Making that Fine Arts Degree Worth Something

Instead of asking, "Do you want fries with that?", at least one fine arts major is putting his art degree to use...making bobbleheads. According to

this A.P. story, anybody can have a bobblehead now, not just rich and famous.

Ralph Trumbo is neither an athlete nor a celebrity. Nevertheless, he has a bobblehead likeness of himself sitting on his mantle.

Bobbleheads, those shaky-headed 3-D caricatures, have jiggled free of their mass-produced roots of an earlier generation. Once merely featureless figures decked out in team colors and handed out on game day, they now depict just about anyone who wants one.

Even Trumbo, a Des Moines letter carrier.

"It's really cool," he said. "I take it to work and they say 'It's you.' It looks just like me."

Trumbo's bobblehead was sculpted by Bryan Guise, who creates the toys in the cramped basement of his home.

Guise, 29, has made bobbleheads for Iowa's governor, police officers, a woman with a deformed face, even a rush job for a dying man. Typically, he takes orders over the Internet and relies on photos of his subjects...

Guise, who graduated from the University of Iowa with a fine arts degree in 2002, has been drawing caricatures since he was a child. He turned that interest into a job making bobbleheads after graduation.

He won't say how many he makes beyond "quite a few." Prices range from $150 to $200.

Sounds to me like a fun and creative way to use his degree.

James Brown Dies

I don't usually do obits here. There are better places than this measly blog for one. But I was shocked to discover that James Brown died sometime while the rest of us were ripping open presents and eating the turkey dinner.

I'm not the world's biggest James Brown fan, but it would be hard for any American to not have some James Brown song in their Top 100 list.

One of the major musical influences of the past 50 years, James Brown was to rhythm and dance music what Bob Dylan was to lyrics.

From Jagger to Michael Jackson, David Bowie to Public Enemy, his rapid-footed dancing, hard-charging beats and heartfelt yet often unintelligible vocals changed the musical landscape.

"He was a whirlwind of energy and precision, and he was always very generous and supportive to me in the early days of the Stones," Jagger said. "His passing is a huge loss to music."

What's in a Deficit?

Bruce Bartlett takes President George W. Bush's accounting methods to task in this article at townhall.com.

Bartlett does an excellent job of laying out the problem with the president's recent announcement that the deficit was about half of what recent Office of Management and Budget projections had been.

If this is the standard for success, one wonders why we didn't do even better. All Bush had to do was order OMB to make an even bigger mistake than it did in estimating what the deficit would be. If it had wrongly projected the deficit to be $500 billion or $600 billion in 2006, then Bush could have announced an even bigger improvement. Maybe next year he should tell OMB to project a deficit of $1 trillion. Then even if the budget deficit rises, Bush can congratulate himself once again for beating expectations.

President Bush, right, accompanied by first lady Laura Bush, gestures as he addresses the media about his visit with troops wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan, Friday, Dec. 22, 2006 at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) In the real world, of course, people measure their progress not against some incorrect forecast, but against actual results. By this standard, the numbers don't look as good. Bush inherited a budget surplus of $128 billion in fiscal year 2001, which the government was already in the midst of when he took office. By the following year, FY 2002, the surplus was gone and the government had a deficit of $158 billion, which rose to $378 billion in 2003 and $413 billion in 2004, before falling to $318 billion in 2005 and $248 billion last year.

Bartlett goes on to point out that none of these budget projections include Medicare and Social Security, the two biggest budget busters in our government. Without including those, all other budget projections are completely inaccurate and useless.

There's good reason why neither of these programs are included in budget projects. They cannot be curbed nor dropped and will be funded regardless of the cost to the rest of the budget. They will be, that is, until there are so many people in those systems versus people paying into those systems that it is no longer sustainable. But no one wants to discuss that, as was evidenced when President Bush wanted to reform Social Security back in 2004. I wouldn't say it will be "fun" to see Democrats suddenly rediscover the problems of Social Security and Medicare, but it will be interesting, to be sure.

10 Trends in Media

Peter Kann has this excellent piece in the Wall Street Journal on 10 trends in the press that need fixing. (Via GetReligion's Mollie.

I won't list all of them, but it is a great list that should have most people nodding halfway through it. Several of them have to do with the blurring of news with something else (whether opinion, advertising, or entertainment). For me, this is a critical problem with the modern press.

The so-called new journalism, which could be quite entertaining, is also so completely submerged in the opinions and biases of the writer that one cannot treat the stories as factual. If one tells a story of a car wreck from one witness's perspective, is it factual? Well, yes, from that perspective. But what about others?

