A Bit Of a Rant

So far, I have one major problem with being pregnant:
People will tell you the BIGGEST loads of utter bull feces about what will hurt your baby, and act like they are God rolled up with Mr. Spock and a developmental specialist if you counter them.

Moderation is very important--of course (taking too much vitamin E is a huge risk that folks don't often think about, for example!)--but here are some things I've personally run into:

"TONIC WATER IS DANGEROUS!!!!" -- er, no, no evidence of this... there was a German study that found that women who drank over a *liter* daily had infants with withdrawal shakes, though.

"It has alcohol in it! You can't have that!"
Dude, it's rum cake. The sauce had rum in it, once upon a time, yes...but there's this thing called "evaporation"? Which alcohol does at very low temperatures, let alone when added to boiling sauce? A slice will not hurt you.

For that matter, having a glass of wine with dinner on occasions isn't going to hurt the kid, either. (I feel deeply sorry for a woman who posted that she was 9 1/2 months pregnant {yes, it's possible, and uncomfortable} and she'd had half a glass of beer, and was now worried-- the sheer level of moronic, self-righteous, fact-free attacks she was subjected too--!!!)
Me, I'm not having anything but maybe a sip of wine from my sister's glass or similar. Having a glass of wine normally gives me a bit of heart burn-- I don't want to imagine how it'd come up now!

"Don't eat chocolate! The caffeine will hurt the baby!"
- the most protective doctor I can find still says that two caffeinated drinks a day is perfectly safe.
Now, let me quote Wise Geek:

The caffeine in chocolate varies according to the type of chocolate one chooses. Caffeine in chocolate that is unsweetened or is semi-sweet usually contains about five to 10 milligrams of caffeine per ounce of chocolate. Caffeine in chocolate with milk added is usually measured at five milligrams or less per ounce. Generally, caffeine in chocolate is present in higher amounts, as the chocolate gets darker.

Usually, the highest caffeine measurement for an ounce of chocolate is 10 milligrams. One can compare this to coffee to see that this is a relatively minuscule amount. The average cup of coffee contains about ten to fifteen times the amount of caffeine in one ounce of chocolate. Usually coffee contains between 100-150 milligrams of caffeine in an eight-ounce cup. This may vary slightly according to brand and roast style.

As to why coffee is "bad" during pregnancy, there are some studies that linked 8 or more cups a day (that's a full pot of normal coffee) to low birth weights, slightly higher miscarriage rates and to baby not sleeping very well during the first two weeks.
Also, there's some studies that link another chemical in coffee to lower circulation, which most pregnant women are already fighting. *grin*

"Drink chamomile! Don't drink chamomile! Drink rose hip tea! Don't drink rose hip tea! If you eat a stick of licorice, you'll miscarry!" and all other herbal-related advice.

Use some common sense, here; the biggest danger is that it's really hard to figure out what moderation is!

Are you self-medicating with over the counter herbal supplements? Oils to the skin? Taking most anything theraputically? (my mother drinking vinegar comes to mind-- don't knock it, it seems to have worked) Talk to your doctor. Natural doesn't mean safe-- as I've known since my mom had to deal with cows who got into Deadly Lupin or ate pine needles. That causes cyclopean calves and early-third-trimester miscarriages, respectively.

Herbal teas can be kind of dangerous, because of the vast range of concentrations that you're going to end up with, even if you start with two identical, commercially normal tea bags. A cup of tea as most restaurants make it-- looking like watery coffee-- is a far, far cry from the way my grandmother use to make it-- black as night. Drinking three pots of pitch-black herbal tea probably isn't that good for someone who isn't pregnant, let alone someone who is.....

Chamomile soothes upset stomachs, so that's good; chamomile also can be used to help induce labor, so that's dangerous.
Used as filler in a lot of teas.

Rose hip and/or Raspberry tea has high levels of vitamin C, so that's good; it can also induce labor, so that's a "watch it."
These will show up in most any health-oriented tea, as well as a "sweetener".

