Dull Blade

Maureen Dowd has wasted yet another column writing about her feelings about being criticized for her writing: "Guys don't appreciate being lectured by a woman . . . the metaphors used to describe my column play into the castration theme: my scalpel, my cutting barbs, razor-sharp hatchet, Clinton-skewering and Bush-whacking. 'Does she,' The L.A. Times's Patt Morrison wondered, 'write on a computer or a Ronco Slicer and Dicer?'"
I suppose some people might think that Dowd is "cutting" and "razor-sharp," I can't see why. I find her to be one of the weakest columnists working today. I can't remember anything that she has written that is, well, memorable. I find a couple of her colleagues at the Times, Paul Krugman and Nicholas Kristof, to be worth reading; if often full of it. They, at least have something to say.

Blame the Eco-Whackos

Maybe Neal Boortz can show everybody how stupid the "eco-whackos" are by building himself a house across from a refinery. . .

Ready. Set. ZZZ.

Every neocon in the world, no matter how boring or lame will eventually get a syndicated column. Case-in-point: National Review Online's Kathryn Jean Lopez will be starting hers next week. The NEA could have found someone with something, anything to say, such as Scott Richert, or Bill Kauffman or Steve Sailer. Instead, K-Lo will join the daily Republican echo chamber at Townhall.
I can't wait

Boo Hoo

Is it unraveling already? The American Spectator's George Neumayr complains that the Republicans are wimping out on tax cuts and Social Security reform. I want my taxes cut as much as the next guy, but the Republicans are the party of Big Government, no Monstrously Large Government. You would think that would be obvious by now, but not this howler from Neumayr:

Didn't rudimentary Reaganomics teach them that tax cuts are not a source of deficits but a solution to them -- a spur to reducing the federal government's size and a stimulus to the economy that makes Americans less dependent on the federal government? Tax cuts at once boost the economy (and can actually increase government tax revenues) while sending a signal to Washington that it must back away from the trough. Cut taxes and fiscal discipline may follow; suspend tax cuts and continued bloated government spending is guaranteed.

What planet does he live on? The budget was balanced after repeated tax increases in the 80s & 90s; along with a divided government with a Democratic president. President Hilary Clinton is more likely to cut spending and balance the budget than President Bush.

Film Comment

I have been following a debate at LIBERTAS, a "forum for conservative thought on film" about the film, American Beauty. One poster, Dave Ross thinks that it is the only film from the last quarter century to deserve its best picture Oscar. Jason, apparently co-editor of the site, disagrees:

The stock conservative villain (Chris Cooper) is a racist military guy who beats his wife, forces his son to watch Ronald Reagan movies, collects Nazi china, and is secretly gay(!). The hero (Kevin Spacey) is a pot-smoking, shiftless, narcissistic liberal who lusts after his daughter’s teenage friends. And Annette Bening - a fine actress, who is otherwise wasted in this role - plays a shrieking, conformist, uptight harridan … who is supposed to be an indictment of suburban womanhood. Instead she comes across as no-one so much as Hillary Clinton. The film seems to be a strange allegory for the Clinton years, with Kevin Spacey as Clinton, Annette Bening as Hillary, Mena Suvari as Monica Lewinsky, and the villain a composite Henry Hyde/George Bush/Ken Starr.

This silly rant sounds as if Jason didn't actually see the movie and is reading from some sort of rightwing, Hollywood-watchdog factsheet. Lester Burnham, Kevin Spacey's character only resembles Bill Clinton in the most superficial sense--his lust for a girl young enough to be his daughter. Other than that, Clinton is an ambitious schemer who lusts for power as much as women. Burnham on the other hand is devoid of ambition and ends up working at a fast food place. His other complaints are silly as well. While we can assume that the gay-psycho-Marine character is politically conservative, I don't see how Burnam is especially liberal. Here he provides further a further brief against American Beauty:

which gratuitously defecates on Reagan, our military, etc. I don’t see why is this so hard to understand - or why I should care what the film says about Kevin Spacey’s acting abilities, which are nil, so far as I can tell. The man is an absolute cipher, a kind of ‘man without qualities’ to borrow a phrase from Musil.

Sam Mendes directed American Beauty, and I’ve been in the editorial suite of his next film. It’s pretty obvious that his new film Jarhead is going to be another screed against the ‘dehumanizing’ U.S. military (Jarhead is an account of the first Gulf War, starring Jamie Foxx and Chris Cooper). And I noticed Mr. Mendes smiling gleefully during the Oscars at Chris Rock’s repeated jabs at Bush - so what is there not to understand here?

His defacation comment is just wierd. Reagan's only appearance is via an old movie on TV that the Psycho Nazi-plate collector is not forcing his son to watch. Note also, his review of the yet unreleased film Jarhead. Jason doesn't let the reader in on what the Internet Movie Database does--that Jarhead will be based on the 2003 book of former Marine, Anthony Swofford. So if it portrays military life as 'dehumanizing,' it will be coming straight from the horses mouth.

Thinking of Smedley

Whenever I read about Marine veterans like this person:

The man was beside himself with fury. He accused me and the AFSC of being
shameful and that the AFSC wanted to see all of our soldiers in Iraq "tried for
war crimes." I just sat at the hospitality table trying to let the veteran blow
off some steam – I couldn’t answer his concerns at that point anyway – I felt
his accusations were for the representatives of the AFSC.
The very, very
angry man finally screamed one thing that I couldn’t ignore. He was practically
frothing at the mouth when he roared: "You people are all cowards. You wouldn’t
die for anything."
That’s when I had had just about enough of Mr. Marine. I
stood up to him and I said: "You are wrong about that, sir. I would have gladly
gone to Iraq instead of my son. I would have died in his place without
question."

I comfort myself by remembering Smedley Butler:

I have visited eighteen government hospitals for veterans. In them are a
total of about 50,000 destroyed men-men who were the pick of the nation eighteen
years ago. The very able chief surgeon at the government hospital at Milwaukee .
. . told me that mortality among veterans is three times as great as among those
who stayed home. Boys with a normal viewpoint were taken out of the fields and
offices and factories and classrooms and put into the ranks. There they were
remolded; they were made over; they were made to "about face"; to regard murder
as the order of the day. They were put shoulder to shoulder and, through mass
psychology, they were entirely changed . . . Then suddenly, we discharged them
and told them to make another "about face"! This time they had to do their own
readjusting, sans mass psychology, sans officers' aid and advice, sans
nation-wide propaganda. We didn't need them any more . . . Many, too many, of
these fine young boys are eventually destroyed, mentally, because they could not
make that final "about face."

More Tyrrell

I previously noted Emmitt Tyrell's lame column on Jon Stewart's America, describing it as the worst book of 2004 (which is impossible since Tyrrell also released a book last year). Now I see that Tyrrell has made that the cover story in the March issue of the American Spectator. Imagine paying the outrageous ($7.95 last time I checked) to get a month old reprint of a syndicated column.

Gotcha!

Sometimes bloggers go to great lengths to catch big media people in falsehoods and errors. Matthew Hoy, for example thinks he has the goods on Paul Krugman:

"Nearly two months ago, in what appears now to be a fit of pique, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman made a promise to his readers.

In the next few weeks, I'll explain why privatization will fatally undermine
Social Security, and suggest steps to strengthen the program.

Well, as the graphic indicates, Krugman has suggested no real "steps to strengthen the program" in any subsequent column. Counting today's column, Krugman has written 15 pieces in the Times, but not one has contained the promised plan."

So Krugman, in a very general way, pledge to "suggest steps to strengthen" Social Security at some point in "the next few weeks." So what's the big deal? Krugman is still working on the Bush plan it would seem. Hoy should work to find genuine examples of dishonesty and incompetence among big media figures instead of trying to whip up a phony controversy. The professor disagrees, however.

Recruiters Lie?

Antiwar.com's Brandon Snider links to a cautionary tale about joining the Army. As would be soldier, Tyler Gilbert found out, signing a contract with the government is signing away your life:

. . . The Army recruiter seemed very nice at first. I mentioned bad stories I had heard, and he told me I could get money for college and I could support my family . . . He was like a stereotypical used car salesperson. Then he started to call constantly, and if I didn't call right back, he'd leave obnoxious messages. He called five to six times a day. He started to call a friend of mine to try to find me, too . . . I thought, "maybe I don't want to do this." Then I figured, "well, I could just try it." They never told me how difficult it was to get out.

. . . They asked me if I had seen a psychologist. I started to write down yes. The recruiter ripped up the paper in front of me and my wife and told me not to say that on the form.

