tuesday february 28, 2006

lying with polls

Polls are supposed to measure public opinion, not shape it. But that ain't how it goes.

Today's news is full of analysis of Bush's awful approval ratings blah blah blah. If it is to have any political meaning, a poll must reflect the actual electorate. In the 2004 election, Democrats and Republicans split evenly, so a poll should sample them equally.

How did the CBS poll sample?

Total Republicans contacted: 272 unweighted and 289 weighted.

Total Democrats contacted: 409 unweighted and 381 weighted.

Total Independents contacted: 337 unweighted and 348 weighted.

As we've said before, just sample the staff at Air America (both of them) and be done with it. Bush will have a zero approval rating and we can all wring our hands and wonder why.

who loves ya, babe?

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman quoted Karl Rove, "Republicans have a post 9-11 worldview, and many Democrats have a pre-9-11 worldview. That doesn't make them unpatriotic, not at all. But it does make them wrong."

From that Friedman concludes that Rove was calling Democrats unpatriotic. Rove said just the opposite. Of course, it is possible to say one thing and mean another. For example, "Tom, I love your tie -- it's not as dorky as your others."

But I take Rove at his word. Democrats are not unpatriotic, they're just dense and petulant.

Democrats are very touchy about their patriotism, or perceived lack of same. I know why: much as they love America, they do not like it. Why the dislike? Let us count the ways:

They dislike America because they are not running it. And they're not running it because Americans won't let them (at least for now.) After losing election after election, they disdain American voters as stupid. Thomas Frank's book "What's the Matter with Kansas" insults the intelligence of midwestern Republicans who, Frank avers, "vote against their economic interests." That is, they don't know what's good for them.
They dislike America because we're not like Europe. Europe has universal healthcare, longer vacations and people sophisticated enough to see through the humbug of religion. (Yes, they have cathedrals, but most Euros regard them as tourist attractions. Church is for chumps.)

Nevermind that Europe is speeding off a cliff as surely as Thelma and Louise. Their high taxes, low economic growth (curious how those go together), excessive regulation, low birthrates, inability to assimilate immigrants and high social spending have Europe becoming Eurabia within decades.
They dislike America because it fights back. When Yugoslavia disintegrated, Europe watched as chaos ensued and ethnic cleansing came back. It took the US to stop it, and US troops continue to be posted in the Balkans lo these many years later, despite Bill Clinton's pledge of a one year deal.

Whereas JFK promised to "pay any price, bear any burden" to promote freedom, today's Democrats want to sign any treaty that promises to avoid conflict. To them, the United Nations embodies moral authority, even as evidence shows it complicit in billion-dollar corruption and the rape/prostitution of young girls in Africa. Oh, yes, and feckless in stopping genocide in Darfur.
They dislike America because it's rich. Liberals are zero-sum economic thinkers who believe one man's gain is another man's loss. Thus America is rich because we've exploited the planet, and because we're imperialist bastards. If so, given our vast military and economic strength, where are our colonies? Japan? No, we turned that back over to the Japanese. Germany? Ditto. And we spent a pretty penny getting Europe back on its feet after WWII. And another pretty penny keeping the Soviets out for the next 40 years.
They dislike America because it's racist. Yes, we have an ugly racial history, especially with respect to Indians and blacks. But show me a nation without a history of racism. Try being a third generation Japanese of Korean descent. Or a third generation French of Algerian descent. At least the United States has worked to fix its racial problems. 40 years after the Civil Rights Act was passed, we have a nation where the CEOs of the largest media company and the largest financial services companies are black. And where a self-made, female black billionaire can send an unknown book onto the bestseller lists.

Since 9-11, a battle of ideas has been raging. Islamic fundamentalists and their many mouthpieces want to convince the world that America is the great Satan. So when embarassing incidents such as the mistreatment of prisoners (not torture) at Abu Ghraib come to light, you can expect Osama and Al Jazeera to make hay.

But what's to excuse Ted Kennedy when he declares, "Shamefully, we now learn that Saddam's torture chambers reopened under new management: U.S. management." Is it any wonder why some Americans might question Kennedy's patriotism? Or when Democrat Richard Durbin compares Guantanomo Bay to Nazi concentration camps and Stalin's gulags?

Feeding propaganda points to people who mean to kill us (and already killed 3000) just to score political points against Bush is no way to demonstrate love of country.

Probably the most successful disliker of America is Michael Moore, who's become a millionaire by pissing on America. Moore drew big cheers from European audiences by telling them, "[Americans] are possibly the dumbest people on the planet." And "We Americans suffer from an enforced ignorance. We don't know about anything that's happening outside our country. Our stupidity is embarrassing." And to Brits, "You're stuck with being connected to this country of mine, which is known for bringing sadness and misery to places around the globe." For this, Jimmy Carter invited him into his private box at the 2004 Democrat Convention.

Yes, Democrats are patriots. But they're like humanitarians who love humanity but can't stand people.

Jim Bass

lying rascals all around

We know that the Mohammed cartoon flap was an organized effort that twisted facts to foment outrage. Lest we get too smug, consider that the same is true with the ports controversy:

My friends, there is an organized disinformation campaign going on in the discussion of the Dubai Ports World deal. Draw whatever conclusions you wish about whether the deal is worthwhile, but please do not buy into these blatant misrepresentations, and please don’t spread them in your discussions.

Clearly, this is a hot-button issue, and there are plenty of reasons for concern in the UAE’s past behavior, particularly before 9/11. Of course, we’re hearing from guys like Ret. Gen. Tommy Franks and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Peter Pace that UAE is “a friend” and “very, very solid partners” in the war on terror. And Sen. John Warner observed that the U.S. military has docked more than 500 ships in the past year in the UAE and uses their airfields to perform support missions for both Afghanistan and Iraq. But some folks still feel as if they can’t trust the UAE, and/or they want a fuller review. Fair enough. I don’t begrudge someone for having concerns about this deal.

However, I do begrudge someone for not having their facts straight. And long after I, and many others, pointed out that this deal is significantly different than what we were initially told, a particular group of people continue to dramatically misrepresent – aw, hell, let’s call it what it is – continue to lie about what it entails.

There are plenty of folks on the GOP side of the aisle repeating and spreading the lies. But check out the comments on the other side of the aisle.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton:

“Senator Menendez and I don’t think any foreign government company should be running our ports, managing, leasing, owning, operating. It just raises too many red flags. That is the nub of our complaints,” said Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., speaking via teleconference in response to Bush’s announcement.

As reported in USA Today, 80 percent of the terminals in the Port of Los Angeles are run by foreign firms. And the U.S. Department of Transportation says the United Kingdom, Denmark, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, China and Taiwan have interests in U.S. port terminals.

The blogger Sweetness and Light observed that the National Shipping Company of Saudi Arabia, which is partially owned by the government of Saudi Arabia as well as Saudi individuals and establishments, operates berths in the ports of Baltimore, Newport News, Houston, New Orleans, Savannah, Wilmington, N.C., Port Newark, New Jersey, and Brooklyn, New York. (The link has an inadvertently haunting photo, BTW.)

monday february 27, 2006

Bush 41 had dana carvey

...and Bush 43 has Steve Bridges. Here's an extended clip from the Jeff Foxworthy roast. He's got every tick and mannerism of Bush down perfectly. And the President is apparently a fan:

Although Bridges wasn’t in makeup when he visited the Oval Office, that didn’t stop the president from laughing. Or from giving his candid review of the taped performances he’s seen of Bridges being him.

“He remarked how odd it was to see someone who looks and acts like him. In fact, I think he said it was downright weird.”

That would be “weird” in a good way, however.

“The President said he really appreciated the tone of my material, how it was all in fun and something he’d feel comfortable having his daughters hear.”

During the pair’s 20 minute meeting, Bush the Real and Bush the Double covered a wide variety of topics – their common home state of Texas, Haney’s Oscar for Driving Miss Daisy, the history of the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, even the subtle differences between doing impressions of George Bush Sr. and George Bush Jr.

“At one point, he actually invited me down to Crawford, Texas to do a little fishing,” Bridges said.

After all was said and done, what was Bridges’ impression of the subject of his very presidential impression?

“I walked away with a sense that I knew him. He’s amazingly down to earth. What you see is what you get, no pretense. And he has a very good sense of humor.”

That said, Bridges also remarked he still was able to get a sense of the weight of responsibility on the President’s shoulders.

“He takes his job and his responsibility to the country very seriously. There’s no doubt about that.”

one world

Mark Steyn:

''We won't stop the protests until the world obeys Islamic law.''

