Musings Archive September 2003
Tuesday, September 30, 2003 GOOD NEWS KEEPS COMING: Arianna Huffington announced this evening that she's withdrawing from the California recall race. Why? Well to defeat the recall -- which is new motivation for her considering she hoped to benefit by it -- and to help defeat Arnold Schwarzenegger.
"I was against the recall in principle. I've always believed this is not the way to run a democracy. But I also saw the opportunity provided to elect with a simple plurality an independent progressive governor."
Of course you were against it. I often participate in processes that I'm opposed to in principle. Me thinks Huffington's decision was really based on the fact that she drew about 4 per cent support.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 11:08 PM EST [Link]
~ YAGBTA: To save time I've created a new acronym: Yet Another Guantanamo Bay Translator Arrested (YAGBTA).
The FBI has arrested another translator who worked at the U.S. base in Cuba. Ahmed Mehalba was arrested at Boston's Logan Airport with what are alleged to be classified materials related to the al-Qaida prisoners being held there. Interestingly, he was arrested on a flight from Egypt.
Mehalba is a civilian translator working for the Titan Corp., CNN has confirmed. Titan, based in San Diego, California, describes itself as "a leading provider of comprehensive information and communications products, solutions, and services for national security."
I'll bet.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 04:18 PM EST [Link]
~ BY THE PEOPLE, FOR THE PEOPLE: Like pretty well everyone else I haven't seen Afghanistan's proposed constitution but the good news is that it doesn't impose the Islamic Shariah law. What I especially like about it was the extensive level of public input.
The commission sent 460,000 questionnaires out to the public this year and held meetings in villages across the country seeking public input.
"So many people replied, including women who said they wanted more rights and good education," [Constitutional Review Commission spokesman Abdul Ghafoor] Lewal said. "The illiterate sent cassette tapes and we got tens of thousands of letters."
A total of 150 000 people submitted suggestions. Let's just hope it's a balanced document that everyone can live with. Yeah, I know the chances of that happening are...
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 04:08 PM EST [Link]
~ HOW TO FAKE YOUR WAY PAST THE DIVERSITY POLICE: I was lucky. When I entered university (1991) I didn't have to run through the gauntlet of diversity police because Laurentian University was out of the mainstream enough to not have instituted the policies yet and its PC Police wasn't all that powerful. Things have changed baby. By my third year I heard of the horror stories of what the frosh was forced to do such as sitting around in circles and pretending to be gay or learning how to put a condom on a banana. Frankly, I never understood that last one...I've never had to put a condom on a banana.
Peter W. Wood offers an easy way for freshman students to fake a diversity essay and it's funny as well as true.
But the "diversity essay" isn't merely a smokescreen. It is also a device to ensure that candidates commit themselves, at least rhetorically, to the campus ideology of diversity. I suspect most high-school students are plenty capable of figuring out what kind of essay they need to submit to earn the "diversity bonus" that will vault them ahead of academically better qualified candidates. But The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that leaders of some campus groups expressed fear that "young applicants might have difficulty writing essays that adequately reflected the impact of their race or ethnicity on their lives." A UM senior, Ricardo Valle, declared that, prior to coming to college, "I did not know what diversity was or how to interpret my experiences as a Latino youth."
Mr. Valle had to go to college to learn how to give up his individuality and conform to the categories of Leftist identity politics, but help is on the way. Students who need assistance concocting testimonials to the prejudices they have endured and the hardships they have overcome already have a choice of websites and consultants who will help. But in a spirit of public service, I am willing to lend a hand too. Herewith some advice for the high-school student aspiring to attend a college that requires a diversity essay.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 11:21 AM EST [Link]
~ THAT MUST HAVE BEEN QUITE THE PARTY: The Chinese government is steamed after it learned that about 900 people -- 400 Japanese and 500 Chinese prostitutes -- participated in a mass orgy at a hotel in the southern city of Zhuhai.
Read on.
In unrelated news, a Japanese court has awarded $1.7 million to the families of a group of Chinese victims of World War II chemical weapons abandoned by the Japanese army.
Read on.
I think I'd rather play host to an orgy then chemical weapons though neither is on my top ten list.
Posted by steve @ 03:51 AM EST [Link]
~ BE CAREFUL WHO YOU GET ANGRY: "Conservative CNN commentator Tucker Carlson's snide humor backfired on him -- and his wife.
While defending telemarketers during a segment on 'Crossfire' last week, the bow-tied co-host was asked for his home phone number. Carlson gave out a number, but it was for the Washington bureau of Fox News, CNN's bitter rival."
How did Fox respond? By posting Carlson's private unlisted phone number on their web site.
Readon.
Posted by steve @ 03:31 AM EST [Link]
~ CONGRATS TO P.E.I. TORIES: The Progressive Conservative Party in Prince Edward Island won its third straight mandate Monday night. The last time the party managed the feat was in the 1880s.
Voters had to battle Hurricane Juan to get to the polls and Premier Pat Binns watched the results in his home on a television powered by a generator.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 01:02 AM EST [Link]
~ HOW TO FIX IRAQ: The secret? Don't kill our enemies, get them to buy our ideals. Sounds good to me. Read it here.
Posted by steve @ 12:26 AM EST [Link]
~ MONDAY NIGHT QUARTERBACK: The football gods continue to take their revenge on me for presuming that I would do exceptionally well this year in my football pool. With 2 minutes left in tonight's game the Packers lead by 22 points, easily beating the 10 points I gave them. In retrospect I should have gave them 15 points but they covered so no biggie.
Cleveland losing to Cincinnati? The Vikings exposing the 49ers for what they are? Philadelphia showing they were a good team playing badly until this week? I should have known better than to pick the Steelers over the Titans. I don't think I can be faulted for picking Jacksonville over Houston (great finish to the game!) I made some mistakes this weekend but managed to get 10 of 15, same as last week.
Week 1: 9 of 15 (Thursday night game not counted)
Week 2: 13 of 15
Week 3: 10 of 15
Week 4: 10 of 15Season %: 70 (- 1.1%)
Posted by steve @ 12:13 AM EST [Link]
Monday, September 29, 2003 SIX FINALISTS have been announced for the Bastiat prize which will be presented next month.
Read the who's who here.
Posted by izzy @ 11:49 PM EST [Link]
~ NOW THIS IS A MOVIE I'M INTERESTED IN: Out of the thousands of Troy movies being made right now -- okay, there are only two of them -- it's Wolfgang Peterson's Troy starring Brad Pitt.
There's a good picture of Pitt as Achilles over at the Gothamist. View here.
Posted by steve @ 03:42 PM EST [Link]
~ ALAMEDA COUNTY TO STICK WITH E-VOTE: Despite a report that their e-voting system is flawed Alameda County says it's going to stick with it for the October 7 recall election.
The report (PDF), commissioned by the governor of Maryland after researchers at Johns Hopkins and Rice University found that the Diebold software was badly written and full of serious security flaws, confirmed that Diebold's AccuVote-TS system "as implemented in policy, procedure and technology, is at high risk of compromise."
Let's hope no votes for Bush or Gore are recorded....
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 03:29 PM EST [Link]
~ WHAT'S BEING OVERLOOKED: John over at Right Wing News has a marvelous post about a wee little important tidbit in the new furor over who leaked the name of CIA employee Valerie Plame to the press.
However, there is a big flaw in much of what's being written about this story. That flaw is that it is being treated as a given that this story was leaked by a member of the Bush administration. While that may turn out to be the case, there is little at this point beyond a leak from an anonymous source to indicate that is what happened.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 03:13 PM EST [Link]
~ SO IS AL-QAIDA GOING TO TARGET RUSSIA NOW?: Russian President Vladimir Putin today refused to throw his support behind the Kyoto Protocol, arguing that his government needed more time to study the deal.
"The government is closely studying and examining this question," Putin told the opening of a five-day World Climate Change Conference in Moscow. "This is part of a complex of difficult and unclear problems. A decision will be taken when this work is finished."
"Russia actively stands for the quickest possible ratification of the Kyoto Protocol," Putin added, but offered no timetable for the process.
Many of the books I've read recently which purport to explain why the world just gosh darned it doesn't like the U.S. say that the Kyoto Protocol partly fuels that anger. I now fully expect airplanes to begin smashing into Red Square and anti-Russian protests in streets across the world.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 03:00 PM EST [Link]
~ WHERE IS HIS HEAD AT?: Arnold Steinberg is asking a lot of the same questions everyone else is asking. One of those questions is: What the heck is Tom McClintock still doing in the race to be the next governor of California?
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 02:42 PM EST [Link]
~ REBUILDING IRAQ: (Via Instapundit) Although the mainstream media isn't too interested in reporting about the reconstruction of Iraq, the engineering press is probably having the time of its life. Here's a collection of articles over at the Engineering News-Record.
Posted by steve @ 02:24 PM EST [Link]
~ SENATOR MILLER?: (via Dispatches) California Republicans seem to be drinking a lot these days because a couple of them have a bright idea: Draft Dennis Miller to run for statewide office.
The comedian Dennis Miller is being talked about, apparently seriously, as a Republican candidate for a statewide post. Three Republican strategists interviewed in the past week have said they want to draft Miller into politics. One, a prominent Republican operative and Schwarzenegger aide who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that once the recall election is over, he plans to recruit Miller to challenge Barbara Boxer for her U.S. Senate seat next year.
The Schwarzenegger campaign even provided Miller a political audition of sorts this week. The comedian, famous for his raunchy and irreverent rants and his stint on "Saturday Night Live" more than a decade ago, provided the campaign's official post-debate spin in Sacramento Wednesday night. Later the same evening, Miller spoke at a Schwarzenegger rally.
Miller, who is registered to vote as a Republican in Santa Barbara, betrayed no political ambitions in either appearance. He was filming a guest appearance on the Fox show "Boston Public" this week and declined to be interviewed for this story. But that has not kept Republicans from considering the possibility.
I liked Miller even when he was a liberal in the 80s and 90s and I think he's smarter than 95 per cent of the population but I find it difficult to believe that he would win high office. Too many people wouldn't understand his speeches and nobody likes looking stupid. I'd vote for him in a second. Couldn't you just imagine the speeches he'd give as senator?
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 02:19 AM EST [Link]
Sunday, September 28, 2003 CROWNING COLBY COSH PRINCE OF PUNDITS?: Question: If, according to Steve Sailer, Mark Steyn is the "prince of pundits" and Colby Cosh is his natural successor, what title of nobility does that confer upon Cosh? Maybe this is what Paul Weyrich had in mind when he said that conservatives are monarchists at heart.
Posted by antle @ 11:41 PM EST [Link]
~ KAZAN DEAD AT 94: What a difficult week for the artistic world. Director Elia Kazan died today at the age of 94. Though well known for naming names Kazan should be best remembered for being one of the greatest directors of the 20th century. On The Waterfront is still one of the best movies ever made.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 11:30 PM EST [Link]
~ STEYN ON SAID: Mark Steyn quotes a few of his old columns to pen an obituary of the recently deceased Edward Said.
Read on.
Christopher Hitchens, who was a good friend of Said, offers his own thoughts at Slate. You can find it here.
Posted by steve @ 06:11 PM EST [Link]
~ VOTE SPLITTING? WHAT VOTE SPLITTING?: A new CNN/USA Today poll shows that support for Arnold Schwarznegger has grown while racist group member Cruz Bustamante is suffering an erosion.
In a separate vote to choose a replacement for Davis, Schwarzenegger was the choice of 40 percent of respondents.
Democratic Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante was the choice for 25 percent of voters polled, Republican state Sen. Tom McClintock received 18 percent.
The poll showed Green Party candidate Peter Camejo with 5 percent and syndicated columnist and independent candidate Arianna Huffington with 2 percent of the respondents' support.
I still support Brooke Adams.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 06:03 PM EST [Link]
~ ABOUT THOSE NEOCONS: I think there are plenty of valid criticisms of neoconservatives and more than a few items in this piece, originally published in Commentary, that I would criticize myself. But nevertheless, I think Joshua Muravchik does a good job in this article of debunking some of the more hysterical anti-neocon conspiracy theories.
Read the full piece here.
Posted by antle @ 04:01 PM EST [Link]
~ O'CONNOR DEAD AT 78: Not a good week for entertainers. Actor/singer/dancer Donald O'Connor died yesterday at the age of 78. Read on.
Posted by steve @ 02:54 PM EST [Link]
Saturday, September 27, 2003 WHY WORK FOR ACADEMIC WAGES ANYWAY?: David Brooks writes in today's New York Times about the problems conservatives face if they want to join the world of academia. Apparently the university world believes it's alright to have a token on the faculty that they can drag out when they need "diversity" of opinion.
"Honestly, I'm not a bigot, I have a conservative friend!"
Read it here. (Free registration needed)
Posted by steve @ 06:43 PM EST [Link]
~ MEANWHILE IN BERLIN: They protested across Europe as well -- small crowds all of them -- and as expected the usual suspects turned up. There is a truly sickening picture from the Berlin protest up at Little Green Footballs.
See it here.
Posted by steve @ 06:38 PM EST [Link]
~ WHAT IF YOU HAD A PROTEST AND NO ONE SHOWED UP: Well, that wasn't quite the case but a meagre 10 000 people showed up in London to protest continuing British military involvement in Iraq.
In the first major protest in Britain since the war ended in April, demonstrators -- some 10,000, by police estimates -- vented their anger at the invasion and the reasons given for it.
The turnout was a small fraction of the estimated million people in Britain who marched in February to protest moves to war.
The Stop The War Coalition, which was organizing the British event with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the Muslim Association of Britain, had said it expected at least 100,000 people to take part.
Nothing like success to disarm your opponents.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 06:29 PM EST [Link]
~ SELF-PROMO ALERT: I have a piece on Howard Dean's misguided belief that raising taxes - under the guise of deficit reduction - is fiscally responsible running today in Capitalism Magazine.
Regular readers are probably familiar with my thoughts on this subject: Governments that run budget deficits are spending too much, not taxing too little. Higher marginal tax rates harm rather than improve prospects for job creation and economic growth. Out of ten Democrats running for president, it would be nice to find one who understood this basic concept.
Posted by antle @ 06:13 PM EST [Link]
~ THE GENERAL HAS NO CLOTHES: Wesley Clark's entry into the Democratic presidential race certainly had an impact on the field. He has already shot up to the top tier and established himself as a force to be reckoned with. As a decorarated career military officer and retired four-star general, he is in a position to neutralize the Republicans' advantage of being more credible on national-security issues. He is a strong candidate for the Democratic establishment to turn to to stop Howard Dean. He could garner the media appeal of Colin Powell and John McCain. He's everything John Kerry was supposed to be and more.
The only trouble is that this particular emperor has no clothes. His command of the issues is thin - the Democrats might make George W. Bush out to be an empty suit, but compared to Clark so far, he is practically a policy wonk. There is growing evidence that he only recently adopted his supposedly strongly held liberal beliefs. He once praised the Bush foreign policy team he rails against today and was talking up the president, helping Republicans raise money and supporting the Bush tax cuts - all positions he has since entirely reversed - within the last couple of years. He voted Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, and while he now claims to have voted for Al Gore in 2000 (and given his close ties to some people in Bill Clinton's administration, he may have) he has not so very long ago sounded like someone who voted for Bush. His position on whether he would have voted for the Iraq war resolution makes Kerry's justification of his vote sound crystal-clear. He is a hawk turned dove.
Since the Clintons have their fingers all over Clark's candidacy, there is already speculation that he is only running as a placeholder for Hillary. Or perhaps he has just decided to recast himself as a liberal Democrat because he sees a window of opportunity to claim the presidency for himself. But the signs of a manufactured candidacy are there. The question remains whether this is something the Democratic base will accept, or whether news stories like these will give them pause.
Posted by antle @ 03:20 PM EST [Link]
~ YES, BUT EVERY DICTATOR DEFENDS THEIR ACTIONS: Zimbabwe's president, Robert Mugabe, today defended seizing land from white land owners saying that it was the solution to the country's economic crisis. Apparently Mr. Mugabe didn't notice that the crisis didn't start until he started seizing land.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 03:19 AM EST [Link]
Friday, September 26, 2003 PLIMPTON AND PALMER DEAD: Writer George Plimpton died last night at the age of 76. Amongst his greatest achievements was serving as a mentor for Jack Kerouac and founding The Paris Review. He will be missed. Read on.
Fans of the 1980s will be saddened to learn that Robert Palmer died today of a heart attack at the age of 54. Always well dressed and his Addicted to Love video will go down in history. Read on.
Posted by steve @ 04:15 PM EST [Link]
~ BODY COUNT OBSSESSION
It seems that every article I read about a soldier being killed in Iraq has to have the body count total. An AP story this morning had the requisite total -- "The 86th servicememer to be killed in Iraq since May 1, the day President Bush declared the end of hostilities". This obssession with body count is reminiscent of Viet Nam, when every nightly news program reported the number of enemy killed each day, accompanied with the number of Americans killed. Back then, the Pentagon put out the numbers to show how well we were doing.
To put some perspective on the numbers (without trivializing the loss of our servicemembers), I looked up the homicide numbers published on the Department of Justice website. Here's what I found:
2001, Washington DC, 232 murders -- an average of 98 in a 5 month period
2000, Los Angeles, CA, 550 murders -- an average of 229 in a 5 month period
2000, Chicago, IL, 631 murders -- an average of 262 in a 5 month period
2000, New YorK City, 673 murders -- an average of 280 in a 5 month period.
Assuming the same homicide rate over the last 5 months, more people have been murdered in each of these cities than soldiers have been killed in Iraq since the President declared an "end to hostilities" in Iraq .Military people understand the potential for death when they serve in hostile environments. It goes with the job. Murder victims are, for the most part, innocent victims who have no expectation of death.
I don't hear the same level of outrage or concern for murder victims coming from the press or the critics of the President's Iraq policy. Could it be because a significant number of high murder rate cities have Democrat or liberal Mayors? Or maybe it's just that the President's opponents are just playing political games.
cb
Posted by clbloomer @ 02:10 PM EST [Link]
~ ASK THE QUESTIONS!: (via Instapundit) I and a occasional reader of this blog have fought a little running gun battle over two topics, including the role the media is playing in Iraq. We both agree that the media is not doing a particularly good job. Paul over at Along the Tracks agrees and has a series of questions he is demanding the media asks.
Read them all here.
Blog God Reynolds also has a posting about criticism the media is receiving from all quarters, not just those evil partisans. Lisa will be pleased.
Posted by steve @ 01:27 PM EST [Link]
~ MOVIE NIGHT AT FORT SINATRA: I have two books to review and another to finish before reviewing it but I just couldn't get the brain working today so I decided to treat myself to two movies my brother-in-law kindly loaned me on Sunday.
The first was The Others (2001) starring the ever gorgeous Nicole Kidman. A lot of people were down on this movie because they said it moved too slowly and was too long but I have to say in honesty I didn't notice the time. Not as creepy as I thought it would be but I was spooked in a couple of parts.
SPOILER ALERT!!!
I can see why people compared this to The Sixth Sense except I don't think The Others was executed as well. Both had their requisite surprise endings but after you watched TSS you could slap yourself on the forehead and say, "Darn it, all those clues that Bruce Willis was a ghost!". With TO, the best you could say was, "Hey, that bit with her husband seemed a little odd." Still, the surprise ending was a surprise to me. Could be that I'm a damned idiot.
SPOILER ALERT OVER
That said, that scene with the old woman that says, "Are you mad? I am your daughter" was creepy as all heck.
The second movie was Ocean's 11 (2001). People fall into one of three camps with this movie:
1) How dare they remake a classic Rat Pack movie.
2) The original sucked and needed to be remade.