They tried to get me to sign up for infantry. I said, "no." The recruiter made it seem like he had to call the Pentagon and that he pulled a lot of strings to get me assigned to tank driving. Once I got to Basic, I found out that they can still assign you to anything they want. . .

I can identify with his story somewhat, because I took a similar plunge back in the eighties. After being lied to (although on more trivial matters than Gilbert) and instructed to lie by recruiters, I signed up. Somehow, I made it through the Marine Corps infamously tough recuit training at Parris Island, South Carolina. Gilbert's experience is in some ways harsher than mine was; probably because the country is at war.
A key difference is the current difficulty in getting out of training that Gilbert describes. I remember several people leaving boot camp because they continually screwed up, or were hurt. One recruit stands out in my mind who never made past the first few days in the receiving barracks. I can still picture him, standing at attention at the front of the classroom, in tears, talking to his mother on the phone.
That a recruiter was intent on getting Gilbert, a 29 year old with dubious knees to join the infantry indicates that the Army is at very least, concerned about meeting recruiting goals. That they keep people in with injuries and the other serious problems that Gilbert describes indicates that they are desparate.
I joined the Marine Reserve in part because I was a rightwing, perhaps even neoconservative, supporter of an interventionist foreign policy. It felt wrong to just stay in college and let others carry the burden. If I were in that position today, I would probably learn to live with the hypocrisy.

Looking for bias

It must be getting tough for Brent Bozell and his chronies to justify their phony-baloney jobs. The first two items in Monday's "CyberAlert" stretch the concept of media watchdog to the limit. The Headline for the first states, "Oscar Audience Applauds Louder for Fareheit 9-11 Than The Passion." Wow. Is the Oscars audience a media source? Will we soon see "CBS Evening News with the Audience from the Oscars?"
The second "expose" is of an Andy Rooney commentary. Rooney, "Hail[ed] Liberal Presidents, Dismiss[ed] Reagan as a Divider." I don't defend Rooney's views. Once he has said, that Woodrow Wilson is great, "because of his idea for the League of Nations"; I have to conclude that Rooney is such a fool that I wouldn't trust him to tell me the time of day. But his slot on Sixty Minute is commentary. It is supposed to be biased.

Invite the world to help us invade . . .

Max Boot(registration), who urged the U.S. to "Take up the White Man's Burden," in his Savage Wars of Peace, now wants to have the rest of the world share that burden (via Steve Sailer):

The military would do well today to open its ranks not only to legal immigrants but also to illegal ones and, as important, to untold numbers of young men and women who are not here now but would like to come. No doubt many would be willing to serve for some set period in return for one of the world's most precious commodities — U.S. citizenship. Open up recruiting stations from Budapest to Bangkok, Cape Town to Cairo, Montreal to Mexico City. Some might deride those who sign up as mercenaries, but these troops would have significantly different motives than the usual soldier of fortune.

Boot is almost a parody of neoconservatism, whose two point plank was characterized by Sailer as, "invade the world, invite the world." Boot wants to invite the world to help us invade it, then give our loyal Gunga Dins citizenship. I won't bother to argue against Boot here. Anyone who thinks that whe should make up for recruiting shortfalls by trading citizenship for military service in Budapest and Cairo and Montreal(!) is beyond hope. The Times should drop Boot's column and just run a Rudyard Kipling poem in his place every week. It would be much more entertaining:

I sha'n't forgit the night
When I dropped be'ind the fight
With a bullet where my belt-plate should 'a' been.
I was chokin' mad with thirst,
An' the man that spied me first
Was our good old grinnin', gruntin' Gunga Din.
'E lifted up my 'ead,
An' he plugged me where I bled, An' 'e guv me 'arf-a-pint o' water green.
It was crawlin' and it stunk,
But of all the drinks I've drunk,
I'm gratefullest to one from Gunga Din.
It was "Din! Din! Din!
"'Ere's a beggar with a bullet through 'is spleen"
"'E's chawin' up the ground,
"An' 'e's kickin' all around:
"For Gawd's sake git the water, Gunga Din!

'E carried me away
To where a dooli lay,
An' a bullet come an' drilled the beggar clean.
'E put me safe inside,
An' just before 'e died,
"I 'ope you liked your drink" sez Gunga Din.
So I'll meet 'im later on
At the place where 'e is gone
Where it's always double drill and no canteen.
'E'll be squattin' on the coals
Givin' drink to poor damned souls,
An' I'll get a swig in hell from Gunga Din!
Yes, Din! Din! Din!
You Lazarushian-leather Gunga Din!
Though I've belted you and flayed you,
By the livin' Gawd that made you,
You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din!

More Condi

John Tabin pours a little cold water on the Draft Condi movement that has been touted by columnist, nitwit, Dick Morris. Tabin notes that this isn't the first time that Republicans have mooned over an idealized pontential black candidate:

This isn't the first time Republicans have gotten starry-eyed about an idealized
black candidate; there was buzz about a potential Colin Powell candidacy in the
fall of 1995. Hilariously, William Kristol was a booster a Powell, years before
Powell became undoubtedly Kristol's least favorite cabinet member.

Zero Tolerance

As if I needed further evidence that evidence that people in this country are childish on the subject of drugs, I see this story, via Hit & Run:

Sikeston, Missouri - Police and school leaders in Sikeston say the case
involving a 6-year-old girl and a bag of dirt needs to be taken
seriously.
"If she would have been 14, we would have been arrested her and
taken her to jail.” Sgt. Shirley Porter said.
It's a story you saw only on
Heartland News. One that generated an incredible response from you. More than a
1,000 of you logged onto our web site to voice your opinion on the Sikeston
first grade student disciplined for giving a bag of dirt and grass to a
classmate.
Police and school leaders felt it looked like a bag of marijuana.
The girl's mother tells Heartland News that her child did not realize the
difference between a bag of weed and the illegal kind. But, passing even a fake
drug is illegal and had the child been older, she could have been arrested.

Yes people do need to take it seriously when the police and school officials are so terrified of pot that they make a big deal out of a bag of dirt. At least they didn't call in a SWAT team.

Bush was right?

Michael Totten, quoting a few weak-minded liberals, suggests that people were wrong to oppose invading Iraq, and that Bush was right. Mark Brown, of the Chicago Sun-Times, said a couple of weeks ago, "After watching Sunday's election in Iraq and seeing the first clear sign that freedom really may mean something to the Iraqi people, you have to be asking yourself: What if it turns out Bush was right, and we were wrong?" Totten quotes Jeff Simmermon ,who was moved by stories Iraqis who were voting in the U.S. "You may think that you have felt dumb before, but let me tell you something: until you have stood in front of a man who knows real pain and told him that you are against your country's alleviation of his country's state-sponsored murderous suffering, you have not felt truly, deeply, like a total f*cking moron." He also quotes an Iraqi saying, "almost all Iraqis in America will vote Republican for the rest of their lives."
I don't know about Brown or Simmermon, but I didn't oppose the invading Iraq becuase I didn't think that Saddam was bad, or because I oppose self-government in the Middle East. I opposed it because Saddam wasn't a threat to the U.S. (even if he had turned out to have a few chemical weapons). Also, I am convinced that invading a country that didn't threaten us, while tying down and over-extending the military, doesn't enhance national security.
As to whether "Bush was right;" that argument doesn't hold water for anyone with access to google. I remember the fear mongering from the Bush administration from the fall of 2002, including talk about "aluminum tubes." Who can forget: "we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud"? I also remember something called the "Axis of Evil." We invaded the weakest member even as the other two are well on their way to aquiring nuclear weapons.
Also, I am more impressed by Iraqis who plan to return to their country instead of staying here and voting Republican.

The People vs. the Powerful

Ryan Sager is upset that rank-and-file conservatives at the Conservative Political Action Conference are against an open-borders policy. "On the immigration panel mentioned above, Phyllis Schlafly took the hard line against immigration. 'The idea of giving any job to any willing worker is absolutely unacceptable,' Schlafly said. American workers won't and shouldn't work for the wages Mexicans and other Latin American immigrants are willing to accept, she said, and companies should be forced to pay them more. All of this met with wild applause from the audience."
I'm glad to know that the rank-in-file opposes the open-floodgates border policy of a president that they otherwise seem to worship uncritically. The context of Sager's remarks is a column arguing that social conservatives might alienate more libertarian Republicans enough to harm the party. He may or may not be right, I don't really care. The Republican party is destructive of both conservative and libertarian values these days. But I don't think that the immigration concerns of Schlafly and some movement conservatives, which seem to shared by the majority of Americans, as opposed to corporate and political elites, are going to harm the party.

