It's not often that I venture into the fever swamp, but I dropped in on the Kossacks this afternoon and encountered this bit of clear thinking:

    "Despite the fact that women and girls in Iraq enjoyed more rights than most women in the mideast prior to the first Gulf War, including guaranteed equal rights and laws that specifically ensured their right to vote, attend school, run for political office, and own property, women's rights was one of many causes cynically trumpeted by Bush as yet another reason to justify this shi*ty war."

He then went on to contrast this notion with current incidents of honor killing and other violence towards women at the hands of sharia extremists. The gist was that the feminist paradise of Saddam's Iraq has been transformed into a free kill zone by Bush.  Ok, set aside the fact that these extremists are the very guys we're endeavoring to kill, it would appear that our deluded little buddy was either not bothered by or is ignorant of a few pertinent items that came to light just after fall of Baghdad.  

Rape rooms? Sexual extortion? Yeah, I guess, depending on whether you'd prefer to be gang raped and sentenced to 200 lashes or gang raped, beaten to death, and dumped into the Persian Gulf from a heilcopter, that one might conclude women had it great in pre-Bush Baghdad. It's all about perspective.

   A few months ago I opined that NBC leads all of the major networks in squandering their credibility in order to push forward their nakedly obvious leftist agenda. And in those months they've certainly lived up to that honor. This is the network that provides the most vapid twit in America an hour each weeknight to spew lies and weaken our country. The network that bizarrely placed the same twit on it's Sunday night NFL show. Amazing. 
   But now I find that they were just warming up. This week it's been revealed that NBC has declined to air pro troop ads by the right wing organization Freedom Watch on the basis that they're too politically controversial. I'm linking to the ads below. You're welcome to decide for yourself, but this writer is done with NBC.

This item from Fox New online was just too fun to pass up: Kenyan Monkeys Make Lewd Gestures At Women.
A couple of questions pop into my bemused mind just now - Since this is being  reported it's obviously a new behavior. So where did they learn this? Do monkeys in the wild make lewd gestures at female monkeys? Have they been hanging around urban construction sites or watching MTV? Just how does a Kenyan monkey get the idea to go all nasty on the female population? And there's no mention of the monkey's taste. Are they indiscriminate or do the target only the hot chicks. Gotta love them monkeys!

   I wrote yesterday of the regrettable decision of Chattanooga, Tennessee's Downtown Partnership to exclude a nativity scene from their annual kick off to the downtown Christmas shopping season. Well, I expected that they'd reconsider, but I certainly didn't expect such a speedy recapitulation. But, as reported today by The Chattanooga Times Free Press they've found a passable compromise and reversed the decision.
   This, I think, is a credit to the Downtown Partnership. Just a little background, the CDP does a great job providing downtown entertainment (usually free!) and programs, and are a part of making Chattanooga into a groovy little place to live. Thirty  years ago downtown was pretty much over, but, like many cities, has undergone a renaissance to become a very vibrant city center. I love living here. (and by "here" I mean just over the border in North Georgia)
    So, I commend the CDP on their decision and remain happily distant from the land of P.C. craziness.

   In my lovely corner  the South we enjoy lives relatively free of the pressures of political correctness.  Military recruiters aren't banned from our citys or schools, my Congressman is a solid conservative, my teenager spends this hour in Geography class learning about Geography rather than the evils of Bushitler, and City Hall wouldn't dare attempt to ban trans fats from restaurants.
   But this morning I awoke to the news that the Chattanooga Downtown Partnership, sponsor of The Grand Illumination - Chattanooga, Tennessee's  kick off to the downtown Christmas shopping season, has decided (after much reluctant hand wringing they assure us) not to feature the nativity scene that's been a part of the celebration from the outset.
   The nativity, which has been manned each year by volunteers from a local Baptist church, was eliminated following several complaints. And in the interest of all holy diversity, the CDP has acquiesced. Sigh...
    Now, I've watched from afar as these issues have played themselves out in other parts of the country, but this is the first time we've seen such P.C. foolishness rear it's ugly head here in our backyard. So it should be interesting to see if Downtown Partnership will prove itself as responsive to the avalanche of complaints they now stand to receive as they were to the those few individuals who were sufficiently offend to make it an issue.
    Simply put, we're a long way from Seattle. I'm predicting that this decision will not long stand. I'll keep you posted.

