Right Wing Nut House

Like most of you, I found the news about audio tapes from Marilyn Monroe’s psychiatrist revealing some pretty sordid stuff about Robert Kennedy and Joan Crawford to be titillating, if not earth shattering news. After all, Monroe, by all accounts, was a Hollywood hedonist of the first order so any alleged sexual affairs with other celebrities would not be shocking in and of itself. Perhaps it says more about our celebrity driven culture that 40 years after her death, her life should still captivate a world that views Marilyn’s overt sexuality as tame and even innocent compared to the vixens and harlots who strut and prance across the media landscape today, flaunting their sexual escapades in tell-all books and TV interviews.

If you’re like me and thought that this “new” information was based on tape recordings made by Marilyn in the days before her suicide, you’ll probably be as surprised as I was to find out that there are, in fact, no tapes at all. And reading further into this story, I’ll bet you’d be further surprised that a book containing “excerpts” from these non-existent tapes is scheduled to hit the book stores soon.

All in a days work for the celebrity obsessed media.

The story would be compelling - if it could be verified.

John W. Miner, who investigated Monroe’s death as a Los Angeles County prosecutor, claims Monroe’s psychologist, Dr. Ralph Greenson, played him secret audio tapes made by the star during one of her therapy sessions shortly before her death. A key revelation of the alleged tapes, according to Miner, is that Monroe was not depressed and was actively planning for to become a serious, Shakespearean actress.

Miner says he took careful, hand-written notes of the tapes and later produced a near-exact transcript.There is no proof Miner’s claims are true, since Dr. Greenson is now dead and no one else claims to have heard the tape.

“You are the only person who will ever know the most private, the most secret thoughts of Marilyn Monroe,” she allegedly told her doctor.

What in the wide, wide, world of sports is this story doing on the websites of respectable news organizations or on the pages of supposedly mainstream media outlets?

There are no tapes to verify these “quotes” from Monroe. No one has even hinted at their existence before. All we have is the word of someone who was paid a fee by an author of a forthcoming book to use “quotes” from non-verbatim transcripts gleaned from tapes that no one else has heard and that no one has even independently verified being in existence.

Matthew Smith paid an undisclosed fee to Miner to use the Monroe transcript in his book, “Marilyn’s Last Words: Her Secret Tapes and Mysterious Death.”

“The important thing about it was that she wasn’t suicidal,” Smith said.

Smith found Marilyn’s talk of the future very compelling, calling her “level-headed.”

“She wasn’t up and down,” he said. “She was on a plane that marked her out as a smart lady. She knew where she was going. It was definite.”

And where was Marilyn going with her career? Why, she was going to play Shakespeare’s Juliet!

“I’ve read all of Shakespeare and practiced a lot of lines. … I am going to do Juliet first,” Marilyn Monroe allegedly said on the tape. “Don’t laugh. What, with what makeup, costume and camera can do, my acting will create a Juliet who is 14, an innocent virgin.”

Monroe’s comic genius (when she was sober) was a joy. Anyone who’s ever seen Some Like it Hot knows that Monroe was could carry off light comedy better than almost any other actress at the time in Hollywood. But she was 36 years old, on the downside of a career in shambles because of her drinking and pill popping. It was pure fantasy to believe that she could play Juliet, or Ophelia, or any other Shakespearean tragedienne.

The realization that her acting options were going to be limited due to her age could have been a catalyst for suicide so any speculation to the contrary is specious. That didn’t stop Mr. Miner from throwing his two cents in regarding the bogus “Who killed Marilyn” fantasies:

Some people believe the Kennedys had to with it; I don’t at all,” he said. “I believe it was the disenchanted survivors of the Bay of Pigs, the CIA agents.”

Smith believes the CIA was angry at President John Kennedy about the botched Bay of Pigs operation a year before. The CIA, according to Smith, was hoping Robert Kennedy would be blamed for Monroe’s murder, and that the investigation would reveal her affair with both the president and his brother. This would force them to resign.

“This was a ploy,” Smith said. “By killing Marilyn, they expected Robert Kennedy, who was in the house twice the day before she died, would be interrogated.”

Now that’s what I call convoluted reasoning. Using Marilyn Monroe to bring down the Kennedy’s? If our CIA had been half as imaginative in fighting the commies, the Russkies would have been brought down decades before the final collapse in 1990.

How this claptrap made it into mainstream publications is a case study in how the confluence of media, celebrities, culture, and politics has changed the way we get our information and what kind news is fed to us. Are the MSM simply making themselves more irrelevant by carrying “news” stories like this one?

Judging by how many Google hits there are of this story, probably not irrelevant enough.

It was just supposed to be a “throw away” post. Honest.

On Thursday August 4th, I was cruising through Duncan Black’s cesspool of a blog, on the lookout for something I could use to illustrate the usual liberal looniness, when I came across a two day old, one line blurb headed simply “Conservative Blog Taxonomy.” Clicking the link, I was directed to Fables of Reconstruction and a post written 3 days prior on August 1st by some moonbat named Mithras.

It looked like a fun idea for the blog so I banged out a post using 10 liberal sites I read on an occasional or regular basis and added a “reality quotient” for a touch of originality. I didn’t finish it until early Friday morning so I simply hit “publish” and forgot about it.

Imagine my surprise 24 hours later when I woke up on Saturday morning to find the post linked to by Michelle Malkin. Now, who wouldn’t be pleased to get a link from the 4th largest blogger on the planet? That said, I was actually kind of embarrassed because it was one of those times that, instead of being recognized for working your ass off on a crisp, insightful piece that you spent a couple of days sweating over, Michelle was kind enough to link what I pretty much considered a throw away post, something I did for fun more than anything.

Having been through something like this before, I knew pretty much what to expect. In the first 24 hours, conservatives follow the link from a big blog and shower you with praise and link like bats out of hell.

It’s the second 24 hours that make you wish you hadna done it.

