The anti-Churchill party

Now I know Dean is a nutcase, but he is the head of the DNC. His guaranteeing US defeat is a little unseemly is it not?

Saying the "idea that we're going to win the war in Iraq is an idea which is just plain wrong," Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean predicted today that the Democratic Party will come together on a proposal to withdraw National Guard and Reserve troops immediately, and all US forces within two years.

Dean made his comments in an interview on WOAI Radio in San Antonio.

"I've seen this before in my life. This is the same situation we had in Vietnam. Everybody then kept saying, 'just another year, just stay the course, we'll have a victory.' Well, we didn't have a victory, and this policy cost the lives of an additional 25,000 troops because we were too stubborn to recognize what was happening."

While I think Ann Coulter is a nutcase as well, doesn’t this make her charges that anti-war liberals are tip-toeing on the borders of sedition slightly more credible? (And believe me, I'm glad no one like Ann is the head of the RNC)

UPDATE: Kerry intimating that US soldiers in Iraq are behaving unprofessionally – almost as if they were terrorists (If plumbers plumb; terrorists ________)
-- probably doesn’t weaken Ms. Coulter’s argument either.

Kerry: “there is no reason, Bob, that young American soldiers need to be going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children, you know, women, breaking sort of the customs of the--of--the historical customs, religious customs. ...Iraqis should be doing that.”

Ok so I now think that 2012 is probably the soonest I won’t be pants pissingly terrified of Democrats being in charge of national security. Anyone who views occasional lapses in cultural etiquette as reason enough to turn over a country with incalculable oil wealth to the next new-and-improved Taliban cannot be taken seriously.

UPDATE: House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi claims over half of house Democrats favor "speedy withdrawl" (much to the consternation of the other half).

UPDATE: Dean changes his mind (again)
"We can and have to win the War on Terror." "We can only win the war -- which we have to win -- if we change our strategy dramatically. ... if we want to win the war on terror we cannot pursue the failed strategy we've pursued..."

UPDATE: This can be filed under Murtha’s “Democrats not sure what they believe at any given moment” category. Delaware Sen. Tom Carper seemingly criticized much publicized pro-withdrawal comments by Howard Dean and other Democrats after returning from a tour from Iraq which I first thought was a rare display of candor.

"I wish more of my colleagues, and folks like Howard Dean, would try going to Iraq to see the situation there for themselves"

Great! So he’s implying that what they said was poorly informed and incorrect. Err no.

“Anyone who has visited Iraq and talked to the people there, he said, is not going to come back thinking this thing is going to be won militarily. It's not."

Huh? Isn’t that exactly what Howard Dean said? (see above)

Has Rove figured out a secret weakness in the liberal mind that causes pandering engines to engage simultaneously in forward and reverse inevitably causing a full logic meltdown? Will we see Dean interrupted in a future speech on the necessity of the Iraq war by a rebellious left hand attempting to make a peace sign?

UPDATE: So while conservatives are actively trying to allow democracy to take hold in Iraq liberals are exporting well worn tactics to discredit democratic elections through claims of disenfranchisement.

Juan Cole: ”The only way the vote will happen at all is that the US military has forbidden all vehicular traffic, so everyone has to walk for the next few days. This tactic prevents car bombings from disrupting the elections, but it is a desperate measure and not a sign of an election that could be certified as free and fair.”

Goodness that’s sounds almost as bad as Ohio. Everyone knows inconvenience = Jim Crow unless you happen to be in country with a tin-pot socialist dictator and then it isn’t inconvenience but a valid cultural preference we’d be arrogant and ignorant to judge. Just ask Jimmah.

UPDATE: Holy cow. I was totally joking about the Iraq/Ohio comparison and Eric Alterman is actually making the comparison....seriously.

Animation projects

I did these animations a few months ago for an After Effects class and have been pretty tardy in putting them anywhere they might be seen. I have no reason for the delay, besides laziness, but I'd be quite interested in any type of feedback you have to offer. They've been fairly compressed to speed up the download, so check them out and I hope you enjoy.

Yay! Gervais!!!

I haven't seen "Extras" yet, but the original "The Office" is the greatest TV show ever. I've been thanking my lucky stars ever since I read this blurb from the Guardian Unlimited (hat tip: the Geek-tastic site Ain't it Cool).

Ricky Gervais says: "I want to do a radio show where I can say what I want, when I want for as long as I want and that's free for anybody who can be bothered to listen anywhere in the world. We didn't want it to just be the best bits of a radio programme you'd missed so this is a show that is straight-to-Pod-cast. I suppose we're trying to create an exclusive club. We'd prefer this to be a few people's favourite show than a huge samey ineffectual broadcast"

Ricky is going to be unleashing 12 podcasts, one every week begining Dec. 5. Just bookmark the link to the Guardian Unlimited, check the site next monday, and subscribe to the podcast. It will be lovely.

