DANGER: Post of only moderate coherence is coming. It’s Monday and I’m not feeling terribly intellectual at the moment.

First, they came for the lawyers, and I did nothing. Then, they came for the auto workers, and I did nothing. Who will be there when they come for me?

(Removes tongue from cheek)

Okay, in all seriousness, welcome to the world of supply and demand. We have a lot of lawyers - only the best ones are going to make serious money, and the rest probably shouldn’t assume six figures worth of student loans. This is true of many fields, mine included. I make about mid-five figures right now, which is on the low end of average for my field; this makes sense since Microsoft technicians are a dime a dozen right now. Instead of forming an MCSE union of some sort, though, I’m diversifying, learning skills that are a little more in demand, such as how to maintain Asterisk phone systems and learning more and more about how to manage Linux servers.

Don’t get me wrong. I feel for the auto workers. They work hard. So do roofers and gardeners, and they make about 1/10th of what your average UAW person makes. The difference in wages is easy to explain, though - anyone can be a roofer or a gardener. Being an auto worker is a skilled job, just like being a mechanic. You have to know something. Trouble is, nowadays, we’re not the only people in the world that know something. People in India know stuff, too. Same goes with China, Japan, Europe, most of Southeast Asia, and pretty much the entire Western Hemisphere. We could wall off our borders, throw down tariffs as far as the eye can see, and just buy American, but that would mean DVD players that cost 10 times as much, winter produce that costs 5 times as much, and all for the same quality that we’re getting from China. China would also stop buying our debt, too - if you think your mortgage rates are high now, imagine what they’ll look like if you have to compete with the federal government when you go to borrow money?

A wonderful article on IMAO links to some articles that point out that Andrew Meyer, the intrepid UF student, may have a rather promising career in communications, whereas most conservative communicationists (I’m trying to make up new words Colbert-style - ask me about “sarchasm”!) are eternally doomed to volunteer blogging in their spare time, with nary a pence to sustain them.

As a semi-libertarian blogger, I feel the pain especially acutely, especially since I can’t seem to get past the “five readers a day” barrier. It’s surprisingly difficult, especially for someone with such “outstanding” self-promotional skills as myself.

That last sentence was sarcastic. Just so you know.

Ironically, I received the most unique hits here thus far when I posted a comment regarding TMQ - how bizarre. Maybe I should just make this a sports blog.

If you’re in the mood for some rather odd pics, check this out:

Lords of Logistics, courtesy of Damn Cool Pics. Good stuff. Here’s one of my personal favorites:

Bonus points if you can figure out how they got the cow in there.

Iran is apparently feeling frisky - it’s calling out Canada for human rights violations:

UNITED NATIONS — In a bid to discredit Canada at the United Nations, Iran is equipping world diplomats with a 70-page booklet on Canada’s alleged human rights violations. Written by Iran “in the name of God,” the document asserts that the Canadian government denies its people food, clean water and the right to work.

“To the great dismay of the international community, it is a great concern that the rights of women are violated, and no serious attention has been paid in promotion and protection of women’s rights in Canada.”

Now, don’t get me wrong - I’m not saying Canada is perfect. I mean, they still believe in hockey, among other things, which is just wrong and immoral. However, Iran lecturing Canada about women’s rights is quite comical, though Iran is relatively progressive compared to, say, Saudi Arabia. Then again, being progressive regarding women’s rights compared to Saudi Arabia is somewhat akin to being progressive towards Jewish rights compared to the Nazis…

Wait - is it possible for me to Godwin my own post? Crap - it looks like I’ve done it! Well, I guess I’m done, then.

From the Des Moines Register, Des Moines police investigate attack by onion :

A Des Moines man went to jail Wednesday afternoon for allegedly throwing an onion at his wife.

The police report begins: “(The victim) states her husband had been drinking and they got into an argument.”

I suspect that they will have to peel through this many-layered case as they investigate this cruel cranial assault with a painful bulb. This will undoubtedly lead to many tears from all parties concerned.

(I’m about this close to creating a “not news” category.)

Courtesy of Slashdot, an article about “Stupid Male Geek Culture” and how it’s keeping women from entering engineering fields. My personal favorite is the following comment posted in response to this:

I get discriminated against by stupid, pretty female culture a LOT more than women get discriminated against by stupid male geek culture. I am willing to be that most geeks feel the same way.
You want a cease fire? Fine. start playing fair with us and we might play fair with you.

In all seriousness, though, what’s so ’stupid’ about male geek culture? I mean, okay, we have All Your Base, Just Got Owned, Tanuk Tanuk Tan, and, granted, those probably aren’t the most intellectual memes in the world. But, you have to admit, it beats the heck out of The View, Britney Spears, or, really, any celebrity gossip at all. Have I mentioned Sex & The City? How about the network formerly known as the WB? I could go on like this all day.

The defense rests.

This… is horrifying.

You’ll want to fast-forward to the 1:00 mark - everything up until then is Whoopi trying desperately and only mildly coherently to tie God and evolution together in a nice, neat, New Age-smelling package. Then comes the gold…

Whoopi: Is the world flat?
Fat Lady: (Confirming the question) Is the world flat?
Whoopi: Yes.
Fat Lady: I don’t know.
Whoopi: What do you think?
Fat Lady: I never thought about it, Whoopi. Is the world flat? I never thought about it.
Barbara Walters: You never thought about whether the world was round…
Fat Lady: No, but I’ll tell you what I have thought about - how to feed my child, how to take care of my family. “Is the world flat” has never entered into… that has not been important…
Crazy Blonde Woman: What will… you’ll teach your son, Jeffrey, right?
Fat Lady: If my son, Jeffrey, asks if the world is flat, I guess I’ll go and…

Okay - I’m done transcribing this. I think you get the idea. It’s too painful to type.

