"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler
by Smitty
I didn’t bother posting on Alan’s earlier remark. But the apology, and forgiveness, are two of the most powerful and under-utilized tools in our culture. The former, because hearts are so hard that ‘New Tone’ is mostly honored in the breech, and the latter, because politics is blood sport set to something off of No Remorse, say Steal Your Face:
by Smitty
It’s an interesting call. Seriously. As a military member, lawful orders place one in life threatening situations. Can lawful orders include sexual acts as part of a cover story, as in this bit from the U.K.?
An undercover police officer has defended having sexual relationships with unsuspecting eco-activists, saying they were ‘essential’ to maintaining a convincing cover story.
Mark Kennedy, who spent eight years posing as eco-warrior Mark ‘Flash’ Stone, has spoken out after learning that three women plan to sue the Metropolitan Police for emotional distress, saying he ‘duped’ them into sex.
Later in the article:
Kennedy’s cover was blown a year ago and he has since left the police and moved to America, where he is working on a book and has signed a lucrative film deal. A Channel??4 documentary about him, Confessions Of An Undercover Cop, aired in November.
In 2002, Kennedy, 42, was recruited by the Met’s National Public Order Intelligence Unit and travelled throughout Britain and Europe, infiltrating activist groups as long-haired, tattooed protester Stone.
Kennedy, who is now getting divorced, insists he was celibate during his first year undercover. ‘I avoided sexual contact, despite the fact that free love is part of that lifestyle,’ he says. ‘I was a new face with money and a van, so I was a catch but I said I’d just ended a relationship and was recovering emotionally.’
In fact, Kennedy was married to Edel, mother of his 12-year-old son and ten-year-old daughter, though he claims he and his wife stayed together only because of the children.
Now, wait a minute: as far as the women go, what is the effective difference between these women fornicating with Flash Stone (really?) and then suing him for money, and just selling themselves as prostitutes? Is it that the notion of charging for the protein transfer did not occur until later?
And Flash boy? Look, if you’re a good enough actor to pull off an undercover gig, why can’t you come up with a better line than “I’d just ended a relationship and was recovering emotionally.’” There are plenty of medical reasons for celibacy. Now you’ve got a failed marriage as an albatross hanging about your neck.
But really: are these environmental outfits really so dangerous that governments need to place undercover operatives within them? What, are they smuggling explosives? May this pulp fiction story not do well in the market, say I. There is no way that the government should have people committing immoral acts. Furthermore, it’s medically dangerous to be engaged in sexual gymnastics like that, and the taxpayers should not be on the hook.
The whole thin smacks of a hoax.
via Digg
by Smitty
Legislation introduced to the Indiana Senate would make it a crime to stray from approved lyrical or melodic guidelines while performing the national anthem at any event sponsored by public schools and state universities.
The bill was proposed by Sen. Vaneta Becker (R). She told The Indianapolis Star that it was inspired by a constituent who emailed her after being upset by a parody of the “Star-Spangled Banner.”
“Sometimes it’s just done in a joking manner,” Becker said. “But I don’t think the national anthem is something we ought to be joking around with.”
I cry tears of pride when the anthem is sung correctly, and my jaw tightens when a Roseanne Barr makes a fool of herself with it.
But making a law barring Barr’s idiocy? No. Doesn’t Indiana have actual issues to manage, and doesn’t Becker look nannyish for even proposing this?
via Memeorandum
Update: linked at The Daley Gator
by Smitty
BOONE, Iowa
Stacy called to say that he can’t get anywhere near Rick Santorum, due to the amount of media there in Boone for the 2 PM CT event. The Duggar family is here, and have loaned their bus to the Santorum campaign. Stacy has an interview to transcribe later.
Thanks to Three Beers Laterfor this fake but accurate depiction of the scene:
TBL was reacting to the Village Voice story which actually noticed Stacy’s reporting, and then turns up the snark on the dextrosphere.
Other reactions:
via Memeorandum
Update: linked at Da Tech Guy, who calls it a “A ‘Sarah Palin like’ press scrum” and Maggie’s Notebook.
Update II: Troglopundit applauds his personal lack of an attention span, whereas The Lonely Conservative sounds more upbeat.
by Smitty
Now there is a provocative read:
Ron Paul — poised to finish strong in the Iowa caucuses – has begun to implement a quiet, complex plan to force a long battle with Mitt Romney for delegates to the Republican National Convention in August. His advantages: Experience, organization, and the legacy of the 2010 Tea Party revival, which convinced Republicans that anti-government figures like Paul just aren’t as weird as they’d thought.
Paul is following the roadmap set by Barack Obama’s 2008 strategy: Start early, learn the rules, and use superior organization and devoted young supporters to dominate the arcane but crucial party procedures in states your rivals are ignoring — states where caucuses and conventions that elect the delegates who will ultimately choose the Republican candidate. The plan begins in places like Minnetonka, Minnesota, a Minneapolis suburb where Paul has based his state headquarters, and where staffers have already begun running “mock-auses” — practice runs for Minnesota’s February 7 caucuses.
