Just some more Mac stuff..

Anand Lal Shimpi is a very savvy guy with a popular hardware site, who's been blogging his switch to a Mac. I'm just posting this morsel as a correction to a common misunderstanding—I'll have it up my sleeve the next time someone tells me Macs won't work on a Windows network....

...I realized today that I hadn't touched on network interaction between Macs and PCs yet so let's talk about that. Networking was horrible under desktop PC OSes until Windows 2000/XP, but now we've all been spoiled with networking that just works. This directly corresponded to my expectations when I tried networking the G5 with the rest of my PC-ridden home network. OS X's Windows file sharing is made courtesy of samba, and although I've heard many criticisms about samba - under OS X it just works. I didn't bother burning any of my old documents, music, etc... off my old PC, instead I relied entirely on OS X's ability to see my PC's shared folders to get my much needed files onto the G5. As you can probably guess, if things hadn't gone smoothly my first blog would have been a much more complaint-oriented one :) I don't know why this impresses me, but the fact all of the 6 PCs I've got on this network right now can be seen by the G5 (and vice versa) is something I definitely appreciate. Gone are the days when Macs and PCs didn't like to cooperate, it truly is a harmonious hardware home here.

I bought a HP Laserjet 4000 years ago, and it's served me well. The problem is that it's a parallel port model and the G5 has no legacy ports: what a great test for Windows printer sharing under OS X :) OS X had no problems finding the printer on my network and I've been using it ever since. Drivers were already available on OS X, making the process as painless as possible. Now onto CD burning and imaging...

Printer sharing under OS-X still amazes me, though I've been using it for several years now.

The whole world a labyrinth?

...In short, if youth is not quite right in its opinions, there is a strong probability that age is not much more so. Undying hope is co-ruler of the human bosom with infallible credulity. A man finds he has been wrong at every preceding stage of his career, only to deduce the astonishing conclusion that he is at last entirely right. Mankind, after centuries of failure, are still upon the eve of a thoroughly constitutional millennium. Since we have explored the maze so long without result, it follows, for poor human reason, that we cannot have to explore much longer; close by must be the centre, with a champagne luncheon and a piece of ornamental water. How if there were no centre at all, but just one alley after another, and the whole world a labyrinth without end or issue?

-- from the essay CRABBED AGE AND YOUTH, by Robert Louis Stevenson

Dragon Ladies

U-2's were in the news when I was a little boy, when Francis Gary Powers was shot down over the Soviet Union. So I find it amazing and delightful that those odd and beautiful planes are still defending Freedom's Wall. Here are some pictures, taken at an "undisclosed location" in Southwest Asia.

The wee folk, the little people...

Since I've been calling people "partisan midgets," I thought I ought to justify myself a bit and say why I think I shouldn't be called a "midget of the ultraconservatives" or some such.

Firstly, I have some general principles and ideas on the direction I think America and the world ought to be moving in. And I try to make them clear to readers, so I can be criticized if I'm inconsistent. And I try hard to be consistent. For instance, I'm openly a free-trader, and therefore I have to give Clinton high marks for NAFTA, and I've criticized Bush for the Steel Tariffs. Likewise, I'm a Wilsonian interventionist, and my support for Iraq, (and my contempt for bogus "International Law,") is extended to also supporting Clinton's equally "illegal" intervention in Bosnia. (I didn't pay much attention at the time, having no blog to sharpen my wits, but I remember hearing Rush Limbaugh complaining that we had no vital national interest in Bosnia, and thinking, "Screw it, lets do it! No one's gonna fix this if we don't.")

Midgets abandon their principles if it means agreeing with somebody they don't like. Such as the lefty waterflies who used to criticize the Taliban, and Moslem intolerance of women and gays—until the minute that put them alongside Bush.

Nothing brings on my contempt like pundits who don't reveal the general ideas behind their words—it's almost impossible to pin them down on inconsistencies. Nothing arouses my sneers like having to guess where someone is really coming from. (Of course I may be unfair sometimes, when I criticize a single blogpost without being familiar with a person's other work—they may have clear and consistent principles I'm not aware of.) Lowest of the midgets are those like Josh Marshall, whose guiding principle is "Republicans bad. Democrats good."

And in areas where I don't have my philosophy worked out, such as Immigration or Gay Marriage, I usually keep my mouth shut, though I'm sorely tempted to skewer lefty hypocrisies. (I did once comment on Gay Marriage here with follow-up here)

And the people I would tend to refer to as Partisan Lilliputians won't debate! They make some assertion, I answer with a long list of facts and opinions and sophistries, and the cowardly weasels scurry away (and then make the same assertion a week later, with the blasé air of one stating something that's been generally accepted and is past the point of needing defense!) Slytherins!

By the way, is there a technical term in the lexicon of logical disputation for someone picking out and demolishing one small error in a long argument, and then walking away slapping the dust off their hands and acting as if they have won a "debate," and there's nothing more to say? That kind of debate I do get.

Actually, though I long for rational debate, I suspect many of those I criticize are like those lefty columnists last year, remember them? The ones who wrote those WHY I HATE BUSH columns? "I hate the way he walks. I hate the way he talks. The curve of his earlobe makes me want to disembowel myself with a red-hot putty knife..." O-KAY. Do not rattle the cage, folks...It might hurt itself dashing against the bars.

#146: The bugle call of partisan hackmanship

KRUGMAN TRUTH SQUAD

Paul Krugman's last bastion of academic respectability rests on his consistent defense of free trade. Hence the protectionist talk coming from the Kerry and Edwards camps must make him cringe. Nevertheless, in The Trade Tightrope (02/27/04), he once again answers the bugle call for partisan hackmanship by making excuses for Kerry on the trade issue (Edwards, apparently, is too far overboard even for Krugman). The result is one of those "just watch the silver screen folks, and don't pay any attention to that man behind the curtain" deals. Read this column if you must. It's pathetic.

There's one howler:

"Put it this way: there's a reason why the two U.S. presidents who did the most to promote growth in world trade were Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, while the two most protectionist presidents of the last 70 years have been Ronald Reagan and, yes, George W. Bush."

What on earth is he talking about? And this is his last sentence! So the column ends with a breathtaking assertion followed by not one word of justification.

What's the name of that public editor again? Okrent, or something? His position is that when facts are presented in error, they must be corrected even if they are camouflaged in opinion columns. Fair enough, but then he has to deal with the Krugman loophole. Outrageous assertions made without any facts don't require corrections!

