So..I'm watching the debates and Richardson says that terrorists ALREADY have nukes?!!

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 09:41 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 15 words, total size 1 kb.

Enough of who I'm dead set against....It's time to declare who I'm for.

That would be Fred Thompson.

Thompson is really the only Goldwater Republican in the race for the nomination.
Thompson's view of the role and function of government is closer to mine than any of the candidates aside from Congressman Paul, and I firmly believe Thompson is far better than that admirably Jeffersonian Congressman on dealing with current threats. Thompson's strong federalist stance is a welcome one to me as this is a vital aspect of a Republic.

    Starting with his early campaigning for Goldwater, Thompson has been politically active in various capacities for on and off for over 30 years. He has also been employed in private sector jobs ranging from the fields of law to entertainment during the aforementioned "off" periods. The private sector perspective is important for the elected representatives to have and it is all too lacking in todays political players. The founders intended that our representative serve for a time and go back to their jobs rather existing as professional entrenched rulers...Thus this is a bigger point for Thompson than is often appreciated.

His experience in public service has ranged from the Watergate hearings were he comported himself admirably to the service in both the US Senate and the State Department ( working for ISAB). In private life he helped bring down a corrupt governor and represented various citizens legal interests. He is also a character actor and while that may seem to be of limited relevance to the POTUS skillset, the skills honed there can have considerable application in both electability and in the all important presidential job of shouting and inspiring from the bully pulpit.

I certainly do not agree with Thompson on all issues, but it is apparent that he has given many of the issues facing the nation a good deal of thought beyond the sound bite.

No candidate is going to score 100% with the focus group of one that is Ken, but I am in agreement with Thompson more than I am with the current President (who I voted for twice) and I feel he has an excellent chance of uniting the party for the tough electoral battle ahead and a better than even chance of uniting our viscerally divided country against the many challenges it faces, challenges that range from the natural, to the man made and from men of ill intent.

Finally, Thompson possesses another important characteristic  that is lacking in much of todays discourse, an almost Reaganlike optimism.  This as important a quality as any in leadership.

Anyway, them's my reasons....

Go Fred!

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 12:56 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 444 words, total size 3 kb.

I kinda like Fred.

It seems that Pejman Yousefzadeh does too.  It is a long well thought out piece...I agree with a lot of it.

He needs a blimp though.

HT: the Blogfather

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 10:52 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 37 words, total size 1 kb.

I am not endorsing Ron Paul. For one thing, I think his stance on the war, (however principled) is catastrophically wrong. However, I do not think that his strict constitutionist views deserve the lampooning they get, particularly from my fellow Republicans. If not for the war, I could see supporting him.

Additionally, I have to give him a big golf clap for this.

He may not be in the top tier in the polls, but he has surged ahead of all his rivals in the Dirigible Department!

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 07:15 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 92 words, total size 1 kb.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 11:07 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 694 words, total size 6 kb.

This came up in the comments to this post on Jim Frasier's excellent site.

The leftie narrative is fairly predictable, conservatives are reactionary pigs who are driven by greed and ignorance while the enlightened lefties motives are as pure as the driven snow.

Um...no.

It is true that the healthy skepticism the right has had for the global warming hysterics IS reactionary in a way.

The environmental movement was pretty much taken over by lefties, especially after the fall of the USSR.

Leftism has never worked, instead it has rendered millions of innocents dead, wrecked economies and left the most "successful" nations it was inflicted upon with weak economies and on a demographic death spiral. After, Robspierre, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, 130 million people dead, and at best malaise and general dispair you'd think there would be a re-examining of premises....

....but, like mid 19th century Christian apocalyptics trying to distract attention from the great disappointment, the lefties watchword has become "next time fer sure".

For a time after the end of the cold war however, this was a hard sell.

So to foist their utterly unworkable philosophy on the rest of us they embraced global warming as an excuse to force anti capitalist (and often anti American) policies through that would never pass political muster in this country.

The policies that the "greens" tend to advocate are the same old authoritarian, planned economy boondoggles that have been failing for 80 years.

