Liberal bias goes pathological

I've gotten pretty used to seeing liberal bias in the media, but at least it's usually fairly subtle. Not so with this breathtaking example by Emily Sohn in Discovery News:

Still don't see the bias? Ok, here...I've highlighted it for you:

I'm not sure why this piece hasn't picked up more traction on conservative blogs or conservative Twitterdom. In fact, I lifted this from one of my favorite righty blogs, Ace of Spades HQ, which doesn't even remark on the obvious bias. Maybe they've become so accustomed to this type of bias that they don't even notice it any more.

The bias is so deep and widespread now, it's become a pathology. When I tweeted a link to the Discovery article inviting people (sarcastically, I thought) to spot the liberal bias, I received this response from @LouYoungNY:

So pathological is this bias that it's taken by liberals as an absolute truth that conservatives are intolerant and close-minded. Keep in mind that this article (presumably) got past fact-checkers and editors before publication.

Oh, and you may want to keep an eye on what your kids are reading for science.

Desperate times call for desperate candidates

Pardon me while I clean up a bit...a blog collects a bit of dust and debris when it's not used for a while. I can't believe I haven't posted anything since September.

OK, that's better. Now, where was I? Oh, right...I was going to opine on the Republican primary race. It's pretty damned hard to get excited about it and I guess I'll just have to assume I'll be voting for Mitt Romney this November. I had to laugh this past weekend during coverage of the GOP primary circus in New Hampshire. A reporter made reference to some "energized Romney supporters", and all I could think was "Energized? Resigned maybe, but definitely not energized."

Anyway, I was pretty excited about Rick Perry's entry into the race right up until the time he started to flame out. Then I started paying more attention to Gingrich, and when he started to surge in the polls after some strong debate performances I thought, hey...here might be a guy who could totally dismantle Obama in a one-on-one debate. But I started to sour on Gingrich when he went batshit crazy on the judiciary.

And this past week, when both Perry and Gingrich went all Occupy Wall Street on Mitt Romney over his tenure at Bain Capital, I knew they were both pretty desperate. I don't think Perry and Gingrich have suddenly decided they're 99%-ers, but I do think they're counting on people's ignorance of just what private equity firms do in an effort to paint Romney as a corporate raider.

Sure, private equity firms sometimes shut down companies and lay people off, but that's not their main goal. In fact, that's generally something they try to avoid. They don't just buy up troubled companies, either. As a case in point, the company I work for acquired a company some years back, but after a few years, it was decided that the smaller company's product really didn't fit into our larger portfolio. It would have been very easy for my company to just kill off the product and layoff the staff associated with it, but the product had value so it was decided to sell off that business unit to a private equity firm. That was at least four years ago, and that company is still alive - and growing - today as an independent software firm.

So, thank you Newt and Rick, for making Romney's inevitability a self-fulfilling prophecy, and for making free market capitalism a topic of debate...among conservatives.

Fun with math

Courtesy of my brother (and sometimes co-blogger) Mark, here's a fun exercise that revolves around a simple mathematical formula.

Movie test:

Be honest and DON'T look at the movie list below until you have done the math!

Try this test and find out what movie is your favorite.

This amazing math quiz can likely predict which of 18 movies you would enjoy the most. It really works!

Pick a number from 1-9.

Multiply it by 3.

Add 3.

Multiply by 3 again.

Now add the two digits of your answer together to find your predicted favorite movie in the list of 18 movies below.

The Movie List:

1. Gone With The Wind
2. E.T.
3. Blazing Saddles
4. Star Wars
5. Forrest Gump
6. The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly.
7. Jaws
8. Grease
9. The Obama farewell speech of 2012
10. Casablanca
11. Jurassic Park
12. Shrek
13. Pirates of the Caribbean
14. Titanic
15. Raiders Of The Lost Ark
16. Home Alone
17. Mrs. Doubtfire
18. Toy Story

Liberty's last gasp

Attention: If you live in Indiana and home invasion robbery is your thing, start dressing like a cop.

This past Thursday, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled 3-2 that citizens are not allowed to resist a police officer's unlawful entry into their homes. The fourth amendment to the US Constitution is dead, at least in Indiana:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

The language is pretty unequivocal, but those three Hoosiers feel that the language is a bit dated, saying (emphasis mine):

We believe ... a right to resist an unlawful police entry into a home is against public policy and is incompatible with modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence.

