Seeing What We Want to See

This is a perfect case of how bias affects the interpretation of results. Is the ability to stick to a position good or bad? Like a lot of things, "it depends". If you love your wife and she is leaving because she has a hard time sticking to things, then you might like her to be more "conservative". If you want to move and she wants to stay where you are, then you might like her to be more liberal.

The old adage that optimist finds the glass half full, the pessimist half empty, and the engineer finds the glass twice as big as it needs to be, comes to mind. All are "right", but I'd argue that the engineer is much close to "science". Science is NOT about values. It is about data, information, models, etc. When there is an attempt to make science into a religion (as atheists often do, because they realize that "something is missing"), there is a big problem. Science truly is "the God that doesn't care"; by definition.

clipped from scienceblogs.com The claim: Politically liberal brains are better at handling change A recent report in Nature Neuroscience has gotten a lot of press. The headlines proclaim that "left-wing" brains are different from "right wing" brains. Are our brains literally hard-wired to be conservative or liberal? The article in the L.A. Times sure seems to suggest it: Sulloway said the results could explain why President Bush demonstrated a single-minded commitment to the Iraq war and why some people perceived Sen. John F. Kerry, the liberal Massachusetts Democrat who opposed Bush in the 2004 presidential race, as a "flip-flopper" for changing his mind about the conflict. In other words, liberals are more likely than conservatives to have a strong response in the area of the brain used to inhibit responses at the time when they are supposed to inhibit response. So is this why Bush invaded Iraq and Kerry flip-flopped?

Swift Boating?

Note, "Swift Boating" can only be done from the right. Here we have MoveOn.org attacking an ACTIVE decorated US General; but where is the "outrage"? Remember when poor John Kerry, the guy that compared US Soldiers to Genghis Khan and threw his (well, on further review, actually "someone else's" medals over the WH fence back in the '70's? He was VICOUSLY attacked by "political dirty tricks", so nasty they raised a whole new evil REPUBLICAN category of "Swift Boating'.

Want to bet if there will be any big MSM rundowns of MoveOn donor lists for possible connections to Democrat surrender strategy? Don't hold your breath.

clipped from www.cnn.com GOP calls on top Senate Dem to condemn anti-Petraeus ad WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Republicans have seized on a liberal advocacy group's print ad attacking Gen. David Petraeus and have called on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to denounce it. In the ad, running in Monday's edition of The New York Times, bold letters under a picture of Petraeus spell out "General Petraeus or General Betray us?" "Every major independent study and many major news organizations cast serious doubt on Petraeus' claims," said Eli Pariser, executive director of MoveOn.org Political Action Committee.

Deer Stand Construction

The past couple of weekends a number of hours have been spent in construction of a deer stand that will be occupied by me the weekend of Nov 3. The "indoor part" is an alleged "3 man" fully enclosed unit called "The Stump", manufactured in Cannon Falls MN. Of course, one doesn't want to be hoping for bad weather, so we decided that a 6x6 deck and a nice stairway would make the stand a bit more comfy. Here are some pictures of construction so far for those interested.

Osama bin Chomsky

Power Line has a great little summary of a sentiment that always occurs to me when bin Ladin or other terrorists come out with statements; How much in line with standard old Democrats much of their rhetoric is, while certain pieces of it (that apparently the left ignores) are at what one would at least think would be complete odds with the leftist Democrat views.

On the surface, "Convert to Islam" ... with the obvious effects of stoning gays, putting women under burkas and following sharia law would seem to be pretty abhorrent to lefties. However, less abhorrent than Christianity? They see Bush as their greatest enemy, so as long as Osama opposes Bush (much like Saddam in the past), they really don't see him as such a bad guy.

Direct declarations of "Iraq is the front line in the war on terror" from what most would consider our enemy while at the same time being happy with the Democrat take-over in Congress would seem to be "slightly embarrassing", but apparently not to the left. One constantly gets the feeling that Saddam, Osama, economic collapse or virtually anything else would be better at some apparently spiritual level than George Bush.

I sometimes think that the "highest good" of the left is avoidance of personal responsibility, so even a completely blood thirsty Islamic state that is totally totalitarian is better than an "opportunity society" that says you get to make up your own mind and are responsible for your own success and failure. The left must have someone else to blame for lack of success--if the state is totalitarian and your fate is not in your own hands, their form of "victory" has been achieved. The entire (short) little Power Line post is WELL worth the read.

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com Osama bin Chomsky The transcript of Osama bin Laden's newest video, in which he speaks directly to American listeners, is available here. It is intensely interesting, for a number of reasons. First, the subject matter is Iraq, almost exclusively. Bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders have said that Iraq is the main front in their global war against us. Second, the affinity between Muslim extremism and Western leftism has never been so clearly displayed. Bin Laden sounds for all the world like a Marxist. He praises Noam Chomsky as one of the "most capable" of American war opponents. Over and over, he attributes American foreign policy to "the owners of the major corporations." In bin Laden's view, "[t]hose with real power and influence are those with the most capital," and "the essence of man-made positive laws is that they serve the interests of those with capital and thus make the rich richer and the poor poorer."

