In Theory, there is no Practice.

Careful, this site is likely to bring up strong emotions. It contains some of the images that the mainstream media has embargoed.
Remember the Blood of Heroes…

OpinionJournal – Best of the Web Today

“‘Bush Is Like Saddam Hussein’
The Phoenixville (Pa.) News reports that at an event sponsored by the Phoenixville Democratic Committee, Michael Berg, father of terrorism victim Nick Berg, made the case for John Kerry:
‘I challenge anyone deep in your hearts to realize that Kerry isn’t like Bush,’ said Berg. ‘Bush is like Saddam Hussein. Bush condones rape and murder, and does it with a wink of an eye. Bush says he does it in the name of economic policy.
‘John Kerry decried rape, murder and genocide while he was in Vietnam. If you think John Kerry will end this war too soon, I say ‘too soon for what?’ It’ll save our sons and daughters.
‘I can’t afford a third party vote. This time, there is only one issue, justice in foreign policy. Vote for John Kerry–I’m going to.’
Kerry’s supporters are beginning to make Howard Dean seem sane by comparison. 

GREEEAAAT! I just moved to Phoenixville last month.

Now I HAVE to get a Rotty to guard the house now, since someone has let a horrible, tragedy break his tenuous grip on reality.

In all seriousness, I do feel sorry for him, as losing a child in that manner cannot be comprehended. But this is painful to read.

The Corner on National Review Online:

“THE RATHER STATEMENT [Jonah Goldberg]
Yes, they said the necessary things — barely. But it sound like it was pulled out of Rather like an impacted tooth. The question is will they do the necessary things? “ 

With all due respect, Jonah, they did NOT.
They did not identify the source.
They did not retract the story.
They did not explain how they disregarded their own experts.
They did not explain why they ignored the Lt Col’s wife and Son.
They lied so shamelessly it takes the breath away:

It was an error that was made, however, in good faith and in the spirit of trying to carry on a CBS News tradition of investigative reporting without fear or favoritism. 

Emphasis mine.
Bottom line, they believed the story was true because they wanted to.

I was reading the Scott Adam’s introduction to Don’t Step in the Leadership (Dilbert Book #13).

Here’s what he said:

Everyone says there’s a lack of leadership in the world these days. I think we should be thankful, because the only reason for leadership is to convince people to do things that are either dangerous (like invading another country) or stupid (working extra hard without extra pay).

Obviously you don’t need any leadership to lead you to, for example, eat a warm cookie. But you need a lot of leadership to convince you to march through desert and shoot strangers. Generally speaking, whenever there is leadership, there is lots of hollering and very few warm cookies.

Ah, the new John Kerry Slogan everyone is looking for: “More Warm Cookies, Less Leadership!”

Oh, and BTW, this was from 1999. Spooky.

Mark Steyn is almost always a must read. This is no execption.

(First noted @ Captain’s Quarters, also @ Little Green Footballs)

Bah. What are these people (the Democrats) doing? If they win and Howard wins, they have hurt their position with the Aussies, and if they lose and Howard loses, they have hurt out position with the Aussies.

But how can they win? If Howard loses? But that is a defeat for the WoT. And that isn’t good, period.

These people just cannot be trusted.

IMAO: Proof of a Kerry Connection with the Forged Documents

Ahh, that explains everything!!!!

Mystery Solved.

Nothing more to see. Shows over. Move along folks.

Hmm, wonder how many “Caption Contests” will there be for this one…

I emailed the following to Orin Kerr (the only changes are I spell checked this version…no wonder he didn’t reply):

Mr. Kerr,

Thanks for the response and the consideration of what I sent you.

And I saw your new post. Okay, I understand your point.

I am still not sure how we can have a debate if the candidates are not engaged. Question a John Kerry vote, and rather than a real answer, we get “I have explained this many times. I cannot make state my position on any more clearly than I already have.” or “I served in Viet Nam, how DARE you question my patriotism”. Or try to examine George Bush’s inability to admit mistakes [aside: I *kind of* empathize with this, as the news organizations apparently are so desperate for GWB failings, they'll make them up. But it is still wrong. It is the inability of Rather and GWB to admit mistakes that is so infuriating, rather than this initial mistake. It also makes me question whether they have the maturity to learn or the wisdom to see the truth]

We can have a debate by proxy, but how real is that? I mean, that is what we are having now with Michael Moore, SBVT, MoveOn.org, the conventions, and so on.

But here is an issue: except for the aforementioned large news source, most people can only pursue 1-3 or so topics in a detailed manner (not talking about repackaging, ala Drudge or Instapundit, but in depth analysis). Some like the Belmont Club do great, great analysis of Iraq. Others, like the professional NRO do try to bring in world, national and other events, but occasionally is overwhelmed by current events.

