Category: Uncategorized

Factual error: When Spider-man is fighting with Doc Ock and Doc Ock throws Spider-man through the overhead pedestrian bridge, Doc Ock throws Spider-man in the direction of travel of the train, and when passing through the bridge, Spider-man doesn’t touch anything. When Spider-man comes out the other side, he is ‘behind’ Doc Ock (in terms of the direction of train travel). This implies that Spider-man has slowed down in the air – fair enough due to wind resistance – and so is traveling slower. However, Spider-man then hits Doc Ock, which implies he is now traveling faster. A physical impossibility (since the horizontal speed doesn’t increase and decrease when thrown, only the vertical speed).

I have to confess, I’m one of those people who gets extremely annoyed when there are obvious plot holes. As one SF writer once said, any story that depends on someone being completely stupid shouldn’t even be considered a story. This doesn’t apply to the new Spiderman movie, necessarily, but this particular error makes me wonder if minor physics errors are one of the reasons that CGI action scenes often look noticeably wrong, even to those of us who couldn’t work out the proper physics with a gun to our head.

Seeing Enemy at the Gates with a Force Recon sniper was a riot. He was physically squirming in his chair with the effort to keep his mouth shut during the movie. Afterwards, we went out for pizza and the girls did their best to ignore us while he went on a 30-minute rampage of the film’s collection of absurdities. Good humor.

Vittorio writes:

Purtroppo, il popolo ha sempre giudicato dalle apparenze; lo fece anche Adamo quando mangiò la mela. D’altronde, qualcuno, credo Rivarol, disse che una dittatura si afferma non per merito proprio ma per gli errori della democrazia. A proposito, visto Portogallo-Grecia? Indubbiamente i Portoghesi hanno commessogravi errori, ma i Greci, che catenaccio!

Certainly the essay of Quintus Tullius suggests that people have always been prone to judge by appearances, although this may have briefly been less of a factor in the days when politics were no longer local but prior to television. And regardless of what a dictatorship affirms about democracy, there can be little question that, based on historical precedent, it is what inevitably follows. This will be true of the American Republic as well, the only question is when and in what form.

And of course, I did see the game. Portugal blundered by their determination to probe and search for nonexistent cracks in the Greek defense instead of trying to break through it by main force. Typical of most midfield-driven teams, they wasted chance after chance by holding the ball too long and allowing the defense to get set.

Greece’s victory is a great Cinderella story – Mississippi State had better odds to win the NCAA basketball tournament prior to the start of the season – but Rehhagel’s revival of il catenaccio may not be a great development for the game. I much prefer the wide-open attacking play of Arsenal and Real Madrid; it would certainly be more entertaining to see teams imitating the Czech Republic instead of the Greeks in the coming years.

Then again, Trappatoni’s use of the Blue Chain backfired badly on Italy and the Greeks were as disciplined in attack as they were in defense, so perhaps we won’t see an unwanted return to the tactics of the past.

I’ve never paid much attention to the oft-cited “it’s the law” argument. As the Gargler pointed out recently, that point is only raised when it’s deemed in the interest of the politicians and bureaucrats to do something that people don’t want them to do or when they wish to compel unthinking obedience. Jaywalking is almost never prosecuted, although “it’s the law”, and businesses freely do business on Sundays in many states in open and accepted defiance the blue laws still on the books.

As the Constitution is now a dead letter in the eyes of the government and the law no longer stands as written but is superceded by judge-declared case law – otherwise known as the Rule of Man that the Rule of Law was supposed to supplant – it’s clear that there is no law. Although few realize it yet, we now live in a Maughamite environment of “do what thou wilt with due regard for the policeman around the corner” and should expect the concomitant results in the near term.

People tend to forget that no one relies so heavily on “it’s the law” as a corrupt political leadership:

China’s state-controlled media have not reported Jiang’s detention, which began June 1. In response to questions submitted by The Washington Post, the government said in a brief statement: “Jiang Yanyong, as a soldier, recently violated the relevant discipline of the military. Based on relevant regulations, the military has been helping and educating him.” Though Chinese police routinely jail dissidents, the decision to detain Jiang appears to have been made by the Central Military Commission, the nation’s supreme military body, with the consent of the party’s most senior leaders, including President Hu Jintao and his influential predecessor, Jiang Zemin, according to a source familiar with the decision-making process.

Jiang Yanyong, a 72-year old doctor and “soldier” clearly broke the law in alerting the world to the Chinese cover-up of SARS. Is it right or just for him to be locked away and re-educated? After all, “it’s the law.”

I’ve selected what I consider to be the ten most important issues in this election for the leader of the Executive Branch, and given both President Bush and Senator Kerry a rating on each using a scale of 1 to 10. The lowest possible score is therefore a 10, the highest is a 100. I would not consider supporting any candidate scoring lower than 66 on this test.

(1) Respect for the Constitution

As the President takes an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution, this would seem to be a pretty basic requirement. Unfortunately, both Bush and Kerry have demonstrated precisely zero regard for either their oath or the document itself. Even Bob Dole, the tax collector for the welfare state, at least pretended to care about the 10th Amendment.

01 – (01): Bush

01 – (01): Kerry

(2) Defending gun rights

Kerry, for all that he has been going through the usual political rigamarole of having his picture taken while killing birds, has reliably voted against gun rights. Bush, on the other hand, has stated his willingess to accept the renewal of the “assault weapons” ban, but has not otherwise pushed for gun control.

05 – (06): Bush

02 – (03): Kerry

(3) National Sovereignty

All the Constitutional rights in the world won’t do Americans any good if the Constitution is superceded by international treaties and organizations. Both Kerry and Bush support LOST, both are fans of the United Nations and numerous other supranational organizations. Bush is marginally less enthusiastic about giving up sovereignty than Kerry, and was willing to drop his amnesty proposal once the level of opposition became clear.

03 – (09): Bush

01 – (03): Kerry

(4) Supreme Court Appointments

This is the big one for Bush defenders, but considering that five of the seven Republican appointees are liberal judicial activists, it’s by no means a slam dunk. I don’t think we can assume Bush, who has governed to the Left of every Republican president since Nixon, will show any better judgment than his predecessors. 2/7 = 28.57 percent.

03 – (12): Bush

01 – (04): Kerry

(5) Taxation

Bush has shown no inclination to respond to the petition put forth by We the People, as he is Constitutionally mandated to do. Nor has he investigated the very credible charges laid against the IRS, when even the US District Attorney “denies that the Internal Revenue Service is an agency of the United States government.” However, his three tax cuts did amount to 2 percent of the national income, so some credit is due. Kerry has been a reliable vote for higher taxes.

04 – (16): Bush

01 – (05): Kerry

(6) Big Government Growth

Contrary to what one would think, growth in government spending has increased fastest under Republican presidents, the two exceptions being LBJ and Ronald Reagan. George Bush has the worst record of any Republican president, while one cannot assume that John Kerry would necessarily be any worse than Bill Clinton. Just as it takes a Nixon to go to China, it takes a Republican president to unleash the full force of the fire hoses of Federal spending. I expect the rate of growth of government spending would actually slow somewhat under Kerry – Bush has set a difficult pace to match.

01 – (17): Bush

03 – (08): Kerry

(7) Commander-in-Chief

Neither Bush nor Kerry has shown any resolve to meet what every historian with his eyes open knows is the third great wave of Islamic expansion. Neither will even admit that this is happening, for that matter. Nevertheless, George Bush has struck one serious blow to the global jihad (Afghanistan) and one minor blow (Iraq), while Kerry can’t even bear to give a straight answer about what has already been done, much less what he would do himself. Bush has surrounded himself with poor strategic advisors and appears to have little notion of history or military strategy, but at least he appears to take the responsibility seriously.

04 – (21): Bush

01 – (09): Kerry

(8) Character

George Bush is by no means the flip-flopper or divorce-prone gigolo that John Kerry is, and he even warned conservatives with his assertion of his “compassionate” perversion of the philosophy. Still, his constant dissembling on the so-called War on Terror and the nature of the threat to the United States and the West is manifestly untruthful. Furthermore, he has not gone public with any of the Clinton administration’s lies about TWA 800 or OK City. As with most Democrats, Kerry’s entire campaign is built on deceit and on the few occasions that Kerry has allowed his personality to shine through, it is a rather ugly one indeed. That being said, one doubts he is an utter fraud like Clinton.

05 – (26): Bush

03 – (12): Kerry

(9) Party Coattails

Who cares? More Republicans to help Bush spend more money faster? More Democrats to help further destroy the social fabric? It’s irrelevant, as Ron Paul, Dr. No, is about the only member of Congress who even pays attention to the law and Constitution anymore.

01 – (27): Bush

01 – (13): Kerry

(10) The Economy

Both men are economically illiterate individuals who surround themselves with Keynesian advisors. Whoever wins will watch helplessly as the Federal Reserve drives the nation off a financial cliff during the next Presidential term.

01 – (28): Bush

01 – (14): Kerry

In summary, I conclude that Bush is twice as good as Kerry and not half as good as he’d have to be in order to win my support. It’s only a zero-sum game if you’re so short-sighted that you only pay attention to the next election. If you don’t believe the political environment can change, well, tell it to the Whigs.

BLS offers advice:

MikeM, if you live in a state where the election may actually be contested, please reconsider your decision. If a few hundred more Palm Beach County voters had gone for Gore, he’d be President now…. You, MikeM, may actually be able to make a difference. And even Vox has conceded that Bush is better than Kerry. So don’t waste a vote that can make a difference, only waste one that can’t, like Vox’s.

It’s time to erase this false concept of a wasted vote. If a wasted vote is a vote for a candidate who has no chance of winning, then this doesn’t simply apply to third party candidates. Dole, Dukakis and Mondale were all miserable candidates who had absolutely no chance of winning, and yet strangely one never heard the concept of a wasted vote brought up then. In truth, the concept is nothing more than a propaganda device used to keep people locked into the bifactional one-party system. If the Libertarians double their vote total from 2000, it will soon be demonstrated that the votes weren’t wasted as the shock waves carry over into the major party.

I haven’t “conceded” that Bush is better than Kerry. That usage carries implications of approval, which I have not granted. I have assumed that Bush is marginally better than Kerry, although I have absolute proof of Bush’s executive branch shortcomings whereas I have only my suspicions and assumptions about the likely evils of John Kerry. In any event, the differences are marginal as neither man supports constitutional government and so neither deserves any electoral support from those who value human rights, individual freedom and the US Constitution.

As usual, the pro-Bush defenders fail to understand that anti-Bush conservatives, libertarians and constitutionists truly don’t want Bush to win. I don’t want Bush to have another term, I don’t want John Kerry to have a first one, and I’m not going to be held responsible for either of them doing so. If the rest of America is foolish enough to vote one of them into power, so be it, I can’t prevent that. But at least I can know that the slow and systematic destruction of America was done over my protest and without my consent.

If you voted for Bush in 2000, then you are responsible for the gutting of the 1st Amendment in McCain-Feingold. You are responsible for the new Medicare entitlement. You are responsible for the Patriot Act, the sacrifice of US sovereignty in the Law of the Sea Treaty, as well as the revival of big government. Protesting that Al Gore might have been worse doesn’t remove any of that responsibility from you. You gave all that to us. Thanks ever so much.

The president had four years to win my vote. He did nothing but confirm the correctness of my decision to refuse to vote for him the first time around.

Paul Jacob has written a fantastic article in which he recommends more democracy as a potential cure for the poisoned republicanism that we now have:

I wish that we lived in a republic as imagined by the best of our founders. But Ben Franklin’s great aphorism was a warning as well as a statement. And it is apparent that Americans have not heeded the warning. We have not kept our republic. Not that keeping a republic is easy. Franklin’s co-conspirator, Thomas Jefferson, explained: “The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.”

…Three democratic reforms provide the first steps to returning our government to its Constitutional, republican roots:

1. Term limits at local, state, and federal levels, for all elected executives and representatives.

2. The right to initiative and referendum by citizens in every state and locality, for Constitutional as well as statutory enactment and repeal.

3. Require a vote of the people for tax increases and borrowing money.

The latter is a particularly good idea and works very well in Switzerland, where the people recently voted down an expensive expansion of the St. Gotthard tunnel that the government had overwhelmingly approved. They have also consistently, (and wisely) voted down member ship in the European Union despite the furious efforts of their politicians. Theory is fine and all, but it is no substitute for hard data and the facts demonstrate that the “mob rule” of referendums in both the USA and abroad works far better than leaving fiscal matters in the hands of a corrupt cabal of long-term office holders.

It should be interesting to see how the American Left, despite its eternal championing of “democracy”, will contort itself into pretzels explaining why it won’t support this proposed empowering of the will of the People, if Jacob’s idea proves to have traction.

tz wrote:

To the point that when nuremburg.org was fined over 100 million dollars for drawing an X through a dead abortionist, the LP saw not threat to free speech, no problem with web censorship, no problem with thought crime, nor any problem with excessive fines.

and

I note no one has challenged me on their tacit acceptance of the nuremburg.org decision though it was a greater threat to liberty than their contemporary alarmist press releases about bills to curb kiddie porn that would likely not pass or die in committee. If some LP official can explain to me why they were swallowing this particular camel while straining at gnats (And I did write and ask at the time) I would reconsider my position.

I hadn’t bothered earlier since it was such an absurd point, but since you bring it up again, I will certainly challenge you on the Libertarian Party’s “tacit acceptance” of the Nuremberg Files case. There was never any acceptance, tacit or otherwise, and you have presented absolutely no evidence to suggest there was. First, several leading libertarians wrote critically of the Oregon court decision, both Julian Sanchez, a regular Reason magazine contributor, and Eugene Volokh, the UCLA professor of law and lead blogger at the Volokh Conspiracy.

Second, you’ll note that the alarmist press releases refer to legislative matters. Political parties pay far more attention to prospective bills than they do to court cases, since they can influence the former but have no ability to influence the latter. There are a plethora of important court cases, even at the Supreme Court level, on which the Libertarian Party has failed to issue a press release, many of which were far more well-known than Planned Parenthood’s civil suit, which in any case was not even directly relevant to the principle of government censorship of free speech. Are you seriously going to attempt to argue that the LP tacitly accepts the verdicts in all of these other court cases too? And has the Libertarian Party ever issued a press release on a civil damages suit?

Since you have presented no grounds for indicating that the Libertarian Party favored, supported or otherwise accepted the Oregon decision or its subsequent upholding on appeal, I suggest that you either find some evidence or reconsider your position.

WC seeks information on the two third parties:

I’ve followed your columns and blogs for roughly the past 6 months; I’ve enjoyed them and learned so very much. I’ve recently made the decision to “abandon” the Republican Party and go 3rd party. One question, though, as I’ve seen you mention the CP and Mr. Peroutka, but mention your support by Badnarik and the Libertarian Party. Now Peroutka is on record against both of them, while Badnarik is both pro-abortion and in favor of any kind of “marriage” (I’m going from the candidate interviews on the Fox Newswebsite). Can you elaborate on the differences between the two candidates/parties and why you’re going with Badnarik over Peroutka?

Sure, but first let me correct your statement about Michael Badnarik. He is pro-life and believes that it is properly a state issue, as one should keep in mind is the case with most murder laws. As for marriage, I do not believe that marriage is properly a concern of the Federal or even state government, and I don’t believe that a Defense of Marriage Amendment will serve any purpose, seeing how the First and Second Amendments are ignored with regularity. The institution of marriage survived centuries without assistance from the government; it is only in the last 150 years, since governments began tracking it and granting “licenses” that marriage has been in decline.

While I support both third parties in preference to the Democrats and Republicans, the main reason I am a Libertarian instead of a Constitutionalist is that I prefer the Libertarian’s first principle approach as opposed to the deified document approach of the Constitution Party. I believe that in the long run, a party dedicated to first principles is more likely to succeed and be able to change appropriately to meet the challenges created by new issues.

Secondly, the Libertarian Party is much more strongly opposed to the exercise and reach of government power, as demonstrated by the Constitution Party’s support for the War on Drugs. The War on Drugs, like the War on Poverty and the War on Terror, is more an effective vehicle for the expansion of central state power than it is a useful weapon against that for which it purports to exist. Since I believe that it is absolutely vital to keep central state power in check – if I had a single issue, that would be it – the Libertarian Party is clearly the appropriate party for me.

Empty Doorway blogs about a post:

For those of us who firmly believe that the direct influence of religion in politics is antithetical to genuine democracy, Bush’s highly public Christian invocations, the presence of religious advisers in his administration whose sole purpose is to ensure that U.S. policy conforms to Christian doctrine (in particular, apocolyptic prophecies related to the nation of Israel), and his direct appeals to Catholic, and now Protestant, clergy to aid him in his bid for reelection, are extremely worrisome. Yet this is apparently not enough for some on the Religious Right, who feel that Bush has done too little, too late, to court their vote. Of course, most of them will still vote for Bush, but that’s not the point. Bush hasn’t done what they apparently thought he would, or at least should do: solidify conservative Christianity’s central role in forming national policy.

What does this moron believe democracy is? Apparently the 5.3 percent of the population that is Southern Baptist are supposed to keep their mouths shut and not participate in the process, along with all the Catholics, Baptists, Methodists and assorted non-denominational Evangelical Christians. Even if he is using the term “genuine democracy” incorrectly to refer to the Constitutional American republic, it’s a weird argument to insist that the political system formed by Christian men to respect God-given rights should be sterilized of all religion.

He wants genuine democracy? So be it. The only reason that the insignificant secularist minority has any power at all is that it has been successful in using its sympathizers in the courts to use federal power to suppress the will of the majority. Fiat democrasia! Of course, if the Athenian model is any example, we’ll also be voting to execute momentarily unpopular generals, but that’s a known hazard of rule by mob.

What is truly frightening is not the sentiment expressed in such passages (especially the second one), but that groups whose members share these pernicious opinions have such a strong voice. They know how to make themselves heard, despite composing a relatively small minority of the U.S. population. They have mastered the technique of using appeals to emotion through faith and fear, to manipulate politicians and larger segments of the population into adopting their stances. Yet, it’s not enough for them that our president’s ear is ever open to their hateful nonsense, or that in decision-making, they are always in his mind. Scary stuff.

The Empty Mind is unsurprisingly more than a little weak on his math. The reason the Christian voices are so well-heard is that the Christian community is so large, a much larger “minority” than blacks, Jews or homosexuals. That’s why the Left, for all its mantra of “democracy, democracy”, fears the Religious Right and needs combat it through the courts instead of the ballot box. The secular Left is so unpopular and so numerically insignificant that it can’t even win in the strictly limited democracy of the American political system and so is forced to have its “democracy” at a third remove, by unelected judges. I’d like to hear what this guy’s definition of “genuine democracy” is, because as is clearly the case here, the use of the adjective necessitates a modification of the following noun. I suspect that in his usage, “democracy” has little to do with how historians and dictionaries have defined the term for centuries.

I’d be scared too, if I looked at the world with so little understanding of what was happening around me. And now there’s more from the Vacuous One:

If you read his comments, keep in mind that I never implied Christians shouldn’t vote based on their faith. Rather, I stated that religion should not have a direct influence on policy. Recognizing the difference is apparently beyond the author’s mental grasp. I also recommend that someone buy him a dictionary, so that he can see that “constitutional republic” is a form of democracy. Naturally, I did not mean a “pure democracy,” in which each person has one vote on every policy decision.

I’m curious to know how, in a democracy of any sort, religion can fail to have a direct influence on policy if 20 percent (Empty’s estimate) of the population votes based on their faith? It’s also amusing that he should think I need a dictionary, as he specifically used the term “genuine democracy” which clearly implies some form of distinction from our constitutional republican form of limited democracy. “Genuine” is not to be mistaken for “pure”, okay…. And Mr. Webster says: “Gen”u*ine, a. [L. genuinus, fr. genere, gignere, to beget, in pass., to be born: cf. F. g[‘e]nuine. See Gender.] Belonging to, or proceeding from, the original stock; native; hence, not counterfeit, spurious, false, or adulterated; authentic; real; natural; true; pure; as, a genuine text; a genuine production; genuine materials.. I’m the one who needs the dictionary? Look, it’s hardly my fault that he can’t write with precision.

In addition, the author would surely benefit if someone explained the difference between Christian (general) and conservative Christian or Religious Right, the latter being a fairly small group that, if we use abortion as a rough measure (the author states that outlawing abortion would appeal to this group), comprises less than 20% of the population (we’d also have to subtract most Catholics who are strictly “pro-life” from that number for it to be accurate). At least the author demonstrates the un-Christian-like anger and condescension that characterizes his minority.

I have no conception of the difference between the broader Christian populace and the Religious Right? Oh, so that’s what Ralph Reed was trying to explain to me when we were talking twelve years ago – before I was a Christian, by the way! Apparently in Empty’s mind, this passes for a difficult concept. And if 20 percent is “fairly small” I wonder why we spend any attention whatsoever to those insignificant black, Jewish and homosexual minorities, which taken in their totality barely amount to 15 percent. I’m not in the least bit angry, but how can I help but condescend to someone who is this ill-equipped to reason or debate?

Nate posts on TWA 800:

0

The number of ships or subs the Navy claimed were within 185 miles of the disaster.

4

The number of Navy ships or subs the FBI, in its final report, admitted were in “the immediate vicinity” of the disaster.

7

The number of days it allegedly took the Navy to find the black boxes in 130 feet of calm water off the Hamptons.

7

The number of hours it actually took the Navy to find the black boxes of a crashed Turkish airplane in 7,200 feet of water earlier in that year off the Dominican Republic.

4

The number of seconds missing at the end of both the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder.

3

The number of satellites in position to record the disaster.

3

The number of satellites reportedly broken at that very moment.

Since I’m well-versed in history and have learned how often the “official” story is a complete pack of lies, I usually appreciate hearing the government’s explanation for an incident, as that eliminates one possibility right there. Interesting, too, that both John Kerry and George Stephanopolous have referred to the “bombing” of TWA 800. Nate’s got more listed; check it out.