Rants and Raves

Anybody notice this?

2009-07-05T08:53:00.000-07:00

This is the Doonesbury strip from July 1.

Mother Boopsie says, "See how many female protestors there are? That'd be impossible in most Arab societies. Images like that are incredibly empowering to gals all over the Middle East."

Daughter remarks, "Arab girls need empowering."

First of all, let me say that I agree whole heartedly.

It almost makes me regret what I'm about to do to Gary Trudeau.

I've been following Doonesbury on and off since near the beginning. More off than on these days I'm afraid. Since Gary Trudeau became more a social commentator than a cartoonist he's been preachy, snide, and to put it baldly - either a liar or woefully ignorant of history.

He recently identified waterboarding as the same torture practices used by the Spanish Inquisition and the Japanese in WWII - a lie. Whether you excuse the practice of waterboarding by American interrogators or not, the fact is the torture techniques used by the Inquisition and the Japanese are similar only insofar as they use water.

But the worst sin of all is - he's not funny anymore. At least not as much or as often as he used to be.

As an Okie, I still treasure his hilarious take on the Oklahoma county commissioners scandal, lo these many years ago.

"Say, you're Emma Doonesbury's boy ain't you? Well, we just want you to know your Uncle Henry is a good 'ol boy who always took care of his people."

"Thanks, I appreciate that," Uncle Henry replies.

"Say Henry, do you think you could do my driveway afore you goes to jail?"

So it's with a certain "gotcha" feeling that I have to point out to Mr. Trudeau, IRANIANS ARE NOT ARABS YOU TWIT.

And furthermore, I am gobsmacked that anyone who has been so loud about his opinions on the war on terror (silly term though it is) and the Iraq strategy thereof, wouldn't know that.

Tea Party, July 4

2009-07-04T17:21:00.001-07:00

I went to the nearest Tea Party I could find on the Fourth, which happened to be Jamestown, North Dakota, pop. 15,527, about 30 miles west of me.
Oddly, I didn't find any mention of one in Fargo - though there was a Hot Air Tour there on June 23. As far as I know, I was the only media person at that one. I did get there about a half-hour after it started, so some might have come and gone by then.

See: http://hotairtour.org/

There were at my count about 77 people at the Tea Party, including the kids. One of the organizers told me there was more interest than that, but a lot of people were out of town on the Fourth.

There was a fair amount of cars and bikes passing by honking their horns and waving.

As the march started shaping up I got a call from a friend in Oklahoma City. He said he was at the OKC Tea Party in front of the state capitol building, with about a thousand other people.

Folks, something is happening in this country. Jamestown impresses me even more than the much larger demonstration in OKC. When ordinary people start gathering to demonstrate in significant numbers in small communities (as opposed to marginalized fringoids gathering in major urban areas) it means something.

Now let's see what kind of media coverage the Tea Parties around the country get. When the MSM is made uncomfortable the sequence goes:
1) militantly ignore
2) ridicule
3) slander

They went from 1 to 3 pretty quickly on this phenomenon, which itself ought to tell us something.

Now here is something interesting about the Tea Party movement. Google "Tea Party" on the Internet, and you'll find a number of different sites, with different URLs. The various sites have state-by-state lists of planned Tea Parties - which to not coincide completely.

This suggests to me a movement so decentralized it has not yet developed a coordinating center, much less a national leadership. The hackneyed and much-abused term "grass roots" springs to mind.

I've sat in on meetings in Washington where a "grass roots" conservative revival was being organized within the Beltway from the gilded ghettos of D.C. think tanks, where there was nary a hint that anyone appreciated the irony of it all.

This could be the real thing, and if it can remain based in "flyover country" and avoid being taken over by a central committee with a Beltway office, maybe...

The Defense of Ft. McHenry/The Star Spangled Banner

2009-07-02T05:43:00.000-07:00

Note: A shorter version of this appeared as an op-ed in the July 4 weekend of the paper.

O! say can you see by the dawn's early light
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?

On the night of September 13-14, 1814, a 35-year old American lawyer and amateur poet stood on the deck of the Royal Navy ship HMS Tonnant, as it took part in the bombardment of Ft. McHenry in Baltimore harbor. Francis Scott Key was moved to write the poem, which set to music became the national anthem of the nation founded on July 4th, 38 years earlier.

In 1812, the United States declared war against Great Britain which, still smarting under the humiliation of losing half its North American empire, had been blockading U.S. trade with its enemy France, impressing American seamen into the Royal Navy, and supporting Indians on the Northwest frontier attacking American settlements.

The British felt keenly that America had betrayed their common kinship by aiding Napoleon, the greatest threat to England in centuries.

“Now that the tyrant Bonaparte has been consigned to infamy, there is no public feeling in this country stronger than indignation against the Americans,” declared the London Times, demanding Britain, “not only chastise the savages into present peace, but make a lasting impression on their fears.”

Key was on board the Tonnant to negotiate the release of a prisoner, Dr. William Beanes of Upper Marlboro, Maryland.

Beanes, a part-time sheriff, was taken prisoner after arresting some rowdy British stragglers, who according to some accounts were caught robbing a chicken coop.

After receiving testimonials the British prisoners were well-treated, Major General Robert Ross and Admiral Alexander Cochrane agreed to release Beanes. But because the delegation had seen the strength of the naval forces ready to besiege Baltimore from the sea, they were detained through the night, though treated as guests.

The naval bombardment began in coordination with a land attack on the city by the British Army, flushed with success after invading and burning Washington almost unopposed. The Royal Navy had to attack at night when the tide was full, and sail out of the harbor shortly after dawn, or be left stranded and vulnerable in the shallows at low tide.

Key and the others could do nothing but watch the bombardment by naval guns and Congreve rockets.

And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
O! say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

In the morning as the smoke cleared, and one has to have some experience with black powder firearms to appreciate how much smoke they generate, Key could see an American flag waving from the battlements of the fort.

On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines in the stream:
'Tis the star-spangled banner! Oh long may it wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Key wrote the poem on the back of a letter. It was later set to the music of a popular English drinking song, “To Anacreon in Heaven.” Why that particular tune is anyone's guess. It is very difficult to sing, as it goes higher and lower than most people's vocal range. It actually works better as a poem in the later verses, which are so little known to Americans that author Isaac Asimov once wrote a humorous short story about catching a German spy by getting him to reveal that he actually knew the third verse!

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion,
A home and a country should leave us no more!
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Key died in 1843 after a long and distinguished career in the law. Ironically, his grandson was interned in Ft. McHenry during the Civil War for pro-Southern sympathies.

In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson ordered "The Star-Spangled Banner" be played at official occasions, but it was not actually declared the national anthem until a law was signed by President Herbert Hoover in 1931.

It beat out “America the Beautiful” for the honor, which still has its advocates among the squeamish who feel “The Star Spangled Banner” is embarrassingly warlike.

O! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war's desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav'n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: 'In God is our trust.'
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

SEX!

2009-06-26T18:44:00.000-07:00

Boy that got your attention didn't it?

It seems to have everyone's attention these days. At the latest count there are two political sex scandals in the news, one writer humiliating her soon-to-be-ex husband in print, and 24/7 coverage of the death of an accused pedophile pop megastar.

To wit:

- Senator John Ensign (R-NV) revealed he had an affair with a staffer - and was by the way cuckolding another staffer.

He came clean after they pulled what looks suspiciously like a Badger Game on him.

Anyone else remember that idiom? Its' an old con: woman seduces man, her husband walks in...

No less a politician than Alexander Hamilton fell for that one.

Ensign's wife issued a statement, "Since we found out last year we have worked through the situation and we have come to a reconciliation."

Since "we" found out? Was Ensign sleepwalking during this affair? Perhaps he had amnesia?

Of course liberals are ecstatic about this one. Oh the hypocrisy! Ensign is a born-again Christian and got awful holy about Clinton's adulteries a while back.

Leftist politicians are by definition not hypocrits about sex and extramarital affairs. It's only hypocrisy if you believe what you're doing is wrong.

The likes of Bill Clinton and Ted Kennedy are not hypocrits, merely opportunistic liars. Their only regret is getting caught.

The hypocrits are the feminist leadership who make excuses for them when they treat women as disposable conveniences to be used and discarded, sometimes in shallow bodies of water.

Ensign showed a measure of backbone by refusing to be blackmailed. Like the Duke of Wellington when a would-be blackmailer threatened to publish some damaging correspondence.

"Publish and be damned!" Wellington replied.

Of course, by that time the Iron Duke was in the House of Lords and didn't have to stand for no steenking election.

The Ensigns have three kids.

Note: remember that I foretold you here: http://rantsand.blogspot.com/2008/10/perfect-storm-of-left.html

Starting I think a year after Obama takes office, if there is a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, it's going to get very bad.

If the Republicans succeed in keeping a one or two-vote filibuster number, how much do you want to bet the news media can find a scandal or two to knock at least one Republican politico out of congress?

Told you.

- South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford (A Republican with a libertarian bent) fessed up he's been having an affair for, evidently a while now. His wife kicked him out of the house a while back, and more importantly didn't stand up with him in public while he made his obligatory public abasement. (Good for her!)

The thing that makes this scandal actually, you know... interesting, is the sheer airheadedness of the way Sanford sent emails which wound up in the hands of a local paper for months before the scandal broke, and left the state without doing his constitutional duty to turn the office over to the Lieutenant Governor during his absence.

By now EVERYONE knows emails should be considered about as private as a postcard. His ineptness in covering a flight to Argentina**, where he spent five days crying in homage to Evita, suggests that on some level Sanford wanted to be caught.

Governor Sanford's public confession was a weird mixture of painful and kind of sweet to watch.

It's always painfully embarrassing to watch a man fall apart in public. What was kind of sweet was, as he was maundering on about his Argentine inamorata, it became plain the guy's in love with her.

This isn't a Bill Clinton/Ted Kennedy-style conquest f**k, Sanford plainly adores this woman. Can you doubt this after reading the emails?

Lust can make you do extremely stupid things, but it takes true love to really motivate you to screw your life up.

He could have pulled a Sarkozy, divorced his wife, and married the exotic hottie. Liberals are always going on about how the Europeans are so much more sophisticated about sexual matters than we grim American puritans, they'd scarsely be in a position to kvetch* - but he's got four young boys.

If you think they're not going to hurt for a long time over this, maybe forever, you're fooling yourself. That goes for you too Sandra.

- Tsing Loh, sweet chariot...

Sorry, couldn't resist.

Well, as Paul Harvey used to say, "After all guys, it is their turn."

Sandra Tsing Loh, writer and performance artist (with a B.A. in physics, I'm impressed) has a piece in The Atlantic here:

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200907/divorce

that has a fair number of conservatives in a twitter. (Oh wait, that means something different now. And BTW, Sandra makes puns on her own name as well. She once had a radio show called, "The Loh Life," which I thought was pretty clever.)

