Musings Archive May 2003
Saturday, May 31, 2003 MACKAY SAYS THAT HE'LL COMMISSION A STUDY!: I've just finished listening to Peter MacKay's first leadership address. It was pretty tepid (Prentice's concession speech was even more wishy-washy) with far, far too many applause lines. He's definitely sending out some mixed signals. First, some blathering about the Progressive Conservatives are the only national party capable taking on the Liberals before the inevitable "We must Unite The Right" moment, which surprised me given the Gentlemen's Agreement we supposedly had between MacKay and Orchard. The funniest moment came when MacKay profusely praised Free Trade before promising... a study of Free Trade's effects, positive and negative. A study, wow. Orchard is one easily satisfied guy. I'm surprised Orchard didn't go for the whole shebang and make MacKay place a demand for a Royal Commission on NAFTA on the campaign platform. There's a good reason why the theme song of the convention is "Don't Stop Believin.'"
Posted by Barton @ 11:22 PM EST [Link]
~ WELL, THAT WAS INEVITABLE:
Final Ballot
Peter MacKay 64.4%
Jim Prentice 35.6%
Such an exhausting day, such a predictable result...
Posted by Barton @ 10:48 PM EST [Link]
~ HAS MACKAY SOLD THE RIGHT DOWN THE RIVER?: Orchard's downright creepy supporters look like they're going to follow their leader right over to MacKay. Orchard and MacKay's Gentlemen's Agreement seems to consist of this:
1. An appointed Blue Ribbon commission from within the Progressive Conservative Party to systematically "review" NAFTA to determine both positive and negative effects with Orchard playing a "considerable role" in that review, whatever that means. MacKay points out that such a review is built into the NAFTA agreement itself and he seems convinced that the results of this review will vindicate Free Trade, something which will not make Orchard supporters very happy.
2. The placing of argricultural and clean environmental policies "front-and-centre" on the Progressive Conservative platform.
3. They were rather vague about it, but it sure sounds like Orchard is going to be running for a seat in the next election.
4. No merger with the Canadian Alliance and no breaking of the 301 rule, while means there won't be any running of joint candidates with the Canadian Alliance.
With the exception of the fourth item, I'd have to say that MacKay bought Orchard's support pretty cheaply. A Blue Ribbon panel appointed from within the very party that negotiated NAFTA is not exactly going to turn around and bash the agreement, especially when the new leader of that party has publicly stated that Free Trade is one of the greatest Canadian economic policies of the last century. You hate to break this to the Orchard people, but the results of this review are well, "fixed." The second item on the list is just vague. Having Orchard sitting around the Progressive Conservative Caucus table will be, uh, fun, but given the clear amount of very strong grassroots support he can elicit, I suppose it's fair enough to allow him a chance to win a seat in Parliament. I mean leftists who don't like the NDP and Canadians who admire the economic policies of Ross Perot and Patrick J. Buchanan should have at least one voice in Parliament to represent them, don't you think? As for the last item on the list, well, it's just idiotic that we're going to be vote-splitting again with the Canadian Alliance, especially against a formidable candidate who has considerable appeal to the economic right such as Paul Martin. That's all I have to say about that. This convention has resolved none of the contradictions that exist in the Progressive Conservative Party. It seems the party's supporters are taking their name a bit too literally again.
Posted by Barton @ 09:35 PM EST [Link]
~ THE ONLY THING I FEEL IS DISGUST: Iman Salih Mutlak made the news briefly earlier this year. You won't remember the name but you'll remember what garnered her headlines. She attempted to attack American soldiers in Iraq with grenades but was shot dead. Her family feels shame, but not for the reason you might think.
Their rage comes not because of her planned attack, but because the 22-year-old woman left the house alone and without permission from her father — thereby besmirching the honor of her tribe.
"When she left the house, she lost her innocence," said her 71-year-old father, Salih Mutlak. "Had she returned home, I would have killed her myself and drunk her blood."
What can you say in response? I know a lot of people don't like to hear this but huge parts of the Muslim world remind me of Germany in the 1920s: nihilistic and death worshipping. Argue with it if you want but this article is a stunning example of its veracity. Read on.
Posted by steve @ 08:38 PM EST [Link]
~ ORCHARD PICKS MACKAY: It's over.
Posted by Barton @ 08:30 PM EST [Link]
~ COOL, BUT DID IT HAVE TO BE THE GUARDIAN?: Salam Pax, the Iraqi blogger who became famous before the Iraqi war, will write a biweekly column for The Guardian.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 08:27 PM EST [Link]
~ THIRD BALLOT RESULTS:
1. Peter MacKay- 1 128
2. Jim Prentice- 761
3. David Orchard- 617As predicted, it's David Orchard's to decide. Brison pulled 72% of his delegates to Prentice, which is very, very good. Joe Clark just went over to give Orchard some fatherly advice. The Orchard people are apparently quite hostile to MacKay because Orchard delegates mostly gained their positions over MacKay supporters and MacKay is viewed as the Establishment Candidate.
Posted by Barton @ 08:22 PM EST [Link]
~ I'VE ALWAYS THOUGHT SHE'D WAIT UNTIL 2008: Hillary Clinton has once again ruled out a run for the 2004 Democratic nomination. But she did not rule out the possibility in the future.
Posted by antle @ 08:01 PM EST [Link]
~ NOT THAT RADIOACTIVE THOUGH: Of course, I also saw on CPAC, a MacKay organizer come over to Orchard and play the tempter. Orchard, who quite frankly has been looking rather bewildered all day (right after Brison dropped off, Orchard actually tried to waltz over to Brison to persuade Brison to swing over to him, but he was brutally rebuffed), listened to the MacKay's organizer's spiel about how MacKay was open to Orchard's ideas, how impressed MacKay was with Orchard's campaign and his ability to get grassroots support, blah, blah, blah. Just before he left, the Mackay organizer even promised to buy Orchard's book, which sounded well and truly like butt-kissing of the fakest sort. One awaits with grim amusement the spectacle of Prentice and MacKay trying to court Orchard supporters after the next ballot. I mean, gee, what can either of them say? "I was for trade liberalization, but now I change my mind" or "Let's emphasize the adjective and ignore the noun." If the Progessive Conservatives were actually a party organized along ideological lines, Orchard would be laughed at. However, with the party in disarray and with policy positions that all seem ever so slightly to the right of the Liberals, this William Jennings Bryan clone is going to decide who's going to be the next leader of the Progressive Conservative Party.
Posted by Barton @ 07:14 PM EST [Link]
~ GUESS WHO'S PLAYING THE KINGMAKER?: Well, it's 6:30 pm here in Toronto (no, I'm not typing from the Progressive Conservative Party convention floor) and Brison has just thrown his support over to the best candidate, Jim Prentice. Brison and Prentice combined can't beat MacKay, but they can vault over perennial second-place finisher David Orchard. That means Orchard going to be dropped off the next ballot and with a two-person race between Prentice and MacKay, he gets to decide who he wants to swing his support over to. Orchard's been described as "radioactive" and Peter Van Loan, former PC Party President, has just compared Orchard's supporters to the Jonestown Cult, so fanatic they seem to him. It's kind of hard to think of an American analog, but I think it'd be like Michael Bloomberg (the leftist who happens to have a membership card in a conservative party) getting to choose between George W. Bush (the Establishment Candidate) and John McCain (the Insurgent Candidate) at a Republican convention.
Posted by Barton @ 06:49 PM EST [Link]
~ NO MORE RINOS: ESR contributor Bernard Chapin argues in Toogood Reports that Republicans must shrink government. It shouldn't surprise anybody that I think he is absolutey right.
Posted by antle @ 05:18 PM EST [Link]
~ NR EXPECTS THE TIMES TO GET EVEN WORSE: A National Review editorial on Howell Raines' New York Times. Depressing.
Posted by antle @ 05:02 PM EST [Link]
~ GLOBALISM - A NATION-BUSTING IDEOLOGY: Robert Locke raises some interesting points about globalism in what I believe is his first feature article for The American Conservative, although we differ somewhat on trade policy. Incidentally, I think he and fellow FrontPage alumni J.P. Zmirak offer a better definition of "neoconservatism" than what you usually get in paleoconservative circles (any conservative who disagrees with me) or what Jonah Goldberg recently offered in a series of G-File columns (it doesn't exist and definitely doesn't describe me). The hardening of conservatism from a tempermanent defined by what it does not believe in - to borrow from John Derbyshire - into a concrete democratic capitalist ideology, something that came up in response to the Cold War, could plausibly be described as "neoconservatism."
But aside from the "conservative zoology" - a term I also believe I am borrowing from the Derb - angle, Locke makes an important distinction between globalization, the desirable economic fact, and globalism, the undesirable ideology. It's one that is too frequently ignored.
