Fossil Freak's News and Views (Part 2)

2003-03-04T08:33:00.000-08:00

Europe and the War.

Mark Steyn, Death wish.

Lileks on George Clooney (the Schmuck) and teaching peace to 2-1/2 year olds.

Five Lessons from Iraq. (Paul Johnson)

E.Nough, why Iraq?

2003-02-28T08:18:00.000-08:00

France Who?
Krauthammer:

That is a serious challenge. It requires a serious response. We need to demonstrate that there is a price to be paid for undermining the United States on a matter of supreme national interest.

First, as soon as the dust settles in Iraq, we should push for an expansion of the Security Council -- with India and Japan as new permanent members -- to dilute France's disproportionate and anachronistic influence.

Second, there should be no role for France in Iraq, either during the war, should France change its mind, or after it. No peacekeeping. No oil contracts. And France should be last in line for loan repayment, after Russia. Russia, after all, simply has opposed our policy. It did not try to mobilize the world against us.

2003-02-27T07:36:00.000-08:00

Rest in Peace, Mrrogers!

A comment on this at Dailypundit:

The god these savages worship is small, petty, ignorant, thin-skinned, petulant, self-absorbed and insecure, and they are fanatically eager to die- and to kill- in his service.
Posted by Dave D. at February 2, 2003 10:57 AM

And this from Donald Sensing:

I haven't read or heard any commentary about the most penetrating quote in the president's SOTU speech Tuesday night. It's this one, that came in the penultimate paragraph:

The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world; it is God's gift to humanity.
That sentence defines the chasm between the West generally, including America specifically, and Islam generally, including Arabic Islam specifically.

[Donald verbalizes something I've been thinking. Our God is a loving God who wants freedom, friends, theirs is a demanding god who only wants slaves. Ours wants to be loved, theirs wants to be feared.]

2003-02-26T08:30:00.000-08:00

David Frum:

Much commentary everywhere on the 30th anniversary of America’s most bitterly disputed Supreme Court decision. I have little to add, except this one thought: It’s worth pausing to consider just how long 30 years is in the life of the law. Brown v. Board of Education was bitterly controversial in its day. But by the time it turned 30, it was accepted almost unanimously. Ditto for the hotly contested decisions of the New Deal courts: by 1968, those once impassioned debates were ancient history. It’s a good bet that if a court decision cannot get itself accepted in three decades, it will never get itself accepted.

Which is pretty ironic, since the main defense that legal philosophers make of highly activist decisions like Roe is that even if they are not justified by the text of the Constitution, they somehow express society’s emerging moral consensus. But what if that moral consensus fails to emerge? Isn’t the inability of a society to digest a highly activist judicial decision in itself a powerful indicator that the decision must be wrong?

"warheads"

2003-02-25T15:11:00.000-08:00

Heston shoots back at Clooney:

The Left Coast Report believes if the guy keeps talking, he'll end up where he belongs - right next to Alec Baldwin on Hollywood Squares.

Ouch, that's gotta hurt.

2003-02-24T08:31:00.000-08:00

Deborah Orin, Dim Dems Playing Politics:

If you support Bush on Iraq and he wins, you gain zip," explained a Democratic strategist. "If you support him and he loses, you lose along with him. But if you oppose him and things go bad, you stand to be a big winner."

That is both breathtaking and revolting.

At a time when U.S. troops seem headed in harm's way, this strategist - and several other Democrats who are disgusted with their own party - suggest some Dems are calculating they could gain politically if there are body bags.

2003-02-23T17:23:00.000-08:00

Lileks, Jan. 29:

The line that clarified everything: I have a message for the brave and oppressed people of Iraq: Your enemy is not surrounding your country – your enemy is ruling your country. And the day he and his regime are removed from power will be the day of your liberation.

It brought to mind Susan Sarandon’s ad, in which she argues against a military effort to depose Saddam. “What,” she asks, “has Iraq done to us?”

Aside from shoot at our pilots, and attempt to kill an ex-President, I’ll grant that they’ve done no more to us than Hitler did to the US in the 30s. But that’s not the point. Sarandon has turned into the very thing her ilk decries: an insular self-satisfied wealthy Westerner who couldn’t care less what happens in other countries, as long as no Americans get a nick.

I don’t believe this war is being fought because Saddam kills his own people. Saddam is a particularly egregious example of a common tyrant; he stands out because he rules a land with great strategic importance, and because his particular brand of megalomaniacal sociopathy makes him an unpredictable actor. It’s not the torture, the war against Iran, the war against Kuwait, the destruction of the oil fields, the gassing of his own people, the starvation of his people to divert resources for palaces and mosques designed to make Robin Leach swoon. It’s the torture and the wars and the oil-field fires and the gassing and the starvation and the palaces and the big grinning fark-you to the terms that ended the last war. Oh, and also the germs, and the gas, and the rockets, and the nukes. And more, which I expect we’ll learn after Powell’s appearance before the UN.
...
we had this: If this is not evil, then evil has no name. This will occasion another round of eye-rolling among those who are less worried about the 200,000 than they are about the role Bush played in downing Wellstone’s plane, but even in European capitals some learned men may have felt a twinge in that empty socket where their conscience once resided.
...
Defeating Iraq isn’t the camel’s nose in the tent - it’s the camel’s head in the bed of every other Arab leader.

2003-02-21T15:56:00.000-08:00

Dawn Olsen:

I can see it now, the liberals were sipping their sour grapes while listening to Bush's speech and instead of "listening" they were remarking on how the VP has no neck and the Speaker has no neck, what a bunch of fatties those two are. Oh wait, that was what I was saying. No what the Left heard was "blah, blah, blah, Taxes,blah, blah,blah, Destroy the Environment, blah, blah, blah WAR FOR OIL."

Gee, that's funny, cause what I heard was a man, who only 3 years ago I wanted to burn in effigy, give an excellently delivered speech that was both heartfelt, principled, passionate and sincere, but also RIGHT ON with what I think this country needs.
...
Let's not forget Israel. Does anyone REALLY think that Middle East is going to decide on it's own that they need to embrace their Semite brothers of Israel, unless we force them to do so?

Well that right there is the crux of this post, those who live in a dream world are also the same ones who think that the Conservatives of this country are Evil incarnate. They hear nothing, they see nothing and worst of all THEY DO NOTHING.

Don't call me a liberal. You can call me a middle of the road conservative who was converted over time, BY LISTENING, READING, FILTERING ENDLESS PILES OF PROPAGANDA BY THE LEFT, and most of all watching the way the Conservatives conduct themselves, compared to the way the Liberals conduct themselves.

Hilary is pathetic. Lieberman is a talking head with NO ORIGINAL IDEAS OR IDEALS. I am fed up with the entire Democrat party. They are embarassing. Their behavior is outrageous. They all remind me of middle managers at the most mismanaged company on earth.

2003-02-21T09:25:00.000-08:00

Warning to the Donks:

I am a dyed-in-the-wool Republican-hater, coming from a long line of Democratic Party supporters, and YOU ARE LOSING ME. I am a white, not-quite-40 mother of three who lives in the suburbs, and YOU ARE LOSING ME. I care about Education, Social Welfare, and the Environment, and YOU ARE LOSING ME.

You have become the Haven of Celebrities; you elect self-righteous, power-hungry hypocrites like Hillary; and your current pool of 2004 front-runners reads like a Who's Who list from Losers R Us. But that's not the worst of it. You don't seem to understand that the vast majority of Americans support the War against Iraq. That we see the quibbling re: the UN Resolutions for what it is. You cannot see the threat that Iraq poses? Where have you been for the last decade? The best you can come up with is parodying the damn French and demanding 'more proof'.
...
You can oppose, but you do not propose. You have no new ideas, no leadership. You come off as a bunch of politically-correct, dithering wannabes. I read more good ideas in one day surfing the blogs than you can formulate in a year. It makes me sick.

2003-02-20T13:22:00.000-08:00

Lee Harris, Presidential Goodness:

This policy of the tried-and-untrue, as it might be called, is nowhere more apparent than in the tricky matter of helping the Third World. Here the liberal party line is that the way to help the Third World is to curb both American power and American wealth, as if by making us less well off we could automatically improve the standard of living of those less fortunate. But this is nonsense, though of late it has become a kind of canonical nonsense through the agency of the Kyoto Treaty. If the whole of the United States were to disappear tomorrow in a catastrophic earthquake like a second Atlantis, it would not materially benefit a single suffering man, woman, or child anywhere on our planet.

2003-02-20T07:00:00.000-08:00

Mark Steyn:

The new Universal Theory, to which 99% of Saturday's speakers and placards enthusiastically subscribed, is that, whatever the problem, American imperialist cowboy aggression is to blame. In fact, it's not so different from the old Universal Theory, in that the international Zionist conspiracy is assumed to be behind the scenes controlling the cowboys: Bush is a "puppet of Jewry," just like Churchill was -- notwithstanding the fact that America's Jews voted overwhelmingly for Gore.
...
How far are the "peace" crowd prepared to go? Well, they've stopped talking about their little pet cause of the Nineties, East Timor, ever since the guys who blew up that Bali nightclub and whoever's putting together those "Osama" audio tapes started listing support for East Timor's independence as one of the Islamist grievances against the West. But why be surprised? In fall 2001, being pro-gay and pro-feminist didn't stop the left defending an Afghan regime that disenfranchised women and executed homosexuals. Yet these are the same fellows who insist that a secular regime like Iraq's would never make common cause with Islamic fundamentalists, apparently requiring a higher degree of intellectual coherence of Saddam than of themselves.
...
Well, so be it. If everybody thought like Saturday's marchers, it would be curtains for all of us. But we're not quite there yet, and reality will be breaking in very soon. Saying that Bush is the real "weapon of mass destruction" is awful cute the first nine or ten thousand times, but only if you live in Toronto or Paris or Madrid. Viewed by an Iraqi from the reality of Basra, it's pathetic.

