sunday, december 31 2006
feared and pitiless, fearful and pitiable
NOBODY who experienced Iraq under the tyranny of Saddam Hussein could imagine, at the height of the terror he imposed on his countrymen, ever pitying him. Pitiless himself, he sent hundreds of thousands of his countrymen to miserable deaths, in the wars he started against Iran and Kuwait, in the torture chambers of his secret police, or on the gallows that became an industry at Abu Ghraib and other charnel houses across Iraq. Iraqis who were caught in his spider’s web of evil, and survived, tell of countless tortures, of the psychopathic pleasure the former dictator appeared to take from inflicting suffering and death.
Yet there was a moment when I pitied him, and it came back to me after the nine Iraqi appeal judges upheld the death sentence against Saddam last week, setting off the countdown to his execution. As I write this, flying hurriedly back to Baghdad from an interrupted Christmas break, Saddam makes his own trip to the gallows with an indecent haste, without the mercy of family farewells and other spare acts of compassion that lend at least a pretense of civility to executions under law in kinder jurisdictions. From all we know of the preparations, Saddam’s death was to be a miserable and lonely one, as stark and undignified as Iraq’s new rulers can devise.
Read on.
culture of corruption
Betsy Newmark notes how Democrat John Conyers gets a wrist slap for his ethics violation:
The ethics inquiry began in December, 2003 when former staff members complained to the ethics panel, formerly named the House Committee on Standards and Official Conduct, that Conyers had required his official staffers to work on campaigns, babysit his children, and run personal errands. Conyers subsequently hired Stanley Brand, a well-respected defense lawyer with a long track record of defending public officials implicated in corruption cases.
In 2003, Reps. Joel Hefley (R-Colo.) and Alan Mollohan (D-W.Va.) headed the ethics committee.
The Hill reported last March that two former Conyers’ aides alleged that he repeatedly violated House ethics rules by requiring aides to work on local and state
campaigns, and babysit and chauffeur his children. Deanna Maher, a former deputy chief of staff in the Detroit office, and Sydney Rooks, a former legal counsel in his district office, shared numerous letters, memos, e-mails, handwritten notes and expense reports with The Hill.His punishment is to clarify to his staff that they don't have to do these sorts of personal tasks and to promise not to ask them to do so. So, in effect, his punishment is to agree to obey the rules that he broke in the first place. And he gets the news of this wrist-slapping released on New Years Eve weekend in the midst of stories about Hussein's execution and President Ford's funeral. Lucky guy.
how other devils met their due
Most of the great butchers of the 20th century died of old age, in their own beds, some of them honored by millions. Not a single one met justice in the sense accepted in free states across the world. The handful who died otherwise are aberrations, victims of strange events that act as models for nothing.
There is one single exception - the hanging of Saddam Hussein on December 30, 2006 after a careful, lengthy trial carried out under extremely difficult circumstances according to internationally recognized judicial norms. The state of Iraq has succeeded where the rest of the civilized world has failed. It is a singular achievement, and it will stand.
"There is no more acceptable sacrifice than the blood of a tyrant." - Giovanni Boccaccio
those precious, precious eurotwits
"The EU has a very consistent view against using the death penalty and it should not have been used in this instance either, although there is no doubt over Saddam's guilt of very serious crimes against humanity," Finland's Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja told YLE television.
...
Louis Michel, a member of the EU's executive Commission, said he believed capital punishment was at odds with the democracy Iraqi leaders were trying to build. "You don't fight barbarism with acts that I deem as barbaric. The death penalty is not compatible with democracy," Michel, a former Belgian foreign minister, told Reuters.
As a citizen of the world's oldest, most free, most prosperous and most powerful democracy, I beg to differ about the death penalty being incompatible with democracy.
Furthermore, Belgians have much to learn about democracy. Belgium has no First Amendment and political parties need a government license to exist. One party, despite being the largest vote-getter, was forced to disband two years ago.
As for life and death matters, the Belgian peacekeepers in Rwanda fled the moment things got bloody, leaving 800,000 Tutsis to be exterminated. Glass houses, Michel, glass houses.
india: the new great game
Three recent events illuminate the contours and fault lines of Asia's emerging strategic landscape, amid the lengthening shadows cast by China's growing power.
First, the United States and India consolidated a wide-ranging military, economic, and diplomatic partnership on December 9, when Congress passed legislation enabling U.S.-Indian civilian nuclear cooperation. Then, at a summit in Tokyo on December 15, the leaders of India and Japan declared their ambition for a strategic and economic entente between Asia's leading democracies. This stands in sharp contrast to the intensifying rivalry between India and China: Tensions over territory and Tibet simmered at a summit on November 21, where Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh's assertion that "there is enough [geopolitical] space for the two countries to develop together" sounded more like hope than conviction.
As its relationships with the United States, Japan, and China show, India has reemerged as a geopolitical swing state after decades of marginalization as a consequence of the Cold War, its own crippling underdevelopment, and regional conflict in South Asia. Although its status as a heavyweight in the globalized world of the 21st century is new, India's identity as a great power is not: It was for centuries one of the world's largest economies and, under British rule, a preeminent power in Asia. Today, a rising India flush with self-confidence from its growing prosperity is determined not to be left behind by China's economic and military ascent. "The [Indian] elephant," says an admiring Japanese official, "is about to gallop."
The United States has an enormous stake in the success of a rich, confident, democratic India that shares American ambitions to manage Chinese power, protect Indian Ocean sea lanes, safeguard an open international economy, stabilize a volatile region encompassing the heartland of jihadist extremism in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and prove to all those enamored of the Chinese model of authoritarian development that democracy is the firmest foundation for the achievement of humankind's most basic aspirations.
India is the world's biggest democracy, a nuclear power with the world's largest volunteer armed forces, and the world's second-fastest-growing major economy. Few countries will be more important to American security interests and American prosperity in the coming decades, as five centuries of Western management of the international system give way to a new economic and security order centered in the rimlands of the Indian and Pacific oceans.
will jimmy carter please go away?
by Burt Prelutsky
Years ago, when I still worked in advertising, I was a copywriter on the Mattel account. It should have been fun because they made toys. But it wasn’t, mainly because of all the restrictions the FCC placed on commercials aimed at children. In one of the spots I wrote, a little boy, playing with his Mattel racing car on the floor, imagined himself leading the pack at the Indy 500. It never got produced. Even though it would have been shot as an obvious daydream, and even though every little squirt playing with the car would imagine himself winning at the Brickyard, we weren’t permitted to show the toys doing anything they couldn’t actually do in real life.
So, how is it that nobody else ever seems to get called on the carpet for their lies and exaggerations? How is it, for instance, that every liberal from Ted Kennedy to Jesse Jackson can get away with pretending that American blacks are still living like slaves, and that four decades after the Civil Rights Act, the only thing keeping blacks out of the cotton fields are Democrats in Washington?
How is it that every rotten movie can get away with lying about how terrific it is? And, unlike other products, they don’t come with money-back guarantees.
And, finally, how is it that Jimmy Carter, that sanctimonious phony who was a disaster during his four years in the White House and a disgrace in the quarter of a century since, can pass himself off as equal parts statesman and saint? While most of us wished that he would simply slink back to his peanut farm after Ronald Reagan whupped his butt in ‘80, we hadn’t realized how starved he was for the spotlight.
Recently, he has been barnstorming all over the country, peddling his book, “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.” Carter contends that his purpose in writing the book -- in the unlikely event it was he and not some anonymous ghost who actually put Carter’s vile thoughts on paper -- was to open a dialogue about the Middle East. He calls upon America to take what he calls a balanced approach to the Israeli-Palestinian problem. He claims that America unfairly favors Israel because of the Jewish lobby. He also compares Israel to South Africa in the bad old days, equating the fence they’ve built as protection against terrorists with apartheid.
Where does one begin to deal with all the lies foisted off by Mr. Peanut? Would he have called for a balanced approach to Germany and Czechoslovakia or Germany and Poland in the 1930s? Would he have carried Chamberlain’s umbrella back from Munich?
Forgetting Jews in congress and the senate, why would any American, aside from Steven (“Munich”) Spielberg, find a moral equivalency between Palestinians and Israelis? Israel keeps trying to trade land for peace, and they keep getting their school buses and pizza parlors blown up in exchange. For people who are traditionally known to be pretty sharp when it comes to horse-trading, this doesn’t seem like a very smart way to conduct business. But, God knows, they keep trying.
Something that Carter, who has often boasted of his close friendship with Yasser Arafat, insists on overlooking is that prior to 1948, the “Palestinians” were in fact the Jews living on the land that was the basis for the modern state of Israel. It was land, mainly sand, they had bought at inflated prices from Arabs for over 50 years. The fact that it is now the Arabs who are known as Palestinians is the result of a clever P.R. firm that suggested that if they wanted to picture themselves as underdogs in order to garner sympathy, they should stop calling themselves Arabs. After all, there were only about five million Jews in Israel and about 125 million Arabs surrounding them, and calling for their extinction.
Now why on earth would Carter call for a balanced approach? After all, Israel, in spite of occasional differences with the U.S., is a staunch ally, one of the few nations that sides us with us at the U.N., and is the only western democracy in a part of the world where Islamic Nazis run wild.
Whenever I hear an American claim that he favors Arabs in this ongoing conflict, a conflict perpetuated by a people who think Hitler left the job only half-done, I wonder why. Whenever I hear an American claim that people who treat their women like chattel; who live under theocratic rule; who oppose freedom of speech and certainly religion; who cheered and danced on 9/11 and then, for good measure, insisted that Israel was behind the attack; and who pay homage to suicide bombers; are preferable to Israelis, a people who share our values and who are exactly like us, except that they’re Jewish, I know that I’m in the presence of an anti-Semite.
Even if he happens to be a former president of the United States.
saturday, december 30 2006
middle school gone wild
It’s hard to write this without sounding like a prig. But it’s just as hard to erase the images that planted the idea for this essay, so here goes. The scene is a middle school auditorium, where girls in teams of three or four are bopping to pop songs at a student talent show. Not bopping, actually, but doing elaborately choreographed re-creations of music videos, in tiny skirts or tight shorts, with bare bellies, rouged cheeks and glittery eyes.
They writhe and strut, shake their bottoms, splay their legs, thrust their chests out and in and out again. Some straddle empty chairs, like lap dancers without laps. They don’t smile much. Their faces are locked from grim exertion, from all that leaping up and lying down without poles to hold onto. “Don’t stop don’t stop,” sings Janet Jackson, all whispery. “Jerk it like you’re making it choke. ...Ohh. I’m so stimulated. Feel so X-rated.” The girls spend a lot of time lying on the floor. They are in the sixth, seventh and eighth grades.
As each routine ends, parents and siblings cheer, whistle and applaud. I just sit there, not fully comprehending. It’s my first suburban Long Island middle school talent show. I’m with my daughter, who is 10 and hadn’t warned me. I’m not sure what I had expected, but it wasn’t this. It was something different. Something younger. Something that didn’t make the girls look so ... one-dimensional.
It would be easy to chalk it up to adolescent rebellion, an ancient and necessary phenomenon, except these girls were barely adolescents and they had nothing to rebel against. This was an official function at a public school, a milieu that in another time or universe might have seen children singing folk ballads, say, or reciting the Gettysburg Address.
Read on.
zero to 80% in 60 seconds
Toshiba's new lith-ion battery recharges in under a minute.
2006 darwin awards
Honoring those people too dumb to live.
Photo collage from Fox News. See Pat Dollard's site for more photos and great quotes. And Yahoo.
Saddam drew his path to hell long time ago…he chose this fate the day he chose cruelty and oppression as a way to deal with his people. He built his reign with blood and terror and vowed to make death the fate of anyone who dared say no to him.
Saddam lost his humanity the day he committed his first crime, so the one I saw walking to the rope this morning was no man to me.
It was him who rejected humanity to become the monster that the weak feared and prayed to see him dead for years to be safe from his crimes.
Outside Iraq people will divide over his hanging, just like they divided over his life and rule but here in Iraq most of us feel that today justice has been served. Those who mourn him are a few and are still living in the past that has no future in Iraq.To those who didn’t like justice I say that his death means life to many.
Executing the dictator renews the hopes of not only Iraqis but also of other oppressed peoples in the world in having a better future where they enjoy freedom. It's time for other tyrants to learn from this lesson and realize that a similar fate is on the way if they refuse to change. Yes, it was the people though their elected government who put Saddam on trial and who says otherwise should go back and learn about how Saddam humiliated, murdered and tortured Iraqis and plundered their fortunes in his stupid adventures.
He deserved to die—our people are still suffering from his crimes till this moment, maybe not in person anymore but through the murderous terrorist machine he built and expanded over years; his orphans are still murdering our people in cold blood trying to deny us the right to build a model of life away from the culture of death the dictator created.
Executing Saddam is an execution to a dark era in Iraq's history and it's a message to all those who followed his ways that there is no turning back; yes, the people will never kneel to a tyrant again and will never give up.The future is in the hands of the people and they will choose their way no matter how big the sacrifice is. We have suffered too much for too long and we deserve a better life and that we will keep pursuing.
On this day as we celebrate justice we shall not forget to pray for blessings for the souls of the dictator's victims and we shall not forget to thank our brothers in America and the rest of the coalition nations who helped us and are still helping us in our struggle to build the new free and democratic Iraq.
UPDATE: cell phone video of the hanging. For strong stomachs only.
media's dilemma
By Steve Gorman
Reuters Friday, December 29, 2006; 8:19 PM
CBS News Vice President Paul Friedman all but ruled out showing footage of Saddam's hanging, saying, "I personally believe it is beyond the pale to show executions."
VERSUS
TERENCE SMITH: Last Sunday, the CBS Newsmagazine "60
Minutes" aired a story that showed Dr. Jack Kevorkian administering a lethal injection to Thomas Youk, a 52-year-old Michigan man suffering from Lou Gehrig's disease.
friday, december 29 2006
joe lieberman
In the Washington Post:
I've just spent 10 days traveling in the Middle East and speaking to leaders there, all of which has made one thing clearer to me than ever: While we are naturally focused on Iraq, a larger war is emerging. On one side are extremists and terrorists led and sponsored by Iran, on the other moderates and democrats supported by the United States. Iraq is the most deadly battlefield on which that conflict is being fought. How we end the struggle there will affect not only the region but the worldwide war against the extremists who attacked us on Sept. 11, 2001.
Because of the bravery of many Iraqi and coalition military personnel and the recent coming together of moderate political forces in Baghdad, the war is winnable. We and our Iraqi allies must do what is necessary to win it.
...
The most pressing problem we face in Iraq is not an absence of Iraqi political will or American diplomatic initiative, both of which are increasing and improving; it is a lack of basic security. As long as insurgents and death squads terrorize Baghdad, Iraq's nascent democratic institutions cannot be expected to function, much less win the trust of the people. The fear created by gang murders and mass abductions ensures that power will continue to flow to the very thugs and extremists who have the least interest in peace and reconciliation.
This bloodshed, moreover, is not the inevitable product of ancient hatreds. It is the predictable consequence of a failure to ensure basic security and, equally important, of a conscious strategy by al-Qaeda and Iran, which have systematically aimed to undermine Iraq's fragile political center. By ruthlessly attacking the Shiites in particular over the past three years, al-Qaeda has sought to provoke precisely the dynamic of reciprocal violence that threatens to consume the country.
On this point, let there be no doubt: If Iraq descends into full-scale civil war, it will be a tremendous battlefield victory for al-Qaeda and Iran. Iraq is the central front in the global and regional war against Islamic extremism.
Read it all.
It recalls a comment from three WaPo reporters who interviewed Bush on December 20.
Given the election results, is increasing the troop level in Iraq even a viable possibility or option?
Yes, Mike, all options are viable.
– given the political will out there?
As you can see, the reporters equated Democrat gains in Congress as a referendum on Iraq ("political will"). But Joe Lieberman was the most overtly pro-Iraq war candidate running, given that he'd lost the Democrat primary to an anti-war candidate and ran as an independent. Lieberman won, so how does that reflect a loss of political will?
enjoy a popcorn moment
With a corny Indian action movie... well, three minutes worth. Video here.
polls are open
Vote for the Idiotarian of the Year. It's a tough call -- there are so many deserving candidates.
nifong in the crosshairs
The Duke lacrosse "rape case" DA faces an ethics complaint by his state bar association. Bull Dog Pundit, a former prosecutor, puts it all in context.
syria crows at democrat bows
The murderous regime that controls Syria crowed that:
All bids to isolate Syria have failed," Bilal said in an interview with al-Jazeera satellite channel, pointing out to the European and US governmental and parliamentary officials who have been visiting Syria for consultations.
"Syria has always called for dialogue and peaceful solutions," the Minister noted, adding that the problem with the USA is to find the just solutions for the region's problems.
He stressed Syria's firm stance which calls for realizing the just and comprehensive peace in the region in accordance with the international legitimacy and in a way that guarantees a full Israeli withdrawal from occupied Syrian Golan to 4th June 1967 Line and occupied Lebanese land as well as establishing a sovereign Palestinian state with Jerusalem as a capital.
"Peaceful solutions" includes blowing to smithereens any Lebanese politician that stands in Syria's way of controlling that country. "Peaceful solutions" includes arming Hezbollah with rockets to attack Israel.
Such double-speak is reminiscent of Orwell's Animal Farm and would be laughable were it not for the pompous strutting of Senators Bill Nelson, John Kerry, and Christopher Dodd. All made visits to Syria to demonstrate their sophisticated approach to foreign policy -- that is, "engaging" our enemies and begging their help.
Thugs respond to fear and harsh consequences, not pretty talk. The freelancing Democrat senators communicated weakness, which is dangerous and foolish. Yet they credit themselves as being superior to Bush.
A world upside down.
thursday, december 28 2006
amish make food stamp bureaucrats look bad
...by not accepting Food Stamps.
This story from the Cleveland Plain Dealer is a couple of months old, but it's a fascinating example of how government tries to insist on "helping" people who are not so evidently in need of its "help." The Ohio Office of Family Stability is demanding that local welfare workers somehow get Amish people to sign up for food stamps. Why? Just because they are eligible on the basis of income. By refusing to sign up, the Amish are lowering the local food stamp participation rates, which makes the agency look bad.
optical computing breakthrough: ibm slows down light
IBM has announced that its researchers have built a device capable of delaying the flow of light on a silicon chip, which could lead the further development of using light instead of electricity to transfer data. Researchers have known that the use of optical instead of electrical signals for transferring data within a computer chip might result in significant performance enhancements since light signals can carry more information faster. The engineering challenge is buffering data on the chip, which is difficult given light’s speed. Thus, a means of using light effectively is to delay its travel.
thursday is worst day for british hospitals
From the BBC.
20 most innovative products of the year
PC World's List. And guess what? Microsoft got the top spot.
free advice
I usually the same time, and whenever a new project comes along, I find it really difficult to actually get started. Once I’ve begun making progress, I’m able to move smoothly without any problems. It’s the getting started that’s really difficult, especially if it’s something I’m not really interested in. At an intellectual level I know I have to get started, but I’m not able to summon up the motivation to begin.
For the last few months, the most reliable technique I’ve found to help me get started is to take the work to a coffee shop and begin while sipping coffee. I’ve found that this allows me to get excited about whatever is in front of me at that time. My brain appears to misattribute the physiological response to coffee as excitement about whatever I’m working on at that time.
nothing too trivial for busybodies
John Stossel writes about legal attacks on Tempe Arizona's Heart Attack Grill, which serves fatty foods with waitresses dressed as sexy nurses.
