locdog's blog

2006-01-11T13:45:00.000-05:00

i pledge allegiance to roe v. wade

here libs, try this one on for size:

NO LAW IS EVER SETTLED LAW.

not the ones that say little brown babies can't go to school with little white babies, and not the ones that say they are all equal under vacuum, pliers, and saline injections.

not that it should really make much difference what your opinion on roe is. any right thinking citizen ought to feel the bile bubbling up when senators start asking for oaths of fealty. they're demanding allegiance to the ends, which, even if valid, may have been reached through flawed means. those means would then be upheld, free to bring about future perversions of justice we cannot even begin to foresee. and, of course, the vehemence with which the oath is demanded gives us all the more reason to be suspicious. senators don't whisper lies, they scream them.

sure, i'm just one more rightwing crank worked up into a lather over abortion, but it's not like i'm the one out there boasting of my broad-mindedness--a condition which, for the liberal, amounts to the willingness to accept any means, however flawed or duplicitous, so long as the desired end can be attained.

locdog's got a mean little end himself, baby

2005-12-06T16:48:00.000-05:00

at least they didn't cut off any ears

it seems john kerry just can't help himself. maybe it's because his own military career was a complete fraud, but whatever the reason, he can't help but smear american troops in harm's way:

[T]here is no reason, Bob, that young American soldiers need to be going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children, you know, women.

back during vietnam, it was cutting off ears and razing villages in a "fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan." but with new wars comes new ugly slander. no longer are we compared to ravaging mongol hordes. we've graduated to gestapo.

and did anyone else notice that kerry used the t-word (that i so handily emphasized in the quote)? now we all know what a gifted orator the good senator is, so we can hardly be expected to believe that its usage was accidental.

so according to john kerry, american soldiers are rapists, pillagers, and now terrorists. funny. the rest of us have always thought of them as heroes.

locdog does

2005-11-11T15:09:00.000-05:00

i've decided to become a liberal

so i've decided to become a liberal. as i see it, it offers many distinct advantages over my present lifestyle.

1. first and foremost is the death of truth. at the end of the day, issues like right and wrong, faith and spirituality, and other great questions of our day are entirely up to me. rather than being obligated by reason to believe in something i find distasteful, i am free to select whichever religion/standard of justice/view on a particular issue makes me feel best--and, what's more, i'm under no obligation to be consistent. indeed, consistency, as any decent lib will tell you, is the "hobgoblin of small minds." the more i vacillate, the smarter i am.

2. second, and this is the most direct consequence of number 1, is that i would then be free to pursue a life of unabashed hedonism. i would do this by telling myself that i would draw the line at hurting others, but, as AIDS, unwed mothers, drug and alcohol addiction, and a million other societal ills readily attest, such is, in fact, an impossibility. that said, my friends, who would all be liberals themselves since liberals shun intellectual diversity like leprosy, would never criticize me. liberalism isn't about results, ergo, it doesn't really matter who i hurt. what matters is that i maintain the proper attitude while hurting others. i may not be a hypocrite, and i may not make anyone else feel bad about how they are hurting others. other than that, i can go nuts. get married five times to five women and sire five children to all of them--hey, the kids will be better off without all the constant bickering, right? that sort of thing.

3. closely related to number 2 is the sudden boost in popularity that would inevitably follow, as i will now be aligning myself with all of popular culture. whether it's MTV or commander in chief, the common thread of liberalism runs through all. the attitudes and values espoused by nearly everyone else around me will now be my own. when i am in a group with several colleagues and one of them starts making fun of Christianity or the president or the state of kentucky, i can laugh along with everyone else.

4. popularity is the admiration of others, but i think that i will be able to do a lot more admiring myself. i'll be able to pick up a major newspaper or turn on a network news broadcast at random and know that i am going to agree with everything i see. nothing will challenge me, nothing will cause me to become upset--at least, the stuff that will upset me will be things like the destruction of the rainforest. it will be something that's further confirming my worldview as it's upsetting me. i can watch the oscars and actually enjoy the acceptance speeches. when barbara streisand opens her mouth, i'll enjoy what comes out of it (singing aside, i mean.) i can listen to this american life or watch nightline and not want to throttle someone. whereas meaningless multiculturalisms like "happy holidays" used to make me want to puke, they'll now fill me with an urge to...have a happy...something. but it'll be good, of that i'm sure.

5. i can be lazy. i can be indigent. i can be a victim. i'll no longer have to take personal responsibility for anything anymore--indeed, my liberal politicians will actively discourage me from doing so. if i have a need, no longer will i need to go out and work to fill it, i'll just cry about it until someone fills if for me. i'll sleep until noon, buy steaks and tacos with my food stamps, maybe buy a quad or a dirt bike. who knows?

i'll no longer have to fight against the rising of the tide. i'll no longer have to weep at the gathering gloom. whereas i now think everything is getting worse, i'll then think everything is getting better. in short, i will let go of every ounce of character, independence, self-reliance, discipline, devotion, integrity, intelligence, and principle i have and be just like george soros. well, sans billions anyway.

then again, maybe locdog could remain a ruthless capitalist bastard long enough to make a bit more scratch, then go for the conversion--you know, just like soros

2005-11-09T17:22:00.000-05:00

not a good day to be a republican

but at least france is burning to the ground.

i find that so damned gratifying that i'm really quite ashamed of myself.

possible outcomes:

1. the french wise up, deport the imam ringleaders, shot rioters on site, and block future muslim immigration.

2. they bend over backwards to capitulate, thus sparking an endless cycle of extortion.

3. they cede france, pack up, and move to spain.

my money's on 2, but 3 is a solid dark horse.

i'm not sure what's more fun, watching allah's chickens coming home to roost or watching the american left squirm in reaction.

best reaction thus far: IOZ's presumably meth-induced take, wherein he argues that the most appropriate response to decades of government-afforded jobs and housing is to burn down one's community. 35% unemployment would make me want to riot too, i suppose, but then, when the government-sponsored-jobs-protected-by-trade-barriers approach is what got france into this mess in the first place, it's hard to imagine what more the government could be expected to give them. what they should give them, after the tear gas and bullets, i mean, is a pink slip and a tax break. put another way, they should give them the opportunity to start their own lives.

and let's not get too swept up in the revolutionary spirit, comrade. these aren't a bunch of trotsky's we're talking about here. we're talking about the arab street, homes. the most brutish, ignorant, and cruel place on earth. it's usually kept in check by the thugocracies that produced it in the first place (see hussein, saddam) but when it gets a taste of western liberty things can get a little messy (see iraq.)

why are the islamists revolting? because the frog-wannabes haven't had a bath in weeks buh dum bum. but seriously folks, is there any other way to behave?

someone spits on a koran? we riot. someone calls God by a different name? we riot. someone fails to provide us with our politically correct kosher diets? we riot. someone applies a filthy jewish word like "kosher" to our diet? we riot.

i know, i know. i'm a racist. yeah. sure. whatever.

here's the problem, chief. it's not about race. it's about islam. it's about a belief system that has warped the minds of men to the point where they can reliably be counted upon to act like monsters at the slightest provocation (e.g. osama) and where most of the ones who aren't monsters themselves cheer on those who are (e.g. our good friend the arab street.)

france has had a checkered history when it comes to islam, of course. algiers and what have you. but since then they've thrown open their borders and done their best to provide their guests with good old fashioned european socialism. among leading western powers, one could not name a nation more willing to traffic with unsavory arab governments or ready to defend the same from just reprisals. how perfectly fitting that islam, a philosophy that cannot be bought, cannot be reasoned with, cannot be sated by anything less than total surrender, has now set it's sights on france.

and anyway, locdog could care less who governs virginia

2005-11-02T10:53:00.000-05:00

bring it on

it wasn't supposed to be this way.

the 2,000th death celebration. record oil profits. harriet meirs. tom delay and merry fitzmas, next it's karl rove.

last week brought us some of the GOP's darkest days since watergate, and unquestionably the darkest of the bush administration.

what a difference a week makes, huh?

after a 22 month investigation into the plame leak, the closest thing to an indictable offense that special prosecutor patrick fitzgerald could come up with is an unknown cheney aid possibly perjuring himself over something that was never a crime to begin with. but paddy boy would be damned if he wasn't going to indict someone for something after the better part of two years--even if it wasn't going to be karl rove.

harriet "who?" meirs is a memory the base will be only too happy to block out thanks to samuel alito, a brilliant, soft-spoken judge who should make a bang up witness at his confirmation. after having their heads handed to them by roberts, senate dems were salivating at the prospect of beating up on the relatively inexperienced meirs. but alito will eat their lunch and the little note their mama wrote them, too.

record oil profits are bad news when you're paying over three dollars at the pump, but with gas prices falling to pre-katrina levels, that headline has lost much of it's sting. combine that with low unemployment and brisk economic growth and the fiscal picture isn't nearly as grim as the dems try to paint it.

even tom delay has been blown off the front page, mostly by the alito nomination, but also by the report from the president's tax advisory panel (not as far-reaching as some of us would have preferred, that, but a definite improvement) and the bird flu initiative (relatively meaningless from a public health standpoint, but a brilliant bit of initiative-seizing politically.)

yep, it wasn't supposed to be this way.

which is why it was the democrats melting down yesterday with their grandstanding closed-door session, not the republicans. what else have they got left? cindy sheehan, harreit meirs, valerie plame...the three queens of discontent came bearing lumps of coal instead of priceless gifts. serves the dems right.

the democrats are a party in disarray. the last national figure they had with any semblance of an idea was al gore, and he couldn't sell a book of matches to an eskimo. since then it's been attack, attack, attack, but they haven't been able to punch through the republican lines on any front. the democratic base, still bitter over clinton's impeachment, the 2000 elections, the crack their mothers smoked while expecting, and God knows what else, believe that the way to get out of the muck they're bogged down in is to mash the accelerator even harder. the democratic leadership, cowed by the move-on chicken-littles now ruling the roost, is only too eager to oblige.

personally, i'm praying that the white house and republican leadership will grab their torches and kindling and dive into this latest witch hunt with relish. let's have that debate about pre-war intelligence. let's look at the claims of clinton and gore in '98 and '99, back when the (not so) little blue dress was the fashion craze. let's look at the UN's own findings over that same period, since they were so reluctant to help. let's talk about the iraqi people's plight prior to their liberation by allied forces, since ted kennedy is so convinced they were better off before we came. let's have our debate over whether the world is safer without that madman hussein in it as a middle-eastern superpower. let's investigate the links between al qaeda and the former regime, now that harry reid has assured us that there was absolutely 100% no connections whatsoever. for three years now republicans have been bullied into silence by some of the most ludicrous charges in modern political history for fear of an unsympathetic media. it's inexcusable. iraq is all the dems have left now, and, truth be told, they haven't even got that. they've only got the illusion of it, the fantasy version the republicans have allowed them to spin for mass consumption. i say it's time to take history back.

the democratic party isn't just at a 52 week low, here. this is rock bottom, a fiasco of historic proportions. theirs is a party with no leaders, no direction, and no real purpose for being. they offer nothing positive to support; a vote for them is a vote for blind rage. it's madness. contrast them, if you will, with the gingrich-era GOP. sure we attacked clinton and sure we had our fun with his scandals, but we at least offered ideas, a vision for the future known as the "contract with america" that served as some tangible alternative to the failures of the clinton administration on a so-called "middle class tax cut" and healthcare reform. and the result? the first republican-controlled congress in 40 years. the democrats offer bile and more bile, and will thus remain safely marginalized.

i find myself almost hoping that the dems get their wish and somehow manage to destroy george w. bush, because he's all they've got left. george bush is the democratic party.

locdog is the republican party

2005-10-04T11:41:00.000-04:00

quick take on miers: bush is weak

bush doesn't have any choice in this thing.

assume that bush wants to name another scalia to the bench. how can he? borders and budget have weakened him with his base, iraq and katrina with everyone else.

the liberals reaction so far has been shockingly tame. about the worst i've heard are charges of cronyism--a real howler after 8 years of bubba and friends. cronyism basically means that the libs can't think of anything else to fault bush with on this pick. she doesn't seem particularly dangerous ideologically speaking, but then, for certain democrats, their base wouldn't tolerate a vote for one of bush's nominees had he sent them the second coming of leon trotsky.

on the other side, i've heard many conservative commentators blasting the republican senate for not being able to hold it together, but let's face it, senators will always do what is in their best interests. ask yourself this question: if bush's poll numbers weren't in the tank, would he be appointing miers? not a chance. it's not the senate's fault should they splinter away from an unpopular president, which, of course, is exactly what would happen if he sent up paleolithic pick we on the right had been hoping for.

bush wasn't a lame duck when he started his second term, but one thing is for certain: he is now.

as to miers herself? who the hell knows. she's been one of bush's closest confidants for years, so it really comes down to whether or not you think personal loyalty would trump ideology when it comes to a nomination that will shape the future of our nation for decades to come.

bush has been disappointing in a lot of ways, but i don't yet buy into that cartoon villain image. if miers is a stealth conservative pick, her appointment and what will probably be a successful confirmation (assuming no nanny problems, sexual harras--no, i don't think i want to finish that thought...never mind) may well turn out to be one of the most tactically brilliant political moves of this young century.

if it's trickery then it's good trickery, but locdog wishes we didn't need it

2005-09-29T12:06:00.000-04:00

make your case against delay here.

i set out this morning to do a post in defense of tom delay when it suddenly dawned on me that i'm not exactly sure what i could even defend him from. so, concerned liberals of the web, here's your chance set me straight.

what, exactly, has tom delay done?

i'm not looking for railing accusations and ten page screeds, i'm looking for facts, because, on the basis of what little fact i've seen, i'm having a hard time figuring out what law delay broke.

i know what he's accused of. he's accused of violating texas campaign contribution law--law modeled on the mccain-feingold federal version--by conspiring with another party to solicit corporate donations for TRMPAC, a political action committee he founded. but beyond that it starts to get a little murky.

TRMPAC sent $190,000 to the republican national committee, $155,000 of which was donated by corporate sources, on the 13th of september, 2002--less than sixty days from the november elections. presumably, this is what delay is being indicted for.

i say "presumably" because none of what i just explained is actually illegal. according to the sections of texas election code delay supposedly violated (253.104 (a), (b)):

A corporation or labor organization may make a contribution from its own property to a political party [but] may not knowingly make a contribution...during a period beginning on the 60th day before the date of a general election for state and county officers and continuing through the day of the election.

except that no such donations actually occurred. TRMPAC is not "a political party" any more than moveon.org is, so corporations broke no law in giving them money (there is also some dispute as to when those corporations actually made their donations to TRMPAC, with some observers claiming that these did not occur withing the 60 day limit.) corporations made perfectly legal donations to TRMPAC, and TRMPAC then made a donation to the RNC--but TRMPAC itself isn't a "corporation or labor union," so what's the problem?

now you could say that this is all a bit unseemly, a bit sleazy, a bit dirty. hey, i'll be the first to agree, but what you can't say is that it's illegal--or, if you can, then you need to show me how.

according to delay, who appeared with brit hume last night on FNC, both parties do it. that's not a defense, but it's not much of a surprise, either. essentially what TRMPAC did (and delay denies having any knowledge of or hand in their day-to-day operations, including the 2002 check, of course) was to launder corporate money into the hands of state candidates.

well, that's not illegal. and if you liberals don't like it, you have only yourselves to blame. welcome to the nasty world of campaign finance, post-mccain. we told you this would happen.

and even if you could somehow prove to me that what TRMPAC did was illegal, you'd then have to prove that not only did delay know if it, but that he actively conspired to "knowingly [make] a political contribution in violation of...Texas Election Code," as the indictment charges. in other words, it's not enough to merely show that delay was aware of what was happening, and it's not enough to show that delay told TRMPAC to make it happen. you have to show that delay knowingly violated the law, i.e., you have to prove his intent.

good luck with that.

this is a weak indictment brought on by a prosecutor with howlingly transparent political motives--a topic for another post--founded in the most liberal county in texas. maybe that doesn't make delay innocent, but the burden of proof is on you guys, and so far, i'm not seeing much in the way of proof.

locdog invites you to lay your cards on the table

2005-09-28T11:34:00.000-04:00

gee, sorry about the last 30 years

nasa now says the shuttle/space station programs were mistakes.

but not to worry. we're "back on track" now because, hopefully by 2018, we'll be landing astronauts on the moon in "a spacecraft that would look like the apollo capsule."

*sigh*

where to begin?

1. after half a century of manned space flight we're still 13 years away from duplicating something we accomplished in 7 years--from scratch--forty years ago? conclusion: bureaucracies. gotta love em.

2. why is "back on track" = "doing the same stuff we did back when the beatles were together"? are they hoping that we won't notice this has all been done before? or maybe they figure that if the new lunar landers look enough like the old chewing-gum-and-duct-tape apollo birds, we'll be swept along in a wave of nostalgia? maybe they'll just send someone to the moon every 76 years or so, sort of like haley's comet. there's a re-run we never get tired of.

3. what is the point of NASA? i have always been a supporter of the space program, and the basis of that support has been my belief in the virtues of exploration. humanity needs windmills to chase. i don't care about tang or velcro, i care about mars, and some day perhaps even manned exploration beyond our solar system. why? because it's there. and there's a lot of it there that we haven't seen yet. even if you want to justify another moon landing as being a stepping stone to further exploration, there's no way it should take us 13 years to get back there. not with today's technology and our prior experience in space flight.

saying it will take 13 years to get back to the moon is the same thing as saying we'll never set foot on another celestial body again.

mark locdog's words

2005-09-15T14:13:00.000-04:00

pledge thoughts

michael newdow is a God-hating crank. according to his ex-wife, he set out initially to get "in God we trust" scraped off of our currency, then, when that fell through, shifted his focus to the pledge of allegiance. the well-being of his daughter--a Christian who likes saying the pledge--was never more than a convenient excuse.

in essence, the USSC agreed with me last time around. the "no standing" technicality they bounced his case out of court on amounts to more or less the same thing: newdow is someone who had to steal his daughter's stone to grind his axe.

this time, newdow, a lawyer, is representing a handful of families who will have standing and thus the case will be heard on its merits. my prediction? there's no way the USSC gives "under God" the boot.

constitutionally, newdow doesn't have a leg to stand on. "one nation under God..." doesn't constitute a state establishment of religion, it doesn't constitute state favoritism of religion, it doesn't deprive anyone of their right to worship (or not) as they choose, it doesn't change anyone's standing under the law. in short, he can't point to a single way in which saying "under God" could meaningfully impact the lives of anyone. he simply resents the fact that students have the option of saying it in a public school if they wish.

a few common counterarguments:

1. the "God" in "under God" is the God of Christianity, therefore, the practice is unconstitutional.

no, God is the only non-sectarian word in the english language for describing the supreme being--the basic of whom the world's great religions are pretty much in agreement on.

"well what if they said 'one nation under Allah' or 'one nation under Shiva' or..."

then they'd be doing exactly what you're accusing them of doing right now: attempting to play favorites. it may be that the word "God" has a predominantly Judeo-Christian flavor to a random observer since our culture is predominantly Judeo-Christian, but that's still a long way from "one nation under Yaweh" or "one nation under Christ." yes "God" means the God of Christianity to most americans, but that's not because "God" is somehow loaded, it's simply because all of us naturally interpret "God" according to our understanding of Him. in other words, if anyone chooses to imbue "God" with some meaning beyond the most generic aspects of deity, that's entirely subjective.

besides, this argument is a cop-out. it's not like there's a better english language equivalent waiting in the wings. the people who advance this view are well aware of that, and simply wish to avoid confronting the more serious constitutional issues head on.

2. if "God" is merely an ecumenical, "civil religion" hallmark card sentiment, then it's meaningless and should not be in the pledge. if it does have a specific meaning, then it violates the first amendment and should not be in the pledge.

this one was popular back when newdow first picked this fight, and it's not surprisingly come back in vogue.

first of all, even if you accept the premise, the conclusion does not follow. if "God" is in fact a meaningless term, then by definition it carries no legal weight and hence can do no harm. we might just as well leave it in the pledge, then, since the vast majority of our country wants it that way. the onus is on those who wish to change the status quo to show that it's somehow harmful, and in adopting this tactic, they've yanked the rug out from under themselves.

but ignoring that for the moment, the fact that "God" might have a meaning does not make it automatically unconstitutional. a simple state acknowledgment of the existence of a higher power isn't the same thing as a law "respecting an establishment of religion." again, there's no preferential treatment shown to theists under the law. last time i checked, atheists and theists used the same courts and got the same justice, voted in the same booths, and paid the same taxes.

3. "under God" is a state establishment of religion. it establishes theism.

(in case you hadn't noticed by now, i've arranged these in order of increasing absurdity.)

theism is not a religion. it has no practices, no rites, no churches, no clergy, no sacraments, no articles of faith, and no beliefs save one: the existence of something or someone called "God," a being who is generally believed to be omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and eternal, but not always, who may or may not be personal--or even a person--may be an individual or part of anything including us, may be good, bad, both, or indifferent, may be male, female, or neither, may predate the universe or have emerged from it, may be singular or plural or singular and triune, may be spirt, may have once been a man, may have been spirit, then man, then spirit again...am i missing any? religions are built around this basic belief in exactly the same way as non-theistic religions are build around the lack of it. that is, starting with this belief, or with its negation, one may work up a set of ideas about the nature of the universe and our place in it. but to call theism a religion, one must bastardize the definition of "religion" to the point where it becomes nothing more than the merest belief about anything having to do with what's beyond our ability to detect through sight, hearing, taste, touch, or smell.

how would the state establish such a "religion" even if it wanted to? the only possible way would be to simply persecute all non-theists, but, once more, there isn't a single tangible ounce of difference between theists and non-theists under the law. also once more, the pledge is voluntary. no one is required to use its theistic form or say it at all.

4. the fact that the pledge is voluntary or that students have the option of saying it without the words "under God" is unimportant. peer pressure could force them into reciting it when they don't want to, and they could be ostracized for their beliefs. therefore, the pledge is unconstitutional.

huh?

i'm no thurgood marshall but i've read the bill of rights a few times, and this one is news to me. ok, let me check my trusty old constitution...here we go:

congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...oh, and also, the courts must proactively ensure that no one is ever placed in a position where they'll have to feel uncomfortable in front of their peers because of their religious beliefs.

oh, wait. i made that last part up.

the first amendment is not a security blanket. in fact, it's a pretty scary thing. it says that it's all up to you. no one is going to tell you the answers, you've got to figure it out for yourself. it does not guarantee--nor should it--that your decisions will be popular ones, it simply guarantees you the right to make them. the laws of our land protect you from discrimination because of religious faith, but that doesn't mean that you aren't going to have to stand out from the crowd, face a few snickers, maybe even be ostracized because of your beliefs. if that's too much for you, then you're a weakling and whatever faith it is you find too unfashionable for mondays-through-saturdays is well rid of you. the fact that we're talking about school children is irrelevant. teachers should do their best to prevent anyone from being ridiculed because of their beliefs (or for any reason, for that matter) but it's a hard world out there and kids need to learn that, too.

locdog is convinced that if we weren't all such babies to being with, we wouldn't be having this silly argument

2005-08-31T16:45:00.000-04:00

america is doomed!

there's looting in new orleans. looting! it started out with food and stuff. then they went after electronics and shoes. now they're looting guns. oh yes, guns.

we have looting and an armed insurgency in new orleans. and it gets better. the cops have no food or water, and are ill-trained and ill-equipped to deal with this new menace. i mean, we aren't talking about a few disgruntled hold-outs from OLD orleans. we're talking about an organized resistance movement. how organized? one cop who called into glenn beck's show this morning claimed that the looters have positioned snipers to cover them while they rob businesses blind. the cops are afraid to show their faces, let alone attempt to impose law and order.

i think it's pretty clear what all of this means. it means that democracy is doomed in the united states of america. we're just not ready for it yet. yep, the writing is on the wall. time to pull our boys out of new orleans and let the dead bury the dead.

< /tounge in cheek >

serious solution: send in the military. place the city under martial law. distribute food and water and medicine. shoot looters on sight.

also: isn't it amazing how thin the line between civilization and anarchy is? a week ago, no one could have believed the chaos in new orleans possible, today it's a reality. a series of perfectly plausible events could transport most of us from our ordinary everyday lives to a struggle for survival in a post-apocalyptic nightmare in the course of a single unfortunate afternoon.

locdog writes from beyond thunderdome

2005-08-19T10:15:00.000-04:00

"absolute moral authority"

maureen dowd--a decrepit self-parody of a once mediocre talent--recently wrote that because cindy sheehan lost a son in iraq, she has "absolute moral authority" when it comes to the war.

it is, we are left to suppose, a happy coincidence that mrs. sheehan's morals jive so beautifully with ms. dowd's. we are further left to suppose that dowd, whose experience with sacrifices for the cause of freedom is limited to taking smarmy pot shots from the sidelines, has some standing to decide who gets this authority and who does not.

my problem with mrs. sheehan, who, were it not for the death of her son would be just one more barking moonbat of the left, is that she seems to have bought into dowd's assessment. for having already visited with the president once, and praising him as someone she has "new respect for," a "man of faith" who is "sincere about wanting freedom for the iraqis," she has now reevaluated her earlier position and demanded a second conference with the most powerful man in the world, something she apparently feels she is owed by virtue of her new-found infallibility.

i see two major flaws in the "absolute moral authority" view, the first of which has to do with a misinterpretation of mrs. sheehan's "sacrifice." mrs. sheehan's loss is very real, as is her grief. but she did not tie her babe to the altar like abraham of old to appease the gods of war. her son's life was not hers to give. he was a 24 year old man who re-enlisted after the start of the war, and had volunteered for the dangerous rescue mission he was killed on. if mrs. sheehan wants to honor her son's memory, she may wish to begin by not trampling on everything he proudly fought and died for.

the second biggie--and the one that prompted me to break my relative silence on this topic--is that mrs. sheehan is not the only mother to have lost a son in iraq, and many (i dare say most) do not share her views. this morning i heard a pennsylvania mother whose son was killed in iraq about a year ago when his convoy was attacked. she was understandably outraged at mrs. sheehan's grandstanding, but seemed most angered by the press proclaiming her the official spokeswoman of all grieving iraq war moms. most of these women do not believe their sons died for a neocon agenda to benefit israel, are proud to have raised young men willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for the cause of freedom, and are wondering when, exactly, maureen dowd will be picking up the phone to coronate them with their own absolute moral authority.

locdog wouldn't hold his breath if he were them

2005-08-11T11:03:00.000-04:00

a bet: you support abortion clinic bombers

i would be willing to wager that every last one of you support abortion bombers. no exceptions. how can i make such an audacious claim? take the following test and see for yourself:

do you believe that an 1871 federal law aimed at fighting the KKK by preventing racial discrimination should be used to prosecute people who have nothing to do with the KKK, and didn't discriminate against anyone's race (or gender or religion or sexual orientation or various and sundry other what-have-yous)?

i'll assume you all answered "no." if you didn't, then i suppose i'd lose my bet, but then, i can always make another bet, whereas you would clearly be suffering from some form of crippling and irreparable neurological degeneration. needless to say, those who answered "yes," are excused from reading any further, and may resume smoking crack or drinking benzene or wood alcohol or whatever it is you poor bastards do to make yourselves turn out this way.

i suppose those of you who are still here are now wondering how it is that a rather commonsensical rejection of judicial insanity could be equated with support for abortion clinic bombers, aren'tcha? well i'm glad you asked.

NARAL pro-choice america has created an ad that accuses john roberts of "supporting violent fringe groups and a convicted clinic bomber" and "excus[ing] violence against other americans" because he once filed an amicus brief in which he argued precisely what you've all agreed with, that as heinous as the actions of these domestic terrorists may be, what they did cannot rightfully be prosecuted under an 1871 KKK law that simply does not apply.

but i'm getting ahead of myself.

back in 1991, several abortion clinics joined in a civil lawsuit against operation rescue, a pro-life group notorious for blockading clinic entrances and other disruptive if non-violent protest measures. roberts was not representing this group, but filed an amicus brief arguing that the prosecution's case, which hinged on a narrow 1871 KKK law, did not apply. roberts explicitly condemned the protestors' actions as illegal under state trespassing law, but not discriminatory as the protestors were blockading women of all races, as well as their husbands, doctors, etc. as the helpful nerds over at factcheck.org (to whom this post owes a great debt) point out, roberts "went out of his way to say that the blockaders were trespassing, which is a violation of state law." indeed, while working as an associate counsel to rondald reagan and dealing with the issue of pardons for abortion clinic bombers, factcheck.org reveals, "Roberts called abortion bombers 'criminals' and 'misguided individuals,'" who "should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law."

so we've got a 1991 case where there was no violence, no bombings, only a blockade, and where roberts' position was that these individuals had broken state law and should be thusly prosecuted, but that they should not be prosecuted under a federal anti-discrimination law which had no relevance to their crimes. everyone with me?

ok, now we jump forward seven years to 1998, when mad bomber eric rudolph blew up a birmingham abortion clinic, injuring emily lyons (the woman in the naral ad that you should go watch now if you haven't done so already) and killing an off-duty cop. so naral puts together this anti-roberts spot, showing footage of the carnage at the 1998 birmingham bombing and an interview in which emily lyons says that since "I almost lost my life...I'm determined to stop this violence so I'm speaking out." presumably, it's john roberts she's speaking out against, and it's roberts alledged support for the bombing of her clinic that prompted the speaking in the first place.

indeed, right before emily lyons explains why she's "speaking out," the ad shows a picture of roberts' 1991 KKK brief, as though the brief he filed were in defense of the 1998 clinic bombing, and, in case that didn't make it clear enough, the announcer then accuses roberts of holding to an "ideology [that] leads him to excuse violence against other americans."

the ad is so laughably dishonest that i could almost believe that evil genius karl rove produced it soley to discredit naral. but it does raise a serious question: if this is the level naral has to stoop to in order to oppose john roberts...then why are they opposing john roberts?

think about it. if they've got to invent things to get hysterical about, why be hysterical? why not be thankful that roberts isn't the pro-life crusader they're knowingly distorting him into?

i think there are two reasons for this, both of which are pretty bad.

the first is that naral, when all's said and done, cares about naral, not "a woman's right to chose." the latter now exists only to facilitate the former, as the mindset of bureaucratic self-perpetuation and the lure of a life of free money from guilt-ridden liberal elites have taken hold.

the second is that, while john roberts would seem a long shot to overturn roe v. wade, and while his clear-minded condemnations of domestic terrorists who bomb abortion clinics should be a comforting thought, groups like naral have always depended on the mutilation of federal law and the constitution of the united states--without it, killing one's unborn child would not be considered an expression of "privacy." step back from the substance of roberts' 1991 amicus brief and consider the form: a crime is committed under state law, the federal government wants a piece of the action, a completely non-applicable statute is invoked, and a refutation of that invocation is proffered. roberts' position was just plain good law--which is probably why, when the case eventually wound up in the supreme court, his argument prevailed to the tune of a 6-3 decision. any good judge is a threat to naral, regardless of his personal feelings on abortion.

locdog is pro-life america

2005-08-09T11:05:00.000-04:00

And as Jesus passed by...

1 ...he saw a man which was blind from his birth.

2 And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?

3 Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.

4 I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work.

5 As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.

6 When he had thus spoken, he spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and he anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay,

7 And said unto him, Go, wash in the pool of Siloam, (which is by interpretation, Sent.) He went his way therefore, and washed, and came seeing.

John 9:1-7

once thought to be a religious metaphor used by the apostle john, the pool of siloam has been discovered in jerusalem.

if you've ever read any of the so-called "higher criticism" of the Bible, or, even worse, studied it at a secular university as i have, you'll find that no book aside from Genesis is attacked with more ferocity than the the gospel of John. John is the most metaphysical of the gospels, and in it Christ is most overtly depicted as God incarnate. arguably the single most dogmatic assertion of the Christian faith, "I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me," can be found in John.

John is frequently accused of embellishing or fabricating large sections of dialogue attributed to Christ, or of inventing historical places or personages. the pool of siloam had been considered by some an example of John's untrustworthiness.

it should be noted that the criticism of John is not motivated by the failure of archeology to validate his claims as the vast majority of persons and places John makes reference to have been confirmed. the list of remaining discrepancies is small and getting smaller with new finds.

the problem with John is that the Jesus represented within its pages does not fit with the Jesus of the modern secular critic, a Jesus who was merely mortal, was not a miracle worker, did not believe Himself to be the savior of humanity much less the Son of God, and had no intention of winding up on a cross. this version of Jesus is best understood as a wandering stand-up act who brought His observational humor and cynical ruminations on the religious elite to sold-out meadows and shorelines all across judea.

their vision of Christ is rooted primarily in contempt for Christianity, and a desire to create a more politically correct Jesus who will be considered less offensive by non-Christians. it is not based on evidence, either archeological or textual, as the archeology confirms the Biblical accounts and the oldest, most reliable gospels are already found in the pages of Scripture.

granted, this finding does not prove that Jesus truly was the Son of God--nor could any archeological discovery--but it does take away one more weapon His detractors used to attack the credibility of those who claim He is. conversely, it's another black mark on the record of Jesus' critics, but that should come as little surprise. it would have taken a lot more than an ancient-world jerry seinfeld to spark the greatest revolution in the history of mankind.

locdog doubts cosby, carlin, or rock could have pulled it off either, but thinks steven wright would have had an outside chance

2005-08-04T14:45:00.000-04:00

here's one for you math/science nerds:

last night i was watching darren aronofsky's pi, a film i hadn't seen in a few years. if you've never seen it, it has to do with a young mathematician who comes across a mysterious 216 digit number while studying the seemingly random fluctuations of the stock market. he learns that this number is embedded into the very structure of the universe, and that by decoding it, one can predict seemingly chaotic phenomena. for his troubles, he's pursued by jewish mystics and corporate raiders, and much suspense ensues.

anyway, the movie got me thinking about a sort-of real life counterpart to aronofsky's fantasy number, the number omega. omega is a mysterious number that is infinitely long and can never be computed but which does seem to bear some fundamental relationship to the nature of the universe--or at least, those parts of it that concern pure mathematics.

omega is the brainchild of one gregory chaitin, a man who looks more like a mathematician than any other human being who has ever lived. chaitin was intrigued by the work of alan turing, the father of modern computational theory, and kurt godel, an austrian mathematician who more or less wrecked math for all of us back in the early 30s.

what godel did, quite simply, was to show that attempts to contruct some sort of logical and systematic foundation for math was impossible (see russell and whitehead.) godel expressed this in set notation, but an english equivalent that's often given goes something like this:

1. imagine there is an omnipotent machine that is capable of answering any question posed to it.

2. this machine is just a machine, after all, a powerful computer that runs on a program which must be of finite length. you can't write an infinitely long program, of course, and even if you could, you couldn't find a computer to run it in a finite amount of time. this means that the machine will always answer in a finite amount of time.

3. you ask the machine to evaluate whether the following statement is true or false: "you, mr. machine, will never say that this statement is true."

4. the machine ponders. if it says that this is a true statement, then it is, in fact, a false statement since it will have invalidated the statement's only claim. this would be a problem, as the machine is incapable of saying anything false. it decides, therefore, to answer "false," but before it does it realizes that in order to do so, it would then eventually have to say that the statement is true, which takes it right back to square one.

