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 in the American people – heart that is humbled by reverence for the creator and swelled by love for mankind.
thursday, november 16 2006
gutless wonder with a bad comb-over
...the boob from Michigan, Senator Carl Levin, lectured Genral Abizaid:
We cannot save the Iraqis from themselves. 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.
Suppose Detroit were suffering from a massive crime wave instigated by various gangs. Suppose one gang was being armed by Mexican mobsters and another by a shadowy group from Canada. Suppose federal agents sent to bring calm were being killed right and left, and citizens, fearing for their lives, were arming themselves into militias.
Would Levin tell the Detroit folks, "Sorry, we cannot save you from yourselves. Tough it out."
record day for us economy
cosmic radiation and climate change
From the Danish National Science Center:
About twice a second an energetic subatomic particle whizzes through your head. It is a secondary cosmic-ray particle, made when primary cosmic rays coming from exploded stars far away in the Milky Way Galaxy hit the Earth’s atmosphere.
The air is a very good shield, and the cosmic rays are more intense on high mountains or in jet planes.Our team at the Danish National Space Center has discovered that the relatively few cosmic rays that reach sea-level play a big part in the everyday weather. They help to make low-level clouds, which largely regulate the Earth’s surface temperature.During the 20th Century the influx of cosmic rays decreased and the resulting reduction of cloudiness allowed the world to warm up.
Such warming events have happened ten times in the last 12,000 years, and recently in medieval times. In between the warm intervals there were cold periods like the Little Ice Age, which was most severe 300 years ago. We know that cosmic rays were intense during the Little Ice Age because the production of radio carbon atoms, C14, was at a peak. These atoms, used for dating by archaeologists, are made when cosmic rays hit nitrogen atoms in the air.
I guess someone forgot to inform these Danes about Al Gore's "consensus" of scientists.
funny as a rubber crutch
Watching Nancy Pelosi stumble is amusing to Republicans. But the Anchoress notes:
Jules Crittenden says sit back and enjoy all this and I agree with him that when you’re licking your wounds and trying to remain philosophical, watching this can be mildly amusing…but only for as long as you can make yourself forget that - as Jules correctly notes - “Lives hang in the balance. Possibly thousands of American lives and tens of thousands of Iraqi lives…All of it carries the threat of grave consequences.”
Once you recall just how very serious are the times and the issues, it is very difficult to take much pleasure in the spectacle of joint-house muddled leadership. It’s not quite on the level of being told if rape is inevitable you may as well lie back and enjoy it, but it’s not too far off, either, thanks to that sense of helplessness.
Things are now out of the immediate control of the American public, who were last week were told to feed their future with a choice of either unfresh fish and transported dairy. Cheered on by a relentless and single-minded press, they chose the dairy, having no idea that the curds and whey were so near-expiration date they wouldn’t even carry into January without media help.
they shoulda kept kosher
Following directions found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, archaeologists have discovered the latrines used by the sect that produced the scrolls, discovering that efforts to achieve ritual purity inadvertently exposed members to intestinal parasites that shortened their lifespan.
The Essenes are one of the few ancient groups whose toiletry practices were documented. The first century Jewish historian Josephus noted that members of the group normally went outside the city and dug a hole, where they buried their waste.
Two of the Dead Sea Scrolls note that the latrines should be situated northwest of the settlement, at a distance of 1,000 to 3,000 cubits — about 450 to 1,350 yards — and out of sight of the settlement.
Tabor and Joe Zias of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, an expert on ancient latrines, went to the site and took samples.
Hey Zev, what's your daddy do for a living? "He's an expert on ancient latrines."
growl
Gerard Allen Van der Ginsberg, reprised:
I SAW the second-best minds of my not-so-Great Generation destroyed by Bush Derangement Syndrome, pasty, paunchy, tenured, unelectable, and not looking too sharp naked,
bullshitting themselves through the African-American streets at cocktail hour looking for a Prozac refill,
aging hair-plugged hipsters burning for their ancient political connection to the White House through the machinations of moonbats,
who warred on poverty and Halliburton's Wal-Mart and bulbous-eyed and still high from some bad acid in 1968 set up no-smoking zones on tobacco farms in the unnatural darkness of Darwinistic delusions floating a few more half-baked secular notions like "Let's all worship Zero!",
who bared their withered breasts and, he or she, bleated their vaginas' mawkish monologues to John Kennedy's ghost under the capitol dome and french-kissed Mohammedan agents in the gore-drenched redrum rooms of Guantanamo,
who passed gas and on into universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating President Al Gore and Vice-President Noam Chomsky envisioning world peace among the masters of war and stayed on and stayed on and stayed on sucking off the great teat of academe in upaid student loans and over-paid professorial positions the better to molest the minds of children for decades with every third year off for bad behavior,
who were embraced by the academies and hired by the New York Times for crazy & publishing obscene odes or anything else that trashed George W. Bush without regard for truth since there were no consequences for these posturing poseurs of puke,
Read it all.
mohammed's reality
That is, Mohammed of Iraq the Model:
The mass abduction that shocked Baghdad yesterday was intended to be a clear message from Tehran-through its surrogates in Baghdad-to anyone who thinks productive dialogue with the Islamic republic over Iraq and Middle East peace is a possible option.
The operation was a show of victory and it was so smooth and perfect that neither the MNF nor the Iraqi military could do a thing to stop it.And today the show continues with the assassination of the colonel who's in charge of internal investigation in the department of national police, also known as the police commandos, one day after an investigation was ordered.
Did Iran misunderstand the American democracy?
Absolutely yes and Tehran is planning and working according to this faulty impression.
Iran now considers itself the victor and it will not negotiate for peace but instead will try to impose conditions to accept America's surrender.
james baker's realpolitik
Austin Bay recalls how the US shafted the Shia and Kurds in 1991 under the counsel of James Baker.
wednesday, november 15 2006
just don't say macaca
The Washington Post pasted a target on George Allen's back, then fired away until his candidacy was dead. When he said "macaca" the WaPo blew this up into big deal. Etc.
With the Democrats safely controlling Congress, the WaPo gets around to exposing some real dirt, this time about Democrat John Murtha. Here he is talking to an FBI agent pretending to be an Arab offering a bribe:
"I'm not interested -- at this point," he says of the dangled bribe. "You know, we do business for a while, maybe I'll be interested, maybe I won't, you know." Indeed, he acknowledges, even though he needs to be careful -- "I expect to be in the [expletive] leadership of the House," he notes -- the money's awfully tempting. "It's hard for me to say, just the hell with it."
This is John Murtha, incoming House speaker Nancy Pelosi's choice to be her majority leader, snared but not charged in the Abscam probe in 1980. "The Democrats intend to lead the most honest, most open and most ethical Congress in history," Pelosi pledged on election night. Five days later she wrote Murtha a letter endorsing his bid to become her No. 2.
For years Murtha has relied on the Abscam bottom line to argue that the case is not a problem for him: He wasn't indicted. But he was named a co-conspirator in the bribery scheme. The feckless House ethics committee didn't take action against him, though the outside investigator it hired quit in disgust after the panel rejected his recommendation to file misconduct charges.
"I am the guy that didn't take the money," Murtha said this summer when his opponent raised the issue.
Yes, but: He's the guy who, brought into the deal by two other House members -- Frank Thompson (D-N.J.) and John Murphy (D-N.Y.) -- agreed to meet with men offering money in return for official action. He's the guy who knew these two colleagues expected a payoff and even vouched for them with the would-be bribers ("Both of them are solid.").
He's the guy who, when offered a bribe, still wanted to do a deal. "I'm delighted to do business with him and do every goddamn thing I can within bounds, you know, so I don't get myself in jail, in order to get him into the country and whatever needs to be done," he says on the video, unearthed by the conservative American Spectator. (You can watch at http://www.spectator.org/.) He's the guy who -- as a member of the House ethics committee-- did nothing to stop the scheme.
why is nancy pelosi so hot on murtha?
Investigative journalists doing their jobs should dig deep—really deep—into Nancy Pelosi’s role in the controversial, $280-million, federal-funded Hunters Point Shipyard affair--in relation to her alleged role as an investor in a real estate investment entity called PRESIDIO PARTNERS.
Look past the fact that the 936-acre site, of which about 443 acres are not polluted and that Hunter Point Shipyard is the largest tract of undeveloped land in San Francisco.
Roll Call has stated that in early 2004, John Murtha “reportedly leaned on U.S. Navy officials to sign a contract to transfer the Hunters Point Shipyard to the City of San Francisco” and that “Laurence Pelosi, nephew of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, at the time was an executive of the company which owned the rights of the land.”
But that’s only the most recent chapter of Nancy Pelosi, John Murtha and San Francisco’s largest tract of undeveloped land.
dirty harry
Jack Abramoff rats out Senator Reid.
Abramoff told prosecutors that more than $30,000 in campaign contributions to Reid from Abramoff's clients "were no accident and were in fact requested by Reid."
Abramoff has reportedly claimed the Nevada senator agreed to help him on matters related to Indian gambling.
The Associated Press reported earlier this year that Reid wrote at least four letters helpful to the tribes that had contributed money to his campaign.
meet the new boss...
house of murtha
Cream rises to the top. Sometimes so do turds.
righteous indignation
We can’t in all honesty blame the American public for being frustrated at the failure of their government to resolve our Iraqi issue. If that is case, you can imagine how we the Iraqi people are feeling; we who are burning in the fires of the crisis and are being crucified daily in the most horrific way.
Yet, it is no use blaming those whose most urgent wish is to see the right outcome of this situation. We can’t blame the American people, whose indignation is righteous and is caused by their impatience at not seeing positive progress towards stability, democracy, reconstruction, respite from the daily horrors that goes on in Baghdad and elsewhere in the country, and generally progress towards the goals that we all wish for.This is righteous indignation, noble sentiments for which we as Iraqis should be appreciative and even grateful. Indeed, after all these sacrifices, there should be some more positive results to show for them.
Yes indeed, when a great power with powerful allies, engaged in an enterprise that is basically very noble and enjoys the support of the majority of the people, stakes its reputation and prestige, not to mention the blood of its sons and daughters and the treasure of its land; it is not permissible to arrive at such a state of affairs as we have now. The consequences of failure are unthinkable not only for us, the Iraqis, but also for all free people in the world with the American people foremost, whether they belong to this party or that. Never mind the chorus of America haters, and all the discordant din of international hypocrisy.
diversity results in diverse results
Today the LA Daily News, among others, ran a story headlined, "Equality efforts slipping, report says." The story was fed by a press release from a liberal advocacy group, the Applied Research Center. Their release says:
In the wake of startling Census numbers, new research from the Applied Research Center (ARC) documents the failure of California lawmakers to address a deepening racial divide threatening the security and well-being of all Californians...
Data released today by the U.S. Census Bureau documents a persistent and deepening racial divide nationwide and in California. White households had incomes that were two-thirds higher than Blacks and 40% higher than Hispanics last year. Whites are also more likely to attend college and less likely to live in poverty.
