iPod use FAIL

JayG tagged me on Facebook for an iPod exercise, basically seeing what shows up when you page through your playlist (pressing "Next" when in shuffle mode). Here's the problem: I don't have any music on my iPhone. And I can't find my iPod (one of the kids had it a year or two ago, and I don't know where it is).

The reason is that I run Ubuntu, and there's no way to sync the iPhone to it (well, now with Ubuntu 10.04 there is; I just haven't upgraded yet). I have a Mac laptop now that I'm at the new job, but it can't see my network drive, so I haven't downloaded my music. When it's a bit less busy, I'll get to it.

What's strange is that I get along just fine without an iPod or equivalent. I don't know if this is a Bad Thing for Apple or not, but I've been without their musical goodness for years now and simply don't miss it. I think that I bought 8 or 10 songs from iTunes a long time ago - so long ago that they didn't play even when I had an iPod, because they only gave you 5 authorizations for computers. With re-imaging on the Big Tech Company laptops, computer refreshes, etc, the DRM got to where I couldn't play them. I'm told that Apple can probably reset this for me, but it's not worth the bother.

It's funny, but I don't think of myself as a luddite, but I just don't miss not having this.

The coming Democrat election disaster

It's beginning to take form, and it's as easy to see as A-B-C.

"A" is for Apathy

Just like the Republican base was demoralized in 2006 and 2008, the Democratic base seems increasingly despondent. Polls are bad enough - even from in-the-bag media organizations like NPR:

NPR concentrated on the 435 congressional districts and asked voters in those districts with an incumbent on the ballot: “As you may know, there will be an election for your representative to Congress in November this year. Do you think you will definitely vote to re-elect [your incumbent House representative] to Congress, probably vote to re-elect [your incumbent House representative], probably vote for someone else, or definitely vote for someone else?”

...

In Democratic districts, 56% said they will not re-elect the incumbent.

In Republican districts, 39% said they won’t vote to re-elect the incumbent.

39% opposed to their incumbent is very high in this land where re-election rates for the House have exceeded re-election rates for the Supreme Soviet. But 56% opposed is simply off the chart. Remember, these are Democratic districts, and they don't like their Democrat. Will they vote against him? Almost certainly not. Will they turn out and vote for him? Good luck with that. Democratic voter turnout will be very low this November, while Republicans and Independents are energized.

"B" is for Bungling

The media looks fed up with the incompetence coming from the White House. They even put up with the contemptuous way the Administration treated them, but now with the Gulf oil spill the cracks are appearing all over:

[The Left's] hatred and contempt for George Bush made them actually believe that he was every bit as stupid as they said he was. A village in Texas was missing its idiot, to be sure.

So it couldn’t be hard to improve handily on what he’d done as president. And what better person to do so than the smart, articulate, liberal candidate Obama? No experience necessary.

Well, as things have turned out, they are starting to learn that it’s not that simple. Obama’s handling of the oil spill is making Bush’s Katrina response look good, much to their anger and chagrin.

The media is already bleeding, and staked pretty much their entire reputation on getting Obama elected. They didn't report all sorts of things that are now clear to any fool who bothers to look. Do they turn on Obama, or on a massively unpopular Congress that passed a massively unpopular (and unread) Health Care bill? The Press is a Herd Creature, and the herd looks like it's starting to break. They have to blame someone, and political correctness suggests that they can't bring themselves to turn on Obama in a way that will hurt. But they'll need a target, and that target will be Congress: savaging incumbents will be popular, and will attract readers and viewers.

C is for Clinton

C is also for "Cunning". She'll be 65 in 2012; 69 in 2016. If she doesn't take on Obama in 2012 and he loses to the Republican, she'd run against an incumbent in 2016. Her shot is 2012.

This one is really interesting, because her supporters may be so turned off by the party that they won't vote even for her:

That vote they took [Health Care Reform], in as much secrecy as possible, rushing through an economy-killing piece of legislation that none of them even read, let alone comprehended, was the [Hellen Thomas] “Go back to Poland!” moment for every Democrat in office. They showed their true worth, abilities, and colors that day. Not a single one of them deserves to be in elected office.

So, this is an area where we have to break from the Clintons, whom we’ve supported and admired our entire political lives.

The Clintons, clearly, are trying to save the Democrat Party by propping up Democrats like Lincoln, and other moderates across the country. In the midst of the Democrat Civil War, the Clinton and the DLC are trying to save these Clintonian/Jacksonian Dems from not just angry voters, but the vitriol thrown at them by the Left.