What upset the government was that the Heart Attack Grill waitresses call themselves "nurses." The waitresses dress like nurses -- although in some cases like nurses you'd see only in an X-rated movie. After customers eat the fatty food, they can ask their "nurse" to wheel them out to their car in a wheelchair -- just like at the hospital.
The customers like the gimmick, and the nurse-waitresses like working there, but the Arizona Board of Nursing says the restaurant violates state law. According to an intimidating letter from the office of the attorney general, only a person who holds a valid license to practice nursing may use the title "nurse."
...
The Board of Nursing would not talk to me about this, but Sandy Summers of the Center for Nursing Advocacy was eager to explain what bothers many nurses. "It's not only the Heart Attack Grill. It's the whole 'naughty nurse' image," she said. Her group says that stereotype kills thousands of people, because it creates a nursing shortage by discouraging women from becoming nurses.
"It's a constant association of sex and nursing that we object to. And it creates an environment where people actually think that nurses are people you can have anonymous sex with, these, these brainless sluts."
dangerous obsession
People in the media, in academia and among the intelligentsia in general who are obsessed with "disparities" in income and wealth usually show not the slightest interest in how that income and wealth were produced in the first place.
They are hot to redistribute the existing income and wealth but seem wholly unaware that how you do that today can affect how much income and wealth will be produced tomorrow. Any number of schemes for redistributing wealth have ended up redistributing poverty in a number of countries.
"Progressives" in the media and among academics and intellectuals claim to be interested in ending poverty but the production of more output is the only way to end poverty for millions of people.
It not only can be done, it has already been done in many countries, for all countries were once very poor by today's standards. But most self-styled "progressives" show virtually zero interest in economic history or in economics in general.
Even in the United States, most people did not have a telephone or a refrigerator as late as 1930. Today, most Americans living below the official poverty level have not only these things but also color television, air-conditioning, a microwave oven and a motor vehicle.
How did this happen? The progressive intelligentsia show no interest in that question.
Even such historically poverty-stricken countries as India and China, repeatedly struck by massive famines, have within the past two decades adopted changed economic policies that have raised vast numbers of people out of desperate poverty.
An estimated 20 million people in India rose out of destitution in just one decade and more than a million Chinese per month have risen out of poverty. But have you heard any progressive intellectuals explaining how such a dramatic change for the better came about?
Progressives are in the business of complaining and denouncing — as a prelude to seeking sweeping powers to control other people's lives, in the name of curing the ills of society. The last thing they want is to discover and discuss how millions of people rose out of poverty by entirely different methods, often by freeing economies from the control of people with sweeping power over other people's lives. Poverty and economic disparities are the raw materials from which the political left manufactures a sense of moral superiority, self-importance and political power.
Read it all.
wednesday, december 27 2006
another botched joke
Sen. John Kerry visits Iraq and gets a cold shoulder from the troops.
Before his arrival, rumors were already flowing that every FOB (Forward Operating Base) Commander told General Casey that they already had another "DV" (Distinguished Visitor) to support while Sen. Kerry was in country -- or that they would be in the middle of ongoing operations -- and hence were unable to support his visit. This rumor was either sparked or confirmed by a post by Matt on Blackfive. (Blackfive, for those who don't already read it, is an infinitely more interesting military blog than mine).
...
On Saturday night, a colleague emailed me and told me to bring my camera, as Senator Kerry was scheduled to give a press conference here in the Palace. At 2100, he entered a conference room wearing his leather flight jacket. Unfortunately, there was no media there, except for the enlisted soldiers from AFTN (Armed Forces Television Network) who had to be there. His aide looked around, saw that this just wasn't happening, and quickly escorted Kerry out before I could take a picture.
Finally, the next morning, Senator Kerry ate chow at the Dining Facility. Normally when a Senator/Representative visits, he is joined by a contingent of soldiers/Marines/airmen from his home state. Despite the fact that the MP unit responsible for Green Zone security is an Army Reserve unit from Massachusetts, not a single soldier went to sit with him. (By contrast, Bill O'Reilly, host of that terrible shoutfest on Fox, had over 400 soldiers waiting in line to meet him on Saturday).
Maybe he forgot to salute and chirp, "Reporting for duty!"
president ford, rip
Gerald Ford:
"A government big enough to give us everything we want is a government big enough to take from us everything we have."
UPDATE: Tigerhawk remembers Ford:
Ford was a remarkable man, as the wire service obituary reminds us. Even as the country mocked him for his clumsiness -- the press conveniently forgetting that he was perhaps the most accomplished athlete ever to occupy the White House -- and derided him for his pardon of Richard Nixon, he led with a decency and competence that I think most Americans of the left and right wish we could conjure up today. He did this at a time when the country was extraordinarily difficult to govern, and he almost paid for it with his life. In September 1975, two separate Californians tried to assassinate him only 17 days apart.
The country threw Ford overboard for Jimmy Carter in 1976, and historians will long debate whether the electorate did the right thing. Right now, Jimmy Carter is in favor among professional historians, but that is because most of them were voters in 1976 and remember the choice they made. If, as I have argued elsewhere, it takes 50 years for the interpretation of an American presidency to settle into consensus, we should not expect the first good history of the Ford and Carter years to be written until the 2020s. At a minimum, Jimmy Carter will also have to die.
cox news serves up kwanzaa bunk
As we noted yesterday, Kwanzaa has about as much significance as Festivus. (And Seinfeld writer Daniel O’Keefe isn't a felon.) Regardless, as predicted, the news media continue to spew goo about this bogus holiday.
Kwanzaa turns 40 today. The colorful holiday, invented by California professor Maulana Ron Karenga in 1966, is like a jazz musician who fuses bits and pieces of music into a vibrant mosaic of sound. Kwanzaa, "first fruit" in Swahili, is a fluent, nonreligious holiday that borrows liberally from a patchwork of cultures and traditions.
Karenga originally created the seven-day observance to empower black communities and uplift black culture and identity.
attention deficit on deficit
Back in July, I wrote this:
Pelosi is promising that if they take the house in the fall, Democrats will roll back the Bush tax cuts and focus on deficit reduction. Who wants to set the over-under on how long it takes them to find some pressing need that overrides deficit reduction? Or will the fact that they control only one branch hamper any attempts to pass new spending?
For Democratic economists who have been bashing Bush like a concrete pinata about the budget deficits, the answer is "ASAP".
Can we come up with an explanation for this seemingly inexplicable behaviour? Why, yes, I think I did: Why aren't we doing anything about the budget deficit? Because no one cares that much.
Oh, liberals say they care, just like conservatives cared when they were out of power. But what most liberals care about is rolling back the Bush tax cuts, not cutting the budget deficit. Why do I say this? Because they supported John Kerry's plan to roll back the Bush tax cuts, and replace them with new spending on health care.
Even if we rolled back all of Bush's tax cuts to those making over $200K, that would raise (according to the Kerry campaign) about $700 billion over 10 years; this would make a dent in the budget deficit, but won't close it. But given the very high marginal rates that would be required to close it (presuming we don't want to raise taxes on the poor and middle class), it makes more economic sense to look at the spending side, for example by giving up the idea that Medicare should provide prescription drugs.
But given the choice between closing the deficit and getting spending they want--on national health care, for example--most liberals would be full of reasons that the budget deficit isn't nearly as bad as we all have been thinking. Similarly, if they were in the opposition, watching all that new spending get passed, most conservatives would be happy to wax lyrical on the terrible downfall that awaits countries that spend more than they earn.
iowahawk bids goodbye to james brown
Here.
the "world's wealth"
Just what is "the world's wealth"?
You can check in your local phone book, surf the Internet or do genealogical research: There is no one named "The World." How can a non-existent being own wealth?
Human beings own wealth. Once we put aside lofty poetic nonsense about "the world's wealth," we at least have a fighting chance of talking sense about realities.
Who are these minority of the world's population who own a majority of the world's wealth?
They are the population of the United States, Western Europe, Japan and a few other affluent countries. How did these particular people come to possess so much more wealth than other people?
They did it the old-fashioned way. They produced the wealth that they own. You might as well ask why bees have so much more honey than other creatures.
...
Nobody likes to see poverty in a world where technology and economic know-how already exist that could give everyone everywhere a decent standard of living.
All you have to do is change people. But have you ever tried to do that?
The quick fix is to transfer wealth. But more than half a century of trying to do that with "foreign aid" has left a dismal record of failure and even retrogression in Third World countries.
Some countries have themselves made changes that lifted them from poverty to prosperity. Indeed, the affluent countries of today were once living in poverty.
But they didn't do it with quick fixes or by turning a dangerous power over to politicians.
tuesday, december 26 2006
medical miracles
The New York Time assays the march of progress in medicine.
boss murtha
...That arrangement over the years has yielded millions of dollars in federal support for the contractors, businesses and universities, and hundreds of thousands in consulting and lobbying fees to Murtha's favored lobbying shops, according to Federal Election Commission records and lobbying disclosure forms. In turn, many of PAID's directors have kept Murtha's campaigns flush with cash.
When the Democrats take control of Congress on Jan. 4, ethics and budget restructuring will be the first orders of business. Among the provisions in the Democrats' ethics package are demands for more transparency in the doling out of federal funds to home-district projects and a required pledge that no earmarks benefit a member of Congress personally. That could put an uncomfortable spotlight on lawmakers such as Murtha.
"It's a real tangled web between the congressman, the nonprofit, the defense contractors and the lobbyists," said Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan watchdog group. "It's hard to say where one stops and the others start."
Murtha declined to respond to numerous phone calls and e-mails from The Washington Post requesting comment.
Maybe Nancy's boy has been deployed to Okinawa.
the "sadr swoon"
I can't get enough of these fawning Western stories about Moktada Al Sadr and his gang, and the reason is that they're so revealing. I mean, if an American journalist shapes his or her dispatches according to the U.S. military spin, then they risk being dismissed within their profession as dupes or propagandists. But hand your coverage over to the spinmeisters for a drooling jackass like Moktada – describe his new furniture, call him "high-minded" without ever meeting him -- and you're doing award-winning journalism.
Yet another example of the Sadr Swoon appeared this week. Hannah Allam, who writes for the McClatchy chain (formerly Knight-Ridder), and who has won an award for her Iraq coverage from the National Asssociation of Black Journalists (and the Overseas Press Club Award for Best Foreign Reporting), interviewed Hazem Al Araji, "director of Al Sadr's social programs and a local militia commander," for Sunday's papers.
In one notable passage, she lets Al Araji define the nuances of thuggery: "If we talk about the word 'militia,' the Mahdi Army doesn't fit the description. We are a group of people with a belief," said Araji, now national director of Sadr's social programs and a local militia commander. "We call it an army, but it's not just an army of gunmen. We protect our neighborhoods and provide services for our people."
The Sadr gangs do protect some neighborhoods, but, you know, they actually terrorize others. They kidnap, rob, and chase Iraqis they don't like from their homes. But Allam doesn't challenge Al Araji on these unfortunate details, nor does she quote anyone else who may provide such information.
Read on.
a touching kwanzaa story
Once upon a time, in the '60s, two radical black groups vied to be the baddest black folk in the land: the Black Panthers and the United Slaves of America, which abbreviated itself as US. (Cute.)
Things were tense. Both wanted to run the Afro-American Studies department at UCLA. One day in 1969, after two Panthers dissed Mauna Ron Karenga, the founder of US, in a public meeting, two of Karenga's men confronted the affronting Panthers after the meeting and shot them dead in the hallway. Dead bang campus politics.
Karenga had once proclaimed one of his members, Deborah Jones, an African queen. But then Karenga's brain told him that she was putting "crystals" in his food and water to kill him. So he and two others tortured Jones and another woman, stripping them, whipping them with electrical cords, beating them with a karate baton and sticking a hot soldering iron into their mouths.
Karenga was arrested, tried and convicted of felonious assault and false imprisonment. He was given 1-10 years in prison. A nut doctor testified at the trial that Karenga (real name Ron Everett) was bonkers:
This man now represents a picture which can be considered both paranoid and schizophrenic with hallucinations and elusions, inappropriate affect, disorganization, and impaired contact with the environment.
One might think that that would be that for felon Karenga; but no, a mere eight years later Karenga was named head of the Black Studies Department at Cal State Long Beach. From three hots-and-a-cot to academic respectability.
Along the way, he also cooked up a goofy "holiday" called Kwanzaa to stick it to whitey.
"Kwanzaa is not an imitation, but an alternative, in fact, an oppositional alternative to the spookism, mysticism and non-earth based practices which plague us as a people and encourage our withdrawal from social life rather than our bold confrontation with it."
Kwanzaa "was chosen to give a Black alternative to the existing holiday and give Blacks an opportunity to celebrate themselves and history rather than simply imitate the practice of the dominant society."
Today Kwanzaa, instead of being laughed off as the fever dream of a felonious buffoon, gets treated reverently by the news media, the President, the US Postal Service and Hallmark Cards.
Only in America, land of opportunity and white guilt.
Sources: The Dartmouth Review. Frontpage Magazine. And Tony Snow.
a touching iraq story
Iraq's highest appeals court on Tuesday upheld the death sentence for Saddam Hussein in his first trial and said it must be carried out within 30 days. The sentence "must be implemented within 30 days," chief judge Aref Shahin. "From tomorrow, any day could be the day of implementation."
another stupid ap "milestone" story
The number of U.S. military service members killed in Iraq has exceeded the number of victims in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, according to an Associated Press count.
Right. And since we liberated Iraq, 164,000 Americans died in car accidents. See? We can write non sequiturs, too.
monday, december 25 2006
merry christmas, happy holidays, seasons greetings
...to one and all.
sunday, december 24 2006
on this day
In 1968, US astronauts orbited the moon for the first time.
The Apollo 8 spacecraft has taken its crew of three astronauts safely into orbit around the Moon, the first manned space mission to achieve the feat. The engine burned for just over four minutes, and then suddenly the avid audience of television-watchers on Earth had the first-ever eyewitness account of the lunar surface from astronaut James Lovell.
"The moon is essentially grey," he said. "No colour. Looks like plaster of Paris. Sort of a greyish beach sand."
In 1979, Europe launched its first rocket.
The first European-built rocket, Ariane 1, has successfully completed its maiden flight.
The space launcher finally took off from the Kourou Space Centre in French Guiana on its third attempt.
Test flight technicians have declared the flight an almost complete success. All three stages seemed to have fired and separated correctly and its tiny payload, an automatic tracking device, was put into the right orbit.
Photo of the week from Timecatcher, a group photo website.
The image was taken at Banff National Park in Alberta, Canada.
liberate this
Jihadis have their eye on the Iberian peninsula, too.
Earlier this year a jihadist document calling for the liberation of so-called occupied territories and issued by the al-Qaeda-linked group Nadim al-Magrebi was posted on the Islamic extremist website Alansar. In most European capitals, where the cult of Palestinianism reins supreme, such demands are often met with approval since the occupied land in question is usually Israeli. But this time the statement addressed Spain—not Israel. It warned of a “holy war against the infidel Spanish state which has occupied the two cities.”
saturday, december 23 2006
what if the nba had quotas?
Imagine the following press release:
In a closed-door meeting, the owners voted to limit the number of black players, in order to increase attendance from non-black customers. The NBA now consists of over 80 percent black players, which creates a non-diverse and less enlightening experience for the predominately non-black fan.
Thus, in order to continue basketball’s popularity, the NBA determines player diversity a necessity to maintain the game’s prosperity.
— NBA commissioner David Stern.
Before you could say “Michael Richards,” in swoop the Revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, as well as the other usual suspect “black leaders.” Marching, screaming, stomping, and howling will precede enough lawsuits to keep the entire American and National Bar Associations fully employed for the next decade.
Yet when it comes to colleges and universities admitting Asian-American students, this is, in effect, exactly what is happening. Because of the superior performance of Asian students on high school grades and pre-college aptitude tests, many colleges and universities, through unannounced policies, place these “minority students” at the back of the line.
California, in 1996, outlawed race-based preferences. After this new law, the percentage of Asian students enrolled at the elite, competitive campus of UC Berkeley increased from 34.6 percent to 42 percent by fall 2006. Similarly, the state of Washington outlawed preferences in 1998, and Asian enrollment at the University of Washington increased from 22.1 percent to 25.4 percent by 2004.
Michigan recently passed laws outlawing the use of race in government hiring, contracting, and admission into public colleges and universities. Expect an increase in the Asian student body at the University of Michigan.
Question: Why do Asian students and their parents put up with it?
Jian Li does not intend to. Li, a permanent U.S. resident, immigrated to America from China at the age of 4. He graduated at the top 1 percent of his high school class. On his SATs, he received a perfect 2400, and totaled 2390 (10 points less than perfection) on his SAT II subject tests in math and science.
Yet Li received rejections from Princeton, Harvard, Stanford, the University of Pennsylvania, and MIT.
Li is not alone. Attorney Don Joe from Asian-American Politics, an enrollment-tracking Internet site — says he receives complaints “from Asian-American parents about how their children have excellent grades and scores but are being rejected by the most selective colleges. It appears to be an open secret.”
sandy scissorhands dossier
All about the thieving, lying document-destroying minion of Bill Clinton here.
For what would have happened if Condi Rice had done the same thing as Sandy Berger, read this thought experiment.
friday, december 22 2006
bitter pills
Is Big Pharma the bad guy? Many Democrats think so. Let's hope they think again.
The pharmaceutical industry operates in a high-fixed-cost and low-margin environment. It costs, on average, more than a billion dollars to get the first pill to market. All subsequent pills, however, can be made and marketed for only a few additional dollars or cents. Of course, no user ever wants to pay the big bill for that first pill. Instead, each fervently hopes to pay as close to marginal cost for the subsequent pills.
The problem with that is that unless someone pays for developing that first pill, there's no second pill to take. The central challenge to drug pricing is to figure out, quite literally, who swallows (and in what proportions) that huge front-end cost. Unfortunately, no company has a precise method to fairly, reasonably and palatably allocate the cost of drug development among the varied classes of subsequent consumers — large HMOs, hospitals, full-service pharmacies and Medicaid for starters. Each buyer has a strong incentive to push as many of those costs as possible onto someone else.The upshot is a rough-and-tumble bargaining game in which drug prices vary substantially across different market segments. But the corner drugstore doesn't have the same leverage to play one drug manufacturer off against another, so it usually pays higher prices for its wares than a large HMO. The resulting confusion leads to loud calls for equitable, industrywide price controls. But price controls would have the same dire consequences as they would in any other industry. Investment dollars will quickly move elsewhere if the regulatory system does not allow manufacturers to maximize their revenues over the useful life of the drug (which, incidentally, never exceeds the 11 or so years of patent protection).
Repeated studies, both domestic and foreign, have shown that price controls dull the incentives of pharmaceutical companies to develop new drugs. Even talk of price controls depresses investment.
Because of its high-fixed, low-variable cost structure, the drug industry will never reach perfect competitive equilibrium. But in our second-best world, ponder carefully the different consequences of two strategies. The first seeks to expand supply by avoiding regulation and encouraging the entry of new companies into the business. The second seeks to hold down prices by direct controls.
embryonic stem cell stumbles
...Stem cell–based therapies propose to treat human medical conditions by replacing cells that have been lost through disease or injury. Unlike an organ transplant, where a damaged or diseased tissue is removed and then replaced with a comparable organ from a donor, stem cell therapies would involve integration of replacement cells into the existing tissues of the patient. The dispersed integration of the transplanted cells throughout the targeted organ (indeed, throughout the entire body of the patient) would make it impossible to remove the stem cell derivatives surgically should any problems arise. Thus, the problem of immune rejection is of particular concern—if transplanted cells are attacked by the immune system, the entire tissue in which the foreign cells reside becomes the target of a potentially disastrous immune attack.