Posted by antle @ 04:26 PM EST [Link]
Friday, May 30, 2003 HOW TOMMY PUNK'D SADDAM HUSSEIN: Fred Barnes has a beautiful article in the Weekly Standard about how Gen. Tommy Franks won the war in Iraq. Along with the stuff we know about -- how the American military's tactics and equipments have changed in the Dubya era -- is an interesting (and unproven) belief that Barnes has that the fact that Turkey wouldn't allow ground forces to operate out of its terrority was planned for and actually a part of Franks' campaign.
THE NEW WARFARE wasn't the sole source of the success in Iraq, nor is it the only aspect of transformation. Old concepts carried out more efficiently played a part. One was deception. The Turkish gambit was Franks's boldest effort to deceive Saddam. There's no proof, but the best guess is it affected Saddam's expectations of when an invasion might occur.
Weeks before the war, American military officers learned from their Turkish counterparts that Turkey was unlikely to allow the U.S. 4th Infantry Division to invade Iraq from Turkey in the north. Such an attack was a critical part of the Franks plan. But absent a northern front, Franks wanted Saddam to think an invasion from Turkish soil was still likely and that the war couldn't begin until weeks after the Turkish issue was resolved. So Franks insisted ships with the 4th Infantry's tanks and equipment remain off the shore of Turkey for weeks, as if awaiting the Turkish okay to unload. In fact, disinformation that the Turks would ultimately permit American troops to operate from their soil was slipped to Saddam's inner circle.
If that's true, Franks deserves to be on the same list as men like MacArthur and Patton.
If you read nothing else today, make it this. Read on.
Posted by steve @ 06:48 PM EST [Link]
~ ANNIKA WHO?: I have to admit that like many of you I was well and truly tired of hearing about Annika Sorenstam weeks before she played at the Colonial last week. But now that the storm has passed Daniel Henninger wonders what was accomplished. Short answer? Nothing.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 04:36 PM EST [Link]
~ THOSE A*@!^#$! REPUBLICANS!: Willy Stern has a great piece about the casual bigotry that Republicans face from the supposedly tolerant left. He's able to pass for a Democrat because he is a Jew and in the simplified world of leftists, that means "he's one of us." Unfortunately for them, he's not and he's outing himself publicly as Republican and providing some observations about the left.
When somebody makes a prejudicial comment about Republicans in my presence, I play a private game. I replay the sentence in my mind—only I substitute a word like "black" or "lesbian" or "Mexican" in place of the word "Republican." In performing this verbal sleight-of-hand, it becomes increasingly apparent that the speaker of the sentence may harbor views not generally considered to be tolerant or open-minded.
Read on. Warning, some bad language.
Posted by steve @ 03:57 PM EST [Link]
~ DERBYSHIRE GIVES US A MENTION: After years of ignoring the mighty ESR empire, the National Review Online rarely goes a week without mentioning us now. Okay, enough of the ego building. John Derbyshire, who Bernard Chapin interviewed a couple of weeks back, mentioned in that interview that he was "a strong philosemite."
John explains what that means in a column that appeared today. Scroll down to "I don't care what kind of Semite you are" here.
Posted by steve @ 03:43 PM EST [Link]
~ I'D CHARGE YOU A MILLION IF I COULD: Just joking. MSNBC has an interesting report that the number of web sites that will charge you a fee to access them is growing rapidly...and the number of people willing to pay has exploded.
The fee frenzy is on. Consumers who rejected anything that wasn’t free on the Web are showing interest in paying for online content. In fact, online subscription revenue will jump over 500 percent in the next few years as Web companies steal market share from their offline rivals, according to new research.
I can understand why web sites are beginning to charge. It costs me more to host ESR than it does for you to surf the web and given that I'm unemployed that means this magazine's last month may be this month. That said, ESR shall remain free.
Posted by steve @ 04:51 AM EST [Link]
~ MY LEVEL OF CONTEMPT IS RISING TO NEW LEVELS: Former U.S. President Bill Clinton opined on Thursday that presidents should be allowed to serve more than two terms.
"It wouldn't affect me, but for future generations the 22nd amendment should be modified," Clinton said Wednesday during an appearance at the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum.
"There may come a time when we have elected a president at age 45 or 50 and then 20 years later the country comes up with the same sort of problems the president faced before, and the people would like to bring that man or woman back," he said. He added that he didn't feel strongly about the issue, though.
Riiiiight. I wonder who wants to be brought back in 20 years. Sorry, no chance.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 03:29 AM EST [Link]
Thursday, May 29, 2003 HAPPY BIRTHDAY BOB HOPE:"Bob Hope turns 100 on Thursday, and he's received an outpouring of birthday greetings and thanks from the veterans and others he's entertained over the last 75 years. Dolores, his wife of 69 years, said they would have a birthday cake with 100 candles, 'with a fireman standing by with a fire extinguisher.' Hope, who entertained troops during World War II, the Korean, Vietnam and 1991 Gulf wars, remains the only civilian named an honorary veteran of the U.S. Armed Forces. He adopted the golf world with such enthusiasm that a tournament is named after him. And last month, the Hollywood Walk of Fame added a plaque to Hope's fourth star -- one each for radio, television, theater and film -- proclaiming him the 'Citizen of the Century.' Hope is said to have marked his birthday with a new one-liner: 'I'm so old, they've canceled my blood type.'"
Hope remains the only man that I've written an obituary for. You'll remember a couple of years ago that a member of Congress announced on the floor of the House that Hope had died and the news spread quickly. At the time I was working for an online newspaper at the time and crafted a fine obit -- quite good actually -- and it ran for about an hour until the news was revealed to be a hoax. Plenty of people got hoaxed that day. I was quite happy to know I had been tricked and he hadn't passed away.
Posted by steve @ 06:23 PM EST [Link]
~ I STILL BET HE'S DEAD: "U.S. troops have found no sign of bodies or even a bunker at the site where intelligence had said Saddam Hussein was sleeping on the war's opening night, a senior officer said Thursday."
Acting on an intelligence tip, U.S. forces launched their campaign on March 20 by firing more than 40 Tomahawk missiles on Dora Farms, a neighborhood south of Baghdad where the Iraqi leader was said to be with his sons."
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 05:08 PM EST [Link]
~ HELP THESE SOLDIERS!: A fire at an American base in the Middle East resulted in 29 soldiers and 12 Marines losing all their personal possessions. Send along some money to help these cats out. They've raised more than $1 500 already!
More info here.
Posted by steve @ 04:58 PM EST [Link]
~ LET'S NOT PUMP THIS STORY TOO MUCH: CNN is reporting that Iraqi military maybe, could have, possibly destroyed the headquarters of the coalition ground forces with a missile on March 27.
The missile was intercepted and destroyed by a U.S. Patriot missile shortly before it could have hit its target.
A CNN crew embedded at ground forces headquarters witnessed the incident. At the time of the incident, the material from the crew was embargoed under an agreement with the U.S. military until major hostilities in Iraq were over.
"This was Saddam's decapitation strike," said CNN national security analyst Ken Robinson, part of the CNN crew embedded at ground forces headquarters.
I'm not downplaying the real danger that the coalition soldiers were in, but the American decapitation strike actually levelled the building it was believed that Saddam Hussein was in. The al-Samoud missile was shot down as it was supposed to be.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 04:50 PM EST [Link]
~ I'D LIKE TO KNOW WHERE MY REVIEW COPY IS: Christopher Hitchens reviews Sidney Blumenthal's The Clinton Wars. Perhaps I'm lucky I didn't read it judging by Hitchens' brilliant review. Read on.
Posted by steve @ 01:39 PM EST [Link]
~ WELL, YOU TOOK OFF YOUR VEIL BEFORE LADY: Little Green Footballs has a good blog entry about Sultaana Freeman, the lady in Florida suing to have her veil on during her driver's licence photo. It seems Ms. Freeman has a bit of a past.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 01:19 PM EST [Link]
~ BUT WHO ACTUALLY WROTE HIS RESIGNATION LETTER?: Rick Bragg has resigned as a New York Times reporter following the little brouhaha over filing a story taken from a freelancer's notes but with only his byline.
Bragg, a national correspondent for the newspaper and best-selling author of two memoirs, told CNN Tuesday that he would resign but said he had done nothing wrong and that he followed Times policy of using the work of freelancers without giving them credit.
Times spokeswoman Catherine J. Mathis told CNN: "Under The Times' dateline and byline policies, the journalist who did the principal reporting should have received a byline for his contribution to the story."
Bragg said the Blair scandal has led to a "noxious atmosphere" at the paper.
"I don't want to let this atmosphere, this kind of noxious atmosphere, become a prison for me," said Bragg, who has a contract to write two more books.
