Golden Mori---"Maersk II?"

Found an interesting link regarding what could become a pirate standoff similar to that of the Maersk Alabama. This time, the ship is Japanese with a mostly Phillipino crew, so our press probably won't touch it much. Unfortunately, this story is already several days old...

The U.S. Navy said Thursday that it intended to remove pirates from a hijacked Japanese tanker monitored by American warships off the coast of Somalia. A crew member's sister said negotiations were under way for the release of the ship.

The Navy came to the aid of the chemical tanker this week, at one point opening fire to destroy pirate skiffs tied to it.

***

Negotiations have started for the release of the Japanese tanker, anchored in Somali waters with 23 crew members from the Philippines, South Korea and Myanmar, said Josefina Villanueva, whose brother Laureano is a Filipino supervisor aboard the Golden Nori.

"The pirates are still on board with the crewmen. They can't leave," she said, relaying information families had received from the Philippines Department of Foreign Affairs.

She said there had been no ransom demand from the pirates. "The talks are just starting. I think the pirates will later on demand something," she said.

Another interesting tidbit from the same story: The USN rendered assistance to a DPRK ship attacked by pirates. First time I heard it. I suppose it's possible that I'm lagging behind on current events, but it seems these are pretty important events that aren't getting much coverage.

It also helped a North Korean ship whose crew overpowered pirates in a clash that left several crew members wounded and one hijacker dead. The hijackers were being held aboard the ship until they can be handed over for prosecution at a port. After the clash, Navy personnel boarded the North Korean boat to treat the wounded.

H/T: Subsim

Assigned Reading

Here is a very thoughtful analysis of the Palin candidacy, what it meant politically, the reality vs. the perception, and how it went down like it did. It gives a very thorough trashing of all the assumptions made on both sides. Very, very highly recommended. (Hat tip: Conservative Wahoo)

One thing I really liked about the theory behind the article is that it offers a sensible explanation for why Palin was mocked for inexperience but Obama got a free pass, in a way that goes beyond the O'Reilly "in the tank" line.

I'm still trying to figure out the "worldview" part. True, McCain did fail to be more than an "attitude poltician with an appealing biography," and would have benefited from articulating a vision of what "his" America would look like. But if McCain was an "attitude" candidate, Obama was an "emotion" candidate, also without a clear vision articulated. All people really knew about Obama's future America was that it would have Hope and would not have Bush. Well, maybe that's just it, when you're able to run against an unpopular administration, maybe emotion is enough, and the substance of the outgoing Pres is all the substance you need.

But, I think he's absolutely right about the need to tie substance with cultural populism. Cultural populsim was demonstrated to be stronger than people have given it credit for, and it's something that would do us some good if it found a voice in power. Maybe that detached-ness, the senselessness that DC has become could be corrected with a dose of some good old common sense and the wisdom the comes from life experience. So maybe the next candidate needs to be able to tap into that, like Palin did. But, whoever that is also needs to have some intellectual depth to his/her candidacy, if for no other reason than to prevent the "blank slate" effect where everyone just throws their own projections at the candidate.

Off To a Great Start, Aren't We?

Wow. What a great first week.

First, we got a glimpse of the new politics of civility.


Then, the new President decides to close the Gitmo detention facility. Without having any idea what else to do with them. Great plan! You know someone isn't serious about putting good governance before ideology when they take the ideological action and save the difficult questions for later. Strange.... that reminds me about a certain heavily criticized ex-President who invaded a country without any plan for handling the occupation and insurgency to follow. But, this is what passes for "CHANGE" these days.

Oh, news flash to the new administration: released detainees are popping up again fighting against US troops. Just recently, one was identified as a new AQ leader in Yemen. So you might want to figure this one out, you know, before people start getting killed for your cause.

The pledge for transparency in government lasted all of two days. I can give the snubbing of press reporters/photographers a pass for now--that was likely just a n00b gaffe that will sort itself out (although, between the retaliatory curtailing of access to some networks during the election, the pay-to-play angle to that story has additional credence). But, the new SECSTATE concealing donors is unforgivable. The only way she received any serious consideration was by promising transparency. But no, the Clintons had to renege on their promise and a cloud of corruption already hangs over the executive branch.

Not even a week in.

