Simplifying Dr. Paul’s Foreign Policy (Again)

Of the candidates in the debate last night, Ron Paul is the only one who advocates leaving Iraq immediately. Here’s a simple analogy.

If you walk into a nest of hornets, they are bound to attack you. We’ll assume that you didn’t know you were walking into a hornet nest before, although that isn’t necessarily the case here. Even though you are bigger and stronger and have a shotgun, you are going to get stung–repeatedly.

What do you do? I see two options, and they both start with getting the hell away from the hornets. The only decision to be made is whether or not to come back with a can full of gas and completely incinerate them. To stand there in the middle of them and try to shoot them with the shotgun is idiotic. If you do that, you deserve to get stung.

Here’s some video from last night’s debate.

[youtube 8BB3NrSpRGE]

Beer Drinking Terrorists On The Run

Yet another story that would be hilarious if it wasn’t true by way of TheLibertyPapers–this one about a group of hashers (runners/beer drinkers) who were suspected of terrorism after mapping out a course using colored flour in an IKEA parking lot. The full story on these felons was posted on MSNBC. Jack Bauer would be proud of this great example of government at its best.

Mayoral spokeswoman Jessica Mayorga said the city plans to seek restitution from the Salchows, who are due in court Sept. 14.

“You see powder connected by arrows and chalk, you never know,” she said. “It could be a terrorist, it could be something more serious. We’re thankful it wasn’t, but there were a lot of resources that went into figuring that out.”

That’s a great policy. Any time you see something even remotely odd, go ahead and assume that it is a terrorist at work and evacuate the entire area immediately. If you’re wrong (or, ahem, just ignorant), it is pretty safe to assume that someone else is responsible and should pay.

Another reason to live on the west side

At 5:00pm on 8/21/2007, Dean is back over the open waters in the Bay of Campeche.  Like many before, the Yucatan has put a hurting on Dean, but it has survived.  Winds are down to 80mph and the pressure now stands at 960mb.  For this one day only…..it is safe to drink the water in Cancun because it has all fallen from the sky.

 Do you have a guess where Dean will go next?  The NHC thinks it’s pretty straight forward that the other east coast will get cleaned up with a Cat 2 storm Wednesday afternoon.  Can they be right about the same storm twice? 

Also, don’t look at Mexico too long.  Invest 92L has formed south of Bermuda Island and has a chance to be a weak hurricane while hitting the space coast of Florida.  If that comes becomes true the media will go crazy!

Fox News — Sensationalist?

I just went to our cafeteria here at work to get some coffee and saw this “headline” on Fox News…”Bloggers a Threat?”

To be fair, I (thankfully) couldn’t hear what they were saying, only see the alert they had scrolling across the bottom of the screen. But are these guys serious? I used to think that the whole blogosphere vs. mainstream media thing was sort of a ploy by bloggers to make themselves seem a little more important than they are. Now I’m not so sure.

Even locally and regionally, there have been incidents like this, that show the divide is very real, and the tension is building on both sides.

In general, I think local news outlets do a decent job at reporting. But there really isn’t much analysis of local news except in the blogosphere. True, there are editorials in the newspaper, but without competition from the blogosphere there would be no balance of opinions. In this sense, there is a real market (need?) for local blogging, and I think that may scare local media.

On the other end of the spectrum, there is national coverage, with several 24 hour stations and analysis of the news–infotainment. Large media outlets have a lot ($$$) on the line, and cannot afford to only report the news. They have to entertain their viewers to keep them glued and keep the ad dollars rolling in. It seems to me that they are afraid of the blogosphere because they are actually getting scooped on stories that matter and are losing journalistic credibility. Others **cough O’Reilly cough** just can’t seem to take the heat of competition.

But I could be wrong.

Margie Loyd Victim of Discrimination?

What?

From WBIR:

The cruise, Isaacs explained, was intended to only hold the reservation the P-card. He said Isaacs immediately notified the finance department and reimbursed the county.

I think that should read “Loyd immediately notified…”

How exactly was this discrimination? At what place of employment are you allowed to steal borrow money to take a cruise, pay it back after you get caught, then keep your job?

The lobster dinner–okay I can see how she was maybe doing as she was told there, but c’mon!

Now that the old loyalties are apparently broken, there’s a good chance the gloves are about to come off. My guess is that we’ll hear a lot more in the coming weeks about how Knox County gov’ment actually operates, and more heads will roll.

It is entertaining and sad at the same time.

One Gorilla at a Time

All the talk about Barry Bonds has apparently quieted all talk about Chris Benoit. I guess the media only has so many minutes of each day it is willing to devote to steroid junkies?

