Funmurphys: the Blog

Small Comfort

I suppose MM's new movie is the big news. I admit I was disturbed to learn that grown women and men plunked down something like $22 million dollars to see the fraud this weekend. But then I realized that the Nigerian 419 scam grosses hundred of millions of dollars annually, year after year, despite (because of?) its obvious nature. Of course, the 419 scam appeals to one's greed, while Moore's 911 scam appeals to one's hate, but they're both such obvious fakes it makes you wonder.

I'm sure you've already seen Beautiful Atrocities' reviewer quote roundup comparing what the reviewers said about Fahrenheit 911 compared to The Passion of the Christ. Even movie reviews are tainted by media bias. My own hometown St. Louis Post-Dispatch has a nutty marxist who hasn't met a conspiracy theory he doesn't believe as its lead reviewer. Speaking of Mel Gibson's movie, what happened to all that anti-semitism it was supposed to spark? Why does anybody believe anything the media says?

Another Day Dawns

And so it begins. Sovereignty has been turned over to an Iraqi government. There are those who say this is a sham; others think it will bring real change. I think even the prior announcement of a hand over made a difference. To the Iraqi people, the insurgents (I don't like the word but I don't have a better one) are becoming more clearly the enemy, more foreign and less home grown; American soldiers are becoming less occupiers and more temporary order keepers; political progress is becoming less just promises and more concrete. These are all good things. The desired end state for Iraq isn't that we're loved and so then we leave; the desired end state is that a representative, liberal Iraq stands on its own two feet, then we leave, and then (maybe) we're loved. How long did the love last in France and Germany?

Europe, Again

Orin Judd links to a long piece by Bruce Bowers in the Hudson review about European/American relations based upon experiences in Europe. It's well worth the time to read.

One of the crucial differences between Europe and America is that Europe is full of people who decided to stay and America is full of people (and their descendents) who decided to leave. You can almost imagine a diffusion process where on one side of the Atlantic you have the least volitile people and on the other the most. I suppose it isn't a surprise then that Europe has increasingly looked to comfort and security while American continues to look to opportunity and success. In a sense on of the problems with Europe really is America -- it's attracted the strivers and the boat rockers that Europe needs. That outflow of people has been interrupted for sixty years from the old Eastern bloc countries -- another difference between our old allies and our new ones.

And Action!

Gregg Easterbrook often comes off as the angry old man of blogging, but this time he's right: "special effects themselves have become boring." Gregg pinpoints his problem with them -- the aren't just impossible to film, they depict the impossible. I don't mind that so much, what I mind is that too often they are substituted for plot, dialogue, character development, even engaging action. I know I'm an old fogey myself, but I strongly believe just because you can do something doesn't mean you should do something (Bill Clinton and I agree about something -- imagine that!).

And while he's endlessly complaining about the "endless fall", he notes that Spy Hard spoofed this very gimmick. And that's another problem I have - once somebody spoofs a particular movie cliche, no self respecting auteur should ever include it in one of their films. But they do. And not just in Charlie's Angels 2, but in films by real auteurs. My favorite example is Galaxy Quest, a non-stop laugh riot for SF lovers, where our intrepid heroes have to make their way through the "chompers", huge smashing devices with a flame thrower at the end. The Sigourney Weaver character complains bitterly about how lousy the writers were to include them in a star ship and mocks the whole cliche. Yet a few years later George Lucas uses the cliche in Star Wars II (really 5 but when you're an auteur, you can number them how you like) when our intrepid heroes have to avoid being smashed etc. on a robot construction conveyer belt. Here it's a supposed to be a high tension moment, but I can't help but laugh remembering Galaxy Quest.

Speaking of laughing, his bonus complaint is also pretty funny. Expeciting truth and accuracy from a movie or its marketing? What's next, thinking Michael Moore makes documentaries?

Easterbrook link that set me off via Ace of Spades

Portrait of the Artist

Clarity In The Murk

David Cohen at the Brothers Judd (I offered to rechristen this place the Brothers Murphy when Sean asked about posting here, but he declined) does a nice job of summing up my view on Israel and the Palestinians:

The point, of course, is that this sort of "context" is infinately reductive, with each side able to point to one earlier step of which they were the victim and which, had it not occurred, would have averted all the succeeding violence. In the west we still distinguish, perhaps naively, between people strapping bombs to themselves and seeking out civilians to murder, on the one hand, and military action, on the other. We also have noticed that, if the Palestinians simply wanted a state, they could have had one years ago. Unfortunately, they don't simply want a state, they want a particular state and that state has different ideas.