It’s a continuation of what the Left started in 2008, actually, where Donna Brazile, Howard Dean, and others in the DNC hatched their plan to purge the party of moderates. They deliberately have alienated working class, rural, and conservative Democrats (now former Democrats) to drive the party squarely to the Left, putting radical Leftists in the nation’s driver’s seat for the first time in history.

The results speak for themselves.

The Clintons know a shellacking is coming in November. It’s sad and hilarious the Left doesn’t realize this, and keeps insisting the problem is that the Left just isn’t communicating its ideas better. No — the problem is that the Left’s ideas and agenda are insane and destructive, and that the tactics they employ to advance their pet projects are rooted in base thuggery, intimidation, fraud, and all things un-American. The electorate is having a visceral reaction to all of this, and just as Democrats purged the Clinton Coalition from the party in 2008, American voters are poised to purge Leftists from office in the fall.

And the problem for the DNC is that they rebranded ALL Democrats as Leftists in 2008. Proudly so.

The Clintons are trying to mitigate the damages to the party and save people like Lincoln, in the hopes that after the Obama Democrats fall, the Clintons can take back the party, move it back to the middle, rebuild it, and then probably try to run Hillary Clinton again in 2016 once Americans see Democrats as centrists again.

We just don’t think this will work.

We believe the Democrat Party is a dead man walking.

The Obama people did so much damage to the Democrat brand in this the Golden Age of Hope and Change that we don’t see any way for even the best Madison Avenue agencies to repackage the party and make it palatable enough for a Democrat to be trusted enough by the public to occupy the Oval Office again for another generation.

And this post is by Democrats, on a Democrat blog. It's a very long post, with a lot of comments, and you should absolutely RTWT.

These people are in the grip of the apathy described above, but Hillary is running out of time and opportunity. Come Thanksgiving, she will start to position herself as the savior of the Democratic Party, which will mean publicly throwing Obama's agenda under the bus. This will include Health Care Reform, although she'll position it as "badly done". The comparisons of Obama to Carter will then include Hillary playing the part of Ted Kennedy in a primary challenge. Unlike Kennedy, she might win.

More sober heads are cautioning against overstating the Republican's chance in November. I think that things are much, much worse for the Democrats than anyone is saying, because turnout patterns will give Republicans a ten point advantage that they wouldn't normally have. I think that the Stupid Republican Party is fixin' to sweep the board in November.

I think that this is probably a Bad Thing, since the Republicans are likely to think that people are voting for them rather than against the Contemptible Democratic Party. Many people will feel the temptation of the tactical - a big win for Republicans. A more strategic play is to vote all incumbents out, because the message needs to be "we hate all of you".

Only when they fear us more than they are tempted by the existing power game rewards will we break them to our will.

What do Democrats think of Obama's speech?

President Obama gave a speech to the nation about the Gulf oil spill last night. It's been widely panned in the blogosphere, and even by normally friendly talking heads like Keith Olbermann. So who do Democrats think? We actually know - it was predicted two years ago.



UPDATE: My take (from 8 months ago) is here.

Lissa made me go to the bathroom

To write about which books were in the Chez Borepatch Throne Room:

So. What reading material is lying around your bathroom? I’m tagging Jay G, Borepatch, Calvin’s Mom, Mike W and Carteach. (And Shoothouse Barbie, but only as an honorary mention ’cause I know she’s got a writing assignment.)

The reading rack consists of:

Not So Wild A Dream, by Eric Sevareid, his memoirs of his experiences as a radio broadcaster in Europe in the lead up to and during the Second World War. Way interesting.

Hope Is Not A Strategy, by Rick Page. About selling. You'll like this, but only if sales is your bag, baby.

How I Accidentally Joined the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy (And Found Inner Peace), by Harry Stein. The title about says it all. If you're a knuckle-dragging nekulturny Denier like me, you'll like this.

The Mismeasure of Man, by Stephen Jay Gould. A bit disappointing re-reading it after 20 years - it's politics are showing.

Watching Baseball, by Jerry Remy. If you're new to Baseball wand want to understand it, or if you've watched it for years but want to understand the strategy, this is worth a read.

National Geographic, June 2008. Probably need to take this somewhere (throw it out? Does anyone ever throw National Geographic out?)

People Magazine, February 25, 2009. Cover story of "Hero Pilot" Chesley Sullenberger. Pretty amazing story, even if it is in People.

