Show Trials

I noticed on Ace, a story about the upcoming investigation into the CIA - headline: "Senate to investigate CIA's actions under Bush". I see they are not investigating the CIA's actions under Clinton, though many of the same people were doing the same things. I also suspect they are not trying to discover who in the CIA leaked sensitive and classified information to the media, thus undermining the fight against muslim terrorists.

I don't know much about the CIA, but after thirty years of simply holding a job, I know a lot about how people in organizations act. I know the lessons I have learned are scalable - the same backstabbing that gets you ahead at McDonald's, gets you ahead at Microsoft, gets you ahead in politics, gets you ahead at the CIA. The difference is simply one of degree.

I know the CIA may always have been, but is certainly now, a political organization - the Church Committee used the crisis of confidence of the 1970's to give politicians in congress more control over intelligence operations. Whether done to make the CIA more accountable to oversight, or to carve out for the legislative branch a slice of power heretofore held by the executive, is irrelevant - the results speak for themselves, the CIA is both player and pawn in the Washington tug of war.

For the last eight years, some in the CIA were brave whistleblowers, exposing the excesses of the evil Bush administration, or they were sleazy double dealers selling their country down the river to curry favor with the leftist establishment - toe-may-to, toe-mah-to. For the last eight years, some in the CIA were dedicated civil servants doing their best under difficult circumstances to protect the nation from those who wanted to do it harm, or they were unquestioning fascist drones mindlessly following the orders of the sinister syndicate who controlled the White House - poe-tay-to, poe-tah-to.

The past doesn't matter, because what is being shilled as an investigation into the abuses of the neocon cabal, is really of course, a purge - the house, senate, and president want to make sure what was done to Bush is not done to them, so anyone who seems to harbor too much loyalty to the previous regime has to go.

There are a couple of things I know from watching innumerable city council, planning commission, and architectural review board show trials ... er, meetings: first, the issues are already decided before the show starts, and second, the first ones in the dock are the erstwhile allies of the new boss - every new boss with a modicum of sense disposes of old friends before going after new enemies. This does not bode well for last year's whistleblowers who are now looking to the new powers-that-be for rewards for services rendered. Any Joe Wilsons or Valerie Plames still working at the CIA should take note.

And finally, just to kill any optimism anyone might have - consider the implications of this snippet from the article:

The inquiry, which could take a year or more to complete, means the CIA will once again be the target of intense congressional scrutiny at a time when it is engaged in two wars and its ongoing pursuit of Al Qaeda.

That's certain to end well. Machiavelli put it best:

Severities should be dealt out all at once, so that their suddenness may give less offense; benefits ought to be handed ought drop by drop, so that they may be relished the more.

Translation: if you are going to have a purge, do it quickly, completely, and if possible, in one night - if you drag it out for a year, expecting your target to wait passively for the ax to fall, you are a fool, or a member of the senate intelligence committee.

On this day in history

The trick to life is knowing when to take the long view, and when to concentrate on the short term. Driving in heavy traffic is a short term project - what is miles ahead or behind is of less importance than the car ten feet in front of you.

Over the last week, I found myself locking ever tighter into the short term, watching this day's action in the legislature, or the hourly update on various news sources, my scope of attention growing ever narrower.

It is, I think, a symptom of the instant communication which is available to us, and is unavoidable. That is not to say it should not be recognized and resisted.

That is why I took great comfort in this news I came across after an internet wander I would detail, but that I can't remember.

The Pope is preparing to offer the Traditonal Anglican Communion, a group of half a million dissident Anglicans, its own personal prelature by Rome, according to reports this morning.

"History may be in the making", reports The Record. "It appears Rome is on the brink of welcoming close to half a million members of the Traditional Anglican Communion into membership of the Roman Catholic Church. Such a move would be the most historic development in Anglican-Catholic relations in the last 500 years.

I am not very religious, and the comfort I derive from this news does not have its source in my feelings about the church. Indeed, many people would read this article and dismiss it as trivial compared to the monumental events of the day.

They would be wrong.

Like the white noise remnants of the formation of the universe we can hear in this story, if we care to listen in the right way, the echoes of passions, and events unleashed half a millennia ago and a half a world away. Events which have not been played out completely even yet.

Trivial? Not by any measure. To study history, is to follow the tracks of the human spirit back across the sands of time and to take comfort in the continuity of human affairs.

One wonders how the acts of our preening politicians, who flatter themselves that they are making history, will resonate as loudly as the hammer taps of a skeptical German monk.

DeMint

It's an odd thing about politics - a hundred million voters, each one convinced the fate of the republic depends on their choice at the polls. I guess this is what Plato's noble lies were all about.

