I couldn't resist

Blame Derbyshire. Reading the poem in light of yesterday's conversation just caused the title to leap out at me. With deepest apologies to Mr. Yeats:

I WILL arise and go now, and go to Innesmouth
And a small altar build there, of clay and fishbones made;
Nine dread nights will I have there, enshrouded in darkling myth,
And live alone in the lurking shade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes creeping slow,
Swelling in the veils of the black tide I hear the chittering;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and dawn an eerie glow,
And evening full as the deep ones sing.

I will arise and go now, for always night is day
I hear the Shoggoth calling with vile sounds by the shore
While I stand by the mirror, my face a pallid gray,
I hear it in my cold heart's core.

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The global reach

Joan Veon writes on WND: At the Millennium Summit in 2000, the United Nations presented the world's 189 kings, princes, prime ministers and presidents a list of global needs. They include by 2015: reducing poverty and hunger by 50 percent, ensuring that children everywhere are able to complete a full course of primary schooling, reducing by 66 percent child mortality, halting and reversing HIV-AIDS, malaria and other major diseases and improving the lives of 100 million slum dwellers ... among others. Notice this is not a country-by-country goal – which would reflect the idea of national sovereignty – but reflects a world united and governed through a universal political body called the United Nations. These goals have also been adopted by all of the extended U.N. family: the International Monetary Fund-World Bank, the World Health Organization, UNESCO, etc., as well as the Group of Eight heads of state. Many leading multinational and transnational corporations have also adopted these goals.

Interesting goals for what people dismiss as a debating society. I have said this many times: the United Nations is the most dangerous threat that mankind has ever known. Once it has tax revenues and a military, it will be a matter of seconds until the Maos, Lenins and Saloth Sars begin competing to seize the reins of power. The most ruthless of them will win. Contemplate, if you will, just what that sort of social engineering psychopath is likely to do with that sort of power and global reach.

A full course of primary schooling. Somehow, I suspect homeschooling won't be smiled upon.

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VDH swings and misses

VDH writes:We are presently engaged in a world war for our civilization and its vision of a just and humane society. Our values will either endure this present struggle and indeed be invigorated by the ordeal, or like once great civilizations of the past we will stumble in the face of barbarism and lose all that we hold dear.... Americans believe that freedom and consensual government — far from being the exclusive domain of the West — are ideals central to the human condition and the shared aspirations of all born into this world.

This is some pretty serious hyperbole. There is a world war being waged against us, but losing to the global jihad will take decades, if not a century or more. In the meantime - and partially under the aegis of the war on method - we are losing what little we have not already lost of our civilization's vision of a just and human society. The twin devils of bureaucratic centralization and cultural secularization have destroyed most of what made the West Western; if the global jihad ultimately triumphs it will be the equivalent of Alaric's Vandals sacking a long-tottering Rome.

The jihad does offer an opportunity to throw off feckless secularism, but the response of the nation's leadership has made it clear that a restoration of freedom is not in the cards. Quite the opposite would seem to be the case. Our corruption is systemic.

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Thus spake Blackfive

I just wanted to say "thanks!" to all of you who made donations to Spirit of America this week. We raised $50,000 from the blogosphere! You people ROCK!!!!

Holy cow! That's impressive. Reflecting back on last week's column, I wonder how much of the $1.5 million raised came from individuals in the ABCNNBCBS community? Blackfive also has this reminder that there are no atheists in foxholes.

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A reading assignment for the Gargler

Fred Reed writes: The Bell Curve, an excellent book more maligned than read, pointed out a trend seldom noticed. The authors called it “cognitive stratification,” not a phrase Byron would have chosen but serviceable enough. It means the concentration of the intelligent. In 1850 people of high intelligence were dispersed through the population. If the child of a cowboy had an IQ of 160, he would probably remain in the geographical region with cowboys. He might be more successful than most, and might choose as friends the quicker wits thereabouts. Yet he would be part of the community.... In 1850 there were few jobs requiring the very bright. Today they abound. Universities began to scour the country for the highly intelligent. These, once found, met each other at elite universities or, later, in the places where the bright concentrated to work: Laboratories, software houses, hospitals, magazine journalism, and occasionally law firms. They married each other. Their children tended to be bright. The result has been that the bright tend to live, play, work, and sleep almost entirely with each other.

It is true that the bright and educated are almost shockingly insulated. I once had an argument with a woman who insisted that everyone went to college - she defied me to name one person in our social circle who hadn't. I couldn't do that, so I was forced to make do with demonstrating that around 50 percent of the populace goes to college at all, and a significant percentage of those who do never graduate. My father used to get on my case for being contemptuous of other people's intelligence, but he finally stopped when I illustrated how many of my problems in the corporate world stemmed directly from overestimating others. Contempt may not be nice, but it is nevertheless wise to temper your expectations of the capabilities of others on whom you are relying.

The most significant thing in this regard has little to do with intelligence. Possibly the great lie of the last 250 years is that man is rational. Our market theories depend on it, often our business activities postulate it, and it simply isn't true. Man is inherently irrational, and this is supported day in and day out by watching the actions and decisions of those around you. Much of the time, intelligence simply helps one do a more convicing job of rationalizing one's stupid decision to follow one's desires.

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Inflation in Revolutionary France

From the Mises Institute: The revolutionary government first decided to cure the evils generated by inflation with more inflation. Instead of destroying assignats received for the national properties, they reissued them in the form of smaller notes. In June 1791, they issued another 600 million assignats (the previous promise not to issue more was conveniently and predictably forgotten), and in December an additional 300 million. By the end of the year, its market value had fallen to 66 percent of its face value. In 1792, they issued 600 million more. In April of the same year, they confiscated the estates of the émigrés (those who fled France to avoid being arrested or murdered) and added them to the national properties.

Then came 1793 Year One; the year of la Terreur. Having tried inflation and legal coercion, they would try terrorizing the population into accepting the plunging assignat at par, and producing and selling at a patriotic loss. In March, the National Convention created the Orwellian-named Committee of Public Safety (another unfortunate American precedent), which was a kind of committee of terror, dedicated to expropriating and murdering those deemed to be "traitors" to France or enemies of la Revolution. In May, they passed le Maximum, imposing price ceilings on grain. It worsened the grain shortage. In June, they passed the Forced Loan, a progressive income tax, whose progressivity was progressively lowered to reach more and more citizens. They also passed increasingly draconian and deadly laws designed to force people to accept the assignats at par and forbidding them from exchanging them for anything less than their face value. In July, the Convention repudiated the first issue of interest-bearing assignats. In August, trading (i.e. buying or selling) specie [gold] was prohibited. In September, the Convention passed the General Maximum, extending price ceilings to all foodstuffs, as well as firewood, coal, and other essentials. In that month, despite the deadly coercion, the assignat fell to 30 percent against gold. During 1793, the Convention issued 1,200 million assignats; in 1794, 3,000 million. Next came the deluge. In 1795, 33,000 million were printed, and in October, when a new government the Directory assumed power, the assignats' purchasing power had fallen to almost nothing. On the black market, 600 francs of assignats traded for one gold franc.

The Directory was done with the assignat, but it was not done with inflation. In February 1796, it issued a new paper currency, the mandat, and made it exchangeable for assignats at the rate of 30 to 1. By August, after 2,500 million had been issued, the mandat had fallen to three percent of its face value. In 1796, the Directory had had enough, finally, and it withdrew the legal tender character of both the assignat and the mandat. Thereupon, their remaining meager exchangeable value disappeared altogether.

Interesting how modern it all sounds, doesn't it. Fiat money and socialism have gone hand-in-hand longer than socialism has been a recognizable philosophy. Not that one can blame socialism for inflation, as it's been around since the first king decided to spend a few extra denari by issuing adulterated coins. If Prechter is not correct, and we are NOT heading for a deflationary Great Depression, we may be unfortunate enough to see what happens if the Fed tries to inflate us out from underneath the mountain of debt hanging overhead. At least our monetary masters have been more circumspect. It's taken us 70 years for our dollar to lose 95 percent of its value; the French Directory managed to completely destroy the assignat in five.

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How they dance

From the Star and Sickle: The anecdotal stories that crime was decreasing in downtown Minneapolis, St. Paul and at the Mall of America started soon after the Metro Transit strike began in early March. Curious about what might be happening, police began discreetly monitoring crime figures and found some intriguing numbers.

• Police calls at the Mall of America, especially on weekends, were down by as much as 21 percent.
• Arrests in downtown Minneapolis had dropped.
• In St. Paul, police calls for so-called "quality of life" complaints, such as narcotics sales near bus stops, also had fallen.

After the metro area's first transit strike in a decade, the possible relationship between the strike and crime has become a much-debated -- and politically touchy -- issue. Critics complain that the focus unnecessarily paints an unflattering portrait of bus riders. Police contend that the figures, while showing drops in possible criminal activity, may have uncertain meaning and caution against hasty conclusions.

Interestingly enough, and unsurprisingly, you won't see a single mention of race in the entire article. But the nervous tone leads to the inescapable conclusion that it was members of a particular group favored by the left-liberal media wasn't getting arrested as often during the bus strike. I'm just curious to know what point is served by talking around easily established facts.

Lest you get the wrong impression, I should point out that I'm on the side of the narcotic sellers anyhow. They're just supplying an existing demand, they aren't forcing their wares on little kids by means of their parents. Oh, that's right, I forgot. If the government okays it, then it must be desirable.

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Employment bleg

I seem to recall someone, perhaps Resispa, had numbers on how many government employees there were at the Federal, State and Local levels. Could whoever that is please email me? Also, if you have them, please let me know what the rate of change since either 2000 or 1992 has been. Thanks.

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Perverts

Robert Alt writes on NRO: While a number of networks chose to air graphic scenes from Fallujah, one deserves special mention. Charlie Ryan and Rachel Levin of NBC contacted military officials in Baghdad immediately after the events in Fallujah to request an interview with a group of soldiers. A Coalition military source confirmed that the crew wished to show soldiers a graphic video of the events in Fallujah, and to record the soldiers' responses. When military officials objected for obvious reasons to this Clockwork Orange proposal, the NBC reporters were incredulous, suggesting that the idea was somehow appropriate because the victims were not soldiers.

As if there wasn't enough reason to turn off the ABCNNBCBS cabal already. I absolutely HATE the news technique of sticking a microphone in the face of someone who has just experienced a personal tragedy, and the reporter asking in a fake compassionate voice: "how do you feel about your parents dying in a freak opening of a Dho-Nha gate in their microwave?" This is nothing but the worst emotional porn. Emotional vampires - someone should drive a stake through their parasitic hearts.

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Big Chilly on Cthulhu

"Soft on terror? Arguably, terror is his long suit!" Big Chilly went on to point out that while having an Elder God tearing at the fabric of reality could present even more problems for the nation than a Hillary presidency, there's ample Lovecraftian precedent for a remote-controlled zombie operated by devotees of the mighty octopoid one. A Mancthulhian Candidate, if you will.

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Mailvox: Compensating

Jeff comments: When violence is used to preserve life or the life of a loved one, it is justified. When violence is used as part of a greater purpose, say to preserve our God given human rights in the face of a tyrranical government, it is justifed. But violent reaction to being screwed over by a radio talk show host, is out of line...unless your balls are so small that you can't take it.

Of course, this leaves out violence for sheer enjoyment's sake. But Jeff's reference to the purportedly miniscule size of my genitals reminds me of a story - now there's a start! Space Bunny and I were lifting weights one afternoon, and I happened to be throwing up a pair of 75s for a few reps of dumbbell shoulder press. One of the women who was a weight room regular yelled out: "what are you compensating for?" To which I responded, loudly, "small penis!"

A shocked silence filled the room as everyone stopped what they were doing and looked right at Space Bunny. She smiled, nodded and held her thumb about an inch away from her index finger, at which point everyone cracked up. Now, there's a girl!

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Disgusted with the Republican leadership

Joseph Farah is disgusted with them over their support of Arlen Spector. Adam McManus has an even better reason: in a more obscure race in Alabama for State Board of Education, the state Republican Party decided to disqualify Christian radio talk-show host Kelly McGinley from the ballot, indicating she was too disloyal. McGinley had written on her website that "maybe, if we practice tough love, the Republican Party will repent and come back to its platform." Thankfully, Montgomery County Circuit Judge William Shashy said in a recent ruling that while McGinley had made "strong criticisms" of the GOP, the party had not set any rules that would disqualify a candidate for such criticisms.

"Zere vill be no dissent! You must adhere to zee Party!" Maybe the Republican leadership is fascist after all. Although you'd think calling for a strict adherence to the party platform would be considered desirable. I have no doubt they'll take care of that little rule next time around. Obey or Else!

I'm not disgusted, however, I'm amused. You get what you pay for and you get what you vote for. If you're dumb enough to support strong government "conservatives", don't be surprised when you get left-liberal leadership. You cannot hope to see smaller government come from those dedicated to making it bigger. I'd think this was a priori apparent, but it's clear that a surprisingly large number of conservative Republicans need to hear it anyhow: some people don't mean what they say. This can even be true of politicians whose last name isn't Clinton and who don't have a (D) in front of their name.

I'm so tired of hearing "well, I think Bush is a good man and I believe he really wants to blah blah blah." You can think whatever you want, of course, but you're obviously not paying very close attention. So he led us into Afghanistan and Iraq - BFD! Wilson got us into WWI, FDR led us into WWII, LBJ led us into Vietnam, did that make them all conservative champions of small government?

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Mailvox: the greater of two evils

Gypsy writes: Why vote for the lesser of two evils? Cthulhu 2004!!!

Are there any rules in the Constitution that bar the candidacy of an Elder God from the Outer Darkness just because he happens to be slumbering beneath the ice in Antarctica? Perhaps that's the third-party solution. Once he gets into the debates - and who's going to gainsay Mighty Cthulhu - he'll win hands down by virtue of causing the other candidates to fail their SAN roll. And then, he'll nail down both the squamous and rugose votes, no problem.

No one will ever be able to argue that Cthulhu will be soft on terror after he devours the entire contents of Guantanamo Bay live on camera.

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Au revoir, Jean-Francois?

From the Village Voice: With the air gushing out of John Kerry's balloon, it may be only a matter of time until political insiders in Washington face the dread reality that the junior senator from Massachusetts doesn't have what it takes to win and has got to go. As arrogant and out of it as the Democratic political establishment is, even these pols know the party's got to have someone to run against George Bush. They can't exactly expect the president to self-destruct into thin air.... What to do? Look for the Dem biggies, whoever they are these days, to sit down with the rich and arrogant presumptive nominee and try to persuade him to take a hike. Then they can return to business as usual—resurrecting John Edwards, who is still hanging around, or staging an open convention in Boston, or both.

Wow! When the Village Voice hates a Democratic nominee even more than they hate George Bush, you know the Dems are in disarray.

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Sowell on media scum

Thomas Sowell plays the players: Readers sometimes ask why I am seldom seen or heard on television or radio. Mainly it is because I turn down 90 percent of the invitations I get. A recent radio interview shows why. I was invited on as a guest to talk about my new book, "Affirmative Action Around the World." But when I phoned in for the interview while the program was on the air, I discovered that another guest was already waiting in ambush, talking about a wholly different topic, minimum wage laws. When I asked the hostess whether I was on the program to discuss minimum wage laws and she said that I was, I knew that this was the old bait-and-switch game that I had encountered many times over the years.... So I hung up the phone. Apparently the people who run the program became angry that I would not play along with their game. They phoned me. They phoned the Hoover Institution, where I work, demanding to speak to the director. But the Hoover Institution includes people who know what the media are like, so this ploy didn't get very far.

Sowell has the right of it. I'd blow them off in a heartbeat too. If nothing else, you have to establish that you are not to be messed with in the future. I figure radio's safer for me than television. There are a few TV types that the urge to Frankenize would be too overwhelming. I don't know if I could even formulate complete sentences, as I'd be sitting there silently debating whether a few weeks in jail and the inevitable lawsuit would be worth it.

Doesn't turning the other cheek mean that it's okay to pop them one first?

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The Senate he deserves... and wants

From the Washington Times: Mr. Toomey, a conservative who had limited himself to three terms in the House, came from far behind in polls to run almost even with Mr. Specter, a liberal four-term incumbent supported by President Bush, fellow Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Rick Santorum and other key Republican lawmakers in the state. With outside groups spending freely in the race, it became a referendum on the strength of each wing of the party.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you your Republican Party! Not that I was before, but it's now impossible to be sympathetic to arguments that the president is hamstrung by Congress. I have to believe that Mr. Bush's endorsement was worth more than the 16,000-vote margin of victory for Senator Specter of Scotland nee' Pennsylvania. What's that again about George Delano being a secret conservative? My guess is that he moves even further to the left after he wins re-election, which he will do thanks to the increasingly hapless Jean-Francois.

I must say that Kerry is simply magnificent to watch from afar. He's the Keystone Kandidate that we've been missing ever since Perot hung up his charts.

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The battle for Europe begins

From WND: Dutch Justice Minister Piet Hein Donner and Immigration and Integration Minister Rita Verdonk informed a special Parliament meeting in Amsterdam of their actions to remove from the shelves a Muslim book distributed by the Dutch Lel Tawheed mosque promoting the stoning of homosexuals and female circumcision. The book is titled in Dutch "De Weg van de Muslim" – "The Way of the Muslim," according to a report in Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin. The book contains shocking instructions in support of female circumcision, beating of wives and the murder of homosexuals. A Dutch parliamentarian, Somali-born Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a former Muslim, demanded the closure of the mosque and any other facility offering the book.

I wouldn't be surprised if within five years, the Koran is banned in Holland and Muslims are being forcibly deported across Europe. What will happen to cause the likely European deportations, I don't know, but I'm quite confident that unless the global jihad gives up - which doesn't seem likely - Europeans will respond more harshly to the jihad than have Americans in this one regard. Europe wears multiculturalism poorly and precisely because they have no taste for war they will turn towards an internal policing option. Lackign a strong regard for freedom of religion and with an ethos that collective rights trump individual rights, the long-term implications of this action are hard to escape.

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Nate, you ignorant slut

The Pan-Gargler writes on his blog: The problem with any IQ test is that it identifies not intelligence, but a pre-determined thought process, a way of thinking and working out puzzles. Taking a measure of one's ability to perform the card trick of finding patterns in colors and shapes, to one's ability to learn is just shamefully ignorant. The IQ tests have a great deal like the Austrian Economics Quiz. It can't tell you what economics is right or wrong, but it can tell you who you agree with.

Oh dear. It looks as if Nate took my advice on arguing like a liberal too seriously. He begins, as recommended, with step 1 - make an absurd statement, preferably about something of which you know nothing. It's clear that either he's writing tongue-in-cheek or he's never read THE BELL CURVE, which delves into the statistical analysis of a number of different concepts using intelligence as measured on IQ tests as the variable.

The results are quite striking. Low-IQ is the best predictor of criminality, better than poverty, illegitimacy or other popularly ascribed root causes. High-IQ is also one of the best predictors of success, whether one is engaged in a job that is considered to be one that requires intelligence or not. This is why the SAT, which until 10 or 12 years ago was an IQ test, was used to determine the likelihood of success - graduation - in college, and did so admirably until the PC forces demanded its modification.

Most people have a very poor understanding of what intelligence is. Intelligence is not some kind of grand, multi-faceted mystery, the EQ BS notwithstanding. Intelligence is nothing more than intellectual firepower, the ability to engage in abstract thought. This does not mean it is necessarily well-directed, well-prepared or even used at all; a loaded M-16 in the hands of someone trained to use it is far more lethal than an empty 152mm artillery piece that is rusted-out from lack of care and use. A wise and well-trained mediocre mind will always argue circles around the brainwashed, ill-trained brilliant mind, but that says nothing about the base intelligence of either.

Furthermore, positing that other well-known personal attributes are actually alternative forms of intelligence does nothing more than pollute the language. There are plenty of low-IQ, high-EQ individuals out there; claiming that social butterflies are just differently intelligenced is as silly as the notion of the handicapable. But the best way to dismiss Nate's assertion is to point out that it ignores the fact that a person who scores highly on a general intelligence test will almost always score highly on ANY test that is based on anything but direct personal experience or memorized knowledge. This is because the test merely reveals inherent cognitive ability, it does not create it. As THE BELL CURVE showed, this "test-taking ability" has wide and effective real-world application.

This doesn't mean that the high-IQ are necessarily successful, as judged by third parties. However, one judges another's notion of success at one's peril. As Mises writes, an individual's actions can only be judged by the parameters assigned by the acting individual.

I may be a member of MENSA, but I, too, scoff at those who are excessively proud of it. To me, it is nothing more than a recognizable warning to my critics. If I was particularly proud of such things, I'd join those intelligence societies that actually are exclusive. One in fifty isn't much of an elite, after all. In the USA alone, there are six million potential members. I rather doubt those six million think very much alike, either.

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NRO: The Movie

Katherine Lopez writes on NRO:The first time I saw and heard Jack Black, true story, I thought "He would have to play Jonah in a movie." I'm pondering the Stuttaford. I think I'd pick more of a Hugh Grant. Derbyshire as Derbyshire is perfect. I think I'd actually want Walken for Derb if Derb were unavailable. I'd lol hysterically at the J-Lo if it weren't so predictable. The list isn't all-inclusive of course. Steve Martin for Brookhiser (thinking academic yet adventurous type). Sharon Stone as KOB. DeNiro as Ed Capano. Keanu Reeves as Ramesh. Keith Oberman as Peter Robinson. Robin Williams as WFB.

Is there a thinking man's Vin Diesel? With Italian shoes, of course.

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Cluster-F

Will2 asks: The cluster-F seems to have been made in the long-term post-war planning due to the recent supply shortages. If it was a consistant problem I feel certain that the media would have picked up on it before the Fallujah standoff escalated. Is it something that we can blame on attacked supply lines or is it planning miscalculations that are getting us into trouble now?

According to the officer whose letter was quoted in Jed Babbin's article on NRO, the problem goes back to original planning miscalculations by the Army generals responsible for the war effort. In this, he echos the other officer who wrote to me yesterday, who blames Clinton-era officers.

Keep in mind that neither generals McKiernan nor Franks planned at all for the post-conflict environment. There is also no evidence that Abizaid once on hand as Franks' deputy addressed this requirement. What ensued was Army thinking that has not changed in 50 years....While the violence increased, the Army generals remained committed to HUMMV mounted light infantry guaranteeing hundreds of maimed and dead soldiers. The Army senior leaders continue to behave like the US Army Air Corps generals from 1942-1943 who insisted that the bomber would always get through without fighter escort. After thousands of dead airmen and destroyed planes, they conceded the need for fighter escorts. Today, the marines and Army are still throwing men with automatic weapons into action against Iraqis with automatic weapons when armor is badly needed. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

The Army GOs in accordance with the new CSA's "light infantry-centric visions" have been busy shipping out the armor and the newly arrived marines left their armor at home and are using borrowed army tanks. When generals Abizaid and Sanchez both saw the true dimensions of the resentment and violence, they panicked and asked that the only armor left in the theater - from 1 AD because 1st CAV brought only 1 in 6 tanks and 1 in 6 Brads - be extended for 90 days. Their panic knew no limits. They then insisted that the newly formed fledgling Iraqi formations go in and kill their own people when we had been trying to permanently erase the praetorian past of the Iraqi Army and persuade both the soldiers and their countrymen that the Iraqi army will never again be used against the people of Iraq. To the credit of the Iraqi soldiers, they refused to kill their own countrymen.

Could we have done better? Yes, but until the GOs are held accountable for their missteps and failures, nothing of substance will change or approve[sic].

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More on incompetence

An active-duty officer writes: I just got back from Iraq a couple months ago. One of the things that Ricardo Sanchez had done with the interrogators was to limit which psychological approaches we could use. Some of the better ones we normally use were determined to be too mean, and would be looked on unfavorably by the public or allies. Nobody from the administration TOLD Sanchez to limit the approaches we could use – he came up with that on his own. Another example where these officers are screwing up is in our ‘take it for a while, then get tough policy’ – that has been a tactic that has been generated on the ground by the commanders on the ground – not dictated from above. I’ve got dozens of horror stories about what these officers are doing over there that don’t make the press – all stuff the administration has no idea about.

So, I fully believe that the administration probably does have the will to fight and the desire to win – but they, and the senior level Clinton Era officers are trying to do this in a politically correct way so as not to offend Arabs or to look bad in the press. I guess, what I’m saying is that you are not seeing a lack of will to fight – just massive incompetence.

This officer points out that much of the senior staff consists of those who survived the cuts of the Clinton years. He notes: "Going from 900,000 to 480,000 troops means that to have stayed in as an officer, you had to be a very good boot licker." I consider an unwillingness to offend or look bad to be tantamount to lacking the will to fight myself, but I nevertheless appreciate his perspective.

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Tiptoeing through the tulips

Jed Babbin writes on NRO:Part of the essence of the warriors' creed is that they will die for their country, trusting that their lives may be spent but not wasted. We are in the process of wasting some of these precious lives in a tactical situation that is unacceptable by any measure. We're extending a phony "ceasefire" while Marines are fighting and dying. On Sunday Gen. Mark Kimmet — our chief military spokesman in Iraq — announced that our effort to end the insurgency in Fallujah and capture or kill the barbarians who killed and mutilated four Americans almost a month ago is now on a "political track".... The future of Iraq cannot be won on this political track. We are adrift, and our enemies are taking full advantage of it. One of my pals, an active duty military intellectual whose name I cannot use, sent me a message last weekend. Part of it says:

We are struggling to tip toe through the tulips in Fallujah when it is no longer possible to do so. Fallujah should already have been an object lesson that if handled decisively and quickly would make further operations in the south unnecessary. We have lost the equivalent of two marine infantry companies precisely because of our over-reliance on light infantry again. Sad for the parents' whose sons have died valiantly, but needlessly

Does it make a difference if a pro-war, pro-Bush cheerleader says it? I wonder if the "we are at war" crowd is going to throw hissy fits at these NROniks with bona fide pro-war on method credentials in the same manner that they threw them at me when I was pointing out the same thing a week or two ago? It is entirely possible to be simultaneously pro-troops and against the military strategy being pursued by the political leadership. To assert that it would have been pro-troops to support the strategy that led to massacres like the Somme and Gallipolli would be idiotic. No more should anyone blindly assume that the Bush administration knows how to fight this war - evidence is quickly piling up that they do not.

It's time to pull the troops out. Once the politicians start interfering with the generals, you're on the path to defeat. There are those who would say that pulling out will send a message that America lacks the will to fight and win this war. That message, I submit, has already been sent.

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Mailvox: who's fooling who?