Licorice tastes great, and so is in a lot of teas, just like rosehip and raspberry. It can also help induce labor, so careful.
Common flavoring.

Lemongrass tastes great, and is used often for flavoring in teas. Three guesses what it can induce, and the first two don't count.... Other herbs listed here.

Cinnamon: generally found in spicy or "warm" type teas. For a change, this in medical-size doses DOESN'T induce labor-- it can screw with your blood sugar level, though, so probably a good idea to leave off on rubbing cinnamon oil on wrists, or taking cinnamon pills.

Garlic pills-- acts as a blood thinner. Nuff said. Garlic as a spice is totally alright, and can help with stuffy noses and such.

Basically: eating herbs and stuff you get at the store is going to be alright. Self-medicating, or drinking teas, can be dangerous. Come on, would you start taking medication when you're pregnant? So why would herb-based medication be any different?

Given my family history of miscarriages, I've been drinking mint tea, less than once a week and won't be even touching the various "pregnancy teas" until much later on. Paranoid, yes, and I even know I'm being silly, but it makes me feel more in control.

For the love of all that's Holy, don't do any shocks to your body if you can avoid it: if you've been running for an hour a day before you found out you're pregant, don't suddenly stop! If you didn't exercise, build up slowly-- walk for that half hour a day that the doctors suggest, and walk faster as you feel you can handle it. Listen to your body.

I kind of like my mom's advice: act like you just gave blood. Make sure you get lots of fluids and iron-rich foods, don't over-do it, but don't freak out. When you feel yourself wearing down, even if you think it's WAY too quickly, step aside and set down, drink some water and eat an apple. (this also reminds me of how granny dealt with her diabetes, amusingly enough)

When someone freaks out about something you're doing, unless you've researched it, ask them where they got the information. If you've researched it, and it's BS, explain as cheerfully as possible that it's BS.

Kind of Interesting-

From here.

Full day light, no hurry to prevent a decent picture, only limit being that the person taking the video/picture wasn't dumb enough to go down on the beach.

And still, this video looks like some kind of spikey log in the water, not like a real-life monster.

Just amused me. ^.^

OnStar and Government Motors

Over at Patterico's I read this:

GM is out of bankruptcy and calling itself the New GM. New GM is keeping the “core brands” — Chevrolet, Cadillac, Buick and GMC cars, trucks and crossovers. New GM is also emailing old GM customers, reassuring them that it will service GM vehicles and offering ‘summer savings‘ on new purchases.

The email includes this notice:

“We want to keep you informed about updates that are relevant to you. General Motors Corporation, Saturn LLC, and Saturn Distribution Corporation are transferring your personal information (e.g., your contact information and vehicle purchase history) to General Motors Company. General Motors Company has substantially the same privacy policies in place as General Motors Corporation had.”

Call me cynical but “substantially the same” is not “the same” privacy policy. I suspect the main difference is that my owner information is now being shared with court and government data bases.

And it triggered a memory of a rant one of my uncles has about OnStar-- he REALLY doesn't care for a tracking service you can't turn off, that can start or stop your car, lock the doors, etc.

Kinda freaky that the government now has direct control over that company, huh?

Beers with Demo's Got A Point

The author argues that the horrific nature of the crime against Matthew Shepard is cause for the enhanced penalties of hate crime legislation. We counter: precisely what is it about being tied to a stake, beaten and eventually murdered that does not warrant being prosecuted to the full extent of the law and then being served the harshest sentencing possible?

Much much of an agreement!

Eeeek.... I've seen folks suggest this before-

but not ones in power.

These ideas (among many other equally horrifying recommendations) were put forth by John Holdren, whom Barack Obama has recently appointed Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, and Co-Chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology -- informally known as the United States' Science Czar. In a book Holdren co-authored in 1977, the man now firmly in control of science policy in this country wrote that:

*Women could be forced to abort their pregnancies, whether they wanted to or not;

*The population at large could be sterilized by infertility drugs intentionally put into the nation's drinking water or in food;

*Single mothers and teen mothers should have their babies seized from them against their will and given away to other couples to raise;

*People who "contribute to social deterioration" (i.e. undesirables) "can be required by law to exercise reproductive responsibility" -- in other words, be compelled to have abortions or be sterilized.

