232 (Test-posting where no one will see, a day later.)
Need a video compilation done.
Title: The Republican Rebuttal
Background image: a big animated chart of the economy tanking.
Quick cuts:
Teenager rolling eyes.
Someone doing a *golf clap.*
Joe Walsh* shouting "You lie!"
Grieving parents of murdered border patrolman.
And a repeating scroll at the bottom, saying...
233 Rep Joe Wilson. Wilson. Not Walsh. Wilson. oof
220 Times Square Art [embedded below] c/o Weird Universe. Warning: nudity for art's sake. Just thought folks here might find this interesting. Don't know why.... (My slight payback for all the many fine links others have posted, such as this one posted recently by someone. [Video removed])
Okay, I see <blockquote> tag doesn't work here. Live & learn. siiigh
Hey, 70 Foole In The Rain, loved the SCoaMF of Steel!
The honorable Mrs Webworker sent me this (3pm CDST, almost an hour before Ace's post — heh) quoting Michael Barone at NRO:
"Democrats have criticized Obama on the speech-scheduling flap. James Carville said he was “out of bounds.” Salon.com’s Cenk Uygur sensed “the audacity of weakness.” It reminds me of a phrase describing a character in the 1980s TV series Dallas — “blustering, opportunistic, craven and hopelessly ineffective all at once.”
Is that last a nice way of saying SCOAMF?
Yeah, I'd say, pretty close, wouldn't you? :)
33 here's another question: "Each of you take one minute to say something about Obama that you like."
That he's only going to be a one-term President.
[Deafening cheers throughout America]
Also, seen this?
Shariah Law and American State Courts: An Assessment of State Appellate Court Cases
The study’s findings suggest that Shariah law has entered into state court decisions, in conflict with the Constitution and state public policy. Some commentators have said there are no more than one or two cases of Shariah law in U.S. state court cases; yet we found 50 significant cases just from the small sample of appellate published cases.
Others have asserted with certainty that state court judges will always reject any foreign law, including Shariah law, when it conflicts with the Constitution or state public policy; yet we found 15 Trial Court cases, and 12 Appellate Court cases, where Shariah was found to be applicable in these particular cases.
[h/t Cuz BD for the link]
Seems like this belongs here, odd tho' it is.
Sunday’s Non Sequitur sets traffic records — article on Daily Cartoonist about this Sunday Non Sequitur comic strip.
Now, I like Non Sequitur (or I did when I used to read the funnies months ago, back before I got too busy to think). Sometimes, even when he's exposing his drooling liberalism, Wiley can get off a good one. I don't think much of this anti-Congress cartoon from last Sunday, m'self, tho. At first I thought it was O'Bluffy's limo. That would've been more realistically funny.
But I thought this was interesting. Asked about response to the cartoon, Wiley said, "Congress is pretty much universally despised right now, and the response I’ve gotten bears that out. I have yet to hear from anyone even remotely taking umbrage with it. I expected at least some saying, 'well, not MY congressman…,' but not even that."
I presume this informal poll means, those who yawn at it like I do ignore it and those who like it fawn and respond. (I used to write to comic books, but who writes to comic strips, anyway? Oh, yeah, it's the Web.)
From Aug 10, 2010 (amazed I found this in my mountain of bookmarks!):
Ruby Bartlett of Ramona [Oklahoma] would like to announce that her boyfriend Specialist Joe Whetstone of Bartlesville will be entering the Tulsa Airport and will be greeted by the Patriot Guard Riders.
The Patriot Guard Rider’s assist in “coming home welcomes” as well as burial needs.
Ruby would like to ask anyone wanting to participate in the welcome home to make posters or just stand along the road waving this young man back to his family.
...The Patriot Guard Riders will meet Spc. Whetstone at the Tulsa Airport.
He will be saluted by The Guard Riders and they will hold a small ceremony at the airport. The Guard Riders will escort Whetstone all the way to his home in Bartlesville.
Beautiful, isn't it! And as Khemo noted, quite a contrast to the shameful way those returning from Nam were sometimes greeted. In a way, we're still making up for that, and I think of that every time I thank a vet for his or her service. The website in the article is www.patriotguard.org. Check it out for more info!
200! (Ah, D@mn!)
38. You misunderstand SCOAMF. Obama's a miserable failure as....
I din't misunnerstand nothin'. I renounces meself fer trying to be funny, missing first, and I lied because I don't stutter.
I am a boob. (See? thread-relevant.)
