Obsidian Wings

On whiting out . . . .

Critical action issue! Little Rock has renamed part of a street named "Confederate Blvd." as "Springer Blvd." in order to honor "black community leader Horace Springer and his family...."  Michelle Malkin is righteously pissed. 

Why is she pissed?  Well, it has something to do with Little Rock's decision to "white out" history.  It also has something to do with the fact that the "white out" appears to have been partially inspired by the opening of the Clinton library.  And, of course, it must have something to due with the fact that the name change actually occurred in 1974, and what really happened is that four old (and incorrect) street signs were recently updated. 

But Malkin's central point is quite sound.  And this is an issue on which Malkin, a long time Little Rock resident who appears to have never lived in Little Rock, has unique moral standing.  Indeed, once a street is named it is well established that the street must retain that name for all time.  The central principle of conservatism being, of course, that local communities have no right to rename their own streets.  That's what got the Romans and the Greeks.  As William F. Buckley used to say, everything is your business, chum!

Consider also the incalculable harm to society and, yes, to reason itself, that has and will come from the Little Rock's 1974 decision to "white out" the name of a part of a street.  Indeed, without the undivided union of Confederate Blvd., we will all (eventually) forget that there was a Confederacy.  Or a Civil War.  Indeed, during last 30 years that the partial name change has been in effect, an unnumbered legion has been in kept in intellectual bondage.  And when will it end?  Will we "white out" history books as well?  Declare Ken Burns a persona non grata?  (O.K., fine, so his history of Jazz makes that a bit tempting.)  Ban the History Channel?  It's coming, friends -- this 1974 partial name change is the harbinger.

Incidentally, who is this "black community leader Horace Springer"?  Some person of alleged local renown?  Well, assuming that Little Rock is right and he deserves to be honored (and, I'm telling you, Little Rock, you haven't proved it to my standards), why must a part of Confederate Blvd. suffer?  Aren't there other, less-valuable streets?  What about West Fourth Street?  Isn't an East Fourth Street enough?  And Garland Street, who really needs that?  It seems prissy -- a little "blue state," if you catch my meaning.  Maybe it'd be a good thing to forget that one instead.

Finally, we mustn't ignore that the Clintons are somehow (vicariously) involved.  You know what that means.  Yup, that's right:  they've been messin' with the space-time continuum again!  Somehow, Hillary snuck back to 1974 and engineered the dastardly name change -- and now she's demanding that four street signs be replaced to reflect it!  In an attempt to "dispel those things that divide us," no less!  And everyone is wearing goatees, Saddam's the Prime Minister of a democratic Iraq, and the French are invading North Korea!  The horror!

We are at Def Con 4, people.  Hold on -- it's gonna be a bumpy ride.

It goes almost without saying ....

.... That, whatever standard you wish to apply, the Palestinians have been among the worst-led people on the planet.  What blame for this should fall upon the Palestinian people -- and I'd say quite a lot -- is perhaps open to question.  Parsing guilt, after all, is for distant God; we merely dabble in approximations, prejudices, and illusions.

With these musings in mind, David Bernstein has written the kind of post on the Israeli-Palestinian divide that I love to see:  one that is unafraid to assign blame where it is richly due, but also unwilling to forget that there are indeed people on both sides of the abyss.

Unfortunately, there are many stories of abusive behavior at the checkpoints. Put a bunch of 19 year old men in a position where they have absolute power over other people, and some will inevitably abuse that power. The Israeli military can and should, however, do a better job of training and supervising its soldiers.

But let's also recall, as media stories on the issue never do, that the checkpoints only exist in their current form because of the need to prevent suicide bombing murders. Before the Palestinians began engaging in this "tactic," they could move more or less freely within the West Bank, Gaza, and even Israel. ...

.... Israelis used to go to the West Bank to get good deal on car repair, food, and other items, and later to gamble in Jericho, and many Palestinians used to go to Israel to work. Few Israelis in the future will be willing to hire Palestinians (Thai or Bulgarian workers present much less risk to life and limb), and even fewer will be willing to shop in towns that were hotbeds of terrorism and mayhem.

