"we are set up for a clear debate over the next few months..."

Cori Dauber has a good analysis of Kerry's speech, on the issue of waging war:

...I think that's wrong. [that the speech was incoherent and skirted all major issues.] I agree -- you have to go back and read the speech again in "the unforgiving light of day." You have to parse the critical section on the war carefully. But when you do, you'll see that there is a clear position there, and that it lines up in such perfect opposition to that of President Bush's that we are set up for a clear debate over the next few months that will allow us to choose between two very distinct visions of where this country should be in the world over the next four years.

If there was a single question we would ask, or see this speech as answering, it would be: did the events of September 11th change the world, or change the way the United States should relate to the rest of the world?...

The problem of course is, that while it is possible to discern much from Senator Kerry's words, they are never expressed so clearly that anyone could pin him down in debate. Never so clearly that he can't say that they mean something else.

A pity, but war has a way of shining a bright light on things that would prefer to stay under the rock.

Don't mention 9/11, it gives us hives...

NY Post, July 31, 2004 -- BOSTON — Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton warned President Bush against evoking too many 9/11 images in his re-election campaign and the GOP convention in New York or Americans would reject him as an "exploiter."...

Warned off! Ha ha. You better believe she don't want him to talk about it. It's the "Clinton Legacy:" the world's biggest smoking pile of rubble. "Warned," forsooth!

And Roosevelt shouldn't talk about Pearl Harbor, and McKinley should just shut up about the Maine.

The roll-out is beginning...

Hugh Hewitt writes:

In his campaign stops today, President Bush ripped into John Kerry's non-record in the Senate, using a new stump speech in both Missouri and Michigan.  Kerry's left almost no footprint on the Senate though he has spent 20 years there --like the kid at the 25th high school reunion who for the life of you you can't remember in even the smallest way.....

...Bush also laid out the framework for his "ownership culture" and "responsibility first" themes for the fall. I watched the speech uninterrupted on a long plane ride, and thought to myself that the roll-out is beginning, and that it is an impressive debut of powerful themes. No happy talk and no minimization of the tasks ahead. Bush closes with a stern reminder of the battles ahead and the overarching issue of the war, but emphasizes that the domestic agenda is one of tailoring new laws to the new econmy, which means individual ownership of health plans, retirement accounts, and small businesses. It is very progressive in the sense that personal liberty and autonomy are the most progressive of all goals. Kerry's appeal to the cliches of the past felt shopworn opposite Bush's sweeping assessment of the many changes that must accompany the new economy.

"Individual ownership." The Dems worst nightmare...

Immoral unless pointless...

Wretchard puts this well

...Even Bill Clinton was prepared to retaliate against Osama Bin Laden for the USS Cole attack by firing hundreds of cruise missiles at his training camps. But George Bush tried to defeat him and for this stood condemned. It is this precise striving for victory, not any single act of retaliation that has made George Bush so illegitimate in the liberal mind. For liberals retaliation is soley used to "send a message"; it always an invitation to negotiation, like the ones Johnson sent Ho Chi Minh without reply; it is never part of the solution itself. In this curious mental universe, force is immoral unless it is also pointless...

We see this often, though, like so many leftish things, it is never explicit. It's expressed in code words, such as talk of "exit strategies." (And the absence, in itself a message in code, of any mention of victory.) And implicit in approval of only those military interventions, such as Bosnia or Liberia, that don't actually protect the US.

And I think it is implicit in the frustration a warblogger like me has in trying to debate with left-leaning types about Iraq. I've got 8 or 10 good reasons for invading Iraq, but they will only debate the small prudentiary ones, such as whether Saddam was chummy with Osama bin Laden.

The bigger points, which involve winning the entire Global War on Terror, they won't argue about. You can't ever pin them down to even admit those as topics of debate.

And that's what was missing from Kerry's speech, and made it seem so slippery that people are writing millions of words debating what it meant. What was missing was not only victory as the only acceptable goal, but also that victory is the most moral and humane outcome.

Pause a moment and remember that General Sherman loved the South. His happiest years were spent in Louisiana. He probably had more friends in the Confederate army than most Confederate generals. The March To The Sea, and his Carolina campaigns, were acts of mercy, explicitly designed to save Southern lives, both by avoiding the bloody battles of the Civil War (those campaigns killed almost no one), and by ending the war decisively, so the South would abandon all dreams of succession and future wars.

Results-oriented alliances

Take a look at this article by Bryan Preston in TCS:

It is playing a key role in curbing and caging North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il. It played a key role in disarming Libya, discovering and rolling up the Pakistani A.Q. Khan nuclear smuggling network, and has become a framework for international military and police exercises organized by the United States. Its membership includes most of the world's largest economic powers, most of the world's largest military powers, and most of the most influential states on earth. The United States, Japan, the United Kingdom, Russia, the Netherlands, France, Australia and Germany are among its 15 member states, and it is one of the pillars of the Bush administration's strategy to both win the war on terrorism and halt the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. As an organization set up to perform a mission that the United Nations and the International Atomic Energy Agency have jointly failed, halting the spread of nuclear weapons, it has the potential of becoming an alternative to the UN itself in coming decades. Notably, all of its members to date are democracies.

But thanks to the media and Democrats who insist on portraying the Bush administration as "unilateral," you have probably never heard of it...

I have in fact heard of the PSI. It's one of those things I think of when goofballs say we are "distracted" from the GWOT by Iraq. It's the news media that are distracted. The Bush Administration has it's eye on the ball every minute.

However, I had not heard of Caspian Guard!

...The "unilateralist" Bush administration is also setting up a sister organization to the PSI called Caspian Guard. Caspian Guard is ostensibly a three-way alliance between the United States, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan for the integration of several interlocking program elements, namely airspace and maritime surveillance and control systems, reaction and response forces, and border control.

What might be Caspian Guard's deeper mission? Take a look at a couple of maps, one of Azerbaijan's neighborhood and one of Kazakhstan's. What do they have in common? Caspian Sea, and both either share a border with or are across the water from Iran. Caspian Guard is to Iran what the PSI is to North Korea -- a cage in the making, constructed by the Bush administration's State Department. Look for several other US-leaning states in the area, such as Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, and possibly even Turkey, to either join the Caspian Guard or cooperate with it in significant ways.

Sweet. And of course we already have Iran partly encircled with Iraq and Afghanistan.

What's really amazing is that our government could come up with such a chaming name. One would expect them to call it Central Asia Responsibility Project, or some such. Is Condi hiring poets?

Judge him by his record...

Tom Bowler comments on Kerry's speech...

