December 31, 2003
"Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbor unto him that fell among thieves?" --LUKE 10:30
I loved this article by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, May God be Restored to the British Isles...
...I got up and immediately disputed the premise, "Blessed are the peacemakers." On the contrary, it was always those who fought evil whom history remembered as the greatest in their generations....Amen, Rabbi. Those "peacemakers" are the Levites and Priests and Archbishops and Liberals who passed on the other side of the road, while the despised bumpkin Samaritans stopped to help the victim.
....If there is one seminal thing for which the year 2003 should be remembered it is this: The year that the normally amoral game of politics trumped the usually moral teachings of religion.(via Protocols)A year in which a former baseball-owner-turned-president of the United States emerged as the greatest man alive by expending treasure, lives and risking all his political capital to cross the world and save 24 million people from the killing machines of a tyrant. If George Bush never wins another election, if he indeed never passes another piece of legislation, I will still remember him as one of my greatest sources of religious inspiration for teaching me to what lengths a human being must go in order to save human life.
And even in the worst case scenario, if he went to Iraq insincerely – if he did it to enrich the executives of Halliburton, or to avenge his father's honor, or because America needs Iraq's oil – I would rather have an insincere politician who saves lives rather than ostensibly God-fearing church leaders who do nothing to stop the murder of their human brethren....
May the New Year be good to you ...
A New Year's resolution is somethingQuotations purloined from Forbes Magazine
that goes in one year and out the other.
-- anonymous
New Year's resolution: To refrain
from saying witty, unkind things,
unless they are really witty, and
irreparably damaging.
-- James Agate
Drink no longer water, but use a
little wine for thy stomach's sake
and thine often infirmities.
—I TIMOTHY 5:23
Frosts me too...
Jonathan Gewirtz writes:
...Steve has a great post about evil dictators and the lefty jerks who enable them. He is discussing Cuba rather than Iraq but the principle is the same.Speaking of Cuba, what really frosts me is those ads for tour excursions, where they talk about the decrepit old cars as though these were manifestations of some quaint custom -- perhaps a Latin version of the New England covered bridge -- rather than tragic reminders of a wrecked society. For these morons it's all about appearances and posturing, and the old cars serve as props to their immoral power-fantasies. Never mind how Cubans actually live, for "progressive" tourists Cuba is a kind of revolutionary Colonial Williamsburg where they can show solidarity with the
inmatespeople in charge and pretend they're fighting the evil Yanqui imperialists.... (How many of these tourists realize that Cuba was a first-world country before Castro took over?)....
A good story for the last day of the year...
LONDON — A flight in the United States proved lucky for a British woman who suffered a heart attack. Fifteen heart specialists, all bound for a medical conference in Florida, stood up to offer help when a cabin attendant asked, "Is there a doctor on board?" (link)Now we just need for terrorists to try to hijack a plane on its way to the Kung Fu championships....
Cast out of the Garden...
Robert Samuelson has an interesting article on Bush-hatred
....In the end, Bush hating says more about the haters than the hated -- and here, too, the parallels with Clinton are strong. This hatred embodies much fear and insecurity. The anti-Clinton fanatics hated him not simply because he occasionally lied, committed adultery or exhibited an air of intellectual superiority. What really infuriated them was that he kept succeeding -- he won reelection, his approval ratings stayed high -- and that diminished their standing. If Clinton was approved, they must be disapproved.Dean Esmay once penned one of the all-time-great blogposts, writing a long list of ways that Bush's policies were almost identical to Clinton's. Which isn't surprising, really, because both had their bases under control, and were, and are, appealing to the Center. And, whatever they may privately wish to do, neither of them were or are in a position to take the country where the majority doesn't want to go. Esmay may have exaggerated the similarities, but that he could write such a post at all says a lot.Ditto for Bush. If he succeeded less, he'd be hated less. His fiercest detractors don't loathe him merely because they think he's mediocre, hypocritical and simplistic. What they truly resent is that his popularity suggests that the country might be more like him than it is like them. They fear he's exiling them politically. On one level, their embrace of hatred aims to make others share their outrage; but on another level, it's a self-indulgent declaration of moral superiority....
It says that Bush and Clinton are hated as symbols of other things that people are unhappy about. I think in both cases the biggest grievance is the feeling of the loss of an entitlement. Entitlement to power and influence. Dems were the majority party for 50 years or so, and grew up knowing that that was how Nature intended things to be. Now they feel they've been cast out of the Garden. And Republicans held the White House for 12 years, and could just feel their strength growing and growing....and then came Clinton. They too felt they'd lost something they were entitled to.
I'm no fan of Clinton, but a lot of what was said about him was just daft and stupid. He wasn't trying to turn the country into a socialist hippie commune. And even if he wanted to, he was but a part of a vast political and governmental apparatus notoriously resistant to pressure from presidents--he had no power to do anything of the kind. And I'll make bold to say he was not involved with drug smuggling and knew nothing about the suicide of Vince Foster.
Now it's Bush's turn to be traduced by people driven crazy because they feel diminished and sidelined. No matter how many years he devotes to patient electioneering and persuasion, it's claimed he's bent on destroying democracy. People go on televison to claim free-speech is extinct! People who obviously know nothing about American religious life claim that we are headed for a "theocracy." Billionaires claim that Bush and the "corporate interests" are going to crush "the little guy."
Bush has led the efforts that have liberated more than 50 million souls from hidious tyrannies--but he's "worse than Hitler." The administration pours its efforts into birthing and nurturing democracy and economic freedom and religious tolerance, not only in Iraq and Afghanistan, but across the Middle East and other backward areas that others considered not worth trying to change. Yet low political hacks call them "the most illiberal people in America."
