thursday, august 31 2006
the real cabal
The Armitage revelation and way he and Colin Powell handled it—in the most self-serving way possible, with maximum damage inflicted on the administration—demonstrates what the real cabal in the first Bush administration was. It was Powell and Armitage, and their minions like Lawrence Wilkerson and Carl Ford.
These people spent countless hours sitting around and figuring out how they could leak and use anonymously sourced hits within the press to undermine Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Rove (and, later, when he was up for the UN job, John Bolton). Powell was always very shrewd about it and left no fingerprints. Since Powell and Armitage didn't have strong policy motivations, they turned everything into a personal turf war, which went a long way to embittering and making dysfunctional the first administration.
Yes, Bush and Rice should have stopped it, but a lot of the blame goes to Powell and Armitage for engaging in this kind of bureaucratic tribal warfare in the first place. Of course, the story in the press was always that Powell and Co. were the embattled, innocent victims—but that was partly because they were feeding so many of the reporters. It's outrageous that because this small group was so adept at leaking and so adept at working the press that they managed to get the administration's "neo-cons" portrayed in the media as an out-of-control cabal.
a tale of two tribes, a gang and a militia
Omar of Iraq the Model relates a personal story that sheds light on what's up in Iraq today.
the couric diet catches on
"no rising tide"
Oh brother, can you name a dime's worth of difference between NBC and the DNC? Newsbusters finds Today shilling for the Democrats again.
If the Today show were ever to air the opinions of a think tank founded, say, by a former Reagan administration official and free-market economist Milton Friedman, and funded by large corporations, it's inconceivable that the show would fail to identify the organization's conservative leanings.
Yet Today didn't feel the need to do the obverse when relying extensively on a liberal think tank founded by a former Clinton official and far-left economists and largely funded by Big Labor.
From a New York Times editorial to a Boston Globe political cartoon, the MSM has been beating the drum this week to talk down the economy in the face of more good economic news. The liberal theme du jour has been that wages haven't risen along with corporate profits.
Doing its bit this morning, the Today show weighed in with a segment it entitled "Work More for Less Pay."
Today relied heavily on comments from an Economic Policy Institute spokesman. But NBC/Today failed to disclose that the EIP is a highly-partisan, largely union-funded operation. It was founded by leftist Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich and other left-wing economists including Lester Thurow and hyper-partisan Boston Globe columnist Robert Kuttner. Matt Lauer introduced the segment, narrated by NBC's Kevin Tibbles, by stating that "a rising tide is not lifting all boats."
americans hate their fabulous economy
Economic facts don't jibe with economic "feelings." If you wonder why, see above. But read this for good commentary.
wednesday, august 30 2006
impresarios as well as terrorists
What are we seeing when we watch events from the Middle East on our television screens? Is it news or is it terrorist theater?
Let us observe two media events which occurred on Sunday in Gaza. Sunday afternoon released hostages and Fox News journalists Steven Centanni and Olaf Wiig spoke before the cameras. The fact of their release and their statements were reported by more than 1,000 news organizations throughout the world.
At the press conference, Centanni and Wiig, who were forced by their Palestinian captors to convert to Islam, praised the Palestinians. Centanni said, "I just hope this never scares a single journalist away from coming to Gaza to cover this story because the Palestinian people are a very beautiful, kind-hearted and caring people that the world need[s] to know more about." Wiig similarly praised the Palestinians.
While their remarks were covered extensively, no one seemed to think that the fact that their first post-release statements were made at a Palestinian Authority sponsored media extravaganza in Gaza was significant. No one noted that the men were flanked by Palestinian "security forces," and stood next to Hamas terrorist leader and Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh.
associated press puts words in rumsfeld's mouth
Q&O compares what Rumsfeld said and what the AP says he said.
ambulance chasing
HotAir video on terrorist use of ambulances, and more.
galt versus gladwell
An argument over the Celtic Tiger. Read the comments for some pungent criticisms of Blink and The Tipping Point. A sample:
If Gladwell (or most other business writers for that matter) were to write about how, say, to make a fortune in the stock market, his formulaic approach would no doubt start by taking a piece of ancient advice that everybody has heard, but that nobody (including Gladwell) has any idea how to execute consistently, such as: "Buy low, sell high."
Then Gladwell would dream up a new buzzphrase that means the same thing but uses that trendiest element in grammar, the present participle—as in his recent mantras "The Tipping Point" and "Thin-Slicing”. Buy low, sell high could be Gladwellized into "Investing Down, Divesting Up ©™®"
Gladwell would pad his book with inspiring but contradictory anecdotes about people who got rich following this amazing strategy. Finally, he would cash in big by giving speeches at $40k a pop on how you too should employ the power of Investing Down, Divesting Up ©™®.
It's not that Gladwell is unique in selling out for piles of money, it's just that he once had potential to do better work than what he is now doing.
girlie man gov. signs girlie man bill
Let's say you're a devout Christian attending a religious college. Would you expect the state of California to compel you to be taught by a man who wears women's clothes? Would you expect "The Governator" to sign a law doing just that?
He did. The bill, soon to become law, is SB 1441, meant to protect gay rights. A key provision:
11135. (a) No person in the State of California shall, on the basis of race, national origin, ethnic group identification, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, color, or disability, be unlawfully denied full and equal access to the benefits of, or be unlawfully subjected to discrimination under, any program or activity that is conducted, operated, or administered by the state or by any state agency, is funded directly by the state, or receives any financial assistance from the state.
"Any program" could easily include the Cal Grant program that provides college tuition. My objection isn't to gays or transvestites (I'm a big fan of Eddie Izzard) but the meddling/bullying of the state into moral affairs -- by the very whiners who cry about their civil liberties.
Gov. Arnold, worrying about winning reelection, wimped out.
JB
legal hilarity
Who said this?
"Be it at the gas pump, the pharmacy or in our courts, these politicians in Washington are putting corporate profits ahead of the health and well-being of their constituents," association spokeswoman Chris Mather said.
Trial lawyers. Yes, those parasites who inflate the cost of healthcare through lawsuits, who chase doctors out of practice, whose greed acts like a hidden tax on our economy, are pretending to care by targeting Republican office holders.
Bullshit. The Democrat party is beholden to the Trial Lawyers special interest, and the GOP is not. It's that simple.
plame out
Hitchens writes the epitaph for the non-scandal. It would be funny if Scooter Libby were not out of a job and millions in legal fees. Libby is facing trial for allegedly lying to investigators.
Sandy Berger stole classified documents from the National Archives, destroyed them in his office and lied about it to investigators. He got two years probation and a $50,000 fine.
san francisco hit (x 15) and run
At least one is dead and 15 are hurt when a man in San Francisco intentionally targeted pedestrians with his SUV in San Francisco this afternoon:
One person was killed and at least 14 others injured when a rampaging man intentionally targeted pedestrians with his sport utility vehicle in San Francisco and Fremont on Tuesday afternoon, according to police.
The driver, a man from Fremont, was in San Francisco police custody. His name was not immediately released by police, but California Department of Motor Vehicles records show the license plate on the black Honda Pilot SUV is registered to Omeed A. Popal of Fremont.
An aide to San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the matter was under investigation, told the Associated Press that Popal was the suspect in custody.
The spree apparently began around noon in the East Bay, where Fremont Police Sgt. Chris Mazzone said the driver struck and killed a 55-year old man walking along the side of the road on Fremont Blvd. near Ferry Lane.Witnesses said the driver, Omeed A. Popal, did not slow down during his rampage.
stifling free speech
McCain-Feingold strikes again.
Federal election regulators refused to ease limits on political advertising Tuesday, blocking an effort to let interest groups run radio and television ads mentioning elected officials within weeks of an election.
The Federal Election Commission voted 3-3 on a proposal that would have allowed such ads as long as they addressed public policy issues and did not promote, support, oppose or attack a sitting member of Congress. Supporters of the change said they wanted to strike a balance between campaign ad restrictions and constitutional free speech guarantees.
The measure failed on a tie vote with the commission’s three Democrats voting against the proposal and the three Republicans backing it.
If porn and Nazi marches through Jewish neighborhoods are covered by the First Amendment, surely political speech should be -- that's why it was written. But no....
tuesday, august 29 2006
katie couric gets the photoshop diet
Oh, how slimming it can be. And we're supposed to buy the argument that CBS didn't pick her for her looks?
HT Instapdundit.
unloved
...America bashers might try a thought experiment in which they imagine a world in which the USA never existed and played no current role. Would Belgium and Canada have somehow pooled their mighty military machines and succeeded in rescuing humanity from Naziism – and Communism? If not for the United States, which nation might have inspired the world to pursue self-government and human rights?
Remember, the famous French Revolution proved so feckless in this regard that the frog-eaters anointed an all-powerful Emperor (Napoleon) less than twenty years after they guillotined their king. In terms of commercial activity and living standards, the United States remains the indefatigable engine that drives the world economy, with productivity and ingenuity as indispensable to sustaining global prosperity as American agricultural bounty is essential to feeding all of humanity.
The irrational nature of America Hatred comes into clearest focus with the realization that this destructive passion flourishes most spectacularly among those who have benefited most conspicuously from the existence of the U.S. You’ll find such festering resentment in Western Europe in general (France in particular), Islamic nations especially dependent on American aid, support and trade (Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, for example), among pampered, privileged stars in the entertainment industry, and on elite university campuses in the United States and around the world.
shotgun baptism
The gang of Palestinian primitives that kidnapped Fox News reporter Steve Centanni and his cameraman forced them to convert to Islam at gunpoint. As Best of the Web noted yesterday:
The New York Times reports that Centanni and Wiig "were released unharmed on Sunday after being forced at gunpoint to say on a videotape that they had converted to Islam." That is a curious way of putting it. Isn't a forced religious "conversion" a form of harm?
One suspects the Times would not describe as "unharmed" the al Qaeda prisoners who supposedly have endured insults to their religion by U.S. interrogators. For secular Westerners, taking religion seriously is an act of condescension toward "victimized" groups.
Indeed, remember the media hysterics about a Koran supposedly flushed down a Gitmo toilet? The report was false, but sufficient to spark riots (with deaths) in certain mideast cities. So to underline the point:
- If you're doing your job as a journalist and get kidnapped, held for two weeks and forced to adopt a religion upon threat of of death, that's okay.
- If you're a terrorist captured in the battlefields of Afghanistan and held at Gitmo where a drop of pee pee accidently drifts through an airduct and soils your Koran, that's torture.
don't hold your breath
...if you're expecting to see a Katrina anniversary story about the grossly incompetent news coverage of the natural disaster. As Jonah Goldberg noted:
As I’ve written before, virtually all of the gripping stories from Katrina were untrue. All of those stories about, in Paula Zahn’s words, “bands of rapists, going block to block”? Not true. The tales of snipers firing on medevac helicopters? Bogus. The yarns, peddled on Oprah by New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and the New Orleans police chief, that “little babies” were getting raped in the Superdome and that the bodies of the murdered were piling up? Completely false. The stories about poor blacks dying in comparatively huge numbers because American society “left them behind”? Nah-ah. While most outlets limited themselves to taking Nagin’s estimate of 10,000 dead at face value, Editor and Publisher—the watchdog of the media—ran the headline, “Mortuary Director Tells Local Paper 40,000 Could Be Lost in Hurricane.”
If the storm had been in, say, Martha's Vineyard, do you think the networks would have been so ready to believe the tales of rape and murder? Just who's racist?
In all of Louisiana, not just New Orleans, the total dead from Katrina was roughly 1,500. Blacks did not die disproportionately, nor did the poor. The only group truly singled out in terms of mortality was the elderly. According to a Knight-Ridder study, while only 15 percent of the population of New Orleans was over the age of 60, some 74 percent of the dead were 60 or older, and almost half were older than 75. Blacks were, if anything, slightly underrepresented among the dead given their share of the population.
This barely captures how badly the press bungled Katrina coverage. Keep in mind that the most horrifying tales of woe that captivated the press and prompted news anchors to scream—quite literally—at federal officials occurred within the safe zone around the Superdome where the press was operating. Shame on local officials for fomenting fear and passing along newly minted urban legends, but double shame on the press for recycling this stuff uncritically. Members of the press had access to the Superdome. Why not just run in and look for the bodies? Interview the rape victims? Couldn’t be bothered? The major networks had hundreds of people in New Orleans. Was there not a single intern available to fact-check? The coverage actually cost lives. Helicopters were grounded for 24 hours in response to media reports of sniper attacks. At least two patients died waiting to be evacuated.
Furthermore, the media missed the big picture: a hugely successful rescue operation.
Largely ignored by the agenda-driven national media, one of the largest rescue operations in history saved more than 50,000 people by boat and helicopter. In this Dunkirk on the Mississippi, Coast Guard and other military units, volunteers, and state and local first responders delivered thousands from death by drowning, dehydration, heatstroke, fire, starvation, and disease. The three goats of Katrina — FEMA’s Michael Brown, Gov. Kathleen Blanco, and Mayor Nagin — had little if any role; in fact, because local communication was wiped out by the storm, they may not even have known about the scale and success of the rescue operation.
Others did know. Orleans Parish civil sheriff Paul Valteau saw a part of this massive effort close up, when he pulled off the Franklin Ave. interstate exit at 3 p.m. on Monday, August 29, shortly after the storm had passed and levees had broken. “They were screaming and hollering everywhere,” he recalls. Submerged homes and businesses stretched into the distance. Survivors stood on rooftops, water up to their waists and rising. Desperate pounding and shrieking came from attics. One man, a double amputee, clung to a tree as water surged around him. “I saw things I never saw in 23 years as sheriff,” Valteau says. “I saw things I never want to see again.” But he also saw Coast Guard helicopters dodge power lines to winch the endangered to safety. He joined one of the ad hoc rescue crews launching boats from the off-ramp. “We weren’t alone. Hundreds of people who had boats showed up at interstate exits and launched their boats Monday afternoon.”
Meanwhile, at least three dozen helicopters from the Coast Guard and the Louisiana National Guard had already swarmed into the city, tracking right behind the storm and fighting 60 m.p.h. winds. Unlike befuddled city and state officials, the Coast Guard’s man in charge, Rear Admiral Bob Duncan, was literally on top of the situation: He flew in with the first crews, watched the first rescue himself, and spent the day in the air observing and directing operations. “People are most in need right after the storm goes through,” he explains. “When they feel comfortable going up on the roofs of their houses, we hope a big orange helicopter is waiting.”
Absent those early rescues, thousands would in fact have died, in line with the mayor’s prediction. With all communications knocked out, says Sheriff Valteau, “it was a reasonable estimation. . . . The mayor didn’t know what was going on in the field. It was impossible for him to know how many hundreds of citizens were out there saving people.”
Shortly after the hurricane, Dan Rather proclaimed that this had been media's finest hour. Perish the thought.
monday, august 28 2006
snootycrats vs. wal-mart
The stupid politics against successful companies.
Attacking oil companies for allegedly price-gouging is unquestionably good (if grossly opportunistic) politics. What Wal-Mart perpetrates, however, is price-gouging in reverse. It sweats every inefficiency out of itself and its suppliers so it can pass those savings on to consumers. Attacking the company for that isn’t populist, it’s perverse. A mom struggling to make ends meet might be angry at spending another $2-a-gallon to fill up at the pump. She’s not going to be so exercised by getting a great deal on diapers.
Democratic Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware declared at a recent anti-Wal-Mart rally in Iowa, “I don’t see any indication that they care about the fate of middle-class people.” Who does Biden think is strolling the long aisles of the nation’s Wal-Marts? It’s not the malefactors of great wealth. Wal-Mart prices make the most difference for exactly those families spending the greatest portion of their budgets on the basics. One estimate is that Wal-Mart saves the average household as much as $2,300 a year. That’s nothing to big donors to the “Biden for President” campaign, but for most families, it’s real money.
terror tv
Michelle Malkin is as perky anyone named Katie, but delivers a stronger message. Watch this latest installment of Vent to see how Al Manar dishes up hate to its mideast audience.
secrets and lies
A fascinating look (video) at how anti-Israeli sentiments were manufactured by manufactured news. This may seem like ancient history (2000) but consider how such propaganda figures into decisions by say, the Presbyterian church to side against Israel.
long arm eye of the law
A Texan foils a Liverpool burglary via webcam.
LONDON: An American helped foil a burglary in northern England whilst watching a Beatles-related webcam over the internet, police have said. The man from Dallas was using a live camera link to look at Mathew Street, an area of Liverpool synonymous with the Beatles and home to the Cavern Club where the band regularly played.
you need a swiss army
...to handle this 2-lb, 85-tool Swiss Army knife.
history on repeat mode
Viking Pundit notes a creepy juxtaposition in yesterday's Boston Globe, one an historical account of the Mao's cultural revolution with an account of repression in Chavez's Venezuela.
a terror bump
Michael Barone notes that the British terror plot has made American voters think twice about Democrats.
There seems to have been a change in the political winds. They've been blowing pretty strongly against George W. Bush and the Republicans this spring and early this summer. Now, their velocity looks to be tapering off or perhaps shifting direction.
When asked what would affect the future, the British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan famously said: "Events, dear boy. Events." The event this month that I think has done most to shape opinion was the arrest in London on Aug. 9 of 23 Muslims suspected of plotting to blow up American airliners over the Atlantic.
No wonder, when you have Sen. Harry Reid cheering "we killed the Patriot Act!"
victory lap interrupted
Hezbo Honcho Hassan Nasrallah, humbled by the slow burn settling in among the Lebanese as they survey the wreckage of their nation, has changed his tune about defeating Israel and offered a lame apology.
In an exclusive interview given yesterday to the Lebanese television station New-TV, Hizballah Chairman Hassan Nasrallah spoke for the first time since the ceasefire took effect and says that had he known what the Israeli response would be, he would have not kidnapped the Israeli soldiers.
In a somewhat apologetic voice, much different from his usual bravado, Nasrallah said that the response to the kidnapping by Israel was not even one percent of what he had thought it would be. “We didn’t estimate that the kidnapping will bring on such a response, as this kind of war has never happened in the history of wars,” Nasrallah said.
Victory lap begun
As the fog of war burns off and the fog of media manipulation/malfeasance comes to light, Israel comes out looking pretty good.
Contrary to what is now the accepted wisdom in the media, Hezb’allah in its recent offensive against Israel neither “badly bloodied the Israel Defense Force,” nor “fought it to a standstill” in Southern Lebanon. In fact, the opposite is the case. By any legitimate measure Hezb’allah was handed a resounding military defeat by the IDF in the recent fighting, and while the cancer that is Hezb’allah was not cured by Israel’s soldiers, it was put into remission.
Read it all.
sunday, august 27 2006
fallen art
An animation, but not your Disney/Dreamworks stuff.
beautiful dreamers
Iran and Hezbollah turn on the lights. Europe blinks! Seriously!
who said this?
“Now, let’s imagine the future. What if [Saddam] fails to comply, and we fail to act, or we take some ambiguous third route which gives him yet more opportunities to develop this program of weapons of mass destruction and continue to press for the release of the sanctions and continue to ignore the solemn commitments that he made?
Well, he will conclude that the international community has lost its will. He will then conclude that he can go right on and do more to rebuild an arsenal of devastating destruction. And some day, some way, I guarantee you, he’ll use the arsenal. And I think every one of you who’s really worked on this for any length of time believes that, too.
If we fail to respond today, Saddam and all those who would follow in his footsteps will be emboldened tomorrow by the knowledge that they can act with impunity, even in the face of a clear message from the United Nations Security Council and clear evidence of a weapons of mass destruction program.”
Click here for the answer.
struggling against reality
Did you hear the latest horror (HT Dr. Sanity) about the two journalists kidnapped by the Palestinian animals? According to the story, they were videotaped in long Muslim robes reading a statement announcing that they had converted to Islam.
If it weren’t so serious, what with two men’s lives at stake, you would almost have to laugh at the preposterousness of this stunt. It’s like a bad Monty Python skit. Imagine the brilliant discussion that went into it, probably not dissimilar to the dozen or so leftist revolutionaries in Life of Brian who spend the movie plotting how they are going to overthrow the Roman empire. In one scene, in the interest of diversity, they debate whether a man should be able to call himslef Loretta and have babies:
LORETTA: It's every man's right to have babies if he wants them.
