The right-wing conspiracy just got vaster

Wednesday, December 31, 2003

It seems that Mikey changes his tune about Osama bin Laden quite often.  On September 12, 2001, Osama bin Laden was a monster created by the CIA.

WE created the monster known as Osama bin Laden!

Where did he go to terrorist school? At the CIA!

Don’t take my word for it — I saw a piece on MSNBC last year that laid it all out. When the Soviet Union occupied Afghanistan, the CIA trained him and his buddies in how to commits acts of terrorism against the Soviet forces. It worked! The Soviets turned and ran. Bin Laden was grateful for what we taught him and thought it might be fun to use those same techniques against us.

The, conveniently, on October 3, 2003, he was a harmless man on in a cave on dialysis.

Dear “Mr. President,” who attacked the United States on September 11th—a guy on dialysis from a cave in Afghanistan, or our friends, the Saudi Arabians?

And let us not forget that in Dude, Where’s My Country? Moore speculates that the 9/11 attackers were part of the Saudi air force.

I would like to throw out a possibility here: what if September 11 was not a “terrorist” attack but, rather, a military attack against the United States? George, apparently you were a pilot once - how hard is it to hit a five-storey building at more than 500 miles an hour? The Pentagon is only five stories high. At 500 miles an hour, had the pilots been off by just a hair, they’d have been in the river. You do not get this skilled at learning how to fly jumbo jets by being taught on a video game machine at some dipshit flight training school in Arizona.

You learn to do this in the air force. Someone’s air force.

The Saudi air force?

What if these weren’t wacko terrorists, but military pilots who signed on to a suicide mission? What if they were doing this at the behest of either the Saudi government or certain disgruntled members of the Saudi royal family? The House of Saud, according to Robert Baer’s book Sleeping With the Devil, is full of them. So, did certain factions within the Saudi royal family execute the attack on September 11? Were these pilots trained by the Saudis? Why are you so busy protecting the Saudis when you should be protecting us?

So, we’ve gone from OBL being a “monster” to a guy on dialysis in a cave to the 9/11 attacks being a plot by the Saudi air force.  Then, on December 14, 2003, OBL was magically back to being behind 9/11 again.

Meanwhile, anybody know where the guy is who killed 3,000 people on 9/11? Our other Frankenstein?? Maybe he’s in a mouse hole.

So, it seems that Mike just can’t make up his mind whether he thinks OBL was behind 9/11, whether it was the Saudi air force, whether or not OBL is a guy in a cave on dialysis, or whether he is a “monster” who killed 3,000 people.

Why, it’s almost as if Mike really doesn’t have much of a logical, consistent position on this issue, and keeps changing his tune depending on what he perceives is the best way to smear President Bush.  Perish the thought.

Here’s yet another sign that Iraq and al Qaeda would never have anything to do with each other.

U.S. forces operating in the so-called Sunni Triangle—the region of Iraq most loyal to captured former dictator Saddam Hussein—found a significant weapons cache that included al Qaeda literature and videotapes, the U.S. military said Tuesday.

Members of Task Force Ironhorse 2nd Infantry’s Arrowhead Brigade discovered the material Monday morning at a site in Samarra, about 65 miles north-northwest of Baghdad. Some of the items were found hidden in a false wall, the military said.

The troops also found a British-made body armor plate with a bullet hole. U.S. Central Command said it was an indication that insurgents were testing the ceramic plate’s ability to withstand expended anti-personnel ammunition.

“The capture of Saddam Hussein has not made America safer.”—Howard Dean

“Nothing that happened today (or in the past 9 months) has made us ONE BIT safer in our post-9/11 world. Saddam was never a threat to our national security.”—Michael Moore

Well boys, we’ll just see about that, won’t we?

It’s the last night of 2003.  I want to see you all back here in 2004.  Be safe tonight, don’t drink and drive, and don’t shoot any fireworks off in your face. :)

Happy New Year, everyone!  All the best for a safe, happy, and prosperous 2004!

According to the lefties, even though the economy is booming, people without jobs will never vote for Bush.  Well, that number just got a whole lot lower.

The number of people filing new claims for jobless benefits last week dropped to the lowest level in nearly three years, a dose of good news for President Bush who wants the economy on firm footing as he heads into his re-election campaign.

Nice bias there, AP.  I’m sure that the president wants people to have jobs because it is a good thing, and any benefits to his campaign are a secondary or tertiary concern.  That’s like saying “The surgeon wanted the patient to live because he was being considered for a promotion.”

The Labor Department reported Wednesday that new applications filed for unemployment insurance dropped by a seasonally adjusted 15,000 to 339,000 for the week ending Dec. 27. Last week’s drop marked the third week in a row that claims fell, and left claims at their lowest level since Jan. 20, 2001 — Bush’s inauguration day.

Claims have been below 400,000 for 13 consecutive weeks, something economists view as a sign that the fragile labor market may be turning a corner.

The latest snapshot of the labor market suggested that America’s businesses are feeling more confident that the economic recovery is genuine, and thus are less inclined to hand out pink slips to workers, economists said.

“It is encouraging that this final piece of the puzzle — the labor market — may be falling into place. It’s a great economic note to end the year on,” said Richard Yamarone, economist with Argus Research Corp. [Emphasis added]

Note the highlighted sentence above.  Jobless claims are at their lowest level since the day Bush was innaugurated.  In other words, they’re as low as they were the day Bush inherited Clinton’s tanking economy.  With the economy skyrocketing upward, good times are ahead for the next few years, a boom of Reaganesque proportions.

I was going to do this last year and didn’t for some reason.  So, not wanting to make the same mistake twice, here are my predictions for 2004.

• George W. Bush will be reelected, but it will be a much closer race than any are predicting. 
• The GOP will keep control of the House and Senate.
• Bush will carry California.
• There will be another terrorist attack on American soil, though not of the size or scope of 9/11.  Perhaps a suicide bomber in the Wall Street area, something of that nature.
• Dean will get the Democratic nomination, and will offer the VP spot to Hillary Clinton, who will decline it.  He will then offer it to Wesley Clark, who will accept.
• Michael Moore’s anti-American hate fest Fahrenheit 911 will open to rave reviews, but his goal of preventing Bush from being reelected will fail.  Moore will then blame this on the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy and the conservative media.
• Ronald Reagan will pass away in his sleep.
• San Francisco will pass an ordinance legalizing inter-species marriage.  “I now pronounce you man and cow.”
• The liberal talk radio network will launch.  Bitter left-wing asshats Janeane Garofalo and Al Franken will host.  After an initial period of curiosity wears off the network will pull in dismal ratings and will fold.  Michael Moore will then blame this on the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy and the conservative media.  Al Franken will go on to make Stuart Rapes His Mother.
• A drive for a constitutional amendment defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman will fail.
• The Dow will close over 11,000 before March.

What are your predictions?  Leave them in the comments.

Now this honor is truly deserved.

The inventor of the world wide web, Tim Berners-Lee, has been awarded a knighthood for his pioneering work.

Dubbed the “Father of the Web”, he came up with a system over 10 years ago to organise, link and browse net pages.

The famously modest man said he was “quite an ordinary person”, and although it felt strange, he was “honoured”.

Sir Tim was recently reunited with the machine he used to invent the web when he e-mailed 80 schools from the UN’s summit on the information society.

I think Sir Tim would approve of the blogosphere, too.

He recently told the BBC World Service’s Go Digital programme his invention was “just another program”, and that he originally wanted it to help achieve understanding.

“The original idea of the web was that it should be a collaborative space where you can communicate through sharing information.

“The idea was that by writing something together, and as people worked on it, they could iron out misunderstanding."

The blogosphere might create more misunderstanding that it irons out, but it cannot be denied that it is a collaborative space where information is shared.  Congrats, Tim, you deserve it.

Tuesday, December 30, 2003

Californians, those from the Bay Area in particular, love to run around patting themselves on the back regarding their belief in free speech.  They have the communist America-hating Pacifica Radio Network, they stage a protest every five seconds, and they all have these snazzy yellow “NO WAR” bumper stickers on the backs of their Volkswagens.  They’re really big on free speech, and like Tim Robbins they believe that their dissent is being silenced by the conservative, pro-war, Pro-Bush media and their allies in the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.  Well, here’s an example of just that kind of silencing of dissent, from a little city about 15 miles north of where I live.

Tim Bueler recently received some unusual advice: His principal and a campus police officer suggested that he stay home from his California high school for a few days.

They feared for his safety because Tim, the founder of Rancho Cotate High School’s new Conservative Club, said he had received threats from other students after writing an article for the club newsletter calling for a crackdown on illegal immigration.

The 17-year-old junior says that stance inspired threats from which teachers have refused to protect him. Some faculty members even started a public campaign against his group, which seeks to promote “the pillars of the Bible, patriotism and conservative beliefs as balance to the mostly liberal viewpoints of teachers,” according to its newsletter, “The Conservative Agenda.” ...

Tim said teachers have also joined in the name-calling. One called Tim a Nazi, while another described the club as “a bunch of bigots.” In a parody of the newsletter, biology teacher Mark Alton called on students to “take a stand against the neoconservative wing-nuts who call themselves Americans.” ...

With about 50 members, the club has hosted speakers from the Eagle Forum and National Rifle Association.

Now, if this were a left-wing student in, say, Texas, whose bleeding heart anti-war club was being “silenced” by a group of fundamentalist Christian teachers, the media would be all over it.  (As of this writing a Google News search for Tim Bueler turns up virtually nothing.) Michael Moore himself would be wailing in a new Mike’s Message about how the neocon juggernaut is rolling over the individual free speech rights of a poor, hapless teenager.

Oh. My. God.  Give me a break.  This is asinine.

The FBI is warning police nationwide to be alert for people carrying almanacs, cautioning the books could be used for terrorist planning.

In a bulletin sent Christmas Eve to about 18,000 police organizations, the FBI said terrorists may use almanacs ‘’to assist with target selection and pre-operational planning.’’

It urged officers to watch during searches, traffic stops and other investigations for anyone carrying almanacs, especially if the books are annotated in suspicious ways.

The FBI also urged police to be on the lookout for people carrying spiral notebooks.  It has been noted in previous terrorist cases that spiral notebooks were used to plan out attacks, and therefore anyone seen carrying a spiral notebook should be considered with suspicion.  Items also designated by the FBI as possible indications of terrorist activity are laptop computers, cell phones, shoes, and newspapers.  The Bureau also reiterated that being a young Arabic male is in no way an indicator of possible terrorist activity, but anyone carrying an almanac should be considered armed and dangerous.

And now we see all the payoff for Germany’s pacifist opposition to the United States.

Authorities closed off streets around a Germany military hospital Tuesday, saying they had received a tip from the United States that al-Qaida-linked extremists planned car bomb attacks against the facility.

An American intelligence agency passed on the information, which pointed to Ansar al-Islam, a group based in northern Iraq that is suspected of recruiting holy warriors in Europe for suicide missions in Iraq, Hamburg’s top security official, Dirk Nockemann, said.

Hamburg police said it had “concrete indications of people who want to carry out attacks by means of a car bomb” on the hospital, located in the Hamburg suburb of Wandsbek.

“Those potentially involved are believed to be from an Islamic terrorist background,” the police said in a statement.

The northern German city of Hamburg was home to an al-Qaida cell that included three of the Sept. 11, 2001 suicide pilots.

The police statement said state officials evaluated the threat as “very serious,” immediately ordering enhanced security at the hospital.

When the Islamists blew up the nightclub in Bali, the anti-war folks said it was because Australia had sided with America.  Now they have plans to attack Germany, a country that couldn’t have been more opposed to the US invasion of Iraq.  What justification will the left manage to divine from this incident? 

Winston Churchill once said that “An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.” Well, the Islamic crocodile is on the prowl, and Europe’s pacifist populations are what it wants for dinner.

Following up on this post, there’s more debunking of the Halliburton overcharge myth, this time in the New York Times.

The rebuilding of Iraq’s oil industry has been characterized in the months since by increasing costs and scant public explanation. An examination of what has grown into a multibillion-dollar contract to restore Iraq’s oil infrastructure shows no evidence of profiteering by Halliburton, the Houston-based oil services company, but it does demonstrate a struggle between price controls and the uncertainties of war, with price controls frequently losing. ...

So far this year, Halliburton’s profits from Iraq have been minimal. The company’s latest report to the Securities and Exchange Commission shows $1.3 billion in revenues from work in Iraq and $46 million in pretax profits for the first nine months of 2003. But its profit may grow once the Pentagon completes a formal evaluation of the work. If the government is satisfied, Halliburton is entitled to a performance fee of up to 5 percent of the contract’s entire value, which could mean additional payments of $100 million or more. ...

The contract to fix Iraq’s oil industry was granted to KBR by a secret Bush administration task force formed in September 2002 to plan for Iraq’s oil industry in the event of war. The task force, led by an aide to Douglas J. Feith, the under secretary of defense for policy, quickly concluded that the government alone could not meet the oil needs, members of the group said. “There were only a handful of companies, and KBR was always one of those mentioned,” said one Pentagon official.

Almost immediately, an alarm went off among members of the group. “I immediately understood there would be an issue raised about the vice president’s former relationship with KBR,” the official said, “so we took it up to the highest levels of the administration, and the answer we got was, `Do what was best for the mission and we’ll worry about the political’ “ fallout. [Emphasis added]

So much for the giant corporate oil conspiracy.

Monday, December 29, 2003

When Jim and I came up with the idea for MOOREWATCH we wanted to achieve two things:  we wanted there to be a single site to function as a repository for opinion and links that counter Mike’s lies, and we wanted that site to show up on search engines, so that anyone searching for info on Michael Moore would have a good chance of finding our site as well.  It looks like we’ve been successful. 

Googling the search string Michael Moore shows MOOREWATCH as second only to MichaelMoore.com.  We’re higher up the food chain than Dog Eat Dog Pictures (Mike’s production company), Mike’s own IMDb page, or even the Bowling for Columbine website!

VERY cool!

The Democrats are screwed, and nobody knows it more than Howard Dean.

Complaining about the torrent of attacks raining down on him from his rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination, Howard Dean on Sunday criticized his party’s national chairman, Terry McAuliffe, for not intervening to tone down the debate.

“If we had strong leadership in the Democratic Party, they would be calling those other candidates and saying, `Hey look, somebody’s going to have to win here,’ “ Dr. Dean, the former governor of Vermont, told reporters trailing him as he campaigned through central Iowa. Referring to one of Mr. McAuliffe’s predecessors, he added, “If Ron Brown were the chairman, this wouldn’t be happening."

If you had strong leadership in the Democratic Party, Howard, you wouldn’t have had your asses handed to you in the lasty two elections by the Republicans.  The fact is that McAuliffe is Bill Clinton’s hand-picked boy, and Wesley Clark is Bill and Hill’s chosen candidate.  Terry and the Clintons all know that there is no chance of you beating Bush in the general election, so they’re hoping against hope that one of the other candidates manages to clinch the primaries.  Don’t expect any strong leadership from the Democrats until after the 2004 elections.  After Bush is reelected, and the GOP maintains its Congressional presence, McAuliffe will be thrown out on his ass, and maybe someone better will replace him.  If you’re looking for strong leadership, Howie, you should look to President Bush.

Dr. Dean also implied that many of his supporters, particularly young people, might stay home in November if another Democrat’s name ends up on the ballot.

“I don’t know where they’re going to go, but they’re certainly not going to vote for a conventional Washington politician,” he said.

As Shakespeare would say, “Therein lies the rub,” or “Therein lies the reason the Democrats are up shit creek.” Dean has gathered his momentum by positioning himself far to the left on issues like the war on terror.  He’s made himself the anti-Bush.  While this has been wonderful at drumming up support among the die-hard liberal Democrats it’s not going to play well with Mr. and Mrs. Middle America.  So, if the Democrats nominate Dean they’re guaranteed the left-wing asshat vote, but the centrist swing voters will either stay home or vote for Bush.  Or, if they nominate Lieberman or one of the other candidates, they have a better shot at winning the center, but they’re going to alienate the faithful, who will either stay home or vote for the Greens.

Why, it’s almost like the Democrats have gotten themselves into a… quagmire.

Gee whiz, am I on the cutting edge of pop culture or what?  Back in October of last year I posted a link to a contest where you could vote for the new Brawny paper towel guy.  Well, the fine folks at Brawny have made their selection.

For the past two years, the folks at Georgia-Pacific Corp. have researched, focus-group-tested and debated the first significant change of the lumberjack look-alike in his 29 years.

Old Brawny Man was so out of date that some execs at Georgia-Pacific, which acquired the line in 2000, referred to him as “the ‘70s porn guy.” He became “a man female shoppers wanted to break up with,” said Gino Biondi, director of Georgia-Pacific’s paper towel brands. “They want a guy they can fantasize about.”

Georgia-Pacific wants a guy who can boost slipping sales. Brawny’s share of the $3 billion paper towel business has fallen from 14 percent to 11 percent since the ‘80s, a distant second to Procter & Gamble Co.’s Bounty. Georgia-Pacific has invested $500 million in a pair of plants to make Brawny stronger, softer and more absorbent, and rolled out the new face with the new towel two months ago.

Packages of Brawny paper towels with the old icon—blond hair, mustache—have been disappearing from supermarket shelves since November. In their place are rolls featuring the New Brawny Man: younger, clean-shaven, dark-haired, ethnically ambiguous, wearing red flannel over a white T-shirt (instead of Old Brawny Man’s blue denim), drawn with a far more visible, powerful torso.

I guess he did look like a 70s porn guy, huh?  Here’s a picture of the new Brawny guy.  What do you think, ladies?

See, the good thing is, if he gets you hot, you can use a Brawny paper towel to dry yourself off.  They’re creating their own demand.  Caliente!

Now, the source of this news is someone from the Iraqi Governing Council, so take it with a grain of salt.  But this story is tantalizing nonetheless.

Saddam Hussein has given his U.S. captors information on hidden weapons and as much as $40 billion (22.5 billion pounds) he may have seized while he was Iraq’s president, an Iraqi official has been quoted as saying.

“Saddam has confessed the names of people he told to keep the money and he gave names of those who have information on equipment and weapons warehouses,” Iyad Allawi, a member of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, told the London-based Asharq al-Awsat daily.

“The Governing Council is searching for $40 billion worth of funds seized by Saddam when he was in power and which has been deposited in Switzerland, Japan, Germany and other countries under the names of fictitious companies,” Allawi said.

I believe the part about the money, that makes perfect sense.  But Saddam giving up weapons details?  What possible motivation could he have for doing that?  Ego, perhaps?  At any rate, if this turns out to be true it is going to be a huge degree of vindication for us pro-war folks.

Sunday, December 28, 2003

Here’s another example of French tolerance and sophistication.

The saga of Joan of Arc is one of France’s greatest stories but a new investigation suggests her martyrdom at the hands of the English never happened.

When the French authorities called on Serhiy Horbenko to throw fresh light on the country’s medieval heritage they never anticipated the Ukrainian orthopaedic surgeon would try to undermine the most potent patriotic story in the nation’s history.

But Horbenko, who has established an extraordinary reputation for his expertise in examining skeletons, has risked Gallic ire by casting aspersions on the accepted story of the demise of St Joan of Arc.

The death of the teenage warrior burned at the stake as a witch - prosecuted by her English enemy and their allies in the Catholic Church - is one of the defining moments in the French national psyche.

But Horbenko’s research into the skulls and skeletons of France’s long-dead royals has led him to conclude that the woman on the pyre was not Joan at all but another French woman. The woman known as “Joan”, he says, lived on for decades after her supposed execution.

It’s an interesting article, I recommend it to anyone with an interest in history.  However, what I want to draw your attention to, gentle reader, is the reaction from the French who invited him to do his research.

Denise Reynaud, the deputy mayor at Clery who commissioned Horbenko, described the Ukrainian as a “very difficult man to work with owing to his Slavic temperament’.

Charming, no?  Basically Reynaud is calling him an “uppity nigger.”

Someone needs to call Johnny Cochran.  A bunch of Jordanians are muscling in on his turf.

More than 600 lawyers have signed up to defend captive Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, the head of Jordan’s Bar Association told the Jordan Times newspaper on Sunday.

Hussein Mjalli said the volunteers had signed up at the association’s offices in Amman and that by late Friday 600 lawyers indicated their readiness to be part of a defence team for the former president of Iraq.

“The intention is to form a higher committee for the defence of Saddam, one which will include legal experts from all over the world,” Mjalli said.

The general secretariat of the Arab Lawyers’ Union was, meanwhile, due to meet on Sunday in Cairo to discuss plans for setting up the defence team, he added.

Earlier this month the Jordanian association sent letters to United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan and Arab League chief Amr Mussa urging them to ensure that Saddam would be handed to a neutral country or the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The barristers have argued that Saddam should not be put on trial because ‘a head of state is immune from prosecution’ and that in any case he should be protected from retribution by the United States.

This is why the International Criminal Court is such an abysmal idea.  This is the type of crap we would have to deal with on virtually a daily basis.  Saddam will be tried by the very people he oppressed, raped, killed, tortured, and murdered, after which he will be—insh’Allah—executed.

Is anyone here surprised by this?

Seven years after Habitat officials launched the only sizable Indiana subdivision made up exclusively of Habitat homes, Barrington Gardens is an experiment some residents say is struggling.

Four of the original 47 families have moved out or are trying to sell their homes—a rate nearly eight times the norm for a local affiliate of the non-profit, ecumenical Christian housing ministry.

Residents like the Camaras say the subdivision’s new, vinyl-clad houses and multicolored playground mask an undercurrent of more unsavory elements: crime that has made the neighborhood far from an ideal place to raise children, and declining property values that mean many residents owe more on their homes than they are worth.

“The house looks great, but it is not worth anything because of where it is located,” said Camara, whose family in 1998 moved into a home sponsored by Oprah Winfrey and built by volunteers from Kroger.

Habitat officials acknowledge that the neighborhood isn’t perfect. But they say the development has lifted many families out of substandard living conditions, enabling them to fulfill their dreams of home ownership, while helping revitalize the Eastside neighborhood.

“I think Barrington Gardens turned out pretty well,” said Jeffry Carter, executive director of Habitat for Humanity of Greater Indianapolis. “When you drive around that neighborhood and the surrounding neighborhoods, those houses look pretty good."

This is the same kind of story we’ve all heard time and time again.  One of the reasons that the street gang movement from LA has grown into every large city in America is because of people taking their gang-affiliated kids and moving away to allow them to grow up in a gang-free area, when the actual result of the move was the gang kid ended up spreading the gang ideology to the city where he moved.  This is undoubtedly the same type of dynamic going on in this Habitat community.  Not all poor people are criminals buy any means, but it is a fact that crime and poverty go together.  So when you move a whole bunch of poor people into an area, is it any wonder that the criminal element also moves in with them?

Oh, and get this.  When you think of someone moving into a Habitat home you think of a dirt poor family, no education, no job skills, single mother with kids, that sort of thing.  Take a look at this guy.

Guy and Leslie Camara had high hopes when they moved to their new Habitat for Humanity home in Barrington Gardens five years ago.

They envisioned a place where their children could romp in their own yard, with a mortgage they could afford on Guy’s income as an independent video and film producer.

This guy is a film and video producer?  He obviously has marketable job skills, why is he in a Habitat house?  I guess he likes to suffer for his art, which is why he’s an “independent” producer.  This guy could probably buy his own house if he would “sell out” and use his job skills to earn more money, but that is apparently out of the question.  Why make a difficult decision to leave a job you love to take another that pays better when you can get a free house from Jimmy Carter?

Sickening.

Back in Augist I blogged on Canada’s mad cow outbreak.  At the time, it was assumed that the American beef supply was safe from mad cow, because we had stopped the agricultural practices that cause it many years ago.  When I heard of the mad cow outbreak here in the United states my first thought was “I bet that cow came here from Canada.” I wish I had done a blog post about it so that my thoughts were on the record, because it looks like I was right.

The Holstein diagnosed with mad cow disease may have entered the United States from the Canadian province of Alberta in 2001 with 73 other cows, an official with the U.S. Department of Agriculture said Saturday.

Ron DeHaven, the USDA’s chief of veterinary medicine, said Canadian records show the herd would have entered the United States at Eastport, Idaho. The cow was part of a herd in Washington state before being sent to slaughter.

He said investigators have matched an ear tag retrieved from the sick cow at the slaughterhouse to records from a Canadian cow.

So, this is good news.  Canada has, I am assuming, taken steps to deal with their mad cow outbreak, as small as it was.  And if it turns out that the American mad cow was of Canadian origin, then our food supply down here is as safe as it ever was.  So, the disease will most likely remain an isolated incident, and people from both countries can one again safely eat each others’ beef products.

(Not to mention the fun we can all have once again making Canada our scapegoat.)

Update: Canada is getting upset.

We used to laugh when Blame Canada was the name of a popular American song.

Now that it’s a political reality, the tune is bitterly off-key.

On Saturday, the Americans were quick to make a “tentative” statement that a diseased dairy cow came from Alberta.

They may be right—but friends don’t make such claims until they’re certain, and questions remain about the identity of this animal.

I could make a comment about how “friends” help out when one asks another for help with a difficult task, like, oh, deposing Saddam Hussein and securing Iraq, but that would be beneath me.

Saturday, December 27, 2003

Hey, I have a question for you bloggers out there who use Movable Type.  Exactly how does a trackback work?  If I link to a trackback URL I usually get a page like this.  I don’t get how it’s supposed to work.  Can someone explain it to me?  Thanks.

Update: I guess I should have been clearer in my original post.  I use pMachine, not MT, so I don’t have trackbacks.  I know conceptually what a trackback is, I just don’t understand what I am supposed to use the trackback URL for.  For example, if I want to link to a post on someone’s MT blog, at the bottom of their post is a trackback URL.  What am I supposed to do with that URL?  If I’m not supposed to link to it, why is it there?  That’s what I’m wondering.

Once again, gentle reader, Howard Dean demonstrates to all why he is unfit to be president.

Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean said he wants Osama bin Laden to get the death penalty, seeking to minimize fallout from a New Hampshire newspaper story in which he was quoted as saying the terror leader’s guilt should not be prejudged. ...

The former Vermont governor, who solidly leads the field of Democratic presidential candidates in both polls and money, said he was simply trying to state in The Concord Monitor interview published Friday that the process of trying bin Laden needs to be fair and credible.

In that interview, Dean was quoted as saying, “I still have this old-fashioned notion that even with people like Osama, who is very likely to be found guilty, we should do our best not to, in positions of executive power, not to prejudge jury trials.”

Dean told the AP in a phone interview that sentiment doesn’t mean he sympathizes in any way with the al Qaeda leader. “I’m just like every other American, I think the guy is outrageous,” he said.

“As a president, I would have to defend the process of the rule of law. But as an American, I want to make sure he gets the death penalty he deserves,” Dean told the AP.

This guy is a lunatic.  He’s planning on following exactly the same foreign policy that worked so well for Bill Clinton.  When terrorists bombed the World Trade Center, what did Clinton do?  He treated it as a law-enforcement matter rather than as an act of war levvied against the United States.  September 11 showed us just how sucessful this policy turned out to be.  How pathetic that Dean seems to wish to follow down the same Clinton bike path.

Dean also couldn’t resist trying to pin the mad cow incident on Bush.

The former governor, whose state has a large dairy cow population, said the Bush administration failed to aggressively set up a tracking system that would allow the government to quickly track the origins of the sick cow, quarantine other animals it came in contact with and assure the marketplace the rest of the meat supply is safe.

“What we need in this country is instant traceability,” he said.

Dean said such a system should have been set up quickly after the mad cow scare that devastated the British beef industry in the mid- to late-1990s. The Bush administration was still devising its plan when the sick cow was slaughtered Dec. 9, and on Friday the government still hadn’t determine the infected animal’s origins.

“This just shows the complete lack of foresight by the Bush administration once again,” Dean said. “This is something that easily could be predicted and was predicted."

Ah yes.  Because of one incident—which has not been confirmed yet, mind you—Bush is to be blamed for not setting up a massive beef-tracking bureaucracy.  This is the typical socialist mindset.  There is not a solution too large for a problem too small.  Let’s take a look at some of the figures on mad cow from the UK.

Let’s consider some facts. BSE has killed 143 people in Great Britain, the country hit hardest by BSE. That’s about 20 people per year since the outbreak began. Compare that total to these figures from the WSJ: “In 2001 Britain recorded 140,000 deaths from cancer, 3,000 from vehicle accidents and 185 from accidental drowning.”

Puts BSE in a bit of perspective, doesn’t it?

Of course.  Mad Cow is much like the flu, a media-driven hysteria with very little basis in fact.  Your chances of contracting mad cow disease are infinitessimal when compared to your chances of, say, falling down the stairs in your house and breaking your neck.  But which one are the media hyping?  Which one is Dean hyping?  Coindicence?

Good old Howad Dean.  He knows how to pander to the Southern Redneck vote.

Howard B. Dean, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination who had said little about the role of religion in politics, yesterday told the Boston Globe that he is a committed follower of Jesus Christ and suggested that this would be a winning campaign issue.

Mr. Dean said he will start mentioning God and Christ as the campaign moves into the South. After the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 19 and the New Hampshire primary a week later, South Carolina and five other states — Oklahoma, Arizona, Delaware, Missouri and New Mexico — will hold primaries on Feb. 3. The South Carolina primary, the first test in the Deep South where history suggests that the Democratic candidate must perform well if he is to win the presidency, is particularly important.

The 55-year-old physician, who is a member of the Congregationalist Church, said he does not attend church often, but prays daily. His wife is Jewish, and their two children adopted the Jewish faith.

Let us not forget that this is a man who left his church over a property dispute.

Dean’s own conversion to Congregationalism was a more mundane political affair. He’d been christened as a Catholic and was raised Episcopalian. But he converted to the local Vermont religion as a consequence of his battle to make over the shoreline. “I had a big fight with a local Episcopal church about 25 years ago over the bike path,” he told This Week with George Stephanopoulos in September. “We were trying to get the bike path built. They had control of a mile and a half of railroad bed, and they decided they would pursue a property-rights suit to refuse to allow the bike path to be developed.” Dean eventually talked church leaders out of the lawsuit, recalls Sharp, but other railroad neighbors refused to budge and litigated the case all the way to U.S. Supreme Court.

Ah, yes.  A dispute over a bike path.  Roughly on par with Saul on the road to Damascus, isn’t it?  And I would be remiss in not linking to Mark Steyn’s brilliant dissection of what he terms the “bike-path left.”

Ask [Dean] serious questions about the president’s key responsibilities--national security and foreign policy--and the passion drains away as it did with Chris Matthews. David Brooks, visiting Burlington in 1997 in search of what eventually became his thesis “Bobos in Paradise,” concluded that the quintessential latté burg was “relatively apolitical.” He’s a smart guy but he was wrong. All the stuff he took as evidence of the lack of politics--pedestrianization, independent bookstores--is the politics. Because all the big ideas failed, culminating in 1989 in Eastern Europe with the comprehensive failure of the biggest idea of all, the left retreated to all the small ideas: in a phrase, bike paths. That’s what Bill Clinton meant when he said the era of big government was over; instead, he’d be ushering in the era of lots and lots of itsy bits of small government that, when you tote ‘em up, works out even more expensive than the era of big government. That’s what Howard Dean represents--the passion of the Bike-Path Left.

As with everything Steyn writes, read the whole thing.