5. the poor machine is done for. it can never answer your question "true," but then, your question was based on the prediction that the machine could never answer your question "true." you walk away feeling quite good about yourself: you were absolutely right all along, knowing something that is true but that an omnipotent machine could never know.

godel's theorem seems like a logician's parlor trick, but it has shocking implications for the fields of mathematics and philosophy. think about it for a second. this machine is omnipotent, it knows every bit of truth that's capable of being known. but even then, there are still truths out there that it can't know. godel has erected an impassible roadblock that boxes humanity's quest for knowledge in. there are statements out there that may be true and that may be false, but as far as we're concerned, they'll simply remain undecided. for a mathematician, this is very bad news. it means that however long or hard he toils, his efforts, however interesting or productive they prove to be, will never approach a comprehensive understanding of the nature of mathematics. he needs to be outside of godel's box to see it, and he can never escape.

a few years later, the british mathematician alan turing applied godel's notion to digital computing--which was no mean feat as the first digital computer would not be invented for another five years.

turing wondered if there was a way for a computer to know in advance whether something was inside or outside of godel's box. imagine you built a computer capable of running any program. we know from godel that there will always be certain problems that are solvable, but which your computer could never figure out, so if you wrote a program that asked it to solve such a problem, your computer would chug away for all time caught in an infinite loop. turing thus set out to find a way to determine if we could know in advance which problems could be solved and which could not, something that's come to be known as the "halting problem."

it works like this. say you want to know what 5 + 5 is but you don't want to burn out a perfectly good computer on an unsolvable problem. so instead of writing a program that would have the computer solve 5 + 5, you instead attempt to come up with a program that asks the computer to tell you instead whether it could solve 5 + 5 in a finite amount of time. how do you do this?

the problem is, a real computer doesn't actually know anything. it's just a calculator. you enter a couple of numbers along with an operator indicating what you want done with them, and the computer does it. it would seem as if the only way to know if your program could run in a finite amount of time would be to feed it into the computer and cross your fingers.

turing found that this is quite correct:

1. suppose there is a program out there called HALT (P,D) that can take some program P, some data to input into that program D, and tells you if P will come to a productive halt or loop on fruitlessly forever when fed data D. for instance, if P were a program that figured out "some number times 5" then D would be the number you wanted multiplied by five, and HALT would tell you if this were doable or not. if it is, HALT will output "halt," and if it isn't, "loop."

2. imagine we told HALT to use P as both the input and the data: HALT (P,P). why would we do this? because it allows us to evaluate whether the program itself will lead to an infinite loop, regardless of what data we use. after all, if P is "some number times five" and what we input is "some number times five" then that's equivalent to asking HALT what happens to P if we multiply any number by five. this will tell us whether P itself is a solvable program, which is just what we're after.

3. "some number times five" is a rather dull program, so let's take a more interesting program called X that simply does the opposite of whatever HALT says. so if HALT says "halt," X loops on forever, and if HALT says "loop," X halts. we then have HALT use X as the input and data, or HALT (X,X).

4. why is X such an interesting program? simple. if HALT (X,X) returns "halt," then the program X will loop on forever, but unfortunately HALT said that it wouldn't, so we have a contradiction. if HALT (X,X) returns "loop," then X will halt, which, again, is exactly the opposite of what HALT said it would do, and again, HALT is contradicted.

5. no matter which way HALT goes, it implies a logical contradiction. but what is the program X? it's simply "do the opposite of whatever HALT says." and if we take X as both our program and our data, HALT (X,X), it becomes "do the opposite of the opposite of whatever HALT says," or, with better grammar, "do what HALT says." in a sense, we've asked HALT to evaluate itself, and what it's determined is that it's bunk. it's self-contradictory. no such program HALT exists.

there the matter remained for quite some time, until the aforementioned gregory chaitin picked up the gauntlet godel and turing had thrown down, which brings us, finally, to omega.

chaitin set out to determine if he could figure out the odds of a program plucked at random from all possible programs halting (or not) when fed into a computer. this probability, he found, was a real number with a value between 0 and 1. he named it "omega." the problem was, although he knew that there was a number out there that could tell you whether or not a program could run--a way to peak outside of godel's box--there was no way to figure out what it was.

why not? the problem with omega, chaitin discovered, was that it was endless and random, much like (as far as we can tell) the digits of the number pi. if you printed it out in binary, it would be an infinite series of 1's and 0's, with each digit bearing absolutely no relation to those that came before. chaitin was able to come up with an equation that, if evaluated, would give you the digits of omega. it worked a bit like the HALT program in that it would tell you, for a given set of data fed into his equation, whether there were a finite or infinite number of solutions. if finite, he could write a 1, and if infinite, a 0. he could thus continue feeding in numbers 1, 2, 3, and so on forever, and get as many digits of omega as he liked.

of course, the equation he created cannot be solved--but he knew that to begin with. after all, by definition, omega was a totally random number where each digit bore no connection to the last, so if there was a formula that could produce it, and that formula could be evaluated, then it would be possible to see some sort of structure in what is absolutely chaotic. after all, you'd simply be applying the same finite set of operations to a series of sequential numbers 1, 2, 3,... over and over again. there would then have to be a connection to the digits of omega since they would have been based on the sequence of counting numbers.

the implications for mathematics are far worse than what godel might have suspected. chaitin's formula for omega was based on number theory, the very foundation of mathematics itself. we're talking about counting, adding, and multiplication here, the most basic, simplest stuff possible. chaitin's formula was based on these operations alone, meaning that the failure to find omega is a sort of a mathematician's uncertainty principle, it's a limit on what we can ever know of number theory, and it's not simply that it's unknowable, it's that, at the core of mathematics, there is deep, deep randomness infused throughout.

what implications might this hold for everyone who isn't a mathematician? some believe that the goal of physics, the so-called theory of everything or TOE, is a fool's errand. physicists are glorified mathematicians, and if math is at its very foundation random and chaotic--a series of disjointed facts bearing no relationship to one another--then there is no reason to believe that such a theory should be possible. some have gone as far as to say that chaitin's work disproves the TOE from the start, but i don't share this bleak assessment. chaitin may have shown we can't know the whole story--in fact, we can know very little of it--but that doesn't mean that what we do know is wrong. there might be enough truth floating around out there within our reach that physicists will be able to somehow manage.

as if the prospect of omega isn't scary enough, chaitin has unleashed greater horrors: super omegas. these come about simply by imagining a machine that could figure out another machine's halting problem, that is, knowing whether or not it could solve a particular problem. it would therefore know omega. however, that machine would have its own halting problem and it's own omega, which could in turn be known by another machine, and so forth.

this hierarchy of omegas actually has applications in computer science. for instance, super omega is the odds of an infinite process producing a finite amount of data, and super-super omega is the odds of an infinite process producing no data at all. some programs are designed to run without halt, like, for example, your computer's operating system, so while it isn't possible to know any of these numbers, if it were, they could have tremendous implications for our modern world--imagine an operating system that never crashed.

so there you have it. omega: a number that allows one to know the unknowable, shows that math is fundamentally chaos, may hold the key to understanding the physical universe, could potentially revolutionize computers and our way of life, which does most definitely exist, and which can never be known.

locdog's brain hurts

2005-08-01T12:11:00.000-04:00

locdog movie review: charlie and the chocolate factory

when i was a kid, i had two of my all time favorite movies back to back on a single VHS cassette. the first was predator--and brother, there are two governors whose bad sides you don't want to be on--and the second was willy wonka, mel stuart's 1971 camp classic.

tim burton's updated take on--what? you take umbrage at the term "camp classic" being used on a sacred and cherished part of your childhood? well go watch it again, buster, because you're in for a shock. willy wonka is awful. it's fantastically, deliciously, laughably bad in almost every respect. my favorite moment--besides "burp, charlie, burp!"--is grandpa joe's meltdown in the film's climax: "you're an inhuman monster!"

the only redeeming quality was gene wilder, a lean and mean gene wilder whose reputation as a comic genius was not yet the given it is today, whose glory days with mel brooks still lay ahead of him. his take on wonka was the perfect counterpoint to the film's sugary coating, a hot fudge sunday topped with tobasco sauce. he's an insane, sadistic, melancholy, gleeful, powder keg of energy played played to pitch perfect comic effect time and again--and he's more than a little creepy to boot. wilder's performance in willy wonka is far, far too good for such a rotten movie, and it remains one of my all-time favorites.

by contrast, just about everything in charlie and the chocolate factory is superb--except for johnny depp, who is merely very good.

burton's obsession has ever been finding the humanity in misfits--and one good look at tim burton ought to explain why. in the '71 film, wilder was the lord of his universe, a towering figure that dwarfed all others--it was is if the oompa loompas had to be small since there simply wasn't any other way one could be in relation to the mad genius willy wonka. here, depp is the eternal man-child, rejected by his father, a stern dentist played by a menacing christopher lee, and abused by a society determined to steal his secrets, he withdraws into his own private neverland ranch, where they oompa loompas--decidedly subordinate in the first film--are his only playmates. if we ever need an actor to portray michael jackson, we need look no further than johnny depp.

the most interesting thing about depp's performance for me was his face. you can't take your eyes off of it. he looks like a thirteen year old white girl. he lives in a fantasy land surrounded by little people. he lures children in with candy and golden tickets...ok, i've got to get off this mj thing.

anyway, his face. it's remarkable. half the time i found it difficult to believe i was watching johnny depp, but then he'd twist that china doll face into some wonderfully expressive configuration and that unmistakable talent shone through. gene wilder's turn gave the impression that wonka's manic behavior was just a put-on for the crowd, that the real show was what was going on behind his sardonically-set eyes. depp took the opposite approach, dumping childlike reactions on the screen completely unfiltered. he titters with delight as the oompa loompas go whirling off into another tune, and he matches the petulance of his adolescent guests with ease. when they received in the '71 version, wilder registered boredom, delight, annoyance...anything but concern. depp wisely avoids the same pitfall but not quite as cleanly. there are several crucial reaction shots of him looking on while a child is being thrown into a garbage shoot by rampaging squirrels or turned into a blueberry where he appears to be...well, a little nervous. maybe i'm making unfair comparisons, but i didn't think he was as effective as he could have been. his was a flawed, post-modern willy wonka, a wonka for the new millenium.

i also thought there were instances where burton and depp were laying it on a big thick. the cannibalism line that's running in all the promos fell flat for me. the winks to the tie-dyeds-and-twinkies set (who comprised a considerable portion of my friday night, 9 p.m. viewing) seemed rather obvious. i sensed that burton was trying a bit too hard to be edgy--and it seems to have worked. most of the grownups i've talked to about this film have thought precisely that, that it was edgy. but then, most grownups think that applebee's really is your hometown restaurant because they hang a few jerseys from the local football team on the wall. what made the original edgy--genuinely edgy--was that it was yet another soulless, saccharine kiddy flick which, oh by the way, had an utter madman running loose throughout.

and now i know i'm being unfair. if i wanted the '71 film, i should have popped that old tape into my VCR and watched it. burton's take on the film was exciting and inventive, and if the hip hop hair metal oompa loompas seem a bit plastic to you, then the surprising heart he brings to the main theme of the picture--family--will more than make up for it. i was amazed at how deeply he could make you feel for characters that you've known for decades--there was a twenty-something with a date sitting to my right who actually gasped when charlie ripped open the chocolate bar in the hopes of finding a golden ticket. sure you know he's going to find it sooner or later, but you care about him finding it. in the original film, it was merely a given. and if that original '71 classic was a sappy film with a heart of darkness, today's version is a dark film with a heart of gold.

locdog's next movie review will be stealth--yeah, right

2005-07-08T10:07:00.000-04:00

here's what london doesn't mean:

it doesn't mean the war on terrorism is working, although i know some of you conservatives will be tempted to think so. the fact that the terrorists have struck more or less everywhere but the united states since 9/11 is encouraging, but you can't conclude from that basis alone that they're not able to strike us as well. it may be that they simply don't want to return to the united states until they can do so in grand enough a fashion to top 9/11, whereas yesterday was their introductory strike on the brits.

it also doesn't mean that the war on terrorism is not working. let's imagine for a moment that the war on terror has been prosecuted to absolute perfection, that every possible step had been taken, every known terrorist stronghold invaded, every leader captured or killed. do any of you seriously believe that that could have prevented a few determined individuals from planting a few bombs on a few trains?

what do the bombings yesterday mean? they mean that there are a lot of sick people in this world who place no value whatsoever on human life--including their own. that last bit shouldn't come as much of a surprise: if you esteem yourself nothing beyond a living smart bomb, why not blow up others? so we'd all better come to grips with the fact that terrorism is never going to be eliminated. you can blame poverty or religion or unjust foreign policy, but the truth is that it's intrinsic to our nature and it's always going to be with us. man's capacity for cruelty is limitless and the pages of history are written in the blood of those who underestimated this truth. the best that we can do is to keep fighting. "forever," i hear someone ask. yes, forever. that's just the way it is. it's the struggle between good and evil in each of our hearts played out on the world stage. you win the first battle, and we'll all win the second. until then, however...

an aside: i held my peace yesterday out of respect while liberals practically turned handsprings. the ghouls had apparently been waiting for something like this for quite some time. the giddy outbursts i witnessed in the immediate aftermath of the train bombings made their daily iraq casualty parades seem somber by comparison. i'm finding it difficult to register my disgust, so i'll simply say that if any of what i've said in this final paragraph is offending you personally, then you're exactly who i'm talking about.

locdog's $0.02

2005-07-06T12:30:00.000-04:00

why bush should appoint a hard-liner

1. bush is under no obligation to cooperate with congress

to hear the democratic minority tell it, the president has a constitutional duty to submit only those nominees they find ideologically palatable. nothing could be further from the truth. the constitution gives the president broad latitude to nominate those individuals he believes best suited to the job. the "advise and consent" role of congress is merely intended to assure that the president's nominees are qualified for their positions, it is not intended to serve as a bargaining chip whereby congressional minorities can dicker the president away from his ideal candidates. we saw a foreshadowing of this recently when harry reid proposed a handful of nominees he found acceptable, the implication being that it's now the president's turn to make a counter-proposal as though this were some sort of negotiation, or worse, to choose from a pool of congressionally approved candidates. for an example of how this is supposed to be handled, check out clinton's nomination of ginsburg (arguably the most liberal justice on the court), and the subsequent overwhelming confirmation afforded her by senate republicans. she was qualified, she was the president's choice, ergo, she was confirmed.

2. ideology should play no role in the confirmation process

if the recent federal appellate court battles are any indication, a staunch conservative appointee would likely be rejected by democrats on the grounds of "extremism." i recently heard one liberal activist argue that the president should nominate a supreme court justice that will represent the interests of all americans, not just his far-right special interests. it should be noted that the democrats are, of course, driven as much by far-left special interests in their opposition as bush would be in a potential conservative nomination, but that's beside the point. bush won a decisive if not overwhelming victory in the last presidential election. it does not matter if many americans did not vote for him. they lost. in our republic--in any republic--those who win elections are given the power to govern as they see fit. we do not now, nor have we ever, lived in a democracy where the will of the people is directly translated into political action--and even if we did, bush's views would still win out by virtue of a simple majority. that is our system of government. it has always been our system of government. it does not change because the democrats are out of power. further, whenever a democrat or liberal activist talks about "extremism" or "representing all the people," what they are really talking about is maintaining the status quo, which is precisely what they'll get as long as bush nominates anyone but a hard-line conservative. it is hypocritical to object to ideologically-driven nominations on grounds that are transparently ideological, and besides, the constitution places no restrictions on ideology as discussed above.

3. by caving to pressure to nominate a more moderate selection, bush establishes a dangerous precedent

if the president desires to nominate a staunch conservative but does not for fear of a messy confirmation battle, he has, through cowardice, tacitly approved the dangerous logic of democratic opponents, namely, that certain types of thinking are unacceptable for our justice system. terms like "ideological litmus test" tend to obscure the real problem: the left's decision to thought police nominees and only permit those whose thinking they deem correct to hold any influence. an individual who has accumulated a long and distinguished service record and garnered the highest marks from professional associations will still be readily denied by the left if they find their beliefs objectionable. this dangerous, un-american, and wrong. it smacks of the sort of naked hostility towards dissent seen in college campuses, major papers, and other bastions of liberalism. in the private world it's merely ugly, in government, it's totalitarian.

4. the people have a right to see their views reflected in the judiciary

the stridency of the left's opposition is easy to understand. america is a predominantly conservative country. a few bastions of liberalism aside (california, new england, rust belt states) the views of most americans tend towards conservatism. we see this in the republican dominance of washington, the prevalence of republicans at the state level, comparisons with europe or canada, etc. since they are unable to enact their agenda through constitutional means (i.e., by elected office) liberals have resorted to enacting it through the courts. it's all they have left, and, as we've often seen, it's all that really matters. as long as the liberals control the courts, our elections are irrelevant--or, at least, they matter only insofar as elected officials will be the ones to appoint the oligarchs. now that the republicans have an opportunity to apply the standard the left has created, they cry foul and do everything in their power to obstruct. the great irony here is that, in addition to being better in tune with the average citizen, conservative justices believe in interpreting the constitution as written.

5. only a hard-line conservative will do

once bush's justice is appointed, there's no accountability and no going back. souter is a fine example of this--souter, one of our most reliably liberal justices, had been decried by liberal groups as a right-wing extremist during his confirmation. in the recent kelo decision, which empowers cities to take private property from one land owner and transfer it to another for the purpose of private development via eminent domain, souter and another supposed conservative, kennedy, sided with hard-line liberals ginsburg, breyer, and stevens in perpetrating one of the biggest crimes against individual liberty in the history of our republic. bush's appointee must be a man or woman about whom there is no question. the media would portray such a pick as a brazen attempt by the president to pick a fight with congress. this is silly for two reasons. the first is obvious: bush is in for a battle regardless of who he picks. even if bush's selection delighted them, the democrats would have to offer at least token resistance to placate their rabidly anti-bush core, and to insulate themselves from future criticism should the nominee turn out to be a stealth conservative. the second reason is that bush doesn't want a big confirmation battle. it in no wise helps him and, indeed, harms him by burning political capital he could spend on social security reform or other initiatives.

why everything i just said doesn't matter

i don't think bush is going to give us another scalia. he's going to give us gonzales.

locdog sometimes wishes he didn't care

2005-06-30T12:43:00.000-04:00

locdog movie review: war of the worlds

when i was a kid and my friends were reading comic books and watching he-man cartoons, i was reading h. g. wells and watching star trek. war of the worlds has long been one of my favorite books, but as a movie fan i've been willing to accept that what makes a good book does not always make a good movie. (this acceptance is what separates us from the apes. and the fanboys.) if a director can stay true to the spirit of the book while producing an entertaining film then as far as i'm concerned, he's produced a successful adaptation.

and in that spirit, war of the worlds succeeds brilliantly. it's a near-flawless summer blockbuster, a popcorn movie with all the trimmings that taps into the paranoid terror of wells' overdone classic while making it feel fresh and relevant once more. there have been enough bad adaptations of classic sci-fi lately (witness the horror that was i, robot) to see what happens when the big-budget template is shoehorned onto the sacred scriptures of dorkdom, but spielberg's film breathes through the material.

wells' novel, and the campy fifties adaptation--a classic in its own right--offered more of a panoramic view of the havoc our martian neighbors wreaked. spielberg's version comes off a lot like the road movie from hell, as you zip from one war-torn nightmarescape to the next along with tom cruise, his rebellious teenage son, and wiser-than-dad grade-school aged daughter. there's an underdeveloped sub-plot centering on the desires of the son to join the resistance, and there's the obligatory creepy farmhouse interlude where we get upclose'n'personal with our new guests, but not much more in the way of story. just carnage. lots and lots of carnage.

not that that's a bad thing. it can be, if left in the hands of a lesser director, but spielberg has always had a knack for combining the big and little. seeing new york city ripped apart by what reminded me of darth vader's helmet on stilts is pretty cool, but with some directors that's all you would have got, and usually it would be presented from a detached, God's-eye view. i've always regarded disaster flicks as essentially pornographic--the mindless repetition of devastation on the grandest scales the studios are willing to finance. but here it's the little things that matter. as dark clouds gather above, blotting out the sun and masking the presence of the alien spacecraft, we see street lights blinking on below. as cruise herds his kids into a van and speeds away from the rampaging space invaders, we see bridges being leveled and houses being uprooted in the rear-view mirror. you can't truly overwhelm a movie audience unless there is some grounding in the mundane, some small connection with reality from which a viewer can formulate a relation between the impossible images on screen and his own humdrum existence.

that's also what makes this film so suspenseful--surprisingly so. enough to easily outshine the recent endeavors of the self-appointed second coming of hitchcock who shall remain nameless until he apologizes for that fraud he perpetrated on the movie-going public with the hi-mr.-park-ranger ending...don't get me started. you've probably forgotten by now that spielberg's films weren't always terminally dull, but he's had some real nail-biters over the years. poltergeist, easily one of the best horror films ever made, comes to mind. there's also a little picture called jaws that you may have heard of. even e.t. and close encounters of the third kind had their moments, despite their warm and fuzzy reputations. yep, once upon a time, this was a director who knew how to kick an audience's ass properly. well, he's back. the farmhouse sequence alone will be enough to make you wonder if he ever really left.

the acting is secondary in a film like this. basically the characters spend their time fleeing from computer-generated nasties or looking scared as they anticipate the next bout of fleeing from computer generated nasties. still, cruise does a good job. he's still the king of the popcorn flick, but he's a bit more seasoned now, more introspective as an actor and not nearly as smug. he rules with wisdom. his bratty kids, played adroitly by cutie dakota fanning and ineptly by dweeby justin chatwin, serve mainly to humanize cruise's lead and provide suspense--it's a road movie with a dozen eggs sitting on the roof of the car. fanning's eyes stretch three times their normal size as she's being stalked by the slimy evil-doers and it's impossible not to feel sympathetic, however obnoxious her character. chatwin's character is even worse. i doubt i was the only one in the theater hoping that either dear ol' dad would thump his skull or the aliens would vaporize him. why do these movies always have to resort to the after school special teen-angst broken-home a-very-special-blossom stereotypes for parent-child interactions? and i don't remember any annoying little rugrats scurrying around in the novel, anyway.

but one thing i'm pretty sure would have delighted that old lefty wells is the film's politics. there's no bigger democrat in hollywood than steven spielberg, and that's really saying something. his views on the war on terror and iraq are somewhat apparent in wotw, but i'm sure there will be enough written in the chatrooms and blogs that i don't need to spend too much time on the subject. don't misunderstand: you don't need to go to the theater looking for a deeper meaning. there isn't one. what there is is a thin skin of liberalism stretched over the film's ambiguous skeleton, but as with a spielberg crony/competitor's recent revenge of the sith ("if you’re not with me, you're my enemy!" "only sith deal in absolutes!"), it's not obtrusive. actually it's more confounding than anything. it would be a stretch to call the martians "symbolic," but at certain points in the film they seem to be representative of different things. we learn that they had burrowed themselves deep underground, lying in wait as they silently plotted for years, and then were summoned by bolts of lightning from the heavens to lay waste to our proud civilization...at one point dakota fanning even cries out "is it the terrorists!?" later, we get tim robbins as a deranged freedom fighter commenting on how if history has taught us one thing, it's that occupations always fail. so are the martians the terrorists or those trying to stop them? there's also a weird tension in the film between spielberg's pacifist instincts and the need to fight, which culminates in the film's climax and gives the overall impression that it's ok to fight, but only at the right time. that striking the right blow at the wrong time will ultimately result in greater destruction. or something. there's enough here for liberal film critics to praise the film as "timely" and allow spielberg to maintain his pretensions, but does a movie this good really need to be justified?

the one consistent lament i've seen in other criticism is the film's ending. i didn't find it as disappointing as others did--it's typical spielberg schlock, but if you steel yourself for it in advance, it's not that bad. it does raise some interesting questions, though. does he really like the sappy stuff or does he think we do? didn't he learn anything from the huge-sellout ending of AI? i don't want to give anything away--although if you don't already know at least the basics of how this film is going to end then you've probably spent the last million years burrowing underground yourself--but to me the ending played like a tribute to our troops. right war or wrong war, let's hear it for our boys...that sort of thing. i actually sorta dug it, except that by the time our boys were able to do anything, it no longer mattered.

war of the worlds is an exceptional summer blockbuster and the perfect film for the fourth of july weekend. it's intense sci-fi demolition, slithery suspense, 100% scientology free, and, of course, there's all the juicy rumors of tom cruise's budding romance with dakota fanning. poor katie holmes, no spring chicken, she. it's also a chance to see a master filmmaker at the absolute top of his game, which ought to be enough to get you film snobs in there as well.

locdog will now hibernate the rest of summer, until the teeny-bopper slasher flicks, bad news bears remakes, cornball t.v. series adaptations, and stock gross-out comedies have subsided once more

2005-06-28T22:10:00.000-04:00

great speech

one of bush's best.

solid content, superb delivery. bush's speeches have produced few memorable lines, but what is memorable about many of his speeches how he takes the material and makes it his own through sheer force of personality. the president's ability to convey moral conviction has ever been his greatest political asset, and tonight was no exception.

the speech had a profoundly unifying message. the emphasis wasn't on what we were doing in iraq in the first place, a hotly contested issue even today, but on why it's so important to win now that we are there, whatever the cost--and that whatever-the-cost mentality was evident throughout the president's remarks. while the president's opponents take potshots from the gallery with calls for arbitrary timelines and other politically-imposed constraints ranging from the meaningless to the outright suicidal, he remains focused on victory.

the speech centered around what the president plainly sees as the fundamental truth of iraq, something that all americans, regardless of party affiliation, should be able to agree on: iraq is now the epicenter of the war on terror, and however high the price of victory, the price of defeat will be higher still. the enemy believes this unwaveringly, all the way up to bin laden himself. our resolve must be firmer still.

much has been made over dick cheney's "death throes" remark concerning the state of the insurgency in iraq. general wesley clark on fox's coverage remarked on how the president failed to reconcile his own appropriately sober assessment of enemy strengths with cheney's somewhat rosier take. but is this such a contradiction? one of the many things the president made abundantly clear tonight was that the fate of the insurgency has already been written. they have failed every step of the way, from destabilizing the provisional authority in iraq to preventing the transfer of sovereignty to inciting civil war. that doesn't mean they can't inflict painful wounds, but without the ability to seriously contest american military supremacy, without a viable alternative to the democratically-elected iraqi government, and, most importantly, without the popular support, they can never prevail. their only chance of victory is to dispirit the american people in hopes of prompting a unilateral withdrawal. if we do not lose faith, we will not lose the war. victory is our choice.

beyond this grand strategic vision, the president also presented some encouraging details, notably those relating to the training of iraqi troops, the founding of an iraqi military college, the international support (both monetary and military) that's benefiting the iraqi people, u.n. assistance on the iraqi constitution, etc. these didn't come across as a typical your-tax-dollars-at-work laundry list of accomplishments, but as a way to give the american people some tangible examples of the night's broader themes.

the president's dipping poll numbers have been all over the news, but the important thing isn't the popularity of a given politician on a given day, it's the commitment of the american people to our troops and their mission, and in that regard, there's grounds for optimism. despite the public's souring on the decision to enter war, our determination to prevail seems greater than ever, and that's something that all americans should feel good about as we approach the fourth of july. taken in that spirit, the president's address tonight was a masterstroke.

locdog doubts it will help him much in the polls as most people's minds have long since been made up, but if it keeps their will to fight strong, then it will have done enough

2005-06-27T11:19:00.000-04:00

the entitlement generation

interesting AP story today on what employers have begun to think of as the "entitlement generation," the crop of kids 18-24 entering today's workforce.

who are the members of the entitlement generation? they have "shockingly high expectations for salary, job flexibility and duties but little willingness to take on grunt work or remain loyal to a company," or, in other words, they're a bunch of lazy idiots.

the story focuses on the efforts of employers to comprehend and manage the kiddies, and the strategy that has proven most effective should come as little surprise: bribery. if junior won't eat his veggies, promise him a cookie. if he won't behave in the store, promise him a toy. if he won't do his homework, promise him a new video game. lazy, idiotic parents have produced a generation of lazy, idiotic children (that's right, once again--and not for the last time--the boomers have given america the shaft) who are incapable of exhibiting the slightest degree of self-discipline or pride in their performance. why? simple. they suffer from a fundamental lack of respect for authority, and without respect for external discipline and authority, true self-respect is impossible.

it's not enough, employers have discovered, to tell junior to smile politely while bagging mrs. clark's groceries. never mind that this is what junior is being paid to do, he must be given additional incentives beyond his pay, except instead of a cookie it's more like a gift certificate to a sporting goods store or record shop. if you hire junior to work the griddle at big boy, it's not enough that you're giving him his 200 bucks a week, he must be allowed, employers have learned, to wear piercings, tattoos, listen to music while he works, etc.

please note that i am not talking about incentives for those who go above and beyond the call of duty, which is a fine idea and integral part of our proud capitalist tradition. no, i'm talking about a program of bribery and cajolery and permissiveness to simply get junior up to minimum standards.

i can hear you liberals laughing this off now: "oh, locdog, you 28-year-old curmudgeon you. people have always complained about the younger generation. this is nothing new." no, that's quite correct. these things don't happen overnight. and i imagine that for generations prior to the fall of rome, old met sat around weeping at the depravity of youth, until finally the country was too soft to brush off a disorganized horde of rabble that they should have nicely annihilated.

in his excellent book the warrior elite, former navy SEAL dick couch was allowed the rare privilege of tagging along with a BUD/S (SEAL basic training) class from beginning to end, recording the successes and failures that winnowed over one hundred hopefuls down to around a dozen graduates as they were subjected to perhaps the most difficult military training in the world. buried among his many invaluable insights were two seemingly minor observations that have stuck with me: a recurring theme among kids who did well was a mid-western rural upbringing, and conversely, the more tattoos a kid had, the more likely he was to fail.

locdog weeps for the future

2005-06-23T11:28:00.000-04:00

the death of private property

the supreme court has ruled that private property can now be taken from you by the government and given over to other private developers under eminent domain. voting with the majority were justices kennedy, souter, ginsburg, breyer, and, of course, comrade stevens. o'conner lead the dissent, and was joined by rehnquist, scalia, and thomas.

what brought all this on? the town of new london, connecticut wants to bulldoze an entire neighborhood of homes--some dating back to the victorian era--to build tourist traps. i kid you not. families that have owned their homes for seven generations will now be forced to leave so that the city can build "commercial development that would attract tourists to the Thames riverfront, complementing an adjoining Pfizer Corp. research center and a proposed Coast Guard museum."

the fifth amendment of the constitution is pretty clear. it says that eminent domain applies to land that will be put to public use. public does not mean private. if public means private then white means black, hot means cold, left means right, and up means down...but then, to the glorified marxists in black robes, the constitution has seldom meant what it said and frequently meant the exact opposite. today, it seems, is no exception.

10 years ago, locdog would have said such a thing could never happen in the united states of america

2005-06-21T10:36:00.000-04:00

you're worse

in the atheist's playbook, the equivalent of the never-fails, bread'n'butter off-tackle-right has got to be good ol' evil:

"if there's a God and He's so good, why does so much bad stuff happen?"

since 9/11, the objection has gotten a bit more pointed:

"if there's a God and He's so good, why do His followers do so much bad stuff?"

there's been little attempt made by longtime secular critics or opportunistic leftists to differentiate between practitioners of different faiths. george w. bush is pat robertson is pope benedict is osama bin laden. it's all ashcroft and the american taliban and sawing off someone's head with a machete while making them play naked twister. you get it.

traditionally, however, the most intrusive, oppressive, murderous government have been secular governments--no, check that. atheistic governments. traditionally over the last century, anyway. but then, over the last century, the atheists have raped and murdered enough to give the rest of the centuries combined a run for their money. joe stalin alone offed, what, 20-some million out of sheer paranoia? then you've got your pol pots and sundry east asian purgings, your chi-coms, your castros, your central american revolutionaries...total up all the people killed by communists, either their own or those killed in communist wars of aggression, and the number soars to almost incomprehensible heights (or lows, i should say.) one source i found puts it at a not implausible 110 million.

whatever the actual number is, it's a lot. more than ashcroft and robertson's totals combined, even. and yet to many on the left, religion represents the greatest threat to peace and prosperity in the free world. now with muslim nations, they've at least got a leg to stand on. muslims currently comprise one side of nearly every war being fought on planet earth, and most of the worst tales of barbarism and depravity emerge from middle-eastern states. Christian nations, on the other hand, have been out of that business since the crusade/inquisition days (and the muslims were at it back then, too), a few exceptions aside.

then again, you've got about a billion people living in communist china right now, a place where the government imprisons you for unauthorized worship, dictates the amount of children you are permitted to have, and bans words like "democracy" from internet search engines--a deal, by the way, that google inc. gleefully leapt at, they of the 98% contribution to democratic candidates, thus sullying themselves alongside microsoft's msn search and yahoo! in participation with the denial of the basic human rights by an atheistic government.

not content with making a billion lives miserable, the chinese have clear designs on taiwan, and to that end have built up a blue water navy to enable them to project their power across the straight that had previously insulated that tiny beacon of liberty and human dignity the atheists regard as a "wayward province."

now before you democrats go off half-cocked, let's keep in mind that i'm not trying to blame one side or the other for collaboration with the chinese government. we're all guilty of buying their slave-made crap, and bush's handling of china has been as bad as clinton's. what i'm saying is, why haven't those howling about the dangers of the faithful given any consideration to those of the faithless?

you who are convinced the belief that dinosaurs died in a flood six thousand yeas ago will be the downfall of western civilization might want to consider the beam in your own eye before picking at the mote in ours. your track record is arguably the worst in human history, and shows little signs of improving.

in the long run, locdog thinks the atheists in china will prove a greater problem than the theists in the middle east

2005-06-20T11:55:00.000-04:00

locdog movie review: batman begins

i've never been much more than a casual bat fan, my interest limited to the theatrical releases and the occasional adam west/burt ward nick-at-nite outing, so the joel schumacher era, featuring the stunningly bad batman forever and batman and robin, came not as a crushing blow to a lifelong devotee, but as a nuisance--why ruin a perfectly serviceable summer movie franchise? tim burton's work on 1989's batman was at times inspired, and the misguided sequel he helmed, 1992's batman returns, seemed a bit too close to the director's eternal-misfit sensibilities for the good of the material, but he clearly meant well. schumacher directed his two films like he hated them from the beginning, driving the series away from the brooding, gothic atmosphere the fans so appreciated in burton's films and into saturday morning cartoon kitsch.

well the dark night is back--with a vengeance. his latest adventure, batman begins, brings us christian bale as a tortured caped crusader trying to right the cosmic balance that lurched horribly awry when his parents were gunned down before his grade-school aged eyes. tim burton had touched on this material in batman, but director christopher nolan (memento, insomnia) lends it a shocking emotional immediacy. the psychological struggle that leads to the emergence of bruce wayne's famous alter ego is the real battle in this film, the fight against the creepy scarecrow (relative unknown cillian murphy, looking like a poor man's johnny depp) and sadistic mentor-turned-enemy ra's al ghul (a mostly wasted ken watanabe) is simply a by-product.

nolan opts for some established vets in the supporting roles to help steady his young leads, and BB offers a typically strong performance by liam neeson as al ghul's right hand man as well as a modest but enjoyable turn by morgan freeman as a wayne corporation engineer, a "Q" to batman's james bond. freeman, along with michael caine's wonderful alfred, get off the movie's best zingers, but next to bale, caine is given the greatest opportunity to flex his emotional muscle. he's british to the core, keeping his upper lip stiff while exhorting young master wayne through his carefully clipped cockney diction and letting just enough heat slip through the eyes to betray the fiery devotion burning within.

and then there's katie holmes. maybe i would have had to have watched more than half an episode of dawson's creek in my life to appreciate this simpering school girl, but if an hour of excruciatingly overwrought tv schlock is prerequisite for enjoying katie holmes', uh, work here, then she probably needs to find a new career. i'm pretty sure tom cruise is gay and his upcoming marriage to dear katie is a sham, so i won't bother asking what he sees in her, but as for the rest of you...the only thing duller than her appearance is her acting and if her screen presence got any smaller it would probably tear a whole in the fabric of space.

thank God she isn't asked to appear on screen apart from christian bale very often, because he keeps her safely marginalized. but hey, if you can hold your own beside liam neeson and ken watanabe, you're doing alright, and bale is more than up to the task. i found his batman a bit dull--there just wasn't much for him to do as an actor once he donned the cape and a bit of michael keaton's psychosis wouldn't have hurt--but he was a superb bruce wayne. suave and urbane as the billionaire playboy, bruce wayne is the mask worn over the bat suit. the burden of maintaining the sham is palpable, it seems to press down on bale from above. dragging himself up from the bat cave after a night of derring-do, he's asked to transition immediately into gadabout mode and entertain a houseful of socialites who'd dropped by to wish him a happy birthday. he smiles and murmurs and mingles oh-so-smoothly, but you can see the desperation in his eyes. when he learns that the bad guys have arrived to crash the party, he clears the house by affecting the drunken child-king, petulantly deriding and dismissing the guests he'd been glad-handing moments earlier, thus saving their lives and protecting his identity by sacrificing his esteem--and showing the audience, if not the guests, the toll it takes on him. comic book movie or not, this is an alpine course of acting challenges, and bale pivots through the onrushing gates with a fluidity that dazzles.

