Lefdementia

There is an air of complete insanity in the air tonight as I look at Memeorandum. It seems that Salon's resident sockpuppet is trying to expose a possible sockpuppet in the US military. Yes, Glengarry Glen Rick Ellensburg Glenn Ross Boy From Brazil Greenwald is trying his hand at IP tracking. (My god, this is a threat to none other than Nick Danger, Third Eye.) Frankly, I'm not going to link to GGREGRBFBG's 4,000 word windbaggery excursion. Jules Crittenden did, brave soul (are your shots up to date, Jules?). But if you bother to wade through the absurdly long post over at the Greenwaldian Logorrheum (and you should wear boots) you'll be exposed to a raging sockpuppet trying to prove someone else is a sockpuppet.

Yeah, Salon, you got your money's worth there.

Glenn Greenwald

UPDATE: Others: Marc Moore (At MVDG Gazette): "Everyone who disagrees with Greenwald, it seems, is a hack, an incompetent, a tool of the right-wing conspiracy that denies him the ability to make his world view a reality."

Bits Blog: "In short, there are likely a million different networks operating in the same address range as the one you think is coming from Iraq. Good luck proving it came from there… or for that matter proving it didn’t. I myself operate several such networks, and another few in the 192.*.*.* range."

A Second Hand Conjecture: "And Mr. Rick Ellensburg or Wilson, or Greenwald or whoever you wish to go by, when I say you are dishonest, paranoid and a propagandist, I mean it in the most civil and professional way."

The Last Man In Service

The last British veteran of the First World War helped kick off the annual poppy appeal - a fundraiser for the British equivalent of the American Legion, the Royal British Legion. Harry Patch, 109, helped get his local appeal started in a ceremony in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset.

Harry Patch, 109, who served during the 1917 Passchendaele offensive and was in the Auxiliary Fire Service in the Second World War, was guest of honour in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, where a cannon blast marked the start of the commemorations.

Speaking afterwards, Mr Patch, from Wells, said: "I have been to many such occasions, and at each one I feel humbled that I should be representing an entire generation.

"Today is not for me, it is for the countless millions who did not come home with their lives intact. They are the heroes. It is also important we remember those who lost their lives on both sides."

Mr Patch was called up for service in 1917, aged 18, when he was working as an apprentice plumber in Bath. A few weeks later he was thrown into one of the Great War's bloodiest battles, at Passchendaele, near the Belgian town of Ypres. During the fighting he was badly wounded by a shell blast which killed three of his friends.

109, the last veteran of the war - and still in service to others. Thank you for your example, Mr. Patch. In the United States, the American legion Auxiliary will begin their poppy appeal soon. Please, when you see a volunteer with the poppies in front of a store, make a donation.

35 Inconvenient Truths

A systematic, thorough and devastating dismantling of Al Gore's propaganda film An Inconvenient Truth by Christopher Monckton takes off from where a British court left the matter. It is clearly written, lavishly illustrated with data and graphs and cannot - and will not - be answered by Gore. Because it exposes the outright fraud of Gore's movie.

A spokesman for Al Gore has issued a questionable response to the news that in October 2007 the High Court in London had identified nine “errors” in his movie An Inconvenient Truth. The judge had stated that, if the UK Government had not agreed to send to every secondary school in England a corrected guidance note making clear the mainstream scientific position on these nine “errors”, he would have made a finding that the Government’s distribution of the film and the first draft of the guidance note earlier in 2007 to all English secondary schools had been an unlawful contravention of an Act of Parliament prohibiting the political indoctrination of children.

Al Gore’s spokesman and “environment advisor,” Ms. Kalee Kreider, begins by saying that the film presented “thousands and thousands of facts.” It did not: just 2,000 “facts” in 93 minutes would have been one fact every three seconds. The film contained only a few dozen points, most of which will be seen to have been substantially inaccurate. The judge concentrated only on nine points which even the UK Government, to which Gore is a climate-change advisor, had to admit did not represent mainstream scientific opinion.

Ms. Kreider then states, incorrectly, that the judge himself had never used the term “errors.” In fact, the judge used the term “errors,” in inverted commas, throughout his judgment.