Here’s the latest in radical Islamofascist hyperbole.

A London-based Arab magazine said on Friday that al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden has vowed to launch a “back-breaking attack” on the United States by February, confirming an earlier message by the militant network.

The weekly al-Majalla said it received an e-mail from Abu Mohammed al-Ablaj, a little known al Qaeda member, saying bin Laden would release a video tape in which he affirms his group’s determination to fight the United States.

“A messenger of bin Laden informed him (Ablaj) that the al Qaeda leader will appear on a televised tape after the execution of an operation which bin Laden described as back-breaking and which would change the order of things,” al-Majalla said in a report in its latest edition, a copy of which was sent to Reuters.

“They (Americans) should prepare...their coffins, hospitals and graves. The coming days will be full of surprises and great events which will make them a historic example,” the magazine quoted Ablaj as saying.

The report came after U.S. officials ordered their color-coded alert system raised to orange, the second highest level, citing possible year-end attacks.

Air France canceled Christmas flights to Los Angeles on Wednesday after U.S. officials relayed information that extremist groups were planning “near-term simultaneous attacks that would rival September 11."

Here’s my prediction: no back-breaking attack will take place by February.  It’s either a hoax, or the US will foil it—perhaps this is the Air France plan?  Nonetheless, I also predict that OBL will not appear in any videotape, unless one of his henchmen has stuck his hand up Osama’s ass and is working his corpse like a puppet.

You know those Air France flights into LA that were cancelled earlier this week?  Apparently some of the passengers didn’t show up.

U.S. officials say investigators would like to talk to people who did not show up for the postponed Air France flights—and are still interested in 13 passengers who were interviewed by French authorities.

A senior U.S. counter-terrorism source says investigators are “actively interested” in questioning some of those who did not show up.

French sources have told CNN they believe the names of all 13—interviewed by French law enforcement—were on U.S. terror watch lists. American authorities have not confirmed that, but one senior U.S. counterterrorism official tells CNN that most of the names of those interviewed and those of interest who did not show up for their flights were on watch lists.

This official says some of the passenger names were not previously on watch lists but came up in recent intelligence.

A U.S. official told CNN on Thursday that one of those who did not arrive for his flight had a commercial pilot’s license.

Tipped off by a French authority, perhaps?  Considering how anti-American France is, and how Muslim it is becoming, I wouldn’t think it out of the question.  But at least this shows that our government, no matter how much I usually think so, isn’t sitting around with its thumb up its ass waiting to respond to the next attack.  And kudos to Air France for for cancelling their flights on two of the busiest travel days of the year.

Friday, December 26, 2003

There’s been a massive earthquake in Iran.

Entire blocks of buildings lay crushed and survivors lined up blanket-wrapped bodies in the street after a devastating earthquake leveled nearly three-quarters of the Iranian city of Bam on Friday, killing at least 5,000 people and injuring 30,000 others.

The quake also destroyed much of Bam’s historic landmark—a giant medieval fortress complex of towers, domes and walls, all made of mud-brick, overlooking a walled Old City, parts of which date back 2,000 years. Television images showed the highest part of the fort—including its distinctive square tower—crumbled like a sand castle down the side of the hill, though some walls still stood.

Local officials said the death toll could reach up to 12,000, though the deputy governor of Kerman province said an accurate count was impossible with many victims still trapped under the rubble. “Rescue operations are going slowly because of darkness,” deputy governor Mohammad Farshad said.

“The disaster is far too huge for us to meet all of our needs,” President Mohammad Khatami said. “However, all the institutions have been mobilized.”

The government asked for international assistance, particularly search and rescue teams. The United States promised to send aid, as did numerous European nations.

It’s a shame that the Iranian people are still ruled by the theocrats.  I would love nothing more than to have a free, open Iran as our ally, and see the US doing all we can to help its people out.  As it is now we’ll send assistance through the Red Cross (or Red Crescent, I suppose).

Since the invasion of Iraq much has been written about how emasculating the liberation has been for Iraq’s males.  They could not (or would not) free themselves, and it took the United States and its allies to do it for them.  Well, look at Iran.  They have an earthquake, and they have to appeal to the Great Satan for humanitarian aid.  How humiliating is that, especially when we had a massive earthquake in California just a few days ago and there was not anywhere near the death and devastation that Iran has experienced?  It’s got to be a bitter pill to swallow, that Allah would protect the infidels and slaughter the faithful.

Thursday, December 25, 2003

A unilateral decision that inflames the Middle east, sparks global demonstrations, and divides the West from the east.  George W. Bush?  No, Jacques Chirac.

President Jacques Chirac of France last week lent his support to a proposed ban on the wearing of Muslim headscarfs, or hijab, in state schools. A law banning “conspicuous’’ religious insignia from the classroom will now be put before the National Assembly in February and should come into effect by September, the start of the next academic year.

While the hijab was the main reason behind such a ban, President Chirac also includes a ban on the Jewish kippa, or skullcap, and “large crucifixes’’, although he has not said exactly how large is “large’’. Mr Chirac’s decision has led to thousands marching in French cities in protest and sparked fiery debate throughout the world.

So much for European sophistication.

I wasn’t planning on blogging much today, if at all, but I saw this story linked by Andrew Sullivan and it’s just too good to pass up.

Democratic presidential hopeful Gen. Wesley Clark said Sunday that his old boss Bill Clinton - not President Bush - deserved credit for forcing Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi to abandon his weapons of mass destruction programs, even though Gadhafi’s turnaround came nearly three years after Clinton left office.

“It’s a program of squeezing Libya that’s gone on for more than a decade,” Clark told a Derry, N.H., audience, according to the Concord Monitor. “The Clinton administration was very much involved with this.”

In a slap at Bush, Clark said, it “shows that you don’t need to use force to get your way in world affairs,” adding that Prime Minister Tony Blair deserved credit for the Ghahafi [sic] breakthrough as well.

Well, Wesley, allow me to retort.

“A spokesman for [Italian Prime Minister Silvio] Berlusconi said the prime minister had been telephoned recently by Col Gaddafi of Libya, who said: ‘I will do whatever the Americans want, because I saw what happened in Iraq, and I was afraid.’”— The Telegraph

“Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, in an exclusive interview with CNN, acknowledged Monday that the war in Iraq may have played a role in his decision to dismantle his country’s weapons of mass destruction programs. ...  Asked about his decision, Gadhafi acknowledged that the Iraq war may have influenced him, but he insisted he wanted to focus on the ‘positive.’”— CNN

So, it seems that, despite Clark’s pathetic election year pandering, Clinton’s diplomatic efforts accomplished exactly dick, while Bush’s show of American force and resolve has achieved significant results.

The retired general added new details to his charge that President Bush was responsible for leaving America vulnerable to the 9/11 attacks, saying that President Clinton tried to warn Bush about Osama bin Laden but Bush wouldn’t listen.

“He wasn’t paying attention,” Clark complained. “He didn’t do his job as commander in chief."

Odd, isn’t it, that President Clinton, who did virtually nothing to confront the growing threat of Islamic terrorism during his two terms in office, suddenly had lots of advice for the incoming president.  Methinks Clark is playing to his base and being less than forthright with the facts.

The former NATO commander said that Bush deserves to be “fired” for not doing more to prevent 9/11.

Kind of like how you were “fired” from your job at NATO, right Clarkie?  Let us not forget Gen. Hugh Shelton’s comments about your early dismissal.  “I’ve known Wes for a long time. I will tell you the reason he came out of Europe early had to do with integrity and character issues, things that are very near and dear to my heart. I’m not going to say whether I’m a Republican or a Democrat. I’ll just say Wes won’t get my vote.”

He won’t get mine, either.

Check out what I got for Christmas.

It’s Christmas Day.  I hope you are celebrating with your family somewhere nice.  May the food be succulent and the wine be plentiful.

Thanks to everyone who participates in this blog, you give it the spirit that makes up its soul.  And a big special thanks to everyone who has hit the tip jar recently.  That money goes straight to server fees, and it is really appreciated.

So, it’s Christmas Day.  Turn off the computer, go spend time with your friends and family.  Have the merriest of Christmases, and we’ll start preparing for New Year. :)

Bush is just creating jobs wherever he goes.

The Bush administration opened up undeveloped areas of the largest U.S. national forest to logging on Tuesday, scrapping a Clinton-era rule aimed at protecting the wilderness.

The U.S. Forest Service announced that it will exempt the Tongass National Forest in southeastern Alaska from a national rule prohibiting timber cutting in roadless areas. The decision means about 300,000 acres of dense, old-growth rain forest will be available for logging.

The forest covers nearly 17 million acres.

So, out of 17,000,000 acres we’re going to open for logging 300,000 acres.  Someone do the math, I’m tired—but this seems like a fair trade off to me.  Loggers get jobs, the economy gets a boost, and some useless trees get turned into luxury furniture. 

Where’s the problem?  Go Bush Go.

Wednesday, December 24, 2003

Looking for that last-minute Christmas gift for the boyfriend, husband, or lonely blogger?  How about a Britney Spears life-size sex doll.  Just like the real thing, the head is empty.  Perhaps someone should buy one for this guy.

I have finally gotten around to writing the mother of all fiskings over at MOOREWATCH.  Thanks to everyone who gave me links and info, you guys rule!

Tuesday, December 23, 2003

Well, well, well.  It looks like the Democrats were (gasp!) wrong about Libya.

Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, in an exclusive interview with CNN, acknowledged Monday that the war in Iraq may have played a role in his decision to dismantle his country’s weapons of mass destruction programs. ...

Hans Blix, former chief U.N. weapons inspector, said he imagined “Gadhafi could have been scared by what he saw happen in Iraq.” ...

Asked about his decision, Gadhafi acknowledged that the Iraq war may have influenced him, but he insisted he wanted to focus on the “positive.”

He said the world is a changed place in which his country can feel safe without weapons of mass destruction.

So, Gadhafi has stated, for the record, that the US action in Iraq influenced his decision to disarm.  This, despite what the anti-war left, Michael Moore, the Democratic presidential candidates, and the diplomatic community have all been saying.  How about that—common sense triumphing over doublespeak and leftist hand-wringing.  Amazing, huh?

I’ve written a detailed fisking of Michael Moore’s latest disgusting bullshit and posted it at MOOREWATCH.  Go take a look.

Monday, December 22, 2003

Hef is pissing off the PeTA lunatics.

Playboy boss Hugh Hefner is feeling the heat of the animal rights’ group after appearing on MTV’s “Cribs.” During taping, Hugh’s new pet monkey Pinky was seen sleeping in a crib and wearing a diaper. A disgusted PETA spokesman said pet monkeys can “grow up neurotic and lonely."

Growing up neurotic and lonely.  I suspect that is what turns normal people into animal rights activists.

Well, this explains San Francisco.

Alphaville is the biggest city in The Sims Online, a spin-off of the highly successful Sims computer game. As its name implies, players can control virtual people in an online world.

The Sims Online can be likened to a chatroom with moving pictures in which people are represented by an avatar rather than text.

But to the chatting it adds a rich virtual world in which every player has a home. There are places to socialise, to work and visit, shops and services, even virtual pets.

Alphaville and its sister cities in The Sims Online were supposed to be benign utopias that allowed people to discover who they could be when freed from the economic and social restraints that shackle them in real life.

But it has not turned out like that at all.

The dark side of Alphaville has been documented by one of its former “residents”, Peter Ludlow, who in real life is a philosophy professor at the University of Michigan.

Urizenus, one of the avatars controlled by Prof Ludlow, was chief reporter on a newspaper called The Alphaville Herald which featured interviews with Alphaville’s child prostitutes, sadomasochists, Sims Mafioso, thieves and members of its shadow government.

“The Alphaville Herald was not supposed to document dodgy things,” he says. “It was done to document the emergence of economic, social and political structures in the game."

What?  You mean that a society devoid of morals, accepted societal norms, or laws, will devolve into a morass of immorality and crime?  I’m shocked, I tell you, shocked!

America, taking the Christ out of Christmas one firehouse at a time.

Firefighters in Glenview have been told to take down their indoor Christmas decorations after some residents complained that they were offended.

The decorations—which included lights, a Christmas tree and a Santa Claus—were inside Glenview’s Station No. 7, at 3507 Glenview Rd., in the firefighters’ main living area. Although the decorations were all inside, they were visible from the street if someone driving down Glenview Road peered into the windows.

“We need to serve all our residents and customers, and we had been receiving calls from citizens who were not happy seeing what they perceived to be Christmas or Christian decorations on a particular firehouse,” said Janet Spector Bishop, a spokeswoman for the village.

“We felt the fairest thing to do was to make sure that our public buildings remain neutral."

Astounding, isn’t it, that the mere presence of religious iconography at Christmas is somehow deemed offensive.  I’m not Jewish, but I’m not “offended” when I see a minorah.  I eat Indian and Thai food all the time, in restaurants filled with Buddhist and Hindu imagery, and somehow I am not horrified or scarred for life.

This has much less to do with being offended, my friends, and is more about an all-out assault by the PC left against anything to do with Christianity.  I’m not an overly religious man, but I do recognize that Christmas, despite all the attempts to secularize it, is a Christian holiday, and should be treated as such.  Americans have a constitutional right to the free exercise of religion, and it’s about damn time we as a society started acting like it.

Man, right after I leave all the fun starts happening.

Yesterday I posted a link to Ralph Nader’s exploratory website.  Here’s the comments I left after filling out the survey.

Ralph, you represent the last electable hope for we progressives!  You MUST run to give us a clear alternative vote!  Damn what the Democrats say or do, they’re no better than the Republicans.  Run, and we will vote for you.  Bush must be stopped, but not by electing someone like Howard Dean, who is almost as bad as Bush is.  You’re our last best hope for a more compassionate, progressive, free America.

A vote for Nader is a vote for Bush, always keep that in mind.

I wonder how many of these bums ended up getting $400 a month here in San Francisco?

While Denver’s new Commission on Homelessness struggles to find shelter for what it calls a record number of people living on cold city streets, another state is trying to solve its problem, in part, by busing its homeless here.

Over the past four years, two counties in Minnesota have given free, one-way bus tickets to some 4,500 homeless people. At least 63 of those people have taken a Greyhound to Colorado.

I love it!  The best way to solve the problem is simply to ship the smelly human vermin out of there.  Here’s what Roxanne White, the Chairwoman of the Denver Commission on Homelessness, had to say.

"Denver never has and never would use such a program,” White said. “Homeless people are part of our community. We should be embracing them and finding them a home and providing for the stranger in our midst, not sending them away."

I know she was speaking metaphorically, but the last thing I’m going to embrace is a vile, disgusting, smelly piece of human filth that has been sleeping in a pool of his own vomit for the past two or three days.  I wonder, Mary, just how many of these bums you have sleeping in your guest bedroom every night?  My guess would be zero, but that’s just me.

Anyoner who has ever taken a high school or college physics class has heard of the laws of thermodynamics.

1. Energy is neither created nor destroyed, but simply changes forms.
2. Heat always passes from a hotter body to a colder body, and entropy (disorder) always increases with time.
3. Absolute zero will be achieved when molecules have no thermal movement.

Now, these are the absolute truths of science—laws.  Well, it seems that some Scientists in Australia have proved the second law wrong.

One of the most important principles of physics, that disorder, or entropy, always increases, has been shown to be untrue.

Scientists at the Australian National University (ANU) have carried out an experiment involving lasers and microscopic beads that disobeys the so-called Second Law of Thermodynamics, something many scientists had considered impossible. . . .

This Second Law of Thermodynamics says that the disorder of the Universe can only increase in time, but the equations of classical and quantum mechanics, the laws that govern the behaviour of the very small, are time reversible.

A few years ago, a tentative theoretical solution to this paradox was proposed - the so-called Fluctuation Theorem - stating that the chances of the Second Law being violated increases as the system in question gets smaller.

This means that at human scales, the Second Law dominates and machines only ever run in one direction. However, when working at molecular scales and over extremely short periods of time, things can take place in either direction.

Now, scientists have demonstrated that principle experimentally.

The reason I find this so interesting is because of evolution.  I have heard numerous arguments from fundamentalist Christians over the years, who say that macroevolution (all life came out of the sea, man evolved from apes, etc.) could never have occurred because the second law of thermodynamics proves that order does not randomly develop from disorder—entropy always increases.  Because the early world was in such a state of disorder, and we now find ourselved in an orderly world (comparatively speaking), the only other explanation is that the order was the doing of God or a Creator. 

It seems now, however, that the second law of thermodynamics isn’t as set in stone as science has previously believed, and thus the fundamentalist arguments against evolution are weaker as well.  Interesting stuff.

In July I blogged on a NR column by Byron York where he explained how Halliburton was not doing anything nefarious, despite the ridiculous claims coming from the left.  Well, since there are now new charges against Halliburton, he’s done it again.

But why did the Corps specify that fuel be delivered from Kuwait? The answer appears to lie with the nature of fuel shortages that swept Iraq in the late spring. After the war, the country’s oil refineries were operating far below capacity. Both gasoline and liquefied petroleum gas, which millions of Iraqis use for cooking, were in very short supply.

American officials feared that the shortages might spark civil unrest. Of particular concern was Basra, the city in southern Iraq that had seen increasingly violent expressions of popular anger against coalition forces. According to a source in the Corps of Engineers, in May, Lt. General Ricardo Sanchez, leader of American forces in Iraq, demanded that fuel be supplied to Basra — fast.

“The initial import of fuel was in response to a request from General Sanchez to do this because there was an uprising in Basra over the lack of gas and cooking fuel,” says the Corps source. “Basra is near the Kuwaiti border. The fastest way to get it there is Kuwait. So we directed them [Halliburton] to do that.”

“Basra was a flash point; we were close to civil unrest,” the source continues. “Probably at the time we didn’t care what it cost, because we were trying to stop a riot. Cost was probably not an issue.”

But the rest of Iraq was suffering from fuel shortages as well. On May 8, in an article headlined, “Angry Iraqis Blame U.S. for Fuel Shortage,” the Washington Post reported on a “ubiquitous scene” in Iraq: “lines that stretch toward dusty horizons as people wait for gasoline, a problem that confronts U.S. authorities with both a complex engineering challenge and a continuing threat to their prestige.”

Soon the U.S. military was ordering fuel shipments to the rest of Iraq as well. While the Kuwaiti source is relatively close to Basra, it is a great distance from northern Iraq, which made for very long shipping lines. And the violent insurgency then beginning inside Iraq made the work not only expensive but also dangerous for the crews hired by Halliburton to deliver the fuel.

“Not many people want to drive eight to fifteen days through a war zone with a truck full of flammable materials,” the company says. “Three drivers have been killed and many others injured while performing this mission, and 60 vehicles have been damaged."

Be sure and read the whole thing, then bookmark it so that the next time one of your asshat liberal coworkers brings it up you can email it to them.

Want to see my impression of Clark and Dean?

“Yes you did.”
“No I didn’t.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Nuh-uh.”
“Yes you did, butt munch.”
“No way, ass breath.”

In actuality, it went like this.

Speaking in a taped interview on ABC’s “This Week,” Clark said Dean had asked him to be his running mate should Dean win the Democratic nomination in a conversation before Clark entered the race.

After the interview was broadcast, Dean campaign manager Joe Trippi said on the same program that such a conversation never happened.

And after that, Clark’s communications director disputed Trippi’s response.

“Joe Trippi may want to check in with his candidate before talking,” Matt Bennett said in a statement from Clark headquarters in Little Rock, Arkansas.

“Howard Dean did in fact offer Wes Clark a place on the ticket in a one-on-one meeting that Trippi did not attend.”

Clark, who was NATO supreme commander during the 1999 air campaign in Kosovo, was asked if he had been softer on Dean’s foreign policy statements than other candidates because he was hoping to be the former Vermont governor’s running mate.

“Absolutely not. ... He did offer me the vice presidency. And what I told him was, that’s not the issue,” the retired Army four-star general said.

“The issue is whether I’m going to be the commander in chief and run to be the commander in chief or not. I don’t believe I can do the duty that I need to do for the American people as the vice president."

What a couple of dumbasses.  This behavior is supposed to be presidential?  They sound like two high school girls arguing over a boy.

I finally got around to seeing the movie Elf.  I think the name is rather misleading.  Instead of “Elf” it should have been called “Spectacularly Unfunny Crapfest That Made Me Want To Take My Own Life It Was So Bad.”

Sunday, December 21, 2003

Ralph Nader is looking for advice.  Stop on by and give him some.

Okay, so it’s not proof, necessarily, but this still leads me to believe that bin Laden is an ex-terrorist.

The pan-Arab satellite channel Al-Arabiya broadcast a tape Saturday with a voice claiming to be that of Al Qaeda leader Usama bin Laden.

However, rival channel Al-Jazeera claimed it aired the same tape two months ago. A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, also said the video previously aired in October on Al-Jazeera.

“It’s not new,” the official said Saturday.

Of course it isn’t.  We got Saddam, and we killed bin Laden.  We’re two for two.

Remember all the crap about the Bush twins and their underage drinking?  Remember the media feeding frenzy?  Remember when Howard Dean’s son got arrested for breaking and entering?  Remember the virtual media silence?  Well, now we can add Al Gore to the list of politicians with naughty children, and the media will undoubtedly largely ignore this incident, too.

The son of former U.S. Vice President Al Gore has been charged with possession of marijuana after being stopped by police while driving a car in a Maryland suburb of Washington.

Montgomery County police said Albert Gore III, 21, was arrested Friday night along with two passengers after police officers observed a Cadillac being driven without its headlights on. As officers approached the car they observed the sun roof was open despite freezing temperatures, county police said.

The officers searched the car and found what appeared to be a partial marijuana cigarette and a plastic bag containing suspected marijuana, police said. Gore and the two passengers were arrested and charged with one count of marijuana possession, a misdemeanor, police said.

When the police found the partial joint in the car, Gore Jr. claimed that there was actually no joint, and demanded a recount.

What liberal media?  Bush scored a major coup yesterday with his Libya WMD deal.  Which, of course, means that the media have to do all in their power to make the victory seem like a defeat, and otherwise belittle the president’s accomplishment.  Case in point?  Check out this article from the AP.

The White House portrayed Libya’s promise to abandon weapons of mass destruction programs as affirmation of President Bush’s hard-line strategy on arms proliferation and suggested the U.S.-led war in Iraq helped convince Moammar Gadhafi that he should act.

Some arms control experts, however, point to what is known about how and when the agreement came about and say that Libya’s turnaround offers proof the United States should shift tactics in dealing with North Korea, Syria and other nations. A greater commitment is needed, they say, to the kind of patient but firm diplomacy that worked with Libya. [Emphasis added]

So, the threat of massive military force had nothing to do with it?  They obviously haven’t been listening fo Gaddafi’s own words on the subject, when he said to Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, “I will do whatever the Americans want, because I saw what happened in Iraq, and I was afraid.” Firm diplomacy requires a credible threat of force, and until Bush came along we’ve not had anyone in the White House with that level of credibility since Ronald Reagan.  Look at the deal brokered with North Korea by Jimmah Carter and Bill Clinton, where Kim got the goldmine and we got the shaft.  Is this the type of “patient yet firm” diplomacy they want more of?

"The president is trying hard to portray this as a victory for his strategy,” said Joseph Cirincione, director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s nonproliferation project. “But when you look at this, it’s almost the opposite of the Bush doctrine."

If you would like to read the National Security Strategy of the United States it’s available here.  It’s a hell of a lot more than the “preemptive war” that so many liberals like to attribute to the doctrine.  Here’s one relevant passage:

Strengthened nonproliferation efforts to prevent rogue states and terrorists from acquiring the materials, technologies, and expertise necessary for weapons of mass destruction. We will enhance diplomacy, arms control, multilateral export controls, and threat reduction assistance that impede states and terrorists seeking WMD, and when necessary, interdict enabling technologies and materials.  [Emphasis added]

Preemptive war is simply one aspect to a global security strategy.  But there cannot be “firm” diplomacy unless the other side knows that you are willing to play firmly.  Bush has established that, American power once again has credibility, and the world is a better place for it.

Oh, that liberal media.

Deep in the Heart of Texas!

I made it alive, half drunk, and tired.  I’m hitting the sack, see ya tomorrow.

Saturday, December 20, 2003

Don’t miss the latest VDH over at NRO.

I’m sure that the Europeans are light-years ahead of us in the use of public transportation. They probably are wiser in their per-capita energy utilization, and their primary and secondary education may be superior. But there is also something of Calypso’s island about them. For all their professed enjoyment of food, shelter, and lovemaking, the Europeans are bored silly with their listless routine and are increasingly timid — this from a great people who should not, but really do, live in terror of their own past. Like Odysseus in his comfy subservience to Calypso, these mesmerized and complacent sensualists sometimes contemplate leaving the comfort of their fairyland atoll and in boredom weep nightly, gazing out at the seashore. But as yet they lack the hero’s courage to finally build a raft and sail rough seas to confront suitors who are trying to crash their civilization.

This war would be over far sooner if 350 million Europeans insisted on a modicum of behavior from Middle Eastern rogue regimes, rounded up and tried terrorists in their midst, deported islamofascists, cut off funding to killers on the West Bank, ignored Yasser Arafat — and warned the next SOB who blew up Europeans in Turkey, North Africa, or Iraq that there was a deadly reckoning to come from the continent that invented the Western military tradition. Indeed, European sophistication and experience, combined with real power, could be a great aid to the West in its effort to promote liberal and consensual governments outside its shores. But if they do not even believe in the unique legacy of their civilization, then why should we — much less their enemies?

The dumb American takes on the sophisticated European elite and whips its ass.

My uncle in Melbourne just sent me this joke.  It could very easily be adapted to the US or any other country.

Two families move from Pakistan to Australia.  When they arrive the two fathers make a bet.  In a year’s time whichever family has become more Australian will win.

A year later they meet again.  The first man says, “I have changed my name to Trevor, my son is playing AFL, I had a meat pie with sauce for breakfast and I’m just about to jump in my Commodore and go to the pub to pick up a slab of VB, how about you?”

The second man replies...

Friday, December 19, 2003

Posting will be light tonight.  I’m flying to Texas tomorrow morning, so I’m going to be packing and cleaning and otherwise getting everything organized for me to leave.  Two weeks at home, good beer, great food… things are gonna be sweet.

Yawn.

Al-Jazeera television has broadcast an audiotape purportedly from the number two man in al-Qaida that says the terror group is pursuing Americans everywhere.

The speaker, said to be Ayman al-Zawahiri, says al-Qaida is pursuing Americans in Iraq, Afghanistan, and even in their homeland. He added that attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq are part of resistance by Muslim militants and ordinary Iraqis, denying that supporters of Saddam Hussein were carrying out the strikes.

The Arab satellite network did not say when the tape was made, and intelligence officials have not verified the speaker’s identity.

Bin Laden is dead, or so disabled and feeble that he would never appear on videotape.

Here’s yet another failure of the Bush administration’s get-tough policies.

President Bush said Friday that Libya would allow international inspectors to account for all major weapons in the country, a step he said would be “of great importance” in stopping weapons of mass destruction in a global fight against terrorism.

Bush said the war in Iraq and efforts to stop North Korea’s nuclear program had sent a clear message to countries such as Libya that they must abandon weapons programs.

Now let’s wait to hear the Democratic candidates spin this one.  Dean will say that it hasn’t made Americans any safer, Kerry will say that if it wasn’t for Bush’s bellicosity this would have happened a year ago, and Lieberman will say that it’s a great thing, but that you should vote for him anyway.

Lil’ Kim should be peeing in his pants.

Update: Here’s more.

Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi has admitted trying to develop weapons of mass destruction but now plans to dismantle all such programs, President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Friday.

Bush said Libya’s decision — which would open the country to international weapons inspectors — would be “of great importance” in stopping weapons of mass destruction in a global fight against terrorism.

Britain and the United States have been talking about the issue with Libya for nine months, Blair said.

“Libya came to us in March following successful negotiations on Lockerbie to see if it could resolve its weapons of mass destruction issue in a similarly cooperative manner,” Blair said in England.

At the White House, Bush said the war in Iraq and efforts to stop North Korea’s nuclear program had sent a clear message to countries such as Libya that they must abandon weapons programs.

“In word and in action, we have clarified the choices left to potential adversaries,” Bush said. That was an apparent reference to Iran and North Korea, two other countries that the United States contends are trying to develop weapons of mass destruction.

Any reaction from the Nine Dwarves yet?

And the dumbass left-wing email of the day comes from :

Lee, did you notice that banning someone because he doesnt “contribute” is a completely fascist attitude ?

About your perception of life, you should get your head out of your ass, if you see what i mean… For example, try to read books you never thougt to read before(are you afraid of what you could find in those books or are you just intellectually lazy ?!). Victor Hugo’s “les miserables” is a wonderful one i think, but anyway books such as “How Ronald Reagan changed my life” arent sufficient to give you a more exact idea of what is mankind or life.

And, mainly, while reading (well) a good book, i feel completely happy and serene, wouldnt you like to try that ?

Idiot.

The Freedom Tower has been unveiled today.  It’s the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen.

Update: The NY Times story has a slide show with a number of images of the design.  I like the general concept for the overall site, I just think that the tower itself looks like ass.  It looks like a building that was in the middle of construction and abandoned, with scaffolding on top of it and a huge pointy antenna coming out one side.

I realize that the architects faced a conundrum.  The people of New York (and America) would expect any new construction to be the tallest building in the world, but there isn’t a chance in hell that any company would rent the top floors of a building that high—look at what happened to Cantor/Fitzgerald.  So by building a non-inhabitable tower they managed to solve both problems.  I jut think it’s ugly.

You know that missile defense system that won’t work?  Well we’ve got our first customer.

Japan decided officially Friday to introduce a missile defense system aimed at shielding the country from attacks using ballistic missiles or weapons of mass destruction.

The Cabinet and the Security Council, Japan’s top defense policy board, decided to start buying the system from the United States next year.

The government will ask for 100 billion yen to cover the costs of implementing the system up until 2007, with 15 billion slated for use in fiscal 2004.

Prime among the reasons for adopting the system is North Korea, which is developing nuclear weapons and a ballistic missile delivery system.

The American left doesn’t understand the need for missile defense, but the Japanese live right next door to two nations who could lob a nuke or two at them any time they like.  (Not to mention the fact that Japan knows firsthand what it’s like to get nuked.)

This week’s asinine environmentalist scare brought to you by the Guardian.

The brazil nut - a traditional Christmas stocking filler, coated in chocolate - could become an endangered species if intensive harvesting continues, according to British and international researchers.

The nuts of Bertholletia excelsa grow in fist-size pods of up to 25 kernels on trees which can grow to 150 metres (500ft). More than 45,000 tonnes are collected each year from the Brazilian Amazon alone, at an estimated value of £19m. But the collection is sometimes so intense that few nuts survive to become seedlings.

“The clear message is that current brazil nut harvesting practices at main Amazon forest sites are not sustainable in the long term,” Carlos Peres of the University of East Anglia and colleagues write in Science today.

Brazil nuts, just the latest thing that capitalism is going to destroy.

Richard Cohen writes in the WaPo that we should not execute Saddam Hussein.  He goes through all the usual liberal arguments about how the rest of the world thinks it’s barbaric and so on, then ends with this idiocy.