the movie boasts somewhat more reserved art direction than any previous venture and, combined with the subdued villains and plot lines, this lends the movie an intensity that the others have lacked. this gotham is not so very different from a city where you and i might live. BB also features some nice action sequences with lots of kung fu swordplay, ninja duels, and a climactic car chase that's definitely worth the wait. which reminds me: the bat mobile. the vehicle defies description. imagine the offspring of a humvee and a stealth bomber and you might get something of an idea of how cool this car is. it's not featured very often, but when it is it takes on the feel of a character in its own right, as it dashes and swirls and snarls like a jungle cat in an especially foul mood.

for the true bat fanatic left hollow by the series' more recent entries or the casual fan who figured that the franchise had played itself out, batman begins is bound to surprise. and the best part? george clooney, val kilmer, chris o'donnell, arnold schwarzenegger, and jim carey are no where to be found.

locdog's next review will probably be spielberg's take on wells in war of the worlds

2005-05-26T10:50:00.000-04:00

prevents AIDS and freezer burn

planned parenthood's 8th grade sex education curriculum recommends that junior wrap his rascal in saran wrap before engaging in oral or anal sex.

i'll repeat that: planned parenthood is telling your 8th grader to seal in that extra fresh flavor--among other things--with saran wrap, then poke little suzy (or billy) next door in the butt.

presumably this advice is intended to serve in the absence of condoms, but, well, do i really need to say it? this is insanity. first off, it's insane that 8th graders should be exposed to this filth at all, but beyond that, would any sane adult consider saran wrap adequate defense against pregnancy or AIDS?

don't you get it, folks? planned parenthood wants your kids having sex. the absolute worst thing that could happen to them would be for kids to begin behaving responsibly in this country once more. and i say "once more" because until fringe leftist groups like planned parenthood began attacking the judeo-Christian foundation of this country, we never had much of a problem with teenage sexuality.

and please, don't give me that crap about how kids were always doing it. of course a certain segment of the juvenile population has always been sexually active, and guess what: they used to be frowned upon by society. peer pressure worked against sexual experimentation. but in this era, it's a much larger percentage of kids who are going at it while MTV and their health teachers are cheering them on. exploding teenage pregnancy and STD transmission figures are all the proof you should need.

common sense sex education would be focused on abstinence, then perhaps maybe possibly condoms, then, if there are no condoms, more abstinence. instead we've got condoms, condoms, and then, if there are no condoms, saran wrap, and this while planned parenthood describes increased funding for abstinence-only programs as "dangerous." why not buy the kids a bottle of champagne, some marvin gaye cds and a box of cigarettes? sorry, abstinence-only did a fine job in this nation right up until we abandoned it in favor of tacitly encouraging kids to engage in risky sexual behavior--as if they need any prodding.

locdog thinks the prodding should be left to the experts, baby

2005-05-24T15:07:00.000-04:00

locdog movie review: revenge of the sith

i've done a few of these amateur reviews now, and i've got to admit that star wars episode iii: revenge of the sith will be the toughest. the movie defies summary judgment. does one focus on the scenes where ian mcdiarmid's performance seems oscar-worthy, for instance, or the ones where it degenerates into high camp? do you praise the special effects as the unique technical achievement they represent, or chide their cold sterility? will you rejoice at finally seeing something interesting on the screen, or wonder why it took two bad films and about a third of a decent one to get there?

the film certainly starts off with a bang, with ewan mcgregor's obi wan kenobi and hayden christensen's anakin skywalker weaving their fighters in and out of an impossibly dense dog fight in the stars. who's fighting and why? it's clones vs. droids, and the why of it, after the previous two films' seemingly endless twaddle on trade disputes and separatists and whatnot, boils down to a plot by ian mcdiarmid's chancellor palpatine to vest himself with emergency powers as a prelude to empire. the opening battle reminds me of two things that have been missing from the latest star wars films: stars and war. we're two thirds of the way done with this thing and we're just now getting to our first real space battle?

obi wan and anakin board the command ship of the droid army's general, fail in an assassination attempt, and return to the jedi council for further instruction. obi wan is sent to pursue the droid general, a sort of half biological, half mechanical thing named grievous who hacks and wheezes like a consumptive from a dostoyevsky novel, while anakin is told to cool his heels, an order that disagrees with him to no small extent. it seems that anakin has been made a member of the jedi council due to his friendship with chancellor palpatine, but he has been denied the rank of jedi master and believes his promotion to council member is cover for the council to use him as a spy. he's quite bitter about it.

anakin is also being tormented by dreams. he senses that his wife padme, played by natalie portman, is going to die giving birth to the babies that will grow up to become luke and leia in the original films. promising him the power to save his wife and the greatness the jedi council is denying him, palpatine, aka darth sidious, aka the emperor, turns anakin to the dark side, and sends him off to destroy the jedi. inevitably, this leads to the climactic confrontation between anakin and obi wan.

on balance, i though the writing and acting in sith was the strongest of the three prequels--which isn't saying a whole lot. still, there are some downright impressive performances. anakin's seduction is drawn out over a series of encounters with palpatine, and mcdiarmid's dizzying cocktail of flattery and cynicism goes down like fine wine. it would be good acting by the standards of any movie and was a genuine pleasure to watch. ewan mcgregor turns in his strongest performance as obi wan yet, seemingly much more comfortable now in alec guinness' shoes. christopher lee is once more under-utilized as count dooku, and the miscast samuel l. jackson is basically taking up space as mace windu. yoda is quite a technical feat, but frank oz’s dialogue seems stilted and forced--even for a star wars movie. the writers are trying to hard to cram in his characteristic dyslexic speech patterns and it's noticeable. and now for poor natalie portman: she's terrible. awful. cringingly bad. but it's really not her fault. i've seen enough of natalie elsewhere to know that she's a pretty good actress when she doesn't have to deliver clunker lines like "anakin, you're breaking my heart!" and stand there looking fragile for two and a half hours.

so how was hayden christensen? surprisingly, he was good enough. his dominant trait in episode ii was whiny, bratty petulance--a far cry from the cold, calculating evil of lord vader. and it's not like he was suffering from a surplus of screen presence, either. he's grown up a bit for episode iii, his anger is a bit more seasoned now. his character is an idealist blinded by pride and deceived by the devil, and christensen manages to keep you pitying him while he slides further and father into darkness. he's also quite creepy with his sadistic glare and yellowish eye make-up. when he strides into a room full of "younglings," toddler-aged jedi apprentices, and sparks his lightsaber, you know for sure that things aren't going to end well. that palpable menace had been all but non-existent in his episode ii performance, and it was a welcome addition here. he still has his share of lousy lines and clumsy deliveries, but yes, i could see this guy becoming darth vader.

as with this film's two predecessors, episode iii is a feast for the eyes. the costumes, environments, space ships, creatures, all of it is so painstakingly and loving rendered that you almost feel obligated to be impressed. lucas knows how compose a shot. the special effects are equally dazzling, but the whole visual package wrapped up together left me feeling a bit hollow. several times during the film i thought to myself "that's very impressive," but the admiration was totally abstract. the effects did nothing to draw you into the story, and most of the time they served little purpose beyond distracting you from what was really important on screen: the characters and their interactions. go back and watch the original star wars from the seventies and you'll see that, despite what you may recall, this was not an effects-driven film. it was driven by 1. interesting characters, 2. a memorable story, and 3. a cast with chemistry enough to easily exceed the sum of its parts. it's a strange feeling to watch a film and on the one hand think that you're seeing some of the most amazing images ever to grace the screen and on the other hand to find yourself wishing for that quiet desert hovel where that crazy old hermit ben kenobi first introduced luke skywalker to his father's lightsaber. all that having been said, anakin and obi wan's final duel is a gem--it's perhaps the only time in this latter-day trilogy that lucas' techno-wizardry succeeds in its repeated attempts at overwhelming the effects-jaded moviegoer.

parents be warned: your kids will want to see this one, but in this case PG-13 means PG-13. most of the violence is the standard star wars laser blaster/lightsaber fare, but a few scenes are gruesome enough to unsettle all but the most desensitized of sever-year-olds. you'll probably want to see it before you make up your minds on taking the kids.

while i studiously avoided exposure to all things episode iii prior to seeing it, you couldn't miss the talk of political subtexts running through the film. everybody's got their own opinion on this one, but if you want my $0.02, then trust me, they're in there. there are points in the movie where anakin parrots famous dubya lines almost word for word. for instance,

anakin: ...i have brought peace, justice, freedom and security to my new empire.

obi wan: anakin, my allegiance is to the republic, to democracy.

anakin: if you're not with me, you're my enemy.

obi wan: only a sith lord deals in absolutes.

i mean come on people. if you're not with me, you're my enemy? that's the freakin' bush doctrine and this movie is comparing it to sith dogma.

it's not a huge deal. i'd have to take lucas seriously as a director before i take him seriously as a political pundit, and unless he magically rediscovers his american graffiti form, i don't see that happening any time soon.

the first two prequels, to be blunt, were uneccessary. everything that matters, everything that all but the geekiest of geeks cared about concerning the star wars back story, happens here. but how does lucas as a writer manage to keep interest in a story that everyone already knows? the whole thing has a rosencrantz and guildenstern quality to it, just ticking off the plot points en route to a predetermined fate that everyone is aware of (and, indeed, the uber-nerds at wikipedia maintain that tom stoppard worked on some of the dialogue.) i think the increased gore and the unprecedented-for-the-franchise PG-13 rating are part of lucas' attempt to keep audiences engaged, but there's more to it. this film is actually interesting. for the first time in the trilogy, i found myself caring about what happens to the people on screen, and this in spite of the fact that i already knew what that was going to be. and, really, is that such a handicap? we as savvy audience members know what's going to happen in movies 95% of the time.

did in enjoy this final star wars romp? yes, absolutely. would i call it a good movie? a better question, i think, is whether it's a good movie with significant flaws or a bad movie with moments of inspiration. the first two clearly fell into the latter camp, but this one is different. i think fans will like more than they dislike, and in the final estimation, that's what really matters. that and the fact that jar jar binks was no where to be seen.

locdog's next review might be spielberg's upcoming war of the worlds remake

2005-05-19T13:33:00.000-04:00

lesson for democrats: R-E-P-U-B-L-I-C

say it with me now:

re-pub-lic

A government in which supreme power resides in a body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by elected officers and representatives responsible to them and governing according to law; also : a political unit (as a nation) having such a form of government

as the deadline towards the so-called nuclear option nears, democratic rhetoric has become progressively more entertaining. this isn't a fight over the right to apply some parliamentary tactic to certain types of votes, no, it's a battle for the soul of our nation and the very fabric of the constitution itself. why, just listen to harry reid:

The Senate is not a rubber stamp for the executive branch. Rather, we're the one institution where the minority has a voice and the ability to check the power of the majority. Today, in the face of President Bush's power grab, that's more important than ever.

reid went on to accuse republicans of attempting to "rewrite the Constitution and reinvent reality," the filibuster apparently being the guide by which democrats now parse the constitution and all of existence itself. (and that, may i say, is a pretty gosh darned drab existence. it's springtime, harry, take a walk. smell the cherry blossoms.)

now it so happens that i recently picked up a constitution and, try as i may, i can't seem to find the word "filibuster" in there anywhere. i did manage to stumble across Article I. Section 5, which says that

Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings, punish its Members for disorderly Behaviour, and, with the Concurrence of two thirds, expel a Member.

now i'm no constitutional scholar, but it seems to me that that says that the house and senate are free to make up their own rules. that if they want a rule that says that on the second thursday of every month during a leap year, all senators with last names beginning with the letter "x" must whistle God Bless America while standing on their head and eating crackers, then that's just fine.

i also came across Article II, Section 2, which says, among other things, that

[The President] shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States

now, again, being a lay person and uneducated in such matters, i would take that to mean that the president has the power to appoint judges, and that the senate has to offer advice and consent, but that a two thirds vote is not required. it is for treaties. says that quite plainly, in fact. but for judges, it's just "advice and consent," which is why the nomination process has always occurred along the lines of a simple up or down vote and which is all the republicans are trying to get now.

gee, i must be missing something. i've done all of this constitutional research here and i can't seem to find the part that the republicans are trying to rewrite. all that's happening is that the president, in accordance with the constitution, is nominating his judges, and the senate, in accordance with the constitution, is writing its own rules. so...what's the problem?

you don't see it either, huh?

well, allow me to answer my own question. the problem is that democrats, for all their talk about the great and glorious filibuster and the significance of checks and balances and lots of other eighth-grade civics class phrases that sound Historic and Traditional and American but mean diddly squat when it comes to constitutional law, hate our republic.

they are trying to do everything in their power to thwart the constitution, and, thusly, the very idea of america itself.

"*gasp* locdog! have you gone mad? how could you say such a thing?"

it's quite simple, really. the democrats know that the only means they have of bringing their leftwing societal engineering schemes to fruition is through the courts. they can't do it through the legislature because the voters won't stand for it. and, as proof of that, i give you a republican white house, republican house of representatives, republican senate, a majority of republican governors and state governments, and so forth.

the people have chosen. they've picked their leadership and have empowered the party of their choice to a convincing degree. and now the democrats are attempting to prevent the people from exercising their power by stopping their chosen representatives from exercising theirs. and while the democrats toss up smoke screens about filibusters and the rights of the minority, they are doing everything in their power to undermine the very founding principle of our system of government--the elected representative.

the point of a republic is that our representatives make the calls on our behalf, so when they're suppressed, we're suppressed. when they lose, we lose. when they don't get to appoint judges, we don't get to appoint judges. the democrats may not like it, but we the people of this country have chosen republican rule. it is the republican's right--his duty, in fact--to appoint judges that reflect our choice.

you can't disagree with locdog here, folks, only with america

2005-05-12T11:39:00.000-04:00

praise the Lord and pass the ballots!

on this week's fox news sunday, arnold schwarzenegger was asked if religion should play a roll in policy making. arnold conceded that a person's religious views shape their outlook and that consequently it's not always possible to avoid conflating the two, but that a politician should do his best to avoid it. it's a land of many faiths and all that.

i've never had much trouble with religion factoring into a politician's decision making. it's absurd to suppose that something so intimately involved in constructing the character and moral framework of an individual should or even could be discarded when it came time to make the most important decisions of all. besides, religion is a known factor. if i'm running as a conservative Christian, people know what to expect. if they share my views, they'll vote for me, if they don't, they won't. if i get voted in, i have an obligation to govern in accordance with the will of my constituency as long as that will doesn't conflict with the constitution or the greater good of the country as a whole.

far more problematic to me has been the extent to which politics should play a roll in religion, in Christianity in particular. Christ talked about a lot of things, but He seldom spoke on politics. on one of the few occasions where He was directly confronted on a political issue, paying taxes to the roman conquerors, His answer was simply "Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's." it's hard to appreciate how stunning this answer must have been to Jesus' contemporaries. the roman occupation was the most controversial issue of the day, something akin to the tensions currently felt in palestine or those in beirut at the height of the syrian/lebanese conflict. it seems apathetic, almost flip, but really it's a statement of priority: for the Christian, the ultimate concern isn't the struggles that matter only in the temporal, but those that shape eternity. we should therefore live in peace with civil authority to whatever extent possible and concentrate on doing the Lord's work.

but the application of Jesus' simple proverb to church policy is a study that could fill volumes. for instance, rome forced the issue shortly after Christ's death by requiring Christians to pay their respects to rome's gods as well as their own. along with the rest of the pantheon, caesar was considered a god, and failure to worship was akin to treason. but although the Christians were willing to pay their taxes and carry a roman soldier's gear the extra mile, they could not kneel before a false god. the early church thus employed civil disobedience, resisting peacefully unto the point of horrific public executions.

if nothing else, tyranny brings clarity. if we imagine Jesus' proverb as a sliding scale with God's business on one end and caesar's on the other, it's obvious that a suffering church has no opportunity to engage in anything beyond God's work--which has a lot to do with the paradoxical strength and expansion of persecuted congregations. the situation under roman rule was not at all dissimilar to that of the church in sudan or china today, and like the first century church, these modern versions flourish in times of persecution. but what about churches in a democracy? there's the amish extreme of completely disengaging from society, or the jesse jackson extreme where religion becomes a facade for political activism. where does the church find a balance?

the debate was renewed a few days ago when rev. chan chandler booted nine members from his church--some of them deacons--allegedly for backing john kerry in the last presidential election. chandler called on his flock to "repent or resign" over the matter of voting for pro-abortion politicians, although no one beyond the Christian media has reported that chandler made similar demands with respect to two pro-abortion republican politicians as well. the issue for chandler was a moral one, not a partisan one.

judging by the tenor of the news coverage, the media has already passed a stern judgment on chandler, who has since resigned if not repented for his sins. was justice served?

if those of you on the left could stifle your reflexive "yes," for a moment, i'd ask you to consider some previous examples of politics from the pulpit. the fabled underground railroad of the civil war was built and maintained largely by Christians opposed to slavery, and the civil rights struggles of the twentieth century were forged at the pulpits before they were fought in the streets. i very seriously doubt anyone would today fault a sixties preacher in a black church for expelling members who openly supported jim crow democrats.

the heart of the matter is whether a clergyman is acting on behalf of God or caesar. is his opposition to a particular candidate motivated by his willingness to see a certain political party advanced for that party's own sake, or is he simply attempting to discharge his duty to provide spiritual leadership on the moral issues of the day? while chandler does not deny that he condemned certain candidates, including kerry, by name, he insists he never endorsed any. that's a small but very meaningful distinction (and no, not just for tax purposes), and it suggests to me that chandler had his priorities straight when he spoke out against pro-abortion politicians--even if he was over-zealous in his handling of those who supported them. and that's a judgment, by the way, that i'm not willing to make. if a Christian stubbornly supports pro-abortion politicians, that might be an indication of just the sort of spiritual problems that could warrant a separation from the church--not necessarily, but it's definitely a troubling signal.

the amish render unto God but not unto caesar, and jesse jackson is the flipside. was chan chandler paying all of his dues? difficult to judge from reportage alone, but if what i've read is accurate then my best guess is that he was. a church's tax exempt status is dependent upon not engaging in overt politicking (which is blatant hypocrisy with the left taking far more advantage than the chan chandler's of the world could ever hope to--look at liberal black churches) but politics is the major moral battleground and a certain level of involvement is unavoidable if the church is going to remain morally relevant. i question the practice of singling out politicians by name since it's not the responsibility of the clergy to politically inform the congregation. still, i've heard my pastor say from the pulpit that he believes a Christian should not support a pro-abortion politician while not naming names, and i have no problem with that whatsoever.

locdog lives at the corner of politics and religion

2005-04-08T10:44:00.000-04:00

he's here, he's queer, he's a war hero

sgt. robert stout, u.s. army, was manning a machine gun atop a humvee when a grenade detonated nearby, showering him with shrapnel. as a result, stout was awarded the purple heart. he has served his country bravely in iraq for over a year, and now that he's recovered from his wounds, he'd like to return to duty. as an openly gay man.

I know a ton of gay men that would be more than willing to stay in the Army if they could just be open. But if we have to stay here and hide our lives all the time, it's just not worth it. We can't keep hiding the fact that there's gay people in the military and they aren't causing any harm.

sgt. stout, along with thousands of other gay soldiers and sailors, has found himself impaled on the horns of a dilemma left by the previous administration. the gays-in-the-military issue had been a centerpiece of bill clinton's platform of social reform, and was one of the first initiatives his white house undertook. candidate clinton had promised to lift the ban on openly gay men and women serving in the armed forces, with running mate al gore proclaiming that clinton would do for gays what truman had done for blacks. but when clinton got to washington, he found himself pressed hard by overwhelming opposition from the pentagon on one side and the not-unfounded expectations of his liberal core supporters on the other.

in 1948, harry s truman, a man with a phony middle initial but genuine in every other regard, simply exercised his authority as commander in chief and ordered integration into reality. yes sir, mr. president! in 1993, william jefferson clinton, a man with a genuine middle name who was a fraud in every other regard, cowered away from his civil rights rhetoric and the moral imperative he'd claimed to craft an everyone-loses compromise which has resulted in the creation of a secret society of unwillingly closeted homosexual servicemen, many of whom have been forced to resign after intentional or unintentional outings.

which is where we find sgt. stout. sgt. stout, a decorated war hero who served his country with honor and has scars along with his medal to attest to his courage in battle. sgt. stout, who is today the exact same soldier he was 10 seconds before the world learned he was gay. and all he asks by way of repayment for the debt that we as american citizens owe him is the opportunity to once more place himself in mortal danger for our freedom. why should sgt. stout not be allowed to return to duty?

i have tremendous sympathy for sgt. stout, as i think any decent, red-blooded american would. but that doesn't mean he should automatically get his wish. in the first place, allowing him to return to iraq won't solve anything--instead of "don't ask, don't tell" will the policy now be that openly gay soldiers can serve as long as they've been awarded the purple heart?

but more than that, sgt. stout, along with every other member of the armed forces, voluntarily waived certain rights when he signed his enlistment papers. among those are the right to free expression, which he is currently violating by being openly gay to begin with, but also by discussing his situation with the press in spite of orders to the contrary. members of the military fall subject to the uniform code of military justice, not the constitution of the united states, and it is incumbent upon sgt. stout to abide by the terms of his agreement. it might sound cold, it might sound heartless, but a purple heart doesn't rewrite the contract. there are legitimate ways to bring about reform, but this isn't among them.

up until this point i haven't said anything on the broader question of whether or not openly gay men and women should be allowed to serve, because, frankly, it's irrelevant. "don't ask, don't tell" is the law of the land. what i do propose, however, is that it's time for that to change. "don't ask, don't tell" is bad policy regardless of which side you take in the debate. because of it, whatever outcome eventually befalls sgt. stout will be tremendously unfair to a lot of people--to those gays who have been forced out if he is permitted to return and to those who will continue serving us bravely if he isn't.

there should be an open debate about this issue and a decision should be made. either homosexuals are allowed to serve or they aren't, no more beating around the bush. i propose that this issue should be decided strictly on the basis of utility: if the military is better off with gays, they should be permitted, if not, they should be refused. the reason our soldiers give up some of their rights to fight is because war is an extreme situation where the civil rights that we take for granted in civilian life become an impediment to survival. it's a tradition that goes back as far as ancient rome and beyond, and it's there for a reason: it works. we owe it to our troops to honor that standard in considering this issue today.

it's time for "don't ask, don't tell" to go, or, as sgt. stout puts it:

The "don't ask, don't tell" policy, when it first came out, was a good stepping stone, but it's outlived its usefulness. We've progressed past it both as a military and as a society.

locdog thinks it's time to move on

2005-04-03T14:04:00.000-04:00

locdog movie review: sin city

never having been a fan of comic books or, ahem, "graphic novels," sin city and i were first introduced via a trailer preceding the effective if exploitative bruce willis suspense-thriller hostage. i was intrigued by the sooty black and white cityscapes occasionally overlaid of with spurts of vivid color, the absurdly lurid material, the constellation robert rodriguez and credited co-director frank miller had drawn together for the project...as the launch date approached, all indications were go for a decent flick, so electra and i hopped in the VW for a night at the movies.

i should say, an essential night at the movies for seldom will you see a movie as essentially movie as sin city. in hindsight, it's easy to see what gave the trailer its sharp hooks: the whole film is a trailer. one poetic pastiche of mayhem and gore after another, the lifeblood of every b-movie and pulp crime novel ever imagined drained into two hours of digitally enhanced bliss.

sin city features three obliquely interconnected tales of debauchery, mickey rourke in a comeback-making role as a born loser transformed into an avenging angel by the death of a hooker, clive owen as a reformed killer sucked into a war between the police and prostitutes by the love of a barmaid, and bruce willis as an aging cop with a bum ticker hunting a pedophile who happens to be a senator's son. can't you just smell the carnage?

the film's storytelling is a model of economy, owing a great debt, no doubt, to frank miller's frame-by-frame comic book world. while i've always been a fan of robert rodriguez, his movies have often lacked focus. from dusk till dawn is the halves of two quality b pictures artlessly welded together, once upon a time in mexico plays like a slide show of fanboy enthusiasm sprawling beyond creative control. not bad movies by any stretch, just not quite ripe yet. sin city grabs you from the start with its utter self-assuredness and unflagging narrative flow and never lets you go.

not that the stories themselves are particularly important. each of them offers a slight nod to the usual noir complexities, but you can leave your notebooks at home as at no point will they intrude on the surprising depth of emotion engendered by the film's various struggles.

and here a quick comparison to long-time rodriguez crony and sin city "guest director" quentin tarantino seems in order. comparisons between sin city, and kill bill vol. I and pulp fiction seem inevitable given the stylistic similarities of the directors, the roughly analogous subject matter and narrative structure of the films, and their uncanny casting sensibilities. but what separates sin city from the work of tarantino, particularly kill bill, is the startling humanity that breathes throughout. that's not a knock against bill, it's just that the two, for all their similarities, are fundamentally different pictures. cinematically speaking, kill bill separated the men from the boys. it was a demonstration of sheer movie making power, a director's God-given gift to hold an audience within his grasp through breathtaking artistry while simultaneously repelling them through his story. you had to keep your distance from bill, to be willing to accept it as pure cinema, like gawking at the most glorious car wreck ever. it was a litmus test on what you like about movies: the movie itself, or what the movie does for you. in sin city you will face no such dilemma, it works brilliantly on both levels.

the three leads are all very strong although i'd have to give the edge to rourke's loveable leg-breaker marv, and the film offers several memorable supporting roles as well. of particular note is elijah wood's creepy cannibal ninja with the charlie-brown shirt. never mind, you just have to see it. the film is also book-ended by a sort of prologue/epilogue with josh hartnett, in the movie's slyest casting conceit, cashing in on his farm boy wholesomeness to play the perfect sociopath, floating serenely above the grit surrounding him. it's rumored that rodriguez will be revisiting this story in an upcoming sequel. let's hope so.

i'll offer my obligatory violence warning here--this film rivals anything produced in hollywood in recent years for grotesque dismemberments, castrations, mutilations, slashings, stabbings, and shootings--but find three factors intervening to mitigate. the first is that the violence is sufficiently over-the-top to be comical as well as revolting. the second is that it's used with judiciousness, i.e., strong characters attacking strong characters rather than mutilating women or children or other ruthless filmmaking stunts. and the third is the film's surprising sense of morality: you want the bad guys to be punished. there is an unquestionable sense of the great cosmic scales being righted, however messily.

the one pervasive criticism i've seen of sin city is its supposed hollowness, layers of lacquer sloshed over a vacuum and buffed to a brilliant sheen, as though certain reviewers assumed that something so stunningly beautiful must be empty within. bullocks. the heart in this movie is what rodriguez and miller put into every glorious frame, not as an exercise in just-because-we-can lucasiod techno-wizardry, but as a labor of love, birthing the eternally dark and rainy world of sin city into motion and sound. and to quote another famous bit of celluloid "a heart is judged not by how much you love, but by how much you are loved by others." if that wonderful wizard had it right, then you need look no further for sin city's heart than the one that will be thudding relentlessly in your chest for two straight hours.

locdog's next movie review may well be star wars episode III, if he has the strength after another 2 hours of lucas' assault and battery

2005-04-01T10:28:00.000-05:00

can we all agree that...

...barring the schindler family from terri's room for the last few minutes of her life was a pretty crappy thing to do? michael schiavo won. terri was nearly dead. did he have to add insult to injury by locking the schindlers out?

that's about as cold blooded as it gets.

the excuse offered by michael schiavo's ghoul attorney george felos was that michael wanted a peaceful environment for terri's last moments this side of eternity. freaky felos went on to paint a lovely portrait of terri snuggled with her stuffed kitty and a halo of sundry other stuffed critters nestled about her head whilst soft, lilting music played in the background--music and stuffed animals being two of the many things schiavo denied his wife for most of the past fifteen years.

er, but wait, wasn't the whole point of the execution that terri was just a veg? even if she wasn't in the advanced stages of dehydration she supposedly wouldn't have been aware of her environment, so who, exactly, was this bit of cheap theatrics meant to impress?

oh, and a bit more on this felos guy. folks, this guy is a freak. i mean an honest-to-God-tin-foil-hat-wearing-communes-with-the-cosmos-picks-up-russian-radio-in-his-fillings freak.

we're talking about a guy who said of a woman a week removed from her last bit of sustenance or drink of water "i've never seen her look more beautiful." the creep sounded like he was about to cream his jeans. made my skin crawl.

here's a sample from his crackpot book litigation as spiritual practice courtesy of nro's eric pfieffer. felos describes an encounter he had sitting at the bedside of another right-to-die case, estelle browning:

As Mrs. Browning lay motionless before my gaze, I suddenly heard a loud, deep moan and scream and wondered if the nursing home personnel heard it and would respond to the unfortunate resident. In the next moment, as this cry of pain and torment continued, I realized it was Mrs. Browning.

I felt the midsection of my body open and noticed a strange quality to the light in the room. I sensed her soul in agony. As she screamed I heard her say, in confusion, "Why am I still here ... Why am I here?" My soul touched hers and in some way I communicated that she was still locked in her body. I promised I would do everything in my power to gain the release her soul cried for. With that, the screaming immediately stopped. I felt like I was back in my head again, the room resumed its normal appearance, and Mrs. Browning, as she had throughout this experience, lay silent.

beyond the vulcan mind-meld, mr. felos also possesses the ability to mentally swat planes from the sky like a telekinetic king kong. no kidding. quoth pfieffer,

Felos claims to have used his mental powers to cause a plane he was passenger on to nearly crash. By simply asking himself, "I wonder what it would be like to die right now?" the plane's autopilot program mysteriously ceased to function and the plane descended into free fall. Felos then observed, "At that instant a clear, distinctly independent and slightly stern voice said to me, 'Be careful what you think. You are more powerful than you realize.' In quick succession I was startled, humbled and blessed by God's admonishment."

when he's not projecting himself across the astral plane or disrupting air commerce, mr. felos can be found teaching yoga, preaching, and, of course, volunteering at the local hospice so he can get his daily dose of death.

slightly off topic: for those of you pinning your hopes to terri's autopsy, forget about it. dr. cyril wecht, the foremost forensic pathologist of our day, was contacted by the schindler family's attorney who requested that he observe the autopsy. wecht agreed, but the florida medical examiner refused. why wouldn't he want wecht watching him?

locdog's enquiring mind wants to know

2005-03-31T11:34:00.000-05:00

a few thoughts on terri's death

when david sinned with bathsheba, the son who was conceived was claimed by God as punishment. while the infant lingered on in ever worsening condition, david fasted and prayed for mercy so fervently that his servants began to fear for his life. what would he do to himself, they wondered, if the boy died? the boy died, and david, to everyone's great surprise, cleaned himself up and got something to eat.

skeptics read the Bible with such hostility to the supernatural that they miss out on all the real mysteries. God commands abraham to sacrifice his beloved son, then, at the last moment, an angel stops him and provides a ram instead. the scoffer sneers at fairy story angels and divine dictums but never bothers to ask himself how a father could be willing to tie his child to an altar and plunge a dagger into his heart. the supernatural is easy. if there is a God, angels and miracles are child's play to Him. it's the people who held the daggers or brushed themselves off and went to dinner that always floored me.

i'm praying that God gives that strength to the schindler family today.

***

the terri schiavo case has been heavily politicized, so much so that a lot of good people have simply tuned the whole thing out. the presumption is that those who are left in the ring, those who still care, are the political hacks. and looking around, i see more than a few of those in here with me. but i also know that this story has affected me more deeply than any single story since september 11th, and i doubt very much that i'm alone in that respect.

most of the accusations have been leveled against the right, so it is for the right i will speak. what you need to understand is that most of us could care less about "the culture of life" or bush's approval rating dropping a few points, it really was about terri and her family. that's not so hard to understand if you're willing to accept that we really believed an innocent woman, a conscious, living woman, was being slowly murdered. i know you don't agree, but we believed that and believe it still. that's why it was such a big deal to us.

***

for me, one of the hardest things about being a Christian is accepting that God knows what He's doing. maybe you don't share my exact religious outlook, but most of you believe in God. and for those of you who do, i'd like you to ask yourselves the following question:

"why did this happen?"

not necessarily why terry schiavo became brain damaged and had a feeding tube inserted and later removed, which is not at all uncommon, but why this particular instance was thrust to the forefront of the national--indeed, the world--consciousness. whichever side you took in the dispute, surely we can all agree that this was not just another story. will some great consequence fall out it? i believe that God does not permit an evil without bringing about a greater good. somehow, i don't believe that this is over.

***

over the past 12 days, as often as i have thought of terri schiavo and her family i have prayed for her. my prayers were that God would intervene on her behalf and spare her life, but i asked that His will would be done, recognizing that there is a time and manner of death appointed to all of us, and this may well be terri schiavo's.

i thought of terri often and prayed for her a great deal. sitting at my desk at work, running in the afternoons, lying in bed at night. it gave me comfort knowing that so many others were praying along with me, and while i was reflecting on that a few days ago, i began to wonder how many people were praying for michael.

i certainly was not. i didn't want michael schiavo to be forgiven for what he had done. when i consider the unimaginable anguish the schindlers must be going through, repentance seems like the ultimate injustice.

Lo, these many years do I serve thee, neither transgressed I at any time thy commandment...But as soon as this thy son was come, which hath devoured thy living with harlots, thou hast killed for him the fatted calf.

but isn't that the whole point of Christianity? wasn't the cross the ultimate injustice? didn't Jesus suffer enough for everyone? who am i to say that He was a few lashes short of a michael schiavo, that He didn't hang on the cross quite long enough?

locdog asks that if you say a prayer today for the schindler family, you say one for michael as well. he needs it just as badly.

2005-03-29T12:40:00.000-05:00

oh THAT moral framework

back in 1995, a thug by the name of robert harlan kidnapped rhonda maloney, a denver-area waitress. after being raped, maloney managed to escape from harlan and was picked up by good samaritan jaquie creazzo. harlan chased them down, shot creazzo and paralyzed her for life, then murdered rhonda maloney.

harlan was convicted of his crimes and sentenced to death unanimously by a colorado jury, but has had his sentence overturned on appeal because--get this--the jury read the Bible.

that's right. in a 3-2 decision, the colorado state supreme court decided that reading the Bible constituted a breech of the "[S]olemn and sequestered nature of jury deliberations" since "[j]urors must deliberate...without the aid or distraction of extraneous texts."

aid or distraction? it's not like they're reading newsweek or piping in courtTV. we're talking about stuff that was written eons ago. i seriously doubt the jurors stumbled upon any major newsflashes within the pages of the Pentateuch. (Bible Code quacks notwithstanding, of course.)

but the real gasser here is that, before deliberations had began, the judge instructed each of the jurors to form their own "individual moral assessment" beyond what the times coverage describes as the "narrow confines of the law." the judge wasn't reaching here, either. colorado law requires jurors contemplating capital cases to be so instructed. even better, the defense pleaded with the jury to consider how "God ultimately took mercy on Abraham," and how harlan read the Bible daily with his father.

i don't know if this is possible, but if i were one of those jurors, i'd be filing suit in federal court on grounds of my first amendment rights being violated. here we have an explicit appeal to a personal moral framework where the jurors are straightly charged to consider whether or not the convicted should be put to death on the basis of their own internal sense of justice, and yet when they do precisely that they have their decision rejected because three judges deem their moral compasses faulty?

laying the blatant religious discrimination aside for a moment, why in the hell do we even have juries if rampaging judges--lawyers in fancy robes--can trump up whatever shoddy pretense they want to throw their opinions out the window?

it's not like the jurors were looking for some external legal insight, after all. as the dissenting justices wrote,

The biblical passages the jurors discussed constituted either a part of the jurors' moral and religious precepts or their general knowledge, and thus were relevant to their court-sanctioned moral assessment.

or, in other words, they were doing exactly what they'd been instructed to do.

the times story mentions two passages of Scripture reviewed by the jury, Leviticus 24 ("he that killeth any man shall surely be put to death...eye for eye; tooth for tooth") and the book of Romans. the Leviticus passage, religious or not, is arguably the most fundamental expression of justice possible. Romans is even more ironic, since it is from Romans that the notion of a personal moral compass is derived:

14 For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these...are a law unto themselves:

15 Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another

the times also interviewed a legal scholar who mercifully pointed out the obvious: "The court says we're asking you to be moral men and women, to make a moral judgment of the right thing to do. But then we say the juror cheated because he brought in a book that forms the basis of his moral universe. The thing is, he would have done it anyway, in his head."

and that's the hideous beauty of this ruling. the courts can't explicitly forbid Christian jurors or order them to forget about the religious foundations of their morality before considering a sentence, but damned if they can't keep them from bringing in a Bible. gotta start somewhere, right?

with courts like this, locdog thinks terri schiavo is a small wonder

2005-03-21T15:38:00.000-05:00

renew my subscription to the resurrection

newsweek offers a surprisingly fair recounting of the origins of Christianity this week for your edification. among the more surprising aspects:

-- it's unwillingness to dismiss the resurrection and accompanying doctrines as mere theological invention. the tale was so exceedingly fantastic that it worked against the credibility of early evangelists and was hence not the sort of thing they were apt to fabricate on a whim.

