A Portal Into Another Dimension

Join me now as we travel to the Huffington Post. Scroll down past the teaser for Absinthe and the one with the headline about having a three-way with God (not making it up). See this week's "little kid steals grandma's truck and wrecks it" story? Watch the video if you like; I didn't. Check out the comments. They're like flipping over a rock. Every aspect of the child's life is dissected, from his given name to his weight to his home situation to wild speculation about the ages of his parents and grandparents.

Great. No conscience, no sense of right and wrong, ignoramus grammar, and
fat as a pig. They ought to just preregister him at the county jail because
that's where he'll end up. Grandmother has custody. That means mama is mostly
likely a druggie. Where's dad? And grandmama drives a big ole gaz-guzzling SUV.
I don't feel sorry for the family; they raised him that way. Videogames, lack of
supervision, bad diet. So many things wrong with this picture I can't even stand
it. They ought to start saving up for attorney's fees.

Oh, and they're real worked up about that SUV.

Part of the reason I didn't look at the vid was I wanted to see if I could figure out what demographic the kid was part of just based upon the comments. We are a post-racial society, after all. Mr. Obama says so, and then Mrs. Obama smacks him in the head. How's she been, anyway? Haven't seen her in a while. At any rate, sixteen comments down the page and TA DA!!

This kid's got some of the qualities and tendencies of Your Typical
ReThugLieCon. Now if only he was white (or Clarence Thomas), he'd be afforded
the opportunities to hone his craft.

OOooo. Twofer. But he's not bigoted. At all. And that's not even the first post to blame 'society.' My favorite, and not just because he accidentally points out what might be a root cause of the little boy's resentment by misspelling his name:

So Latarina was out for a joy ride .... even though he is not of age
for a Driver's License, nor of age to get Car Insurance, nor is he of age to own
a car. But I bet anyone his driving abilities performed alot more better than of
those who are adults that goes out drinking and then drives. Sure, it shows he's
not growing up in a great environment that teaches him to be more disciplined
within his natural surroundings, a kid with no father figure perhaps, nor a
mother who teaches him right from wrong. This just clearly shows that, this is
the direction to where a country is going because the politicians are more
worried about corporate interests and their bank accounts, even at a time of
war. They could of done better things with their war money, such as give a kid
like Latarian a better living environment, not nooooooooooo .... that didn't
happen.Remember now, oppression is a dysfunctional disease brought to you, by
the country's political infrastructure.

I'm sorry; your what hurts? Shouldn't you be lecturing at a community college somewhere right now? Sociology, perhaps, or maybe pre-law? These are the people we share the roads with, the people blocking the aisle at the grocery store who give you that look when you try to go around them. The people who won't take their clothes out at the laundrymat when the machine is done running, like they're renting real estate. These people vote. They think they're right. About everything, all the time. Good thing that's funny.

Fine. We'll Just Sit Here in the Dark, Then.

Syria's ambassador to the U.S. -- who sounds like a real fun guy, by the way -- says the CIA's full of crap. Well, not really. He was... diplomatic about it. Imad Moustapha said the photographs the CIA had that were allegedly taken inside a Syrian nuclear facility were fabricated. "The photos presented to me yesterday were ludicrous, laughable." Okey Dokey. What was the building for, then? Hello? Israel bombed it last year, the Syrians promptly bulldozed the ruins and built a larger building on top of it. They won't say what it's for.

Other annoying countries like N. Korea and Iran like to pretend that they need reactors to generate nuclear power, but it's argued that the reactors are really for generating weapons-grade plutonium. Here's the quick-and-dirty on how inspectors might figure that out. I'm not a scientist. Real, actual scientists are invited to correct me. Preferably over cocktails.