Over the past five years, the scientific community has focused almost exclusively on somatic-cell nuclear transfer, or cloning, as the best resolution to the problem of immune rejection. During somatic-cell nuclear transfer, the genetic information of an unfertilized human egg would be removed and replaced with the unique genetic information of a patient. This would produce a cloned, one-cell embryo that would mature for several days in the laboratory and then be destroyed to obtain stem cells genetically matched to the patient. Based on the success of animal cloning, human cloning was optimistically predicted to be a simple matter. Once we were able to clone human embryos, those embryos would provide patient-specific stem cell repair kits for anyone requiring cell-replacement therapies.
Human cloning has proved to be more challenging than anticipated. Human eggs, as it turns out, are considerably more fragile than eggs of other mammalian species, and they do not survive the procedures that were successfully used to clone animals. Multiple attempts by several research groups worldwide have been unsuccessful in generating human clones. The few reports of the successful cloning of human embryos were either unverifiable press releases or clear chicanery promoted by a quasi-religious group for its own publicity.
The elusive prize to generate the first human clone appeared to be won in March 2004, when a South Korean group led by Hwang Woo-Suk reported in the prestigious professional journal Science that they had generated a human stem cell line from a cloned human embryo. A year later, in June 2005, this same group sensationally reported that they had successfully generated eleven patient-specific stem cell lines from cloned human embryos and had dramatically improved their success rate to better than one in twenty attempts, bringing cloning into the realm of the possible for routine treatment of human medical conditions. Hwang was hailed as a hero and a pioneer, and his reported success evoked an almost immediate clamor to remove the funding restrictions imposed by the Bush administration on human embryonic stem cell research, lest America fall hopelessly behind South Korea in developing therapies.
By fall 2005, however, the cloning miracle had begun to unravel. Colleagues of Hwang raised serious concerns about his published studies, launching an investigation into possible scientific fraud. By December, it was conclusively shown that all the claimed cloned stem cell lines were fakes. To date, no one has successfully demonstrated that it is indeed possible to clone human embryos, and, based on the failed attempts of Hwang and others, human cloning is not likely to be a simple task, should it prove possible at all.
The scandal surrounding Hwang’s audacious fraud raised multiple concerns about the ethics of embryonic stem cell research. Investigations revealed that Hwang had used thousands of human oocytes for his unsuccessful attempts, not the hundreds as he had originally claimed. The medical risks associated with egg donation (the potential complications include both sterility and death) raise serious questions about the morality of conducting basic research on human cloning. Given that Hwang pressured junior female colleagues into donating eggs for his research, how can the interests of female scientists be protected from such professional exploitation? Given that thousands of human eggs from more than a hundred women were used by Hwang and not even a single viable cloned human embryo resulted from this research, how can the medical risks to women entailed by this research possibly be justified?
Read it all.
the best human nature stories of 2006
Collectled by William Saletan at Slate.
are we still evolving?
"Are humans still evolving? In the vernacular sense of improving morally and intellectually - by cultural changes - I think so," says Steven Pinker. "In the biological sense of changes in the gene pool, it's impossible to say." If pressed to come off the fence, however, the Harvard-based evolutionary biologist knows where he stands. "People, including me, would rather believe that significant human biological evolution stopped between 50,000 and 100,000 years ago, before the races diverged, which would ensure that racial and ethnic groups are biologically equivalent," he says.
Creationists would say that the question begs the question.
___________________________
"Begging the question" is a form of logical fallacy in which an argument is assumed to be true without evidence other than the argument itself. When one begs the question, the initial assumption of a statement is treated as already proven without any logic to show why the statement is true in the first place.
A simple example would be "I think he is unattractive because he is ugly." The adjective "ugly" does not explain why the subject is "unattractive" -- they virtually amount to the same subjective meaning, and the proof is merely a restatement of the premise. The sentence has begged the question.
To beg the question does not mean "to raise the question." (e.g. "It begs the question, why is he so dumb?") This is a common error of usage made by those who mistake the word "question" in the phrase to refer to a literal question. Sadly, the error has grown more and more ubiquitous common with time, such that even journalists, advertisers, and major mass media entities have fallen prey to "BTQ Abuse."
how to write good
- Always avoid alliteration.
- Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
- Avoid cliches like the plague—they're old hat.
- Employ the vernacular.
understanding the question is half the answer
Omar at Iraq the Model:
...the military component we need at this particular stage should be different from the routine military operations that US and Iraqi military had been conducting so far. The new military component should be designed to create a friendly climate where politicians can strike deals and reach compromise without coercion from radical extremists.
And so if more boots are to be added on the ground then the mission will have to include freeing politicians and parties such as Maliki and al-Hashimi (the Dawa and the Islamic party respectively) from the ropes that bind them to Sadr and harmful elements in the Sunni political scene.
Right now is a good time, perhaps the best time we have to launch this effort since there's already a large front forming from the parties that are willing to talk against the extremists' camp.If the way forward requires maintaining the basic course of the political process and empowering (and cleaning) the current government and its head then the only way to do this is to relief Maliki, his party and the rest of the Shia alliance from the dominance and influence of Sadr and there are two ways to accomplish this:
Either persuade Maliki and his team and promise them great support and protection from Sadr's reach. Or, Deal a lethal blow to Sadr and his militia in order to render him unable to inflict harm on Maliki and other members of the UIA.
Now really, it shouldn't be that difficult to figure out that the first way isn't working out right, what's needed now is to take the decision to try the second way and deal with the biggest threat to stability in Iraq in the way we should.
If claims that the militia is fragmented and not entirely under Sadr's control are true (and it's actually hard to believe that one man can control a militia of dozens of thousands spread over 11 provinces) then this must be an advantage for us because if that's the case there would be little reason to believe those renegade units would fight for Sadr since many have reached financial independence from the center leadership and let's not forget that money and fear are the main weapons militia leaders use to expand their power and maintain control over the militia members and the population.
thursday, december 21 2006 (the shortest day)
santa drives a brown truck
...labeled UPS. Here's a story about how the parcel delivery company tweaks its efficiency.
when ayaan hirsi ali learned history
ONE DAY IN 1994, when I was living in Ede, a small town in Holland, I got a visit from my half-sister. She and I were both immigrants from Somalia and had both applied for asylum in Holland. I was granted it; she was denied. The fact that I got asylum gave me the opportunity to study. My half-sister couldn't.
In order for me to be admitted to the university I wanted to attend, I needed to pass three courses: a language course, a civics course and a history course. It was in the preparatory history course that I, for the first time, heard of the Holocaust. I was 24 years old at that time, and my half-sister was 21.I learned that innocent men, women and children were separated from each other. Stars pinned to their shoulders, transported by train to camps, they were gassed for no other reason than for being Jewish.
I saw pictures of masses of skeletons, even of kids. I heard horrifying accounts of some of the people who had survived the terror of Auschwitz and Sobibor. I told my half-sister all this and showed her the pictures in my history book. What she said was as awful as the information in my book.
With great conviction, my half-sister cried: "It's a lie! Jews have a way of blinding people. They were not killed, gassed or massacred. But I pray to Allah that one day all the Jews in the world will be destroyed."
She was not saying anything new. As a child growing up in Saudi Arabia, I remember my teachers, my mom and our neighbors telling us practically on a daily basis that Jews are evil, the sworn enemies of Muslims, and that their only goal was to destroy Islam. We were never informed about the Holocaust.
Later, as a teenager in Kenya, when Saudi and other Persian Gulf philanthropy reached us, I remember that the building of mosques and donations to hospitals and the poor went hand in hand with the cursing of Jews. Jews were said to be responsible for the deaths of babies and for epidemics such as AIDS, and they were believed to be the cause of wars. They were greedy and would do absolutely anything to kill us Muslims. If we ever wanted to know peace and stability, and if we didn't want to be wiped out, we would have to destroy the Jews. For those of us who were not in a position to take up arms against them, it was enough for us to cup our hands, raise our eyes heavenward and pray to Allah to destroy them.
Western leaders today who say they are shocked by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's conference this week denying the Holocaust need to wake up to that reality. For the majority of Muslims in the world, the Holocaust is not a major historical event that they deny. We simply do not know it ever happened because we were never informed of it.The total number of Jews in the world today is estimated to be about 15 million, certainly no more than 20 million. On the other hand, the world's Muslim population is estimated to be between 1.2 billion and 1.5 billion. And not only is this population rapidly growing, it is also very young.
What's striking about Ahmadinejad's conference is the (silent) acquiescence of mainstream Muslims. I cannot help but wonder: Why is there no counter-conference in Riyadh, Cairo, Lahore, Khartoum or Jakarta condemning Ahmadinejad?
Why are the 57 members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference silent on this? Could the answer be as simple as it is horrifying: For generations, the leaders of these so-called Muslim countries have been spoon-feeding their populations a constant diet of propaganda similar to the one that generations of Germans (and other Europeans) were fed — that Jews are vermin and should be dealt with as such?
In Europe, the logical conclusion was the Holocaust. If Ahmadinejad has his way, he shall not want for compliant Muslims ready to act on his wish. The world needs to be informed again and again about the Holocaust — not only in the interest of the Jews who survived and their offspring but in the interest of humanity.
Holocaust deniers have another hurdle: the Nazis kept impeccable records of their genocide (as did Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge) as "60 Minutes" reported last Sunday.
For the first time, secrets of the Nazi Holocaust that have been hidden away for more than 60 years are finally being made available to the public. We’re not talking about a missing filing cabinet - we’re talking about thousands of filing cabinets, holding 50 million pages. It's Hitler’s secret archive.
...
The storerooms are immense: 16 miles of shelves holding the stories of 17 million victims – not only Jews, but slave laborers, political prisoners and homosexuals. To open the files is to see the Holocaust staring back like it was yesterday: strange pink Gestapo arrest warrants as lethal as a death sentence, jewelry lost as freedom ended at the gates of an extermination camp. Time stopped here in 1945.
christmas video from al qaeda
Scrappleface has some fun with the latest video from the jihadi general.
people aren't happy. let's tax 'em.
Business Pundit dissects the Economist.
The Economist this week is all about capitalism and happiness. One of the lead articles discusses the idea that greater societal wealth doesn't make people happy. Why? Because we don't really want stuff, we just want more stuff than our neighbors. We want to be better than our peers. People spend so much time trying to get stuff that they don't need, then wonder why they are so unhappy. The surprising suggestion from this article is that taxes can fix the problem. The even more surprising suggestion from this article is that these taxes are not meant to address inequality, but rather, to force the acceptance of elitism and societal hierarchy.
Think of the scramble for schools, Mr Frank says. Only 10% of kids can go to the top 10% of schools. In many countries, wherever the schools are good, the houses will be expensive. Thus parents who want the best education for their child must overwork to afford a house in a good school district. In doing so, however, they raise the bar for everyone else.
Is mutual disarmament possible? Not without government help, Mr Frank and Lord Layard argue. The exchequer should tax earned income heavily enough to deter one-upmanship, they say.
Despite appearances, this is not a naked example of punitive redistribution-the fiscal politics of envy. Mr Frank and Lord Layard do not want to level the social order. Their aim is much more conservative than that. Their taxes would leave the pecking order intact and envy undiminished. But people would be deterred from acting on the green-eyed monster. The problem these economists want to tackle is not inequality per se. It is that people don't know their place and scramble vainly to improve it. Carlyle, who thought man should content himself with being the worthy follower of worthy superiors, would no doubt have approved.This is such an odd thing to read because taxes are usually proposed under egalitarian ideals. The assumption behind so much left-wing thinking is that we should all be more equal, despite being dealt different hands in the game of life, and playing the hand we have been dealt in different ways.
There's more.
losing shock value
From Asharq Alawsat:
The most dangerous thing that could happen in light of the mounting crises in our region is the loss of interest in them.
Let me ask you: does the news of a car bomb tearing through a crowded Baghdad street surprise you? Does it surprise you to hear the news of thousands of families in Gaza losing their monthly income or the outbreak of street warfare between the people of one of the world's "poorest" countries, namely, Somalia? Even news of the opposition or the majority in Lebanon taking to the streets in protest is no longer a surprise!
I will not relate the news of the fall of Somalian cities one after another at the hands of militants of the "Islamic Courts," (Africa's version of Afghanistan's Taliban), as such news is unsurprising. There was also a time when the news of a fierce clash between an Al Qaeda cell and Saudi security forces was part of this "unsurprising family" of news.
The extensive and prompt media coverage that takes place almost simultaneously as these events unfold, and even before these events develop, has become a key element of "accustoming" the viewer and diminishes the element of surprise – the kind of surprise that generates concern, observation and reflection.
Read it all.
a good excuse to loaf
Endless hours spent perfecting your golf swing or basketball shot could be a waste of time, according to a new study which shows that practice does not always make perfect.
Mark Churchland and colleagues at Stanford University in California, US, made the discovery after training macaque monkeys to repeat a simple reaching task thousands of times.
"The nervous system was not designed to do the same thing over and over again," says Churchland, whose team investigated the way the brain plans and calculates motion.
The team showed the monkeys a coloured spot and rewarded them for reaching out to touch it at different speeds. During the exercise, they monitored the promoter cortex of the monkeys' brains, which is the region responsible for movement planning, and tracked the speed of the resulting motion.
...
Contrary to conventional wisdom that movement variability is caused by muscle activity, Churchland’s team found that neural activity accounts for about half the variations. In other words, training muscles to perform a certain way through practice, such as countless hours teeing off or shooting a basketball, will not produce the same shot every time because the brain's behaviour is inconsistent.
wednesday, december 20 2006
piffle from thomas friedman, et al
New York Times columnist and bestselling author Thomas Friedman wrote in a recent column:
..here is some immediate advice I can give the president: If you want any positive legacy, it will not come from Iraq. There are only tears left there. No, the only way for you to salvage your legacy is to get back to your Texas roots and devote the rest of your term to really ending America's oil addiction...
Thus spake Friedman. Iraq, less than one year after 12 million Iraqis turned out to vote for a democratic government, is all finished, washed up, hopeless. Sorry Iraq, you had 10 months to get it done, but the clock's run out.
Which brings to mind a comment from Iraqpundit:
The press and the think tanks don't bother with Iraqis. We seem to be flyspecks.
Iraq is about Bush; Iraqis remain a sideshow. We matter as corpses, because then we can be used against Bush. But as living people who might have a stake – or at least an opinion...? Forget it.
Well, yes, the news media, carrying water for the Democrat party, began declaring Iraq a failure even before things started getting dicey last June. It had to fail for them to regain power.
Now that Democrats have gained slim majorities in both houses, everyone is supposed to be singing from the defeatist song book, including Bush. If he doesn't, it just confirms to them how stubborn/dumb/out-of-touch he is.
As Newbusters noted, Bush sat down with three swells from the Washington Post for:
...a 25-minute interview Tuesday with the three Washington Post White House correspondents: Peter Baker, Michael Fletcher, and Michael Abramowitz. The transcript in today's Post leaves the definite impression it was another game of asking "when will you submit to the will of the Democrats, er, the people?"
The tone of questioning suggests Bush is denying the reality that America is now in the capable hands of a MoveOn.org majority, and demands that he "listen" to their wish list, since his wishes are no longer viable:
Given the election results, is increasing the troop level in Iraq even a viable possibility or option?
Yes, Mike, all options are viable.
– given the political will out there?
Well, all options are viable. I think what the people want is -- they want a couple of things. They want to see Democrats and Republicans work together to achieve a common objective, and they want us to win in Iraq....
But the election results seemed people wanted to bring the venture in Iraq to closure. That seemed to be the strong lesson. And what indications are there that you're actually listening to that sentiment?
Oh, Mike, look, I want to achieve the objective....There's not a lot of people saying, "Get out now." Most Americans are saying, "We want to achieve the objective."
But there are a lot of people who are saying, "Let's get out with a phased deployment over a certain period of time."
If they felt -- if that leads to victory, it needs to be seriously considered. And I'm considering all options and listening very carefully to a lot of good people who have got different opinions about how to proceed.
Makes me wish Bush would say, "With recent circulation drops among your, and other newspapers, the American public has entered a vote of no confidence in your judgement or in your role as gatekeepers. Why should I listen to you?"
iowahawk looks back at the windy city, 1959
A trip down memory lane with the prairie wit.
meet mugabe's victims
Thousands have been killed or tortured by the Zimbabwean dictator. Here are the stories of three.
the lord smites snow and rocky
Senators Olympia Snowe and Jay Rockefeller raised eyebrows with their October 27 letter to the president of ExxonMobil, incouraging him to stop funding scientific research that debunks man-made global warming.
This act got one British Lord Monckton plenty p-o'd, and he wrote an open letter chewing them out. It's a gem.
You defy every tenet of democracy when you invite ExxonMobil to deny itself the right to provide information to "senior elected and appointed government officials" who disagree with your opinion. You are elected officials yourselves. If you do not believe in the right of persons within the United States to exercise their fundamental right under the world's greatest Constitution to petition their elected representatives for the redress of their grievances, then you have no place on Capitol Hill. You must go.
...
There is no evidence that today's temperatures are warmer than during the mediaeval warm period 1,000 years ago. Yet in 2005, the palaeoclimatologist David Deming wrote that after he had published a paper in Science [Deming, 1995] "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 Mediaeval Warm Period.'"
The UN's second assessment report, in 1996, had had a 1,000-year graph showing that temperature in the Middle Ages was warmer than today's. But the 2001 report contained a new graph showing no mediaeval warm period. It concluded that the 20th century was the warmest for 1,000 years. That graph, recently condemned by the US National Academy of Sciences as "having a validation skill not significantly different from zero" -- i.e. as being useless -- was repeated six times in the UN's 2001 report, each time in full colour. In the UN's forthcoming report, there will be no apology for the erroneous graph, from which data showing the existence of the mediaeval warm period had been excluded.
Why should ExxonMobil, or anyone, place the slightest credence in a body that, in the three examples cited above, has manipulated or ignored the truth, has suppressed the participation of dissenters, has failed to address scientists' legitimate concerns about the declared bias of its lead authors, and has failed to apologize even for its most blatant errors? Lord Lawson of Blaby, a distinguished former Chancellor of the Exchequer in the UK, has called for the outright abolition of the UN's climate-change panel. I concur. We need honest science. Therefore we do not need the UN.
rod spared, rod spoiled
Missy Phillips knew she had a big problem on her hands when her boyfriend's 18-year-old son ransacked their house looking for the stash of unwrapped Christmas presents.
To keep the nosy teenager from finding the stereo, video games and hunting bow she and her boyfriend bought him, Phillips had to go out of the house - and into a self-storage unit - to hide the gifts until Christmas Eve.
Around the holidays, the units typically used to store furniture and household items are becoming temporary outposts for adults to hide and wrap gifts for kids and big-ticket items like televisions or bicycles for spouses. In Nashville, one storage service bills their smaller units as "Santa Closets."
An 18-year-old should know better. Instead of spending money to hide his gifts, sorta step-mom should teach the punk a lesson.
Stories like this smell like PR plants. The personal storage industry dreams up a way to goose demand and convinces some hapless news writer that there's a trend to be reported.