Married in Springfield

Tim Graham of the Media Research Center whines about the gay marriage episod of The Simpsons, even though he didn't see it, on NRO's The Corner:

It sounds to me from reading press accounts that it would please GLAAD more than I thought, what with Marge greeting her lesbian sister with the lame line that just cause you're lesbian "doesn't make you less of a human bein'." Hollywood just always starts from the gay-left assumption that disapproval of sin equals thinking sinners are sub-human. That claim in itself matches "The Simpsons" -- it's a snarky cartoon of Christianity.

If this dork had bothered to see the program he would have discovered that Marge was very vocally pro gay marriage in the abstract, but was upset when it was her sister about to be married. It was hardly some gay rights soapbox. One also fights the tempation to scream, "It's a snarky cartoon period, idiot!". He helpfully quotes his "boss," Brent Bozell III saying, "At a time when the public mood is overwhelmingly against gay marriage, any show that promotes gay marriage is deliberately bucking the public mood." The episode didn't come close to "promoting" gay marriage and it is no crime to buck the public mood, whatever that means.

After a few years off, the gender wars seem to be heating up again. Harvard president, Lawrence Summers, under the impression that he has freedom of speech, suggested in a private talk that possibly innate ability and family pressures keep women from advancing in the sciences in greater numbers.
On a related front, Susan Estrich is upset because women aren't appearing on the Los Angeles Times editorial page in sufficient numbers. Estrich has guaranteed that she is the last woman on earth who will ever be in the Times due to a series of snotty emails that have been printed in the new Washington Examiner. I am not sure what qualifies her to be so arrogant and condescending towards someone she is attempting to influence. She lectures one of the more distinguished journalists of his generation that, "NO one tried harder to educate you about Los Angeles, introduce you to key players in the city, bring to your attention, quietly, the issues of gender inequality than I did," and then delivers the key remark: "People are beginning to think that your illness may have affected your brain, your judgment, and your ability to do this job."
Kinsley has Parkinson's Disease. I don't know how that effects his mind, but he will have more on the ball ten minutes after he dies than Estrich ever had. In a previously published set of exchanges, Estrich complained about a column that the Times ran by Charlotte Allen arguing that there are no female public intellectuals to follow in the footsteps of the late Susan Sontag:

There are female intellectuals with stellar credentials and bestselling books: Germaine Greer, Gloria Steinem, Barbara Ehrenreich, Naomi Wolf, Susan Faludi, Deborah Tannen, Natalie Angier. But there's a big difference between these women and their forebears. They are all professional feminists. They don't simply espouse feminism; they write about little else.

Perhaps Estrich is upset because she wasn't mentioned by Allen. Whatever her reasons, she has set the cause of women at the LA Times back probably twenty years.
Into the fray comes Maureen Dowd, the New York Time's answer to Chatty Cathy. Dowd accuses Summers of confusing the the "roles society assigns to women with what women might really want," by suggesting that women might not want to be scientists for 80 hours a week instead of being mothers. But perhaps she has it backwards. It's just possible that women don't want what middle-aged feminists want them to want. "Society" has been leaning on girls to be career-oriented for a while now. Remember "take our daughters to work day?" Dowd is also upset about revelations of how jocks treat women, refering to them as "road beef" and the like in Jose Canseco's book, Juiced. Her complaints about loutish behavior are fair, but she naively states that, "at the dawn of feminism, there was an assumption that women would not be as severely judged on their looks in ensuing years . . . It's just the opposite. Looks matter more than ever, with more and more women spending fortunes turning themselves into generic, plastic versions of what they think men want . . ."
She demonstrates perfectly the problem with feminism. They set out forty years ago to abolish human nature, and they failed. Women have completed the long march through the professions into medicine, law and the academy; but men still have most of the power. And that will almost certainly be the case in fifty or a hundred years from now.

Raise taxes?

Will President Bush agree to raising the income level that the Social Security payroll tax is applied to, thus raising taxes? Some conservatives are concerned at the possibility. They shouldn't worry. I predict that the president will stick to the Republican policy of running up a huge debt and leave it for a less-dishonest president to deal with.

Realistic Republicans

Texas Senator John Cornyn says it is "unrealistic to assume that the 10 million illegal aliens in the United States can be deported and that the only alternative is to create a temporary worker program that has them come forward on their own. " This hopeless notion that we can and should defend the border is distinguishable from the hard-headed realism behind Republican notions of planting democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan. Don't be expecting change, any time soon, from the Republican party's policy of "Invade-the-world, invite-the-world."

All hail the maximum leader!

The Freepers indulge in their daily worship service. What amazes is the way they think he is not just a great president, but practically perfect in every way, as this comment attests:

Remember that one-year memorial ceremony in NYC for the victims of 9/11, how absolutely maudlin it was, till George and Laura came down the ramp, began meeting with the families, and within several minutes, the heaviness was dispelled, rocketed out of there, replaced with the joy and comfort of the Lord expressed through these two? I'll never forget it. It didn't take long and the families were smiling, getting the Bush's autographs, slapping one another on the back, even in the midst of tears.

Everybody didn't play nice. Scrolling through, you notice replies to a comment that has been removed by the FreeRepublic's ever present thought police.

Winners & Losers

Pat Buchanan aims his advice at the Democrats, but Republicans might want to pay heed as well:

Why should Democrats drop the despondency and start to think? First, because Bush won a second term by nothing like the 49-state landslides of Nixon or Reagan – Bush got 31 states. And though he had led America to victory in two wars, a turnaround of 60,000 votes in Ohio would have made him the first president ever rejected in wartime, and he would have lost to an uncharismatic senator from Massachusetts with a voting record to the left of Teddy Kennedy's.

As Buchanan notes, Bush barely clung to power last year in victory that looks flacid compared to Republican triumphs in 1972 and 1984. If John Kerry had been a plausible NASCAR fan, he might have won.

Program Note

Jonah Goldberg has his panties in a bunch (excuse the lapse into GoldbergSpeak) because Tim Russert chose to have Pat Buchanan on Meet the Press with Natan Sharansky:

But what, exactly, was Russert's thinking? President Bush faces significant political opposition from the Democratic Party and its leftwing base -- not from the Buchanan wing of the Buchanan Party. Ted Kennedy or Michael Moore would be more accurate and representative of political reality. Is it that it's unseemly to have Democrats shown-up for their lack of democratic idealism? Or did Democrats simply refuse to come on? Or, was Russert more attracted to the box-office appeal of Sharansky and Buchanan trading punches?

I assume that the last reason Goldberg offered is the most likely. I didn't see the show, and I generally avoid televised punditry these days; but Buchanan is one of the few pundits occasionally worth watching. In spite of Goldberg, the opposition to the Iraq War is broader than the Michael Moore left. Even his National Review colleage, John Derbyshire is now calling for a pullout and denouncing the Wilsonian claptrap that passes for conservatism these days.

UnfreeRepublic

VDare has an article about thought control at FreeRepublic. This time, the issue is oppostition to the presidents immigration policies:

Members and readers of Free Republic would be surprised to know that many members of their community have fallen silent on the discussions about illegal immigration lately because free speech is an illusion on FreeRepublic.com. They are silent because they have been banned from the Web site without warning, cause, or explanation in most cases. For weeks the moderators have been suspending and banning new members that chimed in quickly on the immigration debates.

In spite of its name, FreeRepublic is devoted to slavish worship of the president and Ann Coulter. I was banned a couple of years ago. I never learned exactly why, but I think it is because I posted an article by Steve Sailer. In defense of the Freeper people, I knew or at least suspected that it was a thoughtcrime in their view and posted it anyway. To get the essence of FreeRepublic, check out their daily dose of presidential pictures with worshipful captions and comments.

Details

Stupid Justin Raimondo wants to know who won the Iraq elections. Doesn't he know that the only thing that matters is that they took place?

Reform is dead

The President's plan for Social Security reform is dead. How do I know? Because the worst, lamest, dumbest pundit in America says it will succeed.

But They Had an Election!

Pat Buchanan puts last week's Iraq election in context:

When kings, autocrats or despots are deposed and the people rejoice, it has not always meant democracy is assured. In modern history, people's revolutions have produced tyrannies far more monstrous than the ones they have pulled down.

But they had an election!

In 1917, progressives hailed the revolution in Russia that deposed the czar, for it cleansed the Allied cause of the taint of despotism. But that November, Bolsheviks swept Kerensky aside, seized power and began a 70-year reign of terror. In 1918, the detested Kaiser Wilhelm abdicated. The civilized world rejoiced. Fifteen years later, Hitler took power.

But they had an election!

The Stalinist regimes of Eastern Europe were all imposed from above on Christian peoples who belonged to the West and had been moving toward democracy. The communist nations of Europe were kidnapped children who never forgot who they were or where they came from.

But they had an election!