202. You misunderstand boob....
Zil, I got caught up on a month's worth of Gates of Vienna yesterday, and found a few links I thought I'd post here. (Was going to email them to you, but I don't have your email address.) Weird to go back over a month of news, realizing how much goes by so fast in the news cycles cyclones. "One thing pushes out another" as Mr Butterburr said to Frodo.
Fighting in the Way of Allah — Against the USA -- CNN report "gives some insight into why a permanent solution in Afghanistan remains persistently over the horizon."
Same thing, closer to home:
Proselytizing for the Mahdi at Lackland AFB -- "chapel converted to a mosque on the base. In effect, the U.S. government has become an official sponsor of the Mahdi...."
Col. Allen West Has Them -- "A notable (and dismaying) aspect of the following news video is that neither the news presenters nor the people interviewed on the street seem to have any familiarity with the single-word quote, much less understand its significance."
Michael Coren on Sharia vs. the US Constitution
Is YouTube Shariah-Compliant? -- "YouTube... has begun to take their videos down just because they dare to speak critically about Islam."
Countdown to 9-11 -- "Anjem Choudary and Muslims Against Crusades now eagerly await the tenth anniversary of 9-11… Vlad Tepes has turned the group’s animated graphic into a video, just in case they decide to take it down."
Nothin' you (and folks who read your blog) didn't already know, or at least would surprise you. Sad to say.
Why oh why would I stick my healthy neck out here? I guess it's because I'm too old to worry about it. And to call for LIBERTY! (Also the vain hope that maybe in this days-old comment list, few will notice and backflack will be minimal?)
I want to express my appreciation for those who, while believing homeopathy to be worthless, would still permit me and my family to continue purchasing homeopathic remedies and using them.
Our family has been using homeopathy for over twenty years, and we have a wealth of anecdotal support for it. There are two hundred years of anecdotal support.
Yes, spare me the obvious rebuttals. We're well aware that anecdote is not proof, and that the scientific validation is next to non-existent, and that there is not even a good valid scientific theoretical explanation. Please remember that lack of sound theory and lack of proof do not disprove the possibility. The long road of science is paved with discredited theories, but also littered with the bodies of those who staked their reputations on disputing what was later accepted. Remember those silly plate tectonics people! As for serious study, look at the CERN experiments on cloud formation, long opposed by the Anthropogenic Climate Change zealots. When the money lies in other areas, the research goes elsewhere.
Most "disproofs," such as that described in the article, are misapplication of theory (a specialty of that infamous slight-of-hand artist). If the idea is that homeopathy somehow instigates the body's natural healing responses, then finding that it does not kill bacteria in a petri dish eliminates the element of the body from the equation. (I simplify for brevity's sake.) If you don't need a homeopathic remedy, the theory goes, it is ineffective, so downing a whole bottle of sleeping aid (which idea and formulation are not classical homeopathy anyway) when you don't need it is, surprise, ineffective. Again, I simplify, to make the point that if you test something outside of its own theoretical boundaries and "disprove" it, you've only proven your own unwillingness to approach the matter with a modicum of true scientific open-mindedness, essentially looking for the coin over there where the light's better instead of where it was dropped, even doing so on purpose.
I'm thankful for many liberties beyond the basics like speech and worship. I've married without the State, home-schooled our children, and voted libertarian (when we had the chance), all ideas discouraged, frowned upon, or looked at aghast by "normal" people. We have always read of, and well understood the questions regarding homeopathy, and have seen the abundant errors of those both for and against it. We know we are taking a calculated gamble with our health. We really have found many apparent effects we think far exceed placebic possibility, on ourselves, others to whom we have recommended remedies, and even with animals. We know all these instances of apparent success are questionable, and we've had plenty of ineffective instances. One of the severe problems with testing "natural" remedies is that it seems, as one person related to us, "the remedy didn't do anything; the problem just went away naturally." Marshalling the defense of an individual body by custom-tailoring a remedy based on numerous indicators means that typical double-blind scientific studies are practically impossible.