2003-02-19T08:11:00.000-08:00

Justene Adamec blogs about Recall Davis.

2003-02-18T10:32:00.000-08:00

Jacob Golbitz:

It's beginning to seem like an emerging theme of 2003 is a race to irrelevance between the United Nations and the European Union. Right now it looks a little close to call.

2003-02-12T08:16:00.000-08:00

I knew I'd gotten frustrated... there are so many stupid people... but I didn't know it had been 12 days!

DenBeste says our differences with the Axis of Weasels may be cultural.

2003-01-31T07:33:00.000-08:00

Christopher Hitchens, on cowboys (via Instapundit):

To have had three planeloads of kidnapped civilians crashed into urban centers might have brought out a touch of the cowboy even in Adlai Stevenson. But Bush waited almost five weeks before launching any sort of retaliatory strike. And we have impressive agreement among all sources to the effect that he spent much of that time in consultation. A cowboy surely would have wanted to do something dramatic and impulsive (such as to blow up at least an aspirin-factory in Sudan) in order to beat the chest and show he wasn't to be messed with. But it turns out that refined Parisians are keener on such "unilateral" gestures—putting a bomb onboard the Rainbow Warrior, invading Rwanda on the side of the killers, dispatching French troops to the Ivory Coast without a by-your-leave, building a reactor for Saddam Hussein, and all the rest of it.

2003-01-28T15:44:00.000-08:00

Amy Welborn has many entries on abortion:

The fact is, my husband and I, our four children, his three siblings, and their combined eight children all owe our lives to the fact that the famous Supreme Court decision did not come until 1973 (and its British equivalent until 1967). For all 17 of us are descended from two unwanted pregnancies -- two pregnancies that produced two hasty marriages, some happiness, rather more sadness, and, eventually, two divorces. And I have to say, boy am I glad that those pregnancies -- dismaying and unexpected as they were, entailing the compromises that they did for those involved -- weren't tidied up in a clinic so that the young mothers in question could "get on with their lives." You, gentle reader, would have been deprived of nothing more than my editorial voice. I, and 16 kinsfolk, would have been robbed of everything.

My biological mother was in kind of a hard place when I was born, with two small children and my father off to war, and she considered going to Tijuana for an abortion, but my Mom stopped her. Thus, 5 children, almost 8 grandchildren depend on that stroke of luck. Thank goodness Roe v. Wade wasn't law in 1944!

Also, I had German measles when I was pregnant with the oldest and could have had an abortion in Illinois for that reason. We're all glad I didn't!

2003-01-28T10:09:00.000-08:00

VodkaPundit:

French soldiers and ships helped bring us victory in our Revolution. French farmers gave us brie and crème fraîche and the wines of Burgundy and Bordeaux. French thinkers gave us Voltaire and Victor Hugo. France stands second to only the United Kingdom as the European nation contributing most to Western Civilization.

But after WWI, France went as bad as potato salad left out at a sunny summer picnic.

Aw, c'mon, VP, tell us how you REALLY feel.

2003-01-27T17:47:00.000-08:00

Guest essay at Dean Esmay on Michigan.

Poll on tax rates.

Tacitus:
Useful Idiots (via Instantman, of course)

Mark Steyn on the Lessons of the Falklands.

Trent Telenko, more failures of the Clinton administration.

2003-01-27T07:57:00.000-08:00

Instantman:

In the words of Power Line:
[T]he anti-Chavez, pro-freedom rally by Cuban-Americans and others in Miami was likely larger than any of yesterday's antiwar rallies. How much coverage did it get in your local newspaper?
That says something about the limited appeal of the antiwar movement. And about what the mainstream press considers news, and what it doesn't.

2003-01-26T20:09:00.000-08:00

Tucker Carlson's advice to Dems (so that they don't have to have the American people lose big so they can win...):

[T]hey ought to rediscover their sense of humor. Liberals used to be funny. They edited magazines like National Lampoon. They had a claim on cool. Then something happened. They became sour and earnest and neurotic about secondhand smoke. The Democratic Party became the that's-not-funny-young-man party, the party of no fun.

2003-01-26T11:03:00.000-08:00

Iberian Notes:

What I find amazing are all the educated, intelligent people who are perfectly willing to believe that mobile phones fry their brains, that Monsanto is trying to take over the world, that the CIA or the Mafia or the Teamsters killed Kennedy, that there's a conspiracy between the government, the referees, and some obscure figures with "muchos intereses" to screw FC Barcelona out of the League again this year, that opening the window when it's hot outside is bad for you, that you can catch a cold if the wind blows on you, that crystals have a lot of power and so do pyramids and that everyone has an energy field (and that mine is negative), that feng fuckin' shui is something more than a millenarian superstition, that electric power lines give off radiation, that there are people out there who pay untold sums of money to watch snuff movies, that there are Satanic cults sacrificing babies infiltrating our nursery schools, that it's possible to lose weight without eating less, exercising more, or both, that AIDS is a plot by the federal government to exterminate blacks or gays or both, that the CIA was running drugs from Nicaragua into the USA to fund the contras, that you can learn a foreign language by paying thousands of dollars and sitting at a computer terminal, that the US Army had hit squads to kill deserters in Vietnam, that O.J.'s son was the one who really did it, or that this whole war thing is a devilish plot cooked up between the oil companies, the Pentagon, the arms manufacturers, Dick Cheney, and the Bavarian Fuckin' Illuminati, yet they are unwilling to believe that there are governments and organizations out there that are working together with the goal of destroying everything that we all cherish about our Western society and that maybe we ought to take action against them now while we still can rather than wait until we can't anymore.

2003-01-26T07:32:00.000-08:00

Cowboys and weasels.

Juan Gato:

Notice, carefully there, what the US was supposed to learn from September 11th. Not that we were at war. Not that there are a bunch of toedick fuckwads who want to kill us. No, the US was supposed to learn humility. All that supposed European sympathy was a front for a smug, "That'll learn 'em. Sad it had to be like that, but that'll learn 'em."

2003-01-25T08:00:00.000-08:00

Why Feminism is AWOL about Islam:

“But look more deeply into the matter, and you realize that the sound of feminist silence about the savage fundamentalist Muslim oppression of women has its own perverse logic. The silence is a direct outgrowth of the way feminist theory has developed in recent years. Now mired in self-righteous sentimentalism, multicultural nonjudgmentalism, and internationalist utopianism, feminism has lost the language to make the universalist moral claims of equal dignity and individual freedom that once rendered it so compelling. No wonder that most Americans, trying to deal with the realities of a post-9/11 world, are paying feminists no mind.'

2003-01-24T20:46:00.000-08:00

Nope, they never learn.

Wesley Dabney on Donks, Clintoon, and NorK.

It's all right to offend Catholics but not Muslims.

Midwest Conservative Journal:

Around here, "to gephardt" means to take both sides of every issue, sometimes at the same time.

2003-01-24T09:29:00.000-08:00

Steyn is still worried.

. One of the peculiarities of this conflict is that we right-wing crazies are now the idealists and the Left are the realpolitik cynics. I mentioned the other week John Pilger’s pitiful performance on Australian TV, where he couldn’t seem to grapple with the idea that al-Qa’eda had blown up Bali in part because of the West’s support for East Timor. Last weekend’s marchers were effectively consigning another of their sometime pet causes, the Kurds, to the garbage can. Anti-Americanism trumps all. Tough luck, Kurds. John le Carré claims he would ‘love’ to see Saddam’s downfall, but he’s not prepared to do anything to make it happen, and so, if left to him, it never will.

Conversely, we on the Right have been the ones arguing that the peoples of the Middle East deserve their freedom. This isn’t because we’re starry-eyed, but because, being hard-hearted right-wingers, we understand that there’s no alternative. As long as the Arab states are such comprehensive failures, their leaders will have a vested interest in making sure their wretched subjects remain mired in a grievance culture that blames that failure on others — i.e., us.
...
If the Left were really as progressive as they claim to be, these [Democratic Kurds] are the fellows they’d be talking up. Instead, the ‘peace’ crowd’s committed to keeping the Iraqi people in a prison state of arbitrary barbarism.
...
This phoney war began round about the time of Abdullah’s last non-starter of a peace plan — the Palestinian one. It has been a dispiriting period for Bush backers, who don’t understand why he allowed himself to lose control of the timetable. It has been incredibly damaging in all but the most narrow partisan sense (November’s elections). But we can forgive Bush the phoney war as long as it’s followed by a blitzkrieg (might as well stick with the Bushitler talk). The US has to hit Iraq hard — not by killing civilians but by killing Saddam and a big chunk of his acolytes.

2003-01-23T12:17:00.000-08:00

Celebrities:

It should also be noted that Woody Harrelson is a well-known Hemp Activist. Yes, when people come to their senses once again, and realize that they can get a rope of twice the weight at a quarter the strength of nylon for only three times the price, well, prepare for gridlock in the Home Depot parking lots across the fair republic. Perhaps he’s advocating burlap and burlap accessories. Or perhaps it’s the entire hemp family that he is advocating.
...
Viggo was invited to the show to talk about Lord of the Rings. He is, of course, entitled to his opinion, which seems to be: Does fighting and killing the Orc Armies make us any safer? Does slaughtering them make us more loved or appreciated in Mordor? Will this be forgotten? In other words, won’t all these swords and arrows just make the Orcs angrier then they already are?

