Homocon

Today is the first day of the trial to determine whether the election of Christine Gregoire as Washington State's governor should be overturned. This is something I'll be following closely and with great interest.

For those of you who may not be familiar with the political battle occurring here in Washington State, GOP challenger Dino Rossi filed a lawsuit in January, challenging the third and final (hand) count of the votes in Washington State, which tipped the governor's election to Gregoire after Rossi had won the initial two machine counts, which, to me, is like saying, "Hey, thanks Blue Gene, but we know how unreliable your calculations can be, so we'll take it from here." I mean, wasn't the whole point of machine counting to rescue us from the tedium and inherent unreliability of human hand-counting?

"Every single time a machine counts a vote, it does so in the same programmed manner, by exactly the same inbuilt standards, over and over again. Machines are usually constructed to execute specific functions. Vote-counting machines are designed for the specific single purpose of counting votes. If you doubt a counting machine's accuracy to count, try your pocket calculator -- or an ATM machine."

There's an argument being floated that machine counts are more precise while hand counts are more accurate, but this doesn't take into account the pull of human passions when political results are at stake. While humans don't suffer from the issues that machines do ("hanging chads," anyone?), machines don't suffer from the issues that humans do when performing tedious and repetitive tasks - fatigue, clumsiness, forgetfulness, etc. There's a reason that "Human Error" is a well-known term, and why machines are increasingly used for counting and tabulation tasks, despite their margin of error.

"While automation provides predictable, consistent performance, it lacks judgment, adaptability and logic. While humans provide judgment, adaptability and logic, we are unpredictable, inconsistent and subject to emotions and motivation."

Proponents of hand-counting point to the adaptability and judgement of humans as necessary to the vote-counting process, while neglecting to mention that it's the adaptability and judgement of humans that resulted in thousands of misplaced and lost-then-found ballots that have plagued Washington State's gubernatorial election (not to mention the issue of provisional ballots being fed through voting machines without proper vetting), casting long shadows of doubt and suspicion across the King County Board of Elections. Even Dean Logan, the elections director of King County and a Democrat, admitted to reporters, "Every time you have human judgment and frailty enter into the process, it will change the result . . . when you're talking about close to 900,000 pieces of paper, I think the machine count is going to be more accurate than a manual count."

Yet a manual recount is exactly what Washington voters got, after TWO machine counts that came up with Dino Rossi as the winner -- a hand-count with results so suspect that we're now in the midst of a legal battle that's a black-eye upon the lax nature and slip-shop regulation of Washington State's electoral process.

Throughout human history, almost every major technological advance has been met with resistance: "Ovens, it was once said, would take the charm out of cooking; industrial machinery would cause unemployment; in vitro fertilization would subvert nature . . . at an instinctive level, especially if the technology does something that we do, but does it better, we feel threatened." So critics of the machine-counts and machine voting technology (mostly democrats, natch) are flogging the tired old 1960's Star Trek era meme that humans are somehow better and more reliable at these kinds of things, despite the fact that the demand for more and more technology to replace error-prone human activity flies directly in the face of such sentiments.

I've mentioned the Luddites before, right?

"There's a disconnect between the headlines and the actuality, which is that the machines are working pretty well, but that they're part of a process that involves people and procedures," said Bob Cohen, senior vice president of the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA), and a recent CalTech-MIT Voting Technology Project came to the conclusion that while improved administrative practices and better voter education contributed to more accurate voting results in 2004, it was the significant overhaul of older voting technologies that "made a substantial positive difference in 2004," with the states that engaged in the most significant election technology reform efforts seeing the largest increase in vote tabulation accuracy.

But, somehow, it's the hand-count that matters.

This is a legal challenge that has passions running high on both sides of the political spectrum, as it's a battle for Party control of the Governor's mansion here in Washington State. But this election was a grave disappointment for anyone interested in serious election reform, and I'm hoping that the court rules for a whole new election in 2006 rather than letting this one stand. I'm not at all confident that the court will see fit to make such a ruling, but the electoral process in King County has proved itself corrupt and unreliable, and allowing this last election to stand would be a judicial statement in favor of shoddy electoral procedure.

"No one knows who won this election," said Rossi supporter Brian Thomas, 60, of Seattle. "I hope the judge just nullifies this election so there will be a revote in November." Unfortunately, Chelan County Superior Court Judge John Bridges is only human.

Posted by at 5:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Now this is what I'm talking about -- my cutting-edge, sci-fi future. Watch the video that goes along with the Wired article. It's fascinating stuff, and also offers a glimpse into how life just may have evolved on this planet. I mean, if there's a god, his name has got to be Electricity.

"Up until now, (human cloning) seemed largely like a theoretical exercise," said Bernard Siegel, director of the Genetics Policy Institute. "But now with actual stem-cell lines created for individuals suffering with diseases and medical conditions, this takes on a greater significance, and those who would want to ban this research are going to come face to face with millions of patients seeking cures."

I'm an identical twin myself (one of nature's clones), and so have no problem with the concept of human cloning. While I share my exact DNA with another human being, my brother and I both have our own distinct personalities, individualities and lives, we make our own choices and we've easily managed to create our own full set of separate experiences, so I don't get all bent out of shape by the scare-tactics of the Luddites when they whisper about soulless Frankenstein monsters brewed in a test-tube, or mutter darkly about genetic determinism (i.e. -- "They'll clone Hitler! Aiieeee!"). And the whole "We can't play God!" argument just doesn't wash with me -- we already have organ transplants, fertilization treatments, triple-bypasses and bio-mechanical implants. Whether you like it or not, we've been playing God for a long time, and it's saved millions of lives while improving the health and well-being of millions more.