REG: But... you can't have babies.
LORETTA: Don't you oppress me.
REG: I'm not oppressing you, Stan. You haven't got a womb! -- Where's the fetus going to gestate?! You going to keep it in a box?!
LORETTA: [crying]
JUDITH: Here! I-- I've got an idea. Suppose you agree that he can't actually have babies, not having a womb, which is nobody's fault, not even the Romans', but that he can have the right to have babies.
FRANCIS: Good idea, Judith. We shall fight the oppressors for your right to have babies, brother. Sister. Sorry.
REG: What's the point?
FRANCIS: What?
REG: What's the point of fighting for his right to have babies when he can't have babies?!
FRANCIS: It is symbolic of our struggle against oppression.
REG: Symbolic of his struggle against reality.
****
PALESTINIAN #1: Let’s kidnap some journalists and force them to convert to Islam on video!
PALESTINIAN #2: What's the point?
PALESTINIAN #1: What?
PALESTINIAN #2: What's the point of forcing someone to convert?! No one’s going to believe it.
PALESTINIAN #1: It is symbolic of our struggle against occupation!
PALESTINIAN #2: Symbolic of your struggle against reality.
root causes and other nonsense
NPR this morning featured a report about a change in the laws on shoplifting in the UK. From now on, there will be no risk of jail time for shoplifters. Their crime will be handled in the same manner as traffic violations unless there is a particularly high value item involved. Naturally, shop owners are distressed by this devaluation of their property but that apparently counts for little.
I am not terribly interested in determining the optimal punishment for shoplifting, but I was struck by the explanation for the change. The reporter explained that the change came about as a result of a typical (mis)application of the "root cause" concept. Since the "root cause" of most shoplifting is drug addiction (sic), and jail time does not address the "root cause", then jail time for the offense is not warranted. I suppose in such thinking, jail time would be a "disproportionate response."
While the particular offense involved is shoplifting, the logic, if this kind of thinking can be dignified with such a word, is familiar. The rubric of "root causes" as an explanation for manifest behavior, especially criminal behavior, remains one of the most egregious misuses of Psychoanalytic concepts that our psychobabble addled age has been heir to. It represents a classic inversion of the meaning of Freud's work and completely distorts and perverts the entire enterprise of Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. It also leads to a "reductio ad absurdum" that renders the use of the concept literally nonsensical.
Freud's theory of the mind was revolutionary because he proposed the existence of a dynamic unconscious and formulated the concept of compromise formation and multiple determinants.
inside the deranged liberal mind
Which is not to say all liberals are deranged. But plenty are, and one named Russell Shaw wrote on the Huffington Post that he'd allow a terror attack on America because it would help restore Democrats to power. His logic is that the loss of life from terror would be more than compensated by the lives saved under a Democrat regime.
Just how? Here's a sample:
Block the next Supreme Court appointment, one which would surely result in the overturning of Roe and the death of hundreds if not thousands of women from abortion-prohibiting states at the hands of back-alley abortionists;
I am ambivalent on abortion. But it's not unreasonable to regard it as the taking of life. By that token, some 24 million lives have been lost to abortion since Rowe v. Wade. That's a real number.
Back-alley abortion deaths? Speculative.
Anyway, ACE at Polipundit has sliced and diced this poor clown's screed thoroughly and entertainingly. Have a read.
saturday, august 26 2006
beautiful libraries
nasrallectomy
"I feel I've been searching for Nasrallah with my eyes, heart and mind," writes an Egyptian woman columnist about the chief of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah. "I feel Nasrallah lives within me."
It's a regular epidemic in the Arab world, this sudden hero-worship, and I predict that this poor woman –- who by the way is identified by the AP as a "strongly secular columnist" -- will soon be seeking a Nasrallectomy.
Here's another such sufferer, a male columnist in Kuwait. Lebanon, he wrote in a recent column, "was victorious in the battle of dignity and honor."I don't think Arabs can stand many more such victories. Southern Lebanon -– the area ruled and protected by Nasrallah -- has been reduced to rubble. More than a thousand Lebanese civilians are dead (an unknown number of them because Nasrallah used them as shields). Hundreds of thousands are homeless and without means of earning a living. The infrastructure and economy of Lebanon (and perhaps its democracy, too) have been smashed. All this has been accomplished to advance Iran's dreams of becoming the region's hegemon, and Iran is a country that has traditionally held Arabs in contempt. Oh, thank you, Hezbollah!
I've heard all I care to hear from Arab nationalists about "dignity," "honor," and especially about "victory." Iraqis have experienced precisely such victory. Saddam proclaimed himself the winner in the first Gulf War, remember? Western foreign-policy "realists" sought to "contain" him with sanctions, with the result that the West impoverished Iraqis even as Saddam massacred them. For years, we tried to try to tell Arab nationalists that the lives of Iraqis were a daily horror. What did they tell us in return, these people so profoundly dedicated to dignity and honor? They told us that Saddam Hussein was a great leader of the Arabs, and that we should stop whining.
hezbollah lost
...writes Lebanon Daily Star editor Michael Young. Ditto, writes Amir Tehari.
friday, august 25 2006
mean streets
So in the last few days WaPo ran a story asserting that "the debate is over" and the Iraqi Civil War is officially raging, and the NYT ran a story claiming that "by almost all measures," Iraq's insurgency is getting worse. So how is it that people in Baghdad are telling ABC News that they feel safer than they've felt in a long time?
“I’m happy because we’re safe,” said a man who lives in Dora, a Baghdad neighborhood. “Stores are open and we can move around freely.”
Turns out that, news of the Apocalypse notwithstanding, there's apparently been a significant decline in Baghdad street violence this month, including both criminal and political attacks. At least that's what U.S. and Iraqi officials are claiming. While it's reasonable to take a skeptical view of such claims like these, it's just as reasonable to be skeptical of the U.S. media's reports about the state of the city. As for me, I put my bet on the Baghdadis.
Here's what's going on. The U.S. military has increased its presence in Baghdad in order to rein in the murders, kidnappings and other criminal violent activity that has been plaguing the capital. (This security program does not address car bombings.) Some 5,000 extra troops moved in two weeks ago, and joined with thousands of Iraqi troops to do door-to-door sweeps in a series of dangerous neighborhoods.
yakushima forest
Click the image to see it enlarged.
thursday, august 24 2006
democrats: what part of terror war do they support?
...Assuming against all logic and reason that the Democrats have some serious objection to the war in Iraq, perhaps they could tell us which part of the war on terrorism they do support. That would be easier than rattling off the long list of counterterrorism measures they vehemently oppose.
They oppose the National Security Agency listening to people who are calling specific phone numbers found on al-Qaida cell phones and computers. Spying on al-Qaida terrorists is hampering our ability to fight the global war on terror!
Enraged that the Bush administration deferred to the safety of the American people rather than the obstructionist Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court, one Clinton-appointed judge, James Robertson, resigned from the FISA court in protest over the NSA spying program.
Democratic Sen. Russell Feingold called for a formal Senate censure of President Bush when he found out the president was rude enough to be listening in on al-Qaida phone calls. (Wait until Feingold finds out the White House has been visiting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's "MySpace" page!)
Last week a federal judge appointed by Jimmy Carter ruled the NSA program to surveil phone calls to al-Qaida members in other counties unconstitutional.
Democrats oppose the detainment of Taliban and al-Qaida soldiers at our military base in Guantanamo, Cuba. Democrats such as Rep. Jane Harman, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, have called for Guantanamo to be shut down.
The Guantanamo detainees are not innocent insurance salesmen imprisoned in some horrible mix-up like something out of a Perry Mason movie. The detainees were captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan. You remember -- the war liberals pretended to support right up until approximately one nanosecond after John Kerry conceded the 2004 election to President Bush.
But apparently, imprisoning al-Qaida warriors we catch on the battlefield is hampering our ability to fight the global war on terror.
gullible media exposed
Remember the dastardly attack by Israeli rockets on a Red Cross Ambulance last month? It had a major impact on world opinion. But was the story true?
One blogger produced an extensive examination of the news coverage and the facts. Be sure to watch the ITV 4-minute broadcast. If nothing else, observe how they repeat a sound bite of an Israeli officer saying that they did not/do not target civilians to mean just the opposite.
Whew.
how do shia and sunni tell each other apart?
Slate has the answer.
brits scoff at our gerrymander
The British Economist shows how gerrymandering has subverted US democracy.
In a normal democracy, voters choose their representatives. In America, it is rapidly becoming the other way around.
IMAGINE a state with five congressional seats and only 25 voters in each. That makes 125 voters. Sixty-five are Republicans, 60 are Democrats. You might think a fair election in such a state would produce, say, three Republican representatives and two Democrats.
Now imagine you can draw the district boundaries any way you like. The only condition is that you must keep 25 voters in each one. If you were a Republican, you could carve up the state so there were 13 Republicans and 12 Democrats per district. Your party would win every seat narrowly. Republicans, five-nil.
Now imagine you were a Democrat. If you put 15 Republicans in one district, you could then divide the rest of the state so that each district had 13 Democrats and 12 Republicans. Democrats, four-one. Same state, same number of districts, same party affiliation: completely different results. All you need is the power to draw district lines. And that is what America provides: a process, called redistricting, which, through back-room negotiations too boring for most voters to think about, can distort the democratic system itself.
self-applied handcuffs
The Homeland Security Department has neither the legal nor technical tools to match the British capture of terrorist operatives before they were about to blow up passenger airliners.
Officials said U.S. law would not have allowed the FBI to conduct the type of surveillance that led Britain to uncover the al Qaeda cell and capture what could be the network’s chief. They said the department also does not have the funding to detect new types of bombs used by al Qaeda.
''What helped the British in this case is the ability to be nimble, to be fast, to be flexible, to operate based on fast-moving information,'' Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said.
Officials said British authorities have greater powers of surveillance and investigation, which facilitated the capture of more than 20 suspected al Qaeda plotters. In contrast, they said, Congress has been reviewing the Bush administration's warrantless eavesdropping program and military tribunals.
wednesday, august 23 2006
who pays for healthcare
I found this paragraph on Kevin Drum's blog, but I'd wager something similar could be found on half the liberal blogs out there with a little bit of searching:
GM's management faces higher costs than its competitors in other countries because it has to pay its employees' healthcare costs and Toyota and Volkswagen don't. GM's workers are no better off: their pension benefits are at risk because their continued existence depends on the health of one company, rather than the health of an entire country. So who benefits from this lopsided system? No one except the insurance and financial services industries that administer these plans.
This is a persistent meme on liberal sites, and with good reason: the logic is compelling. The only problem--and it is a slight one--is that this meme is not true. In both Japan and Germany, workers at large corporations get their health insurance via joint contributions from employeer and employee, just as they do in the United States. Big corporations in both countries also have pension schemes, just as in the United States, and higher social security contributions.
To be sure, their health care costs are lower, in large part because they are administered by the government, which rations it more strictly than GE can. But their pension fund deficits are often worse than ours.
Where does this idea come from that the Japanese and German corporations don't have to pay any costs to cover their employees' health and retirement? And why hasn't anyone bothered to check it?
jihad and euro multi-culti
The jihadists are clearly winning their battle over the British people. In the UK, the Labour government has shown that it is more than willing to jeopardise national security in favour of its oppressive multicultural agenda. Violent Muslims – a hotchpotch of infantile soul-searching converts, theocratic barbarians and permanently incensed and uneducated nobodies – who are supposed to be living as British citizens are intending to kill the people they live among. Clearly, the European multicultural project is failing to such a degree that citizens not only possess a visceral hatred of one another but they are now at war with one another.
Western European multicultural programmes, which traditionally structured themselves around a liberal governance of individuals regardless of religion, race, colour and creed, are no longer sustainable for the societies they govern. They are gently becoming the human societies fit for different herds of religious savages, equipped with rights but not responsibilities, provided with authority but no elective legitimacy, administered with intensive social policing without a true realm of private activity, filled with a countless number of illegal and unmeasured migrants far removed from common social mores of both work and leisure. Such societies seemed condemned to tragedies on an apocalyptic scale.
what if bush listened to his critics?
God forbid, says Tony Blankley.
movers and shakers
The midterm election looms, and once again efforts begin afresh to increase voter participation. It has become standard wisdom in American politics that voter turnout is synonymous with good citizenship, justifying just about any scheme to get people to the polls. Arizona is even considering a voter lottery, in which all voters are automatically registered for a $1 million giveaway. Polling places and liquor stores in Arizona will now have something in common.
On the political left, raising the youth vote is one of the most common goals. This implicitly plays to the tired old axiom that a person under 30 who is not a liberal has no heart (whereas one who is still a liberal after 30 has no head). The trouble is, while most "get out the vote" campaigns targeting young people are proxies for the Democratic Party, these efforts haven't apparently done much to win elections for the Democrats. The explanation we often hear from the left is that the new young Democrats are more than counterbalanced by voters scared up by the Republicans on "cultural issues" like abortion, gun rights and gay marriage.
But the data on young Americans tell a different story. Simply put, liberals have a big baby problem: They're not having enough of them, they haven't for a long time, and their pool of potential new voters is suffering as a result. According to the 2004 General Social Survey, if you picked 100 unrelated politically liberal adults at random, you would find that they had, between them, 147 children. If you picked 100 conservatives, you would find 208 kids. That's a "fertility gap" of 41%. Given that about 80% of people with an identifiable party preference grow up to vote the same way as their parents, this gap translates into lots more little Republicans than little Democrats to vote in future elections. Over the past 30 years this gap has not been below 20%--explaining, to a large extent, the current ineffectiveness of liberal youth voter campaigns today.
point of no return
It is hard to think of a time when a nation -- and a whole civilization -- has drifted more futilely toward a bigger catastrophe than that looming over the United States and western civilization today.
Nuclear weapons in the hands of Iran and North Korea mean that it is only a matter of time before there are nuclear weapons in the hands of international terrorist organizations. North Korea needs money and Iran has brazenly stated its aim as the destruction of Israel -- and both its actions and its rhetoric suggest aims that extend even beyond a second Holocaust.
Send not to know for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee.
This is not just another in the long history of military threats. The Soviet Union, despite its massive nuclear arsenal, could be deterred by our own nuclear arsenal. But suicide bombers cannot be deterred.
Fanatics filled with hate cannot be either deterred or bought off, whether Hezbollah, Hamas or the government of Iran.
The endlessly futile efforts to bring peace to the Middle East with concessions fundamentally misconceive what forces are at work.
Hate and humiliation are key forces that cannot be bought off by "trading land for peace," by a "Palestinian homeland" or by other such concessions that might have worked in other times and places.
Humiliation and hate go together. Why humiliation? Because a once-proud, dynamic culture in the forefront of world civilizations, and still carrying a message of their own superiority to "infidels" today, is painfully visible to the whole world as a poverty-stricken and backward region, lagging far behind in virtually every field of human endeavor.
There is no way that they can catch up in a hundred years, even if the rest of the world stands still. And they are not going to wait a hundred years to vent their resentments and frustrations at the humiliating position in which they find themselves.
Israel's very existence as a modern, prosperous western nation in their midst is a daily slap across the face. Nothing is easier for demagogues than to blame Israel, the United States, or western civilization in general for their own lagging position.
Hitler was able to rouse similar resentments and fanaticism in Germany under conditions not nearly as dire as those in most Middle East countries today. The proof of similar demagogic success in the Middle East is all around.
tuesday, august 22 2006
hezbaloney
Much has been made of the "fauxtography" that made its way into such esteemed media as the New York Times and Reuters. Here is an example of how Hezbollah blatantly lies (gosh, no!) about its military prowess. Like Al Gore it lies artlessly, in ways that are easily fact checked.
So look at the photo that appeared in a Hezbollah website showing how they'd blown up an Israeli war ship.
Impressive, no? But wait, as Andrew Bolt of the Herald Sun points out, the photograph actually shows a decommissioned Australian destroyer-escort being destroyed, by the Aussies, as target practice in 1998. Original below.
Inventing one's own reality is nothing new in the Muslima world, as Amir Tehari noted:
So, who won the latest war between Israel and Hizbullah? The question is at the center of a hot debate not only in the Arab media and political circles but also in the informal groupings where much of Arab opinion is shaped.
The fact that the question is asked is a novelty in Arab politics.
Traditionally, no Arab would admit that any war had ever ended with an Arab defeat. The few Arabs who would disagree would be quickly ostracized if not actually treated as "agents of the enemy."
This is what happened to Tunisia's President Habib Bourguiba in 1967, when he politely suggested that the Arabs might have lost the Six Day War. The late Egyptian dictator Gamal Abdul Nasser never used the word hazima (defeat) to describe the result of his 1967 adventure. Syrian despot Hafez Assad also banned the word from his political lexicon. As for Saddam Hussein, the fallen Iraqi tyrant, he was sure that he had won the war against Iran in 1988 and the war against the US-led coalition in 1991. Since he is now in jail, it is hard to know what he thinks of the 2003 war that ended his regime. However, it would be no surprise if he claimed that he had won that round, too.
During the recent war between Israel and Hezbollah, Mohammed at Iraq the Model noted:
I wish the world could see what we are watching here and know the truth about this war, if what you outside the middle east are watching is news, know that here we are getting lies, deception, propaganda and slogans in the outfit of news and analysis, all for the purpose of keeping the region and especially Arabs in the seemingly forever lasting dream that is directed to keep them on the same side with terrorists and , sooner rather than later, collapsing regimes.
Our media and its dishonorable message is cornering the citizen in his home 24/7/365, it portraits all others as enemies and terror as resistance, it alienates the other voice and reflects only one perspective in a horrendously similar manner as if all media networks signed the same code of no ethics, as if all of them are only a changing face of one entity. The Arab media is one that approaches sentiments and ignores facts in order to foster a feedback that contains more hatred and less reason.
why republicans are dogs and vice versa
The fabulous P.J. O'Rourke wrote the definitive "Yes, Virginia" piece a while back, explaining why God is a Republican (He exists) and Santa Claus is a Democrat (he's fantasy). More recently it has been noted that liberal places such as Seattle and San Francisco have more dogs than children, while conservative places tend to have more children than dogs.
You'd think this was prima facie evidence that dogs are actually democrats. I believe that the true explanation is "opposites attract". Also, it says something about the nature of liberals that they are more attracted to dogs than to children. Dogs give and children take. Real adults want to give and nurture, love and be loved; while immature adults cannot commit and need nurturing themselves. So conservatives are happy to give to their children AND take from their dogs. Liberals....well, you get the picture.
We all know why dogs are so appealing. They are loyal. They are selfless. They are undemanding. They truly love you just the way you are, exhibiting the ultimate in actual, as opposed to politically defined, tolerance. 99% of the time, a dog has no agenda except yours. They believe in hierarchy, structure and law. They understand the sanctity of the young and would kill or die rather than allow a child or puppy to be hurt. They live in the moment and appreciate every small beauty of life.
Now let's compare these traits to current, well known behaviors and solidify the classification of dogs as Republicans. Loyal: Bush I and Bush II's marriage vows or Clinton's Oval Office playtime in the recess? Selfless: Churches resettling Katrina victims or the Democratic apparatchiks of Louisiana? Undemanding: Shit kicker Redneck Babes or New Jersey Princesses? Unconditional love: The Salvation Army or NOW? Helping you with YOUR agenda: NRA or NEA? Hierarchy, structure and law: ROTC or Women's Studies Programs? The sanctity of the young: Hezbollah and Planned Parenthood or the Boy Scouts? Live in the moment: Bowling League or Junior League?
So we know dogs are Republicans. Then why do liberals find them so indispensable, more necessary in fact than their own children? In a word, compensation. Reality intruding on political fantasies. It's the same dynamic that leads liberals to do in their private lives what they exhort other people NOT to do in public - think of the Clintons sending Chelsea to private school, Rosie's kids protected with guns, Huffington advocating for small, energy saving cars while driving a tank and living in a palace.
