Carnival of the Elitist Bastards XIII: Ports o' Call

This is your Admiral speaking. Most of you already know why I be helming the ship with Commander Cujo359 providing invaluable assistance, but in case ye were too far in yer cups to remember, this should explain what happened to Captain George. It looked like he would be with us at all, but he rallied enough for us to smuggle him aboard, and now we be on a nice, leisurely sail while he recuperates in a deck chair. Sea voyage be good for yer health, no?

While we waited for Captain George to recover, a thought struck us:

That idea be under consideration, but it looks likely to fail, due to the overpriced drinks part. The crew be a bit nervous about their rum ration due to the incident last voyage. Happily, we be in no danger of running out this time. Y'see, the Southern Fried Scientist knows how to brew beer in a coffee maker:

You’re six days into a 2 month expedition, and if you were lucky enough to not be on a dry ship, it’s de facto dry by now anyway. You’re eying the ethanol stores, the crew is eying each other, and all hell will break loose if y’all don’t get some sweet water soon. This is no time for artistry.

This is not, as a rule, a terribly good beer (though, with a good brewmaster on board, it can be). This is a beer to pass the time. I can guarantee that if you are careful, it will be at least as good as the cheapest commercial alternative.

That be good enough for us. And we look to be needin' his expertise if consumption remains at its present levels. Just because we be Elitist Bastards doesn't mean moderation is a word in our extensive vocabularies. Now ye see why SFS be the most popular man on the boat, eh?

Well lubricated, we sail upon sunlit seas until we reach our first port o' call. Our Elitist Bastardry be sorely needed in Port St. Brendan, where religious sillyness be thick as the barnicles on a wrecked hull. And o' course the first soul we encounter be an unwashed landlubber who tries to sell us life eternal. Efrique dispatches him with a quickness:

I can happily have ice-cream without whining that I can't enjoy it because nobody promised I would get infinite cake after I finish.

Although if somebody should promise infinite rum, we'd happily accept.

Speaking o' rum, it be time to hit the taverns. And, o' course, there be talk o' sports, which reminds Last Hussar of interfaith violence and the worst definition of a mixed marriage he ever did hear:

Those who know Scottish football know that [Glasgow] Rangers is a Protestant club, and [Glasgow] Celtic is a Catholic club, and this is part of their fierce rivalry. I’ll let you absorb that. The SPORTS club you follow depends on which particular interpretation you put on the SAME MYTHS.

Now consider the story of Kevin McDaid, the man in Northern Ireland apparently beaten to death in a sectarian attack by Rangers supporters after the team won the League over Celtic.

He was beaten to death, murdered in a brutal way, because his religeon was identified with the opposing club.

We drink a few rounds for Kevin McDaid. Then we drink a few for his wife. Then we drink to an eventual end to religious violence. Then we drink another few rounds for Kevin McDaid. We don't quite remember what we drank to after that...

Returning to the ship takes a bit longer than usual.

Down by the pier, Stanley Fish be at it again, claiming that scientific claims be no better grounded than faith, since all knowledge claims must start with some sort o' exception. The poor bugger should know better than to say such things within Russell Blackford's hearing:

Assume any proposition you like, "Q", which might, for example, mean "Stanley Fish is the Great Beast of Revelation". Let's assume "P & ~P" and try to derive this directly by using some logical moves that are pretty standard. 1. P & ~P (assumed) 2. P (from 1. by & Elimination) 3. P v Q (from 2. by v Introduction) 4. ~P (from 1. by & Elimination) 5. Q (from 3. and 4. by Disjunctive Syllogism) If your pet logical system doesn't have Disjunctive Syllogism as a fundamental rule, this might take a bit longer, but no plausible system of first-order logic fails to provide for Disjunctive Syllogism somehow. So you get the idea. I've just demonstrated that if any contradiction is true then Stanley Fish is the Great Beast of Revelation. As I said, that might not worry someone who is not worried about accepting a contradiction in the first place. Still ...such a person must also either abandon some very basic rules of reasoning and accept that (as well as being the Great Beast of Revelation) Stanley Fish is the very same Great Fish that swallowed Jonah, not to mention that fact that he is one of the evil spirits cast into the Gadarene swine. And he's also the bottle of cough mixture that I've just been sipping from to try to loosen up some congestion in my lungs.

That certainly explains the nasty taste.

We go island hopping on our way to our next port. This little archipelago contains a lot of religion mixed with truly awful "scientific" thought. Why, on one island, we run into a reporter who's so mixed up it takes John Pieret at least an hour to try to sort her out:

Melanie Phillips won't let consistency stop her. Having made a fool of herself already, she proceeds to show that she can't keep an idea in her head all the way from the beginning to the end of her piece. Consider these statements she makes:

ID is not in itself a scientific discovery. It is rather an inference from scientific discoveries. Looking at the complexity of the created world, it says the evidence points inescapably to a guiding intelligence as the cause of that complexity.

Since ID holds that some vague kind of intelligent force must have been behind the creation of the universe, there's surely very little difference (and considerable overlap) between ID proponents and the vast majority of mainstream religious believers ...

ID is a metaphysical idea that comes out of but stands separate from science, in that science leads here to an idea with which by definition it must abruptly part company.

But, still, she cites with approval Steve Fuller's argument "that the way ID's practitioners approach the debate means they are actually engaged in a scientific enterprise." How, exactly does one part company with science but still be engaged in a scientific enterprise?

In the end, we have to give it up as a bad job. 'Tisn't much you can do when the thinking be this confused.

