Judicious Asininity

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Fri Sep 30, 2005

Jeb Bush leads where George Bush should have gone

He clearly explains the role of local, state and federal agencies in disaster response

The WPO published an op-ed by Jeb Bush that explains how these things should work:

Before Congress considers a larger, direct federal role, it needs to hold communities and states accountable for properly preparing for the inevitable storms to come.

So, why didn't the Senate Finance Committee hold Governor Blanco accountable?

Bush (Jeb) gives credit to Craig Fugate, the Florida equivalent of Louisiana's Major General Bennett C. Landreneau. Funny how Republicans seem to be better than Democrats at doing the job they're elected to do.

Thu Sep 29, 2005

Turkey's EU bid is dead

Europe slowly awakes to the threat posed by Radical Islam

Much of the difficulty in Iraq can be traced to the refusal of the Turks to allow the US to mount military operations against Saddam from Turkey. The consequence is that the Sunni triangle was never exposed to the full force of the US military. The Baathists who are supporting the insurgency were able to lay low during the military phase of the liberation of Iraq. Saddam's military elite was able to execute a pre-planned insurgency after the fall of Bhagdad.

The Turkish refusal was a consequence of their shift to Islamist parties in their last election. The newly elected Islamists thought they could stop the US liberation of Iraq. Me, I'd have said, you're out of NATO, out of aid, out of trade, and you're one step away from being classified with Iran and Syria. The Europeans have lots of reasons to view the Turks with deep suspicion. They have not come clean on the mass murder of a million Armenian Christians. The denial of the Armenian genocide is not helpful to their cause, pariticularly in a post 9/11/Bali/Madrid/London world.

Europe's elites won't say it directly, but they don't want an Islamic nation inside Europe.

Miller's Out

What did Fitzgerald get out of this deal?

Speak of the devil, I post on this today, and Miller makes a deal. I suspect that Miller realized that her "sacrifice" wasn't going to do her cause much good. They want to protect their anonymous sources but it turns out their sources are the likes of Karl Rove and Lewis Libby. The media needs input from people-in-power and the people-in-power need the media to drive the news cycle. It's a vicious circle that put Miller between a rock and a hard place (sorry, couldn't resist the mixed metaphors). What happens if the people-in-power stop leaking to the likes of Miller? Miller loses her most vital resource. So does every other Beltway journalist.

So what did Fitzgerald get from Miller? Dunno, but check out Just One Minute for an update. Check the comments, too.

Plame update

Katrina and Rita pushed the Plame kerfuffle into the background

The Fitzgerald inquiry into the alleged outing of Plame's undercover status is drawing to a close. slc library boy asks why the NYT is ignoring the story even though one of its reporters is still in jail for refusing to testify. He focuses on her plight:

But Calame [the NYT public editor] has not yet written a single word about a most public Fourth Estate showdown between Miller -- serving time in jail for contempt of court in the Valerie Plame investigation -- and special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald.In fact, it is obvious that the leaders of the Times have made a decision not to order hard reporting on Miller's involvement in the Plame affair even when there are important new developments. This journalistic void -- in the midst of widespread suspicion that Miller's refusal to testify before a grand jury may reflect a fear of incriminating herself rather than simply betraying a source -- is in stark contrast to the editorial page's unceasing calls for her release.

mong other interesting news items the NYT has ignored.
...
It is striking that important information that has appeared elsewhere, including certain details about Miller's meeting with Vice President Cheney's chief of staff -- which is now widely believed to be prosecutor Fitzgerald's main focus -- and John Bolton's visit to her in jail, have still not been reported in The New York Times.I think the key to understanding what's going on is to ask why Miller chose to go to jail. Maybe she was the original leaker?

Wed Sep 28, 2005

The Bush Administration is hopeless at defending its position

And it's paying the price

If Karl Rove was the evil genius the Democrats believe him to be, Bush could have crucified Mayor Nagin and Governor Blanco. Instead, Bush got crucified. Worse, he fired Michael Brown, the man who could have done the nailing.

On Cindy Sheehan, all Bush had to say was that he had met her, and that her son Casey believed in Operation Iraqi Freedom and had re-deployed to Iraq. He volunteered for the mission that resulted in his death. The NYT hit Bush with dozens of frontpage stories on St. Cindy, repeating its Abu Ghraib strategy. That could have been stomped on. Didn't happen.

Memo to Bush: Al-Sadr was responsible for Casey Sheehan's death. Why, in the name of God, is that POS still alive? (POS stands for Piece Of Shi'ite). That guy, all by himself, gives you justification for taking punitive action against his masters in Iran.

Bush screwed up big-time

Sacking Brown was stupid

Brown's performance on C-Span shows that the man has been defamed by the media and let down by his boss.

Powerline agrees.

Tue Sep 27, 2005

A gentle reminder for Congressman Rangel

Theophilus Eugene “Bull” Connor was a loyal Democrat

Political Musings picks up this minor detail that Rangel forgot. From Wikipedia:

Theophilus Eugene “Bull” Connor (11 July 1897 â€“ 10 March 1973) was a police official in the Southern United States during the American Civil Rights Movement and a staunch advocate of racial segregation. He was a Democrat and a delegate to the 1948 Democratic National Convention

I seem to recall that LBJ's Civil Rights legislation only passed because Republicans supported it. Southern Democrats didn't. Here are the facts:

The civil-rights bill of 1964 was enacted with strong bipartisan and bi-ideological (conservative and liberal) support. But, the credit for the civil-rights victory has gone almost exclusively to liberals and Democrats, particularly to Senator Hubert Humphrey (D, Minn.) in Congress, and to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. However, much of the hard work of advancing the legislation was done by congressional Republicans — conservative stalwarts including Everett McKinley Dirksen of Illinois, Charles Halleck of Indiana, William McCulloch of Ohio, Robert Griffin of Michigan, Robert Taft Jr. of Ohio, Clarence Brown of Ohio, Roman Hruska of Nebraska, and moderates such as Thomas Kuchel of California, Kenneth Keating of New York, and Clark MacGregor of Minnesota. All of these Republicans served as major leaders of the pro-civil-rights coalition either as floor managers or captains for different sections of the bill.

Although the Democrats controlled both houses of the Congress at the time, a much-higher percentage of Republicans than Democrats supported the civil-rights bill. For example, in the House, Republicans voted for civil rights by a margin of 79 percent to 21 percent, 136-35. The Democrats' margin was 153-91 or 63 percent to 37 percent.

Why your steak is underdone

Very simple economics

One person's rare is another person's medium rare. Since there is no universal standard of doneness for steak, nobody quite knows when the steak is done. If the restaurant undershoots, it can correct the problem with a little more cooking. If it overshoots, it has to find another steak.

I find the best thing to do is to take the steaks off the grill before they reach the desired state. They cook a bit before you serve them. Miss that extra bit of cooking and rare goes medium-rare, medium-rare goes medium, and so on.

This out of character post must relate to the steak we just had for dinner.

A quiet chuckle

Evolution and March of the Penguins

Best of the Web (9/26/05) , discussing "March of the Penguins" notes that:

It strikes us, though, that if there's a message here it is in favor of natural selection and against "intelligent design." Penguins' means of living and reproducing involves repeated, sexually segregated 70-mile treks through unimaginably bitter cold to get food. Those monogamous penguin couples hardly get to see each other, and when they are together, they spend much of their time trying to transfer the egg from female to male, a clumsy maneuver that can easily yield a frozen embryo. Whichever parent is tending to the chick at any given time is starving to death while the other one is off at sea.

Granted, it all seems to work somehow--but if this is intelligent design, the designer is Rube Goldberg.

When you think about it, human reproduction isn't much better. The journey from pre-conception to birth is long and arduous. Getting the humans together is pretty complicated because of our multitudinous social structures. Western cultures seem to have stuck a wedge in the biological clock.

The Kerry campaign provides a relevant metaphor:

It doesn't sound as though the Kerry campaign provides much evidence of intelligent design either.

Mon Sep 26, 2005

The Red Cross and Accountability

Where are the millions of dollars ending up?