Stunning. The reference to "modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence" implies that the nature of our rights as enumerated in the Constitution is adaptable and subject to change over time, yet I'm not sure what part of "shall not be violated" the justices fail to understand. As for the "public policy" language, I'm not even sure where to begin except to say that I'm pretty sure public policy has little to do with our rights under the Constitution. The bottom line, though, is that this is what happens when liberals' notions of a malleable Constitution meet reality.

OK, so the Indiana justices didn't actually rule that cops can enter anyone's home without a warrant or probable cause, but that's the end result. Further in the ruling they say that the proper course of action when a cop commits an unlawful armed home invasion is to take it up with the courts. The same courts, presumably, that issue shit decisions such as this one.

I, for one, wouldn't physically resist an armed man forcibly entering my home. I would, however, grab the phone and dial 911 and tell them that an armed man has just forced his way into my house. Even assuming the dispatcher was aware that a cop was already at my home for some reason, the ensuing confusion might be amusing.

But far better that this craptastic decision never needs to be tested and is brought to the US Supreme Court and struck down. Better yet, maybe Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels will read Alex Kauffman's open letter to him and act before it even gets to the Supremes.

Slut walk? How about a pimp walk, too?

Just a little while ago on Twitter, Brittany Cohan tweeted this bit about an upcoming "Slut Walk" in DC:

So this is the first time I am seeing this...... http://www.slutwalkdc.org/about (Late, I know- but WOW)

I've been hearing about these events for several weeks now, most recently about one in Boston. The link Brittany tweeted provides background on the rich history of the Slut Walk, which goes back, gee...nearly four months:

SlutWalk Toronto started because of a statement made on January 24th, 2011 by the Toronto Police advising young women not to "dress like a slut" in order to be safe. Toronto's Slutwalk was an organized response on April 3, and many cities have followed in its wake, including the upcoming Washington DC participation scheduled for August 13th of this year.

So maybe the Toronto police were a bit crass with their advice, but were they wrong? Is it really wrong to advise people to engage in a little common sense to avoid crime?

For as far back as I can remember we've been advised not to advertise wealth when out and about, especially in strange locations; leave the Rolex watch at home, don't flash lots of cash, that kind of thing. Should there also be a PimpWalk in DC, then? You know...everyone put on their finest Armani suit, wear lots of expensive bling and parade around SE Washington DC at night?

I don't subscribe to the notion that a woman asks to be raped by the way she dresses any more than a wealthy-looking man asks to be robbed by the way he dresses, but there is such a thing as sensible risk management.

Credit where it's due

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

With heroes like this, who needs villains?

Nothing brings into sharper focus the enmity the American Left has for their own country than the case of US Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, the soldier accused of passing reams of classified documents to the anarchists at Wikileaks. Since his arrest nearly a year ago, leftist bloggers have taken up Manning's cause, and at least one Democratic member of Congress has jumped on the Manning bandwagon. Most recently, a group of Manning supporters paid big bucks to attend an Obama fundraiser just so they could interrupt the President and sing a song about Manning:

Twenty-one members of the Bradley Manning Support Network—some donning shirts that read "Free Bradley Manning"—interrupted the president's speech at a $5,000-a-seat event at the St. Regis hotel in San Francisco.

They broke into a song protesting his treatment in military custody: "Alone in a 6x12 cell sits Bradley / 23 hours a day is night / The 5th and 8th Amendments say this kind of thing ain't right / We paid our dues, where's our change?"

For all their posturing about due process, Constitutional rights and allegations of mistreatment of Manning, it's clear that this is really all about the fact that in the eyes of his supporters, Manning did nothing wrong. To them, what Manning is accused of doing is honorable. If all they were concerned with was due process and his treatment before a trial, they'd have taken up the cause of these guys, too, right?

Traveler's hell

I was out in the San Francisco Bay Area all last week, and by yesterday morning I was really ready to get home.

My day started yesterday with a 4AM wake-up for a 6AM flight (I was staying at the SFO Marriott so no need to get up ealier). Weather's good, and I get my rental car returned in short order and get through security with no problem. Delta starts boarding the flight about 35 minutes before scheduled departure, so all's good. I've even got first class upgrades for both legs of the trip (SFO-ATL and ATL-RIC). The trouble started about 10 minutes before scheduled departure when the captain came on the PA and announced that we had to wait for a de-icing crew to come and de-ice us. Shouldn't set us back by more than a few minutes, he says, and that he should be able to make it up en route. That's all well and good, BUT...it was 55 fucking degrees outside (that's about 13 sodding degrees to my Brit friends). To top it off, there was no evidence of ice, frost or even a little bit of dew ANYWHERE.