..."I ask you to judge me by my record", he said, but any mention of the Senator's record brings howls that his patriotism is being questioned. He made almost no mention of his Senate record, but he mentioned his patriotism being questioned.

And tonight, we have an important message for those who question the patriotism of Americans who offer a better direction for our country. Before wrapping themselves in the flag and shutting their eyes and ears to the truth, they should remember what America is really all about. They should remember the great idea of freedom for which so many have given their lives. Our purpose now is to reclaim democracy itself. We are here to affirm that when Americans stand up and speak their minds and say America can do better, that is not a challenge to patriotism; it is the heart and soul of patriotism.

This is a stunning accusation in its dishonesty. I feel he is speaking to me, and accusing me of questioning his patriotism. I don't think he has a direction for our country but for me to say that is to question his patriotism. His purpose he says is to "reclaim democracy itself". Is there anyone but the angry left who feel that democracy has been lost? He is recycling the propaganda of the left and I hope he will be called on it as the campaign progresses...

Terminology Update: "You're questioning my patriotism" and "You're wrapping yourself in the flag" are the automatic Democrat responses to substantive criticism. (Any criticisms Democrats make are "the heart and soul of patriotism.") These phrases have corollaries in the automatic Dem responses to Republicans saying anything positive:

For instance, if we point to our accomplishments, that's triumphalism, a horrid thing. If we win elections, then "democracy needs to be reclaimed," and "the voters are morons." And if we are so lost to normal decency as to suggest that our country should try to DO anything, that's hubris!

Counter-demonstration...

This was seen recently in Best of the Web:

...The next day, the pantomime Gongsters are gone from Copley Square. In their place are shoes--thousands and thousands of shoes. Multitudes of boots are arranged carefully on the lawn, with a sign explaining, "These 907 pairs of boots represent the U.S. soldiers killed in the Iraq war." Then there's a sloppy pile of shoes with another sign: "These 1,000 pairs of shoes represent a small fraction of the estimated 16,000 Iraqis killed in the war."...

Of course deaths mean nothing to those jerks unless they can be blamed on the US. A million of so people killed by Saddam are but the weight of a feather in comparison.

And the phonies can't even imagine counting up the number of people who have NOT died because we liberated Iraq. The number is surely huge by now, though I've lost the link to that web site that was counting.

Perhaps those of us who love freedom should manufacture some sort of tokens or objects to represent those NOT KILLED. Then set up counter-demonstrations whenever this stupid shoe-demonstration stuff happens again. Maybe little toy chipper-shredders. Or little figurines that say "still ALIVE, thanks to USA." A hundred-thousand or so of them would be a big job to set up, but would make an impressive display.

WHO needs to "restore trust and credibility???"

A good line from Lileks:

... And so on. All the stuff about restoring trust and credibility is nice, but note how no one is questioning the trust and credibility of the Brits, the French, the Russians and the UN, all of whom shared the same opinions about Iraqi capability...

There are a lot of such questions that might be asked. It's funny how selectively the "must restore trust and credibility" stuff is applied. In fact it only seems to apply to the USA...while under Republican leadership.

Shouldn't we be suggesting that the antiwar anti-national-defense Left has some problems with THEIR utterly false predictions about Iraq? The predictions of Middle-East-exploding-in-war, the famine-refugees-epidemics-burning oilfields?

There's been lots of pointing at "alternate plans" that allowed for bigger forces in Iraq. But the other plans included stuff like taking SIX MONTHS of bloody warfare to defeat Saddam's mighty army. Shouldn't those people be shuffling their feet and stammering over their mistakes?

The recent investigative report shows that prisoner abuse by US forces is, in fact, very rare in this war. Shouldn't the people who wrote and spoke as if it were endemic, and directed from the top, have to restore THEIR trust and credibility?? Hmmm?

Balderdash

Jason Van Steenwyk gives a good fisking to Editor and Publisher's attempts to obfuscate and explain away the obvious gross bias and imbalance in the news media shown by the Pew Report. here's a snippet:

Indeed, observes executive editor Smith of the Democrat-Gazette, "There are probably more social reformers in journalism than accountants. We tend to attract a certain kind of person."[ie: liberals]

Let’s see…it was conservatives who pushed for welfare reform. It’s conservatives pushing for tort reform, education reforms, social security reforms, and tax reforms. It’s conservatives pushing to reform abortion law and it’s conservatives pushing for the radical reform of the politics of the middle east region. But conservatives aren’t reformers. What balderdash!

Cal Thomas, known to take a conservative viewpoint now and then, backs the "unwelcome" argument, but adds that the profession "doesn't pay all that well unless you get to a certain level," discouraging many conservatives. Larry King, executive editor of the Omaha (Neb.) World-Herald, agrees that conservatives "have more of a background that is perhaps more attuned to the financial aspects of the world."

Change the subject of King’s declaration to from “conservatives” to “Jews” and you get a sense of the speciousness and arrogance of his argument.

Gee. And I thought conservatives—particularly religious ones, were “poor, uneducated, and easy to command.”...

The leftish definition of "social reformers" has come to resemble the joke about the man who loved fresh air so much, he filled his whole house with it...then sealed the windows and doors to preserve it forever...

"If the Left would help this time..."

Orrin Judd mentions this article, The Morality of Intervention, which blames the lack of progress in Darfur on the Iraq invasion. Judd sums it all up nicely:

One reads along futilely in an attempt to find some way in which Sudan differs from Iraq:

* European indifference
* Arab/Muslim complicity
* Opposition from the Realist gang
* The Anglosphere leading the lonely crusade
* A serious response bogging down at the UN
* Complications because of past Western inaction
* The ultimate realization that only America and its military can reorder the situation and save lives

The reasons for intervention are identical. If the Left would help this time, instead of hindering the humanitarian effort, it might restore some of their moral credibility and would certainly hasten vital action.

Bush and Blair are both the sort of "classic liberals' who would love to send a couple of brigades to Sudan to clean things up. But both of them used up their store of political capital fighting the relentless and continuing attacks of the fascistic pro-Saddam Left.

Fighting the same useless crew who now have the gall to castigate Bush and Blair for not doing anything in Sudan...(continuing until the moment Bush/Blair start to do something, when they will switch over to attacking them.)

And of course it is NEVER even suggested that the critics on the Left might themselves take action, say by organizing some of those noisy protests in favor of military intervention in Sudan. No no no... The Left never DOES anything, they just whine about what the grownups do.

