Hate Spewing Crypto-Racist...

...Michelle Malkin reliably promotes a gob-smackingly irrelevant solution to the problem of gang violence.

Any guesses?

Rescind L.A.'s sanctuary law! (Known as Special Order 40.) Got that? Since there are illegals in street gangs, more immigration enforcement will fix the problem. Heather Mac Donald concurs, unsuprisingly. I'm not calling MacDonald a racist, because she's not. Malkin, on the other hand, famously authored a tome (I neither name it nor link to it) favoring the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII, with the clear implication that that would be the best strategy for dealing with Muslims in America, post 9/11. She's now been on an anti-immigrant crusade for a couple of years, blaming just about every problem she can name on the easiest targets she can find. What a charming lady. Here's a recurring motif of the pot calling the kettle... oh, never mind.

Mahavishnu Orchestra

Before jazz-fusion got to be dull and kind of snottily about how good you could play, but not about whether you could write - these guys were shredding eardrums and exhibiting astounding musicianship while simultaneously playing dynamic, compellingly listenable material. "John Mclaughlin" used to be synonymous with "guitar virtuoso," and Billy Cobham is a percussion god. Just one generation removed from Miles Davis' 1960's experiments in combining jazz and rock, this is about as good as this particular genre gets.

Identifying the Non-Trollop Vote

Sometimes doing the oppo research is almost too easy.

H/T The G-Spot.

More Power Line

While I'm complaining about Power Line, maybe conservatives could stop making weirdly false assertions about Democrats:

Current Democratic Party dogma holds that international trade is bad; or, at least, imports are bad.

Come on. At least try to approximate a plausible account of what a Democrat might believe. Sheesh.

NYT, Hotbed of Anti-Semitism

How is it "censorship" when an a company turns down one ad, but just business as usual when the same thing happens to another ad? Ads get rejected every single day, asserting censorship and implying that the unstated reasons are related to a judgment about "the Jewish Lobby" is not particularly convincing. It just depends on whose ox has been gored. Scott Johnson:

David Harris is the executive director of the American Jewish Committee. He has posted an interesting account of the censorship of the AJC's weekly radio ad by the New York Times-owned radio station WQXR

Mickey's Mouth (As It Were)

Kevin Drum asks:

are we just making up special rules for the Clintons?

Of course we are. The context doesn't even seem to matter. In this case it's Mickey Kaus asking rhetorical questions about the Clintons' finances. Mickey - I feel entitled to refer to him on a first name basis, as a long-time fan of bloggingheads.tv - asks, in part:

The press is focused on where all that money ($109 million) came from. Fair enough. But where did it all go? This seems like a genuine mystery.

except, as Drum points out:

Hillary already has to file an annual financial disclosure form with the Senate, and the 2006 form shows that the bulk of the Clinton family fortune is invested in Citibank deposit accounts and a qualified blind trust. The 2007 form will be disclosed in a couple of months. What more is there to know?

there is no mystery! It's been open season on the Clintons for a long time now. Some conservatives demonstrate absolutely no restraint in posing bad faith innuendo, or even making simple, evidence free accusations. (Why hasn't Hillary ever been arrested for Vince Foster's murder?) Mickey's a smart guy with actual journalistic credentials, you can sure if he really wanted an answer to that question he could have found it as easily as Drum.

Trace Elements

Ok, I'm no sartorial god. But between the accessory choices and the topic - plus the fact that I haven't added any content referential to Pharyngula in what seems like days - I couldn't not share this video. It doesn't hurt that it's really funny. Also, this seems like a pretty cool site.

Heh

bjkeefe encapsulates the Malkin Experience.

I have a feeling that even my clever headline won't rate me an Instapundit link.

If You Read My Blog...

... then there's a good chance you'll enjoy The G Spot. I first saw her via a link in an Ezra Klein post and she guest blogged for him a while back. It's smart, somewhat wry, and plain good writing. Recommended.

I found the "Backwards Bush" widget at her blog.

LGF, Best Friend of Tyrants

Say what you like about Charles Johnson, he's not a stupid man. What I utterly don't understand about him, and many other conservatives, is their apparent indifference to tyranny and their disdain for those, like the ACLU who try to stand between us and the creep of tyranny into our lives. Is it so hard to understand that guarantees of due process affect more than just the few people who might be denied it if nobody steps up?

And what can possibly be said about this dumbass? (Or, apparently, organized group of dumbasses.)

Petition Drive

Is there a worse pundit/blogger type than Michael Goldfarb, in terms of a complete lack of intellectual honesty? (Of course there is.) The fearless leader of the 101st Fighting Keyboardists, always willing to Support the Troops™, never shy to find reasons for other people to die. Fighting for the Freedom To Argue Your Beliefs Whatever The Evidence (hereinafter known as FTAYTWE [catchy acronym, don't you think?])

In recognition of his efforts a new blog has been created: Draft Goldfarb. Go there. Sign the petition. Your country needs you.

What Can You Say About a Story Like This?