-- perhaps more shocking, the writer is at least willing to consider the possibility that passages in the Gospels where Christ predicts His own death and resurrection were not merely ex post facto additions from well-meaning early believers. whether founded in historical reality or not, the concept of the resurrection had to come from somewhere...perhaps it really was present in the teachings of Christ?

-- the author readily cedes the empty tomb. it's hard to believe this could be a controversial issue, but the highly-publicized "Jesus Seminar" radicals, in their zeal to jettison even the slightest whiff of the supernatural from the "Historical Jesus" had taken to denying the reality of a burial, let alone a tomb. john dominick crossan, perhaps the seminar's most visible member, has gone as far as to state that Jesus' body would have been tossed in a field and eaten by wild dogs since the romans did not bury their victims. of course, the Bible never claims they did. a follower of Jesus petitioned roman authority for the body, and buried it in his own tomb.

-- the article is one of the only ones i've ever read that does credit to Christianity's egalitarian core. quoting Scripture and citing historical evidence, it accurately depicts the value placed on women and gentile believers in the early years.

-- contrary to the common misconception that the resurrection was part of the legend normally accrued by all religious faiths, the writer dutifully mentions that the event is present in the earliest Christian writings.

-- and most amazing of all, this article contains an online poll which actually seems to be valid. at last glance, 82% of respondents said that they believed in the resurrection. a scientific poll conducted by the magazine found that the actual number was around 78%. it didn't give the margin of error, but 3 or 4 points is pretty standard.

locdog thinks it's worth a look

2005-03-18T10:48:00.000-05:00

question for you libs re. terry schiavo

i must admit that i have surprised myself by, to the best of my recollection your honor, never having printed a single word regarding the terry schiavo case. i haven't been around to post much lately, but the issue is important enough that i should have made the time.

for those of you unfamiliar with terry's situation, in 1990 she suffered a heart attack brought on by a potassium deficiency that had been improperly diagnosed. the heart attack left her severely brain damaged and she's been in what doctors describe as a "persistent vegetative state" ever since. terry was awarded a malpractice settlement which has been eaten up by medical bills and failed attempts at rehabilitation. although there is no living will or written expression of intent of any kind, terry's husband, michael schiavo, believes that she would not have wished to continue living this way and asked the courts to order her feeding tube removed, essentially allowing her to starve. in 2003, he got a florida judge to go along with him, but a last-minute bill was passed by the florida legislature empowering governor jeb bush to order the tube back in, thus prompting a second wave of legal battles.

that brings us up to the present, where the second wave of legal battles would have seen its resolution with terry's tube being removed this very day were it not for senator mike enzi (r, wy), who has subpoenaed schiavo to appear before his committee. as matt drudge reports, this action "triggers legal or statutory protections for the witness...nothing can be done to cause harm or death to this individual."

now that you've got the basics, i invite you to take a look at the link to terry's website i included above if you haven't done so already. specifically, i want you to scroll down to the video section and watch the footage of this "vegetable."

her mother walks to her bed side and terry's face lights up like a christmas tree. she smiles. her mother asks her how her cold is and she attempts to groan out a response. a doctor asks terry to follow a balloon with her eyes, and she tracks it as he waves it side to side. and perhaps most disconcerting of all, when she's given an oral swab, she frowns and turns away in clear displeasure.

are you getting this, libs? this woman is conscious. she's sentient. she has emotional responses and she feels pain. critics of the video have said that of the four hours (illegal) footage her parents brought from terry's bedside, only these few moments have been cherry-picked to give the impression of consciousness.

well, maybe so, but for those few moments, she sure as hell looks conscious to me. let's be perfectly clear here: terry schiavo is not brain dead. she's brain damaged and not so severely that she can't enjoy what to all appearances are at least a few moments of consciousness a day. we barely understand consciousness in a normal, healthy person. how can anyone say what's happening to terry? how can anyone be so sure that they feel justified in ending her life?

they can't. no one can. it's a philsophical impossibility and any doctor or lawyer or husband who claims otherwise is lying. they can look at the charts and study the data but, at the end of the day, no one can know for certain what is or is not happening inside the mind of terry schiavo. so because they're not sure, they're going to kill her--and that in spite of the fact that we don't have any indication of how terry herself might have felt about the matter beforehand.

i'm sorry, but i can't look into this woman's smiling, conscious face and say she's a vegetable. i can't see her scowl at a swabbing and then pretend that it isn't going to hurt like hell as she spends a week or so dying of dehydration--that's a gruesome, barbaric death that the ACLU wouldn't countenance for an instant if it were osama bin laden, let alone an innocent woman. oh, and speaking of the ACLU, where do they stand in all of this? firmly on the side of terry. yep, you heard right. by ordering her feeding tube back in again, they say, jeb bush violated terry's "constitutional right to privacy." ah, privacy. where would euthanasia be without it?

so here's my question, libs. why aren't you standing up for terry schiavo? why do you and the ACLU want her dead while conservatives are doing everything in their power to defend her constitutional right to life.

if terry schiavo was a murderer who slaughtered her husband and drown her children and was awaiting a peaceful lethal injection instead of an innocent woman awaiting the grim prospect of a torturous, week-long execution, you'd be holding candle-light vigils with tim robins and susan sarandon leading the way. as a "pro-lifer" i'm frequently criticized by abortion ghouls as a walking contradiction on account of my contemporaneous support of capital punishment, yet here we have leftists who'll crusade as far as the day is long on behalf of convicted cop killers or child murdering moms and stand idly by and watch--or actively assist in--the death of an innocent woman. in the name of God, how can you accept this?

i implore each of you to visit terry's website, which i'll link once again, and take a look at those videos before you sentence her to death within your own hearts. if this woman only has a few moments of what you and i would think of as life a day, and if those moments are filled with happiness and family and love, then who are any of us to say that that's not a life worth living? no one, not the ACLU, the courts, or michael schiavo himself, has the right to make that call.

locdog asks you to at least check it out

2005-03-17T17:55:00.000-05:00

locdog movie review: super size me

i love mcdonalds. i really do. it's one of my many concessions to crass american consumerism. the pizza hut lunch buffet? dig it. a biggie-sized frosty and cup of chili to go? i'm there. big mac, large fry, and a coke? word. mcdonalds, and most of fast food in general, is cheap, filling, and tastes good. have you ever had one of those mcgriddle things? imagine two hockey pucks made out of french toast squirted full of syrup like a piece of freshen-up with the traditional mcsausage/egg/cheese combo wedged betwixt the two. bitchin.

tragically, my love has ever been unrequited. my freshman year of college i gained twenty pounds subsisting almost exclusively on whoppers and pizza hut. i flew too close to the sun...but, as with all my broken hearts, i was left stronger and wiser in the end.

nowadays i don't have fast food of any variety but once every few months. i literally cannot remember the last time i ate at mcdonalds, although i'm sure i enjoyed my meal and went to sleep that night with a clear conscience. moderation in all things.

it was with some trepidation then that i flipped on super size me, rookie documentarian morgan spurlock's assault on mcdonalds and the obesity epidemic. super size me has become something of a minor pop cultural phenomenon, so i was aware of the basics. some guy eats nothing but mcdonalds for a month and documents his physical and mental decline. how, exactly is that supposed to hold my interest over the course of a 100 minute running time? combine that with a predictably blame-corporate-america approach (as my scouts had informed me) and there seemed little point in finding out.

well, relax. super size me is nothing if not engrossing. take a genuinely funny and likeable protagonist and cram him full of mcmeat, toss in a vegan girlfriend (yes, vegan), add some clever computer graphics and nifty artwork, and slather on vivid, orgy-worthy vomitorium footage and equally unsettling stomach stapling surgery shots and you probably won't even notice the litany of doctors, lawyers, nutritionists, and sundry ubiquitous experts. tastes so good, you forget the fiber!

as mentioned, the film follows spurlock as he eats nothing but mcdonalds food for one month. why would he do this, you ask? because in a recent law suit, a judge ruled that plaintiffs who were attempting to sue mcdonalds for obesity-related health problems failed to show that it was mcdonalds food that had really done them in. (spurlock does not mention that that was only part of the ruling, that the judge also found that, regardless of how bad mcdonalds food was, no one could stuff themselves full of it and not reasonably expect health problems. more on personal responsibility later.)

but it's not quite as simple as just eating a lot of mcdonalds. there are rules. first, of course, spurlock will eat nothing but mickey d's. second, he must have everything on the menu at least once. third, he will only super size when asked...which, not surprisingly, is more or less always. now, doesn't that sound to you, a "reasonable observer" as our courts might say, like a fairly suicidal endeavor?

hold that thought.

aiding spurlock in his journey are three doctors and one nutritionist who subject him to a battery of physical tests throughout the experiment. at the beginning of the film, they predict little more than modest weight gain and perhaps a mild spike in cholesterol, but by the end, they're begging him to stop destroying his body before it's too late.

watching spurlock's morph from the picture of health into a diseased slob, however, is one of the least unsettling aspects of super size me. watching him puke up a double quarter pounder with cheese on day three--complete with close-ups--ranks pretty high on my list. and honestly, who hasn't felt like retching their guts out after mcgorging? still, did i really need to see it? the other shock-value moment, where spurlock shows someone having their stomach stapled, had a similar effect. perhaps these scenes managed to chisel through the shroud of apathy surrounding your typical unimaginative 15 year old, but they just sickened me--and, no, that's not "just the point." the point is that they repelled and alienated and whacked chunks of cred from a surprisingly credible report like the cheap, tawdry stunts they were.

those glaring errors aside, spurlock does a pretty good job. the film's piece de resistance is, of course, him turning from marlon brando into marlon brando. what happens physically, mentally, and, according to his too-much-information earth mother sweetheart, sexually. he puts on 25 pounds. his liver starts looking like a piece of foie gras. his cholesterol shoots up over 100 points. he finds it difficult to concentrate. he becomes depressed. in fact, the only time he brightens at all is when he's eating.

there's more to super size me than that, the best parts, really, have little to do with spurlock. the film should be mandatory viewing for every parent and teen for its treatment of kids and food alone. not just mcdonalds, but the junk food culture in general. public schools catered by food preparation corporations who serve up greasy fries, pepsi, pizza, and other distillations of sugar and fat while supposedly providing yeah-right healthy alternatives (here kid, you can have a slice of double-cheese and pepperoni and a bag of doritos, or this nice apple), schools for troubled kids who behave like little princes since the menu has been switched to wholesome fare...he makes a compelling case for seriously evaluating just what we're putting in our kids, and just what it's doing to them.

but does he succeed where it counts? his central purpose is to pin culpability on mcdonalds for the obesity epidemic ala tobacco settlements. does he pull it off?

no, but not due to any failings as a film maker. i doubt orson welles (no stranger to junk food he) could have made me see the light. eating nothing but mcdonalds for a month is silly, which is the thought you've hopefully been holding through these last few paragraphs. everyone knows that there's a reasonable amount of fast food we should limit ourselves to. and while a big deal is made throughout the film of the difficulty of obtaining mcdonalds nutritional information (although it's on their website, half the homes in america still don't have internet access, spurlock whines--and, i suppose they don't have libraries or malls or airports or any of the other bajillion locations you can find web access these days if it's all that bloody important to them?) no one with half a brain could believe that mcdonalds is good for them. either on account of the name being synonymous with junk food, or on account of the painfully self-evident side effects it's abuse yields in us all.

and abuse is the key word here. used sensibly, mcdonalds food is a harmless treat. abuse it, and it's fatal. well duh. in defense of his argument, spurlock advises those who would say "yeah, but no one eats mcdonalds every day for a month" that, yes, something like a quarter of their customers do just that, dining at mcdonalds several times a week. spurlock contends that since mcdonalds attempts to hook customers when they are young (just like tobacco) and keep them coming back as much as possible with clever ads and market research (just like tobacco) and by essentially manipulating the fat and sugar content of their product to make it as yummy as possible (just like tobacco) that they are therefore quite responsible for these so-called "heavy users" (that's mcdonalds' actual term) and the health problems they incur.

which, pardon me, is lunacy. sorry, tubby, but if you're eating at mcdonalds 6 or 7 times a week and you come down with a case of diabetes, you've got no one to blame but yourself. i don't give a damn how rare mcdonalds nutritional tables are, there isn't a 300 pounder alive who doesn't at some level understand that his or her behavior is self-destructive. i do feel bad for the kids, but that's the parent's fault, not ray kroc's.

tobacco is inherently addictive. food is not. that's not to say that people can't become addicted to food--i'm certain that over the filming of super size me spurlock himself did--but you can't do that without sustained periods of completely unreasonable usage to begin with. and even if i were to stipulate that mcdonalds does everything within their power to get you to purchase their product as often as you can (and if i were a business exec pouring billions--yes, billions--into advertising, i'd want that too) it's still your responsibility as a consumer to know better. how hard is that when all you need to know to see through the hype is as obvious as that mcbrick you get in your stomach after eating their food or that first step on the scale? those who get fooled want to be fooled, those who get addicted hooked themselves.

still, super size me is an enjoyable film, one that's important in spite of its occasionally childish tactics and flawed premise. and i'm not defending the mcdonalds corporation for basically profiting off of an epidemic, by the way. but will spurlock get me to join in with him on any class action suits? not hardly.

locdog is going to sue al gore for his internet addiction

2005-03-04T11:47:00.000-05:00

time

apropos absolutely nothing, i've been thinking a lot about the kids lately. what the hell is wrong with them--and i speak as someone who's closer to kiddom than fogeydom chronologically, but has been considered an honorary old man since he was 12.

in our extended families on either side, my wife and i are the only college graduates from our generation. that's not to say we haven't had our share of dropouts, in fact, that's exactly the point. what are these kids doing?

in my family there is one young man who ran afoul of the law following some pointless mischief (he "liberated" a lawn gnome--honest to God), dropped out of school, moved back home, and in between stints of license suspension and staining his parent's carpets is bussing tables for 8 bucks an hour. another never went to college, dreams of being a police officer but feels in no wise compelled to study criminal justice, lives at home and is currently bussing tables for 8 bucks an hour. a promising young lady on my wife's side dropped out not long after getting knocked up at a frat party, somehow managed to marry the sap, and is now, you guessed it, bussing tables for 8 bucks an hour. at least she doesn't still live at home. i could go on and on. relatives, friends, acquaintances...all with bright, talented, deadbeat kids--or, excuse me, "boomerang" kids.

that bit of sociologist-speak nicely encapsulates what i had previously thought to be a highly localized phenomenon. it is not, after all, difficult to believe that one's relations are simply idiots. but it turns out this is happening elsewhere. so much so, in fact, that the pittsburgh tribune review recently did a story on it--maybe it's a regional thing?

in case you don't bother with the article (i didn't thanks to my studious wife who kindly fed me the reader's digest version) it's about a bunch of twenty-somethings--some of them college grads with seemingly promising futures--who, in the final estimation, are too scared to go out and make it on their own.

i'd thought gen-x was made of sterner stuff, but, for all their faults, their whiny crybaby boomer fathers hold something over them: their childish contempt for authority in all forms sped them from the nest just as fast as their little wings could carry them, and they never looked back.

and oh how i would love to blame this on the boomers. who better to blame for a generation of spineless kids than a generation of spineless parents? whose task was it to impart a work ethic, a sense of pride in one's accomplishments, a sense of purpose or at least a burning desire to seek it out? and, failing all that, wouldn't tough love demand they at least bar the doors once the little sponges have slunk off?

but i can't. for all their failings as parents--and they are legion--at the end of the day, the boomer's "kids" aren't kids at all. they're adults. whether they're too chicken to accept that responsibility or not, that's what they are. that's what they have an obligation to be--an obligation to their parents, to their society, to every scared kid who ever summoned to courage to strike out on his own before them, and, oh by the way, to themselves.

some clever readers may have already guessed that what's really bothering me about all this isn't my relatives or my generation, it's me. ye gods how i squandered my twenties. and now that i'm at the end of them and scrambling to do all the things now i should have done then, i can't help but cringe as i see so many people close to me making the exact same mistakes. there isn't a day that goes by where i don't curse the foolishness and laziness that eventually wound up with me working a fulltime job and paying for evening classes when i'd once been handed a free ride on a silver platter...so many things i could have done and, for some of them, it's now too late.

i think sometimes of a favorite uncle of mine--a great bellowing bull of a man with a herculean spirit crammed into a battered shell of a body, the remnants of his own misspent youth that has left him effectively crippled at an age when most people are finally beginning to enjoy life. he has no regrets. none, at least, that he will admit to, and he has counseled me more than once to adopt a similar outlook. the choices we have made have made us the people that we are, and, he points out, i've done alright for myself. i have a beautiful wife and am able to do the things i enjoy. and did i have a good time while was "wasting" those years? of course. so, what more is there to say?

i do admire his philosophy, but it's thin comfort to a man starving in a gutter. the whole thing presupposes that stuff turns out more or less ok. but to make stuff turn out more or less ok, at a certain point, we've got to start making good choices. which is why my uncle has probably never shared his philosophy with his son, the cop-dreamer, for whom he has nary a kind word.

which brings me back to the kids, and what i would say to them all if i could. i've even tried to say it to some of them, but i never feel as though i've gotten it quite right. i get too mad. mad at myself, but mad at them, too. and in the end i think i'm rightfully mad, because however you choose to reflect upon your early adulthood from your later years, it's wrong to squander your life. i just want to take them and shake them and scream until they wake up. don't they know that they're living? didn't anyone tell them they're alive? this is it. this is your one shot at being young and strong and bright and beautiful and you really can have everything you want if you're willing to go out and get it, so why don't you? don't you know that you'll never be here again, that even if you live to be a hundred and things turn out just fine for you, you'll always look back and wonder at what could have been?

as for me, i've got no excuses. i was scared, mostly. but there was something more to it. something that might have got me past the fear had i known about it then. i think i've got it figured out now and it's helped me quite a bit. i hope maybe it can help others, four little words that have made all the difference: this is my life.

"time" by pink floyd

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an off hand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way

Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun

And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but it’s sinking
And racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in the relative way, but you’re older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death

Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over, thought I’d something more to say

locdog bids you all a pleasant friday

2005-03-01T16:30:00.000-05:00

the supreme court vs. justice

the ussc has voted to eliminate the death penalty for juvenile offenders.

according to kennedy, who wrote for the majority, "The age of 18 is the point where society draws the line for many purposes between childhood and adulthood. It is, we conclude, the age at which the line for death eligibility ought to rest."

after all, he continues "our society views juveniles ... as categorically less culpable than the average criminal."

if you're a bit puzzled as to how kennedy can drape himself in the views of our society while simultaneously nullifying those held by some 19 states and 72 juries, you're not the only one. scalia writes in dissent:

The court says in so many words that what our people's laws say about the issue does not, in the last analysis, matter: 'In the end our own judgment will be brought to bear on the question of the acceptability of the death penalty. The court thus proclaims itself sole arbiter of our nation's moral standards.

if scalia's strident states-rights approach doesn't ring your bell, sample some of the ever wishy-washy o'connor's dissent:

Chronological age is not an unfailing measure of psychological development, and common experience suggests that many 17-year-olds are more mature than the average young 'adult.'

while i agree strongly with both scalia and o'connor, this time, the judicial john kerry that is sandra day o'connor has flip-flopped a bit closer to my heart.

consider that kennedy's argument hinges on a non sequitur. sure we hold juveniles less culpable and sure 18 is the dividing line we employ for most purposes. so what. because as a matter of practical policy we require 18 year olds to register with selective service and allow them to vote, we must then apply the same standard of bureaucratic convenience to every killer in our courts? to individuals whose actions have resulted in the deaths of other individuals? as long as i've never legally smoked a cigarette i can kill without fear of being killed regardless of how fully cognizant i am of the heinous nature of my actions and how meticulously and dispassionately i carried out the deed? evidently the transformation that occurs when one purchases his first R-rated movie ticket is every bit as magical as that which occurs whenever an unborn child slips clear of that final inch of birth canal, when he makes the quantum leap from non-viable tissue mass to full personhood in an instant.

pardon me for paying attention in civics class, but isn't the rejection of one-size-fits-all the whole point of western jurisprudence--that although the laws themselves do not change, we must recognize the various mitigating or exacerbating circumstances that make every case unique?

and give scalia his due as well--at what point do We the People get to govern ourselves? just why in the hell do we go through the trouble of electing officials and passing laws in the first place if at the end of the day our say doesn't matter?

still, neither of the dissenters has the guts to come right out and state the ruling's real flaw: it had nothing to do with juveniles save those five in long robes who formed the majority and their contempt for capital punishment in general. it's classic judicial over-reaching, where whatever scraps of argument available are patched together to move the nation in the direction the justices think it ought to be headed, whether it has anything to do with the will of the people or the matter at hand. their case is so poorly made that it can be nothing else. they believe capital punishment should be outlawed, but capital punishment per se wasn't on the docket, so they took what they could get and, in so doing, made a mockery of millions of citizens in 19 states and the victims of 72 brutal thugs.

locdog sees capital punishment dying the death of a thousand paper cuts, and justice dying along with it

2005-02-11T10:32:00.000-05:00

sack churchill and tenure along with him

reading over dahlia lithwick's latest, i find myself wondering when, exactly, the primary purpose of faculty at our universities shifted from teaching kids to the production of free speech. i really missed the train on that one. crazier still, i sorta figured that a university prof had some obligation, tenure or no, to provide a reasonable facsimile of quality education to the people who bankroll his cushy little fishbowl existence.

but before i launch, a general comment on lithwick's approach. for a writer who alternately criticizes her subject as sophomoric, a hack, and possessed of a third grade mentality, she might want to lay of the *cough* john stuart mill on liberty quotes and the people vs. larry flynn unpopular-speech-is-why-we-have-a-first-amendment style grandstanding. maybe churchill isn't the only one who needs a bit more primary schooling.

ok, let's go.

note that lithwick studiously avoids the contention that churchill as a professor per se is undeserved of his fate. the man is indeed a hack, his scholarship is the basest sort of fraud, his me-tonto haircut and claims to indian ancestry are about as legit as jesse jackson's claims to ordination, etc. simply put, her argument is that tenure is and should remain a get out of jail free card, that while churchill doesn't deserve the bulletproof vest he'd been given, what's done is done, and in the long run the greater harm was in taking it away.

and why is that? because according to lithwick, tenured professors "must be allowed to say and write what they choose without fearing removal by popular referendum," since "[w]e can none of us learn anything...if our fixed notions aren't challenged." in other words, education and iconoclasm are synonymous. lithwick pays lip service to the notion that educational institutions are for teaching, but by teaching she doesn't mean the process of building upon previously established truths to expand one's understanding, she means the exact opposite: deconstructing students, tearing and uprooting what they've learned in favor of what's inevitably termed more "progressive" values.

what better means to that end than the tenure system itself? how better to insulate "annoying blowhards" from the prudent wrath of the american public if not through tenure? on the one hand we quote the latter day saint of democracy himself, john stuart mill, and on the other we argue in favor of an intellectual elite which can and must operate beyond the reach of all democratic principles, comrade lithwick? it's not the death of education that she and, of course, the education establishment along with her, fears, it's what they perceive as stagnation, it's being stuck in a country they don't like rather than being free to rear up future generations towards one they do. and this, naturally, is couched in lots of flowery rhetoric about the constitution and unpopular speech and the true meaning of Christmas yada yada yada.

ward churchill didn't fall through the cracks of the tenure system, he's the reason that system exists. as lithwick correctly notes, the higher-ups at the university of colorado never had much of a problem with his loony politics or third-rate scholarship before, he simply became an embarrassment to them, and, much like moves by the saudi regime to distance themselves from the wahhabist demons they've created, they will cut him loose. not because they don't like him, not because they don't agree with him, not because they don't think he was doing a good job, but because--let's call a spade a spade--things have gotten to the point where there is an excellent chance of him costing them a lot of money, both in lost tuition revenues from irate parents who will pull their kids, and from those who will refuse to send them to churchill's idiocy factory at all.

the solution, then, is quite simple: free your markets and your mind will follow.

locdog is glad he could help

2005-02-01T11:38:00.000-05:00

baptized by purple ink

when you grow up in a nation where a few drops of rain can ravage voter turnout, it's difficult to understand why anyone would brave mortar-fire and suicide bombers to punch a chad--especially when neither jesse jackson and the race police nor jimmy carter and his gaggle of international busybodies will be chaperoning the dance.

the conventional wisdom is that the iraqi people are caught up in some sort of democratic fervor which, put plainly, amounts to temporary insanity. my hunch is that the truth is somewhat more mundane: why not risk your life to vote? if your entire existence had been perpetuated over the last three decades only by the tender mercies of saddam hussein, a few explosions and sporadic gunfire can be more readily taken in stride.

this is not to diminish the heroism of the average iraqi voter. indeed, far from being blinded to the danger by puppy love for newfound democracy, they were more fully aware of it than any of the pundits naysaying what had been billed as a hopelessly suicidal endeavor from the safety of their sunday morning news programs. the iraqi love of freedom is not that of the gourmand for a glass of champagne, but that of a starving man for a loaf of bread. it's a primal hunger, a yearning from all that is within. they knew what they needed, they knew what they were missing, they counted the cost, and they went.

they went and, to a wondrous degree, they returned home again. home with purple finger tips, a distinction one senator described as a vivid symbol of democracy or some such, but, more importantly, one that to an al zarqawi or bin laden must gleam like the mark of the beast. it shocked me as soon as i saw it, and i remember thinking that the poll workers who provided that ink may as well have had the voters use their stained fingers to paint bull’s-eyes on their foreheads. (i also remember thinking that the mild nuisance of having one's finger painted purple alone would have been enough to depress voter turnout by fifty percent were it tried here in the states.) in hindsight, even more surprising was that few in the media criticized such a potentially dangerous method of preventing voter fraud. perhaps the prospects of another bush administration have our media friends thinking obliquely that a few buckets of ink and a few gallons of blood for fraud prevention isn't such a bad deal?

even more than the courage they showed in voting, i admired their purple fingers. it makes me think of baptism in the earliest days of Christianity, when the name of Jesus carried along with it a death sentence. in those days, church pews weren't padded and there weren't any wednesday evening socials. "spirituality" wasn't a compartment in one's life adjacent to aromatherapy and herbal tea, it was what they lived, the bread they ate, the wine they drank, the very air they breathed. to set themselves apart and announce their intentions to throw all they had behind Christ, they would be baptized--a public statement marking them not only to God, but to the bloodthirsty romans as well. it was way of saying that they walked away from their old lives, burned the bridge back, and were now in it to the glorious end.

it may take some time, but iraq is going to be ok.

locdog doesn't see how terror can triumph

2005-01-25T11:41:00.000-05:00

maybe barie was right...

maybe barbie was right. math is hard, or, as president of harvard university lawrence summers recently put it, maybe math is hardwired and women simply have incompatible circuitry.

"It's possible I made some reference to innate differences," he said. He said people "would prefer to believe" that the differences in performance between the sexes are due to social factors, "but these are things that need to be studied."

He also cited as an example one of his daughters, who as a child was given two trucks in an effort at gender-neutral upbringing. Yet he said she named them "daddy truck" and "baby truck," as if they were dolls.

larry was lecturing a room loaded with female scientists and engineers--not exactly the most receptive audience--and, sure enough, he unleashed the furies of hell. and, as decades of feminist self-righteousness culminated in their highest expression, the hissy fit, several scorned women hopped up in a snit and stomped indignantly toward the exists.

"Here was this economist lecturing pompously (to) this room full of the country's most accomplished scholars on women's issues in science and engineering," one little kitten hissed "and he kept saying things we had refuted in the first half of the day."

well tell me something, sugar, what's so bloody offensive about the idea that maybe amidst the scores of physiological idiosyncrasies differentiating men and women, a few might find their way up to the three or so pounds of grey matter lodged between our ears? i mean, we're all scientists here, right? so let's look at this thing from the standpoint of biology. it's counterintuitive to say the least that physical dissimilarities would start at the toes and end at the neck; it smacks of the sort of arbitrary, ad-hoc thinking that led to retrograde motion and the belief that maggots spontaneously grew out of rotting meet. with all the bodily differences that stand so pointedly between us, does one more really seem so far-fetched?

if i might shift more fully into a scientific paradigm and consider the problem from the standpoint of evolution, isn't it the case that modern science believes the basis of cognition and rational thought to be entirely neural? there's no soul or higher man as far as western science is concerned. our thoughts, at the end of the day, are the consequence of quantum mechanics. that being the case, it would be a remarkable coincidence had evolution winnowed and pruned the male and female brains in exactly the same way--particularly given the unique set of challenges facing each gender in the harsh struggle for survival that must have confronted early man.

simply put, there's nothing unscientific about thinking that there may be genuine cognitive differences between women and men translating into a general weakness among the former in mathematical endeavors--and that's to say nothing of the mountain of test score data which bolsters that hunch, all so readily tossed away by the hissy-fitters as the product of a sexist, patriarchal upbringing.

which brings us to the real point: the most upsetting aspect of larry's remarks to the modern feminist isn't its supposedly chauvinistic, unscientific nature, but the potential power loss it represents. gay activists want homosexuality to be genetic because they believe this would insulate them from society's moralists. feminists seek the opposite cause for the same reason--they want environmental, rather than genetic, explanations because through these, they can gain the upper-hand on a supposedly prejudiced society. if sally's math test scores are ten points lower than billy's not because billy was given a g.i. joe while she was given a tea set, then what need we feminists?

all that having been said, some of the finest scientists, mathematicians, and engineers i have ever known are women--including my wife, who used to tutor then mere acquaintance locdog through integral calculus. while there may be genetic handicaps when it comes to women and math, they certainly don't effect everyone to the same degree, nor are they the sort of thing that cannot be overcome. the real danger to feminism in what i'll call the math gene comes not from its mere acceptance, but from the logical extension stretching from acceptance to victimhood. if little girls start a few points behind on the old bell curve, and they know that and can work to overcome it, you've created stronger little girls--stronger than their lazy male counterparts who had fractions and decimals handed to them courtesy of some fortunate DNA. that's empowerment. a far more likely, and incalculably more devastating, outcome would be that feminist groups would start screaming for mathematical affirmative action, spotting girls a ten point head start on exams and an inside track on grad school at MIT.

this is the divine secret of the locdog sistah-hood

2005-01-13T13:26:00.000-05:00

was it worth it?

i heard an interviewer ask president bush not long ago if the iraq war was worth it. the president, of course, said that he thought so, but more interesting than his response was the question it prompted within me: if i had been president, had known what he knew and done what he did, would i feel the same way?

"was it worth it," struck me then as a softball question, but in retrospect, it's not as easy as it sounds. if "worth" is calculated in terms of the cost in american life as a result of the war versus the potential cost in american life had we done nothing, many would conclude it was most decidedly not. the iraq war was fought on the pretense of weapons of mass destruction and the threat they represented in the hands of terrorists, those weapons have not materialized, so what, exactly, are our soldiers dying for? to the left, where the bankruptcy of bush's iraq policy has ever been an article of blind faith, the president answering "yes" is thus all the more proof of his insanity.

i say "blind faith" because, once upon a time, leftists had to convince themselves that, while saddam probably did have WMD, the u.n. could be trusted to contain him in spite of saddam's failure to comply with every resolution they'd thrown his way. it remains true because they presently like nothing better than to say americans are dying in iraq for a lie, but in order to say that they've had to block out the inconvenient fact that, at the time the decisions were being made, everyone who mattered believed it was the truth--including bush.

so was it worth it? to answer that, put yourself in bush's shoes, and, just to make things interesting, let's assume that the left has basically got it right: bush lied about WMD. ok, that would mean he knew that saddam had no weapons of mass destruction from the start. it would further mean that he had some ulterior motive--avenge his father's honor, steal iraq's oil, distract people from his failure to capture bin laden, whatever. i can't keep up with all of these crackpot theories, so pick whichever tickles your fancy or invent one of your own.

so here you are, mr. president, hankering to go to war with iraq and knowing that you'll need to advance some sort of false pretense to do it. there are a lot of possibilities because, aside from osama, saddam is our arch-enemy. maybe you play up his atrocious human rights record, a record of oppression, torture, purgings, mass graves...or maybe you go with his ties to terrorism. maybe you take the geopolitical angle and emphasize that saddam is the most unstable player in the most unbalanced region in the world. the point is that there are many things you could say about saddam that are absolutely true...but you don't say any of them. you pick the one thing, in fact, that you know is absolutely false, that saddam has WMD, and you bank your political future (not to mention the lives of thousands of american soldiers) on it.

i think not.

that's not just stupid, it's insane. you'd never do that, and neither would bush. it's funny how the left plays up karl rove as some evil genius and yet he supposedly hatched the one scheme that was 100% guaranteed to fail? when CIA director george tenet looked the president in the eyes and told him that weapons of mass destruction were a "slam dunk," bush had no choice but to believe him and that would be equally true for any of us had we been in his shoes. the question then becomes, what do we do with that knowledge?

the truth is, if we'd plucked saddam from his spider hole and found a few million tons of serin gas squirreled away along with him, it wouldn't have made the slightest difference because the left is fundamentally incapable of getting it. they're stuck on september 10th, and always will be.

if we'd found saddam's weapons, the question would have been exactly the same: "was it worth it? why did we have to go now? what was the urgency? where was the clear and present danger?"

on september 11th, about half of the people in this country (51% as of last november) woke up. the other half briefly stirred, munched a handful of sleeping tablets, chased them with a hearty slug of jack daniel's, and haven't moved since. where was the threat? where was the clear and present danger? it was everywhere. it was all around us. al qaeda had always been a threat--had, in fact, killed hundreds of americans with utter impunity during clinton's tenure--we'd just never paid much attention. then all of the sudden we realized that these guys could hurt us. big time. and not just overseas, but they could hit us where we live. suddenly the scariest possibility in the world is a rogue dictator with weapons of mass destruction and terrorist buddies. and there happened to be an individual who fit that bill quite nicely. terrorists had not been given a chemical or biological weapon only through the forbearance of a madman. once you realize that, the question isn't "why now," but "why didn't we do this years ago?"

i'd have agree with president bush. the iraq war was worth it. at the time, no other decision made sense, and now that we're there, we have no choice but to win. and incidentally, we've managed to eliminate one of the last truly dangerous rogue dictators, freed millions of people, and brought hope for the future to a troubled region. what's more, the soldiers who are fighting believe in their mission, the people they are helping are deeply grateful, and we're all extremely proud of them.

locdog certainly is

BONUS: apropos absolutely nothing, i was watching the history channel last night and the quarry show was on. what could be duller than a show about quarries? not much else on so i stuck with it, and learned something kinda cool. limestone, when powdered and heated, becomes incandescent. so before they had electric lighbulbs figured out, they used to illuminate stages at theaters this way. hence the expression "in the limelight." betcha didn't know that, smartypants.

2005-01-10T13:03:00.000-05:00

for an eye-opening read...

...check out our good friend joseph d'hippolito's article on michel sabbah, the latin patriarch of jerusalem. what does rome's highest-ranking prelate in the holy land think of his jewish neighbors?

