Go to My Pet Jawa in the sidebar to see what real torture looks like. (Warning: Nasty stuff, NOT SAFE FOR WORK.)

Note: I had to delete the link and re-publish this post because, for reasons I can't fathom, my original post seems to have screwed up the site.

Thanks for The American Barbarian for figuring out which post was causing the problem.

Posted by: Ace at 11:44 AM | Comments (7)
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At some point, I trust, we will be serious about serious measures to increase airline security, and stop being serious about unserious measures. Alas, that time is not now:

If you happen to be reading this while standing in one of those disturbingly slow, zigzag lines at airport security -- looking repeatedly at your watch, wondering if this time you really will miss the plane -- here's something to make you feel worse: Almost none of the agony you are experiencing is making you safer, at least not to any statistically significant or economically rational degree. Certainly any logical analysis of the money that has been spent on the airport security system since Sept. 11, 2001, and the security that the system has created, must lead to that conclusion.

This is not to say that the uniformed screeners aren't more professional than they were in the past or that their presence doesn't create a degree of psychological comfort, both for government officials, who can claim to be doing something to keep us all safer, as well as for those passengers who continue to believe that engaging in ritualistic shoe-removal gives them mysterious, magical protection against terrorism. On the grand scale of things, though, that's all it is: magical protection.

In fact, outside inspectors have found, over and over again, that federal screeners perform no better than the private screeners they replaced.

...

Probably the most significant measure taken in the past four years was one funded not by the government but by the airline industry, which put bulletproof doors on its cockpits at the relatively low price of $300 million to $500 million over 10 years. In extremely blunt terms, that means that while it may still be possible to blow up a plane (and murder 150 people), it is now virtually impossible to drive a plane into an office building (and murder thousands). By even the crudest cost-benefit risk analysis, bulletproof cockpit doors, which nobody notices, have the potential to save far more lives, at a far lower cost per life, than the screeners who open your child's backpack and your grandmother's purse while you stand around in your socks waiting for them to finish.

In defense of the politicians responsible for this:

One of the key functions of a government is to engage in wasteful and idiotic expenditures because "the people" demand "action" on such or such, even if that "action" is almost wholly futile.

That's just. The fuckin'. Way. It is.

Columns like Applebaum's are similarly futile. She's right, but who cares?

We all know what we need:

1, Racial profiling

2, Armed pilots and (some) armed flight attendants, at least those who have shown proficiency in the most important aspect of gun handling -- retaining your gun from an attacker who wishes to take it away from you. And-- controversial, no doubt, but needed -- a special program allowing frequent air-travellers with no criminal history and proven gun-handling skills to carry while on board (so long as they arm with frangible amunition).

3, Norm Minetta's head on a silver platter.

We'll get none of these things, of course.

Posted by: Ace at 11:33 AM | Comments (11)
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From someone calling himself X-Lefty:

The liberal avenger's post just is another confirmation that my actions of voting Right (which means....sigh...republican) in the national elections.

I hope to return to the Left someday since I disagree with the Right on so many social issues (from stem cells to abortion to public displays of religion) it is not even funny and my peer group is mildly displeased (or think I'm mad) with me since they all votes left (or abstain as some can not bring themselves to vote for a Rep but are to disgusted with the current Left to vote for them).

But I actually do love America and it's ideals of Freedom enough to stand with it in this sad time.

I just have to be very quiet about it or else I am called a Nazi.

The Terrorists are the evil ones, those that kill and oppress, it is not the American Military, not Bush, not even Delay.

I really wish the left would get this through their collective (thickish) skull. Our enemies -- our common enemies -- are those who would kill us in order to impose an alien and barbaric system of religion/dhimmitude upon us.

Hillary Clinton and Howard Dean are not my enemies. They are annoyances, hucksters, political rivals. Rivals are not enemies, at least not in a functioning democracy. We "fight" each other by argument, persuasion, some propaganda (hey, we're all guilty), ad hominem attacks (ditto), campaign contributions, and ultimately the ballot box.

Any on the left who cling to the notion that DeLay, Rove, Bush, Cheney, etc. are "enemies" really ought to re-examine their basic beliefs and their understanding of what civil (meaning not politie, but not violent) political culture and democracy are really about.

I think a lot of people on the left are stupid pricks. I'm sure those on the left feel the same way about those on the right. But "stupid pricks" are not enemies. We are, I hope, still all Americans, and still united under one flag, whether you salute that flag or burn it.

I've mentioned this before, but during a particularly hostile argument during the Clinton Impeachment Wars, someone popped in to say, "You guys all know that when the space-aliens come, we're going to be on the same side, right?"

I do think there are those on the left who consciously or unconsciously side with the enemy. But by and large they just have a very different conception of America than we do, and generally want what's best for America. (They just happen to think "what's best for America" is allowing Paris or the UN to rule us.)

I hope that more on the left can make this distinction as regards their "enemies" on the right.

Posted by: Ace at 11:09 AM | Comments (17)
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Wizbang! says pretty much everything I wanted to say.

Posted by: Ace at 11:00 AM | Comments (34)
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It's horrible that 1700 good men and women have died winning for Iraqis what they really ought to have won for themselves, but Political Sports refreshes us as to what truly high casualties really are.