"Let's Call the Whole Thing Off"

The author is ending her marriage. Isn’t it time you did the same?

Sadly, and to my horror, I am divorcing. This was a 20-year partnership. My husband is a good man, though he did travel 20 weeks a year for work. I am a 47-year-old woman whose commitment to monogamy, at the very end, came unglued. This turn of events was a surprise. I don’t generally even enjoy men; I had an entirely manageable life and planned to go to my grave taking with me, as I do most nights to my bed, a glass of merlot and a good book. Cataclysmically changed, I disclosed everything. We cried, we rent our hair, we bewailed the fate of our children. And yet at the end of the day—literally during a five o’clock counseling appointment, as the golden late-afternoon sunlight spilled over the wall of Balinese masks—when given the final choice by our longtime family therapist, who stands in as our shaman, mother, or priest, I realized … no. Heart-shattering as this moment was—a gravestone sunk down on two decades of history—I would not be able to replace the romantic memory of my fellow transgressor with the more suitable image of my husband, which is what it would take in modern-therapy terms to knit our family’s domestic construct back together. In women’s-magazine parlance, I did not have the strength to “work on” falling in love again in my marriage. And as Laura Kipnis railed in Against Love, and as everyone knows, Good relationships take work.

The rest is rather rambling and disjointed. In the middle it reveals that she finds some of her friends are thinking of doing the same, claims her two daughters are just fine, and ends with a rousing call to... what? Get rid of marriage?

Not quite, in spite of the title and subtitle. She does point out that marriages over time tend to get almost intolerably dull.

One is tempted to congratulate her on the triumphant discovery of the obvious.

She says the company of a good man who is a great father was ultimately never going to be as heart-poundingly exciting as trysts with her lover.

Ditto.

Although, there is curiously little about her lover in the piece. He, like her husband and even children, appear briefly onstage as curiously two-dimensional characters. The only people in the piece who appear fully fleshed-out are her female friends, who seem to stand in as extensions of herself and her need to gas on endlessly about her favorite subject, herself.

And though her encomiums to her husband abound in the article and the videolog she's keeping about the divorce process, one has to wonder what he did to her to piss her off so much that she should humiliate him in public?

Oh, she never meant to do that when she implied, or actively stated that she found him a bore in bed and cuckolded him with someone so much more exciting?

And no doubt her children will never get it back from their schoolmates because little kids don't read The Atlantic, and their parents would never talk about that kind of thing in front of them.

But do read the article, she does in fact have some interesting things to say. Also a great many misleading ones, such as the prevalence of divorce in America.

"One in two marriages ends in divorce," is true but does not mean that most couples are going to get divorced. Most people do in fact wind up in stable, long-lived marriages.

What the statistics (and observation) reveal is that the divorce average is inflated by 1) people who have one early marriage that fails, remarry and stay married the next time, and 2) a much smaller number of much-married relationship junkies who raise the average way high all by themselves.

(An ex of mine had just divorced husband number five last I heard. Which was some time ago, she may have done even more to raise the average by now.)

Loh discovered that living with the same person for a long time can become, we shall say routine, and going to bed with a good book and a glass of Merlot is what she looked forward to every day.

This, as I mentioned, is not news to the vast majority of married couples. So what is to be done?

There's good old-fashioned cheating of course. But that involves deception, which Loh evidently couldn't live with.

For Christ's sake, even Dear Abby (the original, not her daughter who took over the family business) said, if you slip; bury it, live with it, and don't burden your partner with it.

Open Marriage*** has it's advocates, though Loh admits the concept is kind of icky.

It is indeed, and I would point out that over thirty-odd years, couples I've known with open marriage agreements have had a 100 percent failure rate. Making "open marriages" far less stable than merely adulterous ones.

Listen, I understand, really I do. The desire for sex with someone new is a drive probably hard-wired into our brains by evolution, and I'll deal with that in a subsequent post.

Perhaps even more than the discipline of fidelity, the responsibilities of marriage with children weigh upon one. No matter how happy or content you are, from time to time you are going to be tortured by the possibilities that would lie before you if you didn't have the responsibility of caring for little persons who would be helpless without you.

I don't mean the freedom to tom-or-tabbycat around. I still dream of building that oil-drum raft and pushing off into the Pacific ocean like that 70-year-old man I read about in my youth.

Maybe I will someday - but that day is not yet. Not while there are little ones relying on Daddy to be there for them.

- And then there's Michael Jackson, the celebrity death that surprised me least.

I really can't bring myself to say much about that sad, pathetic person-of-male-gender.

Was he an active pedophile? So far all we have is a Scotch Verdict, "Not proven."

De morituris nihil nisi bonum est, but...

1) Paying a multi-million-dollar settlement is not the behavior of an innocent man. On the other hand, after paying once and realizing it really encouraged others to make the same accusation, he did fight tooth and nail the next time it happened. On the other hand, the behavior of that "welfare mother" Geraldo Rivera so plainly despises looked a lot like a greedy mother getting a kid to "take one for the team" - shades of The Godfather!

2) The saddest thing of all is that he hired women to create children for him, to be his playthings. Anyone want to take bets on how their lives turn out?

3) If he wasn't an active pedophile, his behavior with little boys was still mega-creepy.

Rest in peace Michael. Sadly, this is probably the only peace you've ever known.

* I'm going to say this again. The leftie sophisticates' claim that sophisticated Europeans see nothing wrong about this kind of thing is misleading at best. True, many cultures European and non-European like the Philippines, allow a man to keep a querida on the side, but the rule is you do not let it affect your marriage and you DO NOT humiliate your wife.

** It has however, produced one really great joke. His staff misheard when they said he was hiking the Apallachian Trail. He actually said he was tracking some Argentine tail. Thanks Gov.

*** 'Open Marriage' was the title of a book published in 1973 by anthropologists George and Nena O'Neil that quickly entered the language as a synonym for what the Brits call a "relaxed marriage."

The book was basically about marriage where the couple were comfortable enough with each other that they didn't feel the need to live in each others' laps, gave each other their space, etc. Stuff that sounds pretty orthodox now.

In precisely one short chapter they discussed the possibility of non-monogamous relationships - which were seized on by bunches of readers as permission to cat around.

They came to bitterly regret this, and Nena specifically argued for fidelity in a subsequent book. Largely because every one of the couples they knew with 'open marriages' got divorced in the interval between the first book and the second.

Previous posts on marriage, sex and relationships:

http://rantsand.blogspot.com/2008/11/bad-time-for-lovers.html

http://rantsand.blogspot.com/2006/12/have-some-free-relationship-advice.html

UPDATE: That article where Tsandra Tsings is evidently striking a chord. The morning after this was posted I opened MSN to find the article in full and a video interview of Sandra, with the obligatory defense of marriage shrink by her side.

Sandra's argument is weak, though to be fair she probably had all of 90 seconds to make it. The interviewer paraphrased it for her first: marriage is an invention of agrarian societies because intact family units were needed to work the farm.

No, marriage predated agriculture. It is a universal feature of hunter-gatherer societies as well.

Sandra made a revealing statement before the video cut off, "I decided I had better things to do with my time than over-parent my kids."

So is she divorcing her husband or her kids?

Demonstrations that bring down governments

2009-06-21T08:10:00.000-07:00

Note: A slightly different version of this appeared as the weekend editorial in the paper..

I’m watching the demonstrations in Iran with the oddest feeling I’ve seen this movie before. In fact, I think I was an extra in a street scene.

In late 1996 I was living in Sofia, Bulgaria, and working at the Institute for Foreign Languages as an English teacher. It was interesting work, my students were a delight to teach, and the country was very beautiful.

Unfortunately, the work was rewarding only in the spiritual sense. I was getting paid in the local currency, Bulgarian leva, which was inflating at the rate of about 10 percent a day. My last payday amounted to $40 for the month, which became $36 dollars by the end of the day without me spending any of it.

On top of that, government offices would not accept their own country’s currency for fees and permits.

About that time, I heard that a friend of mine, Tomas Krsmanovic, a Serbian dissident, was being leaned on by the secret police. After communicating with a dissident-support network I worked with, I decided to relocate to Belgrade, on the theory that if I lived in Tomas’ lap, the thugocracy wouldn’t want to murder him in front of a foreign witness.

What was happening in former Yugoslavia were demonstrations in the capital, Belgrade, and many other cities around the country, to protest electoral fraud attempted by the government of Slobodan Milošević after the 1996 local elections.
Before I left, I marched with the people of Sofia down the yellow brick road (I’m NOT kidding) past the government offices, in a protest that brought down the last communist/coalition government.

A British traveller told me, "You ought to head to Albania, you're on a roll!"

Within 24 hours I was in Belgrade in the middle of their demonstrations.
My friend helped me find jobs at two language schools and a room to rent (payment in Deutchmarks.) The lawyer of one school helped me get work and residence permits in order. (She was, by the way, a lovely young woman who bore, with reasonably good humor, the name Biljana Dracula.)

The demonstrations in Belgrade went on for 96 days and nights from November 1996 to February 1997, when Slobodan Milošević recognized the opposition victories.
Every night an estimated 17 percent of the city’s population (about 1,182,000 though it was hard to tell with war refugees and constant in-migration from the countryside) were on the streets marching, singing and making as much noise as they could during “pandemonium half-hour” when the official government news was broadcast. People not on the streets made noise from their apartment windows and balconies. Construction of homemade noisemakers was a thriving cottage industry.

I marched with students, working people, elegant ladies with furs, and little, old Babushkas beating on metal soup bowls. I couldn’t help it, the demonstrations were impossible to avoid. After work I just took the first demonstration heading home.
The government lined the streets with heavily armed paramilitaries recruited from Bosnian Serb refugees who had no connection with the local people - because the army announced they would not leave their barracks or fire on civilians.
The president’s wife, Mira Markovic or “the Red Queen,” made no secret she wanted the paramilitaries to fire on the demonstrators, but ultimately couldn’t find anyone willing to give the order. The order went down as far as it could go, to a vice-police chief who refused even after they had his son beaten up.

Finally, they had to cave in to the demands of the protesters, and the regime’s days were numbered. In revenge, they had the vice-chief murdered with machine guns Chicago-style, in a pizzeria not far from my work.

Milosevic had to resign from the presidency of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 2000 and ultimately died in prison while on trial in the Hague for crimes against humanity.

That’s how tyrannies fall, and that’s what we should watch for in Iran. Whether the demonstrators win this round or not, my gut tells me this is the death rattle of a dying regime.

Maybe later than sooner - this regime may indeed be willing to shoot down demonstrators by the hundreds. But if it does, it'll never be able to pretend legitimacy again, and our diplomatic president will have a really hard time explaining how his silver tongue will fix everything.