Ours is an occupied country, which explains why people are tired and blow themselves up. The Israelis tell Palestinians: Stop the violence and you will have what you want without violence. But one has seen in the history of the last ten years that the Israelis have moved only when forced by violence. Unfortunately, nothing but violence makes people march. And not only here. Every country has been born in blood.

and that ain't the half of it.

locdog suggests you take a look

2005-01-07T13:14:00.000-05:00

God doesn't owe you a thing

people tend to judge God the way they judge a president. bountiful harvest? God is great. locusts ate your crops? God is dead. up, down, up, down. i'm surprised gallup isn't out there polling His job approval numbers.

when bad things happen to us, we think God is doing a bad job. it's not unreasonable to expect people to feel that way, i suppose, but let's examine that logic a bit closer.

hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, floods, tsunamis...the dreadful exclamation points punctuating the routine of existence. to some, whenever one of these pops up God becomes a monster, a madman, hitler. i'd be willing to bet my bottom dollar that the ones doing all the complaining have 1. got things pretty good overall and 2. never bothered to consider the comparatively easy circumstances of their own existences and thank Him--to them, God is vacationing around the cosmos on sunny days, only shows up when the rains start, and falls asleep just in time for the flood.

their supposition is that God owes humanity peace and prosperity every day, all the time. He has no right to throw in a natural disaster now and then. that's unjust. we deserve better.

"no," i hear someone say "but we don't deserve that. we don't deserve hundreds of thousands of innocent dead."

why don't we? if any of us were God we would have pulled the plug on this race-gone-wrong a long time ago. i can't pretend not to sympathize with those who get angry at God. i've been angry with Him many times--and over infinitely less tragic happenings than, say, the recent tsunami and the almost incomprehensible havoc it wreaked. as a general rule, my first response to everything--including God--is anger. but would we really do things differently?

let's suppose for a moment that God really does owe us all a peaceful death in our sleep at a ripe old age with a lifetime of happy memories behind us. does that rule out the occasional tsunami? i've read that these things are the results of tectonic shifts. ok. i'm no geologist, but it's not hard to see that, in the long run, we'd probably be a lot worse off if the great transmission of engine earth wasn't allowed to occasionally grind a gear. that might sound a bit glib to you, but it's not inconsistent with a God whose doing what's best for humanity as a whole and for all time. we don't know that the disaster we just witnessed, as awful as it was, wasn't the alternative to some far worse disaster that would have befell us had God plotted out the lines of our reality along some alternate course.

a tsumani feels cruel to us because of the pain it causes, yes, but also because of how arbitrary it seems. we've invented the phrase "act of God" to describe events like this--the whimsical workings of creation gone awry (or so we think), capriciously snapping up tens or hundreds of thousands of us with no explanations, and no apologies. every one of us thinks we could do a better job. if i was God, i wouldn't have allowed that to happen, i think to myself, and i truly believe i would not have. but we all think that way. and we all think that we could do a better job than the pope and the president and the coach of the local football team. faith demands something different.

as a wise soul once put it, if you knew what God knows, you would do what God does. as a Christian, i must believe that God is shepherding humanity towards its collective fate along the path of least resistance. that in the cursed cosmos where every single one of us is going to die, whether from tsunamis or hurricanes or choking on a chicken bone at dinner, He really is doing the best work possible with what we've given him to work with.

"what we've given him," i hear someone ask incredulously. "don't you mean what He's given us?"

no, and that's why i'll return to my question of a few paragraphs ago: why don't we deserve tsunamis? why don't we deserve floods and pestilence and war--especially war. oy vey, if i had a nickel for every hypocrite who ever asked how God could let a war happen. as if God is obligated to hold humanity together when we're hell bent on blowing ourselves apart. why should He keep us from killing ourselves--even though, in His benevolence, He's chosen to do just that. war is our choice--and i think He shields us from most of its consequences in spite of that. i have no proof, of course, but i've always had a sneaking suspicion that, since we've acquired the power to eradicate ourselves, we would have done so decades ago had He not prevented us. it just seems like the sort of thing we would do to me.

ok, that's war, but what about the natural side of things? as a Christian i'll tell you that God cursed creation after the fall of man in the garden of eden and you'll tell me that that's a myth. so be it. but do you, dear reader, deserve a perfect creation? do you deserve eden?

we have this karmic notion of divine justice, that God adds up all the good and bad we've done and as long as the good outweighs the bad, we deserve eden. we deserve perfection. that's some logic. i suppose that a banker should allow customers to own their homes as long as they make more mortgage payments than they miss? we don't deserve eden. not even close. sure, most of us think we're pretty good people. we do what's right most of the time. ok then. why should we have anything more than a creation that does what's right most of the time? that most of the time nurtures us and sustains us and provides us resources, and only occasionally does wrong, and never in such a way as to wipe us all out? seems to me that's exactly what we've got.

in point of fact, God has given us far better than what we deserve. here we have an inherently self-destructive species placed in a world that on balance, exhibits the opposite tendencies: in spite of the odd rampage, it's permitted us to thrive. and not only that, but humanity has been able to use this creation to better ourselves. we've made technological progress that has greatly improved our standard of living, if not moral progress, but then, that proves my point.

i wouldn't pretend for an instant that anything i've written here could rob the grief from those suffering in thailand and sri lanka and india right now. but for those of us sitting at a critical distance wondering if God has gone mad, let's stop and think for a moment. God doesn't owe us anything, but He's given each of us far more than we are owed. He's given us the greatest gift of all, charity. charity being unconditional love, the kind His Son demonstrated in dying for a world that had rejected Him. we see echoes of that love today in the charitable actions of people the world over, and i'm reminded of perhaps the most paradoxical truth of human existence and perhaps the best argument for the co-existence of evil and a benevolent God: the greatest good could never have existed without evil. in a perfect world, we can't love unconditionally because everything and everyone is essentially lovable and there's no possibility of sacrifice. here, it's a lot harder. but it is possible.

locdog bids you all a pleasant friday

2005-01-04T13:27:00.000-05:00

stingy is as stingy does

there's been a lot of good ole american indignation stirred up in the wake of UN uber-bureaucrat jan egeland's "stingy" remark. bout damn time. if we don't toot our horn, who will?

just to refresh your memory, mr. egeland called the world's richest nations (read "america") "stingy" on the basis of global charitable contributions as a percentage of gross national product. using this scale, america comes in dead last at a (seemingly) paltry 0.14%. and--oh what a coincidence--egeland's homeland of norway comes in first at a (seemingly) astounding 0.92%. egeland's scale is meaningless since it fails to take into consideration the disproportionately vast size of our gross national product--in terms of actual dollars and cents, the united states' donations far exceed those of all other nations. and beyond direct cash contributions to suffering nations, we send billions in food, water, and medical supplies, billions on AIDS programs, and billions through other UN humanitarian ventures. this is to say nothing of the billions in private charitable contributions from corporate and individual donors.

i won't waste any more time on egeland's dead horse since it's been beaten to death by a surprisingly (and rightfully) chagrined media. there are, however, two points which have not gotten the attention they deserve.

point the first: axe grinding.

how shameful that a natural disaster of nearly unprecedented scale should be exploited as a battlefield for marxist ideologues intent on waging class warfare. egeland's problem isn't with the amount the united states is giving, it's with the amount we're keeping. why should we have such wealth--not just in time of disaster, but ever? why should we have air conditioned homes and swimming pools and SUVs when people in the third world are starving? egeland couldn't have made a more naked appeal for wealth redistribution had he tried, but like all marxists, he's can't see the economic forest for the trees.

the united states is the most generous nation in the world because we can afford to be the most generous nation in the world, and we can afford to be because of our evil, greedy capitalist economy. jan might puff his chest over norway's 0.92% donation, but when it comes down to cash on the barrel head, they've given a pittance. why? because the socialist system they pride themselves on has choked the life out of their economy. they've rendered themselves powerless to make any meaningful contributions to global relief--but then, this is norway we're talking about. when haven't they washed their hands of this planet?

which brings me to point the second: what have you done for us lately?

before we go off on another america bashing tirade, let's pause to consider the indisputable fact that no nation has done so much to better the baseline existence of humanity over the past hundred years as the united states. nearly every major medical, scientific, and technological innovation of the last century has happened here: automobiles, computers, MRI machines...it's impossible to reckon the depths of contributions the united states has made and the myriad of ways they've bettered human civilization. charity is practically an afterthought.

but there's a much more obvious and direct contribution to our fellow man the united states has made and is continuing to make today: military protection. norway spends 0.92% of its GNP on foreign aid then clucks its tongue at those gluttons over in the u.s.--not hard to do when you've never lifted a finger in your own national defense. when madmen bent on world domination appeared early in the twentieth century, norway sniffed and left the dead to bury the dead. a couple of decades later, when a far worse madman arose, they assumed the blanket of allied protection would allow them to preserve their "neutrality" once more and found out the hard way just how wrong they were. millions of dead allies and untold billions in military spending later (neither of which had come much from norway), they had been wrenched free of hitler's grasp...just long enough to wind up on the edge of stalin's, but, once more, they remained "neutral" as the united states waged a cold war that kept the iron curtain safely outside their borders. today they sip the sweet nectar of american industrialization on the sunny veranda of american freedom and wonder why america is so stingy. norway would gladly watch every house in the neighborhood burn to the ground so long as it was not their own, then expect the bucket brigade to come running when it's their precious memories going up in smoke.

locdog can't say he's glad to be back from Christmas break, but he's back

2004-12-22T13:14:00.000-05:00

the worst of Christmas

alright, my traditional xmas thread is started and now that i've gotten the annual secularization rant out of my system, i'd like to move on to a rant of a different sort. except that i'd like this one to be a bit more participatory.

everyone thinks i'm a scrooge.

not you people. to you i'm Jesus-boy. but in real life, pretty much everyone i know is convinced i hate Christmas.

i proudly told some coworkers the other day that, to my knowledge, i had not listened to a single Christmas song this year.* i may as well have told them i sacrifice goats to satan while anally raping small boys. and not surprisingly, no one even asked me why. it's just a given that if you don't have your radio tuned to one of the four or five stations in our market that play 'round the clock Christmas music starting sometime shortly after memorial day, you're a monster.

i have not seen, nor do i intend to see, the polar express.

i do not, nor will i ever, have any inflatable, animatronic, or music-producing ornamentation on my lawn, or in my home.

nor will i, for that matter, countenance even tasteful ornamentation until at least after thanksgiving.

in short, it's not that i have a problem with Christmas, it's that i'm apparently they only one in this country who doesn't.

let me give you a few examples.

on the first day of Christmas my network gave to me a 2 hour made-for-tv holiday movie starring peter faulk, suzane summers, and ricky schroder, written by some guy they found rummaging through the dumpster behind the sound stage.

on the second day of Christmas my radio gave to me feliz navidad re-recorded by j-lo with a special guest rap by will smith and a guitar solo courtesy of carlos santana, who, by the way, has sold out like george lucas with a crack addiction.

on the third day of Christmas my true love gave to me, a bo-ricks haircut gift card and a mention in the "international star registry"--a gift that's almost as timeless as a diamond, which, they tell me, is love and the holiday spirit all distilled down to elemental carbon.

i could fill out the remaining 9 days without too much trouble, but cutesy list-posts tick me off almost as much as the stupid song that's driving this one. the twelve days of Christmas is an abomination and it, along with its creator, should have been drowned immediately after birth. i've seen five carat cubic zirconias that were more tasteful, and besides "bingo" and "99 bottles of beer," there's nothing on earth more annoying to listen to, less fun to sing, and generally holiday-rage inducing. every time i hear it i want to beat random passers-by with a lead pipe.

and now that i'm back on the topic of Christmas music, let me a say few words on the medium in general: Christmas music sucks. there, a few words indeed, but now a few more. it's a crock. you idiots, you absolute blithering idiots, don't you get that? so i'm a scrooge for not opting to poke myself in the eye with a pointy stick or listen to "it's a cheesy synth-pop Christmas starring manheim steamroller!" --and now that i've sullied myself and my readers by mentioning the band whose name, translated out of the black tongue of mordor, means "laughing all the way to the bank," can someone explain to me how a band that has never not sucked has been somehow improved by adding Christmas music to their repertoire? anyone?

don't you people get it? the music, the movies, the made-for-tv specials? i'm not scrooge for rejecting this stuff. scrooge himself created it! he made it up, all of it, and you halfwits can't scramble to his door fast enough to pour your money into his pockets.

and every year it's the same thing. so much so that i'm convinced old ebenezer has entered the information age. want a holiday hit? go and sign britney spears, then enter ten cliches into the Christmas song generator at www.emailthisannoyingurltoallyourfriendsfiftytimes.com and out pops something like

i love snow and mistletoe
the special cheer this time of year
let's make Christmas last forever in our hearts

chestnuts pop and jingle bell rock
a horse and a sleigh make the perfect day
let's make Christmas last forever in our hearts

there. i just wrote that in one take at the cost of ten seconds worth of time and all you need to do is add a soundtrack with some jingling bells and you've got yourself an instant smash. you people don't keep Christmas, you rape it. you rape it and you hate it.

alright, i'm done venting. feel free to add any pet peeves of your own, but i'd also like to salvage something constructive out of the celebration of hackery and vapidity that is Christmas in america. particularly, i'm interested in pop culture's positive contributions to the season--which is why i asterisked my claim not to have listened to any Christmas music. i did listen to gene autry singing rudolf, which i regard more as priceless americana than crass Christmas crap. i’m going to list a few more worthwhile additions to the season, but before i do, i would like to ask that anyone who is amused by dogs barking jingle bells not read any further. in fact, go and shoot yourself. now then, besides gene, i would add

bing crosby's "white christmas."

nat king cole covering torme's "the Christmas song."

bobby helm's "jingle bell rock." (no, really, i like this one--it's a perfectly servicable 50's pop-rockabilly that happens to be about jingle bells, but we should not hold that against it.)

the 1964 rankin-bass "rudolf the red nosed reindeer" stop motion special.

the 1965 bill melendez "a charlie brown christmas." (unquestionably the sweetest Christmas special ever made and a classic in every sense of the word.)

the 1966 chuck jones "how the grinch stole christmas." (this one makes the less more because of my admiration for chuck jones than because of anything that glorified hack ted geisel ever did. geisel irritates me almost as much as the tackier aspects Christmas--how hard is it to write rhyming children's poetry when you've invented 3/5ths of the words yourself?)

also, both "it's a wonderful life" and "a Christmas story." the fact that you've seen them each five thousand times does not make them any less wonderful.

this is by no means an exhaustive list, just some titles near and dear to my heart.

locdog bids you all a merry Christmas

2004-12-22T09:45:00.000-05:00

merry Xmas?

originally posted 20 dec 2001

merry Xmas to you.

2000 years ago in a little middle-eastern town, nothing in particular happened. a certain baby was probably born to poor parents, a child lacking a name, a personality, a gender, or any other definable characteristics. he never made any sort of an impact on anyone's life whatsoever. he never influenced a single thought or gesture. he never, in fact, got noticed at all. he was the most meaningless human being who ever lived.

for his utter lack of significance and merit as a person, this baby was named "X". X, the variable human. X, the mystery man. X, the one without a persona.

today, 2000 years later, people all over the world celebrate the birth of the most meaningless, unimportant human being to ever walk the face of the earth. grudgingly titling the holiday "Xmas", most prefer to refer to it as "the season" or "the holiday" thinking that perhaps even referencing the name of X is too much of a credit to such an poor excuse for a person.

this season was crammed in between hannakuh, kiwanza, new year's, and festivus because it was believed that such an abject failure of a human being should not recieve his own special month, rather, he should recieve the leftovers from various other holidays in the hope that the observation of X's day would go by with as little fan fare as possible. generally, this strategy has worked, as the "holiday season" goes by in such a smushed together blur that few people even recognize Xmas as being a distinct event.

a man without a personality given a holiday to celebrate his name, a holiday which, poetically enough, exists only to further his obscurity.

to this day, however, there remain a few dissidents who believe that X in fact had a real name. and not just any name, but a name so distinct and powerful that the very mention of it causes indescribable pain and offense in many circles. a name imbued with power from a Man Who revolutionized the entire world. a Man Who made a greater impact on the history of the earth than any other Man before or since. a Man Who's significance was so inestimably huge that the human reckoning of time itself was redefined and centered around His day of birth. a Man Who's life was the epitome of the human experience. a Man Who's life serves as an inspiration to those who manage to learn of it. a Man Who continues to incite social revolution and upheval where ever his name is heard even today. a Man Who died, rose again, and lives for evermore.

these few dissidents huddle together in camps with voices as small and frail and unheard as that of the Man they follow. working to tell others that X was not an amorphous blob of biological jelly, but a real, distinct person with a real, distinct life. and not just any person, but the greatest person who ever lived. they say that Xmas was originally designed to celebrate his entry into our world, but that, over time, those who were hostile to X because of the threat he represented gained in power and influence, and banished even the rememberance of his name to total obscurity.

who was X?

locdog wonders if we remember

2004-12-21T13:46:00.000-05:00

him that pisseth against the wall

driving in to work this morning i caught the tail end of a bravura angry white male rant having to do with men being forced to sit when they urinate. i assumed it was a gag, but after arriving at the office it occurred to me that, if it turned out to be true, there would be at least one more rant in it for me. figuring it was worth a shot, i started googling, and lo and behold, for the past 28 years i've been subjugating women in ways i hadn't even dreamed of:

Young women in Sweden, Germany and Australia have a new cause: They want men to sit down while urinating. This demand comes partly from concerns about hygiene -- avoiding the splash factor -- but, as Jasper Gerard reports in the English magazine The Spectator, "more crucially because a man standing up to urinate is deemed to be triumphing in his masculinity, and by extension, degrading women." One argument is that if women can't do it, then men shouldn't either. Another is that standing upright while relieving oneself is "a nasty macho gesture," suggestive of male violence.

A feminist group at Stockholm University is campaigning to ban all urinals from campus, and one Swedish elementary school has already removed them. In Australia, an Internet survey shows that 17 percent of those polled think men ought to sit, while 70 percent believe they should be allowed to stand. Some Swedish women are pressuring their men to take a stand, so to speak. Yola, a 25-year-old Swedish trainee psychiatrist, says she dumps boyfriends who insist on standing. "What else can I do?," said her new boyfriend, Ingvar, who sits.

a quick aside on "splash factor." ladies, you don't know what you're talking about, so just shut up. you think it's laziness or lack of aiming ability but the truth is that it's a lot more complicated than that and that's as far as i'll go. i personally see nothing wrong with making him clean it up if he slobs up the joint, but let it go at that. because if you think you could do better, you're wrong. in my humble opinion, that's tops on the female penis-related misconception list.

now then, firstly, ingvar, bro, how about you just chop off the withered little twig that passes for your manhood and be done with it? you're a damned disgrace to all men everywhere...though i must admit that there's a certain satisfaction in seeing a "man" who would allow such a thing to happen get precisely that. just be thankful she doesn't make you lick the toilet clean when you're done with your dirty business, ingvar, you swine.

secondly, if i wanted to revel in my masculinity, i'm pretty sure i could come up with much better ways of doing it than taking a leak. i'd find some feminist and make her iron my shirts, for starters. then i'd go out and buy a gun. or possibly a dune buggy. heck, make it both. and i'd drive around in it shooting fluffy bunnies and cuddly squirrels while scarfing hot wings and guzzling beer.

here's the thing: when men stand up to pee, we aren't making a political statement. truth be told, it's nothing more than laziness. the Good Lord gave us garden hoses instead of artesian wells, so why sit if we don't have to? we're just doing what comes natural to us: quick, efficient, easy.

there's none so misogynistic as a radical feminist. it's not that standing up to pee is a celebration of masculinity, it's that she's got such a massive inferiority complex that she can't help but let it get to her every time she sits to let nature take its course. she hates herself, hates her body, hates the roll God and nature have given her, and, most of all, hates the fact that, somewhere, some man engaged in the same function is doing it standing up.

this might be a pretty silly example, but the general point is sound: radical feminism has nothing to do with femininity. it's just your typical leftist marxist power grab: take masculinity from the haves and give it to the have-nots. well, sorry ladies, but your self-loathing isn't my problem.

locdog pees on trees in the wild mountain breeze

2004-12-17T13:29:00.000-05:00

i spy

carmen dixon is a middle-age mom with a problem. you see, her 14 year-old daughter lacey's life is basically one big audition for jerry springer. frustrated with her inability to keep tabs on the troublesome teen, dixon resorted to eavesdropping on her daughter's phone conversations with her 17 year old boyfriend oliver christensen.

on one such occasion, she heard christensen confess to tackling an elderly woman and snatching her purse. she prudently called the cops and turned him in, and christensen was convicted of second-degree robbery as a result of dixon's testimony.

until.

until christensen's defense appealed on grounds of the boy's constitutional right to privacy being violated (along with a supporting brief from the ACLU, of course.) carmen dixon had no right to spy on her daughter's phone conversation, ergo, her testimony should be disallowed. and would you believe the washington state supreme court bought it?

they have ordered christensen to be tried again, sans dixon testimony.

let's review. you, dear citizen, are the mother and legal guardian of a minor. said minor lives in your home eating the food you provide and wearing the clothes you paid for. when she talks on the phone (which is always if she's anything like every other 14 year old american girl) she's talking on your dime. you own, pay for, or have legal custody of absolutely everything involved in the situation, and yet you have no right to know what's being said by your own daughter on your own phone.

just to be perfectly clear, i have very little sympathy for carmen dixon per se. in an ideal world, incompetent parents like her would be imprisoned for raising 14 year olds who run with 17 year old petty thugs. motherhood is the single most important social institution, and to say that dixon has been negligent is putting it kindly. her, and parents like her, fail us all by unleashing their brutal little hooligans and future welfare sponges on an otherwise decent country. if you think i'm being too hard on dear carmen, don't. turns out she's facing a ten year stint on an unrelated matter of embezzling over 100 grand from the postal service--a crime to which she's already plead guilty. it seems lacey and potential in-law oliver are just taking their rightful place in the family business.

but i do have a great deal of sympathy for parents in general. and i'm more than a little pissed. "I don't think the state should be in the position of encouraging parents to act surreptitiously and eavesdrop on their children," said some schmuck from the ACLU. and in ACLU land (which would be just like stalinist russia but with extra purgings) i suppose that the state does indeed have more of an interest in protecting the so-called right to privacy of a 14 year old minor who obviously doesn't have the sense God gave a retarded horse on crack than they do in protecting the basic building block of civilization itself: the family--specifically the ability of parents to instruct and protect their children.

as far as i'm concerned, children have no right to privacy. privacy presupposes the ability to conduct one's self in a responsible (or at least not directly harmful) manner. the assumption of privacy is that the free american people are basically alright and hence what they do in their own free time is their own business. i think that's more or less true in the case of adults, but kids? most 14 year old kids can't handle privacy any more than a stone junkie could handle could handle a trip to amsterdam. it's the parents right--no, obligation--to give them only as much as they've shown they can be trusted with, and in the case of lacey, that's not a whole helluva lot.

it goes without saying, of course, that no one in this whole awful mess gives a steaming dog turd for the well-being of an elderly woman whose purse was snatched.

"sorry granny, we'd like to give you some justice, but the ACLU says that the right of privacy for a 17 year old delinquent trumps your right not to be physically assaulted and robbed."

someday locdog will be king and then you'll all pay

2004-12-15T09:59:00.000-05:00

not all it's cracked up to be

last year, a coworker of mine moved to germany to carry on her post-doctoral research. she returned for the holidays with armloads of photographs, chocolate, and stories (but unfortunately no beer) and popped in at the office for a quick hello.

as we chatted over the pictures and german living in general, i asked her how things were going economically. she gave me a don't ask look and then said "terrible."

i decided to play devil's advocate and draw her out a bit further. "but i've always heard they have a great economy in germany."

now my friend is as reliably liberal as they come. it was therefore no small surprise when she said "well, they've gotten pretty spoiled over there. and lazy. they only work a 35 hour week, which i'm all about, but the problem is that they can't pay for what they have. they've got a really posh retirement system over there and they don't have enough workers to fund it any more."

"sounds familiar," i replied.

"yeah. and that's not the half of it. women are given two years paid maternity. they're guaranteed their jobs back when they return. they can also take off six weeks before the pregnancy..."

she continued for a couple of minutes, rattling of a list of typical european-style socialist programs and concluding that the net result was an outrageous tax burden and a stagnant economy.

"since i've gone over there, i'm really starting to see how stuff works. i'm beginning to change my mind about some things."

locdog just smiled

2004-12-13T13:46:00.000-05:00

abstinence sells

a heartening National Center for Health and Statistics study revealed friday that teens are less sexually active. according to the NCHS, the rates among boys and girls ages 15-17 have fallen from 43 to 31 and 38 to 30, respectively, from 1995 to 2002. great news for kids, great news for america, bad news for liberals.

it's more or less an article of religious faith among the glorified marxist reconstructionists parading as liberals these days that Kids are Going to Have Sex. a pretense of scholarship usually swaddles the claim, but what really seals the deal is the air of futility they nurture:

look, mom and dad. look at the clothes they wear. the music they listen to. the movies and tv they watch. the friends they hang out with. you can't compete with that. why try? just get them to use condoms and you've done your duty.

and, sad to say, some lazy parents have bought into this line of thinking. raising abstinent kids is hard work. it takes involvment and a huge investment of time and emotion. a condom, however, takes a five minute trip to the drug store. one parental advice column i read not long ago seemed to offer solace by maintaining that parents who encourage abstinence are actually making pre-marital sex more likely by adding the sheen of the forbidden to an already alluring fruit.

but one thing you'll seldom seldom see them offering is hard evidence. ask your average self-described liberal what he's looking for in a sex-education program and he'll tell you 99% birth control and 1% abstinence--if that. ask him why and he'll say that you can't stop them from doing it. ask him how he knows and he'll give you a look like you just asked him how he knows the sky is blue, and tell you that kids were having sex when he was young and it doesn't look like it's going to go out of style anytime soon.

if you think the left is intellectually lazy, you're right, but that's not what's happening here. it's not that there are mountains of data out there waiting to support the futility argument, quite the contrary. recent studies have shown that parents have a huge role in shaping the sexual attitudes (and consequently practices) of their children, but the futility argument was never anything more than a red herring anyway. sex education types don't want abstinent kids.

why not? given that abstinence is the only guarantee against STDs and teen pregnancy, and given that seventy percent of teens have already opted for it, shouldn't it constitute the bulk of our efforts? shouldn't we be convincing the holdouts of the error of their ways rather than sending that signal to the correct majority (of kids and parents alike)?

those are some tough nuts to crack--until, that is, one realizes that sex education has next to nothing to do with health. to the cultural marxist hardliners responsible for most of the last thirty years' worth of sex ed, teenage sexuality is simply too valuable to give up. traditional american sexual mores represent a huge roadblock on the highway to leftist utopia that they've attempted to build through our public schools. parental influence in general, which is almost always more favorable to the right, must be overcome, and sex is a great way to do it.

think of it this way: abstinence is useless to the left since abstinent teens are basically operating under a system of accountability, but birth control offers both the opportunity to circumvent parental rules and the disastrous consequences such transgressions would ordinarily bring--except it doesn't as teen pregnancy and STD trends over the past few decades will readily attest. but hey, isn't that all the more reason for increased condom classes? in this way, the most powerful biological urges can be harnessed at their peak and used to leverage teens further into the statist camp, either in the direct sense of depending on the government for the basic necessities of life once they're pregnant and illiterate, or in the indirect but more devastating sense of convincing them that the state is the source of all social convention. a victim in the former camp can at worst harm themselves and their offspring, but one from the latter could go on to spread his beliefs, perhaps one day teach himself and rear up thousands of intellectual offspring.

but we needn't be so conspiratorial. most so-called liberals hate traditional american values and would want to see kids doing it if for no other reason than to spit in the faces of our puritan fathers. what's more, "liberalism" today has come to represent the total renunciation of newton's third law, a disassociation between action and consequence where everyone is the victim of everyone else, nothing is anyone's fault, and the buck always stops with some new government program. in other words, there may be sound, strategic reasons for leftist intellectuals to buck against abstinence, but there's more than enough philosophical undercurrent to sweep along the well-meaning rank and file.

the good news is that they're losing. parents do have a voice, and teens are listening. teen sexuality is down, there are corresponding declines in STD and pregnancy rates among the same group, and, in spite of all, the kids are going to be alright.

like most non-parents, locdog is a boundless source of parental wisdom

2004-12-09T13:50:00.000-05:00

best hypocritical democrat quote ever

up at hunting camp i got into it with a life-long democrat/union member about the blue/red divide. he contended that the red states (actually, it was the red regions of the state in which we both live) are the backward, non-productive areas peopled by toothless banjo-strummers and sister-humpers. but the main reasons the reds voted red was, and i quote "because they're prejudiced against all the niggers."

delivered with a straight face and not a trace of irony.

locdog got a buck, two doe, and an environmentalist

2004-11-17T11:57:00.000-05:00

abercrombie & filched

file this one under political correctness run amuck.

LOS ANGELES - Abercrombie & Fitch Co. has agreed to pay $40 million to black, Hispanic and Asian employees and job applicants to settle a class-action federal discrimination lawsuit that accused the clothing retailer of promoting whites at the expense of minorities, lawyers said Tuesday.

The settlement...calls for the implementation of new policies and programs to promote diversity and prevent discrimination in its workforce. Abercrombie & Fitch also must pay about $10 million to monitor compliance and cover attorneys' fees, although the agreement contains no admission of wrongdoing by the company.

ah, the corporate shakedown. jesse jackson must be green with envy. this particular piece of race-baiting, however, was carried out by a, uh, rainbow coalition of various minority groups from wichita, kansas. woops, i mean tulsa, oaklahoma. or was it mobile, alabama? let me check the story again...ah, here it is: san francisco. shocking, but true.

what, precisely, was their plaint?

[Abercrombie & Fitch] hires a disproportionately white sales force, puts minorities in less-visible jobs and cultivates a virtually all-white image in its catalogues and elsewhere.

perhaps you're expecting me to come to A&F's defense by refuting the above. actually, i have no idea whether it's true or not, and, to be honest, don't care.

hell, let's stipulate the whole charge. say i'm a white clothier and my clientele is predominantly white. turns out that white people buy the white clothes they see on white models from happy white faces down at the mall, which, incidentally, is usually located in the whitest part of town. (as astonishing as all this may be to you, consider that companies like A&F have doubtless spent millions on marketing research to wind up at the exact same conclusion.)

ok...so what's the problem? i'm a business man and i'm here to make money. i must have missed the day back in business school where they taught us that the true meaning of business is to transform society into some liberal hypocrite's diversity dream.

don't get me wrong. it's not that i'm advocating discrimination in the work force, but we aren't talking about picking welder A over welder B because welder B's ancestry happens to come from the wrong hemisphere, we're talking about sales. we're talking about image. we're talking about presentation. certain kinds of clothing appeal to certain segments of society and those segments expect their peers to be the ones doing the selling. that's how it works. always has, always will.

and the liberal hypocrites, to be blunt, don't have any more problem with it than i do--which is why i'm writing this post. it's not that they mind the same harmless "discrimination" that keeps over-sexed youths vee-jaying MTV and moldy joe and his orchestra wheezing out the classics at bingo night. it's not that they mind a clothier like FUBU, which uses (so far as i can tell) exclusively black models and salespeople and whose very name (yes, it really does mean "for us by us") practically revels in that exclusion. they don't mind the all-black school, the all-girls school, the all-gay-handicapped-bolivian-truckers school. they mind whitey. they attack whitey. they try to soak whitey, and, more often than not, they succeed. they extort millions of dollars from whitey because they think whitey stole it off of them in the first place. that's the whole thing in a nutshell. vendetta. try opening an all-white school if you don't believe me. (or, just for a lark, try getting tiger woods onto the LPGA tour.)

what really sucks about A&F caving to these thugs is that, far from decreasing the amount of racism in our society, they've helped entrench it all the more.

but then, it does give locdog something else to complain about

2004-11-16T16:44:00.000-05:00

who's to say you wouldn't have shot him too?

the media is in full scandal mode over a marine shooting a wounded, unarmed iraqi. a marine who was himself shot in the face the day before, a marine who had already lost a comrade to a booby-trapped corpse, a marine who doubtless hadn't ate a decent meal or slept a solid six hours or had a hot shower in weeks. in short, a marine who, under any other circumstances, would be considered a hero.

why did he do it? who knows. he seemed inordinately disturbed by the fact that the wounded, unarmed iraqi (apparently unarmed from that marine's perspective) was "playing dead."

sure, to people sitting in cushy chairs with full bellies and a good night's sleep who see all of this on nice, safe satellite delay, it's pretty hard to understand why "playing dead" would incur an automatic death sentence. but, if we'd spent the last week or so dodging bullets--some of which came from terrorists playing hurt or dead in an attempt to lure unsuspecting soldiers to their doom--it would probably make a lot more sense. if we were forced to make life and death decisions under the most extreme conditions imaginable we'd probably be a bit more charitable still. and if most of those decisions amounted to "him or me," i'd doubt few if any of us would be in any great rush to pass judgment.

i'll tell you this much, they gave john kerry medals for taking far less serious injuries and honorably discharged him after killing people who were far more innocent. you may regard that as a controversial statement. you'd be wrong. kerry was never shot in the face, and kerry killed a child and his father whose only crime was picking the wrong night to go cruising in their sampan.

not that i'm faulting him. that sort of thing happened all too often in vietnam. why? because the enemy would use family-owned fishing vessels (and sometimes the family themselves) as cover to sneak up on american soldiers. add time and adrenaline, and innocent people are inevitably going to die.

we don't know all the facts, but this looks like the same type of thing. my gut reaction is that if you're looking for someone to blame for the wrongful death of someone who in all probability had it coming anyway, blame the enemy. you don't want mosques bombed? don't use them as bunkers and ammo dumps. you don't want corpses desecrated? don't rig them up as IEDs. you don't want the wounded shot? stop using them as bait.

there's an orgy of coverage about an obscenity-spouting marine executing a wounded, unarmed man, like some 'nam-era psychopath right out of an oliver stone flick, but what blame, if any, is given the insurgents? that i've seen so far, none. not any. zero. you know, if you start loading red cross trucks up with explosives and driving them into enemy positions, it's not going to be too long before they start targeting your red cross trucks. so whose fault is it when one of them that happens to be carrying wounded gets pounded into oblivion? according to our media it's the hapless american holding the still-smoking rocket launcher. and, as long as they're making him out like a war criminal, why not spit on him and call him a baby killer?

some people are going to throw their hands up over this one and say "that's just war," in an attempt to excuse the accused marine. they'd be as wrong as those trying to railroad him. it's not "just war." it's war with a savage enemy whose brutality and ruthless tactics have put our troops in a position where they are daily faced with the dilemma of following the rules or getting killed by an opponent who couldn't care less. i'm not saying our troops should start strapping grenades to little kids and send them toddling off into the nearest mosque, but the next time something like this happens, let's remember to give credit where it's due.

locdog thinks we owe our troops that much

2004-11-15T16:17:00.000-05:00

the new slavery

i have this friend, who i'll call gary. never met the guy, we know each other through blogging. turns out that gary is an ex-homosexual...or maybe it's "recovering homosexual." i'm not up on all the terminology.

i'll tell you a bit more about gary in a second, but i'd like to pause here and give some of you a chance to calm down. see, i could have called gary a fag or a flamer or a fudge-packer or whatever and you probably wouldn't have batted an eyelash. just one more bigot on the internet. but if i call gary an ex-homosexual, well, i'm worse than hitler.

i've gone and implied that there are people out there who are not happy being homosexual. i've further implied that we have the ability to chose our sexual orientation, to define our lives as we see fit in spite our proclivities. and, lastly, i've stated that there exists at least one person who was gay, wasn't happy, and changed.

changed indeed. gary's a husband now and, together with his wife of seventeen years--an ex-lesbian--he leads programs aimed at helping people who don't want to be gay any more. a devout Christian, gary has written a curriculum for churches looking to start an outreach to homosexuals. he's taught, spoken, and has even been invited to sit on the board of a nationally-known organization that does pretty much the same thing.

