Charlie Daniels sends a love letter to Congress

Specifically, he'd love them all to resign:

I wish you bunch of sold-out, jaded, burned-out hacks would just go home and let some people who still have some vision and whose consciences haven't been seared past the point of reminding them when they're wrong take over and start to claw this nation back on to the path of sanity,

Your ratings are in the single digits, your morals are in the gutter, your minds are on self-preservation and somewhere along the way you traded your honor for political expediency.

You've violated your oaths, you've betrayed your country you've feathered your nests and you've sat on your hands while an imperial president has rubbed your noses in the dirt time after time.

You're no longer men, you're puppets, you're caricatures, jokes, a gaggle of fading prostitutes for sale to anybody who can do you a political favor.

Don't hide your feelings, Charlie - tell us what you really think.

Tramautized delicate flowers

William Briggs (Statistician to the Stars!) ponders the crooked timber that is Man:

There’s a story in John Toland’s magisterial The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire (volume two) which depicts a Japanese ship transporting Western prisoners in conditions worse than on any (other) slave ship. It was dark, confined, covered in human filth, and unbearably hot. Unbearably is a strong and apt word. The men went mad and what they did to each other is difficult to relate. I won’t try. Few survived.

...

Do we need to discuss the Amalekites? The retreat from Moscow in 1812 (and again in the twentieth century)? The guillotine? Should we recall certain religious practices of the Aztecs? The scene in The Brothers Karamazov in which we learn that babies were tossed in the air to be bayoneted for amusement? The Goths? Cannibalism? The practice of sati (also spelled suttee)? Utopian scheme A, B, …?

Enough. It is impossible to be familiar with any serious literature and not realize the human race is fallen, that man is broken, that bad things have always happened and, at least in this form of our existence, always will. A vale of tears isn’t in it. Evil.

So what kind of childish naive sheltered coddled whimpering intellect would allow itself to be “traumatized” over reading about a minor criminal beating up a shopkeeper and then attempting to do the same to a policeman and getting himself killed in the attempt? Traumatized?

I’ll tell you: Columbia law students.

The rest is even better, as he demolishes the frivolous hot house flowers that inhabit today's Academy - students and Administrators.

The only thing that I would add is that many of the prisoners on that Japanese ship were the same age as the Columbia students.

Remember, that's why we call him "The Big Guy"

It would have been awesome if he'd said that to the guy's wife, LOL.

You have to be very well educated to be this stupid

PhD level stupid, in fact. University of Colorado at Boulder tells students to avoid costumes including cowboys ...

But what's offensive about cowboys?

A university spokesman called cowboy costumes a "crude stereotype."

Okay, I'll just go as a university spokesman.

It takes a PhD program to compress that much stupid until it becomes weapons grade.  And a really impressive inferiority complex.  Just sayin'.

Wow. That's pretty brutal.

I'm not saying that it's wrong, just that it's brutal.

Someone ask him how you change the oil on that danged thing.

9/11 Compare and Contrast

Offered without comment.

Pew, pew, pew!

I am so glad that we have a President that understands the American experience.

Found on Twitchy

I sure hope that his shotgun isn't semi-automatic or that the tube magazine doesn't hold more than seven rounds.  It would be too bad if New York or other Blue States had to come and arrest a sitting President.  Likely would cause some sort of unpleasantness or something.h

But if he's so good at the pew pew pew thing, go sign the petition to get him to invite someone skeet shooting.  Because he totally wouldn't lie to use that he could, you know, shoot or something.

I'm angry about the school shooting

"Angry" doesn't describe it, actually.

People's reaction to this atrocity enrage me:

• The Atlanta Falcons will have a minute of silence before their game on Monday.  This infuriates me, because it will do nothing to prevent this sort of thing in the future.  It's all preening - Look at me, I'm so sensitive.  Hey Atlanta Falcons, STFU if you're not going to do anything to prevent this in the future.  Just STFU.
  