Persistence of Myths

The Washington Post had an interesting little article on "The Persistence of Myths". It seems that since some people see a connection between 9-11 and fighting terrorists in Iraq (which is clearly a "myth" to the Post), so they feel it is time for some "research". One of the many good quotes out of the article:

Many easily remembered things, in fact, such as one's birthday or a pet's name, are indeed true. But someone trying to manipulate public opinion can take advantage of this aspect of brain functioning. In politics and elsewhere, this means that whoever makes the first assertion about something has a large advantage over everyone who denies it later.

Wow, The Washington Post has realized that humans have a "first heard / often heard" bias, and we are prone to remember "stories" as opposed to "sets of facts". I guess Journalists aren't exactly "scientists", so this recent discovery may not be too surprising. I wonder how many years it will be before they realize that such things apply equally as well to the left as to the right, in fact they even apply a bit BETTER to the left? 

Of course, it is only the evil right that would EVER try to manipulate public opinion! We can relax completely that folks from the left would NEVER stoop to such a thing, they just deal in "pure truth". If one takes a study on how well one does in the more facts based parts of learning -- math and science for example, vs the more "right brained" things like art, music, journalism, etc, I wonder where the political leanings would be?

Uh, that has been studied a couple of times. Artists, writers, creative people, journalists are usually right brained, Democrat, and liberal (you might notice that Hollywood isn't exactly a bastion of conservatism) So, there are more folks of a right orientation over in the math/science group since they tend to be forced to live with some level of "meritocracy". Blaming others is always going to be a tempting way to deal with problems, and the left has raised that to an art form. 

Why would the left be more story oriented  and less factually oriented? Because the right brain is exactly what their "recent research" points out. It sees the "whole" (the story) as opposed to "the parts" (the lists of "facts"). The folks that "write the stories" have a bias for a certain way of thinking, and they ALWAYS repeat their "facts" over and over ... ". There is no way to win in Iraq", "Humans are raising the temperature of the globe", "The economy is bad". Their "facts" are a lot more like "stories", and although they may claim there is some hard data someplace, they (or most of us) find hard data to be less compelling than a "good story"--and "good" is usually "popular", gives us an "easy way out". 

The story seems to indicate  that "somebody else" is responsible for our problems--big business, the system, George Bush, our parents etc. One person's "fact" is often another person's "myth". People that have an exposure to science and maybe especially those that have an exposure to computers realize that there ARE many things that are either true or false and the difference is known and ACTUALLY factual. (We don't call on Journalists, Actors or Artists to figure those out though). 

 The MAJORITY of things have supporting points and non supporting points, and a negative assertion is NEVER possible to PROVE as a fact. For example; "Saddam Hussein is dead" can be shown to be true or false based on existing discoverable knowledge. The statement "Saddam Hussein had no part in 9-11" is impossible to prove. It may indeed be true, but any one piece of evidence would disprove it. "All swans are white" or "no swans are black" are of the same ilk, but removed from having a political overtone that will lead folks to get excited. 

One black swan anywhere makes the case. Did OJ kill his wife? I don't much care, but a court of law found him innocent. OJ is innocent in the same way that Saddam had no WMD--nobody got him dead to rights enough for there to be "positive proof". There was a lot of "evidence" in both cases, but it didn't get "proven". In OJ's case, 90% of white people think he is guilty and 90% of black people think is innocent.Race DOES matter -- and the fact it matters is not "racist", just human -- we tend to default like those like us in any way. Fans of same team, same religion, family, same interests, same political party, etc. Only Christ inhumanly ways "love your enemies" -- he is God, he can do it even when his fully human nature probably has a cat. 

 Most people are just afraid to say anything that could be construed as positive about George Bush, so you probably can't even get a straight answer on that one. I always find it kind of fun, you can usually have a lefty ready to take a swing at you in about 5 min by simply just a tiny kind word about Bush, one thing they are usually good at is anger. For a lefty, not getting caught and being innocent are the same thing for themselves, criminals and dictators. For Christians, businesspeople and Republicans, the same lefty is ready to convict for all manner of crimes without any evidence at all. It turns out that liberals actually are pretty consistent, it is just that they are consistent in an inconsistent kind of way!

Woman Arrested for Playing Footsie and Waving in Bar

First, let me say that I have no sympathy for Craig. Exactly how does a REPUBLICAN Senator think that he can plead guilty to a misdemeanor and NOT have it become public? I don't care what anyone thinks about Gays, a married Senator pleading guilty to looking for ANY kind of sex in a public bathroom isn't going to be survivable unless you are a Democrat.

Today I hear NPR rambling on about how he apparently isn't going to resign at all, and how evil it was that he was apparently "parsing words" by saying that he INTENDED to resign. Gee, I thought the MSM thought that "parsing words" was GREAT and a sign of "brilliance". Did they already forget "the definition of is - is "? Wow, they have a very selective memory.

The point of this post though is one of my major enjoyments in life; the observation of how smoothly the left avoids any semblance of consistency. Can you imagine if say the Salt Lake City Police had picked up a DEMOCRAT in EXACTLY the same way? The ACLU would be involved and we would be hearing about entrapment, homophobia, invasion of privacy, "only about sex", "looking into the bedroom window" and no doubt things like "extreme bigoted religious views forced on a secular society", "a chilling restriction of rights", etc.

