Ah Freepers!

It is always a pleasure to follow the banter and exchange of views on this thoughtful website:

To: Sub-Driver

MURTHA = ANTI-AMERICAN PIG

2 posted on 06/18/2006 10:01:59 AM PDT by new yorker 77 (FAKE POLLS DO NOT TRANSLATE INTO REAL VOTERS!)

[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]

---

To: Sub-Driver

traitor

3 posted on 06/18/2006 10:03:56 AM PDT by samtheman

[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]

---

To: Sub-Driver

Some enterprising counter-protestor should go to one of these lib rallies and start the chant "We Can't Win"... let that be the slogan of the Democrats!

4 posted on 06/18/2006 10:04:36 AM PDT by thoughtomator (A thread without a comment on immigration is not complete)

[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]

---

To: thoughtomator

Time to put the old fart out to pasture.


http://www.irey.com/

5 posted on 06/18/2006 10:06:25 AM PDT by Spruce (Keep your mitts off my wallet)

[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies ]

---

To: Sub-Driver

Okinawa??? WTF???

6 posted on 06/18/2006 10:06:26 AM PDT by rickmichaels

[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]

---

To: Sub-Driver

http://murthamustgo.blogspot.com/

Excellent rebuttal to Murtha's rants.

7 posted on 06/18/2006 10:09:47 AM PDT by stopem (God Bless the U.S.A the Troops who protect her, and their Commander In Chief !)

[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]

---

To: rickmichaels

Okinawa??? WTF???

That was one of the locations that murtha wanted to "redeploy" our troops to. From there, they could "quickly" go back in if it were necessary.

8 posted on 06/18/2006 10:09:59 AM PDT by Bob

[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies ]

---

To: rickmichaels

That would require at least 12 days of hard steaming by boat or a bunch of aircraft to move from Okinawa to the Gulf, plus days to unload prepositioning ships.

I have no idea what he think being in Okinawa can do for us.

9 posted on 06/18/2006 10:12:24 AM PDT by USNBandit (sarcasm engaged at all times)

[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies ]

---

To: Bob

In other words, he's testing to see if all out carnage breaks loose. And if it does and thousands die, the government goes under, and the police force is in tatters, we should redeploy.

It's beyond moronic.

10 posted on 06/18/2006 10:12:51 AM PDT by CheyennePress

[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies ]

---

To: rickmichaels

Okinawa??? WTF???

I think he meant Guam, but he failed to correct himself (even though Tim gave him a chance). I don't think Okinawa wants 100,000 more troops hanging out there anyway.

11 posted on 06/18/2006 10:14:34 AM PDT by operation clinton cleanup

[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies ]

---

To: Sub-Driver

This POS is already the most vulnerable incumbent running.

I'd hate to be in his shoes on the day after the election.

12 posted on 06/18/2006 10:15:37 AM PDT by Extremely Extreme Extremist

[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]

---

To: Sub-Driver

13 posted on 06/18/2006 10:19:17 AM PDT by mirkwood (Gun control isn't about guns. It's about control.)

[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]

Hadji Girl

Elements of the nutballsphere have entered the advanced stages of hysterics over criticism of the song "Hadji Girl," written and performed (and posted for a brief time at youtube) by Cpl. Joshua Belile, a Marine serving in Iraq. The song tells the story of a Marine being lured into a trap by an Iraqi girl; and who proceeds to kill her jihadi brother and father, while using another young girl as a human shield:

. . . And she pulled up to a side shanty
And she threw open the door and I hit the floor.

Cause her brother and her father shouted

Durka Durka Mohammed Jihad
Sherpa Sherpa Bak Allah
They pulled out their AKs so I could see

And they said
Durka Durka Mohammed Jihad
Sherpa Sherpa Bak Allah

So I grabbed her little sister and pulled her in front of me.

As the bullets began to fly
The blood sprayed from between her eyes
And then I laughed maniacally

Then I hid behind the TV
And I locked and loaded my M-16
And I blew those little f***ers to eternity . . .

The most absurd response comes from "Uncle Jimbo" at the milblog, Blackfive. Jimbo writes that the,

USMC has decided that appeasing the apologists at CAIR is more important than, oh say the freaking Bill of Rights. WTF? over. I realize that military service comes with some restrictions, but I must have missed the part where the right to satire during off duty time was revoked. Anyhow me being me I zipped off a message to the spokesweasel the USMC sent out to flog their kowtow to the Islamic lobby.

Ignore fore a minute that someone over fourteen writes, "WTF"; Jimbo claims to have military experience, but he seems to have never heard of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). Article 134 of the UCMJ reads in part, ". . . all conduct of a nature to bring discredit upon the armed forces, . . . shall be taken cognizance of by a general, special or summary court-martial , according to the nature and degree of the offense, and shall be punished at the discretion of that court."(emphasis added)

A resonable person might consider singing about killing Iraqis, while using a child as a human shield, and "laughing manically"; might "bring discredit upon the armed forces." Jimbo is naive if he thinks that a Marine in uniform, as Belile is partially in the video (still available at Little Green Nutballs), is free to say anything he pleases. Imagine if a Belile got up and sang about how he hates Bush or Rumsfeld. I doubt if he would have many rightwing defenders. And as much as I detest Bush and Rumsfeld, they are in the military chain-of-command, and entitled at least respectful silence if nothing else.

Still, I would hope that the Marine Corps passes on any serious form of punishment in this case. There is nothing wrong with writing and performing such as song for your fellow Marines or soldiers. I assume that it would help to relieve the stress of facing death on a regular basis in a hostile, alien culture. The military should however, impress upon Cpl. Belile and the rest of the troops, how foolish it is to post such a song on the internet; where essentially the whole world can see it.

Once In a . . .

Check for a blue moon tonight. John Podhoretz said something that makes sense. "Whatever Jim Webb is, a 'liberal' he ain't. He's closer to a paleocon when it comes to foreign policy, which is his major issue."

"Mission Accomplished"

Sarah Moore mocks the almost 90 year old Sen. Robert Byrd for, among other things, saying that George Bush declared "mission accomplished" in May of 2001 instead of 2003. It's an minor mistake compared to, you know, being the one who declared "mission accomplished" at the beginning of a long guerilla war.

I Pledge Allegiance . . .

Andrew Sullivan (ignore his "Christianist" nonsense.) notes this humorous mish-mash of historical ignorance from the Conerned Women for America:

Concerned Women for America's (CWA's) Director of Government Relations Lanier Swann will join other conservative leaders in speaking at a press conference tomorrow in support of Sen. Jon Kyle's (R-Arizona) and Rep. Todd Akin's (R-Missouri) Pledge Protection Act. This legislation would ensure the protection of the phrase "under God" in the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance . . .

Swann said, "As Americans commemorate Flag Day, it is also appropriate to remember the importance of keeping God in our Pledge. CWA strongly supports the mention of God in our nation's oath in keeping with our constitutional freedoms. We are free from an established religion and free to worship as we choose. Our country's founding fathers were men of faith who intentionally included the phrase 'under God' in an oath that serves as a symbol of loyalty and patriotism to our great country.

Sullivan helpfully notes that the Pledge didn't come from the "founding fathers" but from 19th century socialist and Baptist minister, Francis Bellamy. It originally read: " I pledge allegiance to my Flag and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." It had numerous revisions, including the addition of "under God" in the 1950s.

Lower Standards

How low have standards become for the right to declare victory these days? Rush Limbaugh provides an answer by celebrating the fact that Karl Rove avoided indictment and, more importantly, the president was able to sneak into Iraq with enough security -- ABC News reported that only Cheney, Rice and Rumsfeld knew -- that he avoided being blown up.

This is victory? More than three years after you know what it is still not safe enough to have a normal visit to Iraq and that's reason to brag?

In related news, another partisan hack is smug because deficit is going to be cut in half sooner than Bush predicted. You know, the deficit that was zero when Bush took office.

Saddam's Ties to Terror . . .

Jonah Goldberg points to yet more proof that the United States would be nothing more than a smoking crater if the Bush administration hadn't rushed to meet the grave threat from Iraq in the spring of 2003:

A newly released document appears to provide evidence that in 1999 the Taliban welcomed "Islamic relations with Iraq" to mediate among the Taliban, the Northern Alliance and Russia, and that the Taliban invited Iraqi officials to Afghanistan.

Cobra II

Andrew Bacevich has a good review of Cobra II : The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq in the London Review of Books. It is critical of the usual suspects -- Rumsfeld, Cheney, etc. He, and the book, also give needed attention to the performance of Tommy Franks:

Rumsfeld's chosen military interlocutor was General Tommy Franks, the commander of United States Central Command. In a bestselling memoir published after his retirement, Franks portrays himself as a 'good old boy' from west Texas who also happens to be a military genius. In Cobra II, he comes across as Rumsfeld's useful idiot: a coarse, not especially bright, kiss-up, kick-down martinet who mistreats his subordinates but keeps his boss happy. Franks knew that he wasn't in charge, but he pretended otherwise. Appreciating the 'political value in being able to stand at the Pentagon podium and say that the Bush administration was implementing the military's plan', Rumsfeld was happy to play along.

Not a Good Day to Die : The Untold Story of Operation Anaconda, about a battle in the war in Afghanistan, was also highly critical of Franks.

I doubt that if Robert E. Lee, Patton and Erwin Rommel all rose from the grave to tell Rummy that his theories and plans were nuts, that he would have listened. But it seems that Franks didn't even see a problem with them.

The Party's Over

Bill Kauffman officially signed off at Reactionary Radicals this morning, but the website and the book linger on.

The Two Marks

Today's American Spectator carries not one, but two defenses of Ann Coulter's remarks about the 9/11 widows, who had the temerity to tepidly criticize the Bush administration on occcasion. Mark Gavreau Judge latches on to the bizarre notion that to ever describe the death of a loved one in any detail makes you a moral monster:

But the more I saw the Jersey Girls' press release, the more that fissure widened . . . Before the list came this: "Contrary to Ms. Coulter's statements, there was no joy in watching men that we loved burn alive. . ."

I read that, and a thought came to mind. I tried to push it away, ignore it. But I simply could not get that line out of my mind: "there was no joy in watching men that we loved burn alive."
. . .

What person describes the death of a loved one in such detail?

Think about it. Think about people you've loved who have died, and how they died . . . Ten years ago, my father died of cancer. I can hardly bring myself to say the word, much less describe what he looked like and went through in the last months. When I meet someone who had a loved one suffer a similar fate, the conversation always trails off when we mention our common story. One of us will mutter, "it's a terrible thing," then change the conversation.

Curse me, I know I'm going to hell for this: Why did the Jersey Girls describe the deaths of their husbands with such startling precision?

What is he talking about? "Great detail," "startling precision"? The statement from the press release is descriptive, but hardly constitutes "startling precision. By invoking his father's death, Judge undermines his whole point. He doesn't use "great detail," but he is using the death of a loved one to make a political point in a fashion far less defensible than the "Jersey Girls." I pay little attention to the policy notions of 9/11 widows, but the 9/11 attacks had obvious political consequences. But Judge invokes his father's death to come to the aid of Ann Coulter.

Judge's point is further undermined by the companion article by Mark Golblatt. Golblatt leads off by describing the death of his mother with, you guessed it, "startling precision." "She spent the last two weeks of her life in a hospice, under heavy sedation but still gasping for air and coughing up phlegm." Goldblatt's article almost has a point. He argues that being a 9/11 widow gives one no special policy insight. I say "almost" because Coulter didn't simply denounce the views of the 9/11 widows, she questioned their basic human decency. Which is what she, and many other commentators, does. Her political schtick involves taking the rightwing line and describing anyone who crosses it as a traitor and as an evil person. It does nothing to advance the political debate in this country, and I can't imagine why the two Marks would dredge up the bones of their own loved ones in order to defend such a repulsive person.

Ding Dong the Witch is Dead!

Lorie Byrd has it all wrong. The killing of Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi is good news, no matter how you look at it. But she says, "make no mistake about it, there are some people who will not be happy about this very good news just because it might allow the President's approval numbers to rise a tick or two."

That may be true in some quarters, but shame on them. The president is in deep trouble because he is doing a terrible job. He may rise a tick or two, but he will go down again.

Why Ann Coulter is Rich . . .

Freepers:

Ann Coulter responds to Hillary Clinton
Drudge ^

Posted on 06/07/2006 1:36:02 PM PDT by Republican Red

ANN COULTER RESPONDS TO SENATOR CLINTON: 'BEFORE CRITICIZING OTHERS FOR BEING 'MEAN' TO WOMEN, PERHAPS HILLARY SHOULD TALK TO HER HUSBAND WHO WAS ACUSED OF RAPE BY JUANITA BROADDRICK AND WAS GROPING KATHLEEN WILLEY AT THE VERY MOMENT WILLEY'S HUSBAND WAS COMMITTING SUICIDE.'

---

TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Miscellaneous; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: CATFIGHT; COULTER; HILLARYCLINTON

---

Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-50, 51-100, 101-150, 151-173 next last

---

Hillary calls Coulter: 'SELF-OBSESSED', 'HEARTLESS' Sean Hannity read the quote to Ann on air and Coulter responded with the above quote.

Priceless.

1 posted on 06/07/2006 1:36:03 PM PDT by Republican Red

[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies ]

---

To: Republican Red

GO ANN, GO!!!!

