Breaking News

I’m skeptical about whether bin Laden is actually dead. TPM guest poster DK says something that strikes me as funny, though: “I will say that typhoid is not exactly my idea of a deserved death for the man.” I don’t know. I hate Osama plenty, and I think dying of typhoid would be absolutely horrible, and much worse than getting shot or blown up. Fatal bacterial infections are world-renowned awful ways to die, so if typhoid has carried him off, I think my lust for vengeance will be perfectly slaked. That said, I’m skeptical. But then, I am partly skeptical because I think he died some time ago; I find it impossible to believe that he would be able to resist taunting everyone with pictures of himself holding a recent paper after some terrorist attack. I just don’t know.

“The Path to 9/11 is produced and promoted by a well-honed propaganda operation consisting of a network of little-known right-wingers working from within Hollywood to counter its supposedly liberal bias. This is the network within the ABC network. Its godfather is far right activist David Horowitz, who has worked for more than a decade to establish a right-wing presence in Hollywood and to discredit mainstream film and TV production. On this project, he is working with a secretive evangelical religious right group founded by The Path to 9/11‘s director David Cunningham that proclaims its goal to ‘transform Hollywood’ in line with its messianic vision.”

Plenty more where that came from, here.

A group of prominent American historians is calling on ABC not to broadcast The Path to 9/11. (For a quick reminder of how propaganda-rific it is, see Mark Grimsley’s recent item at Cliopatria. It quotes an endorsement by Michael Medved and provides some pertinent links.)

The list of signatories starts with Arthur Schlesinger — who, whatever else you may think of him, is pretty much the guy to have out in front on this sort of complaint, for rhetorical appeal to the center (rhetorical construct thought “the center” may be).

[click to continue…]

Feel like getting really angry? Go read this Pandagon post and the zuzu post at Feministe it refers to. And the comments. From Amanda:

Zuzu at Feministe, in trying to write a normal blog post on how this case is being blown up to bolster racist fears, ran into this problem when some of their regular commenters started to bleat about how Moore has only herself to blame for what they considered the outrageous behavior of being young and leaving the house to have fun. Always these people say they mean well, of course, but in this case, the commenter slipped up and showed the true purpose of her bleating:

I don’t know about the whole race thing you’re getting at, but I agree that the coverage seems to be trying to force her into the victim role. It’s tragic what happened, but Jennifer made a number of really stupid decisions that are not terribly sympathetic (to me, at least). Driving into manhattan to get tanked (while underage no less), then not calling parents or authorities for help when she and her friend got stranded was profoundly bad judgment.

You read that right. People are “trying to force…into the victim role” a person who was raped, murdered, and then dismembered and left in a dumpster. I know that there is strong psychological pressure to find some reason why someone else was raped, a reason you could avoid. If I just do this and don’t do this and… Why? Because it’s just really scary to think that you might become a victim for no reason at all. People feel that if they can just do some magical thinking they will stay in the not-victim chalk circle and everything will be OK. The problem is not that women sometimes get drunk or go dancing or get into cars with strangers because someone threatening is following them down a dark city street. The problem is the rapists and murderers. Keep your eyes on the ball, people. Now let’s have the comments thread degenerate into a pointless discussion of what women should be doing to avoid getting raped, because god knows I’ve never heard any of that before. C’mon, Steve, advocate concealed carry! [NB: I am not actually particularly opposed to concealed carry laws (or Steve!), but I don’t think they would put a dent in the US rape rate, because most people are raped by someone they know and no one is likely to tote their pistol around from room to room in their own goddamn house while they talk with a friend. Which nonsensical behavior is also not relevant to concealed carry. And I don’t want to hear about it at all.]

You know, it’s very rare that I find myself agreeing with some Instapundit post about terrorism. Vanishingly rarely. And I find the tedious “media bias” paranoia on the right to be…tedious–wait did I say that? Still, the NYT account of the recent Canadian government action (in which they claim to have arrested the members of a terrorist group previously under monitoring when they accepted delivery of some 3 tons of ammonium nitrate) is sort of strange. I obviously don’t suggest that the headline should read “Muslims, trying to kill you, or trying to kill you and your children?”. That said, it actually is a little weird to have the info run as follows: 1) 17 Canadians arrested for plotting to blow things up; 2) the men were mainly of South Asian descent and varying ages as follows; 3) none were known to be affiliated with al Qaida (why would we even think they were? Oh.); 4) RCMP assistant comissioner notes: “They represent the broad strata of our society. Some are students, some are employed, some are unemployed” (right, now this is crazy, but do they have anything in common at all, like adhering to some fringe-group religious extremism? Anything?); 5) something something something; 6) something something something; 7) other stuff, also, stuff about border security, possibly zinging those who obsess about our southern border at the expense of real security; 8) “Islamic extremists.” Wait, what? Islamic extremists? Surely not!