[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. ]

Midget Moles Won't Stay Whacked...or, NewsMax of the Left

It's a funny thing about the people who still see the Plame affair as emblematic of the monstrous evil of the Bush Administration. That is, even if the story is true, even if someone in the administration did uncover Plame, there are a whole bunch of other fishy things that happened. But the people who pretend to be appalled by a shocking attack on the brave men and women of the CIA, don't care about ANY OF IT. Not unless it can be used to hurt Bush. In fact the whole story started in just that partisan way, with Wilson instantly accusing Karl Rove of the deed, and later admitting he had not the least evidence of it.

SO, what are some other things that happened, which ought to ALSO be generating outrage, if those "outraged" parties were actually interested in national security?

How about the fact that the original article went almost unnoticed? The person who did the most to reveal that Plame was CIA was her husband, Joseph Wilson, who is bitterly partisan against Bush. It was Wilson who trumpeted the matter to the world. Wilson was using this supposedly sensitive information for partisan purposes. Why no outrage about that?

And the CIA confirmed Plame's identity to reporters. If her identity really was an important national security secret, why no outrage about that? And if it wasn't important, the whole story is nothing.

And Plame was supposedly doing sensitive stuff under her own name! And not living a low-profile life. What kind of national security malarky is that? Where's the outrage?

Wilson was sent by the CIA on a sensitive national security investigation to Niger, requested by the Bush Administration. And the minute he gets back, he writes a virulent anti-administration article in the NYT. Uh, is this how the noble CIA operates? So subtle, so secretive? Where's the outrage from people who claim to care about national security?

And the NYT's James Risen said his contacts in the CIA told him Wilson was sent because the CIA had no interest in finding yellowcake. In fact they apparently sabotaged the mission. Where's the outrage from our national security buffs? And even if Wilson had tried his best, the mission was set up to have almost no chance of success. Without money for bribes, without agents already in place, without even much time, there was no way he was going to pry out such extremely toxic information. Where's the outrage from those who are pretending to care about national security? (And there were some suspicious contacts between Iraq and Niger. It's still perfectly possible the yellowcake rumors were true. But our national security fans seem to have no interest in that either.)

And there's another reason I think the people hammering on this have no interest in truth. And that is (if in fact it happened) the most likely explanation for such a profitless move is pure stupidity. Remember when the Clintons were found to have boxes of the FBI records of Conservative notables stashed in the White House? It sounded dreadfully Nixonian! But in fact the guy who did it was a nitwit, and there was no conspiracy at all. Every administration has some flaky stuff happen—remember there are thousands of hastily-assembled people involved, and all of them operating at manic speed. Serious people let the matter drop—NewsMax is probably still frothing over it.

Serious people know the administration is doing its best in a very complex and difficult situation. And making mistakes like any human organization. Serious people offer constructive criticism and thoughtful commentary on the big picture. Partisan midgets see only the few details that fit their hobbyhorses, and ignore anything else.

Code of the Woosters...

It's not my style to have a tip-jar, but if you like this blog, you might donate a few shekels to Dean Esmay. He's in a bind, and he very generously helped me (as he's helped many others) to move my weblog from the sloughs of Blogger to Movable Type.

"the very same vitriol"

This is the sort of thing to keep in mind, when "Progressives" extoll the glorious 1960's, and the heroic antiwar movement:

...As a spy chief and a general in the former Soviet satellite of Romania, I produced the very same vitriol Kerry repeated to the U.S. Congress almost word for word and planted it in leftist movements throughout Europe.

KGB chairman Yuri Andropov managed our anti-Vietnam War operation. He often bragged about having damaged the U.S. foreign-policy consensus, poisoned domestic debate in the U.S., and built a credibility gap between America and European public opinion through our disinformation operations. Vietnam was, he once told me, "our most significant success."... — Ion Mihai Pacepa [link]

And back in the '60's, a working definition of "McCarthyite" (or "Right-Wing kook" or "John Bircher") would have been "someone who thinks the antiwar protesters are fronting for the KGB>"

like spoons falling out of the burglar's pockets...

Alan Sullivan writes about the "implosion" of illicit nuclear arms programs as a result of the liberation of Iraq. Some of these things were new to me.

I wasn't aware that Pakistan's nuclear scientists are being mysteriously murdered, apparently to keep them from talking to us (Of course that would be great cover if WE we killing them.) And I wasn't aware that "...rumors are rife that President Musharraf has effectively surrendered his nuclear keys to Americans." Cool, if true.

Progress is being made. A LOT of progress. And it's happening because we invaded Iraq. As expected. The "neocon" plan; hit one rogue nation and things will start to shake loose. Like cops raiding a gang headquarters, we didn't know what we were going to find, but we knew there'd be something.

And, as usual, "activists" are swarming to defend the gang from "police brutality," though they never give a thought to the victims of gang brutality. And, as usual, they pretend to be worried about "constitutional rights." But what they really don't want is law and order, because it is a prerequisite to economic progress, and will lead to poor people escaping poverty, and escaping the need for a vast apparatus of welfare and government, all dominated by leftists.

It's just the same in the wider world. Leftists pretend to be shocked, SHOCKED that the President "lied to us" to justify invading Iraq, (with all the while WMD's appearing 'round the globe like silver spoons falling out of the burglar's clothes when they are shoved against a wall) But I remember a year ago those cries that Iraq was going to be ruined by Kentucky Fried Chicken! They pretend to care about the UN, or the Treaty of Westphalia, or the sanctity of "International Law." But those are lies; it's Bush, and bourgeois capitalism, and democracy, and the freedom to buy a bucket of KFC that they hate.

...None of this would have happened without the invasion of Iraq. Soldiers who fell in this cause died with honor. They have bought the world an opportunity to evolve toward more benign systems of governance. No matter what his failings in domestic policy, Bush the Younger has earned the approbation of history....

Correction: I goofed, it's Iraqi nuclear scientists who are being murdered...

No risky leap to the next step up...

Wretchard writes:

...In the two generations since the end of the Second World War more than a billion people were abandoned to anarchies and tyrannies euphemistically called "developing nations". Most of them, little more than a stamp and a seat at the United Nations, have already ceased to function -- the 50 "stateless zones" of Tenet's speech. If left to the leadership of men like Osama Bin Laden, these steerless multitudes can snuff out the living nations, as growing entropy blots out a system. The logical response would be to seize control of the movement ourselves, to raise the disaffected masses against their own tyrants. It is step President Bush has vowed to take but it is so audacious and regarded so cynically by the left that it would be a wonder if the world actually took the only path that can save it...

