About Today's Iraq Vote....

I was thinking up some choice words, but I found that someone else beat me to 'em:

Capitol Hill Democrats have once again proved their inability to make Washington work in the right manner.

The Democrat Congress' maneuver to micromanage our military efforts from their offices on Capitol Hill, along with the fiscally deplorable action of loading up a wartime spending bill with pork barrel earmarks unrelated to our military's fight against terrorism has provided the American people with yet another example of the Washington mindset run amok.

Democrats in Washington have established a dangerous policy that essentially provides the enemy a planning calendar with a date certain surrender. By voting for such a policy, they have jeopardized our chances for success and endangered the mission of establishing democracy and defeating the terrorists in Iraq.

All Americans want our troops out of Iraq, but we should never do so in a way that would jeopardize American security. Setting a public timeline without consideration of future circumstances, as they may exist at that time, is reckless and irresponsible.

I urge President Bush to veto this measure and send a clear message to Washington Democrats that they must not and will not undermine the efforts of the United States military.

Source: Governor Mitt Romney on Today's Iraq Vote.

I'm not a Mormon and I'm not a Republican and I don't even know if I'll vote for Romney come 2008, but here and now I'm in perfect agreement with him.

Forgotten Heroes of Thermopylae

James S. Robbins writes about those other defenders at Thermopylae:

The Spartans used the rallying cry of “Hellas for the Greeks” when it was convenient for them, but they were well known for only fighting when the interests of their city were at stake. Even Leonidas’s self sacrifice at Thermopylae was conditioned by an oracle’s vision that Sparta would either lose one of its kings or be destroyed. As well, Herodotus observes that Leonidas was motivated by “the wish to secure the whole glory for the Spartans.”

If you can’t quite get behind rooting for the Spartans, there were other heroes on the scene at Thermopylae, people the movie ignores. Herodotus tells us that when it became clear that the Greek defensive position had been flanked, Leonidas ordered the men from the other Greek states to leave, to prepare for the confrontation yet to come. But the 700 men of Thespiae, led by Demophilus, refused. They chose to stand with the three hundred Spartans, to fight beside them. “So they abode with the Spartans,” Herodotus wrote, “and died with them.”

Who were the Thespians? No, not actors — hard to imagine seven hundred or even seventeen taking up arms these days. They came from Boeotia, near Mt. Helicon, a little more than midway between Thermopylae and Athens. Their polis was traditionally a democracy. The Thespian Hoplites were much more akin to the volunteer citizen soldiers long seen as the backbone of the American fighting forces. Unlike the Spartans, the Thespians did not spend their lives drilling and training for war while living off the sweat and toil of those the enslaved Helots. The Thespians were free men who lived freely, and defended their city because their conscience demanded it.

I know that 300 concentrated on the Spartans, as did the graphic novel on which it's based. Read Steven Pressfield's Gates of Fire, especially near the climax, to get a real feel for the Thespian sacrifice.

300

Once upon a time, a king declared himself a god, assembled an enormous army, gathered a mighty armada, and set out to conquer the known world. Standing in his way was a collection of independent city-states that one day would become known as the cradle of western civilization. It was able to become that cradle because when the Persian god-king Xerxes came a-conquering, the Greek city-states singly and collectively told him to go to hell. They then aided him in that journey.

That, in a really tight nutshell, is the history leading up to and following the Battle of Thermopylae. Thermopylae is where Spartan King Leonidas lead a force of Greek warriors from Sparta, Thespiae, and other Greek city-states. They stood in Xerxes's way, stalled the Persian advance for several days, and died to a man.

The film 300 is about that battle. It is not a completely accurate historical account (the naval portion of the campaign, waged by Athens, is missing, as is the contribution of the Thespians, etc.), but it's not meant to be. Director Zack Snyder calls his film an "opera" of the battle, and that's pretty accurate. Like all opera, you either like it or you don't; there's seldom a middle ground. Also, like opera, its morals and messages are writ large, in bold and italicized print; nuance is not on the menu.

The film is very straight-forward. A Persian messenger comes to Leonidas, insults the King's wife, and demands his surrender. Leonidas responds by kicking him into a bottomless well. He then takes his "personal guard" of 300 Spartan warriors (hence, the title) to the narrow pass at Thermopylae where the massive size of the Persian army will work against it. Emissaries go back and forth. Offers of wealth are made, asking only subservience in return; Leonidas does variations of kicking the messenger into a bottomless well. Thus are lines drawn, and the fight is on.

Snyder over-uses slow-motion. About the only action director who did slo-mo right was Sam Peckinpah, and I'd prefer if modern directors didn't try and match that master's skill. The slo-mo actually takes me out of the fight and gets more and more tedious. When the fighting is done "real time", however, it becomes visceral and frightening. The initial fight, when Spartans and Persians are smashing into each other shield to shield, is an excellent example. Shields, spears, and swords are messy things and 300 captures this with flashing blade and CGI spurting blood.