DM writes: At first, I thought you might be worth reading but alas whatever intelligence you may possess you have allowed it to be corrupted...as soon as I saw your use of sweeping generalizations - as you do to characterize 'liberals' and using "all" so very frequently, I realized you could not be taken seriously.....many will however and -as has been said "You can fool some of the people all of the time"

I have no idea if DM is a left-liberal or not, but this is a favorite tactic of theirs. To pretend to be disappointed at the actions of an opponent, and to act as if there was any chance in Hell that if only for X, they would have supported them. What a crock of bovine ejectus! First, DM reveals that he's barely familiar with my writing as I almost never use the term "liberal", favoring instead the terms "leftist" and "left-liberal". Second, I defy anyone to prove that I frequently use the word "all". In fact, I seldom use that either. DM has clearly read the word into my generalizations about the left when it is not, the vast majority of the time, there at all.

I do often write critically about the left-liberal mind and about left-liberals. And I often use sweeping generalizations, certainly. But it is silly, even downright stupid, to expect anything but generalizations when one is discussing a group that consists of over one-tenth the population in a country of 300 million. Does DM mean to insist that these people have nothing in common? Can "liberals" truly not be characterized? Interesting. DM, with his disingenous pretensions and weak logic, shows every sign of belonging to that group of logically-challenged individuals known colloquially in this country as liberals.

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Be happy with mediocrity

Doug Grow writes in the Star and Sickle: This grab for mediocrity isn't unique to the marathon. I got my first unapologetic introduction to it a year ago in a conversation with Dan McElroy, who was then the finance guru for Gov. Tim Pawlenty and now is the governor's chief of staff. We were talking about the state's financial cuts to cities, including Minneapolis. "Your spending is not stupidly high," McElroy said of Minneapolis financial management. "But it's at or above the levels being spent per capita in comparable Midwest cities." The cities McElroy found "comparable" to Minneapolis? Des Moines, Omaha, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Kansas City, Indianapolis and -- gasp -- Toledo. Fine places all, but not exactly the world-class spots Minneapolis and the rest of Minnesota once aspired to be.

Please. Minneapolis will be lucky if it manages to hang onto mediocrity in the next 20 years. It's got the classic insecurity of a city that knows it's second-tier, but without the wisdom to accept the fact and deal with it. One thing that Space Bunny loves about the Premiership is watching the teams get relegated and promoted; one common theme is a second-rate team with delusions of grandeur goes into debt by overspending in the hopes that it will finish in the top four. The idea is that it will make so much money from its success and a subsequent infusion of Champion's League cash that it will be propelled into the league's elite with Arsenal and United. This never works, of course, and after a run of two years, the team usually collapses and is relegated to the Nationwide league, where it struggles to avoid bankruptcy and liquidation.

How do I know Minneapolis is second-rate? Because neither it nor St. Paul has any confidence to recognize its home-grown talent until it is established as being considered worthwhile by the national media. My old band did not rate so much as a mention in the local alternative rags, much less the major newspapers, until Billboard magazine was writing about us. Then, suddenly, we were big enough to rate the front page of the Entertainment section. The same thing happened to Information Society, who weren't even recognized as local until Kurt had already left for the Bay Area. The book editors will write reams of reviews about books by obscure local press writers instead of the successful local genre writers selling 50x more books- accomplished, award-winning writers such as Rosenberg, Bujold, Dickson, Bethke, Brust, Wrede, (and to a lesser extent, me). Furthermore, if I recall correctly, I am only the sixth writer in the history of the St. Paul Pioneer Press to ever get nationally syndicated, and yet they don't run my column. Instead, they fill their pages with unknown locals and the rehashed leftovers of the Boston Globe and New York Times. I have no doubt they'll pick it up once I'm in ten major newspapers and then brag about the local connection.

The danger Minneapolis faces is not toiling amidst second-tierdom, but spending itself into ruin by trying to transform itself into something it can never be. I'm not optimistic. A three-day business piece in the Pioneer Press lamenting the fact that Minnesota had missed the dot com boom didn't see fit to once mention that the state has very high income taxes. "But so does California," protested an editor when I called them on this. Sure, and California also has Stanford, Caltech, Silicon Valley, silicone blondes and beaches. Minnesota has freezing cold winters, mosquitos and natural blondes. Do the freaking math.

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Perfidious Gaul

One of the most important elections of our time will be approaching soon, and it is not taking place in the United States. Tony Blair has finally, reluctantly, decided that the British people, who have not been conquered since 1066, will be allowed to have a voice in handing over their national sovereignty to the fascist Franco-German cabal in Brussels. There's a fascinating interview on Uncommon Knowledge featuring the historian Paul Johnson, who says of the EU:

I would personally prefer it if Dutch lawyers and German lawyers had played a greater part in the thinking behind all this because they've both got good traditions. If you look at the tradition of constitution-making in France, of course, it's one lurching from one disaster to another and that is true of most Latin countries. But the Germans created Teutonic law before anyone else, certainly Northern Europe. And that is the basis of the English legal system. And that, of course, was a common law system and the English system underlay the American Constitution. So you can trace all back to German. But this is a constitution done by Latins and I think Tim made very shrewd and true remark which I entirely endorse, which is the French and Europe--the moment the French lose control of Europe, they will smash it to bits. They haven't yet lost control of it by no means, I don't agree with Tim there.

But sooner or later, they are bound to lose control of Europe and it's going to cease to be an instrument of French domestic and foreign policy. The moment they are satisfied that they have lost on a major battle, they will withdraw from Europe and smash it up. So Europe is not something you can take for granted because it cannot exist without France, geographically and in lots of other ways, it's too near the center. Europe is a provisional creation just as those Napoleonic states were of the French. And when it ceases to be useful to the French, they will smash it up.

I'm not entirely sure that Johnson is completely correct on this, as I suspect that an important element of the EU is to serve as a modern secular Holy League against the Turk. The mandarins of Europe can read demographics studies as well as anyone, and whereas no single European nation has the ability to do much about what is beginning to be viewed as the Islamic problem, the EU would provide both the scope of power and territory to do so. As Johnson says: "Europe defined itself for most of its history against Islam, against the Muslim world. So it's a huge leap for us and for them to accept the idea that you can be a Muslim European. You know, in the Middle Ages, people would have thought that was like saying you can be a male woman."

Then again, in Johnson's defense, it's impossible to deny that the French broke the Stability and Growth Pact without even blinking the moment that they found it obstructing their domestic policy. So, in any case, here's hoping the Brits have the wits to reject the EU's so-called constitution and go it alone again.

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Mailvox: suitcase nukes

Hudson comments: "But the truth is that at this point, the jihad is not yet a direct threat to America's existence." Uh Huh. By the way, anyone seen those unaccounted for suitcase nukes around anywhere?

Do you think that the suitcase nukes would be any less a threat to America if the global jihad did not exist? Does America have no other enemies? Furthermore, from a historical point of view, the loss of a city or two does not rise to the level of imperiling the nation's existence - from external forces. Many, many countries have lost entire cities through destruction or enemy occupation and survived. The fact that America is so fortunate as to not have experienced this does not change the fact that such attacks are eminently survivable for the vast majority of the citizenry.

I can, of course, envision a scenario where a suitcase nuke or three is planted, justifying a martial law situation that could, in the wrong hands, extinguish what we know as America. Moreover, the global jihad need not be involved, unless one requires a plausible patsy. But an internal threat such as that would be conspiracy theory of the first order, and that way lies madness. The point is that by itself, the global jihad is not yet in a position to win its war against America, nor will it be for at least another 50 years. As a nation, we are in no serious danger from the jihad until Europe falls. At that point, however, there will be a real question as to whether the war is winnable. But it is not winnable as it is now being fought either; this is nothing but a delaying action and, more than anything, a warning shot.

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Mailvox: the onanistic circle

RM writes: What has truly becoming stunning about the media is the way news shows interview other news people instead of the news makers and just sit there and confirm each others' bias.

Or better yet, smugly affirm each other's notions, from their position of objective Olympian majesty. This is one reason why I have zero interest in pursuing appearances on the news shows. The idea of subjecting myself to discussions featuring the length of a fruit fly's life cycle and the ntellectual depth of a mosquito-breeding swamp puddle makes me shiver. I simply have no any interest in a medium where "I disagree with your facts" is considered an effective rebuttal.

News that purports to be entertainment is neither.

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Welcome, new visitors

Sitemeter seems to indicate that we have a few new folks dropping by today. Please make yourselves comfortable and feel free to peruse the archives and make a comment or two. Don't mind the Pan-Galactic Gargler he's always like that. Try to stay out of the way of the White Buffalo, and the hot blonde in black is Space Bunny. If you're looking for those other blogs I mentioned in today's column, they're right here:

Blackfive: the Paratrooper of Love
From the Halls to the Shores
Citizen Smash
Mises Economics Blog
The Evangelical Outpost

UPDATE: Don't mind the regulars. They can get a little weird from time to time, but I promise you, we do often have intelligent and scintillating debates here. However, the comments following this particular post do not happen to be among them. As was once said of Camelot, it is a silly place. Nota Bene: if someone carrying an M-60 happens to grunt at you, just smile, say "nice to meet you, Bane" and back away slowly. If you don't show fear, turn your back or speak poorly of the USMC, you should survive the encounter.

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Bullet-proof Bush

It's hardly a secret that I'm tremendously disappointed, though not surprised, with the left-liberal governance of George Bush and the Republican Congress over the last three years. The Republican Supreme Court too, but that's another matter. While Joseph Farah is rather less sanguine on the matter, I see no reason to change my assertion that George Bush will thump Jean-Francois Kerry in November.

First, even if the market tanks, it's done well enough since October 2002 that he's got enough cushion to make it through the election. Second, no matter how badly the war on method goes, it's unlikely to have a serious effect one way or the other. Third, a terrorist event will actually drive people towards Bush, not away from him. Fourth, homogamy has normal people increasingly leery of the social left.

Fifth, and most important, Jean-Francois is going to be forced to repeatedly open his mouth in public, on television. If his performance on Good Morning America is even close to typical, he'll make the Dukakis drubbing look respectable. Karl Rove and company must be drooling like starving coyotes eyeing a fat, legless chicken when they think about the upcoming debates.

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Examples of media stupidity

1. Predictions of blood-bath every time carry laws are discussed. Never happens in any state.
2. Static tax revenue models. They're always surprised when tax hikes don't bring in expected revenue.
3. Stadium financing. Every economic study shows public-funded stadiums don't boost local economy. This never stops sportswriters from claiming a pot of gold awaits the next tax-increment financed structure.
4. Political spectrum. Everything is posed as progressive vs. conservative, no matter what the status quo.
5. No coverage of adult or Christian entertainment, which combined equate to at least 30 percent of the entertainment industry. Entertainment coverage reads like a pretentious, outdated Tiger Beat.
6. Covering the WNBA. The league is a pure parasite and arena football has a bigger following.
7. Refusing to recognize, much less serve, the conservative 50 percent of their potential market.
8. Quoting government bureaucrats as legal experts. They get played every single time.
9. An almost complete ignorance of ancient, medieval and modern history. Quite impressive, really.

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Doubts of competence

From the Washington Post: U.S. Marines have postponed plans to mount an attack against insurgents holed up here and instead will attempt to regain control of this violence-wracked city without a full-scale offensive, military commanders said Sunday. Concerned about the repercussions an attack could generate across Iraq and the Arab world, senior U.S. military and civilian officials said they had decided to try to confront a band of hard-core Sunni Muslim insurgents, who have effectively taken over Fallujah, by having Marines conduct patrols in the city alongside Iraqi security forces. The new strategy, reached in consultation with the White House over the weekend, represents an effort by U.S. officials to avoid a military incursion that could entail urban combat, civilian casualties and a wave of retributive strikes outside Fallujah, further poisoning relations between Iraqis and U.S. occupation forces.

I'd like the "we are at war" crowd to stop its blind cheerleading for a moment and imagine battalion-level tactical decisions being made by the Roosevelt administration during WWII. Did anyone stop for five seconds to worry about whether sending the 4th Infantry into Cherbourg was going to generate repercussions across Nazi Germany and the Axis world? Every week that goes by strengthens my suspicion that 1) the enemy may be at war with us, but we are not at war with it, and, 2) the present administration is going to be judged a miserable failure with regards to the prosecution and long-term effects of its undeclared war.

Clearly neither the nation nor its leadership is prepared to fight an open war against those who have repeatedly declared war on America. Therefore, it is better that we do not do so, but instead bring the troops home from around the world, secure our borders, expel the many fifth-columnists who are here illegally or temporarily and wait until the global jihad either collapses of its own self-contradictions or grows until it can no longer be ignored. Imitating the Israeli Two-Step and attempting to win hearts and minds in what is a revival of a 1300-year religious conflict is simply stupid and is doomed to failure. The fact that America is now irreligious does not mean it will be able to opt out forever; it's not as if the Byzantine Empire or medieval Christendom was a collection of quiet Bible-studying evangelical prayer groups either. But the truth is that at this point, the jihad is not yet a direct threat to America's existence.

I realize that this is not a popular view, either with my fellow libertarians or pro-war conservatives. Still, I have no agenda except to advocate individual freedom in America and I am simply commenting on the facts as best I understand them.

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End of an Era

Charles Stross writes: This week, Gardner Dozois stepped down as editor of Asimov's SF Magazine, after about 19 years at the helm. His replacement, Sheila Williams, is already editor there and indeed has worked on Asimov's for about as long as (if not longer than) Gardner, so it's not as if things are adrift: Gardner's simply spent a long time there and wants to spend more time on his own writing. (Lest we forget, not only did he win about fifteen Hugo awards as best editor -- he won a couple for his stories, in the dim and distant past.) This news comes less than a month after Dave Pringle announced that he was stepping down as editor of Interzone, after a similar duration. (Interzone is being sold as a going concern to Andy Cox, who will be editing it in parallel with The Third Alternative.)

Why do I get a slight shiver at this news?

Interzone was where I sold my first stories, back in the 80's, under the editorship of Dave Pringle. Asimov's SF is where I really broke into the American market after 1999, via Gardner's auspices. Gardner in the US and Dave in the UK probably published the first short fiction of about 50% of the successful SF writers who came to notice from 1980 onwards! Saying this is the end of an era is, I think, an understatement -- it'll go unnoticed in the mass media, but some of those authors have gone on to have massive effects outside the genre. It's one of those defining moments that will potentially change the entire shape of our genre, thirty years down the line.

I tend to be more interested in writing my own stuff than reading three or four SF novels a week the way I used to as a teenager, but I've certainly read my fair share of Asimov's mags, having had a subscription on two separate occasions. While I don't always agree with Mr. Dozois' choice of short fiction - how is it that I can publish novels and comic books but can't get a short story in print - I own too many copies of his annual Best Of SF collections not to have some regard for him. Asimov's may improve, it may decline, but it certainly won't be the same.

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Good riddance

Pat Buchanan writes on WND: "If we have to make common cause with the more hawkish liberals and fight the conservatives, that is fine with me," William Kristol has told the New York Times. The Weekly Standard editor added that the neoconservatives may just abandon the Right altogether and convert to neoliberalism.... The day after Kristol said he preferred Kerry to conservatives skeptical of committing more troops to Iraq, this item appeared in the Wall Street Journal: "Mr. Kristol thinks Mr. Bush should use the revelations [from the Woodward book] to shake up his war cabinet by firing Mr. Powell ... along with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who has pushed for smaller deployments of U.S. forces than some critics, including Mr. Kristol, think wise."

As regular readers know, I believe that it is either necessary to pull out of Iraq and focus on defending the borders or grasp the nettle and fight the war that has been declared on America for the last 20+ years. However, the current crew is manifestly the wrong gang to fight either the war on method or the clash of civilizations war that will likely, in the end, prove unavoidable. If you can't even name your enemy, much less deal with its self-admitted fifth column, you're the wrong man for the job.

Kristol's statements has some interesting implications, however, for how one views Kerry. They demonstrate a strong indication that the neocons believe Kerry will be even more enthusiastic about fighting wars abroad than Bush has proved himself to be. I have never bought into the notion that a Democratic president will be hesitant to fight any war, because Democrats love the notion of expanding central power and using war as an excuse to do so. There's a reason why the term Isolationist Right exists, after all, while the idea of an Isolationist Left sounds like a contradiction in terms.

However this plays out, I won't be sorry to see the neocons switch sides again.

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Personal instruction

First-year English teacher Phillip J. Fox, 23, of Groton, was arrested April 13 on charges of fourth-degree sexual assault and risk of injury to a minor. Police opened the investigation after receiving a complaint that Fox had sexual contact with a female student at the school. Last year, math teacher David G. Simonin, 53, of Watertown, was arrested during an Internet porn sting. He resigned and is out on bond as the investigation continues. And in 2001, history teacher Bret P. Devino, 30, of Waterbury, was charged with having sex with a teenage student and sexually assaulting another. He was fired and has completed a jail sentence.... "Parents shouldn't be overly worried, as long as they know we're on top of this," said Sgt. Fred Sprano, who is head of the police department's youth division.

Now there's an unfortunate turn of phrase. But I don't see why parents should be concerned about this either. After all, the school district was promising their children would receive sex education from the start. You'd think these conscientious teachers, who are willing to provide hands-on personal instruction, would be awarded medals, not arrested. If they are guilty of anything, they are only guilty of giving too much.

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We are free individuals, not herd animals

A juror later told the St. Petersburg Times he did not really think Paey was guilty of trafficking, since the prosecution made it clear from the outset that he didn't sell any pills. The juror said he voted guilty to avoid being the lone holdout. He suggested that other jurors might have voted differently if the foreman had not assured them Paey would get probation. The prosecutors, who finally obtained the draconian sentence that even they concede Paey does not deserve, say it's his fault for insisting on his innocence. "It's unfortunate that anyone has to go to prison, but he's got no one to blame but Richard Paey," Assistant State Attorney Mike Halkitis told the St. Petersburg Times. "All we wanted to do was get him help."

Two lessons. One: the jury foreman doesn't have any say in the sentencing. Two: If you're on a jury, be the lone holdout. Do what you believe to be right and stand by it, even if a bunch of ignorant would-be herd animals say otherwise. A little short-term conflict is a lot better than a lifetime of sleepless nights, knowing you did the wrong thing.

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Mailvox: when the dead hand of Darwin isn't quick enough

DS writes: I am coming closer and closer to the libertarian position. Much moral legislation is a failure, i.e. “war on drugs”. Let people do drugs and let the matter be taken away from organized crime. Q. What do you do with the idiot who gets high on whatever and then gets into a car and drives it unto something and ends up killing somebody? You desist from policing private behavior, fine. But how do you stop people from killing others with a car, or whatever they could be using (machines, scalpel, etc…) under the influence? Maybe the solution is simple and escapes me. Help me on this.

I'd prefer to say "behavioral modification legislation" since law derives from base morals, but otherwise you've described an aspect of my reasoning. The short answer is: you don't. What you must realize is that there is NOTHING preventing anyone from doing this now. In Minnesota, for example, you can safely expect to rack up six DUIs before you'll ever see 24 hours of jail time. There is already a crime for getting hammered and killing someone with car; it's called manslaughter.

Adding some sort of mandatory restitution payments would likely do more to prevent such behavior than another 50 drug laws and would be perfectly in keeping with libertarian philosophy. Drug law a) prevents nothing and b) actually makes the situation worse by creating perverse incentives. Drugs are more powerful and less expensive than they were when the War on Drugs began, and the user base remains static. The main conceptual hurdle that conservatives have to leap is that the law is not an appropriate vehicle for sending messages. That is the responsibility of family, church and friends.

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But Democrats are worse!

Paul Jacob writes:"For more than 75 years," he [John Stossel} notes, "no Republican administration has cut the size of government." To believe that Republicans cut government is to deny a whole lot of evidence....To talk about their "liberal" bias only goes so far. Conservatives are also prone to error, at least when it comes to partisan matters like evaluating the effectiveness of the GOP.

At least 75 years worth of evidence, anyhow. But I'll bet that cutting government is part of George Delano's secret second-term plan. Right after he invents a perpetual-motion machine, brings peace to the Middle East and gets rid of the designated hitter.

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Nice try, Leonard

Leonard Pitts writes: It's been nearly four months since the scandal broke. Four months since Jack Kelley, star foreign correspondent for USA Today, was found to have lied his way through his professional life for the last 13 years. He lied about where he had been, what he had seen, whom he had talked to, what they had said. He lied so much I'm only half convinced "Jack Kelley' is his real name. Yet you, my colleagues, have not asked the most important question:

What does this mean for the future of white journalism.... Did USA Today advance a moderately capable journalist because he was white? Did some white editor mentor him out of racial solidarity even though Kelley was unqualified? In light of this fiasco, should we re- examine the de facto affirmative action that gives white men preferential treatment in our newsrooms?

Ha very ha. But Jayson Blair was obviously a marginal case from the beginning, even while he was still in college at Maryland. He was an affirmative-action baby, and he was quick to play the race card as soon as he was fired. It was clear that he was being protected because he was black, whereas Kelly was a bona fide star for USA Today. Blair's book has a racially-focused title. So, his failure is rightfully considered to have negative implications for the practice of affirmative action.

Every black individual must make up his mind for himself.. Does he want affirmative action or does he want respect? You can't have both. Even a black who makes it on his own is always going to be suspected of being the beneficiary of this racist policy that assumes blacks are less capable. The fact that there are white failures says nothing about the rightful suspicion that many blacks really don't deserve to be where they are. There's a reason that no one doubts whether KG belongs in the NBA or not. He earned his respect. Don't be surprised when people aren't respectful of those who haven't done likewise.

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Monaco 3 Chelsea 1

I'm not sure which amuses me more, that Champion's League score or the notion that Rivaldo might sign with Bolton. For American sports fans, the latter is as if KG was out of contract and decided to sign with a second-tier European basketball team. I mean, he's the best player on the reigning World Cup champions, and he can't find a spot in Spain or Italy? Bizarre, even if he was redundant at Milan.

Meanwhile, Chelsea's payroll is higher than an NBA team's, while the average age of Monaco's squad, which seldom manages to compete for the third-rate French title, is about 19. I think I'll have to cheer for Monaco in the final assuming they can hold off Abramovitch's collection of overpriced all-stars in the second game.

I know there's an NFL draft today. But I'm a Vikings fan. I prefer to pretend it doesn't exist, rather than contemplate just how they're going to screw things up this time.

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Let's not get carried away here

CW writes: I was recently referred to your blog by a friend, and within a month's time I have decided to vote Libertarian.... Reading your commentary, and that of your readers, really caused me to examine the freedom over security question. The lack of any significant Democrat legislation being passed in the last 20 years indicates to me that we are essentially living the Republican party platform. With exceptions, obviously, but on the whole I think that is the case.I also look at the fact that Nader has raised $600,000 in a month, and has clear support from many on the left. I cannot abide in the left being the principled wing of the political spectrum, and that also helped in my decision.

The Libertarian candidates are anonymous. This is not what you want in Presidential nominees.... Jesse Ventura owed his Governor seat to the KQ morning show. You and your blog could have a similar sway on the national stage. Your thoughts?

First, let me say that I'm delighted that people like CW are coming here with open minds, then being converted into Libertarian pod people. The plan, it's working, it's working..... (Anyone remember Day of the Tentacle? It was the only game Chiliette ever liked - she played it obsessively - but the part that amused me most was when the hero looked at a little plan drawn up on a white board by the evil Purple Tentacle, entitled, Plan To Take Over the Whole World, and mused, "uh oh, that just might work.") Anyhow, I'm pleased that people are visiting here and occasionally running across something that makes them think.

But let's do the math. Jess Ventura, with a major radio show on the main AM station in the state's only major metropolitan area, managed to scrape by and win the governorship in a state of 6 million people. This blog has 1500 hits per day, which realistically means that about somewhere between 150 and 500 people are reading it regularly, out of 150 million voters. In other words, I'm several orders of magnitude below where I'd need to be to even begin having an influence at a national level. A lot more people read my Monday column, of course, but still, I'm pretty much unknown even in the blog world. It's not impossible, to be sure, but we've got a long, long way to go before we get there. But the technological imperative is on our side and that's always nice.

Regardless, I'm having fun. My thinking continues to be sharpened by everyone's comments and emails, which is something that I value very much indeed. I don't know if I'll ever catch up with Instapundit, much less a Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh, but that's not particularly important to me. What is important is that one by one, people like CW have the chance to consider ideas that they might not have encountered before. So, CW, do thank your friend for me.

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Don't take their money

From WND: Homeschooling parents in a Canadian province have been ordered to stop using religious-based materials or other "unofficial" resources when they teach their children at home. Pamela Nagle, a Christian, is one of many angry parents in British Columbia who say they will not abide by the order, according to the Vancouver Sun. "They can't tell me what to do in my own home," said Nagle, whose son is homeschooled but attends a public school one day a week. Nagle told the paper the materials she uses should not matter as long as her son's education meets British Columbia's standards. "I don't like the fact that they believe they know what's best for my child," she said. But Nagle is one of many parents lured into the public school system by a distance-education program, the Sun said. Through the program, she received about $600, Canadian, from the Langley school district in suburban Vancouver, which supplements the hundreds she spends of own money. About 6,800 children are in the program after it started as a pilot project with just 2,200. The parents say they enrolled in distance education after being promised they could continue as their children's primary teacher. The availability of teacher expertise, as well as funds, was the attraction for the parents, while the school district saw benefit from the increased accountability. The children in the program also graduate with a provincial certificate, unlike the estimated 3,000 homeschoolers with no ties to the government's education system.

There's a reason they are offering you money. Don't take it! It's much harder to get out of a system once you're in it than it is to stay out of it from the start. If you're going to send your kids to government school, then send them off and forget about it. If you're going to homeschool them, then do so knowing that you're not going to get any help from the state. Any "help" that you are offered is almost surely a trap. And even if it isn't now, it probably will be in the future.

Homeschooling is totally contradictory to the ethos of the educationist bureaucracy. They want to destroy it, and they are not above using deceit to do so. Keep that in mind when wonderful new programs for homeschools begin appearing in your school district.

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This strikes me as a bad idea

The US civil administrator in Iraq Paul Bremer announced steps to reinstate some former members of Saddam Hussein's disbanded Baath party in the new army, as well as in schools and universities. Bremer made the announcement in a rare televised address to the nation that appeared aimed at rallying Iraqi support as the US-led coalition battles a dogged insurgency by both Sunni and Shiite Muslim militants. Amid mounting concern over the poor performance of Iraqi security forces during recent attacks, the US overseer said more former members of Saddam's military would be allowed to join the ranks of the new army. He also announced measures to speed up the reinstatement of thousands of teachers who lost their jobs because they were once Baathists, even though they were often forced to join the former dictator's party.

I don't understand this at all. Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress have said from the beginning that de-Baathification was an absolute necessity. Are they wrong? While it's true that the Baathists - an Arab mutation of National Socialism - did keep the Shiites in check by killing over 100,000 of them, I'm not convinced that this is the solution. Then again, I'm not there, so it's impossible to speak with any degree of certainty. But from a theoretical point of view, this sounds problematic at best. Also, from what I've read, those teachers were used as spies, so they participated in the system even if they weren't enthusiastic about it.