Fortunately, though the Left is cynical and wants desperately to halt the march of freedom, it has nothing to say. No plans, no dreams, no hopes. Only endless sour complaints (that they won't defend in the arena of ideas.)

The next time you hear someone say "Bush lied," remember that what they are really saying is: "I have nothing positive to offer. No vision of hope. No plan for progress. No risky leap to the next step up..."

Too hot to handle...

Bryan Preston writes about the similarities in terrorist bomb-recipes around the world, and about the much-neglected question of how Oklahoma City fits in to the world terrorist picture...

...So Mr. Murad was found in possession of a notebook with a new thought about truck bombs--substitute nitromethane for fuel oil to make them more powerful--and his notebook can be dated to a time when Terry Nichols was known to be in the Philippines, which was where Murad was arrested. And that very design change showed up first in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995, just a few months later.

Interesting. Even more interesting is a scrap of evidence found in an abandoned al Qaeda safehouse after the fall of the Taliban:

A bomb manual found in Afghanistan contained a recipe for an ammonium nitrate-based bomb marked with the handrwritten notation "Was used in Oklahoma," according to the New York Times.

So there's the science--a new design proposed in an al Qaeda manual shows up in Oklahoma City, and then in subsequent bombings known to have been engineered by al Qaeda elsewhere around the world. Will America's artful investigators ever make the obvious connection?...

No way. There are hot potatoes, and then there's way too hot to handle...

Backfired...I just love it

According to this Boston Herald story, a letter campaign by students, at the behest of school officials, has backfired in a most delightful way...

...If I didn't think a charter school was necessary, these letters have convinced me the high school was not doing an adequate job in teaching English language arts,'' [School Board Member] Schaefer said.

     Despite the letter-writing campaign, which Schaefer said was orchestrated by school officials, the Marlboro-based Advanced Math and Science Academy Charter School as well as new charter schools in Cambridge, Lynn and Barnstable were approved yesterday.

     Opponents vowed a renewed campaign against the controversial public schools, which compete with traditional districts for state education dollars.

     ``We're going to pursue this legally and through the Legislature,'' said Kathleen Kelley, president of the Massachusetts Federation of Teachers...(via Betsy Newmark)

Using school children this way is despicable. And I'd guess the "controversial" is only in the eyes of the Teacher's Unions. And the stuff about "competing for funds" is misleading. The funds go with the students, and a school that loses students get less money, but also needs to spend less, because it needs fewer teachers and staff.

Of course, to the unions, providing livings is the whole purpose of the school system...

The first prize was a death sentence...

Don't miss, don't miss, a splendid article, by a poet who fled from Soviet tyranny, only to find a new Leningrad right here in San Francisco...

...Throughout the fall semester the “Writers on Writing” class desecrated two things I hold dear: literature and America. It was a constant assault on my dedication to literature and my literary taste, and an insult to my love for this country. Not only were we forced to buy a bag of crappy books (except a few) with a price tag of around $200, but almost all these “writers” and “poets” presented on the lighted stage of the huge auditorium week after week used the opportunity to express their hate and contempt for America. Throughout the semester only a few talented exceptions abstained from expressing their political opinions.

If I have expertise in anything in this life, it is literature. I came from the Soviet Union, where literature, especially poetry, was a serious and deadly business. The second national prize for poetry in the USSR was five years in prison. The first prize was a death sentence, as seen by the fates of Nikolai Gumilev (execution by firing squad) and Osip Mandelshtam (a hungry death in the Gulag).

Night after night we typed for Samizdat (underground press) on primitive typewriters the smuggled poems of my friend Igor Guberman, who had been sentenced to five years in a prison camp. Kneeling on all fours (I was so pregnant at the time that I couldn’t sit), I read a book by Nadezhda Mandelshtam—the widow of the executed poet—that was brought into the country as contraband by some brave foreign visitors. The possession of this book was an offense punishable by law. The hostess begged me to leave, scared that I would go into labor right there in her apartment, but I finished that book understanding that this was my only chance to touch this dangerous copy....

- - - - - - - - - -

...Finally, it was America that paid our way out. The Jackson-Vanik amendment forced the Soviets to allow some groups to emigrate in exchange for a cheap grain trade agreement. Jews were the bargaining chip when the USSR was on the edge of starvation.

Divided by the number of people they finally let go, how many kilos of grain were paid for me? Or my mother?  What was the price in grain for the Moscow boy who became a student at Stanford and invented Google? Or another boy, who became the managing editor of this magazine? Or for the Russian taxi driver?...

By the way, The Jackson mentioned was Sen. Henry "Scoop" Jackson, a great man and a Democrat, back when it wasn't ludicrous to link those concepts. Many of the original "neocons" were staffers for Senator Jackson.

SF State U is less than half a mile from us. (Every year we have one lovely June day marred by the much amplified voice of someone like Willie Brown giving the commencement address) I bet you could find hundreds of people there who think the Soviets were just victims of bad press...

Thanks to Alan

A bigger threat than Osama...

Cori Dauber comments on today's NYT:

...What does it take for people to take this seriously? The top three intelligence people in the country (the head of DIA was there as well) just said that we are in as great a risk of attack as we were last year, and of course last year we were in great a risk as the year before. Why does no one seem to want to pay attention? Why isn't this front page news? Someone is crazy here, and I don't think it's me. We have just been told we're at risk of another terrorist attack and that doesn't seem to grasp the media's attention. That just staggers me. It makes me want to grab someone by the lapels and shake them. WHAT ABOUT THIS STORY IS DIFFICULT FOR YOU TO UNDERSTAND? WHYT ISN'T THIS YOUR TOP PRIORITY? WHY DO I SEEM TO BE THE ONLY ONE WHO THINKS THIS IS IMPORTANT?...

What's important is to hurt Bush. Since terrorist fears would help him, they aren't "news."

The hate (and I use the word advisedly, because I think it fits the facts—if I'm wrong give me some evidence) these people feel for Bush has nothing to do with rational argument or facts. If 50 Scuds loaded with VX were found in Basra tomorrow, neither the NYT nor any of the "Bush lied" crowd would apologize or change their thinking in the least.