The left and economics

If you haven’t already guessed from my previous ramblings, the biggest reason I’m not a democrat is their fundamental rejection (misunderstanding?) of basic economic principles. They insist on making policy using an alchemy composed of an odd mixture of feelings and Marxism. Anything resembling the sort of intro-econ stuff you learn as a freshman they look on to with suspicion. Fire baaadddd! This is revealed by Mickey Kaus’ summary of a NYTimes analysis on the latest GDP numbers.

Gregg Easterbrook's rule that All Economic News is Bad was effectively illustrated by yesterday's NYT front-pager, "Upbeat Signs Hold Cautions for the Future." The article notes several positive economic trends, including lower gas prices, but then warns darkly that

... as always with the United States economy, it is not quite that simple.

For every encouraging sign, there is an explanation. ...[snip] Gasoline prices - the national average is now $2.15, according to the Energy Information Administration - have fallen because higher prices held down demand and Gulf Coast supplies have been slowly restored. [Emph. added.]

It's indeed deeply disturbing to learn that higher gas prices have held down demand, causing those prices to fall back to a level at which demand begins to rise again! It's almost as if some insidious law was at work--as prices rise, demand declines! As supply increases, prices fall! You can't win! ... P.S.: The price drop might be alarming if the decline in demand for gas reflected a general economic downturn. But that doesn't seem to be the case. What the NYT's Vikak Bajaj ominously describes is the market working exactly as it's supposed to, coupled with successful rebuilding efforts on the Gulf Coast. It appears to be "quite that simple." ... P.P.S.: Nor can I spot any "cautions for the future." .... P.P.P.S.: Bijaj further reported that

the Federal Reserve and businesses will have a big part in setting the economy's pace next year - the Fed through interest rates and companies by their hiring decisions. [Emph. added]

Yikes. Who knew? That's the sort of alarming macroeconomic information investors can use to make millions--and yet this wasn't even a TimesSelect article. They charge for Bob Herbert but they're giving away Bijaj's explosive contrarian insights for free! The hapless Pinch Sulzberger misses yet another revenue stream. ...

Update: Only a paranoid right-wing blogger would suggest that the NYT's editors are so eager to explain away any positive economic news because the healthy economy is the one remaining prop holding up Bush's presidency, and they can't believe his policies haven't produced another recession yet. Easterbrook's Bad News rule indicates that they'd have written exactly the same piece if a Democrat were in the White House. ... 1:20 A.M.

hmmm....

Topic for discussion: OIL.

Demand is growing very fast (50% in the last decade according to a BP exec I saw on C-SPAN). Production levels are not growing as fast. If we run out of oil, things won't go, people won't make money, economies will stagnate, unless we find something else to make things go. Oil will get more and more expensive as supply decreases, making it more expensive to make stuff go, making economic growth slow down.

Talk amongst yourselves.

Legal Torture

I'm surprised this didn't turn out to be the longest jury deliberation ever.

Georgie gets lost

This is hilarious. Watch as GW tries to wrap up a press conference and finds the door locked.

Also funny

Chicom college students give this song the treatment it deserves.

Awesome Prank

Wow...shocked at first, but slowly overcome by the hilarious genius of it.

Protecting the wrong people

After listening to an insane amount of self righteous demagoguery involving the McCain amendment (Cheney as Torquemada) I’ve found myself supporting the amendment less and less. Primarily I think this is because the arguments employed all generally involve a certain degree of bait-and-switch. When sound moral arguments are employed to question the wisdom of disallowing all “torture”, proponents of the McCain bill shift to a legalistic argument invoking the third Geneva convention as if it’s Mosaic law. And when this is questioned the argument seamlessly shifts to anyone who is against the McCain amendment is implicitly pro-torture. There are many strong arguments against torture I agree with and would cause me to support regulation to limit torture as much as possible but none are convincing enough to persuade me that the human rights of an evil person trump those of their present and future victims. While torture may be ineffective in 99 out of 100 situations, should a situation arise where depriving someone of sleep might help keep 50 people from being blown up; well then let the Christina Aguilera blast away.

But wouldn’t this be a war crime? Article 4 or the Third Geneva convention clearly states that treaty protections only extend to:

o "Members of the armed forces"

o "militias...including those of organized resistance movements...having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance...conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war"

o "Persons who accompany the armed forces"

o "Members of crews...of the merchant marine and the crews of civil aircraft"

o Inhabitants of a non-occupied territory, who on the approach of the enemy spontaneously take up arms to resist the invading forces, without having had time to form themselves into regular armed units, provided they carry arms openly and respect the laws and customs of war.

