Danger: Meme Approaching!

My antennae are up - I just heard Andrew Cohut, the pollster, talking about John Edwards. Now that he is out of the running, where will his voters go? Cohut says that white males are the x-factor here because they look at the remaining choices and, well, they don't have anything in common with them. (Edwards biggest block was white males.)

I was a little taken aback by this. And just now I read that Dick (el chupacabra) Morris was happily chatting up the same idea on HANNITY AND COLMES. I'm certain that they'll trot out Juan Williams to assure us that there's nothing wrong with a LITTLE bigotry. It will be their version of balance.

Me, I think enough of white male democrats to believe that they won't vote for McCain by mistake. I'm plenty cynical; but I think people's knee-jerk hatred of Bush's policies will trump the other hatred. But watch for more "those racist democrats" talk. It's good for a few easy points.

By the way; if we're so racist why have we driven all the white male candidates out of the race?

More Fun With RNC Talking Points

Hey great news! Remember John Bolton? He was the furious moustache with a man attached who was our UN Representative until everybody in the government except the president forced him out. Well, he says that "the mullahs in Tehran" are hoping for a Democrat to win the presidency.

You may recall that the prevailing talking point before the 2006 election was that if Democrats became the majority in Congress, we'd fail in Iraq and terrorists would be everywhere here at home. However, now you can't hear a Republican speak without mentioning that we're winning the war in Iraq, and there hasn't been a major attack on American Soil since a Republican ran the White House! So given that predictions are dubious but results are rock solid, it stands to reason that Bolton's suggestion will have the opposite effect - Tehran is as good as destroyed once a Democrat gets the presidency.

While I'm at it, I might as well address the rumor that Barack Obama was a Muslim but has converted to a Christian; a few right-wing columnists have suggested that electing him would thus infuriate the Muslim world, who would hate the President and put out orders to assasinate him. As always with the RNC talking points I'll take the conversion thing as fact; but how would it be any different than the way the Muslim world feels about the current guy?

And by the way, I'd like to see a definition of "the Muslim World" which doesn't assume ALL the Muslims are bomb-weilding terrorists. I don't have figures, but I do know the majority of them are not, just as I know the majority of Christians aren't picketing Heath Ledger's funeral.

Maybe These Two Killed Music Video

I just ran across the two most incredible music videos ever. Look at this!

The thing that amazes me about Terri's little effort here is even though it's clearly a vanity project NOBODY involved seems the slightest bit interested in it. Maybe her husband paid for it. Maybe she's one of the Shaggs, all grown up. But I defy you to come up with an explanation of this that makes any sense.

Post this to all your blogs - I want to see it go viral, like it should have in the eighties. Never too late!

On a related note, maybe this one is the lost dream sequence from ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST. Thanks to MySpace friend and real life friend Anna Borg for calling my attention. Happy Birthday, Anna!

His Name Is Either Chuck Or Herb, I'm Guessing

Ouch! Check out the last line of a comment from the previous post:

No wonder no (one) comes to your blog. Useless drivel.

Compassionate conservatives! Well, dude's got a point: even by blog standards, I'm not setting the world on fire. I average about 37 visitors a day, and most of them are looking for pictures of the ugly dog pageant winner. And I haven't had an entry syndicated to Reuters since November! I'm a slacker.

Useless drivel? Yeah, I'll cop to that too. Unless you absolutely refuse to form your own opinions, you really don't need mine. I hope you're entertained by the way I present them, but I'd hardly call them useful. In fact GWK, I'd call your opinion more useful than mine, because it provided a springboard for this post. Then again it's useless drivel that no one reads anyway, so I suppose we're both outta luck.

Anyway GWK, since this is spillover for a comment fracas we're having over at WHERE ARE MY KEYS, I certainly apologize if you took my remarks as personally insulting. I was only trying to attack your ideas, not you, and I must have crossed a line somewhere. You're usually a classy guy. 

Beating a Horse Which, While Not Dead, Is Accruing Crippling Hospital Debt While On Life Support

I've been having that universal health care argument over at WHERE ARE MY KEYS again. Great White Knight insists that the high number of uninsured people is misleading because so many of them are unemployed; and then most of them don't WANT insurance. He has friends who are saving the money they'd pay for insurance premiums and intend to use THAT for medical bills. Presumably, that's what everyone else is doing too.