Well, as long as he did nothing wrong...
Posted by steve @ 02:37 AM EST [Link]
Wednesday, May 28, 2003 ERRR, THOSE ARE MOBILE BABY MILK FACTORIES!: The CIA has a report today -- completed with pictures -- on suspected mobile biological plants located during and after the war in Iraq.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 11:10 PM EST [Link]
~ THEY ARE ALREADY LOADED WITH ERRORS: But it turns out that school textbooks are combed over for any word that could possibly offend someone.
Oh heck: Hell hath no place in American primary and high school textbooks.
But then again you can't find anyone riding on a yacht or playing polo in the pages of an American textbook either. The texts also can't say someone has a boyish figure, or is a busboy, or is blind, or suffers a birth defect, or is a biddy, or the best man for the job, a babe, a bookworm, or even a barbarian.
All these words are banned from U.S. textbooks on the grounds that they either elitist (polo, yacht) sexist (babe, boyish figure), offensive (blind, bookworm) ageist (biddy) or just too strong (hell which is replaced with darn or heck). God is also a banned word in the textbooks because he or she is too religious.
These kinds of things are a good argument for home schooling. They are an even better argument for getting John Galt to finally create Galt's Gulch.
Posted by steve @ 02:42 PM EST [Link]
~ MAYBE THE ACU ISN'T THAT C: Ramesh Ponnuru has a good column taking to task the American Conservative Union for not being all that conservative, at least when it comes to who it's supporting in Pennsylvania.
Posted by steve @ 02:38 PM EST [Link]
~ J-LO PRAISES STEVE'S FAVOURITE MAGAZINE!: Jeremy Lott pens a nice little tribute to Modern Drunkard magazine, a journal that unabashedly celebrates the love of alcohol. Perhaps a little too enthusiastically mind you.
Given the self-help literature on the subject, it was fun to see denial was the first reaction most people had when they saw Modern Drunkard. Several asked if this was some sort of elaborate joke. With cover lines such as "The Lost Art of Staggering," "How to Beat an Intervention," and "In Defense of Dionysus," along with the long-running Dead Celebrity Drink Off contest, I could understand their disbelief.
But readers soon learned that, though they are usually happy drunks, the staff of Modern Drunkard Magazine are dead serious about their booze. In fact, that they were denied entry to the Absolut Vodka party at this year's Bar and Nightclub Convention. Shown the door on the hilarious grounds that they were promoting drunkenness, the Drunkards retaliated by passing out hundreds of copies to people going into the melee. Though the guards tried to confiscate the issues, they finally gave up "when a growing group of hasslees started wondering why the literature they were carrying was any of Absolut's business."
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 01:59 PM EST [Link]
~ HE'S RIGHT THOUGH, CORONA REALLY DOES SUCK: I noticed a long time ago that a certain type of person drinks Corona. James Lileks agrees in his latest screed, one labeling Corona as a horrible beer and throws in a funny bit about how bad feature writing, especially at the New York Times, is.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 02:44 AM EST [Link]
~ WHAT IS A ROCK AND ROLL CONSERVATIVE?: That's the question that was posed to me by a reader a couple of days ago. I've referred to myself as one a couple of times and W. James Antle III used the term recently in a story on the flavors of conservatism. I think Jim actually made a mistake including the term in his list of the types of conservatives because unlike crunchy-cons or con-cons, rock and roll conservatism refers to a mindset more than a set of beliefs. One can easily be a rock and roll con-con or rock and roll libertarian conservative. That, of course, doesn't answer the question does it?
I first became aware of the term in the late 1990s thanks to a now defunct web magazine called Journal X that I occasionally contributed to. One of the writers, who's name now escapes me, wrote a column which was filled with conservatism, partying, alcohol and drugs and he referred to himself as a rock and roll conservative. While I didn't approve of the drugs he claimed to have taken, I appreciated the rest of his lifestyle given that I'm Generation X myself and hardly free of the hedonistic impulses that young single men occasionally indulge in. So what is a rock and roll conservative? Some people tend to believe that rock and roll conservatism is just regular conservatism drenched with liberal amounts of alcohol and loud music. I don't think it's that simple. Then again, I can't precisely define what it is either.
A rock and roll conservative is the hot blond in the tight white T-Shirt dancing across from you who tells you at night she hopes that "Baby's Got a Temper" will be the tone of the upcoming The Prodigy album and tells you in the morning she wishes the tax cut Congress passed had been far bigger.
A rock and roll conservative prefers a mixed drink over milk.
Rock and roll conservatives appear to be hedonists but have limits.
Rock and roll conservatives tend to be socially liberal but still believe that some things shouldn't be done in public.
A rock and roll conservative is a blend of Frank Sinatra's desire for fun, William F. Buckley Jr.'s education and John Wayne's old-school values.
Many conservative students are rock and roll conservatives.
Rock and roll conservatives can sound contradictory.
Rock and roll conservatives love politics but don't need feel the need to discuss it all the time. They are rarely zealots but are quite passionate about the things that they believe in and will fight for them. Given the choice, they won't talk politics.
People who were rock and roll conservatives: George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan.
People who weren't rock and roll conservatives: George H.W. Bush, Richard Nixon.
Posted by steve @ 02:17 AM EST [Link]
~ THE NEXT WAR?: There are plenty of people who believed that Iran should have been ahead of Iraq on the targets list and they have some compelling arguments for it, such as the advanced state of Iran's nuclear weapons program. Well, they may get their wish, albeit belatedly. The United States stated Tuesday that it is continuing diplomatic negotiations to get Iran to deal responsibly with a number of al-Qaida terrorists that are currently in that country. We know they're there considering Iran admitted to holding a number in custody, an admission made after they denied it.
Officially, the White House says there is no change in its policy, as this CNN story states. I think the Bush administration, concerned about a war weary population, is probably not considering an immediate war. It's also probably hoping that the continued protests against the theocratic regime continues and that Iranian President Mohammed Khatami makes some headway in reforming the country, however unlikely that is. We may have to wait to see the next member of the Axis of Evil to fall.
There is one interesting piece of bright news for the hawks however. CNN's current poll asking "Is harboring al Qaeda members grounds for military action against Iran?" has garnered 61 per cent in favor of a war and 39 opposed. Perhaps America's population isn't that war weary.
Posted by steve @ 12:09 AM EST [Link]
Tuesday, May 27, 2003 THIS POLL RESULT MAKES ME SICK: Bill Clinton, a greater president than Reagan? Than Washington? Please.
Posted by antle @ 09:06 AM EST [Link]
~ AFFIRMATIVE ACTION DOUBLE-STANDARDS AT THE TIMES: Veteran freelance journalist and Toogood Reports associate editor Nicholas Stix takes an in-depth look at the egregious pattern of double-standards at the New York Times that enabled Jayson Blair's reign of error, showing why the arguments that racial preferences had nothing to do with it simply don't hold up.
Posted by antle @ 08:41 AM EST [Link]
~ SELF-PROMO ALERT: As you can see, I am on a bit of a tax cut kick. I have a piece on "reality-based" scoring versus static scoring and how these estimates impacted the tax cut debate over at Tech Central Station.
Posted by antle @ 12:44 AM EST [Link]
~ THE SUM OF THE PARTS WERE MORE THAN THE WHOLE: Monday night movie at Fort Sinatra, aka Steve's casa and let's see what we have here. Charismatic leading man in Jason Statham. Check. Babe hotter than magma two miles below the Earth's surface in Qi Shu. Check. Guns? Check. Fight sequences? Check. Name of movie? The Transporter.
It was definately a case of the sum of the parts totalling more than the movie's worth. The plot, if you can call it that, was written on onion paper and served to tie the fight scenes together. In fact, I'd keep cutting it up but someone from Victoria, British Columbia gave a pretty accurate roundup of the movie's problems. Well, I could be too hard on the movie...it was hardly the worst thing I've ever seen and the soundtrack was wicked good (especially Fighting Man by DJ Fone and Drixxxe -- you heard it when Statham's character breaks into Wall Street's home).
The lovely Qi Shu and some guy who starred in the moviePosted by steve @ 12:15 AM EST [Link]
Monday, May 26, 2003 THE NINE DWARVES - NO DEMOCRATIC FRONT-RUNNER: A candidate for new national paper of record reports that there is no Democratic front-runner. Whether Lieberman, Kerry, Gephardt, Edwards or Dean pull away from the pack depends a lot on whether their campaign strategies pan out. A tough primary battle with a weakened nominee is just what President Bush ordered...
Posted by antle @ 11:04 PM EST [Link]
~ ANOTHER NEOCON PLOT?: An interesting article on the alliance between Jews and evangelical Christians in defense of Israel. the report is heavy on the politics of the situation, especially as it pertains to President Bush, and light on the rational justifications for the pro-Israel position. But it does discuss a political marriage that is only going to make itself more prominent as the new "Roadmap" progresses.