It merely invites suspicion to dance around an obviously relevant point. I do not think that the risk of anti-Muslim pogroms among readers of the NYT rises appreciably as the issue is mentioned in earlier paragraphs of the article. If Nazis plot to blow stuff up, just go on and say they’re apparently Nazis in paragraph one. I promise not to go look up some random blonde guy and pistol-whip him. Unless he’s this one ex of my sister’s, who’s a racist skin, and…what? OT, sorry. If radical Islamists plot to blow things up, then just go on and say so.

UPDATE: James Wimberley’s point about the “Nazi’s” noted. Namely that they’re Nazis.

FURTHER UPDATE: I thought you all knew enough about me to know that I think Roger Simon is a crazy person–with a hat! It’s my birthday and everything, y’all; be charitible.

AP:

NEW YORK – In the largest study of its kind, researchers found that having people pray for heart bypass surgery patients had no effect on their recovery. In fact, patients who knew they were being prayed for had a slightly higher rate of complications.

The study looked at complication rates within 30 days of heart bypass surgery and compared three groups of about 600 each: “those who knew they were being prayed for, those who were prayed for but only knew it was a possibility, and those who weren’t prayed for but were told it was a possibility.”

Results showed no effect of prayer on complication-free recovery. But 59 percent of the patients who knew they were being prayed for developed a complication, versus 52 percent of those who were told it was just a possibility.

A kind of reverse placebo, I guess.

Dr. Harold G. Koenig, director of the Center for Spirituality, Theology and Health at the Duke University Medical Center, who didn’t take part in the study, said the results didn’t surprise him….

Science, he said, “is not designed to study the supernatural.”

No, it’s designed to study the natural. Like, for example, whether prayer can help recovery from bypass surgery.

UPDATE: Here’s a link to the abstract in the American Heart Journal. The full text is behind a pay wall.

From “BBC News”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/ just now:
I suppose it means the same thing, to all intensive porpoises.

Poetic justice as fairness. Thanks, I’ll be here all week. Actually, my first thought, on hearing that the UAE company had edged out Singapore’s hometown PSA was, “shit, they should have had Singapore do it!” Say what you like about Singapore’s idosyncratic form of government, they a) run the most kick-ass port in the world and b) can really be counted on to deliver efficient government services, without either the corruption which plagues such services in other SE Asian nations, or the general how-can-I-make-this-person’s-life-worse attitude which often seems to prevail in such places as, oh I don’t know, say the Washington, D.C. DMV? On the question of whether it’s a good idea to allow a UAE state-owned company to control (in whatever attenuated way) our port security, I’m kind of of two minds. On the one hand, if some other foreign company would otherwise be running the show, and if the same US, union-member stevedores will be doing the actual work, then maybe its not that big a deal. On the other hand, it seems that the US actually had to refrain from bombing bin Laden (pre-9/11) at some falconing retreat because a good portion of the “emirs” who make up the Emirate in question were there too. I don’t know why that makes me feel dubious…On the gripping hand, I have a perverse sense of pleasure as I watch Bush twist in the wind of the very anti-Arab, our-oceans-no-longer-protect-us bullshit the rest of us have had to hear for the last 5 years. Enjoy! (Unlike during the cold war, where naiads festooned with the stars and stripes were on constant call to toss back offending ICBM’s from their dophin-pulled-seashell mobile tactical units.) But his latest defense is, “I didn’t know anything about it.” Whaaaa? “The president is a sock-puppet moron” is supposed to be a snide criticism, not an exculpatory point. In general I am confused and await further information. Matthew Yglesias rightly notes that the alert citizen will have learned not to trust the administration to make S’mores without plunging half the nation into a sticky-sweet inferno of death. Death that’s sandwiched between Graham crackers! Food for thought.

I wonder whether it’ll be possible to preempt the spin that this was all because of his silly remarks about women in science, and ergo Summers was forced out by intolerant liberals. Probably not — even though, you know, Summers is in fact a liberal and you may remember him serving in the Clinton administration. There’s a line from Douglas Adams that I think explains the real situation a lot better: “You’re a clever man … but you make the same mistake a lot of clever people do of thinking everyone else is stupid.” Not a good management style, especially at Harvard, even if your policy goals are worthwhile.

I don’t, generally, subscribe to the paranoid strain in US politics (my mom does and is irritatingly always right about everything. I well remember when de Menezes was shot in London and the initial story was all about how he had jumped the turnstiles in a heavy coat, etc., and mom instantly said, “this is all bullshit and he was some random innocent.” Chalk another one up for mom.)