Unsaid was that Asians attend college at higher rates than whites and earn more money. So what?
Oh, right. We're all supposed to be equal because "all men are created equal." But that's only true in the sense that American citizens are entitled to equal opportunity to succeed.
But human beings are not born equal. Just the opposite is true. Each of us has unique gifts, talents and ambitions, along with unique character flaws. If not, everyone could play basketball like Kobe Bryant, the piano like Keith Jarrett or the market like Warren Buffett.
But we can't. Liberals confuse equality of opportunity with equality of outcome. They are forever finding "gaps" in outcomes which demand, in their limited thinking, government meddling to make things right. (The "report card" the ARC cites in its report is a measure of how much certain politicians go along with those intrusions.)
Paul Graham writes:
Because kids are unable to create wealth, whatever they have has to be given to them. And when wealth is something you're given, then of course it seems that it should be distributed equally. As in most families it is. The kids see to that. "Unfair," they cry, when one sibling gets more than another.
In the real world, you can't keep living off your parents. If you want something, you either have to make it, or do something of equivalent value for someone else, in order to get them to give you enough money to buy it. In the real world, wealth is (except for a few specialists like thieves and speculators) something you have to create, not something that's distributed by Daddy. And since the ability and desire to create it vary from person to person, it's not made equally.
...The root cause of variation in income, as Occam's Razor implies, is the same as the root cause of variation in every other human skill.When we talk about "unequal distribution of income," we should also ask, where does that income come from? Who made the wealth it represents? Because to the extent that income varies simply according to how much wealth people create, the distribution may be unequal, but it's hardly unjust.
Strip away the high-minded rhetoric of liberals and you get this: they define a just society as one where everyone's outcome is equal.
But since people are not equal, the only way to achieve that goal is to treat people unequally. In horse racing, they make horses with lighter jockeys carry weights.
Liberals use taxes, regulations and racial quotas to rig the outcomes they deem superior and moral. They think the government should be Daddy, doling out the goodies. If they ever openly admitted it, that would be startling.
Of course, there is such a place where equality is enforced by the government. That's Cuba, where everyone is equally poor.
u.n. blows hot air at kids
Kofi, et al, can't stop themselves.
A new United Nations children’s book promoting fears of catastrophic manmade global warming is being promoted at the UN Climate Change Conference in Kenya. The book's main character, a young boy, is featured getting so worried about a coming manmade climate disaster that he yells “I don’t want to hear anymore!”
The new children’s book, entitled “Tore and the Town on Thin Ice” (http://www.unep.org/PDF/TORE.pdf) is published by the United Nations Environment Programme and blames “rich countries” for creating a climate catastrophe and urges children to join environmental groups.
The book is about a young boy named Tore who lives in an Arctic village. Tore loses a dog sled race because he crashes through the thinning ice allegedly caused by manmade greenhouse gas emissions. The book features colorful drawings and large text to appeal to young children.
After the boy loses the dog sled race, he is visited by “Sedna, the Mother of the Sea” in a dream. The “Sea Mother” Goddess informs Tore in blunt terms that the thinning ice that caused his loss in the dog sled race was due to manmade global warming.
This calls for sequel about a young American boy named Tommy who learns about the medieval warming period while reading a book. Tommy, quite the boy scientist, is later perusing a UN climate report and notices that the 400 year warm spell has been erased from UN documents.
"Hmm," he says to himself, "these one-worlders are rigging the science and that makes me mad."
So Tommy breaks open his piggy bank and takes a bus to New York. Through guile and sheer determination, he meets Kofi Annan face to face.
"Listen you corrupt hack," he squeaks in his 10-year old voice. "It's one thing to be in the tank for tyrants and to sit back while 800,000 Rwandans get hacked to death. That was bad, but--"
"Who are you, John Bolten's kid?" Kofi smiles through clenched teeth.
"No, I'm just a young American who respects science. I hate it when science gets perverted by twits grinding an axe. Quit pissing on my leg and telling me it's raining."
At which point Tommy grabs a handful of candy off Kofi's desk and stuffs his pockets as he departs.
"Keep it real," he says on his way out.
TUESday, november 14 2006
abe lincoln shafted 'em
Betsy Newmark noted this story:
"Abraham Lincoln really did a number on us," said Thomas Naylor, a former Duke University economics professor who is a leader of the Second Vermont Republic movement. "He convinced the vast majority of Americans that secession is illegal, immoral and unconstitutional."
The First North American Secessionist Convention, billed as the first national gathering of secessionists since the Civil War, included an eclectic mix of conservatives, liberals, libertarians, left-wing Green Party zealots, and right-wing Christian activists.
The bearded, denim-vested representative of the Alaskan Independence Party sat next to the United Texas Republic man in his gray suit and red tie, just across from the blond pony-tailed representative of Cascadia (better known as Oregon, Washington and British Columbia).
They joined folks from such disparate groups as the League of the South, the Confederate Legion, the Free State Project, Christian Exodus, Free Hawaii, the Alliance for Democracy, the Abbeville Institute, and the Center for Democracy and the Constitution.
All agreed on one thing: their disdain for "the empire" of modern America.
iran wants to own jihad
Iran is trying to form an unholy alliance with al-Qa'eda by grooming a new generation of leaders to take over from Osama bin Laden, The Daily Telegraph can reveal.
Western intelligence officials say the Iranians are determined to take advantage of bin Laden's declining health to promote senior officials who are known to be friendly to Teheran.
The revelation will deal a major blow to Tony Blair's hopes of establishing a "new partnership" with Teheran.
No kidding.
This news fits with the premise of No God, But God, an excellent book about Islam. The author, an Iranian expatriate, believes Islam is undergoing a struggle for its soul. The Shiite Iranians, who got the jihad going in 1979, have felt upstaged by the Sunni Osama bin Laden after 9/11.
According to this theory, the west is a mere prop, like some innocent bystander capped by a gang initiate making his bones.
inscrutable!
A Chinese aircraft carrier in a very small pond. Very.
pelosi gets in bed with murtha
the generals' fantasy wars
When consummate Rumsfeld critic Ralph Peters finally comes to the conclusion that maybe the senior level military commanders running the war just might have had something to do with the mess in Iraq, you know an earth-shattering revelation has just occurred. Unfortunately, Peters’ public unburdening has come two years too late to save one of the most effective defense secretaries in history.
AT and a few others have dared to suggest the same point about senior military leadership a long time ago. So, now that the supposed source of all that is wrong in our defense establishment has been ushered out the door, I will now follow in the footsteps of my fellow commentator and internet radio host Rick Moran and declare that the time for circumspection concerning our military hierarchy has passed
heart of darkness
Dr. Sanity examines the, uh, thinking of a Daily Kos contributor who compares Iran favorably to the United States. Here's a taste of the loony left:
Iran has invested its oil wealth in universal education, healthcare, infrastructure bringing clean water and electricity to more than 98 percent of its people, and economic progress. Military spending is a paltry $91 per capita compared to more than $1,500 per capita in the United States and Israel. The social and economic achievements of the revolutionary regime in Iran in the past 25 years look quite progressive in reducing poverty and social inequalities, and as the society liberalises toward a more secular democratic regime, even better progress can be expected in the future. Compared to rising inequality in the United States and Israel, ranked numbers one and two for social inequality among developed nations, the Iranians look pretty damn good.
That, of course, is the problem. If Iran, rather like Venezuela, becomes a regional leader and examplar of social democracy, it becomes a threat to the corporatist and militarist elites that dominate the political classes of Washington and Tel Aviv and exploit the mineral and oil wealth of underdeveloped nations.
watching webb
Let those other pundits and reporters obsess over the new Democratic leadership as it brings its own special brand of ``progressive reform'' to Capitol Hill. (An all- vegan menu in the cafeteria? Hookahs in the cloakroom? Mandatory Birkenstocks in place of wingtips?)
I will be directing my attention to the back benches. I'll be watching Jim Webb.
With his stunning upset of George Allen, the heavily favored Republican incumbent, the newly elected Democratic senator from Virginia arrives as the most exotic bird in the Washington aviary.
Unlike most modern politicians, Webb hasn't spent his entire adult life running, or plotting to run, for political office. He is a man of unimpeachable physical courage and battlefield heroism, having been awarded the Navy Cross, the Silver Star and two Purple Hearts for his service as a Marine in Vietnam.
As the author of six novels, most of them bestsellers and all of them bristling with interesting ideas, he enters the Senate with a record of creative and intellectual accomplishment not seen there since the death of Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
And best of all, his election last Tuesday makes him the most deeply conservative national Democrat since Grover Cleveland.
Mr. Webb, meet Ms. Pelosi.
...
National Democrats may not know what to do with him either. Webb's arrival in Washington is being hailed as part of a new wave of moderation and pragmatism sweeping the liberal party.
Yet Webb is neither a moderate nor a pragmatist: He's a radical and a populist. His populism explains, among other things, his disdain for the Clintons. Both Bill and Hillary, he wrote in 2001, embody a ``a pervasive elitism, from people who were taught when young that the laws that applied to their countrymen did not necessarily apply to them.''
MEDICAL POLITICS
WHAT kills more than five times as many Americans as AIDS? Hospital infections, which account for an estimated 100,000 deaths every year.
Yet the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which are calling for voluntary blood testing of all patients to stem the spread of AIDS, have chosen not to recommend a test that is essential to stop the spread of another killer sweeping through our nation’s hospitals: M.R.S.A., or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. The C.D.C. guidelines to prevent hospital infections, released last month, conspicuously omit universal testing of patients for M.R.S.A.
That’s unfortunate. Research shows that the only way to prevent M.R.S.A. infections is to identify which patients bring the bacteria into the hospital. The M.R.S.A. test costs no more than the H.I.V. test and is less invasive, a simple nasal or skin swab.
Staph bacteria are the most prevalent infection-causing germs in most hospitals, and increasingly these infections cannot be cured with ordinary antibiotics. Sixty percent of staph infections are now drug resistant (that is, M.R.S.A.), up from 2 percent in 1974.
Some people carry M.R.S.A. germs in their noses or on their skin without realizing it. The bacteria do not cause infection unless they get inside the body — usually via a catheter, a ventilator, or an incision or other open wound. Once admitted to a hospital, these patients shed the germs on bedrails, wheelchairs, stethoscopes and other surfaces, where M.R.S.A. can live for many hours.
Doctors and other caregivers who lean over an M.R.S.A.-positive patient often pick up the germ on their hands, gloves or lab coats and carry it along to their next patient.
PBS addressed this topic last month. When one doctor put together financial data demonstrating that his hospital was losing money on every case of M.R.S.A, the hospital board acted aggressively to screen incoming patients.
