Musings Archive February 2004
Sunday, February 29, 2004 ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI?: The last time I stepped out of a theatre where the audience was largely silent at the end of a movie was Saving Private Ryan. I went to see The Passion of the Christ this evening and I have to say that even as an athiest I was deeply touched by this movie. Mel Gibson and the cast of the movie did a truly remarkable job.
I will say that I can understand why some Jews have objected to this movie, or at least felt uncomfortable about it. Pontius Pilote was portrayed as being reticent to condemn Jesus Christ -- though the average Roman soldier had little trouble carrying out the final order -- while the mob bayed for His blood. That said, the blame is placed on largely on the High Priests who repeatedly demanded His crucifixion.
As for the movie itself...it's simultaneously as bloody as you've heard but also not as bloody. The scourging was difficult to watch (as was the crucifixion itself) because they are the bloodiest scenes but it didn't reach the level of religious pornography that some reviewers have condemned it as. The cinematography was fantastic, the acting superb and the script above reproach. If this movie isn't nominated for Best Picture next year I'll be shocked and very disappointed. The Passion of the Christ is quite easily amongst the best pictures of 2004 even though it's only February.
Posted by steve @ 09:40 PM EST [Link]
~ NOTE TO SELF: MAKE MOVIES ABOUT THIS JESUS GUY: I'll bet you find that on the Pocket PC or Palm of every Hollywood executive who turned down distribution rights of The Passion of the Christ. According to Reuters, the movie has pulled in a total of $117.5 million since Wednesday, the second best tally ever for a movie released mid-week.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 03:36 PM EST [Link]
Saturday, February 28, 2004 BIN LADEN NOT CAPTURED, SAY U.S., PAKISTAN: Iran's IRNA reported today that Osama bin Laden has been captured in a border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Both Pakistan and the U.S. are denying the reports.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 03:58 PM EST [Link]
~ ARE THE REALISTS EVER REALISTIC?: Reuel Marc Gerecht has an interesting piece in an upcoming Weekly Standard about foreign policy 'realists' who say that the West can deal with the 'pragmatic' conservatives now in charge in Iran.
According to many American "realists"--the school of foreign policy most often associated with such men as former national security advisers Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski, former diplomats James Baker, Richard Murphy, Thomas Pickering, and Richard Haass, and institutions like the Nixon Center and the Council on Foreign Relations--there may be a silver lining in the bad news. Iran's "hard-liners" may in fact be "pragmatic conservatives," to borrow a phrase often heard now in the colloquies of Washington's think tanks where the intellectual laborers of American realism are trying to devise a new strategy for Iran and the Greater Middle East. In the post-9/11 world, the fear of weapons of mass destruction in the wrong
hands dominates public policy debates, and a growing number of American realists believe that Iran's "pragmatic mullahs"--in Persian translation, this means former Iranian president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the major-domo of the clerical establishment, and Ali Khamenei, the "spiritual leader" of the country--are the men to cut a deal to halt Iran's WMD programs.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 03:55 PM EST [Link]
~ SELF-PROMO ALERT: I almost forgot that I have a piece in today's Kitchener-Waterloo Record calling on Canadians to make a decision: rebuild the Canadian Armed Forces or simply disband it. If you live in the K-W region feel free to buy the paper, if not, click on "More" to read it.
[more]
Posted by steve @ 03:40 PM EST [Link]
~ UMMMM, BECAUSE YOU HATE JEWS?: A spokesman for the Saudi embassy in Washington, D.C. says that his government will launch an investigation into why its tourism web site stated that it would not issue travel visas to Jews.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 03:29 AM EST [Link]
Friday, February 27, 2004 DON'T BETRAY YOUR PRINCIPLES: Say Thomas Donnelly and Vance Serchuk in an article for the American Enterprise Institute. They argue that Libya's renouncing of WMDs doesn't mean that the United States should tolerate his continued existence. Muammar Gaddafi still has a lot to answer for...like being a bloodthirsty dictator.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 03:49 PM EST [Link]
~ LADY TEE-HEE: (Via Instapundit) I can't believe I've never seen Catherine Seipp's Monthly MoDo Watch before. This month discusses Maureen Dowd's painful attempts at humour.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 03:45 PM EST [Link]
~ BACK ON THE JOB: The FBI agent -- Gamal Abdel-Hafiz -- who refused to spy on fellow Muslims, has been reinstated by the agency.
The firing of Abdel-Hafiz last May set off reverberations throughout the ranks of the FBI, raising concerns that it would seriously impede the bureau’s ability to recruit new Muslim and Arab-American agents badly needed to work counterterrorism cases. Abdel-Hafiz, who was one of only about a half dozen Muslims in a force of 11,500 agents, charged that he was "hit in the back" by fellow agents who were distrustful of him because of his Muslim faith and Arab background.
Hmmm, exactly how does his reinstatement help the FBI? If he won't work as an agent against suspected Muslims, then what kind of people will the FBI be able to recuit by bringing him back?
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 01:40 PM EST [Link]
~ GDP UP IN Q4: More good news for George W. Bush I guess. Read on.
Posted by steve @ 12:16 PM EST [Link]
~ HITCHENS ON HAITI, WMDs AND THE DEMOCRATS: Interesting interview last night on ABC by Christopher Hitchens on several different topics. Read the transcript here.
Posted by steve @ 11:52 AM EST [Link]
Thursday, February 26, 2004 DAMN, THEY ALL LOOK LIKE GERRY COONEY: U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown apologized today for saying that all Hispanics and whites "look alike to me."
Brown made the statement during a Wednesday briefing on Haiti with Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega, a Mexican-American, and the Florida congressional delegation. During the meeting, attended by about 30 people, Brown sat across the table from Noriega and launched an attack on President Bush's policy on Haiti.
She said Republican leaders were "racist" in their policies toward the Caribbean nation, which is almost entirely black, and called the president's representatives "a bunch of white men."
"I sincerely did not mean to offend Secretary Noriega or anyone in the room. Rather, my comments, as they relate to 'white men,' were aimed at the policies of the Bush administration as they pertain to Haiti, which I do consider to be racist," Brown said in a statement on Thursday.
I love when racists defend their racism by declaring someone else racist. Where's the Trent Lott treatment for Brown?
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 10:35 PM EST [Link]
~ STEYN SPEAKS: Mark Steyn has finally publicly addressed his departure from the once conservative National Post.
When Conrad Black sold his remaining fifty-percent share in the Post, he gave a farewell speech to the newsroom in which he said that the paper needed a proprietor who had better connections with the Liberal Party elite - presumably because that's the way things work in Canada. I said to Conrad recently that that's the last thing the Post needs. As a Canadian whose principal assets are in the United Kingdom and the United States, he's one of the few businessmen who doesn't need any favours from the government. Almost every activity in the dependents' Dominion - from books to aircraft manufacturing - obliges companies to enter into some sort of formal or informal relationship with the government. That's bad. It would be bad enough in a functioning democracy, where at least the asses one is obliged to kiss are rotated every five years. But it's worse in a one-party state like Canada, where it's always the same Liberal Party posterior, no matter how saggy and mottled it gets. Canada is no longer quite a respectable democracy, and I want to write for a paper that understands that.
Instead, week by week, the editorials are slowly but surely swimming back toward the shallow end of the pool.
Iraq? The Post now argues that Washington should "accelerate plans to bring the United Nations, international NGOs, and other Muslim nations on-board." Who needs The Globe And Mail? The NGOs have fled Iraq. Say what you like about the wicked Halliburton, its murky subsidiaries, and its sinister private-sector compadres, but, unlike the pussies at Oxfam, they're still sticking it out over there.
Canada's decrepit, underfunded military? The Post argues that there's no way we can compete - not just with America or Britain, but with Australia or France or Italy. Instead, they say that our armed forces should emulate . . . Norway.
Is that really "as conservative as Canada's media get"? Is that the most Canadian conservatives can expect from a so-called conservative newspaper?
Well, that explains why I can't get anything published in the Post. I wish I could argue with Mark about Canada but there's nothing in his piece that I can disagree with. Canada has become in all respects a one-party state. There are few aspects of this country that haven't succumbed to Trudeaupia. I guess that's why I'm applying for jobs in the United States now...ideologically my nation is hostile to me. I may as well go where I can fit in.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 07:33 PM EST [Link]
~ A VICTORY FOR FIREARMS RIGHTS: The Missouri Supreme Court today upheld the constitutional right to carry a concealed weapon.
Read Eugene Volokh's commentary on it here.
Posted by steve @ 07:12 PM EST [Link]
~ THE PASSION
I am providing here the reaction of a dear friend who saw "The Passion" yesterday. We had asked her to let us know what she thought. She is a devout Catholic, a nurse, intelligent, caring, and one of the sweetest people I have ever met. (I did some minor editing to remove names and personal items.)
"I'm left just staring at the keyboard..........can I put together any of these letters to form my response to the movie. It's beyond words. The tears poured down my face like an opened dam, one after the other as I watched Mary's pain in seeing her Son suffer. The scourging at the pillar was horrific and yet you couldn't look away; shame, devotion, a deep love for Christ keeps your eyes riveted to the screen. My diaphragm convulsed as I tried as hard as I could to stifle my growing need to sob.
I didn't want to get out of my seat at the end. I just needed silence, no words, no motion, because somehow every muscle in my body was devoid of movement. It was profound; a visual of everything you imagined it must have been like.
I felt like a woman in shock, my face expressing no emotion, my eyes slightly widened as people stared. I thought I had my cover intact until I took one look at myself in the mirror. Whoa.........no dam opens that much without reddened eyes and a Rudolph nose.
My opinion on the fear of the Jews seeing this as a threat of hate crimes to come...............get over yourself, this isn't about you. As the crowds are yelling to have him crucified you aren't thinking about the ethnic significance. It's so far beyond that, if you're really a Christian that's not what the focus is for you. I would be shocked to learn that anyone comes away from this film hating Jews.
I hate to think of you missing out on such an experience. Some would say it was too graphic, too violent, but somehow to do less than what it was would have been a great disservice to the true sufferings Christ went through for us. I can't stand to watch violent films, but this was different for me. Maybe because of the personal nature of it all, knowing he could withstand that kind of brutality out of love for each one of us. I know I'm not doing a good job of expressing this, like I said, these letters on the keyboard just can't do it. I never once covered my eyes to shield myself from the horror on the screen. My need to protect myself was far outweighed by the gravity of what was happening before me, my needs just didn't matter. I felt very small in the face of His love.
I want everyone to see this film, there's no way it can't change the life of anyone seeing it."
Not much I can add to that.
cb
Posted by clbloomer @ 01:53 PM EST [Link]
~ PORNOGRAPHY: Andrew Sullivan went to see The Passion of the Christ last night and talks about it here. He was moved by parts of the movie but disturbed by some of the violence which he argues has no basis in theology.
We see muscled thugs exhausted from shredding every inch of this man's body. And then they turn him over and do it all again. It goes on for ever. And then we see his mother wiping up masses and masses of blood. It is an absolutely unforgivable, vile, disgusting scene. No human being could sruvive it. Yet for Gibson, it is the h'ors d'oeuvre for his porn movie. The whole movie is some kind of sick combination of the theology of Opus Dei and the film-making of Quentin Tarantino. There is nothing in the Gospels that indicates this level of extreme, endless savagery and there is no theological reason for it. It doesn't even evoke emotion in the audience. It is designed to prompt the crudest human pity and emotional blackmail - which it obviously does. But then it seems to me designed to evoke a sick kind of fascination. Of over two hours, about half the movie is simple wordless sadism on a level and with a relentlessness that I have never witnessed in a movie before.
Posted by steve @ 01:47 PM EST [Link]
~ BYE BYE: The man once known as Darth Vader has left the building. Richard Perle has resigned from the Defense Policy Board.
In his resignation letter to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld dated Feb. 18 and released Thursday, Perle said he quit because he did not want his controversial views "to be attributed to you or the president at any time, and especially not during a presidential campaign."
"This is particularly true now since I have just published a book that calls for far-reaching reform of government departments responsible for combating terrorism," he wrote. "Many of the ideas in that book are controversial and I wish to be free to argue for them without those views or my arguments getting caught up in the campaign."
Read on.
That book was An End to Evil which we reviewed earlier this month.
Posted by steve @ 01:40 PM EST [Link]
~ I COULDN'T IMAGINE MORE BORING PHONE CONVERSATIONS: The kerfuffle over alleged spying on U.N. officials continues in Britain, with Tony Blair sort of but not really denying that British intelligence spied on U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan.
Read on.
What completely appalls me is that British prosecutors dropped their case against Katharine Gun yesterday for leaking a document from U.S. intelligence asking the British to spy on members of the U.N. Security Council. Apparently there is no price to be paid for blatantly releasing your country's secrets anymore...
Posted by steve @ 01:34 PM EST [Link]
~ ANTI-SEMITISM AND THE U.N.: Before yesterday I'd never linked to an article by Anne Bayefsky but for the second time in 12 hours I've found an interesting article written by her. This time she addresses anti-Semitism and the U.N.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 01:41 AM EST [Link]
Wednesday, February 25, 2004 FOUR STARS: I almost always dislike any movie that Roger Ebert likes so I'm even nervous pointing out that he's given The Passion of the Christ four stars.
David Ansen, a critic I respect, finds in Newsweek that Gibson has gone too far. "The relentless gore is self-defeating," he writes. "Instead of being moved by Christ's suffering or awed by his sacrifice, I felt abused by a filmmaker intent on punishing an audience, for who knows what sins."
This is a completely valid response to the film, and I quote Ansen because I suspect he speaks for many audience members, who will enter the theater in a devout or spiritual mood and emerge deeply disturbed. You must be prepared for whippings, flayings, beatings, the crunch of bones, the agony of screams, the cruelty of the sadistic centurions, the rivulets of blood that crisscross every inch of Jesus' body. Some will leave before the end.
This is not a Passion like any other ever filmed. Perhaps that is the best reason for it. I grew up on those pious Hollywood biblical epics of the 1950s, which looked like holy cards brought to life. I remember my grin when Time magazine noted that Jeffrey Hunter, starring as Christ in "King of Kings" (1961), had shaved his armpits. (Not Hunter's fault; the film's Crucifixion scene had to be re-shot because preview audiences objected to Jesus' hairy chest.)
If it does nothing else, Gibson's film will break the tradition of turning Jesus and his disciples into neat, clean, well-barbered middle-class businessmen. They were poor men in a poor land. I debated Martin Scorsese's "The Last Temptation of Christ" with commentator Michael Medved before an audience from a Christian college, and was told by an audience member that the characters were filthy and needed haircuts.
Ebert also argues that the movie is not anti-Semitic and it doesn't really touch upon Christ's teachings, not surprising he notes, because the movie addresses only a limited time frame in His life.
At any rate, I'll be seeing this movie either tomorrow night or during the weekend sometime.
Posted by steve @ 11:09 PM EST [Link]
~ PROTESTS CONTINUE ACROSS IRAN: The Western media doesn't seem too interested -- after all, the hardliners in Iran won a fair election -- but protests continue to rock Iran.
