Ok, if you have not seen it yet… check it out! Good for a laugh

I need to post more, it is turning into the smallholder show.

Back to the trenches…..

Update from the Maximum Leader: Yes, you do.

Steven Den Beste writes the following, part of a much longer post [his repetition of “The Truth Is” is a reference to a Bloom County Sunday strip from years ago]:

The Truth Is that in the last two years one of the strongest currents in international diplomacy and rhetoric has been Tu Quoque. If you are vulnerable to a certain criticism, preempt that criticism by accusing your enemies of that same failure before they accuse you. One benefit is that you may muddy the waters enough so that the entire accusation is devalued, and even if you don’t, when someone accuses you of that same failing it makes them look feeble and reactive.

It doesn’t matter if there’s any basis for the preemptive criticism, or whether it makes any sense. The point is to defuse the entire issue. One example is the ongoing characterization of Israeli action against the Palestinians as “terrorism” by Arab leaders, so as to try to deflect attention from the fact that the Palestinian “freedom fighters” are the ones truly engaged in terrorist attacks.

And now a monumental example of Tu Quoque is beginning to emerge. There has been a steady drumbeat of accusations by the leftist lunatic fringe that the real reason the Bush administration wanted to invade Afghanistan and Iraq was to advance the business interests of certain oil companies. It’s never actually made any sense; f all the Bush administration were really interested in was oil, it would have been far easier to make a deal with Saddam than to invade.

But it’s also becoming more and more apparent that an appallingly large amount of the vocal international opposition to Anglo-American plans for invasion of Iraq actually opposed the invasion because they were making out like bandits, as beneficiaries of the “Oil for Food” program. And apparently the two nations which made out the best were UNSC veto powers France and Russia, who by extraordinary coincidence also were the most intransigent opponents in the UNSC of the invasion.

It’s the latest demonstration of the corruption, incompetence, and venality of the UN as an organization, but by no means the only one. Yet it is still the UN which opponents of the war turn to in their rhetoric as solution to the “problem” of the Anglo-American occupation of Iraq.

The Truth Is that anti-war leftists actually do think that America should “cut and run”, just as Spain now has. But they’re not so disconnected as to believe that they can actually sell that honestly. So their rhetoric is that the US and British should transfer control over Iraq to the UN, and largely withdraw their own forces in favor of “international forces” to take their place. But they no more believe that the UN would handle that job well than I do. The Truth Is that they believe that the only way they can convince the majority of Americans to pull out is to try to pretend that America would be replaced by someone else who would “finish the job”, even though there’s now damned good reason to believe that UN control over Iraq would be an utter catastrophe for Iraqis.

The Truth Is that many of them recognize that the primary justification for our invasion was to gain the opportunity to establish a liberal democracy there, in hopes of infecting the entire region with liberal ideas (using “liberal” in its traditional meaning) and of “destabilizing” the entire region. They recognize that to be dangers to themselves or to close friends of theirs, and hope to prevent it. If Iraq disintegrates into civil war, or if it is once again ruled by a brutal dictator, then the Iraqi people will again suffer but these leaders would all heave a sigh of relief. (And who knows? They might even be able to get back onto the gravy train again.)

The AirMarshal linked me to an alternative, and perhaps more pragmatic, point of view, here.

_

Director,

Alas, I do not get days off like you folks in regular jobs. I have, however, been able to use a lull in paper grading to comply with the Maximum Leader’s directive to post — I would suggest that, when the revolution comes, perhaps only the poet and I will avoid the purge.

I forgot to post this earlier.

page 23, fifth sentence:

“Centralization in agriculture causes huge transportation costs.”

– Joel Salatin, “Salad bar Beef”

I am proud to announce that the Minister of Propaganda has been hired to direct the final chapter of the Men In Black trilogy.

I don’t want to do any spoilers, but the premise is that an Alien Armada arrives in the Solar System and demands that MIB “Deliver Jaime Pressly.”

To Sweet Seasons Farm.

SEOUL — North Korean ruler Kim Jong Il’s surprise summit in China last week took the top off of at least one of the Pyongyang government’s best-kept secrets: The Dear Leader is losing his famed big hair.

The rest is at the Washington Post.

Richard Cohen agrees that Kerry is a piss-poor candidate. His example: Kerry’s flubbed handling of Medalgate.

Excerpt:

The situation was ready-made for humor, for an arid dismissal. Kerry was the hero — Silver Star, Bronze Star, three Purple Hearts — and the president had nothing to show for the Vietnam years except some nights he would like to forget…

But instead of dismissing Bush and Cheney with a lighthearted putdown of the sort that would prompt Bush to seek therapy, Kerry got angry. He waxed indignant. He said, in the manner of Rumpelstiltskin stomping the ground, “I’m not going to stand for it!” In doing so, he mimicked Bob Dole, who lost it entirely during the 1988 New Hampshire primary when he scowled at George H.W. Bush and snarled, “Stop lying about my record.” For Dole, this was not good television.

