in 2012 Evangelicals voting in the Republican primaries might find Sarah Palin on the ballot. His influence would be diminished accordingly.

What I found particularly distasteful about Mr. Huckabee's campaign in 2008 was his rather blatant identity politics: Vote for me b/c I'm Baptist. Well, I'm a Baptist and I voted against him. Sarah Palin isn't a Baptist, her faith is a prominent part of her identity, but she isn't quoting Scripture as much as she's quoting Reagan.

Tonight Mike Huckabee suffered a severe setback. Years back Mr. Huckabee pardoned someone who should be safely locked up in prison, but (if indeed he is found guilty) instead has perpetrated a murder spree. This may speak well of his willingness to forgive others their debts, but it does not speak well of his judgment. It is bad theology and it is bad politics to confuse worldly and heavenly offenses. I suspect this sort of confusion also afflicts politicians who want to grant amnesty to illegal aliens.

All Barak Obama needs to do in 2012 is dust off the Willie Horton ads that George Bush senior and Al Gore used against Michael Dukakis. And since Barak Obama is, by definition, not a racist, his photos of the pardoned cop-killer will run without criticism. Embed this instance of bad judgment into a narrative of running against someone just like George W. Bush and you've got the Obama '12 campaign.

This is a shame, because Mike Huckabee has one advantage over Mitt Romney: he didn't inherit his money. And there's one thing the Democrats have been fine tuning for the last decade: class warfare. If you run a rich scion of a prominent family, you're doomed. Ask Dick DeVos how his run for governor of Michigan worked. Jennifer Granholm's economic policies are as brain-dead as Barak Obama's. Yet she won re-election through pure class warfare. Blame the rich guy for bad economic times.

Here's another strike against Mitt Romney. He was for abortion before he was against it. Some claim that Evangelicals hold Mr. Romney's Mormon faith against him, but it is his changing positions on abortion that matter. If you go from pro-choice to pro-life, that's a Damascus Road change. Makes me kind of think he was pro-choice to get votes in Massachusetts and switched to pro-life to get votes in Republican Primaries. (Not that we haven't seen several Democrat politicians go the opposite direction.)

The third strike against Mitt Romney is RomneyCare. Mr. Romney knew that the Massachusetts legislature and electorate wanted health care reform. And he got a Health Care bill passed at a state level that is not unlike the one Mr. Obama has been pushing at a national level. It's not working out very well of late, or so I hear, but a year or two ago it was being hailed as a wonderful achievement of Mr. Romney. This'll make it hard for Mr. Romney to turn around and run against ObamaCare.

If Romney is the Republican candidate in 2012, this will take ObamaCare off the table. He'll have to find something else to run against. Given the choice between Obama and Yet Another Squish, a lot of Tea Partiers are going to vote for a 3rd Party candidate. Nevertheless, National Review and T. Coddington Van Voorhees VII is going to be pimping for Romney again.

So, name another Republican Presidential candidate? Newt Gingrich? He is the only one who thought he was presidential material, but after his endorsement of Dede Scozzafava in NY-23, he's toast. Tim Pawlenty, anybody ever heard of him outside Minnesota?

Then there's the girl everyone (if you've a Beltway Insider, or a Mainstream Media flack) loves to hate, but everyone most likely to vote in a Republican Presidential Primary treats like a rock star. I've talked to people who stayed in line overnight to get Sarah Palin's autograph on a book.

I've learned to never predict what Sarah Palin is going to do, because she has faked me out so badly when I've done so. It is altogether that Mrs. Palin is going to do nothing more than strike fear into the hearts of Democrat strategists and loathing in the hearts mainstream media Brahmans. And she could spend the rest of her days laughing happily to the bank. However, should she choose to run, she'll do very well with the demographic that's bought her book.

Who is Norah O'Donnell?

2009-11-20T16:06:00.000-08:00

The television show, Babylon 5, had a race of aliens, the Vorlons, who would always ask the question, "Who are you?" This was in contrast with the darker aliens, the Shadows, who would always ask the question, "What do you want?" This was a metaphor to distinguish between the two aliens' approaches toward life. The question, "who are you?" isn't so much a request for identification, as a query about how one's moral compass is magnetized.

I went to lunch at On The Border outside Woodland Mall and watched the show going on outside as I ate my meal. (Sarah Palin was coming to town to sign books as I've recorded elsewhere.) It was a great day for people watching. I thought the most interesting people to watch were the acolytes serving the Network On-Air Talents. They were dressed normally, for New York City. But the Network On-Air Talents were invariably dressed most expensively. Out the window I noticed a tall, thin woman in a very expensive-looking pants suit. Definitely New Yorker, but I did not recognize her. But she did look like a Network On-Air Talent, except she was orders of magnitude more attractive than Andrea Mitchell.

I was parked on the opposite side of the Mall, so the path back to my car lay through Woodland Mall past the spot where MSNBC was camped out. This woman was striking, but I had no clue who she might be. She was being interviewed by a less attractive Network On-Air Talent from Access Hollywood, but that provided no clue. My friend with whom I had been lunching doesn't watch MSNBC, either.

Much later, after I'd gotten Sarah Palin's autograph & handshake, I was home and googling for news coverage of Mrs. Palin. I found a video on Media Matters. The interviewer was Norah O'Donnell. Yeah, same purple top & black pantsuit. I sent the link to two friends with the caption, "Norah O'Donnell picks on a little girl."

So, that's who Norah O'Donnell is.

Later, I read that the girl Ms. O'Donnell was persecuting was not a minor. BUT, just now I learn that this lie came from Ms. O'Donnell herself. Clearly, she understands that picking on kids is not an image enhancer and she lied about the girl's age to forestall blow-back. Happily, the web is such that even Network On-Air Talent can be fact-checked by little girls who are indeed age 17.

Don't take my word for this, read what Red, White & Conservative has to say for herself.

Who is Norah O'Donnell? She's a woman who doesn't let kids or the facts get in the way of her narrative.

Sarah Palin in Grand Rapids, MI

2009-11-18T06:11:00.001-08:00

Just got back from Woodland mall. I arrived at 7:00am sharp and made my way to the end of the line of people waiting to get in. The line extended from Barnes & Noble, back to the Information Desk at the center of the mall, and then snaked around a maze like you'd see at the airport for a while, and then extended back to the mall entrance.

Next to the entrance to Barnes & Noble is a media setup with lights and camera. When I got in line, it wasn't immediately clear which media outfit was there. Unlike local news coverage, there wasn't any scruffy camera guy and a "face." Instead there were some well-dressed underlings, including a fellow in a tie sitting crosslegged on the floor typing on his MacBook Pro. In the center was a short woman in a pant's suit. Heavy make-up. Looking somewhat long in the tooth. Walking past, I heard her saying that people were standing in line for Sarah Palin. Oh, that's what Andrea Mitchell looks like in real life.

So, how much of Mrs. Palin's bad press is a function of the jealousy of older, less-attractive women? And I'm not saying Ms. Mitchell appeared to be a crone, just that she looked as you'd expect of someone her age. I'm not as young as I used to be, either.

I stand in line for a half-hour and notice the fellow 20 people ahead of me is reading. I slap my forehead with my palm, "I have Mrs. Palin's book with me." Helpful advice: 1) buy the book the night before; 2) show up at whatever time your fanaticism moves you to; 3) while away the idle hours perusing Mrs. Palin's prose. I started reading. The line seemed to go faster.

90 minutes after getting into line, Barnes & Noble personnel had affixed a wristband to me. The girl advised me to return at 4:00pm. I thought this odd. I had the wristband... The signing isn't scheduled until 7:00pm.

Walking through the mall to get to my car, I saw folks waiting in a 2nd line. Their story is a little different. They drove down from Traverse City the night before. They'd waited in line since 9:00pm the night before. True fans. Now they had their wristbands. "What are you waiting for?" "To get into line again?" "What for?" "To get our books signed." Oh. They weren't going to go away and return at 4:00pm. Like I said, true fans.

Update:
(I was tired enough last night that I posted this as comments on Stacy McCain's blog. If you've read it there, this is largely the same.)

At Noontime:

I went back to Woodland Mall for lunch. The crowd had changed slightly. Parking is a zoo. This time I observed there are four shows like layers of an onion: 1) There's Sarah who's not there yet. 2) Then there are guys like me with the wristband who have been in line all day. 3) Camping out in a position of Great Honor are the Network Talents. I recognized Andrea Mitchell, but I did not recognize the statuesque brunette (who might induce me to watch network TV again) being interviewed by Access Hollywood. I don't know whether this means she was From Access Hollywood or whether she's someone Access Hollywood thinks important enough to interview. (I later discovered with a bit of googling that she is Norah O'Donnell. You can see a video of her picking on a little girl at the Media Matters website.) 4) Then there's the fourth show, the various acolites and minor deities attending to the On Air Talents. I think they were the most interesting people there.

If you see someone dressed in a black dress coat, s/he's probably from New York and is attending to some broadcast network's business. Conversely, if you see a kid in a Cornerstone University sweatshirt, s/he's been there since Oh Dark Thirty this morning.

Later that same evening:

Mrs. Palin is friendly and personal. She does retail politics flawlessly.

When I got back to the Mall to stand in line again, the line extended outside. (A mall guard told me the fire marshal said there were too many of us to wait inside.)

After a few minutes a pleasant girl from channel 6 in Lansing came by with cameraman in tow and interviewed people behind me. Others kept walking through ruining the shot and I heard the same line repeated 6 times.

When Mrs. Palin arrived, she gave a short speech (couldn't hear much) and a few minutes later the line began to move. The mall seemed warmer than it had earlier in the day.

Andrea Mitchell was camped out at the MSNBC spot directly in front of the Barnes & Noble entrance with Ms. O'Donnell that I'd noticed at lunch. Happily, I've no need to watch MSNBC to learn who that is. Ms. Mitchell looked tired; probably a long day for her, too. Ms. O'Donnell has the youth and looks to not be jealous of Mrs. Palin in those regards. Nonetheless, she may still be jealous of Mrs. Palin's audience.

My cell rang. It was a couple journalism students from Cornerstone University. (My wife had given their prof my number.) They have a Wednesday night class. You could tell by the navy blue "Truth Seekers" tee shirts in a Star Wars font. They came over and we had a nice chat about Mrs. Palin's star power. "Look at this crowd. It's a rock star crowd. She's a Political Elvis"

Their prof owns a small newspaper a couple towns over. This reminded me that newspapers are hurting financially. Mrs. Palin's ability to make old-media newsies irrelevant is an existential threat every bit as real as Craigslist classified advertising. Who needs to tune into MSNBC when you can surf to Mrs. Palin's facebook page and get her words firsthand?

These students went away and the line slowly wound its way toward the Barnes & Noble door. Another Cornerstone student came around holding a big foam core board and a few Sharpies. They were collecting well-wishes for Mrs. Palin. I had to sign it.

Eventually, we got into the bookstore. The clerks know me from the Thursday writers' group. One called, "It's not Thursday." and we laughed. I climbed the deactivated escalators and wended a serpentine route through the stacks.

Sadly, they didn't route us through Philosophy. The teenager ahead of me pulled a book off the shelf about being a gay teenager and handed it to her dad. NTTAWWT. She and I found it a lot funnier than he did. He added that his Facebook account had been hacked a few days back and defaced with a lot of homoerotic stuff. I suppressed additional sniggers.

They had a big cloth scrim set up around the desk where Sarah Palin signed books.

Within this Holy of Holies were cherubim wearing Grand Rapids City Police uniforms and seraphim in plainclothes with coiled wires going into their ears. A high priestess took my books and passed them to Mrs. Palin. She said Grand Rapids was treating her well in that perky, aw-shucks way that I love so much.

I shook the hand of a rock star.

I left slowly, savoring the moment. I spoke with a guy in black suit--Someone Important with Woodland Mall. The crowd control & security was handled professionally and everything went well. His people did a great job. He thanked me back.

The crowd scene was pleasant. Conservatives are all individuals. Some of us can be odd, but everyone was friendly. I detest waiting in line, but I did enjoy the crowd. After Dan's Bake Sale, Rush remarked that the crowd left things neat & clean whereas when the same number of liberals get together they trash the place. This crowd left Woodland Mall in fair shape.

Outside the store the guy in line behind me had his digital SLR out. He asked me to take his picture in front of the Barnes & Noble sign.

Walking back to my car through the mall all the stores had closed and just a few clerks were finishing up for the night. It was peaceful as I carried two signed copies of Sarah Palin's book home.

Everyone Lies about Sex

2009-11-17T22:21:00.001-08:00

When Bill Clinton was found to have lied about having sex with Monica Lewinski under oath, his perjury was excused with the spin, "everyone lies about sex."

A young lady named Carrie Prejean has achieved her 15 minutes of fame by competing in a beauty pageant, losing because she said she disapproved of gay marriage, becoming a darling of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, and then getting in trouble for sexual immodesty. In particular, sex tapes have come to light. I was a little uncomfortable with my coreligionists making a hero out of her. Now they've dropped her like a hot potatoe. (Note the Dan Quayle spelling)

I've been sympathetic toward Ms. Prejean. And I'm still inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt. But there are fewer doubts. She claims these sex tapes were made when she was a minor. If she were 17 when she made the tapes, then she is guilty of distributing child porn. (Yes, every minor who engages in "sexting" is distributing child porn. This crime is rarely (never) prosecuted, but it is nevertheless black-letter law.)

In response to Ms. Prejean's claims of being a minor, her boyfriend claims she was 20 at the time. He has a strong motive to claim she was 20, b/c if she was a minor, he is guilty of a felony. But if she's 20, he's merely a cad.

I hope she was a victim of youthful indiscretion and bad judgment. And I hope that her Christianity moved her to repent of her pornographic videography. Happily, I'm not the judge of this matter.

Conversely, if Ms. Prejean was NOT a minor, she's lying NOW. And she's saying she's a Christian NOW. If so, she has a moral problem NOW. The Bible puts "bearing false witness" in the 10 Commandments, but sex tapes aren't exactly in the Bible. Though Bill Clinton claimed, "everyone lies about sex," Ms. Prejean is held to a non-Clintonian standard.

So, we still have doubts. Maybe she is telling the truth and her boyfriend is lying. Or maybe not. How would we know? I suppose the videos in question could be submitted to forensic analysis.

If Ms. Prejean is telling the truth, then she is a felon. She might seek her own prosecution for distributing child porn. It is a dramatic gesture that would screw up her life more than anything she's done so far, but it would demonstrate integrity.

Centuries a fellow named Socrates was found guilty of a bogus charge and sentenced to die. He had the opportunity to sneak out of Athens, but he didn't. He manned up, accepted the hemlock thrust upon him, and drank every drop.

Henry Cloud, the co-author of "Boundaries" wrote a book entitled "Integrity." One of its early lessons is that everyone needs 1) the competence to do the job, 2) the ability to connect with others and build trust, and 3) the integrity to not screw up.

Drink the hemlock, Ms. Prejean.

Don't pick on Gays

2009-11-04T08:55:00.000-08:00

I think one of the biggest failures of the Religious Right has been that it has forgotten why it exists and this amnesia is hurting it and the Republican party to which it is enslaved.

I'm against abortion. I identify myself as a Social Conservative because I'm against abortion. I despised George W Bush first and foremost because he could not give a coherent case against abortion. He mouthed vague words about "sanctity of life" or something. Sanctity, that belongs in church, not the public forum. He got away with being squishy this way because where we going to go? Gore or Kerry?

Somehow the Religious Right has distracted itself with gays. If you're a Conservative and you think gay sex is wrong, don't do it. And if you're a member of the Religious Right, instigating against gays is bad for two reasons: 1) government has no business in the bedroom, 2) while you're lathered up about gays, you're doing nothing to stop abortion. Here's a clue: gays seldom have abortions. If someone needs an abortion, it wasn't because s/he engaged in gay sex.

I'm not saying gay sex is right or wrong, because you should look that up for yourself in the Bible. I won't change your mind either way. And while I'm talking politics, I think it's wrong for me to bring up bedroom activities. I think that kind of stuff is outside the proper role of government. (But if you're in church or some other social institution, that kind of stuff if fair game.)

Do I think gays have a right to use government de-legitimize my faith if it contains thou-shalt-nots about gay sex? NO. Do I think gays have a right to change traditions and institutions by force of political pressure and government? NO. You leave us alone; we'll leave you alone.

In yesterday's election an openly gay candidate for mayor of someplace won, but the Maine referendum stopping gay marriage won, too. (I think this exemplifies the Christian notion of "love the sinner; hate the sin." But that's too moralistic.) Rather, voters apply different criteria about gays when the question is personal or institutional. We care less about personal attacks predicated upon gay-rights, but we care more about preserving institutions and traditions in the face of gay activism.

Therefore, I think the Religious Right and the Republican party ought to take a more libertarian tack. Something that's been forgotten. Abortion is different b/c it takes a human life. That's nothing to be laissez-faire about. But sex, drugs and rock & roll. Meh.

Forty Ways I Told Republicans To Drop Dead

2009-10-19T21:01:00.000-07:00

I frequently get calls from telemarketers seeking money. Recently I started getting calls from people representing the National Republican Congressional Campaign Committee. Since I detest the direction the Democrats are taking the country, the story the fundraisers tell is compelling to me.

There's the narrative the Republicans in DC say to us provincials. And there's the things they do. It's always wise to compare/contrast the things politicians SAY and what they DO.

So, Mr. Obama named some Congressman in upstate New York to some government job. The Congressman happened to be a Republican. This has created a vacancy and an election is being held to fill it. The Democrats have a candidate. And the Republicans decided to nominate someone who gives every appearance of being a RINO. Now, you'd think that the me-too wing of the party would take a delivery from the clue train. Did none of the party bosses in DC look out the window on 9/12 and see the Tea Partiers? What might that mean? Could it possibly be that the public is of a mind to support those who advocate smaller government?

It appears that one Mr. Doug Hoffman thought as much. He is running as the Conservative Party candidate in the New York 24th Congressional District. As a result, support for the RINO has collapsed to Mr. Hoffman's benefit. Now we have a 3-way race pretty much equally divided.

Movement Conservatives nationwide have stepped in to support Mr. Hoffman with their endorsements. On the other hand the party bosses in DC have dropped hundreds of thousands of dollars on the RINO. In response groups like the Club for Growth have proceeded to buy ads for Mr. Hoffman.

A lot of Conservatives like myself are sick and tired of RINOs like John McCain co-opting the Republican party. When I heard that the people who'd been on the phone just last week begging money from me were giving it to another RINO, I was not amused.

So, Mr. John Boehner and Mr. Pete Sessions of the NRCCC, I thought you'd like to know that the money that I did not send you went instead to Mr. Doug Hoffman.

The Republican Dogs That Didn't Bark

2009-10-15T21:26:00.001-07:00

Republicans don't care when racists perpetrate lynchings. Just so long as the guys doing the lynching are liberals.

So, where is Mike Huckabee, Or Mitt Romney, Or even Sarah Palin? Do any of those Republican "leaders" have anything to say on the subject? Do any of those "leaders" have any inclination to practice LEADERSHIP?

Rush Limbaugh has just been subjected to a media lynching. The likes of which we haven't seen since it was done to Sarah Palin last fall. He was libeled by CNN and various members of the sports press who attributes racist quotes to him that they knew were false. And when they were called on it, they repeated the quotes and said he denied them.

They just made stuff up. And he should sue just to make it harder to libel the next conservative they decide to target.

You'd think that perhaps someone in the Republican Party might NOTICE. Or you think that someone who might want Mr. Limbaugh's support WHEN THE SAME THING IS DONE TO THEM NEXT ELECTION CYCLE, would say something in Rush's defense. Some Republican might express at disapproval of the obvious double standard in play when proven liars and race-hustlers make baseless accusations of racism.

That's where Rush differs from Glen Beck. He's still loyal to the Republican party. He's still in the party and instigating to get it to move to the right. Glen Beck is denouncing Washington Corruption in both the Republican and the Democrat sides of the aisle. Rush goes easy on the Establishment Republicans inside the Beltway. And this is how he's repaid.

The only McCain in Washington likely to condemn Rush's lynching is named Stacy (despite being distracted by Megan McCain's decolletage).

Passing the torch

2009-09-26T11:01:00.000-07:00

Seems the cranky old man who gave us President Barak Obama is anxious to assist in his re-election. George Bush betrayed the Reagan revolution. And the Republicans passed the torch to John McCain who, in turn is fundraising for Mitt Romney.

That John McCain's support for Mitt Romney should assure Barak Obama's re-election may seem counter-intuitive. But it bears a striking resemblance to what happened in Michigan gubernatorial politics. Ms. Granholm has run Michigan's economy into the same hole that Mr. Obama is sending the national economy. But she got re-elected.

She did so by being a class-warrior and the Michigan Republicans obliged her by putting a billionaire who inherited his wealth up against her.

You can see it by way of an analogy. Imagine you're a black man running for Governor against Lester Maddox or George Wallace. These guys made a career of exploiting hatred against people because of an accident of their birth. They had non-governmental organizations such as the KKK to fan the flames of hatred and organize direct action while maintaining plausible deniability for themselves and their political parties.

If you're a guy (of any color) who inherits billions running against a class warrior, it's like being a black guy running against a racist. It's just a different "accident" of your birth.

When Rich DeVos ran for Governor he was demonized as an exploiter of the working classes. This turned Michigan's cruddy economy to Ms. Granholm's advantage. This gave an unpopular Jennifer Granholm a second term. Should Mitt Romney run against Barak Obama, he'd lose by the same dynamic.

Mitt Romney is the son of George Romney, a successful Michigan politician and former President of American Motors Corporation. He has no doubt inherited many good things from his family. Including a pile of cash. This makes him vulnerable to accusations of being a child of privilege.

Moreover, Mr. Romney has added to his family's wealth by his successful career in Finance. Finance, that's the subject of the movie "Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story." If you think that won't be used against Mr. Romney in a general election, ask Mr. DeVos what was said about him and "outsourcing."

I'm not saying Mr. Romney is a bad man or an inept administrator. He brings several demonstrated skills that are sorely lacking in the current Chief Executive of this country. But he's vulnerable to attack from the left. Either the economy will improve: whereupon Mr. Obama will claim that Socialism works and he'll promise to tax and spend even more. Or it won't, and he'll point fingers of blame at everyone who has money and promise to punish them for their greed. That evil Romney is just another fat cat exploiter Michael Moore is telling us about. That's why Mr. Romney will be like a black man running for Governor of Alabama or Georgia against a Segregationist.

Another troubling thing about Mr. Romney is the Massachusetts health care law that he signed into law. It bears many similarities to ObamaCare that no Republican will admit to. Let's suppose Mr. Romney runs against Mr. Obama and tries to make ObamaCare an issue in the campaign. You can be confident that the Massachusetts health care law will NOT be ignored by the Obama campaign.

This will take away the sharpest weapon in the Republicans' arsenal. And I can see a couple million Tea Partiers finding no reason to vote for the Republican candidate. Like they did last time. Why vote for a Republican who promises the same big government that the Democrats are foisting upon us?

This brings us to the "Maverick" who handed the election to Mr. Obama. Disloyalty is not a good leadership trait. Mr. Romney, happily, does not share the single worst character flaw of John McCain. That he should host a fundraiser for Mr. Romney instead of his own running mate reflects his poor political judgment and his inherent disloyalty. We're well rid of him.

Where can I go to find another Ronald Reagan?

Can We Trade?

2009-09-26T10:30:00.000-07:00

It is only getting play in the foreign press. But it seems there was a disagreement of opinion between our Dear Leader and the French President. This isn't the first time these two have been in the news as being less than sympatico.

I think I know why and I have a proposed solution. Sarkozy has the nickname in France of "the American" and his pro-American attitudes are incongruous in a French leader. He has forcefully resisted rioting Moslem youth in his country. And he's been the first non-Socialist in the recent history of French presidents. Pretty much the opposite, at every point, of what the Dear Leader would do.

The first thing Sarkozy did after he got the job was to get a spouse-upgrade to a smoking-hot model.

As for our Dear Leader and the First Lady, I'll say nothing you don't already know. He has been running the country after a fashion reminiscent of French socialism.

So, France, here's the deal: Let's trade Presidents.

Barak Hussein Obama, you're no Joe!