*A transnational "Planetary Regime" should assume control of the global economy and also dictate the most intimate details of Americans' lives -- using an armed international police force.

In case you doubt Confederate Yankee's sources, I looked:
Yes, the book exists, and seems to match up with the claimed content. It was also cited in some 200 books/articles that google has listed.
Here's the main freaky part:

SECTION V THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT: FINDING AWAY OUT 711
Chapter 12 Humanity at the Crossroads 715
The Optimum Population 716
Understanding the Web of Responsibility:
The First Step to Solutions 719
The Prospects 730
Chapter 13 Population Policies 737
Family Planning 738
Population Policies in Developed
Countries 745
Population Policies in Less Developed
Nations 761
Motivation 776
Population Control: Direct Measures 783
Population Control and Development 789
Chapter 14 Changing American
Institutions 805
Religion 806
Science and Technology 813
Medicine 823
Education 824
The Legal System 829
Business, Labor, and Advertising 840
Economic and Political Change 843
Some Targets for Early Change 858
A Question of Goals 873

Fumbling Around A Global Warming Post-

I'm going to probably come back and edit this, and add to it, and re-form it, etc-- I just want to get it down as a sort of collector of things I've been reading, lest I space it. (Updates at the bottom)

Blame B-Daddy's bait over here-- if he'd just act as utterly irrational and childish as most AGCC (anthropogenic global climate change) believers, I'd be able to just shrug him off.
Curse the man!
;^p

This is going to be rather poorly formatted, I fear.

On CO2 causing the green house effect:

In simple terms the bulk of Earth's greenhouse effect is due to water vapor by virtue of its abundance. Water accounts for about 90% of the Earth's greenhouse effect -- perhaps 70% is due to water vapor and about 20% due to clouds (mostly water droplets), some estimates put water as high as 95% of Earth's total tropospheric greenhouse effect (e.g., Freidenreich and Ramaswamy, “Solar Radiation Absorption by Carbon Dioxide, Overlap with Water, and a Parameterization for General Circulation Models,” Journal of Geophysical Research 98 (1993):7255-7264).

On the sun causing global temps:

NASA finally mentions the Maunder Minimum in its discussion of the current prolonged solar minimum, but it STILL does not mention that the Maunder Minimum coincided with the onset of the Little Ice Age, or that the Dalton Minimum in the early 1800’s was also cold, as was the unnamed fin-de-the-1800’s minimum.

On the oddly unscientific actions of AGCC supporters:

I was involved in climate studies seriously about 30 years ago [and]… got a very strong feeling for how uncertain the whole business is, that the five reservoirs of carbon all are in close contact — the atmosphere, the upper level of the ocean, the land vegetation, the topsoil, and the fossil fuels. They are all about equal in size. They all interact with each other strongly. So you can’t understand any of them unless you understand all of them. Essentially that was the conclusion. It’s a problem of very complicated ecology, and to isolate the atmosphere and the ocean just as a hydrodynamics problem makes no sense…

A PDF here:

A Skeptical Layman’s Guide to
Anthropogenic Global Warming
By Warren Meyer
www.CoyoteBlog.com
Coyote@CoyoteBlog.com
Version 1.01, Dated 7/3/2007

Ignoring studies like this, instead of refuting them:

More than 90,000 accurate chemical analyses of CO2 in air since 1812 are summarised. The historic chemical data reveal that changes in CO2 track changes in temperature, and therefore climate in contrast to the simple, monotonically increasing CO2 trend depicted in the post-1990 literature on climate-change.

Since 1812, the CO2 concentration in northern hemispheric air has fluctuated exhibiting three high level maxima around 1825, 1857 and 1942 the latter showing more than 400 ppm. Between 1857 and 1958, the Pettenkofer process was the standard analytical method for determining atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, and usually achieved an accuracy better than 3%. These determinations were made by several scientists of Nobel Prize level distinction.