By the way, I’m sure the large, stupid, planet-shaped being (HINT: If you’re the shape of a planet, figuring out whether a planet is flat or round should be quite simple) has a name. I just don’t care. I don’t learn the proper names of my food, and I’ve eaten plenty of pasta smarter than her. More importantly, I don’t watch “The View”. I want nothing to do with “The View”. This clip only proves that I was dead-on in my original assessment that watching five women babble on incoherently on a vapid morning talk show is not a healthy way to waste time.

If you’d like to read more “mysogeny”, you might be interested in Rachel Lucas’ thoughts on what would happen if mothers took over the world.

PS: I’m actually in a good mood. I’m just feeling spunky today.

I rarely agree completely with what Gregg Easterbrook has to write in his articles, but that’s understandable. TMQ is long. Easterbrook is a liberal that doesn’t shy away from government solutions to problems. Put the two together and you’re going to get some disagreement here. I’m fine with that. In fact, I frequently read his column because it’s one of the better reasoned explanations of the “other side” and it has the advantage of being sugarcoated with sports and cheerleader pictures.

How can you go wrong?

Then he posted this:

Belichick’s cheating could lead to dark days for NFL

The situation with the National Football League is a lot worse than people realize, and the only one who seems to grasp this fully is commissioner Roger Goodell. You don’t issue emergency orders backed by threats on Sunday morning of a game day, as Goodell just did regarding the New England Patriots’ files of cheating information, unless the situation is a lot worse than people realize.

Why is the situation worse than people think? Because the NFL is on the precipice of blowing its status as the country’s favorite sport. The whole NFL enterprise is in jeopardy from that single word: cheating. It’s the most distasteful word in sports. And now the Patriots have brought the word into the NFL.

Two paragraphs in and I’m already riled up. Let’s take a look at how the NFL’s competition is holding up, shall we?

- Baseball has suffered from almost fifteen years of problems. The most serious one today is that baseball has a drug problem. Many players have tested positive for steroids. Other players have been linked to HGH sales; HGH, by the way, can’t be tested for. Meanwhile, they have a player’s union that absolutely refuses to cooperate with anyone on this subject or any other subject that management might have any opinions on, which ties into the problems that baseball was experiencing in the mid-90s.
- Basketball had a referee get caught fixing games and involving himself in a gambling ring. Cheating is one thing; teams can stop that anytime. When referees start fixing games, though, you might as well call yourself “organized wrestling”. Meanwhile, the NBA’s best personality, best player, and most marketable asset is playing in Cleveland in a weak division with a lousy team.
- Hockey so completely overplayed their hand with the American people that it’s not even funny. The only reason they’re more relevant than professional soccer in this country is because professional soccer is completely irrelevant here.
- Boxing? You’re kidding, right?
- Speaking of a drug and credibility problem, wrestling is starting to slip past boxing in irrelevancy.
- College sports are only relevant to those that went to college, and only to those that went to those colleges where sports are relevant. That’s not most colleges. This does not necessarily apply in places like Nebraska and most of the South, but that’s because they’re the only game on in those places. Plus, if you want to talk about crookedness, it doesn’t get much worse than “amateur” sports.
- NASCAR might be the one sport that has the capability to at least sniff the NFL’s behind in ratings and popularity if things go horribly wrong. However, though NASCAR’s appeal has been broadening, I suspect it has a long way to go to get up there. Plus, NASCAR has had its fair share of cheating problems as well, mostly related to arcane car configuration rules and the like. Also, if you think people have a problem with players getting concussions, how do you think people are going to feel about the one of the strongest personalities in the sport dying in a high-speed crash? These are people driving cars in excess of 200 MPH. I don’t care how much safety equipment you put them in, sooner or later, somebody’s going to die out there. It’s called physics.
- Golf is pointless without Tiger Woods and everyone knows it.
- Women’s sports are only interesting to most sports viewers when incredibly attractive women in skimpy outfits are involved. Think women’s tennis and the LPGA. For further proof of this rule, think of the complete lack of popularity for the WNBA.

Of those on the list, who is going to compete against the NFL? With the possible exception of NASCAR, every other sport on that list has far bigger problems than the NFL right now. That alone led me to disagree with Easterbrook. The following paragraph, however, damn near made me want to throw something across the room:

Michael Vick tried to deny and stonewall, but at the last owned up and admitted what he did. That’s dignity. Belichick is now using weasel words to deny responsibility for his own choices. What kind of example does that set for the young? “Make good choices,” football coaches constantly preach to the young. Now, caught, Belichick wants a special exemption to responsibility for his own choices. Belichick also is trying to close the matter by saying he won’t talk about it anymore. So he cheated and now unilaterally declares the matter closed because he doesn’t want to face the consequences of his own choices. But this is not over and not going away. Before the cheating scandal, Belichick had a reputation for being heartless but a really good coach. Now, he seems little more than a creepy con artist, and it’s the refusal to act like a man and take full responsibility that’s really offensive. Goodell’s draft-choice penalty against the Patriots – either a first or a second and a third – is the highest draft penalty ever imposed in the NFL. The severity of this sanction shows how seriously Goodell takes the violation. If more disclosures are coming, there might be a lot more punishment of the Patriots. And unless Belichick comes clean and stops lying about his cheating, this event should disqualify him from consideration for the Pro Football Hall of Fame – it is, after all, not the Hall of Cheaters.