Posted by antle @ 08:41 PM EST [Link]
~ SELF-PROMO ALERT: More from me on the tax cut for the Washington Dispatch. Pesky static revenue estimates.
Posted by antle @ 05:44 PM EST [Link]
~ DOING THE CON-CON. James, I am enjoying the constitutional conservative debate you started. I love the term and will adopt it to describe my political bent even if it is a lost cause. Maybe the U.S. Constitution will rise again.
Meantime, Happy Memorial Day to all. Please visit this page to read a brief history of the origins of this holiday.
Posted by izzy @ 02:06 PM EST [Link]
~ FRANKLY I'M SHOCKED THIS LEVEL OF STUPIDITY EVEN EXISTS: Syrian dictator...err, sorry...president Bashar Assad said in an interview published Sunday that he just plum doesn't believe that al-Qaida exists.
"Is there really an entity called Al Qaeda? Was it in Afghanistan? Does it exist now?" Assad asked, according to the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Anba.
Usama bin Laden, the Saudi-born Islamic extremist who heads Al Qaeda, "cannot talk on the phone or use the Internet, but he can direct communications to the four corners of the world?" Assad said. "This is illogical."
Everyone knows it was those four Jews with the white minivan taking pictures of the World Trade Centre just before the attacks....right Bashar?
Posted by steve @ 02:25 AM EST [Link]
~ THEY SET THE GROUND RULES SO THEY SHOULDN'T COMPLAIN: CNN reports that the Bush administration is considering taking a new approach to Iran. The hardline approach will see the United States attempt to destablize the Iranian government.
Senior Bush administration officials, including the deputy secretaries of defense and state, are scheduled to meet Tuesday to discuss Iran, the official said.
Iranian officials said Sunday that the United States has cut off discussions with the Tehran government that encompassed a range of issues, levying what the Iranians called false accusations that Iran provided a haven for al Qaeda members.
Last week, a Bush administration official told CNN that Lakhdar Brahimi, the U.N. special envoy to Afghanistan, met with Iranian officials Thursday in Geneva, Switzerland. During the meeting, the official said, the Iranians said they had several al Qaeda operatives in custody, including one who might have coordinated the recent terrorist bombings in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
About bloody time. The U.S. should have adopted a small carrot/really big stick approach to Iran years ago when the first signs of dissent by Iran's citizens were reported. That said, I'm reasonably sure that some bearded dudes in Tehran are pretty nervous right now.
Posted by steve @ 02:14 AM EST [Link]
Saturday, May 24, 2003 NY TIMES ADMITS THERE ARE CONSERVATIVES IN AMERICA: The NY Times has an interesting story on what the paper has dubbed Hipublicans, young people who are proud to be conservative.
The temptation, upon entering Charles Mitchell's dorm room at Bucknell University, is to assume that he's kidding. The doormat features a picture of Hillary Clinton and the injunction, ''Wipe Liberally.'' A vast American flag festooned in red, white and blue Christmas lights adorns one wall, along with a faded Reagan-Bush '84 poster and a small photograph of the cowboy-hatted Gipper himself. The sole concession to any interest outside right-wing politics is a wall hanging of an African jungle scene. ''My nod,'' says Mitchell, an intense 20-year-old history major, ''to multiculturalism.''
Of course, the reporter manages to draw in concerns that conservative activists could "stifle intellectual openness among students." It's the type of thing that only a conservative student could find hilarious to hear. We are marginalized, assaulted and threatened every day if we dare to raise our voices -- would you like me to tell you about the two professors at Laurentian University who announced in class that they were after me for writing a popular newspaper column? -- and we're the ones that threaten intellectual openness. Funny stuff.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 06:39 PM EST [Link]
~ MORE NY TIMES FUN: Jack Shafer reports on the latest integrity challenged New York Times reporter to be unmasked. This time it's Rick Bragg.
An editor's note in today's New York Times gently chastises Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Rick Bragg for what would be a firing offense at many newspapers, especially in the post-Jayson Blair era. On June 15, 2002, the Times ran a Page One article datelined Apalachicola, Fla., about the oystermen of the Gulf Coast. The byline credit went to Bragg, but that was wrong, the Times note explains. "[W]hile Mr. Bragg indeed visited Apalachicola briefly and wrote the article, the interviewing and reporting on the scene were done by a freelance journalist, J. Wes Yoder."
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 04:30 PM EST [Link]
~ IF THERE IS A HEAVEN, IT'S IN HAY-ON-WYE: Hay-On-Way in Wales is a book lovers paradise:
Hay is home to 1,500 people -- and about 40 used book stores.
"There are more books per head of population in this town than in any other town in the world," says Richard Booth, who opened Hay's first book store more than 40 years ago. "Put them all together, we offer a better service than the British Library."
For book lovers, Hay is seductive. The shops range from dusty paperback caverns to specialists in children's books, poetry, art, travel and languages. Murder and Mayhem concentrates on thrillers, Boz books on Dickens.
For those tired of browsing, Hay has cozy pubs, good restaurants, historic inns and a ruined medieval castle perched in the middle of town.
Books, pubs and restaurants? I could live there forever. Read on.
Posted by steve @ 04:16 PM EST [Link]
Friday, May 23, 2003 NOTABLE QUOTABLE: A busy week at work kept me from perusing my favorite blog websites as often as I would have liked. But I have been doing some catching up, and I simply have to point out this riposte.
Orrin Judd described this "offering" from Jimmy Breslin as "a column so incoherent that Jayson Blair wouldn't plagiarize it."
Posted by antle @ 11:25 PM EST [Link]
~ BOVARD ON THE PATRIOT ACT: A bit ago I mentioned James Bovard's cover story in The American Conservative on the USA PATRIOT Act. It is now available on-line. It seems that TAC waits for a new print edition to come out before posting articles on its website. I'm wondering if anybody else has noticed that.
Posted by antle @ 07:26 PM EST [Link]
~ DERBYSHIRE: A METROCON OR A DEVIATIONIST?: John Derbyshire kindly referenced Bernard Chapin's ESR piece interviewing him in The Corner earlier this week. James Fulford mentioned it on VDARE.com.
Posted by antle @ 07:18 PM EST [Link]
~ $500 MILLION IS A LOT: Members of the 3rd Armored Cav today seized what may be $500 million worth of gold that someone tried to smuggle out of Iraq into Syria.
Just how much of Iraq's wealth was stolen from her people we'll never know...
Posted by steve @ 01:32 PM EST [Link]
~ ANOTHER LEGACY OF SADDAM: Newsday reports that another plank in the leftist platform decrying American policy over Iraq has given way to the truth.
Throughout the 13 years of UN sanctions on Iraq that were ended yesterday, Iraqi doctors told the world that the sanctions were the sole cause for the rocketing mortality rate among Iraqi children.
"It is one of the results of the embargo," Dr. Ghassam Rashid Al-Baya told Newsday on May 9, 2001, at Baghdad's Ibn Al-Baladi hospital, just after a dehydrated baby named Ali Hussein died on his treatment table. "This is a crime on Iraq."
It was a scene repeated in hundreds of newspaper articles by reporters required to be escorted by minders from Saddam Hussein's Ministry of Information.
Now free to speak, the doctors at two Baghdad hospitals, including Ibn Al-Baladi, tell a very different story. Along with parents of dead children, they said in interviews this week that Hussein turned the children's deaths into propaganda, notably by forcing hospitals to save babies' corpses to have them publicly paraded.
Doctors in Iraq now say that Hussein was to blame for a majority of the death toll thanks to his spending on the military and his palaces. Read on.
Posted by steve @ 01:29 PM EST [Link]
~ IT'S COOL BECAUSE THEY DESERVE IT: Utah, the only state that permits the death sentence to be carried out by firing squad, will do that twice next month.
Exercising their right under Utah law, a serial killer, Roberto Arguelles, and Troy Michael Kell, a white supremacist who stabbed a fellow inmate to death, have chosen the firing squad over lethal injection and are set to die at 12:01 a.m. on June 27 and 28, respectively.
Unfortunately Kell has filed an appeal which means his execution won't take place. God willing, it will.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 01:54 AM EST [Link]
~ POTENTIAL OUTAGES TODAY: Interland will be physically moving all of its servers from Los Angeles to Atlanta today. The physical move is scheduled to start Friday, May 23rd at 9:00PM PDT and end on Saturday, May 24th at 12:00PM PDT. You will probably notice that ESR will be down for the most part. Please have patience, we will be back.