Their visceral loathing of Bush is because he symbolizes the thing they want most to avoid—that in a democracy the vote of the person who mops the floor counts just as much as the votes of journalists or intellectuals.

The New York Times has been called the"Flagship of the Eastern Liberal Establishment." It's been, for a century or more, a bulwark of the idea that, even though the masses can vote, the nation is really guided by a smaller group characterized by good breeding, taste, and intellect.

And their visceral loathing of Bush is because he symbolizes just the opposite. And not just symbolizes; his domestic program is built around the theme of giving choice to ordinary people in many areas where they are now under government control. And he's pushed his program tenaciously from the beginning. It's no wonder that collectivists everywhere see Bush as a bigger threat than Osama...

Rough around the edges; quite normal...

I was fascinated by this article on Russia today. It puts Russia's many problems in perspective, and refutes some doom-sayers, by making comparisons with other nations at the same level of development...

...Russia's economic and political systems remain far from perfect. But their defects are typical of countries at a similar level of economic development. Russia was in 1990, and is today, a middle-income country, with GDP per capita around $8,000 (at purchasing power parity) according to the UN -- comparable to Argentina in 1991 and Mexico in 1999. Almost all democracies in this income range are rough around the edges: their governments suffer from corruption, their judiciaries are politicized, and their press is almost never entirely free. They have high income inequality, concentrated corporate ownership, and turbulent macroeconomic performance. In all these regards, Russia is quite normal. Nor are the common flaws of middle-income capitalist democracies incompatible with further economic and political progress...

One reason many people tend to portray today's Russia as a disaster and a failure is that most people didn't realize what a failure the Soviet Union was. It put on a brave outward show, with cosmonauts, parades of tanks, Olympic athletes, etc. But in fact its economy was rotten from top to bottom, decrepit, crime-ridden and impoverished.

One reason our view was distorted was that the Soviet Union was analyzed and described for us by experts in government and the academy. And since the very premise of the Soviets was that things would run better if controlled by—yes, you guessed it—experts in government and the academy...our analysts tended to paint a rosy picture.

One of the many debts we owe to Ronald Reagan, is that he pushed the CIA and others to start looking for evidence of Soviet economic failure. He knew it would be there, and in fact, we had a LOT of such evidence. But it was in the form of many obscure pieces that had always been ignored because they didn't fit expectations. That was the beginning of a return to sanity and American values, after decades when our leadership was drugged by the idea that Socialism was a workable alternative to freedom.

Bush Glacier--grinds exceeding fine...

Security Workers on Merit

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has stepped into line with a commonly accepted practice in corporate America: tying pay increases to performance and the type of job performed...

...Salaries will be structured according to the type of work, a person's experience, and job location - and, notably, not by seniority. And in the case of a national emergency, the president can waive labor agreements....

...DHS began putting together 180,000 employees from some 22 government agencies in 2002. When a similar restructuring is complete at the Defense Department, about half the government's 1.8 million civilian employees will have made the transition to the new merit system. That's costly in the short term, but cost-saving in the long run...

Quote of the day

From OpinionJournal

...Mr. Nader is best understood as the inventor of today's nexus of liberal politics and trial-lawyer opportunism. His network of organizations have long been suspected of taking trial-lawyer cash, but it is impossible to tell because Mr. Nader refuses to disclose their financial backers. Yet just like Senators Kerry and Edwards he denounces the influence of sinister "special interests." It's a little ungrateful for Mr. Edwards to now upbraid the man who did so much to make the Senator's own fortune and political career possible....

I wonder if there's a bigger scoundrel than Nader in today's American politics.

'course the Weidners can't complain too much, since most of Charlene's work is battling the tort monster that Ralph did so much to create. It's sort of like that famous economics fallacy, about how breaking windows is good for the economy, because it gives work to glaziers...

Political Process corrupted by...

Phil Fraering writes to me, re the recent rantings,

Why am I reminded of that scene from Casablanca?

"I am shocked, SHOCKED to find that POLITICS has entered the political process..."

"Your grant money, sir."

"Thank you."

We HAD a consensus...

I'm going to mention this again, because it is really bugging me.

One of the 637 lies about the Bush Administration now being pushed by lefty apologists and bloggers, is that President Bush refused to seek consensus on the liberation of Iraq and the War on Terror. That he just went off on his unilateral lonesome, and didn't "reach out" to Democrats and others. And thus the country is "divided."

This is a lie.

We had a consensus.

Before Bush became President, and to a large extant through 2002, the policies advocated by Democrat leaders were virtually identical to the policies Bush is following now...

"I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force — if necessary — to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security."—Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Oct. 9, 2002.

"One way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. That is our bottom line." —President Clinton, Feb. 4, 1998.

"If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program." —President Clinton, Feb. 17, 1998.

"In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al Qaeda members. It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons." —Sen. Hillary Clinton (D, NY), Oct 10, 2002 [Go here for a heap of quotes like this.]

The Dem leaders, with the utmost cynical dishonesty, dropped their previous policies down the memory hole, and dressed themselves in new ones, and then complained that Bush was "unilateral" and closed-minded.

And Democrat apologist/bloggers, even if they had supported our war efforts before, instantly internalized their new marching orders, much like Communists of old used to blithely switch positions on order from Moscow, even if the new policy was the opposite of what they just been pushing. And, come to think about it, notice how much that "failed to reach out" line resembles that constant Leftist position of the Cold War, that the Soviet Union (or China or N Vietnam or whoever) really wanted peace and friendship, but had had their shy overtures harshly rebuffed by the Western powers...

UPDATE: Still. one has to feel some sympathy for the poor Dems. Bush is a man who says what he's going to do, and then does it. Can you imagine how bewildering that must be to a guy like John Kerry? Bush says, "We're gong to invade Iraq." Then he invades Iraq. Then all the Democrats drop their jaws and cry, "He tricked us!"

suppressio veri

Kevin Drum writes about a Report by the Union of Concerned Scientists, (UCS) on suppression of scientific evidence by the Bush Administration. Well, I'm definitely against the suppression of scientific data for political ends, and all are welcome to criticize such, even if it's my party that's guilty.

BUT, Drum's contention that this is some sort of new thing, undreamed of until the coming of those horrid Conservative Luddites, is this week's big steaming pile of poop. It's a LIE, something that Drum specializes in. And it's not just a lie, it's a stupid lie. It's an insult to my intelligence.