Except for the principle, I don’t care about Saddam Hussein’s life. I care about him the same way I care about your more prosaic murderer—not at all. But the principle is important. The death penalty vindicates the killer’s mentality: Life can be taken. When a California killer named Hung Thanh Mai, who had murdered a cop at a routine traffic stop, faced the jury during the penalty phase of his trial, he said he was prepared to die.

“Personally, I believe in an eye for an eye,” he said. “I believe in two eyes for an eye. If you take down one of my fellows, I’d do everything to take down two of yours."

This is virtually the same argument that the liberal left used against deposing Saddam, that by doing what is right and just we risk retribution.  “We can’t execute criminals because they might want to kill us in return,” which completely ignores the fact that the criminal act was what began the process in the first place.  In exactly this manner Cohen uses the same argument to support sparing Saddam—we can’t kill him because people like Saddam are killers, as if somehow taking the moral high ground in this case is going to make us safer or prevent future genocidal maniacs.  It’s absolutely pathetic.

President Bush, Joe Lieberman and much of America will probably have it their way. Saddam Hussein will be tried—probably in Iraq—found guilty and executed. In his reptilian brain, he will understand. He would have done the same thing himself.

No he would not, and this is a hugely important distinction.  Saddam would not have given anyone a trial.  Saddam would not have granted his victims the rights that will be afforded him when he is judged.  Saddam will not be tortured.  Saddam’s children will not be tortured, nor his wife raped in front of him.  Equating the death penalty with Saddam’s genocide and despotism is absolutely disgusting, and only a reptilian liberal brain could even begin to make such a connection.

Update: Ramesh Ponnuru weighs in with his thoughts over at NRO.

Thursday, December 18, 2003

Some company that makes anti-Bush t-shirts and bumper stickers has come up with this brilliant product just in time for the main campaign season.

The reference is supposed to invoke Orwellian themes, but 1984 reminds me of the largest Republican electoral landslide in history, with Ronald Reagan taking 49 states against Walter Mondale.  So yes, liberal asshats, you are correct.  The reelection of Bush/Cheney is going to be just like 1984.

Update: Once he gets the nomination and makes a VP choice, I’m going to make a “Dean 1972” bumper sticker based on this.

Peace and love, indeed.

What liberal media?  Take a look at the first line of this story from Reuters.

Howard Dean, the leading Democrat in contention to retake the White House in 2004. . .

A little presumptuous, no?  Dean is not in contention to “retake the White House,” he’s in contention to secure the Democratic nomination for president.  Now, call me crazy, but it’s as if the author has already come to the conclusion that the Democrats are going to “retake the White House in 2004,” and the only issue is which Democrat it is going to be.

Oh, that liberal media.

So much for the jobless recovery that the Democrats have been counting on.

An unexpectedly sharp decline in jobless claims boosted Wall Street Thursday, sending stocks higher for a third day as investors grew more confident that the economic recovery was firmly under way.

“The numbers show that the jobs situation might be better than people expected all along ... and the economy is actually going well,” said Tim Smalls, trader at SG Cowen Securities.

But he added, “What you’re seeing is a lot of money managers shutting down for the year. I think you’ll see some money put to work. But you won’t see a big rush to invest.”

At midday, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 55.34, or 0.6 percent, at 10,200.60. That followed a two-day gain of 122 points that sent the blue-chip average to its highest level since May 23, 2002.

I can’t wait until Dean gets the nomination, and has to explain why he wants to repeal the very tax cuts that reversed the recession.  Apart from playing the class warfare card, he’s got nothing.  Saddam’s in leg irons, his war crimes trial will undoubtedly be going on within the next year—during the campaign, in other words—which will show the world just who it was that Bush and Blair unilaterally deposed… things are looking good.

Guess what?  You know that ultra-super-mega deathflu that is currently killing children and murdering puppies with a chainsaw?

Influenza is now widespread in 36 U.S. states and has been found in all 50, but the outbreak is not yet an epidemic, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Thursday.

People may be filling hospital emergency rooms thinking they have flu, but only about a third of suspect cases actually are influenza, the CDC said in its weekly report on death and disease.  [Emphasis added]

You mean that this is a public hysteria for which there is no rational basis, which is fed by our media to get ratings?  I’m schocked, I tell you, shocked!

This year’s flu season is worrying many because it started about two months earlier than usual, and began with some highly publicized deaths, including those of apparently healthy children.

Some of the worst cases of disease are being caused by a mutated flu strain called Fujian A, which the influenza vaccine only partially protects against. Some areas have reported shortages of the vaccine this season, but the U.S. government is working to redistribute supplies.

Health officials say it is not yet clear if the season may end early because it started early, or whether it will be a bad year for flu. In an average year 114,000 people are hospitalized with influenza in the United States and 36,000 die. [Emphasis added]

Health officials don’t know yet whether it will be a bad year for the flu?  I thought that we were all just seconds away from death!  I thought that if we didn’t get a flu shot we were toying needlessly with our very lives!

But many more people that usual are showing up at doctors offices and clinics complaining of influenza-like illness. The CDC said 7.4 percent of all visits were for flu-like illness, compared with a usual level of 2.5 percent.

Gee, you don’t think that this increase in visits has anything to do with the media-fueled flu hysteria, do you?  “I have a sniffle!  Oh my God, it must be the ultra-lethal megaflu!  I’m doomed!”

Wesley Clark is getting desperate.

Democratic presidential contender Wesley Clark said Wednesday that President Bush has shown a lack of will in pursuing al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

In a blistering critique of the commander in chief, Clark said that “capturing Saddam Hussein doesn’t change the fact that Osama bin Laden is still on the loose.”

“If I’d been president, I would have had Osama bin Laden by this time,” Clark said at a news conference in Concord, New Hampshire, where he was campaigning for votes in the nation’s first primary, January 27.

“I would have followed through on the original sentiment that the president gave us—Osama bin Laden, dead or alive.

“Instead, he executed a bait-and-switch. He took the priority off Osama bin Laden. He shifted the spotlight onto Saddam Hussein."

Actually, Wes, what he did was recognize that this problem is a hel of a lot more than Osama bin Laden.  If we were to capture OBL someone else would immediately take his place.  What is needed is a total remake of Middle Eastern society, and the cornerstone of that effort is Iraq.  Bush is to be praised for seeing the big picture, rather than focusing in on one man who is, in the grand scheme of thigs, rather insignificant.

The retired Army four-star general also said that if Bush questions the patriotism and national security credentials of Democrats in the coming campaign, he would not hesitate to match his record against the president’s.

“I’ll put my 34 years of defending the United States of America, and the results that I and my teammates in the United States armed forces achieved, against his three years of failed policies any day,” said Clark, who was NATO supreme commander during the 1999 air campaign in Kosovo.

Are you sure you want to do that, Wes?  You might get more comments like that from your armed forces “teammate” Hugh Shelton who said, “I’ve known Wes for a long time. I will tell you the reason he came out of Europe early had to do with integrity and character issues, things that are very near and dear to my heart. I’m not going to say whether I’m a Republican or a Democrat. I’ll just say Wes won’t get my vote.”

He added, “We’ve got a president who will go halfway around the world for a photo opportunity but won’t go halfway across town for a funeral for an American serviceman.

“I’ve been to those funerals. I’ve comforted families. ... I don’t think you can make good policy at the top if you don’t understand the impact at the bottom of your organization."

This is really a despicable thing to say.  Clark knows damn well that there is no tradition of presidents going to military funerals, and to try and slander Bush using the bodies of soldiers is just sickening, especially coming from a retired general. 

I used to have respect for Clark based on his accomplishments in the military, but from what I have seen of his personality thus far in the campaign I think he’s a vile human being.  He simply disgusts me, and this display here is a perfect example of why.

Once again I find myself agreeing with John McCain.

Former prisoner of war and U.S. Senator John McCain says he doesn’t think interrogators questioning Saddam Hussein should use any tactics connected with torture.

McCain told NBC’s “Today” show that information gained through torture is unreliable and that such tactics are beneath the kind of nation America is.

The Republican senator from Arizona adds he doesn’t think the U.S. should make a deal to get information from Saddam.

I couldn’t agree more.  Torturing Saddam is beneath us.  We should provide him with his rights as a POW under the Geneva Convention, interrogate him as much as possible, then turn him over to an Iraqi tribunal, where he will be found guilty, and hopefully executed in a brutal Arabic manner.  As McCain says, information gained from torture is inherently unreliable.  Torturing for information is what Saddam did to the Iraqi people.  Doing it to him is beneath us.

I agree with this decision.

President Bush does not have power to detain American citizen Jose Padilla, the former gang member seized on U.S. soil, as an enemy combatant, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday.

The decision could force the government to try Padilla, held in a so-called “dirty bomb” plot, in civilian courts.

In a 2-1 ruling, a three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Padilla’s detention was not authorized by Congress and that Bush could not designate him as an enemy combatant without the authorization.

The former Chicago gang member who converted to Islam was arrested in May 2002 Chicago’s O’Hare airport as he returned from Pakistan. Within days, he was moved to a naval brig in Charleston, S.C.

The court directed Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to release Padilla from military custody within 30 days, but said the government was free to transfer him to civilian authorities who can bring criminal charges.

If appropriate, Padilla can also be held as a material witness in connection with grand jury proceedings, the court said.

“As this court sits only a short distance from where the World Trade Center stood, we are as keenly aware as anyone of the threat al-Qaida poses to our country and of the responsibilities the president and law enforcement officials bear for protecting the nation,” the court said.

“But presidential authority does not exist in a vacuum, and this case involves not whether those responsibilities should be aggressively pursued, but whether the president is obligated, in the circumstances presented here, to share them with Congress,” it added.

In a dissenting opinion, District Judge Richard C. Wesley said the president as commander in chief “has the inherent authority to thwart acts of belligerency at home or abroad that would do harm to United States citizens."

There is a big difference between capturing a non-US citizen on the field of battle, and arresting a US citizen on US soil.  Like it or not, Jose Padilla is a US citizen, and as such he is afforded certain rights and protections under the Constitution.  We, as a free society, cannot give the president the power to simply label people “enemy combatants” and detain them without access to counsel.  It’s not so much that I think that in this specific case it wasn’t warranted, but that if we allow it to be done now, who’s to say who this power would be used against 20 or 50 years down the road?  The Constitution specifically guarantees our rights and liberties for this exact reason, and without a specific mandate from Congress authorizing it I don’t think that the president should be assumed to have the authority to disregard them.

So I get home last night and all the power is out at my apartment.  Aparently some numbnuts drove their car into a power transformer or something.  So I ended up reading a book by candlelight and getting an early night.  Fun fun fun.

Wednesday, December 17, 2003

What liberal media?  Here’s some more of the AP’s bias-free reporting.

U.S. troops smash into homes, shops in major raid to hunt for guerrillas in turbulent city
By Aleksandar Vasovic, Associated Press, 12/17/2003 16:41

SAMARRA, Iraq (AP) Using sledgehammers, crowbars, explosives and armored vehicles, U.S. forces smashed down the gates of homes and the doors of workshops and junkyards Wednesday to attack the Iraqi resistance that has persisted despite the capture of Saddam Hussein.

Loud blasts mixed with the sound of women and children screaming inside the houses. An explosion at the gate of one compound shattered windows, cutting a 1-year-old baby with glass. U.S. medics treated the injury while other soldiers handcuffed four men, who were later released.

The raid, launched before dawn and lasting until midmorning, targeted the city of Samarra, north of Baghdad. U.S. officials say some 1,500 fighters operate in Samarra, making it one of the persistent hotspots in the so-called Sunni Triangle.

‘’Samarra has been a little bit of a thorn in our side,’’ said Col. Nate Sassaman. ‘’It hasn’t come along as quickly as other cities in the rebuilding of Iraq. This operation is designed to bring them up to speed.’’

Now, look at the mental imagery you are shown here: doors being smashed down with sledgehammers, explosions that injure babies, screaming women and children.  Note that the resolution to the raid, nor what prompted it, are not detailed, thus giving the impression that bloodthirsty US troops are smashing down the buildings of innocent Iraqis in a fruitless attempt to stabilize the quagmire region.  It is a “turbulent city.”

Oh, that liberal media.

You know things are going well in Iraq when even our biased, liberal media have to start improving their coverage.

President Bush has taken a battering on television newscasts since landing on that aircraft carrier with the “Mission Accomplished” banner.

While Bush was drawing 49 percent positive coverage during the Iraq war on the ABC, CBS and NBC nightly news shows, that figure plummeted to 26 percent positive from May 1 through Oct. 31, says a study of 1,876 broadcast stories by the Center for Media and Public Affairs.

The figures include comments by critics, such as former Army secretary Thomas White, who told ABC in September that the administration’s postwar efforts were “totally inadequate.” They also include what anchors and correspondents said.

The Iraq coverage was most negative toward Bush on CBS (77 percent) and least negative on NBC (62 percent), the study says. Taking numerous hits were the CIA (77 percent negative), the Pentagon (74 percent negative) and the Homeland Security Department (68 percent negative).

But such numbers could change dramatically with the arrest of Saddam Hussein. “Without a doubt,” said Matthew T. Felling of the media center, “the capture of Hussein will turn coverage around” if there are no major setbacks in Iraq.

This shows what ever conservative in the world could see—that the media here were doing their damnedest to spin the war as being a failure, a debacle, a quagmire, when nothing of the sort was true.  Now, in the face of an overwhelming event like the capture of Saddam, even they are going to have to start begrudgingly admit that maybe things over there aren’t as bad as originally reported.  Don’t get me wrong, I still expect the media to do all they can to malign President Bush, but they’re going to have to start showing the good in Iraq, because their viewers are going to expect it.

A couple of days ago I blogged on how the hysteria over the flu is creating a shortage, which can be explained by simple economics.  Well, here’s proof.

Unprecedented demand for the flu vaccine has caused its price to skyrocket across the United States, from $40 a vial two months ago to as high as $215 today, leading to charges that companies are price-gouging health agencies amid fears of an unusually harsh flu season.

“It’s pretty clear someone is being taken advantage of here,” said Sue Denny of Missouri’s state immunization program, “and it’s easy to see who.”

The hunt for flu vaccine has become so difficult that the U.S. government was forced to look overseas to England, where on Monday it bought 375,000 doses of flu shots made for the European market. Even that infusion is not expected to make a sizable dent in public demand. Each vial contains 10 doses.

Meanwhile, private U.S. companies have been offering for sale several hundred thousand vaccine doses at a steep markup to health agencies across the country. The companies say they are doing nothing wrong. It is a simple case of supply and demand, they say.

Damn I love being right.

Update: Expect this story to be the next public hysteria.

A man in Taiwan has been confirmed to have SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome), health officials said on Wednesday.

AFP said the man, a 44-year-old lieutenant-colonel working at the Institute of Preventive Medicine of National Defense Medical Center, may have been infected when conducting research on the virus in a laboratory on December 5.

“The victim is a researcher engaging in a government-funded research project on SARS, who was infected with the virus accidentally during the experiment,” said Department of Health Minister Chen Chien-jen.

Okay, let’s recap.  An infectious disease doctor, who surrounds himself with various viruses, has (gasp!) caught an infections disease.  Big deal, right?  But this was enough to cause the Thai stock exchange to drop in value almost a full percent.  Health “experts” are “warning” that laboratories could be the source of “a new SARS outbreak." It’s irrational hysteria, folks, and it feeds on itself.  Mark my words, this one miniscule incident is going to get a lot of press.

The scum at PeTA are up to their old tricks.

Animal rights advocates will single out small children at performances of “The Nutcracker’’ in the next few weeks by handing out fliers saying “Your Mommy Kills Animals’’ to youngsters whose mothers are wearing fur.

“Children can’t look up to a mom in a battered-raccoon hat or a crushed coyote collar,’’ said Ingrid Newkirk, president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. “Maybe when they’re confronted by their own children’s hurt looks, fur-wearers’ cold hearts will melt.’’

The fliers include a color drawing of a woman plunging a large bloody knife into the belly of a terrified rabbit. The fliers urge kids to “ask your mommy how many dead animals she killed to make her fur clothes.

“And the sooner she stops wearing fur, the sooner the animals will be safe. Until then, keep your doggie or kitty friends away from mommy - she’s an animal killer.’’

They can’t get their point across to adults (expect for the die-hard left-wing morons) so they go after your kids.  These people are as much a fascist organization as al Qaeda.

Clebrity asshat Alec Baldwin is trying to hook up with the Pope.

Hollywood star Alec Baldwin has appealed to Pope John Paul II asking him to condemn “shocking cruelty” to animals on factory farms that produce food products, activists said Tuesday.

The 45-year-old star of such movies as “Hunt for Red October” (1990) and 1998’s “Mercury Rising” wrote to the pontiff on Friday pointing out that Catholic teaching requires people to treat animals kindly.

“In a clear violation of this teaching, modern factory farms greedily produce the greatest possible amount of meat, milk, and eggs while using the least possible amount of space, time, and money,” he wrote.

“I am writing to ask that you exercise your moral authority in a clear statement of condemnation of present factory-farming methods,” Baldwin said in the letter written on behalf of the animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).

“Your words would do a world of good for God’s animals, who are suffering so horribly on factory farms and in slaughterhouses,” he said in the letter released by PETA.

In the liberal world, Christianity exists to advange the radical leftist social agenda, unless we’re talking about abortion, in which case Christianity is to be ignored and villified as being anachronistic.  I’m pro-choice myself, but I think it’s absoluely disgusting that Asshat Baldwin and PeTA place more value in the life of a fucking farm animal than they do in a human fetus.

A Canadian paper worries that Bush is alienating his closest allies.

U.S. President George W. Bush says Saddam Hussein deserves “the ultimate penalty” — a call for execution that would rule out any United Nations role in an international tribunal and ignores the views of some of his closest allies.

Damn that unilateralist Bush!  He’s cut out the UN again, and now he’s alienating his allies again!  (Translation: closest allies in this context means Canada.)

Note to our supposed allies:  if your name isn’t on the list of nations on the coalition, you’re not our ally.

Saddam’s capture has forced Dean to go a little more hawkish while still railing against everything the Bush administration has done.

The presidential campaign has entered the post-Saddam era. In a political environment transformed for now by the capture of Saddam Hussein, the spotlight Monday was on Howard Dean, the Democratic candidate most identified with opposition to the Iraq war.

He gave a speech designed to moderate his image, but his trademark defiance was also on display.

“My position on the war in Iraq has not changed,” Dean told the Pacific Council on International Policy in Los Angeles. He said the administration “launched the war in the wrong way, at the wrong time, with inadequate planning, insufficient help and at an extraordinary cost so far of $166 billion.”

He called Saddam’s capture “a good thing which I hope very much will keep our soldiers in Iraq and around the world safer. But the capture of Saddam has not made America safer.”

If his positions on the war were the same, Dean’s tone was different. Dean praised U.S. troops and called Saddam “a brutal dictator who should be brought swiftly to justice.” He also took pains to dispel the idea he’s a pacifist, noting he had supported four military actions in the last dozen years — in the 1991 Gulf War and in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan.

Saddam’s capture underscores President Bush’s stature as commander in chief and forces Democrats to prove they have what it takes to lead the military and the world. [Emphasis added]

Dean most definitely does not have what it takes to lead the military, but the rest of the world—especially the terrorists—would love him.

Good old Baghdad Jim is at it again.  Remember, this lunatic is an actual, currently elected member of Congress.  We always get a chuckle when we read this type of paranoid delusion over on the DU website, this is horrifying.

Rep. Jim McDermott of Washington, the Democratic congressman who went to Baghdad last year to say that President Bush would lie to the American people in order to justify war, has now accused the president of timing Saddam Hussein’s capture for political ends.

He told a Seattle radio interviewer Monday that American forces could have captured Saddam “a long time ago if they wanted.”

Asked by interviewer Dave Ross on KIRO-FM whether the capture was timed to help the president, he replied: “Yeah. Oh, yeah. There’s too much by happenstance for it to be just a coincidental thing.”

Pressed by Mr. Ross about whether he meant that the timing of the capture was driven by politics, Mr. McDermott said: “I don’t know that it was definitely planned on this weekend, but I know they’ve been in contact with people all along who knew basically where he was. It was just a matter of time till they’d find him.

“It’s funny, when they’re having all this trouble, suddenly they have to roll out something.”

The congressman made the remarks on the day the president fired back at Howard Dean, the front-runner in the Democratic presidential primaries, for suggesting that he had advance knowledge of the September 11 attacks.

When Paul McCartney’s wife Linda died of breast cancer a few years ago, celebrity asshat Carly Simon stated that, “If this was a men’s disease they would have found a cure for it now.” At the time I thought that was probably the most pathetic conspiracy theory I had ever heard.  Well, McDermott’s little idiocy here trumps Carly nicely.  It’s speaks volumes of the Democratic Party’s current platform when they unleash this numbnuts to spew his idiocy over the radio.

As many of you know, outside the United Nations building in New York there sits a statue of a knotted handgun.

However, given some of Kofi Annan’s recent statements I thought that they might want to replace it with something more appropriate to their current demeanor.

Wesley Clark’s campaign is rolling like a juggernaut.

FORMER vice president Al Gore may be supporting Howard Dean, but retired army general Wesley Clark has support in his quest for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination from ... Madonna.

The Material Girl yesterday threw her support behind the retired four-star general, one of nine Democrats seeking to replace George W. Bush in the November 2004 election.

“I endorse him because I think he’s a great guy,” the pop superstar said on CNN Tuesday. “I think he’s a natural born leader.”

Madonna believes that because of his military experience Clark “knows how to deal with pressure,” and as the former NATO supremo “has a good handle in foreign policy."

How pathetic.  This guy is a four-star general, former commander of NATO, and he’s managed to pick up the endorsement of the gap-toothed slut.  Now all Clark needs are the endorsements of Rick James and Bobby Brown, and he can have the washed-up loser endorsement trifecta.

There’s an episode of The Simpsons where Lisa goes to college, and ends up in a class where all they do is sit around and watch Itchy and Scratchy cartoons.  Well, life imitates art once again.

Around 11 a.m., the lights dim in the second-floor classroom at Centenary College, and 14 freshmen lean back in their chairs as the familiar opening credits of “The Simpsons” fill a screen covering the blackboard.

It’s just another day in Simpsons class, where the professor wears a bright yellow Simpsons T- shirt, the required textbook is “The D’oh of Homer” and a box of donuts (Homer’s favorite snack) waits in the corner.

This day’s episode about Homer obtaining an illegal cable television hookup for the family elicits laughs, but eventually leads to a serious discussion on ethics and copyright laws. The professor lectures about legal statutes, and the students divide into two teams to debate the ethics of illegally swapping online music files.

“It’s a hook to catch their attention,” Professor Norman Cetuk said of the 22-minute animated show. “They have a lot of work to do.”

Centenary’s “The Simpsons: An American Family” course is one of dozens of quirky classes popping up on college campuses as professors look for fresh ways to engage a new generation of students. Colleges say the more offbeat the class, the faster it fills.

I really need to go back to college.  I’ve already memorized every episode of The Simpsons, I could ace the class.

Tuesday, December 16, 2003

And the award for “Most Monumentally-Full-Of-Shit Statement By Any Living Person” goes to… Kofi Annan.

"I think the UN has done as much as it can for Iraq,” Annan told reporters. “So quite honestly I don’t think today is the time to hurl accusations."

The really scary thing is, he actually believes this crap.

Following up on this post, anti-American jackoffs and “peace activists” have damaged one of the mightiest symbols of peace that has ever existed..

Grief stricken Hiroshima survivors yesterday confronted the newly restored Enola Gay, the American plane that dropped the world’s first atomic bomb.

Six survivors and about 50 peace activists visited a new museum, where the restored Boeing B-29 Superfortress has just gone on public display, holding pictures of hideously burned victims among tens of thousands killed or injured by the 1945 blast.

Two men were arrested after a bottle of red paint, meant to symbolise blood, was thrown, denting a panel on one side of the plane – parked in a new annex to the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum.

One was charged with destruction of property, while the other faces loitering charges, police said.

“This is the second time I have seen the Enola Gay,” said Hiroshima survivor Minoru Nishino, 71, who was two kilometres from the centre of the blast, and still bears the scars.

“The first time was on August 6, 1945, when I saw it flying high in the sky,” he said.

Yeah, well, if Japan hadn’t attacked the United States and entered the war allied with fucking Adolf Hitler then nuking your sorry ass wouldn’t have been necessary.

But their act of remembrance beside the plane, was too much for some museum visitors, who angrily chanted “Remember Pearl Harbor” and “What about the Nanjing massacre?” referring to actions of imperial Japanese forces.

“My dad fought in the war – go home,” shouted another man.

Good for them.  Everyone knows about Hiroshima, but very few people know about the Rape of Nanking.

Fifty-eight years after the Hiroshima bombing, and a second atom bomb strike on Nagasaki, opinion in the US on the first nuclear strikes is still sharply divided.

You can always count on the world media to portray the American public as being “sharply divided” on this issue, when the nuking of Japan was one of the most textbook examples of moral clarity in the history of warfare.  Days after dropping the bombs a war that had raged for six years was brought to an immediate end. 

The Enola Gay saved more lives than it took, and these disgusting “peace activists” should go somewhere and die.

Here’s the latest example of why Howard Dean is unfit to be president.

U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, made the following statement Tuesday regarding a recent statement by former Gov. Howard Dean that the liberation of Iraq should only have taken place with U.N. “permission:”

Tuesday, December 16, 2003

“Since when do we need ‘permission’ to protect our nation, our allies and the security of an entire region? Since when does the United States of America need to ask permission before ending decades of rape rooms, torture chambers and the genocide of hundreds of thousands of civilians? It’s disappointing, and I believe quite telling, that he would want to abdicate the responsibility of our national security to a body that left its own sanctions unenforced for more than a decade.

“If the ask-the-U.N.’s-permission crowd had their way, Saddam would still be in power today, rather than in the custody of the 4th Infantry Division.

“I encourage Mr. Dean to visit the troops and families at Fort Hood, home of the 4th Infantry Division and the storied 1st Cavalry Division. It’s a perspective worth having, and something he is apparently lacking.”

Responding to a question following a speech to the Pacific Council on International Policy Monday, Dean declared, “Had the United Nations given us permission and asked us to be a part of a multilateral force, I would not have hesitated to go into Iraq.”

This is what we can expect from a Dean Presidency, a total abdication of American sovereignty to the whims of France and Germany.

Score yet another huge victory for the bumbling hick from Texas.

Former U.S. Secretary of State James A. Baker III said he has won agreements from France and Germany on the need to restructure Iraq’s $125 billion in debt.

“We agreed that it is important to reduce that debt,’’ Baker, who is acting as a special envoy for President George W. Bush, said after meeting with French President Jacques Chirac in Paris. “We would like to do that in 2004 and within the mechanism of the Paris Club.’’

The government of German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said it reached a similar accord after Baker arrived in Berlin.

“Germany and the United States are—like France—not only prepared to reschedule Iraqi debt but also to offer Iraq substantial debt relief,’’ German government spokesman Bela Anda said in a statement e-mailed to news organizations.

Iraq owes about $125 billion, of which more than 10 percent is to companies, according to the top U.S. civilian administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer. The total figure is equivalent to about six times Iraq’s gross domestic product.

The Paris Club, which represents Western government creditors, said after a meeting in July that its members are owed about $21 billion. Of that, $4.1 billion is to Japan, $3 billion to France, $2.4 billion to Germany, $2.2 billion to the U.S. and $1.7 billion to Italy. Those figures exclude late interest, which the Paris club says is roughly equal to the principal outstanding.

Once again Bush gets what he wants without capitulating, giving in, compromising, or sucking up to those self-interested, gutless Old European pricks.  It’s amazing what you can accomplish when you’re willing to play a little hardball, isn’t it?  Iraq has been liberated, there are fundamental changes going on in the Middle East, al Qaeda is on the run, Saddam Hussein is in leg irons, taxes have been cut, the economy is booming again…

Life is good today, my friends.

If you catch a shark, slit its belly open, and drop it back in the water, it will go crazy eating its own guts.  This is about the best metaphor I can think of for the current state of the Democratic Party. 

This morning I blogged on Howard Dean’s flip-flopping.  Here’s an example of John Kerry flip-flopping in his criticism of Howard Dean’s flip-flopping.

"Dean Supported War Resolution. … Until recently, Dean has been able to pull the wool over the eyes of voters in New Hampshire, Iowa and across the nation on his position on the war. The facts are now clear: Dean supported giving the President the authority to go to war. Only when he determined it to be politically advantageous, did he take an anti-war stance."—John Kerry campaign “media alert,” Dec. 12, the day before Saddam Hussein was captured

“Governor Dean and some other people didn’t even think it was great. They didn’t even know that it was good to get rid of Saddam Hussein. … I personally have said all along that saying ‘no’ is not a policy. And Howard Dean has only basically been saying ‘no’ and been angry about the war."—John Kerry, Fox News Sunday, Dec. 14, the day after Saddam Hussein was captured

John Kerry, who served in Vietnam, has taken more positions than a five dollar whore.  Part of this is to be expected—we are in a campaign, after all, and Kerry, who served in Vietnam, is looking for the nomination.  But for Kerry, who served in Vietnam, to disparage Dean for being a pro-war candidate, is just asinine.  Kerry, who served in Vietnam, is going down on a sinking ship and he knows it, so he doesn’t really have a whole lot to lose, except his wife’s millions.

Never underestimate the Arabic propensity for denial and self-deception.

Saddam Hussein’s family wants the former leader to be tried by an international court instead of a special tribunal set up by the U.S.-installed Iraqi Governing Council, one of his daughters said Tuesday.

Raghad Saddam Hussein said her father appeared sedated in footage released Sunday by the U.S.-led occupation authority after his capture near his home town of Tikrit.

“Every honest person who knows Saddam know that he is firm and powerful. Saddam was tranquilized when captured,” she said in an interview with the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya television station.

“He would be a lion even when caged,” she said.

Yes, girls, that’s it.  Well, your lion is not only caged, he’s about to be shot by the zookeeper.

Read this.  Now.

We have enemies that have earned our hatred, and whom we should fear. They are fanatical terrorists who seek opportunities to kill American civilians here and Israeli civilians in Israel. But right now, our national media and the Democratic Party are trying to get us to believe that the people we should hate and fear are George W. Bush and the Republicans.

I can think of many, many reasons why the Republicans should not control both houses of Congress and the White House. But right now, if the alternative is the Democratic Party as led in Congress and as exemplified by the current candidates for the Democratic nomination, then I can’t be the only Democrat who will, with great reluctance, vote not just for George W. Bush, but also for every other candidate of the only party that seems committed to fighting abroad to destroy the enemies that seek to kill us and our friends at home.

And if we elect a government that subverts or weakens or ends our war against terrorism, we can count on this: We will soon face enemies that will make 9/11 look like stubbing our toe, and they will attack us with the confidence and determination that come from knowing that we don’t have the will to sustain a war all the way to the end.

Every registered Democrat in the country needs to be forced to read this op-ed.

Andrew Sullivan has a couple of links on his site this morning that I simply have to pike.  The first is this review of Noam Chomsky’s latest book in the Guardian.

Noam Chomsky is the master of looking-glass politics. His writing exemplifies the ability of the Western Left to criticise everything from the West - except itself. He is immensely popular; but his popularity is mystifying on the first reading. His work is dense and filled with non sequiturs (here he seeks to use the Cuban missile crisis to explain the Iraq war, which is a little like using the first Moon landing to explain the dotcom boom). He claims to confront the comfortable with uncomfortable facts they don’t want to face. Yet his audience is primarily a comfortable Western audience.

The appeal lies in the simple argument that underlies the convoluted prose. Capitalism, particularly American capitalism, is responsible for the world’s problems, it runs. Resistance, however perverted, is inevitable. If the resistance is barbaric the barbarism is the fault of capitalism.

Most of the time, the argument is hidden because, although it can stand up in a many circumstances, it is an absurd universal claim. But every now and again, the veil lifts and the professor is explicit. ‘Recognition that control of opinion is the foundation of government, from the most despotic to the most free, goes back at least to Hume,’ he writes. ‘But a qualification should be added. It is far more important in the most free societies, where obedience cannot be maintained by the lash.’

Got that? Not that propaganda is more subtle in the United States than, say, China, or harder to detect in Britain than say, North Korea, but ‘more important’. To the far Left, accustomed to decades of defeat, Chomsky’s account of the brainwashing of the dumb masses provides an excuse for failure. For others he presents a curiously ethno-centric and soothing view of the world.

Read the whole thing, it’s blistering.  And now for the second link, which nicely shows Howard Dean’s flip-flopping on foreign policy issues.

In March 2000, Dean told a Canadian public affairs program that 98 percent of the public does not vote based on a candidate’s foreign policy views, “unless they are really a wacko.” Now, he says, because of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the Iraq war, national security is the most important issue in this election after the economy. “This president has forfeited our moral leadership in the world because people dislike us so much,” he said.

But here’s the money quote.

During another 1998 appearance on the show, “The Editors,” Dean said it was not worth trying to woo French support on foreign policy initiatives. “The French will always do exactly the opposite on what the United States wants regardless of what happens, so we’re never going to have a consistent policy,” he said.

Amazing, isn’t it?  Now check out his cop-out response.

Asked about the comment, Dean said he now thinks that because the French “have seen how bad things can get with the United States, they might respond to a new president who’s willing to offer them respect again."

So, let’s recap.  Foreign policy doesn’t matter, unless it’s Bush.  And the French will do the opposite of what the US wants, but when they do it when Bush is in office it’s Bush’s fault.

Infidel over at Dar Al-Harb blogs about Kofi Annan, Bay Area patriotism, and the Saddam trial.

Often, out of a perverse sense of fascination with the philosophy of the evil, I listen to 88.1 FM (Pacifica Radio) on my local dial. I don’t know if you’re fortunate enough to have a branch of good old fashioned Berkeley Radio in your area, but I for one am happy to have the constant source of entertainment. The ‘reporting’ this evening went along the lines that any trial of Saddam must be international and run by the UN, otherwise the US will make sure that all evidence of it’s supplying Saddam with chemical and biological weapons for his war crimes will never be mentioned.

All good progressive America haters, I’m sure, feel the same way. i.e. That a fair trial will also include charges against the US government for creating this dictator and then illegally invading his sovereign country to bring him down.

I am quite sure that ironically this is the real reason Kofi Annan and others of the international forces of darkness will whine and cry loudly, wanting control of any war crimes trial of Saddam for this exact reason: to keep any evidence of their complicity out of official evidence

Sounds plausible to me.

Okay, one quick posting.  Saddam was almost blown to Allah.

Col. James Hickey, 43, also said Special Forces soldiers were seconds from pitching a hand grenade into Saddam’s tiny underground refuge when the fugitive dictator’s hands appeared above ground in surrender.

“He was assisted out of the hole,” said Hickey, commander of the 1st Brigade, 4th Infantry Division. Saddam was armed with a pistol, but chose to surrender, identifying himself in English and asking to negotiate.

Can you imagine the conspiracy theories the lefties would be putting forth if they’d dropped a grenade into his little cubbyhole?  “They assassinated him before he could tell the truth about his connections to the secret Bush military/industrial conspiracy!”

Sorry for the lack of posting.  I’ve got a killer headache, so I’ve decided to punk out and take the night off.  See you in the morning.

I’ll be writing my fisking of Michael Moore’s crap tomorrow night.

Monday, December 15, 2003

Here’s the latest reason to tell the United Nations to go to hell.

The top U.N. diplomat said Monday he could not support bringing captured Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein before a tribunal that might sentence him to death.

‘’The U.N. does not support death penalty. In all the courts we have set up (U.N. officials) have not included death penalty,’’ Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in a brief encounter with reporters at the United Nations.

‘’And so as secretary-general and the U.N. as an organization are not going to turn around and support a death penalty,’’ Annan said.

To paraphrase Orwell, if Kofi Annan had had his way the jackboot of Saddam would be stamping on the human face of the Iraqi people, forever.  Somehow I don’t think the Iraqis are going to be too upset that he isn’t sanctioning their tribunal.  The upside to this is that Bush and the IGC can point to Annan’s statement and say, “See?  This is why we can’t send him to the Hague.” It also shows, clearly, why the International Criminal Court has absolutely no moral legitimacy whatsoever.

If Kofi Annan ever takes a hard line against a despotic ruler anywhere in the world I’ll probably crap myself from the shock.  Seriously.  He’s got lots of tough talk for Bush and Blair, but in the face of adversity and struggle he runs like a little girl.  Funny, he wasn’t too broken up about all the people in Iraq who where sentenced to death due to his inaction and cowardice. 

Mass graves are perfectly acceptable if the justification is to prevent war, I guess.  Executing a genocidal maniac is beyond the pale.

How I loathe the UN.

Check out the transcript of Bush’s press conference today.  The money quote:

I will never forget the lessons of September the 11th, 2001. Terrorists attacked us. They killed thousands of our fellow citizens. And it could happen again. And therefore I will deal with threats, threats that are emerging and real.

We gave Saddam Hussein plenty of time to heed the demands of the world and he chose defiance. He did. He said, “Forget it. I don’t care what the United Nations has said over a decade. I don’t care about all the resolutions passed.” He chose defiance; we acted.

And I acted because, I repeat, I have a duty to protect this country and I will continue to protect the country so long as I’m the president of the United States.

A free and peaceful Iraq is part of protecting America, because I told you before, and I truly believe this, this will be a transforming event in a part of the world where hatred and violence are bred, a part of the world that breeds resentment.

And you know, look, we’re going to an election; there’s going to be plenty of time for politics. And people can debate all they want.

I’m going to do my job. That’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to do my job to make this country safer. And I believe we’re making good progress toward that objective.

On domestic issues there are a lot of areas where I disagree with President Bush, but in the areas where it really counts I admire the man like no other.  God damn it’s good to hear an American president talk like this, with pride and conviction and a huge set of brass balls.  Don’t miss what he had to say about France and Germany, either.

Check out this piece of one-sided reporting from Reuters.  As you read the quotes from Iraqis who are uset and defiant about America, remember that these are the same news organizations that somehow managed not to report on a 4,000-person strong pro-democracy, anti-terrorism rally in Baghdad a week or so ago.

But, as any good leftie can tell you, the media in this country are solidly pro-war and would never do anything to disparage Bush.

Following up on this post, we see yet another example of how utterly delusional Howard Dean is.

As our military commanders said, and the President acknowledged yesterday, the capture of Saddam does not end the difficulties from the aftermath of the administration’s war to oust him. There is the continuing challenge of securing Iraq, protecting the safety of our personnel, and helping that country get on the path to stability. There is the need to repair our alliances and regain global support for American goals. [Emphasis added]

When has there EVER been global support for American goals, Howie?  Here’s something you might not have noticed, but the rest of the world hates us.  You can believe all you like that this phenomenon was created by Bush, but the fact is that it existed well before Bush came to office, he just happened to bring the phenomenon to light.  During his eight years in office Clinton never said or did anything that would cause Europe to have to take sides with us, but if he had done so you would have seen this rift revealed much sooner.

The only common goal we have had with the international comunity since WWII was protecting Europe from the USSR.  The second that goal was accomplished the majority of Eueope told it to jam it up our collective ass.  They have no interest in supporting American goals, Howard, because they view American power as a threat.

Following up on my post about bling bling, it seems that the Oxford English Dictionary is intent on destroying our language by legitimizing hip-term-of-the-week slang.

Here’s a sign of the times as far as slang goes: The folks at the “Oxford English Dictionary (OED)” are considering adding the phrase “baby momma” to the wordy publication.

The streetwise saying, a counterpart to the ever-popular “baby daddy,” refers to the unwed mother of a child and has appeared recently in publications like “Jet” and “The New York Times."

Not only have I never heard the term “baby momma” used before, but I cannot believe that the OED will actually place language this incorrect within it’s pages.  The term “baby daddy” is a black American term that reflects the propensity in black speech to ignore plurals of words.  Rather than say, “He is my baby’s daddy” they say, “He my baby daddy,” thus the birth of the term baby daddy.

Other new terms being considered for addition to the dictionary include…

-- “Fembot,” which can be either a robot which looks like an attractive woman or an emotionless woman.

Fembot?  From Austin Powers?  Give me a break!

-- And the verb “wand” which refers to the act of waving a hand held metal detector over a person’s body, as in “I got wanded at the airport."

This last one at least makes a little sense.  I fear for the future of English if the very guardians of the language at the OED see nothing wrong with sullying it with asinine terms like “bling bling” and “baby daddy.” Just disgraceful.

Check out Andy Rooney from last night’s 60 Minutes, on Saddam’s capture.

If you made a list of the 10 most evil men of all time - there has never been a woman so evil - Saddam Hussein would be on the list.

My history isn’t good enough to name all the old ones like Genghis Khan, Nero, Caligula, Attila the Hun, but we all know the modern bad guys: Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Qaddafi, Khomeini, Marcos.

Okay, Saddam is an evil bastard, we’re all in agreement.  He ends his commentary thus:

Anyway, we’ve all been looking for the perfect Christmas present, and now we’ve got it: The capture of Saddam Hussein. It’s the best gift we could possibly get, and we thank the men who gave it to us.

Note the conspicuous absence of President Bush from his list of thank-yous.  Andy needs to be at least intellectually honest to admit that if we had listened to the peace-and-hugs crowd this event never would have taken place.  So, getting rid of one of the ten most evil men in history is a good thing, but recognizing that you were part of the group in opposition to it is another thing entirely.

I tell you what, Andy.  Go back to talking about paperclips and coffee cans and all of the other inane crap you seem fascinated by, and leave the removal of evil men to your political and moral betters.

Two Palestinians are chatting. One pulls his wallet out and starts flipping through pictures.  He says, “Here’s my oldest son. He’s a martyr. And here’s my second son. He’s a martyr too.”

After a pause and a deep sigh, the second Palestinian wistfully says, “They blow up so fast, don’t they?”

(Thanks to Tom McMahon)

Those peace-loving terrorists Palestinians are all bent out of shape over the capture of Saddam.

For Israel, he was a menace over the horizon who long bankrolled the enemy and the Iraqi leader rained at least 30 Scud missiles on Israeli cities during the 1991 Gulf War.

“It’s a black day in history,” said Sadiq Husam, 33, a taxi driver in Ramallah, West Bank seat of the Palestinian Authority.

“I am saying so not because Saddam is an Arab, but because he is the only man who said ‘no’ to American injustice in the Middle East,” he said. . . .

Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat and his government made no comment on the arrest of the deposed Iraqi leader, but Abdel-Aziz Rantisi, a senior Hamas leader, said the United States would “pay a very high price for the mistake” of capturing Saddam.

“What the United States did is ugly and despicable. It is an insult to all Arabs and an insult to Muslims,” he told Reuters.

Islamic factions sworn to Israel’s destruction have taken strength from Iraqi resistance and cautioned on Sunday that Saddam’s capture would not end attacks on U.S. forces. . . .

Saddam paid over $35 million to the kin of Palestinian suicide bombers, militants and bystanders who died in an uprising that began in 2000. . . .

Some did not believe news of Saddam’s capture even when images of the bearded figure flashed across television screens.

“Maybe they captured someone who looks like him,” said Laila Abusharigh, 55, in the Gaza Strip. “Saddam is a real man and all of us are with him."

Not only have they been shown, yet again, that the power of Allah is no match for the United States Armed Forces, but Saddam, a man who has been preaching jihad for the past eight months, punked out and surrendered like a cowardly little bitch.  So much for that macho Arab masculinity, huh?

Believe it or not, there’s someone in Canada who understands that Iraq is not a quagmire.

The trick has been to equate Iraq to Vietnam. Al Gore made a point of it last week when he threw his backing behind Howard Dean for the Democratic party’s presidential nomination, describing the situation as a “quagmire”—the emotionally loaded term everyone knows means Vietnam.

Even on the surface this is a ludicrous proposition. U.S. involvement in Vietnam lasted the better part of two decades and killed more than 58,000 American troops. At its peak the United States had 440,000 soldiers in Vietnam, and they were dying at a rate of almost 320 a week. It was a jungle country, ideal for guerrilla warfare, in which insurgents had crucial support from major powers able to easily supply them with the weapons and financial support to carry on. And even as the United States fought on, it never had a workable plan for a legitimate government that could govern the country.

None of this is true in Iraq, nor even close. The timeline for the U.S. presence has never been made absolutely clear, probably because it didn’t exist. It has become clear since the war ended that too little preparation went into planning for what happened next, probably because Washington overestimated the co-operation it would receive from a relieved and grateful Iraqi population.

The Iraqis were relieved, but you don’t shed the distrust and paranoia that comes from 30 years of repression overnight, and as long as Saddam remained alive and on the loose there was always the danger—no matter how remote—that he would return. As the frequency and effect of anti-U.S. attacks grew bolder, the fear of this possibility grew, and co-operation with the Americans waned.

But at worst the situation has been bad, not desperate. As of yesterday, about 470 U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq since the war began, according to a Reuters count, plus about 80 from other countries. Those are sobering numbers, but far from unprecedented. A news report last month noted that they surpassed the casualty figures from the first three years of Vietnam, as if the long slow buildup that took place there could be directly compared to the lightning invasion of 150,000 troops that took place in Iraq.

Be sure to read the whole thing.

Lieberman speaks the truth.

If Howard Dean had his way, Saddam Hussein would still be in power today, not in prison, and the world would be a more dangerous place. 

He’s absolutely right, and this gets to the crux of why I want Dean to get the nomination.  He’s been running around for months energizing the far left with his talk of repealing the tax cuts and his blunt criticism of the war.  Well, what we’re seeing now is the beginnings of a huge economic recovery, and the capture of Saddam Hussein, two incidents that would not have taken place if Dean’s policies were enacted.  So while the radical left might flock to Dean he’s going to have a hell of a time trying to sell his message to the swing voters.

Michael Moore spews more of his bile over the capture of Saddam.  I’ll write a fisking of this thing tomorrow, I’m too damn tired to do it tonight.  I’m going to need a plethora of links, specifically about just how much France, Germany, and Russia traded with Iraq during the last 20 years compared with the US.  Leave all relevant info in the comments, and I’ll compile it into the mother of all fiskings tomorrow evening.

Update: Come on, gang!  Surely the collective wisdom of this blog’s participants can come up with more links that this!  I really need a ton of facts and figures detailing arms sales to Iraq, specifically.  I know you can do it!

Don’t miss this priceless post over at Right Wing News.  Scroll down to the bottom.  Make sure you don’t have a mouth full of liquid.

Sunday, December 14, 2003

Good God, what a total scumbag John Kerry is.

If we had done this with a sufficient number of troops, if we had done this in a globalized way, if we had brought more people to the table, we might have caught Saddam Hussein sooner. We might have had less loss of life. We would be in a stronger position today with respect to what we’re doing.

He forgot to finish with, “By the way, I served in Vietnam.” While his public statement didn’t reflect it, at least Dean had the class to admit that this was a great day for the Bush team.  Kerry is just a vile, disgusting human being.

Just a reminder:  If you’re going to buy anything from Amazon.com this Christmas season, doing so by clicking this link first will help out the site.  Thanks!

A question for you Army types:  I’m watching 60 Minutes right now, and they’re doing a story on Saddam’s capture.  I’ve never noticed this before, but all the American flag patches on the right arms of the soldiers are backwards.  At first I thought I was looking at an inverted video image, but all the other text on the uniform was correct.  The ensign (blue and stars) is in the top right corner of the patches.  Am I hallucinating, or is there a reason for this?

You know that picture from the 1980s of Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam that the lefties and their compliant accomplices in the media have been throwing around for the past six months?  Take a look at this.

French Prime Minister Jacques Chirac, left, and Saddam Hussein of Iraq are seen prior to a state dinner in Baghdad, in this December 1974 file photo.

Much has been made of Rumsfeld’s trip, the implication being that he and Saddam are old cronies.  Well, assuming that is a given, what should we make of the picture above?  At least Rumsfeld worked to fix whatever mistake he may have made in the past, while Chirac tried to protect his old friend (and debtor) from any repercussion.

It appears that Saddam Hussein was not found in his native Iraq as media outlets have been reporting.  As this photographic evidence shows, Saddam has been hiding out here in San Francisco, living freely amongst the filthy, disheveled legions of homeless, getting his free $400 a month in city funds.

The office of Mayor-Elect Gavin Newsom could not be reached for comment.

Jesus, the media in this country just have to find the worst in anything good, don’t they?  Check out the first two paragraphs in this UPI report.

What’s clear from the initial video footage of the capture of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is that this is not the evil mastermind at the controls of the resistance organizations that continue to harass the U.S.-led coalition.

Thus the immediate benefits enjoyed by the U.S. occupation from his surprisingly meek capture will be psychological in that it proves to the Iraqi people that the brutal despot will not return to power. But little practical or actionable information will come from the arrest to assist U.S. and coalition forces in their hunt for the anti-occupation guerrilla groups.

“Well, Saddam has been captured, but it’s not as big a deal as you might think.” What assholes.

As you can imagine the scumbags at DU are going nuts.  Here’s a typically distasteful example.

I hope that now that Saddam is gone, the Shi’ite majority will feel emboldened to rise up and kick out the Anglo/American invader/occupiers and make it politically impossible for the neocon war machine to continue with its plans for military domination of the planet.

Charming, huh?  “Well, it’s good that Saddam is gone, but now I hope that America loses.” Lovely.

Check out the statement from Howard Dean.

"This is a great day for the Iraqi people, the US, and the international community.

“Our troops are to be congratulated on carrying out this mission with the skill and dedication we have come to know of them.

“This development provides an enormous opportunity to set a new course and take the American label off the war. We must do everything possible to bring the UN, NATO, and other members of the international community back into this effort.

“Now that the dictator is captured, we must also accelerate the transition from occupation to full Iraqi sovereignty."

What a wormy prick.  It is this pathetic attitude that shows why this man is totally unfit to be president.

What can I say about Saddam Hussein’s capture that isn’t expressed in this photograph?

This changes everything.  If you think people were talking about the old regime before, they’re going to spill their guts on everything, now that they know Saddam is out of the picture forever.

Update: The other day I blogged on the fact that Iraqi tribunals are being organized to try members of the old Ba’athist regime.  I’m sure that Saddam will face the same justice.

It looks like old Strom Thurmond was diddling the help.

A 78-year-old retired Los Angeles schoolteacher said she is breaking a lifetime of silence to announce that she is the illegitimate mixed-race daughter of former U.S. senator James Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.), once the nation’s leading segregationist. In an interview, the woman said that Thurmond privately acknowledged her as his daughter and provided financial support since 1941.

Essie Mae Washington-Williams described her claims in a lengthy telephone interview last week, saying she protected Thurmond because of their mutual “deep respect” and her fears that disclosure would embarrass her and harm his political career. Thurmond, who died in June at age 100, said late in life through his office that Williams was a friend.

Williams, whose mother worked as a maid in the Thurmond family home as a teenager, has long been the subject of widespread speculation and has been pursued by journalists seeking her story for two decades. She always denied that she is Thurmond’s daughter.

“I want to bring closure to this,” said Williams, who plans to hold a news conference Wednesday in Columbia, S.C. “It is a part of history."

Thurmond was more a political opportunist than a true racist.  He invoked segregation and racist politics when that was what was required to win elections, and abandoned it as soon as the tide started turning.  If this turns out to be true, this will actually show that the man was much less a racist than his critics have claimed.

Well, we’ve seen this type of thing before, so let’s not get out hopes up, but this could be a bombshell.

Iraq’s coalition government claims that it has uncovered documentary proof that Mohammed Atta, the al-Qaeda mastermind of the September 11 attacks against the US, was trained in Baghdad by Abu Nidal, the notorious Palestinian terrorist.

Details of Atta’s visit to the Iraqi capital in the summer of 2001, just weeks before he launched the most devastating terrorist attack in US history, are contained in a top secret memo written to Saddam Hussein, the then Iraqi president, by Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, the former head of the Iraqi Intelligence Service.

The handwritten memo, a copy of which has been obtained exclusively by the Telegraph, is dated July 1, 2001 and provides a short resume of a three-day “work programme” Atta had undertaken at Abu Nidal’s base in Baghdad.

In the memo, Habbush reports that Atta “displayed extraordinary effort” and demonstrated his ability to lead the team that would be “responsible for attacking the targets that we have agreed to destroy”.

The second part of the memo, which is headed “Niger Shipment”, contains a report about an unspecified shipment - believed to be uranium - that it says has been transported to Iraq via Libya and Syria.

I think it is extremely naive to think that Iraq and al Qaeda would never join forces—it shows a total lack of any grasp of contemporary world history.  I’ve always suspected that a solid link would be found between the two, perhaps this is it.  Stay tuned.

Saturday, December 13, 2003

Posting will be light tonight.  I’ve got my company’s non-religious, non-offensive, secular, inclusive holiday party to go to. See ya later.

Howard Dean should run for president of Fantasyland.

As president, Howard Dean says, he would mold a global alliance that would hunt down and do away with “sleeper cells” of terrorists capable of wreaking widespread damage with weapons of mass destruction.

“Just as important as finding (Osama) bin Laden is finding and eliminating sleeper cells of nuclear, chemical and biological terror,” the former Vermont governor says in a memo to reporters previewing a speech on foreign relations. Bin Laden is kingpin behind the al-Qaida terror network.

“Our global alliance will place its strongest emphasis on this most lethal form of terror."

Ummm, exactly how is he planning on building a global alliance?  The rest of the world is either opposed to the US war on terror (Muslim countries and their allies) or has absolutely no interest in helping us (Russia, France, and Germany).  So just how is Dean planning on building a global alliance with people who don’t want anything to do with us?  I can’t wait to hear the specifics, if he even has any.  This is just the kind of vague boilerplate left-wing idiocy that plays well with liberals, but is non-specific enough to where he doesn’t actually have to commit to anything.

Damn that George W. Bush!

MILITANTS linked to the Al-Qaeda terrorist network plotted to blow up the British Embassy in Yemen, BBC television said on Friday.

It said the plot was foiled when security officials caught the militants filming the embassy building in the capital, Sanaa.

The BBC said about 20 militants were involved in a plot to drive a truck bomb through the gates of the embassy some three months ago.

A Foreign Office spokesman in London declined to comment on the report, saying: ‘We never comment on the security of individual buildings for good reason, but the security of our staff is paramount.’

None of this would have ever happened, of course, had Britain not sided with the cowboy lunatic in the White House.

In the movie Sneakers one of the characters describes how to make a healthy bank insolvent—you start a rumor that the bank is going insolvent, which causes investors to pull their money out, thus actually making the bank insolvent.  Well, virtually the same thing is happening right now in the United States, and it’s been fueled by mass hysteria in the media.  I’m talking about the flu scare that’s gripping the nation.

With flu cases now reported in all 50 states and nearly half of those considered hit hard, the government is scrambling to ship 100,000 vaccine doses to combat shortages, hoping to head off what could become one of the worst outbreaks in years.

The number of states with widespread infections nearly doubled to 24 in the past week, and the season has not yet peaked nationally, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday.

So, what dynamic is at work here?  Flu season hits, and there’s a strain that is a little worse than previous years.  So the media pick up on it, causing more people to go for flu shots. The media then report on how there is a shortage of flu shots, which causes people to panic and want the flu shot even more.  Now we have a hysterical population running around terrified of catching the super-flu, all of them wanting flu shots.

Every year 36,000 people in this country die from the flu.  That’s twelve times the number of 9/11 victims. Nobody seemed too worried about the flu last year, did they?

So, why is there a shortage of flu vaccinations?  It’s simple economics.  When you have an artificially high demand you will have a shortage.  Because of the hysteria over the flu, we have people waiting in line for hours to get vaccinated, which is creating a much higher demand than normal.  With the higher demand, and a price that is undoubtedly controlled by the government, we now have a shortage.  Just you wait, this shortage is going to be used by one of the Democratic presidential candidates as proof that health care needs to be under the purview of the federal government and not left to the pesky free market.

Remember a few years ago when there was that whole outbreak of shark attacks on the east coast?  Someone analyuzed the data and it turned out that there was no more shark attacks that year than there had been any other year.  The only difference was that, for some reason, the media decided to focus on shark attacks, thus giving the impression of a bigger problem than actually existed.

I refused to get a flu shot this year on general principle.  If I get the flu I’ll be out for a day or two and then I’ll be better, same as always.

British health authorities have warned against giving antidepressants to children.  And why do British children need antidepressants in the first place?  Because they all look like this.

Oh, come on, lighten up.  It was just a joke.

My God the Democrats are desperate.

Democratic presidential candidate Dick Gephardt demanded Saturday that front-runner Howard Dean release records of meetings and phone calls about tax breaks given to corporate villain Enron, which Dean denies he did.

Visiting with local Democrats in this town near the North Carolina border, Gephardt alleged that Dean, while Vermont’s governor, “met regularly with the corporate chiefs who benefited from the tax windfall he created for them. A chief beneficiary of his tax cuts for corporate special interests was Enron.”

Dean has faced questions about corporate tax breaks enacted during his 11 years as governor. Enron set up a special insurance subsidiary in Vermont in 1994, a year after the Dean-supported tax break to the insurance industry went into effect.

Dean insists he never gave tax breaks to Enron, the Houston energy-trading company whose 2001 bankruptcy cost thousands of employees their retirement accounts.

“Just more desperate distortion and negative attacks from Dick Gephardt,” Dean spokesman Jay Carson said. “He would rather desperately attack Gov. Dean than talk about his record."

In the 1990s Enron was seen as one of the world’s best companies.  Any governor worth his salt would have offered incentives to get business into the state, just like Arnie is doing right now here in California.  To try and tie Howard Dean to Enron, as if he should have known they were cooking their books, is desperate and pathetic.  But for the radical left wing asshats who make up his base Enron is like discussing Satan or Hitler, and they might take a different view of the issue.  At least that’s what Gephardt’s people are hoping.

In another successful operation by animal-rights lunatics, Keiko the whale has croaked.

Keiko, the killer whale star of the Free Willy movies has died, his caretakers said early Saturday morning.

The whale, which was 27 years old, died after the sudden onset of pneumonia in the Taknes fjord in Norway on Friday afternoon. His animal-care specialist, Dane Richards, said the disease struck the cetacean fairly quickly. . . .

Keiko, which means “Lucky One” in Japanese, was rehabilitated at the Oregon Coast Aquarium, then airlifted to Iceland in 1998. His handlers there prepared him for the wild, teaching him to catch live fish in an operation that cost $500,000 (U.S.) a month.

Keiko was released from Iceland in July 2002. He swam straight for Norway on a 1,400-kilometre trek that seemed to some a search for companionship. He turned up near the village Halsa in late August or early September 2002. He allowed fans to pet and play with him, even crawl on his back, becoming such an attraction animal-protection authorities imposed a ban on approaching him. . . .

Keiko was captured near Iceland in 1979 and sold to the marine park industry. Keiko’s stardom came from the three Free Willy films, in which a young boy befriends a captive killer whale and coaxes him to jump over a sea park wall to freedom.

The $20-million drive to free him was started in 1993, after he was found ailing in a Mexico City aquarium.

If Keiko had been transferred to a better waterpark rather than sent back out into the ocean he very well might be alive.

A few days ago I blogged on how a Japanese group was protesting the Smithsonian’s exhibit of the Enola Gay.  Well, the opening went ahead as scheduled, and the Japanese are still complaining about it.  Take a look at how this BBC article ends.

Three days after the 1945 Hiroshima bombing, the US dropped another atomic bomb on the city of Nagasaki.

Within days the Japanese officially surrendered and World War II end, although debate has raged ever since over whether the act hastened the war’s end and saved thousands of lives or was one of the world’s worst war crimes.

Debate?  What debate?  There will always be people who take a contrarian point of view, but that doesn’t mean that their views are the least bit valid.  There are those who make detailed arguments that the Holocaust never happened, but does that mean that “a debate has raged ever since”?  As I said in my previous post, the Smithsonian should offer to include victim statistics of the bombings, and then announce that they are also opening a new exhibit right next door to highlight the crimes against humanity that the Japanese committed both before (Manchuria) and during (Bataan Death March) the war.  Somehow I don’t think they’d be as gung-ho for a full accounting under those terms.

Bad news for the Europeans.

Deadlocked over voting rights, European Union leaders failed Saturday to wrap up more than two years of work on a first-ever constitution. . . .

The dispute centered on the draft constitution’s provision scrapping a 2000 system for voting for EU decisions that gave Spain and Poland almost as many votes as Germany, which has a population roughly equal to the other two combined.

Poland—the biggest of 10 countries joining the 15-member EU next May—and current member Spain objected to the new provisions. Earlier, Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi said he would present compromise proposals in an attempt to break the deadlock.

But as the meeting broke up, an Italian diplomat said, “We had to acknowledge after intense work ... that there is no agreement.” The diplomat, who like others spoke on condition of anonymity, said the voting system was the main issue.

The idea of a united Europe grew out of the Common Market, a free-trade organization of European states, designed to facilitate trade and economic growth after WWII.  This then became the European Economic Community, and eventually the EU.  The EU nations are in the process of adopting a single currency, the Euro.  And now they are attempting to draft a constitution, which will in essence form a United States of Europe.  It’s just not happening as easily as they had hoped.

This is similar to the disputes that were part of the formation of our Constitution.  The federalists and anti-federalists, slavers and free-staters, North and South, and so on.  We did not have a cohesive national identity at the onset, which fostered smoldering resentment among the disparate groups.  This resentment led directly to the Civil War. 

Europe is heading down exactly path.  People do not identify themselves as the singular “European,” they still think of themselves as French, German, Polish, Spanish, and so on.  There are still rivalries and jealousies among the European peoples, and any compromises made to ratify the constitution are going to cause the same type of resentment that we saw here in the young United States.

Will they ratify the document and eventually lead to a civil war?  Time will tell.

Following up on this post about the California budget deal, it seems that state Republicans might know a few things financially that the national party does not.

With his signature, Schwarzenegger capped a week of bipartisan cooperation rare in recent years, as he and legislative Democrats revived the package considered dead last week and then worked throughout the week to reach a compromise. Once that was done, they had to corral reluctant Republicans, who had wanted a tougher spending limit, to agree.

“This is a compromise,” said Senate Republican Leader Jim Brulte. “What it does is force this state to begin to live within our means. This bill is better than the current situation.”

Senators voted 35-5 for the spending restrictions and 27-12—the minimum needed to get the bill on the March ballot—for the bonds. All the Senate opposition came from Republicans. On Thursday, the Assembly voted 80-0 for the spending limit and 65-13 for the bonds. [Emphasis added]

Republicans who want to cut spending?  Whod’a thunk it!

