perfidy

"Grist", in this case, used as in the third of the definitions from Merriam-Webster.

Interesting article by Mark Steyn, a writer I always enjoy reading, in (tomorrow's) Telegraph.

On close reading, particularly of the last half, a reasonable person could get the impression the Brits have gone barmy. It makes most of what you think you know about excessive political correctness seem rather quaint.

You'll know you've arrived when you see the bit about gay horses. Trust me.

My summary of the Michael Jackson verdict, dittoed from an email I just sent to a friend in PA who insisted that she had to know what I thought of the matter:

Well, I don't blame the jury; I think they did a fine job. The prosecutor screwed up by bringing a weak case, and then by trying it in the newspapers. He should be ashamed.

Richard Jeni, one of my favorite standup comedians, did a show in January or February on HBO (called "A Big Steaming Pile of Me"), in which his opening bit was about Michael Jackson. Sample bits (paraphrased): "Easiest job in the world? Michael Jackson's lawyer - think about it: you have to create reasonable doubt in the jury's mind. (Pretends to point toward Jackson) Ladies & gentlemen of the jury - there's your reasonable doubt. I mean, look at the guy!"

Another part was about needing a jury of your peers. His point was something like "You could troll the entire human gene pool, 24/7, for a month and not come up with one bit of whatever THAT is." So how did they find a jury of his peers, I wonder? They didn't, which is a relief, because he's utterly unique in a damp and clammy sort of way.

He's an easy target, and could well be innocent of all pedophilia. I don't doubt that he was innocent of this pedophilia, primarily because his accusers were so skeezy, even while I have my questions about his proclivities in that area.

And he's a total wack-job, which reinforces the "easy target". But good for him - he got off, and if he could just take a couple years to get his feces together, maybe we'll never have to see or hear from him again.

I'd be OK with that.

Yup - that about sums it up for me, not that I care.

Oh, and happy Birthday, B - Do I get any retro-points for having edited the childish street profanity out of my continuation play to your only-peripherally-about-the-King-of-Pop post?

[wik] It could just be me, but does MJ's lawyer, Thomas Mesereau, look like he could be someone's grandma?

In a Monday morning Telegraph opinion piece, Dr. Bjørn Lomborg opines that environmental scientists might be going 'round the bend:

Last Tuesday, 11 of the world's leading academies of science, including the Royal Society, told us that we must take global warming seriously.

Their argument is that global warming is due to mankind's use of fossil fuels, that the consequences 100 years from now will be serious, and that we therefore should do something dramatic. We should make substantial and long-term reductions of greenhouse gases along the lines of the Kyoto Protocol.

This is perhaps the strongest indication that well-meaning scientists have gone beyond their area of expertise and are conducting unsubstantiated politicking ahead of next month's meeting of the G8.

Now, granted, he's a political scientist, not an environmental scientist, but he's got a reputation for clear thought, and I'd assert that clear thought might be more enlightening than the howling of doom-mongers.

Here's the thing - part of his current exposition of clear thought, embodied in the article linked above, revolves not around debating the correctness of the views of Kyoto Treaty proponents. He points out that, even if you accept them all at face value, they're missing something important. The pro-Kyoto arguments go into great detail about what "will" happen if Kyoto's not put in place, with facts, figures, pictures, and for all I know, hand-puppets. So they're clearly hip to using data to make their case for projections of a dire future.

The same scientific facility and diligence could be applied to a post-Kyoto world, too, wouldn't you think? Lomborg does. And he uses their own projections to reveal that which they "know" but don't share with us, namely that if Kyoto is put into force, the bad effects it's supposed to delay will only be delayed by six years. 6 - not 60 or 600, six.

Color me unimpressed.

He goes on to point out:

Moreover, they should also tell what they expect the cost of the Kyoto Protocol to be. That may not come easy to natural scientists, but there is plenty of literature on the subject, and the best guess is that the cost of doing a very little good for the third world 100 years from now would be $150 billion per year for the rest of this century.