The American Rifleman, June 1945. A much appreciated - and thumbed through - gift from ASM826.

There you have it. Kind of boring - no fiction, but I really don't read much fiction.

And Lissa says to pass it on, so I'll tag ASM826 (and probably kill any chance of free future copied of old gunnie mags), To Old To Work, Too Young To Retire (just to see how many EMS manuals he has in his bathroom), and Lone Star Parson (because I just know that his list includes Aquinas, or Gibbon - or maybe both).

So who was a better General: Patton or MacArthur?

Via Aretae, I find myself pulled by the gravitational (gravitas?) field into Foseti, which offers a cornucopia for the thinking blogger. For example, Patton or MacArthur?

Patton complained about US policy and faded (i.e. was pushed) into the background. MacArthur – because he was operating in the theater that policymakers didn’t care about and because he was loved by the citizens in the countries that the US was operating in – took policy into his own hands. The result was a relatively stable, pro-US Asia and the rise of the biggest economies outside the US. The only exceptions to this general rule – Korea and Vietnam – were undertaken against MacArthur’s advice by the policymakers who otherwise ignored Asia. The result in Europe was a stalemate between great powers, enslavement of half of Europe’s population, and 50 years spent on the brink of nuclear annihilation. Is this even a comparison?

Or the nature of Man:

I believe that the vast majority of men yearn to follow a leader. If allowed to freely pursue "their own ends" they would walk in circles. Some subset of men seek power. Among this subset, some are good and some are bad. I don’t see how one can read any serious quantity of history and disagree with my position. If you disagree, explain war, religion or the rise of nations without reference to men believing in causes and leaders.

Or the nature of Woman (err, not exactly, but the heading was irresistable):

Women are rising in many professions. Unfortunately, they are doing so only with massive subsidy from the government. This subsidy comes in the form of forcing men to pay child support to women who automatically get children in divorce, direct subsidies for working mothers, daycare subsidies, tax breaks, etc. Women may be rising, but an economy based on women-only work is as unthinkable as Greece fully honoring its debt.

Or the nature of Society:

Voting out one set of pols won’t change the results. The elites are the system and the system is the elites. It is so now. It has always been so. It always will be so.

My point (take it as the formalist point) is that along the spectrum of "societies for human beings" there is no choice of a system that doesn’t have elites. A society that has no elites would have to be a non-human society. Human societies create elites. Elites are the system.

Mind you, these were all posted yesterday. Yowzer. That's a lot of Intellectual grist for the thinking mill, right there.

I'm not at all sure that I agree with most of this (and am pretty sure that I don't agree with a lot of this). But if you're looking for something to make you stop and think, about all sorts of things, presented in a delightfully curmudgeonly manner, this should be a waystop for your bloggy adventuring.

Gunblogger Terminology

My Ancestors Were Horse Thieves has it for you:

ARSENAL - Any number of weapons higher than one according to the MSM

...

LOOPHOLE - Something legal that some people feel should not be. See the Gun Show Loophole for a good example

...

WOOKIE-SUITER - Science fiction reading, small "l" libertarians. Complete definition here (with picture).

Yeah, I know this is old. I'm slow lately. Lots more there, so RTWT.

Pucker Factor

Dialed up to eleven:Nice view. But what's that sound?

The lighthouse at La Jument (at the westernmost point in the English Channel) is 150 feet tall.
The lighthouse keeper was stranded, and waiting for a helicopter to take him off. He went out to see if it was there at just the wrong moment. He ducked back into the lighthouse, and survived.

What wind farms actually generate

Government Subsidies:

The [UK] Government pays an indirect subsidy, a “renewable obligation”, or RO – and putting up a wind turbine is the cheapest way to collect it. In contrast to better renewable technologies, a turbine is inexpensive to build, perhaps around £2 million, and it lasts at least 20 years.

The total RO paid to the wind industry last year was £400 million. So each of Britain’s wind turbines earned, on average, £138,000 in subsidy last year – more than Mrs Clegg’s husband makes. Add in the profits from selling the electricity they generate and after construction costs are cleared, you will be making nearly £300,000 per year per turbine, half of it courtesy of the Government.

This is me, looking shocked. Like those German solar power plants where they lit them up with floodlights at night because the subsidized "solar" rates were so much higher than fossil fuel rates. Also in the article:

But Professor David MacKay, who is now chief scientific adviser at the Department of Energy and Climate Change, has pointed out that in autumn/winter 2006/7 there were 17 days when output from Britain’s wind turbines was less than 10 per cent of their total capacity. On five of those days, output was below 5 per cent and on one day it was only 2 per cent. And those were the windier seasons.