Enjoy Every Sandwich has a dead-on analysis of the Presidential Election. I find his criticisms of both Bush and Kerry very telling.

Go read it (scroll down to April 26).

Shoo!

Looks like the Minister of Agriculture took two days off of work to celebrate his birthday.

Glove puppetry (http://www.guardian.co.uk/crime/article/0,2763,1202260,00.html): Another reason the Maximum Leader should be interned in a compost pile.

If things work, I’ll have a picture of my boys frolicking in the upper pasture posted below.

This makes me smile every evening. They know the sound of my truck so start mooing when I get home from work. I mix their bottles and walk back outside. At this point, they gallop to the barn like eager little kids. If you look at the smaller ones on the right, you can see how the twins are smaller than the others.

No, I‚ÄövÑv¥m not talking about the boot shoot at Meehanschloss. (Note to my fellow bloggers: I have pictures of the boots shoot and am not afraid to post them if anyone blogs about ticks. Ever heard of the phrase ‚ÄövÑv Mutually Assured Destruction?‚ÄövÑvp It‚ÄövÑv¥s not just for mad dictators anymore!)

(Looking at those pictures, I am amazed at how young and thin we look. How did we stay so slim when at least half our calories were consumed in liquid form?)

(Many posts ago, the Maximum Leader explained that he didn‚ÄövÑv¥t go into politics because politics was no longer about ideas. Cow manure. He didn‚ÄövÑv¥t go into politics because he knew his liberal friends had pictures of him drinking beer out of footwear that would mysteriously arrive at the Washington Post as soon as he had sewn up the nomination.)

At any rate, here is the real reason for this post.

I had previously argued that animal rights advocates were misguided partially because they seemed to believe that animals lived in a Utopian environment. The Analphilosopher has handed me my head on a platter with his April 26 ‚ÄövÑv Confusions and Fallacies About Animals, Part III‚ÄövÑvp post.

While his strawman setup of:

‚ÄövÑv Animals kill each other, so why can‚ÄövÑv¥t we kill them?‚ÄövÑvp

Doesn‚ÄövÑv¥t address the full nuance of my argument that humane farming actually decreases the suffering inevitable in ‚ÄövÑv Old Bitch Nature,‚ÄövÑvp it is close enough to cause me a bit of intellectual discomfort. He continues:

Aw, the heck with it: go to his site, bump up his traffic numbers and come back. I‚ÄövÑv¥ll wait.

Back already?

So here is the deal. My argument that farming can be more humane is skewered by KBJ. Try transposing my stance on the morality of killing and eating animals to the human realm. If ‚ÄövÑv mother nature‚ÄövÑvp is shown to be analogous to, say, just to make our example have the greatest emotional impact, a concentration camp, would you find the following argument persuasive?

‚ÄövÑv Well, I am giving a better life to the Jews in our humane camp than they would otherwise have in the other camps,‚ÄövÑvp claimed OberKommandant Kleinhalter, ‚ÄövÑv We offer our workers health care and nutritious food so they can serve our purposes. Of course, we do kill them in the end, but we strive to do it quickly and without pain.‚ÄövÑvp

I, for one, wouldn‚ÄövÑv¥t want to defend the morality of that position. So KBJ has me squirming. This is not to say that I am about to betray my Forty-Eighter Wisconsin Dairy Farmer roots and become a vegan; he still hasn‚ÄövÑv¥t convinced me that animals have a claim to moral standing. But his destruction of one element of my defense is well crafted and convincing. I will have to rethink things a bit‚ÄövѬ

A good argument is a joy to ponder. Kudos to the professor.

Hypothetical Question:

A friend is offered a job with the provisional authority in Iraq. The pay is good, but as we have seen on CNN, the danger is real.

As a friend, should you try to dissuade the person from taking the position?

As a patriot, is it wrong to try to keep talented people from helping the American war effort?

When I first started chewing on this nasty little kone (spelling, Big Hominid?) my first thought was Vietnam. It is 1969. My son has ‚ÄövÑv got a letter in the mail: go to war or go to jail.‚ÄövÑvp Do I encourage my child to go risk his life in a war that appears, as of 1969, to already be lost, or do I tell my child to go to Canada? Love and fear for my child and the desire not to see my progeny squander their life in a lost cause would war with teaching your child about obligations to country. If the collective country calls, how can a citizen say no?

My initial response is that this is a harder call than service in World War Two; we could hope for a positive outcome in the Big One AND our civilization‚ÄövÑv¥s very life was at stake.
But on the other hand is the need to uphold the social contract; you can‚ÄövÑv¥t just say no when society issues a requirement.

But the fact that the draft was involuntary makes this a poor analogy to the current situation. The hypothetical friend is volunteering for the assignment.

