Dangerous Dan

…what will draw traffic. I've probably gotten in the neighborhood of 600 hits so far today from search engines. They're all from people looking for this.

So, did you know there's a Lord of the Rings musical opening in… Toronto? Apparently, it's a big budget ordeal at $23 million. My first thought when I heard about this was that it was a stupid idea. Does Gollum get his own show-stopping number? Maybe Boromir does a little dance and Sauron can sing about how misunderstood he is a la the devil in the South Park movie? Seems a little corny. But then I recalled how the books are filled with songs that various characters are always singing, so I thought maybe it wasn't such a bad idea and could actually be reasonably faithful to the singing spirit with which Tolkein imbued the novels. I quickly remembered, however, how tiresome I found the constant singing, how it slowed down the plot, and was generally annoying, so I'm now back to thinking the musical is stupid. I'll reserve final judgment, though, unless/until I actually see it.

In an LA Times editorial, Madeleine Albright takes the Bush administration to task for shaping foreign policy around 'good and evil.' Essentially, that it's not nuanced and pragmatic enough, which has been the common complaint from the left.

Her nuanced advice for the middle-east is to enter into constructive dialogue with Iran about its nuclear program and its role in Iraq:

…the Bush administration should disavow any plan for regime change in Iran — not because the regime should not be changed but because U.S. endorsement of that goal only makes it less likely. In today's warped political environment, nothing strengthens a radical government more than Washington's overt antagonism. It also is common sense to presume that Iran will be less willing to cooperate in Iraq and to compromise on nuclear issues if it is being threatened with destruction. As for Iran's choleric and anti-Semitic new president, he will be swallowed up by internal rivals if he is not unwittingly propped up by external foes.

Albright's problem is that she has no concept of evil regimes. You'll excuse me if I don't trust the woman who did this:

That's Albright alongside Kim Jong Il, happily clapping away at a massive stadium rally that only a dictator can assemble, and which is a display of pure power. This is the woman whose brilliant statecraft (along with Clinton's) allowed North Korea to extort the U.S. while NK reneged on its side of the deal, didn't do anything constructive with Iran, constantly hedged on Iraq, played footsy with Arafat, and turned a blind eye to terrorist attacks on American interests. The Clinton foreign policy as supported by and implemented through Albright punted on nearly every difficult international problem, which tended to be the ones that might require serious military intervention and could be publicly unpopular. Her negligence became Bush's problem and now her advice to him is to keep punting down the road.

Totalitarian regimes don't need an actual threat from the U.S. to stay in power. A voiced threat by them is all they need. Kim Jong Il announces every other month or so that the U.S. is about to invade North Korea. Castro will occasionally say something like that too.

Furthermore, when dealing with Iran, taking the threat of regime change or military force off the table is to take away our one major bargaining chip. Iran has been in talks with the EU about its nuclear program for years and those talks have gone nowhere. Iran has merely been stringing the international community along while its nuclear development continues apace. Euros and UN types don't care about results, they care about process. As long as the process is ongoing, they can pretend they're achieving something when they're not. Iran knows this well and knows that if it can tie up the EU or anyone else in beloved talks, then it can stall for time long enough to complete its weapons. Considering the history of negotiations with Iran and the EU, Albright is only displaying willful ignorance in saying we should disavow the use of force when dealing with Iran and should only enter into negotiations.

Albright makes it seem as if the mid-east would trend toward moderate democracies if only we were to leave things alone. That might be true if you extend the trend line out a hundred years or so. It certainly isn't the case now and the bare glimmers of democracy that we've seen the mid-east have been the result of U.S. intervention (for good or bad) and the fear in those countries of American force. Albright is right that a foreign policy shouldn't be based purely on notions of good and evil,¹ but it also shouldn't be ignorant of them.

Others blogging: California Conservative and Uncorrelated,

1. Albright's portrayal of Bush foreign policy as being oversimplified is itself oversimplified. [back]

I just discovered the collission of two major toy franchises. Hasbro makes Star Wars toys and Transformers toys. Now it also makes Star Wars Transformers. Behold the Darth Vader Transformer that "converts from Advanced TIE Fighter vehicle to Jedi-crushing Sith Lord and back!" Oh yeah.