Think how insecure and spiritually poor the good liberal's life must be. How disjointed his days and years. Today he must be actively outraged and diligently harassing people about global warming, while just a few years ago it was recycling or Alar in apples or peanuts in the school lunchroom. Goddess only knows what he'll be required to be passionate about tomorrow, and how meaningless it will be to him the day after that.
Read it all.
excuse after excuse
What makes two-dozen British Muslims want to blow up thousands of innocent passengers on jumbo jets? Why does al Qaeda plan hourly to kill civilians? And why does oil-rich Iran wish to "wipe out" Israel ?
In short, it's the old blame game, one that over the past century has taken multiple forms.
Once, a tired whine of Islamists was that European colonialists and American oilmen rigged global commerce to "rob" the Middle East of its natural wealth. But they were pretty quiet when the price of crude oil jumped from around an expensive $25 a barrel to an exorbitant $75.
Recently, oil exporters of the Middle East have taken in around an extra $500 billion each year in windfall profits beyond the old lucrative income. It is one of the largest, most sudden — and least remarked upon — transfers of capital in history.
Another old excuse for Islamist anger was the claim the West had favored autocrats — the Shah, the House of Saud, the Kuwaiti royal family — in a cynical desire for cheap gas and to prop up strong anti-communist allies.
Some of that complaint was certainly accurate. But since September 11, America has ensured democracy in Afghanistan , spent billions and over 2,500 lives fostering freedom in Iraq , pressured Syria to leave Lebanon , and lectured long-time allies in Egypt and the Gulf to reform. For all this, we are now considered crude interventionists, even when our efforts may well pave the way for radical Muslims to gain legitimacy through plebiscites.
Read on.
monday, august 21 2006
remembering communism
38 years ago today the Soviet Evil Empire sent in tanks to quash the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia. Watch the video.
Aug. 21, 1968 -- Dozens of people have been killed in a massive military clampdown in Czechoslovakia by five Warsaw Pact countries.
Several members of the liberal Czechoslovak leadership have been arrested, including Prime Minister Alexander Dubcek.
The Soviet news agency, Tass, claims "assistance" was requested by members of the Czechoslovak Government and Communist party leaders to fight "counter-revolutionary forces".
But in a secret radio address, Czechoslovak President Ludvik Svoboda condemned the occupation by Warsaw Pact allies as illegal and committed without the government's consent.
US President Lyndon Johnson said the invasion was a clear violation of the United Nations Charter and that the excuses offered by the Soviet Union were "patently contrived".
The UN charter violated. Imagine that.
culture of corruption: harry reid
Harry and Nancy Pelosi should not have thrown stones:
... the valley — an hour northeast of Las Vegas — is on its way to becoming a real estate development of historic proportions, with as many as 159,000 homes, 16 golf courses and a full complement of stores and service facilities. At nearly 43,000 acres, Coyote Springs covers almost twice as much space as the next-largest development in a state famous for outsized building projects.
By comparison, Irvine Co., one of Southern California's largest developers, controls about 44,000 acres in Orange County.Helping make Coyote Springs come alive was an alliance between a multimillionaire developer and one of the highest-ranking members of Congress: Nevada Democrat Harry Reid, the Senate minority leader and a member of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee.
The relationship between developers such as Harvey Whittemore and politicians such as Reid is especially close in Nevada, home to a small fraternity of movers and shakers, powerful demands of rapid population growth and a huge amount of federally owned land.
Over the last four years, Reid has used his influence in Washington to help the developer, Nevada super-lobbyist Whittemore, clear obstacles from Coyote Springs' path.
At one point, Reid proposed opening the way for Whittemore to develop part of the site for free — something for which the developer later agreed to pay the government $10 million.
As the project advanced, Reid received tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from Whittemore. The contributions not only went to Reid's Senate campaigns, but also to his leadership fund, which he used to help bankroll the campaigns of Democratic colleagues.
mission unaccomplished
Most U.N. resolutions don't have the shelf-life of a gallon of milk, which isn't always a bad thing. But in the case of Resolution 1701--the cease-fire agreement for Lebanon and Israel adopted unanimously this month by the Security Council--things seem to be going sour even faster than that. And that is cause for serious unease.
On Thursday, Jacques Chirac confirmed a Le Monde report that his government was prepared to offer only some 200 combat engineers (in addition to the 200 French troops already in Lebanon) to what is supposed to be the resolution's centerpiece: A 15,000-man U.N. force that will help the Lebanese army patrol their southern border and ensure that Hezbollah will no longer use the area as a staging ground for future attacks against Israel.
Given that the French contingent was supposed to be at the vanguard of this enhanced force, it's unclear whether other nations will be willing to chip in with troops of their own. All of this after the French used the promise of a robust, French-led international force to get the U.S. and Israel to agree to a cease-fire and withdrawal. Even less reassuring is the insistence by French Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie that her troops will remain in the lead only until February, after which, apparently, it's salaam and adieu.
Then there is the delicate matter of disarming Hezbollah. Although the terrorist militia is so far abiding by the cease-fire, its leader Hassan Nasrallah made a televised statement last week insisting it was the "wrong time" to discuss disarmament. "Who will defend Lebanon in case of a new Israeli offensive?" he asks.
The answer, presumably, is the Lebanese Army. By the terms of the 1989 Taif Accord that ended Lebanon's civil war, all domestic Lebanese militias should have long since disarmed or been folded into the regular army. U.N. Security Council Resolution 1559 of 2004 makes the same demand, as does 1701.
But the U.N. resolutions are dismayingly vague about just who, other than Hezbollah itself, is supposed to do the disarming. "I don't think there is an expectation that this [U.N.] force is going to physically disarm Hezbollah," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told USA Today last week. "You have to have a plan, first of all, for the disarmament of a militia, and then the hope is that some people lay down their arms voluntarily."
That's some "hope" on Secretary Rice's part. Emile Lahoud, the pro-Syrian Lebanese President who is nominally commander-in-chief of the army, has described the notion of disarming Hezbollah as "disgraceful": "How can they ask us to disarm while the blood of the martyrs is still warm?" Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora has been less explicit but little better. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports that he has entered into negotiations with Mr. Nasrallah to arrange a modus vivendi between Lebanese troops and Hezbollah fighters still operating in the south of Lebanon.
nano-technology: big argument over small stuff
At Popular Science.
five years after
I happened to be in the Australian Parliament for Question Time last week. The matter of Iraq came up, and the foreign minister, Alexander Downer, thwacked the subject across the floor and over the opposition benches in a magnificent bravura display of political confidence culminating with the gleefully low jibe that "the Leader of the Opposition's constant companion is the white flag."
The Iraq war is unpopular in Australia, as it is in America and in Britain. But the Aussie government is happy for the opposition to bring up the subject as often as they want because Mr. Downer and his Prime Minister understand very clearly that wanting to "cut and run" is even more unpopular. So in the broader narrative it's a political plus for them: Unlike Bush and Blair, they've succeeded in making the issue not whether the nation should have gone to war but whether the nation should lose the war.
That's not just good politics, but it's actually the heart of the question. Of course, if Bush sneered that John Kerry and Ted Kennedy and Howard Dean and Nancy Pelosi's constant companion is the white flag, they'd huff about how dare he question their patriotism. But, if you can't question their patriotism when they want to lose a war, when can you?
At one level, the issue is the same as it was on September 11th: American will and national purpose. But the reality is that it's worse than that — for (as Israel is also learning) to begin something and be unable to stick with it to the finish is far more damaging to your reputation than if you'd never begun it in the first place. Nitwit Democrats think anything that can be passed off as a failure in Iraq will somehow diminish only Bush and the neocons. In reality — a concept with which Democrats seem only dimly acquainted — it would diminish the nation, and all but certainly end the American moment. In late September 2001 the administration succeeded in teaching a critical lesson to tough hombres like Musharraf and Putin: In a scary world, America can be scarier. But it's all a long time ago now.
sunday, august 20 2006
moral vanity on parade
A bill is working its way through the California law-making mill that is, in essence, a unilateral Kyoto protocol in which California, all by its lonesome, will mandate cuts in carbon dioxide emissions.
"I don't see this as much as a responsibility as an obligation to do something and take leadership in making sure that we protect our planet," said Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, D-Los Angeles. "We know this is a real problem, and yet we have not done what we need to do."
Maybe it is a real problem, maybe not. Beyond dispute is that Fabian's law will cost California jobs.
California Portland Cement Co. had planned to build more plants this year but put its expansion on hold as it awaits a decision by state lawmakers that the company says could force it to cut production.
Cement manufacturers represent just one of several industries that would be required to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases they emit under a bill that would make California the first state in the nation to impose such regulations on businesses.
Unlike other industries, which might be able to comply by implementing energy-efficient practices or using alternative fuels, much of the carbon dioxide emitted by cement plants is a byproduct of the chemical process.
"That's just the way cement is made," said Rick Patton, a vice president of the Glendora-based company. "If you limit the amount of carbon dioxide that can be produced, what you're doing is limiting the amount of cement that can be produced."
Let's assume that Al Gore and his Green Scare squad are right: global warming is a man made problem and a disaster unfolding before us. The dirty secret is that even if Kyoto were "enforced to perfection, atmospheric concetrations of greenhouse gases in 2050 would only be 1 percent less than without the treaty" says a report from the Brookings Institution.
So with this in mind, does it make any sense for one US state to pass such a law, one that will hobble its industry and hurt the little guy? Only if you care more about parading your superior "greenness" than serving the public.
The public? Let 'em eat tofu cakes.
dollars to donuts
John Stossel writes how 9/11 led to government subsidized Dunkin' donuts. And worse.
steyn profiled
...down under:
"I'm basically pessimistic about the big questions which I think are hard ones to grapple with … I think we're in for incredibly fast changes and our odds are not good at weathering a lot of those changes.
"I'm often accused of being a racist, but I define 'our' fairly expansively, not just America, Britain, Australia, Canada, but there are lots of people in Japan and India and Pakistan and even people in the Middle East who are going to be adversely affected by these changes. My view, really, is that people forget what a rare moment (in history) the last 60 years have been. People assume it's a permanent feature of life. It's not."
His message, in part, is encapsulated in populate or perish. Little wonder he admires Treasurer Peter Costello's "stirring call — a boy for you, a girl for me, and one for Australia", as he puts it. In essence, old Europe is in trouble because "they've given up breeding", claims Steyn, and have evolved into bi-cultural societies.
"Parts of the Western world are dying and, in Europe, the successor population to those ageing French and Dutch and Belgians is in place … The New Europeans will be observant Muslims instead of post-Christian secularists, but they still will be recognisably European."
Which is all very well, says Steyn, except civil liberties and freedoms do not generally flourish within Muslim majorities, so who's to say with confidence that advanced societies will sustain long-cherished basic rights with such a dramatic shift in their character and the possible advent of a pan-Islamism, categorised by Steyn as presenting a "profound challenge to conventional ideas of citizenship and nationhood".
california drowning in laws
...We are drowning in 47,000 new laws enacted since 1966, covering everything from the size of typeface on official notices on employee bulletin boards to the arcane timing dictating when you must use your windshield wipers.
You couldn't know this, but it's illegal to throw away your cell phone. Lawbreaker!
What a contrast to the early 20th century, when Big Laws addressed, often for the first time, everything from redevelopment to fair employment practices. After that, we got mired in pocket laws, obscurities and nitpickery. Ronald Reagan, Jerry Brown and George Deukmejian added roughly 1,500 new laws yearly; Pete Wilson and Gray Davis about 1,000 annually.
Scary.
But in 2004, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger made news. He vetoed 311 bills. His vetoes caused legislators momentary pause. They sent him “only” 961 laws in 2005. Arnold let 729 become law — a “record low” in our times.
...
Now, the Legislature is frenetically considering up to 1,700 extra laws before its Aug. 31 deadline — an embarrassing brew of self-serving special-interest claptrap that's intrusive, abusive, regressive or downright offensive.
Assembly Bill 2641 by Democrat Joe Coto of San Jose, with scads of bipartisan coauthors, is the Legislature's greedy bid to lure campaign riches from multimillionaire tribes who back the bill. It lets the “Native American Heritage Commission” delay any ground-disturbing activity in California — think of the possibilities! — that unearths remotely arguable “burial” items. It lets this commission, promoting tribal interests, decide what's a “burial ground” and halt projects.
In this bad dream, landowners must negotiate with designated “descendants” of bones. This “commission” should have no more power over your land than the chamber of commerce. With huge Assembly support, 42-2, it heads to the Senate floor.
the "youtube election"
Politicians say stupid things. Now they end up on the Internet.
paging terry wrist and al kyder
Aussie prank, on video.
saturday, august 19 2006
terror plot in germany
Last month...a suitcase bomb on a train...kept quiet ...an arrest today.
we'll let you know if things change
The United States said it had no plans to invade Cuba, after its communist interim leader, Raul Castro, said he had ordered a mobilization to counter a US invasion threat.
Advice to Raul: don't flatter yourself.
photo of the day
I took this photo on Wednesday at Montana de Oro State Park, which is just south of Morro Bay, California. The sun was shining brightly a half-mile inland, but the coastal marine layer was clinging to the shore, thus the overcast skies.
harry and ted try comedy
Knighthawk notes Senators Harry Reid and Ted Kennedy wrote a letter to President Bush:
According to today’s New York Times, it was reported that Administration officials are “beginning to plan for the possibility that Iraq’s democratically elected government might not survive” and that “senior administration officials have acknowledged … they are considering alternatives other than democracy.”
If true, we are deeply concerned that your Administration would even consider abandoning democracy in Iraq.
Read Knighthawk heap on the well-deserved scorn.
wednesday-Friday, august 16-18 2006
a pre-cambrian post
We're off to Cambria (California) for two days to celebrate 32 years together. Be back on Saturday.
JB
how to be charming
jolt
Photo of lightning yapping a boat.
pepsi ceo gives usa the finger
So much for the glass ceiling. Indra Nooyi, a woman, is the new soda pop CEO.
She also is a bit of a snot:
Ms. Nooyi began to compare the world and its five major continents (excl. Antarctica and Australia) to the human hand. First was Africa - the pinky finger - small and somewhat insignificant but when hurt, the entire hand hurt with it. Next was Asia - the thumb - strong and powerful, yearning to become a bigger player on the world stage. Third was Europe - the index finger - pointing the way.
Fourth was South America - the ring finger - the finger which symbolizes love and sensualness. Finally, the US (not Canada mind you) - yes, you guessed it - the middle finger. She then launched into a diatribe about how the US is seen as the middle finger to the rest of the world. The rest of the world sees us as an overbearing, insensitive and disrespectful nation that gives the middle finger to the rest of the world.
According to Ms. Nooyi, we cause the other finger nations to cower under our presence. But it is our responsibility, she continues, to change the current state of world opinion of the US. It is our responsibility to make the other fingers rise in unison with us as we move forward. She then goes on to give a personal anecdote about some disrespectful US business women in an Asian country and how that is typical of Americans overseas.
No talk of what the US has done for the world throughout its history. No discussion about the ills that have been cured and the rights that have been wronged by the US. Just how wrong we are for the way we are perceived and how right they are in their own perceptions of the United States.
Good ole Coca Cola.
if not now, when?
Nasrallah: The Disarmament of Hizbullah Should Not Be Discussed Now.
the most ancient virus to affect the soul
ANTI-SEMITISM IS NOT A SIGN, A SYMBOL, A BULLET, OR A GAS, IT'S A VIRUS. It is the oldest known virus to attack the human soul. The existence of Israel masks the existence of the virus by renaming it ("anti-Zionism"). Through the renaming of this ancient disease as a “political problem,” many people now become infected through their friends, families, at their schools, from their community, church, or nation, or from exchanging infected fantasies with infected ideologues. By changing the name of the disease it has become possible for many to deny that they have contracted the virus. This facilitates the current outbreak. It is a clever virus and this shape-shifting is one of its oldest methods of perpetuating itself.
The origin of the virus is unknown, but many suspect the area to be Bablyon and Sumur with an early leap across borders into Egypt. It was later transmitted through not-so-casual contact to much of the world by traders out of Northern Africa and the Roman Empire.
During the period following the fall of Rome, the virus found traction in early Christianity as a common carrier. In this host it thrived, and was able to survive and spread for many centuries. Of late, many parts of Christianity, now that it has become fragmented, have rejected the virus and those who host it, but strains of the virus can still be found at the center of many subsets of the Christian faith today.
Read on.
no there there
If you needed another reason not to listen to artists, consider that Gertrude Stein, an intellectual Jew, thought Adolf Hitler should get the Nobel Peace Prize.
Scholars of the life of Gertrude Stein were recently startled to learn that in 1938 the prominent Jewish-American writer had spearheaded a campaign urging the Nobel committee to award its Peace Prize to Adolf Hitler. This was disclosed by Gustav Hendrikksen, a former member of the Nobel committee and now professor emeritus of Bible studies at Sweden's Uppsala University, in Nativ, a political magazine published in Israel. (Reports about this appeared in the New York Jewish community weekly Forward, Feb. 2, June 14, and Oct. 25, 1996.)
Hendrikksen, an avowed friend of Israel who is now in his late 80s, recalled that the Nobel committee rejected Stein's proposal "politely but firmly, citing among their reasons the attitude of the Nazi regime toward the Jews."
In the decades before her death in 1946, Stein was a widely acclaimed literary icon. As monarch of the "lost generation" of American expatriates in Paris during the 1920s and 1930s, she cultivated and influenced such literary figures as Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, as well as such artists as Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse. Her Paris home was a mecca for writers and artists. Stein's own "modernist" novels, memoirs, lectures and plays -- once celebrated as stylishly avant garde -- have not aged well. Today she is remembered almost as much for who she was as for what she wrote.
Born in Pennsylvania of a wealthy German-Jewish family, she was raised in the United States, and attended Radcliffe and Johns Hopkins universities. But it was during her years of expatriate living in France that she made her lasting mark.
Stein's seemingly paradoxical views about Hitler and fascism have never been a secret. As early as 1934, she told a reporter that Hitler should be awarded the Nobel peace prize. "I say that Hitler ought to have the peace prize, because he is removing all the elements of contest and of struggle from Germany. By driving out the Jews and the democratic and Left element, he is driving out everything that conduces to activity. That means peace ... By suppressing Jews ... he was ending struggle in Germany" (New York Times Magazine, May 6, 1934).
Whew. By that logic, Hezbollah, should they drive every Jew into the sea, deserve the Nobel nod for bringing peace to the mideast.
mike wallace got punk'd
The man is 88 years old. While his mental faculties have diminished, his ego remains vigorous. So when the nut-job president of Iran specifically invited Mike to come interview him, Mike didn't see he was being played for a sap. No no, after all he's big, intimidating Mike Wallace, the "60 Minutes" reporter who makes grown men cringe.
The cringing now comes from embarassment. All Ahmadinejad needed was to seem normal, not wacky-scary. Mission accomplished. Hang the banner. One cannot imagine Mike being quite so polite to Mel Gibson in a one-on-one. But there he was grinning and being obsequious to a very dangerous man.
Joel Rosenberg writes about the questions that Mike Wallace did not ask:
1. Mr. President, you are telling colleagues in Iran that you believe the end of the world is rapidly approaching. Why do you believe this? How are these views shaping your foreign policy?
2. Could you tell us more in the West about your belief that the “Twelfth Imam” (or “Hidden Imam”) will soon reappear and why you believe that the way to hasten the coming of this Islamic messiah is to launch a global jihad against Israel and the U.S.?
3. Mr. President, in Islam, Jesus Christ is considered a great prophet and teacher. In your lengthy letter to President Bush earlier this year, you talked a lot about Jesus Christ. You criticized the president for, in your view, not following the teachings of Jesus. What are some of your favorite teachings of Jesus? Do you believe Jesus was Jewish? Do you believe that He lived and taught and did His miracles in Israel? Do you believe Jesus wished for Israel to be wiped “off the map?” In the current crisis, what would Jesus do, in your opinion?
