November 1, 2003
Bam-Bam Lives
In a unique and, shall we say, fantastic defense, a father on trial for the beating death of his infant daughter claims that the real cuplrit is his 2-year-old son: A jealous 2-year-old battered his infant sister so badly that it left her vulnerable to death when her father tripped in their St. Paul apartment and dropped her last November, Said Moussa Gouleed's lawyer said Friday, the first day of Gouleed's murder trial. Six-week-old Faduma Moussa Gouleed died from the accidental fall, not from a beating by her father, lawyer Eric Olson said. They're not called the "terrible twos" for nothing, I guess. Let's see what this brawny baby managed to inflict on Sis: An autopsy disclosed evidence that the baby had been repeatedly injured before her death, including several broken bones and a previous skull fracture. Olson said pre-existing injuries inflicted by her brother, coupled with the accidental fall...
Ain't Got Time for Green
Has anyone asked Ralph Nader how it feels to be potentially replaced by Jesse Ventura? Do you suppose Nader may be a bit reluctant to spend a year campaigning on behalf of a party of environmentalists who wanted to throw him overboard for a pro-hunting, pro-snowmobiling, pro-boating candidate?
The Pot Calls The Kettle Black
The LA Times features an article today on how Fox News intentionally skews its news writing to support a conservative bias: A veteran producer this week alleged that Fox News executives issue a daily memorandum to staff on news coverage to bend the network's reporting into conformity with management's political views, refocusing attention on the partisan bias of America's most watched cable news operation. The charges by Charlie Reina, 55, whose six-year tenure at Fox ended April 9, first surfaced Wednesday in a letter he posted on an influential Web site maintained by Jim Romenesko for the Poynter Institute, an organization that promotes journalistic education and ethics. (Romanesko's site, BTW, is on my blogroll to the left.) Read on for a taste of delicious irony: The corporate boards and family investors who control most of the American news media generally feel obliged to maintain a wall of separation between news...
Confess, Heretic
As I've posted before, I'm a practicing Catholic, which is one who hopes to improve through repetition. (ba-dum-ting! Thank you, and don't forget to tip the waitress.) This morning, the First Mate informs me that it's that time again .... confession time. Belonging to any religion requires sacrifice of one kind or another. For Catholics, we have an obligation to go to confession -- now called Reconciliation, sort of how "problems" started to become "opportunities" at the office -- at least once a year, or whenever we have a mortal sin that has not been confessed. (Please note that I am no expert on Catholicism, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.) You are not supposed to receive the Holy Eucharist until you've confessed your sins and receive absolution. However, a large number of Catholics are uncomfortable with confession, myself included, and resist engaging in this...
Why Would They Blow Up My House with My Own Explosives?
In my mind, this Palestinian woman is lucky to be alive: A Palestinian woman expresses her anger after Israeli Defence Forces detonated an explosive belt they found in her house, destroying the ground and first floor of the building, in the village of Hizmeh near Jerusalem(AFP/Atta Hussein). The link will take you to the picture; there is no corresponding story, just the caption, which I've quoted in full. Power Line has a few pertinent thoughts on this, and I'll add my own: I think the Israelis need to detonate ALL confiscated explosives in the dwellings they find them. Perhaps that will send a message to the 75% of Palestinians who think that bombing Israeli civilians is a peachy idea. Maybe that will impress upon them that they have a personal stake in stopping the terrorism and getting rid of the leadership that's keeping them destitute and dislocated. One last thought...
We're Still Answering
I don't know how I missed this, but this is just another outstanding entry by Chris Muir. The sickos called 9-11, and we're still answering. Way to go, Chris!...
Howard Dean, Confederate Racist?
It's an old story for acclaimed "metrosexual" candidate Howard Dean -- Open Mouth, Insert Foot: "I still want to be the candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks," the former Vermont governor was quoted as saying in Saturday's Des Moines Register. "We can't beat George Bush unless we appeal to a broad cross-section of Democrats." Say, Yankee boy, don't you know them's fightin' words, at least among the Northeastern-elite-style Democrats? "I don't want to be the candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks," Gephardt said in a statement. "I will win the Democratic nomination because I will be the candidate for guys with American flags in their pickup trucks." Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts contended that Dean's "pandering" to the National Rifle Association gave him an inroad to "pander to lovers of the Confederate flag." Will the Democrats be as quick with the BUSH...
Get SWLiP Blogrolled on LGF
Brant at Strange Women Lying in Ponds, a most excellent blog, would like to get blogrolled at Little Green Footballs: Let's talk turkey. The reader who gets SWLiP blogrolled on LGF will win a special prize: The Al Jarreau CD of his or her choice. So if anyone reading this has any influence with the guys at LGF, let's see if we can't help Brant out. And while we're at it, maybe someone can get me a mention there too, or a link over at Instapundit. I'll cough up a Jim Croce double-CD album for anyone who can get me blogrolled at either place. Between Brant and I, we'll rescue the RIAA singlehandedly. Well, doublehandedly, at least....
November 2, 2003
Slings and Arrows
Slings and Arrows tries to advance my evolution by linking to my post from earlier today about the LA Times (in SWLiP's hilarious words) being shocked, shocked to find editorial bias at Fox News. Thanks to Byron for the support; I've blogrolled Bryon, and you all should check out his well-written site. In fact, check out this post with a great graphic about economic performance during the Bush administration. As Homer Simpson says, it's funny because it's true....
The Strib blindly follows the NY Times's lead
The Minneapolis Star-Tribune exercises little or no editorial control when purchasing fallacious stories from the NY Times: Two decades after Syria ruthlessly uprooted militant Islam, killing an estimated 10,000 people, this most secular of Arab states is experiencing a dramatic religious resurgence. Ruthlessly uprooted militant Islam? Really? Who's been hosting Islamic Jihad and Hamas for the past 20 years or so? Who's been co-sponsoring Hezb' Allah with Iran for 20 years? Read the entire article and see whether any of these groups, or Syria's support for them, are even mentioned in passing. This is an atrocious piece of writing, and for the Strib to republish it demonstrates their commitment to left-wing memes and mediocrity in general. This was my original post when this story first ran in the NY Times....
Muslim Troops' Loyalty a Delicate Question
The Washington Post published a thoughtful and balanced piece on whether Muslim troops can remain loyal to the US: Military sociologist Charles Moskos is traveling to Iraq this month to poll troops about morale issues. He plans to ask whether Muslim soldiers seem to have their hearts in fighting fellow Muslims, and whether the troops trust Muslims in their ranks. "I'll ask, 'How do you feel about having a Muslim in your tent?' " Moskos said. A black Christian Army chaplain based in this country said some of her fellow soldiers feel "tension" with Muslims in their units, many of whom are also black. "They say, . . . 'Can we really trust them?' " In past wars, this concern over disloyalty in a diverse military has come up again and again. Most famously, the Japanese formed a unit to themselves in World War II and became the most decorated...
The First Sane Argument Against School Vouchers I've Seen
Yeah, I know, this isn't funny ... except it is, in a class-warfare kind of way: Three high school students — a sophomore girl and two junior boys — have been expelled from an exclusive preparatory school in the Sepulveda Pass for allegedly making a sexually explicit video and distributing it on school grounds. ... Wrubel, who did not release the students' names or ages, said two of the students in the video seemed not to know that the recording would be shown to anyone outside a close circle of friends. "They thought they were just doing it for fun," Wrubel said. "And then it showed up in school." I expect that the ACLU will sue the school on behalf of the two boys, claiming oppression of free-speech rights, and Gloria Allred will sue on behalf of the girl, for any manner of civil damages, and for good reason. Still,...
Maureen Dowd Watch
The Belgravia Dispatch posts a fisking, of sorts, on Maureen Dowd's latest column (via Instapundit): But here's the point. Bush, for a good while now--including back during his September speech to the United Nations--has increasingly made reference, not only to terrorists opposing the U.S. in Iraq, but also regime "holdouts." Put differently, he's been more frank about the somewhat variegated nature of the opposition in Iraq recently. So my concerns at least, as someone who has followed the issue pretty closely, have been allayed somewhat recently. But then MaDo comes in and ignores all the evidence to the contrary to facilitate her slanted, anti-Bush op-ed writing process. Gregory Djerejian then provides the specifics on various Bush speeches where he specifically speaks about the difference between terrorists in Iraq, who mostly come from somewhere else, and regime holdouts like the Saddam Fedayeen and ex-military officers. Djerejian lumps Dowd in with Stephen...
Once Around the Axis, and Others
A collection of links to interesting posts around the Axis of Naughty and other great blogs this morning ... Michelle at A Small Victory wonders how to determine when ululating Arabs is a good or bad sign ... and also has a sane look at this morning's bad news in Iraq which puts it in perspective ... Wizbang has the Howard Dean Metrosexual Quiz ready for you (be sure to read the comments!) ... Samizdata has an example of left-wing hypocrisy in education policy in Britain, but we've seen it here before, too ... Kate over at Electric Venom (cool site!) is angry about the dilution of her Social Security money ... Roger Simon ponders the war of civilizations ... DC at Brainstorming wonders about the world-changing power of the new Apple computers, but over at Jessica's Well, the concern is over the hard-drive-changing power of their new operating system...
Off-label drug use growing
If you take prescription medication, you should read this entire article on "off-label" prescriptions: A six-month Knight Ridder investigation has found that patients nationwide are being injured and killed as doctors routinely prescribe drugs in ways the FDA never certified as safe and effective. Moreover, these unapproved prescriptions are soaring. In the past year, 115 million such prescriptions were written, nearly double the number of five years ago, a Knight Ridder analysis of prescriptions for the country's top-selling drugs found. The practice, called off-label prescribing, often is driven by questionable research, aggressive drug company marketing and cavalier doctors, and condoned by tepid regulators. The story details the practice of giving medications for conditions not specifically targeted by the medicine, such as anti-depressants for premature ejaculation, even if no studies exist to validate such use. Doctors aren't prepared for the possible damage these off-label prescriptions cause: Victims of off-label prescribing whom...
My Political Compass
SurlyPundit has a note on her blog showing her Political Compass which gives a more sophisticated indication of her politics than simple "left-right" designations. Her graph point is 7.25/-3.69, which indicates significant rightist economics and libertarian philosophy. My numbers are more centrist: 4.75/-0.56. Quite frankly, I'm a little surprised; I would have expected more libertarian tendencies than that. SurlyPundit has an intriguing blog; you should check it out....
One Mideast State May Be Future of Israel
Make no mistake about it: European anti-Israel sentiment is directly linked to centuries-old European anti-Semitism, and they're falling back on their old tropes of the secret Jewish conspiracy behind all the world's woes. Israel was founded as a way for Jews to escape the "gentle" clutches of genocidal Europeans, and now the same Europeans, less than 60 years removed from the gas chambers of Auschwitz, are ready to ethnically cleanse Asia Minor of the same Jews they failed to kill in Europe.
Will CBS Broadcast This Movie?
IMAO has a script for Les Moonves. Hopefully, we can get Tim Robbins to play Bill Clinton, Pamela Anderson to play Hillary, and Edward Herrmann to play Janet Reno....
Is this the end of 'the West?'
I don't know what breakfast cereal Thomas Friedman's been eating lately, but the man is on fire, this time asking if Europe has thrown in the towel, "Europe" mostly meaning France and Germany: At the Madrid conference, Saudi Arabia pledged $1 billion in new loans and credits for Iraq — and Germany and France pledged zero new dollars. The bottom line is clear: Saudi Arabia cares more about nurturing democracy in Iraq than Germany and France. Ah, you say, that’s unfair. Germany and France opposed the war, so why should they pay more than their share of the paltry EU contribution? Actually, it’s not unfair, when you remember that before the war France and Germany were obsessed with the lifting of UN sanctions on Saddam’s regime — in the name of easing the suffering of the Iraqi people. Friedman sheds quite a bit of light on the disconnect between the...
Minnesota teen dies while being a good samaritan
I normally like to finish on an up note, but that's not possible when you read something like this, which happened in North Carolina but involves a Minnesota teen: When Nolan Myers saw somebody was in need he was always willing to lend a helping hand, his family and friends said. ... He and three friends came upon the accident and stopped to be good samaritans. As Myers, 18, of Carver, Minn., reached one of the injured motorists, the driver of a speeding van plowed into the vehicles and the bystanders, killing five people, including Myers. A sixth person died en route to the hospital, authorities said. You may ask how someone driving by an accident could kill six people standing by the site. Take three guesses: The driver of the van, Larry Robert Veeder, 32, was charged Sunday with driving while impaired and with six counts of involuntary manslaughter,...
November 3, 2003
Good Luck Selling This to the Pelosi/Boxer Crowd
A group of centrist, concerned Democrats have published a manifesto that attempts to fight the McGovern tilt amongst the Presidential candidates: Last week, an impressive group of centrist Democratic foreign policy thinkers released a thoughtful document urging the party to adopt a "progressive internationalism" built around a strong defense, free trade and American leadership through international alliances "to shape a world in which the values of liberal democracy increasingly hold sway." ... Signed by prominent party thinkers like Will Marshall, president of the Progressive Policy Institute, and Iraq expert Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution, the paper updates for a new century the vision advanced by Democratic presidents like Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman. In that tradition, the authors envision an America that expands its own security by working with allies to encourage the spread of trade and freedom around the globe — but defends its interests with...
The Franco-American War, Part 42
Gregory Djerejian at the Belgravia Dispatch has a spot-on analysis of today's Washington Post article on Tariq Aziz and France's role in ensuring war was the only option: Aziz has told interrogators that French and Russian intermediaries repeatedly assured Hussein during late 2002 and early this year that they would block a U.S.-led war through delays and vetoes at the U.N. Security Council. Later, according to Aziz, Hussein concluded after private talks with French and Russian contacts that the United States would probably wage a long air war first, as it had done in previous conflicts. By hunkering down and putting up a stiff defense, he might buy enough time to win a cease-fire brokered by Paris and Moscow. Djerejian asks: And, it begs the question, is this the behaviour of an "ally"? If, on the cusp of a conflict, where the U.S. has amassed some 200,000 troops on the...
Does French Sweat Smell Like Perfume?
Buried deep within the Washington Post is this bit of very good news (via Power Line): The CIA has seized an extensive cache of files from the former Iraqi Intelligence Service....The records would stretch 9 1/2 miles if laid end to end, the officials said. They contain not only the names of nearly every Iraqi intelligence officer, but also the names of their paid foreign agents, written agent reports, evaluations of agent credentials, and documentary evidence of payments made to buy influence in the Arab world and elsewhere, the officials said. It's time for many luminaries on the world stage to start coughing nervously and updating their resumes. This not only promises to embarrass international figures, but will completely undermine domestic arguments that Bush could have worked harder to get more international support. My guess is that the list is heavy on French and German names: The officials declined to...
Onward and Upward
I didn't notice this until after I'd been on a while, but I've evolved further, from Slithering Reptile to Flappy Bird in the TTLB Ecosystem. Thanks to everyone who's been linking back here -- and if you haven't yet blogrolled me, let me know if you do so I can make sure I've blogrolled you in return!...
New Terror Attack Warnings from DEBKAfile
Posting messages in a forum where prior notice of attacks have been revealed before, Islamofascists have stated that several US cities will be attacked in the near future: A new message was posted in the last few hours by the Jeddah-based al-Qaeda-linked Al-Islah (Reform) society calling on Muslims to flee New York, Washington and Los Angeles in advance of major al Qaeda attacks in those cities. ... “The Jews rule the Pentagon by remote control and (are the cause) of Muslims being killed in every corner of the world. The United States should therefore expect more blows.” The message is signed on behalf of the al Bayan (The Threat) movement by “your warrior brother, Abul Hassan al Khadrami”. So far, nothing has been reported on CNN's web site. DEBKAfile gives background information on the forum and the history of al Khadrami. (via Little Green Footballs)...
CBS Bails?
Drudge Report has a headline without a story saying that CBS has dumped the miniseries on the Reagans. In the little Matt Drudge has posted, apparently Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone got involved and moved the miniseries to another Viacom subsidiary, Showtime, where it will run uncut. Of course, this will allow Showtime subscribers to demonstrate their displeasure by canceling and switching to HBO ... they may have done better to just cancel it altogether. Maybe they will. Expect squeals of McCarthyism from ultraleftist Judy Davis and Jim Streisand, er, James Brolin....
First Zell Miller, Now This
Another Democrat appears to be poised to defect in a major election, this time in the Louisiana gubernatorial race: Mayor Ray Nagin, a Democrat, crossed party lines Monday to endorse Republican Bobby Jindal in the Nov. 15 runoff election for governor. Jindal faces Lt. Gov. Kathleen Blanco in the election. Perhaps the Democrats should call in the UN -- 2004 is looking more like a quagmire every day. But this news, combined with the Zell Miller bombshell a few days back, and the sudden retirement announcement of Bob Graham in Florida, and it's becoming clear that the Democrats are losing the South. Despite their recent decision to abandon gun control, the South isn't likely to trust that Dem policy to be permanent, and the screechiness of the anti-war themes at the Presidential debates may play well in Hollywood and San Francisco, but among the NASCAR dads and the Confederate flag...
November 4, 2003
WTF? The Incoherent Post
The Washington Post, whose editorial pages are generally clear-thinking on the war even when critical of the Bush administration, descends into self-contradictory babble in today's ultimately pointless second editorial: TWO MONTHS after the Bush administration embarked on an effort to attract greater international support for its mission in Iraq, it faces the latest surge of violence on the ground from a position that is more isolated than ever. Did I miss something? Has someone withdrawn from the established Coalition? Didn't Bush just get a unanimous resolution from the Security Council affirming the Coalition's mission in Iraq, something that the Clinton administration never did in the Balkans (where, by the way, we still have troops)? How is the Bush administration "isolated", let alone more isolated than ever? Rather than look for further help from India, Pakistan or Russia, or even NATO allies, the Bush administration has abruptly embraced a new strategy...
QandO Joins Fisking Brigade
The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler honors a deserving QandO for its excellent fisking of Kucinich.