Wow.  Just showing that there are readers of this blog in every conceivable branch of the military/industrial complex, here’s part of an email I received earlier today.

Lee,

Saw your post on the NMD launch yesterday (Which is where I was yesterday morning watching it).  Good stuff as always.  Thought maybe you’d be interested in a few of the computer images from the flight.

You’re damn right I’d be interested!  I have no idea if these are secret—I’m assuming not—but just in case I’ll keep the sender’s name to myself.  Anyhow, these pics are super, super cool, thanks for sharing!

Christmas is just around the corner.  What do you get a 13 year old boy who has everything?  How about a bottle of Vietnamese cobra wine? 

I just took these pictures.  That’s sitting on my desk right now, a bottle with a dead cobra in it.  (They keyboard in the background is the very one used to write this website.  And download porn.)

People actually drink this snake crap, too—see the above link.  A friend just got back from a trip to Vietnam and Burma and he brought it back for me.

Friday, December 12, 2003

Apparently all across the state today illegal immigrants gathered to protest Gov. Schwarzenegger’s recent decision to repeal the law giving them driver’s licenses.  I hadn’t heard anything about it in advance.  When I was coming back to work after lunch, however, I saw a whole group of protesters out by my office, maybe 150 people, so I borrowed a digital camera and took some pictures.  The area I work in is next to a large low-income Hispanic area, so it makes sense that this would be where the organizers decided to hold the rally.

Note: I don’t speak Spanish, so I used Systrans to translate the signs into English.  If you speak Spanish and notice an error, please let me know.  Also, to make some of the signs easier to read I did a few brightness and contrast adjustments.  Apart from that there was no other digital manipulation of the photographs.

Arnie: Kicking ass and taking names.

California’s Senate approved on Friday a plan backed by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to cover the state’s growing deficit with a record $15 billion bond measure to go before voters in March.

The passage follows approval by the State Assembly on Thursday, marking a victory for the neophyte Republican governor just a week after the legislature rejected his preliminary proposal. Aides said they expected Schwarzenegger to sign the measure, which includes a balanced budget requirement, within an hour or so of its passage on Friday evening.

Note that a tax increase was not a part of his proposal.  Oh ye of little faith.

Ya know, sometimes you just have to admire Islamic savagery.

A judge has ruled that a Pakistani man convicted of attacking his 17-year-old fiancee with acid be blinded with acid himself, police said Friday.

Mohammed Sajid, 19, poured acid on the face of his fiancee Rabia Bibi on June 24 in Bahawalpur, a city in the eastern Pakistani province of Punjab. His two brothers were also convicted of taking part.

The woman lost both eyes and her face was burned in the attack, which police said followed a minor dispute between the couple.

Judge Afzal Sharif ruled Thursday at a court in Bahawalpur that Sajid and his brothers were guilty of the attack and be jailed for seven years, and that Sajid be blinded by acid, said Rana Riaz, a local police official.

The judge ordered that a doctor perform the punishment publicly at a sports stadium.

“This is an Islamic way of doing justice,” the judge wrote in his verdict.

You’re not going to get any complaints out of me.  Here in America the guy would have gotten 20 years, and been paroled after three, with some mamby-pamby liberal lawyer arguing that it wasn’t his fault, because his dad used to smack his mom around.

Violence against women, including acid attacks, are common in Pakistan, particularly in rural and deeply conservative tribal regions.

Ah, the good old reliable media.  They never miss an opportunity to subtly link violence against women and fundamentalist theocracy with being “conservative.”

It’s Blog Cuba day over at Babalu Blog.  Lots of Cuba-related postings, including one from yours truly.  Stop by and check it out.

While their constitutional convention falls apart, Europe decides on a plan for a joint military force external of NATO.  It’s everything you would expect from European politicians.

It was no longer enough, observed Carl Bildt, a former Swedish prime minister, to talk about Europe’s “soft power” versus the “hard power” of an unassailably mighty America. It was necessary to show how and in what circumstances Europe’s power could actually be used, and how an expanded union - soon to have 25 members - could exercise global responsibility commensurate with its economic weight and ambitions.

The clever thing about this unusually acronym-free strategy paper is that it keeps everybody happy while also breaking new ground. It takes a holistic view of security - talking about hunger and underdevelopment as causes of instability and conflict.

It mentions the effect of climate change and energy dependence as well as the link between failed states and organised crime - familiar from the Balkans, Somalia and Afghanistan. And it highlights the importance of conflict prevention - always cheaper than any cure.

But it also takes a hard look at the newer threats of terrorism and WMD (and, crucially, the possible nexus between the two) - the issues at the heart of American’s post 9/11 and post-Saddam preoccupations. Europe did not want to be accused in future of burying its head in the sand: thus the more robust line it has taken in recent months over Iran’s nuclear ambitions.  [Emphasis added]

I doubt the Europeans are willing to actually create as robust a force as they are proposing.  They simply don’t have the economic ability to spend what is necessary to create, maintain, and deploy this force, all while propping up their bloated nanny-state social welfare programs.  So while they make this tough-sounding proposal—despite their lunacy about climate change in the like—ultimately they’ll fall short of what they envision, which pretty much nicely sums up the EU in general, come to think of it.

Inevitably, the document does not answer every tough question. If Europe wants to punch at its weight in the world, then surely it should end the anomaly of separate permanent seats at its “top table” - the UN security council - for Britain and France, the nuclear-armed victors of the second world war, and replace them with a single EU seat?

There isn’t a chance in hell of the British and the French doing this, especially the French.

Nor does it directly address the sensitive question of pre-emption, which lies at the heart of the “axis of evil” security doctrine propagated by the neo-conservatives who surround Bush. And the phrase “pre-emptive engagement” in an early draft became a less threatening “preventive engagement” in the final version.

“If we want international organizations, regimes and treaties to be effective in confronting threats… we should be ready to act when their rules are broken,” it ventures mildly.

Hmm.  Sounds to me like this is exactly the same argument Bush used during his year of playing diplomatic grab-ass at the UN, yet France and much of Europe didn’t seem too much of it back then.

I have to admit I find this surprising.

A stunning new poll shows President Bush would clobber Democratic front-runner Howard Dean by nearly 2-1 in politically potent New Hampshire - even though Dean has a giant lead over Democratic rivals in the state.

Bush gets 57 percent to Dean’s 30 percent among registered voters in the American Research Group poll. In fact, Dean, from neighboring Vermont, does worse in the Granite State than a generic “Democratic Party nominee” who loses to Bush by 51 to 34 percent. Another ARG poll this month showed Dean with a 30-point lead over Sen. John Kerry (Mass.) for the Jan. 27 New Hampshire primary, the second test after the Jan. 19 Iowa caucuses.

The new poll seems sure to fuel claims by rivals that Dean would be another George McGovern debacle for Democrats in the general election.

It’s not looking good for the Democrats in 2004, is it?

Yesterday I stated my belief that the exclusion list is primarily a tool to use as a bargaining point in negotiations about Iraqi debt relief. Today in The Corner Jonah Goldberg says the same thing.

Isn’t it possible that the stiffing of Germany, France and Russia is simply prelude to Jim Baker’s Iraqi debt-cancellation world tour? It just seems so obvious to me now. He wanted some leverage and to send these countries a signal that we could play hardball before he left. It’s fine with me as a policy or as a negotiating ploy. I mean if I hear the EUniks say this decision was “unhelpful” one more time, I’m gonna go nuts. Look at France last year, or this year, for a definition of “unhelpful."

I think this is exactly what the list is about, and I think it’s good to see the Bush team using every angle open to them.

And the latest asinine proposed law to come out of the EU concerns hunting.

Legislation due to come before the European Parliament in the new year would change the rules governing products of animal origin intended for human consumption. It would mean wild game would have to be certified as fit and healthy before being shot and then be inspected by a vet to ensure that no “abnormalities” occurred as a result of the hunting process.

Opponents of the proposals say they would be unworkable in Scotland where game is often shot in remote rural areas and could mean huge additional costs. While concerned at the situation, they hope that the regulations can be altered to exempt wild game.

Mr Stevenson said: “This proposed new legislation beggars belief and is clearly a step too far, given that pheasants and rabbits fetch little more than £1 when sold on to a butcher. If this section of the bill is supported, the rules governing the sale of wild game will become so tied up with red tape that it will in effect make the purchase of such items untenable.

“Neither the gamekeeper nor the butcher can afford to carry this unjustified additional cost for these delicacies which by their very nature are ‘wild’ game.”

He said if the measures are passed, thousands of people who make their living from providing and servicing the wild-game market could be put out of work.

The bill, due to be debated in February, would dictate that any wild game, furred or feathered, sold to a butcher must be accompanied by an official declaration by a trained person who has witnessed the animal being shot and can vouch for the fact that it was healthy before being shot.

It must also be subjected to a post-mortem inspection by a qualified vet to detect any abnormalities not caused by the hunting process.

Why any independent nation would subject themselves to this sort of crap is just beyond me.

Can you imagine for a second what the world’s lefties would be saying if President Bush cane out and said this?

Muslim groups are chafing at the core values of modern-day France, the head of a presidential panel said Friday, a day after it called for the outlawing of Islamic head scarves in schools.

Bernard Stasi said outlawing head scarves and other religious symbols from schools will not solve all France’s problems with its large immigrant community. But he said the nation cannot tolerate those who seek to undermine its values, which include a strict separation of church and state.

“There are indisputably Muslims or ... groups seeking to test the resistance of the republic, that bear a grudge against the values of the republic, that want France to no longer be France,” Stasi said on France-Inter radio. “We cannot tolerate that."

Remember this the next time you support a “peace plan” for the Middle East that includes the right of return for Arabs into Israel.  At any rate, we have Bush going out of his way to call Islam a religion of peace, and to spread messages of inclusivity, and now we have the French making what the left would consider jingoistic and xenophobic statements, yet it will be America that is considered a hotbed of racism and anti-Muslim sentiment.

Good news from the world of science:  we no longer have to worry about global warming, because the earth’s magnetic field is going to flip, with the typical predictions of catastrophic results.

The strength of the Earth’s magnetic field has decreased 10 percent over the past 150 years, raising the remote possibility that it may collapse and later reverse, flipping the planet’s poles for the first time in nearly a million years, scientists said Thursday.

At that rate of decline, the field could vanish altogether in 1,500 to 2,000 years, said Jeremy Bloxham of Harvard University.

Somehow they’ll figure out a way to blame this on capitalism.

The world media simply do not get the exclusion list.

A day after angering European allies over Iraq contracts, the White House said on Thursday presidential envoy James Baker will travel to Europe next week to seek their help in relieving Iraq’s crushing $125 billion debt.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Baker, the former U.S. secretary of state and Bush family friend, will leave on Monday and will travel to France, Germany, Italy, Russia and Britain, and will report back to President Bush.

“We all share the same goal of helping the Iraqi people build a better and brighter future and they should not be saddled with the debt of a brutal regime,” McClellan said.

And now we can send Baker over to his meetings, where he can speak softly, and carry a great big $18 billion stick with which to remind France, Germany, and Russia just who is holding all the cards in this deal.  The exclusion list gives us an incredible degree of diplomatic leverage, and bringing it up in this manner takes the ball firmly from their court and put it in ours.

Welcome to the Terrordome.

You know that missile defense system that all the liberals said would never work?  Well, it’s had another successful test.

A missile from a U.S. Navy Aegis cruiser shattered a dummy warhead over the Pacific on Thursday, the fourth intercept in five tests of the sea-based leg of a planned multi-layered missile shield, the Pentagon said.

The Standard Missile-3 fired from the Lake Erie off Kauai in the Hawaiian islands “successfully engaged the target” about four minutes after the target was launched, said Chris Taylor, a spokesman for the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency.

The Pentagon described the test as part of increasingly “complex, stressing and operationally realistic ballistic missile engagement scenarios."

Now, obviously this is not a working system yet.  This is akin to having the goal of reaching the moon, and successfully putting a monkey into space—we’re not there yet, and there’s a long way to go, but it’s still great news.  There is no goal that cannot be reached when a serious effort is put into doing so, and with President Bush steadfastly behind this program there is no reason to think that we won’t have a workable missile defense within our lifetime.  And for a spectacular shot of the missile launch, see here.  Take that, Lil’ Kim!

Something to be aware of.

Sundiata Acoli, aka Clark Edward Squire, was born in Texas in 1937. While extremely talented - he began working for NASA as a computer programmer in the 1950s - he threw his life away to join a series of violent extremist groups. On May 2, 1973, police pulled over a car containing Acoli, Assata Shakur (JoAnne Chesimard), and Zayd Malik Shakur, all members of the Black Liberation Army, a Black Panther Party splinter group already responsible for many crimes. As the three were simply being questioned, Acoli and Shakur pulled semi-automatic weapons and began firing at the troopers. State Trooper Werner Foerster was hit twice in the chest; State Trooper James Harper was wounded in the shoulder. According to one account of the crime, Assata Shakur then took the wounded Foerster’s gun and fired it twice into his head, executing him; according to other accounts, either Acoli or Shakur fired the fatal shot. During the shoot-out, Zayd Malik Shakur was killed, and both Assata Shakur and Sundiata Acoli wounded - Shakur severely, Acoli less so. A massive, two-day manhunt was required to bring Acoli to justice.

Both Assata Shakur and Sundiata Acoli were convicted on murder charges, plus a host of lesser felonies; both were sentenced to serve life plus thirty years in prison. With such lengthy sentences, both should die behind bars. However, Assata Shakur escaped from prison in 1979, when four of her Black Liberation Army comrades took a corrections officer hostage and freed her from a visiting area. After several years as a fugitive in America, she was smuggled to Cuba, where she lives in luxury to this day as a guest of the Communist dictatorship. And now, only thirty years later, Sundiata Acoli is up for parole. His supporters are organizing to free him - this time not by taking hostages, but with a slick public relations campaign. If Acoli is paroled, it will be every bit as much a miscarriage of justice as when Assata Shakur was freed. When it comes to the murder of a police officer, life must truly mean life.

What can you do?  Read the page.

Sorry for the lack of posting tonight.  I just bought Secret Weapons Over Normandy for Xbox and I’ve been playing it all night.  I like it a lot.  It’s a flight game that doesn’t require you to be an actual licensed pilot to play it, you can start flying and shooting right out of the box.  Great stuff.

Thursday, December 11, 2003

Yeah, Dean!  Hit the campaign trail and make the case for repealing those horrible Bush tax cuts!

Revising its year-end economic forecast sharply upward, The Conference Board today projected that real GDP growth will hit 5.7% next year, making 2004 the best year economically in the last 20 years.

The forecast, by Conference Board Chief Economist Gail Fosler, expects worker productivity, which set a 20-year record in the third quarter, to rise at a healthy 3.6% next year. That would follow a gain of 4.3% this year.

The economic forecast is prepared for more than 2,500 corporate members of The Conference Board’s global business network, based in 66 nations.

In four years Bush and his aggressive tax cuts have not only staved off a recession, but created a better economy than anything we had under Bill Clinton.  Remember when the Dow crossed 10,000 under Clinton?  It was everywhere in the media, like the speed of sound had been broken.  Well, the market closed over 10,000 today.  Believe it or not, the media haven’t made reporting this event as much a priority as they did when Clinton was in office.  I wonder why that is?

The Iraqi people should thank Allah that Kofi Annan is a risk-averse coward, because if the UN was running things in Iraq it would most likely end up as successful as Bosnia.

Four years after it was “liberated” by a NATO bombing campaign, Kosovo has deteriorated into a hotbed of organized crime, anti-Serb violence and al-Qaeda sympathizers, say security officials and Balkan experts.

Though nominally still under UN control, the southern province of Serbia is today dominated by a triumvirate of Albanian paramilitaries, mafiosi and terrorists. They control a host of smuggling operations and are implementing what many observers call their own brutal ethnic cleansing of minority groups, such as Serbs, Roma and Jews.

In recent weeks, UN officials ordered the construction of a fortified concrete barrier around the UN compound on the outskirts of the provincial capital Pristina. This is to protect against terrorist strikes by Muslim extremists who have set up bases of operation in what has become a largely outlaw province.

The UN.  Is there a more inect, incompetent, impotent, useless organization anywhere in the world?

France, Germany, and Russia can get in on the spoils of war.  All they have to do is send troops to Iraq.

The World Trade Organisation declined to comment Thursday on a US attempt to exclude countries that opposed the war in Iraq from reconstruction contracts, after the EU said it would examine if the move were compatible with global trade rules.

European Union members France and Germany, the two countries that spearheaded Europe’s anti-war drive during the Iraq crisis, have sharply criticised the US decision along with Russia.

The WTO oversees global rules aimed at establishing free and fair trade, including some that touch on public tenders, but a spokesman refused to comment on Washington’s restrictions on the reconstruction contracts.

Legal experts in Geneva said the issue appeared to fall into a grey area of trade rules, partly because Iraq is not a member of the WTO.

The United States said WTO rules did not cover contracts concluded in Iraq because the tenders were regulated by the Coalition Provisional Authority in the country and not directly from Washington.

US Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz cited US security interests as well as the need to encourage countries to provide troops for Iraq as the reason for limiting tenders.

There you have it.  If they send troops they get back in on the goodies.  I also wouldn’t be surprised if this lock-out is going to be used as leverage against France, Germany, and Russia when Baker goes to talk to them about restructuring Iraq’s debt.

Update: Damn I’m good.

Bush’s policy effectively excludes Russia, France, Germany and Canada—as well as many others. The president said he still hoped those countries would agree to forgive Iraq’s crushing debt burden.

“It would be a significant contribution for which we would be very grateful,” Bush said, talking with reporters at the end of the Cabinet meeting at the White House.

There you have it. The big three who are locked out are also the big three who hold all of Iraq’s debt.  You want in on the contracts, boys?  Mr. Baker will be over to talk things over with you shortly.  This is a brilliant piece of political maneuvering on Bush’s part.

The excluded countries are getting upset.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Thursday joined German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and several other European leaders in criticizing the Bush administration policy that limits large Iraqi reconstruction contracts to companies in countries that help militarily in Iraq. The European Commission, meanwhile, said it would examine the contracts to see if Washington had violated its commitments to the World Trade Organization.

ANNAN, SPEAKING at a joint news conference in Berlin with Schroeder, urged the Bush administration to reconsider, calling the limiting of contracts unfortunate and not helpful for restoring transatlantic relations hurt by the war.

“It is up to those who took the decision to reverse it or maintain it and I hope something will be done about it,” Annan said. “It is time we tried to rebuild international consensus and work together and pool our efforts ... to stabilize Iraq.”

There is a very easy way for the international community to rebuild Iraq, Kofi.  All they have to do is send troops, as the US has been asking for six months. 

 Schroeder, for his part, said that international law must apply and that it was the task of all countries to help with reconstruction in Iraq.

“It makes little sense to discuss who can and who cannot individually participate economically in reconstruction,” he said. “International law must apply here and it does not help things to look backwards and is more directed at the past.”

Ah, yes.  International law.  You didn’t seem to care much about international law when Saddam was violating UNSC resolutions, nor when German companies were supplying arms to Hussein in violation of the embargo.

The French Foreign Ministry has declined to comment on the U.S. decision. However, the conservative French newspaper Le Figaro said Thursday the exclusion was “bordering on provocation.”

“For the United States, it is truly a shame that the politics of George W. Bush be presented, once again, in such a petty manner,” the newspaper said. “The anti-Americanism that needs to be combated is going to be revived.”

Oh no!  France might be infused with anti-Americanism?  They’re such pro-American, staunch allies right now, bringing out anti-American sentiment in the French would be a horrible mistake!  I love how they think this decision is “petty.” No, France, the whole “freedom fries” thing was petty.  This is a legitimate decision by the US government to reward those nations who stood by us and exclude those who chose not to do so.  Britain’s Foreign Secretary Jack Straw understands what’s what.

“The United States Congress is fully entitled to say the tax dollars are spent in one way, which in this particular case is contracts limited to those active allies in Iraq, rather than another way,” said Straw. “We have talked to them about it but the decision is for them, not ours.”

Exactly.

Here’s something I bet you didn’t know:  American liberals defeated communism.

I’m too damn tired to fisk this thing, and I’m sure David Horowitz will have a suitable response up at Front Page Magazine in the next day or two.

There was quite a large pro-democracy, anti-terrorism rally in Baghdad today.  Instapundit is all over the story, with links galore.  Notice the utter lack of attention this is getting in the mainstream media.  As any good leftie knows, our media are so gung-ho for Bush and the war that they only report the good things, yet they’re mysteriously silent on this issue.  I wonder why that is?

Maybe if Bush had been standing there holding a turkey…

Wednesday, December 10, 2003

This shows the UN’s level of commitment to the Iraqi people.

Secretary General Kofi Annan said Wednesday that he had ruled out a swift renewal of a substantial UN presence in Iraq because of the danger there.

“I cannot compromise the security of our international and national staff,” he said in a 26-page report to the Security Council that found the UN to be “a high-value, high-impact target for terrorist activity in Iraq for the foreseeable future.” . . .

Ah, yes.  The UN, always ready to take on an easy job when there’s very little risk.  Don’t worry, Kofi, the US will always be there to lead when you don’t have the balls to.

Check out the new Hummer concept vehicle.

Oh yeah, baby.  If this goes into production I am all over it.  I can just imagine the looks on the tree huggers as I drive this bad boy around.  That would be worth the cost alone.

Bush to International Criminal Court:  Up Yours.

The United States will hand over key members of the former Iraqi regime to a special tribunal established Wednesday, and Saddam Hussein could be tried in absentia, the head of the U.S.-backed Governing Council said.

Abdel Aziz al-Hakim told a news conference Iraqis who had committed crimes against humanity during wars with Iran and Kuwait could also face the tribunal, set up to prosecute members of Saddam’s regime.

The former Iraqi dictator is on the run with a $25 million bounty on his head.

Washington hopes prosecuting Saddam’s top lieutenants will help bolster support for the Governing Council and convince Iraqis the old regime will not return.

Of the 55 Iraqis on a U.S. most-wanted list, 38 have been captured and two killed. Officials say trials would begin next year.

I wonder what type of death sentences will be employed.  Firing squad?  Hanging?  Lethal injection?  Or the more traditional Arabic methods of beheading or stoning?  At any rate, expect the lefties to wail like banshees when they hear about this.

Also, I promise that this will be my last “Up Yours” post.  For now, anyway.

FDA to whining GM-food maggots:  Up yours.

The Food and Drug Administration announced Tuesday it won’t regulate the nation’s first genetically engineered household pet, a zebra fish that glows fluorescent.

“Because tropical aquarium fish are not used for food purposes, they pose no threat to the food supply,” the FDA said in a statement posted on its Web site.

Singapore scientists gave the naturally black-and-silver zebra fish a fluorescent red glow by inserting a sea anemone gene.

With the FDA’s decision, and barring a federal court order, the GloFish will be legally marketed in every state except California, the only state that regulates genetically engineered fish to protect its native fish populations. The fish is set to go on sale next month.

Andrew Kimbrell, executive director of The Center for Food Safety, criticized the decision, saying: “My major fear is that this sets a frightening precedent."

The only frightening precedent that this sets is the one where the FDA is not held hostage to the hand-wringing junk science idiots who object to this sort of thing.

Bill Clinton is sucking up to the Canucks.

Saying he disagrees with many current American policies, former U.S. president Bill Clinton warned there will be more wars and unrest unless richer nations provide more help to poorer ones.

“This stuff is not rocket science but every time you do it, you make a world with more partners and fewer terrorists,” Clinton told some 1,600 people who paid up to $250 to hear him speak at the Centennial Concert Hall. “If half the people live on less than $2 a day and millions of people are dying of preventable diseases and 120 million kids never go to school . . . you can hardly expect sweetness and light to prevail in every trouble spot on Earth.”

Providing poorer countries with more economic help, AIDS drugs and other benefits will encourage peace, Clinton said.

Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.  This is such boilerplate liberal crap.  If half the people in the world live under despotic, totalitarian regimes, with no rule of law, property rights, or fundamental human rights, then all the AIDS drugs and foreign aid in the world aren’t going to do a fucking thing.  The best thing we can do to help people is what we are doing in Iraq—get them out from under the boot heel they’ve been living under, and try and build some kind of a foundation upon which they can create a life for themselves.

Taiwan to Bush:  Up yours.

Taiwan’s President Chen Shui-bian reiterated Wednesday that Taiwan would hold its first referendum on March 20, despite opposition from China and a blunt warning by President Bush.

Chen said at a news conference that the referendum would not be about independence nor would it change the status quo with China.

I would have been stronger if I was Chen, saying something like, “It is a shame that the American President does not seem to take seriously our desires to be free and independent nation.  Being the leader of the country that brought about the current model of a representative democracy, I would have thought that he would have been more understanding of our desire for self-determination.”

Bush is flat wrong on this one.  I can only hope that this is the public face of a large degree of backroom negotiating, something that happens all too often in these types of tricky diplomatic situations, where all sides need to appear forceful and face-saving.

Update: Following up on the point I made in the final paragraph above, John Derbyshire writes in The Corner:

The people of Taiwan HAVE self-determination. No substantive matter of Taiwan’s internal policy is dictated by China, nor by anyone else. In this globalized world, I don’t know that they have any less self-determination than anyone else--than the average member of the EU, for example.

The aim of U.S. policy should be to help the people of Taiwan preserve the self-determination they have got, and not lose it by tweaking the dragon’s tail. Governments have to weigh goods against other goods. For Taiwan to have a referendum on its nationhood would be good--I won’t argue with that. For China to give us serious help in restraining the Norks, and to stop the flagrant selling of missile technology to US-hostile regimes--those are other goods--and, so far as the people of the U.S. are concerned, far greater ones. If indeed (I have my doubts, and will write about them in due course) the administration has got some real help on those issues in return for some rough words to the Taiwan govt., personally I could live with it.

A fair point.  I’m not totally averse to the constraints of realpolitik, I just want to be sure that we’re getting our share of the bargain.

The Canucks are getting upset.

The Pentagon drew criticism from one US ally after formally barring companies from countries opposed to the Iraq war from bidding on 26 lucrative reconstruction contracts.

The ruling bars companies from US allies such as France, Germany and Canada from bidding on those contracts - worth $18.6 billion - because their governments opposed the American-led war that ousted Saddam Hussein’s regime.

“If these comments are accurate ... it would be difficult for us to give further money for the reconstruction of Iraq,” said Canada’s deputy prime minister, John Manley. “To exclude Canadians just because they are Canadians would be unacceptable if they accept funds from Canadian taxpayers for the reconstruction of Iraq.”

Steven Hogue, speaking for Prime Minister Jean Chretien, said Canada has contributed more than $190m to the rebuilding effort.

Canadians are not being excluded solely because they are Canadians, asshat.  They’re being excluded because when the United States came looking for assistance and support in Iraq the Canadians told us to go pound sand.  Well, we did, and now Canada isn’t going to be allowed to reap any financial benefit from that decision. 

If you’re that upset about it, Jean, why not call up Bill Clinton?  For a hundred grand or so he’ll gladly fly up there, badmouth America, and tell you how wonderful and righteous you are.

Believe it or not, I’d love to see this happen.

Vermont may soon vamoose from the United States if a small group of citizens has its way.

The Second Vermont Republic is a group that is trying to rouse interest in secession among the state’s 600,000 residents to avoid what organizer Thomas Naylor calls “imperial overstretch” and “corporate homogenization.”

He says that Vermont is a relatively rural place that has nothing in common with big cities like Los Angeles or Chicago. Therefore, Naylor says separating from the Union is the only way to ensure the “Green Mountain State” stays green.

Naylor is planning the secession to be as non-violent as possible and insists that his goal is to merely free Vermont from the chains of 49 other states.

So far, the Second Vermont Republic only has a few hundred members but Naylor is confident his plan will work. So confident that he’s hoping to convince New Hampshire, Maine and Quebec to join them in a new country.

One of tghe biggest mistakes the Founding Fathers made was not specifically writing the right of secession into the Constitution.  It’s blatantly implied—how can you have a “voluntary” coalition of states that isn’t voluntary?—but not specific enough to prevent Lincoln from waging a war to keep the southern states locked into a government they wanted no part of.  This Vermont thing sounds like a bunch of goofy idiots, but it’s still a nice idea.

Sometimes the jokes write themselves.

The director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is leaving his post next month to lead the recording industry’s efforts to stop music piracy.

Bradley A. Buckles, who served ATF for 30 years and was named director in 1999, will come head of the Anti-Piracy Unit of the Recording Industry Association of America, the trade group announced Tuesday.

“Brad’s appointment should signal to everyone that we continue to take piracy, here and throughout the world, very seriously,” said Mitch Bainwol, RIAA’s chairman and chief executive officer.

Any 12 year olds caught downloading mp3’s from Kazaa will have their house firebombed and their entire family burned alive.

As of 9:00pm the far-leftist Gonzalez is losing to the leftist Newsom, 46% to 53%.

Update: 9:20, it’s 53-47 Newsom.

Update 2: It’s official, Newsom wins.  Shit.  Well, at least he’s going to go after the filthy human vermin unfortunate homeless.

Tuesday, December 09, 2003

Be sure and check out this post over at MOOREWATCH.

Two people who understand the issues involving song-swapping are me and Steve Jobs.  Some highlights:

David Bowie predicted that, because of the Internet and piracy, copyright is going to be dead in ten years. Do you agree?

No. If copyright dies, if patents die, if the protection of intellectual property is eroded, then people will stop investing. That hurts everyone. People need to have the incentive so that if they invest and succeed, they can make a fair profit. But on another level entirely, it’s just wrong to steal. Or let’s put it this way: It is corrosive to one’s character to steal. We want to provide a legal alternative.

He also offers a terrific insight into record companies and their profits.

[T]he music companies aren’t making a lot of money right now . . . so where’s the money going? Is it inefficiency? Is somebody going to Argentina with suitcases full of hundred-dollar bills? What’s going on?

After talking to a lot of people, this is my conclusion: A young artist gets signed, and he or she gets a big advance—a million dollars, or more. And the theory is that the record company will earn back that advance when the artist is successful.

Except that even though they’re really good at picking, only one or two out of the ten that they pick is successful. And so most of the artists never earn back that advance—so the record companies are out that money. Well, who pays for the ones that are the losers?

The winners pay. The winners pay for the losers, and the winners are not seeing rewards commensurate with their success. And they get upset. So what’s the remedy? The remedy is to stop paying advances. The remedy is to go to a gross-revenues deal and tell an artist, “We’ll give you twenty cents on every dollar we get, but we’re not gonna give you an advance. The accounting will be simple: We’re gonna pay you not on profits—we’re gonna pay you off revenues. It’s very simple: The more successful you are, the more you’ll earn. But if you’re not successful, you will not earn a dime. We’ll go ahead and risk some marketing money on you. But if you’re not successful, you’ll make no money. If you are, you’ll make a lot more money.” That’s the way out. That’s the way the rest of the world works.

Sounds like the pharmaceutical industry, doesn’t it?  Read the whole thing.

US to gutless cowards: Up yours.

The Pentagon has barred French, German and Russian companies from competing for $18.6 billion in contracts for the reconstruction of Iraq, saying the step “is necessary for the protection of the essential security interests of the United States.”

The directive, which was issued by the deputy defense secretary, Paul D. Wolfowitz, represents perhaps the most substantive retaliation to date by the Bush administration against American allies who opposed its decision to go to war in Iraq.