Next year the box industry may dream up faux boxes that Missy can hide in her house for say, an X-Box 360. When the kid unwraps it on Christmas, a note reads, "Merry Xmas, you've been punk'd, punk."
tuesday, december 19 2006
kofi annan, welfare queeen
The apartment was where Mr. Annan and his wife lived before 1997, when he became secretary-general. The Roosevelt Island home is part of an estate of low-rent state-regulated housing. For years, the Annans saved considerable sums by occupying an apartment meant to help financially strapped low- to moderate-income New York families.
One question Mr. Annan has never addressed is why he and his wife felt comfortable availing themselves of this generous arrangement. Another is how it is that, since Mr. Annan and his wife left that Roosevelt Island apartment 10 years ago to move into the rent-free residence on Sutton Place supplied to the secretary-general, their former low-rent apartment was handed over to be occupied by the family of Mr. Annan's brother.
zucker punch
Director David Zucker (Airplane, Top Secret and much more) is back with another video, this one taking on James Baker and the Iraq Study Group.
HT: Pat Dollard
hillary triangulates truth
As Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton continues to assess a possible presidential candidacy and the contours of a Democratic nomination fight, she has taken another step away from her 2002 vote authorizing President Bush to attack Iraq by saying that she "wouldn't have voted that way" if she knew everything she knows now.
Clinton has often been asked if she regrets her vote authorizing military action and she usually answers that question with an artful dodge, saying that she accepts responsibility for the vote and suggesting that if the Senate had all the information it has today, there would never have been a vote on the Senate floor. However, she has never gone as far as some of her potential rivals for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination -- who also voted for the war -- and called her vote a mistake or declared that she would have cast her vote differently with all the facts presently available to her -- until now.
This morning on NBC's "Today" show, Sen. Clinton was asked about her 2002 vote and offered a slightly evolved answer. "Obviously, if we knew then what we know now, there wouldn't have been a vote," she said in her usual refrain before adding, "and I certainly wouldn't have voted that way."...Sen. Clinton has long been viewed as potentially vulnerable on her left flank with regards to the war in a Democratic nomination fight where primary voters and caucus-goers tend to represent the more liberal wing of the party.
Click the thumbnail image to watch Hillary's video.
you vill behave!
German diplomats don't shoot from the hip - they talk even to hard core dictators, such as Syria's Assad. And Germany's foreign minister Steinmeier didn't mince his words:
"I call on Syria to desist from all actions that could contribute directly or indirectly to the destabilization of the situation," he said before boarding his return flight from Damascus to Germany: "If you follow this path, you will have a partner in Germany."
Hey, Germany's carrot and stick approach has worked before! Remember Steinmeier predecessor Joschka Fischer's sensational diplomatic success in the case of Iran's nuclear ambitions?
Here we go again. The results of Steinmeiers's Syrian talks so far are truly encouraging:
Nil. Zero. Nought.
nostalgia for sexual deviation
Last weekend rumors were flying about a certain cheerleader at my daughter's high school. Facts are tough to tease from such tales, but this much is known: said cheerleader used her cell phone to make a video of her young digits exploring her Mound of Venus.
She then emailed the video to her boyfriend (ain't technology great?) and from there her privates escaped into the public domain. The school threatened punishment and the parents, so the rumor reports, argued that the whole thing was no big deal. Just kids being kids.
Should they choose, the parents might cite Bill Clinton ("I did not have sex with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.") or Paris Hilton, whose amateur porn made her famous enough to launch a line of handbags.
Last month Los Angeles magazine ran a feature story, "A Porn Star is Born," about Sasha Grey. The moment Sasha turned 18, she drove down from northern California to the San Fernando Valley to pursue her dream of becoming a pornstar, an ambition she'd nursed since age 11.
Sasha got an agent right away, and with her young face and taste for pain (don't ask) became a hot commodity. The ten page article describes how much she earns depending upon which orifices are involved. Very matter of fact.
Los Angeles is a glossy, upscale magazine, the type that forces you to flip past ten pages of ads for $50,000 watches and other baubles before you locate the table of contents. I was struck by how normal they made Sasha's career choice sound--it could've been about a young girl who always wanted to become an astronaut. I imagined naive teenage girls reading this article and thinking, "Hmm. Good money, easy hours and fame." They erased any shame that might still attend.
Such journalism marks a milestone in our culture. As a member of the '60 generation (sex, drugs, rock 'n roll) it is odd to find myself feeling a bit prudish. Which reminds me of a conversation Burt and I had over lunch last month. I commented that I was tired of seeing gay men kiss on TV. I have no aversion to homosexuals. I think people are born gay and that we should all live and let live. But that doesn't mean I like watching men locking lips. Burt replied, "I liked gays much better in the closet."
Upon further reflection, I realized I'm not all that fascinated watching men and women frenching on TV or movies either. It seems rote. One exception was in a fine little movie called Dear Frankie in which the couple have yet to acknowledge their attraction.
As they stand outside the door to her flat, saying nothing for about 45 seconds, the audience gets to experience the tension that comes with first kisses. When they finally kiss, it means something. There was something sweet and pure about the moment.
Sweet and pure. Perhaps that is becoming the new deviation.
JB
monday, december 18 2006
bush, b.b. king, lucille and much more
did baker law firm scam iraq sanctions?
Maariv journalist Ben Caspit reports that he has obtained documentation which shows that the law firm in which former American secretary of state James Baker is senior partner used an Israeli agent to bypass the US sanctions on business dealings with Iraq.
Houston-based Baker Botts, with extensive dealings in the Arab world, earned tens of millions of dollars in fees from a deal it brokered between the Korean Hyundai concern and the Iraqi government at the peak of the sanctions imposed on the government of Saddam Hussein, according to Israeli businessman Nir Gouaz, who has been asked in 1998 by Baker's office to mediate in the deal.Now Gouaz wants to come clean and spill the beans to show Baker's hypocrisy and conflicts of interest. "I read all the essays about Baker's vision, about the Baker Report, about the man whom the United States placed at the head of the committee that is to decide on the future of the Middle East, and I decided that there is a limit to chutzpah. The time has come to tell the story," Gouaz told Ma'ariv.
africa giving aid to american episcopalians
In a twist, these wealthy American congregations are essentially putting themselves up for adoption by Anglican archbishops in poorer dioceses in Africa, Asia and Latin America who share conservative theological views about homosexuality and the interpretation of Scripture with the breakaway Americans.
“The Episcopalian ship is in trouble,” said the Rev. John Yates, rector of The Falls Church, one of the two large Virginia congregations, where George Washington served on the vestry. “So we’re climbing over the rails down to various little lifeboats. There’s a lifeboat from Bolivia, one from Rwanda, another from Nigeria. Their desire is to help us build a new ship in North America, and design it and get it sailing.”
how art can be good
I grew up believing that taste is just a matter of personal preference. Each person has things they like, but no one's preferences are any better than anyone else's. There is no such thing as good taste.
Like a lot of things I grew up believing, this turns out to be false, and I'm going to try to explain why.
One problem with saying there's no such thing as good taste is that it also means there's no such thing as good art. If there were good art, then people who liked it would have better taste than people who didn't. So if you discard taste, you also have to discard the idea of art being good, and artists being good at making it.
It was pulling on that thread that unravelled my childhood faith in relativism. When you're trying to make things, taste becomes a practical matter. You have to decide what to do next. Would it make the painting better if I changed that part? If there's no such thing as better, it doesn't matter what you do. In fact, it doesn't matter if you paint at all. You could just go out and buy a ready-made blank canvas. If there's no such thing as good, that would be just as great an achievement as the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Less laborious, certainly, but if you can achieve the same level of performance with less effort, surely that's more impressive, not less.
Yet that doesn't seem quite right, does it?
Read it all.
For those unfamiliar with Paul Graham, he is a computer programmer, co-founder of ViaWeb, an essayist and painter. He is the author of Hackers and Painters.
liberace and cassius clay
Before he became Muhammed Ali, he was Cassius Clay, aka, the Louisville Lip. Here's a holiday gift for everyone whose teeth are set on edge by the blowhard antics of Terrell Owens and his like.
The charming, self deprecating humor of Clay comes through beautifully in this video from the Jack Paar show, where he recites poetry about himself as Liberace plays piano.
no dependency allowed
One of the factors Dems cite for withdrawing troops from Iraq is the fear that the Iraqis will come to depend on America for police and military functions if we don't. I, and I imagine many others probably agree. Now let's apply the concept to entitlement and other domestic programs the Dems treat like sacred cows.
Doesn't increasing the minimum wage cause low end workers to become dependent upon the government to secure them a higher or living wage, as opposed to pursuing education, or advancement?
Doesn't welfare encourage individuals to become dependent on the government for their income, as opposed to taking responsibility for themselves?
Don't generous mandated public retirement accounts, say like social security, cause people to become dependent on the government to save money for them, as opposed to encouraging them to take responsibility for their own savings and retirement investments? We've been hearing warnings about the low level of savings by the American people for years. Is it because they've been allowed to become dependent on the government?
I think the Dems are right on at least that one aspect of their thinking on Iraq. But I'd sure like to see them broaden their thinking a little on this whole dependence thing. If the concept is good enough for Iraq, maybe it's good enough for America, too. (smirk)
sunday, december 17 2006
gladwell on bad stereotyping
I was in Texas and Oklahoma last week. In the course of the trip, I was in a number of situations where I had to make conversation with people I didn’t know. Looking back on those conversations, I realize that when I was talking to white, male businessmen and needed to come up something to say, I generally chose the subject of college football.
For lack of a better word, let’s call this “conversational discrimination.” I don’t assume that every stranger I meet wants to talk about college football. But I drew an inference about my conversational partner, based on his membership in the “white-male-businessmen of Texas and Oklahoma group” and used that inference to direct my behavior. As Judge Posner reminded us, in his review of Blink, in situations where one doesn’t know a lot about an individual, it may “sensible to ascribe the group's average characteristics to each member of the group, even though one knows that many members deviate from the average.” As it turns out, my assumption was largely correct. I had lot of really great conversations about college football. (Let's be clear this was not a hardship: I'm happy to talk about college football until the cows come home).
The reason this stereotype was so useful was that I used as much of the available information about my conversational partner as I could. The fact that I was in Texas and Oklahoma mattered a lot. I wouldn’t have assumed that I could talk about college football with a similar group of white male business types from, say, Silicon Valley. The fact that they were businessmen mattered, and not, say, graphic designers or actors. The fact that they were men and not women mattered, and I know from experience that if I’m choosing a sports topic for conversation with an black male businessman, I’ll probably guess basketball—particularly if the person I’m talking to is from the East Coast. The point is the accuracy of stereotypes is a reflection—in large part—of their specificity: the more information you can use to build a generalization, the better off you are.
jimmy carter, intellectual coward
Betsy Newmark on the worst American president in the 20th Century:
Carter says that his book on Israel and the Palestinians, Palestine: Peace not Apartheid, is supposed to provoke debate and serious thought about the situation there. But he won't travel to Brandeis to debate Alan Dershowitz over the content of his book. His excuse is that Dershowitz knows nothing about the situation in Palestine. Well, wouldn't that make him an easier debating opponent to face? And, Dershowitz has written a book about Israel, The Case for Israel, and has written often both defending Israel and attacking some current policies of the Israeli government. He's also published criticism of Carter's book. Of course, Alan Dershowitz hasn't been accused of plagiarizing Dennis Ross's maps and mischaracterizing them to boot as Carter has.
saturday, december 16 2006
some great photos
Michael Poliza portfolio here.
victor davis hanson
Does running for President allow a candidate to freelance at a time of war by talking to our enemies and triangulating against the president? Why is Gov. Richardson talking to North Koreans, or Sen. Kerry trying to talk to the Iranians, or Sen. Bayh to the Syrians? Wouldn’t that be like a Tom DeLay talking to Milosevic to undermine Clinton during the Kosovo bombing? Or Trent Lott dealing with the Taliban as Clinton sent cruise missiles against them?
Perhaps in the interest of fairness, readers can cite past examples where Republican Senators and Presidential candidates went abroad, undercut Democratic foreign policy at a time of war, and made statements that were welcomed by our enemies. I know Senators of both parties talked to Saddam in 1989-90 and often nearly empathized with him, but we were not yet at war with him.
Nota bene: Senator Nelson just returned from talking in Mr. Assad’s Syria—the serial murderer of Lebanese reformers, the clearinghouse for Hezbollah, the refuge for the killers of Americans in Iraq—with assurances that Syria wishes to be a stabilizing factor in the region.
Sen. Kerry in Cairo just praised Hosni Mubarak, lauding him by chastising President Bush’s failure to listen to this voice of reason and his criticisms of the United States. And why not listen to such advice, since this autocrat has been the recipient of billions in American aid, while squelching all reform for some thirty years in the bargain?
No doubt Kerry also lectured Mubarak about once hyping the WMD threat (“Mubarak lied, thousands died?”). Remember, the Egyptian strongman, as part of his reservations about Iraq, had warned our generals that American troops would be targeted with gasses of all sorts by Saddam.
Kerry also called for new talks with Iran—a rogue state presently in the middle of uranium enrichment, supplying IEDs to the militias in Iraq, promising to wipe out Israel, and hosting a Holocaust denial love fest in Teheran. Surely if the senator once denigrated our own soldiers as terrorizing Iraqis he can at least say that Iranians do the same?
...
Why then has the United States become unhinged?
A variety of reasons.
A media that makes Cindy Sheehan, Valerie Plame, Mark Foley’s email, or lies about flushed Korans in Guantanamo into headline stories is itself nearly lunatic.
The once quick victories in Afghanistan (8 weeks) and Iraq (3 weeks), following the easy wins over Noriega and Milosevic, unrealistically sent the message that the United States could almost simultaneously win wars without losses and continue to honor its global obligations with a vastly reduced Army and Marines.
And the problem in Iraq has not been so much the constant “mistakes” (such lapses happen in every war), as the inability of our government to articulate why we are there and how we will win.
The result is that we have almost worked ourselves into some sort of self-induced paralytic state. But on sober reflection, things in fact are hardly lost. There has been no repeat of 9/11. The U.S. military has killed thousands of jihadists. The Taliban and Saddam are gone. There are still democratic governments in Afghanistan and Iraq struggling to make it, the first in the history of the region. Our troops in the field have high morale and believe they can secure Iraq. And the world, especially in Europe, has become vigilant against Islamic fundamentalism.
We are in much better shape that during any of the crises that Churchill, Roosevelt, or Truman all weathered. And while 50 dead every month since 9/11 is a high toll in this war against jihadism, it does not compare to the 8,000 plus killed from December 1941 to August 1945, a war that similarly started out with a surprise, though less lethal attack on the United states.
cure for diabetes?
In a discovery that has stunned even those behind it, scientists at a Toronto hospital say they have proof the body's nervous system helps trigger diabetes, opening the door to a potential near-cure of the disease that affects millions of Canadians.
Diabetic mice became healthy virtually overnight after researchers injected a substance to counteract the effect of malfunctioning pain neurons in the pancreas.
warning labels
Oversize clothes should have obesity helpline numbers sewn on them to try and reduce Britain's fat crisis, a leading professor said today.
And new urban roads should only be built if they have cycle lanes, according to Naveed Sattar, Professor of Metabolic Medicine at the University of Glasgow.
Fine. Books by Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky and films by Michael Moore and Robert Greenwald should come with idiot labels on their packaging.
Liberal politicians should be compelled to wear buttons identifying them as members of the "Great Army of Meddlers and Know-it-Alls."
palestinians on verge of civil war
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called Saturday for new presidential and parliamentary elections, a dramatic challenge to ruling Hamas militants that threatens to touch off a civil war.
Wait, Arab vs. Arab? Palestinian vs. Palestinian?
Didn't the Iraq Study Group say that solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was the key to peace in the region? All those graybeards might have been wrong? Their wisdom nothing but piffle?
Perish the thought.
mark his words
“Today, it should be clear that not only is weakness provocative but the perception of weakness on our part can be provocative as well.
A conclusion by our enemies that the United States lacks the will or the resolve to carry out missions that demand sacrifice and demand patience is every bit as dangerous as an imbalance of conventional military power."
Rumsfeld will be missed.
friday, december 15 2006
amazing gigapixel image of yosemite's half dome
dennis miller on defeatism
details, details
[Regarding the Baker ISG] Hasn't somebody been left out? Like, Iraq's civilians?
It's been like that from the start. The press and the think tanks don't bother with Iraqis. We seem to be flyspecks.Iraq is about Bush; Iraqis remain a sideshow. We matter as corpses, because then we can be used against Bush. But as living people who might have a stake – or at least an opinion – on the Baker-Hamilton report? Forget it.
bush bashing via foreign tyrants
Part of what makes our modern America a less than fully effective world power is the fact that a goodly percentage of the members of one of our two major parties do not believe America ought to be a world power.
It isn’t that these people are subversive-minded, or that they are enemy spies. Rather, their internal moral code reads suspiciously like the Charter of the United Nations—they believe the advancement of national interests in international fora is simply wrong. It now appears that politicians with these beliefs, having just captured Congress, have decided to play the role of president as well.
Count among this set Democrat Senator Bill Nelson, who recently sojourned to Damascus to meet with a man called Bashar Assad over the objection of the State Department. Assad is what we acolytes of Webster would call an Enemy of the United States of America. As president of Syria, Assad is aiding and abetting the Islamist terrorists whom we fight in Iraq.
And now, two more. John Kerry flies to Egypt, another undemocratic state plagued by terrorism, to criticize the President and the policies of the United States. Kerry met Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. (Whom he did not criticize.) He and Mubarak discussed both Iraq and the issue of Israel and the group of people known as Palestinians.
Kerry slammed the President, endorsed the worst recommendations from the Baker report (namely that we negotiate with Iran and Syria) and generally sashayed about planting his far-left seeds of a seperate peace. Is it any surprise the Israel-Palestine negotiations aren’t farther along, when a band of American radicals expecting to soon control the White House fly to the countries with whom we are negotiating and virtually guarantee a sweeter deal if only they will hold off for a few months?
to be christian in morocco
They might have Islamic names like Mohammed or Ali, but every Sunday these Moroccan converts to Christianity go discreetly to "church" -- to the ire of Islamic militants and under the suspicious eye of police.
"There are about a thousand of us in around 50 independent churches across the big cities of the kingdom," explained Abdelhalim, who coordinates these evangelical Protestant groups in Morocco.
"As we are tolerated, but not recognized (by the state) we must, for security reasons, conduct ourselves as a clandestine organisation," said the 57-year-old, who preferred to use a pseudonym.
"As soon as a church has 20 worshippers it splits in two," said Abdelhalim, a doctor who converted to Christianity 16 years ago when he was living abroad.
And yet western nations bend over backwards to insure the religious freedom of Muslims in their midst.
kicking kofi
...thanks to U.S. military action that Mr. Annan did everything in his power to prevent--we learned that he had presided over the greatest bribery scheme in history, known as Oil for Food. We learned that Benon Sevan, Mr. Annan's trusted confidant in charge of administering the program, had himself been a beneficiary of Iraqi kickbacks to the tune of $160,000.
We learned that Mr. Annan's chief of staff, Iqbal Riza, had ordered potentially incriminating documents to be destroyed. We learned that Mr. Annan and his deputy, Louise Frechette, were both aware of the kickback scheme but failed to report it to the Security Council, as their fiduciary duties required. However, we haven't yet learned whether the senior Annan illegally helped his son Kojo obtain a discounted Mercedes, an issue on which the Secretary General has stonewalled reporters.
flashback
In 1997, The American Enterprise interviewed P.J. O'Rourke, Christopher Hitchens and Kate O'Beirne. It's funny and nostalgic. Here's an excerpt:
TAE: Who is most likely to cheat at cards, Clinton or Gore? Americans said Clinton by 42 to 15 percent.