What color ribbon will celebrities need for this disease?
monday, november 13 2006
watching the clown car empty
From BlackFive.
big contradiction
John Hawkins: Let me ask you a related question, something you've touched on before. Europeans, from what I've seen, have a generally more dim view of the Middle East than Americans - like they think it's futile to try to build democracy in Iraq. You know, everywhere that you talk about -- well, democracy in the Muslim world just won't work. Yet, they're bringing in all the Muslims you could possibly imagine into their own home countries, and they're building them up to such a percentage that....if you get up to where 20%, 30%, 40% of your population is Muslim and you don't think Islam is compatible with democracy, that's kind of a weird combination. How's that happening?
Mark Steyn: I think that is the contradiction. If Islam is incompatible with democracy, that's not a problem for Iraq, it's a problem for Belgium, you know, because Iraq until, you know, a few months back had no democracy to lose. They can easily adjust to the way it's always been.
For Belgium or for Denmark or for the Netherlands, they've got real democracies and they are likely to lose and as you see, I think that is really the issue here, that when these contradictions are pointed out, Europeans essentially refuse to acknowledge them. Yet at the same time they're making capitulations to the most naked form of political bullying --and that's when Islam is officially a minority of, you know, 10% or so.
I`n those cities it's a lot higher already. What happens when it's 30%? I mean, this is a question they never, ever ask themselves and you're right, they do take a dim view. I think at some level there's something else going on there, too, that a lot of these countries, you know, -- we talk about the Middle East, democratize the Middle East - we forget Spain was a dictatorship 30 years ago, Portugal, a little over 30 years ago, Greece, same 30 years ago.
Italy and Germany and France, you've got to go back half a century, but in essence the idea of living under non-democratic regimes is not foreign to these people and I think they think of themselves, their identities less as Europeans are less bound up with ideas of liberty than it is for the U.S. You know, the U.S. is an ideological project in a way that Italy isn't and so I do think that also accounts for part of the way they look at it.
harry reid's bridge to somewhere (his bank account)
...last year's huge $286-billion federal transportation bill included a little-noticed slice of pork pushed by Reid that provided benefits not only for the casino town of Laughlin, Nev., but also, possibly, for the senator himself.
Reid called funding for construction of a bridge over the Colorado River, among other projects, "incredibly good news for Nevada" in a news release after passage of the 2005 transportation bill. He didn't mention, though, that just across the river in Arizona, he owns 160 acres of land several miles from proposed bridge sites and that the bridge could add value to his real estate investment.
Reid denies any personal financial interest in his efforts to secure $18 million for a new span connecting Laughlin with Bullhead City, Ariz.
paul graham
When people care enough about something to do it well, those who do it best tend to be far better than everyone else. There's a huge gap between Leonardo and second-rate contemporaries like Borgognone. You see the same gap between Raymond Chandler and the average writer of detective novels. A top-ranked professional chess player could play ten thousand games against an ordinary club player without losing once.
Like chess or painting or writing novels, making money is a very specialized skill. But for some reason we treat this skill differently. No one complains when a few people surpass all the rest at playing chess or writing novels, but when a few people make more money than the rest, we get editorials saying this is wrong.
Why? The pattern of variation seems no different than for any other skill. What causes people to react so strongly when the skill is making money?
I think there are three reasons we treat making money as different: the misleading model of wealth we learn as children; the disreputable way in which, till recently, most fortunes were accumulated; and the worry that great variations in income are somehow bad for society. As far as I can tell, the first is mistaken, the second outdated, and the third empirically false. Could it be that, in a modern democracy, variation in income is actually a sign of health?
The Daddy Model of Wealth
When I was five I thought electricity was created by electric sockets. I didn't realize there were power plants out there generating it. Likewise, it doesn't occur to most kids that wealth is something that has to be generated. It seems to be something that flows from parents.
Read it all.
gone in sixty minutes
Last night 60 Minutes devoted its full hour in tribute to Ed Bradley. I was watching the football game and flipped back during commercials and only saw to brief bits. In one, they showed Bradley's facial expressions as he reacted to his interview subject. There was Ed the amused, Ed the skeptical, Ed the impatient, Ed the annoyed etc.
Often TV interviews are shot with one camera because it's faster and simpler to light one seat at a time. Which means the correspondent is not reacting in real time to what the subject is saying. He is acting. Sometimes the interview subject has left the room and the correspondent sits down and acts out a whole series of expressions that are later cut into the segment.
Seeing Ed's expressions played out in succession was like seeing a magician inadvertently revealing his tricks. Many "60 Minutes" segments are mini-dramas with villains, victims and heroes. The correspondent serves as our stand-in. How the correspondent reacts is how we are supposed to react. So the facial expressions of Ed or Morely or Leslie are cues, signals for us to think a certain way. It's one way they convey their bias.
.......
The other bit I saw was Ed Bradley emoting over the plight of the South Asian boat people.
How did they become boat people? Who's biased news coverage (CBS's Walter Cronkite reporting on Tet -- see the last item from yesterday) led to the United States abandoning these people to their doom?
Do they have mirrors at CBS?
Meanwhile, Democrats are busy making plans to abandon Iraq. No doubt, they'll figure out a way to make it seem noble.
do'h! another botched joke: the simpsons
The Simpsons is often the funniest show on television. As the writing flagged the last few years, the quality has been spotty. Some episodes are brilliant -- the one where Springfield Elementary is segregated by gender comes to mind -- and some are just cold stone unfunny.
Last night's episode was that and more. The plot hinged on two Army recruiters working in the mall who could not find any teenagers dumb enough to enlist. The jokes suggested that today's Army is having trouble recruiting, which it is not, and that recruits are fools who do not understand the risks they are taking.
All this is context for John Kerry's "botched joke" before the election. Kerry thought he was speaking to a friendly audience, people like the cluelsss writing staff of the Simpsons, and forgot that, for better or worse, when he opens his yap the whole world listens.
I can imagine that our young military men and women and big fans of The Simpsons. How ugly it must be for them to have their courage and sacrifice demeaned by Hollywood twits.
sunday, november 12 2006
how we lost vietnam
Taken from The Wall Street Journal, Thursday August 3, 1995
What did the North Vietnamese leadership think of the American antiwar movement? What was the purpose of the Tet Offensive? How could the U.S. have been more successful in fighting the Vietnam War?
Bui Tin, a former colonel in the North Vietnamese army, answers these questions in the following excerpts from an interview conducted by Stephen Young, a Minnesota attorney and human-rights activist. Bui Tin, who served on the general staff of North Vietnam's army, received the unconditional surrender of South Vietnam on April 30, 1975.
He later became editor of the People's Daily, the official newspaper of Vietnam. He now lives in Paris, where he immigrated after becoming disillusioned with the fruits of Vietnamese communism.
Question: How did Hanoi intend to defeat the Americans?
Answer: By fighting a long war which would break their will to help South Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh said, "We don't need to win military victories, we only need to hit them until they give up and get out."
Q: Was the American antiwar movement important to Hanoi's victory?
A: It was essential to our strategy. Support of the war from our rear was completely secure while the American rear was vulnerable. Every day our leadership would listen to world news over the radio at 9 a.m. to follow the growth of the American antiwar movement. Visits to Hanoi by people like Jane Fonda, and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and ministers gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses. We were elated when Jane Fonda, wearing a red Vietnamese dress, said at a press conference that she was ashamed of American actions in the war and that she would struggle along with us.
Q: Did the Politburo pay attention to these visits?
A: Keenly.
Q: Why?
A: Those people represented the conscience of America. The conscience of America was part of its war-making capability, and we were turning that power in our favor. America lost because of its democracy; through dissent and protest it lost the ability to mobilize a will to win.
Q: How could the Americans have won the war?
A: Cut the Ho Chi Minh trail inside Laos. If Johnson had granted [Gen. William] Westmoreland's requests to enter Laos and block the Ho Chi Minh trail, Hanoi could not have won the war.
left brain, right brain, transcendent brain
The psychoanalyst James Grotstein proposes a “dual track” theory of human development, in which there is a separate developmental agenda for the self in isolation and the self in relation to others. Recent work in neurology has suggested that we not only have two brains (left and right), but two consciousnesses, two very different ways of processing data and experience. In our normal waking consciousness, one hemisphere subordinates the other, so that we have the subjective impression of a unified consciousness, but in reality, it is somewhat analogous to having two eyes or ears. For example, when they are properly functioning, we are not aware of having two eyes. However, the fact that we have two eyes with slightly different points of view creates the experience of depth. Likewise, thanks to having two ears, we can have the experience of a bitchin’ stereo.
The right brain allows us the experience of fusion with others, of oneness with creation, of membership in a larger group. But thanks to the left brain, we can have the experience of uniqueness, of our separateness from the group, of what is called individuation. The two hemispheres also think and process information in divergent ways, one in a holistic, translogical and analogical manner, the other in a linear, logical, and digital manner.
Obviously, especially in the west, there are many excessively left-brained thinkers who derive their philosophies from their own handicapped existence. Here I am thinking of someone like the famous materialist Richard Dawkins, whose spiritually barren atheistic theology is all words and no music, and speaks to no one who is firing in both hemispheres. This is why atheism quickly devolves into bad theology...-------------------------------------------
Consider it this way: the big bang did not just happen once upon a timeless, some 14 billion years ago. Rather, a cosmos mysteriously explodes into being every moment, in every individual's consciousness. Likewise, an entire cosmos comes into being with each new birth, and a whole unrepeatable world fades into oblivion with each death. And it's all happening now.
In this view, the vexing duality of mind and matter is resolved in the only way it can be -- by showing how both poles of the dialectic arise from a single, nonlocal source, outside space and time. Every moment -- that is, the ineffable now -- represents a ceaseless flowing out of eternity into time, accompanied by a simultaneous "flowing in" of time back to eternity. This is the cosmogonic cycle which grace allows us to hitch a ride upon.
rare glasswing butterfly
More photos here of the butterfly with translucent wings.
for those who need coaching
doubling down
Don't throw good money after bad. When you're in a hole, stop digging. If you've been running in the wrong direction, the first thing to do is, turn around.
These are the kinds of things Americans are hearing and saying about the war in Iraq. It's understandable: Those familiar sayings are often useful. When you gamble and lose, the natural tendency is to double your bet--and when that doesn't work, mortgage everything you have to try to retrieve your losses. But as every undergraduate economics student knows, that strategy is a disaster. Hence the principle of "sunk cost." The fact that I've lost a pile on some enterprise or investment is no reason to lose an even bigger pile. The smart move, economically speaking, is to reassess your decisions on a regular basis. When an investment isn't working, get out. Put your money, your talents, and your energy to better use somewhere else.
All of which seems to apply to Iraq, in spades. A seemingly quick and easy military victory has turned sour. The costs, in blood and treasure, have escalated. Victory looks uncertain and distant. It seems the time has come, if not to cut and run, then surely to cut our losses. If ever the principle of sunk cost applied to warfare, it would seem to apply here.
