perfidy

For the last couple days, I've been reading William Tecumseh Sherman's memoirs. As I read, it started me thinking. (Books are cool that way.) Most civil wars throughout history and down to today have been caused by either dynastic succession or about ethnic strife. Here and there, the occasional religious civil war - which in many respects resembles an ethnic civil war. Of course, an American civil war had to be different. Ethnicity and religion had nothing to do with the civil war, at least in that both sides considered themselves equally American, and both sides were Christian, with a fairly even spread of denominations on either side.

America's civil war became an ideological war over the issue of slavery. Fueling this fight over principle was the fact that slavery was necessarily also an economic issue. Slavery is not the most efficient way of mobilizing a nation's labor force; and only a unique set of circumstances had allowed slavery to be immensely profitable (for some) in the south. Without the economic factor, slavery would not have been as divisive an issue. For example, if the north had also held slaves and if their factories could have profitably used slave labor - then only the abolitionists would have been arguing for ending the institution. They may have won that fight, but it would not have required a civil war.

Could it happen again? The United States seems the most stable of nations. Despite the recent animosity between the two political parties, we all get along much better than average. Even in the face of a full on election crisis, everyone pretty much managed to keep their heads. What could possibly motivate a significant number of our population to wage war on the rest?

To be honest, I couldn't think of many issues that are even potentially as divisive as slavery was almost a hundred and fifty years. Global Warming? Please. Social Security? Old people aren't going to take up arms against the young for their pensions. The only one that comes close is abortion, which is just as black and white; however it lacks the economic component that could potentially really get blood flowing. So to speak.

Aside from that, you have the various paranoid fantasies of the aryan brotherhood/inbred klan nutjob variety. The Jewish Zionist world government will use the black helicopters and UN controlled US forces to eliminate the mountain hideouts of the faithful. Somehow, that doesn't quite work as a nightmare scenario for me. Mostly, they're too busy ratting each other out to the ATF to be an effective core for a secessionist movement.

Economic issues, absent some sort of polarizing ideological component, will generally get worked out in a system like ours. Ideological discord, without large scale economic interests lining up on opposite sides, will remain low level bitching on the fringes, or eventually degenerate into a consensus. So we're safe, right? I was wondering if anyone had any plausible ideas for a second American Civil War - my list of worries is getting too short.

Have you ever wondered if all your brilliant ideas are derivative, clichéd and stupid? Do your friends ask, "Hey, wasn't that a Star Trek episode?" Well. just measure them against the comprehensive Grand List of Overused Science Fiction Clichés. Link blatantly plagiarized from sf author James P. Hogan's website.

"Now for a more rigorous scientific explanation of why [detonating nuclear weapons] would not be an effective hurricane modification technique."

From the FAQ page of the Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory, a department of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Exposed! Today in the Boston Globe: Mobile homes a risk in hurricane areas!

Sure, I understand that many people can't really afford to live in other than a single-wide for reasons of culture, economy, family, or other circumstance. Sucks to be them. Sucks bad to be them. But is it really such a surprise when they fall over!?

NASA keeps a small archive of satellite images available to the freeloading public.
Here are the sets organized by state.

There are three seasons hereabouts: Endor, Hoth, and leafpeeping/boorish undergraduate/gay-antique-collector-from- Manhattan. Can you guess which two are represented here:

You can also use the search function and view places you might care to go on vacation, avoid altogether, or drop super reinforced tungsten rods upon. Note that there is a relationship between how dangerous a weather feature is to human life, and how interesting that feature is to observe on a satellite photo.

Some thoughts from the Olympics:

