The so-con wing is heard from

Every time that I want to step in and assure someone that the “social conservatives” aren’t really dangerous to liberty, they go and do something like this:

Concerned that the military is selling pornography in exchange stores in spite of a ban, one lawmaker has introduced a bill to clean up the matter.

“Our troops should not see their honor sullied so that the moguls behind magazines like Playboy and Penthouse can profit,” said Rep. Paul Broun, R-Ga., unveiling his House bill April 16.

His Military Honor and Decency Act would amend a provision of the 1997 Defense Authorization Act that banned sales of “sexually explicit material” on military bases. - “Bill: Stop selling Playboy, Penthouse on base” by Karen Jowers, Army Times

National Review’s Kathryn Lopez, channeling Mrs. Grundy, eagerly jumps in:

...I like the idea of the American military having nothing official to do with porn. We train our servicemen to protect and defend, in situations in which they often have to face perilous choices as who to protect and defend. Pornography is a grave indignity and degradation of the human person. If a soldier wants to view pornography, it's his right, but the U.S. military need not provide it to him.

(Ohmygawd, can't you just hear the sanctimony!)

Then, to top things off, there’s this piece of arrogance:

Exchange officials noted that tax dollars are not used to procure magazines in the system’s largely self-funded operations.

But Broun’s spokesman John Kennedy contended that taxpayer dollars are involved — “used to pay military salaries, so taxpayer money is, in effect, being used to buy these materials,” he said.

...a rationalization worthy of Nancy Pelosi.

Well let’s see:  Broun and Lopez dishonestly conflate Playboy (which, last time I looked, you could buy at your neighborhood Borders) with hard-core porn (which, last time I looked, you could find all over the internet).  And then Kennedy proposes that,  just because the government touches somebody’s salary, it has the right to control how that money is spent!

As one poster on the Army Times forum says,

Now that's the slipperiest slope I've ever seen. Since we in the military are paid with tax dollars, these people believe they have a say in what LEGAL goods and services we are allowed to purchase.  Take that argument to a few examples like foods, evironmentally friendly goods, etc.  How do we find such freedom-depriving politicians to "serve" us in government?

And that’s the whole point: Our troops are adults. Playboy and Penthouse are legal goods. Congressional busybodies should butt out.

Oh, and tell me again, what’s the difference between left-wing meddlers and the right-wing social engineers?

Geez. No wonder some people are afraid of Republicans.


Naming names:

Broun’s bill has 16 co-sponsors. Any of them your congress-critter?

Elsewhere:

Via: Ace, where there’s a LARGE discussion.

Posted by: Old Grouch in Rants at 17:09:08 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Danger. (Slow) loading zone

When it comes to the web, I believe in paying for what I get, or, at least, allowing the creators of what I read to get paid.  So I don’t run programs like Adblock, nor do I have my hosts file configured to block every ad server under the sun.  I look at it as a bargain:  If some company is willing to place ads with a blogger I like, the least I can do is give them a glance.

However...

The majority of my web access is by dialup. (Don’t ask. Just say, “thank you, AT&T, for your lovely, barely-maintained, 1930s-vintage infrastructure.”)  Page loading is slow enough under the best conditions; it can become interminable when some ad server or script server is m.i.a.  I get especially irritated when staring at a blank screen, with a progress bar stalled at 98%, while the browser waits on some widget to load, or for some javascript layout routine to execute.  Or when I try to open a link in another window, get a “can’t find the site” message, and then (after checking netstat) find out the reason the site can’t be found is because the browser can’t get to the DNS:  All of my connections are tied up by ad servers that should have released by now, but haven’t.

When this happens- or when there’s some annoying javascript distraction- I open up the “view source” window and search out likely suspects.  If I’m feeling charitable I may just note the problem.  But if it’s happened more than once, or I’m having a bad day, it’s “into the hosts file with ‘ya, and trouble me no more!”

So if you’ve got any of these folks hanging around your webpages, be warned.  They just might be chasing your traffic away.  And just minutes ago I added some more culprits to the list.  Thought you might want to know.

My list (so far) is below the break...

more...