Since my post got kind of personal with those lefty bloggers, I really don’t have the right to complain about the personal attacks on me made by the moonbats. The only good thing was their lack of imagination. I grew up with friends whose epithets would make Howard Stern blush so the bric-a-brats hurled my way by the trolls never quite reached a level that affected my appetite.

That said, the debate has now made an interesting turn as some pretty heavy hitters discovered Mr. Mithras’ post and have taken off after him for this piggish comment about Michelle Malkin:

Far-right affirmative action hire who is so bigoted she’d arrest herself for trying to cross a border. Famously published a book praising internment of Japanese-Americans that was (a) incoherent and (b) probably not written by her. If she didn’t have tits, she’d be stuck writing at Townhall.com.

I’m glad I don’t have David Bernstein, Bill Ardolino, Jeff Goldstein,, or Jeralyn Merritt fisking my tail for being a sexist pig. (Note: I received a very civil email from Ms. Merritt pointing out that she was in fact a woman even though I had described her using the term “Mr.” I did that with Pat Curley when he was blogging at Kerryhaters last fall, calling him a woman in a post. Pat sent me an email that was also civil, although a little more abrupt than Ms. Merritt’s bemused note.)

Dean Esmay was also featured in Mr. Mithras screed and was described as a “dry drunk” - a blow low enough that he would have been disqualified in a bar fight for delivering it. Mr. Esmay’s response was more dignified than the moonbat deserved:

I didn’t grow up in a union household. Also I am not a “proud dry drunk,” I am a much-more-often sober, less-self-indulgent drunk, not proud of it at all, and I only talk about it because I want to help other people.

As a “Friend of Bill” myself, I know exactly what he’s talking about.

Suffice it to say, none of this would have come to light if I had left well enough alone - probably. Who’s to say some other conservative blogger wouldn’t have found Mr. Mithras pithy rant? At any rate, even though I’m not sorry for most of what I wrote in that piece (a little too hard on Wonkette’s physical appearance?) I wonder how sorry Mr. Mithras is right now?

The death last night of long time ABC anchor Peter Jennings brings to a close an era of journalism that witnessed the power of the press at its zenith in American history. From historic highs in 1969 that saw 85% of televisions in use at the time tune into one of the three major network newscasts every night, that number has now dropped to below 20%. And Peter Jennings was there for both the rise and fall of the network news phenomena as a well traveled foreign correspondent and then as news anchor for “The World Tonight.”

Actually, when Mr. Jennings took over the anchor chair in 1983 following the death of Frank Reynolds, it was his second stint as newsreader for the ABC news broadcast. Joining ABC in 1963, he was elevated to the anchor chair in 1964 at the age of 26. This was at a time when ABC was not considered a serious news contender, finishing a distant third to broadcasts headed up by CBS’s Walter Cronkite and NBC’s Huntely-Brinkley tandem. Despite the fact that both CBS and NBC had gone from a 15 minute format to a 30 minute show for the news in 1963, ABC couldn’t get clearance from local stations for the extra 15 minutes of network news until 1967 by which time Jennings had been eased out of the anchor chair and assigned the foreign beat for the network.

It was his overseas assignment where I first became aware of Mr. Jennings. In an age when it was hugely expensive to transmit via satellite, many of Jennings early reports were on film that was shot on location and then rushed to ABC studios in New York for developing and editing. By the late 1960’s, this had changed and the golden age of news broadcasting had begun. Maintaining enormously expensive foreign bureaus in Europe, Asia, Africa, South America, Central America, and Australia as well as desks in several American cities, the network news shows became the primary source of news for the first time, surpassing newspaper readership for good in 1980.

Jennings reports always seemed calm, measured and balanced when overseas. Whether he was reporting on the Viet Nam war or Oktoberfest in West Germany, he was usually interesting to watch. When ABC went to a 3 anchor format in 1978, Jennings joined the team from London reporting foreign news. His elevation to the anchor chair in 1983 was seen by most as a move by ABC to finally attempt to compete head to head with news giants NBC and CBS.

For whatever reason, it worked. ABC first caught and surpassed CBS and finally NBC. Much of the credit was given to Mr. Jennings calm and deliberate presence as well as ABC’s faster paced and more interesting format. But it’s ironic that just when Mr. Jennings success was reaching its apogee, audience for all network news started to decline. From 1980 to 2003, network news audience declined a staggering 44%. Much of that decline was attributed to the rise of CNN but other factors played a role as well. Expanded local news broadcasts that included national and foreign news - usually with some local angle - pulled viewers away from the nets. And the rise of cable broadcasting in general meant that there was that much more competition for the attention of the American people during the 6:00 - 7:00 PM time slot.

It’s very hard for anyone under 30 to realize the enormous power wielded by the press, especially the major networks, in the period from 1970 to 1980. Their relentless coverage of the Viet Nam war helped end that conflict. Their investigative reports on the Watergate scandal assisted in bringing down President Nixon. And their wall to wall coverage of the Iranian hostage crisis with nightly pictures of American humiliation helped make Jimmy Carter an irrelevancy.

Then came Ronald Reagan and his media savvy advisor’s who changed the entire dynamic of the relationship between the Presidency and the press. Seeing what had happened to the last three Presidents, the Reagan’s advisor’s decided to go over the heads of the media and speak directly to the American people. Partly through prime time addresses from the oval office but mostly through the manipulation of images on the nightly news, Reagan’s counterspin was able to get through the media’s hostility and enable the President to achieve success in both domestic and foreign policy.

Further erosion of the power of the press occurred during the Bush 41 and Clinton years as both White House spin and declining audience due to the explosion of cable news fractured the ability of the media to set the agenda for the nation. Through it all, however, Jennings and ABC news maintained, in my opinion, the least biased reporting - with notable exceptions - of any of the three “major” networks.

Then came 9/11. Jennings coverage of the attack was extraordinary. Showing off both the technical wizardry that makes the immediacy of network news so compelling as well as a personal stamina that saw the anchor on the air for more than 12 hours straight, Jennings and his counterparts - Brokaw and Rather - played a vital role during those dark hours in calming the nation and helping it begin the grieving process.