[Yes, I know, I'm oversimplifying "the Left." Of course there are some there who are capable of action of a positive sort. But they are so few they can only be considered lonely voices. They have no influence, and staying where they are is a sort of moral abdication. They should move to the side that still believes in promoting the good and fighting evil vigorously. That still believes in the FUTURE. They might form a new flavor in the conservative ice-cream parlor. The name "neocons" has already been taken by a previous group who left the Dark Side, so perhaps we could call them "Gladstonians."]

It's the "process" that's important...

AOG noted this line from Carter's speech:

In the meantime, the Middle East peace process has come to a screeching halt for the first time since Israel became a nation.

His comment:

Carter for once has said something about foreign policy that is in fact accurate. However, Carter seems to view this screeching halt as a bad thing. I can see how it might crimp his invitation to soiré rate or cut in to his honorariam cash flow, but in terms of actual peace it’s a big win. On the other hand, it’s been a big loss for the Arafat so I suppose I can see why Carter is for restarting the peace process. What’s a few hundred dead in comparison to the chance to sell out American interests to brutal, dictatorial thug like Arafat?

My thought is: I've never seen such a clear example of how simply and literally INSANE the "peace-process" mania of the Left is. If Carter's words are taken at face-value, this "process" has lasted 56 years. Without producing anything resembling peace.

I guess we just have to be patient and give the "process" some time.

He's a classic liberal...

Melanie Phillips gets this just right

...Where [Andrew] Sullivan is absolutely right is to call Bush a liberal. For in repudiating the corrupted values of both the post-moral left and the reactionary appeasers of the right, Bush has indeed exhibited the classic liberal desire to build a better society, along with the characteristic liberal optimism that such a project can and must succeed.

And this is surely why Bush is so hated by the left. For this hatred wildly exceeds the normal dislike of a political opponent. It is as visceral and obsessive as it is irrational. At root, this is surely because Bush has got under the skin of the post-moral left in a way no true conservative ever would. And this is because he has stolen their own clothes and revealed them to be morally naked. He has exposed the falseness of their own claim to be liberal. He has revealed them instead to be reactionaries, who want both to preserve the despotic and terrorist status quo abroad and to go with the flow of social and moral collapse at home, instead of fighting all these deformities and building a better society....

(Thanks toJonathan Gewirtz at ChicagoBoyz)

It's OK to lie to show Bush lied #....hmmm, I've lost track.

Remember when the otherwise useless ex-ambassador Joe Wilson sabotaged our war efforts by claiming Bush lied about attempted Iraqi uranium purchases? And how he was suddenly the oracle-of-honesty? The advisor-to-presidential-candidates? And remember how the Democrats/news media fawned over him? And perhaps you've noticed how, now that his loathsome falsehoods have been exposed, they've just dropped him down the memory hole?

Well, Howard Kurtz put together some numbers, and Mike at Cold Fury created a very nice chart. Thank you Mike!

#162: It's time for a dose of reality

KRUGMAN TRUTH SQUAD

We were away for only ten days and things really got looney at Krugman central. He and the New York Times editorial page are both going bonkers over the prospect of voting machine fraud in the upcoming election. In Fear of Fraud (07/28/04) Krugman wrote his third column and the Times is now up to at least six editorials on this marginal topic, all of them bordering on hysteria.

It's time for a dose of reality.

First the problem with the 2000 election was not simply that it was close. We have had close elections before. Rather, that election was statistical dead heat. Some important states (not just Florida) were decided by a several hundred to a few thousand votes. Even with a closely divided electorate the odds of that happening were in the hundreds of thousands to one. The odds in the 2004 election will be just as miniscule. Obviously we should improve voting process where practical, but to obsess over this subject is ridiculous.

Second, even if by some stretch of the imagination the 2004 election were to be another "dead heat" the contentious issues would most likely concern voter eligibility rather than vote counting technology. Notice that Democrats rarely mention the uncounted chads today, but prefer instead to talk (without a shred of evidence) of the million black voters denied the vote in Florida in 2000. When it comes to particulars, even Krugman himself mostly emphasizes the undercount of eligible felons and the over count of Hispanics as major problems:

"After first denying any systematic problem, state officials declared it an innocent mistake. They told Accenture to match a list of registered voters to a list of felons, flagging anyone whose name, date of birth and race was the same on both lists. They didn't realize, they said, that this would automatically miss felons who identified themselves as Hispanic because that category exists on voter rolls but not in state criminal records."

He may have some arcane point here. Apparently in Florida most felons are Democrats and most Hispanics are Republicans. But what pray tell does this have to do with his presumed topic – voting machine audits, touch screen technology and paper trails? Answer: NOTHING. Early in his column Krugman protests (too much??) that he is not paranoid. Okay. We prefer the technical term anyway. As we said in the opening sentence – he's looney.

[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. ]

Another great Jonah column from the convention...

From USAToday:

...The problem for them is that not even the now decidedly anti-Bush press can conceal the fact that virtually none of these allegations were true. The Senate Intelligence Committee report, the British Butler Report and the 9/11 Commission report undermine every key allegation of the anti-Bush flat-earthers. The 9/11 Commission, which was being hailed as an oracular council of truth and light when it made Bush look bad, has essentially said the Patriot Act does not go far enough (and Ashcroft, by the way, never even poked his nose in a library); that Bush never lied and that several of Bush's more famous accusers did — including those who, knowing otherwise, insisted that Bush's "16 words" about Saddam Hussein's pursuit of uranium were lies...

...The Boston Democrats are running on the fumes of a Bush-record-that-never-was. They gripe about how he's cut education spending, when he's increased it by more than 35%. They claim he lied about WMDs when he didn't. They say he's violated civil liberties when he's been fighting for the survival of liberty. They're betting everything that they can cross the finish line before the American public realizes that the Democrats are coasting on an empty tank.

Curiouser and curiouser...

From the Tombstone Tumbleweed, Tombstone Arizona [link, maybe temporary] :

Information officer Andy Adame, from the Border Patrol Tucson sector says, “I guarantee it’s not true.”
However, seasoned Border Patrol field agents have shared some disturbing information with the Tumbleweed as well as other civilian sources with the hope the information will make it to the general public.
The Tumbleweed has verified information that a flood of middle-eastern males have been caught entering the country illegally east of Douglas, Arizona...