So let me just reiterate my position here about the handful of poor people in the nation who AREN'T saving up and cannot afford health insurance. I know it's only a handful; and they are all poor because they want to be. But if there is some untoward epidemic or plague, who is going to get shots? The rich, because they can afford it. Who won't? The poor. The more people who can't get health care, the more to spread disease. Check out Africa some time. They don't have universal health care, they got plenty of poor people, and they're dying of AIDS in record numbers. And that's a non-airborne contagion.

Bird flu, typhoid, something new - the poor are going to kill you unless you protect them. More importantly, they're going to kill ME, and I'm not for that at all.

Why The Surge Is Doomed

It doesn't matter how much progress we make - our enemies still have weapons of mass destruction. Thus, once we have delivered the fatal blow to Al-Quaeda, they will simply dig 'em out and destroy our troops. We should therefore pull out now.

An Embarassment of Riches

Twice this month I've gone out for drinks to find impeccable, beautifully executed jazz combos. Perfect Chet Baker style bands, just chugging away with their five minute solos, playing their standards. For the record, if you're in the San Fernando Valley, call The Back Room at Henri's in Woodland Hills, or check out JAX in Glendale.

And I'm marvelling at the technical skill of these house bands. If you put them up against a typical house rock band, it's like comparing (my new favorite metaphor) Apples to Lobsters.

What the hell happened to jazz, that people this good are playing gigs this accessable? Seriously, if it were the same in rock I'd be seeing U2 playing an accoustic set at the local coffee house.

Thompson Seedless

Yesterday Fred Thompson, a damn good actor, dropped out of the presidential race. In some ways I can make even less of this than I could of his candidacy in the first place.

They guy clearly wasn't really trying. Compared to the monomaniacal efforts of Clinton, McCain, Obama, Guiliani (yes, Thompson was putting even less steam into his race than Guiliani, who to date has only campaigned heavily in one state) Fred just wasn't bringin' the heat. In fact, until I read a Warner Todd Huston piece I didn't even know what Thompson represented.

He represented, as it turns out, grass roots conservatism.

Thus his departure worries me. The one thing I have found valuable in Republicans is conservatism. Some times it is useful to progress; but sometimes it's wiser to maintain what you have. If Thompson was that guy, and he's out, then we got no force to balance the urge for radical change.

Thompson, with his nebulous voting record and relative lack of experience, was also the Republican Barack Obama. I'm not sure what kind of omen is implied by this, because as the anti-conservatives, Democrats view lack of experience as an opportunity to think outside the box.

Of the Republican candidates, the one who least scares me right now is John McCain. Even with the pandering to the evangelicals, he still mostly seems to say what he believes and act on it. I don't trust Huckabee because he ain't panderin' - he really IS evangelical. I don't trust Romney because he panders to everyone simultaneously. And both of them are scarred by they ridicule they received in grade school due to their ridiculous names.

Giuliani? Fascist. What's worse, he acheived his greatest success applying fascist tactics, circumventing established law to clean up New York City. And it did work, undeniably; not onlike the way the trains were so much more prompt under certain other famous Italian leaders.

I'm starting to warm to Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama. The experience she keeps touting won't help her govern directly, but it WILL help her defend against the increasingly shrill and crazy attacks from Republicans. Maybe we need a Democrat who is out for revenge in that position. Because, you know, Obama will get eaten alive. Yes he should guard against assasination, but the real danger to the body politic is character assasination. Whatever Democrat gets elected they're going to throw every crazy accusation in the book at 'em; maybe we need someone who is ready to jump in the mud with 'em give 'em a good kidney punch while she's down there.

I know there IS a John Edwards, but I just don't trust him. He's our Mitt Romney.

Commuting by Bicycle - An Overview

Top 5 upsides to bicycle commuting
1. You don't have to feel guilty about not exercising.
2. You don't have to feel guilty about not carpooling.
3. Exposure to the elements, which is surprisingly good for you.
4. You attract the attention of hippies -nice people!
5. No gas, no noise, no carbon footprint.

Top 5 downsides to bicycle commuting
1. Sidewalks: frequent level changes, slow pedestrians, cars tend to wait in driveways by blocking sidewalks.
2. Helmets: dorky but necessesary.
3. Most motorists ("piston jockies") would just as soon kill you as slow down.
4. Wherever you go you arrive soaked in your own rank sweat.
5. The nagging feeling that you are becoming a hippie - annoying people!