If Loving You is Wrong, I Don't Wanna Be Right
It's a bust! In fact, it was a lot of them for South St. Paul police officers responding to complaints of drug use: Twenty minutes before police raided a South St. Paul sex swingers club, one of the partygoing couples reportedly won the top prize — a sex game — for their Halloween costumes. They were dressed as a police officer and a jailbird. When the real police arrived at 1 a.m. Saturday, they found about 100 partygoers in the two-story building between two bars on South Concord Street. Officers also found small amounts of methamphetamine and cocaine. Three people were arrested in the raid; everyone inside was identified and photographed. Yes, thank goodness for the South St. Paul police. I feel so much safer in my community now that we have pictures of all the spouse-swappers out on the town last weekend. Why spend the time on photographing people...
Kerry's wife calls presidential debates 'silly'
... and I completely agree with Theresa Heinz Kerry: Heinz Kerry said debates have become about scoring a punch with quick soundbites. "It's just silly," she said. "I think those debates are really unproductive and they made it hard for all of them to (get their message across)." In fact, I would call them exceedingly silly, made so by live audiences who ooh, aah, gasp, titter, and applaud the most banal and trite comebacks. These debates embody the vacuity of modern hight-tech media sound bite-ism. The formats do not allow for thoughtful policy discourse, and in fact are designed to eliminate any hope of that. They are entertainment, at least in theory, a type of gladiator arena where the fight is not so much between the gladiators themselves as it is between the audience members to stay awake long enough to punctuate their champions' verbal jabs with the appropriate sound...
Building character through sports
If intramural sports exist to build character for young adults, then one of the best success stories can be found in Nate Haasis, a Springfield, IL high-school quarterback: Nate Haasis dropped back for one more pass as the clock wound down on his high school football career. But this one was different: As he threw a 37-yard completion, his opponents just stood around and watched. With that, Haasis became the new all-time passing champion of the Central State Eight Conference, with a record 5,006 yards. But it turns out the two opposing coaches in the Oct. 25 game orchestrated the play to ensure Haasis' place in history. And now the 17-year-old senior wants to nullify the pass and give back the record in a dispute that has roiled this football-crazed city and led to a debate over honesty and fair play. Some in the community have made the coaches out...
November 5, 2003
Republicans Make Gains in the South
The Democrat position in the South continued to erode, as the Republicans gained two governorships in elections yesterday: With a presidential campaign only months away, Republicans picked up two governorships in the South, ousting Mississippi's Democratic incumbent and seizing Kentucky's top job for the first time in 32 years. GOP Washington lobbyist Haley Barbour unseated one-term Democratic Gov. Ronnie Musgrove, while in Kentucky, three-term Republican Rep. Ernie Fletcher defeated Democratic Attorney General Ben Chandler. In an echo of the California recall, neither election was as close as pre-election polls indicated, especially in Mississippi, where newspapers had the race as a dead heat; Haley Barbour wound up winning by eight percentage points, far larger than the margin of error in the polls. Fletcher won by 10 points. Mississippi Democrats criticized Barbour for his connections and years spent in Washington as Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites) and other...
'8 Simple Rules' Returns Without Ritter
ABC struggles to keep its hit show, '8 Simple Rules', going without its star, the late John Ritter: Ritter had completed three episodes for the new season when he died of a heart ailment Sept. 11. His last episode aired Oct. 7. Gambling that a lighthearted sitcom can sustain the loss of its central figure, "8 Simple Rules..." is making a desperate bid to carry on as one of ABC's higher-rated series. Doing so, the producers and the network have risked conspicuous failure as well as criticism for tastelessness. Let me tell you, I watched last night's episode, and I was mightily impressed with their effort. They made an excellent decision to film the show without a live audience, and so even the humor was muted and sad. James Garner and Suzanne Pleshette did an excellent job as a bitter and bickering couple who try with limited success to bury...
Wizbang: Vote Carnival In 2003!
Wizbang has the Carnival of the Vanities up and running. I'll post up some links later on in order to cast my votes. Don't forget that I've entered this post as my first-ever entry!...
Barbra Streisand Decries Right-Wing "Censorship"
As expected, Barbra Streisand leaps to the defense of her husband and his movie: I am deeply disappointed that CBS, the network that in 1964 gave me complete artistic control in creating television specials, now caved in to right wing Republican pressure to cancel the network broadcast of the movie The Reagans. (And I say MOVIE - because this is NOT a documentary - it's a television drama.) She has a point -- this is a movie, after all, not like Michael Moore's supposed documentaries, although I doubt she'd hesitate to defend his intellectually dishonest works. All crying aside, the movie will still be broadcast, just on a different Viacom outlet. However, this part of her argument made my eyes roll back into my head: I don't believe Democrats often, if ever, try to muscle the First Amendment like this. Let's see ... it wasn't more than a few years...
Dean's Confederate Comment Reverberates on Internet
Over the past few days, I have observed a fascinating phenomenon: my post on Howard Dean and his outreach to people who have a Confederate flag on their trucks gets over 10 hits an hour from various search engines, notably Google. Despite the fact that I post regularly on political topics and the War on Terror, this is by far and away the most-requested post from search engines. Granted that this is not a scientific sample, and the Internet is not necessarily representative of the nation as a whole (and some of these searches are originating internationally), but it appears that Dean's comments have inflamed a large number of people who are looking for something on the Internet. No one has posted any comments on my original post, so I can only guess as to what it specifically means, but in general, those comments have resonated to a greater degree...
Weight Isn't The Most Important Thing
My talented and very good-looking friend, Haddayr Copley-Woods, has a new column in the Minnesota Women's Press regarding society's obsession with weight: As a feminist, I am ambivalent about having lost weight at all. Fat is a feminist issue, and although my weight loss was well within the scientific standard for my height and frame, I feel in a way as if I have betrayed the sisterhood. We should love ourselves for who we are, I tell myself, and people should love us for what’s inside. We should not be afraid to take up space. Also, I used to look a little tougher. Quit laughing. I said “a little.” Make sure you read the whole thing, and check out her previous columns as well. Haddayr always delivers an intelligent and entertaining column, I suppose even when we disagree, although so far that hasn't happened....
Blackfive: French Boycott Continues
Here's my first vote for this week's Carnival entry -- Blackfive's deep commitment to the French boycott: The biggest fight that I have ever had with my wife in over six years of marriage was over my personal French Boycott. She had gone shopping and brought back some wine which happened to be made in France. She opened it before I knew what it was, and I asked her to pour it down the drain. Of course, my wife knows me well, and she knows how much it would kill me to watch good booze destroyed. But, we went back and forth over it and she finally poured it down the drain, looking me in the eye the whole time. He'd get my vote even if he wrote atrocious posts just for going through with that, but fortunately, he's a good writer. Check out his blog while you're there. And...
The DNC Discovers Humor
Nothing that has happened in this tempest in a teacup is scarier than the DNC's statement. This isn't a fringe group, for crying out loud, these people want to run our government! Either they're about to drive off a cliff in the next year, or centrist Democrats need to stage a palace coup and eject Terry McAuliffe. They have become delusional in their bitterness.
Howard Dean's Foot Strikes Again
Howard Dean, a man reportedly so intelligent that he is allowed to prescribe medication for people, needs something for his chronic foot-in-mouth disease: Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean told a Tallahassee audience today that southerners have to quit basing their votes on "race, guns, God and gays." Is Dean trying to lose the nomination? He traveled all the way to Tennessee just to tell Southerners to their faces that they're idiots who only vote on the basis of bigotry, religious fanaticism, and homicidal rage. Oh, and please stop doing that. What's next on the Dean itinerary -- a stop at the Bar Association to tell a few bad lawyer jokes, followed by an appearance at the NEA to tell the teachers that they should learn how to read first before trying to teach kids? It's one thing to tell voters what they need to hear (for instance, on entitlements) when...
November 6, 2003
Notre Dame: Desperate
In the second item, I'm afraid that Chris Dufresne of the LA Times has this exactly correct: Navy last defeated Notre Dame in 1963, yet we can't think of a year Notre Dame needed to beat Navy more. Um, ouch! But so true. This season was supposed to be when the Irish challenged for the national championship. After last year's magical season, it appeared Ty Willingham had turned the program around. But at 2-6, it doesn't look like it's going anywhere soon. Read the first, featured item on Eddie Robinson; it's heartbreaking....
Democratic Pickup Lines
George Will writes an excellent column in today's Washington Post, one of three at least nominally about Howard Dean, but Will expands his review to the entire Democratic field of candidates: For Dean and Deanites, the idea of courting the Confederate-flag-and-pickups cohort gives them the frisson of walking on the wild side, the tingle of keeping bad company, like a professor in a biker bar. But Dean's statement, which dripped a kind of regional disdain, was a clumsy attempt to make a sensible point: Disdain no voters. The other candidates, instead of getting past the clumsiness (a Dean trademark), jumped all over Howard Dean to prove their own diversity chops, missing the point entirely. Dean sees that the South is about to depart from the Democrats for a generation, in part because the same disdain that dripped from Dean's statement has been part of the radical Left since the Civil...
The Meme of the Moment: Saint Ronald?
It didn't take long for the left to spin the CBS decision to cancel the "Reagans" miniseries and shift it to Showtime instead. Now we are about to be bombarded with accusations that right-wing nutbars are insisting that Ronald Reagan be portrayed as a saint. Consider this from Timothy Noah in Slate: It isn't especially troubling that CBS would bow to angry protesters in canceling The Reagans, given that the miniseries itself, if at all typical of the genre, is likely a piece of hackwork. (Those who live by popular tastes, die by popular tastes.) But it is troubling that the public, or at least a highly influential segment of it, has apparently ruled any criticism of President Reagan out of bounds. When did the Gipper become St. Ronald? The answer is, of course, that he didn't, and no one is insisting that he was. What generated the vehement protests...
And There Was a Great Wailing and Gnashing of Teeth
... at least amongst Democrats, as productivity continues to rise and jobless claims fell to their lowest rate in almost 3 years: Productivity — the amount an employee produces per hour of work — grew at an annual rate of 8.1 percent in the July-to-September quarter, the fastest pace since the first quarter of 2002. That was up from a 7 percent clip in the second quarter, the department reported. ... In a second report, new applications for jobless benefits last week plummeted by a seasonally adjusted 43,000 to 348,000. That marked the lowest level since the week ending Jan. 20, 2001, and was much better than the 380,000 level that economists forecast. The four-week moving average of new claims, which smooths out weekly fluctuations, dropped to 380,000 last week, the best showing since the week ending March 10, 2001. So now that the economy and the job market are...
She Ought to Just Call His Bluff
Yeah, right, twice a day every day. Sounds like a typical guy ... who's having delusions of adequacy. If I were the wife, I would have said, "But Your Honor, I would like a definition and standard of performance on his part as well. Two pumps and a tickle may be time-efficient, but it's hardly what I call performance, if you get my drift."
November 7, 2003
Jesse Jackson says Iraq is a 'quagmire' akin to Vietnam
Jesse Jackson runs off at the mouth again: Rev. Jesse Jackson on Friday said the U.S. occupation of Iraq was a "quagmire" similar to that seen in Vietnam and that the United States must form alliances through the United Nations if it is to withdraw from the country peacefully. ... While the United States is viewed as an occupying force, the United Nations could be seen as a liberating force, he said, adding that "the key to that is to really appeal to China, to France and to Germany to come in as partners under the umbrella of the U.N." Once again, we get the tired recitation of who needs to approve our foreign policy before the US can take any action in its own interest. This is the first time I've heard China trotted out; as far as I know, China wasn't threatening to veto the 17th resolution. France...
The Partisan Diet
It loks like the "clubby" and "bipartisan" atmosphere of the House Appropriations Subcommittee may be a thing of the past -- and the winners will be American taxpayers: Rep. Ralph Regula (R-Ohio), who chairs the subcommittee that controls spending on education, health and jobs programs, recently stunned Democrats by announcing plans to reject every "earmarked" project they are seeking in the final, compromise version of the bill, which funds the departments of Education, Health and Human Services, and Labor. His reason: When the House passed the bill on July 10, all 198 Democrats present voted against it, several of them saying it shortchanged education programs. The bill passed, 215 to 208. So what happened was that the subcommittee loaded up the bill with both Republican and Democratic pork, and then the Democrats stiffed the Republicans when it came to voting on the bill in the House, including (apparently) Democrats who...
Maybe They Should Be More Specific
Do you remember the couple having sex in St Patrick's Cathedral in the New York radio stunt? The woman involved was sentenced yesterday for her part: A woman accused of having sex with her boyfriend inside St. Patrick's Cathedral as part of a radio show stunt was sentenced to five days of community service. Loretta Lynn Harper, 36, pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct on Thursday. Harper could make a semantic argument that she was performing community "service" in St. Patrick's Cathedral, but I'm sure that the judge has something a bit more tame in mind. In an odd and morbid note, her 38-year-old partner in crime died of a heart attack earlier this year....
Voting Without a Choice
The Washington Post sends out a clear warning signal about the effects of radical gerrymandering on democratic processes: VIRGINIANS CAN FLATTER themselves that they held an election this week, and in some technical sense they did. Votes were cast, and by day's end candidates had won state offices. Yet there was one glaring problem, which should gnaw at everyone who left the polls with a cheery "I Voted" sticker: Most of the legislative races were hardly more competitive than elections in the old Soviet Union. And just as it is in non-democratic societies, this absence of meaningful competition was the product of deliberate manipulation -- in this case the gerrymandering of legislative districts by the politicians who then run for reelection from those districts. Most results were known before a single vote was cast. This problem occurs more frequently than ever in more and more states, and why this is...
QandO: Job Recovery Fastest in 20 Years
Jon at QandO sheds a little light on the "bleak" job recovery progress. Job recovery to a 6.0% unemployment rate from past recessions took 57 months after the 1982 recession and 41 months after the 1991 recession. Recovery time for this recession? 23 months. Now, compare our previous post-recessionary periods with our current post-recessionary period and try to figure out why this unemployment rate is being called unusually bad. Oh. Right. Elections. My bad. When Jon observes, Jon gets it right. Check out the entire blog, if you appreciate rational and fact-based argument. (Hell, check it out even if you don't.)...
Josh Chafetz Wins the Day at Oxford
Josh Chafetz reprints his speech on OxBlog from the Oxford debate on the Iraq War, in which he participated yesterday: I must begin with a word of apology for my lack of preparation. Not only was I just asked yesterday to speak, but I was also laboring under the apparent misapprehension that we would be addressing the resolution that "This House believes that we are losing the Peace." Yet I find that the honorable gentleman who has just spoken in the affirmative [Jeremy Corbyn, MP] has talked about the war - about Vietnam, oil, Mr. Bush, Mr. Blair, international law, weapons of mass destruction, sanctions, and so on. While these are all issues worthy of serious discussion, I must confess to being somewhat baffled at how these normative questions bear on the empirical resolution that I was told we were to debate. Read the entire speech. It reminds us of...
Snark Hunt!
Electric Venom has its weekly snark hunt posted ... and the snark are running! Venomous Kate was kind enough to include one of my entries this week. But there's lots more snark to hunt, so be sure to go there and check it all out. Enjoy!...
It Seems A Little Odd for a "Jobless" Recovery
I know we're in a jobless recovery, because all of those truth-tellers like Al Sharpton keep telling us so, but shouldn't the primary characteristic of a jobless recovery be one that doesn't create jobs? The economy has created nearly 300,000 new jobs in the past three months after a half-year drought, pushing unemployment down to 6 percent in October and leaving little doubt that the jobs market is bouncing back. The Labor Department reported Friday that payrolls grew by 126,000 last month, many more than economists had predicted. That followed a revised 125,000 new jobs in September, more than double what initially was reported. U.S. companies added 35,000 to their payrolls in August. 250,000 jobs added in the last two months. At that rate, we'll add 1.75 million jobs by Election Day next year. We aren't out of the woods economically, though: The new jobs added last month mostly were...
Rip Van Wepner
I know boxers tend to get a little slow in their old age, but this is ridiculous: The boxer who was the inspiration for Sylvester Stallone (news)'s "Rocky" films plans to file a lawsuit against the actor for illegally using his name to promote the films and other merchandise, attorneys said Friday. Chuck Wepner, 65, is seeking $15 million in damages from the right of publicity claim, said his attorney Anthony Mango. The suit will be filed next week in New Jersey State Court. Uh, Chuck ... Rocky first came out 27 years ago, pal. Why the delay? Mango said Wepner waited almost 28 years before filing the suit because he always expected Stallone to compensate him. "Stallone said there was going to be something in this for Chuck. But he was giving him shallow promises to placate him. Chuck took him as a man of his word, but then...
New Weblog Showcase: Mr. Cranky
I've decided to cast a vote in the TTLB New Weblog Showcase for Mr. Cranky and his excellent Halloween story: I am always amazed at how nicely the boy is treated as he goes trick or treating. This year he wore a Hulk costume - you know the one, it has the foam muscles. At one place, the lady of the house gave him a candy after the usual holiday exchange, then squeezed his foam arms and said, "Wow, you're strong!". My boy grinned from ear to ear under his mask. Read the whole thing, it's a great piece of writing. (I have a neighbor like A.H., too ... I wonder if they're related?) I've added Mr. Cranky to my blogroll, too....
Finally, the Strib figures out finance, sort of
Okay, maybe this is a sign of the impending Apocalypse, but even the Minneapolis Star-Tribune has figured out that the economy is improving: For the second time in two weeks, the economy has delivered terrific news for President Bush -- and all Americans. The employment report released Friday shows that the nation's long jobless recovery has come to an end, and that the recovery's job-creating phase probably started last summer, earlier than analysts thought. Coupled with a strong report on gross domestic product released last week, the data suggest that the economy finally is picking up steam after two years of lackadaisical expansion. But, being the Star-Tribune, it simply cannot allow that Bush's economic policies may have been correct all along: More worrisome are the long-term consequences of the president's budget policies. Rather than offer temporary stimulus -- the solution prescribed by a broad spectrum of economists -- the White...
November 8, 2003
You Should Try It From The Other Side
I found a good blog that I'm adding to my blogroll, Bloviating Inanities, which on one hand elevates link-whoring to a new level, while in another post, openly hopes that all readers go away: It is the goal of Suckwatch to annoy and alienate every blogger who reads me so eventually I have no readers and don't have to blog anymore because frankly, it's a big pain in the ass. This mission statement knows what you're thinking - why don't you just quit blogging, you idiot! Well, that would certainly be the logical thing to do, wouldn't it. I love self-contradiction, and so I'm going to be visiting often, although apparently I will eventually be the only one. However, this post is the one that really got my attention, titled I'm an Idiot: As I've mentioned, we had an alarm system installed at our house because a neighbor got robbed....