Wait a second. Michael Vick owned up to what he did only after his lawyers told him that, if he didn’t, he’d be spending more than a year or two in prison for committing felonies. He owned up because it made good legal sense to do so. Belichick did not commit a federal felony. Belichick also did not raise animals to fight for the amusement of himself and his friends. Belichick also did not run an illegal gambling ring designed solely to wager on the actions of said animals. Furthermore, Belichick did not kill any animals after they failed to perform in illegal fighting rings run by him to support an illegal gambling ring run by him. So, comparing Vick to Belichick is ridiculous.

As for Belichick’s impression on the young… oh, why won’t somebody think of the children? In the spirit of Godwin’s Law, I’d like to create the Colborne Corollary. It goes a little something like this:

As a discussion about a mistake or action exhibiting poor judgment grows longer, the probability of someone expressing concern about how the mistake or error in judgment will affect children approaches one.

Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve reached it! There’s just one problem - Belichick doesn’t coach children. He coaches grown adults. He’s not a developer of talent, a la your traditional high school or college coach. His job is to retain talent, keep it from injury, and harness it to win football games. That’s it. I’d be more concerned if it was a college or high school coach pulling something like this. That said, Easterbrook may have a point here - Belichick may not get into the NFL Hall of Fame, at least not on the first ballot. We’ll have to see how the Patriots do this year. Furthermore, I always was fuzzy on why being truthful and confessing to wrongdoing would absolve you of any of the consequences of what you did. If it’s wrong, it’s equally wrong whether you owned up to it or not. Consequently, at least from where I’m sitting, the punishment should be identical whether Belichick is honest about his involvement or not.

That’s enough for now.

This just in from the RGJ: Diagonal crossing stumps a number of walkers:

You can see all sides of humanity when people navigate the new scramble traffic signal for pedestrians at Virginia and Second streets in downtown Reno.

One of them finally pushed the button to activate the pedestrian signal and they began to cross after the little walk man sign lit up.

It goes on like that. Oh, and, in other news, we have a bear problem. This is headline news in Reno, folks.

First, there was Sen. Liebermann indicating that a strike against Iran was a perfectly reasonable option. Now, France is saying that the world should “prepare for the worst… (which_ is war)” with Iran.

Am I the only one finding it interesting that it’s France and Liebermann that are serving as the canaries in the mine on Iran? Strange bedfellows indeed.

Thanks to all the political wrangling and everything else over the past couple of weeks, I felt it was time to get a little perspective going. Seriously, that’s brilliant stuff right there. On a lighter note, some quick thoughts:

In Defense of Ugly Cars - never before have my thoughts on cars been spoken so eloquently. My favorite car was a ‘76 Plymouth Fury that I purchased for $200 and had for all of two months. It was powder blue, had a 360, an almost completely useless back seat, surprisingly little trunk room, and got 15 MPG on a good day. The speedometer didn’t work if I went over 50. It was huge and almost impossible to park. It was ugly. I was pulled over twice in the first month that I had it because I hadn’t registered it - it was still legal (had a moving permit), but, up until that car, I had only been pulled over twice before, and they were both for moving offenses. In short, it was the most interesting car I ever owned. Sadly, after two months and nearly $1000 in repairs just so it would pass smog, the valves started clapping, and that was my cue to exit. I loved that car, but rebuilding the engine was a bit more than I was willing to handle.

My tied-for-first favorite car was my mom’s car while I was in high school - a 1988 Subaru Justy. It was a white five-speed and didn’t have the 4WD, not that I cared back then; I still treated it like a Jeep. I probably went through a set of C-V joints about once a year during high school on the back roads near Pahrump. Mom, I just want to publicly apologize for the abuse I put your car through. Thank goodness you weren’t using it for much at the time.

On an entirely different note, my work got us new workstations with Microsoft Vista on them. For reasons that don’t make sense to anyone, they were only equipped with 1 GB of RAM, which was a little obnoxious. Other than that, though, it’s not too bad. The visuals are nice. It takes a little longer than it should to lock the computer; perhaps if they spent a little less time trying to come up with cute visual effects for everything and a little more figuring out useability, things would’ve gone a little better. GIMP starts awfully slow, but I suspect that’s more of a problem with GIMP than it is with Vista, especially since it’s always on the “Fonts” part of the load-up. Other than that, I haven’t run into any glaring compatibility problems or anything that’s really made me want to stand up and scream. In fact, unlike Ubuntu on my laptop, I haven’t been spending the first couple of days on my machine fiddling with things just to get the hardware to work. Then again, unlike Ubuntu, Vista came preloaded on these workstations.

(I like Ubuntu. I really do. I’m just giving it a hard time because I love it, that’s all.)

Also, I’m slowly building up a library of completely wrong and offensive lolcats knockoffs. Mine don’t involve cats. I won’t reveal much more than that right now because any further details would probably seriously damage my political career. Heh.

Via Instapundit, I found this article explaining why Libertarians are happy. All in all, I don’t disagree with much of it, though there are a few points I’d like to address.