What's going on in Iran?

2009-06-18T09:07:00.000-07:00

Note: This appeared as the weekend editorial in the Valley City Times-Record.

Lots of trouble it seems. Supporters of opposition candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi in the recent presidential race are claiming President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stole the election.

There are riots in the streets of the capitol Tehran which have spread to other cities, and reports of demonstrators being killed.

So did Ahmadinejad steal the election, as all three opposition candidates claimed? It's hard to tell. It's not like he wouldn't, the results were announced suspiciously quickly and nobody really believed that he'd go quietly if he did lose.

Obviously, given the looming danger that a country ruled by crazy people will soon be a nuclear power, a lot of folks in Washington must be hoping this is the beginning of the end of the reign of the ayatollahs.

On the other hand, every time America meddles with Iran it gets burned. Iranians are still mad about Mohammad Mosaddeq, Prime Minister of Iran from 1951 until 1953 when he was overthrown by a coup d'état sponsored by the U.S. and Britain after he nationalized foreign oil companies.

They hold grudges longer than we do, since we seem to have all but forgotten the Iranian hostage crisis when Islamic radicals held American diplomatic personnel for 444 days in 1979-80. Former hostages say they seem to remember a guy who looked a lot like Ahmadinejad among their captors.

President Obama has taken a cautious, non-committal stance, though for once France and Germany are actually making forceful protests.

So who are these people in this “far off country of which we know little”? (Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain on Czechoslovakia after the German invasion.)

Iran is an ancient country, once one of the largest, most powerful empires in the world back when it was called Persia. Iranians are not Arabs and get testy if you make that mistake. Iran means “Land of the Aryans,” and today is still the 18th largest country in the world with a population of over 70 million. And of course, they have oil.

Iranians are mostly Muslims, but Shia, a sect whose adherents make up about one-third of all Muslims worldwide. And to make things interesting, there are minority communities of Baha'is, surviving Zoroastrians (the ancient indigenous religion of Persia), Yazidis, Iranian Jews, and no-fooling devil worshipers.

There are doctrinal differences between Shiites and the majority Sunni Muslims, but the division basically goes back to an ancient power struggle over the leadership of Islam.

When the Prophet Muhammad died in 632 A.D. Shiites believe Ali, Muhammad's cousin and son-in-law, was his rightful successor. However, Ali didn't take power for 35 years, while three Caliphs rose and fell. He finally took power in 656 A.D. after the third Caliph was assassinated, and ruled until 661 A.D. when he was assassinated in turn. After that it gets really complicated.

What makes it so difficult for westerners to wrap their heads around politics in the Islamic world is, there's little difference between religion and politics.

Until the Islamic Revolution of 1979, Iran was a monarchy ruled by a dynasty all of three generations old which ruled from 1925. It replaced another dynasty which ruled Iran from 1794 to 1925. That's the pattern, from time to time a vigorous new dynasty from the outlands rides in a takes over, but must rule through the educated administrative class which provides continuity.

The tradition was broken when the revolution did away with kings because the last Shah was a cruel tyrant – that and he was trying to drag Iran kicking and screaming into the 20th century.

So are the demonstrators going to overthrow the tyrant and create a liberal democracy so we can all be buds again? Would be nice.

However we should remember that Ahmadinejad is only the president. Above him is Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, head of the council of Muslim jurists that wields the real power.

Khamenei can always throw Ahmadinejad to the mob and say, “See? All fixed now.”

Economics: a short guide to the dismal science

2009-06-12T09:07:00.000-07:00

Note: This appeared as the weekend editorial in the Valley City Times-Record.

I suppose everybody agrees we're in an economic crisis now. Unfortunately that's about all everybody agrees on.

The president has his economic advisors working on the problem. The loyal opposition has their own opinions about what caused it and what to do about it.

George Bernard Shaw said, “If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion.”

So if the experts disagree, what hope can we poor mortals have to understand the problem and evaluate any proposed solutions?

Years ago a distinguished economist, once advisor to presidents, at the end of his life revealed a closely guarded secret – economics is not all that complicated. In fact he said, all the economics you need to be an advisor to presidents is taught in the the Intro course for college freshmen.

The basic principles of economics are simple, quite easy to understand, and don't even involve math. When you get to the application, the details of production and consumption and measurement thereof, is where the math and razzle-dazzle comes in.

The 19th century historian Thomas Carlyle called economics “the dismal science.” Most people think it's because economics is complicated and boring. I suspect it's because economics tells you what you can't have.

The first principle of economics is: there's not enough of what we want for everybody. (The first principle of politics is to assure the electorate you can fix this.)

The second principle of economics is: to get something you want, you must give up something you want less, if only your time. (Political careers rely on telling the electorate the choices won't be painful.)

That's what's dismal about it, you can't have something for nothing. Unfortunately, the desire for something for nothing is part of human nature.

I once had an argument with an Englishwoman about the superiority of the British National Health Service. I pointed out the service is lousy by American standards. She countered that it's free, unlike our inhumane American system.

I said, “No it's not.”

She huffily informed me that she was after all English, and knew very well what British health service costs.

“I understand that,” I replied, “but it's still not free. Because nothing is. If you didn't pay for it, it means somebody else did – and not by choice.”

There's a reason paying for some things is not left up to individual choice. Economists call it the “common good,” or “free rider” problem. Things like infrastructure, police and national defense benefit everybody, whether they paid for them or not.*

But whether General Motors stays in business concerns me very little, as long as I can still buy a Ford or a Toyota. I feel for the Detroit autoworkers, honestly I do. But that money the government is giving them to make cars I don't want to buy is money I don't have to pay for my retirement, my kids education, or a car I'd rather buy.

How democratic governments get away with taking from many people, to give to a few people, is explained by a principle economists call, “concentrated benefits/distributed costs.” This simply means the amount any one special interest is able to extract from us, in direct subsidies or price supports, is not enough to complain about. Until we're nickel-and-dimed to death.

But for the special interests, those nickels and dimes add up to a lot.

Shaw explained it even simpler, “A government that robs Peter to pay Paul, can always count on the support of Paul.”**

* Libertarian purists and anarchists sail under the slogan "taxation is theft" and say all taxation is coercive and thus immoral.

No libertarian/anarchist theory has yet successfully demonstrated how a complex society can be maintained without tax levees.

On the other hand, nobody has satisfactorily explained how taking money by threat of force is different from theft either. Once you admit the right of taxation, how do you justify saying what amount is "too much"? How is 10% just and 50% unjust?

** Since Shaw was a Fabian Socialist and an admirer of both Hitler and Stalin, it is not clear to me whether he was speaking approvingly of this as a tactic or not.

Why are you so calm? Why am I so calm?

2009-06-06T05:05:00.000-07:00

I've been wondering lately why I've maintained such a state equanimity while watching the news.

I started by wondering why the heck the country as a whole is so calm.

Yes, yes I know. Everybody is worried about their jobs, their homes and their 401 Ks. What they don't seem to be worried about is the fact that the president of the United States just tossed a long-established body of law in the shredder with a wave of his hand.

I'm referring (among other things) to firing of the CEO of GM, the overturning of creditor seniority in the Chrysler debt, and oh by the way the nationalization of a huge chunk of the auto industry. (You vill drive a peepuls vagen, und you vill like it!)

And this from a president who got testy when asked if he were a socialist!

Why isn't the whole damn country outraged?

For that matter, why aren't I outraged? There was a time this would have had me foaming at the mouth and climbing the walls.

You know, the only really serious analysis in broadcast media of the whole economic situation I see is on Glen Beck on FOX. GB regularly brings on really first-rate economists like Thomas Sowell, who go into technical detail that Common Wisdom says the American people are supposed to be too impatient to sit still for. And his ratings are waaay high.

Not bad for a guy that started out in stand-up comedy. (And yes, the obvious rejoinder has occurred to me.)

But even on FOX they seem eerily calm, all things considered.

Maybe purely economic issues just don't grab people the way say, mass internments or ethnic cleansing would.

Maybe two generations of indoctrination in universities, and increasingly at the secondary and even primary levels have readied our people for socialism. Or at least the variety of socialism technically called fascism, if anybody cared to use the correct term.*

Maybe those of us who aren't with the program have just become resigned to the notion that this country just has to have a fling with socialism/fascism again, as we did in the Wilson and Roosevelt eras.

After all, market processes seem uncertain, chaotic, often confusing and more than a little scary. The idea that order and predictability can be imposed on them is very tempting...

Terribly, disastrously wrong of course, but tempting.

Or perhaps, just perhaps, a fair number of people have reached the conclusion that this time maybe we're not going to pull back from the brink.

Maybe an increasing number of people fear that the long argument we've had since the beginning of this country is not going to be settled by talk and compromise this time.

The argument between those who believe if you just take away the restraints of power those surly, suspicious curmudgeons who created the Constitution put upon high office, they'll be free to create heaven on earth; and those who don't figure we'll ever get to heaven this side of the grave and mind your own damn business thank you very much!

If you go here: http://blogs.moneycentral.msn.com/topstocks/archive/2009/05/29/obama-and-supreme-court-nominee-sonia-sotomayor-send-gun-stocks-soaring.aspx

you'll find the MSN MoneyBlog TopStocks.

Obama's court pick, Sotomayor, keeps gun stocks soaring
Posted May 29 2009, 01:52 PM by Louis Navellier Rating: Filed under: investing, economy, Politics

President Obama's nomination of federal appeals court Judge Sonia Sotomayor to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter heralds yet another victory for gun-makers. Yes, you read that right.

Let me explain.

While most investors have been rightly focused on the crisis in the markets and economy lately, some Americans have been focusing on other political issues, namely the Second Amendment.

They wonder, will the Obama Administration and new Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor put the right to bear arms in jeopardy? Clearly, many think so, as evidenced by an increase in gun sales and an associated rally in gun stocks.

Followed by some stock jargon. Then the author inserts one of those unsupported stealth opinions that journalists get away with too damned often.

But it's not just Sotomayor's nomination that has been lifting the gun-makers. The recession has helped, too.

Buying protection

You wouldn't think a recession as deep as the one we've been experiencing would be a boon to gun sales, but many citizens are arming themselves expressly because of the recession. You see, the recession has brought massive budget cuts to many municipalities. That means less fire and police protection. In response, gun sales are on the rise.

My response to this undercurrent is to recommend stocks that take advantage of the increase in gun sales.

Two of my favorite stocks to buy now make guns. More stock jargon.

I'm pleased to see that the author has done his homework and confirmed what has been quietly circulating around for a while, that gun sales are through the roof.

His contention that people are afraid of crime because the recession is causing cuts in police funding is bullshit.

The unstated premise in this enthymeme** is: when the economy tanks, desperate people turn to crime to live.