From what I just read, the difference is in how short a time a fuel rod is used in a reactor. The objective in power generation is to turn the turbines. Nuclear power plants use steam, and the heat to boil the water to make the steam is generated through nuclear reaction. The fuel rods are made of Uranium 238. During the course of the reaction the uranium isotope picks up an extra neutron and decays into Plutonium 239. You have the option of removing the fuel rods at any point in the reaction process. If you were generating heat for steam you would allow the rods to remain in place until all reactivity tapered off. You would no longer have much uranium 238 and you would have the higher isotopes of plutonium (240,241, and so on). P239 is the one you want for weapons, and if you remove the fuel rods earlier in the process that's what you'll have. So I guess if you have more uranium being expended in a given period of time at a given reactor than 'should be' you have a reason to ask what they're using it for.

Meanwhile, back in Syria, Mr. Moustapha isn't saying what the reactor is for. I guess it doesn't have wires hooked up to it. Bit of an oversight, that. He says there's no military checkpoints, air defenses or even a fence, so it can't be a sensitive facility. It's in the middle of the desert where it's flat and there's a whole lot of nothing. Good luck sneaking up on it, and who needs a fence? Anti-aircraft defenses would be like asking to get bombed again. So what's it for, Moose?

I Suppose "Murdering Crapweasels" is Out.

Style tips from our enlightened betters at the Associated Press. It would be funny if I didn't think it might actually kill us to be nice.

Some do's and don't's from the National Counterterrorism Center:

_ Don't use the term "jihadist," which has broader religious meanings beyond war, or "mujahedeen," which refers to holy warriors.

_ Do say "violent extremist" or "terrorist."

_ Don't use the term "al-Qaida movement," because this makes al-Qaida seem like a legitimate political movement.

_ Don't use "Islamo-fascism" and other terms that could cause religious offense.

_ Do use the term "totalitarian."

_ Don't label groups simply as "Muslim."

_ Do use descriptive terms to define how a group fits into society. For example: South Asian youth and Arab opinion leaders.

_ Don't use "caliphate" when explaining al-Qaida's goals, as this has positive implications.

_ Don't use "salafi," "Wahhabist," "sufi," "ummah" and other words from Islamic theology unless you are able to discuss their varied meanings. Particularly avoid using "ummah" to mean the Muslim world, as it is a theological term.

Politics Made Simple

One one side we have a Harvard-educated lawyer married to a harpy that's also a lawyer, running against a Yale-educated harpy lawyer married to a lawyer. Whoever wins will be running against a guy married to a good-looking blonde who owns a beer distributorship. I can't believe we even have to have an election.

Elian Times 437

Starting in 1983 the McMartin Preschool in Manhattan Beach, CA became the center of the largest, most expensive criminal trial in U.S. history. Three hundred and sixty children were deemed by the State's social workers to have been victims of abuse at the hands of the McMartin family. Lurid tales of satanic rituals and sexual abuse made international headlines. After seven years and $15 million dollars not a single conviction was obtained. The entire thing was a hoax, claiming the livelihoods of the McMartins and the innocence of the children involved.

On April 19, 1993, a Federal raid on the Branch Davidian home in Waco, Texas resulted in the deaths of 87 people when the building was burned to the ground. The rationale behind the raid was alleged to be the illegal stockpiling of weapons, but what brought in the tanks and the Bradleys was an allegation of child abuse. The Davidians midwived and homeschooled. Their children had little to no contact with those representatives of State authority euphemistically referred to as "the outside world." There was no way to prove the children had been or were being mistreated. It was impossible to make that determination from their charred remains.

Fifteen years later we have Waco without the flames. On the basis of a now-discredited allegation of abuse the State of Texas has raided the home and ranch of Yearning for Zion, a fundamentalist Mormon group in Eldorado, Texas. A phone call to a family violence shelter (not the police) purportedly from "Sarah Jessop Barlow" alleged sexual abuse was occurring at the ranch. After removing 437 children from the custody of their parents -- in some cases lying to mothers and children about where they'd go and if they'd stay together -- "Sarah Jessop Barlow" has yet to make her presence known. This is in spite of several identifying characteristics, such as her pregnancy, she gave to authorities. A 33-year-old woman in Colorado Springs is currently being investigated for placing the call. I thought I'd get that into print as it has already dropped down the memory hole.

