The media and polls

When I was younger I worked as an assistant manager at a fast food chain on evening shift. After cleaning up a few of us would stick around and just talk. One of the guys was from a religious family and when he was a kid they lived in Africa where his parents taught at a mission school. He bragged that they taught all religions there, but that all their students selected their religion as they one to follow. He felt that this proved that his religion (I don't remember for sure, but I think he was Baptist) was the right one. He could never understand why I thought it didn't prove anything but that their students liked them or what the school provided.

Recent media stories on the War in Iraq is failing based on polls reminded me of this guy. I wonder if he works for the Washington Post or CBS now? This comic today from Winger says it best;


By the way, why are we still calling this the War in Iraq? Isn't this more of a Police Action than Vietnam or Korea?

Free market approach to bus service

I was overjoyed to see this article which provides good example of how a libertarian society could solve some of our real life difficulties could work.  Many people reject the idea of relinquishing city services to private ownership or even just to policies used in business because they just cannot envision how they could work.  The problem is that we cannot foresee the way ingenuity can conquer problems.  These kinds of stories are a very good thing in that they make the unimaginable something that people can wrap the brains around.

Ginsburg speaks out for interpreting U.S. law based on the laws of other countries

I really don’t understand how judges get selected or elected when they believe in something as dangerous as interpreting U.S. law by considering foreign law. While I am sure that there are some foreign laws that some people in the U.S. would like to see here, if this gets accepted for general use in the U.S. how do you prevent this from abuse?

The basis of our government is that we are a nation of laws and not subject to the whimsy of man. This was to prevent capricious abuse by kings and other hereditary rulers from mandating our lives based on their own wants and beliefs. But what happens if our judges get to use foreign law as a “…store of knowledge relevant to the solution of trying question.”? This is just another means of trying to make our constitution and laws bend to enactment from the bench rather than the elective representatives of the people.

While these, usually liberal, interpreters of the law maybe very happy with the results as long as they are in power, how will they feel if this becomes the basis for interpreting U.S. law based on the muslim law of Sharia or some other repressive countries of the world?

I am not really surprised that this has riled some of the crazies to target those justices who represent this view, though I do not support such actions. How can such a view that skews our laws not stir the passions of Americans? I hope that this becomes an issue in the elections of all U.S. elected officers over the coming years. We face enough enemies to our way of life without creating our own.

A religious "two-fer"

This may actually be a good thing, though I am not convinced of the science behind the need to preserve bio-diversity.  But at least this way we are getting a “two-fer”, using the same property for both the religion of the locals and the religion of “bio-diversity” and Gaia.

Another defeat for red-light cameras!

Here is yet another win for the Everyman, (Everyperson?).  I think, hope, as more people catch on to the fact that red-light cameras are more of a means for cities to try and get more revenue than to try and protect the people that these will disappear faster than they are introduced.

A new play toy for "Q" the future of warfare

I am sure that “Q” would love this, though James Bond would want it to have a cockpit so he could fly it.  The future of UAVs looks to be very exciting and combining it with Trident submarines is very cool!  I can envision converting several of these submarines, no longer needed for nuclear deterrent to use as Special Forces platforms.  They could be the base for Navy Seal Teams with air support provided by these Cormorants and heavy artillery provided by vertically launched cruise-missiles.  This would provide a really quick response team with some awesome combat capabilities.

Ambivalent about the Dixie Chicks

I have enjoyed the Dixie Chicks for quite some time.  One of my favorite of their songs is “Good-bye Earl”, I just loved the dark comedy of it.  However like many I have become distinctly ambivalent towards them since Natalie decided to inject politics into their public image.  Now I heard that, according to Natalie, they don’t even want to be “county” anymore I don’t have very high hopes for my enjoyment of any future titles they release.  

I am not sure about getting their latest album “Taking the Long Way”, I read a pre-release review that stated “Songs look at small-town narrow-mindedness ("Lubbock or Leave It") and the psychology of celebrity ("Everybody Knows"). “   My mom was from Lubbock and I spent many a summer growing up their visiting her folks.  I certainly never thought of Lubbock as a small-town, maybe a small city.  I have to hope that it was the reviewer that attached the “small-town” moniker on Lubbock and not the Chicks.  Though if so I have to wonder at a country music writer who doesn’t know the difference between the two.

I am getting used to the need to separate my feelings about the artist themselves, and their political views, from my enjoyment of their performance.  I am a great fan of Janeane Garafalo, but hate her politics.  I wish that all performers would quit trying to use their popularity to sell a view point, but I am coming to accept that that is just life as we know it now.

Let's hear it for Amazon's penchant for showing alternatives to your current selection

I have found a lot of good music that I ordinarily would not have known of by following Amazon's recommendations and links to purchases made by other buyers of the particular CD I am ordering at the time. I have also found some good books this way but don't normally try it for selecting DVDs.

I bought the first season of Grey's Anatomy and apparently this drove a link to Wish Upon a Star which also has Katerine Heigl in it. Normally if I had just read the story description I would have given this a pass. However this time I read an Amazon buyer's review that convinced me (along with the price tag of $6.99) that this might be worthwhile. So in today's shipment from Amazon along with Doom the movie (Ok, so it probably stinks but I am a SF nut!) came Wish Upon a Star and I popped it in the player.The first half of the movie was pretty predictable though it was interesting to see a younger, brunette, Heigl. But the last half made up for it in being much less predictable and just plain fun.

Latest Books Read

The Merchant’s Partner – Michael Jecks
This one was not easy to figure out and the action was sort of uneven. I enjoyed but not enourmously.

Traitor General – Dan Abnet
I only got about a third of the way through before I had to put it down. I guess the Warhammer 40,000 universe is not for me, waaayy tooo dark.

