A Lesson In Dumb

I do not even begin to know where to start on this issue. James Dobson explains, quite clearly, why he is very, very dumb. Watch the video.

Apparently, it is better to commit political suicide than to, you know, actually accomplish anything. Dobson's zeal to protect the unborn will lead him to abandon the actual born - and any real chance to protect the unborn in the long run. What chance do the unborn stand if the courts are packed against them?

Dobson would abandon the courts and will argue that the backlash will sweep his favorites to power later on. I'd submit that his viewpoint is arrogant and counterproductive. Because losing the courts for a generation would be a disaster. The only power Dobson has is to destroy - not to create. He would destroy a viable challenge to the coronation of a Democrat for the sake of his own ego. And sacrifice the courts to extend his importance.

(Yeah, this will be a popular post, too. Not.)

An Apology For Statecraft

This is one of those topics that probably wont be popular. But I need to get this off my chest. The US House of Representatives appears to be very close to passing a bill that will denounce the events of almost 100 years ago - consequences be damned.

ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey may cut logistic support to U.S. troops in Iraq if the U.S. Congress backs a bill branding as genocide the 1915 massacres of Armenians by Ottoman Turks, a senior ruling AK Party lawmaker was quoted as saying on Monday.

Congress's Foreign Affairs Committee is expected to approve on Wednesday a bill on the genocide issue and speaker Nancy Pelosi, a known supporter of the Armenian cause, could then decide to bring it to the House floor for a vote.

Turkey, a NATO ally of Washington, strongly denies Armenian claims, backed by many Western historians and a number of foreign parliaments, that up to 1.5 million ethnic Armenians suffered genocide at Turkish hands during World War One.

It says many Muslim Turks as well as Christian Armenians died in inter-ethnic conflict as the Ottoman Empire collapsed.

"Don't accept this bill. If you do, we will be obliged to do many things we do not want to do," the top-selling Hurriyet daily quoted AK Party deputy leader Egemen Bagis as saying.

"For example, the Americans depend on Turkey for a large part of their logistical support in Iraq. We would be obliged to cut this support," he was quoted as saying.

Bagis was speaking in a personal capacity, but Turkey's government has many times urged foreign countries, including the United States, not to pass such resolutions, saying historians, not politicians, should judge historic events.

I am not, by any means, an expert on the ins and outs of this whole event. But a couple of observations are in order. Whatever happened in Armenia almost a century ago happened when a government that does not exist any longer, the Ottoman Empire, was still in power. The successor government, that of Turkey, is not the same. I am not - in any way - making light of the real suffering that occurred. But demanding accountability or an apology from a successor government for the actions of a previous power seems absurd.

To do so in the face of real, serious consequences to our real interests in the contemporary world is past absurd. It is dangerous to the point of being suicidal. I do not make any apologies for the people involved in the real horrors that went on in 1915. But I fail to see where any motion passed in 2007 by an American Congress will do a single thing to bring those people back to life. But it could do real damage to this country.

For the folks of Armenian heritage, I have a few questions: Is it worth damaging the country you or your forebears migrated to to pass this resolution? Is it worth demanding an apology from a successor government for the actions of one that is long gone? Is it worth hurting the country you call home now to count coup on a government that is dead and gone? Please, let this drop.

Yeah, this one won't be popular.

The New Poor

Let me get this right out in front. I detest what the Democrats did in putting the Frost family out as a target in a political debate. It shows an utter contempt for the people they purport to be the champions of. I posted my very snarky response to the whole situation knowing full well that some elements on the left would go bonkers over it. Some facts: My wife and I are both professionals. We have both worked long and hard and have raised (or are raising) four children. We have health insurance, which we pay for, through my wife's job. (Her company has a good plan, but it is part of her compensation for her employment - it is not "free".) We are allowed to live in our home as long as we pay the hefty mortgage every month. And we do not own as much in assets as the Frost family. Our kids go to public schools, not private ones (subsidized or not).

The left has - after more than a day now - managed to coordinate a response to the asinine position the Democrats put them into on this. Now they are howling that the right is "smearing" 12-year olds. Bull. The Democrats set that poor family up like bowling pins - and they knew it. Mark Steyn:

Sorry, no sale. The Democrats chose to outsource their airtime to a Seventh Grader. If a political party is desperate enough to send a boy to do a man's job, then the boy is fair game. As it is, the Dems do enough cynical and opportunist hiding behind biography and identity, and it's incredibly tedious. And anytime I send my seven-year-old out to argue policy you're welcome to clobber him, too. The alternative is a world in which genuine debate is ended and, as happened with Master Frost, politics dwindles down to professional staffers writing scripts to be mouthed by Equity moppets.