That brief wait for the de-icing crew turned into around 45 minutes because -- wait for it -- there was another aircraft ahead of us for de-icing. When the guys finally show up, there's no de-icing truck, just a scissors jack used for loading cargo and a guy standing on it with what looks like a garden hose. He proceeds to sort of nonchalantly spray both wings of our plane, and we're on our way from the gate an hour behind scheduled departure. But hey, I'm not worried...I've got a 2.5 hour layover in Atlanta which has just gotten shorter.

Fast forward 6 hours or so. I've had my drink and a smoke at the Heineken Bar & Grill (Concourse A, upper level at ATL for those who like to drink AND smoke while awaiting connecting flights) and I'm at the gate for my flight to RIC. Boarding is running slightly late because the aircraft got in 5-10 minutes behind schedule (your attention is invited to Saturday's violent weather along the east coast), but we're still looking good for an on time departure. Brats and wheelchairs board, then first class. Just as the first couple of coach passengers are getting on, the gate agent runs down the jetway and on the plane to tell the flight attendant that she had to halt the boarding process. It seems they had the wrong aircraft type loaded in the computer they'd have to reload it and reboard those pax who'd already been boarded. One rather unhappy camper (not me) loses his first class seat during the reshuffle, and we push back from the gate about 50 minutes late and start taxiing to queue up for the runway.

But wait! The captain gets on the PA and says that due to severe weather in the Richmond area they may have to hold us on the ground for a while. No, wait! On second thought, if we can takeoff RIGHT FREAKING NOW! we might beat the weather! So...high speed taxi to the head of the line, hard turn onto the runway, and off we go. I thought I saw the pilots of about 17 airplanes behind us giving us the finger.

A couple glasses of wine later, we're starting the initial descent into Richmond. Did I mention they were forecasting violent weather in the Richmond area? Yes, I believe I did. Our MD-88 proceeds to get tossed about like a kite in a gale, and because that's so much gosh-darned fun, we enter a holding pattern at around 5000 feet just so we can enjoy it a little while longer while the REALLY violent weather clears the area around the airport. Unfortunately, nobody thought to tell the guys who fueled the plane that we'd be stopping at an amusement park so we started running low on fuel. Evidently, this storm had already passed through Raleigh, so off we go to RDU for refueling before heading back to RIC.

In retrospect, I guess I shouldn't complain that after all that, we only arrived 2.5 hours late in Richmond. Scheduled arrival time was 17:02, and we arrived at around 19:30.

A (hypothetical) conversation with a climate alarmist

It's hard when you're a climate alarmism skeptic to carry on a conversation about global warming climate change climate challenges with a true-believing climate alarmist because once they find out you're a skeptic they invariably end the conversation and storm off in a huff, presumably to breathe into a paper bag for a few minutes before dashing off to an Al Gore seminar to have their fears validated. So here I'll try and speculate how such a discussion might go if an alarmist ever stuck around for a discussion.

SCENE: Office break room in April, with snow falling outside the window.

Me: Wow...I could really use some of that "global warming" right about now.

Climate Alarmist: It's not called global warming any more.

Me: Oh, that's right, excuse me...global climate change.

CA: No, it's called "global climate challenges" now.

Me: So we've gone from the fairly specific "global warming" to the rather nebulous "global climate change" to the totally amorphous "global climate challenges"?

CA: Um, yeah.

Me: But what does that even mean?

CA: That we'll be faced with desertification, rampant flooding and other forms of climate extremes.

Me: You mean half the planet will be desert while the other half is under water?

CA: Well, not exactly. It's complicated.

Me: And how do we know this? I mean, just how do we know that weather patterns and cycles are significantly different now from, say, ten thousand years ago? It's not like we have concrete global historical weather data going back more than 150 years or so.

CA: Climate scientists use proxy data to figure that out.

Me: And just what are the proxies for precise historical weather data?

CA: Well, it's complicated, but they look at tree rings, among other things.

Me: Ah, tree rings. Well I guess that settles it. So everyone living in coastal areas should immediately move to higher ground, which will soon be desert?

CA: It's not quite that simple--

Me: No, of course it isn't.

CA: --but it's generally accepted that sea levels will gradually rise over the next 50 to 100 years and that some areas will experience drought while some very dry areas will see increased rainfall.

Me: And that's never happened before in the history of the planet? Ever?

CA: Well, um, yeah. It has.

Me: And why is this a crisis now?

CA: If we don't stop the warming of the planet soon--

Me: Wait a second...didn't you just say it's not called "Global Warming" any more?

CA: Uh...

Me: First it's warming, then it's not, then it is again. What is it, exactly, that's causing these "global climate challenges"?