There is not now, nor has there ever been a shred of evidence for this in the U.S. People who've lost their jobs do not go to liquor stores and gas stations gun in hand, seeking money to pay their bills and feed their families. They go cap in hand to the local Department of Human Services.

The author's assertion that funding for police is being cut is problematic at best. My town has a population of less than 7,000 and is located in a county the size of Rhode Island with a population of about 12,000. The police have lots of fancy equipment, and are getting more from grant monies.

People are buying guns because they are afraid of their government.

And I don't mean loud-mouthed a$$hole kids screaming "Revolution! F**k the fascist pig-state of Amerikkka!" I mean people with jobs, families, etc. You know, a life.

Specifically, they are afraid of the federal government in Washington, D.C. By and large they get along just fine with local cops and admire and respect the military.

So who do they expect to need those guns against?

I wonder if anybody really knows right now. Maybe it's a generalized anxiety that's soothed by having the means of self-defence on hand. Maybe it's a suspicion that conflict will arise between civilian factions of our society. (Paging Dr. Tiller!)

Or maybe it's a fear of social movements that bode no good at all.

Now go to the Washington Times here: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/may/29/protecting-black-panthers/?feat=home_editorials

The editorial in full, and just to make sure you know it's just as bad or worse than it reads, the video:

Imagine if Ku Klux Klan members had stood menacingly in military uniforms, with nightsticks, in front of a polling place. Add to it that they had hurled racial threats and insults at voters who tried to enter.

Now suppose that the government, backed by a nationally televised video of the event, had won a court case against the Klansmen except for the perfunctory filing of a single, simple document - but that an incoming Republican administration had moved to voluntarily dismiss the already-won case.

Surely that would have been front-page news, with a number of firings at the Justice Department.

The flip side of this scenario is occurring right now. The culprits weren't Klansmen; they belonged to the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. One of the defendants, Jerry Jackson, is an elected member of Philadelphia's 14th Ward Democratic Committee and was a credentialed poll watcher for Barack Obama and the Democratic Party when the violations occurred. Rather conveniently, the Obama administration has asked that the cases against Mr. Jackson, two other defendants and the party be dropped.

The Voting Rights Act is very clear. It prohibits any "attempt to intimidate, threaten or coerce" any voter or those aiding voters.

The explanation for moving to dismiss the case is shocking. According to the Department of Justice: "These same Defendants have made no appearance and have filed no pleadings with the Court. Nor have they otherwise raised any other defenses to this action. Therefore, the United States has the right ... to dismiss voluntarily this action against the Defendants." In other words, because the defendants haven't tried to defend themselves, the Justice Department won't punish them.

By that logic, if a murderer doesn't respond to the charges, he should be let free. That's crazy.

The Obama Justice Department did take one action against one of the four defendants: It forbade him from again "displaying a weapon within 100 feet of any open polling location" in Philadelphia. Given that it already was illegal to display a weapon at a polling place and that he was not even enjoined from carrying a weapon at polling places outside of Philadelphia, it is hard to see what this order accomplished.

We asked the Justice Department if it was unable to provide any explanation for dropping the case. Justice press aide Alejandro Miyar merely said: "That is correct." Multiple times we asked both the department and the White House to comment on charges that the dismissals represented political bias. We received no substantive response.

Hans Von Spakovsky, a legal scholar at the Heritage Foundation and a former commissioner at the Federal Election Commission, tells us, "In my experience, I have never heard of the department refusing to take a default judgment... . If a Republican administration had done this, it would be front-page news and every civil rights group in the country would be screaming about it."

Consider that the behavior of the defendants was so bad that witness Bartle Bull, a former Robert F. Kennedy organizer who did extensive legal work on behalf of black voters in Mississippi, testified it was "the most blatant form of voter discrimination I have encountered in my life."

Eric Eversole, a former litigation attorney with the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, told us: "It is truly unprecedented for the Voting Section to voluntarily dismiss a case of such blatant intimidation. The video speaks for itself."

We couldn't agree more. After the 2000 Presidential election, Democrats complained about voter intimidation in Florida by pointing to a police car that had been two miles away from a polling place. The police didn't do anything to anyone, but their presence was deemed sufficient to vaguely intimidate people en route to the polls. In this case, the New Black Panther Party actually blocked access to a poll.

Unlike the Florida incident, this case involving the New Black Panthers screams out for tough justice. Instead, the Obama administration looks the other way. This all but invites racial violence at future elections.

Well-written, but this one also has a chickenshit conslusion.

"This all but invites racial violence at future elections," is either a tremendous understatement, wishful thinking, or just plain dumb. This doesn't "all but invite," it frakking guarantees!

I'm not going to speculate about the motives of the president and his supporters in congress. Fact is, I don't have a clue if he has any long-term motives, or is just possessed of the kind of youthful arrogant certainty that given the power, he could solve all the world's problems by next Tuesday after lunch.

(Various people have told me that President Obama reminds them of an imperious tribal chieftan, Adolf Hitler, or various unsavory characters. Actually, what he reminds me of is me in my teens and twenties. Now that's really scary!)

But I am going to make this observation: a managed economy is going to need a thug-corps. Not because of the motives of the rulership, not because they are consciously aiming at tyranny, but because the logic of the situation demands it.

People will not consent to have their lives regulated in this way, to this extent without coercion. Police do not like to be involved in civil/property disputes, the military is aware their oath is to the Constitution not the president, and the ranks of both are drawn from the ruled, not the rulers.

My guess is that a fair number of people have at least a vague intuition of this, and are preparing accordingly.

* I tell you again and again, buy and read Jonah Goldberg's "Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning." But wait for the paperback edition coming out soon. It's got a new afterword on Obama.

Goldberg gives a calm, well-reasoned argument supported by impeccable (and undeniable, that's why critics resort to name-calling and slander) research. But even Goldberg at the end seems to kind of lose steam, as if his conclusions are taking him to a place he doesn't want to go...

From a review by historian and former Leftist Ronald Radosh, "When Mr. Goldberg uses the term "liberal fascism," he is not offering a right-wing version of the left's smears. He knows it is a loaded term. What he is talking about is the historical idea of fascism: a corporatist and statist social structure that creates a deep reliance of its subjects on the government and engenders a sense of community and purpose. In American politics, this tendency toward statism has always been much more at home on the left than on the right."

** Enthymeme: in logic, a syllogism in which one of the two premises is assumed and unstated.

UPDATE: http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13788623&source=most_commented

In The Economist, "Soaring gun sales in Arizona."

American gun sales surged after Mr Obama was elected president. He had a voting record of raising the tax on guns and ammunition by 500%, and, on top of that, he hinted during the campaign that he might restrict gun sales and create a national registry of gun-owners. The election was seven months ago, and the buying spree has not flagged since. Data released by the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System, which serve as a gauge of actual sales, reported 1,255,980 checks in April 2009: a sixth monthly increase, and a 30.3% increase from the 940,961 reported last April.

20 years since the “incident” at the Gate of Heavenly Peace

2009-06-04T08:12:00.000-07:00

Note: A shorter version of this appeared as the weekend Op-ed in the Valley City Times-Record,

Thursday was the anniversary of what the Chinese government calls “the June 4 incident.” That nice bit of understatement describes the killing of somewhere between 241 and 2,600 protesters by the People's Liberation Army.

The first is the official government figure. The second is an early estimate by the Chinese Red Cross, which they now deny they ever said. Really. You must be confusing us with somebody else.

The Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 followed the sudden death of Hu Yaobang, former Secretary General of the Communist Party of China and prominent advocate of reform, from a heart attack. Hu had been forced to resign by the Central Committee of the Communist Party, and humiliate himself publicly in a “self-criticism” session.

A demand for a reversal of the verdict against Hu was the focal point for a growing demonstration in the 100-acre square in the heart of Beijing by Chinese students, workers, disillusioned Party members and masses of people who felt the longing people in communist countries had for anything resembling a normal life.

Protesting students erected a statue of the Goddess of Democracy, modeled on the Statue of Liberty with a Chinese face.

At the time I was a grad student at Oklahoma University, and helping a couple of Chinese students defect.

I'd gotten involved by helping Tang, an archeology student in our department, by proof reading his papers. I actually don't know how he'd gotten in, his pronunciation was horrible and his written English needed a lot of editing. And to give you an idea of how naive he was, he told me his original destination in the U.S. was Harvard, but a friend had talked him into coming to OU with him.

One evening at a party I was making small talk about history and made some off-hand remark about the good fortune of our country in having such a wealth of natural resources.

Tang burst out, “No! Here you are rich because you have freedom!”

“We've got to talk,” I said.

In the course of conversation, it turned out Tang desperately wanted to stay in America – and was an overstay on a J1 student visa.

The J1 visa allows one year of study in the U.S., after which the student must return to his home country and must wait two years before he or she is eligible to return. At the time, we had about 40,000 Chinese students in the U.S. on J1 visas.

It also turned out that Tang had been rather free with his pro-democracy sentiments and admiration of America, and had just discovered his room mate was an informer for Chinese Security. He found out when he got the phone bill, and saw the record of a few hundred calls to the Chinese consulate in Houston.

I couldn't help but laugh, “Tang this girl can't have been a professional if she didn't know all long distance calls are itemized on American phone bills. A real pro would sneak down to the pay phone on the corner.”

I introduced Tang, and his new fiancee Ying, to my housemate who was Director of Hispanic Student Services at the university, on the assumption he might know something about immigration problems.

All this time, the tension was building in Beijing at Tiananmen, the “Gate of Heavenly Peace.” We saw on TV that heroic, unnamed youth standing in front of a line of tanks, and making them back off.

Then the killing started and we all saw the face of a protester on the cover of Newsweek, lying on the pavement his face covered with blood.

The next day, the Chinese students on campus held a demonstration, and crossed their own Rubicon by signing a petition condemning the killings. I saw them on the oval carrying the American flag and singing the Star Spangled Banner.

Since the Vietnam war, the national anthem had left a bad taste in my mouth when I remembered young barbarians burning the American flag, and old scoundrels wrapping themselves in it. I hadn't sung the anthem myself in a long time, and here were all these Chinese kids singing their hearts out.

They were, in a word, awful. It's a difficult song at best and they were so off-key they needed a search party to find it. And in the middle of it I realized I was crying.

The rest is history. The protests were crushed, and a number of protesters tried and executed. But reportedly only workers, no students or intellectuals. The statue of the Goddess of Democracy was demolished. George Bush Sr. solved my friends' problem by unilaterally abrogating the visa treaty, and we got 40,000 new Americans.

But I came across the goddess years later, while out walking in Washington, D.C. There she was at the intersection of Massachusetts and New Jersey Avenues and G Street, NW, within view of the U.S. Capitol. She was chosen as the appropriate symbol for the Victims of Communism Memorial. There people from many lands lay flowers and light candles at her feet in memory of their own dead.