I've heard that there are at times heterosexual guys and girls "on the make" at bars, dances, malls, EVEN church and school. (I know this is hard to believe) Some of the "signals" don't seem all that much less overt than foot tapping and hand waving. If one has no problem with gayness, then why is it a crime for a gay guy to be looking for sex in a bathroom? I'm one of those "Homophobic religious nuts", so **I** don't want gay guys looking for and having sex in public restrooms, BUT if one doesn't have any objections to gay sex, then why is it OK for society to infringe on these gay guys, when guys and gals have been winking, nodding, playing footsie, touching, etc in public for a quite awhile?

Yes, yes, I know, this is just to get a Republican Senator, so all the pro-gay forces have suspended all their usual thinking and rhetoric while the deed goes down. I understand that; it just always amazes me how much the general MSM sheep apparently don't.

The Scandal Test for Republican / Democrat Difference

The following quote from an article in the Pittsburg Post Gazette does a pretty good job of laying out the difference in the Senator Larry Craig phenomenon and the experience of guys like Bill Clinton, Teddy Kennedy, John Murtha, William Jefferson, Gerry Studds, Barney Frank, and the list could just go on and on. For those of you not up on the details of these few:

Billy C - If the lips were a flappin, you knew Billy was a lying cuz that is all the man ever knew how to do. In the specific case of looking for sexual favors with every woman within reach while signing sexual harassment laws that could get anyone else fired for "ogling" for over 3 seconds. Perjury was no longer a crime for Billy -- but of course it has come back for Scooter Libby.

Teddy "The Whale" - In between drunken stupors back while the rest of the country was watching Americans land on the Moon, Teddy was watching the last bubbles escape from the secretary he had recently been using for a sex toy. "It was an accident" ... that he didn't get around to reporting until the next day.

John Murtha - Back in the days of Abscam, John made it clear on tape that he wasn't going to take $50K "right now" ... but it wasn't very clear that he wasn't going to take it or a lot more later.

William Jefferson - $90K of cash in the freezer. Still in office, finally been indicted apparently, one has to really be a news sleuth to keep up with that case.

Gerry Studds - Sex with a 17 year old Congressional Page in '73 ... censured, but served until '97.

Barney Frank - Well, of course he is Gay ... but his "roomie" was a Gay prostitute that was running a business out of Barney's appartment.

But media bias is not the main reason why Republicans suffer more from scandals. Democratic voters expect Democrats to steal on their behalf. Lawmakers are judged on the basis of how many goodies from the federal treasury they can shower on their constituents. The typical Democratic voter doesn't mind terribly if their senator or congressman takes something for himself along the way. (Time Magazine's story on Rep. Mollohan's re-election was headlined, "Pork Trumps Scandal.")
The typical Republican voter wants his senator or congressman to keep his taxes low, his government honest. He is furious when GOP lawmakers stick their fingers in the cookie jar, or give lip service to values they do not practice.
Republicans must be squeaky clean to win elections because their voters will crucify them for behavior Democratic voters wink at so long as the pork keeps flowing. This is why his GOP colleagues already have stripped Sen. Craig of his committee assignments, and many have called for his resignation, while Democratic senators are comfortable having among them a man who left to drown in his automobile a young woman with whom he was having an extramarital affair.

I'm sure that many Democrats do focus on "just the money(pork)", but it seems to me that many of them take a good deal of joy in "their guys getting away with it". Once you decide to be amoral, there is has to be a certain thrill in seeing "your folks" do whatever they want with impunity. What the core of the Democrat party has trouble with are guys with morals and character like Zell Miller or Joe Lieberman -- those get the same kind of treatment as Republicans give Larry Craig.

Take note; 90+% of the time when someone says "there isn't any difference between the parties", they have just told you that they are a Democrat. Only a situational ethicist with no idea of consistency could actually believe that.

Osama is Next

Good Castro got his endorsement in early, he may not make 2008. Osama, Kim-Jung, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (Iran), along with the MSM and Hollywood are in full agreement.

clipped from www.cnn.com Castro: Clinton-Obama ticket 'invincible' WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Add another name to the list of political observers who think a Clinton-Obama ticket would be unbeatable: Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

Hypocrisy: A sin the left almost recognizes.

It appears that we have a Republican Senator not practicing what he preaches. No doubt his constituency will turn him out of office if he isn't forced to resign beforehand. Most likely another seat for the Democrats in '08--starting to look like Hillary and a filibuster proof Senate in '08. Some of us Christian Conservative Bloggers may be headed to Guantanamo as subversives before we know it. Somehow I doubt the NYT would have that on the front page 40 times.

This is a great opportunity to understand the difference between right and left. Bill Clinton SIGNED a sexual harassment law that said that sexual harassment is determined by how the person harassed FEELS (in other words if Monica "felt harassed" just because he invited her up to his room, SHE WAS, even if he didn't drop trou and provide specific genital directions as alleged). The left had no problem with him defending himself beyond any shred of reason to save his skin and save raw political power. He is a Democrat with no standards, so hypocrisy is a simple impossibility. All liberal ethics are situational-they apply to others, not to you. Billy C can't be guilty of one of the only sins that Democrats almost recognize.

Billy C certainly knew he was a harasser when he signed that law, which means he was every bit as big a hypocrite as Craig voting against Gay rights in the "abstract theoretical universe". However, in the real universe where Democrats care only about political power, not about morals, truth, or anything else, there wasn't even an issue.