...or about the early morning hours of June 13, 2004 Border patrol agents from the Willcox station encountered a large group of suspected illegal border crossers, estimated to be around 158, just east of the Sanders Ranch near the foothills of the Chiricauha Mountains. 71 suspected illegal aliens were apprehended; among them were 53 males of middle-eastern descent.
According to a Border Patrol field agent, the men were suspected to be Iranian or possibly Syrian nationals. “One thing’s for sure: these guys didn’t speak Spanish and after we questioned them harder we discovered they spoke poor English with a middle-eastern accent; then we caught them speaking to each other in Arabic…this is ridiculous that we don't take this more seriously, and we’re told not to say a thing to the media, but I have to,” said the agent, who spoke to the Tumbleweed with the promise of anonymity.
Adame confirms the groups of illegals were apprehended on those dates in the same area but stated, “There were no middle easterners in the group. Every single one of them was Mexican.”
The field agent stated the men were wearing the traditional uniform of migrants - baseball caps, tennis shoes, some had work boots, denim jeans and many had t-shirts with patriotic American flags and slogans. The agent added the following description “A curious thing I noticed was that they all had brand new clothing and they looked as if they had just been to the barber shop--you know--new haircuts. They were clean cut and they all had almost the exact same cut of mustaches.”...

Real Minutemen...

A certain unspeakably vile flab-worm recently said that the terrorists in Iraq were "patriots" and "Minutemen" who were going to win.

Here are a couple of the real patriots:

...More than 250 Iraqi men had gathered outside the front gates of the compound here during the morning of July 17. Many were interested in joining the newly formed Iraqi National Guard and working to rebuild their country. One terrorist saw this as the best time to strike.

A taxi approached the front gates at 7:45 a.m., according to witnesses. One of the Iraqi soldiers on duty at the gate that morning was Adil Abed, a young man who was planning to be married next week. He would never see his ceremony or his bride-to-be again.

Abed attempted to stop the suspicious taxi. When the driver failed to respond, Abed fired his AK-47 and the driver returned fire with a pistol, hitting Abed.

The soldier's comrade Sadaam Obeeid rushed forward to help his friend when the taxi, packed with explosives, detonated...

SO, are the slimeballs succeding in cowing the Iraqi National Guard? Are they gonna win, as claimed by a certain maggot finding much favor among Democrats these days??

...That flow of eager men hasn't slowed.

Every hour, men approach the gate to join the ING. One recruit said he did not like the deaths of the soldiers but he was not afraid of it.

"The terrorists were trying to discourage people from joining the ING with their attack," Ahamy said. "In the days following it we have had many, many men come to us wanting to join. They see the attack as proof they are needed. Terrorists will not win here."

The soldiers gathered the remains of their fallen and draped them with an Iraqi flag. A ceremony was held on the compound before turning the fallen over to their families. Iraqi officers visited the families of the two men during the funeral ceremonies to offer their condolences.

"Their death makes a vibration that is felt in the town. The people want the violence to stop," Haair said. "We all know we must work hard and be responsible for that to happen. We support the soldiers' sacrifice by continuing their holy duty to make that happen."...

Yet perhaps this is all just an oddity, an unusual occurrence...not indicative of what's happening???

...The Iraqi solders' actions weren't surprising for the Marines dedicated to training them to take a greater role in security and rooting out terrorism. Lt. Col. Rick Jackson is a 46-year-old from Allendale, N.J. Marine serving as the deputy director of Iraqi Security Forces for 1st Marine Division. He said the actions, while tragic, are telling of the dedication of Iraqis sworn to protect their nation.

"These guys are out training with us every day," Jackson explained. "We do joint patrols together. To hear they stood their ground and acted the way they did isn't that surprising at all."...

The link is thanks to Blackfive, who adds:

One final note, I have heard directly from two Marines who believe that these Iraqi soldiers are the begining of a true professional and free Iraqi military. I have heard secondhand from others who have emailed me that they have been impressed with the dedication and abilities of the new Iraqi Soldiers."...

I'll just sit and wait for certain people to apologize for slandering our military....

Powerline has an analysis of the U.S. Army's report on prisoner abuse that was released last week:

...The Army inspector general report found that since the fall of 2001, overall the United States had held more than 50,000 prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq, a number never before made public.

I blinked in surprise at this: out of 50,000 arrests and detentions during a war, a grand total of only ninety-four allegations of abuse were made? That's astonishingly low -- and it's a wonderful testament to the professionalism and calm devotion to duty among our soldiers, led by Donald Rumsfeld and George W. Bush.

When you actually break the numbers down, it gets even better. Fully 45 of the 94 allegations refer to the moment of arrest or detention...

...Finally, here is the part that truly vindicates Bush and Rumsfeld. The most serious charges -- and the most despicable behavior by the Democrats, as such charges were routinely made without any evidence and without any consideration of how such reckless charges would affect the war effort -- were that we routinely "tortured" prisoners during interrogations in order to gain intelligence. The word "torture" was explicitly used scores of times, as a simple Lexis/Nexus search would show.

Yet the total number of ALLEGATIONS of abuse during or related to interrogations was... eight.

Eight total cases where there was even an allegation of prisoner abuse related to interrogation. And certainly Abu Ghraib would account for all or nearly all of these allegations.

This lays to rest the only serious charge in the entire scandal: clearly, we were NOT using torture or even abuse, either routinely or even commonly, to extract intel from prisoners. All but eight allegations of abuse (out of 50,000 prisoners, 0.016%) were, in fact, soldiers using more force to arrest a prisoner than the prisoner himself thought was necessary, or a prisoner claiming that the thousand-dollar wad of bills that he had in his back pocket was missing when he got to prison (yeah, right)....

Blatnye pesni...

Perry de Havilland at Samizdata linked to a fascinating site of pictures of abandoned buildings and projects in Russia, abandoned.ru. Cool wierd stuff.

I might not have followed the link if Alan had not blogged recently about other things interesting at .ru addresses. I was inspired to go back and actually follow his links, and found this, about the "Russian bard scene."

...It started in the late 50's, after survivors from Northern and Siberian camps started to trickle back to populated parts of the country. Very few of them could write like Solzhenitsyn or Varlaam Shalamov, but many more could sing prison songs. The so-called blatnye pesni were written by career criminals, and songs based on the experience of the camps were written by political prisoners, but in form resembled the former (sometimes even using the same melody).

Society's attitudes towards prisoners changed during the "Thaw" years of the 1960’s. Political "ZK" (inmates), who were previously considered "the enemies of the People," became human again. Suddenly Pushkin's line about "mercy to the fallen" was quoted in Pravda; public debates about "physicists vs. lyricists" filled the arenas with audiences. And the first shy voices of social and political dissent started to appear semi-publicly.

Vysotsky started with songs imitating blatnye pesni, and soon became the best-known Russian bard. (Here's a page about him. See also the excellent Sasha Voloch article here.)...

