"the favorable judgment of history..."

Between these alternatives there is no neutral ground. All governments that support terror are complicit in a war against civilization. No government should ignore the threat of terror, because to look the other way gives terrorists the chance to regroup and recruit and prepare. And all nations that fight terror, as if the lives of their own people depend on it, will earn the favorable judgment of history...

-- Abu Jinan, 9/23/2003

Not worthy to clean their boots...

When I think of the coldly calculated campaign of lies and smears leftists have waged against our contractors in Iraq, especially the Halliburton Corporation, with charges of war profiteering and "crony capitalism..."

And when I think of the efforts of myself and many other more important writers to carefully debunk these lies with facts and reasoning...see here and Here and HERE and HERE (With zero hope of affecting anyone on the left, though perhaps a few people in the middle noticed.)

And then thinking of those Americans murdered today in Falluja, while leftist frauds sit safe at home and sneer and sneer and sneer....

I'm feeling so angry I could spit.

Now, as the almond burns its smoking wick...

APRIL RISE

If ever I saw blessing in the air
I see it now on this still early day
Where lemon-green the vaporous morning drips
Wet sunlight on the powder of my eye.

Blown bubble-film of blue, the sky wraps round
Weeds of warm light whose every root and rod
Splutters with soapy green, and all the world
Sweats with the bead of summer in its bud

If ever I heard blessing it is there
Where birds in trees that shoals and shadows are
Splash with their hidden wings and drops of sound
Break on my ears their crests of throbbing air.

Pure in the haze the emerald sun dilates
The lips of sparrows milk the mossy stones,
While white as water by the lake a girl
Swims her green hand among the gathered swans,

Now, as the almond burns its smoking wick,
Dropping small flames to light the candled grass;
Now, as my low blood scales its second chance,
If ever world were blessed, now it is.

-- Laurie Lee

total tune-up

Great resource for bloggers! Kathy Kinsley (of On The Third Hand) will do all sorts of tweaking, fixing, adjusting, and polishing to your templates and blog-machinery. Reasonable rates.

She just made several improvements here for me. If you click on a "CONTINUE READING" button, the text pops-down on this page, rather than sending you to the archive page. And if you click-on a perma-link, you go to a single-entry archive page, with a side-bar (which I could never manage to put in myself).

And bad bots that collect e-mails for spammers will no more gain entrance...

Highly recommended

affirmations

I found this comment by Russell in a post by Andrea:

I always took opinions like that of Tutu’s to evidence a very narrow, almost amnesiac, view of the world. Once the killer kills, the victim falls out of the equation. They’re no longer part of the consideration. All that’s left in the punishment calculation is: 1) a live, breathing human being in the person of the murderer, at least somewhat sympathetic if only as a fellow human, and 2) a surprisingly vague, abstract notion of some wrong having been committed by the murderer. But somehow, in the minds of those like Tutu, they never seem be cognizant of the living, personified humanity of the victim. He or she (actually “it,” to more accurately capture how I think Tutu considers it) becomes an abstraction that falls out of sight or mind.

I justify my support for the death penalty as an affirmation of the sanctity of human life - so, if one really cares about it, which should afford greater protection and consideration, the life of an innocent or of a murderer?

an affirmation of the sanctity of human life...I kind of think he's on to something there. I certainly don't think Bishop Tutu's warmed-over lefty-mush is an affirmation of anything...and if Tutu can "rise above" several hundred-thousand corpses in mass graves in Iraq, a handful of murdered Americans are not going to bother him.

"Just ask the people he lives with"

The refusal of Democrat leaders to allow the Senate to vote on Bush's judicial nominations is an story of mendacity and hypocrisy. The ugliness is doubled because, having no honest case to make against a group of very competent and decent nominees, they have to slander good men. Jim Miller writes:

More On Judge Pickering:  I never watch 60 Minutes any more; they have been wrong too many times.  Worse, they have sometimes deliberately concocted deceptive stories, as they did when they saved Clinton in 1992.  I can and do forgive news organizations that try to get the facts right; I can't forgive those that try to fool me.  So, it is a pleasure to learn that the program got the facts right about Judge Pickering, a decent man who fought the Ku Klux Klan when that was extraordinarily dangerous, only to be slurred as a racist years later by the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
President Bush himself has said, "Pickering has got a very strong record on civil rights. Just ask the people he lives with."

60 Minutes did, and found that in Mississippi, Pickering enjoys strong support from the many blacks who know him.  In his hometown of Laurel, four of the five black City Council members say they back him, because of all he's done to improve race relations.  And many black attorneys who practice before him say Pickering is fair and first-rate.  They include attorney Charles Lawrence, who says, "I trust him because I've been in front of him.  I've had cases in front of him.  And that's not to say I've always won.  I haven't always won.  But he, he has an understanding of the law and he applies it he applies it fairly across the board...

how swiftly storm clouds can gather

Speech delivery counts for little on the world stage unless you have convictions and, yes, the vision to see beyond the front row seats. The Democrats may remember their lines, but how quickly they forget the lessons of the past. I have witnessed five major wars in my lifetime, and I know how swiftly storm clouds can gather on a peaceful horizon. The next time a Saddam Hussein takes over a Kuwait, or North Korea brandishes a nuclear weapon, will we be ready to respond?

In the end it all comes down to leadership. That is what this country is looking for now. It was leadership here at home that gave us strong American influence abroad and the collapse of imperial communism. Great nations have responsibilities to lead, and we should always be cautious of those who would lower our profile, because they might just wind up lowering our flag.
--Ronald Reagan

Oh bliss, for former woes, a thousandfold repaid...

Thinking about the previous post, if plain talk and honesty become the new fashion in the world, it will have to be ascribed to the influence of George W Bush.

There have been a number of times when his clarity and refusal to bullshit have thrilled me utterly. But one of the best, one of the sweetest, one that made me want to fall on my knees and shout PraiseGodHallelujah Delivered at Last! was in April 2001 when he torpedoed the doctrine of Strategic Ambiguity.

It was invented by our worst president, Jimmy Carter, who abrogated the 1955 treaty in which we promised to aid Taiwan if attacked. Instead, we would be "ambiguous" on the question. Carter, of course, never met a dictator he didn't like. But for the United States of America to be ambiguous between a friendly capitalist democratic nation and a brutal tyranny that has no love for us whatsoever was a disgraceful thing. Especially when the end of the Cold War nullified the original reason for the stinking thing.