[If they are using "Liberal" in the recent sense of "crypto-socialist," then it's true. Bush wants to give ordinary people choice over a wide range of things now controlled by bureaucrats. It's an intentional slap in the face to elitists everywhere. And he's unashamedly Christian! What could be more illiberal? -- I.C. Yeah. The word "Liberal" gets shifted deceptively, sometimes within the same sentence. It can mean thinking like Gladstone, or like Michael Harrington. Anyone using it should be required to provide their definition.--JW]
This kind of drift into nuttiness is a great pity, because now, as always, we need a "loyal opposition." Even the best intentioned governments are like those cartoon giants who knock over trees and flatten houses. They need thoughtful criticism, and also need a feeling that blunders are going to cost them votes. But many critics are sidelining themselves into screwiness. And it's also scary, because it was out of the Clinton-hating fever swamp that the Oklahoma City bombers came. Any group of more than a few dozen includes some people who are crazy! And the crazies among the Bush-haters are now being fed a diet of paranoid lies--such as the recent claim that Bush caused the Iran earthquake!
December 30, 2003
Third World as "ethnographic zoo"
Wretchard puts this well.
...Thomas Barnett pointed out that Africa, in common with dirt poor countries of the Third World, has been detached from the stream of civilization. It remains on the planet only by polite pretense; but in practice under another sun, with different laws of gravity. Even arithmetic is different there, and the starvation of a hundred thousand counts for less newspaper space than the sexual scandals of a Hollywood actor. Yet in that outer dark lies the future of mankind. Barnett convincingly argues that "the real battlegrounds in the global war on terrorism are still over there. If gated communities and rent-a-cops were enough, September 11 never would have happened."The truly dangerous thing about President Bush is that he wants to bring these lost continents back onto the planet. "And we believe that freedom -- the freedom we prize -- is not for us alone, it is the right and the capacity of all mankind." Even at the cost of making them like Americans, free, crass and prosperous. That is a less comforting proposition to the capitals of Old Europe than maintaining the Third World as an ethnographic zoo which pays graft to the zookeepers.
December 29, 2003
Let it seem small matter if he come or stay...
A PINCH OF SALT
(Dream Bird)
When a dream is born in you
With a sudden clamorous pain,
When you know the dream is true
And lovely, with no flaw or stain,
O then be careful, or with sudden clutch
You'll hurt the thing you prize so much.
Dreams are like a bird that mocks,
Flirting the feathers of his tail.
When you seize at the salt-box
Over the hedge you'll see him sail.
Old birds are neither caught with salt or chaff:
They watch you from the apple bough and laugh.
Poet, never chase the dream.
Laugh yourself and turn away.
Mask your hunger, let it seem
Small matter if he come or stay;
And when he nestles in your hand at last,
Close up your fingers tight and hold him fast.
-- Robert Graves
Good evening, and welcome to 'All Is Lost'
What a loss the death of Michael Kelly was. Pejman just linked to this column from 11/2001, which is still hilarious and painfully true.
Good evening, and welcome to 'All Is Lost,' the nightly public affairs program produced by National Public Radio and the British Broadcasting Corp. Tonight we discuss what has been called America's war against terror. I am your host, Perfectly Modulated Voice of Reason."With me, in our Washington studio, are: Fabled Newsman Who Was There When Saigon Fell . . . Scientifically Trained Impartial Scholar . . . and Bureau Chief of Second-Rate Regional Monopoly Newspaper Who Is Desperate to Be Hired by the New York Times. From London, we are joined by our European affairs analyst, Loathes America and Prays for Its Swift Destruction....
[there is a long description of splendid news, with rebellions toppling islamist regimes in Iraq and Iran and Afghanistan, and Bush presented with Osama's head on a pike]
...."Gentleman, given all this, the question is obvious -- Is there any reason to even go on?"
Chorus: "No . . . no . . . utterly hopeless . . . doomed . . . repudiation of entire U.S. strategy. . . . A colossal failure . . . no hope."...
...Perfectly Modulated: "Fabled Newsman, what says the view from inside the Beltway?"
Fabled Newsman: "Been there. Best and brightest. Tet. Vietnamization. No light at the end of the tunnel."
Perfectly Modulated: "And would you go so far as to say . . . "
Fabled Newsman: "Yes. Absolutely: Quagmire. Quagmire. Quagmire. Quagmire. Waist deep in the Big Muddy. Quagmire."
Perfectly Modulated: "Desperate to be Hired by The Times, what's your take?"
Desperate to be Hired: "Whatever Fabled Newsman said goes double for me. With bells on. You bet. Count me in. Ditto."
Perfectly Modulated: "Now let's go to our European analyst, Loathes America, for the insight from over there. Loathes, what is the mood of Europe tonight?"
Loathes America: "Bleak, of course. And properly so. I mean, one does not wish to say that this debacle is what America deserves for its arrogance, its vulgarity, its bullying ways -- well, actually one does wish to say it, doesn't one rather? Really, one just hates America. Really, one always has, ever since one was just a little chap."
Perfectly Modulated: "Thank you, Loathes America. A valuable insight as always. Gentlemen, last thoughts?"
Scientifically Trained: "Things could hardly be worse."
Loathes America: "Nonsense. That Pollyanna optimism so typical of you naive colonials. Things could always be worse. And will be. Thank G-d."
Fabled Newsman: "Quag . . . "
Desperate: " . . . mire."
Perfectly Modulated: "And that wraps up another edition of 'All Is Lost.' Good night, and pleasant dreams.
December 28, 2003
grim
From Powerline:
...Shmuel Yurfest is an Israeli surgeon who has saved the lives of many people, including lots of Palestinians. Last May, he reattached the severed hand of a Palestinian terrorist who was injured when his bomb blew up prematurely. "I have saved the lives of many terrorists," Yurfest says. "But the only reason this one walks on this planet with both his hands is because of my work." While performing the operation, Dr. Yurfest commented to a nurse, "Tell the terrorists, when they make a bomb for me to make sure it's a small one because I have saved the lives of many of them."I am Not. Going. To. Say. ANYTHING.Dr. Yurfest won't be saving any more terrorists. Or anyone else. At age 48, he is blind and nearly deaf as a result of a mass-murder bombing by a 19 year old Palestinian girl....
Book recommendation
Usually, tall books with lots of pictures are fun to leaf through, but aren't the sort of thing one reads from cover to cover. But James McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom, which is, by general acclamation, the best one-volume history of the Civil War, has been re-published in a large picture-filled format as The Illustrated Battle Cry of Freedom, without losing anything. We got it for Christmas, and I've been reading, or rather, re-reading it with avidity
"Howard Dean in the pulpit is like Michael Dukakis in a tank "
Zev Chafets on poor Dean's "Southern Strategy."