Kyoto, (like many of their solutions)  is about hyperregulating the private sector. Additionally, given that treaties are binding for the US (but for Europe, not so much) Kyoto in particular is a way to hurt America and thereby give rather more socialistic Europe a leg up on us and perpetuate the lie that socialism is in any way competitive with a basically free market.

This has as much a political and idealogical bent as any on the conservative side.

Conservatives can additionally be forgiven for skepticism when the boosters of global warming hysteria behave in ways that indicate they don't seem to believe in it themselves. The lefts approved approach is idiocy like Kyoto,which the Europeans who signed it are cheating on, and which ignored major polluters like China and India. (China recently surpassed the US in net CO2 emissions). The left has historically opposed nuclear power, OWWEOL*, supports unworkable boondoggles like ethanol,# and fly around the world lecturing about global warming....in  fricking jets.@

The Bush administration, for all its many, many faults has pushed fuel cells, nuclear power, as well as thermal depolymerization and other biodiesel projects. Significantly he has gotten a CO2 agreement that includes (albiet tentatively) China (and therefore is relevant...quite unlike Kyoto).

Bush has therefore done more practical good in this regard than those who are identified with this cause.

As I've pointed out before there are worse eco-problems than global warming.  Global warming is a perfect storm of solar heating of the whole solar system, coming out of an ice age and CO2 emissions...all at he same time. However, things like acid rain, mercury in the environment,the ecological collapse of the oceans and poisoning of groundwater supplies are almost entirely anthropogenic in nature and are IMHO both more pressing and more directly able to be influenced by human actions.

None of this means that conservatives like myself seriously believe that global warming is not real nor that we don't want to cut emissions.

I and many conservatives support fossil fuel carbon taxes as opposed to the carbon caps/ carbon credits that are just Ponzi scheme vaporware. We support nuclear power, and with the scads of cheap carbon free energy that can provide the thermal depolymerization plants and other biofuel processing plants it can make possible. The current administration is also looking at SSPS arrays for the first time since the early 80's. While I'm skeptical of this technology for several reasons it is not indicative of ignoring energy alternatives.

It is true that there are ignoramuses on the right who deny any anthropogenic component to this issue or even that warming itself is apochryphal. They are given a good deal more exposure than cranks would normally warrant in part because the media likes to use them to discredit the right.

More here, here and here.

*(OWWEOL= Offshore Windmills Within Eyesight of Lefties)

# Yes I know, conservatives do that too...we are most displeased.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 07:01 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 898 words, total size 7 kb.

In the comments to the previous post on the writers strike, Pete Zactiev makes an analogy to computer engineers work on software like LINUX. Pointing out ( I think) that the writers are generally not the creators of these shows and are analogous to someone tweaking a computer OS the writers case by writing episodes.

I don't think this exactly follows. The writers are doing the actual creation of the shows, without them there is no marketable product. A software engineer is an engineer. He/she gets the program which is essentially a customizable machine or toolkit. The kit IS the finished product. The IT person then uses the kit/program to fit to the needs of their employer.  

However, his is an interesting analogy. It certainly follows certain recent trends and that bothers me.

Nations that don't have strong intellectual property protections CAN of course produce scads of stuff.

But they have, internally, serious disincentives to actually create anything beyond refinements of existing products. Despite some cursory enforcement China is piracy central and this is in no way limited to digital media.

This is potentially a huge issue. I firmly believe that one of the reasons the "West" leapfrogged everybody else was that those nations tended to have strong IP laws. Those nonwestern nations that adopted such ideas succeeded and those that didn't fell behind

 Invention and progress depend upon intellectual property law. The reason this nation prospered was because it was friendly to creators. The founding fathers, included several writers, Jefferson and others were inventors, Washington was a civil engineer and Franklin was all of the above. They were renaissance men. They made sure that the nation rewarded its creative individuals with royalties or somesuch. In fact the founders 14yr + 14yr copyright which is used to argue for not extending copyright must be taken in context with the 33 year average lifespan of the day. The founders were  sure enough that this was important and both Federalist and Republican governments built this up over the ensuing 20 years or so.

   This concept is largely responsible for the historic aberration that is the modern world.  Given the nature of digital media such concepts may be untenable, but we should tread lightly for we abandon them at our peril.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 05:32 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 385 words, total size 3 kb.

 Colleen Doran has a long, informative post on the math, misperceptions and reality of the writers strike here. Roger Simon has more here. and this comment over at LGF is probably pretty close to the truth.

The situation here is so utterly backwards from a regular strike that many peoples knees are jerking backwards.

I am no fan of unions.

 I've crossed a picket line and dealt with threats, pursuit, intimidation and since, the union won that one, a bit of harassment. I am not ashamed of that period of my life. Last week I was finally forced to join that union because of my recent injury. Not a happy Ken. Now that I've signed on the dotted line I could (in theory) get in trouble for non-haiographic blogging about Unions.
meh...

I also know voice actors who have taken low end jobs (generally better than no job) for start-up-shoestring Anime companies that could not pay union rates. They helped get the anime industry off the ground in the US. Of course, being "scabs" they must now work under pseudonyms if possible, in Canada, or not at all. One told me she gets harassed occasionally. Closed shop SUCKS! I have a good deal of respect for these guys.

This writers strike, however is not typical.

The writers are the creators, the investors of the creative capital and they are fully entitled to compensation for that. 4 cents per 30 dollar DVD and naught for downloads does not cut it. The production companies are essentially middle men. Yes they take the writers work toproduce and market it, but for any given story, the writer is the only piece of the equation that cant be changed.
 It's not about weather they produce crap (and 90+ percent of TV and movies certainly is fits that description). The writers produce a commodity of value (someones watching it) they are damned well entitled to a percentage of the proceeds given that without them there would be no proceeds.

Bottom line the writers are in the right.

 
If anything the arguments again the  writers getting a percentage of their new media earnings smack of leftist arguments about information wanting to be free....an argument that all of us on the right should be very wary of.

This is not about politics, it is about right and wrong.

I wish my fellow conservatives could realize this.
Injustice is injustice no matter who it happens to. To determine your sympathy for the victims of theft based on their politics is to become like the vile denizens at Kos or Democratic Underground.

We lost the 06 election in part because we became like the Dems in the area of earmarks, and corruption, we became what we most opposed.
It seems some of us have decided to extend this trend to questions of right and wrong too.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 10:06 PM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
Post contains 480 words, total size 3 kb.

I'm rather unimpressed by the Republican field as most of the strongest candidates have their strengths well balanced by other qualities, and the shallow end of the field actively scare me.

The Dems all actively scare me.

This is quite a good point in my book for Fred Thomson though.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 07:02 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 55 words, total size 1 kb.

Ed Morrisey comments on this piece by Craig Franklin, a Jena resident (and reporter) who sets straight some of the facts about the situation in Jena Louisiana that were missed or misreported by reporters who told a story of horrid racism, nosses hanging from trees, dreadful inequity and the railroading of a group of six innocents whoes only crime was to be the wrong color.

A complelling story that needed to be told except that the narrative was incorrect in almost every way.

Sayeth Mr. Franklin

There's just one problem: The media got most of the basics wrong. In fact, I have never before witnessed such a disgrace in professional journalism. Myths replaced facts, and journalists abdicated their solemn duty to investigate every claim because they were seduced by a powerfully appealing but false narrative of racial injustice. 

More here at NRO which makes a point that I'd heard a couple of times but been unable to pin down...ie that the poor oppresed thug in this case kept getting a pass because he was a star on the football team.

This is terrible. It's not just that these ingorant know-it-all BoBo's are slandering good people and fanning the embers of hatred. They are crying wolf and people who have heard about this and the Duke Rape Case might not be so ready to believe a similar tale when its real. This only leads to more hate, which will no doubt be profitable for the press.

There was a time when a story like that of Jayson Blair or Stephen Glass were shocking. Now it seems that they were just par for the course.

TNR, who got burned by glass has been caught trying to cover up a smear campaign on US troops, one that they wanted desperately to believe, but that had been typed by a disgruntled Army Specialist who fancied himself the next Hemmingway. OK so they got snookered, but if they'd fact checked it at all they would have never published it. Now we know that it was the New Republic and not the Army that was lying about their access to the vile little man. They could have cleared this up by a mea culpa but they let it fester and feed the malignant antimilitary bile that so consumes their readership.

It gets worse....

This long war is as much about perceptions as anything, and the press is always there to broadcast to the 4 winds 24/7 any scrap of dirt on the conduct of the war real or imagined. However, good news or even inspiring news....isn't news.

And here is more on the same topic.

Yes this is a stock wail on the media post...but this is an important thing.

Do click follow the above links, most of them are to sites that lean to the right to be sure,  but in many cases those stories would never see the light of day (beyond page 31 of the paper) otherwise. THAT is the problem.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 08:40 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 506 words, total size 4 kb.

Colleen Doran posts on the Hollywood writers strike.

I'm of two minds about this. On the one hand unions have been injuring US industries for years. I'm very much a right to work kind of guy.

On the other hand incidents like Matawan are NOT propaganda, they really happened. Plane old unions are INHERENTLY corrupt, but for all their inherent corruption they do (in theory) act as an important legal recourse for workers.  If organized as guilds rather than straight unions they can be forces for considerable good beyond the narrow interests of the union hall.  Additionally, if the Hollywood writers have been hosed to the same extent as some people I've known in comics and animation then I'm certainly sympathetic to their plight.

On the gripping hand.....as noted in the update to Colleen's post there seems to be a wee bit of overreach in the demands of the Writers "Guild". Via her addendum is an excerpt from a longer communication by Warren Ellis:

The strike rules declare that writers may not write animation or “new media” content. This is interesting because WGA has no jurisdiction over animation or new media. Further, they state that any non-union person found writing animation or new media during the course of a strike will be barred from ever joining the Guild.

 

It sounds a bit arrogant to say the least.

 My sympathies are shall we say...strained. 

First off, at least according to Ellis, they don't seem to have any real jurisdiction over animators or "New Media". Despite the apparent truth of this, being a private entity, it seems they can refuse membership to anyone. If one of their membership requirements is that animators starved while they struck then no animators who worked while they were on strike need be allowed in. They can certainly put a glass ceiling on peoples carrers.

And "new media"? Mmmmmkaaay....

So people getting started online or creating new mediums who don't bow down to the whims of a union they never belonged to (and might not even be aware of the edicts of)...does this mean they can never join? I'm blogging....right now.

Does this mean I can't ever join the WG?

Hell, Miss Doran (who has categorically stated that she will NOT do healthy healing growth on the wound work) is blogging about this...right now...and has advertisements on her site. Is she new media?

The difference between a Union and a Guild (in theory) is that the Guild (in theory) sets up standards and training for its tradespersons to ensure that everyone who is a member is a solid and competent expert at whatever trade they represent. They also collectively bargain just like a union to ensure that their members are treated equitably, but in maintaining standards they expel unqualified or unethical members. Like any human endeavor, they are fallible, but "Guild" carries with it an expectation of both work ethic and competence that union does not. Of course the names of organizations may have little bearing on how they operate. Some organizations called unions (pipefitters for instance)certainly work like a guild. And some organizations with the name "guild" care nothing for the quality of the work their members do and will grow in power and arrogance until they kill their respective geese and create a rust belt of one sort or another.

Which brings us to a fine place in this rant to remind people why so many of the voice actors who dub anime are Canadian. They took work from small marginal companies that couldn't pay union scale, and after a couple of times were shut out from the industry.

LOTS of productions are moving to Canada. The Canadians bend over backwards to bring them in and the expenses are far cheaper because the unions they have aren't nearly as odious.

A lot of writers well versed in the innovative and growth oriented applications  of whatever the hell "new media" is might soon be driven there too.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 10:26 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 662 words, total size 4 kb.

  Saw this Reason post on Instapundit today.

Given the fact that there are professors that wear Che' shirts on campus, links that point out the real face of this murdering, antisemitic, racist, waste of skin are  always a welcome dose of reality.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 10:24 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 45 words, total size 1 kb.

The Anchoress has a typically  thoughtful piece up on the authenticity deficit in our politics which seems more sorely felt than usual this year.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 08:49 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 26 words, total size 1 kb.

Instapundit recently linked to this story about the hiring shenanigans of UC Irvine. It seems they hired a super liberal Dean for their new law school.....and then fired him because of pressure from the VRWC.....or something....they can't get their story straight.

Daily Pundit correctly points out that this is unusual only because of the politics of the erstwhile Dean.

While the lack of reciprocity in indignation is certainly annoying, I don't think it should trump principal.

This guy was shoddily treated and if some blockheaded righty did make noises about it the school was wrong to knuckle under.


This is outside of my usual interests and I'm only aware of it because I'm not exactly a lone voice in the wilderness on this. There are other members of the hopelessly naive union of right of center bloggers here, here and here.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 10:36 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 143 words, total size 1 kb.

I propose a compromise between the US and Russia over the...er...burning Alaska question.

Instead of giving them Alaska proper, why not just send them Ted Stevens instead?

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 08:46 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 33 words, total size 1 kb.

Eaglespeak has an interesting post on the efforts of Russia to solidify their claims to Arctic Mineral Resources. Russia is claiming a huge expanse of the Arctic seabed, claiming that an undersea mountain range, previously supposed to be part of Greenland  is, in fact, part of Russia's continental shelf. More here...

Related  is this series of articles that proposes ideas for dealing with the threat to Canadian sovereignty over arctic islands that is posed by...er...Denmark.

Canada, Denmark the USA, Norway and Russia all have competing and occasionally overlapping claims in the Arctic. Given the recent flexing of Russia's muscles in the area (we HAVE the receipt thank you) it is logical to focus on that rather than two of the more peaceful nation in the world....but the situation in the Davis straits is rather fuzzy legally as it was never really an issue before. Now as the Polar cap recedes and turns this rescource rich area into a major shipping lane and makes getting at those resources tenable things could get interesting. A real war between Canada and Denmark is, of course, unlikely but something similar to the cod war could actually occur.

Crazy.

Of course this is another reason for the Coast Guard to keep and augment its red hull fleet.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 07:16 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 215 words, total size 2 kb.

Colleen Doran has 2 interesting and related posts regards the apprehension and outright fear certain intellectuals have of the new media and the coarsening or dumbing down of our culture ...see here and here.

   Now complaints about the quality of thought put forth by the rabble is not  without some merit. The history of democracies is as old as the first lynch mob, which, of course, is why this nations founders strove to give us a Republic.

The internet has vastly lowered the bar for publishing and done an end-run around the editors that were once the gatekeepers. The result, more often than not, HAS been semi literate "cranks with chips on their shoulders" typing out unfocused digressions and on the fly media reviews without the benefit of any deep literary appreciation or other expertise. To find such 'travesties of the tubes' one  need not look far....

  That example notwithstanding, I think the benefits of this unkempt stream of consciousness do outweigh the downsides. The Jayson Blair fiasco is mentioned in the comments and it is important to remember that Walter Duranty got to keep the Pulitzer given to him by those same hallowed gatekeepers.

  Is there a colossal cacophony cretins creating cartloads of craptacular crap plaguing the interweb?

Yes.

But one can turn it off or on with a mouse click...and the potential to bypass the people who fancy themselves arrestor switches on society is what really gets up many of these peoples nose. As Colleen  points out...

The artiest of the art crowd is just as inflexible, narrow-minded, and cliquish as they would presume a community of Mennonites to be; their idea of what is acceptable is different, but no less rigid in context.

The second link is closely related and bears reading as well. Both have lively comment threads that warrant a look....the second of which is launched by an accusatory comment from some Parsons wannabe who one could be forgiven for thinking is a bitter, out-of work-editor...a rather bad one.