Here's David Frum's description:

...Perhaps Bush's attention slipped, or more likely, perhaps he could no longer bear the sound of his own voice mouthing the State Department's platitudes. But when interviewed by ABC's Charles Gibson, he dropped the talking points and spoke with startling candor.

Gibson asked: "If Taiwan were attacked by China, do we have an obligation to defend the Taiwanese?"

"Yes, we do," Bush replied.

Astonished, Gibson pressed for clarification. He did not need to say a word, for Bush pressed on unprompted: "And the Chinese must understand that. Yes I would."

Gibson, even more amazed: "with the full force of the American military?"

And Bush gave his final answer, "Whatever it took too help Taiwan defend herself."

"Strategic Ambiguity" was dead...

After so many disappointments and "ambiguities," to be alive at this time is sweet recompense. "Oh bliss, for former woes, a thousandfold repaid."

Amazing—could the age of mumble mumble be over?

We live in a time when nations have to speak about foreign policy in diplomatic gurble-globble, with all sharp corners covered in a soft padding of lies. ESPECIALLY if the subject is Israel or the Palestinians. Remember when Israel bombed Saddam's Osirak nuke plant, and the nations of the world all publicly condemned this horrid violation of "International Law?" While privately breathing a sigh of relief that the problem was taken care of? (Except probably France, which was building the thing.)

So I was stunned to read this curious tale:

...I was at the Israeli embassy just this afternoon with my Political Science class, and the representatives there were more than happy to explain. One student came out and asked what everyone was thinking: given Israel's recent actions, what is its policy toward a similar, preemptive strike against Arafat?

The presenter worked primarily in educational ties, so we were expecting an answer that denounced Arafat's actions while stating the Israeli hope that peaceful negotiations could reach a solution: your typical diplospeak. But she flat-out said it: Israel's policy of preempting terror attacks through the killing of terrorist leaders remains in place and Arafat is on the list.

Then she talked about the next issue: what happens after the primary Palestinian leaders are gone, the fence is up, and Israel disengages. Then, she said, chaos...

..While Palestinians may hate Israeli occupation with unmatched vigor, they hardly realize the extent the country still provided basic governmental services. Power, infrastructure, and economic development provided by IDF troops and government representatives will disappear. Americans protest the fence saying that Israel wants to starve and imprison the Palestinians, but the truth is rather simple: Israel will accomplish these things not because it wants to, but simply by ending its existing benevolent oversight of the Palestinian regions.

Forced to administer themselves, rather than unite behind opposition to the occupation, the current ties between the PLO and Hamas will disappear. Over some short period of time, evolution will force a new generation of leadership. No longer able to gain support by galvanizing hatred and blaming problems on Israel, the people themselves will have the chance to choose a better way and begin the process of creating a two-state solution.

They will need help, she said, and Israel has always wanted to give it to them. Whether you believe the second part or not, the first is a standard to which Israel should be held. If the country remains resolute, little can stop its unilateral actions in eliminating the current leadership and withdrawing behind the fence. All that will remain is for the international community to focus on the task of delivering aid to the Palestinians when they finally decide to use it wisely. American success in Iraq would go a long way toward demonstrating this possibility...

Which "winger" wrote this ugly smear?

SO, try to guess which shameless partisan from the Republican smear machine wrote this:

...While Clarke claims that he is "an independent" not driven by partisan motives, it's hard not to read some passages in his book as anything but shrill broadsides. In his descriptions of Bush aides, he discerns their true ideological beliefs not in their words but in their body language: "As I briefed Rice on al-Qaeda, her facial expression gave me the impression she had never heard the term before." When the cabinet met to discuss al-Qaeda on Sept. 4, Rumsfeld "looked distracted throughout the session."

As for the President, Clarke doesn't even try to read Bush's body language; he just makes the encounters up. "I have a disturbing image of him sitting by a warm White House fireplace drawing a dozen red Xs on the faces of the former al-Qaeda corporate board.....while the new clones of al-Qaeda....are recruiting thousands whose names we will never know, whose faces will never be on President Bush's little charts, not until it is again too late." Clarke conjured up this chilling scene again on 60 Minutes. Only in this version he also manages to read Bush's mind, and "he's thinking that he's got most of them and therefore he's taken care of the problem." The only things missing are the black winged chair and white cat...

Ann Coulter? Steyn? Goldberg? Lowry? click below to find out.

Ha ha, Gotcha. It was TIME Magazine!

Thanks to Richard Bennett

(Coulter's more pungent take: "...Isn't that just like a liberal? The chair-warmer describes Bush as a cowboy and Rumsfeld as his gunslinger -- but the black chick is a dummy...")

idealism is with those who serve, rather than bash, their country

Rocket Man has said that today, unlike in our youth, "the fun is on the right." I think we can also say that today (even more so than in our youth) idealism is with those who serve, rather than bash, their country. -- Deacon, at Power Line

Country Z—statist no more...

I turned a paragraph from this article into a generic version, because it could be used as a template for any number of articles one sees these days:

Mr X, who takes office on June 1, has promised to continue Party Y's free-market policies, which have included privatization of state-run industries, adopting the U.S. dollar as the nation's currency and negotiating a free-trade agreement between Region Z and the United States. He said in the interview that he would "be ready to consider" any U.S. request to keep the Country Z's troops in Iraq beyond their current commitment, which ends in June. And he has pledged to seek more programs for the poor, who make up about half the population, according to official statistics.

If you want to understand why Leftists are acting with the lunatic fear of those whose neighbors are all turning into pod people, imagine that paragraph multiplied by 50 or 100! And keep in mind that "Party Y's free-market policies" actually work, producing prosperity with clockwork regularity, while the Left produces poverty with the same dependability.

Also consider that lefties are still today citing Country Z as an example of "the US always supports corrupt dictators," even though Country Z has been electing its leaders for several decades! That's desperation folks!

Country Z is El Salvador, by the way. And you might think that leftizoids would be rushing to exploit that 50% of the population that is poor. Except that everybody there knows that the figure used to be more like 80%. You're looking at DOOM for the world's Socialists.