Funny thing, I'm a registered democrat - only for this year's primary though. I did it so I could vote for Hillary to keep the lefty bloodletting going since McCain was already the republican nominee and it didn't matter on that score. (and no, I'm not a Rushbot - I decided on my own to do it - mostly as a lark)

In truth, I've been a republican since I was old enough to vote (for Reagan in 1980). I grew up in a political family of old school, union democrats. How I ended up as the lone rightwinger, I'll never know. But after reading this from Politico about how the party's leadership is treating a guy who is trying to come up with a winnning strategy, I think it may be time to admit the Reagan revolution began and ended with its namesake.

They say generals are always fighting the last war, but usually this refers to complacent, winning generals. The losers have incentives to think outside the box, and innovate so as to win the next war. But for some reason, the party that's had its ass handed to it in the last two elections seems to feel doing the same things over and over again will eventually work. (Note to republican bigwigs: see Haig, Douglas).

I don't really know that much about Jim DeMint, but if he is really trying to reform things and the atricle is correct in noting:

...Senate Republicans doubt his fiery tactics can lead their party out of the political wilderness when the public is seeking an end to legislative gridlock.

They should understand clearly that legislative gridlock is their duty, and bi-partisanship really means they're just helping to hold us down while the democrats go through our wallets.

Yes, trying to stop the sinking of the country when so many seem to want it sunk, will get you scapegoated as an obstructionist; it might even cost you your seat. But going along to get along won't work either, and if you are going down, it might as well be fighting.

Why Can't We All Just Get Along

Here's Adam Brodsky of the New York Post thinking he is making a point. The times are bleak, he tells us, and we must listen to the better angels of our nature because unity is our only hope.

Horsecrap.

The times are indeed perilous, and our only hope is to fight like mad to keep our new president and his cohorts from wrecking the country even more. It's going to be an uphill battle, and today at least, things don't look so bright.

Brodsky does edge into a truth - sideways and blind squirrel like, when he says:

Republicans, in particular, will have to resist temptations for revenge, after Democrats savaged George Bush - and by extension, his party.

I agree with him here, but not for the reason he gives:

Because hope and support can be self-fulfilling - much as gloom, despair and disaster can be. And at the moment, so much is at stake.

We have to refrain from slanderous, bad-faith attacks on Obama, because those things only work for the left, not us.

The same guy who spouts spittle-flecked accusations about George Bush, and the Masons, Skull and Bones, or Enron, rolls his eyes if asked about William Ayres or Jeremiah Wright. Point out the creepy cult of personality vibe of Obama's little blue book, (I hope it's a hoax, but it doesn't seem to be) and the adoration shown to a guy who is, in the end, just a politician, and be met with the same look my cat gives me when I start explaining calculus.

Lies, therefore, will not work - we do not have ABC, NBC, CBS, NPR, CNN, the Washington Post, New York Times, Hollywood, and just about every public school, university, and probably pre-kindergarden to boost our message along on its way. We do not have the institutions necessary to make lies seem like the truth. All we have is the truth - it might work, if repeated enough, shouted enough, whispered and screamed enough.

So, Brodsky is right, again for the wrong reasons - to fall back on the tactics of the deranged left is to fall into despair - the belief that the house is better burned to the ground than run by someone other than us.

But as far as his belief in the efficacy of hopey change, a little anecdote is in order.

In October 1864, there was a battle at a place called Cedar Creek in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. At first, the Confederates drove the Union from the field, but then Phil Sheridan, the Union commander, led a counterattack to save the day. During the fight, Sheridan, who was one of the most inspiring of battlefield leaders, came across a young bluecoat bleeding on the ground. "What's wrong with you?" asked the general.

"I'm shot through and dying," replied the trooper.

"Nonsense, you ain't hurt a bit. Now get up and charge," was the reply.

With that, the young soldier rose to his feet and ran forward.

Only to collapse and die a few steps later.

The lesson here is fine speeches, and piles of glorious good feeling only get you so far. Someone who is bleeding out needs real help of the right kind, or all the good feeling in the world will accomplish nothing.

Thoughts

I am a bad gunnie. I admit it… lived in Ohio all these years and yesterday was the first time to Camp Perry. We had a blast, and will definitely be back.

On the trip out, I saw one of those things that sends the wheels spinning.

We were driving west through the farms and fields of Erie and Ottawa Counties, when a car passed us – not surprising, I drive by setting the cruise control at the speed limit and staying in the right hand lane. On the back was a sticker with the word “CO-EXIST” formed out of letters shaped from the symbols of the world’s religions.