Posted by steve @ 01:38 AM EST [Link]
Thursday, May 22, 2003 ICKY ALERT. I hope I am not breaking protocol but using one blog to advertise the contents of another blog, but my interview with Peter Brimelow, author of the Worm in the Apple, is available here.
Posted by izzy @ 11:31 PM EST [Link]
~ GOOD NEWS FOR SANTORUM AT LEAST: Sen. Rick Santorum seems to be in the majority, at least in Pennsylvania, in regards to his recent comments about homosexuality. According to a poll, Pennsylvanians not only don't want him to resign, a majority also agrees with him.
The vast majority of the state's voters -- 75 percent -- said Santorum should not resign as Senate Republican Conference chairman, while 58 percent said homosexuality was morally wrong, the Quinnipiac University poll said.
I guess the state founded by Quakers hasn't completely lost its religious beliefs...
Posted by steve @ 05:11 PM EST [Link]
~ WHY AMERICA FORKS OVER BILLIONS TO THE MIDDLE EAST ANNUALLY: On a request from a reader, Steve Den Beste lays out his thoughts on why the United States provides Middle East nations billions of dollars in aid.
I have a feeling that Richard was hoping for a rant by me about how this is a waste and how we shouldn't be doing it. But it's not that straightforward.
Actually, it is. Steve's reasoning for the continuing aid is hardly a revelation but it is an interesting post nonetheless.
Posted by steve @ 02:29 PM EST [Link]
~ AFTER THE JAYSON BLAIR THING I SAY SCREW THEM: The Libertarian Party of New York is circulating an online petition calling for the state to stop a plan to condemn properties just so the New York Times can build itself a new pad at the expense of the taxpayers, the landowners and their tenants.
We condemn a scheme by The New York Times to have New York State condemn property so that the media giant can erect a new building at the expense of the taxpayers, the landowners and their tenants. The Times wants a state agency, the Empire State Development Corporation's 42nd Street Development Corporation, to condemn the properties on Eighth Avenue between 40th and 41st Streets in Manhattan.
All land acquisition costs above $85 million will be borne by the taxpayers. The properties have been estimated by independent experts in the $150 million range.
Read and sign!
Posted by steve @ 02:24 AM EST [Link]
~ LUCKY I TURNED ON THE SWEARING FILTERS: The problems with ESR's email continues. I have about 95 messages trapped on my mail server somewhere in the United States. I can read it but can't respond so please be patient until this latest problem sorts itself out or I spend what's left of my money flying to wherever my provider is located and "talking" to them about it.
Posted by steve @ 01:41 AM EST [Link]
~ I'M NOT AS PRETTY AS TOM CRUISE BUT...: I won't finish that for fear of lawsuit. Nicole Kidman has been talking a lot recently about finding a man. She even stated during a press conference at Cannes a few days ago that she wouldn't act forever but looked forward to life after her craft. I'm hearby offering myself as a man willing to try and sweep her off her feet. Here's why:
Kidman's Puffing Has Anti-Smokers Fuming
Actress Nicole Kidman's televised cigarette puffing at the Cannes Film Festival has anti-smokers fuming. Anti-smoking campaigners say the Oscar-winning The Hours star is one of Australia's greatest success stories who, as a role model for young women, has a duty to not promote the habit. Anne Jones, of the Action On Smoking And Health group in Australia, says, "We accept that Nicole Kidman has a right to smoke, but with celebrity comes a responsibility to avoid promoting lethal and addictive products to young people. Mass media coverage of celebrity smokers, like Nicole Kidman, is priceless for the tobacco industry in their drive to addict new smokers, most of whom are children." At a media briefing while promoting her new film Dogville, Kidman took a cigarette from her co-star Stellan Skarsgard, only to be knocked by director Lars Von Trier in front of the world's press as he moaned, "Oh, Nicole, don't do that - you promised." But Kidman coolly kept puffing. The incident made major Australian news bulletins moments later, where an outrage has erupted.
I know you health nuts out there will slam me for this, but as a fellow smoker I can't help but love the woman more.
Posted by steve @ 01:31 AM EST [Link]
Wednesday, May 21, 2003 AMERICAN IDOL: JAMES WILLIAMS. What? You were expecting Ruben or Clay? Nah. James, age 14, hails from Washington state. He just won the 2003 National Geographic Bee, and he is a HOMESCHOOLER!!! Woohoo. (I'm so predictable.)
How he won: "Williams ultimately came out ahead by answering the following question correctly: 'Goa, a state in southwestern India, was a possession of which country until 1961?' (Answer: Portugal)." Last year's contest was also won by a home scholar.
Read more here.
Posted by izzy @ 08:48 PM EST [Link]
~ CAN WE STOP WITH "THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT" TAKE-OFFS PLEASE?: It's tiresome and hackworthy. That said, Joe Hagan has an interesting piece over at The New York Observer about the pitch Jayson Blair is sending out for a book deal. It's depressing in the sense that his pitch tells us everything we need to know about modern society.
But unlike Mr. Blair’s career-suicide doppelgänger, Stephen Glass—who has said he spent five years in therapy before publishing a work of fiction about his fabrications in The New Republic—the former Times reporter isn’t waiting around to get his head straight. He’s diving right in, not slowed down at all by the gummy ethical issues involved in exploiting his own bad behavior for personal profit. The memoir that Mr. Blair wants to write will either justify his actions or further damn them. Above all, the proposal claims, the book will have something to teach others: "I want to offer my experience as a lesson," Mr. Blair writes, "for the precipice from which I plunged is one on which many young, ambitious, well-educated and accomplished African Americans and other ‘minorities’ teeter, though most, of course, do manage to pull back from the brink. That precipice overhangs America’s racial divide; and the winds sucking us down into the chasm (cultural isolation, professional mistrust, and the external and internal imperatives to succeed, at all costs, to name a few) can be too strong for the troubled and unprepared—as I was—to withstand.
Oi vey. Read on.
Posted by steve @ 07:18 PM EST [Link]
~ FORGET SARS, WHAT ABOUT SAAR?: Matthew Epstein wants to know what's going on with the federal investigation in to the SAAR Network. Back in March 2002, terrorism investigators raided an operation in northern Virginia and carted away computers and documents.
Now over a year after the raids, many are asking whether the Justice Department will hand down indictments or clear the targets' names. While the government has revealed very little about the lengthy probe, documents recently made public in terrorism trials across the nation shed new light on the subjects of this ongoing terrorism investigation.
Too many times people want to rush a complicated investigation but it would be nice if the Justice Department made some sort of announcement. Read on.
Posted by steve @ 02:45 PM EST [Link]
~ LISTEN TO THE SPEECH: (Via I can't remember who) NY Times reporter Chris Hedges' speech is available on the Internet. Listen here. (MP3 format)
Posted by steve @ 02:38 PM EST [Link]
~ ERRR, I THINK I'VE USED THE WORD "SHEEPLE" IN THE PAST: For that I apologize. James Lileks has a marvelous post about people who use the word "sheeple" in relation to the BBC's recent story that the rescue of Pvt. Jessica Lynch was staged. The weapons fired (hint, there were none fired) in front of the camera were using blanks (hint, if you were in the military you'd know why that's idiotic) and the "rescue" was nothing more than some 'ole Rambo theatrics for the sheeple at home.
As it happens, I remember seeing the rescue footage the government released. I TiVod it for the video compilation I was making. No gunfire; no flashbangs; there was a shot of some soldiers going down a stairwell, a grainy green night-vision shot of a waiting room with a portrait of Saddam leaning against the wall, and an outside shot of the stretcher being prepped for extraction. I’ve seen news stories on paintball tourneys that were more dramatic.
Europeans are really beginning to bug me now. I mean really beginning to bug me. It's not enough they refused to send soldiers but now they question the bravery of other soldiers?
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 01:36 AM EST [Link]
Tuesday, May 20, 2003 IT'S ONLY FREEDOM OF SPEECH WHEN A LEFTIST TALKS: New York Times reporter Chris Hedges was booed off the stage during his commencement address at Rockford College after delivering an anti-war speech.
Hedges began his abbreviated 18-minute speech comparing United States’ policy in Iraq to piranhas and a tyranny over the weak. His microphone was unplugged within three minutes.
Voices of protest and the sound of foghorns grew.
Some graduates and audience members turned their backs to the speaker in silent protest. Others rushed up the aisle to vocally protest the remarks, and one student tossed his cap and gown to the stage before leaving.
One lady was angry at the audience's behavior because it was "not behaving as people in an academic setting, where you’re supposed to be open to a great many ideas." That almost made me laugh outloud. In an academic setting (especially for commencement addresses), there is no exposure to a great many ideas, merely liberal ideas. I'm frankly shocked that the audience didn't cheer.
At any rate, when a conservative has a chance to be booed off the stage at Harvard then I'll feel badly for Hedges. Conservatives don't get invites to many commencement addresses.