....This assumption runs especially strong in what Dean likes to call "the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party." These people don't believe in much, but they are fervent on the subject of their own superiority. To them, America's red states (as identified in TV maps on Election Night 2000) are populated by ignorant cowboys, unwashed swampies, hellfire preachers, beauty parlor bimbos, redneck sheriffs, Confederate flag wavers and retarded hillbilly kids sitting in trees playing the banjo.If you have children you know how they can try to be serious and sophisticated, and the result is hilarious, but they get hurt and bewildered if you laugh at them? The metro types who go for Dean are just like that. They have no idea how Dukakis-in-a-tank funny their pronouncements are, and not just about southerners. Remember "Bush had no right to wear a military uniform on that carrier!"? That's goofy and tone-deaf in at least six different ways (not including that a flight-suit isn't a uniform). How hurt and confused they must feel when we don't take them seriously. No wonder they are angry. Dukakis probably doesn't understand to this day why people were laughing at him.This picture of Southern inferiority, like all articles of faith, is immune to both empirical observation and personal experience. To guys like Dean, Dixie is and will forever remain a vast county fair where a slick Yaleman can sell 5-gallon jugs of snake oil in return for votes....
"A more humane Mikado never did in Japan exist" ...
When I'm made Dictator of the Planet, my first proclamation will be to forbid all background music in public places. Maybe with an exception for something quiet and classical. But loud pop music in shops, elevators, shopping malls will punishable by casting-into-volcano.
Especially bookstores! The only bookstore in our neighborhood is a Borders. And it's often a race there to see if I can find something to read before driven away screaming because Borders is trying to raise my consciousness by exposing me to some trendy authentic ethnic South American whatever-it-is. And even if the music isn't hateful in itself, it's impossible to appreciate the charm and flavor of prose with an alien rhythm being crammed into my ear canals. I HATE IT!
I have evil fantasies, where my goons are breaking down doors and dragging the top management of Borders away for questioning. First we will soften them up by locking them into steel trash-cans, and letting an infinite number of monkeys with sticks try to recreate the complete works of Shakespeare by pounding out Morse Code on the cans.
I'm not sure what I'll do to them next. Perhaps I should get in the mood by re-reading that peerless work of SF, Souls in the Great Machine, which tells of an alternate Earth where librarians are powerful leaders, with their own secret police, and firing squads! The perfect fantasy for bookworm types like me.
December 27, 2003
"The way you train is the way you will fight."
If you are wondering how (or if) our soldiers are being trained for deployment to Iraq, you will find this article, National Guard at War at Home to Prepare for Real Thing in Iraq, as fascinating as I did.
...One thing is certain: The newly minted soldiers are being given a vivid taste of what they will face in Iraq during their five months of training. The drill at Fort Drum, which is being replicated at bases across the country, required six weeks of preparation and battle scenes worthy of a Steven Spielberg film.via Cori Dauber.More than 100 Iraqis were flown in from Dearborn, Mich., to play the angry villagers of Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's birthplace. The call to prayer blasted from a makeshift mosque, and there were even angry signs — as in Iraqi cities — hanging from the walls. To complete the simulation, real Red Cross workers and soldiers dressed as journalists milled about, getting in the soldiers' way at every opportunity.
If not for the snow, the fir trees and the fact that the temperature hovers around 15 degrees, the scene might almost have been mistaken for central Iraq...
- - - - - - - -
....On the drill's third day, things got tougher. There was still no water in Tikrit, and when Captain Heintz and some of his men drove back to the village, a full-scale riot broke out. The soldiers tried unsuccessfully to keep them at bay, and watched helplessly as one middle-aged woman, her face shrouded in a cotton kaffiyeh, got into two of the Humvees and made off with about $20,000 of military equipment.
Then came the suicide bomber, smiling deceptively in the simulation, and the loud bang....
"Men of iron, ships of aluminum"
at Spacedaily I found this article comparing the problems of space vehicles like the Shuttle with the problems of Zeppelins and other rigid airships.
...the great rigid airships have a lot of lessons to teach us about how technologies rise and fall. In particular, the problems that eventually killed the large airship are almost exactly the same as the ones that currently bedevil our space launch vehicles -- especially the Shuttle...Among the other similarities: Narrow Contractor Base, Mammoth Ground Support Equipment, Safety Trade-Offs, Low Flight Rate, Publicity Spotlight, Fanatical Promoters......High Unit Cost -- The low lift/volume ratio of hydrogen and helium meant that airship designers had to make their craft very large to get useful amounts of lift. Even an X-zeppelin had to be large and expensive. In sharp contrast, the winged aircraft of the same era were so cheap that X-planes were thrown together by bicycle mechanics in barns and garages...
Narrow Design Base -- There were never more than four independent airship design teams active at one time, and most of them were heavily dependent on Zeppelin Corporation design data acquired by purchase, espionage, or reverse-engineering of crash wreckage. (During this Golden Age of Aviation, there were dozens of airplane design teams at work, exploring every possible idea for improved performance.) The USA is now down to two major players in the launch vehicle market, with the Ariane team the only active overseas group not dependent on old US or Soviet technology transferred during the Cold War.
And the one that really made me both smile and wince: Inappropriate Traditions. (read it)
Just testing...
This isn't a post about John Adams, I'm just following, in my half-educated way, an interesting tutorial on using CSS to float an image to the right of a block of text. Is 'floating" an image the same as "aligning" it to the left or right? Beats me. (As usual, it's just assumed that one already knows various things.) Well, it's different in one way—ALIGN doesn't let you have both a margin and the text-wrap.
Why didn't they have this stuff when I was young and had huge amounts of time to fill learning arcane arts? All that time wasted on Alchemy because there was no XHTML...
And why is there a white area around the picture? I didn't add the padding, so it shouldn't be there...Ah, never mind, the white is part of the picture itself...
Oh well: "Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclination, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." --John Adams
A small positive note...