To cope with what’s called “intermittency”, you must do two things.

First, you have to build far more wind turbines, in far more places, than you theoretically need. Prof MacKay says: “We need to be imagining industrialising really large tranches of the countryside.” Every view, from every summit in Britain – apart, perhaps, from a handful of specially preserved recreational mountains – will be like the view from Plynlimon.

...

The second thing you have to do is build more conventional, carbon-emitting power stations. Unlike wind farms, these can provide electricity predictably and more or less on demand.

Welcome to "Green" power: intermittent, unreliable, and so insanely subsidized that you run conventional generators to make up for them. Higher cost, higher pollution, higher unreliability. But at least it lets Lefties feel better about themselves while they screw poor people and rape Mother Gaia.

Forget Carbon Credits; the UK.Gov needs to buy Smug Credits.

(via)

2,500, a few dozen. Whatever.

Remember the "Scientific Consensus"? How the IPCC said that 2,500 scientists were behind its conclusions? Remember the ad?


Nazzo fast:

The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change misled the press and public into believing that thousands of scientists backed its claims on manmade global warming, according to Mike Hulme, a prominent climate scientist and IPCC insider. The actual number of scientists who backed that claim was “only a few dozen experts,” he states in a paper for Progress in Physical Geography, co-authored with student Martin Mahony.

“Claims such as ‘2,500 of the world’s leading scientists have reached a consensus that human activities are having a significant influence on the climate’ are disingenuous,” the paper states unambiguously, adding that they rendered “the IPCC vulnerable to outside criticism.”

Gee, ya think?

(via)

Must read post about Government

There's so much smart packed into this post that it's in danger of collapsing into a Black Hole of Smart:

Foseti said:

the root of the problem is democracy.

I disagree.

The root of the problem is:
Because the interests of the elite do not match the interests of the whole of society, the natural flow of governance is for elites to aggregate ever more power, and the populace to become ever more immiserated. Mandarin China, Louis XIV France, and Tsarist or Communist Russia is the rest-state for relations between government and subject. Government extracts as much as it can, subject lives in soul-crushing poverty.

The depressingly elegant thing about this is that the game theory is stable. Take the folks who make decisions, build as small a stable coalition as you can, and divide the spoils among the small coalition. It's as inexorable a solution as gravity, given power politics.

This is what governments do when they can. The core challenge of government is how to prevent that.

This is indeed how they roll, from the Forbidden City to Versailles to Washington D.C. to your local city council. Go read.

The secret, of course, if to vote incumbents out so that the remaining pols fear us more than they are encouraged by their rent-seeking cronies. Voltaire was right: In this country it is wise, from time to time, to kill an Admiral to encourage the others.

Vote 'em out. Every Man Jack and Woman Jill. The new ones will be just as bad, of course, but at least they'll be scared. Only this will break them to our will.

The European Elite, lost in the Intellectual Desert

Ken Anderson at Volokh looks at the reaction of one of the pre-eminent European Philosophers to the debt crisis and the threat to the euro. The reaction: this is the best you can do?

In the process of blaming the Germans, however, he also sends a collateral attack on the amoral, cool calculation of interest form of thinking that arises an attachment to economics-rational interest forms of thinking, on the one hand, and an atavistic attachment to sovereignty, on the other. So, a narrow utilitaritarianism in the form of rational choice economics in the service of an outmoded sovereignty. Habermas’ response is to call down for doubling down on the bet on European union in every sense — economic, fiscal, political, and the construction of a shared European identity;

Do it again, only harder. Halbermas rejects not only the response of the European governments, he rejects the example of this side of the pond as well:

Hmm ... Habermas, and the European elite for which he is the celebrated chief public intellectual, are not exactly enamored of that homely American sentiment, “Here, the people rule.” It is impossible within Habermas’ account — faithfully reflecting German and European history — to disentangle patriotism from nationalism, a fundamental difference of political experience that is one of the chief reasons why American intellectual elite attempts to ape their presumed European betters are so far-fetched, ill-suited, and ultimately ugly. (The historian John Lukacs has written deeply on this distinction; it is one that, I sorrow to say, eludes most international law professors of my acquaintance.) The inability to formulate such a distinction is a principal reason for the European elite attachment to both the EU and the ideals of global constitutionalism.