3) It's a movie, lighten up.I was a member of the first camp until I watched it and am now in the third camp. I thought it was a fun movie and Brad Pitt's clothes were absolutely stunning (how metrosexual of me). Good script, great cast (though Don Cheadle was criminally under used), great acting (Pitt and Elliot Gould were quite good) and it all looked good. (Editor - that's a lot of goods and greats, what were you watching? Lawrence of Arabia?) As the DVD commentary put it, the movie made Las Vegas looked like what we dream it to be, not what it really is.
Saul: I have a question, say we get into the cage, and through the security doors there and down the elevator we can't move, and passed the guards with the guns, and into the vault we can't open...
Rusty: Without being seen by the cameras
Danny: Oh Yeah, sorry, I forgot to mention that
Saul: ...Yeah well say we do all that.. uh.. we're just supposed to walk out of there with $150,000,000 in cash on us, without getting stopped?
Danny: Yeah
Saul: Oh, ok.
I still love the original but I have to give the new one its due. It was light fun and I liked it. Huge fans of the movie will be happy to note that Ocean's 12 will begin filming in February 2004. Oddly enough Andy Garcia is in the sequel....
Posted by steve @ 03:01 AM EST [Link]
~ ESR'S CONNECTION TO THE SMU & UT-AUSTIN BAKE SALES: Turns out we were two degrees of separation away from the "minority" bake sales held this week at two schools. Brendan Steinhauser, Executive Director of the Young Conservatives of Texas UT-Austin Chapter, was involved in one of the sales and had a piece of his published in ESR last year on Noam Chomsky.
At any rate, Brendan has sent this email urging conservatives across the U.S. to engage in their own bake sales.
By now I am sure you read in the Washington Times or watched CNN or ABC about the affirmative action bake sales my student group was involved in at SMU and UT-Austin. I am writing to ask for your support in our expose of liberal hypocrisy. We would like to encourage all colleges across the US to hold similar bake sales this week. Any help you could provide us in getting the word out would be fantastic. Thanks for your consideration in this matter. I hope to hear back from you soon.
Sincerely,
Brendan Steinhauser
Young Conservatives of Texas UT-Austin Chapter
Executive Director
Put the walk in your talk conservative students of America.
Posted by steve @ 12:26 AM EST [Link]
Thursday, September 25, 2003 PITY THEY DIDN'T SOLVE PROBLEMS THIS QUICKLY ALL THE TIME: The House of Representatives voted this morning to give the FTC the power to operate a Do Not Call List and the Senate is expected to follow with its own approval right away. George W. Bush could be signing a bill today.
I guess 50 million potential votes does carry some juice.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 02:14 PM EST [Link]
~ SAID DEAD AT 67: I didn't much like him but I didn't much hate him either. Columbia University professor Edward Said died last night at the age of 67 due to leukemia.
Said, of course, was a noted promoter of the Palestinian cause. While I didn't much care for his politics, I will openly state that he was a very intelligent man, one who it would have been quite entertaining to get into a debate with over dinner on any topic. My condolences to his family.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 01:57 PM EST [Link]
~ THE RETURN OF THE SOVIET UNION?: I was completely unaware of this web site until today! Our friends at the National Center for Public Policy Research launched recently "Center for the Future of Russia", particularly pertinent before a summit that starts tomorrow.
Is Russia turning back into an "evil empire"? There are some uncomfortable signs that it may be...
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 01:36 PM EST [Link]
~ SELF-PROMO ALERT: I have a piece in today's Kitchener-Waterloo Record about the effects the three party's economic plans will have on the province's deficit and debt. Short answer: Everyone is likely going to increase the deficit. It's not available online unless you pay so click on "More" to read it. If you live in Kitchener, please buy the paper! [more]
Posted by steve @ 01:30 PM EST [Link]
~ McCLINTOCK FOR GOV. Ok, so I don't live in Californiaaaa, as Arnie S. pronounces it.
But I watched about 50 minutes of yesterday's debate, and the pandering to illegal aliens, among other issues, was a disgrace. Four out of the five thought it was just peachy to require law-abiding, tax-paying, middle-class Californians to pay for the health care of the illegals' children. They all thought that "undocumented workers" should have a license to drive. Mi casa, su casa, was the mantra.
Only Tom forcefully reminded this sorry group (And Ms. Huffington, you are, my dear, the Queen of the Cheap Shots) that they are rewarding lawbreakers with perks.
I say, give the real adult a chance! Support McClintock.
Posted by izzy @ 01:10 PM EST [Link]
~ BAKE SALE A HOSTILE ENVIRONMENT
When race is used as a qualifier for college admissions, it's affirmative action. When race is used as a qualifier for the price one pays for cookies, it's a hostile environment. At least, that's the way Tim Moore, director of the SMU student center, sees it.
"Conservatives' Bake Sale Too Hot for Some Students to Handle
(CNSNews.com) - A demonstration against affirmative action hit a raw nerve at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, on Wednesday. The protest took the form of a bake sale. Young Conservatives of Texas sold cookies at different prices, based on the buyer's race and gender. Whereas white males had to pay a dollar for a cookie, white women paid 75 cents, Hispanics paid 50 cents, and blacks paid 25 cents for the same type of cookie. Offended minority students complained; shouting matches erupted; and the college stopped the bake sale less than an hour after it started because of the disturbance it was causing. "This was not an issue about free speech," Tim Moore, director of the SMU student center, told The Dallas Morning News. "It was really an issue where we had a hostile environment being created." The newspaper quoted David Rushing, chairman of SMU's Young Conservatives chapter, as saying that his group was simply copying what's been done at college campuses around the country. He said the bake sale represented all that's wrong with affirmative action."
"Offended minorities complained"?? What were they offended about?
cb
Posted by clbloomer @ 10:35 AM EST [Link]
Wednesday, September 24, 2003 READING AHNULD'S LIPS ON TAXES: Ramesh Ponnuru has a great piece on Arnold Schwarzenegger and the no-tax-increase pledge in NRO. It is an oversimplification to say that the division between conservatives over Schwarzenegger versus McClintock is purely about social issues like abortion, although this is undoubtedly a component. But a major source of conservatives' trepidation is whether Arnold is a solid fiscal conservative. His refusal to unequivocally rule out tax increases is an example of why this is being questioned.
Does a symoblic pledge matter? It does when you consider that even Republicans with anti-tax records who have refused to sign it have a history of raising taxes.
Posted by antle @ 10:54 PM EST [Link]
~ HERE'S ONE GENERAL WHO IS NOT FOR WESLEY CLARK: Former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Hugh Shelton was asked what he thought of Wesley Clark's candidacy at a forum. He replied, "I've known Wes for a long time. I will tell you the reason he came out of Europe early had to do with integrity and character issues, things that are very near and dear to my heart. I'm not going to say whether I'm a Republican or a Democrat. I'll just say Wes won't get my vote."
These are strong words and ought to provide a cautionary tale to those who believe Clark is some kind of political messiah.
Read the full story about Shelton's public appearance here.
Posted by antle @ 10:24 PM EST [Link]
~ I AM THE LORD OF DREAMS: I used to be quite a comic book geek when I was a young man. One of the masterpieces that proved comic books could be literature -- outside of Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns -- was Neil Gaiman's Sandman series.
Good news! The Sandman is back after a seven year hiatus. A new volume was published last week and the early buzz is that it's pretty good.
If you are unfamiliar with the series, it lasted 75 issues and told the stories of a group of entities called The Endless -- made up of Morpheus (aka The Sandman aka Dream), Death, Destiny, Destruction, Desire, Despair and Delirium. Morpheus was often the lead character but in later years Gaiman made increased use of the others -- especially Death who was portrayed as a teenaged girl (also used in a fantastic three issue stand alone series during the late 1990s).
My favourite story arc was when Satan decided to cause problems for Heaven (which was being run by the Heavenly Host after God disappeared years before) by renouncing his rulership of Hell and opening its gates to release all the condemned souls. He had his wings cut off and disappeared somewhere on Earth. Heaven, in response, sends two angels to run Hell and fitting with the 90s they promptly decide on a new mission for Hell: instead of punishment, they decide to try and rehabilitate the evil. Of course, the decision was essentially made for them because once they entered Hell they could no longer ever again be in the presence of God or Heaven because they had been tainted. Revolving around all of this was the machinations of The Endless -- called that because they were eternals -- and all the other deities of Earth.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 08:14 PM EST [Link]
~ BECAUSE A PHILLY CHEESESTEAK SANDWICH TASTES BETTER THAN A FISHSTICK SANDWICH: Researchers believe that Stone Age cats in coastal Britain transitioned quickly from a seafood diet to a plant and animal diet very quickly.
Scientists had not known how fast domesticated plants and animals caught on with the ancient Britons, with some suggesting it took centuries. The new work indicates the switchover from seafood happened very fast, in less than 100 years and maybe within a generation or two, said lead study author Michael P. Richards.
"I must admit I was very surprised," said Richards, of the University of Bradford in England. The work echoes similar findings of smaller studies from Denmark, northern France and Portugal, suggesting the rapid switchover took place all over the European coastline at the time, Richards said.
The new study, which involved chemical analysis of ancient human bones, appears in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature. Richards said it's not clear why coastal people turned away so abruptly from successful fishing and gathering of shellfish, turning instead to crops like wheat and barley and domestic animals like cattle, pigs and sheep.
It's hard to play cricket and rugby on a fish diet for one thing...I wonder if ancient Britons boiled their fish like they boil steak today.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 08:02 PM EST [Link]
~ EVEN THE HARDEST CORE LIBERTARIAN PROBABLY LIKED THE IDEA: A federal court today put the "Do Not Call" list on hold, ruling that the FTC did not have the authority to set up and operate the list.
Judge Lee West ruled that the Federal Trade Commission cannot enforce the do-not-call registry. The FTC has signed up some 50 million phone numbers for the list, which was due to become effective Oct. 1.
In a statement Wednesday, the DMA acknowledged that millions of American do not want to receive telephone marketing calls. The group said it supports the idea of a list for consumers to express their preference not to be solicited by telephone, and pointed out that for years it has offered its own no-call system for consumers.
It's a half truth but I suppose just true enough. At any rate, this is why I own a cell phone and do not use a landline any more. In the two and a half years I've only used a mobile phone, I've received two phone calls from people I didn't know and both were wrong numbers.
I have to admit that I rather like the ruling in the sense that it confirms corporations do have rights. Unfortunately they seem to be narrowly defined. Telephone marketing calls are corporate speech, but courts have ruled that corporate speech isn't as protected as "regular" speech...and telemarketing calls are alright but cigarette ads aren't. What about telemarketers pitching cigarettes?
That said, I'm still curious about the logic: No one forces me to view cigarette ads, I can turn my head. Telemarketers, however, rely on my spending money to acquire a telephone and pay for service so that they can pitch me their exciting vinyl siding deals. My apologies but your right to free speech ends at the beginning of my driveway.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 03:38 PM EST [Link]
~ BACKPACKING IRAQ: (Via reader Cody E) Don't feel like backpacking Europe but still want to go on the road? A 24-year old student says he decided on Iraq and he has the pictures to prove it. See it all here.
Posted by steve @ 02:37 PM EST [Link]
Tuesday, September 23, 2003 IRAQIS WHO HATE AL JAZEERA: I saw this earlier in the day and forgot to blog it. Iraq's governing council has temporarily suspended al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya after they were accused of inciting violence against coalition troops and sectarian violence.
"They are being suspended for inciting sectarian violence and attacks on governing council officials," the spokesman said. "They have also shown videos of terrorists promising attacks on coalition forces."
I wonder if the ACLU will get involved...
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 09:57 PM EST [Link]
~ DUBYA'S SPEECH: Only just now got to watch George W. Bush's speech to the UN that he delivered this morning -- I was busy working on other projects today -- and I have to say, despite what all the whiners at the UN and their fellow travellers in the punditocracy say, he did a great job at laying out his case.
Our international coalition in Iraq is meeting it responsibilities. We are conducting precision raids against terrorists and holdouts of the former regime. These killers are at war with the Iraqi people. They have made Iraq the central front in the war on terror, and they will be defeated. Our coalition has made sure that Iraq's former dictator will never again use weapons of mass destruction. We are interviewing Iraqi citizens and analyzing records of the old regime to reveal the full extent of its weapons programs and its long campaign of deception. We're training Iraqi police and border guards and a new army, so the Iraqi people can assume full responsibility for their own security.
And at the same time, our coalition is helping to improve the daily lives of the Iraqi people. The old regime built palaces while letting schools decay, so we are rebuilding more than a thousand schools. The old regime starved hospitals of resources, so we have helped to supply and reopen hospitals across Iraq. The old regime built up armies and weapons, while allowing the nation's infrastructure to crumble, so we are rehabilitating power plants, water and sanitation facilities, bridges and airports. I proposed to Congress that the United States provide additional funding for our work in Iraq, the greatest financial commitment of its kind since the Marshall Plan. Having helped to liberate Iraq, we will honor our pledges to Iraq, and by helping the Iraqi people build a stable and peaceful country, we will make our own countries more secure.
The primary goal of our coalition in Iraq is self-government for the people of Iraq, reached by orderly and democratic process. This process must unfold according to the needs of Iraqis, neither hurried, nor delayed by the wishes of other parties. And the United Nations can contribute greatly to the cause of Iraq self-government. America is working with friends and allies on a new Security Council resolution, which will expand the U.N.'s role in Iraq. As in the aftermath of other conflicts, the United Nations should assist in developing a constitution, in training civil servants, and conducting free and fair elections.
Iraq now has a Governing Council, the first truly representative institution in that country. Iraq's new leaders are showing the openness and tolerance that democracy requires, and they're also showing courage. Yet every young democracy needs the help of friends. Now the nation of Iraq needs and deserves our aid, and all nations of goodwill should step forward and provide that support.
The success of a free Iraq will be watched and noted throughout the region. Millions will see that freedom, equality, and material progress are possible at the heart of the Middle East. Leaders in the region will face the clearest evidence that free institutions and open societies are the only path to long-term national success and dignity. And a transformed Middle East would benefit the entire world, by undermining the ideologies that export violence to other lands.
Iraq as a dictatorship had great power to destabilize the Middle East; Iraq as a democracy will have great power to inspire the Middle East. The advance of democratic institutions in Iraq is setting an example that others, including the Palestinian people, would be wise to follow. The Palestinian cause is betrayed by leaders who cling to power by feeding old hatreds and destroying the good work of others. The Palestinian people deserve their own state, and they will gain that state by embracing new leaders committed to reform, to fighting terror, and to building peace. All parties in the Middle East must meet their responsibilities and carry out the commitments they made at Aqaba. Israel must work to create the conditions that will allow a peaceful Palestinian state to emerge. And Arab nations must cut off funding and other support for terrorist organizations. America will work with every nation in the region that acts boldly for the sake of peace.
I don't care much for his trying to bring the UN into Iraq but you do what you have to in politics I guess. What really impressed me was later in the speech when he discussed slavery, something that the UN has pretty well ignored in favor of passing resolutions attacking Israel.
Read (or watch) it here.
Posted by steve @ 09:44 PM EST [Link]
~ ANOTHER SPY AT GUANTANAMO: Pentagon officials announced today that an Air Force enlisted man who served as a translator at Guantanamo Bay has been charged with espionage and aiding the enemy.
Officials said Senior Airman Ahmad al Halabi was arrested July 23 because he allegedly had classified information about suspected al Qaeda detainees and facilities at the Guantanamo Bay base on his laptop computer.
He is being held at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
Al Halabi was charged with 11 counts of failing to obey a lawful general order or regulation, three counts of aiding the enemy, four counts of espionage, nine counts of making a false statement and five counts that include violations of the Federal Espionage Act.
He is also being charged with a single count of bank fraud.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 07:21 PM EST [Link]
~ WHAT GREG EASTERBROOK LEARNED THIS WEEKEND: Don't run the ball after throwing an incompletion on first down. That and other insights -- including a good Denver Broncos cheerleader picture -- in this week's Tuesday Morning Quarterback.
Posted by steve @ 02:49 PM EST [Link]
~ WELL, I NEVER CONSIDERED WHAT THEY DID MUSIC ANYWAY...: According to the Talon News, the Dixie Chicks no longer want to be considered a country music band after the backlash they received over critical remarks about George W. Bush.
I have one bone to pick with the story, which describes them as "once-popular country music superstars." The band did have one of the more successful tours this year despite not winning anything at the Country Music Awards. That and the fact that they sold several million copies of their album still makes them popular.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 02:29 PM EST [Link]
~ I SUPPOSE THIS IS GOOD NEWS: A federal panel ruled today that California's recall election can go ahead on October 7, dealing a blow to the ACLU which is really only concerned about voters rights and not maintaining a Democrat in power. Really.
The ACLU has the option to file an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court. Any emergency appeal filed with the U.S. Supreme Court would go first to Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the justice who has jurisdiction over appeals from the 9th Circuit.
O'Connor could decide to issue a stay to either postpone the election, or allow it to proceed, depending on what the lower court rules or refer the matter to the full Court. Then all nine justices could either respond to the emergency appeal, or decide to do nothing. That would mean the appeals court ruling would stand.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 12:26 PM EST [Link]
~ THE ROLE THE MEDIA PLAYS: (Via reader Carole Graham) U.S. Rep. Jim Marshall (D-Ga.) penned an interesting piece in the Atlanta Journal Constitution about the role the media is playing with its reporting about Iraq.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 12:08 AM EST [Link]
~ MONDAY NIGHT QUARTERBACK: Monday night's game between Denver and Oakland was entirely meaningless to me because of a poor Sunday afternoon though my father, supplied with some picks I made, was in the running until Denver moved past the 5 point spread I wrote him down for. Monday night games have been my Achilles Heels this season. Last year I generally picked blowouts with double digit spreads and did quite well. This year my conservative spread picking is turning out to be a poor strategy.
Once again who screwed me this weekend? The New York Giants by winning over Washington. How I hate the Giants....I'd also like to thank Green Bay and San Francisco for not doing their jobs. Inside tidbit of knowledge: the last five teams to have records set against them went on to win the next week. I should have remembered that with Cleveland who became the sixth team to join that list after beating the 49ers.
Week 1: 9 of 15 (Thursday night game not counted)
Week 2: 13 of 15
Week 3: 10 of 15Season %: 71.1
Posted by steve @ 12:02 AM EST [Link]
Monday, September 22, 2003 YOU EVER TRY DOWNLOADING AN ENTIRE BOX SET?: A friend of mine tried once. The New York Times has an interesting story about the aftermath of the 261 lawsuits filed against people who were downloading music. Short version: people are still downloading to their heart's content.
If you are a regular at Slashdot, as I am, you'll often read the words, "If I like what I download, I'll buy it." Reading Slashdot you'd think the music industry is selling more CDs than ever because there's a hell of a lot of downloading going on.
A 13-year old plays the same game in the news story:
Soli Shin of Manhattan is not waiting for lawmakers to act. She gave some thought to the ethics of file sharing after hearing of the lawsuits and took her own library of 1,094 songs offline, because she knew they were aimed at people who "share" their music files with others. But she saw no reason to stop getting new music for herself.
"It's really a great convenience," Ms. Shin, 13, said. "If I like what I download maybe I'll buy it."
Of course you will, but for some reason I don't think you own albums that contain all the songs you downloaded which means you have violated the law. I hate when people try and rationalize their behavior with outright lies. People download files because they don't want to pay for an album. I don't care what the reason is for not wanting to pay for it, the fact remains is that they don't want to pay for it. Of course, that lie is better than the idiot rantings of a good number of people on Slashdot who believe that artists make too much money. To each according to their need, from each according to their ability, eh Slashdotters?
That said, the music industry is mind-numbingly stupid. It's clear that a significant portion of music listeners want to download music -- Apple's online store clearly proves that -- and most of them would rather pay to download a high quality track or album rather than spend the time filtering out bogus files, poor rips and incomplete tracks on networks like Kazaa. The record companies are in essence attempting to maintain an analog system in a digital world and they are failing badly.
