July 1, 2009

In the comments of a previous post, frequent commenter Geoman wrote the following:

Which brings me to this: the involvement of god or supernatural forces, in any way shape or form, automatically negates your argument as science.

This is true, as far as it goes: Of course discussion of the nature of God is not "science." But not being science is not synonymous with not being worth discussing or not rational or not serious... or even not real. That error -- made by virtually all those particular scientists (or science writers) who also happen to be atheists, is just as egregious as Michael Behe claiming that evolution requires the specific finger of God to arrange various systems of a bacterium into a flagellum.

All that science can say about non-scientific questions is -- science can't say anything about non-scientific questions.

That does not translate to, "Non-scientific questions are nonsense that need never be considered." It also doesn't translate to, "Things outside science are fantasies that don't really exist." But we do need to recognize that they can be neither proven nor disproven by the scientific method; they may well be urgent, vital questions -- but they must be discussed and debated without the imprimatur of "science."

The danger of mistaking any systematized mode of thinking for the only such available is twofold:

1. That we try to drape the mantle of science over questions of politics, religion, morality, aesthetics, or sociology.

This results in, e.g., "social Darwinism," where the undeniable reality of evolutionary biology (henceforth "evo-bio") is abused to declare one race or class of people to be superior to another. (Oddly enough, those making such declarations invariably find themselves in the superior, never the inferior group.)

As noted earlier in the comments of the linked post, such ideological abuse-of-theory does not invalidate the original science that was perverted; but it can taint it politically, causing people wrongly to reject it, in the mistaken belief that the abuse is a "natural consequence" of the real science... and under the well-known fallacy that if the natural consequence of something is bad, its supposed source must be false. ("It can't be true, because it would be so dreadful if it were!")

The corollary danger, though, is just as grim:

2. That we reject anything not provable by science as fiction, fantasy, or meaningless sentimentality.

What an ugly world that would be! And a dangerous one; as above, you cannot "prove" traditional morality (justice, decency, loyalty, courage, and such) by science... so such hyper-rationalists must reject morality as a guide to behavior. They must also reject aesthetic considerations such as beauty, taste, and love; as well as frivolities such as play and recreation. One becomes an automaton.

To be a whole person, we need both scientific rationalism and other varieties of rationalism. To be a whole society, we need all of the above, but also religious rationalism -- a certain kind of religion, that which Dennis Prager identifies as "ethical monotheism." Individuals may not need religion to be moral, but Prager has convinced me that societies do.

Each kind of reasoning must stay in its proper sphere, but each sphere must have some limited volume of overlap with all of the others. As organic minds, we cannot compartmentalize, say, our scientific from our religious reasoning: Each must take account of the other, or we fall prey to Multiple Epistemology Syndrome -- one mode of thinking tells us something is true, while another tells us equally strongly that it is false; and there is no way to mediate between the severed pieces of mind.

The proper answer to the question of evo-bio and Mankind is to accept that evo-bio is how our bodies biologically evolved... and also, that if a theistic God exists, He clearly chose evo-bio as the means to create us (and also as the means to create porpoises, penguins, pike eels, petunias, and paramecia).

By definition of omniscience, a theistic God would know that setting the various laws of the universe and physical constants the way they are, along with a particular initial state of matter and energy, would result eventually in us. But that also requires us to accept that the same space-time and mass-energy "initial condition" might also have created (and continue to create) similar evo-bio elsewhere. In other words, if God works miracles by science, we might not be unique. There may be others out there going through similar intellectual angst, confronting equivalent crises of faith or science; we cannot rule it out by glib vanity and Biblical narcissism.

That same God would necessarily transcend the physical universe (or else He couldn't have created it!) -- so if He exists, he can also be the source of kinds of reasoning that transcend scientific reasoning. That doesn't make them better; they just answer different questions than does scientific reasoning.

In other words, the religious have no reason to reject science a priori; nor do the scientific have any reason to reject religion a priori. They exist quite comfortably side by side; and neither pursuit is inherently useless, meaningless, sterile, or Orwellian.

This seems very obvious to me (and to such prominent religious scientists as Francis Collins), and I've never understood why it seems such a stumbling block to a majority in both camps, the scientific and the religious.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, July 1, 2009, at the time of 7:14 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0)

Is the worm beginning to turn the tide?

AP breathlessly writes about President Barack H. Obama's health-care insurapalooza today in Virginia -- but look what they're saying! The tough-love starts with the headline: "Emotion, few details, in Obama's health care pitch"... and it only goes south from there:

• "The health care changes that Obama called for Wednesday would reshape the nation's medical landscape. He says he wants to cover nearly 50 million uninsured Americans, to persuade doctors to stress quality over quantity of care, to squeeze billions of dollars from spending.

  "But details on exactly how to do those things were generally lacking in his hour-long town hall forum before a friendly, hand-picked audience in a Washington suburb."

• "Some of Obama's questioners Wednesday were from friendly sources, including a member of the Service Employees International Union and a member of Health Care for America Now, which organized a Capitol Hill rally last week calling for an overhaul. White House aides selected other questions submitted by people on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.

  "Republicans said the event was a political sham designed to help Obama, not to inform the public.

  "'Americans are already skeptical about the cost and adverse impact of the president's health care plans,' Republican National Committee spokesman Trevor Francis said. 'Stacking the audience and preselecting questions may make for a good TV, but it's the wrong way to engage in a meaningful discussion about reforming health care.'"

• "'The biggest thing we can do to hold down costs is to change the incentives of a health care system that automatically equates expensive care with better care,' the president said. He said the formula system drives up costs 'but doesn't make you better.'

  Obama did not make specific recommendations for changing the incentive formulas."

• "Obama said, however, that he is working with the American Medical Association to explore ways to reduce liability for doctors and hospitals 'when they've done nothing wrong.' He offered no specifics for a problem that has vexed the medical and legal industries for decades."

• "Obama said a government-run 'single-payer' health care system works well in some countries. But it is not appropriate in the United States, he said, because so many people get insurance through their employers working with private companies.

  Still, he again called for a government-run 'public option' to compete with private insurers, a plan that many Republicans oppose."

Each of these points is factually correct, and one might argue that each is neutral; but they are not presented in a neutral way... and astonishingly enough, the spin is entirely anti-ObamaCare.

Even the last point presents the government option as a refutation of his pledge not to push a "single-payer" system, tacitly accepting the well-founded GOP warning that a subsidized and privileged government option will necessarily drive employers away from private plans for their employees, plans that are overtaxed, heavily regulated, and disfavored in a myriad other ways.

The Washington Post was nearly as bad; please pay close attention to the adjectives used in the opening of their story:

President Obama offered today a wonkish defense of his embattled health care reform effort during an hour-long town hall meeting in Annandale that featured seven questions, including one sent in via Twitter and several from a hand-picked audience of supporters.

As the president's health care bill struggles on Capitol Hill, the administration increasingly is seeking to pressure lawmakers with evidence of the public's desire to get something done as well as proof that the health care industry is a stakeholder in -- not an opponent of -- the effort.

The tone sometimes turns neutral, but never pro-Obama. And I nearly fell out of my chair reading this a few paragraphs later:

In the highly stage-managed event, questions for Obama came from a live audience selected by the White House and the college, and from Internet questions chosen by the administration's own new-media team.

Of the seven questions the president answered, four were selected by his own staff from people who submitted videos on the White House Web site or who responded to a request for "tweets" from the administration.

The president called randomly on three audience members. Each turned out to be members of groups with close ties to his administration: the SEIU union, Health Care for America Now, and Organizing for America, which is a part of the Democratic National Committee. White House officials said that was a coincidence.

Yeah, yeah, a "coincidence" -- that's the ticket!

