PORPHYROGENITUS REMARKS ON A CHANGE IN ANTI-WAR ARGUMENTS:

Many of them allowed that the old inspection regime was ineffectual. Several suggested that inspections be backed by a force of 50,000 troops so they could push their way in wherever and whenever they wanted, without obstruction. But one letter from Iraq later and virtually all of them have dropped that – it appears that those among the “warbloggers” who thought that this option that they claimed to favor was simply a rhetorical device, not sincerely believed, but simply an excuse to object to more serious methods, were right all along. They have now taken, once again, to repeating Tarik Aziz’s line.

This is a bit of an overstatement, I think, but it’s true enough in places.

UPDATE: The IndePundit has some comments, too.

JOSH CHAFETZ has a new slogan for American diplomacy.

WENDY MCELROY reveals the political maneuverings designed to undercut a commission in New Hampshire aimed at gender issues. (Via Quare, whose proper name is still wrong on my blogroll, dammit. I’ve lost control of that thing.)

BRINK LINDSEY has a long post that argues the futility of weapons inspections.

UPDATE: Here’s a response from Warblogging.com — a domain name that, in retrospect, I’m surprised nobody snagged sooner.

MOMMABEAR POINTS OUT this very interesting piece by Janet Daley about English sentiments and English media. Excerpt:

What was shocking was the extent to which people seemed resigned to feeling utterly alienated by the BBC’s coverage of events. What became clear was that the Question Time episode was simply a new low for what they had come to regard as a little more than a cosy, self-indulgent corporate conspiracy against the views of ordinary people.

They had learnt to expect that the experts who would be allowed airtime would all subscribe to the official received wisdom. (Which was, at the time, that the warmonger George Bush would rush into an ignorant, insane “over-reaction” and thus destabilise the world. The American policy proved, in the event, to be carefully planned, strategically cautious and remarkably successful, but no one at the BBC seemed to be embarrassed: they just went on to attack the speculative next stage of American foreign policy.)

Over and again, the letters assured me that “the BBC has nothing to do with us”: I should not mistake the national broadcasting service for the nation. The letters came from all over the country and many of them were scathing of the metropolitan circles that I inhabited.

Britain was full of decent people who were not fooled. The obnoxious chatterers to whom I was referring were “a tiny minority” – which is statistically true enough.

So why, you ask, don’t I just ignore them? Because I can’t, dear reader. And neither can you. Whether you like it or not, they claim to speak for you. Unlike the diffident people who took the time to write to me, they speak with a loud voice and they invariably see to it that they are heard by those they wish to influence.

Nice piece.

JOANNE JACOBS is skeptical of Iraq’s prospects for democracy, and of Tom Friedman’s ability to divine public sentiment via call-in shows.

Hey, Tom: public sentiment on call-in shows that I’ve been on (even NPR’s Talk of the Nation) has uniformly been heavily opposed to gun control. Better tell Howell Raines.

HERE’S AN INTERVIEW WITH SCOTT RITTER, the likes of which you probably haven’t seen before. (Via Susanna Cornett).

SUSANNA CORNETT doesn’t like the “tumbling woman” sculpture. Me, I’m not sure what I think. On the one hand, I can see how it would seem like exploitation.

On the other hand, many of us were blasting the TV networks for refusing to broadcast footage of people jumping from the WTC towers, because we didn’t want the reality swept under the rug. If you want people to remember, well, art is a way of remembering.

UPDATE: There’s an interesting debate going on in her comments section.

ERIC OLSEN, who has pretty much abandoned his original blog for BlogCritics, is seeing it pay off: he has the cover story in Salon, (er, well, it would be the cover story, if Salon had a cover, anyway. . . .).

CHINA’S NEXT MOVE? My TechCentralStation column is up.

VIRGINIA POSTREL observes:

The Iraqis apparently have their own definition of “without conditions,” which is, “with conditions.” For starters, there’s the delay: a 10-day delay just for the meeting on the arrangements, never mind the inspections themselves. More important, the Iraqis’ letter leaves wiggle room for conditions . . . .

As the Japanese and the would-be Confederate States can testify, the U.S. government traditionally takes the idea of “unconditional” a bit more literally than the United Nations seems to.

And rightly so.

UPDATE: Geitner Simmons and Donald Sensing have additional observations, and some interesting background. And Jennie Taliaferro has some polling data and remarks, “FASTER, PLEASE.”

THOSE UNILATERALISTS in the anti-war movement are at it again:

To rapturous applause, Mr Foot told activists: “Whatever the UN says, we are against war with Iraq.”

Those sorts of attitudes are an obvious threat to the international system, and I think this “go it alone” approach is appalling and uncivilized. . . .

THOSE BASTARDS!

SADDAM’S NOT STALLING to prevent a war. At least, not successfully. Because the war’s already underway.

UPDATE: And here’s a report that he’s having domestic political problems, though, well — you’ll see.

BLACK DEMS BLAME JEWS FOR DEFEAT.

“People were talking retaliation,” said Ron Walters, the director of the African American Leadership Institute at the University of Maryland, of last week’s CBC events in Washington. “They were saying [presidential hopeful] Sen. Joe Lieberman is dead in the water, and so on and so forth.”

Well, that’s a constructive approach.

SHOULD THE INDEPUNDIT DECLARE VICTORY? Or is the apparent submission just a delaying tactic?Weigh in in his comments section.

A.C. DOUGLAS has some advice for Colin Powell.

IT’S NOT JUST DENNIS KUCINICH who’s into space kookery. Check out this item from Democrats.Com on the private TransOrbital moon mission (no permalinks, you’ll have to scroll):

Like all the other international laws, Bush is now ignoring those pertaining to space. As America is distracted by 9/11 remembrances and warnings of new threats, His Heinous has turned the moon over to a private, for-profit corporation called TransOrbital that has a far-reaching, frigthening agenda for the corporate domination of space. All TransOrbital had to do was promise not to contaminate and pollute the moon – yeah, right. That’s what the oil companies say about ANWR. There was no Congressional vote – not even any consultation. Bush simply acted as if the moon were his to give away. The TransOrbital venture could be disastrous for the globe – no scientist today could predict yet how adding mass to the moon via human infrastructure or removing mass, via mining, will impact the delicate gravitational interplay between Earth and its only satellite. The moon belongs to all the people of the Earth – not to George. W. Bush or his friends at TransOrbital.

(Emphasis added). Actually, pretty much any scientist could tell you that nothing TransOrbital does could make the slightest difference in the “gravitational interplay” between the Earth and its “only satellite.” (Er, only satellite except for this one, and this one).

The Moon’s mass is .07 x 10²⁴ kg. The Earth is approximately 81 times more massive. By contrast, TransOrbital is talking about payloads in the hundreds (10²) of kilograms at most. Can these people do math? Do they have any idea what they’re talking about?

Why am I wasting my time asking such obvious questions?

Democrats.Com is a parody site, right? Well, yes, whether intentionally or not.

And boy, it didn’t take long for this prediction to come true, did it?

UPDATE: Faisal Jawdat emails that it’s even worse than I make it out above:

If I recall correctly, the strongest gravitational influence on the moon is not the earth, it’s the sun. The earth and the moon share more or less the same orbit around the sun, passing each other as they go.

Contrast to the moons of other planets in the solar system where the strongest gravitational influence is the local planet.

It’s been a long time since I studied this stuff, but that sounds right. (And Faisal’s a tech guy). Is there an astronomer in the house? Somebody page Jay Manifold!

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Mike Doffing points out:

The moon gets unpredicatable amounts of mass added to it all the time. (Hint: they’re called craters.) Moreover, the influx rate does vary significantly (think meteor showers).

Then there’s the earth, which, as you point out, is much larger and therefore attracts even more stuff. It is now known (only proven fairly rececntly) that all of our water comes from space — the early earth was too hot to retain it. How much do the oceans weigh?

I don’t know if they can do math. They certainly can’t do astronomy.

I think the “no scientist can say what the long-term effects will be” is just a reflexive rhetorical trope now, and hence doesn’t require asking any actual scientist anything, or even listening to what they say if you do. This really does read like a parody, but the site, alas, is serious. Well, as serious as it’s capable of being, anyway. With some people the difference is pretty arbitrary.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Jay Manifold replies:

Truly bizarre. Strictly speaking, of course, the statement (“… no scientist today could predict …”) is literally correct, but only because any effect would be so small. Some carriers of anti-commercial memes will stop at nothing, and of course the math involved (see link) is way over the heads of a goodly portion of the electorate.

Faisal Jawdat is correct. Applying F ~ mM/r^2, and setting the Moon’s pull on Earth at 1, the Sun’s pull on Earth works out to about 174. By contrast, Jupiter’s pull on Earth is (on average) 0.006. I could do the rest of the Solar System, but it’s late.

Mike Doffing is also correct: “More than 100 tonnes of inter-planetary dust enters the earth’s atmosphere each day.” (link)

Democrats.Com: Your #1 source for bizarre misinformation! Well, one of them, anyway. There are so many . . . .

LAST UPDATE: Jim Bennett emails these comments:

But of course Congress did vote on it, in 1984, when they (including the Democrat-controled House, which originated the bill) passed the Commercial Space Launch Act. I recall the extensive discussions with the staff of the bill’s originator, Rep. (now Sen.) Danny Akaka, D-Hawaii, and it was quite clear that they were giving authorization to the DOT to approve all non-crewed missions including lunar. I testified at the dammned hearings! It’s also a fact that any mission includes a review for compliance with all US international treaty obligations.

So in addition to being mathematically and scientifically illiterate and innumerate, these people also seem to know nothing about legislation, regulatory procedures, or international law.

He’s right, of course. I was sufficiently distracted by the other idiocies that I forgot to point this out. Maybe we should just introduce those guys to Buzz Aldrin for a course of instruction in the realities of space exploration and development.

PETA IS IN DANGER OF LOSING ITS TAX EXEMPTION over too-close relations with eco-terrorists. Seems fair to me.

(Via The Hammer).

YET ANOTHER CAUTIONARY TALE concerning email.

“TORRICELLI’S TERROR PAL$:”

NEW Jersey voters already concerned about Sen. Robert Torricelli’s low ethical threshold now learn that he’s been a paid shill for a group the government identifies as a terrorist organization.

Called on this by his Republican opponent, Douglas Forrester, in a debate Thursday, Torricelli said the group had been pulled from the State Department’s global terror list and given a clean bill of health. Not true.

(Via Orrin Judd).

ASPARAGIRL POINTS OUT a website dedicated to monitoring and harassing Islamoterrorists on the Web. Buy why are these guys watching them — and who are they working for?

VOLOKH IS ON A ROLL — Now he’s fact-checking John Banzhaf, a law professor at George Washington University who’s switched from anti-tobacco to anti-McDonald’s litigation, but who seems to be accuracy-challenged.

MIKE ZORN is deconstructing Buzz Aldrin punch-ee Bart Sibrel. It’s not a pretty sight.

I THINK WE NEED TO SEE THE “AFRAID OF THE FUTURE” NUMBERS GO WAY, WAY, WAY UP.