Subtleties of Media Bias
Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit discusses an apparently common experience in media -- reporters who go into an interview with a predetermined agenda. I won't excerpt it as Glenn mostly uses an article by Roger Ebert to illustrate his point. Glenn relates this to interviews specifically, but I suspect that this phenomenon is more widespread in journalism. I would guess that reporters already know what their approach to a story will be before they ever write a word or spend an hour investigating. Read Glenn's post; it's very illuminating....
300,000 Iraqis May Be in Mass Graves
Never again. Never again. Never again. Any questions?...
Lá Breithe Sona Dhuit!
You say it's your birthday ... Happy Birthday to ya!...
Michael Moore: Man of the People
As if we needed another reason to dislike Michael Moore, try reading this letter (3rd item): Recently, a co-worker asked me if I had seen the movie Bowling for Columbine yet, I told her absolutely not! My answer surprised her, given the fact my son, Matthew, was one of the 13 murdered during the deadliest school shooting in our country's history. I explained to her that prior to the public release of the movie the families of the injured and dead were invited by Michael Moore to attend a preview screening. How thoughtful. Our family and others considered attending because we were genuinely interested in his message to the public regarding gun control and school violence. However, once we discovered he was going to charge us admission we refrained from doing so. It's laughable that Moore attempts to portray himself as an anti-establishment liberal who is the voice of the...
Republicans Going to the Mattresses?
Today's Washington Post offers hope to those Republicans who believe that the Senate has allowed the Democrats a pain-free filibuster option for too long on federal judiciary nominees: A brewing rebellion by conservative activists has prompted Senate Republican leaders to plan to devote at least 30 straight hours of debate next week to their bid to confirm a handful of judicial nominees being blocked by Democrats. The Republicans are bringing in food and cots for the "Justice for Judges Marathon," scheduled for Wednesday night through Friday morning. It seems like they may be starting to take the filibusters seriously. No one has ever filibustered federal judiciary nominees before (with the exception of Abe Fortas' Supreme Court nomination in the sixties), and the Democrats have done it four times this session. But their obstructionism hasn't gotten a lot of play because the Republicans have allowed them to filibuster without actually doing...
It Never Fails
I hate it when they cancel my favorite TV shows: Bad guys no longer have to fear the "L.A. Dragnet" crimebusters. ABC on Thursday canceled the show starring Ed O'Neill as police Sgt. Joe Friday. The series, based on the classic Jack Webb "Dragnet" series, had low ratings despite a second-season makeover. I could see this coming -- they had moved the show to the Dead Zone of network programming, Saturday nights -- but had hoped that the quality of the show and Dick Wolf's influence would keep it on the air a bit longer while it found its niche. I liked the original line-up but thought the second-season improvements were very good. I loved Ed O'Neill as Joe Friday, too. What a bummer. I'd call for a viewer protest, but three out of the five of us are out of town this weekend....
Progress in Iraq
Reuters reports that US forces have captured 12 terrorists involved in the rocket attack on the Baghdad hotel last month: In overnight raids U.S. troops captured 12 people suspected of involvement in a deadly attack last month on a Baghdad hotel where U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was staying, a top commander said Saturday. The suspects appeared to have links to the former regime of ousted president Saddam Hussein, said Brigadier General Martin Dempsey, commander of the U.S. Army's 1st Armored Division. I doubt that this will get a lot of play here, since it's Saturday and most people aren't watching the news. [What's your excuse? -- I have no life, that's why. Oh, and the First Mate is sick today, and Notre Dame is playing.] "Based on multiple sources who provided human intelligence, the 2nd Brigade of the 1st Armored Division conducted a raid overnight in western Baghdad...
Oil as an Unlimited Resource?
This may be world-changing. A company named Changing World Technologies claims that it can produce oil and natural gas by recycling any carbon-based waste, with an energy efficiency of 85%, and scalable to almost any size. Almost any size. That means, in Samizdata's words, If you live in the middle of the Australian outback, you can chuck your shite and animal carcasses into the hopper on one end... and fill up the old diesel RV from the other fifteen minutes later. Scalable energy production was the hope of the hydrogen fuel-cell crowd (myself included), but hydrogen distribution remained a difficult obstacle for practical use. In this case, the fuel would be mostly inert waste products already in abundant supply at almost every level of scale you can imagine. And the biggest benefit -- energy indepence for not only the US but everyone -- will almost pale in comparison to the...
Britain tried to spy on ally: report
I find it odd indeed that very little notice has been taken of this story from London's Sunday Times (reported by AFP): Britain's internal security service MI5 sought in 2001 to plant eavesdropping devices inside the walls of a London embassy belonging to one of its main allies, London's Sunday Times newspaper reported. ... "For four months from September 2001, MI5 infiltrated the embassy, stole codes used by embassy staff for sending secret messages, and planned to plant listening devices and remove documents," the Sunday Times said. The question is which one of Britain's "main allies" MI-5 penetrated. The composition of the Coalition limits the possible targets. The Sunday Times is enjoined from releasing that information, but offered tantalizing clues. This is from Cronaca, who had access to the original article: The Official Secrets Act prevents The Sunday Times from identifying the country concerned, but its leader has visited Tony...
November 9, 2003
North Korea Has the Bomb: CIA
You can thank the obstructive diplomacy of Jimmy Carter for this new analysis: The CIA has told Congress that it believes North Korea has mastered the technology of turning its nuclear fuel into functioning weapons, without having to prove their effectiveness through nuclear tests. The report goes beyond previous public CIA statements that North Korea built one or two weapons in the early 1990s -- a figure many intelligence experts believe has risen in the past few months. Carter insisted on a diplomatic solution that allowed North Korea simply to affirm that it wasn't pursuing nuclear weapons in exchange for all sorts of technical assistance. Even at the time when he was pursuing that fruitless policy, Kim Jong-Il already had a device or two and now can build as many as they like, while starving their people or herding them into labor camps. It's yet another reminder of the feckless...
Losing Faith?
The US government appears to be losing faith in the Iraqi Governing Council and may be considering alternatives: Increasingly alarmed by the failure of Iraq's Governing Council to take decisive action, the Bush administration is developing possible alternatives to the council to ensure that the United States can turn over political power at the same time and pace that troops are withdrawn, according to senior U.S. officials here and in Baghdad. The United States is deeply frustrated with its hand-picked council members because they have spent more time on their own political or economic interests than in planning for Iraq's political future, especially selecting a committee to write a new constitution, the officials added. "We're unhappy with all of them. They're not acting as a legislative or governing body, and we need to get moving," said a well-placed U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "They just don't...
Further thoughts on the very quiet MI-5 scandal
I've updated my post on the MI-5 scandal in Britain that's been handled very, very quietly. I hope I'm just being paranoid. I don't think so....
Demosophia on John Edwards
John Edwards is increasingly irrelevant, except as a Quayle-like VP candidate, but that doesn't stop Demosophia from one of the best political skewerings I've heard this election cycle: He's the kind of guy who would try to make a horse out of parts from a zebra, a hippo, and a giraffe, and then blame the resulting bloody mess on the poor quality of the animals. The actual post is not too much longer than that -- go read and enjoy....
The System is Broken
The continuous front-loading and jockeying of state primaries has led several states to cancel presidential primaries as a waste of time and money: Several states have moved to drop their presidential primaries next year, worried about costs in still-tight financial times and wondering if the political exercise would serve any purpose. Some say they can't afford the millions of dollars it costs to put on an election. Others say the decisions reflect the lopsided nature of modern primaries: The front-runner gets anointed by the media and campaign donors after the first few state primaries and the rest of the primaries are formalities. Quite frankly, it's well past time for Congress to take a hand in this process. What happens now is that presidential campaigns start up to eighteen months prior to the election, a lot of money and time gets spent, only to have candidates fall by the wayside early...
Critiquing Irish Music
I'm a huge fan of Irish folk music, as well as a student of Irish Gaelic, but I have to admit that this post by Bill had me laughing out loud yesterday. You can't excerpt this stuff -- you just have to go read it. Oh, and sorry for the cryptic post in Irish, Bill; I had meant to go back and post the translation and completely forgot about it....
Drug War Insanity
This one is all over the blogosphere today, and I hesitated to link to it, but it's just too outrageous to ignore: Gun-toting police burst into a South Carolina high school, ordering students to lie down in hall ways as they searched for drugs. The commando-style raid has parents questioning the wisdom of police tactics. The raid occurred Wednesday at Stratford High School in Goose Creek, S.C. Surveillance video obtained by CBS Affiliate WCSC in Charleston shows the police waving their guns and searching lockers as students lie flat on their stomachs or sides. Police officers burst in on a bunch of high-school kids, waving automatic weapons around and acting much like you'd expect from takeover-style bank robbers, and for what? "We received reports from staff members and students that there was a lot of drug activity. Recently we busted a student for having over 300 plus prescription pills. The...
November 10, 2003
Welcome to Sacramento, Mr. Governator
It didn't take long to indoctrinate Governor-elect Schwarzenegger into backstabbing, Sacramento style: The mystery began a month ago, when Lockyer revealed to a crowd of consultants, political scientists and journalists that he had broken ranks with the Democratic Party and voted for Schwarzenegger in the Oct. 7 recall election. Lockyer also seemed to trivialize allegations that Schwarzenegger mistreated and groped women over the span of three decades, dismissing the conduct as "frat boy" antics. But last week, Lockyer said in a news conference that the allegations aren't about to fade and deserve to be investigated — and he shared a few nuggets from a conversation with Schwarzenegger on the topic the day before. That infuriated Schwarzenegger's transition team, whose spokesman a few hours later accused Lockyer of betraying a confidence, in violation of attorney-client privilege. The battle escalated the next day. Lockyer told San Francisco radio station KGO that he...
But they were doing so well!
Not a great shock: CNN is reporting that Senator John Kerry has fired the manager of his struggling campaign: Democratic candidate John Kerry fired his campaign manager Sunday night in an attempt shake up his beleaguered presidential bid, The Associated Press learned. ... [Jim] Jordan will be replaced by longtime Democratic operative Mary Beth Cahill. Cahill has worked for Emily's List, a lobbying group on behalf of women's political issues and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts. Kerry was supposed to be the front runner, but as events unfolded, it appears that both Kerry and Howard Dean have been surprised by Dean's pole vault to the front of the pack, if you'll pardon the mixed metaphor. I think Dean expected to be able to sit around #2 or #3 until the primaries, snipe at Kerry and maybe Lieberman from behind and keep expectations low, and then claim momentum from a...
Even If It Succeeds, It Fails
It's difficult to understand Israel's thinking when it commits to lopsided prisoner swaps with terrorist groups: About 400 Palestinians and several dozen prisoners from Lebanon, Syria, Morocco, Sudan and Libya would be released in exchange for Israeli businessman Elhanan Tannenbaum and the bodies of three Israeli soldiers, all captured in October 2000. I have always believed that negotiating with terrorists on this basis is a sure way to incentivize them to continue their operations, especially in 400-1 ratios. The plan may fail anyway, as there is strong disagreement over terms: However, Nasrallah has said the deal would not go through without Samir Kantar, a Palestinian from Lebanon. Kantar stormed an apartment in the northern Israeli city of Nahariya in 1979, killing a man and his daughter. Another daughter died when her mother smothered her while trying to hide. ... Mohammed Fneish, a Hezbollah legislator, said the group would try to...
Dowd Watch x2 at the Daily Dish
Andrew Sullivan hits Maureen Dowd with two blasts today from his blog. I won't excerpt; just go read both, especially the second, where Andrew discovers the source of the "imminent" claim that's been obsessing Maureen of late....
The Lord Works in Mysterious Ways
This is just too weird to leave alone: A Chilean trapeze artist survived a dramatic plunge after he landed on a fat spectator who broke his fall. It's like something from a Fellini film, or maybe David Lynch. Nah, for David Lynch, you'd have to have a Little Person speaking backwards as well. (via Drudge Report)...
Cori Dauber Returns to Rantingprofs
For those of us who enjoyed Cori Dauber's prolific and excellent posts while guest-blogging at the Volokh Conspiracy, she's back at her home blog now. I've blogrolled Rantingprofs; be sure to add her to yours....
Tommy Franks Rejects Wes Clark as Presidential Material
The Clark campaign took another broadside from a former senior military commander: Gen. Tommy Franks, who retired after leading the first stage of this year's war against Iraq, says in a new report that Wesley Clark, another former general, would make a lousy president. "Absolutely not," said Franks, when asked if Clark, who recently joined the pack of presidential wannabes, would make a good commander-in-chief. This follows the comments previously made made by General Hugh Shelton, which alluded to integrity and character issues. That two former senior military peers would openly disparage General Clark's presidential campaign is unprecedented; in the military, normally great care is taken to support former comrades-in-arms, at least in terms of their leadership and their service. Nor is this the only odd thing about the Post story. He insinuates that his termination as commander during the Kosovo conflict was engineered by Secretary of Defense William Cohen...
November 11, 2003
CNN: Creating the News as We See Fit
CNN reportedly wrote and distributed questions for the Rock the Vote debate and required audience members to ask them, according to an LA Times report: CNN, which has marketed itself as an outlet for serious news, planted a question about computer preferences at last week's debate of the Democratic presidential candidates, according to the student who posed the query and on Monday wrote about it in an online forum of Brown University's Daily Herald. During the debate, cosponsored by the nonprofit Rock the Vote organization, Alexandra Trustman asked the candidates whether they preferred the PC or Mac format for their computers. Despite uncertainty about the relevance of the question, Trustman was told that she could not ask her own question: But when she arrived in Boston for the debate, she wrote, she was "handed a note card" with the question and told she couldn't ask her alternative "because it wasn't...
Hosting Matters Down: Another DoS Attack?
Instapundit, Power Line, and Little Green Footballs all are off-line this morning -- could this be another deliberate DoS attack on Hosting Matters? It could simply be a technical problem, but this is happening quite a bit lately. Don't forget that Instapundit's backup site is here; if this is a DoS attack, Glenn will probably post a message there soon. I don't know of any backup site for Power Line or LGF. UPDATE: Although I can't access Instapundit or the other Hosting Matters sites, they do seem to be up and running, as I am getting a lot of referrals from Instapundit this morning about the Rock the Vote story. Welcome to all of Glenn's faithful readers (which includes me), and I hope you enjoy your visit....
You (and Bush) are likely too dumb for this
MS-NBC published a funny column on how lucky we Americans are to have celebrities to inform us how stupid we are: If you’re an American, chances are there’s a celebrity who thinks you’re dumb. Maybe even stupid. Or an idiot. Or something worse, which we can’t print here. ... Jane Fonda was in Canada this past April and said: “I don’t know if a country where the people are so ignorant of reality and of history, if you can call that a free world.” ... Also in Canada, Martin Sheen said recently: “Every time I cross this border, I feel like I’ve left the land of lunatics. You are not armed and dangerous. You do not shoot each other. I always feel a bit more human when I come here.” Lunatics, ignorant people, dummies — even dumb puppies. Yes, we got ’em all here. And then they wonder why all...
Kerry Campaign Turmoil Deepens
The turmoil in the Kerry campaign deepened as two key officials quit in protest over Jim Jordan's firing: Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry (news - web sites)'s press secretary and deputy finance director quit Tuesday, adding to the bitter turmoil on Kerry's team after the dismissal of his campaign manager. Robert Gibbs, chief spokesman for the Massachusetts lawmaker, and deputy finance director Carl Chidlow quit in reaction to the firing of Jim Jordan, abruptly let go by Kerry Sunday night. Both expressed dissatisfaction with the campaign, according to officials. Kerry initiated the shake-up by firing Jordan, his campaign manager, to demonstrate that he intended to reverse the poor showing of his campaign against Howard Dean. Some Democrats feel that Kerry was the problem more than the people in his campaign, acting as if the nomination was his "entitlement". and allowing Dean's energy to blow him off of the stage. But...
Why the UN Can't Handle Iraq
Blackfive (The Paratrooper of Love) has a good post about the Srebrenica massacre in 1995 and why putting the UN in charge of Iraq is suicidal. He excerpts two articles from the Chicago Sun-Times and the Sydney Morning Herald, detailing the lawsuit being filed against the UN and the Dutch. He titles it, "Clark Would Bring In the UN," but in fairness it should be titled, "Every Democrat Running for President Would Bring In the UN." Blackfive has a good blog, too -- check it out. (via Instapundit)...
Latrell Sprewell: Old-School?
You have to love the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. This is the headline on a story about multi-millionaire basketball player Latrell Sprewell playing through an Achille's heel injury: Timberwolves: Old-school Sprewell plays with pain Old school? It turns out Sprewell also is a distinguished professor from the Old School. He plays in pain, as was evident in Saturday's 88-79 victory over the Heat, when the Wolves played the second of back-to-back games. Sprewell was having a hard time moving, but he wouldn't budge from the lineup. Every time he limped upcourt, dragging that left foot, he was making a statement. Okay. Let's cast our minds back to 1997, when Sprewell played for the Golden State Warriors and P.J. Carlesimo was the coach. The Constitutional Rights Foundation describes the "old-school" outlook of Latrell Sprewell in this Spring 1998 issue of Sports & The Law: Early in the season, the Warriors were losing a...
John Nerdahl, You're My Hero
The Strib published a counterpoint to its one-note, relentless campaign targeting President Bush from West Point graduateJohn Nerdahl: So the reasons for confronting Iraq was never just about WMD, Saddam's threat to the United States or his tyrannical regime. It's almost laughable that Saddam's overthrow is somehow illegitimate because, as the Star Tribune editorial noted, our nation is not equally willing to invade other tyrannical countries like Zimbabwe or Burma. Or that being in Iraq is somehow not about combating terrorism. Or that we are witnessing another Vietnam. Where is your intellectual honesty, objectivity and reasoned perspective? Your underlying motivation to get President Bush becomes obvious as you continue to obsess and "wring your hands" over such irrelevant and absurd analogies. Three cheers for Nerdahl for taking his argument directly to the source -- and at least one cheer for the Strib for printing it. As much as I disagree...
