Nom de plume: Rivrdog

Political advertising

This election season, we've been treated to a boatload of "Issue Ads", political ads for a candidate or other that supposedly don't originate with that candidate. There are no limits on such ads, nor should there be. It's a free country, no matter what McCain-Feingold says.

My problem with most of these ads is that almost all of them lie in one form or another.

There are two types of lies, commission and omission. A lie of commission is when the truthful fact is reversed, or twisted in meaning enough to be reversed. A lie of omission is when a subject is brought up, and a position taken on such subject, but an obvious fact is left out that would have put the lie to the entire presentation.

These lies are obvious to the politically astute, and EVERY party has used lying in their campaigns.

My problem is that TeeVee stations feel that they have to present the material given to them, and present it unedited. I don't believe ANY FCC doctrine ever said that when a bald-faced lie, of either commission or omission, is told, that the broadcaster has to accept it without alteration or comment. There may be law holding that the station is not responsible for torts arising out of presenting lies, but I doubt that there are laws saying that a station cannot identify a lie that is presented with an advertisement.

Why don't we demand that the TeeVee stations refuse to air false political advertising?

There is a process by which we can do this. All these stations have to defend the re-issuance of their licenses in a public forum every few years. At such a forum, the public is invited, in some manner or other, to present their opinion on re-licensing, and back up that opinion with facts about where the TeeVee station might have erred in their broadcast decisions.

Presenting a known lie as political advertising is certainly an error. When that lie is presented either without challenge from the editors at the TeeVee station, or worse, it's challenged and airing of the challenges is refused, then that TeeVee station should, if it presents a pattern of such behavior, not have it's it's license renewed to operate on that channel.

I'm sure an acceptable formula for judging the accuracy of political advertising can be arrived at. The (D)emocrats even devised one themselves, but their fact-checking system only seems to work to check facts of the opposition, and glaring errors of truthfulness in (D)emocratic Party political ads seem to escape their review.

The obvious way to handle screening out lies would be for the TeeVee station to have a citizen's panel available for pre-screening political ads. I would volunteer to perform this duty myself.

The American political process has become completely immoral. It consists, in the main, of spinning lies about one's opponent, and broadcasting those lies. The best liar usually wins the election. The results of all this lying is that we get a pack of confirmed and practiced liars to represent us. Lying is a weakness in the human condition which is usually indicative of other weaknesses, like taking bribes, failing oaths, etc.

Let's attack the root of the problem. The next time a network (or independent) TeeVee station broadcasts their (obligatory) notice that their license is coming up for renewal, let's form a committee to oppose renewal based on the presentation of lies as truth during the political campaign.

The only defense these stations will have is to tell us (and the FCC) that lying is the expected norm in political campaigning. When they make THAT admission, we have them by the throat. Such a political action committee can probably win acceptance of lie-screening of political ads by the station, and win it on the committee's terms.

Anthrax closure?

You KNEW, if you followed this investigation, that the attacker(s) had to be employed by the dot.gov, which is the only outfit authorized to handle weaponized anthrax. You knew that, especially if....

You believed that the dot.gov itself might have perpetrated the attacks as some sort of a horrible diversion from 9-11 investigations, just heating up a week after 9-11-01. Of course, for those of you who believed that the dot.gov might have perpetrated nine-eleven itself, having this theory about the anthrax mailings was natural.

So, truthers everywhere, how do you feel about another "suicide" of another well-placed dot.gov person who was about to become central to a VERY sensational prosecution? How do you feel about a well-researched Wiki appearing before the principal's body got stiff after death?

Personally, I am some bothered by this all concluding during the heat of a bitter Presidential investigation, but just bothered is all, and if you read this blog often, you know that a fair number of government shenanigans operations bother me.

Comments are open. Cut-and-paster truthers will not be published (you MAY leave links), but any original comment will be, unless it's book-length.

Rotten luck

If you're a motor officer on a city PD, you ride escort quite a bit. Escort duty is tough, and demands the best from you and your bike. Escorts have to keep the intersections clear just before the motorcade gets there, while it is passing, then play catch up and do it all again.

This means "busting intersections", or riding at full acceleration through intersections, alongside the motorcade, pass the motorcade then rapidly decelerate to close off an intersection before the motorcade gets there.

The officers with the Big Brass Ones do this leapfrog, but there are other duties, such as riding tail guard.

This unfortunate officer was doing that. Tail guard involves protecting the rear of the motorcade from bonehead citizens (or those out to perpetrate mayhem), and it calls for the ability to maneuver quickly, solve an issue (usually with a direct block), then catch back up to the tail of the motorcade.

The officer took a Jersey Barrier at speed.

Riding your motor down when you've lost it for one reason or another bites, but smacking something unyielding bites worse.

Worst of all, is plowing into something deadly and dying while protecting Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Ouch!

If any of you Texicans want to send me a link to who might know of a memorial fund to help educate the officer's kids, please do so.

