Well, now that I’ve formed a stable opinion I find that what I want to say has been better said by others.  So let’s go down the list in order.

First and most importantly, from Roberta X:

In other news, 3,699 to 13,999 Muslims serving in the U. S. military didn’t go on a shooting spree yesterday.

It’s not the religion. It’s not the guns. It’s the crazy. And no one group has a lock on crazy. Yeah, it’d be nice if you could single out the wicked and the dangerously loony with a simple survey. But it doesn’t work that way and no amount of pointing-with-alarm will make it so.

Just a little, huh.  Hasan wasn’t a hateful murderous asshole because he was Muslim any more than Fred Phelps is a hateful treasonous asshole because he’s Christian.  The “Muslim” part may have been his particular trigger, but those of you keeping score from home will have noted a pair of copycattish spree killings — one in Orlando, one somewhere in Washington State — shortly thereafter.  As I understand it, the problem there is that Hasan’s little orgy of petulant violence reminded those unstable cockvomits that killing a bunch of your friends will get you time on CNN, so that’s the route they took.  I doubt they stopped eating pork beforehand.

And while we’re at it, why is it that a gigantic military base in the midst of a Long War against irregular forces could be one of the most thoroughly disarmed parts of Texas?

• Safe at home (View from the Porch)

The more I think about it, the more pissed off I get at the “this is our home” comment from the completely unsat and hopefully about-to-fall-on-his-sword General Cone.

Sure, General, your troops were “safe at home”… in a war with no fronts.

They were every bit as safe at home as the crews of the USS Cole or the battleship Arizona.  Safe at home like the Marines in their barracks in Beirut.

Boat Guy, in the comments, adds:

Of course our ID cards read “Uniformed Services of the United States” now instead of “Armed Forces…” so perhaps we shoulda known …

Ouch.

Next we discover, once again, that the press has no goddamn clue what it’s talking about when matters turn even slightly technical.

• LAYERS of editorial oversight (Captain of a Crew of One)

SailorCurt quotes Fox as reporting that:

The initial investigation shows that Hasan allegedly used only one gun during the attack — a 5.7-caliber semiautomatic pistol.

The handgun in question is in fact a Fabrique Nationale Five-seveN, famous for its appearance in Counter-Strike and (until now) absolutely fuck-all else.  Its 5.7×28mm round is also fired by the FN P-90 (also famous primarily for its appearance in Counter-Strike), and as Tam notes is something like a particularly hot .22LR in lethality (and the OMG TEH SCARY armour-piercing variety is over 9000 kinds of illegal and no more capable in the “killing people” department).

But a 5.7-caliber weapon?  That’s quite something.  Just go click that link up there to SailorCurt’s article for a rather visual demonstration.

The real question, of course, is what we need to do to our security state to make sure that Nothing Like This Ever Happens Again?

• Feds dropped investigation of Hasan because he didn’t seem violent (Below the Beltway)

…

Oh.

Good thing they’re declaring libertarians to be domestic terrorists instead of investigating army officers who praise suicide bombers.  That’s totally different!

Further on, we discover that the cries of “terr’ism!” being tossed around aren’t precisely consistent with the broader narrative.  I’ll defer on this subject to both Glenn Greenwald and (of all people) Jonah Goldberg, the latter of whom notes that:

Terrorism is, by conventional definition, an attack on civilians intended to strike fear in the non-military population in order to advance a political or ideological agenda. Hasan didn’t attack civilians, he attacked uniformed members of the U.S. Army in advance of their deployment to the frontlines. It was an evil act, but was it an act of terrorism?

Something can be sick and wrong without being terrorism.  Shocking, that.

I’ve got a wee bit of a hate on for Canadian agricultural subsidies and related governmental coercion.  This latest trigger for my (purely rhetorical) homicidal tendencies is a news story by virtue of Eric Crampton:

• Further Canadian agricultural idiocy (Offsetting Behaviour)

Here’s the gist of the problem, courtesy of the Globe and FMail:

Europe insists that its dairy industries have full access to Canadian markets without any unfair competition from within Canada. Danish, Irish and French butter can be bought in supermarkets all over Europe, and officials see no reason why that can’t be the case in Canada, too.

And for the most part, Canada’s farmers share that desire: There are beef shortages in European markets, for example, and the beef-cattle industry is lobbying for more open access, along with most other farm sectors, which see Europe’s 500 million people as a highly desirable market for farm products.