An executive order from 2001 forbids United States scientists from cloning embryos to produce stem cells for research, and a number of states have outlawed human cloning, but no federal law banning human cloning has yet made it past the Senate, and I hope a federal ban on human cloning is never enacted. I like George Bush for a lot of reasons, but on human cloning and stem cell research, I think he's dead wrong. Scientists in this country should not have their hands tied regarding stem cell research or human cloning advances, or they'll fall dreadfully behind in the medical progressions accrued from such research, leaving our medical system as sad and third-rate a wreck as the medical systems in, oh, say, Canada, for example.

Sorry, I just had to blame Canada.

And when the news reports talk about the "Korean scientists," I really wish they'd remember to place the "South" in front of it. North Korea is an intellectual and technological wasteland (not to mention a hell-hole for its starving citizenry), and it'd be a shame if Kim Jong Il gained any good-will or credit through mere geographical association.

On a related note: when it's discovered that stem cells cannot be used to treat alcoholism, drug addiction and sex addiction, can we stop calling these behaviors "diseases" and begin to hold people fully accountable for their own lack of self-control? "But . . . but, I'm a victim!" Yeah, whatever, stop your blubbering -- you're disturbing the other customers at the bar.

OFF-TOPIC:
You see, just as all homsexuals aren't Lefty Liberals, all Christians aren't Right-Wing Conservatives. It's odd that I have to even point out these things, but some of my more radical leftist readers are a little slow . . .

Posted by at 4:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I'm not a big movie buff, and the whole 'Star Wars' cultural frenzy doesn't concern me much, but I am a fan of new and emerging technologies, so I found this Reuters story of interest: "Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith" has been leaked onto a major file-sharing network just hours after opening in theaters, at a time when Hollywood is increasingly concerned about online piracy . . . One popular tracker Web site showed more than 16,000 people currently downloading the film via BitTorrent."

I think piracy is pretty lousy -- I mean, here are these conglomerates sinking literally hundreds of millions of dollars into producing jazzy, snappy, cutting-edge entertainment pieces with the intent of wowing as big an audience as they can muster, and this is the thanks they get? But I also think the studios are way too slow on the uptake on this one. It's the digital age, they're producing digital entertainment, we have digital delivery media (the Internet and satellite television) that reach worldwide, and yet we're still expected to line up at a theater and pay ticket prices that include marketing, film print, shipping and middle-man theater chain costs?

*harumph*

I understand that theater chains have a vested interest in restricting initial screenings to their network of movie palaces across the country and worldwide, but now that perfectly acceptable digital copies of breaking films can be made available for download only hours after a film's release (if not before the film's release), the whole "Let's feed it to the theaters, then release it to Pay-per-View and Pay Cable channels, and then release it on DVD" model is overdue for the dung-heap. Theater chains are already balking at the high costs of converting to digital projection methods, and really, why should they as more and more people simply download films and screen them at home on clear, crisp, sharp, large and brilliant high-definition screens that keep getting cheaper with the passing of each nano-second. So the incentive is obviously lacking and we're saddled with, as a result, a very retro/analog delivery system that's not as good as it could be, and costs far more than it should.

This is not my beautiful future.

Here's my two-cents: ditch the "most favored nation" theater-chain model and release new films to the internet, worldwide, on the same day they're available in theaters. This would cut any self-righteous justifications for piracy off at the knees, and because there's no packaging, film print, shipping or middle-man costs involved in digital distribution, the price of a direct download could be as low as $3.99 (or lower, whatever the market can bear) in order to encourage as much legal downloading as possible. Make it available on Pay-per-View as well. There will still be digital pirates, but the demand for pirated material would plummet as the real deal would be readily available, and the tens of thousands of people who are currently bit-torrenting their illegal copies of 'Star Wars' (and on only the first day of its release) could have just ordered it on Pay-per-View or downloaded it off some studio pay-site, instead.

I mean, that's where everything is headed anyway, so what's up with all the gnashing of teeth, the dragging of heels and the flurry of lawsuits instead of just getting with the program? I have no wish to see the large studios fail -- they're the only ones who can afford to put together these epic, special-FX extravaganzas, and a good diversionary extravaganza can be a wonder to behold . I just can't figure out what it is that they think they're avoiding.

And on the subject of movies, I watched this last night, and if you have any interest in surreal, hyper-violent Japanese cinema (and why would you not, I ask?), this thing will blow your mind. I laughed so hard, and yet it was also completely horrifying. I couldn't tell whether it was a horror movie, an action-thriller or a comedy, and I think that's a good thing . . . ?

I rented it off of Netflix -- you know, where you can also rent "Michael Moore Hates America" (gotta plug the sponsor -- now, back to our regular programming).

OFF-TOPIC:
You know, while this may have started off as just another one of his "You're not paying enough attention to me!" media ploys, I have to say that I've really warmed up to Donald Trump's idea of rebuilding the Twin Towers, just making them slightly taller and a lot stronger.

Posted by at 5:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

The destruction visited on science by what can only be described as modern day Luddism has cost tens of millions of dollars and threatens vital medical research. In April 1987, the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) claimed responsibility for the fire that destroyed two-thirds of the veterinary diagnostic laboratory at the University of California at Davis, which resulted in more than $3 million in damages -- and that was just one isolated incident.

Animal experimentation has brought about astonishing progressions in modern medicine and modern pharmaceuticals. Kidney, heart and liver transplants would not be possible without animal experimentation. Vaccines against polio, measles, diphtheria, and whooping cough, and treatments for strep throat, ear infections, and pneumonia have been made possible because of animal experimentation. Insulin therapy for diabetics was made possible through animal experimentation, while chemotherapy and radiation treatments for cancer came about through -- yep, you guessed it: animal experimentation.

When forced to make a choice between medical progress for humans or the well-being of rats, monkeys and rabbits, I choose humans, just as I would choose to save a human being over a pet dog should I be the first at the scene of a terrible car wreck or a house-fire. It's just not something I care to fabricate a moral quandary over (much like the flushing of a Qur'an down a toilet -- it's a book, they're terrorists, chill out).