First, the reason Ron Paul’s numbers are so low is because he’s nuts. There. I said it. Unfortunately, he’s one of the “programmatically antiwar”, as the article puts it, and it shows. It’s one thing to have a rational, ethical dislike of the Iraq war. It’s quite another when you make it clear that you never see a reason to use force, a position which most of America doesn’t agree with. It has nothing to do with him being a Libertarian. It has everything to do with the moonbat Libertarian foreign policy platform that pretends everything from 1915 on never happened.

Second, I know that hindsight is 20/20, and I wasn’t around to see the ’60s (thank goodness). However, I took exception to this:

The civil-rights movement is an instructive case. Mr. Lindsey includes it in his list of libertarian victories, but it is a perfect example of the inability of libertarians to find a political and moral framework suitable to the big questions of American public life. If people ought to be able to do what they want, then certainly hating blacks–either by oneself or in the company of like-minded souls–is nobody else’s business, including the federal government’s. To the extent that libertarians are remembered at all for their role in the civil-rights era, it is not for marching on Selma but rather for their enthusiastic support of states’ rights and the freedom of white racists to associate with one another.

The solution to this problem is easily revealed in an earlier paragraph:

…the libertarian vision of personal morality–described by Mr. Doherty as “People ought to be free to do whatever the hell they want, mostly, as long as they aren’t hurting anyone else…”

Put another way, as far as Libertarians are concerned, yes, you’re free to hate blacks, but you’re not morally allowed to use that hatred to hurt them or restrict their ability to do the same (and vice-versa). Since many states at the time had laws that hurt blacks, federal intervention was necessary to rectify this. In short:

Individual rights > State rights > Federal rights

That said, federal rights can be used to override state rights on occasions when state rights are infringing on individual rights. That’s why we have the constitution we have - it enumerates what powers are available to the federal government, explicitly restricts them to those powers, and then commands it to defend the liberties of the people covered by it.

Other than that - good article.

It’s pretty safe to say that, if you were over the age of 6 when 9/11 happened, pretty much no matter where you lived, your life was affected in a memorable fashion. I remember when I first learned about the attacks quite clearly - I started my car to move it out of the way of my roommate’s car (his car was in the driveway, my car was behind it) and the radio came on. The morning talk show that I listened to at the time was not doing its usual humorous routine - instead, they were talking about some attacks on New York and the Pentagon, which I thought was rather strange. When I realized they were being serious, I parked my car, ran inside the house, and turned on the TV. This led me to head down to Radio Shack (where I worked at the time) to get a decent shortwave radio to listen to events as they unfolded, only to find the entire store packed with people trying to get cell phone chargers and radios themselves. Even though it was my day off, I manned the register for an hour and cleared some of the crowd; I would’ve stayed longer, but I had to give my ex-wife a ride to work.

My ex worked in a music store in Reno. Her coworkers were what you’d expect from art enthusiasts - relatively liberal, most of them quite young. The entire store was buzzing with news about the attacks, and a couple of people brought portable TVs to watch the coverage. One coworker, however, was not interested in the coverage - I forget who he was, but he kept wandering around the store exclaiming his disgust for the coverage and wondering when the “circus” would end, or something to that effect. He even started turning off TVs after a short while.

I’m telling this story because it highlights an interesting divide that has been present ever since the attacks first occurred. There are some people for whom the coverage was something of a fetish - they felt compelled to watch hour after hour of it, day after day, even after the talking heads were just repeating themselves, over and over. I noticed the same thing during Katrina, too. There were also some people, few at first but eventually growing, that couldn’t stand the coverage and found the entire ordeal disgusting.

Now that it’s been six years since the 9/11 attacks, and since we’re still in war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the big question is this: How do we observe 9/11? Do we go all-out like we have in the past? Or, do we almost pretend it never happened at all? Both sides have their detractors, of course. Many conservatives wonder why we don’t remember it better. Others would almost rather it didn’t exist, and don’t wish to scare the children with it.

A useful comparison here might be to compare 9/11 with how the nation reacted to Pearl Harbor. However, this comparison can only go so far - there weren’t as many news outlets back then on which the news could be rehashed over and over, and even if there were, we were done with World War 2 in four years. Our generation, on the other hand, is stuck in a counterinsurgency, and those are never done within four years, unless you’re the British and you’re talking about one of the Boer Wars. Even then, the British resorted to using concentration camps to win that one in a “hurry”, which is something that we (thankfully) are not willing to do. Also, how do we know whether we’ve won or not? Even if Iraq is pacified, Osama bin Laden is captured, and Afghanistan becomes a stable island of peace in Central Asia, all it takes is one crazy person to inflict disproportionately deadly force on the American people. In short, we’re at war against an idea, not a nation, and ideas never die.

It’s because of the uncertainty of the war, its goals, and our actions to date that we’re increasingly uncertain about how to observe 9/11. It’s not the only day that we’re uncertain about, though. Ask Americans about these dates:

- May 7th: The sinking of the RMS Lusitania. This would eventually drag us into World War I, which would set the stage for the next 90 years of American history.
- October 24th: The day usually credited with the beginning of the October Revolution, which led to the Bolsheviks coming into power in Russia. This event would eventually lead to the Cold War.
- August 23rd: The day the Berlin Wall fell.
- December 17th: The day the Soviet Union formally dissolved.

There is an old adage I read somewhere that goes along the line of, “In Europe, 100 miles is far away. In America, 100 years is a long time ago.” As time passes, our ability and desire to effectively remember 9/11 will undoubtedly decrease as we all move on with our lives. Whether we ever are able to definitively prevent another 9/11 from occurring, however, may be a different story. We can only hope.

Gen. Petraeus gave his report to Congress today. Before uttering a single word, however, there was this:

MoveOn.org’s ad in the New York Times.

Let’s dissect the MoveOn.org ad, shall we?

General Petraeus is a military man constantly at war with the facts. In 2004, just before the election, he said there was “tangible progress“ in Iraq and that “Iraqi leaders are stepping forward.”
Washington Post, “Battling for Iraq,” by David H. Petraeus. 9/26/04 (see below)

In 2004, things couldn’t have been much worse. The battles for Fallujah were already underway. Abu Ghraib was about to rear its ugly head. On the other hand, there was some good news - the United States no longer had direct control over the government of Iraq, handing it off to an interim government that would be replaced with elections the next year. In order for things to improve from 2004 on (and they most certainly have), Gen. Petraeus had to be on to something.
even he admits that there’s too much violence. Continuing on…

Every independent report on the ground situation in Iraq shows that the surge strategy has failed.
GAO report, 9/4/07
NIE report, 8/23/07
Jones report, CSIS, 9/6/07

1. If you take a look at the GAO report, you’ll notice that civilian attacks do drop, starting in October 2006 - this is consistent with Petraeus’ report, though GAO reports a less steep drop in civilian deaths. Also note that Petraeus’ report goes through to August, whereas the GAO report only has data up to July. Furthermore, if you look at the GAO report, you’ll find that attacks of all kinds drop rather steeply in June 2007. That would be the start of the surge.

2. The NIE report begins with the title, “Prospects for Iraq’s Stability: Some Security Progress but Political Reconciliation Elusive”. This would be contrary to MoveOn.org’s assessment that the NIE report supports the statement that “the surge strategy has failed”. That said, you can’t judge a book by its cover. So, let’s take a quote from the NIE:

There have been measurable but uneven improvements in Iraq’s security situation since our last National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq in January 2007. The steep escalation of rates of violence has been checked for now, and overall attack levels across Iraq have fallen during seven of the last nine weeks. Coalition forces, working with Iraqi forces, tribal elements, and some Sunni insurgents, have reduced al-Qa’ida in Iraq’s (AQI) capabilities, restricted its freedom of movement, and denied it grassroots support in some areas. However, the level of overall violence, including attacks on and casualties among civilians, remains high; Iraq’s sectarian groups remain unreconciled; AQI retains the ability to conduct high-profile attacks; and to date, Iraqi political leaders remain unable to govern effectively. There have been modest improvements in economic output, budget execution, and government finances but fundamental structural problems continue to prevent sustained progress in economic growth and living conditions. (emphasis not mine)

So, in short, attack levels fell when the surge began (nine weeks before the report came out), but violence is still high. Interestingly, Gen. Petraeus doesn’t disagree with this, stating in his original report:

To be sure, trends have not been uniformly positive across Iraq, as is shown by this chart depicting violence levels in several key Iraqi provinces. The trend in Ninevah Province, for example, has been much more up and down, until a recent decline, and the same is true in Sala ad Din Province, though recent trends there and in Baghdad have been in the right direction. In any event, the overall trajectory in Iraq – a steady decline of incidents in the past three months – is still quite significant.

The number of car bombings and suicide attacks has also declined in each of the past 5 months,
from a high of some 175 in March, as this chart shows, to about 90 this past month. While this
trend in recent months has been heartening, the number of high profile attacks is still too high,
and we continue to work hard to destroy the networks that carry out these barbaric attacks.

So, there’s agreement there.

3. The Jones report does not contradict the NIE or GAO reports - it also reports that the situation is improving, that the Iraqi Security Forces are starting to make headway, and that they’re not ready to assume the lead in Iraqi security yet. Interestingly, this is also what Gen. Petraeus reports:

As I noted earlier, Iraqi Security Forces have continued to grow, to develop their capabilities, and to shoulder more of the burden of providing security for their country. Despite concerns about sectarian influence, inadequate logistics and supporting institutions, and an insufficient number of qualified commissioned and non-commissioned officers, Iraqi units are engaged around the country.

Compare this to the Jones report:

The Commission finds that in general, the Iraqi Security Forces, military and police, have made uneven progress, but that there should be increasing improvement in both their readiness and their capability to provide for the internal security of Iraq.

[…]

While severely deficient in combat support and combat service support capabilities, the new Iraqi armed forces, especially the Army, show clear evidence of developing the baseline infastructures that lead to the successful formation of a national defense capability. The Commission concurs with the view expressed by U.S., Coalition, and Iraqi experts that the Iraqi Army is capable of taking over an increasing amount of day-to-day combat responsibilities from Coalition forces. In any event, the ISF will be unable to fulfill their essential security responsibilites independently over the next 12-18 months.

Gen. Petraues’ report does not contradict that timeline - in fact, he refuses to speculate on when that might occur.