Zarathustra knows that frustration well, from bitter experience:

So at a party yesterday, I had one of those conversations with another guy in his mid-twenties who goes to the kind of parties I go to. Let me say first that this guy (let's call him "Ted") is a good man, and I don't want anyone reading this to think I am trying to humiliate or denigrate him. I am writing on this subject for the purpose of illustrating a certain frustration, the kind that sometimes ALMOST (but doesn't) make me want to throw in the towel and just say, "Frak it, there's no point in trying to get people to think critically."

Aye, it be like that at times, but we retain our towels and head for our next port o' call anyway. Sciencetown's always got some confused folk wandering about, and it's our duty to help them overcome that confusion. Barbara A. Drescher's printed herself some tracts to that end:

About a month ago, I posted an entry describing the Critical Thinking Education Group (CTEG). This group of educators and others is in the process of building and maintaining a library of resources for all levels and types of critical thinking education. I wrote a quick-reference page (well, a few pages) for this library called Common Misteachings. The following is an expanded version.

Scientific Misteachings SOME COMMON MISUNDERSTANDINGS OF SCIENTIFIC CONCEPTS FOUND IN TEXTBOOKS AND LECTURE NOTES FOR RESEARCH METHODS COURSES

Well, if the godbotherers can hand out pamphlets, why not us? We hand them out left and right as we go along.

While we're in port, we swing by the local bookstore. The rum makes me muse on the suffering I endured at the last one:

Going to the bookstore is becoming a painful experience. I have unreasonable expectations. When I browse the science section, I expect to find science. Barnes and Noble, however, insists on including pseudoscience. Gah. After seeing Denyse O'Leary's atrocity shelved with the biology books, I almost fled. Here's a condensed version of the experience: Crap. Crap. Eh. Whothefuckisthis? Crap. Read it. Read it. Do people really read this shit? Crap. Why are there so many books on God over here? Crap. Read it. Enough with God already! Crap. Where the fuck are they hiding the science?

Luckily, we're in Sciencetown, where they don't hide the science. It's a damned good thing our ship has deep holds.

On our way back to the ship, staggering under the weight of many science tomes, Cujo359 muses about the recent repair mission to the Hubble Space Telescope:

In a way, this mission marks the ends of two eras. One is the era of the space shuttle, which will be phased out in a couple of years. The other is the age of the Hubble Space Telescope. Without continued visits from a vehicle like the shuttle, the HST will eventually break down. The HST has given us both wonderful pictures of the universe we live in, and a far greater understanding of it. Many of us will miss it when it goes.

We surely will. Happily, though, we won't have to miss it too soon. News of the successful repair mission leads to some celebratory rounds. It's a good thing we've got a coffee maker aboard.

Once we've deposited our book booty and depleted the rum stores, we troop to a different district of Sciencetown to investigate one of Blake Stacey's finds:

Jen finds a story about a Swiss research group which made a little ecology of robots with neural-network brains and let their wiring be crafted by natural selection. The most entertaining line of the pop-science writeup:

At intervals, the robots were shut down and those that had the most charge left in their batteries were chosen as "successful", and their neural programming was combined to produce the next generation of the robots. These offspring are downloaded into the same mechanical bodies their parents inhabited, forming an closed-circuit Buddhist system which might be an extremely efficient method of maintaining a stable population, but will provide a serious headache for any robot philosophers who might turn up.

As it turns out, this is a year-old story which somehow started getting circulated again. The primary literature reference is Floreano et al. (2007) in the journal Current Biology. Well, where else would they publish? You know: robots, electricity, current. . . ah, I kill me somedays.

Har har har, argh.

All this talk o' altruistic robots leads Russell Blackford to propose a thought experiment:

Imagine that the T-1001 is a robotic fighting device with no need for a human being in the decision-making loop. Note that it does not possess any sentience, in the sense of consciousness or ability to suffer. It cannot reflect on or change the fundamental values that have been programmed into it. However, it is programmed to make independent decisions in the field; in that sense, it can operate autonomously, though it would not qualify as an entity with full moral autonomy in a sense that Kant, for example, might recognise. It has some limited ability to learn from experience and upgrade its programming.

[snip]

In short, the T-1001 is more effective than human soldiers when it comes to traditional combat responsibilities. It does more damage to legitimate military targets, but causes less innocent suffering/loss of life. Because of its superior pattern-recognition abilities, its immunity to psychological stress, and its perfect "understanding" of the terms of engagement required of it, the T-1001 is better than human in its conformity to the rules of war.

One day, however, despite all the precautions I've described, something goes wrong and a T-1001 massacres 100 innocent civilians in an isolated village within a Middle Eastern war zone. Who (or what) is responsible for the deaths? Do you need more information to decide?

Given the circumstances, was it morally acceptable to deploy the T-1001? Is it acceptable for organisations such as DARPA to develop such a device?

Argh, Russell. That be no kind o' question to be asking your shipmates after they've been at the grog. Ask us again when we be sober... well, relatively sober.

We sail from Sciencetown in a bit o' a fog. Barbara A. Drescher decides it be the perfect time to share a bit o' stupidity she noted down in her diary:

We had a little earthquake about 40 minutes ago (as I am writing this). I happened to have the TV on when it happened, tuned to a local news station (KCAL 9). A few minutes ago, they interviewed a caller who said…

I was sittin’ on top of the Sugar Shack - it’s one of the few two-story buildings here in Lennox, California. There’s not that many two-story buildings over here and, uh, this (unintelligible) was a little different than most. It almost seemed as if it came from the ground up.

We nearly laugh ourselves sober.