• ESPN has told their employees not to tweet anything until Monday.  This infuriates me, because it will do nothing to prevent this sort of thing in the future.  It's all preening - Look at me, I'm so sensitive.  Hey ESPN, STFU if you're not going to do anything to prevent this in the future.  Just STFU.
• The Usual Suspects - I'm looking at you, Piers Morgan - are blathering idiocy about too many guns and the typical hand wringing.  This infuriates me, because it will do nothing to prevent this sort of thing in the future.  It's all preening - Look at me, I'm so sensitive.  Hey Piers Morgan, STFU if you're not going to do anything to prevent this in the future.  Just STFU.
• Politicians, School Boards, and Principals are intimidated by powerful lobbying interests, afraid to take common sense steps that would actually be effective in stopping this sort of thing in the future.  This infuriates me because these people take our coin, and are too scared to actually do what everyone knows needs to be done.  Our children are literally dieing because these people are too timid to do what needs doing.

What needs to be done is not more gun control. The UK banned guns after a horrific shooting at a kindergarten. Since that ban, gun crime has doubled in the UK, while it's plummeted here.  The Police didn't off the evil scum who shot those kids in Connecticut - he offed himself.  This is typical - the Police didn't shoot the Columbine shooter, or the Virgina Tech shooter.  No, we need a practical, common sense approach to school shootings.

We need armed teachers.

Right now, the only person with a gun in a school is an evil, criminal nut case.  Everyone is disarmed, by deliberate intent.  The nutcase will have maybe a half hour to work his evil before going out in a blaze of CNN.  Given the utter failure of the UK's almost complete ban on guns, this wouldn't change if we did the same here.

It would change completely if we had armed teachers.

#2 Son goes to a High School with 1,800 kids.  It has a lot more than 100 teachers.  If even 10% were armed, it would be simply impossible for an evil nut case to kill many kids before being dropped by the righteous return fire from a teacher.

And I am absolutely infuriated by all the people who are horrified by this suggestion, who instead cling to proven ineffective proposals like more gun control.  Infuriated, because these people either know better, or should know better, and instead choose to let our children bleed.  People who choose not to protect them.  People who refuse to trust our children's teachers, who rather take refuge in public displays of how sensitive they are.  People who flinch from confronting evil, even to protect children.

People who choose to enable evil, rather than confront it.  They dance in children's blood, to show how nice they are.  To show that they're better than we are.

It enrages me - makes me rage until my floor turns to lava.

UPDATE 14 December 2012 21:23: Omnia vincit amor. A calmer post that's worth your while.

And a prayer.  Amen.

UPDATE 16 December 2012 21:34: An outbreak of sanity:

A tiny Texas school district may be the first in the nation to pass a law specifically allowing teachers and staff to pack heat when classes begin later this month.

Trustees at the Harrold Independent School District approved a district policy change last October so employees can carry concealed firearms to deter and protect against school shootings, provided the gun-toting teachers follow certain requirements.

Of course sanity breaks out in Texas first.

I wonder if the Administration can sweet talk the Russians to send their ships the DNC showed at the convention to avenge our dead Ambassador in Libya.  In all honesty, it's probably a better response than what we're likely to see.

Adversity doesn't build character, it reveals it

Mr. Anthony Ortolani of Westminster, CO found himself facing adversity.  An avid mountain climber, he was scaling Mount Bierstadt with his German Shepherd, Missy.  Weather rolled in, and they began to descend.

Then Missy hurt her paw, badly enough that she couldn't walk.

We all hope that we will never be tested with a life or death choice, that the cup will pass from each of us.  We hope this particularly when we face the choice because of our own recklessness, and our loved ones are facing the outcome.  Anthony Ortolani had to decide what to do.

He left Missy in the snowstorm on the mountaintop and made his way to safety.  With this decision, he revealed all that we need to know about his character.

If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and man.

- Mark Twain

So much for Mr. Ortolani.  But have no fear, gentle reader, other climbers heard about the situation and revealed their character, too:

Monday morning, eight days after Missy was left, Washburn led a new search team of eight climbers. Chase Lindell and Alex Gelb volunteered to help.

“The thought of a dog slowly dying on the top of the mountain is tough to stomach,” Gelb wrote about his reasoning for joining the search.