Iraq Reprise

Here’s something I wrote way back in November of last year:

The United States will leave Iraq one day; the only question isn't so much when but under what conditions. Our desire is to leave behind a functioning government complete with armed forces that will be able to defeat the insurgents. It would be nice if the insurgents were wiped out before we left, but not necessary. In that sense, US troops are fighting a holding action. The insurgents would like us to leave before that goal is achieved, and then to defeat the government we leave behind. So the insurgents have to do two things to win - demoralize the US, and demoralize a majority of the Iraqi's themselves. Thus they are attacking not just US soldiers, but foreign groups (such as the UN and NGOs) that will help the fledgling Iraqi government, and the Iraqi forces (mostly police) we are constituting for the Iraqi government.

At this point, there are now more Iraqi's under arms fighting with us than there are American troops in Iraq, and the number of Iraqi's under arms grows daily. Soon there will be more Iraqi's under arms for the government than there ever were US soldiers in Iraq. So the attacks against Iraqi police are important to the insurgents to keep that day from coming - not from killing that many police, but from killing enough that too few ordinary Iraqi's become police, or soldiers, or guards. So the insurgents have to attack now before the Iraqi police and military overwhelm them.

And you can't rely on a cursory examination of the press to provide information; they've been wrong and biased on all things Iraq since day three when a sandstorm slowed up our advance. A more balanced view is provided by doing some digging. The press isn't just in the tank, they are the tank.

Mo' Linkage

First up, we have a double header from Cronaca:
He links to an article about how bad female infanticide is in India, and some of the effects its having. How bad - worse than China!

On a lighter note, Cronaca provides the three hardest words in any language to translate. This item is provided in honor of my cousin Linda, who knows more languages than is humanly possible, and who we decided last night would be somebody (along with the rest of her family) we'd like to share a vacation home/condo with (not only is she a blast to be with, but she already has the perfect condo!). For those of you who can't wait, the winner is ilunga, a Bantu word that means a person ready to forgive any abuse the first time, tolerate it the second time, but never a third time.

We have a couple of items in the category of obvious:
Tanya reports that Mary-Kate Olsen has anorexia. I happen to like the Olsen twins (no, I'm not one of those people who were counting the days until they turned 18, I mean there work -- I've actually enjoyed most of the stuff I've seen them in watching with my daughter). How long before Ashley fesses up too?

Meryl Yourish links to a study that reports obese men can improve their sex lives by losing weight -- no word on what Jack Ryan can do.

Speaking of Jack!, Archpundit is wall to wall Jack!. And if you're going to comment at a lefty site, there's no better place than Archpundit.

I've had my share of Andrew Sullivan posts, so I have to let you know that Iowahawk has provided the last Sullivan post you'll ever have to read, entitled Two Minute Sully.

Just to alert the media, Busy Mom has redecorated her blog and it is all spiffy now.

And finally, it's posts like this one that keep me coming back to QandO.

First Weird Al and now Ferrier & Chan

I was forwarded this great multimedia nugget by my friend Gary Smith at Dataquest who runs one of the few e-mail joke distribution lists that's actually funny; it's called Irrational Pie sung to the music of Don McLean's American Pie with lyrics by Ken Ferrier and Antoni Chan. I watched it alone, and then called my boys in and we watched it two more times after which I offered a brief extemporaneous lecture on irrationality (like my father before me I have a number of sound bites that I recycle very frequently but my lessons/lectures are off the cuff).

Webelos Camp

My son and I had a great time at Webelos camp. For him, it wasn't just the fun activities. An important part has to do with fostering independence and taking responsiblity. Real challange does far more than all the fake positive self esteem acitivities ever accomplish. And Mrs. Morgan, who bless her was there all week, was very good about letting the boys know that and experience that. As for me, well, I enjoy being with my family -- and getting away from it all (and doing new things).

When I picked him up on Friday, he said he'd learned a lot of important lessons at camp. One was that if you were with somebody long enough, they got annoying. Another was that he shouldn't be picky about eating. He used to be very good about trying new foods, but a couple of years ago that stopped and his culinary horizon had shrunk to only a few things he would eat. But at camp he was forced to choose between eating whatever was served or going hungry. He discovered that a lot of things he didn't think he would like he actually did. So Friday night he insisted that we eat somewhere he hadn't been before so that he could try something completely new. My wife and I hope this keeps up.

