Apparently, We Can’t…

All just get along.

Michelle Malkin has been getting vilified, threatened and abused by some people on the left. So has her family.

Let's make this very, very clear. People who are doing this are assholes and do not deserve any respect.

Yesterday, someone (sorry, I did not link it, so I do not know who it was) on the left side of the blogosphere put up a post saying they want a "no death threat" litmus test.

Where do you stand on this treatment of Malkin? Still sanctimonious?

I'm on the record as saying she did nothing wrong by posting a publicly available press release these SAW people posted on their website. I stand by that. SHE DID NOTHING WRONG. Are you going to come after me now? Please do.  (Word of advice. Bring friends. More than 30.)

I stand with Jeff Goldstein on this one,

So.  I am now calling for the very public condemnation and ostracizing of those who would post satellite photos and personal home phone numbers of a their political opponents on the web.  I am also calling for the public condemnation and ostracizing of those hyperpartisan bloggers / media figures who condone or applaud such actions.

These people crossed a line. Will the left condemn it? I suggest it would be a good idea, and soon. More than that, I want every single blogger to stand together on this one. This is beyond the pale, and if you do not know that, you should not be allowed in civil company. And I will say the exact same thing for any right-wing person pulling this crap. Period.

Gaius

Trial By Media

There's quite a lot about the Duke Lacrosse team story that is bothering me. I have a lot of doubts about everything that has been happening. This whole story has been a media driven frenzy from start to - not finish, but to this point. First the allegations, then the protests and marches. Then the DA - trying hard to win an election finally investigating. Then the DNA evidence that indicates the accused didn't do it. Then the prosecutor securing sealed indictments. Then the media frenzy to get the perp walk on tape.

Now the leaking to the press of evidence that supposedly exonerates one of the young men arrested. Then an absolutely astonishing admission in the linked report:

Though he was indicted, Seligmann is presumed innocent until a jury says otherwise. No one knows what evidence District Attorney Mike Nifong will bring as he looks to convict Seligmann and Finnerty. If that conviction occurs, the two young men face mandatory jail time. Whether the evidence above will clear their names — in either a court of law or in the court of public opinion — will become clear in the weeks and months to come. (Emphasis added)

And really, there it becomes clear. The media as judge, jury and ultimately, executioner. They are controlling this story and dictating what gets told when to whom. The term "court of public opinion" is a fancy way of  of saying "the court of media opinion". They will decide how to shape and mold the story. They will ultimately decide who's right or wrong. Whether or not it's good for the people involved, or the justice system, they will decide. Oh, the lawyers are playing the media, certainly. But the media is playing all of us, too.

Think about that.

This Just In!

Americans not dying in record numbers! Today the National Center for Health Statistics released preliminary numbers that indicate that annual deaths dropped by more than 50,000 in 2004, the largest decline in nearly 70 years. The report is based on 90% of all reported deaths and is consistent across the country, so the final report is not likely to change much. That's a 2% drop.

So, let's review. We have dire warnings that Americans are too fat and will die from it. We have strident warnings that the health care system is breaking down and we'll die from it. We have people in screaming hysterics over the aging baby-boomers stressing the system and we'll all die from it. We have advocates frothing at the mouth warning us about many, oh so very many, things the are going to kill us. Soon. Like right now.

And we're living longer than ever. 77.9 years is the life expectancy now.

Black Americans gained over half a year in life expectancy, closing the gap with whites - a really great statistic. There's still a disparity, but it is narrowing

Go read it.

UPDATE: Coverage from USA Today.

B.A.N.A.N.A.

One of my favorite acronyms, BANANA replaces the old stand-by NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard). BANANA stands for Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything. Anne Applebaum mentions it in a column in the Washington Post about opposition to wind farms. I posted a long piece about wind power when I was just starting to blog. I wrote that after I got into a long comment discussion about the subject at Jane Galt's blog. It was an interesting experience. It got a bit spirited at times.

Better yet, let's put it this way, it didn't go over well with the true believers. I got arguments from people to the effect of "well, if you'd just be so negative, you could find a way to solve those problems. Since solving the problems would require repealing the laws of physics which I know is beyond my many talents, I gave up trying to tell them. One guy suggested (I kid you not) using kites - he was not joking.

Anyway, here's my wind power primer. While Applebaum's column concentrates on opposition to siting of the farms, mine is a bit more technical. But a pretty easy read.

The Panda’s Flea

We here at Blue Crab Boulevard sometimes indulge certain comic stylings. We take liberties with already humorous stories and exaggerate to make them even funnier. OK, we make stuff up. But sometimes we simply can't make it up. Really. Like this particular item. We swear we are telling the truth.