The administration had warned before the war that countries that did not join an American-led coalition would not have a voice in decisions about the rebuilding of Iraq. But the administration had not previously made clear that French, German and Russian companies would be excluded from competing for the lucrative reconstruction contracts, which include the rebuilding of Iraq’s infrastructure and equipping its army.

Under the guidelines, which were issued on Friday but became public knowledge today, only companies from the United States, Iraq and 61 other countries designated as “coalition partners” will be allowed to bid on the contracts, which are financed by American taxpayers.

Among the eligible countries are Britain, the closest American ally in Iraq, as well Poland and Italy, which have contributed troops to the American-led security effort. But the list also includes other nations whose support has been less evident, including Turkey, which allowed American aircraft to fly over its territory but barred American forces at the last minute from using its soil as a staging point to invade Iraq from the north in March.

It’s about time we made it plain to the rest of the world, that there are specific consequences to defying us.  As sovereign nations they are free to do what they like, of course, but they cannot expect to do so while enjoying the fruits of our largesse.

Choke on it, Chirac.  I love it.

Why should you non-residents care about California’s financial situation?  Because you’re all gonna pay for it.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is expected to ask the federal government this week for a first-ever bailout loan that could reach $1.1 billion to prop up California’s bankrupt unemployment insurance system and continue payments to laid-off workers, sources said.

The bailout marks the first time California has been forced to request money from the federal government to continue state unemployment checks. It likely will prompt Democratic lawmakers and the Schwarzenegger administration into divisive negotiations next year over yet another state fiscal crisis—and whether to burden business or workers to solve the problem.

“It can’t be ignored now, because we’re out of money,” said Bill Rosendahl, a cable company executive in Los Angeles who moderated a state task force on reforming the unemployment insurance system.

As the national economy struggled after Sept. 11, and as an unanticipated number of high wage earners lost their jobs, six other states have sought federal bailout loans to shore up their unemployment systems since last year. California’s request is the largest this year, with New York’s recent $1 billion shortfall not far behind.

The legacy of Gray Davis.  Most of you probably never heard of him until the recall election, but you’ll never forget him now, will you?

National Review sums up the spirit of the season in their print addition.

As we go to press, a congressional bulletin tells us that: “The U.S. Capitol Holiday Tree is scheduled to arrive at the West Front of the Capitol . . . on December 1.” This year’s Holiday Tree, we are further informed, is from the Boise national forest in Idaho. It will be decorated with more than 6,000 holiday ornaments and 10,000 colored holiday lights. Residents of Washington, D.C., will be able to admire the Holiday Tree as they bustle around doing their holiday shopping. Many of us will, of course, decorate our own homes with holiday lights and holiday wreaths. In our living rooms we shall put up holiday trees very much like the Capitol’s Holiday Tree, though of course much smaller. Under our holiday trees we shall pile holiday presents. To our friends and loved ones we shall send holiday cards. Perhaps we shall take our children to see a holiday show — a stage performance of Charles Dickens’s much-loved fable A Holiday Carol perhaps. On Holiday Eve we may be serenaded by carol singers with “The Twelve Days of Holiday” or “We Wish You A Merry Holiday!” Then we shall read the little ones to sleep with Clement Clarke Moore’s classic poem “‘Twas the night before Holiday.” On Holiday itself we shall open our holiday presents and eat our holiday dinner, then settle down to watch the holiday specials on TV. Remember, Holiday comes but once a year, so — Merry Holiday!

Note that nobody ever refers to Islamic or Jewish religious days in this manner.  I wonder why that is?

Left by Ryley Hayes, in the comments to this post.

In my hometown, people have been running around painting “Bush” on the bottom of stop signs. I knew the kid at my High School who was doing it, so me and a friend went to his house one night and painted “Stop vandalizing stop signs” on his car, the bastard.

I love it.

Here’s some more insight into the San Francisco mentality.

Jeff Petrie was a closeted gay teenager when he went off to the U.S. Naval Academy at age 17, and he was a closeted gay 25-year-old when he left the Navy eight years later. In keeping with military policy, no one asked about his sexual identity—and he certainly didn’t tell—but living in a homophobic culture and keeping his identity a secret were excruciating burdens at times. [Emphasis added]

In the contemporary vernacular, anyone or anything that is not fully suppportive of the gay agenda is immediately deemed “homophobic.” A phobia is defined as “A persistent, abnormal, and irrational fear of a specific thing or situation that compels one to avoid it, despite the awareness and reassurance that it is not dangerous.” The military has a policy against gays serving, and there are legitimate arguments both for keeping it and abolishing it, but it is in no way based on an irrational fear of homosexuality.  What is irrational is the way that any criticism of being gay is immediately chalked up to someone’s “fear” of the lifestyle.

We’re getting an assist in Iraq.

Japan decided today to deploy ground troops to join the American-led war in Iraq, in what will be its most ambitious military operation since its surrender to the United States at the end of World War II.

After months of agonizing, punctuated by the weekend state funeral of two diplomats gunned down in northern Iraq, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s cabinet approved a plan to send up to 600 ground forces to southeastern Iraq, in a mission to last from six months to one year.

The troops, though considered non-combat, will be the most heavily armed since Japan began tentatively dispatching its Self Defense Forces overseas a decade ago. They will engage in humanitarian efforts, including establishing water and medical services, and rebuilding schools and infrastructure.

The Defense Agency is expected to set a timetable for the dispatch next week, though the mission is likely to get under way early next year.

In a news conference after the cabinet decision, Mr. Koizumi explained the basis of the decision to a population that, according to polls, remains overwhelmingly opposed to it. Mr. Koizumi said that the situation in Iraq was “severe” but that Japan’s Self-Defense Forces must “fulfill this mission.”

“The ideals and the will of Japan as a nation are being questioned,” Mr. Koizumi said. “Japan’s spirit is being tested. We are no longer in a situation where we can only pay money. We must perform our utmost."

Good for him.  Europe?  Are you gutless pussies listening?

One time-tested act of vandalism political expression that San Francisco asshats engage in is spraypainting stenciled slogans onto the sidewalks.  It’s always ironic when the people doing the vandalizing are the environmentalist lunatics from the Green Party.  A reader writes:

In their never ending quest to protect the environment and keep the planet beautiful here are a few pics of what the Gonzalez for Mayor green-pukes are painting on the sidewalks of downtown San Francisco.

Let’s take a look.  The “Gruesome” being referred to is Gonzalez’s opponent, Democrat Gavin Newsom.

Some left-wing asshat has discovered evidence of a giant media conspiracy!

Last month I blogged on Dell returning some of its outsourced jobs from India to the United States.  It seems that US workers can indeed provide a value-added service that Indian workers cannot.  Well, it also seems that US workers can (gasp!) make a living on Indian wages.

As he thought more about his decision, Jon realized he had a valid business reason to hesitate: As the head of a startup that had been going for less than a year, he wasn’t at all certain he should take the risk of having essential work done at a far-off location by people he didn’t know, and with whom he could communicate only via e-mail and phone. Still, there was that matter of nearly $200,000 in annual savings. Each time he hesitated about making his decision, various confidantes reminded him about the big money at stake.

And then Jon had a brainstorm. What if he offered Americans the jobs at the same rate he would be paying for Indian programmers? It seemed like a long shot. But it also seemed worth the gamble. So Jon placed some ads in The Boston Globe, offering full-time contract programming work for $45,000 annually. (He had decided that it was worth adding a $5,000 premium to what he’d pay the Indian workers in exchange for having the programmers on site.)

The result? “We got flooded” with resumes, about 90 in total, many from highly qualified programmers having trouble finding work in the down economy, Jon says. His decision: “For $5,000 it was no contest.” Jon went American. And the outcome? “I think I got the best of both worlds. I got local people who came in for 10% more (than Indians). And I found really good ones."

You mean, American workers can actually compete?  Perish the thought.

I’ve said if before and I’ll say it again, we are going to end up going to war with China over Taiwan.

As tensions show little sign of easing, Wen is expected to talk tough on Taiwan in his Tuesday meeting with Bush, seeking assurances that Washington opposes the island’s independence.

A source in China has said the usually low-key, soft-spoken Wen will let it be known that possible U.S. military action to help defend Taiwan will not deter Beijing from taking steps to thwart the island’s independence moves.

After his arrival in New York on Sunday, Wen said that “separatist forces” in Taiwan were trying to “use democracy only as a cover to split Taiwan away from China.”

Wen, who is perhaps the closest political ally of President Hu Jintao, is widely expected to urge the White House to come up with a clear-cut statement opposing Taiwan independence.

Wen is also likely to be looking for a pledge to scale down the sophistication of American arms being shipped to Taiwan.

The US is talking down Taiwanese independence.  It’s a tough spot to be in, and I think that we could reasonably requests Taiwan to tone down the rhetoric a little, especially since we’re stretched a little thin on the military front right now.  But Nixon signed on to this “One China” policy when he went and visited Mao, and that disaster has fallen squarely in Bush’s lap.  If China takes Taiwan we have no choice but to fight the Chinese on Taiwan’s side.  Part of this is obvious diplomatic posturing and tough talking, but I firmly believe that the Chinese have the balls to actually try something militarily.

Update: John Derbyshire writes in The Corner:

The big date for the ChiComs is 2008, when the Beijing Olympics take place. The Olympics are critical to the CP for continued legitimacy with their people. Their nightmare is that Taiwan declares independence 6 months before the Olympics. There are probably elements in the military command pressing for action now, so that the outrage will have blown over by 2008.

Exactly.  Let’s see how it plays out.

Update 2: Bush went too far in his remarks today, and I’m not alone in thinking so.

U.S.-CHINA-TAIWAN POLICY contains a host of formulations, complications, and nuances, all of which (at least most of which!) we are happy to discuss. But let’s not lose sight of the forest for the trees.

Here is what has happened over the last month: The government of Taiwan proceeded about its democratic business in a legal and appropriate manner that threatened no one. The government of China decided to throw a fit to see if it could take advantage of U.S. preoccupation with Iraq and North Korea to tilt U.S. policy against Taiwan. And the U.S. government decided to at least partly appease Beijing.

Today, President Bush chose to chastise Taiwan because, allegedly, “the comments and actions made by the leader of Taiwan indicate that he may be willing to make decisions unilaterally to change the status quo.” In fact, the referendum that President Chen plans to hold does not represent any kind of “decision unilaterally to change the status quo.” Indeed, President Chen has made clear he will not seek to hold a referendum on the subject of independence. Can it really be President Bush’s position that Taiwan is not permitted to hold any democratic referenda on any subjects whatsoever?

Furthermore, one topic on which President Chen apparently is considering a referendum is Beijing’s missile buildup vis-a-vis Taiwan. About this missile build-up, and about Beijing’s threats of war against Taiwan, President Bush said not a word.

The president’s statement today is a mistake. Appeasement of a dictatorship simply invites further attempts at intimidation. Standing with democratic Taiwan would secure stability in East Asia. Seeming to reward Beijing’s bullying will not.

As I said this morning, asking Taiwan to tone things down a bit might have been appropriate, or at least understandable, considering the situation in Iraq.  But the president directly chastising Taiwan for their independence movement?  That’s despicable.

Andrew Sullivan links to this Time story on the rise of anti-semitic and other anti-minority violence in peace-loving Europe.  I’m not surprised, considering the British media doesn’t even make any attempt to hide its anti-Israel, anti-American hatred.

Israel trains US assassination squads in Iraq

Israeli advisers are helping train US special forces in aggressive counter-insurgency operations in Iraq, including the use of assassination squads against guerrilla leaders, US intelligence and military sources said yesterday.

The Israeli Defence Force (IDF) has sent urban warfare specialists to Fort Bragg in North Carolina, the home of US special forces, and according to two sources, Israeli military “consultants” have also visited Iraq.

Yes, my friends, special forces who are trained to take out terrorist leaders are “assassination squads.” Note that the Guardian would never dare to refer to Palestinian terrorists in such a pejorative sense.  Palestinians who blow up children in pizzerias are “militants”; Soldiers who selectively target terrorist leadership are “assassination squads.”

Monday, December 08, 2003

Last night I blogged on how some of the world’s shithole nations are whining about US control of the internet.  There’s an article in today’s New York Times covering this same issue.  What’s blogworthy is the attitude of some of these nations.  The title of the article is “Nations Chafe at U.S. Influence Over Internet,” and that pretty much sums up the petulant, whining way that these piss-ant countries think the US “owes” them control over the internet.

Because the Internet first took root in the United States, it may be understandable that American interests have tended to prevail. [Emphasis added]

Took root?  If by “took root” you mean “was invented by” then that sentence would be accurate.  To think of the internet as something other than a US invention is simply ridiculous.  Yes, the web was invented by an Englishman living in Switzerland, but the network upon which it was built was a US DOD project.

"The world should be grateful to Uncle Sam for creating the Internet,” said Talal Abu-Ghazaleh, a Jordanian businessman who is vice chairman of the United Nations’ Information and Communication Technology Task Force. But, he said, it is time for the rest of the world to have a larger voice in Internet governance.

We’ve seen this particular sentiment before.  Try these on for size.

“Iraqis should be grateful to Uncle Sam for liberating them from Saddam.  But it is time for the governance of Iraq to be turned over to Iraqis.”

“Africans should be grateful to Uncle Sam for developing AIDS treatments.  But it is time for the rest of the world to benefit from these treatments, whether or not we have to violate American patents to do so.

“Europeans should be grateful to Uncle San for spending trillions of dollars to protect them from the Soviet Union during the Cold War.  But it is time for America to step aside as a global superpower and allow Europe to control the tone of global diplomacy.”

Sound familiar?  This is just a different version of the same rank-and-file resentment of American success that we’ve been hearing for decades.  It’s standard liberalism/socialism—You have it, I want it, therefore I am entitled to it. 

The US government needs to fight tooth and nail to retain control of the internet.  Anything less is simple capitulation in the face of unreasonable whining.

If there’s one thing California needs it’s more virgins.

British tycoon Richard Branson says California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wants him to base a U.S. cut-price domestic carrier in the state.

Branson made his comments as his Australian discount airline, Virgin Blue, debuted on the Australian Stock Exchange.

Branson said earlier this year his Virgin Group wants to set up a low cost U.S. carrier by mid 2004 under the brand name Virgin USA.

The businessman says Schwarzenegger is trying to persuade Virgin to go to Los Angeles and is trying to see whether he can offer some tax breaks.

A governor actively working to get businesses to come in to a state?  What a radical idea!

Oh Lordy!  Please don’t be throwin’ me in dat dere briar patch!

Al Qaeda told the Taliban last month it planned to divert a large number of anti-American fighters from Afghanistan to Iraq and cut by half funding to Afghan fighter groups, Newsweek reported on Sunday.

Three representatives of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden allegedly met with two emissaries from Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar in the Afghan mountains of Khost province near the Pakistan border in mid-November, the magazine said.

Newsweek cited Taliban sources as saying that bin Laden ordered the shift of resources away from Afghanistan to Iraq because he saw it as an opportunity for killing Americans and their allies in Iraq and neighboring countries such as Turkey.

So, al Qaeda now admits that they are sending terrorists to Iraq.  Kind of hard for the anti-war left to claim that the Iraq war as nothing to do with terrorism, does it?  Please, by all means, come to Iraq!  We can kill you so much easier there than we can in the hills of Afghanistan.

If you spend a lot of time by Saks you’ll end up smelling like Wang.

Following up on this post, this was a dumb move on the part of the White House.

In a rare White House rebuke of a Democratic presidential candidate, chief of staff Andrew Card called on U.S. Sen. John Kerry on Sunday to apologize for using a four-letter expletive in an interview lambasting President Bush’s Iraq policy.

Kerry was quoted by Rolling Stone magazine as saying, “Did I expect George Bush to f..k it up as badly as he did? I don’t think anybody did.”

Card criticized Kerry for the using the expletive.

“I’ve known John Kerry for a long time and I’m very disappointed that he would use that kind of language,” Card said on CNN’s “Late Edition.”

“That’s beneath John Kerry. ... I’m hoping that he’s apologizing, at least to himself, because that’s not the John Kerry that I know,” Card added.

See, Kerry was looking like a real petty jackoff.  By asking for an apology the Bush team looks even pettier.  They should have just shut up and let him sink.

I think Bill Maher is a scumbag, but this is still pretty funny.

Bill Maher has made another stab at career suicide.

The Bush-bashing comic stunned some of Hollywood’s most powerful liberals by joking about Bill Clinton’s sexual indiscretions at a benefit honoring Sen. Hillary Clinton.

New York’s junior Senator was accepting an Oceana Partners award in Los Angeles last Wednesday for her work on environmental issues. Maher emceed the event, which also honored marine explorer Jean-Michel Cousteau, as well as Ron Howard and his Imagine partner, Brian Glazer.

Among the unamused in the audience were Oceana board member Ted Danson, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kiefer Sutherland, Diane Lane, Josh Brolin, Jake Gyllenhaal and Kirsten Dunst, Norman Lear and Jeffrey Katzenberg.

“Maher began bringing up ‘Bill Clinton’s [bleep] jobs’ - with Hillary sitting right there in front of him eating her chicken,” says a witness. “It was just cruel. Ted Danson’s wife, Mary Steenburgen, is a longtime friend of the senator’s. I can’t believe they approved of this.”

The former President, although not there, was listed as a co-chairman of the event, which raised $600,000.

Maher also took a shot at Cousteau - sniping: “That must feel great, getting a one-quarter standing ovation.” Cousteau walked out of the building shortly afterward.

Can you imagine the look on her face?  I would have given anything to be there to see it. 

Odd, though, that Maher, who claims to be a libertarian, would work a fundraiser for a liberal Democrat.  I wonder why that is.  Hmmm.

I was having DNS issues this morning at home, hence the lack of posting.  Apologies.  Use the comments to this post to discuss anything you like.

Westernized countries to shithole countries:  Up yours.

The United States, backed by the European Union, Japan and Canada, has turned back a bid by developing nations to place the Internet under the control of the United Nations or its member governments.

But governments, the private sector and others will be asked to establish a mechanism under U.N. auspices to study the governance of the Internet and make recommendations by 2005.

The move came in preparatory talks for the World Summit on the Information Society, opening Wednesday in Geneva. More than 200 delegates from more than 100 countries attended the talks.

The so-called “digital divide” is a misnomer, implying some sort of nefarious intent on one part to keep the other part ignorant and “unwired.” Nothing could be further from the truth.  If these undeveloped countries want to be a part of the technological world the formula for doing so is quite simple.  Enact a representative democracy of some sort.  Give your population property rights, and a court system with which those rights can be enforced.  Respect the rule of law.  Then, when this system is in place, western telecommunications companies will be beating down your door to win the contracts to wire your country.  You’ll be zipping along the information superhighway in no time.

Businesses are whores, the best kind of whores there are.  If you provide the type of society which is attractive to new businesses, they will invest ungodly amounts of money, all with the expectation of making a profit.  You benefit by getting wired, and they benefit by getting the profit.  This is how a free market works.  It’s quite simple, and can be instituted without the help of the Useless Nations.  Clean up your political house, then call the US and invite the corporations over for a chat.  That’s all you have to do.

Once again the “separation of church and state” means every religion except Christianity is perfectly acceptable.

If a Christmas tree can stand in a school’s halls during the holidays, then a model of baby Jesus and his manger should also be welcomed, contends a Queens, N.Y., mother who is going to court to prove her point.

Andrea Skoros sued the New York City public school system after being told her kids’ Nativity scene could not be a part of the holiday display although a Hanukkah menorah and the star and crescent representing Islam could be exhibited.

A federal judge in Brooklyn Thursday held a procedural conference on the suit and Skoros hopes the ban will soon be overturned.

School officials say that all displays must be secular in nature and chose a Christmas tree to symbolize the holiday but Skoros said this a double standard.

“I felt that it is only fair if they are going to display the menorah, which is a religious symbol, that they also display the Nativity scene instead of just snowmen and stockings and Christmas trees." 

Damn right.  In these times of “tolerance” and “understanding” it’s nice to know that the left still doesn’t consider Christianity worthy of basic constitutional guarantees.

Sunday, December 07, 2003

Planning on writing a letter to the Pope?  Here’s how you end it.

Prostrate at the feet of Your Holiness and imploring the favor of its apostolic benediction, I have the honor to be, Very Holy Father, with the deepest veneration of Your Holiness, the most humble and most obedient servant and son.

I almost want to write a letter to the Pope just so I can end it that way.  I suppose “Check y’all niggaz later!” isn’t an acceptable substitute.

In the face of an idiotic campaign finance law, the NRA comes up with an equally idiotic way around it.

Hoping to spend as much as it wants on next year’s elections, the National Rifle Association is looking to buy a television or radio station and declare that it should be treated as a news organization, exempt from spending limits in the campaign finance law.

“We’re looking at bringing a court case that we’re as legitimate a media outlet as Disney or Viacom or Time Warner,” the NRA’s executive vice president, Wayne LaPierre, said in an interview.

“Why should they have an exclusive right to relay information to the public, and why should not NRA be considered as legitimate a news source as they are? That’s never been explored legally,” he said.

As dumb an idea as this is, I think it’s good that the NRA is utilizing every avenue open to it.  The campaign finance law is so blatantly unconstitutional it’s not even funny, and if this is what the NRA has to do to be able to get its message out then so be it.

And the war on terror continues.

Special Branch detectives have seized a pair of socks containing traces of explosives during an anti-terrorist raid on a house in England.

Intelligence officials believe they were designed to smuggle material for a bomb on board an aircraft for a suicide attack by Al-Qa’eda terrorists.

They were discovered during one of the recent raids carried out by MI5 officers and Scotland Yard detectives on addresses across the country.

Scientific evaluation of the blue socks revealed traces of at least three substances, including TNT, a highly combustible explosive, PETN, a plastic explosive, and RDX, which was first used in bombs in the Second World War.

Detectives believe that the socks were intended to be filled with explosives and worn around a potential bomber’s neck to avoid detection by airport security staff. Once on board, the bomber could assemble a bomb.

One officer said: “Any one of these three explosive compounds on their own is potentially lethal on a plane. Combined, they would be devastating.”

The authorities believe that the likely target of the “sock bombers” was a flight between Britain and America. Details of the discovery were quickly circulated to airports and airlines in both countries late last week.

I don’t know about you guys, but I feel much safer knowing that our racist government doesn’t single out young, Arabic men for closer scrutiny.  There’s no need for the public to be vigilant at all, because it’s not like terrorists are still trying to figure out ways to attack us or anything.

Not only is the UK turning into a police state, but you can add this to the long line of stupid British governmental ideas.

Teenagers will be given the vote at 16 in a historic move being considered by 10 Downing Street and the Department of Constitutional Affairs.

In a signal that the Government wants a major debate on this contentious issue and sympathises with those who argue that the voting age should be lowered from the present 18, Lord Falconer, the Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs, said it was a vital debate and part of the reform agenda he wanted to pursue. ‘I think it is a very important issue,’ he said in an interview with The Observer.

‘We expect more and more of people in relation to personal participation, we expect more and more in terms of social responsibility, in my view rightly, from people, particularly young people.

‘If we want to both engage young people and make them discharge their responsibilities then I think there’s got to be a quid pro quo of letting them see greater influence in the political process.’

Can you honestly imagine a 16 year old paying any attention to the political process?  And then actually voting?  This is nothing but pandering by the Blair administration, akin to Gray Davis’ miraculous support of the driver’s licenses for illegals bill when it appeared that he was going to be recalled.  Seriously, what issues are 16 year olds going to care about?  I wouldn’t trust a 16 year old to choose what to watch on TV, let alone have a say in who the future leader is going to be.

Mind-boggling, isn’t it?  “Cor blimey!  Eye fink Britney Spears should be da Minister of Boobies!  Too right!”

Update: A limey reader writes:

Oh Dear Oh Dear

No disrespect my friend but however entitled you are to your fundamentalist views on your own country I would keep your condescending snout out of our affairs on this side of the atlantic. Surely it is better to give an 16 year old a chance to vote and then they can decide whether they wish to exercise it or not. Voter turnouts are traditionally low in both our countries. Why? Because many so called responsible adults can’t be bothered and as such Right Wing Corporate Puppets such as George Bush and fundamental “GOD” fearing crackpots like Ian Paisley get elected to power.

As the old maxim goes, think before you speak.

This just made my evening.

Below you will see my latest Mr. Picassohead creation.  Entitled “Bowel Obstruction in G-Minor” I present it for your approval.

Want to create your own Picassohead?  Just click here.  Then paste a link to your pics in the comments below.

(Link via Speed of Thought.)

Following up on this post, it seems that the Democrats are so worried about losing the SF mayor’s seat that they’re bringing in the heavy artillery.

It was a long time in the making, but word is former President Bill Clinton will be in San Francisco for a final get-out-the-vote pep talk Monday for Democratic mayoral candidate Gavin Newsom.

The Clinton drop-by was pulled together by Walter Shorenstein, the Democratic fund-raising king. And while scoring Clinton took some work, the biggest headache for Newsom’s camp was deciding where to hold the rally.

First off, Clinton’s people wanted assurances that there would be a respectable-sized crowd for the event. But there were also questions of whom to invite and how to make sure the tone was right.

“One concern was that too big a rally would look like a premature victory celebration,’’ said one Newsom insider who was in on the planning. “Plus, we don’t want a party where everyone just came and left—we need people there actually to work after the rally.’’

Upshot: The rally will be held at Newsom’s Van Ness Avenue campaign headquarters for precinct captains and election-day workers.

That way, they’re assured of a packed house—and a captive audience, to work the phones.

“This isn’t about presidents, this is about people and people working on election day,’’ said Newsom campaign manager Eric Jaye.

If this doesn’t exemplify how intellectually bankrupt and desperate the Democratic Party is I don’t know what will.  They’re about to lose to the Greens, the direct equivalent of the communist party.  They’re not liberal enough for the liberals, and they’re not conservative enough for the centrist voters.  They’re screwed.

Much has been made in the media of Howard Dean’s alleged fiscal conservatism, as a complement to his social liberalism.  Well, my friends, that might not be the case.

In his just-published autobiography, “Winning Back America,” Howard Dean underscores what has become a longstanding central theme of his campaign. He writes: “We cut taxes by 30 percent over the lifetime of my administration.” In Iowa and New Hampshire, his campaign is airing a commercial promoting Dean as a “fiscal conservative who cut state income taxes—twice.”

On the campaign’s website, Dean is even more specific, saying that his two cuts reduced the state’s top income tax rate from 13.5 percent to 9.5 percent.

But an examination of Dean’s record as Vermont’s governor has found that the bigger tax cut was in fact signed into law by his Republican predecessor, Richard Snelling. In 1991, Snelling signed legislation authorizing higher tax rates that would “sunset” two years later. Dean, then lieutenant governor, took over after Snelling died, and the rates dropped automatically at the end of 1993.

While the section of Dean’s website on his fiscal record highlights his role in eliminating the sales tax on clothing items, it omits the fact that the overall sales tax was raised from 4 percent to 5 percent during Dean’s tenure.

Dean’s assertions are prompting criticism from Vermonters familiar with the state’s fiscal history. “No way. That is ridiculous,” said Richard Heaps, a specialist on Vermont tax law and coauthor of the Vermont Economy Newsletter, when asked about Dean’s income tax claims. “He didn’t cut taxes by 30 percent. We would be dancing in the street if he did.”

Vermont has the nation’s 12th-highest tax burden as a percentage of personal income, according to the Tax Foundation. The state’s tax rate could become a major issue in the primary in neighboring New Hampshire, which ranks 49th. Vermonters will pay 10.1 percent of their personal income in state and local taxes, compared with 6.6 percent in New Hampshire, the foundation says in a study.

Howard Dean revealed to be a tax-and-spend liberal?  I’m shocked, shocked I say!  This is yet another reason that Dean doesn’t have a chance in hell of winning.  With the economy flying upward at breakneck speed it’s going to be hard for him to make a case with the public as to why those tax cuts need to be repealed, and then to defend his own taxation record.  The only angle the Democrats can use to spin this is with the deficit, that the cuts need to be repealed and taxes need to be raised to reduce the deficit.

Update: Don’t miss George Will’s thoughts on Dean in the WaPo.

I’ve refrained from blogging on the Bush turkey “scandal” because I figured it was beyond stupid and wouldn’t have much of a life.  Boy was I wrong.  It’s more or less died out here in the US, but the world media is going crazy, as you can see here.  It breaks down like this:  he grabbed a display turkey for a minute or two, then served regular steamed turkey to the troops.  It is only the world media’s incessant hatred of Bush that causes them to see some giant conspiracy here.  It’s simply jaw-dropping to see them try to turn this molehill into a mountain.

For more on this non-issue see Tim Blair.

Is Michael Moore ripping off Larry Elder?  Ryne McClaren thinks so over at MOOREWATCH.

The Japanese are getting all worked up.

JAPANESE anti-nuclear protesters have called on the US government to include details of the terrible aftermath of the 1945 attacks on Hiroshima at an exhibition that is to include the Enola Gay.

They claim the display of the B-29 bomber, which dropped the bomb that killed 66,000 people and injured 69,000 others, is a glorification of the nuclear age.

The bomber, which has been completely reassembled for the first time since 1960, is to be one of the highlights of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum’s new exhibition centre in Washington from December 15.

The atomic bomb - nicknamed Little Boy - exploded above Hiroshima at 8.16am on August 6, 1945.

The Japan Confederation of A-Bomb and H-Bomb Sufferers has called for details about the number of deaths and photographs of the damage caused to Hiroshima by the bomb to be included in the exhibition, but has been rebuffed.

“As victims of the atomic bombs, we can’t bear to have the Enola Gay, which killed thousands of Hiroshima residents, on public display without details of the destruction it wrought,” said Terumi Tanaka, the organisation’s director.

Perhaps we should do what these Japanese ask.  Then, right next to this exhibit, we should have a second exhibit detailing the utter brutality of the Japanese during WWII.  We could start with the genocide committed at Nanking, then head over to the Bataan Death March.  We could also exact testimonials from the comfort women, who were systematically kidnapped and bound into a life of rape and servitude for Japanese troops.  We could also regale the crowds with tales from Allied POWs about how they were brutally mistreated by their Japanese captors.

On second thought, we probably can’t do this.  Pointing out the truth about the Japanese would be racist.

Saturday, December 06, 2003

Nicholas Kristof writes that Dean cannot beat Bush in 2004.  I think he’s absolutely right, and so does the Bush administration, who are licking their chops at the chance of going head-to-head with the doctor.  Kristof’s column contains this brilliant line, which perfectly encapsulates the differences between the two candidates.

You get the feeling that if Mr. Dean and Mr. Bush were stuck together in a small Missouri town, Mr. Dean would lecture farmers about Thomas Paine’s writings, while Mr. Bush would have the cafe crowd in stitches by doing impersonations of Mr. Dean.

This is one of Bush’s best qualities: he’s an average guy, and he acts like it.  You could picture George W. Bush sitting in the Waffle House restaurant in Odessa, TX, eating with the locals, and being completely sincere about it.  Howard Dean, while a genuinely nice guy, would no sooner eat in a place like that, or hang out with the people who eat and work there, than he would vote for Bush in 2004.  That type of attitude and approachability plays well with people in the South, and Dean just doesn’t have it.  I don’t think Wesley Clark has it, either, despite his obvious military bona fides.  Clark is way too cerebral, and he’s much more likely to explain military history or theory than he is telling tales about the time that the US whipped someone’s ass.