Wow, racism does that?

2009-05-30T05:16:00.000-07:00

If you go here: http://www.boston.com/news/health/blog/2009/05/experience_of_r.html

you'll find at bostom.com, in a regular feature "White Coat Notes: News from the Boston-area Medical Community," an article entitled "Perceived racism linked to weight gain, researchers say."

Hooo boy! As author Frances Kendall once said to me, "Everybody who touches that subject gets burned."

But, fools rush in...

Perceptions of racism -- from being treated with suspicion in a store to unfairness in employment or housing -- can heighten stress levels and affect health, research has shown. A new study from Boston University links these smoldering signs of racism to weight gain in black women, suggesting a possible explanation for the their higher obesity rates compared to white women.

Yvette Cozier, an epidemiologist at the Slone Epidemiology Center at BU, led a survey of more than 43,000 women enrolled in the long-running Black Women's Health Study. Writing in the June issue of Annals of Epidemiology, she and her co-authors describe participants' reports on their weight, body mass index, and perceptions of racism.

OK, research design looks OK at first glance. Though you're treading on shaky ground when using self-description of emotional states, as every competent researcher knows. The sample size certainly seems more than adequate.

At the beginning of the eight-year study, the women were asked if they sometimes felt they were treated poorly in a restaurant or store, whether they thought people considered them dishonest or less intelligent, and if they had felt unfairness on the job, in housing, or from police. The women, 21 to 69 years old at the study's outset, were placed in four groups based on how frequently they said they experienced these signs of racism. Their weight was recorded every two years from 1997 through 2005. Their waist circumference was measured at the beginning and end.

At the end of the trial, all the women had gained weight. But the women who said they felt higher levels of racism gained more weight and had bigger waist-size increases compared to the women who felt the least racism. That held true after accounting for factors such as education, geographic region, and beginning body mass index.

OK, the second variable is something that can be objectively measured and compared to the emotional states, and the extraneous variables seem to have been controlled for.

Now the conclusion:

"Racism is real and it has real effects," Cozier said in an interview. "It can result in real changes in the body."

"Racism is real..." no kidding? I thought it was a myth.

"...it has real effects." Well, I guess being insulted, assaulted, robbed, lynched or whatever are real enough to suit anyone's standards.

"It can result in real changes in the body."

Yep, getting shot or having the stuffings beat out of you results in some pretty real changes.

I'm sorry, I shouldn't mock the good doctor without knowing more about her. She isn't necessarily a public speaker, may have been quoted out of context, or may just have been searching for a rhetorical trope to introduce her conclusions with.

That particular trope may have a formal name in rhetoric. Where I come from we call it, "the triumphant discovery of the obvious."

Higher stress changes hormone levels that influence food choices and where in the body fat is stored, the authors write. That makes an association between the stress of racism and weight gain, particularly around the waist, fit with other research in humans and animals, they say.

This is doctor-speak for pure speculation. What they dare not speak about is the established fact that people of different races store fat differently, apparently due to climatological adaptations. This may or may not be relevant - but it seems relevant that it wasn't even included in the discussion.

Cozier said she was interested in learning whether there was another reason beyond diet and exercise that could explain why black women tend to be heavier than white women. Her study did not include white women, so a direct comparison is not possible, she said, but the unique experience of racism appears to be a potential contributor to the difference.

"Her study did not include white women..." so she thinks the controlling variable is racial discrimination, and didn't examine a control group which presumably doesn't experience it?

Folks, I haven't read the full article, published in the 'Annals of Epidemiology' (and when the heck did overweight become an epidemic?) but this looks an awful lot like shopping for research results to support your conclusion.

What seems to me a far more defensible speculation (I won't say conclusion, since the study was not designed to test this) is that weight gain has a lot to do with how far you think you're in control of your life, versus how much you think it's controlled by external factors you have no control over - such as other people's attitudes.

Weight control is by far the simplest physical problem to prescribe for. (In the vast majority of circumstances, I know there are medical conditions that complicate it.) And it's quite possibly the most difficult prescription to carry out.

You eat more than you burn, you gain. You burn more than you eat, you lose. Period.

I.e. there is no "beyond diet and exercise." That's not even medicine, it's physics.

And yes, I'm acutely aware that it's easier said than done. A lot of things are. Everyone who's ever tried to quit smoking knows that.

I'll also add that the researcher didn't even touch upon another well-known observation. Body image problems seem to be a White girl thing in this country. Anorexia and bulemia seem to be confined pretty exclusively to white teens and 20-somethings.

The brightest spot in all of this is, the comments section.

The first 11 out of 110:

Couldn't an underlying insecurity lead to both weight gain and higher sensitivity to apparent slights? How is the causality demonstrated here?

Posted by pg May 26, 09 07:24 PM Obviously racism hasn't gone away - your study proves it - you are a racist!

Posted by Don Johnson May 26, 09 07:58 PM Come on. Of all the stories I've read today this has got to be the most outrageous. Honestly, some people are going to try and use every trick in the book to blame their bad habits, whether it be eating, drinking, smoking whatever on someone or something else.

It seems that no one is accountable anymore for their actions in this country. Let's see, why don't we blame the recession on "blue eyed white males" which the president of Brazil recently did.

Posted by Jim May 26, 09 07:59 PM If McCain were president, George Bush would be linked to weight gain.

Posted by lol May 26, 09 08:08 PM It is clear, very clear, that social experiences of discrimination against lead to pernicious hormonal and behavioral changes. It is not just a matter of habits, there are social and structural determinants of health. People under stress do not have the same chance of controlling themselves when eating. If they are under acute stress, the corticotropin hormone makes them to eat less. Right after the acute stress, the corticoids are still high and the corticotropin low and they eat a lot. That is well known. The weakness of this study is the utilization of perception of discrimination against as a measure of racism. I do not know how well correlated are other measures of racism with perception of racism. I also do not know what other measures of racism are reliable.

Posted by John Smith May 26, 09 08:21 PM I don't know whether to laugh or cry. This is, quite possibly, the most asinine thing I've ever read.

Posted by urkiddinme May 26, 09 08:24 PM I have felt all the the feelings associated with the discriminatory practices listed above. If you want to discuss a problem, let's discuss self-esteem and the effects of being a woman, especially an aging woman, in this society. Let's do a study on that and see what results we get! That said, everyone has felt rejected and has been treated unfairly: male, female, black white, Asian, Hispanic, Christian, Jew, young old, etc. Yes, there is discrimination in this world and it is not restricted to black women.

Something else to consider is that just maybe the store clerk, policeman, waitress

or other perpetrator of "discriminatory" behavior was just having a bad day and took it out on thew closest person. It happens to me all the time and I'm not a black woman.

Posted by Kathie May 26, 09 08:28 PM Jim,
I was going to write something, but you covered it all.

Posted by Joe May 26, 09 08:30 PM I had to make sure I hadn't inadvertently gone to The Onion after seeing this headline

Posted by Jack May 26, 09 08:33 PM One who suffers feelings of inferiority regardless of race or ethnic background, is more likely to eat unhealthy comfort food. I agree with the commenters above. This is a ridiculous correlation. Pray tell, who funded this foolish study?

Posted by Noname49 May 26, 09 08:49 PM Wow. Low self-esteem due to racism causes obesity. How 'bout we just say low self-esteem = bad self image. Hmmmm. Duh. Next up... candy is sweet. Also, this just in, people that yell have sore throats. How about, 'People who are constantly put down have a tendency to snap?' Ooooh. Does someone actually pay money for studies like this?

Thank God! Maybe the lunatics haven't quite taken over the asylum quite yet.

Note: When I was copy editing for the Polish Academy of Science Annual Review, I got a paper that measured fat gain in Polish women, correlated with the education level of their husbands. The study found that women's tendency to stay slim correlated with higher levels of education of their husbands.

Note: Other posts about racism can be found here. So if you're going to write in and call me a racist - read the damn things first.

http://rantsand.blogspot.com/2006/11/racism-versus-culturism.html

http://rantsand.blogspot.com/2007/02/racism-some-questions.html

http://rantsand.blogspot.com/2007/10/that-which-must-not-be-said-and-why-it.html

Recognizing Israel's "right to exist"

2009-05-28T15:41:00.000-07:00

It's on the news again. The president is trying to get Israel to make territorial concessions in the hope their enemies will be satisfied, make peace, and recognize Israel's right to exist.

I can't believe I'm still hearing this garbage about getting Hamas, Abbas and Whatsisass to recognize Israel's "right to exist."

The very term Israel's right to exist is a lie.

Israel's enemies aren't against the existence of a Jewish nation, they're against the existence of Jews period. End of story.

This isn't like the cycles of conquest we're used to hearing about from European history. Poland was conquered and dismembered between Russia, he Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Prussia for 135 years - but there were still Poles.

Those powers subjugated and sometimes attempted to assimilate many various subject nations. They didn't try to exterminate them genetic stock, lock and barrel.

But that's what the jihadists want to do.

And how do you know this, you terrible, xenophobic, racist, intolerant person? (I hear you say.)

Oh gee, let me think for a minute...

Could it be because they say so? Loudly, conspicuously, and at every opportunity?

Call it a hunch.

Memorial Day, 2009

2009-05-21T11:05:00.001-07:00

Note: This appeared as an op-ed in the weekend edition of the Valley City Times-Record.

"On, sons of Greece! Set free / Your fatherland, your children, wives, / Homes of your ancestors and temples of your gods! / Save all, or all is lost!" Aeschylus, The Persians

Those lines were written by the ancient Greek playwright Aeschylus. For his part in creating the art of tragic drama, he won immortal glory. Winner of the highest honors his own and other Greek cities had to offer, he wrote this epitaph inscribed on his tomb.

“Under this monument lies Aeschylus the Athenian, Euphorion's son, who died in the wheatlands of Gela. The grove of Marathon, with it's glories, can speak of his valor in battle. The long-haired Persian remembers and can speak of it too.”

There is not a word about his fame as an artist, only about his service as a common foot soldier in the battle that saved his city and his civilization.

This Monday we celebrate Memorial Day, a day set aside to remember our countrymen and women killed in our country's wars.

Memorial Day is not a day for the glorification of war, celebration of past victories, or lamentation for heroic defeat. It is a day to remember that for each and every American who died in a war, whether that war was inevitable or avoidable, the world ended for someone and was forever damaged for others.

It is fashionable in some circles these days to be “against war,” and to decry the horrors of war.

Congratulations. Only a lunatic is “for” war.

"I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity," said Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander in Europe World War II.

The sixth century Byzantine general Flavius Belisarius, considered by some military historians to be the greatest field commander in history, said, "All men with even a small store of reason know that peace is chiefest of blessings."