On the other hand, if things change so significantly that peace really does break out all over (so to speak), maybe Israelis will venture into towns that used to be "hotbeds of terrorism and mayhem."  If one must dream, dream big. 

TV Fascinating? Or am I Ill?

I played in a volleyball tournament Saturday and Sunday (second place, thanks for asking). I usually feel a bit run down after a big tournament, so when I plopped down on the couch after work I didn't think anything was wrong. I went shopping for food, ate some mushroom-cheese soup and then watched 4 hours of TV on VH-1. I'm really bad at setting the scene, but you should realize that my weekly TV viewing habit runs about 1 hour per week. Today I watched an hour of "inspired by Pink" "Flab to Fab" where they took 3 women and put them through 90 days of a personal training program with a chef and a stylist and the end. I bet I could look even hotter with 3 months of personal training. :)  I love Pink.  She is fun and bad without being too bad.  She wasn't actually in the show which was a little annoying.  However, I was impressed by how the Asian personal trainer really got into the psyches of the trainees.

Next two hours of the top 100 video cliches. It was hilarious. They had categories like "slow-motion hair toss", "underwater", "swan to sexpot", "fire", "robots", "black chorus" and "little people". They showed some of the best videos using each cliche. I didn't realize that Total Eclipse of the Heart had so many cliches packed into one video.

Then right when I was going to turn off the TV there was a fascinating hidden camera show about people singing in their car. This one 50-something lady was great. Hmmm, I'm tired from volleyball, my roommate has the flu, and I just thought almost 4 hours of VH-1 was fascinating. Did VH-1 suddenly get great shows, or am I getting sick?

Slippery Slope or Up in Smoke?

SCOTUS is considering Ashcroft v. Raich, 03-1454 today and it's expected to bring some, er, high drama.

Essentially the question at hand is whether Federal law (in particular, the Controlled Substances Act) trumps state laws allowing the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes. The drama is best illustrated by the case of Raich's co-plaintiff (lawyers, correct term?), Diane Monson:

In 2002, federal agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration showed up at the home of Diane Monson, who grew marijuana there and used it to treat a degenerative spine condition. In California, such use of marijuana has been legal since the voters passed Proposition 215 in 1996, the Compassionate Use Act, which allows seriously ill people to grow and use marijuana when a doctor has found it to be medically appropriate. The federal agents were met at Ms. Monson's home by sheriff's deputies, who found that her cultivation and use of the drug were legal under California law. After a three-hour standoff, the D.E.A. agents seized Ms. Monson's six cannabis plants and destroyed them.

None of the usual arguments for outlawing drugs pass the laugh test for me. If the laws actually worked, that would be one thing. As they stand, however, they're a joke, and they do their own paradoxical brand of harm to society at large (having spent four weeks in a grand jury for cases from the NYC Office of Special Narcotics Prosecution, I can safely say we're wasting a hell of a lot of money on ridiculous cases for this...no offense meant to the fine people working there).

While the MSM is widely playing this as a case about legalizing drugs, however, the NYTimes pointed out in their editorial today that it's also very much about Federalism and has some rather tricky ramifications:

Although the California women should win, it is important that they win on narrow, fact-specific grounds. Advocates of states' rights have latched onto this case and are urging the court to use it to radically rewrite its commerce clause rulings, reviving ancient precedents that took a more limited view of Congressional power. This is where the greatest danger lies in this case. If this sharply restricted view prevails, it could substantially diminish the federal government's ability to protect Americans from unsafe work conditions, pollution, discrimination and other harms.

SCOTUS groupies were reportedly lined up overnight to get in today. Well, groupies of some sort or other, anyway.

PS: I'm leaving for a week in Miami in a bit...bloggin' from the beach if at all possible, but not likely, as I'll be working an art fair and most likley recovering from the parties when not actually selling art (God willing). See y'all in a week.