There will always be Socialism of course, (though the name will change from time to time) because it's the philosophy of those who feel they are better than ordinary people, and should be telling them what to do (for their own good, of course.) There's an impulse for that in every human heart.

(thanks toBrothersJudd Blog)

We're living MLK's dream....

PoliPundit writes:

...A hundred and fifty years ago, this filmmaker could have written a book opposing slavery. Fifty years ago, he could have made a documentary attacking racial segregation. Now all he can "fight" for is renaming a street? The great civil rights battle of the 21st century is changing street signs?

Call me crazy, but I think America is already living MLK's dream. Sure, there are the occasional racist bozos; but they're the exceptions to the rule. I'm what used to be called a "colored" person. But I have never, not once, been discriminated against because of the color of my skin. (Well, I take that back. I was discriminated against in college admissions because I'm not black.)

The great "civil rights" issue for African-Americans today is not renaming streets. It's not "affirmative action." It's school vouchers.

The remedy for black poverty isn't unconstitutional, divisive, unfair racial quotas. It's a return to the traditional family structure, along with private competition for education dollars.

Who stands on the right side of these issues, Republicans or Democrats? The Party of Lincoln is the party of civil rights in the 21st century...

My "grain of salt" standard

When the subject is failures of military planning (and this would apply both to Mr Kerry's voting against this or that weapons system, and planning failures in the invasion of Iraq) I always think about what must have been the most thoroughly-planned military operation in history—the Normandy Invasion.

Whole buildings full of experts worked for a year on nothing else. The beaches were mapped by frogmen and aerial photography. The one D-Day catastrophe, Omaha Beach, was just sheer bad luck; multiple messages from the French Resistance didn't get through.

BUT, when the Allies got past the beaches, they were utterly flummoxed to discover the bocage. A natural fortress of hedges of a thickness and density they had never encountered before—not really hedges, but earth and stone banks covered with a dense mat of ancient vegetation. New tactics and equipment had to be improvised in a bloody learning-environment. Our timing was thrown off by months, with lethal effects later in the year.

No one had given the matter any thought...

Good for Kerry

From Dean's World:

* Update * My lovely wife, the Queen of All Evil, informs me that John Kerry has been distancing himself from Clarke, and that Kerry has already said that Clarke should be indicted for perjury if he lied to Congress under oath.

If Rosemary is correct--and she doesn't have a link but she has a good memory so I tend to believe her--then Kerry needs to be praised. I hope this is true, I really do. I'm so mad at Democrats right now, anything that makes them look less like assholes would make me happy.

The game is called Good Cop/Bad Cop

From the the Australian site NEWS.com.au: Syria seeks our help to woo US

By John Kerin March 27, 2004
SYRIA has appealed to Australia to use its close ties with Washington to help the Arab nation shake off its reputation as a terrorist haven and repair its relations with the US.

Secret talks between the two nations have been under way for months but have become more urgent as rogue nations reconsider their role in allowing terrorists to thrive, in light of the US determination to take pre-emptive military action....

This must be a frightfully bad time to be on the Left. Just as you are getting your latest Bush is a Fascist message polished up and ready for a roll-out, the duplicitous bastard starts putting the squeeze on yet another real fascist dictator! What a spoil-sport! I guess all a poor Bolshie can do is hope he runs out of genocidal tyrants pretty soon....

Go figure...

If you are tempted to believe the insinuations of certain politicians that Americans are getting poorer, take a look at this graph, at EconoPundit. He writes:

Out of curiousity I graphed the census data cited by Kaus. If you accept these data as at all valid, the results are striking. It looks like there were two distinct periods of poverty decline in the US, one ending at the point Lyndon Johnson's "War on Poverty" began, the other starting just at the starting point of Clinton era welfare reform. Go figure.

The Myth of the Racist Republicans

There have been a lot of Academics pushing the line that The Republican Party is a hotbed of racism. And that Southerners are still racist troglodites and cross-burners. It's frustrating to be pretty sure that both these views are false. but not have good counter-arguments.

I recommend The Myth of the Racist Republicans, From The Clairemont Institute

...This bias is evident also in how differently they treat the long Democratic dominance of the South. Carter and the Black brothers suggest that the accommodation of white racism penetrates to the very soul of modern conservatism. But earlier generations of openly segregationist Southerners voted overwhelmingly for Woodrow Wilson's and Franklin Roosevelt's Democratic Party, which relaxed its civil rights stances accordingly. This coalition passed much of the New Deal legislation that remains the basis of modern liberalism. So what does the segregationist presence imply for the character of liberalism at its electoral and legislative apogee? These scholars sidestep the question by simply not discussing it. This silence implies that racism and liberalism were simply strange political bedfellows, without any common values.

But the commonality, the philosophical link, is swiftly identified once the Democrats leave the stage. In study after study, authors say that "racial and economic conservatism" married white Southerners to the GOP after 1964. So whereas historically accidental events must have led racists to vote for good men like FDR, after 1964 racists voted their conscience. How convenient. And how easy it would be for, say, a libertarian conservative like Walter Williams to generate a counter-narrative that exposes statism as the philosophical link between segregation and liberalism's economic populism...

...Timing may provide the greatest gap between the myth and the actual unfolding of events. Only in the 1980s did more white Southerners self-identify as Republicans than as Democrats, and only in the mid-1990s did Republicans win most Southern House seats and become competitive in most state legislatures. So if the GOP's strength in the South only recently reached its zenith, and if its appeal were primarily racial in nature, then the white Southern electorate (or at least most of it) would have to be as racist as ever. But surely one of the most important events in Southern political history is the long-term decline of racism among whites. The fact that these (and many other) books suggest otherwise shows that the myth is ultimately based on a demonization not of the GOP but of Southerners, who are indeed assumed to have Confederate flags in their hearts if not on their pickups. This view lends The Rise of Southern Republicans a schizophrenic nature: it charts numerous changes in the South, but its organizing categories are predicated on the unsustainable assumption that racial views remain intact.