I'd Say I Was "Elitist", But Most People Don't Know What That Means

Right now, as I write this, AMERICAN IDOL is embarking on its seventh season; and like in previous years, it's taking off without me. I have never seen a full episode of AMERICAN IDOL. The only reason I've ever seen any of it is because I set my DVR to start two minutes before HOUSE so I don't miss anything.

It's hard to have a beef with a show I've never seen, but I'm managing with this one. I know I'm in the minority. When the TV ratings come out next week the top slots will be filled with American Idol. If they have three shows a week, they will be numbers one, two and three. What's wrong with you people? How did Simon and company suck you in? 

As I've written before, the show is less entertainment then it is a money-making strategy, squeezing dollars out of the audition process (on some shows it's prep, on this one it's the show) the voting, even the hosts' beverages. Then an idol is picked, and Simon's record company puts out an album which you will want to buy because you just watched a season-long informercial for it. It's sinister! But also - the music is crappy and unimaginative, the judges are insufferable, and Ryan Seacrest isn't a personality: he's a dotted line into which you are supposed to insert a personality.

But most importantly, AMERICAN IDOL is a reality show. It's a little late to nip this trend in the bud, but for Pete's sake, when will people stop watching that crap? Scripted television is less inauthentic than reality shows! Professional wrestling is more convincing than THE GREAT RACE or THE APPRENTICE. Of all the reality shows, AMERICAN IDOL is the reality-est. That is to say, the most staged. How much weight do you think your fifty-cent vote carries, eh?  I like to think that last year's contestant, Sanjaya, the kid with the bad hair and inconsistent performance, was the public's unconscious attempt to see how far Simon would listen to the public before he simply pulled the plug. 

So you guys watch, I'll blog. When I run out of blog material, I'll make a sandwich and maybe play a little solitaire, or download TORCHWOOD from the BBC and watch that. It's only five months... I can hack that.

"Wave" Bye Bye

You know how something can be so inoffensive, so bland, so nondescript that it winds up offending, grating at you and standing out like a sore thumb? The guy in the cubicle next to me has a radio just barely at audible level which plays "The Wave" all day.

I'm not sure you know what "The Wave" is. It's a "smooth jazz" format station. In Las Vegas, where I just was, they call it "The Oasis." I suppose in Alaska they call it "The Hot Spring." They playlist tends heavily toward R&B with something that you might define as jazz every couple of hours. For example, that remake of TAKE FIVE that someone cleverly arranged in 4/4.

Remember PICK UP THE PIECES by the Average White Band? That's odd. The Wave does! Not only do they play it on a daily basis, they also play a plethora of inexplicable covers by series of faceless saxophone artists. I'd have never imagined that there was a PUTP subculture out there. This daily basis thing is important - they play EVERYTHING on a daily basis. I know I'll hear two Anita Baker songs in the course of a work day, and about nine versions of Pick Up the Pieces, and a little Steely Dan, and some Hiroshima, and yes, Kenny G. It's like a country music station playlist, only more limited. It's not like there isn't enough material to fill out the genre - oh how I wish that were the case! - it's that the programmers have decided that familiarity breeds comfort. They've smoothed jazz to the point that you can skate across it.

They don't play any Miles Davis or Chet Baker or Ornette Coleman, perhaps out of fear of attracting the late greats' attention and causing unnecessary grave-spinning. My feeling is, for god's sake, let the spinning begin! I'm weary of David Sanborn. I'm no longer enamored of Enya. Maybe my problem with the station is that when I listen, I perpetually feel like I'm about to get a massage that never comes.

When I get home tonight, I'm going to pack the iPod with speed metal.

Photo Proof of Liberal News Bias!

{irony}Warner Todd Huston is right! Look at this news photo of Barack Obama!  I think there is a very clear message being sent by those rays of light shining down upon him from a higher source. Photo courtesy of The Washington Times. {/irony}

The Washington Times, of course, is the ultra-right-wing tabloid run by Sun Myung Moon.  Today's edition seems especially kind to liberals. Sample headlines: SEX ED FOUND TO PROLONG TEEN VIRGINITY; LIBERAL AND PRO-US? WHO KNEW? (a review of "Charlie Wilson's War", a movie starring Tom Hanks; PROGRAM LENDS HAND TO POOR INDIAN TRIBES. There is a CLINTON NEIGHBOR ARRESTED IN NY KILLING, but that's off the wires. 