2009-09-24T21:48:00.000-07:00

I thought the country was in trouble last year when late in the primary season all three surviving candidates were SENATORS. You know, the guys whose jobs consist of doing nothing but talking and voting. Not a lot of administrative or governance involved in that gig.

I also thought the Republican Party was in trouble last year when it had a radioactive/toxic lame duck President Bush who talked like a Conservative, but governed like a me-too Socialist. (Same destination, more leisurely pace.) And the Republicans were led by a "Maverick" who's sole demonstrated competency was stabbing his allies in the back for headlines. The one bright spot was a now-unemployed housewife who has been reduced to posting the occasional essay on Facebook despite being called a Cancer by various and sundry "Conservative" commentators.

But government propaganda is no substitute for competent leadership. Turns out King Barry wasn't the clean, articulate numinous black man like Morgan Freeman in Bruce Almighty. No, he's a lot further left of the moderate candidate that a lot of Democrats, Independents and Republicans voted for. So sorry, too bad, we got your votes and you've been had. (I feel your pain: I voted for a Conservative and got a Bush instead.)

King Barry is also unlike Morgan Freeman in Bruce Almighty because, (to his dismay) in that he is not God. Unlike King Canute, our President apparently believes his own propaganda. He's the guy who promised the oceans would stop rising. Stand aside, Canute, watch Barry...

...fall on his face. Barak Hussein Obama, you are no Joe Stalin! Say what you will about the brutality and murderous character of the old Soviet union--never more brutal nor murderous than when Uncle Joe ran the show. Joe didn't make the trains run on time, he did something more difficult. He made the Soviet bureaucracy jump through any hoops he set before it. He knew how to pull the strings and make things happen. And the Soviet bureaucracy became a finely honed instrument of Joe Stalin's will.

The Good News is that investigation of ACORN will be performed by the Federal bureaucracy. Barak Hussein Obama can command the investigations to cease, but he lacks the administrative skills and experience of the youngest governor of the smallest state of the Union. If he shuts down investigations, there will be leaks. I don't think it's a coincidence that the bureaucracy has been ahead of everyone else in cutting off ACORN at Commerce and Treasury.

If I were a Democrat, I'd be ashamed to have anything to do with this racketeer influenced corrupt organization. But I'm curious about ELECTED Democrats. How many of them lie awake at night thinking these words "...you're going down with me."

This seems to be the thinking behind the suit that was brought by ACORN against James O'Keefe, Hannah Giles, and Andrew Breitbart. Here's what lawyers have explained to me: When you sue me, I get a fishing license to go through all your records in a process called "discovery." All I have to have is a reasonable expectation that you have information that will help me defend myself. Now, this shouldn't be a problem if everything's on the up-and-up, but if you're a politician with, say, 20 years of history with this racketeer influenced corrupt organization, you might not want that. Let's hope the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy can hire a lot of lawyers and data miners to go through ACORN's underwear drawer. (And this little scandal has demonstrated that Breitbart, et al. are playing chess and thinking a few moves ahead.)

Conversely, if you're a politician with, say, 20 years of history with this racketeer influenced corrupt organization, and also the head of a major political party, a lot of members of that political party will want to make this law suit go away just to stop discovery. Will the state of Maryland dispense marsupial justice in the case of ACORN versus Breitbart, et alia?

Hard choice, I figure. Canute-on-the-Potomac may command it, but the Federal bureaucracy has an institutional-will of its own. If you're IRS or DOJ, you really don't want to let tax cheats (who aren't in Congress or the Cabinet) get away with openly advising tax evasion. And you really don't want them to get away with child-sex-trafficking. Not because you love the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, but because it makes your job harder.

Also hard, because elected officials (unlike Joe Stalin) you have to stand for re-election. If you're explaining why you helped ACORN perpetrate a travesty of justice, you're not accusing your opponent of taking No-Doz. Or demanding he condemn the boiling of rubber frogs.

Perhaps his imperial royal highness King Barak Hussein Obama can issue pardons to everyone involved in the ACORN suit. Pardon's didn't hurt Bill Clinton. and they didn't hurt Richard Nixon, either. (Not the ones he granted, the one he got.)

If you're a Conservative, it really is good news that our Emperor-God is so incompetent at runningthe bureaucracy. Thank God, Barak Hussein Obama is no Joe Stalin.

On Public Health Care

2009-09-21T20:35:00.000-07:00

The last time the Democrats controlled all three branches of US government, they tried to push through HillaryCare. At the time, I thought it Fascist. Not in the sense of German Nazism, but in the sense of Mussolini making the trains run on time. I.e. private ownership of the means of production, but state control thereof. (No, I didn't call anyone a Nazi.)

Next time the Democrats got control, we got the Porkulus bill, and the Government/UAW bail out (or should I say buy-out) of GM and Chrysler. And when the American electorate realized that Porkulus would not create any jobs any time soon, Mr. Obama's popularity took a dive. (Note to politicians: if you vote to spend a trillion bucks to create jobs, create jobs. Don't just print road signs about "recovery.")

With Mr. Obama's flagging popularity came some real push-back to ObamaCare. During the August recess many politicians were reminded that some of their subjects are laboring under the impression that they are citizens who elected representatives. How provincial of them.

Like any good PR campaign, the White House had a narrative ready for the state-controlled (soon to be state-owned) channels: The opposition to ObamaCare is mere astroturfing.

Trouble with that. About the same time they were running that con, the White House, we learn, was marshaling the efforts of America's artists. Nobody gives as much money to artists as the National Endowment for the Arts. And the White House really would like some pro-ObamaCare art. Not that anybody offered any provable quid pro quo...

Or maybe that's what the guys at BigGovernment.com have up their sleeves. Look at what happened recently. Every day we got to see ACORN in another city, acting like a racketeer influenced and corrupt organization. And before ACORN could say "spin cycle" the Commerce Department had announced that someone else would work on the census and the Senate & House had separately voted to cut funding. (Not that they won't try to sneak it back in under cover of darkness.) State-controlled (not yet state-owned) media tried to ignore it as Faux news, but at some point even New York Times readers grow curious about what's going on... But I digress.

Suppose that in addition to the NEA conference call tapes that Glenn Beck played on the air a couple weeks back, there is some hidden-video of "payola for propaganda" sitting on Andrew Breitbart's staging server?

Wouldn't that be a nice October Surprise.

Even if not, imagine the PR strategy:
1) claim anti-ObamaCare is just Astroturf
2) fund Soviet-style propaganda that is pro-ObamaCare
3) use it to counter those people you're calling Astroturfers

Is the White House so stupid that they don't realize that pre-printed signage that coheres to a single theme looks like Astroturf whereas hand-painted signage looks like real grassroots? Those guys with hand-printed signs, getting roughed up by purple-shirted SEIU thugs. They were the astroturfers, not the guys with pre-printed signs and t-shirts. Right. Maybe folks wouldn't have made that connection, if you hadn't been talking so much about astroturf.

Did You Vote For Tiger Woods or Al Sharpton?

2009-09-13T11:04:00.000-07:00

One comparison has been omitted when regarding the Obama-as-promised and the Obama-as-realized. And that is one Tiger Woods. Mr. Woods is as multi-racial as Mr. Obama and extremely good at what he does and highly sought after as an endorser of luxury goods. He's a person of enough-color-to-be-regarded-black who is regarded as sensible and prosperous. He realizes what Mr. Obama (or whoever penned Dreams Of My Father) wrote describing the non-threatening black man. I think that many of the 53% who voted for him expected a President much like Tiger Woods.

Conversely, Obama-as-realized has demonstrated he is much more like Reverend Al Sharpton who hides a core of thuggish race-hustling extortion behind an expensive suit.

This isn't as much as racial thing as a social thing. Or subcultural thing. Power plays that work for Reverend Jeremiah Wright on his congregation do not generalize to the wider American culture. That there is a black subculture (to which Mr. Woods shows no signs of membership) is a signal failure of integration efforts of the 1960s. Rather than demonstrating the success of civil rights, Mr. Obama demonstrates black power at the expense of civil rights.

Had Mr. Obama truly been the Tiger-Woods-sort-of-man who was sold to the American electorate he could have easily assumed the Clintonian role of triangulator-in-chief. To the contrary, he has become the extremist whose words do not match his actions. So much that an unemployed Alaskan housewife has schooled him with a half-dozen Facebook posts. It should be noted that Ms. Palin began her demolition of Mr. Obama with an exhortation to civil dialog after the Mr. Obama had advised his followers “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.”

Tiger Woods would have brought golf clubs.

The Girl In The Amish Dress

2009-09-09T21:37:00.000-07:00

I went to Camp Barakel for the Labor Day weekend family camp. This is a yearly ritual that we've enjoyed as a family since my kids were very young. At family camp there are chapel services. The best part of any chapel service was a testimony given by the speaker's son. The speaker is a natural storyteller and his son has inherited his skill.

He told a story of going to Shipshewana, IN where there's a lot of Amish-themed stuff. Also, it is not unusual for a young, single man to notice an attractive young lady. And the speaker's son told the story of seeing an Amish girl in a shop who caught his eye. He spent some time wondering how he might make this girl's acquaintance and just happened to notice when she finished work. As he watched, he discovered the Amish girl wasn't Amish at all, because she walked up to a car and tossed her Amish dress into the trunk. Turned out she wasn't Amish at all.

He made this a metaphor for the person who wears his Christianity like that Amish dress, but he does not make it an essential part of his character. I liked this a lot at the time and I still do.

But there is an assumption that I made at the time that NOBODY can take for granted. Phoniness is always bad. Sincere belief is not necessarily good. Suppose I sincerely believe in Ba'al or Molech: one of those human sacrifice demanding Pagan deities. That's bad, too. Still with me? Suppose I sincerely believe in a monotheistic deity commonly referred to as Allah. That's less revolting, but it is not Christianity.

When J. Gresham Machen confronted theological liberalism in the 1920s, and later when Francis Schaeffer confronted religious existentialism in the 1970s, they condemned an object-less faith in faith. Christianity doesn't work this way. Christianity makes specific truth-claims about God and Jesus.

For one thing, God is holy. This means two things: God is morally pure and God is transcendent. That morally pure business does not mean he subscribes to all the cultural norms of Baptists like me. It means God embodies everything in the Ten Commandments--the entirety of the Law.

The Ten Commandments are not something the Pharisees could keep, so they substituted their own traditions that they thought they could keep. I think this was a subtle form of idolatry--replacing the God that is for another more amenable to them. Baptists like me are at risk of doing this, too. And so, I expect any normative statement made by any Baptist preacher to be grounded in God's law. If you start telling me to do extra stuff, I'm skeptical, because I don't want to be that kind of idolater.

You see, when God tells me to do stuff, He's obligated to help me. If some Baptist preacher tells me to do extra stuff, I've noticed that God doesn't help me. And Baptists measure status by the extra stuff we're reputed to do.

And then there's Jesus. I'm a sinner, because I've broken God's law. I stand condemned by God and my dead works will not merit anything with God. My only hope is Jesus Christ, his sacrifice on my behalf and his righteousness imputed to me. Jesus is more than the "Get Out Of Hell Free" card, but the life-principle of my every worthy action in this life in this world. I'm not only Justified by faith in Christ alone, I'm Sanctified by faith in Christ--his life, his righteousness, right now. It is the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit that makes me straighten up and fly right.

Conversely, there is another gospel that the apostle Paul speaks of in Galatians 1:8-9

But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. As we said before, so say I now again, if any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed. For do I now persuade men, or God? or do I seek to please men? for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.

Let's think back about that girl in the Amish dress. Phoniness is always bad. I think that the apostle Paul says right here that sincere belief in another gospel is accursed. I'm anxious that we retain the real gospel and reject another gospel.

It's my opinion that the real gospel is centered on the merit and righteousness of Christ imputed to the individual. It's also my opinion that another gospel will be predicated upon human effort; lacking the Holy Spirit it relies upon psychological manipulation tricks to spur people into action. You can read about it here.

The girl in the Amish dress is a great story because it exhorts us to sincere belief. We need to question ourselves and our beliefs. Do we believe in the gospel that the apostle Paul preached, or do we believe in another gospel? Make sure it is the former and make sure you're sincere about it.

Call Me A Tenther

2009-09-09T19:35:00.001-07:00

I just learned a new epithet. If you want to insult and marginalize someone who opposes the unrestrained use of federal power and unrestricted rule of the Federal Government over its subjects. You're a "tenther."

The nickname refers to those who cite the 10th Amendment to argue that federal intervention in areas not authorized by the Constitution, like health care for example, is unconstitutional.

This follows other names such as 'birthers,' 'deathers' and 'tea baggers.'

I believe in a representative democracy. This is a form of government where citizens elect representatives who reflect their interests. This is in contrast with a tyranny where rulers dictate to their subjects.

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

I.e. Power to the people.

To make this real, you've got to have a realistic chance of an elected incumbent politician getting replaced on any given election day. This is not the case and despite the fact that 53% of the public would completely replace Congress at the next opportunity, we won't see it happen. Mostly, because when the Republicans were last in power they proved to be venal and corrupt enough to be indistinguishable from the Democrats.

I live in Grand Rapids, MI. We have a Republican Congressman I've voted for repeatedly. He's an incumbent for life. Like his predecessor (who died in office). But here's an offer. I'm not mad at him and he's done nothing particularly good or evil that I'm aware of. But he is an incumbent.

I'll promise to vote against this guy if enough Democrats in other congressional districts will promise to vote against their incumbent. If all incumbents in the House of Representatives were replaced, their replacements might actually act like Representatives instead of Rulers.

Don't Call Him A Czar

2009-08-26T06:24:00.000-07:00

Glenn Beck has been getting under the thin skin of the current inhabitant of the White House. We know this because they started a boycott of Glenn Beck. The fellow out of the White House behind the boycott is Van Jones. And Glenn Beck went after the fellow, calling him a communist and identifying him as a White House Czar. According to Glenn Beck just now, the White House is denying that he is a Czar.

Should we call him a Commissar instead?

I wonder what Mary Jo Kopechne has to say to Ted

2009-08-25T23:18:00.000-07:00

It appears that Ted Kennedy has left the planet. One wonders what the world would have been like had Mary Joe Kopechne escaped drowning and Ted died back in 1969.

My single most vivid impression of the Massachusetts Senator was a parody advertisement in the National Lampoon for the Volkswagon Beetle--a car famous for its ability to float. The caption was, "If Ted Kennedy drove a Volkswagon, he'd be President today."

My one regret is that Rush Limbaugh will never again run any of his Ted Kennedy Updates. "The Philanderer" was always a favorite of mine.

Mr. Kennedy's accomplishments are many. For instance, he gave us Immigration And Nationality Act of 1965 that worked out so well that it was reformed in the Immigration Reform and Conrol Act of 1986 that granted amnesty to all the illegal immigrants then in our country. And we know how well that has worked out.

Why Charles Hates Sarah (a corollary)

2009-08-24T12:51:00.001-07:00

Yesterday, I claimed that Sarah Palin is "socially horrifying." And I expressed a desire that she continue her socially horrifying behavior.

Today I read that Charles Krauthammer has asked Sarah Palin to "leave the room."

I have as much respect for Mr. Krauthammer as I have contempt for Ms. Dowd, but they are doing the same thing in their imprecations of Ms. Palin. They are condemning her David-like style of fighting. In so doing, Mr. Krauthammer is being First a commentator and Second a conservative.

As a commentator in good standing, Mr. Krauthammer has a vested interest in the social structure Mrs. Palin is undermining with her David-like behavior. For her to behave in a fashion acceptable to Mr. Krauthammer, she must first listen to Mr. Krauthammer, and then she must get his permission to enter or exit the room. And since the other side has a lot more people like him on their side, she will lose. If you doubt this, ask how well Mrs. Palin's interviews with Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric worked for her.

This socially horrifying behavior of Mrs. Palin's has been misunderstood by a lot of people. Particularly me. (I thought she was being anti-elitist, but that's not the case.)

By fighting Goliaths in a David-like way, she is undermining the position of folks like Mr. Krauthammer and Ms. Dowd alike. If people can read your Facebook page for yourself, what do you need Mr. Krauthammer or Ms. Dowd for?

As far as I am concerned, I'm fine with Mrs. Palin waiting until she is sitting in the Oval office with veto-proof majorities in both houses of Congress before she invites either Mr. Krauthammer or Ms. Dowd enter the room.

Sarah Palin is "Socially Horrifying"

2009-08-23T19:21:00.000-07:00

Malcolm Gladwell wrote an essay a while back about how underdogs can win.

Underdogs are called underdogs because the opposition holds all the advantages. Gladwell provides an example of a girl's basketball team composed of shorter girls. The coach found a way to win by adapting unconventional strategies that he adapted from his experience with cricket and soccer. That's how underdogs win. If the other side holds all the advantages, then you will lose if you play the game the other guy's way.

Underdogs win when they can find a way to play the game their way that negates the other guys' advantage. The other guys do not appreciate this and they tend to cry foul.

Let's take a look at the scoreboard and the playing field. The President is a Democrat, as his wacky side-kick. The Democrats have a veto-proof majority in the Senate and a wide majority in the House of Representations. They have all but the networks except one echoing their every talking point. And the Democrats managed to Alinski Mrs. Palin out of the governorship of Alaska.

Meanwhile Half the Republican party is falling over itself to say, "me too."

So, I'd say that Mrs. Palin would qualify as an underdog. And instead of going on the Sunday Morning chat shows or giving interviews with pundits who'll carry her words to the masses, she posts her opinions on Facebook.

Maureen Dowd cried foul last week.

She took a forum, Facebook, more commonly used by kids hooking up and cyberstalking, and with one catchy phrase, several footnotes and a zesty disregard for facts, managed to hijack the health care debate from Mr. Obama.

This is what we call a clue. Mrs. Palin has shown that she can surprise everyone, do things that seem to destroy her future, and then manage to win. When Ms. Dowd whines, "she's cheatin' I'm tellun," you know she's not playing the game her adversaries have laid out for her.

Here's the thing. Mrs. Palin started talking about death panels. And the entire news-government complex started by putting the term in scare quotes. And then they called her a liar. The Messiah In Chief proceeded to say she was Bearing False Witness.

Yeah, but people believe that unemployed hick on the cyberstalking channel instead of their betters like Ms. Dowd, et al. David 1, Goliath 0.

How can this be? ObamaCare is proposed to reduce health care costs. Sick people incur health care costs. Dead people have zero health care costs. And if sick people die sooner that reduces health care costs. Does this mean ObamaCare won't reduce health care costs?

Is there anything in the hundreds of pages the ObamaCare bill that specifically excludes Death Panels? Has any politician suggested adding language to the bill that will specifically exclude Death Panels? I guess a sneering denial will have to do.

When Malcolm Gladwell says:

Arreguín-Toft found the same puzzling pattern. When an underdog fought like David, he usually won. But most of the time underdogs didn’t fight like David.

Later he says:

This is the second half of the insurgent’s creed. Insurgents work harder than Goliath. But their other advantage is that they will do what is “socially horrifying”—they will challenge the conventions about how battles are supposed to be fought. All the things that distinguish the ideal basketball player are acts of skill and coördination. When the game becomes about effort over ability, it becomes unrecognizable—a shocking mixture of broken plays and flailing limbs and usually competent players panicking and throwing the ball out of bounds. You have to be outside the establishment—a foreigner new to the game or a skinny kid from New York at the end of the bench—to have the audacity to play it that way.

Either by accident or design, Sarah Palin has fought ObamaCare like David fought Goliath. I have no idea whether she can keep it up. I hope so, because we've got years of Democrats playing the role of Goliath ahead of us.

Religion For Decorative Purposes

2009-08-20T22:33:00.000-07:00

The Ten Commandments include the 3rd commandment that says not to use the name of deity "in vain." Orthodox Jews keep this commandment by writing G-d. And I think anyone who says, "God" or "Jesus Christ" as part of an oath or curse is violating this commandment. But after reflecting on the commandment, another sense of meaning occurred to me. (If you can find anything in the Bible that contradicts this, you should believe that and not what I'm about to say.)

The Bible says not to use the name in vain. I've also heard the commandment translated not to use the name "in a useless fashion" or an "empty way." And I don't think there's any question that this is what the commandment is getting at.

But consider another use of the word "vanity" and that's the furniture or bathroom figure one uses when applying makeup. We use a vanity to maintain our outward appearance. Beauty being only skin deep and all that.

Jesus complained early and often about the Pharisees whom he called play-actors or hypocrites. He condemned the shallowness of their religion. They were all about appearances without much concern about inward attitudes. He spoke of polishing the outside of the cup while leaving the inside dirty. Whited sepulchers and all that.

They used religion as a Decorative item. And that's what I think the 3rd Commandment is strongly condemning. Thou Shalt Not use the Name as Decoration.

This is a trap for anyone who goes to church more than twice a year. For one thing, it's easy to represent oneself as being somewhat pious while inside you're not entirely incorporating the character of Christ into your inner being. (Or if you're Jewish, internalizing the Torah.) Instead, you go to church and you act like you're not as desperately wicked as you know your heart to be.

I noticed when I was in Shipshewana, Indiana a couple weeks ago that there are many businesses run by Christians. They don't hide their Christianity. That's OK. But anyone familiar with families knows that the children can have a different relationship (or no relationship) with God than their parents. What if keeping up appearances is good for business? I worry that if the kids don't share their parents' Christianity, then after they inherit the business they'll feel a need to fake it: Keep up the facade of Christianity and use it as decoration. If that happens, and I hope it doesn't, it will be a violation of the Third Commandment.

Then there is Politics. One candidate for President last year ran in the Republican primaries on the premise, "Vote for me because I'm Baptist." I am Baptist and I like Baptists and I could probably enjoy an evening of non-alcoholic beverages and conversation with this man and have a great time. But I voted against him because I think having the same religion as me is a bad reason for me to vote for anybody. (Besides, he ran Arkansas as much like a socialist as Bill Clinton did before him.)

Politicians always like to be seen in church. Before Billy Graham got too old, every President make a point of getting a photo op with him. I think that any politician's religious display is suspect, and I look to see whether he's using God's name in the vain pursuit of political ends.

After Bill Climpton lost the governor's race he was in the choir every Sunday sitting where the TV cameras would pick him up. I don't think he did that because he wanted to sing more hymns.

Finally, take the recent behavior of the man currently holding the office of the President. Does his use of religion violate the 3rd Commandment? It depends upon how deep his rhetoric goes to his personal character. If he says one thing and does another once or twice, that's one thing. (A sinner should have the space to repent.) If it's a pattern of behavior, that's another thing.

Let's say that I tell you that we are all our brother's keeper. That's true. Though you can say that all men are brothers, I happen to have three siblings, two brothers and a sister. If I had millions and they were living on welfare or in a dirt-floor shack, I'd do something tangible for them. If Barak Obama believes "I am my brother's keeper," then why does his brother live in a shack in Kenya?

This whole moral argument for nationalized health care (yes, he is calling it something else) that the President has launched in the last few days reeks of hypocrisy and desperation. If it were anything more than cynical manipulation, he would have started with moral arguments, not trotted them out after he'd already lost the Blue Dog Democrats. The effort is so transparently hypocritical that only Democrats could possibly fall for it.

If you're running for office, don't use religion for Decorative Purposes. (This goes especially for Sarah Palin who has been endowed by her Creator with enough decoration already.) Internalize your faith and make it integral to your inner character. Then live that out. You might not win, but you'll do better than that, you'll do the right thing.

Leverage

2009-08-19T19:06:00.000-07:00

There's something about asymmetrical warfare. If you can use a cheap rocket propelled grenade to take out a tank, then you've got an advantage because it costs a lot more to replace the tank than it does to buy more RPGs.

For almost a year now, the entire media-government-political complex has been obsessed with one thing: destroy Sarah Palin by any means necessary. Their goal is to get her to follow Dan Quayle's example and slink quietly away to wherever it was in flyover country that he came from.

And it has been somewhat effective. If her name comes up in casual conversation, half the things attributed to her were instead uttered by Tina Fey on Saturday Night Live. In the hospital today, I saw her face on a magazin cover with the word DIVORCE plastered on her. There's a full court press that's been ongoing nonstop well after the election and well after her departure from the office of Governor of Alaska.