But that instinct is wrong. Warfare is not like investment banking. At precisely the moment an economist might say to stop throwing good money after bad, a wise military strategist might say to double the bet.
Why might that be so? For one thing, willingness to raise the stakes often wins the game. Why do insurgent gangs, who have vastly smaller resources and manpower than the American soldiers they fight, continue to try to kill those soldiers? The answer is, because they believe they only have to kill a few more, and the soldiers will leave. They need not inflict a military defeat (which would be impossible, given the strength of the American military)--all they need to do is survive until American voters decide to throw in the towel, which might happen at any moment.
The proper response to that calculation is to make emphatically clear that the fight will not end until one side or the other wins, decisively. That kind of battle can only have one ending, as Abraham Lincoln understood. In a speech delivered a month after his reelection, Lincoln carefully surveyed the North's resources and manpower and concluded that the nation's wealth was "unexhausted and, as we believe, inexhaustible." Southern soldiers be gan to desert in droves. Through the long, bloody summer and fall of 1864, the South had hung on only because of the belief that the North might tire of the conflict. But Lincoln did not tire. Instead, he doubled the bet--and won the war.
The Japanese tried the same strategy at the end of WWII. Because Truman did not falter, we won decisively and killed the virus that had infected Japan.
Japan is a major ally and boasts the world's second largest economy.
saturday, november 11 2006
far left outraged that right isn't outraged
The Anchoress:
…the weirdest fallout I’ve seen from the election is that the far left folks seem to be annoyed…angry, even at the right for not being more pissed-off, for being mostly philosophical instead of enraged about the results. I think they were hoping to enjoy watching us flip out, and they’re not seeing it.
Instead of ranting and carrying on about “leftards” and spewing venom and hate and charging “stolen, stolen,” the righty blogs are thinking things over and talking and even - fer heaven’s sake - daring to laugh in real amusement as they watch the strangely positive headlines which have surfaced in the press since Tuesday.
I mean, it is VERY amusing (sad, and pathetic, too, but also vastly funny) to see the MSM (the “mediating intelligences”) suddenly proclaim the new gains in the stock market as fantastic news! (Stocks climb on Dem wins! When they reached 12,000 under Bush and a GOP congress, it was doom, doom, doom!). In three days Afghanistan went from a quagmire to a place of hope oh, and look! Now that the Dems are incontrol, we’re finally allowed to read about the tremendous advances being made in ADULT stem cell research!
I’m all astonishment! And yes, very amused.
some common sense prevailed
Arizona voters defeated, 64% to 34%, a proposition to add a million dollar lottery prize to induce people to vote.
proportionality
More from Britain's chief intelligence officer:
My Service and the police have occasionally been accused of hype and lack of perspective or worse, of deliberately stirring up fear. It is difficult to argue that there are not worse problems facing us, for example climate change... and of course far more people are killed each year on the roads than die through terrorism.
It is understandable that people are reluctant to accept assertions that do not always appear to be substantiated. It is right to be sceptical about intelligence. I shall say more about that later.
But just consider this. A terrorist spectacular would cost potentially thousands of lives and do major damage to the world economy. Imagine if a plot to bring down several passenger aircraft succeeded. Thousands dead, major economic damage, disruption across the globe. And Al-Qaida is an organisation without restraint.
webb stuns his "base"
The Corner passes along this first person account of James Webb's victory rally:
He started off by mentioning that "tomorrow is an extremely important day for America," and the crowd went wild, thinking he was talking about taking power. But of course, he launched into his praise of the Marine Corps, and the crowd cheered a little less loudly.
Then he thanked all the brave veterans and brave men still fighting, and the crowd cheered a little less loudly again. Then he mentioned that he received a call from Sen. Allen, and the crowd went nuts again.
Then he mentioned how pleasant and dignified Allen was, and the crowd grew quiet. Then he said he was having lunch next week with Allen — and the crowd was dead silent. Finally he told the audience that they should all thank Sen./Gov. Allen for his many years of dedicated service to the people of Virginia — and you could almost hear the people gathered looking at each other asking, "What the $#@! did we just do?"
It was priceless.
speak up
...Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei stated that the Republican defeat at the polls "is actually an obvious victory for the Iranian nation."
The White House has declined to comment on these statements, but what about the Democrats? Doesn't it behoove the Democrats to correct the claim that their ascension to power is good news for the enemies of the U.S.? Don't they want to move quickly to disabuse Al Qaeda of the idea that Democrats represent something that these butchers deem "reasonable"?
friday, november 10 2006
terror in the UK: "real, here, deadly and enduring"
The chief of Britain's MI5 spells out the terror threat. It's gonna be a long, hard fight.
In the years after 9/11, with atrocities taking place in Madrid, Casablanca, Bali, Istanbul and elsewhere, terrorists plotted to mount a string of attacks in the UK, but were disrupted. This run of domestic success was interrupted tragically in London in July 2005.
Since then, the combined efforts of my Service, the police, SIS and GCHQ have thwarted a further five major conspiracies in the UK, saving many hundreds (possibly even thousands) of lives. Last month the Lord Chancellor said that there were a total of 99 defendants awaiting trial in 34 cases. Of course the presumption of innocence applies and the law dictates that nothing must be said or done which might prejudice the right of a defendant to receive a fair trial. You will understand therefore that I can say no more on these matters.
...
The propaganda machine is sophisticated and Al-Qaida itself says that 50% of its war is conducted through the media. In Iraq, attacks are regularly videoed and the footage downloaded onto the internet within 30 minutes. Virtual media teams then edit the result, translate it into English and many other languages, and package it for a worldwide audience.
(CNN being a willing participant.)
And, chillingly, we see the results here. Young teenagers are being groomed to be suicide bombers. We are aware of numerous plots to kill people and to damage our economy. What do I mean by numerous? Five? Ten? No, nearer……. thirty that we know of. These plots often have links back to Al-Qaida in Pakistan and through those links Al-Qaida gives guidance and training to its largely British foot soldiers here on an extensive and growing scale. And it is not just the UK of course. Other countries also face a new terrorist threat: from Spain to France to Canada and Germany.
trial lawyers cheer election results
The takeover of Congress by Democrats could result in a big payday for trial lawyers at the expense of the feckless food industry.
Food companies like McDonald’s, KFC and IHOP recently announced their intent to stop cooking their foods in trans fats -- industrially-produced vegetable oils used in a variety of food products for their cooking, preservative and cost benefits.
The companies are reacting to widely publicized claims that trans fats cause heart disease and more than 1-in-5 heart attacks. Emanating from a decade-long campaign launched by a small group of Harvard University researchers, anti-trans fat hysteria has been so “successful” that New York City and Chicago have announced moves to ban restaurant use of trans fats.
al qaeda cheers election results
Democrats got very testy when someone observed that the terrorists wanted them to win. But it's true:
A statement purportedly from the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq hails the defeat of Republicans in the US mid-term polls.
The audio message, whose authenticity has not been verified, was published on Islamist websites and was said to be the voice of Abu Hamza al-Muhajir.
The Democrats' victory in Tuesday's Congressional elections was a move in the right direction, the speaker said.
Outgoing US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had stepped down to flee the Iraqi battlefield, he added.
He told US President George W Bush to "stay on the battleground".
"I tell the lame duck (US administration) do not rush to escape as did your defence minister.
The American people have taken a step in the right path to come out of their predicament... they voted for a level of reason," the voice said. Muhajir, also known as Ayyub al-Masri, has been identified by US forces as the successor to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, killed in a raid in June 2006.
Meanwhile, US forces captured an Al Qaeda leader in Anbar province. And Muqtada al Sadr implored Democrats to keep their campaign promises.
get well, joe pa
When I was attending the University of Maryland (class of 1971), Penn State's football team beat us every year. Hard to believe, but Penn State in my college years was being coached by Joe Paterno. That's the same Joe Paterno who is still coaching the Nittany Lions all these years later.
Joe turns 80 next month. A week ago he suffered an injury to his knee when a player collided with him on the sideline. He had surgery and is on the mend, but it means Joe will miss coaching this Saturday, his first miss since 1977.
What a man.
celebrities in jeopardy
This is celebrity week for the quiz show, Jeopardy.
Can you name the second planet from the sun? Well, Regis Philbin, Nancy Grace and the swishy guy from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy could not.
Public schools are not supposed to put students in tracks according to their abilities. Jeopardy clearly has not such limitation. The celebrities are obviously grouped according to their smarts (or knowledge). They play for charity and the show rightly does not want to embarass them, so the questions are dumbed down.
You get a sense right away how bright the players are after the first few questions. Tonight I went through the whole first round without missing a question, something that never happens with regular Jeopardy. It occured to me that it's peculiar that celebrities so often want to lecture the common folk about politics, the environment and such, when they know less than we do.
One I remember standing out for her ignorance, even these years later, is Rosie O'Donnell, who despite being an adult during the Falkland Islands war, could not name the place.
Some stars are quite sharp. Three that come to mind are Cheech Marin, Wayne Brady and the late Jerry Orbach.
Here's a trivia nugget: tonight's final Jeopardy question revealed that Drew Barrymore's great-great grandmother acted on the stage with John Wilkes Booth's father.
thursday, november 9 2006
if it brays like an ass...
Rosie O'Donnell advises, "Don't Fear the Terrorists, They're Mothers and Fathers."
bill maher: shallow and smug
Bill Maher was on Larry King last night, plugging his plan to out Republican homosexuals.
MAHER: "Frank Rich wrote about this a couple of weeks ago. He said, yes we've heard about Mark Foley...but he said, that's just the beginning of it. A lot of the chiefs of staff, the people who really run the underpinnings of the Republican party, are gay. I don't want to mention names but I will Friday night.
KING: You will Friday night?
MAHER: There's a couple people everybody in Washington knows, who run the Republican party
KING: You will name them?
MAHER: I wouldn't be the first. I'd get sued if I was the first, but...you know, Ken Mehlman, okay there's one I think people have talked about. I don't think he's denied it when people have suggested it (actually, he has). He doesn't say...
KING: Ken Mehlman? I've never heard that. But the question is...
MAHER: Maybe you don't go to the same bathhouse I do Larry.
KING: Why would someone who is gay take public anti-gay positions? Why would you do that?
MAHER: Because Larry, hating yourself is the greatest love of all.
So, according to Maher, if you're gay you must naturally be a Democrat (to be otherwise is self hatred). Even if you believe in free markets, low taxes, a strong national defense and think redefining marriage is overreaching, you must be a Democrat if you're gay.
Tell me that's not stereotyping.
Tell me that revealing a person's sexuality without their consent is not an invasion of privacy.
And tell me that defining an individual strictly on the basis of their sexual orientation is not primitive.
post mortemitis
After every election, the chattering classes spill ink and fill airtime explaining the whats and why-fors. This time we're hearing that voters were turned off by Republican corruption and scandals. Which makes one wonder:
- did the voters know about Harry Reid and his lucrative real estate deals?