If that wasn't bad enough, they are willfully mistreating their customers. As Wired pointed out this month, CDs were introduced in the early 1980s with a sale price of about $13 (adjusted for today's dollars). At the time they told customers that CDs were priced higher than vinyl records because the pressing plants needed to be paid for. As soon as they were, the industry promised, CD prices would be competively priced with other formats. Since then, however, CD prices have jumped 16 per cent, making them far more expensive then vinyl or audio tapes despite the fact that CDs cost much less to create.
At the same time, the number of new releases every year has dropped meaning that there is less choice. Why is the record industry surprised that CD sales are falling dramatically? You've geared your entire industry towards meeting the needs of 16 year old girls and effectively told everyone over the age of 25 to go to hell -- this despite the fact that some of the biggest selling and touring acts last year were David Bowie, Bruce Springsteen and Neil Young. Here's a news flash for the record industry: No matter how much a teenager spends of his parents' money on music, I can spend much much more. I spend more in a month then most teenagers earn in a year. You don't want my money? Fine, I know the shareholders over at Hugo Boss AG and The Armani Group appreciate the business I send their way. And another thing, as they rightly state on Slashdot, no industry that sues its customers has ever succeeded in the long run.
Read the NYT story here. (Free registration required)
Posted by steve @ 02:07 PM EST [Link]
~ PRETTY FUNNY: Andrew Sullivan points out that Wesley Clark has taken a bold stand.
Posted by antle @ 01:58 PM EST [Link]
~ I'LL GO ON THE RECORD WITH THIS ONE: I FIND HER MORE ATTRACTIVE THEN ANNE COULTER: But I wouldn't turn down a dinner date with either of them. David Frum interviews Laura Ingraham, author of Shut Up and Sing: How Elites From Hollywood, Politics, and the UN Are Subverting America.
By coincidence, a copy of the book arrived in my mailbox this morning.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 01:29 PM EST [Link]
~ AND I MIGHT HAVE BEEN UNCIVIL ABOUT KENNEDY'S PAST AS WELL: But I'm not apologizing. George W. Bush yesterday described Ted Kennedy's bizarre rantings about Iraq as "uncivil".
In an exclusive Oval Office interview with Fox News' Brit Hume, Bush said that while he respected Kennedy, the senator "should not have said we were trying to bribe foreign nations."
"I don't mind people trying to pick apart my policies, and that's fine and that's fair game," Bush said in the interview that will air Monday night. "But, you know, I don't think we're serving our nation well by allowing the discourse to become so uncivil that people say -- use words that they shouldn't be using."
I have to give credit to Dubya for being classy about it. If I were president I'd be like Teddy Roosevelt (without the progressive politics of course). Kennedy today would be nursing a black eye.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 01:22 PM EST [Link]
~ HOW CAN A NATION WITH MEN LIKE THIS EVER FAIL?: I missed this story when it appeared on Friday but James Lileks bringing it up tonight made me seek it out. Seems the soldiers guarding the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery were given permission to abandon their posts as Hurricane Isabel slammed into them. Their response?
"They told us that. But that's not what's going to happen."
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 02:15 AM EST [Link]
~ BLOODY HELL...ESR DIDN'T MAKE THE LIST: John Hawkins reveals a poll he conducted this week of the favourite political web sites of right-of-center bloggers. Yours truly participated and you can see the results here.
Posted by steve @ 12:36 AM EST [Link]
Sunday, September 21, 2003 SELF-PROMO ALERT: I almost forgot! The Philadelphia Inquirer ran a piece today by me arguing that former NYSE chairman and CEO Richard Grasso deserved as $139 million compensation package. You can find the article here.
Posted by steve @ 08:49 PM EST [Link]
~ NEW YORK FASHION WEEK MAKES STEVE HAPPY: From Daily Fashion Report comes this news:
In a nutshell, this is my quick impression of the spring/summer 2004 collections shown during New York Fashion Week: Beige has replaced black….the pleated skirt has replaced the pencil…the 60’s mod influence that practically defined fall has gone back in time about 40 years and it’s now very much a 20’s thing…Coco Chanel lives and breathes in New York (and everywhere else for that matter)…the mini has been thankfully replaced by the at the knee length…aggressive, hard edged chic is gone and in it’s place there is an elegant, and pretty aesthetic….7th avenue can be dubbed ‘Easy Street’ for spring and summer because of all the relaxed, easy clothing….fashion may or not be ‘cool’ but looking kind of preppy and classic certainly is. And if you want to instantly get a new wardrobe, go to your local notion shop and invest in a variety of ribbons to tie in a bow at the waist or higher (or anywhere at all for that matter).
I'm firmly addicted to black but I am totally happy to know that things like A-line skirts are coming back for women. I've always loved 1920s inspired clothing and I've had absolutely enough of the "aggressive, hard edged chic" that has defined women's clothing for the past couple of years. Women tend to think they look sexier with mini-skirts...I happen to think they look totally hot with a knee length skirt. A preppy girl can't be beat.
Now if I can only convince women not to wear jeans when they go out on a weekend night. To the pretty blond at 100 Georges last night: The black sweater was totally gear but the jeans made you look like you were a second year psychology major. Think how amazing you would have been in a pleated A-line skirt that night...
Posted by steve @ 08:27 PM EST [Link]
~ THAT WASN'T IN THE KORAN: "A Muslim chaplain in the U.S. Army has been arrested and is being investigated on suspicion of espionage and possibly treason, officials familiar with the case told CNN.
"Army Capt. James Yee was taken into custody by U.S. military authorities September 10 at the naval air station in Jacksonville, Florida, while in possession of classified documents 'that a chaplain shouldn't have,' an official told CNN, speaking on the condition of anonymity."
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 04:56 AM EST [Link]
Saturday, September 20, 2003 YOU OF ALL PEOPLE WANT A "STRAIGHT ANSWER": "Under fire from Republicans on Friday, Sen. Edward Kennedy defended his harsh criticism of President Bush's policy on Iraq, in which he charged that the threat from Saddam Hussein was exaggerated by the administration for political purposes."
Yeah, when we know what happened with Mary Joe Kopechne we'll let you know about Iraq Ted.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 03:19 AM EST [Link]
Friday, September 19, 2003 SALAM PAX SPEAKS: (Via Peeve Farm) You may not know who he is but you can hear Salam Pax's voice. NPR did an interview with him yesterday and it's now online.
To listen to Ian Kurtz (who tracked Salam down) of The Guardian and Salam, just go here. Streaming audio in Real Player and Windows Media 9 formats.
Posted by steve @ 03:30 PM EST [Link]
~ NEW VIRUS: Ah the joy of having your email address on several thousand web pages. There's a new virus, of which I was emailed plenty of copies in case anyone needs one, making the rounds. It's called W32.Swen.A@mm or Worm Swen.A.
Read more about it, including how to remove it, here.
Posted by steve @ 02:28 PM EST [Link]
~ I WASN'T IN FAVOUR OF GIULIANI'S SMOKING RESTRICTIONS BUT...: They were a damned sight better than what Mommy in Chief Michael Bloomberg ordered. Rudy Giuliani, a long time cigar smoker, agrees.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 01:43 AM EST [Link]
~ PICTURE OF THE WEEK: An amazing picture of Hurricane Isabel taken from ship.
Find it here.
Posted by steve @ 01:22 AM EST [Link]
Thursday, September 18, 2003 WASN'T THAT OBVIOUS?: George W. Bush today stated that Yasser Arafat has failed as a leader.
"Hopefully, at some point in time, a leadership of the Palestinian leadership will emerge which will then commit itself 100 per cent to fighting off terror," said Dubya.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 04:17 PM EST [Link]
~ MAYBE BUSH ISN'T THAT VULNERABLE: I missed this yesterday so I post it today. A new poll shows that George W. Bush leads every single Democratic candidate and even some Democrats who aren't even in the race.
Bush was favored 52-41 percent over Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, 51-39 percent over Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri and 53-38 percent over former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean and Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts.
The president also easily bested two Democrats not in the race -- former Vice President Al Gore, Bush's opponent in 2000, and New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. Bush was favored 53-41 percent over Gore, and 52-42 percent over the former first lady.
The story goes on to say that the news wasn't all positive for Dubya because a majority of Americans believe the U.S. economy is a bigger issue for them then the war in Iraq. That's actually a positive development since no one is predicting that the economy is going to remain slow into next year. If the Democrats want to run on the economy, they may get slaughtered regardless.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 03:30 PM EST [Link]
~ THEY LIED: James Lileks takes on an editorial in the Minneapolis Star Tribune that essentially states Saddam Hussein should have been left in power. I won't ruin it by quoting any of the delicious parts so go read it for yourself.
Posted by steve @ 03:03 PM EST [Link]
~ MARK STEYN AND THE NATIONAL POST: Mark Steyn has finally publicly addressed his split with the National Post on his web site. Not surprisingly, his leaving was partly ideological, part quality control.
And, underneath the big issues, the ongoing Paul Martinization of the paper proceeds apace, to the point where cringe-making attempts to ingratiate pop up all over the place. A couple of weeks back, the editorial on mandatory retirement included this aside on Mr Martin: “While we would have preferred he run a livelier leadership campaign, his failure to do so has nothing to do with his age.”
So the Post has set its course. I don’t mind being the token right-wing madman at The Irish Times, anymore than I would at The Guardian or The Toronto Star. But, by staying with the Post as it relocates to the great wobbling blancmange of Canadian conventional wisdom, all I’d be doing is providing a bit of cover for the abandonment of its identity. Helping to make a Martinized Post profitable would outdo any good I'd accomplish in the column. My friend and editor Natasha Hassan still runs a better comment page than the Globe, but the news pages before it and the leader page opposite it are wimpier by the week. I don’t want to lend my name to the conversion of the Black/Whyte Post into a paper that thinks we need the UN running Iraq and aspires to the military might of Norway.
I think he might have used "Paul Martinization" first in the pages of ESR...
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 02:45 PM EST [Link]
~ MORE PRAISE FOR "THE PASSION": A Vatican cardinal today stepped up to the plate and offered praise for Mel Gibson's "The Passion."
"I would gladly trade some of the homilies that I have given about the passion of Christ for even a few of the scenes of his film," said Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos, head of the Vatican department in charge of priests.
Castrillon Hoyos, who saw an unfinished version of the film, told Catholic news agency Aciprensa that he would "like all our Catholic priests throughout the world to see it."
I think everyone outside of me has seen an "unfinished version" of the film. Mel, get John Travolta to fly you up to Sudbury and show me the movie.
Read on.
You can also visit this page which has trailers.
Posted by steve @ 02:14 PM EST [Link]
~ BET ON CLARK: Peter Augustine Lawler argues today that the smart money is on Wesley Clark to capture the Democratic nomination.
Some facts that are probably facts: All the Democratic candidates except Dean and Clark are stillborn. They will be wiped off the map by crushing defeats in Iowa and New Hampshire. Dean is the candidate of the most-articulate faction in the party — the upper middle-class, bourgeois-bohemian (bobo) crowd. He appeals to West Wing fantasies and Vietnam antiwar nostalgia, and especially to those on the Left who believe that Clinton demoralized the real (as opposed to the new) Democratic party. He presents himself effectively as an "outsider"; he has the image that perennially suckers primary voters. And he really is an outsider; he would radically reform the Clinton-dominated party establishment. It's hard to see how he wouldn't do very well among the disproportionally bobo (and very white) primary electorates of Iowa and New Hampshire.
That doesn't mean that Dean can get nominated, much less elected. Bobo candidates (such as McGovern or even Dukakis) don't fare well in general elections. They exaggerate the nation's cultural divisions, and so they rally regular guys with no strong partisan affiliations to the Republicans. George W. Bush, one of the most-regular (including religious) guys ever to the president, would have a strong personal advantage over the smug and snotty Dean. More than that, African-American voters don't like bobos; Clinton — who speaks with the cadence of a populist black preacher — won because he understood that so well. Ethnic Catholic northern, and white Protestant southern voters — still a large part of the party's electorate — also are repulsed by the intellectual elitism — including the lack of patriotism — of what was until recently called "yuppie scum."
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 02:04 PM EST [Link]
~ THE GAY CHARTER OF RIGHTS: I was going to discuss Canada's Parliament passing a bill yesterday that extended hate-crimes protection to gays and lesbians but frankly I've just stopped caring anymore. If American conservatives are tired of a "living" constitution then they should come up here...ours doesn't mean a thing at all.
That's the point I've made repeatedly over the past number of years, that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms means nothing except what someone wants it to mean, kind of like Humpty Dumpty in The Looking Glass, except in this case the quote would be "The Charter means what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less."
Colby Cosh makes that point in his blog entry on Bill C-250.
I just find it funny, you know--the Liberals are constantly beating us over the head with their precious Charter of Rights and Freedoms, yet they seem perpetually unclear as to what's actually in the document. In the donkey-baseball debate, they had the temerity to cite Charter values on behalf of gay equality rights, which aren't mentioned in the Charter: they were left out on purpose, and that choice was explicitly defended by the justice minister of the time (a certain Mr. J.J.J. Chretien of Shawinigan).
Ah Colby, people like us are a vestige of the past...for us contracts between a government and its people is an ironclad statement. For others it's simply a starting point to do anything they want.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 02:15 AM EST [Link]
Wednesday, September 17, 2003 HE'S TALKING TO THE PEOPLE OF IRAQ MORE NOW THAN WHEN HE WAS LEADER: Yet another audiotape of Saddam Hussein has surfaced, this time telling the U.S. to get out of Iraq before bad stuff happens.
"We call on you to withdraw your troops as quickly as possible and without any conditions, because there is no reason for more losses that will be catastrophic for America if American officials, primarily you, persisted in the continuation of their aggression and aggressiveness," the statement said.
This reminds me of this times when someone gets beaten up very badly and then once the victor has left warns of his retribution. Or as a friend of mine used to say, "Blah blah whatever."
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 08:01 PM EST [Link]
~ ERRORS? A LIKELY STORY: Andrew Gilligan admitted today that he "made errors" in his reporting over allegations that the British government "sexed up" its intelligence report on Iraq's weapons program.
But he stood by his argument that there had been misgivings among intelligence officials about a dossier on Iraq's weapons, published by Tony Blair's government in September 2002.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 03:17 PM EST [Link]
~ WHY DO THEY HAVE TO SCREW THINGS UP ALL THE TIME?: Kelly Jane Torrance reports that someone will be remaking Brideshead Revisited and will remove Charles Ryder's conversion to Catholicism from the story, focusing instead on his romance with Julia Flyte.
I'm a huge fan of the novel and the 1981 miniseries so these changes are well and truly going to bother me if they come to pass. Jude Law would make a good Sebastian -- though I think Anthony Andrews was just fine in the role -- but that's not enough to placate me if they go ahead and makes changes. Evelyn Waugh had a clear message in his novel and it included religion. The romance with Julia is one the final straws that breaks the athiest Charles' back which ultimately prompts his conversion, it is not the ends, merely one of the means.
Embarassing admission: I first saw the miniseries during my second year in university and like a lot of people when it first ran, I went upperclass British for a while. I even once wore a pair of British tan pants, white polo shirt, ivory tennis sweater and blue blazer. It's a good look if the name Earl in your world means your station in life, not when you're a slightly preppy sophomore at a small university in northern Ontario. Then again the girls did say I looked school boy cute....
Posted by steve @ 03:06 PM EST [Link]
~ YET ANOTHER BLOG LAUNCHED: But this is a good one. The UK's Adam Smith Institute has launched its own blog promoting the free market. Welcome to the blogosphere!
Visit it here.
Posted by steve @ 02:47 PM EST [Link]
~ THE ARROGANCE IT TAKES TO BE PRESIDENT: Wesley Clark told CNN this morning that he believes he is the best person to keep American secure.
"This is what my expertise, my leadership experience, my whole career has pointed and prepared me for," Clark said in an interview with CNN's "American Morning" on Wednesday.
"I've had a lot of diplomatic experience. I've done a lot of work with security policy. I think I'm the best person to look at the future of this country and keep us safe."
Clark may have an advantage over Bush if he becomes the Democratic nominee...he's been a politician far longer than Bush has. As David Hackworth pointed out in May 1999, Clark served over three decades in the American military but only commanded combat units for about seven years. The rest of the time saw Clark as an "aide, an executive, a student and teacher and a staff weenie."
I know it's fun to slam Hackworth as a self-promoter -- an unfair charge I believe -- but ask yourself this: who would you want beside you when everything went to hell, Hackworth -- a man who is one of the most decorated combat soldiers in U.S. history, or Clark, who was a combat leader in Vietnam for a couple of months? When I hear a general talk about his diplomatic experience I automatically know he wasn't a grunt at any time in his life.
Sure, you could point out that Dwight Eisenhower had never led troops into combat before the Second World War and you'd be right. But Ike, when given the reigns of the military machine in Africa and Europe, did get the job done. Clark's greatest achievement? A muddled air war over Serbia.
I'm not dissing Clark's combat experience in Vietnam...it's a couple of months more than I ever saw of combat, and I honour any veteran regardless of whether it's Clark or Gray Davis, but I'm tired of hearing about his fitness to lead based on his military career.
Posted by steve @ 11:20 AM EST [Link]
~ EVEN LIBERALS DON'T LIKE TAX HIKES!
Seattle has become well-known as a haven for whacko liberal politics over the past few years. So one would not be remiss in expecting the ten-cent tax on expresso coffee drinks to pass, especially when it was "for the children". But no, the selfish Seattle residents have spurned "the children" and "education" in order to save a measly dime on a $2.00 cup of coffee. How heartless!
Here's the story:
"Seattle Voters Say Leave My Latte Alone
(CNSNews.com) - By a 2-to-1 margin, Seattle voters on Tuesday said no to a ten-cent "espresso" tax that was intended to raise money for preschool and daycare programs. Coffee shop owners celebrated the overwhelming vote against the tax. They said they were being unfairly singled out to fund programs the state cut out of its budget. Some consumers saw the ten-cent tax on every cup of coffee containing espresso as the beginning of something bigger. They wondered what commodity would be taxed next. But supporters of the failed tax plan expressed disappointment. They said an extra dime on a $2-dollar-plus cup of espresso or latte would end up doing children a lot of good."
cb
Posted by clbloomer @ 10:30 AM EST [Link]
~ FAVORITE EDITORIAL COLUMNISTS IN THE CONSERVATIVE BLOGOSPHERE: John over at Right Wing News conducts a poll to find out who right-of-center bloggers consider to be the best editorial columnist.
Find out here.
I am shocked, shocked!, that no ESR bloggers were consulted.
Posted by steve @ 03:15 AM EST [Link]
~ REBUILDING IRAQ: Andrew Sullivan has a good post about what it will take to establish peace and a stable society in Iraq.
The best source I've found so far is a Rand comparison between the first two post-war years in Germany and the first post-war year in Iraq. Since the Marshall Plan only kicked in in 1948, this isn't a direct comparison. But from 1946 - 1947, the U.S. spent $266 per capita per year in West Germany (in 2001 dollars). If you assume we will spend the full $20 billion in the next year in Iraq and that Iraq's population is around 24 million, then our current commitment is something over $800 per capita. That strikes me as a real and extraordinary commitment.
Make sure to click the link in Sullivan's blog entry through to the Rand essay.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 01:53 AM EST [Link]
~ REMEMBERING 9/11 IN IRAQ: A little late but this just came into my mail box courtesy of ESR contributor Linda Prussen-Razzano. It's a picture from Iraq commemorating September 11. From the original email by the soldier that sent it to the U.S.
How are you all doing? The proud warriors of Baker Company wanted to do something to pay tribute to our fallen comrades. So since we are part of the only Infantry Battalion left in Iraq the one way that we could think of doing that is by taking a picture of Baker Company saying the way we feel. It would be awesome if you could find a way to share this with our fellow countrymen. I was wondering if there was any way to get this into your papers to let the world know that "WE HAVE NOT FORGOTTEN" and are proud to serve our country.