But something funny has started happening. Mrs. Palin got a facebook account. And she's been posting to it. Now, when I post something here, I figure maybe a couple friends might see it and it goes no further. But when Sarah Palin posts to her facebook page, there's a lot of people who notice and read it. This includes people who have heard the latest scurrilous rumors and are hoping for a juicy tidbit, and the uncommitted middle who are wondering why the Dems and their media lapdogs are hyperventilating.

Everyone who sees her facebook posts can see for themselves that Sarah Palin is not Tina Fey. She doesn't write like she's an idiot, how can that be?

This is leverage. It costs Sarah Palin nothing but her time to write up a facebook post. Contrast that with the money it takes to run a big astroturfing campaign and to marshal the efforts of state-run media to get the Dems' message out.

But Mrs. Palin's facebook posts will languish in obscurity unless something drives traffic to her site. And what better to drive traffic than the morbid curiosity of watching a train wreck. Come on Democrats, you know she's caribou Barbie white-trash, keep coming back to see her say something embarrassing, like "death panels." And read every word for some little clue, or tidbit of gossip about her marriage. Check back early and often.

And you Democrats know that if you don't stop demonizing her, she'll be a viable political figure in 2012. You can't have that. Perhaps you should shop around some more rumors about her family.

Try not to notice you're making people curious to find out more about the target of your Two Minute Hate.

What I learned making an epub eBook

2009-08-17T22:08:00.000-07:00

I happen to own an Amazon Kindle and a SONY Reader. I've taken it upon myself to learn out how to make every eBook that I own readable on both devices. Sadly, the only eBook format that works on both devices is PDF. But PDF expects a specific page size and my readers happen to have different display sizes. I've decided to convert everything on my Amazon Kindle to MOBI format and everything on my SONY Reader to epub format.

Removing DRM from eBooks is a violation of Federal law or maybe just talking about it is. So, I've been messing about with Gutenberg texts. And other freely available texts. A couple days ago I stumbled upon a CD-ROM full of Puritan texts. I saw one and decided to convert it into an ebook. I intended to use Calibre to convert the ebook from epub to mobi. But first, I'd have to make a good looking epub file.

The first thing I learned was that the CD-ROM wasn't as good as the web, b/c the book was in PDF and it was easier to start with this html.

The first thing I learned was that WinZip can read epub files, because epub files are just zip files with a differently named extent. Just put all the HTMLs in a zip, rename the file extent. And add a few "extras." (I'll come back to this.)

The second thing I learned was that the epub file may look good in Calibre and on the Kindle, but fail miserably on the Sony Reader. The next step was to figure out how to validate the epub. And I found this site helpful.

The validation process told me the obvious: convert html to xhtml. Mostly by changing all <br> elements to <br/> and all <hr> elements to <hr/>. And the error messages eventually directed me to all but one fix that I needed to make.

If your HTML has any illegal characters, e.g. an accented 'e' like this, é, you'll get absolutely no help figuring out what the bad character is or where it occurs. You'll want to convert it to an escaped version: é or you'll get a useless error message like this: "I/O error reading" without any clue as to where or what the problem is.

After you get an epub that passes validation. You're not done, because the SONY has a limitation. It can't handle any single chapter that's more than 100k in size. Thus you'll have to split all the content into pieces that are smaller than that.

Let's suppose you've got a set of cherry XHTML files in a zip file. It's still not an epub file until you've added the extras I mentioned above. You'll need to add files named:

1) mimetype that holds "application/epub+zip"
2) toc.ncx that defines a table of contents
3) content.opf that defines the contents of the epub.
4) container.xml that names content.opf

These extras were a little intimidating for me to dream up from scratch. So I cheated. I used Calibre to convert a tiny PDF to epub. Then I started replacing and extending the parts and pieces until I had replaced the tiny PDF's content with the desired book's content. Moving step by step through the various files, I could study each change in isolation and get an idea of why things worked or didn't.

In the end, if you're going to mess about with Gutenberg ebooks, you really want to put the extra effort into making them look pretty. This means googling around to find an picture of the book's cover. Or if you're artsy, design your own cover. Or if you've got the book in dead-tree format & scan it. And then there's the business of setting up the table of contents. I think you'll want to aim for a table of contents that fits on a single screen. Finally, you'll want to properly identify the book's publisher and isbn number. I usually look up the book on Amazon and copy whatever metadata I find there. Quality is a matter of attention to detail.

This is my latest foray into the realm of "bookmaking" and I know I've got a lot of learning to do.

More Stupid Republicans, Please

2009-08-15T07:56:00.000-07:00

You can tell the difference between a Republican who's going to lose a political contest from one who's going to win by one simple criterion: How stupid is he?

We all know that Ronald Reagan was an amiable dunce who somehow managed to win two presidential elections by landslides and win the Cold War, then hand the presidency to his Veep (who demonstrated how much smarter he was when he called Reagan's domestic policies "voodoo economics"), George H W Bush.

Eight years after that mental colossus was defeated, his doltish son, an alcoholic frat boy or something, George W Bush, ran for president. This man was so stupid he ended up controlling both houses of Congress and the White House.

That's some kind of stupid, huh?

Now, younger Bush might have been called "stupid" by the press, but that doesn't mean he was a Conservative or a Reaganite. And his statist propensities persuaded the Libertarian bloc of the Reagan coalition to look elsewhere. Nevertheless, Bush was a lame duck and there was no need for him to be stupid any longer.

(One delightful irony is to read Jonah Goldberg's book "Liberal Fascism" and see him squirm at the question of whether Bush was a fascist. When you hear "Big Government Conservatism" just think fascism and it be clear. No, this isn't what the lefties saying, "Bushitler," had in mind.)

Then the Republicans figured that disloyalty and craven media pandering was exactly what the party needed to reward and they nominated the smartest guy in the room (just ask him) John McCain. (This was the point where I quit calling myself a Republican.)

Somehow the boffins running the McCain campaign screwed up. They thought, "if the Democrats have an affirmative-action presidential nominee, we'll counter with an affirmative-action vice-presidential nominee. Little did they know, that Sarah Palin was not going to be a hick non-entity that politely (and quietly) provided eye-candy while McLame lost the election.

Mrs. Palin did what she was hired to do. She got guys like me to pull the R lever on election day. Don't blame me, I voted for Sarah and what's his name.

She also drove the lefties, the Democrats, and the media elites nuts. Which is a blessing really. I used to take National Review and the Trojan-Horse Conservative commentators they publish seriously. I know better than to heed them now, thank you, Sarah.

You see, Sarah Palin, is stupid.

If she were only as smart as I am, she'd have done what I expected her to do: Demonstrate she can run Alaska for the next two years then move on to something bigger. Instead, she quit the governorship, citing spurious ethics complaints and slanders. Just a fortnight later, when someone said she was divorcing her husband, private-citizen Palin could sue the fellow for slander. And after the fellow's remarkable implosion, slanderers have to be more circumspect. Haven't heard anything about ethics complaints, either.

And Sarah Palin is stupid because she used two words, "Death Panels."

This was a horrible thing to say. Republicans could call Obama socialist, and point how much ObamaCare was like national socialism, but doing so runs afoul of Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies. Instead, she said, "Death Panels," and everyone felt the words like blood red painted fingernails on chalkboard.

The lefties caught the vapors. Some fainted and the rest said, "that Palin has gone too far." The Trojan-Horse Conservative commentariate nodded in agreement, knowing how embarrassed they'd be at the next Beltway cocktail party. "There are no Death Panels in this bill... There are?.. Uh, let me get back with you on that."

It even gave pause to union thugs busting heads of Tea Partiers at town-hall meetings.

Death Panels. The AARP is a key front group for the Democrat party. Their leadership had been bought off along with everyone else. BUT the words "death panels" wonderfully concentrated the mind of anyone aged and infirm. When you're stupid like Sarah Palin, you realize a sick geezer will cost ObamaCare money, but a dead one won't.

Death Panels forced the AARP to listen to their members. They could either go along with their Obama, or they could lose their credibility as an advocate for the aged. And geezers vote. Sorry, Barry.

Thus Death Panels have been struck from ObamaCare. (I wonder what else is in this bill my Congressman & Senators have not read.) Who'd of thought that old folks were the exact point where political pressure could be most effectively applied?

Sarah Palin sure is stupid, isn't she? I wish more Republicans were stupid like that.

The Amazon Kindle DX

2009-08-14T14:43:00.000-07:00

Wednesday night after the writers group I was chatting with some friends. One of them said, "You should read The Yiddish Policemen's Union." And I agreed, I should. It's been a couple people who've recommended that book to me, and I'd agreed then, too.

This time, I thought, "Ho, Ho, this will be good." I excused myself and ran out to my car, I retrieved my Amazon Kindle DX. This is a fairly pricey bit of kit, but I'm a gadget fiend and my wife is tolerant of my excesses. I returned and sat down to show my friend the ultimate coolness.

I turned on the Kindle's radio and patiently waited for a connection to the Kindle store. Finally, it came back and I entered into the search box, "The Yiddish Policemen," figured that was enough and hit enter. A short wait. Nothing.

I tried something else. The Kindle isn't the easiest thing to type on so I kept thinking I'd typoed or something. No joy. Then I tried "Chabon" and I got a few hits. I found a hyperlink from the Amazon page to everything written by "Michael Chabon." It came back with a list of three books.

None of them were anything I'd ever heard of, and all the books that I had heard of were absent.

"Way to go, Amazon." Then I realized they were just reflecting the decision of the publisher. "Way to go, Harper Collins." Instead of gloating about what a great device the Amazon DX was, we went back to the previous conversation about what makes a corporation "evil" and what Amazon did last month deleting "1984" off customers' Kindles without permission.

This is what's known as a market failure. I was quite willing to pay whatever Harper Collins was willing to charge to buy a copy of this book. They weren't willing to sell it, but there are other books in the world I can read.

Two Revolutions

2009-08-09T21:23:00.001-07:00

Please forward this to flag@whitehouse.org and flag it "fishy."

If you're a student of history, you may have heard of "The American Revolution" and if the scope of your historical interest is restricted to the 20th Century, you may have heard of "The Russian Revolution." If you think there is no difference between the two, you may believe recent propaganda emanating from state-run media.

A few months ago, President Obama claimed that he was the only thing standing between the bankers and the mobs. This was when the only "tea party" anybody had heard of was in Boston. Now I'm watching "Law & Order: Criminal Intent" and the perpetrator is a former Baader-Meinhof gang member fomenting Revolution through domestic terrorism. The writer had the terrorist conflate his Marxist direct-action with the tea-party rallies.

This week Democrats called Tea Partiers "Nazis," and Republicans called the government-worker union members who roughed up Tea Partiers "brown shirts." Good work guys. I call "Godwin's Law."

Once upon a time I was interviewed for a security clearance. They put me on a polygraph machine and asked if I'd ever been a communist or supported any communist cause. I had to answer, "yes" or "no." My answer then and now is, "No."

This was in 1980. Hitler and the Nazi party had died a decade before I was born. Then I was asked if I had ever been a fascist or supported a fascist political party. This question made absolutely no sense. I tried to make sense of it. I did intend to vote for Reagan and he was pretty far to the right.

So, I asked, "What's a fascist?" I had no idea what fascism meant then. My inquisitor explained that he was asking about the guys Hitler palled around with. And I answered, "No," only because "Hell, No," wasn't allowed. Apparently the boffins at the NSA had seen "The Boys From Brazil" or "They Saved Hitler's Brain."

The trouble is that almost everyone is ignorant of what fascism is. It's all that Hitler stuff, right? Presumably, National Socialism was not a form of Socialism? And those who oppose Socialism, in the form of socialized medicine at a Federal level, do not belong to that socialist heresy that competes with Stalinist Communism?

This is absurd because of the blood libel that Leftists have perpetrated against Conservatives and Libertarians for all my life. Nazis are Socialists. They're a different kind of Socialist than Communists, but they are socialists nonetheless.

If someone says William F. Buckley, or Ronald Reagan, or Rush Limbaugh is a crypto-fascist, ask yourself the question, "What Would Adolph Do?" Would he cut your taxes? Would he shrink your government? Would he RIF federal employees? Would he support the NRA? Would he treat you like a citizen not a subject? Did any of these things happen in Nazi Germany? No, all opposites happened there.

It's called "Totalitarian" government for a reason.

Here's the entire matter in a nutshell: How much government do you want? Do you want a lot more government? Or do you want less government? The American Revolution threw off the British Crown to get less government. The Russian Revolution threw off the Czar and they got a LOT more government. Same with the French Revolution. Tea partiers are engaging in political activism.

They're being regarded as Revolutionaries, but they don't realize their opposition is the one overthrowing the American government with force and violence.

People think that because Tea Partiers oppose Obama's socialism that they're Republicans. Bad news for you GOP. They're sick of your me-too socialism. There's more pent-up demand for less government than any time I've seen since the Carter years. If that pent-up demand cannot find an outlet, reread the Declaration of Independence.

What do you expect of me?

2009-04-25T18:31:00.000-07:00

I was cruising the various right-wing blogs and saw a discussion of Miss California who happens to believe the same thing about gay marriage as President Obama, and for that distinction alone she has been nominated for sainthood by the right. She is an attractive woman who has been photographed as you can see here (scroll down to the last picture).

The photograph shows this young lady holding up a wall and looking backwards. From the look on her face she seems to be inviting the cameraman or someone to assist her in the holding up that wall. Presumably, someone beset by less pure thoughts might think her come-hither look inconsistent with her professed Christianity.

And that's what I'm on about right now. I'm a Christian. What do you expect of me? Should I go around in a white sheet and lynch folks who aren't like me after the fashion of the antagonist in The Foreigner? Should I engage in all manner of sexual misdeeds whilst preaching whatever Reverend Dimsdale preached in The Scarlet Letter? Do you expect me to wag my finger at Ms. Carrie Prejean and insist that she should dress more like Ms. Susan Boyle?

Ms. Prejean is a single lass. And anyone who's read their fair share of Jane Austen novels knows that the raison d'être of every single girl is to attract a rich Colonel Brandon, Mr. Darcy or Mr. Knightley, and marry him. Nothing wrong with that.

(Why yes, there is a tongue in my cheek. I hoped you'd notice.)

This whole matter suffers from a misapprehension of what Christianity is. It isn't a set of legalisms designed to trip up those less holy than oneself--a sort of moralistic king of the hill where the more righteous knock down the less righteous with a lot of blamestorming. Primarily Christianity is a mechanism for getting rid of one's sin. The role of Law in Christianity is to convince ourselves of our own failings. The role of Christ in Christianity isn't to provide quotes from the Sermon on the Mount, but to die on the Cross providing a mechanism for granting mercy to some.

If you don't understand this, and you've felt the sting of a guilty conscience, then I think you may be inclined to play your game of king of the moral hill. Every time you push a Christian down, you can call him or her a hypocrite and explain away your stinging conscience with something like, "I'm not perfect, but I'm better than that." Or suppose you lose the game of king of the moral hill. Then you can say, "well, at least I'm not a stick-in-the-mud like him."

Christianity really isn't about that kind of game. It's one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread. Everyone gets justice or mercy. I happen to need mercy, and I seek it in Christ. It isn't just that I want a "get out of hell free" card, because if I'm going to be saved from my sins, I'm going to have to be saved from doing more sins. And I'm counting on Christ to make that happen in my life. What you can expect from me is a halting, imperfect transition from what I'm doing now to what God expects from me.

A Call For Socialism

2009-04-25T10:07:00.001-07:00

I am no fan of socialism. But there are some non-individualist solutions I readily endorse: insurance companies. These work by spreading risk around so that no one person bears the entire cost of whatever hazard is being insured against. This works and it is in a sense a socialist solution even when the government isn't involved.

I am a big fan of tools. I like building things and finding just the right tool in my shop. At Harbor Freight I'm like a kid in a candy store. But there are tools I cannot afford, but would dearly love to own. And I wouldn't buy them even if I could afford them because I wouldn't use them enough to justify the expense. Like a laser cutter. I'd dearly love to own one of those. Or a 3D printer. Or a CNC milling machine. Or a 3D scanner.

I'm looking at using these tools for individual, onesey-twosy projects. Like a pinewood derby car. Or a wooden case for my Sony Reader. I can't justify the expense for a few, little projects.

I don't think I'm alone in this. There are a lot of guys and gals who'd love to have temporary access to some of these wonderful machines. Sometimes you can "know someone" at a company with a model shop, but if you don't, I have a proposal.

Someone either in the private sector, or in the public sector, can set up a public workshop and fill it with tools like I've just described. Given the moribund manufacturing sector in this region, such machines could be had cheaply. Then this workshop can be made available to hobbyists, entrepreneurs, anybody who can afford either a monthly membership fee or an hourly access fee. The workshop would hold classes on how to make simple projects using each tool and on safely using each tool. And after you've passed a safety course, you could use each tool.

This would put some expertise into the hands (and minds) of people who might not have marketable skills at present. It'd provide an interesting diversion for the hobbyist.

I don't think I'd be writing this if I lived in San Francisco. I think I'd just drop by and buy a membership at the TechShop.

"The Foreigner" is really about Democrats & Union thugs

2009-04-22T08:17:00.000-07:00

My wife scored free tickets to a play downtown, "The Foreigner," and I came within epsilon of walking out. The play is a remarkably bigoted achievement. It teaches that:
1) people with English accents may be neurotics, but they're invariably the smartest people in the room.
2) people with Southern accents may be good or evil, but they are invariably stupid.
3) preachers are venal manipulators altogether willing to destroy anyone who stands between themselves and a donation
4) Christianity is just another word for racist hate-monger

I was about to leave when it struck me that the post-modern method of deconstruction fits quite nicely here. For one thing, the main antagonist sounded exactly like Jimmy Carter. Every time the preacher came out, I thought of killer rabbits and smiled. And then there was his flunky, a big, stupid, superstitious Klansman who threatened violence to get his way. Heh. Just like a union organizer.

So then, if every time they said, "Christian" I mentally substituted "Democrat" and every time they said, "Klan" I mentally substituted "Union." And everything made perfect sense. I relaxed and enjoyed the play.

Now, you may not agree with my politics in which case, please feel free to find your own substitutions.

Good art tells the truth. If you're going to make the preacher the antagonist, his villainy must ring true to the essential nature of preachers. However, if all you're writing is propaganda, your free to set up a cardboard villain and then paste the label of your favorite out-group onto him. Don't like Nazis, Commies or hippies? The antagonist works equally well. Just paste a different label on the cardboard cut-out.

This is the challenge to the artist. Don't write propaganda. Or if you must, simply recycle the other guys' propaganda and switch around the labels as I've demonstrated. If you're selling to a particular market you can pander to their bigotry. But it is better to capture human nature as it is, people are not cardboard antagonists or protagonists. Everyone is a mix of the noble and the venal. That should be depicted so ambiguously that Democrats see the protagonist as one of their own and the antagonist as one of the out-group. And simultaneously Republicans will do the same.

You may be happy that Democrats are in complete control of the government. But when 51% of the people vote Democrat that means there's 49% who didn't. Why do you want to alienate 49% of your market?

If you tell the truth of the essential nature of each of the characters in your play, you needn't paint yellow stars or scarlet letters on people's breasts. The audience will do so according to their own bigotry. But the truth of those characters' goodness or evil will shine through and you'll have done your job as artist.

Why John Galt Matters

2009-03-15T20:18:00.000-07:00

I'm referring, of course, to the protagonist of Atlas Shrugged.

You don't have to be a Reagan Republican, Randian Objectivist, or Burkean Conservative to understand one critical fact about humanity: though we are created equal, and we stand before the law as equals, and we shall be judged by deity as equals, nevertheless, we are not equally productive. I happen to be quite inept at government BS paperwork and this keeps my accountant happily employed. And I do other things better than she does.

Human inequality is a multidimensional thing. I write software for a living. I'm told that there is a factor-of-ten difference between the most productive and the least productive software engineers. Compare the output of these 10X more productive programmers working a 90-hour workweek versus the low-productivity guy who works eight-to-four then out the door.

Contrast the contribution to society of someone with a ton of education and experience versus a high school drop-out on drugs. Consider the societal impact of the former working long hours versus the latter working the minimum.

Scale this up across an entire society and compare two competing societies. The Soviet Union had the best mathematicians on the planet. And there was more oil in Siberia than in Saudi Arabia. In 1917 the Russian economy was the fastest-growing on the planet. Yet, that turned around and somehow the Soviet Empire collapsed. Jimmy Carter notwithstanding, America won the Cold War.

I think you can see where this is going. I think there's a reason why the Soviets lost and Ronald Reagan won the Cold War. We could call it his brilliant strategy, but nobody acknowledged that when he was alive. I think the reason is found in this waggish remark common in the Soviet Union: "they pretend to pay us and we pretend to work." This makes me think that a lot of Russians were doing just enough to get by. And it didn't much matter whether they were high-skilled, high-productivity, or low-skilled, low-productivity.

Jimmy Carter blamed his failures on us. On malaise. Then came Ronald Reagan who pushed through tax cuts. Unlike Mr. Bush he talked about shrinking budgets, governments, and regulation. But the big thing was that he cut the income tax rates on the highest margins.

Suppose I work 40hrs. And I pay some percentage of that in taxes. The rate at which I am taxed for the 41st hour is the maximum tax rate I'll pay. Suppose further that I'm a high-skilled and high-productivity. I'll be paid more per hour than the high-school drop-out on drugs. If you think that's unfair, remember that I'm creating more value per unit time. But if I'm giving most of it back in taxes, why should I work myself to death.

This is how Atlas shrugs. It isn't an overt, dramatic "strike" by the producers, but the accumulation of tens of millions of decisions to knock off a little early or linger a bit over lunch.

How To Go John Galt

2009-03-12T23:03:00.000-07:00

With the recent political events there has been renewed interest in Ayn Rand's novel, Atlas Shrugged wherein the character John Galt leads a strike of the producers against the takers.

You may be aware that the tax base has narrowed so that 60% of the American populace can vote themselves goodies from the other 40%, particularly the richest 20%. This may motivate some rich guys to "Go John Galt."

This note tells you how!

First, you have to quit engaging in productive activity.

Second, you have to stop paying taxes. If you do it right, you can pretend your tax cheating is "an honest mistake." Or you may live in a high tax state. And the way to address that is by moving from a high tax state to a lower tax state. Suppose you live in Illinois with higher taxes. Just move to Virginia or Maryland.

Third, if you've read Atlas Shrugged you know the book depicts an economic collapse instigated by John Galt and his allies. To really do the John Galt thing, you've got to substantially and materially contribute to an economic collapse.

Conversely, you might not appreciate these "wreckers." You might think think people who do such things are criminals. Perhaps we can identify those who've already gone John Galt.

First, who does less productive activity, or does more anti-productive activity than a government official? Second, when the guy running the IRS is a tax cheat as well as the chairman of the House Ways & Means committee, tax-paying is definitely optional for some people. Third, the unicorn of hope and change has pursued disastrous economic policies that have has chased capital out of the financial markets. Presumably, George Soros is done shorting the markets.

So, who is John Galt?

Blue Man Nuke

2009-03-07T06:35:00.000-08:00

Last night I made the mistake of rounding up the usual suspects and going to see the movie, "Watchmen." Bottom line: there is no reason for any Republican to watch this movie, and I suppose, there's no reason for any Democrat to watch this movie, either: just save your money for the next Michael Moore movie.

I suppose "Watchmen" tries to overcome some of the stereotypes and tropes of the comic book. The characters are "deeper" than comic book action heroes. Deeper characterization in the sense of having internal contradictions. Yeah right. If you look for a message in this film it may be that the immanent is corrupt and the transcendent is indifferent.

There's the latex-clad eye-candy. Her story arc goes from unhappy childhood, to stealing the blue man nuke from his first love, to dumping this god for the dork, dithering a bit between them, then settling on the dork. I figure dorkman, who inherited his fortune the old fashioned way, inheritance, was a better meal ticket than the naked blue god.

Justice is for cranks. The crank justice of the all-in-one judge, jury and executioner. Rorschach is the narrator of the film and his character has a nicely noir flair about him. He's the one who investigates the crime that serves as the inciting incident. His flawed sense of justice and morality serves as an interesting counter-point to the machinations of the oh, too, predictable villain of the piece. His reward for solving the crime is fitting of the writer's nihilism.