Will Conservatives act the same? Nope, they won't give the political power a second thought, no matter what the cost. Principles are more important than power, because if you lose your principles that provide meaning beyond mere existence, then you have lost meaning. A life without meaning isn't even worth examining, let alone living. Your principles and spirit are about eternity or they are about nothing. Political power is for just as season at the very most. So, for those that claim "there isn't any difference between Democrats and Republicans", just watch.

Are conservatives any "better"? No; only in the very limited sense that they better understand the reality of our condition. For those with standards, hypocrisy is a way of life, "the homage that vice pays to virtue". To be human and have standards is to always fall short. Sure, some fall more than others, but at least for the Christian, with the understanding that none of us make the grade.

clipped from www.cnn.com updated 2 minutes ago Police report: Senator signaled desire for 'lewd conduct Story Highlights NEW: Group files ethics complaint against Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho Craig charged with disorderly conduct at Minnesota airport in June Airport police officer reports senator peered into stall, gave signals Senator denies any inappropriate conduct Next Article in Politics » (CNN) -- Sen. Larry Craig peered through a crack in a restroom stall door for two minutes and made gestures suggesting he wanted to engage in "lewd conduct," according to the police officer who arrested him.

Reason, Emotion and Iraq

We all like to think that others think as we do, and conservatives are no exception as I see Charles Krauthammer doing that a bit here in "Finally, a Reasoned Debate"

I very much agree with his sentiments, and yes, he points out that Harry Reid and "the far left" won't enter into the "reasoned debate", but I'm afraid that the voices of reason will be much more limited than that.

George Will touches on some of the same issues in his column "What September Won't Settle".
I find that George moves from "even handed" to "the ivory tower" in staying above the fray in this one. He validly points out some of the things said and done by Democrats lately that show just how badly they want defeat in Iraq as rapidly as possible.

Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina, House majority whip, recently said it would be "a real big problem for us" -- Democrats -- if Petraeus reports substantial progress. Rep. Nancy Boyda, a Kansas Democrat, recently found reports of progress unendurable. She left a hearing of the Armed Services Committee because retired Gen. Jack Keane was saying things Boyda thinks might "further divide this country," such as that Iraq's "schools are open. The markets are teeming with people." Boyda explained: "There is only so much you can take until we in fact had to leave the room for a while ... after so much frustration of having to listen to what we listened to."

He then indicates that it is just as bad to be happy with reports like I referenced in "NYT Error". While I certainly agree with George that progress doesn't equal victory, I find it hard to believe that those who care about the US, defeat of terror, the progress of freedom in the world, and avoidance of a civil war that would almost certainly entail the loss of millions of lives should be compared to the likes of Clyburn, Boyda, Reid, or most of the MSM or left. Is cheering for at least the dissemination of a TINY bit of good news to be equated with finding progress as "a real problem" or "divisive"? Just because there are two sides (or more) doesn't mean that all of them are of equal merit.

I generally like what both George and Charles have to say--they are far smarter and well read than I, but I could guess they also have a bit more "academic distance" from dealing with the "man in the street" than I have. This is close to the 3 year anniversary of Katrina, and I see that as the event in which the Democrats and the MSM found a winning strategy with the masses. The core of that strategy is a constant drumbeat of "it is all bad, and it is all Bushes fault". Since their primary good is "political power" and they aren't concerned about the cost of that power, it seems unlikely that they will allow a rational discussion of Iraq that could save millions of lives in Iraq and likely 10s or 100s of thousands here by preventing future terrorist attacks to dissuade them from grabbing for raw power no matter the cost.

Yes, a reasoned debate is almost always a good idea, and the improvements in Iraq while welcome to those that care about more than "defeat of the right" are only "one more step" on what was always known to likely be a long road to success for Iraq. The election of '06 indicates that nationally the forces that think of "reason" and "perserverence in difficulty" are in decline to the forces of "emotion" and "everything should be easy". Since the latter is "natural human nature", it usually takes something pretty significant to turn that tide back.

Hillary on Obsession

When Hillary "vast right wing conspiracy" speaks on obsession, one ought to listen well. It seems that at least she has succeeded in making sure that her husband isn't obsessed with her, so maybe she will be able to have some success with Rove as well. It always seems clear that at least for Hillary it is indeed always all about Hillary.

Interesting how given the NYT, Washington Post, NPR, CBS, CNN, MSNBC ... and a cast of 100's, poor Hillary laments the "attack machine". Oh, that is right, to agree with Hillary is to be "factual", to disagree with her is to be part of "conspiracy" and "attack machines". Just the kind of level headed rational view of the world that many will find as a big improvement in leadership.

clipped from politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com When Clinton was asked about remarks from Rove, she attempted to cast her negative ratings in a positive light. "But I find it interesting he's so obsessed with me. And I think the reason is because we know how to win," she said. "The idea that you're going to escape the Republican attack machine and not have high negatives by the time they're through with you, I think, is just missing what's been going on in American politics for the last 20 years," Clinton added.

Iraqi Prostitutes Are Democrats!

