Post-Miers

Sooner or later we are going to get past the Miers nomination. When we do, I'll be glad that I'm not a Democrat, because there are going to be a lot of cranky Republicans glaring back towards their traditional foes.

Merit

I wish I could stop talking about the Harriet Miers nomination, but I can't. I'm just finding the whole thing way too fascinating. My latest fascination is with the claims that conservatives opposing the nomination are elitist. First, it is a non-sensical claim. I oppose it. I went to a division III school in a city smaller than the student bodies of many colleges. I'm an elitist? But that isn't what I find most interesting about the elitist claim. No, what I find most interesting is the way those making the claim of elitism are sweeping aside a typical conservative value-merit- by making it.

I can't count the number of times I've read some variation of "just because she isn't the most qualified doesn't mean she isn't qualified." What kind of liberal sounding namby-pamby is that? If I go for a job interview, I may be qualified for the job, but if I'm not the most qualified candidate, I'm not going to get the job, folks. Am I to believe that this doesn't apply for Supreme Court justices? And as for the whole schooling issue, that is coincidence to this debate, not a central point. The fact is that Miers has little or no record we can look at to decide if she is among the most qualified for the position. Does she have a nice resume? Yes. Does it give us any idea if she merits a position on the Supreme Court? No. Again, the only evidence we have that she may merit the position is President Bush's word, and too few of us are confident in that when it comes to this issue.

Something you didn't know about me

I've always wanted to go to Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada. I don't know why.

Gaza as Footloose

It looks like dancing (as well as homosexuality) will be banned in Gaza:

After controversies when a Hamas-led council halted a dance festival and Islamist gunmen stopped a rap band performing in Gaza, Dr Zahar defended the enforcement of a strict interpretation of Islam.

“A man holds a woman by the hand and dances with her in front of everyone. Does that serve the national interest?” Dr Zahar said on the Arabic website Elaph. “If so, why have the phenomena of corruption and prostitution become pervasive in recent years?”

I'm pretty sure we can put a stop to this by infiltrating Kevin Bacon, his stunt dancer, and Kenny Loggins into Gaza.

When does history become history?

That's a question that was asked of us in my Senior Seminar class for my history major. After much debate, we never really reached a conclusion, which I guess was the professor's point. It is tough to find that line between what should be considered history and what is still a current event. Most people will agree that an event less than a year old is not history, but a current event. But when you move that event to 5 years out, some people start to waver. Once you move 20 years out from an event, a lot of people waver, even though it is difficult to get a true historical perspective on an event even 20 years old because many people who lived through the event still shape opinion of it.

Given the above, I am having some trouble with the so called "History Channel." In the past two months, it has had shows on 9-11, the Iraq War, and Hurricane Katrina. It is awfully tough to consider any of these events history yet. Some of the shows do a good job of avoiding the politics of today, others do not. I know that professional historians do not think highly of the History Channel, but the fact of the matter is many more Americans are getting their history educations from the History Channel than from professional historians. It bothers me that these current event documentaries that they are doing are being passed off as history to an American public that isn't exactly well educated in the subject.

Miers stupidity

Ugh. This Miers nomination is turning into a mucky mess. I had thought there was a place for informed debate about this within the Republican party. I stand corrected. The entire thing has sunk into the depths of the swamp that is Washington. Everyone in the party has started grasping for mud, beginning with the President's staff, apparently. All the while, I've sat here and waited for someone to explain why I'm wrong about opposing this nomination, and no one has stepped up to do so, with the possible exception of one commentor here, and even she didn't convince me. All I can do is sit back, shake my head and chuckle. The President has dealt the cards; now its time to see who has the best hand. I'm still pretty convinced it isn't the President.

Holmes pregnant. Question: How is this possible?

I don't follow celebrity gossip all that closely, so somebody help me out here. We know Katie Holmes is pregnant. If memory serves me, though, wasn't Tom Cruise unable to impregnate Mimi Rogers and Nicole Kidman? If so, how did he knock up Holmes? The miracle curing powers of Scientology? If not, where did I get that misconception?

Control of the internet

It looks like the EU is going to try to force the U.S. to hand over control of the internet. I'm not exactly sure how they plan to do this, short of starting their own internet or putting together an army to take over ICANN's servers. After all, just declaring yourself King doesn't give you very much power unless the reigning King is foolish enough to hand over his crown. But if they do, I fully anticipate publishing Jiblog as pamphlets shortly there after. Nothing ever good comes of an alliance of the EU, Iran, Cuba, and China.

Walter 'Crank'ite

To my parents' and grandparents' generations: You trusted this man?