Then there's Dorkman. He's the guy the comic-book reader identifies with. He stumbles through this film. He's told he needs to grow up. I saw no evidence that he ever did or that don't think he even wakes up from his somnolent stumble through this narrative.

EVERY a movie that depicts the smartest man in the world is set in the same universe as Idiocracy. Let's see, smartest man in the world, accumulates the greatest fortune in the world, how does he use it? 1) surround himself with ancient Egyptian kitsch, 2) fly blimps with his name plastered on the side over Manhattan, 3) leave evidence of his crimes on a computer, 4) password-protect his secrets with a password taped to the underside of the computer keyboard, 5) reveals his plan in comic-book villain fashion then says he's not a comic-book villain.

Meanwhile a number of minor characters populate the film like the little birds and stuff in the margins of Mad Magazine: Richard Nixon, Ted Koppel, Pat Buchanan, etc. It would help if the actors they'd chosen had been made up to at least vaguely resemble these public figures. Politics casts an omnipresent, baleful stench upon this film. The ultimate political solution advanced by the film is paternalistic, which makes sense given the stupidity of everyone inhabiting this world.

Let us now turn our attention to the Blue Make Nuke. If you've seen the movie trailers, you've seen all the memorable scenes of the movie. He is endowed by a nuclear accident with godlike powers. And being a god means you can be indifferent about covering up your junk. In fact, that's one of the central themes of the book: to be transcendent is to be indifferent.

In the world of Watchmen, if there is a God, s/he/it is indifferent to the human condition. The god of Watchmen is a cerulean cgi construct. One does not love this god with all of one's heart, because he's likely to be checking email during coitus. And what, precisely, does this character do with his godhood?

C.S. Lewis wrote an essay, "Men Without Chests," and the only chest worthy of note in this film belonged to the eye-candy in latex. But in the essay, "chests" was used in a metaphorical sense of ordinate affections: loving the good and hating the evil. There is evil in this film, but only a crank would confront it and oppose it. And only a sleep-walking child would endorse the sentiment.

I walked out of the film and said, "That's two and a half hours of my life I won't get back."

In the wagon or pulling the wagon?

2009-03-03T20:31:00.000-08:00

I just happened upon a graphic that divided the country into 5 quintiles. (For those of you who voted for Obama, that means the bottom 20%, next to bottom 20%, middle 20%, next to top 20%, and top 20%.) It was a bar graph that showed the difference between the money the government spends on the households in that quintile, minus the money households pay to the government in taxes. The bar graph broke it down by state and federal spending. Good news! 60% of the country is getting more government spending than they're paying in taxes.

Ronald Reagan described it like a wagon with some people riding in the wagon and some people pulling the wagon. And our current tax code is structured so that an effective ruling majority of the electorate is riding in the wagon. The next-to-top quintile is getting screwed by the government, but it's only one sixth as bad as the top 20%.

This is not sustainable. It certainly makes more sense for someone to live in the bottom three quintiles than in the top two. I suppose some altruistic souls really dig their patriotic duty to pick up the tab for the politicians who are buying votes with the tax receipts. But how long does it take before they just shrug and say "Who's John Galt?"

I have been wondering whether someone could actually pull off a producers' strike like in Atlas Shrugged and I think the answer is no. There are some true geniuses out there who cannot be replaced, but a lot of mediocre types would be the scabs to break the picket lines. Instead of a dramatic societal collapse as in "Atlas Shrugged" the 2nd stringers will plug the gaps to varying degrees of adequacy. The really great talents who are tired of pulling the wagon can just shift their energies to non-taxable pursuits.

And it isn't as if anyone will hightail it to Galt's Gulch. Just live in a place where the cost of living is cheap and make just enough to live comfortably. Stop and smell the roses. Life is short. I figure smart money will find more friendly places for capital than the USA (It won't be Europe.) or shift assets into tax shelters.

One thing I learned about Democrats in the early '80s is that they are cool with high taxes because they intend for other people to pay them: They make sure they leave loopholes in the tax code for trust-fund kids like the Kennedy family. That's what tax-free municipal bonds are for. There's a reason why the teleprompter-messiah's appointees have tax problems.

So, capital, along with the talent and sacrifice that might go into creating some serious wealth will just go into hiding. And this is a good thing, when unemployment hits 30%, all the John Galt types will be working two days a week and puttering in their back yards on do-it-yourself projects. One doesn't need a lot to live simply. and that's what these hippy-dippy types all say we gotta do. Pass the granola, man, and make room in the wagon.

Jobs: Created and Eliminated

2009-02-01T20:59:00.000-08:00

Last night I saw the movie "New In Town." And it is a tad predictable. The hot female executive goes to someplace in Minnesota and meets the hot male union rep. The movie then proceeds to follow the romantic comedy trajectory. As you know, the romantic comedy has a darkest moment near the end of the film. In this case, the evil corporate types demand the female protagonist eliminate half the factory's jobs.

Just now I'm watching the news and learned how the hot female governor of the state of Michigan will create a passel of jobs.

So that's how things work? Corporate types eliminate jobs and politicians create them. That's a great solution to the movie plot. Let old man Potter buy up the factory, close it down and eliminate all the jobs. Then nice Mr. Smith who's gone to Washington will create new ones. Right?

Here's a question: Where do jobs come from in the first place? Are they spoils handed out by politicians to their voters? Are they annuities extorted from "the rich" by unions?

And how much should that job pay? Politicians make a big deal of raising the minimum wage. But why don't they raise it to real money: Just raise the minimum wage to $500 and everyone with a full time job will be a millionaire! You're probably thinking that your current employer can't afford to pay you that much. Not a problem, if you're job is eliminated, the politicians can just create some more.

The Republican Branding Problem

2008-12-27T09:54:00.000-08:00

I just read on Ace of Spaces that Mr. Charles Krauthammer proposes in a cover article a new tax on gasoline.

We have to seriously question the "branding" of talking heads. The crowd we have are not conservatives. There seems to be something in the water at the National Review and Weekly Standard.

This incident makes me doubt that Mr. Krauthammer would echo Mr. Reagan's sentiment that government is not the solution, but government is the problem. When talking heads start talking about raising taxes in anything but disparaging terms we have to think seriously about what exactly conservatism means.

If the Reagan Revolution is dead, I know one set of fingerprints on the knife in its back. It's not like I'm picking on Mr. Krauthammer (who I've previously been favorably inclined toward), we've got a systemic problem afflicting pretty much every commentator of note.

We should have known we were screwed when the first Republican said "big government conservatism" with a straight face. Mr. Tom Delay gave us fair warning when he said there was no fat in the federal budget to cut. Mr. Bush and Mr. Krauthammer may say many things we like on many topics, but we can't call them conservatives.

The "branding problem" of the Republican party goes deeper than the corruption of guys like Ted Stevens. It goes to the whole notion of what "conservatism" means. I'm not saying that the Republican party ought to kick out the big-government types, but we can't let such folk go around calling themselves conservatives.

You can be less liberal than Mao Tse Tung without being a conservative. I remember scoffing when some C-Span talking-head reported on what the "conservative blogs" were saying about the Republican Convention and she cited a demented fellow who might be many things, but he's no conservative.

So, I propose that we put every putative conservative on trial for actually being conservative. And if we find no evidence to convict, or significant evidence to the contrary, we quit acknowledging and start challenging any representation of that person as a conservative. This should start with both George Bushes extend to every politician and commentator in Washington and New York. We should say, "you're a very nice man, and a loyal Republican (John McCain excepted), but you're no Conservative (John McCain included).

Libertarianism vs Social Conservatism

2008-11-11T15:05:00.000-08:00

I'm a Libertarian. And I'm a Social Conservative. There are a lot of parts of the Social Conservative bit I will die for. Other parts, I just say, "meh." And I don't think I'm the only Social Conservative who thinks this way.

1) Abortion: this is a human life in every instance and there's no chance I'll bend even a millimeter. I frame this as a human rights issue, not a moral one. The fetus is what? an animal? a tumor? a human without rights? a human with rights? Answer the question.

I'm not against stem cell research, either. I'm all for it unless you add the word "fetal." Fetal stem cell research by my way of looking at it is cannibalizing parts of one human for the benefit of another human. If you disagree, prove to me that a fetus isn't a human.

2) Sex, drugs, and rock & roll: meh. Who you take to bed is your business and not mine. If God says "thou shalt not," and you think otherwise, that's your problem with Him not me. Don't mess with the sacraments of any church or say what moral standards the church can't hold and we'll get along fine.

3) Prayer in school: meh. When I was a lad, my sainted mother the separatist Baptist Fundamentalist that she was thoroughly disapproved of the sort of compromised blended ecumenist prayers bandied about in public forums. That rubbed off on me.

Creationism and Intelligent Design (they are different things). I want free inquiry about questions of origins, but it's not a hill I'll die on. If you're upset that some state school wants to teach Darwinism, switch to a private school that doesn't.

Personally, I prefer the separation of school and state. Less opportunity for indoctrination or similar mischief.

So.

Can we agree on these boundaries and live together in the same party? I think so. Maybe we won't go to the same church, or maybe we'll bicker on a personal level, but as far as the civil realm of governance is concerned we've got issues of the proper role of government (minimal) that we hold in common to unite us.

What would Reagan Do?

The Broken Party

2008-11-04T21:35:00.000-08:00

OK, I held my nose and voted for McCain. We've had a systemic problem with Republicanism for several years. The Republican party has demonstrated in the last two elections that it is broken. After the 2006 loss there was not enough done to fix the party. Why didn't the party leadership take a delivery from the clue train?

I'm not thinking we should kick anyone out of the party, but we've got to be smarter about who we're listening to. Ronald Reagan is dead. We need someone else who can speak articulately to small businessmen and libertarians and values voters without embarrassing the country-club set.

I think that we've seen country-club presidential candidates in both Bushes, Dole, and McCain. The civil war within the Republican Party is about to start. Mitt Romney strikes me as yet another country-club candidate. The bizarre whispers that Sarah Palin was a drag on the campaign or that she had "gone rogue" appear to have come from Romney stringers.

It is my earnest hope that Sarah Palin will emerge as the next leader of the Republican party. If not her, I'll look to another neo-Reagan like Bobby Jindal. I have a hard time believing that yet another country-club Republican can unite the party and assemble a winning coalition to reboot the Republican party.

I expect to see a lot more class-warfare in the next four years. Ronald Reagan effectively fought class-warfare because the guy from Dixon, IL positioned himself as the alternative to Rockefeller Republicanism. We'll need someone who isn't old money or married to it to lead us out of this Babylonian captivity. I don't think that person is Mitt Romney.

Who's John Galt?

2008-10-13T23:27:00.000-07:00

Ayn Rand wrote a novel, Atlas Shrugged, that I read when the Soviet empire was imploding. It made perfect sense at the time as the events in the novel, depicted in the US, were mirrored in events in the Soviet Union.

What I didn't realize at the time was that the "strike" against the "looters" described in the Atlas Shrugged had already occurred in the United States. And that strike was only broken by the rise of Nazi Germany and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Consider the crash of 1929. It was a major correction as a market bubble popped. It also caused reverberations from Wall Street to Main Street. My grandparents were impoverished and my parents lived with the concern about another depression. My father's friend would invariably ask, "Do you think we'll have hard times, Don?" A generation of Baby Boomers learned to roll their eyes in response to exhortations to economize from their Depression-baby parents. Today, a lot of economists claim that the hard times were prolonged by our politicians response to the crisis.

Here's the problem. Economic corrections are painful and politicians are compassionate people. Yes, they're corrupt and self-serving in too many cases, but you'll never meet a politician who really doesn't feel your pain. And they want to relieve your pain if they can. They'll get reelected if they relieve your pain. Governments relieve economic pain by putting money into the hands of those who hurt most. This takes a number of forms: unemployment benefits, bailouts of critical industries, welfare, entitlements and college tuition grants. But some of these analgesics can be habit forming, like morphine they cause dependence. The greater the pain of an economic correction, the greater the likelihood that the government will be pressured to apply pain-killers. If pain-killers become addictions the electorate will demand more of them.

Governments can pass various laws, but they cannot repeal the law of gravity. They can set up rules for coordinating economic activities in an orderly fashion. But governments can't create wealth out of nothing. Governments can print money, borrow money, and raise taxes. This wealth can be given to those who are hurt by an economic correction. But this wealth is taken from someone. There's a book out there called "The Forgotten Man" about the Depression. I've not yet read it, but I suspect this book's "forgotten man" is not unlike John Galt of "Atlas Shrugged."

Someone has to create wealth and that's done by working. Tonight I watched the movie, "My Man Godfrey," wherein several pointed remarks are made about prosperity being right around the corner and "The only difference between a derelict and a man is a job." In a capitalist country, rich people need things done and they give jobs to people willing to do those things. Or you take what you have, and create a job out of it. In rich countries, those who work harder make more money and they spread the wealth around by buying stuff or hiring others. This is just common sense. It is deprecated by those wiser minds who call it "trickle down" and they hope to change this.

In this country we tax income but not wealth. This enables many wealthy people to live off their trust funds, and this frees up their time to do things like become Senators. This system is very good for maintaining the status quo. It makes it harder for new money to displace old money. This is what I realized when I was hanging out with Democrat community organizers who liked money and tax breaks as much as Republicans. If you're Ted Kennedy, you can stay rich and make everyone else pay for the goodies you buy votes with.

Certain Republicans who are wiser than I am (just ask them) say that the Reagan Revolution is dead. They think the Republican party should move to the center. They now think the McCain campaign that was crafted according to their design along these lines should be rebooted. These same Republicans claim that neo-Reaganism is a cancer to the Republican party. There's an old saying that seems apt, "It's not the mountains ahead of you that grind you down; it's the sand in your shoes." Mr. Brooks and those like him have been the sand in the Republican campaign this year.

The Republican party certainly has a branding problem. And it may not be the political party that is needed to oppose those who would grow an already bloated government and lead us further down "The Road To Serfdom."

I've never been consumed with blind ambition. Depending upon how the election turns out, ambition will only earn you a higher tax bracket. Should I go out on strike? Ask John Galt?

Can An Anchor Have Coattails?

2008-10-10T19:49:00.000-07:00

Only one of two things are true: Either Barak Obama is a crypto-socialist, neo-stalinist goon due to his alliances with people like Mr. William Ayres, Mr. Jeremiah Wright & ACORN or "he is a decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared of as president of the United States." I do not see how both assertions can be true simultaneously.

In recent days, Mr. McCain has been running ads linking Mr. Obama to America-hating radicals. One is not guilty of anything for associating with such people. But alliances with such people form a reasonable basis for drawing inferences about a candidate's unstated policy aims and fitness for high office. However, these ads mean absolutely nothing if the candidate in question is "a decent person."

Given this contradiction, how do I know Mr. McCain won't similarly nullify any other part of the narrative he has crafted about his opponent's unfitness for office.

This is the central contradiction of the McCain campaign. Andy McCarthy at National Review said it here: "Someone is either a terrorist sympathizer or he isn't; someone is either disqualified as a terrorist sympathizer or he's qualified for public office."

It's Democracy, Stupid

2008-10-10T10:30:00.000-07:00

I think organized criminal vote fraud is traitorous. It is an attack upon DEMOCRACY. We may disagree about taxes or abortion, but DEMOCRACY should transcend our partisan interests. If someone does not, then we really can't expect him to abide by elections he doesn't like. We have to ask every candidate for public office whether he believes in DEMOCRACY and whether that belief has anything to say about ACORN.

Every election year just before the election we get stories or larger and more widespread cases of vote fraud. These frauds aren't coming from First Baptist Church or the NRA, but from ACORN. I don't understand why this kind of organized crime isn't pursued by RICO charges? I don't understand why the government uses my tax dollars to support ACORN. I don't understand why the Congress tried to add pork from the $700B bailout package to ACORN.

Obviously, someone in Washington does not believe in Democracy

Feminism

2008-10-08T22:14:00.000-07:00

In the movie, "The Princess Bride," Inigo Montoya says, "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." I think the national conversation about Mrs. Sarah Palin and feminism is another instance of a word being used whose meaning is in doubt.

Feminism has an appeal because it touches upon fairness and equality. People are differently abled, but nobody is better or worse just because they're a man or woman, black or white, Jew or Greek. I've always thought feminism was about this sort of equality.

Rush Limbaugh coined the term feminazi some years ago to describe "liberal, pro-abortion fanatics." It should be noted that he intends by this usage not a synonym for "feminist," but he describes a specific set of political policy aims. Can you assert equality of the sexes without asserting liberal, pro-abortion policies?

Recently, Camile Paglia has written that Mrs. Palin is "reshaping the persona of female authority." Ms. Paglia is a feminist and an intellectual who enjoys straying from the establishment group-think about what constitutes feminism.

Perhaps we need to distinguish between "feminist" and "establishment feminist" to avoid Rush's feminazi term. Certainly, Mrs. Hillary Clinton is an establishment feminist, but she is no fanatic. But Mrs. Palin is not an establishment feminist.

What prompts this outburst is an essay that I read by someone named Katie Granju who does not like Mrs. Palin. More accurately, after acknowledging Mrs. Palin's accomplishments she thinks it wrong that Mrs. Palin act "like all of these opportunities and open doors just fell into her lap because of her own good luck and hard work." Ms. Granju seems to think that Mrs. Palin owes ideological fealty to establishment feminists. (This sense of "you owe me" is a great way to live a miserable life and become a miserable person.) Presumably brave Norma Rae was out there toiling in some factory, or brave Erin Brockovich was toiling in some legal aid office, or a dozen other brave movie scripts were written so that forever after, all ambitious women would kneel and kiss the ring of establishment feminists.

Feminism's legitimacy comes from equality. However, establishment feminists seem to think that they are more equal than other women. It is fair to include or exclude people from the abortion movement based upon their pro-choice vs pro-life positions. But equality is not abortion. And equality must also be between women, too.

Establishment feminism is a postmodern phenomenon, as such it is preoccupied with power. Equality and power are often conflated in this case. Thus establishment feminism encounters an existential threat when an empowered woman does not share their policy aims. Her very existence suggests that a woman needs an establishment feminist like a fish needs a bicycle. I think this explains Palin Derangement Syndrome.

Follow The Money

2008-10-06T14:40:00.000-07:00

As anyone in America knows, $700 billion dollars are going to bail out the toxic loans of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Since this is campaign season, each party is trying to lay the blame for this mess on the other party.

You can spend hours listening to the various news outlets blather about who did what and when and why it happened.

Or you can follow the money.

Just. Follow. The. Money.

Persons unknown to the public screwed the pooch at Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Since these are government sponsored entities, Congress is charged with their oversight. Happily, for certain congressmen (but not for taxpayers), Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae contributed campaign donations. Large donations.

Here's what I propose. Any politician who has accepted one dime from either Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae should be voted against. Period. If both candidates for an office have accepted ~~bribes~~ campaign contributions from them, the candidate receiving more should be voted against. The following table should prove helpful:

1. Dodd, Christopher J $133,900

2. Kerry, John $111,000

3. Obama, Barack $105,849

4. Clinton, Hillary $75,550

5. Kanjorski, Paul E $65,500

6. Bennett, Robert F $61,499

7. Johnson, Tim $61,000

8. Conrad, Kent $58,991

9. Davis, Tom $55,499

10. Bond, Christopher S 'Kit' $55,400

11. Bachus, Spencer $55,300

12. Shelby, Richard C $55,000

13. Emanuel, Rahm $51,750

14. Reed, Jack $50,750

15. Carper, Tom $44,389

16. Frank, Barney $40,100

17. Maloney, Carolyn B $38,750

18. Bean, Melissa $37,249

19. Blunt, Roy $36,500

20. Pryce, Deborah $34,750

21. Miller, Gary $33,000

22. Pelosi, Nancy $32,750

23. Reynolds, Tom $32,700

24. Hoyer, Steny H $30,500

25. Hooley, Darlene $28,750

Don't take my word for this, I got this here. If, sometime between now and election day, anyone tries to lay blame on anybody, I suggest you simply follow the money. If you plan on voting for anyone listed above, just hand them $700G and cut out the middleman.

A Dangerous Lightweight?

2008-10-05T22:41:00.000-07:00

Sometime last week the narrative reached the right wing commentator, Kathleen Parker that Sarah Palin was just Caribou Barbie: she ought not be running for Vice President and who was dragging down the McCain campaign and ought to pull an Eagleton.

Now, like Peggy Noonan before her, Ms. Parker has eaten some crow. In particular, Ms. Parker states of Mrs. Palin, "to Democrats, she’s still a dangerous lightweight..." which raises the question? If Mrs. Palin is a lightweight, how can she be dangerous?

I had a conversation with my neighbor when I put a McCain-Palin sign in my front yard. (I had foregone putting any Republican signs in my yard until I could get one with Mrs. Palin's name on it.) He announced with glee that Mr. McCain had pulled out of Michigan and thought that significant. He is probably correct at that point. But when I mentioned my support for Mrs. Palin, he said, "She knows nothing."

Very well, if she knows nothing, she should pose no threat to anyone with "D" next to their name, correct?

But my neighbor was not finished with Mrs. Palin. He said, "You know she's a Pentacostal. She supports Israel. She wants Armageddon to force the Second Coming." Now, I doubt that my neighbor recognized the naked religious bigotry in his assertion. I suppose that if Mrs. Palin's middle name were "Hussein" it might be different. But I gave him a pass, going after the sheer ignorance and falseness of this representation of premillenial eschatology. I am a premillenialist Christian and I find this canard of the left utterly ridiculous. If you think this way, you don't know what you're talking about. Christians who speak of the imminent return of Jesus Christ do so to warn that one must always be ready to meet one's maker and give account of one's life. The point is that God is in the driver's seat, not the other way around. But I digress.

I dislike this line of rhetoric: seeking not only the political defeat of someone whose opinions you contradict, but their personal destruction. I've come close to this myself, comparing Mr. Obama with Steve Urkel and contrasting him with John Shaft. I plan to vote against Mr. Obama because he advances policies I dislike and I plan to vote for Mrs. Palin because she advances policies I support.

By moving away from the policies of the candidates to their personal attributes, we set for ourselves a trap. When we speak of policies, we can more easily remain civil in our conversations. On the other hand, when we say the other guy is an empty suit, the other guy will speak of lipstick on a pig, and the conversation goes downhill very quickly. In conversation with my neighbor, most of my replies were, "Oh really?" and "Is that so?" while believing none of it. I don't think my neighbor realizes how close his assertions came to 1930s style antisemitism, or sexism and ageism of more recent vintage. But they got past his civility filter because he'd gone past policy into the ad hominem.

This isn't new. Mrs. Palin is getting the full Ronald Reagan treatment. And the left is tacking very close to the wind while doing this. If she's a lightweight, she can't be dangerous. But if she's worthy of the vitriol we've seen since her nomination for Vice President, someone must regard her as very dangerous. She has proved articulate and she manages to say things I haven't heard from a Republican candidate since Mr. Reagan left public life.

I'm not altogether convinced that Mrs. Palin's enemies are limited to those with "D"s next to their name. This year is not completely unlike 1976 and someone who so channels Ronald Reagan will find few friends in the Nelson Rockefeller wing of the party. One wonders what would have happened had Gerald Ford made Ronald Reagan his running mate. My hopes are that Mrs. Palin is more dangerous than lightweight.

Come On. He's Just A Kid

2008-09-24T09:53:00.000-07:00

Recently, Mrs. Sarah Palin's email was "hacked" and the contents of her email account was disclosed publicly. This is a violation of law and the perpetrator of this crime is suspected to be Mr. David Kernell, a student at the University of Tennessee and the son of an elected official. Though Mr. Kernell remains innocent until proven guilty, the case against him seems strong enough to move the press to opine that the perpetrator is just a kid. The presumption is that youthful exuberance and bad judgment should excuse this act as a childish prank.

Though I am inclined toward mercy in most cases, I note that Mr. Kernell is old enough to serve in the military. At this moment, US servicemen are operating SIGINT listening posts around the world monitoring the communications of America's enemies. These servicemen are not older than Mr. Kernell (though they may be more mature). When telephone calls between foreign nationals were routed through switches located in the US, the NSA sought to intercept them using personnel no older than Mr. Kernell. This caused a great deal of angry discussion about the legality of doing so. Had any of these intercept operators disclosed the contents of these communications, they'd soon find lodging in a federal penitentiary.

