Things look like shit for you and me.

Game over man, game over.

Posted by: Dave In Texas at 06:54 PM | Comments (29)
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Here's Confederate Yankee on an earlier Beauchamp piece.

This is the bit he questions:

As we slowly started moving back toward the Humvee, we could hear the dogs filling in the space behind us. I turned around and saw their green eyes flashing in the deep shadow where we'd left the body. Part of me thought we should have shot the dogs or done something to keep them from eating the body, but what good would it have done? We only would have been exposing ourselves to danger longer than we needed to.

Back in the Humvee, Hernandez started talking to me without looking in my direction. "Man, I've never seen anything like that before," he said.

"What? A guy killed by a cop?" I asked.

"No, man, zombie dogs. That shit was wild," he said, laughing.

Something inside of me fought for expression and then died. He was right. What else was there to do now but laugh?

"I took his driver's license," I said.

"You did?" questioned Hernandez.

"Yeah. It said he was an organ donor."

We chuckled in the dark for a moment, and then looked out the window into the night. We didn't talk again until we were back at our base.

Confederate Yankee establishes that 1) Iraqi drivers licenses are written in Arabic (of course) and thus Beauchamp could not have read it unless he's even more the Renaissance Man of War than he's previously allowed and 2) organ donation is not a big thing in Iraq, and his source does not believe such a designation is ever listed on a drivers license there.

The trouble is that Beauchamp does not state expressly that his statement about the guy being an "organ donor" is an actual fact. It's just as likely -- more likely, indeed, as Owens' update suggests -- this is in fact just another one of Beauchamp's "jokes." One of his "jokes" that he's convinced is side-splittingly hilarious (stop me if you've heard the one about the woman with half of her fucking face blown off by an IED) but is in fact not funny at all.

As I wrote to CJ when he tipped me:

I think the angle here is not that he was outright fabricating, so much as he was employing literary devices in his stories-- playing a role in order to establish himself as a literary character for his coming novel, a hardass, seen-it-all veteran dripping with BAMFism (Bad Ass Motherfuckerism).

Despite the fact that, you know, while his service in Iraq is no doubt dangerous, he's hardly seen much in the way of combat or actual danger. He's seen the possibility of danger, but, alas for his book proposal, not so much the real sort. And yet, despite the relative peacefulness of his posting, he's still got that cynical BAMFtastic thousand-yard-stare thing going, doesn't he?

At least in his accounts he does.

And so rather mundane incidents like this have to be milked to the limit for BAMFist import.

His "joke," as usual, makes no sense. Why is it funny that a dead guy might be an organ donor? When we talk about organ donors, 95% of the time we're talking about the dead. How on earth is this ironic or funny or poignant or even interesting enough to bother commenting on?

It's like "joking" that a dead man has no pulse. Well, ye-ah. That's sort of what makes him dead, right?

This is just another example of a pedestrian, lame anecdote being juiced as much as the law will allow to establish the BAMFism of the central character in Scott Beauchamp's coming novel.

And, as we can expect from him, it's a friggin' lame anecdote. You know what I find most unbelievable in this story? That his buddy "chuckled" over the "joke" that a dead man might be an organ donor.

Sergeant LeClairc was left with his mindthoughts as the satellitemoon fell beneath the far-off snow-covered peaks of Fallujah.

He regarded the corpse beside him.

As he lighted a cigarette he permitted himself a dark humorjoke. The poor-son-of-a-bitch probably has a rapidly declining basal temperature, he thought to himself, most likely due to the cessation of metabolic functions and the radiation of internal heat to the atmosphere.

He chuckled ruefully at his jestwit.

I have a feeling Beauchamp didn't lie about this, though it's untrue. Scott Beauchamp, the greatest emergent poet in the world, remember, seems to have a good-faith but completely erroneous belief regarding the extent of his literary, poetical, and comedic skills.

I also find his claim that his buddy was "doubled-over" with chucklelaughs over his mocking of the IED victim rather implausible as well. Not even because his jokes were callous, sick, cruel, and evil. But because they also simply were not funny. Though Beauchamp, it seems, was quite convinced they were a hoot 'n a half.

An early warning flag for TNR, that they of course completely missed. A signal -- not a conclusive one; not a dispositive one; but a suggestive one nevertheless -- that Scott Beauchamp's accounts were more in the tradition of hack-crap hardass action fiction (comic books for adult men, in other words) than actual journalism.

And, for that reason, perhaps his more luridly implausible tales ought to be given more scrutiny than the old "smell test."

Ed... says the humorjoke was about the dogs feeding on the corpse, and hence his becoming an "organ donor" through non-medical circumstances.

Okay, that seems likely, and it is a slightly better chucklelaugh than I thought.

Still, it's not much of a joke -- even if I concede this one at least makes sense -- and it still is indicative of Beauchamp's determination to role-play the Tom Berenger character in Platoon.

The guy obviously has very little to actually report. And, as the song says, "When you've got nothin', you've got nothin' left to lose." Might as well grab for the not-so-brass ring.

Posted by: Ace at 01:28 PM | Comments (53)
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UPDATE2:ESPN reports Vick has been offered a plea deal, has until Friday to take it.

But the NFL says "no decision has been made".

Sportswriter Jason Cole says two NFL sources told him the league would announce his suspension before the season starts. But NFL spokesman Greg Aiello say that decision hasn't been made.

Vick is under indictment for federal charges tied to organized dogfighting and gambling. His case could go to trial as early as November.

I don't know where I stand on this. My gut says "until you know he's dirty (i.e. he's convicted), you don't suspend him". But there are reports Vick misled the league office concerning details of the investigation. And the NFL is a business, not a court of law.

Do you go ahead with a suspension prior to his trial? What reason do you give, "in this particular case, it looks worse than (pick something to compare it to) x circumstances"? What if he's acquitted?

Cole notes that the league's gambling policy goes way back, much further than the personal conduct policy. A player can be banned for life for illegal gambling.

I just don't know if you can drop the ban-hammer prior to a conviction.

UPDATE: reading through some of the comments I think I'm being a little careless at the end of my post with two different things, suspension, and banning (for gambling). Two different things.

Kinda sorta related, someone asked me the other day why Cincinnati's Chris Henry was playing in a preseason game. The league did suspend him for half the upcoming season, however he is allowed to practice and appear in preseason games. Once the suspension begins, he can't play or practice with the team for 8 games.

Posted by: Dave In Texas at 12:12 PM | Comments (46)
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Over at Volokh Conspiracy (link now points to actual post), Eugene Volokh disputes my characterization of the Salon interview with Taner Edis. He finds it to be a fair interview, just asking questions and that sort of thing. (Incidentally, I don't actually see the piece on his blog, and am replying to the piece as it appears in my email... maybe I'm just missing it.)

My response follows. One thing I didn't mention in my email reply, which I now concede: In fact, the interviewer does not make any sort of statement or argument which is explicitly supportive of a creationism, so long as it's of an Islamic sort.

That is my gloss on the article, and perhaps an unfair gloss. However, given the rather obvious sympathies the author has for "Islamic science" -- obvious to me, at least -- I would argue the interviewer is arguing on behalf of a a "science" which incorporates important articles of faith (as well as morality). Perhaps it's an unfair reading -- certainly some readers think so -- but I read the interviewer in being open to such ideas, and even arguing in their favor. So long as they're coming from a privileged nonwestern, nonchristian culture, of course.

So that's a partial point to Volokh. Only partial, though, because I think that is the general thrust of the questioning.

Note that I've added to my initial response to Volokh. Apart from a spelling correction, I've put the new bits in brackets.

My Bad! Volokh actually hadn't posted yet-- he was awaiting my response before publishing. So, like a dick, I actually jumped ahead of his response to get my response in first.

But his response should be up now, or will be shortly.

What can I say? I believe in unilateral preemptive attacks. I cannot abide waiting around for an attack my intelligence-gathering tells me is on the way.

You made a deadly mistake, Volokh. You betrayed me but you left me alive. more...

Posted by: Ace at 11:20 AM | Comments (54)
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Failure.

For a surge that isn't accomplishing anything it sure seems to be accomplishing something.

Michael Yon:

Large numbers of Iraqis detested us after the prisoner abuse stories, and some over-the-top attacks on Fallujah, for example. But through time, somehow the American military has managed to establish a moral authority in Iraq. ItÂ’s not the only authority, but the military has serious and increasing moral clout. In the beginning, our influence flowed from guns, or dropped from the wings of jets. Later it was the money. Today, the clout still is partially from the gun, and definitely the money is key, but there is an intangible and growing moral clout and it flows from an increasing respect among Iraqis for our military. Washington has no moral clout in Iraq. Washington looks like a circus act. The authority is coming from our military. The importance of this fact would be difficult to understate.

It seems that Al Qaeda and the Sadrists have been a crucial part of our infowar efforts, simply by being themselves.

As I've noted before: The left is fond of claiming that American action only creates "more terrorists." Do they ever pause to consider that terrorist action often creates more anti-terrorists?

Meanwhile, Matt Sanchez is ambushed in Sadr City by a gaggle of adorable children.

Admittedly the latter video doesn't really prove anything. The plural of anecdote is not "data" and all that. Still, it's accurate and real reportage from the front, something that TNR has proven is very hard to come by.

Posted by: Ace at 10:38 AM | Comments (33)
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But seriously, this guy's Lego art is touring US museums. It might be a good time to finally satisfy your girlfriend's or wife's demand for art.

Posted by: Ace at 10:19 AM | Comments (20)
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It gets worse for global warming.

How bad? This bad. Imagine you sought to establish global warming was occurring. An empirically minded scientist would imagine that actual, reliable global temperature records were the best evidence for whether this was occurring or not, and that the theory of global warming would be adjusted, modified, proven or proven false on the basis of those temperature records.

That's what you would imagine would be the case. But what if in fact it were working the other way around? What if the theory of global warming was not being modified to better accord with actual, reliable temperature readings, but that actual, reliable temperature readings were being modified to better conform with the theory of global warming?

That seems to be what's going on. The most unreliable temperature readings -- those located in areas of urbanization, with all the asphalt, air conditioning exhausts, and car exhaust one could ask for -- are, rather than being adjusted downward due to their obvious inaccuracy, being left alone. Because they, quite naturally, produce the highest temperature readings.

Correction: A clear mistake. Some urban temperature stations do have their temperatures adjusted downwards, as long as there is a nearby rural station against which to compare it. But this is an uncommon situation. Despite this correction, the rest of the post stands -- they're adjusting "good" stations to come closer to "bad" stations, rather than either discounting the bad stations entirely or only adjusting the bad stations to match the good. Further, while they could easily determine the exact magnitude of the heat island effect, they have made no serious empirical efforts to do so. If pure happenstance has located a rural station nearby an urban one, they will adjust. But they have not bothered to establish control stations in order to check how far out of line the urban stations are with actual temperature.

Back to the original post.

Meanwhile, better, more reliable readings from better-maintained stations not artificially warmed by urban heat islands are being "adjusted."

Adjusted which way? Um, take a wild guess. Allah's post doesn't have the key quote about which way they're being adjusted, but I think it's fair to say "up" would be the general direction.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 09:42 AM | Comments (53)
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No.

But I went to DU this morning to sample the sweet, seething crazy, and was not disappointed:

The White House Won't Look Different
but it'll sure smell better. I hope whatever cave he flaps off to has laid in a goodly supply of Febreeze.

I don't buy that 'more time with the family' crap. Unless they mean the Republican crime family.
--------------------------------------

that bastard ain't going anywhere
the heat is getting so close so he is running to Texas but he will just be operating bush's puppet strings remontely
--------------------------------------

Exactly. The continuity of power is absolutely necessary to keep Imperial Amerika
"in higher, tighter and righter hands," to quote our First Emperor, Poppy Augustus (1984-1992).

You will see some combination of Loyal Bushie Comrades at the side of the next Emperor (unless the next Emperor of Amerika is permitted to be a Democrat, which I will simply not believe until I see it) which will be the real power in the naive and beholden Romney or Ghouli Imperium.

And Karl's resignation, which has absolutely nothing to do with what the Imperial Subjects of Amerika or our bootickling Imperial Congress want, is the logical step in terms of the Bush Imperium contiuing to keep Amerika a BushPutinist Nation, no matter who takes power.

That last one cracked me up pretty good.

Not to mention the commenters who believe Rove is preparing to flee the country.
Shine on, DU. Good, good stuff.

Do us a solid- we need you to stay bugfucking crazy for the next, oh, year and a half, can you do that?

Thanks in advance.

Posted by: LauraW. at 05:49 AM | Comments (59)
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Well I hope everyone had fun and no one minded it that much.

Thanks for posting.

And reading, of course.

Posted by: Ace at 10:31 PM | Comments (18)
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I won't turn this into another long rant where I bore you all. I'll just invite you to read it in full. The subject of the interview obviously knows what he's talking about, and his opinions are important.

But ultimately they're not a lot more than we -- we, not the jackasses at Salon or NPR -- already knew.'

What is shocking is the interviewer's combative apologism on behalf of the benighted and backward state of Islamic science -- or pseudoscience, in the main. A science writer for an NPR station, no less.

Watch how the interviewer continues insisting, in the face of an expert telling him "no, no, no" that Islamic religious orthodoxy prevents genuine science. And then set a pillow beneath your jaw as he begins arguing on behalf of creationism -- Creationism, that most hated of all beliefs, to liberals -- so long as the creationism in question is of a suitably privileged foreign, non-western culture. And then it just gets more ludicrous as this supposed writer on science issues for NPR begins arguing for a more humanistic approach to science -- one that incorporates Islamic style religious dogma, apparently -- as preferable to cold, clinical (monstrously successful) Western science.

There's no "right" way to do science, this NPR science writer seems to believe, just different views of it. And, of course, the ultimate moral this story is driving towards is that we can both learn equally from each other.

Yes, the US, with thousands of patents every year and the highest standard of living in history (and the broadest sharing of that prosperity as well) has just as much to learn from Pakistan, with a total of eight patents to its credit in the past 42 years, as Pakistan does from the US. Because their science is all concerned with philosophy and "the good of the people" and God and angels and stuff.

And obviously that super-special diverse-culture feature of Pakistan's science really produces some genuine benefits for the world, eh?

I never thought I'd read such an impassioned defense of Creationism in Salon magazine. But then, I guess I should have realized just how many of their other shibboleths they were willing to jettison if they were found to be in conflict with Multicultural imperatives. Truly eye-opening and jaw-breaking.

Hey, Christian conservatives? You want to win your creationism cases? Start bringing in Muslim creationists. And watch your liberal opponents suddenly finding it much more plausible that God -- or, rather, Allah -- created the earth, the animals, and humans directly.

Wow.

The Reality-Based Community.

Or, as another blogger (Riehl?) likes to call it: The Community-Based Reality.

Whatever the Community agrees to shall be their Reality.

Thanks to Hot Air.

Oh, and, remember... Western culture is precisely equal to all other cultures in all ways, except for the long list of ways in which it is decidedly inferior.

Equality is a one-way street. Where a nonwestern culture seems deficient, or even outright pernicious, it is the duty of the dull-minded to claim it is fact equal (but in different ways) to western culture, because all cultures are equal. They must be. God has apparently decreed it so; I can see no other possible reason for them to hold this religious doctrine with such zealous conviction.

Only when a nonwestern culture can be argued (usually facilely) to be superior to western culture is it possible that a state of non-equality can exist.

Says who?

God says, I guess. It's written in a holy book somewhere.

Thanks to Mike Z. for the cite on Pakistan's woeful number of patents.

Posted by: Ace at 09:44 PM | Comments (80)
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