Next, Ms. Kreider makes some unjustifiable ad hominem attacks on Mr. Stewart Dimmock, the lorry driver, school governor and father of two school-age children who was the plaintiff in the case. This memorandum, however, will eschew any ad hominem response, and will concentrate exclusively on the 35 scientific inaccuracies and exaggerations in Gore’s movie.

Ms. Kreider then says, “The process of creating a 90-minute documentary from the original peer-reviewed science for an audience of moviegoers in the U.S. and around the world is complex.” However, the single web-page entitled “The Science” on the movie’s official website contains only two references to articles in the peer-reviewed scientific journals. There is also a reference to a document of the IPCC, but its documents are not independently peer-reviewed in the usual understanding of the term.

Ms. Kreider then says, “The judge stated clearly that he was not attempting to perform an analysis of the scientific questions in his ruling.” He did not need to. Each of the nine “errors” which he identified had been admitted by the UK Government to be inconsistent with the mainstream of scientific opinion.

Ms. Kreider says the IPCC’s results are sometimes “conservative,” and continues: “Vice President Gore tried to convey in good faith those threats that he views as the most serious.” Readers of the long list of errors described in this memorandum will decide for themselves whether Mr. Gore was acting in good faith. However, in this connection it is significant that each of the 35 errors listed below misstates the conclusions of the scientific literature or states that there is a threat where there is none or exaggerates the threat where there may be one. All of the errors point in one direction – towards undue alarmism. Not one of the errors falls in the direction of underestimating the degree of concern in the scientific community. The likelihood that all 35 of the errors listed below could have fallen in one direction purely by inadvertence is less than 1 in 34 billion.

We now itemize 35 of the scientific errors and exaggerations in Al Gore’s movie. The first nine were listed by the judge in the High Court in London in October 2007 as being “errors.” The remaining 26 errors are just as inaccurate or exaggerated as the nine spelt out by the judge, who made it plain during the proceedings that the Court had not had time to consider more than these few errors. The judge found these errors serious enough to require the UK Government to pay substantial costs to the plaintiff.

It will take you a bit of time to go through all 35, though not a real lot. Monckton is a very direct writer, not given to verbose embellishments. Gore is presenting a new mental movie loop for the easily led - or the deliberately mendacious. As I suspect Gore is. He is an energy hog of biblical proportions, has massive financial interests in the acceptance of his propaganda and is given a free pass be his admirers for all of that. The "solutions" being touted for "global warming are, by and large, fraudulent (search 'biofuel' on this site for copious examples). Start thinking people - or get ready for serfdom.

(H/T Doug Ross)

Star Trek: The Left Out Generation

William Shatner is shocked - shocked, I say - that his services are not required for the next Star Trek movie. (This story has popped up several times in the last few days in various media outlets. Seems like a PR blitz on Shatner's part.)

Veteran Star Trek actor William Shatner - who played Captain Kirk in the original series and six films - is stunned by the news that he has been usurped by a virtual unknown in the new movie.

The role of Captain Kirk will be taken by Chris Pine, while engineer Scotty will be played by Simon Pegg, star of the film Hot Fuzz.

Veteran actor Shatner said he "can't believe" he has been excluded.

In a further blow to the original Star Trek star, it has been revealed that Leonard Nimoy, who played 'Spock' in the long running TV series, has a cameo role in the Hollywood film which is due to be released in 2008.

Shatner said: "I can't believe it, I'm not in the movie at all. Leonard, God bless his heart, is in, but not me.

"I thought, 'what a decision to make', since it obviously is a decision not to make use of the popularity I have to ensure the movie has good box office figures. It didn't seem to be a wise business decision."

That last quote may have a bit to do with why the director decided not to hire Shatner. I was a big fan of the original series and watched every episode when it was first televised. But even then, my friend Rick and I, who made it a weekly ritual to watch the show, recognized one thing: Shatner always had a really, really big ego. We used to call him the rocket-powered Romeo. (Galaxy Quest did such a good job of savaging Shatner.) So maybe the director decided what he didn't want on the buffet:

Pennies From Heaven?

New York auction house Bonhams just completed the sale of a largish collection of meteorites. The space rocks were drawn from a number of sources and not all of them sold. But there were some unusual pieces in the collection. Among the objects was a mailbox - hit by a meteorite in 1984.