There really isn't much plot to 300; it's all setup and on with the fighting. This wasn't meant to be the definitive account of the time. This is the opera of the battle, and as such it's a beautiful thing to behold. The film was shot on a sound stage, a la Sin City and Sky Captain. The entire "world" in which it occurs was laid in afterwards via CGI. It comes off better than either of its predecessors; at times it achieves a certain artistic glow.

The cast lacks any major star, and is the better for it. The acting is serviceable; nothing more was demanded. It could have been more. (Example: 1962's 300 Spartans, same battle.) With a little more work, a little more focus on the man, the death of Leonidas at the end could have brought you to tears. Nonetheless, as it is you see men stand for what they believe, in accordance with their beliefs, and willingly give their all for a cause they know is just.

I was amazed at some of the things put into the film. In taking the fight to the invading Persian army, Leonidas violates Spartan law by ignoring the words of an oracle. However, we find that the oracle's handlers were bribed by an unscrupulous member of the city council. That same councilman manipulates the council and prevents sending Leonidas any reinforcements; he even says that Leonidas is provoking Xerxes into invading. Does any of this sound familiar?

I noticed something else while watching the film. The audience got involved. My complaints notwithstanding, the audience gave a damn. People cheered, and not when the action got gory, but when it got meaningful. I haven't seen or heard this sort of audience participation in a good many years.

300 pulled in over $70 million at the box office its opening weekend; it was anticipated it would "only" do around $40 million. Clearly, the film is a hit. Unsurprisingly, this has pissed off a lot of liberals. Tirdad Derakhshani writes that 300 is "so pretty that it hides the ugly truth about war." What is that "ugly truth"? We're never told.

Here's the historical truth behind 300: Because of the Spartan (and Thespian) sacrifice at Thermopylae, the Greek city-states rallied together to oppose the invading Persians. While Xerxes won at the Hot Gates, he lost in his effort to conquer Greece. As a result of that defeat, he was sent packing back to Persia, humiliated and defeated. Greece, often considered the birth place of democracy and western thought, was saved from tyranny, and the entire course of modern history was set. Our world would be radically different if Leonidas hadn't made his stand.

The ugly truth about war is that sometimes it is necessary. Liberals are condemning 300 as being Manichean. It clearly bothers them that a film would come out that says this simple fact, that sometimes war is necessary. This is shockingly relevant today and it's amazing that the Hollywood machine let this film get made.

Meanwhile, Peter Suderman is less impressed than Dirty Harry, David Weigel provides the proper allegorical notes, and National Review makes all the right points.

Me, on the Netflix scale I'd give it 4 out of 5 stars.

James Cameron says I'm a Jew

At least, that was supposed to be what he said this last Sunday night on his non-peer reviewed pupportedly serious desertation presented on the Discovery Channel about finding the tomb of Jesus & Family. And actually, I shouldn't give him all credit as he was only one of the producers and not the director, finder, etc.

I didn't see it, having better things to do, matters involving OTC cures for a head cold and finishing John Frankenheimer's underappreciated Black Sunday. So, for problems with the "documentary" itself, see here, which begins...

Apparently moviemaker James Cameron wishes he had obtained the film rights to The Da Vinci Code.

What else could explain his association with The Lost Tomb of Jesus? This much-hyped show makes a series of provocative claims about the Christian messiah and his kin: Jesus was betrothed to Mary Magdalene, they had a son named Judah, DNA testing of their remains proves it, and so on.

Yawn. Haven’t we read this novel?

What I find fascinating with "documentaries" like this, or novels like those by Dan Brown, is this obsessive assault on Christianity. What's especially fascinating is that they don't quite understand the underlying principles of the theology. They think "Christian" but they don't think "Judeo-Christian", which is far more accurate but more of a tongue-twister, so people just shorten it.

Unless you exist in a Brown-Cameron bubble, you know that both Jews and Christians -- and Muslims, for that matter -- worship the God of Abraham. The two religions differ sharply over the nature of the Christ, Jesus. Put crudely, a Jew would say that Jesus was a good Jewish boy and let it go at that.  Meanwhile, a Christian (like me) says that Jesus was the Son of God, God made manifest on Earth, to atone for the sins of man, to establish a new covenant, and to bring man closer in spirit and in life with God.

But take Jesus out of the equation. Slip into that Brown-Cameron bubble of unfaith and disbelief, and what do you have left? I still believe in the God of Abraham and a whole bunch of Jews around the world get to stand up, point, and say, "We told you!"

See, while Jesus might go away, the God of Abraham wouldn't. And since the Old Testament of my Bible has much in common with the holy writings of the Judaic faith, and since that's what I'm left with, Brown-Cameron would succeed in making me a Jew. Cool! My faith in a righteous and loving God wouldn't change, only my approach to Him. The Islamists would be soooo pissed off!

The currnet climate of climate debate

The Goracle, Hypocrite at Large. The Economist pretty much says all I have to say on that, except to comment on "large". Al, wow, what the hell happened? Seriously. Moonbats used to moonwalk all over Rush Limbaugh about his size, but now he's skinny and Al is, well, not. In a way I think he looks pretty good, a bit of heft being preferable to a stick figure. Oh, and here's a bit about his profiteering off his scare-mongering. Nice guy!

Now that I'm done with the politics of personal destruction, on to the show. In the current climate of climate debate, I find it laughable that the doomsayers insist on framing the argument in ways that stifle debate. These are people who support free speech in every area of life except two: abortion and climate change. In those areas if you are an opponent or skeptic, you are told in no uncertain terms to STFD and STFU.

There is, for instance, the global warming doomsayer who compares skeptics to Holocaust deniers. Yeah, there's a real stimulant to honest debate. I love the editorial cartoon which portrays the Inquisition, glaring down from their high bench, sneering, "You dare challenge global warming with scientific debate!" Sums it up nicely. (For cartoon, go here, look for January 22, 2007.)

Gore et al can sing all day and night that "there is no debate" but obviously there is. They can insult skeptics all day and night by calling them skeptics (as if that's a curse word) or worse. Neither the skeptics nor the debate will go away. By continuously invoking the word "consensus", the doomsayers implicitly acknowledge there is disagreement and dissent.

Consensus implies some sort of agreement, but who held the vote? Consensus implies that there is some disagreement. In science, that disagreement takes the form of facts and figures. In science, the single person who gets it right beats the consensus of millions who got it wrong.

Thus, Gore et al seek to silence dissent by marginalizing dissent, which is spectacularly anti-science. You see evidence of this whenever you read an article that begins, "Every right-thinking person agrees...." Thus, you are obviously a loon if you dissent; your mere disagreement means no one should talk to you.

See this article on the latest example from Gore et al. (Love the closing sentence: "Gore would not answer any questions from the media after the event.") Gore objects to news media even reporting that there's disagreement, dissent, or debate. Though he's careful in his words, his implication is that it's immoral to report dissent over the issue of population explosion global stavation global cooling nuclear winter global warming climate change.

The proponents of the theory of catastrophic climate change give their agenda away by the demands they make. To affect the changes demanded, we would have to turn the internal combustion engine off. That means shutting down major portions of the US economy.

But that's not my point. My point is what's missing. What is always missing from Gore et al's proposals is how to adjust to climate change. Assuming that the planet's climate is changing -- and of course it is, because it always has and it always will -- then how do we adapt to that change?

We hear again and again that climate change is real, is happening right now. We are told we are now beginning to see the effects of global warming via catastrophic climate change. That means the "disaster" has hit. We can't stop it, it's already happened. All we can do now is adapt to the changes. So rather than tell me to reduce my "carbon footprint", shouldn't we be talking about how to live in the new climate?

Fine, say I. We can't prevent the "catastrophe" because it's already happened. So why are all the suggested responses preventative in nature, rather than adaptive?

Adaptation is never discussed. All that's mandated are changes that destroy western economies. And if I listen to the doomsayers, I'm destroying economies for no reason. 100% compliance with Kyoto had a projected impact of negligible proportions in the year 2100. Temperatures would still rise catastrophically, and if I recall correctly the amount of hoped for reduction was within the statistical margin of error, i.e., too small to really matter. Now that is a real inconvenient truth.

And I haven't even gotten to the inconsistencies in the climate change theories (e.g., compare the dire predictions of the 2001 UN report to the less dire predictions of the 2006 UN report).

Then there's the sheer complexity of the system they are trying to model, a chaotic system if ever there was one (and there's still scientific debate over that, whether weather is truly a chaotic system). Consider that at the Oscars, the producers of Gore's film said they were inspired to action after seeing the effects of Hurricane Katrina. They -- and Gore et al -- attributed the severity of Katrina to global warming. In the aftermath of the 2005 hurricane season, and in compliance with global warming computer models, it was predicted that the 2006 hurricane season would be even worse. In reality it was perfectly average...or less. Not a single hurricane even made US landfall. Why? How could the "models" be so wrong? Because of an "unexpected el Nino event" in the Pacific Ocean.

Unexpected. That word sums it up nicely. They had a beautiful model that didn't factor in a known and fairly well understood natural phenomenon. Thus, their computer model predictions were completely wrong. If you take the hard line in science, then you believe that science consists of testable hypotheses. Every time a climate change model is "tested" by reality it fails, yet we are supposed to restructure our society due to what these computer model hypotheses predict for 100+ years in the future.

And Gore et al wonder why there are skeptics.