Suburban Nightmare

This morning my routine was just like every other workday morning - roll out of bed, shower, eat, make my lunch, head out the door for work. But then reality divurged from normal.

Somehow the gasket on the bottom of my garage door was shredded and laying on the garage floor. But it didn't stop there. Something gnawed on the bottom of the garage door. Something had gotten into the bag of sand I keep for gardening -- you never know when a soil emergency will strike. Something had gotten into the garbage in a desultory way. Something had shredded the gasket on my wife's garage door, gnawed on the bottom of the door, and defecated on a piece of the gasket. I had my suspicions, and when I discovered that something had knocked a bag of diatomaceous earth off a shelf and then walked through it, the paw prints confirmed it - a racoon had invaded my garage.

My wife had left the garage door open for a couple of hours after dark last night, and the bandit had made his way in to gorge on dog food, leaving little room for garbage. He must have been startled when my wife closed the door and frantic in his search for escape. I only hope he ran off this morning when I opened the door, but if I know his kind, and I do, he'll be back to feast on the Iams as soon as it's dark again. But this time, we'll be ready.

Friday On The Road With Ali

This photo is from my long ago sojurn in Pakistan. What can I say? I was young, experimental, and I thought taking black and white photo's had edge. This mythic shot depects the journey of linear thought along the road to nowhere in the arid plane of logic. Or it could just be somebody riding a donkey along a dusty road.

Another photo entry for Unbillable Hours Picture Envy

Legal Authority?

The 9-11 Commission is faulting mainly the FAA -- although no one escapes the finger pointing -- for the inability of the Air Force to shoot down the hijacked aircraft that day. Charles Austin demonstrates his knowledge of government contracting (and sarcasm) by asking about the FAA's failure to have proceedures in place to address a multi-plane suicide bombing hijacking scheme.

What makes me wonder, given the current preoccupation with the Bush administration's accountability on torture or consignment of US citizens to Gitmo without formal trial, is the total lack of comment about the authority the Vice President had to order the destruction of American owned property, let alone the murder of American citizens. Am I the only one who wonders about the disconnect? The Vice President suddenly has the power of life and death in a crisis, but the Bush administration can't determine the status of captured al Qaeda operatives? In that felicitous legal phrase, what was the legal controlling authority that allows Dick Cheney to call up the Air Force and order them to shoot down passenger jets owned and operated by American companies in American airspace that will certainly kill American citizens? I really am curious if there is any legal basis whatsoever for such an order.

Kevin Explains It All

I just back from my stint at Webelos Camp (lot's of fun, wish I could have stayed longer) so I'll just post my letter to Andrew Sullivan (that he didn't include on his letters page) in response to his posts (post 1 and post 2) about Larry Speakes:

Andrew you knucklehead, Larry Speakes isn't making cruel jokes at the expense of the sick, he's trying to squelch "far-right crackpot" Lester Kinsolving.

Look again with fresh eyes.

Your first transcript has Lester asking about a "gay plague" Larry hasn't heard about – Larry's probably thinking "there he goes again." So he keeps needling Lester about being gay – do you have it, are you sure, no personal experience here, don’t put it those terms ("I love you Larry"). And Larry comes out and says what he's really thinking: "I thought I heard you on the State Department over there. Why didn't you stay there?" The only straight (sorry) answer Larry provides is in the following exchange:
Q: In other words, the White House looks on this as a great joke?
MR. SPEAKES: No, I don't know anything about it, Lester.

Larry could have added that he only looks on Lester as a great joke.
In the second exchange Lester starts by asking about quarantining military personnel based on saliva transmitting aids. Lester let's the cat out of the bag when he notes his questions about AIDS have provoked "much jocular concern" – whereupon two people from the audience pipe up with jokes at Lester’s expense ("It isn't only the jocks, Lester" & "Has he sworn off water faucets?") In other words, the other reporters have been laughing at Lester and his questions about AIDS, not just Larry Speaks. So Larry brushes him off with "I have not heard him express anything on it" – it being quarantining military AIDS patients. Of course Lester has to keep pushing by asking a follow-up, so Larry again goes to squelch with "Have you been checked?" – and then we could quarantine you.

So by all means Andrew, let’s ask Larry Speaks about why he mocked Lester Kinsolving twenty years ago when Lester asked questions everybody in the room was laughing at.