The pieces were drawn from collections across the world and many examples are richly coloured and intricately patterned, some bearing gemstones.

A piece priced at $1.1m (£0.53m) did not sell but an iron meteorite from Siberia fetched $123,000 (£60,000).

And a US mailbox hit by a meteorite in 1984 sold for $83,000 (£40,000).

"The results were stronger than anticipated with a near-perfect result," Bonhams meteorite specialist Claudia Florian said after the sale.

Bonhams, she added, hoped to sell the unsold lots "in the next several days".

Rocks from space = money. Who knew?

The Last Supper In High Definition

Officials in Italy have put a really, really high definition image of Leonardo Da Vinci's Last Supper on line for people to examine. How high?

16 billion pixels.

The high resolution will allow experts to examine details of the 15th century wall painting that they otherwise could not — including traces of drawings Leonardo put down before painting.

The high-resolution allows viewers to look at details as though they were inches from the art work, in contrast to regular photographs, which become grainy as you zoom in, said curator Alberto Artioli.

"You can see how Leonardo made the cups transparent, something you can't ordinarily see," said Artioli. "You can also note the state of degradation the painting is in."

Besides allowing experts and art-lovers to study the masterpiece from home, Artioli said the project provides an historical document of how the painting appears in 2007, which will be valuable to future generations of art historians.

The website, http://www.haltadefinizione.com/en/ is not functioning correctly as of this post. But you can listen to some interesting music while you're waiting for it to load. I can't see any way to download the monster image - which is probably for the best. It would probably eat a lot of storage. It is a pretty great solution though. This will allow a lot of people to examine it without causing it any more damage.

Of course, I still like my image of the Last Supper, too.

Great Suffering Sasquatch!

The Bradford Era, a newspaper in Bradford, Pennsylvania, is being chastised by the Pennsylvania Game Commission for publishing pictures of a strange animal captured by an automatic camera. Some people think the picture shows a Sasquatch, state biologists say it is just a bear with a bad case of mange.

It’s a fisher, a bear with mange, a bear that just took a swim, a dog bear; these are some of the suggestions that flooded into The Era on Friday to define what sort of creature was caught in a photo by a stationary tree camera in the Allegheny National Forest.

The Pennsylvania Game Commission also contacted The Era about the photos taken by Elk County man Rick Jacobs’ camera, which had been mounted in September to try to record photos of deer.

“I shared the photos with the bear biologist,” said Jerry Feaser of the Game Commission. “There is no question it is a bear with a severe case of mange.”

He explained the wildlife conservation officers routinely trap and mark bears, and see the condition often.

“When people see something that doesn’t appear normal, they are confused about what they see and mistake it for something else,” Feaser said.

He even went so far as to chastise The Era for reporting the story of a questionable photo which some said may be a juvenile Bigfoot.

“Somebody may mistakenly identify something and the news media helps spread the rumor causing more concern and panic than necessary,” he said.

The true believers in mythical beings will, of course, allege this is a coverup. But the full sequence of pictures indicate that it is just a bear, albeit a very sickly one. Well, unless it was Uncle Guido in his bigfoot suit again. He does this periodically when he's off his meds.

Astronauts Find Problem On Space Station

Spacewalking astronauts today discovered metal shavings all through a rotary joint used to position solar panels. This is not good, but not an emergency at this time. Samples of the shavings were taken for later analysis and NASA engineers are trying to figure out the best fix for the problem.

The rotary joint, 10 feet in diameter, has experienced intermittent vibrations and power spikes for nearly two months. Space station managers were hoping a thermal cover or bolt might be hanging up the mechanism, which would have been relatively easy to fix, and were disheartened when Daniel Tani radioed down that metal shavings were everywhere.

"It's quite clear that it's metal-to-metal grating or something, and it's widespread," Tani said.

"Wow," said his spacewalking partner, Scott Parazynski.

The shavings resembled small flakes and were clinging to the joint as if to a magnet, Tani said. "It looks like a dusty table that you'd want to dust at home," he called down.

The astronaut used tape to dab up some of the shavings. It will be returned to Earth aboard Discovery next week for analysis. NASA is uncertain whether the flecks are actually metallic, possibly from the aluminum foil lining the thermal covers, or some other material.