There's actually a series of these. The Darth Vader is probably the best rendered in robot mode. The others look pretty good as vehicles, but are strange as robots. Aside from Vader, there's also:

Anakin/Jedi Fighter
Boba Fett/Slave I ship
Darth Maul/Sith Infiltrator
General Grievous/Wheel Bike (actually, this one looks great, but he was a transforming robot to begin with, so it's kinda cheating)
Luke Skywalker/X-Wing fighter
Obi-Wan/Jedi Fighter (pretty much the same as the Anakin one but in different colors)

X-Entertainment, where I found out about these, has a nice write-up on them and some bigger pictures.

While looking at the latest Transformer lineup, I discovered that Hasbro is rereleasing some of the old classics, like the original version of Optimus Prime. I also discovered that the line is staying current and has a Transformer version of a Scion XB.

Anyway, the Star Wars transformers are nice, but I'll hold out for a U.S.S. Enterprise that transforms into Captain Kirk. A U.S.S. Defiant that transforms into Captain Sisko would also be pretty sweet.
(/geekiness)

Great googly-moogly, the pro-life movement must be getting desperate if it's doing this:

BROOKLYN (March 22, 2006) — A nude Britney Spears on a bearskin rug while giving birth to her firstborn marks a ‘first’ for Pro-Life. Pop-star Britney Spears is the “ideal” model for Pro-Life and the subject of a dedication at Capla Kesting Fine Art in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg gallery district, in what is proclaimed the first Pro-Life monument to birth, in April.

Dedication of the life-sized statue celebrates the recent birth of Spears’ baby boy, Sean, and applauds her decision of placing family before career. “A superstar at Britney’s young age having a child is rare in today’s celebrity culture. This dedication honors Britney for the rarity of her choice and bravery of her decision,” said gallery co-director, Lincoln Capla. The dedication includes materials provided by Manhattan Right To Life Committee.

“Monument to Pro-Life: The Birth of Sean Preston,” believed Pro-Life’s first monument to the ‘act of giving birth,’ is purportedly an idealized depiction of Britney in delivery. Natural aspects of Spears’ pregnancy, like lactiferous breasts and protruding naval, compliment a posterior view that depicts widened hips for birthing and reveals the crowning of baby Sean’s head.

In the name of all that is good and holy, what are these people thinking? Wait, there's more.

The monument also acknowledges the pop-diva’s pin-up past by showing Spears seductively posed on all fours atop a bearskin rug with back arched, pelvis thrust upward, as she clutches the bear’s ears with ‘water-retentive’ hands.

Oh, my… as if it weren’t gross enough, now it’s also creepy pervy gross.

Ok, steel yourself… pictures are after the break.

(link via Wizbang Pop)

(more…)

While I'm not typically in the habit of reproducing comments I leave elsewhere, I'll do so this time. Given the time it took to write them and that my blogging hasn't otherwise been productive lately, it'd be a shame to waste them.

These were in response to this post over at Moonbattery about Charlie Sheen jumping on the conspiracy bandwagon and positing that a plane never hit the Pentagon. A few people took the opportunity to support Mr. Sheen and the conspiracy theories. I posted the following three comments taking them to task. The most interesting is, I think, the second in which I argue that conspiracy theories tend to be self-perpetuating and that for the dedicated conspiracy theorist, the theories cannot be disproved since all evidence necessarily proves the theories.

1)
The most telling quote from Sheen: "It feels like from the people I talk to in and around my circles, it seems like the worm is turning."

Ah, surely.

It's amazing these claims are still out there despite being debunked again and again.

I refer you to this very nice compilation of moonbat myths concerning 9/11 and their thorough smack down by Popular Mechanics.

2)
Interesting.

The problem with hardcore conspiracy theorists is that their theories become self-perpetuating. They start with motivated speculation and then add assumptions, coincidences, bad data, and poor reasoning. Anything that contradicts their hypotheses is merely added to proof of the conspiracy.