Hey, things MUST be getting better in Iraq, the worst news available for a CNN headline was "Impoverished women turn to prostitution"! I'm not positive, but I don' think Iraq is the first time that has happened in world history. These women are just like Democrats though, "everything is for the kids". The mind of the MSM is always a tough one -- mine collapses in Utah, instability in the financial markets, but low cost prostitution in Iraq is the CNN Headline? Listening to NPR discuss the problems of cheap foreign imports in Iraq this AM combined with this is about as close as the MSM comes to the oxymoron of "good news from Iraq".

clipped from www.cnn.com Iraqi women turn to prostitution to feed kids The women are too afraid and ashamed to show their faces, having been driven into prostitution to help support their families amid war. They make as little as $8 a day. "Everything is for the children," one mother told CNN. full story $8 a day is enough to endure shame

iMac

We spent Monday PM to about 4PM today in Northern WI . We bid on a timeshare condo at a local school auction for $100, and nobody else bid, so we got a week at Telemark Lodge outside Cable WI for that low price. We attempted to work remotely from there, but that was somewhat of a challenge with no high speed internet in the rooms, one phone (both my wife and I often needed to be on telecons), and no cell coverage. Oh well, a bit of an adventure, we were able to use high speed from the lodge, and got in a couple of days anyway. It turned out we needed to be back for Friday, so we launched back today. Hopefully I'll write a bit more about Copper Falls and taking the Apostle Islands boat tour today at some point.

During the course of the week, my iMac fever waxed and waned as I looked at the 24" extreme 2.8GHz vs the 2.4GHZ. I had been of the inclination to wait for October when the new OS-X version Leopard is due, but I realize that I likely will want to upgrade my PowerBook G4 as well, so I may just as well buy a "family pack". For a bit it looked like the "extreme" was a quad processor rather than a duo, but it turns out it is just a duo (2 cores) just like the 2.4GHZ, so I decided to take the plunge at the Mac store in the MOA.

So this is the first blog entry typed on the new 24" iMac! Setup was extremely easy, Parallels is installing a copy of XP in the background as I type this, and the screen is EXTREMELY nice. It is completely quiet as well, and I am really glad that I waited for the brushed metal unit vs the white, since the brushed matches my laptop.

Sadly, I need to go to IA this weekend, so tonight is my only chance to play a bit, but I'll have something great to look forward to when I get back!

Jesse James

A friend lent me "Jesse James: The Last Rebel of the Civil War" by T.J. Stiles. The book was very researched and I thought even-handed, so I suppose that most of academia would find it to be conservatively biased. I found the level of detail to be too high for this topic; but I'm just not that interested in being an expert on border state Civil War and Reconstruction politics, economics and law enforcement. I didn't need all the detail, but I found the broad outlines to be extremely interesting, and the author DID do a good job.

In the big picture we all know that the agrarian South relied on the institution of slavery as a cornerstone of the economy, while the forces of abolition gained ground in the North. In the border states like Missouri where Jesse and Frank James grew up with their mother Zerelda Samuel (she later re-married), and specifically in Clay county, those tensions were very personal and direct as the slave owners and those trying to abolish it lived side by side. For a widow farmer like Zerelda, slaves were by far her greatest asset, and the loss of them moved her from being middle class to bordering on poor.

Jesse and Frank James sided with the South and were part of para-military gangs know as "Bushwhackers". The group of "Bloody Bill Anderson" was the most notorius, and the group that they ran with. The author puts forth a framework for violence from a sociologist Lonnie Athens called "violentization" with 4 steps:

1. Brutalization - the subject is either coerced or encouraged to observe to take part in violent acts done to others, and encouraged to approve or take part.
   
2. Belligerency - Subject resolves to respond to provocations with force.
3. Violent Performances - subject pushes through barriers and inflicts pain on another person.
   
4. Virulency - subject feels his social status change due to violence. They now decide to respond with overwhelming force to the slightest provocation.
   

Nice theory, but it seems a bit too pat. Even "Bloody Bill" would release some folks that one would have thought he would kill, and Jesse very much did the same. They lived in a very violent time, and while both ended up being killed, they distingueshed themselves in their ability to survive and cause problems. Then and now, intelligence and UNpredictability tend to be the most successful, and while Jesse and other of the Bushwhacker leaders certainly displayed tactical and even strategic mistakes, they also displayed a cunnign and an understanding of the environment they operated in.

The key to that environment was Democrats that continued to resist the north and work to subjugate blacks after the war. While Lincoln and the Republicans won the war, the Democrats and groups like Jesse and the KKK defeated the North and the Republicans in reconstruction. Interestingly, at that time, media was explicitly political and made no attempt at being "unbiased". The Democrat papers, and especially one Journalist, John Edwards, worked to build up the "Robin Hood Image" of Jesse and his group as being "falsely accused" of anything really evil, and in general just making life difficult for Republicans, the Railroads, and "the wealthy". "Fake but true" was a a Democrat and MSM staple then as now, with the important thing being to spin a yarn that fit what the Southern people wanted to hear.

The raid on Northfield MN was really interesting to read about due to the familiarity with the territory. The reason the target was picked was a political attack against Adelbert Ames, a failed Republican reconstruction Governor of Mississippi that had settled in Northfield. Jesse and the Youngers were defeated by the townspeople of Northfield going to their homes, getting their guns, and firing away a the bandits. Jesse and Frank escaped, but only with wounds and a daring trek across 100's of miles of Minnesota, South Dakota, Nebraska and Iowa.

It is easy to see how a lot of Clint Eastwood and other movies revolve around the Bushwhackers and the subsequent outlaws like the James. They had their time, but essentially they were too successful. Once the South had gotten what it wanted--it's own Democrat rule, and the Blacks under Jim Crow really no better off than slaves, they were willing to turn in guys like Jesse because they didn't want that violence, so the gunfighters lost the support they needed.