Of course the State's argument for its thuggery is "It's for the children. We must protect the children." Towards that end Social Services has removed them from the only life they've ever known, interrogated them without benefit of counsel, separated them from their support network, and plans have been made to scatter them in a diaspora that encompasses the great State of Texas. They've promised to "try" to keep siblings in foster care together. That seems unlikely, as in many cases there are five or more siblings. An argument can be made that since the children were raised communally -- by the village, as it were, that all 437 of them perceive themselves as siblings.

The life of a foster child is very stressful. You know that at any time you can be returned like a pair of shoes by people you've grown to trust who are much too nice to tell you why. You're like a leased car; you receive the bare minimum of required maintenance and no improvements. If your table manners are abysmal, if you're lacking in the social graces, if you can't make heads or tails of Algebra, it's no matter. Your grades or behavior won't reflect upon your foster family since everybody knows you're not 'theirs.' In a few months you'll be someone else's problem. And if you're not lucky enough to get placed with a family you get to live in a group home, an experience I need not describe to anyone who's read "Lord of the Flies." It is a soul-eroding grind of a life for which you are perpetually expected to be grateful. There has never been designed a more mentally abusive system than that orchestrated by the State under the guise of protecting children.

This farce will continue into the indefinite future. The children will never be returned to the only home they've known. How long do you suppose it will take to perform 437 DNA tests? Most of them will be grown by the time the State can even figure out if it's been the recipient of a prank phone call. But the State's objective has already been accomplished: to remove those children from the weird scary Christians. That's why there's been nary a peep from the thousands of communes, group marriages, same-sex unions and polyamorists. They believe being raised in a fundamentalist Christian manner is more damaging to kids than being raised in foster care, and the State seems to agree.

The purpose of all those DNA tests is to determine which if any of the children were the result of a union with an underage girl and an adult man. In this setting a pregnant teenage girl is evidence of a crime. Let the exact same pregnant teenage girl turn up at Planned Parenthood for an abortion and she is embraced. No one would dream of asking her who drove the car she rode there in, much less who knocked her up. And polygamy is horrible and oppressive, unless the women are in charge. Cloaking the practice in religion is despicable, unless they're Muslim.

In fifteen years all the further we've come is nobody gets set on fire this time. The kids at Waco may have had it better, though. They got to stay with their family until the end.

The LAT Picks on the Cripple

Ralph Vartabedian (ralph.vartabedian@latimes.com) is an extremely tough man. He laughs at danger with a boisterous, hearty guffaw. He thinks those guys on "Deadliest Catch" are pansies, that oil rig workers are mincing pantywaists, that the ice road truckers need to suck it up. He must; he also thinks John McCain, a fighter pilot who was shot down and spent five years as a POW in Viet Nam (thank you, sir), isn't disabled enough to rate a tax-free disability pension. After all, McCain has said he felt well enough to hike in the Grand Canyon. One wonders how ill one of Ralph's children would have to be in order to miss a day of school. I don't think chicken pox would cut it. Just out of curiosity, does John Kerry get a pension for his heiney-full of rice?

In the same story, Vartabedian worries that McCain might be too disabled to be President, given his history of skin cancer. One of the Left's secular saints, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was wheelchair-bound from polio. He seemed to work out OK enough. John Kennedy, a fellow veteran, had back trouble. Some days the pain was so bad he could barely cheat on his wife. So which is it? Is McCain too old and broke down, or not old and broke down enough?

Wierd science

From the BBC:

Muslim scientists and clerics have called for the adoption of Mecca time to replace GMT, arguing that the Saudi city is the true centre of the Earth.
Mecca is the direction all Muslims face when they perform their daily prayers. The call was issued at a conference held in the Gulf state of Qatar under the title: Mecca, the Centre of the Earth, Theory and Practice.
One geologist argued that unlike other longitudes, Mecca's was in perfect alignment to magnetic north. He said the English had imposed GMT on the rest of the world by force when Britain was a big colonial power, and it was about time that changed.

It figures that the shot across the bow is a thrown rock.