Posted by: Old Grouch in Rants at 16:23:57 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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FreeDB: Broken and irritating

Being the good citizen, and believer in co-operative action that I am, on the (infrequent) occasion when I rip a CD, if FreeDB can't find it I always try to submit its information.  Problem is, the last few times I've sent one in, I’ve gotten this error message back:

Subject: Rejected freedb submission

Your freedb submission was rejected for the following reason:
Discid collision in category ····

Please fix the problem before you resubmit it.

The problem with this error is that the submitter has nothing to do with it:  Its cause is a limitation in the FreeDB protocol.  The result is a broken, user-unfriendly experience that discourages further submissions.

A look at the bloody details below the jump.

more...

Posted by: Old Grouch in Rants at 23:58:45 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Incoherent weasel sighting

Stop campus shootings: ban prop guns- And while you’re at it, be sure to carefully cover your “but” (even at the expense of clarity):

“All of us have a healthy respect for the freedom of artistic expression that college theater represents, but and all of us agree that out of respect for the families of those victims of the tragedies at Northern Illinois University and Virginia Tech, but and from an abundance of caution, but it is best at this time not to undertake a campus production that contains the portrayal of graphically violent scenes.” - Robert C. Brown, president, Arkansas Tech University

This mound of incoherence is by a university president? It must be rough to try to do the politically correct thing without seeming to do so.^[1]  (And then there's the “thinking” behind the decision.)

I guess what Mark Twain once said about school boards now goes double for university administrations.

(Having said that, Assassins is one of Sondheim’s suckier efforts.)


^[1] UPDATE 080222 23:56:  A late comment to the insidehighered.com story by a poster identifying him/herself as an ATU faculty member (no permlink, scroll to the comment by “D, at 4:30 pm EST on February 22, 2008”) offers:

A third option... that certain parties may simply have felt the content of the play was distasteful and inappropriate...
Arkansas is a red state with a deep patriotic bent, maybe the administration (or some influential alumni) simply felt the play to be inappropriate...

Accepting this explanation, rather than the obvious no-guns-on-campus one, requires believable answers to the questions of why the play was scheduled in the first place, and why the administration, once it had determined to stop  performances, felt it necessary to mask its reasons for doing so.  It is a possible scenario, and one that would lead me to change the above sentence to, “It must be rough when you have to scramble for a politically correct excuse to mask what’s actually censorship.”  But it is also worth noting that raising the possibility of censorship is a good way to shift the blame for a (now embarrassing) action;  from politically-correct motivations of the  administration to agitation by unidentified red-state rednecks. 


Via: Althouse (at IP) who notes:

The bright side of this is:  Because it's high-class musical theater that's getting censored, even the usual prissy anti-gun types should get pissed off.

Ox, gored, etc.

Posted by: Old Grouch in Rants at 19:34:50 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Bring out your hair shirts

Will Wilkinson writes about why deciding the “things that we don’t need” is best left to individual choice...

...Most critics of consumption don't take it as far as Diogenes.^[1]  But if you're going to take it anywhere, you've got to draw a line and say why pants and bowls go on one side of it, and iPhones and a 20-ounce soy milk mochaccino go on another.

But why suppose there's one line?  Different people have different aspirations and plans. They have different frames of reference for adequacy and excess.  What each of us needs depends on what we are trying to make of our lives.

Of course, moralizers of all stripes, from officious environmentalists to religious fundamentalists, have strong ideas about what we really need.  But the fact that you think you know what's best for me doesn't mean I don't really need my nose hair trimmer or my stuffed armadillo. I have my reasons.

...and the “moralizers of all stripes” reply:

...At the macro level too many Americans live in poverty and extreme insecurity.  They suffer from inadequate “materialism” by greedy businesses, indifferent citizens, and plutocratic politicians.  At the micro level too many families are being hurt by fraud and misleading consumerism, inadequate financial literacy, and a false belief that “more” is always better. - Eric

Ah yes, all those poor,^[2] beaten-down, illiterate, falsely-believing Americans.. just waiting for the enlightened to rescue them!  (Hey, Mr. Enlightened, how much of your after-tax income do you spend to directly assist the poor?^[3] If it’s not 20%, shame on you.  If it’s less than 10%, then STFU.)

The more stuff we consume, the less money there is to provide basic food, shelter and medicine to people who cannot provide for themselves. - Michael Ostrom

The old zero-sum fallacy makes its appearance, and it's only the third comment.