Whither Russia? What's Putin up to? Who knows...This seems like a positive sign:
MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin signed a bill on one-window concept for registering businesses into law on Dec. 23 in a move expected to ease the often time-, energy- and money-consuming bureaucratic gridlock faced by entrepreneurs while registering businesses in the country....A splendid idea, but probably very difficult to implement, since the "one-window" will be passing information on to various bureaucracies with incompatable data systems.
It would certainly be difficult to do here. Good luck, Ivan.
December 26, 2003
Boxing Day surprise...
I was scrolling down-down-down at Boing Boing and was astonished to discover an old friend of ours—Allie Barden, (who used to babysit for our kids, and remains a special friend.) She was reporting from McMurdo, in Antartica, where she is working in a mess hall.
We knew she was there, but didn't know about her web-site, a sort of blog with penguins...
....we were going on a us air force plane c141 which is a big, massive, loud piece of metal that travels through stupid conditions at amazing speeds. it was the auschwitz train of moving bodies to the ice. earplugs are mandatory (if anyone wants to purchase my used ones, they can do a search on ebay.) but you can't really hold conversations on the craft anyway since its as loud as a train engine compartment inside the plane. there were 137 people on my flight, of them, 32 were female. we were gender segregated on the flight, our seats, basically cargo netting with seat belts and oxy masks...
there were 2 long paralell rows that ran down the center of the plane. your knees met the knees of the person across from you, your back against the back of the person behind you, your shoulders against the shoulders of the person next to you. moving is not really an option with huge boots and 20 pounds of cold wether gear. my knees hurt so much. if you could maneuver it, you could stand on your seat, but something on your lap ended up falling on the lap of the person next to you. comfortable, it was not. exciting ..... i enjoyed every minute of that flight. except the part when it felt like my eardums were bein sucked out of my head. i didn't like that feeling. there were no windows on the craft except one porthole in the middle which i was lucky enough to be in the vicity of, but could not see out of,due to the whole not being able to move thing.bathroom travel was not prohibited, but the latrine was nasty. howver, when you gotta go..... so i went. and i am so glad. the latrine was next to the flight deck, and the usaf crew wre hanging out by the door. i talked my way into the cockpit an hour before landing. we had just started to fly over the continent and that's where i saw my first glimpse of antarctica. i can't explain it. the trans-antarctic range peaked below us, and i had a driver side view. i sat in the co-pilot's seat, and was like a little girl in a candy store, fogging the window. there were deep cracks in the otherwise flawless ice floes which denotes glacier movement like when you stick a spoon in chowder that has cooled and formed a skin over the top. i saw ranges that rose to 14,000 (our altitude was 35,000) that were all prefect white with hints of blue. they looked like what clouds would look like if they wre sharp and pointy. i saw places completely untouched, where man has never walked. some of it was like the moon, but sanded over smooth like fiberlass and freshly painted....
"And, guarding, calls not Thee to guard..."
Army Cpl. Kerry Otwaska, of Genoa City, Wis., guards the entrance of St. Raphael’s church in Baghdad on Wednesday during Christmas mass.
Dusan Vranic / AP photo
#140: Nothing scares a leftie like the thought of people becoming more self-sufficient.
KRUGMAN TRUTH SQUAD
New Year's Resolutions (12/26/03) is hardly worth reading. However, there is one notable political comment. Krugman essentially throws his support to Howard Dean for the presidential nomination. Here's one of several beauties:"In the last few weeks the usual suspects have been trying to paint Howard Dean's obviously heartfelt comments about his brother's death in Laos as some sort of insult to the military."
The point, of course, was that the brother was NOT IN the military as Dean had just claimed. Looks like Paul and Howard will go down the same toilet together next November. At least we will only have to trip the handle once.
On economic policy, Krugman took a swipe at tax-exempt savings accounts which may be a major Bush initiative starting next year. Amazing! Nothing scares a leftie like the thought of people becoming more self-sufficient.
[The Truth Squad is a group of economists who have long marveled at the writings of Paul Krugman. The Squad Reports are synopses of their discussions. ]
We gotta catch up with Eastern Europe...
Via Drezner, a Chicago Tribune story about the growth in credit card use in Hungary. This is what really impressed me:
....The biggest obstacle credit card marketers had to overcome in Hungary was fear of fraud. But consumer concerns about the safety of their cards have led to an important security innovation made possible by the explosive growth of mobile phones in Hungary.Fascinating. We gotta catch up with Eastern Europe...Each time a card is used, the cardholder immediately gets a text message on his or her cell phone confirming the transaction and notifying the cardholder of the balance. Initially developed in Hungary, the messaging system is used widely in Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. It is now being introduced in Western Europe....
In our family, like many, everyone has a cell phone. So each little Weidner has his or her own phone number, which is something new in the world. And now the US has a law that cell phone numbers must be portable. If you switch to another provider, you can take your number with you. (My impression is that other countries don't share our number problem, what with our six big providers constantly grabbing customers from each other.) So now we can, if we wish, keep our numbers forever. So I'm guessing we are rapidly heading to the time where everybody in the world has their own permanent phone number.
And then it could turn into an everything number. Send an e-mail to someone's "phone number," and it will be automatically routed to whatever mailbox they are using. Enter a "phone number" into a web page, and go to that person's home page or blog.
What I'd like to have is a home phone that is connected to a re-charging dock for all our cell phones. When you are "at home," your phone is in the dock, and any calls for you ring on the home phone. If nothing else, it would bring some order to our current phone chaos here at Weidner Central, what with children setting down phones any old which-where, and then panicking when it's time to leave for school.
December 25, 2003
Freedom's mudhole...
As you unwrap the shiny presents, or drink your glögg, stop a moment and remember those who stand on Freedom's Wall. (Or try to snooze in Freedom's bog....)
I got the picture from Spot On, and also a link to...
. . . . well, if you want your SOCKS KNOCKED OFF,
. . . . . . . . if you are "urban sophisticates" like us and you want to feel REALLY HUMBLED,
. . . . . . . . . . . . .go HERE to see how our war dead are honored in a small Texas town....