Semper Fi
1stSgt Dave Jobe 'Baker 8"
Click here (42Kb, pop-up)
Posted by steve @ 01:20 AM EST [Link]
Tuesday, September 16, 2003 UMA THURMAN AND SHE'S ARMED WITH A SWORD...DOES IT GET BETTER?: As some of you may know, I'm a big fan of cheesy martial arts movies. Not that "Kill Bill" is going to be one of them but I can tell, especially given Quentin Tarantino's previous work, that it's going to have its share of cool lines and great action. That and Uma Thurman -- playing The Bride -- is in it. You can have your Cameron Diazes and the like but I'll cast her in a movie any day.
O-Ren Ishi: You didn't think it was gonna be that easy, did you?
The Bride: You know, for a second there, yeah, I kinda did.
Watch the theatrical trailer for the part one of the two part movie here.
[Update - 2:14am, Sept. 17] - Quentin Tarantino explains his movie universes in an interview with Sight and Sound magazine. Interesting quote:
I've always considered when it comes to my universes, that there's two. The Quentin universe, the normal Quentin universe, which to me has all the fun of a movie-movie, but in actual fact is more real than real life. You take all the fun of a genre movie and then you throw real-life smack against the conventions of the genre and have fun out of that. Which I can't say I made up. In his own way, that was Elmore Leonard's process, which I used to read in his books, and I turned it into a movie thing. So that universe has all the fun of a movie-movie, but in some ways is more realistic than you normally get in movies.
That's the world that Reservoir Dogs takes place in, that's the world Pulp Fiction takes place in, that's the world my script for True Romance takes place in. Then I have another universe, that's the movie-movie universe. Kill Bill is the first movie I've directed inside that universe, but my script for Natural Born Killers exists in that world, my script for From Dusk Till Dawn exists in that world. And the best way to most accurately describe the differences between the two universes is when the characters in True Romance and Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, when they go to the movies, these are the movies they see.
Posted by steve @ 05:37 PM EST [Link]
~ CLARK TO RUN: If Al Gore is advising you, I have to wonder how good the advice is. Fox News is reporting that Wesley Clark will indeed announce tomorrow that he will throw his hat into the ring and seek the Democratic nomination.
Sorry Wesley, but you won't be the next Dwight Eisenhower. For one thing, Ike won a war.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 03:18 PM EST [Link]
~ IT'S ALWAYS THE GIANTS: A few choice expletives popped out of my mouth last night during the New York Giants-Dallas Cowboys game. I had the Giants by over 10 points in two pools and of course the Giants dropped the ball -- in Jeremy Shockey's case literally -- and not only didn't cover the spread but they lost. Did Shockey's "homo" remark about Bill Parcells really motivate a horrible Cowboy's team to victory?
Every week the Giants somehow screw me. They win when I pick them to lose, They lose when I pick them to win. They fail to cover the spread. They are playing the role for me that the Chicago Bears did a couple of years ago. I despise the Giants...even my respect for Kerry Collins isn't enough to mitigate what is now outright hatred.
Needless to say, I won no money this week...
At any rate, Gregg Easterbook's latest Tuesday Morning Quarterback is up and he tells us about NFL running backs, the NFL's anti-teenager rule and Miss Slovenia. Read it here.
Posted by steve @ 02:33 PM EST [Link]
~ I'M NOT SURE I BUY THIS: A new study out of England says that the way you sleep reflects your personality.
Professor Chris Idzikowski, director of the Sleep Assessment and Advisory Service and a visiting professor at the University of Surrey in southern England, has identified six common sleep positions and what they mean.
"We are all aware of our body language when we are awake but this is the first time we have been able to see what our subconscious says about us," he said.
Crouched in the fetal position is the most popular sleep pattern and favored by 51 percent of women, according to the results of the study he conducted for a large hotel group.
Fetal sleepers tend to be shy and sensitive while people who assume the soldier position, flat on their back with arms at their sides, are quiet and reserved.
I think this is silly. The only way I don't sleep is on my stomach. I fall asleep in the "soldier position" (sounds kinda kinky!) or on my side with one arm stretched out under a pillow. Does that mean I'm quiet and have a social personality?
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 02:23 PM EST [Link]
~ WHY PEOPLE HATE THE MEDIA: A barbershop has been offering complimentary beverages to its patrons, so reporter decides to go there, ask for a beer and then rat them out for serving alcohol without a liquor license. He thinks this is a good thing. The owner is right - he should install an identification check "for snot-nosed reporters looking to make a mark."
Via Hit & Run. Full story here.
Posted by antle @ 09:15 AM EST [Link]
~ HE'S NO BROOKE ADAMS: But he is serious about illegal immigration. Bill Kahiler interviews Joe Guzzardi over at Ether Zone.
Posted by antle @ 09:03 AM EST [Link]
~ SEE, THE GOVERNMENT CAN'T EVEN GROW GOOD GRASS: Not that I've ever smoked marijuana myself, mind you, but people who have tell me that you feel pretty good on it. What then is the explanation for marijuana grown by the Canadian government that is so bad that its smokers are demanding refunds?
The marijuana, which is being grown under tightly controlled conditions, was originally meant for medical researchers but was released to patients after an Ontario court order said that people who needed it to combat illness should receive it. The problem? The marijuana grown by the government is supposed to contain 10.2 per cent THC but is only about a third of that.
"It's totally unsuitable for human consumption," said Jim Wakeford, 58, an AIDS patient in Gibsons, B.C. "It gave me a slight buzziness for about three to five minutes, and that was it. I got no other effect from it." Barrie Dalley, a 52-year-old Toronto man who uses marijuana to combat the nausea associated with AIDS, said the Health Canada dope actually made him sick to his stomach.
"I threw up," Dalley said Monday. "It made me nauseous because I had to use so much of it. It was so weak in potency that I really threw up."
Both men are returning their 30-gram bags, and Dalley is demanding his money back - $150 plus taxes. Wakeford is returning his unpaid bill for two of the bags with a letter of complaint.
The government should have given the contract to people in Sudbury...I know a number of people in the industry and they seem to satisfy their customers.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 03:59 AM EST [Link]
Monday, September 15, 2003 HOW THE MEDIA BEHAVED IN IRAQ: (via Andrew Sullivan) New York Times reporter John Burns pens an absolutely devastating account of how the media behaved in Iraq before the war started.
Terror, totalitarian states, and their ways are nothing new to me, but I felt from the start that this was in a category by itself, with the possible exception in the present world of North Korea. I felt that that was the central truth that has to be told about this place. It was also the essential truth that was untold by the vast majority of correspondents here. Why? Because they judged that the only way they could keep themselves in play here was to pretend that it was okay.
There were correspondents who thought it appropriate to seek the approbation of the people who governed their lives. This was the ministry of information, and particularly the director of the ministry. By taking him out for long candlelit dinners, plying him with sweet cakes, plying him with mobile phones at $600 each for members of his family, and giving bribes of thousands of dollars. Senior members of the information ministry took hundreds of thousands of dollars of bribes from these television correspondents who then behaved as if they were in Belgium. They never mentioned the function of minders. Never mentioned terror.
In one case, a correspondent actually went to the Internet Center at the Al-Rashid Hotel and printed out copies of his and other people's stories -- mine included -- specifically in order to be able to show the difference between himself and the others. He wanted to show what a good boy he was compared to this enemy of the state. He was with a major American newspaper.
This makes what CNN's Eason Jordan wrote a few months back look like a minor quibble. (Read our blog entries about Jordan here, here, here and here)
Read on
Posted by steve @ 04:59 PM EST [Link]
~ PROVING THE SUPERIORITY OF MEN: At least when it comes to drinking.
In the life-is-not-fair category, new research finds that women not only get drunk on fewer drinks than men but women also suffer from worse hangovers.
A team at the University of Missouri-Columbia developed a new scientific scale for measuring hangover symptoms and severity.
Even accounting for differences in the amount of alcohol consumed by men and women, hangovers hit women harder.
''This finding makes biological sense, because women tend to weigh less and have lower percentages of total body water than men do, so they should achieve higher degrees of intoxication and, presumably, more hangover per unit of alcohol,'' said Wendy Slutske, an associate professor of psychology who led the team.
"Hangover per unit of alcohol"? People are just strip mining the fun out of being alive...
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 02:31 PM EST [Link]
~ LET'S MAKE UP OUR MINDS ALREADY: Israeli Foreign Minister Sylvan Shalom announced today that killing Yasser Arafat is not, in fact, any part of Israeli policy.
Killing Arafat "is not the official policy of the Israeli government," Shalom said. "It was never before, and we don't speak about any killing, we didn't speak about it before, and we don't speak about it today."
Fair enough, but Shalom could have emailed me before I created this week's poll question.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 02:04 PM EST [Link]
~ IT'S NOT THE GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATES WHO ARE STUPID IN CALIFORNIA: It's everyone in that useless state. A federal appeals court ruled today that the fact that six counties were using punch-card balloting was unacceptable -- the same system that got Florida in trouble during the 2000 election.
The ruling from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals follows a hearing last week in which the American Civil Liberties Union sought a postponment of the vote.
The ACLU argued that election officials should have more time to replace antiquated voting machines in several California counties.
If Monday's ruling stands, the recall vote would be moved to March 2004.
I'm almost beginning to hate California as much as I hate Toronto. I wouldn't include Orange County except they made that stupid "The O.C." show so I hate that part of Cali as well.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 01:59 PM EST [Link]
Sunday, September 14, 2003 THE PALESTINIAN TRAGEDY: Charles Krauthammer has a fine column on the Palestinians' tragic tendency to miss opportunities for independence because they would require peaceful coexistence with Israel. Mahmoud Abbas' resignation and his replacement with an Arafat crony represent the latest missed opportunity.
Read the full story in the New York Daily News here.
Posted by antle @ 11:51 PM EST [Link]
~ SUNDAY NIGHT QUARTERBACK: Verily did the football gods smile on me today. Out of 15 games today, yours truly picked 12 right, only tripping up by choosing Atlanta, Tampa Bay and Philadelphia to win. May the football gods truly curse Buccaneer Martin Gramatica for having two field goals and one PAT blocked. Had Gramatica only hit one out of those three yours truly would already be collecting a hideously large sum of money from two separate football pools. I'll have to wait until tomorrow night (and hope that the New York Giants score by over 10 points) to find out if I won.
May the football gods reward Baltimore's Jamal Lewis for his record setting 295 yards rushed today, surpassing Corey Dillon of Cincinnati, who ran for 278 yards in October 2000 against Denver.
In retrospect, picking Philadelphia to win against New England was a mistake...that one I should have gotten right.
Season record:
Week 1: 9 of 15 (Thursday night game not counted)
Week 2: 12 of 15...final score to be determined Monday evening.Posted by steve @ 11:39 PM EST [Link]
~ JUST FOR FUN. I spotted this in cyberspace, but I don't know where on the earth it originates.
Here is the sentence: "Woman without her man is a savage."
Boys can punctuate it like this: "Woman, without her man, is a savage.
Girls can punctuate it like that: "Woman! Without her, man is a savage."
I vote for the latter one.
Posted by izzy @ 11:11 PM EST [Link]
~ STILL NO FRONT-RUNNER: The Washington Times is reporting that if retired Gen. Wesley Clark were to jump into the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, he would start out in fifth place with 9 percent of the vote. According to the Gallup poll that these numbers are based on, he would take his support mainly from the Democrats ahead of him who are currently leading the pack nationally. He would take three points away from John Kerry, two points away from both Richard Gephardt and Howard Dean, and one point away from Joe Lieberman.
But you'll notice that the overall dynamic of the race remains largely unchanged, at least in the short term, if Clark gets in. There would be five candidates (counting Clark) bunched together on top of the field, all running within a few points of each other with no clear national front-runner. Then there would be the other five candidates in the bottom tier languishing in the low single digits. Of course, there is three months for all of this to change, and even if it doesn't change in that span of time, the momentum that comes with early primary and caucus victories is likely to change it. But so far, aside from the media boomlet for Dean, none of the Democrats have been able to gain any traction.
Posted by antle @ 09:18 PM EST [Link]
~ ERRR, I DON'T THINK YOU SHOULD SAY IT'S AN OPTION: The Israeli vice premier said today that killing Yasser Arafat was an option for "removing" him.
"Killing (him) is definitely one of the options," Ehud Olmert, a mainstream member of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's cabinet, told Israel Radio Sunday.
"We are trying to eliminate all the heads of terror, and Arafat is one of the heads of terror," said Olmert, who elaborated on a decision taken Thursday by Israel's security cabinet to "remove" Arafat, calling him an obstacle to peace.
Dude, now you can't set up a "car accident" that would have solved your problems. Seriously though, I think killing Arafat would be insane at this point. Back in 1982 when you had the chance you could have pulled it off and things would be different today, but now? Too late...
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 04:52 PM EST [Link]
~ A BLOW TO THE EUROFASCIST SUPERSTATE: Exit polls are showing that Sweden narrowly voted no on the euro. Good for them.
Posted by antle @ 04:23 PM EST [Link]
Saturday, September 13, 2003 FRANK O'BANNON, R.I.P.: Indiana Gov. Frank O'Bannon, a good and decent centrist Democrat, died five days after suffering a massive stroke earlier today. He will be succeeded by his lieutenant governor. Along with current U.S. Senator Evan Bayh, under whom O'Bannon served as lieutenant govenor, they helped make the Democratic Party viable in Republican Indiana's statewide elections.
With losses in politics (O'Bannon), music (Johnny Cash) and television (John Ritter, a very good if often underrated comedic actor) in addition to the 9/11 anniversary, this has been a tough week.
Posted by antle @ 07:54 PM EST [Link]
~ UNPATRIOTIC CONTRARIANS: Like John Derbyshire, I have a distaste for the kind of intraconservative battling that David Frum undertook in his controversial "Unpatriotic Conservatives" piece for National Review earlier this year. Moreover, I happen to strongly disagree with Frum's characterizations of certain writers and publications I respect in that piece. But I don't think he was calling attention to an imaginary phenomenon - not all essentially antipatriotic movements are on the left.
I submit as an example this piece by Robert Higgs, who sees a nation in mourning for those who perished on 9/11 and asks what the big deal is. Higgs is a gifted libertarian scholar whose main achievement is showing in Crisis and the Leviathan how various emergencies are used by government to expand its size and powers. This view, which I share, has for Higgs transformed into a blind contempt for all government interventions in crisises and an apparent repudiation of any nationalist sentiments.
Higgs would have us believe that there is no distinction to be made between a large number of innocent civilians murdered in an act of war that may just be a harbinger for future atrocities to come and the cumulative total of individual tragedies that take place over the course of a given year. Of course, two can play at this game. Perhaps we should ask Higgs why we should be concerned about more concerned about the number of people killed by oppressive governments than those who die from accidents or natural causes throughout the world every year. Or why should anyone worry about the number of people who have been killed in U.S. military interventions when larger numbers of people throughout the Third World die from other causes (and at the hands of other governments and warring parties) each year.
There really isn't much you can say to someone whose ideology leads them to feel as if they are not a part of a larger national community with a stake in national tragedies, or to believe that human deaths should be minimized if they occur under circumstances that are likely to aid political programs they oppose, or to be able to muster more anger at government policies they disagree with than at those who would perpetrate a 9/11 that will convince them otherwise. But I think what is wrong with Higgs’ piece will be readily evident to most other people, even those who oppose U.S. military intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan. It has often been said of certain humanitarians, especially on the left, that they profess great love for humanity but don't like people. I would hate to see the development of a libertarianism that professes great concern for the individual but similarly doesn't care about actual people.
Posted by antle @ 06:22 PM EST [Link]
~ WHAT'S NEXT, LIBERTARIANS FOR HIGHER TAXES?: I've written a lot lately about the friction between libertarians and conservatives that is driving many libertarians leftward, causing some to even consider voting for a Democratic presidential candidate. The Democrat most libertarians seem to be pondering is Howard Dean. There is a new Libertarians for Dean blog that is devoted to fleshing out these questions, with a position of neutrality on whether libertarians should actually vote for Dean.
Posted by antle @ 06:14 PM EST [Link]
~ WHO WILL BE THE ANTI-DEAN?: Howard Dean is a pretty non-traditional front-runner. He definitely has the kind of momentum the elder George Bush would have characterized as "The Big Mo," and has built up leads in Iowa and New Hampshire in some polls. But Dean's summer surge hasn't produced anything like a consensus that he should be the nominee and doesn't often come out on top in the national polls, which may be irrelevant since the nominee will not be chosen by a single national primary, but is usually a characteristic of a true front-runner for a major party presidential nomination.
Two exceptions who come to mind are Barry Goldwater and George McGovern, who won their respective parties' nominations despite having opponents who often led them in the national polls but were unable to overtake them in the primaries and caucuses. This is exactly why many establishment Democrats, who actually have a vote as the "superdelegates" to the Democratic National Convention, don't want to see Dean get the nomination. If Dean beats Richard Gephardt in Iowa and John Kerry in New Hampshire, effectively driving both of them from the race, the Democrats will be looking to coalesce around a "Stop Dean" candidate. Who will that candidate be?
As George Will points out, Joe Lieberman would be a logical choice. He has a national following, is well-known from his stint on the 2000 Democratic ticket and offers a sharp contrast with Dean. The downside is that many liberals find him too conservative and that his candidacy would probably divide Democrats and be a gift to the Naderites of the Green Party. John Edwards is another possibility, which is probably why he has decided to stay in the race despite disappointing poll numbers and the fact he will now no longer have a Senate seat to fall back on if he loses. Edwards is less dovish than Dean and less hawkish than Lieberman and might find a lot of center-left primary voters in play if Kerry and Gephardt drop out. The last possibility is largely unknown entity that is Wesley Clark. Although talked about as a potential Dean running mate, Democrats might look to a late entry by him as a way to unify the party and neutralize the Republicans' advantage on national security. The downside is that no one knows enough about where he stands yet.
But this much is clear: Dean is the front-runner at least to the extent that now the Democratic presidential race has come down to him versus everybody else.
Posted by antle @ 05:21 PM EST [Link]
~ SELF-PROMO ALERT: I have a piece in today's Kitchener-Waterloo Record (and yesterday's Sudbury Star) about the promises being made during the Ontario election campaign about changing the auto insurance system. Although I blast all three parties, I take particular aim at the NDP for their promise of a public auto insurance system. It's not available online but I have included it in the "More" link. [more]
Posted by steve @ 02:58 PM EST [Link]
~ ONE MORE 9/11 TRIBUTE: The Blue Man Group has put together an online presentation entitled Exhibit 13.
As 601am describes it: "The usually explosive performance artists do not appear in it; there are no blue-painted heads in sight. Instead, pieces of white paper drift down in front of a pure black background as percussive music plays. All these papers were found in [Carroll Gardens,] Brooklyn, where they floated across the river from the World Trade Center, and as they gently tumble from the top to the bottom of the screen some become legible: a sheet with scorched edges, filled with Japanese calligraphy; a letter that begins 'Dear Recruiter,' a cover sheet that says 'Exhibit 13.'"
Find it here.
Posted by steve @ 04:23 AM EST [Link]
~ FINALLY, A COURT DOES SOMETHING RIGHT: "A three-judge federal appeals panel dismissed a lawsuit filed by senate Democrats hoping to derail a new round of Republican-led congressional redistricting in Texas.
"The Democrats argued that Senate rule changes by Republicans to further the redistricting effort violated federal law. The judges, who listened to two hours of arguments Thursday in Laredo, dismissed those claims."
Not that this will be the end of it of course...
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 03:54 AM EST [Link]
Friday, September 12, 2003 SPEAKING OF DUMB IDEAS...: I have been conspicuous in my absence by not replying to David Janes' eloquent response to my post regarding Dalton McGuinty's blatherings about the possibility of re-amalgamation (though I note that Mr. Janes was also rather conspicuous in skipping a key part of my post in which I tried to empirically prove that, yes, things in Toronto have in fact gotten better since amalgamation). Well, I didn't actually feel the need to respond because, well, why should I, when Dalton McGuinty did such a fine job himself, in my place? Reversing the amalgamation of either Toronto or Ottawa is a "dumb idea," declares the back-flipping Honourable Leader of the Opposition. Well, so there.