- Democrat Congressman William Jefferson and his $90,000 in cold cash?
- did voters consider that Texas DA Ronnie Earle's abuse of his office to get revenge on Tom DeLay constitutes a form of corruption?
- did voters upset about Mark Foley consider that Dem. Barney Frank turned a blind eye to his gay prostitute boyfriend's call boy business and is still in Congress?
- did they consider that Ted Kennedy got a woman killed, fled the scene and decades later is regarded as an elder statesman by his party?
Not likely. And do they know about Nancy Pelosi's plans to name a felon, Alcee Hastings, to the top position on the House Intelligence Committee?
We have difficulty accepting that Mr. Hastings has been allowed by Ms. Pelosi to venture anywhere near national security matters, much less onto a field as vital as the Intelligence Committee, which exercises oversight of organizations ranging from Central Intelligence Agency to the U.S. Marine Corps Intelligence Department, including the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency. That Mr. Hastings is employed by the United States of America, and is not a guest a federal penitentiary, is itself cause for wonder.
...Hastings' judicial tenure, normally a life appointment, was cut short after only a decade. Barely two years into office, "Judge" Hastings accepted a $150,000 bribe in exchange for giving a lenient sentence to two swindlers, then lied in subsequent sworn testimony about the incident. The case involved two brothers, Frank and Thomas Romano, who had been convicted in 1980 on 21 counts of racketeering. Together with attorney William Borders Jr., Hastings, who presided over the Romanos' case, hatched a plot to solicit a bribe from the brothers. In exchange for a $150,000 cash payment to him, Hastings would return some $845,000 of their $1.2 million in seized assets after they served their three-year jail terms.
Taped conversations between Hastings and Borders confirmed that the judge was a party to the plot. Hastings was also criminally prosecuted for bribery, but his accomplice Borders went to prison rather than testify against him. Hastings was acquitted thanks to Borders' silence.
[Borders was then pardoned by President Clinton, confirming the wisdom of his refusal to testify. In a remarkable display of chutzpah, Borders then applied for reinstatement to the District of Columbia Bar, claiming that Clinton's federal pardon eliminated his local disbarment. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit did not agree, and the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear his appeal. To former D.C. delegate Walter Fauntroy, Borders' case had a spiritual quality to it. "Being pardoned by the president is like being pardoned by Jesus," Fauntroy sermonized. Thankfully, the Supremes evidently disagreed with this "theology."]
Ah yes, Clinton, the pardon-for-$$$ president. No corruption there.
nutshells
When Republicans worry more about staying in government than about limiting government, they get thrown out of government. That's the lesson of Nov. 7, 2006.
-----------------------------------------
The Democrats said: “Had enough?”
The Republicans said: “It could be worse!”
The voters said: “Let’s find out.”
same strategy, new tactics
Why did Donald Rumsfeld fall on his sword? The situation on the ground -- all them new Democrats comin' to town -- changed. So Bush made a tactical move.
One thing regarding the Democrat's victory I expected: hearings. A lot of folks were just sent to Washington on the promise of willingness to "ask the tough questions" on Iraq. (A nice way to deflect any concerns that you have no answers, of course, but I digress...) But what that translates to is hearings - probably hearings ad nauseum, and doubtless with multiple planned appearances from one Donald Rumsfeld. My guess - and I state this with sincerity - is that barring appointment of a Special Assistant to the Secretary for Listening to the Tough Questions, Mr Rumsfeld's ability to run the Defense Department would effectively come to a close in late January, 2007.
He may still be spending that time at the show trials, of course - he himself may in fact become the unpaid Special Assistant to the Secretary for Listening to the Tough Questions. But now it won't compromise his ability to lead a military in time of war.
on donald rumsfeld
Vaya Con Dios, Rummy!
Here is the record of Donald Rumsfeld. (1) Tried to take a top-heavy Pentagon and prepare it for the wars of the postmodern world, in which on a minute’s notice thousands of American soldiers, with air and sea support, would have to be sent to some god-awful place to fight some savagery—and then be trashed live on CNN for doing it; (2) less than a month after 9/11 he organized the retaliation against al Qaeda in the heart of primordial Afghanistan that removed the Taliban in 7 weeks, when we were all warned that the U.S., like the British and Russians of old, would fail; (3) oversaw the removal of Saddam in 3 weeks—after the 1991 Gulf War and the 12-years of 350,000 sorties in the no-fly-zones, and various bombing strikes, had failed. (4) Ah, you say, then there is the disastrous 3-year insurgency—too few troops, Iraqi army let go, underestimated “dead-enders” etc.?
But Rumsfeld knew that in a counterinsurgency (cf. Vietnam 1965-71) massive deployments only ensure complacency, breed dependency, and create resentment, and that, in contrast, training indigenous forces, ensuring political autonomy, and providing air and commando support (e.g., Vietnam circa 1972-4) is the only answer—although that is a long process that can work only if political support at home allows the military to finish the job (cf. the turn-of-the-century Philippines, and the British in Malaysia). He was a good man, and we were lucky to have him in our hour of need.
big dog or little pussy?
An LA firefighter, a veteran of 19 years, calls himself The Big Dog. During a volleyball game earlier one day he'd bragged, "You guys keep feeding the Big Dog." As a prank, they put dog food in his spaghetti sauce that night.
He sued the city for harassment and won $2.7 million. Oh, by the way, Big Dog is black. Somehow the incident became racial enough to file a lawsuit and scare the LA City Council into settling (they frighten easily).
...he felt the prank was offensive, humiliating and took on a particularly malicious character because he was African- American and his colleagues were not, according to his lawsuit.
So only people of the same color can prank each other? How does this promote a healthy work environment?
"Because of what happened to me, I could not trust people I worked with, and I could not continue to risk my life as a firefighter with people I did not trust to protect me," Pierce said Wednesday in a statement.
One never knows the inside story. But pranks and teasing are part and parcel of life in a firehouse. As one dissenting council member said:
"Firefighters and police officers play pranks on each other. I've had pranks played on me," said Zine, who was an LAPD officer for 38 years. "I'm not saying what they did was right, but it wasn't worth $2.7 million."
the global warming plot thickens
Two big questions about global warming stand out: one, does the apparent warming of the earth portend disaster and two, are human beings responsible for the warming. To listen to Al Gore and his Green Scare minions, the answer to both is yes.
Disagree or even voice doubt and you're branded a "denier." The science is settled, they say.
But scientists have discovered that CO2 levels were once 18 times what they are today, without cooking the planet. What does that mean?
Where the specialists clash is on what the evidence means for the idea that industrial civilization and the burning of fossil fuels are the main culprits in climate change. The two sides agree that carbon dioxide can block solar energy that would otherwise radiate back into space, an effect known as greenhouse warming. But they differ sharply on its strength.
Some argue that CO2 fluctuations over the Phanerozoic follow climate trends fairly well, supporting a causal relationship between high gas levels and high temperatures. “The geologic record over the past 550 million years indicates a good correlation,” said Robert A. Berner, a Yale geologist and pioneer of paleoclimate analysis. “There are other factors at work here. But in general, global warming is due to CO2. It was in the past and is now.”
Other experts say that is an oversimplification of a complex picture of natural variation. The fluctuations in the gas levels, they say, often fall out of step with the planet’s hot and cold cycles, undermining the claimed supremacy of carbon dioxide.
“It’s too simplistic to say low CO2 was the only cause of the glacial periods” on time scales of millions of years, said Robert Giegengack, a geologist at the University of Pennsylvania who studies past atmospheres. “The record violates that one-to-one correspondence.”
He and other doubters say the planet is clearly warming today, as it has repeatedly done, but insist that no one knows exactly why. Other possible causes, they say, include changes in sea currents, Sun cycles and cosmic rays that bombard the planet.
“More and more data,” Jan Veizer, an expert on Phanerozoic climates at the University of Ottawa, said, “point to the Sun and stars as the dominant driver.”
So scientists, who are not shills for the oil industry, are engaged in serious debate. That is, there is no scientific "consensus" on global warming.
“In my view, the uncertainties are too great to draw any conclusions right now,” Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton, said. “It could be that when the dust settles some insight will emerge that will be germane to the current problem — how do we keep the climate from spinning out of control.”
Skeptics say CO2 crusaders simply find the Phanerozoic data embarrassing and irreconcilable with public alarms. “People come to me and say, ‘Stop talking like this, you’re hurting the cause,’ ” said Dr. Giegengack of Penn.
In 2002, Daniel H. Rothman of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology also raised sharp Phanerozoic questions after studying carbon dioxide clues teased from marine rocks. Writing in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, he said that with one exception — the recent cool period of the last 50 million years — he could find “no systematic correspondence” between carbon dioxide and climate shifts.
Which cause? The Green Scare, the politicization of science.
Finally, another theory which explains global warming is fluctuations in cosmic radiation as the solar system moves through the galaxy.
In 2003, Dr. Veizer joined Nir J. Shaviv, an astrophysicist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, to propose a new climate driver. They envisioned slow movements of the solar system through the surrounding galaxy as controlling the cosmic rays that bombard Earth’s atmosphere. A reduction, they argued, would lessen cloud cover and Earth’s reflectivity, warming the planet. The reverse would cause cooling. The Phanerozoic record of cosmic-ray bombardment showed excellent agreement with climate fluctuations, trumping carbon dioxide, they wrote.
wednesday, november 8 2006
time warped
Get this, from today's LA Times:
Just two months before principal photography was meant to commence in Paris on the latest "Rush Hour" sequel, director Brett Ratner came to screenwriter Jeff Nathanson ("Catch Me If You Can") and informed him that he wanted a part written into the Jackie Chan-Chris Tucker action-comedy franchise for Roman Polanski.
Roman Polanski? The guy who wrote and/or directed "Repulsion," "Rosemary's Baby" and "Chinatown," three of the bleakest assessments of human nature ever put on film ... in "Rush Hour 3"?
The same Roman Polanski who got a 13-year old girl drunk, sodomized her and then fled to Europe? (If you have the stomach for it, read the grand jury testimony of his victim here.)
Polanski is a creepy, pedophile fugitive. He is scum, regardless of what films he's made. Scum is unworthy of any mention short of contempt, let alone such awed gushing.
strawberry fields in november
A farmer in Camarillo, CA adjusts the irrigation for his newly planted strawberry crop.
The western reaches of the Santa Monica mountains
figure in the background.
JB
calling nancy pelosi
An imaginary moment...
Me: Congratulations Ms. Speaker. You promised to raise the federal minimum wage by $2.00 if you won.
Pelosi: Yes, two bucks more for working people.
Me: I think that's stingy. I say raise it to $25.00 -- give everyone some extra walking around money.
Pelosi: $25? Sorry, that's impossible. Absurd.
Me: Why? Everyone would be instantly well off.
Pelosi: If they paid workers $25 an hour, McDonalds would have to charge $15 for a Big Mac.
