Heading out now... roofdeck plus fireworks equals crazy delicious. I hope everyone drinks responsibly or, if that's impractical, then irresponsibly.

But whatever you do, drink. It's for the economy.

Posted by: Ace at 02:01 PM | Comments (59)
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I spoke to my friend Steve_in_HB yesterday. He's not a Republican; he's a sort of extreme libertarian with some Republican leanings. But not enough to be a Republican. He's pretty down on organized religion and the religious right agenda, for example.

When I've tried to argue politics with him, he's generally argued against me 50% of the time. Sometimes a little more. Sometimes a little less.

The point he made is that he is the Democrats' target for recruitment. Born in a Blue State, raised in a Blue State, living in a very Blue State. And yet, when he got involved in arguing with some of the liberal posters here, and checking out Fire Dog Lake blog, he was completely turned off.

He's open to the Democratic message -- whatever the hell that might be -- but they just don't seem particularly willing to engage him with anything other than insults and unhinged Get-Bush-At-All-Costs-isms.

Anyway, he wrote something to this effect on the blog today:

I'll tell you some of what I've seen. A string of people coming here not to discuss issues, but rather to hurl canned insults.

Typically the first sentence contains "fascist". There is also a generally sneering use of mock hick phrasing. Some type of allusion to gun racks and trucks. Also, some variation on the Chimpy McHitler when referring to Bush.

Frankly, there is no reason to take these people seriously. They start out with the assumption that Republicans or Conservatives are evil and stupid, not that their fellow citizens are good people who have different political beliefs. How can you have serious discussions with this type of person?

As for "unpatriotic" -

Having reservations about surveillance activities, counter-terrorism tactics, etc is not unpatriotic. However, many of the "liberal" commenters don't really want to talk about trade-offs between privacy vs security, regime change vs realpolitik, etc. They instead take glee in US setbacks, misteps, etc because it helps their political side. That is unpatriotic.

I'm not even a Republican and disagree with a lot of their positions. In other words, I'm the Dems/Libs target audience. But all I see from them is blind anger, petty politicing, sneering elitism, and, at times, a lack of patriotism.

This isn't just the Internet, either. Sure, it's worse on the Internet, and there are a lot more dummies in cyberspace than working at the DNC, but it's just all part of the Big Democratic Message, which seems, to many, to consist of little more than "Impeach Bush, Give Us Back Power, We'll Make Things Better, Though We Have No Idea How, Or Else We're Too Afraid To Share That Information With You For Fear You Won't Like Our Actual Ideas."

The Republicans got their noses bloodied in 1998 when, as many people believed, they seemed to have de-emphasized advancing actual policy debates in favor of pursuing their bete noir, Bill Clinton, with an Ahab-like intensity. Hey, I was part of that madness myself, so I can't point fingers. I do know, though, that whatever the complaints were against Bill Clinton, Republicans failed to convince a majority of the country that we had anything to offer that was better as a substantive matter.

There's little point in giving advice to your opponents -- you don't want to give them useful advice, and besides, they won't listen anyway -- but really, hatred and spite are just not selling, guys. Even at the steep discounts you're offering based on volume, volume, volume.

You don't like Chimpmaster McHalliburton, Fascist Emperor of Hegemonic Terrorism. We get that. You also despise conservatives, anyone more religious than, say, Michael Newdow, and anyone who's ever taken a shot at a deer.

You say you have trouble "getting your message out;" trust me, that part of the message has come through loud and clear. Message received, roger wilco.

Now-- can we skip down a bit to the bullet-points lower on the list?

Posted by: Ace at 01:09 PM | Comments (311)
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Up to $3150 for a Prius? That sounds less like a subsidy and more like a half-a-free-car handout.

But... maybe not a bad idea in principle. I always get whacked by the free-marketers when I suggest that, given that oil dependency is a strategic peril, perhaps a bit of government interference in the free market isn't a bad idea.

Unlike the fantasy solutions of solar power and wind-farms, this does seem to be a viable technology, improving in efficiency and falling in price every day, and perhaps a bit of a government-sponsored kick-start to the tech would make it better and cheaper, faster.