Mr. G. Gordon Liddy knows something of federal penitentiaries. He was lodged therein after doing the 1970s equivalent of Mr. Kernell's hacking, bugging a telephone. If Mr. Kernell is found guilty, but only gets a wrist-slap would this give a green light to a Renaissance of Watergate-style political black ops? Worse, if the seriousness of the infraction does not rise to the level of prosecution, political operatives will take this as license to invade anyone's privacy.

Carly, You're So Vain

2008-09-17T07:41:00.000-07:00

You probably think this essay is about you.

One of the sources of unease I've felt with the Republican Presidential candidate this season has been his association with Carly Fiorina. I don't know Ms. Fiorina and have supposed she's a nice person. However, I've noticed that the quality of Hewlett Packard has declined markedly in the last few years. When HP bought out Compaq it didn't seem like a smart move to me, but I'm far enough removed that I had no basis for that opinion.

Then there was a huge fight within HP over Ms. Fiorina's leadership. The last I'd heard of her was her forced eviction from the company. Of course, a lot of damage was already done and someone else had to clean up after. I had supposed that would be the last I'd hear from Ms. Fiorina.

So, when Ms. Fiorina insinuated herself into the McCain Campaign as some kind of economics guru, I felt a vague discomfort. Her involvement seemed like a bad move, but I couldn't definitively say why.

Yesterday I discovered why. You have to have very poor business judgment to say that your boss is unqualified to run a business. After all, he made the business decision to hire you.

This creates one of those rare situations where we can know something certainly: Either Mr. McCain is unqualified to run a business and his hiring decision of Ms. Fiorina validates that decision (making her stupid) OR Mr. McCain is indeed qualified to run a business whereupon Ms. Fiorina's assertions are false (making her a liar). We do not know whether Mr. McCain is qualified or not, but we do know Ms. Fiorina is either stupid or a liar. Hence we conclude that HP was correct to remove Ms. Fiorina from leadership.

Update: It appears that a businessman who is considerably more successful than Ms. Fiorina would be willing to hire either Mr. McCain or Mrs. Palin to run a business. It should be noted that Mr. Romney's business experience is more apropos to gauging fitness to run a business than Ms. Fiorina. This further vindicates the opinion of the HP board that fired her. Why yes, this does speak ill of Mr. McCain's judgment to associate himself with Ms. Fiorina.

With Apologies to Rudyard Kipling

2008-09-13T14:39:00.000-07:00

IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
' Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be Sarah Palin!

Two Sorts Of Feminism

2008-09-13T11:52:00.001-07:00

I just read this article describing a speech by Newt Gingrich. According to the Washington Times:

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Friday that Sarah Palin represents a "threat" to modern feminism and to Democrat Barack Obama's quest for the presidency, and that is why the "elite media" is trying to tear her down.

"Governor Palin violates every norm they have: she is tough, she is smart, she is articulate, she is happy, she has five kids, she has a very hardworking husband who is a union member, she is an NRA life member, she actually goes to church and prays. The list just gets worse," he said.

Perhaps I'm quibbling semantics, but when you make a woman the 2nd banana of the most powerful country in the world, you're not undermining girl power. This is hardly a blow to women or a threat to women's rights. To the contrary, Mrs. Palin is poised to become the personification of equality between the sexes. I'd rather vote for her for President than for Veep.

If you let the girl drive, she has the steering wheel and she gets to decide which way she turns. This is feminism by definition. In this sense Mr. Gingrich's assertion that Mrs. Palin is a threat to feminism is wrong.

But there is a difference between feminism by definition and feminism by tradition and convention. (By this I mean conventions and traditions that have been adopted only since the early 1970s.) Traditionally and conventionally feminism started with bra burning and eschewing cosmetics. Traditional and conventional feminism regards the unplanned pregnancy as a curse and children as a punishment. This form of feminism is typified by the spinster scold. The sort of person Rush Limbaugh calls the feminazi.

In this second sense Mr. Gingrich is right, Mrs. Palin is a threat to traditional/conventional feminism. I suspect that after five children she doesn't share Catharine MacKinnon's notion that all consensual sex between husband and wife is rape. Mrs. Palin has demonstrated her pro-life convictions when she gave birth to a disabled child and when her daughter got "in trouble." Both "problems" are easily be solved by abortion.

It is a sham to claim that women should be empowered, but then require every woman to toe the Democrat party line and/or the radicalized agenda of a self-appointed elite of Womon's Studies professors.

A persistent slander that has been heaped upon Conservatives by traditional/conventional feminists is that we hate women. No, we hate some policy aims of some women. Ask any Conservative if he'd vote for Margaret Thatcher and the answer would be YES!!!

Some traditional/conventional feminists who realize that any power placed in Sarah Palin's hands would undermine their policy aims are now claiming that Mrs. Palin is not a woman. She can't be: she is a mother, and men find her attractive.

Astroturfing The Insubstantial

2008-09-10T15:02:00.001-07:00

I just saw this on National Review.

When several liberal bloggers all choose to spotlight one particular news report by an Alaska CBS affiliate, one begins to wonder if we're seeing a coordinated message. Adding to Dean's observation, it sure is strange the way the liberal blogs all spotlight the same obscure story at the same time, huh?

I think it is significant because I've been thinking about the contrasting warfighting strategies of Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain. Astroturfing is nothing new and I suppose it is not unique to Mr. Obama's campaign. Francis Schaeffer once said that you shouldn't ascribe to a conspiracy the coordinated actions of a bunch of people who are all in lockstep as far as their worldviews are concerned. Thus, a few people can easily receive and forward the same choice tips that exactly fits their mental picture of the world.

Nevertheless, it appears that there are two or three channels of negative information coming from the Obama campaign about Mrs. Palin. The first is directly from the campaign and it mentions all the things a liberal Democrat would dislike about a conservative Republican. As such it's a fairly straightforward matter of attack and wholly cricket. But then there are the less-than-direct attacks which are troublesome. The rather childish, petulant insults like discussing Hillary with middle finger extended or referring to lipstick-wearing pigs are really beneficial for the window into Mr. Obama's character that they provide. I was upset yesterday, but today I'm grateful for this disclosure.

However, the astroturfing is troublesome. If you've a story you can't shop, or that would generate significant blowback, you can release it to your fellow-travelers and count on them to muddy the waters. Consider former mayor of New York City, Ed Koch, who announced his opposition to Mrs. Palin on the basis of a demonstrably false story about book-banning in a public library. I think Mr. Koch should oppose Mrs. Palin according to his beliefs and values, but he ought not support his decision upon a falsehood. I don't think Mr. Koch even knew he was deceived until long after the fact.

We've got to have a grasp on reality if we're to function in this world. When lies are your stock-in-trade, I think it distances you from reality. This may yield some short-team pleasantness, but it can be long-term harmful. And if you overdose on lies, you have blowback that can kill you.

Now, it appears that the Obama campaign believes that one can make a negative impression about Mrs. Palin if a particular CBS affiliate's news story is aired, but they're afraid there's not enough substance to it. Fritz Mondale once said, "where's the beef," and the Obama team must not have sufficient faith in this line of attack to man up and put it out there directly. Mrs. Palin had no problem directly attacking Mr. Obama in her convention speech. Why are her Democrat opponents not similarly direct?

If you punch me in the nose, I'll hate you but I'll respect you. Conversely, if you try to stab me in the back, I'll both hate and disrespect you. Mr. Obama has never faced big-league pitching and it shows.

Steven Quincy Urkel for President?

2008-09-09T19:07:00.000-07:00

Mr. Barak Obama said that when you put lipstick on a pig, its still a pig. Now, any one of the 40 million people who saw the Republican Vice Presidential acceptance speech recalls the joke about how a hockey mom differs from a pit bull. (Yes, he also deniably called Mr. McCain an old fish, but I'm not on about that.)

It does not require the intelligence commonly claimed by a Democrat candidate for national office to connect the lipstick allusions. Isn't that clever? Mr. Obama didn't actually call Mrs. Palin a pig. Haw haw haw. When someone complains about the attack tomorrow, he'll deny it and everyone who doesn't accept this will look petty. Mr. Obama flipped the bird at Mrs. Clinton earlier this year in a similarly deniable fashion. It must have taken the brain the size of a planet to come up with that trick.

Or a sixth grader. You know, the guy you eventually got fed up with and gave a wedgie to. There's a word for this: passive-aggression. It's what gelded males do around females who have cowed them. It's the standard operating procedure for men without chests.

When Mrs. Palin went after Mr. Obama in her acceptance speech, she manfully launched a frontal attack. There were no childish petty snipes she might deny the next day. There was an arrogance in her sarcasm, not unlike that of Mr. Mohamed Ali who really was the greatest. (Mr. Obama has the arrogance of the Emperor/Messiah with no clothes. He has everyone in the Washington DC Beltway convinced that his hopey/changey/whatever is just so marvelous that only provincial bumpkins doubt its substance.)

When Mrs. Palin pointed out that someone has to have an awfully thin resume to count such a bogus gig as "community organizer," Mr. Obama whimpered the next day that the mean girl was hitting him: She used... sarcasm. She knew all the tricks, dramatic irony, metaphor, bathos, puns, parody, litotes and… satire. She was vicious. In this world there are producers and there are consumers. Community organizers are not producers. Look at all the jobs Mr. Obama didn't create in his community. Someone has said that "Jesus was a community organizer." My Bible says he was a carpenter.

Contrast this with snippy, mincing references to pigs and lipstick. Or a thousand astroturfed smears about Mrs. Palin and her family by anonymous bloggers whose IPs track back to Democrat operatives. Yeah, that's the kind of guy we want standing up to America's enemies. That'll scare them.

When I vote for a black guy President he's gonna be John Shaft, not Steve Urkel.

Update: I suppose that passive-aggression is altogether fitting to a disciple of Mr. Saul Alinsky. I happened upon this essay wherein this paragraph appears:

His creed was set out in his book ‘Rules for Radicals’ – a book he dedicated to Lucifer, whom he called the ‘first radical’. It was Alinsky for whom ‘change’ was his mantra. And by ‘change’, he meant a Marxist revolution achieved by slow, incremental, Machiavellian means which turned society inside out. This had to be done through systematic deception, winning the trust of the naively idealistic middle class by using the language of morality to conceal an agenda designed to destroy it. And the way to do this, he said, was through ‘people’s organisations’.

Saul Alinsky vs John Boyd

2008-09-06T23:51:00.000-07:00

Here's a lens through which to view the current political conflict. On one side is a fellow whose first job out of college was community organizer. On the other side is a fellow whose first job out of college was fighter pilot. Each appears to have brought this experience to the fight.

It is wrong to accuse Barak Obama of having no experience. He was a community organizer. I served on the board of a neighborhood association in the early 1980s and have met a few. However, my experience was insufficient to become acquainted with their guru, Saul Alinsky and his book Rules For Radicals. However, I now recognize the pattern of conflict followed by his disciples. I am confident that Mr. Obama learned Mr. Alinsky's lessons as well as did Mr. Obama's rival, Mrs. Hillary Clinton. Better, seeing as how both worked from the same playbook and Mr. Obama won.

Before that, Mr. Obama's greatest achievement was winning his Senate seat. He was quite lucky when the judge unsealed Mr. Ryan's divorce papers. Mr. Ryan was ahead in the polls at the time. But you make your luck and we'll never know exactly how this lucky break came about. Perhaps someone more familiar with Mr. Alinsky's book could say.

The other party is headed by a fellow I've written about in the past as mere media hoax. He was so out of touch with my wing of the party, so hostile toward the religious right, so prone to sell out Republican interests, and so quick to kowtow to the media elites that I thought it impossible that he could inspire loyalty in the Republican Party. Obviously, I was wrong.

Before Mr. McCain became a POW he was a fighter pilot. Fighter pilots kill Communists.

They did so over North Korea and over North Vietnam with lopsided kill-ratios thanks to the fighting doctrines taught by USAF Colonel John Boyd. The key notion in Mr. Boyd's way is the OODA loop. In any dogfight, each pilot must do the same four things: Observe, Orient, Decide and Act. The participants in a dogfight will loop through these steps, and the winner invariably manages to "get inside the other guy's OODA loop." A fighter ace kills the other guy because when he's inside his OODA loop, the other guy is always responding to a stale situation. During the "Observe and Orient" steps the pilot forms a mental picture of reality. During the "Act" step the pilot changes reality. If I'm inside your OODA loop, I'm changing the situation faster than you can decide what to do that'll save yourself and/or kill me.

It is widely documented that Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and George Bush were all "misunderestimated" by their political opponents. Though I don't think Mr. Bush was or is a Conservative, each of these politicians were never understood by their political opponents. And each of these politicians managed to run rings around their adversaries. They each had this stealth shield spell of confusion that addled their enemies' wits. It's hard to Observe and Orient when your brain can't grok who your opponent is.

Since the Friday before Labor Day it appears that Mrs. Palin has transformed Barak Obama from Emperor/Messiah into Wyle E. Coyote, Sooooper Genius. Look at all the narrative attacks that have been spun about her and none have come close to touching her. Can this mean that someone is serially faking the drive-by media elites out of their jock-straps? Has Team McCain gotten inside Team Obama's OODA loop?

Maybe, and maybe it doesn't matter. Elections are zero-sum games, just like dogfights: one guy wins and one guy loses. Except in dogfights losing is usually much worse for your health. But elections are a form of politics and I don't know whether Mr. Alinky's tactics (which are native to politics) are more effective than Mr. Boyd's tactics.

Update: for a better analysis of Team McCain's fighting strategy go here. If you happen to agree with Mr. McMain's side, you need to get your head around this:

McCain's undoing of the elite, leftist media provides a universal lesson for contending with the Left. At base, the Left's ideology, whether relating to women's rights, human rights, academic inquiry or war and peace is not universal but tribal. Moreover, when the Left is challenged on any one of its signature issues, because it cannot actually make a case for the universal applicability or even logic of its views, it tends instead to embrace the politics of personal destruction while ignoring the obvious contradictions between its stated beliefs and actual behavior.

WHY things are this way have to do with the nature of post-modernism and its notion of truth and absolutes.

Another Update: Another OODA loop analysis of the current conflict.

Grace and Works and Gratitude

2008-09-05T22:50:00.000-07:00

I've a friend who's a good Catholic. Last week he expressed curiosity about how Baptists and more generally Protestants stay on the straight-and-narrow. I failed to give a good answer and this is an attempt to put my understanding into words. Keep in mind that I'm not any ecclesiastical authority and whatever I say should be checked against scripture. Don't take my word for any of this. Check it out for yourself.

First off, I'm Reformed enough to think that God saves sinners. Sinners don't save themselves or accept any power-assist or make any leveraged deals for grace. My state outside grace is like a dead man completely incapable of doing anything acceptable to God. Some disagree, thinking there may be some unfallen spark of desire for God that must be fanned into flame. But I don't.

However, I believe that when a human presents to another human the good news of the gospel and calls upon a sinner (we're all sinners by birth) to repent & believe, God chooses to add his effectual call of the Holy Spirit to the message. Quite frankly, I believe every Christian starts his Christianity with a miracle of resurrection in a spiritual sense. Before that, everyone is disinterested in the God that Is and is anxious to either get away or substitute something he finds more acceptable.

When God goes "zot" like this, the sinner brings nothing to the transaction but his sin, his desire/promise to not-sin, and his belief that God will forgive him. Where I show I'm uber-Reformed is that I think the expressions of belief, the repentence, and the faith are all RESULTS of grace, not CAUSES of grace.

So, at this point my Catholic friend asks, "So, why do good after this?"

I was reminded of this question last Sunday. The preacher spoke of the merit of Christ and the imputation of his righteousness, his merit to the believer in exchange for the believer's sins. And after that we live in the power of Christ to do good.

I nudged my wife and whispered, "why?"

The answer I didn't give my Catholic friend, but that I did give my wife is "gratitude."

Gratitude is the only reason any Christian should ever do any good thing. Keep in mind two things, we've asked God to save us from our sins, which means we want to be rid of them. Second, God provides this grace free of charge and I think God is offended by any attempt to pay for it via religious activities. So, I've got this debt of gratitude that is infinite in extent. I'm not obligated to pay it off, but I think it is only fitting for a Christian to keep this in mind. When there's some little sacrifice I'm called upon to do, I compare it with the sacrifice of Christ on my behalf. It's only fitting to do what I can as an expression of gratitude.

I think that as long as I realize that nothing I'm doing is getting me to heaven, or keeping me in the boat, but that everything's in God's hands, there is no room for vanity. When Jesus spoke of the Pharisee and he Tax Collector and how they prayed, the Pharisee seems altogether too satisfied with his spiritual state. He's grateful for not being like the guy next to him, but the Christian's gratitude must run much deeper. We're all sinners, and just because I'm a nice guy right now, that doesn't mean all the bad things i did in the past are inoperative. There's more than the moral delta between Pharisee & Publican, there's the delta between absolute perfection as lived by Jesus and my own sinful state. I've got to remind myself how much I've been given to properly assess a fitting extent of gratitude toward Christ.

Why be good? Because it's the least I can do.

Another Day, Another Sarah Palin Spin

2008-09-04T20:44:00.000-07:00

The mainstream media and Democrat operatives, as good post-modernists, cannot change the facts of the world, but they can frame those facts to suggest their preferred interpretation of them.

Fact: John McCain nominated Sarah Palin to be his running mate.

Spin Attempt #1: She's the second coming of Dan Quayle. Like Mr. Quayle, nobody who mattered knew her and she wasn't a regular on the Sunday thumb-sucker shows. And she can't be qualified, otherwise our masters in the Beltway would have lunched with her and would tell us so.

However, Mrs. Palin failed to cooperate by responding to bright lights like a deer in the headlights. (This might have something to do with her beauty pageant experience.)

Spin Attempt #2: She's trailer trash with too much hair, too many kids, and her youngest is probably the fruit of an incestuous union between her husband and her daughter.

The conspiracy theories to support the latter hypothesis utterly buggered belief and couldn't pass the laugh test. All they did was to make the extra-chromosome wing (Al Gore's words) of the Republican party, i.e. me, furious. (Why yes, I have gone back to calling myself a Republican.)

Spin Attempt #3: (whispered) She's a bad mother with an out-of-control 17-year old daughter, taking dangerous risks flying on airplanes (imagine that, airplanes) while pregnant, and doing G-d-knows-what in the Governor's office while she should be barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen.

This also failed because Democrats can't keep a straight face when they say a wommon's place is in the home. To add insult to injury, the Religious Right failed to drop her like a hot potatoe when they learned of daughter's out-of-wedlock pregnancy.

Spin Attempt #4: OK, Sarah Palin is beleaguered from all of the above and is really Thomas Eagleton, v2.0 and the Republicans will come to their senses and drop her from the ticket.

Then Mrs. Palin gave a speech that a lot of people watched (to find out what all the buzz was about). It's hard to maintain 37 million instances of the "who you going to believe, me or your lying eyes" narrative. Meanwhile, a lot of Republicans remembered how tasty red meat is and are now saying they'll vote for Sarah Palin and that guy with her.

Spin Attempt #5: [speaking of the messiah] Sarah Palin used... sarcasm. She knew all the tricks, dramatic irony, metaphor, bathos, puns, parody, litotes and... satire. She was vicious.

Well, being the "attack dog" of the ticket is the main job responsibility of the Veep. Obambi was in her sights and she put lead on target.

This brings us to now.

Spin Attempt #6: Sarah Palin is Spiro T. Agnew v2.0. Given the poisoned atmosphere of recent rumor-mongering and hard-to-deny media-bias, she's going to make the campaign all about the press bias and Leave Obama Alone! Please, please, Leave Obama Alone! Leave Obama Alone! Call us nattering nabobs of negativity, please. Leave Obama Alone! Call us an effete corp of snobs. Leave Obama Alone! Please!

Here's a bit of meta-analysis. When the story changes each day, you don't have to pay much attention to it, or take it particularly seriously, because it'll be different tomorrow.

Meanwhile, I've got a suspicion that doesn't have sufficient data to support it. Mrs. Palin appears to have a track record of taking on powerful enemies and hanging tough against them. Something had to sustain her through the viciousness of this last week's attacks upon her family from the ends-justify-the-means left. You might call her an Iron Lady, but that title is currently held by Dame Margaret Thatcher. Don't take my word for it. Just keep your eyes open and we'll see.

Peggy Noonan's Got Some 'Splainin' To Do

2008-09-03T14:49:00.000-07:00

This afternoon I read Ms. Peggy Noonan's essay touting the Republican line about Mr. McCain's Vice-Presidential selection of Mrs. Sarah Palin. However, her off-mike conversation with Mike Murphy and some MSNBC talking-head includes her uttering these words:

“It’s over… They went for this, excuse me, political bull**** about narratives. Every time Republicans do that… they blow it.”

With this in mind, consider what she wrote:

Because she jumbles up so many cultural categories, because she is a feminist not in the Yale Gender Studies sense but the How Do I Reload This Thang way, because she is a woman who in style, history, moxie and femininity is exactly like a normal American feminist and not an Abstract Theory feminist; because she wears makeup and heels and eats mooseburgers and is Alaska Tough, as Time magazine put it; because she is conservative, and pro-2nd Amendment and pro-life; and because conservatives can smell this sort of thing -- who is really one of them and who is not -- and will fight to the death for one of their beleaguered own; because of all of this she is a real and present danger to the American left, and to the Obama candidacy.

She could become a transformative political presence.

So they are going to have to kill her, and kill her quick.

And it's going to be brutal. It's already getting there.

I'm not too sure how to interpret Ms. Noonan's written opinions in light of her presumably candid remarks. Did she knowingly write something her audience would like to hear to provide some boob bait for the bubbas? Or should I instead take pains to recall that Ms. Noonan included herself in the class of people she describes here:

Let me say of myself and almost everyone I know in the press, all the chattering classes and political strategists and inside dopesters of the Amtrak Acela Line: We live in a bubble and have around us bubble people. We are Bubbleheads.

Bubbleheads. Yes. I think that best harmonizes the oral and written record.

Update: Ms. Noonan attempts to harmonize her written and spoken words here. Make of it what you will.

Democrats Without Chests

2008-09-02T18:40:00.000-07:00

The Catholic journal "First Things" has news of recent statements by Democrat activists that give pause. Now, I would not think the remarks so significant had I not been on vacation this last weekend whereupon I had occasion to reread my copy of the C.S. Lewis novel, That Hideous Strength.

Civil discourse requires the interlocutors to put their partisan aims under something larger than themselves. The ancient Greeks of Plato's Dialogs thought that Reason, qua, Reason must be ultimate. Theists in general must put the will of God over their own will to power. Historically, American political conflicts have taken place within the framework of the Constitution. When that framework proved inadequate Civil War took a half-million lives on its battlefields.

We have recently seen low-life's who would have a hard time knowing which end the round comes out of a gun proclaiming their willingness to perpetrate any crime to bring about the "greater good" as they see it. Happily, all of the NRA members are on the other side of this debate. The First Things essay speaks of bloodshed. I don't think we've come to that.

I think that if someone publicly says that he believes the ends justify any means necessary, remember that this includes violating the Constitution, the Bible, the Koran, the laws of the land, and the rules of civil discourse. You should believe his every utterance to be a lie until someone you know to believe in absolutes confirms it and you ought to attach the maximum skepticism to it when you hear it repeated. The "big lie" theory depends upon it being repeated so widely that people lose track of its source.

That Hideous Strength is a story of how men without chests find themselves completely unprepared to handle evil. The antagonists start with things that seem good, but take this same "ends justify the means" approach. The result are a few lies to "cut the red tape" and those lies are doubled and tripled until all correspondence between words and reality is lost. What meaning is communicated grows more and more vague. In the climactic confrontation between N.I.C.E. and Merlin all meaning is lost.

There are no policy goals so valuable that lying about them is justified. There are no policy goals that destroying innocent people is justified. If you think otherwise, I will not trust you and we cannot have a civil discussion.

An Answer and A Question

2008-08-11T15:56:00.000-07:00

This afternoon a colleague was attempting to add an image to his WPF application. What made this unusual was that he wanted to get the image from a resource cooked into an assembly. This was not particularly straightforward to do.