A growing wave of national protests continues to rock Iran with the latest turmoil occurring in the provincial cities of Ardel, Kiar and Farsan. As recently reported in many other cities, the peaceful demonstrators were viciously attacked by regime security forces while marching and vocally expressing their opinions of the regime and it's leaders. Using plastic bullets, tear gas and clubs, regime security forces set upon the peaceful demonstrators inflicting injury to tens, and unlawfully arresting many more.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 11:03 PM EST [Link]
~ PAYING THE PIPER: Pair of articles up at Blog Iran about recent oil deals and a U.S. warning about investing in Iran's oil industry. So who is one of the investors? France's Total. I'm shocked.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 11:01 PM EST [Link]
~ SHOW ME THE MONEY: Israeli officials raided four Arab banks yesterday and seized $30 million in funds they claim came from Libya, Iran and Syria to fund Palestinian fighters.
The raid was directed by the Shin Bet security service, which checked hundreds of accounts with the help of bank computer staff arrested the night before. Agents took the money from the vaults, corresponding to the sums they identified in the accounts. They said the deposits belonged to Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and what the Israelis termed "senior terrorists and their families who received funds designated for financing terrorism". Officials said the raiders were also seeking evidence that Yasser Arafat was involved in funding attacks.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 10:57 PM EST [Link]
~ HUMAN RIGHTS V. HUMAN RIGHTS: Anne Bayefsky makes the case in today's Jerusalem Post that the security fence is not "just" a security vs. human rights issue, but a human rights vs. human rights issue. Moreover, suicide bombings and other terror do not just violate Israeli human rights but Palestinian rights as well.
Read on. (Free registration is required)Posted by steve @ 05:11 PM EST [Link]
~ GREENSPAN NICKS ANOTHER BUSH: Well, George H.W. Bush was no fan of Alan Greenspan and it looks like George W. Bush won't be one either. Today Greenspan appeared before Congress and warned that spending cuts were necessary if the deficit is to be contained.
That said, he also said that recent tax cuts should be made permanent.
He is right, of course. This should be another signal to the Bush White House to stop spending like a drunken poet on payday.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 02:50 PM EST [Link]
~ SLAUGHTERVILLE TO KEEP ITS NAME: Earlier this month we blogged a bit about PETA calling on Slaughterville, OK to change its name because it sounded mean to animals. Kathryn Jean Lopez has an update on the story here.
Posted by steve @ 02:46 PM EST [Link]
~ WHAT'S HAPPENING IN IRAN: Koorosh Afshar has a piece in today's NRO about what's been going on in Iran over the past few days.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 02:40 PM EST [Link]
~ TIME FOR THE COUNTERREVOLUTION: Pat Buchanan believes that the better choice to reign in judicial activism (to include its recent marxist escapades in overthrowing the ages old institution of marriage) is for Congress to utilize the constitutional provision to limit the jurisdiction of the federal courts. Such a law can be passed by a mere majority vote, and might set a precedent to reverse the course of the court's unconsitutionally assumed power to legislate and overthrow legislation, in many other areas. The down side of this approach, which Buchanan doesn't discuss, is that the very next congress can overthrow such a law by a majority vote, as well. Regardless, we need to consider this option.
Read on: WorldNetDaily: Time for the counterrevolution
Posted by farrell @ 10:29 AM EST [Link]
~ I'M NOT GOING TO MAKE ANY JOKES ABOUT 'SIX-WAYS': A six way conference opened this morning over the issue of North Korea, brokered -- no less -- by China.
The United States stood fast, calling for the irreversible, verifiable dismantling of North Korea's plutonium and uranium weapons programs and repeating that it did not intend to attack a country it branded part of an "axis of evil" with Iran and pre-war Iraq.
After half a year of shuttle diplomacy, delegates from North and South Korea, the United States, China, Russia and Japan shook hands before taking their places at a hexagonal table in a guarded guesthouse for the second such meeting brokered by China.
China swiftly took on the role of honest broker."As the talks deepen, we will face more difficulties and meet more challenges. The talks aim to enlarge the consensus, not to highlight the differences, to settle problems, not to escalate conflict," said Vice Foreign Minister Wang Yi.
I'm also not going to make any jokes about China as "honest broker." North Korea acts the way it does because China permits it to do so. If they wanted the situation resolved, it would have happened already.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 02:30 AM EST [Link]
~ TWO OUT OF THREE AIN'T BAD: And he'll likely make it three out of three. With all the kerfuffle about gay marriage everyone seems to have forgot that Hawaii, Idaho and Utah were holding a primary and two caucuses today. Kerry won Idaho and Utah and is waiting to hear the inevitable from Hawaii later on this evening.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 01:03 AM EST [Link]
Tuesday, February 24, 2004 WHY TRUST THEM?: U.N. inspectors in Iran have found even more material that the Iranians didn't declare concerning their nuclear weapons program. Today the AP reported that they found signs of polonium -- used to trigger nuclear chain reactions.
The agency said the traces of polonium-210 were found in September, and that the element "could be used for military purposes ... specifically as a neutron initiator in some designs of nuclear weapons."
Iran never mentioned working with polonium-210 in earlier declarations of its past and present nuclear activities, it said.
Polonium-210 also can be used to generate electricity, which Iran contends is the sole purpose of its atomic program. Saber Zaimian, spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, declined to comment on the report, saying his organization was studying it.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 06:21 PM EST [Link]
~ WHAT DID HE KNOW AND WHEN DID HE KNOW IT?: The Village Voice, of all outlets, has some very serious questions about John Kerry and an alleged cover-up involving American POWs in Vietnam.
Over the years, an abundance of evidence had come to light that the North Vietnamese, while returning 591 U.S. prisoners of war after the treaty signing, had held back many others as future bargaining chips for the $4 billion or more in war reparations that the Nixon administration had pledged. Hanoi didn't trust Washington to fulfill its pro-mise without pressure. Similarly, Washington didn't trust Hanoi to return all the prisoners and carry out all the treaty provisions. The mistrust on both sides was merited. Hanoi held back prisoners and the U.S. provided no reconstruction funds.
The stated purpose of the special Senate committee—which convened in mid 1991 and concluded in January 1993—was to investigate the evidence about prisoners who were never returned and find out what happened to the missing men. Committee chair Kerry's larger and different goal, though never stated publicly, emerged over time: He wanted to clear a path to normalization of relations with Hanoi. In any other context, that would have been an honorable goal. But getting at the truth of the unaccounted for P.O.W.'s and M.I.A.'s (Missing In Action) was the main obstacle to normalization—and therefore in conflict with his real intent and plan of action.
I'm always suspicious about stories involving the cover-up of MIAs/POWs in Vietnam because there's never been any real evidence -- verifiable at any rate -- that the U.S. left men behind but I do find it interesting that the Voice is asking these questions. If, however, Kerry did cover-up real evidence of MIAs/POWs in favour of normalization then I would hope his career -- and self-promotion as a hero -- is over.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 06:12 PM EST [Link]
~ APPETITE FOR DESTRUCTION: Saul Singer had a good essay in yesterday's Jerusalem Post about the back-to-back suicide bombings in Jerusalem and Kirkuk, and what we learned from a captured document from a terrorist named Zarqawi.
Read Saul's article here (Free registration required) and read Zarqawi's document here.
Posted by steve @ 04:21 PM EST [Link]
~ ALWAYS WITH THE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTS: George W. Bush today came out in favor of a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.
In an announcement fraught with social, legal and political implications, Mr. Bush urged Congress to act on the amendment quickly and send it on to the state legislatures. Quick action is essential, he said, to bring clarity to the law and protect husband-and-wife marriages from a few "activist judges."
"The voice of the people must be heard," Mr. Bush said in a brief White House appearance.
Two-thirds of each house of Congress would have to approve the proposed amendment. It would then have to be approved by at least three-fourths of the state legislatures, or 38, to become part of the Constitution.
"An amendment to the Constitution is never to be undertaken lightly," Mr. Bush said. "The amendment process has addressed many serious matters of national concern, and the preservation of marriage rises to this level of national importance."
Constitutional amendments are never to be undertaken lightly but conservatives are always calling for them. Regardless of where you stand on the issue of same sex marriages, conservatives have to stop wanting to change the constitution every time some social issue rears its head. It's hard to take a conservative denying the constitution's status as a "living document" when they keep calling for the thing to be changed.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 02:10 PM EST [Link]
~ GOOD TO KNOW HE HAS TIME TO SPARE FOR FOREIGN ISSUES: Ayman al-Zawahri apparently has enough time on his hands -- while on the run from American forces -- to comment on the ban of religious headgear in French schools.
"The decision of the French president to issue a law to prevent Muslim girls from covering their eads in schools is another example of the crusader envy that the westerners have against Muslims," the voice said in the tape aired on the pan-Arab Al-Arabiya satellite channel.
" . . . They brag of freedoms and democracy and human rights," the voice said. "This envy that boils in their hearts and overflows in their chests and they pass it on to the generations."
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 03:47 AM EST [Link]
~ ON THE AIR: The Christian Science Monitor reports on Al Hurra, the U.S.-sponsored TV network being beamed into the Middle East.
No one thinks most Arabs' visceral dislike of US foreign policy is purely a result of watching television. But it is, experts say, a combination of policies themselves, the somewhat sensationalist way they are presented, and the emphasis on the two thorniest problems in the Middle East - Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
That's where Al Hurra - which means "the free one" - comes in. It is building on the success of its sister program, Radio Sawa. Set up two years ago to target Arab youth - the most disaffected and largest proportion of the population - Radio Sawa now attracts as many listeners as mainstream Arab stations.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 03:08 AM EST [Link]
~ IMAGINE DINNER WITH MICHAEL MOORE?: Right Wing News has released the results of its poll of those least likely picks by right of center bloggers to invite over for dinner.
For the record my picks were: Michael Moore, Al Franken, Al Gore, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Madeleine Albright, Ralph Nader, Gloria Steinem, Naomi Klein, James Carville, Paul Krugman, Noam Chomsky, Eric Alterman, Ted Turner, Barbra Streisand, Robert Scheer, Joe Conason, Arianna Huffington and Bill Moyers
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 03:04 AM EST [Link]
Monday, February 23, 2004 "HAVE YOU KILLED ANYONE YET?": A fascinating excerpt from Rumsfeld's War by Rowan Scarborough in today's Washington Times. Find it here.
Posted by steve @ 06:02 PM EST [Link]
~ SAY HELLO TO SHATAN FOR ME: U.S. officials say that the top bomb-maker for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed during a gun battle in Fallujah. Apparently Task Force 121, whom we mentioned just a few hours ago on this blog, was responsible for sending the chap to Hell. Remember to drink plenty of water...it's a dry heat down there.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 04:10 PM EST [Link]
~ NOW IT BEGINS: He only received 2.7 per cent of the vote in 2000 but that won't stop the media from giving Ralph Nader play in their stories. 97.3 per cent of the rest of the United States experiences their eyes glazing over.
Read on.
Cheap attempt to once again promote his service in Vietnam: John Kerry, who has challenged George W. Bush -- in the words of the story -- "to a debate on the impact of their experiences during the Vietnam War era on their current approaches to presidential leadership."
Well, Mr. Kerry served in Vietnam and Mr. Bush served in the Air National Guard. Mr. Kerry favors consulting the world and treating terrorism as if it were a law enforcement problem. Mr. Bush believes that terrorism deserves a military response, unilaterally if necessary. Seems to me that combat doesn't necessarily do very much for leadership. Kerry could have asked Bill Clinton that since they believe in the exact same principles. Clinton didn't even have to serve in the military in any capacity...
Posted by steve @ 02:06 PM EST [Link]
~ THE BIG FIASCO: Michael Ledeen weighs in on the Iranian election with his own thoughts about what's going on and what should be done. Hint, if you've been reading this blog and ESR you already know.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 01:56 PM EST [Link]
~ SUPERSECRET NEWS REPORTING: (Via Brothers Judd Blog) The Washington Times reports that a "supersecret" commando unit is being positioned in Afghanistan to hunt for Osama bin Laden. As Orrin Judd points out, is it supersecret if it's mentioned in the Times?
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 01:53 PM EST [Link]
~ I PREFER MY STORIES MORE RISQUE: Mudville Gazette takes apart a news story that reported on a global warming study done for the Pentagon. It's done as a humorous bedtime story.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 12:30 AM EST [Link]
Sunday, February 22, 2004 THANKS FOR KILLING YOUR OWN PEOPLE: A state in Nigeria that is controlled by Islamic leaders announced today that it wouldn't permit polio vaccinations on the grounds that it is a Western plot to make Muslims infertile.
"Kano state will not participate in tomorrow's polio campaign. Our team made the discovery of contaminants first, remember," state government spokesman Sule Ya'u Sule told The Associated Press, referring to tests the state says its scientists conducted on the polio vaccine last year.
"Unless we are convinced by our committee (of health experts) that the oral polio vaccines are safe, the exercise remains suspended in Kano state," Sule said.
U.N. aid agencies insist the door-to-door drive to inoculate 63 million children in 10 west and central African countries, including Nigeria, is critical to stemming a growing polio outbreak spreading out from Nigeria's predominantly Muslim north.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 11:46 PM EST [Link]
~ I'M SHOCKED THE BBC DIDN'T TELL THE WHOLE STORY: IRVAJ reports that the BBC hasn't been telling the West the whole story about what's going on in Iran.
Following the election sham in the Islamic Republic, several towns and cities in Iran have become unstable and widespread clashes are reported from them.
In Dehdasht (old name Belad-Shapoor) between 2 to 9 people are reported to have been killed in the clashes. People started protesting after the cheating just became too brazen.
In Firoozabad, Fars, people clashed with the Law Enforcement Forces when a cleric by the name of Yunesi-Sarcheshmeyi was declared the winner. One conscript soldier is reported killed. It is not certain whether he was on the side of the people or against them. The people have set fire to banks and all shops are shut.
In Miando-ab, West Azerbijan, some of the cheaters have publicly confessed how they were taught by a cleric to remove the voting stamp from their ID cards and vote again.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 11:44 PM EST [Link]
~ SOMEWHERE JOHN KERRY STARTS CRYING: Ralph Nader, attempting to screw Democrats for a second straight election, announced today that he is running for president but not under the Green Party banner.
I don't think he'll make much of a difference but you never know....his 2.7 per cent of the vote back in 2000 caused some problems for Al Gore.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 03:18 PM EST [Link]
~ BUT IT'S STOPPING ATTACKS, RIGHT?: Interesting article about Israel's security wall.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 04:28 AM EST [Link]
~ SO WHY ISN'T HE DEAD: Ha'aretz reports that Osama bin Laden has been located in northern Pakistan, precisely the area where Pakistan authorities have been pressuring tribal chieftans to cough up information about him.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 04:10 AM EST [Link]
~ PROTESTS ACROSS IRAN: According to SMCCDI major protests were held across Iran that were ignored by the media.
Tehran has been placed under strict martial law with regime security forces deployed throughout the city. In spite of the menacing security forces, young people are circulating on motorized cycles calling for an overthrow of the regime.
The general impression found among residents is that the regime must be removed, if necessary, by armed force.
Posted by steve @ 04:05 AM EST [Link]
Saturday, February 21, 2004 ONLY THREE PER CENT VOTED?: According to Project: Free Iran, only three per cent of Iranians went out to vote yesterday, contrary to the claims of the government and the subsequent reporting of the media.