The result is not re-thinking...

AOG writes:

...However, what I find more interesting is the lack of critical comments about the lack of action in Sudan by the current administration. Normally Bush would be getting beaten up on a regular basis for this. But the problem is that Bush has been doing exactly what the Left claims it should have done with regard to Iraq — working only through the UN and other multi-national organizations. If this becomes a campaign issue, it won’t be pretty for the Democratic Party or Senator John Kerry. The French veto of even sanctions against the government of Sudan for its sponsorship of mass rape, mass murder, ethnic cleansing and slavery might upset even some of the faithful...

"might upset even some of the faithful." My guess is that it won't. I suspect that a lot of the preposterously virulent hatred inspired by Bush is precisely because he poses just such questions to the "faithful." Thereby prodding them to confront an emptiness inside.

Any leftish person who really cares about human rights would have said that they are GLAD that millions were freed from the unspeakable cruelties of the Taliban and the Ba'athists. That it was a GOOD thing. Well, we've seen how many of the "faithful" are honest this way. Maybe one or two percent.

The rest have failed the test. Shoving their faces in it once again will just make them angrier. If Bush tries to do anything in Sudan, we will instantly hear that it's about OIL. (Even though it's the French who are clinging to Sudanese oil contracts.) That will be the excuse for not supporting the President. Or that the Republicans are really "fascists," so those who attack them can still call themselves "anti-fascist," even as they support hideous dictators.

We are in a time of great change. And that means it is a time when people look inside to their own philosophy, especially political philosophy, to give them new answers. Many people are looking inside and finding NOTHING. And the result is not re-thinking, it is ANGER and denial.

Update: Looks like the Sudan sneers have already begun: It's just domestic politics; Bush don't understand the nuances; there are lots of hell-holes in Africa, so why pick this one; the problem's impossible to solve.....and Bush isn't doing enough.

How many Protons in the universe?

I liked James Taranto's article, No Republican has won the White House without Ohio. So what? He points out that there are a huge number of long-term trends that last until...they end.

... Mr. Bush was the first Republican since James Garfield in 1880 to win the White House without carrying California. That record would not have fallen had Al Gore received a few thousand more votes in Florida--but in that case, Mr. Gore would have become the first Democrat ever elected without carrying Missouri...

... In the process, George W. Bush became the first Republican to win the presidency without carrying Delaware since Benjamin Harrison in 1888. Mr. Bush was also the first president since Harrison to win election without a popular-vote plurality.

Perhaps it augurs well for John Kerry that neither Harrison nor the two earlier "minority" presidents, John Quincy Adams and Rutherford Hayes, won re-election (though Hayes didn't run). But in order to keep that streak going, Mr. Kerry would have to become the first president since Lincoln to win in November after being nominated at a convention in his home state.

He also would need to win the White House as a sitting member of Congress, something only three men have done: Rep. Garfield in 1880, Sen. Warren G. Harding in 1920 and Sen. John F. Kennedy in 1960. And here's a streak that might give Mr. Kerry pause: All three died in office....

I suspect that the number of trends one could construct is mathematically something similar to the the number of possible chess games...more than there are protons in the universe or some such large number.

Interesting comparison.

You may have heard that Ann Coulter's column about the Dem Convention for USAToday was spiked. Now they've replaced it with one by Jonah Goldberg.

In this case I don't think it was liberal bias. Jonah is just as conservative, but wrote a more thoughtful and clever column. Ann's piece was more nasty and sneering than witty. Or so I think, you can compare them:

Coulter's column is now here. Goldberg's is here.

(Thanks to Betsy Newmark)

Tying himself in knots...

Hindrocket at PowerLine writes:

For a while, Andrew Sullivan was a powerful and effective pro-national security, and mostly conservative, voice. His web site was one of the inspirations that prompted me to start blogging. But once the possibility of gay marriage opened up, Andrew could think of little else. It has been obvious for the past year that he has been preparing to endorse the Democratic nominee, whoever he may be. Andrew may or may not be fooling himself when he paints a pro-security veneer on his support for John Kerry, but he isn't fooling anyone else.

He's referring to this post by Sullivan, who is going through ludicrous contortions to try to justify dumping most of what he has professed to believe in favor of a single issue. He would do better to just be honest, rather than trying to convince us that Kerry is "the conservative choice."

Update: I notice that the other Sullivan has taken the trouble to pour some cold water on Andrew S's logic...

" its terrifying good"

Back on June 14, Firas Georges wrote

...After I got out of Tahreer Sq. and avoided traffic jam I passed the building of Baghdad Stock Exchange which we (my partners and I) spent a long time in as stock brokers (my basic profession) and I remembered what my partner said last Friday about it “its going to be opened this month and they practiced a test exchange last Saturday, and there was a great job done by the coalition helping the Iraqis old team to reopen as soon as possible”. Laws was changed, a new board of directors without government representatives, a new place, a new techniques of exchange, and of course many more job opportunities for the market staff and for brokers companies and for the investors.
For us as a stock brokers firm, it’s a dream to reopen and establish stock exchange, especially when the American experts who helped to reopen the market are saying “we are trying to develop new, modern exchange facilities”.
Any way I will keep the site visitors informed about what’s new in ISX (and thats Iraq Stock eXchange)reopening and its all on http://www.isx-iq.net/

I wondred what was happening, but he's been too busy to blog until recently, but now he says:

...What may back up my criteria is what is going on in the ISX (Iraq Stock eXchange). Things there are more than good, its terrifying good...(read about it here)

. And here's a photo essay on the Iraqi exchange, at DefendAmerica. (This stuff fascinates me, I love reading about countries coming alive again after socialism.)

Iraqi stock traders update the sales boards with the latest prices on the available stocks at the Iraqi Stock Exchange, Baghdad, Iraq, July 18, 2004. U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. D. Myles Cullen

Bring me Zalabia!

Dave T. picqued my curiosity by posting this item:

We All Scream...

...for ice cream, especially if we can eat the dish.

And thanks to Syrian immigrant and entrepreneur Ernest E. Hamwi, we can. One hundred years ago today at the St. Louis World's Fair, in response to a cry for help from a neighboring ice cream vendor who'd run out of dishes, Hamwi rolled up one of his waffles and made history.!

