With several anti-American leaders, plus Qaddafi, making speeches to the UN today (see what I did there?) I was reminded of that other kook who used to live in the government housing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Which brought me to this.
Yeah, But He Did Lie, So…
September 10, 2009 38 Comments
From Matt Welch:
It is telling that so many people who claim to be speaking on the side of Truth, Justice, and the American Way of Journalism have consistently focused their outrage-o-meters at individual townhall attendees, political broadcast entertainers, and the lesser lights of a lame (if resurgent-by-default) opposition party, while letting walk nearly fact-check-free the non-irrelevant occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. If calling out lies and misrepresentations about a significant policy proposal is such pressing journalistic business—and it should be!—you’d think the watchdogs might start with the guy doing the proposing.
Counterpoint: Shawn Williams Makes the Case For
September 4, 2009 12 Comments
My friend and news entrepreneur Shawn Williams of Dallas South Blog makes his case in support of the Obama speech to schools.
Portraits in Leadership: Carolyn Davis
August 27, 2009 13 Comments
I’m not sure exactly what to say. The Dallas council adopted a rule that members have to attend at least half a meeting to get paid for that meeting, and one member more than any other has a problem with that?
A frustrated Davis, who voted against the measure along with council members Vonciel Jones Hill, Steve Salzar and Ann Margolin, said there could be many reasons why she couldn’t attend a full meeting.
“I have to take my daughter to school,” she said.
What kind of job did Carolyn Davis have before where she expected to get paid for not showing up? Some sort of union job or community organizer gig? And look, I covered council for a year. Meetings typically run eight hours. Where does her daughter go to school, Shreveport?
For those not following at home, Davis is the member who expensed the city for her vacation to Belize (trade mission or some damn thing), uses campaign funds to pay for her car maintenance, and doesn’t even know what committees she sits on.
It all leads to the obvious question: How on earth could Dallas be facing financial difficulties with visionary leadership such as this?
Get a Life, Jonah
August 25, 2009 9 Comments
I’m not a real big fan of Jonah Goldberg. Oh, he’s undeniably talented as a writer. So was Upton Sinclair, but that didn’t make Sinclair any less a know-nothing, overhyped prick.
My problem with Goldberg is that he’s like the writers and producers on Star Trek: The Next Generation, compared to the original, one and only Star Trek. The writers on the original Star Trek — they were war veterans, former cops, former business owners, pilots, and engineers. They’d lived life and their scripts had a depth to them.
Meanwhile, writers for the step-child of Trek with the bald guy as captain, those writers had spent their whole lives writing for television. Thus the show was flat, predictable, entirely conventional, and — more than anything — soulless.
Which brings me full circle to Goldberg. He’s a paper-hanger parroting the neo-conservative line to the point of parody. Something really rubs me wrong about guys who spend their 20s advocating for interventionist, non-defensive wars, but they can’t be bothered to enlist.
And today he suggests that torture isn’t immoral because the good guys do it in the movies.
Really? Yes, really.
Look, I’ll skip the “it’s just a movie/TV show” response because he is right — that’s not his point.
Now, I know I will get a lot of “it’s just a movie” or “TV shows aren’t real” email from people. At least I have every other time I’ve made this point. So let me concede a point I’ve never disputed while making one these folks don’t seem to grasp. If such practices, in the contexts depicted, were as obviously and clearly evil as many on the left claim, Hollywood could never get away with having the good guys employ them. Harrison Ford in the Tom Clancy movies would never torture wholly innocent and underserving victims for the same reasons he wouldn’t beat his kids or hurl racial epithets at black people. But given sufficient time to lay out the context and inform the viewers of the stakes, as well as Ford’s motives, the audience not only understands but applauds his actions. Of course it’s just a movie. But the movie is tapping into and reflecting the popular moral sentiments. Think of these scenes as elaborate hypothetical situations in the debate about torture and interrogation that are acted out and played before focus groups of normal Americans.
No, Jonah, the problem is in real life, the certainty that Jack Bauer, Jack Ryan and Jonas Blaine operate under almost never exists. The heroes can be sure they have the right guy and that he knows where the bomb is or will answer “WHO DO YOU WORK FOR??!!!” because their world is a pocket universe with a limited cast and omniscient writers.
I’m not saying that kind of certainty never exists in the real world. I’m saying it’s as rare as neo-con who is an actual military veteran.
We all know the hypothetical. If a nuc-u-lar bomb was about to go off in a day care, and Abdul knew where it was, would we support cutting off his fingers? Sure — almost all of us would grab the snippers and do it ourselves. If that didn’t work I can promise you there are even more interesting and grisly tricks we could play with his internal organs. And few of us would shy away from doing it.
IF. WE. COULD. BE. CERTAIN.