  Another week and another handful of celebrities are in the news trumpeting their lefty political views – sigh.  Just in the past couple of days we’ve heard from Barry Manilow who refused to suffer the indignity of sharing a stage with conservative Elizabeth Hasselbeck on The View and Sally Fields who used her acceptance speech at the Emmys as a platform from which to speak out against the war. And that’s just in the last 48hrs or so. 
    The list of outspoken liberal celebrities grows larger daily as more and more exploit their high public visibility to air their political views. This is well within their rights and one can hardly blame them. I’d certainly do the same if I were their shoes. 
     But what I find amazing is that they all march in perfect lefty lockstep. Conservative musicians and movie stars are a rare and precious commodity and are sighted far less often than Big Foot or Elvis. In Hollywood liberals rule: Streisand, Sheen, Penn, Cusak, O’Donnell, Goldberg, Belafonte, Glover, Sarandon, Robbins… the list goes on ad nauseam. 
    So how is it that liberalism is so universal among our talented friends? I think it must be, in part, due to the emotional nature of the artists mind. A person ruled by his emotions is truly a person in chains. (the same explanation applies to the question of why young people are, on average, much more prone to liberal thought.) It seems obvious that a high degree of emotionalism is an essential element of an artist’s personality. And even a casual listening to some of their statements will make obvious the fact that these folks are speaking from the heart with no bothersome filtering by the mind. It’s in the gut, it’s on the lips, it’s out the mouth. 
    Combine that fact with the surreal bubble in which celebrities dwell and plain, old fashioned peer pressure and you have a perfect recipe for madness. Within this bubble all things will take on an extra sheen of intensity. A conservative is not merely someone with whom you disagree philosophically. Rather,  they’re to be loathed and hated as dangerous, brutal Nazi knuckledraggers. Bush (and all of the worlds intelligence services, incidentally) wasn’t simply mistaken about WMD, he lied (LIED!) in order to start a war for oil. And irrationality doesn’t stop there. Our Hollywood friends constantly liken our President to Hitler or Satan or both and accuse him of the worst dictatorial aspirations while jetting off to hobnob with Hugo Chavez – a genuine dictator by any measure. Arrrgggggg!
    Will there ever come a day when these people realize that their charmed lives are made possible by the strength and security of the nation. Security paid for with the blood and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform? Will it dawn on them that if the country were actually spiraling into totalitarianism, as they contend, that they would have long since been “disappeared” rather than speaking out at peace demonstrations and living in luxury far beyond the imaginations of their fans? Does Hanoi Jane foster any illusions that had she would have been free to speak out against her country had she been a citizen of North Viet Nam? Does Rosie really think that if her government was capable of offing 3000 of it's citizens in an impossibly complex plot that she would be allowed to live long enough to out them on national television? 

     So here’s my challenge to Sean Penn, Danny Glover, Harry Belafonte, Cindy Sheehan, or any other high profile bozo who thinks Hugo Chavez is creating Heaven on Earth  in Venezuela. Put Up Or Shut Up! I’ve noticed that you always seem to buy round trip tickets for that workers paradise. A quick visit and photo op with Chavez, and then it’s back to the mansion in Malibu. So let’s see some action to back up all the verbiage. Move down there. If the Bush is Satan and Chavez a modern day saint why would you want to stay here? I’m sure Hugo and his crew would enthusiastically welcome such a public relations coop. In fact, I’ll go you one better. If any of those mentioned above take the plunge, divest themselves of their US property (and ideally their US citizenship) and permanetly move down to Hugo’s little love fest I will donate $100 to MoveOn.org. (Note to celebrities. In my working class world $100 is a huge commitment). So there it is. Any takers?