Three per cent seems a little low, especially with the government portraying this as a vote on Islamic government. I'm fairly sure the number of conservative Iranians registers higher than single digits. That said, I have no doubt a lot of people stayed home.
Read on.
[Update - 6:43pm] CNN has a pair of interesting news stories up. One says that hardliners are making gains -- hardly a surprise since most reform candidates were barred from running -- while the other reports on blogging in Iran.
Posted by steve @ 06:32 PM EST [Link]
~ YOUNG CONSERVATIVES AND AMBIVALENCE ON GAY MARRIAGE: Nick Schulz , editor of Tech Central Station, has an interesting piece on the ambivalence many people feel about the gay marriage issue, along with an intriguing proposal by Jonathan Rauch - who along with Andrew Sullivan is a leading proponent of the "conservative" case for gay marriage - to constitutionalize DOMA rather than go with any of the existing versions of the federal marriage amendment.
Read on.Posted by antle @ 01:12 PM EST [Link]
~ A JOB FOR REWRITE: STALIN'S WAR: A new book, based on a brief window look into the Soviet archives, reveals 50 million Soviets died at the hands of the German's in WWII, while 2 million German women were raped at the hands of the Soviets. The question ought to be raised, did either Stalin or Hitler even care?
Read on: A Job for Rewrite: Stalin's War
Posted by farrell @ 11:59 AM EST [Link]
~ A WHOLE PARTY OF CON-CONS!: The Constitution Party has updated their website. It has a new look and more current information on it. By and large their efforts have been futile and nothing on their new site convinces me that this year will prove otherwise, but these folks are for the most part fighting the good fight. They deserve a look.
Check it out.
Posted by antle @ 12:09 AM EST [Link]
Friday, February 20, 2004 THEY MADE IT: Earlier today it was reported that enriched uranium was shipped to Libya from Pakistan but it turns out the Libya was able to process their own as well.
Using technology and know-how acquired through the black market, Libya was able to process uranium into plutonium, the U.N. nuclear watchdog says.
Diplomats citing a report from the International Atomic Energy Agency said Friday the country was able to "separate a small amount of plutonium."
The report did not specify the amount, but it appeared to be less than the approximately three kilograms (nearly seven pounds) required to make a nuclear bomb.
Wow, what a relief. So this time American and British intelligence were right: Libya's WMD programs were in a fairly advanced stage.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 04:46 PM EST [Link]
~ STAYING HOME: Here in Sudbury -- home of Enter Stage Right -- we have a good reason to stay in today: it's snowing like no one's business. In Iran, they have an even better reason: boycotting the election. According to Project: Free Iran, millions have decided to skip the election.
[Update - 5:01pm] - Meanwhile the media says it's not clear how effective the boycott was.
Posted by steve @ 04:43 PM EST [Link]
~ ENRICHED URANIUM SENT TO LIBYA: According to police in Malaysia, Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan sent enriched uranium to Libya.
Buhary Syed Abu Tahir - Dr Khan's alleged financier - said he was told in 2001 that the uranium was sent in a Pakistani jet, a police report says.
Mr Tahir, a Malaysian resident, also told police Iran paid Dr Khan $3m for used centrifuge parts in the mid-1990s.
The report also alleges that several European businessmen were involved in supplying Libya nuclear technology.
The Europeans are sowing the seeds of their own destruction.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 12:30 PM EST [Link]
~ POPULIST EDWARDS (AND KERRY?). Today there is an interesting article in the NY Times, on Edwards and Kerry, becoming hostile to the Bush internationalist agenda on free trade. The problem with both Kerry’s and Edwards supposed opposition to these “free” trade deals, is that they miss the core of the issue, that these are not free trade deals they oppose, but managed trade deals, and that we are not just losing jobs, but our sovereignty. If money is the only issue, the marxists are right, we will sell them the rope with which they will hang us.
Edwards Notes Differences on Issue of World Trade
Posted by farrell @ 11:51 AM EST [Link]
~ IT COULDN'T HAPPEN TO A NICER GROUP: The Christian Science Monitor reports today that the Sierra Club is the target of a "takeover" attempt by animal-rights and anti-immigrant activists.
A combination of animal-rights and anti-immigrant activists is aiming to take control of the organization - and change its philosophy and direction - by getting their slate of candidates elected to the group's board of directors. They already control several seats, and more are up for grabs. The dispute gets to two core questions among environmental activists.
The first is whether population growth (which in the US mainly means immigration) is a key contributor to environmental degradation because more people mean more pollution and greater consumption of natural resources. Some critics say this country's liberal immigration policy acts as a safety valve for high-population countries, making it easier to avoid dealing with their environmental problems, and adding to the problems here.
But for many environmental activists, it's hard to take a tough stand against those immigrants - especially when such a platform could dissuade other progressives from joining or contributing. Some critics say national environmental organizations have become too elite, ignoring the needs of the urban poor, many of whom are immigrants.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 03:04 AM EST [Link]
~ IRANIAN GOVERNMENT JAMS OPPOSITION BROADCASTS: According to SMCCDI, the Iranian regime is doing its best to make sure Iranians don't hear different points of view ahead of the elections today.
Posted by steve @ 02:51 AM EST [Link]
~ RUE DE PUSSIES: Mark Steyn tackles the "controversy" that sprang up when Triumph the Insult Comic Dog went to Quebec and decided to insult the natives. Steyn's piece is funnier than anything that appeared on Conan O'Brien that night.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 12:58 AM EST [Link]
Thursday, February 19, 2004 SO-CONS AS CON-CONS: The Boston Globe has a story today on some socially conservative gay-marriage opponents who are rallying to impeach the four justices responsible for the Goodridge decision. I've long maintained that it is better for con-cons to challenge the very structure of a judiciary unencumbered by the Constitution rather than simply try to correct their wrongdoing through the amendment process. While I understand the importance of judges being free to make unpopular decisions, it is equally clear that there needs to be grave consequences when they make unconstitutional ones.
Read on.
Posted by antle @ 11:28 PM EST [Link]
~ IRANIAN TRAIN CARRYING EXPLOVIES BOUND FOR AFGHANISTAN?: According to DEBKAfile, the train explosion that killed over 300 people in Iran on Wednesday was because of explosives onboard that were bound for Afghanistan.
DEBKA’s sources in Tehran have heard unconfirmed reports that the disaster was no accident, but possibly sabotage carried out by anti-government forces in Khorassan province, which borders on Afghanistan. This report ties in with another that claims the train was not carrying innocent industrial cargoes but hundreds of tons of explosive materials Iran was smuggling into Afghanistan via the Shiite city of Herat to be used by Iranian saboteurs and agents for guerrilla attacks on US troops and the forces of President Hamid Karzai, as well for supplying the Taleban in their Kandahar stronghold.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 10:28 PM EST [Link]
~ NO SURPRISE: U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan says that direct elections could not be held by June 30.
"As we move forward, we hope we will be able to work with the Iraqis and the coalition to find a mechanism for establishing a caretaker or an interim government until such time elections are organized," Annan said Thursday.
His statement came as Paul Bremer, the top U.S. civilian administrator in Iraq, said in Baghdad that changes and adjustments are possible in the structure of the political handover to Iraq this (northern hemisphere) summer, but stressed that the June 30 handover date remains.
"And hold it should. In the November 15th agreement, the Governing Council and coalition promised the Iraqi people sovereignty on a date certain and we will give it to them," Bremer said in a news conference.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 08:08 PM EST [Link]
~ ADMINISTRATION SHUTS DOWN NEWSPAPERS AFTER CRITICISMS: Sorry to disappoint you Michael Moore fans out there but I'm referring to Iran. It seems that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the "reform" supreme leader, has shut down two newspapers after they criticized him.
The newspapers published parts of an open letter written earlier this week to Khamenei by lawmakers denouncing the disqualification of more than a quarter of the candidates in tomorrow's parliamentary election. The letter said Khamenei had failed the spirit of the Islamic revolution by allowing the election to go ahead, the Associated Press reported yesterday.
Supporters of President Mohammad Khatami say the disqualifications mean they will lose their majority in the 290- seat parliament to opponents of his program to bring greater democracy to Iran. Khatami's attempts to introduce his program have been blocked by supporters of Khamenei, who control the judiciary, the media and the Guardian Council that oversees elections in Iran.
A group of lawmakers read out their letter to Khamenei at a news conference late on Tuesday, IRNA said. Sharq and Yaas-e-Nou published the letter yesterday "with numerous censored parts," the IRNA report said.
Wow, they're just like John Ashcroft. We can't allow Sharq and Yaas-e-Nou to suffer the same fate as all of those American newspapers shut down and all of that dissent silenced, can we?
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 03:35 PM EST [Link]
~ ANYONE WHO RAPS THE WORD 'LATKE' HAS TO BE COOL: Dena Ross has an amusing and cool article about 50 Shekel, a Jewish rapper who hopes to use his flow to educate young Jews about their faith.
Along the way, Shekel seems to delight in making witty parallels to mainstream rap, throwing around the term "chewitz" (short for Manischewitz, a Passover wine), the way cognac appears on traditional rap albums. "You can find me in da shul, praying after school/ Honey I got the chewitz if you're jumping in my pool." Shekel raps, "I'm just into making peace, I ain't into causing trub/So come give me a hug, if you're into getting love."
"'In da Club' inspired me to do something with rap," Cohen says. "50 Cent talks about what he knows. I choose to talk about what I know."
Holla y'all!
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 03:27 PM EST [Link]
~ BELINDA! COMING TO SUDBURY!: Pleasant news in the mail today. Belinda Stronach, my choice for leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, is coming to Sudbury next week. Now if I could only afford to go.
Unlike her appearance in Vancouver, which ESR scribe Jackson Murphy was witness to, Belinda won't be appearing in a bar but rather a dreary hotel conference room.
Posted by steve @ 03:13 PM EST [Link]
~ I WOULD LAY THE MOTHER OF ALL BEATINGS ON THIS COWARD: A soldier with the 2nd Battalion of the 504th Brigade Parachute Infantry Regiment has deserted from the U.S. Army and has fled to Canada. Jeremy Hinzman says that when he joined the U.S. Army he didn't think that, you know, it would actually go around doing army stuff.
Hinzman told the Fayetteville Observer by phone that the socialist structure of the military appealed to him - he liked the subsidized housing and groceries and, at the end of his service, the money for college.
"It seemed like a good financial decision," he said, adding, "I had a romantic vision of what the army was."
But he was horrified from the start of basic training, by the chanting about blood and killing during marches, by the shooting at targets without faces and by what he called the dehumanization of the enemy.
"It's like watching some kind of scary movie, except I was in it," he said. "People would just walk around saying things like, 'Oh, I want to kill somebody."'
Yeah, I heard that a lot around CFB Petawawa when I was there...all we dreamed of was killing Charlie. Seriously though, if I knew where this guy was in Toronto...
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 01:28 PM EST [Link]
~ THAT'S A LOT OF SACAGAWEAS: (Via Brothers Judd Blog) BusinessWeek Online reports that John Kerry may be the belle of the ball with Democrats but he's got a huge task ahead of him: Trying to negate the enormous fundraising advantage that George W. Bush holds.
Conventional wisdom says he can't. Sure, Kerry's campaign raised $5.5 million between his breakthrough victory in Iowa on Jan. 19 and Feb. 10 -- and is flush for the first time since December, when he mortgaged his Boston home to lend his troops $6.4 million. But Bush's coffers make Kerry's cash look like chump change: Bush has $100 million left from the $132 million his campaign raised in 2003, and is likely to amass another $50 million between January and the Aug. 30 start of the GOP convention. That lets Bush fill the airwaves with ads that try to define the Democratic standard-bearer as a Northeastern liberal -- while Kerry may have to ration his funds, or borrow against the public money he'll get as of Aug. 1. "It will be very difficult to catch Bush in terms of the head start he has in his donor base," says Anthony J. Corrado Jr., a Colby College government professor who studies campaign cash.
Kerry, like Bush, has renounced public funding for the primary portion of the race. So the Democrat -- whose decision to go it alone last December was seen as a desperate bid to counter Howard Dean's Web-based money machine -- won't face limits on his pre-convention fund-raising or spending. While neither has publicly said so, Kerry and Bush are expected to accept public funds for the general election, during which they must refrain from raising or spending private money. But there Bush has a definite advantage. Because the Dems' July 26-31 convention is a full month before the GOP confab, Kerry must stretch over three months the $75 million he'll receive in public money for the race's general-election phase. Bush, meanwhile, will have an extra month in which to spend his primary cash hoard, and will need only to stretch his $75 million public kitty over two months.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 01:21 PM EST [Link]
~ BUT THEY'RE SO GOOD AT IT: Jewish leaders are calling on European Union leaders to fight the resurgence of anti-Semitism.
Romano Prodi, president of the European Commission (EC), told the conference that "the Europe of today is the not the Europe of the 1930s and 1940s."
But he said anti-Semitism presented Europe with a "new challenge" as it spreads among disaffected Arab minorities amid tensions over the Mideast conflict.
Do Jews care one way or another when their synagogues are being burned down that it's a Muslim who brought along grudges from the Middle East rather than a fascist government that was responsible? The EU can say all the pretty things it wants about fighting anti-Semitism -- particularly in France -- but the fact remains that it tacitly endorsed it by not immediately combatting it. The past, as usual, carried no lessons for today's leaders.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 01:13 PM EST [Link]
~ AND SPEAKING OF SENSITIVE NUCLEAR TECHNOLOGY: According to an official in the Bush administration, international inspectors in Iran have found uranium enrichment centrifuge parts for a type of centrifuge that is more sophisticated than the type Iran has admitted to possessing.
International Atomic Energy Agency officials found "P-2" centrifuge parts that are "far superior, more sophisticated than anything" that the Iranians have revealed publicly, the official said.
A P-2 centrifuge can produce much more uranium appropriate for production of nuclear weapons than a P-1, which the nation confirms it has.
In Tehran, Hamid Reza Assefi, a spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, denied Iran had the sophisticated centrifuges.
"There are no P-2 centrifuges in Iran, either at civilian or military installations," he told reporters.
At the risk of sounding like an adventurous neoconservative, it's time for someone to knock at Tehran's door and ask a couple of questions.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 01:05 PM EST [Link]
~ IT'S ALWAYS EUROPE: The New York Times reports today that sensitive nuclear technology has been "pouring" out of Europe despite efforts to contain it.
Many of the names that have turned up among lists of suppliers and middlemen who fed equipment, materials and knowledge to nuclear programs in Pakistan and other aspiring nuclear nations are well-known players in Europe's uranium enrichment industry, a critical part of many nuclear weapons programs. Some have been convicted of illegal exports before.
The proliferation has its roots in Europe's own postwar eagerness for nuclear independence from the United States and its lax security over potentially lethal technology. It was abetted, critics say, by competition within Europe for lucrative contracts to bolster state-supported nuclear industries. Even as their own intelligence services warned that Pakistan could not be trusted, some European governments continued to help Pakistan's nuclear program.