But one thing is clear by now: Whatever the truth about this boy's private school, his family home, his father's commercial property, etc, the Frosts are a very particular situation and do not illustrate any social generality - and certainly not one that makes the case for an expensive expansive all-but universal entitlement.

No, the Frost family is not "average" and the Democrats set them up to be savaged. They knew it, they did it on purpose and they are hoping the voters will ignore the details and feel pity for the Democrat's victims - and blame the Republicans. Which shows the contempt the Democrats have for the average voter.

The Democrats are trying to paint anyone who opposes their scheme as being "against the children." Bull. Nobody who opposes the vast expansion of SCHIP is against giving aid to those who really need it. The argument is over where the line is drawn. But the Democrats willfully sent a little boy in to take the heat for them. Who is really against the children here? And what party is setting a family up to be savaged in a partisan debate?

UPDATE: Joe, you're wrong here. I honestly do not think anyone is trying to "take the kid out." He was thrown out as a sacrificial lamb by the Democrats here - you're giving them a complete pass on this - you should not. I asked in my original post about this whole mess:

This is a blatant fraud by the Democrats and easily checked. So why in the world did they do this?

I think the answer is obvious - they hoped to evoke a response. They did. But the Democrats set that family up knowing they would be pummeled over this. Steyn is right here: "And, if the Democrats don't like me saying that, next time put up someone in long pants to make your case."

It is not the right looking "mean-spirited", it is the left looking manipulative. Don't give them a pass, Joe. That will only make it worse.

Bring Your Gun To School Day

I have no idea how much of this is a publicity stunt and how much is real, but it caught my eye. A teacher in Oregon is suing the school district she works in for the right to carry her legally permitted concealed pistol to school. She says she doesn't even know if she will do so if she wins - it is more about the principle and the doubt factor. People with bad intentions should have to worry whether their victims might be armed.

MEDFORD, Ore. - High school English teacher Shirley Katz insists she needs to take her pistol with her to work because she fears her ex-husband could show up and try to harm her. She's also worried about a Columbine-style attack.

But Katz's district has barred teachers from bringing guns to school, so she is challenging the ban as unlawful, since Oregon is among states that allow people with a permit to carry concealed weapons into public buildings.

"This is primarily about my Second Amendment right and Oregon law and the simple fact that I know it is my right to carry that gun," said Katz, 44, sitting at the kitchen table of her home outside this city of 74,000.

"I have that (concealed weapons) permit. I refuse to let my ex-husband bully me. And I am not going to let the school board bully me, either."

In Oregon, a sheriff can grant a concealed-weapons permit to anyone whose criminal record is clean and who completes a gun-safety course.

Thirty-eight states, along with the District of Columbia, prohibit people from taking guns to school, according to the National Council of State Legislatures. But it's unclear how many offer an exemption for people holding concealed-weapons permits, since the council does not track such exceptions.

My state happens to be one that absolutely bars the carrying of concealed weapons on school grounds. The problem here is that this issue may not be as clean as it could be:

Shirley Katz said she bought her own gun in 2004 after Gerry Katz grabbed her by the throat and threatened to kill her — an allegation he denies.

He argues that her desire to take her gun to school is about reopening their divorce to get exclusive custody of their 6-year-old daughter.

"She's just scamming everybody," he said. "As soon as this thing started … I called the principal at her high school and told her … I am not coming to your school. I am not a threat to her. I have no desire to hurt her."

The Virginia Tech shootings illustrated the illusory safety of "gun-free zones". They simply ensure that people with bad intentions have a free hand and have nothing to fear from a possible reaction from an armed citizen. Again, I'm not sure this is the best test case for this. But I think that properly trained, licensed citizens carrying weapons is generally not a bad thing. If it makes one person who may be thinking of going on a rampage think twice, it is not a bad thing.

The Threat Of Bad Education

Oddly enough, my son and I were talking about the problems in American education earlier today. Then I saw this item from Neal Boortz pop up over at Real Clear Politics this afternoon. He's discussing the failure of American education and has a great CS Lewis quote.