Little Man in Big Shot

In 1997 we vacationed in Gulf Shores, Alabama. Kyle was fascinated by the birds at the beach. It was just one of the many things he loves about the beach.

I'm putting this shot up in honor of a new photo carnival. Now we'll see if I have time to actually enter it.

Link Via Da Goddess

Law or War?

Phil Carter does a pretty thorough job of discussing the Padilla case, but I have to agree with JAG Central that the key to the case is whether or not Jose Padilla is an enemy combatant or not.

Since the FBI found Padilla's application to the al Qaeda training camp in a binder that contained 100 other such applications, type-written each with the title at the top, "Mujahideen Identification Form/New Applicant Form," I don't see how you can argue he wasn't an enemy combatant. And if he's an enemy combatant, then the whole panoply of American rights goes out the window. Period. End.

It's important to remember that it was al-Qaida, and not George Bush or the US military that turned our country, along with every other country, into a battlefield. Jose Padilla was an enemy soldier trying to infiltrate our lines to kill civilian non-combatants. Now we can decide that it is better that 99 enemy soldiers go free than a single innocent be wrong classified, but let's be honest about it. We're betting lives on our ability to be near omniscient and omnipotent, and I don't think our track record is that good. If you found an enemy soldier infiltrating your lines, would you prefer to act immediately, or wait until you had enough evidence that you could take to court?

If we adopted the standard that once an al-Qaida operative was in the US, and a US citizen, we had to work through the legal system, what kind of pressure would that place on our defenders? Waiting for a crime of mass murder to be committed while they just watched and waited and hoped they could stop it in time. Wouldn't it be easier (and better) to just make those people disappear with no accountability? Questioned and then killed? Just how badly do we want to tempt ourselves?

My Eulogy for Reagan

The first time I heard of Ronald Reagan was in 1976 when he ran against Ford in the Republican Presidential primaries. My mother just loved Ronnie (she had hated Nixon with a passion). In the summer of 1977 (I think), Reagan addressed a session at the ABA convention at the Fairmont in San Francisco, and my mother was mad at my father for not getting tickets to see him. As fate would have it, we were walking down the side of the hotel just as Reagan left a side door to get in a waiting limo. We had to stop to let hm and his group by. My father and I waited, but my mother said nothing. It turned out she hadn't even noticed him.

In 1980 I would vote for Ed Clark, the Libertarian candidate for President, in part because Carter had already conceded by the time I voted in the late afternoon in California. In 1984 I enthusiastically voted for Reagan. I wasn't surprised he won by such a huge landslide in 1984. While taking a taxi ride to the airport in 1983 after a friend's wedding in New Haven (yes, Yale), the black female cabbie was cooing about Reagan; maybe she was just buttering up her two white boy riders looking for a tip, but I don't think so. The whole direction of the country had changed under Ronnie.

It's hard to believe in what poor shape we were in 1980. President Carter inherited a lousy situation and only made things worse. He blamed our problems on a miasma of negativity, not flawed policy. The economy was in a shambles with high unemployement and high inflation. Japan was poised to beat our economic ass and the Soviet Union was winning the cold war. Even the Boston Globe ran a fake headline "More Mush From the Wimp" about a Carter speech. The elites had thrown in the towel (where it remains today) and were yammering away about how the US had always been lousy and just plain wrong (just like today).

But Reagan's optimism was infectious. He said the problem with the economy wasn't something government should fix, but government itself. It took awhile, but his cutting taxes and reining in government regulation put the economy back on track (in the eighties, prosperity was called greed, when a Democrat became President in the nineties, it turned back into prosperity). He challanged the Soviets instead of retreating -- and I mean this economically, militarily, and most importantly morally.

The left likes to claim that victory in the cold war was bi-partisan. Well, the fight was bi-partisan up to the Vietnam war, when the left gave up. It began to embrace dictators of the left, like the Sandinistas. By the end, the left and the Democratic party were fighting against fighting the war all they could -- economically, militarily, and morally.

The left likes to claim that the politics of personal destruction started with Clinton. Ha. It started with the second politician in the depths of time and have continued ever since. From time to time it may abate, but believe me, Reagan was vilified by the left throughout his time in office and long afterward.