What's up with the paper today? Spirit of Christmas got a hold of 'em? Or is the regular editor off for the week? If so, do I buy a condolence card for the guest editor now or wait until he meets with a freak accident around New Years?

Thanks For Asking

And since you ask, I've simply been too busy hanging around with people to write. I've found this is a much more effective way of tamping down the Seasonal Affective Disorder than simply brooding, which is my usual strategy. Go figs!

Went to my office Christmas party last night, which was held at a swanky bowling alley in Hollywood. I was gunning to win a flatscreen HDTV in the raffle. Didn't quite make it, though I did win a wind-up generator portable TV with a lantern on it. And a memory foam pillow. And a DVD player. And a wind-up flashlight and radio. And LED stick-on laps for under-lit places. And a SEX IN THE CITY trivia game, which I gave to the waiter as a tip. 

The reason for all the prizes was everyone was given 5 tickets at the beginning of the evening, then more tickets were awarded to our bowling teams using an arcane selection of rules - how many strikes, how many combinations (3 / 7 split? You win!) and so on. I didn't understand it, but I got another 50 tickets. 

Another guy won two telescopes. Give him a little duct tape, and he's got the best damn binoculars ever.

What I found tremendously disappointing about the evening was this: Nobody, I mean nobody got embarrassingly drunk. The golden age of the office party is clearly past. I remember just a little over ten years ago going to one where a marriage broke up, somebody fell off a bar stool, and a women I barely knew came at me out of nowhere and french-kissed me.  I miss being around that kind of madness. A couple of years ago I was a the Christmas party of a mortgage company and it came pretty close; but since we had all just been laid off it was mighty bitter drinking. Embarrassing but no fun.

You are going to ask me about my plans for Christmas. I know you are. Well, I'm going to Vegas on Friday and I'm staying in town until Christmas day. There are few places more Christmas-immune than Vegas, baby. The Noel is pretty weak sauce in that town. You'd barely know there WAS a holiday except it's half deserted and the dancers in the Rio sky parade are wearing Santa hats.  If I don't write before then, just re-read this post until I get back.

The Right is Never Wrong (Especially When They Are Wrong)

I have long marveled at the ability of Republicans to "stay the course." They out stake a piece of ideological territory and never, ever give it up. In a lot of ways it's their strength because it makes them appear solid and reliable. However, it also frequently backfires on them because in real life people change their positions in the face of new data.

You might think I'm talking about the latest N.I.E. concerning Iran's nuclear program, but the President is only now starting to dig in his heels on that one and insist that they have one anyway. That issue just isn't ripe for pickin' yet. Instead, I'm going to give the example of a l'il comment war over at WAMK.

The esteemed Madeline's Dad wrote a post called WORDS MATTER. If I'm not mistaken, the point was that Democrats are too quick to label some of the excesses of our country in this time of war as, well, as he put it:

Senators and Congressmen using the words "torture" and "atrocities" to describe events that are unseemly, but hardly worthy of their definitions.

Fair enough, a matter of opinion. Or rather it would be, if it wasn't for that "Senators and Congresmen" passage. Something about it bothered me, and I asked for an example of a Senator or Congressman actually using the word "atrocity" to describe events. MD was kind enough to provide links to an editorial by ABC News, another one by the Washington Post, then CNN and then the Independent in the UK. No Senators, no Congressmen. He also posted a YouTube clib of Sen. Durbin in which he used neither word, but condemned our practices using less inflammatory language.

In the next 15 responses, I asked repeatedly for some proof that one of our elected officials had used "atrocity." Responses included:

I guess the search engines at Puffington Host don't cover traitorous statements made by US Congressmen.

Ted Kennedy never clamied that Saddam's torture chambers had "reopened under US management".

jOn caRrEy never acused US troops of "terrorizing innocent Iraqi families" during the night. Or that that's something the Iraqi military should be doing themselves instead.

Barack Obama never said that the US is carpet bombing Iraqi cities.

John Murtha would certainly not say that US Marines had murdered innocent Iraqi's "in cold blood".

(Preceeding courtesy of Ameridann, who missed his chance to call Barack Obama "Osama". You're slipping, Ameridann!) These are all legitimate quotes (probably) and also, they are all attempts to avoid saying "no, I can't prove that a Senator or Congressman used the word 'atrocity.'" Mad's Dad insists that he has heard it said, even though he can't find proof.