I don’t see where anyone detained by the US in Afganistan or Iraq meet any of the criteria. The McCain ammendment goes far beyond the Geneva conventions though. If passed it would extend protections of the Fifth, Sixth, Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments.

Torture is a horrible thing but I think it’s too easy to lose track of who the real victims in this conflict are. I believe it would be far worse to instill a greater fear of legal consequence within those that are working to protect the innocent. This is a bad law backed up by bad arguments.

One other thing: I do want to briefly acknowledge just how f'd I think the Republican party is at present. While I think too much was made over NJ and Virginia continuing to have democratic Governors, all of Ahnuld's amendments being defeated and the House's inability to pass the most recent budget doesn't bode well for 2006. God I miss Newt...

Taking a Stand

The Indy Star takes a gutsy stand against tornados.

Excellent critique

Steven Green of Vodkapundit has an excellent post that speaks equally well to both supporters and critics (the reasonable ones anyway) of the war in Iraq . He puts the war on terror in historical context, but primarily focuses on the growing role of the media in war and how what has been reported has influenced it's outcome. He attributes some of the media's tendencies to the lack of perspective in its coverage, primarily its lack of embeded reporters.

However it's worth noting that he also has this to say:

I don't mean to imply that the MSM needs to hop on board the bandwagon and cheerlead for any President along any military campaign, no matter how foolhardy – far from it. In case you hadn't noticed, I used a good portion of this essay to complain about Washington, and that's something the media can do a whole lot more effectively than one small blogger. Criticism isn't just necessary, it's a necessary good. But the MSM needs to relearn constructive criticism, and they need to remember which country defends their rights, and which group of people would gleefully slit their throats.

Here's the first section of the piece:

Four years into the Terror War, "What's the most important element for victory?" is a question long overdue. It's also a question our national leadership, nearly all of our intellectuals, and none of our mainstream media have yet to answer.

President George W Bush hasn't told us, because he doesn't know. His rivals for the Oval Office never answered the question – either because they also don't know or because they don't like the answer. Our Congress and Senate ought to be debating this issue, the most important of our postmodern era. Instead, they're doling out the pork, posing for the cameras, or busy keeping the campaign dollars flowing in by treating small, partisan differences as matters of life and death. Here we are, with a real life-and-death struggle on our hands, and our leadership fiddles while the barbarians beat us at our own game.

Our public thinkers – pundits, intellectuals, whatever you want to call them – are the people we should most rely on for guidance in times such as these. However, they've come up short even using the pathetic standard by which this blogger measures them. Too many of our intellectuals are caught in the past, real or imagined. Most liberal thinkers think one of two things: That this Terror War can be safely ignored (or treated as a police matter, which is effectively the same thing) or that "America isn't worth dying for." Either path leads to defeat – but at least Cindy Sheehan is cheering openly for the other side. Conservatives fall into three camps. Paleoconservatives, like Pat Buchanan, have joined in the loony left's "blame America first" chorus. If only we'd cut off Israel, buy off the Arabs, retreat behind our borders, and act a lot more like France – then we wouldn't be in this mess. Neoconservatives hold the naïve hope that if we just topple the dictators, democracy will sprout like shiitake mushrooms after a cool rain. Vanilla conservatives might have some reservations about singular campaigns in this war (George Will's reservations about Iraq, for example), but usually get all gung-ho whenever and wherever the troops are involved. But as I discussed in an essay called "Game Plan" last year, this war is about a lot more than combat.

Our mainstream media haven't answered the question, because they know the answer – and they're deathly afraid you'll find out what it is. But we'll get to them in a moment.

Incredibly Disturbing

For many people in Africa, it sucks to live. You can imagine how much worse it is to be in prison there.

Times up Bambi

Well there’s a sliver of good news for Republicans this week. It looks like the NRDC hippies and Larry David’s wife will no longer be able to keep us from our precious. The Senate voted (86-13) (51-48) today to allow drilling in ANWR. The 1.33 gallons-per-minute dream is still alive! Vroom!!!

Chomp

Noam Chomsky, the well known critic of US foreign policy and now retired Professor of Linguistics at MIT was recently named the worlds "top public intellectual" by Prospect magazine. I know nothing about his theories on linguistics and only a little about his politics, but it was his politics that got him on this list. The more I read about this guy, the more I wish folks on the left would distance themselves from his critiques. His logic, such as it is, is entirely incongruous with any conception of a moral high ground. I.e., since personal politics boils down to which ideology most reflects your broad ideas of right or wrong, consistency matters. If one truly cares about the plight of oppressed people, one does not flippantly excuse the actions of a despotic/totalitarian regime. This interview from the Guardian, hardly a bastion of conservative journalism, offers a pretty dramatic example of how morally capricious this fellow is.