I googled a bit, and found many versions of the tale. Sometimes with the inventor named Ernest A. Hamwi. Here's another one:

During the Fair a Syrian immigrant named Ernest A. Hamwi decided to try something different to help out a teenage ice cream vendor he was next to who was having problems selling his product.  Ernest was a pastry vendor at the Fair and sold "Zalabia" (click on the name for a recipe) which was a crisp, sugar-coated, warm waffle which he made over an open fire using a waffle iron.  Taking a Zalabia while it was still warm and soft, he rolled it into a cone shape and let it cool.  Once cool the cone was handed to his next-door neighbor, Arnold Fomachou, at the Fair who was selling ice cream.  The cone was scooped full of ice cream and given the name World's Fair Cornucopia.  It was an immediate success.  By the time the Fair had ended, ice cream vendors had started to seek out pastry suppliers to collaborate on making the ideal Ice Cream Cornucopia.  The ice cream cone had caught on and the idea traveled home with Fair-goers to all parts of the globe.  After the fair, Hamwi sold his waffle oven to J. P. Heckle and helped him develop and open the Cornucopia Waffle Company. Ernest traveled for Cornucopia introducing the new way of eating ice cream. In 1910, Hamwi opened the Missouri Cone Company.

Here's some more...

It was not long afterward that another Lebanese immigrant, Albert George, along with other family members, bought some second-hand cone-baking machines and started the George & Thomas Cone Company in 1918. In 2004, that company is still owned/operated by the George family, together with the employees. As such, the company is now an ESOP and is known as Joy Cone Company, after its signature brand of ice cream cones. It is today the largest ice cream cone company in the world, baking over 1.5 billion cones/year...

Stryker

Sgt Stryker has an interesting rant, about how he's an "independent" because both Republicans and Democrats are unserious about the War. I think he's way off base...

... Most of the blog responses to the story from the conservative wing or the "single-issue voters" was one of fear. "Could this be a dry run?", "This is why we need to profile all Arab males!", "The security doesn't work, it's up to us!" were all common responses to the story, which is odd because most of them base their support of the current Administration on the very fact that it has done a lot to protect us from future terrorist attacks. If you believe that this Administration is our last, best hope for Victory, then why do you carry-on as if nothing has changed or improved in the past three years? How do you rationalize the paradox? Most of the responses to the panicked woman story were indictments against the current Administration on the very issue that they say represents their over-riding decision to support the Administration. It doesn't add up...(Thanks to Donald Sensing)

No paradox.

First of all, it's Democrats, not Republicans/conservatives, who think big-government programs are likely to solve problems. If Republicans complain that Homeland Security is a mess, we are NOT like a church who has discovered that its Pope or Swami isn't infallible. We've been saying the same stuff from the beginning.

More importantly, I believe that a lot of Republicans are like me in thinking that defensive measures such "Homeland Security", are a sideshow. They amount to waiting around while the bad guys take the initiative and plan nasty surprises, That's the least productive way to fight terrorists. We need to do it, we wish it were done better, but it's a "Maginot Line." Bush has to work on it, but basically it's the Democrat solution to the War.

It would be better to force Islamic terrorists to react to our moves. Give them the nasty surprises. Perhaps by invading some distant country that just happens to be a vital component of their religion and culture? Then they would be forced to go there and attack us and play shoot 'em up games with the best military on earth. And for a really dirty trick we get the people of that foreign country to join our side. Seduce them to the "Dark Side," to Capitalism, Democracy, and Globalization. We could start, say, by liberating them from a brutal tyrant, and then by helping them generously and getting them started with self government. Pretty soon they will start helping us to kill or imprison the "foreign fighters" who are spoiling their new birth of freedom.

And then, if there is no major terrorist attack on US soil for several years after 9/11, many of us will suspect that there is a connection, and that Bush's policies have made us much safer. Doesn't seem like a paradox to me.

Would we like to see our country do more? Fight harder? Of course. Does Bush want to do more? I believe so. But there is one vital bit of war material that is missing, and the lack of which blocks further movement. One that armchair generals usually overlook. And that is political capital. I'm going to repost this quote from Iain Murray, because it's terribly important and apropos, and he put it so well:

...Such criticisms miss the point. It is true that there will be no major expansions of the war this year because of the US election, but the reason for that is not some dastardly example of a victory for partisan politics over the national interest, rather it is the complete opposite. For the US Election is this year's battlefield in the War on Terror. Just as in 2001 the focus was on Afghanistan, in 2002 it was the UN and last year it was Iraq.

The truth is that the Bush Administration is tired, and has achieved about all that it can in this term. That is no criticism - it is remarkable, given the circumstances of Bush's victory that so much progress has been made, but winning those battles has taken its toll. Endless bouts of diplomatic wrangling, the complete overhaul of the basis of America's foreign policy, the invasion of two countries, two massive tax-cuts and the maintenance of a national war footing, all achieved in the face of a hostile press, intransigent Generals and a diplomatic corps in open revolt have drawn on President Bush's supply of political capital to the extent that it is now depleted.

The only thing that will refill that store is victory in November. Just as the Republican victories in the 2002 mid-terms led directly to breaking the deadlock in the United Nations, so the re-election of Bush will devastate the hopes of so many of America's foes...

"For the US Election is this year's battlefield in the War on Terror." That's it in a nutshell. All the partisan posturing is actually a covert struggle to decide America's future strategy. When Republicans howl about "docs in socks," or Democrats claim the Republicans are really fascists in disguise, the real issue is the WAR. A vote for Kerry will be a vote for "Homeland Security," for reluctance to attack overseas, for more equipment for "first responders." A vote for Bush is a vote to make Carrier Strike Groups our first responders.

Stryker's posturing as an "independent" is an abdication of responsibility. He's taking an "I get to stand outside and sneer at everybody" attitude. Phooey.

Every government on earth, yea, every human institution on earth, is flawed. Deeply flawed, and prone to make endless mistakes. It's part of human nature, or so we conservatives think. (It's called Original Sin. Leftizoids still tend to believe, despite countless failures, that perfection is attainable if only the 5-Year Plan is drafted with enough care.) So for every human project you can be an "Independent." You can always stand outside and sneer. But you won't do the world much good.

They fight back—that's bad. Very bad....

Alex Alexiev writes in FrontPage Magazine Of Afghan Girl Schools and American Allies:

Flying back home on the day the NATO summit opened in Istanbul, I came across an article by a British journalist, Charles Clover, in the venerable Financial Times. In it, the author blasted the American military in astonishingly vitriolic language. He described our troops as “socially maladjusted” and “natural-born killers” that have become "America’s main international liability.”...

Mr Alexiev just returned from visiting American and Allied forces in Afghanistan, so he is able to forcefully refute this Euro-filth. Mr Clover can see the awesome violence we unleash in war, but everything positive we do is invisible to him. Do read.