December 24, 2003
SWEDISH GLÖGG
This was my Grandmother's recipe. Julglögg (Christmas Glögg) is a spiced wine to serve at holiday parties...
| Spice mixture 1 tsp Cardamom 1 tsp Cloves 1 tsp Ginger 3 1/2 tsp Cinnamon 1 cup of Vodka Vanilla Mixture Let these two mixtures stand separately in their own bottles for at least 5 days. |
RECIPE: Add 3/4 cup Sugar to 1 1/2 cups of water, and warm to near boiling point. Add a splash of Lemon Juice, a bottle of red wine and a few spoonfuls of Brandy or Vodka. Add 2tsp of the Vanilla Mixture, and 1 TBSP of the Spice Mix. Serve piping hot in little cups, sprinkled with sliced Blanched Almonds |
December 23, 2003
"Read it and weep"
Alan Sullivan pointed me to this article on the Poles, and their many efforts on behalf of freedom. And how they've been wretchedly treated by an ungrateful world every time.
Including, right now, by us, in return for much help in Iraq. They asked for almost nothing, but even that was too much. While we give billions to Turkey or Egypt. I HOPE somebody's waking up and paying attention to this....
Pass it on, please.
...On that fateful afternoon, the Polish cavalry struck the Turkish lines with such force that 2,000 lances shattered. The charge stunned the Ottoman army. A hundred thousand Turks ran for the Danube.No army from the Islamic world ever posed such a threat to the West again.
Poland's thanks for its courage? In the next century, the country was sliced up like a pie by the ungrateful Habsburgs, along with the Romanovs of Russia and the Prussian Hohenzollerns. It was the most cynical action in European history until the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which divided Poland again in 1939.
But the Poles never gave up their belief in their country - or in freedom. During our own revolution, our first allies were Polish freedom fighters such as Casimir Pulaski and Tadeusz Kosciusko...
THE COURTSA figure of the Epiphany
The poet's imageries are noble ways,
Approaches to a plot, an open shrine.
Their splendors, colors, avenues, arrays,
Their courts that run with wine;Beautiful similes, 'fair and fragrant things,'
Enriched, enamouring,—raptures, metaphors
Enhancing life, are paths for pilgrim kings
Made free of golden doors.And yet the open heavenward plot, with dew,
Ultimate poetry, enclosed, enskied,
(albeit such ceremonies lead thereto)
Stands on the yonder side.Plain, behind oracles it is; and past
all symbols, simple; perfect, heavenly-wild,
The song some loaded poets reach at last—
The kings that found a child.-Alice Meynell
More "under the radar" stuff—"Teddy's Nightmare"
More on Medical Health Savings Accounts. (I used the wrong terminology.) A friend sent this WSJ article, Teddy's Nightmare. It's a sugarplum for subscribers only, but I'll quote some of it.
...When Medical Savings Accounts were originally created in 1996, liberals led by Ted Kennedy did their best to kill them in the crib. Severe restrictions were placed on who could own them, as well as on the number of policies that could be sold, and authorization was set to expire this year. Not surprisingly, insurers did not rush into the market.Ain't gonna happen. The days when Teddy and Tom could crush all hopes and dreams of reform are just about over. Their days of keeping people poor, and uninsured, and uneducated, in order to "justify" big government programs are fading fast. Gee, if we can bypass those two horrid old dinosaurs, we may catch up with South Africa...But now those restrictions are gone, the Treasury Department announced rules for new HSA policies yesterday, and private insurers are already jumping into the market. A glimpse of their market potential is provided by South Africa, of all places. After the Mandela government deregulated South Africa's private insurance market in 1994, HSA-type plans quickly captured about two-thirds of it.
That's precisely the kind of success that Senator Kennedy and friends fear could happen here. Democrats know that a reinvigorated private health insurance market will end their dream of a Canadian-style health system. Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle has already introduced a bill to "correct" the Medicare legislation, with HSA repeal a top priority....
...Another beneficial effect of HSAs is that they will wake consumers up to the needless state mandates that price so many people out of insurance. Individual and small-group purchasers in New York, in fact, may well discover that they can't even buy a high deductible policy because of that state's mandates.Waking people up. That's the whole idea. Give ordinary people IRA's and 401-K's, and those who aren't totally brain-dead start to be more skeptical when "evil corporations" are denounced for "obscene profits."The easiest way to solve this problem would be for Congress to exercise its Constitutional power to free up interstate commerce in insurance. If New York politicians want to regulate insurers until they flee the state, fine. But they shouldn't be able to tell New York residents that they can't buy an HSA from, say, Connecticut, which has many fewer mandates....
Soon lot of our medical problems are going to be dealt with without any bureaucrats involved. That's going to be a wake-up. Plus, the Bush Administration is working hard at giving parents with kids at sub-standard public schools the right to chose other schools. That should turn on some light-bulbs. And soon, soon, Social Security.
#139: Poor krug, he's got nothing to say
KRUGMAN TRUTH SQUAD
Citizen Conrad's Friends (12/23/03) is a testament to how desperate things are getting over at PK headquarters. The Dow is over 10,000, the economy is roaring, President Bushes approvals are over 60% and we finally caught Saddam! So what does Paul Krugman write about? Conrad Black!
Black is someone most of Krugman readers have never heard of and couldn't care less about if they had. But that's not the point. The point is to use Black and his business problems as a lead-in to smear someone else who is more important and has some career similarities to Black. That would be one Rupert Murdock! What has Murdock done-other than be a conservative in the same business as Black? Nothing!
And that about sums up this column. It's a big nothing.
[The Truth Squad is a group of economists who have long marveled at the writings of Paul Krugman. The Squad Reports are synopses of their discussions. ]
Yet another "Bush Revolution—under the radar" story
They're here! Medical Savings Accounts are here! Or rather, they are now law, and will be available next year. Here's an article (PDF) you should read if you are interested.
The new Health Savings Accounts (HSA) provision in the Medicare bill was signed into law by President Bush on December 8, 2003 and goes into effect January 1, 2004. All 250 million non-elderly Americans will now have access to a Medical Savings Account (MSA), and one that is far more attractive than the Archer MSAs that were enacted in 1996.This is going to be BIG. There are MSA's already, but only a limited and tentative plan that hardly anyone uses. But there's nothing tentative about the new law. Look for the banks and brokerages who are now trying to sell you IRA's to soon be pushing MSA's.Account holders must have a qualified insurance plan, but the insurance requirements have been opened up considerably. Allowable deductibles have been lowered to $1,000 for an individual and $2,000 for a family. The maximum deductible requirement has been replaced by maximum out-of-pocket limits of $5,000 and $10,000 for individuals and families. These limits include deductibles and coinsurance for “in-network” providers. There is no restriction on the stop-loss limits for out-of-network services. These amounts will be adjusted annually for cost of living increases.
