Life Preservers

In a response to this stupid bullshit Jacob T. Levy quotes himself and I like it:

In a world filled with states, officeholders and officials should view themselves as having political responsibility as analyzed by Weber, which is much like [David] Miller’s remedial responsibility. They wield power that is not morally legitimated by its origins; the power exists because of morally neutral historical and social accidents. What remains is moral responsibility for what is done with the power.

State officials then confront a world in which their authority gives them unusual power over outcomes. In a world full of drowning children, they are unusually likely to have access to life preservers.

War Crimes

Here's a non-surprise:

Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, codenamed Curveball by German and American intelligence officials who dealt with his claims, has told the Guardian that he fabricated tales of mobile bioweapons trucks and clandestine factories in an attempt to bring down the Saddam Hussein regime, from which he had fled in 1995.

"Maybe I was right, maybe I was not right," he said. "They gave me this chance. I had the chance to fabricate something to topple the regime. I and my sons are proud of that and we are proud that we were the reason to give Iraq the margin of democracy."

Gee, I'll bet all the dead people are grateful for his courage. He probably has flowers thrown at him when he's out on the streets of Baghdad, right?

In a series of meetings with the Guardian in Germany where he has been granted asylum, he said he had told a German official, who he identified as Dr Paul, about mobile bioweapons trucks throughout 2000.

Aww.

Trashy

Mark Kirkorian is heartened:

A small piece of evidence to counter my pessimism about Egypt came right after Mubarak’s departure, when ordinary Egyptians organized themselves to clean up the mess in Tahrir Square[.]

That was indeed a nice picture of folks coming together to make things better.

This all may sound charming but unimportant, but it’s not. Anyone who’s been to the third world has seen trash strewn everywhere. This isn’t because less-developed countries produce more trash; in fact, they produce less. And it’s also not just because of lack of money for a proper waste-disposal infrastructure. Rather, it’s the product of a lack of civic consciousness and responsibility, without which ordered liberty is impossible.

...

Yes, the good news of the day is that Cairenes are potential non-savages.

Sometimes the natives of these third-world backwaters harness their primitive beats in protest of the ruin of their surroundings:

Buildings That Hurt You

Was in Toronto for a quick meeting - sorry DKW! - and got to make it to the ROM with a relative.

There are some interesting things in that building:



Unfortunately a bunch of it is taken up with the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal, a building which requires careful navigation:



Handy guardrails keep the building from splitting your skull. It remains to be understood how the building feeds itself in the absence of BRAINZ.

Gay Marriage Between Men and Women

Nicola Davison at Slate:

I'm at a fake-marriage market, where Chinese lesbians and gay men meet to find a potential husband or wife. In China, the pressure to form a heterosexual marriage is so acute that 80 percent of China's gay population marries straight people, according to sexologist Li Yinhe, a professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. To avoid such unions, six months ago, Shanghai's biggest gay Web site, inlemon.cn, started to hold marriage markets once a month.

Shampagne all around.

WYSIWYG

The Corner advertises the NRO's current offerings:

The editors counsel caution — not euphoria — over the Egyptian protests.

Charles Krauthammer outlines a new foreign-policy manual for the U.S.: the Freedom Doctrine.

RiShawn Biddle suggests that the U.S. overturn “reverse” seniority rules for teachers.

Henry Payne observes that the Internet has spread to rural areas — without government’s help.

Lou Dolinar chides President Obama for supporting the high-speed-rail boondoggle.

Robert VerBruggen warns against an effort to unionize airline-security workers.

Mona Charen coaches baby boomers to age gracefully.

Michelle Malkin demands that Congress defund Planned Parenthood.

This sounds like a staff meeting in hell.

For Future Use

I'm sure it'll come in handy.



Ripped off from here.

One of These Days, A Book

A nice Lulu vanity print of this shit would make a fine parting gift to anybody I wanted to part with:

The pirates’s boners are turgid and throbbing
They’re needing a fuck or a decent blowjobbing
But nary a woman is there to be had
So they’ll have to make do with your slut of a dad.

Does it really require context?

What Need Does This Asshole Talking Fulfill?

Donald Rumsfeld can't shut his fucking mouth:

The "war on terror" prison at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba is "one of the finest prison systems in the world," former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in an interview with Fox News on Tuesday.

Perhaps a certain president could show this somehow-not-yet-beaten-to-death-in-prison asshole what an asshole he really is, and perhaps my ass poops ice-cream.