Remember, however, the VC is a much larger organization than what, 99% of the the blogs? Each of the conspirators usually has very few concurrent open threads, and y’all only have a diverse topic base because the individual conspirators follow what they are interested in / what they know best. Even then, most threads there are quite narrowly focused compared to what, say, the NY Times pursues on a day to day basis.

The Blogosphere (however that is defined) is a self organizing community. What individuals choose to pursue cannot be controlled. It is somewhat free market / free for all. The topics that do get pursued are the ones the have the most ‘value’ to the pursuers. Wishing that were otherwise is like wishing people wouldn’t eat so much Fast Food even though people know is ‘bad’ for them.

Hey, I need to go to lunch!

Next Week:

Scenes from the Newsroom (NOTE: I updated this comic, here is the Original):

That’s all folks. Not gonna post anymore comics. Thanks for stopping by!

If you can read this I still have some bandwidth left. Don’t expect it to last.

Enjoy what you see, sorry there isn’t more atm, but life has been good: new house, wife is expecting our first. And so I have been smelling the roses, instead of wailing about the world.

But this rather thing is just too fun.

This one seems remarkably timeless given that is was originally published circa 1984…

This has gone beyond CBS getting duped, and has entered the active and willing participant.

Q: Can CBS/Dan Rather be that stupid?
A: Hmmm…If it weren’t for Watergate, I’d say no-one every went broke underestimating the stupidity of the partisan media. As I see it, CBS/Rather, like John Kerry, overestimated the strength of their reputation/authority. They thought they could just say, “I’m right. The charges are made by partisan no-bodies.” aka the “Argument By Authority” (see Instapundit’s Analysis).

Okay, let me try to tie these together by going through a different tact. The “Gold Standard” for scientific papers is a Peer Reviewed paper. What does Peer Review Mean?

Peer review subjects an author’s work or ideas to the scrutiny of one or more others who are experts in the field. These referees each return an evaluation of the work, including suggestions for improvement, to an editor or other intermediary (typically, most of the referees’ comments are eventually seen by the author as well). Evaluations usually include an explicit recommendation of what to do with the manuscript or proposal, often chosen from a menu provided by the journal or funding agency. Most recommendations are along the lines of the following:

• to unconditionally accept the manuscript or proposal,
• to accept it in the event that its authors improve it in certain ways,
• to reject it, but encourage revision and invite resubmission,
• to reject it outright.

Okay, so with respect to Ra^therGate and Kerry’s Vietnam Quagmire, a peer review (presumably) occurred in private, but clearly, they either decided “to unconditionally accept the manuscript or proposal” or “to accept it in the event that its authors improve it in certain ways”. And they may have thought they had made the necessary adjustments. But after the the release of the documents / the nomination of the candidate, another review occurred.

There are some stark differences between this review and the original review. The most obvious, this was public. People not involved in the review could see the objections / questions that experts though should be addressed. Further, there were quite a few more experts checking things out than is typical in an closed setting. And these experts ranged from eye witnesses to museums to technology gurus to actual forgers.

Now, here is a how both CBS/Rather and Kerry responded similarly poorly: the questions the public review raised were initially dismissed by CBS/Rather and Kerry. Why? Quite simply because they do not believe the Bloggers are their peers. They have mistaken their privileged position with authority. From the Pajama crack to Kerry’s DYKWIA attitude, they simply think we are beneath them.

“Knowledge is power” may be a pithy saying with some kernel of truth, but “Knowledge is Authority” seems more true. And now that the network news departments can no longer act as Information Firewalls with Packet Filtering, the authority is free to spread and assemble as people’s curiosity and desires lead them.

I think the key point is that being frugal is not the same as being cheap.

Glenn, obliquely I think, states that here:

And, in fact, that’s what I was really buying at the shoe store: Goods and services bundled together. At places like Target, they’re unbundled — you get goods, but not much in the way of service. I bought the shoes at an old-fashioned shoe store, and in the process I paid extra for the service, and I got my money’s worth.

Emphasis mine.

Okay, not so obliquely.

Anyway, I think people are beginning to remember that the tradeoff between PRICE and BENEFIT can be approached from more than one direction. If you look at COST as the ratio of PRICE and BENEFIT (not a rigorous economic argument of course), then you can reduce the cost in many ways. The obvious:
1) Given the same benefit, the lower priced option is better.
2) Given the same price, the higher benefit option is better.