Of course, from a the perspective of a European lefty, our forces are “socially maladjusted.” For instance, they are actually willing and able to fight! Their enemies fear them! How much more barbaric and primitive can you get? And they are willing to fight for freedom, not just of Americans, but of oppressed people in distant lands. (Not only fight, but work! Ugh.) You can't get much more maladjusted than that. Most of them still believe in honor, patriotism (and, shudder, even God). That's creepy, and a huge liability. If you want to be popular in Berlin.

I guess Mr Clover is right, 'cause our guys really are “natural-born killers." You attack them, they kill you. And it just seems natural to us “socially maladjusted” Americans. In fact, we are proud of it. Screw you, Mr well-adjusted blood-sucking Euro flab-worm.
(Thanks to Blackfive)

"What he did was kill me without pistol"

Robert Alt has a story that took my breath away. Iraqi Army Lt. Col. Ahmed Lutfi Raheem tells his tale:

"I was on my way home to Baghdad after my brigadier boss had told me the war was over and to go home," Ahmed said, describing his last moments as a major in the old Iraqi Army air defense unit he had been with for nine years. "He said it was an order," he added...

[Major Raheem starts walking home, and encounters an American soldier]

...The encounter would prove to be a pivotal one for the military veteran because for the next two anxious minutes, Ahmed went through what must be emotions impossible to describe to someone who has never known he was about to die. It was more the result of the 33-year-old’s lifetime of experience with the ways of Saddam Hussein.

Ahmed, though, was actually two minutes away from a rebirth of sorts. "He looked at me for a while and I thought he was going to kill me," Ahmed said. "But he didn’t kill me," he added. "Instead he came to the position of attention and saluted me as an officer," Ahmed said, "And said, ’Sir you can go.’"

"I took a few steps and began to cry," he said, "Because I think, ’Why do I fight these people for ten years?[’”]

"This moment changed me from the inside," Ahmed said. "What he did was kill me without pistol. He killed the old major in the Iraqi Army who fought America from 1993 to 2003.”

Ahmed was advised by a U.S. Army officer to apply at the recruiting center in Baghdad and was ushered into the army a short time later as an "officer candidate." After training, he was commissioned a lieutenant colonel in the new army having made the cut for promotion from his former rank in the old army....

There's more, Ahmed Raheem's adventures were just beginning. Read! (And if you are not touched by this, you are a blockhead with a heart of stone.)

I got two things to say. One: THIS is why (or rather, one of many reasons why) we did not just keep the old Iraqi Army intact. The army Raheem came out of was twisted and sick. We didn't go to Iraq to bring stability, we went to catalyze change.

Two: You don't see stories like this in your newspaper. Because the news media want Democrats back in power, and are trying hard to convince us that Iraq is a hopeless mess. But think about it, any of you Dems out there. Think. You are building the Democrat Party on a foundation of lies! Lies that disparage American achievements. You are building an election campaign on lies. How's that gonna work in the long run? Where are you going? And is it worth it?

(thanks to Betsy N)

Don't hold your breath...

Mike writes:

From the 9/11 commission, heard on the radio just now: “There is no question whatsoever that there was a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda.” As if any justification beyond the several others for removing Saddam had ever been needed, there it is as plain as it can be made. And may all the antiwarriors choke on it.

Woebegone contrite retractions from the “Bush liiied!” crowd now gleefully accepted; all hair shirt coupons cheerfully honored. No other discounts, no returns, no rain checks...

Don't hold your breath, Mike. They've "moved on." They have no shame, and they care nothing for facts. American is loathsome, and for us to defend ourselves is by definition wrong. They aren't "anti-war," they are anti-national defense.

The REAL danger...

ABCNEWS, July 23, 2004— Law enforcement officials are playing down an FBI report warning that domestic terrorists might attack media vehicles at the Democratic National Convention in Boston next week.

What's this you say? "Terroriststs?"

That's rich. If an Al Qaeda saws someone's head of on video, he's an "insurgent." Or a "militant." If he shoots an American soldier he merits being called "the resistance." But let the news media be threatened by some group of teenage skinheads, and that's "terrorism." (thanks Bill Quick)

La Pflame...

If you are still hoping to "get" those evil Republicans, you will be disappointed to learn...

THE WASHINGTON TIMES: The identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame was compromised twice before her name appeared in a news column that triggered a federal illegal-disclosure investigation, U.S. officials say....

I still haven't heard any explanation of how she came to be a "secret" agent under her own name!

Hope....against great odds.

If you want to know what's REALLY GOING ON, read this article from City Journal: Yes, the Education President, by Sol Stern.

In the fall of 1995, Dr. Reid Lyon, who directs research in the neuroscience of reading and learning disorders in children at the National Institutes of Health, got an unexpected call from first-year Texas governor George W. Bush. “Look,” Bush said, getting right to the point. “I have lots of kids who are not reading well. What’s the science on this that can guide us?” After that chat, Bush flew Lyon down to Texas several times to help redesign the state’s early-childhood reading programs so that they incorporated the latest NIH findings. “We’ve had a great relationship ever since,” Bush recently noted.

Lyon now serves as President Bush’s informal advisor on reading pedagogy, and he helped craft parts of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) act, the ambitious federal education bill that Bush signed into law in January 2002. Thanks largely to his input, Washington for the first time is using its spending power to prod school districts across the nation to rely on scientific standards in selecting reading programs. “There’s no need to throw good money into programs that don’t work,” Bush explains. “We’ve tried that before.”

For NCLB’s reading initiative alone, Bush richly deserves the title “education president.” But in addition, NCLB, though not perfect, is a powerful instrument of reform in other ways. What’s more, a new Bush-promoted school voucher program for Washington, D.C., may point the way toward further education reform in a second Bush term...

There's a ton of good stuff in this article. Lots of things are cooking. The vile child-murderers of the teacher's unions/Democrat Party are still fighting hard to preserve their government education monopoly (no matter how many young lives are destroyed), but they are being outmaneuvered! Outfoxed! What bliss. I think the good guys are going to win.