Posted by: Ace at 10:57 AM | Comments (4)
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Great story.

But of course I'm just looking for the google-hits off "Grandmother snatches."

Thanks to NickS.

Posted by: Ace at 09:57 AM | Comments (10)
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Tom Friedman:

Liberals don't want to talk about Iraq because, with a few exceptions, they thought the war was wrong and deep down don't want the Bush team to succeed.

I think that's right, and I've got a lot of quotes from liberals to prove it. It's not true of pro-war liberals, obviously, and it's not true of many anti-war but pro-American liberals. But there is a certain kind of liberal who just wants to be personally vindicated, and he actively roots against America just so that, once the bodies have stopped falling, he can say, "See? I was right all along."

That's a pretty high price for an I told you so.

But it's not just about personal vindication, either. Many liberals consider the US to be a positive force for evil, violence, and repression in the world, and they don't want the US to have the capability of inflicting its miseries and horrors on the rest of the kite-flying world. A defeat in Iraq would sharply curb our projection of power, and that's ultimately what they want.

To quibble with Friedman: He says that conservatives don't talk about the current up-cycle of violence in Iraq, because we think it's our job to just "applaud" whatever the Bush Administration does.

That's not really true. It's a combination of things. 1, it's depressing and sad, and 2, it's a storm that must be weathered. Yes, we could endlessly discuss the storm and how terrible it is, but ultimately it doesn't change the fact that storms will come and you don't run from storms.

Posted by: Ace at 09:37 AM | Comments (67)
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A-hem. Europeans increasingly just don't speaka de democracy, do they?

One crucial mistake was to send out the entire three-part, 448-article document to every French voter, said Mr Giscard.

Over the phone he had warned Mr Chirac already in March: “I said, ‘Don’t do it, don’t do it’”.

“It is not possible for anyone to understand the full text”.

Speaking of not understanding:

Of course, Giscard d'Estaing was quoted by the New York Times sometime back as saying he
patterned himself after Thomas Jefferson, whom he said wrote the US Constitution.

Problem is, James Madison was the main author of the Constitution. Jefferson, who was in France
at the time, didn't even read the Constitution until three months after it was adopted.

Details, details. But Giscard d'Estaing's smart, and writes things we can't understand.

There's a quote I love from Douglas Adams' Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. The set up is that Dirk, a PI with a sketchy reputation, has bluffed his way into a crime scene, and is fencing words with a cop he considers to be his intellectual inferior. The cop turns his back for a moment, and Dirk steals the thing he came to steal (the tape from the answering machine).

"You can put the tape back now," the cop says [all this is approximate "quoting.']

"Huh?" Dirk says.

"If I turn my back on you, it's just to give you the opportunity to take what I know you've come to take. I didn't know what you wanted to take, so I turned away to see what would be missing when I turned back again."

"I see," Dirk says, taking the tape out of his pocket.

"You're a clever man, Gently," the cop says. "But you make the same mistake a lot of clever people do. You assume that because you're smart, everyone else must be stupid."

Those who fancy themselves our political and intellectual leaders, both here and in Europe, would be wise to bear that cop's admonition in mind.

Posted by: Ace at 09:07 AM | Comments (6)
Post contains 346 words, total size 2 kb.

A-hem. Europeans increasingly just don't speaka de democracy, do they?

One crucial mistake was to send out the entire three-part, 448-article document to every French voter, said Mr Giscard.

Over the phone he had warned Mr Chirac already in March: “I said, ‘Don’t do it, don’t do it’”.

“It is not possible for anyone to understand the full text”.

Speaking of not understanding:

Of course, Giscard d'Estaing was quoted by the New York Times sometime back as saying he
patterned himself after Thomas Jefferson, whom he said wrote the US Constitution.

Problem is, James Madison was the main author of the Constitution. Jefferson, who was in France
at the time, didn't even read the Constitution until three months after it was adopted.

Details, details. But Giscard d'Estaing's smart, and writes things we can't understand.

There's a quote I love from Douglas Adams' Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. The set up is that Dirk, a PI with a sketchy reputation, has bluffed his way into a crime scene, and is fencing words with a cop he considers to be his intellectual inferior. The cop turns his back for a moment, and Dirk steals the thing he came to steal (the tape from the answering machine).

"You can put the tape back now," the cop says [all this is approximate "quoting.']

"Huh?" Dirk says.

"If I turn my back on you, it's just to give you the opportunity to take what I know you've come to take. I didn't know what you wanted to take, so I turned away to see what would be missing when I turned back again."

"I see," Dirk says, taking the tape out of his pocket.

"You're a clever man, Gently," the cop says. "But you make the same mistake a lot of clever people do. You assume that because you're smart, everyone else must be stupid."

Those who fancy themselves our political and intellectual leaders, both here and in Europe, would be wise to bear that cop's admonition in mind.

Posted by: Ace at 09:07 AM | Comments (6)
Post contains 363 words, total size 2 kb.

Neither is one of Andrew Sullivan's readers, who sends an email ripping him.

Reagan said to never speak ill of a fellow conservative, but he didn't say anything about linking ill of a fellow conservative.

Posted by: Ace at 08:53 AM | Comments (31)
Post contains 49 words, total size 1 kb.