Below are some links to pertinent articles and stories regarding the benefits to humanity brought about by animal research, and the havoc wreaked by the new 21st century Luddites who suffer from the glue-sniffing delusion that an animal (any animal, mind you -- just pick one!) is somehow equal in worth to a human. I'm willing to concede that animals have value, yes, as far as research, entertainment, food source, transportation, labor and/or or companionship is concerned, but equal?

Pshaw!

1. "Childhood injections might protect people later in life, animal studies suggest, and a dose of antibodies could clear clogged arteries."

2. "The protection of public health from adverse effects of pesticides can be achieved through reliance on animal testing and use of the highest ethical standards."

3. "The Animal Liberation Front is a criminal organization that has claimed responsibility for thousands of acts of violence against animal enterprises and their employees, mostly in the United States and Great Britain."

4. "There is no question that the fringes of the animal welfare and environmental rights movements have become increasingly radicalized . . . These sectors see themselves in a war against the entire government and industrial democracy itself."

5. "Cancel the (December 10th) Forest Labs party or syrup of ipecac and diarrhea inducing agents will appear in your catering provisions begining Friday afternoon."

6. "Vaccines for polio and hepatitis B were developed through experiments on animals. Medical procedures like measuring blood pressure, pacemakers, and heart and lung machines were perfected on animals before being tried on humans. Surgery techniques, like those to correct and prevent bone diseases, were developed on animals."

7. "Researchers must show that animals used in their particular project are not being unnecessarily burdened. This means that any burden placed on experimental animals needs to be justified. One aspect of providing that justification is to show that the research is likely to bring benefits either by (a) improving medical care of humans or animals or (b) contributing to new scientific information."

8. "The ALF has always had a stated policy of non-violence. However, in more recent years, ALF activities have extended to vandalism, arson and making threats against individuals who directly or indirectly work for organizations the ALF has targeted."

9. "A great many medical breakthroughs have depended on the use of laboratory animals and much of the medical research being done today still depends on them. Yet this research faces increasingly hostile campaigns by those who, through lack of understanding, would seek to ban all animal research."

10. "The MORI poll found that people do not recognise the link between animal research and medical treatments. Thirty five per cent said that they or a close family member had taken a prescribed drug for a serious illness in the past two years, yet only one in six of this group realised that the drugs had been tested on animals."

Individuals involved with organizations such as ALF are not concerned with the welfare of bunnies and beagles -- the so-called "Animal Rights" activism of ALF and PETA (among others) is merely a smokescreen that provides useful cover for a disturbed litany of arsonists, vandals, thieves, exhibitionists, anarchists, sociopaths and thrill-junkies.

UPDATE:
Right in my own backyard . . . typical.

OFF-TOPIC:
Har!

And double har!

Posted by at 7:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I get a lot of comments and emails with statements like these:

1. "Lining up early for your pink triangle... good boy." 2. "Fascism is running amok . . . You're the typical American: Dumb, unsophisticated, ignorant, stupid, evil and fascist." 3. "I'm sitting here trying to imagine one reason why any rational gay man would be a republican...? Conservatives are trying and are going to take away homosexual's rights." 4. "Conservative Christians don’t tend to grasp the concept of personal liberty." 5. "It's a shame (you're) too stupid to realize that when the extreme right has its way, (you'll) just be another number in their sick "Christian" gulag." 6. "I just worry that our reaction now begins to mirror the late 1920's and early 1930's in Germany. "

My first reaction is laughter. My second reaction is to post my own response to the Chicken Littles of the Left who are positively sanguine over Palestinians firing rocket-launchers at Israeli school-buses, yet can manage to get themselves all worked up into screeching echo-chambers of paranoia over the supposed dangers of Western, post-WW1 Christianity.

I, myself, am not a Christian, but I was born and raised in a fundamentalist, Protestant household, so I know the basic tenets pretty well. Christians may believe in the inherent sin of mankind, but they also subscribe to the notion that individual worth is valued at such a premium that their God sacrificed himself, enduring unbelievable and torturous physical agony, to save their souls (hence, The Passion). In growing up surrounded by Christians, and in my dealings with them in my adult life, it's become clear to me that (more often than not) Christians adhere to the "all are precious in His sight" philosophy, which fuels their interest in participating in political activity -- not because they desire to rule the world, but because they're genuinely concerned about the moral health and spiritual well-being of the societies in which they live and function.

Which is why attempting to equate Christianity with WW2 Nazis or Russian totalitarianism reveals an ignorance of such breadth and magnitude as to be, quite simply, astonishing. Nazi testimony regarding the period of WW2 reveals a deep contempt for Christianity within the Nazi Party. Nazi totalitarianism demanded that all religious activity conform to the desires of Nazi leadership, Christian churches were forced to accept the racist doctrines of Nazism under threat of imprisonment in concentration camps, and the Gestapo monitored Christian clergy and congregations for any semblance of dissent with Nazi policies. And while much is made of the alleged "silence" of Pius XII during the Nazi persecution of the Jews, little is mentioned regarding the systematic persecution that Catholics and Christians underwent at the hands of the Nazis.

The clergy, hierarchy and Vatican were vilified by the Nazi leadership as poisoners of German blood, race-death merchants, race-swamp promoters, race contaminators, race-chaos merchants, obscurantists or "men of shadows," sorcerers of Rome, and, referring to the Jewish roots of Christianity, as advocates of perverted "Orientalism." Catholic newspapers were banned, Jesus was portrayed an an unwitting tool of Jewish world conspirators, brown shirt gangs broke up meetings of Christian trade unions and the Catholic Center Party, thousands of Catholic Center Party supporters were placed in concentration camps, and while the Catholic Church found it necessary to enter into an agreement with Hitler's government (which has been regarded as a move of "necessary evil" in order to protect as many of their members as possible from persecution and torture at the hands of what was then recognized throughout Europe as a legitimate governmental body), Catholic schools and trade unions were still dismantled, clergy members imprisoned, and threats, bribes, brutal nighttime interrogations and nervous breakdowns were reported along with stories of priests thrown out of windows, children arrested, families imprisoned and thousands of believers denied employment with the State unless they renounced their religion.