What fascinates me is, even if they think they have a legitimate larger point, they refuse to give up ground on the parts that don't matter. It makes Republicans less like statesmen and more like bulldogs, I think. I love bulldogs, but I don't consider them electible. They're ***king dogs.

Then again, when Mitt Romney revises his opinions based on the facts, I find him untrustworthy. Double-edged sword, the nuance thing.

Another Front In The War On Christmas

I am outraged! It's Saturday afternoon, and there isn't a lot on TV for adults - it is thus that I landed on KSCI Channel 18, which is a local foreign language station. Today they are running a Hindi-themed show in English, SHOWBIZ INDIA. It was pretty enjoyable until I came across this commercial.

It was for some long distance service, and get this - they were saying you should sign up in time for "this festive season."

This Festive Season!

Obviously the War On Christmas has filtered down to the smallest stations! There is no time to lose. We must now do... well, whatever we do to preserve our treasured Christmas traditions. Call your local Hindi station now and demand that they directly refer to Christmas when they talk about this time of the year. 

While your at it, don't let your Jewish friends off the hook. 

Going to Welles Once Too Often

Perhaps I'm not the nurturing type, but I AM nursing a head cold. It's making my throat sore and sapping my boundless energy. This leaves almost nothing for my righteous political rage at the end of the day, which is why yesterday instead of attempting to laugh through the Republican debate I popped a DVD of THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI into my iMac and grooved on the 60-year-old cinematic goodness.

Though actually, it wasn't all that good. 

There's a couple of background stories concerning the movie which probably explain away the bad chemistry of this movie. For one thing, it was kind of made on a whim. Welles was mounting a stage production and needed a quick $50k for sets and costumes, so he called the head of Columbia and offered to make a movie based on a Maxwell Anderson novel which some say he hadn't even read. They gave him the money provided he cast Rita Hayworth, Columbia's number one star and Welles' then wife. By the time they went into production, the marriage was almost on the rocks and they divorced before it was even released.

And of course, there was the usual studio butchery as Welles lit off to his next project, leaving the post production to a team of non-geniuses.

Orson Welles fans are a peculiar lot, more so than most fans. They love CITIZEN KANE, his one flawless film, but they others? They don't love them. They love the films they WISH they had been. To be an Orson Welles fan is to be forever tantalized by the noble failures he left behind. 

A couple of months back I watched MR. ARKADIN, a movie which now boasts 7 different versions and no definitive director's cut. Every version is a bad movie, but somehow you can believe that had Welles remained in the editing room, it would have been a classic. Welles would have found the exact right pacing. Welles would have flawlessly dubbed in all the bad dialogue in a host of sparkling radio voices. Welles would have commissioned a score that does the story justice.

I can't help but suspect that Welles, who was a great filmmaker but a brilliant self-promoter, realized that he was better off leaving his work to people who could take the blame for his cinematic misdeeds. He was the tallest man on the landscape and yet was always able to make someone else the lightning rod. And then, as his fans lamented how others had ruined a masterpiece, we went off to sell wine and frozen peas and pick up an occasional gig as the voice of God. 

The last film Welles shot, THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND, remains unreleased to this day as various rights holders bicker over how to cut it. I recall hearing an anecdote on the Tonight Show,  years after Welle's death, by a famous actor who did a cameo in it. I can't recall who it was.

"Welles said 'Action! Now look down.' I looked down at the floor. Later I asked Orson what I was supposed to be looking at and he said, 'Dwarves. Dwarves are running between your legs. I'm going to add them in post'"

It's been over 30 years and there still ain't no dwarves. And you know what? I don't think there ever will be.

At Last, Democrats Get A Shot At The Big Pandering Money

I tip my figurative hat to WAMK for again pointing me in the direction of a fresh outrage. 

Senator Dick Durbin, Democrat, has introduced the inevitable bill designed to "help nearly 638,000 families – a quarter of the 2.2 million people at risk of foreclosure – keep their homes by allowing them to modify the terms of their loan in bankruptcy proceedings." It sounds like a blow struck for the little guy against the big mortgage companies, but I'm more cynical than I used to be. A press release can say anything. 

First of all, no matter who it benefits, this amounts to a kind of bailout. Bad financial decisions need to have predictable consequences, because that prevents bad financial decisions in the future. If an offer seems too good to be true it damn well better play out that way. 