Me: Big Macs are bad for you, so that's good, right? People couldn't afford as many.
Pelosi: But it's not just fast food, the price of everything would jump. If burger flippers make $25 an hour, nurses will want more. And teachers, office workers.
Me: The more the merrier.
Pelosi: No, because then inflation gobbles up the raise and we're back where we started.
Me: Okay, make it $18 an hour.
Pelosi: Still too much.
Me: $12.75?
Pelosi: I like it, but it still feels too high.
Me: Feels? You do this by feel?
Pelosi: How else? I'm a progressive.
Me: You could let the market set prices.
Pelosi: Market? Wall Street, those greedy bast...
Me: No, workers and employers. If the boss doesn't offer enough, no one takes the job. He soon figures out what the job is worth.
Pelosi: Sounds like faith-based economics. Who are you, anyway?
Me: Jim Bass, friend of the working man.
Pelosi: I'm going to hang up now.
Me: Wait, I have another idea that won't cost much at all.
Pelosi: (snapping) What?
Me: Award everyone a college degree. People with college diplomas earn more.
Pelosi: That's because they know more!
Me: You mean, like people who make more than minimum wage?
three dimensional hanging art
on the bright side...
- Daniel Ortega was not on any US ballot.
- Joe Lieberman won
- There won't be any more computer phone calls urging me to vote for whatever.
- California voters soundly rejected Prop 87, heavily promoted by Bill Clinton and Al Gore.
- The birds are still singing and the flowers still blooming.
tuesday, november 7 2006
cooking the numbers for global warming
A scientist takes a hard look at the UN's global warming numbers:
So to the scare. First, the UN implies that carbon dioxide ended the last four ice ages. It displays two 450,000-year graphs: a sawtooth curve of temperature and a sawtooth of airborne CO2 that's scaled to look similar. Usually, similar curves are superimposed for comparison. The UN didn't do that. If it had, the truth would have shown: the changes in temperature preceded the changes in CO2 levels.
Next, the UN abolished the medieval warm period (the global warming at the end of the First Millennium AD). In 1995, David Deming, a geoscientist at the University of Oklahoma, had written an article reconstructing 150 years of North American temperatures from borehole data. He later wrote: "With the publication of the article in Science, I gained significant credibility in the community of scientists working on climate change. They thought I was one of them, someone who would pervert science in the service of social and political causes. One of them let his guard down. A major person working in the area of climate change and global warming sent me an astonishing email that said: 'We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period.' "
So they did. The UN's second assessment report, in 1996, showed a 1,000-year graph demonstrating that temperature in the Middle Ages was warmer than today. But the 2001 report contained a new graph showing no medieval warm period. It wrongly concluded that the 20th century was the warmest for 1,000 years.
The graph looked like an ice hockey-stick. The wrongly flat AD1000-AD1900 temperature line was the shaft: the uptick from 1900 to 2000 was the blade. Here's how they did it:
- They gave one technique for reconstructing pre-thermometer temperature 390 times more weight than any other (but didn't say so).
- The technique they overweighted was one which the UN's 1996 report had said was unsafe: measurement of tree-rings from bristlecone pines. Tree-rings are wider in warmer years, but pine-rings are also wider when there's more carbon dioxide in the air: it's plant food. This carbon dioxide fertilisation distorts the calculations.
- They said they had included 24 data sets going back to 1400. Without saying so, they left out the set showing the medieval warm period, tucking it into a folder marked "Censored Data".
- They used a computer model to draw the graph from the data, but scientists later found that the model almost always drew hockey-sticks even if they fed in random, electronic "red noise".
mercindy benz
Cindy Sheehan is so dumb she can't draw a peace symbol correctly.
serial killer scorecard
- Son of Sam: six dead, seven wounded.
- Ted Bundy: 22-100
- Green River Killer: 49 dead
- John Wayne Gacy: 33 known victims
- Jeffrey Dahmer: 17 men and boys
Saddam was just convicted of killing 140 of his countrymen. He is on trial for killing 185,000 Iraqi Kurds in the Anfall campaign. He killed 5,000 with poison gas in the Halabja. And there's plenty more.
gutless
The indignant protest that "of course" "we support our troops" isn't support, it's a straddle, and one that emphasizes the Democrats' frivolousness in the post-9/11 world. A serious party would have seen the jihad as a profound foreign-policy challenge they needed to address credibly. They could have found a Tony Blair -- a big mushy-leftie pantywaist on health and education and all the other sissy stuff, but a man at ease with the projection of military force in the national interest.
But we saw in Connecticut what happens to Democrats who run as Blairites: You get bounced from the ticket. In the 2004 election, instead of coming to terms with it as a national security question, the Democrats looked at the war on terror merely as a Bush wedge issue they needed to neutralize.
And so they signed up with the weirdly incoherent narrative of John Kerry -- a celebrated anti-war activist suddenly "reporting for duty" as a war hero and claiming that, even though the war was a mistake and his comrades were murderers and rapists, his four months in the Mekong rank as the most epic chapter in the annals of the Republic.
It's worth contrasting the fawning media admiration for Kerry's truncated tour of duty with their total lack of interest in Bob Dole's years of service two presidential campaigns earlier. That convention night in Boston was one of the freakiest presentations in contemporary politics: a man being greeted as a combination of Alexander the Great and the Duke of Wellington for a few weeks' service in a war America lost.
But Kerry is the flesh-and-blood embodiment of the Democratic straddle, of the we-oppose-the-war-but-support-our-troops line. That's why anti-war Dems, outspinning themselves, decided they could support a soldier who opposed a war. And as Kerry demonstrates effortlessly every time he opens his mouth, if you detach the heroism of a war from the morality of it, what's left but braggadocio? Or, as the senator intoned to me back in New Hampshire when I tried to ask what he would actually do about Iraq, Iran or anything else, "Sometimes truly courageous leadership means having the courage not to show any leadership." (I quote from memory.)
bar code architecture
grand theft mario
you don't know wasabi
Think that green lump of putty served with your sushi is wasabi? Think again.
top eleven reasons to vote
monday, november 6 2006
sympathy for the devil
Saddam Hussein's conviction provoked deeply mixed emotions around the world today, raising painful questions about the death penalty, the U.S.-led project in Iraq and the quest to heal historical atrocities.
Isn't that precious? "Painful questions about the death penalty."
Until Iraq was liberated -- over the objections of these delicate souls -- Saddam was merrily executing, gassing and torturing hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis at will.
Saddam believes in capital punishment, but without trials or even a proper burial.
His henchmen stuffed living people in chippers. He had children tortured in front of their parents. None of that seemed to matter to these enlightened humanitarians as long as it was out of their sight.
The sacrifice of the American military and the resolve of the American government ended that evil. No, Iraq isn't the Switzerland of the mideast, not yet, but it has a chance.
From the sidewalks of Arab cities to the government halls of some European countries, critics dismissed Hussein's death sentence as the flawed conclusion to an inherently illegitimate trial.
...
In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel said: "It was right and it was important to reappraise Saddam Hussein's crimes by a court." But Merkel also stressed her opposition to capital punishment.
Think Germany banned capital punishment for moral reasons? No, it was to save Nazi war criminals:
...Germans point proudly to Article 102 of their Basic Law, adopted in 1949. It reads, simply: "The death penalty is abolished." They often say that this 56-year-old provision shows how thoroughly the postwar Federal Republic has learned -- and applied -- the lessons of Nazi state-sponsored killing. (Communist East Germany kept the death penalty until 1987.)
But the actual history of the German death penalty ban casts this claim in a different light. Article 102 was in fact the brainchild of a right-wing politician who sympathized with convicted Nazi war criminals -- and sought to prevent their execution by British and American occupation authorities.
Far from intending to repudiate the barbarism of Hitler, the author of Article 102 wanted to make a statement about the supposed excesses of Allied victors' justice.
dueling visions
Washington Post: Soldiers in Iraq Say Pullout Would Have Devastating Results
Can anybody seriously argue that Bin Laden, Al Sadr, Assad, Ahmadinejad et al. would not prefer to see Democrats gain political power?
Democrats exude weakness. Indeed, they shower themselves in weakness and proclaim themselves clean and holy.
Tyrants prefer weak enemies.
Tomorrow is a gut check for the United States. It's as simple as that.
polls r.i.p.
...pollsters know most of their polls this year were garbage, as did those who sponsored them, and yet they went ahead and did them and reported on them anyway. They were garbage because pollsters are getting response rates on their calls maybe two out of ten tries — which means that simply for them to get enough respondents to poll, they have had to dig for every last voice they could.
In addition, the vast majority of polls this year were of "adult Americans," a category that is absolutely useless and meaningless in political polling. Adult American polls are the kinds that end up with responses like 40 percent of people think people have been abducted by UFOs, or that Elvis is alive, that kind of thing. Not to mention the fact that voters form a relatively small subset of "adult Americans" — in a year like this, maybe 35 percent in all.
blame karl rove
Just in time for the election, Friday's employment numbers clearly showed: the economy is creating a lot of jobs, we don't know how to count all the jobs we have, and job gains are benefiting Americans of all races and skill levels.
Over the past year, NewYork State residents have seen a 14% decline in the number of unemployed, with the state unemployment rate falling from 5.5% in September 2005 to 4.4% in September 2006.
...
We are creating jobs faster than we know how to count them. But here's the real mystery — with such strong employment numbers, why the dissatisfaction with the economy?
Why indeed? I blame Big Baloney (MSM).
popular science's gadget review
Electronic golf ball finder, hammer holster and grill-in-a-tube and much much more.
scrappleface:
Pelosi: Saddam Verdict Unrelated to Bush Policy
(2006-11-06) — Just hours before voters go to the polls to annoint Rep. Nancy Pelosi as the new House Majority Leader, the California Democrat said the conviction and death sentence for former dictator Saddam Hussein by the Iraqi High Tribunal “happened in spite of, not because of, foreign policy decisions by U.S. President George W. Bush.”
“It was just a matter of time until the law caught up with Saddam,” said Rep. Pelosi. “If it hadn’t been for Bush’s illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq, it would have happened in some other way, and probably sooner. For example, Saddam might have been impeached by the Iraqi legislature, or voted out of office, or even brought up on charges at the International Criminal Court in the Hague.”
dumbstruck: twin towers were felled by asteroids
Here is a doozy of a letter to the editor in today's LA Daily News from Dick Denne of Toluca Lake, CA:
As a combat veteran, I knew that Joh Kerry was talking about the commander in chief of the troops, not the troops. You know you're stupid if you thought otherwise. You know you're stupid if you think we're in Iraq fighting terrorists. You know you're stupid if you think a terrorist could kill you before you're hit by an asteroid. Is Bush stupid? Well, stupid is as stupid does.
Ain't it comforting to know the odds against terror are astronomical?
Hey, Dick Denne, stupid is as stupid writes.