Posted by steve @ 11:45 PM EST [Link]
~ SOUTH CAROLINA PARDONS ESR'S PATRON SAINT: The State of South Carolina today pardoned James Brown for his past crimes in the state.
Brown, who served a two-and-a-half-year prison term after a 1988 arrest on drug and assault charges, and was convicted of a drug-related offense in 1998, was granted a pardon by the state Department of Probation, Parole and Pardon Services.
Brown, who appeared before the board, sang "God Bless America" after the decision, said his publicist, Dan Forman.
"God bless America on this beautiful day. I hope my pardon shows the youth that America is a beautiful country," 70-year-old soul legend said in a statement. "I feel good!"
If you didn't know it, the checkered past of Brown hasn't been enough for us not to name him our patron saint/spiritual advisor.
Posted by steve @ 11:33 PM EST [Link]
~ NOAH FELDMAN IS WRONG: Says Martin Kramer. If you remember, Feldman has written a book After Jihad: America and the Struggle for Islamic Democracy, one that argues that Islam and democracy are not incompatible. I reviewed the book for ESR and the Christian Science Monitor and was lauditory both times.
Kramer thinks that people like me might have been too lauditory. In fact, he points to my Monitor review as one example. Why are we wrong? Because we accept the basic premise that people like Feldman are advancing, one that rests on a shaky base.
The Esposito/Feldman idea goes like this: Islamists are really no worry at all. In fact, they are actually the best hope for democracy in the Middle East. Leading Islamist thinkers want democracy, and if Islamist parties were allowed to take power—which they certainly would do in free elections—it would be an improvement over the situation today. Even if Islamists declared "Islamic" states on assuming power, these regimes would probably be more or less democratic, provided you don't insist on a narrow, culture-bound definition of democracy. The United States is making a big mistake by allying itself with autocratic rulers in the region, and it's betraying its values too. It should encourage inevitable change in the Islamists' favor, which is really in the U.S. interest.
Kramer says that the only way that line of thinking works is if you claim that "jihad" is over, which you can certainly claim is far from reality. Of course, you can also claim that the spirit of violent jihad is diminishing, as Gilles Kepel did in his book Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam which I reviewed here.
At any rate, I'll let Kramer's thoughts speak for themselves because he's done a better job of laying them out than I can. Read on.
Posted by steve @ 03:15 PM EST [Link]
~ IRAN AND THE INTERNET: I have a natural inclination not to post anything that was in the Globe and Mail but there was an interesting article in today's paper about Iran and the effect that the Internet is having on it. The religious leaders are having a real difficult time controlling access to information and it's beginning to destablize their hold on the young population.
What's really got the mullah's beards in a knot? Weblogs, the very thing that the western press dismisses as vanity posting with little credibility.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 02:54 PM EST [Link]
~ GOLDBERG ON NEOCONSERVATISM: Jonah Goldberg continues his series on neoconservatism today here (you can find part one here). The funniest part can be found here:
Today, "paleoconservatism" has become the real "neoconservatism," in that it is literally the newest form of conservatism out there, resembling very little the conservatism of William F. Buckley or Barry Goldwater or the rank-and-file of the Republican party. An even funnier irony is that in many respects paleoconservatism is more left wing than what we call neoconservatism. The reason this is funny is that so many self-described paleos view themselves as "further to the Right" than those they label neocons. But they need to explain why Pat Buchanan's public policies sound so liberal.
I and ESR -- and I suppose its contributors by extension -- been savaged over the last few years for being one of those Jew-loving neocons. I plead guilty to the Jew-loving (in the sense that I don't hate Jews), but my neocon status is less certain. I prefer "rock 'n' roll conservative" or "tired and sleepy" as labels but you can't help what people call you. That said I always knew I was more conservative than paleocons. As Goldberg (oh no, another one of those Jews!) points out, some of the stuff that Pat Buchanan advocates wouldn't be out of place coming from Ralph Nader.
Buchanan now favors caps on executive salaries, expansion of Medicare benefits, and high trade barriers. He fumes about the excesses of Wall Street and the free market.
Well comrades, I guess paleocons are conservative. But seriously, I've long considered paleocons to be the left-wing of the conservative movement. It's not that I find neocons to be terribly conservative either, but they speak less nonsense than paleocons. Caps on salaries?
Posted by steve @ 02:49 PM EST [Link]
Monday, May 19, 2003 THE INFORMATION AGE SOLDIER: Steven Den Beste of U.S.S. Clueless fame has a good piece in today's Opinion Journal about the rise of the Information Age soldier.
One usually thinks of the paradigmatic soldier is the frontline rifleman, or maybe a guy buttoned up in a tank. Think of ancient armies and one imagines the Roman legionary, or a knight on horseback. Basically, we think of the guys who are doing the fighting. That's quite natural.
But in order for guys like that to be where they are, doing what they're doing to the enemy, there are other people elsewhere doing other less glamorous jobs. For every fighter pilot doing wing-overs and patrolling the air over the battlefield, there's a squad of mechanics on the ground responsible for keeping the aircraft flying. For every frontline platoon, there are other guys responsible for moving a steady flow of supplies to keep that platoon fed and watered and supplied with ammunition.
The usual term for these roles are "tooth" and "tail." The "tooth" part is all the guys who are actually in the position of being able to kill enemies, and the "tail" guys are the ones who may find themselves in the position of fighting but don't usually expect to do so. (But all of them can die; everyone is potentially a target even if they aren't all shooting.) We speak of the tooth-to-tail ratio, though it usually makes more sense to talk about tail-to-tooth: How many men must there be behind the front doing unglamorous work to make it possible to put one man directly into combat? In some cases it's greater than 10 to 1.
Posted by steve @ 03:04 PM EST [Link]
~ GOOD LUCK ARI: I'm sure you've already heard but Ari Fleischer announced today he's leaving the White House.
Posted by steve @ 02:59 PM EST [Link]
~ "IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH," ETC: So, there I was sitting in my uncle James' spanking-new, interior-designed to within an inch of its life, thirty-fifth floor downtown condo (typical exchange: Barton-"So how much did it cost to buy all this brand new furniture?" James-"A lot." Barton-"Yeah, I know that, but, uh, do you have some sort of, uh, round dollar figure?" James, pausing to think a bit-"...A lot."). James was standing on the balcony, staring out towards the east at a gloriously clear morning sky, thinking about the meaning and destiny of life. I was lounging around at his nearby direct-from-Denmark glass and steel mini-office (there was a new flat-screen iMac sitting on the desk, of course), languidly reading the gossip and resturant reviews from Toronto Life in an attempt to distract myself from the sub-Rothko and imitation-Frankenthaler prints that my uncle had insisted on decorating his walls with. A perfect setting for two cosmospolitan sophisticates like us to start trading quips like some mismatched couple in a screwball comedy, right? Well, instead of Woody Allenish witticisms or Wildean apercus or even Seinfeldean observations, I got this-
James (lost in reverie): You know, we've had such a long, cold winter. It felt like it would never end. And now it's May and it's like, we never had a spring! It's so cool today and it's May...it's like winter never ended... (trails off).
Barton (barely paying attention): Yep.
James : It's so cold! (walking back inside, shivering) You know, what I blame for all this?
Barton: What?
James: Global warming, of course.
Barton (rather taken aback): But, you said yourself that's it was colder outside than usual!
James: You have to look at the big picture... (trails off without elaborating).
Barton (very slowly emphasizing every word): You...said...it...was...cooler.
James: Yeah, but you have look at the big picture (wanders off, while I struggle to get my jaw off the floor).
My uncle is a geography teacher.
Later, an actual Rothko print he had ordered finally came in. Well, not an exactly a "print" per se. When my uncle took it apart, he found out that the guys had actually just cut out the back of a calendar that had happened to use Rothko's paintings and stuck the sheet into the frame. Nevertheless, my uncle decided to keep it and hung it up on a wall in the second bathroom where it accomplished its purpose of "filling space." Rather curious about his new-found treasure, my uncle decided to conduct some research on the painting using the Internet. He found out that the original, which is entitled "No. 61 (Rust and Blue) [Brown Blue, Brown on Blue]," was at The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, here it is. Staring at the image on his monitor, my uncle then realized that he had hung the Rothko print on the wall upside down. That discovery prompted this later dialogue-
Barton: So, have you fixed that Rothko print yet?
James: Nope.
Barton: And may I ask why not?
James: Well, I kind of think it actually looks better upside down.
Barton (playing the pompous windbag): But isn't that a, well, obscenity against the artistic work's integrity? Shouldn't we follow the artist's explicit purpose and intentions in how he wanted his painting to be presented? I mean, what would it look like if you bought a print of the Mona Lisa and decided to hang it upside down on your bathroom wall, huh?