Christians were also tortured, imprisoned and murdered in Bolshevik Russia, whose revolutionaries sought the establishment of an atheistic state along with a warlike communism, which led to the formation of the Soviet Union, where educational functions of the Church were completely abolished, churches and church properties were confiscated by the government, Christian clergy were imprisoned and tortured, and an estimated hundreds of thousands of Christians were murdered, imprisoned or driven from their homes for political reasons. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, the celebration of Christmas was prohibited, while then and afterward an extensive propaganda campaign was undertaken to convince the citizenry (especially the children and youth) not to become believers, with the church consistently portrayed by the government as corrupt, hypocritical and otherwise evil. Stalin (the darling of the 60's radical left) starved, imprisoned and murdered tens of millions of people, including the Jews, Catholics and Orthodox believers whom he labeled as "enemies of the state" and had systematically wiped out.

To all the liberals who flail about, blathering stupidly about the Christians and their Gulags, I have this to say: Hitler, Stalin, Mao Tse-Tung, Ho Chi Minh, Idi Amin and Pol Pot are responsible for the extermination of hundreds of millions, and none of these men were Christians. It can be argued, actually, that all of them were actively anti-Christian, yet, somehow, the new Left deliberately floats the notion that George Bush and the Conservative Christians are the ones to fear; that somehow it's the members of a distinctly reformed and now comfortably modernized religious belief system that are the ones who are going to toss everybody in the clink and throw away the key.

Not bloody likely.

Throughout contemporary history, it's been the atheists, the communists and the anti-Christian/anti-religion forces who have been responsible for the destruction of entire societies and the rape, torture, starvation, imprisonment and murder of hundreds of millions, including the deliberate and systematic elimination of religious beliefs and believers (and don't even get me started on the bloody, tyrannical and repressive nature of Islamic theocracies, where, even today, just wearing the wrong clothing can get you beheaded in a public square), yet it's been the Christians and the traditionally Christian nations who have most often stood up to and cried out against oppression because of their firm grasp on individual worth, personal liberty and the value of the human soul.

If you think a Christian leader at the helm of a modern, prosperous and technologically progressive Christian nation is scary, then you obviously didn't pay much attention in History 101, because there's nothing scarier historically than a group of angry anti-Christians who want nothing more than to seize control of the reins of government . . . for the good of the people, of course.

Posted by at 3:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (12)

Spiegel Online has a terrific interview from back in February (I know -- I'm late to the party and all the hors d'oeuvres are gone) with historian Frederick Taylor regarding his recently published book, Dresden: Tuesday, February 13, 1945, on the 60th anniversary of the allied firebombing of Dresden during World War 2.

"Some people mistake the attempt at rational analysis of a historical event for a celebration of it . . . (yet) most people combine an irreconcilable sense of conflict between what was necessary -- as people saw it at the time -- to defeat the Nazis and what you can feel good about as a people. There is no real solution to this paradox."

Read the whole thing, because it has significant correlations to what's happening now regarding Iraq, the Bush Administration's WOT and the Mainstream Media's Vietnam nostalgia act.

Meanwhile, over at Newsweek, the MSM is learning yet another harsh and long-overdue lesson about media accountability. Just over six months past The Fall of the House of Rather, sloppy journalism, anonymous sources and non-existent editorial controls are again the rule of thumb as liberal reporters and editors, eager to keep pounding the "U.S. Military is EEEE-VILLLL" pulpit, ran with a sketchy, uncorroborated account of EEEE-VILLLLL U.S. soldiers flushing pages of the quran down the toilet in an effort to TORRRR-CHURRRRR the insurgents terrorists held WAR CRIMES! captive at that Nazi concentration camp Guantanamo Bay. 15 Afghanistan citizens are now dead, with scores more wounded, in the resultant riots after Eastern media outlets began reporting an item that Newsweek editors are now admitting is unverifiable.

"Our original source later said he couldn't be certain about reading of the alleged Qur'an incident in the report we cited, and said it might have been in other investigative documents or drafts."

The NYT, CBS and now Newsweek? Is it any wonder that more and more people are turning to the Internet for their information?

The conservative blogs weigh in:

"Well thanks, Newsweek, for the apology! We forgive the dozens of innocent deaths and the harm done to coalition troops thanks to your irresponsible journalism."

"Why is it that large, trusted news outlets can't employ the same basic critical thinking that countless obscure blogs do? Isn't it worth it to get the facts straight and to consider the consequences of slipshod reporting?"

"Should a particular story collapse in a heap, you can always run the "fake but accurate" line – trust us, it’s happening but we just can’t prove it at the moment."

"These news outlets are happy to publish anonymous allegations because the stories leaked by their sources fit the reporters' political preconceptions. . . . If this satisfies journalistic standards at NEWSWEEK, maybe it's the standards that need some work."

"Thanks, pal! Fifteen people dead, many more injured, the natives restless in all the usual places, and you offer us the usual bureaucratic haut-en-bas mumbo-jumbo . . . The problem is not simply a reporter’s mistake but editorial ignorance of the global information grid."

"This is journalism at its most insidious and dangerous."

"Newsweek is concerned that they caused a riot? When will they become concerned that there is a direct correlation between printing stories told by terrorists, their lawyers, and family members of terrorists about torture being the rule rather than the exception and getting American soldiers killed?"

"Those journalists knew how Muslims would react! Why would you hurt your own country and risk more deaths just to report this “fact?” To what end?"

"As I've warned before, if Americans conclude that the press is, basically, on the side of the enemy, the consequences are likely to be dire."