In the Arab Middle East, there is no memory of democracy. There is an unbroken history of despotism and domination – by Ottoman Turks, then by Western imperial powers. To understand what kind of nations liberated Middle East peoples will construct, consider the most powerful currents running in the region.

But they had an election!

Apples, Oranges

Everybody needs to get it straight. The president never said that Saddam's Iraq was an "immenent threat." He only said we had to go to war right away, or it would be too late:

If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late. Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option.

Which is completely different.

The Tyrrellian Crackup

I just assumed that R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. was in a retirement home somewhere after the American Spectator imploded a few years ago. Yet this Mencken wannabe is still around, giving out his annual J. Gordon Coogler award for the worst book of the year. This year he award's Jon Stewart's America:

Stewart has with a small team of gag writers written America: A Citizen's Guide to Democracy. It is a satire, a pasquinade, a hoot at the American polity, a bemanuring of the High and Mighty. Stewart is extremely learned, knowing every nook and cranny of pop culture and most of the undergraduate liberal arts curriculum of Brown University.

This "bemanuring" let's call it, of the web is supposed to be funny. Yet the only parts of Tyrrell's pompous rant that are even remotely funny are the ones that quoted from Stewart's book.

The Forgetting

Hugh Hewitt:

Quick: What do you recall of Bill Clinton's eight SOTUs? He held up a
little card once, and suggested that it was the future of health
care.

And they went long. Very long.

He's right, but then I've already forgot what Bush said last night.

Biases

I didn't watch the State of the Union speech last night. I prefer the liberal media filter. I then turn to NRO's the Corner for the gossipy details.

Rock, Hard Place

Pat Buchanan spells out the U.S. dilemma in Iraq. Our presence is both the cause of the terrorist insurgency, and the only thing keeping it from prevailing at the present time.

Cold Hard Truth

John Derbyshire complains about a Levitra commercial coming on during prime time while one of his children was in the room. The cultural conservative in me is sympathetic except for the fact that he was watching the political pornography of The O'Rielly Factor on Fox News which is less suitable for children, or any sentient creature for that matter, than an attractive woman "winking, simpering and sighing, telling us what a great erection her man is getting nowadays, thanks to Levitra."

Important Notice

The post below will make a lot more sence when My review of Hugh Hewitt's Blog is published in a few weeks. They are intended to support claims that are too tangential or complex to fully address within the review itself.

Relevant Links for my review of Blog

These links support some of the claims I made in the April, 11 issue of The American Conservative:
The Boston Herald editorial
Jonah Goldberg linking to Boston Herald editorial.
Glenn Reynolds does the same.
Jesse Walker's Hit & Run post on the Herald editorial.
A search of Abu Ghraib mentions at Instapundit.
Hugh Hewitt's search results don't produce a unique link, but those interested can search his site here.
A Hewitt post on Armstrong Williams.
Jack Shafer at Slate on Michael Chrichton's Times prediction.

On the Dole

Every conservative journalist and his brother has a syndicated column, and now it seems that they are all on the take from the Bush administration.

Simon Sez

Roger L. Simon knows the real reason the Dems raised a stink about Condoleeza Rice. They are worried about 2008. "I have had another thought about why Condi became such a lightening rod. The Dems are afraid of her as a presidential candidate in '08 and wanted to take her down a peg as soon as possible. After all, according to Forbes anyway, she is the most powerful woman in the world -- and that was before she was Sec'y of State (No. 2 - Wu Yu of the Chinese Politburo; No. 5 - Hillary Rodham Clinton; No. 10 - Carlton Firoina of Hewlett-Packard)."
This puts Simon out in nutcase territory with Dick Morris, who has predicted a Hillary V. Condi race in 2008, but was predicting that Sen. Clinton would be Howard Dean's running mate about a year ago.
I think it's time that Simon replace that Fedora hat he wears with one made of tin foil.

UPDATE: His comment section is even better:

If Condi Rice runs as merely the VP candidate in 2008---she should pick up a minimum of 20% of the black vote. That figure is enough to give the Democratic Party nightmares. Please note that President Bush won in November with less than 15% of this voting block.Condi Rice virtually guarantees the Republicans an easy lock on a minimum of 270 electoral votes. Is there also anyway the Democrats might continue to keep Pennsylvania in their column?

Here is my boring, conventional prediction: both parties nominate two white guys and the Democrats get about 90% of the black vote.

Rummy's War

Even if I favored the war in Iraq, I would still be appalled by this. "The Army's Third Infantry Division has added scores of female soldiers to newly created 'forward support companies' that provide maintenance, food service, and other support services to infantry, armor, and Special Forces units that commonly engage in combat. Army officials acknowledge that the changes will increasingly place women, who make up about 15 percent of the armed forces, in combat situations, but believe they are following federal law, which prohibits female soldiers from serving in units that engage in direct combat."
It is, however, the logical outcome of Rumsfeld's management of the Pentagon. "The change made by the Third Infantry Division was prompted by a shortage of trained troops caused by the unexpected length of the Iraq war and has set off a quiet, but highly charged debate within the Army over the role of women in the military. As a practical matter, the guerrilla tactics used against US troops during the occupation have also blurred the traditional lines between combat and support functions and is expected to prompt a wholesale review of the definition of ground 'combat' within the Bush administration."
Fortunately, the president still has his bubble of unreality to exist in. "President Bush's policy on women in ground combat takes just four words to articulate: 'No women in combat.'"
Via the Corner.

A Byrd in the Sheets

These guys continue to show how little they think of Condoleeza Rice. To them, she is nothing more than a racial/sexual category. Sen. Robert Byrd is taking note of Rice's behavior, not her race and sex. The New York Times states, "Senator Byrd asserted that Ms. Rice had helped to make the Bush administration's case for an unconstitutional, unwise and unprovoked war against Iraq -- and had done so, he said, on the basis of faulty intelligence that she represented before the war as far more conclusive than it was. 'Accountability is not a negotiable commodity,' Mr. Byrd said, arguing that to confirm Ms. Rice would be to approve policies that had isolated the United States, made it more vulnerable to terrorism and cost American lives under false pretexts."
Byrd's critics don't seem to be up to defending Rice on the merits, so they are resorting to the Race Card.
I tried to find evidence of Byrd's position on the confirmation of Colin Powell in 2001, but the Senate doesn't list a roll call vote on the matter, leading me to believe that it was passed on a voice vote without objection. I would think that a klansman would be much more threatened by a black man.

UPDATE: Roger L. Simon: "But then I can't imagine having joined anything as wretched as the Klan, so maybe I would have ended up a self-righteous bloviator in the US Sentate. " You are a self-righteous bloviator. And Byrd is criticizing Rice's performance as the quote above shows.

More Strange Bedfellows

I have noted before how the Bush years have lead to stranger than usual bedfellows. Now the positively loony left-wing Z magazine is carrying the columns of Paul Craig Roberts, who is usually more likely to be found at Chronicles or Lewrockwell.com.

Oscar time

Never mind that this lame blog is still called the "Kerry Spot." Why not just call it the "Clinton Spot" or even the "Carter Spot." Its owner, Jim Geraghty seems to think that its a big deal that Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 didn't get an Oscar Nomination. He even thinks it's a big deal that "the left" aren't up in arms over the alleged snub. "But here’s an interesting dog that isn’t barking… Michael Moore gets passed over for the big award he coveted… and the lefty bloggers aren’t up in arms. In fact, nobody on the left is talking about Moore today."
But why would they care? It would seem extremely rare to have a documentary nominated in this category. Roger L. Simon blogger, gasbag knows the real cause however:

Most who are thought of as "Hollywood" are not documentarians to begin with. They are fiction filmmakers, show people. They adopted Moore for a short while to make a point which is now fading even for them. Most people in Hollywood now see, although maybe they won't admit it, that democracy in Iraq is extremely important. For Moore, it's over.

I would have never got the connection between democracy in Iraq and Moore's Oscar hopes with out Roger Simon's help.

Johnny's Heavenly Guesthost tonight is . . .

Sadly, Johnny Carson died yesterday. In related stories, so did Bob Uecker, Joan Embry of the San Diego Zoo and Dr. Joyce Brothers.

Strange Bedfellows

Politics, in the Bush years, have made strange bedfellows. An example is found on James Bovard's underutilized blog. The libertarian who sometimes writes for The American Spectator praises the leftwing Democrat's tough questioning of Condoleeza Rice:

Condoleeza Rice was before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee today for a rubber stamp confirmation hearing to be Secretary of State. Most of the senators kowtowed to her. Sen. Barbara Boxer, on the other hand, single-handedly at least temporarily redeemed the honor of the Democratic Party. Boxer hammered Rice with her false statements and contradictions on Iraq and on terrorism.