What's more, the trend away from confident beliefs in white supremacy may have begun earlier than we often think. David Chappell, a historian of religion, argues that during the height of the civil rights struggle, segregationists were denied the crucial prop of religious legitimacy. Large numbers of pastors of diverse denominations concluded that there was no Biblical foundation for either segregation or white superiority. Although many pastors remained segregationist anyway, the official shift was startling: "Before the Supreme Court's [Brown v. Board] decision of 1954, the southern Presbyterians. . . and, shortly after the decision, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) overwhelmingly passed resolutions supporting desegregation and calling on all to comply with it peacefully. . . . By 1958 all SBC seminaries accepted black applicants." With considerable understatement, Chappell notes that "people—even historians—are surprised to hear this." Billy Graham, the most prominent Southern preacher, was openly integrationist.

The point of all this is not to deny that Richard Nixon may have invited some nasty fellows into his political bed. The point is that the GOP finally became the region's dominant party in the least racist phase of the South's entire history, and it got that way by attracting most of its votes from the region's growing and confident communities—not its declining and fearful ones. The myth's shrillest proponents are as reluctant to admit this as they are to concede that most Republicans genuinely believe that a color-blind society lies down the road of individual choice and dynamic change, not down the road of state regulation and unequal treatment before the law. The truly tenacious prejudices here are the mythmakers'.

The prize which no sane man ever covets...

From Belmont Club, here's a morsel taken out of context to whet your appetite. Read the whole post:

...There remains a third answer. That the existence of these two great religious totalitarianisms -- one secular only in name and the other religious only in dissimulation -- is required for their mutual defeat. It relies on the observation that both the Left and Islamism react together to produce an extremely toxic combination which neither could have achieved alone. It takes some reflection to remember just how far both the notions of Islamism and Leftism have moved since September 11. The former was an unknown towards which the man in the street would have been indifferent while the latter was a kind of eccentricity, rough yet without danger. Neither will be again. Both have mutated in interaction or perhaps have become that which they really were.

Both are struggling for the space in which conservatism can never go and for the prize which no sane man ever covets: the dominion of souls....

Reality TV...

This article from Stars & Stripes really tickled me. 'tis a far different Army we have now than when I was young:

MOSUL, Iraq — Armed police burst into a house, subdue a gang of bandits and rescue the hostages.

The scene could be straight out of the U.S. television reality show “Cops,” but instead of American police officers, the lawmen getting their 15 minutes of fame are Iraqi police.

The show is “Heroes in Blue,” an Iraqi reality television program funded by the U.S. military as a way of informing Iraqis about the work of their own security forces. It is a collaboration between an Iraqi television producer and Lt. Col. Wayne Swan of the Mosul-based I Corps Task Force Olympia....

Comment that ate Tokyo..

I've been swapping some comments with my friend Dave Trowbridege, but my comments have grown like The Blob and absorbed all my blogging energy, (blobbing energy?) so I'll just make this one a post...

There's a lot of things I'd like to answer, but they really need long blogposts—maybe soon

But I've got to hit one point. Rush Limbaugh is NOT a demagogue.

1. Rush usually backs up his attacks with facts and logic. I've listened to them, sometimes at tedious length. I predict, without having heard him recently, that Rush is even now attacking Richard Clarke not with invective or cries of treason, but with facts and with honest argument. I predict that he's comparing Clarke's testimony in August 2002 with what he is saying now, and demonstrating that Clarke has serious credibility problems. (And I furthermore predict that Leftists like Neiwert will say that Clarke is being brutally attacked by the Republican smear machine. And then use those "smear tactics' as "evidence" of the fascistic trend of the Conservative Right.)

2. Neiwert says somewhere something like "Rush is trying to drive a wedge between the workers and the middle class." But I've several times heard Rush talking with callers who are poor or unemployed. And he shows concern and listens, and then passionately urges them to keep faith and keep trying, to believe in education and hard work and American values. He tells about his own hard times, and urges them to avoid dependence on government handouts as much as possible. Rush keenly wants the poor to move to the middle class. Of course a leftist might hate that, but it's not demagoguery—he never suggests that people are being "kept down" by sinister forces. And it's the opposite of "vile;" His warmth and sincerity are palpable.

3. Rush often listens to arguments of people who disagree with him. I suspect they go to the head of the queue. He's respectful, draws them out, listens, makes counter-arguments, suggests they might want to give his ideas some thought, gives them a free subscription to his newsletter....He doesn't call them crazy, or impugn their honesty. Most importantly, he is setting an EXAMPLE for his millions of listeners of engagement with differing ideas. That's not what a demagogue would want to do.

4. Rush constantly urges people to think about what he's discussing. One of his jokes is to say "Don't think about this. Just listen to me and I'll tell you exactly what to believe." Which of course is a reminder that people should think for themselves. (Sorry for explaining a joke. Somebody would be sure to miss the point if I didn't.)

5. Rush's ideas are mainstream American Conservative, and he sticks to them. A demagogue would abandon his principles for political expedience. But Rush has strongly criticized the Bush Administration for overspending, for increasing the size of Government, for Medicare. Also he doesn't traffic in conspiracy theories. No black helicopters, no hidden foes that can't be named.

6. It's not demagogic, or fascistic (or vile) for a Conservative to attack Liberalism! Or Big Government, the UN, "multilateralism" or "multiculturalism." That's what American Conservatives BELIEVE, and have all along. (I was introduced to conservative notions back in the 1950's! But that's another tale) One of the many logical flaws in Neiwert's essay is to critique conservatives as if they should hold leftist principles. He cites attacking the UN and multilateralism as de facto evidence of the ugly drift of the Right. But we've attacked the UN consistently from the moment it was mooted. (And with the same arguments all along, which have nothing to do with dislike of foreigners. Read den Beste on Tranzis, and you'll get the drift)

There are legitimate criticisms that can be made about Rush, and I don't always agree with him myself. And he is hard-hitting and brutally combative, and not always fair. But that fits a lot of people on the Left too. You probably disagree with many of his positions, but they can all be argued with, because they are based on facts and ideas, not the slippery insinuations of a demagogue. (And by the way, I never listen to Michael Savage. I think he's a loon. And I've never listened to Rush except when driving. I'd much rather read a book or a blog.)

And speaking of arguing, what exactly is "the (true) conservative position?" You are very coy about your own ideas, which is a bit unfair if you are going to attack others. I loved Exordium, but your ideas aren't in a pin-downable form there.