"Where was Newsweek and the rest of (the MSM) when The Palestinian gunmen holed up in the Church of the Nativity tore up Bibles for toilet paper? . . . Why is the world media so hell bent on portraying Islam as some kind of sacrosanct religion, better and above the rest? Is their book somehow holier than everybody else's? Not bloody likely!"

"Yeah. Sorry about all those dead people. Next time we'll try to make sure our sources are credible."

"Just wondering, when will the Libs start to demand resignations?"

"South Asian political and security analyst Bahukutumbi Raman said the Islamist rioting in Afghanistan is being deliberately incited by well-organized agents of the Hizb ut-Tahrir terror gang, who quickly recognized the Newsweek “Quran desecration” story as a propaganda windfall."

"Newsweek has blood on its hands. Blood on its desks. Isikoff should cough up his source."

"In their exercise of that freedom of speech we hold most dear, was there no thought for those who guarantee that right . . . have we grown so self-centered as a nation that we think only of our rights, and never of our responsibilities?"

"Why do the jihadis get the benefit of the doubt over our military? Is the Bush Administration inherently less trustworthy than Al Qaeda operatives? Maybe there is no Tokyo Rose in the war on terror and so Newsweek thought they'd fill the void."

"Newsweek lied, people died!"

Daily 'Screw 'Em' Kos gives Newsweek a pass:
"I see this incident this way: Newsweek has good sources for its allegations, but has backed off because it finds itself in a dicey, ill-founded public relations nightmare."

WTF? "Good sources," and they're backing off? Unlikely.

Wizbang takes a rather different approach:
"The riots were a completely irrational and wrong response, and Newsweek should not be held responsible for what a bunch of religious, West-hating whackos do. Those lunatics are simply atrocities waiting to happen, and anything -- anything -- can be the trigger. One might as well find the woman who rejected Ted Bundy and blame her for all the women he subsequently murdered."

OFF-TOPIC:
"Vicente Fox refused to apologize Monday for saying Mexicans in the United States do the work that blacks won't — a comment widely viewed as acceptable in a country where blackface comedy is still considered funny and nicknames often reflect skin color."

When are we closing the borders? Now? Perhaps? Or maybe we can just trade Canada and Mexico for Poland and Italy -- I'd actually visit south of the border if it meant Naples instead of Tijuana. And who the f*ck needs Canada?

Posted by at 4:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Yep -- just your typical Seattle politico.

In the run-up to the 2004 election, one of my favorite sights was when I was driving down Bellevue Way, and just as I was cruising past Bellevue Place, on the corner stood a group of female protesters, all carrying signs and chanting slogans against George Nethercutt -- they weren't for any candidate, mind you, just against Nethercutt. In the middle of the chanting, sloganeering group stood one solitary man who looked to be in his late twenties, quietly holding a very tall, very large sign which read, simply, "Help! I'm surrounded by liberal morons!"

Welcome to Seattle.

1. We have respectable and deeply intelligent representatives who aren't swayed by emotional rhetoric or cheap anti-American sentiment.

2. Seattle-ites are law abiding citizens who are eager to encourage international economic development and trade.

3. Did I say law abiding citizens?

4. And deeply intelligent representatives?

5. And our elections are a model of objective, ethical state bureaucracy in action.

6. We love a good, friendly debate of new ideas and workable solutions.

7. We're also big on free-speech and ideological tolerance.

8. And Seattle's unprecedented climate for the calm and rational exchange of viewpoints only encourages more of the same.

But hey -- the weather's great (I grew up in the midwest, so a rainy winter is definitely preferable to a subzero winter), Lake Washington's grand, the espresso's incredible, and though it's not New York, there are still some terrific restaurants. So c'mon all you libertarians and conservatives -- pack your bags and move on in! This place is overdue for a real political revolution.

ADDENDUM:
Just a gentle reminder as to why you should never feed the liberals.

Posted by at 7:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

With The Huffington Post derided as "the sort of failure that is simply unsurvivable," "further proof that being divorced from reality works best with a large divorce settlement to invest," and "the liberal echo chamber" with celebrity entries that "read like the opening lines from ungiven speeches that dribble off into empty mutterings," even the ever-leftist The Guardian had to chime in with a spot-on and razor-sharp spoof of Arianna Huffington's latest vanity project just to retain even a semblance of credibility while also maintaining a very safe distance.

But my favorite. ever. piece. of. web. satire. is. THIS.

With superbly crafted swipes at every liberal politician, loony celebrity and self-absorbed blogger within reach, Huffington's Toast raises the act of critique to an art form with postings from "not really" Howard Dean ("I hope lots of negroes are logging in from hotel kitchens -- WAAAAAUUUUUGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!"), Hunter S. Thompson ("Like, for example, you come up with the idea to shoot a man in the head just to watch him die") and Martha Stewart ("Or else you could just hire a Guatemalan girl to darn your stockings. That’s what I do. But of course I’m very very wealthy"), while also engaging in clever send-ups of Instapundit Glenn Reynold's newfound and near fetish for blonde and fellow conservative blogger Ann Althouse ("UPDATE: Althouse Althouse, Althouse Althouse; Althouse-Althouse Althouse") and Hugh Hewitt's incessant product placement ("Back to pimping my books and groupies on my radio show"), this is my new favorite web diversion and one-stop entertainment shop.

And the site even sports an advertisement for one of my favorite movies (and also advertiser on homocon), "Michael Moore Hates America"!

*sigh*

It's, like, candy all day long . . .

*Note to Andrew Breitbart: If you know what's good for your career, you'll ditch this lame-ass Huffington blog-wannabee and start your own on-line, uber-Drudge, fantastico-pop-culture expose. I've read Hollywood Interrupted. I know what you're capable of doing. Call me -- we'll do lunch.

1,000 WORDS:
Ha!