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It always comes down to the Left

This should be of interest for those who are concerned about the use of the FCC as an instrument of Christian extremism. From the Mises Institute: The rationale Roosevelt and his acolytes employed to justify the creation of the FCC has been reiterated for decades. According to the boosters of the 1934 Federal Communications Act, the radio spectrum was a limited resource. It also crossed state borders. As such, it was necessary and appropriate that the federal government own the airwaves. As argued by the Roosevelt Administration, the broadcast spectrum was, by its nature, a public good, and it was in the public interest that Washington regulate its use, thus avoiding potential private business conflicts. In 1938, for example, the FCC revoked the license of the Yankee Radio Network, a conservative broadcaster that often editorialized against FDR's policies. The FCC announced: "Radio can serve as an instrument of democracy only when devoted to the communication of information and exchange of ideas fairly and objectively presented . . . It cannot be devoted to the support of principles he [the broadcaster] happens to regard most favorably . . ."

First, note who established the FCC. None other than that most left-wing of presidents, the man who socialized the American economy, FDR. Second, note how it was being used 66 years ago. The modern equivalent would be the Bush administration shutting down Air America. (NPR would be a better target, of course, but that's a legitimate shut-down by government, since NPR is government.)

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Rest in peace

Pat Tillman, a former NFL player who swapped a glamorous football career to enlist in the U.S. Army, has been killed in action in Afghanistan. The 27-year-old former football player [for the Arizona Cardinals] was killed in direct action during a firefight in Afghanistan.

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Pages: PARIS TO THE MOON

This is a book of non-fiction written by a liberal Jewish New Yorker who decides to go expat for a few years with his wife and newborn son. Possessed of a romantic childhood vision of Paris, reinforced by an actual visit as a teenager, the little family takes an apartment in Paris and experiences the pedestrian joys and petty tribulations of living amidst Old Europe's last natural aristocracy, the Parisians.

It's a delightful book. Adam Gopnik has a wry sense of humor and a keen eye for not only the small details that paint a vivid picture of his experience there, but also the broader generalizations that, taken in the collective, define the French character. It is well-written too, for who could fail to be amused by the following passage:

"Like all ambitious French politicians, Juppe chooses to present himself as a literary man. He has actually written a book of reflections titled La Tentation de Venise - The Venetian Temptation. Juppe's Venetian temptation was to retire to a house there, where he could escape from political life, admire Giorgione's Tempesta, drink Bellinis in the twilight, and think long deep thoughts. La Tentation was regarded as a fighting campaign manifesto, since it is as necessary for an ambitious French politician to write a book explaining why he never likes to think of politics as it is for an ambitious American politician to write a book explaining why he never thinks of anything else. Juppe, ahead of the pack, had written a book asserting not only that he would rather be doing something else but that he would like to be doing it in a completely different country."

I enjoyed the book and found myself laughing out loud on more than one occasion. This is a warm book, a gentle and humane book, full of a man's affection for a city and his great love for his son, through whose eyes we see the vast chasm between the expat and one who has never known another home. If the book will do little to change one's view of the French as arrogant curs with a penchant for socialism and boot-licking, it nevertheless will provide one with the ability to smile when next encountering the inevitable Gallic intransigence. A book well worth reading.

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Try reading it, moron

Joseph Farah writes: I knew this was coming in 2000 and told you then. I have met George Bush exactly once. In my presence, he was asked point blank what he would do if confronted with unconstitutional legislation on his desk. His response? "How would I know if it were unconstitutional?" Anyone asking such a stupid question is unworthy and unfit for the highest office in the land.

I've never subscribed to the Democrats notion that George Bush is stupid. He isn't, as his SATs translate to an above average IQ of around 115 or so. Not impressive, but significantly smarter than many of his most vocal critics. But the fact that he would evade such a simple question in such a obvious and puerile manner only underlines my total unwillingness to support him in any way, even though Kerry is similarly indifferent to the Constitution.

His failure to veto a single bill out of Congress supports Farah's first-hand testimony that we now have a president who has no interest in opposing unconstitutional legislation. He had his chance and he blew it. He does not deserve another one.

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New Opera 7.5

If you have any interest in a new browser, you may want to check out the new Opera 7.5. it's still in beta, but it's got a very clean new look, has finally gotten rid of the big icon bar across the top - now there are small icons that fit nicely on the current address bar where you can type in the URL - and has added IRC chat and newsfeed reading capabilities. It's still got the great pop-up blocking ability, which was the reason I originally switched to it and it's available for Windows, Linux and Macintosh.

The beta feels a little less crisp, speedwise, than the previous 7.23 release, but that's normal. Otherwise, it seems quite solid. I'd recommend having a look at it, especially if you're still using the clunky vehicle that is IE.

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A new Million-Mom march

From Debka: Nasrallah described how, several weeks before Israel was scheduled to withdraw from Lebanon, he organized the town and village populations of the south and several thousand Shiites from Beirut into massed groups of civilians, each ordered to stage marches in different sectors. Elderly people hoisting Lebanese and Hizballah flags, women and children marched in a body on the bases of the Israeli-backed South Lebanese Army who, aware of the Israeli pullout, did not dare open fire on the advancing processions. In no time, all their bases were overrun by the motley mobs and the Hizballah flag fluttering overhead. According to Nasrallah, the departing Israeli troops had to negotiate safe passage back to the Israeli border in exchange for leaving their weapons, even tanks, behind.

Our sources reveal that the Hizballah leader showed Hamas the Gaza version of his plan. For stage one, he proposed collecting the 200,000 Palestinian mourners who followed the Yassin and Rantisi funeral processions, and dividing them into groups of 10-15,000. Each would march on a marked IDF position or camp defending Netzarim and Gush Katif. In stage two, a million Hamas marchers would hurl themselves at Gush Katif, the largest settlement bloc of the Gaza Strip. Even Israeli tanks would not be able to arrest this human deluge, he said. The Israelis may start shooting, but the Palestinian mass will keep coming, and, like in Lebanon, it will mow down the army positions. The settlements will then crumble. Israeli troops and settlers will be stampeded into flight and the Palestinians will take over their bases and homes – not in 2005 as the Israelis offered, but next summer.

This would likely work. The Israelis, being foolishly of the opinion that it is possible for them to be regarded any worse by the world, will hold their fire until it is too late. As with Lebanon, they'll find themselves retreating in disarray, giving enough encouragement to their enemies to inspire another three years of useless and pointless carnage that will achieve nothing.

I do not believe in war by half-measure. We should not have gone into Iraq unless we were prepared to wipe out every Iraqi in the country in defense of our national interest. We aren't ready to do so, of course, because there was no sufficient provocation nor did/does our national interest demand it. There is no such thing as civilized war, it is inherently uncivil. It is evil. It is, rarely, necessary, in a fallen world populated by evil men. And when it is necessary - when it is absolutely inescapable - it must be pursued mercilessly until victory is beyond any doubt.

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Mailvox: short-term reasoning

BLS writes: I stand by my final analysis: this election is between Bad and Worse. If you don't pick Bad, then by default, you've allowed Worse to win. It might make for great chest-thumping about messages sent, but it's poor electoral strategy.

I think I finally figured out a way to explain this to everyone. BLS is right, that refusing to select Bad is poor electoral strategy - in the short term. But what this "pragmatic" approach misses is that this is not, in the long term, strategy at all, it is tactics. Tactics are neither good nor bad from a strategic point of view, they are entirely irrelevant. This explains why, to a certain extent, the two sides have been talking past each other. In my view, the "principled" approach is the correct one, as it actually encompasses a longer-term, strategic view.

For example, if the president wins re-election with the support of the libertarian and conservative rights, he has no incentive but instead is encouraged to move further left. If he loses to Kerry, the Republican party will be forced to turn to its base and allow more influence to the grass roots in order to inspire them. This is why both Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, the two most right-wing Republican presidential candidates, were produced when the party was out of power. Once in power, the liberal wing had the resources to flex its muscle again and squeeze out the grass-roots. George Bush was presented to the party as someone who was in Reagan's tradition, not his father's, although once he won the nomination he immediately began to campaign to the left and govern even further leftward.

There is no way that the "pragmatic" approach will ever move the Republican party to the right. In fact, calling the approach pragmatic is a misnomer as Kerry will likely be hamstrung by a Republican Congress that will not allow him to move as far to the left as it will allow George Bush to go. This is a basic paradox of politics. Only Nixon can go to China, only a Republican governor can raise taxes in California and only a Republican administration will be able to successfully attack American gun rights.

I am, of course, skeptical that it makes any significant difference in the long term. The die is already cast. The economic winds are blowing and the American people are far more likely to call for more of the poison than sickened them than they are to call for the antidote. And yet, we persist, as eventually those who survive the sickness of strong government will need those to show them the way out. We are the intellectual Spartans and we do not expect to hold the pass forever. The smart money, actually, pretty much all the money, is on the side of big government. But we can be encouraged with the certain knowledge that paper money always erodes into nothing in time.

In any case, if any of our pragmatic Republicans here can present a scenario which shows how supporting the left-wing of the Republican party will help move the country and the party to the right, comment on it or email me and I'll post it here.

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Why George Bush will likely win

The nice thing about John Kerry is that you can easily justify supporting him. Chances are extremely high that he supports your position on pretty much anything on which you might have an opinion The problem is that he also supports the opposite position as well.

Why will Bush win? At first, I assumed this would be the case because of the homogamy issue. But now, I believe this because the Democrats nominated a candidate who combines Bob Dole's likeability with Bill Clinton's trustworthiness.

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Rage against the dying of the light

Zephyron despairs: "Third Party" candidates have no chance to win. Every campaign finance reform bill drives the nail a little deeper into the coffin. Even if a good third party candidate was getting major support, the lap dog press would run a merciless smear campaign against him. Winning under those circumstances would be impossible. There are too many trust and parrot dummies in America. The Republic is on it's death bed. I wish it were not so...

Yes, the Republic is on its death bed, assuming it isn't dead already. The fact that our third-generation leaders don't wear the purple and take turns playing Caesar only means that the modern Triumverate has not yet revealed itself fully. So what? Let us show them how a Republic dies. Vote Libertarian. Vote Constitution. Vote your conscience and your principles. Don't let it happen without protest. They cannot claim assent when you will not support them.

There was an inspiring t-shirt I saw in a shop when I was a child. It showed a huge eagle swooping down on a mouse, claws extended. The mouse was not cringing in fear, but standing up boldly and extending a single digit towards the sky. It was captioned "The last great act of defiance."

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Epiphanies

Hank writes: VD you continue to assume that I'm for big government. You know better than that by now. Bringing up the effectiveness of Soviet censorship doesn't reduce the threat posed by these extremists here. Was the massacre of Christians in Turkey during World War I have any less barbaric because it wasn't nearly as efficient or far reaching as the massacre of Jews in World War II by Germany? No social, religious or political affiliation is above falling into the traps of abuse of power like this. It just so happens that it is the neo-cons and religious right who are doing it in this country right now.... I'm all for libertarianism. Let's give it a whirl. If big transnational corporations don't swoop in and take over everything it just might work.

Hank, you can rant about the dangers of Christian extremism all you like, with my full and cheerful blessing, as long as you stay true to the idea that expanding government power is not the answer to solving any of society's ills, whatever we perceive them to be. It's a major conceptual breakthrough for anyone, of any political stripe, to realize that advocating central state power for their own purposes is tantamount to advocating that same power in the hands of the enemy. There is always a Commodus waiting to wear the purple.

If Hank and his fellow leftists are willing, I'll be delighted to help them ensure that there isn't any central state power for Christian extremists to abuse. All the more enthusiastically if these "Christian extremists" are the likes of the current Republican leadership.

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SNAFU

From the Daily Reckoning: As far as what's happening over here... first, in Fallujah, the Marines were doing well until they ran out of gas, literally. The real reason the Marines had to start their truce/cease-fire strategy is because the coalition forces are running extremely low on fuel right now. We first heard about it maybe 10 days ago or so from some Army 5th Group Special Forces guys who were complaining to us, saying how even THEY had been ordered to ration fuel.

Considering that Special Forces guys get the best of everything and get first dibs on everything, including fuel, we knew the shortage must be pretty bad. Sure enough, just a couple days later, the Army 1 star, who runs the base where our compound is located, implemented strict refueling policies, severely limiting how much gas we can take per day. They've gone so far as posting guards at the fuel points to measure how much gas is pumped per vehicle, per day, with everything getting logged on their clipboards. It's definitely a change. The 1 star didn't tell us where the fuel shortage came from, but it is probably a mix of poor planning and recent fuel truck convoys from Kuwait being either delayed or cancelled due to the increasing number of attacks. Anyway, that's the reason the marines had to slow down in Fallujah. Once the fuel problem gets taken care of, the Marines will probably pick up the pace again. Fallujah is going to take a couple months, not a couple weeks....

We knew things would get worse before June 30th, and they have. Things will probably continue to get worse. It's already been established that both the new Iraqi military and Iraqi police are pretty much worthless and cannot be trusted. So much so, that the Army requested Kurdish soldiers to come to Baghdad to replace the Iraqi soldiers currently providing security for the army bases here. The Army knows the Kurdish soldiers can be trusted and are loyal to the U.S., unlike the Iraqi soldiers. It'll be interesting to see what happens when a few thousand Kurds show up in Baghdad armed with AK47s. But that'll only be one of many future problems.

The Army recently extended the tour lengths another 4 months for a lot of their guys who have already been in the Middle East a year now. Their morale and motivation was already non-existent before the extension; now these guys, tens of thousands of them, are just taking up space over here.

I know it's still early in the game, but you can pretty much write off the entire U.S. Army (with the exception of their special forces and maybe their aviation units) as being "operationally ineffective" in the future (i.e. completely worthless to the coalition from here on out, except to suck up food and fuel). Generally speaking, the Army is incompetent in these types of environments: only Marines and Special Forces guys do well in a place like this. Special Forces because they're so precise, and Marines because they're so disciplined... and ferocious.

The Army is just making things worse for the coalition. The Army is intent on having its presence seen and felt in Iraq because they think that will make everyone think they are in charge. What they don't seem to realize is that a large military presence is the one thing, pretty much the only thing, the Iraqis can't tolerate. Despite reports by the news media to the contrary, Iraqis don't resent the humanitarian projects, or the rebuilding effort, or even the U.S. being in control of the government until the transition. Sure the Iraqis want to be in charge, but the majority can tolerate the situation until a transition happens, even if it's months down the road. But what they can NOT tolerate is waking up every day and seeing army tanks and Bradleys rolling through their towns and villages. And they can't tolerate being stopped by endless Army checkpoints on the highways, which were set up by commanding officers who think terrorists and insurgents haven't figured out a way yet to avoid those checkpoints. That's what the Iraqis resent and can't tolerate, along with a thousand other ways the Army makes its presence felt (and I didn't even mention having your door kicked in at 2 am because of some "hot Army intel"). Until the Army realizes all of this - which it seems like it never will - things will only get worse. And in response, the Army will just increase its presence."

Do try to keep this in mind when the armchair heroes who've never been within three thousand miles of Iraq blather that all we need is to keep our fighting spirits up. An army still fights on its belly, and even the best soldiers are only as capable as their supply line. More important, perhaps, is to remember that armies are designed for killing people, breaking things and winning wars, not nation-building. Failure does not only stem from lack of ability or will, but also from conceit. To me, the very concept of nation-building sounds almost as wildly hubristic as the fatal conceit, socialism itself.

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Remind you of anyone?

From Slate on Eric Harris of Columbine infamy: These are not the rantings of an angry young man, picked on by jocks until he's not going to take it anymore. These are the rantings of someone with a messianic-grade superiority complex, out to punish the entire human race for its appalling inferiority. It may look like hate, but "It's more about demeaning other people," says Hare.

A second confirmation of the diagnosis [of psychopathy] was Harris' perpetual deceitfulness.... Harris claimed to lie to protect himself, but that appears to be something of a lie as well. He lied for pleasure, Fuselier says. "Duping delight"—psychologist Paul Ekman's term—represents a key characteristic of the psychopathic profile.

Messianism. Superiority complex. Pleasure in deceit. I don't know why, but a vision of the Clintons just popped into my head.

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Come and kill it

I really don't understand the phenomenon of leaving one place because you don't like it, then working to make the place to which you've escaped more like your previous place. I was reading George Will's column, which mentioned that Arizona is becoming more liberal because of Californians fleeing the disaster that liberals have made of California. I've seen a similar phenomenon in Florida, where people move from the North because they like the sun and low taxes, then immediately begin complaining that the public services are not as all-ecompassing and why doesn't Florida just institute a state income tax so that the state government can provide [fill-in-the blank] like their old state does.

Either embrace your new culture or stay home. It's that simple. I hate The Gap on every corner phenomenon. That doesn't mean we should ban it, but at least think twice before you go buy an overpriced fake Italian coffee at Starbucks and consider patronizing the local coffee shop on the corner instead. And forget The Gap. Their clothes are the epitome of bland and boring anyhow.

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God wants you to sell your soul

Scott Breed writes to WND: It is our obligation to vote and to vote prayerfully. If you think conceding the presidency of the United States -- to a person who is as outside the will of God as John Kerry seems to be -- is OK as long as you maintain the principles of your vote, you are making not only a grave political mistake, but possibly a grave spiritual sin.

This cretin attempts to argue that since no man is perfect, you must vote for the lesser of two evils. What a load of literal non-sense. There is a massive difference between voting for someone and refusing to vote for his opponent, and it is significant that he can't even quite bring himself to utter the words that not supporting evil is "a grave spiritual sin."

A general warning to Christians: if you feel the need to preface a statement with "possibly" or "could lead to" before a statement on sin, then stop and rethink what you're about to say. Nine times out of ten, you'd be much better off shutting your trap before you make an ass of yourself.

George Delano must be in trouble if his supporters are feeling the need to accuse others of grave sin for not supporting a man who repeatedly offends their conservative principles. Now there's a Christian notion if I've ever heard one - sell out your principles for worldly power. This would be outrageous if it wasn't so outrageously stupid. President Bush made a calculated decision to move to the left. Neither he nor his supporters should be surprised or upset that those of us on the right have no desire to see that he maintains his power. If the Republican Party will not support individual freedom, Constitutional rights, national sovereignty and small government, it has no reason whatsoever to expect that those of us who do will continue to support it.

If you genuinely like George Bush and his performance in office, then vote for him, by all means. But if your only reason for supporting Republicans is that Democrats are worse, you are politically rootless. You have no principle except your misconceived pragmatism. That argument will never change. You will never leave the Republican Party, no matter what they do, because the Democrats will always be worse as the two parties drift slowly, but surely, towards their bipartisan destination of all-powerful state.

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Mailvox: Christian extremists

Hank writes again: I'm deeply troubled by the actions of the neo-cons and Christian extremists in the FCC and DOJ. I'm more appalled at the entire lack of reaction by the populace in general. Combine this with a total apathy about the removal of our rights by USA PATRIOT Act and the Bush administrations insistence on scaring people into believing they have to surrender their rights to have them protected, and I don't see this country's democracy lasting much longer.

There's your answer, Hank. What would possibly be the purpose behind an alliance between the secular Jewish neocons in the administration and their nonexistent Christian extremist colleagues? So now the FCC is full of Christian extremists... really? Did the fact that the secular Soviets had a far more rigorous policing of art than the FCC has ever envisioned escape your attention? Or that the FCC was stricter 50 years ago? How many of those seven words can't we say now?

The truth is that what you rightly fear has nothing to do with Christianity or even religion at all. Liberals, neo-cons and compassionate conservatives alike are uniting to destroy the remnants of the Constitutional republic that remain. This Christian extremist loathes the Patriot Act, would ban the FCC outright and despises the Bush administration's use of the oldest totalitarian canard in the book - put your faith in me and you will be safe. And yet, as a liberal, would you turn to the central government to stop this? Only the central government is the very instrument of all of this!

This country isn't and never was a democracy. If you want to defend your God-given (yes!) rights, then cast aside your emotional bond with big government and embrace the intellectual freedom of libertarianism. The love of money may be the root of all evil, but government is evil's strong arm. Bush and Ashcroft are not right-wing, they are strong government advocates just like Hilary Clinton. Their arguments may be different, but the results always point in the same direction: more central government power, less individual freedom.

Walk into the light....

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Mailvox: crash and burn

Hank writes: Those Christian extremists also have the most powerful organization in the world under their direction. That includes multi-trillion dollar power to cripple economies, a defense budget larger than the rest of the world's combined as well as the ability to annihalate any country they see fit. That's just what they can do to foreign peoples they don't like. This says nothing for what they have in store for those of us here. Forgive me if I'm more threatened by the fundamentalists running our govermnent more every day rather than a bunch of penniless Muslims half a world away.

This is stunningly and uncharacteristically poor thinking by Hank. The only way it can possibly be considered even vaguely valid is to define all Christians as extremists. George Bush is a Methodist, which is a liberal mainstream Christian denomination. His administration is full of non-practicing Jews, so much so that its defenders claim that simply to criticize the neocon influence on the administration is tantamount to anti-Semitism. Unless Hank is referring to Focus on the Family, which is much more of a Christian fundamentalist organization than the Bush coterie, he's simply making statements that would sound more appropriate coming out of the humorless and factually challenged morass that is Air America.

Ironically, one could almost make a better case for the Clinton administration being full of Christian extremists, being that Bill Clinton is a nominal Southern Baptist and his administration was less populated by obviously non-Christian Jews.

Finally, our government isn't the one with the power to cripple economies. Its part is done. Thanks to years of bipartisan mismanagement and the disastrous leadership of the Federal Reserve, that power now lies with the Chinese and Japanese governments.

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Not chastened enough

Rich Lowry writes on NRO: By my count, the ranks of chastened hawks -chastened in their own differing ways, of course-now includes Charles Krauthammer, David Brooks, and Francis Fukuyama. It's possible to be sadder, wiser, and still resolved to see this thing through. That's where NR is, and where, I suspect, a lot of supporters of this war are.

Nation-building is not an appropriate enterprise for a free society. It was a bad idea in Woodrow Wilson's time and it is a bad idea now. All that we are likely to accomplish in Iraq, I fear, is to enhance the power and ambition of the United Nations. After all, if we turn primary responsibility over to them, who could argue that the organization needs military capability of its own as well as a means of funding it?

As for the chastened hawks, how much longer will it take for them to take the next step and conclude that American troops should not be there, not to mention Bosnia or any of the 100 other countries in which our troops are stationed as they attempt to maintain Pax Americana. The romantic irony of bringing "democracy" to these foreign lands aside, it simply isn't going to work. The projected stay has now reached 10 years. No doubt it will soon be longer than that.

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Mailvox: sinking to new lows

DS writes of Air America: Decided to listen while driving around the last two days. I get the Portland station. Could not believe the low life attempt at humor. VP Cheney and Justice Scalia being gang sodomized? Saying Bush likes seeing people on fire jumping out of buildings! Not only is it not funny; it is totally disgusting. Even though I think they are helping the Republican cause it's embarrassing to listen to. The laugh track is worse than Gilligan's Island. I wonder what they plan to do to sink to new lows.

Go off the air. That's my guess. Speaking of radio, I've been digging up some information on Pirate Radio, Icecast and other Internet radio options. What's the general preference - and I'm promising nothing - downloadable MP3's from a web site or streaming from a server? Given that you won't be able to tune in on your radio anyhow, I don't see any real benefit to the latter, but lots of additional expense and operating issues. Then again, perhaps I'm missing something. Anyone have any thoughts?

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We know where he stands

Dr. Kern, of the SKI gold stock analysis system, writes: The great crash of the century has been initiated. Liquidate all assets that can decline in net asset value (stocks, bonds, real estate, gold, but not EE, I Savings Bonds, or cash). As I stated on the triple buy in 12/02, but this time in reverse, all traditional technical indicators of oversold conditions will prove to be wrong. The gold stocks declined today through all stops and although the panic selling is usually indicative of a low, I’ll pick the needle out of the century’s haystack, and indicate SELL EVERYTHING (due to the greatest and truest triple sell [signal] in history). I understand that you will view this communication as being the rantings of a lunatic and a contrary indicator. Do not fight the SKI indices. Please remain out of everything until the patterns indicate that a great bottom has occurred. IT has happened and the indices have spoken.

This is certainly in line with what Bob Prechter said when I spoke to him yesterday. He felt the top of a Cycle, Supercycle and Grand Supercycle Wave 2 was in very recently. I note, on the other hand, that the R/DMA-200 barely been punctured yet, which is my usual buy signal. I won't get concerned until the R/DMAs drop below .90, which has not happened in this ongoing bull market for metals.

One thing that makes me at least pay attention here, however, is that Kern has been an unrepentant gold bull - he still is, actually, in terms of his logic, he's just sticking manfully by his system - so this is not someone who is simply a bear by temperament.

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A bold prediction

From the Daily Reckoning: "Investors are convinced that the recent spate of good economic news will cause the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates before the end of the year. They're dead wrong. Here's the fact investor are missing: consumers can't afford rising interest rates. The Fed can't raise rates, says Denning, "until the final piece of the inflation puzzle is in place: rising consumer incomes. Until that happens, rising prices will simply make consumers cut back on spending. Throw in rising interest rates and energy prices and you have two more factors which lead to slower consumer spending and economic growth. "Bottom line: the economy can't grow until the consumer can spend more. And the consumer can't spend more when prices and interest rates are rising. If consumer incomes don't inflate, inflation in producer prices or consumer prices won't matter. Until consumer incomes rise, the Fed stands pat. "And here's a prediction for you - the Fed will become so concerned with the market pricing in rising rates (and pushing mortgage rates up) that it will cut rates by 25 basis points at its May 4th or June 30th meeting."

That flies in the face of what almost everyone is thinking. I have no opinion myself, but I have to admire the boldness of his call. By the way, I had a nice chat with Robert Prechter of Elliott Wave fame. I'm preparing an interview for a future column. Should be interesting for the dismal scientists.

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Pity

MANCHESTER, England -- Manchester United dismissed speculation Tuesday that the club's 67,000-seat stadium was a target for al-Qaida terrorists. British media reported that seven people arrested in anti-terrorist raids in the Manchester area Monday were planning suicide bomb attacks at the soccer team's high-profile Premier League game against Liverpool on Saturday.

The only improvement would be if Bayern Munich were the visitors. Or Dirty Leeds, but then, considering their performance this year, I suppose a bomb would be redundant.

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Anybody need a quarterback?

I don't know if Kurt Warner can still play. But if I didn't have a marque quarterback, I'd sure sign him and find out for myself. Even if he won't ever regain the form that had TMQ writing about him being an alien entity, he'd make for a solid backup.

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Mailvox: A two-way street

Jennifer writes: After a whole article about how women need to respect men (which I agree with) and how women should help boost a man's confidence, not tear it down -- doesn't it make sense that a man should respect a women's insecurites and build her up, too? If it is a confidence killer to her for him to be looking at the pictures can't he just for her sake put it down?

Absolutely. But that's NEVER going to happen if she's not showing any interest in meeting his needs or even in his feelings. Why would a woman expect him to show any concern about her desires or insecurities if she shows none about his. I think it is impotant for women to understand that sexual rejection is probably the biggest cause of male insecurity there is, not just for eight-grade boys but adult men as well. There's a reason that all the super-studs are irritatingly confident, it stems primarily from their knowledge that they can get what they want in the arena that matters most to men.

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That's one down, two to go

From the Independent: Shell was embroiled yesterday in Britain's biggest corporate scandal for almost 20 years after it admitted a three-year plan to deceive its shareholders. The City reacted with astonishment after the crisis-stricken multinational released details from an internal report that exposed how the company had deliberately overstated its oil and gas reserves for several years. Judy Boynton, the finance chief, became the third boardroom casualty of the furore that followed the shock 20 per cent downgrade in reserves three months ago. The Shell affair, the most damaging scandal in the UK since the Guinness debacle 18 years ago, has already led to the departure of the chairman, Sir Philip Watts, and the head of exploration and production, Walter van de Vijver.

Take that, White Buffalo. A fig for your improved corporate behavior and governance. And yes, it counts.

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Mailvox: in defense of porn

A different JT writes to the WND editor this time: Getting straight to the point. I am appalled at Vox Day's recommendation in the commentary "What Men Want," that anyone should view Sports Illustrated"swimsuit" models to choose the prettiest. The rest of the article was well thought out and offered sound edification for any adult. The offer of advice to look at soft porn as a way to win favor with the "boys" is a stumbling block of the first order in a Christian's life. God has given Vox Day the talent to write and a clear mind to think straight. He should use them with responsibility.

While I'm most appreciative of JT's kind words as well as the fact that she is cognizant of the fact that there was more to the column than the one-half of one sentence which seems to have caught the attention of all the Christian women - other women seem to be so busy being appalled at the notion that I dared to suggest that female behavior in a relationship could possibly be sub-optimal that my shocking advocacy of pornography, adultery, necrophilia and tantric sex ritual in church appears to have escaped them.

What's interesting to me is how flimsy my critics' arguments are. I break it down as follows:

1. Having an opinion on which SI model is prettier requires one to have read the SI swimsuit edition. (false)
2. Sports Illustrated is porn (dubious, but I'll grant it), and all porn is equal (false - every argument makes the immediate bait-and-switch from SI to ponygirls. If SI is your only "porn", then you're not much of an addict if you only see it once per year.)
3. Porn viewing is/leads to lusting after other women. (true)
4. Porn viewing leads to adultery (false - baseless assertion) or increased likelihood of adultery. (false - porn is a sex substitute). I enjoy how people making this argument skip right over the verse about husbands and wives not denying themselves to each other. Ever said, "not tonight?" Poof, there goes your high ground.
5. Porn leads to broken marriages (false - anecdotal proof only and very little of that)
5. Porn is displeasing to God (true)

There's not much of an argument if all you can come up with, really, is that God doesn't like it so you shouldn't do it. Well, sure, definitely, but that doesn't really explain the crusading mentality. Lust is a deadly sin, along with Sloth, Greed and Gluttony and the other three sins. There's also a verse or two warning about what you look at. Meanwhile, there's practically an entire book in the New Testament, not to mention tons of Proverbs, devoted to warning about how loose and wicked tongues lead to Hell. I would bet that not one one-hundredth the marriages that have failed have done so due to porn compared to how many have broken down thanks to wicked and untamed tongues. For every Penthouse subscriber there are 100 fat greedy little women gossiping in the sanctuary about each other, each convinced of their righteousness vis-a-vis the fourteen year-old boy with acne and a Playboy collection. It's like a bad joke. Perhaps I'm the only one who sees irony in the image of an obese lesbian pastor shrieking against the evils of pornography from the pulpit of her dying church.

But of course, sins like gossip, greed and gluttony have far more appeal to women than image-based lusting, so therefore the latter must be warred against as a cancer on the church and society, while all the former are quietly ignored. I say that the bulk of these arguments and the crusading outrage have nothing to do with God at all, as substantially similar arguments are made by non-believing women with much the same frothing-at-the-mouth passion. It's about female insecurity, not hatred of sin.

Now, the title of this post is somewhat tongue-in-cheek. I am not advocating pornography nor am I a fan of it. I don't even subscribe to Sports Illustrated, for that matter. But I think the overweening obsession with it on the part of modern Christians is both indicative of the feminization of the church as well as yet another example of mistaking a symptom of societal decline for a causal factor. The magical elimination of all porn from society would not have even a small part of the positive impact on society of requiring churches to be led by men who actually believe in the Bible as God's Word and are devoted to helping their congregations apply it to their lives.

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Mailvox: that's a tough one

Nate asks: Vox, who's your favorite Hugo winner from the last 20 years?

First, I have to point out that Zelazny won in 1968, so Nate's own answer should be disqualified. Stuck in the '80's, are we, Nate? I'm basing this on ouvre to date, not solely on the book for which they won, since Zelazny's LORD OF LIGHT is one of my all-time favorites, but he also wrote a lot of lesser fiction. Anyhow, I'll go back to 1968 since Zelazny is in the game and I can leave both Heinlein and Herbert out of the mix.

1. Neal Stephenson
2. William Gibson
3. Dan Simmons
4. Roger Zelazny
5. Tie: Lois McMaster Bujold and Joan D. Vinge. Bujold should get the nod based on cumulative, but THE SNOW QUEEN is too fantastic to leave out entirely.

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A liberal flies Air America

From the LA Times: I decided to listen to one entire day's original programming, all 17 hours. So at 6 a.m. on Good Friday — the first anniversary of the fall of Baghdad, the day after Condoleezza Rice testified before the commission investigating the 9/11 attacks — I tuned in to 1580, turned on my computer to take notes and sat with both until 11 p.m. It may have been the most boring day of my life. My fellow liberals have long argued that they haven't been able to match the conservative success on talk radio because the medium is ideally suited to conservatives. According to this self-serving argument, conservatives are more willing than liberals to engage in nasty name-calling and to see everything in black and white, while liberals — concerned with nuance and complexity — are inevitably reasonable, willing to consider both sides of an issue. But President W's policies — especially in Iraq — have now so enraged liberals that they are willing to play dirty too. Hence, Air America. Not....

Limbaugh does his name-calling so creatively and hilariously that it usually winds up being entertaining. As repellent as I find his politics, Limbaugh is an entertainer as well as a polemicist, and after liberal talk-show experiments with such policy wonks as former Govs. Jerry Brown of California and Mario Cuomo of New York all failed, the folks behind Air America promised that they'd learned their lesson. They too would find ideologues who are funny. Nice try.

Adieu, sweet, sweet Alice. Go thou gently, (and quietly for the love of all that's good and holy), into that dark and radio-silent night.

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Mailvox: Bill ponders why he's here

Bill comments: I hang around because the conversation is interesting, not because I agree with it. Vox and I seem to share enough of a world-view to talk, but we're still pretty far apart on many issues of substance. I often get the sense that our discussions range from talking past each other to violently agreeing.

I couldn't bear to do this if everyone agreed with me all the time. I have zero interest in preaching to the choir, I'm far more interested in having my premises challenged and tested - by sane people capable of rational thought, that is. Not that the occasional hate mail isn't a blast, or a sober attempt at a substantive critique as we've seen from folks like Strange, Able and others. I'd hardly be recommending the fiction of an EU-loving pagan socialist if I didn't believe that exposing oneself to intellectual diversity is not only healthy, but vital for sharpening one's own mind.

The only thing that's been disappointing about this blog is seeing how the volume of hate mail I used to receive from the column so rapidly dwindled to a tiny trickle, as people became less and less sanguine about entering the ring. I hope the syndicate will add some papers in the next six months or so and then we'll get a new supple of fresh meat, er, that is to say, amusingly disrespectful missives of disagreement.

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And so it begins

It seems my appearance on the Northern Alliance Radio Show went pretty well, as Saint Paul and the gang have asked me to become a quasi-regular of sorts. I'll be appearing for a segment or two on a monthly basis, in much the same way that Hugh Hewitt has his regulars. No formal schedule or anything, but I'll post here a few days before I'm going to be on. He mentioned that several people were interested hearing more on the Bush v Kerry question that we barely began to get into at the end.

Anyhow, it was fun and in the event I ever to decide to do anything beyond the writing, the experience will come in handy. I've already gotten most of the "ums" out, now it's time to work on "you know". I'm still working on getting my hands on an MP3, and when I do I'll arrange to post it somewhere for your listening pleasure.

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What's the prob?

Michael Graham writes on NRO's Corner: Jeff Greenfield of CNN says the most disturbing revelation on "60 Minutes" last night was Bob Woodward's claim that the Saudis plan to flood the international market with oil to bring down gas prices in time for the American election. To which I say "Great!" Why shouldn't the Saudis help out the president who's bravely led a coalition against an enemy on their own border, an enemy who has repeatedly threatened to invade Saudi Arabia? If the Democrats want to argue that having President Bush in office means oil-rich nations will try to help out the American economy, go right ahead. If these nations were driving gas prices up in order to punish Bush, you can bet Teresa Heinz Kerry's dead husband's last dollar that the Democrats would be holding Bush responsible. Instead, they’re helping a brother out. What's the prob?

I'm not even sure where to begin teeing off on this one. If George Bush is "a brother" of the House of Saud, well, we've got some serious problems considering that it is the Wahhabist Saudis who have revived the long slumbering war on the Dar-al-Harb in the interest of establishing global sharia. But it would certainly go a long way in explaining why, after a Saudi-financed attack by Saudis at the behest of a Saudi expat cheered on by Saudi government clerics, the President decided to wage an undeclared war on Iraq. Michael Moore is a borderline insane, dishonest lump of lunacy, but I don't know if even he's gone so far in saying that the President is not only in bed with House of Saud, but is downright akin to them.

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Mailvox: oh you bad boy!

JT, a self-proclaimed widow, writes: I always thought a misogynist little boy lurked under your skin, and I now I know you are a misogynist little boy masquerading as a man. You aren't even married; you are like a priest trying to tell a married couple how they should respond to each other.... I have no idea on what you are basing your ideas, but it seems to me that you need to have your ego stroked all the time. For instance sports--you need to have your sports time and would like to have a woman sitting by your side whether or not she is bored to death (sort of like a dog) so that you can reach over and touch her just to make sure you are not alone. You sound like a guy who just can't be alone and who is not happy with the kind of person he is. I am 54 years old, so it may be that the years separate our opinions, but you really need to find yourself-really find yourself. Do people your age actually walk around thinking about their relationships all the time?

As usual, write something a woman doesn't like, and immediately she resorts to accusations of mysogyny. It's really sad when even the hate mail is tedious. So, where did I go wrong? What, exactly, is she asserting, that women should be disrespectful and uncivil to their husbands? That a woman should behave like a unhappy harpy and still expect a man to stick around? That a man is responsible for her feelings and that her time is well spent in trying to bring him down? That she should try to prevent him from hanging out with friends, and if they do happen to be around, she should insert herself into the gathering and play topic police? JT, do you even have a point?

I always find it amusing when people make staggeringly inaccurate assertions about me. As anyone whose ever spent 30 minutes with me can probably tell, I'm not all that keen on spending the bulk of my time around other people. The five books I've written would tend to be a bit of a clue that I enjoy my solitude. But it's true, I do spend 24-7 thinking about relationships, watching Oprah and reading women's magazines.

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Double your money in 30 seconds!

I expect CNBC to hire him as an expert investment commentator any day now. He'd fit right in with Larry Kudlow. Buy! Buy! Buy!

Meanwhile, Fleck writes: The refi game and government stimulus have been the only glue holding the economy together. If last Wednesday's move in the bond market has shut the door on (mortgage) refi activity once and for all, as I believe it has, then the Fed is basically trapped. It is my view that we have reached the inflection point -- where it's game over for stocks, real estate and the economy. That doesn't mean everything will stop on a dime, but we may look back at this period in time and say that it was an inflection point.

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Mailvox: useless TSA

Scott comments: As an American who has lived in Israel for over 10 years, I consider myself very sensitive to the assault on American liberties. I got a firsthand look at the new reality in my short trip to Los Angeles last May. The TSA, at the very least, irked me. Everything they were doing was wrong. It's like they stole the "form" of security, as done correctly by El Al, without adopting the "substance.

I experienced the uselessness of the TSA myself a few weeks ago. I was dropped off at the door with far more luggage than I could possibly carry by myself, while there was a huge line to check in. I flagged down a passing man in a TSA uniform and asked him if he could help me move the luggage to the back of the line, some 50 yards away, from where I could move things along, piece by piece. He said, no, he couldn't, and was unmoved by my warning that I was just going to leave it there and get in line - I knew the line would eventually take me where the luggage was.

Now, I could see this big pile of baggage from my spot in the line 50 yards away, but the rest of the TSA people didn't know that. And in the 20 minutes it took for the rest of the party to join me and collect the luggage, not a single passing TSA employee bothered to check out this big pile of anonymous suitcases. What a joke.

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It's just another partial-birth abortion, after all

The order to kill every pregnant Jewish woman had been issued that morning. So when a Nazi guard patrolling the Jewish ghetto in Kovno noticed a pregnant Jew walking past the local hospital, he shot her at point-blank range. She died on the spot. Hoping to save the baby, some passersby rushed the dead woman into the hospital. An obstetrician determined that she had been in her last weeks of pregnancy, and said that if surgery were performed immediately, her baby might be rescued.... Then came a horrifying postscript. "The cruel murderers . . . came into the hospital to write down the name of the murdered woman. . . . When they found the baby alive, their savage fury was unleashed. One of the Germans grabbed the infant and cracked its skull against the wall of the hospital room. Woe unto the eyes that saw this!"

Abortionettes, Nazis, they're all the same to me, except I have slightly more respect for the historical NASDAP than NOW. Calling a feminist a femi-Nazi is an insult to National Socialism.

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Mailvox: the harsh reality of relationships

LL writes: What a wonderful article. For the women who read, and heed this article life will be better. Many men stay in painful relationships for years, until their children are grown. Once their children are grown, it is not uncommon for them to leave their wives of many years. The pure and simple fact is: women control relationships from the ages of 6-45, they decide who they will date, they decide how serious the relationship will become, and in most cases they decide who they will marry. After the age of 45 there is a complete role reversal, women control almost nothing. The sex-induced fog of youth is mastered, and the simple fact of life is that there are far more available over-45 women than there are available over 45 men.

Yet when men leave wives of many years the wife is stunned. The only thing that the wife can come up with is that they have been left for a younger woman. They look for the "easy" answer, they are being left for youth. In actuality the husband decided years before to leave when the time was appropriate. The reality is that the husband is not leaving for a younger woman, but rather, is leaving for a more loving, more civil, caring partner who just happens to be younger. What also happens frequently is that many of these middle aged women go through menopause and lose all sexual interest in their husbands. Their rationalization is: "oh well, I don't need it, so he will just have to do without." Sorry...nope, nope, nope, nope...no only means no for as long as the receiving partner decides that he will accept no. Once "no" is no longer the acceptable answer he looks elsewhere, and if sex is of interest he passes right by the post menopausal set, on this way to the younger crowd.

I think the significant insight there is that "the husband decided years before to leave when the time was appropriate." On occasions I've spoken with older, divorced men whose children are grown, I'm often struck by how happy many of them are. "The best money I ever spent" is a commonly heard theme. This is why I think that it is absolutely necessary for men to marry a Christian woman who embraces the notion of duty and responsibility within marriage, as opposed to a woman who views a relationship solely in terms of rights and happiness. A man should no more marry such a woman than a woman should marry a man who beats her, cheats on her or treats her disrespectfully.

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A most desirable atrocity

Golden Gryphon has published THE ATROCITY ARCHIVE, by Charles Stross. If you have any interest in brilliant science fiction that combines computer technology and Cthulhu, that conflates MI-5 and the Mythos, you must seriously consider buying this novel. In addition to being the first writer to ever work Austrian economics into a novella, Stross was a finalist for the Nebula last year and his SINGULARITY SKY is up for the Hugo this fall. His ACCELERANDO is one of the most thought-provoking, mind-bending works of fiction I've ever had the pleasure of reading. He writes like a William Gibson who actually understands technology.

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Thinking differently

Pat Buchanan thinks about an unthinkable that is a little less unthinkable than mine: The president calls failure in Iraq unthinkable. But the alternative may be an open-ended war the American people never signed on to, and, if present polls are any indication, may not be willing to support indefinitely. Iraq is not Vietnam, but, for President Bush, there are troubling similarities to other unhappy moments in American history. Truman's presidency was broken by the "no-win war" in Korea. LBJ's presidency was broken by his failure to "win or get out" of Vietnam.

What does a president do if he believes a war is just and necessary, but the people come to believe it is the wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time, with the wrong enemy? We are not at that point yet, but we are getting there. And President Bush had best begin to think the unthinkable.

Bringing the troops out of Iraq and taking a step backward after several steps forward in the war against the global jihad isn't really all that unthinkable in my book. The unthinkable that concerns me far more is how elements within the federal government are using the conflict to war on American liberties and take a few quiet steps forward towards selling out national sovereignty to the United Nations. The problem is that whether we fight the war that's been declared against us or not, the sell-out continues apace. President Clinton turned over the rivers and parks, President Bush is in the process of turning over the seas and possibly the Internet, and neither of these things required a war to excuse them.

You may see this as paranoia; I don't care. The head-in-the-sand brigade has already been proven wrong about the EU ("it's just a trade zone, it'll never be a political entity") and will be proven wrong over time about the UN as well. Whatever we do with regards to Iraq, turning an oil-producing country over to the United Nations in any way should not be one of the options. The UN is desperate to achieve an independent source of revenue; once it succeeds in that, it will begin asserting its self-proclaimed right to govern.

This isn't rocket science, people, just an ability to think in terms of decades instead of election cycles. When power is centralized, it attracts those who wish to rule over others like a bitch in heat attracts male dogs.

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Those right-wing corporations

U.S. radio broadcasters have asked federal regulators to bar rival satellite radio services from offering content tailored to local markets, according to a petition obtained on Friday. The National Association of Broadcasters, which represents radio conglomerates like Clear Channel Communications Inc. , filed the request due to concerns the up and coming satellite services are trying to replace local radio outlets. Both XM Satellite Radio and Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. now offer traffic and weather for several cities on its national service, but are barred from using ground-based transmitters that extend service into hard-to-reach areas to air programming aimed specifically at a local market.

"This foray into local content is directly contrary to ... repeated and express promises that satellite radio service would be limited to delivering national programming to serve the unserved and underserved," according to the petition filed this week and obtained by Reuters. NAB said the two companies may also be developing satellite radios that can receive advertisements, news and other content targeting a local market by using Global Positioning Satellite (GPS). The broadcasters' group demanded that the Federal Communications Commission, which licenses satellite services, explicitly ban their rivals from using any technology to offer content in one area that is different from another location.

This is a good example of the absurd notion of the inherently conservative big corporation. Big corporations love socialist governments, because instead of having to compete with competitors spawned by new technology, they can simply lobby the government to ban their competitors altogether. The left's attempt to create a dichotomy between big business and big government is a false one, as the two, in fact, tend to feed off each other. This is why the PRC has massive corporations, and why Hitler had no trouble reaching accomodation with the industrial giants of Germany. I always find it ironic that the environmental and anti-globalist left believes that government will somehow help them seriously rein in the big corporations.

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The all-devouring Wolves

I'm not a big NBA fan, but I'm pleased to see the Wolves do so well. Back when all the talk of the next Michael Jordan was revolving around Vince, Kobe and AI, I always felt that KG was the only possible heir to the throne. If he can lead the Wolves to a championship, this will become obvious to everyone. He's that rarity of rarities, a true superstar of genuine humility and civility. Best of luck to you and the pack, KG.

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That sounds familiar

From the Washington Times: Two of Fox News Channel's most ubiquitous military analysts, retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas G. McInerney and retired Army Maj. Gen. Paul E. Vallely, are out with a new book on how to win the global war against al Qaeda and other terror groups. In "Endgame: The Blueprint for Victory in the War on Terror," the two Vietnam combat veterans call for ratcheting up the global conflict by taking on Iran, North Korea and Syria — now.

It has to be Saudi Arabia, not North Korea, and the enemy needs to be identified specifically in order to rally the nation, but I note that I am not alone in failing to be terribly sanguine about the current conduct of the war on method. And for those Bush defenders who argue that this has really been the secret plan all along, well, any commander-in-chief whose strategy is escalation by inevitability should be removed for incompetence. Not to mention violating the Constitution, the oath of office and the right of the American people to decide if and when they will go to war, and with whom. I don't believe George Bush lied the nation into Iraq - the many violations of the 1991 peace treaty were sufficient justification to invade and unseat Hussein long before Bush was even elected - but at this point it remains possible that he is lying the nation into a far more serious conflict.

The problem that libertarians and conservatives have in looking at this conflict is that both tend to look at Iran, Iraq and the other Arab nations as being distinct countries equivalent to the USA, UK and France. They aren't, they are more properly viewed like Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas in the loosely federated Islamic nation. On the libertarian side, for all that war is the health of the state - and the present administration is certainly attempting to use its war-on-method to ratchet up central federal power - war has been declared on the USA by the Dar-al-Islam for the last 20+ years. That is the well-established fact, and it must be recognized that the war does not persist because of the noxious global American troop presence, but because the Dar-al-Islam seeks global sharia. A global American troop presence did not cause Northern Africa, Egypt, Spain, Hungary, Romania, Southern Italy and parts of Austria to be overrun 1200 years ago and it is not causing the global jihad now. As was the case in 1940, the real war lies below the Phony one.

Conservatives, on the other hand, must recognize that the Bush administration is as power-hungry as its predecessor, and if it is to be trusted to fight this war, it must significantly change its ways. One reason that the present administration pretends to be so focused on terror - even as it protects Arafat and warns Israel about killing terrorist leaders - is that it can eliminate the rights and liberties of its citizens, whereas these things aren't necessary in fighting a proper, Constitutional war against the jihad. It is wrong, both historically and morally, to give the administration a pass simply because there is a war to be fought. FDR and LBJ are anathema to conservatives for the many evils they committed during WWII and Vietnam, no more should George Bush or any Republican be excused for similar unconstitutional excesses under the aegis of war-fighting.

The lessons of history are clear. If a free people do not go willingly and knowingly into battle, they will lose. Attempts to manipulate them are not only wrong, they are likely to lead to failure.

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IT'S BACK!!!

Hello Cthulhu, that is. This is easily the best Internet comic. It was gone for about a year, but it's finally back. Oh frabjous day! The new Spring Break one is hilarious.

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Counter-productive?

From the AP: An Israeli missile strike killed Hamas leader Abdel Aziz Rantisi as he rode in his car Saturday evening, hospital officials said. Rantisi's son Mohammed and a bodyguard were also killed in the attack. The militant Hamas leader was one of Israel's top targets after it assassinated Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin in an airstrike last month.

The Brits are saying that this was a counter-productive action. Meanwhile, Debka reports that Hamas is afraid to tell anyone who its next leader will be. The number of suicide bombers are down. But I guess you could say it's counter-productive if you're a fan of the terrorists.

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Keep this in mind

...when they tell you that the UN is a mechanism for world peace: Three UN police officers -- two Americans and a Jordanian -- were killed in northern Kosovo and 11 others were injured after a quarrel between UN officers led to an exchange of gunfire, UN and hospital sources said. UN police spokesman Neeraj Singh said the UN officers were all stationed at a prison in the town of Kosovska Mitrovica. Sources close to the UN mission said the incident was the result of a dispute between Middle Eastern and United States officers serving in the same international police force.

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In case you forgot

I'll be hanging out with the Fraters Libertas and company on Northern Alliance Radio at 2 PM central. It's on the Patriot, 1280 AM, in the Twin Cities. St. Paul says we'll probably take some calls; the number is 651-688-3131. However, do try to lay off the inside jokes since neither they nor the audience will have any idea of what you're talking about even if I do.

By the way, they were kind enough to blogroll me as well. I do appreciate it. I have to say, this is the most I've looked forward to doing a radio show since the time in Toronto when the host was openly inviting feminists to call in after I wrote "Spiting Their Pretty Faces". It felt just like playing Doom. "Say hello to my little friend!"

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Good luck fixing the GOP

Robert Novak explains how it works: Following her impressive performance on NBC's "Meet the Press" April 4, Bush adviser Karen Hughes's friends and supporters in both Washington and Texas started quietly boosting her for governor of Texas in 2006. Gov. Rick Perry, who succeeded to the governorship in 2000 when Gov. George W. Bush became president, has indicated he will seek another term. But Perry has many enemies, and the word in Texas political circles is that Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison could challenge him for the Republican nomination. Conservative activists do not consider Hughes one of them and are not talking about her for governor. However, Republican insiders who are not fond of either Perry or Hutchison are starting to promote Hughes, a former television journalist who never has run for public office.

So, even if the party has someone in office, or an experienced conservative (ADA rating 0, ACU rating 88) interested in pursuing it - Perry has been hounded by incessant rumors that he's gay, that is the elephant around which Novak is dancing - the wishes of the GOPolitburo must take precedence. If a conservative senator can be passed over in favor of a rookie courtier, what does that tell you about your chances, as a complete outsider, of effecting any change at all?

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I like this guy

Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks and confirmed maverick in general, isn't afraid to speak out about the Wrinkled Whores. I bet they'd like to figure out a way to fine him. Maybe they can take some hints from David Stern.

Savvy investors? I was shocked. Of the 63 companies and 400-plus participants we visited, I would be exaggerating if I said we got 10 good questions about our business and how it worked. The vast majority of people in the meetings had no clue who we were or what we did. They just knew that there were a lot of people talking about the company and they should be there. The lack of knowledge at the meetings got to be such a joke between Todd and I that we used to purposely mess up to see if anyone noticed. Or we would have pet lines that we would make up to crack each other up. Did we ruin our chance for the IPO? Was our product so complicated that no one got it and as a result no one bought the stock? Hell no. They might not have had a clue, but that didn’t stop them from buying the stock. We batted 1.000. Every single investor we talked to placed the maximum order allowable for the stock....

Price-earnings ratios, price-sales, the present value of future cash flows, pick one. Fundamentals are merely metrics created to help stockbrokers sell stocks, and to give buyers reassurance when buying stocks. Even how profits are calculated is manipulated to give confidence to buyers.