And free-market capitalism being what it is, big mortgage companies are already motivated to restructure debts, because the last thing they need is to foreclose on hundreds of thousands of houses at once. The paperwork overhead of turning those things over, added to a glut of fire-sale-priced residences, has got to be a worse headache than simply renegotiating with the current owners. 

What worries me about this bill is that I suspect that Durbin isn't pushing it to help the little guy; he's giving the mortgage companies a face-saving way out. I mean come on, in a match between huge money and the common man, who do you think will get to a politician first? On the other hand, it pleases me to see a Democrat behind this. Sleazy? Yes. But two or three years ago it would have been a Republican with an identical bill, but they would have sold it as a means of sustaining jobs and keeping the economy afloat. The fact that the banks let a Democrat carry their water means it's going to be a mighty rough election year for Republicans.

Globalonybaloney

I'm increasingly amazed by the ability of people to deny that mankind can effect the environment, especially when politics is involved. Poor science is made to jump through all kinds of hoops by the right. If Stephen Hawking were explicitly liberal, Rush Limbaugh would be mocking him for suggesting there is such a thing as "time."

Therefore we have to suffer through a lot of crazy debate about Global Warming, because it's a pet cause of Al Gore. Instead of listening to the majority of legitimate scientists, conservatives are forced to believe a handful of oil-company researchers. I have been batting this issue around lately with Warner Todd Huston (who believes that the new Eagles album aids the terrorists, even though it's perfectly acceptable to hate it because the album is just lame) and he's been riding the bullet train to Crazytown trying to convince me that there is no such thing as Global Warming. Or there is, but we aren't causing it and there is nothing we can do to stop it, and we shouldn't even try because there isn't any.

Warner says:

This isn't about "saving the Earth." It's about so-called scientists getting money for more research to assure globaloney exists.

Yes, that's right - the majority of the world's scientists have gotten together in secret, maybe at one of those conferences in Helsinki, and agreed to gin up the results of their research to squeeze a little grant money out of the rest of us! All this time I thought it was energy companies trying to protect their profits; but it turns out they're the altruistic ones! Those scientists are the greedy, rapacious bastards!

Warner says:

...People imagine that plastic won't break down and disintegrate. But this isn't true at all. It's just that plastic is such a new substance that microbes haven't figured out how to break it down. Eventually, they will.

Same thing happened to trees millions of years ago. Now trees break down and disappear because microbes, etc. break down the wood. But millions of years ago, they hadn't quite figured that out yet. That is why we can find bark and nearly whole fallen tree trunks deep under the earth in coal mines (for instance).

These two paragraphs have created a whole new energy source, because they make my head spin so much I have hooked a belt to it to power my reading lamp. First of all, microbes will eventually figure out how to break down plastic? How is that possible, knowing that there is no such thing as evolution?

Second, as proof that microbes learned to break down wood, Warner offers the example of million year old undecomposed wood. These microbes had millions of years - wouldn't a few of them have gone back to the older stuff and learned to eat that? If anything, this example proves that when Charlton Heston digs his fist through the sand screaming "you maniacs! You blew it up! God damn you all to hell," he will get his wrist tangled in one of those six-pack holder things, 'cause they're going to be around forever.

Finally, Warner says:

But a local "mess" does not automatically translate to a mess that encompasses the whole world!!!

I suppose the multiple exclamation points means I'm winning. But you know what? These guys always cite examples from nature ("The earth warmed during the renaissance! We didn't cause that!") so I'll refute that argument with a natural example. My "local mess" - the eruption of Krakatoa. From Wikipedia :

In the year following the eruption, average global temperatures fell by as much as 1.2 degrees Celsius. Weather patterns continued to be chaotic for years, and temperatures did not return to normal until 1888. The eruption injected an unusually large amount of sulfur dioxide (SO₂) gas high into the stratosphere which was subsequently transported by high-level winds all over the planet. This led to a global increase in sulfurous acid (H₂SO₃) concentration in high-level cirrus clouds. The resulting increase in cloud reflectivity (or albedo) would reflect more incoming light from the sun than usual, and cool the entire planet until the suspended sulfur fell to the ground as acid precipitation.

I'd have quoted Conservapedia instead, but they don't have an entry for Krakatoa. Those guys only have so much server space and bandwidth, and explaining how dinosaurs survived on Noah's Ark takes up most of it. But you could call the eruption a local event, and it effected the entire world. It is said that Munck's THE SCREAM depicted the post-Krakatoa sky. In Norway. Just sayin'.