CA: Greenhouse gases.

Me: Which do....what?

CA: Um, raise temperatures. Like in a greenhouse.

Me: So, the problem once again is global warming.

CA: It's complicated.

Me: Yeah, so you've said.

CA: Could you hand me that empty paper bag over there?

Closetgate: What if Cheney did it?

Yeah, I know...the whole "what if Bush/Cheney did it" thing is getting rather threadbare, and generally speaking, the answer is always the same: the media would be howling about [insert latest outrage here] for days.

But with "Closetgate", as the story of the hapless press pool reporter confined to a closet during VP Joe Biden's appearance at a fundraiser has become known by some on Twitter, the answer I think would be "it wouldn't have happened in the first place".

During the eight years of George W. Bush's administration, I don't recall this kind of deliberate isolation from the media. In the little more than two years that Obama has been in office, we've heard one story after another of "the most transparent White House in history" holding the media at arm's length or being prevented outright from covering White House activities.

The story of Orlando Sentinel reporter Scott Powers being confined to a closet -- and guarded -- during a fundraiser at which Biden was to speak is just the latest example of this administration's contempt for the media. This White House is like a college fraternity with a passel of pass-around chicks (if you'll forgive the crudity) who hang out for parties while the frat brothers take their turns with them in a back bedroom. This is effectively what happened to Powers...a low-level White House functionary kept him hidden away while all the beautiful people swilled cocktails and fed on delicacies until Joe Biden wanted to take him out and play with him for a few minutes, after which he was once again hustled off out of sight. But you can bet that just like the pass-around chick, that reporter will be back for more.

Maybe the reason there was so much media coverage of the Bush White House's various fumbles compared to those of Obama's is that the Bush White House actually let the press cover them.

Noted Democratic loudmouth dumps on middle America

It's no secret that Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) is often a hysterical douchebag in Congress. The guy obviously loves the media attention he gets from his temper tantrums, and in fact I often find him pretty amusing. But maybe it's time his handlers kept him away from Twitter:

Weiner's smear was directed at Iowa Republicans who booed him when Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) mentioned his name at a conservative conference in Iowa.

A word of advice to Mr. Weiner: You're not in high school any more. You're not tweeting anonymously at night about the ruffians who doubtlessly doled out daily wedgies and swirlies to you. You represent New York's 9th fucking Congressional District in Washington and need to start acting like it. I've no doubt that with this tweet you managed to offend the 40% of your constituents who didn't vote for you in the last election, but who you still represent.

Grow the fuck up, Weiner.

About that "Odyssey Dawn" thing...

As a long-time military guy, I've always hated military operation names that seemed hand-crafted for public consumption and subsequent printing on t-shirts and bumper stickers. "Desert Shield" and its follow-up "Desert Storm" come immediately to mind. "Just Cause", the operation to invade Panama and capture Manuel Noriega, was to me a particularly unsubtle bit of salesmanship, and operations "Iraqi Freedom" and "Enduring Freedom" are particularly egregious examples of bad names for military operations.

World War 2 saw such cryptic names as "Market Garden", which was the Allied operation to secure bridgeheads and strategic positions along rivers in Germany and the Netherlands. Now that's a good name for an operation. The Allied invasion of Normandy was called simply "Overlord", another good name for a military operation. In more recent history, Israel dubbed its operations against Hamas in the Gaza Strip "Cast Lead".

In the 1980s, we had names for exercises under 9th Air Force that all seemed to begin with the word "Coronet" followed my some apparently random noun. They were all horribly boring and mundane, and therefore good names.

As operation names go, "Odyssey Dawn" doesn't completely suck by my standards. While I suspect some general officer somewhere thought it sounded cool (and thus potentially t-shirtable), at least it doesn't smack of some PR flak's idea of a marketable name.

Fair wages

Courtesy of my buddy "Big Dog" Mike, who sent this via e-mail:

The Alabama Department of Labor discovered a dairy farmer was not paying proper wages to his help and sent an agent out to investigate.

"I need a list of your employees and how much you pay them," the Department of Labor employee said to the farmer upon arriving at his dairy.

"Well, there's my farm hand who has been with me for three years. I pay him $200 a week plus free room and board," the farmer explained. "Then there's the mentally challenged worker. He works about 18 hours every day and does about 90% of all the work around here. He makes about $10 per week, pays his own room and board, and I buy him a bottle of bourbon every Saturday night so he can cope with life. He also sleeps with my wife occasionally."

"That's the guy I want to talk to, the mentally challenged one," the Department of Labor employee said.

"That would be me," the farmer replied.