James (very patiently): First of all, it's not the Mona Lisa. Second, I'm the one who bought it and as the owner, therefore I should be allowed to decide how to present it in whatever way I want to. Finally, since it's not the Mona Lisa, but a Rothko print, people won't be able to tell that it's actually hung upside down, so it won't matter.
There you have it. My uncle now has a brand-new Rothko "print" costing over a hundred dollars, that isn't really a print, which he has decided to hang upside down on the wall of the second bathroom of his designer condominium, because he likes it better that way. Mark Rothko, my uncle James tells me, is his "favourite" artist. I'm not saying that my uncle James is foolish or anything like that, but I just found these two exchanges rather funny.
As well, the fact that James thinks (pretty accurately, I believe) that, as with so many modern abstract paintings, people will be unable to tell whether the Rothko "print" is upside down or not, tells us a lot about the state of contemporary art, but that's a rant for another day...
Posted by Barton @ 03:31 AM EST [Link]
~ HER NAME WAS MATHILDA MAY: James Lileks has a good blog on the New York Times and the Jayson Blair controversy. I'd quote some of it but it's worth going over and reading the thing for yourself.
He also praises the latest Simpsons episode, which I thought was horrifically bad, and expresses how stupid the 1985 movie "Lifeforce" was. It was Bad but the young lady that Lileks refers to is named Mathilda May who was...ummm....perfect for the role. If you've seen the movie, you know why.
Read on.
[Update - 4:51am] Rusty White has a funny review of Lifeforce which stresses May's nakedness and how bad the movie is. I'm almost tempted to buy it on DVD as a reference point for badness.
Posted by steve @ 12:37 AM EST [Link]
Sunday, May 18, 2003 MODERATE DEMOCRATS ARE RIGHT-WING EXTREMISTS: Or so that paragon of true moderation James Jeffords apparently believes. Note how this recent convert to the cause of Howard Dean still manages to get in a dig against the GOP.
Posted by antle @ 09:37 PM EST [Link]
Saturday, May 17, 2003 GOOD RIDDANCE TO FUSIONISM: Julian Sanchez, one of the libertarian bloggers whose missives contributed to my decision to write my piece on the libertarian-conservative clash, takes issue with parts of it.
Sanchez disagrees that conservatives and libertarians “will continue to hang together on the grounds of a shared commitment to ‘the dignity of man.’” That actually is not my position. I do argue for a continuation of libertarian-conservative cooperation, but I make no prediction as to whether this will happen. My guess is that those who can crudely be called right-libertarians will continue to align themselves mainly with conservatives with a focus on free markets while those who equally crudely may be described as left-libertarians will work with liberals with a focus on social issues. Recently, we’ve seen so-called “lifestyle libertarians” driven further away from mainstream conservatives over issues like gay marriage and cloning while paleolibertarians and paleoconservatives have drawn closer together. What ultimately will happen will depend in large part on what issues continue to claim public attention.
He also notes that most major political classifications have some kind of conception of the inherent worth of the individual and the dignity of man, including left-liberals. He’s right about this, but I still think there is some value to Ed Feser’s comparison of the libertarian and traditional conservative conception of man. The notion that man is a being created in the image of God, for example, is something that can just as easily have libertarian implications. It is also worth noting that the conservatism I am defending seeks to conserve the political legacy of the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. And while Sanchez is right that left-liberals want the individual to have the effective means to realize his potential and have a good standard of living, the left does have more of a tendency to view the individual as subject to economic and other material forces beyond his control.
Sanchez misreads my line about the need for libertarians to “understand the importance of virtue” as saying that a failure to endorse the promotion of virtue by the state is tantamount to denying virtue. Both in this article and in my piece about Bill Bennett, I explicitly criticized conservatives who take the position that values must be promoted by the state. But I also criticized libertarians who go beyond opposing such government policies to opposing moral criticisms of individual choices. My position is that libertarians need not inherently reject traditional morality, including aspects of it that Sanchez finds “stultifying.” This is a position that some libertarians would certainly agree with. Just because something is immoral doesn’t mean it should be legal, but just because something should be legal doesn’t necessarily mean its moral.
This is not to claim that Sanchez and I would be in complete agreement over what ought to be legal – or what government policy should be on a given subject generally – even as we differ on what is moral. I strongly disagree with most of the statements he makes in the final paragraph of his blog entry; in some cases these are philosophical disagreements, in others mere observational disagreements, and in others actual policy disagreements. Particularly, I think his “Stepford-wives-meet-Ozzy-and-Harriet utopia” reference is a gross distortion of the conservative position. But I think a conservatism that took more seriously the proper limits of government could work effectively with libertarians who are at least tolerant of traditional values.
So have changing social realities buried fusionism by ending any commonality of interests between conservatives and libertarians? I’m not sure. For starters, not all social trends are marching inexorably in the “progressive” direction, so it is not necessarily the case that all societal change is rendering traditionalist conservatism obsolete, whatever that even means. Is the tension between libertarians and conservative really worse than it was during the height of the sexual revolution, the Vietnam war, the draft and the legalization of contraception and abortion? Conservatives and libertarians also have very pronounced internal divisions. The war against Iraq divided libertarians at least as much as conservatives possibly more so, while open sniping between various factions on the right can be read in the pages of conservative periodicals.
Sanchez himself is moving from the Cato Institute, which often works with the conservative movement on policy issues, to an assistant editorship at Reason magazine (congratulations), which has tended toward a view of libertarianism as a “third way” beyond left and right. Both Reason and Cato are widely considered parts of the libertarian mainstream. Libertarians and conservatives have always had both differences and areas of common interest, and I don’t see much reason to believe that the former will cancel out the latter anymore than in the past.
Posted by antle @ 05:32 PM EST [Link]
~ NOTHING A SOLDIER LIKES MORE THAN FOOD...WELL, THIS IS A FAMILY RATED SITE YOU KNOW: Todd Melet has launched a new web site to collect money to buy meal gift cards for active members of the U.S. military.
We are not a charity, but a method for people to give a direct gift, with no charity overhead to deduct from the gift. I am not making money off of this either.
Users come to our site and purchase a gift card for Pizza Hut, or Darden Restaurants (Red Lobster/Olive Garden), and we ship it directly to Fort Bragg for our first card give-away. We have sponsored a party in the park on June 13th at Fort Bragg to achieve distribution, and we will do other military base give-aways after this event.
Pretty cool idea. Help Todd and a military person by buying a meal gift card at his web site.
Posted by steve @ 05:09 PM EST [Link]
~ RECLAIM YOUR SECOND AMENDMENT RIGHTS: The Federalist, through its Patriot Petitions web site, has launched a petition to reject legislation renewing the 1994 Clinton-Feinstein-Schumer Gun-Control Act. Unfortunately U.S. President George W. Bush supports the ban.
Make your voice heard here.
Posted by steve @ 05:04 PM EST [Link]
~ WHAT EXACTLY IS YOUR CORE MISSION?: University of California regents went on record Thursday to declare that they are opposed to Ward Connerly's push to stop state and local agencies from collecting race data.
University President Richard Atkinson had asked governors of the nine-campus system to take the public stand, saying Connerly's initiative could "adversely affect the university's ability to carry out its core mission."
Core mission? I hope that mission is education, which in that case you don't need to know anything about race, eh Mr. Atkinson? Silly me, I forgot, education is the beard for your real agenda.
Posted by steve @ 02:24 PM EST [Link]
~ GOTTA HATE THOSE "INTERNATIONAL TERRORISTS": At least 24 people have been killed in five near simultaneous explosions that shook the Moroccan city of Casablanca Friday night, the country's interior minister says.
About 60 others were wounded in the blasts, at least three of which were caused by car bombs.
Speaking in Morocco's capital, Rabat, Interior Minister Mustapha Sahel blamed "international terrorists" for the attacks and said some of the blasts were committed by suicide bombers.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 04:39 AM EST [Link]
~ JUST BLOWING SMOKE: More evidence that the conventional wisdom on secondhand smoke, used to justify nanny-state smoking bans in many cities, is bunk. Jacob Sullum elaborates in his latest column. Of course, the study is dimissed as Big Tobacco propaganda.
Posted by antle @ 01:45 AM EST [Link]
~ A PUNY TAX CUT: I suppose any tax cut is a good thing, and it was good to see that some portion of the president's dividends tax reduction remained intact, but the tax cut passed by the Senate is far from impressive. It fails to offer permanent tax relief, simplify the tax code or reduce marginal rates adequately to have a real impact on economic growth. Is this the best an all-Republican Capitol Hill can do?
