The drip, drip, drip theory

Negative war coverage adds up.

[T]he overall MSM coverage of the war in Iraq has had a negative net impact on the opinions and perceptions of many Americans regarding the daily events taking place there. ... So in terms of general news practice and protocol, there is an imbalance coming out of Iraq in the coverage.

The aggregation of the drip-drip-drip is what killed the public support of the war. The negative effect was not as instantaneously felt or as potent this time as it was when TV nightly news was in its "Uncle Walter" infancy (and before 24-7 repetition of newspaper headlines news networks) during Vietnam era. It is also inevitably true that bureaucratic and political mismanagement from all sides of the aisles has prevented the war from being executed in a more precise and efficient manner, but you go to war with the "slam dunk" Intel agencies, "Peace Dividend" military and Marx-lite Political Parties you have, not the ones you want.

Who knew that we had actually won the Tet offensive? Who knew that a generation of North Vietnamese men had virtually been wiped out by American forces? Who knew that no Americans were fighting in Vietnam when we pulled the plug?

Can nothing be done?

Miserable handwriting

I can't even address an envelope. Not so you could read it, I mean.

[I]t seems strange that I have a good talent for drawing -- a strong line -- but miserable penmanship. You would think if I can draw a rose it should be easy to draw the letter "e" and not make it look a bit like "k" or maybe "i" or "o." But my handwriting is so bad it almost amounts to a secret code. The problem is even I am not always successful at decoding it.

It's always helpful to know who to blame, and I blame my bad handwriting on my father. When I was a schoolchild I had difficulty writing in cursive, so my father brought me a used typewriter from his law office. I loved that typewriter to death, but never learned to write cursive well.

My father had weird notions of child-rearing, and since I was his oldest child, I got the benefit of most of them. For instance, I had to sit at the table until I had finished my dinner. Since both of us were stubborn, I often sat there until bedtime. I also had a kind of fragile stomach, so if forced to eat something, I would--well, you figure it out.

One of the weirdest was of his notions was letting a child (me) make her own decision about surgery. The doctor recommended that my tonsils be taken out. I was not in favor, and he said that if I didn't want to I didn't have to. If the current climate of opinion had prevailed in those days, he would have probably been arrested for child abuse; all children had their tonsils out in those days. But not me.

I suppose if I had had some life-threatening disease my decision would have been overruled.

Wanted: a prayer for computer problems...

sought by network administrator.

Also by the rest of us.

I chose the wrong career

Top civil service earners in Boston are police.

Police in Boston were by far the city's top earners last year, with 25 Police Department employees earning more than $200,000, nearly four times the number who made that amount in 2005, according to city payroll figures released to the Globe.

Of the employees last year, all but one -- Superintendent of Schools Michael G. Contompasis, who made $221,574 -- were police officers, the records show.

Tip from Conservative UAW guy.

Explain to me again why this guy is on the public payroll

...let alone in a leadership position.

Courtesy of gazizza.

Traveling, with or without a donkey

The AAUW is having a used book sale in Concord Mall. I managed to spend $13.50, and would have spent more except I bought as many books as I could carry. I got a Time-Life history of ancient Rome for a dollar, not much text, but enough, and very nice illustrations, including maps. I love maps, particularly historic maps, where Marseille is Massilia and Naples is Neapolis. This is a bathroom book to my way of thinking.

You've heard of coffee table books? I like to keep a nice book in the bathroom for, well, extended reading. I've gotten halfway through ancient Rome in this fashion. I also practice reading French phrases aloud in the bathroom. Doesn't everyone?

But I digress. I bought a book I've always wanted to read, Robert Louis Stevenson's Travels with a Donkey. I should mention here that I love books about traveling to damned uncomfortable places, and Travels with a Donkey fits the bill exactly. I myself don't want to travel to damned uncomfortable places at all; European capitals are more my style, or what would be my style if I had a style. I like others to serve as surrogates for me and go to these frightful places. In R L Stevenson's day, anywhere off the beaten track was likely to be uncomfortable and primitive, and lodging was apt to involve sharing a bed with a stranger or two. This suited Stevenson just fine. He was a man who took life as it came, more or less.