i bring all this up for two reasons. the first is that for the past two weeks now, everyone and their brother has been saying that bush rode the whole gay marriage thing to power. not that that has much to do with this particular post, just that the topic has been in the news a lot lately. the second reason is this article, written by a small man. in it, the small man digresses from his fundie-bashing momentarily to snigger about a good man, an ex-homosexual who is himself a leader of a nationally-known homosexual outreach program. he was spotted in a gay bar a few years ago, you see.

i remember when that happened. i'll bet some of you do, too, and with no small degree of satisfaction. i'm pretty sure most gay readers will. why? hard to say, but i'll venture a guess.

it all starts at birth. you're born gay (or straight, or bi, or whatever) and there's nothing you can do about it. maybe at first you don't want to admit it to yourself. maybe you do and you try to fight it. maybe you have some unsuccessful flings with members of the opposite sex in a desperate attempt to right yourself...but then one day you decide that there's nothing wrong in need of righting, and you accept yourself for who you are. (did i miss any cliches?)

it's not a choice. what's choice got to do with it? it's in your genes. you might have been born a serial killer or a future NBA star or having green eyes instead of blue, but you weren't. you were born gay. that's the hand you were dealt, end of story, forever and ever amen. you're a slave to your sexuality. your fate may be a billion letters long and written entirely in G's and A's and T's and C's, but it comes down to the same thing: once gay, always gay.

now, i don't know anything about genetics. i don't know if there's a "gay gene" and, frankly, i don't care. i know that there are genes that make people heterosexual, and that many heterosexual people have lived long, fulfilled lives in total celibacy. they say that there may be genes that make you an alcoholic, or at least predispose you towards it. well, there are a lot of dried-out drunks around today. to me, genes are an excuse.

just look at rudy. you know: rudy! rudy! rudy! five-foot-nuthin. a-hundred-and-nuthin-pounds. and he played for notre dame. kid was a big hero. they made a movie about him. short, unathletic people like me were inspired because he decided not to play knute rockne's game instead of mother nature's.

they don't make movies about guys like gary. mostly they spit at them and applaud when they fail.

being gay isn't the problem, you see. having a problem with being gay is the problem. in perhaps the greatest irony of the culture war, the fundamental truth of the gay rights movement is that no one has a right to sexual self-determination. if you don't like being gay, it's because you're sick. you've been given a head full of bad wiring. you're hung up on outdated morality, judgmentalism, self-loathing. you're weak. you're a coward. you're unwilling to be different. worse, you're tearing everyone else down with you. you're costing the movement the gains they've made. so if you're not happy being gay, get your head right, suck it up, and deal with it, right?

why does leaving homosexuality have to be a bad thing? why do those who try have to fail? or, if they don't, how come they have to be secretly longing to get back in?

which is why, to finally answer my own question, i think it was such a wonderful thing to so many small people when an ex-homosexual got caught in a gay bar. it reminds me of drunks who laugh when they hear of someone falling off the wagon.

most of you know that i think homosexuality is a sin, but i don't see how that changes anything. suppose i didn't. suppose i was just peachy with gay sex. so what? hell, so what if i was gay myself? if someone isn't happy being gay, why should i be against him leaving? maybe he isn't trying to make a moral statement or to tell the world how awful geing gay is or to set the movement back fifty years, maybe he just wants to have a wife, two kids, and all of that. it wouldn't make me any less angry to hear his fellows telling him he's wrong to think that way--no, that he doesn't have a right to think that way--and praying for him to fail should he muster the courage to put his thoughts into action were my sexual mores something other than what they are.

locdog thinks we decide who we are

2004-11-05T13:01:00.000-05:00

the best argument yet for the electoral college

2004-11-04T13:55:00.000-05:00

the myth of a deeply divided nation

the year is 1992, and the main party candidates are william jefferson clinton, democrat, and george herbert walker bush, republican. bush, the incumbent, has squandered astronomical post gulf-war approval ratings by going along with congressional democrats on a large tax increase. the democrats run ads around the clock with bush's infamous "read my lips: no new taxes" promise from the '88 campaign, giving the 41st president pretty much exactly what he deserved for siding with democrats in the first place.

enter ross perot, billionaire and self-proclaimed economics expert. it seems impossible for a businessman with no prior political experience and not an ounce of credibility on national security to get elected today, but the world was a very different place in 1992. our arch enemy, the soviet union, had just fallen. america was the lone superpower, and faced no serious outside threat--or so we thought. our focus turned inward, and the flamboyant perot was just the man voters were looking for. want to run a war? call a general. want to run an economy? call a businessman.

perot's simple appeal made sense to the tune of 19,741,657 votes, a full 18.9% of the total, and they came disproportionately from disgruntled republicans alienated by bush's tax hike. with perot absorbing a huge chunk of his core, bush went down in flames with 37.4%, 39,103,882 votes, and clinton won the election with 43.0%, 44,909,326 votes. not since the election of 1912, won by thomas woodrow wilson with 41.8% of the vote, had a president won with such a skimpy plurality--and in that election, there had been three major candidates (wilson, theordore roosevelt who took 27.4%, and howard taft who won 23.2%) as well as a socialist and a prohibitionist candidate who combined for over 7% of the electorate. one must go back to franklin pierce in 1852 (42.5%) to find a three way race in which a winning candidate did worse than clinton. how long ago was 1852? pierce's main challenger belonged to the whig party and nearly all states west of the mississippi did not yet exist.

if that's not enough to put clinton's victory in perspective, simply consider the fact that nearly 6 out of every ten voters voted against bill clinton in 1992. by today's standards of "mandate," in which a candidate who actually wins an outright majority of the votes is said not to have one, one would have half-expected clinton to govern as though he were a conservative republican.

not that this gave the slightest bit of pause to clinton, his supporters, or the media. wjc was so concerned about healing the divides in our land that he promptly set out to enact one of the most radical social agendas in recent memory, starting with the largest tax increase in american history (pointing out that this was reneging on the same campaign promise that ousted his chief rival seems almost beside the point), closing dozens of military bases (scary considering he asked for a good deal more than he actually got) and slashing the military budget by hundreds of billions of dollars (clinton's vaunted budget cuts almost in their entirety), and, of course, attempting to usurp what was fully 1/7th of our gross domestic product by socializing the american healthcare system. predictably, the voters rebelled and, in 1994, handed unified control of congress to the republicans for the first time in four decades.

skip forward to 2004. republican george walker bush has won reelection with 51% of the vote, beating democrat john kerry by three points and becoming the first president to garner a majority since his father in 1988. he received a record number of votes, 58,978,616 at last count, and in so doing became the first president to be reelected despite winning his first campaign with a loss in the popular vote--a particularly remarkable feat when one considers that high voter turnout was presumed favorable to kerry. like clinton in '92, bush's party controls both houses of congress. unlike clinton, however, bush actually built on both majorities, the first president to do so since the thirties. in addition to these figures, several conservative ballot initiatives passed in states across the union.

yet the media has once more taken up the "deeply divided" mantra from the 2000 election, an election whose controversial results at least offered them a leg to stand on and nevermind that bush had won with nearly 5% more popular support and 5.5 million more votes than clinton in 1992. (in clinton's "landslide" 1996 victory, he had 49% of the popular vote compared to bush's 48% in 2000, although he still got 3 million fewer votes than the republican.)

the myth of a "deeply divided" nation flows out of a perhaps willful ignorance of recent history on the part of the media, combined with their obvious desire to deny bush a "mandate". as previously noted, america has not been this united behind a candidate in 16 years. that's unless one counts the americans united against bill clinton, of course, a majority in both elections. one can argue that a 51-48 victory for bush isn't exactly a ringing endorsement, but why didn't anyone argue this in 1992 or 1996 when a far, far stronger case could have been made that americans did not want the president's agenda, and there was no corresponding congressional shift to offset clinton's meagre numbers?

america is not a deeply divided nation. it is, in fact, surprisingly united given the extraordinary circumstances of the past four years. i don't dispute that the vehemence of the opposition is at levels not seen since the sixties, but emotional intensity does not in and of itself constitute "division." most americans are for the president. another ten percent of moderates and conservative democrats could have gone either way, but broke for kerry. that leaves us with the same 40% core democrats that we first saw in 1980 and have seen in every presidential election since--41% for carter, 40% for Mondale, 45% for Dukakis, 43% for clinton. put simply, three-fifths of the country is either desirous of or willing to live with republican leadership, and two-fifths is not. while that two-fifths has become increasingly vocal courtesy of a media all too willing to amplify their plaints, their size really hasn't increased.

america is not deeply divided, or at least, it's no more divided now than it has been for the past quarter century.

locdog thanks presidentelect.org for the stats

2004-11-03T10:10:00.000-05:00

ok, what now?

alright, alright. gloating time is over. let's get serious. now that this thing is more or less official, what do the two sides need to do?

what kerry needs to do: concede. today.

i don't fault john kerry for looking into the provisional votes in ohio. although i oppose provisional ballots in general, they are the law of the land and kerry owes it to ohio (to say nothing of our democracy) to see whether or not bush actually is the president. but it's going to become increasingly apparent to john kerry that there's no way he can win, not with the president's 140,000 vote cushion. i'm not sure how many provisional ballots are outstanding, but let's say there are 175,000 which sounds about right. let's say 30% of those turn out to be invalid (i expect it will be a lot more than that, but we'll see) and, of the remainder, let's say kerry picks up 80%. that would leave bush with a little over 40,000 votes, not to mention what he would pick up from absentee ballots which should break in his favor.

now, given the above, john kerry needs to keep two things in mind. first, there is an open seat in 2008 for which he would presumably be the front-runner. second, people will remember.

right now, john kerry is the most important man in america. he has the power to launch us into days of court squabbles and banana republic farce, or he can begin to heal the wounds of florida. the 2000 election was never very far from people's minds in this campaign, and in 2008, john kerry can either be remembered as a hero, or a zero. the choice is his.

what bush needs to do: grab the reigns and go.

kerry needs to be the conciliatory one. for bush, however, that would be suicidal.

let's consider the following: the president has a majority of the vote. clinton--the most popular democrat in ages--never got above 49%. and not only does bush have a majority, he's got around a 3.5 million vote lead and has garnered more votes in total than any other candidate in our history. that's partly due to high turnout, but conventional wisdom before the election was that high turnout favored the democrats. in terms of popular support, bush has really accomplished something. and after winning ohio, his electoral margin will be equally cushy.

furthermore, the president's lead was confirmed by what can only be described as a tectonic shift to the right. the republicans gained seats in the house and the senate, won several conservative ballot initiatives, and, in what more than any other race will be remembered as the symbol of the 2004 election, dethroned the sitting democratic senate minority leader.

democrats and many moderates will say that now is the time for the president to reach out to his rivals and heal the divide in our land. wrong. our democracy has spoken, and if it wanted republicans to act like democrats, it would have spoken for democrats. it didn't. why is it incumbent upon the winner to make overtures to the loser? in a democracy, that's heresy. america trusts republicanism and the democrats can either play ball, or get bowled over. the bush administration needs to seize the initiative early with social security, tax cuts, and, most importantly, the war on terror. if they don't excercise their new-found muscle, they'll find it quickly atrophies.

locdog is tired, but happy

2004-11-03T04:50:00.000-05:00

there is a God, and He has a sense of humor

my fellow republicans (and losers),

last night as locdog and electra noshed on a wonderous array of snacks and flipped between a wonderous array of pundits, locdog made the comment that his only hope for the evening was that, if john kerry won, it would be without the so-called "popular vote."

well now we have democrats fighting for precisely that.

no "will of the people." no "mandate." no "democracy." just get the white house any way we can and isn't the constitution wonderful and isn't the electoral college the greatest institution in the history of mankind.

and so, in a race where george w. bush quintupled al gore's margin in the "popular vote," the democrats now strive to thwart everything they claimed to hold dear in the last election battle. no big surprise there.

there's no way the amount of provisional ballots left in ohio--about 25,000 beyond bush's margin of victory (assuming, of course, that the majority of these ballots are not fraudulent)--will be enough to propel kerry to a win, but why should that stop anyone from putting the country through days of pointless strife? so my plan is just to sit back and enjoy as what few scruples the democratic party clung to after 2000 go flying out the window.

locdog congratulates the president on his big win

2004-11-02T17:08:00.000-05:00

should white people sing black music?

look, we aren't going to know who wins this election for days. so why dontcha all kick back, relax, and ponder another bite-sized morsel of inflammatory irrelevance from yours truly:

should white people sing black music?

or, put another way, can a race own a particular musical genre?

i ask this because not long ago i saw a commercial for michael mcdonald's (warning: annoying flash intro) latest album, motown 2.

in case you don't have a mom, mcdonald is the latest menopause-set heartthrob to cash in on the key bolton-and-yes-i-think-stewart-is-sexy demographic, aka, bored middle-aged white women.

but however lame his fan-base, the man's really got a set of pipes. if you've been in a waiting room in the past two years--or, better still, seen an MCI commercial--odds are you've heard him belting out ain't no mountain high enough. and he sounds good, too. his voice has that soul, that sensitivity, that passion. he's got that certain...blackness...that just melt's mom's butter.

and he's so, so very white.

i didn't grow up in the fifties--i was a bicentennial baby, which may have something to do with my interest in politics--and didn't learn until i was in my early twenties that elvis was a controversial figure. no, i don't mean the hip-wiggling-ed-sullivan stuff, i mean that there are an awful lot of black people out there who do not like him:

Elvis was a hero to most
But he never meant shit to me you see
Straight up racist that sucker was simple and plain
Motherfuck him and John Wayne

that was public enemy courtesy of helen kolawole, who enthusiastically, ah, seconds that emotion and, no doubt, hates michael mcdonald.

the argument in a nutshell is that whitey steals from african-american styles and goes on to fame and fortune while The Man keeps his foot planted firmly astride the necks of poor negro artists. helen even trots out the easily disproved "The only thing Negroes can do for me is buy my records and shine my shoes" bromide to show some direct evidence of the king's supposed racism.

the argument stuck around into the sixties as well. the beatles' great transitional project rubber soul took its tongue-in-cheek name from criticism of contemporary black intellectuals, who derided the british invaders as cheap "plastic soul" knock-offs of the genuine article.

vanilla ice from my youth and eminem from today have faced similar battles--although given that black music dominates pop culture to an unprecedented degree as do black artists themselves, it's becoming increasingly difficult to mistake the argument as relevant.

it's not hard to see the injustice in talented artists being ignored because they happen to be black while the more melanin-challenged among us cash in on the styles they invented, but is that a critique on the successful white artists or the cynical record execs they work for? and if the latter, isn't that really just another way of critiquing society? if america in elvis' day hadn't been profoundly racist, we wouldn't have needed a white boy to sing hound dog.

if you step into the shoes of an elvis or a michael mcdonald or an eminem, you quickly lose your ability to appreciate all the fuss. after all, you're just a sincere artist who grew up loving a certain kind of music, who has an obvious gift for it, and who dreams of doing nothing but sharing your gift with the world. michael mcdonald can't help the fact that he's a white man who grew up loving motown, and that millions of people like hearing him sing it. that's not his problem--not anyone's problem, really. why should an artist have to apologize for his race? and why should a consumer have to apologize for buying an artist whose skin is the wrong color?

the speciousness of the white man/black song argument is not my only knock against it: it's straight up racist, simple and plain. to appreciate that fact, you need only flip the tables. imagine a wildly successful black country music artist (hey, ten years ago, no one could have ever imagined wildly successful golf or tennis stars so don't say it couldn't happen), and imagine how people like helen kolawole would howl when her counterparts in the redneck community inevitably complained of theft.

black intellectuals and musicians have no more right throwing up a racial cordon around motown than the pga would with tiger woods. what's next, suing emeril over a fried chicken and black-eyed peas recipe?

locdog is off to vote, and, come hell or john kerry, will return tomorrow

2004-10-28T11:54:00.000-04:00

CIA: terror tape is real, and other news

the CIA and FBI have authenticated the abcnews terror tape--you know, the one the network of mark halperin won't let you see.

abcnews' excuse had been their unwillingness to air something they couldn't prove authentic (this despite the fact that just this morning i heard abc radio repeatedly report on an "unconfirmed" terror tape from a group claiming to have the infamous 380 tons of missing explosives.) i, of course, was not fooled, and dismissed abc's ploy for the transparent shillery it was. and, by the way you liberals, i seem to recall you telling me the tape was pure propaganda. karl rove lock, stock, and barrel.

given that their we-aren't-sure-it's-real excuse was a fraud from day one, it won't surprise you to learn that abc has now moved on to something new: "This is not something you just throw out there while people are voting."

let me make this clear: our intelligence community has confirmed the authenticity of an al qaeda terror threat tape just days before the election--the window of time experts picked as al qaeda's ideal months ago--and abcnews is sitting on it because, let's face it, it would be politically helpful to bush.

folks, if airing a terrorist warning is politically helpful to bush, then bush should win the election. regardless, if anyone dies because of abcnews' reluctance to put word out, then the blood will be on their hands. i asked you all yesterday and i've still yet to get an answer: how many 9/11s are john kerry's election worth?

in other news, bush leads in PA and, gee what a shock, looks like saddam moved those explosives himself and, gee what a shock, the looks like the russians helped him do it.

2004-10-27T22:49:00.000-04:00

why i'm voting bush

originally posted in response to this fray post.

a little over four years ago, i followed a link from the msn.com homepage to an article defending al gore's performance in the third presidential debate, a townhall format where speakers were able to roam the stage. the writer, william saletan, felt gore had won: "Liberated from the tyranny of form, Gore used his domination of space and time to impose a tyranny of content." i remembered that line well enough to google it and track down the article just now, because i felt then (and still do) that i'd read something of special significance--it was quite possibly the geekiest line in the history of punditry. needless to say, i had to respond, and the rest is history. besides, bush had cleaned gore's clock.

my support for president bush in october of 2000 must have been a lot like what john kerry is receiving from his partisans today. kerry didn't conquer his opponents in the democratic primary, he won by default. gephardt's union support fell through, lieberman's hawkish foreign policy alienated much of the democratic core, and howard dean...well, howard dean. yeah. kerry was therefore said to be the "electable" candidate--he was damned with faint praise to be sure, but that was the least of the paradoxes troubling his candidacy: in what sense could a man be said to possess "electability" while lacking all of the traits commonly associated with those who win elections? kerry is not particularly attractive. he is eloquent but has a tendency to harangue the crowd, or else to endlessly dilute his meanings with catch-alls and qualifiers. he has little in the way of charisma, and often seems ill at ease in the presence of voters. he's an old-guard massachusetts liberal senator.

a fellow frayster recently asked what people like about john kerry. sample responses from his supporters include

"he is a compassionate conservative"

"he can be held accountable"

"he can identify a mistake and change course"

and so on. in the primaries, kerry was "electable," i.e. not too hot, not too cold, not too dean, not too gephardt. now he's not too bush. it is the challenger's prerogative to bash, but there comes a time when voters need someone to vote for. if john f. kerry wins this election, it won't be as john f. kerry. i'm not even sure there is such a man. instead we'd have Not F. Dubya, 44th president of the united states.

as i said, i think i understand kerry voters. after eight years of clinton, the last thing this conservative republican wanted was four years of gore. but george w. bush? in God's name, why? like many republicans, i punched my chads in dreamlike state of disbelief, wondering how in the blue hell dubya could be the best the republican party could come up with. if a bush at all, why not jeb? jeb was the one who was...well, electable. everyone knew that.

but dubya it was, and i remember sitting up 'till three a.m. rooting not so much for a bush win as for a gore loss. shameful, but there it is.

when bush finally emerged the victor, he came to washington with promises of being a uniter, not a divider. bullocks to that, i thought. divide, man, divide and conquer. consensus is not and must not be the goal of leadership, doing what's right is--which is why today we've got the candidate of the "global test" and the candidate of america first.

in retrospect, there wasn't a whole lot to divide over in the pre-9/11 months of bush's presidency. gary condit, a throwback to the age of clintonian frivolity, dominated the news. the major controversy of the day was stem cell research, an issue that's enjoyed a somewhat surprising resurgence of late but which was even more academic to most voters then than it is now. the economy was receding and tax cuts were on the horizon. business as usual, really, but the president had still managed to impress many of us--including more than a few democrats--with his ability to get stuff done. the buzzword was "mandate" in those days, whether bush had one and, if he didn't, how it would effect his style. well, he didn't, and it didn't. bush plowed through congress like jim brown through an arm tackle. iron will, determination, resolve. quintessential dubya. now people say he's a stubborn warmonger. well, they said that about churchill, too.

then came 9/11 and, of course, everything changed. not long ago, a liberal buddy of mine sniggered as he showed me a tape of bush sitting in an elementary school reading "my pet goat" to children, seemingly indecisive for a span of seven whole minutes. i imagine that a century from now, historians will still be pondering the ways in which the world changed on 9/11. it took george dubya bush about seven minutes to figure it out, and he hasn't looked back since.

do you remember him standing there at ground zero, grabbing the bullhorn and telling that fireman that the whole world was going to hear from us soon? do you remember how that made you feel? remember how it gave you hope? there were more than a few complaints from the other side when a few moments of that now legendary ground zero footage found its way into a campaign spot, but i didn't mind. why shouldn't we remember that? we need to remember that.

we need to remember because that's what leadership is. anyone can take pot shots from the cheap seats, but bush was on the field when it counted. he saw this country through the worst disaster in our history. that's not to say we wouldn't have pulled through had he not been in office. americans survive. but he made us stronger at our weakest moment. i cannot imagine the burden laid upon the shoulders of a man in such incredible circumstances, but when many would have crumpled, bush stood firm, and had strength enough left over to share with us all. that's leadership. it's leadership not merely when things were at their worse, but when things were worse than any of us had ever imagined they could be. bush looked the worst terrorist attack in history in the eye and didn't flinch, faced something of a scale no president or world leader had ever faced before, and in so doing, forever etched his name among the greatest of them all.

bush's response to the attacks of september 11th was not simply to root out and punish the single organization directly responsible. while that would have been just and satisfying, it would have failed to acknowledge the true gravity of the terrorist threat. the president recognized that terrorism wasn't the disease, it was a symptom. not of poverty and hopelessness, as some of his rivals have suggested, since these are symptoms as well--and of the same sickness. our foe was in fact an old one, one that we've fought against in nearly every war we've waged. it was tyranny. the struggle against oppression. terrorism flourishes in the worst places on earth, and that's no coincidence. hence the bush doctrine, as it came to be known, is simply this: freedom is our weapon in the war on terror.

thanks to president bush, afghanistan held its first free election ever. that's something we can all feel good about as humanitarians, but, more to the point, it makes america safer. the islamic fascists that tyrannized the afghani people and nurtured osama bin laden's regime are no more. in january of next year, iraq, our arch enemy for over a decade, will be holding free elections. we are safer because saddam hussein is gone, yes. we are safer because he can no longer horde weapons and foster ties with terror. but ultimately we're safer because where there was once nothing but fear and misery, there's now hope for the future and people with hope don't fly airplanes into buildings.

afghanistan was the vietnam of the soviet union, and iraq had been a thorn in our side for years, but under bush's leadership, these two states were transformed with a rapidity so shocking that only the unprecedented respect shown to civilian bystanders in their liberation can compare. however much we might like to, we cannot limit the war on terror to the terrorists themselves. the bush doctrine will be remembered as this president's most lasting and meaningful contribution to history, it is the only way to ensure our long term safety in the world, and the president is worth reelecting if for no other reason than that.

i have disagreements with bush in some areas. i think he spends too much. i think he's wrong on immigration. i would have liked to have seen him handle the chinese differently on more than one occasion. but i'm voting for george w. bush because, at the end of the day, i recognize that the greatest challenge facing our nation right now is winning the war on terror, and no one can do a better job of it than him.

locdog asks you to vote bush on election day

2004-10-27T10:53:00.001-04:00

let me get this straight...

i'm doing my best to follow this whole missing explosives thing, but what's really missing these days is common sense. a few questions...

1. what, exactly, does the IAEA mean when they talk about "sealing" explosives in march of 2003? if they believed, as they did, that these weapons were being used in saddam's nuclear program, why weren't they simply destroyed? if we're asked to believe that a crew of ragtag looters made off with them, then how much easier would it have been for saddam to get at them? what the hell did they "seal" those weapons with, anyway? police tape?

2. in april of 2003, two american divisions visited al qaqaa. while neither of them were specifically searching for these explosives, both made at least a cursory inspection as soldiers would in any location where they would be bedding down for the night. neither they nor the reporters embedded with them saw any indications of looting, nor did they see any UN "seals" on any of the bunkers, and, of course, none of them saw the explosives in question. this strengthens john kerry's case how, exactly?

3. assume the explosives that were so all-fired important to saddam's nuclear ambitions (according to kerry and the left, anyway) were in al qaqaa subsequent to the fall of the hussein regime. that bunker sits on a major artery leading north into baghdad and, as all of our forces were coming from the south thanks to the french-wannabe turks, would have been near the heart of american activity in the period when the IAEA claims the weapons were stolen (late april-early may). no one disputes that al qaqaa was looted subsequent to our april visits, but the looting was of the small-time, smash-and-grab variety where people were making off with whatever they could carry. how then did someone manage to make off with nearly 400 tons of explosives? realistically, this would have required a convoy of 30+ trucks operating around the center of american activity in iraq. it seems highly implausible that an operation of this scale could have gone unnoticed.

4. who could have pulled it off? as charles krauthammer pointed out on fox news' special edition last night, there was no insurgency during the period in question. saddam's forces had been routed and were in utter disarray. the coalition was still encountering pockets of resistance here and there, but a coordinated insurgency wouldn't appear for months. there was nothing like the sort of command and control needed to organize what would have had to have been a very well planned and well supplied raid on saddam's al qaqaa bunker.

5. given all the above challenges, is it not more plausible that saddam simply moved the stuff himself? once the international inspectors had fled, what was to stop him? hell, i'd just like to know why everyone is so darn sure he didn't move it himself, or why the burden of proof is on the united states armed forces (or their president) rather than the renegade regime whose decades of depravity precipitated the war in the first place? the IAEA says that in mid-march, they had confirmed that the explosives were still in al qaqaa. not long after that, all international agencies left as war with the united states became inevitable. at that point, why wouldn't saddam have moved his explosives--either to another location or out of iraq altogether? if you're saddam hussein and these explosives are vital to your nuclear ambitions, why would you leave them in the one place where they're almost certain to be destroyed since the whole world knows they're there?

neither the IAEA, the new york times, nor john kerry have to make the wild allegations they're bandying about plausible. they just level the charges and hope for the best. but if these missing explosives are the critical blow to our national security they're being made out to be, shouldn't someone be interested in learning how they vanished in the first place? if they're going to automatically discount the painfully obvious and problem-free explanation of saddam himself, shouldn't they at leat be able to advance a plausible counter-scenario?

locdog won't hold his breath

2004-10-26T13:25:00.000-04:00

how's that crow tasting?

it seems i've been beaten to the punch on the latest 60 minutes debacle--that's right, the fraudulent missing weapons story comes courtesy of the same people who brought you the fraudulent memo story--but that's ok. the conservatives who've addressed this issue already have done a bang-up job of it. i'll limit myself to tying up a few odds'n'ends.

1. HMX and RDX are not nuclear proliferation list materials, and are not rare. RDX was discovered in 1890 and was used throughout the second world war. HMX is a derivative of RDX and is the most powerful conventional explosive the military has (although i've read that new stuff is on the way...) while both could be used in making a nuclear weapon, presumably as the shape charges used to implode the fissile core thus unleashing the atomic detonation, they would be among the easiest of all necessary components to obtain, hence their absence from proliferation lists.

2. 380 tons of explosives in iraq is like 380 grains of sand in the sahara. our forces have secured hundreds of thousands of tons of conventional munitions, and even if they had dropped the ball on some of the IAEA-sealed variety, they still deserve credit for the fantastic work they are doing. it is totally unrealistic to expect that in a nation the size of iraq with munitions stockpiles as extensive as saddam's were, that some of these would not fall into enemy hands. one would imagine that the vast majority of weapons and explosives currently being used by the terrorists operating against our forces in iraq were former hussein property, but until the issue became politically useful, no one on the left much seemed to care.

3. this october surprise hasn't been news since april 30, 2003. with what was undoubtedly the full if unstated support of IAEA head mohamed el-baradei, 60 minutes had been sitting on this story for over a year and a half waiting for the moment at which it could have the maximum political impact, October 31st. fortunately for the beleaguered news show, the NYT beat them to it.

the response of democrats has been sadly predictable. although kerry has repeatedly criticized bush for his unwillingness to admit he makes mistakes--did so in the context of his criticism on this very story, in fact--he is unwilling to admit one of his own. instead, he's got his attack poodle joe lockhart escalating the violence:

In a shameless attempt to cover up its failure to secure 380 tons of highly explosive material in Iraq, the White House is desperately flailing in an effort to escape blame. Instead of distorting John Kerry’s words, the Bush campaign is now falsely and deliberately twisting the reports of journalists. It is the latest pathetic excuse from an administration that never admits a mistake, no matter how disastrous.

let's review: one day after the liberation of iraq, our troops are on the spot. they find the weapons are already gone. although this was known for over a year and a half, the media is only now reporting on it, reporting that these weapons were in fact stolen right out from under our troops after they had arrived. kerry harshly criticizes bush over something that wouldn't have mattered all that much even if it was true. nbc reveals the truth: those weapons were gone before our boys arrived. kerry campaign dismisses the truth as a "pathetic excuse."

pathetic excuse, indeed.

locdog suggests a nice, hoppy IPA to cut through that greasy carrion-fed flesh

2004-10-22T11:06:00.000-04:00

i win

yesterday john kerry, who's been on more hunting trips lately than elmer fudd, shot himself a goose. well, we know that a shot was heard and that the senator was photographed with a dead goose in his hands that he claims to have shot. not known is whether it was a single, fleeing goose in a loin cloth that had been shot in the back or if there were multiple geese that had caught the unwary hunters in an ambush. witnesses nearby claim that kerry had fled the scene at the sound of gunfire, only to return later and rescue a fellow hunter who was ankle deep in swamp muck and being pecked half to death. hopefully detailed after action reports will be forthcoming.

a typically sardonic cheney referred to the senator's foray as his "october disguise," a ruse to trick conservative ohio gun owners into thinking that he'll keep his mitts of their mausers. bush reminded pennsylvania voters that "even in camouflage" kerry can run but he can't hide. it doesn't really matter how much mossy oak and realtree kerry drapes himself in, he's got a near flawless rating from the brady people sparkling over his head like a beacon, and his one defense for his twenty year assault on our right to keep and bear arms is his supposed love of hunting--as if the second amendment had anything to do with hunting.

his deplorable gun rights record isn't the only thing kerry's hiding from, though. he hides from his days with the jane fonda set by transforming his convention into the most spectacular display of jingoism since patton climbed up before the american flag and promised to use the hun's guts to grease the treads of our tanks. he hides from the decade of the eighties by dropping ronald reagan's name more frequently than maureen, michael, patti, jr., and nancy combined. kerry fought the gipper tooth and nail on fronts domestic and international only to have adopted his vision of fiscal conservatism and strong national defense just in time for november. he hides from abortion, gay marriage, and every other hot button social issue by hanging his entire culture war strategy on the who-cares issue of stem cell research.

no, really, i mean that: who in the hell cares? show me one poll where stem cell research proves to be anything other than an afterthought with the american voter. shoot, i'd settle for one where it's even mentioned as an issue on people's minds. plenty of polls out there saying that, in the abstract, most people favor it, but why doesn't it show up in any of the which-issues-matter-most polls? and, seeing as how it does not, why does kerry talk about it so much? why does he have mrs. christopher reeve, not a fortnight since the death of her heroic husband, out there stumping for him? simple: it's the one social issue where he's more in line with the views of the average voter than the president. as trivial as it is, it's all he's got.

what's my point? my point is that i've won. we've won. us. conservatives. not republicans per se, americans. ordinary, ever day, slightly to the right of center americans who comprise the majority of this great nation of ours and force john kerry to pretend he's the second coming of barry goldwater to even have a prayer of getting elected.

don't you libs get it? don't you get why bill clinton won his election on a campaign of tax cuts and welfare reform? and why, when he failed to deliver on taxes as well as his one liberal issue, healthcare, voters bolted to the right with the republican revolution of 1994? don't you get that what made howard dean unelectable wasn't a scream? don't you get why kerry has to go on hunting trips in ohio and show up to his convention with his old vietnam crewmates and talk about ronald reagan and john mccain and tax cuts? it's because you've lost.

you've got two candidates running for this election, a somewhat conservative and an utter fraud, but either way, it's my beliefs that are going to get voted in. you guys have about 30% of the country who agrees with you. the rest, to varying degrees, agree with me.

losers.

locdog bids you all a pleasant friday

2004-10-15T11:56:00.000-04:00

there's something about mary...

great title, huh? hey, it's friday. i've had a long week.

anyway, in my analysis of the last presidential debate, i briefly mentioned john kerry's tasteless invocation of the vice president's lesbian daughter:

what focus group told [kerry] that outing the vice president's daughter on national TV for transparently political purposes was a good idea? bush has kerry beat on gay marriage even without gaffes like that...

since that time, some liberals--including a typically prissy fray editor in an apparent direct response (i'm honored)--have taken issue with my usage of the word "out." the ed makes the case as well as anyone:

Kerry did not out Cheney. Unlike Alan Keyes, he did not call into question Mary Cheney's moral character. The only thing Kerry sought to do was humanize an issue which is being discussed in alarmingly abstract terms. In fact, the vice president has alluded to his daughter on numerous occasions in public statements and appearances.

like the majority of politically minded fraysters, i was well aware of the sexuality of dick cheney's daughter. i would be willing to bet, however, that if you were to take a sample of your typical nationwide TV audience, the sort that tuned into the last debate, you would find that mr. joe sixpack hadn't the slightest notion of mary cheney's sexuality, probably didn't know the vice president had a daughter, and may or may not have even known who the vice president was. things really are that stupid out there. mr. joe sixpack, who tunes into politics on debate night once every four years--much the same way he attends sunday services every other easter--certainly knows nothing of what goes on in dick cheney's "public statements and appearances" and wouldn't be equiped to recognize any "allusions" even if he did. john kerry has had twice the visibility in the past year as cheney has his entire career, and people are just now starting to figure out who this man they call kerry is.

so hi, america! meet dick cheney's lesbo daughter!

moving on, kerry's remark clearly alienated conservatives and the latest polls would indicate it did him some damage in other places as well, but even some intellectually honest gays, liberals, and--oh yes--gay liberals have taken his alledged gay baiting to task.

this may come as a bit of a shock, but i don't buy into the prevailing sentiment that kerry was trying to damage bush's support among his conservative core. i didn't get that impression at the time of the debate and i don't get it now. i see no reason to interpret kerry's remark, however ill-advised, as anything more than a rather poor gotcha. "oh yeah, mr. president, well how can you be out there demanding we rewrite the constitution while your own vice president has a gay daughter?" i'm not going to attribute to malice what i can just as easily attribute to stupidity. i don't like john kerry personally or as a presidential candidate, but using mary cheney as a wedge to pry the redneck vote away is about the most cynical, homophobic thing a politician could do. you could disagree with bush's constitutional ammendment, but it's at least a principled stand. if kerry's doing what some people think he's doing (ditto edwards, who i believe is guilty of nothing more than the same stupidity) then he's a monster, or, as lynn cheney graciously put it, "not a good man." camp kerry may be guilty of consistent, coordinated idiocy, but that doesn't automatically make them homophobes.

nor does it get them off the hook. homophobic or not, politicians have no business dragging the sex lives of each other's children into a presidential debate. it's quintessential gutter politics. don't you democrats give me that old bill clinton crap again--we aren't talking about an elected official giving interns oral examinations while osama was bombing embassies, we're talking about someone's daughter. a daughter who is entitled, i think, to not have her sex life paraded around in front of thirty million viewers. a daughter who is indeed quite human, but whom john kerry's "humanizing" efforts reduced to a mere symbol of sexual politics.

mary cheney aside, what i'd really like to know is why are so many democrats, and, more importantly, so many in the gay community willing to look the other way on kerry's flacid stance? kerry's got three choices, he can oppose gay marriage, he can support it, or he can try to do both. care to guess which of the three he's doing? kerry's mary cheney remark stole the attention from his awful response and has gone on to drive the post-debate news cycles--big win for bush there, by the way. but kerry's actual, uh, position deserves a closer look.

basically, john kerry believes that gays are sweet and wonderful and cuddly and special and just the bestest folks in the whole wide world and he loves them very, very much, but for some unknown reason, he won't allow them to marry.

