PC Hypersensitivity

The New York Times reports that a group of the "hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history" have taken to the streets to protest the use of the word "retard" in the Ben Stiller release of "Tropic Thunder". This movie is a comedy and the purpose of comedy to be irreverent, to make us look at the sillyness of ourselves. It is not hate speech! Who didn't love Steve Martin as Nevin R. Johnson ("I was born a poor black child") in "The Jerk" or the racial overtones in "Blazing Saddles."

I am sure that anyone that looks hard enough can find something to be offended about in just about anything. (sarcasm alert) In fact, I took my daughter to see "Kung Fu Panda" yesterday and I was aghast to see pigs and geese depicted as stereotypical slanty eyed Chinese. Then his little tidbit jumped off the page as I read the transcript to the Obama/ McCain Saddleback Forum.

Obama: You mentioned one person I'd be listening to and that is Michelle, my wife.... I think any leader needs somebody who can get in your face and say " Boy, you really screwed that one up. You really blew it."

She calls him Boy? Insensitive x&Y%$, I'm outraged!.

This example, like the Tropic Thunder case is PC hypersensitivity at its worst. Seems ridiculous doesn't it.

History Channel special “9/11 Conspiracies: Fact or Fiction.”

"I'd like to be able to say that everything we're saying is backed up by fact."

-Dylan Avery- “Loose Change.”

I just finished watching the History Channel special “9/11 Conspiracies: Fact or Fiction.” and what surprises me most is the angry vehemence of the people that are so certain that they know, “The Truth”.
I have met a variety of these people over the years. Those that believed that the “X Files” was a documentary, each one sure that they knew the truth about, (insert your favorite conspiracy here.) and if I wasn’t so blind I would see it too. But those believers were generally loners or passed their little discoveries about the truth around their tight knit little community. The internet has changed all that and has made it possible for everyone to be a historian and develop a narrative of what happened on that September morning.

What they fail to realize is they are not historians. Historians compile evidence from primary sources in its complete and original context in a logical manner to reach conclusions that are verifiable by others to build a narrative of events. The Truthers, on the other hand build a narrative and then fill it with whatever evidence best fits. Mr. Avery illustrates this when during the re-edit for Loose Change 2. “We took the good parts from “Loose Change” then we put in some other things” Avery says chuckling.

As another of the Truthers put it "There is in my opinion, substantial evidence, that suggests..." This type of logic is rampant in a philosophy that is selling opinions packaged as proof by people that are not even qualified to decifer what the evidence is telling them.

The show did an excellent job of point by point refuting each argument using experts and witnesses. It also gave good insight into how and why these beliefs are formed. Catch it on the repeats Sat and Sun.

· Video. If you don’t have two hours, you can watch Penn and Teller debunk some of the loonier loons of the Truth Movement.
· Right wing Nuthouse: 9/11 TRUTHERS GUT PUNCHED BY HISTORY CHANNEL
· Skeptic Magazine

Loons

There are those that expect that the justice system is not interpretors of law but instead the final arbitor of morality. In this piece in the Saint Pete Times, we see comdemnation of the supreme court for not reaching a decision that fit the moral expectations of the writer. She writes;

"If there's a choice between casting their lot with the little guy and tipping a case toward compassion, or putting a foot on his throat, it's a safe bet that these four will be getting out their boots." And this; "Now we see that Roberts and Alito are cut from the same razor wire"

The implication that the supreme court is now the home of mean spirited, jackbooted, brown shirts is a cute use of rhetorical metaphor but it misses the mark in honestly interpreting the function of the court.

Free Speech TV

I awoke the other night to a show that was promoting the impeachment of the president for war crimes and crimes against humanity. "I must be dreaming" I said, but then realized that I had rolled over onto the remote and accidentally ventured into the upper reaches of the satellite spectrum where we never venture. Channel 4915 on the Dish Network is home to FSTV. As I watched dumbfounded I could only wonder what FS stood for. Frigging Socialist perhaps? I find it curious that the FCC would grant them licence under the regulations set aside for non-commercial educational programming. This is definitely not your PBS/CSpan programing
FSTV tauts itself as the channel that is:

Seizing the power of television to expand social consciousness, FSTV fuels
the movement for progressive social, economic, and political transformation. By exposing the public to perspectives excluded from the corporate-owned media, FSTV empowers citizens to fight injustices, to revitalize democracy, and to build a more compassionate world.