Executive Qualities

The following showed up on a tech website today and I think they are pretty accurate. I'd rate Honesty and Intelligence at the top with Passion 3rd, but he didn't say there were in order. I disagree about the "innate leadership"--sure, some people have more God given ability in one or more of these areas than others, but ANYONE can improve on ALL of them.

What if you don't want to be an executive? Well, then the competition is still reduced a bit, but I'd argue that all of these are just fine in anything you want to do. Marriage, parenting, friendship, church, education--you name it. It is a list worth thinking about from time to time. The other point is that "ruthless", "dishonest", "greedy" or "conceited" aren't on there anywhere no matter what the American Media often has to say about business. Are all executives "wonderful"? Certainly not, but the characteristics listed strike a person that has spent 29+ years in corporate life as being the general case.

From CNET Train Wreck Blog

1. Passion. Driven to get the job done and do it right; passion for one's function, the marketplace, the company's product, work in general; high energy level
2. Intelligence. There's no substitute for intelligence, with emphasis on insight, analysis of complex problems, deductive reasoning, out of the box thinking
3. Fearless. Willing to take risks, embrace new challenges, make mistakes, and say what's on one's mind without fear of consequences; opposite of CYA mentality
4. Leadership. Innate ability to motivate people to willingly do one's bidding, especially when there's no direct benefit for them to do so
5. Can-do attitude. Simple put, everything is "no problem;" somehow finds a way to make it happen with minimal supervision; respect for "the customer"
6. Work ethic. Committed to working long and hard for the fulfillment of a job well done; respect for business and work; clarity in knowing right from wrong
7. Integrity. Understanding the importance of meeting commitments, on schedule and on budget; plus following up and keeping one's word
8. Flexibility. Easy to work with, willing to take on new responsibilities without clear personal benefit and without whining about it; willing to take one for the team
9. Humility. Willing to do what it takes for the team and credit others; intuitive understanding of the value of Karma in the business world
10. Honesty. Honest, straightforward, strong moral fiber; tells the truth regardless of consequences; goes hand-in-hand with fearless and strong work ethic

The Horror of Hope?

For the ranks of the "War is Lost", July was a bad month. It seems like "the surge" may be working, and of course that is bad news for Democrats, the MSM and America's other enemies.

clipped from www.weeklystandard.com The Turn Defeatists in retreat. For the Iraq war's opponents, July began as a month of hope. It ended in retreat. It began with Democratic unity in proclaiming the inevitability of American defeat. It ended with respected military analysts--Democrats, no less!--reporting that the situation on the ground had improved, and that the war might be winnable. It began with a plan for a series of votes in Congress that were supposed to stampede nervous Republicans against the continued prosecution of the war. It ended with the GOP spine stiffened, no antiwar legislation passed, and the Democratic Congress adjourning in disarray, with approval ratings lower than President Bush's. It began with Democratic presidential candidates competing in their antiwar pandering. It ended with them having second thoughts--with Barack Obama, losing ground to Hillary Clinton because he seemed naive about real world threats, frantically suggesting that he would invade Pakistan.

Legends of the Fall

U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, suggested Bush administration spending on the Iraq war may have crimped funding for domestic projects such as road and bridge construction, and for such infrastructure projects as new levees for New Orleans. 

"We've spent $500 billion in Iraq and we have bridges falling down in this country," Klobuchar told MSNBC. "I see a connection between messed-up priorities."

Watched the movie "Legends of the Fall" tonight on DVD and was very impressed with the film. A very common book / movie theme of the "wild, free spirit, personally charmed, much-loved person" that "has something special" about them. In true Hollywood tradition, there are allusions to "higher power", but it is in the sense of "a great spirit", or "spirit of the the bear" in this film. Hollywood and most of the worlds artists are extremely comfortable with a higher power that provides blessing even if you follow no rules at all as Tristan (the "loved one") in the film.

We are all human, at the core our brains operate very much the same. Emotional content is always there, and our "reality" is very much colored by the emotional content of what we see--biologists happen to believe the mechanism is orchestrated via the amygdala and there is quite a bit of detail on how it probably works. No matter, we all know that we are very prone to just project what we "believe" onto reality. At least I think we used to realize that; we maybe didn't understand the mechanism, but looking at reality OBJECTIVELY and discounting things that obviously were not objective and didn't make sense used to be part of "maturity" or "reasonable" or "rational". Seeing what IS rather than whet we might feel should be.

So we have Amy. I have a hard time believing that she actually believes that Iraq has ANYTHING to do with the bridge. Yes, she hates Bush, yes she wants to make political hay, yes, she may be emotional, but certainly she knows that is IMPOSSIBLE. NOBODY believed that bridge was going to fall ... not a single state road engineer, nobody at the UofM right next to it which studied it as part of engineering classes. Either the President or First Lady, the governors children or anyone else would have been routed across that bridge without a second thought.

Nick Coleman's diatribe talks about a "50% bridge", which is completely off the wall and it seems very hard to believe he doesn't know that he is out and out lying. The 50% is an assessment number that has NOTHING to do with the idea that the bridge is going to fail. That bridge was on NOBODYS list of needing to be replaced ... LONG before there was talk of closing or replacement there would have been weight restrictions, re-routes, etc. The best of the bridge inspection technology that we are now using failed in this case. Like everything else, there was "some probabiity of failure" ... all the data that we had would have said it was very low, but in this case it happened. The odds of my house collapsing on me right now are very low, but the chance isn't "zero" ... some homes DO collapse and then we go back to the drawing board, just as we do with the bridge.