I See What You Did There

First, giving credit where credit is due, Conservative Wahoo saw it first.

Here is a story about how the press covered the election. It is amazing in three respects. First, if there was ever any doubt about the widespread perception that the mainstream media has a liberal bias, this should prove it once and for all. Second--and I was surprised by this--it shows that Fox News Channel really is living up to its "Fair and Balanced" motto (I thought they would have had a slight conservative tilt, but the data shows otherwise). Finally, it's remarkable because despite what the raw data shows, the Pew Research Center still managed to present the data in a form that made it appear that FNC was skewed right and that the network news outlets were right in the middle.

Absolutely amazing. The problem with Pew's presentation is that it compares each outlet to the average of all of them, and then decides that if a network is to the left or right of that average, then they are left or right politically. The obvious problem with that is it assumes that the media as a whole is centrist. But it doesn't take a genius to figure out that the media as a whole can be on one side or another--especially when you have a network like MSNBC out there pulling the average way, way out to the left. A better method of analysis is not to assume anything, but to compare the way the networks treated the candidates. No spin, just straight up.

So here is the raw data that the story is based on. The data tells a pretty clear story, when you look at is for what it really is. So, here is what it looks like when you compare how the networks covered the candidates:

FNC
Negative Stories
Obama: 40%
Mcain: 40%
-BALANCED-

Positive Stories
Obama: 25%
McCain: 22%
-BALANCED- (slightly Obama favoring)

MSNBC:
negative stories:
Obama: 14%
McCain 73%
--Tilted against McCain by 5 to 1 ratio--

Positive stories
Obama: 42%
McCain: 10%
--Tilted for Obama by 4 to 1 ratio--

CNN:
Negative Stories
Obama: 39%
McCain: 61%
--Tilted against McCain by 1.7 to 1 ratio--

Positive Stories
Obama: 36%
McCain: 13%
--Tilted for Obama by 2.8 to 1 ratio--

NBC
Negative Stories
Obama: 20%
McCain: 54%
--Tilted against McCain by 2.7 to 1 ratio--

Positive Stories
Obama: 43%
McCain: 17%
--Tilted for Obama by 2.5 to 1 ratio--

CBS
Negative Stories
Obama: 27%
McCain: 57%
--Tilted against McCain by 2.1 to 1 ratio--

Positive Stories
Obama: 21%
McCain: 8%
--Tilted for Obama by 2.6 to 1 ratio--

ABC
Negative Stories
Obama: 27%
McCain: 56%
--Tilted against McCain by 2.1 to 1 ratio--

Positive Stories
Obama: 49%
McCain: 15%
----Tilted for Obama by 3.3 to 1 ratio--

So there you have it. When FNC says "Fair and Balanced", at least in this election, they meant it. CNN, MSNBC, and the old networks favored Obama in their coverage by a 2-5 to 1 margin. The data proves it.

Accuracy of State Polls

Something to keep in mind:

The first thing that jumps out at you if you read the state polls, is that there are a lot more polling groups doing polls at the state level, than at the national level. Also, most of the polling groups which do national polls, do not also do state polling, probably because it is expensive and difficult to try to cover all of the states on a consistent and timely basis. I have written before that national polls often focus on urban centers, which means that many of the states would require a functionally different methodology to work than what is used nationally. State polling tends to be smaller in respondent pool size, smaller in budget, and less frequent. Some polling groups only do one poll for the whole campaign, and it's common for even major groups to do a poll only once a month....

2006 was a bad year for republicans... it's not surprising that democratic party supporters gained a few points (usually 1 to 3 points) relative to 2004 in voter participation. So I went back and looked at voters by party affiliation, and compared those balances to this year's weighting by Survey USA. In thirty-six states, the party affiliation weights for democrats used by SUSA was five points or more higher than in 2006, a high-water mark for democrats. In twenty states, the party afiiliation weights for democrats used by SUSA was ten points or more higher than in 2006, and in eight states, the party affiliation weights used for democrats by SUSA was thirteen points or more higher than in 2006. Significant battleground states affected by this bias are as follows:

Pennsylvania: D+5 in 2006, SUSA using D+19, 15 point variance
Indiana: R+14 in 2006, SUSA using R+1, 13 point variance
Nevada: R+7 in 2006, SUSA using D+6, 13 point variance
Colorado: R+3 in 2006, SUSA using D+9, 12 point variance
Iowa: R+2 in 2006, SUSA using D+10, 12 point variance
Virginia: R+3 in 2006, SUSA using D+9, 12 point variance
Ohio: D+3 in 2006, SUSA using D+13, 10 point variance
Missouri: R+1 in 2006, SUSA using D+7, 8 point variance
North Carolina: R+1 in 2006, SUSA using D+5, 6 point variance

I've looked at the publicly available records on historical election participation, 2008 new voter registrations, and the Census information on these states, but I can find no valid reason for such large and arbitrary changes in political affiliation weightings. I would therefore submit that the models being used for many of the state polls have design flaws, which threaten the credibility of their published results.

Source.

The Homestretch

We're almost there, and like the rest of you I'll be happy when it's finally over. These things seem to be starting earlier every cycle, and this one's been draining.

I've got two good reads for you. I can't vouch for the validity of either, but they purport to be from sources within the Obama campaign. The message: don't trust the polls, this is closer than we think.

Here's #1: I can't say I care for a lot of the comments on the attached video, but there's a lot of editing going on there so hopefully it's not a representative sampling. Communist? Close enough. Muslim terrorist? No.

...and I'll post #2 directly (highlighting mine). If this is really from the inside, you can't get better strategic insight.

What you were never intended to know in this election

A Hillary staffer comes clean

Posted by: Anonymous_14

Thursday, October 30, 2008 at 04:52PM CDT

26 Comments

After a long and careful consideration of all the implications and possible consequences of my actions today, I have decided to go through with this in the hope that our country can indeed be guided into the right direction. First, a little personal background… I am a female grad student in my 20’s, and a registered Democrat. During the primaries, I was a campaign worker for the Clinton candidacy. I believed in her and still do, staying all the way to the bitter end. And believe me, it was bitter. The snippets you’ve heard from various media outlets only grazed the surface. There was no love between the Clinton and Obama campaigns, and these feelings extended all the way to the top. Hillary was no dope though, and knew that any endorsement of Obama must appear to be a full-fledged one. She did this out of political survival. As a part of his overall effort to extend an olive branch to the Clinton camp and her supporters, Obama took on a few Hillary staff members into his campaign. I was one such worker. Though I was still bitterly loyal to Hillary, I still held out hope that he would choose her as VP. In fact, there was a consensus among us transplants that in the end, he HAD to choose her. It was the only logical choice. I also was committed to the Democratic cause and without much of a second thought, transferred my allegiance to Senator Obama.

I’m going to let you in on a few secrets here, and this is not because I enjoy the gossip or the attention directed my way. I’m doing this because I doubt much of you know the true weaknesses of Obama. Another reason for my doing this is that I am lost faith in this campaign, and feel that this choice has been forced on many people in this country. Put simply, you are being manipulated. That was and is our job – to manipulate you (the electorate) and the media (we already had them months ago). Our goal is to create chaos with the other side, not hope. I’ve come to the realization (as the campaign already has) that if this comes to the issues, Barack Obama doesn’t have a chance. His only chance is to foster disorganization, chaos, despair, and a sense of inevitability among the Republicans. It has worked up until now. Joe the Plumber has put the focus on the issues again, and this scares us more than anything. Being in a position to know these things, I will rate what the Obama campaign already knows are their weak links from the most important on down.

1 – Hillary voters. Internal polling suggests that at best, we are taking 70-75% of these voters. Other estimates are as low as 60% in some areas – particularly Ohio and western PA. My biggest problem with this campaign’s strategy was the decision NOT to offer Hillary the VP slot. She was ready and able to take this on, and would have campaigned enthusiastically for it. This selection would have also brought virtually all of her supporters into the fold, and the Obama campaign knew it. Though I have no way of knowing this for certain, and I do admit that I am relying on internal gossip, Senator Obama actually went against the advice of his top advisors. They wanted him to choose her, but the only significant opposition to this within the campaign came from Barack and Michelle Obama. In short, he let personal feelings take precedence over what was the most logical thing to do. Biden, by the way, has been a disaster inside the campaign. Everyone cringes whenever he gives an interview, and he creates so many headaches as the campaign has to stay on their toes in order to disseminate information and spin whatever it was he was trying to say.