Thus, when I linked to the Popular Mechanics article debunking the multiple myths the theorists have generated, Moonbat Supreme, instead of confronting the content, merely rhetorically asked why PM would be motivated to discredit the conspiracy theories. That is, because what PM said ran counter to his conspiracy theories, that by default meant that PM itself was part of the conspiracy. That, bizarrely enough, is taken as further proof of the conspiracy.

The problem is that absolutely nothing can dissuade the determined conspiracy theorist. Anything that supports the theory proves the theory, and anything that discredits it (no matter how damning) also proves the theory. So in the mind of the conspiracy-minded person, the theory is impossible to disprove. All evidence only serves to prove the theory, despite whether it augments or detracts from it.

So to you conspiracy folks, please explain to me how I am the one being close-minded to possibilities when your minds funnel any and all evidence towards support of your pre-determined position? You accuse us of denying evidence. This is because we argue against it. You, however, merely and conveniently assert that all evidence supports you. This improperly absolves you of the responsibility to confront the content itself. Instead, the conspiracy just grows ever-larger. The problem with this, though, is that the larger the proposed conspiracy, the less likely it's true. How large have these conspiracies grown?

3)
Prince, indeed. So let's do something interesting and turn the pithy questions back on them. M. Supreme, though I have my doubts, I will assume you have an adequate amount of common sense. Let's think about the following.

Planting demolitions explosives is an intensive and time consuming endeavor requiring a great deal of skill. You don't just stick them in a building, you must strategically place them on key supports, cutting some supports, etc. If these were planted in the towers, how is that nobody noticed?

If 9/11 was a big conspiracy and the government flew two jets into the towers (that planes hit the towers isn't under debate), why would the government neglect to hit the Pentagon with a plane? I would think that if they had gone to the trouble to do so with the towers and that they lacked the moral scruples to do so, there would be no reason NOT to hit the Pentagon with a plane. Not to do so and then claim it had happened anyway would have been extraordinarily foolish and dangerous to the conspiracy. Are the plotters malevolent geniuses or sloppy amateurs?

The reason the likelihood of a proposed conspiracy being true is inversely proportional to its size is because larger conspiracies involve greater numbers of people. The more people who are involved, the more likely it is that someone will talk and expose the conspiracy. As it is, your conspiracy involves, at least, thousands – possibly tens of thousands. Among the people that would have to be in on it to some degree: administration officials, CIA, FBI, various local officials, police forces, foreign intelligence agencies and their governments, demolitions experts, the people on the airplanes, congressmen (both Democrat and Republican), various military entities, all media outlets, eyewitnesses, and the list continues growing. Why has nobody talked? In over four and a half years? These are not all government stooges, but many common people. Surely someone would have a crisis of conscience.

Democrats would have to know about the conspiracy. Why not reveal it and crush the president and Republicans?

Reporters would have to be in on it. Why not reveal it and crush the president and Republicans?

Foreign governments not friendly to the U.S. or at least those that don't like Bush would have to know about it. Why not reveal it to get rid of Bush?

Domestic intelligence agencies haven't been able to keep a lid on many, many classified operations due to "whistleblowers." Why have none blown the whistle on this, which is much larger and more important than any of the other operations?

Surely the civilians on the planes didn't volunteer to die and their phone calls to friends and family described the hijackers. If the 19 hijackers were government agents, why would they volunteer to die? Why wouldn't they also use weapons that would better guarantee them of success? Surely the conspiracy could have arranged some reason for guns to be planted somewhere on the plane.

Why have the experts in building demolitions not come forward? Especially since controlled building demolition isn’t particularly a government or military expertise, it’s a civilian one.

If it was a grand conspiracy, presumably the goal would be to inculcate fear without causing peripheral damage. That is, preserve the economy. Why pick a technique that destroyed a major financial center, grounded civil aviation, and severely hurt the economy which in turn hurt Bush? Why not do something that could still cause fear without the severe economic damage?

