From Victor Davis Hanson:
How did a serious country, one that endured Antietam, sent a million doughboys to Europe in a mere year, survived Pearl Harbor, Monte Cassino, Anzio, the Bulge, Tarawa, Iwo and Okinawa, the Yalu, Choisun, Hue and Tet, come to the conclusion
Mr. McGehee asks:
Why is Anonymoron still allowed to crap all over this blog?
At least two reasons. First, the trivial one. Because in his cowardice (and viciousness), he not only uses no name, but also changes his IP more often than he changes his underwear, there’s no obvious easy way to block him. I could delete his posts after the fact (and I suppose if I did that for long enough, he might eventually get discouraged and go away, but I’m afraid that the creature would just retaliate by spamming me or something when I was away from the computer). But there’s no way to preempt them that I’ve figured out, short of shutting down comments completely, a cure that I think (at least for now) worse than the disease.
Additionally, it would set a precedent. Though I’ve threatened to do it in the past in a couple cases, I’ve never banned anyone here. In general, there’s been no need, because usually the trolls get bored and go on to harass someone else. Anonymous Moron, unfortunately, seems to be quite persistent. I continue to hope that he is just a little more persistent than most, and will not become a permanent featurebug of this community. Unfortunately, he’s too stupid to realize that he convinces no one of anything except that he’s an idiot (I suspect that many people who might agree with him on the issues are tired of him as well, because he’s a caricature of their side, and makes it difficult for them to argue their own points, even when legitimate–I’d in fact be interested in feedback from that community on the subject).
However, I am getting more than a little tired of it myself (particularly since I’m generally on the receiving end of his vile attacks). If anyone has any ideas as to what to do about it, I’m receptive to hearing them.
Is that what the public school system is?
Today, schools promote anti-bullying strategies which encourage the goons to talk to their victims. They attach no blame to the perpetrators. Predictably, they are failing, according to the British children’s charity Kidscape.
Using this strategy the school forces the victim to provide a written statement describing how distressed he feels about the way he’s been treated. He is then expected to read the statement to the good little boys who have derived pleasure from inflicting pain. This approach gives the thugs all the information they need to torture their victims even more.
One exasperated mother described the dismal results:
“They found out about my son’s weaknesses, his feelings and his lack of confidence and had a field day bullying him and telling others. The bullying increased because the bullies knew he would not tell again after this devastating result.”
In another instance a school principal refused to exclude a boy who had set fire to a young girl’s hair. He was reluctant, he said, to single out a youngster who had “problems.” Describing this junior arsonist as a youngster with problems is like saying that Jeffrey Dahmer had an eating disorder.
Maybe the girl with the flaming hair can resolve her feelings about being set on fire. Would anyone like to suggest that she talk to the psychological social worker?
Sure sounds like it to me.
Is that what the public school system is?
Today, schools promote anti-bullying strategies which encourage the goons to talk to their victims. They attach no blame to the perpetrators. Predictably, they are failing, according to the British children’s charity Kidscape.
Using this strategy the school forces the victim to provide a written statement describing how distressed he feels about the way he’s been treated. He is then expected to read the statement to the good little boys who have derived pleasure from inflicting pain. This approach gives the thugs all the information they need to torture their victims even more.
One exasperated mother described the dismal results:
“They found out about my son’s weaknesses, his feelings and his lack of confidence and had a field day bullying him and telling others. The bullying increased because the bullies knew he would not tell again after this devastating result.”
In another instance a school principal refused to exclude a boy who had set fire to a young girl’s hair. He was reluctant, he said, to single out a youngster who had “problems.” Describing this junior arsonist as a youngster with problems is like saying that Jeffrey Dahmer had an eating disorder.
Maybe the girl with the flaming hair can resolve her feelings about being set on fire. Would anyone like to suggest that she talk to the psychological social worker?
Sure sounds like it to me.
Is that what the public school system is?