Some vitamins and herbs are quite effective in specific instances, but those fields of health are filled with fraud, hokum, and dangerous ignorance. Far more so, homeopathy is a complicated, difficult discipline, where finding the right remedy and the right dosage is no easy thing, and there is lots of misinformation, misunderstanding, and pure balderdash even by homeopathic standards. I've seen herbal remedies marketed as "homeopathic." There are clear "classical" definitions of homeopathy, and then there's the public and pedestrian ideas. That not every reputed cure works as "advertised," or always works in all cases on all people, does not discount all instances with all remedies. So, the sledgehammer and standard-pharm manner of testing homeopathy has even less credibility than does homeopathy itself, to my understanding. I do not seek hereby to persuade, merely to suggest zealots who dispute homeopathy may want to examine whether they truly reason, or need to question the tenets of their blind faith. Just sayin'.
In any case, if I wish to keep trying it to find out for myself, I'm grateful if even those who are so sure of themselves about its ineffectiveness will keep their ignorant noses out of my business. I for one am not a blind dupe, new-agey zealot, am not ill-informed. I'll grant the possibility that I may be self-deluding, but I'm certainly not being defrauded. It's just a part of our health "experimentation." It's not like I'm going to avoid antibiotics if they're called for! As with, say, chiropracty (way to open a whole 'nother can of worms, eh?), there can be some beneficial methods and a whole lotta dangerous bone-twisters. (I really liked it that Penn & Teller BS [s01ep2] had a chiropractor putting down most chiropracty.) Same goes for much of the fraud and deception in your allegedly reliable scientifically-proven Big Pharma-copia, if you look closely. Let me be free to choose to play with my own body with my cheap little sugar pills, if I want to. You go ahead and down your expensive venom with fatal side-effects.
To reiterate my primary point, give me liberty and I'll worry about my own death. Thanks.
A follow-up I'm still considering whether or not to post. The title of the article was "How Far Should the Government Go to Protect Us from Snake Oil? The Case of Homeopathy" by Ronald Bailey
Amusing story to supplement my previous prolixity, considering the title of the article.
When we first started testing homeopathy for ourselves, we lived in Major City and found an actual MD who was a homeopathic advisor, best we've ever encountered. I asked him once why he turned from standard practice to homeopathy and he said when he interned at Major City Hospital, he got tired of seeing patients come back with the same ailments; implication being, just what we have found in our decades of experience, when homeopathy works, it does not just transiently like many symptom-suppressing medications, but seemingly eliminates the cause of those symptoms.
The first major test of homeopathy, for us, was when our twin boys were so young I could still pick them both up at the same time. One day I developed asthmatic-like symptoms and could hardly lift them. I felt bent over and out of breath all the time. I'd had itchy eyes, runny nose, sneezing allergic symptoms as a kid, but never asthmatic symptoms. After this went on too long, I went to see the Doc. He started me out on Remedy A at potency X. I got some relief, but not cured. He switched me to Remedy B, and I seemed to be not even as wll off even as on Remedy A. So he went back to Remedy A at potency Y. My symptoms vanished completely in a day or so and have never returned in almost twenty-five years. Weird, but regardless of how or why, I was happy to be well again. Asthma sucks.
So, I asked the Doc what the remedy was. He told me it was Exotic Latin Name. My Latin being stale, I said, okay, what's that in English? He replied, Latinish Name without the Latinish suffix. No light bulb over my head yet.
I should digress to say this man appeared to me very peaceful, zen-like y'might say, a nice smile behind his goatee, and a pleasant and confident manner, and usually that was his only expression. (His patients in Major City would probably recognize him from this.)
So I asked, him, okay, what's it made from? And he replied, it's the venom of the South American Black Snake. I grinned and said, Oh! Snake Oil! I didn't know him too well at that point, so I was glad for his reaction at my sarcasm; I actually got him to break his zen pose and laugh out loud, one of the few times I ever managed to do so. Yes, he said, out of the umpty-thousand (he was specific) remedies in the homeopathic repertoire, this one is made from snake venom.
How was this remedy determined, I asked? He said, well, Dr. Famous Homeopath was down in South America and he was bitten by the S. Am. Black Snake, and he developed the symptoms you've been having. That's how they do it.
I have to admit, that experience piqued my interest. Took three "placebo" tries to "coincidentally" make my weeks-old symptoms suddenly dry up and go away forever. I also got a personal demonstration in how complex it can be to prescribe homeopathically. We've often had similar experiences, where a remedy seems not to work at one potency, or not to bring complete relief, and then at another, not necessarily "stronger" potency, has dramatic and permanent effect. Mighty interesting system of voodoo, at worst. As I said before, our experiences have suggested to me that it's worthy of more attention than it's been given by the self-assured doubters who have not given it serious trial according to strict homeopathic methodology.