Viggo, when you are bombing people publicly sworn to your violent death, then the answer to your first question -- Does bombing people make us safer? -- is, uh YES. Does bombing make us more loved and appreciated overseas? No. Do we want to be loved and appreciated by those who stone women for the crime of being raped by a male relative? I don’t. I’d be ashamed to be admired by the likes of them. Finally, Will this be forgotten? I hope not, Viggo. I really do. After eight years of ineffective, token responses to the murder and dismemberment of our people, I hope to God they do not forget what we did to them in Afghanistan.
...
I also reflect on what [Osama] said in his own words on his Al Qaeda recruitment tapes: that the US is a paper tiger, weak and without the will or stomach for a fight. Having taken the measure of a president beloved by Hollywood Actors for his compassion and articulation, he took the same bet that the Imperial Japanese took half a century earlier; namely, that we are nothing but a bunch of weak, vacillating, self-hating cowards; militarily mighty but morally crippled, a whimpering giant to be mocked and attacked at will. Wonder where he got that idea?

People like Viggo Mortensen embolden people like Bin Laden, Saddam, and Kim Jong Il. America baffles them; dissent and debate gives them the same look as you see on a dog staring at a cartoon on TV. So they watch us like hawks, looking for what they know. Weakness. They know what weakness looks like. They can hear moral cowardice, lack of resolve, unwillingness to sacrifice, to get our hands dirty, or worse, to get our hands bloody. They can sense weakness like a shark senses weak and dying fish - unerringly and from a long way away. The ability to accurately gauge an opponent’s strength or weakness is THE survival skill for larval dictators.
...
I will happily forgive the Great Lady the spelling and factual errors, and even the rampant greed…but there are three things that I find unforgivable about people like her and Warren Beatty and Alec Baldwin, and those are these:

First: try, if you can, to disabuse yourselves of the pernicious idea that your lives are worth more than those of your fellow citizens, for it is the engine of your hypocrisy in many telling instances
....
And would it also be too much to ask, just as a common courtesy to those who pay for your mansions and limousines, to every once in a while assume that perhaps this freely elected, multi-racial, multi-cultural democracy is not automatically in the wrong when confronting dictators, murderers and terrorists? Will you abide by this reasonable request, or do we have to write it into your next contract?

2003-01-23T07:06:00.000-08:00
The bishop and the governor. The article doesn't mention the standing ovation for Kavanaugh, the Monsignor who wouldn't allow Davis to come use his kids as a photo-op unless he recanted.
A spokesman for Davis criticized the bishop for "telling the faithful how to practice their faith."
Excuse me? That's a bishop's JOB!

2003-01-22T14:05:00.000-08:00
Amy Welborn has a number of pro-life posts.

2003-01-22T07:53:00.000-08:00
January 22: Forty-two Million Babies
42 million babies in 30 years is 1,400,000 babies per year killed, though the "good" news is the rate is slowing.
Peggy Noonan:
It seems realistic to assume the 40 million would have included your average mix of heroes, villains and those undistinguished by recognizable gifts.
But actually I wonder about that. It has seemed to me over the years that so many of the 40 million were the children of bright or educated or affluent parents, lucky young people and, in the way of things, might likely have gone on to--well, we might have lost more curers of cancer than we know. In any case, whatever these individuals would have become, they were all unique, blessed. They all deserved the same thing, life, and all suffered the same fate.
Looked at in this way, abortion might seem not a completely private choice but one that has had a profound public impact on our country. If you want to be cold and actuarial about it, you can note that in the next five to 10 years tens of millions of baby boomers will retire, and their futures would be more secure if they were benefiting from the financial support of the missing 40 million, many of whom would be paying into Social Security right now. But they're gone, so they can't help.
If you want to be less actuarial than cultural in your thinking, it's hard to believe that we don't all know, down deep, that abortion has not made our country a gentler place. I believe we haven't begun to appreciate the effect on our children and their developing understanding of life that they are told every day, on television and in magazines, in advertisements and news stories, that we allow the killing of children. It's not good for them to know that, not good for them to be told over and over that they live in a place where life is not necessarily respected and inconvenient life can be whisked away. Knowledge like that has a chilling effect on the soul.

....

Abortion is now the glue that holds the Democratic Party together. Without abortion to keep them together, the Democrats would fly apart into 50 small parties--Dems for free trade, Dems for protectionism; for quotas, for merit. All parties have divisions, the Republicans famously so, but Republicans have general philosophical views that keep them together and supported by groups that share their views. They're all united by, say, hostility to high taxes, but sometimes they have different reasons for opposing tax increases.
The Democratic Party, in contrast, has exhausted its great reasons for being, having achieved so many of them during the past 75 years. The Democrats often seem like the Not Republican Party, no more and no less.

....

[T]he pro-abortion forces keep the party together, but they also tie it down. They keep the Democratic Party on the defensive--the lockstep pro-abortion party that won't even back parental notification, the party of unbending orthodoxy that will fight tooth and nail against banning abortions on babies eight months old, babies who look and seem and act exactly like human beings because they are.
No party can long endure, or could possibly flourish, with the unfettered killing of young humans as the thing that holds it together. And so a prediction on this grim anniversary: Someday years from now we will see abortion's final victim, and it will turn out to be the once-great Democratic Party, which was left at the end deformed, bloody and desperately trying to kick away from death, but unable to save itself.

2003-01-20T08:11:00.000-08:00
Andrew Sullivan:
The facts don't seem to matter. America is portrayed as an imperial force dedicated to what a Harvard professor recently described as "the crushing and total humiliation of the Palestinians." Yet it was an American president, Bill Clinton, who only two years ago brokered a deal that offered the Palestinians sovereignty over 98 percent of the West Bank and Gaza. (Arafat said no and his people are still living with the consequences.) America is described as waging a war against Muslims. Yet in almost every recent American intervention - in Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan - it was for the sake of the security of Muslims that American soldiers risked their lives. America is described as relentlessly pro-Israel. But America gives almost as much foreign aid to Egypt and Jordan. America is described as imperialist. But in Afghanistan, recently liberated by the U.S., the Americans have done all they can to set up an indigenous government, capable of self-rule, and are pouring millions of dollars into reconstruction. America is described as unilateralist. Yet, after the worst terrorist attack in modern history, the U.S. patiently assembled a coalition to rid the world of al Qaeda's Afghan bases, and has waited eleven years while Saddam has violated almost every term of the 1991 truce. Even now, the U.S. has gone painstakingly through a U.N. route to achieve its goals. These are simply the facts. But in the new cult of anti-Americanism, facts don't seem to matter.

2003-01-19T08:06:00.000-08:00
Comment on Daily Pundit (about approval ratings):
I have this terrible feeling that if Bill Clinton had a chance to do it all over, he would have bombed North Korea and Iraq.
He did bomb Iraq. Right on the eve of the Senate conviction vote -- it was called "Operation Desert Eagle". Supposedly it was in retaliation for Saddam kicking the inspectors out, and was intended to "degrade" Saddam's WMD programs, but most of the sites hit had bugger-all to do with WMD.

Of course, the bombing was stopped ~~after the Senate voted~~ ~~as soon as it started to destabilize Saddam~~ before Ramadan started.

Posted by Robert Crawford at January 17, 2003 11:49 AM

2003-01-18T07:45:00.000-08:00
Christopher Hitchens on the anti-war bunch.

2003-01-17T07:37:00.000-08:00
Christopher Johnson:
I think I've finally found the reason that current antiwar opinion grates on me so much. I like to think of myself as a logical person. And antiwar statements, whoever makes them, don't even make the slightest effort to be intellectually coherent. On the one hand, every delegation that goes to Iraq, religious or not, reports on the great suffering of the Iraqi people, particularly The ChildrenTM, as a result of the sanctions imposed on Iraq by the UN as a result of the Gulf War. Yet, to such people, the United States and its allies may not proceed against Iraq without the approval of the very organization that slapped those sanctions on Iraq twelve years ago.

Another thing. Were the United States to be successful in this endeavor, there would obviously be no more need for sanctions on Iraq and they would be quickly removed. Yet antiwar types do not wish the United States to go to war against Iraq. Do they think that it would be better for the Iraqi people they claim to care so much about that the sanctions, which they say have done so much harm, remain in place?

2003-01-16T07:48:00.000-08:00
Glenn on Frist and the vaccine deal.

Tax cut analogy.

Tiggers, Rabbits, and Canadians.

Canadian internment camps (yet they point the finger at US)

French Jokes.

Will the Fibbies ever be up to the job?

2003-01-15T06:22:00.000-08:00
Korea
Howard Kurtz on South Korea.
Glenn.
A Smart Spear.
On the other hand, they don't all hate us.
Joe User, Let them go.
They rally to keep US troops.

Orson Scott Card.

2003-01-14T11:38:00.000-08:00
Victor Davis Hansen, Korea is Not Quite Iraq:
There are lessons to be learned from all this that go all the way back to the Korean War, and should teach us the bitter wages of not achieving victory — whether in 1951 or 1991 — when it was within our grasp. Let us hope that our third glaring mistake, Vietnam, chooses to follow the Chinese, rather than the North Korean, model. We have at least learned that only one thing is worse than not confronting a bully at all — letting him slink off when he is beaten.

2003-01-13T23:43:00.000-08:00
Do Democrats know why they lost the Senate majority? :
So much for the theory that Democrats lost the Senate in November because they had obstructed President Bush's agenda. Judging by Tom Daschle's behavior so far this year, the new Senate minority leader has concluded that the lesson of their drubbing is that Democrats weren't obstructionist enough.
...
Democrats are understandably sore about losing their majority, but rather than undertake some introspection they're jumping right back to the barricades. They apparently figure they can obstruct Mr. Bush's agenda and voters will blame Republicans who are supposed to be in control.
Maybe, but we seem to recall that's similar to the argument they made last year. Max Cleland and Jean Carnahan can testify from private life to how well it worked.