4. You have told colleagues that when you were speaking at the United Nations last fall, you were surrounded by a light from heaven and that for about 25 or 26 minutes everyone in the General Assembly was mesmerized by your speech — that not a single person blinked for that entire time. Would you describe that experience for us? Do you believe that God or an angel was with you at that moment? Do you believe Allah has chosen you to be the leader of Iran at this moment in history?
5. You say that the era of bombs is over. Why then did you sign a $1 billion deal with Moscow last December to buy Russian missiles and other arms? Why are you sending missiles, bombs and $100 million a year to Hezbollah? Why are you sending bombs and bombers into Iraq?Iran is the new Germany. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the new Adolf Hitler. Radical Shiite Islamic jihadists are the new Nazi storm troopers. The pursuit of the Twelfth Imam is the pursuit of the new Third Reich. CBS News had both the opportunity and responsibility to help the world truly understand this regime and the danger it poses. It failed miserably, and we are all poorer for it.
tuesday, august 15 2006
channeling orwell at the dnc
Democrats, fearing the latest terror plot might remind Americans that the terror threat is no figment of George Bush's imagination, are busy trying to score political points. On an Bush administration success.
Remember, the British airline plot was foiled. So far.
The memory of 9/11 faded quickly for Democrats, who soon made Bush the enemy. With the New York Times serving as the party's house organ, they've leaked and politicked about terror fighting tool Bush has put into play. And many that preceded him as well.
In their lust for power, they concluded that anything that hurts Bush -- "he's eavesdropping on your phone calls!" -- is good, regardless of how much it undermines the nation's security.
Now, they're upset because their dangerous, petty game has been exposed. And sure enough, they're crying politics. Said the Times:
It comes like a punch to the gut, at times like these, when our leaders blatantly use the nation's trauma for political gain. We never get used to this. It never feels like business as usual.
Oh, please. Revealing the methods for tracking financial transactions wasn't political? The data mining story wasn't political? Someone, please punch Pinch.
Meanwhile, Hillary the Schemer is trying to position Democrats as tougher on terror and Bush as, yawn, incompetent:
"We've done some things right," the New York senator said at a community event in Schenectady. "Obviously we've beefed up airport security in some ways, but as we've learned over the last week not in every way that matters. We still have not done what we need to do to protect our ports, our borders, our bridges, our transit systems, our rail lines, it's a long list."
Her list will no doubt grow.
Ms. Rodham-Clinton knows it is physically and fiscally impossible to guard every bridge, train, cargo container, etc. against a terror attack. By publicly listing such potential targets she can then say "I told you so" should any of them get hit.
Astute observers will remember that just two months ago, the Democrats called for a New Direction for America and listed six priorities, including cutting college costs. Terrorism did not make the list.
So it's dissemble time again. Harold Ford, running for Bill Frist's open Senate seat:
“The president told us that the British attacks are a stark reminder that the nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom,’’ Mr. Ford said, “yet his administration has dismantled the very infrastructure that is responsible for catching those terrorists.”
This is galling, but funny. But not so funny if the MSM convinces enough voters to swallow this line of crap. Then the joke will be on us.
Jim Bass
Extra credit: to see the Democrats craven use of terror as political tool, read the 2003 MEMO.
a date to remember
Aug 15, 1945 -- Japan has surrendered to the Allies after almost six years of war.
There is joy and celebration around the world and 15 August has been declared Victory in Japan day. The end of war will be marked by two-day holidays in the UK, the USA and Australia.
After days of rumour and speculation, US President Harry S Truman broke the good news at a press conference at the White House at 1900 yesterday.
He said the Japanese Government had agreed to comply in full with the Potsdam declaration which demands the unconditional surrender of Japan.
Supreme Commander General Douglas MacArthur will receive the official Japanese surrender, arrangements for which are now under way.
Later, in an address to a crowd that had gathered outside the White House President Truman said: "This is the day we have been waiting for since Pearl Harbor. This is the day when Fascism finally dies, as we always knew it would."
But he warned that the task of creating a lasting peace still lay ahead.
Indeed, the task was great. But the so-called (by liberals and assorted anti-Americans) imperialist United States forked over billions of dollars to help rebuild Europe. And, instead of seeking revenge against the Japanese, we helped them become a stable democratic nation. And our ally today.
it used to be a chicken in every pot
Cardin, a Democrat from Baltimore County, gathered with cancer survivors and doctors in Lutherville to detail his efforts to expand cancer screening and his plans to fight the disease.
"We are going to lick cancer by 2015," Cardin told a group of 15 people at the HopeWell Cancer Support Center on Falls Road.
skinny size me
Merab Morgan, a construction worker from North Carolina lost 37 pounds - eating only McDonald's for 90 days.
not so funny
A writer for the Ali G show visits the Edinburgh Arts Festival and gets a shock:
...Stand-up comedy is as good a prism as any through which to look at the changing attitudes in our society. If my past few days are anything to go by then it is becoming increasingly acceptable to hate the Jews. Again.
I’ve seen two comics so far who have been happy to amuse their crowds with Holocaust gags. I’m not sure which to be the more concerned about.
One was a left-leaning angry Australian conspiracy theorist, Steve Hughes, whose show The Storm is an assault on all things Western. “I want to bash Condoleezza Rice’s brain to bits and kill that f****** Jew Richard Perle.” Hughes is the one at the Pleasance Courtyard while Perle is an adviser to George W. Bush as he was to Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton on foreign affairs.
The second was a far more charming African-American comic who for much of the show was thoughtful, funny and even quite sweet. But he seemed to have a problem with Jews, too. Reginald D. Hunter is doing sell-out shows in the new E4-sponsored venue, the Udderbelly. Three hundred come along every night to see Hunter’s Pride and Prejudice and Niggas. You should see the poster.
I was laughing along until he announced that he was about to be extremely controversial and break the last taboo of stand-up comedy. Long silent pause. "Jeeeeews" Another long pause with some giggles from the audience. "You see, you’re not allowed to say that."
He went on to say how its illegal to deny the Holocaust in Austria. He has a good mind to go to Austria, stand in the street and say the Holocaust didn’t happen so that he could get arrested and tell the judge he was talking about the Rwandan holocaust. Whether or not he thought there should be a law against going to Rwanda and denying that genocide, he didn’t say.
By claiming that making a joke about Jews is the one last, great comic taboo, he simultaneously provides the moral justification for a crack at the Jews and he silences them from the right to complain, as this would only confirm the unspoken premise: that Jews are overprotected in society or even worse that Jewish media controllers are obsessed with silencing any criticism of their own.
His joke is essentially one about freedom of speech and selective Jewish control of that freedom, but he gives the lie to his true feelings by his choice of example. Of all the possible targets, of all the things he might wish to say, his complaint is that he is not permitted to parrot the greatest anti-Semitic slur of the last hundred years — that the Holocaust never happened. As a believer in free speech, I am not convinced by the criminalisation of Holocaust denial, but that does not mean I am confused about the motives of those who wish to utter it.
The great Lenny Bruce, a comedian who suffered endlessly at the hands of the American authorities for the right to freedom of speech and to break taboos, once did a bit that began: “Are there any niggers here tonight?” His liberal audience was initially shocked at this racist outburst, but as the monologue continued he made it clear that it was “the suppression of the word that gives it the power”. That was taboo-busting. That was a righteous plea for freedom of speech.
obscure french history
The film Cache, which we watched last night, referred to a massacre in Paris in 1961. I was living in Germany at the time, and while only 12 years old, I read newspapers and didn't remember this at all. So I did some digging and here's a look back:
A colleague of mine in Cairo told me a story a few years ago about a massacre in the streets of Paris.
He was a news service reporter at the time of the violence in the French capital —Oct. 17, 1961—and saw tens of bodies of dead Algerians piled like cordwood in the center of the city in the wake of what would now be called a police riot.
But his superiors at the news agency stopped him from telling the full story then, and most of the world paid little attention to the thin news coverage that the massacre did receive. Even now, the events of that time are not widely known and many people, like myself, had never heard of them at all.
This year is an apt time to recall what happened, and not only because this is the 35th anniversary year of Algerian independence. The continuing civil war in Algeria and the growing violence and racism in France, as well as the appalling slaughters taking place elsewhere in the world, give it a disturbing currency.
Here’s what happened:
Unarmed Algerian Muslims demonstrating in central Paris against a discriminatory curfew were beaten, shot, garotted and even drowned by police and special troops. Thousands were rounded up and taken to detention centers around the city and the prefecture of police, where there were more beatings and killings.
How many died? No one seems to know for sure, even now. Probably around 200.
cowboys and germans
From Atlantic Review:
"Amerikanische Verhältnisse" means "American conditions" and is a quite popular phrase to scare Germans about hire-and-fire capitalism, poverty, crime, health care etc. Olaf Gersemann, currently with Financial Times Deutschland, wrote a book about it in 2004. The German original is called Amerikanische Verhältnisse. Die falsche Angst der Deutschen vor dem Cowboy-Kapitalismus and the English translation is Cowboy Capitalism: European Myths, American Reality.
Liberale Stimme has written a Review in German. Synopisis from the publisher:"Europeans and many American pundits believe that while the U.S. economy may create more growth, Europeans have it better when it come to job security and other factors. Olaf Gersemann, a German reporter who came to America, found the reality quite different. He checked facts and found the market freedoms in America create a more flexible, adaptable and prosperous system then the declining welfare states of old Europe."
Just last week (August 4, 2006) the semi-tabloid Berliner Zeitung chose "Amerikanische Verhältnisse" for the headline of an editorial about the growing gap between the rich and the poor in Germany and the increasing unfairness (income, wealth, education, health care). The editorial did not analyse the economic conditions in the United States, but only dealt with the socio-economic trends in Germany and concluded that American conditions are now reality in Germany as well.
A closer look at the socio-economic situation in the United States (just like in Germany) would reveal good and bad aspects, but only the bad aspects are featured in the phrase "Amerikanische Verhältnisse." Some German papers write about the good aspects of the US economic system, many papers and politicians recommend more U.S. type reforms, and the term "American Dream" is still popular and still has a good ring to it, but whenever the phrase Amerikanische Verhältnisse is used, it sounds really bad, because it excludes what is good in America.
monday, august 14 2006
sleeper cell cell phones?
Were the disposable phones meant to blow up the Mackinac bridge? The FBI says no terror link has been identified, but 60,000 people cross the bridge in an annual Labor Day walk.
america short of factory jobs workers
...Manufacturing, long known for plant closings and layoffs, is now clamoring for workers to fill high-paying, skilled jobs. While millions of manufacturing jobs have been outsourced or automated out of existence during the past decade, many of the remaining jobs require higher skills and pay well — $50,000 to $80,000 a year for workers with the necessary math, computer and mechanical abilities.
Some manufacturers are so desperate for workers who can program, run or repair the computers and robots that now dominate the factory floor that they are offering recruitment bonuses, relocation packages and other incentives more common to white-collar jobs.
In Ohio, American Micro Products Inc., an electrical parts maker, is offering $1,000 bonuses to workers who recruit technicians, and it is covering moving costs for the new employees. In San Antonio, Toyota cannot find enough qualified applicants for skilled positions at its new plant, even after the state sponsored a training program. In Fontana, California Steel Industries Inc. found it so hard to fill five mechanical and technical positions, some paying $28 an hour, that managers started paying employees to train for the unfilled jobs.About 90% of manufacturers say they are having trouble filling skilled jobs such as machinists and technicians, according to a survey released in December by the National Assn. of Manufacturers, the leading industry group representing 12,000 manufacturers.
belgian wafflers
The Corner fires a warning shot at the Belgian thought police.
elephant compassion
A touching story about elephants dealing with death.
science, as told by calvin's dad
Sample of insights from Calvin and Hobbes:
C: Why do my eyes shut when I sneeze?
D: If your lids weren't closed, the force of the explosion would blow your eyeballs out and
stretch the optic nerve, so your eyes would flop around and you'd have to point them
with your hands to see anything.C: How do bank machines work?
D: Well, let's say you want 25 dollars. You punch in the amount and behind the machine
there's a guy with a printing press who makes the money and sticks it out this slot.
C: Sort of like the guy who lives up in our garage and opens the door?
D: Exactly.C: What causes the wind?
D: Trees sneezing.C: Why does ice float?
D: Because it's cold. Ice wants to get warm, so it goes to the top of liquids to be nearer
to the sun.
the muslim delusion
A Muslim critiques his faith:
In the 21st century, when the world is moving fast and some nations have already reached the stars, Muslims remain far from the horizons.
Decadence, illiteracy and orthodoxy are the pronounced facets of the current Muslim culture. Deluded by their fantasies they are entrenched in illusions, vanities and misconceptions. Illiteracy, sectarian strife, and misconceived perceptions have further added to their despair.
The delusion that besets the Muslim mind represents a deep psychological betrayal that leaves severe scars on the body politic of the Muslim Ummah. It is a period of anguish, despair and delusion, which many Muslims fail to recognize. They brush aside the realities by declaring that they are the darlings of God and everything will be resolved in their favour.
"a spirt of absolute folly"
An Israeli critiques his nation:
In the difficult summer of 2006, the State of Israel is declaring in astonishment: They surprised us. They surprised us in a big way. They surprised us with Katyushas and they surprised us with the Al-Fajr rockets and they surprised us with the Zelzal missiles. They surprised us with anti-tank missiles.
And they surprised us with the operational skill of the anti-tank squads. They surprised us with the bunkers and the camouflage. They surprised us with the command and monitoring. They surprised us with strategy, fighting ability and a fighting spirit. They surprised us with the astonishing power that a small death-army with low technology and high religious motivation can have.
However, more than they surprised us in Summer 2006 with the strength of Hezbollah, they surprised us this summer with our own weakness. They surprised us with ourselves. They surprised us with the low level of national leadership.They surprised us with scandalous strategic bumbling. They surprised us with the lack of vision, lack of creativity and lack of determination on the part of the senior military command. They surprised us with faulty intelligence and a delusionary logistical network and improper preparedness for war. They surprised us with the fact that the Israeli war machine is not what it once was. While we were celebrating it became rusty.
iran cracks down on iran president's blog
More wit from Scrappleface.
sunday, august 13 2006
a boost for the self-esteem movement
Everyone has royal blood.
standing by bush
...for neocons or any other conservatives to turn against George W. Bush would be a terrible mistake. Presidents invariably disappoint their strongest supporters. Their powers are limited, and they must cope with Congress, public opinion, unwieldy agencies and, where foreign policy is concerned, other nations that can help or hinder us. The results never match the elegance of the policies formulated by people like me, who grapple only with editors.
Neocons and other conservatives revere the memory of President Ronald Reagan now. But at the time, we weren't satisfied. "To say that neoconservatives [are] disappointed . . . understates the case to an incalculable degree," Norman Podhoretz, editor of the neocon flagship Commentary magazine, lamented about Reagan's foreign policy in 1982.
The contrast between Reagan's courage toward the "evil empire" and his faintheartedness toward Middle Eastern terrorists underscores the magnificence of Bush's achievement in marshaling our country for a war against terrorism. Middle Eastern terrorists had been coldly murdering Americans for three decades, but from Nixon through Clinton, no president dared face the issue head-on. The fight promised to be too nasty, and it required a strategy for changing the politics and psychology of the Middle East, for which there was no guidebook. So each administration had contented itself with shaking a symbolic fist or issuing some subpoenas while leaving the problem to metastasize.
if pinch ran the new york times in 1943
Too true. Scroll down to see the larger front page.
fear no evil
There are men out there who want us dead. This is undeniable. They want to see us all dead. Each and every one of us. They don’t know our names, they don’t know what our thoughts are about their grievances. They don’t know what our actions are and how we’ve lived our lives. They don’t care. They just want us dead.
I wish I had a sweet, comforting post-Sept. 11 lullaby to sing the ones I love to sleep when they experience fear of these evil men. But I don’t. Lullabies combat false monsters. Real monsters require something different.
missed cinema: kiss kiss bang bang
It's not easy finding new life in the LA/private eye/film noir genre. Raymond Chandler's novels formed the basis for many of them, most famously The Big Sleep. His private dick was Phillip Marlowe, the loner with a conscience up against a corrupt world.
Chinatown updated the genre, and rose above it with its historical elements. Robert Altman rethought Marlowe as a kind of loser played by Elliot Gould in The Long Goodbye. The Cohen brothers went one step farther and imagined Marlowe (though by another name) as a dissolute stoner in The Big Lebowski. The central joke of Lebowski was that he was useful to the corrupt because he was such a useless person.
Now there's Kiss Kiss Bang Bang by Shane Black who pulls off the trick of mocking the genre while executing a fine example of it. The movie is smart, smart-alecky and very funny in unexpected ways. It came out last year, got good reviews but sank at the box office. Cream doesn't always rise. Check this one out.
mugged by reality
A literary editor for the liberal Tikkun magazine, agonizes over his conversion to conservative thinking.
outsourced journalism
From an informative post on how news photos end up in the news, there is this:
Naturally, there’s one other piece to this puzzle, one that I hesitate to mention because it’s circumstantial at best, and maybe even downright wrong. But I think it’s interesting, so I present it for my readers to make up their own minds.
In 2004, Reuters opened an office in Bangalore, India, staffed with 20 Indian journalists covering “2,000 small to medium-sized American companies” and a team of six editors.
“Reuters admits costs are 60 per cent less in Bangalore than its ‘onshore’ centres in New York, Britain and Singapore,” wrote Randeep Ramesh of The Hindu.
“This is just the beginning for Reuters in Bangalore. The company’s data unit, which archives material for 30,000 global firms, already employs 300 people and will grow by another 300 next year.”
“The average age in the office is 25.”
In the words of one reader, “You get what you pay for.”
israel has no right to exist
...As I have said before, this war is not just ideological, or about power, territory, resources, or any other tangible entity. Rather, this is a war that is taking place on a deeply spiritual level within the collective consciousness of the world. You needn’t believe me when I say this. Rather, just apply it to the situation as you would any mundane academic theory and assess it’s explanatory power. In my view, the models and story lines we are given my the MSM and by the usual leftist academics are ridiculously inadequate to explain what is going on.
Israel is surrounded by enemies, both literally, in the form of her bloodthirsty Arab neighbors, but ideologically as well. Many on the left are openly questioning Israel’s right to exist, deeming it an “historical mistake” (Richard Cohen) or the source of all Muslim grievances--as if Muslims wouldn’t simply be at each others’ throats if Israel were obliterated, or as if Israel has anything to do with Muslim violence in the Philippines, Darfur, Malaysia, Canada, India, Singapore, et al.
At bottom, the conflict between Israel and her enemies is easily explainable, and yet, this simple explanation exceeds the boundaries of human reason properly so-called, since it is infra-rational in its nature and infrahuman in its consequences. In other words, the explanation is not “beyond reason” but prior to it. Quite simply, it is because the enemies of Israel are absolutely steeped in lies. They believe things about Israel that are not only untrue, but cannot possibly be true, to such an extent that the word “lie” is hardly sufficient to describe the phenomenon.In this case we are not simply referring to “erroneous information,” or to something that is susceptible to being corrected. Rather, we are dealing with an ontological and spiritual lie that is at the foundation of the very personality--and, by extension, culture. You might even say that we are dealing with “the father of lies,” in the sense that it is a primordial lie that then perpetually generates its own lies. Therefore, it doesn’t matter how many lies you dispute on the surface, because a new one will rise to take its place. One can well understand why the Passover Haggadah--the special prayer book for the Passover Seder meal--says that "In every generation there are those who rise against us to annihilate us... " Those are always different people but representatives of the same spiritual force.
Lest you get excited about the title of his essay, read it all.
saturday, august 12 2006
quiz: who said this?
If you treat law enforcement officers who put their lives on the line for your safety every day like some kind of enemy army to be suspected, derided and, if they should enforce the law against you, to be shot, you are wrong. If you appropriate our sacred symbols for paranoid purposes and compare yourselves to colonial militias who fought for the democracy you now rail against, you are wrong.
How dare you suggest that we in the freest nation on Earth live in tyranny. How dare you call yourselves patriots and heroes.