Next day, we reach our next port o' call: Historia. There we discover that George hasn't just been sunning himself idly on the decks. He's written a (mostly true) story about a futuristic history class and an event that might have changed the world:

“OK, first the weird story. Every History Spiderweb begins with a weird story.” There was a small clamor from the students, and a couple flat ‘oh, goodies”. He touched an option on his teacher’s reader; the projector highlighted a spot on the time-line. He tossed a ball of brightly colored yarn to a student, who got up and pinned the yarn to the highlighted spot and waited.

“On 30 December, 1912, the spoiled granddaughter of a rich Illinois politician was having a party at their home in Bloomington. Many of the children of the rich and well-connected were there. On the big estate there were games and groups and a good time was being had by all her friends. And her even more spoiled brother was at the party, hanging out with his buddies.”

“The young man’s name was Adlai Stevenson. Has anyone heard that name?”

“There’s Stevenson hall at ISU,” said one girl. “My dad works there.”

“That’s right; same guy,” said Mister History. Well on this morning young Adlai was 12 years old - three years younger than you are now. And he was clowning around with some of his friends and in those days, you could legally keep unlocked guns in a house with children.”

The class grew quieter at the mention of guns. Almost all of Mister History’s weird stories ended with somebody dying, sometimes a lot of sombodies. But still - 12 year olds at a party!

George's story ends with a difficult question that has us pondering as well we can with our pounding heads. It leads to a long discussion with the citizens of Historia, who've gathered round us at the dockside park to listen. One thing we all know about history is that it has much to teach us. Cujo359 points out that history isn't just people and events, but geology as well:

Europe benefited from a mild climate, nearness to the places where horses, oxen, and other animals were domesticated, and the places where agriculture began. It translated those advantages, combined with the advantage of being so open to the sea and isolated by some geographic features, that it almost had to explore the rest of the world.

Even so, Europe hasn't had everything its way. Mt. Vesuvius, for instance, helped end the western Roman Empire. The bubonic plague reached it several times, thanks to its contacts with Asia. One of those plagues helped end the eastern Roman Empire. But Europe was lucky. Isolated from the Muslim empire by the Bosporus, the Dardanelles, the Danube River, and the mountainous southeast of Europe and too distant from the empires of Asia, Europe survived long enough to develop the technology and the domesticated animals it would use to conquer much of the world.

It could be worse. Europe could have gone through the event that ended the Akkadian empire - a century-long drought.

This seems like a good lesson for Elitist Bastards to teach, doesn't it just? Learn your history and geology, or your geology might make you history.

After all this heady stuff, it's almost a disappointment to know our next port o' call is Politician Island. But Dick Cheney's there giving a speech, and Cousin Avi's all ready to deconstruct it:

Excerpts from the speech delivered by Dick Cheney on May, 21, 2009:

I had the advantage of being a vice president content with my responsibilities I had and going about my work with no higher ambition.
Today, I’m an even freer man. Your kind invitation brings me here as a private citizen, a career in politics behind me, no elections to win or lose, and no favor to seek.

What utter bullshit. This facile attempt to appear unbiased and finally able to speak the truth without fear of political repercussions could not be more wrong or more insulting.
Here is a man almost universally loathed by the American people, who outed Valerie Plame for political gain; who asserted his office was outside the executive branch and refused to keep records in accordance with the law; who directed the ginning up of twisted and unethical legal “opinions” to justify egregious violations of domestic and international law in order to build a false case for an illegal war; who (presuming some shred of sanity or decency remains in his wizened, evil skull) carries around the sneaking suspicion that, if this thing isn’t sewn up fast, enough crap may spill out that may yet find him facing prosecution for war crimes.
THIS man wants us to believe that now he is finally free to tell the truth – nothing at all hindering the manner in which he casts history and his culpability therein.
One presumes Cheney has been briefed by his crack team of legal experts on utterances against interest.

It's a long speech, full o' the worst kinds of stupidity, and so Avi has to make a long stop at the nearest pub before completing Dick's demolition. Needless to say, Dick's thoroughly demolished, and we return to the pub for further celebration in true Elitist Bastard style.

Woozle gets up on a table to make an announcement. He had an epiphany about political philosophy while watching an old Star Trek episode:

I had labeled the philosophy I was defending as "rational liberalism", to avoid confusion the wide range of "liberal" values, much or most of which I agree with but which can get pretty loopy in places (albeit generally less alarming or outright dangerous than many neocon beliefs), but after watching this episode I found the phrase "Star Trek liberalism" bouncing around my head...

...and then it occurred to me that what I am actually doing is saying something like this: Neocon/Republican philosophy is a radical departure from the values which seem the best to me and which I grew up with, many of which are demonstrated by the better Star Trek episodes. The moral values displayed in those episodes are the values I want to preserve, in the face of the "post-9/11 world" claims that we must clamp down on freedoms and lower our standards if we expect to survive the terrorists (and abortionists and gays and America-hating liberals).

In short: I am a Star Trek conservative.

Judging from the ensuing cheers, the vast majority of us will own the label of Star Trek conservative proudly ourselves.

Politician Island was our last port o' call. We board ship, fire up the coffee maker, and sail for home. As we watch the beer brew, we get to wondering who in the world discovered how to do such a thing, and that gets us talking about other discoveries: the spectrum, plate tectonics, penicillin, hundreds o' other things that have changed our lives. Those are precious moments:

I'll let geologist James Kennett describe that moment when a breakthrough is made:

Moments of intense discovery are very emotional for scientists. when scientists make discoveries that they think are really important - breakthroughs, if you like, eureka moments - there's an elation - there's an elation, an emotion. These are emotional moments.