This is where much of modern journalism is falling down. In its attempt to humanize stories from environmentalism to unemployment to war, journalists are creating impressions that may be true on a microbial level, but may not be true in a larger sense.

While Kann's list is not exhaustive, it is instructive. I only wish I were more hopeful that journalists would take it to heart, but I'm just not that hopeful.

Merry Christmas to All!

Hark the herald angels sing
"Glory to the newborn King!
Peace on earth and mercy mild
God and sinners reconciled"
Joyful, all ye nations rise
Join the triumph of the skies
With the angelic host proclaim:
"Christ is born in Bethlehem"
Hark! The herald angels sing
"Glory to the newborn King!"

Christ by highest heav'n adored
Christ the everlasting Lord!
Late in time behold Him come
Offspring of a Virgin's womb
Veiled in flesh the Godhead see
Hail the incarnate Deity
Pleased as man with man to dwell
Jesus, our Emmanuel
Hark! The herald angels sing
"Glory to the newborn King!"

Hail the heav'n-born Prince of Peace!
Hail the Son of Righteousness!
Light and life to all He brings
Ris'n with healing in His wings
Mild He lays His glory by
Born that man no more may die
Born to raise the sons of earth
Born to give them second birth
Hark! The herald angels sing
"Glory to the newborn King!"

Rush Was Right!

Remember when liberals howled because Rush Limbaugh (and others, including President Bush) said that voting for Democrats in the mid-term elections was voting for terrorists? Well, now the terrorists want some credit.

Al Qaeda has sent a message to leaders of the Democratic party that credit for the defeat of congressional Republicans belongs to the terrorists.

In a portion of the tape from al Qaeda No. 2 man, Ayman al Zawahri, made available only today, Zawahri says he has two messages for American Democrats.

"The first is that you aren't the ones who won the midterm elections, nor are the Republicans the ones who lost. Rather, the Mujahideen -- the Muslim Ummah's vanguard in Afghanistan and Iraq -- are the ones who won, and the American forces and their Crusader allies are the ones who lost," Zawahri said, according to a full transcript obtained by ABC News.

I'm still waiting for the Democrat rebuttal.

UPDATE: The second link has been fixed, per a note from Dana. Thanks!

They Still Give Me the Creeps

Japanese marine biologists have captured on film the elusive giant squid, but killed it in the ensuing struggle. (Via Jules Crittenden):

Japanese marine biologists, however, have lured a giant squid to the surface of the ocean, off the Ogasawara Islands south of Tokyo, capturing it on camera as it reached out to eat one of its relatives.

They filmed it as they reeled it in. And, according to Tsunemi Kubodera, the team’s leader, it "put up quite a fight".

It was not quite as long as the largest squid yet recorded — a specimen found in 1887 that measured 18.2m (60ft) from the top of its head to the tip of its tentacles. But the young female was still twice as long as the average person is tall, at 3.5m.

Alas it did not survive the experience. "It took two people to pull it in," Dr Kubodera said, "and they lost it once, which might have caused the injuries that killed it...

"It struggled furiously to escape by spouting water from its funnel. This means they can actually swim pretty fast, in addition to their normal movement just drifting in deep waters," he said as he showed the film to reporters.

For years, I've thought that the best horror movies are those taking place underwater. For some reason, being in the dark in the woods never scared me as much as those movies where the scientists were stuck miles under the ocean in complete darkness.

After I first heard about these giant squids, I was completely freaked out. There's just something about a creature whose eyes are as big as a human head and whose tentacles are longer than a London bus that scares me more than King Kong, Michael Myers, Jason, and Freddy Krueger combined.

Now, I guess, we'll be seeing the film of these gigantic monsters all over the Discovery Channel. I'll be waiting for the Halloween movie.

P.S.--I originally titled this post "They Still Give Me the Willies," but given that the post under it is about Monica Lewinsky, I thought it would be better to change it.

Dumb-but-Smart People

Libby Copeland discusses Monica Lewinsky's graduation from the London School of Economics in this Washington Post piece.

After the initial gasp of surprise at this startling fact, Copeland goes on to describe a subset of humanity she calls "dumb-but-smart people."

Dumb-but-smart folks defy our low expectations. They appear dull or ditzy but possess unpredictable pockets of intelligence...

We all know a dumb-but-smart person -- the airheaded clotheshorse who holds an Ivy league PhD; the mulleted townie who grows up to be a Wall Street tycoon. These people are smart in spite of themselves. At high school reunions, the pleasure of looking better than a former flame is completely undone by the mysterious success of the dumb-but-smarts, who seem too stupid even to appreciate their own unlikely journeys.