"pretty darn smart"
Salena Zito in the Pittsburgh-Tribune Review:
"In the type of war that we fight right now," he said, "you have to be pretty darn smart."
As an eighth-grader, Lasater became enamored with the Marines' tradition and history. He deployed twice to Iraq with the 3rd Battalion 7th Marine Regiment -- first in Al-Qaim and then in Ramadi.
He, too, is frustrated by Iraq, but for a very different reason: "American politicians want things to happen in war as if they saw it on TV. They want a beginning and they want an end -- all in one shot."
Iraqis, he said, "understand why we are there ... to establish freedoms so they can have a democracy and vote."
Lasater recalled Iraqis telling him that "when Saddam was there, it was bad all of the time. (Now) it is bad only some of the time, and they know there is an end, and that end is democracy and freedom. With Saddam, there was no end."
HT: Pat Dollard
sunday, november 5 2006
the dolphins point the way
The Miami Dolphins are the only NFL team ever to notch a perfect season.
So when teams go undefeated deep into the season, the old timers and old fans, such as I, sit up and take notice. In 1985, the Chicago Bears were on their way to the Superbowl and were undefeated until they played in Miami on a Monday night. Although the Dolphins were not a great team, they shocked Mike Ditka and his Bears with a 38-24 defeat, their only loss that season.
Today the Dolphins brought their 1-6 record to the Windy City to take on the perfect-so-far Bears and whipped 'em 31-13. Which shows you that anything can happen. And the Dolphins did everything to lose the game, jumping offside twice to turn Bear punts into first downs.
Let's hope some of that underdog magic rubs off on the GOP come Tuesday. (Yeah, it's a tortured metaphor. Sue me.)
civilization watch
A lifelong Democrat makes the case why Democrats cannot be trusted with national security. A very thoughtful essay.
vanity unfair
Fascinating, isn't it, that Vanity Fair managed to release a story from its January issue about supposedly disgruntled neocons criticizing Bush, just days before the November election?
Well, many of those neocons say they were conned, and quoted out of context, by Vanity Fair.
Richard Perle
Vanity Fair has rushed to publish a few sound bites from a lengthy discussion with David Rose. Concerned that anything I might say could be used to influence the public debate on Iraq just prior to Tuesday’s election, I had been promised that my remarks would not be published before the election.
I should have known better than to trust the editors at Vanity Fair who lied to me and to others who spoke with Mr. Rose. Moreover, in condensing and characterizing my views for their own partisan political purposes, they have distorted my opinion about the situation in Iraq and what I believe to be in the best interest of our country.
I believe it would be a catastrophic mistake to leave Iraq, as some are demanding, before the Iraqis are able to defend their elected government. As I told Mr. Rose, the terrorist threat to our country, which is real, would be made much worse if we were to make an ignominious withdrawal from Iraq.
jim webb's dark ride
Via Pat Dollard.
Remember abscam?
Rep. John Murtha (D), aka Congressman Cut-and-Run, was caught on tape. Watch him play footsie with the briber in this campaign video.
For those who don't remember ABSCAM, it was an FBI sting operation targeting corrupt politicians.
Congressman Jack Murtha (D-PA) was not indicted or prosecuted. The FBI videotaped Murtha as saying, "I'm not interested...at this point." to $50,000 cash right after Murtha had offered to provide names of businesses and banks in his district where money could be legally invested.
In November 1980, the Justice Department announced that Murtha would not face prosecution for his part in the scandal. In July 1981, the House ethics committee also chose not to file charges against Congressman Murtha, following a mostly party line vote, after which E. Barrett Prettyman, Jr., the panel's special counsel, abruptly resigned in protest. House ethics rules require members to immediately report any bribe offers to the FBI.
saddam will hang
I was overwhelmed with joy and relief as I watched the criminals being read their verdicts. For the first time in our region tyrants are being punished for their crimes through a court of law.
Until this moment and while I’m typing these words I’m still receiving words of congratulations in emails, phone calls and text messages from friends inside and outside the country. These were our only means to share our happiness because of the curfew that limits our movement.
This is the day for Saddam’s lovers to weep and I expect their shock and grieve to be huge. They had always thought their master was immortal so let them live in their disappointment while we live for our future.
This is a day not only for Iraqis but a historic day for the whole region; today new basis for dealing between rulers and peoples are found.
No one is above the law anymore.
Much coverage here at Gateway Pundit.
How will this story play in the MSM, also know as Big Baloney? Instapundit notes:
UPDATE: Hmm. Turned on the TV. Fox was covering Saddam, but CNN was running an election-themed piece on stem cell research, and MSNBC was reporting on the hot prospects for the Harold Ford campaign. You'd think this would deserve more attention than that . . . .
Oh, wait, they just teased a coming story with "Will Saddam Hussein's sentencing spark more violence in Iraq?" I should've figured on that spin, shouldn't I?
So, in the last couple of days we have learned:
a) Saddam was a year away from an atomic bomb in 2002
b) The Iraqi people, with a democratically elected government, tried the monster who murdered hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and sentenced him to death after a prolonged tiral.
Sounds like progress to me.
saturday, november 4 2006
kerry: one sorry senator
John Kerry insulted the military, refused to apologize, then kinda apologized (sorry if I was misunderstood etc.), then put this defense of his insult on his website:
if the left wrote history
Alas, given the popularity of Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky, this isn't much of a joke.
Via No Pasaran
intolerance
A German parliamentarian of Turkish origin has called for Muslim women to throw off their headscarves and embrace Western values. After receiving death threats for the remarks, she is under police protection. Politicians are defending her right to free speech.
a guide to discussing islam
I am a conservative Republican. I am a freelance writer for several local media outlets. I also have journalistic experience. Therefore, today I am going to blend my regard for the complexities of Islamic culture with my experience as a journalist and provide friends, pundits, and fellow members of the Rightosphere with my Guide to Sensible Islam Posting. It is my hope that they are used to enhance productive discussion of Islam, its practitioners, and Americans of Muslim faith in our domain.
Let me start by stating why I feel it has time to set forth some rules. One word: BACKLASH.
When all you ever read about an entire group of people goes against your experiences with actual members of that population, you are inclined to disregard the author’s views. All of the author’s views. On all subjects. And this is beginning to happen to pundits failing to distinguish between Islamic terror-lovers and law-abiding, freedom-desiring Muslims who are supportive of the Global War on Terror...
ny times hoist on its own petard
...the child rearing practices of any society, once it has reached a certain level of material abundance and the reasonable expectation that their children will survive childhood, will tend to produce adults with elevated levels of Narcissism...
Such people are more in need of the approval of their like-minded cohort than usual, which means they tend to adopt the most orthodox positions of their group and have trouble questioning those who they consider authoritative. As might be inferred, if their like-minded cohort defines themselves in political terms, they will tend to be more partisan than most. As well, when an idea has become incorporated into their self representation (ie, it is an important element of their identity) they become even more resistant to change or even self reflection.
In our political world, there is a great deal of Narcissistic investment in ideas that have become identified as "liberal" or "left."
The reason I refer to these ideas as "Narcissistically invested" is that they are primarily designed to show that the proponents of the ideas are smarter, kinder, more caring than their opponents. Self described "liberals" or "progressives" are bolstered by such ideas which is why a common theme on the "progressive" web sites is that John Kerry was just telling the truth when he made his now infamous remarks.
So, what does this have to do with the New York Times November surprise?
Read on...
friday, november 3 2006
old fashioned vote stealing
There are two ways to steal a vote: a) prevent someone from voting or b) cancel their vote with fraudulent ballots. There's plenty of the latter:
So, less than a week before the midterm elections, four workers from Acorn, the liberal activist group that has registered millions of voters, have been indicted by a federal grand jury for submitting false voter registration forms to the Kansas City, Missouri, election board. But hey, who needs voter ID laws?
We wish this were an aberration, but allegations of fraud have tainted Acorn voter drives across the country. Acorn workers have been convicted in Wisconsin and Colorado, and investigations are still under way in Ohio, Tennessee and Pennsylvania.
The good news for anyone who cares about voter integrity is that the Justice Department finally seems poised to connect these dots instead of dismissing such revelations as the work of a few yahoos. After the federal indictments were handed up in Kansas City this week, the U.S. Attorney's office said in a statement that "This national investigation is very much ongoing."
Let's hope so. Acorn officials bill themselves as nonpartisan community organizers merely interested in giving a voice to minorities and the poor. In reality, Acorn is a union-backed, multimillion-dollar outfit that uses intimidation and other tactics to push for higher minimum wage mandates and to trash Wal-Mart and other non-union companies.
Operating in at least 38 states (as well as Canada and Mexico), Acorn pushes a highly partisan agenda, and its organizers are best understood as shock troops for the AFL-CIO and even the Democratic Party. As part of the Fannie Mae reform bill, House Democrats pushed an "affordable housing trust fund" designed to use Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac profits to subsidize Acorn, among other groups. A version of this trust fund actually passed the Republican House and will surely be on the agenda again next year.
Acorn and its affiliates have pulled some real stunts in recent years. In Ohio in 2004, a worker for one affiliate was given crack cocaine in exchange for fraudulent registrations that included underage voters, dead voters and pillars of the community named Mary Poppins, Dick Tracy and Jive Turkey. During a Congressional hearing in Ohio in the aftermath of the 2004 election, officials from several counties in the state explained Acorn's practice of dumping thousands of registration forms in their lap on the submission deadline, even though the forms had been collected months earlier.
unemployment lowest in 5.5 years
The U.S. unemployment rate dropped to its lowest in nearly 5-1/2 years during October as 92,000 more jobs were added and hiring in each of the two prior months was revised up, a government report on Friday showed.
hawkins excerpts steyn
Quotes from America Alone:
Let me put it in a slightly bigger nutshell: much of what we loosely call the Western world will not survive the twenty first century, and much of it will effectively disappear within our lifetimes, including many if not most European countries. There'll probably still be a geographical area on the map marked as Italy or the Netherlands -- probably -- just as in Istanbul there's still a building known as Hagia Sophia, or St. Sophia's Cathedral. But, it's not a cathedral; it's merely a designation for a piece of real estate. Likewise, Italy and the Netherlands will merely be designations for real estate.
-----
All dominant powers are hated -- Britain was, and Rome -- but they're usually hated for the right reasons. America is hated for every reason. The fanatical Muslims despise America because it's all lap-dancing and gay porn; the secular Europeans despise America because it's all born-again Christians hung up on abortion; the anti-Semites despise America because it's controlled by Jews. Too Jewish, too Christian, too godless, America is George Orwell's Room 101: whatever your bugbear you will find it therein; whatever you're against, America is the prime example of it.