So they are.



(Postdated for your viewing pleasure)

Vacation Report: Big Hole in the Ground

Well, my darlings, here they are at last: ye olde Grand Canyon photos. The big hole in the ground's pretty spectacular when you haven't seen it in person for over 15 years. This geologically-inclined native ran around like a kid in a candy store all day.

Alas, I'm no good at recognizing formations, so you'll have to suffer without the intimate details. I'm sure the vistas will alleviate some of the pain.

There are places where you can get right up to the rim, no fences between you and the scenery, and realize the scope of this thing:


If you have no fear of heights and a healthy respect for long ways down, you can nudge right up to the edge and look nearly a mile straight down:


The key is to a) be standing on solid rock, b) ensure that rock doesn't have any ominous fractures, and b) make sure there's a ledge a few feet below you just in case your calculations were wrong. As long as you don't lean too far forward, you can pick up some pretty spectacular shots in near-perfect safety.

Or you can go for the totally safe bet and just sit on the limestone mini-cliff at Mather Point:

When it's cloudy, the light changes quickly. The Canyon shows a different face with every passing cloud shadow:






There are temples all over the place: Vishnu, Isis, even Cheops Pyramid. If you ask me which one the temple at the left is, I'd just stare at you blankly. But it's easy to see why explorers felt moved to call them temples:


Especially when the light hits them:



Those patches of sun and shadow absolutely delight me - they give you quite the show with all the different rock types.

Down below, if you look reeeaaallllyyy closely, you can catch a glimpse of the Colorado River. It's got itself buried deep in that hole in the middle there:

I'm calling this formation the Bactrian Camel, because that's what it looks like to me:

Here's a good shot showing relative rocks. That white stuff in the foreground is Kaibab limestone. The red stuff on top of the next formation over is Coconino sandstone. And then you go down into the bones of the earth. Some of the rock at the very bottom of the canyon is billions of years old:

The whole character of the canyon changes with just a few steps, which is why I have nearly three hundred pictures snapped when we only saw a tiny fraction of the whole:

Mother Nature did some pretty intense carving work on this place. You can get a sense for how complicated it all is when you find these little nooks looking down into the main Canyon:

Whelp, I'm late for the train. Must dash:

All right, so that's not my train - we're actually having breakfast at the Railroad Cafe. But if you get a chance to come here, do try to take one of the train rides to the Canyon. But do what I'm doing: make sure you can afford the dome car.

Today, it's Sedona, Jerome and Prescott - I'll have a photo report for you later. Adios!

Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

I've been at the Grand Canyon all day, and I'm motherfucking exhausted. Apparently, however, stupid's well-rested and raring to go.

When the children cry, it's probably because of Jeff Sessions:

Yesterday, Sen. Pat Leahy (D-VT) held a hearing on the Uniting American Families Act, which would allow gay nationals to bring their foreign partners into the United States on the same basis as straight couples. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), the only Republican who bothered to show up, grew impatient during the testimony of Shirley Tan; she faces deportation back to the Philippines, though her partner of 23 years and her children are American citizens. The New Republic reports that Sessions mocked Tan’s child for crying:

[O]ne of Tan’s children started crying within seconds of the start of her testimony. … For most people, the sight of a 12-year-old boy in tears at the prospect of his mother being deported halfway around the world would invoke some sympathy. Unmoved, however, was Alabama Republican Jeff Sessions, ranking minority member of the Committee and the only Republican to bother to attend the hearing. At the sight of the weeping boy, according to a Senate staffer who was at the hearing, Sessions leaned towards one of his aides and sighed, “Enough with the histrionics.”

That's sure some compassionate conservatism, that is.

The children might also be crying because Cons don't want them getting to school safely:

In April, President Obama and his cabinet identified $100 billion in easy-to-make cuts to the federal budget. His detractors scoffed, calling the cuts a very small drop in a very large bucket.

So, the president encouraged congressional Republicans to give the administration a hand. Obama vowed to take the GOP seriously if lawmakers could identify reasonable budget cuts, targeting wasteful and unnecessary spending.

Republican leaders have apparently finished their homework project, but I don't think the White House is going to like the results.

Responding to a challenge from President Barack Obama, House GOP leaders are offering up a roster of more than $23 billion in spending cuts over the next five years.

The proposed cuts, which were to be sent to the White House on Thursday, bear little resemblance to the dramatic proposals Republicans unfurled when they took over Congress 14 years ago.

Rather than proposing, for example, the elimination of the Education Department, as they have in the past, Republicans are suggesting killing a program that pays for building sidewalks, bike paths and crossing guards as part of the Safe Routes to Schools program. That would save $183 million a year.

For all the talk about "wasteful government spending" from GOP leaders, I actually thought the Republicans might come up with some half-credible ideas. If they combed through the budget, looking for some common-sense cuts, I figured they were bound to find a few spending measures that would prove hard to defend.

But they want to go after the Safe Routes to Schools program? Really? They think we're spending too much on making sure children get to school without getting hit by cars?

I guess the problem is that the children are no longer fetuses, and thus undeserving of special protection in the Cons' worldview. I can't wait to see them attempt to defend this one to parents.

For added hilarity, go check out Steve's followup, in which numbers are inspected, and it's discovered that the $23 billion in spending cuts mysteriously became $375 billion in the telling. Like a fish story, it turns out that certain claims were exaggerated. The final number: $5 billion in spending cuts.