Somewhere, a kid is saying, “see…steroids can help you do really good things too.”

The real question…will anyone ever be World Champion 16 times like Ric Flair? And is so, can they do so without the use of steroids? In my estimation, no way.

My Newest Feed — MyBootsNMe

Although I encourage EVERYONE to subscribe to my RSS feed (it’s free after all), I’m generally pretty picky when choosing to subscribe to a blog. Yesterday was an exception. I came across MyBootsNMe and browsed a little. I was pretty impressed and subscribed immediately. Great photos, great writing, and a pleasure to read. Check it out.

It is rare that I will subscribe to a single blog like this. Usually, I’ll have my interest in something peaked and subscribe to 10 or more new feeds on that topic within a couple of days. Invariably, most of these don’t stay on my list for more than a week or two because I’m either bored with them or they aren’t putting out much good new material.

That reminds me of another reason Google Reader is great. It provides you with stats that actually tell you how often a feed is updated and how many of the items you are actually reading. It makes it pretty easy to decide what should stay and go on your list. I try to keep my list of feeds pretty short while still spread across subjects I’m interested in.

Vince McMahon on Today

I saw Vince’s interview with Meredith Viera at the gym this morning. She pretty much grilled him about the Chris Benoit tragedy. Vince did his part and (correctly) portrayed Benoit as a monster, but it doesn’t seem like the media is going to let this steroid angle go.

The seem pretty set on making this out to be “roid rage”. Over a three day period? I don’t think so.

Now to the bigger question…is steroid use rampant in professional wrestling? Uh, you think? Does that question really even need to be asked?

Seriously, if you know so little about steroids and the signs of steroid use that you need to ask that question about anyone on the WWE roster, you don’t have the adequate background knowledge to ask if this was an instance of roid rage.

And again, why is the mainstream media even covering this beyond the published facts of the case? Yes, it is a horrible tragedy, and I can see why the people who actually follow pro wrestling want to know more about it, but outside of that small market it is just more sensationalist journalism.

In other late breaking headlines…Did you hear that Paris was on Larry King? Did you hear the iPhone is coming out in a week?

Ron Paul’s Appeal to the Technoclass

No one can deny Ron Paul’s support and presence online is pretty amazing. How can a guy be so huge in the online community, yet still considered an outsider in the mainstream conversation? I’ve written before about the issues that mainstream media has dealing with the Paul campaign, but it is frustrating to be on the pro-Paul side of the argument and see him basically shut out of serious debate in the broad media. Probably the most frustrating are the accusations that the online support for Dr. Paul is actually very small and being perpetuated by a few puppet masters who are using their technical expertise to generate hype.

The fact is, Ron Paul’s support in the blogosphere and in other online arenas is very real and very large. While it may seem unlikely or unbelievable to the mainstream, there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for the online community’s sudden interest and large support of a single candidate where none has existed before. For the most part, the web is still driven by computer geeks and engineering types–LOGICAL THINKERS, FACT SEEKERS, AND PROBLEM SOLVERS–The Technoclass.

The ideas Ron Paul presents in debates and interview strike a chord with the technoclass for a few simple reasons. While most candiates base their platform on party loyalty, emotion, or poll results, Dr. Paul’s platform is based on logic, facts, structure, and actually addressing the issues. Ron Paul’s ideas follow the same line of thinking that we engage in every day–Identify the problem (issue), determine the factors that contribute to the problem (events that lead to the issue), determine the limitations of possible solutions (the Constitution), implement the best solution.

So why hasn’t the technoclass chosen a candidate for widespread support before this election cycle? Well, there’s a reasonable explanation for that as well. Never before, at least since the web has become widely popular, has a candidate taken the approach of presenting reasonable arguments and solutions to problems. For the technoclass, often the most reasonable course of action when no feasible solution to a problem has been presented is to do nothing.

That’s exactly what the technoclass has chosen to do, until now.

**UPDATE**
Of course, I could be wrong…dopplegangr has an alternate explanation.

Venezuela, Can We Have Your Soap Opera Stars?

Isn’t it ironic that celebrities and “big media” news anchors in Venezuela are leading movements against a socialist regime, while a large number of the same crown in the U.S. seem to be encouraging movement towards socialism and governmental regulation?

Soap opera stars leading a march may not sound like a big deal, but soap stars in South America are the equivalent to movie stars here.

From Reuters:

Waving flags with the logo of RCTV, demonstrators packed the streets of the capital where news anchors and soap opera stars slammed the imminent closure of the opposition channel.