He's in his own mental box and can't get out. Never mind that things aren't working, and the wheels are starting to come off; never mind that the United States has outperformed the European Union experiment throughout the entire lifetime of that experiment. Pay no attention to those existence proofs - the philosophy has to be correct.

Sheesh. And these guys like to sneer at us for being idiot cowboys.

Life is loud

Really loud at home, and I'm at a new job, and it's even busier than a new job usually is. I'll do my best (I have tons of blog fodder), but it may be hit or miss for a couple days.

But Sitemeter tells me that it's hard for me to compete with the Celtics-Lakers. I guess that means i'll see y'all on Wednesday ...

Accuracy, schmacuracy

Don emails to point out an article examining an astonishing statement from NOAA, the US Weather service:

The following remarkable statement now appears on the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) site:

For detecting climate change, the concern is not the absolute temperature — whether a station is reading warmer or cooler than a nearby station placed on grass — but how that temperature changes over time.

The root of the problem? NOAA’s network for measuring temperature in the United States has become corrupted by artificial heat sources and other issues.

Surfacestations.org is a cooperative effort that has had volunteers physically most of the US weather stations that feed data into the climate record databases. The volunteers take photographs, and stations are analyzed for compliance with NOAA siting guidelines. NOAA recommends that stations be sited in grassy areas far from asphalt, buildings, and machines generating waste heat (for example, ait conditioning compressors).

How many stations comply? 10%.

Are they truly saying the accuracy of the temperature readings don’t matter? Yes, they are! But why?

The NOAA climate measuring network is so broken there is literally no way to fix it. Reacting to criticism of this annoying fact — and to cover up its significance — NOAA now says accuracy simply doesn’t matter, the temperature reading itself is not as important as the trend. This is clearly a deceptive political statement meant to distract the reader from the truth.

Of course the accuracy of the temperature reading matters!

Remember, a warming of only one degree Fahrenheit over the last 160 years is what the warmists claim to be evidence of manmade global warming. (And of course, half of that warming occurred from 1910 to 1945, before they claim the presence of any significant human influence.)

...

This means that among numerous other violations, most climate measuring stations have artificial heat sources within 33 feet of the thermometers. Examples of these heat sources: buildings, roads, air conditioning vents, heat reflecting surfaces, stations located on top of roofs, in confined areas that restrict air flow, at waste treatment plants that generate heat, and on asphalt parking lots.

All of these influences introduce a warming bias to the measured temperature. Many of these warm biases were introduced in the last 25 years. During this time, a new generation of thermometers — the MMTS/Nimbus thermometers — were gradually installed across the country. These thermometers are hardwired to the weather station or building where the readings are recorded. Because of this wiring, the thermometers have been repositioned closer to heat sources. The older, more pristine locations were too far away to run the cables — there were too many things in the way like buildings, roads, and other infrastructure. The installers simply moved the thermometers closer to make the installations easier and more economical.

Longtime readers have heard me repeatedly complain about the very poor quality of the temperature record databases. It's a very poor reflection on the state of climate science that this is simply accepted as a normal way of doing business. It's mighty convenient to turn a blind eye to critical flaws in the data, when the flaws reinforce your conclusions.

The problem for climate scientists, of course, is that even sixth graders can do better science.

More "Common Sense" gun control laws

This one is about the "felons should lose their right to possess firearms" bit. Eugene Volokh finds teh crazy in the Michigan state law code:

The statute, Michigan Penal Code § 750.532, provides,

Any man who shall seduce and debauch any unmarried woman shall be guilty of a felony, punishable by imprisonment in the state prison not more than 5 years or by fine of not more than 2,500 dollars ....

On a snarky note, I thought it was southern rednecks who were supposed to be the bluenoses, but I digress. Volokh points out how this law is currently used (roughly 20 convictions in the last 10 years), and the problem with this:

One story on the subject, John Schneider, It’s a Crime, Lansing State Journal, Feb. 15, 2000, at 1B, reports that,

[A]ssistant Ingham County Prosecutor Sam Smith ... explained that in the case that appeared in the newspaper, simple seduction wasn’t the original charge. The man was charged with a more serious offense. The seduction plea became, as Smith put it, the “resolution” to the case. That’s most often how it’s employed, Smith said — as a “reasonable resolution.”
Smith stopped short of saying that consensual sex between consenting unmarried adults would never be prosecuted as a crime, but admitted it would be rare. Of course if one of the parties is married, the crime becomes adultery, but that’s rarely prosecuted, either, Smith said.