2 – Sarah Palin. Don’t believe what the media is telling you about how horrible a choice she was. Again, our internal polling suggest that though she has had a minimal impact on pulling disaffected Hillary Democrats to McCain, she has done wonders in mobilizing the base for McCain. Another thing – we were completely taken by surprise with her pick. In my capacity in the research department, I looked into the backgrounds of Leiberman, Romney, Pawlenty and Ridge, and prepared briefs. I don’t mind bragging that we had pretty good stuff on all of them. With Leiberman, the plan was to paint him as an erratic old-timer who didn’t have a clue as to what he was doing (pretty much a clone of McCain). In Romney, we had him pegged as an evil capitalist who cut jobs. Pawlenty was going to get the “Quayle treatment”, or more precisely: a pretty face, with no valid experience. Tom Ridge was going to be used to provide a direct link from McCain to Bush. As you can see, we were quite enamored of all of them. Then the unexpected happened – Sarah Palin. We had no clue as to how to handle her, and bungled it from the start. Though through our misinformation networks, we have successfully taken some of the shine off. But let there be no doubt. She remains a major obstacle. She has singlehanded solidified “soft” Republican support, mobilized the McCain ground game, and has even had some appeal to independents and Hillary voters. This is what our internal polling confirms.

3 – Obama’s radical connections. Standards operating procedure has been to cry “racism” whenever one of these has been brought up. We even have a detailed strategy ready to go should McCain ever bring Rev. Wright up. Though by themselves they are of minimal worth, taken together, Rev. Wright, Bill Ayers, Father Pfelger, and now, Rashid Khalili, are exactly what the campaign does not need. The more focus on them, the more this election becomes a referendum on Obama. The campaign strategy from the very beginning was to make this election a referendum on Bush. Strategists have been banging their head on how successfully McCain has distanced himself from Bush. This has worked, and right now the tide is in his favor. People are taking a new look at Barack Obama, and our experience when this happens tells us this is not good news at all. When they take a look at him, one or more of these names are bound to be brought up. McCain has wisely not harped on this in recent weeks and let voters decide for themselves. This was a trap we set for him, and he never fully took the bait. Senator Obama openly dared him to bring up Ayers. This was not due to machismo on the part of Obama, but actually due to campaign strategy. Though McCain’s reference to Ayers fell flat in the last debate, people in the Obama campaign were actually disappointed that he didn’t follow through on it more and getting into it. Our focus groups found this out: When McCain brings these connections up, voters are turned off to him. They’d rather take this into consideration themselves, and when this happens, our numbers begin to tank.

4 – The Bradley Effect. Don’t believe these polls for a second. I just went over our numbers and found that we have next to no chance in the following states: Missouri, Indiana, North Carolina, Florida, New Hampshire and Nevada. Ohio leans heavily to McCain, but is too close to call it for him. Virginia, Pennsylvania, Colorado, New Mexico and Iowa are the true “toss up states”. The only two of these the campaign feels “confident” in are Iowa and New Mexico. The reason for such polling discrepancy is the Bradley Effect, and this is a subject of much discussion in the campaign. In general, we tend to take a -10 point percentage in allowing for this, and are not comfortable until the polls give us a spread well over this mark. This is why we are still campaigning in Virginia and Pennsylvania! This is why Ohio is such a desperate hope for us! What truly bothers this campaign is the fact that some pollsters get up to an 80% “refuse to respond” result. You can’t possibly include these into the polls. The truth is, people are afraid to let people know who they are voting for. The vast majority of these respondents are McCain supporters. Obama is the “hip” choice, and we all know it.