Why pick something so complicated as what happened on 9/11? For terrorists, they can identify weaknesses and exploit them. Exposure of their plot after it’s in action is unimportant. Conspirators, though, need to continue concealing their plot after the fact. So why do something as complex as hijacking four planes, flying one into a field, flying two others into the towers at roughly the same point where they had previously planted large amounts of explosives (while somehow keeping the explosives intact and keeping them from detonating until the appropriate time), apparently making the fourth plane disappear but detonating explosives in the Pentagon anyway and saying a plane hit it, etc. This would be an unnecessarily complex operation with too many people involved and too great a chance of being uncovered. It would be foolish. Real conspirators would have kept the operation small and with few or no loose ends.

Considering that the accepted opinion is that 9/11 was the result of terrorists and not a conspiracy, considering that you want to convince everybody that it resulted from a conspiracy, and considering that you are acting as a plaintiff indicting numerous people of malfeasance, the burden of proof is, at the very least, pragmatically yours. Thus far, you have presented speculations based on assumptions that are in turn supported by outright improbabilities which are suspended in the ether. What say you to my questions? And remember that it is not enough that you point out oddities or coincidences, you must be able to present a cohesive case for a conspiracy that cannot only explain the oddities and disprove accepted events, but also bear a reasonable chance of success and also remain concealed to this day. Can you do it? Can you make a thing that defies common sense and is of absurd complexity and improbable likelihood more plausible than what’s accepted?

This blog is officially four years old! Actually, my blogaversary (however it's spelled) was on March 15th. I didn't mention it then because, for some reason, I really thought it was March 22nd. Anyway, it's been a fun four years and I intend to keep going… hopefully more regularly than I have been this month, but life intrudes and not feeling beholden to my blog keeps me from getting burned out on it.

I saw V for Vendetta last Friday. I thought it was a well-executed movie with an engaging story.

Other than that, I thought it was dreck.

The modern political commentary was unmistakable, heavy-handed, and distinctly moonbatty. Possessing a Koran earned the death penalty. So, apparently, did being a homosexual. Many other cultural objects were prohibited for being unwholesome. A right-wing fascist dictator has taken over England and uses fear and Christian faith to control the populace. America's in a civil war after "its war" that started 20 years prior went horribly wrong (although it seems Texas is ok in this war since Dell is still making computer monitors). Government surveillance is omnipresent and the control of media absolute. Oh, and at one point, two central characters are aghast at discovering that the worst terrorist attack in the country's history was inflicted by its own government so as to generate fear and… to control the populace.

If there's something that's always annoyed the hell out of me, it's how movies always depict dystopian futures as being that of some conservative theocratic fascism. Why not make them about atheistic socialist dictators that control their citizenries through fear, killing their own people, constant surveillance, and control of the media? Nah, for liberals, the very concept of such a thing would just be too far fetched and unrealistic.

While the tools of control can belong equally well to a fascist or communist dictator, dystopias of the far left have been far more common over the past century as well as longer lasting and more pervasive. Two hands and at least one foot are required for rattling off the communist totalitarian regimes whereas the fascist ones need just a few fingers.

Moreover, while conservatives long ago learned what an ultra-right-wing government looked like and wholly rejected it as abhorrent, liberals have never thus rejected ultra-left-wing governments. The same people who pat themselves on the back for rebuking conservatives and waling about a slide towards an utterly improbable fascism are the same ones who for years denied that Stalin, Mao, Kim, and other communists were doing any wrong. Then when the atrocities became impossible to deny, they merely claimed that the same countries they had so long touted as paragons of leftist idealism were impure forms of socialism and so a socialist utopia should still be attempted. I imagine that Conservatives in the UK would be surprised to learn they're on the cusp of taking ultimate power since the Labour party has been thoroughly dominating them. All of Europe decidedly belongs to the left and most countries are at least quasi-socialist, if not outright so. Their surveillance methods are also far more liberal (ahem) than our own. The world is not in danger of a fascist dictator. It is in danger of a socialist or communist one. Or at least a new one since I can think at least five current ones just off the top of my head.