2003-01-13T08:53:00.000-08:00
The Regulation Clinton-Hating Post

Clinton as chancellor of Oxford?:
Close, but no cigar. Bill Clinton's candidacy as Chancellor of Oxford University is facing growing opposition from dons who fear that his election would endanger the reputation of the institution and the virtue of its undergraduates.
Awwww.... he may be denied this hunting field.
A number of academics have told The Telegraph that the former President of the United States would harm "the dignity of the office" if he were chosen to succeed Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, who died last weekend.
...
Growing numbers of dons, however, are arguing that Mr Clinton's sexual peccadilloes, including his affair with Monica Lewinsky, a 21-year-old White House intern, render him unsuitable for such a prestigious post.

They also argue that his lies on oath about the Lewinsky affair and his decision to award presidential pardons to a number of well-connected criminals just before he left office in January 2001 should disqualify him from the role. Dr Jeremy Catto, the Senior Dean of Oriel College and a fellow in medieval history, said: "Having Clinton as Chancellor wouldn't exactly add to the dignity of the office. Given his past record, I shouldn't think for a moment that the university's women students will be safe."

Mark Almond, a fellow of Oriel College and a lecturer in 20th-century history, added that Mr Clinton would face "endless allegations of sexual scandal"."There's bound to be trouble," Mr Almond added. "We need a woman chancellor, not a womanising chancellor.
...
Other objections to Mr Clinton include his patchy academic record - he went to Oxford as a Rhodes scholar in 1968 but failed to complete his degree - and his extensive commitments in America.
His extensive commitments, or his failure to complete them?

2003-01-11T09:27:00.000-08:00
Steven Den Beste
North Korea's hand is notably absent in reasonable cards to play, so they have to use what they have, and this one at least has symbolic value capable of scaring the pants off certain people.

But they're also beginning to hint as to what they really want.

Shortly after the announcement, a North Korean envoy to China, cited by Seoul's YTN television, said North Korea would be willing to reverse its decision if the United States and its allies resumed shipments of fuel oil.

...
What they're asking for is that we buy them off, and resume substantial amounts of aid to them without any important concessions by them at all except to tone down the ruckus. Such a deal!

There's no hurry here. Let's be calm and slow and deliberative, OK? Let's spend LOOOTS of time in negotiations and consultation. Let's negotiate and dither and consider carefully what we should do. (Let's be European.)

North Korea doesn't have time. They're trying to manufacture urgency for us because they're in an urgent situation themselves. If we have a bit of patience, they will get more desperate, and if it becomes clear to them that we're not falling for it, they will change tactics, almost certainly in ways which will be better for us. ... I think they may be looking at disaster in no more than weeks. Their vehemence and stridency betrays someone who needs a quick solution. (That's one of the critical differences between North Korea and Iraq: time is on Iraq's side.)

Part of what we're reaping here comes from the fact that in the past this kind of grandstanding by North Korea did indeed result in us buying them off. (That's what the 1994 agreement amounted to.) It's important for us to break with that precedent, not only in regards to our specific situation with North Korea, but also for more global reasons.

Many other nations in the world who are in a position to manufacture crises are watching this closely. If we cave in, it's going to happen again.

2003-01-10T18:40:00.000-08:00
Lileks:
You know what I’d like to hear, just once? “As a New Yorker, I remember too well the death and destruction that arrived on our doorstep that day in September. As an American, I worry about regimes who possess both the means to kill innocent citizens and the devilish will to do it. As an artist, I value the freedom I have in a pluralistic, secular democracy, and I realize that these traits are not only rare and worthy of defense, but deserve to be extended to people in other nations. As a student of history, I am impressed by how our military - which has the ability to annihilate cities and nations - has spent billions to develop weapons that destroy a single building. Surely this says as much about us as our crass and extroverted culture; what other nation with our abilities would take such care? Presented with enemies who build weapons factories next to kindergartens, we invent missiles that take the former and spare the latter. This may not mean we are right, but it surely means we are are bound by a notion of decency our opposites lack. As a human being, I mourn the loss of innocent life that will surely attend any war - but I must admit, if we could have prevented 9/11 with a military action that cost a dozen innocent lives, I would have supported it with the reluctance that must attend any act of organized violence. And finally, as a filmmaker who lives in a special kind of isolation, surrounded mostly with affluent like-minded people from the arts community, I must admit that when it comes to foreign affairs and military matters I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about.

2003-01-10T07:34:00.000-08:00
Mark Steyn, are we serious?:
If Saddam had been toppled to the cheers of a grateful populace last spring, among other consequences Yasser would be out of office, the ayatollahs would be packing, the House of Saud would be feeling the squeeze of lower oil prices, Boy Assad would have changed course so fast he might actually merit that invite to tea with the Queen, and the European anti-war movement would not have swollen inexorably in inverse proportion to the amount of actual war.
...
a man like Kim Jong-Il reminds us of the perils of this approach: crazy as he is, it’s unlikely he’d be crying ‘Look at me! Over here, you moronic cowboy!’ if Bush had already killed Saddam and set in motion the remaking of the Middle East. The 13 months since the liberation of Afghanistan allowed Kim to figure that the US isn’t serious.
Dammit.

2003-01-09T20:11:00.000-08:00
Governor Gray, How We Hates 'Im
Parapundit quotes:
...this is his normal mode of operation, that is, ignore a problem until it reaches epic proportions, panic, and then screw up the solutions

2003-01-09T08:23:00.000-08:00
Ed Koch's resolutions. I like them, though I do like vacationing in Mexico and I do listen to Sound and Spirit.

2003-01-08T08:29:00.000-08:00
Jackie Mason and Raoul Felder, Kill Jews, Get Your Own Country:
How can you throw the Arabs out, where would they go?" The answer is if they don't care whom they kill, why are we obligated to care where they go?

(via Bill Quick and read the comments, too.)

Den Beste on Palestinians. There's another one above.

Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler is closest to my opinion. I first lost it on 9-11 when they danced in the streets, and each new bombing just reinforces it.

2003-01-07T18:37:00.000-08:00
The truth about ANWR (via Bill Quick)

Afghanistan not so bad, John Bono

Clinton knew about the NorK nukes. Like I'm so surprised.

Will Daschle run? Kevin was wrong, darn it.

Definition of insanity.

Victor Davis Hansen takes on Patty Murray.
Next, fish in a barrel.

2003-01-07T08:21:00.000-08:00
The Financial Times got the "Man of the Year" right, unlike that creepy "newsmagazine", TIME.

NY Observer's media mensch of the year. Good guy.

2003-01-06T09:15:00.000-08:00
Lileks:
Every time I think I’ve had it I find that there are still a few jots of sympathy left - and by “sympathy” I mean that last weary civilized impulse that makes you stay the hand of your inner beserker. I don’t think I’m alone in this. It doesn’t mean there’s now a vast angry mass advocating for the immolation of those who want to scour the earth clean of Jews. No. But before I didn’t care what happened to the people in the organizations that arrange these attacks. Now I don’t care about what happens to the culture that permits it. Approves of it. Defends it, sanctions it, shelters it, sings it praises, names streets after the men who do it. I’m done. I don’t want to hear the word “but” in any sentence uttered by a PLO / Fatah / Al Aqsa / Hamaz / Hezbollah apologist. I don’t want to hear the phrase “cycle of violence” used outside the context of a gang fight at the Tour De France.

I never want to see Arafat asking for anything anywhere any more. I don’t want to see people on the West Bank cheering as clumsy Scuds lumber over their heads in February, because I know they’ll head to Israeli hospitals when the germs hit them, and I know they’ll be admitted for treatment.

I’m not saying I wish them ill. But the line of people I care about now is very, very long. The apologists and supporters of the bombers can get behind the 100 wounded I never met. The 20 who died. The one who was the child of a father my age. And when it’s their turn to ask for my sympathy, I’ll probably point to the line with 3000 New Yorkers, and kindly request that they head to the back.

Nail bombs in a cafe. Jesus Christ.

Actually, my supply of sympathy ran out when I saw the Palestinians dancing in the street on 9/11. They can go directly to Hell.

2003-01-05T16:06:00.000-08:00
Kim duToit's resolution.

2003-01-05T11:36:00.000-08:00
Kathy Kinsley on the Fibbies:

A lot of us still remember that one of Ashcroft's first actions after September 11 was to arrest people for dispensing medical marijuana

Yeah, that and deciding Oregonians didn't know what they wanted. Apparently he's never read the 10th Amendment.

Oh, yeah, and the drapes for the statues.

2003-01-05T07:55:00.000-08:00
Brian O'Connell:
In a way, we're all on Flight 93. Our defense is in our own hands, as our Constitution always insisted. The government has bigger weapons, yes, but the government is made up of our employees, and when you come down to it, they're just people, as capable as some of them are. There is no magic solution there. This bullshit, tell us soothing stories and tell us that everything will be OK crap that some insist on hearing from our governments is a real danger; don't rock the boat; we don't want to hear bad news. That's for suckers. Everything will not be OK. It's already not OK. 3000 people died on US soil.

2003-01-04T15:45:00.000-08:00
Larry Miller, A Tale of Two Selfish Men:
In the collective sense, it's good for our country to be selfish, oh, maybe right about now, by saying, "Thanks just the same, but we'd really rather not wait around to be murdered, so we're going to stop you before you can."

2003-01-04T07:06:00.000-08:00
2002 is SO last year!

Book awards

Dave Barry calls it a "wary" year.

2003-01-03T16:08:00.000-08:00
Tobacco Road Fogey to Charles Rangel:
They are not bargaining chips in your cheap, rhetorical, political game.

One of them is my kid.

I'll give him to my country, even for tawdry and divisive people like you have become in the past fifty years, Congressman, because this country is worth fighting for and dying for.