     Well, well, well. Looks like the science in regard to the global warming question isn't so settled after all. You can see this in detail over at Hot Air. I'm here to discuss scientists.
     For me the most troubling aspect of the wildly politicized topic of warming has been the obvious abandonment of scientific principle by so many of the "scientists" involved. As I was taught, the scientific method should be the dispassionate examination of testable data in order to ascertain the most likely explanation of a phenomenon. Also, this data is always subject to change. In other words, science by it's very nature is NEVER settled. As the method progresses there are constantly new discoveries made, methodological flaws discovered, and new methods of inquiry developed.
     Why then are we seeing at least half of the scientific community declaring the question settled and their conclusions unimpeachable when such declarations fly in the face of the rationale of scientific inquiry? The obvious answer is political. These folks have allowed their agendas to either cloud their scientific judgement or lead them to making near fraudulent statements they know to be, at best, half-truths.
     The liberal corruption of the humanities at our universities has been of great concern to me, but, prior to An Inconvenient Truth I felt confident that at least the hard sciences, with their reliance on hard fact,  would be immune to such craziness. I was wrong, and this is much more troubling to me than some English department marching in leftist lockstep. This reveals a malignant willingness to deny and/or distort facts by the very community we rely on to ignore the political altogether. Our laboroties should be sound proof havens from the clamor of political correctness.
    Meanwhile, this weeks edition of Newsweek dismissed en masse all those scientists not willing to bow before the Global Warming alter as being highly paid shills for big oil. Ironically, few are the actual deniers on that side of the question. Almost to a man they merely suggest that the science isn't at all settled, that there are most likely many, many factors to be considered in explaining any warming, and that caution should be the watchword of those seeking such an explanation.
     So I ask you, which camp is most dedicated to the true principles of truth seeking and which is most likely to be discredited when the worlds oceans fail to reach a boil?
    

    I gotta tell ya, I'm lovin'  this story. The fact that he chose New Hampshire as his vacation get away was cool enough in itself, but yesteday while boating on Lake Winnipesaukee the Sarkman directly confronted two news photographers, one from the Associated Press, who he obviously felt were infringing upon his space. He actually boarded their boat and yell at them in French! Whew!
   This is exactly the kind of machismo that France could use these days, and the Sarkman has proven once an for all that he's no limp wristed metrosexual. Woooo Ahhhhh! Where was this guy in March 1936? He might have put the smack down on Hilter over that Rhineland business.
   In any case, let's hope he unleashes this on the lefttards back in Paris, eh? You go, Sarkman!
   

    Last weekend I enjoyed , for the umpteenth time, Ken Burn's The Civil War on PBS. Fine television, that. But what was most striking was the similarity between Bush's position of today and that of Lincoln in 1864. I've heard mention of this before in some article or blog post, but Burn's actual text was so "spot on" in relation to today's circumstances that I'm kind of surprised that PBS didn't edit it. 

     With an election upcoming later in the year, Lincoln was the standard bearer of an increasingly unpopular war. As a result his approval rating (such a modern term, no?) was near to bottoming out. From his most belligerent critics he earned the derisive epithet "The Original Ape" (kinda like Chimpy Mcbushitler, eh?). He faced a Democrat congress who "wanted out of the war at any cost" and hostility within his own party. Bogged down on two fronts (Atlanta and Petersburg), the war seemed a hopeless waste of lives and resources after four long years. His Democrat opponent in the election would be none other than George McClellan, the petulant, young general who Lincoln had had to fire twice as commander of the Army of the Potomac when he proved unequal to the task. Lincoln's prospects, and those of  "the last best hope for mankind" were bleak indeed.  Kind of eerie.  But, when Sherman took Atlanta that summer Lincoln's reelection was assured. The Union would be preserved.

      The lesson here, I suppose, is for conservatives not to lose heart in the face of a Democrat majority hellbent of defeat, an electorate impatient with the progress of the war, and the fate, perhaps, of the "last, best hope for mankind" again hanging in the balance. You never know when Sherman might take Atlanta.         

     I was listening to Prager's July 9th interview with Theodore Dalrymple on my iPod this morning, and Theo made a point that hit home. When asked if he had any take on why educated, young doctors would have been involved in the attempted bombings in Glasgow and London he suggested that, and I paraphrase, that it takes fairly high intelligence to act so stupidly. That one must possess the talent for abstract thinking in order to rationalize nonsensical notions and acts. 
    Yes! Exactly! For years I've wrestled with the question of how highly intelligent people could so passionately embrace fatally flawed ideologies and isms. Just look to our universities. These are the people our society pay to think, yet the best those intellectuals currently occupying our campuses could come up with has been utter caca -  Illogical tripe unworthy of their supposed brilliance. 
     Dr Dalrymple's theory answers that conundrum nicely. If one can dwell in pure thought unfettered by practicality then one can fall into any number of rabbit holes chasing down answers. In that cerebral underworld the thinker will encounter no pesky realities to hinder the construction of his or her utopian visions. The effect can only be magnified by the near total unanimity today's academic will find among his peers. And it's the talent for abstraction that fuels these mental meanderings. How else to explain the state of today's campuses? How else to explain a functional mind finding merit in a proven loser like socialism? 
     I will, however, go Dr Dalrymple one better. I doubt that very many non-professionals are especially hampered by a lack of the capacity for abstraction. Instead, I feel that any impulse toward abstraction is tempered by a very intimate relationship with the cold, hard realities of life. If you're going to try to sell the amnesty bill to a native born dry wall installer who's had his business cut in half by illegal labor you'd better pack a lunch. You'll be at it a while. Let's see you convince a police officer that the bank robber who just shot him is a victim.
     Fortunately, few can stay aloft forever, and the more honest among them will most likely come to their senses. Take for example the beltway liberals in Virginia who recently found the hordes of illegals occupying expensive homes in their neighborhoods not be be especially good neighbors. Twenty five people in a three bedroom suburban home next to yours are no longer abstractions. Especially if they're urinating in the yard in full view of your ten year old daugther.
         
   

  Allow me to direct you to RightWingDuck and his fun take on McCain's current staffing woes over at IMAO:

 Many political analysts have greeted the move with great joy. Said one commenter, “These illegal aliens will do the work Americans find beneath them: such as cleaning, gardening, and supporting a John McCain bid for a presidency.”

Funny, funny stuff!

     High fives to the Sarkman!  Yes, France's new president has astonished the French press by actually stating the obvious about Hezbollah. Meanwhile, Britain's new PM reveals a Chamberlainesque understanding of the danger in his midst by banning any official reference to the word "Muslim" in relation to terrorism.  Amazing!    
     So, this is at once heartening and depressing. I'm overjoyed that Sarkozy "gets it", but sad to see those in charge of  my ancestral homeland continue to whistle in the dark. One would think that having physician's from their fabled National Health Service detonating flaming Jeeps would arouse some instinct toward self-preservation in our English brothers, but...  Maybe if they had gangs of disaffected Muslim punks rioting nightly they be more likely to pick up on these subtle clues. 
     Oh well, any country that gave us John Cleese can't be beyond hope.
     
UPDATE:
     Theodore Dalrymple makes the case better than most in this L.A. Times op ed piece. Love this guy!

 