Moving on… next up, the MoveOn.org ad has this to say:

Yet the General claims a reduction in violence. That’s because, according to the New York Times, the Pentagon has adopted a bizarre formula for keeping tabs on violence. For example, deaths by car bombs don’t count.
“Time to Take a Stand,” by Paul Krugman. 9/7/07

Unfortunately, I don’t have a TimesSelect membership, and I’m not about to pay for one now. That said, as I mentioned earlier, the GAO, NIE, and Jones report all indicate similar drops in violence as that reported by Gen. Petraeus.

Next up…

The Washington Post reported that assassinations only count if you’re shot in the back of the head — not the front.
“Experts Doubt Drop in Violence in Iraq,” by Karen DeYoung. 9/6/07

First, Gen. Petraeus declared the drop in “ethno-sectarian” deaths to be 55%, not 75%. In Baghdad, he reports a higher decrease of 80% since December, which may be what MoveOn.org was responding to. However, Gen. Petraeus reports that total civilian deaths, less natural causes, went down by 45% since December, a number which the MoveOn.org ad doesn’t dispute. Furthermore, from the Washington Post article:

Senior U.S. officers in Baghdad disputed the accuracy and conclusions of the largely negative GAO report, which they said had adopted a flawed counting methodology used by the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency. Many of those conclusions were also reflected in last month’s pessimistic National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq.

So, in short, MoveOn.org cited a source that contradicts its preceding sources!

Continuing on…

According to news reports, there have been more civilian deaths and more American soldier deaths in the past three months than in any other summer we’ve been there.
The Associated Press, “Violence Appears to Be Shifting from Baghdad.” 8/25/07
National Public Radio, “Statistics the Weapon of Choice in Surge Debate,” by Guy Raz. 9/6/07
Associated Press, “Key Figures About Iraq Since the War Began in 2003.” 9/5/07

Let’s start with the first AP article:

The AP tracking includes Iraqi civilians, government officials, police and security forces killed in attacks such as gunfights and bombings, which are frequently blamed on Sunni suicide strikes. It also includes execution-style killings — largely the work of Shiite death squads.

In other words, this article uses ISF casualties as civilian deaths. Nice. It then says they’re on the rise. Of course they are - that’s because the ISF is doing more of the fighting. Is that true? Who knows? The important thing is that, as long as you count military casualties as civilian casualties, you’re going to be able to draw really bad conclusions. For example, I could claim that Iraqi insurgents have inflicted over 3,000 American civilian casualties, and that’s why we need to fight there - we must stop them from killing our people! Oh, did I mention they were members of the Armed Forces, and they’re over there suppressing a civil war? Why, does it matter? They’re killing thousands of our people!

Jesus.

Next, the NPR article:

The military measures stability in Iraq by looking at total attacks daily — attacks on U.S. troops, Iraqi forces and Iraqi civilians. The Pentagon says total daily attacks are now at a one-year low. But last year was the deadliest for Iraqis since the invasion, so the comparison, says retired Army Col. Paul Hughes, is somewhat misleading.

No it’s not. The point of the surge was to decrease violence. It’s lower than last year. Sounds good.

“Even with the security that’s improved in the Baghdad region,” Hughes says, “they are still not getting the electricity and the water that city’s citizens need.”

Before the war, Baghdad had round-the-clock electricity. Today, more than four years since the invasion, the city averages about six hours of electricity a day.

This, of course, does not touch on how much electricity was being received in other parts of Iraq prior to the war, nor that there was no insurgency before we invaded Iraq because Saddam had the rather interesting knack of either gassing them or by wiping out their food supply.

Then comes the gem of the NPR article:

And then there’s the issue of Anbar province. Both the White House and the Pentagon have attributed the changes in Anbar to the surge strategy. But several military advisers who worked in Iraq until late last year have said that is simply not true. MacGregor says that the increasing cooperation between U.S. forces and Sunni tribes in Anbar started more than 18 months ago, long before the “surge.”

“And they were done on the initiative of the Marines and the Navy who looked at Anbar and said, “There’s gotta be a better way to do business here,” he says.

So, things were improving before the surge? Cool!

Finally, the third article:

_Prewar nationwide: 3,958 megawatts. Hours per day (estimated): four to eight.

_Aug. 14, 2007, nationwide: 4,110 megawatts. Hours per day: 10

Remember how I asked about the power situation for the rest of Iraq? Well, does this answer that question?

WATER:

_Prewar: 12.9 million people had potable water.

_July 13, 2007: 15.4 million people have potable water.

SEWERAGE:

_Prewar: 6.2 million people served.

_July 13, 2007: 11.3 million people served.

Of course, it wouldn’t have been so bad if it weren’t for the sanctions… I mean, it’s not like it was Saddam’s fault that all of Iraq’s resources went to its capital or anything. Of course not.

*************

Okay, I’d continue dissecting this, but, frankly, MoveOn.org did a wonderful job of putting enough sources in their article to keep me from dissecting them all in a timely fashion. As it is, I’ve spent far more time on this than I should have. If someone wants to carry the torch and continue the dissection, more power to them. Either way, though, understand this:

MoveOn.org was wrong about what Petraeus had to say. It was even wrong about what its own sources had to say, at least the ones that I looked at, and picked contradictory sources to make its argument. If that isn’t proof of some “book cooking”, I don’t know what is.

Let’s start with something nice and fluffy… I’m, of course, referring to Vanessa Hudgens. Now, I just want to start by pointing out that watching the Disney Channel, even with my four-year-old son, ranks up there with watching BYU-TV as one of the cornerstones of my own personal vision of the seventh circle of hell. Watching a Disney Channel show about high school students making a musical, on the other hand, would undoubtedly transcend that, leading to a serious psychotic episode on the part of yours truly, especially since:

1. I hate musicals.
2. I hated high school and can’t stand teenagers.
3. I hate theater people. Seriously, they’re annoying.
4. Did I mention that I can’t stand the Disney Channel?

So, until Vanessa decided it’d be a good idea to expose herself in front of her boyfriend who, in turn, decided it’d be a good idea to share those pictures with 2,000,000 of his closest friends on the Internet, I didn’t even know “High School Musical” existed. In hindsight, I could’ve lived another 80 years without that knowledge and lived a much happier, more fulfilling existence, but I digress. What kills me about this incident is that, since they’re on a show targeted towards ‘tweens (has a stupider word for pre-teens and teens been created? I think not), they’re basically required to pretend they have no sex life.

Dear America: People over 18 have sex. In fact, many people under 18 have sex, too.

I understand where the problem is, don’t get me wrong. Parents get squeamish about sex in this country, and somewhat understandably so. Nobody wants to be a parent of a teenager that comes up to you and says, “Mom, Dad… uh… how do I put this… so, I had sex with this girl and I’m now a father.” The answer to this problem for a lot of people is abstinence education, which, in theory, is a great concept - if you want to stop teen pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases, don’t have sex. Sounds great. There are a few problems, though:

1. You have to start abstinence education at a very early age - if you don’t start pushing it until 14, it’s way too late. Come to think of it, this holds true for traditional sex ed, too.
2. There has to be support from the parents. If your parents are sleeping around before marriage, well, why wouldn’t you?
3. It’s very difficult to do abstinence education without pushing a religious agenda.

I want to expand on #3 here. If I came up to you and offered you two choices:

1. Don’t have sex. There’s no chance for sexually transmitted diseases or unwanted pregnancy. It will take some work, though - your body will be fighting you every step of the way.
2. Have sex but use protection. Condoms give you 97% protection against unwanted pregnancy when used correctly, and is also highly effective against HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases. If a woman uses the pill, unwanted pregnancy rates go down to less than 1% if used consistently. So, as long as you’re using the tools available properly, there’s a 1 in 20 chance that something will go wrong while you satisfy your urges.

What are you going to choose? Tell a teenager that, if they have sex with protection, they have, at most, a 5% of having something bad happen if they do everything properly, do you really think they’re going to not have sex? These are the same people that, at least when I was going to high school, saw nothing wrong with taking ordinary passenger cars on dirt roads and doing over 60 MPH. Risk assessment is not their strong suit. Denying them information about protection isn’t going to work, either - what’s going to happen then is, at some point, they’ll have a friend that has sex unprotected and nothing bad happens. Having unprotected sex doesn’t immediately give you AIDS and pregnancy 100% of the time, at least in the short term. All it takes is for a teenager to have one friend that got lucky before they’ll decide that maybe they’ll get lucky too - nothing bad happened to my friend, so why would anything bad happen to me?

So, where does religion factor in all of this?

Since teens don’t respond to risk assessment, and, if you deny them information that tells them how to responsibly do what they desperately want to do anyways, they’re just going to make up their own information, you have to come up with another way to encourage them to make the choice you want them to make. There are only two ways to pull that off:

1. Public shame. Nothing keeps a woman’s legs shut faster than telling her that all of her friends will shun her if she has sex with someone. This worked with great effect in the 1950s.
2. Make up an all-seeing deity that will send them to hell if they stray. Think “Santa Claus”, only with a backbone.

Guess where religion comes in? That’s right - you get an all-seeing deity (God) and, in the “right” circumstances, public shame for free!

Oy.

For better or worse, some teenagers are going to have sex. If you really want to do something about it, here’s all you need to do:

1. Encourage the most nerdy and anti-social behaviors you can come up with at an early age. Get them involved in Linux vs. FreeBSD threads on Slashdot as soon as possible. Take them to renaissance fairs, but make sure to cut them off at 13 so they don’t take advantage of the relatively permissive atmosphere. Get them involved in role-playing games. Buy them a WoW subscription. Give them a book on regular expressions. Buy their clothes at thrift stores. You get the idea. Nothing is guaranteed to keep a kid from having sex before their 21st birthday better than being a complete nose-picking, booger eating, Slashdot flaming nerd.
2. If #1 is completely unacceptable to you, give them enough information to have sex with relative safety. Make it clear that it’s not 100% and that, ideally, they shouldn’t do it at all, but if they really, really must, at least be halfway intelligent about it.

Wow… this post went all over the place. I apologize. I’ll try to have a coherent thought before I post in the future.

I posted a link to my blog on my Nebraska trip on my Myspace page, but didn’t link directly to it. Since I’m feeling prolific today, I’m putting a link here for convenience sake.

With that out of the way…

From Green Eyeshade:

Recently, the non-partisan publication “Congressional Quarterly” reported that the Pentagon is receiving earmarked appropriations it has not asked for.

Most of these earmarks are destined for pet projects within certain congressional districts, undoubtedly slated to meet political ends.

In fact, 67 of the House Democrats who voted in favor to cut defense spending by over 20% are the very ones who have added $485 million worth of earmarked defense appropriations for various companies located within their home districts.

I know politics isn’t terribly rational, but can we at least try for some small measure of consistency here?