The group powered through a snow squall near the summit of Mt. Bierstadt and found the dog right where Washburn had last seen it, on the treacherous sawtooth. They named the dog “Lucky” and took turns carrying the dog down the mountainside in a backpack.

Astonishingly, Mr. Ortolani wants Missy back.  The rescuers are suing to keep the dog that they saved.  Ortolani has been charged with animal cruelty, but is certain to escape the just sentence that would have been his in a younger and less degenerate age of the Republic - namely, being tarred and feathered.

Worst of all, Missy probably misses her master desperately.  Her pack is broken, even though she has had a significant upgrade in human companionship.  What captures our hearts about our canine friends is that they see us as we would be seen, not as we are.  Alas, this applies even to one such as Mr. Ortolani.

But while Missy will always see him as protector, the rest of us see him as he is: juvenile, reckless, and cowardly when the chips are down.  Missy may remain true to her breed and look at him with the eyes of loyalty, as she should.  I will look at him with the eyes of contempt, as I should.

No man likes to live under the eye of perpetual disapprobation.

- Dr. Sam Johnston

Mr. Ortolani is well advised to get used to it.

The media are largely responsible for the decline in civic discourse

Via Insty, we find a chin tugging complaint that while the whole Harry Reid is a Pederast meme is funny, it's wrong:

Nonetheless, while giving someone a “taste of his own medicine” is no doubt satisfying and perhaps even instructive, wrong is wrong, and spreading intentional lies, even about a public figure as devoid of decency and scruples as the Senate Majority Leader, is unethical. No conduct, no matter how nauseating, by its target can justify this. Stooping to Reid’s level can only further degrade civility and dignity in American public discourse, which is the objective of political sewer-dwellers like Reid, not anyone with the best interests of the nation in mind.

That last sentence strikes me as particularly wrong.  The Media in an earlier and less degraded age actually did act as a referee.  While there was probably never a time when they weren't biased, there was at one time a basic expectation of standards.  Harry Reid would have been pilloried by the media in the 1970s and 1980 for his "sumdood told me that Romney like totally didn't pay taxes" charge.

Quite frankly, when the media enforced basic standards, we did have a higher level of civility in the public discourse.

And then that all turned into 60 Minutes airing 30 year old Microsoft Word documents, and the baiting of Joe the Plumber, and the silence on the media's part towards Reid.  The media have decayed to the point that they see no need to enforce minimum standards of decency on one side, while imposing absurd standards on the other side ("You don't support Obama?  I wonder if it's because you're racist.").

And so to Mr. Marshall's complaint on ethics grounds.  What's interesting is that there's quite a lot of theory about this.  If we are interested in a long term enforcement of ethics norms, can that theory give us guidance as to the strategies most likely to result in higher levels of civility?  It can indeed.

Game Theory is the study of strategic decision making, and has been well studied for generations.  The Prisoner's Dilemma is one of its most famous problems - two prisoners are each offered a choice: give evidence against the other or not.  If neither rats the other out, they both will get light sentences.  If both rat out the other, they will both get longer sentences.  If one rats and the other doesn't, the rat goes free and the other serves a very long sentence:

	Prisoner B stays silent (cooperates)	Prisoner B betrays (defects)
Prisoner A stays silent (cooperates)	Each serves 1 month	Prisoner A: 1 year Prisoner B: goes free
Prisoner A betrays (defects)	Prisoner A: goes free Prisoner B: 1 year	Each serves 3 months

What's interesting is that politics falls very neatly into an "iterated prisoner's dilemma" model, where a series of incidents are played out, one following the other, in a never ending ethical dilemma.  So what strategy does Game Theory recommend to increase ethical outcomes (in this case, to prevent ratting)?

Tit For Tat is the model that optimizes outcomes.  The rules are as follows:

This strategy is dependent on four conditions, which have allowed it to become the most successful strategy for the iterated prisoner's dilemma:^[1]

1. Unless provoked, the agent will always cooperate
2. If provoked, the agent will retaliate
3. The agent is quick to forgive
4. The agent must have a good chance of competing against the opponent more than once.

In the last condition, the definition of "good chance" depends on the payoff matrix of the prisoner's dilemma. The important thing is that the competition continues long enough for repeated punishment and forgiveness to generate a long-term payoff higher than the possible loss from cooperating initially.