Still: $3150 in tax credits? What the hell?

From Insty, who has some stuff on terrorists' increasing PR problems, as well as a candidate for dumbest story of the year.

The AP, it seems, wrote a story on the NSA-cookies-scandal (I'm pretty darn sure that's an impeachable offense, by the way), and says that a website putting cookies on your computer isn't "technically illegal."

No? Not "technically" illegal? Is there another sense of "illegal," not codified and technical in nature, which I'm not aware of, thereby requiring this modifier?

Or was AP, even while grudgingly conceding it's legal ("technically" legal, one presumes), trying to insinuate that in some "non-technical" sense it actually is illegal?

The AP, I think, is not technically guilty of criminal stupidity and agenda-liberalism with malice aforethought. But who knows. There've been a lot of changes in the law.

Posted by: Ace at 12:50 PM | Comments (16)
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Q & O pauses to take a breath before writing (not my own personal style, but whatever works for ya), and decides that Parker isn't as off-base as some (like me) alleged.

In particular, he notes that a lot of her criticisms -- of juvenile name-calling, narcisstic seeking of attention, sloppy analysis and fact-checking, etc. -- are in fact true of many blogs, and most blogs on occasion, like, for example, the one you're reading right now. Or many of the left-wing blogs (an update to his post notes Atrios as a culprit, though I'm not sure how "Open Thread" can be subject to any sort of substantive criticism).

I think Q & O makes some good points, and perhaps there is more room for self-criticism on my part.

But I do think one point stands: For an article about the shrillness, incivility, and nastiness of blogs, Kathleen Parker -- MSM Member in Good Standing, and Don't You Forget It -- sure seemed to turn out some shrill, incivil, and nasty copy.

Which is one of my pet peeves regarding MSM criticism of blogs: They tend to accuse of sins they excuse in themselves. Partisanship? Reinforcement of the "bubble" of like-minded thought? Snarkiness? Shrillness? Attention-seeking? Attacking people for personal gain? Lapeses in accuracy, accountablity, and objectivity? Yep, Pardner, the MSM exhibits all these in spades.

I can't really blame any of my personal flaws on my parents, but, in this particular case, I'll just say to the MSM: Don't like what your children have become? Well, Mom and Dad, we learned it all from you.

Posted by: Ace at 12:20 PM | Comments (7)
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A lefty cartoonist poses a question. It's answered.

Posted by: Ace at 11:32 AM | Comments (12)
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From the director of the Holocaust Museum argues:

Director Steven Spielberg claims that he's not telling us what to think. In talking about his provocative new film, "Munich," Spielberg says that, as an artist, he's offering questions, not answers. And he insists that, as a Jew exposed to the Talmudic tradition, he wants to provoke discussion, not provide conclusions.

I don't think Spielberg is being disingenuous in talking about "Munich," which re-creates the massacre by Palestinian terrorists of 11 Israeli athletes during the 1972 Olympics and Israel's decision to respond with targeted assassinations of the perpetrators. But it's clear from watching the film, and reading his many comments about his goals in making it, that what he says, alas, simply isn't true. On both of the film's central themes -- terrorism and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict -- Spielberg and "Munich" offer plenty of answers and conclusions.

First, the terrorism issue. Spielberg told a Los Angeles Times interviewer that answering aggression with aggression "creates a vicious cycle of violence with no real end in sight." He said much the same thing to Time magazine -- "a response to a response doesn't really solve anything. It just creates a perpetual-motion machine."

And his film frames for the viewer exactly this bleak vision of unending and unendable violence. Palestinian terrorists murder Israeli athletes to put their cause before the world. Israeli counterterrorists assassinate Palestinian terrorists involved with those murders. Palestinian terrorists carry out more murders of innocents, presumably because of the assassinations. At the end of the film, the camera lingers on the pre-9/11 Manhattan skyline, dominated by the twin towers of the World Trade Center. The film is crafted to demonstrate that violence breeds violence in the long run as well as in the short run.