And a wonder from my own head:
B-Daddy accepts that, in the past, CO2 followed warming; if, today, he claims that CO2 is causing warming, and presumably had the same effect in the past, how come it didn't run away all the prior times? Why did CO2 go up, lagging the warming, and then the warming stopped?

Yeash, some nuts will hook on to anything, won't they?

At what point do we jail or execute global warming deniers?

What is so frustrating about these fools is that they are the politicians and greedy bastards who don't want a cut in their profits who use bogus science or the lowest scientists in the gene pool who will distort data for a few bucks. The vast majority of the scientific minds in the World agree and understand it's a very serious problem that can do an untold amount of damage to life on Earth.

So when the right wing f*cktards have caused it to be too late to fix the problem, and we start seeing the devastating consequences and we start seeing end of the World type events - how will we punish those responsible. It will be too late. So shouldn't we start punishing them now?

K... I had to add this one, just to go with the one above:

Green consultant Dan Cass asks:

Have you ever wondered why it is that nobody is going to jail for causing climate change?

Probably because changing the climate, besides being relatively difficult to both accomplish and prove, isn’t actually a crime. Yet Cass sees a precedent:

The best known precedent of international legal action are the war crimes trials held after World War Two, in Nuremberg and Tokyo.

Laura at Pursuing Holiness on the clean up of known-bad information sources, a look at why there is borderline hysteria, and a prediction for the future:

I’m not suggesting that the “quiet cleanup” is quiet due to anything more than simple embarrassment. But the result of it is that it will help pave the way for the next big global cooling scare. As the recorded temperatures drop back to normal levels, there will be media reports of the sudden sharp drop in temperature, and it will finally be widely publicized that warming stopped some time ago. The media will publish breathless reports. Demands for explanations will be made and taxpayer money for studies will be provided. This is easily predictable as it’s happened four times before just in the last century. Articles fretting about global cooling started in earnest a couple of a years ago and the pace is picking up. Newsbusters linked today to an article suggesting we may have a year without summer; an interesting flashback to when I was a kid and an adult warned me to enjoy my summer vacation, because we wouldn’t have that kind of warm weather when I grew up. The writer of Ecclesiastes did warn that there’s nothing new under the sun.

The Moral Case FOR Global Warming

As I have noted before, e.g., here and here, environmental cooling, whether on long or short timescales (and no matter what the cause), is associated with significantly increased morbidity and mortality compared with periods of higher temperatures. Add starvation to the list of mechanisms behind that inescapable fact.

Meet Ian Plimer:

He's an Australian geologist, and the man who has exposed the great climate change con trick:

The hypothesis that human activity can create global warming is extraordinary because it is contrary to validated knowledge from solar physics, astronomy, history, archaeology and geology,’ says Plimer, and while his thesis is not new, you’re unlikely to have heard it expressed with quite such vigour, certitude or wide-ranging scientific authority. Where fellow sceptics like Bjorn Lomborg or Lord Lawson of Blaby are prepared cautiously to endorse the International Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) more modest predictions, Plimer will cede no ground whatsoever. Anthropogenic global warming (AGW) theory, he argues, is the biggest, most dangerous and ruinously expensive con trick in history.

...

So go on then, Prof. What makes you sure that you’re right and all those scientists out there saying the opposite are wrong? ‘I’m a geologist. We geologists have always recognised that climate changes over time. Where we differ from a lot of people pushing AGW is in our understanding of scale. They’re only interested in the last 150 years. Our time frame is 4,567 million years. So what they’re doing is the equivalent of trying to extrapolate the plot of Casablanca from one tiny bit of the love scene. And you can’t. It doesn’t work.’