"It was an economic consideration," said Paul Stais, a former Belgian member of the European Parliament who lobbied unsuccessfully for tighter export controls.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 01:00 PM EST [Link]
~ EVERYONE WANTS PEACE ALL OF A SUDDEN: Syria has contacted Israel via an intermediary offering to resume peace talks.
The messages carried by Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul expressed "Syria's readiness to resume peace talks from where they broke off" in January 2000, Khaddam said.
They also said that Syria was "still committed to the peace process in accordance with U.N. Security Council resolutions."
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 01:13 AM EST [Link]
~ SELF-PROMO ALERT: Speaking of gay marriage and Massachusetts, I have the cover story in today's American Spectator On-Line. What the Bay State needs in light of the Supreme Judicial Court's shenanigans isn't another constitutional convention, it might just be another Boston Tea Party.
Read the piece here.
Posted by antle @ 12:14 AM EST [Link]
Wednesday, February 18, 2004 AN UNLIKELY CRITIC OF SAN FRAN GAY MARRIAGES: Congressman Barney Frank has expressed his opposition to San Francisco's decision to illegally issue marriage licenses to gay couples, on the grounds that such civil disobedience is merely a symbolic diversion that breeds disrepect for the law. Of course, he doesn't see judges rewriting the constitution to mandate gay marriage as being bad for the rule of law, but hey, we'll take what we can get.
Read on.
Posted by antle @ 11:41 PM EST [Link]
~ BACK IN THE SADDLE AGAIN: Sorry for the dearth of posting lately. I thought I'd give interested parties an update: I have completed my move from Boston to the D.C. area (Fairfax, VA, specifically) and begun my job at The American Conservative. It's quite an adjustment, but with the job change and relocation behind me and a few days of rest ahead of me, you should start to see some more activity by me on these pages.
Posted by antle @ 10:54 PM EST [Link]
~ POTHOLES: VodkaPundit has a good response to all of those people opposed to money being spent fighting the war on terror.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 07:06 PM EST [Link]
~ ONE MORE REASON TO HAVE VOTED FOR HIM: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed turning a courtyard at the California state capitol building into a smoking area.
Under the actor-turned-governor's plan, part of the Capitol's roof would be removed to create an area where legislators and other Sacramento visitors could smoke.
The governor's spokeswoman, Terri Carbaugh, explained that Mr. Schwarzenegger wants to create an informal meeting and schmoozing area where he can smoke cigars with lawmakers and other power brokers.
Predictably some are crying foul.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 02:41 PM EST [Link]
~ BYE BYE: After vowing to fight on last night, Howard Dean today ends his bid for the Democratic nomination.
Dean, however, might not be entirely finished as he has one final move: endorsement. Now I know that I've been snarky about the value of endorsements so far but Dean might be different. His supporters are dedicated to his cause and if he endorsed John Edwards he might cause some problems for John Kerry. I guess we'll find out on Super Tuesday next month how this will all shake out.
Posted by steve @ 02:35 PM EST [Link]
~ SO UNHIP THEY COULD FIT THROUGH ANY DOOR: Polaroid says that despite what Andre 3000 says in his hit song "Hey Ya!", you should not shake a Polaroid picture as it as developing.
"Shaking or waving can actually damage the image," the company writes on its Web site in answer to a consumer's question about the song. "Rapid movement during development can cause portions of the film to separate prematurely, or can cause 'blobs' in the picture."
Ummm Polaroid...you know that Andre 3000 wanted the babes in his video to shake something else, right? Watch the video if you can't figure it out.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 02:29 AM EST [Link]
~ NARROW VICTORY: That's what you get for engaging in an NHL 2004 marathon (five game win streak for my beloved Toronto Maple Leafs after an embarassing loss to the hated Montreal Canadiens). A thumb used so much that the top layer of skin as worn off and I missed the news that John Kerry barely won Wisconsin.
Two things immediately pop out at me. One) Howard Dean is finished (Yeah, I know, that's obvious). He can stay in the race as long as he likes but he's done. All that time and money spent in Wisconsin and managed just 18 per cent? Go back to Vermont Howard. Two) Sen. John Edwards has no chance to win the nomination either but he will be a useful tool for the Democrats to keep interest up during the nomination process. After all, as long as there is at least two horses in the race it's worth watching.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 02:24 AM EST [Link]
Tuesday, February 17, 2004 "LET ME BE PRECISE.": If I can say anything nice about Howard Dean, at least you know where he stands on many issues. John Kerry? In response to a straight forward question the man can pack so much garbage in that you don't know if he's behind nationalized health care or the Treaty of Westphalia. In The New Republic today Andrew Sullivan addresses Mr. Kerry's habit of not answering questions.
Posted by steve @ 09:01 PM EST [Link]
~ SPEAKING OF LEAVING: Along with John Bryden, Canadians are leaving the Liberal Party as well. A new poll released today shows that Liberal support continues to plummet. The Conservative Party, which last month was barely registering, has shot up to eight points behind the Liberals.
The Ipsos-Reid poll completed for CTV after Prime Minister Paul Martin's weekend public relations blitz, shows the Liberals would be able to count on only 35 per cent of decided voters across the country.
The new Conservative Party of Canada appears to be the big beneficiary of the Liberals' misfortune. They gained another three points, pushing their support among decided voters to 27 per cent.
In contrast, the NDP slipped a percentage point to 17 per cent, while the Bloc Quebecois edged up a point to 11 per cent.
In even better news, support for the Liberals has fallen everywhere in Canada. My only question is this: Knowing what you know about the Liberals, my fellow Canadians, are you going to once again ignore scandals and re-elect them?
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 02:32 PM EST [Link]
~ LET THE LEACHING BEGIN!: Current Liberal MP for Ancaster-Dundas-Flamborough-Aldershot, former news editor at the Toronto Star (!), and writer of two highly-praised books of Canadian history, John Bryden, has quit the Liberal Party in disgust, saying that he wants "to find again the kind of idealism that has always motivated me as a backbench MP" and that the "Conservatives show signs they have that kind of idealism." May he be the first of many.
If Bryden wants to keep his seat, he better join another party and quickly. Independents do not tend to get elected to our Canadian Parliament unless their name happens to be "John Nunziata" and even then, only once. Given the demographics of Ancaster-Dundas-Flamborough-Aldershot and the last election results, I would not recommend the NDP, which leaves, guess who?
Posted by Barton @ 01:57 PM EST [Link]
~ THEY HAVE TREATMENTS FOR THAT: Dariush Shirazi argues that the virus of Iran must be stopped now.
For the American Administration to wait and fail to act for fear of the political uncertainties brought about by the election-cycle whirlwind sweeping across the land of the free and home of the brave is an outright mistake, and a dangerous one at that. President Bush must set aside the political storm clouds that now cast shadows over America, for one last stand, a stand that will most certainly bring about the achievement of his proposed goals for freedom, as well as rewarding him with another four years in office so that he may continue his leadership and sustain current progress.
I appreciate Mr. Shirazi's enthusiasm but I doubt election year considerations can be trumped by anything outside of another terrorist attack in the United States.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 01:45 PM EST [Link]
~ TRUDEAUPIA TRIUMPHANT: A month ago during my blogging hiatus, I noted a series of absolutely brilliant posts by the folks over at Innocents Abroad that perfectly captured just what is so demoralizing about politics and society in general here in the Peaceable Kingdom. It all began when one of the titular "Innocents," John Coumarianos, met a Canadian couple whom he describes as "highly-educated, professional people." He accurately describes a character type that has become all too familiar over the last thirty or so years and is now utterly dominant in Canadian education, government, and media:
I was struck by how different they are from most Americans -- at least most Americans that I know. First of all, they don't have any particular allegiance to Canada or any other country. I also got the impression that they view politics or the modern state system as antiquated, a kind of historical relic to be overcome or surpassed. Their view of politics or government is that it exists simply for providing services like healthcare (which actually was the only source of patriotism or national pride for them). Although America is often accused of making people "consumers" instead of "citizens," I was impressed by how little my northern counterparts thought government, politics, and citizenship (not just the Canadian variety, but all varieties) ennobled them. They didn't dislike Canada at all; they just didn't think politics or the state were that important. Their view (which is probably the view of most educated Europeans) actually makes them more consumers (at least of government programs) and less "citizens" than Americans.
This is the attitude of ninety-five percent of the young people I've met at the University of Toronto. These are the proverbial "the best and the brightest" that our country has to offer, yet their stance towards politics, indeed their whole conception of what it means to be patriotic about this country, seems to go no deeper than "Heritage Moments" and making sure the recommendations of the Romanow Report are implemented. We are truly on Hayek's Road to Serfdom, being lulled to sleep by the corrupt corporatism embodied in the Liberal Party of Canada. In the conservative 1980s, instead of a Reagan or Thatcherite Revolution, we in Canada got Brian Mulroney who gave us free trade (a massive positive), but who did nothing to fundamentally reform the political dynamic of this country. Instead, Liberal bagman were shuffled unceremoniously out of office, to be replaced with bagman who happened to have Progressive Conservative affiliation.
Collin May, a bona fide Canadian living abroad, outlines our dire situation and how we got into this mess in two posts, firstly here and then here. His conclusion? Canada is fast becoming a country whose main, indeed perhaps sole purpose, is to exorcize the demon of nationalism, Quebecois or otherwise, in effect, an anti-nation:
The federal Liberals, since the 1960’s, have attempted to defeat all threats to their power by taking a sort of abstracted middle ground. This ground attempts to unify Canada under Liberal rule by diminishing any form of real political identification on the part of Canadians. Any party, group or political movement that dares challenge this dogma is branded as being opposed to “Canadian values.” So, Canada today is increasingly becoming a detached and self-congratulatory urbanized mass of humanitarian internationalists who are unable to see that their cherished self-perceptions have no real substance. The Canadian nation exists only to advance the cause of the anti-nation. Paul Martin is likely to play on this anti-nationalism in order to build his electoral wins. The deracination of the Canadian nation will proceed apace. The only challenge may come from those remnants of political affiliation, such as Alberta, that would prefer a sense of citizenship over consumerism. But in the Canadian community, the apolitical consumer looks likely to extinguish the citizen in the long run.
Posted by Barton @ 12:38 AM EST [Link]
Monday, February 16, 2004 I DID NOT HAVE SEX WITH THAT MAN...MR. KERRY: Alex Polier denied today that she had an extramarital affair with Sen. John Kerry.
"I have never had a relationship with Senator Kerry, and the rumors in the press are completely false."
Reminds me of the denials by a famous former intern. That said, regardless of whether Kerry stepped out on Theresa Heinz or not, I'd hate to be invited over for dinner. I don't care whose family you are talking about, the fireworks always start over dinner.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 06:58 PM EST [Link]
~ I GOT TICKETS TO MAUI: Tomorrow will likely spell the end of Howard Dean's campaign and the people who would best know that are his campaign staff.
Today Dean fired his campaign manager Steve Grossman after he stated that he would switch his support to John Kerry if Dean lost in Wisconsin.
According to ABC news this evening, Dean campaign staff are trying to persuade him to quit to protect his legacy as having changed how grassroots campaigns worked with his 'pioneering' work with the Internet. Oh yeah, and a lot of them have booked vacations for after Wisconsin.
Posted by steve @ 06:50 PM EST [Link]
~ WITHOUT A TRACE: Seems like Abdul Qadeer Khan is about to disappear like one of those victims on that Anthony Lapaglia FBI show. Pakistani officials today denied reports that Khan suffered a heart attack this weekend.
Officials say that Khan is as fit as a fiddle. Right....
Posted by steve @ 02:03 PM EST [Link]
~ THIS EXPLAINS A LOT: What with Jeremy Lott posting his new favourite poem (did you make sure to pay royalties to the Yeats family, Jeremy?) and Terry Teachout posting a daily Almanac, I figure I might also stop with the original writing and steal some other person's hard work as well. Here for example is the most striking passage of prose I've read recently. It's about, of all people, Alexandre Dumas, author of The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers, among other books:
[Alexandre Dumas] has many qualities in common with the classics, even with the classics which are much more important than he. This certainly he has in common with the great men: that he is indefensible. He sprawls at full length like Shakespeare, and shows all his imbecilities; he is so open to attack that the word for him is not so much indefensible as defenceless, smilingly and superbly defenceless. He has the nakedness of the giants. He has that absolutely healthy characteristic of the really strong; I mean his weakness is mere weakness and nothing else. His lapses are strong, steady, healthy lapses, like great stretches of healthy slumber; the strong man's stupidity is as strong as sleep. It is not, like the stupidity of lesser minds, merely a nervous nap.
...Writing badly anyone can understand who writes at all; I for one do it perpetually. Writing badly is the definition of journalism; writing badly is almost in such cases the definition of living honestly. But writing badly on such an enormous scale; writing badly with such immense ambition of design; writing badly with such immense industry of words and pages; and writing so badly as Dumas did-these things are the marks of no common mind. It requires a great man to write so badly as that. It is as courageous as building an ugly Cathedral, and staring at it as it sits triumphant in the sky. It is as bold as building the great wall of China, and deliberately building it wrong. If Dumas was futile it was almost in the same sense that Napoleon was futile.
From "On Writing Badly," by G.K. Chesterton
You need only think of James Joyce's Finnegans Wake or David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest.
Posted by Barton @ 01:20 PM EST [Link]
~ FOR ALL YOUR CONSERVATIVE NEEDS: By the way, if you're really interested in the fine details regarding the Conservative Party's leadership race and election preparations (as well as some gossip), you need go no further than Bluedraft.com. Bluedraft, which is run by two party members on their own time and money, has become Grand Central for ordinary party members requiring that kind of information, as well as a springboard for malicious leaks and cranky opinions. Among other fascinating things I've recently learned is that our Deputy Leader Elsie Wayne is retiring from Parliament and that BC Conservative MP Ted White is struggling against the Iranian menace. Why don't you have a look?
Posted by Barton @ 12:45 PM EST [Link]
~ MY FRIEND KATE
I want to wish Happy Birthday to my friend Kate. Kate is one of my wife's former voice students who is now a freshman in college. We made a special trip to see her in a perfomance Saturday night. As we expected, Kate was wonderful. She is an energetic performer with a phenomenal voice.
Kate is one of those "kids" you don't hear about. With abundant news stories about problem children in our schools, we seldom get to hear about the success stories -- the stories about serious students who work and study hard, who get good grades, who treat adults respectfully, who care about more than sex, drugs, and abusive music.
Kate is an incredible performer. When she sings about a broken heart, you just know that her heart is literally shattered. When she smiles, her face lights up like sunrise. Of all my wife's students, Kate is the only one who can bring tears to my eyes.
Happy Birthday, Kate. God bless you and keep you safe.
cb
Posted by clbloomer @ 11:05 AM EST [Link]
~ IT'S AMAZING HOW FAST YOU CAN GET A HEADACHE: All I needed to see was the headline. It seems our pals over at PETA have once again picked a fight with a town over its name. The target this time? Slaughterville, Oklahoma.
The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals sent a latter to Slaughterville administrator Marsha Blair suggesting that the town undergo a moniker makeover to sound less hostile to furry and feathered friends.
"Veggieville [is] a friendly name honoring a heart-healthy and compassionate alternative to animal corpses," the letter said.
The group said it's even willing to cough up a lot of lettuce — $20,000 worth of veggie burgers — for Slaughterville students if the town will change its name, according to Bruce Friedrich, director of PETA's vegan campaigns.
As the story points out, the town is named after co-founder James Slaughter. This, of course, is hardly the first time that PETA has tried to raise some publicity for their little cult. Back in October they called on Rodeo, California to change their name.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 04:13 AM EST [Link]
~ BE UNPREPARED: A long while back, I and David Janes had a little arguement about whether amalgamation was worth it. Mr. Janes points out this article by the Globe & Mail's John Barber saying that it wasn't because "uncontrollable wage escalation has been its defining characteristic." Well, I have another story to tell about amalgamation and this really shook me in my confidence, about both the amalgamation and Mike Harris.
Quite naturally, for weeks now, I've been attending many, many meetings regarding our new party. At one of these meetings, I happened to fall into talking with a former Toronto city councillor, who very kindly offered to drive me back into the city. Well, on the long drive back, we got to talking about City Hall politics (and boy, are there some stories there). For the most part, it was all very good-humoured. It was only when the councillor began talking about what happened with amalgamation, that the colour rose in his cheeks and he began speaking in rather agitated tones. What he told was a horror story of organizational mismanagement and political expediance. What became frighteningly clear from his narrative was that the Mike Harris government was using the amalgamation of the various municipal government(s) of Toronto as a test-case for all its other planned municipal amalgamations around the province because, well, essentially they had no idea how to go about doing it.
The City of Toronto has about 55 000 municipal employees. On the very day that Mel Lastman was sworn-in as the new mayor and amalgamation was supposed to be officially complete, almost no one of these 55 000 people knew what department they were assigned to, what were their duties and authority, who they reported to, what their official job titles were, or what was their place on the org chart. Why? Because the task force the provinicial government had assigned to amalgamate the city had only begun its work and actually hire people only six weeks before. In essence, what the task force had done was hire only the very top layer of bureaucracy, the Commissioners of the various city departments. These Commissioners in turn had to look at the pool of available municipal employees (all 55 000 of them!) and interview and vet for themselves the next layer of bureaucracy, and they in turn had to do the same thing, and so on. No one in the previous municipal governments were guaranteed a job or the same job in the same position they held in the hierarchy because the entire administrative infrastructure had to be rebuilt from the top down. So, in essence, five or six layers of bureaucracy had to be built from nothing and 55 000 people had to go through the job hiring process all over again. This process took two-and-a-half years to finish! In other words, the municipal government did not actually begin functioning properly until thirty months after amalgamation was supposedly officially finished. The result? City politicians (especially in the mayor's office) with no full-time bureaucracy to help them, had to rely on their own political staffers to get all the grunt-work done. This left a giant opening for corruption to occur, such as we saw with the MFP scandal, because, a lot of the time, there was simply little or no City staff consultation, involvement and/or oversight in the various deals being made. This is also why City Hall under Mel Lastman developed a reputation as a paradise for "Backroom Boys" shenanigans. That culture had its source in the rushed amalgamation. Mel and his friends had to rely on his many cronies because that was the only way any work was going to get done.
By the time Lastman's second term was winding down, this former city councillor (who is, remember, an Ernie Eves-supporting Tory) was so disgusted by the situation, that he was one of the first to urge arch-NDPer David Miller to run for the Mayor's office. He might be a Leftist, but I was assured that Miller is principled, smart, and completely incorruptible, the perfect man to clean-up the Augean stables that Mel built on Queen Street. Indeed, this former city councillor, who quit partly because his district was being redistributed out-of-existence and partly because he could not endure more than one term of a City Hall run under Mayor Mel, is seriously considering running for City Council again because David Miller is running the new administration.
As for an Ontario Tory like me, well, if we're still wondering why we were wiped out of own capital city after ruling the province for eight-and-a-half years, the way amalgamation was handled is a definite factor. On the perversely positive side however, perhaps Miller will prove so successful at restoring competence at City Hall, the people of this city will forget all about the problems we originally had in the first place.
Posted by Barton @ 04:12 AM EST [Link]
~ LEWINSKY REDUX: (Via Brothers Judd Blog) As Newsweek did nearly ten years before with the Monica Lewinsky story (until Matt Drudge grabbed the story from under them), so is an unidentified American television network doing now. According to England's The Sun, the woman who allegedly had an affair with John Kerry recorded an interview with a network in late December about the allegations. They are reportedly sitting on the interview until they can prove the allegations.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 03:59 AM EST [Link]
~ UNINFORMED POLITICAL COMMENTARY OF THE WEEK: Being what my fellow young Tories disparagingly call an "Artsie" (to which I sneer right back to these future lawyers that they are just a bunch of "Careerists"), I read a lot of really bad political commentary made by some really smart arts writers, who don't know the first thing about politics. For example, I read with amusement once when X2: X-Men United came out on video, the Toronto Star's video reviewer Norman Wilner write about just how closely the genocidal villain in that movie (who, if you recall, wanted to kill every mutant in the whole, wide world) resembled Bush, Rumsfeld, Rice, and co. Subtle stuff.
Anyway, it's just not the movie reviewers anymore. Now the architecture writers are getting in on the Bush-bashing act too. Here, for example, is an article by the Toronto Star's Christopher Hume, who's always worth reading. Hume is assessing the design of a new border crossing to be built at the Peace Bridge in Fort Erie. Note the nuanced political commentary Hume puts into his three introductory paragraphs:
As the United States descends into fascism, the importance of Canada, North America's only civil society, is greater than ever.
That's why the new border crossing at the Peace Bridge will be so significant. The $43-million facility won't change Canada-U.S. relations or make this a better country, but, in its own quiet way, it says a lot about who we are and, more important, who we're not.
Designed by Toronto's NORR Architects, the reworked Canadian Plaza at Fort Erie, Ont., is a small but telling gesture intended to convey the image of a place where people are still welcome, of a nation that hasn't succumbed to paranoia.
As you can see, Hume likes the design because it expresses Canada's "openness," unlike the United States which, as we have seen, is in the midst of succumbing to "fascism" and "paranoia." Hume even ends his review with a prediction:
Architecture is only one way a society reveals itself; sometimes it expresses common values, sometimes what we wish those values were. The Peace Bridge may involve a bit of both.
Either way, this will be one crossing where people would rather be coming than going.
I welcome the waves of American refugees fleeing Bush's Amerika with open arms. I'm sure they'll love it here. After all, we are "North America's only civil society."
Posted by Barton @ 02:50 AM EST [Link]
~ NOW WHERE WAS I...?: After a long, long, long absence, I've finally decided to break my silence and resume blogging. And yes, I was suffering from post-Eves, post-Miller trauma. It's just that essentially wasting a month worth's of every moment of your free time on an election campaign that results in the self-destruction of a party you really believed in, doesn't exactly encourage you in participate in future campaigns, which is why I sat out in the mayoral race. Also, the fact that my study schedule was thrown off by that one month did not help matters. Anyway, I've kept up with the blogs and really, Jackson, David, Kathy, Bruce, Andrew, Colby, and Adam (not to mention my two new favourite blogs: Terry Teachout and The 2 Blowhards) offer better, more insightful writing than this Literary Studies and Philosophy major could ever could summon up in these rambling thoughts and that was rather depressing too. And oh yes, I'm now on my Spring Break (pauses, runs upstairs, and looks outside), I mean, what the University of Toronto calls, "Reading Week," so I have time to ramble on a bit.
Since this was Valentine's Day weekend, I will offer these (non-political and utterly trivial) words of wisdom. No matter how unimaginative you are and no matter how great a deal it looks like it is, never, never, never, take your date to a "fun" chain restaurant, such as, oh, Jack Astor's (the so-called "Best-Joint in Town"). Apart from a street-sign that displayed a donkey's bottom as its most prominent feature, posters on the wall whose main point of humour was that they featured puns on the first syllable of the second word in the name of the restaurant, decor that screamed "Corporate Kitsch" (did I mention the absolutely monstrous Elvis shrine in the corner?), and the North Korean-style atmosphere of enforced jollity among its many sins, I spent the entire time being distracted by how eerily my experience was prefigured by this article from The Onion (warning: mild profanity).
Posted by Barton @ 02:20 AM EST [Link]
Sunday, February 15, 2004 WEB SITE PLUG: Got an email from an interesting group this weekend called NGO Monitor. The group's mission is to promote accountability by human rights NGOs when it comes to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Thanks to their work the Ford Foundation has dropped support for the Habitat International Coalition, an NGO that was particularly political and anti-Israel.
Visit it here.
Posted by steve @ 11:49 PM EST [Link]
~ IT ISN'T JUST THE NYT: Gary Larson has a good article over at Intellectual Conservative about how regional newspapers -- specifically the Minneapolis Star Tribune -- are attacking the Bush administration disingenuously over the issues.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 11:45 PM EST [Link]
~ IT'S A WORLD WAR: Japanese media reported today that al-Qaida planned terrorist attacks in that country during the 2002 World Cup.
The attacks were not carried out because al Qaeda did not have a network in Japan, which hosted the 2002 event jointly with South Korea, according to the Sankei.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 03:29 PM EST [Link]
~ HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY: I tune out for a day and I miss two more victories by John Kerry, this time in Nevada and Washington, D.C. As soon as the late to the party AFL-CIO endorses Kerry, it will all be over.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 01:42 AM EST [Link]
Friday, February 13, 2004 CAN WE PUT THIS TO REST NOW?: A retired officer from the Alabama Air National Guard announced today that he remembered seeing George W. Bush Dannelly Field in Montgomery in 1972.
Calhoun said he does not have any photographs or documents to prove Bush showed up for duty, but his ex-wife, Patsy Burks, said she remembered Calhoun's account.
"Bill did come home [from the base] and told me that Bush was there," she said "I think what stuck in my head was that he was helping on the Senate campaign."
"What I do know about Bill is that whatever he says is the truth," she added. "This issue came up in the 2000 election. ... Bill did mention in 2000 that he contacted someone and said, 'If you need me to come forward, I will.' And they said, 'We're hoping that won't be necessary.'"
Let's move on people. Nothing to see here.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 04:09 PM EST [Link]
~ "I DID NOT HAVE SEXUAL RELATIONS WITH THAT WOMAN.": John Kerry denied today that he had cheated on his wife with a former Associated Press employee. For his sake I hope he's telling the truth. There's many other stupid things I'd do before making a woman like Theresa Heinz angry.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 04:06 PM EST [Link]
~ JFK AND THE STORY BEHIND THE STORY: David Frum has some interesting thoughts about the John F. Kerry/infidelity story that the mainstream media won't touch but everyone else is commenting on.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 12:56 PM EST [Link]
~ AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY FOR A UNIPOLAR WORLD: Charles Krauthammer gave a speech on Tuesday at the AEI Annual Dinner and I have to admit that even if you don't agree with him, it's an impressive speech. I won't quote a line from it, go read it yourself.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 12:49 PM EST [Link]
~ UMMM, THANKS: John Kerry received the endorsement of Wesley Clark today. As I have asked before, what value is the endorsement of a man who wasn't popular? What I want to know is where will Madonna throw her support now?
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 12:45 PM EST [Link]
~ PREEMPTIVE BOLOGNA!
In today’s Federalist we read:
"But intelligence can never tell us everything. Leaders must understand the minds of their enemies, and the nature of the world they live in. Furtive, dictatorial, aggressive regimes with powerful grudges against the United States deserve our suspicion. When they are patrons of terror, they deserve our hostility. September 11 -- which was accomplished not by WMD, but by box cutters -- has raised the stakes immeasurably. Such countries as North Korea, Iran, Libya, and Saddam's Iraq must understand that they live on borrowed time. In many situations we will use diplomacy, as we have with North Korea and Libya. In others, we will wait on domestic developments, as in Iran. In still others, we will try isolation, as we did for many years with Iraq. But when the best intelligence we have, plus the nature of the beast, counsels force, then we must use it. We cannot wait, as Condi Rice once put it, until our smoking gun is Chicago. The administration must not think, however, that everyone understands and accepts preemption in an age of terror. These are new presumptions for a world that we now understand to be dangerous. The case for them must be made, and defended. It must also be accompanied by an assurance to the public that the intelligence gathering that assists our leaders in analyzing the threats against us will be done in the most intelligent way possible." --National Review
Thus saith, the new world order loving 'National Review.' The claim is that we need to make a case for, and defend preemptive strikes; that the new morality of the offensive war doctrine is in, the old morality of the defensive war doctrine is out. But has the world really changed because of one sneak attack on the US? Haven’t we had terror attacks and sneak attacks on the US and its citizens dating back to the early days of our relationship with the American Indians, or back to the days of the Barbary Pirates, or back to the Lusitania, or who can forget Pearl Harbor? In fact, as far as all of mankind goes, didn’t the first sneak attack occur when Cain slew Abel in the field?
Something’s a foot here. Once we cross the line, and not as an exception, mind you, but as a doctrine, presume that we can execute pre-emptive strikes and wars upon those who have not yet attacked us, simply because 'things have changed,' simply because they possess weapons that might hurt us, if used, is to create a doctrine that justifies the step by step sacking of the world, for in behalf of the UN and the internationalists who worship at the UN’s alter, for no better reason than the cockeyed belief that 'the world has changed,' and thus, needs to be disarmed to be ‘safe.’
If an attack is truly imminent, this is one thing. We certainly might defuse the threat, and do so without going to the extremes of conquering that nation, occupying its lands, and asking the UN to set up ‘democracy.’ But how loosely do we draw the line between imminent and speculative threats? Possession of weapons of mass destruction should not be classified as imminent; as if the mere possession of a weapon is a crime; as if, the weapon has a mind of its own and will cause its owner to use it. Don’t we possess such weapons? And isn’t the possession of weapons in individuals and nations fundamental to the right to self defense? And isn’t the anti-weapon UN, in fact, no friend of liberty? Just where will the National Review, the Bush Administration, and the internationalists take us as we jump from one preemptive attack to another so as to make the world safe? Safe for who and for what? An all powerful UN?
As for the Federalist, they claim to be on the side of the Constitution and the Founders, but they sound more and more, just like 'The National Review' they chose to quote and highlight, born and bred Establishmentarians.
Posted by farrell @ 10:29 AM EST [Link]
~ I WAS NEVER GOOD AT MATH: A group of academics at the University of Washington in Seattle say they have a mathematical formula that predicts which couples will have their marriage end on the rocks.
"We have been able to predict that divorce will happen before [it does]. That's old news," says John Gottman, emeritus professor of psychology. "But what we have now is a scientific model for understanding why we can predict it with such accuracy."
So silly the arrogance of academics.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 01:48 AM EST [Link]
Thursday, February 12, 2004 HANG HIM: A member of the U.S. National Guard was arrested today on allegations that he attempted to contact al-Qaida and provide them with information.
Army Lt. Col. Stephen Barger said Spc. Ryan G. Anderson was being held at Fort Lewis "pending criminal charges of aiding the enemy by wrongfully attempting to communicate and give intelligence to the Al Qaeda terrorist network." Anderson, 26, will remain at the base near Tacoma.
Barger declined to give any details on the arrest, including what information allegedly was given to Al Qaeda or how it was provided.
The rumor is that the information was passed over the Internet via chatrooms. Seriously, if the clyde is guilty, I support making the ultimate example of him. Perhaps Martin Sheen can make another movie about the same subject...
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 08:23 PM EST [Link]
~ JFK CHEATED ON HIS WIFE?: According to Matt Drudge, John F. Kerry's campaign may hit a rough spot soon as allegations over infidelity may surface.
A frantic behind-the-scenes drama is unfolding around Sen. John Kerry and his quest to lockup the Democratic nomination for president, the DRUDGE REPORT can reveal.
Intrigue surrounds a woman who recently fled the country, reportedly at the prodding of Kerry, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.
A serious investigation of the woman and the nature of her relationship with Sen. John Kerry has been underway at TIME magazine, ABC NEWS, the WASHINGTON POST, THE HILL and the ASSOCIATED PRESS, where the woman in question once worked.
Goodness...an intern? Over at Instapundit, Glenn Reynolds reports that a blogger first reported this last week.
Posted by steve @ 04:15 PM EST [Link]
~ WHO DO YOU LOVE?: Cox and Forkum have a typically good cartoon today about John Kerry and his conciliatory attitude towards Iran's religious dictatorship.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 04:07 PM EST [Link]
~ THANKS KHAN: U.N. inspectors have found secret drawings of advanced centrifuge used to enrich uranium, similiar to ones found in Libya.
The diplomats said preliminary investigations suggested that the design matched drawings of enrichment equipment found in Libya that was supplied through a network headed by Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 11:19 AM EST [Link]
~ JUST DON'T GET TOO LIKE WESTERN SCHOOLS: The Christian Science Monitor reports that teachers in Iraq are adjusting to a new way of teaching: student participation.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 01:10 AM EST [Link]
~ CLASSLESS: After the Mexican soccer team knocked out the U.S. team from Olympic men's soccer qualifying, the crowd chanted "Osama!" I would so totally stop that immigration initiative just for that.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 01:01 AM EST [Link]
~ SERVING WITH BUSH: You've probably already seen this but the Washington Post printed a letter from Col. William Campenni (Ret.) who served with George W. Bush in the Air National Guard. He says the AWOL charge is bogus.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 12:58 AM EST [Link]
Wednesday, February 11, 2004 I'M APPALLED...APPALLED!: French prosecutors have launched an investigation into allegations that Yasser Arafat's wife Suha has laundered money to the tune of a $1 million a month. The right person to investigate is Yasser himself. God only knows how much EU money he's salted away in Swiss bank accounts.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 01:23 PM EST [Link]
~ WHAT ARE YOU THINKING KARZAI?: Jed Babbin reports that the Karzai governmetn in Afghanistan has allowed ten Iranian "border posts" to be constructed inside its borders.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 01:17 PM EST [Link]
~ THOUGHTS ON GAY MARRIAGE: I miss Peeve Farm for one day and I miss a good blog by Brian Tiemann on the subject of gay marriage.
I tried writing on this subject a few days ago, but few people seem to be echoing its sentiments independently. Or, I should say, few gays seem to be echoing it. I've run across precious few gays who see value in waiting for public opinion to shift further behind same-sex marriage, as it's already on course to do; I've seen few gays who look at the fact that poll numbers show such a huge increase in popular support for SSM in just the past decade and conclude that if we give it five or ten years more, support will be nigh-universal-- rather than claiming that Now is Our Hour to Strike! Most gays, on the contrary, look at developments like the Canadian codification of SSM and Massachusetts' judicial decision and take them to be the big go signal, and now there's no stopping them-- they've got to go for the gold now, evidently seeing the collapse of America into a religio-fascist Nazi-esque state bent on the extermination of all sexual deviants lurking right around the corner.
But that's not the feedback I've been getting from conservatives, though. What I've been hearing, from numerous people writing me in e-mail, is to the following effect: Thank you, thank you, thank you for finally showing that there are gay people out there capable of reason, understanding, and compromise-- and who grasp the concept that Middle America's opposition to gay marriage has nothing to do with hatred of gays, but rather with a reluctance to redefine and dilute such a cherished institution as marriage, particularly before we're all ready to do so. I'm now actually more willing to support same-sex marriage now that I know that my objections have at least been received and correctly understood, instead of misrepresented and demonized. What I guessed, and seemingly accurately, is that most Americans-- even quite conservative ones-- have no problem at all with gay people; they're just not wild about the idea of having to explain to their kids that "Well, Junior[/Princess], when you grow up, you can get married to a girl[/boy] and have kids of your own, or else you might choose to marry a boy[/girl] and just live together, because you might like to kiss-- uh, well, you know how girls[/boys] have cooties? Well, one day you might... you know what? Screw it. Here's my credit card, go check out some porn sites and get it over with."
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 12:52 AM EST [Link]
~ I GUESS THAT MADONNA ENDORSEMENT DIDN'T HELP: If you had told me that Wesley Clark would drop out of the race before Dennis Kucinich or Al Sharpton I'd have taken a bet on that. Kerry easily won both states tonight with Clark finishing third in both Virginia and Tennessee. Dean finished a distant fourth in each state but still plugs on hoping that Wisconsin saves his all but dead campaign.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 12:38 AM EST [Link]
Tuesday, February 10, 2004 A REAL VICTORY FOR KERRY: Winning south of the Mason-Dixon line may be John Kerry's biggest feat so far, beating southern natives John Edwards and Wesley Clark in Virginia. Tennessee closes at 8:00pm but people are already saying Kerry will win that one as well.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 07:52 PM EST [Link]
~ HAPPY BIRTHDAY: Tomorrow is the 25th anniversary of the revolution that catapulted Ayatollah Ruhallah Khomeini into power in Iran. Amir Taheri has some thoughts about the regime here while SMCCDI reports that the regime is paying people to come to the big Iranian cities to "celebrate" the anniversary.
Full buses are reaching the cities of Tehran, Esfahan, Shiraz, tabriz, Mashad, Hamadan and Oroomiah (former Rezai-e) by delivering their load of paid rural people who are receiving money, gifts, promises and free full paid travel to cities.
Most of the state's foundations' hotels and dorm places, Bassij centers, mosques and even part of the regime's military facilities, such as in Lavizan (NE of Tehran) are receiving these guests.
The regime intends by this way to boost its "popular legitimacy" and avoid empty streets on these days while each of the ministries have received the order to gather groups of employees, school students and plainclothes militaries and to send them for the two events ahead.
Posted by steve @ 03:47 PM EST [Link]
~ TIME TO CHANGE COURSE: Saul Singer of the Jerusalem Post tells the Bush administration that U.S. policy towards the Israel/Palestinian mess has to change.
In June 2002, Bush made the boldest US pitch ever for Palestinian statehood, but conditioned it on an end to terrorism and Palestinian regime change. Then, in the run-up to the war in Iraq, the Bush administration embraced the road map and joined Europe in covering Yasser Arafat with a fig leaf of a Palestinian Authority prime minister. The result has been no regime change and no end to terrorism.
Sharon's unilateralism is, more than anything, an admission that the US and Israel have, at least for now, both given up on Palestinian regime change. This is a tragedy for all concerned. It means dooming Palestinians to live under Arafat's police state, and risking that suicide bombers will be replaced by missile attacks. Most of all, it risks signalling that the Palestinians have gained territory through their terror war, creating a setback for the hope of peace and security for Israel, and the war against terrorism generally.
How can President George W. Bush salvage his vision of two states living in side by side in peace and freedom? Three steps are needed, two of which involve incremental adjustments to long-standing US policy.
Read on. (Free registration required)
Posted by steve @ 03:42 PM EST [Link]
~ BAN ON RELIGIOUS APPAREL ADVANCES IN FRANCE
A large majority of France's National Assembly voted Tuesday to ban religious emblems in state schools, in an attempt to keep tensions between Muslim and Jewish minorities out of the school house.
Banned, under this legislation, are emblems, banned are students who wish to participate in activities, e.g., protest activities against sex education, and other 'religious' activities and speech.
The French want their people to believe that they are promoting religious tolerance, but how about this: secular France once again demonstrates its intollerance towards faith. They say they fear violence, but violence should never be tolerated, and violence should be treated as a separate issue. Whenever one crosses the line and takes one's private religious views to the point of violating the sacred rights of other, that is when the state legitimately must step in. Short of that, in a free society, it is the state's duty to butt out, not force people of faith to practice their faith in a closet.
Posted by farrell @ 03:35 PM EST [Link]
~ IT WAS THE INTERWEB THAT DONE IT!: Ex-Howard Dean campaign manager Joe Trippi says it was the Internet that caused his candidate's campaign to go off the rails.
Joe Trippi, who resigned after defeats in Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire Democratic presidential primary, said the direct involvement of so many Internet supporters deprived the campaign of the traditional weapon of political surprise.
"We were having a real problem with how to say, 'We could be in real trouble here,"' Trippi told a technology conference of the tactical trouble the Dean campaign had in balancing the need to keep supporters informed.
Remarks I have to admit I find laughable. In the January issue of Wired magazine, Dean supporter Gary Wolf regals the reader about how Trippi utilized the Internet to build up Dean's war chest and grassroots support.
What does a campaign manager matter? Howard Dean fans found each other through Meetup.com and raised his banner on round-the-clock blogs - and the network did the rest. But in fact, Joe Trippi's management of the Web campaign has been obsessive and brilliant. He has hired a staff of seemingly sleepless bloggers whose engaging voices on Dean's Web site set the tone for a larger network that includes independent bloggers, Meetup members, and supporters who comment regularly on the campaign site. He participates in a series of conference calls with all the Meetup organizers, he controls the timing and goals of the major fundraising pushes, and he uses his blogs' Comments feature to provide instant, focus group-style feedback. Most important, Trippi makes sure the structure and the rhetoric of the Dean campaign are aligned with the self-image of the most active segments of the Internet community. When Dean talks about a decentralized, networked, bottom-up democracy, he is aiming these words directly at an Internet constituency Trippi knows very well.
Trippi had no problems with the Internet when Dean was raising millions of dollars and enjoying healthy support...only when the campaign collapsed. Dean's campaign didn't fail because of the Internet, it failed because Democrats realized he wasn't a viable candidate.
Posted by steve @ 03:26 PM EST [Link]
~ THE HORROR AT GUANTANAMO: "A 15-year-old Afghan boy released after spending a year at the U.S. prison for terror suspects in Cuba says he underwent almost no questioning while in detention but got plenty of schooling, prayer and good food."
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 03:15 PM EST [Link]
~ OKAY, BUT YOU SELL THE WAR TO AMERICANS: Michael Ledeen argues today that in order to liberate Iraq, we must also liberate Iran. As he points out, we don't need to fight a war to do so but Americans should take a harder line with the mullahs.
As Singer pointed out in a piece in the Jerusalem Post last week that we linked to, one that coincidently was published on the National Review's web site today, it remains to be seen whether George W. Bush is capable of more than simply military action
Posted by steve @ 12:24 PM EST [Link]
Monday, February 9, 2004 MORE TROUBLE FOR MEL: Newsweek saw a preview of The Passion of The Christ and says that charges of anti-Semitism aren't entirely unfounded.
As moving as many moments in the film are, though, two NEWSWEEK screenings of a rough cut of the movie raise important historical issues about how Gibson chose to portray the Jewish people and the Romans. To take the film's account of the Passion literally will give most audiences a misleading picture of what probably happened in those epochal hours so long ago. The Jewish priests and their followers are the villains, demanding the death of Jesus again and again; Pilate is a malleable governor forced into handing down the death sentence.
At the risk of sounding like an anti-Semite -- and Lord knows nearly eight years of Enter Stage Right and nearly three years of this blog should prove conclusively otherwise -- wouldn't Jesus Christ be more of a threat to the Jewish hierarchy then it would Rome? After all, Christ claimed he was the Jewish messiah come to fulfill prophecy in the Old Testament, a direct threat to Caiaphas' authority. Pilate, who really was a petty tyrant, likely considered the whole mess -- and Christ was far from the only Jew who ever ran around claiming to be the messiah -- a Jewish problem until he had no choice but to address it directly.
And the fact that the Jewish elite -- i.e. the priests of the Temple -- demanded the death of Christ doesn't remotely imply that the Jewish people themselves were responsible for His death.
I guess we'll just have to wait until the movie is released before anyone can really begin debating these points.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 04:36 PM EST [Link]
~ I THINK THEY WOULD HAVE USED THEM ALREADY: Ha'aretz is reporting that al-Qaida has possessed tactical level nuclear weapons for the past six years.
However, the sources said Al-Qaida doesn't intend to use the weapons against American forces in Muslim countries, "due to the serious damage" it could cause. But that decision is subject to change, the sources said, if Al-Qaida "is dealt a serious blow that won't leave it any room to maneuver."
Umm, like losing the country that protected you or having your organization decimated globally? Sorry, I don't buy this.
Although tactical level nuclear weapons have a low yield -- 0.1 kiloton, though they can get up to 1 megaton -- one would still have done more damage than the terrorist strikes of September 11, 2001. It's hard to believe that al-Qaida would have pulled off an elaborate strike like 9/11 when it could have tried to smuggle in one TNW through America's porous border and truly created terror.
Posted by steve @ 02:47 PM EST [Link]
~ IF A QUAGMIRE DOESN'T EXIST...MAKE IT UP YOURSELF!: Glenn Reynolds spotlights a blatant CNN attempt to turn a memo by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi -- a Jordanian -- into a story about how Iraqis want to drive the U.S. and its allies out of Iraq.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 02:24 PM EST [Link]
~ Source: NewsMax.com
"We should be very confident in saying very loudly to the world that Taiwan is an independent, sovereign country; there is no need to be ambiguous," the island nation’s President Chen Shui-bian boldly announced Friday, defying Beijing’s denunciation of his decision to call a referendum on relations with mainland China.
"Rejecting international concerns that the election would serve as a provocation, threatening the status quo in the Taiwan Strait, Chen described the March 20 referendum, Taiwan's first, as a key milestone in his country’s infant democracy, according to a report in the LA Times."
And so here we have another opportunity for President Bush to prove himself something other than a democratic in drag, by backing off his establishment line on Taiwan, and standing by Taiwan in its aspiration to be recognized by the world as an independent nation, as they were once recognized even by the UN (remember, they had a position on the Security Council until Bush 1 withheld his veto in the Security Council as Red China was voted in and Taiwan voted out). But don't count on it. Like his father, Bush 2 believes the legitimate China is the thug state headquartered in Beijing. So what are we to conclude? Bush must have had another revelatory moment, as he did with President Vladmir Putin, this time with the premier of China, wherein "I shook his hand, I looked into his soul, and I knew I could trust him." Sure, Mr. President; I aggree; you can trust the communists ... to be communists.