It's a perfect fit, and one that quite frankly used to be played by the media.  In days past, Senator Reid would have found that retaliation for his bogus charges would have come from them, in the form of increasingly disbelieving questioning and increasingly negative reporting about him.  He would have learned not to take that sort of tack in the future, as we see when Tit For Tat computer models run for multiple iterations - they fairly quickly reach a stable equilibrium with a minimum of rats.

Alas, the media have abdicated this role, and so the Internet has stepped up as an alternative channel.  My fundamental disagreement with Mr. Marshall is that he is not advocating for ethics in the long term, but only in the short term.  His quote again:

Stooping to Reid’s level can only further degrade civility and dignity in American public discourse

Tit For Tat disagrees, and in a world where the media no longer enforce the same ethical norms on both sides of the debate, the ethical payoff to "turn the other cheek" is precisely the continued degradation of civility that Mr. Marshall so rightly deplores.  In fact, the Harry Reid is a Pederast meme is precisely the correct response, because it is becoming so successful that the media may have to cover it - and there's simply no way to cover it without reference to Reid's own original charges.  In short, more of these may in fact nudge the media back towards a more neutral referee stance.  If not, the very success of the memes will hasten the media's demise.

In either event, we're likely to see increased levels of civility as one side finds that it is no longer able to rat on the other with impunity.

Targeting the Little Satan, or the Great Satan

So Iran is readying a nuclear test, and the entire Middle East is on tender hooks.  Everyone expects Iran to start lobbing nukes at Israel as soon as they roll off the assembly line.

I'm not sure that this makes sense.  After all, Israel is the "Little Satan".  There are other targets in the area that may be more interesting:

(AP) —  Iranian patrol boats and aircraft shadowed a U.S. aircraft carrier strike group as it transited the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday.

The passage ended a Gulf mission that displayed Western naval power amid heightened tensions with Tehran, which has threatened to choke off vital oil shipping lanes.

We are, after all, the Great Satan.  They've attacked us before.  The Revolutionary Guards are staffed with guys who would take a nuke on a one-way mission.  The current Administration is staffed with rookies, and the Iranians might be able to cause them to send two carrier groups.  I'd say "three", but that's just crazy talk.  Wait, what?

The push to get Iran to do something terminally irrational (now that USS Enterprise in its final tour of duty is almost on location just off the side of CVN-70 Lincoln and CVN-72 Vinson in the Arabian Sea, where the US will shortly have not one, not two, but three aircraft carriers) is now in its final stretch. As AP reported earlier, Iran has been now entirely cut off from the global financial system, as that anchor of international financial transactions, SWIFT, has just taken Iran off the grid. This leaves Iran with just three options for international trade: making gold into a fully convertible currency, barter, or exchanging Rials for Renminbi and other local currencies. As a reminder, virtually the entire non-parked naval fleet will be in the Arabian Sea and Persian Gulf in the next 4-6 days, where 3 aircraft carriers and one big-deck amphibious warfare ship are just waiting for the order.

Taking out a carrier or two would put a real crimp in any American response to an attack on Israel.  It likely would have a certain popularity in much of the International Community, unafraid of our Apologizer In Chief.

But hey, probably nothing to see here.  I mean, we have all the Right People® in the Oval Office now.  They have a (D) after their name, so everything's fine.  Oh, wait ...

Everybody chill out

I've got this, people.

I think I've heard that before.

I get the feeling that Cameron is cut from the same cloth.  I dare say we'll know
soon.

(Via #1 Son)

A helpful reminder when you're packing in your waistband

Finger off the trigger until you're lined up on target.  Boy, howdy.

The problem that Superhero Dads have

Oh, the Humanity ...



Somehow I have this picture of JayG as the Superhero Dad.  But that would be wrong.  Srlsy.

Like, don't go there, man.  It will hurt.

(Via #2 Son)

Quote of the Day

First Charlton Heston, then TJIC:

Seriously, though, I love this: a guy is complaining that he might be denounced.