I say to you, all of you... there is nothing patriotic about hating your country, or pretending that you can love your country but despise your government. There is nothing heroic about turning your back on America, or ignoring your own responsibilities. If you want to preserve your own freedom, you must stand up for the freedom of others with whom you disagree. But you also must stand up for the rule of law. You cannot have one without the other.
The real American heroes today are the citizens who get up every morning and have the courage to work hard and play by the rules--the mother who stays up the extra half hour after a long day's work to read her child a story; the rescue worker who digs with his hands in the rubble as the building crumbles about him; the neighbor who lives side-by-side with people different from himself; the government worker who quietly and efficiently labors to see to it that the programs we depend on are honestly and properly carried out; most of all, the parent who works long years for modest pay and sacrifices so that his or her children can have the education that you have had, and the chances you are going to have.
I ask you never to forget that . . . .
HT Polipundit
the color of sympathy
The fighting in Lebanon and Israel has lasted about a month. Images of weeping mothers and lifeless children have moved the "international community" to arrange a ceasefire. The AP says, "at least 1,041 people in Lebanon and 124 Israelis have been killed."
So let's round that up to 1500 dead in one month.
Now, recall Rwanda in 1994. On opening day of that genocide (a scheme known to Kofi Annan 90 days in advance) the victims numbered 8,000.
Next day: 8,000. Day three: 8,000. Day four: 8,000. Et cetera for 100 days. No doubt mothers wept there, too.
The Hutu murderers used machetes. By day's end, they were so arm-tired they lacked strength to properly finish off a victim, so many bled to death slowly over a matter of days. They, too, wept openly and pleaded for the "international community" to intervene. 5000 Marines could have ended it in short order.
No one came to help. Au contraire, the world looked away. Coward-in-chief Bill Clinton and his crack team at the State Department played genocide word games. Consider this exchange:
Reporter: "How many acts of genocide does it take to make genocide?"
State Dep't Spokesperson: "That's just not a question that I'm in a position to answer."
Reporter: "Well, is it true that you have specific guidance not to use the word 'genocide' in isolation, but always to preface it with these words 'acts of'?"
State Dep't Spokesperson: "I have guidance which I try to use as best as I can. There are formulations that we are using that we are trying to be consistent in our use of. I don't have an absolute categorical prescription against something, but I have the definitions. I have phraseology which has been carefully examined and arrived at as best as we can apply to exactly the situation and the actions which have taken place ...
And so Clinton and Madeline Albright tap danced their way out of acting. To acknowledge genocide would have compelled them to act under a 1948 UN compact.
To paraphrase Orwell, some victims are more equal than others.
(A timeline of Rwanda is here with contemporaneous quotes from world leaders.)
cell phone creeps
We linked to a story on Thursday:
Deputies stopped Osama Sabhi Abulhassan, 20, and Ali Houssaiky, 20, both of Dearborn, Mich., on a traffic violation Tuesday. They found the flight documents along with $11,000 cash and 12 phones in the car, said Washington County Sheriff Larry Mincks.
Prosecutor Susan Vessels declined to say how the phones, cash or flight information involved terrorism. Abulhassan and Houssaiky admitted buying about 600 phones
If the idea of 600 untraceable cell phones stirs concern, brace yourself:
Last week, the Grafton police pulled over 24-year-old Hashem Sayed for a routine traffic stop. But what they found in his car was far from routine. Patrolman Daniel Laymon recalls the scene, "There were multiple cell phones, roughly 150 to 200 cell phones from multiple retailers," he said.
But wait, there's more!
Early Friday morning, the three men were arrested on Homeland Security Terrorism charges after making multiple purchases of cell phones at a Wal-Mart store in the eastern Michigan town of Caro. The store limits the number of cell phones that customers can buy to three, but authorities say that they purchased up to 80 of the disposable, prepaid phones for $20 each, and that they had a thousand more inside their van.
Michigan state police say that the phones could be used to detonate bombs.The growing fear that cell phones could be used to detonate bombs on planes, along with the Middle Eastern descent of the suspects, prompted suspicion. Whether or not they were truly planning a terror plot remains unclear.
you and what army, part II
Boy, Hollywood folk can be a font of laughter, especially when they're being serious. Take this weeks gathering a handful of swells including Warren Beatty, Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, Mark Ruffalo and Jake Gyllenhaal to hear Iranian dissident Akbar Ganji. His message?
Addressing the standing-room-only crowd of about 75 people for an hour, Ganji urged complete disarmament in the Middle East.
Well that's that. Wonder why no one else thought of that. Haim Saban, a Jew, argued that Israel needs its nuclear weapons as a deterrent. Ganji responded to Saban:
"The only way is to ban the bombs for everyone."
Okay, click your heels together three times and...
I also wonder how 75 people comprises "standing room only" in movie producer's house. Were they meeting in the bathroom?
friday, august 11 2006
the sharpest manmade thing
A photo.
four blind men and an elephant
From Opinion Journal:
Let's emphasize that again: The plot was foiled because a large number of people were under surveillance concerning their spending, travel and communications. Which leads us to wonder if Scotland Yard would have succeeded if the ACLU or the New York Times had first learned the details of such surveillance programs.
And almost on political cue yesterday, Members of the Congressional Democratic leadership were using the occasion to suggest that the U.S. is actually more vulnerable today despite this antiterror success. Harry Reid, who's bidding to run the Senate as Majority Leader, saw it as one more opportunity to insist that "the Iraq war has diverted our focus and more than $300 billion in resources from the war on terrorism and has created a rallying cry for international terrorists."
Ted Kennedy chimed in that "it is clear that our misguided policies are making America more hated in the world and making the war on terrorism harder to win." Mr. Kennedy somehow overlooked that the foiled plan was nearly identical to the "Bojinka" plot led by Ramzi Yousef and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to blow up airliners over the Pacific Ocean in 1995. Did the Clinton Administration's "misguided policies" invite that plot?
And if the Iraq war is a diversion and provocation, just what policies would Senators Reid and Kennedy have us "focus" on?
Surveillance? Hmmm. Democrats and their media allies screamed bloody murder last year when it was leaked that the government was monitoring some communications outside the context of a law known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. FISA wasn't designed for, nor does it forbid, the timely exploitation of what are often anonymous phone numbers, and the calls monitored had at least one overseas connection. But Mr. Reid labeled such surveillance "illegal" and an "NSA domestic spying program." Other Democrats are still saying they will censure, or even impeach, Mr. Bush over the FISA program if they win control of Congress.
This year the attempt to paint Bush Administration policies as a clear and present danger to civil liberties continued when USA Today hyped a story on how some U.S. phone companies were keeping call logs. The obvious reason for such logs is that the government might need them to trace the communications of a captured terror suspect. And then there was the recent brouhaha when the New York Times decided news of a secret, successful and entirely legal program to monitor bank transfers between bad guys was somehow in the "public interest" to expose.
Read it all, then send it to your friends.
thursday, august 10 2006
euro trash
Belgium strikes us as only semi-civilized in a western democratic way. For example, political parties must have a license to exist. If the government yanks the license, you're gone.
This happened in 2004 when Vlaams Blok was ordered out of existence. The fact that this party garnered more votes than any other mattered not.
Perhaps we can export them a First Amendment.
Now Paul Belien, blogger at Brussels Journal, has gotten a visit from the cops:
This morning the police came to my door again to question me about allegedly racist articles on The Brussels Journal. I was not in. Tonight the local police phoned to “invite” me urgently to the police station. In Belgium any leftist or totalitarianist can lodge a complaint against “internet racism” through a Belgian government website and the judiciary starts an investigation.
Apparently someone in Ghent has lodged a complaint against this website. I am not allowed to know who this person is, but I am requested to come to the police station to be interrogated. I told the officer that I refuse to justify my writings for anonymous complaints. “I am not living in the Soviet Union,” I told him (though I fear I am).
As a matter of principle I will not go to the police station. I defend the freedom of the press, which implies the right of journalists not to be questioned by the authorities about articles and opinions that they write or edit. I told the officer that if the police wants to question me they will have to arrest me. The Belgian authorities are clearly intent on intimidating us and closing down this website.
How cute that Belgians can muster force to intimidate a mere blogger. But when Belgian UN peacekeepers were faced with preventing genocide in Rwanda, they ran like frightened children.
In their wake they left behind excellent chocolate, waffles and 800,000 macheted corpses.
Also Belgium is precisely what liberals count as sophisticated compared with gauche America. While these same liberals whine about suppression of dissent in the US (which is all in their heads) the suppression is real in Belgium.
smitten
"He's an impressive fellow, this guy. He really is. He's obviously smart as hell." So says Mike Wallace.
Is he describing President Bush? Tony Blair? Mel Gibson? No, the Holocaust-denying president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Y'know, the one who think there's no great art than martyrdom.
why we fight
Mother and her 13-year old son hung by Taliban for delivering laundry.
the changing mind of democrat party
In writing about the results of the Connecticut primary, Michael Barone notes a trend in the Democratic Party - the end to American Exceptionalism. This is the belief beginning when John Winthrop gave a sermon to Puritans immigrating to what would become Massachusetts Bay Colony preaching that they would be a "city upon a hill" and serve as a model for the rest of the world.
All American leaders from George Washington to Abraham Lincoln to John F. Kennedy to Ronald Reagan have echoed this belief that there is something special about this country. But this has also been a country with flaws. American Exceptionalism doesn't mean that we deny the flaws of our country, but that we redouble our efforts to eradicate injustices so that we can come closer to fulfilling the promise of our country's ideals.
Lieberman's loss yesterday leads Barone to note a decline of such attitudes among Democratic voters.In 2004, pollster Scott Rasmussen asked two questions relating to American exceptionalism: Is this country generally fair and decent? Would the world be better off if more countries were more like America? About two-thirds of voters answered yes to both questions. About 80% of George W. Bush voters answered yes. John Kerry voters were split down the middle, with yeses outnumbering nos by small margins.
...
The working class Democrats of the mid-20th century voted their interests, and knew that one of their interests was protecting the nation in which they were proud to live. The professional class Democrats of today vote their ideology and, living a life in which they are insulated from adversity, feel free to imagine that America cannot be threatened by implacable enemies. They can vote to validate their lifestyle choices and their transnational attitudes.
In the mid-20th century the core constituencies of both the Democratic and the Republican Parties stood foursquare for America's prosecution of World War II and the Cold War. Today, as the Connecticut results suggest, it's different. The core constituency of the Republican Party stands foursquare for America's prosecution of the global struggle against Islamofascist terrorism -- and solidly on the side of Israel in its struggle against the same forces. The core constituency of the Democratic Party wants to stand aside from the global struggle -- and, as the presence of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton at Mr. Lamont's side on election night suggests, is not necessarily on the side of Israel. It's not your father's Democratic Party.
For those unfamiliar with the concept of "transnational progressivism" read this.
wake up call
Not all my readers appreciate that we are seeing now, in southern Lebanon and northern Israel, and across swathes of Afghanistan and Iraq, a harbinger of our future. The war with fanatical Islam is spreading, and must come to us. It already has, in its terror phase. We have huge police and security forces working around the clock to prevent terror attacks from happening in Canada; all convinced that such attacks are inevitable.
We cannot know how the war will develop; only that it will. It will be quite unlike previous world wars. We can only observe that we are now in transition from the terrorist stage, to the guerrilla warfare stage. I can only guess, but would think the next threshold will be crossed when a country, most likely Iran, brings true "weapons of mass destruction" into play. The word "threshold" could mislead. Each new stage adds another layer, so that the terrorism will continue, joined to guerrilla war; and then both will continue, with WMD added.
Does that sound alarmist to you? If so, I can only reply, wake up, gentle reader. The very people who guard you in your sleep are alarmed on your behalf.
On the other hand, there are many little signs that an awakening may have begun. In Israel itself, there has been a procession of "peace activists" before Israeli media, saying they were wrong to think any good could come of "land for peace" appeasement.
And I think of a Canadian -- a lady half my age, and twice as intelligent -- who wrote me from Germany the other day. She said it had been, "The Day of the Dead Child Picture, when it graced every front page in the U-Bahn. And I wondered if enough photos of poor dead (and blond) German children might have stopped the U.S. from entering the war -- and Hitler from being defeated."
The fact someone so young (I know most older Canadians get it) could see through the propaganda, even without suspecting fakery behind it, fills me with hope.
watch the director at work
Staging dramatic footage from the Qana tragedy.
"logic is heresy"
Mohammed at Iraq the Model writes that Arab media are depicting Hezbollah winning:
...the usual daily boastful enthusiastic speeches about the Arab right and Arab might in this struggle…
No doubt our writer realizes that those in power in the region do not want to see a logical end for this conflict because then the bitter truth of numbers and results on the ground will wipe out the illusion of victory…all what these people want is a continuation of a low-level conflict that can be portrayed to the public as victory to justify and legitimize the concept of "patriot resistance" and "necessary leaders" so that the public stands behind those leaders and overlook or learn to accept all of their bad sides.
As it had always been the case logic can not find a place among us and "logic is heresy" said one Caliph a long time ago to shut up any one who dared disagree with his rule.
One of the forms of anti-logic propaganda common in this conflict as well as previous ones is the extreme exaggeration of one's capabilities and extreme understatement of the opponent's.
This exaggeration flows in our blood to the degree that makes us live in an imaginary world of our won making where we are always the bigger, the stronger and the better. What I find appalling is the use of vulgarity to demean the opponent to the degree that a superpower like America is described as a thief country stealing oil or to call a powerful country like Israel a "fragile mutant entity" while facts say that it's more advanced than all of its neighbors by all standards.
ohio terror plot
Two men were charged Wednesday with money laundering in support of terrorism after authorities said they found airplane passenger lists and information on airport security checkpoints in their car.
Deputies stopped Osama Sabhi Abulhassan, 20, and Ali Houssaiky, 20, both of Dearborn, Mich., on a traffic violation Tuesday. They found the flight documents along with $11,000 cash and 12 phones in the car, said Washington County Sheriff Larry Mincks.
Prosecutor Susan Vessels declined to say how the phones, cash or flight information involved terrorism. Abulhassan and Houssaiky admitted buying about 600 phones in recent months at stores in southeast Ohio, said sheriff's Maj. John Winstanley. The men said they sold the phones to someone in Dearborn, a Detroit suburb.
Investigators going through the car after the pair were pulled over in Marietta, about 90 miles southeast of Columbus, also found a map that showed locations of Wal-Mart stores from Ohio through Kentucky, Tennessee and into North and South Carolina, Vessels said.
nbc newsman: don't believe tv news
As a veteran journalist who has been in countless war zones around the world (especially the Middle East) as an NBC network correspondent, it pains me to see what passes for accurate coverage in the early stages of a conflict like the one between Israel and Hezbollah.
Because almost none of the American television networks have a vast stable of experienced reporters any longer who understand the region, they employ the old "parachute them in" philosophy, i.e. dispatching perfectly good -- and frequently very young -- journalists, few of whom have any experience in covering this story and don’t stand a snowball's chance in Gaza of getting it right initially. They engage in what I call "nerve end journalism." reporting what they think they see in one of the most confusing places on earth, with very little context. Their movements are also very restricted by both sides.In the case of Beirut and other parts of Lebanon under the control of terrorists, Hezbollah usually runs daily press tours, making sure reporters and photographers see the worse that Israel has inflicted -- killing civilians, etc. -- in order to slate the coverage, but never reveals that Hezbollah uses private homes, mosques, schools, hospitals and other public buildings for their headquarters or to launch their lethal missiles.
Then there's the danger factor if a reporter angers his terrorist tour guides. Christopher Albritton, a freelance contributor for Time magazine, wrote in his blog a couple of weeks ago, "To the south, Hezbollah is launching Katyushas, but I'm loathe to say too much about them. The Party of God has a copy of every journalists' passport and they've already hassled a number of us and threatened one." They also take pictures of all journalists, warning they better follow the ground rules or else. Terrorists in that part of the world have been doing this for years.
wednesday, august 9 2006
why does the world hate jews?
Jews comprise one quarter of one percent of the world's population, yet generate so much hate. Michael Medved explains why.
new slur: christianist
Kathleen Parker writes about the latest fear mongering from the left, Christians as Taliban:
"Christianist'' is a relatively new term that roughly refers to a virulent strain of right-wing political Christianity that, supposedly, parallels Islamist lunacy.
Although both groups may be "true believers,'' those who try to connect the dots of Christian belief, specifically evangelical Christianity, to Islamism seem willing to overlook the fact that Islamists praise Allah and fly airplanes into buildings while Christianists praise Jesus and pass the mustard.
And though both groups of people may use scripture to shape their approach to the public square, Islamist interpretation of doctrine permits religious expression through suicide-murder, beheadings, public stonings (preferably of women) and Jew-hating, while Christianist doctrine deals in such wimpy notions as forgiveness, tolerance, redemption and cheek-turning. Weirdos.
A slew of new books have emerged with titles like "American Theocracy,'' and "Kingdom Coming,'' that tackle the perceived emerging Christocracy, while op-ed-ists opine that right-wing evangelicals are directing foreign policy through the White House. Words like "theocrats'' and "American Taliban'' have become commonplace in describing those who fill televangelism's La-Z-Boys.
lawsuits make us unsafe
...Personal-injury lawyers claim they make America safer, but that's a myth. It's easy to see who benefits from those big damage awards we read about. Less obvious -- but just as real -- are the things we'd all like to have but never will get because of this climate of fear. Here are a few examples.
Monsanto once developed a substitute for asbestos -- a new fire-resistant form of insulation that might save thousands of lives. But Monsanto decided not to sell it for fear of liability. Richard F. Mahoney, the CEO at the time, said, "There may well have been a safe, effective asbestos replacement on the market, and now there isn't."
Why do we have to worry about shortages of flu vaccine? Because only a handful of companies still make it. And why is that? Because when you vaccinate millions of people, some get sick and sue. Between 1980 and 1986, personal-injury lawyers demanded billions of dollars from vaccine manufacturers. That scared many American drug companies out of the business.
staged outrage
Michelle Malkin coined the term "fauxtography" to describe the phony photos coming from the mideast. This post has some amazing examples. One even made the cover of US News.
que sera sera
Mark Steyn commemorates the 50th anniversary of that song and the songwriting duo that produced it.
the Answer: plenty
The question: "What else is there for a man to do but to sacrifice his son for his religion?"
American Digest links to a video every American with common sense should see.
a swede looks at swedish socialism
Let me first say that there are positive aspects to the welfare state model. It would be hypocritical of me to say anything else, as I have enjoyed some of its benefits by growing up in one. It is also not entirely incorrect to say that it has worked better in Scandinavia than anywhere else. Still, my view is that there are critical flaws to this model. Although they may not bring the system down right away, they will do so over time. My bet is that we are approaching the point where the Swedish welfare state will cease to function.
Even if you consider a national welfare state to be a totally closed system without migration in or out and without international competition – which isn’t possible, of course – there are internal flaws that will, over time, weaken the structure.
Judging from the experiences in Scandinavia, the welfare state worked to some extent because it was based in small and ethnically homogenous nations, with a strong cultural and religious (Protestant) work ethic which had just experienced several generations of a booming capitalist economy. These traits kept the system afloat for decades, but the work ethic and the sense of duty slowly got eroded and replaced by a sense of rights, while the high taxation and the passivity bred by the system eroded initiative and the will to take risks. Again, these flaws are inherent to the model. They make time to develop, but they will, eventually.
The welfare state will also be subject to external pressures. International competition will make a welfare state economy less competitive because the high tax rates in the will stifle economic growth.
Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew points this out: “In the end, the workers, whether they like it or not, will realize, that the cosy European world which they created after the war has come to an end. [...] “The social contract that led to workers sitting on the boards of companies and everybody being happy rested on this condition: I work hard, I restore Germany’s prosperity, and you, the state, you have to look after me. I’m entitled to go to Baden Baden for spa recuperation one month every year. This old system was gone in the blink of an eye when two to three billion people joined the race – one billion in China, one billion in India and over half-a-billion in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.”
waiting to die in belgium
Euthanasia is legal, but the supply of drugs is short.
spam goes literary
Why you get the oddest combinations of words in spam.