But would you do the wetwork on Abdul if you were told, “Well, we’re pretty sure he knows. We’re almost certain he’s involved. Of course, he could be just a guy off the street. Hell, we do work for the government, you know. Have you seen our previous work samples? The mortgage crisis, dollar collapse, the imprisonment of dozens of innocents for rape, and yeah — that whole tax code? That and the post office and those levees in New Orleans? Yeah, that’s us. Congress pays our salary. We’re running GM. Go on, now — start cutting on the guy.”
That’s the problem Jonah. Scenes where the good guys break the rules are cathartic because we know they have the right guy and the stakes are that high and yeah, Jack just kneecapped the dude but we saw the dude blow up a bus of nuns, so — okay. We want that in movies because reality isn’t so certain and it’s fun to watch bad guys blow up real good.
Look, even in real life I’m not against a little roughing up of the worst of the worst. Bread and water, limited sleep, a little slapping around, hot and cold running dysentery. And when we have a real asshole we know without a doubt is guilty, I’m not going to lose sleep if we go full Jack Bauer on him. But those cases are so rare that no, it doesn’t justify systematic, sanctioned torture.
(Side note: If they want to shake up Season 8 of 24, have Jack torture someone who is categorically innocent and have to deal with the consequences beyond a whispered, “Dammit.”)
See, I can enjoy the fantasy of fiction or even approve of the very rare use of extreme methods in the very rare instances of absolute certainty. But that doesn’t make it right. Hell, I watch Doctor Who despite its regular neo-Marxist and anti-gun message. I watch porn with a whole bunch of bells and whistles — and let’s be honest, humiliating stuff — and I don’t want any of that in my bedroom for real. (Mostly.)
So no, Jonah, there’s no connection. It is just entertainment.
Oh, and by the way, your own war porn fantasies didn’t get your flabby ass to the recruiting station, Jonah, so you’re the best counter to your own argument.
Quote of the Week: Matt Welch
July 16, 2009 Leave a Comment
The more you cede your own well-being to an 800-pound gorilla, the more that 800-pound gorilla is going to act like a thin-skinned asshole.
Context here, but it pretty much is a universal axiom.
Tea Partiers Boo Perry, Cornyn
July 6, 2009 1 Comment
Have doubts the Tea Party protesters are for real, and protesting both the Democrats and Republicans? Have look here as they boo those two posers — Sen John Cornyn and Gov. Rick Perry. They call Cornyn “Traitor!” shout “You’re the problem!” (3:30ish) and “Sell out!”
Sweet.
When can we start voting from the rooftops?
(h/t Wick)
It’s Got Monkeys. Nuff Said.
June 11, 2009 1 Comment
This is less than two minutes and explains more in that time than you’ve learned in years, I’d reckon.
Monday Roundup: Violence in South Dallas But Not Really South Dallas…
June 8, 2009 8 Comments
- Two dead, three seriously wounded Saturday night and none of them — or all of them — or maybe some of them? — were in South Dallas. Except when they were in neighborhoods in South Dallas, in which case that’s not South Dallas. Or something like that. Ask Rawlins. Bring aspirin.
- You know what will make downtown Dallas great? Besides that the 12 weekends a year when we’ll have drunken conventions at the People’s Hotel? Pep rallies. Yes, pep rallies. (Seriously? I’m beginning to think that even his editors don’t read what he turns in.)
- Who knew Dallas owned a TV channel in the first place?
- DISD has its own police, and it’s a good match up.
- And speaking of, Robert Guest asks all the right questions (that a newspaper reporter failed to) about Flower Mound polizie police apparently busting down the door of a residence not based on probable cause, but rather the refusal of residence to let them in.
- You can look at someone’s hand an know if they’re gay. Seriously.
Thursday Roundup: See how I’m not punching him?
June 4, 2009 9 Comments
- What’s that word? Oh yeah, irony. The first school named in this story of how high school seniors are so indoctrinated to fear the humorless Powers That Be that they don’t play senior pranks anymore is Liberty High School in Frisco. Sorta surprised they didn’t quote the principal at Oceania High School.
- And speaking of Oceania schools — DISD is ensuring equality in education by bringing every school down to the lowest common denominator. Viva égalité!
- Something smells seriously fishy here. Who needs seven night vision scopes for hunting? Who needs one night vision scope for hunting anything but the most dangerous game? And who spends an average of $7,000 on a night vision scope in the first place? Even the most advanced ones don’t run that much.
- I’m confused. The last paragraph in a story about someone filing an abuse allegation against two DPD officers — the police department can file “retaliation charges” against you for complaining about allegedly being abused while in custody? (Here’s a better version of the story from CBS 11.)
- You know, it’s stupid enough that anyone would deny that the email has a racist tinge – referring to the White House as the black house. But I’m even more offended at the stupidity of thinking a proposed state bill in Austin originated with Mr. Obama, and with the idea of a $50 tax on gun purchases.
- And speaking of…Cracked.com’s “7 Ridiculously Over-The-Top Modifications to Deadly Weapons.” No. 7 is the Chainsaw Bayonet.