If the president turns to the New York Times for succor, he will be disappointed. Here is a news commentary story on the global-warming bill just passed in the House; the story is written by John M. Broder, and it's found in the Politics section, not among the Op-Eds:

As the most ambitious energy and climate-change legislation ever introduced in Congress made its way to a floor vote last Friday, it grew fat with compromises, carve-outs, concessions and out-and-out gifts intended to win the votes of wavering lawmakers and the support of powerful industries.

The deal making continued right up until the final minutes, with the bill’s co-author Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California, doling out billions of dollars in promises on the House floor to secure the final votes needed for passage.

The rest of the piece details some of these payoffs -- including a number that are sure to produce screams of anguish and rage from potential Obama supporters, including:

• Utilities that operate coal-power plants will receive "tens of billions of dollars worth of free pollution permits," as well as "billions for work on technology to capture carbon-dioxide emissions from coal combustion to help meet future pollution targets." Broder notes that the deal was negotiated by Rep. Rick Boucher (D-VA, 84%), "a conservative Democrat from Virginia’s coal country;" that is the only concession to the Times' traditional animus against "conservatives." (When did someone who votes 84% liberal become a conservative Democrat?)
• A billion dollars of pork for Rep. Bobby Rush (D-IL, 33%) to distribute around Chicago.
• "Democrats from Southeastern states" got a special deal: reducing the target for getting energy from renewable resources from 25% to 15%, "with states given the ability to reduce it further if they cannot meet the target."
• More tens of billions of dollars in government goodies for refineries, rural energy co-ops, and a massive expansion of "carbon offsets" that can be sold by argibusiness -- as well as shifting their regulatory burden from the EPA to the "farmer-friendly Department of Agriculture."

I wonder if this change in the media weather has something to do with the Obamacle's sagging approval ratings? Today, Rasmussem Reports has the president's approval down to 54% positive, 45% negative -- which can hardly be called "sky high" anymore -- and with an approval index (percent strongly approving minus percent strongly disapproving) in negative territory, at —1% -- 32% strongly approve, 33% strongly disapprove.

CNN/Opinion Research notes that, although Obama's approval remains high at 61%...

"Since March, Obama's approval rating has gone down one percentage point each month in CNN polls," notes CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.

If that continues for another year...

In the current ABC/Washington Post poll, Obama's approval advantage has dropped from 43 points in February to 34 points in June -- still high, but still shrinking.

Gallup still maintains the fiction that Obama's approval is 2-1 positive; but even they show his disapproval rating rising 20 points since he was inaugurated.

In any event, no matter what the reason, the antique news media have begun to wake from their Obamic torpor: They are finally starting to question the One about his supposed solutions, though they still give him a pass on his own litany of the problems he "inherited" from "the previous administration." (Watch for them to give Barack Obama the credit for winning the Iraq war, because the final pullout will occur on his watch.)

Huzzah. Now let's see some actual coverage of the many, varied, and far more American Republican alternatives to Obamunism.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, July 1, 2009, at the time of 4:59 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

June 29, 2009

I have finally identified the greatest bane of conservatives, their bugaboo, their bête noire -- the great barrier that retards them from winning many of the most vital political arguments of today. But let me sneak up on it a bit: What do all these contemporary issues hold in common?

• Cap and Trade -- rather, Cripple and Tax
• The expansion of nuclear power generation

• The EPA's attempt to outlaw CO₂ (and now NO₂ as well; hat tip to Hugh Hewitt)

• Missile defense, both theater and strategic
• Nationalization of major industries
• Nationalization of health care to a single-payer, government-controlled system
• The promiscuous proliferation of "endangered species" that are, in fact, not endangered

First, each of these controversies is a wedge issue by which Republicans and conservatives can oust Democrats and liberals from Congress -- and potentially from la Casa Blanca, as well.

Second, each is fundamentally a scientific question, from climate science, to nuclear physics, to aeronautics and cybernetics, to the optimal pursuit of medical research, to economic science, to the biological sciences.

And most important, for each of these wedge issues, the Right can only win if it is more credible when speaking about scientific matters.

It's not good enough merely to be no less credible than, on a par with the Left -- in this case, a "tie" in rationalism goes to whoever is best at slinging emotional arguments; and in that arena, the Left always has the home-field advantage.

All of which leads me, by a commodious vicus of recirculation, back to the hubris-flaw of conservatives; and that is, of course, the squirrely refusal of so many prominent conservatives to accept the findings of a century and a half of evolutionary biology.

That intellectual blind spot torpedoes conservative credibilty on a host of other scientific issues:

• Sure, the Right argues that so-called anthropogenic climate change is a myth; but they don't even believe in evolution! How can we trust anything they say about global warming?
• Conservatives believe in missile defense for America; but they also believe that no species has ever naturally evolved into another, that humans were here for the entire existence of life on this planet, that the Earth is only a few thousand years old, and that each and every species had to be individually designed and assembled by God -- that natural selection had nothing to do with it. Do they also believe in the Tooth Fairy?
• Republicans say that if we're worried about burning too much fossil fuels, we should switch to using more nuclear power; they say that new reactors, such as Pebble Bed Modular Technology and Integral Fast reactors, are safe. But can we really trust the judgment of people who think that dinosaurs and humans co-existed -- like in the Flintstones?

This one bizarre religious belief -- based ulimately upon the foolish misunderstanding that accepting evolution means you must reject God -- is the single greatest cause of conservative's loss of credibility in scientific debates... a fact driven home to me every other week, when I'm accused of the same mental myopia (and also accused of being a conservative).

Worse, I'm convinced that the only reason so many conservatives think only atheists can support evolution -- is that they believe certain well-known atheists who say so! Good heavens, why would so many conservatives believe that socialist atheists like Richard (the God Delusion) Dawkins, Christopher (God Is Not Great) Hitchens, and Phillip (the His Dark Materials (Golden Compass) trilogy) Pullman have conservatives' best interests at heart?

Here's a newsflash: Those atheists are radical leftists -- and consummate propagandists. They will tell you that all evolutionary scientists are atheists; but that is a patent falsehood, as Professor Francis Collins -- an evangelical Christian who headed the Human Genome Project -- ably argues in his magnificant book, the Language of God.

The scientific evidence for evolution by variation/mutation and natural selection is overwhelming; and no respected, peer-review-published scientist in the field of biology disputes the fundamentals of the discipline. (Everyone disputes the details; that's the very nature of science.) The unanimity is so stark that the nutters at the creationist Discovery Institute are reduced to babbling about conspiracy theories to "silence dissent," a facile and convenient claim most recently pushed by noted actor, conservative columnist, and evolutionary biologist (I made up that last one) Ben Stein.

But for purely religious reasons, conservatives who are also believing Christians -- which is a huge subset -- plus some politically conservative Jews, have an irreducible simplicity as a core axiom: That evolutionary theory, which they call "Darwinism," is false. They reason backwards from this axiom to declare invalid any experiment, observation, or conclusion that supports it. And in the process, they fatally damage their own credibility to argue any case that depends upon the ability to reason logically or to understand basic scientific principles. Or even the scientific method itself.

How can they maintain that a conspiracy of silence exists to silence dissenters to the fatally discredited Globaloney thesis (which is true) if they become objects of ridicule by arguing that the same sort of conspiracy silences mythical armies of scientists who would otherwise reject evolution? They make themselves sound like Agent Fox Mulder; they make themselves laughingstocks.

Worse, they even damage my credibility, due to guilt by association; and I'm bloody sick of it. Every time I argue science with a liberal, I must spend the first 500 words defending myself from the false charge of rejecting evolution -- and the next 2,000 words mitigating the damage from the same charge -- but more true this time -- leveled against the Right in general.

Such anti-evolutionarians have become the anchor holding us back from overturning the nonsensical, bogus psdueoscience of the Left, from the banning of silicone breast implants, to the criminal idiocy of parents who refuse to allow their children to be vaccinated, to the phobic fear of nuclear power plants by liberals who had already worn out their videotapes of the China Syndrome before it even came out on DVD.