...And this is why the spammers have had to resort to literature. Filters like the one Graham wrote are everywhere now. In order to get past them, spammers try to make the text of their e-mails look more like something you'd actually write.
These spammers mine Web sites that post the full text of books, like Project Gutenberg, which, along with its affiliates, has more than 250,000 books online.
Spammers also need each e-mail to look different so the filters can't pick up on particular passages. Sometimes the spam-making programs do this by rearranging sentences. Other times they compose fake sentences out of pairs of words that tend to occur together.
This is called "Markov Chaining," after the Russian mathematician Andrey Markov. Graham says it explains the word salads you may see in spam.
"'Half lost on my firmness gains to more glad heart or violent and from forage drives a glimmering of all sun new begun,'" Graham quotes. "Every pair of words in there actually occurs in Paradise Lost," he says.
tuesday, august 8 2006
chinglish spoken here
A whole gallery of images where English gets mangled.
reuter rooter
HotAir does a nice video summary of the phony news photos from Reuters.
inconvenient truth
Al Gore's global warming film/polemic/religious revival took some liberties with science. Its poster links global warming to the natural cycle of hurricanes. Yes, that's a hurricane coming outta that there smokestack.
Very few scientists buy the argument that the current, more intense, cycle is the result of global warming. But given last year's nasty hurricane season it was a smart gamble: if there's another bad season in 2006, they can chalk it up to global warming and President Bush.
Alas for Al Gore, the hurricane season so far has been tame, and forecasters predict a milder season than previously expected.
Of course, nature takes its own course and anything can happen. When it does, you can be sure Al Gore's congregation will never, uh, curb its enthusiasm for propaganda.
hillary's new hampshire problem
...they don't like her. They really, really don't like her.
time fountain
A fascinating invention and video.
oops, never mind
The Washington Post's Thomas Ricks claims Israel is letting some rockets in for PR purposes, then backs off.
unrepentant genetic outlaws
...True, I believe in the obligation to consider the genetic realities before conception. People with serious inherited problems may well choose never to become pregnant. That's quite different from the apparently healthy people who discover during pregnancy that perfection is a little further away than they might have planned, and look to abortion as the solution.
After all, once we start the engine of test-result abortion, where will it run? If it's "moral" to abort a baby with Downs, is it "moral" to abort one with an IQ ten percent under normal? And if this practice becomes so common that most lower IQ babies are aborted and the average IQ goes up, will babies previously considered normal become the new abortion targets? If gross deformities get you aborted today, in twenty years will potentially average looking people get the scraper?
not just about land
Despite the claims of terrorist organizations, Israel's current two-front war is not just about land. After all, Hezbollah and Hamas fired rockets from Lebanon and Gaza well after Israel had withdrawn from both places.
Indeed, if sacred Arab ground were the driving force of the Middle East crisis, then surely Syria itself would now be willing to risk a shooting war over the all important Israeli-occupied Golan Heights . Meanwhile, Cairo is still perhaps the nexus of virulent Arab anti-Semitism, even though Israel finished handing over Sinai to Egypt in 1982.
The world prayed that after the unilateral departure of Israel from Lebanon in 2000 and Gaza in 2005, and the recent elections in Beirut and the West Bank , it was witnessing an incremental evolution toward a lasting peace between rational democratic states. Gradually, Israel was returning to its 1967 borders. In response, gradually, it was hoped, Israel 's Arab neighbors would vote into office reasonable statesmen who would renounce terror and get on with the business of crafting workable economies and governments. But all that optimism presupposed a radical change in the Middle Eastern mentality. Unfortunately, that hasn't happened.So, if the most recent war in Lebanon and Gaza is not about land per se, then whence arises the elemental desire to destroy Israel ?
The answer boils down to Islamists feeling their reputation is at stake. Words like "honor" and "pride" are evoked — in the sense that they need to be regained — by every insecure radical in the Islamic world, from al-Qaeda's Osama bin Laden to Hezbollah's Hassan Nasrallah and Iran 's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Fist-shaking crowds, fiery mullahs and terrorists all boast of not giving an inch to infidels and of the restoration of the now sullied honor of the Islamic people.
clinton guy discovers ugly left
Lanny Davis writes in today's Opinion Journal:
WASHINGTON--My brief and unhappy experience with the hate and vitriol of bloggers on the liberal side of the aisle comes from the last several months I spent campaigning for a longtime friend, Joe Lieberman.
This kind of scary hatred, my dad used to tell me, comes only from the right wing--in his day from people such as the late Sen. Joseph McCarthy, with his tirades against "communists and their fellow travelers." The word "McCarthyism" became a red flag for liberals, signifying the far right's fascistic tactics of labeling anyone a "communist" or "socialist" who favored an active federal government to help the middle class and the poor, and to level the playing field.
I came to believe that we liberals couldn't possibly be so intolerant and hateful, because our ideology was famous for ACLU-type commitments to free speech, dissent and, especially, tolerance for those who differed with us. And in recent years--with the deadly combination of sanctimony and vitriol displayed by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and Michael Savage--I held on to the view that the left was inherently more tolerant and less hateful than the right.
Oh, brother! Davis often pops up as a TV pundit, sharing his insights with the masses. Yet he never knew the left was ugly?
Hugh Hewitt writes in Mugged by Reality:
What’s shocking about Lanny’s article isn’t his discovery of left wing bigotry, especially anti-Semitism. Nor, for that matter, is Lanny’s realization that the left is capable of spewing vast amounts of bile cause for stopping the presses.
What’s interesting about this piece is how, until recent weeks, Davis confesses to having been smugly comfortable in his assumption that the right wing, which he personifies by mentioning the names Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and Michael Savage, was inherently less tolerant and more hateful than the left.
rise of neo-soviet union
We have previously documented on these pages the horrifying explosion of race-based violence in Vladimir Putin’s Russia. As ghastly as those developments are, though, something even more sinister is underway in Russia these days, something that makes it seem that Russia would better be referred to as the Neo-Soviet Union: It’s an attack on democracy itself.
Just as it was Britain, by means of Winston Churchill’s famous “Iron Curtain” speech, which warned the West about the rise of the original USSR, it is today British journalism that sounds the clarion call that warns of USSR redux. Three major pieces of journalism from Britain have provided a vital overview of the situation.
Read on...
monday, august 7 2006
quagmire
For Hezbollah, says Arab Times.
gallery of phony news photos
UPDATE: Even more fakery here. The same woman keeps losing her house. One wonders if they have a modeling agency that specializes in victims.
bamboo bike
Your next weekend project.
what do you see?
Depends on how old you are.
disassociative press
Reading media-generated opinion polls ("public distrusts Bush on economy" etc.), it often seems such polls are not meant to measure public opinion as much as to grade themselves on their propaganda efforts. "What, 40% think the economy is booming? We've got work to do."
Now comes an editorial masquerading as news from Charles Hanley of the Associated Press that confirms this. Hanley is mighty upset because a recent poll showed half of Americans believe that Saddam had WMD.
Do you believe in Iraqi "WMD"?
Did Saddam Hussein's government have weapons of mass destruction in 2003?
He makes WMD sound like Santa Claus.
Half of America apparently still thinks so, a new poll finds, and experts see a raft of reasons why: a drumbeat of voices from talk radio to die-hard bloggers to the Oval Office, a surprise headline here or there, a rallying around a partisan flag, and a growing need for people, in their own minds, to justify the war in Iraq.
People tend to become "independent of reality" in these circumstances, says opinion analyst Steven Kull.
Indeed. Just because we didn't find 55-gallon drums of chemical weapons sitting in warehouses, the left concluded that Saddam had never been a threat.
The reality in this case is that after a 16-month, $900-million-plus investigation, the U.S. weapons hunters known as the Iraq Survey Group declared that Iraq had dismantled its chemical, biological and nuclear arms programs in 1991 under U.N. oversight. That finding in 2004 reaffirmed the work of U.N. inspectors who in 2002-03 found no trace of banned arsenals in Iraq.
Despite this, a Harris Poll released July 21 found that a full 50 percent of U.S. respondents - up from 36 percent last year - said they believe Iraq did have the forbidden arms when U.S. troops invaded in March 2003, an attack whose stated purpose was elimination of supposed WMD. Other polls also have found an enduring American faith in the WMD story.
Okay, here is what the Duelfer report also said:
Saddam wanted to recreate Iraq’s WMD capability—which was essentially destroyed in 1991—after sanctions were removed and Iraq’s economy stabilized, but probably with a different mix of capabilities to that which previously existed.
Saddam aspired to develop a nuclear capability—in an incremental fashion, irrespective of international pressure and the resulting economic risks—but he intended to focus on ballistic missile and tactical chemical warfare (CW) capabilities.
And Saddam was nearly free of UN sanctions. Again, the report:
- Saddam’s primary goal from 1991 to 2003 was to have UN sanctions lifted, while maintaining the security of the Regime. He sought to balance the need to cooperate with UN inspections—to gain support for lifting sanctions—with his intention to preserve Iraq’s intellectual capital for WMD with a minimum of foreign intrusiveness and loss of face...
- The introduction of the Oil-For-Food program (OFF) in late 1996 was a key turning point for the Regime. OFF rescued Baghdad’s economy from a terminal decline created by sanctions. The Regime quickly came to see that OFF could be corrupted to acquire foreign exchange both to further undermine sanctions and to provide the means to enhance dual-use infrastructure and potential WMD-related development.
- By 2000-2001, Saddam had managed to mitigate many of the effects of sanctions and undermine their international support. Iraq was within striking distance of a de facto end to the sanctions regime, both in terms of oil exports and the trade embargo, by the end of 1999.
So Saddam was awash in oil money via the corrupt UN and was ready to get back in business. No wonder half of the American public thinks he was dangerous.
"I'm flabbergasted," said Michael Massing, a media critic whose writings dissected the largely unquestioning U.S. news reporting on the Bush administration's shaky WMD claims in 2002-03.
"This finding just has to cause despair among those of us who hope for an informed public able to draw reasonable conclusions based on evidence," Massing said.
Translation: why, oh why, won't these dumb boobs listen to us?
Well, maybe because some read beyond the mainstream media. For example, here is the New York Sun:
The man who served as the no. 2 official in Saddam Hussein's air force says Iraq moved weapons of mass destruction into Syria before the war by loading the weapons into civilian aircraft in which the passenger seats were removed.
The Iraqi general, Georges Sada, makes the charges in a new book, "Saddam's Secrets," released this week. He detailed the transfers in an interview yesterday with The New York Sun.
"There are weapons of mass destruction gone out from Iraq to Syria, and they must be found and returned to safe hands," Mr. Sada said. "I am confident they were taken over."
Most Americans never heard of General Sada. Unlike Michael Moore, Congressman Murtha, Cindy Sheehan et al, General Sada contradicted the mainstream media's Iraq narrative and was thus ignored.
There are also captured Iraqi documents being slowly translated and released that hint at secret weapons programs after 1991. Very little of this has been in the mainstream media.
Hanley ends his editorial with some flatout lies:
Administration statements still describe Saddam's Iraq as a threat. Despite the official findings, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has allowed only that "perhaps" WMD weren't in Iraq. And Bush himself, since 2003, has repeatedly insisted on one plainly false point: that Saddam rebuffed the U.N. inspectors in 2002, that "he wouldn't let them in," as he said in 2003, and "he chose to deny inspectors," as he said this March.
The facts are that Iraq - after a four-year hiatus in cooperating with inspections - acceded to the U.N. Security Council's demand and allowed scores of experts to conduct more than 700 inspections of potential weapons sites from Nov. 27, 2002, to March 16, 2003. The inspectors said they could wrap up their work within months. Instead, the U.S. invasion aborted that work.
No, no, no. UN Resolution 1441 called on Saddam to completely come clean on WMD or else. But Saddam still refused access to some sites. Naturally, the "or else" mitigated by France and Russia, was zilch.
I'll end with a quote. Guess who said this?
"Saddam Hussein must not be allowed to threaten his neighbors or the world with nuclear arms, poison gas or biological weapons."
"Other countries possess weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles. With Saddam, there is one big difference: He has used them. Not once, but repeatedly. Unleashing chemical weapons against Iranian troops during a decade-long war. Not only against soldiers, but against civilians, firing Scud missiles at the citizens of Israel, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Iran. And not only against a foreign enemy, but even against his own people, gassing Kurdish civilians in Northern Iraq."
"The best way to end that threat once and for all is with a new Iraqi government -- a government ready to live in peace with its neighbors, a government that respects the rights of its people. Bringing change in Baghdad will take time and effort. We will strengthen our engagement with the full range of Iraqi opposition forces and work with them effectively and prudently."
President Clinton in 1998.
Jim Bass Permalink
social security cynicism
From the Washington Post:
YOU MIGHT THINK that a call from the new Treasury secretary for reform of entitlements would get a respectful hearing from Democrats. If entitlement programs are not reformed, they will squeeze out other spending programs that Democrats care about; they will create a budget crunch that no responsible party could want.
But some Democrats do not appear to understand this. Yesterday an e-mail sent out on behalf of Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader, dismissed Henry M. Paulson Jr.'s comments on "privatizing" Social Security, adding that this policy has been "soundly rejected by the American people."
The Social Security reform that President Bush pushed last year involved personal retirement accounts. But it did not involve "privatization": The accounts, which were to be optional, were to be designed and administered by the government, with no opportunities for Wall Street salesmen to foist enormous hidden fees on unsuspecting workers. Besides, the idea that the American people rejected Mr. Bush's plan is only half true. The president failed to get traction not least because Democrats were doing their best to scare voters into thinking that their retirement checks would be confiscated.
Today's faithful readers of Rolling Stone magazine, which declared Bush one of the worst presidents in history, will wake up one day and realize they're stuck with a massive financial burden.
A few might remember he was the only president in recent memory with the guts to try to reform the program that is weighing them down.
sunday, august 6 2006
some racist thoughts are okay
Mel Gibson is catching holy hell for his drunken, anti-Semitic outburst. One Jew who wasn't upset about it is the arresting officer who noted, "It was the booze talking" and "I hope this doesn't affect his career."
But Mel Gibson will pay big for what he said. Yesterday, in the LA Times Tim Rutten wrote about Gibson in tones that suggest he is a virus that must be stopped.
However, no such oppobrium is reserved for black filmmaker Spike Lee. Lee is a racist and proud of it. And he is viral in his racism. Coming soon from HBO film is a four-hour documentary about Katrina. This is the same Spike who declared the failure of the levees a government conspiracy.
"It's not too far-fetched . . . I don't put anything past the United States government," Lee said. "I don't find it too far-fetched that they tried to displace all the black people out of New Orleans."
So it was whitey up to no good again. Needless to say, Mel Gibson won't be handed $2 million by HBO to make a documentary about the Holocaust. But Spike Lee gets $2 million to tell the Katrina story.
Why? Because of Liberal guilt that patronizes blacks by holding them to a lower standard and that believes America must be bad because we've got it so good. Etc.
An insightful Katrina film might note that a greater percentage of whites than blacks died in New Orleans, and that Democrats cynically used a natural disaster to play a nasty race card against Bush (who has been very good for black Americans) -- a racist act in itself.
That would be a groundbreaking film, but don't hold your breath. Also, don't hold your breath waiting to hear about Spike's nasty anti-Semitic streak.
In short, if you're a left leaning black racist, you get a pass. Witness the way Al Sharpton gets treated with kid gloves by the likes of Hillary et al. Or Louis Farrakhan. Everyone else who utters a racist comment goes to the back of the bus.
Do the right thing, indeed.
reuters caught doctoring photo
...to make damage in Beirut bombing look worse. And they did a clumsy job of it, too.
a day at the races
Yesterday marked the 29th running of The McNish Classic, one of four regattas on the West Coast devoted to wooden sailboats. Described by some as a “living history fleet,” the sloops, cutters, ketches, yawls and schooners are all constructed from designs created before 1952. In Saturday’s competition, the boats ranged from a 20-foot sloop to a 72-foot schooner.
The race is sailed on a triangular course in the waters just outside Channel Islands Harbor (Oxnard, California). A sophisticated handicapping system devised specifically for classic boats makes it possible for any of the entrants to have an equal chance to win. The race uses an inverted start in addition to the handicapping system in order to get the boats to the finish at the same time, creating an exciting and dramatic visual climax at the harbor break wall.
Indeed, the first two boats crossed the finish line only seconds apart. It was a beautiful day on the water.
Jim Bass
mtv at 25
by J.C. Phillips
This week the Music Television Network (MTV) turns 25 years old. I am perhaps not the ideal writer to address this cultural milestone. When MTV was born, I was past my teenage years and my musical tastes tended towards artists like Al Jarreau, Weather Report, Pat Metheny and George Benson. These were not typical MTV artists. Nor apparently were some of the R & B artists I enjoyed. In the early days of MTV, R & B artists were few and far between.
Admittedly, I was also a bit of a square. I never really understood the idea of a music video. Far from being interesting, they seemed more like nightmares put to music and recorded on film. With few exceptions, I found myself watching MTV with my mouth agape thinking, “what the----?”
The times changed, however, and my appreciation for the video genre and the network grew.
The catalyst for my growth and perhaps my fondest memory of MTV is the day the network began airing the videos from Michael Jackson’s’ hit album “Thriller.” Until that time, Black artists had to beg MTV for airtime. There was, however, no denying Jackson. Jackson had not yet become a walking carnival sideshow attraction (even if the hair at that time did seem a bit greasy) and was the biggest thing in music – the biggest personality in entertainment! His fans, which in those years seemed to be just about everyone, waited with baited breath for the release of each new video. Do you remember where you were when the video for “Thriller” debuted?” Jackson’s work stood heads and shoulders above the rest of the fare offered on the station and ushered in a new era of music video production. To keep pace, other artists were forced to raise production values and increase budgets for their videos. The days of low budget nightmares were officially over.
Jackson’s success gives credence to the notion that the market place has the power to transform our culture. The audience demanded Jackson and was soon demanding other Black artists. MTV responded by airing the program “Yo MTV Raps.” “MTV Raps” was soon the highest rated program on the network exposing artists to a much wider buying audience than they had previously known. The face of MTV has continued to change. Artists like Missy Elliot, 50 Cent, Mary J. Blige and others that in the early days would have been missing in action are now a frequent if not dominating presence on the network.
The videos played on MTV also provided a training ground for young directors. Directors like David Fincher, Jonathan Glazer, Sanaa Hamri, Spike Jonze, and Hype Williams all got their start working on music videos. For better or worse, their style – the fast cuts and off beat angles – are now staples in mainstream feature films.
MTV has also had an impact on what we watch on television. The network did not invent reality television, however, they brought panache and flair to the genre that has helped to shape it. Programs like the “The Real World”, “Pimp My Ride”, “MTV Cribs” and “Made” have spawned knock-offs on other cable stations and the major networks as well.
From the moment Michael Jacksons’ video Billie Jean appeared on the screen, the world of entertainment was changed forever. And I found myself watching MTV all the time. Who can forget Run-DMC in “The King of Rock”? Robert Palmer’s video for “Addicted To Love?” MC Hammer and “U Can’t Touch This?” Or Madonna’s “Vogue?” Much to my wife’s dismay, I will turn to “Made” on Saturday mornings and I am a loyal viewer of “The Real World.”
Oh, yes. My second fondest memory of MTV is the first time I saw En Vogue sashay across the screen in those short, slinky, silver skirts in the video “My Lovin’ (You’re Never Gonna Get It.).” I need oxygen just thinking about it.
Happy 25th MTV!
saturday, august 5 2006
goggles
A Google Map flight simulator.
bambi's revenge
A video.
milk reviewed on amazon
Here.
old ideas
"Blow in her face and she'll follow you anywhere." Gawd.
hezbollah psych-ops
Hezbollah and its foreign sponsors deserve credit: They understand the perverse psychology of the Middle East. They knew they could launch a war against Israel and then have Israel get the blame for the devastation that inevitably would follow.