• I loved the opening ceremony. These affairs can't help but be a little cheesy, but the sheer majesty and taste with which the long theatrical sequence covered the 3,000 year history of Greece made up for any faint ridiculousness. Bonus points for alphabetizing the nations by the Greek alphabet. Points off for NBC for Bob Costas and Katie Couric. Note to Bob and Katie: nobody-- nobody cares what you think about what Fiji is wearing.
• What is going on with NBC? With a stable of associated cable networks to exploit (USA, Bravo!, MSNBC, Telemundo), you'd think they could put together a nifty package that puts the marquee sports—gymnastics, swimming, maybe volleyball/beach volleyball—front and center in prime time for the first week of the Games. But nooooo! Last night Bravo! edited their coverage of Olympic badminton (!) to end precisely at 8 and switched to regular programming, just in time for NBC to go on the air with - synchronized diving?
• Synchronized diving? What the fuck?
• The lady gymnasts need to eat some cake.
• The men gymnasts are scary in a Shaolin kind of way.
• What is going on with NBC? Last night the best gymnastics coverage I could find on any station was on RAI. Never heard of RAI? It's from Quebec. Broadcasting in French. NBC was showing doubles marshmallow eating.
• Olympic badminton is scary. That wussy little shuttlecock and flimsy little racquet in the hands of experts become weapons of fearsome power. Last night in a doubles match I watched a short little American guy with a 35-inch (!) vertical leap whip off a kill that must have been going 85 MPH when the shuttlecock hit the court. Unbelievable. More unbelievable is that they got taken apart by a Norwegian team who played like implacable machines.
• Olympic ping-pong is scary. The players watch the ball with all the concentration of a severely autistic child focusing on the one thing that makes him react, and volleys skitter and glide millimeters above the net only to whip off sideways when the ball hits the table. I swear some of these men have more than the usual number of arms.
• What is going on with NBC? Right now in Greece, competitors are vying in boxing, fencing, equestrian, table tennis, water polo, swimming, badminton, soccer, baseball and softball. Between now and noon, NBC's many networks will show us live: table tennis, soccer, and water polo. Weak.
• One word: Thorpedo.”
• The only way to watch soccer is on Telemundo. One word: GOOOOOOOOOAL!”
• We USAians got our ass handed to us in basketball by Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico. Let that sink in. Puerto Rico. There can only be one response: "Mr. President, I have reason to believe that Puerto Rico is harboring Weapons of Mass Destruction."

I really need to watch more baseball, is what I need to do.

Rather than waste your time adopting a local highway, adopt a sniper and help him waste our enemies. Snipers are a small part of a big army, and often do not get the equipment that they need. This is especially true now that the war on terror is forcing the army to force more and more expert riflemen into the sniper role.

So Brian Sain, a police SWAT member, has done something to ameliorate the problem. The website has a long list of gear you can buy for the snipers, including relatively inexpensive items like AA batteries and handy wipes. Or you can by mini binoculars, range finders or body armor. Or, you can make a direct donation online and let adopt a sniper buy gear for you, and pay for shipping costs. Thanks to the fabulous Michelle Malkin for pointing this out.

From the Adopt-A-Sniper FAQ:

Q: Why isn't the government buying these things?

A: The commitment in OEF/OIF is huge. Snipers need different and expensive gear than is required by many other troops. This can cause problems when the military tries to maintain a perfectly uniform dress code and the snipers end up doing without. The logistics of running the US military are staggering and snipers are just one small spoke in a very big wheel. We just try and relieve some of the burden from the snipers themselves and also from their families.

Q: How did this organization begin?

A: A group of SWAT snipers in the US were all too aware that they (the police snipers) often have to make do without the things they need to get their jobs done. Often misused and misunderstood, the police snipers correctly figured that the military snipers were operating under the same circumstances. The police snipers established contact with the various military sniper school cadre and began sending items they could spare right out of their own gear bags and also making personal purchases. An article on the organization later appeared in Stars and Stripes overseas. The military snipers began networking with the police snipers more and more and the rest is as they say ... history.

Q: I thought snipers, being specialized operators, would have everything they need. Why don't they?

A: In every war it seems that the military must re-learn the lessons of the past. The war on terror is ideally suited for the tactics of the sniper. With the convoy escorts and house to house fighting, the US military is using snipers in numbers not seen in modern history. It seems like a no-brainer but a man with a rifle that knows how to use it, is in much
demand in a war. Soldiers and Marines that have not been to a formal sniper school but who shot "Expert" on the range are being issued special rifles and basically doing the same job as the school trained snipers in some cases. Adoptasniper makes no distinction between these two types of operators and offers assistance equally. We currently support snipers on each end of the spectrum; from the very well trained and equipped who normally request smaller, specialized items to the marksman soldier with little to no support that needs "everything" to do the job asked of him ... and every variant in between.

Q: How do we know that the snipers higher ups will allow them to use the items we send or purchase?

A: Fortunately, many of the military higher ups have relaxed some of the operational needs stipulations. They realize too, that their men need things to get the job done and we have even had some officers contact us for assistance for their troops.

Q: Who is involved in this organization?

A: ALL persons directly involved are either current or former police or military snipers or both. ALL are either currently operational themselves or are directly involved in training police and military operators in the US and abroad.

Q: Can I send a monetary donation?

A: YES. We request that monetary donations be sent to Keith Deneys of Snipersonline. Snipersonline is a 5013C non-profit organization and we would prefer that all monies received be received through that entity.
The address is located on the contact page. You can also send a donation online.