So, I hit up the news wire and come across this gem:

WASHINGTON (AFP) — A B-52 bomber flew the length of the United States last week loaded with six nuclear armed cruise missiles in a major security breach, US military officials said Wednesday.

[…]

The US Air Force has relieved the munition squadron commander at Minot Air Base in North Dakota of his duties, and launched an intensive investigation into the incident, a spokesman said.

“At no time was there a threat to public safety,” said Lieutenant Colonel Ed Thomas. “It is important to note that munitions were safe, secure and under military control at all times.”

I’m going to be the snark that points out that, if they were really under control, they wouldn’t have flown the length of the country without anybody noticing until the plane landed. I suppose the truly miraculous thing is that, after 40+ years of having airborne nuclear weapons, this kind of thing hasn’t happened more often, or that there haven’t been more publicized incidents.

Ah, Labor Day… the joys of three day weekends that are just perfect for little road trips. For example, you could take a little road trip to catch a football game. Oh, if you’re confused why Ault, CO is on that route, well, it might help if you knew who Nevada’s head coach is.

If you’ve never been to a big time college football game, go to one. UNR home games are fun and interesting, don’t get me wrong. Hearing 25,000 drunk people do their best to turn the aluminum architectural albatross known as Mackay Stadium into something closely approximating the Black Hole, only minus the face makeup, is quite interesting and enjoyable. It’s not terribly family friendly, mind you, but where else can you start a “The ref beats his wife!” chant and actually have people go along with it? That said, there’s something to be said for the big time - the pageantry of the marching band, the cheerleaders working together, the fans all going along with it and getting pumped up by insane amounts of school pride… seeing it in action is a very different experience.

It doesn’t get much more different than Nebraska.

To start with, Nebraska’s Memorial Stadium is a bit bigger - about 3-4 times bigger, to be exact. That, however, is the least interesting aspect of a Nebraska football game. First off, Nebraska fans are much friendlier than your common household UNR fan. They’re gracious to visitors to a fault - before my friend and I took our seats, we were repeatedly asked if we enjoyed our trip, if we were enjoying the stadium, how we thought the game would go, whether we were enjoying Nebraska’s hospitality, and so on. This extended in just about every aspect of the game, as it turned out, except for what happened on the field.

The differences didn’t end there, though.

They opened the stands an hour and a half before the game. Immediately, fans began to fill into the stadium. An hour before the game, the stands were at least a third full. Their team took to the field for warm-ups. Immediately, the fans cheered - the acoustics proved to be quite excellent. After a little longer, they announced the starting lineups. During this time, fans continued to fill the stadium, filling the stands with red. Meanwhile, the band began to filter in with significant pomp, firing up the fans even further. Finally, with half an hour to go before the game, the stands were full, the marching band took to the field, and played the first of many Nebraska-themed marches and fight songs. What they did next, though, still amazes me.

They pointed to the visitor’s section and played our fight song.

It didn’t just end there, though. As the game passed, I realized that their visitor’s section was the first area in the stadium to receive shade. Their refreshments were priced reasonably. There was virtually no hostility pointed towards our team. Also, the fans were incredibly well educated - when their offense took the field, you could hear a pin drop. When our offense took the field, though, the fans immediately ignited into a cacophony, making it almost impossible for anyone to hear themselves think. This went on throughout the first half - by the beginning of the second half, the game was under control well enough where the Nebraska fans were content to sit, watch the game, and just take it easy. Then, finally, at the end, before our team left the field, several dozen Nebraska fans lined up to give our team a standing ovation.

After leaving the game, it didn’t take long to learn that the politeness of Nebraskan fans didn’t end at the gates of Memorial Stadium. Everyone in Lincoln was so polite, it was scary. My friend consistently remarked that he wasn’t going to be able to sleep that night, lest the pod people claim him. While walking the streets that night, a couple of incidents immediately showed us how different Lincoln and Reno were. To understand these examples, it’s important to note that my friend was wearing a costume designed to resemble a Union officer’s uniform, something which would be met with extreme confusion and derision back home. The point of the outfit was to celebrate Nevada’s history in the Civil War, which was interesting since Nevada’s only contribution to the Civil War was in giving Lincoln enough Congressional votes to keep the war going. So, with that in mind…

- After we left a local sports bar, having refreshed our whistle and our bellies, we began to walk back to my truck (yes, I was sober - just drank tea). On the way back, a group of people stopped us and asked us what was up with the uniform. Years of conditioning taught us to be on our guard, but my friend answered truthfully. Instead of being difficult, the group of people said that they found his explanation interesting, that they originally thought he was about to act in a play, and that they hoped we enjoyed the game. They then left us on our way.
- On the way to the truck, a girl screamed at us, in the top of her lungs, “Your outfit looks HOT!” Now, we both knew she was being sarcastic, but the sarcasm was NICE. In Reno, we’re quite certain we would’ve been showered with warm beer, he would’ve been called all kinds of unsavory names, and we’d probably be missing a limb or two by the time we got to our truck, which would’ve been missing two tires and the radio.

Okay, now I’m exaggerating - Reno isn’t that bad. But, it’s definitely not that nice. Nobody is anywhere near that friendly there. Most people would’ve just ignored my friend back home, figuring that he was at least as dangerous as he would’ve thought they were.

No matter how you slice it, Nebraska is a very different place from home… and, crazy as it sounds, it’s good to be home. That level of niceness and politeness is just weird.