Reagan changed America and the world. Prosperity returned to America, and the evil empire of the Soviet Union was ended with a wimper and not a bang. And that's why Reagan was elected in a landslide in 1984, and why Bush Sr. was elected in 1988 (if we couldn't have Ronnie, at least we could have his VP), and why Reagan was one of the great presidents. Yes, he made mistakes on the little stuff. But he knew what he wanted to do, he knew how he wanted to do it, and through great perserverence he saw it through, in both domestic and foreign policy. I don't often admit this, but my mother was right to love him.

Priceless

The St. Louis Post Dispatch ran the following correction this morning:

A story in Friday's Metro section about the National Spelling Bee misspelled the winning word. The correct spelling is "autochthonous."

UPDATE: I wanted to send this into the WSJ's Best of the Web but the post never put the correction up on their website. It skipped from June 3 to June 8 without mention of any June 5 corrections. If I was as cynical as their leading columnist (who has assured me that I'm not), I'd say they didn't want to post it to keep it from being widely linked on the internet.

A Little History

Today is 64th anniversery of the completion of the evacuation from Dunkirk. 338,226 British soldiers were picked up off the beach in France and returned to England with not much more than the clothes on their backs. I have to wonder - were the appeasers gloating? Were they saying "I told you so?" Were the university professors cheering because this would be the death knell of imperialism, or at least take the greatest empire down a notch? Was Lord Gort, commander of the BEF, reviled because 20% of the men under his command were killed or captured during their defeat in France?

History records that the British considered Dunkirk a victory, and any hopes of knocking England out of the war were ended when Churchill delivered (another) famous speech:

"We shall defend our island whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender."

Today is the 62nd anniversary of the start of the Battle of Midway. The battle was the turning point in the war in the Pacific - the destruction of cream of the Japanese navy and with it the end of their running wild. The outcome of the battle it is said heavily depended on luck. And there is some truth to that, but that really isn't the whole story. Without the courage and sacrifice of the men in the torpedo bombers that pressed home attacks despite total loss, there would not have been a chance for the dive bombers to sink four Japanese carriers.

Warming Followed By Cooling. Repeat.

As the weather warms with spring, global warming returns to the media. So we are bombarded with not just news stories, but turkeys ("As God is my witness, I thought they could fly!") as well, like The Day After Tomorrow. I don't mind a silly movie - I thoroughly enjoyed Independence Day by the same crew, but at least then they didn't think they were making a documentary about the hazards of global despoiling aliens. As to its scientific accuracy, the fact that the book it was based on was co-written by Art Bell is all I need to say. As a movie, try the fifteen minute review, or if you want something shorter, here's my academic review:

See Dick Cheney. See Dick oppress. See W. See W. die off camera. See a lot of people die. See Dick Cheney again. See Dick Cheney apologize for being a white male oppressor and for all other white male oppressors. And they lived happily ever after abandoning their wicked oppressive ways and living in peace and harmony with the land and the historically oppressed peoples on it.

The InstaReview would be "feh."

I have every confidence that with the cooling that fall and winter brings, the spectre of global warming will disappear from the media conciousness, except for the pelting of Al Gore with snowballs when he makes dire predictions about how hot it's getting in a speech delivered during a blizzard. I have every confidence that vagaries of the weather, unpredictable as it has always been and as it remains despite our best models and computers, will continue to be blamed on global warming by its true believers. Last week we had spring weather in St. Louis - hail, strong winds, torrential downpours, tornado warnings. This was the indication of spring beginning to give way to summer for most of us; to others, a dire warning of global warming.

A Domestic Scene

This morning my wife had a concerned look on her face. "Should I be concerned?"

"About what?" I replied.

"That list of websites by the computer."

I thought a moment. Lightbulb goes off over my head. "Those are sites I had to blacklist from the blog. I get an email for each comment, I write down the URLs I need to ban, and then I use Blacklist to do it."

"Debt consolidation, online gambling, something about flirting - you can see why I was curious."

"Yep." I'm just glad I didn't have any nekkid wimen or male potency comment spammers recently.

I'm amazed how much comment spam I get here at a small potatoes site. I didn't get any when I was running Greymatter, but after my switch to Moveable Type it started. At first I used to ban IP addresses, but I noticed pretty quickly that spammers were changing their addresses the way a secure radio frequency hops. Thankfully Jay Allen wrote Blacklist for MT. While I still get comment spam, I don't get it from the same place twice. Of course, the real solution is the death penalty for spam - email or comment, but I don't think that will ever pass.