I'm sorry, but to say Obama is a stuttering clusterfuck of a miserable failure is insulting to all of us actual stuttering clusterfucks of miserable failures in the world. We know who we are, and Dick Milhouse O'Bluffy is not one of us. He has succeeded in everything he set out to do. Ruin the economy? Check. Destroy democracy? Check. Throw all friendly nations under the bus and embrace our enemies? Check. Party like it's the end of America while making sure it is? Check. I could go on for hours. But then I might miss cutting and pasting this as First. And I'm such a SCoaMF I probably can't even do that!
Some food-for-thought articles at Mother Jones Reason related to libertarianism in general and to Ron Paul in particular reflect how large is the blanket of "libertarianism," its internal disagreements and external misunderstandings.
Sally Kohn writes one of the silliest pieces on the topic I’ve ever read. "...if the self-appointed creators wish it, there would be no restrictions on guns or automatic weapons. Or, for that matter, no prohibition against murder." ... I’ve yet to meet a libertarian who opposes restrictions on homicide. Perhaps I don’t get out often enough. ...
Will Wilkinson Calls Ron Paul "an Embarrassment to the Creed" of Libertarianism by Matt Welch
Today comes further evidence for Doherty's thesis, in the form of a Wilkinson piece in The New Republic titled "A Libertarian's Lament: Why Ron Paul Is an Embarrassment to the Creed." Specifically, Wilkinson is embarrassed about Paul's stances on immigration and civil rights...
...ultimately I'm far more concerned with whether America is getting more libertarian (particularly in its politics and public policy), and in my judgment it most definitely has. And I don't see how you can arrive at that conclusion without giving heaps of credit to Rep. Ron Paul.
The latter article quotes from A Tale of Two Libertarianisms: The conflict between Murray Rothbard and F.A. Hayek highlights an enduring division in the libertarian world, by Brian Doherty, which discusses how
All sorts of intra-libertarian internecine squabbles follow along the same rough lines of the split between the hardcore, no-compromise, anti-statist Rothbardian and the more classical liberal, utilitarian, fallibilist, and prudential Hayekian.
My first AoS book thread contribution might seem like this link posted by HeatherRadish in the morning thread, but I don't care what the boys think; I'm secure in my manhood. Such as it is.
My wife brings home many books, fortunately usually from the resale shop for a dime. Yesterday I asked her how many she's currently reading, and we stopped counting at twelve. I read one at a time, as a rule.
Sometimes we find gems in the slurry. This morning I managed to finish one that's not long, but which I've been slowly working through, titled Will the Real Me Please Stand Up?: 25 Guidelines for Good Communication by John Powell and Loretta Brady (not to be confused with other books named Will the Real Me Please Stand Up). [Link is to Amazon.]
There's many communication "rules" I learned the hard way over my decades of dealing with folks, live and online, which I thought were well stated with good (if sometimes painful) examples. How to speak, to listen, to ask clarifying questions rather than make presumptions, to own one's perceptions and responses instead of projecting them on the other person, to recognize, and avoid, the mind games.
You likely either know someone (or you are someone) who says, "Oh, I know just what you mean!" when you probably don't, or "I know what you should do!" when the other person is not really asking for your self-centered, half-interested advice.
Yes, guys, it talks about expressing and listening to feeeelings, about "sharing" as a God-given gift to be given and received, but it's more about not dumping, not manipulating, and not letting emotional $#!+ pile up and then explode; clearing the air instead of muddying the waters; even, sometimes, just letting things slide for the moment; so, it's practical, realistic, and pretty clear about communication techniques.
I've already found it applicable, watching out for my own hasty presumptions, and helping others, a little, to recognize misperceiving habits and exaggerated reactions. Not the SF or mystery or tech manual that is my usual fare, but I'm glad I read it.
Usenet. BBS. DOS. Ah, folks! Just got through watching Dr Who, then I come here and I feel like I stepped through a time warp.
Radio Shack Model I. Originally had a memory of 4K, less some for the built-in rudimentary abbreviated BASIC. (Made my young nephew ROFL this summer to tell him that, while he played online multiplayer games on his laptop.) Later, outboard 5" floppies, a whopping 16K 64K of mem, lower-case conversion by doing surgery on the circuit board. TRS-DOS, then NEWDOS, then DOUBLE-DOS that doubled the 5" disc capacity. Acoustic modem hooked up to BBS at 300baud. Later a zippy 2400 baud actual plug-a-phone-line-in modem card. The geniuses who wrote TAPCIS for access to CompuServe freed me from my own interface sw, but I still had to write my own word processer. Home-made bookkeeping (with checkbook balancing ability!) in VisiCalc macros. A display of 16 lines of 64 characters each. Writing processor-level software for the Z-80 chip (half the commands of the original PC chip) to make 4-dimensional games on a monochrome display with maximum graphics of 128 by 48 blocks (don't call them pixels). I knew what every chip and byte in that computer did. That was the last time, though.