The politicization of science has been going on for a long time, and it's groups like UCS that have been the worst offenders. They are not neutral observers, they are not truth-seekers, and they are highly politicized. And they feel they should be the arbiters of what is "science" is and what is not. Their political "party" is Transnational Progressivism, (Tranzi) which is the latest morphing of Socialism. (And Socialism is the modern morphing of the ancient idea that elites should rule, and the common man should obey. And the reason for the "transnational" part is that 20th Century experiments with rule-by-elites within nations have repeatedly been embarrassed by the prosperity and freedom of neighboring nations, and by the propensity of the common folk to flee the "worker's-paradise"--in ways varying from brain-drain to leaky boats. So this New Socialism seeks above all to undermine nation-states—especially the US, which has been the biggest embarrassment of all.)

Scientific research itself often has a funny way of sabotaging the political programs of all sorts of groups, both Left and Right. And when people like Bjorn Lomberg have pointed out that scientific research contradicts the Environmentalist party line, groups like UCS have no problem with attacking and vilifying them, and trying to suppress their conclusions. That's a bit of Stalinism that I'm sure Drum has no problem with at all.

I just encountered a bit of Tranzi supressio veri today at Alan Sullivan's blog.

...No, I'm not talking about color preferences for house-trim in South Florida. I'm talking about the fatal effects of hot water on reef coral. The phenomenon is called "bleaching" because coral colonies turn white when most of the individual polyps have died. It's the living creatures in those calcined houses that make corals colorful. While it's certainly true that reefs are sensitive to disturbance, I find it suspicious that one sees so much press about coral dying and none whatsoever about its recovery. To judge from the media, all the coral in the world must have died several times over. Few people know that severe bleaching episodes in the Indian and Atlantic oceans have been followed by surprising bounce-back...

Bounceback? First I've heard of it! Bet you won't find that in the NYT, or NPR. They routinely protect us from inconvenient facts. But of course that kind of protection is OK, because groups like UCS have already decided what scientific truth is, and Leftists have absorbed the official version like a dye. To suppress a bit of environmental good news is a sort of "higher truth." Lenin would have approved.

And government departments tend to become strongholds of Tranzi science. Their products, such as EPA Reports, may simply be scientific evidence. They may also be carefully edited selections of evidence designed to further a political goal. Suppressing a report can sometimes be suppressing truth, and sometimes suppressing lies.

America did the right thing....

Those of you who think Colin Powell is a Clinton/Kerry/Chirac/StateDepartment type of appeasement-weasel who just went along with liberating Iraq because he was a "good soldier" should just shut up and read this speech, given yesterday at Princeton. Here are a few snippets:

...I've been to northern Iraq. I have visited a city called Halabja. It was in 1988, on a Friday morning, that 5,000 people were murdered in their homes by a chemical weapon, by gas that was delivered by Saddam Hussein, delivered on his own people, and five thousand people died.

I've been to their memorial. I've seen their graves. At that time he had the intention, he had the programs, he had the delivery means and he had the stockpile. Intention, programs, capability, stockpile.

You can have intention, you can have programs, you can have capability to deliver. He may not have the stockpile at the moment. But there was no doubt in my mind, in the President's mind, or any of us who have thought about this and examined this, that there was no intention on his part not to have the intention for such weapons and programs...

...The President understood that. Prime Minister Blair understood that. Prime Minister Aznar understood that. Prime Minister Howard understood that. Prime Minister Berlusconi understood that. President Kwasniewski of Poland understood that. So many other nations understood that.

We weighed all the consequences. The President acted. The other leaders acted, decisively and appropriately...

...And Dr. Kay connected some dots out of all of this, dots he connected on his own: “we know that terrorists were passing through Iraq. And we know now that there was little control over Iraq’s weapons capabilities. I think it shows," he said, "Iraq was a dangerous place…I actually think this may be one of those cases where it was even more dangerous than we thought.”

His conclusion: “I personally believe the war was justified.”...

... Not only have coalition forces rid the world of a regime that was simultaneously building palaces for its pampered and digging mass graves for its innocents, the object lesson of the war has led to some important successes in the non-proliferation area.

So don't let anybody be confused by the debates that are going on. America did the right thing....

I wonder if they have good Afghan restaurants...

I was bemused by the thought of all those Somalis shivering in the Twin Cities, but now Charlene just informed me (this is real-time blogging here, folks) that the largest Afghan-American community is in nearby Fremont, California! I had no idea...

(I do know, however, that the woman who gives President Bush his haircuts is from Afghanistan...a nice bit of trivia.)

Somebody's thinking..

AOG writes:

I came up with a great money making idea, for anyone out there looking to score some cash.

In corporate America today, there are plenty of “diversity” programs that attempt to hire more minorities of various types. The key question is, what makes some one a member of these minorities? It seems to be the case that it’s primarily self-identification: if you tell the corporate recruiter that you’re [ethnic], then you are as far as the corporation is concerned. I’ve looked for years and never found any legal basis for determining or disputing such a claim. However, the problem is that the recruiter can’t ask you and it seems a bit awkward to blurt it out. The standard technique is to have a key award on your resume that indicates your ethnicity.

Here’s the idea - sell those awards! You set up a website as an institute or foundation, make up some blather (or copyright infringe it from some other website). Once you’ve got that set up, you charge people an “entrance fee” for participating in a contest for an ethnic award. Oddly, it turns out that every one who applies wins! Then the participant can honestly put on their resume “won Best [ethnic] Rising Star Award, 2004”. Of course, you’d need a set of stock phrases for the award, with a few web pages for each. Charge $20 or $50 for the entrance fee and go....

What's needed is a disadvantaged ethnic group with blonde hair and blue eyes...

Lies coming...be ready

Be prepared. Keep this up your sleeve to answer the LIE that our Democrat pals are going to be spreading...In fact already are spreading: That the GOP Convention in New York was scheduled to take cynical political advantage of 9/11.

The New York Post writes:

...The mayor asked both parties to hold their conventions in the same city for the first time since 1972. At the time, we thought it a great idea - one that would serve as a vote of confidence in New York's future after 9/11.

Indeed, Democratic National Chairman Terry McAuliffe was approached first, with former Democratic Gov. Mario Cuomo actively backing the city's efforts.

But McAuliffe wasn't interested - unless the Democrats were given an exclusive and the GOP shut out, that is.

In other words, McAuliffe wanted to make sure that only his party could reap whatever political benefits might accrue from holding a convention here.