The Nation:

That dawn, naked, covered in blood and feces, bleeding from her anus, she found a US soldier she did not know lying naked in the bed next to her: his gun lay on the floor beside the bed, she could not rouse him and all she could remember of the night before was screaming and screaming as the soldier anally penetrated her while a colleague who worked for defense contractor KBR held her hand--but instead of helping her, as she had hoped, he jammed his penis in her mouth.

Over the next few weeks Smith would be told to keep quiet about the incident by a KBR supervisor. The camp's military liaison officer also told her not to speak about what had happened, she says. And she would follow these instructions. "Because then, all of a sudden, if you've done exactly what you've been instructed not to do--tell somebody--then you're in danger," Smith says.

This is what "Lisa Smith" (she's asking not to identified) reported on the record to Karen Houppert. The story goes on to describe another nightmare:

Over the next month and a half, she says, she faced a series of hurdles. She would be discouraged from reporting the incident by several KBR employees, she says. She would be confused by the lack of any written medical protocol for sexual assault (as the only medical person on site, she treated herself with doxycycline). She would wander through a tangled maze of interviews with KBR and Army investigators about the incident without any clear explanation of her rights. She would be asked to sign several documents agreeing not to publicly discuss the incident, she says. She describes having her computer--which she saw as her lifeline, her main access to the outside world--confiscated by KBR staff as "evidence" within hours of receiving her first e-mail from a stateside lawyer she had reached out to for help.

And eventually she would find herself temporarily assigned to sleeping quarters between two Army Criminal Investigation Division (CID) officials, who, she says, assured her that it was for her own safety, since her alleged assailants were at the same camp for questioning; they roamed freely. When she wanted to move about the camp to get meals etc., she was escorted.

Read the whole thing. Blog it. It's all allegation, at this point, that should be remembered. But if there's no serious investigation it'll never be anything but. And why is the victim of an alleged rape being treated this way, in contrast to the alleged rapists? (Well, we know why.)

Friday Galactic Blogging

NGC 2841. A close (50,000,000 light-years) obliquely oriented unbarred spiral, visible in Ursa Major. It's bigger than the Milky Way and only superficially similar. It is an APOD image and as such the same old stuff applies: click the image once to view the APOD information page. Click the image on that page for the higher resolution view.

Still More: BMFA

Nobody should hear about Martha Wainwright for the first time without the chance to hear the amazing, passionately profane song she wrote about her dad. (Loudon "Dead Skunk" Wainwright.)

While I'm At It

(Find it here. I've had to replace the embed link which has been removed.)

It was through this performance is that I first became aware of Martha Wainwright. The soundtrack album to this film is pretty constantly in the CD player in my car.

Martha and Adrian

That is, Martha Wainwright and Adrian Belew covering Bowie's Heroes. Who better than Adrian to perfectly cop that sustainy Robert Fripp sound? And he's not even playing a Les Paul!

Adrian has played guitar for David Bowie, and in what must be among the greatest compliments to a guitar players skills had a gig with Frank Zappa, followed by a long-standing (I assume continuing until now) seat in King Crimson - the only (non-bass) guitar player to have played with Fripp on a continuing basis.

Martha has an impressive musical lineage. Brother Rufus Wainwright and she were raised by mom Kate McGarrigle and her sister Anna McGarrigle. Dad is Loudon Wainwright III.

Lack of Preexisting Postings

Ok, I have multiple "preexisting conditions." I work as a contractor so my health insurance tenuously hangs on my wife's state of employment. I care a great deal about health care and and don't post nearly enough about the topic. In lieu of actually having said anything substantive, I offer this bit about Elizabeth Edwards, against whose health problems mine pale, somewhat.

Jennifer Oullette on the LHC

Over at Cocktail Party Physics she says a lot more than merely calling them "idiots." Unlike some.

Julian Sanchez on Hillary on "the Math"

I'll admit to a bias in favor of geek humor. My Phil 101 teacher (also the guy at the head of my introductory course in symbolic logic) had me reading Gödel, Escher, Bach when its "trade paperback" edition was initially published. (i.e., a long time ago.) I write software for a living. The only meaning behind the name of this blog is, well there is no meaning: the name just reflects my own particular amusement at self-reflexive labels. At one point in my life, I thought doing mathematical proofs was entertainment. All of this to establish that I'm not objective about this sort of thing. Still this, by Julian Sanchez, is the funniest damn thing I've read in a long time. Your mileage may vary.

What Am I Missing?

David Freddoso:

Meanwhile, the largest turbine manufacturer is...General Electric, and by a mile. They now own half the market for turbines, and nearly half of generating capacity.

So don't be surprised when you see GE lobbying for carbon-cap legislation that would effectively subsidize wind-power (even where it is already profitable). Green is also the color of money.

I don't want to put myself in the position of defending GE, of all things. But what exactly is the message here? David imagines that GE might, at some future time, begin lobbying in its own interest? Isn't that something which Republicans, particularly economic libertarian types, are in favor of? I guess if you can associate the label "Green" with something, then it's, by definition, specifically evil, and we must be, even in the context of evidence-free imaginings of the future actions of putative allies, vigilantly guarding against it.