I think they're in "throw me that fish I'm buying so I can tell my wife I caught it" territory, here.

Other news of the idiots includes Ari Fleischer, who should really just shut up rather than constantly proving himself a lackwit:

Today, former Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer told CBS that he disapproved of President Obama’s speech in Cairo about the U.S. relationship with Muslim communities around the world. His problem with the speech? It was too “balanced”:

Fleischer bluntly told [CBS's Mark] Knoller, “bottom line — the speech was balanced and that was what was wrong with it. American policy should not be balanced. It should side with those who fight terror.” [...]

I didn't catch Obama praising any terrorists, did you? I believe there's something wrong with poor Ari's brain - he seems to believe Obama wants to side with those who don't (yet) fight terror just because he refuses to throw gasoline on fires. Statecraft is completely lost on this fucktard.

Speaking of balanced, this should get a giggle out of you:

Hearing conservative Republicans whine about the "liberal media" is more tiresome than anything else. The accusations are obviously false; the evidence to the contrary is overwhelming; and the charges themselves are a reminder that the GOP's rhetorical and/or policy agenda hasn't progressed at all in many years.

And yet, the right isn't just clinging to this discredited idea, it's apparently launching some kind of congressional caucus to talk about it some more.

The GOP has been getting a lot of bad press recently, but Republicans in Congress are convinced that it's not because of their obstruction or lack of ideas. Rather, they say, it's all the media's fault.

As reported by Newsmax, House Republicans are set to form a new caucus devoted to fighting "liberal media bias." The group will be led by Texas Rep. Lamar Smith, who calls media bias "the greatest threat to our democracy today."

That's obviously silly hyperbole, but Smith seems to mean it. Without realizing the irony, the Texas Republican appeared on Fox News this morning to argue, "The greatest threat to America is a liberal media bias." Fox News' Bill Hemmer, equally oblivious, seemed to agree with the argument.

That's our Faux News: Fair(ly Oblivious) and (Un)balanced. Just like the vast majority of America's minority party.

And that's all she wrote, folks. I'll get the Grand Canyon pics up tomorrow. In the meantime, a little something to tide you over:

Wish you were here.

Vacation Report: Home Sweet Home

And by home, I mean Flagstaff, o' course. Look, I love Washington state, I adore Seattle, but Flagstaff is where I grew up. It's my city. And I'm thrilled to be back here for a nice, long visit.

Today was mostly an intensive travel day to get here, so there's a lot of shots from the car. Here's the Colorado River, just over the Arizona border from Needles:


An awesome road cut near Kingman, where you can see the sedimentary layers piled up like a tiramisu:


The San Francisco Peaks filling our windshield on I40 just outside of Williams:


Ant lion's trap in the soil under a Ponderosa pine. Ants fall into that little cone-shaped hole, can't climb out because the dirt slides down the steep walls, and BAM - ant lion emerges from the bottom of the hole and the poor little ant is lunch:


One of the main telescopes at Lowell Observatory, where we saw the moon as I've never seen it before:



This is me getting an eyeful of moon mountains, craters and maria. Lemme tell ya, you can see it all you like in books, but there is nothing like putting your eye to a telescope and seeing it live:


Flagstaff city lights from Mars hill, taken from the observatory:


And a huge hunk of the meteor that blasted Meteor Crater:



It's good to be home.

Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

Oh, for fuck's sake, someone elect us a better set of Con Congressmen. Because the vast majority of the current set are outrageous fucking idiots.

Here we have Sen. Graham grandstanding with nothing to stand on:

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) gave a harsh assessment of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor Wednesday afternoon, criticizing her ideology, questioning her temperament and saying he had little intention of voting for her.

[snip]

“I think she does have the intellectual capacity to do the job,” Graham said. “But there's a character problem. There's a temperament problem that they — during the time they've had to be a judge, that they were more of an advocate than an impartial decider of the law. And I've got to find out, in my own mind” about her temperament.

With such lingering questions about Sotomayor's record, Graham said, hearings should be held in September after the August recess.

Well. At least he didn't call her stupid. Otherwise, he hit every Con talking point about her. Do these people have some sort of training camp where they learn to be such raging fucking idiots? First, this "temperament" thing's really got no traction in a country that thrives on Judge Judy reruns. Second, where the fuck does he get "advocate" from? If he'd bothered to look at her actual record rather than rumors about her record, he'd see that a little emotion doesn't interfere with Sotomayor's ability to impartially decide the law. What a fucking dumbshit.

Then we have a stiff double shot of dumbfuckery on the environmental side. Here are some of the Con party's finest on green jobs:

Yesterday, House Republicans took to the floor for an hour-long series of speeches dedicated to attacking Waxman-Markey clean energy economy legislation. But in addition to doing the usual — misrepresenting an MIT study to claim the legislation would result in a tax and flaunting their skepticism of global climate change — the members of Congress decided to fire a volley of smears at workers doing green jobs as well. ThinkProgress has compiled a video of some of the attacks:

REP. JOHN FLEMING (R-LA): What we really get is a pass-through of taxpayer dollars that go into what I would call artificial - or I call them paper mâché jobs, so-called green jobs.

REP. TODD AKIN (R-MO): The green jobs that are being talked about, we’re going to create all these green jobs. In Spain, they call them subprime jobs.

REP. G.T. THOMPSON (R-PA): This is all in the name of green, greening America, specifically solar and hydro. But I have to - in terms of the economy, the other green that comes to mind is gangrene.

And I wonder why the first word that comes to mind when I hear "Republican" is "fucktard."