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Same planet, different worlds

Strange Semantics writes on his blog: There's also an air of Fascist-like propaganda that wafts through the current right-wing zeitgeist. Notice Bush's constant assertions that you are either for or against him, and Carl Rove's acknowledgement that he can spin (read propagandize) anything his opponents might say so that it harms them, rather than his team. There's the misuse of pre-war Iraqi intelligence, and the spinning of the post-war reality in Iraq, to say nothing of the constant reference to a connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda, which we know never existed in any meaningful sense. So, the commission, because it dissents from the President's message, which is simply "I am infallible; follow me," is decried as partisan (it's a bipartisan commission!) at best, and a complete complete joke at worst.

This is fascinating. It came to my attention through Technorati, which lets you see who is linking to you, as the "complete joke" was a link to my recent post. But, as is his wont, Strange cocks it up entirely since the notion that I am dismissive of the 9/11 commission because it is insufficiently pro-Bush is utterly nonsensical to anyone who is a regular reader of this blog.

First, one of the commission's members is hopelessly conflicted, given that she was directly involved in the events leading up to 9/11. Second, they aren't asking any of the significant questions about 9/11. Where is the wreckage of the plane that supposedly hit the Pentagon? Oh, right, it liquified after making a hole far too small for a Boeing, and yet there's plenty of items from the two planes that hit the Twin Towers. Why did the FAA fail to respond to the hijackings for 45 minutes? Is it true that some of the supposed hijackers are alive and giving interviews in European newspapers, and how were they identified so quickly given that none of their names appear on the passenger manifests? Why was gravel and dirt dumped over the pristine lawn that went right up to the Pentagon while the firefighters were still putting out the fire? How is it that the same names keep cropping up in the TWA 800, OK City and 9/11 investigations?

Those are the questions I'm interested in hearing the Commission ask. But they won't. And that's why the Commission is a joke. As usual, the partisan uproar is merely noise to keep everyone, in both parties, looking in one direction. Bush and Kerry are identical, again, in this regard.

And, for the x-millionth time, the fascists are left-wing. They always were left-wing big government lovers, they always will be left-wing big government lovers, and the Bush administration has at times looked increasingly fascistic AS IT MOVES TO THE LEFT and disregards individual rights in favor of increasing central government power. In any case, Jonah Goldberg's forthcoming book should be the final word necessary on the subject.

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Arsenal is awesome

Watching Arsenal this season reminds me of the 1998 Vikings. Every time they break forward with the ball, the crowd hushes just like when Randy Moss would go deep and Randall Cunningham put the ball in the air. They play the prettiest passing game in the world, they attack mercilessly and without hesitation, and they are totally unselfish. In the process of destroying dirty Leeds today, they had four lightning-quick one-touch passes leading up to a one-time strike and goal by Pires. It's like watching a finely tuned machine transform itself into a work of art.

Their utter confidence is brilliant too. After a hand ball led to a penalty, Henry chipped a soft lob directly at where the goalie had been standing a moment earlier. But the goalie had already dived to the side and had to lie there watching the ball float over him. That's total self-assurance. 24-0-9 after today... the Premiership should be in the bag, but here's hoping they can finish the season undefeated.

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On B-52s

Okay, I'm actually thinking about the band. I happened to pop Cosmic Thing into the CD for the first time in about ten years and realized that I'd completely forgotten what a good CD it is. Junebug is just impressively strange: "Let's get in the mud! Go! Go! Go Junebug!" I'm not much of a concert guy, but they're one of the few bands I regret not ever seeing live. Freaks.

But as to the other sort of B-52 I had to laugh when I was reading about how some US troops were saying that it's just a few bad apples causing most of the trouble over in Iraq. This is surely true, but as PJ O'Rourke pointed out years ago in All the Trouble in the World after a trip to Northern Ireland, that's what the occupying soldiers always say. And while it may be true, that doesn't mean that you're not going to be there for 30 years dealing with the trouble caused by those comparatively few troublemakers.

I also thought it was interesting that the fatality rates seem to be generally running around 10-1. That's precisely where the Israeli-Palestinian rate was until the suicide bombing campaign dropped it down to 3-1 for a while. This might explain why no one is in a hurry to take away America's guns. Even allowing for the many advantages of a professional army, there's simply too many guns in the hands of too many people for anyone to even think about it, unless you managed to import the troops from China. Then again, on second thought, that's assuming a desire to avoid civilian casualties.

I don't actually have a coherent point here, I'm just thinking out loud.

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Shopping for pandas

Just ran my numbers. As a good contrarian, I was suspecting that it might be buy time anyhow, with France announcing that it's going to sell 500 tons by 2009 out of the blue while the Financial Time was loudly beating the same "gold is dead" drum that it was beating back when gold was at $275. Those inflation reports must have the big gold shorts sweating. Anyhow, the drop to $398 today brought us to a third day sitting at 1.02 R/DMA, which is my buy point. Silver probably would have been the better buy yesterday, as it actually dropped below 7 and a 1.2 RMDA for a few hours.

If Prechter happens to be wrong here, again, I think it will be safe to ignore him on metals. I've been loathe to do so entirely, but this is one area where his leaving inflation out of the equation just doesn't compute.

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Understanding inflation manipulation

Richard Benson explains it very well: The primary sources of manipulation are: 1) Making sure the wrong items are in the index; 2) Taking “hedonics” to ridiculous extremes; 3) Getting consumers to do more of the work and receive less services; and, 4) Changing to a Chain Weighted Index.

If you're having trouble understanding how the CPI is by no means an accurate measure of inflation, read this. Benson makes it very, very simple.

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The super-secret strategy

From the Washington Times: The number of illegal aliens being apprehended on the southwestern border has jumped 25 percent in the first three months of 2004 compared with last year, and some are blaming President Bush's immigration proposal in January for enticing immigrants across the border. "It doesn't take a rocket scientist to tell you the president's speech was the catalyst for lots of folks to make their way north and try to get into this country in order to get what they accurately believe to be amnesty," said Rep. Tom Tancredo, Colorado Republican and chairman of the House Immigration Reform Caucus. The increase in apprehensions was driven by a spike within the two Arizona sectors, Yuma and Tucson, which saw increases of 60 percent and 51 percent, respectively.

Since our Republican friends are chock-full of secret Bush strategies, maybe this is his secret libertarian plan to destroy the Welfare State by flooding it with folks on the dole. This is in obvious cooperation with secret libertarian Alan Greenspan's plan to bring back the gold standard by destroying the debt-backed dollar. The plan, it's working, it's working! Mwuh-ha-ha-ha-haaaa!

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This could be interesting

The State Department on Thursday "strongly urged" private U.S. citizens to leave Saudi Arabia as it announced plans to order some U.S. diplomats out the country because of security concerns. "Private American citizens currently in Saudi Arabia are strongly urged to depart," the State Department said in a travel advisory after it decided to send nonessential U.S. diplomats and all embassy family members home.

June 30th is coming fairly soon. Perhaps the President and his military advisors have decided that it's time to grasp the nettle. There's no shame in admitting a strategy isn't working, only in sticking with it once you know it isn't working. I doubt it, but it's possible.

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Il corpo e' ucciso, ma lo spirito vive sempre

From the BBC: Italian hostage defied killers. The Italian hostage killed by kidnappers in Iraq was a defiant hero in his final moments, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini says. The dead man was identified as Fabrizio Quattrocchi, 36, a security guard. As the gunman's pistol was pointing at him the hostage "tried to take off his hood and shouted: 'now I'll show you how an Italian dies,'" he said.

Sometimes, your only choice is to die poorly or die well. Bravissimo, Fabrizio. Ha mostrato il cuore di un leone. Il suo onore e il suo coraggio confondano i suoi assassini. Resta nello pace.

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Spinning survival

The Dark Prince of politics, Robert Novak, writes: When George W. Bush faced the nation in a rare prime time press conference, he was responding to a crisis of confidence among his Republican supporters. His recent difficulties in dealing with adversity had planted serious doubts among party leaders. The president's performance Tuesday night eased their anxiety about an imminent loss of support by his base, but worriers were not completely reassured. Considering how he has handled the first three months of this election year, President Bush's press conference was indeed a welcome relief. Republicans had feared another public relations disaster following twin failures in his State of the Union address and his appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press." While he dodged a third bullet Tuesday night, Republicans concede Bush was less than triumphant.

Funny, I don't remember either the State of the Union address or Meet the Press being mentioned as disasters at the time. I do remember some breathless color commentary on NRO's Corner, generally more positive than Jonah Goldberg's laconic review this time around: "I thought Bush was fine though. At first I thought the prepared remarks were a bit too down-tempo. But it became clear his comments were building on each other. I think he set the right tone and said the right things."

No doubt we'll be hearing about how the next one was satisfactory, in contrast to the previous three disasters. In any case, Churchill he ain't.

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Mirage, not miracle

The Asia Times covers the Chinese economy: So, all hunky-dory in the Middle Kingdom? Maybe. In the past decade, and certainly since the Asian crisis, warnings by some contrarian analysts of a rapidly overheating Chinese economy cranked up a few more notches. That didn't faze foreign investors and Chinese policymakers, who scoff at the babble as banal - the same way Asia ignored, then lampooned, similar talk in the mid- to late 1990s. Then, wham! Asia's economic castles were found to be built on sand. Their miracles were almost entirely debt-financed. And still other analysts fervently describe Chinese economic development as a miracle par excellence. Some are already saying this century is China's. The zeal and eulogies are all too familiar. But the contrarian chatter is fast catching up to China, with stronger tones - not something Chinese policymakers can afford to ignore anymore.

"The miracles were almost entirely debt-financed." Why does that remind me of something?

Oh yeah, Mogambo was going off as if he had a cell phone attached to him: as a case in point, I take the $21 billion weekly issuance of debt, multiply it times fifty-two weeks, and compare that annual debt issuance to, oh, let's say, income. Oh, not YOUR income of course, because you are so smart and handsome and you make the big bucks. No, I'm talking about the national Personal Income, which is listed as $9,364 billion, a figure that includes the pathetic contribution of us ugly little trolls out here slaving away at our pathetic little low-paying, dead-end jobs, and then coming home at night to listen to someone else whine about THEIR pathetic little low-paying dead-end job, although we have no interest in her damn day, and I think I speak for all us trolls when I say that we seethe with envy at your good fortune. Anyway, so when I calculate all that out that, I find that the federal government, our lackluster elected officials, are putting us in more debt, to the tune of 11.5% of our income

Right, there's your white-hot 8.2 percent growth. The triple-D economy. Debt + Debt+Debt = short-term growth, long-term bust. Not good times.

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9/11 is a joke

The commission, anyhow. Let's follow the progression. Gorelick writes a memo setting up a bureacratic wall. Said wall is widely considered to have made the 9/11 attacks more easily accomplished. Gorlick named to 9/11 commission, commission goes on TV and the memo is released. An obvious conflict of interest given that Gorelick was a participant in the events leading up to 9/11, and yet the vast bulk of the mainstream media claims that it doesn't matter or attempts to ignore it altogether.

Get up, ah, get, get down.
911 is a joke in your town....

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Mailvox: who's lacking clarity?

BLS writes: I would respectfully suggest you distill your political beliefs down to the two or three most important to you, then decide which candidate you think is most likely to support them after actually being elected. It's a two-part process: who can win, and of those, which is better....
No difference between JFK and GWB is a common theme on this blog. It may indicate lack of clear thinking.

I've distilled my hot buttons down to five. In fact, this is precisely why I am totally indifferent as to who will win in 2004, just as I was in 2000. I understand that some people believe that it matters greatly if one person is willing to commit 10 percent less fraud than another, as for me, I don't care to support anyone who embraces the concept. We can agree to disagree, of course. I'm throwing ideas, not rocks.

1. Ending the Federal Reserve and inflation paper.
JK=O
GB=0
GN=1

2. Protecting private gun rights
JK=0
GB=.5
GN=1

3. Leaving the United Nations and all organizations infringing on national sovereignty
JK=0
GB=0
GN=1

4. Respecting the American Constitution.
JK=0
GB=0
GN=1

5. Responding to the petition of We The People.
JK=0
GB=0
GN=.5 (based on his negative comments about income tax, I believe he would at least investigate the claims.)

I believe Gary Nolan of the Libertarian Party - the only Libertarian candidate I've interviewed thus far - is by far the best candidate for the Presidency. Management of the undeclared war on method isn't even in my top ten, especially since I am increasingly of the opinion that Bush is bungling the war that the global jihad has declared on America. So, I'll cheerfully vote for Gary Nolan, assuming he wins the Libertarian nomination.

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Never going to happen

If I had just one wish this Christmas season, it's that all the children of the world would join hands and sing together a song of peace in perfect harmony. If I had two wishes this Christmas season, it would be to hold a heavily short position on the QQQs the day before Congress forces Wall Street to expense employee options. NRO's Ramesh Ponnuru was wondering why there's such a big fuss about expensing options, and this little pair of charts should help explain why:

It is unlikely, however, that the average private investor is aware of how significant options accounting is for the earnings of tech companies.... As you can see, excluding employee options as a cost of doing business increased reported net income per share by an average of 77% in 2001, 61% in 2002 and 34% last year. For some companies, like Cisco and Ebay, for example, earnings per share were doubled or tripled due to the accounting fiction that the cost of employee options grants should not be considered an ordinary cost of doing business.

Yeah, get rid of half or two-thirds of their earnings, since the shareholders will never see them, and I imagine that their share prices will tend to sink a bit. I imagine the Wrinkled Whores will have a little something to say about ever allowing that to happen, though.

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Crocodile tears

The newspapers are crying crocodile tears about the young woman soldier who died in Iraq and her two sisters who are still on duty. Keep in mind that these are, for the most part, the very individuals who have been arguing that women have an absolute right to serve in the military, not only in a support role but in the elite special forces as well. They cheered the ludicrous notion of GI Jane, the Navy SEAL, (GI?) and then are horrified when these American Amazons experience what happens to a dependable percentage of soldiers in combat.

As I have written before, most women and the sort of men who don't engage in any physical activity - such as the average left-oriented journalist - have simply no idea how great a divide separates the sexes. I'm not a particularly big guy, but when I was in the weight room doing arms today, I curled Space Bunny's weight five times. Now, consider that she's taller than average and extremely fit - scored 100 on the USMC's fitness test when we took it for fun one day - but can't even come close to benching her own bodyweight once.

There are those who think that modern combat doesn't require physical strength, and it's true, you're not often carrying a sword and shield around these days. But an M-16 and several hundred rounds of ammo aren't exactly weightless, and in the field, it's not always possible to have the cooking staff setting up a kitchen and serving you hot meals. So, you'll probably want to carry around a few MREs. And then, you're in the desert so water is a necessity, and water is surprisingly heavy. Not to mention the GPS, grenades and ten other things that I'm forgetting.

I'm sorry for that girl, her sisters and her parents too. But she should never have been there, in a combat zone, in the first place.

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Bad cartoons, gamma males and the arts

The Evangelical Outpost travels to the strange, strange world of Boondocks creator Aaron McGruder: ...the last straw came when he “dropped the N-word,” as one amused observer recalled. He said—bragged, even—that he’d voted for Nader in 2000. At that point, according to Hamilton Fish, the host of the party, “it got interactive.” Eric Alterman, a columnist for The Nation, was sitting in the back of the room, next to Joe Wilson, the Ambassador. He shouted out, “Thanks for Bush!” Exactly what happened next is unclear. Alterman recalls that McGruder responded by grabbing his crotch and saying, “Try these nuts.” Jack Newfield, the longtime Village Voice writer, says that McGruder simply dared Alterman to remove him from the podium. When asked about this incident later, McGruder said, “I ain’t no punk. I ain’t gonna let someone shout and not go back at him.” Alterman walked out. “I turned to Joe and said, ‘I can’t listen to this crap anymore,’” he remembers. “I went out into the Metropolitan Club lobby—it’s a nice lobby—and I worked on my manuscript.”

Sometimes I really feel as if I'm missing out by not living my life in the incestuous little media fish bowl. All of these little dust-ups that never amount to anything, posturing between gamma males who only talk smack because they know no one is ever going to actually do anything about it. So, what do we learn from this?

1. McGruder not only isn't funny, he's pathetic. Like most lefties, he can't take any heat.
2. Alterman is not only an intellectual coward, it sounds as if he might be a physical one as well. I note in passing that he subscribes to the same pragmatic voting philosophy as our friendly lesser-of-two-evils gang here.
3. Left-liberal gatherings have the same high-strung bitchy vibe as sorority meetings at elite colleges.

Reading this, it makes me feel a little bit like one of my friends in the dojo, one of our most lethal fighters. He was looking rather wistful as we watched a fight getting broken up one evening out at the clubs. "Thirteen years I've trained, and no one ever even takes a swing at me," he said, more than a little sadly. I pointed out that it would probably help if he would stop wearing Dragon accoutrements and generally looking as if he was just itching for the opportunity to go Bruce Lee on someone. When even the gangstas are looking at you, raising their eyebrows and looking quickly away, you might want to consider bringing it down a few notches if you want to get your bang on.

This reminds me - it isn't related - but if you're interested in martial arts, one of the instructors I trained under for a few months apparently has a video series out. Karl's a nice guy and great fighter, but he could be a little touchy at times. After Big Chilly trophied at Diamond Nationals and Karl failed to defend his title there, he was still pissed-off to such an extent that he ended up cracking Big Chilly's ribs with a sidekick the next time they sparred. I drove by the building where Karate Junction was the other day; it's been demolished and a new building is going up. No great architectural loss to the world, but it made me feel sentimental, for a moment, anyhow.

You may recall that I estimated that I'd been pounded several hundred times in the past. Karl is responsible for about 10 or 12 of those poundings. He knows what he's doing.

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Doctor Vox in tha house

Puzzled asks: RJK and VD: where did you study medicine?

I can't speak for RJK, naturally, but I have my MD from the same place many of the public school counselors, psychiatrists, and child psychologists who prescribe Ritalin, often after a five-minute consult, received theirs.

"...one urban school district in Minnesota reported administering 1,294 medications in 1985; by 2000, that number had increased to 35,111, according to a 2002 report to the Minnesota Legislature.... In Maine, for example, the Legislature found in 2000 that 63 percent of school personnel who were distributing drugs had two hours or less of training."

Shoot, I've got more, ahem, training, than that....

Even the DEA is concerned: "The DEA doesn't have oversight in schools, where large quantities of methylphenidate are often stored in unlocked drawers and dispensed by nonmedical personnel. Many schools have more methylphenidate on hand than some pharmacies."

House Passes Bill to Bar Schools from Requiring Medication of Students

The United States House of Representatives voted May 21 to prohibit school personnel from requiring a child to obtain a prescription for a controlled substance as a condition of attending school. State education agencies would be required to develop policies and procedures to prevent schools from making such requirements.... The House Committee on Education noted that it was concerned especially about the appropriate role of prescription medication in treating children diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and attention deficit disorder (ADD). "The Committee has been made aware of situations where parents have voiced concern that local educational agency officials have required them to place children on psychotropic medication in order to attend school or receive services."

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Doing excellent work

The Fraters Libertas leading the charge for subscribers to drop the Star and Sickle in my hometown. Good onya, gentlemen. Looking forward to congratulating them on their anti-paper drive - let's expand the movement to include the ABCNNBCBS cabal. If you don't read it/watch it, they can't sell advertising.

In the words of the immortal Chuck D, SHUT 'EM DOWN!

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Al Franken goes down...

and I didn't even hit him! You have to check these posts out, they're hilarious! It's amazing how fast they leap to the obvious conclusion: it's the fascists!

Take the under....

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6 percent inflation

Consumer prices - lifted by more expensive gasoline, airfares and clothing - rose by 0.5 percent in March, raising questions about whether the seeds of unwanted inflation are being sown.

Not that the CPI is the least bit accurate, but it's interesting that despite every effort to hide inflation, it's still running at a 6 percent annual rate. What's also amusing to me is that when the monthly rate is low, the annual rate is reported. When it starts getting higher, the annualization mysteriously vanishes. It doesn't make those money market rates look so good, now, does it.

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I'm a First Way guy myself

John Derbyshire concludes, in his wisdom: Thus we are unwilling to take either the First Way or the Second, to play either the Angel of Vengeance or the Great White Father Over the Sea. There is nothing for it but to seek a Third Way. Will the Third Way work? Personally, I doubt it. Given what we are, though — what we have become — I don't see that we have any choice.

It is profoundly stupid to knowingly continue down a path that won't take you where you need to go, but it is intriguing to watch. I was always curious, when reading history, to know why intelligent men would do what, not only in hindsight but even at the time, were obviously stupid things. The answer is that they felt they had to, whether it was to save face, honor or political standing. Greatness requires surmounting at very least the latter, unfortunately neither George Bush nor John Kerry show the least little sign of being either interested or able to do so.

Many of the president's defenders say: "he can't do X because he'll lose support." Yes, because often doing the right thing means upsetting the idiots who have no idea what is going on. But you must do it, if it is the right thing. George Bush is trying to do the minimal thing, to fight a war on method that will somehow - he has no idea how - keep the enemy at arms length without destabilizing the economy or turning the conflict into full-scale war. I don't think most people realize what a tightrope he is attempting to walk, nor how small his chances of success are.

Better to grasp the nettle and have done with it.

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Tales from the days when men liked women

One of my favorite memories of being in a band, aside from the occasional Bacchanalia you'd imagine, was the evening we were visited by Wax Trax! Records. The VP of A&R, the owner and his boyfriend flew up to Minneapolis to check us out, speak with us and take us to dinner. Our music was a little on the light side for them, as Ministry and Thrill Kill had just left them for greener pastures and KMFDM was the main act they were pushing, along with a NIN wannabee called Sister Machine Gun. The first sign that things weren't likely to be entirely synchronous between us was when we were sitting down at a nice Italian restaurant - an old favorite of mine called Pronto - and the lead singer started having a knowledgeable discussion about wine with the main keyboard programmer.

The owner looked at the VP and said: "geez, are we signing a band or a bunch of wine critics?" The best part, though, was when we heading back from the clubs later and we drove past the homosexuals gathered en masse outside the Gay 90's, as was their wont at closing time. Fortunately, we were in two taxis, so only the VP was in the car with the drummer and I when our astoundingly clueless drummer said: "holy cow, look at all those faggots."

The VP looked a little concerned, cleared his throat and said, "Mike, you should probably know that Jim and Danny are partners." The drummer, who was quite young, perhaps 18, said "business partners?" The VP put his head in his hands and just about died laughing. Good times, good times.

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Thus spake the Islamic expert

Daniel Pipes writes: For Muslims, rule by non-Muslims is an abomination, a blasphemous inversion of God's dispensation. This explains why one finds a consistently strong resistance to rule by non-Muslims through 14 centuries of Muslim history. Europeans recognized this resistance and in their post-crusades global expansion stayed largely away from majority-Muslim territories.... This history suggests that the coalition's grand aspirations for Iraq will not succeed. However constructive its intentions to build democracy, the coalition cannot win the confidence of Muslim Iraq nor win acceptance as its overlord..... I therefore counsel the occupying forces quickly to leave Iraqi cities and then, when feasible, to leave Iraq as a whole.

In other words, the administration is not only ignoring sound military strategy, but the history of past occupations in the region as well. If the war on global jihad is not on - and from the President's speech, it's clear that he has no stomach for either declaring it or waging it - we must bring the troops home now.

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Shrinking America goes insane

From the London Telegraph: The New World has lost its superiority over the Old - at least in terms of physical stature - and John Komlos has the evidence to prove it. His records, including files on "runaway slaves", "indentured servants" and "West Point graduates", bear testament to the American decline. Prof Komlos's research over more than 20 years has documented the heights of almost a quarter of a million people from the 1700s to today. The findings, he says, provide the most accurate gauge to date with which to measure the development of the human physique. "Americans have stopped growing while Europeans are increasing in height at quite a pace," says Prof Komlos, 50, a leading "anthropometric historian" who studies such development.

Meanwhile, a study appearing in Pediatrics magazine states of children on Ritalin: "I don't think this is necessarily a cause for great alarm in parents. The effect was rather modest, only about a centimeter less over a year." Children on medication also grew slightly less than their non-medicated peers. Children on medication alone gained 4.85 centimeters, while those on combination therapy grew 4.25 centimeters. Kids receiving behavioral therapy grew an average of 6.19 centimeters, while a "control" group of children grew 5.68 centimeters.

I'm a pro-legalization libertarian. I have no intellectual problem with people deciding to spend their lives in search of the eternal buzz. That being said, ARE THESE PARENTS COMPLETELY FREAKING INSANE OR WHAT? You don't inject your child with heroin, you don't cut them a line or two before sending them off to school and you don't have them popping speed like vitamins either! And anti-depressants? If your kid is depressed about school, then pull him out of the public schools, don't turn him into a creepily smiling medi-zombie!

At least this puts the lie to the drug war. There's absolutely no case for banning social pharmaceuticals when much stronger drugs are being prescribed by non-medical personnel to four year-olds. Maybe the realization they risk turning their children into physical midgets as well as mental ones might wake a few parents up, but I'm not optimistic.

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Still talking nonsense

From My Way News: Bush said the United States was demanding the arrest or capture of Muqtada al-Sadr, a radical Shiite cleric whose illegal militias have fought U.S. forces in southern Iraq. He said he had instructed the military to use decisive force if necessary to crush the insurgency. He compared insurgents taking hostages in Iraq to radical Islamic fanatics around the world, saying they are "serving the same ideology of murder" of those who blow up trains in Madrid, Spain, bomb buses in Israel - or inflicted the worst attack in American history.

"None of these acts is the work of a religion," Bush said. "All are the work of a fanatical political ideology." The legacy that our troops are going to leave behind is a legacy of lasting importance, as far as I'm concerned. It's a legacy that really is based upon our deep belief that people want to be free and that free societies are peaceful societies." "Some of the debate really centers around the fact that people don't believe Iraq can be free; that if you're Muslim, or perhaps brown-skinned, you can't be self-governing or free. I'd strongly disagree with that," the president said.

Color me unimpressed. Not only the expected stay-the-course speech, but he even managed to work in a suggestion that criticism is treasonous: "I think that analogy is false. I also happen to think that analogy sends the wrong message to our troops and sends the wrong message to the enemy." Because, of course, the notion of a war by proxy fought against an external nation supplying an internal militia with men and munitions bears no similarity to Vietnam at all. After all, the one is in the desert, the other is in the jungle.

And what is that fanatical political ideology? Is it Communist? Is it Libertarian? Let's see, their primary desire is to establish global Sharia. That sure sounds religious to me. Meanwhile, if a Christian shoots a doctor to stop abortion - a profoundly political goal - that's an example of religious extremism. Furthermore, history ablsolutely suggests that Muslims cannot be self-governing or free. Indonesia and Turkey are the only two modern Islamic states. Both have committed terrible religious-based genocide, and Turkey's constiution requires the military to act preemptively to prevent the major religious parties from taking control of the country. In Algeria, the first elections were canceled by the military when the jihadist one-vote one-time party was about to win.