Random Musings En Route To A Pointless Practical Question

I have not posted for the last few days because I have been reading and commenting on a book manuscript. In between, however, my inner six year old has been having fun working on a project. In the aftermath of the election I felt gloomy, and when I feel gloomy one of the things that helps is to take care of something. My cats are fine, so first I turned to my fruit trees, and when I had done all sorts of things to make them happy, it occurred to me that I could do something about the orchids. There are about seven of them, bought about once every six months because they look so pretty sitting there in Trader Joe's, but I have never done anything besides watering them, and they have responded by neither dying nor blooming. Anyways, I happened to be in the pet store buying a collar for Nils, my escape artist boy cat, when lo and behold, I saw a cheap aquarium, which it occurred to me could be turned into a humid growing place for the orchids. So I bought it, and (as so often happens with these things) it turned out to be more complicated than it had seemed. Some things were easy, but the one that has me perplexed is air flow (in all that humidity, orchids tend to rot without it.)

A friend of mine (whose husband-in-all-but-legalities is into both orchids and solar power) suggested getting a toy airplane with a moving propeller, removing the propeller and motor, and hooking them up to a solar panel. I wasn't sure about the solar panel -- where does one get solar panels? -- But I went off to Target anyways, to check out the toys. (I love toy stores, though some developments in toys bother me. Lego's turn from blocks you decide what to make into to Bionicles, for instance.) Alas, no suitable planes, but instead I found a little fan designed for putting in a tent. (As every sales person I talked to told me, my quest for a little tiny fan would have been much easier had I not been looking in winter.) Anyways, it will work well, but now I arrive at my question:

The fan runs on batteries. I would rather it run off a plug, since this seems less wasteful and less likely to involve dumping bad stuff into landfills. (Also, no need for perpetual replacing of the batteries.) Obviously, I would need a transformer of some sort. Would it work to take the transformer (or whatever that heavy black box is) from some dead piece of computer equipment, see that it had the right voltage, remove the thing you're supposed to plug into the equipment, and attach the wires to the battery-place in the fan (supposing I were careful to properly insulate the wires?) -- As you may be able to tell from my use of such technical terms as 'battery-place', I am not technically sophisticated, though I am game for experiments. Anyone who answers this question will earn the gratitude not only of me, but also of several orchid plants, as well as the collection of plastic animals which have up to now been perched on various windowsills, but may now move into the upside-down aquarium. (The plastic pteranodon seems particularly eager to move into a more appropriate environment. He will be grateful to you.)

If anyone else has any arcane questions, feel free to use this thread :)

Update Well, my problem is solved. Consider this an open thread; those with either mechanical questions or interesting homemade contraptions to describe are particularly invited.

NewsFlash: War Against Islamic Terrorists NOT All That Parallel to Cold War

OK so this is a few days old already, but I've been busy eating.

The Defense Strategic Board report "Stratetic Communication" (pdf file) is now on their website. It was discussed a few days ago in the NYTimes, where the focus was on how the US is "failing in its efforts to explain the nation's diplomatic and military actions to the Muslim world," but it also drew distinct differences between the current conflict against radical Islamist ideology and the Cold War:

"In stark contrast to the cold war, the United States today is not seeking to contain a threatening state empire, but rather seeking to convert a broad movement within Islamic civilization to accept the value structure of Western Modernity - an agenda hidden within the official rubric of a 'War on Terrorism,' " the report states.

"Today we reflexively compare Muslim 'masses' to those oppressed under Soviet rule," the report adds. "This is a strategic mistake. There is no yearning-to-be-liberated-by-the-U.S. groundswell among Muslim societies - except to be liberated perhaps from what they see as apostate tyrannies that the U.S. so determinedly promotes and defends."

The report says that "Muslims do not 'hate our freedom,' but rather they hate our policies," adding that "when American public diplomacy talks about bringing democracy to Islamic societies, this is seen as no more than self-serving hypocrisy." (emphasis mine)

Juan Cole Threatened with Libel Suit by MEMRI

Via Matthew Yglesias
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) has threatened to sue Professor Juan Cole if he doesn't retract recent comments he's made about the organization.

[President of MEMRI] Colonel [Yigal] Carmon's letter makes three charges: 1) that I alleged that MEMRI receives $60 million a year for its operations. 2) That I alleged that MEMRI cherry-picks the vast Arab press for articles that make the Arabs look bad. 3) That I said that MEMRI was affiliated with the Likud Party.