--the hell is that?

here's a clue for all you homos out there: remember how jacked catholics were when john kerry said that he believed life began at conception and supported abortion anyway? that's how you should be feeling now. if you're not, then you just very well might be a partisan.

bush is guilty of the same hypocrisy to a lesser extent. really all bush needs to do is tack support for gay civil unions onto his current position and he's got an iron-clad stance which would translate to a difference in semantics rather than tangible discrimination against gay couples.

could kerry do the same? i suppose so, but bush has his reasons for wanting the marriage moniker left to heteros. what are kerry's?

aside from the political, locdog means

2004-10-14T11:56:00.000-04:00

final debate (thank God)

i consider myself something of a political junkie, but honestly, how many of these things can a guy be expected to watch? i guess i'm not the only one keen on civic duty, though, because the debate trounced baseball in the ratings, pulling in a combined 36 share to baseball's 16 according to matt drudge.

who won? kerry. those ultra-rightwing hacks at the gallup organization gave him a 52-39 edge. not asked was the extent to which viewers felt kerry was the better performer, i.e., do those who felt kerry won feel he won big, just barely eked it out, etc. do i as a viewer feel that kerry's performance was 13 points better than bush's (whatever that means)? no, i can't honestly say that i do.

it's worth noting that while republicans and democrats predictably backed their own guy, kerry's support among democrats was 13 points better than bush's was among republicans and 9 points better among their voters, i.e. kerry's got the more enthusiastic base. that alone counts for a hefty chunk of his lead. independents favored kerry by 20, which i would interpret as a combination of kerry's success in portraying himself as a fiscal conservative, and his more independent-friendly leftish social views. a pretty compelling case for kerry so far, but let's keep digging.

kerry continues to do himself good with these debates. 42% of viewers had a more favorable impression of him, 15% less, and 43% unchanged. perhaps the most significant number there is the 43% unchanged figure: a lot of people are still making up their minds about john kerry, and the verdicts are increasingly favorable. bush's more/less/unchanged numbers were in line with the previous debates at 27/17/56.

how is kerry helping himself? the viewers felt he expressed himself more clearly by a remarkable 32 points. he understands the issues and cares about the needs of people like you by 12 points. he agrees with you more on your issues by 7 points, shares your values by a less convincing 4 points, and was the more believable by 3 points (those last 2 numbers being within the poll's 4 point margin of error.) despite all that, bush was the more likable by 5 points--that smartass kerry.

alright, we've been in the tall weeds here for a while, but if you've stuck with me this far, it's about to pay off: who won the issues?

healthcare: kerry +14
economy: kerry +5
education: kerry +1
taxes: bush +3

so despite kerry's powers as the great understander, communicator, and carer-abouter, his only breakout win is on the issue of healthcare. his economy number is just barely outside the margin of error, herbert hoover and all (if you democrats aren't worried about that, you should be.) he's got a statistical tie on education and, somewhat surprisingly, the republican-friendly tax issue. despite being the more effective tactical debater by far, kerry did not do enough to win people over on what are supposed to be his issues. what he won was the professional admiration that is his due as a skilled orator, but that's not the same as convincing people you're right. and that's why i don't think kerry won this thing as cleanly as the thirteen points might suggest at first glance. i also thought that, on a question by question basis, bush gave as good as he got most of the time. kerry's just too consistent. he's not going to beat himself.

a few general impressions:

1. bush did a lot better in this debate than anyone thought he could. kerry had to feel good about his chances going into wednesday night. he'd pulled out a shocking upset in the first debate, tied in the second, and had the table set for a big win in the third. kerry should have mopped up the floor with bush--one would have thought he could have easily bettered his 16 point victory from the first debate--but bush had him back on his heels, particularly in the first half of the debate. most of the post-game wagging i heard had to do with how surprised everyone was by bush's aggressiveness. well why should they be? bush's gutsy domestic showing in the second debate may have been a bit of a shock, but should have clearly foreshadowed how he'd handle the third. and besides that, isn't the weaker candidate on a given issue usually apt to be the more aggressive?

2. for a guy cracking mob jokes, kerry ought to know that even tony soprano would have second thoughts about going after someone's daughter. when edwards started that crap in the veep debate, i couldn't believe cheney didn't reach across the table and strangle him. now kerry brings it up as well, and for the life of me i can't figure out why. what focus group told him that outing the vice president's daughter on national TV for transparently political purposes was a good idea? bush has kerry beat on gay marriage even without gaffes like that, but fortunately for kerry, it's one of the few he made in three otherwise solid debates.

3. was kerry wearing john heinz's shoes last night? sure he's nailing his wife and spending his billions, but since when did the most liberal senator in washington start snuggling up to ronald reagan? kerry the fiscal conservative? kerry the warm'n'fuzzy social moderate? it wasn't his san francisco/new york base john kerry was talking to last night, it was topeka and little rock and birmingham. john kerry seems to be convinced that to win this election, he's going to have to do it as a republican. good on bush for slapping him back into place with that "john mccain endorses me" line. shades of you're no john kennedy, who, by the way, was a genuine fiscal conservative and, by today's standards, a social moderate.

4. line of the night again goes to bush. he took the softball "what have you learned from your womenfolk" and knocked it out of the park with "to listen." i find it hard to believe his writers scripted it for him. that's just bush. kerry also got in a good one on the same question with "marrying up," but didn't get quite the laugh bush did. a bit too real. one more thought on the same topic: after bush's gasser listen-line, he basically ducked the question and proceeded instead to ramble romantic nothings like a starry-eyed freshman poetry major. A+. kerry gave a detailed list of specifics that he'd picked up from his spouse and his mother (did he really just quote his mother's dying words in a presidential debate?) with a demeanor that was not all that different from the one he used to discuss the relative merits of balancing social security on tax increases as opposed to retirement savings accounts.

5. i think that while kerry won the debate, he also lost the election. look, kerry isn't going to defeat bush on iraq, terror, or national security. he just isn't. every poll i know of gives some combination of these three as the key issues in this election, followed by the economy, healthcare, education, etc. kerry's strength lies in what for this election will be secondary issues, which means he needed to be able to win on things like the economy by a lot more than five points. he needed to not only dominate bush on these issues, but to shift the entire focus of the campaigns to the domestic front, where (theoretically) he could put bush on the defensive. that's a tall order, one that perhaps no democrat but bill clinton could have pulled off. kerry is no bill clinton.

locdog is glad these debates are over, because he's tired of writing about them

2004-10-13T14:31:00.000-04:00

one conservative's take on sinclair

i can't tell you how it pains me to say this, but sinclair broadcasting group is wrong.

if you haven't heard the leftist caterwauling over sinclair's decision to preempt regularly scheduled broadcasts on stations all across america in favor of a decidedly anti-kerry documentary, then your ears are probably packed with concrete. liberals are a hysterical bunch in general, but to hear them tell it, you'd think the dead hand of joseph goebbels was seizing control of the airwaves.

but who, exactly, is sinclair and what, exactly, are they airing?

sinclair broadcasting group is a collection of 62 stations spanning major and not-so-major markets nationwide. it's CEO and president david smith is a bush donor and, judging by some recent editorial decisions sinclair has made, quite conservative. it's fairly well known, for example, that sinclair ordered their ABC affiliates to spike the nightline episode where the pictures and names of all the u.s. troops killed in iraq up until that point were given. sinclair maintained (correctly) that presenting these images without context was an act of political speech parading as news. indeed, anti-war protestors frequently employ the exact same tactic, by displaying coffins, empty boots, crosses, anything that could divorce the raw emotional impact of death from the broader significance of those deaths. nixing koppel doesn't constitute proof of sinclair's conservatism per se--the decision could have been based on nothing more than reasonable standards of journalistic integrity--but then, a liberal in david smith's position wouldn't have even noticed how grossly political koppel's actions were.

stolen honor, the documentary sinclair stations will shortly be airing, is a collection of interviews from vietnam prisoners of war who were in captivity at the time of john kerry's now-infamous "jenjis" kahn congressional testimony. it's made by a group calling themselves "red white and blue productions" based out of harrisburg, PA. these are not the swifboat vets and this documentary (as far as i can tell without having seen it) focuses not on john kerry's inflated war record, but on his anti-war activities and how those activities affected american POWs--many of whom were being tortured to obtain confessions to the very atrocities kerry accused them of.

ok, those are the basics. so why do i, a good conservative and bush supporter who believes john kerry betrayed his fellow veterans after and feel that the introduction of this issue into the presidential debate is long overdue oppose sinclair's choice?

quite simply, because it's wrong.

sinclair has defended their actions on grounds of the newsworthiness of the documentary. john kerry has made vietnam the centerpiece of his campaign and, as such, the issue merits attention. they further argue that they have invited john kerry to participate in the presentation and present his side of the story, an offer he has refused. so far, however, sinclair has made no commitment to providing equal time for the opposing viewpoint.

while i believe that sinclair's defense is sound, it's only half the story. news or not, they can't seriously expect me to believe that they're airing this documentary scant weeks before the election solely for the newsworthiness of it, and while the media has thus far been negligent in their responsibility to inform the public of the true nature of kerry's past, that doesn't mean that sinclair is merely righting the balances. i don't see how a reasonable person could look at sinclair's decision and come away with anything other than the overwhelming impression of political machination.

sinclair may be a private corporation protected by the first amendment, but the airwaves they use are owned by the public, and the privilege of broadcasting over them is extended on the condition that those airwaves will be used for the public good. but presenting only one side of such a politically charged topic so close to the election is not in the public's best interest. this is nothing more than a powerful media mogul shamelessly furthering his own political agenda. he is not justified by the fact that his agenda happens to be one i agree with.

i'm already hearing the usual "your side does it too" apologetic from the right--proof that on some level my conservative brothers agree with me. and oh how right they are. rathergate, NPR, the palpable bias of the nightly news broadcasts, the today show totally ignoring the swiftvets while offering sleaze merchant/bush biographer kitty kelly three full days, PBS, so on and so forth. all biased. all political. all abuses of the responsibility of broadcast television. all wrong. but because the left is wrong doesn't mean that we on the right get to adopt their tactics. if we're better than them, our conduct should show it.

to me, the most unsettling aspect of the whole stolen honor mess is the former POWs themselves. no one alive today has sacrificed more for their country than these men have. no one's story has been so underreported. no one has more of a right to be heard. and, ironically, no one has done more to preserve the freedom of the airwaves sinclair is seeking to exploit. these men deserve to have their story told and john kerry deserves to be disgraced and ruined--at the very least--for what he did to them. before you democrats dismiss these men as GOP operatives i implore you to consider that any single one of them has suffered more than most of you could even imagine, suffering that was exacerbated by john kerry's shameful hearsay testimony and the fuel it provided their captors.

their stories ought to be heard, but not like this. although i doubt they'd agree, they're being used. once more, their honor is being stolen from them for crass political purposes, this time to sink john kerry rather than to save him. that their story ought to sink kerry is irrelevant: if the truth can't withstand a fair rebuttal, then it isn't true.

locdog’s $0.02

2004-10-11T13:00:00.000-04:00

another day, another network, another memo

almost as essential to the cliche conservative persona as God and guns is the belief in liberal media bias. it's gone beyond mere article of faith into enshrinement in the apostle's creed of conservatism; denying it is to deny the Holy Trinity or virgin birth. and, as a good conservative, i believe it myself.

but when conservatives discuss the matter, many liberals simply tune their complaints out. others acknowledge the bias but insist it's necessary to counter rush limbaugh, fox news, the white house spin machine, etc. others still deny it and point instead to a neutral media that's merely perceived as leftwing by far right types, or, my personal favorite, they'll argue that the corporate-owned media is actually slanted to the right and its conservative critics are paranoid. point out the numerous polls that show the establishment media far to the left of the general public (80% democratic registration, liberal views on abortion, guns, etc.) and you'll get a lot of denial for your trouble.

in their zeal to chisel through liberal obstinacy, some conservatives have posited the existence of a conspiracy of powerful media figures, a web of lies and collaboration aimed at systematically advancing their agenda. i have two problems with this. the first is that they may as well try arguing the existence of gravity to a man who believes he can fly. like convincing liberals of the seriousness leftist media slant, it's a waste of time. my second and more significant objection is that it turns off the few reasonable minds that might be willing to listen by making you sound like a kook.

it's just so unnecessary. we don't need terry mcauliffe showing dan rather how to make an ass of himself, dan can handle that just fine.

how does media bias happen? it doesn't happen in smoke-filled back rooms, it happens in equally smoke-filled college bars on the columbia university campus, and in the classrooms and dorm rooms and rallies that program a generation of journalists whose most basic assumptions have been hardwired into them without the slightest hint of challenge. arrive at the newsroom and what's changed? nothing. everyone thinks just like you do and they probably always have. these people have spent their entire lives inside a liberal echo chamber--and we wonder how jayson blairs and rathergates happen? how could they not happen? especially when a meagre two sources--the new york times and washington post--have most of the say in what's covered and how it's done.

you don't need all the cloak and dagger stuff to get people to march in lockstep when they're assembly line automatons to begin with.

i was somewhat surprised, then, to see that abcnews political director mark halperin has actually instructed the abc staff to apply a liberal bias. with rathergate, a far less important network news memo scandal, one could at least make an argument that there was deception involved. but here we plainly see a general whipping the troops into shape:

The New York Times (Nagourney/Stevenson) and Howard Fineman on the web both make the same point today: the current Bush attacks on Kerry involve distortions and taking things out of context in a way that goes beyond what Kerry has done.

Kerry distorts, takes out of context, and mistakes all the time, but these are not central to his efforts to win.

We have a responsibility to hold both sides accountable to the public interest, but that doesn't mean we reflexively and artificially hold both sides "equally" accountable when the facts don't warrant that.

I'm sure many of you have this week felt the stepped up Bush efforts to complain about our coverage. This is all part of their efforts to get away with as much as possible with the stepped up, renewed efforts to win the election by destroying Senator Kerry at least partly through distortions.

It's up to Kerry to defend himself, of course. But as one of the few news organizations with the skill and strength to help voters evaluate what the candidates are saying to serve the public interest. Now is the time for all of us to step up and do that right.

that this moving plea for service to the public interest comes in the context of its perversion reveals one of many blind spots halerpin and his organization--and the establishment press in general--are suffering from. let's look at a few.

first, note that the authority halperin derives his argument from is not the journalistic bedrock of fact, but the processed new york times and howard fineman version. i'm not sure if halperin is making an "everyone else is doing it" appeal or if he honestly believes that the nyt and howard fineman are reliable, dispassionate observers, but i suspect it's a little of both. his memo has the urgency of a man who senses that he's fallen behind ("Now is the time...")

the next three paragraphs form the crux of the argument. to paraphrase, both kerry and bush employ distortions, but in the case of bush, these distortions are central to his efforts to win. therefore, kerry and bush should not be "reflexively and artificially" covered the same. bush is trying "to get away with as much as possible," (read "they're trying to use us") in an effort "to win the election by destroying Senator Kerry." so, halperin concludes, we must "help voters evaluate" because we are "one of the few..." this he defines as serving "the public interest" and exhorts the staff to "step up and do that right."

according to halperin, abcnews has a moral obligation to be biased and would be remiss in their duty to the public were they not applying a double standard. bush, he says, is an arch criminal, and why should such a man be given the same treatment as john kerry, who is guilty of little more than jay walking?

even in the face of such flagrant conspiring, i feel vindicated in my kindler, gentler automaton analysis. it never even occurs to halperin that if bush is so much worse than kerry, the voters shouldn't need help evaluating since the truth would be self-evident to anyone acquainted with the basic facts. he doesn't seem to mind or even notice that he's not dealing in facts at all, he's dealing in prefabricated evaluations--and secondhand ones at that. better still, he later refers to those evaluations as facts, meaning that he fails to recognize the core journalistic distinction, the one that lies between fact and opinion. he is so convinced that his own outlook is the only one possible (and why shouldn't he be when he's never had to seriously consider otherwise?) that there is no distinction between fact and opinion. halperin, you see, doesn't see his responsibility as informing the public and letting us draw our own conclusions, he sees it as drawing the public's conclusions for them and then informing us as to what they ought to be. but he speaks with such unabashed idealism about it that one wonders if he's ever even been introduced to the simplest and most fundamental tenets of journalism.

you'll note that in my analysis, i've assumed halperin to be a well-meaning if misguided individual, trying to serve democracy to the best of his understanding. i have done this because whether you are a conservative or a liberal, that is, whether or not you happen to agree with the conclusions halperin wants to force feed you, you ought to resent the breakdown in journalistic standards. i have not gone the easier route of dismissing him as one more cynical DNC hack in the employ of the establishment media (although that is probably the case) because it's irrelevant: regardless of who mark halperin is or what he believes, he's dead wrong and he ought to be fired.

fired on account of one careless memo? no, fired because, like dan rather, he's either unable or unwilling to do the sort of brutal introspection so crucial to being a good journalist. good intentions or not, he's betrayed our democracy and shows no signs of even being able to comprehend his crime.

locdog however, does, and thinks he ought to be sacked

2004-10-09T11:37:00.000-04:00

undecideds can bite me, plus a win for bush

i'm skeptical of townhall debates and the so-called undecided voters that people them for three reasons. first and foremost, i'm terrified by the prospect of anyone who hasn't made up his mind at this stage in the game getting a say in who becomes the next Most Powerful Man in the World. i mean let's face it, you've had four years to evaluate george w. bush and well over a year for john kerry, to say nothing of his twenty year senate record. if you don't know who should be president by now, do the country a favor and don't vote. and howzabout spending the time you save neutering yourself with a weed-eater lest your mush-minded offspring similarly plague future generations.

my personal contempt for the universally sucked-up-to luminaries known as "undecideds" aside, i have a more practical reason for being skeptical of townhall debates: there aren't any undecideds. last night i saw what appeared to be a mixture of republican and democratic shills asking talking point memo gotcha questions. whatever genuine undecides there may be, i cannot believe their reluctance to jump on board the kerrywagon stems from the burning question of whether or not the candidate will look the television camera in the eye and swear not to raise middle class taxes. i find it equally unlikely that after four years of bush, a serious-minded voter is waiting to sign the president's re-up papers until she hears the president list three mistakes and what he's done to correct them. john kerry is going to raise your taxes massively and give you government run healthcare in return. if you think that's a good idea, vote for him. if, on the other hand, you think the omelet of iraq is worth it, broken eggs and all, and that we need to continue preemptive actions abroad, vote for bush.

my final reason for loathing townhall debates is a rather cynical one that has to do with both the incumbent and myself being republicans: anyone who really hasn't made up their mind by now is going to vote for kerry. they've had four years to decide on bush, and if they haven't done so, it means that they don't like the guy and just want to be reassured that kerry isn't going to screw things up any worse than they felt bush has done before jumping ship. if kerry can't lie at least that convincingly, he has no business in politics.

all that said, the debate was a win for bush.

i thought both candidates did very well last night. kerry continues to impress with his ability to smoothly adapt to any given situation, but then, that's what a senator is paid to do. still, gore was a senator, and the gear-grinding crashes that birthed one al from the ashes of the last serve as witness to the difficulty of adapting from one of these painfully contrived forums to the next (well candidate x, we'd love to hear what you're going to do when your finger is on the button and north korea is getting frisky, but the amber light is blinking you see and, well, the amber light is blinking!)

i thought bush did a much better job than last time, but that goes without saying. he sputtered occasionally, but never ran out of gas--was for the most part a dynamo: bouncing around the stage, emoting with his eyes, sucking the audience in like a hoover. he had more laugh lines, seemed the more comfortable of the two, and was by far the warmer candidate. i thought kerry would slaughter bush on the domestic front, but bush more than held his own and was able to launch effective counter-attacks on his rival's more-or-less untouched senate record--about damn time.

the strategies of both men seemed little changed, kerry's especially. attack, attack, attack. a lawyerly barrage of facts and figures just like last time, all aimed at eroding the president's foundation rather than establishing his own. i think this has a lot to do with the perception among democrats that kerry won. he "knows his stuff," after all. and, as i did last time, i'll tip my hat in acknowledgement of the man's skills. he was well-prepared, the result of what was no doubt the most cramming he'd done since he took his bar exams. the problem for democrats is that's more or less all he's got.

this shouldn't come as a shock to anyone. here's a man who won the primaries for being--what, dynamic? inspirational? motivational? visionary? nope. "electable." kerry's biggest asset was not being howard dean, and, now that dean's out of the picture, his ace in the whole is not being dubya. the man spent the first minute and thirty seconds of every question he was asked assaulting the president, and the last thirty seconds saying he had a plan to do better (not to be confused with explaining his plan.) vote for me. i'm not him. kerry's either a humble man or a ruthless son of a bitch willing to endure anything for personal power, because if he makes it to the presidency, it will be as Not F. Dubya.

bush, by contrast, made the case for optimism. this is what i have done. this is why it's working. yes there are problems but we're moving in the right direction. he said "hard work" once that i counted and spoke with shining eyes about the virtues of liberty several times. what was different about bush here was that he seemed more willing to go after kerry, and when the talk turned to domestic issues, he was on a 60/40 attack/defend footing. i think it worked. bush injected kerry's record into the debate (and, more importantly the subsequent news cycles), and that can only help him.

ok, enough of my blathering. hard figures and then i'm gone.

in a gallup poll of 515 registered voters with a +/- 5 point margin of error, voters called the debate kerry 49, bush 47, equally 7. republicans and democrats favored their guy to the tune of an 80/20 split, and independents showed a strong kerry preference at 53/37--which, given what you've just read about "undecideds," many of which are likely independents, should not come as a surprise.

in terms of favorability, kerry helped himself out a bit, picking up 38%. 20% saw him as less favorable and 42% felt about the same. bush picked up 30%, lost 20%, and had 49% leaving as they came. we've seen you before, mr. president.

now for the important stuff.

the best news of the night for kerry was that his economy rating went up 5 points thanks to the debate, while bush's dropped by 1. statistically, bush stayed the same, while kerry, whose move is still within the poll's margin of error, is close enough that we can say--without too big a grain of salt--made some gains.

the bad news for kerry? he got beat on iraq and terror. beat bad. real bad.

on iraq, kerry's predebate/postdebate favorables were 50/45 while bush's were 46/53--a definite boost for the incumbent. kerry's terrorism numbers are even worse: 45/39 to bush's 52/56. i don't think that on november 2nd bush will win 56/39, but still, you've got be nervous about the terror number if you're a kerry supporter.

kerry did well in the technical categories of self-expression and understanding the issues, a whopping 17 point and 5 point lead respectively, but lost ground elsewhere. notable for the president is that he had a 1 point lead over kerry on "agreed with you more on issues you care about," one of those touchy-feely poll questions democrats traditionally own. a 1 point lead is something for republicans to smile about when bush shouldn't have even been close. the president was also the more likeable by 2 points (a moral victory for kerry, really), the more believable by 4 points, and demonstrated he was tough enough for the job by--ouch--13 points.

bush has got a 17 point lead on terror and a 13 point lead on toughness, you democrats.

the debate was a statistical tie which, in and of itself, is a win for bush. after an obvious defeat in the last debate, he has clearly regained the momentum with what was perhaps his best debate performance ever. anyone who's ever watched their football team let a lead evaporate in the fourth quarter knows what i'm talking about.

wrapping this up, the only reason kerry was even in this thing is because the average american viewer is savvy enough to recognize that "winning a debate" involves looking smart, passing out lots of numbers, etc. but they also realize that that doesn't necessarily make you the best man for the job, or even prove you're right. in some ways, the more kerry looks like a good debater, the worse off he is: good debaters can argue any position effectively, whether they agree with it or not, to get themselves the win. given enough time, a good debater can mine enough statistical nuggets to undermine whatever they wish. if bush had set out to prove the sky blue, kerry probably could have outdone him arguing it was green. so what?

locdog is looking forward to the third debate

2004-10-06T13:02:00.000-04:00

the vice presidential debate: who gives a rip?

i can't bring myself to offer serious analysis of arguably the most meaningless high-profile event in american politics, the traditional vice presidential debate, so i will offer a few general impressions instead.

1. cheney won. didn't win big, didn't dominate, but he won. it was the craggy old man vs. the breck girl, and the breck girl got her fanny tanned on more than one occasion.

2. it occurred to me at one point in the debate that cheney was doing well because he was playing to his strengths. say what you will about the vice president, he is a serious-minded individual and that came across last evening. it then occurred to me that cheney wasn't playing to anything, not his strengths, his rival, or even his president. cheney was simply being cheney.

3. if john edwards was as successful a trial lawyer as everyone says he was, this country is flat out screwed. was it just me, or did anyone else get the impression that edwards was auditioning for the lead on barney and friends? when you say "four" do you really need to hold up four fingers to make yourself understood? he had fourth grade material to begin with and even then he acted like he was trying to teach it to second graders. whole juries bought this crap? i was insulted by the stupidity--not edwards', who strikes me as quite sharp, but the implied idiocy on my part as a viewer. don't even get me started on his cloying attempted humor.

4. i nearly didn't watch the debate. had zero interest leading up to it and could barely keep my eyes open through an episode of wild west tech on the history channel--a program i actually enjoy--that was on in the preceding hour. i'm glad i stuck it out, though, because this debate was rather entertaining. no you're-no-john-kennedy-deer-in-the-headlights moments, but a few memorable zingers nonetheless and a surprising air of intensity from both candidates.

5. not surprising was the fact that cheney was at his best on national security issues as edwards was with the domestic stuff. i find it more or less impossible to take john edwards seriously on national security and must admit i have my doubts about anyone who doesn't share my incredulity. still, you've got to hand it to the guy, he can more than hold his own on the butter side of the old guns/butter relation. bush should be thankful he doesn't have to go against edwards on the domestic front, because he'd get his head handed to him. that said, while this is edwards' strength and a weakness for his republican counterpart, he's still got room for improvement. laid it on a bit thick with the i-feel-your-pain stuff, and, good as he was, watching him made me appreciate clinton's legendary empathy all the more.

6. to wit, my personal favorite moment of the evening was edwards' misty-eyed portrayal of fat cats sunning by the pool courtesy of stock dividends and bush's sorely needed capital gains tax cuts while soldiers in iraq are paying a higher rate. apples to oranges for starters, but rather than going into the not-all-that-complicated distinction between single and double taxation, income and capital gains, cheney instead opted to politely slash edwards' throat by reminding the senator that he himself had benefited to the tune of 600,000 dollars american via the exact same mechanisms.

7. halliburton is not a winning issue for democrats.

8. no one cares whether or not cheney and edwards have met before. the funny thing about that line--and it was a great line--was that even as cheney was saying, i was thinking to myself "gee, that doesn't sound right..." i had no idea they'd met at a prayer breakfast in sheboygan in nineteen-ought-seven, it just didn't seem all that probable. kerry/edwards' pedantic toadies in the media couldn't scurry to their powerbooks fast enough to prove the veep wrong, but his point remains: edwards, just like kerry, has an abysmal attendance record. if he's correct about "experience not equaling good judgment" or whatever that throw-away line he kept using was, then he's damned lucky. one more word on this non-topic, it's pretty darn clear that edwards didn't remember those meetings any better than cheney did. post debate some lackey had doubtless got a hold of him and set him straight, because he was out there citing the never met line as further evidence of cheney lying to the american people (no, he didn't use the l-word.) but edwards obviously didn't remember making cheney's acquaintance either, because if he did, he couldn't have spat out the patriot-missile oh-yes-we-did-meet comeback fast enough.

9. john kerry is an ugly man. physically, i mean. edwards is such a little cutie-pie.

10. didja notice how good a speech-giver bush is last night? it dawned on me as i was watching his number 2 that their styles are exactly opposite. while bush can give a killer speech and cheney could render an ADHD kid in a starbucks comatose, cheney is by far the superior debater, where his understated wit and laconic manner lend him an unmistakable air of authority.

locdog's $0.02

2004-10-01T13:38:00.000-04:00

when is a win not a win?

when is a win not a win?

uh-oh, conservative readers are thinking, if locdog is getting zen, it must have been a really bad night for bush. well, take heart. it wasn't that bad. of the two losses that confront me this morning, bush's and the pitt panthers humiliating defeat at the hands of uconn (yes, they have a football team) in their inaugural big east matchup, i find the latter by far the most distressing.

still, my hat's off to kerry. bush won the first half, but not nearly as cleanly as kerry did the second. kerry was by far the more consistent of the two candidates, staying strong after the first-question butterflies fluttered off while bush seemed to taper. he became more redundant and exasperated as the evening marched on, while kerry marched right along with it. more than one commentator thought the president looked tired, and i couldn't disagree.

but then, bush is the president. he has a war to fight and a country to run. john kerry has little else to do besides avoid his senate obligations, spray on a tan, and bone up on some statistics. before the debate, bush was touring the devastation in a ravished wasteland that makes iraq look like shangri-la: florida. kerry was getting a manicure.

did you enjoy the debates? i did. especially the first half, and no, not just because that was the part bush won. in the first half of the debate, we saw two competitors at the absolute top of their games--i've honestly never seen either of them look better than they did in that first 45 minutes--battling it out in the sort of heavyweight slugfest that's the perennially unfulfilled promise of presidential debates. if you truly want to appreciate how good last night's debate was, go find yourself a copy of any of the three bush/gore matchups. as for bush/kerry, 50 million people tuned in, and they weren't disappointed.

bush jumped on kerry early and often in the initial stages, looking and sounding larger than life despite being physically dwarfed by the challenger. kerry launched waves of attacks, all delivered with back locked straight and a thudding cadence to match, but he seemed somehow small. this was clearly a man who knew he was behind and had some catching up to do, and it's hard to appear confident and strong when you're running for your life. a couple of memorable plus exchanges for bush were the "global test" for preemptive action comeback, and the sublime "i don't think he mislead us" exchange, where bush responded to kerry's allegations of misleading the american people on iraq by quoting kerry's own hawkish proclamations from a couple of years ago chapter and verse, and punctuating each with an "i don't think senator kerry mislead us when he said that."

around the halfway point, kerry began to gain the upper hand. when i sift through the memory banks looking for kerry's plus exchanges, i don't find individual moments but a general air of growing confidence coming from a man who does this sort of thing for a living, and has for most of his adult life. one particular line for kerry does stand out, an obvious applause line but for lehrer's kung-fu grip on the audience's throat. it was when kerry said he "made a mistake" with words when he'd said that he voted for the 87 billion before he voted against it, but the president mistakenly got us into war. something to that effect.

i guess what makes that line most memorable for me was that it was a fat, juicy pitch right down the middle, and bush went down looking. prior to it, kerry had been blasting bush over his failure to adequately prepare our troops for combat, complete with a sob-story about so-and-so from hackensack who had to buy her son's body armor on ebay. did bush flip senator kerry's question on him, pointing out that his mistake wasn't in how he spoke, but in how he voted? did he ask the senator if he told that mom how he tried to keep her son from being adequately equipped by attempting to nix his funding? did he demand to know by what authority someone blithely strolls away from 87 billion dollars then pounds his pulpit and promises never to send troops into battle ill-prepared? the whole point of kerry's disastrous 87 billion quote--the very reason he gave it in the first place--was that he had on one hand voted to make the war possible while on the other voted to deny the troops what they needed to fight it.

that was far from the only opportunity the president missed. for bush, the second half of the debate was little more than a mumbled reiteration of the first, while kerry assaulted him with a dizzying array of facts and figures, virtually all of which were used to tear down bush's case rather than build his own. whether you think kerry's stats are lies and damned lies or not, the fact is, there's always another set out there waiting to make the opposite case, and bush sure as hell didn't know them.

nor did he know, apparently, what his plan to win in iraq was. kerry didn't either (or if he did he didn't tell us what it was), although he at least knew that he had one. i know he knew that he had one because he must have spoke of its existence nearly as often as he did his vietnam service, which, by the way, popped up six times before i lost count. the challenger repeatedly claimed that george w. bush "won the war without a plan to win the peace" and bush refused to respond. could not respond, is what liberal readers are thinking, but looking at this in purely political terms that's an absolutely asinine position. of course bush has a plan. he discusses it with his advisers and generals and ambassadors and the iraqis themselves on a daily basis. there are tangible actions going on right now in iraq--huge actions that are killing hundreds of terrorists--that bush didn't even mention. he could have given a laundry list of steps and goals that would have made kerry's pumpkin-colored head spin, but instead he gave a meek defense of the status quo. now whether or not bush's plan is the status quo as you liberals believe, there are ways you say things and ways you don't. i disagree with you, of course, which makes the breakdown in debate technique all the more ugly.

so why, given all that nastiness, am i not too terribly concerned with bush's bad answers? because even a lot of bush's bad answers were good.

lehrer asks a question about global consensus and kerry launches into two minutes of names, dates, facts and figures that no one will remember tomorrow, least of all kerry. no one was meant to. the impression is what counts, the idea formed in the mind of the voter that, hey, this kerry guy really knows his stuff. maybe he's to be taken seriously after all. bush responds with something along the lines of "you can't lead if you're not committed, you have to stay the course, etc., etc." but then goes into "--and i know these guys. i know ambassador shmo and president whatshisface. i had lunch with them last week, and i'm flying off to this meeting or conference the next."

it's argument from authority, and as far as debate points goes, it's garbage, but if kerry puts all his debate points in one hand and craps in the other, he'll figure out pretty quick which fills the fastest. liberals are in fits of ecstasy over kerry's oh-so-sophisticated presentation and the superiority this supposedly manifests, but the average voter likes to hear the president saying "i know these guys." it might seem like that's not a lot to come back with, but when bush looks the camera right in the eyes and lets fly, people know he's not trying to pull one over on them. it may be he doesn't have the words to express exactly why this or that won't work, but people have come to expect that and know nonetheless that he believes in what he's saying. that knowledge was, is, and always will be the president's greatest asset.

john kerry should wake up this morning and take note of the fact that most of the same polls that show him winning the debate also show that it really didn't change anybody's mind. and democrats in general have apparently failed to learn the lesson of al gore, because the jubilant braying i hear now sounds suspiciously like what i heard following the first of the 2000 debates, which, i will remind you, was initially hailed as a victory for gore and for the exact same reasons.

americans aren't going to the polls this november to vote for captain of the national debate team, they're going to vote for a president, one who'll have to lead them out of one war and, in all likelihood, into others. even the youngest voters participating in this election will have had plenty of exposure to smooth-talking senators; there's more to it than that. if the war on terror were going to be settled in a court of law somewhere, kerry would be your man. but it isn't. given the choice between a stammering cowboy and a greased-pig lawyer, americans are going to opt for the cowboy every time.

locdog's $0.02

2004-09-30T15:57:00.000-04:00

quick thoughts on the debate

1. what bush must do: not blow it. bush doesn't have to be great, he has to be good enough. he's up big in the fourth quarter (on foreign policy, anyway) so now isn't the time to get flashy on offense. go to your ground game--your bread and butter--and play the prevent defense.

2. what kerry must do: throw the bomb. then onside kick, recover, and throw it again. for better or for worse (worse) kerry has staked his claim to the presidency on iraq. he's got to take chances. he's got to advance a bold vision on iraq, convince people that he's serious about 1. winning and 2. getting the troops home. in that order.

3. what bush stands to lose: everything. this election is referendum on bush's iraq policy. while people know what to expect from bush, there are enough tentative bush supporters looking for an excuse to vote for kerry that, if dubya gives them one, he's going to become the second bush one-termer.

4. what kerry stands to lose: not nearly as much as bush. kerry is already trailing the president by 20+ points in iraq/leadership related polls and it's hard to see how that could get much worse. kerry wants to be the iraq candidate but if he can't make any headway tonight, he'll need to shift to domestic issues--which is what he should have been doing in the first place. in that sense, a disastrous kerry performance might be exactly what his campaign needs. even at this late stage in the game, there’s time for kerry to regroup and start over.