"on the pogroms of Russia, which none the less Chomsky can't help qualifying as "not very bad, by contemporary standards. In the worst of the major massacres, I think about 49 people were killed."

or

"Being smart, he believes, is a function of a plodding, unsexy, application to the facts and "using your intelligence to decide what's right".

This is, of course, what Chomsky has been doing for the last 35 years, and his conclusions remain controversial: that practically every US president since the second world war has been guilty of war crimes; that in the overall context of Cambodian history, the Khmer Rouge weren't as bad as everyone makes out; that during the Bosnian war the "massacre" at Srebrenica was probably overstated. (Chomsky uses quotations marks to undermine things he disagrees with and, in print at least, it can come across less as academic than as witheringly teenage; like, Srebrenica was so not a massacre.)"

More profound examples of these basic views online, simply google his name and browse through the results. The most concise and efficient grouping of critiques is can be found on Wikipedia.

How common is this?

While it’s likely that Mary Mapes is just an especially nutty (ex)member of the media establishment I wonder how many Journalists like Mapes rationalize ideologically motivated journalism by comparing themselves to Edward R. Murrow. Is this the security blanket journalists like those at the NYTimes wrap themselves in every time it’s revealed their reporting is less than objective? If this self-indulgent Robin Hood fantasy is what allows ideologues to believe they’re still good journalists, what does this say about Academia? I’m sorry but Edward R. Murrow and Joe McCarthy are hardly the hero and villain liberal mythology (and George Clooney) would like them to be.

That’s it?

So after 2 years of heavy breathing by the media all we get is an indictment of a subject of the probe (Scooter) who testified that they heard about Plame from Tim Russert instead of Cheney -- which in itself is perfectly legal? While I won’t dispute that what Scooter did was obviously very stupid (he of all people should know how and why you don’t perjure oneself), isn’t the real story that the whole basis for the investigation was a joke; that the administration did nothing illegal in their handling of Joe Wilson’s leaks, lies and subsequent editorial? Unfortunately I think the Democrats and their media sycophants will use this indictment as a foothold, however tenuous, to try to argue that the administration started the Iraq war knowingly on false pretenses despite the fact this investigation has essentially proven the opposite.

UPDATE: As usual, Andrew Sullivan needs to take a deep breath and meditate on Occam’s Razor. None of the conspiracy theories over the last 2 years have played out and there’s no reason to expect that any others created by his excitable mind will either.

ONE MORE: Tom Maguire is compiling a list of every reporter that admitted to having knowledge of Valerie Plame prior to the Novak editorial. What does this mean? Probably not as much as it would have a few months ago before Fitzgerald doused any hopes of indictments related to Plame's identity, but it still could make a Libby prosecution much more difficult; forcing Fitz to prove that Journalists didn’t bring up Plame before he did; in effect to prove a negative. At the very least it further demonstrates just how idiotic this whole controversy is.

Remote control people

I just found this article on Drudge, and it's incredibly bizarre.

Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp., Japans top telephone company, says it is developing the technology to perhaps make video games more realistic. But more sinister applications also come to mind.

I can envision it being added to militaries' arsenals of so-called "non-lethal" weapons.

A special headset was placed on my cranium by my hosts during a recent demonstration at an NTT research center. It sent a very low voltage electric current from the back of my ears through my head _ either from left to right or right to left, depending on which way the joystick on a remote-control was moved.

I found the experience unnerving and exhausting: I sought to step straight ahead but kept careening from side to side. Those alternating currents literally threw me off.

The technology is called galvanic vestibular stimulation _ essentially, electricity messes with the delicate nerves inside the ear that help maintain balance.

I felt a mysterious, irresistible urge to start walking to the right whenever the researcher turned the switch to the right. I was convinced _ mistakenly _ that this was the only way to maintain my balance.

The phenomenon is painless but dramatic. Your feet start to move before you know it. I could even remote-control myself by taking the switch into my own hands.

Freaky.

The right thing to do

Harriet Miers just withdrew her name from consideration for the SCOTUS post. Tell us what you think.

Google Earth

If you haven't yet, you should try playing with Google's new Google Earth program (currently only for PC's). It's freakin' awesome. You can explore any part of the world from almost any height and any angle. I've already "visited" the pyramids, hoover dam, mt. everest, mt. saint helens, the grand canyon, eiffel tower, mt. rushmore (you can actually make out some of the faces), and several other places.

My only complaint is that searching for locations, even popular ones, can often be a pain. It will tell you "Your search returned no results" for some places even if, once you've found it manually, it recognizes the name you originally searched for. I recommend having a second internet window open to use to find the coordinates of the place you want to visit, then find it manually using those--I find it quite entertaining. (FYI: Wikipedia often has the coordinates of famous landmarks).