But this still strikes me as wrong. Say someone refuses to accept such a “reasonable resolution” and pleads not guilty, perhaps because he claims the sex was consensual and that he shouldn’t have to go to jail for it. Nothing in the law keeps the prosecutor from charging the person both with the more serious offense (presumably rape) and with seduction, so that even if the jurors accept the man’s story, they’ll still convict him of seduction.
I don’t think we should put our trust in the noblesse oblige of prosecutors when it comes to sex crimes any more than when it comes to speech crimes. Seduction shouldn’t be criminal just so that prosecutors find it easier to reach plea bargains in rape cases.

Make enough behaviors into felonies, and you can take away people's rights. A convenient transfer of power to the government here: not only does this make their job easier, but it makes everyone defer to government officials; after all, who wants to call attention to yourself that could result in a felony prosecution for a trivial act, based on the prosecutor's discretion?

It seems that in a less degraded age of the Republic, the response would have been tar and feathers.

Blogroll Additions

Mycroft Holmes 4 describes himself as an "engineer disturbed by the lack of rational thought in modern society." Can't really argue with that. He writes about movies he's seen, pointing out lack of rational thought - like in the new Robin Hood flick:

First, Robin the archer deserts his post with the other archers in order to charge into battle waving a warhammer. He’s joined by Marion (in custom armor, no less) who is now an expert swordswoman. She’s followed by a group of lost boys on small horses. Then Robin the archer goes toe-to-toe with Godfrey using a sword.

Not to mention the horrible shaky-cam (complete with close-ups) during the Saving Private Ryan style French landing. Ridley Scott is renowned for his directing style in movies like Alien, Bladerunner and Gladiator. Watching the Saving Private Ryan ripoff, all I could wonder is what the hell happened?

So much for that, then. I'm with him about the whole "rational thought" thing, and get all distracted by this sort of Hollywood silliness.

A Geek with Guns is, well a geek with guns:

I’m a self proclaimed geek, a stereotypical one at that. I like dinking with computers, watching and reading science fiction, and getting into long arguments about why operation system X is better then Y.

I’m also a huge gun nut.

None of that here (cough! Ubuntu Linux! cough!) ...

You really should check out his post on the awesomest guitar evar (spoiler alert: AK-47 is involved) which is, well, the awesomest guitar evar.

Welcome to the blogroll, folks! If anyone out there has been kind enough to blogroll me, but I haven't reciprocated, please leave a comment or shoot me an email.

"Sarah Palin, give me back my Legions!"

In fact, they saw that he was so greatly affected that for several months in succession he cut neither his beard nor his hair, and sometimes he would dash his head against a door, crying: "Quintilius Varus, give me back my legions!"

- Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars, Augustus, XXIII

It's not clear that the Roman defeat at Teutoburg was the worst military disaster in their history, but it's not clear that it wasn't. Three entire Legions, with associated Cavalry and Auxiliaries were wiped out almost to a man by German barbarians. The three Eagle emblems of the Legions were captured and displayed as booty by Hermann, their chief. You didn't rise to become Imperator of the entire civilized world without being tougher and more ruthless than your rivals, but this defeat seems to have unhinged Caesar Augustus. The idea that almost a fifth of the entire Roman army could be annihilated by naked savages was more than he could take. It ended the Roman drang nach osten into Germannia, and fixed the border of the Empire at the Rhine. To underestimate your opponent - as Varus and Augustus certainly did - is to invite disaster. Much of the Left is doing the same with Sarah Palin ("I can see Russia from my house!"), with predictably disastrous consequences. Which vision of healthcare is closer to the American public's? The Imperial Government version as defined in the 2000 opaque pages of the Obamacare bill, or her "Death Panels"?  

 Americans, by large margins, simply do not trust the Government to do the right thing, and she tapped into that. The Progressive Legions lost that battle, and Palin has the Eagles (figuratively speaking; perhaps literally come the November elections). But they continue to underestimate her:

Sarah Palin made a surprise appearance on The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien tonight—and turned the tables on actor William Shatner. Shatner mockingly read passages from Palin's blockbuster Going Rogue—including ones about rapper Kid Rock and stalking sheep. Afterward, it was Palin's turn to read from Shatner's Up Till Now. The former Alaska governor's selections included one in which Shatner talks about visiting an African elephant "in my underwear." After the readings, there appeared to be no hard feelings. The two left the stage arm-in-arm.