'Tis a great time to be alive! Here's some more. Chew on this:

...Nothing would be a better classroom exhibit for the president’s lecture to the American people than a successful Washington, D.C., voucher program. As Bush education official Rees notes, it will be “rigorously studied” by supporters and critics of choice alike—which is why, she says, “I am spending 75 percent of my time on the D.C. program, making sure it is implemented well and sold to parents.” The Census Bureau has just released figures showing that the D.C. public school district spends a mind-boggling $13,400 per pupil—higher than any state in the union. Yet as everyone now knows, Washington has the worst schools in the country. When, as is likely, thousands of D.C. voucher recipients manage to find perfectly decent schools for $7,500 or less, even the most mathematically challenged taxpayers will comprehend just how much the public education system that President Bush has valiantly worked to reform has been ripping them off.. [emphasis mine]

Which is why the complaints that NCLB was underfunded are bullshit. We are already spending HUGE sums on education. Lack of money is not the problem. The State Socialist system that squanders it is the problem.

[Note: go back to that first paragraph for a useful corrective to the "Bush Lied" buffoons. When he campaigned for the Texas governorship he promised to focus on education. He did exactly what he promised, and got splendid results. When he campaigned for President, he promised to focus on education, and that's exactly what we are getting. Consistently. Relentlessly. Here, read this:

...The president began putting the first part of his education reform package into place literally hours after he took the oath of office. The morning after the inauguration, he and Mrs. Bush listened carefully as Reid Lyon and other top education researchers presented their findings at a White House forum on reading pedagogy. The president made it clear that he wanted federal reading policy to go “wherever the evidence leads.”...

The GREAT CLEANUP is coming...

I missed, but Tom Bowler points out this great piece by Alaa:

...Well, of course the Arabs are our brothers in so far as we are an Arabic speaking people. And of course we don’t wish them harm. And how many sacrifices have the Iraqis made for their sake? So, we wish them well, generally speaking. However, how we wish they could be less stupid, less cruel and more understanding. Also it would be nice if they could become less selfish, less hypocritical, less addicted to lying, treachery and jealousy. That would be nice. And perhaps they could show a little more concern about the murder of our people, the destruction of our livelihood, the sabotage of our national assets and infrastructure. It would be even nicer if they could actually stop perpetrating these rather unfriendly acts....

A nice rant, I just quoted the warm-up.

And then there's this:

...Oh yes, this new government is achieving amazing success in even such a short period. This is going to drive the enemy to desperation, and this is becoming clear in the increasingly venomous tone of his vituperations on Al Jazeera terrorist station and such similar media. Imagine this, a station run by Wahabis (nicknamed Filthy Beards henceforth), staffed with Baathist Palestinians and financed by a mini state, which is supposed to be an ally of the U.S. and enjoys the full patronage and protection of the West, without which protection it had no chance in hell at survival; a strange situation indeed!

If there are Iraqis amongst these people they had better come to their senses and stop destroying their country. Otherwise they will find the determination of the people getting more and more firm, and with each terrorist act more and more people alienated and determined at confronting and defying them. The GREAT CLEANUP is coming and the HOUSE shall be in ORDER sooner and later, with the vermin TOTALLY EXTERMINATED, God’s willing...

Salaam

Salaam. Or as we say here, amen Brother. How's the song go? "...stone be rolled away, let the guilty pay, it's independence day..."

You know, I would guess that the postmodernist preemptive-surrender crowd can't even imagine that terrorist attacks might make a group stronger. More stubborn, more dangerous. They can't imagine people who still have what they have lost, a belief in the future...

Among the Amish...

Orrin Judd linked to this piece, about an impromptu meeting of President Bush with some Amish people in Lancaster County:

... An Amish woman who lives on a farm across Witmer Road from Lapp Electric that morning had presented a quilt to the president with a card thanking him for his leadership of the country. Bush said he would like to talk to the quilter and her family.

So the Secret Service invited the family to meet the president. Friends wanted to come along, and the entire assembly eventually numbered about 60. They were evenly divided between adults and children of all ages. The group walked together across the road to Lapp Electric.

Stoltzfus reports: “It took a while to get them through the metal detectors as these were farmers and shop men, with vice grips, pocket knives, and nuts and bolts in their pockets. Some ladies had baby gear. All pockets had to be emptied.’’...

The press wasn't there, but a local writer put together a story for the Lancaster New Era. If you follow Bush, like I do, you encounter these oddities frequently. They are never reported in the mainstream press.

Wretchard writes:

The Berger story will make it impossible to post until a sense of its extent emerges. The story of the former National Security Adviser stuffing classified material pertaining to the 9/11 terrorist investigation into his pants and socks is like an opening scene into a larger show; the vestibule into a darkened mansion; the trailer to a movie we are half afraid and half compelled to watch. [link]

My guess is that the story will turn out to be a Disney comedy of bumbling and incompetence. Clinton seems to have hired only lightweights who would make him look smart by comparison.

But what mainly occurs to me is that the coddling of Democrats by the media is not helping them. Just the opposite. It's been pointed out how unfair it is; If Condi were caught pilfering secret docs, there would be banner-headlines, she would be forced to resign, and Democrats would be howling for impeachment. But that's precisely why Condaleeza Rice will never be in such a mess. She knows she's in hostile territory, and any misstep will bring a savage attack.

My guess: Life in the Clinton Administration taught Berger that you can break the rules without fear of serious consequences.

Update: David Frum makes a similar point:

The Democrats are not well served by the media bias in their favor. Irritating as conservatives may find these quadrennial orgies of positive publicity for the Democratic nominees, any Democratic nominees, conservatives at least know not to believe it. Liberals though find themselves being whirled about by their own spin until they are dizzy...
...I sometimes think that Democrats suffer from the same problem as ultimately felled Saddam Hussein: They cannot trust their servants to report the truth.

[Frum actually read the Newsweek piece on Kerry and Edwards. He found it more revealing than the authors probably intended.]

"with my faith in the human spirit reinforced..."

MOZAMBIQUE BEATS ALL, By Ralph Peters. July 19, 2004 -- WHAT do you call an African country that suffered under one of the most vicious colonial regimes, was attacked by a powerful neighbor at independence, fought a brutal civil war for more than a decade and was classified as the poorest land on earth?

If the country is Mozambique, you call it a success story.

I just returned from a stroll through Mozambique with my faith in the human spirit reinforced. Forever starved for tales of woe, our media only tell us of Africa's crises — the last time Mozambique made headlines was during the disastrous flooding in 2000. Yet, along with the continent's undeniable problems, there's more than one success story....

In the project of closing the Gap, Africa is a ways down the road. But it's coming. It's coming. We can look forward to the same sneers from Lefties that we hear now about Iraq. Freedom and capitalism and globalization will make Africans unhappy and confused—obviously they aren't ready for it this century...

sorry Noam, you can't outrun the History Train.

Edmund says...

No one could make a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little. --Edmund Burke

(thanks to