Paul’s rivals dismiss his chances. “Ron Paul’s not going to be our nominee,” Mitt Romney said flatly in December.
This is really an argument against “Arcane Rules”. We all love to hate on professional politicians, but it is truly a full-time job just to understand the basics of how the sausage is made. Complexity favors the insiders. We love to hate the IRS, but no one is really talking about killing the 16th Amendment or offering a tax code other than one putting the ‘b’ in Byzantine.
The two things we have to do, going down the road, are: involve more people, and stamp out complexity. Systems need to be as simple as possible, but no simpler.
As for the Paul candidacy: irrespective of anyone’s personal opinion of the newsletter utterances, you have to know, with total clarity, that the MSM would utterly, endlessly pillory Paul over that issue, while simultaneously touting an unexpected new hip-hop release by Jeremiah Wright as some sort of cultural achievement, just for the recreational hypocrisy of it all. Also, Ron’s foreign policies are unworkable, and would cause a big fat war, into which we’d be dragged.
So, even though Virginia’s primary is going totally South Park, I’m left to pray for a Santorum triumph, as a way to avoid the centrism of Romney, and the left-libertarianism of Paul.
via Huffington Post
Steve Ertelt of Life News reports:
For the second time, people opposed to one of the Republican presidential candidates have misappropriated the name of a prominent Iowa pro-life organization attack the candidate in the state that holds the fist caucus tomorrow.
In December someone used the name of Iowans for Life on fliers distributed at events in the Hawkeye State to attack pro-life former House Speaker Newt Gingrich with claims that he is not prolife on abortion.
Now, Iowans for Life’s name has been falsely attached to fliers disparaging pro-life former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum — who has cruised to a third place standing in the state that leads off the campaign to replace pro-abortion President Barack Obama.
“Iowans for Life has once again been subject to fraudulent use of its name for the purpose of negative rhetoric targeting a candidate in the presidential campaign,” the group told LifeNews on Sunday. “This second deceitful usurping of Iowans for Life’s name was aimed at Senator Rick Santorum.”
First Newt, now Santorum? I suspect the Perry campaign was responsible for both of these cheap smears. As I remarked Saturday, if desperation was a cologne fragance, they’d reek of it.
by Smitty
From Nobody Understands Debt, emphasis mine:
Deficit-worriers portray a future in which we’re impoverished by the need to pay back money we’ve been borrowing. They see America as being like a family that took out too large a mortgage, and will have a hard time making the monthly payments.
This is, however, a really bad analogy in at least two ways.
First, families have to pay back their debt. Governments don’t — all they need to do is ensure that debt grows more slowly than their tax base. The debt from World War II was never repaid; it just became increasingly irrelevant as the U.S. economy grew, and with it the income subject to taxation.
Second — and this is the point almost nobody seems to get — an over-borrowed family owes money to someone else; U.S. debt is, to a large extent, money we owe to ourselves.
I grasp that Krugman is correct in the sense that he depicts accurately a mentality present in the bulk of our policy makers. I also gather that returning to a fundamentally valid fiscal approach is going to hurt, hurt, hurt. What Krugman and the rest of his ilk have absolutely never done is shown why citizens should quietly accept what amounts to an acceptance of theft. What is the moral basis for your argument, which appears to be pure pain avoidance?
I’m not saying our system is unethical, for it has been accepted for decades. My question in the title could be restated:
“How can those members of society who still cling to a notion of ‘right and wrong’ that is stronger than ‘Did Congress spew some legislation?’ be reconciled to your notion of debt?”.
If we agree that “debt” does not mean what, say, George Washington would have thought it means, then please publish the re-definition of the term. You, and our policy makers overall, are abusing the term “debt” in a manner similar to the way some would like to abuse the term “marriage”, which gets at your second point.
When the demographics start to go bad, as with Japan, the argument that we “owe it to ourselves” becomes as foolhardy as tampering with the word “debt”. While not totally out of the childbearing range, I’ll be blessed to hit the replacement rate, personally. Stacy is picking up the slack, but who will help his kids carry the “debt” load, Paul? Your cat? Debt is debt, marriage is marriage, and the Progressive attempts to freebase these symbols are ++ungood.
Americans are going to sober up about debt, Paul. The “or not” alternative is untenable. Also, your ideas.
via Memorandum
Related: neither #OccupyResoluteDesk nor the GOP look particularly great in this graph:
Update: Marginal Revolution, “Krugman v. Krugman”
Now to be fair, Krugman covered himself in 2003 in a credible way he said “unless we slide into Japanese-style deflation, there are much higher interest rates in our future.” Thus, I do not fault Krugman’s forecasting ability. What I do fault is that despite a 180 degree about-face, one thing remains constant in all of Krugman’s writings, anyone who disagrees with him is portrayed as a mendacious idiot. In truth, Heritage today and Krugman 2003 both have legitimate concerns about the long-term debt situation of the United States and it would have been to the credit of Krugman 2012 had he acknowledged that point more fairly.
by Smitty
Did you catch Dilbert riffing on Congress today? Ouch. By the way, you can customize it to ‘honor’ your Congresstool.
Also nicely done: