Popular left-winger blogger Matthew Yglesias takes note of an anti-French book advertised at National Review and opines that:

"I don't even know what this obsession with France-bashing is supposed to be about at this point. During early 2003 it was a useful way to distract the public from the serious questions being raised about the advisability of invading Iraq by stigmatizing all opposition to the war as objectively pro-French (and, of course, pro-Saddam), but there doesn't even seem to be a cynical purpose to it at this point. It's just the descent of conservatism into pure ressentiment (a French word, yes, but it comes to us in English through the German Nietzsche, so...) divorced from any real aims."

This is Hilarious AND ironic!

If you ask a liberal to expound on what's wrong with America, they can reel off an endless litany of complaints. Heck, the "Blame American first" mentality is so entrenched on the left that some of them, like Noam Chomsky, can even make a comfortable living off of kvetching about America.

Yet, the idea that conservatives might be as hostile to France as many liberals are to America is so fantastic to Yglesias that he seems unable to comprehend it. Either it must be part of some sort of stratagem or it's just an irrational dislike that could have no basis in reality.

Loathing America, liberals get -- but getting angry at a treacherous, anti-American nation, that views us as rivals and undercuts us at every turn -- that, they don't understand...

Here are a couple of columns from Clifford D. May & Jonah Goldberg that expand a bit on why so many conservatives don't like France.

Of late, we've been seeing a lot of assaults on conservatives speaking at college campuses. This has been treated like a joke, because these conservatives have been hit with food. William Kristol, Pat Buchanan, Richard Perle, Ann Coulter are the most recent examples.

This is extremely dangerous behavior for obvious reasons. The truth is, when someone runs up on to a stage like that, you don't have any idea what they're going to do. They might have a pie in their hand, but they could also have a knife in their pocket.

That's why anybody running at a speaker like that, whatever their ideology, could fairly be considered a threat, and SHOULD BE TREATED AS ONE by security and by the audience members, and never allowed to get on the stage.

So, if let's say someone is running towards the stage with a pie or salad dressing in his hand and let's say a student stuck his leg out or tackled him or even security tased them, that in my opinion would be perfectly appropriate. In fact, it might even save a life.

Furthermore, since we're seeing a lot of this sort of potentially dangerous behavior aimed at conservatives, might I suggest that security guards or even a couple of large college Republicans should be stationed near the stage to make sure that this doesn't continue to happen.

Last but not least, this should be treated as the serious matter that it is. Any student doing something like this should be expelled and prosecuted in a court of law. If some of these thugs get the jail time that they deserve, it might go a long way towards convincing other people that this sort of assault is a bad idea.

I'm a believer in states' rights, but there seems to be a lot of disagreement these days about what states' rights are in the first place.

For example, I would argue that the Federal Government's attempt to pass a Constitutional Amendment that defines marriage as being between a man and a woman is not an assault on states' rights. How can it be, when gay marriage hasn't been passed by any legislature in the US and 38 states would have to ratify the Amendment for it to come into force?

The reason the protection of marriage Amendment, among other issues, is being talked about in Congress is because power hungry judges at the state and federal level are making decisions on a regular basis, based on little more than their own personal biases and that should be left to elected representatives of the people. Then after our robed masters, like kings of old, issue decrees that all of us must live by, they imperiously proclaim their pig's ear of a ruling to be a silk purse of constitutional law.

What we're starting to see, especially at Congressional level is not -- for the most part -- Republicans who've fallen out of love with Federalism, but legislators who are starting to push back against judicial overstretch. That's a good thing and it's long overdue.

This is the last post about Terri Schiavo that I intend to make until after her funeral mass next week. If you'd like to read what has been written previously about Terri Schiavo on RWN, here's a list:

-- I Come To Bury Terri Schiavo, Not To Praise Her
-- Answering Some Frequently Asked Questions About The Terri Schiavo Case
-- Beautiful Bible Stories Rewritten For These Days & Times: King Solomon Cuts The Baby In Half
-- The Terri Schiavo Case In 70 Words
-- And So It Goes With Terri Schiavo
-- Why Terri Schiavo's Feeding Tube Should Be Reinserted
-- Mark Steyn On Terri Schiavo
-- We Wouldn't Even Treat A Dog This Way
-- Cows Have More Protection Under The Law Than Terri Schiavo
-- Is This A Description Of A Woman Who Is A Vegetable?
-- If You Have A Problem With Saving Terri Schiavo, You Have A Problem With Conservatism
-- The Knowledge Gap & The Terri Schiavo Case
-- The Politics Of The Terri Schiavo Case
-- Q&A; Friday #13: Should A Person In A PVS Be Allowed To Die If That Was Their Wish?
-- We Are Still A Nation Of Laws
-- A Message To Some Of The People On My Side In The Terri Schiavo Fight
-- Responding To Some Of The Common Objections To The Federal Government Trying To Save Terri Schiavo's Life

Click on the advertisers -- P-L-E-A-S-E. The more you click, the happier my advertisers are, the more often they buy other ads on RWN, the more money I make, the happier I am, the better RWN becomes.

Put another way, if you don't click on the ads, it means you want Hillary to be President in 2008, you also want Howard Dean to be VP, and it's also very important to you to see Ted Kennedy as our next Secretary of Defense.

Here's one last way you could think of it: JUST CLICK ON ADS! CLICK ON THEM! CLICK ON THEM NOW....uh, please?

ConservativeMatch Dating Service
GoToMeeting Online Meetings Made Easy
Matt Furey Combat Conditioning
Place A Bet On Iraq
Rightalk Online Radio
Right Wing Attire
Wanted: Real Estate Investors
Ankle Biting Pundits
Right-Wing Stuff
Studentcon
VitaminUSA

Because of the suspected use of performance enhancing substances by the overwhelming majority of people in the artistic community, a number of great works have now been called into question.

As a result, the United States Department of Education has been forced to place an asterisk beside numerous pieces once considered to be part of the classical canon.

In literature, for example, works by William Shakespeare, Mark Twain and Ernest Hemingway -- each of whom is suspected of using various stimulants to assist in the creative process -- will now be crossed off mandatory reading lists.

Hamlet and the Mona Lisa are just two of the classic works which will now carry an asterisk.

Likewise, paintings by suspected drug users Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali will be torn out of all artistic text books from this point forward.

Furthermore, music recordings will now be taped over so that the creations of alleged abusers of performance enhancing substances -- i.e., every piece of music written so far -- are not provided an unfair advantage over musicians who choose to remain sober and drug-free.

Together with the Bush administration and the United States Congress, the Department of Education hopes that from now on American students will be free to enjoy the three remaining works of art at their disposal.

This satire was used with the permission of the Chortler.

Lol, the left-wing election fraud racket never ends. Here's the latest from a group of University Professors:

"Officially, President Bush won November's election by 2.5%, yet exit polls showed Kerry winning by 3% [1] . According to a report to be released today by a group of university statisticians, the odds of a discrepancy this large between the national exit poll and election results happening by accident are close to 1 in a million.

Two alternatives remain. Either something was wrong with the exit polling, or something was wrong with the vote count."

Of course, there was an explanation given for why the exit polls were off that seems plausible to me:

"The consortium that conducted the presidential exit polls, Edison/Mitofsky, issued a report in January suggesting that the discrepancy between election results and exit polls occurred because Bush voters were more reticent than Kerry voters in response to pollsters."

But the professors involved just blew that explanation off. However, here's something that any reasonable person -- which probably doesn't include these professors -- isn't going to be able to blow off: the fact that the exit polls have been off by large amounts in 4 of the last 5 Presidential elections and have leaned towards the Democrats every time. Here's the data via liberal Kevin Drum:

In 1988, the exit polling favored George Bush by just 0.6%, but he won by 7.7%.
In 1992, the exit polling data favored Bill Clinton by 12.8%, but he won by only 5.6%.
In 1996, the exit polling data favored Bill Clinton by 14.7%, but he won by only 8.5%
In 2000, the exit polling data favored Al Gore by 2.3%, but George Bush won.

Drum also notes another little factoid that's highly inconvenient for election conspiracy theorists:

"(A)n analysis (done by Mitofsky) shows that exit poll deviations weren't any different in precincts with different kinds of voting machines, which means that electronic fraud is very unlikely as an explanation for anything."

As far as I'm concerned, that should settle the question of whether there was some sort of massive electronic vote rigging conspiracy in the last election once and for all.

As most of you know, the Korean War began with a devastating sneak attack from a Nork military that was larger, much better armed, and more experienced than the South Korean forces. In essence, the Norks cut through the South Koreans like a hot knife through butter and had the US not gotten involved, the war would have been over relatively quickly.

But, there are so many intriguing little details about the war that I've already learned from reading Robert Leckie's "Conflict: The History of the Korean War." Personally, the thing that surprised me the most was how close we came to losing that war, even after American troops got involved. Our Air Force made a big impact, but believe it or not, at one point, the war and the freedom of all the South Korean people may have been lost if not for the actions of a single brigade of Marines.

It was still fairly early in the war and the American and ROK forces were digging in and desperately trying to hold a defensive perimeter to stop the rapid advance of the North Korean forces. But, there was a breach in a key area, one that could have almost irreversibly turned the war in the favor of the North.

Here's a report from Leckie's book by a British military observer that explains how dire the situation was and how their hopes all rested on the marines (emphasis mine):

"The situation is critical and Miryang may be lost. The enemy have driven a division-sized salient across the Naktong. More will cross the river tonight. If Miryang is lost Taegu becomes untenable and we will be faced with a withdrawl from Korea. I am heartened that the Marine brigade will move against the Naktong salient tomorrow. They are faced with impossible odds and I have no valid reason to substantiate it, but I have a feeling they will halt the enemy.

I realize my expression of hope is unsound, but these Marines have the swagger, confidence and hardness that must have been in Stonewall Jackson's Army of the Shenandoah. They remind me of the Coldstreams at Dunkerque. Upon this thin line of reasoning, I cling to the hope of victory."

Here's Leckie's description of the first day of fighting:

"The marines struck in Obong-ni, or No-Name Ridge as they called it, the morning of August 7. Twice they attacked, and twice they were hurled back, but by nightfall they had clawed their way to the summit of two of the ridge's hills."

The next day, immediately following an airstike that took out a machine gun nest, the Marines did what they do best: obliterate the enemy:

But then, the blast still echoing in the surrounding hills, they rose and swept through the destroyed position, their rush gaining momentum until they had taken No-Name Ridge and had put the broken enemy to flight.

The pursuit carried as far as the river, and there, said the log of the carrier Sicily, "the enemy was killed in such numbers that river was definitely discolored with blood."

Had that one battle gone a different way, the entire course of history over the last fifty years could have been dramatically changed for the worse...

Getting Social Security reform done was ambitious and worth trying, but from Day 1, it was going to be a tough sell. Americans -- like most people -- are usually only inspired to make significant changes in policy when there's a crisis of some sort and even those of us who think something needs to be done today will admit that it's going to be more than a decade until the program starts going into the red.

Furthermore, the President just isn't gaining any traction on the issue. While support for private accounts usually crosses the 50% mark, apparently the American people don't trust Bush to handle it, because the approval rating for how he's handling it seems to be mired in the thirties despite the fact that he has been promoting his plan for 3 months.

Of course, most of this isn't his fault.

The people who are receiving Social Security or about to start collecting checks are understandably very suspicious of any changes to a program that put money in their pockets. Furthermore, the Democrats have been extremely disciplined on the issue and as far as I can tell, Bush isn't going to get any support across the aisle for any plan that he proposes, under any circumstances. On top of that, Republican members of Congress are always skittish about making any changes to Social Security because as it is, in every election, no matter what happens, the Democrats try to demagogue them as heartless monsters who want to kill the program and send everyone over 65 into the streets. Anything that makes the Dems' propaganda job easier makes them nervous.

So while I applaud Bush for taking on the issue and think making sure the program stays solvent is vitally important, I think it's time for Bush to accept that it just isn't going to happen, emphasize that his plan won't lead to benefit cuts for people currently receiving Social Security to minimize any political damage in 2006, and quietly let the plan die. That's not to say that they shouldn't have a vote, but it's time to accept that the mountain is a little too high to climb at this point and move on to other things.