With the passing of Mr. Jennings, the end of what could be termed the post World War II media is at hand. It was peopled with individuals whose worldview was shaped by the events during the war years. The current crop of media denizens has had their worldview shaped by Viet Nam and Watergate.

Somehow, I think we’re a lot poorer today.

Calling all bloggers!

You have until Monday night at 10:00 PM to get your entries in for this week’s Carnival of the Clueless.

Last week was the best yet with 26 entries from both the right and left side of the political spectrum hammering those individuals and groups among us who are truly clueless.

Here’s what we’re looking for:

Each week, I’ll be calling for posts that highlight the total stupidity of a public figure or organization – either left or right – that demonstrates that special kind of cluelessness that only someone’s mother could defend…and maybe not even their mothers!

Everyone knows what I’m talking about. Whether it’s the latest from Bill Maher or the Reverend Dobson, it doesn’t matter. I will post ALL ENTRIES REGARDLESS OF WHETHER I AGREE WITH THE SENTIMENTS EXPRESSED OR NOT..

You can enter by emailing me, leaving a link in the comments section, or by using the handy, easy to use form at Conservative Cat.

When J. Robert Oppenheimer walked out of the hearing room on that beautiful spring day in May 1954 he was, by all accounts, a broken man. The United States government had been looking into the question of whether or not to renew his access to classified material, a question made pertinent by Oppenheimer’s past associations with communists. The dangling cigarette - as much a part of his public face as the hooded eyes and sharp, aquiline features - seemed to hang from the corner of his thin, expressionless mouth and a look of rueful sadness was on his face, as if he didn’t quite believe what had befallen him.

Later that summer, The Atomic Energy Commission revoked his security clearance because of “[c]oncern for the defense and security of the United States.” His loyalty to the United States an open question, Oppenheimer withdrew from public life to spend the remainder of his years teaching, lecturing, and writing about science and man’s place in the universe.

It could be said that the years following his humiliation were an anti-climax to one of the most remarkable scientific careers in history. For despite taking over Albert Einstein’s old job at Princeton as Chair of the Institute for Advanced Study as well as being a respected and well traveled writer and lecturer, nothing could compare to what Oppenheimer accomplished in the war years when he headed up the scientific team that built the atomic bomb. And, more importantly, his post war fall from grace was a far cry from the heady days following World War II when for a brief instant, it seemed as if Oppenheimer and his fellow scientists who unlocked the secrets of the atom and allowed mankind to control the lightening, would achieve what politicians and diplomats could not - international control of nuclear power.

Born in 1904 to wealthy, immigrant parents, Oppenheimer’s early years were marked by astounding academic achievement. A delayed entrance to Harvard due to a bout with colitis didn’t slow him down as he graduated in three years with a degree in Chemistry. After a very brief and unsatisfying stint with Ernest Rutherford’s famous Cavendish Laboratory of Experimental Physics, Oppenheimer realized his ability tended more to the theoretical aspect of the science and proceeded to study with the brilliant Max Born at the University of Cottingen in Germany where he received his PHD in Theoretical Physics in 1927.

The history of physics from the turn of the century to the early 1930’s will be remembered as one of the most remarkable periods of discovery in human history. Oppenheimer’s contributions to this explosion of knowledge has been generally dismissed as inconsequential, although some have pointed to his seminal work regarding the relationship between protons and electrons - the Born-Oppenheimer Approximation - as extremely important to the ultimate understanding of sub-atomic particles. He also predicted both the existence of one of those particles, the positron, as well as the existence of black holes.

But Oppenheimer’s was a restless mind. He migrated to Berkeley to teach and advise the brilliant Ernest O. Lawrence with his cyclotron experiments. Lawrence’s experiments needed a theoretician to explain what the experimentalists were seeing with their cyclotron work and Oppenheimer’s collaboration with with University of California scientist turned out to be both intellectually satisfying and profoundly relevant to advancing scientific knowledge of the atom.

Oppenheimer’s brilliance could be overwhelming. He had an extraordinary knack for grasping a concept immediately and cutting to the heart of a problem. His memory was legendary. In addition, the broad reach of Oppenheimer’s intellect was startling. This probably contributed to his lack of recognition as a top level theoretical physicist. His long time friend Isidor Rabi:

Oppenheimer was overeducated in those fields which lie outside the scientific tradition, such as his interest in religion, in the Hindu religion in particular, which resulted in a feeling of mystery of the universe that surrounded him like a fog. He saw physics clearly, looking toward what had already been done, but at the border he tended to feel there was much more of the mysterious and novel than there actually was…he turned away from the hard, crude methods of theoretical physics into a mystical realm of broad intuition.

All the while, Oppenheimer maintained relationships with communists. As most intellectuals during the 1930’s, Oppenheimer saw the depression as a failure of capitalism and communism as the wave of the future. Using his vast inheritance, he bankrolled many left wing causes while marrying a former communist Kitty Harrison. It was these associations that would come back to haunt him later although it appears Oppenheimer himself was never that interested in politics. In fact, once Stalin’s horrors started to become known, Oppenheimer began to cut his ties with most left wing organizations and individuals. Cynics also point to the fact that it was at this time that the federal government was getting interested in the potential for building the atom bomb and that Oppenheimer’s associations would have precluded his participation.

Whatever the reason, Oppenheimer threw himself into the early atom bomb work with enthusiasm. He assembled a theoretical team in California that included future Nobel Prize winners Hans Bethe and Edward Teller who dealt with some of the early problems of bomb design. And later, when looking for someone to head up the scientific enterprise that became the Manhattan Project, the Project’s director General Leslie Groves found in Oppenheimer someone who was familiar with the many scientific disciplines that would be required to build a successful bomb as well as a driven personality that would see the project through to completion.