The image itself was in c:\dev\project\framework\IntranetFramework\Content\Images\CSiLogo.png. And we were putting into the IntranetFramework assembly. That seemed to go straightforwardly, but there arose a problem when we went to use it.

Ultimately we added to the xaml file the following:

Source="/IntranetFramework;component/Content/Images/CSiLogo.png">

What's interesting is the syntax that we had difficulty getting right. Don't forget the initial "slash" followed by the assembly name delimited by semi-colon followed by "component" followed by the path within the project's directory tree to the image in question.

It took a fair amount of googling to add the "/" and the "component/" to the image source attribute.

You might keep that in mind if you're struggling with something like this.

It was my friend who did all the work, but I just sat watching. When I thought I understood what he did, I did likewise with a different image file I added to the project and then added to another xaml. Everything the same except the different filename.

It didn't work. Then my friend told me what he'd done before I dropped by. He added the image file to the project as a Resource, then immediately deleted it again. Whereupon my version started working. I don't exactly know why; I figure it's a bug in Visual Studio 2008's WPF code generator. If anybody figures it out, please add a comment explaining it.

Whereupon Stoicism Ensued

2008-08-07T09:02:00.001-07:00

Last night I walked out of a writers' group that I attend and was surprised. I'm quite anxious about a party I'm throwing tonight and so I've been watching the weather all week. I watch weather more closely nowadays because I ride my scooter to and fro. It's a great way to go. You're outside with the wind in your hair. When I scooter into work you can tell because I'm grinning all day.

This week it rained Monday morning so I drove and grumbled to work, but the weather said it'd be iffy Tuesday and Thursday, but sunny Wednesday. I scootered to work in wonderful weather and then rode to my writers' group, but I noted a bit of cloud cover. When the group broke up last night, I stepped outside and felt a couple drops sprinkling on me. Instead of loitering and chatting, I bid my farewells and scooted.

My writers' group meets in downtown Grand Rapids and I live in the northeast suburbs. It's about a five mile ride to get home. I started out and after a block the rain was pouring down.

You can tell when I go past on my scooter because I've got a grin on my face. Last night the grin became a grimace. I got as far as Fuller avenue and noticed my scooter lacks the power to climb the hill on Fuller faster than about 15 mph. I was soaked to the skin with almost the entire ride ahead of me. And there was a traffic snag at Fuller and Lake. It is a very low feeling to sit in a downpour waiting for traffic when you've got most of your ride ahead of you.

After a few cycles of the streetlight, I got moving again and the rain was now a full downpour. Hard to see. I was driven to distraction by the fear of an unseen pothole opening before me, and also the fear that my tires would lose traction. Thus I proceeded more slowly as some light hail joined the downpour. Thus I proceeded until I was 2/3rds of the way home.

On Plymouth avenue there is an overpass. I sheltered there and tried unsuccessfully to dry my goggles. You can't dry goggles when everything you have is soaked. After a few minutes of laboring in vain, I proceeded home.

Upon turning onto my street, I noticed the road beneath the trees was dry and that the rain was letting up. The rain ended as I drove into my garage.

My wife met me with great sympathy and she helped me strip. My shirt and undershirt and backpack came off to begin their process of making puddles on the hallway floor. I got in the shower, but before I did I tried to wring water out of my underwear: the item of clothing I thought would be the last to be soaked. I got a fair amount of water out.

The shower was hot and I enjoyed the sensation. I was safe and warm. A few minutes later I had changed into dry clothes and this ordeal was past tense. I tease my Prius-driving friend about how I use less gas and have a lot more fun than he does. I figure that when he reads this he'll feel some measure of vindication.

Weber Gas Grill Pizza

2008-08-04T17:00:00.000-07:00

I have an aging Weber Silver gas grill. It's a nice day today, but a bit hot and humid. On a couple occasions when my wife has been busy, I've wanted to get Papa Murphy's pizza, but I didn't want to heat up the house with pizza baking.

What to do?

I got my pizza stone out and placed it in the center of my cold gas grill. Then I put the spurs to it, getting my grill as hot as it would go. It topped out around 500 degrees, less when the breeze kicked up. When I guessed the pizza stone was at thermal equilibriuum, I put the first pizza on. Gave it 10 minutes, then opened the grill a crack to see if it looked OK. It did. Gave it five more minutes. Should have given it one or two more. The top was nicely browned, but I was anxious about the crust in the center. Another minute would have addressed that.

I almost lost the pizza taking it off the grill/pizza stone. I used a half-sheet pan instead of a peel. Note to self, buy a peel.

Second pizza was a thinner gourmet pizza. The pizza stone was at temperature by that time and I gave it more time. I was rewarded with more GBD (gold, brown, delicious) on the top and the crust was a perfect shade of brown.

And all that heat of pizza baking is outside on my deck.

Check Your Premises

2008-08-01T12:19:00.000-07:00

I'm told that Ayn Rand was wont to tell people to check their premises. With this in mind, I recently read this essay. The essayist angrily accuses a large group of people of being irrational in their response to the mishandling of a cracker. I agree that it is irrational for people to get upset about a cracker.

However, there's more to this story than just a cracker. I do not believe in the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation. But I do understand the doctrine. In short, it claims that the elements of the Lord's Supper, bread and whine, are transformed by the priest's recitation of the rite into the body and blood of Christ.

It is one thing to mishandle a cracker. It is another thing to mishandle the body of Christ. Whereas the essayist signifies the flap as concerning a cracker, millions of Catholics and Orthodox Christians would claim what was once a cracker is no longer a cracker. To them, the flap is over desecration of the body of Christ. If you desecrate a cracker it is one thing, but if you desecrate the body of Christ that is another thing entirely.

Catholic ire is premised upon the mishandling of the body of Christ. The essayist chooses not to recognize the significance of Christ in the elements of the Lord's Supper.

A Catholic friend who pointed this essay out to me is greatly exercised at the essayist's insensitivity. And I sympathize with him. He also made dark hints that violence might be directed against the desecration.

I don't believe in transubstantiation. But if I did, I would not be as ired as the Catholics seem to be. Christ is either living or dead; either capable of taking care of himself or powerless beyond the activism of his Church. I happen to believe in the former.

In Old Testament times, the prophets of Ba'al contested with the prophet Elijah on Mount Carmel. The contest was simple: Here's an altar with a sacrifice upon it, let the deity that really exists set it afire. As you may recall, the prophets of Ba'al got themselves into a lather to no effect, whereas Elijah poured water on the altar and made sure that only God could get the credit. And then fire came from heaven and burnt everything up. In this we see contrasted the religion of dead idols and the religion of a living God.

Thus, I see Christ as more than capable of protecting himself from, or responding forcefully to, any desecration. I think members of the Roman church are responsible to take every reasonable measure to maintain the integrity of their rites and relics. But this stops short of unethical measures. Islam is the religion of riots and murders over a rumored desecration.

This reminds me of another situation where people attach different significances objects. Consider a cluster of a few thousand cells. I've a pro-abortion friend who considers this cluster of a few thousand cells "a bit of goo." Conversely, when this cluster of cells is a fetus I regard it as constituting a human being with rights. I was pro-choice until I signified the fertilized ovum as a distinct human life whereupon I became pro-life.

I think that people who think that fetuses are humans with rights are obligated to take every reasonable measure to secure the rights of such powerless individuals. But this stops short of bombing abortion clinics or shooting abortionists. Such actions are not pro-life.

Partisan arguments about the cracker and the bit of goo are so bitter because each side starts with different premises and reasons from there to conclusions that the other side is populated by demons or madmen. For this reason, we each have to acknowledge our own premises and those of our interlocutors. Humans are by-and-large reasonable creatures. We have the ability to reason from the other fellow's premises. I think we should do so periodically to remind ourselves that the fellows on the other side are not demons.

Hubris is not Triumph

2008-07-29T08:26:00.001-07:00

While I was vacationing last week, the junior Senator from Illinois, a fellow with less than two hundred days' worth of experience in that post, went on a tour of some foreign countries. I'm told that a lot of crowds full of people who do not vote in American elections showed enthusiastic support.

This fellow, whose press coverage is generally characterized as messianic, went to Jerusalem and the wailing wall. Though I didn't see any pictures (being on vacation) I suppose his campaign staffers plastered it with campaign posters.

One of Bill & Hillary's press tricks was to stage some phony photo op and then feign outrage. I did hear that the Lord Messiah's prayer left at the wailing wall was pilfered and published. I've every confidence it was as sincere as it was focus-group tested.

I read the New York Times claim of this trip that "even Republicans have described as politically triumphant." Though I missed the pictures of the Lord Obama riding into Jerusalem on the foal of an ass with adoring palm frond waving crowds crying Hosanna, I won't deny the New York Times its Palm Sunday.

Though I once called myself a Republican and have no reason to vote for the senior Senator from Arizona, I would characterize the junior Senator from Illinois' trip as manifesting as much hubris as anything.

Kooks And Nukes

2008-07-28T16:20:00.000-07:00

One of the side effects of paying $4.00/gal for gas is the reminder of what politicians said about domestic energy policy a generation ago. We heard all sorts of things about energy independence that was empty rhetoric. Meanwhile, the Saudis paid for a nice park downtown next to the Gerald Ford museum. I figure oil producers have spread around a lot of petrodollars in a bipartisan fashion to get us where we are today. And what do we do about it? Mr. Bush goes to the Middle East and asks the Sheiks nice to increase production. And Mr. Obama tells us our thermostats are set too high.

I've believed a lot of lies spread by malthusans. For one thing, there was an argument about nuclear power plant safety where Navy said they could guarantee nuclear power plant safety and the non-navy guys said that there was a chance of a cascade of rare events that would lead to a nuclear accident. As a believer in the Murphy, I believed the latter. This belief was vindicated by Three Mile Island and Chernobl.

The biggest disaster of TMI was that it gave credibility to Jane Fonda when "The China Syndrome" movie came out at the same time. Nobody died and nobody got cancer from any radiation released by that event.

Chernobl is another story. People died. But think about it. There was a core meltdown and for ten days the Chernobl reactor was out of control. There was no containment of radiation or radioactive fallout.

And the world did not end.

Last spring a friend and I flew over two electrical power plants, a coal-fired and a nuke. The first thing I noticed about the coal-fired plant was the huge amount of space allocated to storing coal with trains bringing more coal in all the time. Coal is not 100% pure carbon. It's a mix of whatever else is in the ground nearby. And when it burns what do you suppose comes out with the smoke, but fly ash. I was surprised to learn recently that there are trace amounts of radioactive materials in that fly ash. If you live downwind of a power plant, you'll get less radiation from it if it's a nuke.

Safe and clean natural gas can also contain trace amounts of radon gas. Radon gas is radioactive and the biggest cause of cancer after cigarette smoking.

But nuclear fission produces nuclear waste that remains deadly for thousands of years, right? Yes. But it doesn't have to. If your president isn't an idiot peanut farmer, you can reprocess nuclear fuel rods to remove unburnt fissionables, greatly reducing the volume of nuclear waste.

Or you can use a different nuclear fuel cycle. Nuclear fission seems to be all about neutrons. And when you burn enriched uranium, the fission products like to soak up neutrons poisoning the reaction. But there are other fission fuel cycles that do not depend upon enriched uranium, and manage neutron flux differently. These reactions produce much less nuclear waste and what they produce has a half-life of a few centuries, not several millenia. Moreover, there's a lot more thorium than uranium on this planet.

And a thorium fuel cycle generates no bomb-grade isotopes, eliminating the risk of proliferation.

And when you're talking about radioactive waste, you should consider the uranium mine in Oklo where a fission reaction burned up all the U235 leaving its fission products safely encapsulated in situ.

So, why is it that we haven't built a new nuclear power plant in this country for a generation? For one thing, it's plain ignorance and gullibility of the public and the media in the face of propaganda by anti-nuclear activists. For another thing, it costs a lot of time and money to license a new nuclear plant. Look at the billions that were lost by Consumers' Power when they dropped the Midland plant. The only way they could have been stupider would have been to buy energy futures from Enron. Putting a lot of money in a decades-long project that's subject to the whims of politicians, bureaucrats and judges is as risky as it gets.

The people who own and operate nuclear power plants know this. They have a license to print money and more nukes would just mean more competitors. They can uprate their reactors, and make incremental improvements, but they'll do nothing revolutionary.

And that's why we're paying so much for energy.

Who Owns This World?

2008-07-01T20:02:00.000-07:00

A while back a politician said this:

"We can't drive our SUVs and, you know, eat as much as we want and keep our homes on, you know, 72 degrees at all times, whether we're living in the desert or we're living in the tundra, and then just expect every other country is going to say OK, you know, you guys go ahead keep on using 25 percent of the world's energy, even though you only account for 3 percent of the population..."

This reminds me of the environmentalists of my youth. Back then the line was that the US had 6 percent of the world's population and we consumed a third of the world's resources. This pattern of rhetoric has an unstated premise that the world should be divided into equal parts and distributed in equal shares to each person in the world today.

This sounds reasonable until you think about it. Who owns this world? If you think this planet is owned by its 6.7 billion inhabitants in equal shares, then how is this ownership reallocated when the population of the world increases? For instance, if I were to kill my fellow-man, my shares increase. Or if I have a dozen kids, my family will have an inordinately larger share.

The people who think this way generally think having a dozen kids is a bad idea. Same goes for killing one's fellow-man.

Property and ownership doesn't work this way in a capitalist society. I happen to own the house I'm typing this from and the land it sits on. None of the world's 6.7 billion people have helped me pay the taxes, improve the property, or maintain it. If someone gets hurt on my property, none of those 6.7 billion people will accept legal liability.

There is only way to consistently understand "using 25 percent of the world's energy, even though you only account for 3 percent of the population" in 2008, and say "The U.S. has 6 percent of the world's population but consumes a third of the world's resources" in the 1970s, is to have a continuous redistribution of wealth with the ebb and flow of demographics.

This notion of property is a form of collectivism. The criteria isn't necessarily Marxist because we're not talking about a Robin Hood redistribution from rich to poor, "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need," but it is redistribution nonetheless.

This rhetoric has been part and parcel of the environmentalist movement for my entire life. I'm not in favor of polluted air or water, but I believe in private property. When someone owns something they take care of it. When nobody really owns something, they don't.

There's more to this world than consumption. There's production and wealth creation. People work with varying degrees of effectiveness. With capital equipment and technology, one can increase one's productivity by orders of magnitude. One of those 6.7 billion people scratching at dirt with a stick will produce much less grain than a farmer with a tractor and hybrid seeds. Few environmentalists bother to point out that Americans produce a disproportionate amount of the world's wealth.

This collectivist notion of property does not correspond to economic reality. Governments throughout the 20th century demonstrated that they could repeal the laws of economics. However that does not mean politicians can't promise this to attract voters.

The Load Just Got Heavier

2008-06-22T20:52:00.000-07:00

This story starts in June of 1978 when I graduated from college. There was a bunch of us who hung together, Mike, Clyde, Cindy, and Deb. Mike and I were graduating, and Cindy's folks came to see Mike graduate. They brought along some folks from Cindy's church, Grace Baptist Church of Laurel, MD--including the new pastor there, Colin Smith. He was just a couple years older than us.

The guy was a walking party waiting to happen.

After graduation, I went to MSU, got a Masters' degree and after that got a job with the gubmint. The job was near Laurel, and six weeks after my wife and I were married, we moved there. It was an adventure, living away from home, getting settled in a strange place, and making friends in a new church, Grace Baptist Church where Colin Smith was pastoring.

We lived out there for three years and it wasn't unusual for Mary and me to spend a Friday evening with Colin and Anita watching Kurosawa movies in Japanese with subtitles. Sunday nights after church we'd go to the parsonage and play Rook and eat pizza. I played the best Rook of my life back then.

One Sunday night instead of Rook at the parsonage, we went for ice cream sundaes. We'd gotten nicely settled in and Anita started counting kids. They had five kids all five-years-old or younger. She came up one short. The youngest, little Colin, had been forgotten at church!

Another time Colin took a community-ed class in Chinese. He told the story that at the end of the class the teacher took the class to an authentic Chinese Restaurant. But when they tried to order in Chinese, the waitress gave them a dumb look and said, "I don't understand you. I'm Korean." He'd tell stories with such obvious glee that it was impossible to be around him without having a good time and feeling the lightness of his spirit.

All this happened over 25 years ago. These pleasant memories are a treasure.

But the year 2002 was generally an unhappy one. I had been diagnosed with cancer and spent the previous year in chemo. My father, whose surviving cancer made me think I could beat it too, had his cancer come back. And he wasn't doing well. I'd been sick in January, been CT-scanned, and biopsied to see if the cancer had returned. The results were due the next Monday afternoon.

Meanwhile, Colin Smith had gotten his PhD in ancient languages at Cornell and was teaching Old Testament Hebrew at Baptist Bible College of Clarks Summit, PA. And the Dead Sea Scrolls were on display at the Grand Rapids Public Museum. Colin and a dozen of his BBC students therefore came to Grand Rapids to look at them.

This entailed finding housing for Colin and Anita as well as the students. Colin's daughter-in-law just happens to be a Grand Rapids native and the daughter of some friends from Trinity Baptist Church. The bulk of the students ended up bunking at their house and we got a call asking if we had an extra bedroom for Colin and Anita. OF COURSE WE DID.

Thus, they stayed with us. It was the first time we'd seen Colin and Anita since we'd left Maryland over twenty years before. He was a lot grayer than I remembered and I suppose I was, too. But the humor and quick wit and merry spirit were just as I remembered. We spent Saturday night sitting around the kitchen table and had a wonderful time. It felt like no time had lapsed before. We just picked up our friendship where we'd left it back in 1983.

That Monday we took off work and went to see the Dead Sea Scrolls with Colin and his students. It's a lot more fun to go through an exhibit like that with a PhD expert in such things who can read hieroglyphics and who summons a bright student, points to a 2000-year-old scroll of Psalms, and commands the kid, "Read that." It was a thoroughly wonderful, carefree afternoon.

Did I mention that I was waiting for cancer test results? We got home and there was a message on the machine. I called back, the test was positive, the cancer was back. Dad had died of cancer the October before. I went into a funk.

But that weekend, having seen the Dead Sea Scrolls that are thousands of years old, having seen Colin and Anita, having been blessed by their fellowship. It contextualized the bad news and made it bearable. And we bore up under it.

That weekend my kids, Jane and Dan, got a chance to meet Colin and see his BBC students. They were impressed, Jane almost went to BBC. (She's saving the world another way.) Nevertheless, when Colin Smith and some other guys went to Lake Ann Baptist Camp to hold a week-long seminar for teenagers, Jane and her friend Lindsay went to learn from him. They were less impressed by the other preachers there.

Just this last Friday, Jane's friend Laura got married. Laura's sister is that same daughter-in-law of Colin Smith, and her husband Colin's son, Ben, was there. Looking at Ben wrangling his son, Bond, I thought of how Ben has the best of Colin and Anita. We spoke at the reception and he has that same quick wit and sense of humor. I was reminded that I missed my friend, Colin Smith.

This long rambling discourse started in 1978 and it comes back there. My friend Cindy, who introduced me to Colin Smith way back there in Ohio, called this afternoon. She said she had been speaking to her parents. They told her Colin Smith died today. Oddly, this weekend I reflected, for no reason, upon the demise of other friends. My mom and dad and other family members. None struck me as hard as news of Colin's passing.

When my Dad died, my step-sister's husband said that he was quite a guy. That's true. I told him then that Dad set an example, now its up to us to set example. I look at my college professors, my pastors, my parents, and I see that I stand on their shoulders and they are giants. When giants like Colin Smith leave this world, they leave a gap for others to fill.

What is the Colin-Smith-shaped void in this world tonight?
Here's a better description than I can write.

Was That You On The Couch With Nancy Pelosi?

2008-06-17T08:47:00.000-07:00

I am reputed to be a Conservative and Republican.

Thus I get a lot of spam from the right side of the beg-o-sphere (the spectrum of people sending out pleas for cash lest the republic will fall). The way to understand politics in America is simple. You've got Republicans and Democrats who each have their heroes and antichrists. The heroes of the Republicans tend to be the antichrists of the Democrats and vice versa. For instance, Neutron Newt Gingrich was instrumental in taking control of Congress away from Democrats for the first time in my lifetime. This made him a hero or an antichrist depending upon whether you pull the D or the R lever on election day.

It's an effective system, you write ad copy that says, "send us money, or else (insert name and picture here) will take over Washington and corrupt our precious bodily fluids." Then do a mass mailing to everyone who thinks (insert name and picture here) is the antichrist, and wait for the money to come rolling in.

So, imagine my surprise when I get an email talking about high gasoline prices (about which I am furious), from good ole Newt Gingrich saying, "Drill Here, Drill Now." I found it a compelling pitch. Until I remembered the picture of him and Nancy Pelosi sitting on the "global warming" couch. Oh, that's right, Mr. Gingrich believes that the burning of fossil fuels will cause global warming and said something should be done.

What should be done about global warming? We can solve it. We should burn less fossil fuels. How? By making gas so expensive that most people can't afford to buy it. So, whenever I complain about the price of gasoline, I remember that global warming couch and the people who've made ads sitting thereon.

So, Mr. Gingrich, which is it? Do I believe your spam in my in-box saying we should "Drill Here, Drill Now" or do I believe what you said on the couch next to Nancy Pelosi? Or maybe I'll choose to believe nothing coming out of Washington.

The Fellowship of the Two-Cycle Fumes

2008-06-02T23:12:00.000-07:00

This story starts 30 years ago. While I was away at grad school my dad and brother, Mark, went to Muskegon and bought Mark's first moped. Over the years my little brother has accumulated quite a stash of mopeds. The total number of mopeds he owns is classified.

And a couple years ago he ran into the Ghost Riders.

Then Mark turned me onto my Honda Metro II scooter a couple of months ago. I figure he didn't think I was ready for a moped. Between then and now, every Monday has either been cold or rainy or busy. Tonight was busy, too, but a meeting got canceled. So, I called my brother.

"Where you at?" I asked. Not much for phone etiquette, I know.

"In my garage," Mark answered. He's cool with the lack of phone etiquette.

"I can be there in the time it takes to get my scooter from my house to yours. You going to Founders?"

"Sure. Come on over."

I got to Mark's house on the other side of town then the two of us drove to Founders microbrewery downtown. I got there and saw about 30 mopeds parked, but only about three scooters. And my 2nd-cousin Lee was there who I hadn't seen in 25 years. He was riding the orange Motobecaine Mark helped him find last year. I looked over the various mopeds parked there. It was a cool sight.

I figure that although I like my scoot, I'll probably be riding my wife's "pink Puch" to subsequent Ghost Riders meetings. I'm buying the pink Puch as soon as Mark gets it running. It's not pink, really, sort of a champaign color. The people have about a half-dozen old guys like me and Mark, but mostly a bunch of kids in their 20s.

After a few minutes of introductions to Mark's friends in the Ghost Riders, we all took off on a ride. My little Honda has this gentle, purring, 4-cycle engine that would never disturb anyone's sleep and its exhaust emissions have a bouquet not dissimilar to rose-water, in my unbiased opinion. This is in contrast to the sound and fury of over two dozen 2-cycle engines. These brethren of the chain-saw engine were belching so much smoke that I could sense Rachel Carlson spinning in her grave. Spotted Owls, no doubt, quaked in their nests this night.

I was unfamiliar with the protocol. The first stop on our ride was to the gas station, where we all bragged about our mileage. A fitting start as we extended a two-wheeled, two-cycle, 100mpg middle finger to the foreign despots who've doubled the price of gasoline of late.

My brother brought his dog in the bike trailer he's modified for canine transport. It's a chick magnet (which would work better if he was more than two years younger than me), but it means he tends to stay near the back of the pack. Since I was the new guy, I kept with him.

However, since I was running flat-out most of the time and sometimes felt a need for more power on hills or catching up, I figure I'll be doing some performance mods on my scooter.

Other guys have some very fast rides. Oddly, these guys would stay near the back then zoom to the front whenever we came upon a red light, where they'd stay in the middle of the intersection until everyone had gotten through. They would act as sheep dogs keeping the herd together. I wonder if the police would approve.

It was great fun to course through the streets of Grand Rapids in a roaring horde of mopeds. A mobile cloud of two-cycle exhaust fumes. After the ride, Mark and I went back to his house and we hung out for a while before I scootered home well after 11:00pm.