A phrase comes to mind when I see Sen. Inhofe mentioned. It's "Fucktard to the tenth power:"

In a speech for the Heartland Institute yesterday, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) said that the Senate could just “stall” any EPA regulation:

INHOFE: Don’t be distressed when you see the House passes some kind of cap-and-trade bill. And you know it could be worse and she could still pass it, so it’ll pass there. The EPA has threatened to regulate this through the Clean Air Act. That isn’t going to work in my opinion because we can stall that until we get a new president – that shouldn’t be a problem.

Note to my nation: elect only Democrats not affiliated with the Blue Dogs until Inhofe is dead. Otherwise, our environment's likely to take a shotgun to the head.

Let us leave the halls of Congress before I can't take any more. Not like the view's better anywhere else. If we turn on the teevee, we're likely to be assaulted with this nonsense:

On Monday's edition of Glenn Beck's hopelessly bizarre Fox News program, the host discussed General Motors' bankruptcy, and the federal intervention to save the company, with the National Review's Jonah Goldberg. If you're already thinking, "Uh oh," you still might be surprised by their chat.

Beck began by explaining to viewers that "Liberal Fascism," Goldberg's book, is necessary to "understand" what has "destroyed our country." Beck added that Goldberg's book "began to open my eyes," and prompted the Fox News host to do "an awful lot of research."

The notion of Beck using "Liberal Fascism" as a springboard for genuine academic research is literally laughable, but let's move on.

Beck asked his guest if there are "any examples in history where this kind of stuff has happened -- what's happening today -- and what does it lead to?" He was vague about what "this kind of stuff" included, but presumably it dealt with the government rescue of GM. Goldberg responded with the comparison that Beck wanted to hear:

"Well, I mean, we saw -- I mean, it's funny. I mean, again, you know, I'm not calling Barack Obama a Hitler and I'm not calling him Nazis and all the rest. But, you know, in fascism, we saw the people's car. We call it the Volkswagen, where the state said what we're going to do is we're going to take over the auto industry -- government and business and unions are going to get together and we're going to create cars to fill a political need rather than a market need and give people these cars."

There's just no stupid too stupid for these assclowns, is there?

And then, like a rancid cherry on top, comes Mark Sanford:

Now the governor has taken action on two bills that show where his priorities really lie: He vetoed a bill reigning in predatory payday lending, and signed a bill allowing loaded guns on school grounds.

Reinforcing his ideological approach, Sanford claimed that regulating payday loans was incompatible with “limited government and maximized individual freedom.” State Sen. Joel Lourie (D) replied, “His vision for South Carolina is for ineffective, underfunded schools, for kids buying cheap cigarettes and for unprotected consumers.”

The gun law Sanford signed allows anyone with a concealed weapons permit to leave a gun in their car while parked at a school so that, according to the bill’s sponsor, teachers can more fully exercise their rights:

“I’m not trying to bring firearms inside the school,” said [Sen. Shane] Martin, R-Spartanburg. “You don’t need to carry it inside the school. But I’ve had teachers tell me they can’t exercise their (Second Amendment) rights traveling to and from school. They ought to be able to travel to school without having to leave their weapon.”

So while Sanford refuses to fix crumbling schools or prevent thousands of teacher layoffs or crack down on some of the most predatory lending practices around, he was willing to join a freshman senator’s “grand gesture” to the NRA. It must be more of that “reform” Sanford has trumpeted.

Stupid really never does take a vacation, does it?

Vacation Report: The Kitteh Stays Home While We Have an Adventure

We spent the morning at Monterey Aquarium while the cat played queen of her domain at the hotel. Eventually, if it turned out reasonably well, I'll have video of some actual otters for you. In the meantime, I've got fishies:


And a crab:


The little guy staring directly at the camera came rushing over and posed when he saw me photographing his buddy:


Sand dollars!


Look closely - there are seahorses in this photo:

These guys aren't quite as well-disguised:

The other otters were playing too hard for my camera to photograph without flash. But here's a sleeping one for you:



A posing penguin:


And, finally, the gratuitous photo of the ocean snapped from a moving car:



Plenty more to come.

Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

Day Two with internet access. But too tired to do much. Let's make it short and sweet, shall we?

Here's what Rep. Issa apparently thinks is a good argument against paid family leave:

Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), expressing her support for a bill that would grant four weeks of paid family leave for federal employees, recently made note of international standards on the issue. "163 countries have recognized the importance of providing paid leave to families," Maloney said. "163 countries cannot be wrong."

The point, of course, was to point out something of a global consensus on the issue. There are certain basic employee benefits that should be available, and as the argument goes, if 163 countries already offer paid family leave, maybe it's time for the United States to step up.

In response, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), easily one of Congress' most embarrassing members, produced a video attacking the proposal. Chris Harris notes one of the video's key arguments.

Immediately following Congresswoman Maloney's remarks, the video features text asking: "Could these guys be wrong on paid parental leave?" The video then features NORTH KOREA, IRAN, VENEZUELA, and CUBA, with each country's name accompanied by a photo of its respective dictator.

Is [Issa] serious? Is his best argument actually that four countries the U.S. doesn't like "recognize the importance" of newborn children having their parents at home to care for them? That we should refuse to help dedicated public servants because Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hugo Chavez do the same?

Apparently, yes, that's Issa's argument.

Pathetic.