Stated that baldly it sounds ridiculous. But, simply as a matter of fact, every year more and more of the world lives under Islamic law: Pakistan adopted Islamic law in 1977, Iran in 1979, Sudan in 1984. Four decades ago, Nigeria lived under English common law; now, half of it's in the grip of sharia, and the other half's feeling the squeeze, as the death toll from the cartoon jihad indicates. But just as telling is how swiftly the developed world has internalized an essentially Islamic perspective. In their pitiful coverage of the low-level intifada that's been going on in France for five years, the European press has been barely any less loopy than the Middle Eastern media.

What, in the end, are all these supposedly unconnected matters from Danish cartoons to the murder of a Dutch filmmaker to gender-segregated swimming sessions in French municipal pools about? Answer: sovereignty. Islam claims universal jurisdiction and always has. The only difference is that they're now acting upon it. The signature act of the new age was the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran: Even hostile states generally respect the convention that diplomatic missions are the sovereign territory of their respective countries. Tehran then advanced to claiming jurisdiction over the citizens of sovereign states and killing them -- as it did to Salman Rushdie's translators and publishers. Now in the cartoon jihad and other episodes, the restraints of Islamic law are being extended piecemeal to the advanced world, by intimidation and violence but also by the usual cooing promotion of a spurious multicultural "respect" by Bill Clinton, the United Church of Canada, European foreign ministers, etc.

The I'd-like-to-teach-the-world-to-sing-in-perfect-harmonee crowd have always spoken favorably of one-worldism. From the op-ed pages of Jutland newspapers to les banlieues of Paris, the Pan-Islamists are getting on with it.

dr. sanity

...looks at Bush and the national security debate:

From the beginning (was it only 5 years ago?) the Democrats and the left have been hysterically screaming about quagmires and civil wars with their usual generalized defeatism; and more recently we have heard the growing uneasiness on the part of Republicans and neocons that the Bush policies are moving too slowly.

Both the excessive hysteria and the niggling uneasiness come from the same psychological source -- a need to have everything resolved by the 2006 elections; or at the latest by the 2008 elections. The Democrats would like Bush's policies to unambiguously fail; while the Republicans are hoping for unambiguous success.

Too bad both desires will be frustrated.

The kind of major shift in US foreign policy that Bush has initiated may actually take decades to play out; and the repercussions of what has happened in the last 5 years may ripple for half a century or more. That is to say, there will be no instant gratification and no instant and universal successful outcome or failure --i.e., the kind that can win votes and influence money flow in time for the 2006 elections; nor probably for the 2008 ones either.

We are new parents who uneasily hold the tiny crying infant in our large bumbling hands. As we look at this small creature we have created, we have many thoughts and fears.

We might anxiously wonder what the future will bring for him and for us? Will this child grow up to be a doctor? Or a mass murderer? We have no way of knowing at the moment, and can only commit ourselves to providing the nurture and care necessary for optimal personality development.

Initially, the task is messy and rather smelly; but at some point, that small infant will be fully capable of making his own decisions and going forward on his own. For a human infant, that happy day generally occurs somewhere in the teen years.

I have no idea how long it takes for a liberal democracy; but expecting it to mature in 3-5 years requires a excessive degree of fantasy and self-delusion.

Read it all.

canadian healthcare is sick

From the New York Times:

The country's publicly financed health insurance system — frequently described as the third rail of its political system and a core value of its national identity — is gradually breaking down. Private clinics are opening around the country by an estimated one a week, and private insurance companies are about to find a gold mine.

Dr. Day, for instance, is planning to open more private hospitals, first in Toronto and Ottawa, then in Montreal, Calgary and Edmonton. Ontario provincial officials are already threatening stiff fines. Dr. Day says he is eager to see them in court.

"We've taken the position that the law is illegal," Dr. Day, 59, says. "This is a country in which dogs can get a hip replacement in under a week and in which humans can wait two to three years."

"In a free and democratic society where you can spend money on gambling and alcohol and tobacco," Dr. Day said, "the state has no business preventing you and me from spending our own money on health care."

This is the "single-payer" system liberals (Democrats) tout as the solution to America's rising healthcare costs.

Single-payer is a euphemism for government monopoly. Only the most obtuse dreamer can believe that any government monopoly could ever be efficient.

healthy dose of healthcare innovation

President Bush has innovative ideas on controlling health care costs, primarily through Health Savings Accounts that give individuals more control over how their medical dollar is spent. The general principle is that people will not choose to spend a dollar on health care unless they get a dollar’s worth of benefit—and this will place downward pressure on both medical costs and insurance premiums.

In reaction to Bush's agenda, many liberals like Ted Kennedy trotted out the increasingly tired "only for the healthy and the wealthy" charge against HSAs. While it is tempting to go through all the evidence showing it isn't true, it may be more instructive to consider the example of Wendy's touted by Bush. The average worker at Wendy's is likely part of the "working poor." And since the health of the poor tends to be worse than that of general population, chances are that Wendy's employees are a bit sicker on average. In other words, Wendy's is an excellent example of consumer-driven plans not being primarily for the healthy and the wealthy.

Furthermore, other parts of Bush's health care agenda make HSAs more accessible for the poor and sick. Bush's agenda permits a low-income family to take a refundable tax credit to purchase an HSA. It also allows small businesses and civic and religious groups to form associations that enable them to pool their resources to purchase insurance for their members. Finally, Bush enables employers to put additional contributions in the HSA of an employee with a chronic health condition.

National Review (2/27 print only) notes:

In his State of the Union address, President Bush devoted only a few sentences to health policy. But, to coincide with the speech, the Bush administration released a five-page document proposing health-policy reforms so sweeping and bold as to merit comparisonto the scope—though certainly not the content—of Hillary Clinton’s plan of a decade ago. If the White Houseis able to see its proposals through, it will leave a lasting and positive mark on American social policy.

One component of Bush’s reforms is Health Savings Accounts (HSAs). The idea behind HSAs is quite simple. Individuals should be allowed to manage some of their own health-care dollars through accounts they own and control. They should be able to use these funds topay the costs of out-of-network doctors, diagnostic tests, and other procedures not covered by third-party, catastrophic insurance. The accounts should be taxfree, and should eventually be available for non-medical purposes, letting individuals profit from wise decisions that allow them to reduce their health-care costs.

sunday february 26, 2006

it was bound to happen

A cartoon to piss off two minority groups "Bro-Hammed."

public show of unity

Iraqi clergymen, Shiites and Sunnis, have met in a mosque in Baghdad and decided to contribute to ending the crisis that followed bombing one of Islam’s holiest sites, the shrine of Imam Ali al-Hadi and hasan al-Askari in the city of Samarra north of Baghdad.

What was amazing about it is the unity they showed on TV. Above is a picture of clergymen. The one leading the prayers and circled by a black line is sheikh Abdul Salam al-Kubaisi, spokesman and main preacher in the Association of Muslim Scholars, which is the supreme Sunni religious authority in Iraq. In the picture, Kubaisi is shown leading the prayers and all the clergies behind him are Shiites from Sadr trend.

This is the first time I see this. I’ve never seen a Sunni clergyman leading Shiite prayers. You could see the main difference between Sunni and Shiite Islam. Notice the way the Sunni stands [joining hands on the abdomen] and the Shiites standing with hands loose on the sides.

who blew up shia's golden dome?

Five theories of who did the deed and why.

the amazing touch screen

Last week we linked to a video of a remarkable multi-touch-screen demonstration. Here is more information on the who, when and why.

more piety from the religious left

You may remember the Presbyterians coming out against Israel in favor of the Palestinians (wonder what they think of Hamas). Now a coalition of American churches:

...sharply denounced the U.S.-led war in Iraq on Saturday, accusing Washington of "raining down terror" and apologizing to other nations for "the violence, degradation and poverty our nation has sown."

If you have the stomach to read through their whole statement, you'll find liberal boilerplate: global warming, Katrina, blah blah blah.

punch lines

"To have a negative portrayal of the Prophet Muhammed is a slap in the face and we have an obligation to defend our prophet against slurs on his reputation," said Marya Bangee, a sophomore at UC Irvine and a member of the Muslim Student Union. "They're trying to draw a link between Islam and terrorism and that's what we've been trying all along to stop."

Stop what? Drawing the link or stopping the terrorism carried out in Islam's name?

sunnis, sadrists make peace

From the Australian:

THE movement of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, alleged to have played a role in the anti-Sunni violence over the last few days, publicly made peace with political and religious Sunni leaders overnight.

Four sheikhs from the Sadr movement made a "pact of honour" with the conservative Sunni Muslim Scholars Association, and called for an end to attacks on places of worship, the shedding of blood and condemning any act leading to sedition.

The agreement was made in the particularly symbolic setting of Baghdad's premier Sunni mosque Abu Hanifa where the Shiite sheikhs prayed under the guidance of Sunni imam Abdel Salam al-Qubaissi.