...Modern agriculture has contained some amazing scientific successes, but monocultures have taxed the environment in unprecedented ways, led to blander-tasting food, and (if you care) led us to treat our farm animals in pretty harsh ways...

- The suburbs are boring and not very sustainable as they help foster global warming. Everyone is realizing this, at least the first part.

- Scientific food products like Twinkies and Cheez Whiz, delicious though they often are, are screwing with our notion of food in ways we haven’t logically come to terms with. Is it unsustainable? I don’t know. - mk

So it's all about aesthetics?  The Horror of the Unenlightened, sitting in their boring suburbs, watching television while snarfing down Twinkies and Cheez Whiz!  (Except when they’re mistreating farm animals or shopping at Wal-Mart.)  Ick!

[To other commenters] What did the “common good” ever do to you? Why so unhappy? - Michael Ostrom, again

The problem, Michael, is whenever somebody brings up the “common good” it invariably turns out to be all about them getting their jollies by telling me how to live my life,  frequently with the force of the state behind them.

It might be marginally less-irritating if these folks would just admit that they really don’t like other people very much and that while they would be much happier if the (aesthetically-unpleasing) part of mankind simply disappeared, in the meantime they’ll settle for exhibiting their superiority by making rules for everyone else.  But that would require them to realize that, when it comes to their loudly-espoused beliefs having real effect on their personal lives, they’re a bunch of posers.  Not gonna hold my breath waiting for that to happen.

But I will head out to lunch... and buy a triple cheeseburger.

-----
^[1] “...who extolled the unencumbered life of the lowly dog...  One day, Diogenes smashed his only possession, a wooden bowl, after seeing a peasant boy drink from his cupped hands.” (Wilkinson, again)
^[2] Relatively speaking, of course.  In the same thread, another commenter evokes the “impoverished yet happy people like those in Magdalena, Guatemala.”  (And in the next paragraph he quotes Anton Chekhov.)
^[3] Meaning direct contributions to food banks, shelters, The Salvation Army, and the like.  Not the $500 you spent to attend the last fund-raiser.  And donations to NGOs that spend most of their resources on whining to the media and government about how bad poverty is don't count, either.

Posted by: Old Grouch in Rants at 18:52:07 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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...and happy Valentine's day

The Archbishop would probably call it “cultural accommodation”:

The British government has cleared the way for husbands with multiple wives to claim welfare benefits for all their partners, fueling growing controversy over the role of Islamic Shariah law in the nation's cultural and legal framework.

Bigamy is outlawed in Britain, but authorities have never prosecuted Muslim men who had legally married more than one woman abroad and continued to live with them after immigrating.  Shariah permits men to have up to four wives at one time.

Now, after a review that began in November 2006, a panel of four government departments has decided that all the wives of a Muslim man may collect state benefits, provided that the marriages took place in a country where multiple spouses are legal. - Washington Times

Via:  From the Maas via Ace

Posted by: Old Grouch in Linkage at 19:48:51 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Follow the leader

“Donut” suggests a bumper sticker:


UPDATE 080209 19:35: Print your own!

Posted by: Old Grouch in Rants at 22:02:34 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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More ugly software

My browser can't get off of the home page.

Possibly because something is truncating the honkiin’ long asp URLs^[1] that the site uses.

Viewing the source reveals that the generator that produces these abominations is a program called “Oxcyon Centralpoint 7.0”

Its flagship technology, Centralpoint, is the only Lifecycle Management technology available within ECM, incorporating virtualization yielding pervasive delivery. Oxcyon is not an ASP (Application Service Provider) but is able to offer subscriptions to its technology across disparate physical environments in contrast to traditional, leave-behind applications which dominate this market today. This technology eliminates this obsolescence and changes time to market from months to minutes eliminating costs and risk for its clients. Oxcyon enjoys early market adoption in numerous verticals including: Publishing, Healthcare, Manufacturing, Government and Non Profit/Religious markets. ^[2]

(Not to mention buzzword-compliant... )

Anyway, you have been warned.