But I'll never forgive your efforts to cheapen the value of that gift, Congressman.

2003-01-02T20:31:00.000-08:00
Steven DenBeste :
What they don't seem to have realized is that Bush is the anti-Clinton. Clinton was ephemeral; Clinton distracted easily. Clinton took the short view and was concerned with the day-to-day. One of the distinguishing features of foreign policy under the Bush administration has been its consistency and the extent to which it is inexorable. Once Bush seems to have picked a direction, it is very hard to make him veer off, and that is what all these people are trying to make him do. Christopher himself was Secretary of State under Clinton, and seems to be trying to advocate that Bush become as distractible as Clinton was. It's hard to believe that anyone in the White House gives a tinker's damn for what Christopher thinks. (And having it printed in the NYTimes probably didn't help any.)

David Frum is more optimistic than Bill Quick.:
serious and important work was being done in four separate areas--and all of them are about to pay off. First, order was restored to Afghanistan. For all the questions about whether the United States has done enough to stabilize Afghanistan, there's no doubt at all that the world's wildest country has become freer and safer than ever before, and that it has ceased to be a base of operations for al-Qaeda and other Islamic extremists.

Second, the United States and Great Britain have built themselves an advanced new network of bases and facilities in the Middle East and Central Asia. The most important is the huge new airbase--as large as Washington's Dulles International Airport--put up in less than a year in Qatar. Thanks to the Qatar base, the U.S. coalition is no longer dependent on the Prince Sultan Airbase in Saudi Arabia, which means the Saudis have lost their veto over Western military actions in the Persian Gulf.

Third, 2002 was the year that the Bush administration committed itself to fostering democracy in the Arab world. In June, President Bush delivered his important speech calling for a new and accountable Palestinian leadership. That speech announced a new approach not only to the Arab-Israeli dispute, but to the more general problem of violence and extremism in the Arab world. And it implied that the goal of intervention in Iraq would be bigger than the mere toppling of a dictator: The goal would be the creation of an Arab alternative, a new regime that demonstrated that an Arab state that turned to law and liberty and peace could deliver better results for its people than sheiks, mullahs, and presidents-for-life.

Fourth and last, 2002 was a year in which no major terrorist attacks occurred in the West. It's too early to say that the war on terror is being won. But it can be said that police and intelligence work is disrupting the terrorist networks and thwarting their plans. For most of us, this last is the most important success of all.

2003-01-02T10:24:00.000-08:00
Glenn notes the quiet (in the right way) New Year's Eve and comments:
And people were right to be defiant. They're still out there, and they still want to kill us. But when New Year's passes without incident (reportedly with a bigger crowd at Times Square than at the millennium celebrations), and when Islamists are the butt of late-night jokes, the terrorists have lost another round.

Bill also comments.

2003-01-01T15:41:00.000-08:00
Predictions for 2003 from National Review, Tim Blair (I especially like Time's man of the year 2003), Jay Manifold, Kevin McGeehee (escaped Sacramentan), and a roundup of bloggers by John Hawkins.

2003-01-01T08:26:00.000-08:00
HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Just a few remnants from last year:
Will Vehrs:
Here’s what Margaret Carlson of Time magazine had to say in February about Enron’s Sherron Watkins, the woman who would become Time’s Co-Person of the Year for 2002:
"She didn't blow that whistle loud enough for anyone who wasn't on the take to hear it. So I don't know, there's going to be no movie made about her. And she kept a paper trail. She showed some moral indignation to her colleagues, but did nothing to help the people who were going to lose money."

Heh.
Andrew Sullivan and again on the winners and losers of 2002.

2002-12-31T17:39:00.000-08:00
North Korea

Glenn writes about North Korea and US hyperpower.
I say let the UN take care of it. Pull out of South Korea. Just say, "hey guys, YOU fix it."
More.

John Hawkins
I've posted this before, but it's still appropos:
If we actually did kick back in our hammocks for a ten-year rest the Middle East would explode, Taiwan would get swallowed by China and France and Germany would probably be at each other's throats again. Hell, if we took twenty years off it wouldn't surprise me to look at a map and see nothing but a giant swath of China red covering all of Europe, skulls & crossbones covering all of Africa, and nothing but a green patch with the words 'Forbidden Zone' where the Middle East used to be. We're the only thing keeping the planet from reverting back to an early 1800's style plunder, war, and rampage philosophy.

If you want put it in perspective, it's like we're the guy who ended up being the designated driver for the planet.
...
. We wouldn't take over the world if every nation begged us too. Our ancestors came to America in the first place to GET AWAY from everyone else in the world and it's very easy for us in this age of global communications to understand why.

Anna on being the world's policeman.

Steven on the NorKs.
What they're trying to do right now is to create panic. They are in deep trouble and their clock is ticking. Given that they actually are running out of time (and fuel oil, and food, and damned near everything else) then it is clear that it's to their advantage to try to make everyone else feel as if time is running out with as many provocations as they possibly can come up with. I believe that the cessation of fuel oil shipments is what set this crisis off; North Korea may well grind to a halt soon from simple inability to generate energy. As their fuel supplies dwindle, they are trying to force rapid movement by us; they are trying to make us feel as much urgency as I believe that they feel.

In actuality, there is no rush, relatively speaking. We can't ignore the situation for years, but we do not need to start negotiations in the next few days and finish them in a few weeks.
...
I believe that the best course of action is to refuse to even talk to them until they ratchet down the hysteria. If I'm right and they are actually running out of time, then either they'll end up preparing for war (which we would be able to detect) or else they'll back down, which I think is more likely. I think what we're seeing is a manifestation of their panic. As bad as the situation there is for us, it has to be remembered that it is vastly worse for them in every regard. They are looking at catastrophe.
...
As long as we remain strong and patient and apparently unafraid and unimpressed, and as long as we refuse to even negotiate with them (so that they cannot even deliver their demands) then it leaves them alone, screaming into the wind, growing increasingly frustrated as their situation deteriorates. Eventually they'll give up on what they're doing now and try something else, and then we'll see.

As strange as it may sound, time is actually on our side. The actions of the North Korean government right now are all aimed at trying to convince us otherwise, and the Bush administration quite correctly isn't falling for it. When Powell says that there is no crisis, he's quite correct: North Korea has a crisis. We do not, and we can't allow them to make their crisis ours too.

Bill wants to nuke the plants and pull out of SoKo. I like it.

Via Instantman, Tony Woodlief:
Well, since you asked, we aren't the world's policeman, until the world goes and gets itself in another bind, usually involving the Germans directly or indirectly, and requiring some sort of rescue of the French, during which they will try to overcharge us for amenities. Come the wet-ass hour, to quote Al Pacino, we are everybody's daddy. So no, the Europeans don't want us involved, because they are too busy having fun pretending, now that we've defeated the U.S.S.R., that somehow they can manage their own safety without actually having armies, and while selling technology and weapons to terrorists and communist China. About the time they have their fat heads in a noose, made of rope they've sold at EU-subsidized prices to their executioners, then they'll start carping about how isolationist and hard-hearted we are.
...
So to answer your question, no, we aren't the world's policeman, but when there are people out there who want to kill me and my children, and they are actively seeking the means to do so, then my personal philosophy is that you kill them and everything within a ten-mile radius of them, post freaking haste. And if the U.N. doesn't like it, they can pack their louse-filled bags and hold their busy little seminars on gender inequality and structural racism on somebody else's dime. Since you asked, I mean.

2002-12-31T09:44:00.000-08:00
2002 In Review

Poll on Idiotarian of the Year So many choices!

Bill Quick checks out NROs predictions for 2002.

Religion stories of the year... what's missing?

The 50 most loathsome people of 2002.
I don't think Gov Gray made it, though.

Top Weird Stories of the Year.

Best and worst in Washington.

2002 in Review, Pete duPont:
Passing fast-track trade legislation was a triumph, but steel tariffs, a bloated increase in farm subsidies, and the McCain-Feingold assault on free speech were policy errors. The U.S. Supreme Court may correct the last, but Mr. Bush will have to undo the first two before he leaves the presidency.
...
Trent Lott's racially offensive remarks at Strom Thurmond's birthday party have to lead the stupidity list. Also on that list is the Florida statute requiring mothers who wish to give a child up for adoption and cannot identify the father to publish in the newspapers each week for four consecutive weeks the names, dates and locations of every sexual encounter that might have led to the pregnancy.
[!]
...
The silliest of 2002 begins with a convicted Florida sex offender who fled to Bangor, Maine, in February and spent three freezing nights in the woods avoiding capture. The resulting frostbite cost him a few toes, so he threatened to sue the detective who failed to arrest him in time to avoid the damage. "If he had done his job properly I wouldn't be in the condition that I'm in right now," Harvey Taylor said. "I would have been in jail that very same day."
....
Meanwhile across the pond, the bureaucracy of the European Union goes about its Monty Python-like business as the Ministry of Silly Rules, decreeing just how many vegetable lumps a sauce may contain before it is classified as a vegetable instead of a sauce. Regulation 288/97 decrees the sauce is a vegetable if more than 20% of its content by weight fails to pass "through a metal wire sieve with an aperture of five millimeters, after rinsing in water of a temperature of 20C [68 degrees]." Why have such an inane rule? It turns out if a product is classified as a vegetable instead of a sauce, the tariff on its importation rises from 20% to as much as 288%. No wonder the EU bureaucracy loves it.