To me, the examples she gave were people who we used to call "book smart." The opposite were the people who were "street smart," and we always put our money on those people over the book smart people. Street smart people tended to be savvy and intuitive, capable of thinking on their feet, taking a gamble, and having the gamble pay off.

Book smart people, on the other hand, could hold multiple post-graduate degrees and still be living with their parents because their degrees were in useless things like European Literature or Fat Studies. They are more introverted, focused on task, follow rules, and risk averse. I confess to being a book smart person. :)

There's a whole feminist screed that could be written about the infamous Ms. Lewinsky and her thesis, In Search of the Impartial Juror: An Exploration of the Third Person Effect and Pre-Trial Publicity. About the low expectations people have of women, particularly women who flaunt their sexuality. How sexually-expressive women get punished for showing interest in Teh Sex.

But the moral of Lewinsky's story (at least to me) wasn't about sexually-expressive women getting punished. It was about doing stupid things when you are young that you will live to regret later. I can't imagine Monica reliving her thong-snapping flirtation with the president for her children or grandchildren, at least, if she really is a smart person.

Sadly, though, no matter how many degrees Monica gets, no matter how many purses she sells, no matter how many reality shows she hosts, her obit will be about thongs, cigars, blowjobs, and a little blue dress. I guess that's the epitome of the smart-but-dumb person.

Cross-posted at Common Sense Political Thought.

UPDATE: Not surprisingly, Amanda at Pandagon misses the point.

"Finally I am logged off from the incessant broadband stream of information of my daily life."

So says Mike Albo in this New York Times piece. (H/T to Ann Althouse).

WHENEVER someone asks where I’ll be for the holidays, I always do the same thing: roll my eyes and say, exasperatedly: “I guess I’m going home for Christmas. Hope I don’t go insane!”

It’s been part of my conversational repertory since my early 20s, the time when you start having to prove to yourself that you are a self-governing adult, but before you realize that adulthood basically involves complex and enervating tasks like Internet dating, shopping for jeans, trying to remember your 15 various log-on codes and passwords, and deciphering your Verizon bill.

Now I am 37 years old and I can’t wait to go insane at Christmas in that comfortable padded cell known as “home.” Instead of being tedious, going home has become an indulgent retreat from my fried-out issue-driven city life. It is a place where I line my mind and body with the fatty lard of my suburban youth and experience not one moment of regret.

For a brief week, I get to be as ugly and out of it as Americans are always accused of being, and no one has to see it.

Ahh, to go home and not have to be an adult for a week. I don't know what I'd do with such a luxury. Or what my husband or kids would do, for that matter.

When my mom was alive, every Sunday was a little bit of Christmas break that way. It was a chance to go back, eat lots of stuff I'd never fix for myself, play several games of Scrabble with Mom, laugh at my (now oldest) niece and nephew, and then dump all the minutiae of my life on my mother.

Dad was always there, too, ready to argue politics, liberal media bias, and why 60 Minutes was undermining the American way of life. I didn't pour out the details of my life to him for some reason. To Mom's "local," Dad was "global." The big picture guy. The philosophical debate person.

But Mom--Mom!--She was homemade biscuits and cream puffs, arts and crafts projects, sewing lessons, and kitchen table chat. She was hugs and kisses and stroking your hair. She was 80 gifts under the Christmas tree because she kept finding things she thought you'd like and so she just kept buying them or making them.

Since my mother passed away nearly 11 years ago, Christmas has moved on to my house and my brother's house and my sister's house. We don't have a single unitary Christmas like we once did. We all have our own family Christmases with their own quirks and traditions. My in-laws come over, usually with more gifts than I've ever seen outside a department store, and my husband and I make the dinner. Then we go see my father, who doesn't like to get out much except to Denny's these days.

These days, we also have to juggle doing our celebration with the schedule for the oldest daughter. Divorce is terrible and one of the consequences is that the holidays always have an undercurrent of "who's turn is it this year?" to them. So, this year, we'll do the bigger celebration the day after Christmas, only doing quiet stuff Christmas day.

I miss going home for Christmas, but mostly, I just miss my mother. Every day.

Feminist Illogic

If you go look at the pictures at this post at Pandagon, ask yourself this question:

Why are so many of the commenters outraged at the original T-shirt ("Problem Solved"), but not at similar anti-male ones?

And the Most Outrageous Outrage Is...

Media Matters has a piece titled Most Outrageous Comments of 2006. Of course, it should be titled Most Outrageous Conservative Comments of 2006--And Have We Said Lately How Much We Hate Ann Coulter?