I've heard that scooters and mopeds are a fad. Maybe so, but I had a great time with my brother tonight.

Indiana Jones and the Hollywood Stupid Tax

2008-05-24T17:07:00.001-07:00

Imagine the following scenario: soldiers of an enemy nation invade this country, kill several US servicemen, seize control of a government base, kidnap a college professor and coerce him to help them steal government property.

Further, after this college professor escapes imagine foreign agents of this same enemy nation threaten and attempt to kidnap him at gunpoint in broad dailight in a crowded restaurant.

If such things were to occur, wouldn't the citizens and government of the US be justified to feel some anxiety, almost paranoia in response?

The opening scenes of the latest Indiana Jones movie show those very crimes being perpetrated against Professor Jones and his young side-kick Mutt. And though I thought it unbelievable that the Soviets could mount such attacks on US soil, I was willing to go along for the sake of the story.

My complaint is that after this narrative setup, Messrs. Lucas and Spielberg feel obligated to pay the Hollywood stupid tax and invoke the dread scourge of McCarthyism. So be it, but I find it then altogether incongruous that Indiana Jones should then express the customary Hollywood sentiment that the Communists are really no big worry.

Either the Commies were credible antagonists OR the Red Scare was justified. You can't have it both ways.

The problem is that Stalinists make effective antagonists. Lucas and Spielberg know this and I think they did a good job of making them appear suitably evil. It's a pity they could not be true to their art.

Lindsey Graham for Veep

2008-05-15T12:22:00.000-07:00

Given the current state of the Republican party, Mr. McCain is challenged to find a running-mate who clearly understands his vision and where he wants to take the party. Afterall, Mr. McCain is no young man, so he needs to make it clear that the future course of the party will be consistent with his vision. Mindful of this, I suggest Senator Lindsey Graham as his running mate.

Over the course of the last several years, Mr. Graham has been the Senator more likely to articulate policies most congruent with Mr. McCain's. Moreover, no less a Republican than Rush Limbaugh has taken to calling Mr. Graham "vice president" over the course of the last several years. So, come on Republicans, our party has nominated the Maverick, give us more.

Evolution In A Bucket

2008-04-20T13:05:00.000-07:00

When I was a tender lad, the origins argument consisted of two competing narratives roughly equivalent to the partisans in conflict in the old Spencer Tracy movie, "Inherit The Wind." You either believe the dates printed in your Schofield Reference Bible, or you think you're a monkey's nephew.

Later, when in college, I learned that Creationists distinguish between Evolution in the small and Evolution in the large. Specifically, Creationists assert that we have verified proof with things like fruit flies, domesticated animals, or antibiotic-resistant bacteria that selective breeding and mutation can change the morphology of animals. But the evolution we see in the lab, and that we see in nature, is only evolution WITHIN species, not BETWEEN species.

Quite frankly, this distinction between micro and macro evolution seems to have the fossil record going for it. Though we see a lot of different fossils, we don't find a lot of "missing links." If Darwinian evolution explains the presence of millions of distinct species on this planet, then Darwinian evolution posits the existence of many millions more transitional forms between those species. When this complaint was first raised, well over a century ago, the reply was that "we haven't dug them up yet." Time has gone by and the transitional forms remain missing and the reply is twofold: not everything gets fossilized and missing links don't last many generations. The theory is called "punctuated equilibrium." Still it bothers me that there are so many species and so few (any?) transitional fossils. I'm no geologist, I may be wrong, so if there are lots of fossilized missing links out there, I'd like to hear of it.

I am more familiar with mathematical optimization and computer algorithms. Over the last couple decades I've heard of "genetic algorithms" or "evolutionary algorithms" that have been applied in some contexts, but when I'd read more, the details would get fuzzy and I'd lose the thread of what was being described.

However, in a completely different context, I heard a scientist describe an algorithm he called a "simulated anneal" that I could understand quite handily. Let's suppose you have a problem of connecting various things much like the atoms of a metal. Each connection contributes positively or negatively to some objective function. You want to come up with the "global minima" of the objective function. There are too many connections to exhaustively try them all. What to do? One approach is to look at every pair of atoms and make the link that's "best" then connect those pairs of atoms to the pair that's "best" and so on until everything's connected.

This is called a "greedy algorithm" and it often produces a poor result, getting caught in what's called a "local minima" of the objective function. This process is like dropping a marble in a bucket and letting it roll to the lowest point it finds. The trouble is that if the floor of the bucket is shaped inconveniently, say like a mountain range, you may find the marble trapped in a mountain valley whereas had it been dropped elsewhere it would have rolled to the lowland plains.

If this isn't good enough, if you need to get the marble to the bottom of the bucket, you need to dislodge it from its local minima. How do you do this? By shaking the bucket.

In the algorithm I described above, this is analogous to replacing the deterministic rule that I'll make the "best connections" with another rule. I'll add a random variable, analogous to temperature of an annealing vat of metal, to all pair-wise scores and decide whether to link or not on the basis of score+temperature. This biases the solution in the right way, but it doesn't lock it into local minima.

The idea is that over time if you repeatedly perform the process above, the solution (or marble in the bucket) will probabilistically spend more time in better local minimas. By slowly reducing the temperature, you get a solution that's much more likely to be better than you'd get from the greedy algorithm. This process is analogous to the formation of crystal domains in an annealed vat of metal.

Now, there's nothing biological in the last five paragraphs. It's just math and considerations of systems behaving not unlike what you see in soap bubbles or heat-treated metal. I was surprised when someone told me THAT algorithm I just described is also termed an evolutionary algorithm.

Does this mean that any algorithm that includes a random element and an objective function (i.e. fitness) can be termed Evolutionary? This furrows my brow because it makes the notion very expansive. I don't think of soap bubbles settling into minimum energy configurations in this way. I can't think of any Creationist who can have a problem with this sort of mathematics.

Now, could we by selective breeding do the same sort of optimization on successive generations of an animal? Isn't this what the fruit fly experiments demonstrate?

The Bible was written before Carl Linnaeus devised his system of classification. Thus the Creationist must tread lightly. My college Bible classes used the "baramin" which combines two Hebrew words, "bara" and "min." The Hebrew word "min" is translated "kind" but I think this word does NOT mean species in a Linnaeus sense. The phenomena in the Bible is procreation. Those parts of the Bible which speak of animals bringing forth "after their own kind" are places where this Hebrew is employed. Could the word "kind" merely reflect an animal's genotype? That is, does the Bible intend to convey only that the animals delivered their own DNA (with mutations perhaps) to the next generation?

Suppose, for sake of argument that we engage in a program of selective breeding among dogs. So much so that we come up with one breed of dog that cannot successfully mate with another breed. If this occurred, could we claim that speciation had occurred? Would this PROVE the Bible is wrong? I rather doubt it.

I don't know what the Creationist or the Evolutionist would say to this. However, when I've thought in these terms, the lines have tended to blur. No doubt both sides will want to burn me as a heretic.

Where Is The Archimedean Point?

2008-04-13T23:55:00.001-07:00

I've been a bit troubled with thoughts of Descartes and his "cogito ergo sum" and trying to figure out exactly what it is that's bothering me.

Tonight, listening to The White Horse Inn I heard the term Archimedean Point. The immediate context was not Cartesian solipsism, but a sort of gnostic quietism. They were talking about "Barnes & Nobel Christianity" and all the self-help gospel types who provide spiritual "secrets" of looking inward in a sort of post-verbal, certainly post-rational, way.

The White Horse guys are masters of snark. And they laid into these people they termed gnostics with delicious sarcasm. Of course, they were unfair in their criticism, but they have a valid point and they miss a valid point that they oughtn't.

First, let me agree with the White Horse guys. It is wrong to tell people to "look inside yourself" for the divine. Luther was right when he said, "simul justus et peccator." If you tell a sinner to look within, you should also warn that person to expect to see sin when he does so. This is where the White Horse guys hit it out of the park. Calvin called the human heart "an idol factory." The Bible calls the human heart "desperately wicked" and "deceitful." Its greatest deceit is excusing and rationalizing away sin. Shame on any putative Christian preacher who blows off this point.

Second, let me disagree with the White Horse guys. My Bible tells me that as a believer in Christ, I have an indwelling Holy Spirit. And my bible also states that, despite the fall, I'm made in the image of God. Thus, when I "look within" I shouldn't be surprised to find God indwelling and God imaged in the architecture of my psyche. The White Horse guys need to be a little more charitable.

Putting these together, what do we get? If you look into my psyche, you'll find a mix of the sinful and the divine. Alexander Solzenitzen says the battle line between good and evil runs through the center of every man's heart. Thus, I'll have to test what I find within myself to see if it really is the divine or whether it is sinful self-deception.

How am I going to do that? That's where I heard Archimedean Point and thought it important. Archimedes said, "give me a lever and a place to stand and I will move the world." Upon what does Descartes stand when he says, "cogito ergo sum?" Nothing outside himself. As the guy on Mythbusters says, "there's your problem."

If you fail to establish an Archimedean Point outside yourself, that relativizes yourself and everything in your world, you've nothing to push against. You're like the astronaut in zero-gee pushing on a lever and flying backwards in reaction.

This is where God comes in. Three decades ago I gave my presentation in Epistemology class and the critique I heard was that it wasn't Cristocentric enough. You need a Christocentric Archimedean point.

Now, let's suppose you believe in orthodox protestant Christianity. Then you understand that God has disclosed himself in verbal propositional terms in Scripture. Thus, when you "seek God within yourself" you should not be surprised when a lot of Bible verses come to mind. Those are Bible verses that are made out of WORDS and those words hang together RATIONALLY. At least, that's how it is with me. When God speaks to me, when he delivers a "word of knowledge" it is through a Bible verse popping into my head unbidden.

That's what you do. If your heart says something ridiculous about having an adulterous affair, take a delivery from the clue train Exodus 20:14, you're hearing the deceitful part. If your heart says you're doing something wrong and it can provide chapter-and-verse, you're hearing the divine.

A Reason To Vote Against Mr. Obama

2008-04-13T11:24:00.000-07:00

Heretofore, I've enumerated at least one specific reason why someone would vote for Mr. Obama. In the last week, Mr. Obama has provided a specific reason to vote against him.

When Mr. Obama was in San Francisco chatting informally with the rich power elite, he referred to rural Pennsylvania with these words:

You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

When I first read Mr. Obama's remarks I didn't think them particularly nasty or elitist. Perhaps this reflects poorly on my own tendencies toward arrogance.
Update: I forgot to stress that Mr. Obama's remarks are not so much troubling because they are elitist, but for the values they reflect.

But upon closer reflection, I started thinking about what this reflects about Mr. Obama's underlying worldview. What's primary in his thinking is the economic determinism latent in his remarks. What drives and defines the people of rural america are economic factors like jobs or government handouts. I don't believe any of this, but it appears Mr. Obama does. Karl Marx also believed in economic determinism and I don't agree with him, either. Am I saying Mr. Obama is a marxist? No, but sharing the same ecoomic worldview as Karl Marx makes it harder to not be a marxist.

Moreover, look at Mr. Obama's view of human suffering. Mankind, at least in rural Pennsylvania, suffers because of inadequate government compassion and activism. This kind of thinking is statist at best. Contrast this with Mr. Reagan's claim that government wasn't the solution, but that government was the problem. I don't think the government is my momma at whose breast I must be fed. But this is not the reason I have in mind to vote against Mr. Obama.

My reason to vote against Mr. Obama has to do with the opiate of the masses. Another idea of Karl Marx's.

Mr. Obama painted a picture of human pain, and then described how poor people self-medicate to dull that pain. One of those painkillers is religion. Religion, qua religion, as Mr. Obama has posed it, has nothing to do with events of 2000 years ago when our Saviour was crucified and rose again.

I think this explains why Mr. Obama was a member for 20 years of Trinity Church in Chicago. You'll recall that Mr. Obama has claimed he's not a racist, that he doesn't think God should damn America, etc. But he joined and stayed in that church where such things issue from the pulpit. Why? I think it's because he wasn't listening.

There is another explanation for why people in small towns in Pennsylvania go to church. This reason doesn't carry much weight with the power elites. There might just be something to religion. People might go to church because they find truth there.

If you don't believe that way, that's up to you and I'll respect you for it.

But if you believe there's only political expediency or economic painkillers in religion, and then you make any claim of faith, be it Islam, Christianity, or anything, you're a phony.

Because Mr. Obama's remark leads me to believe he's a religious phony, that's a reason to vote against him.

Uncertain? Who's Fault Is That?

2008-04-06T09:28:00.000-07:00

It occurred to me this morning, that Truth and Certainty have something to do with communication. I think Truth is What God Knows. And if I'm to have any truth, God has to tell me. Now, this is a rather odd formulation if you aren't a theist. But if there is a God it doesn't matter that you're not a theist.

Now, communication is a process where ideas in my mind become ideas in your mind. Since communication isn't a perfect thing, there may be some change of the ideas during this process. I think in terms of language and I express ideas in my native language in either spoken or written words. My skill with language and my clarity of thought will bear upon the effectiveness with which thoughts get into your head. If your language differs from mine, or your cultural idioms differ, we should expect some translation will be necessary.

Christianity teaches that God discloses truth to mankind in General and Special revelation. Special revelation includes the Bible. And the communication model I've described above fits the process of reading and interpreting the Bible.

In dialog with an apostate years back I was confronted with a number of "contradictions" in the Bible. I used scare quotes around contradiction because I claimed then that there are no contradictions in the Bible. Now, we can easily interpret the Bible in a malicious fashion so as to contrive contradictions. e.g. Jesus said he was a vine, and John said he was a lamb, and a lamb is not a vine. (In this sense of "malicious interpretation" I'll concede that contradictions can be construed by the skeptic.) The matter is not that a contradictory interpretation can be contrived, but that no harmonious interpretation exists.

I was plowing through the list of contradictions my interlocutor had given me and I formulated harmonious explanations for all but one. And that one had me flummoxed. It was a crisis of faith. And I prayed about it.

Prayer changes things most frequently by changing the person doing the praying. And in the prayer I acknowledged a fair degree of pride in my ability to solve such problems. And pride is not one of the cardinal virtues of the Christian. In fact, it's on the vice side of the tally sheet.

And I realized two questions were in play: 1) is the Bible contradictory? and 2) am I skilled enough at hermeneutics to resolve this apparent cotradiction? If *I* fail to interpret a text correctly is it the text's fault or is it mine? Once the thought occurred to me that my failure to solve this hermenutical puzzle might be MY fault, the solution presented itself and all was well. Contradiction and Crisis of faith resolved. If curious, I've written up the "contradictions" here and here. (I apologize for the woodenness of my prose.)

In the truth and certainty debate, it is important to consider where blame for one's uncertainty should be placed. I think consideration of blame can help bring together the parties in an intramural debate between those asserting "philosophical uncertainty" and those who do not. Placing blame helps us distinguish "philosophical uncertainty" borne of creaturely humility from pagan, post-modern skepticism.

My atheist and agnostic friends blame uncertainty about the existence of God and his speaking in Scripture upon God and Scripture itself. And if there is no God, then uncertainty about his existence, indeed certainty of his non-existence is perfectly reasonable. However, if you are a Christian Theist, then there is a God who has spoken.

But did God mumble? If God mumbles, then he is to blame for any uncertainty about what he's said. I don't think anyone in the Emergent Church movement would grasp this thistle. I think it is slanderous to suggest they do.

If God speaks clearly, any uncertainty could be the fault of our ears. Christianity asserts that all men are fallen, and Reformed Christianity asserts that the fall touches man's every capability. (This is TULIP'S T.) I think this explains my atheist and agnostic friends' uncertainty about the existence of God. They were born deaf and have subsequently stuffed cotton in their ears. (Rom 1:20)

Catholicism seems to munge moral and metaphysical categories. The Catholic notion of grace has a metaphysical component that serves to bridge the gap between created and uncreated beings. (By means of metaphysical grace infused within the bones of a saint, Catholicism has claimed that a relic can perform miracles.) The goal of redemption in Catholic terms is the visio Dei that not only consists of the complete cleansing of the sinner of his sins, but a bridging of the impedance mismatch between the non-being of creatureliness and ultimate beingness of the Uncreated One. (Apologies if I've misrepresented Scholastic thinking. I'm only a Baptist after all.)

This metaphysical impedance mismatch between creature and uncreated might be to blame why God might speak clearly, but (incompletely) redeemed man not hear clearly enough to be certain.

I think we want to ask our brothers who claim "philosophical uncertainty" if they blame this uncertainty upon their creaturely finitude. This seems to be what R.C. Sproul is thinking about when he says he'd have to be omniscient to possess "philosophical certainty." And I'm cool with this. I think it's wrong, but this isn't a test-of-fellowship disagreement. If you blame your philosophical uncertainty upon your creaturely finitude, that is an expression of creaturely humility.

Indeed, creaturely humility is one of the cardinal virtues of Christianity.

RC Sproul Is Mistaken

2008-04-02T20:26:00.000-07:00

I just heard a quote where RC Sproul speaks of "absolute certainty about anything" and that this requires omniscience. I disagree. But first, let's make clear that I think he's right about everything else a Presbyterian can get right. (I'm a Baptist and Presbyterians sprinkle and I don't hold that against him.) Moreover, we must recall that Dr. Sproul is not a mathematician, but a theologian. And he's betrayed his ignorance of mathematics in the past.

Let's consider the claim that one must have omniscience to have absolute certainty about anything through the contrapositive. Consider the set of propositions known to omniscience. Every proposition therein will be absolutely certain, by the definition of omniscience. Now consider any finite subset of propositions drawn from the omniscience set. Each element of this finite subset will not be made less certain by this process.

For Dr. Sproul to claim that no one can have absolute certainty about anything is equivalent to positing the impossibility of the last paragraph's finite subset OR the impossibility of anyone ever possessing any such set. If these things are simultaneously possible, then Dr. Sproul's premise is mistaken. Q.E.D.

This assertion that you need omniscience to know anything with absolute certainty implies that nobody can ever know ANYTHING God knows, because it would serve as a counter-example.

Now, for purposes of illustration consider this example. Omniscience knows all the digits of PI. Let's suppose I possess this proposition: "PI is approximated by 3.14159." This is a remarkably ignorant statement. There is a countably infinite number of digits of PI that are left out of this proposition. HOWEVER, no matter how many digits you add to your knowledge, they cannot conspire to overthrow this proposition.

Consider Pope Benedict XVI's lecture at the University of Regensburg. He asserted that reason must be the basis of talk about God. Islam holds a contradictory notion about God's nature, claiming God's transcendence makes his will beyond our categories. To Islam there's no problem with God giving irrational or evil commands. Conversely, Christianity asserts an image relationship between God and man and that the transcendent deity discloses himself in a fashion comprehensible to mankind.

One might even go so far as to call that disclosure a finite subset of propositions drawn from the omniscience set.

What Exactly Do I Owe This Black Man?

2008-03-28T09:36:00.000-07:00

Mr. Obama's pastor, Jeremiah T. Wright has made some statements that his defenders rationalize as expressions of black rage. He's gone so far as to say, "God damn America." And Mr. Obama has asked for a more frank and open discussion about race.

This is true. Blacks and whites seldom speak frankly about race. Thus, I have often reacted to black rage with a shrug and the remark, "I don't owe you anything." Yet that's the message of Mr. Wright and his ilk: "We're owed." The rationale is that blacks are disadvantaged by America's legacy of slavery.

I can understand that a child afflicted with fetal alcohol syndrome and born to a crack-whore mother and raised in a ghetto and sent to an inner city school will face an almost insurmountable nexus of disadvantages. Are any of these things necessarily a black thing? I think it's racist to think so. Did I sell the booze, etc.? I think the weight of that culpability is on someone else's shoulders.

Why is Mr. Wright so angry that he says, "God damn America?" What were the disadvantages of his family? According to this biography his father was a pastor and his mother was a doctor--I presume a PhD. Compared to my own parent's 6th and 8th grade education, I maintain that Mr. Wright had a relatively privileged family background.

Perhaps Mr. Wright who was born in 1941 was denied educational or vocational opportunities in his youth? The Brown vs Board of Education ruling occurred when he was 12 years old. The Civil Rights Act was passed when he was in his early 20s. His biography does not show any insurmountable difficulties. Update:I just checked the fine print of the Wiki article on apartheid. Apartheid ended in 1995. That was 13 years ago and on another continent! But to listen to fellows like Mr. Wright, it's still ongoing. Why didn't he say "God damn South Africa?"

I do not find any justification for Mr. Obama's pastor's outrage. In fact, today I came upon this picture of Mr. Wright's house. Perhaps in a less racist America, Mr. Wright could afford this house instead.

America's legacy of slavery is that politicians like Mr. Obama attach themselves to men like Mr. Wright for the power he has accumulated to himself. Mr. Wright accumulates that power by pandering to the grievances of blacks with legitimate complaints of disadvantage. His message of "we're owed" is clearly false in Mr. Wright's life. How does "we're owed" help any disadvantaged person of any color overcome his disadvantaged station in life?

If you think "we're owed" you'll have an excuse for all of your own failings. if you think "we're owed" you'll think someone else needs to do something for your benefit and this encourages passivity on your part. This does make the slaves on the liberal plantation easier to control after all.

I think I owe this to the black man: You're my equal. Act like it. Man up. Take control of your life and overcome whatever disadvantages. If you fail, open your eyes and learn why you failed. It wasn't for lack of 40 acres and a mule a century before you were born.

Real and Phony Martyrs

2008-03-24T15:09:00.000-07:00

On Sunday, Pope Benedict XVI baptized a Christian convert named Magdi Allam. This placed Mr. Allam and the Pope at risk of retribution from Islamic extremists. You may recall a year ago the Pope merely suggested that REASON should be the operant basis for interfaith dialog, whereupon adherents to "the religion of peace" started rioting, burning things, and killing people.

With this in mind I wondered what in the world had gotten into the Pope's head. Though some Moslems think that leaving Islam is a sin to be punished by Allah, a significant number start sharpening their knives.

I now think that this is exactly what the Pope is thinking. The reality of Christianity is never so obvious as when the martyr stands in the coliseum indifferent to the lions. Ours is a faith predicated upon the Resurrection and to people looking forward to Resurrection martyrdom is no loss. Thus, I won't be terribly surprised, though horribly grieved, to note that Mr. Allam, or even the Pope has been murdered by some swine.

Contrast this with phony martyrs: Feckless losers who have no significance to their lives except killing as many people as flagrantly as possible then saving the last bullet for themselves. I'm thinking of the fellows who shot up Columbine High School some years ago. These men did the devil's work and traded their souls for a few weeks' worth of posthumous headlines.

John Lennon failed to consider these swine pigs when he sang, in "Imagine" no hell below us and above us only sky. Society cannot work without justice and how can there be justice for the murder-suicide without hell? Or call it what you will a just repayment after this life for crimes personally committed during this life.

Nowadays, when you hear of "martyrs" on the news, they are more often than not murder-suicides essentially the same as the swine of Columbine. They strap on a bomb vest and kill Israeli or Iraqi civilians. If there's a deity that rewards such behavior with Paradise, he's the devil. I want to go to where that deity isn't.

The man who bravely stands for his God and for his faith when dogs would murder him for no other reason than that he stands for it--he is a man. He is no phony martyr.

Let's Not Be Frank

2008-03-17T23:50:00.000-07:00

At this moment in my DVD player is a film series from the 1970s. When I was an undergrad I worked in the library and one of my more enjoyable duties entailed showing films for various assemblies. What I enjoyed most was on Sunday evenings setting up and showing a series of films starring Francis Schaeffer entitled, "How Shall We Then Live." I bought the DVDs last year and this week on a lark my wife started watching them again.

Francis Schaeffer was one of my heroes. I recall emerging from my agnosticism negotiating exactly how much of a thinker I could be while remaining true to Christianity. Francis Schaeffer and C.S. Lewis were significant influences in my defining the relationship between Christian Theism and philosophical thought.

Toward the end of "How Shall We Then Live" Schaeffer tends to get dark in his warnings of where we're going as a society. Secular humanism was the great Satan of those days, but at least it was humanistic. Contrast that with what Pope John Paul II called our culture of sex and death.