The meeting was broadcast on television and the religious leaders all "condemned the blowing up of the Shiite mausoleum of Samarra as much as the acts of sabotage against the houses of God as well as the assassinations and terrorisation of Muslims".

The statement made reference to the key concerns of both communities with the violent aftermath to the attack on the Samarra mausoleum which saw more than 119 people die.

The sheikhs condemned "those who excommunicate Muslims" a reference to the "takfireen" or Islamist extremists like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi who justify killing fellow Muslims by declaring them non-Muslims.

saturday february 25, 2006

holocaust denial and child abuse

ShrinkWrapped:

...I mentioned child abuse in my title for a reason, since it is the closest we can come in America to a model of the Holocaust and Holocaust denial. When a young child is abused, they are almost always warned not to tell anyone and further, that if they do tell, no one will believe them. Children, especially in the days before we taught our children in grade school about such things, had no choice but to believe their powerful abuser. The worst of the abusers would tell the child that what they were doing was an expression of love for which the child should be grateful, or was a result of the child's behavior. "I am doing this to you because I love you so much" or "I am beating you because you were bad" or "I am having sex with you because you seduced me." No one would question the evil of such adult behavior; the difficult question arises when we look at the long term damage from the abuse and the denial of the abuse.

Memory is among our most plastic of all cognitive functions. If you tell a group of people at the scene of an accident that you saw a man wearing a red coat running from the scene, a week later a significant number of witnesses will be found to have "remembered" a man in a red coat running from the scene; if, in fact, there was a man in a red coat and you authoritatively say there wasn't, a significant number of people will "forget" having seen the man. In a similar, though more insidious way, if a parent tells a child he or she was never abused, they are faced with an impossible task:

Who will they believe? Can they believe their own perceptions and memories, which necessitates doubting the love of the most important person in their world? Or do they deny their own minds, believe their parent, and preserve them as a loving protector?

There is no way a child can negotiate this chasm and the result is an adult who can never trust her own perceptions and memory and can never truly feel loved. The insult never ends. If they confront their parent as an adult, those who are lucky enough to receive confirmation can then, after years of psychological work, sort out their confused feelings and thoughts; those who receive denial as adults are left never knowing who they are or what to believe. Are they the poor abused victim who has every right to feel rage and sorrow or the bad child who deserves contempt for believing such horrible nonsense?

"let's blame the sunnis"

Blogger Ali (brother of Mohammed and Omar of Iraq the Model) posts infrequently, but his posts are always thoughtful. His latest is a gem:

When I served in the military I made friends with a devoted She'at Captain, well not made friends but actually I was paying him so that I spent most of the 3 months I had to serve in my home. This guy was very proud of his job and accomplishments. He often talked about his heroic actions against the "saboteurs". Who were those saboteurs? No, not just the Badr Brigade which was active after 1991 but mostly anyone who stood against Saddam during the uprising and that meant the vast majority of the She'at. Yet this Captain always refer to the She'at Imams and quote them during our conversations saying this Imam "Peace be upon him" or that Imam "God bless his secret" which I'm sorry I don't know what it means!

I asked this guy once about how he, a devoted She'at see the bombing of holy shrines in Najaf and Karbala back then during the uprising. He didn't answer the question and kept blaming the saboteurs and Iranians. There were no Americans at that time or he would have blamed them.

That guy was no exception for the denial most Iraqis lived in at Saddam's days and we had many officers like him in our camp. The commander himself, a General was a She'at. This is part of the reason, as I think, why most Iraqis especially She'at do not want Saddam's trial to take its natural long course. They don't want to remember their submission and even collaboration with the tyrant, as it's very humiliating to them. Most of you have seen the tape from Dujail. Who were those hundreds of people racing each other, stumbling to the ground to cheer the great leader? The "Victims" themselves. Yes they had too, but honestly I think they didn't have to take it that far, but it's that paralyzing fear that makes most people not only submit to evil but volunteer most of the time, reporting their own flesh and blood at times to prove their innocence. Do I blame them for that? Not really, as I felt that fear too and it wasn't easy to cope with at all. But I blame them now when they try to show themselves as the innocent victims and blame everything on Saddam and the Sunnis.

No, we were ALL part of the tragedy and those massacres and we all have to own that to finally come clean and start fresh. Only the Kurds seem to have the right to claim that they always stood against Saddam, which is true but then again their motives were not patriotic at all and certainly not humane. They were ethnic.

...

The She'at attitude these days makes me compare it to that of the African Americans in general. Yes they were enslaved and severely oppressed for hundreds of years and they're still subjected to some degree of discrimination in some areas by some, but is their reaction to all this healthy, or even helpful to them? And haven't they really gained equality in a way that at least enables them to lead a successful dignified life? I'm certainly not an expert in that and don't want to go deep into something I'm not that informed about but from what I read and heard it seems that some of them are still trapped in that victim's skin and blame all their misfortune on the others.

I think it's human nature that makes us feel comfortable in rushing to give our problems a specific name and that name should not be "us". It's a relief to some people, especially those whom their liberty and independence were taken away from them for a long time, to blame it on the others.

So, Sunnis are not the pure evil and She'at are not that innocent and that was the case since Saddam's days. Yes, Sunnis were more accepting of Saddam's regime in general and were more opposing to the change, but the thing is that they "were" and now things have changed a lot.

another update from zeyad

Here, with photos of the men in black. Meanwhile, President Bush leans on Iraqi political leaders to move ahead on forming a government.

bad p.r.

Despite the vaunted genius of Karl Rove, the Bush White House has been terrible at public relations. During the 2004 campaign, they allowed the mediacrats to write the narrative about the Iraq war, then reacted to it. Weak. Now the ports story shows more bungling on politics and PR.

danish solidarity

Christopher Hitchens orgaanized a pro-Denmark event yesterday at the Danish Embassy in Washington D.C. Instapundit links to stories about it.

blindmen and elephants in iraq

What's going on in Iraq? It's hard to know and maybe nobody knows. American news media yesterday reported that things were calming down. But then Zeyad (one of the first Iraqi bloggers, back after a long hiatus) writes:

Fierce streetfighting at my doorstep for the last 3 hours. Rumor in the neighbourhood is that men in black are trying to enter the area. Some armed kids defending the local mosque three blocks away are splattering bullets at everything that moves, and someone in the street was shouting for people to prepare for defending themselves.

There's supposed to be a curfew, but it doesn't look like it. My net connection is erratic, so I'll try to update again if possible. The news from other areas in Baghdad are horrible. I don't think it's being reported anywhere.

My father and uncle are agitatedly walking back and forth in the hallway, asking me what we should do if the mob or Interior ministry forces try to attack us in our homes? I have no answer for them.

Zeyad includes an MP3 file of gunfire he recorded with his cell phone. Meanwhile, Omar writes:

The defense minister in a press conference currently on Iraqi TV gave statistics to correct what he described as "exaggerated media reports" about civilian casualties and attacks on mosques since the attack on the Samarra shrine:

Mosques attacked/shot at without damage: 21 not 51
Moderately damaged: 6 not 23
Mosques destroyed totally: 1 not 3
Mosques occupied by militias: 1 not 2 (evacuated later).
Civilians killed: 119 not 183

It was also announced that day-time curfew in Baghdad and three other provinces (Salahiddin, Diyala and Babil) will continue for another two days.

And then we have our loudmouth media. Southern California radio hosts John and Ken have been editorializing about (I'm paraphrasing) how hopelessly uncivilized Arabs are and how it took a Saddam to keep order. And that the US should just pull out and let them kill each other.

Beyond the ugliness of such sweeping generalizations, it ignores our own violent history. Why, it was just 14 years ago that a large swath of Los Angeles was burned by angry mobs.

friday february 24, 2006

spot the lie

Find the statement that isn't true:

Longtime FBI director J. Edgar Hoover was a cross dresser
The CIA sold cocaine in American ghettos to fund the Nicaraguan contras
Saddam had no WMD
The United States is harvesting organs from Iraqis to sell to Israel
AIDS was a US biowarfare program gone amiss

Hoover may or may not have been a cross-dresser. We do know the KGB planted the idea as disinformation -- I saw a former KGB on Larry King chuckling about doing it. Ditto the AIDS conspiracy theory. The coke in the ghettos story was started by a story in the San Jose Mercury News that was later refuted in the LA Times and other newspapers. The organ harvest in Iraq is part of a hit movie from Turkey, now playing to crowds in the Muslim world. As for Saddam and WMD, it's true we didn't warehouses filled with 55-gallon drums, but that doesn't mean he didn't have WMD.