#151: "Efficiency" Krugman-style

KRUGMAN TRUTH SQUAD

The Medicare Muddle (03/26/04) is Paul Krugman's third column in six weeks on this topic and makes him the champion recycler of the New York Times. There's really nothing new. As in Social Security Scares (03/05/04), see Squad Report # 148, and The Health of Nations (02/17/04), see Squad Report #145), he continues to walk a tightrope between scaring seniors enough about their benefits to keep them voting Democratic, but NOT scaring them so much that they might embrace privatization. For once the privatization camel has his nose under the health care tent there is no turning back.

Krugman continues referencing undocumented studies showing that government health programs are more efficient that private ones. We would love to see those studies. Our guess is that these efficiencies come at the expense of choice, timely service and quality. When you price something below cost rationing always occurs, one way or another. Then there is an even greater problem. If you wring all the profits out of a private system to provide cheap service, how does innovation continue to get financed? On this point Krugman's silence is deafening.

This photo helps make the point. These two cars are Soviet ZIL-41044s circa 1980. They too were produced "efficiently", because the prices of their inputs were controlled, their design costs were minimal (they were stolen them GM) and customer service was non-existent. So if you didn't mind waiting a year or two and didn't really care which color you got..... Which one would you want?

[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. ]

Berlin sandcastles washing away...

From an article in OpinionJournal :

Florida will be a pivotal battleground this November, but on the crucial subject of education reform the battle in that state is already joined.

In the past five years Florida has delivered real school choice to more American schoolchildren than anywhere else in the country. Which is no doubt why Jesse Jackson was down in Tallahassee earlier this month calling Governor Jeb Bush's policies "racist." He and his allies understand all too well that when poor African-American and Latino children start getting the same shot at a decent education that the children of our politicians do, the bankrupt public education empire starts looking like the Berlin Wall...

Berlin Wall is just the right term. Leftists are scrambling everywhere to prop up their crumbling edifices of tyranny.

...And another study, this one by the Manhattan Institute, finds that even kids without vouchers benefit because the competition is pushing Florida public schools to improve....

Of course. That's the whole idea. Competition. It works. Everyone benefits. Poor and minority and special-ed kids benefit. (Even taxpayers, since Florida has a big program where businesses pay for vouchers)

So everyone's happy, right?

...In response, the teachers unions, pols and bureaucrats opposing any reform have opted for a dual strategy of sue and regulate...

Evil. Evil. Evil. Socialist bloodsuckers feeding on children. The thought of them writhing and squirming at the name Bush like vampires confronted with a cross just warms my heart.

myopia

From OpinionJournal:

What you have is classic bureaucratic myopia. The invasion of Iraq was a presidential decision, made by looking at the totality of the national interest. Mr. Clarke's niche was terrorist organizations narrowly defined. And like all such "stovepipe" occupants in Washington, he spent his life trying to get others to adopt his narrow priorities rather than trying himself to see a bigger picture. Gen. Eisenhower is credited with the dictum: If a problem is insoluble, enlarge it. Mr. Clarke's book is an expression of bureaucratic rage that the Bush administration enlarged the terrorism problem beyond Mr. Clarke's bailiwick.--Holman Jenkins

Good questions beget good answers...

Orrin Judd posed a good question regarding this:

The government's former top counterterrorism adviser testified Wednesday that the Clinton administration had "no higher priority" than combatting terrorists while the Bush administration made it "an important issue but not an urgent issue."

The question?

Does anyone else find it odd that in his entire run for president, Al Gore never mentioned the most urgent foreign policy issue of the administration he was helping to lead?

Somehow I think that Clarke saying that the Clintonites had "no higher priority" than combatting terrorists just isn't going to stick. It won't adhere.

truly puke-worthy Bush Hatred

Jonah Goldberg writes:

Does anybody remember the nasty insinuations shortly after 9/11 about how Bush "ran away" from Washington for fear of attacks on the White House? The Salon wing of the punditocracy, for example, insisted that, in Joe Conason's words, "The Bush administration told an outrageous lie that the president was a target of terrorists." In classic Conason style, he turned his outrage to 11 on every knob....

Now Richard Clarke, in his book, is claiming credit for keeping the president out of Washington that day! And Conason? His words:

"...To be honest, it seemed to me that you saved their asses that day."

Do read Jonah's piece, it's short, but a gemlike example of truly puke-worthy Bush Hatred.

Quote for today

David Carr, at Samizdata, on The Guardian's showing us the "Yassin we never knew."

"Yassin the wise, Yassin the benevolent, Yassin the humanitarian. He was a gift to mankind. It was said of Yassin that he could light up a room, though he generally preferred lighting up buses and cafes."

comrades in the war

Since the World's leftylackwits are just now shedding crocodile tears over a slimesucking terrorist leader who finally got what he deserved, (While simultaneously criticizing Bush for not killing the equally vile Osama) it suits my mood to blog a little about the charm of Israel. (I've never been to the Holy Land, but someday...someday...)

From the blog Kumah! (Via Protocols)

Having just finished an exam, the three of us were driving home to Jerusalem from Bar Ilan University when we hit serious traffic. We decided to pull over to pray Mincha (the afternoon prayer).

We began to pray when all of the sudden another car pulled over about fifty feet away from us. An old Yemenite man hopped out and told us, "what, you don't want to pray with a minyan (quorum of ten)?"

As we answered him two more cars pulled over - one with Breslov Chassidim and the other with a pair of Moroccan brothers, with kippot creased from being folded and pocketed.

More followed and we had the great privilege of praying to God along with a random sampling of our incredible people - gathered from all the world to thank the God of Israel at the side of a highway leading to Jerusalem.(original post has a picture)

These are the people whose murder our lefty pals don't seem to mind. these are the good guys. These are our comrades in the war.

IT'S ALL ONE WAR.

LeftHypocrisy Report #87,391

Remember when Roger Ailes, the head of Fox news, sent, after 9/11, a personal letter to President Bush urging him to take strong measures against terrorists?

He was widely condemned by the Media Wing of the Democratic Party for such a shocking example of partisanship. The NYT had several articles and editorials condemning Ailes, (though they made no criticism at all when Walter Cronkite revealed that he had worked for Bobby Kennedy.)

Now Dave Huber at Oh That Liberal Media has a long list of journalists who are helping Kerry. I will just sit here a while and wait for the outpouring of outrage.

