As an engineer, I am trained not to treat a symptom of something that has gone wrong – the real job is to find and correct the root problem, that ‘disease’ that causes the symptom to show up in the first place.  Often, in what can be complicated systems, the symptoms show up in a place in which one goes “huh?” and only when debugging has led to the source of destruction (not an easy task, given the many layers of software from multiple vendors each ‘not quite lining up’ with agreed upon protocols and) can one go “THAT was interesting”.  That latter word, interesting, has an “engineer’s definition”: intellectually stimulating, but boy, this is going to hurt for a while.  Interesting problems are fun to work on (if you can stand the stress and heat of “why isn’t this fixed YET!”) because they are interesting.  But when you are told to eliminate a major area of investigation and you know that order is “other than for technical reasons”, it gets real hard to satisfy “why isn’t this fixed YET!”.

It is the same problem in Politics, when a real source must never be discussed because it is Politically Incorrect (emphasis mine, reformatted):

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – After fresh criticism of his record on combating HIV/AIDS, President Barack Obama on Monday ordered a stepped up effort to deal with the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the United States.  An executive order from the White House, which follows renewed criticism of Obama’s AIDS strategy during his visit to Africa in late June and early July, called for better coordination of the national effort. Obama’s order said that recent studies had shown that aggressive testing and early treatment can have a significant impact in preventing transmission of the human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS.

Well, they have two out of the three sources named.  But just like with the ill-named War on Terror (a war on a tactic?  No, but politically correct hacks can’t say Islamists) where the truth can’t be publicly stated, it can’t be done in this issue (for fear of hacking off other special interest groups):

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When I watched the verdict being declared in the OJ Simpson trial (where a black man was accused of killing a white woman and her friend, and where “if the glove don’t fit, you must acquit” entered the lexicon), I was aghast at how long the trial had gone and how quickly the jury returned its verdict (makeup: 9 Blacks, 1 Hispanics, 2 Whites / 10 Women, 2 Men) of Not Guilty.  I had disagreed with the jury but thought: Justice as been done.  He was innocent before the trial and now he is innocent after the trial.  That is our system.  I had no thought to say: hey, this is not right – we need a trial do-ver simply because I disagreed with it.

Not so much in this trial.  I note that the Left is now using the same incrementalist and unrelenting legislative insistence that if they don’t get the result they wanted, they switch to a mode by which redouble their efforts by any means possible and by “enlisting the mob” and using that intimidation factor of a pure democracy (“mobocracy”)  to override The Rule of Law  (see also Grokster Mike’s post; more on the DOJ ‘double jeopardy’ civil rights announcement here and here even as the DOJ’s Community Relations Division was stirring up trouble ahead of the trial, a la Community Organizers, vs acting oil on water (no match jokes please, even if it may be appropriate)).  They are also not willing to let the system work as it should – they will bring all kinds of “non-partisan” groups to bear and “celebrity rabble-rousers” “community leaders” (like the ever present race-baiters Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson) even if they live thousands of miles away from where an incident took place. Already, the story is starting to come out in how the Martin family decided to make this a political / race baiting process instead of simply letting the judicial process go forward (e.g.,  go read the great citizen journalism of “following the network” done by Conservative Treehouse to get a fuller idea of the machinations of the Left behind the scene).

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Uttered by Sunny Hostin who is a CNNer. Again, from The BlogLine of the Day:

“So a Hispanic shoots a black and is acquitted by women, but it’s still white men’s fault.”

And add into the mix, Eric Holder’s line of “in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards“.  He took a lot of heat for that last clause, calling the people that he is supposed to serve “cowards” – THAT certainly shows “nose in the air” snootiness about the ordinary citizen.  However, I ask both of them:

Since late 50’s and early 60’s, when HAVEN’T we been talking about race??

Talking about race relations has gone on almost non-stop since this nation started to work to get rid of Jim Crow.  I can’t remember a time when it wasn’t part of the national conversation in one fashion or another – and I, and many others, really do resent Holder’s comment highly and, IMHO,  think that Hostin’s says a lot about her internalized sense of racism.  For some people, it seems, that if it wasn’t for racism identity fights, they’d have no identity at all (think: Sharpton, Smiley, and Jackson).

You know, almost all Conservatives are already “with” MLK’s line of “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”  As an engineer, I could care less what you look like – but how good is your code? Now as a political blogger, I don’t care if you are black, white, yellow, red, brown or purple with green polka-dots:  All I care about is how you think and believe with respect to the philosophy of what made this country great. Are you a good person, love your wife and provide for your kids, be nice to others, obey the laws and Constitution, and pay your taxes?  Remember, color IS only skin deep but stupid goes right to the bone.  And I believe that those that hang onto “White Privilege” as a crutch really need to get out of their own little talking group and talk to others.

For that stupidity, and all it implies and accepts as gospel, goes past skin, past bone, and right into the marrow.  DaTechGuy sums it up well:

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The death of 6′ 1″  5′ 11″ Trayvon Martin was a tragedy as is the loss of any life but he chose to pin George Zimmerman to the ground and then attempt to
turn his head into meatloaf.

If Mr. Zimmerman had not then had to shoot Mr. Martin in an effort to save himself from additional injury or death no one would have ever heard of either of them and Travon’s trial for aggravated assault, attempted murder, or even the murder of George Zimmerman, would have never even registered on the race-baiter/anti-gun left’s radar.

The circus-left and their ring-masters in the media do not care about anyone’s life or their rights.

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Conservatives understand that for regular folks to have the opportunity to achieve they need to be free to do so.  As GrokTALK! guest Joe Mendola in segment two and three, Jennifer Lopez, Marc Cuban, Lady Ga Ga, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, almost every great success story in modern America who has an influence on current popular culture started out as a 99 percenter.  They were just like you or I, but they had a dream or an idea, ambition, drive, and the personal and economic freedom to pursue it.

Democrats (Progressives, Liberals) insist that government must be free to deny personal and economic freedoms at will.

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Liberals want to spend  your money to create energy “solutions” that can never deliver enough power to meet our needs, whose manufacturing processes are extremely harmful to the environment, that do not produce very many jobs, cannot be sustained without taxpayer support (many of which fail despite it), many of whose raw materials come from hostile foreign nations, that have significant environmental impacts themselves, whose output will cost you significantly more from your pocket every day, which will create a constant drag on every other sector of the economy.

Conservatives want something that actually works.

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It is wise to question why the computer models of the environmentalists who cried wolf have failed so spectacularly.   We should ask how the data provided to justify climate fear-mongering in general has failed to produce any of the results claimed.  We should ask why limousine liberals who insist the seas are rising continue to pay top dollar for island get aways and beach-front property.  We should also ask if more CO2, or even a warming trend–which we’ve not actually had for 16 years now to the dismay of many, would actually be as bad for the world as the government funded, rent-seeking IPCC  fairy tale author’s claim?

What if fertilizing the atmosphere with co2 is actually good for the planet?

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