Cole disputes the "libel" or validity of each of these, but offers a rather biting defense for the second one:

I continue to maintain that MEMRI is selective and biased against the Arab press, and that it highlights pieces that cast Arabs, especially committed Muslims, in a negative light. That it also rewards secular Arabs for being secularists is entirely beside the point (and this is the function of the "reform" site). On more than one occasion I have seen, say, a bigotted Arabic article translated by MEMRI and when I went to the source on the Web, found that it was on the same op-ed page with other, moderate articles arguing for tolerance. These latter were not translated.

He then goes on to take MEMRI to task for their own alleged violations of the laws involving the written word:

I will add another criticism of MEMRI, which is that it systematically violates the intellectual property of Arab writers by appropriating their content without paying for it and storing them on its servers, and then claiming copyright in their work as translated. This is a shameful way of proceeding. Where the source articles are published in a country that is signatory to the major international copyright agreements, it may be illegal. All sites dealing in other languages do quote or translate from time to time, which falls under fair use. But MEMRI has a much more systematic set of appropriations going.

Personally, I find MEMRI rather transparent. The cartoons they post* on their website, for example, undercut the supposed balance in their "research." I'll stop short of endorsing Cole's request that folks contact MEMRI (I rarely feel that's appropriate), but I will note I find Carmon's complaints "reaching" at best.

*Again, copyright issues seem unclear here.

More on the Ukraine

Bush's policy team took the proper stance on the Ukraine election despite the fact that stance put it in opposition to Russia's Putin--a man whose help Bush is likely to need in the future:

Secretary of State Colin Powell said Wednesday the United States cannot accept the results of elections in Ukraine, which the opposition says was marred by fraud.

Powell warned "there will be consequences" for the United States' relationship with Ukraine as a result of the developments in the former Soviet bloc nation.

Powell spoke shortly after election officials in Ukraine declared that Kremlin-backed Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych won the election over opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko. The announcement raised fears of violence in Kiev, where tens of thousands of demonstrators have been demanding that the results be overturned.

"We cannot accept this result as legitimate because it does not meet international standards" and allegations of fraud hadn't been investigated, Powell said at a news conference.

Powell said he spoke with outgoing Ukraine President Leonid Kuchma and urged that his government not crack down on demonstrators. He also spoke with other regional leaders, including Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

Powell did not elaborate about his conversation with Lavrov, but said he advocated a solution to the crisis in Ukraine that is "based on the law, using legal procedures."

The State Department confirmed Tuesday that it had summoned the Russian ambassador and discussed Ukraine. The Kremlin described the meeting as "unprecedented interference" in another country's affairs.

The Ukraine is in the middle of a very important election. It is trying to successfully transition from the horrible Soviet model of pseudo-elections to establish a democratic tradition. It is appropriate, especially in view of Bush's democracy rhetoric, for the US to support a very careful review of the election rather than go along with more short-term interests by siding with Putin's favorite. If any country can positively effect the outcome (which is by no means certain) the US is that country.

Note to commentors. Please don't reveal your inability to make useful distinctions about 'fraud' by blithely comparing the election to the US election. If you absolutely must insist on turning this into further Bush-bashing please have solid arguments.

For indepth updates, I one again reccommend FistfulofEuros.

Giving Thanks: An Open Thread and Haiku Invitational

Giving Thanks for all
The wingnuts you wonderful
Folks deflect daily

It's horribly boorish of me, I know, but I have this tradition, regardless of how New-York-jaded my hosts any given year may be, of asking everyone at Thanksgiving dinner to mention one thing they're actually thankful for. My, my, my, the looks I get. Most folks will mutter some half-considered idea or kick me under the table for introducing such a Norman Rockwell moment into their otherwise Calvin Klein gathering, but sometimes I find someone who was really happy I asked. Hope springs eternal.

Anyway, this is an open thread and haiku invitational (in honor of Moe, who with his financee, we hope is having a wonderful Thanksgiving showing off the bling bling).

Ukraine

If anyone is interested in the very tense situation going on regarding the vote in the Ukraine, I would suggest that Fistful of Euros is an excellent source for updates.