Still, something is fishy in this whole Cheney story. My first instinct was just to say, there was an unfortunate hunting accident, and Cheney wasn’t adhering to well-known rules of gun safety, but basically his secretiveness created the impression of some wrong-doing where none existed. But. This whole push-back of blaming the victim? Like he was supposed to give a hearty “halloa!” to his friends who were flushing some other birds? Standing behind the shooter when you are hunting birds in a line is supposed to be a pretty iron-clad way of staying safe. Was Cheney in the middle, so that the barrel swung past one of his fellows on the right or left on its fateful 180 movement? Even if he were at one end or the other, right behind him is not supposed to be a good place to fire, especially since he knew his pal was recovering another brace of quail somewhere. And what’s up with the whole scrubbed beer thing? I don’t think Cheney is a brazen murderer or something, but I have to say that recent coverage has made me much more inclined to think that either he was drunk, or he was standing a lot closer to the victim then we have heard. It’s just weird. This seems like something they could have defused with an early statement and apology. Something is going on.

UPDATE: aah, there we go. “In response to Mr. Hume’s questions about the day, Mr. Cheney said that he had consumed one beer earlier in the day, but that no one in the party was drinking as they hunted.” One beer. I’ve done a lot of stupid things after having “one” beer before, too. Classic drunk denial; you can’t just say you didn’t have anything to drink, so…

Hilzoy and Katherine’s new posts at Obsidian Wings (just keep scrolling) on Lindsey Graham’s despicable move to strip non-citizens of habeas corpus rights are must reads. I warn you, though, they will turn your stomach. The details of the allegedly frivolous malpractice suits brought by Guantanamo detainees are sickening.

UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds asks “Has the senate suspended the writ of Habeas Corpus?” Yes, it has! Thanks for asking!

Oh, sure, they’ve been thinking about the whole bird flu thing. But what about zombies?

“When it comes to defending ourselves against an army of reanimated human corpses, the officials in charge have fallen asleep at the wheel,” [Pittsburgh Mayor Tom] Murphy said. “Who’s in charge of sweep-and-burn missions to clear out infected areas? Who’s going to guard the cemeteries at night? If zombies were to arrive in the city tomorrow, we’d all be roaming the earth in search of human brains by Friday.”

I’m afraid it’s all too likely that zombie-preparedness has been neglected in New Orleans, especially given former FEMA head Brown’s focus on tasty food—other than human brains.

At 11:20 a.m. Aug. 31, Bahamonde e-mailed Brown, “Sir, I know that you know the situation is past critical . . . thousands gathering in the streets with no food or water . . . estimates are many will die within hours.”

At 2:27 p.m., however, Brown press secretary Sharon Worthy wrote colleagues to schedule an interview for Brown on MSNBC’s “Scarborough Country” and to give him more time to eat dinner because Baton Rouge restaurants were getting busy: “He needs much more that 20 or 30 minutes.”

I was born in Savannah, GA, and raised just outside the city; I spent many a happy childhood hour playing on the various above-ground crypts which enhance the picturesque nature of the city. You can bet your life we were armed to the teeth against possible zombie intrusions. Wait, maybe that was just the paranoia talking after my parents were in on that big shipment of DMT from out west when I was a kid. When my mom woke up still tripping on the third day, stuttering things like “wheels of fire…wheels within wheels…” I knew things were bad. But by then I could totally make pancakes and stuff, so me and my 3-year-old brother were fine. Wait, what was I saying? Yeah. Zombie preparedeness. Don’t rely on the government. Y’all are going to be on your own. Mmmmm, braaiins. It makes the pain go away. The pain of being dead.

Fast on the heels of Henry’s post about Tom DeLay’s ‘I am become county sheriff’s office’ incarnation – another report of another powerful legislator managing a yet more abstract transmogrification [transmogrifaction?]: “According to the Associated Press, Alaska’s senior senator was the forefront today of a clash of generations and political philosophy.” Sounds Hegelian.

Wow, sign me up.

A leading architect of the intelligent-design movement defended his ideas in a federal courtroom on Tuesday and acknowledged that under his definition of a scientific theory, astrology would fit as neatly as intelligent design….

Listening from the front row of the courtroom, a school board member said he found Professor Behe’s testimony reaffirming. “Doesn’t it sound like he knows what he’s talking about?” said the Rev. Ed Rowand, a board member and church pastor.

Yeah, dude. It totally sounds like he knows what he’s talking about. Also, did I ever tell you about the time I made a gravity bong? I cut off the bottom of a 2-liter bottle, and put it in the pool, and then….

Damn you, liberal elites!!

Wait, did you know that you can use a fish tank compressor and a gas mask to make an electric bong? Seriously dude, you have to listen to this. OMG, and did I ever tell you about this amazing juice fast I went on? You just use Grade B maple syrup and lemon juice… No, you have to promise me you’ll try this juice fast!