Evolution is the great counterexample cited to prove that the Right is no more rational than the Left. Thanks; the rest of us really appreciate being lumped together with Ben Stein and Michael Medved.

(This post was, of course, driven by my annoyance at Medved presenting yet another knucklehead railing against "Darwinism," citing the Discovery Institute's all-purpose catechism of "irreducible complexity"... that mutable charge that shifts from biological system to biological system, always one step ahead of the very reduction of complexity it claims cannot occur.)

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, June 29, 2009, at the time of 6:11 PM | Comments (29) | TrackBack (0)

Isn't it amazing how long it took Barack H. Obama to finally, grudgingly support the Iranian protestors in their opposition to the patently stolen "reelection" of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad -- and how tepidly he supported them when he finally moved away voting "present"... yet how swiftly he has moved to condemn the Honduran supreme court's removal of the president?

Notice that he jumps immediately to the most extreme solution -- reinstating corrupt lefty, anti-American, and Venezuelan ally Manuel Zelaya as President of Honduras. None of this namby pamby nonsense about finding some intermediate solution, as he proposes for the Iranian crisis. And notice that Obama doesn't even condemn Oogo Chavez's threat to send Venezuelan troops to invade Honduras to reinstall Zelaya -- regardless of the Honduran constitution, democracy, or the people. No, this is a crisis. Zelaya must be reinstalled by any means necessary... not now, man, yesterday!

What do these two positions, on Iran and Honduras, have in common? Three major similarities I can see:

1. Both Obamic positions support the status quo against real "hope and change" for the people of those two countries;
2. Both take the side of the bully against his victims;
3. And both put President "Lucky Lefty" Obama on the same side as his best bud, Oogo Chavez.

Democrats, especially the president, bristle when they are compared to Soviet apparatchiks; they like to think of themselves as "progressives" who want to "move America into the future," rather than socialists who intend to mire us in the cloying stasis of yesteryear's authoritarianism.

Well I say, if the shoe fits, sleep in it.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, June 29, 2009, at the time of 3:29 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

June 28, 2009

Yesterday, we learned that President Barack H. Obama will not "forcibly inspect" the North Korean ship that we suspect is carrying nuclear technology to Burma, which some people call Myanmar:

An American destroyer has been shadowing the North Korean freighter sailing off China's coast, possibly on its way to Myanmar.

Undersecretary of Defense Michele Flournoy met with South Korean officials in Seoul on Friday as the U.S. sought international support for aggressively enforcing a U.N. sanctions resolution aimed at punishing Pyongyang for its second nuclear test last month. The North Korean-flagged ship, Kang Nam 1, is the first to be tracked under the U.N. resolution.

Naturally, North Korea calls the allegation that they are trying to build a nuclear arsenal a slanderous lie. In completely unrelated news, they have threatened to launch a nuclear strike against the United States if we attempt to board the ship without the permission of North Korea's hereditary king, Kim Jong-Il:

North Korea has in response escalated threats of war, with a slew of harsh rhetoric including warnings that it would unleash a "fire shower of nuclear retaliation" and "wipe out the [U.S.] aggressors" in the event of a conflict.

Undersecretary of Defense Michele Flournoy explains why we can only inspect the ship if the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, suspected of smuggling nuclear materials, gives us permission to board the ship and search for smuggled nuclear materials:

"The U.N. resolution lays out a regime that has a very clear set of steps," Ms. Flournoy said, according to the Yonhap news agency. "I want to be very clear. ... This is not a resolution that sponsors, that authorizes use of force for interdiction." [Well that's certainly useful!]

Ms. Flournoy said the U.S. still has "incentives and disincentives that will get North Korea to change course."

Aha. That certainly closes that case. Barring using any of our vastly superior military muscle, we can still, she notes, use "incentives," such as bribery, and "disincentives": very strong language, followed by very strong language; and if necessary, downright caustic and scornful language -- with perhaps a finger-wag, if the Secretary of State gets involved (her spouse can explain to her the ins and outs of one-digit diplomacy).

Rough language -- fierce -- imperious! I often find that the Obama administration reminds me of one of my favorite poets:

So now we know that we can only interdict Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty scoffers -- the DPRK is not actually a signatory, so technically it cannot be a "violator" -- if they graciously allow us to do. Thus I think I more clearly understand the Obamic stance on the upcoming missile launch by North Korea against Hawaii: Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is absolutely correct that we can shoot that missile down... but we only may blow it out of the sky if we first ask permission of King Jong-Il.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, June 28, 2009, at the time of 10:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

June 25, 2009

Feel free to present any argument pro or con in the comments section. All normal commenting rules still apply, so remain civil. Unlike normal comments on normal posts, I'll respond to arguments here (not every line in every comment, but those that raise a new argument or counterargument).

Have at ye!

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, June 25, 2009, at the time of 11:04 PM | Comments (50) | TrackBack (0)

An American officer in Iraq offers a plan -- "under protest!" -- for mitigating problems of gays serving openly in the military

As readers know, I strongly support allowing gays to serve openly in military service in any capacity, and also allowing women to serve in combat. The two policy questions are very different, so I will split them into two different posts.

I recently argued the first in a blogpost titled Martial Arts and Marital Darts -- wherein I took the Obamacle and his Bestial Virgins to task for pushing so hard for same-sex marriage (yes, even Barack "Lucky Lefty" Obama himself, when he denounced California's Proposition 8)... while doing absolutely nothing to allow gays to serve openly: I argued that the favored policy was an attack on traditional marriage and could gravely damage Western civilization, if it leads to further changes in marriage, such as acceptance of polygamy; while the disfavored policy was actually an exercise of liberty and every person's fundamental right to defend his nation and society.

I was naturally aware that many, particularly in the military, rejected the policy of gays serving openly in military service; so when I heard from one such -- an officer in Iraq, a "Transition Team Leader" who blogs under the name Boss Mongo -- I responded, and we had a friendly and fascinating discussion.

Please make no mistake: Boss Mongo very much opposes the policy change I support. He is an upper mid-level commissioned officer who served two tours in Iraq and now commands a training team. He believes that such a policy change would be "prejudicial to good order and discipline," and would damage our warfighting capability.

But I was much more interested in Boss Mongo's expertise than his opinion; I've heard opinions on all sides from officers and enlisted, many with similar combat experience. But this was the first time I was able to speak, one on one, with a training officer who could move the discussion forward beyond the hand-waving stage (on both sides!)

I urged Boss Mongo to tell me what he would do to mitigate the damage -- what training he would have to institute (were the policy ordered) to preserve "good order and discipline." The thought experiment I gave him specified that Congress, the Commander in Chief, and and Pentagon had all agreed -- and no branch of government had consulted Boss Mongo before making its decision (amazing!) So now, the orders have come down the chain (in this hypothetical), and he is ordered to take charge of the training program to prepare current and incoming soldiers, gay and straight, for the New Way.

What, I asked him, would you do? He agreed that he would not resign his commission; he's a career guy, and he would stay in the military and obey orders. So with those caveats, here is Boss Mongo's plan -- including how he arrived at it, which is amazing in itself... I think I spawned a series of high-level meetings that may have set-off a policy prairie fire; what power these blog-things have! Here is what we would need to do in order to make such a policy change work, if the government decides to do so:

Okay, under great protest and not ceding to the premise that the open service of homosexuals would not be prejudicial to good order and discipline, I'll proffer a mitigation strategy for incorporating the policy.