HITCHENS: The 15 are the sort who make three-card monte possible. Without the 15 percent, it wouldn't be true that there was one born every minute.
O'ROURKE: Gore would be more likely to pull a gun on you than cheat you. I come from generations of used-car salesmen, and the minute I laid eyes on Clinton I said, God bless him. If we had had him at O'Rourke Buick, I would be way too rich to be doing this for a living.
TAE: Clinton watched the movie Air Force One over and over. What does that mean?
O'ROURKE: In your dreams, Bill!
O'BEIRNE: It means he has time to answer Paula Jones' charges.
political puppy love
It is sometimes called a bubble or a boomlet or a bandwagon. A new political figure arrives on the national stage and audiences swoon. Suddenly, mysteriously, and without anybody knowing much about him, he is The One, the next hot thing, eclipsing all other presidential wannabes.
(Until he isn't anymore.)
This bubble is not love -- as anyone who was ever 15 years old can testify. This bubble is infatuation. Political infatuation. Presidential contenders can be the subject of crushes just as surely as that new kid in high school, and in both cases it's what you don't know about the person that forms much of the appeal.
Speaking of which, there's this transfer student we've been eyeing in Miss Fischer's P.E. class. Name's Barack or something. Big dark eyes, great cheekbones. From Illinois. Don't know much about him, but, boy, is he dreamy.
Which reminded me of a quote from P.J. O'Rourke about the Kennedy family:
We have no one to blame for the Kennedys but ourselves. We took the Kennedys to heart of our own accord. And it is my opinion that we did it not because we respected them or thought what they proposed was good, but because they were pretty. We, the electorate, were smitten by this handsome, vivacious family.... We wanted to hug their golden tousled heads to our dumpy breasts.
why princess di was killed
She wasn't wearing a seatbelt.
There, that didn't take nine years, 832 pages and $7 million.
If the Brits spent all that time and moolah to assuage conspiracy buffs, they don't understand the mind of conspiracy buffs. Everybody's in on it, dontcha see?
global poor are getting richer
In a report out today, The World Bank looks both at current economic growth rates and projections for the next 25 years. The report, Global Economics Prospects 2007 says "developing economies are projected to grow by 7.0 percent in 2006,more than twice as fast as high-income countries (3.1 percent), with all developing regions growing by about 5 percent or more." While these nations have only 22 percent of global GDP they accounted for 38 percent of the increase in global output. And they are expected to increase their share of global output by about 50 percent by 2030.
The report expects the world economy to grow from last year's $35 trillion to $72 trillion by 2030. And this "is driven more than ever before by strong performance in the developing countries." Only two decades ago the poor nations provided only 14 percent of wealthy nations' manufactured imports. Today they provide 40 percent and by 2030 they are projected to provide over 65 percent.
As it was over the last 25 years it is the poor who will benefit the most. "The number of people living on less than $1 a day [in constant dollars] could be cut in half, from 1.1 billion now to 550 million in 2030." And the number living on less than $2 per day will decline by an estimated 800 million.
This will happen in spite of a growing world population, though growth levels will be much slower than today. The population growth rate, which was around 1.7 percent in the 1980s will decline to 1 percent by 2015 and to 0.7 percent in 2030.
thursday, december 14 2006
seasoned greetings from pat dollard
Pat sent us this:
For My Democrat Friends:
Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasion and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all. I also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2007, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great. Not to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country nor the only America in the Western Hemisphere . Also, this wish is made without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wishee.
By accepting these greetings, you are accepting the aforementioned terms as stated. This greeting is not subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for herself/himself/others, and is void where prohibited by law and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher. This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a period of one year or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wish
For My Republican Friends:
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
the allende myth
If all you know about Pinochet and Chile came listening to the left or from watching Costa-Gavras's Missing, here's a broader perspective.
omar reads the isg report
The ISG report was released more than a week ago but I didn't want to write immediately about it. The strange thing is that although the report is highly publicized and the recommendations touch on many critical topics few of ordinary Iraqis here seem interested in discussing it and the interest can be seen almost only among politicians.
It's actually not that strange; many people see this report and other political movements as an effort among politicians to make deals that can only by coincidence be in the interest of the people.
bananas
I’m sitting there, eating the banana, and the dog plants herself before me and says, “Ma,” (I swear, she says “Ma”) “Ma, what you eating?”
Border Collies are very smart dogs. They’re like having another teenager in the house, and once they get an idea in their head, they pester you. In the past this dog got after me for a burned-out lightbulb in the ceiling fan which bothered her because it messed with her light-and-shadows and kept making her jump.
When I didn’t fix it fast enough to please her, she followed me around all day, saying, “I could fix that lightbulb for you…You’re going to fix it, right? Because if you’re not, I could probably do it…do you have a ladder? Please fix the light…”
Tonight, I got, “Ma, what you eating?”
“Go away,” I said. “You’ve had your supper and this is a banana. I know you don’t believe this, but you’re a dog; you don’t eat bananas.”
Read it all.
aiming for the blind
A Texas lawmaker is aiming to allow the blind to hunt. Texas State Representative Edmund Kuempel has introduced a measure that would allow blind people to hunt any game that sighted people can currently pursue...
A blind person can shoot a rifle by mounting an offset pistol scope on the side of the rifle instead of on top," said Terry Erwin, the Austin-based Hunter Education Coordinator with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.
"This allows their companion behind them to peer over their shoulder and help them sight it, but the blind person can pull the trigger," he told Reuters.
After that, the companion can eat their food and tell them how good it tasted.
creepy carter
Jimmy Carter brings a Christian perspective to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. Unfortunately, it is the same Christian perspective as a drunken Mel Gibson, obsessed with heaping blame on the Jews.
Yes, there are two sides to every dispute, and heaven knows the Palestinian people have suffered throughout the past six decades, but Carter apes the Palestinian position and calls it evenhandedness. He is such a rabid partisan that his next logical step after the publication of his rant of a new book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, can only be to follow the example of the late Israel-hater Edward Said and be photographed throwing rocks at Israeli security forces.
Carter’s inflammatory title accords with attempts to delegitimatize the existence of the Jewish state by equating Zionism with racism. Carter thinks he’s being charitable because what he is criticizing “is not racism but the desire of a minority of Israelis to confiscate and colonize choice sites in Palestine, and then to forcefully suppress any objections from the displaced citizens.” Oh, is that all?The book marks Carter’s further disgraceful descent from ineffectual president and international do-gooder to apologist for the worst Arab tendencies. “It is imperative,” Carter writes, “that the general Arab community and all significant Palestinian groups make it clear that they will end the suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism when international laws and the ultimate goals of the Roadmap for Peace are accepted by Israel.” In the meantime, presumably, the slaughter of Jews can continue.
all the tea co2 in china
Fires in underground coal mines in China consume an estimated 200 million tons of coal per year, putting some 2-3% of all man-made carbon dioxide into the atmosphere—or as much as that produced by all the cars and light trucks in the U.S. And whereas auto transportation has considerable economic value, all the pollutants from coal fires are completely and utterly useless.
Of course, to ‘global warming’ zealots the purpose of fighting ‘global warming’ isn’t to save the environment; it’s to bugger industrially-advanced nations, especially (indeed, almost exclusively) the United States.
Let's send Laurie David to Beijing to straighten them out.
wednesday, december 13 2006
radar goliath
ISIS technology is set to debut in 2009 as part of a colossal unmanned airship parked at more than 65,000 ft. over combat zones. Bonding the ISIS radar to the airship's superstructure will cut down on overall weight, and allow for a huge, continuous array. At anywhere from 164 to 328 yards in length, the airship will be the largest airborne radar antenna ever built, able to track everything from aircraft to individual troops across hundreds of miles.
Controlled remotely from the ground, the airship will ascend to the stratosphere and could take the place of standard surveillance aircraft, remaining in place for up to a year. Parts of the curved radar array have been tested successfully in the lab by Raytheon, but at press time no contracts had been announced for the design of the airship itself.
the rorschach candidate
Project your fantasies on Barack Obama.
who said this?
Let our position be absolutely clear: An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.
kofi's first draft
That clever Iowahawk somehow found the first draft of Kofi Annan's valedictory address:
...Now I want to pass on five other lessons I have learned during 10 years as secretary general of the United Nations, as well as CEO of KofiCo Oil Vouchers Ltd.
First, in today's world we are all responsible for each other's security. Against such threats as nuclear proliferation, climate change, global pandemics or terrorist accountants plotting UN audits from their safe havens in failed superpowers, no nation can make itself secure by seeking supremacy over others, and their private financial records. Only by working together can we hope to achieve lasting security for ourselves, and perhaps a nice comfortable villa in Switzerland. Let’s just say that “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.”
But when we look at the murder, rape and starvation still being inflicted on the people of Darfur, we realize that our teams of fun-loving security back-scratchers can sometimes be a PR headache. That’s why we must also summon the political, economic and marketing muscle to keep ahead of the news cycle. Boys will be boys, and in the grand scheme of things, do a few rambunctious UN troops really matter when all the planet’s children are under the looming threat of climate change? I mean, what's with that? Do you people hate the planet’s children or something?
Second, we are also responsible for each other's welfare. As secretary general, my primary responsibility is to protect member states from widespread famine, genocide, and thermonuclear attack. All I ask in return is reserved parking and some decent window offices for me and my staff. Although I’ve kept my end of the bargain -- going 175-22 against key famine and genocide goals in FY ’06, I might add – there are some member states who are shirking their responsibilities by continually bitching about office remodeling cost. I’m not naming any names (cough cough USA cough), but I will say sometimes it’s pretty damn hard to focus on protecting you American ingrates from famine and genocide when you’re always carping about budgets. By the way, you’re welcome.
Read it all.
a perfect excuse
A new book says messiness is good.
milk money
...a Dutch-American farmer who figured out how to produce milk outside the federal subsidy system so as to undersell producers who are part of the subsidy system.
So what happened? The subsidized farmers got Congress to pass a law stopping the independent. There's a lot of emphasis on the campaign contributions of those doing the lobbying. And it notes that one of the leading members pushing the change in the law was Rep. Devin Nunes, from the No. 1 dairy-producing district in the nation, whose grandfather started a dairy business still owned by the family. That district, by the way, is not in Wisconsin or Vermont. It's near the southern end of the Central Valley of California, the milkshed of greater Los Angeles.
Barone goes on to make a good point about how lobbyists exist because of the reach of government. Read it all.
tuesday, december 12 2006
pinochet's legacy
It's hard not to notice, however, that the evil dictator leaves behind the most successful country in Latin America. In the past 15 years, Chile's economy has grown at twice the regional average, and its poverty rate has been halved. It's leaving behind the developing world, where all of its neighbors remain mired. It also has a vibrant democracy. Earlier this year it elected another socialist president, Michelle Bachelet, who suffered persecution during the Pinochet years.
Like it or not, Mr. Pinochet had something to do with this success. To the dismay of every economic minister in Latin America, he introduced the free-market policies that produced the Chilean economic miracle -- and that not even Allende's socialist successors have dared reverse. He also accepted a transition to democracy, stepping down peacefully in 1990 after losing a referendum.
By way of contrast, Fidel Castro -- Mr. Pinochet's nemesis and a hero to many in Latin America and beyond -- will leave behind an economically ruined and freedomless country with his approaching death. Mr. Castro also killed and exiled thousands. But even when it became obvious that his communist economic system had impoverished his country, he refused to abandon that system: He spent the last years of his rule reversing a partial liberalization. To the end he also imprisoned or persecuted anyone who suggested Cubans could benefit from freedom of speech or the right to vote.
The contrast between Cuba and Chile more than 30 years after Mr. Pinochet's coup is a reminder of a famous essay written by Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, the provocative and energetic scholar and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations who died Thursday. In "Dictatorships and Double Standards," a work that caught the eye of President Ronald Reagan, Ms. Kirkpatrick argued that right-wing dictators such as Mr. Pinochet were ultimately less malign than communist rulers, in part because their regimes were more likely to pave the way for liberal democracies. She, too, was vilified by the left. Yet by now it should be obvious: She was right.
But the Left loves Fidel and despises Pinochet.
Another feather in Pinochet's economic cap: he transitioned Chile's Social Security system (with the help of an American economist) from the Ponzi scheme system we have to one where workers own their accounts.
sneaky, slippery slope
From the New York Times:
New studies project that the Arctic Ocean could be mostly open water in summer by 2040 — several decades earlier than previously expected — partly as a result of global warming caused by emissions of greenhouse gases.
Many reputable scientists argue that human influences are not the primary cause of the earth's warming. To present it as fact is not news, it is propaganda.
wizard of tehran
It's fitting that David Duke, former wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, once America's most effective terror organization, finds himself at home at the Holocaust Denier's Grand Conference in Tehran.
After all, Iran is arguably the world's largest state exporter of terror today. Plus Iran is where the Aryan race came from.
Ahmadinejad's gang is a prime example of nutballs in power. To travel the distance from "Never Again" to "Never Happened," one must believe in a conspiracy that includes:
- the German people to take the rap for such beastly acts
- thousands of invented survivor eye-witness accounts
- hundreds of invented eye-witness accounts by American GI's that liberated the death camps
- creating phony death camps, complete with stacked skeletons, for photo ops
- etc.
The problem with conspiracy boobs (conspiracy theorist is too generous) is they've never heard of Occam's Razor.
Now pause a moment to consider that one of the Iraq Study Group's grand ideas is to negotiate with Iran to help secure Iraq.
UPDATE:
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Tuesday told delegates at an international conference questioning the Holocaust that Israel's days were numbered.
Ahmadinejad, who has sparked international outcry by referring to the killing of six million Jews in World War Two as a "myth" and calling for Israel to be "wiped off the map", launched another verbal attack on the Jewish state.
"Thanks to people's wishes and God's will the trend for the existence of the Zionist regime is downwards and this is what God has promised and what all nations want," he said.
"Just as the Soviet Union was wiped out and today does not exist, so will the Zionist regime soon be wiped out," he added.
open your window and scream
These are trying times for rational people. The world seems upside down.
Cowards get medals for bravery. Surrender is defined as victory. Graybeards behave like twitchy teenagers and project reason onto evil enemies who are unreasonable to their core. America, the greatest force for good in the world, is derided as the great Satan, with American media and academia leading the chant.
What to do? I say open the window, fill your lungs with righteous outrage, throw back your head, open your throat and unleash the primal scream. It's therapeutic. And you'll need it to survive Kofi Annan's exit from the stage, which will no doubt be treated with media reverence.
The shameless hack dares point the finger at the United States (Bush, really) for lacking in accountability.
[pause for scream]
Yes, this is the same Kofi Annan who:
- had 90 days advance knowledge of the Rwanda genocide and did nothing
- presided over the biggest financial scandal in history, Oil for Food, which enriched Kofi's son, assorted pals and Saddam Hussein. This allowed the latter to flip the bird at the UN and prolong the suffering of Iraq's people.
- had UN Peace Keepers in Congo raping women and trading food aid for sexual favors
- presided over a UN that has done nothing to stop genocide in Darfur
- has done nothing to stop the destruction of Zimbabwe
- incompetently prevented the ethnic cleansing of 8,000 mena and boys in Srebrenica from being stopped. The Dutch soldiers who were part of the UN protective force, who let the Serbs take the men away and shoot them, were recently honored for their service.
Accountability? Saddam Hussein mocked the UN's gas bags for 12 years because there was no such thing as accountablility -- until George W. Bush brought him to account.
When the tsunami wreaked destruction on millions, the UN mobilized its mouth. Bush sped aircraft carriers with food, medicine and fresh water to the scene and saved thousands of lives. That's accountability.
When the Taliban executed women during intermission at soccer games (see video here) and forbade women from working, Kofi's UN did nothing. Only the United States stopped that evil.
Kofi is just sore because Bush exposed him as a glib eunuch.
When Bush addressed the UN General Assembly in 2002, it was the UN's chance to put up or shut up. They didn't put up. God knows, Kofi will never shut up.
So, go ahead, scream.
not the village idiot
Best of the Web has been running letters from service men and women who are offended by the likes of John Kerry and Charles Rangel implying they are dim losers for serving. Here's a favorite:
I have been watching your Rangel and Kerry columns go by, and finally have a few moments to add my two cents. It is 2130 in Kabul. I have worked only 15 hours today, and I am tired. I may be the village idiot for choosing to be here, but I am having the time of my life.
A bit of background: I have a bachelor's degree, a doctor of medicine, a master's of public health and tropical medicine, and a master's degree from seminary. I have an academic appointment at a medical school. I raised my hand a year ago when told of the opportunity to contribute to the reconstruction of the health sector in Afghanistan.
Here's how my day went today: This morning I spent about an hour with about 30 generals and colonels, the senior leadership of the Afghan National Army medical services, many of whom spent the past 20 years fighting the Soviets, the mujahedeen and the Taliban. I am continually honored by their respect for me, an outsider, as I give advice on rebuilding their combat casualty care system while fighting insurgents. Afghans are a rugged, determined people, and I learn from them daily. They are focused on efficient, effective management of their system, and they will succeed.
Next, my staff and I celebrated and mourned the departure of one of our officemates, who is returning to the States this weekend after her deployment. She had a great deployment, contributed much to moving the country forward, and will be missed both by the Afghans with whom she worked every day and by us. She will look back on this time with great fondness, and with no small degree of patriotic pride for her contribution to the war effort.
I then donned my body armor and Kevlar helmet, chambered a round in my Beretta, and put it under my thigh as I led our convoy back to the base. As I drove down the road, I carefully looked at each child and adult who ran out into the street. Is that man wearing a suicide vest under his cloak? Is that car sagging because its springs are worn out, or because it is carrying an IED?
I am working with some of the best American, French, British, German, Dutch, Croatian, Albanian, Turkish, Romanian, Italian, Jordanian, Egyptian, Korean, Polish, Spanish and Australian men and women in the world. I serve alongside brave, determined Afghans, many of whom have come back to their native country from the West by choice. Afghanistan is better off today than it was several years ago. There is much to do, and I am honored to be a part of it. I will remember this assignment as the high point of my career in the Air Force.
I take great comfort in realizing that the vast majority of our elected representatives are not fools, but I will continue to defend the rights of those who are. Yep, I may be the village idiot, but not for choosing to be here.
the damned of darfur
A HALF-million dead in Darfur; 2.5 million refugees - not counting the corpses lost in the sands or terrified survivors in hiding. Surely, the world will act?
No. The world talks. While the militias kill - and years pass. The United Nations looks away - its signature gesture when human rights are violated.
Welcome to the triumph of global hypocrisy.
Europe wrings its hands - as Europe always does - but declines an invitation to the dance. After all, "responsible" governments can't play fast and loose with another state's sovereignty. No dictator or president-for-life would be able to get a decent night's sleep.
So Sudan's Islamo-fascists continue to kill with impunity.
Our own left mourns theatrically for Darfur's dead - but no one has formed a new Lincoln Brigade to take on Sudan's Muslims fanatics. And the uncomfortable fact that Arab Muslims are slaughtering black Muslims goes ignored. It doesn't fit the left's comfortable worldview.
Oh, yes: Those on the left demanding that we "bring the troops home" from Iraq would be delighted to send American troops to rescue Khartoum's victims. But our military is occupied with other cases of fanaticism and genocide in the Muslim world this holiday season.
Isn't it curious that, when it comes to liberation, Iraq didn't count? For the endlessly hypocritical left, there's one magic difference between the half-million dead of Darfur and the 1.5 million people killed by Saddam in his internal massacres and neighborhood wars: Bush.