Rice looked indignant -- perhaps a bit shocked that Boxer had not been informed of Rice's pending coronation. Rice did what a Bush appointee caught in a bald-faced lie does best: get righteous. "We can have this discussion in any way that you would like, but I really hope that you will refrain from impugning my integrity," Rice told Boxer. "I really hope that you will not imply that I take the truth lightly."

Boxer was implying no such thing. Instead, Boxer was vigorously detailing how Rice stomped the hell out of the truth. And for Rice to act like some slandered virgin on the integrity front fails the laugh test.

Condi and the Klansman

When did wingers become so obsessed with race? "News"max reports: "A former Ku Klux Klansman who once vowed to keep the military segregated is single-handedly holding up the confirmation of Secretary of State-nominee Condoleezza Rice, the first African-American woman to be appointed to the office."
Michelle Malkin states: "Democratic Sen. Robert "Sheets" Byrd, past recruitment officer for the KKK and former advocate of racial segregation, has announced that he will obstruct the confirmation of the first African-American woman to be nominated to be Secretary of State."
Apparently conservatives have little faith in Condi's knowledge and skills, so they feel compelled to fall back on race and gender as her qualifications for office. "Sheets" Byrd, as Malkin so cleverly calls the West Virginia Democrat, actually treats Rice with more respect. He seems to have taken note of her performance in office, and wants her to be fully vetted by the U.S. Senate before she assumes the senior cabinet position.
Speaking of Byrd, he is the rare politician, who wrote a book worth reading.

Thoughts about Blog

Ironically, my blogging time has been seriously reduced because I am working on a review of Hugh Hewitt's Blog. The finished product will be published in an oldfashioned analog publication, but here are a couple of quick thoughts. It doesn't bolster you credibility in a book essentially announcing the death of the big media to brag on the cover that the author is a "New York Times Best-Selling Author." Also, when you pile claim upon claim upon claim about what the (right-wing) blogosphere has accomplished against the dread "MSM," one might want to provide footnotes documenting the claims.

Conspiracy theory

According to this guy the "elite media" broke the Armstrong Williams story when it did in order to distract attention from the release of the CBS investigation report.

Given the fact that the Freedom of Information Act had been invoked in relation to the Ketchum/Education Department contracts back in October, why did it take three months for the Armstrong Williams mess to come out? Because the elite media and their friends at the People for the American Way knew a storm was brewing over the CBS scandal. They held on to the Armstrong Williams story, sat on it, until it served a useful purpose for their associates in the established media at CBS. Through USA Today the story was disclosed a mere one business day before the CBS internal investigation was released, the timing for which media insiders surely knew quite well. By doing so they rationalized turning attention away from the CBS scandal.

This brings a couple of questions to mind. Wouldn't breaking the Williams story in October of last year have had the same effect when CBS could have used it more? And why would the liberal media sit on a story until January when releasing it in October of last year might have damaged the President's electoral prospects?
Bill Hobbs seems intrigued by the idea.

Hillary v. Condi

Who's the lamest pundit in America? My vote goes to Dick Morris. Morris is a political hack who worked both sides of the street until he deftly used his association with the Clintons in order to become a professional anti-Clinton fear-monger. I guess it would be tough to swallow being fired by Bill Clinton for sexual improprieties. In order to be effective, he must continually whip up fear of another Clinton presidency.
To that end, in late December 2003, he published a column in the New York Post (no longer online) stating that, "Howard Dean may turn to Hillary Rodham Clinton to be his vice presidential candidate. And, especially now that Al Gore has un-retired, Hillary might just accept. . . The Clintons have done everything they can to stop Dean's momentum. At the race's start, they sent their A Team - pollster Mark Penn and media guru Mandy Grumwald - to work for Sen. Joe Lieberman in hopes of putting one of their faithful in the winners circle."
Note his casual assumption that everyone (except himself) who ever worked for the Clintons are perpetual lackeys to be dispatched at their whim. Just a few months later, in David Horowitz's nutty Frontpage, Morris stated the following:

the demise of Howard Dean's candidacy opens the door to a Kerry/Clinton ticket in 2004. As long as Dean was favored to get the nomination, Hillary likely wasn't interested in the second slot on the ticket. With the Vermont governor almost certain to go down to a massive defeat, Hillary probably wanted no part in the ensuing carnage. But now that the Democrats have a real chance to win, it makes all kinds of sense to offer her the nomination and for her to accept it.

Of course, this flatly contradicts what he wrote the previous December. But hey, who checks these things anyway.
Now, he is talking up a 2008 matchup between Hillary Clinton and Condoleeza Rice, at Newsmax and, again at Frontpage. He cites a poll showing that many Americans believe the New York senator to be qualified to be president and winning match ups against some prominent Republicans. Big deal. A poll at this point measures little more than name recognition, but he goes on to say:

Ultimately, the only Republican who may be able to beat Hillary is Bush's nominee for secretary of state, Condeleezza Rice. Able to appeal to black and female voters without sacrificing support among whites and men, Condi could be the only figure who stands between Hillary and the White House.
And, unlike Rudy--and also unlike Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.)--Condi can probably win the nomination. A social conservative who will elaborate her largely traditional views on important values issues as an inevitable part of her service as secretary of State, Rice can win primaries where Guiliani cannot and beat Hillary where neither Frist; nor Sen. George Allen, R-VA; nor Jeb Bush; nor Pataki can.
Will Condi run? It is very important that she does. But it is very important to end the Republican complaisance about a Hillary candidacy. The assumption that she is radioactive among moderates and will self-destruct is comforting but completely untrue. Hillary will be the strongest Democratic candidate since her husband ran.

This nonsense falters on several grounds. On what basis can he state that Rice will be able to appeal to black votes without alienating whites? Black conservative politicians, who are few and far between, have won by appealing to white voters in offices far below the presidency.
There is also the issue of gender. Maybe Morris hasn't noticed, but the U.S. has an unbroken record of electing men to the presidency; and usually men who have succeeded in executive/leadership positions such as governer or general. Clinton bombed as "co-president" early in her husband's first term, and salvaged a political career after public sympathy rose for her when she Stood By Her Man. Rice is an academic who has risen through appointments. On top of that, both have other handicaps. Clinton represents a region that hasn't elected a president since 1960. She would have been better off if she were a senator from either her adopted state of Arkansas or her home state of Illinois. She is also one of the most polarizing figures in American politics with a habit of making flip remarks that energize her enemies. Rice, on the other hand; is a brittle, unpleasant person who stoked bogus fears about being nuked by Saddam. The Iraq War would hang heavily on her head in 2008.
Of course, none of this matters to Dick Morris. Next month he might peddle Dan Quayle, or Rush Limbaugh or even himself as the only way to stop the Clinton Menace. When you are flexible enough to have worked for the Clintons as well as Jesse Helms and Trent Lott, I suppose it is easy to say almost anything.

Unqualified contempt

Michelle Malkin is one of the few on the right who seems to take the Armstrong Williams bribery business seriously, perhaps because people are always assuming that she is paid off as well".

Speaking of being in denial, some conservatives argue that the Pay to Pander
program is no big deal compared to the CBS scandal. The Clinton administration
did it, too, they point out. Other liberal journalists have failed to disclose
ethically suspicious payments, they steam. Excuses, excuses. I thought we on the
Right stood against such expedient moral equivalence.

There are no
shades of gray about this, friends: the Bush Education Department subsidized a
prominent minority conservative "journalist" with federal taxpayer dollars to
sell black parents on the Teddy Kennedy-inspired No Child Left Behind boondoggle
-- a program that represents the largest single expansion in federal education
spending since Jimmy Carter created the Education Department.

This
fiscally irresponsible, ethically challenged and possibly illegal arrangement
deserves only one thing from conservatives: unqualified contempt.

Pseudo-reality based

Sjrda Trifkovic looks at disturbing reports about the President's willingness to hear bad news, and has some good advice for a more effective U.S. foreign policy: "To deal with the terrorist threat effectively and on the basis of leadership willingly accepted by those who are led, the United States should discard the pernicious notion of its exceptionalism. But instead of realizing that the threat to America is enhanced by the policy of global hegemony, President Bush is turning that hegemony into a divinely-ordained, morally mandated, open-ended and self-justifying mission of this country for decades to come."