"We're an ignorant nation right now. We're not really capable I do not think---the majority of our people---of making the decisions that have to be made at election time and particularly in the selection of their legislatures and their Congress and the presidency, of course. I don't think we're bright enough to do the job that would preserve our democracy, our republic. I think we're in serious danger." ---former CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite

His eyes were bigger than his stomach

I think we've all had a meal that we've thought might take years off of our lives, but this is nuts. A snake in the Everglades had a meal that ended its life:

When the carcasses were found last week in an isolated marsh in Everglades National Park, the gator's tail and hind legs protruded from the ruptured gut of a python -- which had swallowed it whole.

As an added touch of the macabre, the snake's head was missing.

Finally, monsieur, a wafer thin mint.

(A little joke for all of you Monty Python freaks out there)

The right's debate on the Miers nomination

Interesting. For the first time since the nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, I've gone over to Blogs for Bush (of which I am a supporter) to see the response. Between their post here and the comments, it's interesting to see the split. There are the 'common front' folks who seem to believe that we should line up behind the President no matter what, and then there are those who seem to be perfectly willing to criticize the President when they feel he's deserving of it. I am sympathetic to the common front types, but I just can't bring myself to mindlessly line up behind him even when I think he's wrong. And I think he's wrong on this choice, even if she proves to be every bit the strict constructionist he promises.

The classless Rosie O'Donnell

I check out Fark.com on a daily basis. So when I saw their link to Rosie O'Donnell's Flickr account, I had to check it out for the humor value. The first few sets of pics were pretty mundane. Then I saw one that pissed me off. Rosie saw fit to post a picture of a drowned young girl, I'm guessing in Louisiana. That picture shows zero respect for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. It is classless and tasteless of O'Donnell to have it in her public Flickr account. If she thinks she's making a political point, I hope she also realizes that she's exploiting the victims of a natural disaster to do so. And I thought "exploitation" was the ultimate rage for Hollywood's limousine liberals. I guess exploitation of poor disaster victims is alright as long as you can land a punch against a Republican President.

Nature, a strange, beautiful, and creepy beast

As this blog is wont to do, I need to break off into the realm of the odd for a post. As you've read below, we went on vaction for a few days to some of the beautiful places around Lake Superior. During the course of the trip, I was doing a lot of rock hunting. Rocks have an odd place in the relationship of Mr. & Mrs. Jib. One of our rock stories was of a tiny heart shaped stone I had found on a beach for her once upon a time. On this trip, I was tasked with finding her another heart shaped stone. If you've ever been along the shore of Lake Superior near Duluth and Superior, you know that there are a lot of rocks to look through. I was having no luck with the hearts, though. Late in the trip, the lovely Mrs. Jib wandered off to take some pictures, so I went down to the lakeshore to look for interesting rocks. Still, despite my best efforts, I was finding nothing interesting. Eventually she found me, and as she walked towards me on the shore, I looked down and found a rock that stunned me.

If you are the type who doesn't like 'blue' talk, now would be a good time to go to the next post. Because the rock I found looked like a phallus. Actually, that's not entirely correct. It looked like a full set of male genitalia in profile. I picked it up and gave it to her as my rock "offering". This rock, about 4 inches or so long, was hilarious. It was difficult to believe that nature had eroded this rock into this shape. So we took it home with us as a joke. Had the story stopped there, I might not even be sharing it with you, but it turned creepy.

We knew from the get go that this rock had a flaw, a discolorization of sorts, on the side that looked, well, dirty. Neither of us thought much of it. Tonight I had pulled the rock out of my camera bag and had given it to her to store away. It had been set down before being put away, though, and I had a chance to see the rock and its flaw from a distance. It was then that I realized that the shape of the discolorization was nearly an identical replica of the phallus-rock itself. The creepiness began.

Lake Superior is revered by sailors and the local Chippewa for having a spirit of its own. Had I found this rock at any other place, I would not be creeped out at all. But having found it on the shores of Lake Superior, I'm beginning to worry that it is some sort of Lake Superior fertility rock. We've discussed having kids, alternating in the 1-3 range, but I'm now afraid that, because of this rock, I am going to impregnate Mrs. Jib with octuplets just by looking at her. I look at Mrs. Jib frequently, and I now fear that this rock is going to end up giving us somewhere in the vicinity of 13,000 children in the next 15 years. I know Mrs. Jib will one day be a fine mother, but I'm quite sure she will not be pleased to have 13,000 children.

For now, we will hold onto this stone. Hopefully it will be good luck to us, or at least be a long running source of humor. But if we end up with octuplets in the next year sometime, we will be paying someone to take it off of our hands. Quickly.

NRO The Corner just got even more interesting

National Review Online's The Corner has long been my favorite blog. The political discussions are stimulating, and the banter entertaining. I know that Lance and Kevin have joked about the Badger Blog Alliance taking it over, but in all seriousness, it is what I'd like to see us emulate. I didn't think they could improve on the mix they had going over there, especially after adding John Podhoretz. I was wrong. Rush Limbaugh is now posting at The Corner.