2 posted on 06/07/2006 1:37:14 PM PDT by shekkian

[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]

---

To: Republican Red

You would think Hillary would be smart enough to not argue with Ann.

3 posted on 06/07/2006 1:37:40 PM PDT by kjam22

[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]

---

To: Republican Red

Ouch! That stings.

4 posted on 06/07/2006 1:37:50 PM PDT by theDentist (Qwerty ergo typo : I type, therefore I misspelll. 17,400+ snide replies and counting!)

[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]

---

To: Republican Red

It is all over DRUDGE NOW! YOU go ANN! LMAO!!!!!!!!!

5 posted on 06/07/2006 1:38:02 PM PDT by Halls (One Proud Texas Momma!!)

[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]

---

To: Republican Red

Yeah! Hillary should never have crossed Ann expecting some sort of subdued, or even silent response.

SMACKDOWN!

6 posted on 06/07/2006 1:38:06 PM PDT by tongue-tied

[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]

---

To: theDentist

Cat fight . . . cat fight!

7 posted on 06/07/2006 1:38:14 PM PDT by Galtoid ( .)

[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies ]

---

To: Republican Red

While I don't agree with Ann's "schtick"--she is awesome.

8 posted on 06/07/2006 1:38:26 PM PDT by Pondman88

[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]

---

To: Republican Red

ouch ! does this effectively shut Hillary up ?
how does she respond ?
let anne lewis do the dirty work ?

here we go again...probably the nuts&sluts defense.

grab some popcorn......

9 posted on 06/07/2006 1:38:36 PM PDT by stylin19a (Some mornings, it's just not worth chewing through the leather straps.)

[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]

---

To: Republican Red

Bawahahha...IT'S ABOUT TIME!! The loathing WITCH FROM NY needs to be put in her place...unfortunately, the mediaWHOREES will only cover HITLERY'S statement and not Ann's...SCREW THEM!!

10 posted on 06/07/2006 1:38:37 PM PDT by RoseofTexas

[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]

In The Email

I received an interesting email yesterday, but I think I'll pass on it:

Hello,

I am a casting associate for Fox’s hit show “Trading Spouses.” I was checking out your website and was hoping you could help me out in my search. We are looking for families who are dedicated and passionate in their convictions to participate in the show which highlights the wealth of cultures and personalities from households across ther country. The show requires that each family consist of at least one child between 6-18 years of age and have two parents within the home. At the end of the 7 day shoot, each family receives $50,000. If you are what we are looking for, or know anything family that is, please contact me. If you have any questions regarding the show, check out the website and www.fox.com and click on the “Trading Spouses” icon.

Our deadline is approaching FAST and I would love for families to have this amazing opportunity. Thanks so much and I can’t wait to hear from you!

Thanks a lot and take care,

Jason

Jason Eskin
Casting Assistant
Trading Spouses
Rocket Science Laboratories
323.802.0485
JasonE@rocketsciencelabs.com

You Can't Throw Bombs From Your Front Porch

I see that, (via Michael Silence, and a host of others) A.C. Kleinheider has been scolded for linking to one of my posts at Reactionary Radicals. Nathan Moore doesn't like my post with Wendell Berry's thoughts on corporations ("You would find that these organizations are organized expressly for the evasion of responsibility. . . The buck is processed up the hierarchy until finally it is passed to 'the shareholders,' . . .) and puts the invective level on high:

I found both quotes (he is upset with another Kleinheider link also) posted to be drenched in a stank of thoroughly whipped absurdity, but were quoted alone without comment possibly indicating tacit approval. Do we have a blogging Tennessee anarchist in our midsts?

I can't argue with that logic. What part of it constitutes "whipped absurdity"? The part about corporations being designed to evade responsibility or the part that we should care about it?

I don't know if I qualify for the title "anarchist," but if I do, Moore need not worry. I'm the Front-Porch type, not the bomb-throwing kind.

Update: I should also comment on the thoughts of this guy who scolds poor A.C. for linking, as well, to " anti-Semites and Nazi war criminals." I didn't figure out who the anti-Semite was in the first link, but the second one is of Hermann Goering. " . . .the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country." As vile as they are, dictators and mass muderers often cut through the crap and get to the truth, and the Goering quote explains how we got into the mess in Iraq rather succinctly. Absent any other evidence, no reasonable person believes that quoting Goering where appropriate implies any support for his crimes.

James Webb vs. A Pig In Slop

The June 19 American Conservative has a good article by James Antle about the Senate campaign of James Webb in Virginia. If Webb wins the Democratic Primary, Virginia will surely be the most interesting state to watch in the fall campaign. And I believe, with no real basis, that the incumbent, George Allen, Jr. has a glass jaw and feet of clay; and he can be beat, or at least wounded enough to kill his presidential ambitions. Antle notes the danger to Allen:

The outcome of this primary fight will have national implications. The most obvious pertain to 2008. If Allen is forced to spend this fall defending his seat or ends up losing, his Republican presidential bid may be derailed. By contrast, a Democratic Senate pickup in Virginia would aid the presidential aspirations of former Gov. Mark Warner, who has held fundraisers for both men. While a Rassmussen poll shows both Webb and Miller trailing Allen badly, a Zogby survey has Webb down by just 7 points—and Allen below the critical 50-percent incumbents’ threshold.

The New Republic article about Allen a few weeks back, once you get past Ryan Lizza's silly obsession with the Confederate Battle Flag and race, is an interesting character study. One of the details that stood out to me was that when his father left the Los Angeles Rams in 1971 to go to the Washington Redskins, Allen transferred from UCLA to the University of Virginia. Its probably what I would have done, but then I don't put on Allen's tough guy schtick. The biographies of the two men present a startling contrast. Lizza notes that when Allen went to UVA that he was,

like a pig in slop. Even at Virginia's own state school, Allen stood out for his showy brand of good ol' boyness. Under the headline "allen and country living," a 1973 profile in the school paper noted his penchant for country music had earned him the campus nickname of "Neck." He drove a pickup truck (paid for by the Redskins). He wore cowboy boots. He supported Richard Nixon and the war in Vietnam. He once shot a squirrel on campus, skinned it, ate it, and hung its pelt on his wall.

If this sounds like a privileged, rich kid's idea of being a "good ol' boy" that's because it is exactly what it is. Contrast Allen's sideline support for Nixon and the Vietnam War with Webb's record of being a heavily decorated veteran of the war that Allen was content to cheerlead for. Biography alone isn't enough, but Webb's bio is about 1000 per cent better than John Kerry's. Webb has issues as well, particularly the Iraq quagmire which he opposed back when Kerry and most other Democratic politicians were afraid to do so.