But dairy farmers in central Canada, who represent a small share of agriculture, are pushing hard for protection of the government-subsidy program known as supply management. European farmers generally not receive subsidies for the production of food, and provincial supply-management programs, which mainly apply only to dairy, would be seen as an unfair competitive advantage.

MURDERDEATHKILL!

If I hadn’t grown up in Western Canada, I’d wonder why these smug self-satisfied cockvomits from Out East are so convinced that they can fuck over everyone else in the goddamn country to maintain their profit margins.  But having had a continent’s-length view of the subject, I’m well-convinced that the east-of-Winnipeg mentality is pretty damn clear in that “making other people suffer so that we can maintain our status quo” is par for the fucking course.

Ag subsidies.  Fuck.

I am disappoint.

What a fine way to end the 2009 Formula One season — that was quite the race at Abu Dhabi.  Sebastian Vettel won easily, cementing second place in the WDC and leading a 1-2 Red Bull finish as Mark Webber fought off a late-race challenge from Jensen Button.  Neither McLaren nor Ferrari scored any points, so the former takes the “best of the rest” constructor’s title by a single point.

The Yas Marina circuit is… less disappointing than Shanghai.  Hermann Tilke really needs some elevation to play with (Sepang, for instance) to design a decent road course, and Abu Dhabi has rather little of that to go around.  Still, there was some good racing — including Kamui Kobayashi clanking some serious brass while passing Jensen Button into the T8-9 chicane after Button’s first pit stop.  (Kobayashi would give up the position when he pitted, of course, but it’s the principle of the thing that’s important.)  How Kobayashi squeezes his giant balls into the TF109’s cockpit is beyond me.

There were only a couple of retirements: Lewis Hamilton’s MP4-24 developed a rear brake problem as he was charging around in P2, and the team pulled him in before the disc exploded.  More amusingly, Jaime Alguersuari mistook the Red Bull-Renault pit (preparing for Vettel’s first stop) for his own Scuderia Torro Rosso pit and nearly bisected the RBR jack-man on his way through.  He had to take another lap around the circuit, in which he ran out of fuel developed a freak transmission problem.

Only 130 days ’til the 2010 Bahrain Grand Prix!  (Australia is second on the calendar next year.)

——

And with the end of the 2009 season comes the beginning of the ‘09-’10 Formula One Silly Season.  Clear the decks for rash and irresponsible speculation!

We already know that Williams have signed Rubens Barrichello from BrawnGP and Nico Hulkenberg from GP2.  Who will fill Rubens’ place at BrawnGP?  Kimi Räikkönen is leaving Ferrari, but he’ll probably end up at McLaren to replace the unimpressive Kovalainen.  I doubt that Ross Brawn would be interested in Kazuki Nakajima, but Nico Rosberg seems like a perfectly decent driver in a car that never really improved its pace from the beginning of the season.

As the BMW-Sauber F1 team disintegrates, Robert Kubica is set to head for Renault; where’s Heidfeld going?  My guess is Toyota, who’re starting from scratch as well.  Heidfeld’s a capable, experienced driver who’d make a good foil to Kobayashi.

We note with gobsmacked exasperation this latest from — holy shit and fuck me sideways, Gore Vidal:

• A Conversation with Gore Vidal (The Atlantic)

Regarding Roman Polanski’s “indiscretion”:

I really don’t give a fuck. Look, am I going to sit and weep every time a young hooker feels as though she’s been taken advantage of?

OH GORE VIDAL NO!

The rest of the interview is a train wreck.   For further analysis (and furious indignation) you should look to Shakesville:

• Gore Vidal, rape apologist

Die in a fire, Gore Vidal.

Stone’s Ruination IPA is now available in six-packs.  In supermarkets.

I love this country!

Skippystalin posts another majestic rant on the slow implosion of the Liberal Party of Canada:

• Woe is Iggy (Postcards of the Hanging)

Of particular note:

I would be more than happy with the NDP as the Official Opposition. They actually do believe in something and the possibility of power might actually make them responsible. I disagree with everything that the New Democratic Party has ever said about anything, but I believe that they believe it.

The Liberals are whores and I don’t think that anybody would even notice if they all went to Bob Pickton’s farm.

Besides, the Conservatives already are the Liberals. Maybe it’s time to thin the ideological stroll.

Throw in the fact that the only national party worth voting for are the secessionists from Quebec, and that’s Canadian politics in a nutshell.

Let me show you them.

• The Unholy Brew (Atomic Nerds)

LabRat just summed up my impotent fury with the modern environmental debate, although she didn’t mention wanting to geld Bono* for the “Live Earth”-private jet commuting thing (that’s okay, I just did — and holy fuck do I ever).