The unsettling thing about all the lies (except Hoover, who was creepy in plenty of ways) is that people believe them earnestly and use them to nurse grievances and form their worldview.

How we deal with propaganda may determine how the next 50 years turn out. Armed and Dangerous has a meaty post on this subject with plenty of comments that advance the dialog.

The Armchair Philosopher weighs in. Yesterday, Donald Rumsfeld wrote this in the LA Times:

OUR NATION IS engaged in what promises to be a long struggle in the global war on terror. In this war, some of the most critical battles may not be in the mountains of Afghanistan or the streets of Iraq but in newsrooms in New York, London, Cairo and elsewhere.

Our enemies have skillfully adapted to fighting wars in today's media age, but for the most part we — our government, the media or our society in general — have not.

Consider that violent extremists have established "media relations committees" and have proved to be highly successful at manipulating opinion elites. They plan and design their headline-grabbing attacks using every means of communication to break the collective will of free people.

Our government is only beginning to adapt its operations for the 21st century. For the most part, it still functions as a five-and-dime store in an EBay world.

I have just returned from Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco. In Tunis, the largest newspaper has a circulation of roughly 50,000 — in a country of about 10 million people. But even in the poorest neighborhoods you can see satellite dishes on nearly every balcony or rooftop.

Regrettably, many of the TV news channels being watched using these dishes are extremely hostile to the West. The growing number of media outlets in many parts of the world still have relatively immature standards and practices that too often serve to inflame and distort rather than to explain and inform. Al Qaeda and other extremist movements have utilized these forums for many years, successfully adding more poison to the Muslim public's view of the West, but we have barely even begun to compete in reaching their audiences.

In response, the Times published three letters. All equate the missing WMD "lie" with propaganda beamed into Muslim TVs that repeat the slanders of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and other such ugly fabrications. Scary.

spooked

While living in Denver in the '70s, I went with my wife and a group of friends to hear a band from Aspen called Liberty. They played an eclectic mix of songs and put on a great show. Liberty was opening for some stand-up comedian we'd never heard of.

One of Liberty's founding members is Danny Wheetman, now of Marley's Ghost. They have a new album out with a front and back cover illustrated by R. Crumb, a fan of the band. If you musical tastes don't fit into a neat category, check them out.

Oh, that unknown comedian turned out to be pretty funny. His name was Steve Martin.

JB

laugh at this

More cartoons from westerners. The current New Yorker also has three great cartoons by Art Spiegelman (print only, alas).

thursday february 23, 2006

sanguine about a civil war

Blogger Ali at Free Iraqi writes about the tensions after the mosque destruction:

...I tend to see this as not as bad as it looks. The attack is definitely a terrorist act aims to inflaming sectarian divisions and creating a civil war, the She'at are over reacting and some of them are pointing the accusation directly or indirectly towards all Sunnis. This is all bad, but the good thing is the different reaction among She'at religious authorities, the 'formal' one represented by Sistani and the more radical represented by the Sadirists and the SCIRI. There's no question that most She'at follow Sistani and that's why those two strong radical organizations still need his blessings and support.

Sistani being a religious man who believes in the She'at dogma sees that he needs the help of those two even if he disagrees with them and fear them to some extent in order to strengthen the role of She'at in Iraq and glorify what he stands for. Both parties put with so much from each other to achieve their own agenda, but recently the split started to widen not only between the formal and more radical side but also between the two radical ones. Power hunger has always served to blind people at one point or another and the struggle among the allies can be more bitter and worse than that between them and their common enemy.

If the radical She'at listen to Sistani and calm things down then we have no reason to worry that much about a civil war (Although we will have to worry about a dominant united religious front which I think can be worse), while if they don't then they may take Iraq into a civil war which is not that unlikely now to happen given the strong Iranian interference and support for those radical components among She'at. But is that really that disastrous?

Maybe, but I tend to think it won't be for many reasons. 1st such civil war will never be a full scale one with the American troops still in Iraq, so all that can happen is merely increasing the assassinations carried out by both radical Sunnis and She'at towards each other which may serve to expose those parties further more to everyone. 2nd if the Sadirists and the SCIRI go against Sistani's will they will risk losing his support. Average She'at will gain nothing from such limited civil war and while now they're carried out by their emotional reaction, when they see that revenge will only bring more death to others but also to them, after a while short or long they will stop and listen to the voice of reason and that will deprive the radicals from most of their power.

stifling dissent yet again

A community college student in Massachusetts faces possible disciplinary action for shouting "Remember Chappaquiddick!" during an on-campus speech by Democrat Sen. Edward Kennedy yesterday.

Paul Trost, 20, a student at Massasoit Community College in Brockton, Mass., says he was upset by an introduction of Kennedy given by Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., in which the congressman noted how the long-time senator overcame hardship in life on his way to success.

Whoa! I'd love to read that intro. Ted Kennedy overcame hardship? Too many millions? Having a rich daddy get him back into Harvard after being expelled for cheating?

"One of my teachers called me ignorant and told me this was an embarrassment to the school," Trost told WND. "She said to me, 'Can't you forgive him after all these years?' And I said, 'No, he killed somebody.'

"If it had been me or any other person, we'd be in jail," Trost says he told his instructor.

Referring to his two-word shout, Trost said, "I did it because I know about Kennedy's past. I know what happened at Chappaquiddick.

"I wanted to send a message to him that my generation still knows about it. We haven't forgotten about it."

a coup at harvard

Alan Dershowitz spoke with Hugh Hewitt about the firing of Larry Summers at Harvard. File this under stifling of dissent in America by the radical left.

AD: ... it was incredible chutzpah for the arts and sciences faculty, merely a plurality of them, to engineer this coup. And let me tell you who engineered it. It was engineered by particularly an anthropology professor, a guy named Randy Matory, who teaches Afro-American and Afro-South American studies. And basically, what he said in his resolution that he first proposed, was Summers has to go because number one, he's too patriotic. He's trying to tell us to be more patriotic. And that, by Matory, is regarded as the great sin, that he's teaching patriotism...

HH: Let's pause on that, professor. Did he actually make that statement in a faculty meeting, or reduce it to writing somewhere?

AD: Yeah, he said it on a television show last night, and I can, I think, find it and read you his exact quote, because it is just remarkable that a person would say this. He says, "He (Summers) was telling us we should be more patriotic," and that's among the list of things that he says he should be fired for.

...

HH: The root of this, isn't it, Alan Dershowitz, is tenure?

AD: Well, you know, tenure has failed. I can tell you why. There is no less courageous group that I have ever encountered in my life, and I meet people from all circles of life, than tenured professors at major universities. They are among the biggest cowards. They use tenure as a sword, but not as a shield. And they are afraid to speak their minds, even on the Summers thing. So many faculty members who supported Summers were afraid of alienating some people on the hard left, and remained silent. And therefore, we got a very, very skewed public debate about Summers' qualities as a president. He was a very good president in many ways. You know, he boosted the endowment, he increased the faculty. He was going to make this major move to Allston. He's really increased the strength of the sciences...

hillary's fear mongering

“First family that comes and says ‘I want to send my daughter to St. Peter’s Roman Catholic School’ and you say ‘Great, wonderful school, here’s your voucher,’” Clinton said. “Next parent that comes and says, ‘I want to send my child to the school of the Church of the White Supremacist …’ The parent says, ‘The way that I read Genesis, Cain was marked, therefore I believe in white supremacy. … You gave it to a Catholic parent, you gave it to a Jewish parent, under the Constitution, you can’t discriminate against me.’”

As an adoring, if somewhat puzzled, audience of Bronx activists looked on, Clinton added, “So what if the next parent comes and says, ‘I want to send my child to the School of the Jihad? … I won’t stand for it.”

So there's yer choice, folks: a government monopoly controlled by powerful labor unions and educrats, or Osama as your next school superintendent. Polipundit has more.

an unlikely duo

William Bennett and Alan Dershowitz:

We two come from different political and philosophical perspectives, but on this we agree: Over the past few weeks, the press has betrayed not only its duties but its responsibilities. To our knowledge, only three print newspapers have followed their true calling: the Austin American-Statesman, the Philadelphia Inquirer and the New York Sun. What have they done? They simply printed cartoons that were at the center of widespread turmoil among Muslims over depictions of the prophet Muhammad. These papers did their duty.

Since the war on terrorism began, the mainstream press has had no problem printing stories and pictures that challenged the administration and, in the view of some, compromised our war and peace efforts. The manifold images of abuse at Abu Ghraib come to mind -- images that struck at our effort to win support from Arab governments and peoples, and that pierced the heart of the Muslim world as well as the U.S. military.

The press has had no problem with breaking a story using classified information on detention centers for captured terrorists and suspects -- stories that could harm our allies. And it disclosed a surveillance program so highly classified that most members of Congress were unaware of it.