That's because Bush is the root of all evil. We all know that. Right? Right?
rudolph the whiner
Eric Rudolph, the Atlanta Olympic and abortion bomber who was on the lam for many years, now sits in Colorado's SuperMax. And he thinks his forced isolation is cruel:
“It is a closed-off world designed to isolate inmates from social and environmental stimuli, with the ultimate purpose of causing mental illness and chronic physical conditions such as diabetes, heart disease and arthritis,” he wrote in one letter to The Gazette of Colorado Springs.
Rudolph eluded the FBI for five years by living in caves in North Carolina's mountains, which sounds pretty isolated.
monday, december 11 2006
thank the troops
An easy way to send thank-you cards to the troops. Tip of the Hat to Susan Gertson.
"full circle with jeane"
The silencing of conservative speakers by shouting campus mobs is a sadly too common occurrence nowadays. Yet the mother of all campus shout-downs was the drowning out of a talk by Jeane Kirkpatrick at the University of California at Berkeley in February of 1983. At the time, the practice of shouting down speakers was uncommon. So it shocked me when, as Berkeley grad student, I heard faculty members openly justifying that action with the claim that “oppressors have no free speech rights.” The Kirkpatrick incident was a key moment in my long, slow transformation from McGovern liberal to conservative.
Read it all.
rumsfeld's farewell
Donald Rumsfeld is not universally loved in the Pentagon. I'm told that he can be a tough, stubborn, and demanding boss. Rumsfeld is infamous for firing off short memos -- known colloquially as "snowflakes" -- asking next-to-impossible-to-answer questions or demanding revolutionary changes. He came to the building in 2001, promising to transform the Department of Defense from a Cold War force to a more flexible, agile military, better prepared to face the challenges of the Twenty-first Century. Almost six years later, that transformation is well underway, but not yet complete. Along the way, Rumsfeld has stepped on many toes, and slaughtered many sacred cows. Inevitably, he made some enemies, especially among the senior officers and long-serving bureaucrats who were heavily invested in the "old way" of doing things.
...
Another woman asks what was his worst day, and his best day. I expect him to say "September 11, 2001." But he surprises me.
"Abu Ghraib." He says, and a pall crosses over his face. Most men, having been faced with such a profound shame, wouldn't bring it up voluntarily. But Rumsfeld isn't most men. He seems genuinely, personally ashamed of what happened in that awful place. It has been reported that he submitted his resignation over the affair, but that the President prevailed upon him to remain.
"My best day?" He pauses. "How about a week from Monday?" A week from Monday, Robert Gates will be sworn in as the new SECDEF, and Rumsfeld will leave the building. He will be missed.
A man asks if Rumsfeld has any words of advice for his successor. Pace mutters something that the microphones don't catch. Rumsfeld smiles. "General Pace says he should listen to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs." Laughter. "But any advice I have for the new Secretary, I'll give to him in private."
After the questions are done, there is a standing ovation. People in the auditorium crowd up to the aisle, in order to shake Rumsfeld's hand as he passes.
in defense of big pharma
In our household, the miracle drug is called Copaxone. Not only do we owe this miracle to a pharmaceutical company, we owe it to an Israeli pharmaceutical company. Apart from George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, in some precincts it's tough to get more evil than that.
The pharmaceutical companies deliver extraordinary value to their customers, yet there is apparently great political advantage in bashing them. It is not obvious why this is so. Yes, we all wish the pharmaceutical industry would do certain things differently (I, for one, could easily go the rest of my life without hearing about "a strong, lasting erection" during prime time), but that is true of all industries. If I had to venture a guess, I would say that people resent paying money for drugs, no matter how much value they confer, because they feel they have no choice in the expenditure.Their doctor tells them that they need a prescription and they do not know enough to challenge the doctor's judgment. They have not budgeted for the expense because people do a bad job of planning even for known unknowns, so they also resent spending the money. The drug is not perceived as having value (even if it alleviates pain, calms the nerves, stems multiple sclerosis, thins the blood, lowers cholesterol, or ensures a strong, lasting erection), it is the thing that suddenly prevents you from paying for some less necessary thing. Never mind that the drug saved your life, or made your life worth living.
...
There is also this myth that most new drugs are incrementalist and fundamentally unnecessary. Oh? If you are one of those people who believes that most new drugs are "unnecessary," honestly conduct this thought experiment: Virtually every drug invented before 1990 or so is "off-patent," and therefore available at a tiny fraction of its original cost. We could easily afford a dirt-cheap program to offer off-patent drugs to every American, but on the stipulation that they could never substitute any drug of more recent invention. While most Americans would have said in 1990 that their healthcare was pretty good, I submit that virtually all Americans would deeply resent a program that barred them from taking the new, more effective drugs that have become available since 1990. And with good reason.
Read it all.
being there
Mike Fumento on how readers are served when reporters actually go to the places they are reporting on:
In a Nov. 29 blog, "Will the real Ramadi please stand up?" I observed that three articles on conditions in Ramadi and al Anbar Province had appeared within a week of each other giving entirely different points of view. Mine and one in the Times of London said we're winning the war in Ramadi; a Washington Post A1 story co-authored by "Fiasco" author Thomas Ricks claimed exactly the opposite.
The difference, I said, could be explained simply. I and the Times writer reported from Ramadi. Ricks and his co-author have not only never been to Ramadi, they wrote their piece from Washington. Well now the WashPost has printed another article on the city, this time an upbeat one. What gives? You guessed it.The second one was reported from Ramadi. Case closed, thank you very much. Unfortunately, it's little solace knowing how few journalists ever leave their safe little hovels in Baghdad hotels or Washington, D.C.
Fumento's original item: Will the real Ramadi please stand up?
WaPo's new Ramadi happy report: Extended Occupation Helps US in Ramadi.
Hey, that's an interesting conclusion. So maybe, if an extended occupation helps US in Ramadi, then an extended occupation will help US in Iraq. Someone please notify following:
James Baker, Innane Strategy Guesswork
Lee Hamilton, Innane Strategy Guesswork
Nancy Pelosi, Americans for Cutting and Running
John Murtha, Americans for Cutting and Running
John Kerry, Americans for Cutting and Running
Hey, now that I think about it, the Innane Strategy Guesswork crowd didn't leave their hotel in Baghdad, either.
Rule No. 1 of reporting. Go have a look.
sunday, december 10 2006
iraq support group
Well, the ISG -- the Illustrious Seniors' Group -- has released its 79-point plan. How unprecedented is it? Well, it seems Iraq is to come under something called the "Iraq International Support Group." If only Neville Chamberlain had thought to propose a "support group" for Czechoslovakia, he might still be in office. Or guest-hosting for Oprah.
But, alas, such flashes of originality are few and far between in what's otherwise a testament to conventional wisdom. How conventional is the ISG's conventional wisdom? Try page 49:
"RECOMMENDATION 5: The Support Group should consist of Iraq and all the states bordering Iraq, including Iran and Syria . . ."
Er, OK. I suppose that's what you famously hardheaded "realists" mean by realism. But wait, we're not done yet. For this "Support Group," we need the extra-large function room. Aside from Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Kuwait, the ISG -- the Iraq Surrender Gran'pas -- want also to invite:
". . . the key regional states, including Egypt and the Gulf States . . ."
Er, OK. So it's basically an Arab League meeting. Not a "Support Group" I'd want to look for support from, but each to his own. But wait, Secretary Baker's still warming up:
". . . the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council . . ."
That would be America, Britain, France, Russia, China. A diverse quintet, representing many distinctive approaches to international affairs from stylish hauteur to polonium-210. Anybody else?
". . . the European Union . . ."
Hey, why not? It's not really multilateral unless there's a Belgian on board, right?
picture of a 5 mb harddrive in 1956
This explains why there were no iPods in the '50s.
cold cash no problem for democrats
U.S. Rep. William Jefferson easily defeated a fellow Democrat in a runoff election Saturday, despite an ongoing federal bribery investigation.
With 71 percent of the precincts reporting, Jefferson, Louisiana's first black congressman since Reconstruction, led with 57 percent of the vote over state Rep. Karen Carter.
Carter was unable to capitalize on a scandal that included allegations that the FBI found $90,000 in bribe money in Jefferson's freezer.
return to black hawk down
Garrett Jones, a retired CIA case officer:
Experts call Somalia a failed state. This is a sophism. Somalia was a failed state in 1990 under the last central government of the mildly insane Mohamed Siad Barre. Nowadays, one could call Somalia a space between countries. Or simply a feral nation.
This is the place that perfected the practice of extorting cash from international aid organizations in return for allowing the aid groups the privilege of feeding other starving Somalis. (Gangsters R Us, with Third World panache.) When the United Nations tried to intervene and establish a central government in 1993 (an admittedly naive effort), the Somalis united just long enough to drive off the foreigners and resume their embrace of warlords and clans.
I was there in 1993, running covert operations in Mogadishu for the CIA when the U.N. effort was wrecked. President George H.W. Bush had sent the Marines into Somalia to feed the starving children, and President Clinton was attempting to install a Jeffersonian democracy in a medieval culture. The Clinton theory was that the U.N. would use its peacemaking powers to force the Somali factions into a political accord, and then peace would break out.
Unfortunately, nobody told the Somalis. They viewed the U.N. and the U.S. as foreign invaders bent on Christianizing their Muslim culture while destroying the power of the clans and warlords. This dispute spawned a series of attacks that cumulated in the Battle of Mogadishu between the U.S. Task Force Ranger and Somali clan fighters, as portrayed in the film "Black Hawk Down." After losing 17 elite troops to an African mob in a single night, Clinton lost all stomach for further "nation building" involving U.S. casualties, and the U.N. effort collapsed. After that, the world largely went back to ignoring the Somalis.
Now the Somalis are poised to insist that the international community tune back in while they commit an auto-da-fe on CNN. Somali Islamists, modeling themselves on the Taliban, have taken control of most of the country, driving the warlords out of the cities and into the bush. The internationally recognized Somali interim government (an effort by neighboring countries to get the clans and factions to agree to some sort of consensus government with which the world can interact) is surrounded in the provincial city of Baidoa, about 160 miles northwest of the capital. When the roads are dry enough to allow military operations, the Islamists will swiftly overwhelm the interim government unless outside help arrives at the last minute.
If you're thinking, so what, just another crazy African country, think again.
Although this is far away, and may not happen to anyone you know personally, it is going to become a concern of the U.S. soon. An Islamic fundamentalist haven on the Horn of Africa is more than a tragedy for the long-suffering Africans; it is a threat to the oil routes that fuel the West and pass just offshore. Recent domestic terrorist attacks have already shaken the House of Saud's iron grip on its population; a sanctuary where its fundamentalist enemies can regroup only a few hours across the Red Sea would be a dagger at its heart.
If the Somalis block the Gulf oil routes, this will delight the Green Scare crowd:
Frustrated with the federal response to global warming, hundreds of cities, suburbs and rural communities across the nation have taken bold steps to slash their energy consumption and reduce emissions of the pollutants that cause climate change.
a one horse-power car
me translate pretty one day
After they get computers to translate English-to-Spanish etc., can they do male-to-female or liberal-to-conservative?
an eccentrics hall of fame
These folks hear a different drummer, all right.
saturday, december 9 2006
tony blair: adopt our values or stay away
Tony Blair formally declared Britain's multicultural experiment over yesterday as he told immigrants they had ''a duty" to integrate with the mainstream of society.
In a speech that overturned more than three decades of Labour support for the idea, he set out a series of requirements that were now expected from ethnic minority groups if they wished to call themselves British.
These included "equality of respect" - especially better treatment of women by Muslim men - allegiance to the rule of law and a command of English.
If outsiders wishing to settle in Britain were not prepared to conform to the virtues of tolerance then they should stay away. He added: "Conform to it; or don't come here. We don't want the hate-mongers, whatever their race, religion or creed.
"If you come here lawfully, we welcome you. If you are permitted to stay here permanently, you become an equal member of our community and become one of us. The right to be different. The duty to integrate. That is what being British means."
...
"The right to be in a multicultural society was always implicitly balanced by a duty to integrate, to be part of Britain, to be British and Asian, British and black, British and white," he said
The bombings had thrown the whole concept of a multicultural Britain "into sharp relief" and highlighted the divisions in society. While it was right that people should enjoy their own cultures, they should do so under a single set of overarching values.
"When it comes to our essential values, the belief in democracy, the rule of law, tolerance, equal treatment for all, respect for this country and its shared heritage — then that is where we come together, it is what gives us what we hold in common; it is what givesright to call ourselves British," said Mr Blair.
"At that point no distinctive culture or religion supercedes our duty to be part of an integrated United Kingdom."
democrat vs. republican morals
The Mark Foley scandal ended with a report on whether House leaders did enough to protect pages from the randy gay emails of the alcoholic GOP Congressman.
"A pattern of conduct was exhibited among many individuals to remain willfully ignorant of the potential consequences" of Foley's untoward behavior, the report said. "The failure to exhaust all reasonable efforts to call attention to potential misconduct involving a member and House page is not merely the exercise of poor judgment, it is a present danger to House pages and to the integrity of the institution of the House."
When Foley was found out, he promptly resigned his seat. So far, nothing suggests Foley ever laid a finger on a page.
Contrast this with the case of Democrat Congressman Gerry Studds:
In 1983, Studds acknowledged his homosexuality after a 27-year-old man disclosed that he and Studds had had a sexual relationship a decade earlier when the man was a teenage congressional page.
The House of Representatives censured Studds, who then went home to face his constituents in a series of public meetings.
Studds, who actually had sex with a minor, did not resign his seat. After his slap on the wrist, he remained in Congress until 1997, when he retired. Far from being a pariah:
In 1996, Congress named the 842-square-mile Gerry E. Studds Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary after him in recognition of his work protecting the marine environment.
iraq oil sharing deal in the works
Iraqi officials are near agreement on a national oil law that would give the central government the power to distribute current and future oil revenues to the provinces or regions, based on their population, Iraqi and U.S. officials say.
If enacted, the measure, drafted by a committee of politicians and ministers, could resolve a highly divisive issue that has consistently blocked efforts to reconcile the country's feuding sectarian factions. Sunni Arabs, who lead the insurgency, have opposed the idea of regional autonomy for fear that they would be deprived of a fair share of the country's oil wealth, which is concentrated in the Shiite south and Kurdish north.
Mohammed at Iraq the Model has more:
According to a recent paper published last November by Dow Jones (don't have a link, read a summary on paper) after the world economic forum in the dead sea, Iraq's income from oil exports for this year was at 35 billion dollars with a 14.3% increase from last year's total.
And that if oil export levels retain the current level and under stable prices, the coming year will witness a record income that was never reached in the history of modern Iraq and revenues will jump up to 40 billion dollars; a huge figure given the humble plans of the government and a figure that will put the government in a position where it must come up with new and ambitious plans to match the new revenue figures.
they're selling postcards of the hanging
..they're painting the passports brown, Saddam the evil bastard, is going down...
One of the hardest tasks will be to determine who gets to be the hangman because so many people want revenge for the loss of their loved ones," said Basam Ridha, an adviser to Prime Minister Nouri Kamal al-Maliki.
now I know who's behind all that spam
HT: AnklebitingPundits
pray or be prey
Residents of a southern Somalia town who do not pray five times a day will be beheaded, an official said yesterday, adding the edict will be implemented in three days.
Shops, tea houses and other public places in Bulo Burto, about 200 km northeast of the capital, Mogadishu, should be closed during prayer time and no one should be on the streets, said Sheik Hussein Barre Rage, chairman of the town's Islamic court.
His court is part of a network backed by armed militiamen that has taken control of much of southern Somalia.
catfight: arianna calls hillary an opportunist
Arianna Huffington has a voice that could launch a thousand missiles -- aimed at her.
Once she couldn't get her hubby elected to the Senate, and he came out of the closet, she passed herself off for a while as a conservative commentator. Then she flipped flopped. (Actually Huffington strikes me as a more common type here in Southern California, a grasping star f**ker.)
Whatever. Now she's calling Hillary an opportunist.
Michelle Malkin has fun with it.
friday, december 8 2006
victor davis hanson
I haven’t engaged much in the parlor game of identifying mistakes in the occupation, because none of them (and there were many) reached a magnitude of those in World War II (e.g., daylight bombing without fighter escort in 1942-3, intelligence failures about the hedgerows, surprise at the Bulge, etc) or Korea (surprise at the Yalu).
Nor were any fatal to our cause, despite the ‘disbanding’ of the army, Abu Ghraib, etc. If there were any serious blunders, they concerned the sense of hesitation that gave our enemies confidence—the sudden departure of Gen. Franks, the pullback from first Fallujah, the reprieve given Sadr, etc.
In other words, once we were in a war, whatever public downside there was to using too much force was far outweighed by losing our sense of control and power, and ceding momentum to the terrorists. So we can learn from that, and begin again cracking down hard on the insurgents before calling for more troops.
we've been warned
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has warned Western leaders to follow the path of God or "vanish from the face of the earth".
"These oppressive countries are angry with us ... a nation that on the other side of the globe has risen up and proved the shallowness of their power," Ahmadinejad said in a speech in the northern town of Ramsar, the semi-official news agency Mehr reported Wednesday.
"They are angry with our nation. But we tell them 'so be it and die from this anger'. Rest assured that if you do not respond to the divine call, you will die soon and vanish from the face of the earth," he said.
...
"We hope to have the big nuclear celebration by the end of the year (March 2007)," Ahmadinejad said, echoing comments he has made on numerous occasions in recent months.
Perhaps James Baker, Sandra Day O'Connor, Vernon Jordan and fellow "realists" can fly over and join the celebration.
the atheist delusion
Shannon Love at ChicagoBoyz takes on Richard Dawkins:
Atheists reflexively repeat the mantra that religion causes oppression, war and general cruelty of all kinds, while asserting or implying that atheism does not. Dawkins falls right into this mindless argument in the opening paragraphs of the book and never lets up. (Reading someone like Dawkins making such a pompous, counterfactual argument is like chewing glass.)
This particular fallacy arises from three sources: (1) attributing every bad decision in the distant past to religion, (2) ignoring all of the bad decisions made by atheists in the recent past and (3) ignoring all of the good decisions that religious people made in the recent past.
Laying all bad decisions of the distant past at the feet of religion comes from projecting a wholly modern western cosmology onto pre-modern cultures everywhere. Until the Elizabethan Sir Roger Bacon (not the monk, the other one), nobody, anywhere, divided the cosmos into our contemporary conception of natural and supernatural. Up until that point, everyone, everywhere, thought the cosmos was governed by supernatural personalities or forces whose actions depended in whole or in part on the moral choices of human beings. Bacon's key insight, (itself based in theology) that the material world functioned automatically, without continuous supernatural intervention, made a scientific study of the cosmos conceptually possible. Even so, it would be nearly 200 years later, during the time of the American and French revolutions, before such a world view developed real political import.
Until that time, everyone thought about all decisions in what we would today call supernatural terms. In truth, it is better to say that people then lacked our modern conception of the natural. They saw a chaotic and random world that appeared to follow no rules or inherent order. In one of his books, Carl Sagan (another fallen idol of mine) showed how an East Indian oral poem, that told how to create a poultice for an infected tooth, began and ended with a description of the poultice recipe's relationship to the Hindu gods and the cosmos in general. In such a cultural milieu, everybody, everywhere, justified their actions, good or bad, in terms we would call religious.