In September of 1942, Oppenheimer accepted the position as Scientific Director of the Manhattan Project. Starting from scratch in the New Mexico desert, Los Alamos became a magnet for the best minds in physics, chemistry and engineering. Oppenheimer rode herd on this diverse group, amazing his colleagues with his grasp of the problems associated with turning the theoretical into the practical. Victor Weisskopf , a brilliant theoretical physicist in his own right, gives us a sense of what it was like at Los Alamos working under Oppenheimer:

“He did not direct from the head office. He was intellectually and even physically present at each decisive step. He was present in the laboratory or in the seminar rooms, when a new effect was measured, when a new idea was conceived. It was not that he contributed so many ideas or suggestions; he did so sometimes, but his main influence came from something else. It was his continuous and intense presence, which produced a sense of direct participation in all of us; it created that unique atmosphere of enthusiasm and challenge that pervaded the place throughout its time.”

The closer the bomb got to becoming a reality, the more unease was demonstrated by scientists working on the project. This was especially true after it became clear in early 1945 that Germany was nowhere near completing a bomb and in fact had never really started. This fractured the scientific consensus that was responsible for the idea of building the bomb in the first place. The fear that Germany would construct an atomic b0mb is what gave impetus to the entire effort and once that threat was gone, many of the scientists began to have second thoughts.

Notable among them was Leo Szilard, the diminutive Hungarian immigrant who first conceived the idea of a nuclear chain reaction (he actually patented the process, later giving it to the British government to maintain secrecy) and who was present at the creation of the first nuclear chain reaction in Chicago in 1942. Szilard was horrified at the prospect of actually using the bomb, believing the threat would be enough to deter either Japan or Germany and cause them to surrender. Szilard’s naivete regarding Hitler and Japan carried over into a belief after the war that only a committee of scientists from all over the world should be entrusted with nuclear secrets.

Szilard drafted a letter as a cover to a report that came to be known as The Franck Report and circulated it among scientists not only in Chicago, but also at Los Alamos and at Berkley where Ernest Lawrence was busy working on uranium isotope separation. The Franck report not only opposed the use of the bomb on Japan but called for atomic secrets to be shared openly with all nations after the war. Groves was livid with Szilard believing that the scientist had not only violated security, but that he was undermining the dedication of his scientists at Los Alamos.

While the debates over whether or not to use the bomb raged in the laboratories and dormitories at Los Alamos, Oppenheimer remained committed to at the very least, testing the weapon. In that respect, Oppenheimer convinced almost all the scientists that they should view the project as a physics experiment which needed to have the main hypothesis tested. And he promised some of the more outspoken advocates for not using the bomb that as member of the scientific advisory group to the Interim Committee on using the bomb, he would make their views known to both military and civilian authorities.

By May of 1945 with Germany out of the war, The members of the Committee came up with three options on what to do with the bomb:

1. Inform the Japanese of the existence of the bomb and threaten to use it unless they immediately surrendered.

2. A demonstration of the bombs destructive power at a remote location.

3. Drop the bombs on Japanese cities with no warning.

Oppenheimer was part of a group of scientists who contributed to the report that advocated using the bomb on Japanese cities without warning. The reasoning was that any warning given would allow the Japanese to move thousands of American POW’s into the area where the bomb would be dropped. Plus, it was felt that the psychological effect of the bomb would be lost if any advance notice was given the Japanese. The report stated that since “we can purpose no technical demonstration likely to bring an end to the war; we see no acceptable alternative to direct military use.”

Oppenheimer was always torn on taking this position. On the one hand, he sympathized intellectually with his colleagues from Chicago who didn’t want to use the bomb. On the other hand, Oppenheimer was privy to intelligence that indicated unless the Japanese were shocked by using the bomb without warning on one or two of their cities, they would not surrender without a massive invasion. To the end of his days, his public statements reflected this dichotomy as he alternately would justify his support for using the bomb and curse himself for not taking a stronger stand against the post-war plans for nuclear power that, for the most part, shut scientists out of the decision making process.

Oppenheimer did oppose the quick use of the second bomb on Nagasaki reasoning that the Japanese government should have time to evaluate the bomb’s effects. In this, he may have been correct in that the Japanese at first disbelieved President Truman’s announcement that one, lone bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and secondly, the Japanese government was unable to get to the city and evaluate the damage until August 8th, less than 24 hours before the second bomb was used on Nagasaki.

Following Japan’s surrender, a tug of war ensued between the scientists and the government on who would best control the awesome power of the atom. It is perhaps instructive that at this time, scientists believed that anything short of international controls on nuclear secrets would result in an arms race. Intellectually they were right. But in the practical world of post war domestic and international politics, there was never a chance for any such plan to succeed. The Soviets had proved themselves duplicitous in eastern Europe and the cold war was well underway. Oppenheimer was made an adviser to the newly minted Atomic Energy Commission which oversaw America’s efforts to both build weapons of mass destruction and use the knowledge gained from the Manhattan Project for peaceful purposes. He correctly predicted that the Soviets would have a weapon much faster than the military’s estimate of 10 years (1955). This was born out when the Soviet’s exploded their first atomic bomb in September of 1949. What the scientists had feared became a reality; an arms race was underway that was to divert massive amounts of both money and scientific expertise to bomb making.

The dilemma faced by Oppenheimer and his fellow scientists echoes down to this day as more and more scientists are opting out of weapons building even with the promise of exciting, breakthrough work as part of the bargain. But perhaps Oppenheimer and his fellows should be remembered as much for their patriotism as they are for the work they did. For it was the belief that their nation’s survival was at stake that drove them to achieve the breakthroughs necessary to bring the Manhattan Project to fruition. Because of that, and even with their doubts and feelings of guilt about how it was used, we should be eternally grateful for their work.

The radioactive Mullahs in Iran have apparently rejected the latest offer from the EU 3 of Germany, France, and Great Britain to halt their uranium conversion efforts:

Iran announced Saturday that it would reject a proposal by three European countries aimed at ending the confrontation over Iran’s nuclear program.