A French playwright is spending his days inside a cage at a zoo in order to write his new blockbuster hit, The Panda's Flea. Norbert Aboudarham spends ten hours a day inside a cage with a bale of straw to sit on and a laptop computer and writes. He refuses to speak while in the cage, but will communicate via notes passed through the bars. Aboudarham is quoted as saying, "To write about the universe, you have to put yourself in a cage smaller than the universe."

According to Christine Morrier of Amiens zoo, a former director of a cultural centre, the experiment is a way of "questioning man about his belonging to nature."

"For the animals it makes no difference at all, In any case they are used to the people who look after them," she said, noting that Aboudarham, whose stint ends Thursday, had drawn many sightseers.

We here at Blue Crab Boulevard question Mr. Aboudarham's grip on sanity, but we then we aren't artistic types. We strongly recommend that Mr. Aboudarham seek treatment for fleas after he gets done with his artistic endeavor.

We would dearly love to review the play when it is finished. Provided it's in a cage that is smaller than the universe, of course.

UPDATE: Open Trackback time - to Woman Honor Thyself.

Oopsey-Daisy

The French navy surrendered a multi-million dollar sonar system when a dolphin, thought to be heavily armed with an automatic mackerel demanded they hand it over.

OK, I made that up.

But the French navy did lose a sonar device worth $3.7 million over the side in rough weather when the captain of the ship decided he knew better than his lieutenant and had it deployed. After the crew stopped rolling around on the deck holding their sides, the ship returned to port and the captain had to answer a couple of questions. From the Minister of Defense. She was not amused.

Jack Bauer Replaces McClellan

Presented with no further comment. We don't want to be hooked up to the machine.

Mind The Boulders

What the heck is it with news from Cyprus lately? For a little bitty island, it's been in the news a lot.

Women on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus are working on a project to string bras together for the twin reasons of raising awareness of breast cancer and trying like heck to get into the Guinness Book of World Records. The women have racked up assets of about 100,000 bras collected from all over the world. The organizers hope to say ta-ta to the current record holders in Singapore. Now, Cyprus has some tough terrain, so mind the boulders, ladies.

We here at Blue Crab Boulevard heartily encourage the spontaneous donation of brassieres on the part of bystanders should the effort look like it might fall short. We wouldn't want it to be a bust.

Kidding aside: Breast cancer kills more than 400,000 women all over the world every year. Regular screening, especially for women over 50, should be performed.

Related Items

Today we have a couple of (vaguely) related items:

A recent global survey reports that middle-aged and elderly men tend to be more satisfied with their sex lives then women in the same age brackets. Most of the participants were married. There were certain cultures and countries that had higher rates of sexual satisfaction overall. For example, three quarters of American men were satisfied as opposed to two thirds of women. In Japan it was 18% and 10% respectively. Austrians scored substantially higher than the French. Which is kind of funny given the reputation the French have.

And comedian Gilbert Gottfried has been crowned the unsexiest man alive by the Boston Phoenix.

"The parrot-voiced, pickle-faced comic is to sexy what Kryptonite is to Superman," The Boston Phoenix wrote.

Gottfried is well known these days for being the voice of the AFLAC duck.

We're not sure how old Gottfried is, but we do wonder if his partner participated in a survey recently.

On Demonization.

In an earlier post we mentioned Glenn Reynolds' statement:

"But I didn't let my disappointment with Clinton turn into a hatred of all his policies, the way that some people seem to have let their dislike of Bush turn into a belief that all of Bush's policies — and anyone who defends any of them — have become evil."

We think Reynolds has that exactly right. The tendency to demonize someone who disagrees with you has become all to commonplace. We first noticed it increasing during the Clinton Presidency. Not that it didn't happen before then - of course it did. It started becoming more common then it seems. Things like Hillary Clinton announcing that there was a "Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy" ranged against her and Bill. Then it just kept getting more ugly, more often. Both sides did it, too.

Now demonization has become so commonplace that only exceptions are notable. That's a real pity. We try not to do it, but we can't say we're exactly perfect, either. But here at Blue Crab Boulevard we've been classed repeatedly by a lot of people as a "right-wing" site. Which bothers us very much since we never did get that Official VRWC Membership Card we sent in the boxtops for. (Just another capitalist scam, we suspect).

Oddly, the National Journal's Blogometer classed Blue Crab Boulevard as a lefty site the first time they ever (to our knowledge) noticed us. So it's a bit tough to classify based on one post. Nonetheless, it happens all the time. We've had commenters who call us blind defenders of the Bush administration. Based of course on the one post they've ever read here.

The commenters can be difficult to deal with sometimes. Which is why a lot of sites have turned off comments, we suspect. When the Daou Report listed us as a blog on the right, we were hit with an avalanche of comments, many obscene. We had to do two mass purges of the comment queue. Which then got us accused of censoring the commenters. One can't win.