What Heaven And Earth sets out to do is restore a sense of scientific perspective to a debate which has been hijacked by ‘politicians, environmental activists and opportunists’. It points out, for example, that polar ice has been present on earth for less than 20 per cent of geological time; that extinctions of life are normal; that climate changes are cyclical and random; that the CO2 in the atmosphere — to which human activity contributes the tiniest fraction — is only 0.001 per cent of the total CO2 held in the oceans, surface rocks, air, soils and life; that CO2 is not a pollutant but a plant food; that the earth’s warmer periods — such as when the Romans grew grapes and citrus trees as far north as Hadrian’s Wall — were times of wealth and plenty.

All this is scientific fact — which is more than you can say for any of the computer models turning out doomsday scenarios about inexorably rising temperatures, sinking islands and collapsing ice shelves. Plimer doesn’t trust them because they seem to have little if any basis in observed reality.

‘I’m a natural scientist. I’m out there every day, buried up to my neck in sh**, collecting raw data. And that’s why I’m so sceptical of these models, which have nothing to do with science or empiricism but are about torturing the data till it finally confesses. None of them predicted this current period we’re in of global cooling. There is no problem with global warming. It stopped in 1998. The last two years of global cooling have erased nearly 30 years of temperature increase.’

The article is a fascinating read, the story behind the publishing of the book is no less than amazing on its own. It made me sit up a little straighter, it made my fingers twitch, the activist in me was re-activated and I once again wanted to do something to stop this stupidity. And that's just from reading the article. I'd probably go nuts if I read the book.

Go read the rest, as usual. I especially like his response to folks who accuse him of ruining their childrens' future....

Oh My....

Gov. Palin-

If you doubt that that she's REALLY been knocked out into the Far Beyond That Shall Never Run because she resigned in the face of doing more harm than good, check out the comments here.

This is a short version of most of them; though it lacks in detail, it gets the point across:

lewisge Yesterday 09:02 PM
"In all three scenarios, Palin is unfit for high office, and certainly unfit to be the vice president or the president of the United States. "

This is the biggest bunch of horse-hockey I have seen to date on this topic.

Gary Lewis

There's a fallacy called "false choice"-- you know, "either you're for abortion, or you hate women!" type thing.

While Power Line's post isn't nearly that bad, it does display a pretty powerful set of blinders: the poster can't seem to allow for the possibility that someone in politics would act for good outside of their own interests.

Paul's offered choices are: she's hiding from a scandal, she can't handle 'criticism,' and she got a better offer than 'fulfill the duties associated with the position the voters of Alaska entrusted to her.'

Now, I'm just a dumb pregnant lady, here, but I can come up with several more options:
She's protecting her babies from the sick bastards that seem to be showing up more and more as they notice that anything they do that's vaguely against Gov Palin is A-OK.
She's protecting her family because they've already spent far, far too much personal money on harassment-lawsuits, and they're not rich. It's possible, you know, that someone might put their family's economic well-being in front of satisfying a bunch of politics-as-a-sport folks.
Or, shocker, she looked at what good she can do in the last few months and compared it to how much it's costing Alaska for her to stay on, and decided it was best for her to leave. You know, like she said in her speech?

Given that most of the good political minds I'd usually go to for stuff I hadn't thought of are fixated on running around screaming "off with her head," I highly doubt these extra three options even cover all the reasonable options for why Palin is resigning.

Just Apply Existing Laws....

Heard about Micro UAVs yet?

Think robotic birds, and that's about right. Maybe even dragonflies. Kinda cool.

Like most cool things, though, it can turn off folks' good sense.....

Listening to a podcast of The Dark Secret Place from KFI-AM, and he just displayed that short-circuiting of common sense....

Wondering if police could send these into folks' homes without a warrant.

Um, no. That's unlawful search. Same as sending a cop in, full stop.

This stuff drives me nuts... same way I can't stand "cellphone laws" for driving. There's already laws against hazardous driving. So apply them!

Funny Defintion of Justice.....

But Gary is not a terrorist, he's a mild-mannered computer nerd with Aspergers syndrome who won¹t survive a year, let alone 60, in a US high security prison.

Wait, wait.

Put aside for a moment that "computer nerd with Aspergers" is mildly redundant.