Meanwhile, someone in the Premier's office (the mole?) faxed out a bizarre press release today calling McGuinty, "an evil reptilian kitten-eater from another planet." Now, McGuinty might be many bad things (including being a possible distant relative of Norman "Psycho" Bates), but a lizard-skinned interplanetary consumer of baby felines, he is most certainly not. He's not that interesting. I have a contact who works in Communications for the Premier, so I'll try to find out who and what screwed up.
Posted by Barton @ 04:02 PM EST [Link]
~ ME LIE. ME NO THINK. ME TORY: Bruce Rolston decides to channel the subtle spirit of Al Franken against us poor, beleaguered Ontario Tories (a rather bad role model, don't you think, Bruce?). As per usual, he scores points off of us and I tip my hat to him in the spirit of fair play. But I do have two quibbles:
In late 2001, Eves announces that the Tory government would have to override their new "no taxation without representation" law, because the economic backlash from Sept. 11 had made it impossible for them to support the coming tax cuts they had previously passed through parliament. (To which most of Ontario responded, "What economic backlash?" but never mind.)
You mean this economic backlash, Bruce?
And of course, this sentence stuck in my craw in reference to what it is to be done with our Tory government: Thinking Ontarians begin looking around for rails, tar, and feathers. Now, I openly admit to being a Tory partisan of the most thoughtless sort, you know, the type who thinks nothing of working 20+ hours a week while being a full-time university student on a hopeless campaign just because I like my candidate and find working with my fellow right-wingers just plain fun. Maybe it's just my lack of thinking, but by Mr. Rolston's own criteria, the number of thoughtful, smart, politically-informed Ontarians has actually gone down ever since the election was called. Come, join the lobotomized Tory masses and be free of the burden of thought!
Posted by Barton @ 03:34 PM EST [Link]
~ JOHNNY CASH, RIP: I saw this at 6:00am this morning but I couldn't bring myself to blog it until now. Johnny Cash, the man I once described as the ideal preacher, died today at the age of 71.
I could ramble on about Cash and his coolness. How unlike much of the music today, Johnny Cash believed in what he was singing. He felt it and you could hear that when he sang. Rather than do any of that, I'm going to go and listen to my Cash albums in tribute.
Read on.
Orrin Judd has some speachifying about it here.
Blog Critics goes link crazy on the matter.
Posted by steve @ 01:12 PM EST [Link]
~ ADD ANOTHER STATE TO THE SMART COLUMN
and another real contribution to "homeland security".
Missouri became the 45th state in the US to allow carrying of concealed weapons. The state legislature had to override a veto by the governor to pass the measure.
Reuters has the story.
cb
Posted by clbloomer @ 10:34 AM EST [Link]
~ WELL, AT LEAST THE CHINESE SAVED SOME MONEY BY NOT BUYING IT ON THE OPEN MARKET THIS TIME: A report by the U.S. Navy says that the Chinese likely managed to get their hands on some of the classified material onboard the EP-3 spy plane after it was forced to land on the Chinese island of Hainan in April 2001.
"The destruction of classified material was accomplished while the aircrew was probably still in shock from the aircraft collision and the subsequent rapid descent of the aircraft and with very little time prior to landing," the report said.
It also found that "destruction of all classified materials onboard did not occur," and concluded that "compromise by the People's Republic of China of undestroyed classified material on PR-32 is highly probable and cannot be ruled out." PR-32 was the mission designation of the U.S. plane.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 04:08 AM EST [Link]
~ I SUPPOSE IT WAS THE ETHIOPIANS WHO USED POISON GAS ON THE ITALIANS THEN: Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi might have dipped into the wine during a recent interview. Berlusconi told a reporter that Benito Mussolini had never killed anyone and only sent "people on vacation in internal exile." The comments were made after the reporter compared Saddam Hussein and Mussolini.
The remarks weren't published when the original interview appeared in August but surfaced yesterday. The story prompted Berlusconi to "clarify" his remarks.
"I didn't accept his comparison, or the comparison of my country to another dictator or another dictatorship, that of Saddam Hussein, which provoked millions of deaths," Berlusconi said at a news conference.
I suppose Mr. Berlusconi doesn't know that the train station used to ship the Jews off to concentration camps was practically outside the windows of the Pope's official residence in Rome.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 03:14 AM EST [Link]
~ BABY, THAT WAS MONEY!: I needed a break from today so I dubbed it Movie Night at Fort Sinatra at about 11:00pm and watched my latest DVD prize, Swingers. Starring Jon Favreau and Vincent Vaughn, the 1996 movie chronicles one cat's obsession with his ex-girlfriend and his friend's attempts to get him over here.
A lot of people like living in small cities. They get the feeling of being neighbours and knowing other people's names. Leaning over the fence to talk with someone next door about those neighbours down the street who persist in blasting Led Zeppelin at 11:30pm. They are happy with the fact they can travel from one end of town to the other in half an hour.
I'm not one of those people. I hate small cities. I'm either a New York, Las Vegas or Los Angeles kind of man. I realized that back in the mid-90s when Cocktail Nation sprang up. Remember that craze the Gen X youth had? Drinking martinis, wearing slick suits and doing the lindey hop with their special squeeze? I don't. I only got to experience it third hand by listening to lounge music -- I will admit that I even own a Sammy Davis Jr. CD that isn't his greatest hits, but just a regular lounge album entitled The Wham of Sam! -- and corresponding with people across the U.S. by email who were really hooked into the scene.
I was born for the 1950s. Favourite book? The Way You Wear Your Hat: Frank Sinatra and the Lost Art of Livin'. Music? Frank Sinatra. Style of dress? Sharp baby, nothing but sharp.
Of course in Sudbury this is all wasted effort. We never had The Derby or The Dresden or anything like it in Sudbury. I'm forced to hear cover bands do "Sweet Home Alabama". People enter the upscale bars I frequent wearing T-Shirts. It's considered sophistication when someone orders a chocolate martini.
Although the lounge scene is window dressing for the movie, it really captured the spirit of those days...days I missed by being stuck in Sudbury. I guess I can live through movies until one day I'm in a real city.
That said, the movie is a sort of documentary for a good number of men at the age of 30. Not married, struggling to establish themselves, looking for a fun time every night. I could tell you stories of what year 30 was like for me...a lot of good times...
Trent: Baby, that was money! Tell me that wasn't money.
Mike: That was so demeaning.
Trent: She smiled, baby.
Mike: I can't believe what an &#*hole you are.
Trent: No. No, baby, she smiled. This is what we came here for. No we met a beautiful baby and she likes you.
Mike: She likes you.
Trent: Whatever. Daddy's gonna get her to bring her friend. And I don't care if I end up with her, or one of her beautiful baby friends.
Posted by steve @ 03:04 AM EST [Link]
Thursday, September 11, 2003 A LASTING IMPRESSION YES, BUT LASTING CHANGE I’M NOT SO SURE: Did 9/11 really change the world, or at least the world as it is known to and experienced by Americans? I think Jeremy Lott is right – the answer is both yes and no. Certainly, no one who lived through 9/11 is likely to ever forget the experience. When things like the Beltway sniper attacks, the explosion of the space shuttle Columbia or last month’s widespread power failure occur, our minds are much faster to suspect terrorist foul play. But certainly, things are much less changed than I anticipated two years ago.
My office is in the Prudential Tower, one of the two tallest buildings in Boston, the city where two of the hijacked flights originated. I was at work at about 7:45 a.m. and we conducted our 8 a.m. conference call as normal. Like Steve, I was sitting at my desk working and drinking coffee when I launched my web browser. My default home page is set to MSN and I happened to scan the news headlines. I read that a plane had crashed into one of the towers of the World Trade Center.
I quickly told a co-worker what had happened. Our initial naïve reaction was that this had been some sort of terrible accident. Then a few minutes later we read reports that a plane had crashed into the second tower. By this time, our floor was abuzz with activity as people were talking about what was going on. The guy who worked in the mailroom on our floor wheeled a television into my office and we gathered around to watch the news. We saw the first plane hit and then the impact of the second plane. Seeing that second plane hit made the horrible truth sink in: America was under attack.
Then came news that a plane had crashed into the Pentagon, the symbolic center of our military strength, a place we had always taken for granted would be impenetrable. Panic began to fill the air. Then the rumor mill started. There were conflicting reports about the president’s whereabouts and someone on TV said that at a car bomb had gone off outside the State Department. It looked as if the world had gone mad and who knew where it would strike next.
I was on the very next commuter rail train out of Boston at 10:50 a.m., retreating back to suburbia. The train was packed as people hurried to get out of the city, not knowing if we would be the next target. I remember sitting next to a friend a co-worker, wondering how we would ever even know when the attack was over. After all, nothing quite like this had ever happened before and the terrorists were obviously among us.
I sat transfixed by the television coverage. The towers falling, people jumping out of windows, smoke pouring out the Pentagon. I also saw images of heroes, brave men and women rushing into burning buildings, some of them to their deaths, to save the lives of people they did not even know. As much as I love our national anthem, I never got such a lump in my throat listening to it as when it was played by the color guard at Buckingham Palace.
My co-worker was right: it was hard to know when it was over. I went back to work the next day, but some @#$% called in a bomb threat. Every day for the next several days, it was the same routine: A threat would be made, we would have to take it seriously and everyone would leave. Once I walked all the way to Boston Public Gardens (9/11 and the days that followed were warm, sunny days with beautiful blue sky), away from any tall buildings, and I listened to the news on the portable radio a vendor had perched on his hot dog cart. The stress of going through evacuation drill everyday was too much for one of my co-workers, a stubbornly independent blind man who had to work smarter to get himself a Coke out of the vending machine than I had to work all day. He worked from home until the chaos was over. Many people were afraid to come to work.
Even amidst all this, the mundane still intruded. The weekend before 9/11 I had been in Cleveland to be the best man in my friend’s wedding. The weekend was so packed with activity that I didn’t get a chance to return my tuxedo, which I instead brought with me and sent Federal Express to ship back. All the flights out of Logan Airport were grounded, which delayed this shipment. The man at the tux rental place called me daily demanding to know when I would return this tux. I kept assuring him it would arrive as soon as flights resumed. Finally, I told him that considering the losses other people had experienced that week, he was pretty lucky if all he lost was a damn tuxedo. I slammed down the phone.
I wasn’t in New York, I didn’t lose anybody I knew, I wasn’t sent off to wage war against the terrorists, but it still was a pretty intense few days. For some people, it will last a lifetime. If you had told me that 9/11/03 would be as much like 9/10/01 as it was, I would have said that you were crazy. But re-read the Michelle Malkin column I posted earlier. Don’t you notice the same things?
9/11 left an impression for sure. It’s just not clear to me that it was a behavior-altering one. I pray for our county’s continued safety, but also for her honor – mostly, that she will not dishonor the memories of those who died that terrible day.
Posted by antle @ 11:13 PM EST [Link]
~ THE MORE THINGS CHANGE, THE MORE THINGS STAY THE SAME: Michelle Malkin has a very worthwhile column about those who could not be shaken from the status quo even by something of the magnitude of 9/11. Symoblism can never take precedence over saving human lives or securing a nation.
Posted by antle @ 09:14 PM EST [Link]
~ PERHAPS THE MOST FITTING TRIBUTE: The names of those who died. 601am has published a blog entry with the names of the 2 792 people who perished that day. Find it here,
Posted by steve @ 07:48 PM EST [Link]
~ IT'S HARD, BUT NOT AS HARD LAST YEAR: James Lileks weighs in on today and the long, slow war America is fighting.
Now I am resigned, in advance, to the loss of an American city by a nuclear weapon. The End of the World now looks like a comic-book premise, a Heston-movie conceit. We feared it would all be gone in a day, our world upended like an Etch-A-Sketch. What we never considered was a long, slow war, a conflict that burned and sputtered, skittered from one spot on the map to the other. The old wars were simple: the other side had accents, uniforms, nations, cruel habits and urbane sneers. The old wars took years. The old wars were in black and white. The old wars were monophonic, scored by Max Steiner, released by Warner Brothers, and the only proof they really happened at all was the small battered box in the back of Dad’s sock drawer, the box that held some oddly colored metal bars. The next war would be horrible, total, and short.
Two years ago today I was convinced that every presumption I had about the future was wrong. This war, I feared, would be horrible, total, and long.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 06:16 PM EST [Link]
~ HAVE THINGS CHANGED?: Jeremy Lott says the world has changed since the terrorist attacks, and yet things aren't really all that different.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 04:20 PM EST [Link]
~ NEVER FORGET: Cox and Forkum commemorate today as only good cartoonists can. Check it out here.
Posted by steve @ 03:34 PM EST [Link]
~ KNOW YOUR ENEMIES: Jay Reding says he knows who are enemies are and you'd better know as well. Read on.
Posted by steve @ 01:57 PM EST [Link]
~ IT STILL HURTS
On September 11, 2001, I was on my way to the office and heard a short report on the radio that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. No other details were readily available. It wasn’t until 10 minutes later, when I arrived at the office, that I was confronted with the magnitude of the disaster. We set up the television in our lobby and watched in disbelief.
It became personal a few minutes later. A friend called and said that the Pentagon had been hit. From where I was standing, the Pentagon was 9 miles away. My house is 29 miles from the Pentagon. Although I never felt personally threatened, I called my wife and told her to stay home. If it became necessary to evacuate the area, I wanted to know where she was.
As the images of the smoking, burning Pentagon appeared on the television, I became concerned for my friends who worked there. I knew trying to call any of them on the phone would be useless. I started sending emails, knowing logically that they probably wouldn’t have access, but emotionally needing to touch base with them somehow. Luckily, they all escaped unharmed, but I didn’t know that until the next day. There were some tense moments. My friend Sally had gone to the dentist that morning. Her office was destroyed. We didn’t know if she was dead or alive until late that evening.
The images continued – the massive traffic jam that brought vehicular movement to a standstill. I know people who walked for more than 5 hours to get to somewhere they could communicate with loved ones.
The Towers collapsed. The Pentagon burned. Innocent people died. People from my neighborhood died.
I remember seeing the video of the plane slamming into one of the Towers. It felt as if someone had shoved a hot poker into my diaphragm. No matter if that video is ever shown again. It is permanently etched into my memory, and the burning pain in my guts returns every time.
I am no stranger to war, having spent a career in the Navy. But this was not war. This was savage, brutal murder. Military people make the decision to risk their lives. The innocents murdered that day had made no such choice. And they died because they were an easy target – a target that only cowards could attack.
I am still angry. I am angry with the cowards who murdered innocent people. I am angry with the fanatics who continue to support and fund terrorism. I am angry with those who choose to attack my country, my freedom, my way of life. I am also angry with those of my own country who think that the best way to deal with these savages is to negotiate.
My country, my friends, my family have been attacked and threatened. I will not forget. I will not forget those who died innocently, nor will I forget the animals who perpetrated this cowardly act.
It still hurts. I doubt that it will ever stop hurting.
God Bless America, those who love her, and those who defend her.
cb
Posted by clbloomer @ 11:11 AM EST [Link]
~ WE'VE ALREADY BEEN THROUGH THE SECOND ANNIVERSARY OF 9/11: Or at least an anniversary of sorts, argues Richard Brookhiser in a thoughtful piece for the New York Post. It was brought home to us again during the August power outage.
Link via The Corner. The full story is here.
Posted by antle @ 08:58 AM EST [Link]
~ THE LEMON GETS SERIOUS: Satirical web site The Lemon becomes serious today and discusses the second anniversary. Read it here.
Posted by steve @ 03:24 AM EST [Link]
~ TWO YEARS AGO: I got into work at 8:30am as I did every day. It was a day like any other for me. My routine typically was to unlock our offices and turn on my PC in preparation for the day's work. As usual a few minutes later I went down the street to pick up a coffee and bagel -- my diet long having been abandoned. At about 8:46am I was at my desk eating and drinking and going over the faxes that came in the night before.
It wasn't until 9:15am or so when a co-worker's friend called to tell me that something had happened in New York and that I should turn on the TV in my office.
How will I describe to my children what it feels like to know that your world changed in a heart beat? I had looked forward of telling them about the fall of the Communist Bloc and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. I wanted to tell them about Russian grandmothers lecturing Red Army tank drivers during the coup attempt against Mikael Gorbachov. I wanted to tell them about a time when we lived in fear of a country they would only know as a friend. But compared to September 11, 2001, the fall of Communism was a sideshow. It was almost bloodless and only served to lull us into thinking that our enemies had been vanquished.
The entire staff gathered in my office that morning, watching the smoke billowing from the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. We watched unbearable images of stock brokers, restaurant workers, secretaries and visitors to the buildings that day waving out the windows of the World Trade Centre, desperate to be rescued from the horrific heat from the burning jet fuel. We watched as men and women jumped from the two towers, choosing death over suffering. We saw the faces of men and women who would never again return home.
By the time my future children grow up the new World Trade Centre will be built. How will I describe to them what used to be there and what it was like to watch them collapse? Of seeing people little different from me regardless of gender, religion, social status or race fleeing from the advancing rain of debris and wall of smoke? Of hearing the screams of people trapped under cars or in buildings as their world turned black -- as the ashes of buildings, their contents and people enveloped them? Of hundreds of police, firefighters and emergency personnel who perished in an instant trying to save the lives of other humans?
Or of warplanes summoned to guard their wounded nation? The fear and confusion of an entire continent as we waited to see where the next attack would be? The rage of a people who had been attacked for being nothing more than Americans? A world on edge as it waited to see where the eagle's talons would strike?
For the rest of the day I watched that television. I was angry beyond measure. The United States isn't my country but I know who the terrorists wanted to murder that day. They wanted to murder people who represented a way of life that terrorists could never understand. They tried to tell us that freedom and life meant nothing in the world they represent.
I'll also tell them of the good things. How people overcome differences both minor and major and united. How a simple song called "God Bless America" became an anthem of hope. How a forest of flags sprang up. How a nation who had been attacked used its awesome power not only to punish those responsible, but free the people of two nations from their oppressors.
I don't know the answers to a lot of the questions I raised here. I don't have the right words today, just two years after that day, which is obvious from this post. I do know that I will never forget.
Posted by steve @ 03:20 AM EST [Link]
~ FOR SOME THE WORLD CHANGED: Porphyrogenitus shares his thought on what this day means to him. Read it here.
Posted by steve @ 02:06 AM EST [Link]
~ REMEMBERING SEPTEMBER 11: This week I collected a bunch of URLs in commemoration of the second anniversary of September 11, 2001 and I wanted to share them with you in case you were interested.
TelevisionArchive - September 11, 2001
Pretty well the whole world was glued to television sets on September 11, 2001 and TelevisionArchive has collected the programming of that day so you can watch it online. It can be difficult watching the feed from 8:00am or 8:30am knowing what will happen in just a few minutes...
Kevin Steel has created an aural poem in remembrance of September 11 which you can download at his web site. It's not easy to listen to.
There was one image that truly brought home the horror to people not at the World Trade Centre, the image of a man who had jumped out of one of the towers. For the September issue of Esquire Tom Junod tried to find out who the man was.
Twin Towers Memorial Photos Videos & News Archive of the September 11 WTC Attack
A little like TelevisionArchive with video clips from stations around the world.
Some of you may have watched the PBS special about the World Trade Centre that aired this week...Sheila Astray did and she wasn't pleased by what she saw.
911 Remembered: Rick Rescorla was a soldier
I posted this last night but in case you missed it, here it is again. Rick Rescorla fought in a battle in the Ia Drang Valley that was later the subject of a book and a movie entitled We Were Soldiers. Rescorla's last battle was on September 11, 2001 when he fought to save as many lives as possible before the south tower collapsed. You can also sign a petition asking George W. Bush to award Rescorla a posthumous Presidential Medal of Honour. Over 20 000 have signed already...