While thinking of the answer, I used the topic, and our e-mail discussions, to conduct a couple round-table discussions with various members of my team and some of my subordinate teams. The demographics of the participants were pretty varied. Tallying it up later, I talked in small groups to: two O4s (one Asian, one Puerto Rican), three O3s (two white, one black), two E8s (both black), five E7s (two black, two white, one hispanic), and one Warrant Officer (hispanic). When I initiated the discussions, the universal first reaction was "Eww."

So it took a while to get the guys to focus on the discussion point; the first X number of minutes were spent getting them off of decrying the policy itself. Most of the senior (ie, ~20 years) guys said that it would be time to drop retirement paperwork (my crew consists of mostly senior guys; my youngest team member is 28 with six years in). Anyway, once we established the constraints of the conversation (and tabled the HIV factor for a later discussion), most of the guys came up with the same concept of response that I had:

1. First, tangentially, commissioned officers thought that problems would manifest mostly on the battlefield, NCOs [non-commissioned officers -- the Mgt.] thought that the most serious problems would arise in the barracks environment.
2. The service already has a chain training mechanism in place; it is used for annual, biennial, and quarterly training on EO [Equal Opportunity, I presume -- the Mgt.], Family Advocacy, prevention of sexual harassment, suicide prevention, DUI/Drug prevention, etc. This would be the venue for most training. Officers, NCOs, and junior enlisted would probably have different training evolutions, with unit training at the end, conducted by said officers and NCOs.
3. The training would have to be tailored to present homosexual service as consistent with the military values -- loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity, and personal courage -- and the military values would have to be the foundation of the training/instruction.
4. The service-member support networks, from the Chaplains to the headshrinkers, would have to be a part of it and be consistently available to help members with problems arising from the new strategy.
5. Orders would go out giving the officer and NCO corps instructions on how the chain of command wanted adverse or serious incidents handled.
6. One thing we all agreed on was that a significant chunk of time and effort would have to be expended on retention, keeping good service members in who are determined to vote with their feet -- or rather, their discharge paperwork -- because of the policy.

That's about it. Everything after that would be adapting to the situations arising and always being ready to call an audible when things go awry, and they will.

Two points that struck me immediately; the first is the disparity between what the commissioned officers think would be the most serious problem versus what the NCOs think (point 1 above); I wonder why they didn't agree? I hope that Boss Mongo will send another e-mail clarifying that disconnect.

The officers thought the battlefield would be the focal point of conflicts, but the NCOs were more worried about problems in the barracks -- I suppose that showers and sleeping arrangements would top that list of concerns, though that's only my opinion. But if the NCOs don't see the battlefield as a serious problem, and officers seem less concerned about controlling problems on bases stateside and abroad, then perhaps between the two, both concerns can be adequately addressed.

The other point that jumped out at me, which I knew but hadn't thought through the implications of, is that within all branches of the military, training is ongoing, constant, and universal; and a great deal of "civilian" values training is already incorporated into that regime. That is, we don't only train our soldiers, sailors, Marines, and airmen to be warriors; we don't restrict training to the martial virtues that Boss Mongo enumerates; we also train them to be "good people" and "good citizens," according to the virtues currently accepted within the nation.

We train our service members not to discriminate on the basis of race, not to engage in sexual harassment, to eschew excessive drinking, and to avoid illegal drugs entirely. We train them to notice early warning signs of suicidal tendencies in themselves and their fellow servicemen, to seek counseling for serious family "issues" (that's a word my sister the MFCC loves), and so forth.

And we already train them in a certain level of tolerance towards gays: I'm sure that Boss Mongo and every member of his team would agree that a response as extreme as actual gay-bashing -- physically assaulting a person because he or she is thought to be homosexual -- is inconsistent with the military virtues they all strive to achieve.

This gives me great expectations that if such a policy is ever enacted -- I hope it is, Boss Mongo hopes it isn't -- it would not be too hard to train the very, very vast majority of servicemen and servicewomen to go beyond mere avoidance of gay-bashing to judging their fellow service members by how well they do their jobs and by their adherence to those same military virtues, rather than by whether they are attracted to the opposite or the same sex.

Please note that I am not arguing that homosexual activity is not a "sin." In many religions it is, and self-proclaimed members of those religions should probably abjure and forswear.

But in those same religions, having any sex outside of marriage is also a sin, even for the unmarried; yet we don't ban sexually active singles from military service, it's no violation of the UCMJ, and it needn't disrupt good order and discipline. (Of course, anything can be a problem if misused or abused; we do condemn adultery in our military, and we disallow certain types of fraternization.) Tolerance is not the same as approval or applause: Under the policy I advocate, straight service members don't have to cheer homosexual squadmates... just tolerate them.

It should be an easy sell for most servicemen to say, "What the other guy likes to do with his naughty bits is none of your business, unless he shoves it in your face -- figuratively or (especially) literally!"

Whether we should make this policy change is a subject for another time; but I hope this post -- especially including Boss Mongo's reluctant contribution, spelling out what can be done and what would need to be done -- advances the topic to the point where we can ask the critical question: Do the positives of allowing gays to serve openly in the military outweigh the negatives?

The better we can quantify each side of the equation, the easier to see which way the scales tilt.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, June 25, 2009, at the time of 6:23 PM | Comments (19) | TrackBack (0)

June 24, 2009

I know I said the last post was the penultimate one on the subject of the Anti-Democratic Democrats' Denial of Democracy in Albany; but something so Kafkaesque has just happened in the New York State Senate that I cannot silently wait for the ultimate post... which will be the one where everybody's hash is finally settled. I am optimistic about much mirth and hijinks to ensue; I'm calling this the first post-penultimate word.

Our previous posts on this titillating topic are:

• New York Democracy + Chicago Rules... Hijinks Ensue
• More on the Anti-Democratic Democrats' Denial of Democracy in Albany
• Penultimate Word on on the Anti-Democratic Democrats' Denial of Democracy in Albany

The current hilarity writes itself:

In Albany, Separate Senate Sessions for Each Party

Republicans and Democrats attempted to hold separate Senate sessions at the same time on Tuesday, leaving the Capitol in confusion and bickering as members of both parties shouted over each other on the Senate floor, and each party claimed it was in control.

Though Democrats had entered the Senate chamber through a back hallway just before 12:30 p.m. and locked the doors -- much to the surprise of Republicans -- Republicans moved ahead with plans for their own session and began calling for votes on bills as Democrats sat silent in protest.

Exactly who was in control of the Senate -- or whether any of the procedural action the Republicans had taken was legally valid -- was unclear. Democrats were successful in blocking Republicans from taking control of the Senate gavel, which remained firmly in the hands of Senator Andrea Stewart-Cousins of Westchester County, who was guarded by sergeants-at-arms on both sides.

The first point of puzzlement is why the sergeants-at-arms have sided with the Democrats... aren't they supposed to be neutral? How do they know which party legally controls the body? Are they lawyers? Have they even consulted with lawyers -- upon whose authority?

UPDATE, une 24th, 2000: Heh... that was how the story read yesterday; but today, the Times pulled another fast one: They jacked up the URL and ran a whole new story under it -- headline, body, page count, pocket change, blood chemicals, and all. Gone are the paragraphs quoted above, to be replaced by this:

Come to Order! Not a Chance, if It’s Albany

New York did not have one State Senate on Tuesday. It had two.

Democrats sneaked into the Senate chamber shortly after noon, seizing control of the rostrum and locking Republicans out of the room. Republicans were finally allowed to enter about 2:30 p.m., but when they tried to station one of their own members on the dais they were blocked by the sergeants-at-arms.

So then something extraordinary -- and rather embarrassing -- happened.

The two sides, like feuding junior high schoolers refusing to acknowledge each other, began holding separate legislative sessions at the same time. Side by side, the parties, each asserting that it rightfully controls the Senate, talked and sometimes shouted over one another, gaveling through votes that are certain to be disputed. There were two Senate presidents, two gavels, two sets of bills being voted on.

What is the point of such stealth-rewrites? They didn't make it any better for Democrats or harsher on Republicans... they just didn't like the first version (which can still be seen here), so they substituted a different one, with the same URL. Yeesh.

To serious-up for a moment, what I consider the most significant bill caught up in the maelstrom of madness -- a bill to legalize same-sex marriage throughout New York, the third-largest state in the United States -- might be doomed for this term. From a subsequent article in the Times:

Senators defied Gov. David A. Paterson on Wednesday and refused to take up any of the 10 issues he put on the schedule for a legislative session, indefinitely postponing votes on same-sex marriage and other signature items of the governor’s agenda....

Though gay rights supporters were initially pleased that the governor had placed a bill to legalize same-sex marriage on the agenda, many gay rights advocates were saying on Wednesday morning that they did not believe a vote would accomplish anything. There are myriad legal questions clouding any piece of legislation that the Senate takes up, and supporters of same-sex marriage are wary of seeing their issue turned into a political football.

“Nobody wants it to pass under a cloud, so it will be immediately subject to legal challenge,” said Assemblyman Daniel J. O’Donnell, a Democrat from the Upper West Side who sponsored the same-sex marriage bill that passed the Assembly last month. Even if the Senate did pass the bill the governor put on his agenda for Wednesday, and the legal issues were not so complicated, Mr. O’Donnell said same-sex marriage would still not be legal because the governor’s bill would have to be passed again by the Assembly.

The normal session expired in the middle of this month; depending on the outcome of the stalemate (I'm tempted to call it "Fool's Mate" instead), there may be insufficient time to bring up the same-sex marriage (SSM) bill before the expiration of the current "extraordinary session," called by N.Y. Gov. David Paterson. If it expires, and if Paterson does not call another, then I think the Senate is in recess until January... at least so the New York State Senate's own website seems to say.

Will there still be such impetus next year for jamming through such a fundamental change to a foundational insitution as marriage -- without any referendum of New Yorkers? I don't know; but at this point, those of us averse to monkeying with one of the foundations of Western civilization should be grateful for any delay we can get. Perhaps legislators will have an opportunity to think a second time, as Dennis Prager likes to say.

But back to whipping the cat in Albany! Let's run with both versions of the Times story; maybe by tomorrow, yesterday will have never happened at all.

We still have the same problem with the sergeants-at-arms siding with the Democrats -- the default-to-the-liberals favoritism found in Democratic states like New York. First the guards defended the "Democrats' gavel" against the rampaging Republicans, notwithstanding a 32 to 30 vote to oust former Majority Leader Malcolm Smith (D). The same majority then elected Sen. Dean Skelos (R) majority leader and Sen. Pedro Espada (D) as president of the Senate; how can the sergeants unilaterally decide to abrogate that vote, "blocking Republicans from taking control of the Senate gavel?"

But then they did something even worse, discussed in detail in the first version of the story but only sketched in the second: When Majority Leader Skelos called Sen. George H. Winner, jr. to the podium... oh, but let the Times tell it in its original words, before editors decided to merely hint around the bush:

Shortly after Republicans walked onto the Senate floor on Tuesday afternoon, their leader, Dean G. Skelos, called the chamber to order and asked one of the Senate Republicans’ deputy leaders, George H. Winner Jr., to “take the podium.” Mr. Winner, who was standing at the front of the chamber, attempted to climb the stairs that lead to the podium where the presiding officer stands but was stopped by a Senate guard.

“Senator Skelos,” Mr. Winner responded, “I have been instructed by the sergeant-at-arms not to take the podium.” Mr. Winner then walked to a desk in front of the podium, called the Senate to order from there and began calling votes on a list of bills. Since Democrats sat silent and did not voice any objections, Mr. Winner claimed that each bill passed by a vote of 62 to 0.

So in addition to defending the Democrats' presumably inherent right to hold the gavel at all times, regardless of any organizing votes to the contrary, the sergeants also forcibly prevented a Republican senator from even approaching the podium -- because the Democrats didn't want him to be allowed to speak.

One final example deserves note of the sergeants abandoning their traditional role as neutral defenders of the peace -- in order to concentrate on their other traditional role as New York civil servants, that of being liberal Democratic partisans. In the original version:

Republicans seemed just as caught off guard as the rest of the Capitol when the Democrats came in at 12:30 p.m. As news of the Democrats’ move spread, some Republican staff members rushed to the Senate chamber and peered in through the windows to watch the Democrats congregating inside.

Senator Winner, a Republican from central New York, described the Democrats’ move as unnecessary and possibly against the law.

“It seems to me somewhat petulant and or illegal to lock the doors,” Mr. Winner said.

The outer doors to the chamber were kept locked by the sergeant-at-arms of the Senate, but some reporters were able to gain access through a back door.

The new version of the story makes clear that the Democrats snuck in alone -- and locked the doors against the Republicans. Thus, the sergeants-at-arms must have been holding the door against duly elected Republican state senators entering the state Senate chambers:

Democrats sneaked into the Senate chamber shortly after noon, seizing control of the rostrum and locking Republicans out of the room....

Early Tuesday, Republicans seemed as surprised as the rest of the Capitol when Democrats took over the chamber. Some Republican staff members rushed to the chamber to peek through small windows to watch the Democrats congregating. Some reporters were able to gain access to the locked chamber through the office of Mr. Espada, hurrying through a side room where Mr. Espada’s grandson was parked in front of a television, watching the Cartoon Network.

Note the curious omission of the fact that it was the sergeants who prevented Republican senators from entering the chamber (replaced by the reference to the Cartoon Network -- product placement, or do the Times editors simply have a "thing" for cartoons?) This fits in with the new version omitting the tidbit about sergeants jealously guarding the "Democrats'" gavel and brushing past the same sergeants preventing Sen. Winner from speaking from the podium. Could that be the reason for the rewrite -- to whitewash the complicity of the supposedly neutral guardians of the Senate in a partisan dispute against the GOP?

If so, what a sad and petty reason to engage in such an Orwellian rewrite of history. Times publisher "Pinch" Sulzberger should busy himself reading his Shelly; it may tell him some inconvenient truths about his own future and that of his family's media legacy:

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, June 24, 2009, at the time of 5:39 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

The administration of President Barack H. Obama has already sent out numerous invitations to various Iranian "diplomats" -- would that include top officials of the Qods Force who have entered this country under a false flag? -- invitations that appear to have been completely ignored by their recipients.

Pondering this turn of events, I have to ask: What kind of hot dogs were the Obamas planning to serve? Would they be all-beef dogs? Or would they be ordinary weenies, which include among their ingredients a large component of pork?

Let's suppose the staff of the One was sufficiently on the ball to specify all-beef. Then my next question is which brand... Hebrew National?

There may be other reasons for the pocket-veto by Iranian agents than simple anti-American animosity.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, June 24, 2009, at the time of 2:17 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

June 23, 2009

Another question that answers itself:

President Barack Obama on Tuesday squared off with the insurance lobby over industry charges that a government health plan he backs would dismantle the employer coverage Americans have relied on for a half-century and overtake the system....

"If private insurers say that the marketplace provides the best quality health care ... then why is it that the government, which they say can't run anything, suddenly is going to drive them out of business?" Obama said in response to a question at a White House news conference.

"That's not logical," he scoffed, responding to an industry warning that government competition would destabilize the employer system that now covers more than 160 million people.