Antle notes that Webb has been wearing the combat boots of his son, an Iraq bound Marine. Glenn Reynolds, who has frequently recommended Webb's book, Born Fighting : How the Scots-Irish Shaped America, called wearing the boots a "gimmick reminiscent of 'John Kerry, reporting for duty.'"

Here's a prediction: Reynolds, who is less and less distinguishable from Hugh Hewitt; will, if the Virginia race is close, join with the yet to be formed "Naval Academy Grads for Truth" in calling for Webb to release all of his military records to prove if he really "earned" that Navy Cross.

Sorry Poddy . . .

A while back, I noted that National Review had started a blog to flack Can She Be Stopped by John Podheretz. I guess the book and blog are both so lame that the latter died after only nine days. The posts began on May, 9 and ended May, 18.

"Buddies"

A.C. Kleinheider points to a comment by R. Neal discussing Glenn Reynolds' thoughts on Haditha. Neal says, "what little I know from talking to people who have been in the military, and in combat, suggests that a big part of the training is that it's not about God, Country, the Constitution, or Freedom and Liberty, or anything else. It's about your buddy in the foxhole next to you, who will watch your back if you watch his, who is willing to die for you as you are for him . . ."

That is essentially how it works, although I can't remember me or any of my "buddies" actually using that term. Maybe we would have in a war zone. I know nothing about war, but something about Marine training. It relied heavily on cultivating an us-versus-them mentality. With "them" being the other squads in your platoon, the other platoons in the series (a group of four platoons who trained and graduated together), the other training battalions at Parris Island, and the Army and the Navy. I remember my senior drill instructor referring to the "Army position of attention -- surrender." Marine General and anti-war activist, Smedley Butler explained what happened to young men sent to war in 1918, and it probably still applies:

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 . . .

That might help explain what happened at Haditha, if the story turns out to be true. It ought, in my opinion, to mitigate slightly (though not excuse) the crime. The idea that, in a couple of years the young men who actually pulled the trigger may be sitting on death row or serving life in prison, while the architects of this war collect 100 grand at a time on the lecture circuit, makes me sick.

I don't think anyone has commented on the creepy email that Reynolds posted and appears to agree with:

. . .

Our press and the anti-American left both in this country and outside of it has been reporting "Hadithas" over and over again over the last three years.

. . .

The real danger is that we who support the war will reach the point that we say "we might as well be taken as wolves then as sheep". At that point the left can celebrate that they have made our military and those who support it the people they claim we are. Once that happens however any compunction about respecting them will be gone, and remember one side is armed and one is not.

That is a fate that I don't wish on any of us. (emphasis added)

Note the extent to which this guy confuses the role of the guys who sit in Borders, typing with a latte, and those who actually do the killing. Another way to read it is that war supporters are going to get their guns and kill everybody else. Or am I missing something?

Two Roads Diverged . . .

Karl Zinsmeister, the former American Enterprise editor who has just been appointed to be a Whitehouse Domestic Policy Advisor (replacing the guy who got arrested for making phony retail returns) was a legislative aid to Sen. Pat Moynihan with Bill Kauffman before they both went into journalism. Zinsmeister even took the jacket photo for Kauffman's first book,Every Man a King: A Novel. I won't go into the minor controversy over Zinsmeister altering some quotes from a news article before publishing them at The American Enterprise website and his talk about his fellow embeds being "whiny and appallingly soft." I don't have any comment on Zinsmeister arguing that "the war is over and we won."

I'll just note that the paths of Zinsmeister and Kauffman couldn't have diverged more and we are fortunate that the latter took the road less traveled.

Outrage!

Salon's "Broadsheet" (a clever name for a women's blog) reports that various feminist groups are outraged that ABC News anchor Elizebeth Vargas stepped down because she is expecting a second child in a couple of months:

The official word is that Vargas is leaving the demanding job for another: mother of a 3-year-old and a child due this summer. "For now, for this year, I need to be a good mother," she said on Friday. After the second child arrives, she'll return to coanchor "20/20." Charles Gibson has replaced her on "World News Tonight."

But three leading women's groups aren't so sure that that's the whole story. NOW has joined with the Feminist Majority Foundation and the National Council of Women's Organizations to protest Vargas' departure. In a letter sent Monday to ABC, they characterize Vargas' move to "20/20" as a "clear demotion" and "a dispiriting return to the days of discrimination against women that we thought were behind us.". . . NOW president Kim Gandy finds the whole thing fishy: "It seems unlikely to me, having survived and thrived through her first pregnancy, that she would logically give up the top job in TV a few months out, anticipating she couldn't handle it."

. . .

Vargas, for her part, suggests that because her situation is unique, it should not necessarily be taken as bad news for all women. Not only is she the first person to get pregnant while working as lead anchor, but -- remember -- her former coanchor, Bob Woodruff, was critically injured in Iraq. . . The "20/20" job is more predictable and less demanding, she said.

NOW still isn't buying it. "If she can't have it all," said Gandy, "who among us could?"

What kind of horrible woman decides to stay at home with her kids for a couple of years and what kind of sick society allows it over feminist objections?

Contra Crunchies

The Contra-Crunchy Conservative, a blog dedicated to the blinding and obsessive hatred of all things Dreher noted last week that the paperback edition of Crunchy Cons has been announced with a thankfully shortened subtitle. This leads Pauli to engage in some theorizing:

I suppose there's not as much real estate on a paperback, but let indulge in some conspiracies. Do you think the Birkenstock company sued? Probably not -- maybe there was just a little something on there to offend more people in the paperback-buying market demographic. I haven't seen too many Birks at the pistol range.

Or maybe Rod was asked (or bribed) by the evil Republicans to remove the reference to saving their party? This is actually the most interesting aspect of the subtitle to me -- I had been pointing to that little parenthesized remark as kind of an obstacle to the claim that CCism isn't really about politics but the, you know, transcendental free-range sensibilities of the greater good or whatever.

So I'll be the first one to praise this change as a recognition and application on Rod's part of a "regular conservative" sensibility called unity. With a lot of the pundits buzzing with the uncertainties of continued Republican majorities, and therefore conservative influence in general, I imagine the market for the quaint and eccentric topics in Crunchy Cons may be soon questioned by conservative book-buyers and the publishing industry. A liberal takeover might be devastating for an author like Rod whose success in large part depends on conservatives not having anything better to do.

And devastating for the rest of America.

How about this -- the original subtitle was simply way too long?

Memorial Day Salebration!

As we head into the holiday set aside to honor our nation's retailers, theme parks, beaches and anyone who has a "salebration," it is worthwhile to remember that Memorial day, originally called "Decoration Day" was originally set aside to remember those who died fighting for the United States during the Civil War; and then later expanded to include all of America's war dead. Bill Kauffman (who else?) denounced the standardization of most of our holidays into Three Day Weekends a few years ago:

The traditionalists had a monopoly on wit. Fletcher Thompson (R-Ga.) offered an amendment to rename our holidays "Uniform Holiday No. 1, Uniform Holiday No. 2," etc. The immortal skinflint H.R. Gross (R-Ia.), who had opposed spending government money to keep the eternal flame over jfk's grave, proposed to move Christmas and New Year's Day to Monday. The Mondaynes were not amused.

The Uniform Holiday Act of 1968 passed the House, 212-83, and the Senate by voice vote, without debate. "This is the greatest thing that has happened to the travel industry since the invention of the automobile," rejoiced the president of the National Association of Travel Organizations.

Rep. Dan Kuykendall (R-Tenn.) saw it differently: "If we do this, 10 years from now our schoolchildren will not know what February 22 means. They will not know or care when George Washington was born. They will know that in the middle of February they will have a three-day weekend for some reason. This will come."

This has come.

Former Confederate states also established Memorial days on several dates ranging from Robert E. Lee's birthday on Jan. 19 to Jefferson Davis' birthday of June 3. Myrta Lockett Avary wrote of the first Memorial Day in Richmond, Virginia in her Reconstruction chronicle,Dixie After the War:

The young men of Richmond, the flower of the city, marched to Hollywood [cemetery], armed with picks and spades and numbering in their long line, . . . remnants of famous companies, whose gallantry hand made them shining marks on many a desperate battlefield . . .

Thousands visited the green hillside where General Jeb Stuart lay, a simple wooden board marking the spot; his grave was a mound of flowers. . . No Hero, great or lowly, was forgotten, What a tale of broken hearts and desolate homes far away the many graves told! Here had the Texas Ranger ended his march; here had brave lads from the Land of Flowers and all the states intervening bivouacked for a long, long night, from whose slumbers no bugle might wake them.

Accountability moment

The Nerve of these people. Over at Neocon Central -- the Wall Street Journal editorial page-- they are upset at the lack of accountability in the new Iraqi government:

Most troubling is the lack of accountability for past performance. Take Bayan Jabr, who presided for the past year over an Interior Ministry infiltrated by "death squads" that undermined Iraqi trust in the police. Mr. Jabr is at least out of that job, but he's nonetheless gotten the plum and important Finance Ministry instead.

Don't these guys know how democracy works? Iraq had its "accountability moment" and they have put their decider in place. Past performance no longer matters.

Town Hall Truth Forum?

Via Volunteer Voters, I saw this post at Team GOP. "Corker’s campaign said he would not be a part of a series of 'Town Hall Truth Forums' initiated by former Congressman and GOP Senate contender Ed Bryant." A "Town Hall Truth Forum" sounds positively Orwellian to me.

Explanations

Ramesh Ponnuru asks why President Bush doesn't get more credit for the good economy:

It seems to happen every week: Some new piece of good economic news comes out, and Republicans sink a little deeper in the polls. In late April, it was estimated that the economy had grown by 4.8 percent during the first quarter of the year. A few days later, new jobs numbers came out. It turns out that 5.3 million jobs have been created since August 2003. The unemployment rate is 4.7 percent — well below the average of each of the last three decades. The stock market continued to rise, and looked likely to hit a record soon.

The public responded to all this good news by turning a little more against President Bush. In a mid-April poll by Gallup and USA Today, 36 percent of the public approved of the president’s performance in office and 59 percent disapproved. In an early-May poll, approval had fallen to 31 percent and disapproval had risen to 65 percent. Bush’s 23-point deficit had widened to 34 points.

Perhaps it is because economic growth isn't enough. Walk or drive around your town. How many check cashing stores, signs saying "we buy houses" with a phone number and rent-to-own places do you see? I see too many in Knoxville to believe that the economy is truly healthy. Maybe that's why people don't approve of the President's handling of the economy. Or perhaps people have noticed how incompetent that the Bush administration is in almost every area, and are convinced that they can't do anything right.

Reactions

In the last day or so at Reactionary Radicals, I went off on a backyard totalitarian I discovered at Pajamas Media who would impose an ideological litmus test for grilled hamburgers:

Vote check at the backyard gate and turn away anyone who voted for Al or John, any Kennedy or any woman who ever wore even a single piece of “organic” clothing.

Extra points for guests that arrive one or two to a large, flashy vehicle, families with three or more children, snack items brought from Wal-Mart, and t-shirts reading “Iraqi Freedom Campaign”.

What a cretin! I also worked in a quote from my favorite Walker Percy novel, Lancelot:

. . . The story which I never had quite the energy or desire to correct was that in the grand mythic Lamar tradition I had confronted the Kleagle in his den, “called him out” with some such Southern Western shoot-out ultimatum as “Now listen here, you son of a bitch, I don’t know which one of you is bothering Ellis but I’m holding you responsible and if one hair of a Buell head is harmed, I’m going to shoot your ass off for you,” and so forth and so forth. I put a stop to it all right, but in a manner more suited to Southern complexities and realities than the simple dreams of the sixties, when there were only good people and bad people. I went to see the Grand Kleagle all right, who was none other than J.B. Jenkins, a big dumb boy who played offensive tackle with me in both high school and college . . .

"Courage"

If you are like me, you start gagging at the mention of Michael Novak's name, but to read him praising the president's "courage" is a bit much. George W. Bush is brave, according to Novak, for withstanding the slings and arrows of Moveon.org and the Harvard faculty.

The Da Vinci Concentration Camp

The self-absorption of some of these people! Stanley Kurtz senses a chill wind blowing at conservatives from the Da Vinci Code movie:

Conservatives have forgotten just how precarious our position is. One cable news channel, talk radio, and the blogosphere do not an invincible army make. It only seems that way because we also have nominal control of the reigns of power. But lose our foothold in government, and conservatives are up a creek. The other side controls the levers of cultural power in this country, and we are the enemy in their eyes (and on their screens).Conservatives need to face the fact that our position in this culture is genuinely precarious. If we lose our hold on power, we’ll scream bloody murder on our outlets at everything the other side does. Yet those screams may only confirm our helplessness.

Yeah, the next step is concentration camps. In case you didn't get it, Kurtz thinks that his movement's position is precarious, and is threatened by Hollywood. I haven't seen the movie, but I have read both The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons and see them for what they are -- page-turning suspense novels that go a little tough on the Catholic Church, which being one of the most enduring institutions in the history of the world, will survive its encounter with Dan Brown. They are not attacks on the political right.

Note that Kurtz also says that Democrats are "angry" in part, because of "the return of patriotism." When did patriotism go away? Was there an epidemic of flag burning and people renouncing their citizenship that I slept through? Or does Kurtz believe that patriotism goes away whenever a Democrat is in the Whitehouse?