This leads to a form of confirmation bias on the part of atheists. They look into the distant past, see some actions we disapprove of in the modern world, notice that the people who chose the actions had a religious world view, and conclude that the religious world view caused the problem. However, since everybody in the distant past had a religious world view, and no significant decision makers until the very recent past had an atheistic world view, the fact that decision makers in the past were religious tells us about as much about them as the fact that they all breathed oxygen.
murder in rue mumia
Mumia Abu-Jamal murdered a policeman named Danny Faulkner in Philadelphia in 1981.
The facts were not controversial. Faulkner had stopped Jamal's brother, William Cook, for a traffic violation. Jamal happened, by what appears to have been pure coincidence, to have been driving a cab nearby. He observed Faulkner and Cook struggling. He ran across the street toward them and shot Faulkner in the back, according to the police account. Faulkner got off one shot and hit Jamal in the chest.
Jamal then stood over the fallen officer and fired four more shots. When police arrived on the scene they found Faulkner dying from a bullet between the eyes and Jamal sitting on a curb nearby. A .38 caliber Charter Arms revolver registered to Jamal was at his feet with five spent cartridges in it. Jamal was wearing a holster.
The loony left, which includes such Hollywood luminaries as Ed Asner and Mike Farrell, claim Mumia is the victim of a racist frame job.
(Note: if these folks cannot recognize the evil of a single cold-blooded cop killer, no wonder they cannot understand the evil of men like Saddam or Iran's mullahs.)
Now the citizens of the French town of Saint-Denis named a street in his honor. Such actions are meant to poke a stick in America's eye. Mumia had already been named an honorary citizen of Saint-Denis. He's also an honorary citizen of Palermo, Italy (home of the Mafia), Venice, Montreal and, of course, San Francisco.
Yesterday, the House passed a resolution condemning Saint-Denis for naming the street after an American cop killer. The vote was 368-31. Best of the Web was good enough to list the names of those who voted nay.
Neil Abercrombie (Hawaii)
Carolyn Kilpatrick (Mich.)
Robert Scott (Va.)
William Clay (Mo.)
Barbara Lee (Calif.)
Jose Serrano (N.Y.)
Emanuel Cleaver (Mo.)
Cynthia McKinney (Ga.)
Fortney Hillman Stark Jr. (Calif.)
John Conyers (Mich.)
Gregory Meeks (N.Y.)
Edolphus Towns (N.Y.)
Jim Cooper (Tenn.)
Jerrold Nadler (N.Y.)
Tom Udall (N.M.)
Danny Davis (Ill.)
James Oberstar (Minn.)
Nydia Velazquez (N.Y.)
Raul Grijalva (Ariz.)
Major Owens (N.Y.)
Maxine Waters (Calif.)
Maurice Hinchey (N.Y.)
Ed Pastor (Ariz.)
Anthony Weiner (N.Y.)
Mike Honda (Calif.)
Donald Payne (N.J.)
Lynn Woolsey (Calif.)
Jesse Jackson Jr. (Ill.)
Charles Rangel (N.Y.)
Eddie Bernice Johnson (Texas)
Bobby Rush (Ill.)
As BOW noted, eight members voted present:
The "present" votes came from Sam Farr (Calif.), Al Green (Texas), Luis Gutierrez (Ill.), Sheila Jackson-Lee (Texas), John Lewis (Ga.), George Miller (Calif.), Janice Schakowsky (Ill.) and Melvin Watt (N.C.). Tellingly, every member of the Pennsylvania delegation who was present voted "yes."
The most disturbing name on the "no" list is that of John Conyers. Granted, this is only a symbolic vote, but is it really a good idea to entrust the chairmanship of the Judiciary Committee to a man who casts a symbolic vote for a cop-killer and against his victim?
thursday, december 7 2006
global warming on mars?
The ice is melting. Melting!!
sgt. boggs disses the iraq study group
We bring this post from Powerline in its entirety:
T.F. Boggs is a 24-year-old sergeant in the Army Reserves, back home from his second deployment to Iraq. I yield the floor to Sergeant Boggs on the ISG report:
After watching the Iraq Survey Group press conference today I am a firm believer that all politicians are idiots. Okay well not all of them but they all have a problem understanding reality. If any politician is reading this now feel free to email me and we’ll go out for coffee and I’ll further explain. But I digress.The Iraq Survey Group’s findings or rather, recommendations are a joke and could have only come from a group of old people who have been stuck in Washington for too long. The brainpower of the ISG has come up with a new direction for our country and that includes negotiating with countries whose people chant “Death to America” and whose leaders deny the Holocaust and call for Israel to be wiped from the face of the earth. Baker and Hamilton want us to get terrorists supporting countries involved in fighting terrorism! If I am the only one who finds something wrong with that then please let me know because right now I feel like I am the only person who feels this way.
Not only are the findings of the ISG a joke but the people who led the group (Baker and Hamilton) treat soldiers like they are a joke. One of the main recommendations of the ISG is to send more troops to Iraq in order to train Iraqis so they can secure their own country, but they don’t feel that we are doing a good job of that right now because training Iraqis isn’t an attractive job for soldiers to do because it isn’t a “career advancing” job.
As someone who trained Iraqis from time to time I take personal offense to this remark. In my experience soldiers clamored for the chance to train Iraqis. Any soldier who doesn’t think training Iraqis is worth their time because it isn’t a “career advancing” job shouldn’t be part in the war on terror plain and simple.
***
I feel like all of my efforts (30 months of deployment time) and the efforts of all my brothers in arms are all for naught. I thought old people were supposed to be more patient than a 24 year old but apparently I have more patience for our victory to unfold in Iraq than 99.9 percent of Americans. Iraq isn’t fast food--you can’t have what you want and have it now. To completely change a country for the first time in its entire history takes time, and when I say time I don’t mean 4 years.
Talking doesn’t solve anything with a crazed people, bullets do and we need to be given a chance to work our military magic. Like I told a reporter buddy of mine: War sucks but a world run by Islamofacists sucks more.
big bad capitalists
The Los Angeles Times refers to documentary "films" that are "critical of corporate power." But just what does this vague word "power" mean when it comes to businesses?
Wal-Mart is the big bugaboo these days but what "power" does Wal-Mart have? I lived three-quarters of a century without ever setting foot in a Wal-Mart store and there is not a thing they can do about it.
It so happened that this past summer in Page, Arizona, I needed to buy some toiletries, which caused me to go into a nearby Wal-Mart for the first time. Inside, it looked more like a small city than a large store. But the prices were noticeably lower than in most other places. Is that the much-dreaded "power"?
Apparently Wal-Mart does not pay its employees as much as third-party observers would like to see them paid. But obviously it is not paying them less than their work is worth to other employers or they probably would not be working at Wal-Mart. Moreover, third parties who wax indignant are paying them nothing.
One of the morally indignant "films" (more high-toned than "movies") coming out of Hollywood makes the same complaint against Starbucks, depicting poverty-stricken Ethiopian coffee growers providing beans for the big-bucks coffee store chain.
Are the Ethiopian coffee growers worse off now that Starbucks is buying their beans? Supply and demand would suggest otherwise. But moral crusaders seldom have time for economics.
fight the real war
An unvarnished look at what Bush did right and did wrong.
engaging the enemy
SHOULD THE United States turn to Iran and Syria for help in reducing the violence bloodying Iraq? James Baker's Iraq Study Group, out this week with its well-leaked recommendations, thinks direct talks with Tehran and Damascus would be a fine idea. I think so too -- right after those governments switch sides in the global jihad.
As things stand now, however, negotiating with Iran and Syria over the future of Iraq is about as promising a strategy for preventing more bloodshed as negotiating with Adolf Hitler over the future of Czechoslovakia was in 1938. There were eminent "realists" then too, many of whom were gung-ho for cutting a deal with the Fuehrer.
As Neville Chamberlain set off on the diplomatic mission that would culminate in Munich, William Shirer recorded in "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich," Britain's poet laureate, John Masefield, composed a paean in his honor . When the negotiations were done and Czechoslovakia had been dismembered, the prime minister was hailed as a national hero. The Nobel Committee received not one, not two, but 10 nominations proposing Chamberlain for the 1939 peace prize.
Chamberlain and his admirers had been certain that Munich would bring "peace in our time." Instead it helped pave the way for war.
what, me worry?
The newspapers today are full of stories using the Iraq Study Group report as a smackdown on Bush. One calls it a "rebuke." The Daily News had some man on the street reactions that were priceless. Here's a gem from Yvonne Shove, a 36-year old homemaker, who has a gift for nonsequitur:
"Fighting violence with violence is not the answer. If we show a peaceful way to rebuild, we'll be much better off. So many young lives have been lost, so many homeless children, so many homeless wives. It's just sad."
Honey, next time there's trouble in your neighborhood, don't call the police. They carry guns. Call a folk singer.
Yvonne would probabaly cheer these soldiers:
AMSTERDAM -- Against a backdrop of protests, the defense minister honored Dutch troops who served in the U.N. peacekeeping force that failed to prevent the 1995 slaughter of more than 7,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica enclave during the Bosnian war.
Congrats on a job well undone.
meanwhile, sixty-five years ago today
...the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. FDR fought violence with violence. After we defeated the evil of Imperial Japan and the Nazis, we showed a peaceful way to rebuild.
Now both nations are democracies and major trading partners.
National Geographic has a nice Flash presentation on Pearl Harbor here.
wednesday, december 6 2006
jimmy carter, hack historian
Professor Kenneth Stein of Emory University and the Carter Center, makes it clear he wants nothing further to do with Jimmy Carter and disavows any connection to Carter's lastest book.
President Carter's book on the Middle East, a title too inflammatory to even print, is not based on unvarnished analyses; it is replete with factual errors, copied materials not cited, superficialities, glaring omissions, and simply invented segments.
Aside from the one-sided nature of the book, meant to provoke, there are recollections cited from meetings where I was the third person in the room, and my notes of those meetings show little similarity to points claimed in the book. Being a former President does not give one a unique privilege to invent information or to unpack it with cuts, deftly slanted to provide a particular outlook.
Having little access to Arabic and Hebrew sources, I believe, clearly handicapped his understanding and analyses of how history has unfolded over the last decade. Falsehoods, if repeated often enough become meta-truths, and they then can become the erroneous baseline for shaping and reinforcing attitudes and for policy-making. The history and interpretation of the Arab-Israeli conflict is already drowning in half-truths, suppositions, and self-serving myths; more are not necessary. In due course, I shall detail these points and reflect on their origins.
There's more.
In short we learn that Carter, in addition to being meddlesome, pious and pompous, is also a liar.
morons on the march
Sen. Barbara Boxer (aka the Weeper) plans to get serious about global warming.
Boxer promised a series of hearings that will examine all aspects of and all views about global warming, including those of senators, scientists, environmentalists and businesses.
"My plan for global warming is to listen, listen, listen," she said.
She said legislation would follow the listening, and she anticipates that her bill will look much like the global warming initiative that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law in California in September.
How does she know that, after listening, listening, listening, any legislation will be needed? Silly question-- she's a Democrat.
California passed a mini Kyoto treaty, unilaterally opting to cut CO2 emissions.
The US did not ratify the Kyoto treaty (President Clinton never even submitted it to the Senate) because it exempted India and China.
Why? Because those nations constitute more than one-third of the world's population and two of the fastest growing economies. Which means that industries wanting to avoid Kyoto's constraints would simply move to India or China. Which means no global environmental benefit but plenty of economic pain to those who see their jobs moved to India and China.
Boxer should know this. She was a senator in 1997, when the Senate unanimously passed a resolution declaring:
(1) the United States should not be a signatory to any protocol to, or other agreement regarding, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change of 1992, at negotiations in Kyoto in December 1997, or thereafter, which would--
(A) mandate new commitments to limit or reduce greenhouse gas emissions for the Annex I Parties, unless the protocol or other agreement also mandates new specific scheduled commitments to limit or reduce greenhouse gas emissions for Developing Country Parties within the same compliance period, or
(B) would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States...
Kyoto was a stupid idea in 1997, before China's explosive economic growth. It's even more stupid now.
citizen journalist
Bill Roggio is embedded in Iraq. Fascinating stuff.
In nearly every conversation, the soldiers, Marines and contractors expressed they were upset with the coverage of the war in Iraq in general, and the public perception of the daily situation on the ground. The felt the media was there to sensationalize the news, and several stated some reporters were only interested in “blood and guts.” They freely admitted the obstacles in front of them in Iraq. Most recognized that while we are winning the war on the battlefield, albeit with difficulties in some areas, we are losing the information war. They felt the media had abandoned them.
During each conversation, I was left in the awkward situation of having to explain that while, yes, I am wearing a press badge, I'm not 'one of them.' I used descriptions like 'independent journalist' or 'blogger' in an attempt to separate myself from the pack.
What a terrible situation to be in, having to defend yourself because of your profession. I've always said that the hardest thing about embedding (besides leaving my family) is wearing the badge that says 'PRESS.' That hasn't changed. I hide the badge whenever I can get away with it.
hollywood's moral quandary
With some early reviews lauding the audacity and innovation of Mel Gibson's bloody Mayan epic, "Apocalypto," Hollywood's tight-knit community of Oscar voters may find itself facing a difficult dilemma in the coming weeks: Will they consider the film for an Academy Award?
Since Gibson's drunken tirade against Jews last summer, many people in Hollywood swore - both publicly and privately - that they would not work with him again or see his movies.
But that was before the critics began to weigh in on "Apocalypto," a two-hour tale about a peaceful village of hunter-gatherers who are attacked and enslaved by the bloodthirsty overlords of their Meso-American civilization.
Priceless. Mel gets drunk and spouts anti-Semitic rants and thus, according to some, must be blackballed. Contrast this handwringing with other movieland transgressors:
- In 1977, director (Chinatown) Roman Polanski seduced a 13-year old girl with wine and sweet talk, then sodomized her. After copping a plea for pedophilia, Polanski fled to Europe where he still acts and makes films. Hollywood folk refer to him as being "in exile."
- Also in 1977, David Begelman, who was running Columbia Studios, was found to have been embezzling money from the company. When actor Cliff Robertson blew the whistle, the condemnation and career damage belonged to Robertson.
- Director Victor Salva engaged in sex with a 12-year old boy acting in one of his films. He served 15 months in prison. He later went on to direct "Powder" and is still working in Hollywood.
So it's okay to molest children and steal from your own studio, but don't get loaded and shoot off your mouth -- that's just too much.
Finally, Gibson's anti-Semitic tirade pales in comparison to the direct threats to Jews made by Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Y'know, statements like we're gonna wipe all Jews off the face of the earth etc. But that didn't stop Mike Wallace from doing a kiss-up interview on "60 Minutes."
bottom story of the day (with apologies to james taranto)
An American Airlines flight was forced to make an emergency landing Monday morning after a passenger lit a match to disguise the scent of flatulence, authorities said.
The Dallas-bound flight was diverted to Nashville after several passengers reported smelling burning sulfur from the matches, said Lynne Lowrance, spokeswoman for the Nashville International Airport Authority. All 99 passengers and five crew members were taken off and screened while the plane was searched and luggage was screened.
tuesday, december 5 2006
cnn airbrushes history to make losing look good
Get a load of this, from CNN's Situation Room yesterday:
BLITZER: More now on our top story: the situation in Iraq and the upcoming report from the Iraq Study Group, which will be released on Wednesday.
When it comes to the war in Iraq, our senior analyst, Jeff Greenfield, is contemplating the L-word: losing -- Jeff.
The "L" word? Oh puke.
JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SENIOR ANALYST: Wolf, even before we know what the Iraq Study Group will recommend, a pessimistic notion seems to be gathering strength, the idea that there is no good course to pursue, that the goal should be to make the best of a bad situation. So, could the U.S. lose in Iraq? And what would a loss mean?
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
GREENFIELD (voice-over): Think of what happened when the French left Indochina, after a military debacle in 1954. More than a communist triumph in the north, it helped marked the end of France as a legitimate international power. The same was true of Britain after it abandoned its efforts to hold on to its African colonies half-a-century ago.
And some argue that the Soviet loss of Afghanistan in the 1980s marked the beginning of the end for that nation. But what about what happened in Vietnam in 1975, after the U.S. pulled out and the communist north Congress conquered the south, or when the shah of Iran, a longtime U.S. ally, lost power to the Ayatollah Khomeini, and when U.S. hostages were held in Iran for more than a year, without any effective response?
After we cut and ran from Indochina, we had the genocide of 1.7 million people in Cambodia (see The Killing Fields), the murder of millions in South Vietnam by those all-for-one-one-for-all communists and hundreds of thousands of refugees and boat people. Plus a stain upon our honor.
In one view, such setbacks encouraged Americans' adversaries to be more bold in their assaults. But, over time, another picture emerges. Less than 20 years after the fall of Vietnam, the Soviet Union literally ceased to exist.
Osama bin Laden specifically cited our defeat in Vietnam in calling the United States a paper tiger. Osama didn't think we'd fight back after 9/11 (and if Democrats get their way, we'll quit ASAP).
The Soviet Union ceased to exist because Reagan exploited Soviet weakness and forced the issue. The threat of military superiority (ours) helped bring the Soviets down because they could not afford both guns and butter (or vodka). The capitalist USA could and whole lot more.
To hear Greenfield, the Soviet Union just faded away like an old flower.
More than half-a-century after China became communist, the U.S. is, economically, at least, a partner. And America's biggest companies see China not as a threat, but as a huge market. And Vietnam, it embraces an American president and American investments.
Great. But what about the 50-plus years of misery millions of Chinese endured? And the Vietnamese? And all others whose human/economic potential is stifled by idiotic ideologies and vicious regimes?
The same folks who fret about urban blight in America turn a blind eye to "national blight" around the world. So what if Soviet citizens stood in line for four hours to buy bread or a roll of toilet paper?
As for Iraq, the turmoil there almost surely means that the ambitious goals of the invasion, a stable, functioning democracy, are beyond reach.
Says who?
But, if the United States chooses to engage, and chooses, as well, to talk with nations in the region, like Iran and Syria, that course will likely trigger a profound debate, perhaps even reaching into the next presidential campaign.
Let's hope so. A debate might expose the jolly little appeasers for the dangerous fools they are.
Back to you, Jeff.
couric kvetch
In the midst of an otherwise positive story Monday night about the “revival” of religiously-inspired movies, such as The Nativity Story and Facing the Giants, CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric saw a dark side. She pressed Catherine Hardwicke, director of The Nativity Story and Mike Rich, the film's screenwriter: "Do you worry at all that non-believers may feel excluded and diminished at a time when we're so divided about so much?"
What's with this "divided" meme? Does Couric remember the Civil War? That was division. And who says we all should agree on everything?
As if there's a dearth of non-spiritual films for people to see. Has anyone at CBS News ever worried about how the faithful feel “excluded” and “diminished” by multiplexes playing only violent and sexually-explicit films, to say nothing of the many which include scenes ridiculing the faithful or portraying religious figures as criminals?
a consultant joke
Here.
no two alike
absence of absence of malice
As SI points out below, many on the transnationalist left (and in the US Congress) are all atwitter these days: The world, for them, is returning to normal—with the benching of John Bolton (not because he’s been ineffective, mind you, but rather because he radiates musk and kielbasa sandwiches rather than eau fraiche and anything pan-seared and drizzled with a cranberry chutney), the UN re-emerges unhindered as the corrupt and inefficient world governing body of its pre-Bush salad days, a body overseen by unelected bureaucrats from mostly undemocratic countries; diplomats of the meticulously groomed variety can get back the business of eating cucumber sandwiches and pretending that ineffectiveness and stasis is erudite nuance; and Nancy Pelosi will work that Cardinal Red power suit of hers in the halls of Congress to keep the US’s balls tightly sealed in a Fabergé mayonaise jar.