Preventive care services may be covered on a first-dollar basis. That is, deductibles will not have to apply to services as defined by section 1871 of the Social Security Act.
Annual contributions to the HSA are limited to 100% of the deductible up to a maximum of $2,600 for an individual or $5,150 for a family. Account holders aged 55 and up may make additional contributions of $500 in 2004, increasing by $100 each year until it reaches $1,000 in 2009.
What will be interesting are the behavior changes we may expect to see. Imagine tens-of-millions of people going to any doctor they like, and just paying for the visit. Spot cash money. No calls to "the Plan" to see if they will authorize such-and-such. No special negotiated rates because you belong to some group. Just free-market choices. (This is for routine stuff—big problems will still be paid by your insurance.) The savings in overhead should be huge. And the incentives to avoid unnecessary treatments will be huge—the money will be yours. If you don't spend it, it stays in your account and grows.
In the last few years I've been to 3 physicians. And every time I've had to listen to bitter complaints about "managed care." Now a lot of patients and doctors are going to be managing things themselves.
(via Brothers Judd Blog)
December 22, 2003
Another "Bush Revolution—under the radar" story
Bryan Preston writes:
...The Telegraph said a top US State Department official confirmed last week that the Proliferation Security Initiative, an international, US-led scheme to halt the spread of banned weapons by seizing them in transit, had "netted several seizures."Nice how they call a major new alliance a "scheme," but I'll pass over that bit of editorial comment buried in a news report to talk about why this is so important. As I've noted before, the PSI is one of the most underreported stories of the year. Most journalists don't know anything about it, and liberal commentators like Josh Marshall have simply elected not to mention it since it gets in the way of their "Bush is an unrepentant unilateralist" critiques of administration policy. The PSI is extremely important to the future of weapons proliferation and to the world community generally. It not only acts as a de facto blockade against Kim Jong-Il, but the PSI unites 11 of the world's most powerful states, all democracies, in an anti-proliferation alliance that operates outside the aegis of the UN to perform a function that the UN has clearly failed to do--stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction. And it's the brainchild of Undersecretary of State for Arms Control John Bolton, one of the more maligned figures in the Bush administration....
Sometimes things change ...
There's an interesting article in NRO on Christianity in China.
....Kathryn Jean Lopez: How many Christians are there in China?Christianity is apparently growing rapidly in China, which could have big implications for the future. I'm always fascinated by any sort of renovatio. A country like China, we just assume that it will carry on much the same, and that we will have to struggle with the same intractable problems far into the future. Sometimes, it turns out, not so...David Aikman: [There are] about 70 million Protestants and about 12 million Catholics.
Lopez: How have that many Christians managed to flourish in China, largely underground? What drives them?
Aikman: During the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) every single church building (and mosque and temple as well) was closed in China. The formal, permitted structures of Chinese Protestantism and Catholicism had also been dissolved by Mao's Red Guards. Christians become used to gathering in totally clandestine situations, in homes, fields, forests. Because the government was so overtly hostile to religion, Christians took the view that the best response was open and energetic evangelism wherever and whenever they could. Even when China began to open up in 1979 and the "official" churches were permitted to function once more, the "house church" networks had established such a powerful presence all over China that it made sense to continue to operate completely outside of the domain of any Chinese officialdom.
Lopez: Many of the Christians are elites — scientists, intellectuals. How did that happen?....
another petty tyrant suddenly gets friendly
You've probably already seen Greyhawk's tableau of TIME covers. Dead on. Time has been doing its sneering best to disparage and misrepresent our war efforts, and now suddenly they preen themselves on their support for our people, by having US soldiers as the "Man of the Year.". What phonies.
Anyway, by any rational standard, the Man of the Year should be George W. Bush...and they're not about to bite on that little cranberry.
December 21, 2003
Greyhawk posts a story about wounded GI's...
...One of more than 280 Marines injured in combat since the beginning of the fight to topple Saddam Hussein's government, Frei lost much of his right arm, which has been replaced by a prosthesis.We're just midgets compared to those guys...After being treated at Bethesda National Naval Medical Center just outside Washington, he took 30 days of convalescent leave in San Diego and then headed back to his base at Camp Pendleton, Calif.
Among his first actions was applying to remain in the Marines. Another was going out to meet other returning troops injured overseas in the hopes of passing along encouraging words.
"You have to maintain a positive attitude," said Frei, 31. "You have to. You can decide to let this slow you down, just like any other adversity you would run into in your life...
And for the snarkmeisters who try to make a scandal out the President not attending soldier's funerals (which, by tradition, and for important symbolic reasons, a President does not do in wartime), there's this:
..."I met the president" at Walter Reed, said McLain, 22, a military police officer in the National Guard who is now home in Havre, Mont.McLain, who is recuperating from injuries suffered in Iraq, has a photograph of himself with Bush, but the college student admitted he doesn't recall a great deal about the meeting because he was "heavily morphinated."
Bush's visit is one of several he's made to see injured troops at the complex named after a noted 19th century Army physician who did pioneering work on yellow fever....
"like an old high school quarterback"
A.O.G. tells me something I had no notion of: The UK has a spacecraft they hope to land soon on Mars! Very cool, I wish them luck.
He also said this:
Daniel Schorr was on NPR this morning, bloviating about some Nixon related thing. I realize that Schorr hasn’t had a moment of glory since the Nixon presidency, but while I can understand Schorr’s need to dwell on his past triumphs, why does that count as news? Why does NPR subject the rest of us to that? I have to agree that the Vietnam / Nixon experience has indelibly marked the generation that took part in the anti-government protests. Like an old high school quarterback who won the big game 30 years ago but struggles with a broken marriage and dead-end job now, modern reality is just too painful to deal with straight up. The only difference is that I can feel sorry for the former quarterback.