It's Hard Out There . . .

. . . For a Crunchy Con: "Greetings from Key West, where I'm attending a conference sponsored by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. We're about to hear a lecture on what Muhammad accomplished and why it matters. The lecturer is Michael Cook, one of the leading authorities in the world on Islam, who teaches at Princeton; in fact, he holds the chair once held by his mentor, Bernard Lewis. The lecture is about to begin. I'll liveblog throughout."

Cut and Run

Retired Lt. Gen. William Odom minces no words in the May/June issue of Foreign Policy:

In fact, getting out now may be our only chance to set things right in Iraq. For starters, if we withdraw, European politicians would be more likely to cooperate with us in a strategy for stabilizing the greater Middle East. Following a withdrawal, all the countries bordering Iraq would likely respond favorably to an offer to help stabilize the situation. The most important of these would be Iran. It dislikes al Qaeda as much as we do. It wants regional stability as much as we do. It wants to produce more oil and gas and sell it. If its leaders really want nuclear weapons, we cannot stop them. But we can engage them.

None of these prospects is possible unless we stop moving deeper into the “big sandy” of Iraq. America must withdraw now.

If course, if you still have faith in Bush and Rumsfeld . . .

Shocked, Shocked!

So what did these people expect, Connecticut on the Gulf?

So glad our troops, including my cousin, helped liberate Iraq. So what do we get in return? Islamic law, a Shi'ite government that is inching toward Iran-style fundamentalism, and NOW, that country supports the Arab Boycott of Israel.

Imagine a country where about 60% of the population practices Shi'ite Islam organizing a government on those principles and not the Declaration of Independence!

A Byrd in the Senate

I draft Robert C. Byrd at Reactionary Radicals and express a desire that this Mountain Lion in Winter hang around the Senate, at least until you know who is gone.

The Party of the People

Dennis Hastert: People who earn $40,000 don't pay taxes.

We Call It Life

Damned environmental Nazis and their attempts to keep kids from breathing.

Update: Real Climate addresses the substance of the ads.

Crunchy Review

The June issue of Chronicles is out, and with it my review of Rod Dreher's Crunchy Cons. I'll post the first couple of paragraphs along with the opportunity to subscribe:

Rod Dreher's book labors under a few handicaps. First, there is the cloying title and absurdly long subtitle. In addition, the cover features a cutesy picture of a VW microbus with a GOP elephant painted above the grille. The back cover features a "Crunchy Con Manifesto" that is a bit simplistic. "We are conservatives who stand outside the conservative mainstream; therefore, we can see things that matter more clearly." However, the old adage about not judging a book by its cover applies here because Crunchy Cons does merit serious attention.

The conservative movement, as currently constituted can accomplish little more than elect Republicans, demonize Democrats and liberals and turn execrable books by talk radio hosts and syndicated columnists into best sellers. Since politics has devolved into a team sport many conservative rank-and-file are happy just to be "winning." In Crunchy Cons, Rod Dreher looks at the deeper issue of whether conservatives are accomplishing anything of value.

Parenthood

I find the Glenn Reynolds' reasoning to be wanting in his article about the decline of parenthood, but how does one argue with such logic?

People in the suburbs buy SUVs instead of minivans not because they need the four-wheel-drive capabilities, but because the SUVs lack the minivan's close association with low-prestige activities like parenting, and instead provide the aura of high-prestige activities like whitewater kayaking. Why should kayaking be more prestigious than parenting? Because parenting isn't prestigious in our society. If it were, childless people would drive minivans just to partake of the aura.

I had foolishly assumed that people are having fewer (or no) children for a variety of reasons, the main ones being:

1 The increasing availability of various forms of birth control.

2 The large number of people who finish their education deep in debt.

3 The extention of adolescence in a prosperous society where lots of people go to college and grad school.

Down Home

I go all East Tennessee on Reactionary Radicals this morning, praising Jimmy (Duncan) and Dolly (no last name needed).

Snobs

The odd thing about this article in The American Enterprise proclaiming that opposition to "sprawl" is movtivated by snobbery is that TAE is one of the few neocon magazines that has been running articles critical of the burbs for years now as this old issue demonstrates.

.0015 Minutes of Fame

Via A.C. Kleinheider and BrittanyG, I, or at least my name and my words get their moment in the sun on Nashville Television.

Update: I guess that I should give you the quote they used on TV:

The president is pandering to his base with this Guard thing, and it won't work (either as pandering or immigration control). Fortunately, I don't have to watch.

I don't know if I will be proved correct since I passed on the President's speech for a B movie starring Lee Tracy.

Wal-Mart Effect

The most recent American Conservative has a good review of Charles Fishman's The Wal-Mart Effect by Marian Kester Coombs:

Wal-Mart's pricing monomania has rooted out wasteful practices like the packaging of bottles, jars, and canisters of product in cardboard boxes but has itself created another gigantic category of waste: the bargain TV or DVD player or lawn mower that, purchased without the benefit of a knowledgeable service person and manufactured with cheaper and cheaper materials, soon breaks down, is not worth repairing, and winds up dumped in the trash--the Pickle Caper writ large. Fishman notes, "In the Wal-Mart economy, we as consumers often buy too much just because it's cheap."

Indeed

Daniel Larison notes that, "Considering how much irritation Crunchy Cons caused the crowd at NRO and elsewhere, we can only imagine how much consternation and gnashing of teeth such open talk of anarchists and reactionaries will cause in all the usual circles." Lil' Poddy, the Birthright Pundit had about three cows a week when NRO was hosting Crunchy Cons. I doubt his system could handle Reactionary Radicals.

Sound and Fury

I drove by and saw this rally in progress Saturday afternoon. About six or seven people were holding up a sign on the sidewalk, in front of the shopping center mentioned on their flyer. The Rightwing Blogosphere is still full of sound and fury about the traitors in the MSM, but away from a computer screen, their rage is signifying less and less.

American Top 40 . . .

The new Reactionary Radicals blog is up with an RR top 40(or so) list that has many good selections but misses a few that should be included. The list contains a couple of songs from the Kinks, including "Village Green Preservation Society and the title track from Muswell Hillbillies. The opening track, "20th Century Man," laments that "This is the age of machinery, A mechanical nightmare, The wonderful world of technology, Napalm hydrogen bombs biological warfare . . . Ain't got no ambition, i'm just disillusioned I'm a twentieth century man but I don't wanna be here . . ."

RR themes appear in later Kinks songs such as "Living on a Thin Line," (written by Dave Davies) from Word of Mouth. That song begins with the line, "All the stories have been told Of kings and days of old, But there's no England now . . . "

The list also features the Skynyrd classic "Sweet Home Alabama" but neglected "Things Goin' On" from their first album, Pronounced Leh-Nerd Skin-Nerd, which forcefully states:

Too many lives they've spent across the ocean.
Too much money been spent upon the moon.
Well, until they make it right
I hope they never sleep at night
They better make some changes
And do it soon.