It is a further irritant that V for Vendetta intimates intolerance towards Muslims will outlaw them. This is high-handed morality considering that the only countries that outlaw religions are Islamic nations. While V portrays a future in which Korans are illegal, in the present, Bibles and any non-Islamic religious texts are forbidden in Saudi Arabia, Iran, and elsewhere. The movie shows a future Christian theocracy, though the only theocracies that exist now are Islamic. Instead of commentary on what isn't and won't be, why don't filmmakers criticize actual religious injustice? The thought that any modern Western society is a step away from outlawing unfavorable religions, homosexuals, and certain cultural artifacts borders on the absurd. Yet the very societies that already do this, the Islamic societies, are given sympathy as victims. Instead of placing V in an improbable future London, why not put him in actual modern-day Riyadh or Tehran?

Another real shame here is focusing on the terrorist tactics of some supernatural hero who is a latter-day Guy Fawkes, speaks of revolution, says words are powerful, and is more than mere flesh, but is also an idea and "ideas are bulletproof." These men don't exist. Real men who resist totalitarian regimes really are mere flesh and suffer because of it. They live in fear of the consequences of their resistance, they are arrested, imprisoned, tortured, and often executed directly by bullet or indirectly through work. These are the men of Tiananmen Square, of the Hungarian Revolt, of Solidarity, of the gulag in the Soviet Union, of the laogai in China, of the labor camps in North Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Nazi Germany. These are Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Andrei Sinyavsky, Oskar Schindler, Raul Wallenberg, Lech Walesa, Wang Dan, Shen Liangqing, and millions more who go unrecorded. Their ideas may have been bulletproof, but they weren't. Where are the films in their honor? Schindler got one, what about Wang Dan? What about Sinyavsky? They didn't/don't have fancy knives, explosives, or kung-fu moves that get them out of trouble like V does. Real heroes are the men who persevere despite the overwhelming chance of failure, not the ones arrogantly guaranteed of success.

V for Vendetta is a morality tale warning of things that could be in the same way that Mars Attacks! implored us against complacency towards alien threats. The events (or anything similar to them) of neither are going to come about. V is another version of the oft-told tale liberals tell each other whenever history fails to steadfastly march to their drumbeat. Conservative power necessarily means fascism while liberal power means utopia. They ignore their own sins, they ignore the threats they present, and they ignore the sorry history of the extremism of their own ideology. And we're all the worse for it.

Hugo Chavez is continuing his dictatorial ways in Venezuela. One of a tyrant's favorite things to do is to continually reshape his country's symbols and institutions to his liking. By restructuring the institutions, he makes the machinery of government loyal to him. By remaking the symbols, he makes the people loyal to him as their national consciousness becomes slowly based not on their nation, but on their leader. What it means to be X is dependent on the man who creates what it means to be X.

All the great tyrants have done this: Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, Ho Chi Minh, even Napoleon. Chavez is following in their noble tracks by redesigning Venezuela's flag. He's making the horse run left instead of right (not a coincidence, I'm sure) and has added a bow and arrow to represent Venezuela's indigenous people as well as a machete to represent the labor of workers. Oh, and he added an eighth star because Simon Bolivar originally wanted it (another tyrant trick: favorably compare yourself to some past national hero).

Among his other changes to national symbols and names: renamed the legislature the National Assembly, renamed the Supreme Court the Supreme Court of Justice, and renamed the country itself the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

But dictator techniques don't end there. Chavez also declares that his leadership is a revolution marking a new era in Venezuela: the Fifth Republic. Think Third Reich here or something similar. At least one lackey lawmaker says all the changes Chavez is making are justified because "Chavez's 'revolutionary' process should be accompanied by a new set of national icons." If you ever take over a country and want to become a good autocrat, always declare that you're so goshdarn important that you're personally ushering in a new epoch in history.

Seriously… is there a book of rules for this sort of thing? Maybe "Tyranny for Dummies"? 'Cause dictators all seem to do so many of the same things. Perhaps they're just tips that get passed around and Castro told them to Chavez. I'm sure Chavez has in turn told them to new Bolivian President Evo Morales and that's a cause of concern for Bolivia.