But when Bloomberg rightly wouldn't play that game, McAuliffe made a few snide remarks about how the mayor should rejoin the Democratic Party and then shuffled off to Boston - home of the Red Sox (and Teddy Kennedy)...

(via Betsy Newmark)

This gave me my best laugh in a weeks...

...The event that I've been pitching [fundraiser with Karl Rove speaking] was tonight and it was really fun. I got to Eugene, the event space, about 20 minutes early. I was on the host committee and so was getting a coveted photo taken with Karl Rove. Scott had emailed me that there were going to be the usual corny protesters outside, so I was expecting the small crowd gathered across the street from the place. I walked in and checked my coat and while I was doing that I heard someone say 'Karl is going to talk to them!' I walked over to the door and looked through the glass and indeed, Karl Rove was crossing the street to go talk to the protesters. Everybody watched and whispered 'what is he doing' as he walked over to them. The crowd shifted down the street as he approached them. I watched some of the protesters take his picture. It was stunning.

Later on, when I met him to take the photo, I had to ask: 'what did the protesters say to you?' He said 'they ran away, they wouldn't talk to me.'

The story's here, by NY blogger Karol. Thanks to Brian T.

Equivalence

James Webb, Vietnam vet and writer, has written an article that says that for Vietnam vets, Kerry and Bush are both unattractive. I won't try to debate his assessment of the liberation of Iraq—he calls it "arguably...the greatest strategic blunder in modern memory." Time will tell.

But what's interesting to me is that his criticisms of Kerry are made with very specific and vivid and disgusting examples of how Kerry lied about our soldiers in Vietnam and aided our enemies. But his Bush criticisms are generalizations without any examples. "And yet his actions in Iraq, and the vicious attacks against anyone who disagrees with his administration's logic, give many veterans serious pause...." OK, give us an example of a "vicious attack." Webb doesn't. Which veterans has he asked? How did you find this out? He doesn't say.

Or there's this: "At the same time, those around Bush, many of whom came of age during Vietnam and almost none of whom served, have attempted to assassinate the character and insult the patriotism of anyone who disagrees with them. Some have impugned the culture, history and integrity of entire nations, particularly in Europe, that have been our country's great friends for generations and, in some cases, for centuries...." So where are the specifics? Where are the quotes? Give us an example! I suspect he can't. That "patriotism" thing is a common lefty canard, never accompanied with examples.

(My guess: Webb moves in the sort of trendoid New York circles where just mentioning the words "Bush" or "Reagan" or "middle-class" are witty sallies that have people rolling on the floor. No facts needed.)

And there's also an egregious case of LYING WITH STATISTICS.

But in the zero-sum game of a presidential campaign, to go after Kerry is to give a free pass to Bush, whose actions then and now deserve no prizes. Recent statements defending Bush claim that the National Guard was not a haven for those who wished to avoid Vietnam; but it clearly was. According to the National Guard Association, only some 9,000 Army Guardsmen and 9,343 Air Guardsmen served in Vietnam. Considering that nearly 3 million from the active forces did so, one begins to understand why so many of America's elites headed for the Guard when their draft numbers were called.

There are a couple of things wrong here. First, the ANG is much smaller numerically than the NG. So the number sent to Vietnam is proportionately much higher. Second, all modern forces have many more non-combatants than fighters. For every guy on the front-line, there are 5 or 10 support troops. But, as I understand the history, the ANG was rotating pilots into AF units. They weren't sending any flapjack flippers or medics or clerks. Statistically, that's a very different animal...

Wearing baseball caps that read SWAT in homemade letters...

[NY Times] BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 19 — A bad day is when (1) you get arrested (2) by the people who once worked for you and (3) they tell you exactly what they think of you.

Muhammad Zimam Abd al-Razzaq was having a really bad day. Mr. Zimam, a former interior minister under Saddam Hussein and an enemy of Iraq's Kurds, was No. 41 on the American occupation force's most-wanted list in Iraq.

He was in his house in the southern Baghdad neighborhood of Saidiya on Sunday, when a squad of Iraqi police officers showed up around lunchtime. No burly, locked-and-loaded American soldiers to hunt down the dangerous; no, this was a bunch of Iraqi cops barely old enough to shave, wearing baseball caps that read SWAT in homemade letters...

The flavor of this story is bizarre and dreamlike and blackly comical, with Keystone Cops jumping up from the floor one after another with their accusations while Mr Zimam is offered tea and coffee on a comfortable couch—Al Jazeera apparently filming it all...

(Thanx to OxBlog)

Topping Metternich...

This has got to be the stupidest article of the week, by Fred Kaplan, in Slate. The author thinks Colin Powell is falling apart because he has failed as Secretary of State.

Is Colin Powell melting down?

It's hard to come up with another explanation for his jaw-dropping behavior ...last week before the House International Relations Committee. There he sat, recounting for the umpety-umpth time why, back in February 2003, he believed the pessimistic estimates about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. "I went and lived at the CIA for about four days," he began, "to make sure that nothing was—" Suddenly, he stopped and glared at a Democratic committee staffer who was smirking and shaking his head. "Are you shaking your head for something, young man back there?" Powell grumbled. "Are you part of the proceedings?"...

First of all, what Powell was doing was acting like a grownup. The staffer was performing with childish discourtesy and deserved a much worse spanking than he got.

When I was growing up, if I or any other child were to mouth-off in public, any nearby grown-up would have squelched us immediately. And gone to our parents if it seemed necessary. Nowadays they probably wouldn't dare, for fear of a rebuff or a lawsuit. When your lefty pals talk about the "conformist 1950's," and how pleased they were to trash them, this community support for good manners and behavior is a lot of what they were jettisoning. If bad manners and a general coarseness are the norm today, you can, as they say, thank a Liberal.

Anyway, back to Powell.

...As George Bush's first term nears its end, Powell's tenure as top diplomat is approaching its nadir. On the high-profile issues of the day, he seems to have almost no influence within the administration. And his fateful briefing one year ago before the U.N. Security Council—where he attached his personal credibility to claims of Iraqi WMD—has destroyed his once-considerable standing with the Democrats, not to mention our European allies, most of the United Nations, and the media...

You've noticed, I'm sure, that we haven't invaded anyone for almost a year now. Pretty much everything that the Administration is doing out in the world is diplomacy. And our diplomacy has been very successful so far, and looks to be in good shape for bigger triumphs in the future. Colin Powell may end up in the history books looking like the greatest foreign minister since Metternich. This is failure?