Rather than argue for leniency because we don't know of much harm done, they're arguing that he shouldn't be tried in the country whose military he hacked because they don't think he'd survive prison? Note there's no reason given for why he wouldn't survive in max security-- which, from what I can find, involves being separate from other inmates.

No, he's just a poor wimp, so he shouldn't be punished for breaking laws, it might be too much for him.

A recap: he hacked into a foreign country's military computers.
This is REALLY not a good thing-- I'm not surprised GB is handing him over.

He's a forty-something year old sys admin.

That's the same job Elf does.

Amazingly, for a guy who was "just looking for proof of aliens," he found time to leave some notes:

“US foreign policy is akin to government-sponsored terrorism these days . . . It was not a mistake that there was a huge security stand down on September 11 last year . . . I am SOLO. I will continue to disrupt at the highest levels . . .”

At the link is further information:

Having gained access to these computers the appellant deleted data from them including critical operating system files from nine computers, the deletion of which shut down the entire US Army’s Military District of Washington network of over 2000 computers for 24 hours, significantly disrupting Governmental functions; 2,455 user accounts on a US Army computer that controlled access to an Army computer network, causing these computers to reboot and become inoperable; and logs from computers at US Naval Weapons Station Earle, one of which was used for monitoring the identity, location, physical condition, staffing and battle readiness of Navy ships, deletion of these files rendering the Base’s entire network of over 300 computers inoperable at a critical time immediately following 11 September 2001 and thereafter leaving the network vulnerable to other intruders.

14. The appellant also copied data and files onto his own computers, including operating system files containing account names and encrypted passwords from 22 computers comprising: 189 files from US Army computers, 35 files from US Navy computers (including some 950 passwords from server computers at Naval Weapons Station Earle); and six files from NASA computers.

15. The appellant’s conduct was alleged to be intentional and calculated to influence the US Government by intimidation and coercion. It damaged computers by impairing their integrity, availability and operation of programmes, systems, information and data, rendering them unreliable. The cost of repair was alleged to total over $700,000.

Buuuuut he's just looking for little green men!

Ignore that he shut down Washington Army computers shortly after 9/11.

Repeat after me: he's just a poor nerd!

Sign That You've Heard "Change" Too Much:

-it takes you well into chapter six of the Chaos Lands in Warhammer to remember/realize that Tzeentch is the god of "change."

(Warhammer: proof that there ARE worlds far more depressing than anything you can come up with.)

Made Me Smile

It wasn’t supposed to be so - the great early modernists were convinced that the Prole would be happy to insert himself into his cube in a great glass hive, sit in a rational chair and study a Mondrian before going down to the Worker’s Center on the ground floor and hear a lecture.

The bourgeois desires of the Lower Orders must be such a disappointment to their betters. If only they knew!

This is why Mr. Lileks gets the big bucks.

Amusing: I know of most of these things via scifi or other non-historical books. (Data tried to paint some Mondrian stuff at one point.) Once you know the theories, you can see them elsewhere-- but the words are different, now.

We The People

of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.









If you don't have the option of visiting family, living or gone, why not watch Iron Man, or Independence Day? Elf is off for his duty weekend, and family is a bit too far to travel to reach, so I'll probably watch that, or Stargate: SG1, and thank God for the great nation I had the incredible luck to be born into.

My choices are all of the geek type, and I can't stand Saving Private Ryan type movies-- FAR too close to home-- but feel free to drop suggestions for good movies! Can't be worse than some of the suggestions sci-fi wire offered for the best moments.


Happy ID, troops. Hope your good times shine as much as mine do.

The What If Game....

This is of a piece with the Dubya-hate. Had a Democrat president kept the nation safe for 7 years after a heinous attack, kept the economy running and unemployment numbers low, even after that attack; had he taken out a murderous despot who gave sanctuary to terrorists like Abu Abbas, liberated millions of people and helped warring tribes forge a tenuous democracy in a region where it was thought impossible, we would have heard that the inevitable mistakes and difficulties of war were “inevitable mistakes,” and there would be talk about Mt. Rushmore. We’d be hearing that “the president did not overspend, the congress overspent,” (though the whole Sallie Mae/Freddie Mac debacle that upset the markets would still be underreported). But because a Republican president did those things, well, we know the rest.