Polygamists normally live on the fringe and try to avoid any attention being called to them. Now, though, they're coming out of the woodwork, banding together, and attempting to legalize their practice. As was predicted, they're largely piggy-backing their effort on the drive to legalize gay marriage. While gay marriage is a separate issue and should be judged on its own merits and not because it is the first step on a slippery slope, it's worrying that polygamy could gain any sort of traction.

A problem with our loosening sexual mores is the idea that nobody is in the position to judge the partnering practices of others. That's just lazy thinking and is indicative of those whose response to important moral dilemmas is a subjective hedonist "whatever makes you happy" instead of doing the hard thinking on the matters.

Polygamy is not a healthy practice in a modern society. When implemented, it results in women becoming akin to property, their value exists only in relation to their husbands or to whom they can be married off, and these patriarchies start marrying off girls instead of women. Women become commodities, useful for sex and salvation, and women (at least those who don’t already buy into the men’s excuses for the practice’s necessity) are forced to participate.

Worse still (at least practically speaking, maybe not morally) is that polygamist communities are inherently unstable due to the natural gender balance. The ratio of men to women is typically 50/50. If multiple women are married off to only some men, though, that means that other men are denied spouses. That is, there is an excess of men and the extras aren't happy at not having a mate. In one fundamentalist Mormon sect in Utah, boys are driven out of the community on trumped up (or simply false) charges and dumped in nearby towns – and at ages as young as 13. The sect's male leaders don't want competition for wives and so they simply eliminate potential challengers before they can become a problem. This illustrates another issue: raw power differentials. The men with the wives wield an inordinate amount of power over not only the females who are wholly dependent on them, but also young males. Any boys who expect to rise to any prominence can do so only under the good graces of those above them.

So I don’t particularly care if some people say they can make polygamy work or that it makes them happy. If they care merely to live together, fine. But if they engage in polygamous marriage and demand equal rights, standing, and benefits given to conventional married couples through legalization of polygamy, they should be handed an unequivocal no. While my libertarian tendencies make me wary of the government intruding on private practices, especially those that are religiously based, marriage is also an important social practice. As such, it warrants the attention and regulation of law. Because of the practical social implications described above (and my list is hardly exhaustive), polygamy should be roundly denounced, outlawed, and actively stamped out wherever it is found. If the polygamists unite, let them – we’ll better know who to prosecute.

Sunnis and native insurgents in Iraq are starting to band together to kick out foreign al-Qaeda fighters. This isn't the first report I've seen on the phenomenon and it isn't terribly surprising. The problem is that the three groups do not share the same ends. The insurgents' primary end is to get Americans out of Iraq, the Sunnis' is to regain power, and al-Qaeda's is to kill infidels. That is, the ends are nationalistic, political, and ideological, respectively.¹

When the U.S. first invaded, these three groups were natural allies in attacking American forces. The insurgents thought doing so would bloody our nose and get us out of the country, the Sunnis thought it could drive us out so they could reassert their authority, and al-Qaeda wanted to kill soldiers of the Great Satan. So, for the insurgents and Sunnis, attacking Americans was a means to a further end, whereas for al-Qaeda, it was an end in itself.

Things have changed, however. Following the first general elections in Iraq in January 2005 and Bush's insistence on not withdrawing, it started becoming apparent to the native insurgents and especially the Sunnis that outright violence was becoming a less and less effective means to achieve their ends. After the Sunnis largely boycotted that election and were excluded from the government-building process, they realized that if they wanted any power in the new Iraq, they were going to have to start participating in its nascent government and elections. The path to political power lay in democracy and not the old-fashioned tyranny to which they had been accustomed.

While some (many?) insurgents continue violence against Americans, others have realized that the best way to get U.S. forces out of Iraq and regain control of their country is to make Iraq stable and self-sufficient. That is, the reason for the U.S. being there needs to be removed, control needs to be centered in a truly Iraqi government, and perhaps the new government can even request that America remove all its forces. Again, the best means to achieving their end has changed.