Update: Some left-wing asshat comments on the Kristof column:

But what else should we expect from someone who covered Bush in 2000?

It’s always a conspiracy, isn’t it?

John Kerry, he’s all class.

Struggling 2004 Democratic wannabe John Kerry fires an X-rated attack at President Bush over Iraq and uses the f-word - highly unusual language for a presidential contender - in a stunning new interview with Rolling Stone magazine.

Sen. Kerry (Mass.) used the undeleted expletive to express his frustration and anger over how the Iraq issue has hurt him because he voted for the war resolution while Democratic front-runner Howard Dean has soared by opposing it.

“I voted for what I thought was best for the country. Did I expect Howard Dean to go off to the left and say, ‘I’m against everything’? Sure. Did I expect George Bush to f - - - it up as badly as he did? I don’t think anybody did,” Kerry told the youth-oriented magazine.

Brookings Institution presidential scholar Stephen Hess said he can’t recall another candidate attacking a president with X-rated language in a public interview.

“It’s so unnecessary,” Hess said. “In a way it’s a kind of pandering [by Kerry] to a group he sees as hip . . . I think John Kerry is going to regret saying this."

Kerry then discussed details of his health care proposal, during which he reminded the interviewer that he had fought in Vietnam.

Update: Eye On The Left has the photo.

The San Francisco mayoral runoff election is coming up on December 9.  It’s the battle to see which left-wing asshat voters here are going to pick.  They have two choices, Democrat Gavin Newsome and Green Matt Gonzalez.  Yes folks, you read that correctly, San Francisco is potentially about to be the first major city in American to elect a mayor from the Watermelon Party.

I don’t actually live inside the city limits so I won’t be voting in this election, but if I were, I’d vote for Gonzalez.  The guy is a total lunatic.  Check out his issues page.  His answer to power needs for the area is to close two functioning power plants, increase conservation programs, and focus on solar and tidal power.  Homelessness can be solved by spending even more money on services for these human vermin.  Affordable housing?  “The housing market by itself will not deliver affordability, and badly planned market rate housing development can actually decrease the supply of affordable housing. The City must adopt smart policies that allow the private market, the nonprofit sector, and government to work together to keep the city affordable.” Go read the rest of them, it’s jaw-droppingly ignorant.  He is the physical embodiment of every stupid idea that this city has ever produced.  He’s also picked up a huge endorsement:  Michael Moore.

People of San Francisco!  I urge you all to vote for Gonzalez.  The disaster that this man and his policies will wreak on your city will create nothing but enjoyment for me.  I want to see this city suffer under its own delusions.  I want to see the rates of homeless increase to where the moderate liberals start leaving.  I don’t want you to be able to go ten feet anywhere in the city without being accosted by someone who spent the last five days sleeping in his own urine.  I want the housing shortage (caused by rent control) to become so bad that the buildings here end up being abandoned and become dilapidated slums.

In short, I want San Francisco to get what San Francisco deserves, and his name is Mayor Gonzalez.

What’s the difference between Hillary Clinton and Saddam Hussein?  Apparently Saddam doesn’t use a ghostwriter.

President Bush has appointed James Baker as a special envoy to try and restructure Iraq’s $120 billion debt.

I hope that the rest of you see the irony here.

Check out this numbnuts.  It’s simply horrifying that there are people out there this monumentally ignorant who are actually able to vote.

Friday, December 05, 2003

In the days and weeks after 9/11 most Americans realized that life was not going to be the same from that point on.  The hijackers and plotters had been living among us for years, and we hadn’t expected a thing.  They used our complacency and openness against us, with catastrophic results.  Because of this the president urged us to be vigilant, to keep an eye out for anything suspicious, and to alert the authorities of something seemed out of place.

This was a hugely controversial move, invoking hysterical shrieking from the left.  “It’s like nazi Germany all over again!  The government wants us to turn in the neighbors!” These claims, while utterly ridiculous, were strong enough to give the administration pause in its message.  Bay Area liberals were among the most vocal with this criticism.  So it is with a sense of amusement that I have seen the following signs appearing recently on bus stops all over this area.  (Click on the image for a larger version.)

This is a sign from the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, urging the public to report any vehicles that are smoking or otherwise giving off more than the normal amount of exhaust.  Basically they’re encouraging people to turn in their neighbors for the ghastly crime of having a smoking vehicle.  Indeed, you don’t even need to turn in someone you know—if you can read their license plate you can call from your cell phone and turn in the unsuspecting polluter.

This is a beautiful illustration of just how far out of whack the priorities are in this area.  If you see suspicious behavior and make a report to the police in the name of national security you’re a fascist.  If you see a smoking car and report it to the authorities you’re a good citizen.  Turning in the neighbors isn’t in and of itself bad, it’s the motivation that’s the clincher.

Someone just hit this site after doing a Yahoo search for Left Thinking from the Right Coast.

I hope they weren’t disappointed.

Take a moment and go vote for your favorite bloggers over at Wizbang.  If I may be so bold as to recommend Right-Thinking in the Best Conservative Blog category…

Update: Thank you, everyone, for your kind words, and your votes. :)

Quick, check this out before Amazon takes it down.

Britain inches ever forward towards becoming an actual fascist police state.

Tobacco should be made illegal and the possession of cigarettes a crime in order to curb the menace of smoking, a leading medical journal will say today.

In an attempt to drive the lethal habit to extinction, The Lancet calls on the Government to ban tobacco to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.

It is the most radical demand yet made by the medical profession on tobacco, and comes only a week after the 13 royal medical colleges called for a ban on smoking in public places.

The British Medical Association yesterday published a draft bill to ban smoking in public and appealed to MPs successful in the ballot for private members bills to back it.

However, The Lancet’s proposal for tobacco to be outlawed was greeted with scepticism by campaigners yesterday and ridiculed by the tobacco lobby which said it revealed the “true voice of the rabid anti-smoking zealot.”

In an editorial headlined “How do you sleep at night, Mr Blair?”, The Lancet says a ban on smoking in public would be a start but that it is “missing the point.” The availability and acceptability of smoking is far more significant.

“If tobacco were an illegal substance, possession of cigarettes would become a crime, and the number of smokers would drastically fall.

This is the exact same logic that caused the United States to enact prohibition.  Then, the realization that it was an utter failure that did nothing but bring about the rise of organized crime prompted the public to demand that prohibition end.  Today is the 70th anniversary of the end of prohibition.  How fitting that Britain’s most prestigious health journal chose today to call for a prohibition on cigarettes.

Britain has some of the world’s strictest gun control laws.  Surely since guns are an illegal item, and possession of a gun is a crime, the number of violent gun crimes would drastically fall… right?  Wrong.

Those who do not learn the lessons of history are doomed to be liberals.

Speaking of science, check this out.

A newly discovered 425 million-year-old fossil boasts a lurid claim to fame - it has the oldest penis on record.

The five millimetre long crustacean, discovered by UK and US researchers, has been named Colymbosathon ecplecticos - derived from the Greek for “astounding swimmer with a large penis”.

The well-endowed creature is surprisingly similar to modern relatives, despite being entombed nearly half a billion years ago, says the team.

The previous record holder was not available for comment.

As with everything related to contemporary liberalism, the ideological message is more important than the actual science.

Three Maryland researchers have admitted fabricating interviews with teenagers for a study on AIDS prevention that received more than $1 million in federal funds.

Lajuane Woodard, Sheila Blackwell and Khalilah Creek were employed by the University of Maryland at Baltimore’s department of pediatrics as researchers on the study, funded by a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

The three admitted they made up interviews with teenagers, which they had claimed took place from May to August 2001, for the study on preventing the transmission of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The fabrication was first reported in the journal Research USA.

The study was designed to evaluate the impact of “safe sex” counseling on black teens in Baltimore housing developments. Congressional staffers said the study, titled “Effectiveness of Standard Versus Embellished HIV Prevention,” received more than $1 million in NIH funds in 1999.

“It is terribly troubling that federally funded research on a topic as sensitive and important as HIV prevention for children, some as young as 13, would be intentionally manipulated,” said Rep. Mark Souder, Indiana Republican and chairman of the House subcommittee on criminal justice, drug policy and human resources. “If not caught, the lives of countless children may have been put at risk by ineffective, perhaps dangerous, prevention messages developed from this fabricated research."

Subjecting teenagers to a specific program was more important than finding one that was scientifically proven to work.  (D.A.R.E. is another great example.) So, I wonder how many of these kids will end up with HIV because of this fraud?  And I wonder how many liberals will somehow blame George W. Bush for letting it happen, like they did with Reagan and AIDS.

Update: Speaking of Reagan and AIDS, Andrew Sullivan provides the following quote.

"I hate to be a pill, to piss on smoldering embers, no matter how warming, but the facts are these: it was neither Larry Kramer’s hysterics, the courageous reporting of the New York Native, Everett Koop’s blinding-hot moral flash or anything else that turned the tide of AIDS recognition in America and of AIDS research funding by the American government. It was nothing less or other than Ronald Reagan’s sentimental - goddamnit - feelings for a fellow guy he just happened to like a whole hell of a lot from their Hollywood days, a guy called Rock Hudson who came down with the goddamn thing. And if you don’t think them’s the facts, go look them up. As our story winds down to a close, darlings, in the year 1985, rather than cut AIDS funding by ten million, Ronald Reagan - or more probably Nancy, as Ronnie was already, courtesy of Alzheimer’s, more and more lunching out, though not in public - was upped to one hundred million, and, get this right please, a 270 percent increase in AIDS funding. You see, darlings, all that heaven allows written on the wind by tarnished angels is an imitation of life.” - dialogue from James McCourt’s “Queer Street: Rise and Fall of an American Culture, 1947 - 1985."

Why deal with the truth, when you can demonize a Republican?

Following up on this post from July, California shows that they’re just as delusional and paranoid as Europe when it comes to icky science-type stuff.

Citing ethical concerns, state regulators Wednesday refused to allow sales of the first bio-engineered household pet, a zebra fish that glows fluorescent. GloFish are expected to go on sale everywhere else next month.

California is the only state with a ban on genetically engineered species, and the Fish and Game Commission said it would not exempt the zebra fish from the law even if escaped fish would not pose a threat to the state’s waterways.

“For me it’s a question of values, it’s not a question of science,” said commissioner Sam Schuchat. “I think selling genetically modified fish as pets is wrong."

There you have it, folks.  There’s no real scientific argument, but why go with the science, when you can let pure emotionalism rule your every action?  Also, I’d be willing to bet that this guy is a pro-choice leftie.  So sucking a human fetus out of the womb is perfectly okay, but selling a glowing fish is “a question of values” and “wrong.”

It must be astounding to have priorities so far out of whack.

Steel tariffs, they save American jobs!  Yeah, in the steel industry.  Everyone else gets the shaft.

Dale Congelliere cheered when he learned that President Bush had scrapped the controversial U.S. tariffs on imported steel.

The president of Crenshaw Die & Manufacturing Corp. in Irvine said his raw material costs shot up 35% after the tariffs were imposed in March 2002. He blamed escalating steel prices for making his metal stamping company uncompetitive in some areas, saying they contributed to a painful decision to forgo year-end bonuses for his 80 employees.

See what happened here?  To artificially prop up the price of steel and save a steelworker’s job a metal stamper’s family had to do without their year-end bonuses.  They government should have just confiscated the bonus money from the stampers and given it directly to the steelworkers.  It would have been much more accurate.

Now that the tariffs are ending, Congelliere said he was hopeful about his business, which consumes 6 million pounds of steel a year. “I’m excited,” he said.

From stamping plants throughout Southern California to huge steel-consuming operations such as the joint Toyota-General Motors auto plant in Fremont, many manufacturers in the country’s most trade-dependent state applauded the White House’s decision to repeal the tariffs 16 months before the protections were to end.

The cost of producing a car will now go down, translating in savings that will be passed along to the customer.

Bush’s action was a major victory for California Steel Industries, a Fontana-based steel mill that imports 2 million tons of steel slabs a year.

Vicente Wright, president of the firm, said the cost of steel slabs, which California Steel turns into galvanized pipes and other finished products, jumped two-thirds after the tariffs were imposed.

The cost of pipes jumped two-thirds.  How much did this affect people’s decisions to upgrade their plumbing, or install new pipes in their properties?  By increasing the cost of pipes you reduce the business opportunities for plumbers to practice their trade.  By not driving their plumbing vehicle as much the car won’t have the usual amount of wear-and-tear, resulting in fewer trips to the garage.  Because he’s going on fewer trips for work the plumber won’t be buying as many sandwiches for lunch, which will mean that the sandwich places will be ordering fewer deli supplies.  This in turn effects the warehouse where the sandwich place gets its roast beef and bread.  This affects the baker who made the bread, and the cattlemen who raised the beef.  And so on, and so on, and so on.  You get the idea.  Tariffs in one area can have detrimental effects in countless other sectors of the economy.

"It’s the right decision,” he said. “The market should dictate its own rules."

You bet your ass it should.

On Jay Leno just now:  “It seems that one in five American adults has attention deficit disorder.  Apparently President Bush has it as well.  He doesn’t seem to be able to focus his attention on the deficit.”

If one of the Democrats happens to defeat Bush in 2004 I wouldn’t be surpruised it one of their first courses of action would be to “unilaterally” cede control of the Internet to those oh-so-competent administrators in the UN.

A global summit scheduled in December may result in a proposal to put the Internet under United Nations control — an idea that has met solid resistance from the United States.

“There are some countries that have been very adamant to get their governments to play a bigger role in Internet management,” said Ambassador David Gross, the State Department’s coordinator for international communications and information policy. He is leading the U.S. delegation to the World Summit on the Information Society, scheduled to meet Dec. 10-12 in Geneva, Switzerland.

Gross said that while the U.S. supports greater access for all nations to the Internet, it will resist any efforts to take the Net out of the private sector.

“We will continue to fight hard to ensure that the Internet remains a balanced enterprise among all stakeholders — one of these stakeholders is government, but it is one of many stakeholders,” Gross told Foxnews.com, adding that “it must be private sector-led. That is very important to us."

Horrifying, isn’t it?  US telecommunications companies would just build their own internet, and leave the current one to be destroyed by the UN and their socialist bureaucracy.  Take a look at the Panama Canal.  Jimmy Carter gave it to the Panamanians, and not both ends of the canal are controlled by front companies for the Chinese Communist Party.

The old law of unintended consequences strikes again!

P.S.  5 points to anyone who can explain the title of this post.

You are too stupid to know what to eat, according to Joe Lieberman.

Warning: Jelly doughnuts may be hazardous to your child’s health.

That is what Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, a Democratic presidential candidate, is telling America’s parents as he seeks a federal investigation into the marketing practices of junk-food companies. . . .

As president, Mr. Lieberman said, he would push for three interim moves while the FTC conducts its study:

• Require that junk-food advertisements include nutritional information that somehow warns parents, much like movie ads are accompanied by parental ratings.
• Ask Congress to require restaurant chains to include nutritional information on menus and boards. A bill already pending in Congress would do this.
• Empower the Agriculture Department to set standards for food sold in schools, primarily vending machines. The department regulates lunch menus but sets no limits on what companies can sell children through vending machines.

Mr. Lieberman’s campaign officials said the senator will not define junk food, leaving that to dietary and health care professionals.

Astounding, isn’t it, that the epidemic of obesity in this country began in the late 70s and early 80s, precisely the same time that the US government began demanding food labeling and nutritional information on packaging.  Because of these government guidelines it provided a set of rules by which food like PopTarts can be deemed “heart healthy.” The government labeling itself is misleading, not the fact that the food companies comply with it.

Yet another example of the law of unintended consequences in action, compounded with the liberal belief that the answer to a problem caused by governmental interference is more governmental interference.

Thursday, December 04, 2003

The girls over at Right We Are are exiting the blogging game.  Sorry to see you go, girls!  All the best!

Speaking of France, Instapundit links to this report about France’s aircraft carrier.

Actually, the French had planned to build a second nuclear powered carrier, but they are having so many problems with the first one that they are quite reluctant about building another one. Britain is building two 50,000 ton conventionally powered carriers, at a cost of $2.5 billion each. France would order a third of this class, and bring down the cost of all three a bit. The new French nuclear carrier “Charles de Gaulle” has suffered from a seemingly endless string of problems. The 40,000 ton ship has cost over four billion dollars so far and is slower than the diesel powered carrier it replaced. Flaws in the “de Gaulle” have led it to using the propellers from it predecessor, the “Foch,” because the ones built for “de Gaulle” never worked right. Worse, the nuclear reactor installation was done poorly, exposing the engine crew to five times the allowable annual dose of radiation. There were also problems with the design of the deck, making it impossible to operate the E-2 radar aircraft that are essential to defending the ship and controlling offensive operations. Many other key components of the ship did not work correctly, and the carrier has been under constant repair and modification. The “de Gaulle” took eleven years to build (1988-99) and was not ready for service until late 2000. It’s been downhill ever since.

I link to this for a couple of reasons.  Firstly, I never pass up an opportunity to laugh at the French.  But, more importantly, this illustrates just how delusional France is when it envisions Europe as being a future superpower rival to the United States.  These numb nuts can’t even build an aircraft carrier.  We have, what, 13 or 14 of them?  Our economy simply dwarfs theirs.  In 2050 the average European will be 55, while the average American will be 35.  Their welfare crisis is going to grow and grow and grow, while the death of the baby boomers will ease some of the load on ours.  There is simply no way that a French-led Europe is ever going to be able to come close to competing with the US either economically or militarily.

And that really bothers them.

"I would rather have a German division in front of me than a French one behind me.” --- General George S. Patton

I don’t buy this crap for a second.

One thousand and seven hundred U.S. soldiers have deserted their posts in Iraq, with many of them failing to return to military duty after getting permission to go back to the United States, according to the French weekly magazine Le Canard Enchaine.

The magazine, known for its satires and exposes, said the French intelligence agency obtained the information from what it described an “American colleague.”

Citing a senior French official posted in Washington, the magazine also said that 7,000 U.S. soldiers have left Iraq allegedly due to psychological troubles and other illnesses.

Allow me to remind our valiant French cousins what true cowardice looks like.

ARMISTICE AGREEMENT BETWEEN THE GERMAN HIGH COMMAND OF THE ARMED FORCES AND FRENCH PLENIPOTENTIARIES, COMPIÈGNE, JUNE 22, 1940

Between the chief of the High Command of the armed forces, Col. Gen. [Wilhelm] Keitel, commissioned by the Fuehrer of the German Reich and Supreme Commander in Chief of the German Armed Forces, and the fully authorized plenipotentiaries of the French Government, General [Charles L. C.] Huntziger, chairman of the delegation; Ambassador [Léon] Noel, Rear Admiral [Maurice R.] LeLuc, Army Corps General [Georges] Parisot an Air Force General [Jean-Marie Joseph] Bergeret, the following armistice treaty was agreed upon:

ARTICLE I.

The French Government directs a cessation of fighting against the German Reich in France as well as in French possessions, colonies, protectorate territories, mandates as well as on the seas.

It [the French Government] directs the immediate laying down of arms of French units already encircled by German troops.

ARTICLE IV.

French armed forces on land, on the sea, and in the air are to be demobilized and disarmed in a period still to be set. Excepted are only those units which are necessary for maintenance of domestic order. Germany and Italy will fix their strength. The French armed forces in the territory to be occupied by Germany are to be hastily withdrawn into territory not to be occupied and be discharged. These troops, before marching out, shall lay down their weapons and equipment at the places where they are stationed at the time this treaty becomes effective. They are responsible for orderly delivery to German troops.

I think I’ve made my point.

With a stroke of the pen one of George W. Bush’s biggest mistakes is no more.

Today, I signed a proclamation ending the temporary steel safeguard measures I put in place in March 2002. Prior to that time, steel prices were at 20-year lows, and the U.S. International Trade Commission found that a surge in imports to the U.S. market was causing serious injury to our domestic steel industry. I took action to give the industry a chance to adjust to the surge in foreign imports and to give relief to the workers and communities that depend on steel for their jobs and livelihoods. These safeguard measures have now achieved their purpose, and as a result of changed economic circumstances it is time to lift them.

Note the spin, that the tariffs did their job and are no longer necessary.  A classic example of bovine scatology.  Nonetheless, I’m glad to see them go, no matter what justification the Bush team puts on it.

Sorry for the light posting.  I’m going to our department’s “Holiday Lunch” today.  See ya later this afternoon.

This is going to make the tree-hugging lunatics go insane.

More timber and brush can be cut and cleared with less environmental scrutiny under a law President Bush signed Wednesday. He said the initiative will help protect communities from devastating wildfires.

“This law will not prevent every fire, but it is an important step forward, a vital step to make sure we do our duty to protect our nation’s forests,” said Bush, who stood before rows of wildland firefighters. “We’ll help save lives and property and we’ll help protect our forests from sudden and needless destruction.”

The Healthy Forests Restoration Act is the first major forest management legislation in a quarter-century. It seeks to speed up the harvesting of trees in overgrown woodlands and insect-infested trees on 20 million acres of federal forest land most at risk to wildfires.

It does that by scaling back required environmental studies. Also, it limits appeals and directs judges to act quickly on legal challenges to logging plans.

Once again Bush proposes a controversial policy or law, which is fought tooth and nail by his opponents, and gets it passed anyway.  Not bad for a smirking chimp, huh?

Wednesday, December 03, 2003

And the utter non-story of the day award goes to:

Young Terrance Martin could not let President George W. Bush get away with mistakenly saying he was just 6 years old when he was really 7.

It happened in the Roosevelt Room at the White House on Tuesday when Bush signed the Adoption Promotion Act of 2003, which renews tax credits for adoptions and encourages families to find homes for more than 500,000 children in foster care.

Before signing the legislation Bush talked about the need for more adoptions as he stood with Christopher and Diana Martin and their seven children, four of them adopted.

Terrance interrupted the president in mid-speech under the glaring television lights to point out he was not 6.

“How old are you?” Bush asked.

“Seven,” said Terrance.

“OK, seven,” said Bush, as the crowd chuckled. “I’ll take it up with the fact-checker."

The headline of the article?  Seven-year-old boy corrects Bush.

Oh, that liberal media.

The other day I solicited opinions from readers regarding IP law, and how it relates to both music swapping and pharmaceutical companies.  Following up on that thought, Natalie Solent writes:

Why the decline [in HIV research]? Because the drugs companies no longer believe that they are going to get rich out of AIDS research. In fact they begin to doubt they will get any compensation at all. They read the newspapers, they study the speeches of politicians, and they sense that the popular wind is blowing against them. They think, probably rightly, that governments will either force them to sell at a loss drugs that were developed at huge expense or will bypass them and the law entirely by buying generic copies of patent drugs. Governments, after all, are the ones who can change the law when it is inconvenient. One minute the authorities will come down like a ton of bricks on pirate music or pirate videos. The next minute they will say that it is ‘unacceptable greed’ for companies to actually want to profit from patents on medical discoveries. I accept that there are subtleties and genuine conflicts of principle in the field of intellectual property - but the bottom line is that if pharma companies get nothing but abuse for the work they put in they bloody well won’t put in much more of it. Just as for the slaves, it’s no surprise that if people are forced to work for nothing then they don’t bust a gut.

Exactly my point, but stated much more eloquently.  The same is true with music and movies—if there is no protection of intellectual property then the product will cease to be made, it’s that simple.

(Link via Andrew Sullivan.)

Dear Democrats: Enjoy the election.

U.S. business productivity over the summer rose to heights not seen in two decades, the Labor Department reported today, further evidence of a buoyantly rebounding economy.

The key measurement of efficiency—how much each employee produced per hour—hit an annualized rate of 9.4 percent. The number reflects last month’s upward revision of the nation’s rate of economic production for the same period.

What is happening, many economists believe, is that businesses are watching a spurt in demand but are waiting to see if it will continue before hiring more employees. Meanwhile, they are driving their existing workforces harder to meet that demand, accounting for the productivity boost.

“You can do that for only so long before you exhaust your workers,” said Stephen Stanley, senior market economist for RBS Greenwich Capital. “They are going to have to start hiring. We’re seeing that in the numbers” for employment already, he said.

“It’s pretty amazing,” he said. “When firms see an initial improvement in demand, they look at it a little skeptically. They don’t want to go out and hire a lot of people if it’s just a blip . . . The best of the productivity gains are behind us,” he said, “but the positive side is that businesses will probably start hiring again."

A year from now the economy will be booming, jobs will be plentiful, and the Democrats are going to be stuck with nothing but Iraq.  As I said a few weeks ago:

[M]ost of the Democratic candidates are on the record calling for the repeal of most or all of the Bush tax cuts. Now that the economy is skyrocketing they’re going to have to explain why they want to repeal the very tax cuts that spurred the growth in the economy, or they’re going to have to reverse themselves and admit that they were totally wrong to begin with.

Heh.

I don’t like the sound of this.

The Russian government declared Wednesday that it is “moving toward ratification” of the Kyoto treaty on global warming despite opposition by a top aide to President Vladimir Putin, offering environmentalists renewed hope of enacting the landmark pact. . . .

“There are no decisions about ratification of the Kyoto protocol except that we are moving toward ratification,” Mukhamed Tsikanov, deputy minister for economic development and trade, told a hurriedly organized news conference that was called to offset the impression left by the Putin adviser’s comments. Tsikanov added that “Russia will ratify the protocol if it is proved that it is in our interest.”

Because of a historic quirk in timing, Russia stands to profit from the treaty. The agreement sets the goal of reducing greenhouse emissions from levels of 1990, when the Soviet Union’s factories were pumping out pollutants at far higher rates than the economically weaker Russian economy is today.

As a result, Russia could sell its excess pollution quota to other countries trying to meet Kyoto targets and it wants to cut deals with Japan, Canada or European countries before ratifying it.

This last part shows just how stupid the treaty actually is.  Russia is actually pumping out fewer greenhouse gasses than they were in 1990, yet that is the baseline by which the credit system is to be determined.  Well, the ball is in Putin’s court.  All we can do now is sit back and see what he decides to do.  Or is it?

The White House denied trying to influence “in any way” other nations’ decisions on whether to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on reducing greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming.

US opposition to the pact remains unchanged, but “each nation will reach their own conclusions independently,” spokesman Scott McClellan said, after Russia said it would not ratify the accord in its current form.

Asked about Moscow’s decision, which dealt a severe blow to hopes for the agreement’s ratification, McClellan replied: “It’s not something that we have attempted to influence in any way in terms of other nations’ decision-making”.

Ah, I see how this works.  If America was to lobby Russia not to ratify the treaty that would be bad.  But all the pressure being applied to Russia right now by the world’s left-wing asshats, America-haters, and environmentalist lunatics, that’s perfectly acceptable.

Whew!  I feel safer now!

In the past two years, the Department of Defense has discharged 37 linguists from the Defense Language Institute for being gay. Like Glover, many studied Arabic. At a time of heightened need for intelligence specialists, 37 linguists were rendered useless because of their homosexuality.

I will refer you, gentle reader, to my thoughts on this subject from last year.

When evaluating any policy a cost/benefit analysis must be performed. For example, consider your standard infantryman. They are in plentiful supply. If the “benefit” of the military’s policy against homosexuals means that a few of them get discharged the cost of doing so is not going to hurt the operational readiness of the armed forces, nor the national security of the nation. With Arabic-speakers, however, it’s a different situation entirely. Arabic linguists who can both pass the security checks and have the desire to work for the US government are in drastically short supply. The “benefit” of getting rid of these men, under these circumstances, is far outweighed by the cost of their departure, in terms of operational readiness and national security.

Assuming the ban on gays in the military is necessary, shouldn’t there also be a provision that the president can, in the interests of national security, use his discretion to override the ban? This identical argument was made in the case of the homeland security bill, and if the logic of the argument rang true under those circumstances it, in my mind, rings true here. Bush could really win a lot of converts if he came out publicly and stated as much, and had these men reinstated.

The GOP won big by rightfully portraying their Democrat counterparts as being more concerned about union bosses than national security. The Democrats can very easily make that same case in 2004, especially if there is another al Qaeda terrorist attack. We now know that there were intelligence intercepts referring to 9/11 that were not decoded until days after the attacks, due in part to a lack of people who could decode them. Will the same situation occur again? Only time will tell.

Indeed.

Following up on this post, there’s a great column on the death of Kyoto in today’s National Post.  Some highlights:

Even Canada, the Boy Scout of Kyoto ratification under Prime Minister Jean Chrétien and David Anderson, his Environment Minister, has abandoned the treaty in all practical respects. Canada cannot and will not meet its original Kyoto carbon reduction targets. And yesterday Paul Martin added to the shakiness of Canada’s support with the observation that Canada still does not have a plan in place, even though the country has spent $3.6-billion working up schemes to control greenhouse emissions.

Standing on the firmest logical ground not always held by Mr. Chrétien, Mr. Martin said: “You need a plan to determine whether you can meet the targets.” Canada, he said, had not yet developed that plan.

I’m shocked, I tell you… shocked! You want to know what is happening in Canada, my friends?  A huge game of climate poker.  With the US not ratifying Kyoto it cast doubt onto whether it would ever get enacted.  So countries like Canada voted to ratify the treaty to placate their environmentalist lunatic voters, but didn’t do anything to implement it.  Now that it looks like Kyoto is dead they can shrug their shoulders and say, “Hey, we tried.”

The U.S. Senate recently handily defeated a bill sponsored by Joe Lieberman and John McCain that would have introduced Kyoto-style mechanisms to control carbon emissions.

I had not heard of this.  I like a lot of what McCain says, but it’s crap like this and his campaign finance reform legislation that would prevent me from ever supporting him as a candidate for president.

Whatever Russian voters think of Kyoto, they may know a thing or two about the need for economic growth and their country’s long road to catch up with the West. The country needs growth rates of up to 10% a year to make real progress, and endless dickering over Kyoto emissions and credits with UN officials and global climate regimes is widely seen as a growth killer.

President Putin has made this point on numerous occasions, each of them dismissed by Kyoto proponents as politicking and grandstanding. But he has been remarkably consistent. “Our experts are concerned that the ratification will lead to problems which will restrict economic growth,” he said in early November. “We cannot accept such a position.”

The same theme was struck more clearly yesterday by his economic advisor in Moscow. If Russia adopts Kyoto emissions targets, Mr. Illarionov estimates growth will have to be limited to 2.5% a year. But if Russia wants to double its GDP, he said, it must have 7% growth per year for 10 years.

To grow, Russia needs ever greater volumes of energy. A recent Financial Post commentary reported Russia’s greenhouse gas emissions increased 13% a year in recent years. Under current economic growth objectives, considered necessary to lift Russia out of Third World status, Russia’s carbon emissions by 2008 could be 6% higher than they were in 1990. Russia’s official Kyoto target envisioned emissions at 20% below 1990 by 2008.

Something’s got to give here, and Mr. Putin clearly isn’t going to let it come out of his country’s growth. If there’s an election issue here, that might be a good one for Mr. Putin. What do we want: Kyoto or growth?

The Greens don’t care much about growth, because that helps everyone.  They want everyone to be poor, so that government can take money from the rich and redistribute it to them.  But it’s absolutely true that implementing Kyoto will destroy economic growth while doing virtually nothing to address climate change (not that there’s anything to be worried about there, anyway).