Also, shockingly missing is Dwight Yoakam's "I Sang Dixie,"(from Buenas Noches From a Lonely Room) aptly described by Kauffman in Chronicles a few years back as a "deracine anthem":

He said listen to me son while you still can
Run back home to that Southern land
Don't you see what life here has done to me?
Then he closed those old blue eyes
And fell limp against my side
No more pain, now he's safe back home in Dixie

Come Monday

As Daniel McCarthy has pointed out, starting monday Reactionary Radicals goes on line to discuss the themes of Bill Kauffman's Look Homeward America : In Search of Reactionary Radicals. The participants include Kauffman, McCarthy, Jesse Walker and John Zmirak.

Alas, this blog will exist in the shadow of the blog discussing the Birthright Pundit's new book Can She Be Stopped? : Hillary Clinton Will Be the Next President of the United States Unless . . .

Rally To Censor The Iraq War

I saw this flyer posted on a bulletin board at the Universtity of Tennessee. I think there is at least a slight possibility that it is a hoax since it asks for volunteers, but leaves no phone number or email address; and it doesn't give a time for the demonstration. On the other hand his office is right across the street:

Rally To Censor The Iraq War

TIRED OF TV NETWORKS LIKE NBC,CBS ABC and CNN REPORTING UNFAIR, DISTORTED AND NEGATIVE NEWS? THE NETWORKS SAY OUR COUNTRY IS LOOSING IN IRAQ, AND THAT WE ARE TORTURING AND MISTREATING "THOSE POOR OLD TERRORISTS", WHO BY THE WAY WOULD LOVE TO KILL US AMERICANS AND OUR FAMILIES. IF YOU ARE FED UP WITH THIS LUNACY AND FOLLY,
JOIN US AT:

BROADWAY-KMART SHOPPING CNTR
SATURDAY, MAY 13, 2006

PATRIOTIC MUSIC AND SPEECHES OVER OUR P.A. SYSTEM. WE PLAN TO HAVE EVERY ONE SIGN A PETITION THAT WILL BE SENT TO PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH REGARDING CENSORSHIP ON THE WAR IN IRAQ. THE LIBERAL NEWS MEDIA, CERTAIN SENATORS AND GENERALS ARE DETERMINED TO UNDERMINE, BELITTLE AND DESTROY OUR WAR EFFORTS IN IRAQ, AS THEY DID IN THE VIETNAM WAR. SPEAKERS AT THE RALLY WILL EXPLAIN HOW IF WE LOSE IN IRAQ, WE WILL LOSE THE ENTIRE MIDDLE EAST AND 80% OF THE WORLD'S OIL!! YOU WILL SEE GAS PRICES SOAR TO $18 TO 20$ PER GALLON. THIS COULD HAPPEN WITHIN 1 YEAR TO 18 MONTHS AFTER AMERICAN TROOPS WITHDRAW. IF YOU LOVE YOUR COUNTRY AND WANT TO CONFRONT THE LIBERAL HATE AMERICA GROUPS, THE ACLU, THE NEWS MEDIA, HOLLYWOOD, SOME LUNATIC CONGRESSMEN AND SENATORS . . . THEN THIS IS YOUR OPPORTUNITY!!

The Only Thing

Politics is the only thing in the current administration:

After discussing the huge strides the agency has made in doing business with minority-owned companies, Jackson closed with a cautionary tale, relaying a conversation he had with a prospective advertising contractor.

"He had made every effort to get a contract with HUD for 10 years," Jackson said of the prospective contractor. "He made a heck of a proposal and was on the (General Services Administration) list, so we selected him. He came to see me and thank me for selecting him. Then he said something ... he said, 'I have a problem with your president.'

"I said, 'What do you mean?' He said, 'I don't like President Bush.' I thought to myself, 'Brother, you have a disconnect -- the president is elected, I was selected. You wouldn't be getting the contract unless I was sitting here. If you have a problem with the president, don't tell the secretary.'

"He didn't get the contract," Jackson continued. "Why should I reward someone who doesn't like the president, so they can use funds to try to campaign against the president? Logic says they don't get the contract. That's the way I believe."

Government contracts are now subject to a political litmus test(as is participation in scientific advisory panels, as Chris Mooney notes in The Republican War on Science). Rod Dreher notes that this is yet another example of the "rank cronyism" of the Bush administration.

Rummy's Lapdog

Hugh Hewitt interviews Donald Rumsfeld and Austin Bay and it is clear that the only problem that any of them see is with media coverage of the war:

HH: Is the American media doing a good job of covering the war in all of its facets?

DR: Oh, goodness gracious. You know, I'm not a judge and a jury. That's up for the American people to decide, and you know where they rank the media.

Hewitt didn't go into any possible problems with the way that Rummy has fought the war, or bring up the generals. Charlie McCarthy would have asked tougher questions of Edgar Bergen.

Winning

I agree that we are winning in Iraq. We have been winning for more than three years now and will be winning three years from now. The only problem is that our various enemies in Iraq don't have to win, they only have to not lose.

New TAC

The May 22 issue of The American Conservative is out with my review of Harvey C. Mansfield's book Manliness, along with an excerpt of Bill Kauffman's Look Homeward America : In Search of Reactionary Radicals. You should pick up a copy, or better yet, subscribe.

Fame & Fortune . . .

It's good to know that you are accomplishing something and I appreciate the kind words from A.C. Kleinheider, a Middle Tennessee blogger who now has a professional gig. Little did I know that when I linked to his original blog a year or so ago that it encourage him to continue blogging until he was discovered and launched on the path to fame and fortune.

Falling Up

The Right Side of the web is in a tizzy over Patrick Kennedy getting in a wreck, or something. And who can blame them? We all cheer when the other team fumbles. But leave it to one of the Power Line guys, John Hindraker in this case, to tread upon the thin ice:

Perversely, perhaps, I want to make a serious comment. Which begins with a quote from a dentist who lived in my home town in South Dakota: "Voting for Democrats is like picking your nose. You like to do it, but you're not proud of it."

Crude, but apt. Why on earth is a lost, pathetic nonentity like Patrick Kennedy a member of Congress? . . . Can the people of Rhode Island possibly be proud of being represented by a slow-witted, uninformed young man with admitted psychiatric and drug problems? I assume not.

. . .

Obviously, Kennedy is a Congressman because of his last name . . .

Actually, the dentist quote is stupidly inapt. What the heck does it mean? But the more important issue concerns a loyal Bushie criticizing Rhode Island voters for supporting a dullard with a famous name. Yeah, I can't imagine why people would vote for Patrick Kennedy, but he hasn't got nearly as much mileage from his name and family connections as George W. Bush. Read Kevin Phillips on the subject. Bush is a man who can only fall up, and he kept falling til he made the Whitehouse.