A Foreign Ministry statement announcing the decision came as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was sworn in as Iran’s new president.

President Ahmadinejad’s new government now faces a decision about whether to proceed with Iran’s announced plan to continue with a uranium conversion process that Tehran suspended a year ago, a step that the West has said may lead to it seeking sanctions against Iran at the United Nations Security Council.

Newly minted President Ahmadinejad appears to be having a problem focusing on reality. This from his innauguration speech:

“We want peace and justice for all and they are the integral part of our foreign policy,” he said, addressing senior Iranian officials and foreign ambassadors at the ceremony. “I stress on these two principles so that countries which use the instrument of threat against our nation know that our people will never give up its right to justice.”

“I don’t know why some countries do not want to understand that the Iranian people will never give in to pressure,” he added. “When people see such attitude, resistance grows in them and achieving a national right becomes an ideal.”

John F. Kennedy, he’s not.

It would be interesting if some enterprising reporter would ask the terrorist what his definition of “justice” is? As a member of the elite Qods or “Jerusalem Force,” a brigade of the feared Revolutionary Guards based in western Iran that specialized in assasinating “enemies of the revolution” who lived overseas, Iran’s new President may have a little different take on what “justice” really means.

Couple these statements with the bizzare press conference last week featuring this exchange between reporters and Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hamid-Reza Asefi about Iran starting up their uranium enrichment (UCF) processes:

Reporter: What will the scope of the (UCF) activity in Esfahan be at the beginning? Will it have full or partial capacity?

Asefi: No. I know it is of no interest to you.

What is going on?

I’ve already speculated here that given all we know about Iran’s new President, it’s possible that the Guardian Council has determined that confrontation with the west is inevitable and as a result, is becoming much more insular in its outlook. Without much coverage in the western press, the Revolutionary Guards (who are under the direct control of Guardian Council leader Ayatollah Khamenei) have been on a rampage since Ahmadinejad’s election, rounding up dissidents, cracking down on freedom of the press and assembly, and supressing any hint of protest against the regime. Some of the reformist elements have responded by becoming violent themselves. A recent outbreak of anti-government protests in the western part of Iran recently was ruthlessly put down by 100,000 troops.

Iran is going to go ahead with its uranium enrichment programs because it sees no other choice. The regime is in trouble at home and will now seek to build an atomic bomb to rally support to the government. It worked for Musharaf in Pakistan as the dictator almost bankrupted the country to build the bomb. The Mullahs may see a rekindling of nationalistic pride as the only alternative to being booted out.

With the news today that a vaccine has been developed to counter Bird Flu, the race now begins to produce enough of the drug to immunize those most at risk during a possible pandemic:

The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, said that although the vaccine that had undergone preliminary tests could be used on an emergency basis if a pandemic developed, it would still be several months before that vaccine was tested further and, if licensed, offered to the public.

“It’s good news,” Dr. Fauci said. “We have a vaccine.”

But he cautioned: “We don’t have all the vaccine we need to meet the possible demand. The critical issue now is, can we make enough vaccine, given the well-known inability of the vaccine industry to make enough vaccine?”

That shot by Dr. Fauci may be out of line. The vaccine industry has the ability to make enough doses. The problem has been both industry and government short sightedness:

The fact of the matter is that, compared to manufacturing drugs or other types of vaccine, producing flu vaccine is an exceedingly high-risk, low-profit, labor-intensive enterprise. Pharmaceutical companies have dumped the product because, in the words of a recent Washington Post article, it “has simply become too much trouble.” Liability costs, real or potential, comprise only part of an economic equation which also includes such factors as government regulation (including price controls), market unpredictability and production challenges unique to flu vaccines.

As the Times article points out, part of the problem is that vaccines need to be incubated using live chicken eggs.

Because the vaccine is made in chicken eggs, “a potential major stumbling block” to successful mass production is the number of eggs farmers can supply manufacturers, Dr. Fauci said.

If manufacturers can overcome such hurdles, the new vaccine could go far in averting a possible pandemic of human influenza, Dr. Fauci said.

Other problems that need to be overcome before the vaccine can be mass marketed include more human trials to determine dosage levels as well as tests to make sure the drug is safe for young children and adults over 65 years of age. This most recent round of tests was performed on healthy adult volunteers under 65.

Under normal circumstances, we’re still probably 3 to 5 years from having a viable vaccine. However, given the urgency of the situation, the drug could be used in an emergency to immunize those most at risk.

Ordinarily in a flu outbreak, at risk individuals would include the very old, the very young, and those whose immune system has been damaged due to diseases like AIDS. Also at high risk for infection are the health professionals who would be treating flu victims. If enough doses could be found to immunize these groups, the death toll for a pandemic could go down significantly.

The question being asked by governments and international health officials is are we going to be given enough time? Given the nature of the crisis, it’s going to be a race between our ability to defend against infection and the virus’s ability to mutate.

At least now we appear to be on the same lap as the bug.

It happens every year. A gigantic spasm of anti-Americanism breaks out all over the world on August 6th as people gather in every major city to condemn the use by the United States of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

And yet, there is no similar day set aside by the world to remember other tragedies of that war - tragedies that when taken together reveal that our incineration of Hiroshima was a godsend to both the American people and millions of people across Asia.

The city of Hiroshima was rebuilt as a “Peace City.” A large part of the city has been given over to remembrances of August 6, 1945. There are arches, monuments, a museum, and a Peace Bell.

Dedicated in 1964, the Peace Bell has become a focal point for the annual gathering of remembrance. Tens of thousands of people gather in Peace Park to hear the ringing of the bell at 8:15 AM, the time the bomb exploded. There follows a minute of silence.

I wonder what those tens of thousands of people are thinking of when that bell tolls?

Are they thinking about the 2200 Americans who were killed on December 7, 1941? Are they thinking of the sailors from the Oklahoma and other ships who were strafed by machine gun fire from Japanese airplanes as they fought for their lives trying to swim in the oil choked and flaming water.