They knew also that if Israel failed to respond forcefully to their ground and missile attacks, they could say Israel was cowardly. And if Israel did respond forcefully, they could say Israel was a bully, its response “disproportionate” — even while insisting that Israel was doing them no serious damage.
They knew they could target Israeli civilians and hide combatants and weapons behind Lebanese civilians — in homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques. Even so, whenever Lebanese women and children were killed, they could accuse Israel of “war crimes.”
Give Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran credit for this, too: They understand the equally perverse psychology of Europe, the U.N. and the “international community.” Two years ago, U.N. Security Council Resolution 1559 demanded that Hezbollah disarm. Hezbollah refused to comply. In response, the international community shrugged its collective shoulders.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah has been taking delivery of increasingly advanced weaponry from Syria and Iran — while U.N “peacekeepers” in southern Lebanon avert their gaze.
friday, august 4 2006
showbiz in war
My readers may be wondering what happened to all the coverage from Qana. As usual, when the "liberal" media begin to realize they've been had, the story disappears. But it is never properly corrected. We get a few days of blazing headlines, and round-the-dial TV coverage of an "Israeli massacre", laden with innuendos, and then -- the fade-out. This will not do.
What happened at Qana was, almost certainly, what happened at Jenin in 2002, what happened on a beach in Gaza a few weeks ago, and what has happened on innumerable other occasions. The Israelis are instantaneously accused and convicted of a monstrous and perhaps intentional act of butchery, by people quite incurious about the facts. Their pathological hatred of "Zionism" is all the proof they need. These are people who seldom bother to shed even crocodile tears when Jews are blown to pieces by suicide bombers, or rockets are fired indiscriminately into their homes; but become tremendously excited when the news breaks that some Israeli retaliation may have gone wrong.
It took several months to clarify what had happened at Jenin -- a staged massacre. It will take several months before something like the true story emerges, from Qana. By which time no one will be listening.
preppy rap
china has heart
A pair of human rights activists are charging that "a crime against humanity" is happening on a large scale in China. Members of Falun Gong, a spiritual movement banned by the Chinese government since 1999, are being "in effect, murdered for their organs," which are being sold to buyers from China and abroad, says David Kilgour, a former member of the Canadian Parliament and coauthor of the report.
Mr. Kilgour and his partner, Canadian human rights lawyer David Matas, are now traveling the world speaking with governments and professional and human rights organizations urging further investigation of the allegations. Early last month, the pair released a report ( http://investigation.go.saveinter.net/) laying out details of an investigation they undertook on behalf of a Falun Gong support group, the Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of the Falun Gong in China.
a million here, a million there...
...and pretty soon it adds up to real money. So said legendary Senator Everett Dirkson many years ago. USA Today writes about the fed's accounting tap dance:
Congress and the president are able to report a lower deficit mostly because they don't count the growing burden of future pensions and medical care for federal retirees and military personnel. These obligations are so large and are growing so fast that budget surpluses of the late 1990s actually were deficits when the costs are included.
The Clinton administration reported a surplus of $559 billion in its final four budget years. The audited numbers showed a deficit of $484 billion.
Speaking of federal dollars, how'd you like to make $80k manning a toll booth? Just move to Massachusetts for a Big Dig Deal:
When I sat down for lunch with Gov. Mitt Romney, he described a decade-long legacy of drunken-sailor spending behavior, thanks to an endless pipeline of money from Washington; rampant patronage; nonstop political finger-pointing; and potential criminality on the part of fat and happy government contractors.
"What we have here is a systemic failure of accountability as to how the money got spent," he fumed. "We have hundreds of people manning the turnpike tolls who make $60,000 to $80,000 a year." Some electricians with overtime were earning $300,000. According to the state auditor, $23 million was spent on ramps spanning the Charles River, which had to be demolished because they did not meet community approval and led to nowhere.
thursday, august 3 2006
juan williams gets stiffed by liberals
Ever since I heard Juan Williams talk about his book that just came out this week, I've been looking for reviews in the major media about his book, Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America--and What We Can Do About It and I haven't been able to find any. The only references I've found are on conservative outlets such as Bill O'Reilly or Newmax. Apparently, the MSM has closed its doors to one of their own, an NPR correspondent, for gosh sake! Williams told Michael Reagan about the freeze out he's facing.
On my radio show the other night Juan told me how he has been silenced by the very liberals who have always clasped him to their bosoms. When I asked him if he’s been put on the "back burner" he said: “It’s not the back burner, but the burner itself that has disappeared. You just don’t get covered when you try to talk about what I consider to be central issues in terms of not just black America but all America. It’s part of American history, it’s part of the reality of the way we live, especially with increasing numbers of minorities in the American population, racial politics, drop-outs in schools, the fact that people talk about what’s going on with jails and all that.
“People just don’t want to talk about why we are in a grievous situation even now in the 21st century with regard to race and the kind of leadership we have on race.”
Libs complain about having their dissent stifled. This is one example of how liberal MSM does so by fiat: We don't like what you say, we pretend you're not there.
morons on the march
Rep. Cynthia (the cop smacker) McKinney's closing statement from a recent debate:
Thank you very much. An ordinance which was found unconstitutional written by an attorney. Dr. King reminded us that the measure of a man is where he stands in challenging controversy. I stand. Alongside our troops and our veterans, working families, and Mr. Clark, who could get no help from Mr. Johnson when his land was swallowed up by a landfill. Eisenhower reminds us that every dollar spent on war is a theft from the people. And I have brought more than $350 million. Send me back to Washington, so I can speak truth to power.
Send her somewhere to get head screwed on straight.
one path to lasting peace
From Jihad Watch:
Ahmadinejad Proposes Final Solution to Middle East crisis
Of course, he may not want to exterminate all the Jews in Israel. He would probably be just as happy if they accepted dhimmi status and paid the jizya. "Iranian president: Israel's destruction solution to Mideast crisis," from Ynet News, with thanks to Sr. Soph:
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Thursday the solution to the Middle East crisis was to destroy Israel, state-media reported.
In a speech during an emergency meeting of Muslim leaders in Malaysia, Ahmadinejad also called for an immediate ceasefire to end the fighting between Israel and the Iranian-back group Hizbullah.
"Although the main solution is for the elimination of the Zionist regime, at this stage an immediate ceasefire must be implemented," Ahmadinejad said, according to state-run television in a report posted on its Web site.
That must mean that his boys in Hizballah are in trouble. They're hoping a ceasefire will give them a chance to regroup.
There is video at the Ynet site.
fog of war news
There's been plenty of ink painting the news black for Israel's war with Hezbollah. Here are two positive looks at what's happened so far:
Amid the relentless images of the dead extracted from a building in Qana, amid the fiery anger those images generated – from Lebanon to Europe and from Egypt to Indonesia - and amid deafening global cries for an immediate ceasefire, a curiously contradictory picture is emerging from the battlefields of Hizballistan: Hizballah is on the ropes, running short of resources and desperate for a ceasefire for its very survival.
While the world has held itself aghast at ‘Israeli aggression,’ Israel has been relentless in pursuit of what has been described as the fiercest Arab fighting force in the region. Undeterred by global outcry as over two thousand rockets and missiles have rained down upon Israeli cities with relatively little note, Israel has made good on their Prime Minister’s declaration of “Enough.”
Israel is providing a lesson on fighting the war on terror.
Then there's the Iwo Jima analogy:
Hezbollah’s predicament comes closer to the Japanese forces at Iwo Jima than the German Army in Normandy and Western Europe. And as such, Israel’s strategy in part calls for trapping the Hezbollah terrorist forces in their entrenched, fortified positions where Israel will cut them off from re-supply and then tear apart piece-by-piece...
Hezbollah’s strategy appears geared for a massive Israeli armor and infantry incursion up to and perhaps beyond the Litani River.
Hezbollah was counting on a twofold IDF tactic of digging out the entrenched fighters in a costly war of attrition while also moving rapidly into Lebanon, leaving its lines of communications vulnerable to guerrilla ambushes in the rear. The Israelis thus far have not taken the bait.
Hezbollah apparently banked on Israel falling for a “rope-the-dope” strategy. Instead, it is Hezbollah that is trapped, like the Japanese Imperial Army on Iwo Jima, in a delusion of its own making.
donaldson still a jerk, james brady still alive
We posted yesterday about the mostly light-hearted event to commemorate the closing of the White House briefing room. On hand were old press secretaries, including Dee Myers, Marlin Fitzwater and so on.
A new briefing room is being constructed and will be named after James Brady, Ronald Reagan's press secretary who was shot (and left in a wheelchair) during the attempt on Reagan's life. Brady was also in attendance yesterday.
So was former ABC newsman Sam Donaldson, who reverted to form by shouting a question at President Bush, wanting to know if Bush thought "Mel Gibson should be forgiven."
Why ask that? Why should Bush weigh in on such matters? It was a lobbed grenade that Bush smartly lobbed back with his "we don't answer questions from has-beens" retort.
One more thing came to mind: in the hours after the Reagan shooting, Sam Donaldson rushed out the news that James Brady had been shot and killed. Imagine the grief that caused to Brady's extended family as they heard one of their own had been murdered.
Later Donaldson defended his sloppy journalism with the usual excuses of "competitive heat" and "reliable sources."
mohammed dumps on arab media
Although we have greater issues to be concerned about here in Baghdad I feel I must talk about the Arab media and its deception campaign and that's because wars in both Lebanon and Iraq are largely the same.
In both cases the media functions not only as a means to deliver news but had long turned into an effective weapon that is not the least interested in objectivity or factuality. The Arab media shamelessly sided with terrorism (or resistance from their perspective) and this propaganda machine funded by the evil powers in our region continues poisoning the minds of their Arab audience to feed the totally needless hatred towards the world.
I'm frankly tired of all this, tired of showing defeats as victories and tired of all the lies about power, heroism and legends…lie, lie, lie and then lie again and add some flavor to the report with some poetry or irrelevant words of wisdom and turn that report into a commemoration of a fading era of countless defeats.I wish the world could see what we are watching here and know the truth about this war, if what you outside the middle east are watching is news, know that here we are getting lies, deception, propaganda and slogans in the outfit of news and analysis, all for the purpose of keeping the region and especially Arabs in the seemingly forever lasting dream that is directed to keep them on the same side with terrorists and , sooner rather than later, collapsing regimes.
Our media and its dishonorable message is cornering the citizen in his home 24/7/365, it portraits all others as enemies and terror as resistance, it alienates the other voice and reflects only one perspective in a horrendously similar manner as if all media networks signed the same code of no ethics, as if all of them are only a changing face of one entity. The Arab media is one that approaches sentiments and ignores facts in order to foster a feedback that contains more hatred and less reason.Perhaps the peak in the destruction curve inflicted by the Arab media on the Arab mind was in the exploitation of the Qana tragedy, I heard the news about the casualties among children and civilians and I knew that the armies of mourners were already being summoned, that incident was exactly what the media was looking for, a funeral to mourn our bad luck as we say here.
lieberman in black face
The Anchoress weighs in the left's latest insult to Joe Lieberman:
Joe Lieberman, former Veep candidate, former “conscience of the senate,” has the temerity - the unmitigated gall - to stick by his own opinions and principals instead of simply “falling in line,” as Hillary once demanded (“you don’t have to fall in love, just fall in line…”). He refuses to kowtow to the unhinged section of the left. He refuses to dance around the war and his vote okaying it, as John Kerry and Hillary Clinton and all the rest of them, who - if you want to use black stereotypes - have become veritable Bojangles on the issue.
And for that - for daring not to be owned by anyone on that “plantation” Hillary loves to talk about - he’s being treated abominably…by people who will proclaim (with straight faces) that they are “tolerant” and “open-minded” and that they believe “people are entitled to their opinions.”
Of course, this is mild compared to painting black Republican Michael Steele as Sambo.
wednesday, august 2 2006
sleep science
Forty Winks: Science and Sleep.
"We don't answer has-been's questions"
President Bush having fun with the White House press corps. Video here. I loved this gentle dig:
THE PRESIDENT: I don't know. Does the air conditioner work better there than here? (Laughter.)
Q Yes.
THE PRESIDENT: The last time I had a press conference in here, it felt like it was outside. As a matter of fact, some of your makeup was running. (Laughter.)
yackety yak
Former President Clinton and big-city mayors from around the globe announced an initiative Tuesday to combat climate change and increase energy efficiency in everything from streetlights to building materials.
The partnership brings together Clinton and the resources of his presidential foundation with the Large Cities Climate Leadership Group - an alliance of Rome, London, Mexico City, Los Angeles and other cities that have pledged to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
LA can't keep its sidewalks maintained, among other basics.
The aim is to pool technology and resources to slash the pollutants that contribute to global warming while promoting clean-burning fuels and energy conservation.
"This is a very, very serious problem, but also a phenomenal opportunity," Clinton said at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he signed the pact while flanked by mayors of Los Angeles, San Francisco and London, as well as British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Talk and signing ceremonies -- the wonderful playacting world of liberalism.
The former Democratic president faulted the White House for moving too slowly on global warming, and said an era of environmental catastrophe awaits if more isn't done at home and abroad. After taking office, Bush reversed a 2000 campaign pledge to regulate carbon dioxide emissions, then withdrew U.S. support from the Kyoto treaty requiring industrialized nations to cut their greenhouse gases to below 1990 levels.
"The entrenched thought patterns and economic interests of yesterday are our common enemy," Clinton said.
Clinton had eight peaceful years to deal with this. The Kyoto treaty, negotiated on his watch, was DOA in the Senate 95-0. Bush simply pointed out the obvious.
Furthermore, Bush championed the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development, which will do more to curb global warming that perfect compliance with Kyoto ever would.
The AP writer, Michael Blood, is either ignorant of the facts or a liar.
weaponization of children
THE NEW BATTLE FLAG now being waved high over the armies of Allah mustering across the world is not the banner of Muhammad, but a flag almost as ancient as the prophet, the Bloody Shirt. Among the weak in arms and courage and righteousness, the Bloody Shirt is their weapon of mass distraction; their attempt to storm the moral high ground and hold it as they wait for their reinforcements of love, peace, compassion and truce to flow in from the far corners of the world screaming "Stop this barbaric war that slaughters, for God's sake, innocent women and children!"
The cynical create and present the daily dead baby exhibit. And the fools of the world oblige them with their compassionate echoes sent out with the numbing predictability and regularity of a New York Times editorial or, worse still, a mushy screed from our high-priest of compassion, Jimmy Carter.
After all, who among us is not moved by endless images of dead babies sheathed in blood, body parts hanging by a shred of gristle, with the blank stare of eternity glazing their eyes? What "civilized" person secure in their happy world of languid summer days, mall festivals brimming with second-rate food and third rate crafts, concerts on the lawn with wine and traveling minstrels, could not want this distant tribal slaughter to stop, stop, stop this very instant?
To see the Bloody Shirt, as the Hezbollah in Lebanon drag their children from the rubble and parade them before the world, is to want all replaced with the Rainbow Flag immediately -- no matter who must suffer, no matter how many Jews must die in that distant country where, "After all the Israelis aren't so much Jewish as they are Zionist oppressors who, if they just gave up a little more, would be left in peace. I mean, look at that. Children are dying every minute there. Have you no compassion, sir? Have you, at long last, no compassion?"
Have I no compassion?
That was a fair question the first time it was posed to me, oh, several decades back. I think I had a lot of compassion back then. I must have had oodles. I must have been soaking in it. At least that's what I conclude when I read the things I wrote and remember the things I did. For awhile, every cause on Earth, every injustice from Cape Horn to Belfast called upon my bottomless well of compassion. The church burnings and bombings in the South during the Civil Rights struggle. The napalmed girl on the road in Vietnam. The carnage of apartheid. And, of course, the 50 years of ceaseless exposure of their dead by the Palestinians.
The Palestinians, and by extension their rollicking sidekicks around the Muslim world, are the masters of dead-child porn. Looking at the recent releases from this sick culture is like watching a very unfunny Monty Python clip from the Holy Grail movie where the cart is pulled through the city with the chant, "Bring out your dead!"
Read it all.
tuesday, august 1 2006
why jimmy carter was/is a failure
He's blind. Consider what he wrote today:
Leaders on both sides ignore strong majorities that crave peace, allowing extremist-led violence to preempt all opportunities for building a political consensus. Traumatized Israelis cling to the false hope that their lives will be made safer by incremental unilateral withdrawals from occupied areas, while Palestinians see their remnant territories reduced to little more than human dumping grounds surrounded by a provocative "security barrier" that embarrasses Israel's friends and that fails to bring safety or stability.
The security barrier more or less ended the suicide bombings from the second Intifada (that is, it worked).
No doubt there are majorities who want peace, but the Palestinians elected Hamas to lead their government. And Hamas openly declares it wants to destroy Israel.
When given the chance to govern Gaza, the Palestinians began their rule by firing rockets at Israel.
The general parameters of a long-term, two-state agreement are well known. There will be no substantive and permanent peace for any peoples in this troubled region as long as Israel is violating key U.N. resolutions, official American policy and the international "road map" for peace by occupying Arab lands and oppressing the Palestinians. Except for mutually agreeable negotiated modifications, Israel's official pre-1967 borders must be honored. As were all previous administrations since the founding of Israel, U.S. government leaders must be in the forefront of achieving this long-delayed goal.
Pre-1967 borders would mean giving back the Golan Heights. Does Jimmy Carter understand the military meaning of higher ground? Imagine the range of missiles fired from the Golan Heights.
A major impediment to progress is Washington's strange policy that dialogue on controversial issues will be extended only as a reward for subservient behavior and will be withheld from those who reject U.S. assertions.
Such as not negotiating with those who declare their intention to wipe Israel off the face of the earth? What possible negotiations could ensue from a party that will not back down from declarations of murder?
If that's what constitutes "subservience" in Jimmuh's mind, well, there you have it.
fear and pandering
AskMom on the Seattle shootings:
...my liberal friends are deeply in denial about the source, the motives, and the probable upcoming replays of this tragedy. The tv and radio versions all failed to mention the one and only truly relevent detail: before opening fire, the shooter said "I'm an Islamic American. I'm angry at Israel."
The unwritten rule here since 9-11 is that we never say, suggest or imply that Islam or Arabs, or citizens of any particular (Arabic) country, or Jihad, or bigotry or hatred are involved in any violent and destructive events.
Politically correct terms here in the Emerald City are: Insurgents. Guerrillas. Refugees. Misunderstanding. Tolerance. Rebel. Freedom Fighter. Displaced person. Radical. Homeland. Religious differences. Cultural Forces. Historical oppression. So Seattle is already tying itself into a pretzel thinking of excuses for this latest, hometown Jihadist evil. Listen to the crud building up around the story: This man had a criminal record. (So it's the fault now of the police who arrested him before?) He was from Pakistan but "an American Citizen." (So his hatreds and violence became our responsibility when he deceived us into naturalizing him?)
He "may have had a personal grievance." (If he'd murdered someone at home, there is supposedly never an excuse for domestic violence. But since he did it somewhere else, hey, no problem, we’ll understand, it's just a personal grievance.) Two days ago I was in New York City and so thankful to be headed home to the pine trees, clean air and marine sensibilities of Seattle.
Today I'm ashamed of the place where I was born. When are the arrogantly self-styled elite who speak for this city going to accept reality? No amount of intellectual conjuring will convince rational people that this was an isolated act.
For years the Jihadists have told us in plain language that we must submit or die. They relentlessly spew forth their hatred of Jews and Christians. They proved in New York, Paris, Madrid, London, Bali, Bombay and hundreds of other places, that they mean to kill us all as soon and as painfully as they can.
why "world opinion" means nothing
...In fact, "world opinion" is constantly upset with America and Israel, two of the most decent countries on earth, yet silent about the world's cruelest countries.
Why is this?
Here are four reasons:
First, television news.
It is difficult to overstate the damage done to the world by television news. Even when not driven by political bias -- an exceedingly rare occurrence globally -- television news presents a thoroughly distorted picture of the world. Because it is almost entirely dependent upon pictures, TV news is only capable of showing human suffering in, or caused by, free countries. So even if the BBC or CNN were interested in showing the suffering of millions of Sudanese blacks or North Koreans -- and they are not interested in so doing -- they cannot do it because reporters cannot visit Sudan or North Korea and video freely. Likewise, China's decimation and annexation of Tibet, one of the world's oldest ongoing civilizations, never made it to television.