Never mind - color me actively opposed. Unless they cease the pretense that this is anything but a way to hobble the developed world so that the third world can catch up, disdain for Kyoto proponents is all I can muster. Not for nothing did the US Senate vote unanimously in favor of a resolution calling the Kyoto Treaty a "bad thing" or words to that effect.

[wik] See also Robert Novak's latest, in which he reports:

"In reality, Kyoto was never about environmental policy," a White House aide told me. "It was designed as an elaborate, predatory trade strategy to level the American and European economies." The problem for Europeans has been that Bush refused to go along, ruining the desired leveling effect. The EU's industries have been devastated, while the U.S. has prospered.

Europeans' desire to bring U.S. prosperity down to their level is no conspiracy theory of American conservatives. Margot Wallstrom, the Swedish vice president of the European Commission, in 2001 (when she was commissioner for the environment) said the Kyoto Protocol was "not a simple environmental issue . . . this is about international relations, this is about economy -- about trying to create a level playing field."

They should be encouraged to intercourse themselves, sez me.
[/wik]

No wallflower, Lomborg, he finishes by pointing out what we perhaps might ought to be worrying about, including AIDS, malaria, malnutrition, free trade and clean drinking water; all things that perhaps we might be able to positively affect.

And, unspoken in Lomborg's article - the comparison between those challenges and the alleged challenge of global warming. Those maladies are inarguably bad, but global warming, and the shifts in global climate, have been occurring since the Earth initially cooled from whatever flaming rock it used to be, and I find it hard to credit arguments that there's some static configuration the climate on Earth is supposed to have. It certainly wasn't static before mankind and his evil SUVs started tooling around, and I question how reasonable it is to expect it to be so in the future.

(If you can get past the bad plot and the breathlessly overdone drama, I'd recommend Crichton's State of Fear for a decent bibliography of the failings of global warming activists' critical thought processes)

Friday morning's Telegraph contains a story that brightened my day. Entitled "Speech by Mugabe 'proves he is losing his mind'", it informs that:

President Robert Mugabe was accused yesterday of displaying "senile dementia" when he boasted to Zimbabwe's parliament that "great strides" were being taken towards "economic recovery".

Absolutist that I sometimes am, the next paragraph talks about a slightly older issue (last week) that, to me, smacks of advanced syphilitic insanity on the old bastard's part:

The president hailed the march of progress in a capital where bulldozers have demolished thriving factories and township shacks alike, throwing tens of thousands on to the streets.

At the risk of (again) being accused of simplistic exaggeration, I think that half of what's wrong with the entire African continent would be resolved with the ascension of the MDC's Morgan Tsvangirai or, frankly, anyone outside ZANU-PF, to the presidency of the unfortunate country of Zimbabwe.

And when I've recently had occasion to rail, off-line, at the facile pleadings of Hollywood nobility for the US to belly up to the bar and double down on its African aid, most of my objection was that so much aid already has gone toward propping up tinhorn shitheads like Mugabe that Africa is almost better off without further such help.

If he goes 'round the bend, however, my railing will be reduced by a quarter. And if one of his army colonels speeds it up on behalf of his countrymen, and doesn't simply take over in his stead, well, I'd reduce my railing by fully half.

Via WSJ's sometimes annoying email news alerts, this headline:

After taking a string of scalps, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer suffered a high-profile loss today, taking some of the luster off his campaign against shady mutual-fund trading.

Funny thing - I could be misremembering, but he hasn't actually taken many scalps in his tenure as New York Attorney General, though he has convinced a lot of people to scalp themselves and deliver the flesh and hair to him, gift wrapped.

Without expressing opinion on either his choice of targets or his reasons for seeming always to be trying to be newsworthy, there's a funny thing about this loss, encapsulated in the words of whatever sporting wit came up with the phrase "That's why they play the games".