When the bell tolls are they thinking of the Batan Death March where tens of thousands of Americans were shot, beaten to death, bayoneted, and left to die after collapsing due to the heat and exhaustion?

Any prisoner found with Japanese souvenirs was executed immediately, because the Japanese believed the soldier must have killed a Japanese soldier in order to get it. Many soldiers had found these items, such as money and shaving mirrors. Their own personal property was usually stolen as well.

Any troops who fell behind were executed. Japanese troops beat soldiers randomly, and denied the POWs food and water for many days. One of their tortures was known as the sun treatment. The Philippines in April is very hot. Therefore, the POWs were forced to sit in the sun without any shade, helmets, or water. Anyone who dared ask for water was executed. On the rare occasion they were given any food, it was only a handful of contaminated rice. When the prisoners were allowed to sleep for a few hours at night, they were packed into enclosures so tight that they could barely move. Those who lived collapsed on the dead bodies of their comrades.

When the bell tolls, are they thinking about the 230,000 prisoners of war who died while in Japanese custody?

One in three died in captivity at the hands of the Japanese, starved to death, worked to death, beaten to death, dead of loathsome epidemic diseases that the Japanese would not treat. From the beginning, what the Japanese did to their prisoners, body and soul, was humanly appalling. Even so, the prisoners stayed and took it. For them the stakes were: try to escape, with the chances of suffering and dying almost a hundred percent, or stay with what turned out to be a two-to-one chance of surviving.

When the bell tolls, are they thinking about the 80,000 women who were raped and more than 350,000 massacred in Nanking, China in 1937?

Between December 1937 and March 1938 at least 369,366 Chinese civilians and prisoners of war were slaughtered by the invading troops. An estimated 80,000 women and girls were raped; many of them were then mutilated or murdered.

To this day the Japanese government has refused to apologize for these and other World War II atrocities, and a significant sector of Japanese society denies that they took place at all.

When the bell tolls, are they thinking about the estimated 200,000 Korean, Filipino, and other Asian women the Japanese army used as “comfort women?”

During World War II the Japanese Imperial Forces Ministries, the Foreign Office, the secret police, the military and naval police and local ‘recruiters’ ran a highly organised prostitution network to supply the military brothels with Korean, Taiwanese, Chinese and Filipino women. It should be added that this trafficking also included Dutch women from PoW camps, Eurasian and Indonesian females. It is important to note, too, that this trafficking was carried out by official Imperial Edict and was an established policy known and approved by such as convicted Class A war criminal and General Vice-Minister of War, Yashijiro Umezu.

Women, some as young as twelve when their ordeal began, endured years of coercion, violence, abduction, rape and wrongful imprisonment at the hands of the Japanese.

When the bell tolls are they thinking about the 15,000,000 Chinese civilians killed during the unprovoked war brought about Japan’s greed and militarism?

When the bell tolls are they thinking about the thousands of infants that Japanese soldiers used to impale on their bayonets just to amuse themselves?

When the bell tolls, are they thinking of the thousands of American soldiers killed after Japanese soldiers pretended to surrender only to pull the pin on a grenade and kill themselves and their erstwhile American captors?

If we’re going to remember the victims of Hiroshima, then we damn well should be remembering the victims of Japanese militarism. It was at least as odious an ideology as fascism. And the brutality it engendered in its soldiers had no parallel in modern history.

The arguments for and against dropping the bomb have been raging for decades. Each new bit of evidence that comes out changes few minds. My own view is that anyone who thinks the Japanese were ready to surrender before August 6, 1945 is sadly mistaken. My belief was buttressed recently by this excellent article in the Weekly Standard by Richard B. Frank that details some Japanese intercepts which make it clear that the militarists were bound and determined to fight to the bitter end.

At the time the bomb was dropped, there was hardly a stick or a stone left standing in any major city in Japan. The militarists were determined to resist any additional bombing campaign - a campaign that had already claimed the lives of as many as 1.5 million Japanese civilians. As for the Navy’s idea of blockading Japan and starving the island nation into surrender, that too would have killed millions of additional Japanese as well as failing to bring the Japanese government to heel.

As for an invasion, it’s been correctly pointed out that the Navy was extremely reluctant to participate in a venture that would have allowed it’s fleet to be exposed to as many as 10,000 suicide planes from the mainland of Japan. It’s problematic whether an invasion even would have been attempted much less succeed.

But what nobody can argue is that while the war raged, thousands of civilians in dozens of country were dying every day at the hands of the Japanese army. Despite all the protestations about why the US used the bomb, no one can refute this one simple point; dropping the atomic bomb saved lives.

The bell is silent now. It will remain so for another year. Do you think by this time next year the world would have begun to put our actions at the end of World War II into some kind of perspective? Or do you think that’s asking too much?

I’m late to this blog swarm but I feel I just have to put my two cents in the pot regarding this extraordinarily stupid ruling by the NCAA that will ban Native American mascots for “March Madness” next year:

The National Collegiate Athletic Association banned the use of American Indian mascots by sports teams during its postseason tournaments, a ruling the president of Florida State University called “outrageous and insulting.”

The NCAA’s executive committee said the organization, which governs college sports, is limiting the prohibition to tournaments it controls. It doesn’t have the power to institute an outright ban, said University of Hartford President Walter Harrison, chairman of the committee.

Effective immediately, nicknames or mascots that are determined to be “hostile or abusive” can’t be shown on uniforms or other team-related clothing, Harrison said. He wasn’t specific about which nicknames or logos would be affected.

I’m totally with Jeff Goldstein on this:

The problem is, decisions like this are more than simply insulting, because they strengthen the political hand of prononents of identity politics, which in turn weakens individual rights and drives the PC culture that leads to the kind of balkinization and clash of cultures we’re now beginning to see all over Western Europe.

Quite a sad day for America, and another embarrassment to come out of our increasingly gutless academy.