My first reaction was irritation, but I stopped to think about why it was irritating – and a few things came to mind:

First of course was the incredible shallowness of it. Humans have been struggling with the existence of evil for as long as we have been on the planet. Plato, Augustine, and Hannah Ardent all confronted it. Their answers differed on the source of evil – conflict among the gods mirrored on earth, or original sin, but they all agree people are often vicious animals, and that will never change. I don’t think they are sitting in philosopher heaven slapping their foreheads and saying, “Coexist, why didn’t we think of that!”

Next, the sheer, stumbling, childishness it shows– there are places in the world where simply having that bumper sticker on your car is cause to be dragged down the street by your heels and stoned to death – legally. Those are the people who need to hear your message, not me, but I don’t see that you have any plan for getting the message to them.

Finally, the arrogant presumption of it. Friend, you’re preaching to the choir; you live in a place where coexistence is a way of life. In fact it’s enshrined in our founding documents. But here’s the ugly little secret… do you know how we got to this place? We got here by killing the ones who didn’t want to coexist with us. The freedom you enjoy to drive on down the highway with your opinion displayed on your bumper was paid for in blood – the blood of soldiers who surely would have rather been anywhere else than Yorktown, Fredericksburg, or Baghdad, but also the blood of innocents in places like Dresden, and Hiroshima – where children who died screaming as fire rained down from the sky.

There is nothing you can do to alter the fact that your liberty is a bloodstained thing. And there is nothing you can do to alter the fact keeping it will require more blood be spilled.

What you can do is live in such a way as to redeem that blood. Think long and deep about your life and freedom, learn what it really costs, and realize though that may be high, the cost of regaining it once lost would be astronomical.

Finally accept that the freedom you pass on to your children, though it won’t be pure, can be less bloody, but a bumper sticker slogan won’t help.

Wheel of Fortune

We were coming back from the Indianapolis blogfest and all night car wash, and since driving I-71 north from Columbus is mostly “hit cruise control and settle in behind a truck” driving, I had some time to chew over some of the conversation.

Specifically, I was thinking about some of the things James Rummel was telling me about his experiences helping people who have been brutally victimized by some of society’s worst predators. It’s humbling when you meet someone who does good things and refuses to despair over the wickedness he sees every day. Me, I tend to fall into moping if my shoelace breaks.

But talking to James was enlightening, and it helped me gain a deeper realization of something I knew intellectually, but never seriously internalized – I am incredibly lucky. I exist in the middle of the American middle class – the graviest of the gravy trains in the history of the planet. Hell, if I had a blindfold, a million darts, and a map of the world, nine-hundred-thousand throws would land me in a place worse off than here and now, and a lot of those would be traumatically worse.

Coming out of my reverie, I look up to check the rear view mirror and I can see someone driving shiny new Audi and working up to pass me. Nope, the left hand lane traffic is too fast, they’re going to have to wait, and I can see the black car shudder as the driver’s impatience gets transmitted through the steering wheel. Sorry friend, I’m not going to move up and crowd a tractor trailer just so you can get your autobahn on – you can wait.

The Audi driver found a solution – pass on the right, eighty miles an hour past me and my eighteen-wheeled friend in heavy traffic and the devil take the hindmost.

I glanced over to see the car and driver – blond, young, pretty, Maryland plates (what she’s doing in flyover county, I don’t know), and to top it all off a matched pair of “Obama!” signs in the rear window, all heading to the glitzmall just outside of Columbus.

Which brings me to the title of today’s post, wheel of fortune, not the game show, the original thing.

Our medieval forbears had had no microscopes, telescopes, or scientific apparatus with which to view their world. Their means of putting order to reality consisted of their senses and some well-developed metaphors.

We like to flatter ourselves for our sophistication, and tend to think of the people of previous centuries as dim-witted step children to the greatness which is us. But we came from them, and much of their thought lives on in us unchanged and the wheel of fortune is a powerful representative of that.

What goes up must come down, here today, gone tomorrow, and what goes around comes around. The world works that way, they knew it a thousand years ago, and in our cells we know it today.

So what is going in the mind of my “too cute to care, too blond to die” roadmate, that makes her believe the change part of “Hope and Change” is going to benefit her? What possible adjustment in her cushy upper berth of life is going to make it better? When luck and genes have put you in a place where your biggest worry is missing the exit to the mall, would you roll the dice to see if something better will come along? Does she not know she is at the top of the wheel with nowhere to go but down?

After Mr. Rummel gave just a small glimpse of just how bad some people can be, I shook my head an said, “Sometimes I just don’t understand my species.”