Posted by at 7:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

In 2004, New York's DMV suspended about 300,000 driver's licenses after a computer search discovered that they were granted based on fake Social Security numbers, yet in a breathtaking display of what can only be considered contempt for public safety and state identity regulations, a New York judge blocked the suspension of the fraudulent licenses while also demanding that the DMV cease requiring Social Security cards or even a valid visa as a condition for license renewal.

Hence, the REAL ID Act.

Not even close to being the "attack on immigrant rights" that organizations such as the Leadership Council on Civil Rights and the ACLU are portraying it to be, the "REAL ID Act of 2005" simply establishes minimum standards (including proof of legal presence in this country) that must be met before states issue licenses or ID cards that could be accepted by Federal agencies as proof of identity.

While numerous conspiracy websites, MSM news reports and Leftist press releases scream "racism" and "anti-immigrant bigotry" in response to the passage of the REAL ID Act, the truth is that the REAL ID Act is a step in the right direction -- if you believe that the right direction includes the encouragement of legal immigration and the preventions of identity theft, multiple state IDs and voter fraud, while also ensuring that jury pools are composed of actual U.S. citizens.

Apparently, organizations such as the ACLU could care less.

"The REAL ID Act is a civil rights disaster," shrieks Ahilan Arulanantham, an attorney for the ACLU's Southern California chapter -- of course, refusing to offer any specifics as to just how an act that offers U.S. citizens added protections against identity fraud and government entitlement abuse could possibly violate the civil rights of anyone who believes that laws and government regulations are created to be followed rather than ignored.

Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Human Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (is it just me, or do liberals adore organization titles that run on longer than Bill Maher's monologues?), trots out the usual stale oppositions to anything that could potentially make immigration enforcement easier and more efficient, declaring that the REAL ID Act "forces asylum seekers to prove . . . that they are indeed being persecuted" by their home government. The worst-case scenario that the ACLU offers as proof of the "anti-asylum" nature of the REAL ID Act?: "The Act . . . allows (not requires, just simply "allows" -- ed.) evil government officials to demand written "corroboration" from those seeking asylum. For instance, a Chinese woman seeking asylum after being forced to have an abortion could be required (again, not actually required, just a sort of vague "could be" required -- ed.) to obtain proof of her abuse from the doctors who performed the procedure."

That's the best they could come up with?

The ACLU conveniently neglects to mention that the written corroboration simply "allowed" for could also be something as innocuous as the testimony of U.S. embassy workers, international relief organization members or other verifiable and credible sources -- if the written corroboration is even asked for, that is.

Even Brian Doherty, a senior editor for Reason Magazine, drinks the conspiracy kool-aid aimed at discrediting the REAL ID Act and derides the act (or even, apparently, any simple asking of ID, such as when boarding for a plane flight or after being stopped by the police) as coercive molestation, officious authoritarianism and a disgrace.

Take a valium like a normal person, Doherty.

While advocates for illegal immigration, such as Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Council on Civil Rights, claim that "The REAL ID Act is the most blatant attack on immigrant rights since the last major overhaul of immigration law in 1996," they offer no other solution for the troubling growth of illegal immigration (er, excuse me -- "undocumented worker influx"), which is presently estimated at 10 million and growing. There are the shop-worn amnesties and "guest worker " programs laughably proffered as legitimate responses to illegal immigration, but the problem with amnesties and "guest" programs is that: 1. Both refuse to acknowledge that the illegal immigrant is here in the country, well, illegally; 2. The people and companies who employ illegal immigrants are breaking the laws of the land, and shouldn't be excused or rewarded for doing so; and 3. Perhaps the United States is better off with a much stricter identity application policy which seeks, simply, to enforce existing (and hardly onerous) immigration regulations, to verify the claims of those seeking asylum, and to hopefully minimize our country's ongoing problems with identity theft, entitlement program abuse and voter fraud.

In a country where each step taken to require more and better cooperation between separate security organizations is greeted enthusiastically as necessary for the better protection of U.S. citizens, it doesn't make much sense to continue championing the present isolation of one state's DMV records from the other. The only time that DMV's would have any reason to use the REAL ID Act's inter-operable database capability would be when they check as to whether an applicant for a state license or ID already has a license or ID issued from another state -- this is a measure designed to prevent the use of multiple identity documents that criminals and illegal immigrants use to hide from law enforcement and immigration agencies.

Charging that the government will employ the REAL ID Act to "Big Brother" us to death only reveals that the last time the REAL ID critics actually used their brains was when they were forced to read 1984 back in high-school. Oh hell, who am I kidding? They probably just watched the movie, instead.

RANTING LIBERAL BLOG #4,309,279:
This guy is a hoot: "With the Mad King George and Queen Condi at their rudderless and blood-sucking neo-con helm, get ready for a bumpy ride, folks ..."

Click, point and laugh!

Posted by at 1:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I'm an Enterpriser (and a total Internet geek for even bothering to complete an online quiz). Hey Michelle! You wanna head out for a drink and some commiserating conversation?

Ann Coulter can come, too.

Oh, hell, while I'm at it, here's my top ten list (at present, and not necessarily in any particular order) of who I'd love to meet up with for Martinis, all at once and at some serious cocktail bar, like, say, El Gaucho or Viceroy -- my treat!:

Condoleeza Rice
Dinesh D'Souza
Christopher Walken
Ann Coulter
James Watson
Bruce Klein
Dennis Miller
Dennis Hopper
Donald Rumsfeld
P.J. O'Rourke

I think we'd have a swell time. You all know where to reach me . . .

Posted by at 8:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Janice Brown is an unapologetic Conservative and a defiant Federalist. Openly critical of socialism and contemporary liberalism (both peas in a frickin' pod), Justice Brown valiantly attacks the underpinnings of the nanny-state and the foundations of the entitlement system in her eminently rational, and therefore controversial (to some), court decisions.

