Strat

Recap for the Chronically Clueless: some douchebag wants to build a mosque in New York City at Ground Zero.

Fact Check
• Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the douchebag mentioned above, said shortly after the 9/11 attacks in a 60 Minutes interview that “… United States policies were an accessory to the crime that happened.”
• Rauf is being sent on a Middle East trip funded by the U. S. State Department (aka American taxpayers) to foster greater understanding. Or something. (Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain! Certainly no mosque foreign fund-raising going on here!)
• The proposed mosque is not at Ground Zero — it’s a couple of blocks away in a commercial area, in a building that was hit by landing gear or something when the twin towers were attacked.
• Saint Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, destroyed when the South Tower fell, can’t get greenlit for rebuilding because of the bureaucratic clusterfuck that is the NY/NJ Port Authority’s long-delayed and hideously over-budget reconstruction project.

Strat’s Position
• Private citizens using private money can buy/build on private property for any lawful purpose. Unless there’s some legitimate zoning issue or something, nothing prevents Rauf from building a mosque wherever he wants.
• It’s a dick move. Expect widespread public disapproval.

Tags: Prophet Motive // Add Comment »

It has occurred to me of late that the frequent 5-4 decisions of the Supreme Court indicate a basic malfunctioning of our judicial branch.

Let us consider the apple:

If we were to show nine people at random an apple, I believe there would be a unanimous nine-person consensus that it was an apple. There might be disagreement over whether it was a Red Delicious or a Braeburn, and some might opine that they don’t even like apples. But by and large, I believe that we could run our nine-person test a hundred times and get nine “apple” decisions almost uniformly, with maybe an occasional 8-1 or even 7-2 split, depending on the sobriety and/or mental impairment of the participants.

Now let us charge our nine-person panel to compare a tomato to an apple:

Would we even approach a 5-4 split in deciding whether these are the same items? Even considering that both items are red, spherical, and ostensibly fruit or vegetable products, I just don’t think there would be that big of a schism.

Some Justices like apples a lot. I mean, they really, really, like apples, and feel apples should be promoted heavily, even though the constitution doesn’t even mention apples. So when an apple/tomato (or apple/cherry, or even apple/wildebeest) comparison crops up, they try their damnedest to find for the apple.

What they should do, of course, is what they swore to do in the first place: compare the case before them to the constitution. I don’t even mind if they throw in some pro-apple language, like, “whereas tomatoes suck, and whereas apples are a healthy treat, the court must nevertheless conclude that what we have here is a fucking tomato.” That would be the honorable thing to do, and it’s what they’re supposed to be doing already. It would engender respect for the judiciary, because people could see that the Justices were honestly evaluating things instead of performing legalistic acrobatics to justify their pet opinions.

Alas, it is not so. Depending on who retires or croaks and when they do it, the Supreme Court swings this way and that in the political spectrum, and Congress seems more interested in getting nominees from their own team appointed than demanding objectivism and fealty to the constitution.

Tags: Riding the Pine // Add Comment »

I’ve upgraded WordPress to version 2.9.2 successfully, and trimmed some posts that failed to amuse me. Well, let’s be honest: there were thirteen posts, and I nuked twelve of them, leaving only the original Declaration of Intent.

Fun will now commence.

Tags: Under the Hood // Add Comment »

As my first post, it is perhaps seemly that I announce my qualifications and intentions for this weblog. There is, after all, the (admittedly slim) chance that someone will eventually stumble across this site, probably from a combination of strong drink and mistyped search engine terms, and I feel I owe it them.

Qualifications

I have absolutely no qualifications. This in itself does not seem to be a great hindrance in the blogging realm. From what I can tell, as long as I have an opinion and rudimentary motor skills, I’m good to go.

Intentions

I intend to publish my opinion on whatever subject interests or annoys me at any particular moment, which will in turn engender massive subscriber participation and discussion, culminating in lucrative advertising contracts that will allow me to collect obscene amounts of money without really working. (note: this may not in fact happen)

If you become offended by anything written here, your quickest and best solution is to immediately point your browser at another web address.

On the off chance that something written here actually gets noticed by someone and such notice threatens to blossom into a lawsuit of some kind, let it be known that it was meant in jest, as a parody, was in fact satire, and besides, I don’t have anything nice enough for you to go to the trouble of bothering a judge to take from me.

Tags: Under the Hood // Add Comment »