Wow, that's a toughie: If the free market provides the best quality health care -- then how can feckless, inefficient, corrupt federal government drive them out of business? Here are a few possible answers:

• By jacking up taxes, administrative fees, and punishing profit on private insurance -- but not government-run health care.
• By running the government health care at a loss, forcing taxpayers to pick up the difference.
• By regulating private insurers out of the market.
• By adding so much red tape to private insurance plans that medical-care approval takes too long.
• By extorting employers to dump their private plans in favor of the government plan, upon threat of fines, audits, and denial of necessary licenses.
• By forcing doctors to charge private insurance a premium, under threat of the feds cutting off or reducing Medicare payments if they don't.
• By seizing control of companies (surely the federal government would never do that!), dumping the private plan, and signing aboard the government plan.
• By enacting legislation giving unions veto power to block any private health-care plan.
• By removing a corporate CEO and installing an Obama crony in his place.

Whew! That exercise took all of two and a half minutes.

Next question?

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, June 23, 2009, at the time of 7:31 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

I have a new one for you.

"Argumentum ad Defatigationem" is Latin for argument by exhaustion -- arguing in so fatiguing a manner that one's opponent just gives up and stomps off -- after which the arguer jumps up and down and shouts "I won!" It's a favorite trick of liberals (and too many libertarians); but liberals especially bring a tasty flavor to the proceedings with a number of rhetorical stunts that appear paralogical, but are actual diabolical.

The first one I identified, many years ago, was Argument by Tendentious Redefinition; this occurs when proponent secretly redefines a common and usually deplorable word -- but he relies upon listeners clinging to the original definition in order to tar his opponent with inuendo and subconscious slander. The classic example is a radical feminist who secretly redefines "rape" to include all heterosexual sex -- then repeatedly accuses ordinary heterosexual males of being "rapists."

Today's entry is a very different antic; I'm dubbing it Argument by Promiscuous Propinquity: One conducts it by taking two or more utterly disparate incidents and smooshing them together, one right after the other, to create the illusion that they are all the same incident.

If that seems a little vague, let me offer this clean example. Submitted for your approval, here are the first three grafs of the New York Times story linked above, titled "Tapes Reveal Nixon’s View of Abortion":

On Jan. 23, 1973, when the Supreme Court struck down state criminal abortion laws in Roe v. Wade, President Richard M. Nixon made no public statement. But privately, newly released tapes reveal, he expressed ambivalence.

Nixon worried that greater access to abortions would foster “permissiveness,” and said that “it breaks the family.” But he also saw a need for abortion in some cases, such as interracial pregnancies.

“There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white,” he told an aide, before adding: “Or a rape.”

And here are the fourth and fifth grafs -- the immediate successors to the above:

Nine months later, after Nixon precipitated the resignations of two top Justice Department officials and forced the firing of the special prosecutor looking into the Watergate affair, Ronald Reagan, who was then the governor of California and would later be president, told the White House that he heartily approved.

Reagan told the White House that the action -- which would become known as the “Saturday Night Massacre” -- was “probably the best thing that ever happened -- none of them belong where they were,” according to a Nixon aide’s notes of the private conversation.

What do those two statements have in common? Nothing at all... except that both were recorded by the same device in the White House.

But what are readers to infer they have in common, this vile expression of racism and eugenics attributed to Richard Nixon, followed by Reagan's hearty approval? Clearly, the intent is that inattentive readers (that would be most of them) should mistakenly believe that Ronald Reagan approved of aborting biracial babies.

There is no transitional language between the two excerpts to alert readers that the reporter, the aptly named Charlie Savage, is making an abrupt, right-angle turn to a completely different subject. And in particular, note the phrase "nine months later;" if you simply sidle up and whisper "nine months," the first thing most Americans would think of was pregnancy -- further fostering the illusion that Ronald Reagan "heartily approved" of racial eugenics.

(Ronald Reagan is only mentioned once more in the article, in an almost parenthetical aside.)

Now, I have no idea whether the Times correctly quotes Nixon in context; but that's not relevant to this point. And it's utterly unpersuasive to object that the story does not explicitly state that Reagan's hearty approval was for Nixon's alleged eugenicism (nor does it explicitly say that the approval was for the firings and forced resignations). This gives Mr. Savage "plausible deniability," speaking of Nixon.

But really, words are my business; in a court proceeding, I would be a qualified expert on the subject. I know when someone is using language not to edify or enlighten but to obscure and mislead.

This series of five paragraphs is no accident: In the realm of serious, written, edited, and published prose or journalism, the Lizardian Rule of Intent reads, Never attribute to mere stupidity what can adequately be explained by malice; particularly when the object of the malice is, in fact, viscerally hated by the maligner. (If the same sort of appalling elite-media juxtaposition had befallen Barack H. Obama, I would more readily extend the benefit of doubt. Also, a mistake like calling the 2008 Republican VP nominee "Sarah Pallin" cannot be explained by malice and is clearly just a tyop to be shrugged off.)

Anyway, that is the new entry. I've thought about it for a while; I was going to discuss it right after the One's Apologia to the Moslems, when Paul Mirengoff at Power Line was defending the president by noting, with courtroom precision that bespeaks well of his talent as an attorney but not so well of his appreciation of political voice and tone, that Obama had not explicitly equated Israel's treatment of the Palestinians to the Holocaust.

Understanding Argument by Promiscuous Propinquity allows us to note the strangely inappropriate closeness, within the speech -- adjacency, in fact -- of the two incidents: Jews under the Nazis and Palestinians under the Israelis... a propinquity that defies benign explanation. But in that case, the transitional rhetoric made it kristall clear that he was comparing them: After describing the Nazi extermination of Jews, and before introducing Israel's entirely reasonable responses to Palestinian terrorism, Obama connected them by saying "on the other hand." That makes clear he is comparing one to the other... and context made clear he was equating, not contrasting.

So I abjured, awaiting a cleaner example; and here I have found it!

Argument by Promiscuous Propinquity... keep an eye out for it in future.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, June 23, 2009, at the time of 5:58 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

June 22, 2009

In a stunning turn of events (well it stunned me, at least), Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who I had thought the odds-on favorite to be the Democratic nominee for governor of California in the 2010 election, just announced today that he will not run for the office. He says that Los Angeles residents are in crappy enough financial shape that he doesn't want to abandon them.

I always thought former "MEChAnista" Villaraigosa was likely to beat out Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA, 100%) for several reasons, not least of which that he would be the first elected Latino governor since we became a state in 1850, and the first Latino governor to serve since Romualdo Pacheco, who succeeded in 1875 to the office after the previous governor was elected to the United States Senate. (Pacheco served for a few months until a new governor was elected.)

As the Hispanic population of California has become significantly larger, and as Hispanic voters tend to coalesce around Hispanic candidates regardless of whether the two groups actually agree on many issues, I was more worried about a Villaraigosa candidacy than any other Democratic candidate, from Feinstein, to former Gov. Jerry Brown, to San Francisco Mayor and lawless radical Gavin Newsom, to any of the also-rans.

So who will take Villaraigosa's place on the ballot?

• With Villaraigosa out, Feinstein becomes the default front runner. She certainly has the most extensive political experience as mayor of San Francisco, state senator, and United States senator. She also came close to beating then-Sen. Pete Wilson in the 1990 governor's race.
• If anybody has a shot at displacing her on the ballot, I would guess it would be the ultra-ultra-liberal Newsom... who burst on the scene in 2004 when he unilaterally, without any legal authority, ordered San Francisco to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples (Newsom is himself heterosexual). The State Supreme Court later nullified all those "marriages"... though of course it subsequently ordered the state to start doing what it had just slapped Newsom for doing... for which the voters slapped back with Proposition 8.
• Jerry Brown is a spent force, in my opinion; the only reason he can even run is that the term limits law doesn't count gubernatorial terms served before 1990.
• There is always the faint possibility that former Lt.Gov. Cruz Bustamante will run; but he has been virtually invisible on the momentus political and economic issues facing this state recently, focusing instead on a much more urgent project: "Lose weight now -- ask me how!"

On the Republican side, I'm placing my bets on Meg Whitman, former President and CEO of eBay from 1998 to 2008. I think she would be especially strong against Sen. Feinstein:

• Feinstein will be 77 years old on election day (today is her 76th birthday); Whitman will be 54.