I can enjoy Legends of the Fall, Star Wars, or even build my own foolish scare story about how the government is likely to force guys like me to work until I'm 80 under some new Democrat doctrine of tax slavery. There are fantasies and there is reality--one would like to believe that a position of being a Senator or a newspaper columnist would require that you understood something of the difference. I believe that a major reason for the "incivility" in politics these days is because as evidenced by Amy and Nick, something between 30-50% of our population has decided that fantasy and legend feels better than reality so they are just going to go with it.

Bridge to Anger

clipped from www.startribune.com Nick Coleman: Public anger will follow our sorrow The cloud of dust above the Mississippi that rose after the Interstate 35W bridge collapsed Wednesday evening has dissipated. But there are other dark clouds still hanging over Minneapolis and Minnesota. For half a dozen years, the motto of state government and particularly that of Gov. Tim Pawlenty has been No New Taxes. It's been popular with a lot of voters and it has mostly prevailed. So much so that Pawlenty vetoed a 5-cent gas tax increase - the first in 20 years - last spring and millions were lost that might have gone to road repair. And yes, it would have fallen even if the gas tax had gone through, because we are years behind a dangerous curve when it comes to the replacement of infrastructure that everyone but wingnuts in coonskin caps agree is one of the basic duties of government.

The nice thing about the unbiased MSM and Democrats is that they don't play negative politics like Republicans. We all understand that more money and more taxes solve all problems in the public sector, but are a negative in the private sector. It is just a fact. We also know that nobody should expect a bridge to last over 40 years, and that Government in '67 was all under Republican control and being done "on the cheap".

All it takes for humans to create perfection is more dollars in the public sector--there is no reason to even look for a cause before we reach that conclusion. More public money is a universal good and more private money is a universal evil. Life is simple, let the righteous anger begin.

"Everyone but wingnuts in coonskin caps". Once we get the fairness doctrine back we will be free of name calling oafs like Limbaugh, and we will only get the "civil" non-partisan viewpoints of reasoned voices like Coleman. One can barely wait.

NYT Error: Good News From Iraq Printed

clipped from www.nytimes.com Op-Ed Contributor A War We Just Might Win By MICHAEL E. O’HANLON and KENNETH M. POLLACK Published: July 30, 2007 Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily “victory” but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.

Wow, Brookings and NYT, somebody was asleep at the switch. I guess it is the time of the year when most folks are ignoring the news, so it is a great chance for some lefties to give us that old "unbiased" feint and claim "they report it all". This will of course be ignored and buried by the Defeat-O-crats, as the worst kind of "bad news". Just like Global Warming, defeat in Iraq is one of those stories with no other side.

Oshkosh

My wife and her brother, sister-in-law and I headed over to the annual EAA Convention at Oshkosh WI this past Wednesday. I've been there a couple times in the past, but the last time was over 10 years ago, so it seemed new. I shot a number of pictures of the event, a few of them are here.

The human gyro almost made me sick just watching it, but he enjoyed it and was none the worse for wear!

The highlights of EAA for me were:

1. The F22 Raptor arrival was very cool--lots of sound and vapor trails off the wings as they loaded them up on turns. There are a number of cool videos out off that link including some from the airshow where they go from slow flight to vertical climb.
   
2. The Harriers were impressive and loud. I saw them 10+ years ago and the sense was that "hover trick" was just that, a trick. I got some good video of them, but there are a lot of good videos out on YouTube off the link so worth taking a look at.
   
3. X-Plane the flight simulator. Looks like this is the product of pretty much a single dedicated computer / airplane geek that has produced some great scenery and what looks like a whiz-bang simulator. They had a demo set up with 3 big screens that made you believe that the era of the home flight simulator is REALLY here!
4. The Cirrus Planes and new small jet. These are the guys that put the parachute on the airplane and their planes are BEAUTIFUL, large enough that a guy like me could feel comfortable in them, and fast. They are also expensive and flying is still one of those things that takes a lot of time that I don't have.
   

It is just GREAT to see innovation like Cirrus alive and kicking in the aircraft industry again after the Republicans managed to get enough tort reform so apparently John Edwards can't sue everyone back to the Wrights just because some pilot screws up and crashes anymore . Sadly though, the post Enron Age of Sarbannes Oxley has driven these kinds of companies to be private rather than public, so those of us willing to invest can't take part in the aviation dream as investors and have a chance to move both it and our wealth along at a greater rate (or lose our shirts, but that is what investment has always been about! Risk and POTENTIAL reward)

Well, it was 3 days of aircraft heaven anyway, it won't be 10+ years before I return again!

iPod Battery Replacement

My son is headed off to the National LCMS Youth Gathering in Orlando in the AM and he convinced that his iPod battery life was simply not up to the rigor of such a long trip. The modern teen carries more computer power than it took in total to put a man on the moon in the '60s, more storage loaded with music than room sized computer from my college days, more music that the all the record collections of my whole college dorm room floor, and the communications capability of Star Trek in their cell phones. Of course the cell phone doubles as a camera and the Nintendo DS will hook up to the Internet with wireless as well. It is a new area.