2002-12-30T08:40:00.000-08:00
Mark Steyn is a bit pessimistic:
We do not yet know how this latest twist in the Clinton saga will play out in the Democratic presidential race, but, putting aside the conspiracy theorists who say Bill and Hill have to stay married so they can’t testify against each other, the wedding of Teflon Willie and Silicon Demi would be like one of those old European dynastic unions, formally sealing the relationship between the Dems and Hollywood, just when both parties, if they had any sense, should be figuring out that they ought to be seeing less of each other. Like Sean Penn holding press conferences in Baghdad, there are times when the Dems could use fewer celebrities. Far fewer.
....
In its own shrivelled way, Trent Lott’s self-inflicted wound sums up the last year. The Republicans underperform. But ultimately the Democrats always manage to underperform more. Furthermore, the Dems’ key interest groups, whether African-Americans or Celebrity-Americans, seem to be working overtime to keep the party looking at best irrelevant or at worst deeply trivial. What happened in November is that a small but critical sliver of the electorate decided the Democrats weren’t credible on the big issue of the day. This is very true. The Dems’ lack of credibility is laughable — so laughable, so ridiculous, so pathetic that it’s very conveniently obscured how the administration’s own credibility on this issue diminishes month by month.
...
In his State of the Union address last January, identifying Iraq, Iran and North Korea as the ‘axis of evil’, the President warned that ‘time is running out’. Well, someone evidently jammed a big ol’ sausage in the hourglass, because it stopped running out round about August and, indeed, much of the sand seems to have run back in again.
...
On its face, this is very difficult to explain, though a lot of us go to a lot of trouble trying to. The endless postponement of the Iraqi D-Day, now as routinely rolled over as those Soviet five-year plans, is all part of some cunning Bush ‘rope-a-dope’ strategy. So is Colin Powell’s recent statement that the administration isn’t looking for regime change in Baghdad. So is the ongoing mantra of ‘the Saudis are our friends, no matter how many of us they kill’.
...
The connection between Saudi ‘charitable giving’ and terrorism is well known. The most benign explanation is that the Princess is an idiot, and Americans are dead in part because of her idiocy. The wife of the Secretary of State and the mother of the President have no business comforting a stooge of their country’s enemies.

Meanwhile, the alternative explanation to ‘rope-a-dope’ is that the Pentagon needed time to replenish stocks. This was just about believable last spring. By late November, when senior officials were allegedly leaking to the press that they might need another year just to make sure they were really fully absolutely replenished, it was looking a whole lot less plausible.
...
Obviously, a war on terror is not like a war on Japan: it’s not just about the battles, but also the battles that never take place. One assumes that al-Qa’eda have tried to pull off another attack on US soil but at some border post or ticket counter or rental-car agency they’ve been stymied.
....
weaponised laxatives aside, from their inability to hit anything other than the softest of targets — from Bali to Tunisia — it seems reasonable to conclude that al-Qa’eda’s freedom of manoeuvre has been drastically curtailed.
...
It’s hard not to feel that this year has been a lucky escape — except for the dead in Bali, in Moscow, in Kenya et al. It seems unlikely that the West can make it through another 12 months without something happening somewhere.

2002-12-28T09:22:00.000-08:00
TIME's end-of-year thing is turning into a joke. Last year, if they didn't have the guts to put Osama on the cover, they should have put "the American people." This year obviously belongs to Bush. I listened to the guy say next year would probably be Bush, but if he defeats Saddam, brings down the mullahs, gets North Korea to disarm, they'll doubtless find someone else.
Lawrence agrees.

2002-12-27T17:17:00.000-08:00
Scrappleface on Affirmative Action. I was thinking about this in the Emergency Room Christmas morning. There was my doctor, an African-American. I don't care WHAT color his skin is, but I WAS a little interested in how he got to medical school... was it ability, or was it affirmative action? In other words, does he actually know anything? I decided to relax and take his credentials on faith. But WHY do our A-A brethern want to be thought of this way, instead of just considered as a human of whichever skin shade?

Yay David Letterman!

2002-12-27T10:38:00.000-08:00
My sister lives in Anti-American Central:
Best of the Web:
This reflects a geographical divide in the state of Washington. Seattle is a haven for wacko anti-Americanism; it even sends pro-Saddam congressman Jim McDermott to Congress. The rest of the state, however, is populated by normal Americans. A Seattle Post-Intelligencer poll finds that Seattle residents oppose the liberation of Iraq by 52% to 40%, while the statewide figures (despite including Seattle) are reversed: 51% favor liberation and only 43% oppose it.

2002-12-26T10:11:00.000-08:00
Why isn't Law in Jail?

The Three Wise Guys

Clinton a Hypocrite (No, I'm shocked, I tell you, shocked!) by Earl Ofari Hutchinson, who by his picture, is African-American.

2002-12-26T06:30:00.000-08:00
via Best of the Web, Hanoi Jane in Jerusalem.

2002-12-24T11:05:00.000-08:00
Christmas, by Cold Fury, via Bill Quick.

Lileks.

2002-12-23T16:07:00.000-08:00
Forgiving the Phony, James Bowman :
let us remember that it is the season of forgiveness and goodwill and if there is little enough of either yet for Trent Lott, let us spare a bit for Al Gore. What, you may ask, has Al Gore to be forgiven for? I don't know, but there must be some reason why I hate him so. No man in public life do I find so repulsive as Al. It's partly that he is such a transparent phony, and phony not in the way that Bill Clinton was a phony. Clinton was conman phony, but a conman has to be charming or he will starve to death. And Clinton was certainly charming. Gore is utterly without charm. He is boring-phony; phony-for-the-sake-of-phoniness; phony because he doesn't know how not to be phony.
...
; Gore is dull as well as phony, and the worst kind of dullard at that: Namely, one who believes that he is smarter than the rest of us and so undetectable in the lifelong imposture that he is Al Gore and not merely an arrogant twerp trying to impersonate him.

(He says if we don't forgive Gore, he'll be back!

2002-12-23T07:28:00.000-08:00
Victor Davis Hansen says not to forget why we are fighting.

2002-12-22T12:32:00.000-08:00
The Last Lott (or so I hope)

Instapundit:
Unlike the Democrats with Clinton, the Republicans have purged themselves of someone who didn't belong in the office he held. The failure to do so cost the Democrats greatly. I think that the Republicans, meanwhile, will reap benefits from their action.

Also:
THE LOTT CONTRAST: Reader Tom Wright emails:

This may not be a widely held view but I think the Trent Lott episode is a huge plus for the Republican Party. It may gain them nothing at the polls but at least they have proved that they are capable of embarrassment and shame when on of their number demonstrates an unfitness for his office.

Tardy though it may have been, the disgust and outrage shown by Republicans over Sen. Lott's remarks contrasted with the Democrats' studied indifference to the past comments by Sen. Byrd or the vileness spewed by Rep. McKinney shows that while both parties may have bigots, at least the Republicans are ashamed or theirs.

Eric Alterman:
Actually, this is the worst possible solution for the Democrats, who won’t have Trent Lott to kick around anymore as leader, but also won’t be getting a Democratic replacement in his seat.
(Hillary hasn't heard this word, yet. She thinks they can still pile on... I think it IS going to be another Wellstone memorial.)

Patrick Ruffini:
This is a watershed moment in the history of the Republican Party. If the November 5th elections testified to the strength of the party as reformed by George W. Bush, the events of today spoke to its soul. By showing that the party could police itself in a morally significant manner — a rarity in Washington — these last two weeks have proven more crucial to the future of the GOP than even the big election victory of six weeks ago.

2002-12-20T16:58:00.000-08:00
20 Most Annoying Liberals of 2002 (again, because it goes with this Lileks piece):
But why do they think their opinion carries weight? Because they know they’ll suffer no consequences. Yoda could give an interview and say “Had the right idea, Hitler did” and we’d still all trot off to Episode 3.
...
And speaking of Germans - well, Austrians - it’s notable that among the few Hollywood non-leftists, the most cheerful, popular and successful of the batch is an Austrian immigrant. Makes you wonder what he knows that we don’t.

(He also took Gnat to see Santa)

Also, speaking of Annoying Liberals (he made it to the top of my list, but to be fair, the list was written before the latest Clintoon dump)
Peggy Noonan writes:
You could almost see Mr. Clinton's mind whirling as Jonathan Karl interviewed him. Hmm, I could be high-minded and speak thoughtfully during what amounts to a public crisis, or I can play gut-ball politics and slam the enemy. No contest. Way to go, Bill, and happy holidays from a grateful nation.

2002-12-20T08:21:00.000-08:00
YAY!!

Robert Prather, Neolibertarian News Portal, is a native of Pascagoula

William Kristol

Krauthammer:
True, if Lott is ousted, he might resign from the Senate and allow his seat to go Democratic, thus jeopardizing Republican control of the Senate and undoing the great Republican electoral triumph of 2002.

So be it. There is a principle at stake here. Better to lose the Senate than to lose your soul. New elections come around every two years. Souls are scarcer.

Instapundit is reminded of Gollum. He quotes Andrew Sullivan likening Lott to the "I'm not dead yet!" knight.

I just want these things, Lott going, the war in Iraq, to happen RIGHT NOW. ("Late next month?" I wanted mid-November!)
Stephen answers this, unknowingly.

Yay! One down, Lott's resignation. Now, for the war, which might actually be going on, anyway.

2002-12-19T21:47:00.000-08:00
Via Bill Quick, 20 Most Annoying Liberals of 2002. Only 20?? So many to choose from...

2002-12-19T06:59:00.000-08:00
John Fund
Bill Clinton angered many Democrats when in 1998 he was found to have lied about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, but almost every congressional Democrat decided that having a president forced out of office would reduce the party's chances of holding on to the White House. As it turns out, the Democrats might have prevailed in 2000, if Mr. Clinton had resigned and handed the keys to the White House to Al Gore. Instead, Mr. Clinton stayed as a visible reminder of the many scandals surrounding his presidency, and left Mr. Gore with conflicted feelings about defending the Clinton record.