Actually, I would guess that most members of the press are like people around here, and don't even consider helping Kerry to be doing anything. Being for the Democrat is just too normal, like breathing.

to strike an impressive blow

David Bernstein writes at The Volokh Conspiracy:

CLARKE ON BUSH: I don't know anything about Richard Clarke, but he sure isn't making the Bush Administration look good. I'm still hoping that going after Iraq first instead of the real terrorist threat of Iran was part of some grand master plan, and not an inexplicable obsession with Saddam, but Clarke's claim that top Bushie's were obsessed with Iraq both before and after 9/11 gives me pause.

No one doubts that Iran is tops in supporting terrorists, (though Iraq did plenty of it too) but still I find this puzzling...

What does he mean by "go after Iran?" Does he mean invasion? Is so, ponder on how hard it was, diplomatically and politically, to organize an invasion of Iraq. And that despite tons of good excuses: UN Resolutions, genocide, actual use of WMD's, aggressive unprovoked wars. None of those things were available for Iran. I don't think a military attack was ever in the cards.

If Bernstein means lesser sorts of pressure, diplomacy and sanctions and embargoes and such, well, phoooey. That's just more Clintonian BS, and I guess it's hardly worth arguing with such ineffectual stuff.

And of course there IS a master plan. The heart and origin of Islamic radicalism lies in the failure and backwardness and despotism of the Arab world. And the "neocon" plan is to plant a powerful example of democracy and economic freedom right smack dab in the middle of the mess, with hopes of starting a new trend. You may not like the plan, but it's silly to say there isn't one. And for a variety of reasons Iran wouldn't be useful for that. It's not Arab, it's partly democratic, and it's not the sort of gross failure that all Arab countries are. (No doubt Mr Bernstein is aware of the plan, and is ignoring it for rhetorical purposes.)

And even without "the plan," anyone who wanted to really fight against terrorism had good reason to become obsessed with Iraq, and there was nothing inexplicable about it. The necessary first step (the little neocon inside me says) was to hit one important terror-supporting country really hard. Only then would the other terror-supporting tyrants take us seriously and start mending their ways, or changing. (and despite leftist lies, there's never been an intent to fight "an endless series of wars.")

And if you want to strike an impressive blow, Iraq is the obvious choice. Most of the others are too weak militarily to demonstrate our willingness to fight. Conquering Libya or Syria won't shake Iraq, but conquering Iraq has already shaken Libya and Syria and quite a few others. Including probably Iran.

And while toppling the Iranian regime would probably not have weakened Saddam much, toppling Saddam has surely greatly weakened the position of the Mullahs, and greatly encouraged those who hope to rebel against them.

Krugman...truth...a hopeless struggle

The Krugman Truth Squad is going to start passing on Krug's non-economic columns. Makes sense, they are a bunch of economists!

And I thought about giving today's Krug column a working over, but why bother? Every point he makes has already been refuted many times. The Bush-haters who read him don't care about facts...

I'll just whack one mole, to keep in practice. Krugman writes:

...After 9/11, the administration's secretiveness knew no limits — Americans, Ari Fleischer ominously warned, "need to watch what they say, watch what they do." Patriotic citizens were supposed to accept the administration's version of events, not ask awkward questions...

Well, you can read the transcript with Fleisher's remark here.

It's obvious from the context that Fleisher is responding to being baited by reporters about a truly vile remark by a left-wing America-hating scumbag, who called our soldiers cowards compared to the brave 9/11 terrorists. And it's clear that if Fleisher had had his 'druthers he would have responded with a well-deserved punch in the nose. He obviously wasn't making a blanket threat to Free Speech, or quoting any sort of prepared position.
Fleisher concludes: "This is not a time for remarks like that; there never is." And he's correct! And if asked, he would have added that we have Freedom of Speech, and the slimeball was free to say what he did. But it was still wrong! And it was perfectly proper for Fleishman to say that it was wrong.

"to escape the cycle of murder and negotiation..."

I'm stunned. I thought I had covered all the reasons for liberating Iraq long ago. (I remember trying to debate with a blogger who started his argument with: "The case for war against Iraq is very weak. It has two components, neither of which stand up to serious examination..." Absurd of course, I'd already blogged at least 6 reasons myself. And of course, the slippery dog wouldn't debate them. They never do.)

Today Wretchard comes up with one more, so obvious, so compelling, that I'm smacking my forehead that I didn't see it.

We might have been put in the position Israel has been in for decades, with every success against the terrorists aborted by demands for "negotiations."

...He [Osama] hoped to force America into fruitless but ineffectual reprisals against the Islamic world, then offer a hudna at intervals while he prepared his next blow. George Bush's counterstroke, which history will either judge as an act of supreme folly or genius, was to go beyond Afghanistan into Iraq. In a worthy riposte to Osama's, he escalated the struggle to the point where it was mutually mortal. If the fall of the Twin Towers was a gauntlet in America's face, the fall of Baghdad was a glove shoved down the Islamist's throat. Both Bin Laden and Bush have made compromise impossible. If the jihadis believed they could control the tempo of the conflict they were misinformed; American forces in the Arab heartland have forced a zugzwang to compel the game to the bitter end.

Yassin's assassination serves the same purpose. Israel's main problem was to escape the cycle of murder and negotiation that was slowly bleeding it to death. No matter how horribly Israel was attacked it was always expected to return, in an attitude of abjection, to the negotiating table. The Jihadis learned that any Israeli counteroffensive could be aborted by throwing the prospect of further talks into its path. Israel's superiority on the battlefield would be nullified because it would always be restrained by the "Peace Process", a misnomer if ever there was one...

If Al Gore had been President, I have no doubt he would have moved against Afghanistan. And also pursued other actions against Al Qaeda. But then what? Sooner or later would come the negotiations—whenever it suited Al Qaeda's schedule. The "Peace Process." With the French in the middle. The fight would be stalled, with the enemy allowed to decide when it is to be resumed....

Imagine a half-dead mouse...