United Flight 93
They were heroes whether they managed to bring down Flight 93 or "only" fought back. Visit memorial web sites here, here, here and here.
Voices: Stories from 9/11 and Beyond
Michelle over at A Small Victory has collected personal stories about September 11. Well worth a visit.
Don't Commemorate September 11
Had this been written by anyone else they would have been accused of being insensitive but it's Christopher Hitchens so he must have at least one important point to make about not commemorating the victims of the attacks. Remember the victims after the war is over, he says, not before. "What is required is a steady, unostentatious stoicism, made up out of absolute, cold hatred and contempt for the aggressors, and complete determination that their defeat will be utter and shameful."
Posted by steve @ 12:42 AM EST [Link]
Wednesday, September 10, 2003 IT'S TRUE, I WENT TO YALE WITH BUCKLEY: Am I trapped in the past -- a preppy at Yale in the 1950s past -- by wanting grosgrain belts? I'd take them all except for maize and red...
Posted by steve @ 11:53 PM EST [Link]
~ SPEAKING OF TAXES
Most, if not all of the Democrat presidential hopefuls are advocating tax increases (cleverly disguised as "rolling back the Bush tax cuts"). Several have intimated that their views on tax increases are "mainstream". Howard Dean has said that he knows "lots" of people who want to pay the same taxes they paid during the Clinton administration.
I'm curious to know how any of the 9 dwarves can rationalize his tax proposals in light of the overwhelming rejection of the tax hike in Alabama. Is it that 67% of Alabamans are members of the vast right wing conspiracy? Or maybe they're just dumb hicks? Selfish? Greedy? Lacking human compassion? Racist? Sexist? Haters of old people and children? Anti-education?
If any of these Democrat nuts is really "mainstream", I'm Attila the Hun.
cb
Posted by clbloomer @ 04:29 PM EST [Link]
~ A VOICE FROM THE DEAD?: Arabic language news network Al Jazeera has aired a new videotape starring Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri.
The tape shows bin Laden and al-Zawahiri out for a stroll but the audio is merely statements recorded at a different time. Bin Laden praises the September 11 hijackers while al-Zawahiri talks about attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq.
It's getting pretty silly for al-Qaida to pretend that bin Laden is still alive. It's almost like that Saturday Night Live skit a few years ago that mocked the remaining Beatles for releasing anything with John Lennon's voice on it as a "new Beatles track", including the message on Lennon's answering machine accompanied by music.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 03:38 PM EST [Link]
~ SO MUCH FOR THE "CHRISTIAN" TAX HIKE
Voters in Alabama, to the tune of 67% of them, rejected the proposed $1.2 Billion tax increase being pushed by the State's Republican governor. The governor, Bob Riley, had made an absolute fool of himself as he tried to shove the hike down the throats of Alabamans. The most outrageous reason for voting for the tax hike? The governor claimed that the good citizens of Alabama had a "Christian duty" to vote for it.
It appears to me that the real "Christian duty" is to vote for more freedom and less government. Don't expect to see much of Governor Riley in more elevated political circles.
Read more about it at CNSNews.
cb
Posted by clbloomer @ 02:47 PM EST [Link]
~ MORE FROM THE DITZY CHIX
This time the banjo player, Emily Robison has shown her deep understanding and profound perception of bashing American politics in a foreign country. Emily and her banjo have a problem with Arnold running for governor in California.
"[Arnold Schwarzenegger] is a great film star," she told a German newspaper, "but I find his run for governor absolutely insane.
"America should be governed by people who have a clue," Robison continued. "I hope he doesn't win."This creates a real dilemma! I have already burned my Dixie Chix CDs. Do I have to buy them again and burn them?
WorldNetDaily has the story.
cb
Posted by clbloomer @ 11:22 AM EST [Link]
~ EDWARD TELLER, RIP: Edward Teller, the man considered the "father of the H-bomb", died Tuesday at the age of 95. Not well liked by his peers for his strident support of the H-bomb program, Teller served his adopted country admirably for over six decades. He will be missed.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 01:00 AM EST [Link]
~ RICK RESCORLA. A NAME THAT WILL NEVER BE FORGOTTEN: (Via Peeve Farm) As the second anniversary of September 11, 2001 comes racing towards us we should remember the heroes of that day. One of them was a man named Rick Rescorla.
If you read the book We Were Soldiers Once And Young, which of course was recently made into a movie starring Mel Gibson, his name might ring a bell. Rescorla was a platoon leader at the battle of Ia Drang Valley. He distinguished himself in battle many times in Vietnam and in wars before that while with the British army. His last battle occurred on September 11, 2001 and like during his leadership in the Ia Drang Valley, his only thoughts were the people who worked with him -- this time in the south tower of the World Trade Centre.
If you can read this without fighting back a tear then your a tougher person than I am.
Posted by steve @ 12:47 AM EST [Link]
~ THAT GIRL. Andrew C. Thomas likes a book about logic and faith that a pair of homeschooling advocates have written for home scholars. The authors are Nathaniel and Hans Bluedorn, and the book is called The Fallacy Detective. However, he does have a complaint. It's about a certain bombastic blonde.
"As something of a downside, the book is marketed on the conservative Web site http://www.townhall.com. It shares pages with the extremist works of Ann Coulter, among others, but certainly belongs in better suited company," sniffs Thomas.
Hey, pal, you know how many books this duo can sell at Town Hall? Lots.
Ms. Treason, in fact, gets a mention in this article I wrote (it isn't online, so I am posting it on my Minuteman blog) about Professor James Miller. He's the Smith College economics prof whose conservative political views got him en agua caliente. Translation: He no get tenure.
Posted by izzy @ 12:39 AM EST [Link]
~ EVEN I NEVER GOT AN F...I THINK: George W. Bush gave himself some pretty high marks on Sunday night over the war on terrorism but not everyone agrees. Ivan Eland, director of the Center on Peace and Liberty at the Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif., is less impressed by Dubya's performance. Here's a press release the Independent Institute issued Tuesday:
Independent Institute's Ivan Eland Says Bush Gets an "F" in Terrorism War
OAKLAND, Calif. Sept. 9 -- A leading expert on war and national security issues here at the nonpartisan Independent Institute has taken the Bush Administration to task for failing to achieve its stated goals in its "war on terrorism."
Ivan Eland, senior fellow and director of the Center on Peace and Liberty at the Institute, uses the second anniversary of the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington to undertake a comprehensive assessment of the American response. So far, he says, the effort has only "drawn a bull's eye on the American people and undoubtedly caused rogue states to speed their weapons programs." In addition, he says that U.S. policy toward Iraq "has made things worse for the average Iraqi than Hussein ever did."
He provides preliminary data that suggests that more children were killed by the U.S.-backed embargo (500,000) than the total number of Iraqis (including Kurds and Shiites) killed by Hussein.
"When bombs purposefully kill civilians, the U.S. government labels it terrorism," Dr. Eland said. "But when a U.S.-led economic embargo does the same, it is justified as needed to make a despotic leader meet Western demands."
He continued: "The history of economic sanctions shows that authoritarian regimes redirect the pain of economic strangulation to the weakest members of society, while keeping the pillars of the regime -- the security forces -- fat and happy. The United States knew that Hussein would take those very actions and sacrificed the welfare of the Iraqi people to continue its vendetta against an already weakened Hussein. Sanctions turned a once prosperous nation into a country where children died en masse."
Eland reported that the Administration's major accomplishment -- that is, the elimination of Afghanistan's Taliban regime that was harboring al Qaeda (gaining a B-minus) -- has been significantly offset by the escape of al Qaeda's leadership and the growing elements of "quagmire" that is confounding the U.S. in that country.
He also raised the issue of the "demonstration effect" of eliminating Hussein on the behavior of other autocratic regimes. Comparing U.S policy toward non-nuclear Iraq and the already nuclear North Korea, he noted that "Iraq got invaded, and North Korea will likely get concessions." And Eland asked: "What would you do if you were the leaders of Iran? Just what they are doing -- accelerating their nuclear program (which somehow came as a shock to the administration)."
The following is Dr. Eland's "Report Card" on U.S. War on Terrorism:
Removing al Qaeda haven in Afghanistan and neutralizing the group's leadership B-
Avoiding a quagmire in Afghanistan C-
Finding weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq F
Making Iraq better off by eliminating Saddam F
Reducing proliferation of WMD to rogue states and terrorist groups F
Adopting a more "humble" foreign policy to prevent overstretch of U.S. military F
Making U.S. citizens and territory safer from terrorism and bringing 9/11 conspiracy to justice F
Ivan Eland is author of the book, Putting "Defense" Back into U.S. Defense Policy: Rethinking U.S. Security in the Post-Cold War World. He was formerly with the CATO Institute in Washington, D.C.
----------
I'm sure Mr. Eland means well but any time I hear talk about the embargo killing 500 000 Iraqi children I have to take a step back. Those numbers have been discredited more times than I can even begin to count...and as for the quagmire? I don't see one.
[Update - 9:15pm] David Janes responds to Ivan Eland.
Posted by steve @ 12:21 AM EST [Link]
Tuesday, September 9, 2003 GENIUS AND NAZI PROPAGANDIST: Leni Riefenstahl, who would have undoubtedly been one of the greatest filmmakers of the 20th century had she not worked for the Nazis, died last night at the age of 101.
For many students of her life and legacy, Ms. Riefenstahl was both propagandist and genius. A popular dancer and actress before becoming a movie director in 1932, she enthusiastically put her talent at the service of the Nazis.
Yet, without her exceptional artistic vision, her two most famous documentaries, "Triumph of the Will" and the two-part "Olympia," would neither have caused a sensation at the time nor be considered classics today.
Ms. Riefenstahl never denied her early conviction that Hitler could "save" Germany. She also said that her idealized image of him fell apart "far too late," near the end of World War II. But, amid widespread skepticism, she insisted that she was never a Nazi and that "Triumph of the Will" and "Olympia" were apolitical, inspired only by her desire to create works of art.
Still, while her documentaries continue to be studied in some film schools, Ms. Riefenstahl remained trapped in the shadow of her association with Hitler. Her repeated attempts to find financing for a new film always ended in failure, while public screenings of her movies and exhibitions of her photographs invariably prompted protests. As recently as last year, she was briefly investigated in Germany for purported race-hatred crimes.
It's hard, even with the knowledge that many of my family were killed by the Germans during World War II and my grandfather was brutally treated by the Nazis in a POW camp, not too look at "Triumph of the Will" and "Olympia" as nothing short of genius. Even Steven Spielberg admitted a couple of years ago that Riefenstahl's absolute mastery of the subject matter and her pioneering techniques were watershed moments in cinema. That said, Riefenstahl's genius was harnessed by pure evil and despite what she said later in life, she knew the truth.
Read on. (Free registration or use Acct: esrmusings3: Pass: cookie)
Posted by steve @ 04:42 PM EST [Link]
~ EASTERBROOK JOINS THE BLOGOSPHERE: Greg Easterbrook, who is more valuable to me for his Tuesday Morning Quarterback column at ESPN than as a political pundit, has a new blog over at The New Republic. Visit it here.
I have to admit that I disagree with a lot of what he says but he is a bright guy and wickedly funny when he wants to be.
Oh, and speaking of TMQB, here's his latest one. I only managed nine right in each of the two football pools I was in this weekend...I tell you, the New York Giants screw me over every weekend whether I go with them or against them. This week: Greg meets the Eagles' cheerleaders (oh lucky man!) and talks about the spate of ugly football uniforms, among many other things.
Posted by steve @ 03:50 PM EST [Link]
~ THE ROAD GETS EASIER FOR BROOKE ADAMS: Former baseball commissioner Peter Ueberroth will hold a press conference at 4:00pm today where he will announce he is withdrawing from the race for the California governorship. Despite placing fourth in polls, Ueberroth garnered just five per cent support.
Read on.
As I said, this only makes Brooke Adams' chances of succeeding that much more likely.
Posted by steve @ 02:27 PM EST [Link]
~ RACISTS UNITE: White supremacist Tom Metzger endorses Cruz Bustamante for governor of California. For real.
Posted by antle @ 08:25 AM EST [Link]
~ AS LONG AS YOU GOT THE MONEY...: Ezra Levant wrote Monday for the Calgary Sun that he intends on reviving the Alberta Report. He says he's raised a good hunk of cash already. Read his column here.
We blogged about it a few days ago here.
Posted by steve @ 03:14 AM EST [Link]
~ I WISH I WAS IN CANCUN: Though attending meetings wouldn't be on the agenda unless they were held in a bar. Follow the WTO conference in Cancun at a special section of the Tech Central Station web site.
Posted by steve @ 03:05 AM EST [Link]
Monday, September 8, 2003 KRAMER IS BACK!: Martin Kramer over at Sandstorm is back from his August vacation and he takes aim at Columbia University and Edward Said.
Seems Said, who recently declared Kramer was an "outrageous Israeli" (almost lyrical don't you think?), slammed Kramer for allegedly accusing Columbia University of being a "terrorist hideout" because two Palestinians are on a faculty that numbers 8 000. Kramer responds thusly:
I never called Columbia a terrorist hideout, nor have I described any of its faculty as apologists for terrorism. I do accuse them of creating, on their campus and especially in the Middle East department, an atmosphere of intimidation that really is McCarthyite.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 04:20 PM EST [Link]
~ SORRY, I DON'T BUY IT: Newsweek has an interesting little story in their September 15 issue arguing that WMDs may never be found in Iraq. This is so, Iraqi defectors have said, because Saddam Hussein ordered everything destroyed.
I'm far from an expert on dictators but I do know one thing: They never voluntarily give up a trump card and WMDs were Hussein's trump card. Those weapons are either buried somewhere or they are in Syria.
Posted by steve @ 01:55 PM EST [Link]
~ WARREN ZEVON, R.I.P. The excitable boy has succumbed to lung cancer, about a year later than his doctors predicted. But his music will endure.
I especially like his line about being able to be both a wild rock musician and a "sober dad for 18 years." He told interviewers, "I've led two very full lives." Not a bad thing to be able to say looking back, after all.
Posted by antle @ 10:37 AM EST [Link]
~ SELF-PROMO ALERT: Not sure when it's OK to vote for a liberal Republican? Are you a Californian trying to decide whether to vote for Arnold Schwarzenegger or Tom McClintock? The Giuliani test might help.
I have a piece in The American Prowler today describing it.
Posted by antle @ 07:56 AM EST [Link]
~ WHY DID DUBYA GO TO THE UN?: Steven Den Beste thinks he might know why...
Posted by steve @ 03:15 AM EST [Link]
~ THE SPEECH: Duya's speech earlier this evening pretty well touched on all the items I expected him to and it built a pretty decent case that things are going well in Afghanistan and Iraq despite what the mainstream media is reporting. It had a number of quote-worthy lines in it, which we've come to expect from a Bush speech, and it was filled with optimism which in times like these -- and especially a few days before the anniversary of September 11, 2001 -- is much appreciated.
The Middle East will either become a place of progress and peace, or it will be an exporter of violence and terror that takes more lives in America and in other free nations. The triumph of democracy and tolerance in Iraq, in Afghanistan and beyond would be a grave setback for international terrorism. The terrorists thrive on the support of tyrants and the resentments of oppressed peoples. When tyrants fall, and resentment gives way to hope, men and women in every culture reject the ideologies of terror, and turn to the pursuits of peace. Everywhere that freedom takes hold, terror will retreat.
Our enemies understand this. They know that a free Iraq will be free of them -- free of assassins, and torturers, and secret police. They know that as democracy rises in Iraq, all of their hateful ambitions will fall like the statues of the former dictator. And that is why, five months after we liberated Iraq, a collection of killers is desperately trying to undermine Iraq's progress and throw the country into chaos.
Where I was slightly disappointed was the following paragraph:
Our strategy in Iraq will require new resources. We have conducted a thorough assessment of our military and reconstruction needs in Iraq, and also in Afghanistan. I will soon submit to Congress a request for $87 billion. The request will cover ongoing military and intelligence operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, which we expect will cost $66 billion over the next year. This budget request will also support our commitment to helping the Iraqi and Afghan people rebuild their own nations, after decades of oppression and mismanagement. We will provide funds to help them improve security. And we will help them to restore basic services, such as electricity and water, and to build new schools, roads, and medical clinics. This effort is essential to the stability of those nations, and therefore, to our own security. Now and in the future, we will support our troops and we will keep our word to the more than 50 million people of Afghanistan and Iraq.
$87 billion is an awful lot of money but I have to wonder if it's going to be enough, especially since it's going to be spread over at least two years. I get the feeling that a good hunk of that money is going to go to the military instead of rebuilding those two nations. That said, this is a relatively minor quibble since it remains to be seen exactly how that money is to be spent. I'll complain at the right time if it's warranted.
What I think the speech did do was send a very clear message to everyone, especially the Democratic hopefuls: the Bush administration isn't taking the war on terrorism any less lightly today then it did on September 12, 2001. The war on terrorism is going to be a long one and I doubt Iraq is going to be the last target. I have a list of nominees if Mr. Bush is reading this.
Overall grade: A-
Posted by steve @ 01:34 AM EST [Link]
Sunday, September 7, 2003 NEW 9/11 TAPE SURFACES: The New York Times reported yesterday that a new tape showing the first airplane crashing into the World Trade Centre has surfaced. It is likely the only video that has images of both airplanes striking the WTC.
Read Little Green Footballs' entry on it here.
Posted by steve @ 06:40 PM EST [Link]
~ WHAT IT'S REALLY LIKE IN IRAQ: Peeve Farm has a good blog about an American soldier's article running in lefty-land's The North Coast Journal Weekly telling what it's really like in Iraq. Unlike what the mainstream press is telling you, most Iraqis are appreciate of the U.S.-load coalition.
I was in eight or nine cities in Iraq. Starting from Kuwait, we saw pretty much every city along the river on the way to Baghdad. People absolutely loved us everywhere we went. There were big parades. We'd just roll down the streets, or sometimes be on foot patrol, and kids would run out of their houses just to wave at us, just to get a wave back from us. People would give us flowers; they'd give us flowers and gifts and Pepsi -- all kinds of stuff.
I'd have people come up to me and say, "What took you so long? You should have done this in '91!" Especially when we were in Baghdad. We were in this huge building, with a huge fence around it. I'd have a lot of people -- especially the elderly guys -- telling me, "I was tortured under this building for 12 or 14 years," or, "There's torture chambers under here." So we went down and checked it out, and sure enough, there were torture chambers under there -- basically an entire block, underground, with cells and everything else.
By far the best line is in Brian Tieman's blog entry: "It's taking its time, but the establishment of a free press in post-war America continues apace."
Read Josh Ingram's article here.
Posted by steve @ 06:27 PM EST [Link]
~ SCHWARZENEGGER COMES OUT AGAINST WARD CONNERLY'S RACIAL PRIVACY INITIATIVE: That Cruz Bustamante opposes this threat to the diversity racket doesn't surprise me, but Schwarzenegger's announcement of his opposition to Proposition 54 is newsworthy. He argues that it is essential that we collect racial data that pertains to health and education. Why? The collection of this data in legitimate health and medical research is exempted from Prop 54. The only other reason would be to protect racial preferences, which Californians already voted to abolish in Connerly's Proposition 209 in 1996.
Via Toogood Reports. Read the full story here.
Posted by antle @ 04:47 PM EST [Link]
Saturday, September 6, 2003 IS THE BLOGOSPHERE THE REAL ALTERNATIVE PRESS?: You don't have to read too many "alternative" newspapers before you begin to wonder what is so "alternative" about them. They all sound the same, cover the same kinds of issues and, with few exceptions (the New York Press at its finest being the most noticeable), all have the same lefitst editorial slant. Sure, if the major local daily endorsed Gore, your local alternative newsweekly probably endorsed Nader. But other than that, it's hard to see what makes them alternative.