This rotary joint, launched and installed just four months ago, controls the huge solar panel wings on the right side of the space station, to make sure they're facing the sun. The joint for the left solar wings is working fine.

The rotary joint will remain in a parked position as much as possible until the problem is solved, said Mike Suffredini, NASA's space station program manager. Flight controllers were trying to determine whether any more inspections or even repairs will be needed in the coming week, or whether they can continue to work around the problem following Discovery's departure.

Other tasks on the spacewalk went well.

Venezuela: Cocaine Capitol

The Washington Post reports that the amount of cocaine shipped through Venezuela by Colombian drug cartels has risen sharply. They also report that high-level officials of the Chavez government are involved in the trade.

Now, however, the volume of cocaine trafficked through Venezuela has risen sharply. Shipments have increased significantly, with suspected northbound drug flights out of the country increasing threefold from 2003 to 2006, according to American radar tracking. Counter-drug officials say up to 220 tons of cocaine — a third of what Colombia produces — now pass through Venezuela, double the figure in the 1990s. Most of it is bound for the United States and burgeoning markets in Spain, Britain and Italy.

The traffickers have operated with illegally obtained Venezuelan identification cards from agencies as varied as the National Guard, the DISIP intelligence agency and even the economy ministry, all while living in some of the finest neighborhoods in the Venezuelan capital, according to authorities in Bogota, the Colombian capital, and in Caracas. The trend has led to spiraling turf wars among drug gangs in Caracas slums and has directly challenged the government's ability to rein in corruption.

"The problem of drugs has gotten out of the hands of Venezuela," said Mildred Camero, a former drug czar in President Hugo Ch¿vez's government and now a consultant on narcotics to the United Nations, the United States and private industry.

"Now the situation in Venezuela is grave, grave, grave," Camero added. "At some moment, we're going to collapse."

In an interview, Venezuelan Attorney General Isa¿as Rodr¿guez characterized the corruption as isolated and said the government has made fighting the drug trade a priority. But he acknowledged the problem and said traffickers have corrupted some Venezuelan officials while working hand in hand with others.

"In the DISIP, which is the intelligence police, and undoubtedly in some sectors of the National Guard, there is complacency or participation in drug trafficking," Rodr¿guez said. "And not just them, but civil officials at airports."

Venezuela is also heavily involved in the trade in "blood diamonds", so this isn't really a big surprise.

31 To Go

Another slanted story from AFP on gun laws in the United States. The headline screams it all: 'Shoot first' laws make it tougher for burglars in the United States." Yes, 19 states have enacted 'stand your ground' laws that make it legal to defend your home from an intruder. Which includes the right to ten-ring a burglar on sight. Yes, some criminals will get shot. The NRA supports these laws, the anti-gun zealots are opposed - and are the ones labeling these laws as 'shoot first'.

"This law will bring common-sense self-defense protections to law-abiding citizens," said Rachel Parsons, a spokesperson for the NRA.

"If someone is breaking into your home, it's obvious that they are not there to have dinner with you," she continued. "You do have a right to protect your belongings, your family and yourself.

"The law needs to be put on the side of the victim, and not on the side of the criminal, who is attacking the victim."

But for the Freedom States Alliance that fights against the proliferation of firearms in the United States, these new laws attach more value to threatened belongings than to the life of the thief and only serve to increase the number of people killed by firearms each year, which currently is estimated to stand at nearly 30,000.

"It's that whole Wild West mentality that is leading the country down a very dangerous path," said Sally Slovenski, executive director of the alliance.

"In any other country, something like the castle doctrine or stand-your-ground laws look like just absolute lunacy," she continued.

"And yet in this country, somehow it's been justified, and people just sort of have come to live with this, and they just don't see the outrage in this."

My state does not have a 'stand your ground' law specifically. But, as the deputy who taught my carry class said, they also don't prosecute the homeowner in cases like this. Self defense is still a right. The article mentions something interesting:

According to Federal Bureau of Investigation, there were 2.18 million burglaries to the United States in 2006, up 1.3 percent compared to the year before.

But the number is still well below the 3.24 million burglaries a year committed 20 years ago.