Gen. Robert E. Lee, who Winston Churchill called, “one of the noblest Americans who ever lived,” said, “It is good that war is so terrible, lest we should learn to love it.”

Does anyone think their moral authority to condemn war is greater than these men's?

Our oldest living veterans went to war in a time when men like Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Hideki Tojo commanded armies and fleets that laid waste to nations.

Our fellow-citizens in today's military serve at a time when weapons of terrifying power are in danger of falling into the hands of rogue nations, failed states and international terrorists.

Some day there may come a time when men “shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they study war any more.”*

Some day perhaps, Memorial Day will be “a dim remembering of a cursed time, when man was a wolf to man.”**

But that day is not yet.

And until that day comes, men and women in uniform, our countrymen, must continue to put themselves between their homes and those who would destroy them. And we must continue to honor those who did not fail in their duty, lest the day come when there is no one left willing to stand between our homes and war's desolation.***

* Isaiah II

** Bartolomeo Vanzetti to the judge who condemned him to death, "Your laws, your courts, your false god, will be a dim remembering of a cursed time when man was a wolf to man." Very eloquent, especially for a man for whom English was a second language. Too bad the sumbitch was guilty. Unfair trials sometimes convict guilty people too.

***O, thus be it ever when freemen shall stand,
Between their loved homes and the war's desolation;
Blest with vict'ry and peace, may the heav'n-rescued land
Praise the Pow'r that hath made and preserv'd us as a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause, it is just,
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust"
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

Fourth verse, it's really a better poem than it is a song IMHO.

Oh God, not this "sophisiticated European" crap again

2009-05-16T06:09:00.000-07:00

If you go here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/so-john-edwards-had-an-af_b_203742.html

to the Huffington Post, you'll find an article by a Johann Hari, a columnist for the London Independent, entitled, "So Jonathan Edwards Had an Affair -- Grow Up, Adultery is not a Political Issue."

Hari invokes the Monica Lewinski scandal:

"Memo to America: Grow. Up. Have you forgotten the lesson of Lewinsky so soon? While al-Qa'ida plotted a murderous attack on the US, the twice-elected president was busy being impeached over a few bouts of consensual oral sex. It meant nothing. It was nothing. But it skewed your politics for years."

Hari is half-right here. Outraged and uptight Republicans focused on the sex aspect of l'affair Lewinski to the point where the real issue was totally obscured.

The real issue was perjury - lying under oath, and witness tampering. And that damn well does impact the issue of whether a public official is fit to serve.

A society can survive a high crime rate, even a high violent crime rate. What it cannot survive is allowing the trivialization of perjury, and witness and jury tampering. Tolerate these - for any reason, and you haven't got a justice system left.

A lawyer once pointed out to me, that if a prosecutor finds evidence of witness tampering by a murder suspect, many would happily drop the murder charge if they could send the perp up on the tampering charge.

But our pols evidently don't have to live under the same law as the rest of us.

Hari goes on:

"It doesn't have to be this way. Continental Europe has a mature model where politicians' affairs are considered irrelevant. The idea a French President would be debarred from office for sleeping with somebody other than his wife is preposterous.

Talking about "a right to know" about affairs is silly. We no more have a right to know about Edward's sex life than we have a right to know what he looks like naked."

True enough. When Francoise Mitterand died, his wife and his mistress (with her daughter by him) walked in the funeral procession hand-in-hand.*

I did not then, nor do I now give a frak who Bill Clinton, or Jonathan Edwards, sleeps with.** If I were the president of this land, I'd have a hareem in the East Wing of the White House. (Uh, you know I'm kidding honey. Just making a point!)

I care about taking an oath seriously, and I care about courage.

Caught out in lies that were certain to be uncovered eventually, neither of these wimps had the guts to look the press in the eye and say, "Who I sleep with is none of your damn business!"

Once a pol does this and makes it stick, then maybe we'll grow up and become tres European.

*Interesting side note. Some years back I asked a Japanese fellow-grad student about then-Prime Minister Tanaka, and how the Japanese press treated the fact that he had a traditional arrangement with a concubine and second family in a house across town from his wife and primary family. (I'd read it in Newsweek.)

She answered, "Oh, does he?"

She wasn't shocked you understand. She just didn't know. Which answered my question.

**Although I've got to say, what the hell is wrong with these guys' taste? They've got access to some of the most beautiful women on the continent - and they get caught with a pudgy Valley Girl and a skank groupie.

The administration and those photos

2009-05-14T09:24:00.000-07:00

Note: This appeared as an op-ed in the weekend edition of the Valley City Times-Record.

"There were young knights among them who had never been present at a stricken field. Some could not look upon it and some could not speak and they held themselves apart from the others who were cutting down the prisoners at My Lord's orders, for the prisoners were a body too numerous to be guarded by those of us who were left. Then Jean de Rye, an aged knight of Burgundy who had been sore wounded in the battle, rode up to the group of young knights and said: 'Are ye maidens with your downcast eyes? Look well upon it. See all of it. Close your eyes to nothing. For a battle is fought to be won. And it is this that happens if you lose."
Froissart’s Chronicles, 14th century

President Obama, announced he would authorize release of photos showing prisoners undergoing “enhanced interrogation.” Right-wingers announced the imminent downfall of the American republic.

Then he changed position and said he wouldn't. Left-wingers announced the imminent downfall of the American republic.

Reportedly, top US commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan personally told the President they opposed release, arguing it would make the US mission more difficult.

Most of the controversy concerns “waterboarding,” a technique used on three terrorists a total of six-and-a-half minutes. It's also routinely used on U.S. military personnel training to resist interrogation.

One of the terrorists the CIA is known to have waterboarded is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

The 9/11 Commission claims Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was “the principle architect of the 9/11 attacks.” Under questioning he boasted, “I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew Daniel Pearl, in the City of Karachi, Pakistan.”

Pearl's body was found cut into ten pieces in a shallow grave in the outskirts of Karachi in 2002. A video of Pearl's last minutes was posted on the Internet, and featured on snuff-DVDs sold as light entertainment in parts of the Middle East where they don't like us much.

The arguments about “enhanced interrogation” concern whether the techniques used are, or are not torture. And given they are, is torture ever justified?

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said the CIA didn't tell her they would actually go out and do what they described in the briefings she attended. The minutes of the meetings show, to put it bluntly, that she's lying her head off.

Anyone who says they'd never use torture under any circumstances is lying their head off. Tell anyone that someone they love more than their own life is in the hands of Khalid's buddies, and watch them join the “waterboarding is for sissies” camp in two seconds.

The question is, how far can we go before what we do destroys us and the ideals that define us as a civilization? Is there too high a price to pay for survival?

Maybe – but you have to survive to have that discussion.

We are justifiably proud of the progress we've made since the not-so-long-gone days torture was acceptable legal practice, and executions and bear baiting were public entertainment. What we too-often fail to realize is, that progress has not been evenly distributed across the globe.

Our enemies come from a culture which holds public beheadings - and parents bring their children and let them kick the head around like a soccer ball. Where to murder someone who insults you, your clan, or your religion is praiseworthy. Where mothers teach sons if their wife, daughter, or sister is raped, their duty is to murder her.

Our enemies think we are soft, and their ruthlessness will overcome our power. Whether they are right or not, is a still-open question.

So Mr. President, I'd say go ahead and release those photos. If we allow these things in our name, we ought to be willing to look at them.

But if we do, let's look at that Danny Pearl video too.

This just in....

2009-05-13T15:02:00.001-07:00

I just received this comment on an old post of mine from October 28, 2006, "Iraq is not Vietnam."

Here: http://rantsand.blogspot.com/2006/10/iraq-is-not-vietnam.html#comments

At 11:47 PM, Blogger Deepak said…

I'm sure those thousands of dead Iraqis have you to thank, genius. You know that Saddam had no ties to bin Laden, right? It's pretty obvious that you're a half-fascist, not a libertarian. Stop calling yourself that, you McCarthyite pig!

Always nice to hear from a fan.

The answer I posted:

Deepak,

It's difficult to understand what you're referring to, since your post is so brief and consists entirely of name calling, i.e. "half-fascist" and "pig."

And since you use a nom-du-blog, have provided no links to a website, and have no public profile available, I must refrain from speculating and limit myself to only those conclusions justified by the evidence you provide.

1) You can't argue, you can only call names.

2) You're a coward who hides behind the anonymity of the Internet.

As to your demand I stop calling myself a libertarian, make me.

Waiting to hear from you Deepak, but not anonymously, nor holding my breath.

In the meantime, you might brush up on some more of my old columns:

http://rantsand.blogspot.com/2007/08/my-martial-arts-study-pekiti-tirsia.html

http://rantsand.blogspot.com/2008/10/martial-arts-research-combatives-part-1.html

http://rantsand.blogspot.com/2008/10/martial-arts-research-combatives-part-2.html

http://rantsand.blogspot.com/2008/11/martial-arts-research-part-3-combatives.html

And after you're through wetting yourself...

Hey, I won something!

2009-05-11T15:21:00.001-07:00

No, it wasn't the lottery. Not yet, and you won't hear about it from me when I do...

What I won was First Place in the North Dakota Newspaper Association Better Newspaper Contest, in the category of Personal Columns - Serious, among newspapers of 12,000 or less circulation.

I posted it here http://rantsand.blogspot.com/2008/06/fathers-day-lessons-for-older-dad.html

I also won second place in the category of Picture Story, for a photo series on a drill the first responders of our community staged in front of the local high school - very fake-gory it was and a great drill.

It seems very appropriate on the day I'm going to pick up my family at the airport. They've been evacuated to my parents home on the east coast, and it's given me an excellent opportunity to rediscover something.

Being a bachelor sucks.

The house is eerily un-haunted. There are no sounds at night, no breathing on the other side of bed, and beyond her in the crib. And beyond the crib in the next room.

I'd have welcomed the company of a ghost.

Now I'm getting my family back - can the lottery be far behind?

A recommendation and my plan for voluntary term limits

2009-05-08T17:34:00.000-07:00

Have a look here: http://www.pjtv.com/video/Afterburner_/The_Cost_of_Media_Bias/1736/6337/

at Bill Whittle (my favorite blogger) video-commenting on media bias. Chapter and verse, chapter and verse.

God I love the video age! It's getting harder and harder to maintain hypocrisy and lies in public anymore.

Whittle speaks of an aristocratic congress-for-life. Some say the cure for this is term limits.

Well, term limits have been passed a few times, and just as quickly overturned, or delayed forever by challenges in the courts. Does anyone really think the political class will willingly put up with exclusion from the gravy train?

So I have "a modest proposal." We propose a social contract with those who would undertake the noble sacrifices of public service. Which (so they say) are a burden they undertake for the Greater Good of Us All.

You altruistic public servants can have three consecutive terms in office.