Stating that "Government has been transformed from a necessary evil to a nanny," and adding "if we can invoke no ultimate limits on the power of government, a democracy is inevitably transformed into a Kleptocracy," Janice Rogers Brown has fired a warning shot across the bow of legal positivism (the belief that law is manufactured according to shifting social conventions rather than a guiding moral principle), alerting every moral relativist within earshot that there's a new sheriff in town, and he goes by the name, "U.S. Constitution."

Opposed vehemently by a laundry-list of politically left organizations that would make any self-respecting Conservative swell with pride (NOW, CBC, NAACP, People for the American Way, Planned Parenthood, Friends of the Earth, Women's Reproductive Rights Assistance Project, etc. etc.), Janice Brown believes that judges should subordinate their own political and social agendas in order to neutrally apply the written law, stating emphatically that it is the province and duty of the judiciary to say what the law is, not what it should be.

There are, of course, the ensuing shrieks of leftist outrage at any attempts to clear away the haze of modern judicial bong-smoke that's led our entire society, blind and stumbling, towards vague and yielding abstracts of truth and justice, but when the law is interpreted according to politically-correct fashions and intellectual whims, and the Constitution is regarded as a "living document" to be folded, spindled and manipulated to suit recent collectivist agendas that were never offered a place at the table to begin with, then the non-stop, high-pitched whine of supposed progressivism reveals itself as just another layer of white multiculturalist noise to be tuned out, along with your typical NPR broadcast.

Deliberately mischaracterizized as anti-Enlightenment for the heresy of criticizing the Enlightenment for its "failure to provide a rational explanation of the significance of human life," and also derided as "another infamous Black character from the bootlicking quarters of California," for declaring that equality of individual opportunity rather than affirmative action is what the constitution requires, Brown was recently informed that she was being harshly ridiculed for being too much like Clarence Thomas, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell and George Bush, to which she responded, “At least I’m in good company!”

Here here!

"By accepting the beguiling proposition that all perspectives are equal," she stated in her commencement address to the Class of 2003 at the Columbus School of Law, "we left Western Civilization . . . undefended," a problem which she has stated is the direct result of a lack of a firm world view, and an overly vague sense of truth. "The idea of constitutional government is deceptively simple," she stated in her speech to the Institute for Justice, "the government cannot legitimately infringe upon our rights even if the majority votes to do so," and in "our rights" she includes the rights of the unborn as well as the mother, the comatose as well as the fully aware -- and as marriage is a traditionally heterosexual ritual with its own inherent limitations and obligations, then I would assume that gays are included in the "beguiling proposition that all perspectives are equal" part for their quixotic insistence that what one person has must be watered down and made available to everyone else, no matter the impracticality of it, or the potential consequences.

"Evil is not merely a matter of opinion," she told the graduates at the Columbus School of Law, and it is in this regard that she is most emphatically a nominee of the Bush Administration. "What we need is to revive our passion for freedom and our determination to defend vigorously, rationally and without apology our way of life, which is unique and deserves not scorn nor diffidence, but devotion."

Perhaps if the Democratic members of the Senate actually read her words, they wouldn't be so quick to filibuster a justice whose respect for truth, life and constitutional law would be an obvious credit to any administration.

Posted by at 5:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

"We're in a country where you are innocent until proven guilty," says Ted McGregor, editor of the Pacific Northwest Inlander. "But let's be honest: 'Alleged pedophile' is one of the harshest things that can be in front of your name."

Just ask Jim West. Accused by Robert Galliher (who has a record of drug offenses and drug addiction) and Michael Grant (who's now in Central Washington jail, facing his seventh felony-drug conviction) of sodomy and molestation in incidents that supposedly happened almost 30 years ago and for which there's no corroboration or substantiation, Spokane Mayor Jim West is in a battle for his political life and personal reputation, thanks to the oncrack reporters at Spokane's Spokesman-Review.

The Spokesman-Review newspaper published an article on Thursday detailing accusations that Spokane Mayor Jim West had molested two boys decades ago, and had more recently used his position as Mayor of Spokane to make himself a more appealing and attractive score on a gay Web site (damn, why didn't I think of that?). But the first sentence of The Spokesman-Review story recklessly and irresponsibly states: "For a quarter-century, the man who is now Spokane's mayor has used positions of public trust — as a sheriff's deputy, Boy Scout leader and powerful politician — to develop sexual relationships with boys and young men," without simultaneously explaining that these are unsubstantiated allegations from uncredible sources who have a financial motivation for lying about a public official.

I find this deplorable, though I'm not at all surprised. I mean, "reporting" like this is exactly why I've cancelled all my newspaper subscriptions.

Yes, I'm used to "gay" being a bombshell, especially in politics, and most especially when the politician has dared to hold political and social views that deviate from the "I was born gay and therefore need a host of special laws to require employers to cover me for insurance, to hire me for whatever job I feel I deserve, and to protect my fragile sense of self-esteem from the cruel bigots who taunt and mock me" meme. But flushing a man's life and career down the toilet by reporting unfounded stories and repeating gay chat-room conversations? That they'd been researching for three years? And in those three years they've only found two men to say anything actually bad about Jim West, both of them convicted felons with lawsuits against the county?

The charge that West used his position as Mayor to offer an internship to an online chat partner is not the scandal here (not good judgement, but hardly surprising news in a post-Clinton "meet me in the Oval Office" world), and the newspaper articles detailing the story say that the sting operator posed as 18, which is, also, not a scandal. So the focus of the purported scandal is on the "allegations" of child molestation, and then, more tellingly, on Jim West's supposedly anti-gay agenda in the state legislature.

So let's examine just how "anti-gay" Mayor Jim West actually is.