Shouldn‚ÄövÑv¥t we as a society applaud people who are willing to sacrifice for the greater good? We need heroes like Pat Tillmon to remind us of our better natures and the price of our freedoms. This concept is an easy one in the abstract. It is easy to praise strangers who heed the call of flag and duty. But when it comes to a friend, your natural fears and concerns shoulder aside the abstract patriotism.

Hell, if you will permit me to divulge a dirty little secret from my closet of cowardice, there is a part of me that thanks God on a daily basis that I had completed my service obligation and resigned my commission before the invasion of Iraq. This is not so much because of a fear of physical harm (though that is real). I was a bit nervous when my unit was on deck for the invasion of Haiti ‚ÄövÑv¨ the possibility of being shot at becomes clear in your imagination as you are packing up your gear to report to the assembly site. But even with that fear, part of me was willing to put aside personal preferences in the service of our nation. Leaving graduate school would have been a major inconvenience, but that was how I viewed it ‚ÄövÑv¨ as an inconvenience. I have a daughter now. The idea of leaving her and not helping her development as a person is obscene ‚ÄövÑv¨ if I was still under orders, I would leave- what choice would I have? - but I would be very, very unhappy. So I look at my daughter and thank God that I‚ÄövÑv¥m done with the army thing.
But I also look at my daughter and fear what Muslim extremists want to do to her and her future. If you have read my previous posts, I want Osama and the other Islamofascists dead, dead, dead. So I should support the war, right? Even if it means that I should encourage my friend to voluntarily put himself in harm‚ÄövÑv¥s way.

But the real problem is this: I don‚ÄövÑv¥t think the war will help protect my daughter‚ÄövÑv¥s future. Bush and his pals tried to do the occupation on the cheap and are intellectually incapable of changing their tactics. If Bush stays president, the insurgency will grow and we WILL lose. Big Hominid has frequently observed that the issue of national security will weigh heavily as voters make up their minds in November. I, for one, will pull the lever for Kerry on the national security issue. We need a new approach because the current one, t‚ÄövÑv¥aint workin‚ÄövÑv¥. And Rumsfeld won‚ÄövÑv¥t come up with a new approach. Winning (or at least, not losing and appearing weak to the fundamentalist crowd in the ‚ÄövÑv Arab Street‚ÄövÑvp) is important and I think only Kerry has a chance to win. But I‚ÄövÑv¥m in the minority. Most Americans aren‚ÄövÑv¥t going to switch horses midstream (to use Lincoln‚ÄövÑv¥s 1864 phrase) and Kerry is an awful, smarmy, mealy-mouthed candidate. I think Bush is going to be elected in a landslide. So we are going to lose.

If we are going to lose, and yet can‚ÄövÑv¥t get out, I‚ÄövÑv¥m reminded of Tom Lehrer‚ÄövÑv¥s comment: ‚ÄövÑv beginning to feel like a Christian Scientist with appendicitis.‚ÄövÑvp One of the most sobering things about the MacNamara documentary is when he admits that the administration KNEW we were going to lose Vietnam but couldn‚ÄövÑv¥t come up with an exit strategy. Can you imagine living with yourself after sending thousands of boys to die for a cause you knew was lost?

Which brings me back to my hypothetical friend. If one believes that the war is lost, than anyone who dies in Iraq is dying to no purpose. If I believe the chance of death is real and that my friend‚ÄövÑv¥s death will not advance the interests of my nation in any way, shouldn‚ÄövÑv¥t my concern for my friend trump patriotism?

So, if you remove the concept of God and Country from the equation, the only thing left to discuss is money. The occupation authority, operating on the principal of supply and demand, is offering very high salaries. It is moral and just for people to try to provide material comfort for their families. But that material comfort has to be balanced against a loving presence. A trip to Iraq would mean at least a year physically separated from family. This year could easily become two or three as contracts are extended (Yossarian‚ÄövÑv¥s experience of extension is not unique, as recently demonstrated by the Wisconsin National Guard) ‚ÄövÑv¨ though a civilian contractor probably has more leeway to refuse an extension than a soldier. There is a small but real chance that the physical separation might become permanent should my friend end up buried in a shallow grave.

So should I ask my friend to sacrifice wealth so that his children will have a greater chance of knowing their father?

Or, is it none of my stinkin‚ÄövÑv¥ business? Should I just butt out?

What do my fellow bloggers think? What would you say to this hypothetical friend?

Is he too busy with his thespian pursuits? I want to know how he is doing, goll darn it!

I just schlepped over to Amazon to add a book to my wish list - “Brook Farm, the Dark Side of Utopia,” after reading a review in the Washington Post. My master’s thesis (alas, unfinished), was on a utopian experiment in Ripon, Wisconsin. I discovered that Amazon has added a new feature to wish lists - priorities! Woo-hoo! Now I can let my friends and family know that I want this particular history book more than I want this other book on pasture management.

Amazon wish lists. The greatest creation ever. Now if only I could get my creative-gift-giving sister-in-law to use Amazon and to stop buying me horshoe sets…