Us bagel-eating Neo-Cons feeling smug...
[Ah ha! It is YOU who's been pulling the Bush-puppet's strings for the Zionistas! --I.C. Lighten up guys, it's a joke! I'm no Neo-Con. Just a plain-vanilla-wafer-Con)
The Washington Post has a pleasing editorial, The 'Bush Doctrine' Experiences Shining Moments. I have but a few quibbles...
...Those who developed the Bush Doctrine -- a policy of taking preemptive, unprovoked action against emerging threats -- predicted that an impressive U.S. victory in Iraq would intimidate allies and foes alike, making them yield to U.S. interests in other areas. Though that notion floundered with the occupation in Iraq, the capture of Hussein may have served as the decisive blow needed to make others respect U.S. wishes, they say...The notion didn't "flounder," though it may have seemed so. It was our patience and persistence dealing with the difficulties and frustrations in Iraq that gave us the credibility that has impressed foes and allies.
In some ways it was better that the occupation has been difficult and bloody. We've been able to make a good start at laying to rest the notion that we will bug out when things get tough. And that we can be stopped by a chorus of shrieks and sneers and ankle-biting from the "International Community." And that we are captive to the "need for stability" in the ME.
An impressive start, impressive enough that various people are now nervously extrapolating our future moves as straight lines, and not bell-shaped curves.
...Bush still has some inconsistencies to work out with his doctrine. Earlier this month, he drew rebukes from conservatives for undermining democratic Taiwan to win favor with totalitarian China. And, as Bush's domestic opponents point out, he has been contradictory in his views of international organizations. Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) said the administration's support for International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors in Libya and Iran "is difficult to reconcile with the administration's previous ridicule of IAEA inspectors in Iraq." ...These are not inconsistencies. We are asking Taiwan to stop grandstanding, and support us in the diplomatic firmness needed to deal first with NK, and then China. That's perfectly consistent. The B-Doc (As we bagel-eating SF Neo-Cons say) was always meant to lead to diplomatic strength, not to a series of wars.
And the IAEA inspections (and all the other inspections) are only useful when there is cooperation. They were always a farce in Iraq. If Libya or Iran cooperate, then the inspections will work just fine.
(via Betsy Newmark)
December 19, 2003
News from the real world...
Sometimes, living in San Francisco, one starts to have a vague feeling that America was a problem of the past, now tidied away by the 'Progressives.' So I cherish stories like this, from Greyhawk:
....In a matter of a week, kids at the 500-student school in north-central Colorado Springs dug deep into their piggy banks, unearthed crumpled dollar bills from secret hiding spots and did extra chores around the house to raise money for airline tickets and hotel accommodations for two fellow students. In the end, they gathered about $3,000.That means Anthony Mitchell, 8, and Megan Mitchell, 7, can visit their injured soldier father at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., for Christmas. They wouldn't be able to go without their classmates' help.
Staff Sgt. Roy Mitchell of Indiana was severely burned and lost part of his left leg in a land-mine explosion in Afghanistan on Nov. 23. The 32-year-old from Fort Drum in New York was one of 21 wounded soldiers recovering as of Wednesday at Walter Reed....
Bogus, again...
If you are susceptible to the HALLIBURTON/CHENEY/CORRUPTION/CRONY-CAPITALISM syndrome, you are probably NOT susceptible to reasoned argument. But, for the record, the recent charges that Halliburton overcharged us for fuel are BOGUS.
The Army asked Halliburton to buy fuel from Kuwait (For the very good reason that it is adjacent to Basra, where there were riots over fuel shortages.) It was the Halliburton Corporation that initiated purchases of fuel from Turkey (much cheaper). This saved the US a bundle. Now they are being accused of overcharging for the Kuwaiti fuel.
Thank you, oh loyal opposition, for your CONSTRUCTIVE criticism in time of war. blerrrp.
Of course it would be much better to turn for help to the saintly people of the NGO's, who are untainted by Capitalism... but...what's that you say? They've left Iraq? Scooted? Too dangerous? Too "unstable?" I guess somebody forgot to tell the heartless private sector that it's cut 'n run time.
December 18, 2003
To an older place than Eden, and a taller town than Rome...
THE HOUSE OF CHRISTMASTo an open house in the evening,
Home shall men come,
To an older place than Eden,
And a taller town than Rome.
To the end of the way of the wandering star,
To the things that cannot be, and that are,
To the place where God was homeless,
And all men are at home.-- G.K.Chesterton
December 17, 2003
The latté is the politics
One of the frustrations of being a "warblogger" is that the anti-war types will snipe and sneer endlessly, but won't debate. At least not using dead-white-men-of-ancient-Greece-patriarchical-homophobic tools like, you know, "logic," or "facts." At least I've never had a real debate—perhaps i'm too minor a weblogger. (Though I've noticed that if I make some trifling mistake in an otherwise impeccably [I think] logical argument, the epee is often embedded in my gizzard with blinding speed, with the rest of the stuff still ignored.)
A subset of this frustration is when you ask some leftizoid: "OK, you don't like the President's plans. At least they are bold attempts to take on big problems. What's your big vision?" What's your plan? "...And answer came there none."
I think this article, The Bike-Path Left suggests a reason why...
....He's [Dean] full of anger.But only for peripheral issues. Ask him serious questions about the president's key responsibilities--national security and foreign policy--and the passion drains away as it did with Chris Matthews. David Brooks, visiting Burlington in 1997 in search of what eventually became his thesis "Bobos in Paradise," concluded that the quintessential latté burg was "relatively apolitical." He's a smart guy but he was wrong. All the stuff he took as evidence of the lack of politics--pedestrianization, independent bookstores--is the politics. Because all the big ideas failed, culminating in 1989 in Eastern Europe with the comprehensive failure of the biggest idea of all, the left retreated to all the small ideas: in a phrase, bike paths. That's what Bill Clinton meant when he said the era of big government was over; instead, he'd be ushering in the era of lots and lots of itsy bits of small government that, when you tote 'em up, works out even more expensive than the era of big government. That's what Howard Dean represents--the passion of the Bike-Path Left....