Spitzer's ability to terrorize individuals and companies into admitting guilt may have advanced the cause of justice so far during his tenure. Heck, anything's possible. But every so often, at the very least, it's nice to see someone force him to get a case in front of a jury, to ensure both that remembers where the courthouse is located and that he's not simply an overreaching schmuck.

And I'm not saying he is. But a jury in New York State Supreme Court has given a hint that perhaps, in this case, he might have some attributes in common with such grandees.

[wik] Link to WSJ story replaced with one to a non-subscription report on the matter, at the Telegraph.

[alsø wik] Freely available, terse, and complete - WSJ editorial on the matter.

Well, that's not quite true - in one forum or another, I state the obvious multiple times per day, and for that I apologize.

But here's a case where the WSJ's Brendan Miniter has done it, and it seems to me to be a public service:

Hero or not, Mark Felt did America a great service

Just when I thought that nobody in a position to widely disseminate such a rational thought was going to do so, Mr. Miniter comes and says:

This is an open memo to those on the right who've spent the past week chastising their counterparts on the left for calling Mark Felt, a k a "Deep Throat," a hero. It's true that the recently outed Watergate supersource might have acted for his own interests, and that real heroes pay the price for their heroism instead of hiding in the shadows of a parking garage. It is therefore difficult to laud his personal character or portray him as someone young people should emulate.

But if Mr. Felt isn't personally a hero, his actions look a lot more heroic than the actions of those who've had the most biting words for the now 91-year-old man who at the time was the No. 2 official at the FBI. Pat Buchanan, a former speechwriter for Richard Nixon, called Mr. Felt a "snake." Charles Colson, another Nixon aide, who served seven months in prison for obstruction of justice, said Mr. Felt was "violating his oath to keep this nation's secrets." Watergate conspirator turned radio personality G. Gordon Liddy, who also served time, is quoted as saying bluntly that Mr. Felt "violated the ethics of the law enforcement profession."

Sounds about right to me, since I was tired of the whining revisionists' history-polishing after the first of the participants opened his gaping pie-hole on the matter.

Miniter's take is a good one, and I commend it to your attention.

[wik] George Friedman, in the Geopolitical Intelligence Report which hit my mailbox a couple hours ago, covers the underpinnings of Felt's methods, along with some of his motivations, and comes to some very obvious conclusions that, ahem, hadn't even crossed my mind. I can't find a link for the briefing at his site, but if anyone's interested, I'd happily forward the Stratfor email.

[alsø wik] For the truly intrepid, the Onion's take on the matter

Court Rules Against Pot for Sick People

The arguments of the majority in this case appear to be "Well, it IS, after all, federal law". They were presented with an opportunity to legislate from the bench, and they refused to do so, an act for which I think they are to be commended.

But, dang - this is such a silly issue for which to have a controlling federal law that it begs for some form of quick legislative solution.

No, I'm not a capital-L Libertarian who believes that all drugs should be legal. In fact, I'm not certain I even have an opinion on the matter, to be honest with you. But this smacks of a matter to be decided locally, particularly since marijuana is among the more benign substances with which Americans self-medicate.

A good friend of mine lives in Mendocino County, CA, and the law there is that pot's OK, for medicinal purposes or any other. I've noticed nothing untoward in my visits to the area, other than the fact that some of the residents are a little more intentionally (faux?) laid back and environmentally wacky than I prefer, but I attribute that to something other than the killer weed.

And no, I don't give much weight to the claims that smoking pot makes you terminally stupid. For that, you can just go sniff the air in Pasadena TX.

I began my daily dumbing-down by perusing the news in the morning's Houston Chronicle. Among items the editors deemed crucial for my continued functioning as a citizen, I found the following:

Pasadena is a suburb way down on the east side of Houston which is home to many of the oil refineries in the area, and not coincidentally stinks to high-heaven. I was only vaguely aware that it was populated by rejected extras from Deliverance, those with low tolerance for chemical fumes, or both.