Those of us old enough to remember when the "Big Three" television networks actually voluntarily policed their own content via their various departments of standards and practices have watched with dismay the rapid decline in those very standards of decency. In my life time we've moved from an overly puritanical standard where even the word "pregnant" was taboo to a new era so profane that we're no longer shockable and the only apparent word too dirty for network censors is "God".
Responsibility seemed to be the watch word for both the entertainment and news divisions of the networks, and they actually seemed to respect and respond to their viewing public. Those days, sadly, have passed. Sure, there are business realities they've had to face with regard to competition from cable offerings not bound by broadcast content constraints. It's got to be tough holding on to that coveted 18-34 y/o male demographic when HBO and Cinemax can offer hours of nudity and sex nightly.
Still, these days it seems that the networks have completely abandoned the notion of customer service and have opted instead for agenda driven programming and news. They're in intense competition for the honor of "most irrelevant", and it's my opinion that, though the contest is close, NBC is in the lead.
Take for example the short lived show The Book of Daniel which features a drug abusing Episcopal priest with an unimaginably dysfunctional family. I personally had no problem with the premise, but it should take a genius to have foreseen the backlash they would face from offended Christians before they invested millions in a show that ran less than 6 weeks.
Then there's the issue of The Veggie Tales. For those of you who don't know, Veggie Tales is a wildly popular series of cartoons featuring an ensemble of singing vegetables with a very Christian message. Until NBC bought the broadcast rights these were only available in video and dvd. So positive was their message and such a departure were they from the likes of Bart Simpson that millions of copies were sold without the benefit of being a regularly broadcast show or intense advertising. My own children have watched them so much that even I know a lot of the songs by heart. Enter NBC. They made a deal to broadcast Veggie Tales as a Saturday AM offering, but just two weeks prior to airing announced that any reference to God or Christianity would be edited out. Brilliant! Take a popular existing show and excise the very element that made it so successful in order to pander to the PC police and/or satisfy the networks anti-Christian bias.
Their plan to air a Madonna concert which featured Madonna hanging from a cross. Naw, that wouldn't offend a major percentage of your viewership would it? Hmmmm...
Focusing on their news division we find MSNBC - the most ideologically unhinged television "news" organization extant. And their bull goose loony is Keith Olbermann who's hatred for all things Bush is only eclipsed by his tremendous ego and journalistic incompetence. Each night at 8pm Keith spews forth an hour of distorted, unchallenged, anti-Bush drivel so ridiculous that it's actually entertaining to watch. He's even inspired a popular website dedicated to exposing his work for the tripe that it is - Olbermann Watch. Other than his laser beam focus on all things Bush, the most telling element of Keith's show is his utter lack of any opposing point of view. You'll never, ever see a guest brought on to offer a dissenting opinion. You see, when lying and operating with an impaired intellect its best not to field any challenges.
This brings me to the inspiration for this blog post. It's being reported that NBC is actively seeking disgraced Rosie O'Donnell for some sort of daytime show on the regular network and possibly a night time show on MSNBC. Rosie O'Donnell is an unhinged proponent of, among other wacky notions, the 911 Truth movement. The 911 Truth movement holds that there is indisputable "evidence" that the Bush Administration planned and executed the attacks of the World Trade Centers and the Pentagon in order to rationalize war in the Mid East. This, of course, is insane, and by offering a vocal proponent of this madness two time slots on NBC one can only assume that NBC agrees with this point of view. This means that NBC has completely lost touch with reality and main stream America. If Rosie is signed, NBC will have become completely, irretrievably irrelevant.

No Cable TV, No Internet, No Office, No Stress, No Problem! I've just spent the week slow trolling for King Mackerel out of Murell's Inlet, South Carolina. Now to catch up on the reel real world. Sigh...

    I'm reflecting on the value of optimism today after reading two items with vastly different perspectives on the state of our nation. The first was Bill Moyer's commencement address from SMU.  I genuinely pity Bill because despite possessing the talent and opportunity to sample the riches of  America far beyond the reach of most he can still only regard it in the most negative terms. "America needs fixing. Our system of Government is badly broken." and "America's a great promise but a broken promise" are among his observations.
    Contrast that with the refreshing optimism of this blog post at Wizbang by DJ Drummond. I heartily second D.J.s viewpoint.
     Though I once identified myself as a liberal I was never able to completely buy into the Orwellian view of America touted by my fellow travelers. Whether it was my buddy from the late 70s informing me that Big Brother was real and in full control back then or my German college roommate, fresh off the plane Stuttgart, informing me that American racism was as vile and vigorous then (1987) as it was in the 50s their dark visions never squared with my reality.  Even at the zenith of my narrow minded Reagan Derangement Sydrome I couldn't help but admit (secretly) that things were pretty good.  I might have played Gil Scott-Heron albums to bolster my liberal credibility, but I found the notion of revolutions - televised or otherwise - to be pretty silly and ill-advised.
     In the end their repellent paranoia and pessimism played a significant role in my fully awakening to reality and embracing conservative values.  
     Be you liberal or conservative answer this honestly: Would you rather be trapped in an elevator for 10hrs with 5 diarists from The Daily Kos or 5 conservative bloggers?