All I can think of is this:
There are not more than 100 people in the world who truly hate the Catholic Church, but there are millions who hate what they perceive to be the Catholic Church.

Another version was used in the preface to the book here
-- it seems the good Archbishop phrased the thought quite a few times!

Exactly The Point

In Iran the principle was very clear. The Iranian people were standing up for free and fair elections and many were losing their lives because of it. The thug regime in Iran, knowing it was on the losing side of the election, took the steps necessary to fake the vote and suppress the consequent outrage. Contrary to what Obama tried to sell days later, this was not about whether Ahmadinejad or Mousavi was a better candidate. They are probably two peas in a pod. Rather, this was about the Iranian people standing up for their rights to fairly elect their leaders. Obama's silence was cold calculation, nothing more.

A great many things make me tired these days-- mom says it's a side effect of pregnancy, and should pass in about 20 years-- but the argument that we should be silent and not condemn governments murdering, on the street, their citizens, should said citizens object to a pretty obviously rigged election* ....

Should hold silent....

Because we're not sure the guy that got elected is a whole lot better than the Mad Midget?

Golly, you mean that an Iranian Politician might NOT be a moderate social-liberal Democrat?
(This seems to be the "acceptable" option for most places I've seen the objection. Insert whatever the preferred "alright" candidate is-- a nice Jewish boy, a loyal Knight of Columbus, Gov. Palin of Iran, etc.)

Ah, alright, if principals such as "elections shouldn't be rigged" and "killing non-violent protesters is bad" aren't worth speaking up in defense of, let alone actually defending, should we not object to tell lies when they're for a good cause?

Cold-blooded murder when the target deserved it, or at least didn't do enough to not deserve to be murdered?

Rape, if the girl is really pretty?

How about theft, if you're stealing from someone or something big enough, or you think you can get away with it? (Ooops, wait, that's the current Congress' main objective-- my bad.)


*(all the polls favor the other guy, reporting irregularities including hand-done ballots being turned in faster and in larger numbers than ever before, the nearly unheard of part where a very popular candidate hugely lost his home area...I'm sure I'm leaving some out)

Dog Sues Man-

at least, that's what the guy Obama wants to regulate, well, everything, wants to make possible.

No, really:

More specifically, he wrote: “Laws designed to protect animals against cruelty and abuse should be amended or interpreted to give a private cause of action against those who violate them, so as to allow private people to supplement the efforts of public prosecutors.”

In English: if I want to harass you, I want to be able to claim standing on behalf of your pigs, cows, chickens or dog and sue the daylights out of you.

Why Can't-

People just do what they say?

Why do they have to put on a big kabuki about how they've made a brave new movement? Why do they talk about how horrible "whisper campaigns" are, while pressuring folks to counter the kabuki they just did?

Good News, And Points

Over at VC.

Was it worth it?
Are we doing any good over there?


Commenter Tom W.'s answer seemed, to me, to answer the *big picture* question in admirable fashion:

"While the terrorism was certainly bad, Iraq made astonishing social, economic, and political progress the entire time and built up effective security forces, which is nearly unbelievable considering the country was fighting the most ruthless, merciless, evil enemy in the modern age. How many other countries have built armies from scratch, adopted free-market capitalism, written a constitution, and held their first free elections all while fighting a long-term war? Pretty much none, I think. The Coalition provided the security and the example, and the Iraqis improved themselves by sheer force of will. They're amazing, truly heroic people."

To his answer, I would like to offer this into evidence as to the good we're doing.

Well, what are you waiting for? Go see what the evidence is....

By the by, might not be on starting Friday, Ugly is back from Afghanistan and the Elf and I are driving down to help with the ranch picnic.

Iran Update

from relyable places, via the Anchoress
ThreatsWatch.org

Iran has executed its Tiananmen Square. Baharestan Square has become synonymous with barbarity, cruelty, massacre and inhumanity.