So why wouldn’t folks at The Nation—and their apparatchiks, walking brain bruises like our poet laureate, semanticleo—celebrate a return to a world modeled after their own enfeebled cowardice, which they’ve conveniently convinced themselves is just bravery spiced with pragmatism.
After all, it takes willpower to studiously avoid taking action in, say, Darfur or Iran, when your mandate is supposedly precisely opposite.
Pass the toast points, boys! We have some strongly worded condemnations to draft!
two versions of what to do next
Five years after September 11, and three-and-a-half years after toppling Saddam Hussein, the U.S. is almost as angry at itself as it is at the enemy. Two quite antithetical views of the war on terror — and indeed, the entire American role in the Middle East — are now crystallizing.
Ideology and political affiliation are no longer necessarily touchstones to either opinion — not at a time when The Nation and The American Conservative share the same views on Iraq and the role of the United States abroad. Republican senators like Chuck Hagel call for withdrawal, while Democrats like a Joe Liebermann do not.
Republican realists are welcomed by liberal Democrats, who want nothing to do with the neo-Wilsonian neo-conservatives that once would have seemed more characteristic of liberal’s erstwhile idealism. It is not just that public intellectuals, politicians, generals, and journalists have different views, but their views themselves are different in almost every 24-hour news cycle. Even the Bush administration at times seems torn, gravitating between both schools of thought.
While there are dozens of variants to the following two divergent positions, they represent a clear enough picture of the present divide.
monday, december 4 2006
dead white males
An ancient astronomical calculator, built around the end of the second century BC, was unexpectedly sophisticated, a study in this week's Nature suggests. Mike G. Edmunds and colleagues used imaging and high-resolution X-ray tomography to study fragments of the Antikythera Mechanism, a bronze mechanical analog computer thought to calculate astronomical positions.
The Greek device contains a complicated arrangement of at least 30 precision, hand-cut bronze gears housed inside a wooden case covered in inscriptions. But the device is fragmented, so its specific functions have remained controversial. The team were able to reconstruct the gear function and double the number of deciphered inscriptions on the computer's casing. The device, they say, is technically more complex than any known device for at least a millennium afterwards
rwanda on "60 minutes"
Last night's "60 Minutes" featured the founder of Netflix, who happened to mention that the film "Hotel Rwanda" was in its top five rentals. The next segment told the harrowing survival story of six women who hid in a packed bathroom for 91 days during the Rwandan genocide that killed 800,000 people -- 8,000 per day for 100 consecutive days.
Watching this, it brought to mind the snotty bit of prehistory we mentioned yesterday, of leftist historians ranking George W. Bush the nation's worst president ever.
Bill Clinton knew about the Rwandan genocide while it was happening and did nothing. Kofi Annan was warned 90 days before it began and did nothing. This was low-tech horror -- most died from machete wounds, many bleeding slowly to death over days -- that could have been stopped by 5000 Marines.
But doing nothing was easier, and it seems, cost-free in terms of reputation. Bill Clinton was never criticized for his cold, calculated cowardice. No one attached Rwanda to Clinton's name like partisans have attached Katrina to Bush. Black American leaders barely made a peep about the wholesale slaughter of black people in Africa. "Hotel Rwanda" went very easily on Clinton.
When Bush took office, women were being stoned to death in Afghanistan and could not work. Now they are working and holding public office. Iraq is in turmoil right now, but it was a nightmare (and danger to the world) before 2003. Remember that Saddam killed more than 100,000 Iraqis in the '90s.
Clinton was so desperate for a legacy that he launched a full-court press in his final days trying to solve the Palestinian-Israel conflict. He refused to see that Yassir Arafat was playing him. This led to one of the more humiliating moments in American diplomacy: Madeline Albright chasing Arafat to his car, begging him to return to the negotiating table.
the cure is worse
Democrats, returning to power, can't wait to get even with the wicked pharmaceutical companies. Y'know, those greedy capitalists that help cure diseases and extend life spans, but dammit, don't do it for free.
But they better be careful.
Is the future of your health riding on what happens in Washington? Sidney Taurel thinks it might be. The Eli Lilly CEO ticks off a list of former "death sentences" being cured or turned into chronic conditions--"AIDS, leukemia, Hodgkin's, hopefully solid tumors within the next few years. The potential for medical research is unlimited. We just need to make sure we don't interdict it by the wrong policies."
And what might those "wrong policies" be? Anything, it would appear, that reduces the financial incentives for drug companies to invest in research and development. Mr. Taurel points without hesitation to the mere threat of HillaryCare in the early 1990s as an episode that reduced investment in R&D, as drug makers, including his own, redirected money toward the purchase of pharmacy benefit management companies. As another example, he offers the anti-drug-industry crusade of Sen. Estes Kefauver in the late 1950s and early '60s:
"At that point companies started to diversify. We bought Elizabeth Arden, we went into animal health and agricultural chemical products, later on in medical instruments and so forth. All other companies did similar things. And for a while after that we saw fewer new products. When this threat subsided the companies focused again on R&D and we saw a golden era in the '80s and '90s with a lot of new products and breakthroughs."
That's was from the Wall Street Journal. Here's the libertarian take:
"Fixing" the prescription drug benefit. When the Republicans passed Medicare part D, I—like many libertarians—despaired of the GOP. The only thing worse than a massive new entitlement ushered in by Republicans? A passel of aggressive Democrats promising to "fix it." By allowing Medicare to negotiate for lower drug prices with pharmaceutical companies and permitting more importation of pre-price controlled drugs from Canada, Democrats will add another command-and-control component to our already monstrosity of a health care system.
There's the old familiar song and dance about how if you decrease Big Pharma's prospective profits on new drugs, they will (reasonably) retaliate with less spending on research and development. According to the author of a new study from the Manhattan Institute: "Prices would be driven down by over 35 percent by 2025. The cumulative decline in drug R&D for 2007-2025 would be about $196 billion in year 2005 dollars, or $10.3 billion per year. Because R&D costs for new medicines are about $1 billion, the loss would be about 196 new drugs."
But to really understand the havoc a Democratic "fix" could wreak, warily eyeball the Department of Veterans Affairs, which already negotiates for its drugs and has been cited by Democrats as a model for Medicare. At the VA, prices for drugs are very low. But one way that the VA keeps overall prices down is by making it tough to get new, expensive drugs. Their formulary includes about 1400 drugs, and they refuse to consider a drug for inclusion until it has been on the market for three years. Compare that with the 4,300 drugs currently listed at (the privately negotiated) Part D formularies. Right now, a third of VA seniors say they would rather be on Part D. If Dems have their way, at least these vets won't have to bother with the paperwork for switching.
sunday, december 3 2006
moorpark fire: the future of newspapers?
As big newspapers lose circulation, some believe the future will belong to those who provide local news. Today a 4,100-acre wildfire menaced the city of Moorpark, California. Television coverage in LA was spotty, but the county newspaper, the Ventura County Star, used its website to cover and update the story with both text, pictures and video.
More than 800 firefighters — working under a unified command between the Ventura County Fire Department and the California Department of Forestry — were on the lines. Their number was expected to reach 1,000 firefighters overnight.
Crews wanted to use fixed-wing aircraft to battle the blaze, but that was impossible due to strong winds that were clocked at 40 miles an hour with gusts at more than 70 miles an hour. Ground crews, aided by some water-dropping helicopters during the day, battled the blaze.
Capt. Barry Parker, the spokesman for the Ventura County Fire Department, called the conditions "a firefighter's worst nightmare."
There is no letup in sight as strong northeast winds are predicted through Wednesday, fire officials said.
There is no permalink to the main story, but you can see a short video of firemen saving a house here. A staff shot photo slideshow here and a photo slideshow shot by local photographers here.
All in all, a very smart and informative way to cover a story.
now this is a big dog
know your caste
The great metaphysician René Guenon once mentioned that one of the problems with the modern world is that so few people are “in their proper place.” He made the remark in reference to something that we in the West categorically reject, the caste system, so it should not be surprising that people have no idea what caste they belong to.
But natural castes exist, and if you try to eliminate them, they will just return in a perverse form -- just as you can try to eliminate sexual differences but will end up with weird sexual hybrids and a lot general confusion -- confusion that is then institutionalized and taught as “wisdom” in our universities.... but only because there are so many academics who are in the wrong caste and have no business being in academic life!
Let’s review our castes, shall we? But before doing so, let us remind ourselves that this is not a matter of equality under the law, much less before the eyes of God. To be honest, it is actually an issue of compassion, for it is difficult to be happy if one spends one’s life on the wrong path. As the Buddhists say, “another man’s dharma is a great bummer,” or something like that. I hope it goes without saying that I am not advocating some sort of imposition of the caste system, any more than I would advocate stratification of society based upon Jungian typology. Having said that, there is a good chance that you will be happier in life if you know your Jungian typology -- your “psychological DNA,” so to speak -- and pursue a career consistent with it.
baker's witless wisdom
...the President scornfully consigned the Iraq Study Group to the ash-heap of history yesterday with a single dismissive sentence during his press conference in Jordan: "This business about 'graceful exit' just simply has no realism to it whatsoever."
rock, scissors paper
Churchill, Hitler and Tommy Smith (1968 Olympics) demonstrate the fundamentals of the game.
islam and the politics of rape
One woman is raped every two hours and one gang-raped every eight hours, according to the country’s independent Human Rights Commission. But under the ordinance introduced in 1979 by the dictator General Zia ul-Haq as part of an Islamisation campaign, rape cases have to be dealt with in sharia courts. Victims need four male witnesses to the crime — or face prosecution for adultery.
More than 2,000 women are in jail for intercourse — either victims of rape or those who have eloped to marry for love and have then been reported, usually by one of their parents.
prejudging history
Liberal hacks are crapping over Bush, dubbing him the worst president in history. Yawn.
Betsy Newmark has a few words about this.
saturday, december 2 2006
ucla 13, usc 9
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
unreal "realists"
The panic over Iraq is driven, in part, by the daily violence in Baghdad. Riding to the rescue are the "realists" led by James Baker and his Iraq Study Group.
But James Baker was the "realist" whose counsel after the Gulf War led to leaving Saddam in power and looking the other way as Saddam slaughtered 100,000 or more Shiites. (Oh, and for all the Greens in the audience, Saddam destroyed the marshlands.)
Where was all the hand-wringing about loss of innocent Iraqi life back then, when it was far worse?
Where were the jeers about incompetence when Saddam snubbed his nose at the UN, got rich off Oil for Food, deprived his people of food and medicine, pursued nuclear weapons and funded suicide bombers in Israel?
Now, these realists are here to lecture Bush 43 about looking after our interests.
Charles Krauthammer ridicules this argument:
What do people think we've been doing for the past five years? True, the president's rhetoric has a tendency to go soaringly Wilsonian, e.g. the banishing-tyranny stuff in his second inaugural address. But our policies of democratization in Iraq and Afghanistan and Lebanon have been deeply rooted in the most concrete of American interests.
If we really had been in the grip of "idealism," we'd be deep in Chad and Burma and Darfur. We are not. We are instead trying to sustain fragile democracies in three strategically important countries -- Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon -- that form the geographic parentheses around the principal threat to Western interests in the region, the Syria-Iran axis.
We are trying to bring democracy to Iraq in particular because a pro-Western government enjoying legitimacy and popular support would have been the most enduring means of securing our interests there. Deposing Saddam & Sons was essential because they posed a permanent strategic threat to the region and to U.S. interests. But their successor -- the popularly elected Maliki government -- has failed.
After years of siding with tyrants to maintain stablility, Bush decided in the wake of 9/11 to try something new and bold. It ain't over yet.
"arabs may one day miss George w. bush"
From Lebanon Daily Star:
Bush is not anti-Arab, though. He went farther than any predecessor to support Palestinian statehood when, on June 24, 2002, he declared: "It is untenable for Palestinians to live in squalor and occupation ... My vision is two states, living side by side in peace and security." Certain Palestinian groups, often with foreign support, squandered their opportunity by re-embracing violence. Bush's belief in liberty extended beyond the Palestinians, though. While his father's advisers sacrificed Lebanese freedom for the stability of the Syrian military presence until 2005, Bush sought actual Lebanese independence.
Autocrats across the region distrust Bush for entirely different reasons. To leaders in Cairo, Damascus, Tehran and Riyadh, the Palestinian cause is little more than a useful rhetorical tool to distract their own citizens from failures closer to home. These leaders do not blame Bush for his policies toward the Arab-Israeli conflict, but rather dislike him for his rhetoric of democratization and reform.
The US occupation of Iraq may not be popular anywhere in the Arab world, but scenes of Iraqis celebrating Saddam Hussein's downfall infused Arab regimes with particular unease. Many Arab leaders surround themselves with sycophants. Delegates at Egypt's National Democratic Party conference in September, for example, repeatedly interrupted President Hosni Mubarak's speech to inform him of their admiration for him and the love of ordinary Egyptians. But, outside the posh convention center, ordinary Egyptians cursed their president for corruption, stagnation and his desire for a royal succession.
the new populism and the ipod economy
Here's a logical antidote to the John Edwards/James Webb "Two Americas" baloney. Excerpt:
What does a restaurant have to do with an Ipod? Both are means of production. Both are little factories for supplying a timeless human pleasure: cooked food, and musical entertainment, respectively.
At lunchtime I sometimes go to one of the restaurants near where I work. Ordering lunch in a restaurant hasn't changed much since, say, the 1960s. The food varies in quality, reflecting the chefs' skills. Prices vary with the quality of the food, but not that much: the cheapest lunch in the neighborhood costs $3-$5; the priciest (out of my range) cost $30-$50. Presumably chefs' wages vary with the revenues they bring in. Most nearby restaurants have had some business from me.
Most mornings while commuting to work, I listen to my Ipod. Ipods are cutting-edge technology, infinitely superior to the LP records that my parents listened to in the 1960s. In a device half the size of my palm, there is almost 50 days' worth of the best music ever made. I divide my listening time very unequally between the thousands of songs that I have at my fingertips. Many I haven't listened to, even once, while others I've listened to 100 times or more. Hardly any of the songs in my Ipod are by local artists.
And lots of pretty good musicians will never get into my Ipod at all. I would happily eat food cooked by a second-tier or third-tier chef. But there's no reason for me to listen to a second-tier singer, because I can afford the best. The Billy Joels and Bruce Springsteens of gourmet cookery will always be out of my price range, but the Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen of rock-n-roll are accessible to any teenager earning minimum wage.
And this has implications for the pay structure of the respective professions. The best chefs earn $100K - $150K, less than 10 times more than a minimum-wage McDonald's worker. Meanwhile, Paul McCartney's net worth is $1.5 billion, in a profession that is home to thousands of the proverbial "starving artists."
Why the difference? It's because of the costs of reproduction. There is no way to cheaply mass-produce the art of a master chef. As a result, one of his meals is only worth as much as one affluent customer is willing to pay for it. And since the master chefs can only satisfy a tiny share of total demand, there's plenty of room for chefs of lesser talents. But since Billy Joel's music can be reproduced ad infinitum at almost zero cost, he gets his royalties from thousands or millions of listeners, and makes a fortune. And since a handful of rock stars can make enough music for everyone, lesser musicians—even some of considerable talent—are left out in the cold.
friday, december 1 2006
msm media hatchery finds cheaters
Columbia University officials are lowering the boom on some graduate journalism students suspected of cheating on, of all things, an ethics exam.
The J-schoolers' alleged lapse on the final was reported yesterday by Radar Online.
The exam in question consisted of two essay questions to be completed in 90 minutes any time during a 36-hour period.
The course, which includes such issues as "Why be Ethical?" and "Tribal Loyalty vs. Journalistic Obligation," is taught by New York Times columnist Samuel G. Freedman, who could not be reached yesterday.
This is where they learn fake but accurate.
empires in motion
An animated map of Europe and the Mideast shows the ebb and flow of empires.
steaming simmons
Funny bit with Richard Simmons on Letterman. Video.
bjorn lombord
...wrote the Skeptical Environmentalist in 2001. He has a new book coming out. TCS interviewed him:
LOMBORG: Perhaps this is most clear when you look at the movie from Al Gore. Everything he says is technically true. He says for instance that if Greenland melts, sea levels will rise about 20 feet. This is technically true. But of course the very evocative imagery of seeing Holland disappear under the waves - or New York, or Shanghai - leaves the impression that this is all going to happen very soon. Where in fact the UN climate panel says that the sea level rise over the next 100 years is going to be 30 cm - about 20 times less than he talks about. So there is a dramatic difference between what we're being told and what we're actually seeing. Which is also why I am writing a new book which comes out next fall on climate change, and I will address some of these issues.
TCS: To what extent do you feel global warming overshadowing the debate on other environmental challenges?
LOMBORG: It clearly does. Global warming is an important issue and one which we should address. But there is no sense of proportion either in environmental terms, or indeed in terms of the other issues facing the world.
If you just take the environmental problem first, it's very clear that what causes by far the majority of deaths is lack clean drinking water and lack of sanitation. Millions of people are dying each year from this. Also taking the new WHO estimates of what really kills people, these are the huge issues.The second biggest problem is indoor air pollution, which probably kills somewhere between 1 and 3 million people each year, basically because people are too poor to use good fuels and end up using dung or cardboard or whatever they can find. Only a very distant third comes climate change, which the WHO puts at 150,000 to die right now.
This of course ignores those people that are no longer dying from cold-related deaths. For some inexcusable reasons, I would argue, they have the idea that they will only look at things that are going to be bad and don't have to look at will be good from climate change.
One of the top climate change economists has modelled - and several papers that came out a couple of weeks ago essentially point out - that climate change will probably mean fewer deaths, not more deaths. It is estimated that climate change by about 2050 will mean about 800,000 fewer deaths.
why search for aliens
...when earth's living creatures are so bizarre?
The weird and wonderful creatures living by methane vents in the southwest Pacific have been photographed for the first time...
"I'll burn you into a bbq chicken!"
Actual English subtitles from Hong Kong films.
two talking terror heads
So I was watching Al Jazeera a few weeks ago and there was journalist Abdel Bari Atwan talking about the awful events in Beit Hanoun. His solution struck me as not less awful. He called on all the Arab countries and Iran (with whatever nuclear ability it has) to attack Israel. What does Atwan think of the U.S.? He thinks it generates a "culture of hate" that it directs "against the Arabs and Muslims."
Now that you know something about Atwan and his nuanced views of things, I can tell you that he has written a book. It's called The Secret History of al Qaeda, and the reviewer for WaPo thinks it's just "excellent." Indeed, that reviewer thinks that the newspaper that Atwan edits, Al-Quds al-Arabi, is "the best Arabic-language daily newspaper." Actually, Al-Quds has some pretty remarkable takes on the Middle East, arguing, for example, that the Arab regimes it doesn't like are subservient not only to the U.S. but even to Israel.
Who is this reviewer? It's Michael Scheuer, the intelligence analyst who wrote a book critical of the West's war on terror entitled, Imperial Hubris. Thus we have two Talking Terror Heads crossing tongues, as it were, with some notable results...I think Scheuer has that backwards. It isn't that Atwan's conclusion "should deeply unsettle" U.S.leaders. These U.S. leaders should be deeply unsettled by Scheuer's discussion of Atwan's book. Because if this is the kind of person we've been relying on for analyzing and advising about terror, we are in even more trouble than we realize. You know, the CIA kept Scheuer's unit secret. Maybe they were embarrassed.
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.