I hate "guys"

Seth Stevenson, writing in Slate analyzes the pornographic Hardee's commercials that feature young women cramming their fists or dozens of straws in their mouths to show that they are able to eat the new double thick burger. Hardee's, Mountain Dew and the various video game manufacturers; with their appeals to loutish, perpetually adolescent "guys" are only one of the reasons that I have almost abandoned commercial TV for the refuge of my favorite channel.
Real men don't eat hamburgers just to show how big their mouths are. And I don't think a director would say; "now, in this next scene, Lauren, I want you to cram your fist in your mouth."
I can only imagine what Hardee's will feature young women stuffing their in their mouths--their feet, a football, a VW Beetle--during the Superbowl.

Big hairy freakin' deal!

Is this the Tsunami that struck from Indonesia to Africa the day after Christmas a natural disaster and tragedy on a scale rarely seen, or just another chance to venilate your political prejudices? For Bill Hobbs and this guy, it seems to be just a chance to score off of their political enemies. The latter writes: "Charities controlled by billionaire ketchup heiress Teresa Heinz have pledged a relatively modest $450,000 to tsunami relief in recent days, with Mrs. Heinz explaining she prefers to keep her charitable contributions local." I don't know what she does with her money, but keeping it local seems like a good idea, especially when everyone else is rushing to give money to Tsunami victims. He adds to news that a Willie Nelson concert raised $75,000, "Big hairy freakin' deal!"
Hobbs writes:

"One of the weirder things in disaster-relief-fundraising is the
Hollwood/celebrity fundraiser or telethon. A network or a group of stars who
could individually or collectively donate millions and do it right now instead
take days or weeks to organize a concert that raises in many cases less than
they could give.
Willie Nelson raised a whopping $75,000. Big deal. He could
have quietly written a check. Or he could have called a press conference,
announced that in lieu of a concert/fundraiser, he was putting an Amazon
donations button on his website and would like for each of his fans to donate
that way, so that not one cent of their donations would go to pay the overhead
of a concert."

Now how does this guy know how much Nelson can write a check for? I know he had problems with the IRS a few years ago. Look for a hasty backtrack if Mel Gibson or Toby Keith participate in a benefit.

Steve Sailer takes Alberto Gonzales down in his column at VDare. He not only has a problem of a lax attitude towards torture, but his views on immigration are dubious. But there is also the far more serious issue of competence:

"The best you can say for Gonzales is that he's a tool. He's a classic
minion whose career over the last decade has
consisted of concocting legal rationalizations for whatever George W. Bush wants
to do."
"There is also the detail that Gonzales is flamingly inept. He recently
vetted and endorsed the now-withdrawn nomination of the gangsterish Bernie Kerik
to be Secretary of Homeland Security. But, Bush never fires anybody for
incompetence, just for independence. And that's the single sin you can be sure
Gonzales won't commit."

Of course, that seems to be what the President wants, and what he will get.

Up from poverty

No wonder, poor Armstrong Williams had to take money from the Education Dept., he only gets ten grand a speaking engagmement. Poor fella. I can't help noticing how little attention this story is drawing from people who would be outraged if the Gore adminstration was paying off, say, Al Franken. With the exceptions of Michelle Malkin and Jonah Goldberg, I haven't seen any criticsm of this on the right.

Armstrong Williams-Self Respect=$240,000

The USA Today revealed that radio and TV personality, Armstrong Williams accepted almost a quarter of a million dollars from the Bush administratio to shill, er, advocate for the No Child Left Behind act. The things they have to do to get their message past the liberal media.
Heck, for that amount of money, I would talk up the No Child Left Behind act, the Iraq War, the whole shebang.

UPDATE: How could I let someone else make the obvious Godfather parallel? Kevin Drum: "So what's the fuss, anyway? As I recall, that's sort of like how the Godfather worked too. 'We got newspaper guys on our payroll. They might like a story like that.' It's amazing how often the Bush administration reminds me of that movie.

Good News!

Thomas Sowell has a column about the media's reporting from Iraq. So far as it goes, he is right about the media's ghoulish anticipation of our 1,000th casualtie there. But most of it is the standard recitation of complaints about the failure to cover heroes (he fails to note Pat Tillman) from the war and the failure to report the "good news." I would be interested to know if this war has produced a Sgt. York or a Audie Murphy.
But the good news that Sowell recites is the usual: "Those who are busy 'honoring' the deaths of American troops in Iraq seldom have much to say about what those troops accomplished. The restoration of electricity, the re-opening of hospitals and schools, and all the other things being done to try to restore a war-devastated country get little attention, and everything that has gone wrong makes the front pages and TV news for weeks on end."
Actually, I am almost certain that I have seen mainstream media reports about such facts, but I can't say for sure since they are tangential to the real story in Iraq. I don't remember the president going before the American people 2002 and saying that we must invade Iraq inorder to update the country's crumbling infrastructure.
Part of what Sowell is engaging in is preselling the blame for defeat in Iraq. "This is the approach that gave the media their biggest triumph and ego boost - the discrediting of the war in Vietnam. More than 50,000 Americans died trying to save that country from Communist attacks. Their achievements included victories on the battlefield that were negated politically by the way the American press reported the war. In recent years, Vietnam's Communist leaders themselves have admitted that they lost that war on the ground but hung on because the American anti-war movement gave them hope that they could win it politically." Anytime I see conservatives/Republicans bringing up the media in Vietnam this way, I assume their confidence in the Bush administration's ability to prevail in Iraq is shaken, so the are finding somebody to hang the blame on: The Media, Michael Moore, the French, the Democrats, somebody.

Update

I just updated my links to include several sites I have been meaning to put on, and some examples of my writing on the web, goingback to 1995. Ah, for the simple pleasures of the Clinton years.

Historical parallel

Hugh Hewitt: "The sub-head on the Los Angeles Times' front page story on the approaching Iraqi elections: "Workers and candidates risk their lives and limit their visibility." Sort of like every member of the Second Continental Congress from July of 1776 to Cornwallis' surrender at Yorktown on October 19, 1781."
Yeah, Hugh. It's exactly like that.

Still a good read.

My review of James Bovard's Terrism & Tyranny from the January, 2004 Chronicles is online. Bovard's The Bush Betrayal is worth reading also.

Good News!

The "blog of the year" proves its worth by announcing some good news from Iraq Some examples:

Over 400,000 kids have up-to-date immunizations.
School attendance is up 80% from levels before the war.
Over 4.5 million people have clean drinking water for the first time ever in Iraq.
Over 60,000 police are patrolling the streets.
Over 100,000 Iraqi civil defense police are securing the country.
Over 80,000 Iraqi soldiers are patrolling the streets side by side with US soldiers.
Over 400,000 people have telephones for the first time ever.
Girls are allowed to attend school.
The port of Uhm Qasar was renovated so grain can be off-loaded from ships faster.
The country had its first 2 billion barrel export of oil in August.

All in all, a pretty lame list. Nothing remotely balances the continuing failure to defeat the terrorist insurgency that is not only killing Americans, but Iraqi non combatants at an alarming pace. Also, since their source is some guy in the national guard, I would like see some documentation of the good news. I am especially skeptical of the claim that girls could not attend school before in Iraq, under one of the more secular regimes in the Islamic world, where, if I am not mistaken, some women have been involved in various weapons-progams under Saddam.
Oh, wait. I forgot. IT WAS REPORTED ON A BLOG, WHICH MAKES IT MUCH MORE RELIABLE THAN ANYTHING IN THE DREADED MSM!

Mirror Mirror on the Web

The blog world is feeling its oats these days; especially those on the right who see themselves as watchdogs of the media, now known as either the MSM or the "legacy media." They got a terrific boost a couple of months back when, Power Line uncovered CBS's reliance on a forged document to indict the president for failing to perform his required service in the National Guard.
But just because a blogger claims to have debunked something doesn't mean it is debunked. Hugh Hewitt writes at the Weekly Standard website about how low the big media has sunk. "IF OLD MEDIA--the 'legacy media' of the big papers and old networks plus the newsweeklies--was a city and not simply a set of gasping institutions, it would look like Stalingrad circa 1944. Parts of most of the virtual buildings are still standing, but the devastation is pretty complete." I can't help but note that he can't scrounge up a more recent example of an urbarn warfare debacle. Say . . . Fallujah, perhaps? But he also seems to think that just because a blog has attacked a big media source, that the blog must be correct. He say that the Belmont Club "scissor[ed]" the Associated Press's credibility and links to a post that is a confusing mess of accusations based in part on a letter sent by some guy to the aformentioned Power Line. The gist of the argument is that the AP is in cahoots with terrorists in order to be able to get pictures of their murders. If the anonymous blogger who goes by "Wretchard" has any solid evidence for this theory, I am not smart enough to glean it from his post.
I see this sort of thing frequently--a blogger claiming to have slain a giant when his stone actually bounced off Goliath harmlessly. The criticism also flows in only one direction--against stories threatening to the Bush administration and the Republican party. A few months back, before I started a blog, I saw an opportunity to have two rightwing sights correct an error that they had amplified. Back in May, Jonah Goldberg and Glenn Reynolds linked to a Boston Herald editorial critical of Al Gore. The problem was that the Herald took a quote and abriged it to such a degree that it was almost certainly the result of intentional dishonesty or extreme ideological blindness. the Herald said, "How dare Gore say that Americans have an 'innate vulnerability to temptation...to use power to abuse others.' And that our own 'internal system of checks and balances cannot be relied upon' to curb such abuse. Here is is actual quote:

Our founders were insightful students of human nature.
They feared the abuse of power because they understood
that every human being has not only "better angels" in
his nature, but also an innate vulnerability to
temptation -- especially the temptation to abuse power
over others.Our founders understood full well that a
system of checks and balances is needed in our constitution
because every human being lives with an internal system of
checks and balances that cannot be relied upon to produce
virtue if they are allowed to attain an unhealthy degree of
power over their fellow citizens.