Matt Welch has a great piece making this point and contrasts the so-called alternative press with the vitality being injected by the legionso f mostly amateur cyberjournalists running blogs. He writes intelligently and positively about the "blogosphere" without worshipping it, glossing over the large number of less-than-stellar blogs or pretending that it represents a trend that will somehow completely replace conventional journalism. If you haven't caught it yet, it's definitely worth a read.
Posted by antle @ 10:32 PM EST [Link]
~ LIBERTARIANS AND CONSERVATIVES CONT'D: I meant to acknowledge Julian Sanchez's recent comments on my Tech Central Station piece about the friction between conservatives and libertarians a lot sooner, but I suppose better late than never.
His main point is that libertarians aren't some bloc of swing voters who bounce back and forth in their alignment with the left and the right. Insofar as left and right are not permanent categories, which side people identify libertarians with will change as the definitions for these categories change, and as different issues related to personal liberty gain and lose salience. Point taken. The main reason I frame the issues the way I do, however, is that I would like to see libertarians be more conservative and conseratives be more libertarian. But tilting at that particular windmill does not mean that libertarians shift from left to right like, to use Julian's example, Sandra Day O'Connor.
Posted by antle @ 09:40 PM EST [Link]
~ WHITHER THE ROADMAP?: I advocated giving the Bush's administratin's Israeli-Palestinian "roadmap" plan a chance. With the resignation of Prime Minister Abbas, I must admit that it appears likely that this chance has passed. So what's next?
Robert Locke, formerly of FrontPage Magazine, recently argued that the entire concept of the "peace process" is based on flawed premises and must be abandoned. Perhaps it is time to contemplate the heretofore unthinkable. In any event, this much is clear: Peace negotiations can only work insofar as the negotiating parties truly want and agree upon the terms for peace.
Posted by antle @ 06:21 PM EST [Link]
~ SECURITY ALERT: It would appear that someone has hacked Interland, the fine company that hosts ESR, and is inserting code on some pages.
Web surfers who have visited the compromised sites might get a surprise on their next phone bill when they discover expensive calls made to 900 numbers. Others could also find themselves party to a denial-of-service attack launched against another computer.
That's because the malicious script placed in the HTML code at the bottom of many Interland-hosted Web pages instructs visitors' browsers to access other malicious sites and download either of two Trojan Horses, which can have different effects on a user's machine. The malicious script affects only surfers using unpatched versions of the Internet Explorer 6 browser.
As far as I know ESR hasn't been touched but I figured you'd want to know. Please surf safely! If you are running IE6, get that security patch.
Full story here.
Posted by steve @ 04:17 PM EST [Link]
~ THIS ISN'T GOOD: He had more baggage then all but one of the women I talked to last night but he was the last best hope for the Palestinians. Mahmoud Abbas offered his resignation to Yasser Arafat today.
Abbas submitted his resignation and that of his government to Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, who later told Palestinian legislators in Ramallah that Abbas and his Cabinet will be operating as a caretaker government.
Although Arafat stopped short of saying he accepted Abbas' resignation in his remarks, some Palestinian legislators told CNN that invoking a caretaker government is tantamount to accepting it.
Palestinian officials, however, are not discounting the possibility that Abbas could eventually maintain his position as prime minister, with Arafat asking Abbas to appoint a new government.
If Mr. Arafat was a smart man he would ask Abbas to form a new government. Of course, Abbas was what Arafat least needed if he was to maintain his power base, Abbas was uppity. He thought being named prime minister actually meant something and tried to flex that authority independent of Arafat's desires. He came to learn that the position was merely created to placate critics of Arafat.
Abbas was far from perfect, I think we can all agree on that. What distinguished him from Arafat was the fact that he wasn't Yasser Arafat. Unfortunately that worked both ways: he wasn't Arafat to the U.S., which was a good thing, and he wasn't Arafat to the Palestinians, which wasn't so good.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 03:58 PM EST [Link]
Friday, September 5, 2003 THIS ISN'T A SURPRISE: Spanish police have arrested an al-Jazeera reporter for alleged links to al-Qaida.
Authorities believe that Tayseer Allouni -- who interviewed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden nearly two years ago -- provided support for two suspected members of the group, a Spanish court official told CNN.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 07:04 PM EST [Link]
~ THE "BIG MO:" Watching CFTO News tonight (Hampton's utterly witless stunts are just dismaying to watch; hey Howard, we Tories are secretly wanting you to pump up your support here, but we can't help it though if you continue to do things like wave styrofoam swiss cheese pieces about in a speech about hydro privatization), when they announced the results of a COMPAS poll taken right after the election was called. The results are just grand:
Liberals: 46%
Progressive Conservatives: 41%
NDP: 12%That's a jump of over 5% in our support with absolutely no campaigning on the part of the Premier. Just a tiny bit more and we'll be within the margin of error and practically tied with the Liberals. Oh, I feel good.
Posted by Barton @ 06:25 PM EST [Link]
~ BOVE BOOK SIGNING: Poet Robert Bove, who has appeared in ESR and whose book The UFOs of October I recently reviewed, is holding a book signing in New York later this month.
Bove will be signing his book at "New York Is Book Country," a function of The Fifth Avenue Street Fair, on Sunday, Sept. 21, from 11 a.m. to noon in the iUniverse booth (#5), west side of Fifth near 48th Street. Following the signing, Bove will be hovering around the booth for the next hour or two, happy to schmooze with all comers.
Show some love and go and meet Robert!
Posted by steve @ 03:23 PM EST [Link]
~ SOMETIMES I WISH LIFE WERE LIKE A TOM CLANCY NOVEL: The FBI said today that it is searching for four men for questioning in an unspecified terror plot against U.S. interests.
In a Clancy novel these men would have been visited by very serious men who do very serious things. If you get my drift...
Fox News story here, FBI bulletin here.
Posted by steve @ 03:20 PM EST [Link]
~ TAIWAN UNDER ATTACK FROM CHINA?: The Taipei Times reported yesterday that Taiwan's government believes that China is launching a cyberattack designed to penetrate the island nation's government and business databases.
"National intelligence has indicated that an army of hackers based in China's Hubei and Fujian provinces has successfully spread 23 different Trojan horse programs to the networks 10 private high-tech companies here to use them as a springboard to break into at least 30 different government agencies and 50 private companies," Cabinet Spokesman Lin Chia-lung said yesterday.
The government agencies invaded by the Trojan-horse programs include the National Police Administration, the Ministry of National Defense, the Central Election Commission and the Central Bank of China.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 01:18 PM EST [Link]
~ AND SO IT BEGINS: For those of us hoping beyond hope that religious violence could be avoided in Iraq comes news that a Sunni mosque was attacked this morning in Baghdad by three armed men. Fortunately no one died but three were wounded including one critically.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 12:30 PM EST [Link]
~ BRINGING BACK THE DEAD: A couple of good posts courtesy of Kevin Michael Grace and Kevin Steel about Ezra Levant's musing publicly about launching a conservative magazine in Canada (specifically in Alberta) to replace the recently defunct The Report.
As you may remember, back in June I myself mused about launching a Canadian conservative magazine. As Bubbles from Trailer Park Boys (Canadian reference) would say, "Your drunk and on drugs!" I'd like to do it but raising a couple of million in capital is just something that this out of the loop/un-networked northern Ontario boy can't manage. Maybe I'll win the $12.5 million in the Super 7 Friday night...well, in that case I'm doing ESR from somewhere warm and tax free...
Both KMG and Steel reflect on Levant's plans
Posted by steve @ 04:21 AM EST [Link]
~ THEY SEEMED PRETTY CLEAR TO ME: Actor Johnny Depp, who called the U.S. a "dumb puppy", is engaging in some damage control today.
Depp released a statement saying that his comments had been taken "radically out of context."
"I am an American. I love my country and have great hopes for it. It is for this reason that I speak candidly and sometimes critically about it. I have benefited greatly from the freedom that exists in my country and for this I am eternally grateful.
"What I was saying was that, compared to Europe, America is a very young country and we are still growing as a nation. My deepest apologies to those who were offended, affected, or hurt by this insanely twisted deformation of my words and intent."
Johnny, from where I sit, you said what you said. Be a man and stand by what you said.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 03:12 AM EST [Link]
~ WHEN DID I CROSS THE LINE?: Another good bit by James Lileks today, blasting some ass who thinks that Lileks' continued anger about September 11, 2001 has gone on a bit too long.
Angry? Almost two years later I’m still f*#king furious about it, if you want to know the truth. I’m not sure what emotion these people want me to have. An appropriate amount of sadness mixed with an appropriate amount of shame mixed with a soupcon of perspective and a dram of self-hatred? Can you send me the precise recipe, please? Because from where I stand, I see the two forces I thought the left deplored: religious intolerance and fascism. Together at last! Swirled into one cone! If Kluxers had flown planes into the UN building, these people would be insisting that America was bubbling over with millions of Bubbanazis, and the failure of the networks to mount Second Anniversary specials would be proof that the media secretly embraced the White Power agenda.
F*#king A James. Not only was I not in New York when September 11 happened, I was safely ensconced in Canada. That said, I'm still filled with rage over what happened that day. I still remember the phone call that morning from a friend's father telling me to turn on the television and then an hour later watching the towers fall. I still remember seeing the terrorized faces of New Yorkers running away from that huge dust cloud and then when the networks decided to air them, the most horrifying images I've ever seen: the people jumping from the towers. Few days go by when I don't think about that day. When are we supposed to be not angry?
F*#k them. My anger is my own and I believe it's justified. Perhaps it's not the healthiest way to remember the thousands of people callously murdered that day but it's the way that people like me and Lileks deal with it. If you don't like it...well, you know the two words I have. The second word is "you."
I will say this. I also remember the goodness that came out of those days...of New Yorkers cheering police, firefighters and EMS personnel driving in and out of what was once the World Trade Centre for days after the attack. I still remember how Americans united and helped each other out. I miss hearing "God Bless America". I still proudly hang my copy of Havana Street's fireman poster created to raise money for the victims of the attack.
That doesn't mitigate my anger and it never will.
Read it here. (About half way down the blog entry)
Posted by steve @ 02:54 AM EST [Link]
~ WALTZING TO ANNIHILIATION: Having put my optimistic spin for the provincial election, here's my take on the impending federal election in the spring of 2004: It's going to be a complete wipeout. Alright, maybe not a complete wipeout, there might some spots (large and small) of Canadian Alliance green, NDP orange, and Tory blue here and there, with some Bloqheads huddling for warmth along the St. Lawrence and in the Quebec interior, but boy oh boy, it's going to be bad. Real bad. Every one of the young provincial Tory activists I've talked to (and these are activists, mind you) have thrown up their hands in disgust at federal politics. They've conceded the federal election a long time ago. Some of them, people who hate and loathe Dalton McGuinty and the Ontario Liberals with every fibre of their political being, have decided to vote for Paul Martin. A few are even considering memberships with the federal Liberals as well. The permanent political staffers are planning to stay put in Toronto, even if we Tories lose the provincial election and even if they were to get job offers from the Canadian Alliance and/or Tories in Ottawa. That's because there's a feeling that there'd really be nothing worth accomplishing up there and all the talented conservative staffers now esconced in Victoria, Edmonton, and Toronto have absolutely no intention of joining what are viewed as quite frankly "second-rate" political staffs working for the two conservative parties down in Ottawa. A few days ago, on a long subway ride, I was talking about the federal situation with a fellow campaign worker of mine. This guy was one of those political savants you tend to meet on election campaigns. While I have a fairly general grasp of the politics across the country, this guy seemed to know just about every riding, the voting history of the ridings, and the odds each party had in the each riding (and remember, at present, there's 301 ridings with a small increase to 308 ridings once electoral redistribution is decided upon in the spring of 2004). Well, between the two of us, we worked out what we thought was a fairly reasonable guess at the results of the next federal election. Make of it what you will. Here are the current party standings in Parliament:
Liberals: 171
Canadian Alliance: 63
Bloq Quebecois: 34
Progressive Conservatives: 15
NDP: 14
Independents: 4Here's what we (two random, if informed young Tory activists) thought Parliament would look like after the Martin wipeout:
Liberals: 215 to 245
Canadian Alliance: 30 to 45
Bloq Quebecois: 10(!) to 30
NDP: 5 to 15
Progressive Conservatives: 5 to 10Yes, we're predicting a Liberal gain of at least around 45 seats. And we're predicting that our own party is going to be reduced to a Maritime rump which will most likely be without Official Party Status. The one good thing? The whole "Unite The Right" thing will then most likely occur since one of the partners will be on political life-support and need all the help it can get. I also ventured another, more wild prediction. If we're right, and the next federal election is as much a debacle for the Progressive Conservatives as we fear it's going to be, Peter MacKay will be so completely discredited, that he'll be forced to resign, and the political structure of the party will be so shell-shocked, David Orchard and his pals will take over the federal party. At which point, "Unite The Right" becomes kind of a moot point, as they will no conservatives left for the Canadian Alliance to unite with, would there?
Posted by Barton @ 02:34 AM EST [Link]
~ A FEW ELECTION NOTES: Bruce Rolston puts the case against the Ontario Tories more brutally than a Progressive Conservative hack like me ever can, so I can appreciate that. Bruce put us on his blogroll after I launched a few potshots myself at him on the topic of Ontario politics, so he's a straight-up guy, even if he does have tendency towards exagerration. Ernie Eves, "Chief Criminal?" "Worst thing to happen to Ontario politics since Francis Bond Head??" (Does Bruce's history book skip the period of 1990 to 1995?) "Invisible bugs crawling on his skin whenever actual human beings enter his personal space???" Hey, at least Mr. Rolston admits his political biases, as I do with my own. And I'm not going to attack him for his name-calling here, because quite honestly, we Tories are going to be indulging in a lot of name-calling ourselves once the ban on election advertising is lifted next week.
For the past week, I've been working on a quite hopeless campaign in the west of the city. Even so, the mood among us young Tory activists can be best described as "nastily confident:" infinite contempt for Dalton, smirking condescension for Howard (my candidate, after looking at the NDP platform, said that they came across as children, "If only we are all nice and good to all the poor people out there and raise the minimum wage to ten dollars a hour and bring back rent control, everything will be JUST FINE!"). Rolston writes of "relentless personal attacks on the Leader of the Opposition." Oh, he ain't seen nothing yet. I've been told that we've got some incoming attack ads on poor Dalton that are just masterpieces of vitriol. Hey, let the mud-slinging begin.
Alright, I will indulge in one policy dispute here. The front page of yesterday's National Post reads: "McGuinty 'wide open' to de-merging Toronto" with the Liberal leader saying, "If the people of Toronto want to come forward and they develop a consensus with respect to how it is they'd like to remodel their system of governance, I'd be delighted to work with them to lend shape to that." Excuse me, if this highly dubious bit of worm-can opening does not inspire my confidence in Dalton "I know him to be a good man" McGuinty as a potential Premier. Listen, if Dalton wants to pander to the fantasies of some of the more diehard anti-amalgamation folks, fine. But that doesn't hide the fact that comments like these are signs of outright stupidity. Whatever the rights or wrongs of amalgamation (and let me be on the record as being for it), the province and the city have spent billions, literally billions of dollars, setting-up and combining complex administrative structures, moving staff and equipment, renovating buildings, rebranding the entire municipality, and all-in-all trying to build precisely the kind of "consensus" Dalton talks about. There is not one good reason in the world, why all that public money and the work of almost six years should be thrown away, just so we can work out yet another endlessly painstaking "consensus" for the indulgence of a few "pre-1998 Golden Age" fantasists. And please, please don't give me any of that "woe-is-Toronto-under-amalgamation" crap that is served all hot and fresh from the editorial pages of the Toronto Star. Who are you are going to believe: them or the 45% of all immigrants to Canada who continue to relocate here year after year after year? Who are you going to believe: them or Statistics Canada, who said that the population of the GTA recently reached over five million? Who you are going believe: them or your own lying eyes? (Had a look at how many condos are being built downtown lately, Dalton?) Or the Chief Planner for the City of Toronto, who recently said that we had the healthiest downtown in North America, even better than Manhatten? Or the murder rate, which despite all the media (and police) hysterics about black-on-black gang violence, remains on track to stay within the low 60s, where it has been stuck at for at least the last few years?
As one of my fellow campaign workers put it, "Look all around you. Things have gotten infinitely better." To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, here's the key question to ask yourself, "Next month is Election Day. Next month all of you will go to the polls, will stand there in the polling place and make a decision. I think when you make that decision, it might be well if you would ask yourself, are you better off than you were eight years ago? Is it easier for you to go and buy things in the stores than it was eight years ago? Is there more or less unemployment in the province than there was eight years ago? Is Ontario as respected throughout the country as it was? And if you answer all of those questions yes, why then, I think your choice is very obvious as to whom you will vote for." And I believe we all know what the answer to all the above questions are, don't we?
[Update - Sept 5, 1:26pm] - David Janes responds to Barton. - ed.
Posted by Barton @ 01:19 AM EST [Link]
~ SELF-PROMO ALERT: The American Prowler is running my review of Tucker Carlson's new book here.
Posted by steve @ 01:09 AM EST [Link]
Thursday, September 4, 2003 TRIBUTE IN LIGHT: Gothamist reports that PBS will be airing a documentary on the Tribute in Light, the twin columns of light that was the first sanctioned memorial to the victims of the World Trade Centre.
Read more here.
Posted by steve @ 02:52 PM EST [Link]
~ ESTRADA DROPS OUT: The GOP is slowly but surely losing the fight over the judiciary.
Posted by antle @ 01:26 PM EST [Link]
~ THIS IS NOT FROM THE ONION: A prank by those fun-loving Amish turns deadly.
Read the story here.
Posted by antle @ 01:00 PM EST [Link]
~ THE QUINTESSENTIAL AMERICA HATER
Ramsey Clark is one of those guys that Ann Coulter would call a traitor (she does in her book Treason). His only agenda is to hate whatever America does.
Here's his take on Dubya and the liberation of Iraq, taken from a story at CNSNews.com: 'Citing charges from the Nuremburg trials at the end of World War II, Clark said the war in Iraq was a "crime against peace" and called for Bush's impeachment. The U.S. government, according to Clark, cannot be trusted.'
This is the same Clark that defended Saddam Hussein from Baghdad during the first Gulf War. Ann Coulter is right. This guy is a traitor, a treasonous slimeball.
The rest of the article is at CNSNews.com.
cb
Posted by clbloomer @ 10:24 AM EST [Link]
~ ANALYZING DUBYA: John Ray slaps Oliver James over his silly "psychological profile" of George W. Bush, one that to most of us doesn't remind us of the current president. In fact, it's so bizarre that you have to read The Guardian article for yourself. That's what you get for relying on Freud and Marxism...
Read John Ray's blog entry about it here. Make sure to click through to Natalie Solent's blog entry about James' book as well...
Posted by steve @ 02:20 AM EST [Link]
~ I'D RATHER HAVE GREY POUPON: Sen. John Kerry - or as my readers call him, Ketchup Kerry - is trying valiantly to get his campaign back on track. I ran into his campaign bus on my way home from work - let me just say that in the 18 years he's been my senator, I've never been impressed with him.
Posted by antle @ 12:35 AM EST [Link]
~ WAIT YOUR TURN LIKE I DID, AHNULD SAYS: James Fulford over at VDARE.com reports that Arnold Schwarzenegger told interviewers that an amnesty for illegals is unfair to legal immigrants. Additionally, he reportedly demonstrated a better grasp of the English language than Arianna Huffington.
Posted by antle @ 12:29 AM EST [Link]
Wednesday, September 3, 2003 KIDS...BAH!: According to the latest Mindset List the average college freshmen knows what "bling bling" is but has no idea what a Paul Newman is.