Imagine a housewife. Imagine a messy problem; plugged toilet or half-dead mouse brought in by the cat. Imagine her waiting for her husband to come home, because MEN are supposed to deal with these icky problems... Then think about the following:

Powerline blog, writing in FrontPage magazine.com, has a long and detailed refutation of the charges of Clinton officials Sandy Berger, Madeline Albright and Richard Clarke:

"Where to begin: the mind boggles at such shamelessness. To state the obvious, in late 2000 the Clinton administration was STILL IN OFFICE. If there were steps that needed to be taken immediately to counter the al Qaeda threat, as they "bluntly" told President Bush's transition team, why didn't they take those steps themselves?

More broadly, of course, the Clinton administration was in power for eight years, while al Qaeda grew, prospered, and repeatedly attacked American interests:

*1993: Shot down US helicopters and killed US servicemen in Somalia
*1994: Plotted to assassinate Pope John Paul II during his visit to Manila
*1995: Plotted to kill President Clinton during a visit to the Philippines
*1995: Plot to to bomb simultaneously, in midair, a dozen US trans-Pacific flights was discovered and thwarted at the last moment
*1998: Conducted the bombings of the US Embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, that killed at least 301 individuals and injured more than 5,000 others
*1999: Attempt to carry out terrorist operations against US and Israeli tourists visiting Jordan for millennial celebrations was discovered just in time by Jordanian authorities
*1999: In another millennium plot, bomber was caught en route to Los Angeles International Airport *2000: Bombed the USS Cole in the port of Aden, Yemen, killing 17 US Navy members, and injuring another 39

So what, when they had the power to act effectively against al Qaeda, did these Clinton administration officials do? Little or nothing....

Condi Rice deals with the accusation that nothing was done by the Bush Administration, writing in the Washington Post. Much WAS done, more was planned; obviously in hindsight it was not enough.

For another exercise in imagination, go back to, say, August of 2001. Congress deadlocked, Dem majority in the Senate, every Bush initiative stalled. Then imagine Bush going to Congress for authorization to fight a world-wide war against Al Qaeda. Try, just TRY to imagine Democrats giving Bush enthusiastic support for bloody battles in Morocco, The Philippines, Afghanistan, Mali, Yemen.....ha ha ha ha ha ha ha...

I urge you to read the PowerLine piece, but if you don't have time, here's the last paragraph:

There you have it: Richard Clarke is a bitter, discredited bureaucrat who was an integral part of the Clinton administration's failed approach to terrorism, was demoted by President Bush, and is now an adjunct to John Kerry's presidential campaign.

New technology...

Take a look at this video! A 36 ton truck hits an innovative new barricade at 50mph. The barricade (unlike the truck) appears unharmed.

(Thanks to Dean)

Where are the new North Korean punk bands???

Funny article on conservative punk-rockers, A Bush Surprise: Fright-Wing Support:

..."But it's when he talks politics that Mr. Rizzuto sounds like a real radical, for a punk anyway. Mr. Rizzuto is adamantly in favor of lowering taxes and for school vouchers, and against campaign finance laws; his favorite Supreme Court justice is Clarence Thomas; he plans to vote for President Bush in November; and he's hard-core into capitalism.

"Punks will tell me, `Punk and capitalism don't go together,' " Mr. Rizzuto said. "I don't understand where they're coming from. The biggest punk scenes are in capitalist countries like the U.S., Canada and Japan. I haven't heard of any new North Korean punk bands coming out. There's no scene in Iran."

Mr. Rizzuto is the founder of Conservative Punk, one of a handful of Web sites and blogs that have sprung up recently as evidence of a heretofore latent political entity: Republican punks. With names like GOPunk, Anti-Anti-Flag and Punkvoter Lies, the sites are a curious blend of Karl Rove and Johnny Rotten, preaching personal responsibility and reflexive patriotism with the in-your-face zeal of a mosh pit."...

This is not completely surprising to me, having met Dr Frank, noted punk-rocker and thoughtful blogger...

But it really tickles me, because the left is still pushing the line that they are the political choice of the young and exciting. When they are actually the flavor of smugness and sclerosis.

Perhaps they will start pushing the line that pierced and tattooed young conservatives "aren't really young." Just like black conservatives "aren't really black."

"Private affluence and public squalor"...a positive indicator

Thomas Friedman has an interesting op-ed, which I think has things exactly wrong:

"But it will require some radical changes in politics: While India has the hardware of democracy — free elections — it still lacks a lot of the software — decent, responsive, transparent local government. While China has none of the hardware of democracy, in the form of free elections, its institutions have been better at building infrastructure and services for China's people and foreign investors.

When I was in Bangalore recently, my hotel room was across the hall from that of a visiting executive of a major U.S. multinational, which operates in India and China, and we used to chat. One day, in a whisper, he said to me that if he compared what China and India had done by way of building infrastructure in the last decade, India lost badly. Bangalore may be India's Silicon Valley, but its airport (finally being replaced) is like a seedy bus station with airplanes.

Few people in India with energy and smarts would think of going into politics. People don't expect or demand much from their representatives and therefore they are not interested in paying them much in taxes, so most local governments are starved of both revenues and talent."...

The infrastructure ploy is a fall-back position for leftizoids who have been forced to concede that government can't actually build an economy. So their position is "The economy can't grow until after we raise taxes and build roads and airports..." Or "until after we build a new City Hall to house the better government that we need before the economy can grow."

India is doing it right, Doing what the US did. What was Galbraith's phrase, "Private affluence and public squalor?" That's a good sign. Buy India, sell China.

Your High School history book probably made a lot of hay with the Erie Canal. But mostly America grew by starving a fairly corrupt public sector and letting the private sector boom with low taxes and few regulations. The museums and universities and national parks and highway systems came after economic growth. Often paid-for or led by "robber barons" or their heirs. They were pulled into existence by rising expectations and prosperity. Rather than being pushed by government in the expectation that these amenities would somehow spark growth.

Likewise the demands for good government came after the great explosions of wealth. Your history book probably implied that "The Gilded Age" and its plutocrats caused corruption and bad government. To which reformers responded with things like the Progressive Movement. But the corruption was there all along. It was increased national wealth that stimulated us to indulge in luxuries like reform movements.

"Few people in India with energy and smarts would think of going into politics.." That was just how things once were in America. Or rather, how they would have looked to a NYT columnist of 100 or 150 years ago. Actually, men with "energy and smarts" were entering politics, but they were poor and hungry ruffians that a Thomas Friedman would have disdained. When the wealthy and elegant young Theodore Roosevelt decided to enter the mire of New York politics, his social equals thought he had gone mad.