My question for the NCAA is why stop at Native Americans? There are a whole host of mascots and symbols out there that are incredibly insulting and demeaning. Try these on for size:

FIGHTING IRISH OF NOTRE DAME

Anyone who thinks that picture of the leprechan with his fists balled up as if ready to fight isn’t an ethnic caricture, think again. It was a common cartoon as recently as the 1930’s to portray the Irish as drunken sots who loved to fight and always got into brawls. Besides, looking at my beloved Irish’s mascot, I detect that the little guy may have had a wee too much of a nip of the “crature.” Then again, because I’m Irish, maybe I’m just looking in a mirror.

USC TROJANS

Have you ever seen a more demeaning characterization of condoms in your life than the “Trojan” sitting on the horse? I must say, the least they could do is take the element of beastiality out of their mascot presentation. And have you noticed when the “Trojan” rides around the LA Collesium how he’s always waving that sword? Doesn’t that look just a little bit too phallic?

Imagine what would happen if the NCAA were to ban all the sexually demeaning mascots out there! Say Goodbye to the Washington “Huskies” and the Arizona State “Wildcats.”

OKLAHOMA SOONERS

Making a mascot of the famous Oklahoma “Sooner” is a travesty of AntiAmericanism. The “Sooner” was a nickname given to people with the true American spirit who were involved in the Oklahoma land rush in 1889. Thousands of people lined up at a starting point waiting for the signal to begin a mad rush to claim a portion of millions of acres of land. Then, when the cannon boomed…

The riders on horseback burst ahead of the droves of land seekers, but as they spread across the horizon they were discouraged to see that covered wagons and even men on foot had already occupied many prime places. As many as nine out of ten of these settlers had jumped the gun, earning themselves the name “Sooners”.

HOW DARE THEY! To demean the all-American traits of exhibiting initiative, imagination, and being a real “go-getter” is an affront to all of us who value what makes America great. Yes, they sort of violated the rules but we Americans know instinctively that unless you bend the rules a little, you’ll never get ahead in this country. Just look at Ken Lay.

BOSTON CELTICS

While we’re banning college mascots, how about going after the pros? The shamrock is an insult to every living Celt who treasures their past.

At one time, the Celts ruled an empire that stretched from the Black Sea to England. And yet they reduce that glorious past to a representation of one tiny Island in the Atlantic Ocean? Ridiculous.

BTW…if there are any living Celts out there please let me know. Since there are so many idiots in Europe who think we should give all that land back to our own Native Americans, maybe we can wangle a few million acres from some of those Euro-twits by laying a solid guilt trip on them for stealing Celtic lands.

NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS

Hah! Patriots? In Massachussetts? Are you kidding me?

Is there any bluer state than the deep, dark, blue of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts? I think serious consideration should be given by the NFL to yank that moniker from the two time Super Bowl champs and replace it with something more appropriate. Like the New England Chowderheads or how about the Boston Baked Beans?

To insult our patriot past by comparing the moonbats in Massachusetts with the brave fellows who endured Valley Forge, threw the British Army back 3 times at Bunker Hill, and pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor towards the noble goal of human liberty is unconscionably demeaning to today’s patrtiots. The moonbats today don’t even go to Valley Forge unless it’s in their heated RV. And the only thing they’re willing to pledge their fortunes to is the ACLU or Moveon.Org.

Mithras, who runs the liberal site Fables of Reconstruction , posted what he terms “A Conservative Blog Taxonomy.” It’s actually a very clever idea. And given that I’m a shameless and inveterate thief when it comes to harvesting ideas to feed this personal demon of a blog, I thought it might be interesting to duplicate the moonbat’s efforts and see what I could come up with in creating a “Moonbat Blog Taxonomy.”

Now taxonomy is generally defined in biology as an “orderly classification of plants and animals according to their presumed natural relationships.” This posed something of a problem since there’s no such thing as “natural relationships” when it comes to moonbats. In fact, there’s nothing natural at all about liberals in that you have to make a preternatural effort day in and day out to exhibit that amount of cluelessness regarding the world around you as it actually exists.

Be that as it may, in researching the subject, I arrived at a solution to my dilemma; categorize the sites using as a benchmark how far the blog deviates from the real world and descends into conspiratorial fantasy.

I discovered that the more forcefully the denizens of these sites bragged about being a member of the “Reality Based Community” the farther they actually were from existing on the same plane of the universe as the rest of us. Some maintain a passing familiarity with reality - as if reality were like walking past a beautiful woman and getting a tantalizing whiff of an exotic perfume. Others have had reality slap them upside the head and still deny the evidence of it with their own eyes and ears.

A “Reality Quotient” (RQ) will be assigned each site in order to rank their moonbattiness. A rank of “5″ indicates a firm foothold on reality. A rank of “1″ indicates a trip back to planet earth is in order.

KEVIN DRUM

Kevin Drum’s blog The Political Animal swings wildly between well written analyses of politics, the economy, and current events and a snivelling, simpering condenscension that grates on the mind like a fingernail run across a blackboard grates on the ears. His famous “A Few Wee Questions” for hawks on the Iraq war became the source of much hilarity on the right as well as conservative blog fodder for weeks. Not above letting his Bush hatred cloud his judgement.

RQ: 4.5

TALKLEFT

I’ve always found Jeralyn Merrit’s Talkleft to be island of reason in a sea of liberal idiocy.

When you think about it, that’s not saying much.

Merrit’s a smart, savvy attorney who knows criminal law but whose political judgement is, shall we say, wanting…As in “wanting one iota of political horsesense.” Like all other lefty bloggers, her posts on the Gannon/Guckert imbroglio got to be like watching an epileptic rolling around on the floor having a fit. Everyone else in the vicinity was wondering what the big deal was.

RQ: 4.1

WONKETTE

I’ve never understood the fascination with Wonkette AKA Anna Marie Cox. Maybe it’s the three names which make her sound mysterious. Maybe it’s the penis jokes which make her sound slutty. It can’t be her personal appearance. She looks like a pushing 40, pre-middle aged, dumpy, lumpy, policy maven.