Seriously, go read it.

——

* Is that redundant?

Anyone else watch World Superbike this weekend?  Some dude from Tennessee won the championship in his rookie year.

• Spies makes history with Yamaha to claim first ever World Superbike victory (World SBK)

Impressive stuff:

Spies can now claim 14 Superbike race wins and 11 pole position race starts in his rookie year, breaking all records since the championship began. He leads the standings with 462 points, six clear of rival Haga.

The racing at Portimao was fantastic:

Race one saw a textbook performance from Spies, taking the holeshot on the first corner and leading from the first lap. Perfectly executed lines and smooth riding saw him cross the line nearly two seconds ahead of a determined Biaggi who had stalked him for the entire race. Championship rival Noriyuki Haga crashed out six laps into the race, leaving Spies some breathing room for race two.

With the extra points behind him and less pressure for an outright race win Spies kept himself in check for race two, monitoring Haga’s position and keeping a steady race pace as he counted the laps down to victory. The American let a couple of riders passed then tucked in behind Biaggi for a number of laps. After the Italian rider ran wide a couple of times, Spies turned on some extra speed to pass him and brought his championship winning Yamaha R1 home in fifth place to take victory.

Good stuff.

——

In other news, Toyota’s once again building cars I might actually want to buy:

• Toyota FT-86 Concept: the AE-86 is back in the red metallic flesh (Jalopnik)

(Link goes to full-frontal car porn gallery.)

I’d comment on Toyota’s priorities, but Jalopnik’s Ben Wojdyla already wrote what I’d have to say:

What’s that? You can’t imagine a Toyota that might consider offering a fun, affordable, two door with a modicum of sportiness and some seriously interesting style? Might we introduce you to the Toyota FT-86 concept — the first Toyota (barring the epic Lexus LFA) we’ve been genuinely excited about since the… um… Supra? Wow, that took entirely too long.

A lightweight RWD sports coupe?  Yes please.

“The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously.”
– Hubert Humphrey

In the comments to this post on framing the gay-marriage debate, SmartDogs notes that rights don’t abrogate responsibilities.  Crudely put: the fact that you have the right to do something — protest a soldier’s funeral with “GOD HATES AMERICA” signs, for example — doesn’t mean you’re not an asshole if you do it.

At least, this is the way things work in a negative-liberty framing of rights.  If the way you think of freedom of speech starts with “Congress shall make no law…”, then you’re likely to think of government’s role in speech as a negative — in fact, an absent — one.  But if the way you think of freedom of speech starts like this:

“The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society”

then you might start to think that your government guarantees and endorses certain kinds of speech… subject to “reasonable limits” of course.  After all, if the government itself has established “reasonable” limits, and your speech falls within those limits, it’s as if that government approves of what you have to say, isn’t it?

This explains the astonishingly abusive behaviour of Canada’s Human Rights Commissions:

• Free speech is too damn American

When HRCs keep clipping away at Canadians’ free expression, it’s not (merely) because they’re narrow-minded asshats: it’s because the positive-liberty framing of free speech in Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms endorses any protected speech (“you have the freedom to say things like this”), so the HRCs have to decide what speech to prohibit.  They have to decide where those “reasonable limits” lie.  And it won’t surprise anyone that they can only do an incomplete job of doing so.

The American way is better.  All the Bill of Rights says is “regulating your speech is not the government’s problem” — it does not endorse, either implicitly or explicitly, any of that speech.

We note with bewildered aspersion this latest from the Beeb:

• Rich Germans demand higher taxes

Pretty much what it says on the tin:

A group of rich Germans has launched a petition calling for the government to make wealthy people pay higher taxes.

The group say they have more money than they need, and the extra revenue could fund economic and social programmes to aid Germany’s economic recovery. Germany could raise 100bn euros (£91bn) if the richest people paid a 5% wealth tax for two years, they say.

Here’s a thought, mein herren unt dammen: why’n'cha give that extra money you don’t want to charities directly, and not waste any of it lining the pockets of incompetent government jobsworths?

(Not that I’m in any position to brag about my enlightened compatriots: this mental illness is endemic in Canada as well.  People agitate for higher gummint spending on damn near every cause that looks sideways at their heart-strings, but look at me as if I’ve grown a second skull when I suggest that they cough up two bucks for the local food bank.  “Helping people?  That’s the government’s job!”  No, the government’s job is killing Polish immigrants at the airport.  Helping people is our job.)