Finally, I've heard numerous Republican commentators getting all over Clinton for wanting to capture or arrest bin Laden. I find it interesting that Bush is doing exactly the same thing with this Iranian puppet.

UPDATE: NRO manages to refrain from entirely sounding like Tiger Beat covering its favorite pop star in discussing the speech, but just barely. Unfortunately, Ramesh Ponnuru, who is normally one of the most reliably sane NROniks, writes: Like Vienam, except that we've captured Ho Chi Minh, we've taken Hanoi, there's no draft, and the boat people have mostly come back.

This only goes to show that he missed the analogy. Let me make it simple. North Vietnam = Iran. South Vietnam = Iraq. Mahdi Militia = Viet Cong. Tehran = Hanoi. Baghdad = Saigon. Saudi Arabia = Soviet Union/China. And one might want to have a look at what Congress is up to before one speaks too soon on the absence of a future draft.

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By the banks, for the banks

From Stateline.org:

State officials’ hackles are up over a new federal banking rule they say erodes consumer protections and favors the federal government in a turf war that’s been simmering for more than a century. A long list of opponents, including the National Governors Association, the National Conference of State Legislatures and the attorneys general and banking supervisors from all 50 states, is prepared to go to the mat to see the rule rescinded.

The new rule was issued in January by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the federal agency that charters, regulates, and supervises national banks. The rule allows national banks to ignore protective state banking laws related to false and deceptive advertising, predatory lending, customer privacy, general consumer credit issues and no-call lists. OCC representatives say they are simply clarifying power the federal government has had for 140 years. But opponents say the OCC has overstepped its bounds; they fear the rule is a bold attempt to shrink states’ role in passing and enforcing consumer-protection laws and a move by federal regulators to usurp state powers.

State officials now are pushing Congress to step in and re-assert states' authority over all banks within their borders. The rule change means that of the nation’s approximately 9,000 banks, 2,000 institutions such as Bank of America, Citibank and Wachovia would not be subject to state regulation because they are nationally chartered. Seven of the country’s 10 largest banks hold national charters.

If you're looking for the bad guys, you could do a lot worse than look where the money goes. And the federal government has had this power for 140 years? Let's see, 2004-140 = 1864. That would be right around the end of Act I of the American Experiment.* I have a feeling that we might get the chance to see the end of Act II. The interesting question is this: will there even be an Act III.

* of course, everyone knows the war was about slavery. Not expanding federal power. Nope, not at all. No, don't look at the power players... hey, look, Dred Scott!

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Give credit when they call them

Well, SKI sure nailed it this time. He forecast a likely 5 percent drop in USERX and the gold stocks by Tuesday's close, and the HUI got hammered down 6.21 percent today alone. This triggers his triple-sell signal, which has some significant and worrisome implications.

He wrote yesterday: But if the triple sell pattern occurs, all I can say is that the prior three triple historical sells have yielded 60-90% declines in USERX over several years corresponding to disinflation or deflation. I find that hard to believe, but it has not happened yet (pending tomorrow).

Does this mean deflation? I find it hard to credit, as the central bank can easily go into hyperinflation mode any time it chooses, and has already indicated that it will. This supports the Elliott Wavers, who've been insisting on a deflationary scenario for the last eighteen months, and contradicts Hamilton's RDMA bull notion, which has gold setting up for a buy soon at 1.02 - we're at 1.04 now. Ackerman, too, called a big short-term decline, but he sees it turning around next week.

What are you seeing, Jamie?

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Nate starts things off with a bang

The infamous White Slaver, inveterate Rebel and uncompromising resister of Northern Aggression has his own blog. Visit it. The name alone is a classic.

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Mailvox: a possible first

Jamsco asks: Hey Vox, I have a polite question. What is your definition of Socialist as in "total socialist distribution" with regards to the policies of the democrats? I assume that you aren't against all taxation (perhaps I'm wrong.) However, It seems like you and other commenters here use socialist to mean "those who believe in more taxation than me." As you know, I've been called a socialist here because I don't think that requiring that people be taxed for public school funds is wrong. At the very least, I don't think that most (95%?) Americans would consider me to be socialist based on this fact.

A socialist is one who believes that the collective society, through the mechanism of the government, has a fundamental underlying claim on all private property that supersedes the rights of the nominal owner. I am not against all taxation, although I am against all income taxation for Constitutional, legal, historical and economic reasons.

Now, there are a variety of socialists. A Marxian socialist believes that society hold the underlying right to property on the basis of prior expropriation of stored labor, a Christian socialist believes that society holds it because only the government can achieve equitable distribution of societal wealth. But the reasons why are irrelevant to me as all of them are, in my view, anathema. Most modern Democrats are what I personally consider to be Santa Socialists, because they have no idea why government holds this underlying right, nor do they necessarily even understand that it is required to by their lights, all they care about is that property is taken from one party and distributed to another. In short, if you are a forced distributionist, you are some variant of socialist.

What makes you a socialist, even if a very weak one, is that you fail to understand that the reason does not matter. If the government has the right to seize private property, be it 1 percent or 100 percent, at will, then the justification is irrelevant. Whether it is for schools or personal prostitutes, all that matters is that government rights trump private property rights.

A pure socialist, of course, would require that 100 percent of all private property be confiscated, then distributed according to the judgment of those charged with managing the central distribution. The reason one seldom sees pure socialism at work is because it tends to fail very, very quickly. But whether you believe in 100 percent confiscation or ten percent, you're simply quibbling about the degree.

It's rather like the old joke. A man offers a woman one million dollars to have sex with him. She accepts. He then offers her a dollar, to which she reacts angrily. "What kind of woman do you think I am!" "We've already established that," he replies. "Now we're just negotiating over the price." Most Americans today are weak socialists at a minimum, simply because they cannot imagine a truly free market society, with free association and voluntary government.

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The prescience of NWA

To the police I'm sayin f--- you punk,
Readin my rights and s---, it's all junk.
Pullin out a silly club, so you stand
With a fake-ass badge and a gun in your hand.
But take off the gun so you can see what's up,
And we'll go at it punk, and I'ma f--- you up

This has been the great success of the drug war. To undermine respect for the law and create general hatred of the police. Most of my law-abiding upper middle-class friends and I now have more regard for lower-class criminals than we do for the police - at least they don't operate under color of law. The local sheriff happily cooperates with revenue agency thefts built on blatant fraud, the local police commit highway robbery* and then affect to be surprised when the citizenry begins to regard them as nothing but a gang of thugs, more part of the problem than the solution.

It's not just a few bad apples. It is endemic corruption designed into an extra-legal system. There's nothing inherently virtuous about the police, they are merely a tool. And it is becoming increasingly obvious that the particular order they are being used to uphold is not a form compatible with individual freedom, the common law or the American Constitution.

*Local police in these small towns made millions of dollars in profits by trolling the interstate highways and stopping travelers with out of state tags. The police typically claimed some traffic infraction, asked permission to search the car and got it, found no drugs but some cash, then brought in a drug sniffing dog, and after getting it to "alert," seized all the travelers' money.

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Conservative delusions

Let's get one thing straight. I consider the Democrats to be the party of lies. They have to lie, because no one who is both sane and self-responsible is ever going to vote for a program of total socialist distribution unless they are on welfare or a government employee. But Republicans have clearly begun to learn from their counterparts, not only the politicians but the commentators too.

Witness the recent words of Mrs. Hagelin writing of Bill Bennet on WND: Yes, the situation in Iraq is messy, Bennett said in a magnificent, powerful speech he gave in November to Heritage Foundation members. And yes, President Bush and his aides sometimes have seemed reluctant to defend their actions. "But let's be clear on this," he said that day. "In the issue that matters most – our survival, the civilized world's survival, the spread of democracy, the war against terrorism and radical Islam – the president is right and his critics wrong."

Now remember, this is from a column claiming to set the record straight. So, let's review the assertions:

1. The situation is messy, yes.
2. Bennett's speech was magnificent and powerful. I wasn't there, but we'll give him the benefit of the doubt. 2/2.
3. The issue that matters most is our survival. Hmmm. Well, I believe that history illustrates that Franklin was correct in saying those who value security over freedom will have neither. The administration has argued that we must accept some sacrifice of liberty in order to ensure our security, which is a dubious argument that has been used since Marius and Sulla began the destruction of the Roman republic. Strike one.
4. The president is defending the civilized world. The three greatest threats to the civilized world at this time are the global ambitions of the United Nations, the coming breakdown of central banking and the global jihad. President Bush is an advocate of the first two and refuses to address the third. Strike two.
5. "the spread of democracy" We don't have a democracy, we have (or had) a republic. We're preventing democratic rule in Iraq. Strike three.
6. The president is right about the war on terrorism. And he's guaranteeing Arafat's survival? Not really a strike, not really a hit. Call it a ball.
7. The president is right about radical Islam. Let's see, everyone else and his brother knows that the difference between the global jihadists and the so-called moderates is mostly one of degree. But the only problem is that "the religion of peace" has been "hijacked". Right, tell it to the Ummayids and the Abbasids, the caliphs and their names boasting of martial prowess. Strike four.

Four and one-half incorrect assertions in seven is setting the record straight? I suppose that depends upon what the meaning of is, is. What with their rampant and unsupported assertions of secret second-term plans, secret war strategy and now a secret war against "radical Islam", I'm beginning to wonder if conservative supporters of the current administration aren't becoming entirely delusional.

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Radio call-ins

In case anyone is interested, the Northern Alliance radio show will be taking callers during the interview from 2-3 Central next Saturday. The number is 651-688-3131, and be sure to let them know that you're a Vox Popoli regular or Vox Volk or whatever the appropriate noun might happen to be.

Clearly we need a name and a t-shirt. We've already got the flag, of course.

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Mailvox: second guessing?

JN writes: The last time I checked, there has been no second attack on the US mainland. Pres Bush must be doing something right, even Libya has turned in their nukes. He is a believer, why do you dislike him so? Would you prefer Hanoi John Kerry? Patriotic men have always rallied around the president during war time, what your problem, Bub? Don't give me that Libertarian business either, we both know, there is not a libertarian candidate that is credible. Swallow your pride, and get behind your President. Pride was Satan's problem, don't let it get you!

I didn't say the president was doing everything wrong, only that the jury is still out on whether he will be successful in confronting the current enemy, the global jihad. I don't personally dislike him, but I dislike his dishonesty, many of the people with whom he has surrounded himself as well as his ready willingness to embrace the new world order of the UN-supremacist movement.

I will not rally around any president who refuses to obey the Constitution, of any party. The "patriot" argument has been used by every totalitarian leader since the dawn of recorded history; Americans are free and owe allegiance to no man. And, as usual, the truth is inadvertantly revealed in the attack on exogenous credibility. The pursuit of power trumps all. Others can abandon their principles if they wish, I'll stand by mine.

There would be very little change if those who refused to accept the status quo paid any attention to those who only think in terms of the pragmatic and the immediate. The Republican Party, like every party in the history of politics, will eventually die. Probably later than sooner, but to argue as if it is some eternal constant is to deny both logic and probability. I don't care who wins in 2004, I'm far more concerned about laying the groundwork for 2040.

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Income tax exposed

Larkin Rose has released his video on the Section 861 argument against the fraudulent federal income tax scam. It's a big download and the traffic is pretty heavy so you may wish to wait a day or two. Then again, you may want to DL it before the IRS starts threatening the hosting server, as you know they will.

I haven't seen it yet, so I have no opinion on it. But anything that helps expose the scam to more people is a good thing. I'll be interested to hear reviews of it, from both those who agree and disagree with Rose's case.

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Mailvox: word from the soldiers

A captain writes: Great article! What you described in the Clausewitz quote what we in the military call the "decisive point". Not sure if we have one. Hmmmpf. I think somebody forgot about that.

And the Original Cyberpunk recommends a Ralph Peters article which tends to support my statement about Iran as the operations center of the global jihad against the West: ON Saturday, Iranian agents ambushed an American convoy on the road between Mosul and Akre in Iraq. The attack did not go as planned: Our troops responded sharply, killing two Iranians, wounding a third and capturing two more.

They were carrying their identity documents. And you haven't heard a word about it. The administration doesn't want to admit how much American blood Teheran has on its hands.

I would say that sounds rather like an administration that is not paying any attention to the military dictum I cited this morning, wouldn't you?

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Mailvox: there's no contradiction

GS writes: The first sentence in your article is a direct contradiction to everything else you wrote. Which way is it? If there was sufficient cause for the American military to invade Iraq why were we not told:

1. There is no evidence linking Iraq with 9-11.*
2. Iraq's WMD programs probably had been dismantled by 1998.
3. Any involvement in Iraq would grow into a regional conflict with Iran as the centerpiece.
4. Us and our allies will have to accept more terrorism on our own soil(s). Spain found this out the hard way. So did we in 1995 and 2001.
5. Our republican form of government is a uniquely Judeo-Christian concept. How in the world are we going to install such a concept of government on people who hate both Jews and Christians? That's like asking Americans to accept an Ayatollah as supreme dictator. Not likely to be popular.
6. Iraq will likely spiral out of control with someone worse that Sadaam eventually coming to power.
7. Our constitutional liberties will be continuously assaulted - even while we preach freedom to the rest of the world. Abominations like the Patriot Act, CAPPS II, biometric ID cards and police-state-like tracking of anybody who travels, etc., etc., etc., - all in the name of security of coarse, will become commonplace.

I agree with much of what GS says here. Still, none of it changes the fact that Iraq repeatedly violated a cease-fire agreement. That is perfectly adequate justification for a declaration of war, and has served as such for many a historical war. The fact that the Bush administration did not choose to declare war on that basis - did not declare war at all, of course - does not eliminate the existence of the justification. Of course, being justified and being optimal are two entirely different things. Indeed, this failure to make a solid case, not only for a declared war against global jihad but even against Iraq, is one of the reasons that I suspect George Bush's handling of the war will be considered to be incompetent by future military strategists.

* There's evidence linking him with OK City, however, as well as significant support for terrorists. Then again, we haven't exactly been invading the Palestinian Authority over the latter and it has far more direct links with al-Qaida than Hussein ever did.

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Somebody owes you?

From the Pioneer Press: "It was just devastating," said Marlys Lundeen, her feet in gravel where her patio used to be. "Somebody owes us."

Let me get this straight. Somebody offers to buy your house. Since the house is going to be destroyed to make way for a new strip mall, you ask if you can remove things from the house. Permission granted, your greed runs amok, you go nuts and rip out air conditioners, moldings, flooring, cabinetry and skylights. You do this with your very own hands. And then, the sale falls apart. Whose fault is it that you now own a half-ruined house?

Nobody owes you anything, lady. YOU DID IT TO YOURSELF! I'd feel bad about being so amused by this, if it weren't for the all-too-typical attitude expressed here. The lesson: if it sounds too good to be true, it surely is.

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Who else is at war with us

Condoleeza Rice said: "The terrorists were at war with us, but we were not yet at war with them. For more than 20 years, the terrorist threat gathered, and America's response across several administrations of both parties was insufficient."

Let's see. We're still not at war with the terrorists - not having declared war against them - and we're not even pretending to be at war with the non-terrorist wing of the global jihad that also considers itself at war with us. And if you're going to argue that the Constitution doesn't really matter and it's just a dead document that can be ignored at will, well, I'd consider that a sad and shocking position for any Republican to take. But if that's where the Republican Party truly stands now, I'd very much like to see it in writing.

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Mailvox: More reading comprehension issues

LookB4ULeap writes: "There can be little doubt there was sufficient cause for the American military to invade Iraq, unfound WMDs and United Nations' resolutions notwithstanding."

Cute but unqualified. Most of the free world rejected Bush's "war" but according to you: "there is little doubt" that it was justified. Additionally, the "American military" was not the entity who decided to invade Iraq. It was Bush and his whacked out war cabinet with their bogus rationale. If you do a close review you will find that most of the U.S. military leaders were either against the invasion or advised that a larger force was needed. Those who advised against the invasion or criticized the planning were either derided or dismissed. You, Farah and Bush are much alike; deluded ideologues who think that they are right and everyone else is wrong... Keep dreaming and try to get your facts straight. Reality has a nasty way of catching up with people like you.

This is absurd. The Iraqi war is a multinational effort; Germany, France and Russia are hardly the entire free world. I never said that the American military decided anything, in this country, the American military is not allowed to decide anything but is wholly subject to the political leadership. More importantly, I have repeatedly stated that the Iraqi Occupation is a mistake and that Iraq should have been at most a peripheral target.

But it's most amusing to be lectured on reality by anyone who thinks that Bush and I are much alike.

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More on Clausewitz and the Commander-in-Chief

Pursuant to today's column, here's a few more thoughts contrasting Clausewitz's dictums and how the War on Terror and Afghanistan and Iraq and the Iranian puppet militia is being waged by the Bush administration.

"It is clear that war is not a mere act of policy but a true political instrument, a continuation of political activity by other means"

The deeper concern here is that the president is applying this entirely too literally.

“Given the same amount of intelligence, timidity will do a thousand times more damage than audacity”

The execution of the invasion of Iraq was audacious, the invasion itself was not. Invading Saudi Arabia and Iran, that would have been audacious.

"Never forget that no military leader has ever become great without audacity. If the leader is filled with high ambition and if he pursues his aims with audacity and strength of will, he will reach them in spite of all obstacles."

Do we even know what the president's aims are? He isn't telling us. And if he's filled with seriously high ambitions and is pursuing them in secret, we're in for some serious trouble.

"The majority of people are timid by nature, and that is why they constantly exaggerate danger. All influences on the military leader, therefore, combine to give him a false impression of his opponent's strength, and from this arises a new source of indecision."

The direct danger from al-Qaida to the USA is somewhat exaggerated, even as the long-term threat from the global jihad is underplayed. Al-Qaida is only a small operative arm of the jihad. But his point is broadly salient even outside of military matters; one has only to watch the local news to recognize the truth.

"We must, therefore, be confident that the general measures we have adopted will produce the results we expect.

This one is clearly shot to Hell. For all that the administration insists that things are going to plan, it is highly dubious that the increase in violence a full year after the cessation of hostilities

"After we have thought out everything carefully in advance and have sought and found without prejudice the most plausible plan, we must not be ready to abandon it at the slightest provocation. Should this certainty be lacking, we must tell ourselves that nothing is accomplished in warfare without daring; that the nature of war certainly does not let us see at all times where we are going; that what is probable will always be probable though at the moment it may not seem so; and finally, that we cannot be readily ruined by a single error, if we have made reasonable preparations."

I don't think that things have been planned without prejudice, considering the general bias towards an Iraqi attack, but the administration does seem flexible enough to abandon plans if necessary. That being said, the single error of not targeting the central enemy would seem to be potentially fatal.

"The first and most important rule to observe...is to use our entire forces with the utmost energy. The second rule is to concentrate our power as much as possible against that section where the chief blows are to be delivered and to incur disadvantages elsewhere, so that our chances of success may increase at the decisive point. The third rule is never to waste time. Unless important advantages are to be gained from hesitation, it is necessary to set to work at once. By this speed a hundred enemy measures are nipped in the bud, and public opinion is won most rapidly. Finally, the fourth rule is to follow up our successes with the utmost energy. Only pursuit of the beaten enemy gives the fruits of victory."

Let's see.... one, no. Two, pretty much. Three, no. Going to the UN and coalition-building is a massive waste. Four, no. Instead of moving on to Iran when we had momentum, we sat and handed over the initiative.

"The best form of defense is attack."

This has been done reasonably well.

"The conqueror is always a lover of peace; he would prefer to take over our country unopposed."

One wishes the president, the great defender of "the religion of peace", would keep this in mind.

"The first, the supreme, the most far-reaching act of judgment that the statesman and commander have to make is to establish . . . the kind of war on which they are embarking."

This is possibly the most worrisome. The administration has clearly decided on an amorphous war without tangible goals against a nameless enemy. Shades of 1984 indeed.

"no one starts a war-or rather, no one in his senses ought to do so-without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by that war and how he intends to conduct it."

I'm not sure that one can't make a stronger case for bin Laden's rationale than the president's. Granted, bin Laden's goals are so high as to appear insane, but at least he's identified his enemy and made his case. The president hasn't.

"Pursue one great decisive aim with force and determination."

Still wondering what that is supposed to be. Unfortunately, so are our soldiers. What, precisely, is the one great decisive aim?

"If the enemy is to be coerced, you must put him in a situation that is even more unpleasant than the sacrifice you call on him to make. The hardships of the situation must not be merely transient - at least not in appearance. Otherwise, the enemy would not give in, but would wait for things to improve."

Not even close. This is particularly dangerous against an enemy with a proven long-term outlook.

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Our conservative president

Robert Novak reports: President Bush will go to Pittsburgh April 19 on a rescue mission attempting to save four-term Sen. Arlen Specter, who faces an increasingly serious conservative challenge from Rep. Pat Toomey in the April 27 Pennsylvania Republican primary.

So, George Delano is now out actively campaigning against eminently electable conservative Republicans. I'm sure this will be defended as a necessary act of incumbent protection, but it should demonstrate rather clearly the man's principles, or rather, lack of them.*

Granted, John Francois wouldn't be content with only campaigning against Toomey, he'd also want to campaign against the Highlander - who once recommended turning to Scottish law to discipline Bill Clinton - but that's hardly a point of massive ideological superiority now, is it.

A pox on both their houses!

* To be fair, he never claimed to be an actual conservative, only a compassionate one. And we all know what it means when you insert an adjective in front of the noun.

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Worst ad campaign ever

The Sports Guy rants: Those "Whatever happens in Vegas stays in Vegas" ads, maybe the biggest head-scratcher in advertising history. Why would anyone ever inflict that much needless tension on their demographic? Were they appealing to adulterers? Druggies? Strip joint stalkers? Snuff film producers? Were we supposed to think to ourselves, "You know, I wasn't gonna go, but I didn't realize I could do morally destructive things with no repercussions -- book me a plane ticket!" And don't get me started on the ramifications of these ads with wives and girlfriends across the country, many of whom were already insane to begin with. For instance, right as I was leaving for my latest trip -- staying at the Hard Rock this time, on the way to the airport, plane ticket in my hands -- the Sports Gal smiled and told me, "And don't think I don't know that the Paradise (a strip club) is right across the street from the Hard Rock."

She slipped that sucker in like a Tommy Hearns right cross. And while I was hemming and hawing, she followed with this uppercut: "Hey, whatever happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, right?"

Great ad campaign. Thanks, guys.

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He is risen

I'm often told that my perspective on the world is disturbingly dark. People who have met me often find it hard to balance this implacably negative vision with my generally cheerful and happy state of mind. The answer is simple: I believe that we live in a fallen world ruled by a supernatural serial killer. The world is evil and Man is evil, therefore the incidence of evil neither surprises nor disturbs me overmuch. It is simply to be expected.

But on the first Easter, the iron grasp of evil was broken by what CS Lewis calls the Divine Invasion. Through the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, we have the power to resist evil's ability to affect our lives, and more importantly, we hold the hope that one day the usurper will be banished and his reign brought to a close. The world may be evil, but it has no hold on my Lord, nor, through him, on me.

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Incompetence, if we're lucky

James Pinkerton writes: If you knew that President Franklin D. Roosevelt had received a memo a month before Pearl Harbor entitled, "Japanese Determined to Attack the United States in the Pacific," and that he had done nothing about that information, would that knowledge change your perception of FDR as a wise war leader? Roosevelt received no such memo, of course, but President George W. Bush got a blunt warning five weeks before 9/11 and he did little or nothing. He even presided over a stand- down in preparations, concentrating on other concerns.

As tomorrow's column will demonstrate, I have some serious doubts about the president's abilities as a Commander-in-Chief. While some commentators ignorant of military history think that the conquests of Afghanistan and Iraq prove his greatness - Peggy Noonan springs to mind - those of us who have at least made a hobby of the art of war tend to be significantly more dubious. One has only to recall how many times those lands have changed hands to be skeptical of the likelihood, let alone the probability, of a successful long-term occupation in the German mode. Germany, one might do well to remember, was considered one of the most culturally advanced societies in the world prior to World War II, and Japan the world's most homogenous, while neither Iraq nor Afghanistan would tend to be described in either of those terms.

I don't question that America must face up to the need to declare war against the global jihad, but given that George Bush has not: a) properly identified the enemy, b) united the nation against it or c) focused on the targets required for victory, I think that it is starting to look increasingly likely that he will come to be viewed as an ineffectual, if not incompetent, wartime president.

This is not necesarily the case, mind you, as my information is insufficient to make any such determination in a definitive manner. But given that the current martial effort appears to be ignoring a number of basic strictums of military theory, I am less than entirely optimistic about the results.

The only good thing I see here is that it would seem almost oxymoronic to allow 9/11 to take place in order to mount an incompetently managed war. The government lied to the American people about Waco, TWA 800 and OK City, and I have no doubt they are lying, somehow, about 9/11. But while I firmly believe that FDR allowed the attack on Pearl Harbor in order to force the nation into WWII, the seeming incompetence of the Bush administration would appear to argue its innocence in that regard. Hopefully, the truth will eventually find its way out.

UPDATE - It wasn't just Tom Clancy either. From the Washington Post: "I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people . . . would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile," Rice said Thursday. But a 1999 report prepared for the National Intelligence Council, an affiliate of the CIA, warned that terrorists associated with bin Laden might hijack an airplane and crash it into the Pentagon, White House or CIA headquarters. The report recounts well-known case studies of similar plots, including a 1995 plan by al Qaeda operatives to hijack and crash a dozen U.S. airliners in the South Pacific and pilot a light aircraft into Langley.

Condi is pretty good, but she's as full of it as the rest of them. Color me skeptical.

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What are you waiting for?

DU writes: The people who are ruled by emotion rather than intellect, who compare the reality of the present with some kind of utopian vision of perfection, will always have a reason why whatever has been done is not enough.

That's surely true. But it is utterly absurd to argue that a great deal has been accomplished, when the majority of the Republican effort has actually gone towards making things worse. In other words, the Toad Swallowers are not even bothering to pretend anymore. And where is the emotional argument? The only Republican defense is entirely based on fear - vote Republican or the evil scary Democrats will get you! Boo!

I expect that you'll come around eventually, DU. I've seen far too many people who have argued exactly the same points that you have do so to believe that you won't. What is amusing is that I heard them pre-2000 from a number of new ex-Republicans. My argument is not the least bit based on emotion. In fact, I daresay that it is ruthlessly cold logic, fully accepting that things will almost surely get worse before they get better. As hard as it is for me to believe this, it will obviously take at least four more years of Republican rule for most conservatives to start realizing that they have been fooled again.