An Iranian blogger (whose URL I will not publish) live blogging from Baharestan Square in central Tehran today captures but brief glimpses of the unimaginable horror that took place today. Bus loads of protesters were stopped and unloaded from their buses by "black-clad police" and literally herded. When the massing was sufficient, as the barely controllably distraught Tehran caller to CNN described first hand, hundreds of the regime's Basij thugs poured out of an adjoining mosque and commenced a massacre with axes, clubs, guns and gas.

Warning, graphic picture(s).

The Anchoress on Iran

Is today Tehran’s Tiananmen Square?

People being thrown off of bridges, being slain in the streets. Beating old men in the streets. “Would you help us, could you help us?”

None of this is easy to watch, but we mustn’t not look.

CNN – a chilling, heartbreaking phone call from a woman in Tehran. “they are killing students with axes, put axes through the hearts…this is horrific, this is genocide, this is…a massacre, this is Hitler, and you people should stop it…nobody takes action; it’s time to act.”

Her post is updating continuously.

Death, Iran and Does the Camera Lie?

Neo-neo has a post.

By now you’ve heard the story of Neda Agha-Soltan, killed last weekend in a demonstration in Iran, and seen her photos—alive, dying, and dead. Her fiance and witnesses report that she was purposely targeted by Baseji paramilitaries who shot her in the chest.

When I heard of Neda’s death from a friend several days ago, my first thought (after “how horrible”) was that her image would almost surely be used to rally others under the banner of her martyrdom. This has come to pass, and not just in Iran. Even President Obama referred to her death in his press conference today

Go read.

English Writing In Iran

"Why are all the police labeled in English?" "Why are all the protestors' signs in English?"

It's not that unusual. Especially once you realize that the ones that are in English are a LOT more likely to be spread in English-speaking countries.

Five minutes on google:
A gas pump in Iran.

Road signs in Iran.

For an internet cafe.

A Slate article on why the Police and protesterscaféprotesters all write in English-- it's because a lot of folks can read English!

Post-election protests continued in Tehran for the fifth day on Wednesday. In many photos, riot police wear uniforms with the English word police on them. Ambulances, too, bear the word ambulance in English. Why not use Persian words instead of their English equivalents?

Because everyone knows English. Like many capital cities, Tehran has its emergency personnel wear markings that are internationally recognizable. Street signs, too, are translated into English, and police cars are generally inscribed in both English and Persian. That makes the city more tourist-friendly without sacrificing clarity for locals. After all, the Persian word for police is the same: polise. (Persian, or Farsi, is an Indo-European language that uses an Arabic script, but people will often use Latin lettering, also known as Penglish or Fingilish, especially when typing or texting.) It's also the same word in French (police), German (polizei), Italian (polizia), Czech (policie), and many other languages. Iranian students are required to take English classes in high school. So using the English word for police actually maximizes the number of people who will understand it.

So folks will have to find better reasons if they wish to ignore a $3000 bullet fee for your son being murdered, or women shot through the heart on tape.

Ooh, I know the right thing! Let's invite the thugs to our Independence day party!

The irony is disgusting.

Jane is home!

Jane is home!


Cougar and Mahoney are pleased.

Don't Let Reality Get In the Way of Your Theory....

Listening to Coast to Coast, and the guest-- on the topic of reincarnation-- is insisting that kids choose their own name, by telepathically sending the information to the parent.

Small problem-- I was named in part for my mom's favorite aunt, who died while she was pregnant, and Elf and I have had a list of baby names for well over a year before I got pregnant.

Maybe he-who-will-be Thomas Patrick is able to reach into the future and alter our minds? (They're both family names-- one for each side.) Maybe Kathrine Jade is able to reach back and do the same? (Not family names, but chosen for beauty.)

Never can tell which way folks with such theories will jump....

Happy Father's Day

Best dad anyone could hope for-- the perfect balance to my mom, and solid force in our lives.

He probably said something to the effect that it's "kinda chilly" when this picture was taken....