Here we have two governors preferring home-grown ignorance to national standards:

Yesterday, Education Week reported that 46 states have agreed to join forces to create common academic standards in math and English language arts through an effort led by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers. A primary goal of the initiative is to “eliminate the patchwork of academic standards across the country that result in students in the same grades learning different things in different states.” In Mississippi, for instance, 90 percent of fourth-graders passed the state reading exam in 2007, according to U.S. Department of Education data. But only 51 percent had at least “basic” or “partial mastery” on the test known as the Nation’s Report Card.

Republican Governors Sarah Palin of Alaska and Mark Sanford of South Carolina - the same governors who postured to reject millions of education stimulus funds - are among the four governors refusing to join the initiative. In a press release Palin said:

Alaska’s decision not to participate until after we monitor this is based on our desire to spend our time and public resources to improve instruction in the classroom and to form productive relationships between schools and the communities they serve.

Also pathetic.

And, rounding out the pathetic, witness the right pathetically engaging in the tu quoque fallacy:

There was another horrible shooting yesterday, this time in Arkansas. And this time, the motive appears to have been a hatred of the American military for the Muslims who have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan:

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — A 23-year-old man upset about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan opened fire from his truck at two soldiers standing outside a military recruiting station here on Monday morning, killing one private and wounding another, the police said.

... In a lengthy interview with the police, Mr. Muhammad said he was angry about the killing of Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan, Chief Thomas said. Previously known as Carlos Bledsoe, Mr. Muhammad told investigators that he had converted to Islam as a teenager, Chief Thomas said.

Chief Thomas said investigators believe that Mr. Muhammad acted alone. He seemed to be familiar with the Army recruiting office because it was not far from his home, the chief said, but might have been on the prowl for anyone in uniform.

“I would say he was looking for any and all targets of opportunity that happened to be military,” the chief said in a telephone interview. “That may have well been the first place he found.”

This is, of course, a horrific case, and no one in their right minds would celebrate it.

Yet naturally, the right-wingers -- still feeling the sting from having been held culpable for their inspirational role in the assassination of Dr. George Tiller on Sunday -- have decided that this is all the fault of liberals. As usual, Michelle Malkin is leading that particular parade.

There's a significant difference, though, in this case and the Tiller murder: No one on the left is celebrating this or wishing that the recruiters had had a chance to make their peace with God before being shot. No one is trying to justify it by suggesting that the recruiters met a just fate.

And most of all, while there are smatterings of fringe leftists who hate the military and regularly demonize military recruiters, they exist entirely on the margins.

The Cons are more pathetic than the state of my body after three days on the road. For the record, that's some pretty serious pathetic.

Vacation Report: The Kitteh Has an Adventure

Posting will be light for several days yet, I'm afraid. Not much time for catching up on doings around the intertoobz when travel involves long stretches stuck in a car without internet access. But I can at least let you guys share the adventure to some extent.

We passed Mt. Shasta today. It made a brief appearance from behind its morning clouds:


Gorgeous, isn't it? That stretch of I5 is absolutely spectacular. Lots of fun with plate tectonics and mountain building, and plenty of curves where you can persuade your car to let you play with g-forces.

At the end, you can drop by the dam at Lake Shasta and get yourself a nice view:



We took the cat on a brief hike. I promised you amusing photos of a cat in harness, and amusing photos of a cat in harness you shall have:

As you can see, she made a beeline for the treeline. She planned to play hidey-cat as much as possible. Fortunately, the leash and harness foiled her schemes.

We finally managed to extract her from beneath the trees, and she briefly settled in to admire the view:



On the way back, she once again made a break for the trees, which in this case required a little mountain climbing:

If you wonder what she's looking down at, it's me. And yes, she's considering if she has enough altitude to leap down and rip my face off. She's not what you'd call an outdoor cat.

We're settled in to an apartment-turned-hotel at the moment, where she's taking over the place. If you're ever in Monterey, CA, the Deer Haven Inn & Suites is an excellent place to stay. Total home-away-from-home, including a full kitchen. And it's pretty cheap for what you get.

That's all I can stay awake for at the moment. Hopefully, we'll once again have internet access tomorrow night, and I can entertain you with further pictures of my cat despising the great outdoors.

Hasta, amigos!

Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

Sorry about the lack of a Happy Hour yesterday, my darlings. There were, shall we say, a few issues with internet connectivity. It left me adrift in a world without intertoobz, which came as a bit of a shock. You don't realize how dependent you are on technology until it's no longer available.

Good thing I had the Garmin, or I would've been completely helpless. What's this "phonebook," and how would I look up a restaurant in that?

Alas, still not much time for posting or catching up on all the shit I missed, but I caught inkling of a few major stories that broke while I was away. I see some right-wing fucktard shot an abortion doctor. And they wonder why we call them terrorists.

There's nothing I can say to his family to ease the pain of their loss. All I can do now is beat up on the stupid shites who still don't get it. Such as Sarah Palin:

Right-wingers have a problem admitting that there's such a thing as right-wing terrorism. We saw it recently with that prescient Homeland Security bulletin that they all claimed smeared them. And now we're seeing it again with the assassination of Dr. George Tiller.

Sarah Palin issued a statement today about the assassination of Dr. George Tiller in Kansas that was a classic Double Fail:

I feel sorrow for the Tiller family. I respect the sanctity of life and the tragedy that took place today in Kansas clearly violates respect for life. This murder also damages the positive message of life, for the unborn, and for those living. Ask yourself, 'What will those who have not yet decided personally where they stand on this issue take away from today's event in Kansas?'

Regardless of my strong objection to Dr. Tiller's abortion practices, violence is never an answer in advancing the pro-life message.

Palin, like most movement conservatives, is worried most of all about the possible effects this murder will have on the anti-abortion movement and her own politics.