Al-Qaeda, though, never saw killing Americans as a means to something else (as the insurgents or Sunnis did), but as an end in itself. They accordingly have continued their violence and, as it becomes more difficult to kill U.S. soldiers, have turned their ire on the Sunnis and other Iraqis whom they see as collaborators with America because they are participating in the political process.

Thus, the insurgents, Sunnis, and al-Qaeda are no longer the natural allies they once were. Since foreign al-Qaeda fighters who fight for ideology are now harmful to the ends of the insurgents and Sunnis (as well as to their lives), the insurgents and Sunnis have a potent interest is ridding the country of al-Qaeda.

(link via CQ)

Others blogging: TigerHawk

1. I'm roughly lumping them into three different groups with specific interests, but there is obviously gray here and overlap among them such that, say, a native insurgent is both nationalistically and ideologically motivated and some native insurgents are purely ideologically motivated. Nevertheless, I think these divisions describe the primary end they seek and I'm describing native insurgents as not ideologues. [back]

Dan Rather gave a speech Wednesday in which he expounded on his rules for good journalism. Judging from what he said, they appear to be as follows:

1) Ask more questions, especially the tough ones.
2) Offer less sensationalism and more real analysis.
3) Pay more attention to international events.

It should be immediately obvious that in the memogate affair, Rather violated rules 1 and 2. Tough questions were not asked and the analysis was pitiful. Does this mean that Dan Rather was a bad journalist according to his own criteria?

For further irony, observe this statement: "American journalism at its best is a public trust and is deeply bound up in our system of checks and balances." Yes, the guy who reported clear forgeries as fact, who ignored concerns from document experts as to the memos' authenticity, who depended on a handwriting expert to say the typed documents were real (even though he didn't), who still claims the memos are real despite blinding evidence to the contrary, and who thinks he was unfairly canned for the fiasco, is lecturing on public trust and checks and balances.

Rather also said, "American journalism is in need of a spine transplant." A spine isn't very useful if it doesn't have a brain attached to it. Courage without moderating prudence and intelligence is not courage, but merely dangerous recklessness. Maybe Rather should first worry about that.

(link via MRC)

Not surprisingly, it’s becoming more apparent that Valerie Plame's "outing" as a CIA agent had no effect on national security. Many on the left wanting to get the Bush administration on something – anything – have bemoaned Plame's identification as an agent as damaging to American intelligence. An odd statement, surely, since no one has been able to point to any actual damage incurred. I had also wondered how it could be true that her clandestine activities could have still been secret since she was working for a CIA front company that any intelligence agency worth its salt would have known was a CIA front company.

A new report from the Chicago Tribune reveals further details that Plame once had an embassy address (a big no-no if you're undercover since it's generally assumed anybody assigned to an embassy could be an intelligence agent) and that she was assigned to CIA headquarters as an energy consultant (a real undercover agent would never be spotted going into CIA offices). Her big reveal as an agent couldn’t have harmed national security since any agency paying attention would have already known she was an agent and her weak covers indicate she probably was never undercover to begin with.

In short, there's really no story here except that Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, has managed to milk the brouhaha for all its worth by posing as a noble whistleblower (though he wasn’t) marked for destruction by Bush and Co.

If you haven't been told, MC Hammer has his own blog.

There, you can find such gems as "Still, I like my muscles hard because it helps me execute my moves with more power."

Ok, that's a little unfair. It's actually a pretty decent blog and Hammer hits on a variety of topics. He even has short little quasi-podcasts. Definitely worth a look.

It's been in the news how Vince Young took the Wonderlic intelligence test at the NFL scouting combine and scored just 6 out of 50 and then 16 out of 50 on a retest. He's not in bad company, though. Dan Marino scored a 16 also and Brett Favre just 22. Turns out QBs average only 24.

The depressing part is how flippin' easy the questions are. If Young honestly scored a 6 on this… well… a 6 is just below the level of drooling, slack-jawed mouth-breather. Is this what UT is turning out in its student athletes?