Media Matters is another of those supposedly "neutral" watchdog groups which, amazingly, never find anything negative to say about liberals (I know, it's shocking, isn't it?).

The list is predictable hyperbole from columnists and commentators, and most of the top 10 consist of Ann Coulter snippets. Remember Ann Coulter? She's the one who says that she likes to say things just to piss off liberals.

Compare the list at Media Matters with this extensive piece at Media Research Center.

Interestingly, most of the quotes MRC uses are from supposedly straight news sources. Sure, there is a lot of punditry as well, but most of the awards were for hyperbole in what is ostensibly objective news. For example, this about Hurricane Katrina:

ABC’s Steve Osunsami: "In many black neighborhoods, they actually believe that white residents sent the barge that destroyed the levee and flooded their communities."
Unidentified black man, in HBO’s film by Spike Lee: "They had a bomb. They bombed that sucker."
Osunsami: "To this day, the conspiracy theories are so widely held, director Spike Lee put them on film...."
Spike Lee, director: "As an African-American in this country, I don’t put anything past the government."
— ABC’s World News with Charles Gibson, August 29.

Or this about moonbat conspiracy theories about lower gas prices last fall:

Anchor Katie Couric: "Gas is the lowest it’s been all year, a nationwide average of $2.23 a gallon. It hasn’t been that low since last Christmas. But is this an election-year present from President Bush to fellow Republicans?"
Reporter Anthony Mason: "...Gas started going down just as the fall campaign started heating up. Coincidence? Some drivers don’t think so."
Man in a car: "And I think it’s basically a ploy to sort of get the American people to think, well, the economy is going good, let’s vote Republican."
— CBS Evening News, October 16. As Mason spoke, the camera zoomed in on the driver’s bumper sticker, "GOP: Grand Oil Party."

To be sure, there are tons of quotes from nutbag Keith Olbermann, but, frankly, I expect him to be a nut, mostly because there are only about three people watching his show (and all of them have lefty blogs so they can quote him extensively).

The left's obsession with Ann Coulter (she got four of the top 10 quotes at Media Matters) is both laughable and disturbing. I think it says a lot that they could find so few conservatives to bash. The MRC piece quotes dozens of sources for its outrageousness awards. You think it says something about the sheer number of liberals saying stupid things on television?

Cross-posted at Common Sense Political Thought.

"I am a 'progressive democrat,' but I can't help but feel a little anger at the 19-year-old with a baby on her hip and pregnant with the next one"

So says a commenter at this post by Joan Blades at Huffington Post.

Blades is shilling for Momsrising.org, a group advocating more government intrusion and regulation of business and family life and higher taxes. Well, that's not what they say they're for. They say they're for maternity and paternity leave, flexible work, TV and afterschool programs, health care for all kids, excellent childcare, and "realistic" wages. Everywhere I look on their site, though, I can't find where they think this money is going to come from (although a few seem to think that if we just get out of Iraq the money spent on defense can pay for these things...yeah, right).

Hey, I'd love to get paid for staying home raising my kiddoes, too. And I don't know anyone advocating terrible childcare. And most people would say they'd like better wages.

But who is gonna pay for those things?

Why, the same people who pay for the other things. The taxpayers.

Blade doesn't go into any of that in this piece. Mainly, she's defending herself against the hordes of anti-breeder trolls condemning her opinions.

It's interesting to read the comments. On one side are the commenters who agree with Blades that yes, yes, yes! We need the government to mandate paid leave, flexible hours, better wages, better childcare (with no increase in price), etc., etc. That side doesn't explain how on earth we will pay for all this new regulation without a spike in unemployment for the very people Blades wants to help.

The other side--and in some ways, the more interesting side--is completely anti-children--er, breeder.

Here are a few comments from this side:

Blacksheep: I am a "progressive democrat," but I can't help but feel a little anger at the 19-year-old with a baby on her hip and pregnant with the next one -- solely supported by the taxpayers at large. I know she's not living a life of luxury, but her luxury is being able to stay home and watch and help her children learn and grow.
I wouldn't want to deprive any mother of this, but I think that we need to reform the way welfare works -- I know this is going to sound completely totalitarian and against civil rights, but I strongly feel that as soon as a woman enrolls for welfare after birthing a child, she must go on norplant, depoprovera, or get an IUD (long-term birth control methods). If she cannot personally support one child, her freedom to have more must be removed until she has a way to support more children.