After one, you have to spend at least an equal amount of time making an honest living before you run for any public office again.

Or, you can have two terms in office. After which you spend an equal amount of time in jail.

Or, you can have three consecutive terms in office, after which we take you out and shoot your sorry ass because you're hopeless.

And speaking of pictures...

2009-05-03T07:32:00.000-07:00

We had an exchange at the office the other day, which I'm still chuckling over, for reasons I can't quite explain.

The weather outside was foul, and our town is still rationing sewer use. The durn college sports auditorium electronic billboard is flashing, "Yellow is mellow, brown flush it down," if that gives you an idea.

At any rate, I got an email from my father with pics of my wife and kids. They're staying with my parents on the east coast while the emergency lasts.

(I suspect my boy became instantly popular in school after telling his new schoolmates there were no toilets in our town, "Ewwww gross!")

At any rate, I was telling a female colleague in the office about the pics, and how the sun is shining on the bay and everything looks so beautiful.

"I don't want to see them," she said grumpily.

"Damn she looks good!" I remarked.

"Steve!" she said, shocked.

"Hey, that's my wife I'm talking about."

What can I say? Nine years and I'm still crazy about my wife.

There was a time that was considered shocking. The Polish King Jan III Sobieski, who led the Polish-German forces that relieved the siege of Vienna by the Turks, had a wife Maryszenka. Their relationship was the scandal of Europe at the time.

You see, one doesn't know how to put this delicately, but the king was known to be in love with his wife.

That just wasn't done!

Polish popular movies still make fun of this. I saw one in which foreign ambassadors come to the palace to meet with the king, and the palace staff find him in a corner enjoying a little slap-and-tickle with the queen.

Since the king was often away on campaign in those turbulent times, they wrote to each other a lot. It's a pity their correspondence hasn't been translated, I'm told it deserves a place among the masterpieces of delicately erotic literature.

"The act of defending any of the cardinal virtues has today all the exhilaration of a vice."

G.K. Chesterton

Ooooo am I getting it now!

2009-05-01T05:53:00.000-07:00

Note: What follows is an editorial for the Valley City Times-Record. It follows a story I did, which is described in the editorial. The story was accompanied by two pictures. One of two North Dakota Highway Patrolmen in their shirtsleeves in the freezing water, and one of the rescue team working to save the life of the young lady whose car plunged into the frigid water.

In the picture you can clearly see her face. She remains in critical condition in a hospital in Fargo.

There has been some controversy about the picture, to say the least. The family of the accident victim did not like it at all, which I fully understand. They've got to be mad at somebody, and there really isn't anyone to be mad at: no other driver caused the accident, no pothole in the highway, not even a bartender who served one too many drinks. It was a damn goose in the road the driver swerved to avoid.

Reactions are mixed. A Fargo TV station called us and begged for the pictures. Others think it was tasteless. I'm sorry I can't reproduce the pic, but it's not my property anymore. What I saw, and I believe the pic shows, is brave and skillful men working their hearts out to save the life of a young woman who might be anyone's little girl.

Now, even as we speak, a loudmouthed sports caster on the local radio station is going on and on about how we only did it to show them up (absurd, they're a radio station) and I should be fired, blah, blah, blah.

At any rate, here's what I have to say about the incident:

***********************************************************************************

*Volunteers do their communities proud

Wednesday evening was hectic to be sure. I was on my way out of the office to follow a story when word came in that a woman was trapped in a car in Hobart Lake.

Following a fire engine to the scene, I saw personnel from the state Highway Patrol, Barnes County Sheriff's Office, Sanborn Fire Department, and Valley City/Barnes County fire, rescue and ambulance, not to mention the wrecker from Gille Auto. They were moving so quickly, smoothly, and with such coordination you'd think they did they did this every day.

Rescue Lt. Scott Magnuson, who led the team of divers who recovered the victim from the submerged car, rightly said the rescue was a team effort by a lot of people, starting with the witnesses who called in the report via cell phone. Remember when a witness would have had to drive to the nearest gas station to use a phone?

Highway Patrolmen and Sheriff's Deputies immediately established traffic control and secured the scene, a vastly under-appreciated part of any rescue effort.

A couple of the first Highway Patrolmen on the scene shucked their shirts and jumped in the frigid lake and located the car, saving the rescue team precious time. I was freezing my keister off just standing there fully clothed in the wind and rain.

All of them performed crucial roles, but the success of their efforts depended on the highly specialized training and equipment of the volunteer fire and rescue personnel.

Without the men and equipment; the wet suits, rubber boat, SCUBA gear, and tools, I have no doubt that good men would have killed themselves in a possibly futile attempt to rescue the victim. It takes nothing away from the professionals to say, our volunteers are awesome!

The tradition of volunteer responder has a long and honorable history. The first fire brigades were founded in ancient Rome, the Corpus Vigiles.

The all-volunteer, privately financed Royal National Lifeboat Institution, organized in 1824, has 272 lifeboats assigned to 210 stations in the British Isles. Since it's founding the RNLI has saved more than 124,000 lives, an average of three a day, at a cost of 435 crew members killed in the line of duty.

Volunteer responder services exist because small communities just flat can't afford to maintain highly trained full-time professionals for emergencies that are thankfully rare. In the United States, 73 percent of all firefighters are members of volunteer fire departments, according to the National Volunteer Fire Council.

The NVFC is a non-profit membership association representing the interests of the volunteer fire, EMS and rescue services, and serves as an information source regarding legislation, standards and regulatory issues.

On the web there is also VolunteerFD.org, a place for volunteer firefighters to come and share information with their fellow unpaid professionals. They operate the Sponsor a Firefighter program which suggests ways in which individuals, businesses, and communities can support their volunteer first-responders.

One way some communities support their volunteers, is to provide tax incentives to volunteer.

The IRS previously considered such benefits income subject to federal taxation, until Congressman John B Larson (D-Conn.) proposed the Volunteer Responder Incentive Protection Act (VRIPA). George Bush signed the bill into law, in December of 2008.

H.R. 3648 exempts all tax benefits provided by state and local units of government to volunteer firefighters and EMS personnel from taxation by the federal government. Additionally, the first $360 per year of any other type of benefit that a volunteer receives would be exempted from taxation.

VRIPA expires at the end of 2010. So if you'd like to do something for the men and women who guard your lives, you might make a note to write your congressman next year.

I'm back, and I've got an answer about China

2009-04-26T08:49:00.000-07:00

I've been in Vancouver for a week at the Fraser Institute seminar/course on economics for journalists, a great experience on which I'll be blogging anon.

I came back to a depressingly empty house, as I evacuated my family after the sewer system in the city was breached by floodwaters. Limited use has been restored - but we're still using port-a-potties stationed on street corners.

Vancouver is a city set in the most staggeringly beautiful setting I've ever seen, which made it doubly hard to come back, but duty calls...

At any rate, during a dinner discussion on how China may, or may not be liberalizing due to the benign influence of market economics, I raised the question of whether it matters if the gender imbalance in China creates tremendous civilization-wrecking instability.

For years I have been trying to find data on what the gender imbalance caused by China's one-child policy is, since wa-a-a-ay before I started to see it in print.

Well, now there are some figures: around 32 million extra boys in China, and getting worse in the younger, not yet pubescent age groups.

If you go here: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1550484

you'll find an article by Therese Hesketh, a lecturer at the Centre for International Health and Development at University College London, and Qu Jian Ding: Family size, fertility preferences, and sex ratio in China in the era of the one child family policy: results from national family planning and reproductive health survey.

The conclusion is: Since the one child family policy began, the total birth rate and preferred family size have decreased, and a gross imbalance in the sex ratio has emerged.

The funny thing is, the article is from 2006, the article on MSNBC here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30155400/

is from a few weeks ago. Look around and you find the MSM seems to have noticed this just recently.

The MSNBC article seems to summarize the point of the more technical BMJ article reasonably well. Briefly, the gender imbalance in post-pubescent males is very bad now. It's going to get much worse over the next 10-15 years as more boys grow up and experience that volcanic hormonal surge we all remember so fondly.

Many media articles quote Hesketh thusly, "If you've got highly sexed young men, there is a concern that they will all get together and, with high levels of testosterone, there may be a real risk, that they will go out and commit crimes."

I don't know if this is an example of that charming British understatement, or just plain dense. These numbers are not just a recipe for a high crime rate, this is a portent of war, revolution, and chaos on a scale not seen since World War II.

Oh, and by the way, India may be experiencing the beginning of a similar gender imbalance for the same reason, a preference for sons expressed in sex-selective abortion and female infanticide.

Pleasant dreams!

Pirates – hostis humani generis

2009-04-16T11:06:00.000-07:00

Note: This appeared as an op-ed in the Valley City Times-Record.

If you've been following the news, you know that Capt. Richard Phillips is free, and three Somali pirates won't be sailing under the Jolly Roger anymore.

To most people, this must seem like a pretty bizarre interlude amidst news of the economy, foreign affairs, etc. Most people are only marginally aware that there still are pirates in this day and age.

Piracy, the capture and looting of cargo transported by sea, is a very old business. Three-thousand-year-old wrecks of ships recovered by archaeologists from the Aegean Sea, show evidence their cargo was looted and the ships deliberately sunk.

The Roman statesman Cicero called pirates, hostis humani generis - “enemies of all mankind.”

The first foreign war fought by the United States was a Naval/Marine Corps expedition sent by Thomas Jefferson against the Barbary Pirate state of Tripoli, in what is now Libya. The capture of the pirate state's capitol is commemorated in the Marine Corps Hymn, “From the halls of Montezuma, to the shores of Tripoli...”

Piracy diminished, but never entirely died out, when steam ships became faster than any wooden sailing vessel. Steam ships required coal for fuel, and extensive infrastructure to build and maintain their steel hulls. Pirate ships which were formerly pretty self-sufficient when powered by wind, and able to affect their own repair and maintenance with available wood, just weren't able to catch merchant ships anymore.

In effect, civilization doomed piracy.

But piracy survived in places where ships have to pass through narrow seas near coasts not under the control of civilized states. The Gulf of Aden, the Straights of Malacca, the Philippine archipelago are all areas long dangerous to commercial shipping and wealthy yachtsmen.

In modern times, pirates operate from swift motorboats darting out from rugged coasts, or launched from harmless-looking mother ships.

Pirates, then and now, require a marketplace to sell stolen goods, and modern financial apparatus to arrange the transfer of ransom payments for captured ships and seamen.

And, just as in Jefferson's administration, they thrive because the merchant firms and governments they operate under find it easier and cheaper to pay ransom than take on the pirates.

In Jefferson's time the European states had been paying ransom for hundreds of years. If you were among those fortunate enough to be ransomed like Miguel Cervantes, author of Don Quixote. Some historians estimate that more Europeans were captured and taken into slavery in North Africa, than West Africans were taken into slavery in the Americas.

And in both cases, the slave catchers and sellers operated from North African Islamic states which grew rich on the trade.

Now U.S. ships and seamen are once again targets of pirates. President Barack Obama gave orders to act decisively at the discretion of the on-site Naval commanders, and deserves great credit for this. The Europeans are again playing the ransom game, and the pirates are even now holding dozens of European hostages and several ships awaiting ransom.

Congressman Donald Payne, (D-N.J.) chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee's subcommittee on Africa, traveled at some personal risk to assess the situation on the ground in Somalia, and also deserves credit.

Unfortunately, he also came back mouthing more of the “we have to address the root causes” drivel our civilization seems afflicted, and hamstrung by.

Congressman, permit me to explain the truth about “root causes.”

The reasoning of a pirate or any other extortionist goes like this, “You have it. I want it. I'm strong enough to take it. You're not strong enough to keep it.”

Keep that in mind and the path to a solution to this problem should be, if not easy, at least relatively straightforward.

Bias example

2009-04-12T06:21:00.000-07:00

Here's another example of the kind of thing I study in media bias. Not the open, conscious type of gatekeeping (a la the New York Times, which decides what you ought to know) but the unconscious, off-the-cuff turn of phrase that reveals the mindset of the speaker.

Last Sunday (Sunday before Easter) I caught Geraldo at Large on FOX. The subject was, men who go off their heads and kill or rob after losing jobs etc.

Now note one thing. FOX is widely known, and widely despised in some circles, as a "conservative" network. And in fact, you can see the opinions of some of the newsreaders on FOX displayed quite openly.

To my mind, that's the good thing about FOX. The positions of their talking heads is out in the open. On the other networks, they're "objective" you know.

Of course, they're nothing of the kind, and it shows to anyone paying attention.

And in point of fact, FOX employs more self-identified liberals than the other networks combined have open conservatives.*

One of them is of course, Geraldo Rivera.

At any rate, on the program, Geraldo asked two guests, "After all things were worse during the Reagan administration, unemployment was higher, my God... And in the 70s with those gas lines..." (Quoted from memory, I don't have recording devices ready at all times for this kind of thing. I have to get it on the fly.)

Notice what is missing, "in the 70s" NOT "during the Carter administration." He specifically mentioned the Reagan administration, then identified the Carter years only by decade.

That's the kind of thing I'm looking for - and I'd appreciate help. Examples from any point of view.

Happy Easter to all.

* There remains the question of whether FOX deliberately, or unconsciously chooses liberals to represent that point of view, who are kind of creepy, or macho-flash a$$es - or whether they just have to scrape the bottom of the barrel because liberals who are articulate and attractive are all welcome at the other broadcast outlets.

It is also worth noting that an analysis of campaign contributions by FOX employees a few years back, tilted slightly to the Democrats.

Why America can do nothing for Roxana Saberi

2009-04-10T08:43:00.000-07:00

Note: This appeared as an Op-ed in the Valley City Times-Record. You can google Roxana Saberi if you're unfamiliar with this case. Briefly, she's a Fargo resident, dual American-Iranian citizen, now in prison in Iran charged with espionage.

Her father is Iranian, her mother Japanese, and if there's any combination more likely to produce lovely daughters I'd like to hear about it. She is a former Miss North Dakota USA.

***

Fargo resident Reza Saberi, father of imprisoned journalist Roxana Saberi is in his native Iran, demanding the regime release his daughter.

I hate to say this, but lots of luck.

Roxana, a 31-year-old freelance reporter from Fargo, is in an Iranian prison charged with espionage. Reports indicate she has been living in Iran for six years, working as a freelance journalist reporting on the Islamic Republic, and stayed on after her permission to work as a journalist was revoked.

One report has it she was arrested buying, or attempting to buy, a bottle of wine, a big no-no in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The thought of a lovely young woman in prison in Iran gives one a queasy feeling. The worst jail in America is a five-star hotel in comparison with what passes for normal in Islamic countries. And news reports say she's in the infamous Evin prison. That's not good.

There are efforts underfoot to bring pressure on the Iranian government to release Saberi.

I would give a lot to be wrong about this, but there is probably nothing that can be done to help her from this country. She is going to have to rely on the whims of a capricious and probably clinically insane clique of thugs for mercy.

It could happen though. Ahmedinejad delighted in showing “king's mercy” to the British sailors and marines they caught at sea a few years back – after rubbing the UK's nose in their impotence to do anything about it, and their complete lack of support from their fellow EU members.

And, the President of the United States has made conciliatory gestures to Iran. He was answered with withering contempt, but it doesn't seem to have registered on him.

President Obama was also recorded on video bowing low to the King of Saudi Arabia, also known as “The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques,” and conspiracy buffs have been having a field day ever since, while the media studiously ignores yet another protocol blunder.

The White House denies the bow. So who are you going to believe, the President of the United States or your lying eyes?

But, if the President deigns to take notice of the Saberi case, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has stated publicly Saberi should be released, then it might just happen. Because nothing would trip President Ahmedinejad's trigger more than to have our president grovel publicly to him.

And, that's the only thing that has a chance of working, because legally the United States doesn't have a leg to stand on, even presuming the Iranians would be impressed by legalities.

Here's how I know. Saberi holds dual American and Iranian citizenship. My children are dual citizens of the U.S. and Poland. When our first child was born in Warsaw, we registered the birth with the Polish authorities and the American Embassy.

What they told us at the embassy was, they don't like dual citizenship, but they recognize it happens. The consequences are: my children must enter Poland on their Polish passports, and enter the U.S. on their American passports. Everywhere else they can whip out the passport that offers the cheaper visa.

Whichever country my son becomes of draft age in (if they have conscription), they've got him.

And here's the kicker, if a dual citizen is arrested in either country he/she holds citizenship in, the other can do nothing.

I think we'd better get used to seeing our president grovel.

UPDATE: April 18, According to the morning news, Roxana Saberi has been convicted of espionage in Iran, and sentenced to eight years in prison. We'll see what happens.

It could have been worse...

SHAME!

2009-04-03T12:46:00.000-07:00

Here's the still. Go here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JGK-xbXxMw&feature=related

for the video and see that it's not a trick of cherry-picking photos for an awkward or out-of-context shot.

The President, and his staff's ignorance of protocol, resulting in abominable rudeness to the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom pales before this.

That is the backside of the President of the United States you see, as he bows low to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.

You may recall, the President returned a bust of Winston Churchill on loan to the United States. And after receiving wonderfully tasteful and significant presents from Prime Minister Gordon Brown, gave him a set of DVD's that won't play on English sets and some trinkets from the White House gift shop.

If it wasn't a calculated insult, it was definitely tacky.

He also, by the way, took the Queen's hands in both of his. Protocol is for a quick touch of the hands. Michelle touched the Queen on the back, also not protocol. To be fair the Queen initiated a touch, so Michelle might actually have been invited to a greater intimacy than protocol stipulates.

Those of a conspiratorial bent will no doubt read very sinister motives into this. I think there is no need - even "innocent" ignorance in this case is appalling enough.

At this moment I am so furious I can barely see straight. Once and for all, AMERICAN CITIZENS DO NOT BOW TO FOREIGN MONARCHS GOD DAMN IT!

Much less the President of the United States! Innocent ignorance, or whatever motive you wish to ascribe to this. Our president has disgraced our country.

If it were a private citizen who'd done this, I'd say stay overseas because you haven't got a country to come back to.

I am going to be watching the MSM for reactions to this with great anticipation. I'll be watching to see how the MSM tries to 1) ignore, 2) make light of, 3) justify this.

Thank God for the Internet! It's very difficult to bury things anymore. (My wife saw it before I did - on the online Polish media.)

I have been a critic of the President; his ideology, his associates, and his policy. Nonetheless, I realize that these are differences of opinion, and my assessment of the soundness of his judgement, and have tried to express my differences in an appropriate tone.

But this is neither.

This is a disgrace.

Mr. President, you have disgraced our country. Every one of your countrymen who understands the symbolism of this gesture, giving the sign of submission to a foreign tyrant, is - or damn well should be, burning with shame right now.

Sandbagging for the flood

2009-04-02T07:45:00.000-07:00

Note: This appeared as an op-ed in the Valley City Times-Record

I went up to the North Dakota Winter Show building on Tuesday morning to put in a few hours sandbagging after the paper went to press.

Monday I'd seen the college students up there and I knew the high school students would be there taking the first shift.

So I drove up, parked my car and walked over to the sign-up desk. I'd covered this story enough to know they really need to be finicky about documenting everything for federal aid reimbursement, and that includes volunteer time.

“Where should I go?” I asked the gentleman at the desk.

“You know Daryl Stensland?” he said.

“Yeah, I think so.”

“See him, he's over there.”

So I go up to the volunteer fireman who's coordinating efforts on the floor.

“What should I do?” I ask.

“Grab a shovel and start filling,” he answers quite logically. “Three full shovels in each bag.”

Following his advice, I join a group of high school students at the nearest pile of sand. They're all paired up, shovelers and baggers. So I start filling bags solo.

There's a drill to this. Grab a bag and open it. Hold it with a couple of fingers while you use both hands to stick the shovel into the pile. Take out the shovel with your right hand near the blade and use it like a very big trowel to put in the bag. Put the bag down and get another shovelful with two hands. Shift grips, grab the bag with your left and pour in the sand. Repeat. Shift grips, grab the bag with your left, and put it aside.

Young girls around me are shoveling and grabbing bags that look like they're a significant fraction of their own weight and piling them on pallets.

After a while a young lady comes up and without a word starts helping me with the bags. Now I can shovel without interruption while she opens bags, holds them and puts them aside. Repeat.

I can feel it coming, the ache. It starts in back, right on the belt line, a little more on the right at first, if you're right-handed.

Come on! You used to do this for a living. And shoveling stuff much less pleasant than sand at that.

Jeez, will you look at that girl! You can see the exhaustion in her face, but she doesn't complain.

Come to think of it, nobody's complaining. These kids are having a ball. They're doing meaningful work to help save their town, and they're doing a durn good job of it too, without supervision and without slacking an inch.

There's an old guy over there working alongside kids who look like they could be his grandchildren. There's a woman with a grade-school kid working together, filling bags.

Pallets get covered with bags, one, two layers at most. Wouldn't take many of these to break them. Guys come and get them with forklifts and put them on big flatbed trucks to take into town.

My partner gets called away to help with something else. By! I wonder what her name was? Back to shoveling one-handed.

After a while the Salvation Army arrives with barbecue sandwich makings. This is the second meal in my life I've had from the SA. Tastes grand.

More sandbagging after a quick lunch. Then I've got to get back to town and take some pictures of the work along the dikes.

So long kids, it's been an honor working with you.