2002-12-18T21:27:00.000-08:00
John Poindexter's data profile. Excellent.
.

Robin Goodfellow. On War as evil.

Glenn calls this another dropped ball. Grumble.

2002-12-18T07:19:00.000-08:00
"A Walking Pinata"

Christopher Hitchens on resignations.

Mark Steyn:
For the best part of two centuries, the Democrats have been the party of race: In the 19th century, they were for slavery; in the 20th, for segregation; in the 21st, for the neo-segregation of ''affirmative action,'' ''hate crimes'' and all the other paraphernalia of the modish trickle-down apartheid determined to make racial categorization a permanent feature of the American landscape. In fairness to the Dems, this evolution represents a significant century-on-century improvement: There's no reason to believe that one day, come the 24th or 25th century, they won't have reached the position that American citizens should be treated as freeborn individuals, rather than as chorus members of their respective identity-group kicklines. That's what the Republican Party stands for: Condi Rice is an effective, black, female National Security Adviser but she holds that position not because of her blackness or her femaleness but her effectiveness; she's better than the white males who were up for the job.

Glenn:
I've heard some folks say "I'd rather lose the Senate than keep it with Lott as Majority Leader." I think that's right

Rod Dreher:
I don't want to be part of a party that says, "Our guy, right or wrong." I think a principled politician wants to hold power to do something, not just for its own sake. The Clinton affair revealed that many Democrats were happy to sell out their own professed views on women's rights, sexual harrassment and suchlike, for the sake of raw power. That was disgraceful, and I don't want to see the GOP act the same way.
...
The party should be about principle, not personality. Granted, it's easier to say this because Lott doesn't seem to have much personality, but the point still stands.

Gene Callahan makes his point:
That's not what I meant to say. It's more like this: Let's say we're in Germany circa 1938. It comes out that Hitler likes to torture frogs. Suddenly, all these people who had been pretty quiet about him explode with fury: "The frog torturer must go!"

Now, I'm against frog torturing. But, with everything else he was doing, my response would be, "And you're upset over THIS?"

And I don't mean to trivialize the evil of Jim Crow. But, as I pointed out, it's pretty clear that Lott is not actually trying to re-institute Jim Crow. The very worst interpretation of his remarks is that he misses it but isn't trying to do anything about the fact. And my question is, "What have we come to when eviscerating the Constitution [e.g. USA-PATRIOT, Total Information Awareness, resolutions authorizing a Presidential decision to use force as opposed to declaring war, e.g. - UO] is a matter for polite discussion but this bad -- but absolutely meaningless to any policy -- remark creates a tempest and calls for resignation?"

(via Unqualified Offerings).

2002-12-17T15:58:00.000-08:00
Frum on Gore:
But why would Gore – of all people – suddenly wish to eschew a focus on the past? During the ’02 campaign, he talked of little else but. He roused partisan crowds by asking them to remember where they were and how they felt when they heard the Supreme Court decision on December 12, 2000, counting on that anger to mobilize Dems and especially black Dems.

He miscounted. And in the aftermath, Democrats are coming to recognize the 2000 defeat as a strategic catastrophe, a defeat that gave Republicans their best political opportunity since 1952. Maybe they once thought, “Poor Al was robbed.” Now they think, “Bonehead Al robbed us.” 2004 was shaping up to begin with a long, long dissection by Democrats of every misstep and mistake Gore made in ’00. Gore did not dread that the general election would “focus on the past.” He was terrified that the primaries would – and that Democrats would want to repudiate that past.
...
Of course, there’s another strong national Democrat with an eager eye on ’08: Hillary Clinton. And quite a lot of the psycho-drama of the next six years in American politics will be watching these two strange beasts try to do each other in. And the most exciting part of the psycho-drama will be watching the most popular and prominent of all national Democrats, Bill Clinton, decide which of these people he dislikes more.
...
This Lott business has been painful and dangerous for the Republican party. Yet Republicans have nevertheless insisted almost unanimously on accepting that pain and danger in order to hold their leaders to a moral standard. If Democrats felt the same way, the impeachment of Bill Clinton would have had a very different ending - and Al Gore would very likely be president today rather than a disgruntled author bitterly tabulating his sales. Honesty after all is still the best policy.

Sullivan on Gore:
After a while, even the most insulated, cocooned politician can tell if almost no-one wants him to run. The latest opinion polls showed that Gore had a 19 percent favoribility rating - in the Nixon-resignation basement. In any polled match-up, Gore would lose to Bush in a landslide. Of course, Bush is still buoyed by wartime ratings - but his persistently high showing suggests something deeper: that the American public have bonded with this president, like him, trust him and feel immensely relieved that he won the presidency two years ago. On a very basic level, Americans know now what they think of Gore and Bush. And it would take something truly epochal to shift their views.
...
Other Democrats, off the record, even suggested they'd like Gore to run, but only because he'd be a great person to beat in the early primaries in order to give their own campaigns a lift. This has got to hurt. For a month of campaigning a touring, it was as if Gore kept pulling every lever for political lift-off, while staying firmly, fixedly on the ground.

2002-12-16T15:31:00.000-08:00
Lileks goes shopping.

Daniel Drezner on carriers.

2002-12-16T07:39:00.000-08:00
Gregory points out It's not just our politicians:
David Ahenakew, a senator with the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations (FSIN), says Hitler did the right thing in "frying" six million Jews. His comments have to be read to be believed:
"The Jews damn near owned all of Germany prior to the war," Ahenakew said in an interview.

"That's how Hitler came in. He was going to make damn sure that the Jews didn't take over Germany or Europe.

"That's why he fried six million of those guys, you know. Jews would have owned the goddamned world. And look what they're doing. They're killing people in Arab countries."

Dear God.

2002-12-15T14:21:00.000-08:00
Instantman:
Nigeria's film industry is taking over Africa, beating out the rival Ghanaians and even cutting into the Bollywood market share. That the industry is located in the South, and strongly Christian in its interests, is likely to have impacts throughout Africa, where there's something of a religious Cold War underway.

Not that cold, considering the Miss World Riots.

2002-12-15T11:41:00.000-08:00
Yet Another Roundup.

comment:
Because we all know that if Lott were a Dem - the Dems would have hooked arms, formed a circle and sung Kumbaya.
Also, they would have suggested that the press was to blame because this is Trent's personal life and what the man does at a party for his friend is nobody's business.

The Democratic Black Caucus would have screamed that this is a non-issue because "they" know better and if "they" aren't offended nobody else has a right to be...

(Rosemary Esmay)

2002-12-15T07:33:00.000-08:00
Novak on cardinal Law:
Third is a laity in very large numbers living in open dissent and rebellion, and encouraged in this by many clerical voices — even among their own pastors — first on many small things but gradually on many increasingly large things, too. In fact, one can hardly be certain, listening to them parade their utterly self-confident convictions, why they don't become Congregationalists (and elect their own pastors), or Baptists, or Unitarians, or, at least Episcopalians

John Farrell on good priests.

2002-12-14T14:56:00.000-08:00
Don't Go Away Mad...
Colbert King

Sheila rounds up a Lott of columns

New York Post
...Just GO AWAY!

2002-12-14T08:03:00.000-08:00
FBI reportedly didn't act on Ptech tips
There were earlier stories about the BinLaden Family escaping, and the FBI messing that up. Our local talk show had a caller who had tried to deal with the FBI when his phones were hijacked one night. The numbers dialled were all Pakistani addresses and other Mideast locations. The Fibbies didn't want to know. They would rather pick low-hanging fruit and not have hard investigations, which might be understandable but could be fatal.

2002-12-13T20:07:00.000-08:00
Frank, who to replace Lott?

Michelle Malkin, Vacant Lott.

Christopher Johnson,
To hell with the party, to hell with conservative principles. I'm not giving up my Meet the Press time. If this were the first time Mr. Lott had ever said something like this and, more importantly, if Mr. Lott was an effective Majority Leader, I would say that everyone says and writes stupid things now and then so move on. But it is not. Lott has been far too careless for far too long.

David Frum points out that conservatives are most upset:
For eight long years under Bill Clinton, conservatives incessantly argued that character counts. “You can’t be one kind of man and a different kind of president,” said Lynn Martin at the 1992 GOP convention, and conservatives have been repeating the point ever since. When one of their own does something they consider seriously morally wrong, the conservative impulse is not to rally ‘round and pooh-pooh the offense. (“Everybody lies about segregationism.”) The conservative impulse is to question whether a moral offender can continue as a political leader.

2002-12-13T09:12:00.000-08:00
Lott's Go!

Should he stay or should he go now?

Instapundit is all over this story, and says it may have reached the tipping point. (And that was before Bush reamed him.)

Scrappleface on Dems.

Midwest Conservative Journal:
And we on the right, who have driven the anti-Lott sentiment, can at least brag about this. The left was willing to go to any length to keep a president in office who had committed felonies. We conservatives, though, have much higher standards for our leaders. We are eager to dispense with a mere congressional leader for a careless and tone-deaf opinion.

2002-12-12T08:10:00.000-08:00
Christmas at the White House

Rainbow Food Cooperative. Unfortunately, they've blinked again and caved to the Islamists.

Pilgrim means peace, Islam means disorder (via Cal Ulmann.)

National Review editorial on Daschle and Rush and Uncle Tom Cobley and all.

2002-12-11T17:17:00.000-08:00
Kill Kurds, Not Mumia.

First an Archbishop Druid, now this.

Buckley on Algore.

Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day.

Geitner Simmons.

The Times, they are a'changing.

Instapundit:
If Raines wanted to launch a big crusade, worthy of the Times -- and one that would even hurt Republicans -- he could devote the New York Times' vast reportorial resources to unravelling the web of Saudi financial influence in Washington. Instead, he's worried about golf.