I wonder if anyone has looked at the high correlation between increased gun ownership and decreased burglaries over that 20 year period. Stories like this always predict that the streets will be running ankle deep in blood when the law passes - it never happens. But they still trot it out at every opportunity. On the other hand, declaring areas 'gun-free zones' has repeatedly led to bloody massacres at the hands of non-law-abiding people, haven't they? Think about that.

And don't even think about trying to break into my house.

Canadian Rookie Cop Busts US Fugitive

A Rookie member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, out of the academy for just six weeks, chased down, tackled and arrested a fugitive from the United States. Mountie Stephane Gagnon captured Richard McNair, an escaped murderer who had managed to get out of a Federal prison in Pollock, Louisiana las year - his third escape since being convicted of killing Jerome Theis during a burglary in 1987.

McNair told the young officer: "You have captured a big fish here — you guys will be on the news tonight."

"I don't know if he (Gagnon) realizes the significance of the arrest," Wells said. "There are those that go 20 to 30 years — or their entire careers — without making a high-profile arrest."

"I did only my job," Gagnon said Friday.

McNair, 48, was convicted of killing Jerome Theis, of Circle Pines, Minn., in November 1987 during a burglary at a Minot grain elevator. Richard Kitzman, an elevator employee, was shot three times but survived.

McNair's crimes brought him a life sentence. His escapes landed him a list of the 15 of the nation's most wanted criminals.

Gagnon was on patrol with training officer Nelson Levesque when the two noticed McNair in a stolen van. McNair sped away in the van when the officers attempted to pull him over, but hit a dead end, the officers said.

McNair fled the vehicle, and was tackled by Gagnon after a quarter-mile foot chase down a dirt road and through a wooded area.

McNair fought being handcuffed but Gagnon "applied pressure points to make him comply," Wells said. "At that time we didn't know who he was — we thought he may have been a suspect in tobacco smuggling or drug smuggling."

I hope they have this guy well secured. He is more than a little good at escaping.

Calling For A Recall

The Chicago Tribune, in an unsigned editorial, is calling for the Illinois legislature to enact a recall provision to enable the voters to remove a politician who is not meeting the needs of the voters. The purpose: to throw Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich out of office.

The National Conference of State Legislatures offers a succinct summary of how a recall provision would be useful in a predicament such as Illinois': "Proponents of the recall maintain that it provides a way for citizens to retain control over elected officials who are not representing the best interests of their constituents, or who are unresponsive or incompetent. This view holds that an elected representative is an agent, a servant and not a master." (The NCSL takes no position on whether states should have recall provisions.)

This serious mechanism is rarely used. Only two U.S. governors have been recalled. North Dakotans ousted Lynn Frazier in 1921. In 2003, Californians voted to remove Gray Davis and, in a separate ballot measure, selected Arnold Schwarzenegger to replace him…….

…….The bill of particulars against Rod Blagojevich is numbingly familiar. His is a legacy of federal and state investigations of alleged cronyism and corruption in the steering of pension fund investments to political donors, in the subversion of state hiring laws, in the awarding of state contracts, in matters as personal as that mysterious $1,500 check made out to the governor's then-7-year-old daughter by a friend whose wife had been awarded a state job.

Presented this year with an extraordinary opportunity — his Democratic Party controlling both houses of the Illinois General Assembly — Blagojevich has squandered what should have been a leadership moment: He is governor of a state in desperate need of more accountability in its public schools, of a new tax formula for funding those schools, of a meaningful attack on its swelling pension indebtedness. Today Illinois has … solutions to none of the above.

Instead, taxpayers are bankrolling an endless game of chicken between legislative leaders and a governor known to boast about his self-diagnosed "testicular virility." Blagojevich has clumsily tried to recast himself as a prairie populist, bashing his state's employers. He has borrowed from the future to cover costs of state government today. And in a fiasco that may have its own constitutional implications, he has redirected millions of taxpayers' dollars to personal priorities that he can't convince lawmakers to support.

It sounds distressingly familiar, doesn't it? In fact it sounds rather a lot like what is happening in New York with Eliot Spitzer. Two of the biggest states being run by inept Democrats. The Tribune says that the odds of enacting a recall provision in time to do any good with Blagojevich are not great, but they want the legislature to get started on it.