"What I want to fix your attention on is the vast overall movement towards the discrediting, and finally the elimination, of every kind of human excellence — moral, cultural, social or intellectual. And is it not pretty to notice how 'democracy' (in the incantatory sense) is now doing for us the work that was once done by the most ancient dictatorships, and by the same methods? The basic proposal of the new education is to be that dunces and idlers must not be made to feel inferior to intelligent and industrious pupils. That would be 'undemocratic.' Children who are fit to proceed may be artificially kept back, because the others would get a trauma by being left behind. The bright pupil thus remains democratically fettered to his own age group throughout his school career, and a boy who would be capable of tackling Aeschylus or Dante sits listening to his coeval's [of the same age] attempts to spell out A CAT SAT ON A MAT. We may reasonably hope for the virtual abolition of education when 'I'm as good as you' has fully had its way. All incentives to learn and all penalties for not learning will vanish. The few who might want to learn will be prevented; who are they to overtop their fellows? And anyway, the teachers — or should I say nurses? — will be far too busy reassuring the dunces and patting them on the back to waste any time on real teaching. We shall no longer have to plan and toil to spread imperturbable conceit and incurable ignorance among men." C. S. Lewis

Now don't you want to go back and read that again? I guess I read it 20 times over the weekend … just amazed at how well a man who has been dead for so long has perfectly nailed our current system of government education and what it is doing to our children. And referring to government school teachers as nurses? Brilliant! Absolutely effing brilliant! (Excuse me, I got carried away there for a bit.)

This country is in trouble. No, I'm not talking about the threat from outside – the biggest element of which would be Islamic radicalism. I'm talking about the threat from inside. The men who marched in bare feet wrapped in rags over frozen ground in 1776 – leaving a trail of blood for the British to follow – would scarcely recognize us. They put their lives on the line for independence, far too many of us strive for dependence. They embraced freedom. We embrace security. The men of 1776 were extraordinary. We reject the extraordinary for the mundane.

Our schools are turning out perfect little government subjects who have been taught that, somehow, it is bad to excel, but virtuous to simply fit in.

Do you think the men and women of just two generations ago could ever imagine a school system where children aren't allowed to play tag because it involves chasing and unwanted touching? Of course you don't want to be touched! That makes you "it!"

It is some pretty disturbing stuff. It also matches rather closely what my son and I were talking about. There really is a problem in the schools. Colleges routinely have to put incoming freshmen into remedial classes to even get them to a basic college level as Boortz points out. That should be a warning sign that something is very wrong indeed. There is too much emphasis what is little more than indoctrination and less and less teaching of kids how to think. It is somewhat driven by a misplaced egalitarianism that tries to force equal outcomes - which should never be the goal of schools. It is invariably brought to the least common denominator that way, hold back the best so that the less gifted students won't feel bad. Boortz blames the teacher's unions for this state of affairs. They are certainly part of the problem. As are politicians and parents who do not care enough about what their kids are being taught. Go read the whole thing.

So Cute You Just Want To Punch It

The Nissan Motors company has unveiled its newest concept car, the Pivo-2. It's just so cute and cuddly that you want to slap it.

(AP) Nissan's ball-shaped electric vehicle can squeeze into tight spots without backing up because its wheels turn 90 degrees and the cabin part of the car can rotate in a complete circle.

The Pivo 2, being shown at the Tokyo auto show later this month, is a three-seat ecological commuter car that's fully working but too expensive to go on commercial sale yet, according to Nissan Motor Co. officials.

In a demonstration Friday, the concept car rolled up next to a tiny parking space, turned its wheels at an angle, then scooted into the space without the back-and-forth jockeying that most cars would need.

The top part of the car - the name is inspired by the word "pivot" - swivels 360 degrees, independent of the wheels, so drivers can turn to face whichever direction they want.

Nissan designers added robotics functions to the Pivo 2, an upgrade of a car shown a couple of years ago, so that a bobbing mechanical head near the steering wheel speaks in a cute electronic voice to provide companionship.

Its the robo-buddy that makes me want to hit it, incidentally. Too cutesy. But there's video of the car parking (and the robo-buddy just asking for it) here. They also have some nice still pictures.

Don’t Take Any (Giant) Wooden Nickels

A craftsman from Scotland has been commissioned to carve a set of giant wooden nickels by Historic Scotland. The aim is to create replicas of the 38 surviving 3-foot diameter wooden head roundels that originally adorned the ceiling of the royal apartments of Stirling Castle.

Historic Scotland has commissioned a local craftsman to recreate a set of wooden heads, above, carved during the Renaissance to decorate the royal apartments of Stirling Castle for King James V.

John Donaldson has put aside almost five years of his life and used the same painstaking techniques of his ancestors to replicate the Stirling Heads.

His work is part of a plan to rebuild the ornate ceiling of the King’s Presence Chambers as it would have looked in 1538.

The carvings depict imps, classical heroes and nobles. They were used to adorn the coffered ceilings in one of the most important rooms of the palace until 1777 when the roof collapsed, destroying much of the grandeur.