The parents of four Pasadena children left at home alone have been arrested and charged with child endangerment and possession of marijuana.

Billy Bob Pettey, 31, and his wife, Crystal Pettey, 22, were arrested after Pasadena police officers responded to a disturbance call shortly after 7 p.m. Saturday from a neighbor at their apartment complex in the 4300 block of Shaver.

After reading the beginning of the story, completely aside from the male protagonist's name (which, well, come on - do you actually know anyone named Billy Bob?), it occurred to me that I've never known a girl named Crystal that wasn't either a stripper or should have considered stripping as a career advancement maneuver.

So I read on. And if you've got 30 seconds of your life for which you don't have a better use, feel free to do the same.

If I were a more caring individual, I'd shed a tear for the future of Houston's east side, because I don't think Billy Bob and Crystal are horribly unique among their neighbors. And no, none of the good strip clubs in Houston, of which I hear there are many, happen to be anywhere near Pasadena.

But I thought you might benefit from knowing that this guy apparently harbors some level of disdain for Cameron Diaz.

Ah, the stuff I read so you don't have to. Even though you just did.

Perhaps oddly for a guy with a temporary disdain for political commentary, my first short note at the new home so graciously provided by my friends here at the Ministry has a political tinge. It's occasioned by Buckethead's posting about the proposed changes to Senate rules, now made moot by the agreement reported this evening.

As that matter's already well covered at the link and comments above, my take's a bit macro. Harry Reid, in the tradition of folks from both sides of the political aisle, has engaged in a long-running game of pissing on peoples' shoes while claiming it's raining. Similarly to the theatrics of Trent Lott, who originated the phrase "nuclear option", and Bill Frist, among others repeatedly use it, the game involves sleight of hand, repeated ad nauseam until the hoped-for moment when everyone forgets their legs are being pulled, with vigor.

As evidence for Sen. Reid's success, the Washington Post makes reference to the proposed rule changes as "an arcane constitutional question", when it's neither arcane nor even a constitutional question at all. Mr. Reid regularly refers to it as a (capital C) "Constitutional matter", intentionally confusing the actual requirement for "advice and consent" with his desire to let the minority outvote the majority. Frist, Lott, and the rest haven't helped by talking about the "nuclear option" as though a change to the Senate rules was utterly unprecedented and disgusting, sort of like wiping out a couple cities in Japan.

Yeesh. You can't get a straight story out of either, and it's become a battle of drooling retard sound bites, none of which accurately reflects the position of its dispenser. In my admittedly non-existent perfect world, Reid would make a case to the public at large that those "extreme" judges such as Owen and Brown are actually extreme, rather than, say, not holding the political views that he thinks they should hold as females, African Americans, or in one case, both. Claiming to disagree with their views isn't the same as convincing the rest of the Senate or the American public you're right. Just ask Tom Daschle, if you can find him. But it's easier to cast it as a constitutional infringement, or the trampling of the rights of a group who, ahem, didn't carry the majority in either house of Congress.

And the Republicans? Sure, it's easy to change the rules, far easier than making your case and doing what Senators do - trading horses. There's not much room for give and take on a yes/no vote for a judicial appointment, particularly in a case when so much testosterone's already been spilt. Gilding the proposed rule change under the previously chosen name, "nuclear option" (until Karl Rove dictated other nomenclature) was a great way to further inflame prostates all 'round, but not good for much else, like an actual resolution to the matter.

And so now we've got a compromise. Since I believe 80% of Americans are clustered within a standard deviation of dead center, I'm drawn to the conclusion that roughly 80% of the populace is, like me, happy that some form of resolution's been reached. (Yes, I just made that 80% up. Twice. Out of whole cloth)

Complete happiness, however, remains elusive. I'd enjoy the ability, for once, to deactivate the bullshit filter when listening to my elected representatives as they troll for dupes.