Now more than ever.

Schadenfreude

What has happened to the Humanities in the United States is nothing short of criminal. The barbarians were invited in and given teaching positions, and no one seemed to think it was a bad idea except the students who stayed away in droves.

Ah comeuppance... This from Classical Values ... follow the links and read it all.

If you tell students re-runs of Gilligan's Island are of the same value as Keats, don't be surprised when they skip your class and go for computer engineering instead.

Differences

I was thinking about the political labels we all seem to end up with, and was trying to decide what makes a liberal different from a conservative. One way is in the opinion department. Conservatives have opinions - some of them pretty half-baked, and liberals have opinions - some of them even based on a kind of critical thought, but the difference is that conservatives realize they may be wrong so are at least a little careful with their opinions, while liberals have no such restraint and will use government power to make you believe what they believe.

Econ 101

I've been pretty busy lately, but in my spare time I've begun to read "Free to Choose" the brilliant work by Milton and Rose Friedman. While less directly about economics than philosophy it is still a stunning work.

Big dork that I am, I have to take it in small sections because every couple of pages or so, I run across things which rock me so hard I have to spend the rest of the night thinking about the implications.

It also fills me with profound sadness - especially the sections on social security and education. If there was a way to take the entire country by the lapels, shake it and say, "Here! Read this, and next time you think you're getting something for nothing, read this again."

Friedman was right almost thirty years ago and has been given lip service since then, but no one who matters (read: the people who keep returning pandering, self-serving politicians to office) really pays attention.

Put it this way, imagine you are sitting in a burned out basement in Berlin in 1945 and you come across a book written in 1915 which accurately predicted world events and laid out a plan to avoid the disaster, but had languished unread because no one wanted to believe.

Yeah, its like that.

A Fisk On Both Your Houses

By now everyone who matters in the gunblogger community has read this as noted by Uncle.
Falling into the troll trap set by an obvious psychopath like Mr.Schannon is weak of me, but since I'm tucked away here in the backwaters of the blogosphere, and this is mostly a writing exercise I'll take up the challenge.

Oh yes, psychopath, he really believes his stuff. Dictators of old (and not so old) had a trick: they would attack someone, and then when their victim defended himself they would cast them in the role of the aggressor and claim to be in the right. Everyone knew their claims were a fig leaf to cover their viciousness - they were lying, everyone knew it, but as long as appearances were kept up, things could go along as usual. Schannon's not kidding. He really thinks he's offering a compromise, and is by now probably shaking his head with regret at the stubbornness of us gunnies.

Mister "reasoned approach" sees gun owners as falling into two groups.

hunters all dressed up in their "out-to-kill" finery, oiling stocks and cutting cross-hatches into their bullet points...

and these are the semi-okay ones who will maybe be allowed to keep some guns. The ones who own anything but hunting weapons are the crazies who need disarmed.

Oh yeah, I'm feeling the love and respect just wash over me.

It seems however, he's failed to characterize the folks at the Brady Campaign, and Violence Policy Center. How about I cover for ya, pal... "Wasp-waisted sissies all dressed up in clingy rayon with hearts, eyelashes, and wrists all aflutter at the mention of the word gun." There ya go princess, feel free to use it next time you're feeling all "reasonable".

The second amendment he decides is a

veritable smorgasbord of words that can be construed to arrive at any conclusion one wants. What the hell does it mean?

and he doesn't see how, if someone of his titanic intellect can't make heads or tails of it, anyone could. Guess all those constitutional law profs are just treading water, eh?

By my count, its twenty seven mostly one and two syllable words, three commas, and two clauses. One premise, one conclusion - us knuckle draggers with the cross-hatched bullets must not have the subtlety of mind necessary to squeeze ambiguity out of a thing like that.

I'm glad he's not a lawyer... letting a judge in on his "humble opinions" would have his clients strapped to a gurney for parking tickets..

He continues by asking...

So, how does one rationally address this issue? (Pardon me while I fall off my chair laughing.)

No, pardon me while I fall off my chair laughing at what you consider rationality.

But as he says, he's not an unreasonable guy; he's a meet you in the middle type...

But I wouldn't let my personal distaste for those chickens (like there's real danger in going after deer) interfere with my desire to strike a compromise with the pro-gunners that guarantees their right to rifles and shotguns.

You got that, all you chickens? - no pistols, nothing semi-automatic, no scary looking stuff mind you, and if you get uppity,mister
cowardly-animal-slaughterer, "old reasonable" will have to step on some necks. Call me a cynic, but if the guy's got that low of an opinion of hunters, I don't see them having a lot of future after the rest of us are disarmed.