(Even the Erie Canal was not one those "highways to nowhere" that get built in Infrastructure-Land. It was a fairly visionary public project, but the need, the demand, the wealth to build it, all existed prior. The canal was busy from the moment it opened. The histories tend to imply that the world stood still until the canal was built. That suddenly, with the opening of the canal, settlers started heading West. No way. "In nine years, Canal tolls more than recouped the entire cost of construction..." That's the tip-off. )

(via Orrin Judd)

Put your money where your mouth is...

You know how the Democrats go on and on about how vitally important our traditional alliances are? Well, this made me sit up and think... Blaster writes:

Wouldn't it be smarter ...

For the Democrats to recognize that alliances are two-way, and call on our European allies to be allies? They could still stick it to Bush and say "despite our cowboy President blah blah blah, but the future is too important, why don't you guys support us because success is too important to let our alliances fall by the wayside?"

Democrats are always claiming that their being chummy with European leaders and appreciating their nuanced shades of gray means that they could do a better job of diplomacy and alliance-tending, and save America from the catatrophic isolation that results from electing Republicans...So why wait? Your country needs you now--here's your chance to shine!

Of course some skeptix types might suggest that Democrats might prefer that America have difficulties, just to improve their electoral chances...But surely they wouldn't sink so low.

Or that countries like France and Germany favor Democrats because they expect that they won't actually do anything or ask for any help. And that F & G would no more help Kerry overthrow a genocidal fascist dictator who lines their pockets, than they would help Bush...Nahhh. I refuse to believe such cynical things.

Seriously, Kerry did request that Spain reconsider removing forces from Iraq. Which was highly credible of him. But if he wanted a break from campaigning, he should have hopped a plane to Spain and made a real push. If he failed, at least he would have shown himself to be a serious guy. And if he succeeded, he would have an actual accomplishment to brag about!

Luke 10: 30-32

Deroy Murdock has a moving article on Iraq's mass graves. A subject some ice-hearted bastards have no interest in...

..."Iraq's mass graves have received some attention, but foes of Operation Iraqi Freedom prefer to discuss other things. They would rather focus on unseen weapons of mass destruction than on obvious scenes of mass death.

The liberal media appear only mildly interested in all of this. The Nexis database shows, for instance, that between January 1 and March 15, 2004, America's so-called paper of record, the New York Times, featured 191 references to Iraq and "weapons of mass destruction," but only six to Iraq and "mass graves." It's far easier to slam President Bush on Iraq while some 400,000 Iraqis who loudly would defend him, instead are busy decomposing.

Those who still believe America and its allies should have left Iraq untouched cannot avoid this conclusion: Had their arguments prevailed, Saddam Hussein's mass graves would be in business today, increasingly brimming with Baathism's voiceless victims"

deceiver...

The Belgravia Dispatch has a nice long dissection of some of Josh Marshall's latest lies:

"If Susan Sachs can read the Pew Center poll accurately, why can't Josh?

Maybe because, quoting Josh's intemperate smear of Perle (and assorted unnamed "folks"): "it's the essence of how these folks think, how they deceive themselves when they're not busy deceiving others." "

You can judge for yourselves, the actual quotes, the actual poll results are laid out before your wondering eyes.

That's how us vile right-wing warbloggers make a case. With facts. With evidence. Not that the sort of people who read Marshall will care about those.

(Thanks to Henry Hanks)

Not so distant a prospect...

There's an interesting NYT article, Hussein's Fall Leads Syrians to Test Government Limits, on a number of ways in which the totalitarian rule of the Baath Party in Syria is loosening.

There's some unintentional humor, because the NYT obviously hates to admit that anything Bush does could actually be successful:

...When the Bush administration toppled the Baghdad government, it announced that it wanted to establish a democratic, free-market Iraq that would prove a contagious model for the region. The bloodshed there makes that a distant prospect, yet the very act of humiliating the worst Arab tyrant spawned a sort of "what if" process in Syria and across the region...

It's not a distant prospect, the model is already contagious; that's the gist of the article.

And it's when police states start to loosen control that they become most vulnerable. They think they can reform just a wee bit, and gain some of the advantages of freedom. But once they loosen up they are probably doomed...

...Syrians who oppose the government do so with some trepidation because it used ferocious violence in the past to silence any challenge. Yet the fall of Mr. Hussein changed something inside people.

"I think the image, the sense of terror, has evaporated," said Mr. Amiralay, the filmmaker....

That's the PLAN. The Bush plan. The neocon plan.

The fall of one tyrant leads to the fall of others. And our own shaky petty tyrannies, of newsroom and university and archdiocese—they hate George W Bush for very good reasons...(thanks to Cori)

"Did you notice Bush and Cheney wearing the flag?" How icky!

The Media Research Center's Dis-honor Awards for the Most Outrageously Biased Liberal Reporters of 2003 can be seen here.

My favorite, in the I Hate You #!*#! Conservatives category, is:

“I decided to put on my flag pin tonight -- first time. Until now I haven’t thought it necessary to display a little metallic icon of patriotism for everyone to see....I put it on to take it back. The flag’s been hijacked and turned into a logo – the trademark of a monopoly on patriotism. On those Sunday morning talk shows official chests appear adorned with the flag as if it is the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval and during the State of the Union did you notice Bush and Cheney wearing the flag? How come? No administration’s patriotism is ever in doubt, only its policies. And the flag bestows no immunity from error. 

“When I see flags sprouting on official lapels, I think of the time in China when I saw Mao’s Little Red Book on every official’s desk, omnipresent and unread. But more galling than anything are all those moralistic ideologues in Washington sporting the flag in their lapels while writing books and running Web sites and publishing magazines attacking dissenters as un-American....I put it on to remind myself that not every patriot thinks we should do to the people of Baghdad what bin Laden did to us.” 
-- Bill Moyers on PBS’s Now, February 28, 2003.

There's lots more. Lunacies for every taste. Leslie Stahl: “How did we get to a place where much of the world thinks that George Bush is more evil than Saddam Hussein?”. Or Howell Raines: “Our greatest accomplishment as a profession is the development since World War II of a news reporting craft that is truly non-partisan, and non-ideological...