About 38 original roundels, some of which are more than a yard (a metre) in diameter, still survive although there is evidence that at least 46 were made. Mr Donaldson’s job is to copy them and make three or four new ones to his own design.

I just love that line: "when the roof collapsed, destroying much of the grandeur." That is classic. Eventually, the originals will remain on display while the replicas are to be installed in the newly un-collapsed roof. Anyway, here's an article from 2004 on the Historic Scotland website that has a picture of Donaldson holding one of the manhole cover sized carvings. (It also appears to be taking longer than originally planned.) 

Put Out An ATB!

That's an All Toilets Bulletin. Someone has done a really crappy thing and stolen a giant toilet. The theft flushed the great dreams of the team who had built and raced the unusual vehicle, affectionately known as The Crapster.

The Crapster wasn't the fastest entry in last weekend's Red Bull Soapbox Race. But in the competition for best-loved entries, the Fremont crowd voted it No. 2.

So the five Colorado Springs, Colo., soapbox racers were more than a little dismayed when they woke Monday morning to find their U-Haul truck had been stolen from outside a downtown Seattle hotel. And whoever had been trolling for loot must have been surprised to open the cargo door and see the 7-foot-tall carpeted toilet.

Just two days earlier, The Crapster was rolling downhill.

Tom Valentine, who steered from inside the bowl, said it was his first race.

After success in Seattle, Valentine and crew talked of touring soapbox races across the nation. They even envisioned putting the toilet on pontoons so it could float.

Which is a bit of a switch. Things usually float in the toilet, but we digress. Police have no leads and have not identified a number one suspect as of yet.

The Entitlement Tsunami

The San Antonio Express-News editorializes today on the coming disaster that politicians from both parties are studiously ignoring. The trainwreck of Social Security and Medicare will begin as early as 2013 according to a new report. Yet Hillary Clinton dodged the issue at a recent AARP meeting. That isn't going to work.

Speaking at an AARP forum for presidential candidates last month, Sen. Hillary Clinton laid out her vision for entitlement programs headed toward insolvency.

"Raising the retirement age is not the answer," she said. "Cutting benefits is not an answer."

Presumably raising taxes is not an alternative either because, she said, "Putting everything on the table is not the right answer." Which sounds like a prescription for more of what Washington is already doing to address this problem — nothing.

Clinton's appearance at the AARP event coincided with the release of yet another one of those reports detailing the dire financial situation of the Social Security and Medicare trust funds. This one, from the Treasury Department, says Social Security has a $13.6 trillion shortfall.

Delaying changes — that is, keeping difficult decisions off the table — only makes the situation worse.

The HillaryCare plan will bring socialized medicine - and another huge funding burden to taxpayers. Yet neither she nor many other politicians are addressing the simple fact that the treasury is in trouble over already existing entitlements. Wouldn't it be a better idea to address that issue before instituting another enormously expensive program? The editorial suggests adopting a plan from Senator John Cornyn of Texas to set up bi-partisan commissions to make the hard calls on how to solve the looming crisis. That idea, taking the politics out of the situation, is not gaining much traction with folks like Hillary. Dodging this issue and trying to institute expensive new programs is not the answer.

Hansel And Cable

Once upon a time there was a German man who was known to police by his fingerprints. One day he decided that working for a living was much too hard and that stealing copper cables was much, much easier. The End.

Literally.

Police in the western city of Duisburg found the 32-year-old man's blackened remains by a set of cable cutters and pile of non-live cables he had already stolen.

Only because one of his hands survived incineration were officers able to identify the man as German of Kazakh origin.

"His fingerprints were already logged on police files," a local police spokesman said. "The force of the shock was so great that the hand was severed from his body."

I sense a Darwin Award candidate.

LOST At Sea

William Clark and Edwin Meese slam the Law of the Seat Treaty (LOST) that is now being considered by the US Senate. This fight has been going on since before Ronald Reagan was elected president and it still is today. They point out that the real intent of the treaty is to take away American sovereignty and substitute control by the United Nations. They are right.

The so-called seabed mining provisions were simply one manifestation of the problems Ronald Reagan had with LOST. That was made clear by an entry in his diary dated June 29, 1982, after months of efforts to negotiate extensive changes in the draft treaty text came to naught. On that evening, President Reagan wrote: "Decided in [National Security Council] meeting–will not sign 'Law of the Sea' treaty even without seabed mining provisions."