Fanning The Flames

Bill Whalen, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, write an op-ed about the fires in California for the San Francisco Chronicle. Or, more properly, about how the California fires were just another excuse to fan the flames of political derangement.

If you found yourself mesmerized by California's terrible wildfires last week, you might have overlooked an even uglier conflagration that's engulfed the entire nation: the acid state of political discourse, and the abject failure of the left, the right and a supposedly neutral media to resist their darker natures and juvenile tendencies.

There are notable exceptions to this claim, with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger being the premier example. Throughout the week, he stayed optimistic, talked action and results, and resisted the media's bait to blame someone - anyone - for California's misfortunes. It's exactly what you look for in a leader.

Otherwise, this latest "crisis" was just one more round of partisan blood-sport, just as last August's bridge collapse in Minneapolis became more about Iraq than crumbling infrastructure. Far from dying down, as California's infernos will, America's shout-fest/blame-fest/hate-fest will continue at least until next year's presidential election - something fires, floods and famines seemingly can't change. It began on Tuesday, when Senate Majority Leader and erstwhile climatologist Harry Reid, D-Nev., told reporters, "One reason we have fires in California is global warming." It was Reid's way of sticking it to the Bush administration, which cares not for the Democrats' energy package. It's also Demspeak for: "If Al Gore were president, this never would have happened." That, of course, opens the door to the Florida recount controversy, the legitimacy of the Bush presidency and a whole army of Dubya-related phobias.

It is a good critique of both the left and the right, neither side being without some bad examples. The Orange County Register today has a collection of political cartoons about the fires, the first one illustrates perfectly how bad it has become. The California fires are being contained now, so the media and the pundits will search out the next big thing to fan the flames. Don't worry, there will be another fire soon enough, literally or figuratively.

Rise Of The Thought Police

Wendy Kaminer has a brilliantly reasoned - and beautifully written - op-ed over at the Opinion Journal today about why so-called hate crime legislation is a terrible idea. This is one of the best criticisms of the subject I have ever seen.

The Matthew Shepard Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act is no exception to this rule. By invoking memories of University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard's brutal 1998 slaying, it makes a sentimental bid for expanded federal hate-crime legislation covering violent crimes motivated by a victim's sexual orientation or "gender identity," as well as race, sex, religion, ethnicity or disability.

Its prospects are dimmed by the threat of a presidential veto, but last month the Matthew Shepard Act was attached to the Defense Appropriations Bill by a 60-vote majority in the Senate; a companion bill passed the House (with the support of 212 Democrats and 25 Republicans.) Naturally, the bill enjoys the enthusiastic support of civil-rights groups, including the historically civil libertarian American Civil Liberties Union.

The ACLU has withheld support from hate-crime legislation in the past but wholeheartedly embraces this bill, which applies only to acts of violence and has been carefully drafted to avoid criminalizing pure speech: It provides that evidence of a defendant's hateful speech or associations are only admissible at trial if they "specifically relate" to the offense charged. In other words, speech could be offered as evidence that a violent act was motivated by bias, but it would not be a crime in itself.

Still, distinguishing hateful bias crimes from other hateful acts of violence punishes ideas and expression, no matter how scrupulously the legislation is crafted. When someone convicted of assaulting one woman is subject to an enhanced prison sentence or a more vigorous prosecution because his assault was motivated by a hateful belief in the inherent inferiority of all women, then he is being punished for his thoughts as well as his conduct.

Kaminer is right here. No matter how you look at this, hate crime laws punish the thoughts of the perpetrator of a crime. That is anathema to the constitution of this country. Voltaire, in his A Treatise on Toleration said:

Not only is it extremely cruel to persecute in this brief life those who do not think the way we do, but I do not know if it might be too presumptuous to declare their eternal damnation.

The murderers of Matthew Shepard are serving consecutive life sentences for their heinous crime. Punishing their thoughts would do no more to them. We do not need thought crimes ensconced in Federal law. Read Kaminer's piece.