She's gotten inside their head, as hilariously lampooned by Iowahawk:

Now where were we? Oh yes, Tina Fey. Now, just the other day Tina... umm... is everything all right? I mean, you have the strangest look in your subthalamus. Oh...! Oh, this. The bikini. Funniest thing. Turns out once I'm inside a liberal's head, It's like poof! Off with the clothes. I tell ya, it's gotten to the point that I really don't even notice it anymore. No, don't be embarrassed or ashamed, most of your friends don't even give me the bikini. Whoa! Did you feel that? I think I felt a little earthquake! Oh -- I see. It was just you, banging your head against the stair banister trying to get me out of it. Trust me, you might as well give up on that, because it's not gonna work. Just ask Tina Fey.

Why is the Left in full give-me-back-my-Legions garment rending fury? It's not a rational response, they're reacting to Palin as a symbol. She embodies a force that contradicts their world view. The Roman model is top-down, and has appealed for centuries to the Intellectual Elites who see themselves as potential Imperators, or at least Equites, fit by birth or by Class to instruct the Lower Orders. Palin is through and through representative of the Germanic/Celtic bottom-up system, where talent and determination is more important than Class membership. Coming from nowhere, the Left simply cannot conceive that she could successfully lead opposition to the "Civilized World". And so the deep political crisis of the day is whether she's had a boob job. Meanwhile, the November elections approach. Tactical brilliance will help save some of the Democrats, but the others are surrounded by enraged barbarians voters who see them as arrogant, out of touch, and ruling not for the people (bottom-up) but rather for their K Street lobbyist cronies (top-down). Progressives in general and the Intellectual Left in particular hate the market because it is chaotic and bottom-up, and has no deference to the Intellectual Elite's top-down pretensions. That's what Palin represents, and why they refuse to recognize her has the adversary she really is. Doing so would force them to confront the reality that an Ivy League degree (and Ivy League student debt) doesn't qualify them to rule, that results and not class membership are what matter, and that a horde of barbarians can cut the cream of the Imperial army to pieces when it coalesces around the right leader. Is she the right leader? Time will tell. But so long as the Left continues to spin fantasies about the opposition, their drang nach osten towards a Progressive Utopia is stalled.

Not by treachery, not against pregnant women, but openly against armed men do I wage war. There are still to be seen in the groves of Germany the Roman standards which I hung up to our country's gods. Let Segestes dwell on the conquered bank: let him restore to his son his priestly office; one thing there is which Germans will never thoroughly excuse, their having seen between the Elbe and the Rhine the Roman rods, axes, and toga. Other nations in their ignorance of Roman rule, have no experience of punishments, know nothing of tributes, and, as we have shaken them off, as the great Augustus, ranked among deities, and his chosen heir Tiberius, departed from us, baffled, let us not quail before an inexperienced stripling, before a mutinous army. If you prefer your fatherland, your ancestors, your ancient life to tyrants and to new colonies, follow as your leader Arminius [Hermann] to glory and to freedom rather than Segestes to ignominious servitude.

- Hermann's speech to the Germanni, Tacitus, Annals, 1.59

The Romans did finally retrieve their Eagles, and enshrined them in the Temple of the Avenging Mars. But their border remained the Rhine, and the Germanni unconquered. In the fullness of time, their top-down Empire collapsed of ts own weight, as an indifferent lower class and an incompetent ruling class proved unable to save the Caesars from a bottom-up world. Surrounded like Varus, they disappeared under a wave of barbarians. And good riddance. The Dinosaurs smell change on the air, and roar their defiance.

Another home made rifle

This is getting out of hand. First, RobertaX writes to tell us of the dude in China who's shooting at the eviction crew with a home made rifle, now we have a dude who not only builds a sniper rifle in his basement, but posts a video of it up on Youtube:



He does not tell us how many Lego bricks it took him, but he does provide specifics:

This is by far the best rifle I have ever made. It is a working magazine-fed rifle in bolt-action configuration, with detachable magazines, sniper scope and bi-pod

You can see a video here that explains all of what I'm about to say

'Bolt action' means that every time you want to load a round, you flick the bolt lever up, pull it backwards, push it forwards again and flip it down. By doing this you will extract a 1x4 [Lego] brick from the magazine, pull back the 'hammer' (rubber band), insert the brick into the chamber and hook the rubber band onto the back of it.

If it's this easy to manufacture firearms, no wonder the Brady crew is on a suicide watch.