They pride themselves as having the guts to air things that you wont find on the MSM. Besides the Impeach Bush symposium the daily schedule is rife with Bush Hating Propaganda which includes a segment that connects Guantanamo Bay with the Texas prison system where Bush " took his first life" when as governor a prisoner was executed. Another where the president is criminally responsible for the New Orleans debacle and also a documentary narrated by Sean "Do as I say not as I do" Penn. For lighter fare there is "Toilet Training"that surveys the policing of gender in restrooms and a regular feature titled "The Connection" that asks;"How can we build a fairer and more compassionate world?"

I have ventured back several times out of curiosity and by the fact that I really enjoy that cold chill running up my spine.

Carbon Credits

I have been trying to figure out a way to cash in on the pompous guilt ridden carbon credit crowd but the always astute (clever and perceptive: shrewd and discerning, especially where personal benefit is to be derived (encarta)) IowaHawk has once again beaten me to the punch.

Potty Mouth Update

During the recent Bru- ha -ha over John Edwards hiring of a couple foul mouth blogger babes I wrote an oblique observation about the matter. I had always gotten the impression from my forays into the left wing of the blog"o"sphere that there was an uncontrollable cyberspace road rage in action. The News Bucket , using comedian George Carlin's "7 Words You Can't Say On TV" have gathered empirical evidence that this phenomena is indeed invasive on the left and to a lesser extent on the right.

Lead, Follow, or Get Out of the Way.

If not for the fact that it is so funny, it would be almost painful to watch the once emboldened Democratic Leadership, which ran an election as the party to end the war, wallow rudderless in the mire of disgraceful indecision. Their only actions to date required no real commitment on their part and the only ideas they are floating now have no chance of ending the war but are geared toward embarressing the president politically. As Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif recently lamented, "Bush hasn't to date done anything we've asked him to do, so why we would think he would do anything in the future is beyond me," and with the Bush's approval rating at 36% that tactic has little life left in it.
The Murtha Plan is DOA and the latest twist involves using budget waivers whereby anytime the president needs another box of ammo he will have to get authorization from congress. Biden has proposed revoking the original authorization but when Bush declared the end of major hostilities it could be argued that we are no longer working under that bill anyway.
So that brings us to defunding the Iraq operations, the one action that legally and constitutionally could stop the war. But for reasons that only the democrats can say (and they aren’t at this point) defunding has become the third rail of the debate and they are loath to pull the plug.
It must be painful to try to nuance your core beliefs in exchange for political expediency. (The use of methods that bring the most immediate benefits based on practical rather than moral considerations. (Encarta) In a time of war that expediency reaches another level. Mark Twain once said ;

Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn't. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your conviction is to be an unqualified and excusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let me label you as they may.

It is not at all unpatriotic to question the war but it is morally bankrupt not take the actions to back up your stated convictions.

Global Warming

The other night while skipping through the channels I paused for a moment on Larry King Live. Not a show I normally watch because I think it is a little morbid of CNN to use an interviewer that actually died in 1987, but I digress. What caught my attention was Larry’s guest Bill Nye the Science Guy was on, discussing the upcoming made for TV, end of the world as we know it, apocalypse now, topic of Global Climate Change. Formally known as Global Warming. What made this interview interesting was that Nye was debating MIT climitologist and infamous global warming denier Richard Lindzen.
I don’t know if Mr. Bill Nye Inc., Cornell University educated engineer, former Boeing employee, and sometimes comedian would use a topic as serious as the end of the world to promote his Science Guy schtick but it became pretty clear that Bill was out of his league in this debate.



What this clip doesn’t show is that after several more minutes of Nye lobbing the climate change mantra and Doctor Lindzen smashing every serve a flustered Nye switches gears and presses the Professor to admit that we ought to do it for the good of the people so they have clean air. He then goes on to say that we ought to do it because it would an economic boom as people make a switch to alternate energy. It appeared that his scientific arguments didn’t have much leg.

If Nye, Gore, and DeCarpio are the Science Front Guys for Climate Change then the awaiting disaster has all the credibility of Y2K, West Nile, Flu vaccine shortages, or any number of scares that in hindsight came no where near the point where we had a guy dragging a cart through the streets yelling "bring out your dead".

“Comic Interlude”

During my days in Alaska I witnessed the glaciers receding and I have no doubt that the earth's climate is changing. If there is one constant in this world it is change, but there are credible voices that say that the sky is not falling and as the global warming inquisition gains steam those voices have a right to be heard. As Lindzen said many years ago: "...the consensus was reached before the research had even begun. Now, any scientist who dares to question the prevailing wisdom is marginalized and called a sceptic, when in fact they are simply being good scientists."