And yes, eventually the sky healed and things got back to normal. But it was just one source of pollutants, and it stopped after a month and a half. We have been pouring junk into the air since the industrial revolution from points all over the globe. How brainwashed by Bill O'Reilly do you have to be before you think that might create a problem?

Well, never mind. If Al Gore believes it, it MUST be wrong. Next thing, you'll be telling me that there is a company called APPLE that makes computers and phones!

However, I Am Not Gay

Sometimes you do stuff without realizing it. Only after a while do the patterns emerge. Let me explain.

When I moved out for my separation in August, I made a point of getting a set of dishes. A single matched set, and I thought the set might as well look good, so I went for a deep red theme.

So last week I was attempting to use my microwave/toaster combo (one unit! Kenmore! Pretty good idea for tight spaces) for a kitchen timer and I accidentally set it to cook instead of time. It cooked itself for 8 minutes, which was sufficient to destroy the electronics. The toaster still worked, but I thought I'd replace both. Instead of the cheerless white color I'd gone with originally, I opted for the striking red as depicted below. Note the enclosed cookbook under the left foot - my counter is a little skewed.












Well, this afternoon I stopped by Best Buy. I have this $50 dollar gift certificate, an award for good administrative assistance at my job, and I've been needing a new vacuum cleaner. Guess what I got?


















I swear I wasn't planning on matching anything; I just liked the price and feature set. My point is, when will this stop? Is a cherry red comforter next? A sub-rosa leather couch? Will I move to the red-light district when my lease runs out?

Quin Hillyer Is A Stand-up Guy

My last post used a column by Quin Hillyer of the American Spectator as a jumping off point, and he was kind enough to respond. It's a long letter and I won't quote it completely but I will say that I found all of it to be intelligent and heartfelt. No, I don't agree with all of it, but I respect his point of view. Which is represented as follows:

I do happen to believe that the Left is more often guilty of this sort of behavior than the right is, but I have been way out front in blasting conservative scofflaws too, criticizing Tom DeLay in print as far back as 1998, and writing columns for places such as the New Republic -- in early 2005, WAY before everything blew up in their faces in 2006 -- warning that GOP congressional ethical lapses were a serious problem that could help cost the GOP its congressional majority. I happen to believe that Bill Clinton, however, is the most prominent example of the psychology described in the study, because time and again when I worked as a leadership press aide in Congress in 1995 and 1996 I was privy to people coming back from meetings with Clinton having been assured he would do one thing, only to turn on the TV and see him saying the exact opposite while fiercely attacking them for positions he had just told them he could work with. Neat trick.

Before getting to your main point, I really, really hope you understood, from both the headline and my closing paragraph, that the whole column was slightly tongue in cheek. I was using the study as a launch for me to criticize specific liberals for lies and hypocrisy, but I acknowledged in the end that I was stretching the study beyond its actual findings in order to make my points. 

In short, as I noted in the headlines (which I personally wrote, even though that is not always the case) that my column was a bit of a "psych job" intended to goad  my liberal friends (and my liberal adversaries), and that I was "having fun" with the study. In short, the column was intended to use mild humor and mild self-deprecation (noting that I myself wasn't being fully honest with the psychological study) to make serious points about how people in politics (of course I focused mostly on the left!) manage to talk themselves into doing incredibly unethical things while still telling themselves they are morally superior.

Now, as for your point about torture: Please know that I wasn't trying to divert attention from or "derail" ANYTHING, and that I wasn't even thinking about the torture debate when I wrote my column. Granted, I clearly come down more on the side of "enhanced interrogation  techniques" than you do (http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=10709). But I also, at first glance (not an in-depth analysis), think that I agree with what Bill Clinton said about a narrow statute allowing a presidential finding, etc. I do NOT think we should broadly lower our standards to those of the inhuman monsters for whom torture is almost an end in itself, and I think it is good that we so clearly set so many hurdles in the way of any of our own folks who might fall into the self-justifying trap of deciding for themselves, without checks and balances, that their own ends are noble enough to make torture okay.

My only response, aside from thanks for the respectful reply, is that as my pal Skot suggests the phrase "just kidding" literally means "I'm not kidding." However, Quin, you're perfectly justified in not originally addressing torture in your column and you are graceful to not sidestep my attempt to drag you into my tangent.  Long may you wave.