----
The single most important fact about the early twenty-first century is the rapid aging of almost every developed nation other than the United States: Canada, Europe, and Japan are getting old fast, older than any functioning society has ever been and faster than any has ever aged. A society ages when its birth rate falls and it finds itself with fewer children and more grandparents. For a stable population -- i.e. no growth, no decline, just a million folks in 1950, a million in 1980, a million in 2010 -- you need a total fertility rate of 2.1 live births per woman. That's what American has: 2.1, give or take. Canada has 1.48, an all-time low and a more revealing difference between the Great Satan and the Great White North than of the stuff (socialized health care, fewer handouts, more UN peacekeepers, etc.) that Canucks usually brag about. Europe as a whole has 1.38. Japan, 1.32; Russia, 1.14. These countries -- or, more precisely, these people -- are going out of business
the latest green scare
More twisted facts from the Global Warming crowd:
The review correctly points out that climate change is a real problem, and that it is caused by human greenhouse-gas emissions. Little else is right, however, and the report seems hastily put-together, with many sloppy errors. As an example, the cost of hurricanes in the U.S. is said to be both 0.13% of U.S. GDP and 10 times that figure.
The review is also one-sided, focusing almost exclusively on carbon-emission cuts as the solution to the problem of climate change. Mr. Stern sees increasing hurricane damage in the U.S. as a powerful argument for carbon controls. However, hurricane damage is increasing predominantly because there are more people with more goods to be damaged, settling in ever more risky habitats.
Even if global warming does significantly increase the power of hurricanes, it is estimated that 95% to 98% of the increased damage will be due to demographics. The review acknowledges that simple initiatives like bracing and securing roof trusses and walls can cheaply reduce damage by more than 80%; yet its policy recommendations on expensive carbon reductions promise to cut the damages by 1% to 2% at best. That is a bad deal.
Mr. Stern is also selective, often seeming to cherry-pick statistics to fit an argument. This is demonstrated most clearly in the review's examination of the social damage costs of CO2--essentially the environmental cost of emitting each extra ton of CO2. The most well-recognized climate economist in the world is probably Yale University's William Nordhaus, whose "approach is perhaps closest in spirit to ours," according to the Stern review. Mr. Nordhaus finds that the social cost of CO2 is $2.50 per ton. Mr. Stern, however, uses a figure of $85 per ton. Picking a rate even higher than the official U.K. estimates--that have themselves been criticized for being over the top--speaks volumes.
new york times admits saddam had wmd
I'm sorry, did the New York Times just put on the front page that IRAQ HAD A NUCLEAR WEAPONS PROGRAM AND WAS PLOTTING TO BUILD AN ATOMIC BOMB?
What? Wait a minute. The entire mantra of the war critics has been "no WMDs, no WMDs, no threat, no threat", for the past three years solid. Now we're being told that the Bush administration erred by making public information that could help any nation build an atomic bomb.
Let's go back and clarify: IRAQ HAD NUCLEAR WEAPONS PLANS SO ADVANCED AND DETAILED THAT ANY COUNTRY COULD HAVE USED THEM.
I think the Times editors are counting on this being spun as a "Boy, did Bush screw up" meme; the problem is, to do it, they have to knock down the "there was no threat in Iraq" meme, once and for all. Because obviously, Saddam could have sold this information to anybody, any other state, or any well-funded terrorist group that had publicly pledged to kill millions of Americans and had expressed interest in nuclear arms. You know, like, oh... al-Qaeda.
The New York Times just tore the heart out of the antiwar argument, and they are apparently completely oblivous to it.
...every stop has been pulled out to ensure that a reader will believe that posting these documents was a strategic blunder of the first order.
But the story retains its own inherent contradiction: The information in these documents is so dangerous, that every step must be taken to ensure it doesn't end up in the wrong hands... except for toppling the regime that actually has the documents.
...
Among the dozens of documents in English were Iraqi reports written in the 1990’s and in 2002 for United Nations inspectors in charge of making sure Iraq abandoned its unconventional arms programs after the Persian Gulf war. Experts say that at the time, Mr. Hussein’s scientists were on the verge of building an atom bomb, as little as a year away.
So this is the stink bomb the Times tosses out for the weekend chat shows on the eve of the election. This is a cousin of the "unguarded" explosives depot story released by the Times in 2004. Sigh.
thursday, november 2 2006
foiled plan meant to hit u.s. cities
A group of alleged terrorists arrested in London in August planned to blow up airliners over U.S. cities to maximize casualties, rather than over the Atlantic Ocean as many intelligence officials originally thought, according to recent remarks by a senior FBI official.
The comments by Mark Mershon, head of the FBI's New York field office, indicate that U.S. and British intelligence officials now think that the airliner plot was aimed at maximizing the potential loss of life and economic impact.
Had it succeeded, Democrats would have blamed Bush for letting it happen on his watch. Of course, when Bush warns, "They are people out there who want to kill us." he they accuse him of fear mongering.
al gore humor
Over at Ace of Spades. For a great laugh, read the comments.
no can say "too gay" in america today
ESPNU commentator Brian Kinchen has been suspended for saying that one of his own comments was "kinda gay" during the network's broadcast last weekend of the Northern Illinois-Iowa football game.
rapping wrapping paper
microsoft versus china
A senior executive for Microsoft has said the firm could pull out of non-democratic countries such as China.
Fred Tipson, senior policy counsel for the computer giant, said concerns over the repressive regime might force it to reconsider its business in China.
"Things are getting bad... and perhaps we have to look again at our presence there," he told a conference in Athens. "We have to decide if the persecuting of bloggers reaches a point that it's unacceptable to do business there."
tempted by uncovered meat
Iowahawk is hilarious again. To fully appreciate his latest, here is some context:
In the religious address on adultery to about 500 worshippers in Sydney last month, Sheik Hilali said: “If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside on the street, or in the garden or in the park, or in the backyard without a cover, and the cats come and eat it ... whose fault is it, the cats or the uncovered meat?
"The uncovered meat is the problem."
The sheik then said: “If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab, no problem would have occurred."
Now, from Iowahawk:
Ask The Aussie Imam
Islamic Advice from Imam Yahu al-Zirius
Spiritual Leader, Fostaz al-Vegimita Mosque
Lakembabongabinga, Sydney, NSW
Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali of Mullagangabanga, NSW asks:Some of the cobbers at my local mosque spotted some sheilas who weren't wearing their hijabs, so they naturally had a go at raping them. For some reason the coppers loaded them off to gaol! I ask you: if you take out uncovered meat and place it outside on the street, or in the garden or in the park, or in the backyard without a cover, and the cats come and eat it ... whose fault is it, the cats or the uncovered meat?
This is a very interesting question. With respect to cats, the Q’ran in Surah 12:45.1(c) states that, “the cat always lands on its paws.” However, Surah 3.14e-9 says that “pita bread always lands hummus-side down.”
Of course, the crafty infidel will see this as a contradiction: what if a believer were to glue a hummus-laden pita to the back of a cat, and hurl it from the local prayer tower? No matter how it hits the ground, the crafty infidel will say it invalidates Q'ranic infalibility! This is where the meat comes in. The key is to first put the uncovered meat between the cat and the pita, in a sort of cat-meat-pita sandwich.
As it plummets from the tower, the cat will eat through the glue to get at the delicious uncovered meat, thereby freeing the pita to land hummus side down, and the meat-refreshed cat to land happily on its paws. In this way you may demonstrate to the crafty kuffar the eternal perfection of the sacred Word of Allah, as revealed through His Prophet (peace be unto him). Also, if the crafty kuffar is an uncovered woman, don't forget to rape her.
last word on kerry
Patterico busts the New York Times for flat out lying about what Kerry said at Pasadena City College.
wednesday, november 1 2006
oldie but goodie
Dead deer talks (via Jimmy Kimmel) to passersby.
michigan's depression
Observations from Polipundit.
world's wittiest lonely hearts ads
strange taste
Richard Linklater has made a movie of "Fast Food Nation" which
...attempts to dramatize American culture's obsession with profits by illustrating the connections among illegal immigration, poor public health, the corporate monolith, student activism, suburban sprawl, the exploitation of workers, crystal meth addiction, the minimum wage, and, of course, the manufacture, packaging, marketing and consumption of fast food. In other words, the ideas explored in Schlosser's book have been super-sized.
"Obsession with profits"? Hollywood is obsessed with box office receipts, but American culture? As for poor public health, we're living longer than ever before. This one sounds like a lecture, not a movie.
mel, kerry: get me rewrite!
These brothers in arms didn't botch their joke. Photo is from some friends of Pat Dollard.
John Kerry's people are saying he didn't mean to insult US troops, but rather to insult President Bush. They are peddling this version of his supposed joke:
“I can’t overstress the importance of a great education. Do you know where you end up if you don’t study, if you aren’t smart, if you’re intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq.”
What he actually said was this:
“You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”
If it were just a matter of wandering off the script*, why didn't Kerry say so immediately?
Instead, a day later, he defended his comments by calling Tony Snow a "stuffed suit," Rush Limbaugh a "doughy" chickenhawk and himself a "real man."
Kerry could have appeared with the script, read it aloud and apologized for the misunderstanding. Given Kerry's track record of accusing American soldiers in Iraq of "terrorizing" civilians, he doesn't deserve the benefit of the doubt.
Then there's his slur of American troops in Vietnam:
They had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the country side of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.
They shot dogs for fun!
Meanwhile Mel Gibson's people have released a statement saying his drunken, antisemitic rant last July was a mistake, a case of the actor wandering off the script because of intoxication. He said:
F*****g Jews… The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.
What he was supposed to say was:
F*****g news… The news is controlled by the biggest whores in the world.
That clarifies that.
* How hard is it to read a joke off a script? Johnny can't read indeed.
the elephant in the room
People are getting touchy about talking politics, says the New York Times. But as James Taranto noted yesterday in Best of the Web:
What's interesting about the Times piece, as blogger Josh Treviño notes, is that "every person in the piece who actively rejects a friend or family member over politics is a Democrat"--a fact that reporter Anne Kornblut does not specifically note. Treviño observes:
The American left--which we'll posit as synonymous with Democrats here--is sincerely angry, and the anger goes beyond reason in a surprising number of cases. The conservative view of politics holds that it does not encompass all spheres of human activity. . . . There is no sound reason, for example, to reject association with like-minded parents, or friendships with co-workers, or the company of one's own mother, on the grounds of political disagreements. Yet we see emphatic Democrats doing all these things in Kornblut's piece. Why? We can only hypothesize, with the caveat that perhaps, if the tables were turned, Republicans and conservatives might behave the same way toward their family and neighbors--even if, in the last comparable period, from January 1993 through January 1995, it doesn't seem they did.
Part of this might stem from the shorthand that liberals think conservatives are evil, while conservatives think liberals are emotional children.
Photo-Roses
This is a site selling art-quality photographs of roses.
These are suitable for framing, as they say, and work nicely in home or office. Some favorites include this yellow rose photograph with a single drop of milk, this photograph of a white rose half-submerged in chocolate or this Cherry Parfait rose photographed in closeup and given a heavenly glow.