Global Warming: The Cold, Hard Facts? : Timothy Ball, Canada Free Press

Al Gore Is a Greenhouse Gasbag :Professor Bob Giegengack, Penn St.

Fear, Complexity, & Environmental Management in the 21st Century :Michael Crichton

The real deal?: Lawrence Solomon, National Post; Ten part deniers series.

From the Loon Files.

PETA attacks Anchorage Church for Living Nativity Scene. End up with foot in mouth because of head in ass.

The Kos Part 2.

Another look into the mind of the man that declares that he runs the number one democratic activist web site on the internet.


Thanks once again to the Iowahawk.
Salmon Kos Part 1.

The Kos

Dean Barnett, writer extraordinaire, at Townhall has some notable insights into a segment of the blogging world. (It was Dean's "Soxblog" that inspired me to start blogging myself). Today he chastises those that use blogging not as a forum but as a hammer to justify their ends with little regard for the consquences. Most notably he talks about what he frequently refers to as the "Kos Kids".
As I wrote earlier, the tone of some of the stuff that comes out blogs like DailyKos is often crass and asinine. A short time ago I gained some insight into self-proclaimed king of the liberal blogging world, Markos Moulitsas, in a remark that he posted about at the tragic death of TV's Croc Hunter, Steve Irwin. He stated that he couldn't figure out why a person would put himself in such a dangerous position when he had children that were now fatherless. (This was also echoed by a couple of my professors at Tall Corn College).
Author Sherwood Anderson writes in his classic "Winesburg, Ohio", that if you want to be a writer instead of a run of the mill hack, you have to dream, you have to live, you have to have passion. You have to have the ability to understand a person and thier passions.
I have no doubt that Mr. Moulitas is a genuinely smart guy. According to his bio he has sheepskins stacked up like cordwood and he lists his occuption as writer, but without the ability to "dream" he will never fathom why a person would swim with sharks, climb a moutain, fly a plane, or any of the pastimes and professions that don't offer the comfort or safety of blogging and because of that it leaves the rest of his analysis and opinions looking hollow.

Loons; Part II

I recently wrote about an editorial in the Cedar River Rag that called on the government to address the claims of 9/11 conspiracy loons. They even gave several free column inches to a local loon to illustrate their point.
Well it seems that real scientists have been busy examining why the towers fell and their research has been released. I have linked to the National Institute of Science and Technology FAQ page. They also have a complete report HERE.
Since the Rag threw down the gauntlet on this subject they do have an obligation to follow up.


Please do not write to tell me that the people at NIST are part of the cover up.

Decline in Liberalists

The Wall Street Journal reports that youth for the Democratic Party are getting harder to find. In the long term, liberal politics will decline because liberals refuse to multiply. The system relys to a certain extent on Political socialization , the process in which individuals throughout their childhood learn about the world around them and use this as the basis for the opinions they hold as adults. Parents essentially handing down their political culture to the next generation.
What I found interesting in the article is what it did not say. Lack of offspring may be true in the rainbow arm of the liberal establishment but surely the rest of them have not taken a Vow of Chastity. Perhaps the low birthrate figures is not an unwillingness or inability to breed but is due in part to the fact that since 1973, 47,000,000 potential voters (plus their descendants) have been intentionally taken out of the electorate pool.
I suspect that liberals have a larger propensity to abort thier offspring than conservatives and this would be a huge factor in their future survival. Eventually they may even go the way of the Dodo.

Middle School teacher burns U.S. flags in class

An astute reader in Texas recently sent me this article. Certainly there are better teaching methods.

Feeding the Loons

For the folks that believe the X Files was a documentary, the Cedar River Rag today called upon the government to respond to new allegations that its version of events in the attacks on the World Trade Center are incorrect. Although the paper believes that debunking all conspiracies is a waste of time and money, this one somehow contains less bunk than the rest and merits government investigation.
The government spent $35 million on its report of the tragedy. At this point it is up to the historians to write the historical narrative of these times, and leave the loons to their vices.

There are a couple of things I am curious about though, that they surely should answer.
Is Bill Gates the head of the Department of Alien Technology?
Who really is running the world? ( I am looking for a new job and would make a heck of a benevolent despot. Where do I apply?)
What's up with all these pesky black helicopters?

Come on, fess up. We know the truth is out there.