• To be perfectly blunt, Whitman beats out Feinstein for the pulchritude prize walking away. If you don't think that can make a difference in an election, ask President John S. McCain. All right, there were some other issues; but the visual chasm between the virile, young Obamacle and the Methuseloid McCain surely played a major role, especially with younger voters.

  Anyway, judge for yourselves -- from these two admittedly tendentious photos, which I deliberately chose to make Feinstein look awfuler than she really does, and Whitman look better than she really does:

• Feinstein has never done anything in her life other than politics. Whitman has never before done politics. I believe this is a positive, not a negative, because she is extremely well known in [stealth correction] "Silicon Valley," the high-tech sector of California. I see young people, conservatives, techies, women, and anybody who actually works a real job for a living finding Whitman's biography compelling... and Feinstein's biography dull as dishwater.
• Related to the above, Feinstein has many decades of corrupt and compromising baggage she must explain away. It has hurt her in past elections.
• Meg Whitman earned her own personal fortune by building eBay up from a handful of employees to the juggernaut it is today; Dianne Feinstein married money for her third husband, Richard Blum.
• Whitman totally neutralizes the gender issue, as both are, you know, women.
• She also neutralizes the personal-fortune issue, as she is ten times as rich as Feinstein... but unlike the latter, Whitman earned her own wealth.

• Whitman also has a better shot at winning the "I can fix the California economy" sweepstakes... though this could cut the other way, too, if voters decide Schwarzenegger's failure was due to his inexperience with stroking the Democrat-dominated legislature. In reality, he failed because the Democratic legislative majority is too busy sticking its head in an ostrich to actually help ordinary Californios crushed by the insanity of the state budgets the majority has enacted for years and years.

  But of course, any GOP nominee would have to define this issue in favor of truth, and not allow the Democrats to define it self-servingly. Again, I like Whitman better than any other Republican candidate.

• Whitman is simply a more galvanizing speaker than snoozy Feinstein.

I have to like our chances in the California governor's race a lot better today than I did yesterday. I can see the light at the end of our rope.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, June 22, 2009, at the time of 6:26 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

Most folks see the rioting throughout Iran as a revolution brewing, as if 1979 met 1776. But I'm very skeptical... mainly because in my opinion, and despite the take of most commentators, the two major players are not actually current Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Mir-Hossein Mousavi Khameneh, the other major candidate in the election: Rather, the two players in this game are in fact Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Iran's wealthiest man, the moneybags behind Mousavi, and the man that Ahmadinejad "defeated" in 2005 in an election that was likely just as dirty, corrupt, and stolen as the one this year.

We've tracked the increasingly bellicose and violent schism between Ahmadinejad and Rafsanjani for a number of years now:

• That Ain't the Half of It
• It Ain't Even the Quarter
• Ahmadinejad At the End of His Rope?
• Ahmadinejad's Rope Pulls Taut
• Ahmadinejad and the Rope: A Lad Insane
• Is Iranian "Supreme Leader" Ayatollah Ali al-Khamenei Dead?
• Congressional Resolutions vs. Presidential Resolution
• Mother of Mohammed! Is this the end of Mahmoud?
• Hoodwinkers and Their Codependents: In Search of Intelligent Intelligence on Iran

It appears to me that what is unfolding in Iran is not a revolution... it's really a civil war by proxy.

Ahmadinejad is not himself a politically powerful cleric, like Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, or his successor and current Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Ahmadinejad has a "guardian angel" among the mullahs: Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi of Qom. Mesbah-Yazdi is a member of the Assembly of Experts, the group that elects the Supreme Leader -- perhaps the foremost proponent of the so-called Qom school of Shiism, which preaches absolute rule by the mullahs.

He is also Ahmadinejad's spiritual guru, preaching that the return of the Twelfth (or Hidden) Imam and the dawn of the Islamic era is imminent and can be triggered by a military conflagration, even one started by Iran itself.

Wolf Howling reports that there is a split within the clerics of Qom, with some following the Najaf school of Shiism, as personified by Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in Iraq, and in Iran by former Khomeinist Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri. These clerics, both tremendously more respected throughout Iran as spiritual leaders than current Supreme Leader Khamenei, teach that clerics should only set the religious rules, but not control the government. I don't think this "faultline," as GW calls it, enters into the present distress; we all know where Ahmadinejad stands on the question of whether mullahs or the people should rule Iran; and I don't recall Rafsanjani ever calling for Montazeri-style freedom, civil rights, human rights, and women's rights.

By contrast with Ahmadinejad, Rafsanjani needs no "guardian angel;" he is himself the leader of the Assembly of Experts, and a strong candidate to eventually succeed Khamenei. In the last elections, Rafsanjani received more votes than any other Ayatollah for the Assembly -- 1,564,197; Mesbah-Yazdi received less than half that total at 726,498 votes.

Rafsanjani appears to have greater backing from Khamenei; but it's probably more a strategic chess move to keep Ahmadinejad in check than any deep affection between Khamenei and Rafsanjani: I suspect Ahmadinejad just scares the bejesus out of Khamenei; the president is (or was, before the current troubles) consolidating power among the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Barring a major political shakeup, it mightn't be long before Ahmadinejad decides he needs a promotion... say, to Supreme Leader. Alternatively, if Khamenei should die (due to natural causes: "It's only natural he would die after such causes"), Ahmadinejad could engineer the elevation of Mesbah-Yazdi to Supreme Leader. It would be an open question then which would be the other's puppet.

Ahmadinejad has religious fanaticism on his side, but Rafsanjani's strength is more in the line of old-fashioned corruption, the lifeblood of the Islamic world -- think Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Syria, the PA, and so forth. It's Millenarianism vs. Kleptocracy, even more exciting than Alien vs. Predator!

But the irony is that Iran, Persia, is a dying land. It may end, not with a bang, but with the silent lack of enough whimpers.

In a Steynian twist, Iran has the lowest fertility rate of any Moslem majority country, and I believe any country in the Middle east, including Israel (compiled from CIA World Factbook).

Fertility rate is the mean number of children born per female in her lifetime. Bare population replacement rate is about 2.1 children per mother (the extra .1 accounts for children who die before they can have children of their own). A country with a fertility rate far above 2.1, such as Somalia, is growing rapidly; a country with just about 2.1 is holding steady (the United States, for example); and a country with a fertility rate significantly below 2.1... is dying... think of Europe, Australia, Thailand, Cuba, and Canada.

Here are the countries of the Arab League, plus Israel and Iran, in order of fertility rate:

Fertility rate of Arab League, Israel, and Iran

Country	Fertility rate/strong>
Somalia	6.60
Yemen	6.41
Mauritania	5.69
Oman	5.62
Gaza	5.19
Djibouti	5.14
Comoros	4.90
Sudan	4.58
Iraq	3.97
Saudi Arabia	3.89
West Bank	3.31
Syria	3.21
Libya	3.15
Kuwait	2.81
Israel	2.77
Egypt	2.72
Morocco	2.57
Bahrain	2.53
Qatar	2.43
Jordan	2.47
UAE	2.47
Lebanon	1.87
Algeria	1.82
Tunisia	1.73
Iran	1.71

No Moslem-majority country has a lower fertility rate than Iran. To put their dire dilemma into perspective, Iran has a lower fertility rate than...

Iran losing the baby war to these countries

Country	Fertility rate/strong>
Afghanistan	6.58
Pakistan	3.73
United States	2.10
France	1.98
Turkey	1.87
Ireland	1.85
Norway	1.78
Luxembourg	1.78
Denmark	1.74
Finland	1.73

Iran is about as infertile as...