Anyway, enough of my rambling, go read both posts.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 04:29 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 346 words, total size 3 kb.

I am no fan of the frothing hysterical Bo-Bo's that make up most of the Kossacks. But damn....this is just profoundly stupid.

This is exactly the sort of wretched passive-aggressive sleaze we deal with on college campuses and that we oppose in the real world in opposing the "fairness doctrine".

Using the government to stifle viewpoints you don't agree with is wrong.This is one of the principals of American conservatism. (_{You should acquaint yourself with those Mr. Bambenek}).

The sweet irony of doing this to those who long for the "fairness doctrine" does not in any way mitigate the wrongness of it. Lowering ourselves to the level of the more extreme Dems rather defeats the purpose of opposing them.

Brickmuppet Blog utterly opposes this ill-conceived asshattery.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 09:08 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 132 words, total size 1 kb.

The recent furor over the large traffic fines (and linked state income tax increases) seem pretty justified to me.

Aside from their onerous size, the tickets seem poorly geared toward saftey, and even the Governor agrees they are mainly a revenue measure.

Speed, especially on the interstates is not a major saftey concern....changing speeds are....like the sudden changing of the speed limits in Newport News (Warwick Blvd.) and Norfolk (Terminal Blvd.) downward to take advantage of this upcoming windfall.

The 20mph downswings in speed limits on rural roads like 258 in Isle of Wight county are already an issue....they tend to be sudden with minimal warning and often associated with a hill and a patrol car. This is sleazy enough without a thousand dollar fine (and a spike in taxes for years).

Traffic fines should be for satey...not revenue generation. I hope the backlash from this is VERY strong.

I seem to remember back in the early days of the republic we had a method of dealing with public officials like Gov. Kaine....I wish I could remember what that was....

                     

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 09:28 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 184 words, total size 2 kb.

 ....the alternative is worse.

Sen. John Kerry said during a C-Span appearance that fears of a bloodbath after the US withdrawal from Vietnam never materialized. He says he’s met survivors of the “reeducation camps” who are thriving in modern Vietnam. An award-winning investigation by the Orange County Register concludes that at least 165,000 people perished in the camps.

Note that 165K is a seriously lowball figure even for the camps alone. It does not take into account those killed outright by the commies nor does it deal with the genocide perpetrated against the Montagnards.It does not deal with 250,000+  boat people who died in leaky sampans trying to flee the socialist utopia inflicted upon them and it doesn't even touch the death tolls in Laos and Cambodia caused by the  fall of those nations governments to the communists which the fall of Saigon made all but inevitable.

....but it is a good place to start.

...and I'm sure survivors of the reeducation camps are going to say anything they can to prevent being put back into the fine accommodations that Kerry's efforts in the US made available to them.

Asshole....

This seems part of a larger campaign by Dems to whitewash the human catastrophe that was the result of their proudest moment.

Senator Kennedy earlier this year made this rather bizarre statement.
Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., replied, "Well, first of all, I heard the same kinds of suggestions at the time of the end of the Vietnam War. The 'Great Bloodbath,' we're going to have over 100,000 people that were going to be murdered and killed at that time. And for those of us who were strongly opposed to the war, [we] heard those same kinds of arguments."

Yeah...and those arguments proved correct...

 The purpose of this memory hole silliness is, of course, to deflect attention from what will happen if we bail on the Iraqis the way we did  the South  Vietnamese.

  There were many principled arguments and good people on the side opposing the decision to go to war in Mesopotamia. But the notion that ONCE THERE we should break our word and leave them to a Cambodia scale horror or worse is not in any way an act of good faith...It is moral cowardice, intense denial,  or the most venal politicking.

 This long war is difficult, heartbreaking, expensive in blood and treasure and, like all wars, it is a terrible and wretched thing. However, I firmly believe that given our current choices, fighting it is the best, most ethical alternative for our long term security, and  that of the Iraqis.

More hereand here.
An interview with General Petraeus here.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 10:27 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 448 words, total size 4 kb.