Judicious Asininity

This is the Archive Page. Click Here for Main Page

Fri Apr 30, 2004

Ted Koppel's list of military personnel killed in Iraq

I have no objections to the names being read provided he reads out the names of the all the victims of Islamic Terrorism first

If he ignores the victims, then we know it's just a cheap political stunt at the expense of the man and women who have given their lives in the War on Terror.

He could start with this list (adapted from here):

June 5th, 1968. Los Angeles, Senator (and then presidential candidate)
Robert F. Kennedy was making his way from the ballroom at the Ambassador
Hotel to give a press conference, after winning the California Primary. The
prearranged route went through a food service pantry. While making his way
through this area, a Arab-Palestinian, Sirhan Sirhan, stepped forward and
shot Kennedy dead.

February 23, 1970, Halhoul, West Bank. PLO terrorists open fire on a
busload of pilgrims killing Barbara Ertle of Michigan and wounding two other
Americans. Read more »

Blogging will be light over the weekend

I've got a date with a Flying Pig

Truly!.

Bush's wavering in Iraq is a bad sign

The only good thing it does is tell us what it would be like if flip-flop Kerry was in charge

Barbara Lerner's article Rumsfeld’s War, Powell’s Occupation gets to the root of the problem. The only real fighting that seems to be going on is between Rumsfeld's Pentagon on the one hand and Powell/Tenet of the State Department/CIA on the other. Bush will listen to one side, go with that for a while, and then switch sides, usually at the worst time. The Marines were doing a great job crushing the insurgency in Fallujah and making an example of those who would commit atrocities against Americans. Instead of finishing the job, they were stopped to let a "peace process" work. Have they learned nothing? There is no "peace process" when you are dealing with Islamic Terrorists. There is Hudna, where they con you into a truce while they regroup and rearm, and that's it.

Now an Iraqi army has been assembled out of thin air and Saddam holdovers to take over from the Marines. A sleaze ball UN diplomat is replacing Mr. Bremer's failed governing council. Ayatollah wannabe Sadr is still on the loose, doing Iran's bidding, and terrorists are continuing to flood into Iraq from Syria and Iran.

At this rate Bush junior is going to leave Iraq in a bigger mess than Bush senior did after the first Gulf War. I'm starting to think Bush's Texas Poker is more like the kid's game of Snap; he's just grabbing at any card that comes by. John Kerry couldn't do worse, could he? Unfortunately, the answer is probably yes.

Thu Apr 29, 2004

How low will the Democrats go?

The latest ploy is calling Cheney the lead chickenhawk

Senator Lautenberg called Cheney the "lead chickenhawk":

"We know who the chickenhawks are," the New Jersey senator said on the Senate floor. " and cast aspersions on others, but when it was their turn to serve, they were AWOL from courage".

The AWOL jab is intended to skewer Bush despite the fact that claims he was AWOL were refuted by the release of all his military records. Moreover, the Bush/Cheney team has not cast aspersions on Kerry's few months of service in Vietnam. What they have done is question Kerry's commitment to national defense based on his anti-war activities, his voting record on defense issues and his on-again, off-again support for the war in Iraq and the Patriot act.

The political reality for the Democrats is that Kerry is a dead duck candidate. His best campaign week he spent on vacation. To cover up the fact that Kerry is a dead duck the Democrats are trying to draw attention away from the smell of decomposing duck by creating bigger stinks elsewhere. The 9/11 Commission is one such (failed) attempt.

This latest smear campaign is going to backfire. By claiming the Bush/Cheney team "talk[s] tough on national defense and military issues" Lautenberg only highlights the obvious corollary that the Bush/Cheney team also acts tough on national defense and military issues.

Wed Apr 28, 2004

What if the Supreme Court rules against the Administration on the Padilla and Hamdi cases?

It will be a major step towards our defeat in this War

If dirty bomber wannabe Jose Padilla is treated like a criminal, a good trial lawyer could get him freed in the time it took to raise his bail. After all, he hasn't actually committed a major crime on US soil. His lawyer would call Abu Zubaydah as a witness for the defense. For national security reasons, the US wouldn't produce Abu Zubaydah, and Padilla could walk.

If Padilla then meets up with a sleeper cell, assembles his bomb and detonates it in a U.S. city, who would be held responsible? Not the executive branch; they did all in their power to stop Padilla. Not the legislative branch; they empowered the President to conduct the war on terror. The culprits will be the unelected, unaccountable Supreme Court Justices. Do they really want to take the chance that a terrorist suspect, released because they overruled the executive branch, succeeds in a devastating attack on U.S. soil? I hope not, but it looks they are willing to take the chance, by putting the individual rights of an avowed terrorist ahead of the collective rights of his thousands of potential victims.

The 9/11 Commission really is a joke

At least to commission member Bob Kerrey

Michelle Malkin describes his performance on the The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

Now, it would be one thing if Kerrey used his privileged position to inform Stewart's younger audience of the gravity of the 9/11 panel's task. But instead, Kerrey yukked it up. First, he dished with Stewart about President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney's upcoming private meeting with the commission. When Stewart mocked the president's "buddy system," Kerrey guffawed: "He is bringing his buddy, that's exactly right, for safety." Emboldened by audience applause, Kerrey riffed that it was more like "Screw you, buddy." Asked by Stewart whether people were really blaming each other over the terrorist attacks during closed hearings, Kerrey snorted: "Oh, Jee-zus, yeah."

We're supposed to take this 9/11 Commission seriously? How can we, when its members can't? Richard Ben-Viste used it to score cheap political points. Jamie Gorelick should be appearing before it instead of sitting on it, a point she proved with her very own WPO Op-ed. Bob Kerrey thinks it's some sort of comedy.

God help us if the 9/11 Commission is supposed to help the nation figure out why 9/11 happened and how future attacks can be stopped.

The enemy within

The U.K. has a big problem and it's our problem, too

Scott Burgess highlights the problem the UK has with radical Muslim clerics exploiting Britain's lax laws and generous welfare benefits. Here's an example of the problem:

Ramee Abdul Rahman Muhammad
Manchester Imam
Benefit Status: £1400/mo + rent

Lectured to shoe bomber Richard Reid, as well as British suicide bombers Omar Sharif and Asif Hanif. According to the Daily Mail, "he is still urging British Muslims to take up arms and wants Britain to become an Islamic state." Now in the UK, he is seeking asylum from the US - but may be deported soon.

Osama Bin Ladin could probably set up shop in Brixton and nobody would blink. Maybe they'd think they'd be able to keep an eye on him and stop him from committing any more alleged crimes.

What do these respected religious leaders produce? According to this LGF link Radical British born Jihadists. Here's what one of them says:

“As far as I’m concerned, when they bomb London, the bigger the better,” says Abdul Haq, the social worker. “I know it’s going to happen because Sheikh bin Laden said so. Like Bali, like Turkey, like Madrid - I pray for it, I look forward to the day.”

Follow the link to LGF's source to read more. The latitude given our enemy in the U.K. is unbelievable. It would be equivalent to letting the Nazi party operate recruiting offices in London during the Blitz. It isn't that much better in the U.S. and British citizens like Richard Reid are just a transatlantic flight away.

Future Car Technologies

Dan Berard at American Thinker believes hybrids will be the wave of the future for the next decade. I disagree.

In his article at American Thinker he makes the economic case for hybrids using dubious assumptions. He claims that:

To test the economics of driving one of these cars, it is easy to calculate the savings, using published numbers for average levels of driving. Assume that you are fairly typical, so your car now averages 17 miles per gallon (mpg). You pay $1.75 per gallon at the pump, and you drive 1000 miles per month, or 12,000 miles per year. Your gasoline bill alone will be $102.95 /month. Now, if you trade-in for a hybrid, if you can get 40 mpg, then you save $59.19 / month. If we take the worst case scenario and assume you must pay a premium of $3000 for your new hybrid, the extra financing cost of $3000 for five (5) years at 6% interest is $58.00/ month. Your new hybrid at 40 mpg is a breakeven deal for you at current gasoline price levels. You will save an extra $9.00 per month for every 25 cent per gallon increase in gasoline price.

Toyota plans to launce the new Lexus RX330 hybrid, which boasts 60 mpg in the city and 48 mpg on the highway. This luxury SUV/car will accelerate 0 to 60 mph in 10 seconds. Of course, the gasoline savings are even more impressive at 60 mpg and rising gasoline costs.

But according to this report:

Toyota, meanwhile, is aiming to squeeze 35 miles of driving out of a gallon of gas on average with both its Lexus and Toyota SUV hybrids. But that's an "engineering target," and in actual day-to-day driving, customers are expected to get as much as 20% less, averaging about 28 mpg. A conventional V6 RX330 is rated to get 20-22 mpg. A conventional V6 version of the Highlander, which is based on a chassis and mechanical systems similar to the RX, goes 20-21 miles on a gallon of gas. A four-cylinder Highlander is supposed to get 23-24 mpg.

If Berard was doing an apples to apples comparison, he should be comparing the Lexus Hybrid at 28mpg against the conventional V6 at 20mpg. Let's redo his figures using the hybrid and conventional versions of the Lexus 330.

Read more »

Assume that you are fairly typical, so your car now averages 20 miles per gallon (mpg). You pay $1.75 per gallon at the pump, and you drive 1000 miles per month, or 12,000 miles per year. Your gasoline bill alone will be $87.50/month. Now, if you trade-in for an equivalent hybrid, if you can get 28 mpg, then you save $25/ month. If we take the worst case scenario and assume you must pay a premium of $3000 for your new hybrid, the extra financing cost of $3000 for five (5) years at 6% interest is $58.00/ month. Your new hybrid at 28 mpg is going to cost you an extra $33.00/month at current gasoline price levels.

While Hybrids are all the rage with some manufacturers, others are exploring ways to get more out of current technology. There are three main strategies being pursued. One is to increase the number of gear ratios so that the engine can stay at its most efficient operating efficiency over a greater range of speeds. Honda Accord's (EPA mileage rating 24 city, 33 highway) now come standard with a 5-speed automatic. Luxury makers are moving to 6-speed or even 7-speed automatics, while 6-speed manual transmissions are becoming popular for sportier models. CVT transmissions offer an infinite number of gear ratios and deliver improved fuel economy in hybrids and conventional cars.

Another strategy is to reduce the number of working cylinders from 6 to 3 or 8 to 4 once the vehicle has reached cruising speed. In the US Chrysler and GM are going down that route.

The third is to reduce vehicle weight by using lighter materials, such as aluminum, composites and plastics. Luxury Jaguars and Audis head the aluminum parade.

These advanced technologies eventually end up in mass produced vehicles. The result is that the gap between hybrids and conventional engines will remain so small that consumers will have no economic incentive to pay a premium for hybrid vehicles.

Berard discusses hydrogen technology and research into alternatives. There are good reasons to be skeptical about hydrogen technology. Hydrogen is not a source of energy but a storage medium. It has to be created using more energy than it will release when combined with oxygen. Hydrogen is very difficult to store and transport without leaks and that leaking hydrogen may well do damage to the ozone layer.

Berard ends up deciding we need an Energy Plan:

We need an energy policy to jump-start the process of investing in smart technologies which reduce our dependence on oil imports and protect our environment from harmful pollutants. However, to achieve our goals, we also need an Energy Plan to move things along at a measured pace.

This is the kind of planning process used in big business, and I believe we need the same in our Department of Energy (DOE). As long as the government makes ample use of market mechanisms, and stays away from picking winners and losers, letting results speak for themselves in the marketplace, such a policy could usefully accelerate technological progress, and help us confront our strategic energy challenges.

Unfortunately, vote-seeking politicians and agenda-driven bureaucrats can't help themselves when it comes to picking winners and losers, and they almost always choose poorly. The ethanol boondoggle and MTB disaster should tell Berard all he needs to know about Government energy plans.

A radically different set of technologies -- the internet, wireless communications, and cheap hardware -- is starting to reduce fuel consumption . The average home-office has as much technology as the average cubicle in a down-town office and can communicate just as well. Why waste 1-2 hours a day to commute to an office when you can spend that time more productively working from home?

« Collapse

Tue Apr 27, 2004

I'm sorry but this is funny in a sick sort of way

Two for the price of one

A Hamas suicide bomber blew up two armed Palestinians who tried to rob him at gun point in the Gaza Strip

Hat tip: Lucianne

Understanding Fallujah

One blogger is light years ahead of the big Media

That would be Wretchard of Belmont Club, blogging from Australia. Go read all he has to say about how the USMC is cracking the Fallujah nut.

Mon Apr 26, 2004

Looks like the Marines took my advice!

It's about time they hit back at mosques

Earlier today, I wrote "The next time US forces take fire from a mosque, they should destroy it." Ask and you shall receive. According to CNN:

A statement from the 1st Marine Division said its forces returned fire after being shot at from the mosque. One attacker was killed, the other gunmen withdrew, then returned later and opened fire on the Marines again before tanks destroyed the minaret.

According to the same CNN report Bremer has also issued an ultimatum to al-Sadr and his Mehdi army in Najaf:

"Weapons are being stockpiled in mosques, shrines, and schools. This explosive situation cannot be tolerated by those who seek a peaceful resolution to this crisis," Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator in Iraq, said.

Muslim terrorists and their supporters have exploited our respect for places of worship and holy sites. But respect abused is respect lost. Let's hope the moderate Shi'ites realize that they have a lot to lose if they continue to allow al-Sadr to occupy Najaf.

I've had it with Internet Explorer

It kept crashing and/or freezing for no good reason so I switched to Mozilla

I downloaded the latest release of Mozilla from Mozilla.Org (1.5) and so far it has been rock-solid. I especially like the ability to have multiple tabs in the one browser window. That way I can put all my favorite blogs in one window and tab between them.

Some reasons why the media annoys me so much

Look at what the media considers important

I was relaxing yesterday evening after a fun morning pacing a marathon (that means I ran at a set pace for other runners to follow) and watched Fox News for a while. In the last week or so:

Pat Tillman was killed
two American women training to be U.N. police were murdered in cold blood by a Muslim fanatic
Fallujah remained on the boil
The stand-off at Najaf continued
A terrorist attack using chemical weapons was foiled in Jordan
The UNSCAM oil-for-food scandal continued to spread
Kerry's war record suffered self-inflicted wounds
A North Korean train blew up most of a town
The 9/11 Commission kept Gorelick on

to list just a few newsworthy events. These events were skipped or skimmed over to make way for news that the mainstream media considered important. I suffered through hours of idiocy revolving around the Michael Jackson trial. I don't care about Michael Jackson or his sister or any other related Jackson, or Jesse Jackson for that matter; they are irrelevant to the issues facing this country in a post 9/11 world. Ditto for the Scott Peterson Trial. Ditto for Martha Stewart. No wonder serious people would rather read blogs than watch TV news and commentary.

Bush is going wobbly on Fallujah

At least that is the way the Iraqis will see it

When Bush Senior failed to destroy Saddam and his regime in the First Gulf War, Saddam turned his defeat into an Iraqi victory. Now the insurgents in Fallujah can make the same claim. We're already seeing signs that Iraqis are seeing it that way. After the blast at a suspected weapons factory in Baghdad, Fox News reports that:

The blast leveled the front part of the one-story building, in the Waziriya district, and set four Humvees outside on fire. Later Iraqis dragged one of the Humvees away, looted material off it, poured fuel on it and set it on fire again.

It doesn't take much imagination to realize what they would have done if there were American bodies in the wrecks.

I'm also getting sick of the undue consideration that the US is giving to mosques. Perhaps the situation in Najaf would be resolved sooner if the US showed that it will act against terrorists who use mosques for shelter. The next time US forces take fire from a mosque, they should destroy it. If al-Jazeera broadcasts to the Muslim world that the US has destroyed a mosque and all the terrorists sheltering inside it, then maybe they will understand that respecting religious sites is a two-way street.

Recently, I asked Whose idiot idea was it to involve Lakhdar Brahimi in Iraq?. According to Opinion Journal, we can now identify the idiots who sold Bush on Brahimi:

Mr. Brahimi is the man Mr. Bremer and National Security Council staffer Robert Blackwill have sold to President Bush as the key to a sound political transition in Iraq. But three times in the past two weeks he has made public remarks damaging to coalition progress and U.S. interests in the region.

Fri Apr 23, 2004

We can ensure Pat Tillman did not die in vain

Or we can turn our back on him and every brave soul who has died in this war

It comes down to this. If you were a passenger on United Flight 93, you had a choice: fight the hijackers or let them win. The choice hasn't changed. Pat Tillman made his choice and paid the same price as Todd Beamer and the other brave passengers on that flight.

We all have to make the same choice in our own ways. Do we let the cancer of radical Islam eat away at the edges of our world and in the center of our cities, or do we fight back with all our resolve and determination? Are we like Pat Tillman or Michael Moore? Civilization depends on our answer.

Whose idiot idea was it to involve Lakhdar Brahimi in Iraq?

His comments on Israel show he is part of the problem, not the solution

Check out this Reuters report:

Brahimi told France's Inter radio on Thursday that Israeli policies toward Palestinians and Washington's support for them hindered his search for a caretaker Iraqi regime that would take power on June 30 when the U.S.-led occupation ends.

"The problems are linked, there is no doubt about it," said Brahimi, a former Algerian foreign minister. "The big poison in the region is the Israeli policy of domination and the suffering imposed on the Palestinians."

Brahimi said his job was complicated by Iraqi perceptions of "Israel's completely violent and repressive security policy and determination to occupy more and more Palestinian territory."

Do these Arabs not understand the concept of a self-inflicted wound? They are pretty big on suicide bombings, so the concept shouldn't be too hard. The Palestinians have walked away from every deal they've been offered since the U.N. created Israel in 1948. Every time they've done it, they've gotten worse off. Tough. Instead of whining about Israel, Brahimi should be telling them to abandon terrorism, recognize Israel's right to exist and start building a civil society. If they actually did that they would find the Israelis more than willing to help.

Hat tip LGF

RIP Pat Tillman

Sad news indeed, and proof that we are still a nation at war

LGF links to the tragic news. Shakespeare pays tribute to a brave young son who died in battle.

Your son, my lord, has paid a soldier's debt:
He only lived but till he was a man;
The which no sooner had his prowess confirm'd
In the unshrinking station where he fought,
But like a man he died.

Macbeth, Act V, Scene VIII

Thu Apr 22, 2004

Howard Fineman's assessment of Kerry's chances

They don't look too good

Newsweek columnist Howard Fineman provides an assessment of Kerry's chances against Bush on a number of key issues. Fineman has gone through each issue analytically, avoiding the partisan spin that we see from so many big-media columnists. Here is his take on the political impact of the 9/11 Commission.

Richard Ben-Veniste & Co. The media loved the 9/11 commission hearings. By instinct, we thrilled to watch a prosecutor such as B-V on the hunt, creeping in on a witness like a big cat. But the commission, which served as a platform for the theatrical Richard Clarke and the cross-examinations of Democratic members, eventually came off as too political and partisan to damage the president. Just the opposite, I think. Too many of the commissioners ended up looking like they were pressing to prove that Bush could have and should have prevented the 9/11 catastrophe—a theory the public doesn’t buy. In fact, most Americans tend to blame the rise of terrorism here on the eight-year Clinton administration. Bush, without having to say much, was able to play the political victim.

I'd only add that Rice was a big hit in her appearance.

Worse still, Dick Morris gave Bush the kiss of death, again. That's bad news for the Dems.

Murderers Burn in Hell

So Says Saudi Cleric

Of course, there are a few caveats:

Saudi Arabia's top cleric said on Thursday the people behind a suicide car bombing in Riyadh would "burn in hell" for killing innocent Muslims in the attack, which a militant group linked to al Qaeda said it carried out.

God has promised wrath, damnation, painful torture and an eternity burning in hell for he who deliberately kills a Muslim... Unjustly killing a Muslim is the gravest crime which cannot be atoned," said the kingdom's highest religious authority, Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdulaziz bin Abdullah al-Sheikh.

I tell all Muslims that this act is a sin, it is one of the greatest sins," he said in a statement. "Aiding, calling for, or facilitating the murder of a Muslim is tantamount to involvement in murder and all who do so will be thrown by God into the flames of hell, for so dear is the sanctity of Muslim blood.

That's better than nothing I suppose but what about others? Like Christians, Buddists, atheists, and other infidels. Does Allah and the Koran care about the murder of these people?
I submit that He in fact does care. Murder is wrong regardless of the victim's religious beliefs.
Maybe one day these Muslim clerics will get the message that the rest of the world feels strongly about murder, especially when they are the victims of it, and tell their people that they will "burn in hell" for committing murder, perverting their religion to suit their own plans, and for attempting to shape world societies into the perversion they have conjured up. Yeah, maybe one day. But that day will only come when the rest of the world stands firm in the face of terrorism and fights it with a will that cannot be defeated. Then, when the Muslim world feels the pain that has been brought to them because of those who commit the murder of innocents, attitudes will change. Those changing attitudes will suffocate the current Muslim societies that turn a blind eye to the atrocities being committed in the name of their religion. This will cause an awakening that will give rise to an attitude change. You know, address the root cause of terrorism.

Wed Apr 21, 2004

Wine Again

In cans, no less

So I saw this Aussie Wine called "Aussie Wine" in an aluminum four pack and bought the Chardonnay flavor. I at least had the good taste to pour it into a glass before quaffing. It wasn't corked and stood up pretty well against the Black Box Napa Valley Chardonnay squirted out of a plastic bag. I won't need to foist this on the brother-in-law.

The British oasis of calm in Basra blows up

The enemy strategy is clearer, now

There is a lot of hand-wringing and second-guessing going on about the situation in Iraq. It seems like the war is just beginning with violence breaking out all over the country. Some on the Right are starting to call for more troops and criticizing Rumsfeld for a failed post-war strategy. The Left is having a field-day bashing Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld with Haliburton thrown in for good measure. Despite that, Bush is hanging firm on the date for the hand-over of sovereignty. Why he would involve the cowardly, corrupt and hopelessly compromised United Nations in the process is beyond me, unless it is Rovian triangulation designed to weaken Kerry. Be that as it may, the transfer of power to Iraqis will take place on time.

The enemy is desperate to stop that from happening. When an Iraqi government takes over, backed by American military power, the enemy will have lost their only chance to win back Iraq. Their strategy borrows from the Communist strategy that worked so well in Vietnam: win the hearts and minds of the US electorate and victory will be yours. Heck, they even had John Kerry on their side, spouting Communist propaganda before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The attacks in Iraq have been designed to have maximum political impact in the US during a tight election campaign. The idea is to inflict lots of casualties on the US, and provoke US responses that lead to a lot of civilian casualties. They want the Western and Arab media to convince the world that the US position is precarious and getting worse. To that end they have thrown everything they can into each battle and lost big time, more often than not. The enemy is also deliberately targeting coalition partners in an attempt to split the coalition apart. That strategy has had some success, with Spain, the Dominican Republic and Honduras pulling out, Thailand wavering and Portugal wondering. Each withdrawal supposedly weakens US resolve. The Iraqi police and fledgling army have been infiltrated or attacked to push them out of the picture. That has also been part of the plan of attack.

Just who is the enemy? I'd say it is the terrorist sponsoring states of Iran and Syria and their supporters in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the rest of the Muslim world. They are using Baathist hold-outs, an international collection of Jihadists, and Shi'ite militia to do the dirty work. The attacks of the past few weeks have been co-ordinated and sequenced, indicating an overall strategy.

Will the enemy succeed? Let's put it this way. If Al Gore or John Kerry was Commander-in-Chief, they could. But the Bush team understands what the enemy is trying to do. The Marines and US Army have bottled up the major threats in Fallujah and Najaf, acting firmly enough to restore control, without using so much force that they cause civilian casualties or destroy holy sites. The US will hand sovereignty back to Iraqis to defuse the claim that America's ambitions are imperial. They will also continue hunting down the terrorists who are infiltrating Iraq, while building the case, and the base, for the next stage of the war on terror. By fall the horrors of the past few weeks will have receded into history.

Next up: Saddam's trial

For more analysis, check Belmont Club, Christopher Hitchens and Hoystory.

Tue Apr 20, 2004

Time for some running propaganda

With all these lawyers lining up to sue the Fat Food industry, it's time to face simple facts

If you consume more calories than you burn, you get fat.

Here's how I got on the right side of that equation.

Some people are genetically disposed to get fatter faster than other people, but that's the way the cookie crumbles. Whatever, when the pounds start creeping up on you, you need to find ways to consume fewer calories and/or burn more.

In my youth I found that smoking two packs of cigarettes a day reduced my propensity to consume calories. I stayed thin, but gray-skinned and out of breath most of the time. But I knew I was slowly committing suicide. At age 34 I quit for the 100th time and succeeded. My weight shot up from 160 to 215. This was not good. But I rested on my "gave-up-smoking" laurels for 17 years. I had a stress test and scored way below average. This too was not good.

My dear wife regularly bikes on an exercise bike, doing 45 minute sessions 4 days a week. She wanted me to do something similar. After extended negotiations, I agreed to walk 20 minutes on a treadmill 4 times a week. I was 52 and I knew I was running out of time to get my body in shape. So I started doing this treadmill routine, and it was boring, so I added in short jogging intervals (or should I say bouncing, since so much of me was bouncing around). Within a few months I could actually jog for 20 minutes continuously. At that point I bought some running shoes and started jogging outside.

That went OK for a while until I started to experience knee pain. I tried to run through it. Soon, I could barely walk. I'd come so far, and now I was back to square one. So I resolved to walk my running routes for a while, and eventually I found I could run again. This was amazing; not that I could, but that I wanted to.

So I got back into a running routine, doing about 3 miles 4 or 5 times a week. Then I saw a TV advertisement for a 5km race that showed ordinary looking people schlepping along and I thought, hey, I can actually do this, now. So I entered the race, full of trepidation, being so old and all, and had a blast. I wasn't last and I actually finished 4th in my age group. I also had huge blood stains on my cotton t-shirt. I thought I'd pinned my race number to my nipples; the problem was abrasion. Real male runners know that simple spot band-aids placed over the nipples solve the problem. Real female runners buy good sports bras.

That 5Km race hooked me. This was actually fun and you didn't have to worry about winning or losing. Doing it was enough. I saw people in worse shape than me finishing long after me, and I felt proud of them for getting out there and doing it.
Read more »

Wine Drinkers Revolt

We drink as we think

Our neighborhood supermarket has made great strides in its wine department; so much so that we have stopped buying wine online. The manager knows us as regulars and even passes off some of his trade samples to us. Recently, he tried to interest us in some French wines. "No way", I said. "Besides poor price performance compared to New World wines, they're French and we don't drink French wines, drive French cars, eat French cheese or watch French movies". "Oh", says Mr. Manager, "you looked like John Kerry supporters". "Never in a million years", said we, in unison.

But we had been picking up some rather nice, cheap Spanish reds that went well with hearty pasta dishes. Not any more. Not since Zap the Sap went all wobbly on us. We may try out some Portuguese wines while they last (note the deliberate ambiguity) and we definitely need to up our Italian wine consumption.

Australian wines are big in our house. The Spanish el cheapos have given way to d'Arenberg's "The Jump Stump" Grenache, Shiraz, Mourvedre blend. Jacobs Creeks reds and whites offer good price performance and their sparkling Pinot Noir provides champagne performance at Asti Spumante prices.

On the domestic front we get through a lot of Camelot chardonnay. It's made by Kendall Jackson and they put a plastic cork in the bottle. Never had a bad bottle. Ditto for the Two Tone screwtop wines. I reckon we run close to 10% spoilage on natural corks. Sometimes they are not so bad that we can't pass them off on the brother-in-law or use them in cooking, but mostly they are just bad.

It's a pity the Brits don't have much of a wine industry. They were competitive with the French during the Medieval Warming Period about 800 years ago, so there's hope for them yet; that's assuming the current slight warming trend doesn't collide with an overdue ice age. Eiswein, anyone?

Is it fair to boycott a country's products because you don't like their politics? When it comes to the war, I'd say yes. French agricultural producers, including wine makers, are a powerful political force in France. If their sales plummet because Americans stop buying French products then the French elite will start to take notice. Woody Allen ads won't woo us back. 100% support in the current world war will.

Is Bush going wobbly on Iraq?

The signs don't look good

The WSJ Opinion Journal doesn't much like the idea of U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi being given control over the transition to Iraqi rule. Ceding control to a U.N. bureaucrat is bad enough, but then I read that:

In Iraq Mr. Brahimi is being assigned the role of de facto Douglas MacArthur.

This includes assailing U.S. military commanders for their tactics in the middle of a battle zone. As Marines fought house-to-house in Fallujah last week, Mr. Brahimi took to the Arab airwaves to declare that "Collective punishments are not acceptable--cannot be acceptable, and to cordon off and besiege a city is not acceptable."

Whose side is Mr. Brahimi on? Fallujah is the base of the Baathist insurgents and foreign fighters who are killing Americans. Only this weekend, insurgents who had fanned out from Ramadi and Fallujah ambushed and killed 10 Marines near the Syria border. Unless Fallujah is cleared out as a terror sanctuary, many more Americans will be ambushed and no Iraqi government will be safe.

The one-sided "cease-fire" in that city, along with Mr. Brahimi's comments, have already sent a signal of weakness that will only embolden our enemies. The fastest way for Mr. Bush to lose support at home would be if Americans see their soldiers restrained from doing what it takes to win by U.N. statements or political control. That's when his own base begins to walk.

Any more of this sort of pandering to the U.N. and the Democrats will certainly get the base walking. Moreover, the pro-war Democrats are going to have even less reason to vote Bush if he goes soft while Kerry hardens his position.

Moreover, the administration has taken no advantage of the U.N. Oil for Food scandal. Every time Kerry talked about bring the U.N. and our erstwhile allies into Iraq, the administration could have pointed to a criminal enterprise that enriched U.N. bureaucrats, European officials and Saddam Husein while the Iraqi people suffered.

Bush junior should understand better than anyone that going wobbly on Iraq will be fatal to his administration and an abdication of his responsibility in the War on Terror. His father's wobbling got us into this mess in the first place.

Mon Apr 19, 2004

UN Peacekeepers in shoot-out among themselves

And John Kerry still wants to hand Iraq over to UN control?

Reuters reports on a firefight between Jordanian and Western UN peacekeepers in Kosovo.

KOSOVSKA MITROVICA, Serbia and Montenegro, April 17 (Reuters) - Two Americans and a Jordanian have been killed after violent emotions over Iraq boiled over into a shootout between members of the U.N. law enforcement mission in Kosovo.

U.N. police spokesman Neeraj Singh said three police officers -- two American and one Jordanian -- were killed and 11 others wounded.

Unconfirmed reports spoke of up to five dead and 14 wounded in a 10-minute exchange of fire on Saturday at the U.N. compound in the ethnically divided city of Mitrovica -- usually the scene of peace-making interventions by U.N. police and NATO troops.

The deputy head of the Serb hospital in Mitrovica, Milan Ivanovic, said one of the dead was an American woman, hit along with four female U.S. colleagues.

Hat-tip Adam Yoshida

Kerry wants more countries involved in Iraq's stabilization

Names, we want names.

Florida TV station WPBF reports that:

Speaking at the North Palm Beach fund-raiser, Democrat John Kerry criticized President George W. Bush's ability to build international relations, and said he wants more countries involved in Iraq's stabilization.

Kerry told the breakfast crowd that every president of the 20th century did a better job than Bush on international relations.

Take the first Gulf War, for example. Bush I built an impressive coalition, but he paid a price. Coalition members vetoed the destruction of Saddam's regime as an objective. Once Saddam's army was ejected from Kuwait, the war had ended. The first Bush administration hoped that the defeat of Saddam would lead to his overthrow. After fomenting rebellion, the administration stood by while Saddam crushed the uprisings with his usual murderous efficiency. Feel-good international relations turned out to be bad policy.

The failure to finish off Saddam back then had a number of consequences. The Iraqi people suffered horribly and they can be forgiven for being suspicious about American motives today. The US was forced to station troops in Saudi Arabia, adding fuel to the radical Islamic fires being stoked up by Bin Ladin. Saddam financed terrorist activities in the Palestinian territories, and elsewhere. The Muslim world saw Saddam's survival as a sign of American weakness.

Once again, Kerry should be asked to name names. Which countries does he want involved in Iraq's stabilization? France? Russia? Iran? China? Vietnam? The American people need to know which countries Kerry thinks will help in Iraq.

Sun Apr 18, 2004

Jamie Gorelick leaps to her own defense

And trips on the "Wall"

In yet another indication of how politicized the 9/11 Commission has become, Jamie Gorelick has an op-ed in the Washington Post defending her declassified memo and her position on the 9/11 Commission. About all she demonstrates is her skill as a lawyer and political obfuscater of the highest rank.

Her opening paragraph is self-congratulatory and self-serving. She claims:

the commission has acted with professionalism and skill.

This statement is contradicted by the behavior of Bob Kerrey, Richard Ben-Viste and herself in their interrogation on Condoleeza Rice. That was a disgraceful display of disrespect for her office, the office of the President and the precedent set by her appearance.

The claims that:

First, I did not invent the "wall," which is not a wall but a set of procedures implementing a 1978 statute (the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA) and federal court decisions interpreting it.

In her own memo she writes:

That AUSA[Assistant US Attorney] will continue to be "walled-off" from participation in the on-going criminal investigations and cases will continue to abide by all FISA dissemination provisions and guidelines.

She may be able to deny "inventing" the wall, but she certainly was not only implementing it, but making it higher. She also uses the trick of semantic deflection; the procedures effectively constitute a wall by preventing communication between respective criminal investigation and intelligence efforts. She uses the phrase "walled-of" in her own memo.

She then tries to shift the blame onto Reagan and Bush I.

Second, according to the FISA Court of Review, it was the justice departments under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush in the 1980s that began to read the statute as limiting the department's ability to obtain FISA orders if it intended to bring a criminal prosecution.

Unfortunately for her argument, she fails to mention that her memo was written in 1995, after both those Presidents were out of office and after the first major terrorist attack on US soil, the WTC bombing. After that, it should have become easier to investigate terrorism. She helped make it harder.

Read more »

Gorelick then brings her old boss into the picture.

Then, in July 1995, Attorney General Janet Reno issued written guidelines that spelled out the steps FBI intelligence agents and criminal investigators and prosecutors needed to follow when sharing information. The point was to preserve the ability of prosecutors to use information collected by intelligence agents.

Unfortunately, Gorelick does not tell us what those guidelines were. Obviously, there was a material change in the practical restrictions that came into being under Reno. Whether it was an extension of Bush-Reagan directives, or whether under Reno it was reinterpreted more narrowly, or whether Reno actually amended the directives or law to prevent more communication might be clarified by the memo. We do know that the much maligned Patriot Act overturned the Reno guidelines.

Heather Mac Donald gives us some clues as to the impact of the Reno guidelines:

But absurdity is no bar to realization in the airless world of civil libertarian absolutism. To prevent the wholly fantastical abuse of FISA power by criminal investigators and prosecutors, a set of inhibitions gradually developed to regulate contacts among FBI agents who were gathering intelligence under a FISA order, FBI agents who may be investigating an already committed terrorist crime, and federal prosecutors.

Those inhibitions reached their peak destructiveness with Attorney General Reno’s “Procedures for Contacts Between the FBI and the Criminal Division Concerning Foreign Intelligence and Foreign Counterintelligence Investigations,” issued in July 1995. Immediately dubbed “the Wall,” the 1995 guidelines erected a mind-boggling and ultimately lethal set of impediments to cooperation among all relevant anti-terrorist personnel.

The practical effect? “We absolutely were unable to check people out,” reports James Kallstrom, former head of the FBI’s New York office, in anger. “How can you have a proactive agency that protects citizens, if, in order to even start an investigation, you have to show that someone is a member of a known terrorist organization, with the wherewithal to carry out an attack and the intention to do so?”

When Gorelick claims:

The point was to preserve the ability of prosecutors to use information collected by intelligence agents.

she is hiding behind a gratuitous statement. She is claiming it is intended to protect what prosecutors can use, when in actuality, all it does is limit what they can use under the guise of
preserving their use of it, and of course this says nothing about information going in the other direction.
Gorelick writes:

Fourth, the memo I wrote in March 1995 -- which concerns
information-sharing in two particular cases, including the original World Trade Center bombing -- permits freer coordination between intelligence and criminal investigators than was subsequently permitted by the 1995 guidelines or the 2001 Thompson memo.

When she writes "concerns information sharing" she actually means restricting information-sharing. She goes on to claim:

The purpose of my memo was to resolve a problem presented to me: facilitating investigations on both the intelligence side and criminal side at the same time.

The word "facilitating" is also misleading. She is clarifying and re-stating the restrictions, and for all we know (having not seen either Reno or the original language of the law/directive), de-facilitating the sharing of information. Continuing, she write:

My memo directed agents on both sides to share information -- and, in particular, directed one agent to work on both the criminal and intelligence investigations -- to ensure the flow of information "over the wall."

This is wonderful. She admits there was a wall, and unless she is encouraging agents to flout the law, she is resorting to semantic nonsense -- the wall was there, she acknowledged the impediment and excuses her explicit re-statement of the bricks in the wall by directing agents to shout loud enough to be heard over the wall? This makes no sense.

She goes on:

We set up special procedures because of the extraordinary circumstances and the necessity to prevent a court from throwing out any conviction in those cases.

The impact was worse; she and her boss hamstrung the whole system. You can't jump walls when you're hamstrung.

Judicious Search

Asinine Stats

Most Popular Entries

Archives

Syndicate RSS

News Links

Contact Form

Your Email

Subject

Message