Back in the groove

Well, not quite yet. Vacations are current event black holes for me. About the only news I get is from the few minutes of talk radio my wonderful but FM-centric wife allows me to listen to, and the internet time I steal in the evenings. I'm going through my Bloglines RSS feeds and realizing how woefully behind I am on things. I will be back to full speed very soon.

In a semi-related note, I'm not going to participate in this week's Carnival of the Badger even though I really wanted to. Belle is hosting this week over at Leaning Blue (I'm still vainly hoping we can lure her to the dark side), so make sure you check it out.

The mystery of Joel Henry Hinrichs III

Joel Hinrichs III, the young man who blew himself up outside an Oklahoma University football game last weekend, has been a pretty low profile story thus far. It is a story worth watching, however. An Oklahoma TV station is reporting that Hinrichs had tried to buy ammonium nitrate, the key ingredient in the Oklahoma City bombing. There is also some quiet and uncomfirmed buzz that he had had Pakistani roomates for a time. Because all Hinrichs succeded in doing was to kill himself, this has to be considered the solo action of a disturbed man. The investigation is worth watching, though, to see if there were any connections that he had made with terrorists, and if so, whether they might try to use other similarly disturbed Americans as suicide bombers.

A journey concludes

This is the only picture I'll be showing from our trip (unless my film pics kick ass). Who would have thought a person can enjoy Minnesota? This picture, taken by the lovely Mrs. Jib, is of a waterfall in Gooseberry Falls State Park, north of Duluth. We enjoyed our visit to Lake Superior, but the weather did not completely cooperate. We headed up with a forecast of 3 days of sun. The sun disappeared 2 hours after we arrived. By Monday afternoon, the fog rolled in. By Monday night, it rained cats and dogs. And for half our drive home today, we were in rain, sometimes torrential. Still, fun was had by all.

Miers, Bush, and Trust

I don't really like the direction some of the rhetoric is going on this Miers nomination. I'm hearing more and more people saying things like, "Conservatives are itching for a fight." That's not what really has most conservatives upset right now, the lack of a fight over the nomination (more on this later). What has most Conservatives upset is that Bush had plenty of qualified (more qualified) nominees at his disposal. Instead, he chooses Miers, an unkown quality to almost everyone but himself. That means we have to trust him. There is plenty of reason for us to do so, and 4 years ago, we probably would have. But our trust in the President has frayed. This Republican Congress and Presidency has come about because of conservativism, particularly the fiscal arm of conservativism. Conservatives have watched this Republican government, including the President, pay lip service to conservative philosophy but ultimately turn their noses up at it. So now President Bush asks us to trust him on this, but we aren't particularly willing to. Miers may be what he says she is. But she may not. He and Congress have pushed Conservatives' trust to the breaking point, and this is just too important an issue to risk trusting him on.

Now as for Conservatives itching for a fight. There is a difference between itching to fight and being prepared to do so, between fighting for fighting's sake and fighting for something. Conservatives were prepared to go to the wall for any of constructionists that have been discussed for weeks now because they see this debate to be of utmost importance for America. And it's not just about abortion, or gay marriage, or any of those other cultural red herrings the left likes to make this debate about. It is about ensuring that all three branches of government are in balance, powers checked. It is about ensuring that the judiciary does not become the despotic oligarchy that Jefferson envisioned it could become.

This is not about Miers, per se. She could very well become a fine judge. The problem is Bush had an opportunity to go with a candidate with known qualities, and he'd have had the full support of and defense from his base. They would have "gone to the mattresses" for his choice. He did not, though. He went with an unknown quantity from his close circle. For Conservatives, the odds in the lottery look better right now.

Cronyism and political stupidity

Conservatives have by and large been able to dismiss the charges of cronyism leveled at President Bush by the left. In the last few weeks, that has become something conservatives have been less and less willing to defend the President against. Today's nomination of Miers stinks of it, and some conservatives have started to criticize the President on it. A tag can stick to a President when both sides of the political spectrum use it, so cronyism is now a part of the Bush legacy. Nominating Miers was politically stupid. If the President wanted to be a lame duck by the end of his first year of his second term, why'd he bother running for re-election?

Miers

I've missed out on all of the Miers blogging, I'm sure. I've not read a single thing on the nomination, as this is my first moments on the computer today, but I've listened to Rush and to Hannity in the car today. Rush was somewhat soft-peddaling this nomination. Hannity wasn't happy, but he had Cheney on, and Cheney was doing his best to sell the choice. There are two problems with the choice that neither Rush nor Cheney can explain away. First, the odds of Miers being a strict constructionist are pretty low. Two, I think this further confirms that President Bush is no more a conservative than his father was.

Note
W.C. Varones commented on my earlier post on Miers to say he didn't think that was going to be the choice. I had hoped he would be right. So much for that, but at least he can admit being wrong.