2002-12-11T07:12:00.000-08:00
Little More on Lott:

Bill Quick:
I still think he should go, (not from the Senate, but from the leadership) because this latest contretemps demonstrates a problem with Lott that has existed for years: He's stupid.

Also, he lacks a spine, but that's a whole different issue.
Which elicited this comment:
The Dems and their friends in the media could be making a mighty stink about this but they aren't. In fact, Daschle was downright forgiving. Why? They like him exactly where he is and want him to stay on as majority leader because he's such a dimwit and so easy to roll.

2002-12-10T17:26:00.000-08:00
David Frum:
Kerry’s entry into the race – and his choice of issues – is an early hint that the Democrats as a party are not taking seriously their defeat in the ’00 and ’02 elections. Of their top possible candidates – Gore, Kerry, Lieberman, Daschle, Gephardt, Edwards, Davis, Dean – all but Edwards have made clear that they are going to campaign on what might be called the Sorehead Platform: We were robbed in 2000! Roger Ailes wouldn’t let us get our message out in ’02! No to everything that has happened since – no to tax cuts, no to military action in Iraq, no to homeland security, no, no, no, no, no. Oh, and we almost forgot: all that talk about increasing energy production here in North America? No to that too.

Also:
The Koran itself tells us that Muhammad had a lively appreciation of feminine beauty. On a visit one day to his adopted son Zaid, Muhammad was struck by the loveliness of Zaid's wife, Zainab. Soon afterward, Muhammad announced that he had a revelation from Allah: Zaid and Zainab must divorce -- and Zainab must then remarry Muhammad. (The Clans, 33:37). The incident caused another of Muhammad's wives, Aisha, to observe: "I see your Allah quickly grants your desire."

Muhammad possessed somewhere between 10 and 12 wives over his lifetime. Other Muslims were allowed no more than four, but Allah waived the restriction in Muhammad's unique case. (The Clans, 33:50).

2002-12-10T07:34:00.000-08:00
Lileks:
what will probably happen anyway: the separation of that intangible bond between America and Europe. They’ll be just another continent, like South America, neither friend nor foe. And should their bacon need saving - bacon from pigs fed only non-GM feed, hand-trimmed by butchers to EU specs - then the American response would probably be a short bark of humorless amusement: as if.

By “Europe” I mean Western Europe. Eastern Europe is probably much more dependable and friendly.

Wonder how that happened.

2002-12-09T19:14:00.000-08:00
Whole Lott of Trouble:
David Frum.

Arthur Silbur:
And one last, perhaps comparatively minor, but related question: to borrow the old cliche, would you buy a used car from Lott? I sure as hell wouldn't. Lott has always struck me as incredibly smarmy, and I can easily imagine him draping his arm around someone's shoulder in his overbearingly friendly manner, smiling that nasty little smile (which seems to imply that he's sharing a very unpleasant dirty little joke with you), and slowly but surely sliding the knife into the other person's back.

Virginia Postrel also describes him as smarmy. She also says:

Where's Howell Raines's crusading southern liberalism when it's needed? (Mark Kleiman notes that the NYT is AWOL on the story; I guess country clubs are more important than the Senate.)
(Via Glenn), who later quotes reader Greg Barto:
As a Republican who has watched Trent Lott excel even Bob Dole in flushing my party's opportunities down the toilet, I'll shed no tears if he's ousted.

Andrew Sullivan:
And where's the New York Times? Howell Raines is so intent on finding Bull Connor in a tony golf club that when Bull Connor emerges as the soul of the Republican Senate Majority Leader, he doesn't notice it. And where's the president?

2002-12-09T07:40:00.000-08:00
Rand on Trent Lott:
I believe that he should resign for the same reason that I've thought that he should resign ever since he took the post six years ago--he's a politically tone-deaf idiot, a gutless wonder who presided over and enabled the sham trial in impeachment, and let the Democrats roll him time and time again. If he stays in power, he's quite likely to continue to do and say stupid things that will lose him the Senate, or at least more likely than most of his probable replacements.

Couldn't have said it better myself. Affable and inept.

2002-12-08T20:05:00.000-08:00
Josh Chavetz:
LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT ... At the same time that the UN is telling the US that it needs to be more multilateral, at the same time that the UN is begging the US for a $1.3 billion interest free loan to renovate the buildings on formerly US sovereign territory -- buildings which, by the way, sit on obscenely expensive land that was given to the UN by an American philanthropist -- UN weapons inspectors are telling the US that it will only get to see a bowdlerized version of the statement Iraq released yesterday. Is that about right? Explain to me again why this whole UN thing was a good idea ...

(via Instantman, of course.)

It's OK, though. Al is on the case.

2002-12-08T16:21:00.000-08:00
Cardinal Law is back in Rome. The Pope better do the right thing this time. (He's probably more upset about the impending bankruptcy. Morals, not money, is where they're most bankrupt.) Boston SHOULD be Lawless!!

2002-12-08T12:11:00.000-08:00
Steve Gigl fisks binLaden:
Worst. Civilization. Ever. Oh thank you, Osama, for making us see the light! You can be certain that I'll get right on that whole setting-up-sharia-in-America thing, just as soon as I stop GUT-LAUGHING, you spoiled little rich brat from Saudi FREAKING Arabia. When we start stoning women for getting raped in the US, I'll be sure to be less sarcastic about this.
Joshua Furgusen on who really made the binLaden tape. This is a pretty good theory. (via Instantman, of course.)

2002-12-08T09:04:00.000-08:00
Bigwig:
Despite the now-increased threat of bankruptcy that has dogged the company all year long, United Airlines managed to find $192,275 to give the Democratic and Republicans parties in 2002.

So, from a shareholder's point of view, is that money well-spent if it buys enough influence to keep the company from going under? If it's not, how much money should United have spent? Would five hundred thousand dollars have been enough? As big as amount as that is, it's a drop in the bucket for a company with a billion in cash reserves. If you're an an American citizen as well a shareholder in United, do you celebrate the rise in value of your stock given the parlous economic times, or do you decry the influence of big money on the government, even though that influence has benefited you personally?

2002-12-07T07:15:00.000-08:00
Howard Kurtz on Algore.

Glenn says Algore is half right, but misunderstands (go figure):
But while grousing about how things have gone downhill since the Good Old Days has its pleasures, it won't win elections. A savvy politician might take note of these changes, as evidence of public preferences that were concealed by the biases in the old, monopolistic media but that are now revealed by the more competitive market of today, and adjust his positions accordingly. Gore, on the other hand, seems to have moved to the left, introducing new policy proposals like national health insurance that seem tailor-made for old-style establishment-liberal media. It remains to be seen whether his views will be rewarded by the political market.

Jim Pinkerton on Algore.

David Frum:
If you were a Democrat, wouldn’t you just want to shake Clinton? Here’s what I’d be saying: “Hey Bill: You decided not to retaliate forcefully when Saddam Hussein tried to murder your predecessor, our 41st president. You decided that the right way to stop North Korea from getting a nuclear bomb was to lavish them with aid – and then you decided to ignore the evidence that they were cheating. You issued the rules that crippled our intelligence agencies.”* You decided that your top priority for the military was to social engineering, not fighting. You refused to take custody of bin Laden when he was offered up to you. You decided to fight terrorism by, as President Bush 43 so vividly put it, by firing million-dollar missiles at $10 empty tents and hitting a camel in the butt. And now you tell us that we lost the Congress because we’re seen as soft on national security. Ooooooooooooh.” It does make you wonder why there isn’t a word for chutzpah in Arkansan.
...
I have this theory about politics: when a political party offers the voters ham and eggs, and the voters say no thanks, its first instinct is to say, “OK then – how about double ham and double eggs?” It’s as if defeat liberates parties to say what they reallythink – and what the Democrats really think is that the voters are just as bored with the whole subject of national security as they are and would really prefer to drop the whole subject. It often takes two elections – and sometimes three – to teach a party to stop talking about what matters to itself and start talking about what matters to the voters.

There's a solution: The Counter-Clinton Library.

2002-12-06T21:39:00.000-08:00
Tony Woodlief finds a mole in NPR:
First, I suspect there is a secret campaign to revoke the 26th Amendment, and that its primary strategy is to put microphones in front of twenty year-olds. Perhaps a cultural anthropologist reading this can enlighten me, but I'm not sure if there has ever been a case where a society with language has morphed into a society without language, and I'm curious to know whether ours will be the first.
...
Right. Little Johnny isn't busting caps in the 'hood because he had no father or mother or preacher or teacher worth a darn, no, he's slinging slugs because Ronald Reagan sent troops into Grenada. Johnny may not be able to spell his own last name correctly, but he's socially conscious.
(via Instantman)

2002-12-06T07:54:00.000-08:00
Lileks
I’m picturing Jesus outside the Temple, waving a placard:
VERILY VERILY LO LO, MONEYCHANGERS HAVE TO GO.

2002-12-05T18:25:00.000-08:00
Michael Kinsley.

"Violence broke out"

Colby Cosh says schools are old-fashioned. (Via Joanne Jacobs.)

Warblogger's Manifesto. This before the big de-linking hoohah. Teapot. Tempest.

Smart Genes, Garrison Keillor fallout.

Best of the Web, satire, I swear

The roots of Muslim Rage. Oddly enough, I found this article in hardcopy in the back room a month ago.

James Lileks.
Lileks

Fritz Schranck, on Cardinal Law being against the war: "If you lost credibility in one major area of responsibility, what makes you think you kept it elsewhere?"

Michael Kelly, Wishful in Defeat

The Second Letter of John to the Idiotarians.

Al Barger was not pleased with the funeral pep rally.

Slashdot.
Dammit, why can't the FBI deal with stuff that MATTERS?