Motors are where it's at in patrol work. Frankly, I never had the nerve for that work, so I never applied (maybe being in a near-fatal scooter crash when I was 20 took the desire to yank throttle out of me). I have nothing but the highest respect for motor officers, though, and this officer's family deserves support from EVERYWHERE.

Global Warming Hoax

Not only can I DENY "global warming" hysteria, not only can I DEBUNK "global warming" hysteria, I can now DESTROY "global warming" hysteria.

Read this. It gets technical, but the author keeps coming back to the salient points of the data Messrs. Hansen and Schneider (no relation) left out of their "science".

In the end, the author accuses them all of fraud, for the evidence of global cooling has been accumulating since 2000, and the trend is firmly established now. Oh, yes, the long, cold Winter. Get used to them.

That picture of the Solar Disk totally fascinated me, because I was in an Astronomy Club in high school, and we had built a solar observatory and could safely monitor the surface of the sun for sunspots. We NEVER saw it without a single sunspot. That picture counters 10,000 words of pseudo-science. That solar condition can ONLY happen during periods of EXTREME solar quiescence. BTW, in case you didn't study this stuff, solar quiescence RESULTS in planetary cooling.

The sad thing is that Al Gore is still coasting along on the coat-tails of the phony warming science, trying to scam us into more carbon-credit schemes, and now, maybe, just maybe, positioning himself to be offered up as a "compromise" candidate to the (D)emocratic Party if said (D)onks deadlock between HRC and BHO this summer.

President Gore? Well, he COULD be the first President impeached and removed from office and imprisoned for theft on a global scale.

This message is for the world: How are those of you north of 40 degrees north latitude going to feed yourselves? Better start working on that, people, because if the Russians, who mirror this cooling report, are correct, that will be a MAJOR problem in the lifetime of the O-BOMB-AH generation.

Personally, I think the socialists will transition smoothly from global warming hysteria to "global cooling must be met with good socialist collective action", and it will happen fast, and when the educational establishments wake up and see the Socialists have this new set of Eskimo clothing on, they will try to slew around 180 degrees themselves and start screaming as to how evil Capitalism and it's twin Nationalism will let the rest of the world freeze and starve while the fat cats hog all the fur coats.

I guess we will never beat Socialism, but in the next few years, we will make them look foolish.

Apology

Yep, it's an apology.

I rag constantly on the keen and competitive pistolero known as "Mr. Completely". He has a blog, and blogs his competition results, usually with lots of photos of the competitions themselves, which run to bowling pin matches and various forms of steel-target matches.

I rag on him because we have a fundamental difference about sights: I insist upon using normal (iron) sights on handweapons (and most rifles), and Mr. C uses enhanced sights of various forms. He has several weapons in each class of competition pistol and revolver, and most sport tactical red-dot type sights. At least one sports his version of "iron" sights, a piece of pipe glued on top of the pistol's barrel (these are usually known as "tube" sights, and when I was competing in smallbore indoor rifle, they were expressly forbidden in the iron sight class by the NRA).

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UPDATE: 072507 1900 PDT: Egad, that tube sight isn't a tube sight, according to Mr. C. It's a "sunshade". OK.....if he says so.

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Mr. C claims he is just staying ahead of the young whippersnappers (and his ageing eyes) with what I call his "gizmo" sighted weapons, but I claim he has given up on his natural eyesight way too early.

My bragging comes from using my aging eyes to sight weapons and achieve decent results, but Mr. C's bragging comes from winning matches, which he does with regularity, or at least placing in the top 3, which he almost always does, even in large matches.

Mr. C is accompanied on his journey in life by the redoubtable KeeWee, who is an excellent competitor herself (High Lady at the huge Great Northern Bowling Pin Shoot in Missoula, MT).

So, to spank my old ass severely, KeeWee published a picture of Mr. C actually competing with a normal open-sighted handgun, then took pains in her blog to draw my attention to it.

So, I owe Mr. Completely an apology. An abject apology, given without reservation with the usual spirit.

Mr. Completely, I apologize for any and all aspersions I have cast upon your motivation to shoot competition and other matches with your gizmo-gunny weapons. I now realize that you CAN shoot properly with normal handgun sights.

Now, can you tell us why you've been sandbagging us all these years? If I had a nickel for every one of your mentions of "old, tired eyes", I could pay my blog bill.

Just wondering, Mr. C.

Think about it...

New Category: "The Truth Hurts"

Think about it:

The Feddle Gummint wants to disarm us all so the tiny percentage of violent criminals amongst us can't hurt us.

That's their version.

It's bullshit. Those violent criminals amount to about one-one-hundredth of one percent (about 300,000 people out of 300,000,000). The vast majority of them are already in jail, on their way to jail, or on supervised release and our society does, on average, a decent job of protecting us from them.

The Truth is that the Feddle Gummint wants to disarm us so that we can't start and win a Second American Revolution, throw their Constitution-bending asses out of power and re-establish the proper course of this Nation.

If THAT Truth hurts, try the Daily Kos, I'm sure there's something there to take away your pain (and responsibility).

If that Truth brings you to a "tole ya so" moment, welcome aboard.