“The Full Metal Deer Apocalypse”

That is Mark Steyn's name for the film loop that circles endlessly through the minds of many of the people trying to make sense of the world around them. Riffing off the same topic that Peggy Noonan did a few days ago, Steyn points out that many people in America relate not to how the world is, but how they think it is based on their movie and pop culture frame of reference. His starting point is a recent opinion piece written by Christopher Dickey in Newsweek entitled War and Deliverance. In it, Dickey makes a rather tortured metaphor about Dick Cheney as a wannabe hero, a la the Burt Reynolds character in the movie Deliverance. Everyone else is the Jon Voight character, just trying to make sense out of everything. Steyn is having none of it.

Christopher Dickey paints with a broad brush: "On a grand scale they [the administration] could reinterpret the Constitution until it became meaningless." (Monitoring jihadist phone logs being the reinterpretation into meaninglessness, unlike, say, partial-birth abortion, which is merely an ancient constitutional right the founders had cannily anticipated a need for.) So one's first reaction to this is a faint flicker of surprise that Dickey doesn't see Cheney as the mountain man and the Constitution as his rape victim. One's second reaction is that the metaphor is dishonest. When it comes to "closet fantasies" about toppling Saddam, it's not Dick Cheney versus "the rest of us." Throughout the 1990s and all the way up to the Iraq war resolution, there were a lot of folks auditioning for the Burt Reynolds role: Bill Clinton, Al Gore and almost every other prominent Democrat indulged in just as much "ersatz fortitude" about Iraq and its WMD as Dick Cheney ever did.

But the third and bigger point is that, enjoyable as they are, pop-culture metaphors aren't really of much use, especially when you're up against cultures where life is still defined by how you live as opposed to what you experience via media. It seems to me, for example, that when anti-war types bemoan Iraq as this generation's Vietnam "quagmire," older folks are thinking of the real Vietnam – the Gulf of Tonkin resolution and whatnot – but most anybody under 50 is thinking of Vietnam movies: some vague video-store mélange of "The Full Metal Deer Apocalypse."

Take the Scott Thomas Beauchamp debacle at the New Republic, in which the magazine ran an atrocity-a-go-go Baghdad diary piece by a serving soldier about dehumanized troops desecrating graves, abusing disfigured women, etc. It smelled phony from the get-go – except to the professional media class from whose ranks the New Republic's editors are drawn: To them, it smelled great, because it aligned reality with the movie looping endlessly through the windmills of their mind, a nonstop Coppola-Stone retrospective in which ill-educated conscripts are the dupes of a nutso officer class.

If Steyn is harsh with Dickey and the folks endlessly watching The Full Metal Deer Apocalypse running in their heads, he is utterly merciless with the 9/11 conspiracy theorists.

It's the same with all those guys driving around with "9/11 Was An Inside Job" bumper stickers. That aligns reality with every conspiracy movie from the past three decades: It's always the government who did it – sometimes it's some supersecret agency working deep within the bureaucracy from behind an unassuming nameplate on a Washington street; and sometimes it's the president himself – but when poor Joe Schmoe on the lam from the Feds eventually unravels it, the cunning conspiracy is always the work of a ruthlessly efficient all-powerful state. So Iraq is Vietnam. And 9/11 is the Kennedy assassination, with ever higher percentages of the American people gathering on the melted steely knoll.

Every day the government manages to prove exactly how incompetent it can be yet the troofers believe that some sinister force was able to carry out a gargantuan demolition job - and keep it secret.  Never mind that such a powerful, ruthless organization would have long ago silenced the troofers, in their mental film loop they are the little guy who brings down the evil empire. Such drama. Such heroism. So little understanding of the real world and the real threats. So easily manipulated and led.

The sleazier politicians like Ron Paul and now Bill Richardson are trying to cater to those people that only have those pop-culture conspiracy theory frames of reference. Several other candidates kowtow to those who think all problems can be solved merely by wishing it to be so. So they campaign for more ethanol, even though using 510 pounds of corn to produce 13 gallons of fuel isn't a smart use of limited resources. Other failed politicians turn to Hollywood and produce a film full of lies and exaggerations, bypassing the mental film loops and supplying a new one directly. Leading the easily led into thinking that they are thinking for themselves as an art form.

Steyn closes with a powerful truth for the pop-culture types: "Life is not a movie, especially when your enemies don't watch the same movies, and don't buy into the same tired narratives."

(Idiotic Dickey piece here.)