One of my favorite of this genre is Motoring with Mohammed, by Eric Hansen, about his travels in Yemen. I defy anyone to read the first page of this book and not be captivated. Baghdad without a Map by Tony Hurwitz is another. It's about the Baghdad of Saddam Hussein, and other Arab countries where the author sojourned.

For some reason, Englishmen are more likely than most to go where no man has been before. Uncomfortable places are probably all in a day's work for those who endured the rigors of English public schools. Redmond O"Hanlon's adventures in Borneo are an example of a couple of Brits venturing into a land of ticks, fleas, cholera and other hazards and living to tell the tale.

Younger daughter as a teenager, looking teenage and pensive

Discriminating against illegal voters

It's unfair to minorities.

Why shouldn't everybody vote early and often? In many American cities, most notably Chicago, people rise from their graves to vote. It makes a nice little outing for these poor dead people, who otherwise don't have much fun.

Spoilsports!

A one-man protest

It works for me.

Accentuating the positive

My mother only believed in one kind of news: good news. Bad news did not get delivered. People who divorced relatives of ours were never referred to again, as if they had never existed. Even if they left a couple of kids behind in their wake.

Even the dead were forgotten as soon as possible.

For instance, I was a teenager before I realized that my mother had had two siblings who died young. They were never discussed, their graves were never visited, no-one was even named after them. It was as if they deserved to be forgotten for having had the bad taste to die in childhood.

When my grandmother was very ill, my mother's weekly bulletins went like this:

Me: How is she?

My mother, judiciously: I think she's a little better.

Every week she got a little better, until she died. She had improved herself into another plane of existence, so to speak.

My favorite celebrity

is Britney Spears.

Her message seems to be: "Okay, I'm a low-rent, trashy, rich, famous celebrity with lots of money. Deal with it!"

Contrast this with the high-minded, hectoring attitude of stars like Robert Redford, Susan Sarandon, Sean Penn, etc. Britney is not telling anyone what to do. She's not telling us to protest the war, drop our babies, shave our heads, or get tattoos. Nor is she going around spewing hatred and then heading for the rehab. She goes in and out of rehabs as often as I go in and out of my bathroom.

I find her attitude refreshing.

Frightening, if true

and I am afraid it's all too true.

Courtesy of lead and gold.

If we can't count on getting the truth from the press, how can we make judgments? Answer: we can't.

Read the whole thing.

Happy birthday, George

Carnival of the Insanities is up

Lots of good stuff.

This makes my blood boil

A callous disregard for human life, as long as it is American:

American transports flying badly wounded U.S. troops back to the United States, often ask European air controllers for a more direct flight path through European air space. This is in order to get the wounded soldier or marine to the American hospital more quickly. This is particularly useful when the aircraft have been turned into a flying ECU (Emergency Care Unit), and doctors are actually treating the seriously wounded in flight. The European air controllers rarely allow the direct flight. It would mean some more work for them, but saying "no" is another way to stick it to those bastards who removed Saddam Hussein from power, and continue to fight Iraqis who want to destroy democracy in Iraq.

No emotion has a shorter shelf life than gratitude.

Courtesy of seraphic secret.

Stella awards

for the year's most frivolous successful lawsuit.

This year's favorite could easily be Mr. Merv Grazinski of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Mr. Grazinski purchased a brand new 32-foot Winnebago motor home. On his first trip home, having driven onto the freeway, he set the cruise control at 70 mph and calmly left the drivers seat to go into the back and make himself a cup of coffee. Not surprisingly, the R.V. left the freeway, crashed and overturned. Mr. Grazinski sued Winnebago for not advising him in the owner's manual that he couldn't actually do this. The jury awarded him $1,750,000 plus a new motor home. The company actually changed their manuals on the basis of this suit, just in case there were any other complete morons buying their recreation vehicles.

Unholy alliance

The Islamists and the lefties get together:

This leftist-Muslim partnership exists not just on the streets, but in the protest movement's heart. Britain's Stop the War coalition, which has organised more than 15 nationwide protests and hundreds of smaller events, was largely forged by two small, intensely committed bodies—the far-left Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and the Muslim Association of Britain, which is close to the international Muslim Brotherhood. These tiny groups have co-ordinated street protests by up to 1m people.

Separated at birth?

Is Jackie whats her face running for president of France?

How to be safe

Hints from the Department of Homeland Security.

Depressing...

But not unexpected.