As part of my research duties, I scour right wing blogs and websites to get somewhat of a “feel” as to what is being talked about on the other side. Much of it is nonsense, but there are some exceptions which give the campaign jitters. A spirited campaign has been made to infiltrate many pro-Hillary sites and discredit them. A more disorganized, but genuine effort has also been made to sow doubts among the unapologetically right wing sites such as redstate.com. Don’t you guys get it? This has been the Obama campaign’s sole strategy from the very beginning! The only way he wins is over a dispirited, disorganized, and demobilized opposition. This is how it has been for all of his campaigns. What surprises me is that everyone has fallen for it. You may point to the polls as proof of the inevitability of all of this. If so, you have fallen for the oldest trick in the book. How did we skew these polls, you might ask? It all starts with the media “buzz” which has been generated over the campaign. Many stories are generated on the powerful Obama ground game, and how many new voters were registered. None of this happens by coincidence. It is all part of the poll-skewing process. This makes pollsters change their mixes to reflect these new voters and tilt the mix more towards Democratic voters. What is not mentioned or reported on is not the “under-reported cell phone users or young voters” we hear so much about. What is underreported is you.

I changed my somewhat positive opinion of this campaign during the unfair and sexist campaign against Sarah Palin. I will never agree with her on the issues and will probably never vote for her, but I am embarrassed of what has happened. I can’t ignore our own hand in all of this. What I do know is that I will not be voting for Obama this time around. Treat that as you will.

Freedom of Speech on the 'Net: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

AUSTRALIA will join China in implementing mandatory censoring of the internet under plans put forward by the Federal Government.

The revelations emerge as US tech giants Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, and a coalition of human rights and other groups unveiled a code of conduct aimed at safeguarding online freedom of speech and privacy.

The government has declared it will not let internet users opt out of the proposed national internet filter.

Source.

On the corporate side, this is encouraging. Yahoo and Google's past cooperation with China's censorship efforts was analogous to a farmer being paid to spread agricultural pests and believing the deal was profitable for him. It's good to see that they've pulled their heads out of their asses and realized that taking a stand on the principles that make their livihoods possible is, *gasp!* , good for business too!

Australia... I just don't know what's wrong with them. Haven't they learned curtailing freedom is not the answer?

Thoughts on the Financial Crisis, From a Democrat

And by far the best article I've read this campaign season.

I'm just glad that someone in the business has the courage to speak up when something is going horribly, horribly wrong.

H/T: Neptunus Lex

Palin/Biden Debate and Public Expectations

CNN's Navarette had this to say about the debate:

As the debate wrapped up, I was pulling into a parking lot for an evening speech to a local Democratic club. The person who greeted me shook his head and suggested that Palin had faked-out her critics by weaving a caricature of an airhead. Then, underestimated, the lipstick-wearing pit bull mauled poor Joe Biden.

Could be. The conversation brought to mind the classic film, "The Hustler." The late Paul Newman pretends to be dreadful at pool, and then, with his mark on the hook, clears the table.

Don't look now, Democrats. But you've been hustled.

We've also seen a trend of early polls from both left-leaning CNN and right-leaning FNC (and I'm sure many others) showing that Palin exceeded expectations. But, what I disagree on is this "hustle" notion. Expectations weren't low because Palin hustled anyone. Expectations were low because there was a deliberate propaganda effort in the MSM which was successful, I'm sure, "beyond their wildest expectations." So successful that even voices on the right were bamboolzed.

The bottom line is that the picture of Palin that's been painted in the MSM has been very, very different from the real Palin we see on live, unscripted, unedited TV. If that isn't proof positive that we're not being given the news straight, I don't know what is. The fact of the matter is that the MSM has collectively engaged in a deliberate effort to destroy her in any way they can. Early efforts were not very well thought out--they got too personal and it backfired, fueling her popularity. But, once the MSM caught their breath and thought things through, they shifted to a strategy of re-defining her identity. She would no longer be the immensely popular maverick governor with accomplishments in ethics reform and energy infrastructure. She would be the radically right wing, dangerously ignorant no-nothing. And to accomplish that, lies were circulated about book banning, CNN lied about the authority of commanders-in-chief of the National Guard, and the press pulled a bait-and-switch gag to try to fool people into thinking she forced rape victims to pay for evidentiary medical exams. As if that wasn't bad enough, they deliberately edited the interview with Charlie Gibson to protray her as unknowledgable and ultra-right wing. And over the last week, instead of seeing the entire Couric interview, we're being fed spittets of Palin being caught in gotcha moments (which I might add, were bad questions to begin with... "tell us what McCain has done to regulate Fannie May besides the bill he sponsored to regulate Fannie Mae? How the hell can you ask a question and demand that the response not include the answer!?!?!). How do you suppose they decide which clips are newsworthy and which are not, hmmm? And then the comedians took over to take the message to the masses of people that don't watch the news on a regular basis.