....For hard-core Democrats, the whole war thing is an unwelcome intrusion on what large numbers of people had assumed to be a permanent post-Martian politics. When you're at a Dean get-together, you realize they're not angry about the war, so much as having to talk about the war....
Whatever happened to "just war?"
seablogger writes;
...Whatever happened to "just war?" No U.N. existed when the doctrine was promulgated. It's specious for Catholics to claim retroactively that only the U.N. could authorize conflict. And it's astonishing that a conservative pontiff would ditch Church teachings, merely because of a little political inconvenience. In his younger years John Paul didn't hesitate to discommode the Soviet Empire; yet in his dotage, it seems, the Pope has become an ideological pawn of his Eurocratic handlers. Perhaps he dimly perceives himself as a champion of the common man, shaking his staff at another empire, which he can no longer distinguish from that previous one. Meanwhile his colleagues make fools of themselves...Reminds me of Rowan Williams writing about how he was deeply learned in "International Law," and was sure that it would be "illegal" for the US to liberate Iraq. Gorf.
Cardinal Renato Martino,: ..."Seeing him like this, a man in his tragedy, despite all the heavy blame he bears, I had a sense of compassion for him," he said in answer to questions about Saddam's arrest...How about a little more compassion for those people Saddam fed through the chipper-shredder, while he got his jollies listening to them scream? It seems to me the dictator has received very gentle treatment indeed, if anyone tended his teeth, rather than knocking them out. What is this "compassion," really? Perhaps it's a sense of dignity so morally-obtuse that it feels threatened by any violation of rank or title, no matter how bogus or monstrous the dignitary. If the President of the Republic is humbled, who might be next? A Cardinal of the Church, held to account for concealing thousands of child-violations?....
Seablogger also writes, about the movie Master and Commander: " ...In O'Brian's novels, Maturin is not only the Captain's match in force of character; he is a strange and dangerous man who kills without the slightest compunction when the occasion arises. Indeed Maturin's duels, and his perils as an agent of naval intelligence, provide many of the most dramatic moments in the duodecology (a word I just coined for a twenty-novel cycle). Betanny was given none of this, and he is physically inapt for the role as well: too tall, too handsome...."
I haven't seen the film, but it would be amazing if Hollywood could even imagine having a major character be small, grey-skinned, peevish, and capable of a cold, reptilian glare that can frighten strong men. And if they did, they couldn't possibly combine it with Maturin's warmth and charm. (His name, by the way, should probably be pronounced something like MATCH'rin. Not muh-TOOR-in...)
Take a look at Seablogger--an interesting person. "Duodecology" --gotta love it.
He's also the voice of Treebeard...
I loved an interview with John Rhys-Davies, in NRO. He's the guy who played Gimli in Lord of the Rings, and Sallah in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
....He recalled a conversation with his father back in the summer of 1955 as the two of them overlooked the Dar Es Salaam harbor in Tanzania. He remembers his father pointing to a boat and saying, "Twice a year it comes down from Aden [in Yemen]. It stops here and goes down [south]. On the way down it's got boxes of machinery and goods. On the way back up it's got two or three little black boys on it. Now, those boys are slaves. And the United Nations will not let me do anything about it."Rhys-Davies says that interviews like this are going to doom his career. I'm not sure how serious he is. It will be very interesting to see what happens...As the conversation continued on that warm summer day, his father said, "Look, boy, there is not going to be a world war between Russia and the United States. The next world war will be between Islam and the West." "Dad, you're nuts," Rhys-Davies responded. "The Crusades have been over for hundreds of years!'" (Precocious as it sounds at age 11, he points out that he did indeed know a "bit about history.") After all, it was 1955. Dwight D. Eisenhower was president of the United States and the Cold War was front-burner foreign policy.
His father responded, "Well, I know but militant Islam is on the rise again. And you will see it in your lifetime."
Osama bin Laden held in Area 51, cloning attempted...
Seen on The Corner, (via Betsy N)
....Hannity and Colmes just replayed a segment from earlier on Fox during which Mort Kondrake relayed a conversation he had with Madeline Albright in a Fox green room. She asks, Do you suppose the administration has Osama bin Laden and will bring him out before the election? Kondrake said that he asked her if she was serious and she suggested it is a real possibility. She was our secretary of state....Unbelievable.
Thank. You. God. The grownups are back in charge.
My second thought: What kind of people think up such accusations? Where's she coming from? It has to seem vaguely plausible to her that a President of the United States would engage in such a preposterous (and I would say treasonous) Hollywood plot to win an election. What kind of world could Madeline Albright have been living in, to nurse such phantsy's? Hmmm?
December 16, 2003
#139: an equal opportunity snipper!
KRUGMAN TRUTH SQUAD
Patriots and ProfitsWith (12/16/04) Paul Krugman crawled into a journalistic spider hole all his own. He opened this column with the lofty disclaimer that charges of profiteering by Halliburton "have, inevitably and appropriately, been pushed temporarily into the background by the news of Saddam's capture." He then proceeded to write a less than appropriate and definitely "uninevitable" column on exactly that subject.
What happened here is pretty obvious. Krugman had ALREADY written this column before the Hussein capture and was too lazy (and cowardly) to switch to the major topic of the weekend; a topic on which he has pounded the Bush administration over and over in previous columns. At least Maureen Dowd had the good sense to be on vacation and did not have to deal with the broader implications for the anti-war left of Saddam in custody.
As to the column itself, it is a classic example of a "Krugman investigation." Basically, he strings together some carefully selected news sources and then yells corruption. In this case his slanted snippets come from the Wall Street Journal, the Army Corps of Engineers, NBC News and US News and World Report among others. At least he's an equal opportunity snipper! Nothing is sourced precisely; no dates are given and interspersed between these "citations" are a litany of Krugman innuendos and character assassinations.
In other words; it was business as usual. In his first column after the biggest story since the beginning of the war, Paul Krugman was AWOL.
[The Truth Squad is a group of economists who have long marveled at the writings of Paul Krugman. The Squad Reports are synopses of their discussions. ]
To clarify what I was saying...
Update: Xavier in a comment to this post, added a link to a Russian blogger who a