Then I were a hacker, by necessity. Now I be (mostly) a user, unavoidably. I just replaced my expired monitor with 1920x1080. Have about 3gig hard drive space on the LAN, sluggish cable internet at 100Mbps. Nearly 50 tabs open in two browser windows. Download hi-res full-length movies and watch them in wide screen. Power I could never imagine having in the late 1970s.
And I still can't make these things do what I want half the time.
I plugged in that Model I and it said "READY" -- sweet! How could I suspect... they would DESTROY MY LIFE!
Sorry. Blubbering in my cider-doused doddering senility. Time to take my rheumy eyes and long gray beard and shuffle off to bed!
tl;dr! :)
Just read, or skimmed, or glanced at, all the AoS posts and 'way too many of the comments from back at Tuesday's "This is how science gets settled" through this one. BRAIN... CLOSE TO MELTING!
Now I have to hurry out to get beer before the Oklahoma liquor stores close for Ramadan Christian Sabbath Communism Holiday attempted government-enforced sobriety.
Yesterday, I heard one of my 25yo sons say "scoamf." I really hadn't thitherto thought about how one pronounces it! Skoamph. Vowel as in (appropriately) "loaf" or "oaf."
This is the overnight open thread, right? Oh, sorry.
Didn't read all comments, just the top few and then searched for "Elements." Glad to see it repeatedly mentioned, and that I don't have to be the one to link to the online version. Still keep my well-worn 40-year-old copy from high school near the desk. But I never did get that one rule, "Be concise!"
O, illiterate stuttering clusterfu¢k of a catastrophically miserable failure of Democracy!
What were the Most Highs high on when ruling in the kingdoms of men that day?
Around 1967, my step-father refused to underwrite my investing in ten mint-condition issues of Fantastic Four #1 (at IIRC $20 each from the Howard "Ripoffsky" ad in the comics). I had this crazy idea they'd become more valuable.
Before he died, I did get to tell him about a copy of FF#1 selling for something over $100,000.
Near-Mint, if you can find one: $142,000.
If he were still alive, and I hadn't had my comics collection stolen in 1978 anyway, I figure a lawsuit for $2,000,000 would be about right.
"So why is it exactly that Democrats act so morally superior on this issue, as if it’s REPUBLICANS whose hands are soiled by the dirty fall-out of our WMD program?"
I understand Leftists have put down America for dropping The Bomb(s) and ending the war, and of course conservatives can be thought of as representing America in all its Glory, while Leftists can be thought of as opposing that spirit, still, I wasn't really aware that Democrats blamed Republicans for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Was there something in particular to which you were responding here?
Wherever did you get that "to satisfy America's thirst for vengeance against the Japanese" and the rest of those "reasons" for dropping the bombs? One might almost imagine from the tone of this that you somehow object to our having dropped the bomb, although I presume you're merely being sardonic. No question there was a desire for vengeance among many where the "punishment" of Hiroshima and Nagasaki fit the "crimes" that began (for the USA) with Pearl Harbor, but the satisfaction of vendetta was primarily a consequence, hardly significant as motivation. Certainly, there was already an interesting in showing the Commies our superiority. "Justifying the effort and expense" is just plain stupid. Ending the war without invading Japan was the crucial matter. The toll upon both sides had we failed to act, or delayed, would have absolutely dwarfed the damage to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. For that matter, the carpet-bombing of Tokyo was more devastating than The Bomb.
For the real human toll likely in the event of delay or choice to not drop the bomb, I recommend "Thank God For The Atom Bomb" [ArthurK] over at Ace of Spades, and the [PDF] article to which it refers. Also recommended is the History Channel show on Japan's atomic bomb, rumored to have actually reached the stage where they test-fired one in Korea.
My Uncle Ed, after slogging through the mud of Europe, was one of those positioned to die invading the Japan islands, but who instead is alive to celebrate his 90th birthday next week. Thank God for the Atom Bomb!