5. who will win: bush. since september 11th, bush has shown himself as able a wartime president as any. he is never more eloquent, passionate, or presidential than he is when he's making the moral case for beating up the bad guys. unfortunately for kerry, who's had trouble clearly communicating his foreign policy vision thus far (to put it mildly), this is bush's A-game. bush is also the more likeable of the two, seems the more at ease with himself, and is able to project confidence without appearing too strident or cocky--just watch the smirks. on paper, it looks like a route. that said, bush had better be careful. kerry is an orator of no small repute, and his back is to the wall.

locdog is making bush minus 7 his silver bullet mortal lock special of the week

2004-09-29T14:43:00.000-04:00

could this be the mother of all flip-flops?

on august ninth, john f. kerry responded to bush's challenges on iraq by stating that, even knowing everything we know today, he would have still voted to authorize the war in iraq.

behold: "We should not have gone to war knowing the information we know today."

--senator john f. kerry, 28 september 2004.

how kerry will spin it: kerry maintains (or has recently been maintaining, i should say) that his vote to go to war was not a vote to go to war at all, but a vote to authorize the use of force against saddam hussein because he believes that a president should have such authority--in other words, it wasn't a vote about iraq at all, but a vote about the nature of the presidency itself. in his most recent statement, he merely reaffirmed his "wrong war at the wrong time" stance, i.e., just because he gave bush the authority doesn't mean bush should have used it, or at least he shouldn't have used it in the way he did.

how republicans can respond: does this really require a response?

i've got to admit, part of me really loves john f. kerry. it's the childish part that never tires of seeing ideological opponents debase themselves with this whore only to get slapped in the face by him the next morning again, and again, and again. an interesting study of the liberal psyche would be whether they honestly believe kerry's position as encapsulated by these two quotes actually constitutes "nuance," or if they're simply willing to endure any amount of degradation to see bush ousted. until such is undertaken, though i'll offer a token response.

the republicans don't need to rebut this clap-trap, they need to repeat it. if kerry wants to climb up on the gallows and stick his head in the noose, the republicans shouldn't loosen the knot by dignifying his schizophrenic ravings with a serious response, they should give it a few hard tugs themselves. we've been hearing kerry flip-flop jokes on the late-nite shows for a month now: the absolute best barometer of a candidate's foibles registering with the public. leno, letterman, and stewart decide the outcome of elections, not jim lehrer.

for the record, no one--not even kerry's supporters--can seriously believe that kerry did not understand his so-called vote to authorize the use of force was a vote to authorize war. bush's rhetoric leading up to the vote and the general mood of the nation at that time make it impossible. kerry knew what he was voting for. if he wants to trash bush's handling of the war once it was underway, fine, but he has absolutely zero right to make a claim like "we should not have gone to war" and then pretend he isn't reversing himself.

locdog thinks kerry is his own worst enemy

2004-09-29T13:26:00.000-04:00

kerry will raise your taxes

john kerry ain't exactly waterford crystal when it comes to iraq, but his domestic policy has been more or less clear. lots of new spending, keep bush tax cuts permanent for the lower and middle classes, raise taxes on the "rich," who are defined by kerry as those making over $200,000. he claims that in addition to all the healthcare and tax cuts, he will be able to reduce the deficit. fortunately, his proposals are detailed enough that they're subject to serious analysis (unlike, say, the vague and mysterious "more sensitive war on terror") and the numbers aren't looking good for the american tax payer.

as economist brian riedl points out in the latest national review, based on kerry's current promises and CBO figures, he will raise the federal debt 3.1 trillion dollars over the next decade. running the same analysis with figures from kerry's campaign and equally rosy leftwing think-tanks and you come up with a 2.3 trillion dollar debt increase. these figures would yield budget deficits of 525 billion and 443 billion respectively--an increase in both cases.

as riedl puts it

These estimates aren’t surprising. Kerry’s proposal to shave $211 billion off the budget deficit while also spending nearly $2 trillion more — on everything from health care to business subsidies to endangered-species protection to high-speed rail to free college tuition for volunteers — doesn’t pass the smell test. No tax increase restricted to those earning more than $200,000 can bridge this large of a gap.

take the shortfall estimates and divide them up over american tax payers, and you get the kerry tax increase: $2,090 to $2,829 per household, based on whichever set of numbers you prefer. that, or kerry could lop off some of his budget increases.

locdog never knew a democrat to cut spending when he could raise taxes, though

2004-09-23T13:59:00.000-04:00

it's now or never

i've written before about the need to stay in iraq. whatever you thought of the decision to go in the first place, we're there now and, consequently, iraq has become the epicenter of the war on terror. the primary sponsors of the current crop of iraqi terrorists, iran and syria, are two of the most active terrorist states in the world today. in providing passage, men, and materials, they have in effect been waging a terrorist cold war against the united states of america. we can't afford to lose face, to ourselves, to them, to the middle east.

i heard someone remark this morning that if we don't win in iraq, we'll face a never-ending stream of middle-eastern terror. how true.

if we can't win in iraq, a state with a largely sympathetic population that is willing to participate in a federal government (if you want "insurgency" talk to france, circa 1950s vietnam) then where can we win? there is no evidence to support the contention that the people of iraq are in open rebellion. what we do see are tightly focused hot spots in four or five cities whose names have become household words, yet there are dozens of iraqi cities we've never heard of where millions of iraqi civilians are peacefully yet impatiently awaiting democracy. they've continued waiting while we've tip-toed through the hot spots in a misguided effort not to offend them, thereby sentencing ourselves to the death of a thousand paper cuts.

in what cannot be dismissed as coincidental, the frequency of suicide bombings and other terrorist strikes against iraqi civilians and u.s. military personnel has escalated with the coming of november, as has the grisly parade of decapitated civilians. make no mistake: from the beginning, terrorism has been about public relations, and the death of a thousand paper cuts gives the media all it needs to portray iraq as a perpetual disaster. despite the fact that we have sustained about one part in sixty the number of casualties, the vietnamization of the war progresses in the minds of the american people.

driven by the "if it bleeds it leads" credo of journalism and a political opposition that believes they have found their key to victory in turning americans against a sitting wartime president, the critical shift in our psyche from "we must win" to "we cannot win" has begun to occur--and it's happening at a pace that accelerates with every bomb-blast and beheading. for better or for worse, bush has lead us into this war by force of will alone: his own, amplified through the public's. if the public abandons him, then victory truly would be impossible. at that point, john kerry would indeed be our last, best hope for success, but little of what kerry has said or done indicates he would be capable of taking the steps necessary to win this war.

john kerry's position on iraq is incoherent even by political standards. the few points he has been consistent on (of late) amount to the belief that everything bush has done since afghanistan has been wrong, and a mysterious plan to right it all. if kerry, with the media, can convince the american people things are bad enough (i don't think they can, but the election is still a long way off) they will abandon bush in favor of the devil they don't know. and what happens then?

there is no magical mystery plan that's going to fix what ails iraq. victory is going to be achieved by a long, tough fight, slugging it out toe to toe with the nastiest, dirtiest fighters on the face of the earth. there will be more casualties, probably a lot more. if kerry adopts a get-tough policy with iraq, cordons off trouble-spots, locks down the syrian and iranian borders, refuses to allow himself to be held hostage by buildings--however sacred--it will become readily apparent that victory is not to be had for the bargain price he's selling. when the political winds turn into his face, he will reverse course. he has done it throughout his career. it's lovely to think of french and german cavalry riding to our aide, but to believe the outcome of that (even if it did happen) would be anything other than a thousand more paper cuts is foolhardy. the french and germans have no will to fight. they would eventually withdraw and kerry would go with them. either way, we're backing out of iraq under john kerry.

but if we remain with bush, war-weariness in the public will set in that much faster. this is unfortunate, because of the two men, george w. bush clearly possess the greater measure of resolve, and resolve is what's needed to win.

it is therefore vital to our national interests that the public be convinced of the necessity of victory in iraq, and, once more, bush is better suited to carry this message. the american people must realize that if the nascent iraqi democracy is thwarted, the long term consequences for the united states will be disastrous.

first, if the american military is unable to stand up to islamic militants, it is unlikely the iraqi government could prevail. the odds of an iranian-sponsored iraqi theocracy would become uncomfortably high. the military hardware this government would have access to and their essential dependence on terrorism and antagonism towards the united states is the most frightening long-term prospect in the war on terror.

second, the broader war on terror will be dealt a severe blow, both from the psychological boost an american defeat would bring to global terrorism, and from the psychological wounds sustained by the american people in another vietnam-style defeat.

third, assuming bush wins the presidency, the credibility of the united states would be significantly hamstrung by defeat. although the president's critics insist that our global reputation is already at an all time low, this studiously ignores the fact that those who most loudly opposed our war against the hussein regime stood to lose the most by his defeat. notwithstanding that, the people of the world think the united states has bitten off more than it can chew. if we prove them right, our reputation will hit a genuine rock bottom.

this is all to say nothing of the suffering the iraqis themselves would endure were democracy supplanted by theocracy, of the oppression of women and minorities, the suppression of knowledge, and the wholesale denial of the most basic civil liberties.

americans must understand that the war on terror is now, right now, in iraq. nothing, not even the capture of bin laden, can be more important. and while seeing osama's corpse swing from the washington monument would be a formidable morale booster, the end result might actually be to our detriment. if osama is apprehended before the people become convinced of the necessity of victory in iraq, there may be a shift towards complacency, but if september eleventh taught us nothing else, it surely taught us that we can never be complacent again. it's a luxury we never really had to begin with.

the war on terrorism is in iraq and the time is now or never. if we lose there, we've lost.

locdog believes we will win, but he can't be the only one

2004-09-21T16:19:00.000-04:00

sea, air, land

one month and one day ago, my wife and i sat over burgers and a few microbrews, me pulling my hair out agonizing over my future and her surrealy calm. i'd just found out i wasn't going to fly for the navy, and although i was committed to going in, i hadn't the slightest as to what capacity.

"let's pray about it for one month," she advised.

one month? one month. my God. one month.

i'm 27. people think that's young. people think 50 is "middle age." people are dumb. 27. dear God. one more month. if i hadn't wasted so many months, if i hadn't wasted so much time...

"if you are serious about finding God's will, you'll do it."

at the time it sounded like the craziest idea i'd ever heard, but i knew she was right. in my heart, i made a pledge that if the cost was a month, i'd pay it.

i've paid it. a month. i never knew how long a month could be. every night, on my knees in prayer, lying awake in bed, talking it over with my friends, my family, myself...what was i to do?

this morning my wife reminded me that it was one month. i had no idea. a month and a day, in fact. a month and a day.

in my heart, i knew what i was supposed to do. i think i'd known it all along, but i had to be sure. it wasn't the sort of thing you just decided on a whim. the future of yourself, your family, maybe your kids if you ever had any...the potential to change everything in your life, to turn it upside-down and right-side up, or maybe to right it finally, once and for all. she told me it was the right thing to do. part of me still thinks she's nuts, but the bigger part, the deepest part of me knows that she's right.

God willing, i'm going to be a Navy SEAL.

locdog knows that through Christ, all things are possible

2004-09-20T13:55:00.000-04:00

CBS recants

full text of rather's statement, courtesy of drudgereport.com:

Last week, amid increasing questions about the authenticity of documents used in support of a 60 MINUTES WEDNESDAY story about President Bush's time in the Texas Air National Guard, CBS News vowed to re-examine the documents in question—and their source—vigorously. And we promised that we would let the American public know what this examination turned up, whatever the outcome.

Now, after extensive additional interviews, I no longer have the confidence in these documents that would allow us to continue vouching for them journalistically. I find we have been misled on the key question of how our source for the documents came into possession of these papers. That, combined with some of the questions that have been raised in public and in the press, leads me to a point where—if I knew then what I know now—I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question.

But we did use the documents. We made a mistake in judgment, and for that I am sorry. It was an error that was made, however, in good faith and in the spirit of trying to carry on a CBS News tradition of investigative reporting without fear or favoritism.

Please know that nothing is more important to us than people's trust in our ability and our commitment to report fairly and truthfully.

any reactions?

IMO, this retraction is just as phony as the memos themselves. this wasn't "a mistake in judgment." going a bit too fast on an icy road is a mistake in judgment. winding your car up to 120 and slamming it into a bridge abutment over the shrieking protest of your passengers is something else entirely.

and get a load of this slippery little gem: "I find we have been misled on the key question of how our source for the documents came into possession of these papers."

note he doesn't flatly state "our source misled us" anymore than he admits that these documents are forgeries (preface "forgery" with "apparent" if it makes you feel more comfortable.) because, if he did, he'd have no excuse for cowering behind his recently discovered set of journalistic ethics. he'd have to cough up some names and humiliate himself further.

people can forgive honest mistakes, but this was a betrayal. it was a betrayal of trust, of ethics, of truth, and of the unique civic responsibility of the press.

locdog's $0.02

2004-09-16T13:01:00.000-04:00

liberalism and the double standard

heard a great essay on ultra right-wing hate radio this morning, although i missed who wrote it. it had to do with the double-standard liberals tend to apply to everything, and how ineffective the typical conservative response is.

example: a democratic politician is caught in an affair with a young intern. liberals dismiss the matter as purely personal. conservatives respond that if it had been a republican politician, they would have been firing up their irons to brand him with a scarlet A.

i've said the same thing a million times myself, quite correctly, and, if i gave the source of the double standard any thought at all, i would normally chalk it up to the other side's lack of principle.

what this guy said--and it's so darn obvious it makes you want to kick yourself for not seeing it sooner--is that the libs aren't being unprincipled, they are, in fact, being perfectly consistent with their core beliefs.

what we think of as a liberal, he continued, is really a "cultural socialist," the great principles of traditional middle-class liberalism having been subsumed by hard leftism. if you think about the economic characteristics of socialism, this becomes easier to see.

to a socialist, "equality" has to do with outcomes. everyone must end up at exactly the same place, and this in spite of the fact that people are unequally intelligent, thrifty, hard working, creative, and so forth. now inherent in this ethos is big, oppressive government, because since there will always be hard working, industrious people who excel far beyond the lazy and stupid, some agent of force, i.e., government, will have to take their "surplus" wealth away for redistribution. it cannot be any other way.

take that same paradigm and slide it from the economic to the cultural and what do you see? once more, there are two classes, the haves and have-nots. but in this case the breakdown doesn't occur on economic lines (although cultural socialists will always argue that wealth mirrors this trend) but along socio-political ones. if you are a white Christian male gainfully employed heterosexual, you, they say, have all the power. if you are a black pagan female unemployed lesbian, you have none. and just as in economic socialism, the goal must be the tearing down of the powerful and the elevation of the weak to achieve "equality."

seen in that light, the liberal double standard makes perfect sense. why shouldn't jesse jackson get a free pass if he bangs five thousand ho's a day while parading as a reverend even though he's got no more formal training in religion than al gore did? and if a bob packwood or newt gingrich were to act along similar lines, why shouldn't he be ripped to shreds? the important thing to a cultural socialist isn't that everyone is treated equally, it's that everyone ends up at the same place. i've heard some radical academics go as far as to say that blacks could never be racist because they have no power. as long as a power inequity exists, only the white man can be guilty of bigotry. i mean it's not like these people are trying to hide who and what they are. they're practically flaunting it.

the writer went on to say that cultural socialists use government in exactly the same way economic socialists do, to right the perceived inequalities by force of law. he gave several examples from the cultural realm, all of which had to do with the tearing down of traditional american values, and their replacement with the left's "empowerment" versions. anyway, you get the gist.

once you grasp this whole cultural socialist/double standard thing, you see what has to be done. whining about the existence of the double standard is pointless because the liberal is simply doing what he needs to do to maintain his belief system. instead, his beliefs need to be attacked at their core:

justice demands unequal results for unequal efforts. any other form of "equality" is a perversion.

if anyone knows who came up with this stuff, clue locdog in

2004-09-14T17:42:00.000-04:00

sure God wanted bush to be president

originally posted in response to this slate article.

to every thing, turn, turn, turn, there is a season turn, turn, turn...

sing along! you know the words!

for waldman, the criteria for good religion isn't theological truth, it's how "responsible, inspiring, and poetic," it is. frankly i prefer an atheist. at least they're capable of recognizing a claim on objective truth for what it is. there's greater dignity in telling someone they're flat wrong than on patting the world's great faiths on their heads and telling them to play nice.

but i digress. sure God wanted bush to be president. if you believe the Bible--or more of less any of the world's main monotheistic faiths--then one of the jobs clearly ascribed to the Deity is the assignment of earthly potentates. whether that was in the monarchic, God-appointed-me-to-rule sense, or the more nebulous sense of God calling a certain man out and leading him to a leadership roll, it's clear that God elects the world's rulers. if you believe in a God that's personally knowable or in the slightest bit concerned with humanity, it would be difficult to believe that He takes no interest in those few members of humanity tasked with determining how the rest of us will live our lives.

as a conservative Christian living through the clinton years, i often found myself reflecting on the numerous Biblical passages that reinforce this notion, especially when another believer would ask why God would appoint someone who so thoroughly flouted His law--that's not a reflection on clinton as a president, simply on his personal moral character. the Bible shows that God appoints leaders for all sorts of reasons. sometimes because they were needed to pull a nation through trying times, sometimes because they were exactly what the nation deserved, and sometimes we just don't know why.

if a conservative Christian believes that God blessed our nation with a strong, morally upright president then that no more invalidates the notion of divinely determined human leadership than a liberal secular humanist who thinks that God--if there is such a thing--was punishing us. nor does the fact that george w. bush believes he was divinely called to be president mean that he's necessarily wrong. seems silly to state it like that, but millions, perhaps billions, of people pray for God's guidance in their lives, and out of fairness to them, it needs to be said. rare is the president who doesn't claim to seek divine counsel in trying times and implore the nation to do the same. are we simply more comfortable with the hypocrites than with someone who's actually sincere in his beliefs--who truly believes that God can and does take an interest in the course of an individual life and is willing to make His will known if we're willing to seek Him out?

i think our discomfort stems mainly from the fact that if bush claims God wanted him to be president, that must mean that bush thinks he's God's gift to america. but generally those who feel God's call upon their lives are humbled by the experience. moses arguing with God at the burning bush is perhaps the best example, but there are others. now by way of contrast, think jonah: the arrogant ones run the other way. those with a vocation to the priesthood don't believe they're there because they are somehow more worthy than the next guy--if anything, they're more acutely aware of their sins. even in the professional realm, believers will often tell you that they feel as though God called them to a task that was beyond their capabilities so that they would be forced to rely on Him--this is what many athletes have in mind when they thank God for their great accomplishments. it's not that kurt warner won the super bowl because he sucked up to God, it's that kurt honestly believes he could not have accomplished what he did without God giving him the strength and wisdom to do it, and he's sincerely grateful.

lastly, i don't think waldman proved what he set out to. he didn't show that the fact that many people on the religious right (including, apparently, bush) believe that the president was God's man for the job means that they believe that God wants him to win again. in virtually every quote waldman himself gives, people are recalling their feelings at a specific time, "at this moment," as one of them puts it. as a Christian, i am perfectly willing to accept that God may have wanted george w. bush in 2000, but not in 2004. whatever God's reasons for voting bush 2000, they surely weren't simply to award the office of the presidency to a nice guy. if God calls you to be a plumber, He wants you to fix pipes, and i find it hard to believe that He wouldn't have had some specific tasks in mind for george w. bush in 2000. might those now be accomplished? might there not be something He wants kerry to do?

it's certainly possible. fact is, we don't know, and we have know way of knowing. as believers we must vote our conscience in accordance with our faiths and let God take care of the rest.

locdog won't say that bush is God's man in '04, and he doesn't hear those waldman quoted saying that, either

2004-09-14T13:24:00.000-04:00

getting to know you

the latest WaPo/ABC news poll has kerry's favorability rating at an astonishing 36%, the result of a six-month, 18-point plummet that surely has his preppyness yanking out those lustrous locks in big, bloody hunks.

just how bad is 36%? well, how white is rice? here, courtesy of matt drudge, are a few people with higher favorability ratings than JFK v 2.0:

John Ashcroft: 49 (2003)

Michael Dukakis: 47 (1988)

Prince Charles: 45 (2003)

Herbert Hoover: 43 (1944)

Jesse Jackson: 38 (2003)

Vladimir Putin: 38 (2003)

kerry ties martha stewart and--get this--beats joe mccarthy by one point. dukakis has him by eleven.

now i know you democrats out there think i'm just gloating, and, i will admit, you're partly right. but as a matter of practical politics, you must admit that this is fascinating stuff. how, for instance, could that other great horse-faced jackass coasting on his naval record, prince charles--a man who many americans, albeit unfairly, fault with the death of one of the most beloved figures in modern history--have kerry beat by nearly ten points?

sure, sure: it's the GOP attack machine. lies and distortions. smear and slander. the politics of personal destruction.

oh boo-freakin'-hoo.

this is presidential politics folks, it's hardball. there hasn't been a presidential candidate yet who didn't get third-rate rectal exam from the opposition--read the catty remarks that got alexander hamilton shot by veep candidate aaron burr. in 2000 the NAACP practically had george w. bush driving the truck that drug james byrd to his death.

and the swiftees? don't even talk to me about the swiftees. bush's military service record has undergone ten times the amount of scrutiny that kerry's has, including a wave of new DNC-sponsored attacks and media driven hysteria based on what almost certainly is nothing but lies and distortion, and, guess what, no one cares. didn't hurt bush in 2000, hasn't hurt bush now. looks like mr. koosh-ball hair just can't take a punch.

--and i'll do you one better: slick willy. here was a man who in all probability was a rapist, who was certainly guilty of multiple instances of sexual harassment, and who was beyond a shadow of a doubt a shameless philanderer...and so what? it's not that the republicans didn't try to use this stuff to their advantage, it's that no one cared. people liked clinton. they thought he would do/did a pretty good job. and they didn't care.

end of story.

are you beginning to catch on, my little pinkos? are you beginning to see the problem here? it's not about hate speech and the vast right wing conspiracy, it's about an over-coiffed bitch who thinks the green bay packers play on "lambert field".

let's go back to the swiftees for a sec. sure they've taken their toll, but clinton was a flat-out draft dodger and it never hurt him. now kerry on the other hand...his sanctimonious grandstanding at the national convention, his holier-than-thou recollections of combat derring-do, his whole you'd-better-love-me-because-i'm-a-damned-war-hero shtick...what americans love is to see guys like that fall flat on their faces. love to see them exposed as hypocrites. watch reality t.v. for five minutes and i dare say we love nothing better.

in the national lampoon's farce that is the 2004 presidential election, john kerry is the omega house snob who can't get it up for his debutante sweety while george w. bush is swinging from the street signs with a saber in his teeth like john belushi. people don't like john kerry. they don't like his kind because his kind doesn't like them and they know it.

locdog is loved by all

2004-09-10T10:59:00.000-04:00

all hail the new media!

although more and more questions as to their authenticity are surfacing, we don't yet know the cbs docs are fake. the late supposed author's wife, son, and a peer who served with him all question the documents, and an independent forensics expert (i.e., one not in the employ of cbs) describes herself as being "virtually certain" the documents are forgeries.

could this be the end of dan rather?

in a sense, it already is. regardless of whether or not the documents are proven fraudulent or rather ends up deservedly sacked (consistently lousy ratings, consistently biased reporting) cbs, along with nbc, abc, and the rest of the establishment media are going the way of the dodo.

in less than thirty days, we've seen two major news cycles driven entirely by the new media--bloggers, internet forum denizens, talk radio, and so forth. first there was the swift boat thing. the new media took a story virtually ignored by their mainstream counterparts and shoved it to the forefront of the american psyche by force of will alone. of particular note is kerry's fictional Christmas in cambodia holiday show with special guest star mark hamill and a surprise appearance by chewbacca, now debunked and recanted courtesy of what was, at the time, a fledgling 527 with a paltry $500,000 in funds, a few commercials, and a website. now we have the amazing disappearing/reappearing texas ANG smoking gun memos, delivered on 60 minutes by dan rather personally as proof of bush's dereliction of duty. it took all of five minutes for the bloggosphere to start poking holes in The Man's version, five minutes after that it was on drudge, and, lo and behold, today it's all over the WaPo and the AP. even the new york times has a story on it although, true to form, the old grey lady buries it on page 17 and this despite the fact that a story by the exact same reporters on the exact same memos--this one heralding the 60 minutes report rather than questioning it--graced the front page one day prior.

more and more i'm hearing members of the old guard decrying the decline of journalistic standards. "it's the internet," they say. "it's matt drudge and the bloggers. anyone with a website can say anything they want and there's no truth, no accountability, no standards. it's not like the old days."

thank God for that.

the establishment media is dying, of that you can be sure. their ratings are plummeting, and with them goes whatever vestiges of influence they have managed to cling to, but that isn't the disease itself, it's only a symptom. listen to the contempt the new media is dealt at the hands of the old. listen to the scorn. they hate having to cover this stuff--hate every minute of it. they hate being drug around by a bunch of upstarts. but more than anything, they hate not being the ones who get to dictate to the american people what they are going to think about, and how they should think about it. that's the real problem. see, if there was any truth or standards or accountability in the old media, there would be no need of the new.

the old will continue to see the new as the source of all their problems and thus they will continue to die. until, that is, they realize that the new media exists not as a problem, but as the solution to a problem that the establishment media itself created.

not that locdog would mind if they didn't, of course

2004-09-09T13:34:00.000-04:00

question for kerry and dems in general

are you committed to victory in iraq?

not exit strategies, not six more months and we're out, not i promise that in my first term i'll bring all the boys home.

victory.

see, i'm a reasonably well-informed person. i follow the news. i read the papers. but if somebody walked up to me on the street and said

"locdog, reasonably well-informed person that you are, is john kerry, in your opinion, committed to victory in iraq?"

i would be unable to answer. not because i don't like john kerry and think he'd make a lousy president. it's more like the other way around. i'm convinced kerry will make a lousy president because i don't know how to answer that simple question. i heard charles krauthammer say it best just last night: "on the most serious issue of our day, he's no longer a serious candidate."

what really scares me--scares me--about you democrats is that you, half of our country, aren't serious either. i've got news for you all. this election is not, should not be, cannot be about the economy, stupid, jobs, health care, social security, or welfare for crack-addicted transvestite former pro wrestlers because none of that stuff matters a hill of beans if we don't win in iraq. the people we are fighting against are out to end our civilization. but i fear that if september 11th didn't teach you that we cannot peacefully coexist with terror, nothing will.

i know you people never thought this war was a good idea, but it really doesn't matter. if we don't win this thing now, we are going to reap the whirlwind. big time.

kerry seems to be inching closer and closer to howard dean, pandering to his lunatic constituency--i mean that, by the way, you people are insane--rather than leading them. you know what i as an american citizen want from john kerry more than anything else? i want him to stand up and say that he's going to win the war in iraq. instead he wants to babble about what a lousy job bush has done and how he'd do it all different and better, cheap shots from an empty suit content to gloat on the past and apparently unconcerned with the future--just like his fans.

the idea of john kerry winning this election really scares me. i don't know what he'll do. my hunch is that, if push came to shove, he'd back down and pull us out before the job was done. you know why? democratic jubilation over the 1000th death in iraq aside, 1000 dead soldiers in a year and a half of continuous combat isn't a lot of deaths. it isn't even close to a lot of deaths. in terms of the annals of warfare, it barely registers. in terms of what we lost on september 11th, it pales. i know, i know: "try telling that to the parents of those dead soldiers you heartless bastard!" i don't pretend for an instant that the overall scale of the thing can in anyway minimize the grief of even a single parent deprived of a child, nor should it. but i truly believe that if we lose, a lot more americans are going to die and they aren't going to be soldiers. and you know something? i'd be willing to bet you that most of those parents do, too.

things could get rough in this war. really, really rough. we could reach the point where the media isn't celebrating just two or three deaths a night, but two or three hundred, or two or three thousand. in world war one, 50, 60, 70 thousand men or more could die in a single battle. i don't think we're headed that way with the war on terror, but my gut tells me that this thing is going to get worse before it gets better.

will john kerry tough it out? a better, far more meaningful question is, since john kerry refuses to lead, will you the democrats let him?

locdog doubts it

2004-09-03T15:48:00.000-04:00

i was wrong

in my post below on bush's convention speech, i said that there would be a bounce of "a couple of points."

never let it be said that i'm not man enough to admit my mistakes.

and on that note, locdog bids you all a pleasant holiday weekend

2004-09-03T11:43:00.000-04:00

the speech and the convention

as i peruse the idiotic criticism emanating from kerry's supporters, i can't help but feel vindicated in my assessment of bush's speech and of the convention in general: they were both fine.

but first, the criticism and what makes it idiotic. here's what doesn't make it idiotic. it's not idiotic simply because it's criticism, i.e., this isn't a partisan knee-jerk defending-my-guy type thing. it's not idiotic simply because it's coming from kerry supporters, although that certainly doesn't help. and it's not idiotic because the people who are offering are themselves idiots, although i'm sure many of them are. what makes it idiotic is that it lacks any semblance of an understanding of the average american voter.

the problem for many kerry supporters is that they themselves hate bush so much that it's hard for them to fathom how anyone could feel any differently. but people like bush. people trust bush. when bush says something, most people believe that he means it. if he committs to something, most people think he'll follow through. that doesn't mean they like what he's committed to per se, only that they believe he says what he means and he does what he says.

now that's an extraordinary thing. evidentially kerry supporters needed to be reminded that there is a mile-deep layer of cynicism politicians must swim up through if they ever hope to break free. the very word "politician" has become an epithet. it is, at the very least, synonymous with crook and cheat and liar--all things kerry supporters believe about bush now and always have. but step away from that hard core and what you find is that about 55% of the american people still like the guy. despite the economy and iraq, they like george w. bush.

why? a contrast with john kerry's convention performance might be useful. kerry's convention speech was, quite literally, the speech of a lifetime. some long-time observers said it was the best they'd ever seen him give, and while i've only been paying attention to him for about a year, i'd have to agree. his delivery was flawless. bush, on the other hand, sounded tired at times. stressed. he stumbled over a word to two, botched the delivery of a couple of jokes. when pulpit-pounding hellfire was what the delegates were begging for, he sometimes seemed timid. it goes without saying that the entire first half of his speech was a total snoozer.

so why was this not an utter disaster for george w. bush? because nobody cares. when people look at john kerry, they see a very slick, very disciplined, very well coached, and, certainly, very skilled performer. they see a politician. but the presidency isn't about being captain of the debate team (as al gore could surely attest) it's about trust and leadership.

few but the most rabid republicans would have found bush's speech exhilarating, but i can see how a lot of people might have found it reassuring. i can see why people unlike myself, people who disagree with bush on key issues--let's just say it: iraq--would have been comforted nonetheless. when bush says he's never going to let down his guard, never going to let up in the defense of our nation, i believe him, and i think that, whether they agree with his methods or not, most other people do too. when he struggled to get through stories of hospital visits to the war wounded or of meeting parents who lost sons in iraq, i think they can see real emotion there. i think they can see in his eyes that the man has hefted the weight of the thing upon himself, and not all the "bush lied" protest signs or democratic inquisitions into prewar intelligence combined can undo that.

bush's greatest strength as a politician--and as a leader--is that people believe in him. that's the fundamental prerequisite for leadership, and bush's speech played to that strength in a big way which is why the speech was a winner, warts and all. and have no doubts about this: bush will get a bounce. it will be a small one, a couple of points maybe, but it will be there. and i'm sure kerry's core will be mystified by it, and equally puzzled at how, for all john kerry's forced bluster and cheesy machismo, he hasn't been able to command the same respect.

a brief word on the convention in general--success. conventions are media events, and on that level this one worked brilliantly. holding it in new york, the line up of speakers, even the protesters...in terms of media fodder, the democrats didn't even come close. and as to the also idiotic criticisms by kerry's supporters on the convention itself, let me just say that if you don't think a bunch of handsome, famous people speaking with passion and shameless optimism as to the future of our nation wins votes, then you'd better find yourself another hobby, because believe me, politics ain't your bag.

locdog's $0.02

2004-09-02T16:45:00.000-04:00

kerry quickie

"When it comes to Iraq, it's not that I would have done one thing differently," said would-be president john kerry to the nashville american legion. "I would have done almost everything differently."

dontcha just love it? here we are two months out from the presidential election with the RNC in full swing and bush surging in the polls and kerry is STILL trying to explain his iraq position. the WaPo, thrilled, describes it as one of kerry's "sharpest and most detailed explanations" yet. reminds me a bit of an art critic praising a jackson pollack as his least splatteriest painting yet.

seeing how senator kerry would have done "almost everything" different, it should be easy for him to come up with a few specifics, right? right. like your obnoxious uncle who won't shut up while the game is on, kerry looks at the interception and says that if he were on the field, he wouldn't have thrown the ball over there.

He faulted Bush for stubbornly ignoring the advice of military commanders on the ground and politicians back home, dismissing the State Department's concerns about a postwar Iraq, and failing to secure Iraq's borders and draw in allies to relieve the burden on U.S. troops. Once inside Iraq, he said, the president botched opportunities to share responsibility with NATO or the United Nations, train indigenous Iraqi forces, safely secure prisoners of war and adequately guard nuclear waste and ammunition storage sites. Kerry said he would have not made those mistakes.

emphasis added.

locdog's yet to see a monday morning quarterback throw a bad game

2004-09-01T16:46:00.000-04:00

second major gaffe of bush's campaign

i don't like this. not one darn bit.

bush had gone to the FEC to get them to clean up the 527's long before anyone had even knew what a swift boat was--march, in fact. since the FEC has done absolutely nothing in response, bush has now gone to the courts.

rove is quick to point out that the bush camp has been consistent on this issue, opposing 527's all along. and they have--why shouldn't they when nearly 90% of 527 donations have gone to liberal groups? (although that's probably changing now that the swiftees are hitting their stride.)

i don't really care who's been consistent on what, my problem is that the republicans ought to be the party of free speech. what the bush camp wants is for the FEC to enforce the law as written. these 527s aren't supposed to attempt to influence the outcome of an election, but they all do, and bush wants them to cut out the lawbreaking. so why not take the high road and ask that the campaign finance laws be revised to allow for unlimited political speech by any group so long as they give full financial disclosure? if bush had held out for this the first time rather than caving to media pressure over so-called campaign finance reform, he wouldn't be in this situation.

the 527 flap is the result of a government-inflicted thorn in the side of free speech, one that bush (and kerry) are now trying to use government to smooth out. it's natural for a democrat to want to use government to fix government-created problems, but aren't republicans supposed to be about fixing government-created problems by getting out of the way?

locdog's $0.02

2004-09-01T14:56:00.000-04:00

if liberals are so in favor of free speech

then why are they so opposed to its exercise? harassing delegates all over new york--at times physically assaulting them--infiltrating the convention and attempting to shout down speakers (or the vice president), clashing with police officers in unruly protests...the list goes on and on.

new york has been overrun by a bunch of ignorant, mostly unemployed (through choice, not economics) thugs with nothing better to do than insult, curse, punch, kick, flip off, spit at, or otherwise molest those who don't agree with them--and the real gasser is that the tactics kerry's brownshirts employ are the clearest manifestations of the very oppresion they think they're protesting. liberal activists have some sort of sixties holdover perpetual martyr complex, some masturbatory rot about being a small, deperate band struggling against darth vader's own police state. truth is, it's a pinstripe suit, nice wingtips, red tie, and a neat and tidy head of hair as opposed to last night's t-shirt, a pair of worn birkenstocks, a hemp necklace, and a crop of dreadlocks that's apt to get you an ass kicking circa new york city these days.

great example on n.y. based fox and friends this morning, when one of the hosts told of how a liberal group with a name along the lines of "somethings for free speech" (may have been lawyers, but it was early and i've been off coffee for three days) invaded their newsroom chanting "fox shut up!" at the top of their lungs.

free speech for me but not for thee. for thee it's violence, harassment, fear tactics, book burnings--yes, book burnings. why the hell not? if you sneak into a lawfully held rally for the sole purpose of drowning out someone else's political views, why not burn his books? what's the difference? a pound of pulp and some lighter fluid, that's what.

after ahnie and laura last night, locdog thinks you libs are right to be afraid