This darkness of tone, this warning of impending statist anti-humanism became much more apparent in Schaeffer's follow-on movie series, "What Ever Happened To The Human Race."

I caught a vibe back then that something wasn't quite right, but I couldn't put my finger on anything. I was and continue to be committed to pro-life. I had to admit the truth of Schaeffer's thesis in that film series. There really is no difference between one government that declares Jews to be non-persons, and another that declares the same about Blacks as the US did prior to the Civil War. And who's to prevent the Supreme Court from declaring that the unborn are non-persons, too? And thereby Francis Schaeffer violated Godwin's Law in his anti-abortion rhetoric, and taught a generation of pro-lifers to do likewise.

This was something I enthusiastically supported. But I think that was a mistake. Today I spoke with a friend about adoption and abortion. I've always said that I think every pro-lifer has a moral obligation to be willing to adopt and to do so if that will prevent an abortion. I heard long ago that the number of couples wanting to adopt is roughly equal to the number of abortions. Why has the pro-life movement done nothing about this? What have we done except vote for corrupt idiots who'll promise to nominate strict constructionist judges in the empty hope that Roe v Wade will be overturned?

Why is it easier to fly across the world to China or Korea to adopt than it is to adopt a child right here? Why haven't we asked this of our pro-life legislators?

It is too easy to say that Francis Schaeffer blinded us with Godwin's law. But I doubt that. It's more natural to oppose force with force. Godless feminazis get one Supreme Court to overturn abortion laws. We'll get our own Supreme Court to reinstate them. Let's face it, pro-life politics is a great way to keep Christians voting for Republicans who mumble incoherencies about "the sanctity of life" without having to actually DO ANYTHING about it.

So, now, I read that Francis Schaeffer's son, Frank, has come out condemning his father's political activism. I have never had much respect for junior. He always seemed to be something of a parasite on his father's ministry. Like Yoko Ono's baleful influence seen in "Let It Be." I think he saw this and tried unsuccessfully to attain a measure of independent achievement.

The complete extent of his failure has been seen in his recent denunciation of his father. Mr. Schaeffer has taken his place in that long line of ghoulish children who dine on a dead parent's reputation. He has thus made his stock and trade deconstructing and discrediting his father's work. Let's not be Frank.

It may be so, my lord.
Hear, nature, hear; dear goddess, hear!
Suspend thy purpose, if thou didst intend
To make this creature fruitful!
Into her womb convey sterility!
Dry up in her the organs of increase;
And from her derogate body never spring
A babe to honour her! If she must teem,
Create her child of spleen; that it may live,
And be a thwart disnatured torment to her!
Let it stamp wrinkles in her brow of youth;
With cadent tears fret channels in her cheeks;
Turn all her mother's pains and benefits
To laughter and contempt; that she may feel
How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is
To have a thankless child! Away, away!
-- William Shakespeare in King Lear

Reducing My Carbon Footprint

2008-03-14T16:46:00.000-07:00

A couple weeks ago my brother called me. He wanted me to get on eBay and find out what a Honda Metropolitan II sold for. I told him. He said he had one for sale. Well, not his, it belonged to his boss. The price was right.

Now, sometime in the mid '70s, my brother got a moped, a Puch. And between then and now he's bought a few dozen more. He says he doesn't collect them, he hoards them. I thought it would be fun to tool around with him sometime. So, I asked him to keep an eye out for one if it came on sale.

It's a 50cc Honda scooter that's classified as a moped. It's top speed is about 25mph IFF you're going downhill with a tailwind. This afternoon I saw the temps were in the 50s for the first time ever. I gave him a call, brought him the money, got the license and registration, and went to his house to pick it up.

He lives on the west side of GR and Mary rode along to drive back the van. She asked if I wanted to wear long underwear and I scoffed at her. Nevertheless, I took my hose hat and gloves and put on a flannel shirt beneath my leather jacket.

I set off to bring it home. When your vehicle has a top speed that's 25mph with a nominal speed well below that, you have to plan your route carefully. At the secretary of state's office, they had a moped safety brochure and I'd read it this afternoon. Setting off, I was filled with paranoia. Potholes are particularly bad this year and I could easily see myself falling in never to be found, just paved over by an inattentive road crew. Traffic whizzed past and I felt more kinship with the pedestrians on the sidewalk who invariably looked and smiled.

When I got home, I turned off the moped (or is it a scooter?) and just whooped. It was a blast, but I should have worn long underwear.

My brother brags that he gets 100 miles to a gallon. With gas at $3.40, that's a consideration. I've plotted a side-road route between here and work. If it ever warms up I intend to see what the commute is like. I'm looking forward to it.

A Specific Reason To Vote For Obama

2008-02-20T22:37:00.000-08:00

I've been listening to the latest spin about Mr. Obama's run for president and how his supporters are being grilled by right-wing talk radio. The problem question: name one specific reason why you support Mr. Obama. And the right-wing meme is that there's no specific reason, just a velvet fog of good intentions.

Well, let me provide a specific reason to vote for Mr. Obama. He's a Liberal and will pursue a Liberal program of governance. This isn't in any way news to anyone. He's stated any number of expansive government initiatives he'd like to see enacted. This is the antithesis of Mr. Reagan's thesis that "government is the problem."

I think that the Democrats and Republicans have done the country a disservice in turning the word "Liberal" into a demon term. Most voters simply do not know what the words Conservative and Liberal mean. For instance, when Mr. Huckabee advances a pro-life position while also advancing an agenda of activist solve-all-your-problems government, people think that means he's Conservative. Same goes for Mr. Bush who creates a new Medicare drug entitlement initiating a major new spending program to pay for it. This isn't Conservatism. It got so bad that Mr. Bush's Wilsonian approach to foreign policy and his huge domestic spending increases were fleetingly called "Big Government Conservatism." No, Big Government Conservatism, just like Compassionate Conservatism are simply code-words for the "Liberalism that dares not speak its name."

Given the Republicans who are running for President, it looks like the Republicans will be trying to expand the tent to fit more populists and liberals. And given Mr. Bush's failure to control the Federal Bureaucracy, we've seen a federal government that is not recognizably Conservative. Need a fresh example: the Department of Justice has filed briefs to support the Washington DC handgun ban. Hint: defending gun control is not conservatism.

Why vote for a faux-Conservative who'll say nice things about Mr. Reagan and rule as a Liberal? Wouldn't voting for Mr. Obama be mere truth in advertising? He's clearly a Liberal and he'll rule as a Liberal if he's elected. Better than what we have now.

Who'd Vote For A Black Man?

2008-02-17T09:16:00.000-08:00

I just read the news that Mr. Obama's vote counts in the recent New York primary election were disappointing. Particularly, those precincts of New York where he has received zero, count them, zero votes.

I understand that the Democrat party is not as enlightened as the party of Lincoln in its handling of race relations. The party of slavery, after all, numbers among its Senators the former klansman Mr. Robert Byrd. Thus, when a black gets all uppity and runs for President, I can understand that Democrat voters might prefer someone a little "whiter," like Mrs. Clifton.

Of particular interest in this primary election's results was Mr. Obama's performance in New York's 94th District where right-thinking Democrats understand a black man's place in society. I suspect the baleful influence of the Dutch, who created Apartheid, and settled that part of New York, and who named that district where Mr. Obama got ZERO VOTES, Harlem.

Or maybe not and there is a poll tax in Harlem?

That Was An Invalid Response

2008-02-17T08:32:00.000-08:00

Freezing rain canceled church, so I was sitting at the kitchen table relaxing on a Sunday morning. The phone rang.

I answered as I always so, "Steve Poling speaking." It is something all my friends expect and well within the guidelines I learned in grade school about how to use the telephone.

This approach has the advantage of immediately putting telemarketers on the defensive as they will invariably ask, "May I speak with Steve Poling?" When I'm feeling unkind, I answer them with, "What did I just say?" In any event, I won't buy anything from anyone who asks to speak with Steve Poling after I tell them that I am speaking.

In recent years this alternative telephone protocol has brought unexpected benefits. Nowadays computers can do rudimentary speech recognition. Thus some telemarketers' computers will wait until someone says, "Hello," before launching into their pitch. "Steve Poling speaking," is insufficiently close to "Hello" for the computer to cope. The result is usually a few seconds of dead air sufficient to convince me to blow off this robocall.

However, this morning the telemarketing call only paused briefly before replying, "That is an invalid response." Telemarketing computers are offering telephone etiquette advice? I hung up.

Sucky Pro-Life Rhetoric

2007-12-30T19:24:00.000-08:00

I just read the following exchange:

MR. RUSSERT: But you said you would ban all abortions.

GOV. HUCKABEE: Well, that's not just because I'm a Christian, that's because I'm an American. Our founding fathers said that we're all created equal. I think every person has intrinsic worth and value...

Now, I'm pleased that Mr. Huckabee is pro-life. And I'm not ragging on him, I'm ragging on every Republican politician within living memory.

Let's make one thing very clear: I am not pro-life because I am a Christian. Christianity is a religion that places ethical demands upon Christians. Pro-life politicians are NOT running for Preacher, Priest, or Pope. Politicians, particularly Republican presidential candidates are not and shall not be in a position to extend any ethical demands of Christianity to the general populace. CHRISTIANITY SHOULD NOT EVEN BE MENTIONED IN THIS CONTEXT.

Several Republican presidential candidates say that they are pro-life. Mr. Bush says he is pro-life. This is good. WHY are these people pro-life? Simply stated, abortion is a procedure for terminating a pregnancy without producing a live birth. This procedure is legal by judicial fiat. Pro-life politicians say they want to change this. Why? Tell us why you think so.

I am pro-life and I'm pro-life for reasons I'll not rehearse here. I'm sick of fellows like Mr. Bush talking about "the sanctity of life" which is code for something, but it isn't a straight reason.

The trouble with talking in code is that all the pro-lifers will recognize the code as will the pro-choicers. Great, we can choose up sides and throw rocks at each other. That's all. Nobody needs think at all, just just have to follow.

Let's suppose Mr. Huckabee has some absolutely killer reasons for being pro-life, trot them out, tell them to Mr. Russert. And let's suppose Mrs. Clinton trots out her reasons for being pro-choice. With the reasons available for everyone to examine, we'll know who's a "true" pro-lifer or pro-choicer and who's just mouthing codewords to get votes.

And if we have the arguments out there duking it out, people will be thinking about these things. I believe in this thing called Democracy and that demands an informed electorate. I believe in reason and the ability of people of good will to discuss disagreements and come to whatever compromises are possible. Generally, we think no compromise is possible in the pro-life vs pro-choice argument. Yes, abortion or not is either killing the unborn or not. But perhaps some accommodation can be made for the unwilling mother? Can nothing be done to avoid unwanted pregnancies altogether?

I don't think pro-life voters are idiots, and I wish Republican politicians would quit treating us like it.

Southern Baptists and Liberalism

2007-12-28T09:40:00.001-08:00

I've said before that I'm a Fundamentalist. Sometimes I'll say I'm an Evangelical and blur that distinction that I want to draw into tight focus now. Fundamentalist, like Puritan is a demon-term that is applied to behaviors and attitudes no self-respecting Puritan or Fundamentalist would identify with. So, when I say Fundamentalist, I mean to say that there are certain key ideas that are "fundamental" to Christianity. Did Adam have a navel? I don't care. It's not a "fundamental" of the Christian faith. Did Christ rise from the dead? I do care. You have a right to deny this. But if your religion denies it, it isn't Christianity. If you agree that similar non-negotiables exist in the Christian faith, you are to that extent a Fundamentalist, too.

Over a century ago German rationalism re-examined Christian dogma and rejected certain supernatural elements of the religion, while retaining certain moralistic teachings and rites and forms of Christianity. This redefinition of Christianity is either a rearrangement of trivialities OR constitutes a heretical poseur that's no more Christianity than Islam or Judaism is. Fundamentalism claimed the latter and Theological Liberalism claimed the former. The institutional machinery of a number of Protestant denominations embraced Theological Liberalism and in response the Fundamentalists dropped out. I am a member of a Baptist association that dropped out of the Northern Baptist Convention very early and has historically been somewhat militant and defensive about its Fundamentalism.

The Southern Baptist Convention also saw inroads of Theological Liberalism and many Baptists dropped out, too. Jerry Falwell and the Bible Baptists of the south came out and were separate from a Southern Baptist Convention that was "going liberal." However, something significant happened in the 1970s: The Southern Baptist Convention reversed this trend. Theological Conservatives were able to wrest control of the Southern Baptist Convention from the Theological Liberals. This did not happen without a fight and many Southern Baptists lined up on opposite sides of this conflict. The educational institutions of the Southern Baptist Convention remained solidly within the Liberal camp so that my alma mater, Cedarville University, was asked by the Southern Baptist Convention to serve as a conservative alternative.

Southern Baptists have been active and prominent in Democrat politics for a long time. Mr. Jimmy Carter was a Southern Baptist Sunday School teacher. Mr. Bill Clinton sang in a Southern Baptist choir. Mr. Albert Gore attended a Southern Baptist seminary. Nevertheless, these men have not participated in the resurgence of orthodoxy within the Southern Baptist convention.

So then, it was with interest that I learned that Mr. Paul Pressler claimed that Mr. Huckabee had been a slacker in the war against secularists within the Baptist church. Very interesting. Is Mr. Huckabee one of those Southern Baptists?

Mr. Huckabee has been playing a game of "identity politics" that I strongly dislike. I'd prefer a politician who articulates political positions congruent with my own to a politician who goes to my church. However, if Mr. Huckabee is going to play the game of identity politics, he'd better be the RIGHT KIND OF BAPTIST. Because if he isn't, Republican Primary voters may say "Die Heretic!" and push him off the bridge.

McCain’s starting to look better to than this guy

2007-12-21T21:01:00.000-08:00

I am an Evangelical Christian. I have identified with the Religious Right from the late 1970s. I have consistently voted and supported candidates congruent with the aims of the Religious Right AND the Religious Right has heretofore been identified as Conservative in its orientation. I am a Fundamentalist Baptist.

Last year I declared that John McCain is a media hoax and I've thought Mr. McCain's only strength in Republican primary elections came from Democrat crossovers. We saw that in 2000 and we're going to see that again next month, bringing us to Mike Huckabee. I predict Mr. Huckabee will draw a lot of CROSSOVER Democrat votes in the Michigan primary election to throw sand in the works of the Republican presidential selection machinery.

I don't like the Arkansas school of Politics. Today my wife got a push-poll robocall from what seems to be the Huckabee campaign misrepresenting Mr. Thompson's position on abortion. (My phone number is well known to Conservative/Republican databases, and I wasn't surprised by such.) I think it is OK for a politician to truthfully say, "I'm against X and my opponent is for X." This is just truth in advertising, not negative campaigning. You might like X and this information will help you vote for the other guy. It's a completely different thing to apply Arkansas spin: "I'm against abortion and my opponent once helped abortionists!" It's sleazy politics to distort an opponent's record in this fashion. If Mr. Thompson is for abortion, show me his votes, quote his words endorsing the practice. Don't repeat agitprop of the pro-abortion activists who dug this up during opposition research. For heaven's sake, don't lie (or say Clintonian half-truths) about the other guy.

Update: I am told that an independent group supporting Mr. Huckabee is responsible for similar calls in other states (NH, SC) and that Mr. Huckabee's campaign has asked them to stop. I am unaware of Mr. Huckabee doing anything to repair this group's damage to the body politic. Political lies damage more than any one candidate, they sew cynicism through the entire electorate. Mr. Huckabee owes it to the Republican party to denounce Common Sense Issues of Colorado, aka Trust Huckabee.

(All candidates who are pro-life should demonstrate how strongly they support this position by stating their reasons for it. Saying, "I was pro-life before he was," is useless.)

Mr. Huckabee has a record as governor that, though pro-life, does not demonstrate much adherence to Conservative principles. It is good to be pro-life, but pro-life politics is painless when you can say Washington won't let you DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT. The politician can mouth pro-life platitudes to keep the Republican base on board while ruling like a Liberal. If I'm tired of Arkansas politics, I'm dead-tired of the Bush school of politics. Mr. Huckabee seems to capture that infuriate-the-Left plus dishearten-the-Right combination of religious platitudes plus free spending that made me hate Mr. Bush.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has expressed his disbelief in the Virgin Birth of Christ and other miraculous claims of Christianity. He has every right to to hold and express this opinion. But he has no right to call it Christianity. Similarly, no Republican candidate has any right to redefine Conservatism in his own image. Mr. Huckabee has every right to be a pro-life liberal. If that is who he is, he should embrace that identification.

Several prominent Conservative voices have pointed out that Mr. Huckabee is no Conservative and has less than impressive foreign policy positions. Mr. Huckabee's campaign has interpreted this as a personal attack. Then his campaign gone on to counter-attack with falsehoods. (Did he learn this tactic in the from another Arkansas governor?) When Mr. Huckabee's operatives say that Mr. Rush Limbaugh just repeats the New York-Washington elite's talking-points, they misrepresent Mr. Limbaugh's record in a fashion that no one who listens to Mr. Limbaugh can believe. Did he learn this tactic from Nevada Senator, Harry Reid? Even if you think Mr. Limbaugh is the anti-christ (he's not) this is stupid politics.

Mike Huckabee is to Evangelical Republicans as Jesse Jackson is to Black Democrats. He has played a divisive game of identify politics. Vote for me because you share the color of my skin or my religion is sucky politics. When Mr. Bush nominated Ms. Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court, the White House used identity politics to hide her lack of judicial gravitas and liberal background. Written large between the lines was the message, "You Evangelical rubes should get on board because she's an Evangelical, too." I didn't buy it and the Republican base didn't buy it, either.

I will not get behind the Mike Huckabee campaign for these reasons.

Update: I have recently learned some more things that I don't like about Mr. Huckabee.

A Modest Proposal

2007-12-14T13:14:00.000-08:00

This week at a time when nobody was watching, the Republican Presidential candidates had a debate. I did not see this debate. I've been following this debate season second-hand. We've had talking snowmen and sappy crooning posing questions that Democrats might like to hear of the Republicans, and that the newsies running the debates find interesting. Indeed, in the debate prior to that, questions of no interest to the Republican primary voter, were posed by operatives of the Clinton campaign.

The problem is that the news media does not share the interests of the Republican primary voter. It's my opinion that the Republican primary candidates should route around damage. There's no reason why the respective state Republican Parties should conduct the debates themselves. The video can be distributed via YouTube or some other internet mechanism. If the candidates want to make snarky comments dissing their competitors, they can post them to Scrappleface.

If the drive-by media wants to attend , let them sit in the back and after everyone's discussed the substance of interest to Republican voters, they can ask the respective candidates to repeat their Scrappleface snarks.

Christmas Music

2007-12-02T07:22:00.001-08:00

I like to listen to Jazz Brunch on the local radio station. It's a Sunday morning thing to return from church and listen to tunes that I don't generally hear. Sadly, this ritual works only 11 months of the year. After Thanksgiving, the DJ picks non-stop Christmas Jazz tunes. And it's a lot better to hear Larry Carlton do "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen" than someone else.

My problem is that today's date is December 2nd. Christmas is 23 days from now. Even if I love a genre of music, being force-fed it for three weeks suffices to turn me into a Grinch or a Scrooge or whatever term signifies "zeitgeist non-participant." I remarked to my beloved wife moments ago that I appreciate Christmas songs on the weekend-of Christmas. Then they make sense and I rather enjoy them. But by that time, all the radio stations are utterly burned out on the subject and can only play zombie-like the most shopworn of the standards.

My thought, unspoken, was "Why can't they wait until the weekend of?" And the answer came to mind with the wings of Mercury, shocking in its immediacy. All the Christmas shopping has been completed by that point. There's the rub.

Consider the Peanuts TV special with its "Christmas ought not be commercial" message, but it mere presence reminds us to go shopping. Anti-commercial "meaning of Christmas" message is all good and fine, but that should not get in the way of our shopping. If radio stations were serious about the "meaning of Christmas" message, they wouldn't run Christmas carols non-stop until everyone's sick of them and, coincidentally, all opportunities for shopping are exhausted.

End The War

2007-11-27T21:18:00.000-08:00

Driving to XP West Michigan tonight I passed through the trendy parts of East Grand Rapids, where I saw these yard signs that say, "End The War." When I see the words, "End The War" I have often thought that that means "Give up and cut our losses."

Here's another way of looking at it. We ended World War II in 1945 and I have every confidence that Mr. Churchill and Mr. Stalin and Mr. Roosevelt each did their level best to end that war as quickly as possible.

From now on when someone says to me, "End The War," I intend to reply, "Yes, we should win it as quickly as possible."

The Hollywood Stupid Tax

2007-11-13T23:05:00.000-08:00

I've said elsewhere that I believe the death of the Star Trek franchise was due to the Hollywood Stupid Tax, a fact I realized when I saw the Enterprise from the evil-parallel Spock-with-a-goatee universe and noted that those were the only episodes that didn't suck of the entire Enterprise series.

The Hollywood Stupid Tax came to mind again yesterday when I turned on the old-movie-channel and saw the last 5 minutes of "The Dirty Dozen." That movie rocks in a way that only someone who thinks "300" was homoerotic cannot understand. There's a writers' strike on in Hollywood. So, there's an EXCUSE for the plots of all the stories being tired, derivative and repetitive. And what could the American viewing public go to see over Veterans day weekend? Anti-war sermons consisting of 87 minutes of famous-name actors giving speeches to one another. How's the box-office on your latest flick, Mr. Redford?

There's more to it than just further alienating people who already think Hollywood types suck. There's "opportunity cost." Opportunity stands rapping on the door with huge boat-loads of cash in a valise saying, "open up and this money is yours."

Just imagine what a remake of "The Dirty Dozen" would bring in in terms of box-office. Set the thing in Afghanistan and select a dozen guys in federal prison for a suicide mission to someplace in the Afghan mountains. Make them heterosexual, white, male Christians who don't sort their recyclables. Use lots of CGI and roll out an accompanying videogame that plays a lot like Halo. It's a license to make tons of money.

Now, i don't own any stock in any of the big movie companies. But if I did, I'd seriously question the financial stewardship of current management.

Solving Problems With Unsent Email Messages

2007-11-10T13:21:00.000-08:00

I've found that an effective problem-solving strategy is to write an email message describing the problem. This happened in the last 48 hours to me.

First, I have a legacy program that does not have any formal unit tests. It was my first OO project and my inexperience really shows. Happily, I drank the Test-Driven Development (TDD) kool-aid a couple years back so my current code doesn't suck so bad. But living in a TDD mode makes maintenance of legacy code devilish. You get used to "TDD has your back" and when you approach your legacy code with that same fearlessness about refactoring its a high-wire act without a net. Ergo, I resolved to write unit tests for the new work that's required of it and also for any refactoring I choose to do.

More easily said than done. I have some experience with CPPUNIT and have applied it on some of my C++ work with some success. However, everything I have using CPPUNIT works in 32-bit Windows on the Microsoft C++ compiler. And this legacy system is a BORLAND 16-bit Windows application with a 3rd-party GUI library nobody uses anymore called zApp that I don't want to port to 32-bit Windows and the Microsoft compiler. How to add a unit testing framework to that? Pondering this question has kept me up some evenings. But the GLSEC conference this week thrust upon me the urgency to add unit tests and the guys at Atomic who use mock objects to abstract HARDWARE got me thinking.

I saw a way to start, but there were a lot of details that I didn't understand and I wanted some help. So, I started work on an email to a colleague describing what I was trying to do and what I had a hard time understanding.

The mere act of articulating a problem is a magical thing.

I jotted down the first steps I'd taken and where, exactly I was having difficulty. And then an idea occurred. I followed up on that idea to clarify my question and in so doing I found that the idea had solved that difficulty but had raised a couple others a little further along the path to solution. So, I edited my email restating the question as a backgrounder for the current difficulty nettling me. As you can probably guess, I was mid-description when another solution came to mind. And follow-up proved itself, and I edited the email to summarize the current state of my ignorance and so on iteratively until done.

I had a working program, but an email that was a mess of half-finished edits reflecting how much I didn't know at various points in the last few hours. I deleted the unfinished message, declared victory, and went to bed.

This pattern works with more than just emails. If you have a supportive wife, or cubicle-mate, or if you're pair-programming, just describing what you don't know suffices to organize your thinking enough to suggest a solution.