The Cat Who Dropped a Bombshell – Lilian Jackson Braun
Another light mystery story so much like all the rest of the The Cat Who... series. The characters stay facinating so I don't intend to stop reading them any time soon.

Kildar - John Ringo
Ringo has turned into one of my favorite authors, but this book was a bit of a disappointement. I enjoyed Ghost, the first in theseries, quite a bit. But with this one I believe that Ringo got so wrapped up in creating this fantasy world that he forget that it needed to be more than just an intellectual exercise. There is little action in this book, most of it is the details of building the Kildar's new home and telling the background of the Keldara.

I hope this doesn't become like Leo Frankowski's novels which became more of a intellectual masturbatory fantasy than an action series. I would have preferred a longer novel with more action or less details of building up the valley what ever it takes to provide more balance in the book.

Hopefully now that he has developed the vallery of the Keldara the next novel, Chooser of the Slain, will be more on a par with Ghost.

Princess of Wands - John Ringo
Case in point, this book kicks ass. I am a bit tired of so many SF and Fantasy novels that feature women as the action hero, but so long as the are all this good I will never stop reading them. It is also is a better magic in the real world story than any of the Buffy books or movies. I think it is as good as the Dresden Files series by Jim Butcher and better than Simon Green's Nightside series.

Sour Puss - Rita Mae Brown
This one was a bit too easy to figure out which eventually made the denoumout turn a bit sour as well. But again, this is a series I read for the characters more than the story line.

How to identify parody on the internet?

I ran across this article on the "Scoop Independent News" website while searching for Casey's gravesite location. After reading it became fairly obvious it is a parody, however for much of the world, particularly the Middle East, they may not be able to tell that. After I thought about it for awhile I realized that a lot of people in the U.S. that either don't pay attention to the news or just certain sites may also not get that this article is not and could not be true.

So I did a search for "riding across the symbolic gravesite of Casey Sheehan" on Google and found 22 postings. This same story was repeated on www.SQLSpace.com "No Censorship Zone", the Inbox Robot - A News Service for Research Professionals, blondesense.blogspot.com, www.gregpalast.com (the story's author), www.freepress.org, www.opednews.com,sf.indymedia.org, www.maavak.net, www.apfn.net/messageboard, peaceandjustice.org, carapace.weblogs.us (Not Your Father's America), illuminati-news.com, www.legitgov.org, and a commetator on www.astroworld.us. Not a single site reported this as a parody and in fact most sites were made to look like real news sites. So exactly how many people are being fooled by such "reporting" on these sites?

No headstone for Casey?

I haven't corroborated this yet, but SMASH is usually a pretty good source. I would certainly say that there was been more than enough time, 2 years, to get a marker of some kind put on his grave.


This site (seems to be Cindy's site) purports to show the temporary wooden cross on Casey's grave in "Arlington West" cemetary on August 23, 2005." However this seems to be the symbolic grave site set up in Crawford at "Camp Casey".


This is the original site of the photo SMASH uses and the blogger on that site claims to have received the photo from a Vacaville reporter. Also includes a post stating that she hasn't had time to get a marker.

Meanwhile posters, rather loud posters, on the Randi Rhodes show forum claim that she has no marker because all markers at Arlington National Cemetary for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are government provided and come with a motto that she does not approve of. Consequently she decided to go with the plain wooden marker.



However Vanity Fair and the New Republic both state that the gravesite is in Vacaville-Elimira cemetary in the photo a photo is included in Vanity Fair's January 2006 issue for the magazine's 2005 Best of the Best -- "Heroes! Winners! Guilty Plea.

So take your pick; a) Cindy hasn't had time to get a marker, b)Casey is buried in two different places, c) Cindy doesn't know she can buy the marker herself, or d) Cindy has spend all the the $250,000 dollar insurance payout from the government and is too cheap to buy one and won't accept the government provided marker

AP Demonstrates Their Definition of Clear Reporting

I ran across this article today by the AP reporting on Cindy Shehaan’s latest stunt. The portion of the article I have a problem with is this one sentence, “The march to the U.S. Mission to the United Nations by about a dozen U.S. and Iraqi anti-war activists followed a news conference at U.N. headquarters, where Iraqi women described daily killings and ambulance bombings as part of the escalating violence that keeps women in their homes.” If you are reporting what a group says of anti-war activists are saying you would think the complaints would be against the US. Thus this sentence seems to be saying that the US is committing daily killings and ambulance bombings wouldn’t it? I searched the web for ambulance bombings and can find no reference to it except in the use of ambulances as suicide bombs. However I did run across this gem on the Codepink web pages of Women Say No to War, “Cindy Sheehan with Iraqi Delegates at the Women Say NO to War press conference. Iraqi women described daily killings and ambulance bombings as part of the escalating violence that keeps women in their homes.” See any similarities? I wonder who is copying whom here?

While checking on this I ran across a statement of goals on the Code Pink web site. This is obviously the work of a committee and one that doesn’t care if their message makes much sense. While mandating the elimination of foreign control (withdrawal of all foreign troops and fighters, commitment to discard plans for any foreign bases in Iraq, etc.) it also calls for an imposed “full representation” of women in the peacemaking (making how?) process and a commitment to women’s full equality in the post-Iraq war. Ok how exactly would the later be done if the former is done? If all foreign nations remove themselves from Iraq then how can you insure the role of women if the Iraqis don’t want it?

Also I am not sure why this goal made it into the list “The nullification of privatization and deregulation laws imposed under occupation, allowing Iraqis to shape the trajectory of the post-war economy;” Are there some socialists are anti-capitalists in the group who are against private ownership?