John Hawkins over at Right Wing News has posted the results of the 2nd Annual Warblogger Awards, which I participated in.  Surprisingly I got an honorable mention in the “Best Blog Overall” with four votes.  Cool!

Now this is a movement I can really get behind.

FDR, get off the dime!

That’s the command from a handful of Southern California Republican congressmen involved in an effort to replace Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s image on the dime with Ronald Reagan’s.

Rep. Mark Souder, R-Ind., introduced the legislation that would boot the Democratic architect of the New Deal in the Great Depression from all future 10-cent coins to make way for the conservative icon.

“It is particularly fitting to honor the Freedom President on this particular piece of coinage because, as has been pointed out, President Reagan was wounded under the left arm by a bullet that had ricocheted and flattened to the size of a dime,” Souder wrote to colleagues in rounding up support for his bill.

About 80 lawmakers, all Republicans, have co-sponsored the Ronald Reagan Dime Act, including Reps. Elton Gallegly of Thousand Oaks; Howard P. “Buck” McKeon of Santa Clarita; Bill Thomas of Bakersfield; and David Dreier of Glendora.

“FDR believed the federal government should spend your dimes. Ronald Reagan believed the people should spend their own dimes. I think it’s clear that the dimes in your pocket should bear Ronald Reagan’s image,” Gallegly said in a statement explaining his support of the bill.

It’s about damn time we get Ronaldus Maximus on an American coin.  And getting rid of Franklin Delano “Father of the Welfare System” Roosevelt would be an appropriate touch.

(Link via The Angry Clam.)

Howard Dean, being interviewed by Chris Matthews.

Iran is a more complex problem because the problem support as clearly verifiable as it is in North Korea. Also, we have less-fewer levers much the key, I believe, to Iran is pressure through the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union is supplying much of the equipment that Iran, I believe, most likely is using to set itself along the path of developing nuclear weapons. We need to use that leverage with the Soviet Union and it may require us to buying the equipment the Soviet Union was ultimately going to sell to Iran to prevent Iran from them developing nuclear weapons. That is also a country that must not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons much the key to all this is foresight. Let’s act now so we don’t have to have a confrontation which may result in force, which would be very disastrous in the case of North Korea and might be disastrous in the case of Iran.

Can you imagine for a second what the media in this country would be saying if Bush had uttered this rambling, incoherent nonsense? Had referred to Russia as the Soviet Union, a country that hasn’t existed since 1991?  But since it’s the Golden Boy of the American Left he gets a free pass.

Oh, that liberal media.

Update: Andrew Sullivan comments:

I’m on the road so forgive me for not elaborating further on Dean’s “Soviet Union” gaffe. No, it’s not the end of the world. But it’s hard to come down hard on the president’s linguistic difficulties while ignoring Dean’s. But what is serious is that Dean seems to think that we can prevent proliferation by buying the stuff from North Korea, Russia, or whoever. But what’s to stop rogue nuke states selling to Iran and to us? Is Dean that naive? And isn’t it true that the real source of Iran’s nuclear material has recently been Pakistan anyway? My bottom line: I don’t care if a presidential candidate commits a gaffe in foreign policy. I do care that his instinct is to buy off enemies, rather than confront them; and that he’s not on the ball about where the real threats are coming from. Dean is making me more nervous about his foreign policy ideas, not less. Hillary is far smarter (if predictably slimy).

Absolutely.

A reader emails.

Quick question and some comments.  You’ve repeatedly discussed your aversion to downloading copyrighted music on both economic and moral grounds.  You also mentioned that a few days ago you went to see Bad Santa.  While you were waiting, you snuck into The Cat in the Hat and caught 20 minutes of it and decided it was a lousy movie and that you were glad you didn’t waste any money on it.  Why do you consider what you did to be different then someone who downloads a few songs from an album to sample?  You purchased the right to see movie A and decided to see some of movie B, though you had not purchased the right to see movie B.  You effectively “stole” from the both the theater showing movie B and the creators of movie B. 

Full Disclosure:  I’m personally torn on the issue.  I’ve sampled much of the music I’ve purchased recently by downloading from the internet.  I’ve been able to seek out artists that have interested me but were not available through alternative “free” music sources such as radio or television.  I try as often as possible to purchase the albums of music that I download and enjoy, but will not pay for music that I download and decide is lousy.  One of the issues in both the downloading of music and your sneaking into a movie theater involve asymmetries in information.  Normally when we purchase something, we have some idea of whether we actually want what we’re purchasing.  However, there is a measure of risk involved when purchasing movie tickets or a full album.

I find little moral or economic difference between your movie sampling experience and my music downloading experience.  In fact, you “stole” 20 minutes of the film and then further added to the “offense” by publishing a negative review of the movie.  I’m curious what your thoughts are on this matter and hope you can respond.  I understand though if you do not have the time or interest.

This is a good point, and I’m more than happy to address it.  I really don’t have any problem with someone downloading a few songs to sample.  I’ve admitted that I download songs all the time, that numerous times I have bought CDs because of those downloads, that I often don’t buy the songs I download, and that I think downloading music without paying for it is stealing.  (As it stands right now I have 4,725 songs on my computer.  A huge, huge portion of these are rips of CDs I own, and 530 of them are from the Apple Music Store.  The rest are downloads.)

I do think that there is a huge distinction to be drawn between downloading a song as a preview and downloading songs to keep without paying for them.  There’s not a lot of practical difference between downloading a song to preview it than there is borrowing a CD from a friend to give it a listen to decide whether you want to purchase it.  What I object to in regards to music downloading is the justification that people provide for doing it, to try and somehow convince themselves and others that it’s not really stealing.  This attitude is nothing but a dilution of the property rights of the creator, and I don’t think that this is in any way a good thing for our country and our economy.

As far as going into the movie goes, I look at that like the taping of records or the radio was ten or twenty years ago.  Because I had to drive to the movies, actually purchase a ticket, and go into the theater, there are natural physical constraints that limit just how much my actions are going to affect the bottom line of the theater.  Now, imagine what would happen if 500,000 people showed up at the movie theater, walked in without paying, then sat and watched the whole film.  That is more or less what is happening in regards to online movie piracy.  Another distinction is that I’m not going to somehow sit here and try to legally justify sneaking in to see The Cat in the Hat.

I think that your attitude is more or less similar to mine.  Music consumers want to be able to (a) preview songs before they buy them, and (b) not be forced to buy a whole album full of crap for one or two good songs.  This is a legitimate market force, and the music industry is reacting to this demand, through businesses like AMS, Napster, and so on.  But just because there is a legitimate market desire does not provide justification for the large scale theft of music.

You want to know why kids can’t learn in school?  Because schools are filled with adults that are this ignorant.

A 7-year-old boy was scolded and forced to write “I will never use the word `gay’ in school again” after he told a classmate about his lesbian mother, the American Civil Liberties Union alleged Monday.

Second-grader Marcus McLaurin was waiting for recess Nov. 11 at Ernest Gaullet Elementary School when a classmate asked about Marcus’ mother and father, the ACLU said in a complaint.

Marcus responded he had two mothers because his mother is gay. When the other child asked for explanation, Marcus told him: “Gay is when a girl likes another girl,” according to the complaint.

A teacher who heard the remark scolded Marcus, telling him “gay” was a “bad word” and sending him to the principal’s office. The following week, Marcus had to come to school early and repeatedly write: “I will never use the word `gay’ in school again."

Un-fucking-believable.  It kills me to have to be on the same side as the ACLU, but this is beyond ridiculous.

More on San Francisco’s wino crisis in today’s Crapicle.  Some highlights:

San Francisco has become a city of political and social enablers, as psychologists would put it.There aren’t enough programs or housing to help all of the 8,600 to 15,000 homeless get off the street—and there haven’t been since the crisis began in the early 1980s. Most of the chronically homeless get just enough to survive on the streets, but not enough to move into a healthier life.

Over 20 years, a politically accepted, coordinated, consistent policy has never emerged to solve the city’s problem with hard-core homelessness—now the worst in the United States. The city fails to get untold millions in federal, state or private grants that other cities are able to capture because it doesn’t have a comprehensive plan.

“The city has no shared vision of what results it is trying to achieve, and the issue is so politically charged that its officials and administrators cannot agree on what the city is trying to do,” read a scathing report issued last year by the office of the controller on San Francisco’s homeless policy. The city can’t even determine how many homeless people it has, the report said, or compile enough data about who they are.

Note the tone of the article: the city just hasn’t come up with a “plan” for dealing with it.  It was their plan that created the problem in the first place, but they can’t seem to admit that.  They haven’t been able to get grants, as if giving bums more money is the solution to a problem created by giving bums money.

The situation evolved out of the city’s liberal character and temperate weather, both of which made it attractive to drifters. A bad economy, the high cost of housing and decades-old cuts in support for the mentally ill made it worse.

Not to mention the $400 in free cash, and the fact that these people have absolutely no desire to help themselves.

The only solution is providing the homeless with “supportive housing,” meaning a room and enough on-site counseling to cure the substance abuse, mental illness or joblessness that rendered them homeless in the first place.

Not to mention immediately ceasing the cash handouts that enable their lifestyle.

Mary Concannon and Michael Mee, visiting from Ireland in July, were panhandled six times in six blocks on their way to shop for baskets at Pearl Art and Craft Supply near Sixth and Market streets. They also watched crack cocaine dealers hawking and smoking drugs in the open.

“Oh, my gosh, it’s so amazing,’’ said a shaken Concannon. “Isn’t there something anyone can do?"

What these tourists failed to realize is that this is a city that does more than any other city in America, and they have the highest rates of homelessness.  The problem is caused by people “doing something,” not by people doing nothing.

Read the whole thing.

Another socialized health care success!

PARIS The French government, criticized for reacting too slowly to a deadly August heat wave, has urged hospitals in Paris to take swift emergency measures to fight an epidemic of flu and gastroenteritis. More than half a million people in France, including many children, have contracted flu, gastroenteritis or bronchitis in recent weeks in an unusually early winter outbreak, and experts say the epidemic has yet to peak. Media coverage of crowded hospital waiting rooms and off-duty health workers being recalled to cope with the influx may have exacerbated the crisis, prompting more people to bypass their doctors and head straight to the hospital. ‘‘The health authorities have added beds and made staff come back to work. They are all scared stiff,’’ said Patrick Pelloux, head of the Emergency Hospital Doctors Association. ‘‘We are in a permanent state of crisis, so as soon as there is a problem, the system explodes,’’ he told the daily newspaper Libération. The situation comes as France battles to plug a gaping hole in its health budget. Pelloux and other doctors have criticized the government for failing to improve hospital resources since the August heat wave, which killed 15,000 people, most of them elderly. [Emphasis added]

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again.  The only thing socialized heath care accomplishes is providing the same level of shitty service to everyone.

Tuesday, December 02, 2003

Score another one for Arnie.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger scored a major political victory Monday, as the state Assembly followed the Senate’s lead and repealed a controversial law allowing undocumented immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses.

The law was passed just three months ago with the support of recalled Gov. Gray Davis. Schwarzenegger made repealing it a key promise in his campaign to replace Davis in the October 7 recall vote.

“This is one of those rare moments when legislators recognized the will of the people of California and did the right thing,” said Sen. Rico Oller, a San Andreas Republican, who sponsored the repeal bill. “The repeal ... was one of several campaign promises made by Governor Schwarzenegger, and I’m pleased to have played a role in making that happen.”

Oller’s spokesman, Bill Bird, said the repeal was “the first piece of major Republican legislation to get out of the state of California in five years.”

“It’s a unique moment, and I sincerely hope there are many more,” he said.

I have a feeling there will be.  Arnold’s got the momentum.

Ohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohplease...

Ralph Nader has not yet decided whether to make another run for the White House, but he’s authorized a new exploratory committee to raise money for a potential bid.

The Nader 2004 Presidential Exploratory Committee was formed in late October as part of the consumer activist’s effort to gauge support for a run, said Theresa Amato, a committee director.

“He is using it to test the waters,’’ said Amato, who served as Nader’s national campaign manager when he ran for president on the Green Party ticket in 2000. She said the organization is part of Nader’s overall strategy of “talking to people, calling people, seeing what level of support there is.’’

The new committee also has a Web site under construction, www.naderexplore04.org, which Amato said would debut “very soon’’ and play a key role in raising money.

Nader has said he would decide by the end of the year, but Amato said Tuesday an announcement is more likely to occur early next year. Nader did not return phone calls seeking comment.

Anything that will steal votes away from the Democrats is okay in my book.  Go Ralph, go!

So I took the Deathmobile in this morning.  I told the guy that I suspected that the problem was going to end up being a short in my steering column.  Well, I just got called by the dealership, and the problem is indeed a short in the streeting column.  The problem is that on my particular model the part they have to replace controls all the circuitry, and it’s about $650.  So add in a couple hundred bucks labor, plus tax, plus whatever the hell else and I’m looking at a grand or so.

Fuck.

Update: Total damage:  $782.34.  If you were on my Christmas list I wouldn’t expect much this year. :)

Following up on this post, it looks like Russia has officially decided not to ratify the treaty.  The world’s socialists, environmentalist lunatics, and America-haters are all gathering and praying that it isn’t so.

Russia, whose vote will decide the fate of the landmark Kyoto environmental pact, will not ratify it because doing so would threaten its economic growth, Kremlin economic adviser Andrei Illarionov said Tuesday.

But a U.N. official said Illarionov’s views were not an official rejection of the treaty, and environmentalists said Russia’s industrial output had fallen so far that pollution limits set by the pact would have no impact on its recovery.

“In its current form, this protocol cannot be ratified,” Illarionov, who advises President Vladimir Putin on economic issues, told reporters.

The treaty aims to cut emissions of the gases responsible for global warming. Countries responsible for 55 percent of emissions must ratify the pact for it to come into force but Washington has pulled out, leaving Russia with the casting vote.

“The Kyoto protocol places significant limitations on the economic growth of Russia,” Illarionov said after a meeting between Putin and European businessmen.

But the United Nations, which has gathered ministers and experts from around the world at a conference in Milan to discuss climate change, said the comments did not amount to an official rejection.

“This is a senior adviser to the president, it is not a formal rejection like we saw with America,” said Michael Williams, a U.N. climate talks spokesman. “We remain optimistic that...Russia will ratify."

Sorry, junk science kooks and Watermelon Party extremists!  You’re just going to have to sit back, watch the US and Russia belch out greenhouse gasses, and notice in 20 or 30 years that all your global-disaster predictions have failed to come true.

Update: Not so fast, says Jean Chretien.

The Kyoto environmental accord is in jeopardy according to a senior adviser in the Russian government, but not according to Prime Minister Jean Chrétien.

Chrétien said Putin had told him he intended to sign the accord.

“I’m practically convinced the Russians will sign the accord,” Chretien told reporters on Tuesday.

Putin is not a stupid man.  He’s not going to hamstring the Russian economy before it even has a chance to take off.

This is the inevitable end result of the sexual liberation of the 1960s.

[Washington D.C.] health officials, who every day confront the nation’s highest incidence of AIDS, will soon install plain white condom dispensers in select government offices and begin distributing the contraceptives for free.

The goal is to place more than 50 dispensers in offices frequented by the public, including the D.C. Housing Authority and the departments of human services, motor vehicles and public works, among others.

“They’re going to be as common as water fountains,” Ivan O. Torres, interim director of the city’s HIV/AIDS Administration, said of the dispensers. “The mayor is committed to this. . . . This is no longer something to be ashamed of. It affects all of us.”

City officials, who announced the measure on World AIDS Day yesterday, said they know of no other city or state that has distributed prophylactics so broadly from within government buildings.

The condoms are intended for the public and not for city workers, Torres said. They will not be displayed prominently in lobbies but they will be readily available.

The problem here is the total lack of any sort of fundamental morality, compounded by the “if it feels good, do it” mentality that pervades liberal thought.  Look, I’m not a prude by any means, but the problem here is caused by people sticking their dicks in any available hole, not the lack of the availability of condoms.  You know how the liberals always whine about how we need to attack the “root causes” of crime, or the “root causes” of terrorism?  Well, they won’t dare look for the root causes of AIDS transmission, because the root cause is liberalism itself.

I wonder how this is going to turn out.

Art school dropout Odai Rasheed is directing Iraq’s first feature-length movie in more than a decade with film he “liberated” from Saddam Hussein’s culture ministry after the dictator’s fall.

The subject: the fateful spring days when the Americans invaded and the regime collapsed. It’s a time of shame felt by Baghdadis over the looting of the city and joy mixed with pain from being liberated and occupied at once.

“Where is Baghdad in the midst of this real-life nightmare and dream at the same time?” Rasheed, 30, muses in an introduction to the film. “What is it like for the city’s streets to feel pain under the weight of the tanks?”

The film reels that Rasheed and his friends found in the ministry’s storeroom were past their expiration date. Hence the film’s name, “Gheir Saleh,” or “Under Exposure.”

“Gheir Saleh” explores the idea of death through the lives of three friends—Hassan, a movie director; Moataz, a cello player dying of cancer; and Maysoun, a postgraduate archaeology student with whom both men are in love—in the days immediately after Saddam’s ouster.

“What’s Baghdad like today?” Moataz asks Hassan in one scene. “Horror, Baghdad is not Baghdad anymore,” Hassan replies. “There is pain in every meter you walk. The freedom we wanted for years came, but it’s mired in blood and dirt."

This could go two ways.  It could be a stark, honest dramatization of what it is like to live under a brutal dictatorial regime, followed by a bombing campaign, and subsequent occupation.  These are situations that the vast majority of people in the west have no experience with, and I think that this film could be an interesting exploration of these issues—the joy at finally being free coupled with the shame of knowing you couldn’t (or wouldn’t) do it yourself.  I just hope that it doesn’t turn into a blatantly anti-American screed, designed to impress and play to the Hollywood left, because the only reason this guy is able to make this film in the first place is because of American and allied blood.

Sorry about the light posting this morning.  I have to take the Deathmobile into the shop at 8:30.

After my crappy day with my near death experience in the car, I had one good thing happen.  I called my mom today, and my brother happened to be over at her house, and he answered the phone.  He asked me if I had bought my ticket home for Christmas yet, and I said no.  He travels internationally for work, and has about a zillion air miles on every major airline.  He said that he had 48,000 miles on United that he had to use by January 1 or he was going to lose them, and asked if I wanted him to get me a ticket.  Of course I said yes.  So, not only did he get me the ticket, but he had enough miles to get me first class both ways.

Sweet.  I had to pay a $10 processing fee.  Not a bad price for two first class tickets. :)

Monday, December 01, 2003

We’ve had numerous discussions on this site regarding the downloading of MP3 files.  Many people do not regard it as theft, while I most certainly do.  So I’m quite curious to find out what those of you who justify song-swapping think about this.

The World Health Organisation yesterday predicted that Aids drug prices will drop to levels once thought impossibly low, as it rolled out its new strategy to get treatment to three million in the developing world by 2005.

The cost of Aids treatment in affluent countries where pharmaceutical companies have patents on their medicines is more than $10,000 (£5,800) a year.

Copies made by generics companies in India where the same patent rules do not apply are now being sold to African nations for around $300 a year. Launching the WHO plan in Nairobi, assistant secretary-general Jack Chow said: “We expect it to fall to less than half of that by the end of 2005. That is about a dollar a day at present, falling to 50 cents a day or less. In a world that spends billions of dollars on cosmetics, it is not a great deal of money.” . . .

The prices of Aids drugs have tumbled, thanks to grassroots activists in South Africa and elsewhere demanding drugs to keep people with HIV alive. The pharmaceutical companies came under pressure to drop prices and stop trying to block the generics companies from, as they see it, stealing their inventions and making cheaper copies. [Emphasis added]

So, to recap, American pharmaceutical corporations spend millions of dollars to develop a drug.  Indian pharmaceutical companies, which have different rules covering the production of generics, take the formula and reproduce it, completely eliminating the ability of the American company to reap profit from its investment.  Is this stealing, or is this simply yet another example of IP law gone wrong?  If you should be able to legally redistribute unlimited copies of a song you happened to purchase, why should India not be able to take the work product of an American company and make unlimited copies of it?  And what will the long-term effects on AIDS drugs be?  Should US companies be expected to pour R&D money into developing new drugs, knowing full well that India is going to turn around and steal their IP?

Update: Here’s another wrinkle for the discussion.  Pirate copies of Microsoft’s new operating system, Longhorn, are available for sale on the streets of Malaysia.  (Knowing China as I do, I’ll be willing to bet it’s all over Shanghai, too.) Now, does Microsoft have a right to their IP?  These are obviously developer CDs, given out at MS’s last developer conference.  So, since MS gave the OS to users, does this give the users the right to freely redistribute the software, even though it violates the terms and conditions agreed to as a prerequisite of the exchange?

We all knew this was going to happen, I’m just surprised it happened so quickly.

A lawyer for a Utah man with five wives argued Monday that his bigamy convictions should be thrown out following a Supreme Court decision decriminalizing gay sex.

The nation’s high court in June struck down a Texas sodomy law, ruling that what gay men and women do in the privacy of their homes is no business of government.

It’s no different for polygamists, argued Tom Green’s attorney, John Bucher, to the Utah Supreme Court.

“It doesn’t bother anyone, (and with) no compelling state interest in what you do in your own home with consenting adults, you should be allowed to do so,” Bucher said.

The gay marriage issue is going to get ugly before it’s resolved, specifically because of potential side-effects like this.

There’s weirdness afoot at the United Nations.

A body was found inside United Nations headquarters on Monday, a U.N. spokesman said. U.N. security and the New York police department are investigating the matter.

The U.N. spokesman said the person had been shot, and that the body was discovered inside the building’s third-floor lounge at about 11:30 a.m. He declined to give any details on the deceased person pending notification of the family.

The spokesman, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the world body considered the shooting an “isolated incident.’’

Please allow me to remind you, gentle reader, of the piece of art that sits outside the UN building in New York.

I would also ask you to take a look at this post.  It seems that guns are bad, unless they’re being used to protect Kofi Annan.  Or kill anonymous people inside the UN building, it would seem.

So I’m driving home for lunch as I do every day.  It’s raining, cold, and wet here today.  I’m driving along at the speed limit when all of a sudden my car lurches forward.  My cruise control decided to engage even though it was turned off.  I popped the car in neutral and coasted to the shoulder.  The engine was revving like crazy, as was my heart, which was about 240 bpm.  I turned the car off, waited a few seconds, and turned it back on again.  Everything seemed fine, so I continued home.  As I pulled into my apartment I felt the cruise control kick in again.  So I won’t be going back to work, I’ll be taking the damn car into the shop.

Just what I wanted to piss away $1,000 on right before Christmas.  Fuck.

Gee, guess what?  The British anti-war movement is dominated by communists and socialists.

The peace movement could be destroyed by the takeover of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the Stop the War coalition by Trotskyist groups and the Communist party, according to allegations circulated by a leading campaigner.

The claims have been made by Jimmy Barnes, the veteran leftwing secretary of the trade union CND movement. He has warned in a paper sent to the campaign’s national council and the trade union CND executive that “CND itself is now a small divided group with little future, unless there is a change”.

Mr Barnes claims the Communist party and Socialist Action sought control of CND in order to use the campaign as a base from which to exert influence over the Stop the War coalition, the loose body which organised the massive protests against the war in Iraq. Mr Barnes asserts the coalition is increasingly dominated by another Trotskyist group, the Socialist Workers party.

Referring to the last CND conference, he claimed “the antagonism we saw at the conference is derivative of the aggressive and sectarian behaviour of those involved in the Stop the War coalition who strove hard to control and dominate the anti-war protest movement”.

He claims CND officer positions are “now dominated by people associated with these two political groups, although in practice the groups act as one”. The new leadership were so polarised from the membership that the campaign could no longer function as a forum for debate.

He claims both CND and the Stop the War movement believe the political opposition to the Iraq war is “generalisable into a political reaction against the New Labour project overall”. Mr Barnes partially agrees with that position, but warns that the million plus anti-Iraq war marchers “have not been asked about this alternative political project and are unlikely to feel much affinity for it”.

He also alleges that some in the Stop the War coalition have compromised on issues such as gay rights and even anti-semitism to retain the support of some British Muslims.

What?  You mean leftists are willing to compromise with thugs, tyrants, and dictators in order to do anything to see the west lose?  I’m shocked, I tell you, shocked! Leftist anti-semites?  Perish the thought.

Seriously, this comes as a surprise to no right-thinking person.  I refer you to Frederick Forsyth’s excellent letter of a couple of weeks ago.

The British left intermittently erupts like a pustule upon the buttock of a rather good country. Seventy years ago it opposed mobilisation against Adolf Hitler and worshipped the other genocide, Josef Stalin.

It has marched for Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Andropov. It has slobbered over Ceausescu and Mugabe. It has demonstrated against everything and everyone American for a century. Broadly speaking, it hates your country first, mine second.

And now it can march for Osama and Saddam.  How proud they must be.

This is alternately humorous and horrifying.

It was Saddam Hussein’s last weapons deal—and it did not go exactly as he and his generals imagined.

For two years before the American invasion of Iraq, Saddam’s sons, generals and front companies were engaged in lengthy negotiations with North Korea, according to computer files discovered by international inspectors and the accounts of Bush administration officials. The officials now say they believe that those negotiations—mostly conducted in neighboring Syria, apparently with the knowledge of the Syrian government—were not merely to buy a few North Korean missiles.

Instead, the goal was to obtain a full production line to manufacture, under an Iraqi flag, the North Korean missile system, which would be capable of hitting American allies and bases around the region, according to the Bush administration officials.

As war with the United States approached, though, the Iraqi files show that Saddam discovered what American officials say they have known for nearly a decade now: that Kim Jong Il, the North Korean leader, is less than a fully reliable negotiating partner.

In return for a $10 million down payment, Saddam appears to have gotten nothing.

So while it is kind of funny that Saddam got screwed by Lil’ Kim, it shows that he wasn’t playing around about building up his weapons systems.  Should we have waited until he had a whole fleet of missiles, armed and ready to go, to justify an “imminent” threat?  You be the judge.

Bush has seen the light.

The Bush administration has decided to repeal most of its 20-month-old tariffs on imported steel to head off a trade war that would have included foreign retaliation against products exported from politically crucial states, administration and industry sources said yesterday.

The officials would not say when President Bush will announce the decision but said it is likely to be this week. The officials said they had to allow for the possibility that he would make some change in the plan, but a source close to the White House said it was “all but set in stone.”

European countries had vowed to respond to the tariffs, which were ruled illegal by the World Trade Organization, by imposing sanctions on up to &dol;2.2 billion in exports from the United States, beginning as soon as Dec. 15. Japan issued a similar threat Wednesday. The sources said Bush’s aides concluded they could not run the risk that the European Union would carry out its threat to impose sanctions on orange juice and other citrus products from Florida, motorcycles, farm machinery, textiles, shoes, and other products.

Bush advisers said they were aware the reversal could produce a backlash against him in several steel-producing states of the Rust Belt—including Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio. That arc of states has been hit severely by losses in manufacturing jobs and will be among the most closely contested in his reelection race.

The sources said that Bush’s aides agonized over the options to present to the president and that they considered it one of the diciest political calculations of this term. A source involved in the negotiations said White House aides looked for some step short of a full repeal that would satisfy the European Union but concluded that it was “technically possible but practically impossible."

I will refer you to my comments from a few months ago.

Honestly, I think Bush could score a lot of points with his core constituence (i.e. people like me) if he got up there and said, “Look. At the time we enacted these tariffs they sounded like a good way to help protect the American steel industry, but things simply haven’t worked out that way. We’ve actually hurt the economy by causing jobs in other areas to be lost, industries that depend on steel. And these tariffs haven’t gone over well with the rest of the world, either. The World Trade Organization has found these tariffs to be in violation of international agreements. So, I’ve decided to rescind the tariffs. When you look at the balance sheet the costs to keeping them in place are greater than the benefits, and keeping them in place simply isn’t good for the country."

Be sure and check out this post, too.

A couple of weeks ago I blogged on attempts by individuals to sell components for a “dirty bomb” to terrorists.  Well, here’s another example.

Inside Makeria’s boxes were two capsules of highly radioactive metals—strontium and cesium—of a type that terrorism experts say can be used in a dirty bomb, a device that spews radiation but does not trigger a nuclear explosion. A third container held a vial of brown liquid that Georgian police identified as the substance used in mustard gas, one of the earliest chemical weapons. Only later did police learn Makeria’s role in the affair. He was a courier for criminals trading in components and materials for weapons of mass destruction.

In a scheme still not fully understood, the boxes were delivered to Makeria by another Georgian, a man with a history of drug offenses. Makeria’s job was to carry the boxes by train from Tbilisi to Adzharia province, a troubled enclave on Georgia’s southwestern frontier. From there, police believe, they were to be transported by other couriers across the border into Turkey or perhaps even Iran, for delivery to an expectant customer. The buyer’s identity remains unknown.

What is certain is that the Georgians who sought to profit from selling components of a dirty bomb are far from unique.

There have been dozens of cases of trafficking in radiological materials over the past three years, along with what some weapons experts describe as a disturbing new trend. While most sellers of such materials have traditionally been amateurs—opportunists and lone actors in search of easy profits—authorities are now seeing a surge of interest among criminal groups. In a string of incidents from the Caucasus and Eastern Europe to West Africa and South America, gangs have stalked and stolen radiological devices to sell for profit or to use in crimes ranging from extortion to murder.

It’s going to happen, folks.  And those setting it off will feel emboldened by doing so, so much so that they will pursue a full scale nuke.  I figure I’ve got 40-60 years left on this planet, and I am positively convinced that I’ll see that full nuke detonation in a major western city sometime before I kick the bucket.  The dirty bomb will probably happen in the next year or two, if not sooner.

Earlier today I blogged on how liberal activism (or more specifically, its motivations) meet the standard to be called a delusional disorder.  And now, proving my point, we get this tale through Drudge, proving to the world why he rules.

Top Hollywood activists and intellectuals are planning to gather this week in Beverly Hills for an event billed as “Hate Bush,’ the DRUDGE REPORT has learned!

Laurie David [wife of SEINFELD creator Larry David] has sent out invites to the planned Tuesday evening meeting at the Hilton with the bold heading: “Hate Bush 12/2 - Event”

The message reads:

“This is the most important meeting you can attend to prevent the advancement of the current extremist right wing agenda. Do not miss this meeting. This will be a high-level briefing to discuss the strategies… to affect what happens next November.”

Political heavies Harold Ickes, Former Deputy White House Chief of Staff and Campaign Manager for the ¹96 Clinton/Gore re-elect, and Ellen Malcolm, Founder of Emily’s List, a political action committee that elects pro-choice, Democratic women, will chair the gathering.

Names included on the “HATE BUSH” invite, obtained by DRUDGE, include:

Go to the site to read the names.  Nobody of any real great import is there, which makes this all the more pathetic. 

The characteristic common to all delusional orders is “the view that the world is a hostile place, filled with persecutors and conspirators, a world where the writer holds a special place as victim, savior, or both.” Once again, this fits this Hollywood Asshat pow-wow.  They view the world as a hostile place, that Bush is the one making it so, and thus they must use their (minor) celebrity to overcome the shackles of their Ashcroft victimhood and become the saviors of America by doing all they can to oust Bush, thus achieving the exaltation of mere lesser liberals. 

Like a glove, my friends.