Self Made Candidate

Bob Corker is presumably Tennessee's best funded senate candidate this year since I have seen his ads enough to be sick of them. One has the wannabe senator telling an audience about his hardscrabble upbringing. You know the drill: born in a log cabin he built with his own hands . . . sold pencils on a street corner . . . Or something like that, it's the sort of boilerplate claptrap that I tune out.

It builds up to Corker desire to go to the Senate to get spending under control. Now I would like to get spending under control as well, but I am far more concerned about the war in Iraq, the looming war against Iran, immigration, etc. He does address these issues in a superfical manner:

We must complete our mission in Iraq, supporting the new emerging democratic government until Iraqi forces are prepared to defend their country.

Iran and North Korea pose exceptional dangers because of their possession of nuclear materials and our relations with these nations should be a top foreign policy priority. We must be firm in our insistence that Iran and North Korea renounce any nuclear weapons programs and we should stay focused on solving this problem in the near term.

Okay Sen. Corker, what if it takes another five or ten years to "complete our mission in Iraq"? Are you still game? Suppose Iran tells us to take our concerns about their nuclear program and stick them where the sun don't shine; do we bomb, invade, what? What do you have to offer other than platitudes?

And how can any Republican candidate talk about controlling spending with a straight face? If Republican control of the government for the last six years have led to exploding debt, I don't see Corker making much of a difference.

Indeed

Glenn Reynolds:

Of course, if we seized the Saudi and Iranian oil fields and ran the pumps full speed, oil prices would plummet, dictators would be broke, and poor nations would benefit from cheap energy. But we'd be called imperialist oppressors, then.
UPDATE: Various people (with various degrees of enthusiasm) see the above as a call for invasion. It was, rather, a comment on the vacuity of the "imperialist oppressors" language. Though I was probably wrong there anyway: If we really were imperialist oppressors, the critics would be sucking up.

Me (or anyone not insane): Well, yeah, invading a country to steal its resources does seem kind of "imperialist" and a little "oppressive." But if those terms are too leftwing, how about "Saddam like" or perhaps, "not unlike the actions of Imperial Japan circa 1941." What is really disturbing is Reynolds' mindset. He thinks that opposing aggression is a morally suspect position.

And note that Reynolds is deciding how his political opponents would respond to a theoretical position and then he labels it vacuous. Harsh words coming from someone whose greatest contribution to public debate is "heh."

Responsible Rummy

Even if Mackubin Owens is correct in asserting that the problems in Iraq are due to Don Rumsfeld deferring too much to the military brass(and I have my doubts), he is still in charge and responsible for the failures of that occupation.

Crunchy Post

The Washington Post Style Section goes Crunchy. The most startling revelation is that a youthful Rod Dreher served as a tour guide for the late 60's radical, Abbie Hoffman in Baton Rouge.

Yippie activist Abbie Hoffman came to campus, and Dreher volunteered to escort him around town. A wigged-out Hoffman demanded to be driven to Jimmy Swaggart Bible College so he could yell obscenities out the car window and maybe pick a fight. There was an arrogance to it. It was a small moment in a Dreher's journey rightward, toward something that seemed more sensible, upstanding.

On Pins & Needles

Set aside plenty of time for reading, Stephen Green is working on an “essay.” Make that two.

Close Call

Another Memo-of-Mass Destruction. "Saddam Regime Document CMPC-2003-016083 dated in 2001 contains a series of Top Secret memos that address the production of Nerve Gas Detectors which was prohibited by the United Nations resolutions concerning Iraq according to the document itself."

They loaded these banned detectors onto unmanned aerial vehicles and dropped them on our cities and killed millions.

Writers in the South

Rod Dreher thinks he knows why the South produces good writers:

Think of all the material! I just got this from my old pal Thomas, a fellow Louisiana native:

My father’s dachshund (Huey, named after Huey Long) was going to turn 16 in June. My folks had to put him down on Friday for a number of health reasons but there is such a nugget of humor in this that I had to share. Mother informed me that they buried Huey with a can of Miller Lite (his preferred beer) and positioned him facing East. Do you suspect other families have “flavor” such as this?

Well, my late Uncle Murphy once won a tombstone off an undertaker in a bourre' game. Guy couldn't pay him, so he gave Murphy a tombstone made to order. It had Murphy's name, date of birth, and the epitaph Murphy selected for himself. Murphy put it on his front doorstep, where it sat for over 20 years. When he finally expired, his kids had the date of death carved into the stone, and as he requested, put it at the head of his grave. The epitaph reads: "This ain't bad, once you get used to it."

The late Walker Percy begs to differ (from his self interview reprinted in Signposts in a Strange Land:

But what about those unique characteristics of the South? Don't they tend to make the South a more hospitable place for writers?
Well, I've heard about that, the storytelling tradition, sense of identity, tragic dimension, community, history, and so forth. But I was never quite sure what it meant. In fact, I'm not sure that the opposite is not the case. People don't read much in the South and don't take writers very seriously, which is probably as it should be. . .

I have a theory of why Faulkner became a great writer. It was not the presence of a tradition and all that, as one generally hears, but the absence. Everybody in Oxford, Mississippi, knew who faulkner was, not because he was a great writer, but because he was a local character, a little-bitty fellow who put on airs . . .

The Stud

It is instructive to remember what the people were saying when caught up in the moment three years ago today. Their comments have aged well, like fine wine . . .
K-Lo:

Presidential Stud, Continued [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

That looked to me like a pefect landing, to cap off a combat war won in under a month. If the likes of Fox News Channel and NR chose the pictures that would best characterize his presidency: bullhorn at Ground Zero, in a flight suit on the deck of the Lincoln, hanging with his men . . . This is one cool presidential moment. If this were a private corporation, whoever thought of it would be getting a nice raise.(emphasis addded)

More K-Lo:

This is different, guys. And it's not just because he is a Republican and I like him. It's different because he is a leader of a nation that is winning a historically significant war. He is using the props of commander in chief to show the nation and the world--the day after the State Department announced that terrorism is at its lowest point in decades in the U.S.--to demonstrate that we are winning this long war on terrorism, even if we still have miles to go, to show that we support these guys who fought and those who died for our freedom and for the freedom of Iraqis, Afghans, and hopefully in the future, others in that part of the world . . . Again, this is not some stunt photo op.

John Hindraker: "Yeah, we've had better leaders. Their names were Washington and Lincoln. And maybe Roosevelt."

Glenn Reynolds was more skeptical, but caught a lot of flak. "The jet-pilot arrival, on the other hand, rang false."