-----
^[1] Like:
http://www.indianapolishomeshow.com/ME2/Sites/dirmod.asp?
sid=2263A838BB9D41B1B5985FF73A77AE86 &
type=gen&mod=Core%20Pages&gid=7B68F6C5C82C4B0DB29D26DF87CF1D29
^[2] Cut-and-pasting the quote brought along this code at the beginning: “<span style="font-family: Verdana;"> <span style="font-size: 8pt; font-family: Verdana; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"> <span style="font-size: 7.5pt; color: rgb(0, 33, 52); font-family: Verdana;">” I rest my case.

Posted by: Old Grouch in Rants at 23:32:07 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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How to secure the homeland

This started out as a quite different post.^[1] But then my attention was directed to this:

“There are currently no guidelines regulating the private acquisition of biological, chemical, and radiological detectors,” warned [Richard] Falkenrath [New York City Police Department deputy commissioner for counterterrorism], adding that this law was suggested by officials within the Department of Homeland Security. - Village Voice, “NYPD Seeks an Air Monitor Crackdown for New Yorkers” by Chris Thompson

So let me get this straight: Some useless bureaucrats at the DHS think there should be “guidelines” for private ownership and use of things like geiger counters, all in the name of “avoiding unwarranted anxiety.”  Because without “guidelines,” why, people might go around using them, and what’s more, they might find radiation in some unusual places. (And might get upset about it!) With no government “help.”

Now if the denizens of New York are so stupid that they elect City Council members who are stupid enough to pass an ordinance like this, well, so many more candidates for the Darwin Award. They can face their own consequences.

But the DHS has no business encouraging this. The “mushroom management” concept of keeping citizens ignorant and helpless has no place in a democratic society, no matter how convenient it might be for government agents. Somebody ought to find those unnamed officials and take ’em out back of the outhouse.

After all, it’s hard to be "a pack, not a herd" when the government keeps pulling your teeth.


Naming names: Running point for the proposal, Peter Vallone, Jr., chairman of the Council's Public Safety Committee.


Via: Slashdot
--------
^[1] The story so far: Nannies in the Bloomberg administration and the New York City Police Department want to require a license for any privately-possessed air-quality monitor:

...[Richard Falkenrath, New York City Police Department deputy commissioner for counterterrorism] and Mayor Michael Bloomberg have asked the City Council to pass a law requiring anyone who wants to own such detectors to get a permit from the police first. And it's not just devices to detect weaponized anthrax that they want the power to control, but those that detect everything from industrial pollutants to asbestos in shoddy apartments... - Village Voice, “NYPD Seeks an Air Monitor Crackdown for New Yorkers” by Chris Thompson

All supposedly out of fear of “excessive false alarms and unwarranted anxiety.” None of which have happened. What’s more, Falkenrath is anxious that there is “no requirement that they be reported to the police department—or anyone else, for that matter—and no mechanism for coordinating these devices.” And without all those government guidelines and requirements, well, you never can tell what people might do, can you?

Posted by: Old Grouch in Rants at 17:54:30 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Fire them all - 2

Looks like it'll be business as usual on the RepubliCrat front:

President Bush is unlikely to defy Congress on spending billions of dollars earmarked for pet projects...

Wimp! Glenn Reynolds: “I could carve a better backbone out of a banana.”

...but he will probably insist that lawmakers provide more justification for such earmarks in the future...

...on the day the sun rises in the west!

...administration officials said Monday.

Fiscal conservatives in Congress and budget watchdogs have been urging Mr. Bush to issue an executive order instructing agencies to disregard the many earmarks listed just in committee reports, not in the text of legislation.

Lawmakers, including the House Republican whip,

whip.R.I.N.O. Fixed it for you!

Roy Blunt of Missouri, have cautioned the White House that a furor over earmarks could upend Mr. Bush’s hopes for cooperation with Congress on other issues...

Mike Hendrix: “Oh no. Oh, god no. Not that. Because they’ve all worked together so civilly and well up till now.”

...including efforts to revive the economy.

...which the government is so good at.

Moreover, Republicans shudder at the possibility that a Democratic president might reject all their earmarks.

Poor babies! Bill Quick: “And there you have it. If the GOP protests Dem earmarks, a Dem President might not okay the GOP earmark raids on the public purse.”

(Story from New York Times)

Elsewhere:

Previously: Fire them all

Posted by: Old Grouch in Rants at 23:07:33 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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