I naively thought it would be a simple matter to get Goldberg and Reynolds to admit that they had errantly publicized such an egregious howler. Alas the did not respond to my emails. Fortunately, I have friends in high places. I sent the links to Jesse Walker, and he put it all up on Reason's Hit & Run. Both bloggers ignored Walker's post and refused to correct their errant links to the Boston Herald editorial, although, I know that Reynolds makes occasional references to Reason's blog and to Walker's contributions to that blog.
I think blogs are swell. Heck, I even started one myself. But a few bloggers have a long way to go before they measure up to their inflated self-images.

Cheerleaders For Fascism?

Some people are so outraged about media bias, they must invent examples of it in order to unleash their fury on it. Roger L. Simon unloads on Reuters for the crime on interviewing Sunni Arabs.
"Almost jumping for joy, here's a piece of propaganda from Reuters quoting only Sunnis who aren't voting. It shows the news agency at its purest, a propaganda outfit that would rather see America fail at any cost than for democracy to succeed in Iraq. Screw the Iraqi people, if it means that the war worked.

Here's an idea--maybe we should rename Reuters. At least the Voice of America calls itself the Voice of America. How about RNA -the Reactionary News Agency?"

But the article he links to doesn't sound anything like the one he rants and raves about. It only displays the skepticism many Sunni Iraqis have towards U.S. efforts to democratize their country as well as towards Osama bin Laden's attempts to thwart them:

"It makes no sense to put your life in danger to vote when the Americans will put whoever they want in power anyway," said Mohammed, a Baghdad resident who refused to give his full name, on Tuesday.

"Whatever Bin Laden says, people had already made up their minds not to vote. I didn't even register."



"I'm not bothered about the election; all I want is to return to Falluja and for violence to stop throughout Iraq,"

"Bin Laden knows nothing about Iraq; he is an extremist who lives in caves. He lost 75 percent of his support in Iraq by making everyone who votes in elections an infidel."

"Anyway, the American presence in the country gives you the impression that the election is false and unfair."

Blah Blah Blah!

Anthony Gancarski is an ex-paleolibertarian/conservative who at one time contributed to Antiwar.com and the American Conservative. At some point he had a change of heart, or decide that the grass is greener on the neo side of the fence. Writing for David Horowitz's Frontpage, he launches a peculiar attack on the American Conservative. He is disturbed that a magazine of ideas actually allows for several points of view. He says that TAC "handled the run-up to the election in a somewhat clumsy manner; their 2004 endorsement was split five ways, with advocacy for Bush, Kerry, a couple of third-party candidates, and for complete abstention from the process itself." But what is so clumsy about that? At least among those who retain the ability to think, everybody doesn't have to agree on everything, all the time.
Since his arguments are so weak, he has to ride the neocon hobby horse of anti-semitism, a term now utterly devoid of meaning. Yet he is utterly inept that he even screws that up. Check out how he mangles this quote from Scott McConnell:
"'As alarming as the neoconservatism of Rumsfeld, Cheney, Perle, Wolfowitz, Feith, Danielle Pletka, and John Bolton is, more alarming is the spirit that has spread in its wake – a kind of neoconservativism without a graduate degree. You see it on certain blogs and hear it in the rants of some of the most widely listened to right-wing talk-radio hosts. If the Arabs don't want to be democratic, we should nuke them. We have no choice but to nuke them for our own safety. It's a vulgarized neoconservatism – no one from the American Enterprise Institute speaks like this (in public). But this talk is around in the heartland and growing, and it is wind in the sails of the new administration.'

Perle, Wolfowitz, Feith, Pletka – these names have been invoked time and again, and usually for no honorable reason. This case presents no exception. It's offensive, though predictable, that McConnell would participate in the time-honored 'neocon Jew rollcall.'"

Did you notice? Gancarski carefully excises the gentile names Cheney, Rumseld and Bolten and repeats repeats the others to act as if McConnell is obsessed with the Jews. But it is obvious who has the unhealthy obsession here.

Happy Holiday!

Only a few years ago, I was vaguely anti-Christmas. There are aspects of it that I don't particularly care for. I gag when hearing Christmas Carols massacred by Mannheim Steamroller, or transformed into jingles for Old Navy and the Gap. My stomach turns while watching low-rent hoards pour into Wal-Mart the day after Thanksgiving to purchase poorly made crap at "always low prices." This is possibly due in part to simple snobbery. But it is also to some extent motivated by the disdain, which I share with the Pope, for the excessive commercialization of the holiday.
My attitude began to change a few years ago when I was working at Liberty magazine. I was inspecting the letter we were sending out with our Christmas gift offer. It had an image of a Thomas Nast Santa but no use of the word "Christmas." I unsuccessfully argued that our subscribers, though overwhelmingly secular would be more likely offended by the PC phrase "holiday gift" than by the mention of of Christmas. I began to notice the extent to which some people and organizations go to avoid saying Christmas. Now, I am mildly offended by the banal phrase "happy holidays."
There is currently a rhetorical war raging over Christmas, and how much it is under threat. Vdare is the best source on the right. Salon and the Washington Monthly have weighed in as well. From what I have seen and heard, a lot of people are concerned about offending the tiny minority of people who are perputually nourishing grievances. Big corporations, a reliable source of political correctness, are driving much of this with their "holiday sales," etc. I was pleasantly surprised the other day, while shopping in the Fresh Market, to hear numerous employees wishing customers a merry Christmas. The Fresh Market is a yuppish chain that caters to a proportionally higher number of secularists than does Wal-mart. If they aren't afraid of Christmas, than nobody should be.

Geography Lesson

speaking of immigration policy, George Bush said in his press conference (registration) today, that, "family values do not stop at the Rio Grande river."
Indeed they do not, but as I believe Steve Sailer was the first to point out, the Untited States does.

Rumsfeld's War, Clinton's Fault?

How low will some go in order to defend Don Rumsfeld? Lt. Col. "Buzz" Patterson sinks pretty low in Human Events. He dnounces Army Spc. Thomas Wilson for jumping his chain of command. "where was this guy's commander? You don't jump the chain of command, and in this case, I mean the entire chain. It's military cardinal rule number one. About 15 seconds after that question was asked I would've had the young man standing in front of me while I offered him a quick refresher on this whole military thing. 'Before you make a statement to the big guy, how's about you complain to me first. Having the Secretary of Defense hear about it before I do, or my boss, or his boss, or his boss's boss, is not a happy thing.'"
There are a couple of problems with this rant. First, how does Patterson know that this issue hasn't come up in Wilson's chain of command? He doesn't of course. The second problem is the way that Patterson ignores the nature of the gathering. While Rumsfeld refused to take questions from the press, he threw the floor open for questions from the gathered soldiers. Now, I assume that it was intended to be a sham, with Rumsfeld hoping to answer questions along the lines of: "What is your best quality, your bravery or fortitude?" Wilson and the other soldiers shouldn't be blamed for taking the defense secretary at his word when he opened the floor for questions.
Patterson praised Rumsfeld's response, but composed one of his own that Rummy should have given:
Well, young man, you can thank former President Bill Clinton, who in 8 years in office, never saw the need to evolve the military from a Cold War force to one that would be fighting future wars, one that would emphasize urban fighting and move away from 'the linear battlefield' doctrine. You can thank him for reducing Army Divisions from 18 to 10, otherwise you probably wouldn't even be here. You can thank him and Secretary of Defense William Cohen for failing to program for these weapon systems back in 1997 and 1998, when they were developing and funding the Six-Year Defense Program (SYDP) under the DOD's Planning, Programming and Budgeting System (PPBS).