To a lefty-pundit, of course, it is. To him, Powell is the only hope within the Administration of blocking the bloody march to "war-after-war" planned, supposedly, by the Neocons. His job is to thwart the President's policy, to sabotage it, to force it to be more Clintonian. The thing is never expressed so baldly of course—the conflict is always described as being with Rumsfeld or Cheney. But people in the know always report that GWB is the one who makes the decisions, and he's really the one who people like Kaplan want to stymie.

It probably never even occurs to Mr Kaplan that success for a Secretary of State should lie in loyally implementing the President's policies. Not when the President is a Republican and a Texan. "Success" is being popular with pundits and Europeans and those who cherish the UN. Just as it probably never occurs to him that Congressional staffers should not be making mock of the President of the United States, even if they disagree with him. (And, I'd guess, it doesn't occur to him that children who are impolite should be reprimanded. Pope's line pops into my head: " This painted Child of Dirt that stinks and stings...")

The whole point of the so-called Neocon plan was diplomacy. The whole point was avoiding wars. And now that we've cleaned Saddam's clock, diplomacy is working like it hasn't done in decades. Every week seems to bring some new tale of a tyrant suddenly grown more reasonable, or some regional conflict newly amenable to negotiation. Colin Powell is an important member of an extremely successful team. Therefore he is a success. I don't know what he would personally like to see happen; I find him very opaque. But it doesn't matter! His duty is to give the best advice he can, and then support whatever decision is made.

There's also "Insourcing"

This editorial points out something very important....

While outsourcing has captured current attention, it is not a new phenomenon. If the term is defined as jobs operated by U.S. companies in foreign countries, the current total is 10 million positions, or 7 percent of domestic U.S. employment. Further, there's been an upward trend in the number of outsourced jobs since the mid-1990s, when trade barriers were significantly reduced following the signing of the NAFTA and GATT agreements.

What is less well publicized and understood is that "insourcing" also occurs in our economy. Insourcing happens when foreign companies establish jobs in the United States.

The latest statistics show insourcing accounts for over 6.5 million jobs nationwide. Although this is less than the number of outsourced jobs, the gap has actually narrowed in the past quarter century. That is, there's been a recent trend of foreign companies adding jobs in the U.S. faster than U.S companies have increased jobs in foreign countries....

(Thanks to Daniel Drezner)

Art thoughts...

UPDATE to earlier post on Iraqi sculpter: In honesty I have to say I find this statue artistically banal. But I far prefer its sincerity and decency to the tastes of our artsy-fartsy intelligentsia who would gladly watch Kalat's countrymen gassed or shot or fed into the shredders, if it would help preserve their despicable lefty elite club in power.

Prissy scum. Just thinking about them (and the "art exhibit" I saw recently, consisting of a pile of sticks dumped on a museum floor) makes we want to throw the contents of every "Museum of Modern Art" into a landfill, and replace them with bronze castings of George W Bush's cowboy boots. And send everyone who thinks "found objects" are art, and worthy of federal subsidies, off to Iraq to help sift bones out of mass graves. That'll give 'em some found objects to think about...

25,000 Somalis living in Minnesota...now don't that beat all!

...For decades, the building served as a repair shop for streetcars. Later, it became a machinery warehouse. Then, a little over four years ago, a Palestinian émigré named Basim Sabri spotted it, and the posted For Sale sign, while driving down Pillsbury. Sabri, who had already built a small empire of residential properties in the Whittier and Uptown neighborhoods, snapped up the dilapidated building for the fire-sale price of $169,000. It was his first venture into commercial property, and he wasn't exactly sure what to do with it. With limited funds, Sabri began rehabbing the heating and plumbing. Around the same time, he noticed the dramatic influx of Somali immigrants in the Twin Cities. It struck him: He would build a souk--the Arabic word for a mall or bazaar--to serve the Somali community. It was a novel idea. At the time, Sabri says, there were no other Somali malls in Minneapolis--or, for that matter, in North America.

"The word travels very quickly in the Somali community. Very rapidly," Sabri recalls. "I met with the coffee shop guys. Before you know it, I had a whole tribe of Somalis wanting to rent. I'm filled in no time." One draw was the relatively inexpensive rent: about $375 a month. And once foot traffic was established, other Somali entrepreneurs--many of whom had been merchants in the old country--were clamoring for spaces of their own...(link. Thanks to BroJudd)

Remember that charming moment when it was noticed that black Americans have higher average incomes than Swedes? So, any bets on when Somalis in the Twin Cities surpass the French?

"My art teacher would hate it!"

It makes my head spin to think about the scorn that our intelligentsia and "artists" would heap on this if it ever came to their attention. It won't of course, since the members of the newsmedia are part of the same club, and shield us from such things...I took the pix from a 4ID web-site (link). My daughter saw this and instantly said, "My art teacher would hate it!"

FORWARD OPERATING BASE, Tikrit, Iraq – When he was forced to fashion statues of Saddam Hussein on horseback, the Iraqi sculptor had no idea that someday he would melt them down to create a memorial for American soldiers.... The toppled statues were cut up into pieces by members of the 555th Engineer Group and spirited quietly to the artist, Kalat, who reshaped the chunks of bronze into a likeness of an American soldier being comforted by a small girl as he mourns a fallen comrade....

...The artist, who fears retaliation from former regime loyalists for his work with the Coalition, spent several months sculpting and casting the statue. Though he created the original statues of Saddam along with another artist, he created the 4th ID memorial through his own design, said Anderson.

     The sculpture is based on a scene many in Iraq have witnessed in one form or another. A soldier kneels before a memorial of boots, rifle and helmet – his forehead resting in the hollow of his hand. Behind and to his right stands a small Iraqi girl with her hand reaching out to touch his shoulder....

Well the Weidners thank you, Kalat, and to hell with "Art."

(Thanks to Brian Tiemann, who had a good comment: "You won't be seeing this in Doonesbury anytime soon." )

#145: Health care is socialism's last stand

KRUGMAN TRUTH SQUAD

Most observers would agree that the battle between capitalism and socialism during the last two decades was won by capitalism. As a means of developing, producing and distributing goods and services it proved to be far superior to socialism, and as a medium of technological innovation and adaptation to changed economic circumstances it was unmatched. So that debate is over, right? Well, not quite. When it comes to issues concerning health care socialism is alive and well. Apparently, on such important matters, the market system is not to be trusted. Thus, while no one would suggest we need universal, affordable BMWs, no politician can deny we need universal, affordable health care. The fact that the policies required to provide free BMWs would destroy a company seems lost on those advocating similar policies to care for our health.