Posted by antle @ 01:36 AM EST [Link]
~ LINDA BOWLES, R.I.P.: I haven't seen much coverage of this sad event, but the talented conservative columnist Linda Bowles has died. One prays that she and her beloved husband are together again.
Posted by antle @ 01:15 AM EST [Link]
~ A NEW NATIONAL PAPER OF RECORD: Stanley Kurtz made the case for the Washington Post replacing the New York Times as the national newspaper of record. While Howell Raines has taken the Gray Lady off into a left-wing never-never land, the Post has increasingly provided balanced and competent coverage of national events. Perhaps if it changed its focus to becoming more of a national paper it could become a real source of competition to the NYT.
Of course, as Jeremy Lott pointed out a while ago, there already is a national newspaper competing to the title of paper of record: Don't laugh, it's USA Today.
Posted by antle @ 12:44 AM EST [Link]
~ AFFIRMATIVE ACTION CAN BACKFIRE ON INTENDED BENEFICIARIES: There are many arguments against affirmative action, but one that does not receive enough attention is that these policies can hurt the very people they are intended to help. William Anderson makes this point very well with regard to the Jayson Blair case in LewRockwell.com.
Posted by antle @ 12:30 AM EST [Link]
Friday, May 16, 2003 NOT EVERYONE CAN BE IN THE "ELITE"
Gun Group Blasts Senator's 'Double Standard'
(CNSNews.com) - A pro-gun group says it's the height of hypocrisy for Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) - a strong gun-control supporter - to walk around with an armed guard. "Chuck Schumer has been working overtime for years to deprive honest, law-abiding Americans the means with which to defend themselves from violent crime," said Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. "Yet, here's Schumer unmasked, protected by an armed New York police detective, a luxury not available to average working class Americans. If Schumer is convinced that his fellow Americans don't need firearms, why does he feel the need for an armed bodyguard?" In the press release, Gottlieb called Schumer's actions "a deplorable double standard."
cb
Posted by clbloomer @ 04:49 PM EST [Link]
~ RECOMMENDED READING: Nevertheless, one must take advantage of one's idleness, so may I humbly recommend to our dear readers Professor Taki's Syllabus from the latest edition of The American Conservative in which he calls William Kristol "Attila the Hen" (hey, I laughed), suggests that President Bush should read Oswald Spengler's The Decline of the West, A.J.P Taylor's The Origins of the Second World War, and J.A. Hobson's Imperialism (anyone familiar with the contents of any of the above three will find these reading recommendations to the president hilariously weird), and writes assessments of books he hasn't even read. That Taki, what a card!
Meanwhile, Steve Sailer calls The Matrix: Reloaded with its mixture of action and intellectual posturing "My Dinner with Andre on the Hindenburg" and The Economist writes a serious and on the whole, balanced assessment of President Bush's fraying relationship with the religious right. I wouldn't say the same thing about the accompanying cartoon, however.
Posted by Barton @ 04:46 PM EST [Link]
~ VITA INACTIVA: One of the reasons for my light posting is that my grandmother (who's 80) recently moved in with us, so it's been pretty chaotic here. She's now living in my sister's old room in the basement. My dad, being the carpentry genius that he is, put-up a railing to help her climb up the stairs; two days later, when I reached up to grab it, the whole thing fell off the wall. Since my grandmother is completely unfamiliar with our neighbourhood, my mother won't even allow her to walk out of the backyard for fear that she'll get lost (which has happened before). So she's stuck in the house all the time with me, who's confined here because the summer job does not start until June. So what do we do all day? We watch television, of course. It's oddly pathetic really. The grandmother (who's forgotten all the English she's ever learned, even though she's lived here in Canada since after the Second World War) just sits around watching the images flickering around the screen. It doesn't matter what program it is, it doesn't even matter that she doesn't understand a thing that's going on, just as long as there's something to distract her on the television. So that pretty much leaves me with the choice of what to watch, which then led me to the absolutely horrifying, but in retrospect, mind-bogglingly obvious discovery that daytime television is..., well, there's just nothing there. Our afternoon viewing so far has consisted of:
1. Jacques Cousteau's Ocean Tales (a children's cartoon).
2. Sailor Moon (another children's cartoon).
3. An informercial for digital television channels.
4. A program that seems to consist purely of eurodance music videos.This has been going on for the last week. Gradually, a great fear of retirement has been growing in my mind and I'm not even out of university yet. In fact, I'm so idle, I've been reduced to writing blog entries like this...
Posted by Barton @ 03:37 PM EST [Link]
~ BLOODY EMAIL: I didn't even know it until today. My mail server...located somewhere in the United States...underwent some "changes" this week. Specifically Monday afternoon meaning I hadn't gotten any ESR related mail until just now when I fixed it. 290 email messages...if you mailed me, please be patient...I'll get to you sometime this weekend.
Posted by steve @ 02:25 PM EST [Link]
Thursday, May 15, 2003 REST IN PEACE JUNE: June Carter Cash, wife of the Man in Black and a talented singer/songwriter in her own right, has died of complications from heart surgery. She was 73.
The love that June and Johnny had for each other was legendary. Our thoughts go out to the family.
Posted by steve @ 08:50 PM EST [Link]
~ PROJECT FOR A REVOLUTION AT QUEEN'S PARK*: I must warn my American readers beforehand: the following long, long post has everything to do with both Canadian politics and Canadian history. You may skip it to your heart's content.
My apologies to all the readers of this humble weblog for my extended absence. While Steve was busy taking in the hits for his interview with the great Mark Steyn (if you're one of the two people left in the right-wing blogosphere who haven't read it yet, here it is), I was arranging for myself some summer employment working for that anti-democratic dictatorship otherwise known as the Government of Ontario. Anti-democratic dictatorship, you ask? Well, if Bruce Rolston says it's true, then it must be. Being the good lickspittle for my future employers that I am and a member of the governing Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario (who still haven't sent me my membership card yet), I feel somewhat obliged to defend those two grand institutions from the calumnies of Mr. Rolston. I'll try to ignore the image that troubles my mind of all those brave dissidents locked up in the rotting cells underneath Queen's Park as I write this defence.
Given the remarkable tone-deafness of the Eves government in the last few weeks, I will openly admit that such a defence is rather difficult. The most recent revelations that the provincial government authorized itself to spend up to $36-billion, half the government's annual budget, without seeking the approval of the provincial parliament is simply the icing on the cake of a so-far horrendous 2003. We must add to that Tory MPP John O'Toole's "flipping the bird" at the Opposition and then lying about it to the press before television footage forced him to recant, the Speaker's (a Tory MPP himself) recent charging of his own government with contempt for presenting the budget outside of Queen's Park in an auto-parts factory, and of course, that damned budget presentation itself, which simultaneously reinforced the images of the provinicial Tories as arrogant, self-congratulatory, and in the pockets of Big Bad Business. The list of sins by the Eves regime, both actual and perceived, is long and I do not propose to give the reader any half-witted sophistry in attempting to excuse them. Whether or not you believe the authorization of the money was to set-up a "slush fund" (as the opposition Liberals charge) or more charitably, an arrogant and underhanded way to pay to the bills for the day-to-day running of the provinical bureaucracy (as Christina Blizzard writes), I concede the government made a massive mistake for which it deserves to be whipped as much Mr. Rolston wants. Chris Stockwell's hysterical high-pitched squeals in response to the Liberals' attacks yesterday did not help matters much either.
That much said, does the list of above sins (egregious as they are) warrent placing us Tories on the same level of legitimacy as King George III on the verge of the American Revolution and the Family Compact in 1837 (with Dalton McGuinty playing the role of George Washington and William Lyon Mackenzie????). I wouldn't be so sure about using such comparisons, given that the response to the undemocratic entities named above was armed rebellion, but maybe I'm reading too much in Mr. Rolston's words. Mr. Rolston also states that:
The simple fact is that, while these Tories may claim that they will only use their new powers for good (lowering taxes on the elderly being their big and deeply cynical election promise) the removal of any restrictions on government power they have launched can inevitably be used the next time they, or anyone else in their place, wants to raise taxes, too. Never mind any requirement for public oversight over expenditure, either.
Fair enough, but let me say this. Given that both the Liberals and the NDP are endlessly slamming the government over this abuse of power, if and when the Liberals or (god forbid) the NDP do form the government in this province, wouldn't it be very, very hypocritical in a very, very obvious way if they then turned around and committed the exact same abuses of government power, this time in the name of raising taxes instead of lowering them, as Mr. Rolston seems to inevitably expect them to do? I don't think much of either Dalton McGuinty or Howard Hampton in terms of competence at governing, but even I believe that they're not so vile as to be so grossly deceitiful. Quite frankly, I'm surprised that Mr. Rolston appears to have a lower opinion of McGuinty and Hampton's moral consistency than I do.
Then there's this li