In its zeal to publish stories critical of our nation's efforts -- and clearly upsetting to enemies and allies alike -- the press has printed some articles that turned out to be inaccurate. The Guantanamo Bay flushing of the Koran comes to mind.

But for the past month, the Islamist street has been on an intifada over cartoons depicting Muhammad that were first published months ago in a Danish newspaper. Protests in London -- never mind Jordan, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Iran and other countries not noted for their commitment to democratic principles -- included signs that read, "Behead those who insult Islam." The mainstream U.S. media have covered this worldwide uprising; it is, after all, a glimpse into the sentiments of our enemy and its allies. And yet it has refused, with but a few exceptions, to show the cartoons that purportedly caused all the outrage.

The Rocky Mountain News published the Danish cartoons recently.

crisis in iraq

The destruction of the dome of the Shia Samarra mosque -- an obvious provocation to sectarian violence -- has had some effect. For the best on-the-ground coverage, we look to Iraq the Model:

Today is a day off in Iraq, emergency situation now officially declared with extended curfews 8pm-6am.

Sistani has been calling for restraint and calm but it seems that some Shia factions are not listening to him but instead they are listening to their direct references or acting on their own.

Spokesmen of the Islamic Party and Muslim Scholars claim more than 120 mosques have been blown up, set ablaze or came under small arms and RPG fire including the Um al-Qura mosque which is the HQ of the Association of Muslim Scholars which came under several drive-by shootings.

Radio Sawa reported a short while ago that the central morgue in Baghdad received some 80 bodies of people who were killed with gun shots since Wednesday afternoon.

In our neighborhood the Sadr militias seized the local mosque and broadcast Shia religious mourning songs from the mosques loudspeakers.
In several other cases, worshippers were turned away by "gunmen in black" who surrounded the closed mosques. Other mosques are encircled by razor-wire to stop anyone from approaching them.

The sense in the streets and the statements given by some Shia clerics suggest that retaliation attacks are organized and under control and are focusing on mosques frequented by Salafi and Wahabi groups and not those of ordinary Sunnis.

...

Baghdad looks more alive today but in a very cautious way, traffic in the streets is heavier than it was yesterday but still way below normal.
There's some kind of shopping frenzy because people are trying to be prepared if the worst happens; people are stock-piling small reserves of food, cigarettes, bottled water…etc especially after they heard some of the roads to/from Baghdad are closed and vehicles were turned away.

The Sunni political leaders were invited to a meeting with the UIA suggested by president Talabani but they refused to join the meeting saying the government has to condemn attacks on their mosques as well before they consider ending the boycott.
Talabani responded positively to their demand and gave a short statement to the press half an hour ago and condemned all attacks on worshipping places of all kinds.

The situation is still very tense but the good thing is that the Sunni have not returned the attacks and I hope the Shia have satisfied their vengeance by now because I don't want to even think of what can happen if this situation lasts longer than this.

wednesday february 22, 2006

storm over the ports

Here's a calm perspective on the big port dustup, from CBS news no less. It looks like Bush is right, but his party is panicking in the face of November elections. If Democrats can claim the Republicans are selling out the safety of America, whether true or not, Republicans will lose seats.

No one ever said politics is pretty.

"why mommy is a democrat"

I've been meaning to post about this children's book, but American Digest says it all.

toonophobia

A cartoon about the cartoons.

suicide bombers, suicide thinkers

From Armed and Dangerous:

The most important weapons of al-Qaeda and the rest of the Islamist terror network are the suicide bomber and the suicide thinker. The suicide bomber is typically a Muslim fanatic whose mission it is to spread terror; the suicide thinker is typically a Western academic or journalist or politician whose mission it is to destroy the West’s will to resist not just terrorism but any ideological challenge at all.

But al-Qaeda didn’t create the ugly streak of nihilism and self-loathing that afflicts too many Western intellectuals. Nor, I believe, is it a natural development. It was brought to us by Department V of the KGB, which was charged during the Cold War with conducting memetic warfare that would destroy the will of the West’s intelligentsia to resist a Communist takeover. This they did with such magnificent effect that the infection outlasted the Soviet Union itself and remains a pervasive disease of contemporary Western intellectual life.

Consider the following propositions:

There is no truth, only competing agendas.

All Western (and especially American) claims to moral superiority over Communism/Fascism/Islam are vitiated by the West’s history of racism and colonialism.

There are no objective standards by which we may judge one culture to be better than another. Anyone who claims that there are such standards is an evil oppressor.

The prosperity of the West is built on ruthless exploitation of the Third World; therefore Westerners actually deserve to be impoverished and miserable.

Crime is the fault of society, not the individual criminal. Poor criminals are entitled to what they take. Submitting to criminal predation is more virtuous than resisting it.

The poor are victims. Criminals are victims. And only victims are virtuous. Therefore only the poor and criminals are virtuous. (Rich people can borrow some virtue by identifying with poor people and criminals.

For a virtuous person, violence and war are never justified. It is always better to be a victim than to fight, or even to defend oneself. But “oppressed” people are allowed to use violence anyway; they are merely reflecting the evil of their oppressors.

When confronted with terror, the only moral course for a Westerner is to apologize for past sins, understand the terrorist’s point of view, and make concessions.

Read it all.

HT: Instapundit.

tuesday february 21, 2006

bird flu faqs

...but not faqtual:

Q: Can I still eat poultry?

A: The thing is, bird flu tastes like chicken so you never know if your General Tzo's is infected. You're at highest risk if you're eating at a Chinese establishment that is owned by Mexicans or a Mexican establishment, owned by the Chinese. Best stick to KFC, which is made from featherless, beakless mutates that are not legally birds.

This way you can die of cancer like the rest of your neighbors.

Q: How do I protect my cockatoo or canary from bird flu?

A: If you keep a cockatoo or canary as a pet, slaughter it immediately. The proper way to do this is to grab its body in your fist, walk it into the kitchen, place it on the cutting board, and lop its head off with a knife. Pretty much any knife will do. Bird necks are about as tough as celery.

As you probably know, the head and body must be burned, separately, with their ashes scattered in different directions. Just like you're disposing of a vampire corpse.

Important: Be sure to rinse thoroughly both the knife and your cutting board! How stupid would you feel if you successfully killed and disposed of the infected bird only to later die from decrusting a PB&J sandwich? I bet you'd feel pretty f-ing stupid.

If the caged bird is a beloved family pet, have your husband, wife or live-in buddy take the kids to a movie before slaughtering. When they come home, explain to them that lil' Petey flew out the window and then surprise them with a new pet monkey. Kids love monkeys, and they're 100% disease-free.

Q: What's the difference between a pandemic and an epidemic?

A: Here's a handy way of remembering it: If your home town is in the "-demic" part, you're probably already dead.

jimmy carter, segregationist

Betsy Newmark highlights this column:

Carter also didn't mention at the [Coretta Scott King] funeral that he ran for governor of Georgia in 1970 at the height of the civil rights movement as an arch-segregationist. Veteran Georgia political observer Bill Shipp has written that Carter "ran a subliminal 'fergit, hell' campaign." Shipp said, "Carter promised to be the antithesis of his Democratic primary opponent, former Gov. Carl Sanders, an urbane Augusta lawyer who had served Georgia ably as governor from 1963 to 1967. Sanders promised a fair shake for African-Americans in state government. Carter promised to invite Alabama Gov. George Wallace into the state to speak, and he vowed to retain an old-time segregationist as chairman of the state Board of Regents."

During the campaign, Carter's minions aggressively promoted a photograph to the media showing a smiling Sanders with his arm around a (gasp!) black athlete, and Carter referred to the highly respected former governor as a "Hubert Humphrey Democrat." Jimmy Carter won the gubernatorial election in 1970, but with less than 10 percent of the black vote.

Funny, but I don't remember him discussing any of these facts at the funeral, nor do I remember him apologizing to the mostly black assemblage about running for office as a segregationist. Maybe he was pressed for time. After all, the funeral only ran six hours, and that's not near enough time to confess your sins and bash a sitting president all in the same self-serving eulogy.

an iraqi laughs off sadr

From Iraqpundit:

Lee Harris, writing this week on TCSDaily.com, has produced a melodramatic analysis of Iraqi politics entitled "Misunderstanding Moktada al-Sadr." That's an appropriate title, because the author truly does misunderstand this Shiite "cleric."

Harris attributes some remarkable qualities to the religious school dropout. According to the piece, Moktada is a savvy politician who knows how to get what he wants, and presents an overwhelming danger to the interests of the United States. This is only the latest inflation of Sadr, who has previously been characterized in the American press as Iraq's Alexander the Great, and who has such admirers as Juan Cole, who has embraced Sadr as a "young Shiite nationalist."

...

"Political cunning"? Please. This guy is really not that smart. Most Iraqis see him in very different terms: as mentally ill. His shortcomings are apparent to Arabic speakers who have watched him on television. Al-Sadr is absurdly inarticulate (and he has a speech impediment, which makes a difference in a culture that is sensitive to oratory).

...

Unlike most of the American media, Iraqi Shiites know that Sadr never completed his religious education, and that matters to them. He comes off as an idiot on TV, and that matters to them, too. Plus, Sadr's mental history is the subject of some truly lurid gossip well known to many Iraqis, and that matters as well.

The fact is that mainstream Shiites who seek clerical leadership have a group of perfectly respectable clerics to choose from. Furthermore, such Shiites constitute a culture that values age, which they associate with study and wisdom. All that the young, inarticulate, and probably crazy Sadr has going for him is his distinguished family name. Even so, there are other respectable Shiite names in Iraq. The case of Ahmad Chalabi's failed political efforts should prove that a respected family name takes one only so far.

wheeling and dealing in iraq

Is it my imagination or has the level of violence decreased in Iraq since the elections and the long negotiations over forming a government? The intricacies of the negotiations are too much for me to fathom, but Iraq the Model notes:

The interesting and powerful statement made today by the American ambassador is considered supportive to the political line of those blocs.

Khalil Zad connected investing in Iraq and providing financial support with the presence of a nonsectarian government in Iraq and said that the only solution for Iraq lies in building a government of national unity that includes everyone and diminishes the danger of sectarian polarization that's been endangering the future of the country. This is of course a clear message to everyone that America is not willing to stand by religious parties that are trying to connect Iraq's future with the crazy dreams of Iran.

whine of bureaucrats leaking

The State Department, long a bastion of the pampered and pompous, has needed a good ass-kicking restructuring for decades. Condi Rice is doing it and it's making some folks tetchy.

A State Department reorganization of analysts involved in preventing the spread of deadly weapons has spawned internal turmoil, with more than half a dozen career employees alleging in interviews that political appointees sought to punish long-term employees whose views they considered suspect.

Senior State Department officials deny that and say an investigation has found that the proper personnel practices were followed. But three officials involved in the reorganization, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly, acknowledge that a merger of two bureaus reduced the influence of employees who were viewed by some political appointees as disloyal to the administration's policies.

"There are a number of disgruntled employees who feel they have been shoved aside for political purposes. That's true," said one of these officials. "But there was rank insubordination on the part of these officers."

About a dozen top experts on nonproliferation have left the department in recent months, with many citing the reorganization as a reason.

The dispute has thrown a spotlight on the tensions that often exist between longtime career employees and the political appointees who come and go with successive administrations. It is also being closely watched within the State Department as another sign that, under Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's leadership, the department will no longer be at war with the rest of the administration.

Notice how "political appointee" sounds a little dirty. In fact, their positions are most directly determined by the electorate. Career employees often disdain the elected administration -- whether Democrat or Republican -- as temps who should learn their place.

Heaven knows no wrath like a bureaucrat scorned.

why no nukes for iran

Victor Davis Hanson outlines six reasons.

postponing reality

Thomas Sowell:

Today's "educators" can simply pass the students along to the next grade and eventually send them out into the world with nice-looking diplomas and little else to enable them to cope with the complexities and challenges of work and of life. These students then pay big time for the rest of their lives.

California is one of a number of states that has belatedly begun to recognize what a disaster this policy has been. In 1999 a law was passed saying that students would receive a diploma only if they could pass a standard test to show that they had some real knowledge, instead of just an acceptable attendance record.

These tests do not require genius. We're talking basic math and English. We're talking multiple choice questions where the passing grade is 55 percent -- and you can get 25 percent by just guessing.

Like other states with high school graduation exams, California has postponed forcing students to pass that exam as a condition for receiving the diploma. This year, the state has decided that it is finally going to enforce this law passed in 1999.

venezuela running out of oil?

From PubliusPundit:

Is Venezuela running out of oil? This Bloomberg article certainly suggests it, and if so, it’s an earmark of a communist regime. There’s no such thing as a communist regime without shortages.

Russia the breadbasket ran out of wheat.

Cuba the sugar king ran out of sugar.

Vietnam the rice bowl ran out of rice.

China the Middle Kingdom ran out of everything.

And now, Venezuela, with the largest oil reserves in the Western Hemisphere, is having trouble with its oil production, enough so that the energy-saving measure of natural gas substitution has been introduced to the domestic population, which consumes very little oil compared to the amount Venezuela produces. Why would they need to scrimp on a population that uses so little anyway? Why scrimp there? Does that little bit that’s used domestically really matter that much? Is the margin that thin?

osama makes a vow

"I have sworn to only live free. Even if I find bitter the taste of death, I don't want to die humiliated or deceived," bin Laden said, in the 11-minute, 26-second tape.

To which Donald Sensing replies:

“bitter the taste of death”? You lying jackal, you’ve been telling your recuits how glorious death is and how exalted it is to die as a martyr for Islam! “Bitter?” What about the 72 virgins awaiting every shahid in paradise? (Oh, yeah, I forgot!)

What a sad sack bin Laden is.

monday february 20, 2006

hans blix as elmer fudd

Protein Wisdom:

After watching the “Nightline” report, I noted that what we learned—from Saddam’s own lips—was that the inspections weren‘t working, regardless of whether or one concludes Hussein was stockpiling biological and chemical weapons: again and again, we heard Saddam and his aides discoursing on how they were able to fool inspectors with subterfuge and misdirection.

And, if you believe some of the alternate translations, Saddam’s admission that Iraq would never use such chemical or biological attacks on the US (a conclusion favored by ABC and Newsweek), actually supports the Bush administration’s fears—and our primary reason for invading Iraq: that the greatest danger posed by Iraq was Saddam’s willingness to farm these weapons out to terrorist groups for use, removing Iraq’s state fingerprints.

Listening to the tapes, you are left with one of two choices: you either believe Saddam was a self-important (though largely internationally impotent) iron-fisted ruler who posed no threat to the US, for all his bluster to the contrary; or else you believe him to be precisely the man he’s always been: a murderous tyrant who would use whatever means at his disposal—including alliances of convenience—to attack the US and its interests.

eleven unfashionable thoughts

Andrew Keen:

History is littered with Great Seductions. Every couple of hundred years, there is a particularly virulent Great Seduction, a utopian ideology which promises, with catastrophic consequences, to build heaven-on-earth. The last truly Great Seduction was communism which, fuelled by the seductive promises of an international brotherhood of intellectual Casanovas, resulted in widespread political destruction, economic misery and cultural carnage.

The grander the promises, the greater the seduction. So what is the next Great Seduction? What is the next all-encompassing dream knitting together lavish promises about politics, community, culture and media? What next single truth promises to deliver heaven-on-earth to its followers?

The next Great Seduction is digital utopianism. Think of it as the Silicon Valley version of communism. Its outline can now be glimpsed in the fantasies now being peddled by utopians in a revolution that Silicon Valley insiders call “Web 2.0.” These digital idealists are seeking to revolutionize our media and culture through new technologies such as blogs, search engines, wikis and podcasts. For the digital utopians of Silicon Valley, new technology has become the vehicle to create social justice, free culture, democratize media, revitalize politics, confirm humanity and, last but not least, establish heaven-on-earth.

crushing dissent again

...by Democrats. From Powerline:

Brian Melendez is the chairman of the Minnesota Democratic Party. This past Thursday Melendez called a press conference and condemned the first of the two advertisements -- the one featuring the veterans -- as "un-American, untruthful and a lie."

The two advertisements can be viewed here. The first of the two ads is devoted to the Iraq war veterans; the second to the Gold Star Families, featuring Merrilee Carlson of St. Paul. Mrs. Carlson's son Michael was killed in Iraq last year; the Wall Street Journal published Michael's "credo" this past Memorial Day.

In Minnesota the mask has fallen from the Democratic Party. It has condemned the message of Lt. Col. Bob Stephenson and the other veterans supporting the mission in Iraq as "un-American." Yet it has gone beyond its outrageous condemnation of the ads. It has actually sought to suppress the message of the featured war veterans and Gold Star Families, emailing Party members and urging them to contact television stations demanding "the removal of the ads."

The Democratic Party has officially pronounced that Col. Stephenson and his ads are "un-American." That such a thing could happen is almost beyond belief -- a Marine officer with more than ten years of active duty labeled "un-American" for supporting America's foreign policy -- but it is nevertheless true. And attention must be paid.

I watched the ads, and the only controversial statement is that "our enemy in Iraq is Al Qaida, the same terrorists who killed 3000 Americans on 9/11..."

Yes, we are fighting Al Qaida in Iraq, but we are also fighting Baathist remnants. Liberals go nuts when anyone remotely suggests a link between Saddam and 9/11. They have a point, but a small one.

They cry censorship with Linda Ronstadt gets booed off stage (by paying customers) for making anti-Bush comments during a concert, but think nothing about overtly trying to supress a political ad that contradicts them.

back to the future in russia

President Vladimir Putin urged the government Friday to speed up the creation of a state-supported venture capital fund to spur investment in innovative technologies.

"Venture capital funds have to be created now" without being put on the back burner, Putin told Economic Trade and Development Minister German Gref during their meeting at the Kremlin.

The idea of a fund to support the development of start-up technology firms was first floated by Putin during his meeting with IT scientists and businessmen in Nizhny Novgorod on Thursday and appears to be part of the government's strategy to diversify the economy and redirect development away from natural resources production toward processing and high technology.

Government venture capital is a contradiction in terms. The free market calculates risk/reward differently (efficiently) than any government created entitity. In Russia, with its legacy of central economic planning, its hard to see this working.

You may also remember that Bill Clinton and Al Gore, freshly in office, had big ideas about building teams of smart people to spotlight technologies to build the "information superhighway." That is, they were going to invest tax dollars (your money) in technologies they deemed promising.

But while Clinton-Gore were still yapping about all this, thousands of small startups funded by venture capitalists investing their own funds, built the commercial Internet we all enjoy today. All in a matter of five years.

The dotcom boom had its dry holes, and its investment bubble, but a tremendous transformation took place. And government had nothing to do with it.

Putin would do well to read The Wisdom of Crowds.

career death?

Actor Gary Busey conked his head hard in a motorcycle accident some years back. Maybe that explains his career choices. It's one thing to make anti-American films in Hollywood -- that gets you tagged as courageous, acting truth to power and all that.

But making an anti-American film for Muslim Turkey in which you play a Jewish doctor who harvests vital organs from Iraqis to send to Israel? Can't be good for the career.

German blogger David's Medienkritik looks at this in some detail.

Abu Ghraib is Back

for another round of condemnation. Medienkritik notes Der Spiegel's coverage:

Since when has America advocated torture as a means of promoting freedom? When someone is tortured or abused in a German jail in violation of established standards, does that mean the German government is torturing in the name of democracy as well? When illegal immigrants suffocate or commit suicide in German custody is that also in the name of democracy? It is as if the United States had never addressed the issue. It is as if the McCain bill torture ban had never been passed by Congress and signed by the President.

This is a dangerously cynical equation of two concepts. Particularly in a Europe where the general public is already so jaded that many no longer believe in the concept of freedom. Why? Because instead of reporting on the systematic violation of human rights in nations like North Korea and Iran the German media finds it necessary to exploit two year old photos of Abu Ghraib for profit (again and again). Never mind that Saddam's Abu Ghraib was a thousand times worse or that hundreds of thousands are starving to death in Kim Jong Il's gulags. There is no need for context in the world of asymmetric journalism.

Germany's Disgrace: Standing By While Dictators Murder Millions

Germany opposed toppling Saddam and his regime of mass graves. It was not Germany or the UN but the United States that ended the killing in the Balkans. And while SPIEGEL lectures us on "America's Disgrace," the German government is out actively promoting business ties and trade fairs with the Sudanese government as the slaughter in Darfur continues.

Ex-Chancellor Schroeder favored lifting the EU arms embargo on China, perhaps the world's most prolific violator of human rights. German efforts to stop Iran's nuclear ambitions have proven to be more of the same impotent diplomatic dupery that too many Europeans support at all costs. In the meantime the Iranians have taken advantage of the stalling to advance their insane ambitions to destroy Israel and threaten the world.

sunday february 19, 2006

silly city by the bay

Lay down your arms, Uncle Sam:

Supervisor Gerardo Sandoval was invited on Fox News on Tuesday to discuss locating warships on San Francisco’s waterfront, but he ended up dropping a major bomb with the news channel’s conservative audience when he made the following statement: The United States should not have a military.

Sandoval’s declaration, which came before a national audience on the popular Hannity and Colmes news program, drew a flood of calls and e-mails — some even threatening violence — to his City Hall office. It also provoked surprise and bemusement among Sandoval’s Board of Supervisors colleagues, who have been caught up in their own fair share of verbal snafus.

The statement came after Sean Hannity and Alan Colmes grilled Sandoval for voting against stationing the USS Iowa on San Francisco Bay. Sandoval, who sided with the majority of his fellow supervisors, said he felt it was inappropriate to put a 10-story symbol of war on the Bay. But then, after saying he supported the battle against Germany and Japan during World War II, Sandoval was asked whether the United States should have a military.

His response: “I don’t think we should have a military. Absolutely.”

steyn is fine

The third jolly event of the week was those other excitable fellows -- the Big Media White House reporters -- jumping up and down shouting "Death to Dick Cheney!" NBC's David Gregory, the George Clooney of the press corps, was yelling truth to power about why the Elmer-Fudd-in-gun-rampage story was released to "a local Corpus Christi newspaper, not the White House press corps at large.'' I know how he feels. I remember, like, four or five years ago -- early September, maybe second week -- there was this building collapse in New York and I had to learn about it from the TV because this notoriously secretive paranoid administration couldn't even e-mail me a timely press release. For an NBC guy discovering that some hicksville nowhere-burg one-stop-light feed-price sheet got tipped off before he did is like a dowager duchess turning up at the royal banquet to discover the scullery maid's been seated next to the queen.

So anyway David Gregory's going bananas and yelling "I will yell!" and "Don't be a jerk!" at the White House press secretary, and there's more smoke coming out of his ears than from Ronald McDonald in Lahore, and I'm thinking, you know, maybe Karl's latest range of Rovebots that he planted in American media corporations are just a wee bit too parodically self-absorbed to be plausible. And then this lady pipes up and asks, "Would this be much more serious if the man had died?"

Well, maybe. And maybe it would be even ever so much more serious still if, after peppering him with birdshot, Cheney had dragged him into a safe house in the Sunni Triangle and decapitated him with a rusty scimitar while shouting "Allahu Ahkbar!" and then sold the video to al-Jazeera.

Fortunately, the Washington Post had that wise old bird David Ignatius to put it in the proper historical context: "This incident," he mused, "reminds me a bit of Sen. Edward Kennedy's delay in informing Massachusetts authorities about his role in the fatal automobile accident at Chappaquiddick in 1969."

Hmm. Let's see. On the one hand, the guy leaves the gal at the bottom of the river struggling for breath pressed up against the window in some small air pocket while he pulls himself out of the briny, staggers home, sleeps it off and saunters in to inform the cops the following day that, oh yeah, there was some broad down there. And, on the other hand, the guy calls 911, has the other fellow taken to the hospital, lets the sheriff know promptly but neglects to fax David Gregory's make-up girl!

winning the drug war?

I believe the "war on drugs" is a stupid public policy that creates criminal franchises and doesn't prevent drug use. If you can buy heroin inside a federal prison, and you can so I'm told, then who's kidding whom?

In the interest of equal time, here is Jonathan Last reporting that we're winning the war on drugs.

JB

bully for you

Dr. Helen:

...in Denmark, Muslims make up only 5% of the population but receive 40% of welfare outlays. Many of these immigrants are told by their leaders that Muslim law gives them the right to "cheat and lie in the countries that harbor them." They are told to view the benefits they receive as jizya--the tributes that "the infidel natives of Muslim-occupied countries are obliged to pay to Muslims in order to preserve their lives."

And the welfare offices in Denmark can be the setting for violence--termed "culture clashes" by Danish journalists. "Some clients lay waste to social security offices and hit social workers--not out of frustration but because they've learned that bullying gets them what they want.

The Danish government is not repressive; welfare workers tend to be sympathetic and eager to help. Many immigrants perceive this as weakness, and exploit it, 'tyrannizing' the social workers." The Danish solution? More PC behavior--get translators to translate not only between languages but between cultures. Yeah, that will work.

jew launches anti-semitic cartoon contest

An Israeli cartoonist has launched an "anti-Semitic cartoon contest" to poke fun at fellow Jews in response to furore among Muslims over the publication of caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad.

Cartoonist Amitai Sandy said he was inspired by violent Muslim protests and the launching of a Holocaust cartoon competition by an Iranian daily that said it wanted to test the boundaries of free speech espoused by Western countries.

"We thought it would be a much braver thing to do to publish cartoons about ourselves, rather than our adversaries," Sandy told Reuters. "We want to fight fire with humour."

Here's a link to the contest site.

iraq wants to join nato

From Iraq the Model:

The senior advisor in the Iraqi defense ministry Mohammed al-Askari told the press today that the ministry is looking forward to seeing Iraq become a member of the NATO and that the minister Sa'doun al-Dulaimi, the chief of staff and the higher commanders are planning to propose this plan to the new government once it's seated.

Al-Askari told al-Hurra TV tonight that the chief commanders in the ministry had been discussing this subject with great interest for a long time and that:

If al-Dulaimi gets a second term he will be working hard to convince the parliament about the necessity of joining the NATO as this falls in Iraq's strategic interests….the recent changes in the Middle East region and Iran's intentions to pursue nuclear weapons is encouraging us to move in this direction.

We have got to think of a suitable deterring capability to protect Iraq from aggressions and we think being part of the NATO will provide Iraq with the best protection it can get because the NATO represents the base for peace and security in the world.

different leno, and this is no joke

Jill Stewart:

The Sacramento Bee confirmed what many had feared: California has among the most lenient laws in the nation toward sexually violent predators, society's life-wreckers.

Gaping loopholes in California law let hard-core sex criminals committed to Atascadero State Hospital choose whether they want treatment. Almost none choose treatment, and after a breezy two-year stint, they are released from Atascadero - usually unmonitored, by lax courts.

As the Bee noted, the loophole is "precisely how 54 rapists and child molesters won release through the end of 2005 from their Atascadero commitments."

Last year, KCRA-TV (Channel 3) in Sacramento reported that one loophole, called the "opt-out" clause, granted 2,677 sex offenders "an exclusion" from being named on the attorney general's Web site. Legislators created the loophole, insisting that offenders found guilty of misdemeanors aren't that dangerous. The truth is, nobody knows how many of them are wily chronic offenders who sneak under the radar.

Last year, Assemblyman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, essentially argued that misdemeanor sex criminals just need jobs. As quoted by KCRA, Leno said, "If you deny them secure housing and deny them an opportunity to get on their feet and get a job and to be able to move forward for themselves and for their own children, they're more likely to reoffend, not less likely."

Good Lord. Sex crimes are not caused by economic troubles.

It was Leno, once again, who oversaw the demise last year of a bill to close the horrific Atascadero loopholes delineated by the Bee.

Senate Bill 864 by Sen. Charles Poochigian would have extended the two-year "civil commitment" at Atascadero to an "indeterminate" length. Democrats in the Senate found it too strict, but Poochigian worked out a compromise. SB 864, approved by the Senate unanimously, required that sexually violent predators spend seven years at Atascadero.

To the shock of many, the bill was killed by Mark Leno and his two equally ultraliberal colleagues, Los Angeles-area legislators Jackie Goldberg and Lloyd Levine, in the Assembly Public Safety Committee.

saturday february 18, 2006

get me one of these

Hands on computing.

Hat tip to Gerard van de Leun.

juggling like no other

An amazing performance from Chriss Bliss. You'll need Flash installed. And have your speakers turned on.

alec baldwin leaves no doubt

Mark Twain said, "It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt." Case in point is Alec's insight into the Cheney bird shot incident:

So, I suppose the question is…what kind of civil trial will we see, or not see, between Cheney and Whittington? Whittington is certainly no stranger to a court room and to civil litigation. Will Cheney pay him off, preemptively? Will they go to court? I would imagine if a guy with a few beers in him shoots you in the face on a hunting trip, how could you turn down that opportunity?

What would Cheney do about the whole secrecy thing then? I mean, this is the guy that sicced Enron on Gray Davis and the state of California to embarrass Davis, trigger the recall and then watched Arnold Schwarzenegger become governor of California. (To this day, perhaps, still the low point in American political life.) Then Cheney covered it up.

Cheney’s the guy who told Libby to out Valerie Plame. The rumor I heard is that someone yelled, “Look out! Shooter!” and Cheney thought he said Scooter and fired in that general direction.

Cheney is a terrorist. He terrorizes our enemies abroad and innocent citizens here at home indiscriminately. Who ever thought Harry Whittington would be the answer to America’s prayers. Finally, someone who might get that lying, thieving Cheney into a courtroom to answer some direct questions.

"multiculturism of the streets"

Joe Kotkin writes about how America assimilates diverse cultures, and why this matters.

The best way to see this ongoing process is by checking out the streets of Houston, Los Angeles or New York—the great immigrant portals of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Among the people working there, concepts such as “ethnic solidarity”, “people of color” or “cultural community” generally count for less than basic principles such as “Does this sell?”, “What’s my market?”, and ultimately, “How do I fit in?”

Of course, for many immigrants their own ethnic group provides the ideal starting point for integration into America. Immigrants have always tended to cluster together, service each other and find unique economic niches. They have done so not mainly for reasons of ideology or ethno-political solidarity, however, but simply because it has provided the most obvious and immediate means of making a living.

In the 20th-century American city, this pattern was manifest in ethnic enclaves—Jewish, Chinese, Polish, Greek, Italian—that were in many ways self-sufficient. Immigrant businessmen thrived by providing groceries, insurance, banking and mortuary services to their compatriots. Before long, each group carved out its own economic niche—Jews in the garment industry, Chinese laundries, Greeks diners, Italians greengrocers and so on—which could be marketed to the rest of the society. To some extent, these specializations persisted over generations, and some still exist today. Some “ethnic” businesses, too, expanded well beyond their ethnic niches—A. P. Giannini’s Bank of America and Jewish-owned department stores such as Bloomingdale’s in New York or Gottschalks in California’s Central Valley are classic examples.

rich benefits if you live

The Army released captured Al Qaida documents, which include its "mission statement," health benefits and vacation policy, among other tidbits. Besides chrisitians and jews, they don't like Buddhists much either:

The waiting heroes will be found in the staunch Taliban movement… why not? It did show legendary heroism in protecting Osama bin Laden and in destroying the Buddha idols (this heroism didn’t cost America anything but some of Mr. Buddha’s stones)

p.j. o'rourke

I'd also like to thank the angry mobs for giving the Europeans a lesson in free speech. Europeans are unclear on the concept. It's against the law in Germany to deny the Holocaust. (A little late, I'd say.) Many European countries have laws against "hate speech" that don't seem too different in intent from what Muslim protesters want to do to Danish cartoonists--although the penalty phase of the trial probably would be less dramatic in Europe. Europeans suppose free speech is harmless--nattering in cafés. Americans know that the right to self-expression, like the right to bear arms, is dangerous. That's why we keep a firm grip on those rights. In America the worst kind of people can shoot their mouths off. And they can get shot.

Not shooting the worst kind of people is, of course, the cornerstone of European foreign policy. Now we see the fruits of this nuanced and sophisticated diplomacy all over the Muslim world. I haven't been so satisfied by a policy outcome since half the cars in France were set on fire last year. But if the past is anything to go by, the Europeans will learn nothing from any of this. (Although the French are these days, maybe, less inclined to ridicule the American obsession with finding a good parking place.)

The Europeans are the perfect target. They could have helped bring freedom, democracy, and law to the Muslim world, but they'd rather be smartasses. Meanwhile, my family and I will be participating in a little religious extremism ourselves this weekend--or so going to church is regarded by many Europeans. And after Mass we won't be eating Danishes. We'll be having "Prophet Pastries."

Charles Krauthammer

"[The Cheney shooting] was hardly an affair of state. And it was hardly going to be kept secret. Arrogance? The media laying these charges are the same media that just last week unilaterally decided that the public's right to know did not extend to seeing cartoons that had aroused half the world, burned a small part of it and deeply affected the American national interest.

Having arrogated to themselves the judgment of what a free people should be allowed to see regarding an issue that is literally burning, they then go ballistic over a few hours' delay in revealing an accident with only the most trivial connection to the nation's interest or purpose. Cheney got a judgment call wrong, for reasons that are entirely comprehensible. The disproportionate, at times hysterical, response to that error is far less comprehensible."

friday february 17, 2006

sacrilege as comic fodder

Posters for Mohammed sitcoms.

sound and fury

It's was only a week ago that NPR provided gavel-to-gavel coverage of the Senate Intelligence committee hearings into the NSA wiretaps. You'd think it was the McCarthy hearings or something monumental. But it was all posturing.

The Senate Intelligence Committee decided today not to investigate President Bush's domestic surveillance program, at least for the time being.

"I believe that such an investigation is currently unwarranted and would be detrimental to this highly classified program," Senator Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas and chairman of the panel, said this afternoon following a closed session.

So, after making political hay, they got together and realized what Bush did was a) legal and b) important for the security of the country. But they already knew that. Thus, to alter one word of the Bard's:

Schumer's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale

EMAIL US:

Site by Bassworks Multimedia