The man selected by President Reagan to undertake those renegotiations was the remarkable James Malone. In 1984, Ambassador Malone explained why the Law of the Sea Treaty was unacceptable: "The Treaty's provisions were intentionally designed to promote a new world order–a form of global collectivism known as the New International Economic Order (NIEO)–that seeks ultimately the redistribution of the world's wealth through a complex system of manipulative central economic planning and bureaucratic coercion. The Treaty's provisions are predicated on a distorted interpretation of the noble concept of the Earth's vast oceans as the 'common heritage of mankind.'"

Interestingly, Ambassador Malone declared in 1995, "This remains the case today." That statement is particularly relevant insofar as LOST's supporters, including some of our colleagues from the Reagan administration, insist that the 1994 Agreement "fixed" the previously unacceptable Part XI provisions. As James Malone explained to a conference on the Law of the Sea Treaty before his untimely death more than a decade ago:

"All the provisions from the past that make such a [new world order] outcome possible, indeed likely, still stand. It is not true, as argued by some, and frequently mentioned, that the U.S. rejected the Convention in 1982 solely because of technical difficulties with Part XI. The collectivist and redistributionist provisions of the treaty were at the core of the U.S. refusal to sign."

The last thing the world needs is the UN in control of the oceans and everything that lies under them. Approval of this treaty would be a long step toward a world government - which is exactly what the authors of the treaty intended from the start:

Such developments only serve to reinforce the concerns President Reagan rightly had about the central, and abiding, defect of the Law of the Sea Treaty: its effort to promote global government at the expense of sovereign nation states–and most especially the United States. One of the prime movers behind LOST, the late Elisabeth Mann Borgese of the World Federalist Association (which now calls itself Citizens for Global Solutions), captured what is at stake when she cited an ancient aphorism: "He who rules the sea, rules the land." A U.N. publication lauding her work noted that Borgese saw LOST as a "possible test-bed for ideas she had developed concerning a common global constitution."

The UN, who brought the world Rwanda, who wallowed in the corruption of the Oil for Food scandal, who has sponsored peacekeepers who run sex slavery rings in the countries they are supposed to be protecting, wants control of the seas. Can you think of a worse idea? Any Senator who votes for this should be run out of office.

WaPo Reports Nuclear Power Comeback

The Washington Post reports that nuclear power is poised for a comeback.

CHEROKEE COUNTY, S.C. — Two decades ago, after Duke Energy abandoned its partly built nuclear power reactors here, the site was sold and turned into a movie set. Director James Cameron used it to film "The Abyss," a 1989 movie about civilian divers who encounter aliens while trying to rescue a stricken nuclear submarine. Cameron filled the unused nuclear containment building with water and hauled a section of an oil rig, a tiny submarine and fiberglass rocks inside to make convincing underwater scenes.

Now there's a new twist in the plot: The nuclear power industry is trying to come back from its own abyss. With natural gas prices volatile and people anxious about climate change, the nuclear power industry is touting its technology as a way to meet the nation's growing energy needs without emitting more greenhouse gases. Over the next two years, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission expects applications to build as many as 32 new nuclear reactors.

Duke Energy could be among them. It reacquired the Cherokee County site and has been tearing down old buildings so it can ask the NRC to let it start all over again. On a hot mid-September afternoon, a giant wrecking hammer was prying huge chunks of concrete from the walls of the old containment facility. They dangled from steel reinforcing rods like stones tottering from the ruins of an ancient coliseum. Inside, the props for "The Abyss" lay covered with dust.

Other utilities and independent power companies are also laying the groundwork for a new wave of U.S. nuclear plants. On Sept. 24, NRG Energy filed the first full application for a new nuclear unit since the partial meltdown of Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island plant in 1979. Then the Tennessee Valley Authority approved plans to build two new reactors in northern Alabama, where it abandoned two mostly finished units in 1988 when electricity demand failed to meet forecasts. Earlier, Constellation Energy Group filed a partial license application to add a nuclear unit to its existing site in Calvert Cliffs, Md.

NRG Energy chief executive David W. Crane proclaimed "a new day for energy in America."

Anti-nuclear zealots got a lot of press and the positives of nuclear power were completely ignored for many years. Now the press is starting to back away from their position that held the nuclear industry hostage for so long. About time. The newest generation of reactors are even more safe than the old designs - which were very safe, indeed. This is long overdue and good news all around.

Voodoo

Well, neither the hosting company's tech nor I could figure out what happened. Or how it fixed itself. But it did suddenly fix itself and comments appear to be back up and running.

Comments Have Crashed

I do not know why but the "Comments" database is crashed at the moment. I may need to bleg some help on this one - I do not understand why it crashed or how to fix it at this point. I'll get on it after I take my daughter to an appointment.