Then there are the commenters themselves. The tendency among many lefty commenters (yes, this is a sweeping generalization, it is not universal) is to use a lot of rhetorical tricks to actually try to cut off discussion. Not to say we are perfect here, but others use a lot of tactics that are listed here. Now the use of common propaganda techniques may or may not be intentional, but they are being used.

So, what's the point of this post you ask? Just this; we try to have some sense of humor here. Take a little time to look around and see what the place is all about. Read some of the posts carefully, you'll see that a lot of them are not ideologically-driven. Honest. There are some people we dislike, we try to be up front about that. Other times we may not be defending the holder of the office, but the office itself. Or visa versa, as the case may be. You will undoubtedly find positions you do not like, and some you will agree with. Just try not to demonize us and we'll try to return the favor.

Fran O’Brien’s Update

Mudville Gazette and Blackfive have the details. Here's a direct link to the Hilton GM's answers to questions at Andi's World.

I'm with Blackfive on this, Hilton does not know what is going to hit them because of this. They are ignoring bloggers at their peril.

How To Get A Huge Poll Number Boost

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that President Bush continues to slide in the Polls. Since we now know that the CIA is reading us, along with a number of other agencies, we would like to repeat our sure-fire way to raise the poll numbers. We here at Blue Crab Boulevard have a simple, straightforward way to accomplish this.

Build a fence across the border with Mexico. Two thirds of Americans want one. Do that first and control the border, then try to address your guest worker program or other ways to solve the problem. But build the fence first. Right away. As in today. Yesterday would be better, but we try to be reasonable.

We're open to a job offer in the reorganized White House.

Sometimes It’s Better To Wait A Bit

Rather than going off half-cocked. Last night I read an article in the New York Post that reported a strong rumor that Yale was considering hiring Juan Cole for a tenured position. I immediately started typing a fairly incredulous post, thought better of it and, instead, dashed off an email to my Yale contact. I wanted him to post a tirade.

The answer I got was,"No". With a lot of good reasons why it wasn't a good idea.

He was absolutely right, too.

Today, someone with a little bit more stature in the Yale community took care of the issue. Chances are, Yale will be more likely to listen to Michael Rubin '94 GRD '99 than to we here at Blue Crab Boulevard who haven't exactly been kind to Yale lately.

Let's just put it this way, the times I have looked at Juan Cole's articles, he has been wrong. Every. Single. Time. The latest was an article where asserted, in a very authoritative tone, that Iran could not use recycled fuel from a civilian light water reactor to create a plutonium bomb. He said it had to do with isotope concentration. Which kind of neglected to mention that the US had designed, built and detonated a plutonium bomb made from recycled fuel. Because the way you elect to control the reactor determines isotope concentration.

Ah well, thanks for doing the heavy lifting, Mr. Rubin.

Science Fiction To Scary Fact

As far as I know, Larry Niven was the person to originate the term "organlegger". From about 1969 onward, Niven produced a number of stories set in his "Known Space" universe that had to do with the subject of both legal and illegal organ transplants. Among some of the best are the "Gil the Arm" stories.

Organleggers were particularly dangerous. They kidnapped people, killed them and harvested the organs for the black market. This may actually be one of the origins of that popular urban legend about the guy waking up in the bathtub full of ice with a kidney or two missing. There is also a legal market, fueled with organs harvested from executed criminals. The scary part is that the crimes carrying a death sentence grew less and less severe as demand grew.

Now some doctors in Britain are charging that China is doing just that. They claim the Chinese are harvesting the organs of executed criminals and selling them. The Chinese government denies this, but the British doctors are trying to gather documentation.

Scary, isn't it?

THIS Will Get Some Folks Spinning!

It seems the CIA is data-mining blogs.

The new Open Source Center (OSC) at CIA headquarters recently stepped up data collection and analysis based on bloggers worldwide and is developing new methods to gauge the reliability of the content, said OSC Director Douglas J. Naquin. 
"A lot of blogs now have become very big on the Internet, and we're getting a lot of rich information on blogs that are telling us a lot about social perspectives and everything from what the general feeling is to … people putting information on there that doesn't exist anywhere else," Mr. Naquin told The Washington Times.

Now this should be obvious to anyone with half a brain. What we bloggers publish is free and available to anyone. Coupled with the fact that businesses are finding that they ignore bloggers at their peril, is it a surprise that the CIA would see some value in this? It's not just the CIA, either. Traffic logs show fairly regular hits originating from the house.gov domain. Also the State Department, the IRS and a whole bunch of other government agencies. And let's face it, we here at Blue Crab Boulevard ain't exactly Instapundit.

UPDATE: Greetings to visitors from A Blog For All. Please do take a look around. Unless you're spying on me. I hope nobody thinks I'm really paranoid. Did I say that out loud?

I don't show any hits from the CIA, but that doesn't mean they aren't watching.

Feeling paranoid, lately?