More to the point, she refuses to acknowledge -- just as she did in the campaign last year, in the above interview with John McCain -- that abortion-clinic violence is in fact domestic terrorism.

If Palin starts marketing her own perfume, I do believe she should call it "Forever Clueless."

Meanwhile, Michelle Malkin gets sarcastic before throwing a pity party for the poor, poor right wing:

Late-term abortion doctor George Tiller was gunned down at his church in Kansas Sunday morning in a thoroughly evil, cold-blooded act of domestic terrorism. Yes, terrorism. Not “extremism.” Interesting how the t-word has been rediscovered.

Guess what, Michelle? It hasn't been rediscovered - it was right there in that DHS report you frothing fuckwits threw such fits over all along. I suppose you're referring to Obama's dropping of the phrase "Global War on Terror," which you frothing fuckwits also threw such fits over. So many fits - your poor little fists must be sore from pounding the floor.

But kudos, Michelle, for condemning the violence without Palin's little qualifiers. Maybe someday you'll be a real adult.

But Bill O will never be a real newsman:

At the top of his Talking Points segment, O’Reilly did briefly say, “Americans should condemn the murder of Dr. George Tiller,” but he then quickly segued into more attacks on Tiller. He also used the opportunity to attack his critics, saying they were trying to “exploit” the incident to attack Fox News. In particular, he singled out the writings of Helen Kennedy of the New York Daily News, Mary Mapes on the Huffington Post, Mike Hendricks of the Kansas City Star, Markos Moulitsas of DailyKos. O’Reilly blasted liberals who were “very very sympathetic” to Tiller and said one of the first things that he thought of when he heard the news of the killing was…himself:

When I heard about Tiller’s murder, I knew pro-abortion zealots and Fox News haters would attempt to blame us for the crime, and that’s exactly what has happened. [...]

No backpedaling here, madam [Mary Mapes]. Unlike you, I report honestly. Every single thing we said about Tiller was true, and my analysis was based on those facts. [...]

You'll love his definition of "analysis":

Besides repeatedly referring to the doctor as “Tiller the Baby Killer,” what are some of the factual statements O’Reilly has made about Tiller over the years?

– “If you want to kill a baby, you hire Tiller. You’ve got to pay him $5,000 up front, and he’ll kill the baby.”

– “No question Dr. Tiller has blood on his hands.”

– “Dr. George Tiller destroys fetuses for just about any reason, right up until the birth date.”

– “This man executes babies that are about to be born.”

– “This is the kind of stuff happened in Mao’s China, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Soviet Union.”

And the right wonders why we hold them accountable for whipping up the murderous fanatics in their midst. Gee, that's a hard one.

Turning to other stupid gits, let's check in with Bill "Bogus Ball" Kristol. Oh, look, what a shock! He's wanting to go blow up brown people again:

In light of North Korea's recent nuclear and missile tests, international leaders are pondering how best to proceed, weighing a series of unsatisfying options. On Fox News yesterday, Bill Kristol presented the same idea he always presents when faced with a national security challenge.

Kristol explained, "I don't rule out the possibility of us deciding -- and I think it might be wise for us to decide -- to knock out a few. They're apparently rolling a long-term missile to a base to test another one, long-range missile to test another one. You know, it might be worth doing some targeted air strikes to show the North Koreans, instead of always talking about, 'Gee, there could be consequences,' to show that they can't simply keep going down this path."

Brit Hume, on the same program, endorsed Kristol's proposal, but said he "can't imagine" the Obama administration actually launching a military strike on North Korea. (They follow Newt Gingrich, who began urging strikes in April, calling on the administration to use "lasers" to attack North Korea.)

Matt Yglesias noted, "Kristol doesn't even attempt to say what he thinks this will accomplish. He just kind of tosses it out there for no reason because arguing that the United States should start wars is what he does."

We really need to get him into therapy. With enough mental health treatment, he may realize you can do more than just automatically reach for the bombs when countries full of brown people do things you don't like.

And, finally, the Cons need to realize something: having the most senior members of your party saying, basically, they can't be bothered with condemning people of their party for calling a Latina federal judge a racist is a real turnoff:

On CNN’s State of the Union, however, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said that he has “better things to do” than to ask members of his party to refrain from accusing Sotomayor of being a racist. Host John King noted that McConnell is the “highest elected Republican in the United State of America” and asked, “would it be best that language like racist not be used?” McConnell demurred:

KING: Are Rush and Newt making it a lot harder by using language like that? [...]

MCCONNELL: They’re certainly entitled to their opinions. … Look, I’ve got a big job to dealing with 40 senate Republicans and trying to advance a nation’s agenda. I’ve got better things to do than to be the speech police over people who are going to have their views about a very important appointment.

With views like those, no wonder they're looking at numbers like these:

In February, RNC Chairman Michael Steele explained that his party would find "messengers" who can capture a "region" made up of "young, Hispanic, black, a cross section." He intended to apply conservative principles to "urban-surburban hip-hop settings." Steele added that his efforts "will be avant garde, technically."

Well, technically, the party is moving in the wrong direction. A new Gallup poll found, "More than 6 in 10 Republicans today are white conservatives, while most of the rest are whites with other ideological leanings; only 11% of Republicans are Hispanics, or are blacks or members of other races. By contrast, only 12% of Democrats are white conservatives, while about half are white moderates or liberals and a third are nonwhite."

I do hope they enjoy being the minority party (although not the party of minorities). Unless a miracle happens and they get intimately acquainted with a clue-by-four, it looks like they'll be there for quite some time.