The Death of Multiculturalism

Daniel Foster:

Reacting to David Cameron’s Luton Munich speech, one prominent Canadian community leader said Cameron was “spot on” when he insisted British multiculturalism has failed, adding that Canada’s multi-culti experiment was no better off.

“The Canadian multicultural model has failed, as the British model has,” the leader said. “When first generation (Muslims) are more loyal to Canada than the second generation, then we have sufficient evidence to say that multiculturalism has failed.”

Foster is one of the smarter Cornerites - which elevates him to stupidity I suppose - so he saves the punchline until the end:

So who’s the leader? Tarek Fatah, founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress.

More here.

The link goes to the Toronto Sun, a paper nobody needs to read ever, and the few other Canadian papers covering it seem to mostly be those interested in arguments against multiculturalism. Should you choose to follow the link, you'll find that the arguments against multiculturalism are that Mulsims aren't loyal to Canada, and also that 18 guys got arrested for concocting a plot to blow stuff up.

To the first of these two points I'd answer that if the measure of failure is loyalty to Canada then we gotta stop sucking Neil Young's cock. Really, one of the strengths of Canada, at least in the west where I grew up, is a notable lack of patriotism, notwithstanding these shitty commercials for shitty beer. I just do not care if your ambition is to move to Pakistan, though I hope it works out. I suppose the area on which Canadians can agree is that America sucks and Americans are stupid, although we all wanna go live in the warm parts of America forever and have sex with Americans and never come home ever. Unless we get cancer or something.

To the second, it's really bad that dumb people following a stupid religion wanna blow stuff up. But, you know, there's a war on that nearly everyone agrees is stupid. Some people are just not gonna be content to wave signs.

--

Coincidentally I've been listening to a BBC documentary about Muslim areas in Sweden.

MP3 link.

Tom Cruise and the Slaves

Via Brendan an article about Scientology. There are incidents detailed that are new to me, but most of the material on the CoS itself is typical stuff from an investigative article on Scientology: abuse, money, egomania, and a wall of silence around what the church actually does and believes. The most interesting thing about the article to me is that many of the defectors are believers in the good that Scientology can do, they just don't like how the hierarchy works. A standard religious conundrum I guess. I wound up having a little pity for Tommy Davis, who comes across there and elsewhere and elsewhere and elsewhere and elswhere as a tightly-wound shitbag and obvious liar, yet a pawn of an organization that can't let go of any power it conceives it has. I kind of hope he's able to wear an old shirt with paint on it and some cutoffs down to the 7-11 to get a Slurpee once in a while.

On to juicy celebrity news!

Brousseau also says that he helped customize a Ford Excursion S.U.V. that Cruise owned, installing features such as handmade eucalyptus panelling. The customization job was presented to Tom Cruise as a gift from David Miscavige, he said. “I was getting paid fifty dollars a week,” he recalls. “And I’m supposed to be working for the betterment of mankind.” Several years ago, Brousseau says, he worked on the renovation of an airport hangar that Cruise maintains in Burbank. Sea Org members installed faux scaffolding, giant banners bearing the emblems of aircraft manufacturers, and a luxurious office that was fabricated at church facilities, then reassembled inside the hangar. Brousseau showed me dozens of photographs documenting his work for Cruise.

Both Cruise’s attorney and the church deny Brousseau’s account. Cruise’s attorney says that “the Church of Scientology has never expended any funds to the personal benefit of Mr. Cruise or provided him with free services.” Tommy Davis says that these projects were done by contractors, and that Brousseau acted merely as an adviser. He also says, “None of the Church staff involved were coerced in any way to assist Mr. Cruise. Church staff, and indeed Church members, hold Mr. Cruise in very high regard and are honored to assist him. Whatever small economic benefit Mr. Cruise may have received from the assistance of Church staff pales in comparison to the benefits the Church has received from Mr. Cruise’s many years of volunteer efforts for the Church.” Yet this assistance may have involved many hours of unpaid labor on the part of Sea Org members.

Rich people love free stuff.

UPDATATRON!

Author Lawrence Wright interviewed here. Thank the manqué.

Waltzing's for Dreamers

See Richard Thompson move from easygoing jokester to heartbreaker in mere moments. Surely the mark of a psychopath. Also watch him tune up mid-solo. This is about as sappy a melody and sentiment as I can handle in a song...at least from people who are not Gods Walking The Earth, which Richard Thompson obviously is. Seek out a studio version; a smidge of gurl harmony really adds to the song cuz you get TWO pathetic losers instead of one.