But who, some University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee freshmen asked Tuesday, is this Paul Newman? Or Pete Rose, who the list points out has always been a gambler in their lifetime?
"I've never heard of those people," said Pamela Westmoreland, 18.
Either I was the smartest man in the world -- which I doubt -- or I occasionally opened a book -- more likely -- but I was nowhere near as stupid as the average freshman of today. If they stopped watching Punk'd for five minutes they'd know who Paul Newman is (My God, that means they've never watched Cool Hand Luke! -- "I can eat 50 eggs.") and a lot of other things. Of course, there's hope:
Adults may not understand college freshmen, but McBride cautioned them not to dismiss the younger generation just because they have their own references. The point of a liberal arts education, after all, is to teach some history and context, he said.
What the hell is high school for then? And what are they going to do, watch Slapshot, The Sting or Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid?
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 06:57 PM EST [Link]
~ SHOPPING FOR THE SOUL: When I first saw the magazine Lucky on the newstand I really things were going to hell faster than even I had originally thought. The magazine, if you've never read an issue, is essentially a collection of advertisements that you pay for. Note, I didn't say there was editorial content along with advertising, I said it was advertising. It's aimed at women and it is a magazine devoted to shopping. Along with real ads readers are treated to round-ups of products that they may covet.
In this era of the "buysexual" or "metrosexual" one shouldn't be surprised then that men too will receive the Lucky treatment. Simon Dumenco reports on Cargo, the magazine that Condé Nast hopes will be as popular with men as its counterpart is for women.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 01:31 PM EST [Link]
~ MEMO TO JOHNNY: I DON'T MISS YOU: Actor Johnny Depp said today that the U.S. was like a "dumb puppy" and that he wouldn't live there until the current political climate changed.
"America is dumb, it's like a dumb puppy that has big teeth that can bite and hurt you, aggressive," he said.
"My daughter is four, my boy is one. I'd like them to see America as a toy, a broken toy. Investigate it a little, check it out, get this feeling and then get out."
I've never liked one of your movies Johnny, even before I knew you were an ass. I will give you credit though, unlike Alec Baldwin you did leave.
Read on or read Paul Walfield's recent essay about Depp here.
Posted by steve @ 01:02 PM EST [Link]
~ GETTING PLAYED: James S. Robbins has a good piece in today's NRO about how to deal with North Korea. Everybody wants to come up with a deal with North Korea as quickly as possible...Robbins doesn't quite agree.
[R]eaching a deal is not a good in itself. Besides, agreements are only as dependable as the people who make them and the North Koreans have not demonstrated much creditability. They are particularly shameless about it. When faced with evidence they were violating the provisions of the deal concluded with the ever-optimistic Clinton administration in 1994, the North Koreans simply abrogated it. When accused of violating the terms of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, they pulled out. A new agreement might contain stringent verification and inspection provisions (under the rubric "don't trust but verify"), but if the history of arms control teaches anything it is that the "hiders" have a huge advantage over the "finders;" and if the balance begins to tip the other way, North Korea will say game over and demand a new agreement on more favorable terms. This instrumentalist view of international agreements may not come as a surprise to students of Soviet history, but if there are any of them in the State Department, they were probably reading Lenin for the wrong reasons.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 12:38 PM EST [Link]
~ SELF-PROMO ALERT: I have a piece in FrontPage Magazine today recalling my wild and crazy times raising a right-wing ruckus in college. I'm afraid it does not include any anecdotes about my meatloaf purchasing habits.
Posted by antle @ 08:13 AM EST [Link]
~ NEVER RUSH THE PLANNING!: The Washington Times reports that a "secret report for the Joint Chiefs of Staff lays the blame for setbacks in Iraq on a flawed and rushed war-planning process that 'limited the focus' for preparing for post-Saddam Hussein operations."
The report, prepared last month, said the search for weapons of mass destruction was planned so late in the game that it was impossible for U.S. Central Command to carry out the mission effectively. "Insufficient U.S. government assets existed to accomplish the mission," the classified briefing said.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 03:29 AM EST [Link]
Tuesday, September 2, 2003 WARREN ZEVON'S SWAN SONG: Today I bought what will surely be Warren Zevon's last album of original material, The Wind. The songs were written and the disc was recorded after he was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer. He raced the impending doom imposed by his terminal illness to finish the album and I am glad he did.
I don't know if there are any Warren Zevon fans out there among the readers of ESR. He is a quirky songwriter and recording artist known for showing a morbid sense of humor in his lyrics. He was never the greatest singer, but there was something in his voice that went beyond technical skill. If you like Bob Dylan, Tom Waits or John Prine, you know what I mean. I don't want to sound like the world's biggest afficionado of obscure Zevon music - my favorite album of his was always Excitable Boy, the commerically popular one, with "Werewolves of London" and "Send Lawyers, Guns and Money" on it.
But if you're contemplating buying The Wind at all, I strongly urge you to do so. His cover of Dylan's "Knocking on Heaven's Door" is powerful (especially given the context) as are such original tunes as "Keep Me In Your Heart" and "She's Too Good For Me." The album is dignified, bittersweet without being maudlin. And there's still plenty of Zevon's irascible wit. Even if this wasn't Warren's swan song, this would be a great album. It boasts appearances by Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, Don Henley, Joe Walsh, Jackson Browne, Timothy B. Schmitt, Emmylou Harris and the pedal steel guitar sounds of Ry Cooder and David Linder. If you're concerned about how his voice will sound, as I was, rest assured that he still sounds like same Warren who sang "Werewolves of London."
Posted by antle @ 09:27 PM EST [Link]
~ THAT JUST MEANS WE GET TO KILL MORE OF YOU: The Taliban says it has sent another 300 fighters into southern Afghanistan to challenge Afghan and American soldiers.
Maulvi Faizullah, a senior Taliban commander involved in fighting in Zabol, said a fresh wave of militants had been deployed in Dai Chopan district to join up to 1,000 others who have been fighting in the area for the last eight days.
Given that Taliban troops keep being slaughtered by the dozens every time they go into combat against American soldiers, I say keep 'em coming. The more you send in, the quicker American soldiers get to go home.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 02:12 PM EST [Link]
~ IT HAD TO HAPPEN SOONER OR LATER: A federal court judge ruled today that John Hinckley Jr., the man who tried to kill U.S. President Ronald Reagan, will get a chance this fall to convince a judge he should be allowed unsupervised visits with his parents.
Judge Paul Friedman of U.S. District Court set either Nov. 3 or Nov. 17 for the start of a three- to four-day hearing on whether Hinckley should be allowed to have unsupervised visits with his parents away from the hospital.
The date will depend on when two government-appointed doctors who have examined Hinckley can testify.
Friedman said the hearing could be held even earlier if an unrelated case is settled before it goes to trial.
What are people thinking?
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 02:07 PM EST [Link]
~ WILL THE CONSERVATIVES WIN AGAIN IN ONTARIO?: Of course, if your a snarky lad like I, you ask if there are any conservative parties to vote for in Ontario.
Premier Ernie Eves announced this afternoon that Ontarians will be going to the polls on October 2. For the first time since well before 1995, I have no idea who I will be voting for...or more accurately, if I'll be voting at all.
What brought me back into provincial politics was the Common Sense revolution of Mike Harris, a conservative politician who remarkably followed through on the majority of promises he made. Unfortunately for conservatives, Eves seems less than willing to carry on this revolution of tax cuts, fiscal responsibility and business friendly policies which have fostered economic growth and job creation.
Don't get me wrong, Eves is better than the alternatives of Dalton McGuinty and his Liberals and Howard Hampton and the New Democrats. I guess my choice is really whether I'll vote. Should I reward someone who seems to be abandoning the policies of Harris or should I help hand McGuinty victory by staying home. Does it matter?
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 01:58 PM EST [Link]
~ I'M SORRY STEVE, BUT I JUST CAN'T RESIST...: Class, welcome back from summer vacation. I hope you all enjoyed it. As your first exercise for today, why don't you try to compare and contrast these quotes.
1. But what about all the pundits who egged them on? If you are proven wrong, big time, about an issue that you chose, despite your ignorance, to bluster about over and over, shouldn't you pay a price? (Steve Sailer, on why pundits who are wrong should admit they are wrong, Sept. 2, 2003)
2. Does anyone else find this claim suspicious? "France's worst heat wave on record has killed an estimated 3,000 people across the nation, the Health Ministry said Thursday, as the government faced accusations that it failed to respond to a major health crisis," the Associated Press reports from Paris. Three thousand deaths? In a Western European country? Because of the weather? This is the kind of death toll usually reserved for Third World natural disasters--Chinese earthquakes, Bangladeshi floods and the like. Has the heat really killed 3,000 Frenchmen?... Might it be noteworthy that the French are claiming almost the same number of deaths from the heat as America suffered on Sept. 11? (James Taranto, on the French Heatwave Deaths, August 14, 2003)
3. Does anyone else find Taranto to be a hate-filled moron? Look, a heatwave in Chicago alone caused 700 excess deaths in a week in 1995. (I particularly recall the 26 hour blackout on a humid 106 degree day I endured.) There's nothing unlikely about a once-a-century heatwave killing 3,000 in a sizable country. On an individual basis, these kind of deaths aren't as bad as, say, the deaths in a school bus crash, because the victims are typically old people without long life expectancies, but still, it's awfully sad. (Steve Sailer, responding to James Taranto, August 14, 2003)
4. The mathematics of this problem are terribly transparent. In order to meet their self-imposed targets from the Kyoto Protocol (search) on global warming, European nations already have taxed energy, but they have not done enough. Consequently, even more restrictions are being proposed, especially by the German government. Unaffordable air conditioning will become even more expensive, killing more and more Europeans the next time the temperature reaches what passes for a few degrees above what is normal in Dallas. Europe has effectively imposed a continuous blackout on air conditioning, and now it is paying the price. Some people will point to the hundreds of people who died in the infamous July 1995 Chicago heat wave and wonder how we could have ignored this obvious tragedy. We didn't. Normally many more die on the poorer South Side of the city, but not in 1995. A power outage hit the affluent North Side early on and the air conditioning went out. As they say, Q.E.D. And as for the heat-prostrated people of Europe, it's too bad that the Kyoto Protocol will do nothing measurable about the Earth's mean temperature for the forseeable future. But it will kill thousands and thousands more in France, Germany and England, where energy taxes are enormous, creating an invisible blackout of lifesaving air conditioning. (Patrick J. Michaels, "Energy Tax Blacks Out Many Lives In Europe," FoxNews.com, August 20, 2003)
5. France's Health Boss Quits Over Heat Deaths (Daily Telegraph, August 19, 2003)
Chirac Fury At "10,400 Deaths" In Heatwave (Daily Telegraph, August 21, 2003)6. And where are the Red Cross and Oxfam and Human Rights Watch and all the other noisy humanitarians? If 10,000 Iraqis had died of dysentery on George W Bush's watch, you'd never hear the end of it...France isn't on the edge, it's in the abyss. When I motored round Iraq a couple of months ago, the hospital wards were well below capacity. Yet in France the entire health system – or that percentage of it not spending August at the beach – is stretched beyond its limits (35 hours a week, 44 weeks a year)...10,000 French can die, and even the French don't seem to care – or not too much, and not with any great urgency. Bernard Mazeyrie, managing director of France's largest undertakers, told the New York Times that several of the bereaved were in no hurry to bury their aged loved ones: "Some, he said, informed of the death of relatives, postponed funerals, not to interrupt the August 15 holiday weekend, and left the bodies in the refrigerated hall." Au bord de la mer? Ou au bord de ma mère? Hmm. Tough call...Big Government inevitably diminishes its citizens' capacity to take responsibility, to the point where even your dead mum is just one more inconvenience the state should do something about. (Mark Steyn, "Iraq May Be On The Edge But France Has Hit Rock Bottom Abyss," Daily Telegraph, August 23, 2003)
As they say, I report, you decide. (By the way, I wouldn't be picking on Steve here, if he hadn't been so vicious as to call James Taranto, a "hate-filled moron." Live by name-calling, die by fact.)
Posted by Barton @ 12:07 PM EST [Link]
~ ONE FOR JAMES. This Sam Francis column, about the failures of the mainstream conservative movement, strikes me as a blog made for Mr. Antle.
Alas, the "old-timers" are out-of-touch with some of new trends that are also rapidly changing the so-called political discourse - like the Free State Project or even blogging.
I think what Sam said about Marxism in the universities is right on!
Posted by izzy @ 11:32 AM EST [Link]
~ GREAT, NOW I HAVE TO HATE GEN-X'ERS AS WELL: One of the greatest posts I ever wrote appeared on January 20, 2003 and concerned my hatred for baby boomers.
You are a plague that has destroyed Western culture and replaced it with dead-end nihilism. You are the most self-important generation ever. You laud yourselves for every evil that you foisted on us. I don't hate you, but I do hate your age cohort.
Ah words that keep me warm. Well, they did until the New York Times came along to report (years late of course, the Simpsons once lampooned this years ago) that people my age -- my age! -- are beginning to live in the past. What do people aged 18-34 like to do these days? Relive their youth by embracing things from their childhood.
It's fair to say that the singer-songwriter who calls herself Gwendolyn never thought her band, the Goodtime Gang, would appeal to anyone over the age of, say, 7. A typical performance includes covers of the preschool standards "Bingo" and "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" and original compositions that tackle topics like human anatomy, the importance of sharing and bugs.
So it was with some surprise that Gwendolyn, who is 28 and performs in a Raggedy Ann dress, cartoonish pigtails and knee-high socks, found herself one recent evening in a packed Los Angeles nightclub performing for a crowd of fans whose idea of a stiff drink extends beyond undiluted o.j. Many in the audience sat cross-legged on the floor, cocktails perched on bobbing knees. Some sang along.
The performance was part of a bill that began with an elaborate puppet show and ended with an appearance by the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players, a "conceptual art rock band" from New York, which includes a 9-year-old girl on drums. For Gwendolyn, who has no children of her own but who says her songs for children are inspired by "a 4-year-old kid inside me," performing children's music for an audience of grown-ups was more than just a hipster lark — it was liberating.
It's funny but the same day the article appeared -- Sunday -- happened to see me outside smoking a cigarette and internally rage that I was no longer 22. Turning 30 a couple of years ago was hard. I still remember thinking that day that I was now no longer in my 20s. Even though I'm still closer to my 20s than my 40s, those days seem so distant to me now -- not to mention a little sad. I made a bit of a mess of my 20s and in recent years I've been making up for it. I don't party like it was 1993 -- I doubt I'd even want to if even given the chance -- but I am having some fun these days.
That said, I don't drug myself into thinking that I can relive halcyon days by watching 'Battle of the Planets' or trying to find my circa 1973 NHL bedspread on eBay. For better or worse I'm 32 and there's plenty of things to keep you busy at that age without retreating to the mental fortress of days long past. I'd like to think that if I ever wore Scooby Do underpants, it was in 1975 when I was too young to know better.
As much as I miss my youth -- and I know saying that at 32 is stupid -- I have no real desire to relive it. I don't want to go to a restaurant and order macaroni and cheese and meatloaf (Revelation: I've never eaten meatloaf in my life). I don't want to read Harry Potter. I don't want a He-Man action figure. I do not want to suffer Peterpandemonium.
Unlike these Gen-Xers who seem to believe that adulthood has lost its appeal, I think it -- though fraught with problems -- is a pretty good thing, or at least better than the alternatives. Yes, we have to worry about money and bills and how the two rarely meet in a happy medium. We have to worry about women, or men, or if you swing that way both women and men. We know that our parents won't live forever and that begins to scare us. We know that we aren't the same people we were just ten years ago when the world seemed so open to us. But at this age we get to experience the joys of discovering women, or men, or if you swing that way both women and men, in deeper and more sophisticated ways. We become parents ourselves. We learn that money isn't everything...though we still never have enough of it.
If you're a Gen-Xer and you believe listening to childhood albums, wearing children's pajamas and watching children's programming adds something valuable to your life then fair enough, knock yourself out and spend that disposable income of yours on Hello Kitty! and Spider-Man T-shirts. If it takes that to get you through the day then I doubt anything I could say would convince you that you're acting just like an idiot boomer who longs for the summer of 1969. Me? For all the problems I have these days -- and I have a few -- I prefer not to duck them by fooling myself they don't exist because I once owned a Cure album. When I want to feel warm and cocooned these days, I put an extra blanket on the bed.
Grow up.
Read the Times story here. (Free registration or use Account: esrmusings, Pass: cookie)
Posted by steve @ 12:44 AM EST [Link]
Monday, September 1, 2003 SELF-PROMO ALERT: Alabama Attorney General William Pryor has had a tough few months. First, Senate Democrats blocked his nomination to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals because of his socially conservative views. Now, he is being criticized by conservative Christians in Alabama for abiding by a federal court order to have the Ten Commandments display removed. The guy just can't catch a break.
I have a piece about his troubles in Brainwash, the webzine published by America's Future Foundation. While you're there, check out Brainwash's new site design.
Posted by antle @ 10:38 PM EST [Link]
~ THIS IS WHY I SUPPORT ADAMS: The man who never showed fear in his movies seems to be afraid of debating. Arnold Schwarzenegger today announced that he would participate in only one debate, one scheduled for late September.
I know Brooke Adams would never turn down an opportunity to debate.
Posted by steve @ 06:57 PM EST [Link]
~ WILL HILLARY DO IT?: The buzz that Hillary Rodham Clinton may actually jump into the 2004 Democratic presidential race is continuing. None of the other Democrats are catching fire (with the exception of Howard Dean who reminds Washington of George McGovern), George W. Bush looks less formidable after and polls show Hillary would clean up if she ran in the primaries. John Kerry, once considered a strong possibility for the nomination, is down 21 points to Dean in New Hampshire and has sunk to 5 percent in the national polls. Between Dean, Dick Gephartdt and Joe Lieberman, there is no clear national front-runner. Could Hillary do it?
My impression has been no. She hasn't even fulfilled her commitment to serve out her first Senate term. The race would make her look opportunistic. Bush still has to be considered the favorite and Hillary wouldn't want to risk losing to him. If the Republicans were to keep the White House in 2004, she'd have an even clearer Democratic field in 2008. Plus, the public is not as gaga over the Clintons as it was in the '90s.
But I think a point Orrin Judd made recently on his blog has a lot of truth to it: In politics, if you want to be president and can win your party's nomination, you run. Hillary is in that position now. Bush is looking more vulnerable than a year ago. There reportedly will be a big meeting of her advisors and money people this month. Time will tell whether she runs, but at this point I wouldn't rule it out.
Posted by antle @ 04:30 PM EST [Link]
~ I DIDN'T DO IT! SAYS SADDAM: Al Jazeera has an aired an audio tape purportedly by Saddam Hussein claiming that he had nothing to do with the bomb outside a mosque in Najaf.
Addressing the "great and strong people of Iraq," the speaker on the tape referred to the bombing as "an accident," adding, "They [the Americans] rushed to accuse the so-called Saddam supporters with no evidence."
"Maybe many of you have heard the hiss of the snakes, the servants of the occupiers, how they accused us without any evidence of killing of al-Hakim," the tape said.
"Saddam Hussein is a leader not of the minority but the leader of the great people of Iraq," the tape said. The voice added that Iraqis included Arabs, Kurds, Shiites, Sunnis, Muslims and non-Muslims.
The bombing was an accident? Perhaps we could accidentally kill Saddam one of these days. That said, at least the tape didn't say that Israel was behind the bomb like the Egyptian and Iranian media have proposed.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 01:47 PM EST [Link]
~ RIP CHUCK: Charles Bronson has passed away at the age of 81. Although everyone keeps talking about his 'Death Wish' movies, I always preferred his work in The Magnificent Seven and The Dirty Dozen.
Movie night at Fort Sinatra on Monday will be The Magnificent Seven.
Sleep well Mr. Buchinsky.
Read on.
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