I've already stated what it would take to bring me back to the Republican Party, so here's my question to DU and other staunch party loyalists. What will it take for you to abandon the party? A law requiring human sacrifice and 100 percent taxation would presumably do it for almost everyone, while it's clear that a massive increase in federal spending and complete disrespect for the Constitution won't. What, specifically, are you waiting for?

This isn't a rhetorical question. I'm just curious.

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I'd rather charge the beaches

The Evangelical Outpost tells of his latest duty. War is Hell, and not only for those getting shot at.

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Entrepeneurial politics

Alex wrote: Crappy power Republicans do not represent the wishes of the majority of the party in the Majority Party

I agree. What I don't understand is that given this, why do you think that enlarging this already ineffectual conservative majority will help you take the party away from the strong government Republicans who have controlled it since its birth? I've already seen good conservatives spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to do precisely what you're advocating, only to eventually quit the party in disgust, their lesson learned the hard way.

You will never be allowed to seize the reins of power. Do you truly believe that it is happenstance that the same sort of quasi-moderate Republicans keep getting nominated, regardless of whether they are electable or not? Do you think it is an accident that the party is always trying to unseat one of its most popular members, Ron Paul? The notion of "fixing" the Republican Party is like trying to take over a Fortune 500 company to bring your product to market instead of starting a new business. It may look easier, but the reality is harder because you have an active opposition.

Only those who think outside the box ever have the ability to create significant change. The two-party system exists for a reason and only way to break out of the long-term bipartisan direction is to build a third party. And a third party will never grow unless those who are sympathetic to its goals are willing to give up their addiction to the status quo. That's my take on it. Perot and the Reform party were not a genuine movement as they had no ideology, however, they did show that their is real discontent. Just imagine if Perot had not been a goofy-looking loon, but a principled and properly polished candidate committed to liberty.

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What anti-tax Republicans?

I think small government Republicans are fast approaching the plight of the heterosexual Episcopalian. Jonathan Adler points out on NRO's Corner: Republicans hold every statewide office in Ohio, and dominate the state legislature. So how is it that Ohio now has the third-highest state and local tax burden of any state in the nation? Only Maine and New York impose higher taxes on their citizens. Yet Ohio politicians wonder why the state remains in an economic slump.

Republican Toad Swallowers are hiking up Virginia's taxes in the largest rise in state history. Governor Pawlenty has - shockers - changed his mind now that he's in office and decided that public-funded stadiums are necessary to the well-being of the Minnesota citizenry.

Vote third party. Wouldn't you like to be a Libertarian too?

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Time to pay attention

From SKI: The SKI indices have the gold stocks by the "pants." A drop on Monday of 1% (the gold mutual fund USERX falling below 8.44) will cause a sell. A drop of 5% by Tuesday's close will generate a terribly bearish triple sell. But the buy signal remains intact and USERX (the gold mutual fund) closed on Friday one penny over the critical point of 8.50! Furthermore, gold stocks need to rise 5% next week to avoid a sell signal. I expect the rise, remaining long from 8.36, but am ready to sell if so required.... In the bigger picture, gold stocks have declined and gone sideways for more than 4 months, as I sold near both the December and January highs. The next few days will end the critical period and establish the trend for months if not years to come (looks like years to me).

I haven't previously followed SKI's gold stock system, but I've been keeping an eye on it recently as a possible means of distinguishing between gold bulls like Adam Hamilton, who are expecting massive inflation in the coming years, and bears such as Robert Prechter, who is expecting deflation based on the Elliott Wave patterns. I tend to fall in with Hamilton, as the Elliott Wave patterns do not account for inflation, an omission that, in my opinion, has wrongly led Prechter to predict every market for everything to go down. He's surely right about some of them, but it's hard to credit ALL of them going in the same direction.

In any event, it can't hurt to keep an eye on USERX at 8.51, which means that anyone in gold will be concerned about a drop to 8.08 by Tuesday's close. Then again, to mix a few systems, if not metaphors, it's interesting to see that as near as I can tell, the Elliott Waves for USERX look rather like a wave 5 of 3 up is about to take off, thus offering some support for SKI's notion that USERX will rise to 8.93 by week's end to avoid sending any clear signals.

If the gold stocks movement was echoed in bullion, this would have some interesting implicatons for Hamilton's R/DMA system. A five percent rise by Friday would take us to a reasonable sell at $442 with an R/DMA of 1.132. A five percent drop by Tuesday would indicate a definite buy at $399 with an R/DMA of 1.025. That would take guts, and as usual, the more you know, the more you're sure you don't know anything. Since the last R/DMA signal was the 1.023 on March 3rd, I think the rise is more likely, probably to around $450 and a definite trader's sell of 1.152.

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The 3D economy

From the Star Tribune: Analysts estimate that 30 to 40 percent of U.S. vehicle owners are upside down at trade-in. With credit-card debt and bankruptcies already running at record highs, auto loans are one more way for consumers to land themselves in financial trouble.... About 75 percent of Americans take out loans to buy new vehicles, said Bob Kurilko, vice president of marketing for Edmunds.com, an auto research Web site. Fifteen percent lease. About 10 percent pay cash. In the past five years, according to the Federal Reserve Bank, the size of the average vehicle loan has gone from $19,880 to $27,240 -- an increase of 37 percent. Yet many consumers say they want to hold the line on their monthly payments. The solution: extend the term of the loan. The average length of vehicle loans has increased from four years to five since 1999, according to the Federal Reserve, and many automakers are offering longer terms than ever.... "It's absolutely insane," Kurilko said. The average deficit of owners who are upside down at trade-in is $3,700, he said.

It's easy to think that the American economy is humming along when you drive around and see all the new cars and the big new houses being constructed in placed like Oakdale and Woodbury. But then you read something like this and realize that it's all being funded on a tide of easy credit, which indicates a classic Austrian bust is going to be coming along soon enough. Even the Keynesians should be a bit concerned, since if I=S, there isn't going to be much growth-generating Investment by entrepeneurs when the Savings rate is below one percent.

Truly, the $13 trillion in derivatives would tend to indicate that I=D, as in Debt. And of course, the article mentioned above indicates a large part of C=D as well. And we already know that quite a bit of G=D too, since the Government is borrowing $64 billion a month just to pay its bills. So, apparently, GDP = D+D+D. Who's got a model for that?

I'm beginning to wonder if perhaps The Lord of the Rings wasn't intended to be a critique of central banking.

UPDATE: Speaking of the humming economy: And here's another twist: last week's miraculous and widely applauded jobs report shows a preliminary, seasonally-unadjusted increase in government payrolls of more than half the 308,000 reported. We can see the wonks at work all around the beltway: "Heck, if we can't make the jobs appear, well...we can just hire the workers ourselves!" The U.S. Government already employs nearly 22 million people. What's another 159,000?

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On the radio

In my hometown, no less. Just in case anyone's interested, St. Paul of the Fraters Libertas was kind enough to invite me to appear on 1280AM-the Patriot, from 2-3 PM on April 17, for the last hour of the Northern Alliance Radio Show. I'm quite looking forward to it, as their blog indicates that we appear to have complimentary sense of humor. I think I can guarantee:

1. Gratuitous slams on the Minnesota Golden Gophers Women's Basketball Team
2. The Star and Sickle's performance of a metaphorical Monica on the aforementioned.
3. Much-deserved criticism of Sid Hartman and his noted work in the field of economics.

I don't know if they're taking calls or not, but if they are, I'll post it here. Also, if anyone knows where it's being broadcast on the Internet, please let me know.

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Take the under

By the way, a little rumor I heard firsthand from a media honcho who is in a position, if not to know, at least be well-informed, suggests that Alice only has funding through November, and that Air America has not been successful in finding advertisers for their shows. Personally, I expect some sort of manufactured reason to close down operations before that, as Alice will need an excuse to avoid admitting that he got his head handed to him.

It's no shame to get stomped by Rush, who, unlike Howard Stern, actually is the king of all media. But to be shown up by Bill Bennett? The Gambler may be good company in Vegas, but he's not exactly the most dynamic individual I've ever heard.

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Arrow-Odd and the mighty Vikes

Nate writes of the death-embracing Shiites: I think people confuse this mindset, with that of the great warriors of the past like the Vikings and the Samari. Blowing one's self up on a passenger bus would hardly qualify you for Valhalla. The Viking Warriors didn't need to be brainwashed for three days before battle in order to welcome death. It was simply who they were. Courage was simply their way. Much in the way that cowardice is the way of the people we are dealing with now.

I'm not sure about that, but Nate's comment reminds me of something. Years ago, I was flying out to New York with my band to meet with TVT, and I happened to be reading a collection of old Viking legends. The tale of Arrow-Odd has stuck in my mind, as I kept cracking up while reading it, and one of my bandmates asked me what was so funny. So, I read a little bit of it and looked up to see everyone in the near vicinity staring at me with horrified faces, which, of course, only made me laugh again.

What I found amusing was one part of the tale, when Arrow-odd's best friend is given a mortal blow while they are out a-viking. The friend has been secretly in love with a Viking princess, who happens to return his affections. Arrow-odd avenges his friend's death, naturally, being the hero and all, then returns to his friend and listens to his final words, which are not quite as immortal as Mercutio's, but nevertheless striking as he removes his armband and asks Arrow-odd to give it to the princess along with his death-greeting. Upon his return, Arrow-odd hands her the armband, as directed, at which point she recognizes it and immediately collapses at his feet, dead of heartbreak. The very next line, which I still remember clearly, was what amused me so:

"Arrow-odd threw back his head and laughed." Now, that's a warrior ethic! Death, be not proud.

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The Cognitive Dissonance of the Moral Supremacist

Margot Miflin discovers intellectual diversity on Salon: I was sitting in therapy describing an in-law I like, and quickly heading for a "but." "He's a loving, caring, selfless man -- but his politics are all about hatred," I said. "He's not educated, and more significant, he's ignorant -- he actually listens to Rush Limbaugh." I waited for a "Whoo boy!" or a sympathetic smile, but my shrink just stared at me, expressionless.

"I assume you're not a Limbaugh fan," I ventured, assured that this woman, so nuanced in her thinking, couldn't possibly be a Dittohead. She was so reasonable that I couldn't imagine her getting off on Rush's demented tirades. She didn't seem square enough for his politics, and I was certain no hate radio fan was capable of her intellectual sophistication. Besides, she was an educated urban Jewish professional, and Rush's audience consisted largely of white suburban males.

She held my gaze a few excruciating seconds longer. "Actually, I am," she said. My moral compass began spinning wildly. I was suddenly sitting with someone new. The levelheaded sage in whom I'd confided for nearly a year had been replaced by an off-the-rack ideologue.

There's a few interesting revelations here. Beyond the usual left-liberal nonsense about hate = not liberal, the idea that listening to Rush Limbaugh makes one ignorant is truly bizarre. Ignorance is a state of knowledge. There are surely many, many ignorant Limbaugh fans, just as there are indubitably ignorant Frankenfans. Indeed, Al Franken himself is a shockingly ignorant man, as he required 14 researchers just to come up with numerous assertions that I was able to refute off the top of my head. But ignorance and Rush Limbaugh listening can at most have a parallel relationship, not a causal one, and one might easily build a case for precisely the opposite position, as any Limbaugh listener would probably far exceed the average American's knowledge of the current dramatis personae politiche.

Second, and more significant, is the unconscious confession of the belief that an ideological difference of opinion is fundamentally moral. This is why I regularly mock American liberals as moral supremacists, who despite their moral relativism will often assert that they are morally superior beings due solely to their ideological identification. It is a literally nonsensical point of view - and admittedly one that not all American liberals are foolish enough to share - but as most left-liberals will be quick to inform you, consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds like yours.

But as this therapist no doubt thought secretly to herself, it's always most amusing to watch the cognitive dissonance explode inside the dysfunctional mind of the liberal moral supremacist, who cannot abide the notion of a smarter, better-educated individual who subscribes to an ideology of the right.

UPDATE: Nate points out: Note the begining of the piece. It's the key to the humor of it all... You have a woman who clearly views herself as in control, intellegent, articulate, educated, and in all aspects superior to the man* she is talking about... And she begins the piece with the statement: "I was in therapy"

Good point, Nate. While I have a reasonable amount of left-liberal friends, most of my immediate social circle is conservative or libertarian. I think one of them was in a bit of therapy a few years back, and she's one of the only left-liberals in the bunch. I think that would make for an interesting scientific study. What percentage of Democrats, Republicans and Libertarians have been in therapy*

* Actually, it was another woman, but you couldn't tell from the bit I quoted.
** Rehab doesn't count.

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Another new fave

I've seen these cartoons around before, but I didn't realize that they had a blog. Many of them are quite good; I particularly liked the two that were done after the elimination of the Hamas leader. Check out Cox and Fortnum's editorial cartoons, if you haven't already.

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Holy to you, sport, holy to you

As everyone who visits here regularly is aware, I am highly critical of the Bush administration's prosecution of this undeclared - on our part - war. That being said, I'm pleased to give credit where credit is due, most especially when it is due the United States Marine Corps. This is one of the first signs of good sense I've seen since the brilliant execution of the capture of Baghdad in less than a month.

The head of the Marines First Division, General James Mattis, defended the attack, warning if rebels used places of worship in their war against US forces, his troops would not hesitate to strike them at sacred sites. "If they barricade themselves inside a mosque, we are not going to care about the mosque anymore than they do," Mattis said.

It's still far too soon to see if the War on Global Jihad will end in victory, but at least there are early indications that this will not be another Vietnam, where the politicians tell the soldiers how to fight.

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Harvard's always been full of it

The Evangelical Outpost slams Harvard's school of divinity by using the cruel technique of quoting its professors: When the faculty gathered recently to discuss Mel Gibson’s “The Passion”, the reaction was unanimous -- they hated it. That in itself is probably to be expected since claiming an appreciation of the movie would have required taking a courageously contrarian stance. But the attitude toward the reference material is rather peculiar and disturbing: "Although Gibson claimed "The Passion of the Christ" remains true to the history of the Gospels, [François] Bovon pointed out that this might be a hollow claim. "The Gospels are history and interpretation," he said. "The Gospels are not our best sources to the history of the passion of Jesus."

Someone should point out to Dr. Bovon that the Gospels are the only sources to the history of the passion event. You would expect that the former dean of the University of Geneva to have access to that type of knowledge. (John Calvin, who founded the school, must be spinning in his grave.) Harvey Cox, who proudly wears the label of “heretic”, also weighs in: "The problem is that much of this stuff in the movie is in the Gospels," countered Cox. "It's read every Good Friday in churches."

This reminds me of my favorite, and only, experience at Harvard when I was up there for the weekend visiting a friend. At a party that night, we were listening to a pretentious hockey player pontificate about how fabulous the school's hockey team was, leaving everyone present with the distinct impression that he was a member of the team. He was more than a little put out when I asked him why he was not in Minnesota, as the team was away playing the Gophers that weekend. He finally admitted that he was just an intramural player, trying to impress the chickadees, of course. From such nebulous stuff are our political leaders made.

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If poets were generals

Steven Vincent writes on NRO of Shiite martyrdrama: Unless you have the instincts of a pre-Reformation Catholic peasant-or Mel Gibson — it is nearly impossible to grasp this appreciation of suffering and death. But here it is not death as a redemptive power, death as spectacle — a public expression that seeks the admiration of man as much as God. This is what, in my mind, separates Shia radicalism from its Sunni counterpart. Wahabbi and Palestinian suicide bombers seek honor and glorification by killing their enemies; the Shiites' spiritual apotheosis, on the contrary, comes from having their enemies kill them — a kind of suicidal exhibitionism that fetishizes Hussein's fate at Karbala. Early Christians felt that the blood of martyrs nourished the Church; Shiites believe that martyr blood will embellish their own holiness and that of their families for untold generations.

Seen in this light, it's not surprising that the first eleven of Shia's twelve sinless imams died by unnatural causes, their infallibility apparently unable to detect the poisons that dispatched each to Allah. (The 12th imam, Mohammad al-Mahdi, disappeared down a hole in Samarra and won't be seen again until Judgment Day.) Contemporary imams have likewise met grisly fates. Last August, a car bomb killed Mohammad Baqr al-Hakim in Najaf. An interesting Shia poster depicts the slain cleric along with over 60 extended family members — all of whom were executed by Saddam Hussein — superimposed over a bleeding map of Iraq. More prevalent is a poster that shows a stunned Moqtada al-Sadr cradling his father, whom Saddam's thugs murdered — along with Sadr's two eldest brothers — in 1999. In 1980, Sadr's uncle, Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Baqr al-Sadr, and his aunt, Bint Hoda, also met death at Baathist hands — a legacy of martyrdom that gives the 31-year-old cleric a spiritual authority his youth would not otherwise warrant among the age-revering Shiites.

I have no doubt that the Marines will give al-Sadr what he appears to be seeking, but this underlines the point that I was making about how "lowering the boom" is unlikely to have the effect that it would have in a less death-worshipping culture. I don't know precisely what the effect will be, nor do I fear the effects of "Shiite anger" - what does it matter if they're angry when they hate you already - but I find it difficult to imagine that a people steeped in a mindset so alien and warped by decades of suffering are going to respond as we think they should.

I suspect it may be as Dobson writes of an abused child. Whereas discipline corrects the behavior of a normal, loved child, it does not have the same salutary effect on an abused child that has been given reason to fear and hate the abuser. And yet, it's hard to even conceive the possibility of showing metaphorical love in this situation, particularly through the unlikely device of the USMC. Well, it's unwise to attempt to build a military strategy around a metaphor anyhow.

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A test for our friend Able

Actually, it's just an amusing little poli-spectrum test. It's not serious and mistakenly describes libertarians as libertines, but some of the characterizations are quite good. Here's my favorite two:

17: For what offenses should unlimited asset forfeiture become standard operating procedure?

CONS: Drug dealing.
LIBL: Insider securities trading.
LBRT: Nothing.
COMM: Being too successful in the marketplace.


56: What are the responsibilities of all good citizens?

CONS: Pay some taxes, begrudgingly.
LIBL: Pay lots of taxes for the betterment of all mankind- without whining.
LBRT: Fight foreign invaders on American soil.
COMM: Unquestioned obedience.

For some reason, that last one cracks me up, as it beautifully lampoons the way in which libertarians strike both Republicans and Democrats as being completely over-the-top out there. And then, the Communist answer is the perfect follow-through.

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Mailvox: Beauty and the Brain

Alex asks: What would you say Vox about attractive women who find average-looking brainiac types hard to resist? Do you believe that a beautiful woman can be attracted primarily to a man's intellect, higher the better?

Absolutely. This isn't always the case - it doesn't happen anywhere nearly as often as your average computer geek wishes - but I've certainly known it to happen to more than a few individuals. Space Bunny, who is by all accounts a very attractive woman, has usually tended to gravitate towards more intelligent men. The Chilliette pursued Big Chilly remorselessly in preference to men like the UCLA quarterback she'd previously dated. And years ago, I happened to date an Elite girl who was only interested in either brains or fame. As long as the guy wasn't a complete toad, looks were irrelevant. So, it happens.

That being said, it's more the exception than the rule. You don't see women flocking around game developer conventions the way they do around even college athletes, never mind that the game developers are smarter and far wealthier. I don't recall hearing about Gatesian groupies either, for that matter. The problem, I suspect, is that women require a minimum level of social adeptness that many intelligent men cannot muster. Come to think of it, intelligent men whose intelligence tends towards the verbal instead of the math tend to do better, to put it in SAT terms.

The challenge for bright women is that intelligent men are even less likely to value intelligence in women. Too many intelligent women are brainwashed into being constantly and needlessly antagonistic through their educational experience, so the notion of a happy cheerleader is very attractive to a conflict-avoidant man. Intelligent women like to interpret this as being "too strong" for their opposite counterparts, but in reality it's much more a case of being "too unpleasant". But an attractive, intelligent woman who is able to portray herself as being easy to get along with will seldom fail to clean up with intelligent men. Men primarily want their women to be happy; a cheerful attitude goes a surprisingly long way with men, who contrast it with the many women of their acquaintance who are always bitching, moaning and complaining at the slightest excuse.

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Why you can't get a date

You may remember a post a little while ago about the romantic travails of a Pioneer Press reporter who was attending a speed-dating event. Here's the summary: ...let’s start with the results of my recent speed-dating experience. As I mentioned in my last column, the event itself was a lot of fun, and I especially was looking forward to learning if any of the three guys I was interested in felt any sparks for me. About 72 hours later, I received my answer in a short and formatted email from the dating service. Not one. Not a single one. Not the first, second or third guy. A complete strikeout. I felt like a pedestrian who had gotten splashed by a passing car hitting a puddle -- embarrassed, clammy and cold. Also like Martha Stewart after a group shower. The e-mail also informed me that I had 13 “missed opportunities” -- men who had circled “yes” for me, but not I for them.

I'd say this is Nature's way of telling you that you have an unrealistic attitude about how attractive you are. The woman doesn't have to be alone, but she's choosing that over dating men who are actually in her league. Remember that she thought that the women were higher caliber, despite the fact that many of them booked out of there as quickly as they could afterward. She might have learned her lesson, as she says that she'll try a different strategy in the future. Then again, she might be considering ways to try to make herself more attractive to the three guys aren't interested instead of giving the other 13 a chance.

Men as well as women need to get a grip on where they stand. If you're old and weird-looking like Donald Trump but rich and famous, you can date spectacular women such as Melania Knauss. You can date lesser beauties if you're poor, but young and handsome. Sadly, these things can change over time, so a man can't depend on his high-school jock status counting for much post-collega and a woman can't rely on the fact that all the boys thought she was a babe in eighth grade. Furthermore, and I can't emphasize this enough, most men don't care IN THE LEAST that a woman happens to have a college degree or a good job. Not only does it not make a career woman more attractive than the aerobics instructor in the hotpants, but it often raises serious questions in many men's minds about her commitment to being a mother. That's the truth. That's the reality.

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How the left takes over

Ever wonder why every foundation set up by a wealthy conservative capitalist ends up donating millions of dollars to socialist causes? Here, writ small, is a nice example of the basic process at work. The same concept holds true of investment vultures who feed off the creative genius of entrepeneurs. I think the lesson is that, as with politicians, you should never allow anyone who is eager to seize influence over you to do so. This is something that both bankers and the parasites of the Left have mastered.

O'Sullivan's First Law: "All organizations that are not actually right-wing will over time become left-wing." Leo's amendment to O'Sullivan's First Law: any organization with "women" or "girls" in its title will tend to become part of the cultural left in general and the abortion lobby in particular.

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Okay, so some libertarians may need to rethink open borders

From the Washington Times: A paper found in the rented apartment of one Moroccan terrorist said, "We must develop immigration into Western countries as the path to the glory of Islam and the destruction of the Godless pagans."

I'm actually fine with not letting non-citizens into the country. Among other things, you can't fit six billion people inside the 48 contiguous states and the wealth and freedom that a libertarian government would produce over time would cause nearly everyone to want to move there. Look how many people want to come to America as it is. But people and capital have to be free to leave it anytime and anyhow they want.

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Mailvox: the pax principle

EN writes: You're a smart lad. You should be advising GW and the neoconidiots who thought they could translate their academic and historical shortsightedness into military victory. Of course they wouldn't listen but at least they couldn't act shocked and scream about being undercut by the Democrats when this doesn't turn out well. BTW, you've got to hand it to the Founding Fathers. They made it almost impossible to fight any wars without the gravest threat to the nation uniting us. Unless a war is quick and bloodless then the coming election cycle will make it impossible to continue fighting. Our system is not meant for fighting wars as much as not fighting them. Always a wise choice unless backed into a corner.

You wrote: "The Romans maintained their dominance for so long by constantly sowing discord among their enemies." Yes, but there's also that little business of killing all the men, raping all the women and sending the survivors into slavery once you got on the Roman bad side. The Romans make the Russians seem grandfatherly.

It's hard to argue with that. After his legions killed 4,000 Aduatuci, a Belgic tribe, in a battle following a false surrender, Julius Caesar rounded up 53,000 men, women and children and sold them into slavery. This was after slaughtering the Nervii to such an extent that he claimed the tribe was virtually eradicated and the name Nervii disappeared from the tongues of men. Rome plundered the Celts so thoroughly that after three years of Caesar's campaigns in Gaul, the price of gold bullion dropped by a third. America, for all its great power, is unlikely to establish a Pax Americana unless it is willing to resort to like measures. One hopes we are not, but nevertheless, considering the conceptual gap between "Islam is a religion of peace" and "carthago delenda est", one would tend to expect widely divergent results.

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Steyn on the demise of satire

Fortunately, there are still a few genuine satirists around - for example, the chaps who put together the EU report on rising anti-Semitism. "The largest group of the perpetrators of anti-Semitic activities appears to be young, disaffected white Europeans," said the official summary, introducing us to the concept of Euromaths. If you troubled yourself to look inside, it turned out that some nine per cent of anti-Semitic attacks were by young white males. The remaining 91 per cent were by... well, let's not get into that. In the EU, nine per cent is enough to make you the "largest group". One day, there will be only one tattooed knuckle-dragging white skinhead left on the continent. But he'll single-handedly be officially responsible for the majority of anti-Semitic attacks.

Ah, yes, those peaceful Religion of Peace folk. Fortunately, the exposure to ordered government they've experienced in Europe is obviously helping them find a sense of owning their individual destiny and take responsibility for their actions. Though how anyone could argue that blowing oneself up when the police are besieging one indicates a failure to take responsibility for one's actions is beyond me.

Seriously, is anyone thinking anything through anymore? I'm not the least bit opposed to the concept of a free and peaceful Middle East. I'm just incredibly skeptical that it is anything but a propagandistic crack-smoking dream, especially given that the notion a) flies in the face of a centuries-old historical pattern and b) it's going to be brought about by a government that is steadily reducing freedom at home in combination with that paragon of individual liberty, the United Nations.

War has been declared on America. If we must fight it, let us fight it. But if we're only going to fight Schleswig-Holstein and ignore Bavaria, Thuringia, Hesse, Saxony, Saarland and the Rhineland-Palatinate, let's not pretend that we're going to make a serious long-term difference in ending the Nazi threat. This is still the Phony War phase. And the jury is far from in on whether George Bush is a competent wartime Commander-in-Chief or a short-sighted, feeble one.

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Another reason to like Aussies

... besides Firestarter and our resident JamieR: When a three-metre crocodile latched on to the arm of an 11-year-old girl swimming behind his boat, skipper Ray Turner leapt into action. The former crocodile hunter dived from the boat, landed on the back of the reptile and gouged one of its eyes until it freed the girl. Hannah Thompson was swimming with other children at Margaret Bay near the top of Cape York Peninsula yesterday when the crocodile attacked. Mr Turner heard screams and a shout of "crocodile" and in no time was hurtling through the air towards the water.