Because of this dichotomy, Paul Krugman in The Health of Nations (02/17/04 can, in one sentence, acknowledge that US health care is the best in the world and then, in a subsequent sentence, imply that health care should be affordable to all and then, in yet another sentence, claim that the means to get from here to there is to crack down on prices received by drug companies and health insurance companies. There's not a word about the returns on investment that are necessary to keep financing innovations in health science and technology, or drug research. In fact, an apparatchik in the old East Germany could not have put it better. Somehow when it comes to health care they get away with it.

There is a sensible, market-based solution to the US health care problem and the Bush administration is sort of moving down that sensible road. But since Krugman says he will "talk more about alternatives for health care in future columns" we will wait and see how his solutions evolve before discussing this further.

But one thing is clear. Health care is socialism's last stand.

[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. ]

Happy birthday, George...

My anxious recollections, my sympathetic feeling, and my best wishes are irresistibly excited whensoever, in any country, I see an oppressed nation unfurl the banners of freedom.

--George Washington

"His abilities and anticipated future assignments make him a valuable asset"

This made me grin. Apparently the scurrilous and stupid attacks on President Bush's Air National Guard service have backfired—a lot of people are now becoming aware that Bush got glowing evaluations as a fighter pilot. That's the sort of stuff he's too classy to boast about or even mention, but Terry McAuliffe has done us the favor of publicizing it. Hee hee hee...

Jimmy Breslin is such a jerk.

(From Newsday) ...His whereabouts have nothing to do with it. What matters only is that Bush was in the National Guard in Texas because he was dodging the war in Vietnam. In those days, if you were in the Guard, you were not called for Vietnam...

Bush wasn't in the National Guard, he was in the Air National Guard—a very different thing. Men from his unit were fighting in Vietnam when he joined. If he had trained on F-100's he probably would have gone. F-102's turned out to be useless over there.

... What matters to all our senses is that he is a president who struts around as a war hero,

Never did any such.

..who dodged Vietnam and most of the National Guard drills

DID do most ANG drills, did miss some at a time when the AF was shedding excess pilots, and when F-102's had been taken out of service—and that after 2 1/2 years of active duty...

...and who with less shame than anybody we have had maybe ever,

Can one say "Bill Clinton?"

sends your kids to a war that he ducked as if he was allowed to do it by birth....

'cause we elected him to do just that, which is really what Breslin hates. He had no objections when Clinton sent people into danger in Kosovo.

...The picture of him playing soldier suit on an aircraft carrier, the helmet under his arm like he just got back from a run over Baghdad, marks him as exceedingly dangerous...

Guess what, fool, if you flew on a jet to a carrier, you also would be required to wear a flight-suit and helmet. It's safety gear, not a uniform. And Bush took it off after landing. Yikes, does that carrier trip torment the lefties! I shall cherish it in my heart forever for just that reason.

They pretend to be upset because there was something illegitimate about it, but what really chews out their livers is that Bush was obviously right at home with our service-people, and extremely popular. Unlike certain other presidents, nobody had to be ordered to be friendly to him!

It's pathetic that lefty media types who normally ignore our military, and certainly don't want their own children to join, suddenly now value combat service above everything. If some upset gives Dean the nomination they will instantly decide that only physicians should make life-or-death presidential decisions!

AND, do you notice the huge gap in all the articles of this type? Something missing? If there's an article on poverty, aren't there always quotes from some poor people? Isn't a disaster story is always accompanied by quotes from the hapless victims? So why don't Breslin and his fellows go to an Army base and gather some quotes from those unhappy soldiers who are being sent to die by a "guy who ducked the war?"

In fact I think Mr Breslin should be required to visit some bases. He would pick up some very colorful quotes!

(thanks to Cori Dauber)

Good news, plus a big disappointment...

Lt. Col. Suliman Hammad, left, describes the attack on an Iraqi Civil Defense Corps compound to Capt. Mark Zahaczewsky, right, an Army intelligence officer from Washington, D.C., as Spc. Khaled Dudin, an Arabic-speaking medic from Chico, Ca., aids in translating. Army Times photo

Wretchard notes the good news in this article on the attacks on police stations in Falluja:

...No American troops were involved in the fighting. Officers from the 82nd Airborne Division stationed a 10-minute drive away could hear the battle clearly. They offered help but [Lt Colonel] Hammad said it wasn't needed. The Americans did provide additional ammunition and weapons, including light machine guns...

I'm still not sure the Iraqis are ready to handle representative government, but there's no doubt they can slaughter terrorist scumbags if they decide to...I vaguely remember reading of this incident as "police station overrun in Falluja.", with the implication that things were, as usual, geting worse. But in fact five places were attacked, and the Iraqis said, "no help needed, just send more bullets..."

[Update: Bill Quick has it right: "We've won in Iraq. The rest is just taking out the garbage - and shooting it."]

Not-good news
Unfortunately, the much touted British methods of pacification, so nuanced and superior to those ham-handed insensitive US Army methods, seem to have resulted in Basra becoming thug-city. Here's the story, read it and weep...Sounds like the Brits are too multi-culti and sensitive to actually choose between good guys and bad guys...

Tell him a joke on Saturday, and he'll laugh in church...

Our friend Dave wrote this post in January, and I just now noticed the joke of the title...

A couple of good thoughts...

From Hugh Hewitt

...In short, most of "elite" media in America is practicing a steely resolve not to dignify the Kerry allegations absent some "proof," while relentlessy probing President Bush's ANG record of three decades ago.  The hypocrisy is so enormous that it defies categorization, though not explanation:  Standards for Beltway media differ when the "scandal" involves a man of the left than when it involves a man of the center-right...

Bush's Guard service started with 2 1/2 years of active duty. But he's a "draft-dodger."

Steve writes:

....Actually, that's the wrong way to look at the situation. The question is not why are there not more conservatives in academia. It's more relevant to ask: why are liberals under-represented outside the school system? Is it an indictment of their inability to survive in the business world? Is it proof of the old line "those who can, do... those who can't, teach"? What skill do members of academia - such as philosophy instructors - actually possess that allow them to survive outside the sheltered walls of the school system?....What would they/could they do to earn a paycheck?....