In the transcripts of the May 4th interview with West conducted by the Spokesman-Review, Karen Dorn Steele asked:
Question: "What about on gay rights issues? You pretty much consistently oppose any expansion of legislation that extends civil rights protections to gays."
Answer: ". . . I go back to basic principal. You can't assault anybody. We shouldn't be carving out special classes of people . . . You shouldn't discriminate against anybody. Every time you carve out a class, you're implying that anybody who is not specifically game it's fair game on . I just think that the assault laws are out there, the penalties for that is out there, and just leave it at that."

For this rational response regarding the enforcement of existing laws for everyone, Jim West has been tarred as "anti-gay". Only in a loony-leftist's mind . . .

And moving on to the online gay chat partner/paid newspaper consultant "Moto-Brock," who posed as a young gay man interested in politics so that the Spokesman-Review could reel in their big catch:
Q: "So you've chatted with Moto-Brock? And in fact offered him a job."
A: "No, but I have lots of interns, internships, I mentor people."
. . .
Q: "Jim, why don't you come clean with this and tell us what's happened here? You've offered this young man the trappings of your office …."
A: "Bill, I haven't offered this young man, or whoever this supposedly young man is the trappings of my office."
. . .
Q: "In this book are two sessions of online sex. You're not going to talk about it? Why don't you just come clean and tell me that it happened and that is part of who you are?"
A: "Because that's my personal life and the kid was 18."

And then we get to the real story, the real reason behind this article at the Spokesman-Review, and I'll give one guess as to what that motivation might be:
Q: "I'm just trying to understand the issue here again. If you were Jim West, truck driver, and you were on AOL…, we wouldn't be having this conversation. You're the mayor of our city and you were offering lures to a teenage boy. How is that going to rest with your conservative, republican constituents . . . how does that square with your persona as a legislature who is almost homophobic who opposed …"
A: "I'm not (homophobic), that's bullshit."

And there it is. The Homophobic-Closeted-Republican stereotyping and bigotry of the left. The "allegations" of molestation are just window dressing, something to hang this underhanded attack upon. The police have stated through a spokesman that they're not at all interested in pursuing the molestation "allegations" because of their unfounded, uncorroborated nature, and also the fact that the accusers are repeat felons with an ongoing financial suit against the county and without a shred of credibility. There's no "scandal" involving chatting online with an 18 year old (or, as the reporter for the Spokesman-Review likes to keep saying, "teenager") in the privacy of your own home, and as the offers of perks were merely offers instead of actual done-deals, well, there's no "scandal" there, either.

So what we have is a three-year investigation into Jim West's private life in order to expose him as a bigoted and hyprocritical gay Republican.
Q: ". . . there's been the whole series of gay rights bills that Cal Anderson and Rep. Ed Murray tried to expand our anti-discrimination to cover gay people. If you are gay or bisexual why would you pose that?"
A: "I don't think you should discriminate against anybody."
(And here comes the big $20,000 question, the mantra of the gay-left):
Q: "By supporting that bill, you are discriminating, aren't you?"
A: "No you're not . . . As I stated way early, nobody should be discriminated against for any purpose, assaults, it's illegal to assault a bus driver, it's illegal to assault this person or that person, creating special classes of people you shouldn't assault, I think is flat wrong . . . Why is that hypocritical if I don't believe in some of these issues that the gay political community is pressing?"

The interview, the article, the allegations, the headlines -- Steven Smith, the editor for the Spokesman-Review has come out and stated that their report on Jim West was not about his being gay, but when you read through the transcripts of their May 4th interview with West, almost the entire last half of it is devoted to questioning him about his sex life, his attitudes regarding his sex life, how could he have the sex life that he has and still vote the way he does regarding the sex lives of other people who have gay sex lives, what he might think about what people might say about his gay sex life, what he might think about speculations regarding his gay sex life, his online gay sex life, his offline gay sex life, his sex sex sex life, his gay gay gay sex sex sex gay sex sex gay . . . *snore*

And this was a three year investigation, culminating in a blow-by-blow (no pun intended) of chat sessions on a gay website?

I think a much more useful three-year investigation might involve digging up the sex lives and political leanings of the staff for the Spokesman-Review. I have a hunch that we'd find a number of gay and liberal reporters and/or editors who just plain don't like Jim West and/or Conservative politicians in general, who have liberal political axes to grind and leftist social agendas to push, and who think nothing of instigating a vicious and unfounded smear campaign against a popular and successful elected official, utilizing uncredible child-molestation allegations and "dinner date with your blue Lexus" innuendos in an attempt to destroy an elected official's personal life and public career because they've convinced themselves that he's their enemy and the ends justify the means.

But hey -- I'm just alleging.

OTHER OPINIONS:
A Clear Voice
WizBang
Jeff Blogworthy
Say Anything

Posted by at 4:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

In honor of Cinco de Mayo, it gives me great pleasure to introduce Bolton Pinata!

1. "Bolton’s abusive tendencies are not just a personality flaw; they are part of a broader political strategy."

2. "Mr. Bolton proceeded to chase me through the halls of a Russian hotel -- throwing things at me, shoving threatening letters under my door and, generally, behaving like a madman."

3 "Bolton was one of the pack of lawyers for the Republican presidential ticket who repeatedly sought to shut down recounts of the ballots from Florida counties before those counts revealed that Gore had actually won the state's electoral votes and the presidency."

4. "There are so many victims of his abuse, so many harrassed intelligence analysts, so many memos to Powell and others manipulated at Bolton's direction, so many sabotaged foreign policy initiatives led by other of his colleagues in State, and so many foreign policy crusades . . . that this Under Secretary was clearly working over time to let his mania out on all those he wanted to conquer."

5. "The officials, who would discuss the incidents only on the condition of anonymity because some continue to deal with Bolton on other issues, cited a dozen examples of memos or information that Bolton refused to forward during his four years as undersecretary of state for arms control and international security."

6. "His real mission, though, is nothing less than to undermine the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), and once he is installed, he will be in a position to take his orders from the Perle Cabal to do so.