She believes she can elevate snark to the level of political discourse as she gossips her way through the bedrooms, board rooms, and dining rooms of Washington. What passes for “information” is really just a regurgitation of news clippings and other blog posts with a smattering of innocuous, inane commentary. Not ill informed, just colorless with tepid attempts at humor. No insight. No original thinking. Dull, drab, almost humorless, and totally without redeeming value. In short, a waste of time and bandwidth.

RQ: 4.0

MYDD

The duo of Jerome Armstrong and Chris Bowers at MyDD are perhaps the biggest purveyors of Democratic spin in the blogosphere. A paid consultant for the Dean campaign, Armstrong has a knack for being more wrong about more things political than any other big blogger I’ve seen. His analysis is shallow and trite. His writing is, well, boring. Vomiting up Democratic talking points on everything from the WoT to the Rove-Wilson-Plame affair, I have yet to see an orginal position taken in opposition to anything the Democrats have done.

RQ: 3.6

ESCHATON

Atrios AKA Duncan Black runs the site Eschaton. I’d call Mr. Black a snake in the grass but that would be insulting snakes, grass, and the sun that gives life to both of them. A true leftist lickspittle his “community” is the most vulgar, most obscenely obnoxious group of party hacks around. Black has been known to sic his minions on bloggers who displease him. A real class act.

RQ: 3.1

OLIVER WILLIS

If there was ever a more irrelvant hysteric on the left side of the sphere than Oliver Willis I haven’t discovered him yet. Famous for putting a “countdown” clock at the top of his blog counting the days that Brit Hume hadn’t resigned for , as Oliver put it so rationally: ” Hume intentionally manipulated the words of the 32nd president, Mr. Franklin Delano Roosevelt to make it appear as if FDR supported privatization of social security. This is a brazenly false falsehood.” After about a month, Mr. Willis removed the clock from his blog but not before several conservative bloggers razzed him hilariously.

Willis’ conspiracy mongering about everything from the 2004 election to Jeff Gannon reveals a pathological resistence to reality that makes him one of the top 5 cluebats on the left.

RQ: 2.4

AMERICABLOG

Even just typing the name makes me feel unclean. John Aravosis of Americablog is a walking argument for internet regulation (too bad I adamantly oppose it). The nauseating way in which he “outed” Jeff Gannon by publishing nude pictures of the quasi-journalist along with the suggestion that Gannon may have been a gay escort at one time, sickened decent people everywhere. The fact that he was cheered on by other lefty bloggers tells you all you need to know about the hypocrisy that drips from the snarling lips of the radical lefties.

The “conspiracy” pushed by Aravosis had Gannon sleeping with every male in the White House including the President. The fact that even the White House press corps let out a collective yawn at the whole affair proves that not only was there nothing to the story, but that some harmless twit of a conservative writer who wanted to hide his identity was unceremoniously outed by people with no integrity and no honor.

RQ: 1.4

THE HUFFINGTON POST

There are so many loons, goons, and poltroons who write for Arianna Huffington’s Huffington Post that you all you have to do to find someone totally disconnected from reality is close your eyes, point, and click. It’s hard to say whether the B-list celebrities or C-list journalists who write for the site are more irrelevant. And Arianna herself presides over these mountebanks like a Queen of Tarts, jostling with the dozen or so posters for the honor of being named “Conservative Cannon Fodder for a Day.” There is no site out side of the Democratic Underground whose writers are more regularly nor more completely fisked.

RQ: 1.1

DAILY KOS

Markos Moulitsas Zúniga AKA Kos, AKA “Screw ‘em” Kos is possibly the worst thing to happen to the Democratic party since George McGovern. His ability to raise money from his legions of conspiracy mongering, paranoid readers makes him absolutely indispensible to the party’s infrastructure. Just recently, he almost singlehandedly took an unkown attorney and Iraqi War vet Paul “Two-faced” Hackett and, by raising nearly a half a million dollars in a fortnight, put him within spitting distance of winning the special election in Ohio’s 2nd Congressional District.

What makes Kos such a ball and chain for the Democratic party is that despite his ability to raise money, the fantastical conspiracies given prominence on his site regarding Bush, the war, elections, Gannon/Guckert, Rove (again and again), Cheney, Haliburton, and on and on - give the party a patina of psychosis that leaves conservatives laughing and rational Democrats scratching their heads. His “0 for 16″ record when supporting a Democratic candidate also prove he’s a loser. If he couldn’t raise money, he’d be out of business since a political consultant is only as good as his won-loss record. And without the conspiritorial nature of his site, he’d lose half of his considerable readership. They’d simply pack up and go someplace that will feed their constant paranoia that the world is against them.

RQ: 0.4

DEMOCRATIC UNDERGROUND

I actually have a soft spot in my heart for the inmates at the Democratic Underground. Let’s face it; the internet just wouldn’t be the same without them. It’s become a matter of course for me that whenever I’ve got writer’s block, I visit the DU and, within 5 minutes, find something so outrageous, so far beyond the pale, that my dilemma regarding what to write about disappears in a flash. I wear their disapprobation like a badge of honor.

Perhaps one illustration of their complete disconnect from reality is in order. Following the tsunami tragedy last December, a comment thread at the site started to speculate that, in fact, secret US government tests in the ocean caused the giant waves. The comments got loonier and loonier as the DU’ers speculated that the earth itself was falling apart:

Since we know that the atmosphere has become contaminated by all the atomic testing, space stuff, electronic stuff, earth pollutants, etc., is it logical to wonder if: Perhaps the “bones” of our earth where this earthquake spawned have also been affected?

You just can’t make this stuff up.

For DU’ers, every election is stolen, every setback by Democrats is the result of a plot by Karl Rove, and everything else is Haliburton’s fault. In short, when looking for sanity at the Democratic Underground, it’s best to remember the sign that Dante Alighieri saw at the gates of hell in his poem “The Divine Comedy:

“All hope abandon, ye who enter here.”

RQ: ARE YOU KIDDING?