There's a few wrinkles to work out on the road to paradise...

Of course, we have to address the automatic vs. semi-automatic issue as well as the increasing number of guns that resemble Rambo's favorite wartime toys, but once we're engaged in good faith efforts, one can hope that we can isolate the extremists on both sides. I can't believe that every pro-gunner wants an Uzi... or at least I hope not.

Well now, what could be fairer than that? You don't really want an Uzi, do you? What are you some kind of extremist?

All it takes is a little love, a little trust, realizing the other guy isn't a murderous, festering, drooling, gun-owning, retard (much). After all Mark Schannon has...

engineered this process between chemical plants and the communities in which they operate, and it takes a long, long time, as well as people who truly want a reasonable, workable solution.

Holy crap, I'd like to know where those communities are and how much green glowing goo is bubbling up through the basement floors of people who trusted "Old Reasonable".

Propellers on jets

I came across this at Ace of Spades HQ this morning. It seems kind of an off-hand weekend post about a humongous house and includes one of Mr. "Of Spade's" stalwarts commenting on a quote from a sociology professor.

The AOS people are a worldly bunch and reading some professor's standard liberal blah-blah about conspicuous consumption probably doesn't cause the outrage-o-meter to even twitch over there. In my little patch of nowhere, this sort of thing from someone whose pay comes from my tax dollars and who should know better causes much eye-twitching.

This from a September 1st AP story:

"Do you actually need to have that amount of space to live a good life?" said Susan A. Eisenhandler, a sociology professor at the University of Connecticut. "There are homeless people. There are impoverished people. There are serious social concerns, and we're not addressing that."

As one whose livelihood is tied to the construction industry, I would like to take this opportunity to note that Susan A. Eisenhandler is an idiot of the first water.

Sue, (you don't mind if I call you Sue... good) back in the World War II days, Bell Aviation was working on developing a jet airplane. In order to confuse potential spies, they built a fake propeller to attach to the thing when not in actual use - the theory being that enemy spies would see the big spinny thing on the front and conclude that this was just another piston engined airplane. The point is, they didn't actually try to fly the airplane with the propeller on.

That propeller is you Sue: functionless, completely for show, and actually dangerous when employed.

When whatever gazillionaire built the monstrous house, he employed architects, engineers, bricklayers, ditch diggers, and a drooling half-wit with a push broom to clean up after everyone went home for the night. Those people give to charities or at least pay taxes, and every one of them has a skill for which someone is willing to pay them for the practice thereof.

In short Sue, the building of the rich man's house provided more real, measurable benefits than all the sociology professors of all the universities in the whole wide county.

Here's a little test for you Sue, quit your taxpayer funded job and go free lance. That's right, hang out your shingle as a sociologist for hire. Drop us a line once in a while so we can know how its all turning out. Worse comes to worst, you can always try to wrestle the guy's broom away from him.

Frankly, my money's on the drooling half-wit.

Opening Day

Hello... hello... is this thing on? This is mine own message in a bottle and if anyone is reading, allow me to thank you in advance.

Special thanks also go out to the Trophy Wife (hereinafter T.W.) for setting this thing up for me and encouraging me to actually write down and post my thoughts instead of just pestering her with them.

I suppose if you are reading this you may be interested in the one who put the scrap of paper in the bottle as it were:

The divine Miss Dickinson pretty much nails it.

I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us -- don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know.

This nobody has opinions however, and as supreme power in Mike-istan, I intend to share them (or at least write them). The whole Mike-istan thing is admittedly a conceit, but I think it points to an important issue - we are all master of our own minds; we all own ourselves. I am not the originator of this idea; it is standard libertarian fare, and very profound when you think about it.

If someone kicked open your door and tried to take your stuff, regardless of whether or not you were in a position to stop them, you would be hurt, angry, enraged and offended. Every day people are trying to do just that with your mind: commercials, solicitors, and ads are one way it is done, but add to that politicians and special interest groups who want to use the power of the government to make you drive, eat, and think what they want.

Maybe it is just me, but as my own nobody, I become very angry when some a**hole decides he knows what is better for me than me. But what really frosts me is when he doesn't have the decency to try and sell me on the prescription, but goes right to the legislature to have it enacted as a statute. I believe the term for this is skull-f***ed without the courtesy of a reach-around.

Well... just let them try - my mind is stocked with many sharp, pointy objects and stands ready to lacerate the... uhm, er, aaah, okay we're heading into the darker reaches of metaphor land here, and I've got to go out and buy ammo, so I think I'll pick this up later after... after the meds kick in.


Farewell and God Bless