Today, schools promote anti-bullying strategies which encourage the goons to talk to their victims. They attach no blame to the perpetrators. Predictably, they are failing, according to the British children’s charity Kidscape.
Using this strategy the school forces the victim to provide a written statement describing how distressed he feels about the way he’s been treated. He is then expected to read the statement to the good little boys who have derived pleasure from inflicting pain. This approach gives the thugs all the information they need to torture their victims even more.
One exasperated mother described the dismal results:
“They found out about my son’s weaknesses, his feelings and his lack of confidence and had a field day bullying him and telling others. The bullying increased because the bullies knew he would not tell again after this devastating result.”
In another instance a school principal refused to exclude a boy who had set fire to a young girl’s hair. He was reluctant, he said, to single out a youngster who had “problems.” Describing this junior arsonist as a youngster with problems is like saying that Jeffrey Dahmer had an eating disorder.
Maybe the girl with the flaming hair can resolve her feelings about being set on fire. Would anyone like to suggest that she talk to the psychological social worker?
Sure sounds like it to me.
I wasn’t as big a fan as many, but it’s been a quarter of a century since John Belushi died.
These guys have a great job:
We’re very careful with these tanks
There’s a lot of lively discussion over at Space Politics over NASA’s budget crunch and its implications for ESAS. I would note that it’s getting harder and harder to find defenders of Ares 1.
[Update at 11:30 AM EST]
Here’s another lively thread:
If NASA was somehow developing the technologies to enable very-low-cost human spaceflight, with advanced life support systems, in-situ resource utilization, and advanced propulsion systems, then maybe I could get behind the idea of a gov
…by the Marines happened 231 years ago, in the Bahamas. Before they were the US Marines.
I’m kind of amazed at the latest kerfuffle about the firing of the six US attorneys. As has been noted multiple times, they serve at the pleasure of the president. The only unorthodox thing about it, as far as I can tell, is the loophole that would allow them to be replaced absent Senate confirmation. And there seems to be a certain lack of ingenuousness in some of the reporting on it. For instance, in the piece at Slate, note this graf:
This kind of purge is legal but unprecedented. A recent report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service revealed that since 1981, no more than three U.S. attorneys had ever been forced out under similar circumstances. And now we have six in a day? What’s going on?
Unprecedented? Really? We’ll come back to that in a moment.
Note the emphasis, which is mine. What does “under similar circumstances” mean? Well, if one follows the link to the CRA report, it turns out that it means “having served less than a four-year term.” But why is it so awful for a president to remove his own appointee? The CRA report doesn’t count those removed as a result of an administration change.
Which gets us to the “unprecedented” rhetoric. Where was all the fuss and bother in 1993, when Janet Reno fired every single US attorney bar one (over ninety of them) in a single day? As Judge Bork noted:
She was not in charge from the beginning. Upon taking office, in an unexplained departure from the practice of recent Administrations, Miss Reno suddenly fired all 93 U.S. attorneys. She said the decision had been made in conjunction with the White House. Translation: The President ordered it. Just as the best place to hide a body is on a battlefield, the best way to be rid of one potentially troublesome attorney is to fire all of them. The U.S. attorney in Little Rock was replaced by a Clinton protege.
Just as Whitewater was heating up. Just a coinkydinky, one can be sure.
Yet I don’t recall it being such a big deal at the time. In fact, it’s hard to find much reportage on it from the era (something that caused some of my commenters to unjustly accuse me of lying about it a few months ago).
Guess it’s only an outrage when Republican presidents fire a few US attorneys. A wholesale slaughter isn’t very interesting, when a Democrat does it. Particularly when it’s a Democrat whom the press had just propelled into office by ignoring, or helping spin away, all of the many corruption issues and incipient scandals associated with him (certainly Clinton’s problems with ethics and aversion to truth weren’t unknown to Arkansas reporters of the era). And as Bork also notes, it set the stage for all the scandalous activity to come.
[Update]
Andy McCarthy has more on Democrat double standards in such matters, particularly from Senator Feinstein..