Iran is on a par with these dying countries

Country	Fertility rate/strong>
Sweden	1.67
Netherlands	1.66
United Kingdom	1.66
Belgium	1.66

So what's happening in Iran, right as we're sitting here now? First, a huge number of Iranians -- Persians -- are desperate for freedom and sick and tired of thirty years of theocracy, madness, and horror. Alas, they have fixed their wagon to a supposed "reformer," who is actually a stalking horse for Ayatollah Rafsanjani. Mousavi's only good quality, compared to the current lunatic president, is that he is probably not a "Twelver."

But the underlying reality belies the combination of superficial reporting by the antique media, wishful thinking by those of us who long for the mullahs to be overturned by a 1776-style revolution, and manipulation by Iranians desperate to move the mugwump leader of the free world off his fence and into helping true democracy spread to our bitterest enemy in the world. This "underlying reality" comprises a pair of despicable despots, a madman and a thief, neither with a clue how to defeat the fate decreed by demography, fighting a proxy civil war in the streets of Iran over who will preside over the dying earth.

Persia has a long and great (though I would not say "honorable") history, and its people deserve better; sadly, they need extraordinary outside aid, which the One They Will Continue to Wait For has no intention of ever offering, since he is on the side of the "established order" in Teheran.

I don't think the Persian people will get the "better" they deserve. They may get different; they may trade back King Stork for King Log. And perhaps they'll be satisfied with that.

Meanwhile, the American Hamlet sends out press releases and, like the Bellman in Lewis Carroll's Hunting of the Snark, furiously tinkles his bell. Is this one of those tests that Joe Biden warned us to expect -- and warned us that Barack "Lucky Lefty" Obama would be seen to flunk?

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, June 22, 2009, at the time of 2:24 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack (0)

June 19, 2009

The state of California -- the most populous by far at 36.8 million -- is staring down the barrel of a $24 billion deficit; there is a very strong likelihood that barring any unforseen windfall, California will have to declare bankruptcy within the next few months.

Now mind, $24 billion is chickenfeed by federal standards -- even the federal standards preceding the One Who Will Spend Us Into Oblivion. However, despite pleas from all factions in the factious state government (some sincere, others perhaps not so), the feds flatly refuse to bail California out.

Now I happen to agree with this position; states should not be "bailed out" when their financial messes are entirely self-generated... which describes California to a tea party. During the boom times, the state -- well, the Democratic legislature, which has run the state more or less continuously, in despite of Republican governors, for decades -- the Democrats enacted enough new "entitlement" programs and other new and frivolous spending to fill the Yosemite Valley. Now times aren't so flushed; and my libertarian response is, "You buttered your bread, now sleep in it."

But you have to admit, refusing to bail out one of the most liberal, pro-Obama, leftist-socialist states in the United States is awfully out of character for the Barack H. Obama administration and the Congress of Majority Leader Harry "Pinky" Reid (D-Caesar's Palace, 70%) and Squeaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Haight-Ashbury, 100%).

Great leaping horny toads, Obama has already pledged more than twice as much to bail out a single company: GM. GM employed 243,000 people in 2008, probably less now; California employs 242,939 total people as of May, 2009 -- not to mention having the largest economy, again by far, of any state: $1.812 trillion gross state product. One would think it a no-brainer for the Democrat president and Democrat Congress to offer "fiscal amnesty" to the Democratic state with the largest number of electoral votes, the largest economy, and the largest population.

So why aren't they?

I really don't think it's because the Oogo-istas running the federal government, who are throwing money at every problem the pops up and nationalizing one major industry after another, have got a sudden attack of fiscal restraint. Rather, I think there are two other major reasons for the denial:

1. California has a (nominally) Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is term-limited and cannot run for re-election in 2010.

It will be an open contest; but if Schwarzenegger has actually solved the state's long-running fiscal crisis, Republican candidates for the legislature and the governorship will receive a major electoral boost... which they sorely need; on its own merits, the California Republican Party is possibly the most inept and dimwitted in the Union.

But if Schwarzenegger is seen to fail -- even if it's due to the Democratic legislature's refusal to enact any meaningful spending cuts -- Republicans will nevetheless get the blame; and the Democratic nominee (probably Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa) will be elected by a landslide.

Simply put, the Democrats see a fantastic chance to grab the governor's mansion to go along with the state legislature, thus enjoying a limitless free pass to enact any socialist measure, no matter how unpopular, no matter how insane. Democrats may be calling for a federal bailout of California in public, but I strongly suspect they're privately sending a very different message to the Obamacle and his bestial virgins... one that says, "Hold off on any bailout until Antonio, not Arnold, demands it."

Certainly Democrats are not acting like they want to solve the crisis (at least not until 2011); with a state budget of $131 billion, they would only need to cut 18% across the board to have a balanced budget again. From 1998 to 2008, the budget grew from $73 billion (in 2008 dollars) to $131 billion, an 80% spending increase -- what a spree! Reducing the budget by $24 billion would only mean returning to 2006's budget. Yet the legislature "cannot find" even 5% in cuts!

I don't think any serious person could argue that the legislature is honestly or sincerely trying to solve the crisis. And I don't believe they will try -- until a Democrat is in place to take all the credit.

2. I suspect the second main reason for no Obamic bailout of California is lingering anger and resentment over the citizen's constitutional amendment that overturned California's State Supreme Court on the issue of same-sex marriage (SSM).

Proposition 8 was passed by a strong majority; it amended the state constitution to declare marriage to be only between one man and one woman; no other form of union would be legal or recognized in the state as a "marriage." (The 18,000 same-sex couples who married during the brief interval in which it was legal are "grandfathered" in.) I suspect that a great many Democrats in Congress -- and the One Himself -- still seethe that the people of the state took back their own government from the elites... and still fear that such resistance might set an example to citizens in many other states, on many other issues. Government of the people, by the people, and for the people has never been very popular in "people's republics."

Yes, I know; President Obama says that he agrees with the voters of California that marriage should be restricted to mixed-sex couples. Color me skeptical; I find it much more likely that, like many other Democrats, he sincerely wants to revolutionize marriage, along with every other bedrock principle upon which Western Civilization is built. I believe he would not only be fine with same-sex marriage but polygamy as well -- that strokes two special-interest groups at once!

But he doesn't want his fingerprints on such a radical, drastic change in social culture. The president would much prefer others to do the dirty work (preferably federal judges, who are more reliably liberal and don't have to worry about re-election), while he stands above the fray and votes "present." He thought he had nabbed the biggest prize of them all when the California Supreme Court issued its ruling last year; the state is home to the largest population of gays, of Hollywood celebrities, and of liberals (with, of course, a gigantic overlap), and it routinely gives Democratic candidates the largest amount of campaign cash.

But then along came the traditional-marriage amendment, chopping the legs out from under the court's ruling. Injury became insult when that selfsame court -- ignoring the blatant "hints" from the Left -- actually held that Proposition 8 was valid and legitimate, and would be enforced.

And then immediately afterwards, along comes Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, cap in hand, begging for money from the federal coffers. Hah!

Sure, Schwarzenegger himself pretty much supports SSM, and he's hardly what anyone would call a conservative. Ne'ertheless, he still has that scarlet R stitched onto his 52-inch chest; and that was sufficient to evoke all the rage, hatred, and fury: You don't expect the Democratic Congress to give money to a state full of homophobes, do you? (Especially not a state whose citizens had also voted in recent years to end state subsidies to illegal aliens and to terminate all racial-preference programs statewide. Good heavens, they must be Nazis!)

So take my thoughts for what they're worth; I'm glad we weren't bailed out, no matter how disreputable the reason why not. But I'm apprehensive how this will all play out in next year's gubernatorial and legislative elections. It's hard to imagine that the liberal monopoly here could get any worse; but no matter how deep you already are, you can always dig another sub-basement.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, June 19, 2009, at the time of 6:57 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack (0)

June 18, 2009