Words:

Oh play me a blue song and fade down the light
I'm sad as a proud man can be sad tonight
Just let me dream on, oh just let me sway
While the sweet violins and the saxophones play
And Miss, you don't know me, but can't we pretend
That we care for each other, till the band reach the end

One step for aching, and two steps for breaking
Waltzing's for dreamers and losers in love
One step for sighing and two steps for crying
Waltzing's for dreamers and losers in love

Now they say love's for gamblers, oh the pendulum swings
I bet hard on love and I lost everything
So don't send me home now, put a shot in my arm
And we'll drink out old memories and we'll drink in the dawn
And Mr Bandleader won't you play one more time
For I've good folding money in this pocket of mine

Oh, one step for aching, two steps for breaking
Waltzing's for dreamers and losers in love
One step for sighing, and two steps for crying
Waltzing's for dreamers and losers in love

Oh Miss, you don't know me, but can't we pretend
That we care for each other, till the band reach the end

Oh, one step for aching, two steps for breaking
Waltzing's for dreamers and losers in love
One step for sighing, two steps for crying
Waltzing's for dreamers and losers in love
Waltzing's for dreamers and losers in love

The End of the Wiki Nonsense

The wiki I was bugging people about here and here was decided by conference call and MediaWiki won. I preferred Tiki just because I thought the ability to install and administrate was better for normal humans, but the guys who are going to have the say over administration without actually administrating seem to think they'll be able to get what they want if they pay other people to do that. MediaWiki is recognizable, and can do WYSIWYG editing along with many other good things if you customize. If the higher-ups can hire someone to make MediaWiki do all the stuff they want done it'll be awesome. The problem for the developer is gonna be getting a meaningful articulation of what the project is supposed to achieve, as I don't think the decision makers have an understanding of what they'll get. I know what I want and a cuddlier-than-Wikipedia MediaWiki installation is good for me, my colleagues in my office and across the country, but I'm not sure the people who are signing off on it are gonna realize their dream for it if they have a hard time spelling out their desires in words.

An okay result for me if it actually goes live and doesn't get bogged down in meeting after meeting resulting in tweak after tweak. As for the result for them, we hope for a patient developer who is okay with computer baby-talk and handholding.

Usenet: Overrun By Pornography?

What?

Please explain:

Just Fuck

Somehow I sense that granny meat belongs here.

The Battle Against Bullshit

Toodling around at The Corner I saw this from John J. Miller:

I’ve probably never done this before, but I’m going to leap to the defense of Jimmy Carter. This legal action against him is the very definition of a frivolous lawsuit. If plaintiffs had to pay costs when they lost lawsuits, we wouldn’t see nonsense like this.

Quite right, the suit's bullshit and woe betide Regnery if such suits gain traction. Or, you know, The National Review. And The Corner!

There's more:

By the way, Carter hasn’t been “officially charged with fraud.” He has merely been accused of it. Big difference.

Who's he talking to? Oh right, the bit's titled "re: President Carter’s ‘Fraud’" so there must be an item further down. And there is:

A provocative case — Unterberg et al. v. Jimmy Carter et al. — is under way against former president Carter for his analysis (if that is the right word) of the Israel-Palestine crisis, Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid. The Washington Post reports that five dissatisfied customers, to put it mildly, have filed a class-action lawsuit in Manhattan federal court against Carter and his publisher, Simon & Schuster, alleging that the 2006 book ought to have been classified as a work of fiction.

Provocative! Thanks to Miller the piece has been updated:

Correction: This post originally carried the title “President Carter Officially Charged with Fraud.” The mistake has since been changed. The fault is my own.

Here is the new title:

President Carter Officially Sued for Fraud

All better.

Things I Like

I like this cartoon about the Super Bowl.

Even better are the cranky comments underneath.

May the halftime show be spectacular.

Liberal Speech Codes

Breaking news! LIBERALS TELL YOU YOU CAN'T SAY STUFF!



Comment #1:

Taste

A question:

Would you eat meat that was grown in a lab?

Hmm, meat that hadn't been attached to a live animal which was walking around in its own shit and periodically shocked or burned or otherwise beaten and confined in a small space to suffer...

How could that possibly be tasty meat?