"I was pitching myself off the boat and I could see the black shadow in the water. He came out when I was already launched and I landed right on him," he said today. "I landed fair on its back and I got a finger in its left eye, I missed the right eye, but he got a fright and he let go," said the 57-year-old, who hunted crocs in Papua New Guinea more than 30 years ago. He estimated the croc to be around 3.3 metres long. "They will always let go when you go for an eye because it's their vulnerable point and their livelihood."

I'd like to think that I'd go after a croc if it was attacking a child. But I'd probably have to drop an f-bomb or two first.

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Mailvox: The problems with The Plan

Bill writes: The proposal for Iraq (per every administration official that’s written about it) is to instill order under some kind of responsible government with the goal that they will trade peacefully and begin working in their own best interest - with the ultimate goal of inculcating a sense of ownership of individual destiny. This should drain the swamps of terrorism in the mideast as people take responsibility for their actions, and see that they have a hand in their future. This is The Plan.

That may be so, Bill, although I'd remind you that the propaganda arm brings up the word "democracy" every time it mentions our presence in Iraq. Except, of course, we're not only not bringing democracy there, we're actively working to suppress the free determination of the Kurds, who would prefer a Kurdish state to being forced to live in a country that has murdered and savagely oppressed them. But we say we love freedom, so it must be so.

And, of course, everyone knows that ordered government is the best way to force individuals to take responsibility for their actions. After all, government has proved to be such a wonderful tool for encouraging individual responsibility here. And you wonder why I'm skeptical that this is going to work out well? Government is ultimately a reflection of the people, even, to some extent, in a totalitarian society. If the Bush administration truly wants to try to aid the cause of peace in the region, it would create numerous decentralized governments and let the people begin to figure out for themselves where they would like to live.

A strong central government structure only brings all the bad guys together in one place to compete for control of it and ensures that the worst and most ruthless will eventually have it at their disposal. This is why the UN is the most dangerous idea in human history.

I also wonder if the administration officials realize how ridiculous they must sound when they intone these pompous statements about how men like this Iranian puppet will be arrested and brought to face justice and whatnot. Sure, it sounds good to American ears, but who do they think they're threatening? These are people who are used to being tortured and slaughtered in a hundred sadistic ways, so they probably laugh out loud when a military bureacrat threatens them with a fair trial and jail. Not to mention that jailing a terrorist usually accomplishes little more than determine what the demands of the next terrorist will be.

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Mailvox: Iraqi Tet

DU asks: Are you willing to entertain the possibility that this may be the Iraq version of the Tet Offensive? That the resistance might just have staked everything on this uprising and we put it down that they will be broken?

I'm certainly open to the possibility. It's not that I'm impressed by the savagery of the resistance or anything, after all, as much as it grieves me greatly that a single Marine should be lost, this was hardly the first day of Tarawa. But I am not at all sure that lowering the boom, so to speak, is likely to work greatly against a populace against which numerous booms have been lowered for decades. Remember, the jihad considered Afghanistan a win against the Soviets, never mind that they probably lost 20-1 casualties there, possibly even higher. And if you're accustomed to your neighbors being fed to plastic shredders, I'm not sure the notion of being arrested and being fed well by the Americans is particularly frightening.

I'm also not impressed with the Bush administration's idiotic notion of keeping Iraq together in this bizarre forced embrace of bitter enemies. If they had any real desire to make the situation work and bring freedom to Iraq, they'd carve it up according to tribal and religious zones and allow each group complete independence. Of course, the administration is not seriously dedicated to freedom and self-determination for Iraqis, but it's a pleasant-sounding fiction. I don't know precisely what their goals are, but democracy and free self-determination are clearly not two of them.

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Venomous wisdom

From the Mogambo Guru: For the first time in a long time, two things happened at the same time. First, I wasn't lashing out at a cruel world when I woke up, and the second thing is that Foreign Custody Holdings at the Fed decreased last week. In fact, it went down by a whopping $16.8 billion. I will pause a minute while you rub your eyes in disbelief at both of these revelations, as I think I speak for us all when I say that we are all dumbfounded that the Mogambo even HAS any mood other than "bad" or that foreign central banks would not want to continue to fund the appetites of a consumption-addled bunch of financial and economic dimwits like us Americans. What in the hell could they have been thinking?

The banks, since we are speaking of a real dimwitted bunch of losers, soaked up $18.2 billion of government debt in the same week, taking their holdings of that toxic asset to a new, all-time record, which indicates that their supply of smarts has hit a new all-time low, in a kind of symmetrical yin-yang banking thing. But then again, I am sure that you remember that the whole history of macroeconomic crises is always the result of banks acting like greedy morons, and that this sordid history lesson goes all the way back to caveman days, when the First National Bank of Og financed the Great Depression of the Thirteenth Year of the Rule of King Ga the Merciless, and I am sure that I do not have to recount for you the terrible aftermath, wherein all the mastodons, well, why go into that unpleasantness all over again?

And the banks are starting to increase their reserves too. Worried about a potential run? Probably not, since a bank can't go bust these days, not as long as we have Ben Bernahnke's magic printing press backed by the full faith and confidence of the federal government.

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Fallujah and the lessons of Chechnya

Here's what I don't understand about what I consider to be the horrendously bad idea to occupy Iraq. Given the failed French colonization of Algeria, the failed Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and the failing Russian occupation of Chechnya, why does anyone believe that an American occupation of Iraq is likely to be any more successful? Yes, I'm aware of the success of the Japanese and German occupations, but in case you hadn't noticed, there are significant differences between those two cultures and Arabic culture. We won the war - which I believe was justified by virtue of Hussein's repeated violations of the 1991 ceasefire - but once Baghdad had fallen and Hussein was in our hands, our job was done.

In the last six years, the Russians have killed almost ten percent of the Chechnyan population, and yesterday they still lost almost as many troops as we did in fighting the bloodiest battle of the Iraqi occupation to date. Does anyone seriously think that the USA is going to be willing wipe out 2.2 million Iraqis in an attempt to pacify the country? I don't believe that for a second, and yet the Chechnyan example indicates that even that might not be enough. Iraq is not exactly a country unaccustomed to suffering savage butchery.

It is a foolish, foolish thing to stake national prestige on changing the hearts and minds of another culture. In order to successfully extricate our forces without creating significant doubts about our military power, it will now probably be necessary to topple another regime before declaring victory and bringing our troops home as we should have done once Baghdad had fallen and Hussein was in our hands. I imagine Iran is the next target, since Israel is going to hit them soon before their nuclear production facilities go online if we don't do anything first.

And before Bane, Rat Spleen and company start leaping all over me with unfounded accusations of martial cowardice and dovishness, I'd ask them to answer one question. If we're not as ruthless as the Russians and the French, and their greater ruthlessness did not suffice to pacify other Arab nations, how and why do you expect this occupation to end well? And what is your metric, at what point would you be willing to admit that the occupation has failed and the troops should come home?

One of history's most repetitive lessons is that there are limits to what can be accomplished through military power. As governments since the days of Nero have learned time and time again, you cannot force people to think and behave as you wish if they prefer to die. You can only kill them, and in doing so, you invariably sow the seeds of your own destruction.

The Romans maintained their dominance for so long by constantly sowing discord among their enemies, keeping them off-balance and invading primarily when a leader appeared and gathered enough power to pose a danger to the empire. As Roma moderna, we would do well to imitate them in this regard.

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Enough with the Nazis

Someone get all that stuff to the CAVE, will you? Do we have one yet? Anyhow, just copy all that stuff and throw it in there and I'll clean it up later. I'm not really in the mood to deal with it now, as I've got a car in the shop to repair the damage inflicted after getting hit while parked at the gas pump and Arsenal got knocked out of the Champions League by bloody Chelsea after losing in the FA Cup to United.

If they blow the Premiership now, I'm going to think about switching my allegiance to Scunthorpe or something.

Also, LD has something going at voxday.tribe.net. Check it out, even via RSS if you like. It should allow for more in depth conversation for those who wish it, although I rather like the Haloscan limits since it keeps things to the point. If you want something to go further in depth, you can always email me and request it to be posted. Except for Resispa, I'm a little frightened of what he might come up with if given half the chance.

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Shifting Sands

AA began: ideologically the Nazi party was more right-wing than left.... The Nazi party did implement socialist programs, though many were gone by the end of the war because they didn't have the money to keep them going. That doesn't make them socialist, and the pluralism, egalitarianism, etc. that are central to the democratic party's platform are hardly mirrored anywhere in the Nazi party's platform. The opposite, right-wing alternatives are.

After this thesis came under severe pressure, he subsequently wrote: ...covering them all, we see that there are some specific similiarities with Republicans, some vague similarities to democrats and socialists, and some things that don't resemble either side of the political spectrum in America today. And: I cited all 25 and went through them. Since few of the 25 were even associated with the Democratic party, and those that were, were vague, this whole post baffles me.

Meanwhile, I had written "Over a third of the 1920 Munich Manifesto precisely matched goals put forth by the American Democratic party, and that percentage more than doubled if one eliminates the historical aspects of the Nazi platform that simply have no application today."

This prompted him to assert: The American Left is not mirrored in the Nazi manifesto, and neither is the Left, even if they both share qualities and aims with it. In fact, many of the aims are consumate with our Constitution. Actually, I think the Democratic party shared fewer than 7 (of the 25) by itself... Final tallies: Democrats: 7 Socialists: 14 Communists: 14 Republicans: 17 Libertarians: 6

At which point, I went through, point by point, and assessed where the various ideologies stood with relation to the National Socialist program. Which prompted him to reassess again and write: Doing percentages here is strange, but if we make these into percentages, Republicans are half Nazi, Communists 2/3, Libertarians less than 1/3, Democrats a little less than 1/2, and Socialists a little more than 1/2. Of course, in reality, none of these ideologies share the nastiness of Nazism, the total disregard for life, the all-encompassing power of the state, etc.

Care to tell us again how your views aren't changing, how you're boldly standing your ground? The only significant difference now between your latest assessment and mine is that you're still trying to disguise the Democrats' Nazi tendencies despite having to double your original count. I, too, had the Communists most similar and the Republicans at almost 50 percent. But not only are a number of your mutating assessments still incorrect - the idea that Democrats, (not to mention Socialists), don't support government-controlled media is risible, I'll take that seriously when they get rid of NPR, the NEA and "campaign-finance reform" - but your original assertion that the National Socialists were right-wing is again blown away by your own calculations.

Furthermore, the National Socialist annual percentage rate of domestic democide was .138, which is much lower than the AVERAGE annual rate of Communist domestic democides at .769, which not only includes famous killing fields such as the People's Democratic Republic of Kampuchea and the People's Republic of China, but also post-WWII Poland and Czechoslovakia. You're right, they didn't share the Nazi disregard for life, they far exceeded it.* But why let small things like historical facts get in the way of your baseless assertions?

AA is beginning to remind me of the guy who refuses to believe that his girlfriend is having an affair with another man. "But, she said she loves me," he argues, with a heartbreakingly serious expression. "Democrats say they believe in individual freedom, ergo it must be true! Socialists say they only want to help everyone, therefore it's got to be true!" And I'm forced to try to keep from rolling my eyes in disbelief as I tell him - just as I told a too-innocent friend of mine a few months ago - that sometimes people say things that simply are not true.

*true, the Nazis had a vicious 1.59 percentage rate of foreign democide, but this is not easily compared with the Communist and other Socialist regimes, since those bloodstained governments are usually too busy killing their own people to conquer foreign lands And even that rate pales before the 4.131 foreign democidal rate achieved by Indonesia for a much longer period of time in the murderous years between 1965 and 1987.

Comments ()

Walking the planks II

Here are the ten pillars of the Communist Manifesto, measures which Marx himself admitted were "despotic inroads on the rights of property" and "appear economically insufficient and untenable", but were necessary and unavoidable in order to make "further inroads upon the old social order".

I have analyzed these as well, from the point of view of the following four political ideologies: National Socialist, Democratic, Republican and Libertarian. Since there are only 10 points, each is assigned a value ranging from zero to 10, otherwise, the analytical process is much as before.

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.

None of the four ideologies examined are willing to go to this extreme. National Socialists are the most openly enthusiastic about commandeering private property, while Democrats and Republicans have claimed 31.1 percent of the nation's land for the government between them. Democrats, however, are greater proponents of property use regulations. Libertarians oppose government ownership of land.

6 (6) National Socialists
5 (5) Democrats
4 (4) Republicans
0 (0) Libertarians

2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.

This one is not very difficult. I haven't done much research on National Socialist tax rates, but knowing their overall philosophy of the State I'll give them a conservative 5. If anyone has solid information, please let me know. Democrats score a perfect 10, Republicans favor lower taxes in general, but will usually raise them as well rather than cut spending. Libertarians oppose all income taxes.

10 (15) Democrats
05 (12) National Socialists
06 (10) Republicans
00 (00) Libertarians

3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.

Certainly these were not recognized in the case of Jews and enemies of the Nazi State, as proved by property that is still getting back to its rightful heirs sixty years later. I'll need to dig up their inheritance laws too. Democrats are much stronger proponents of the estate tax, whereas this is one tax that the Republicans have actually managed make progress towards abolishing. Libertarians oppose inheritance taxes.

05 (20) Democrats
07 (19) National Socialists
00 (10) Republicans
00 (00) Libertarians

I'll finish this later, as I have to see a television set about a soccer game. But you can have a look at the rest of the Communist platform and draw your own conclusions in the meantime.

4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal obligation of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc.

Comments ()

Walking the planks

I have analyzed the foundational platform of the historical National Socialist German Workers Party and characterize how each of the following four political ideologies can be compared to it: Communist, Democratic, Republican and Libertarian. I have assigned a value from zero to four to each of the 25 points, depending on how closely the position of the ideology parallels that of the Nazi program. In cases where a point had multiple aspects, I simply attempted to look at each aspect separately, then add the total.

This analysis does not attempt to account for motivations. In a Senate of 100 senators, each may have a different reason for voting for a specific bill, but in determining a senator's ideological rating, one does not speculate as to why he voted for the bill, all that matters is his vote. Specific actions always take precedence over general pretensions.


1. We demand the union of all Germans, on the basis of the right of the self-determination of peoples, to form a Great Germany.

The key words here are forced union and right of self-determination of PEOPLES, plural, as well as a nationalist concept. Communists support forced union and collective group identification, but not self-determination. Democrats support forced union, collective group identification and self-determination. Republicans support forced union and self-determination, but not collective group identification. There is, however, a nationalist flavor that modern Democrats and Communists abjure and Republicans tend to favor. Libertarians support none of the above, favoring free association.

3 (3) Democrats
3 (3) Republicans
2 (2) Communists
0 (0) Libertarians

2. We demand equality of rights for the German people in its dealings with other nations, and abolition of the Peace Treaties of Versailles and St. Germain.

The second half is irrelevant to all four ideologies, but there is both a notion of collective rights as well as same strong sense of involuntary national identity mentioned above.

2 (5) Democrats
2 (4) Communists
1 (4) Republicans
0 (0) Libertarians

3. We demand land and territoryfor the nourishment of our people and for settling our surplus population.

Democrats and Republicans alike support military intervention on behalf of national economic self-interest, Republicans a little more strongly. Communists favor world revolution by conquest if necessary; the rationale is different but the policy is the same. Libertarians do not support this.

3 (8) Democrats
4 (8) Communists
4 (8) Republicans
0 (0) Libertarians

4. None but members of the nation may be citizens of the State. None but those of German blood, whatever their creed, may be members of the nation. No Jew, therefore, may be a member of the nation.

Neither Democrats nor Republicans seek any serious limitations on citizenship or immigration although a branch of the Republicans would support some. Both parties strongly support Israel and the Jewish people. Communist nations are viciously opposed to Israel and have historically targeted Jews, though without the single-minded ferocity of the Nazis. Communists have never suggested limiting citizenship. There is a collective race consciousness here that is shared by Democrats.

2 (10) Communists
1 (09) Democrats
1 (09) Republicans
0 (00) Libertarians

5. Anyone who is not a citizen of the State may live in Germany only as a guest and must be regarded as being subject to the Alien Laws.

This is pretty standard for both major American ideologies, although I must recognize the love Democrats harbor for illegal immigrants. Libertarians tend to favor open door policies, although not as strongly as other philosophical tenets.

4 (14) Communists
4 (13) Republicans
3 (12) Democrats
1 (01) Libertarians

6. The right of voting on the leadership and laws of the State is to be enjoyed by the citizens of the State alone. We demand, therefore, that all official positions, of whatever kind, whether in the Reich, the provinces, or the small communities, shall be held by citizens of the State alone. We oppose the corrupt parliamentary custom of filling posts merely with a view to party considerations, and without reference to character or ability.

I don't know of any ideology that seriously argues for the right of non-citizens to vote; this is irrelevant for comparative purposes. Communists, Republicans and Democrats all strongly favor filling posts with views to party considerations, albeit the American parties do so far less stringently than do the one-party Communists, nor do they apply them to the mass of the bureacracy. Libertarians would fire everyone and abolish the posts, regardless of party.

4 (18) Communists
2 (15) Republicans
2 (14) Democrats
0 (01) Libertarians

7. We demand that the State shall make it its first duty to promote the industry and livelihood of the citizens of the State. If it is not possible to nourish the entire population of the State, foreign nationals must be excluded from the Reich.

Democrats strongly support both government management of the economy as well as individual welfare, but not corporate welfare. Republicans strongly support government management of the economy and corporate welfare, but not individual welfare. One could make a deeply cynical comment about the Communist position here, but we'll resist the temptation. The latter half is massively irrelevant to the United States of Adiposity.

4 (22) Communists
3 (18) Republicans
3 (17) Democrats
0 (01) Libertarians

8. All further non-German immigration must be prevented. We demand that all non-Germans who entered Germany subsequently to August 2, 1914, shall be required forthwith to depart from the Reich.

Neither Republicans nor Democrats support racial-based immigration laws, but Democrats are more strongly against them. However, there is again the collective race consciousness shared by modern Democrats. The strong government control of immigration is shared by Communists, but not the racial flavor.

3 (25) Communists
1 (19) Republicans
1 (18) Democrats
0 (01) Libertarians

9. All citizens of the State shall possess equal rights and duties.

All four strains believe in equal rights, but it is the duty towards the state aspect that is the salient point here, indicating that the State's rights supersede those of the individuals living in it. Democrats believe this more strongly than Republicans, who are often accused of being indifferent to their social responsibilities. Duties to the State is, of course, central to Communist ideology.

4 (29) Communists
4 (22) Democrats
2 (21) Republicans
2 (03) Libertarians

10. It must be the first duty of every citizen of the State to perform mental or physical work. The activities of the individual must not clash with the interests of the whole, but must proceed within the framework of the community and must be for the general good.

Again, the State and the collective are elevated over the individual. However, citizens are required to work, which Democrats do not support despite the Clinton-era reforms.

4 (33) Communists
3 (25) Democrats
1 (22) Republicans
0 (03) Libertarians


11. Abolition of incomes unearned by work. BREAKING OF THE THRALDOM OF INTEREST.

Democrats regularly decry those who “unfairly” prosper, supposedly at the expense of others. They have not yet begun to propose legislation to abolish such incomes, however. Republicans and Libertarians alike oppose this vehemently, while Communists agree completely.

4 (37) Communists
2 (27) Democrats
0 (22) Republicans
0 (03) Libertarians


12. In view of the enormous sacrifice of life and property demanded of a nation by every war, personal enrichment through war must be regarded as a crime against the nation. We demand, therefore, the total confiscation of all war profits.

Communists don't support profit of any kind. Democrats don't like “excess” profits of any kind, and also call regularly for legislation against arms dealers. Republicans and Libertarians are both generally opposed to confiscation of profit.

4 (41) Communists
2 (29) Democrats
0 (22) Republicans
0 (03) Libertarians

13. We demand the nationalization of all businesses which have been amalgamated.

Democrats do not support nationalization of all businesses, only some. Republicans continue to support existing national monopolies such as the Post Office. Communists wish to nationalize everything, whereas Libertarians would privatize the Marines.

4 (45) Communists
2 (31) Democrats
1 (23) Republicans
0 (03) Libertarians

14. We demand that there shall be profit sharing in the great industries.

Democrats support the minimum wage, require steep social security and health care contributions from the employer and are favorable towards forced distribution of private property. Republicans likewise, but less enthusiastically. Communists want to share out not only the profit, but the entire industry. Libertarians, as usual, oppose completely.

4 (49) Communists
4 (35) Democrats
2 (25) Republicans
0 (03) Libertarians

15. We demand a generous development of provision for old age.

Democrats and Republicans alike support Social Security, but it was a Democratic entitlement passed over Republican opposition. Furthermore, it is Democrats who oppose Republican attempts to modify it in any way and are constantly telling the elderly that Republicans want to slash their benefits. Communists support, Libertarians oppose.

4 (53) Communists
4 (39) Democrats
2 (27) Republicans
0 (03) Libertarians

16. We demand the creation and maintenance of a healthy middle class, immediate communalization of the large department stores and their lease at a low rate to small traders, and that the most careful consideration shall be shown to all small traders in purveying to the State, the provinces, or smaller communities.

The notion that the state is even capable of creating and maintaining a social class is a fundamentally socialist notion on several levels. This also smacks not only of the Keynesianism of both American parties, but also of the Democratic hatred for Walmart. Communists believe that the bourgeiosie should be executed; they have as little in common with the Nazi concept here as do the Libertarians.

0 (53) Communists
3 (42) Democrats
2 (29) Republicans
0 (03) Libertarians

17. We demand a land reform suitable to our national requirements, the passing of a law for the confiscation without compensation of land for communal purposes, the abolition of interest on land mortgages, and prohibition of all speculation in land.

Republicans, Democrats and Communists alike support the confiscation of land for communal purposes, although their level of enthusiasm varies. Only Communists would abolish interest – although Greenspan appears to be trying – and Democrats are far more supportive of zoning and government management of land than are Republicans.

4 (57) Communists
2 (44) Democrats
1 (30) Republicans
0 (03) Libertarians

18. We demand ruthless war upon all those whose activities are injurious to the common interest. Sordid criminals against the nation, usurers, profiteers, etc., must be punished with death, whatever their creed or race.

Far too extreme for any American philosophy, although Democrats buy into the notion of a common interest that supercedes individual rights. Republicans favor the death penalty, Democrats largely don't. Communists support, Libertarians oppose.

4 (61) Communists
2 (46) Democrats
1 (31) Republicans
0 (03) Libertarians

19. We demand that the Roman law, which serves the materialistic world order, shall be replaced by a German common law.

The Libertarians score some Nazi points! Both Republicans and Democrats favor admiralty law, which is the equivalent of Roman law here, and have actively worked to remove the English common law from the US legal system. The Communists are violently opposed to common law, while the Libertarians support it strongly.

0 (61) Communists
0 (46) Democrats
0 (31) Republicans
4 (07) Libertarians

20. With the aim of opening to every capable and industrious German the possibility of higher education and consequent advancement to leading positions, the State must consider a thorough reconstruction of our national system of education. The curriculum of all educational establishments must be brought into line with the requirements of practical life. Directly the mind begins to develop the schools must aim at teaching the pupil to understand the idea of the State. We demand the education of specially gifted children of poor parents, whatever their class or occupation, at the expense of the State.

Ah, yes, the public schools. Both Republicans and Democrats are actually more extreme than the Nazi platform, which only called for the education of elite children at state expense. Communists support, Libertarians oppose.

4 (65) Communists
4 (50) Democrats
4 (35) Republicans
0 (07) Libertarians

21. The State must apply itself to raising the standard of health in the nation by protecting mothers and infants, prohibiting child labor, and increasing bodily efficiency by legally obligatory gymnastics and sports, and by extensive support of clubs engaged in the physical training of the young.

Democrats believe that the State is responsible for individual health, Republicans have lately begun to embrace this concept with the Medicare entitlement. Democrats are enthusiastic about government youth programs, while only the Communists make sports obligatory.

4 (69) Communists
3 (53) Democrats
2 (37) Republicans
0 (07) Libertarians

22. We demand the abolition of mercenary troops and the formation of a national army.

Regardless of the question of mercenary troops meaning militia, (I believe it does), only the Libertarians are opposed, at all, to a national standing army, but even they are open to a small defensively oriented professional army augmented by a large national militia as in the case of Switzerland.

4 (73) Communists
4 (57) Democrats
4 (41) Republicans
2 (09) Libertarians

23. We demand legal warfare against conscious political lies and their dissemination in the press. In order to facilitate the creation of a German national press we demand that: (a) all editors, and their co-workers, of newspapers employing the German language must be members of the nation; (b) special permission from the State shall be necessary before non-German newspapers may appear (these need not necessarily be printed in the German language); ( c ) non-Germans shall be prohibited by law from participating financially in or influencing German newspapers, and the penalty for contravention of the shall be suppression of any such newspaper, and immediate deportation of the non-German involved It must be forbidden to publish newspapers which are damaging to the national welfare. We demand the legal prosecution of all tendencies in art and literature which exert a destructive influence on our national life and the closing of institutions which militate against the above-mentioned requirements.

Democrats strongly support government-funded media as well as government limitations on the media. See the Equal Time bills and McCain-Feingold for details. Republicans support the latter to a lesser extent. Except for flag-burning, Republicans do not support government censorship, they support the ending of government funding, which is not at all the same thing, but Democrats support legal prosecution and closing of institutions which offend those groups they wish to protect. Communists support, Libertarians oppose.

4 (77) Communists
3 (60) Democrats
1 (42) Republicans
0 (09) Libertarians

24. We demand liberty for all religious denominations in the State, so far as they are not a danger to it and do not militate against the moral and ethical feelings of the German race. The Party, as such, stands for positive Christianity, but does not bind itself in the matter of creed to any particular confession. It combats the Jewish-materialist spirit within and without us, and is convinced that our nation can achieve permanent recovery from within only on the principle: THE COMMON INTEREST BEFORE SELF-INTEREST

This is qualified religious liberty, with the State elevated over the Church. There is a mention of Christianity, but also a strongly worded repetition of the theme that the common interest supercedes all. Democrats very much support this qualified religious liberty as well as the common interest, and at least when running for office, claim to be Christian. Republicans are less supportive of such qualifications and the notion of common interest, Libertarians reject both that as well as the State's right to interfere with private religion at all. Communists do not recognize religious liberty, but very much agree on the common interest front.

2 (79) Communists
4 (64) Democrats
2 (44) Republicans
0 (09) Libertarians

25. That all the foregoing requirements may be realized we demand the creation of a strong, central national authority; unconditional authority of the central legislative body over the entire Reich and its organizations in general; and the formation of diets and vocational chambers for the purpose of executing the general laws promulgated by the Reich in the various States of the Confederation. The leaders of the Party swear to proceed regardless of consequences - if necessary at the sacrifice of their lives - toward the fulfillment of the foregoing Po