Via Don, in email.

Eddy Arnold - Cattle Call

Roy Roger's six shooters are being auctioned, and so cowboys everywhere are sitting up. When you think cowboy music you think of Roy, and Gene Autry, but also Eddy Arnold.

The son of a sharecropper, the "Tennessee Plowboy" dropped out of High School to help on the farm. Good with a guitar and blessed with a good singing voice, he started playing on the radio as a teenager, and was ultimately discovered by Col. Tom Parker, the same manager who discovered Elvis. Arnold "only" sold 85 million records in a career that spanned over sixty years.

His sound was a "pure" country one until the 1950s, when the newfangled Rock 'n Roll cut into sales. With Jim Reeves, Arnold reworked his sound to appeal to a wider audience. The resulting "Nashville Sound" was the precursor of Patsy Cline's "Countrypolitan".

It was pretty controversial - some folks didn't think it was "real country". But it sure sold records. His 1965 "Make the World Go Away" was an international hit.

Cattle Call is from the early days, with a purer country sound. Something that Roy certainly knew.



Cattle Call (Songwriter: Tex Owens)

The cattle are prowlin',
The coyotes are howlin'
Way out where the doggies roam
Where spurs are a jinglin'
And the cowboy is singing
His lonesome cattle call

He rides in the sun
'Til his days work is done
And he rounds up the cattle each fall
Singing his cattle call

For hours he would ride
On the range far and wide
When the night wind blows up and slow
His heart is a feather
In all kinds of weather
He sings his cattle call

He's browned as a fairy
From ridin' the prairie
And he sings with an western drawl
Singing his cattle call

The Nashville Sound was very different indeed. Here's Eddy with Dean Martin in 1965:



Pretty fun, although not particularly country. Eddy Arnold died only a couple years ago, two months after the death of his wife of 66 years. Quite a run there, too.

I got a facelift

For the blog, not for me (like it'll help me anyway). Blogger has some new templates, and I've hated all the blank space on the left hand side of the screen for a long, long time. I also (slightly) prefer the font.

Let me know what you think.

UPDATE 11 June 2010 17:38: Man, you want to score a ton of page views, go into the new "Designer" feature of blogger and try looking at different layouts. Each one of these counts as a page view. Kind of cheating, really. But they have a couple of new nice templates, and some really hideous ones.

"The science about global warming has changed."

Everybody's favorite Republican Senator (Climate Change subdivision) was South Carolina's Lindsay Graham. He was one of the co-sponsors of the Cap-and-Trade legislation, meaning he had the proper bona fides from the Greens (not that any of them would ever vote for him). And he seemed to be a true believer, too; earlier this year when asked about a rival bill put forward by Dick Luger which lacked Carbon limits, he called it "half-assed".

Suddenly, he's voting against his own bill, and backing Luger's. Even worse (from the point of the Greens), he's not talking the talk any more:

"The science about global warming has changed," he noted, offhandedly. "I think they've oversold this stuff, quite frankly. I think they've been alarmist and the science is in question," Graham told reporters. "The whole movement has taken a giant step backward."

I followed up with him. "Can you clarify that statement that the science on global warming has changed?" I asked.

"The public acceptance about global warming has changed," he said.

So what made Senator Graham stray off the Reservation? The Register offers what seems the right analysis of how politicians tick:

Although the political elite is almost entirely signed up to mitigation policies, the reality is that they can't introduce them, because it means electoral suicide. Mitigation entails a world of pain - with jobs lost, higher energy costs and a lower standard of living. This appeals to a few puritans - the kind of people who mourned the end of rationing, perhaps - but not the general public. So we've seen Australia drop its emissions trading scheme, and in the US, the only Republican backer of a climate bill change sides.

Benny Peisar, director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, suggests another reason for the lack of momentum. Up until about two years ago, he points out, environment ministers would regularly meet at global conferences, and make grand proclamations. They set the policy. But since then, finance ministers and prime ministers and presidents have taken control of the policy, and they've done the maths. So what pledges politicians continue to make, are ever more meaningless.

Let's see: politicians promising voters all sorts of nice-sounding things when the costs are diffuse or hidden, and then running away taking more "nuanced" positions once the voters start to see the price tag?

There's still momentum in Congress around Cap and Trade even though nobody wants it - not even Democrats. They may ram it through yet - after all, why not make the election even more of a disaster?

Actually, The Register's article is very interesting indeed, and is worth clicking through to both pages.