Posted by farrell @ 02:02 PM EST [Link]
~ MORE PROTESTS IN IRAN: SMCCDI News reported yesterday that Tehran University was hit with another round of student protests.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 12:40 AM EST [Link]
~ THE OTHER COSTS OF WAR: Great story in today's Christian Science Monitor about the Kuchi, a nomadic tribe in Afghanistan that has seen their way of life impact by constant war.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 12:06 AM EST [Link]
Sunday, February 8, 2004 PAUL BREMER, CON-CON?: I was leafing through some recent issues of Newsweek, and I came across this little snippet: Paul Bremer, head of the coalition's provisional government in Iraq, was asked about the neocons and their vision of transforming the political culture of the Middle East into liberal democracy. He, a "lifelong Republican" according to the magazine, replied that he was not a neocon but a "con-con!"
Now, I know, he doesn't mean by it the same thing that I do. I coined the term as shorthand for "constitutional conservative." Bremer is just trying to say he's a plain old conservative rather than a neocon. But that doesn't stop the quote from encouraging me in my pursuit of popularizing "con-con." I'm sure the word "meterosexual" had to go through similar misuses and misconceptions before it became popular.
Posted by antle @ 11:04 PM EST [Link]
~ As Britain debates over a proposed "no limits" immigration policy that may or may not cause a possible flood of communist and ex-communist immigrants into their country, as noted in the New Zealand Herald. , who should not wonder about the wisdom behind the Bush Administration's tireless efforts to promote a 'Free Trade' Area of the America's, modeled after the EU, not to exclude the EU's third way call for a borderless society?
Now, I'm all for at least considering a free and fair trade arrangement with nations friendly to the United States, but just like NAFTA, the FTAA is not about free trade, but rather about the creation of another level of government, international in nature, with by laws loyal to the UN Security Council and the principles and purposes of the United Nations, and as such, a threat to the soveriegnty of the US, and the freedoms of every American.
Even in the short term, the FTAA's immigration goals alone, ought to concern us.
Can't we be honest, and look to Europe, and acknowledge that one of the very real dangers of the proposed 'Free Trade' Area of the America’s is that the prosperous, capitalist US will be flooded with immigrants from countries unfriendly to our economic, political, and moral values, perhaps to receive welfare, perhaps to penetrate our local, state, and national governments, perhaps to create a groundswell for revolutionary change, or at the very least to push the envelope on the balance of power between conservatism and liberalism in this country, farther to the left?
Hasn't France's borderless approach regarding Arab immigrants been a significant cause of France's unfriendly attitudes toward the United States, especially regarding our "War on Terror"?
Sure, good immigrants will come to, they always have. But we don't need a borderless society to encourage them. They have in the past, do now, and will in the future, come, legally, despite any challenges and obstacles which lay in their path.
Like so many Bush maneuvers to please Vincente Fox's NWO goals for a borderless society, it seems odd that the Administration simultaneously endeavors to erect a security apparatus over us all, one which supposedly promises to tighten up our borders against the threat of terrorism, even while so revolutionary a change as the FTAA is quietly being jammed down our throats.
Meanwhile, the typical Republican tra la las along in the presence of so much double talk. Ah, isn't it grand to be a partisan? Pass along the blinders.
Posted by farrell @ 10:37 PM EST [Link]
~ SO WHAT HAPPENED TO ACCOUNTABILITY?: For everyone who hoped that all the recent intelligence failures would inspire George W. Bush to clean house...well, it won't happen.
President Bush said Saturday that CIA Director George Tenet's job is not in jeopardy despite election-year questions about the accuracy of prewar intelligence on Iraq.
"I strongly believe the CIA is ably led by George Tenet," Bush said in an Oval Office interview to be broadcast Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press."Asked whether Tenet's job was in jeopardy, Bush answered: "No, not at all, not at all," according to an excerpt of the interview provided by the network.
I guess it's true: Once you have a government job you are set for life.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 04:00 AM EST [Link]
Saturday, February 7, 2004 MAGGY BRIMELOW, R.I.P.: Maggy Brimelow, the wife of Peter Brimelow, the CBS Marketwatch columnist and VDARE editor who Bernard Chapin interviewed for us here, died yesterday after a long battle with breast cancer. Our thoughts are with the family, especially their two young children.
Posted by antle @ 07:29 PM EST [Link]
~ "IT WAS HIS CHOICE.": U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is in Munich today where he defended the U.S.-led invastion of Iraq, telling his audience that the war was ultimately Saddam Hussein's fault.
"It was his choice," Mr. Rumsfeld said in a speech here to 250 government ministers, lawmakers and national security experts from 30 countries, most of them in Europe. "If the Iraqi regime had taken the same steps Libya is now taking, there would have been no war."
Read on. (NYT, Free registration required)
Posted by steve @ 06:00 PM EST [Link]
~ WHAT HAPPENED TO THE BUSH DOCTRINE?: Jerusalem Post Editorial Page Editor Saul Singer had a great piece about the Bush doctrine on terrorism in the February 5 issue that I didn't see until today -- well, actually until Saul emailed it to me. He raises some valid criticisms.
Bush believes that the war against terrorism is about driving every rogue regime out of the terror business, and that this is what the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are really about. The Democrats in the race (sans Lieberman) either don't agree with confronting regimes or have not put forward a plausible alternative for doing so. But Bush's problem is that neither has he.
As long as Bush's actions, rather than his words, project that the war against terror ended in Iraq, he is not offering voters a real choice and is draining his own policy of credibility. Bush seems to want to have it both ways: not scaring voters that he is gearing up for another war, while promising he will not let America's guard down.
Read on. (Free registration required)
Posted by steve @ 03:46 PM EST [Link]
Friday, February 6, 2004 LET'S HOPE THIS INTELLIGENCE IS WRONG: The Telegraph reports that the U.S. has evidence that Iran has a secret atomic bomb project despite Tehran's promise to throw open the books to international inspectors.
He [a U.S. official] said the Teheran regime was secretly trying to build a second and more advanced uranium enrichment plant in parallel to the large facilities in the town of Natanz revealed to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) last year.
"There is no doubt in our mind that the Iranians have a lot that the IAEA does not know about," said the official. "The Iranians have a military programme that the IAEA has never set eyes on."
Another western source confirmed that the nuclear technology smuggling network headed by Abdul Qadeer Khan, Pakistan's top nuclear weapons scientist, had sold much more equipment to Iran than Teheran has so far admitted to.
All the more reason to actively support Iran's pro-democracy movement.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 09:55 PM EST [Link]
~ DUBYA IN GOOD SHAPE: Murdoc points out that although people are slamming the economy under George W. Bush (particularly the unemployment rate) -- and pointing to that as a potential factor in the election -- his numbers are actually better than those of Ronald Reagan's going into the 1984 election.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 09:50 PM EST [Link]
~
Happy 93th Birthday Gipper!
Posted by steve @ 02:27 PM EST [Link]
~ FIRE UP THOSE CONSPIRACY WEB SITES!: George W. Bush today named his panel to investigate the kerfuffle over Iraq's alleged WMDs.
The panel will be chaired by former Sen. Charles Robb and retired federal judge Laurence Silberman. The other members include Sen. John McCain; Lloyd Cutler, who served as White House counsel to Presidents Carter and Clinton; Former apellate court judge Pat Wald, a Democrat; Rick Levin, president of Yale University; and Ret. Adm. Bill Stuberman, a former deputy director of CIA. Two others will be named later.
Early prediction: Panel will find problems, issue some wide-ranging recommendations, some will be instituted, a "new intelligence community" will be inaugurated, nothing will change.
The problems with the intelligence community go much further than simply their failures to detect the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and the intelligence concerning Iraq's WMDs. The chief problem is that America's intelligence communities have turned into traditional bureaucracies more interested in defending their turf and playing the role of The Annointed. They have turned into the same blocks of stone that every other federal agency has and until they are remade nothing will change.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 02:02 PM EST [Link]
~ WHICH SIDE WILL YOU BE ON?: Wicked good piece in today's TechCentralStation about what Frederick Turner calls a realignment of politics in the U.S.
A realignment is taking place in the politics of this country and indeed of the world at large. It is increasingly difficult to define the meanings of left and right, liberal and conservative.
Democratic candidates are running on once-Republican platforms of fiscal restraint, protection of jobs from foreign competition, and the principle of leaving dictators alone; the Republican President proposes expensive prescription drug and space exploration plans, encourages legal guest workers, and sets out to make the world safe for democracy. Progress is surely the property of the "conservatives," while resistance to economic, technological and political innovation comes from the once-progressive liberals. The "culture wars" have ended in a strange standoff, even a detente. The left seems bankrupt of new ideas and cannot be a partner in any really interesting conversation. The recent collapse of the Dean campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination is a case in point: his only platform, as the delegates perceived, was to be against things.
A rift is opening at right angles, so to speak, to the old borders of contestation. The rift, I will argue, is not between left and right but between libertarian and communitarian. Or perhaps we could say that in the intellectual absence of the left, an inherent rift in the right is becoming the new locus of debate, and the remnants of the left are having to choose one side or the other.
I'm not sure I completely agree with Turner but I can see his point. The U.S. has a president who in many respects is little different in governing style from Bill Clinton -- at least when it comes to spending -- and the traditional left has turned toxic thanks to its embrace of extremist politics. That leaves Democrats trying to sound like Republicans and Republicans trying to sound like Democrats.
Problem is are Americans even aware that there is another way?
Kind of reminds of The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror VII when Kang and Kodos takeover the forms of Bob Dole and Bill Clinton:
Homer: America, take a good look at your beloved candidates. They're nothing but hideous space reptiles. [unmasks them]
[audience gasps in terror]
Kodos: It's true, we are aliens. But what are you going to do about it? It's a two-party system; you have to vote for one of us.
[murmurs]
Man 1: He's right, this is a two-party system.
Man 2: Well, I believe I'll vote for a third-party candidate.
Kang: Go ahead, throw your vote away.
[Kang and Kodos laugh out loud]
[Ross Perot smashes his "Perot 96" hat]
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 01:54 PM EST [Link]
~ THERE ARE MORE MEMOS: Those Democratic Judiciary Committee strategy memos that got Manuel Miranda fired apparently contain more than we've been told.
In a letter delivered to the committee Friday morning, Manuel Miranda says he has read "documents evidencing public corruption by elected officials and staff of the United States Senate."
Miranda says the evidence of wrongdoing is contained in previously undisclosed Democratic memos obtained by Republican staffers on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Fourteen of those memos were leaked to the press last November. Two sources familiar with the memos tell NRO there were dozens of additional memos — perhaps as many as 100 — that were downloaded by Republicans but never made public.
Corruption in politics? I'm appalled.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 01:45 PM EST [Link]
Thursday, February 5, 2004 WAS THE LEAK IN CHENEY'S OFFICE?: According to Insight on the News, the investigation into who leaked Valerie Plame's identity to Robert Novak has led to Vice President Dick Cheney's office.
According to these sources, John Hannah and Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, were the two Cheney employees. "We believe that Hannah was the major player in this," one federal law-enforcement officer said. Calls to the vice president's office were not returned, nor did Hannah and Libby return calls.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 11:54 PM EST [Link]
~ MR. INTEGRITY: (Via reader L Maginsky) Seems John Kerry isn't the clean nose that he pretends to be.
A Senate colleague was trying to close a loophole that allowed a major insurer to divert millions of federal dollars from the nation's most expensive construction project. John Kerry stepped in and blocked the legislation.
Over the next two years, the insurer, American International Group, paid Kerry's way on a trip to Vermont and donated at least $30,000 to a tax-exempt group Kerry used to set up his presidential campaign. Company executives donated $18,000 to his Senate and presidential campaigns.
Were the two connected? Kerry says not.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 11:51 PM EST [Link]
~ THE WORTH OF AN ENDORSEMENT: John Kerry will officially receive the endorsement of Dick Gephardt tomorrow which begs the question: What's the endorsement of a man who dropped out of the nomination race due to a lack of popularity really worth?
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 11:33 PM EST [Link]
~ THE POLITICS OF VIETNAM SERVICE: I respect Sen. John Kerry's service in Vietnam, though I grow weary of his insinuation that this innoculates him from any criticism. The American Spectator reminds us of what the good senator had to say on this subject over a decade ago in a different context.
Read here. I'll be looking for more from this new contributor.
Posted by antle @ 11:22 PM EST [Link]
~ SHARPTON'S ROMANCING THE STONE: An interesting Village Voice story alleging connections between Al Sharpton's presidential campaign and longtime Republican operative Roger Stone. Via Hit & Run.
Posted by antle @ 11:07 PM EST [Link]
~ NORKS: (Via Instapundit) Al Maviva has a lot more information about the concentration camps of North Korea over here.
Posted by steve @ 07:57 PM EST [Link]
~ THIS CHANGES THINGS: One of the reasons my early suppport for Belinda Stronach for the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada was her electibilty. Turns out Canadians have a different idea.
Stephen Harper is the first choice of Canadians if they could vote in the Conservative leadership race, according to an SES/Sun Media poll.
When asked to rank the "profiles" of the three candidates, based only on their political or private-sector experience and ability to speak both official languages, 41 per cent preferred Harper's resume. Former Ontario cabinet minister Tony Clement ranked second at 26 per cent. Both Clement and Harper, the former Canadian Alliance leader, speak English and French. Unilingual former auto parts executive Belinda Stronach placed third with 20 per cent.
Read on.
This directly contradicts a poll Stronach released yesterday which showed she was leading the other candidates.
Posted by steve @ 03:50 PM EST [Link]
~ WHAT ARE YOU AFRAID OF PAUL?: A spokesman for Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin, who promised more autonomy for his MPs, today announced that there would not be a free vote on Canada's unpopular firearms registry.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 03:47 PM EST [Link]
~ REGAINING YOUR SENSES: Georgia's school superintendent Kathy Cox announced today that she is dropping plans to remove the word 'evolution' from the state's high school science curriculum.
"I will recommend to the teacher teams that the word 'evolution' be put back in the curriculum," Kathy Cox said in a statement.
Cox said she originally wanted to replace "evolution" with the phrase "biological changes over time" to avoid controversy.
"Instead, a greater controversy ensued," she said.
Duh.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 03:20 PM EST [Link]
~ GETTING SERIOUS ABOUT STOPPING THE SPREAD OF NUKES: Well, that doesn't describe Pakistan. Today Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf announced that Abdul Qadeer Khan would be pardoned for sharing nuclear secrets with nations like Iran, Libya and North Korea.
Musharraf called the scientist a "national hero" for bringing the bomb to Pakistan, but said he had made "mistakes".
Stupid git.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 03:11 PM EST [Link]
~ WHAT WILL YOU READ TONIGHT?: (Via The Corner) Orgnet.com has an interesting graph about what people on each side of the political divide are reading. Read on.
Posted by steve @ 03:07 PM EST [Link]
~ THE KURDISH 9/11: Ansar al-Islam attempted to suicide bomb their way into splitting up the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) on Saturday but the two groups say it won't happen.
Arbil, a city of 600,000 that's home to about a fifth of Kurdistan's people, is a city in shock. Militia from the KDP seem to man every other street corner. They flag down and search every car that has nonlocal plates. An aide to a KDP official calls the attacks "the Kurdish Sept. 11," and predicts big changes in the weeks ahead. "Just as things changed in America, we are going to become a lot more aggressive in going after the terrorists in our midst."
Good lads! At least they learned the lesson that 9/11 taught some Americans: Never give in.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 02:35 AM EST [Link]
Wednesday, February 4, 2004 AUSCHWITZ II: Ann Applebaum of the Washington Post had a superb essay today about the concentration camps of North Korea.
Nowadays, it seems impossible to understand why so few people, at the time of the Auschwitz liberation, even knew that the camp existed. It seems even harder to explain why those who did know did nothing. In recent years a plethora of respectable institutions -- the Vatican, the U.S. government, the international Jewish community, the Allied commanders -- have all been accused of "allowing" the Holocaust to occur, through ignorance or ill will or fear, or simply because there were other priorities, such as fighting the war.
We shake our heads self-righteously, certain that if we'd been there, liberation would have come earlier -- all the while failing to see that the present is no different. Quite a lot has changed in 60 years, but the ways in which information about crimes against humanity can simultaneously be "known" and not known hasn't changed at all. Nor have other interests and other priorities ceased to distract people from the feelings of shame and guilt they would certainly feel, if only they focused on them.
Look, for example, at the international reaction to a documentary, aired last Sunday night on the BBC. It described atrocities committed in the concentration camps of contemporary North Korea, where, it was alleged, chemical weapons are tested on prisoners. Central to the film was the testimony of Kwon Hyuk, a former administrator at a North Korean camp. "I witnessed a whole family being tested on suffocating gas and dying in the gas chamber," he said. "The parents, son and a daughter. The parents were vomiting and dying, but till the very last moment they tried to save the kids by doing mouth-to-mouth breathing." The documentary also included testimony from a former prisoner, who says she saw 50 women die after being deliberately fed poison. And it included documents smuggled out of the country that seemed to sentence a prisoner to a camp "for the purpose of human experimentation."
I guess if there is one constant in world politics it's this: The people with the unpronounceable names disappear without a trace while we in the West argue about important things...like whether John Kerry had a botox injection or about George W. Bush's National Guard service. "Never Again!" was a joke back then and it's a joke today. We're always willing to turn a blind eye to the most horrific evil. We might be repulsed or afraid, but that isn't enough to spur us into action. After all, we might miss that episode of "Friends" where the kids do something wacky.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 07:31 PM EST [Link]
~ BEATING VERMONT: Until today Vermont was the only state in the union that had legal recognition of same sex partnerships in the form of civil unions. Well, Massachusetts went one step further today when the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that only full, equal marriage rights for gay couples would be constitutional.
"The history of our nation has demonstrated that separate is seldom, if ever, equal," the four justices who ruled in favor of gay marriage wrote in the advisory opinion. A bill that would allow for civil unions, but falls short of marriage, makes for "unconstitutional, inferior, and discriminatory status for same-sex couples."
The much-anticipated opinion sets the stage for next Wednesday's constitutional convention, where the Legislature will consider an amendment that would legally define marriage as a union between one man and one woman. Without the opinion, Senate President Robert Travaglini had said the vote would be delayed.
Posted by steve @ 03:21 PM EST [Link]
~ AMAZING: Got this earlier tonight from a web site I can't remember: Pictures from Tsarist Russia from 1910 to 1915. Here's the really cool part: They're all in the original color taken by Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii. They're all stunning when you consider the pictures are nearly a century old and of a world that long disappeared. It would be like color television footage from the same period.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 02:48 AM EST [Link]
~ BIG TIME: In case you haven't heard, though I don't think he's announced publicly yet, longtime ESR contributor and senior editor W. James Antle III has hit the big time. Jim has been hired by The American Conservative as an assistant editor.
Jim first appeared in ESR back on January 24, 2000 with an article on tax cuts and I knew back then that he was destined for greater things. Over the years he's contributed many high quality articles, ones that have made this humble effort far better than I could have hoped. For that, I truly thank you Jim.
That said, Jim will be back in the pages of ESR in the coming weeks. Once he's settled in with the new job you can look forward to more of his articles gracing this effort. Good luck Jim!
Posted by steve @ 02:08 AM EST [Link]
~ BOTOX BOY WINS BIG: If you had told me on January 1 that John Kerry would be the clear frontrunner just over a month later I would have offered to put money on the line contradicting that. Kerry was the big winner tonight winning five of seven states with John Edwards picking up one and Wesley Clark likely picking up Oklahoma.
Rachel Alexander argues in a new article I just posted that one of the reasons is because Kerry has turned himself into a John F. Kennedy or Bill Clinton-esque candidate. Sounds as good as anything else I've heard.
Posted by steve @ 01:55 AM EST [Link]
~ IS PREEMPTION DEAD?: Judging by the gloating in Europe and among the anti-war left and right, many people believe it is. An interesting story in today's Christian Science Monitor suggests that the real casualty from the failure to find WMDs in Iraq may be George W. Bush's preemptive strike policy.
"People who opposed this war feel vindicated and will feel even stronger about the risks of the doctrine of preventive war, that you have to base it on intelligence that may be flimsy, inaccurate, or can be interpreted in different ways," says Jens Van Scherpenberg at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin.
On that I would gladly agree with Van Scherpenberg. Preemptive strikes are all about reliable intelligence. That said, predicting the death of a sound policy when the intelligence ducks are in a neat row is a bit silly. Should we abolish the United Nations because its method of stopping conflict/maintaining global security has failed in virtually every single instance? After all, if the war accomplished one goal it was to prevent Saddam Hussein from creating or using WMDs again. What was that, liberal internationalist? I can't hear you...
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 12:24 AM EST [Link]
~ I GUESS HE RAN OUT OF 'JOEMENTUM': Joe Lieberman announced tonight that after losing in Delaware, where he had hoped to win so that his campaign to remain viable, he would be dropping out of the race.
I didn't agree a lot of the time with Lieberman but the man is a class act and the most palatable of the Democrats.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 12:11 AM EST [Link]
Tuesday, February 3, 2004 DIVERSITY ONLY EXISTS WHEN DIVERSE IDEAS EXIST: (Via U.S.S. Clueless) That point has long been lost on many people. The latest example is a photo exhibit at Lehigh University in Bethelhem, Penn.
A man who could be President Bush's identical twin smirks for the camera, his left hand cupping the breast of a leering woman in a negligee.
The 4-foot-by-4-foot image part of a satirical exhibit called "The Forbidden Pictures, A Political Tableau," by internationally renowned photographer Larry Fink has upset student conservatives who see it as further evidence of a liberal bias on campus.
....
In an essay accompanying the five vivid photographs, Fink makes clear the target of his satire. He says the 2000 presidential election was stolen, criticizes the "fundamentalist neoconservative conspiracy," calls Bush a "frat boy with charisma" and refers to "our current fraudulent leaders, George W. and his cabinet."
Another photograph depicts a group of prostitutes sitting around a table scattered with miniature elephants the symbol of the Republican Party. Campus conservatives suspect that a woman in the foreground is meant to be national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, although Fink says she is not depicted.
The exhibit's curator, Ricardo Viera, makes no apologies for the display, saying it is meant to promote discussion.
"Universities are a forum for diverse ideas and intellectual challenges," he said.
Frankly I had to deal with this BS when I went to Laurentian University as well. Talk of diverse ideas and intellectual challenges never means an open exchange of ideas, it is merely a cover to defend sophomoric attacks on conservatives. As I learned during my four years in the re-education camp that cost me thousands to attend, if you dare to promote anything other than liberal orthodoxy, you'd better be prepared to suffer attacks -- whether verbal, physical or otherwise -- from students and faculty alike.
As Steven Den Beste points out over at U.S.S. Clueless, "I just wonder whether they would have displayed such a 'satirical' exhibit if the target-of-skewerance were a person of color or a person of gender?" Of course, we all know that the person would be described as racist or sexist and their exhibit drummed off the campus with a sorrowful apology from the university president begging forgiveness for having offended anyone. After all, don't affirmative action bake sales provoke discussion?
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 08:37 PM EST [Link]
~ KERRY TAKES MISSOURI, DELAWARE, EDWARDS GRABS SOUTH CAROLINA: More shockingly, Al Sharpton placed third while Wesley Clark was fourth in South Carolina. Hey Wes, remember when you were the It Boy? Mr. Clark, meet Mr. Dean.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 08:21 PM EST [Link]
~ RETURN TO SENDER: The ricin tainted letter sent to the office of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist wasn't the first instance apparently. ABC news reports that in November a letter postmarked Chattanooga, Tenn. was sent to the White House but was intercepted at an off-site mail sorting facility before it reached its target.
The powdery substance in the letter tested positive for ricin. However, the tests indicated that the poison was in a low-potency, granular form that posed no health risk, the sources said.
According to two law enforcement sources, the intercepted letter addressed to the White House was signed "Fallen Angel."
That sign-off was also used in a letter that was part of a package containing ricin that was left at a post office in Greenville, S.C., in October 2003.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 08:17 PM EST [Link]
~ TIME FOR A SHAKE-UP: David Brooks has few kind words for the CIA in today's New York Times.
For decades, the U.S. intelligence community has propagated the myth that it possesses analytical methods that must be insulated pristinely from the hurly-burly world of politics. The C.I.A. has portrayed itself as, and been treated as, a sort of National Weather Service of global affairs. It has relied on this aura of scientific objectivity for its prestige, and to justify its large budgets, despite a record studded with error.
The C.I.A.'s scientific pretensions were established early on by Sherman Kent. In his 1949 book "Strategic Intelligence for American World Policy," Kent argued that the truth is to be approached through a systematic method, "much like the method of the physical sciences."
This was at a time, just after the war, when economists, urban planners and social engineers believed that human affairs could be understood scientifically, and that the social sciences could come to resemble hard sciences like physics.
If you read C.I.A. literature today, you can still see scientism in full bloom. The tone is cold, formal, depersonalized and laden with jargon. You can sense how the technocratic process has factored out all those insights that may be the product of an individual's intuition and imagination, and emphasized instead the sort of data that can be processed by an organization.
Whatever you may have thought about Richard Perle and David Frum's An End to Evil (which I reviewed for this week's issue), it's hard to deny that their call to reform the CIA -- not to mention the FBI, the State Department and certain aspects of the military -- were on point. It's not the failure to stop the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 that bother me the most, it's that little seems to have changed since.
Read on. (Free registration required)
Posted by steve @ 01:49 PM EST [Link]
~ MUSHARRAF KNEW?: Friends of Abdul Qadeer Khan, the cat who transferred nuclear secrets to Libya, North Korea and Iran, state that Pervez Musharraf knew all about it.
"Whatever I did, it was in the knowledge of the bosses," Khan's friend quoted him as saying.
The scientist also said that two former military chiefs — Gen. Mirza Aslam Beg and Gen. Jehangir Karamat — and Musharraf were "aware of everything" he was doing, the friend said.
"I am also convinced that (Khan) couldn't act unilaterally," the friend added.
If you read the article, it's hard not to be impressed by how Khan managed to smuggle the equipment, even going so far as to charter private planes to deliver things like high-tech centrifuges.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 01:39 PM EST [Link]
~ WHY NOT BAN RAIN?: If there's one certainty in life, students will protest. Today the Iranian government announced a ban on student protests over the barring of reformist candidates from this month's elections. To add a little more gas to the fire, the government also warned eight pro-Reform newspapers about how they were covering the crisis.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 01:33 PM EST [Link]
~ SURPRISING: A new poll shows that John Kerry and John Edwards are both ahead of George W. Bush in head to head battles but that Dubya is ahead of Wesley Clark and Howard Dean. Kerry, thanks to his wins last month I can understand but Edwards?
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 04:15 AM EST [Link]
Monday, February 2, 2004 WELCOME BACK: Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin moved back to the political left today with his government's first Throne Speech, one that laid out billions of dollars for cities and environmental clean up.
Really, the only thing new in Martin's speech was the word "new" which we heard over 30 times.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 08:35 PM EST [Link]
~ MORE TROUBLE FOR IRAN'S THEOCRACY: Reform politicians in Iran today announced they would boycott the February 20 elections.
Mohammad Reza Khatami, leader of the Islamic Iran Participation Front and brother of Iran's president, said the party would not field any candidates because thousands of liberal candidates have been disqualified from the polls by hard-line clerics of the Guardian Council.
Many of the disqualified candidates are sitting lawmakers, including Khatami, who also is deputy parliament speaker.
"We have no hope for the possibility of free and fair elections. All legal opportunities have been killed," Khatami said.
Posted by steve @ 02:24 PM EST [Link]
~ APPALLING!: Tom Shales, certainly no voice of conservativism, registers his disgust with not only the half-time show, but many of the horrible commercials CBS chose to air.
I'm afraid to say this, but I almost wish they had aired at least that PETA ad. As hard to believe as it is, it would have actually elevated the level of the broadcast.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 01:55 PM EST [Link]
~ A RETURN TO THE 'GOOD' OLD DAYS: A story that I haven't seen any play: On Saturday, John Kerry pledged to treat terrorism as a law enforcement problem.
Speaking before a group of Oklahoma City firefighters, Kerry complained that the Bush administration "doesn't understand the war on terror."
Under a Kerry administration, he said, the fight against terrorism "will involve the military now and then," but it will be "primarily an intelligence-gathering, law enforcement operation."
Hey, that worked so well before it's no surprise Kerry wants to try it again. I wonder if Osama would respond to a summons?
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 03:54 AM EST [Link]
~ THANKS FOR DOING YOUR PART TO MAKE THE WORLD AN UNSAFER PLACE: Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan fessed up yesterday to being the cat who traded nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
Khan's motivation? He wanted other Muslim nations to develop nuclear programs to take the pressure off Pakistan. So why North Korea? He couldn't explain that one.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 02:05 AM EST [Link]
~ PEOPLE WATCH THE SUPER BOWL FOR COMMERCIALS: But Reid Collins says this year's commercials, particularly those during the first half, were nothing to write home about.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 12:24 AM EST [Link]
Sunday, February 1, 2004 ALWAYS LISTEN TO A CAB DRIVER: I was catching a cab out to a night club last night and bumped into a cab driver that is devoted to gambling on football like George W. Bush is to spending money on anything he can think of. His prediction last night? Pats by 3. Well, the Patriots didn't cover the spread but he did better than my 10 point spread and my friend Joe's 7 point spread. Oh well.
So what about the game? In conversation last night I said that the first quarter was going to be very quiet and only begin to pick up near the middle of the second quarter. I wasn't so far off. What I didn't expect was the offensive explosion. Defense may win games but offense makes you want to watch them. I was as bored as could be during the first 27 minutes of that game but sticking it out proved to be a wise decision. I would have been surprised had the entire game seen 37 points scored but that was registered during the fourth quarter alone. Overall I thought it was a reasonably entertaining game.
I have to admit that I'm more impressed by Tom Brady than I ever was before. The kid is poised and doesn't get shaken from his game very easily, not that Carolina ever seemed to really get to him.
I never, ever, ever watch half-time shows -- except for when U2 did it a few years back -- and I paid the price this year. Justin Timberlake tears off a piece of Janet Jackson's shirt and exposing one of her breasts and I'm watching something on the Discovery Channel. Bloody remote controls...
Posted by steve @ 11:40 PM EST [Link]
~ IF AMERICANS ARE SO DUMB...: John Ray has an insightful little post that answers all those people who run around declaring that Americans are stupid.
[Musings Archive Index] [Back to New Musings]