The scary part is that it worked. Not against committed Dem's, we know where they stand and that's fine. But it's scary that the middle bought it too, because by now they should know that they can't get their news from the network news, CNN, or MSNBC and expect to get the whole picture. (Nor should they believe they could get both sides all the time from FNC, but in this instance, they would have.) And it's scary because they started to change conservative minds as well. For the people that weren't too worried about the power of the slanted MSM in the age of FNC and the internet--myself included--we have been proven horribly, horribly wrong.

They've succeeded in convincing America that someone isn't who she really is by manipulating the information we have. Perception has become unhinged from reality to serve a political end.

I suppose next thing we'll be convinced of is that "we are at war with Eurasia. We have always been at war with Eurasia."

More Media Lies

The US is arming Israel to strike Iran's nuclear facilities, if you believe the AP headlines.

Fact check: The 250 lb Small-Diameter Bomb (GBU-39) is not a bunker buster. It's a little shit bomb designed to be used in areas where the larger bombs we currently carry cause too much collateral damage. Its penetration ability is the same as other conventional bombs.

The truth is, Isreal asked for bunker-busters a few days earlier and was turned down. So the US sold Israel a weapon they can use to reduce civilian casualties in airstrikes in Lebanon, but refused to sell them weapons that they could use to start a war with Iran. But apparently that's not the reality that the MSM wants the people to know, so they're spinning the sale of the GBU-39 as something it's not.

I said it before, I'll say it again. Journalism is dead.

See also: Sexing up the headlines

Images: The SDB "bunker buster" vs. the GBU-28 bunker buster on F-15E Strike Eagles. Which do you think can take out a reactor in an underground bunker?

Linked: ABC edited out key parts of Palin interview

Link

This needs to be disseminated far and wide.

Hat tip: Neptunus Lex

Krauthammer Unwittingly Hands My Ass to Me

In yesterday's post, I invoked the "Bush Doctrine." Interestingly enough, about the same time, ABC's Palin interview also invoked a "Bush Doctrine," but it was a very different thing he was talking about.

To me, the Doctrine was our policy of treating regimes that harbor terrorists as hostile--the justification for the war in Afghanistan. To ABC's Gibson, the Doctrine was preemptive war--which he incorrectly attributes to being the justification for the war in Iraq and perhaps other future wars as well. (I say incorrectly because Iraq was sold as a preventative war, not a preemptive war. This "Bush Doctrine" was a new and controversial concept borne out of the risks of rogue states or terrorists acquiring WMD. Anticipatory self-defense/preemption applies to strikes against military forces which are poised to or are mobilizing to strike. It is not new and is widely accepted.)

But as Krauthammer points out, we're both wrong:

There is no single meaning of the Bush Doctrine. In fact, there have been four distinct meanings, each one succeeding another over the eight years of this administration -- and the one Charlie Gibson cited is not the one in common usage today. It is utterly different.

The first was American unilateralism with respect to the ABM treaty and Kyoto; Krauthammer himself coined the term "Bush Doctrine" to refer to the administration's unilateral approach.

The second was the one I used.

The third was the one Gibson used.

And the fourth--and current--use of the Bush Doctrine is nothing other than conventional tried-and-true liberalism:

...the fourth and current definition of the Bush doctrine, the most sweeping formulation of the Bush approach to foreign policy and the one that most clearly and distinctively defines the Bush years: the idea that the fundamental mission of American foreign policy is to spread democracy throughout the world. It was most dramatically enunciated in Bush's second inaugural address: "The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world."

Applying that doctrine to the Pakistan issue, it would seem that the moral imperative of going after AQ/the Taliban wherever they are is much diminished in the face of the overriding priority of spreading freedom into "the Gap."

So, I was wrong. You don't suppose Gibson will admit that he was wrong too, do you?

As the Dust Begins to Settle

The Palin media frenzy has probably run 80% of its course, with the vicious attacks only garnering the interest of political junkies like myself. The rest of the country is probably ready to move on, is waiting for real facts, or just doesn't care. So much the better. That, of course, isn't stopping Salon and CBC, just to name a few outlets, that continue with attacks leveled at her and her family.