Second, "world opinion" is shaped by the same lack of courage that shapes most individual human beings' behavior. This is another aspect of the problem of the distorted way news is presented. It takes courage to report the evil of evil regimes; it takes no courage to report on the flaws of decent societies. Reporters who went into Afghanistan without the Soviet Union's permission were killed. Reporters would risk their lives to get critical stories out of Tibet, North Korea and other areas where vicious regimes rule. But to report on America's bad deeds in Iraq (not to mention at home) or Israel's is relatively effortless, and you surely won't get killed. Indeed, you may well win a Pulitzer Prize.
Third, "world opinion" bends toward power. To cite the Israel example, "world opinion" far more fears alienating the largest producers of oil and 1 billion Muslims than it fears alienating tiny Israel and the world's 13 million Jews. And not only because of oil and numbers. When you offend Muslims, you risk getting a fatwa, having your editorial offices burned down or receiving death threats. Jews don't burn down their critics' offices, issue fatwas or send death threats, let alone act on such threats.
Fourth, those who don't fight evil condemn those who do. "World opinion" doesn't confront real evils, but it has a particular animus toward those who do -- most notably today America and Israel.
vocabulary of untruth
A “ceasefire” would occur should Hezbollah give back kidnapped Israelis and stop launching missiles; it would never follow a unilateral cessation of Israeli bombing. In fact, we will hear international calls for one only when Hezbollah’s rockets are about exhausted.
“Civilians” in Lebanon have munitions in their basements and deliberately wish to draw fire; in Israel they are in bunkers to avoid it. Israel uses precision weapons to avoid hitting them; Hezbollah sends random missiles into Israel to ensure they are struck.
“Collateral damage” refers mostly to casualties among Hezbollah’s human shields; it can never be used to describe civilian deaths inside Israel , because everything there is by intent a target.
“Cycle of Violence” is used to denigrate those who are attacked, but are not supposed to win.
“Deliberate” reflects the accuracy of Israeli bombs hitting their targets; it never refers to Hezbollah rockets that are meant to destroy anything they can.
Read them all.
hezbollywood
Is Qana another phony?
It was to be a perfect Hollywood ending for Hezbollah. Just as the Israeli bombing of the village of Qana in 1996 brought a premature end to Israel's Operation "Grapes of Wrath," so too a sequel of Qana II could change, once and for all, the direction of Israel's current summer blockbuster, "Change of Direction." Ten years ago, world condemnation of an errant Israeli shell that hit a civilian compound forced then-PM Shimon Peres to curtail the offensive against terror bases.
The setting was also perfect: Kana was again being used as a primary site for launching rockets against Israeli cities. The IDF reported that more than 150 rockets had been launched from Qana and its vicinity at Israeli civilians, wreaking destruction in Kiryat Shmona, Maalot, Nahariya and Haifa. It was only a matter of time before the Israeli Air Force would come for a visit, using pinpoint targeting of the sites used to launch rockets, Hezbollah logistical centers and weapon storage facilities.
On the morning of July 30, according to the IDF, the air force came in three waves. In the first, between midnight and one in the morning, there was a strike at or near the building that eventually collapsed.
Brent Sadler of CNN reports that the Israeli ordnance did not even hit the building but landed "20 or 30 meters" from the structure.
There was a second strike at other targets far from the collapse building several hours later, and a third strike at around 7:30 in the morning. There too the nearest hit was some 460 meters away, according to the IDF. But first reports of a building collapse came only around 8 am.
Thus there was an unexplained 7 to 8 hour gap between the time of the helicopter strike and the building collapse. Brigadier General Amir Eshel, Head of the Air Force Headquarters, in a press briefing, told journalists that "the attack on the structure in the Qana village took place between midnight and one in the morning. The gap between the timing of the collapse of the building and the time of the strike on it is unclear."
sick bastard really sick
HAVANA - Fidel Castro, who took control of Cuba in 1959, rebuffed repeated U.S. attempts to oust him and survived communism's demise almost everywhere else, temporarily relinquished his presidential powers to his brother Raul on Monday night because of surgery.
The Cuban leader said he underwent surgery after suffering gastrointestinal bleeding, apparently due to stress from recent public appearances in Argentina and Cuba, according to a letter read live on television by his secretary, Carlos Valenciaga.
"The operation obligates me to undertake several weeks of rest," said the letter. Extreme stress "had provoked in me a sharp intestinal crisis with sustained bleeding that obligated me to undergo a complicated surgical procedure."
Meanwhile, folks in Miami are celebrating. Watch video here.
I lived in Miami for ten years and it's hard to convey the depth of hatred Miami's Cuban-Americans feel toward Fidel Castro. Having left there in 1987, I'd like to be back there when Fidel dies.
Babalu Blog has an extensive Death Watch:
Maybe Presidents Bush's visit to Miami today gave the bearded bastard a bad case of runs. Whatever the outcome, lets all hope castro is presently wallowing in severe pain.
Remember folks, in the event that the dictator has finally begun to sing El Manisero, the public will not be informed until all elements of the government are in place to keep the Cuban people under strict and total control.
JB
monday, july 31 2006
thirties redux?
The history of 20th-century America is largely about a country that never prepared for war, and was always compelled — by our enemies — to conduct enormous crusades. It was seemingly all or nothing for us. The history of America in war, like that of most others, is largely about making enormous blunders at the beginning, and then sorting it out.
Our great strength is not so much avoiding error, but the ability to recover quickly, change tactics and even strategy, and get it done. I think that applies to the three world wars in the last century.
The scary thing about our current jam is that 9/11 was supposed to have been the wakeup call, but we are again asleep. For this I blame our leaders — both the administration and the Dems. The administration is constitutionally unable to explain itself, and the Dems have no qualms about losing all present battles so long as they can elect their candidates and bring down this president.
The greatest failure of our leaders, with rare exceptions, is their refusal to see the war plain, which means Iran and Syria (might as well call them “Syran,” since they operate in tandem, with Tehran pushing most of the buttons). It was never possible to “win in Iraq” so long as we insisted on fighting in Iraq alone. You can not win a regional war by playing defense in one country. It was, and remains, a sucker’s game. Syran pays no price at all for killing our kids and our allies in Iraq and Afghanistan, and now in Gaza and Lebanon/Israel.
and the crowd yelled "moo!"
A leading agricultural show ended in disarray when a young woman performed an impromptu striptease among the cattle lines.
As security officers at the Royal Welsh Show rushed to the scene and tried to restrain her, she was hosed down with water normally used to wash the cattle, preventing them from getting a grip on her.
The stripper ended her table-top performance by throwing her thong into the crowd, which was returned on the end of a pitchfork.
microsoft "photosynth" technology
Watch the video here. Read about it here.
john bull's slow suicide
SCHOOLS would no longer be required to teach children the difference between right and wrong under plans to revise the core aims of the National Curriculum.
Instead, under a new wording that reflects a world of relative rather than absolute values, teachers would be asked to encourage pupils to develop “secure values and beliefs”.
The draft also purges references to promoting leadership skills and deletes the requirement to teach children about Britain’s cultural heritage.
congo quiz
Today, the Democratic Republic of Congo goes to the polls to elect a new president. Under President Mobutu Sese Seko, who died in 1997, Zaire (as the country was then called) saw its per capita gross domestic product decline by an average of 4.9 percent per year between 1980 and 2000, the worst record among countries for which data are available. As Congo heads to the polls, we wonder: What is most remarkable about its recent past?
A. Fastest economic growth rate
B. Received more development aid than any other country
C.Highest birth rate in the world
D. Lowest income per capita in the world
They have their answers, and it's certainly factual. But 3.5-4.5 million estimated deaths from the civil war are certainly remarkable, too.
H/T: VikingPundit
sunday, july 30 2006
clear thinking
From Omar:
...if Zawahiri, Nesrallah, Ahmedinejad and Sadr are calling upon extremists whether, Sunni or Shia, from all over the world to put aside their differences and unite in this war against the free world and to establish the Empire of terror from "Afghanistan to Andalus" then this is more than enough reason for you in the free world and for us who are struggling for our freedom to put aside our differences and disagreements and unite, from Sydney to Mumbai to Baghdad to Paris and London all the way till California, all must stand against this evil that is trying to destroy our world.
ghettoization of war
...the notion that "fighting" a war is the monopoly of those "in uniform" gets to the heart of why America and its allies are having such a difficult time in the present struggle. Nations go to war, not armies. Or, to be more precise, nations, not armies, win wars. America has a military that cannot be defeated on the battlefield, but so what? The first President Bush assembled the biggest coalition in history for Gulf War I, and the bigger and more notionally powerful it got, the better Saddam Hussein's chances of surviving it became. Because the bigger it got, the less likely it was to be driven by a coherent set of war aims.
War is not like firefighting: It's not about going to the burning house, identifying what needs to be done, and doing it; it's not a technical solution to an obvious problem. And, if you think it is, you find yourself like George Bush Sr. in 1991, standing in front of the gates of Baghdad and going, "Er, OK. Now what?"
Some people look at the burning house and see Hezbollah terrorism; others see Israeli obduracy, or a lack of American diplomacy, or Iranian machinations, or a need to get the permanent Security Council members to send peacekeepers, or "poverty" or "despair" or an almighty pile-up of abstract nouns. You can have the best fastest state-of-the-art car on the road, but, if you don't know where you're going, the fellow in the rusting '73 Oldsmobile will get there and you won't. It's the ideas that drive a war and the support they command in the broader society that determine whether you'll see it through to real victory. After Korea and Vietnam and Gulf War I, it shouldn't be necessary to have to state that.
No one can argue with U.S. military superiority. America has the most powerful armed forces on the planet. The Pentagon is responsible for 40 percent of the world's military spending, and outspends the next 20 biggest militaries combined. It's responsible for almost 80 percent of military research-and-development spending, which means the capability gap between it and everyone else widens every day.
So why doesn't it feel like that?
In Iraq, the leviathan has somehow managed to give the impression that what previous mid-rank powers would have regarded as a little light colonial policing has left it stretched dangerously thin and bogged down in an almighty quagmire. Even if it were only lamebrain leftist media spin, the fact that it's accepted by large numbers of Americans and huge majorities of Europeans is a reminder that in free societies a military of unprecedented dominance is not the only source of power. More importantly, significant proportions of this nation's enemies also believe the spin. In April 2003 was Baby Assad nervous that he'd be next? You bet. Is he nervous now?
We live in an age of inversely proportional deterrence: The more militarily powerful a civilized nation is, the less its enemies have to fear the full force of that power ever being unleashed. They know America and other Western powers fight under the most stringent self-imposed etiquette. Overwhelming force is one thing; overwhelming force behaving underwhelmingly as a matter of policy is quite another.
Read it all.
living longer, healthier lives
New research from around the world has begun to reveal a picture of humans today that is so different from what it was in the past that scientists say they are startled. Over the past 100 years, says one researcher, Robert W. Fogel of the University of Chicago, humans in the industrialized world have undergone “a form of evolution that is unique not only to humankind, but unique among the 7,000 or so generations of humans who have ever inhabited the earth.”
The difference does not involve changes in genes, as far as is known, but changes in the human form. It shows up in several ways, from those that are well known and almost taken for granted, like greater heights and longer lives, to ones that are emerging only from comparisons of health records.
The biggest surprise emerging from the new studies is that many chronic ailments like heart disease, lung disease and arthritis are occurring an average of 10 to 25 years later than they used to. There is also less disability among older people today, according to a federal study that directly measures it. And that is not just because medical treatments like cataract surgery keep people functioning. Human bodies are simply not breaking down the way they did before.
So maybe the "food police" will disband and leave us alone? Don't count on it.
saturday, july 29 2006
looks like mel will be self-financing all his movies
Once inside the car, a source directly connected with the case says Gibson began banging himself against the seat. The report says Gibson told the deputy, "You mother f****r. I'm going to f*** you." The report also says "Gibson almost continually [sic] threatened me saying he 'owns Malibu' and will spend all of his money to 'get even' with me."
The report says Gibson then launched into a barrage of anti-Semitic statements: "F*****g Jews... The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world." Gibson then asked the deputy, "Are you a Jew?"
current events
Q. What do these nations have in common?
Algeria, Argentina, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Brazil, Cameroon, Canada, China, Cuba, Czech Republic, Djibouti, Ecuador, Finland, France, Gabon, Germany, Ghana, Guatemala, India, Indonesia, Japan, Jordan, Malaysia, Mali, Mauritius, Mexico, Morocco, Netherlands, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Republic of Korea, Romania, Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Switzerland, Tunisia, Ukraine, United Kingdom, Uruguay, Zambia
A. They are members of the UN Human Rights Committee.
Q. What has the committee done of late?
A. Told the USA to shut down secret detention facilities. It urged the government to ensure the rights of poor people and blacks were respected in relief efforts. And claimed both poor people and black people were "disadvantaged" in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
Ain't it a crazy world when the likes of Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Cuba get to lecture the US on human rights? Perhaps it the opinions of some of those nation's ambassadors about John Bolton that so troubled John Kery.
the collector
by Burt Pretlusky
When I was a kid, I collected stamps. I never had much of a collection; most of my stamps were commonplace, the sort that came in packages of 500 for a buck or two. But I enjoyed looking at them and sticking them in my big blue album. They gave me a sense of the world beyond Los Angeles and a grounding in geography, but, mainly, I liked them because they were pretty.
My favorites came from a place called Tannu Tuva. Stamps must have been a major source of income for the country because they really went all-out. Most nations were satisfied commemorating monarchs, explorers, and presidents, on little squares and rectangles. But Tannu Tuva’s stamps were huge and colorful, and, often as not, they were triangular.
As I look back after all these years, I seem to recall they were often illustrated with wild animals and jungle scenes. Which is why I assumed the country was tucked away somewhere in Africa. Only recently did I learn it’s in Asia. (I did say that collecting stamps gave me a grounding in geography, I never claimed it turned me into Marco Polo!)
While moving from one place to another, my stamp album and I got separated. I took it as a sign. For a while, I considered collecting coins, but I never really liked the way they looked.
It wasn’t that I lacked for interests. I always liked music; books; movies up until, say, the 70s; tennis; poker; and, of course, writing. But once the stamp collection went missing, I fell out of the habit of collecting things.
But in recent years, I’ve found the old urge creeping up again. The things I find I now enjoy sticking in a book are the really wacky, self-serving statements made by politicians. For instance, all by himself, Al Gore, Mr. Junk Science himself, could fill a fair-sized volume.
Of late, Mr. Gore has become the anti-Cassandra of global warning. Unlike that cursed daughter of Priam and Hecuba, whose accurate prophecies were never believed, Al, the cursed husband of Tipper, merely has to open his yap and millions of gullible Americans hail him as a modern seer. Like the Scarlet Pimpernel, he’s here, he’s there, he’s everywhere, proclaiming that Omaha will soon join Atlantis at the bottom of the sea. Being a liberal, he naturally closes off any possible debate by insisting that no serious scientist disagrees with his dire prophecies. Any climatologist who dares to suggest that Gore is suffering from delusions of competence is branded a charlatan in the pocket of the oil industry.
Furthermore, Gore intentionally overlooks the cyclical nature of the world’s climate, which apparently has little or nothing to do with man’s relatively puny activities on this planet. One question among many that Gore ignores is how it was that in a Newsweek cover story in 1976 the question being posed was: What can be done about global cooling?
As Charles Dudley Warner once remarked, everybody talks about the weather. But, fortunately, having passed away in 1900, Mr. Warner was spared ever running into Al Gore, the man who never shuts up about it.
However, when it comes to collecting the twaddle of politicians, the true aficionado doesn’t hesitate to cross party lines in pursuit of a golden nugget. So, although he’s not in Mr. Gore’s league, you can’t fault the GOP’s Sen. Arlen Specter for not trying. For instance, in explaining his opposition to an amendment defining marriage as the joining of a man and a woman in holy matrimony, the senior senator from Pennsylvania actually said, “We should keep the government off our backs, out of our pockets, and out of our bedrooms.” What’s more, he said it with a straight face, which is what separates the men from the boys in the nation’s capitol.
Inasmuch as the proposed amendment didn’t outlaw sodomy, his reference to bedroom activities made no sense at all. But when a U.S. senator announces that he wants the feds off our backs and out of our pockets, you expect to see his nose expand like a telescope, putting Cyrano and Pinocchio to shame.
The problem with collecting political hokum as a hobby is that it hardly leaves you time for anything else. Really, no sooner are you jotting down Hillary Clinton’s self-righteous remarks about Ann Coulter then President Bush is once again denying that his amnesty plan, which certainly waddles, swims, and quacks like an amnesty plan, isn’t really an amnesty plan. Perhaps he and Sen. Specter could have a competition involving dueling noses, and sell tickets.
One thing for sure -- so long as politicians keep talking, I’m going to need to get a much bigger book!
missed cinema: "journey into amazing caves"
Filmed for IMAX, this DVD packs a powerful visual experience as it follows two adventurous women into some, well, amazing caves. The screen cap shows them rappelling into a cave inside the Grand Canyon. There's also a trip down a 50 foot ice cave in Greenland and an underwater cave in the Yucatan.
The film lasts 37 minutes. Then watch the "making of" extra, another 37 minutes. Next time you read about some heroic actor doing his own stunts, think of these adventurers -- and that includes the film crew. This is truly extreme filmmaking.
friday, july 28 2006
cross your fingers
A drug made to enhance memory appears to trigger a natural mechanism in the brain that fully reverses age-related memory loss, even after the drug itself has left the body, according to researchers at UC Irvine.
hilarious
Stephen Colbert infuriates another politician. Or so it seems.
iranians ticked off at mullahs
...for plenty of reasons, but one of them is giving money to Hezbollah:
“Let them fight with each other until they get tired,” said Reza Muhammadi, 33, who runs a small grocery in the center of town. “Arab countries are not supporting Hezbollah, but my country is? They are giving my share to the Arabs.”
Mr. Muhammad said he worked six days a week from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. to feed his family. So, he said, he had no tolerance for his government’s financial commitments abroad. “One percent of our budget has been approved by my Parliament to give to Palestine,” he said. “Why should I not get angry about this?”
two comedians, neither one funny
Warren Christopher, former Secretary of State, waxes on about how his diplomacy stopped the fighting in the mideast over and over and over... Like any true believer, he counsels repeating the same strategy, more ceasefires.
Meanwhile, Al Qaeda's #2 man says, "The war with Israel does not depend on cease-fires ... It is a jihad (holy war) for the sake of God and will last until (our) religion prevails ... from Spain to Iraq," said al-Zawahri. "We will attack everywhere."
Hear that, Spain? Your foreign minister can don a kafiya and condemn Israel, but Al Qaeda wants the Iberian peninsula back.
poseurs in turbans
It would actually be wiser for Moktada (or his puppet masters) to study the case of Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, than it would be to come to his aid. There is a lesson waiting for Al Sadr in Lebanon.
Where exactly is Hassan Nasrallah these days? He's hiding in a figurative spider hole of his own, redefining "victory" as survival while waiting for the diplomatic corps to save his reckless hide. (One report has him hiding in the Beirut embassy of his Iranian paymasters, though Iran denies it.)
Hezbollah's gunmen are regarded as making a better showing in battle than such predecessors as the Egyptian army, which took off its boots in order to run away faster. But then those poor Egyptians fled because they wanted to live, whereas
Hezbollah's gunmen have been persuaded to embrace "martyrdom" even as their leader keeps his distance from battle and his location a great secret. Perhaps there's a spider hole awaiting Moktada, too, depending on the role his "movement"
plays.
Do you remember when Al Sadr used to appear in public wearing a shroud in anticipation of his own martyrdom? That was when the U.S. sought to arrest Al Sadr for the murder of the reformist cleric Khoe'i (who was, unlike Moktada, a real cleric). What a set of poseurs these are under those turbans.