’cause that is exactly what my grandfather, a Marine in the Pacific Campaign, worried about. Being denounced by some chick at the school bake sale.

Well, that and Japanese infantry.

Actually, no, I think it was mostly Japanese infantry that concerned him.

As a matter of fact, in between killing fascists, being an iron worker 40 stories above the streets of Manhattan, and raising a family of four kids, he probably didn’t take two milliseconds to give a rat’s ass about what anyone thought of him.

That man's simply hurtful. Must be something about ironworking, or something - he knows where to hit so it will leave a mark ....

Can I just say that I have a little crush on Jenny Sanford?

No, not like that. Like this:

When I found out about my husband's infidelity I worked immediately to first seek reconciliation through forgiveness, and then to work diligently to repair our marriage. We reached a point where I felt it was important to look my sons in the eyes and maintain my dignity, self-respect, and my basic sense of right and wrong. I therefore asked my husband to leave two weeks ago.

And this:

I believe enduring love is primarily a commitment and an act of will, and for a marriage to be successful, that commitment must be reciprocal. I believe Mark has earned a chance to resurrect our marriage.

And this:

Psalm 127 states that sons are a gift from the Lord and children a reward from Him. I will continue to pour my energy into raising our sons to be honorable young men. I remain willing to forgive Mark completely for his indiscretions and to welcome him back, in time, if he continues to work toward reconciliation with a true spirit of humility and repentance.

Translation: shape up and walk the line, mister.

Quite some time ago, I mused on the differences between Princesses and Cowgirls:

However, speaking as someone who several decades ago had to choose between princesses and cowgirls, I'd tell the boys to go with the cowgirls every day. As Postrel says:

I expected the museum to be stupid. It wasn't. In stark contrast to the ridiculous Women's Museum in Dallas, which (the one time I visited it) featured a strange combination of populist kitsch and social-constructionist feminist dogma, the Cowgirl Museum showcased women of no-nonsense character, pioneer (and pioneering) achievement, physical daring, and unapologetic femininity.

No-nonsense character. Pioneering achievement. Daring. Feminine. Yeah, baby.

That's what built this country, and it's alive and well in the South Carolina Governor's Mansion. Without the Governor.

Douchebag Driving School, Eurotrash Edition

Jay posts the list of Top Douchebag-mobiles. As an homage to the master, here's Helga from Unpimp My Ride, teaching new euroDouchebags the finer points of a GTI.

Snow? In New England? Srlsy?

It's not only December, it's nearly the Solstice. So not only is snow possible in New England, it's expected. So how do these hardened, experienced New Englanders react to the forecast of 6-9"?


Beef. It's What's For Dinner. Except in New England, where we're all out. I won't show you the toilet paper aisle. Oh the humanity!

Now southerners are not allowed to scoff (I remember school being canceled in Atlanta based on a forecast that there might be snow). However, you are hereby given leave to roll your eyes when some pompous Northerner talks about how they not only had to walk 5 miles uphill to school both ways, they had to shovel a path through the snow first.

I have to say that I do miss my old beater F250 pickup. Yeah it was a rustbucket, and yeah it kept breaking down, but it not only had a snowplow, it had an industrial sized snowplow. I was king of the road. But it was a beater, and it did break down, and I had to shovel once because it broke down.  I did the Happy Dance when we got rid of it.

I wanted a small plow for the Wrangler, like this. Not king of the road, but maybe prince of the road.


Don't do it, said the family. Get a snowblower, said the family. "If we get a snowblower," said I, "will you boys do the driveway?" Of course, they said.


And they did. Well, #1 Son did. He wouldn't be plowing in the Jeep, so this seems a win.

New Zealand men firing blanks?

Since neither of my regular readers is a kiwi, I'll point out the following from The Australian:

Research presented to a gathering of international fertility researchers in Brisbane today was told that the sperm volume carried by the average New Zealand man decreased from about 110 million to 50 million per millilitre between 1987 and 2007.

No problem in either Oz or the Home of the Brave:

This contrasts with Australia and the United States, where no decline has been seen. Studies from Scotland and France show marginal declines.

That's now serious the crisis is for kiwi men - the french are kicking your ass in manliness. Ouch.