ORSunshine: Having a child might require a good deal of sacrifice on the part of the parents, but it is still an inherently selfish act. Feeling the need to reproduce when there are already so many children in need says that you care more about the experience of pregnancy, childbirth, or spreading your own genetic material than you do about caring for children.

charon: Why should responsible people who choose not to further overpopulate the planet be held responsible for the choices--or "accidents"--of those who do contribute to overpopulation, often not unselfishly, but with extreme ego and self-gratification in mind. As for women earning less--well, moms are the first to leave work and take time off to go to school functions, etc. But that leaves their colleagues to do extra work, so why shouldn't those colleagues earn more and be more often promoted? To do otherwise would be discriminatory...

What I found interesting in all the discussion was that no one discussed the role private charities, religious organizations, and civic groups can and do play in helping families. Is it really so hard to conceive of private institutions helping families instead of the government? Welcome to the legacy of FDR, I suppose.

Creating a Loophole in McCain-Feingold

The Associated Press has this story about a three-judge panel which ruled that issue ads may run during the election season. (Via The Brothers Judd blog).

The federal government cannot prohibit advocacy groups from running issue advertisements during peak election season, a panel of federal judges ruled Thursday.

The 2-1 ruling was issued in a case involving a Wisconsin anti-abortion group that challenged congressional restrictions on ads by corporations, labor unions and other special interest groups that mention candidates two months before a general election.

Some lawmakers have predicted such a ruling would create a loophole in the 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign law, which attempted to reduce the influence of big-spending special-interest groups in elections.

The case automatically heads to the Supreme Court for review.

The three-judge panel upheld the government’s right to prohibit corporate and union-sponsored advertisements that attempt to influence voters but said organizations have a First Amendment right to speak out on genuine political issues.

Wisconsin Right to Life has been fighting the law since 2004, when it sought to run an advertisement urging voters to contact Wisconsin Sens. Russ Feingold and Herb Kohl, both Democrats, and ask them not to hold up President Bush’s judicial nominees...

The judges said Thursday that the Wisconsin advertisements were genuinely addressing policy, not the election, and thus were constitutionally protected speech.

This doesn't surprise me at all. You can't muzzle people from speaking out about issues two months before an election. It's absolutely contrary to the First Amendment's intentions.

Legal Liability and Blogging

Law.com has this article discussing what potential legal liability bloggers may face.

While it may seem like an eye-rolling "what next?" moment to all us little bloggers out here, there could be liability issues for others, particularly bloggers for firms, businesses, and bigger political bloggers.
Lawrence Savell outlines a few questions that will end up being answered in court at some point:

A threshold issue is whether blogs are any different from more traditional means of communication. Among the questions that the courts have yet to answer fully are:

--What is the significance of the increased immediacy of blogs?

--Are blogs more likely in the defamation context to be construed as protected "opinion"?

--Are they more likely in the copyright or trademark context to be construed as a permissible "fair use" of the intellectual property of others?

--Do traditional communications law principles apply and, if so, in what manner?

--Are bloggers journalists, such that both the privileges and the responsibilities of journalists are applicable to them?

This is all new territory, legally speaking, and it will be interesting to see how it plays out in the courts. Read the rest of Savell's article to think about some of the issues facing blogs today.

Christmas--er, Non-Sectarian Day Off Anecdotes

Just a few stories to liven up those last days before Christmas:

-- The local high school (public) had its Christmas and holiday concert last week. There were five different bands/ensembles who played, complete with approximately 10 versions of Jingle Bells. Most interestingly, they also played variations on a variety of Christmas carols such as Good King Wenceslas, God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, Silent Night, O Come, All Ye Faithful, and Hark! The Herald Angels Sing. I had to thank God that the ACLU must not have known about this abominiable violation of church/state separation.

-- At the church's youth Christmas program Sunday night, we were treated to a slightly different version of the wise men's gifts. During her reading, one of the girls informed us that the wise men brought "gold, Frankenstein, and myrrh."

-- Today, my son's class will enjoy a Winter party, as he informed me.

"It's a Christmas party," I said.

"No," he answered solemnly. "It's a winter party."

"Other than the birth of Christ, why would you be celebrating winter? Do you have a spring party, as well?"

"Actually," said my husband wryly. "It is a spring party. You can't call it an Easter party."

-- Admittedly, even I have been conditioned to ignore the obvious Christmas overtones to my son's winter party. I'll be helping the Room Mom, and I volunteered to bring goody bags for all the kids.

At the party store yesterday, I searched for properly non-Christian, non-Christmas goody bags.

"Snowmen, ok," I thought to myself. "Are pointsettias ok or are they too Christmas-y? What about Santa Claus? Is he still all right or has he been dumped, too? No bags with Merry Christmas emblazoned on them. A picture of mittens? That should work. No bags with Christmas trees on them. Hmm."

Making non-sectarian goody bags for a non-sectarian unmentionable day off party seems like a lot of work and not much fun.

-- The youngest child informed me (at the same seating) that there is a girl in her class who can't even hear the word Christmas.

"We aren't supposed to say it," she said. "We can't have a Christmas party. That's why it's a winter party, because she can't hear the word Christmas."

"What happens if she hears the word Christmas?" I asked. "Does she melt?"

My daughter shrugged and continued eating. It made me wonder how the girl had completed the project we'd been given the week before. We had to cut out a Christmas tree diagram and then decorate it with whatever we liked (buttons, feathers, beans, macaroni, etc.). If hearing the word Christmas was so offensive, what would actually decorating a Christmas tree do to such a person?

Cross-posted at Common Sense Political Thought.

And then All the Feminists Exploded in Anger. The End

Mary Grabar has a great column discussing that vapid, estrogen-laden talk show The View.

I say great only because I agree with her, of course. But after reading it, I couldn't help but wonder what on earth the Pandagonistas would say about statements like this:

This was the danger of giving women the vote. The danger to conservatives (and the survival of this country) is the voting bloc of single women, i.e., those who lack the guidance of a man in the form of a husband or intellectual mentor.

These are women who pride themselves on being independent and empowered when they dress like prostitutes (look at the view of cleavage on the View!). These are the women who watch the View. These are the women who support Hillary Rodham Clinton. These are the women on the show who ask Senator Clinton questions like "Do you think being a mom will help you in the White House?" as they did on December 20. These are the women who think it matters that a potential presidential candidate waxes on about the same themes in her re-released book, It Takes a Village: that preschool programs need to be expanded, that working parents should have time off to take care of their kids. This is the potential presidential candidate who was applauded on the show for allowing one of her staff members to bring in her baby’s playpen.

This is a woman who started off with a discussion about how much she likes to do crafts at Christmas time.

Yes, I can imagine: we’ll have playpens and parenting classes and crafts classes in the new Clinton White House, maybe even a special prayer room for the Muslims and breaks five times a day for them. This will bring peace to the world by setting an example, for all the terrorists will supposedly drop their weapons in awe of this "village." Hillary’s answer to the Iraq question was that she wanted the country to have a "conversation" again. What—like the one they have on The View?

News flash: there are fanatics who want to annihilate us and Hillary Rodham Clinton is talking about crafts and "conversations."

I suppose this is the warm-and-fuzzy Hillary on display, the baking-cookies-and-standing-by-my-man Hillary that will get the estrogen vote. I prefer when Hillary doesn't do the touchy-feely stuff, not just because I think it's fake but because I don't care about it. I want to know exactly what she wants to do about Iraq and the environment and taxes and business regulations and the United Nations. I want to know what sort of judges she thinks should be on the Supreme Court: the kind that make shit up from international law when it suits 'em or the kind that stick with our Constitution?

Of course, I think most of us know what Hillary is really like. We've been watching her for at least a dozen years and I don't think she's gonna change now. But the trouble with the inanity of The View and other gaggles of women is that they reduce all of us to the stereotypes I thought feminists had fought against all those years ago. Did they do that so that Hillary Clinton could discuss how she likes to do crafts at Christmas time in an interview? And are these the same questions we would expect Rosie O'Donnell to ask, say, Mitt Romney were he to actually make it onto their show?

I doubt the giggling henfest on The View would ask Romney what his favorite Skittle was or how being a dad has affected his political philosophy. Everybody knows that Republicans are Nazis. After all, Joy Behar compared Donald Rumsfeld to Adolph Hitler. And we all know how perceptive she is.

UPDATE: Amanda covers Grabar's column at this post on Pandagon and the post and comments are predictable.

On the Associated Press, Straw Men, and Didn't They Teach You about Accuracy in J-School?

Allah at Hot Air has an excellent post discussing the latest in the Jamil-Jamail Hussein affair.

Evidently, Michelle Malkin has found out...something...about Hussein, but it is still unclear if anyone knows exactly who this man is. Allah thinks the man used a pseudonym, which is a violation of A.P. ethics (I know, oxymoron) without explanation.

But the better part of Allah's post is his dismantling of Eric Boehlert's silly piece slapping at warbloggers and their interest in the Jamil-Jamail Hussein story. Here's a bit from Boehlert's column:

The warbloggers’ strawman is built around the claim that if the AP hadn’t reported the Burned Alive story, which was no more than a few sentences within a larger here’s-the-carnage-from-Baghdad-today article [Actually, Allah notes that the burning bodies was the only element of the story when it first hitThe Drudge Report], then Americans would still gladly support the war in Iraq...

Chasing the Burned Alive story down a rabbit’s hole, giddy warbloggers deliberately ignore the hundreds of Iraqi civilians who are killed each week, the thousands who are injured, and the tens of thousands who try to flee the disintegrating country. None of that matters. Only Burned Alive matters, as if an AP retraction would change a thing on the ground in Baghdad, where electricity remains scarce, but sectarian death squads roam freely...

[D]espite the hundreds of stories AP files from Iraq each week, and the thousands posted annually since the invasion, warbloggers can only find fault with a single story, yet insist that one is enough to tarnish the AP’s Iraq reporting and all mainstream news reporting from Baghdad.

The disengenuousness of Boehlert's small, petty claim is palpable. He knows that there are more than 60 stories using Hussein as a source, according to Malkin. And if Boehlert worked anywhere other than his high school newspaper, he knows that the credibility of a news outlet is only as good as its sources. If the sources are suspect, so is the news agency that reports it.

So, it isn't like Boehlert is naive enough to honestly believe this is just about one story. He knows better.

Allah goes on to dismantle Boehlert's argument bit by bit:

He also knows that the AP originally claimed four mosques were burned and that that claim has since disappeared into the ether without so much as a clarification. Just like he also knows, courtesy of Robert Bateman, that it’s unlikely in the extreme based on Hussein’s location that he’d be a credible witness for the wide variety of attacks sourced to him by the AP. All of which make this story highly dubious, yet none of which Boehlert sees fit to mention anywhere in his piece. Why?

Because he doesn’t care if the story’s bogus or not. He’ll say en passant that he does because he knows, as a journalist and media critic, that he has to. But it’s strictly pro forma. His position seems to be that the story’s true in the Larger Sense, as a microcosm of the brutality in Iraq, even if it’s not, you know, technically true (”as if an AP retraction would change a thing on the ground in Baghdad, where electricity remains scarce, but sectarian death squads roam freely”). In other words, “fake but accurate.” That’s his bottom line here and that’s why it’s dishonest of him and his pals to even pretend to care whether the report’s accurate. As far as they’re concerned, if Jamil Hussein turns out to be real, the story’s true; if he turns out not to be real, the story’s True. They can’t go wrong. Meanwhile the AP, if it’s guilty of bad facts to whatever greater or lesser degree, gets an almost completely free pass.

At the risk of suggesting that I know What Warbloggers Believe better than Eric Boehlert does, let me assure you that we’re not using this story as a fig leaf for the war. There are Shiite death squads roaming hospitals in Iraq — just one of many “bona fide, grim realities on the ground,” as Michelle puts it, but gruesome enough in itself to convey the magnitude of the emergency. No one, or almost no one, is under any illusions about how awful conditions are and how Bush mismanaged the occupation when we had our best chance to get it right. On the contrary, it’s Boehlert who’s using the war as a fig leaf for yet another credible accusation of shoddy, possibly ideologically motivated war journalism. He’d have you believe that to challenge this report is, essentially, to be guilty of historical revisionism, which is not only ironic vis-a-vis the AP but a nifty way of cowing a critic into backing off. It’s more important that Michelle Malkin be wrong, you see, than knowing for sure whether the world’s biggest news agency is passing off crap stories about the most important issue of our time.

The problem Boehlert isn't willing to address is that this story is just the latest of example of journalistic malfeasance. How is anyone supposed to believe anything written by the Associated Press if they use bogus sources and don't correct their mistakes publicly and loudly? If the A.P., which used to have a valuable reputation for accuracy and honesty, can't be held accountable by supposed media watchdogs like Media Matters, then why should the average guy reading and/or watching the news trust them?

Instead of spending so much time trying to trash Michelle Malkin for asking the questions, Boehlert should spend his time figuring out why journalists are more interested in truthiness than truthfulness.

Sandy Berg(l)er Destroyed Documents and It Was a Misdemeanor?

Patterico discusses the latest information in the Sandy Berg(l)er shredding documents story. This information from an A.P. story:

But Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., outgoing chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, said he's not convinced that the Archives can account for all the documents taken by Berger. Davis said working papers of National Security Council staff members are not inventoried by the Archives.

"There is absolutely no way to determine if Berger swiped any of these original documents. Consequently, there is no way to ever know if the 9/11 Commission received all required materials," Davis said.

Berger pleaded guilty to unlawfully removing and retaining classified documents. He was fined $50,000, ordered to perform 100 hours of community service and was barred from access to classified material for three years.

Officials told The Associated Press at the time of the thefts that the documents were highly classified and included critical assessments about the Clinton administration's handling of the millennium terror threats as well as identification of America's terror vulnerabilities at airports and seaports.

Patterico had questioned back in 2004 whether Berger had taken originals or not. Evidently, we will never know for certain, since Berger "had 'destroyed, cut into small pieces, three of the four documents. These were put in the trash.'"

But I'm sure he did it for the good of the country, right?

School Accuses 5-Year-Old of Sexual Harassment

From the I Couldn't Make This Stuff Up file, this story via The Raw Story:

A kindergarten student was accused earlier this month of sexually harassing a classmate at Lincolnshire Elementary School, an accusation that will remain on his record until he moves to middle school...

According to a school document provided by the boy's father, the 5-year-old pinched a girl's buttocks on Dec. 8 in a hallway at the school south of Hagerstown.

I'm curious what led the kid to do this, but does a 5-year-old have the mental capacity to sexually harass someone?

I'm not trying to downplay the inappropriateness of the boy's behavior, but it seems to me that branding this "sexual harassment" both dillutes the seriousness of real harassment and inflates the numbers of children who are sexually harassed in school.

Cross-posted at Common Sense Political Thought.

Liberals and Free Speech

One of the intellectual disconnects I notice most frequently in liberals is the one surrounding freedom of speech.

Liberals usually spend a great deal of time talking about free speech and demanding their right to speech, but they also want to stifle speech with which they disagree (such as religious speech in schools, for instance). An elementary school girl is barred from singing Awesome God because a principal thinks it is "proselytizing," for instance, but gay pride T-shirts are ok. (Aside: judges determined that student rights to free speech were violated in both instances).

But one of the oddest disconnects for liberals is between speech and action. They seem to have a very hard time noting the difference between them. That's why they try to use anti-racketeering laws against abortion protesters. It's why you will frequently hear arguments that boil down to the idea that a woman's right to abortion is sacrosanct, whereas a protester's right to free speech should be limited.

I bring this up in connection with this post from Pandagon that I linked to yesterday.

Once you get past the pro-life- and Catholic-bashing, there was a quote from the Center for Reproductive Rights which concerned attempts to add forced pregnancy to the International Criminal Court's definition of a crime against humanity.

The part that caught my attention was this:

If such a general formulation had been accepted, the spouse’s objection to terminate a pregnancy could have been a punishable act - crime against humanity.

And Amanda's comment after it:

God forbid that a man forcing his wife to bear a child against her will be considered a crime against humanity.

This transformation of objection to force made me ask this question:

How is objecting to an abortion the same thing as forcing someone not to have one?

There were a few of the typical responses to this. One person discussed how, in poor countries, men will control all the finances and so by "objecting" to the abortion by not paying for it, he is effectively forcing her to have the baby. I understand this practical approach to the situation. But is a person objecting to an abortion really a crime against humanity? And should a man be forced to pay for an abortion he doesn't approve of under penalty of law?

I next posted this:

So, now you expect him to pay for her to kill the child he objects to her killing? How does that make sense?

I'll admit that I knew at this point that I was poking the cranky tiger with a stick. But the responses became more predictable:

bluefish A: what do you think, sharon? that the husband should have the ultimate say over whether or not a woman terminates a pregnancy? (notice i didn’t say killing a baby or child because that’s not what abortion is, in my mind)
regardless of her thoughts, concerns, doubts, fears, health, etc. should the husband should decide when, where and how his wife/property will reproduce?

Dorothy: Does it make sense for him to be able to force her to continue a pregnancy she objects to continuing?

Inky: Sharon: the point of it is that the entire society is set up so that him objecting does prevent her from getting the abortion, because he controls her financial resources.

aimai: This makes Sharon’s annoying “how is it fair to ask/force a man to pay for an abortion he doesn’t want” so stupid–women work, and work hard, from dawn to dusk at labor that is either unpaid, or whose payment is handed over to their husbands.

I tried repeatedly to separate the money issue from the speech issue by explaining that of course the woman should have her own money to do with as she wanted. And I wasn't even trying to debate abortion per se. I wanted people to recognize that a person objecting to their spouse having an abortion shouldn't be a crime against humanity (although, frankly, I do think abortion could be categorized as a crime against humanity).

Unfortunately, the Pandagonistas aren't really interested in free speech, at least where abortion is concerned. That much is obvious.

It isn't that the financial independence of women is insignificant. Obviously, if women have more control of their resources and become more empowered that way, then that is better for everyone. But it seems illogical to me that they cannot admit that a man objecting to his spouse's abortion doesn't rise to the level of a crime against humanity, a distinction usually reserved for slavery, genocide, and extermination of a population.