The Calico Cat Confesses
Michael Kantor over at The Calico Cat confesses to his secret vice of late: Despite the name of the show, Average Joe, these guys range from a little below average to downright ugly. I expected to hate the show like I've hated all other reality shows I've seen. But I was surprised to discover that I actually enjoyed the show and I'm looking forward to the second episode on Monday night. What's going on here? Have my tastes in entertainment sunk to the lowest common denominator? Will I take up bowling and hunting next week? Michael's post is, as always, well-written and entertaining. More so than the television show, I suspect, but then again I'm no fan of reality TV. He suspects that the guys are the butt of the joke despite the advertisements we've seen, depicting the show as a karmic payback to a pretty woman with overweening hubris....
Meryl Yourish Fisks Michael Moore
Meryl Yourish, another excellent blogger, fisks Michael Moore, albeit reluctantly: I almost never write about Michael Moore, because I find him a tiresome windbag. I saw him on The View a few weeks ago, and even the ladies of the ABC morning were fed up with his lying and dodging of questions. I have never seen a harsher interview on that show. They don't have transcripts available, but CNN's Kara Henderson asked the tough questions. But once she gets started, she gets rather enthusiastic. A sample: Let's think about why so many Europeans would have passports, and why so many Americans do not. Let's go look at a map of Europe. Okay, now let's go look at a map of America. Do you see something similar about the two maps? Right! Many European nations are the size of American states! Why, if you're German and you want to vacation in...
November 12, 2003
It's The Diva in All of Us
Syl Jones, a writer I don't normally recommend, has a good column in today's Strib about the growing sense of uncivility in today's society: At twilight a few weeks ago, on I-394 East, I witnessed yet another sign of our impending demise as a species. A young man held a "Howard Dean for President" sign on an overpass, waving at the passing cars. Directly in front of me, a bull-necked idiot driving a Jeep Wagoneer leaned out of his window and violently thrust his middle finger in the air, causing a temporary loss of vehicle stability that put me and several other drivers at risk of injury. To say that some people are angry these days is an understatement. The streets are boiling with unhappy, impatient and selfish people just spoiling for a fight. Sometimes, it's hard not to give them one. Jones presents a new theory of Divalution; if...
Best of Veteran's Day
In honor of my father (Korea), father-in-law (WWII, Korea, d. 1991), paternal uncles (WWII, Korea, peacetime), maternal uncles (Vietnam, peacetime), and cousins (peacetime, current), here are a few posts around the blogosphere that represent the best of the blogosphere's remembrances of Veteran's Day... Power Line has the best veteran's story, one of an unrecognized hero: Capt. Harry Hornbuckle. Venomous Kate reminds us of the everyday sacrifices of military families. Leave her a message telling her how much we appreciate both her and her husband. Michelle at A Small Victory has two notable posts about Veteran's Day. In the first, she talks about how much of our lives we take for granted, and how much of that is possible only due to the sacrifice of our military. In the second, she notes how a few mouthbreathers spent their Veteran's Day disrespecting that sacrifice. To our soldiers, past and present: thank you...
Executive Life, Now Dead, May Come Back to Haunt the French
Forbes has an update on the fallout of the Executive Life scandal, which may ensnare prominent French politicians (via Zonotics and Instapundit) : In April 1991 a California insurance company called Executive Life, having gone bust, became the object of an investigation by the state of California. In 1992 what had once been France's most successful bank, Crédit Lyonnais (now a decrepit institution), put together a deal whereby the bank would buy Executive Life's junk bond portfolio, and a new French insurance company would take over Executive Life's insurance business. At the time of the deal, Crédit Lyonnais was owned by the French state. Under U.S. federal law banks could not own insurance companies; under California law state-owned companies could not own insurance companies. The deal was agreed to because U.S. insurance regulators were assured that the new insurance company was independent of Crédit Lyonnais. ... The clash of cultures...
Kristof: Hold the Vitriol
Some words of warning to the left (and the right), courtesy of Nicholas Kristof in today's NY Times: Liberals have now become as intemperate as conservatives, and the result — everybody shouting at everybody else — corrodes the body politic and is counterproductive for Democrats themselves. My guess is that if the Democrats stay angry, then they'll offend Southern white guys, with or without pickups and flags, and lose again. We could argue about the origins of this polarity or who was angrier earlier, but at this point, both sides are equally guilty of irrational political hatred and it needs to stop, or at least those who indulge in this sort of behavior need to be marginalized. We are all Americans, and most of us come to our beliefs through heartfelt experiences, observations, and philosophy. We can learn from one another and we can compromise where necessary so that we...
Dead Ends: HOYA SAXA CARNIVAL!
Dead Ends has the new Carnival of the Vanities up and running, with a distinct Georgetown flavor: HOYA SAXA CARNIVAL! My entry on the overwhelming police response to raid a swinger's party is posted there, although I put my real name to it, instead of the blog name. I'll update this post later tonight on my faves from this week. UPDATE: As promised, here are my votes for the Carnival winners: Mark Pierce at Earthly Passions fisks it up on Newsweek's article on Dick Cheney. (He's on my blogroll now!) Porphyrogenitus has a lengthy, detailed deconstruction of the Clark plan on Iraq, and how it flies in the face of historical precedent and common sense. Blackfive posts a letter describing the inspiring events surrounding the memorial and burial of American heroes lost in battle. Bring a Kleenex. Outside the Beltway discusses why we all can't get along, refuting Matthew Yglesias,...
Consumerism in Baby Names, or Dipsticks On Parade
Another sign of the impending Apocalypse -- American parents are naming their offspring after commercial products: According to Social Security Administration research, out of the 4 million babies born nationwide in 2000, 55 Chevys, six Timberlands and seven DelMontes are about to enter preschool. And that's just the boys. Let's not forget the girls. Consider the 25 Infinitis, five Celicas, 164 Nauticas, 298 Armanis and 21 L'Oreals who turn 3 this year. Can our obsession with consumerism get any more crass? Can we possibly exhibit any more of American materialism than to name our own children after automobiles, cosmetics, and -- unbelievably -- cable television sports networks? So much for the little boy in Texas whose parents named their son ESPN (pronounced Espen). As far as Evans knows, only two babies in 2000 were named after a sports network. The other ESPN was reportedly born in Michigan a few months...
Filibuster: Your Remedy for Insomnia
I'm not linking to anything specific here, but just a couple of bipartisan thoughts on tonight's debate in the well of the Senate. I've been flipping back and forth (I can't miss a new episode of South Park, after all), and my insistence on watching the marathon debate claimed its first victim: my wife. She fell asleep at 7 pm and went to bed. My insomnia seems to be more resistant to the blathering, but it's getting to be a close-run thing. Right now, I'm watching Harry Reid, D-Nevada, who had a clever moment earlier. He claimed he had a chart showing the administration's efforts to create jobs, and put up a blank white board. He then said, "If you turn it around, it shows the exact same data." Despite everything, he's pretty entertaining. Now, Charles Schumer, D-NY, keeps pointing at the score, 168-4, saying that the 4 were rejected,...
Poll: Bush Approval Rating on Economy Up
I haven't seen too much of these poll numbers today -- it's enough to make one believe in that mythical left-wing media bias: Public approval of President Bush's handling of the economy has increased amid signs that the economy is recovering, according to a poll out Wednesday. Half in the NBC-Wall Street Journal poll, 50 percent, approved of Bush's handling of the economy, up from 43 percent who approved two months ago. Bush's overall job approval was at 51 percent, with 44 percent not approving. That's largely unchanged from that same poll two months ago - when he was at 49 percent. Despite the relentless carping Bush has endured, his polling continues to improve on the economy. Since his economic packages were passed by Congress, we've had growth in every quarter, and now the employment numbers are falling into line, too. The AP released this story at 7:32 pm today....
One More Time
If you haven't yet done so, be sure to drop by Electric Venom and let Venomous Kate know how much you appreciate the sacrifice that her and her husband are making for his defense of our freedoms. Her husband is about to be shipped out but is in limbo at the moment, and Kate's feeling the stress. Multiply that by all of the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines who put their lives on the line every day for us, and think about how awe-inspiring it is that the best of our young men and women are compelled to sacrifice so much to keep us from harm. Just drop by and say thank you. She can use the support....
November 13, 2003
We're From the Government, We're Here to Help
A Minneapolis couple who called for medical advice after a home birth nearly lost custody of their children -- and now they're suing the city and the police: As they had with many of their eight other children, Daniel and Karen Mathias chose for Karen to give birth to Gabriel in their Minneapolis home last Christmas. Their call to a hospital the next day seeking advice on the newborn's eating behavior ended with child protection workers phoning, police knocking on their door and what the couple contend was a forced trip to a hospital. ... A hospital staff member who called back that evening "became agitated" on learning the baby had been born at home and insisted that he be brought in immediately and examined. Karen Mathias didn't believe it was necessary. The baby appeared happy and healthy. She said in an interview that she intended to take the child...
Generalissimo Franco Is Still Dead
I noticed this morning that the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and New York Times still have not put Bush's rising poll numbers anywhere on their main web pages. The Minneapolis Star Tribune doesn't even carry the story on its Politics section. MS-NBC has a prominent link on their main web page, but since NBC sponsored the poll, that makes sense. CNN? Nothing on its main page, nothing on its Politics page. Seattle Times? Nothing, not even on its wire service. AP wire on Yahoo? It's right there, in time order. Remember when Bush's numbers were falling? Did you have to search all over the place for that story, or was it headline news? But there's no such thing as a left-wing bias in the media. Riiiiiiiiiiiiight....
Moore No More: Alabama Chief Justice Removed
But -- but -- that order was a lawful order, given by a superior court with proper jurisdiction, and Moore was bound by his oath as an officer of the court to obey it. An oath, by the way, invoking the same God he claims to defend!
Deuling Dodos
German environmentalists face a difficult choice -- can you sacrifice one species to save another? A protected species of bird is devouring rare fish in the German state of Bavaria and creating a dilemma for local officials who now want federal permission to kill birds that once appeared headed for extinction. ... "The problem is that a protected bird is eating protected fish," a spokesman for the Bavarian environment ministry said this week. Eager to save the fish from extinction in the wild, Bavaria has asked the federal government for permission to reduce the bird population, for example by shooting them or taking their eggs. It's fairly obvious that one of these endangered critters is going to have to be scaled back, either through intervention (the birds) or through inaction (the fish). Careful management of the cormorant population may save the fish. Is that approach likely to be followed? Well...
When Dreams Come True ...
Either this guy was having a flashback to a fraternity hazing stunt, or he really likes the casual look: Despite the rain and wind, a man decided to visit a Marshall [MN] convenience store wearing nothing but his ``birthday suit.'' The 38-year-old man was staying at a local motel. He ran from his room about a half-block and across one of Marshall's busiest streets to the store on Wednesday. Did you ever have one of those dreams where you are doing routine tasks when you suddenly discover you're naked? I don't think they're much fun, but to each his own. He's living the dream, all right! But what did he expect to do at the convenience store? A store worker said the man appeared to be trying to steal things. The manager was backing out of the parking lot, noticed the naked man entering the store and went in to...
November 14, 2003
Our Greatest Ally
Tony Blair gives an interview to the muscularly-named Stryker McGuire and demonstrates why America is blessed to count Blair and the British as our friends and allies. MS-NBC published some excerpts: Blair on leadership in the face of popular dissent: Firstly, on the really big issues, you owe people your leadership. There is no point in doing a job like this unless you do that. I believe passionately in the cause to which I have committed myself. ... There is a resurgent anti-Americanism. Now I happen to think that is wrong and misguided, but it is our job to go out there and show it is misguided, which is why I think it is important that President Bush is coming. Blair on progress and the seeming lack of it against terror: There is a stage at which when you begin to fight back, the conflict can sometimes seem even more...
But Mumia Is a Martyr
Aaron McGruder, who draws the "Boondocks" comic strip, considers Condoleezza Rice a "murderer", and apparently the NAACP agrees: NAACP Chairman Julian Bond said over the weekend that he agreed with political cartoonist Aaron McGruder's characterization of National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice as "a murderer." ... "I don't like her because she's a murderer," the cartoonist announced. The charged drew immediate condemnation from Armstrong Williams, who complained, "That is totally out of line to say she's a murderer." Unfazed, McGruder repeated the accusation, stretching out his words, "S-h-e'-s a m-u-r-d-e-r-e-r." What did Julian Bond, longtime civil rights activist and now the chairman of the NAACP, have to say about McGruder's accusation? Certainly not words of temperance or support for a successful African-American woman in high government office: "I generally agree with his politics 100 percent and I think he explained himself well," the NAACP chief said. The NAACP's message is clear...
Lileks Is On Fire
Today's Bleat is unbelievably good; go read it now. Need convincing? Then Ted Rall wrote a column called “Why We Fight” in the voice of an Iraqi “resistance” fighter. I suppose it’s intended to help us understand the mindset of the enemy. Eh. The French have a saying: his head, it is filled with urine. Or they should have such a saying; I’m sure it would sound elegant and dismissive. These people aren’t the loyal opposition anymore; they’re just the opposition. They may say they love America, but they love some idealized nonexistent America that can never exist as long as there’s individuality and free will. They’re like people who say they love women and beat their wife because she doesn’t look like the Playboy centerfold. I’m sick of the lot of them. As for Rall, who cares about him? He’ll get his reward: the great yawning indifference of history....
Goodness Gracious: G!
In honor of Venomous Kate's declaring today G-day, here are a few Gs for you:
And You Thought a 40-Hour Talk Marathon Was Stupid
Do you want to know how ridiculous this Senate nomination debate has become? Then check out the flap over the comments made by Sen. Zell Miller regarding Justice Janice Rogers Brown: "The Democrats in this chamber refuse to stand and let her do it. They're standing in the doorway, and they've got a sign: Conservative African-American women need not apply. And if you have the temerity to do so your reputation will be shattered and your dignity will be shredded. Gal, you will be lynched," Miller said. Well, Zell's fellow Democrats were aghast at Zell's choice of analogies, as you might imagine, and all of the rhetorical cannons were fired: "I was offended. I think it was unfortunate," Daschle said. "I think those within the civil rights leadership who have commented and have asked for an apology are right." ... "Either Senator Miller has conveniently forgotten a frightening period of...
November 15, 2003
CNN.com - Car bombs rock Istanbul - Nov. 15, 2003
Terrorists struck against Jewish synagogues again with car bombs, this time in Istanbul: At least 15 people were killed and 146 injured Saturday morning when two cars laden with explosives simultaneously detonated near two Jewish synagogues in Istanbul, according to the Turkish interior minister. Turkish officials believe the explosions -- which took place early Saturday morning on the Jewish Sabbath -- were a coordinated terror attack. Apparently the dead and injured were passers-by, as the synagogues were mostly empty. Turkish media reported the Islamic Great Eastern Raiders Front had claimed responsibility for the attacks, but government officials in Ankara suspect the attacks were carried out by terrorists outside the country, possibly al Qaeda. If it is al-Qaeda, they seem to be killing more Muslims than anyone else these days. It would appear that their ability to mount attacks has become greatly reduced to the Middle East area. Hopefully, all those...
Diversity in Athletics
No matter how good an athlete you were, no matter how important an executive you are -- it's never too late to make a complete ass out of yourself, as former Dodgers and Angels pitcher Bill Singer demonstrated: New York Met official Bill Singer, a former All-Star pitcher with the Dodgers and Angels, directed racially insensitive remarks at Dodger executive Kim Ng in deriding her Chinese heritage this week, baseball officials who witnessed the incident said Friday. What were the comments anyway, you ask? Some critique of current Chinese political philosophy? A crack about Confucius? Mocking Mao? According to witnesses, Singer approached Ng in the bar of the hotel where the meetings occurred. After asking Ng, the highest-ranking Asian American in the major leagues, questions about her background in a sarcastic tone, Singer began speaking nonsensically in mock Chinese before eventually leaving. ... Two officials within earshot described the exchange....
Case Closed: The Most Important Story of the War, So Far
The Senate Intelligence Commitee has evidence, much of it developed during the Clinton administration, that Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein have been working together for over a decade. I'm not going to excerpt it; read the whole thing. Then, ask yourself this: When did Rockefeller's staff write that partisan memo, and if it was after October 27, why do you think the Democrats are suddenly desperate to make the Bush administration look like it's lying? Maybe because this information (and more on its way from the Iraqi Intelligence Service's files) will pull the rug out from under anti-war candidates like Howard Dean and John Kerry?...
So Many Links, So Little Time
A few thank-yous to some very nice people in the blogosphere today ... First off, thank you to Venomous Kate at Electric Venom (a daily read for me) for including me on both the Snark Hunt and The Letter Of The Day Is H Big Trunk over at Power Line included me in today's excellent posts by linking back to my comments about Zell Miller and the end of the civil-rights movement. Merde in France has been sending readers over to me all day long. If you want a window on Europe, especially France, MiF is a stylish must-read. Sometimes I try reading the posts in French, but my high-school French hasn't been able to keep up ... Thanks again, folks!...
Opus Returns! Garbo Speaks!
It was great fun. If it got strident towards the end of its run, if it introduced stupid characters like that *&^%^%$ cockroach, if it couldn't handle female characters -- we forgave all that.
It was Bloom friggin' County, man. Until it became Outland, which became inexplicable, and then became extinct.
No More Justice Moore (washingtonpost.com)
The Washington Post hs an excellent editorial wrapping up the removal of Justice Moore in Alabama yesterday: But civil disobedience is not the province of judges, who are not in any event supposed to serve as generals in the culture wars. When the federal courts say what the Constitution means, the duty of every state court judge in the nation is to obey. This is the crux of the matter, in my mind. As I said before, I wasn't unsympathetic to Justice Moore's rather ostentatious display, nor did I feel that the court order removing the monument (all three tons of it) was critical to the safety of the republic. Once ordered, though, Moore was duty-bound to obey it, and his refusal to do so unequivocally disqualifies him for the bench. That's what lunatic-fringe pundits like Michael Savage don't understand....
Oh Yeah, That's Useful
One of my favorite blogs, Second Nature, has a post on what may be the weirdest idea in agriculture (from the Sun-Times): An Oregon scientist inspired by Homer Simpson has successfully created "tomacco" -- a tomato plant that contains nicotine. I remember that episode! But, ah, I think Matt Groening was joking around, dude. Baur grew the plants again, this time hollowing a portion of each out and grafting them together. The plant took form, and after weeks of pruning, he now has a large tobacco root that has sprouted a tomato branch. The branch has yielded one ripe fruit, and tests have shown the leaves contain nicotine -- the fruit will be tested for nicotine today. The scientist says he expects the fruit will contain much higher levels of the addictive ingredient. ... But Baur is having a Dr. Frankenstein moment, noting that nicotine, when ingested orally, can be...
November 16, 2003
Dixie Democrats and States Rights
The Washington Times published an analysis of Southern Democrat attitudes rolling into this election cycle, and just the number of Democrats talking on the record should be discouraging for the Dean campaign's desire to reach out to Southerners: Interviews with Democratic chairmen throughout the Southern and border states elicit a range of surprisingly frank emotions about the party's feisty, Northeastern front-runner — from impressive to wait-and-see discomfort to fear that his liberal views on Iraq, tax cuts and social issues once again would allow Mr. Bush to sweep the region, as he did in 2000 against Al Gore. Most acknowledge the growing conservatism that dominates their region, and some concede it will be difficult, if not impossible, to carry many Southern states if the nominee is out of step with mainstream Southern values. What struck me was the number of people in Democratic leadership posts that were willing to be...
Worst Damn Sports Analogy, Period
No story to link to here -- I'm watching the Vikings-Raiders game, and the Raiders are running all over the Vikes, who haven't helped the defense out by coughing up the ball at least four time. They're down by eleven in the 4th quarter. The announcer, Bill Maas, decided that he would be clever about the Vike's lack of run defense. This is what he said: "The Vikings need a whole case of Immodium, because they can't stop Oakland's runs." Ha ha, hee hee. Sam Rosen was just about speechless after that crack, if you'll pardon my pun. I'd say Maas needs something to stop his diarrhea of the mouth. And the Vikes just fumbled again. Oh goody....
It Could Have Been Worse, Comrade
The Commissar announces the results of a series of investigations of blogosphere denizens. Lucky for me, I've only been demoted (to Corporal? Bleah), and dishonorably discharged. I could have been purged in a more Stalinist manner, like a few others at the Politburo Diktat. Go visit the Commissar and be sure to have your confessions ready....
A Prayer For Israel (Psalm 83)
If you have a few minutes, check out this beautiul presentation by A Christian Witness of a Prayer for Israel based on Psalm 83. (via Sophorist and Politburo Diktat)...
BuzzMachine Goes On the Offensive
Jeff Jarvis at BuzzMachine takes on anti-Americanism and makes a no-apologies stand against it: Pardon me, but I'm going to take a very dangerous and contrarian and by some views shrill, right-wing, illiberal stance and I'll take your barbs and the Guardian's with pride: I'm pro-American. Let me say that again, because I am one and because I was attacked and damned near killed because I am one (and yes, that matters): I am pro-American. This quote came from a previous Jarvis post, but he builds on this thought and expands on it: Let's be very clear: Just as anti-Semitism led directly to the Holocaust, anti-Americanism led directly to September 11th. Demonizing the people of this country made it acceptable to some and a goal for some to see fanatics murder thousands of us, just as demonizing Jews made it acceptable for fanatics to murder millions of them. I'm not...
Movie Review: Auto Focus (2002)
What an odd film; it plays like a twisted version of Rock Star without the third act. If it weren't a true story, you'd almost suspect it was written by Focus on the Family as an R-rated Afternoon Special-sort of cautionary tale. Don't peek at nudie magazines because this could happen to you! Greg Kinnear plays Bob Crane, the star of "Hogan's Heroes" whose TV success haunted him until his murder in Phoenix in the mid-70s. Kinnear is excellent, as is Willem Dafoe as John Carpenter, the man whose sycophantic friendship allowed Crane to give free reign to the worst of his sexual demons by supplying him with the video equipment and the girls to keep a constant party rolling. Where most movies of this type use drugs or alcohol as the addiction, Auto Focus uses sex and pornography. The entire movie centers on the sick relationship between Crane and...
November 17, 2003
India & Syria: The New Laurel & Hardy
Who knew that when India and Syria decided to get together that it would produce such comedic possibilities: India and Syria want the United Nations (news - web sites) to play a major role in Iraq (news - web sites) where the priority must be to restore security, said a joint statement to mark the departure of Indian premier Atal Behari Vajpayee. The two countries said it was "vital that the Iraqi people take charge of their own destiny", and for the United Nations to "play a large role in the economic and political reconstruction of Iraq". Wow, wouldn't that be great! Oh, wait a moment -- the UN buggered out of Iraq when their security forces allowed terrorists to bomb their facility. Their security forces, of course, were their former Iraqi Intelligence Services minders under the Saddam Hussein regime. So we should allow the UN to use Saddam's Gestapo...
He Still Doesn't Get It
Gray Davis, who is out of a job as of today, apparently still entertains notions of apolitical domeback, despite his recent recall: After five years in office, Gray Davis leaves the Capitol today on an ignominious note, the only California governor ever recalled by voters. But far from being chastened, the 60-year-old Democrat has surprised longtime associates with a reaction that some characterize as deep denial of his fate. He has hinted at a political comeback — sometimes in a joking fashion, at other times seriously — noting that his removal from office so early in his second term means he still could serve another term as governor, said people close to Davis, all speaking on the condition of anonymity. Nothing is impossible in politics -- after all, who would have thought that Gore could have screwed up a "gimme" Presidential election in 2000, partly by losing his own home...
Creative Thinking By Coalition Leadership
Today's Washington Post carries a story about creative thinking in opposition to the insurgency emanating from the Tikrit area and how it's allowed the Coalition to gather better intelligence, as well as more cooperation from local Iraqis: Frustrated by a persistent insurgency, the U.S. military has surrounded ousted president Saddam Hussein's birthplace with concertina wire, issued identification cards to all male residents and begun controlling access to this wealthy enclave of Hussein relatives on the outskirts of Tikrit. In order to pass through the wire and military checkpoints, all males have to present their ID cards. No card, no access, either in or out of Auja. The result is a much clearer picture of the town's residents, mostly wealthy Hussein backers and family, and better face-to-face contact with more sympathetic Iraqi leaders around the area. It avoided the intrusive and dangerous door-to-door searches that would have otherwise been necessary to...
A Challenge to the Blogosphere
So my challenge is this: Link to a different argument in the WS article each day and put your own thoughts on it in your blog. Skeptical? Good! Post about that. Because whether this memo is true or false, either way it is a huge story and deserves much more press than it's currently receiving. Keep going every day until we start to get some firm answers about the veracity and reliability of this data.
QandO Fisks the Latest E-Mail Trash
Jon at QandO does a terrific job of fisking the latest e-mail blitz: George W. Bush's "resume". A sample: We garnered the most sympathy for the U.S. after the World Trade Center attacks and less than a year later I made the U.S. the most hated country in the world, the largest failure of diplomacy in world history. Losing sympathy was the largest diplomatic failure in world history? Gosh, I'd have thought it was, you know, the tiff that started WW1, or something. Do tell.....what did we plan to do with that sympathy? Was there some sort of bank account in which it would have gathered interest and paid for our funeral after we'd ignored the threat for a bit longer? And could the US possibly be the most hated, because of government controlled media propaganda like this? The United States wasn't "loved" even in the halcyon days of the...
Promises Kept, But Miles To Go Before He Sleeps
Arnold Schwarzenegger was sworn into office today after a historic recall election, and immediately kept a key campaign promise: Newly inaugurated California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed an order rolling back a 300 percent increase in state vehicle registration fees Monday, just hours after taking the oath of office. Executive Order No. 1 repealed the $4 billion increase in the "car tax," imposed earlier this year to help shrink a massive budget shortfall from $38 million to $8 million. Analysts believe the fee hike contributed heavily to his predecessor's defeat. Reversing the car tax was one of actor Schwarzenegger's leading campaign promises. The revenue loss will complicate his goals of balancing the budget, but perhaps at this stage it is more important to keep promises and build trust with an electorate whose trust has been badly bruised the past few years. His first legislative target appears to be the enormous workers-compensation...
Second Nature: Yeah, that's Me
To thine own self be true ... Shakespeare said it first, but sometimes we bloggers need a reminder of this. Nothing gets more personal than a journal, and a large part of blogging is really what used to be called journaling, an exercise I remember well from acting workshops I took back when I thought I might be the next Anson Williams, a pathetic ambition if I ever heard one. Steve at Second Nature has a good post calling us back to this truth, along with another: Never bring a knife to a gunfight. I am not sure who coined that phrase, but it probably wasn't the guy with the knife. Steve describes the desire we all feel to post on every hot topic in the news, as if we're the mainstream media and are somehow obligated to remark on every single bit of data that winds up on our...
Let's Keep the British Protests in Perspective
All we're hearing in our newspapers is that Britain's about to erupt with anti-American hatred in response to a visit from President Bush. Well, it's a bit overblown, as the Guardian reports in a new poll taken amongst the British electorate: The survey shows that public opinion in Britain is overwhelmingly pro-American with 62% of voters believing that the US is "generally speaking a force for good, not evil, in the world". It explodes the conventional political wisdom at Westminster that Mr Bush's visit will prove damaging to Tony Blair. Only 15% of British voters agree with the idea that America is the "evil empire" in the world. Just as here, the UK has a large, diverse population, and it's not difficult to come up with a few thousand mouthbreathers that would be happy to loudly protest damn near anything, especially a representative of capitalism and military strength. Supposedly, Tony...
November 18, 2003
Challenge, Chapter 2: Osama's Peace with Saddam
Blogosphere Challenge, Part 2: Osama's Peace with Saddam. One of the constant themes of the anti-war media blitz was that Osama and Saddam were enemies due to Saddam's secularism (or skin-deep Islamism prior to the first Gulf War) and Osama's fanatical Islamist beliefs.
UN Buggers Out -- Again
The UN, which purports to be the only agency that can restore democracy to war-torn areas, is abandoning its efforts in Afghanistan after the death of a French aid worker: The U.N. refugee agency began pulling foreign staff out of large swaths of southern and eastern Afghanistan (news - web sites) on Tuesday in the wake of the killing of a French worker, a decision that could affect tens of thousands of Afghan returnees. ... The withdrawal of international staff follows a series of attacks on the United Nations in recent days, including the drive-by killing of Bettina Goislard, a 29-year-old UNHCR worker, as she traveled through a bazaar in a clearly marked U.N. vehicle in the city of Ghazni, 60 miles southwest of the capital. That same day saw a bomb attack on a U.N. vehicle in eastern Paktia province. And on Nov. 11, a car bomb exploded outside...
Mass. Court Strikes Down Gay-Marriage Ban
I'm sure this news will fan the flames of the blogosphere and talk radio for the next few days: Massachusetts' highest court ruled 4-3 Tuesday that the state's ban on same- sex marriage is unconstitutional and gave lawmakers 180 days to come up with a solution that would allow gay couples to wed. ... "Whether and whom to marry, how to express sexual intimacy, and whether and how to establish a family — these are among the most basic of every individual's liberty and due process rights," the majority opinion said. "And central to personal freedom and security is the assurance that the laws will apply equally to persons in similar situations." "Barred access to the protections, benefits and obligations of civil marriage, a person who enters into an intimate, exclusive union with another of the same sex is arbitrarily deprived of membership in one of our community's most rewarding...
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Slate Picks Up the Scent
Slate (no friend of the Bush administration) has picked up the story of the Hayes memo and the Saddam/al-Qaeda connection in two articles today; the first revisits the thread of the Prague-Mohammed Atta visit, and the second deals directly with the apathy of the press regarding the Feith memo. (via Croooow Blog) Edward Jay Epstein retraces the investigation into Mohammed Atta's travels prior to 9/11, specifically the Czech intelligence report -- never repudiated by the Czechs -- that Atta met with Iraqi officials known to be IIS operatives: The reason there had been joint Czech-American interest in the case traced back to the December 1998 when al-Ani's predecessor at the Iraq Embassy, Jabir Salim, defected from his post. In his debriefings, Salim said that he had been supplied with $150,000 by Baghdad to prepare a car-bombing of an American target, the Prague headquarters of Radio Free Europe. (This bombing never...
November 19, 2003
Challenge, Chapter 3: Independent Confirmation from the IIS
Taking a further look into Stephen Hayes' report on the Feith memo, we can see that Osama and Saddam spent the years between their initial rapprochement and the 1998 embassy bombings building the relationship between al-Qaeda and the Iraqi Intelligence Services (IIS). In 1998, as tension was building between Saddam and UNSCOM, Iraq's upper echelons were escalating contacts with the terrorist group: IN ADDITION TO THE CONTACTS CLUSTERED in the mid-1990s, intelligence reports detail a flurry of activities in early 1998 and again in December 1998. A "former senior Iraqi intelligence officer" reported that "the Iraqi intelligence service station in Pakistan was Baghdad's point of contact with al Qaeda. He also said bin Laden visited Baghdad in Jan. 1998 and met with Tariq Aziz." 11. According to sensitive reporting, Saddam personally sent Faruq Hijazi, IIS deputy director and later Iraqi ambassador to Turkey, to meet with bin Laden at least...
A Taste of Defeatism at the LA Times
LA Times publishes a featured analysis today that reviews al-Qaeda's effectiveness and strategy in the wake of 9/11. Not surprisingly for the LA Times, it focuses on the negative: "Al Qaeda as an ideology is now stronger than Al Qaeda as an organization," said Mustafa Alani of the Royal United Services Institute for Defense and Security Studies in London. "What we are witnessing now is a major shift in Al Qaeda's strategy. I believe it is successful. Now they are not on the defensive. They are on the offensive." Large-scale terrorist groups never go on the defensive, unless you get them all trapped in a building, SLA-style. By their nature, they operate as distributed networks. This was true even prior to 9/11. It's not as if the entire group arrived in Kenya and Tanzania to bomb our embassies; they operate in cells. A U.S.-led assault on Al Qaeda has left...
Great Security at Buckingham Palace
Security breaches like this happen here in America, too, but with all of the protests going on over President Bush's visit, you'd think a little bit of double-checking would be in order: The Daily Mirror newspaper, claiming to have exposed a security breach at Buckingham Palace, said its reporter had been given full access to Queen Elizabeth II's residence on his first day on the job two months ago. The Mirror said reporter Ryan Parry had been due to serve breakfast Wednesday morning to key Bush aides. It said Parry quit his job as a royal footman at midnight Tuesday. It's not unusual for new hires to begin working ahead of receiving their security clearances, but very unusual to be given complete access to the most sensitive areas, regardless of where you work: Parry said he gave one real reference and one fake reference when he applied for work at...
Don't We Look Peachy?
I know every media outlet in the nation is covering the Michael Jackson/Neverland Ranch search story, instead of something a bit more useful, but our national shame has reached international status. Merde in France has posted about this, linking to a Canadian story, with this lovely little quote from The King of Pop: Jackson denounced media coverage of the search in a statement released by Backerman to The Associated Press. "I've seen lawyers who don't represent me and spokespeople who do not know me speaking for me. These characters always seem to surface with dreadful allegations just as another project, an album, a video is being released," the Jackson statement said. Yes, it's not enough that this well-known creep manages to embarrass us internationally, he also manages to plug his latest project along with it. Hey, I guess there's no such thing as bad publicity, is there? Also, Merde in...
A Little Perspective from The Politburo Diktat
There may be some in the blogosphere who are foolish enough to underestimate the Politburo Diktat, but not me, and this post is one reason why. The Commissar makes a point about commitment to victory by using a particularly apt historical analogy: Da, Comrade, Great Patriotic War. That was war. Commissar not understand Americans. Are they at war? Did enemies kill 3,000 citizens in one morning? How does America want to win war? Sit around campfire, on Peace Rug, sing Kumbaya? In Great Patriotic War, Soviet Union lost 20 million in four years of war. 5 million a year. 400,000 a month. 13,000 per day. 500 per hour. Comrades, by this scale, America has been at war in Iraq for about one hour. Now you talk "exit strategy?" Read the entire post. The Commissar has a terrific blog, both in content and style. And no, I'm not sucking up to...
Wandering Aimlessly Through the Blogosphere
Random sightings while taking a stroll through the blogosphere this evening ...
Nolan Myers' Family Speaks Out
Some of you may remember this post regarding the death of a Minnesota teen in North Carolina, who was hit by a drunk driver while being a Good Samaritan and trying to assist stranded motorists on Route 54. Nolan was one of six people killed by Larry Robert Veeder, whose blood alcohol level was .18, which is over twice the legal threshold in most states, including North Carolina. Veeder was charged with six counts of involuntary manslaughter. This was the story as I excerpted it from the Star Tribune (links no longer valid): When Nolan Myers saw somebody was in need he was always willing to lend a helping hand, his family and friends said. ... He and three friends came upon the accident and stopped to be good samaritans. As Myers, 18, of Carver, Minn., reached one of the injured motorists, the driver of a speeding van plowed into...
The Master/Slave Controversy
Instapundit links to a post at Boing Boing that details a benighted response to the electronics industry-standard terms of master and slave. This is from an e-mail sent to technology vendors from Los Angeles County: One such recent example included the manufacturer's labeling of equipment where the words ''Master/Slave'' appeared to identify the primary and secondary sources. Based on the cultural diversity and sensitivity of Los Angeles County, this is not an acceptable identification label. We would request that each manufacturer, supplier and contractor review, identify and remove/change any identification or labeling of equipment or components thereof that could be interpreted as discriminatory or offensive in nature before such equipment is sold or otherwise provided to any County department. While I hardly ever pass up a chance to tweak the nose of my native LA, this issue came up years ago at my former company which will remain nameless (a...
November 20, 2003
Challenge, Chapter 4: Stephen Hayes Responds
Stepping away from the first Weekly Standard article for today, Stephen Hayes writes a powerful rebuttal to both the Pentagon non-response response and the naysayers in the mainstream media using it to justify their inaction (via Power Line): IF THE INTELLIGENCE REPORTING in the memo was left out of earlier "finished intelligence products" because the reporting is inaccurate, it seems odd that it would form the basis of briefings given to the secretary of Defense, the director of Central Intelligence, and the vice president. And it would be stranger still to include such intelligence in a memo to a Senate panel investigating the potential misuse of intelligence. If, on the other hand, the information in the Feith memo is accurate, it changes everything. An operational relationship between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, as detailed in the memo, would represent a threat the United States could not afford to ignore....
Turks In The Crosshairs Again
Blasts rocked Istanbul in another twin set of bombings this morning, killing at least 15 and injuring hundreds in attacks aimed at British interests: Two blasts have rocked Istanbul, killing at least 15 people and devastating both the HSBC Bank headquarters and British consulate in an apparent suicide attack the government has linked to Islamist militants. Turkish television, quoting city health officials, said that besides the 15 killed, 320 people were injured. Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said the strikes on Thursday bore "all the hallmarks of the international terrorism operations practised by al Qaeda and associated organisations". While Turkey has strong Western connections and is the only Islamic democracy operating in the Middle East, it is ruled by an Islamist party at the moment, making Turkey an odd target, especially since Turkey refused to militarily support the Coalition, inflicting an embarrassing diplomatic setback to George Bush just weeks after Bush...
Update on Miss Afghanistan
For all of you fans of beauty in the cause of freedom, the Los Angeles Times has an update to the story of Miss Afghanistan, who made headlines around the world when she competed in the Miss Earth pageant in Manila: Miss Afghanistan knew she was taking a risk when she strutted across a Manila catwalk in a bright red bikini. ... But she did not know she would be denounced by the government of her native land, criticized by fellow Afghans — even in the U.S. — and at the same time hailed by others as a role model for girls and women in the "new Afghanistan." All because of a bikini — and a modest one at that. Where is Vida Samadzai now? She's at Cal State Fullerton, my alma mater, where I managed to avoid graduating by avoiding classes. She's studying international business and communications, and is...
She Wants to Throw The Book at Bambi
I don't know why I moved from LA to Minnesota. I honestly thought that I would feel safer here, but then I readthis story: Laura Lee Nicholas heard a couple of taps on her bedroom window Wednesday morning. Her day was about to get very interesting. ``All of a sudden, I heard this really bad crash,'' the 21-year-old college student said. ``I thought it was a burglar.'' She hid under her blanket. Noise coming from her dresser followed, as she imagined a burglar taking everything out of her dresser. Nicholas thought the burglar had left her room, which is on the ground level of her parents' home. So she peeked out from under the blanket to grab a cell phone. That's when she saw a deer, staring right back at her. She still called police, and two officers quickly led the deer back outside. It was turned over to a...
They Don't Just Eat Donuts in Eagan
In Eagan, Minnesota, the police chief isn't a desk jockey, at least not full time: A teenager who allegedly burglarized eight Eagan homes in less than three hours Tuesday didn't realize who was waiting for him when he headed for the street. ... Out of the unmarked squad stepped Eagan Police Chief Kent Therkelsen. Therkelsen drew his gun and ordered the 16-year-old boy to the ground. The youth complied, going face down. Less than a minute later, officer Paul Maier pulled up to assist his boss. Chief Therkelsen has an engaging sense of humor about the incident: Therkelsen said he doesn't want to turn Tuesday's arrest into "the Kent show." He credits the hard work of his officers and the quick action of citizens. He just happened to be in the right place at the right time, he said. "My theory is this guy was looking for the oldest cop...
Evolution in Weblogs
I noticed that I have moved up the food chain again, going from Flappy Bird to Adorable Little Rodent in the TTLB Ecosystem. Captain's Quarters is currently ranked in the mid-700s, and we're averaging about 300 hits a day. (At that rate, I'll need 28 months to hit Venomous Kate's latest milestone, and she did it in 8 months!! Way to go, Kate!) Thanks to everyone who's blogrolled me, or has been linking to my posts!...
UN Details al-Qaeda Threat
The UN, which has consistently been AWOL in the war on terror, reports on al-Qaeda capabilities: Some members of al Qaeda most likely possess portable surface-to-air missiles and may use them to target military transport planes, a U.N. report says. The threat was among several findings detailed in the report by the United Nations' al Qaeda and Taliban Sanctions Committee which also cited a shifting of the terror network's strategy, a move towards "softer" targets and a warning the group was working towards a biological or chemical attack. Gee, I wonder where they might have gotten chemical or biological weapons?? The report also identifies Iraq as "fertile ground" for al Qaeda, which receives the "funds it needs from charities, deep pocket donors, and business and criminal activities, including the drug trade." Iraq was fertile ground for al-Qaeda, as British and American intelligence knew for years. The report will be published...
All Your Foreign Policies Are Belong To Us
Thousands of British protestors are storming the streets ... well, sort of, as David Carr lets us know at Samizdata:
Behind The Protests ... Same Old Crowd
Hindrocket returns from Britain with perspective on President Bush's visit and the protests that have ensued. Power Line posts Hindrocket's extensive post, which is definitely worth a read: What was most striking to me was the utter lack of substance in most coverage of the visit. The focus was almost exclusively on the security precautions attending the trip, which were pretty universally frowned upon, and the demonstrations against President Bush, which were hoped-for, salivated over, and covered with gusto. No one spoiled the mood by reminding readers that these were the same tired demonstrations (and largely the same tired demonstrators) who have greeted past American presidents. The BBC, for the most part, disdained to cover the visit at all. Hindrocket spent quite a bit of time in England and had a chance to look into the guiding spirits behind these tired, and oddly absent, demonstrators. Not surprisingly, some familiar faces...
News You'll Never See
I'm trying to avoid the whole Creepy Jacko thing, but certain odd points just seem to beg for a bit of blogging. Take this, for instance, from his brother Jermaine: Jackson's brother Jermaine denounced the allegations in a CNN interview as "nothing but a modern-day lynching." "This is what they want to see: him in handcuffs. You got it. But it won't be for long, I promise you," Jermaine Jackson said. Modern-day lynching? Tom Daschle had this to say about Jermaine's choice of words: "I was offended. I think it was unfortunate," Daschle said. "I think those within the civil rights leadership who have commented and have asked for an apology are right." And this from the LCCR: "Either [he] has conveniently forgotten a frightening period of American history, or he is willfully demeaning all those African-Americans who were hung from trees throughout the period of racial segregation in the...
November 21, 2003
Challenge, Chapter 5: Mainstream Media Gets Interested, But To What Purpose?
Finally, some of the mainstream media has taken an interest in the Feith memo, as reported by Stephen Hayes in the Weekly Standard. Unfortunately, Newsweek's Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball wrote a report that seemed to care more about the fact that the Weekly Standard is owned by Rupert Murdoch than in the evidence at hand. Here's the second paragraph: CASE CLOSED blared the headline in a Weekly Standard cover story last Saturday that purported to have unearthed the U.S. government’s “secret evidence of cooperation” between Saddam and bin Laden. Fred Barnes, the magazine’s executive editor, touted the magazine’s scoop the next day in a roundtable chat on “Fox News Sunday.” (Both the Standard and Fox News Channel are owned by the conservative media baron Rupert Murdoch.) [bold emphasis mine -- CE] “These are hard facts, and I’d like to see you refute any one of them,” he told a...
France's Rushdie Moment
Power Line is referring readers to this FrontPage magazine article detailing how Islamofascism in France is destroying free speech: “...I hope someone slits your throat, you dirty, Jew pig...” France, once the land of Enlightenment, is turning into a place of darkness, thanks to Islamist fanaticism. Death threats like the one above have forced a French publishing house to cancel plans this month to publish a translated version of American author Robert Spencer’s book, Islam Unveiled: Disturbing Questions About The World’s Fastest Growing Faith. As I posted earlier this morning, this is the cause for which the totalitarian apologists and their clueless followers march in Trafalgar Square, the Mall in Washington, and in cities near you. Followers of Islam, the "religion of peace", have shut down the publication of a book which dares to analyze the Qu'ran and its message of jihad. Fascism can abide no dissent -- and make...
Lileks: Brilliant as Always
James Lileks is a Minnesota treasure, and his take on Nightline's decision to bump coverage of the President's bellwether speech at Whitehall to cover, of all things, Michael Jackson is a terrific example: You know what? Michael Moore is right. There are many Americans who are ignorant of the world around them. And they’re all TV news producers. Two big bombs in Istanbul, and what’s the big story of the day? Following around a pervy slab of albino Play-Doh as he turns himself into the police. I was stunned to discover last night that Nightline not only covered the Jackson case in detail, but bumped coverage of the Whitehall speech, which was the most important speech since the Iraq campaign began and arguably the most important speech of the war, period. You would expect that a major commercial media outlet like ABC, with a supposedly top-notch news program like Nightline,...
On The Road Again ...
I'll be scaling down the blogging significantly for the next eight days, as I will be traveling to Southern California for the Thanksgiving holiday with the First Mate, our son and daughter-in-law, and our granddaughter, the Little Admiral. (She's 18 months old, and she's got Grampa wrapped around her little finger.) It'll be the first plane trip for her, and we're all praying that she'll sleep through it, or at least not get all wired up during the 4-hour flight. She'll be visiting Disneyland for the first time, so Grampa's bringing the camcorder and lots of film. I'll post the best picture of it once I get back and have the pictures developed. I do plan on taking the computer with me -- I need something to do on the flight, and the laptop's got a DVD drive, so it's my little entertainment center. My father has a wireless network...
November 22, 2003
Why California?
So I'm here in California now, land of Ah-nold da Governator and Carls Jr hamburgers ... mmm, good. The weather today is 65 degrees, sunny with a bit of wind. In Minnesota? 32 degrees and snowing. Heh....
Challenge, Chapter 6: Post-9/11 Connections
Continuing on the Blogosphere Challenge on the Feith memo, the last part deals with Iraqi/al-Qaeda connections after 9/11, which would be the biggest impetus for America to include Saddam's removal as an integral part of the war on terror. Hayes continues: Several reports indicate that the relationship between Saddam and bin Laden continued, even after the September 11 attacks: 31. An Oct. 2002 . . . report said al Qaeda and Iraq reached a secret agreement whereby Iraq would provide safe haven to al Qaeda members and provide them with money and weapons. The agreement reportedly prompted a large number of al Qaeda members to head to Iraq. The report also said that al Qaeda members involved in a fraudulent passport network for al Qaeda had been directed to procure 90 Iraqi and Syrian passports for al Qaeda personnel. The analysis that accompanies that report indicates that the report fits...
November 23, 2003
Power Line: A Million Hits
Congratulations to Big Trunk, Hindrocket, and Deacon for going over 1,000,000 hits! Power Line is one of the best blogs on line, and is definitely among my daily must-reads. They've been kind enough to mention me on more than one occasion, for which I am very grateful. Gracious, intelligent, and powerfully good writers -- small wonder they've been as successful as they are. Congratulations, guys, and I'll bet your next million comes in half the time....
You Wouldn't See This Christmas Special (Well, Maybe on Fox)
Disturbing? Yes. Deeply cynical? Undoubtedly. Hilarious? Yah, you betcha. Read the whole thing. And Merry ^%&*#%* Christmas to you too, pal.
Good Advice for New Bloggers
For those of you who may be new to blogging, or are considering starting your own blog but aren't sure how to build a readership beyond your own family, here's some good advice from the Commissar at the Politburo Diktat: As great Revolutionary Ringo Starr sang "You gotta pay your dues if you wanna sing the blues, And you know it don't come easy." You must work to build Revolution. Seek out intelligentsia. Exchange Blogrolls. Comment on posts. Trackback to posts. ... Find "comrades." (No, not in hackneyed, satiric sense of Commissar, in real sense.) A network of blogger/readers. Blogrolling? That only first step. Many have 100, 200 blogs on Blogroll; not all of them are comrades. "Comrades" are bloggers, maybe of roughly same size, who read your blog, maybe comment now and then, mention/link to your blog in posts, and maybe exchange emails. This advice is easy if you...
Challenge, Chapter 7: Differences and Motivations
Hayes, in the summary of his original article on the Feith memo, makes the following observation: CRITICS OF THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION have complained that Iraq-al Qaeda connections are a fantasy, trumped up by the warmongers at the White House to fit their preconceived notions about international terror; that links between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden have been routinely "exaggerated" for political purposes; that hawks "cherry-picked" bits of intelligence and tendentiously presented these to the American public. The Bush Administration has not been the only target for this criticism. Rupert Murdoch's Fox News (the Weekly Standard is also owned by Murdoch) was the subject of a rather notorious study that purported to show that its viewers tended to be extraordinarily misinformed on the war on terror. One of the points that claimed to demonstrate the ignorance of Fox News viewers was the result that around 70% of them thought that...
November 24, 2003
On the Bush Blogroll
George Bush freed almost 50 million people in two years and deposed two of the worst totalitarian regimes in recent decades. Ted Rall advocates the political system which resulted in the oppression of hundreds of millions, the slaughter of millions, and Dean wants us to know that he's proud Ted Rall supports him. That's enough for me.
Palestinian Toys Sending US Message: Do We Hear It?
Someone please explain to me again why we want to give sovereignty to people who produce children's toys such as these:...
Challenge, Chapter 8: The End, The Beginning
In the final paragraphs of his Weekly Standard article, Stephen Hayes notes that the Feith memo really just skims the surface of the contacts between Saddam's Iraq and al-Qaeda. Hayes notes another possible connection: The memo contains only one paragraph on Ahmed Hikmat Shakir, the Iraqi facilitator who escorted two September 11 hijackers through customs in Kuala Lumpur. ... Other intelligence reports indicate that Shakir whisked not one but two September 11 hijackers--Khalid al Midhar and Nawaq al Hamzi--through the passport and customs process upon their arrival in Kuala Lumpur on January 5, 2000. Shakir then traveled with the hijackers to the Kuala Lumpur Hotel where they met with Ramzi bin al Shibh, one of the masterminds of the September 11 plot. The meeting lasted three days. Shakir returned to work on January 9 and January 10, and never again. In this case, the US has intelligence reports of Iraq...
Politburo Diktat: Ted Rall in 2005
The Commissar has a crystal ball these days, and he's not afraid to use it, comrades. In this post, he's looking into Ted Rall's future commentary, and has translated the screams and grunts thusly: Thank you for joining the ABB (Anybody But Bush) resistance forces. You have been issued an AK-47 rifle, rocket-propelled grenade launcher and an address where you can pick up supplies of bombs and remote-controlled mines. Please let your cell leader know if you require additional materiel for use against the Bushies. I don't regret voting for Howard Dean in 2004. But Bush seized power again in 2004, 54% of the popular vote and 300 electoral votes notwithstanding. Read the whole thing, or be prepared to explain to Glorious Revolutionary Political Apparatchiks why you have failed in this assignment. And Comrade Commissar, if you're checking me out in that crystal ball, I swear she never told me...
The Cheese Stands Alone
For all of you cheese lovers out there, I'd like to introduce a new addition to the CQ blogroll: The Cheese Stands Alone. It's well-written, funny, incisive (I guess that means it has fangs), and most of all, it links back to me. Although it lists me in the Brie category, which implies some sort of French connection, and I don't think it's the cool one with Gene Hackman and nifty car chases with drug dealers. Perhaps it has something to do with my blog being like fine champagne, and as the Cheese says, there is no sex in the Champgne Room, and not much of it here either. Since there's no sex, and in honor of the newest blogroll addition, here's a list of my Top 10 Cheese of All Time: 10. Fonzie jumps the shark, and Happy Days bites the dust. 9. David Soul sings "Don't Give Up...
November 25, 2003
Redoing the Blogroll
If you think you're noticing some changes in the blogroll, you are correct. I am changing the blogroll to categorize the listings a little better. My blogroll has grown so large that it's difficult sometimes for people to understand what their relationships are to my blog. As soon as I figure out completely what the new system will be, I'll post an explanation....
November 26, 2003
Positive Medicare Coverage from the Strib!
Imagine my surprise when I read this article, entitled "Medicare drug plan helps poorest most," featured on the Minneapolis Star-Tribune's web site: The poorest and the sickest older Americans will benefit most from the Medicare legislation passed Tuesday by the Senate and sent to President Bush for his anticipated signature. ... "This bill, we know it is not good enough," said Michele Kimball, Minnesota director of AARP, which supported the legislation. "The perfect plan would have cost $1 trillion. This is the best we could do. But, bottom line, it will help millions who have no help." There has been a lot of heat and smoke about this proposition, and not just from Democrats, either. Plenty of Republican conservatives are scratching their heads wondering what happened to the party of fiscal responsibility when it just expanded an entitlement program widely believed to be marching towards bankruptcy. But what good is...
Gray Lady Getting Alzheimers?
Eric at Viking Pundit notes an unusual correction by the Newspaper of Record: The diagramless puzzle in the magazine on Sunday provided an erroneous clue for 21 Down, seeking the answer "Colin." Colin Powell is secretary of state, not defense. Now, perhaps I am being a bit harsh, but shouldn't a newspaper know the correct job titles for a sitting president's Cabinet members? Especially in this case, where the Secretary of State is frequently hailed by said newspaper as a lone voice of reason in this administration, while the Secretary of Defense is routinely castigated? I understand that this is just a puzzle, not a hard news story. But one would suppose that the Times allows its employees to read the entire paper; if this is an example of how well the Gray Lady serves to educate its readership ......
Magyar Blog: When and How Do You Call It a Night?
This may seem a bit cruel once you read Martin's entire post, but he does raise an interesting point of blog etiquette: What is the etiquette for ending a blog? And not just a cessation of posts either, I mean taking it down completely. If this blog disappears, and all links lead to 404 errors (or even a message from me apologizing), is that some sort of Stalinist re-writing of history? It's not like a million people have linked to this site. I got one link from Instapundit, one from Serenity's Journal, a bunch from Frozen In Montreal, two from Sneakeasy’s, and a couple from Debbye in Toronto. Seriously, in seven months of blogging, that’s it. So no one will be crushed. But do I have some obligation to keep the content online? Read the entire post. I admit that the thought has occurred to me in a theoretical sense,...
November 27, 2003
Happy Thanksgiving!
A Happy Thanksgiving to all of you from Captain's Quarters! As we continue our vacation, I can't help but to think how blessed I am for my life and my family, even with all of our problems and challenges. Sometimes I think my life truly started when I got married ten years ago, even though I joke that it seems like 20, which usually earns me a slap on the arm. Yesterday we spent a great day at Disneyland. Now, I grew up in Orange County; I went to Disneyland (and Knott's Berry Farm) about a thousand times when I was growing up, so except for the newly added attractions, it's been old hat for me whenever I go back. But my sister works for Disney -- we get in free, and so we've usually gone there on every trip back to California. At the end of the day, we've...
Thanksgiving Greetings Around the Web
Here are a few good posts this Thanksgiving holiday: Power Line has George Washington's original Thanksgiving proclamation. Definitely a good read today. They also link to a story in today's Strib that I read last night, about George H.W. Bush's Thanksgiving letter back home to his parents when he was stationed in Minneapolis in 1942. The Sophorist continues the historical perspective with a proclamation from Abraham Lincoln making Thanksgiving official, in 1863. Jon at QandO gives thanks for capitalism and its ability to produce freedom. Lileks, who is about to pull a disappearing act in December [sob], has a small thought for today. Venomous Kate's baking all day. My blood sugar went out of control just looking at her menu. Guess who Matt Margolis is thankful for! (Me, too.) Lastly, while we're at home with our families giving thanks, there's one family in the Upper Midwest that will be praying...
Chickenhawk? I Think Not
President George Bush flew into a hot zone in order to spend Thanksgiving in Iraq: President Bush made a Thanksgiving Day visit to Baghdad, appearing before delighted soldiers taken completely by surprise. After appearing before some U.S. troops in Baghdad and the Iraqi Governing Council, Bush left Baghdad at about 8 p.m. Iraq time, or noon EST. Air Force One stayed on the ground for just two-and-a-half hours, the White House said. I can't tell you how outstanding it is to see a commander-in-chief spending a family holiday with the troops that he has, wisely or foolishly, put into harm's way. Obviously, this visit could not be announced to either the troops or the press before it was made. Here's how the troops found out: Iraq's U.S. civil administrator L. Paul Bremer told the soldiers he wanted the most senior person in the room to read the president's Thanksgiving proclamation...
New Additions to Blogroll
Today, I'm adding a couple of blogs to my blogroll. First, I'm adding Blog Iran, a blog dedicated to freeing Iranians and establishing a true democracy in Iran, free of the control of the mullahs. Today I received an e-mail from Haleh at ActivistChat.com: The news site provides pro-freedom and pro-democracy news - specifically in regards to Iran, and BLOG-IRAN is a Grassroots Campaign that is uniting Bloggers from around the world who support the Iranian struggle for freedom & democracy. The goal of each is to provide much needed awareness of the struggle for democracy in Iran as well as support America's/Bush's vision of aiding people of the region and throughout the world in their battle for freedom. Here's a telling quote regarding Bush's commitment to spreading democracy, and our willingness to support that policy: Food for thought: - Bush has greater support in Iran among the Iranian population...
November 28, 2003
No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
Although this is not well known in many areas, it is popular in Minnesota to deep-fry turkeys for Thanksgiving; the process seals in moisture and cooks the bird rather quickly. However, it is not without its dangers, and it seems that every year brings stories like this: Bill Fickett wanted to give his wife a break from the kitchen on Thanksgiving, so he offered to cook the turkey. His gesture ended up setting their garage on fire and causing about $14,000 in damage. ... Fickett was heating up about 3 gallons of oil for the turkey right before the fire started. He adjusted the temperature to the recommended 350 degrees, then stepped into the house to get the bird. Smoke was pouring out of the garage when they came back. When St. Cloud firefighters arrived about 2:15 p.m., the garage was in flames, said Gene Kostreba, acting assistant fire chief....
Dana Milbank Spouts Off Again
Dana Milbank, whose reporting leaves no doubt about his feelings for the Bush administration, attempts an in-depth analysis and only manages to state that Bush is "indelibly" tied to results in Iraq -- as if that's breaking news: Iraqis may be reassured that the United States will put down the insurgency and restore order in their country. Or they may take the image of Bush landing unannounced at night without lights and not venturing from a heavily fortified military installation as confirmation that the security situation in Iraq is dire indeed. But one thing is certain. Bush's Thanksgiving Day surprise ties him, for better or worse, ever more tightly to the outcome of the Iraq struggle. Well, excuse me for stating the obvious, but duh. "Insurgents" -- otherwise known as unreconstructed Ba'athists who would like nothing better than to re-install Saddamism/Stalinism -- have access to SAMs and explosives and relatively...
Politburo Diktat Maps the Blogosphere
Comrade Commissar is not just good political enforcer -- he is Glorious Revolutionary Cartographer as well. If you click on just one link today, you must click on this one, Comrades. I notice that KaptainEdsk is located in South-Central Reynoldssia, which suits me just fine. Nice place for good weather and a nice little dacha near the Volga, da? This is your one-stop blogroll; simply click where you want to travel, and faster than Glorious Revolution, you are transported to the blog of your choice. (Da, I know, Comrades, choice is counterrevolutionary plot, but we must peacefully co-exist for the moment ...)...
November 29, 2003
From the Soldier's Perspective
Andrew Sullivan posts this e-mail from a soldier at the Thanksgiving celebration in Baghdad where President Bush made his appearance: Mr. Sullivan, I was present for the surprise visit by the President. It was truly wonderful to be there, and my buddies and I really are grateful that President Bush would take a real risk to come see u. He flew about 12 hours to spend 2 hours with us, he served food to the troops, but he never got a chance to eat himself, at least not until he got on the plane, I'd imagine. For 2 hours, the President walked amongst us, not a receiving line where we came to him, stiff and formal, but coming to us, reading our names on our uniforms and greeting us by name. He looked me in the eye when he shook my hand, he joked with some, whispered to others, spoke...
Flying Home, with France On My Mind
Today we're flying back to Minneapolis, after a great vacation with the family. These times are never long enough, but it will be great to sleep in our own beds again. No other posting today, as I will be too danged busy, but you should check out this post at Jennifer's History and Stuff about France. I spent my blogging time today writing an extensive comment on why and how the French irritate the livin' snot out of me. (If you read this, Jennifer, sorry about the length.) Tomorrow, we'll have the 500th post at Captain's Quarters!...
November 30, 2003
500th Post: The Dark Side of Blogging
Last night, after we got home, I fired up the laptop and took a quick look around some of my favorite blogs before hitting the sack. I was hoping to come up with a blogosphere theme for my 500th post, and the Commissar at the Politburo Diktat did not disappoint -- although certainly other bloggers have been behaving in a most disappointing manner: The Politburo authorizes me to extend its congratulations to the LOL on its highly successful advancement of Party members within the TTLB Ecosystem, maintained by the "Dumber Than the Average Bear" NZ Bear. With your commendable and Revolutionary use of two tactics, you have propelled many LOL members to high ranking in the Ecosystem rankings, even while the Ecosystem is maintained by that reactionary wingnut, NZ Bear. The Commissar discovered that some League of Liberals bloggers have been using two different methods of artificially inflating their stats...
Still A Distraction?
It amazes me, but some people insist that military action in Iraq is a distraction from the war on terror. News stories like this tend to disprove it: American forces have captured three members of Osama bin Laden (news - web sites)'s terrorist network in northern Iraq (news - web sites), a U.S. military commander told The Associated Press on Sunday. If confirmed, it would be the first disclosed detention of al-Qaida militants in Iraq. About 10 members of Ansar al-Islam — an Islamic group U.S. officials believe has al-Qaida links in northern Iraq — also have been arrested by U.S. troops in the past seven months, said Col. Joe Anderson, commander of the 2nd Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division. There are two explanations for al-Qaeda to be in Iraq. One: they were there all along, as our intelligence indicated, or they are coming to Iraq to fight American...
When Irish Eyes are Smiling
No, this is not a reference to Notre Dame's spanking of Stanford yesterday. Power Line posts about the poetry and beauty of Ireland, a subject which always has my interest, as you well know. And in this instance, Hindrocket has plenty of evidence of both!...
Perhaps They Could Call Him "Dances With Weasels"
It's a story straight out of Hollywood, and may wind up there: A 59-year-old retired builder from Yorkshire, northern England, was shocked to discover he is in fact a tribal chief with a claim to thousands of acres of land in Canada, British newspapers reported on Friday. Mick Henry, the son of an English mother and a Canadian soldier over in Britain during World War II, was recently tracked down via the Internet by his long-lost Native Canadian relatives from the Ojibway tribe in the province of Manitoba. Until recently, Henry hasn't bothered to learn much about the people he's destined to lead; he thought that they still lived in teepees until he was told about his inheritance. However, Henry is determined to bring Western values to his tribe, even though he still lacks a ceremonial name: Henry is also apparently hoping to cash-in on his new-found heritage and sudden...
The Patriette Quails at the Cold
A big thank-you to the Patriette, who recently included me in her blogroll, but she seems to have an issue with Minnesota. She's applying for doctoral programs and one of her choices is, or was, the University of Minnesota, which is near where I live. (The Patriette adding to the collection of Northern bloggers? How cool would that be?) Inexplicably, this picture may have dissuaded her: I just have to say that as someone looking into their programs and currently living in Texas, THAT PHOTO DOES NOT MAKE ME WANT TO ATTEND THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA! It makes every person who's told me that I am insane for wanting to move north because it gets so cold up there seem correct. Kelly, don't worry about this picture. It's designed to keep out all of the riff-raff from the Paradise that is the Upper Midwest. Just because you can drive pick-ups...
Obituary of a Madman
As part of my new commitment to Blog-Iran, I was directed to this notable obituary of a key figure in the 1979 Iranian Islamic Revolution -- and an indication of the tender mercy we can expect from Islamofascists if they are allowed to expand their power: After the establishment in 1979 of a fundamentalist Islamic republic in Iran under the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Iranian army occupied three Kurdish-Iranian towns for supporting the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan, condemned by Khomeini as "un- Islamic". The hardline cleric Ayatollah Sadeq Khalkhali set up his Islamic revolutionary court to weed out "counter-revolutionaries" in the town of Saghez. Learning that a Kurdish defendant who was born in Orumiyeh had lost a hand to a grenade explosion during the Tehran uprising, Khalkhali asked what he was doing in Saghez. "I am a guest at a social get- together, your honour," replied the defendant. "That...
Gollum: What I Really Want to Do is Direct
The New Zealand Herald manages to scoop the rest of the world media in its exclusive interview with the ever-reclusive, ever-controversial Gollum: The first thing you notice when meeting Gollum in the flesh (so to speak) is how much shorter he is in real life than he even appears on screen. Hobbits must tower over him. We're talking Kylie Minogue short. I reach down, we shake hands. The second thing you notice about Gollum is the smell of fish. James Griffin manages to get past the fish aroma to press Gollum on the rumors that he and Rings director Peter Jackson have not always seen eye-to-bugeye on artistic issues. Gollum feels that Jackson has been too much in thrall to the JRR Tolkien books: "We sees things differently, the Master and Gollum. Sometimes the way he treats us." He trails off into a moody silence, looks away, eats a handful...
About
Ed Morrissey has blogged at Captain's Quarters since 2003, and has a daily radio show at BlogTalkRadio, where he serves as Political Director. Called "Captain Ed" by his readers, Ed is a father and grandfather living in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota, a native Californian who moved to the North Star State because of the weather.
My Other Blog
The Crows Nest
Gollum: What I Really Want to Do is Direct
The New Zealand Herald manages to scoop the rest of the world media in its exclusive interview with the ever-reclusive, ever-controversial Gollum:
The first thing you notice when meeting Gollum in the flesh (so to speak) is how much shorter he is in real life than he even appears on screen. Hobbits must tower over him. We're talking Kylie Minogue short. I reach down, we shake hands. The second thing you notice about Gollum is the smell of fish.
James Griffin manages to get past the fish aroma to press Gollum on the rumors that he and Rings director Peter Jackson have not always seen eye-to-bugeye on artistic issues. Gollum feels that Jackson has been too much in thrall to the JRR Tolkien books:
"We sees things differently, the Master and Gollum. Sometimes the way he treats us."He trails off into a moody silence, looks away, eats a handful of sushi, sips his Mai Tai. I ask him what he means. He turns back, suddenly bug-eyed and venomous.
"He treats us like we not real, yes, like we are one of his precious special effects. But Gollum has feelings, Gollum hurts, but does the Master care? No, no he cares only for the Books. His precious precious."
Lest you think that Gollum is only interesting in his contribution to the Rings trilogy, Griffin discovers that Gollum has plans for his career after the release of the last Rings movie, The Return of the King. Gollum is apparently negotiating for the lead in a Don Knotts biopic, which sets off a case of the giggles for Griffin. This results in the following reaction from the 500-year-old entertainer:
"You think Gollum is only about the Rings? Like the rest, you think Gollum has no career after the Rings is dust? They all think that, laugh at us, hurt us with cruel words. But Gollum does not laugh, Gollum knows this is the beginning, yes. And his agent knows this too, yes, he says we are the new Yoda, the next Steve Buscemi, yes. You are like the Master, with your cruel laughter. Sting us, it does."
Speaking of Steve Buscemi, isn't it strange that you never see him and Gollum together? It's almost as if ... well, never mind. But the notion of Gollum playing Knotts isn't bad at all. I'd especially love to see him playing Ralph Furley from Three's Company:
JANET: What are you doing in my bedroom, Mr. Furley?
FURLEY: Must have the Precious ... Nasty, swishy Jack Tripper wants the Precious all to himself ... [grabs lingerie from doorknob] Give me the Precioussssss...
Well, maybe not. But read the rest of the interview so that you can get a good look at the mutant behind that evil screen persona. Heck, even Gandalf thought that Gollum would have a role to play later on.
Obituary of a Madman
As part of my new commitment to Blog-Iran, I was directed to this notable obituary of a key figure in the 1979 Iranian Islamic Revolution -- and an indication of the tender mercy we can expect from Islamofascists if they are allowed to expand their power:
After the establishment in 1979 of a fundamentalist Islamic republic in Iran under the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Iranian army occupied three Kurdish-Iranian towns for supporting the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan, condemned by Khomeini as "un- Islamic". The hardline cleric Ayatollah Sadeq Khalkhali set up his Islamic revolutionary court to weed out "counter-revolutionaries" in the town of Saghez.Learning that a Kurdish defendant who was born in Orumiyeh had lost a hand to a grenade explosion during the Tehran uprising, Khalkhali asked what he was doing in Saghez.
"I am a guest at a social get- together, your honour," replied the defendant.
"That fits together very well," Khalkhali said candidly, "Born in Orumiyeh, participated in the Tehran uprising, executed in Saghez. Kill him! Next!"
The next defendant was charged with being the son of a usurer.
"What does my father's crime have to do with me?" protested the defendant.
"Usury is haram - sin," thundered Khalkhali, "and so is the seed of usury. Kill him! Next."
Twenty-four other Kurds were tried that day by Khalkhali. All were executed.
Khalkhali should be a name we recognize, according to the Independent:
Television footage taken in 1980 showed Khalkhali prodding the burnt corpses of US soldiers killed in an unsuccessful mission to rescue American hostages held at the US embassy in Tehran.
Khalkhali died unrepentant on November 27th:
Twenty years on, he remained unrepentant. "I would do exactly the same again," he said, when reminded how defendants had been given little chance to speak or get a lawyer to challenge evidence, if any were presented. "If they were guilty, they will go to hell and if they were innocent, they will go to heaven."
Bear in mind that the people of Iran have been under the thumb of people such as Khalkhali for twenty-four years. People such as Khalkhali have been exporting Islamofascism for all that time, notably but not exclusively through Hezb' Allah, and now are reportedly sheltering al-Qaeda leaders. After Iraq is secure, Iran should be our next focus for change -- not military action, but through diplomatic, economic, and covert means, we need to defeat this threat to the region and the world.
The Patriette Quails at the Cold
A big thank-you to the Patriette, who recently included me in her blogroll, but she seems to have an issue with Minnesota. She's applying for doctoral programs and one of her choices is, or was, the University of Minnesota, which is near where I live. (The Patriette adding to the collection of Northern bloggers? How cool would that be?) Inexplicably, this picture may have dissuaded her:
I just have to say that as someone looking into their programs and currently living in Texas, THAT PHOTO DOES NOT MAKE ME WANT TO ATTEND THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA! It makes every person who's told me that I am insane for wanting to move north because it gets so cold up there seem correct.
Kelly, don't worry about this picture. It's designed to keep out all of the riff-raff from the Paradise that is the Upper Midwest. Just because you can drive pick-ups across our lakes in the wintertime does not mean that Minnesota is unfit for human habitation. I moved from Southern California to live here six years ago, and I've only lost two fingers since then. No, just kidding! Fortunately for my vocabulary, I still have all of my fingers.
Doesn't the sun shine there from time to time?
Yes, we have lovely sunshine all twelve months of the year. However, as we discovered shortly after moving here, a bright sunny day in the middle of winter is not a good sign. In fact, it means that it's colder than Ba'athist compassion -- I mean, it's like tongues-freezing-to-flagpoles, tears-freezing-to-cheeks cold. That's when we all go to the Mall of America, or our favorite pub, or just stay the hell indoors.
Anyway, don't let that little picture throw you too much. As you can plainly see, the weather wasn't bad enough to discourage scores of people from riding their bicycles! And when you do get up here, make sure you let us all know so that we can show you where the frozen lakes are at.
Perhaps They Could Call Him "Dances With Weasels"
It's a story straight out of Hollywood, and may wind up there:
A 59-year-old retired builder from Yorkshire, northern England, was shocked to discover he is in fact a tribal chief with a claim to thousands of acres of land in Canada, British newspapers reported on Friday.Mick Henry, the son of an English mother and a Canadian soldier over in Britain during World War II, was recently tracked down via the Internet by his long-lost Native Canadian relatives from the Ojibway tribe in the province of Manitoba.
Until recently, Henry hasn't bothered to learn much about the people he's destined to lead; he thought that they still lived in teepees until he was told about his inheritance. However, Henry is determined to bring Western values to his tribe, even though he still lacks a ceremonial name:
Henry is also apparently hoping to cash-in on his new-found heritage and sudden celebrity status. When contacted by telephone by Reuters, a Henry family spokeswoman said: "He is not speaking to the media about his story any more without a fee."
Apparently, it's not enough for Henry to have thousands of acres of Canadian land to fall into his lap. They should take this capitalist theme into account when they come up with his ceremonial name. I'm thinking something along these lines: Sells Out to Strangers, or perhaps Greedy Horse.
When Irish Eyes are Smiling
No, this is not a reference to Notre Dame's spanking of Stanford yesterday. Power Line posts about the poetry and beauty of Ireland, a subject which always has my interest, as you well know. And in this instance, Hindrocket has plenty of evidence of both!
Still A Distraction?
It amazes me, but some people insist that military action in Iraq is a distraction from the war on terror. News stories like this tend to disprove it:
American forces have captured three members of Osama bin Laden (news - web sites)'s terrorist network in northern Iraq (news - web sites), a U.S. military commander told The Associated Press on Sunday. If confirmed, it would be the first disclosed detention of al-Qaida militants in Iraq.About 10 members of Ansar al-Islam — an Islamic group U.S. officials believe has al-Qaida links in northern Iraq — also have been arrested by U.S. troops in the past seven months, said Col. Joe Anderson, commander of the 2nd Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division.
There are two explanations for al-Qaeda to be in Iraq. One: they were there all along, as our intelligence indicated, or they are coming to Iraq to fight American soldiers, instead of coming to America to kill civilians. Either way, it would appear that the battle for Iraq is, as many of us have maintained all along, a key piece of the war on terror in general and on al-Qaeda in particular.
500th Post: The Dark Side of Blogging
Last night, after we got home, I fired up the laptop and took a quick look around some of my favorite blogs before hitting the sack. I was hoping to come up with a blogosphere theme for my 500th post, and the Commissar at the Politburo Diktat did not disappoint -- although certainly other bloggers have been behaving in a most disappointing manner:
The Politburo authorizes me to extend its congratulations to the LOL on its highly successful advancement of Party members within the TTLB Ecosystem, maintained by the "Dumber Than the Average Bear" NZ Bear.With your commendable and Revolutionary use of two tactics, you have propelled many LOL members to high ranking in the Ecosystem rankings, even while the Ecosystem is maintained by that reactionary wingnut, NZ Bear.
The Commissar discovered that some League of Liberals bloggers have been using two different methods of artificially inflating their stats in order to move up the TTLB Ecosystem: multilinking posts and multiple sitemeter accounts. The first isn't necessarily abusive, unless all you're doing is publishing posts with so many links that it's obvious that the whole purpose is to pump up your alliance's stats. (The Commissar includes an example in the comments over at NZ Bear's post on this subject.) The second, though, is plainly intended to deceive the Ecosystem programming in order to boost the standing of LoL bloggers. This has caused NZ Bear to suspend a number of LoL blogs and invalidate their links for the Ecosystem:
If you're wondering just how badly these blogs distorted the League's rankings, I'll draw your attention to the League's total inbound unique statistics from this morning, before I suspended these blogs: 8597 unique inbound links across all the League's blogs. With the removal of the duplicate blogs, the League now totals 5641 unique inbound links. That's right: 34% of the League's total unique links were due to these duplicate blogs. To League members, I ask you: is that really the way you want to advance?
I have trouble trying to decide what is most disturbing about this scandal. The LoL logs involved (a minority of them) purposely abused NZ Bear's hospitality by corrupting his Ecosystem. There's a masturbatory element in all of this, too; I mean, what's the point to all of this if all you wind up doing is running your stats up with a bunch of your own links? And what does that say about the credibility of LoL blogs, that they go out of their way to falsify their records? Would you trust anything written by a blogger that feels free to corrupt someone else's blog system?
That's not the worst of it, though. If you read through the comments for NZ Bear's initial post on the subject, you'll find some of the LoL trying to make the case that conservative blogs play games with their stats, too. I am sure that's true. However, before the LoL came along, there were two alliances, and neither of them were partisan; they were formed around tongue-in-cheek opposition to or support of Instapundit. While their blogs may or may not be politically oriented, their alliances were not. This political finger-pointing is ludicrous and embarrassing, especially since it's coming from the only politically-oriented alliance in the Ecosystem and the only alliance that's been caught with its hand in the cookie jar.
This is what happens when one loses sight of their reasons for blogging. If the only reason you blog is to become a Large Mammal in the TTLB Ecosystem, what do you think that gets you? Validation of your political beliefs, or some sort of affirmation as a human being? It's an odd way to think, and it results in twisted escapades like this. It's hardly a Watergate event, but it's still a good lesson in corruption.
Flying Home, with France On My Mind
Today we're flying back to Minneapolis, after a great vacation with the family. These times are never long enough, but it will be great to sleep in our own beds again.
No other posting today, as I will be too danged busy, but you should check out this post at Jennifer's History and Stuff about France. I spent my blogging time today writing an extensive comment on why and how the French irritate the livin' snot out of me. (If you read this, Jennifer, sorry about the length.)
Tomorrow, we'll have the 500th post at Captain's Quarters!
From the Soldier's Perspective
Andrew Sullivan posts this e-mail from a soldier at the Thanksgiving celebration in Baghdad where President Bush made his appearance:
Mr. Sullivan, I was present for the surprise visit by the President. It was truly wonderful to be there, and my buddies and I really are grateful that President Bush would take a real risk to come see u. He flew about 12 hours to spend 2 hours with us, he served food to the troops, but he never got a chance to eat himself, at least not until he got on the plane, I'd imagine. For 2 hours, the President walked amongst us, not a receiving line where we came to him, stiff and formal, but coming to us, reading our names on our uniforms and greeting us by name. He looked me in the eye when he shook my hand, he joked with some, whispered to others, spoke a little Spanish to my friend. 2 hours of almost non-stop motion, how exhausting after a 12 hour flight! He did it to be with us, and we appreciate it.
It's amazing how well that compensates for the media elite currently blathering on about how the secrecy of the trip amounts to lying to the sainted press corps, as if security considerations were just an annoying afterthought. Howard Kurtz reports on the biggest whiners:
Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, criticized the White House correspondents who made the trip without spilling the secret. "That's just not kosher," he said. "Reporters are in the business of telling the truth. They can't decide it's okay to lie sometimes because it serves a larger truth or good cause."
So, Tom, let me get this straight: if a reporter decides to pose as a mental patient to blow the lid off of abuse in psychiatric hospitals, he's acting unethically -- correct? I mean, the reporter is lying, isn't he? If a reporter poses as a slaughterhouse worker in order to inform the public of substandard practices in food handling, he's lying, isn't he? Investigative journalists do this all the time -- and in the case of the Bush trip, it wasn't even lying -- it was keeping one's mouth shut for a finite, short period of time so that the story could be told safely. Explain to me how that's unethical and that's lying, but the two cases I mentioned earlier (Geraldo Rivera, 1969, and Upton Sinclair, 1906), explicitly lying about one's identity and purpose is somehow justified by the end result.
Philip Taubman, Washington bureau chief of the New York Times, said that "in this day and age, there should have been a way to take more reporters. People are perfectly capable of maintaining a confidence for security reasons. It's a bad precedent." Once White House officials "decided to do a stealth trip, they bought into a whole series of things that are questionable."
Philip Taubman and Tom Rosenstiel really ought to compare notes. On one hand, Rosenstiel says that reporters are obligated to tell what they know, but on the other hand, Taubman's insisting that the White House could have told the entire press corps and no one would have breathed a word of it. Oh, and the White House "decided" on stealth mode, too; it's not as though it were necessary to keep him alive, or anything like that. Kim Hume has a more realistic view:
She said the administration took a network pool crew, as it was supposed to, and "we didn't get any competitive advantage from it." Had more journalists been told, Hume said, "the story would have leaked in about two seconds" because "news people are the biggest gossips alive."Of course, media leaks never occur; just ask about this incident, over at Rantingprofs:
Second, from this story, the cell wasn't captured in its entirety. Why? Wait for it -- media leaks. It would have been real nice if the Beeb had been a bit more, say, robust in their coverage of that part of the story. I'd love to know which outlet leaked information that made it possible for suspected terrorists to get out of dodge before the cops grabed them, wouldn't you? (But by all means, lets rehash whether it was unnecessary deception for the White House to put out a fake menu before the President left for Baghdad. I'm sure that information would never have leaked.)
The media are up in arms both because Bush didn't invite them all to his little party, and also because they're beginning to suspect that he's going to breeze to re-election next year, and they aren't happy at all about either one.
UPDATE: Demosophia has a good post on this same topic. Money quote: "I suppose they'd also have insisted on giving Hitler fair warning about the invasion of Normandy." And besides the one post I linked from Rantingprofs, you can read more about this story in several earlier posts as well.
Politburo Diktat Maps the Blogosphere
Comrade Commissar is not just good political enforcer -- he is Glorious Revolutionary Cartographer as well. If you click on just one link today, you must click on this one, Comrades.
I notice that KaptainEdsk is located in South-Central Reynoldssia, which suits me just fine. Nice place for good weather and a nice little dacha near the Volga, da? This is your one-stop blogroll; simply click where you want to travel, and faster than Glorious Revolution, you are transported to the blog of your choice. (Da, I know, Comrades, choice is counterrevolutionary plot, but we must peacefully co-exist for the moment ...)
Dana Milbank Spouts Off Again
Dana Milbank, whose reporting leaves no doubt about his feelings for the Bush administration, attempts an in-depth analysis and only manages to state that Bush is "indelibly" tied to results in Iraq -- as if that's breaking news:
Iraqis may be reassured that the United States will put down the insurgency and restore order in their country. Or they may take the image of Bush landing unannounced at night without lights and not venturing from a heavily fortified military installation as confirmation that the security situation in Iraq is dire indeed.But one thing is certain. Bush's Thanksgiving Day surprise ties him, for better or worse, ever more tightly to the outcome of the Iraq struggle.
Well, excuse me for stating the obvious, but duh. "Insurgents" -- otherwise known as unreconstructed Ba'athists who would like nothing better than to re-install Saddamism/Stalinism -- have access to SAMs and explosives and relatively cheap cars that can be used as low-speed guided missiles. No one knows that better than the Iraqis, for Pete's sake. I suspect they are a lot more aware of their security situation than would be a pampered reporter typing out his "analysis" from the safety of his mid-Atlantic home office. I suspect that they are a lot more aware of their world now that they have over 150 newspapers free to print whatever they like, rather than Saddam's Minister of Information -- Comical Ali -- telling them that the camo-wearing groups of people arriving in armored vehicles through the middle of Baghdad didn't exist, and if you help these imaginary folk, the Fedayeen will kill you.
And if you don't already know that Bush's presidency is absolutely tied to the war on terror, and specifically to success in this radical intervention in Iraq, then reading Dana Milbank won't cure you from your obtuseness.
There is nothing novel about presidential visits to war zones at holiday time. Bill Clinton went to Kosovo for Thanksgiving in 1999, Lyndon B. Johnson went to Vietnam for Christmas in 1967, and President-elect Dwight D. Eisenhower visited Korean battle fronts in 1952. Richard M. Nixon also traveled to Vietnam, in 1969.
Ho ho ho ... oh, wait, he's serious. Nixon, Johnson, and Eisenhower visited the troops when the zones were hot, just as Bush did yesterday. Kosovo was hardly a hot zone in November 1999. This is an attempt to de-emphasize Bush's surprise visit to the troops. Don't get me wrong; Clinton did the right thing in 1999 by spending his Thanksgiving with the troops, and I'll assume that he would have made the trip if it was still a hot zone, like Baghdad is today. It's just that the two visits are hardly equal in terms of impact or security.
In contrast to Bush's carrier landing, which they immediately branded a stunt, Bush's critics yesterday did not begrudge him the trip to Iraq, nor the necessary secrecy, nor even the disinformation the White House used to lead people to believe he would be at home on his ranch in Texas all day.
This is pretty disingenuous, as critics spent most of the day yesterday begrudging him all of these things; they just didn't have the guts to go on the record. For instance, MS-NBC manages to get this into their story:
Upon hearing of the visit, Iraqis looked on with befuddlement and bemusement, saying they knew it was meant for U.S. troops but hoping he gained some insight into the country during his brief stay. ... Defending his decision to make the trip and the deception surrounding it [emphasis mine], Bush said: “I think the American people appreciate me going to express my sympathies to these kids.["]
In addition, while I was watching the news of the event on CNN, there was a good deal of discussion as to whether the administration had acted ethically in deceiving the White House press corps about the president's itinerary for Thanksgiving, as if he had decided to eat at his in-laws instead of at his ranch. Talk about missing the entire point! Also, if you want to see more carping about the Thanksgiving visit, feel free to lose 30 points off your IQ by visiting Democratic Underground, where they are inventing all sorts of weird motives and conspiracies, but in all fairness, they are hardly representative of mainstream opposition.
You can read the rest of Milbank's "analysis", but it contains little in the way of analytical thought. It's just a rehash of wire service quotes from yesterday and today. Why does the Post continue to allow Milbank to cover this presidency, anyway? If this trite and hackneyed piece is the best he can do, he should be reassigned to movie reviews and let someone else who understands the news cover it.
UPDATE: Power Line gives this a brief mention, but also links to a straightforward story at the Washington Times.
No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
Although this is not well known in many areas, it is popular in Minnesota to deep-fry turkeys for Thanksgiving; the process seals in moisture and cooks the bird rather quickly. However, it is not without its dangers, and it seems that every year brings stories like this:
Bill Fickett wanted to give his wife a break from the kitchen on Thanksgiving, so he offered to cook the turkey. His gesture ended up setting their garage on fire and causing about $14,000 in damage. ... Fickett was heating up about 3 gallons of oil for the turkey right before the fire started. He adjusted the temperature to the recommended 350 degrees, then stepped into the house to get the bird.Smoke was pouring out of the garage when they came back.
When St. Cloud firefighters arrived about 2:15 p.m., the garage was in flames, said Gene Kostreba, acting assistant fire chief. The fire was contained to the garage, which was not attached to the house.
Fortunately, the Ficketts only lost the garage and its contents (no car was inside at the time), and not the house or anyone's life, and no one was hurt. But it underscores the danger of this process. If you are going to deep-fry your bird, you can't walk away, and you had better be clear of any structures when you cook. Bill Fickett has a better idea:
"I'll probably stick to baking them now.''
New Additions to Blogroll
Today, I'm adding a couple of blogs to my blogroll. First, I'm adding Blog Iran, a blog dedicated to freeing Iranians and establishing a true democracy in Iran, free of the control of the mullahs. Today I received an e-mail from Haleh at ActivistChat.com:
The news site provides pro-freedom and pro-democracy news - specifically in regards to Iran, and BLOG-IRAN is a Grassroots Campaign that is uniting Bloggers from around the world who support the Iranian struggle for freedom & democracy.The goal of each is to provide much needed awareness of the struggle for democracy in Iran as well as support America's/Bush's vision of aiding people of the region and throughout the world in their battle for
freedom.
Here's a telling quote regarding Bush's commitment to spreading democracy, and our willingness to support that policy:
Food for thought: - Bush has greater support in Iran among the Iranian population than he has here in the states, lets hope he can act on the great speeches and defend freedom of Iranians, the only way for the war on terrorism to be won.
The only way to truly secure our freedom is to free as many people as we can from brutal, oppressive dictatorships and kleptocracies. Hopefully these changes can be peaceful; in the spirit of supporting peaceful change, I'm adding Blog Iran to the Int'l Waters list.
I'm also adding Eye on the Left to the Battleships list. EotL is a sharply partisan but always interesting blog, and quite frankly, I'm not sure why I haven't added them before. It's a great window on the opposition, especially its fringe elements.
Chickenhawk? I Think Not
President George Bush flew into a hot zone in order to spend Thanksgiving in Iraq:
President Bush made a Thanksgiving Day visit to Baghdad, appearing before delighted soldiers taken completely by surprise. After appearing before some U.S. troops in Baghdad and the Iraqi Governing Council, Bush left Baghdad at about 8 p.m. Iraq time, or noon EST. Air Force One stayed on the ground for just two-and-a-half hours, the White House said.
I can't tell you how outstanding it is to see a commander-in-chief spending a family holiday with the troops that he has, wisely or foolishly, put into harm's way. Obviously, this visit could not be announced to either the troops or the press before it was made. Here's how the troops found out:
Iraq's U.S. civil administrator L. Paul Bremer told the soldiers he wanted the most senior person in the room to read the president's Thanksgiving proclamation and asked who was there to do it.Then Bush emerged, misty-eyed and wearing a U.S. Army exercise jacket. As soon as the soldiers spotted him, the room erupted in cheers. He told them he had arrived for a warm meal.
"I can't think of a finer group of folks to have dinner with," he told the troops.
The folks at the Democratic Underground are not pleased:
We can never underestimate Bush and Co. This will play *very* well on TV - not just Faux - it's breaking on all the networks. They're playing it up that Bush risked a great deal by flying into a hot zone (they're rehasing the SAM attack on the DHL plane from the weekend). All sounds very Bruce Willis (puke) ballsy. We can wail and gnash our teeth about how pathetic this is, but Bush scored some major points here. It's quite different that the aircraft carrier fiasco (where there was NO danger at all) - there actually was some danger here. It's high time that dems realize exactly what we're up against and act accordingly.
Perhaps it's time for them to understand that politics is not everything with this president. Bush is leading in all polls against all candidates without even airing a single ad, despite the months-long tirade his opponents have launched against him. Bush did not need to make this trip, and in fact the trip may not have been advisable from a national-security perspective. The fact that he did it anyway speaks volumes about his character and his motivations. We hear a lot from Democrats about supporting the troops; if this is the tenor of the reaction we see from this event, it will speak volumes about the character of the opposition. (Thanks to Eye on the Left for the story and the quote.)
UPDATE: Give a cheer to Senator Hillary Clinton; she spent Thanksgiving with the troops in Afghanistan.
Thanksgiving Greetings Around the Web
Here are a few good posts this Thanksgiving holiday:
Power Line has George Washington's original Thanksgiving proclamation. Definitely a good read today. They also link to a story in today's Strib that I read last night, about George H.W. Bush's Thanksgiving letter back home to his parents when he was stationed in Minneapolis in 1942.
The Sophorist continues the historical perspective with a proclamation from Abraham Lincoln making Thanksgiving official, in 1863.
Jon at QandO gives thanks for capitalism and its ability to produce freedom.
Lileks, who is about to pull a disappearing act in December [sob], has a small thought for today.
Venomous Kate's baking all day. My blood sugar went out of control just looking at her menu.
Guess who Matt Margolis is thankful for! (Me, too.)
Lastly, while we're at home with our families giving thanks, there's one family in the Upper Midwest that will be praying for the safe return of their 22-year-old daughter. DC at Brainstorming posts pictures and the story of Dru Sjodin. Here's one of them:
DC believes in the power of prayer; so do I. Let's all remember her and her family in our Thanksgiving prayers today.
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