You see, soldier, we've never gone to war with the army we want. We were grossly undermanned and under-equipped entering World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. Thanks to President Bush and a program called "Defense Priorities and Allocations System," we've increased the production of Humvees from 15 to 450 a month. We've spent $1.2 billion since August 2003 on armor and armored Humvees alone. (Numbers courtesy of 2slick.blogspot.com and Soldier for Truth.org) We are adapting as we always have. You can be sure, soldier, that no Humvee heads north without "Level III" armored protection.
Where would we be without Bill Clinton? It is particularly egregious that he would have Rumsfeld denouncing Slick Willie for shrinking the size of the military. If Don Rumsfeld has a signiture issue, it is his desire to 'transform' the military in part by reducing the size of the military. He has repeatedly denied the need to increase the size of U.S. occupying force, which more honest conservatives have denounced. Patterson ignores the deliberate nature of the build up to the Iraq war, which was run on a schedule set by the Bush administration.
It can scarcely be said too often: the U.S. military is streched to the limit in Iraq with inadequate supplies because Rumsfeld and the Bush administration were unprepared for a long and costly war.

Poor, Stupid Soldiers!

Many on the right are outraged about the question that Specialist Thomas Wilson asked about the lack of adequate armor for vehicles headed to Iraq. Outraged that U.S. troops are being unnecessarily put at risk by poorly equipped vehicles? No, silly. Outraged that one of their heroes has been made to look foolish in public by a hick soldier. Outrage has caused them to embrace some pretty weak arguments in defense of their champion, Rumsfeld. Middle Tennessee blogger, Bill Hobbs complained because the media circus was arranged by an embedded Chattanooga reporter, Edward Lee Pitts, helped engineer the media circus. Hobbs says that Pitts violated a journalist's code of ethics by becoming involve in the story. I don't understand the rules involved well enough to know if he has a point, but it seems that Pitts helped to expose the truth instead of perpetrate fraud.
Rush Limbaugh also denounces the influence of Pitts on the story. It is interesting to note the low opinion that the Doper, er, Doctor of Democracy has for our troops. He talks as if the soldiers who cooperated with Pitts were too stupid to know what they were doing. "The soldier knew that he was prompted to ask these questions. The soldier knew that the sergeant at the microphone was pointed at him or cued to point to him by the reporter. The reporter stayed silent for two days and only admits this in an inter-office memo that somebody has leaked. The soldier takes all the accolades for this courage and bravery and standing up to Rumsfeld, which we know now wasn't the case. What we do know is that Rumsfeld wanted to hear from the soldiers, and he wanted to hear from the soldiers without interference from reporters or anyone else. A reporter facilitated the rules; the reporter created news, was an embed reporter. He created news in order to then cover it. If the soldier had asked the question without prompting, fine. I have no problem with the question. Rummy was willing to take all comers without pre-selection of questions. He wasn't trying to hide or duck, but the reporter's action was cheap theatrics. It wasn't Rumsfeld who chose which soldiers from which to take questions or from whom to take questions; it was the reporter who set this all up. The reporter plants the questions with the soldier, then goes to the sergeant at the microphone, points out the soldier to call on, soldier gets called on, asked the question, big hoots of applause erupt."
Either these soldiers are so dull that a reporter from an obscure newspaper can manipulate dozens of them into cooperating in his evil scheme to embarrass Don Rumsfeld, or the questions that they asked (or cheered upon hearing) resonated with them.
I assume that the latter is the case.

Hillbilly Armor

Specialist Thomas Wilson, of Tennessee's 278th National Guard unit, now in Kuwait, told the Secretary of Defense that his unit had been reduced to rummaging through landfills in order to get "hillbilly armor" for their vehicles headed to Iraq. According to the New York Times(registration) the Tennessee Volunteer was cheered when he asked, "Why don't we have those resources readily available to us?" The Soldier asks an excellent question.
Unfortunately for Rumsfeld, the truth is that the Bush administration was criminally unprepared for a lengthy occupation. If things had gone to plan, the U.S occupation would have ended, and Chalabi would be Iraq's new kleptocrat.
Rumsfeld's lame response was that they are getting new armor as fast as they can and that, "you go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time;" which might have some validity if the Bush administration hadn't been planning to invade Iraq from the day it took office. They had two years to get ready for a lengthy war, instead they prepared for a cakewalk.
The president and the defense secretary rarely miss an opportunity to us the military a prop to demonstrate what tough guys they are. It is good to see a soldier, and a Tennessean at that, force Rumsfeld to squirm uncomfortably over the mess he is sending the National Guard to clean up.

Crying In Your Latte

A whiny blogger from the Evergreen State is upset that senator Kerry is giving $200,000 dollars from his presidential campaign to aid in a state-wide hand recount in Washington's gubnitorial election: "OK, this makes me so *&%%^& angry, I could spit. What is it, Kerry couldn't create a national constitutional crisis so he's having to make do with creating one for the state of Washington? The Dems probably couldn't raise the entry fee for the hand recount request without getting this.

I don't know if it's legal to give funds that were raised for presidential campaign costs for a state recount effort - but I know that it's certainly unethical. It isn't the purpose to which his donors made their contributions. Oh, that's right, he doesn't care: it's nuance you know."
What nonsense. Any ethical duty that Kerry owes is to his donors. I can't imagine that they would be upset at him using his remaining funds to help elect Democrats at other levels. It would be unethical if he bought a new car or took a Las Vegas vacation with it.
This guy is upset that because it might work. He should stop being such a big baby.

The Lament of the Aging Libber

What are fashionable boomer feminists fretting about these days? The rise of AIDS in women, which was the focus of yesterday's "World AIDS Day" commemorations? The mistreated female employees of Wal-Mart? Of course not. If New York Times columnist, Maureen Dowd(registraion) is a guide; the big concern is that Tom Brokow's anchor job at NBC is going to a dreaded "white male." Yecch!
Dowd, a catty columnist who delights in her own cleverness and has risen far above where her talents merits, whines that the networks don't even consider minorities or women and says, "We are in the era of vamping, self-doubting 'Desperate Housewives,' not strong, cutting 'Murphy Brown.' It's the season of prim 'stay in the background' Laura Bush, not assertive 'two for the price of one' Hillary." If I remember correctly, the "two for the price of one" presidency lasted for about ten minutes and the former first lady was able to launch a career in politics because she stopped trying to make policy and became a sympathetic figure due to her husband's cheatin' ways.
Dowd complains that "Feminism lasted for a nanosecond, but the backlash has lasted 30 years." I don't know about that. It lasted long enough to put Jessica Lynch and many other young women and mothers of young children in the Iraq war, along with other dubious achievements.

Blah, Blah, Blah

For about the millionth time, I have seen a commentator complain that the "liberal media" is accentuating the bad news out of Iraq. This Time it's Helle Dale in the Washington Times: "If you trust most media accounts fed to American viewers and readers, Iraq is an unmitigated disaster. There is no security throughout the country, and armed insurgents are springing up, sown like dragon's teeth by the offensive of the U.S. military forces. The scheduled elections are highly uncertain. Indeed, 100,000 Iraqis have been killed by U.S. forces. Iraqis have never had it so bad. It is a drumbeat with echoes of the way the American media reported the Vietnam War."
I watch ABC News, the News Hour on PBS and check the websites of the Times, Post, etc. and I haven't got that impression at all. Most reports I see focus on the Sunni areas of Iraq, with occasional flareups in other regions. I have seen reports about the Lancet story alleging that we have killed 100,000 Iraqis but it has hardly been taken as gospel by the media. She complains that the media isn't saying enough about good news such as debt cancellation and all of the soldiers and police we have trained in Iraq. I have seen stories about the debt cancellation, and while that demonstrates the diplomatic skill of the Bush andministration combined with the generosity/political calculations of Iraq's creditors, it says nothing about the situation in Iraq. She claims that we have trained 45,000 police and 48,000 soldiers and national guardsmen in Iraq. These numbers should be treated with extreme skepticsm. When 93,000 trained Iraqis make it possible to send 93,000 American soldiers and Marines home, that will be news.
Dale makes a telling statement when she says, "Admittedly the security situation is dire, but look at these figures. In October, the number of Iraqis killed was 775 from acts of war and murder; American troops suffered 63 casualties and 691 wounded. These are too high, but at a time of a major military offensive against insurgents, those numbers are not gigantic."
Who in the Bush administration or the punditocracy, when the war was being conjured up with scary stories about "mushroom clouds" and duct tape two years ago, was saying that Iraq would be an endless war? It was supposed to be a cakewalk. And how many times have we won? When a U.S. tank toppled the statue of saddam? When the president had his aircraft carrier photo-op? When Saddam was fished out of his spider hole?
The war keeps going and going with no end in sight. That's the real news from Iraq.