Well, back to the subject at hand. We ordered the battery from www.ipodjuice.com
, and the procedure was "stressful", but not over the top. It is a tightly put together compact little unit and prying open the case takes some perseverance and finesse. The little tool they sent worked OK, and the little torx screwdriver for the special screw inside was a requirement. It always seems to be the little odd things that cause the most trouble, and in our case the little 3-wire battery plug just didn't want to come out. I had to resort to a very small needle-nose I happened to have and that did the trick. Prying the glued in battery was a little disconcerting, but went OK and then we moved rapidly to get it all back together.

The all important "smoke test" when 100% with everything working, and there were sighs of relief all around as the charging process began ... now in true Lutheran style we pray for the big 1200 mAh lithium battery to provide those 10+ hours of important iPod listen time.

Income / Hackers and Painters

August 2004 I read an excellent book by Paul Graham called "Hackers and Painters" that I would highly recommend to anyone with an interest in technology and programming from a fairly philosophical level. Graham has a web site, on which he expounds on many topics. Graham was one of the creators of "Viaweb", one of the first web applications, which ended up being sold to Yahoo for something like $50 million, of which he likely picked up something in the 10's of millions. He got his money by CREATING something, not "taking it away from somebody".

Every so often I end up going back to Chapter 7 of "Hackers" titled "Mind the Gap". A few of the quotes are just worth bringing over.

Like chess or painting or writing novels, making money is a very specialized skill. But for some reason we treat this skill differently. No one complains when a few people surpass all the rest at playing chess or writing novels, but when a few people make more money that the rest, we get editorials saying this is wrong.

I'd argue that the chief reason for this is that a majority of people don't understand what it means to have a growing economy, they believe that the wealth that Bill Gates gets is "taken from others", they simply don't understand the idea of "wealth creation".

Graham points out a potential reason for this being wired into people so strongly, and he calls it "The Daddy Model of Wealth". Because when we are young we don't create any wealth, everything we get is given to us by the powerful (parents), and the ONLY problem is "fair distribution", many people just carry that model over into adulthood.

In a free market, prices are determined by what buyers want ... It's lamentable that people prefer Reality TV and corndogs to Shakespeare and steamed vegetables, but unjust? That seems like saying that blue is heavy and up is circular.

Graham argues that the appearance of the word "unjust" here is proof of the "Daddy Model".

Will technology increase the gap between the rich and the poor? It will certainly increase the gap between the productive and the unproductive. That's the whole point of technology.

Technology should increase the gap in income, but it seems to decrease other gaps. A hundred years ago, the rich led a different kind of life from ordinary people. ... Now, thnaks to technology, the rich live more like the average person.

His point is that the rich and poor in the US do largely the same things, just at a different level of "branding". You can shop at Wal-Mart, Target, Nordstroms, or even higher up the cost/brand chain, but what you are getting is generally marginal differences in quality, and in many cases simple branding than in content. Extreme mass production has made DVD players available for $25 to $2,500 dollars. The $2,500 model doesn't really do anything different than the $25 model, it just does what it does with extreme quality. If you can afford that, then you might pay for it, but the guy with the $25 model will likely enjoy "Shrek" just as much, and what is more, the proof in the sameness is it is actually almost certain that the 100x difference in player cost consumers WILL watch the same thing.

Again, the fact that "Shrek" is preferred to "A Midsummer Nights Dream" may well be lamentable, but it has nothing to do with income disparity or technology. The cautionary thing is that if one refuses to allow wealth creators to keep a very significant amount of what they create, one can drastically slow the creation of new wealth, and then everyone suffers. Naturally, the people at the bottom suffer far worse than those at the top, so if actual outcome was the interest of people vs "justice meaning less disparity" the people that are ostensibly "for the poor" would largely be "for the rich" as well, they could be "pro-human", but by and large they are still in the "Johnny took too big a piece" mode of analysis, and logic isn't likely to have a lot of weight with them.

Most likely we will be in the mode of re-learning this painful lesson post-'08 through increased taxes and a sluggish economy. Already we seem to be seeing the signs of the market predicting that outcome.

I'm an Idiot, Cabela's is Great !

In April I replaced my 15 year old trolling motor with a Minn Kota Terrova with 80lbs thrust, powerdrive and I thought a neat feature called Autopilot that would allow me to put it on a course and the motor would automatically adjust for wind and current. I say "I thought", because the autopilot "didn't work". I was out fishing with the boat twice, and figured that since the motor was under warranty anyway it didn't make much difference when I took it in.

Oops ... somehow I got the wrong model that had all the buttons at lights for autopilot on it, but didn't have it enabled. BUT, even though it has been close to 90 days since I bought it, Cabela's had NO PROBLEM just allowing the return and letting me upgrade to the model with Autopilot.

I always knew I loved that store, now they have an even more loyal customer!

Human Nature

clipped from www.psychologytoday.com Why most suicide bombers are Muslim, beautiful people have more daughters, humans are naturally polygamous, sexual harassment isn't sexist, and blonds are more attractive. Human nature is one of those things that everybody talks about but no one can define precisely. Every time we fall in love, fight with our spouse, get upset about the influx of immigrants into our country, or go to church, we are, in part, behaving as a human animal with our own unique evolved nature—human nature.