One Marine in Afghanistan wrote back:

Sir,

Your package arrived at Forward Operating Base XXXXX today and was meet with great fan fair by my Marines. We are tremendously grateful for the equipment that you sent us. It is wonderful to see the support that the community enjoys from our fellow Snipers. The cleaning gear came in quite handing after our 25 straight day field operation. The mini binos will help lighten our load as we continue to spend most of our time chasing the Taliban between 7,000 - 10,000 feet. We head back out on our next field operation tomorrow after 4 days of rearming and refitting here at the FOB. The arrival of your gifts was perfectly timed.

If you are able to support the platoon further we would be more than happy to receive it. We are sitting pretty well with equipment, but I had the Marines compile a list of personal use items that they could use. Of course good stateside, Copenhagen was right at the top. Any type of Protein Bars ( We have each lost about 10-20 lbs so far), Gatorade and Poweraid Drink Mix, Dry Weapons Lubricants like Graphite ( the sand is a constant battle), Canned air, and anything else that you have access too. If you send it we will make good use of it...

Again, thanks for your support and please stay in touch.

I will keep you posted as to the status of the platoon and our operation here in Afghanistan.

Semper Fi,

XXXXXXXX
S/S Plt Cmdr
USMC
FOB XXXXXX, Afghanistan

By now we all know the sordid saga of James McGreevey, soon to be ex-governer of New Jersey. The young and politically ambitious governer of a beleaguered Eastern state is more or less caught in flagrante delicto carrying on an affair with a man who is not his wife. He makes a stirring public confession of guilt and regret, in the process coming out to the world in one unforgettable epigrammatic statement, “I am a gay American,”and announces he will resign his post.

However, it turns out that the soon to be ex-governer’s resignation won’t be until November, which maybe seems a little opportunistic and hollow. We also find that the mysterious dreamboat with whom our hero has had his dalliances is an Israeli poet and a member of the governer’s own staff. Stranger still, indeed. Digging deeper, we find that the Israeli poet in question had acted as director of New Jersey’s homeland security efforts despite no training, prior security or administrative experience, or indeed any qualifications of any kind aside from an uncanny ability to craft a sonnet.

At this point, suspicions begin to arise in the press about the timing and content of our hero’s public confession. Rumors drift out from the New Jersey press stringers, whispers of investigations, ethical violations and crooked fundraising, and a general pall of skeevy wrongdoing settles over the entire affair. The quality of scandal not strained; it falleth as a gentle shitmist over Trenton. Suddenly, our upstanding Gay American is not such a nobly flawed hero after all, but simply a cheap hustler on the make playing his last sympathy card before the hammer can fall.

That fact is the landmark aspect of the whole affair. A New Jersey governer resigns in disgrace, and rather than choose contrition or defiance in the face of evidence, he appeals to the hearts and minds of the country as a gay man. James McGreevey played the gay card, because of everything he could have done, it had the most upside for him.

Gay rights activists and allies, and indeed anyone with a pulse, will naturally be appalled at the sheer brazenness with which James McGreevey used what half the country believes to be a dead-serious equal-rights fight to keep his ass out the fire, and everyone else should be appalled for the opposite reason. With his public coming out, timed as it was to deflect scandal, James McGreevey has cheapened himself and the public image of gay America, and given the moralists and moonbats ammo aplenty with which to fire back at anyone who contends that gay people in general are not sex-mad degenerate opportunistic psychopaths in leather underwear looking to rape the corpse of the US Constitution and its laws.

But there is a silver lining to this. Just stop and think about it for a minute. Today, in 2004, a prominent politician in a partially rural state would rather be known as gay than be known as crooked. If anyone needed proof that the moonbats and moralists are doomed to lose the fight over the acceptance of gays in this country, there you have it. Can you imagine Nixon trying the same thing? In 1974, the only thing that could be worse for your reputation and career than being a megalomanical sociopath with his hands in every nasty thing in Washington would be to be (and I invoke the spirit of John Derbyshire as I say this), an invert, a buggerer, a lily-livered Liberace light in the loafers. But today… meh. So he’s gay. He’s also a crook.

Today is a proud day for gay rights in the United States of America, and it took a dirtbag to do it.

[wik] Proving me so, so right (and it feels so good!), McGreevey’s poll numbers are up since he made the announcement. A coming out bounce! Who knew?

I have lost my soul. I have started photoshopping WWII propaganda posters.

Given my pathetic photoshop skills, this is a laborious process for me. But after seeing some of the annoying liberal versions, I felt compelled to try my hand at it.

Bear in mind that this vastly overstates my opinion of Kerry's national security credentials. If I do it again, I promise I won't post it unless I think it's really clever.

And, just for enjoyment, this poster that doesn't need photoshop at all: