thursday, november 30 2006
but who's counting?
Partial cast from HBO's "The Wire" the best drama on TV.
Ethnic minorities were not cast in about 80 percent of first-, second- and third-billed leading roles in Hollywood films last year, according to a study released Wednesday.
This level of representation of Latino, black, Asian-American and American Indian actors is based on a review of the 171 commercially released films in 2005 that reported a gross of at least $1 million.
In addition, the first-time study from the UCLA School of Law and the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center showed that 69 percent of all casting notices for three months this summer specifically asked for white actors. Roles advertised for a specific ethnicity other than whites ranged from 0.5 percent to 8 percent of the total, it found.
Will Smith. Jamie Fox. Denzel Washington. Cuba Gooding Jr. Samuel L. Jackson. Morgan Freeman. Ice Cube. Laurence Fishburne. Chris Rock. The list goes on.
will on webb
Wednesday's Post reported that at a White House reception for newly elected members of Congress, Webb "tried to avoid President Bush," refusing to pass through the reception line or have his picture taken with the president. When Bush asked Webb, whose son is a Marine in Iraq, "How's your boy?" Webb replied, "I'd like to get them [sic] out of Iraq." When the president again asked "How's your boy?" Webb replied, "That's between me and my boy." Webb told The Post:
"I'm not particularly interested in having a picture of me and George W. Bush on my wall. No offense to the institution of the presidency, and I'm certainly looking forward to working with him and his administration. [But] leaders do some symbolic things to try to convey who they are and what the message is."
Webb certainly has conveyed what he is: a boor. Never mind the patent disrespect for the presidency. Webb's more gross offense was calculated rudeness toward another human being -- one who, disregarding many hard things Webb had said about him during the campaign, asked a civil and caring question, as one parent to another. When -- if ever -- Webb grows weary of admiring his new grandeur as a "leader" who carefully calibrates the "symbolic things" he does to convey messages, he might consider this: In a republic, people decline to be led by leaders who are insufferably full of themselves.
Even before his studied truculence in response to the president's hospitality, Webb was going out of his way to make waves. A week after the election, he published a column in the Wall Street Journal that began this way:
"The most important -- and unfortunately the least debated -- issue in politics today is our society's steady drift toward a class-based system, the likes of which we have not seen since the 19th century. America's top tier has grown infinitely richer and more removed over the past 25 years. It is not unfair to say that they are literally living in a different country."
Well.
In his novels and his political commentary, Webb has been a writer of genuine distinction, using language with care and precision. But just days after winning an election, he was turning out slapdash prose that would be rejected by a reasonably demanding high school teacher.
Never mind Webb's careless and absurd assertion that the nation's incessantly discussed wealth gap is "the least debated" issue in American politics.
Fascinating how Democrats, who complain about Bush being a "divider," exhibit such bad manners?
inside the crumbling kremlin
Notes from the final days of the Soviet Union, including memos between Gorbachov and his top men.
kramer vs. kramer?
Craig Ferguson had the best analysis on his own show immediately following Letterman, suggesting that the only way Richards could make amends was to sue himself in a court case that could be called “Kramer vs. Kramer.”
Serious suggestions after that have been only marginally less ridiculous - ranging from a fine of $500,000 for each time Roberts used the N-word, to a finger-wagging essay in this week’s Time, “The Kramer in All of Us,” advising that “maybe the audience needs to examine itself too.”
Maybe, and maybe not.
wednesday, november 29 2006
kill whitey!
But then who'd buy most of the rap music, buy NBA tickets and keep Oprah in her billions?
mob rule on campus
America's college campuses, once thought to be bastions of free speech, have become increasingly intolerant toward the practice. Visiting speakers whose views do not conform to the prevailing left-leaning political mind-set on most campuses are at particular risk of having their free speech rights infringed upon.
While academia has its own crimes to atone for, it's the students who have become the bullies as of late. A disturbing number seem to feel that theirs is an inviolate world to which no one of differing opinion need apply. As a result, everything from pie throwing to disrupting speeches to attacks on speakers has become commonplace.
Conservative speakers have long been the targets of such illiberal treatment. The violent reception given to Jim Gilchrist, founder of the Minuteman Project, an anti-illegal immigration group, at Columbia University in October is a recent example. Gilchrist had been invited to speak by the Columbia University College Republicans, but was prevented from doing so by an unruly mob of students. What could have been mere heckling descended into yelling, screaming, kicking and punching, culminating in the rushing of the stage and Gilchrist being shuttled off by security.
Ironicly Berkeley launched the free speech movement in 1964. George Orwell satirized this tendency in the Left in Animal Farm. I guess some free speech is more equal than others.
jeers, tears for english al jazeera
In an outbreak of common sense, this offshoot of the infamous channel best known as a video jukebox for Osama bin Laden and other Arab terrorist fanatics has so far been rejected by every major American cable-TV operator.
And that, that has the liberal elites outraged, and filled with contempt for the crazy cable companies for somehow denying the American public more enemy propaganda.
In mid-November, the subject came up on the TV talk show “Inside Washington,” and the show’s liberal pundits were unanimous that America’s cable companies should put on the al-Qaeda mouthpieces. Washington Post columnist Colbert King insisted “I’d put them on the air,” and thought the ban was “crazy.”
Mark Shields declared it was a test of our belief in the “full, free flow of ideas. Let it out there.” NPR reporter Nina Totenberg complained that cable companies carry all kinds of shopping channels, “every kind of deviant sex on the face of the earth,” and every old cop show. Refusing a channel for al-Jazeera? “That’s just crazy.”
thank you, president bush
A nice letter from a Manhattan attorney.
imams crying foul may have been provocateurs
The passengers and flight crew said the imams prayed loudly before boarding; switched seating assignments to a configuration used by terrorists in previous incidents; asked for seat-belt extensions, which could be used as weapons; and shouted hostile slogans about al Qaeda and the war in Iraq.
Flight attendants said three of the six men, who did not appear to be overweight, asked for the seat-belt extensions, which include heavy metal buckles, and then threw them to the floor under their seats.
Flight attendants said they were concerned that the way the imams took seats that were not assigned to them – two seats in the front row of first class, exit seats in the middle of the plane and two seats in the rear – resembled the pattern used by September 11 hijackers, giving them control of the exits.
can't we all just get along?
A torturous debate left the Los Angeles City Council sharply divided by race Tuesday as members weighed whether to restore a settlement offered to a black firefighter whose dinner had been laced with dog food.
For the first time, the council heard directly from Tennie Pierce, the target of the incident, who had filed a discrimination case against the city.
At their lawyer's recommendation, council members initially voted to pay $2.7 million to keep it from going to trial. But last week — amid a storm of public reaction — Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa vetoed the action, setting the stage for Tuesday's council session.
"Whatever anyone says about me, I've always tried to do what's right," said Pierce, holding back tears as his wife sat nearby. "This is wrong. If four black firemen did it to a white fireman, I would stand up [with] the white fireman and say it was wrong."
As we noted before, to Tennie doing right included participating in pranks and hazing along with the rest of them. (Check out the links to the photos if you haven't already)
The "oy vey, I'm gay" constitutes a two-fer. Why are no gay Jews weeping before the council, demanding $2.7 million for hurt feelings?
Such wheedling must work up a powerful appetite. May we suggest:
Pasta de Alpo
1 can Alpo, any flavor
1/2 pound ground beef
1/4 cup crocodile tears
2 cloves garlic
1/2 cup minced onions
1 can Italian tomatoes
Cook it all up, serve on pasta of your choice, along with a glass of whine.
tuesday, november 28 2006
eurabia as seen from the inside
I can assure you that “Eurabia” is real enough. We have received threats from extremist muslim, we have been harassed by the authorities. I was present when earlier this year a group of scholars met in The Hague to discuss Eurabia. I saw how they had to do so anonymously, under assumed names and under police protection.
Eurabia is not a myth. Eurabia is all too real.
We see how the inner cities and suburbs in various European countries are degenerating into “no go” areas, where people get killed, where the police no longer venture and where radical Muslims hold sway. The French authorities have published a list of 751 “sensitive urban areas,” which are no longer under the control of the authorities and which have become, as Daniel Pipes remarked, the “Dar al-Islam, the place where Muslims rule.” Almost 5 million people, or 8% of the French population, live in these “sensitive urban areas.” But, apparently, there is hope, because here is Ralph Peters in The New York Post, offering to have the U.S. intervene and evacuate the inhabitants to America!
Americans do not realize how dramatic the situation is in Europe today. The Europeans are running. Instead of fighting they are leaving. They are leaving the cities for the countryside. In my home town of Antwerp 5,000 immigrants move in every year while 4,000 Antwerpians move out. Many Dutch are leaving their highly urbanized country for places such as rural Norway. Some are leaving Europe altogether.
The Netherlands and Germany have more emigrants than immigrants today, and in other countries, such as Belgium, Britain and Sweden the number of emigrants is rising. These people are not driven by hatred, they are driven by despair and the hope for a better future which they realize their Eurabian home countries are no longer able to provide.
up in flames
Michael Medved writes about a man who doused himself with gasoline and set himself afire to protest the Iraq war.
...no one can explain how a decision to burn yourself to death on a freeway off-ramp will help to rescue the “innocent civilians” Ritscher mentioned in his suicide note. Given the fact that nearly all of those unarmed bystanders have been killed by insurgents or militias in Iraq, and that the U.S. military devotes itself for the most part to protecting rather than murdering civilians, it remains unclear how even the immediate withdrawal of our forces would spare innocent lives. It’s even more perplexing to think that sane individuals could believe that a showy suicide would influence U.S. policy makers or sway public opinion in any way. Doesn’t the very nature of Ristcher’s unspeakably painful death suggest a mental derangement that’s hard to blame of George W. Bush and his policies?
Nevertheless, the dead man’s admirers cite his courage, his conviction, his idealism--- typifying the liberal tendency to judge intentions rather than results. To them, it doesn’t matter that his suicide achieved nothing. What counts is his sincerity, his fervent desire to advance the cause of peace.
look who's talking
It is something one half of the population has long suspected - and the other half always vocally denied. Women really do talk more than men.
In fact, women talk almost three times as much as men, with the average woman chalking up 20,000 words in a day - 13,000 more than the average man.
Women also speak more quickly, devote more brainpower to chit-chat - and actually get a buzz out of hearing their own voices, a new book suggests.
The book - written by a female psychiatrist - says that inherent differences between the male and female brain explain why women are naturally more talkative than men.
Inherent differences? String her up for apostasy. Larry Summers was run out of Harvard for suggesting that very notion.
magical realism and the mideast
A great post, difficult to excerpt, but here's a taste:
It is all too easy to see the similarities between the fictions penned by Garcia-Marquez, the surreal nature of negotiating with terrorists such as Pablo Escobar, and the presumptions of American political elites who believe that by engaging Iran and Syria -- thereby admitting their involvement in Iraq's chaos -- that such chaos might be ended on terms favorable to either the US or Iraq. Such dreams are the stuff of our own variety of magical realism, but rather than resulting in pleasant narrative escapes, they will result in the irrelevance of the United States, whether one means its military power, its national interests, or its once-admired revolutionary Democratic ideals.
Negotiating with Iran and Syria, whilst they hold positions of strength, is likely to be only the first of the magically realist positions that the US political class breathlessly advocates. There will be more, and the ones to follow will be even sillier. In one episode in One Hundred Years of Solitude, the entire village of Macondo succumbs to an incurable insomnia, "the most fearsome part of which," was not "the impossibility of sleeping, for the body did not feel any fatigue at all, but its inexorable evolution toward a more critical manifestation: a loss of memory."
complaints sung by a choir
Finns are known as a dour lot. Two Finnish artists are doing the lemons into lemonade thing by forming the Complaints Choir of Helsinki.
The couple invited people in various international cities to submit their complaints, which were then set to churchly choir music under the direction of a local choral director. So far there have been complaints choirs in Hamburg, St. Petersburg, Helsinki, and Birmingham, England — with videos for the latter two available online.
global warming goes to supreme court
This should be interesting.
moNday, november 27 2006
affordable democrats
Before the election, Nancy Pelosi put out a blathering pamphlet called "A New Direction for America." It was full of promises to make things more affordable -- including "lower gas prices" (thanks to "tough laws to prevent price gouging"), and "affordable access to health insurance," and "affordable college," and "affordable broadband access."
Searching the paradoxical combination "affordable Democrats" brings up nearly 1.4 million hits. One of our major political parties seems to have been having a giant garage sale with other people's property.
Everybody loves a bargain, so profligate promises of cheap gasoline, health insurance, student loans and fast Internet hook-ups were bound to appeal to everyone who relies on telephone marketing and Internet spam to find a bargain. But why stop there? Why don't Democratic politicians promise to make many more things affordable?
My wife just paid $3 for a single artichoke. Can't congressional Democrats do something about that? Can't they make artichokes affordable for the middle class? And why not use their "tough laws to prevent price gouging" to slash the outrageous price of lifesaving red wine? Doesn't the middle class deserve bargain Barolo and budget Bordeaux?
Read it all.
It's interesting that "affordable college" to Democrats means cutting interest rates on college loans, which in turn means that Joe Lunch Bucket, with no children in college, would be subsidizing others' education.
Furthermore, there are plenty of indications that federal subsidies lead to higher tuition -- schools raise fees as students' ability to pay rises.
the "eurabia myth"
Ralph Peters argues that Europe will turn genocidal before it lets itself become Islamized. A bleak prospect to be sure, but with native Europeans aging, when will this take place and at whose wrinkled hand?
Mark Steyn's premise seems more likely. UPDATE: Steyn answerss Peters.
Had he read America Alone, for example, he would know that I do, indeed, foresee a revival of Fascism in Europe. He concludes: “All predictions of Europe going gently into that good night are surreal.” Which of us predicted anything about “going gently”? As I write on page 105 of my book: “It’s true that there are many European populations reluctant to go happily into the long Eurabian night.”
What I point out, though, is that, even if you’re hot for a new Holocaust, demography tells. There are no Hitlers to hand. When Mr Peters cites the success of Jean Marie Le Pen’s National Front, he overlooks not only Le Pen’s recent overtures to Muslims but also the fact that M Le Pen is pushing 80.
As a general rule, when 600 octogenarians are up against 200 teenagers, bet on the teens. In five or ten years’ time, who precisely is going to organize mass deportations from French cities in which the native/Muslim youth-population ratio is already – right now - 55/45?
you don't have to join this discussion
Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, argues there is no such thing as free will. So far 501 posters have replied, and it's still not settled.
family tree with no branches
Mark Steyn writes about the 64-year old grandma suicide bomber:
Fatma An-Najar, a 64-year-old grandmother who had a livelier Thanksgiving than most grandmas. She marked the occasion by self-detonating in the town of Jebaliya, and, although all she had to show for splattering body parts over the neighborhood were three "lightly wounded" Israeli soldiers, she will have an honored place in the pantheon of Palestinian heroes...
An-Najar gave birth to her first child at the age of 12. She had eight others. She had 41 grandchildren. Keep that family tree in mind. By contrast, in Spain, a 64-year old woman will have maybe one grandchild. That's four grandparents, one grandchild: a family tree with no branches.
Then he cites an interview with the new Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, Katharine Jefferts Schori. She is asked how many members are in her church.
"About 2.2 million," replied the presiding bishop. "It used to be larger percentage-wise, but Episcopalians tend to be better educated and tend to reproduce at lower rates than other denominations."
This was a bit of a jaw-dropper even for a New York Times hackette, so, with vague memories of God saying something about going forth and multiplying floating around the back of her head, a bewildered Deborah Solomon said: "Episcopalians aren't interested in replenishing their ranks by having children?"
"No," agreed Bishop Kate. "It's probably the opposite. We encourage people to pay attention to the stewardship of the earth and not use more than their portion."
...
Here's the question for Bishop Kate: If Fatma An-Najar has 41 grandchildren and a responsible "better educated" Episcopalian has one or two, into whose hands are we delivering "the stewardship of the earth"? If your crowd isn't around in any numbers, how much influence can they have in shaping the future?
less sun, more flu?
Could a vitamin D deficiency explain flu season?
sUNday, november 26 2006
fat studies
Read the comments, too. It will be interesting to see whether the left adopts chubs as a victim group -- after all, fat people do consume excess resources.
all hail the corporatocracy!
Whenever the United States is accused of being an imperialistic nation, it makes we wonder whether I missed something in geography class. Namely, where are our colonies, our conquered lands?
Japan? Nope, turned it over after we civilized it. Germany? Ditto. Etc.
Seems to me, that as superpowers go, we've behaved nicely. Not perfect, but very nice.
Then one day a reader of this blog -- and no doubt a reader of Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn -- informed me that America wasn't imperialistic like that. No, we are imperialistic via our capitalist corporations. He kept referring to the "corporatocracy" that rules all.
You find this notion everywhere. My family watches the guilty-pleasure show Prison Break on Fox. The metaplot involves an evil conspiracy "of business interests" that controls the federal government.
Hollywood offers a living to writers, directors and performers who couldn't make a profit on a lemonade stand if their lives depended on it. Said folks regularly present the world of business as an evil enterprise. Alas, many soft heads around the world absorb their nonsense as fact.
Recently, former President George H. W. Bush was speaking in Abu Dhabi when he was taken aback by the hostility toward his son.
"We do not respect your son. We do not respect what he's doing all over the world," a woman in the audience bluntly told Bush after his speech.
Bush, 82, appeared stunned as others in the audience whooped and whistled in approval.
A college student told Bush his belief that U.S. wars were aimed at opening markets for American companies and said globalization was contrived for America's benefit at the expense of the rest of the world. Bush was having none of it.
"I think that's weird and it's nuts," Bush said. "To suggest that everything we do is because we're hungry for money, I think that's crazy. I think you need to go back to school."
At 82, Bush is far removed from college, so he can be forgiven for not understanding that these crazy ideas probably came from school. Anti-capitalist anti-Americanism comes standard at most institutions of higher learning. Heck, we even export it: witness Hugo Chavez brandishing Howard Zinn at the UN.
Returning to the college student's assertion, if indeed our wars are aimed to "open markets for US companies and to benefit America" at others' expense, how are we doing?
A quick survey of my material goods turned up this:
Car: Honda, from Japan
Car: Dodge Caravan (once a US automaker, now owned by Germans)
Computer monitors: Samsung, South Korea
Laptop: from Japan
iPod: Sold by Apple, made in Shanghai, China
Big screen TV: Mitsubishi from Japan
Cell Phone: Samsung, South Korea
Land phone: Panasonic, from Japan
Digital cameras: Canon, Japan
Computer printer: Epson, Japan
Stereo system: Japan
Clothing: Malaysia, Viet Nam, Mexico, China and on and on
Too much to mention: stuff from China (when my daughter was 8, she was reading a product label and asked, "How come everything's made in China?")
Food: we have lots of imported goodies from Europe, S. America and Asia. Much of it was purchased at Trader Joes, a retailer founded in Pasadena and now owned by Germans.
DVDs: France, Italy, Iran, China, Bhutan etc.
Water: the water utility in Thousand Oaks, CA is owned by Germans
Figuring heavily in that list are nations we waged wars against, several of which we defeated. If we fight wars to impose our products, why are we buying their stuff? Why are foreigners buying our companies?
The other puzzling thing about the corporatocracy is how it determines which members profit and which ones lose. Did they hold a secret convention where it was decided that Wal-Mart would eclipse Sears as the world's largest retailer? Did Detroit's Big Three volunteer to become shadows of themselves?
To hear liberals talk about corporations you'd think they achieved their influence with tanks and bombs instead of manufacturing and advertising stuff people want to buy. You'd also think that corporations are malevolent, exploitive entities rather than enterprises that most Americans collect their paychecks from and own a piece of (as well as investors the world over).
America spends a fortune on a military trying to expand and preserve freedom around the world. When we succeed, we trade with those free peoples. Sometimes, we even export our jobs to them.
Shame on us.
Jim Bass
your odds of dying
Well, I'd say 100%. But of what? Chart here.
rangel's drafty notions
Tigerhawk lifts a long post from Stratfor about bringing back conscription.
VENEZULEANS SMELL STENCH OF SULFUR
...and realize it's Hugo. Also, PubliusPundit has commentary.
experts agree: the minimum wage is a bad idea
Well, I looked into it a little, and it pains me to discover that brilliant economists tend to think alike, from conservative Milton Friedman to liberal Paul Samuelson to everyone's economist Alan Greenspan:
Friedman: "The high rate of unemployment among teenagers, and especially black teenagers, is both a scandal and a serious source of social unrest. Yet it is largely a result of minimum wage laws."
Samuelson: “What good does it do a black youth to know that an employer must pay him $2 an hour if the fact that he must be paid that amount is what keeps him from getting a job?”
Greenspan: "With respect to the minimum wage, the reason I object to the minimum wage is I think it destroys jobs. And I think the evidence on that, in my judgment, is overwhelming."
saturday, november 25 2006
how do you say soprano in russian?
As the deadliest poison known to man was revealed to have killed Russian exile Alexander Litvinenko, the question last night was: How many more lives could it claim?
The 43-year-old former KGB officer was the victim of polonium 210, a radioactive element used as a trigger in nuclear weapons.
It is so powerful that a lethal dose can be passed on through the body in sweat or saliva.
So his widow Marina, 44, and ten-year-old son Anatole could have been contaminated just by kissing him as he fought for life in hospital. They are said to be at greatest risk.
But up to 100 other contacts will be tested among hospital staff, family members and restaurant workers who came into contact with him.
Detectives and scientists expressed open astonishment that such an elaborate and evil Cold War-style hit could happen Britain, describing the murder as ‘unprecedented’ and ‘mind-boggling’.
remembering communism: ten million starved in 1932
At a time when American intellectuals and entertainers were fawning over the ideals of communism's people power, Stalin was busy murdering his people .
Ukraine held solemn commemorations Saturday to mark the 73rd anniversary of a man-made Soviet-era famine that killed one-third of the country's population, a tragedy that Ukraine's president wants recognized as an act of genocide.
At the height of the 1932-33 famine, 33,000 people died of hunger every day, devastating entire villages. Cases of cannibalism were widespread as desperation deepened.
This was not tragedy, but mass murder. Josef Stalin intentionally cut off food to Ukraine as reprisal against the farmers who would not surrender their farms into collectives.
This was genocide on scale larger than the Nazi extermination of six million Jews. Instead of being put to death in gas chambers, the Ukranians were left to die a slow, agonizing death.
[Ukrainian leader] Yushchenko has asked parliament to recognize the famine as genocide, but some lawmakers have resisted, and Moscow has warned Kiev against using that term.
Touchy, touchy.
Russia argues that the orchestrated famine did not specifically target Ukrainians but also other peoples in the Soviet agricultural belt, including Russians and Kazakhs, and this month said the issue should not be "politicized."
In the annals of lame excuses, this ranks high. Stalin was targeting Ukrainians, but murdered a few others, so that means it wasn't genocide. Technicalities.
Let's see, maybe the Russians can blame it on a "forcefield of rage."
North Korea has reportedly starved two million of its own. When President Bush cited North Korea in his "axis of evil" speech, Madeline Albright et al thought him uncouth.
____________________________________________
Historical note: New York Times reporter Walter Duranty visited the Soviet Union at the time of the famine, but denied it happened and won the Pulitzer Prize. The New York Times still cites that Pulitzer as an accomplishment.
clint eastwood: stuck on stupid
Clint is back with another picture about the Pacific war, this time from the Japanese perspective.
"The great futility of war is explored in this picture," Eastwood says.
War is wasteful, tragic, destructive and worse. But it is often unavoidable.
Or maybe not.
When Hitler began his conquest of Europe, the civilized world could have decided that war was futile and surrendered.
friday, november 24 2006
losing clout
800,000 Lebanese demonstrate against Syria in 2005
Yesterday's LA Times headlined a story "Lebanon crisis reflects fading U.S. clout" that contrasted the optimism in Lebanon after the Cedar Revolution of spring 2005 with conditions there today, as Syria murders one oppostion leader after another, and the fallout from this summer's Hezbollah-Isreal war resonates.
The article's subtext was a subtle "we told ya so" dig at President Bush for having honored the call of the million people who flooded the streets of Beirut a year and half ago demanding a democracry free of Syrian influence. Bush is portrayed as an idealistic fool for believing democracy could make a difference in the middle east.
A now we're losing clout. Ho ho!
On March 4, 2005, FoxNews's Jennifer Griffin interviewed Lebanese journalist Gebran Tueni, who told her that Bush's vow, in his State of the Union address, to spread freedom in the middle east was a turning point for their movement to get Syria out of Lebanon.
Gebran Tueni: Huge impact. People were very happy when President Bush was reelected. Believe it or not. We had headline that day, which was on 8 columns, one word: Bush. Know why? Simply, because we think that this is the first time that an American president is speaking clearly about democracy and is serious about implementing democracy in the Middle East.
Really, the Lebanese were always cautious about American policy in the Middle East. The Lebanese always thought that the Americans bartered them with the Syrians. We are still cautious that one day or another, we’ll have a Syrian-American agreement, you know and Lebanon will pay the price. What helped a lot, I think, really that for the first time, maybe, we felt we are not going to pay the price alone. Because at the time, we were outspoken, but we were killed.
Gebran Tueni was assassinated eight months later by a car bomb, presumably by Syria. Listen to audio of the interview here.
Now we have foreign policy greybeards (realpolitikers) and most leading Democrats counseling Bush to "engage" Syria and Iran. By engage, they mean talk, negotiate, figure out a way to run home yet save face.
What a shame that would bring on our honor. What weakness that would signal to our enemies. What a depressing message that would send to billions of downtrodden people hopeful for a better life.
It's ironic that liberals, who decried the US for cozying up to friendly tyrants in the past (Saddam, Pinochet, the Shah etc.) are demanding we do just that now. And ironic that humanistic liberals are so quick to conclude that some people "just aren't ready for democracy."
Yesterday, the movie "Bobby" opened in American theaters. The idea of Bobby Kennedy makes liberals go mushy, makes them pine about "what might have been" had their idealistic hero not been murdered (by a Muslim, as it happens.)
But what of John F. Kennedy who declared:
Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty. This much we pledge—and more.
When JFK spoke those words, the enemy of freedom was a far greater foe. Today, Iran and Syria are barely functioning economically. Their major exports are terror, death and destabilization.
Why do we count ourselves too weak to defeat this evil? How can we sell out victims of oppression so quickly? How can anyone believe, moral cowardice notwithstanding, such a move will make America more secure?
If we are at a turning point in history, where western civilization must affirm its belief in itself, why are the media not asking of our allies, where are you? France has a long history in Lebanon. Where's the French clout?
Why can't Europe lift a finger to fight the evil in the world, to bolster our common clout?
JB
so close, so far
No, no, no….
The problems in Iraq, in the radical Middle East at large—with democratization, with nuclearization, with Islamism—are not, repeat not, a lack of dialogue with Syria and Iran.
We know what both rogue states wish and it is our exit from the Middle East and thus a free hand to undermine the newly established democracies of Lebanon and Iraq—in the manner that all autocracies must destroy their antitheses.
They both sponsor and harbor terrorists for a reason—to undermine anything Western: a Western-leaning Lebanese democracy, a Western-style democracy in Iraq, a Westernized Israel, or soldiers of the United States in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Syria, as we see once again with the killing of Pierre Gemayel, is practicing serial murdering in Lebanon. I was on the Hugh Hewitt show last night, and he was right to make the point that Syria is like the Nazi regime of the late 1930s that sent its agents into Eastern Europe and Austria to assassinate and undermine republican leaders, to pave the way for the ‘necessary’ and ‘welcome’ entrance of the order-bringing Wehrmacht into a ‘brother’ state.
Iran is a rogue nation that seeks bombs to use them against the region’s only viable democracy in Israel. Neither Damascus nor Teheran can tolerate a democratic Iraq—no more than the Soviet Union would have allowed the Baltic Republics to have pro-Western democracies or Nazi Germany wished to be a partner in peace with republican Czechoslovakia.
Yes, yes, we need perhaps to have a national “dialogue”, but not over talking to Iran and Syria—but instead whether we wish to continue to fight and win this war.
Tell us it ain’t so?
As I understood the President, whether in his ‘Axis of Evil’ speech or his ‘with us or against us’ construct, the United States is no longer seeking Clintonian short-term, stop-gap palliatives of cruise missiles and federal indictments. Instead we are at war with both terrorists in the field, and the regimes that sponsor, pay, and host them. In such an existential struggle, democracy is as destabilizing to them as jihadism is to us, and so we promote it whenever we can as the right and smart thing to do—especially given the hysterical hatred toward it voiced by bin Laden and Dr. Zawahiri.
And for all the conundrum, the war against the jihadists is still going well. Iran and Syria are striking out because they feel surrounded—democratic Turkey on one side, Israel on the other, with nearby democracies struggling to become established in Kurdistan, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Al Qaeda is being dismantled, and a Europe galvanizing against Islamic fascism. Even the impotent UN is beginning to stir against Iran and Syria. If we can stabilize Afghanistan and Iraq, we can bring enormous pressure on both these two rogue nations. So why give up now—which is what talking to these amoral governments constitutes, given our previous rhetoric and vow to quit the appeasement?
thanksgiving day, november 23 2006
for your amusement
Knowing your limitations is wise. Exceeding them is amusing for the rest of us. Long ago, William Shatner recorded a version of the Beatles's "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" that's been bouncing around the 'net for years.
Someone then took the audio track and created a video that's hilarious. Watch it here.
the wonder computer of the '80s
William Shatner commercial for the VIC 20.
the anti-dixie chick
just what we needed
people who taste words
For most of us, the boundaries between our bodily senses are clear-cut and rigid. But for a few rare individuals, the demarcation between vision and hearing, or between taste and touch, are less solid, with one bleeding into the other.
These people have a condition called "synesthesia," in which two or more of the senses are crossed. Some see colors when listening to music, while others associate tastes with shapes or words with colors.
A very small number of synesthetes can "taste" words.
The risk of indigestion for these folks must be staggering.
at least al gore didn't go this far
...failed Mexican presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador inaugurated himself “president” in a bid to be seen as Mexico’s legitimate elected president. He lost, of course, and this grandiose gesture is nothing more than his own personal fantasy.
He looks like Gilligan up there, in one of the dream sequences, declaring himself dictator. But Gilligan was a television comedy of course. AMLO really believes it.
castro convertible
Cuba’s immensely wealthy Castro family, which Forbes magazine pegs for just under a billion provable dollars, is beginning to look outward for asylum with their money. That’s why the Chilean press yesterday reported that Mrs. Castro, the second or third wife of the Cuban dictator, has just bought a parcel of land straddling the Chile-Argentina border.
That way, if something goes wrong on an extradition or truth commission subpoena, she can step over the boundary and remain on the estancia. It’s an amazingly shameless effort to launder out the ill-gotten Castro fortune into potential palaces of exile. In Cuba, the word is sinvergüenza.
George and Henry at Babalu have the whole story, including translations from the Chilean press and a lovely photo of Mrs. Castro in this first-rate post here.
Fidel worth $1,000,000,000? That's quite a gap between rich and poor.
wednesday, november 22 2006
you're unique -- just like everyone else
That's one of my favorite slogans from Despair Inc., the company that pioneered demotivation.
Does that poster of the cute kitten hanging by its claws with the headline, "Hang in there, baby!" make you want to retch? Then these people are for you. Their credo:
Psychology tells us that motivation- true, lasting motivation- can only come from within. Common sense tells us it can't be manufactured or productized. So how is it that a multi-billion dollar industry thrives through the sale of motivational commodities and services? Because, in our world of instant gratification, people desperately want to believe that there are simple solutions to complex problems. And when desperation has disposable income, market opportunities abound.
AT DESPAIR, INC., we believe motivational products create unrealistic expectations, raising hopes only to dash them. That's why we created our soul-crushingly depressing Demotivators® designs, so you can skip the delusions that motivational products induce and head straight for the disappointments that follow!
Check out their site for posters, and free demotivational videos.
that unfabulous baker boy
Former Secretary of State James Baker has been saying that, when it comes to diplomacy, you don't "restrict your conversations to your friends"--shorthand for the view that the U.S. should engage Syria and Iran to find solutions in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East. But yesterday's murder of Lebanese Minister Pierre Gemayel might remind even Mr. Baker and his Iraq Study Group what some of those non-friends are all about.
"The hand of Syria is all over" Gemayel's assassination, said Saad Hariri, the leader of the parliamentary bloc that helped evict the Syrian army in the spring of 2005. Mr. Hariri knows whereof he speaks: His father, former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, was blown up with 22 others in February 2005, and the preliminary U.N. investigation offered a trail of evidence pointing to Damascus as the culprit.
A who's who of anti-Syrian Lebanese politicians and journalists have also since been targeted for assassination. In June 2005 journalist Samir Kassir was blown up by a car bomb. Three weeks later, politician George Hawi was killed the same way. The following month, Defense Minister Elias Murr narrowly survived a car bombing; Mr. Murr was considered pro-Syrian but claimed he had been threatened by Rustom Ghazali, the longtime chief of Syrian intelligence in Lebanon.
Read it all.
how big baloney* used murtha
For most of the last year, Congressman John Murtha has been placed on a pedestal by the major media, painted in red, white, and blue hues as a “hawkish” Democrat who courageously declared we needed to “redeploy” (read: withdraw) from Iraq.
The oohs and aahs began last November. “All of Washington listened,” announced CBS’s Bob Schieffer, since “on military matters, no Democrat in Congress is more influential.” Murtha’s words “followed President Bush halfway around the world,” boasted NBC anchor Brian Williams. CNN’s Bill Schneider declared Murtha’s withdrawal mantra as the “Political Play of the Week,” suggesting it might turn out to be a tipping point just as delicious as Walter Cronkite’s call to get out of a “stalemate” in Vietnam.
Months before the midterm elections, this new media-anointed hero announced he would run for the post of House Majority Leader under a potential Speaker Pelosi. During that time, Democrats were hammering a so-called Republican “culture of corruption,” with Pelosi pledging to “drain the swamp” of the majority’s ruinous ways in Washington. But the national media didn’t exactly wonder how Pelosi would square fighting corruption with installing someone thoroughly tainted with that odor of corruption – John Murtha.
In January, the Cybercast News Service reported a story that made Murtha’s ethical problems clear. In a 1980 video of the FBI’s Abscam sting investigation, Murtha told the FBI agents posing as Arabs that he wouldn’t take money up front, but might “change his mind” later “after we’ve done some business.” In the end, he was listed as an unindicted co-conspirator. He wasn’t convicted of a crime, or even charged, but the tape makes clear that Murtha was amenable to making corrupt deals if the right circumstances emerged.
So what did the media do? They largely ignored these charges as they touted Murtha’s plausibility as a voice against the war. On the networks, Murtha was interviewed as a great sage, and Abscam went unmentioned. In June on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Tim Russert discussed Murtha’s run for the House Democratic leadership, but when it came to ethics, Russert only mentioned that “Some Democrats have pointed out that you were just one of four Democrats to vote against lobbying reform.” Nada on Abscam.
* Aka, the mainstream media or MSM.
gasp: racism is breaking out all over
Michael Richards blows his top. A black fireman gets his $2.7 million settlement vetoed by the Mayor (see "Race Cards" from yesterday if you lack the background).
What can it all mean? Why, by golly, the LA Daily News spotted a trend, "L.A. blacks say racism raising its head again." As for the vetoed $2.7 million, the NAACP is plenty pissed about this.
"We and the community are outraged by the Mayor's decision, which sends the worst possible message to the victims of discrimination, harassment and retaliation in the Los Angeles Fire Department," the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People wrote in a statement released Tuesday.
Except maybe the fireman, Tennie Pierce, wasn't a victim, but a crybaby/hustler cashing in.
"It is an outrage for the city to ratify and condone the `isms' by allowing retaliatory actions to derail the settlement of this case, which was recommended by the City Attorney and approved by the City Council."
Yep, all them isms. How 'bout taking a stand against dumbism?
..civil-rights groups called for Bamattre [the Fire Chief] - who is set to retire in February 2008 - to resign because he has failed to root out racism, sexism and retaliation in the department despite having been brought in as a reformer 11 years ago.
Why stop there? What about gluttony, pride, sloth, envy, lust, wrath and greed? The man had 11 years to fix all that.
Pierce's case began when supervisors and fellow firefighters mixed dog food into his spaghetti. It was a prank designed to humble him after a volleyball game earlier that day when he'd bragged, "You guys keep feeding the Big Dog," which was his nickname.
In his lawsuit, Pierce called the joke offensive, humiliating and particularly malicious because he was African-American and his colleagues were not. After he complained, colleagues harassed him, by barking and making dog-food jokes, he said, eventually forcing him to take a leave from work.
So Pierce is arguing that, because he's black, he can't take the same ribbing others (and he) dish out. That is, he can't tolerate being treated equally. But this won't matter because:
...we are not going to have hazing anymore," said Fire Commissioner Genethia Hudley-Hayes, who helped develop the guidelines with firefighter groups.
Better start with Big Dog, because Pierce has been photographed participating in pranks (see photos here):
On November 14, 12 members of the City Council viewed incendiary photographs of firefighter Tennie Pierce acting as a key instigator in outrageous hazing — forcing a water hose into the mouth of a strapped-down and bound firefighter in one photo, taunting a tightly bound firefighter whose sheetlike garment is scrawled with the words “Oy vey! I’m gay!” in another.
That day, San Fernando Valley–area Councilman Dennis Zine distributed the photos around the City Council’s “horseshoe,” where they sit during meetings. All had a chance to see what was perhaps the most personally humiliating image — Tennie Pierce grabbing and apparently shaving the bare testicles of a strapped-down, and firmly bound, firefighter.
Firemen, uh, firefighters spend long hours together. Hazing and pranks probably contribute to the cohesion of the unit, not detract. As an avid fan of FX's "Rescue Me" which is set in a New York firehouse, I get the sense that racial jokes and pranks build camaraderie.
One scene last season had the firemen playing the cops in a hockey game. In no time a fistfight breaks out on the ice. The character of Franco Rivera, watching the melee from the stands says to the girlfriend of a fellow firefighter, "See, that's why we Puerto Ricans don't play hockey. We carry knives."
My god, an ethnic joke.
tuesday, november 21 2006
the ike pike turns 50
Few people realize the interstate highway system is the brainchild of President Eisenhower, who proposed it as an investment in national defense -- making it faster to move men and materiel from coast to coast etc.
It's 50 years old this year. And it was in this very month, November, 1956, that the first eight-mile stretch of what would eventually be more than 42,000 miles of limited access highway lacing the states together was opened in Topeka, Kansas.
Give thanks because the Interstate is going to make your holiday trip, this week, and at Christmas, immeasurably faster and easier than it used to be. Only those who drove or rode as children in automobiles in the '30s, '40s and '50s can fully appreciate how much faster and how much easier.
Long distance auto trips back then meant stop and go driving through a maze of dangerous intersections with and without traffic lights; through railroad crossings, perilous curves and steep grades on which motorists too often found themselves crawling along behind heavy trucks.
Most main routes led directly through cities and towns and there were few by-passes. For every charming little roadside restaurant now remembered through the haze of nostalgia, there were scores of dirty joints of decidedly uneven quality. If you were lucky you might find a good motel, but often you were left with a grim, run-down tourist cabin.
During Jimmy Carter's presidency, the federal speed limit was reduced to 55 mph as a means to conserve gasoline. Long after the oil shocks ended, the Democrat-controlled Congress refused to raise the speed limit back.
It was only in 1994 that Republicans allowed the states to set reasonable speed limits, meaning citizens again could legally drive 65-80 mph depending on the place and circumstances. So if you're traveling this week by car, you can thank Republicans for those extra hours spent at your destination, not on the highway.
celebrity jeopardy update
Question: "Honeycomb cells are made up hexagonal elements. How many sides are there on a hexagon?"
Susan Lucci: Eight?
Paul Shafer: Twelve?
Question: Which branch of government does the Supreme Court belong to?
Mario Cantone: blank look
Joely Fisher: blank look
Martin Short: blank look
race cards
Now that Michael Richards apparently* lost his temper and exploded with racial slurs at a comedy club, it will be interesting to see how this plays. Richards was presumably sober when he repeated the word nigger and told a black audience member, "50 years ago we would've had you upside down with a f***ing fork in your ass."
When Mel Gibson spewed anti-semitic stuff a couple months back, he was sloppy drunk, and Hollywood was unforgiving. Such Jew hatred could not be the booze talking, many said, although the Jewish cop who arrested Gibson, and bore the brunt of his tirade, say it was just the booze talking.
Those who spoke againt Mel's motives cited a pattern of suspicious behavior. One, his father apparently is a Holocaust denier whom Mel has refused to condemn. Some thought Jews were unfairly depicted in his Passion of Christ movie.
Curiously, many of these same voices were quick to defend John Kerry's "botched joke" about our military being stupid losers. Doing so, they ignored a long, nasty pattern of anti-military comments from Kerry.
Then there's the case of the black firefighter in LA who claimed racial harassment over a firehouse prank. The gutless LA City Council agreed to pay him $2.7 million for damages. Yesterday Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa vetoed the settlement.
Today in America, one rightfully pays a heavy price for racist behavior. Yet there is virtually no cost to blacks who play the race card in order to get a leg up. Gaming the system this way cheapens the memory and sacrifice of true victims of racism and of those who took a principled stand against it.
Villaraigosa's veto is an important step toward correcting that.
______________________________________________
* Or was he just doing a "botched" Lenny Bruce? For those who don't remember, Bruce did a bit where he used every racial slur he could think of, the point being to defang the words.
san francisco: disgrace by the bay
IN THE SPECIAL CITY, choice doesn't really mean choice. San Francisco Unified School District trustees proved as much last week when they voted 4-2 to eliminate the popular Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps, and deprive high-school students of a program that instills leadership and other skills essential to success in a competitive world.
First, the vote was wrong because it hurts kids. Imagine a program so popular that hundreds of students have turned out to support it -- even though it demands from its 1,600 participants behaviors not often associated with teenagers. To wit: punctuality, the proud wearing of a uniform, marching in drills and respecting a chain of command.
In one vote, school board members Dan Kelly, Mark Sanchez, Sarah Lipson and Eric Mar buried a program that can provide structure for the at-risk students whose lives they claim to want to improve. Left-leaning politics clearly are more important to these four than the futures of flesh-and-blood teenagers, who may fall through the educational cracks because they are struggling to develop the self-discipline and leadership skills that JROTC fosters.
Educators like to talk about the need to get kids to think for themselves. This vote shows that a majority of the board doesn't want students to think for themselves, they want them to think as the board members do.
Make no mistake about it. This vote was anti-military -- a slap in the face to veterans who risked their lives defending the freedoms that the four board members enjoy so thoroughly, even as they would deny the district parents and students the freedom to choose.
Sure, the four hide behind the lame argument that JROTC, as the resolution put it, "manifests the military's discrimination against LGBT people." When politicians give phony excuses, that tells you they know they are on shaky ground.
monday, november 20 2006
iranian dissident mom, kids stranded in moscow airport
it's so high school
Sometime during the '80s, my wife and I had some friends of friends over for a visit. They were both in network news, and, in their early 30s, had already developed jaundiced notions about their field. John -- I can't remember his last name -- said that when he went to parties he was always identified as "John with CBS."
He said it was as if his surname was "WithCBS." His point was that in his social circle, friendship was just a tool for personal advancement. He was weary of the sharp-elbowed careerists that passed as friends.
This came to mind reading a New York Times story about TVNewser, a blog written by a 21-year old college student that's read by all the top TV news swells for insider gossip and news.
It is read religiously by network presidents, media executives, producers and publicists, not for any stinging commentary from Mr. Stelter, whose style is usually described as earnest, but because it provides a quick snapshot of the industry on any given day. Habitués include Mr. Williams and Jonathan Klein, the president of CNN’s domestic operations, who long ago offered up his cellphone number to Mr. Stelter.
“The whole industry pays attention to his blog,” said Jeffrey W. Schneider, a senior vice president of ABC News. “It would not surprise me if I refreshed my browser 30 to 40 times a day.”
Today's blog contains such gems as this, explaining how CNBC's Tom Costello schemed his way up the news food chain while attending a charity dinner.
When Costello arrived at his assigned table, he noticed that the name tag of [Brian] Williams had been placed a few seats away from his. With the slickness of James Bond, Costello quickly switched the cards so that Williams would be seated next to him.
As he and Williams chatted, Costello made a pitch to an anchor he greatly admired. Hoping to join NBC News, he asked Williams, "What does it take to get on your radar screen?"
And then to Costello's delight, Williams retorted: "You just made it."
How inspiring. The MSM clique that shapes the national debate by shaping the news is, like Hollywood, comprised of insecure, ambitious people who evoke memories of high school.
how attack machine got its name
WALLACE: Well, I must say — and we told you before you came on that we were going to talk some about the joke. I agree there's things to talk about after, but there are questions people have, and I'm going to ask you about them, sir.
Didn't two senators, didn't Democratic leader Harry Reid and also the Democratic campaign chair, Chuck Schumer, didn't they call you up after the joke and say to you, "This has become a distraction; sit down; get off the campaign trail"?
KERRY: Chris, let me again say to you — I mean, let's be serious about this. This was a bad joke. And I own it. And I apologized for it.
But the full measure of the Republican attack machine knew exactly what I had said, and they set out to make it a distraction.
Yes, it was John Kerry's whining about some feverishly imagined attack machine that led to this site.
a plan to keep john bolton
From American Thinker:
John Bolton, the US’s ambassador extrordinaire to the UN is an interim appointment because many Senators, led by the soon to be ex-Senator John Chafee (R-RI) opposed him. Known for his bluntness, Bolton definitely lived up to his reputation last week in what a Calcutta newspaper labeled an “extraordinary outburst,” “a scathing attack,” “a blistering attack.” You get the idea.
And what triggered Bolton’s behavior? The usual UN behavior—hypocrisy. The Arabs initiated still yet another UN resolution condemning Israel, this time for the accidental death of 19 Arab civilians as Israel was trying to stop Arab rocket attacks against its citizens. These deliberate Arab attacks against civilian targets have killed and maimed many Israeli and foreigners in Israel; the UN has been silent. Bolton was definitely not silent.
“Many of the sponsors of that resolution are notorious abusers of human rights themselves, and were seeking to deflect criticism of their own policies,” he said.
“This type of resolution serves only to exacerbate tensions by serving the interests of elements hostile to Israel’s inalienable and recognized right to exist.”
“This deepens suspicions about the United Nations that will lead many to conclude that the organization is incapable of playing a helpful role in the region,” Bolton continued.
“In a larger sense, the United Nations must confront a more significant question, that of its relevance and utility in confronting the challenges of the 21st century. We believe that the United Nations is ill served when its members seek to transform the organization into a forum that is a little more than a self-serving and a polemical attack against Israel or the United States,” he said.
“The Human Rights Council has quickly fallen into the same trap and de-legitimized itself by focusing attention exclusively on Israel. Meanwhile, it has failed to address real human rights abuses in Burma, Darfur, the DPRK, and other countries,” Bolton charged.
But of course, Democrats and squishy Republicans get nervous by such straight talk. They plan to reject his appointment, leading Claudia Rosett to suggest:
If Congress is absolutely determined to reject the best UN ambassador the world has seen in about a quarter of a century — John Bolton — then the only alternative if President Bush wants to keep him is another recess appointment. For that, Bolton would have to work without pay. It’s enough to make a person want to suggest that if you really care about trying to do some good in the world via the UN, stop sending your kids out to collect for UNICEF, and start sending them out to collect donations to keep John Bolton in office. Bolton, from everything I have seen, is far more honest and competent on every level than UNICEF, any of the other UN agencies, or most of the senior staff walking the halls of the UN, let alone many of the UN ambassadors whose limos cruise the streets of New York.
Note the headline that the Calcutta paper put on their article on Bolton's remarks.
Bolton in extraordinary outburst against United NationsIt shouldn't be that extraordinary for someone to describe the anti-Israel bias at the U.N.. It should be daily fare, but it isn't. That is what is extraordinary.
And now the Democrats want to block John Bolton's renomination to be the Ambassador to the United Nations. They clearly don't care about what the U.N. becomes as long as they can have the pretense that it is some noble multilateral organization that is a force for peace throughout the world instead of a place where some of the most notorious human rights abusers freely criticize the United States and Israel while ignoring their own abuses and having no fear that their hypocrisy will ever be revealed.
who do you trust?
Last June, Arnold Kling wrote about Trust Cues:
When people in business meet for the first time to discuss a transaction, they often exchange what I call "trust cues" in order to reduce mutual suspicion. For example, they may recite empty phrases from popular business books, such as "win-win," "synergy," "principles," "customer-driven," or "raising the bar."
Nicholas Wade provides a readable, wide-ranging survey of the impact of recent advances in genetics on anthropology. In one chapter, he argues that the origins of what I observe in business behavior can be found in early religious rituals. Religions produce trust cues. Trust cues are necessary for large societies and trade among strangers to emerge. They serve to protect people from cheaters and liars.
What I am going to suggest in this essay is that political beliefs can serve the function of trust cues. Political beliefs may have at best a tenuous empirical basis, but they function to demonstrate one's membership in a trusted group.
A fascinating essay, worth reading to the end. It inspired this equally fascinating essay from Assistant Village Idiot:
There are regional tribes: Joel Garreau convincingly describes Nine Nations of North America. Texas conservatives are not the same as New Hampshire conservatives, as my second son is finding out. They are an affiliated tribe. They like making noise. We like being left alone. Or perhaps, their other tribal identifications are very different from what you find in New England. Libertarians in New England are geeks who really care about the Tenth Amendment; the same party in Arizona tends toward people who also belong to NORML. There are religious and ethnic tribes as well.
Many people straddle tribes, or move fairly easily in more than one. Many more think they move easily but don’t. The entire cultural weight of the LL Bean catalogue was founded on the illusion that even though you’re a chieftain in the (Preppy) Business Tribe of suburban Boston or New Haven, you can still mix naturally with hunters, boat repairmen, and dog breeders in Maine. The balancing act for those trying to rise in the Business Tribe is difficult. You actually might mix well with the lobstermen and pie-bakers – because they really are your relatives. There’s just something humorous about wearing the look that is supposed to be an imitation of the relatives you are trying to hide, so that you can assume the appearance of unassuming wealth.
Come to think of it, the Arts & Humanities tribe tries to do that on their vacations also. It’s no accident that there are lots of books about people having profound thoughts while hiking in the wilderness. That group doesn’t hunt or fish much, however.
sunday, november 19 2006
thomas sowell
Milton Friedman was one of the very few intellectuals with both genius and common sense. He could express himself at the highest analytical levels to his fellow economists in academic publications and still write popular books such as "Capitalism and Freedom" and "Free to Choose" that could be understood by people who knew nothing about economics. Indeed, his television series, "Free to Choose," was readily understandable even by people who don’t read books.
Milton Friedman may well have been the most important economist of the 20th century, even if John Maynard Keynes was the most famous. No small part of Friedman’s achievement was rescuing economics from the pervasive and virtually unquestioned Keynesian orthodoxy that reigned in many places.
secret santa revealed
illegal pot costs us 7.7 billion a year
The economic cost of prohibition.
department of oblivious design
You won't believe this toy. Read the user comments for a laugh.
long-winded way to say he's a liar
LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, like a B-list Barack Obama, has been touted as a Democrat with a national future. The LA Daily News:
As chroniclers of Antonio Villaraigosa invariably come to discover, sometimes what comes out of the Los Angeles mayor's mouth - particularly when it's about his past - and what ultimately turns out to be true are not always entirely the same.
So, Antonio is "truth challenged?"
Now in his second year in office, Villaraigosa, 53, is catching himself in some of those inconsistencies - those embellishments of the past or his tendency to exaggerate or bolster his importance - flaws that can often simply be attributed to a faulty memory or political hyperbole.
Faulty memory includes telling people his father was an abusive alcoholic who walked out on his family, then gave the identical name to a son sired by his new wif, and being raised by a heroic single mom.
The truth is his mother remarried and had a second family - including another son, Rob Delgado, the mayor's half-brother - while Antonio was still living at home.
And that alcoholic dad?
"God knows that I was never an alcoholic and that I never hurt his mother or abused my family," Antonio Ramon Villar Sr. said in an interview, denying the mayor's long-accepted account of his difficult childhood.
"I know the public has been poisoned against me, but this is the truth, so help me God."
Villaraigosa's claim that his father later gave another son the exact same name he had given him also is inaccurate.
That other son was christened Anthony Gustavo Villar, and today he is a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Anthony Villar, 45, has gone so far as to personally contact Villaraigosa to challenge him on why he has publicly vilified their father, said Estela Villar, Anthony Gustavo's mother and the wife of Antonio Ramon Villar Sr.
The second family of Villar Sr. portrays a husband and father who has been gentle, loving, kind and deeply religious - and who in 47 years of marriage to Estela has never abused either his wife or their four children, nor shown any hints of alcoholism.
victor davis hanson on israel
We are witnessing strange things about Israel. Columnists this year wrote about it being a “mistake.” And for the first time emboldened Islamic leaders talk seriously not about restoring lost land on the West Bank and the Golan Heights, but of “wiping” it off the map entirely.
The Lebanon war saw not just slanted coverage, but outright falsification and lying from the major Western new servers—many of them served by local stringers who provide on the ground propaganda and faked photos. And now the Holocaust has been reinvented, as the old idea of a safe haven for the survivors of the Third Reich has been transmogrified into “a one bomb state.” Mein Kampf is translated as “Jihadi” on the West Bank and sells briskly. We are seeing a venomous anti-Semitic hatred in the Arab-supported state papers that the world has not witnessed since the 1930s and 1940s.
Back home, the Left/Right split on Israel has also been turned upside down. If you wish to read sick hatred about the Jewish state go to the leftist blogs or the campuses, not the Montana badlands. Somehow the Palestinians have reinvented themselves as liberal victims of Western, white male imperialists. Thus, in the manner of Blacks, Chicanos, Gays, and Women they are deserving of the usually accorded sympathy for their oppressed status—never mind the Islamists’ gender apartheid, religious intolerance, homophobia, and fundamentalism that should be so repugnant to the liberal mind.
Now more than ever Israel is nearly all alone—and so serves as a barometer in the West of true liberal courage of conscious. It has no oil, no international terrorists, no large population, no real material advantages and no threats to be made in the most crass sense.
Instead, it is a humane liberal society, an atoll of reason in a surrounding sea of autocracy. So it is the perfect litmus test for the Westerner: on the one hand is principled support for an embattled democracy; on the other, is easy appeasement that wins applause from millions, eases concerns about oil and terrorism, and offers cheap relief of elite guilt by trashing the very Western culture that rewards us all. Tragically, most leftist elites these days fail the test. Somehow, especially in Britain, they put themselves on the side of illiberal groups like Hamas or the Palestinian Authority whose history is antithetical to very notion of tolerance.
Now we have yet again the ubiquitous Jimmy Carter. Not content with a failed Presidency, he is determined to turn his legacy into even a greater failure, lecturing us in his new book about an apartheid Israel.
Unlike blacks in his own Georgia of the 1950s, Israeli Arabs vote and enjoy civil liberties, perhaps a million of them, with another 100,000 plus as illegal aliens. In fact, they enjoy rights not found in other Arab countries, inasmuch as Jews treat Arabs inside their own country not just better than Arabs treat Jews (they ethnically cleansed 500,000 from the major Arab capitals in the 1960s), but in the sense of civil liberties better than Arabs treat Arabs.
Carterism is a new postmodern pathology in which smug piety, dressed up in evangelical new-age Christianity, pronounces from afar moral censure on the more righteous party—on the theory that acting well but not perfect is worse than acting badly. Carter reminds me of the timid parent who spanks hard the good son for the rare misdemeanor because he takes it with silence while giving a pass to the wayward son for the daily felony because he would throw a public fit if corrected.
saturday, november 18 2006
literary lions
compassionate conservatives
The child of academics, raised in a liberal household and educated in the liberal arts, Brooks has written a book that concludes religious conservatives donate far more money than secular liberals to all sorts of charitable activities, irrespective of income.
In the book, he cites extensive data analysis to demonstrate that values advocated by conservatives -- from church attendance and two-parent families to the Protestant work ethic and a distaste for government-funded social services -- make conservatives more generous than liberals.
compassionate loonyism: a real la story
You can't make up stuff this good. The LA area called Venice is beset by gangs of raccoons that have attacked and nearly killed residents' dogs, among other things. So what does LA animal control plan to do about it? Shoot to kill? Trap and remove? Nah.
...the city animal control agency is instead urging people to try to get along with the raccoons - a notion that strikes some as political correctness gone wild.
"What we're trying to inculcate in the L.A. community is a reverence for life. If we have more reverence for life, it translates into all our programs - for women and infants, the elderly and everybody in our community," said Ed Boks, the head of Los Angeles Animal Services.
"As we develop these programs that demonstrate our compassion for creatures completely at our mercy, it makes for a more compassionate society all the way around."
Sure, leaving wild animals to wreak damage will raise everyone's vibe. Kumbaya. Of course, abortion clinics will close in reverence for life, right?
One wonders how far this principle extends. Poisonous snakes? Bears?
Will the LAPD unilaterally decide that gang-bangers are people, too?
Who's running this city? Rodney "Can't We All Just Get Along" King?
To quote Katherine Hepburn, "The loons! The loons!"
oil from shale at $17/barrel
Israelis technology promises a breakthrough.
HT Instapundit.
friday, november 17 2006
baby pics and photoshop
One Dad just couldn't stop himself.
rape as a tactic of war
what would jesus tax?
Bill Clinton cut the capital gains tax rates on long-term gains in 1997 and a strong decrease in poverty rates resulted. George Bush cut the capital gains and dividends taxes in 2003 and the resulting economic surge caused a decrease in the 2004/2005 poverty rate. Although comparable data are not available for the first of the supply-side tax cuts which were proposed by John Kennedy, his rationale for those cuts was the alleviation of poverty, claiming that in economic affairs 'a rising tide lifts all boats.'
Critics on the left charge that lowering the tax rate on capital helps the rich, not the poor. This reveals the fundamental presupposition error of their thinking—that the rich and poor have an inherent economic conflict of interest. They do not.
The tendency in modern dynamic economies is for the rich and poor both to get richer, but at different rates. Growth-oriented policies are beneficial to both. They have an inherent harmony of interests. This is demonstrated by current economic data. Lowering the cost of taxes on capital lowers the risk of capital investment. The tax cuts of 2003 triggered a very strong surge in capital spending. This means more buildings, more computers, and more machines, which means more people to occupy, sit at and operate them. That's why the household survey shows a gain of 8 million jobs in the past 3 years.
ibd smacks down carl levin, et al
A nation that's defended Europe from aggression in the 60 years since World War II is asking why Iraq can't defend itself. The fact is, Iraqis risk their lives for their country every day.
Clearly the days when Democrats warned of a long twilight struggle and pledged to pay any price and bear any burden to ensure the success and survival of liberty are over, judging from remarks by Carl Levin, incoming chairman of the Senate Armed Service Committee.
"We cannot save the Iraqis from themselves," Levin opined Wednesday at a Capitol Hill press conference. "The only way for Iraqi leaders to squarely face that reality is for President Bush to tell them that the United States will begin a phased redeployment of our forces within four to six months."
"We cannot be their security blanket," he added. But why not, if it's in our best long-term security interest?
Yes, we should demand more of the Iraqis. But those who ask whether we can or should stop Iraqis from killing themselves forget that we're in this to stop others from killing us and using Iraq as a base camp from which to do it.
We've been Europe's security blanket for six decades. We are Japan's security blanket. We are South Korea's. It's been said that were it not for us, the French would be speaking German and the Germans would be speaking Russian. In 1938, the West decided it couldn't be Czechoslovakia's security blanket and sold out that country in Munich, Germany. The rest, as they say, is history.
"Phased redeployment" is a code word for retreat, one that may one day, Senator Levin, lead to car bombs going off in the streets of Detroit, not Baghdad. We forget that this war really began when a truck bomb went off in the parking garage of the World Trade Center in 1993, nearly killing tens of thousands.
Iraqis — civilians, military and police — are risking their lives for their country every day, from the millions who proudly held up their purple fingers to the young police applicants who are murdered as they line up to serve their country. Then more line up in their place.
Are the Arabs ready for democracy or are they doomed by an ingrained tribalism? We need only to look at Lebanon, where a multicultural democracy once flourished. Beirut was called the Paris of the Middle East until the country became a human shield for the PLO and then Hezbollah terrorists supported by Syria and Iran.
Read it all.
creating wealth in the third world
Kiva.org lets individuals connect with borrowers via the web by reading their "loan applications" and funding via PayPal.
Confucious said, "Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime."
Today, he might add, "Give the fisherman a microloan and he'll build a fishing fleet, provide jobs for others and create trickle down wealth for members of his village."
Next month, Pakistan's Muhammad Yunus will receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on "microcredit," the issuing of small loans -- so as little as $20 -- to poor people with ability but no means to finance their ambitions.
In many ways it is the antithesis of typical top-down multimillion foreign aid programs that seem to produce little besides wrecked economies and filthy rich dictators. And it respects free markets in a way that deviates from the Marxist economic policies that ruined much of post-colonial Africa. As this economist explained to Bill Moyers:
GEORGE AYITTEY: Well, see, in the rest of Africa they assume that the market system was a capitalist institution. So they don't want to have anything to do with the market system. Not knowing that the markets were in Africa even before the colonialists came to Africa.
BILL MOYERS: At a very local level.
GEORGE AYITTEY: Yes. At a local level. I mean, if you go to West Africa, for example, market activity has always been dominated by women. There was free trade in Africa. There was free enterprise in Africa before the colonialists came. But anyway, they identified markets and capitalism with the West. So they rejected that. And many of them also associated democracy with the West and rejected that as well. So they went to the East and copied Socialist and Marxist models. Mugabe, for example, determined to turn Zimbabwe into one party -- Marxist/Leninist state.
But I digress. Initiatives to deliver business credit to Third World borrowers are booming. The New Yorker has an indepth look at the players and their competing philosophies. If you know little about this subject, the New Yorker article is an essential primer.
Some see microfinance as a form of charity (the UN, Yunus) and others see it as a business. Pierre Omidyar, who became very wealthy by writing the code that became eBay, is one of the latter. He is investing multimillions in microlending ventures for idealistic reasons, but insists the ventures be profitable to weed out inefficient operators.
It's not just limited to Africa. In Mexico 70 percent of the population have no access to banks. Small loans to the right people can spur the creation of wealth that has eluded the nation for so long.
Not mentioned in the New Yorker article is Kiva.org, which is using the Internet to address one of the biggest challenges to microlending. That is, cutting expenses. Managing a $20 loan is no less laborious than managing a $20,000 loan.
So Kiva has set up a website that matches individuals with borrowers. Log on to their site, read the "loan apps" and fund a loan in whole or part.
sharing blessings for the holiday season
by J.C. Phillips
I love this time of year. Even in Los Angeles, there is a bit of chill in the air. The sun hangs low in the sky, leaves are changing and football season is in full swing. Even better, mid-November marks the beginning of the season of feasting. Following Thanksgiving, there will be weeks of parties leading up to the celebration of Christmas, followed closely by the New Year’s festivities. If like me you love to eat, there simply is no better time of the year.
But November is also the time of year when we begin to count our blessings and in counting, we realize we have been blessed in excess and so turn to our fellow man to share what we have been granted in abundance. More charitable giving is done during this time of year than at any other. Cynics among us would argue that this is merely an effort by some to beat the tax man out of his due.
I do not share such cynicism. I have met too many people doing too many good things –people dedicated to the uplift of their fellow man. I have met and worked with those that focus locally on their neighborhoods and others that reach across the seas in order to do their good works. Fisher House and Maternal Fetal Care International are two perfect examples.
Working locally is Fisher House, a public private partnership created in 1991 to provide temporary housing for the families of military personnel wounded in the service of their country. Wounded soldiers often require specialized care only available at military instillations. Fisher House builds comfort homes near major military and veterans’ hospitals in major cities, enabling families to be near their loved ones while they are rehabilitated. Through a program called Operation Hero Miles, which uses donated frequent flier miles, Fisher House has also provided 5000 emergency plane tickets. Since its inception, Fisher House has provided over 2 million days of lodging to military families, saving them $80 million. More remarkable is that 97% of every dollar donated goes to the work of Fisher House.
Supporting the troops is more than something one says or a bumper sticker one places on the car. Support is a verb, it requires action.
Reaching across the seas is Maternal Fetal Care International.
We in America often forget how fortunate we are. Generally speaking, we have the finest medical facilities in the world, the best trained doctors and nurses as well as hospitals equipped with the latest technological advances. Most people in the world do not enjoy such advantages and some people lack even the most rudimentary medical care. Sure, they have midwives that have been bringing babies into the world for generations, but what happens if there is a complication? Most often, both mother and baby die. Even when educated about the importance of prenatal care, many poor women live many miles from the clinics that are available. Mothers are forced to walk long distances to receive prenatal care. Once at the clinic, they will find medical staff hobbled by equipment that is out of date or in need of costly repair.
Los Angeles gynecologist Dr. Lisa Masterson founded MFCI in 2005 to help address these problems. She is determined to help mothers and babies survive and enjoy healthy lives in the poorest regions of the world. Donations to MFCI help purchase fetal monitors, prenatal vitamins, delivery kits, surgical supplies, insecticide-treated bed nets and HIV/AIDS medications. A few dollars can make the difference in the lives of mothers and babies halfway across the world.
Of course, some will continue to believe that the world is a selfish place peopled by beings only concerned with what they can get. I beg to differ. There is a wealth of heart