But, as cooler heads are slowly beginning to prevail, at least one person is actually out there with some thought-provoking analysis, and is doing so while speaking to a left-leaning audience. It's a bit lengthy, but worth reading every page. Here's a few snippets:

Conservative though she may be, I felt that Palin represented an explosion of a brand new style of muscular American feminism. At her startling debut on that day, she was combining male and female qualities in ways that I have never seen before. And she was somehow able to seem simultaneously reassuringly traditional and gung-ho futurist. In terms of redefining the persona for female authority and leadership, Palin has made the biggest step forward in feminism since Madonna channeled the dominatrix persona of high-glam Marlene Dietrich and rammed pro-sex, pro-beauty feminism down the throats of the prissy, victim-mongering, philistine feminist establishment.

As a dissident feminist, I have been arguing since my arrival on the scene nearly 20 years ago that young American women aspiring to political power should be studying military history rather than taking women's studies courses, with their rote agenda of never-ending grievances.

The gun-toting Sarah Palin is like Annie Oakley, a brash ambassador from America's pioneer past. She immediately reminded me of the frontier women of the Western states, which first granted women the right to vote after the Civil War -- long before the federal amendment guaranteeing universal woman suffrage was passed in 1919. Frontier women faced the same harsh challenges and had to tackle the same chores as men did -- which is why men could regard them as equals, unlike the genteel, corseted ladies of the Eastern seaboard, which fought granting women the vote right to the bitter end.

Let's take the issue of abortion rights, of which I am a firm supporter. As an atheist and libertarian, I believe that government must stay completely out of the sphere of personal choice. Every individual has an absolute right to control his or her body. (Hence I favor the legalization of drugs, though I do not take them.) Nevertheless, I have criticized the way that abortion became the obsessive idée fixe of the post-1960s women's movement -- leading to feminists' McCarthyite tactics in pitting Anita Hill with her flimsy charges against conservative Clarence Thomas (admittedly not the most qualified candidate possible) during his nomination hearings for the Supreme Court. Similarly, Bill Clinton's support for abortion rights gave him a free pass among leading feminists for his serial exploitation of women -- an abusive pattern that would scream misogyny to any neutral observer.
But the pro-life position, whether or not it is based on religious orthodoxy, is more ethically highly evolved than my own tenet of unconstrained access to abortion on demand.

McCain's Citizenship and Eligibility

According to Drudge, the NYT is about to release an article questioning John McCain's eligibility to be President because he was born outside the United States (he was born in a military base in the Canal Zone).

It had me worried for a moment, but I tracked this down. Article II, Section 1(5) provides that only a "natural born citizen" is eligible to be president. The Constitution does not define the term "natural born citizen." Amendment XIV, of course, provides that persons born in the United States are citizens of the United States, we can use common sense to inform us that such persons fall within the definition of "natural born citizen." McCain was not born in the United States so he is not a born 14th Amendment citizen. He is, however, a born statutory citizen:

The following shall be nationals and citizens of the United States at birth: ... (e) a person born in an outlying possession of the United States of parents one of whom is a citizen of the United States who has been physically present in the United States or one of its outlying possessions for a continuous period of one year at any time prior to the birth of such person

8 USC 1401.

Citizenship was automatic at birth in his case; to me that counts as "natural born."

Closer than I'll ever need to get

The most shocking thing about this besides how insane these guys are is how small the funnel appeared to be on the ground. I thought even these "ropes" were pretty big on the ground, but then again, this is the first video I've seen that was actually close enough to provide an accurate sense of scale.

PS: For anyone who wants to do this, please approach from the side or behind, not from the front. These guys were fucking DUMB.

Heroes

One of the most aggravating things about colossal crimes is that the person least deserving of recognition is just about the only person who gets any. The Joel Myricks of the world deserve more credit than the Dylan Klebolds. Let's reverse the trend.

Liviu Librescu, a Holocaust survivor, was a professor of engineering at VT. When the shooting started outside his classroom, Professor Librescu barricaded the door, preventing the shooter from entering the classroom as his students escaped out the windows. The perp fired through the door, fatally wounding Librescu. Let him be remembered.