However, it is certainly possible to get more benefits for a higher price, and this is a bit of the gray area where good shoppers have an advantage.

From my personal experience, I used to buy (well, usually still do) all my shirts off the deep discount rack at department stores. Usually at the end of a season, I could get 5-10 shirts for $100 that I wouldn’t be embarrassed to wear at work. Earlier this year, I splurged on some Brooks Brothers shirts. The salesperson helped me with measurements, and I bought 3 shirts for $125. And they are worth every penny to me: they fit better than any shirts I have ever owned.

Now part of the fit was due to BB having more sizes (sleeve lengths at every inch) than say Polo at Macy’s. But, part of that is clearly due to the help of the salesperson getting accurate measurements.

Now if only BB would have $9.95 shirts at the end of every season…

Sharing my peculiar insights “approximately whenever I feel like it” (to stea^H^H^H^H borrow a quote from Scott Adams)

Well, I was wondering where everyone was getting these nice looking blogs. Now I know: the templates at http://www.blogger.com have been updated. Nice.

Makes me want to start updating this blog again.

Not that anyone really cares…hehe

FP: Some of our European allies stooped to a pretty low level in the Iraq war. The French are quite a case study. What is their problem? Has anti-Americanism become so pathological there now that they think Saddam is Mother Theresa? It’s like George Bernard Shaw prostrating himself before Stalin. Give us your perspective.

Hanson: Funny, isn’t it? Europe is to New York and Boston like the latter are in turn to Boise and Bakersfield–affluent, elite, culturally aristocratic, and largely ignorant that the rest of the world does not operate on the premises of The Hague or Geneva. But why this European hobbits-in-the-Shire fantasy?

I am listening to the Fellowship of the Ring on CD atm, and the whole idea of the Rangers (Dunedain) invisibly guarding the Shire seems very appropriate. The Anglosphere is acting as the last vestiges of the men of Westernesse, while Europe is either unaware (The Shire), trecherous (Isengard) or de-moralized (Denethor of Gondor), or only now awaking from a spellbound stupor (Rohan).

I must be careful to not overextend the anology, but I submit the Suadia Arabia (I am greatly resisting the temptation to use F***ce as here, despite the new revelations about their conduct with Saddam before the war wrt oil contracts) is playing the role of Isengard, Spain (and their recent elections) represent the dismay of Denethor, Great Britain is quite rightly the Rohan (as I believe Tolkien consciously based them on Old English culture and history), and most of the rest are like the Hobbits of the Shire, who think everything is fine, and that outsiders are queer and not to be trusted.

Let us pray, that like the hobbits, there is an unseen strength and valor beneath the surface that may still come out. The current events are not encouraging in this respect

Calif. Supreme Court Orders Halt to Gay Marriages and Gay Marriage Ban Wins Preliminary OK in Mass.

This clearly doesn’t solve the problem, nor is the Massachussetts issue remotely likely to impact its runaway Supreme Court, but it is nice that the lawlessness is starting to get reigned in.

I really wish there were an easy solution to the problem, but with our courts and hyper-liberal media, there doesn’t seem to be anyway to come to a compromise. As much as I disagree with the homosexual lifestyle, I don’t believe we can ‘Think them into the corn field’. Given our political system, and the increasingly secular society (driven by anti-religion crusaders), it seems quite improbably that a Christian solution will emerge. It will be sinful and flawed, because it does not follow our Lord’s will.

It seems that we will have to continue praying in faith, witnessing in faith, and living in faith. Of course, that is with or without gay marriage. I am just trying to find the proper personal response to the whole problem.

The bad news: Terror Blasts Kill at Least 192 in Spain

My heart aches for the Spaniards that were killed or hurt in this attack. It should stop surprising my how dumb the terrorists are. They are clever, but dumb. They can figure out fiendish ways to inflict death and destruction, but they have no idea how to bring a free people over to their side. The more they try to hurt people, the more people will resist their message. Morons.

 From Jay Nordlnger’s NRO Column (emphasis mine)

Another questioner alleges that Britain et al. are “cooking the books” in Iraq � placing their thumbs heavily on any electoral scale. Straw himself describes this as a charge of “a stitch-up job,” then knocks it down, in no uncertain terms. He again avows his special love of democracy: “I have been democratically elected to public office. Who else in this room can say the same? Let me see hands, please. One? Fine. But I don’t care to take lectures on democracy and democratic legitimacy. Elective office in a democracy has been my life.” What’s more, “‘legitimacy’ is an easy word to mouth, but those who question our methods in Iraq should be asked, ‘What would you do that would be an improvement on what we’re doing?’”

That is a question that tends to shut mouths.