Spielberg told critic Roger Ebert that his movie says, "I don't have an answer." But he, and the movie, do have an answer, and a ringing one: Striking back with force is not the solution.

Posted by: Ace at 11:15 AM | Comments (12)
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I'm going to soon have a "Comment" feature for those headlines in the sidebar, so people can comment on a particular story that's not on the front page, if they like.

Until then, there's this.

Posted by: Ace at 10:53 AM | Comments (17)
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I'm beginning to doubt their committment to Sparkle Motion The Religion of Peace (TM):

A bomb packed with nails exploded in a crowded Christian market selling pork ahead of New Year celebrations in eastern Indonesia on Saturday, killing at least seven people and wounding 53, police said.

The early morning blast in Palu, capital of volatile Central Sulawesi province, came after warnings of militant violence during the Christmas and New Year season in Indonesia. But it appeared to be linked to regional tensions, not international Islamic militancy.

Oh, well, that's a relief. It's just a local embrace of the Murder Cult, not an international one.

Indonesia is predominantly Muslim but its east has large pockets of Christians, to whom pork is not forbidden.

...

"This was probably extremists because they targeted a part of a market that was selling pork, which would seem to indicate sectarian violence between the religions. Or an attempt at least to spark sectarian violence," he said.

Great. Now they're killing over entrees.

Posted by: Ace at 10:52 AM | Comments (6)
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NY AG, and likely gubernatorial candidate, Elliot Spitzer is alleged to have "chilled the right to dissent" of an opinion-writer in the WSJ:

a furious Spitzer tracked [the critic] down in Texas last spring after he authored an earlier piece in defense of former American International Group CEO Maurice "Hank" Greenberg, who was being investigated by Spitzer for corporate fraud. '

Citing notes he said he took during the telephone conversation, Whitehead quoted Spitzer as saying, "Mr. Whitehead, it's now a war between us and you've fired the first shot . . . I will be coming after you. You will pay the price."

...

Spitzer has denied Whitehead’s claims. However, on Friday, the Post reported, Spitzer admitted to having a “a passionate conversation” with Whitehead.

NY GOPers are calling for a probe. Some are calling for impeachment, but really, do we have to play their reindeer games?

Posted by: Ace at 10:39 AM | Comments (2)
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Because the warrantless stage of intercepting messages is broad-based and most likely completely computerized:

Programmed into this computerized scan are likely to be automatic prompts that are triggered by messages containing certain keywords, go to certain addresses, occur in certain patterns or after specific events. Supposedly those messages that trigger these prompts are targeted for further scrutiny.

In the context of the post-9/11 threat, which includes sleeper cells and sleeper operatives in the United States, no other form of surveillance is likely to be feasible and effective. But this kind of surveillance may not fit into the forms for court orders because their function is to identify targets, not to conduct surveillance of targets already identified. Even retroactive authorization may be too cumbersome and in any event would not reach the initial broad scan that narrows the universe for further scrutiny.

Moreover, it is likely that at the first, broadest stages of the scan no human being is involved -- only computers. Finally, it is also possible that the disclosure of any details about the search and scan strategies and the algorithms used to sift through them would immediately allow countermeasures by our enemies to evade or defeat them.

If such impersonal surveillance on the orders of the president for genuine national security purposes without court or other explicit authorization does violate some constitutional norm, then we are faced with a genuine dilemma and not an occasion for finger-pointing and political posturing.

Warrants may be sought after the broad computerized scan has intercepted millions of messages and flagged a certain tiny number as possibly related to foreign intelligence, but obviously not previous to this step.

More: From the Washington Post:

Who are our masters of surveillance today? Most are located at the National Security Agency, the giant "Crypto City" complex located off Interstate 95 between Washington and Baltimore. The agency vacuums up 650 million intercepts a day -- called signals intelligence, or sigint -- from satellites, ground stations, aircraft, ships and submarines around the world. And it hunts for patterns that might lend seemingly ordinary words significance in the war on terrorism.

650 million a day. That would be an awful lot of warrant-applications flowing into FISA, wouldn't it?

Posted by: Ace at 10:26 AM | Comments (13)
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