Lucianne.com linked to this expose of the Red Cross Money Pit :

The national Red Cross reports it spent $111 million last year on fundraising alone. And it's hard to escape the organization's warning of Armageddon if you don't call in a credit card number or send a check or donate blood (which it resells to the tune of more than $1.5 billion annually, part of its $3 billion in income).
...
Its fundraising vastly outruns its programs because it does very little or nothing to rescue survivors, provide direct medical care or rebuild houses. After 9/11, the Red Cross collected more than $1 billion, a record in philanthropic fundraising after a disaster. But the Red Cross could do little more than trace missing people, help a handful of people in shelters and provide food to firefighters, police, paramedics and evacuation crews during that catastrophe.

The Red Cross's charter of 1905

required the Red Cross to submit an annual report "of its proceedings for the preceding year, including a full, complete, and itemized report of receipts and expenditures of whatever kind" to the Secretary of War for audit by the War Department and subsequent submission to Congress.

Amendments to the 1905 charter include one that:

created a board of nine trustees, elected by the Incorporators, to manage and control the Red Cross Endowment Fund.

Does any reader know how to find out how much is in that endowment fund today?

...The fifth amendment, passed by Congress on May 8, 1947, represented a major change in the structure of the Red Cross. Reflecting the wishes of chapters to increase their influence and following the recommendations of an internal committee that reviewed the governance of the Red Cross, the 1947 amendment did away with both the Central Committee and the Board of Incorporators. In their place, a 50-member Board of Governors was created. Eight members were to be appointed by the president of the United States, including one to serve as board president and principal officer of the corporation. The remaining presidential appointees were to be officials of the federal government "whose positions and interests are such as to qualify them to contribute toward the accomplishment of Red Cross programs and objectives." Thirty governors were to be elected for three-year terms by the chapters, one-third being elected each year at the corporation's annual meeting, designated as the national convention. The twelve remaining governors were to be elected by the Board of Governors for three-year terms as members-at-large. An executive committee was also created, consisting of not less than eleven Governors, to exercise the powers of the Board when it was not in session.

The governance of the Red Cross continues to operate basically as constituted in 1947 although there have been a few subsequent changes.
...
The seventh amendment (July 17, 1953) updated language in reference to the military ("War Department" became "Department of Defense," "Secretary of War" was changed to "Secretary of Defense," and "Army and Navy" became "Armed Forces").
The eighth amendment (August 12, 1998) was a recodification of the charter and ... made no substantive changes although it added a provision that consolidated a series of laws concerning federal ownership and Red Cross use and maintenance of the buildings and grounds on Red Cross Square.

In other words, The Red Cross remains accountable to the Secretary of Defense, is ostensibly audited by the Dept. of Defense, which then submits the results to Congress.

The Red Cross should be held accountable for every single penny contributed, particularly for the post-9/11 and post-Katrina relief efforts. Surely a full accounting and audit can be demanded at the federal level. If resources have been misused, as Richard M. Walden charges, perhaps one thing that the President, his Secretary of Defense, and Congress could do is amend the charter so that funds contributed to the Red Cross in time of emergency do not end up in discretionary "national disaster accounts" but are directed instead - in their entirety - to organizations that rebuild, i.e., the community foundations and rebuilding agencies Walden referred to.

The Brits have problems in Basra

It's way past time to deal with al-Sadr and his al-Mahdi Army

The British prided themselves on how their tactics had spared them from the insurgency that rages in the Sunni triangle. The pride was misplaced. The late Steve Vincent identified the underlying problems in a post dated 7/2/05:

As I've written , the fact that many, if not most, of Basra's constabulary harbors primary loyalties to the city's religious parties is--as you might imagine--a serious problem. To the despair of many secular-minded residents, the British are doing a cracker-jack job of teaching Iraqi police cadets close-order drills, proper arrest techniques and pistol marksmanship, without, however, including basic training in democratic principles and a sense of public duty. As a result, our Anglo allies may be handing the religious parties spiffy new myrmidons to augment their already well-armed militias. Worse, the knowledge that a cop's sympathies may lie more with the Badr Organization than the Basran citizenry erodes general trust in the police. "If someone, say, stole my car, I wouldn't go to the police to get it back," an Iraqi journalist told me. "I'd negotiate directly with the thieves."

The London Times reported that two SAS soldiers were arrested by Iraqi police and had to be rescued by British forces:

They had been in Basra for seven weeks on an operation prompted by intelligence that a new type of roadside bomb which has been used against British troops was among weapons being smuggled over the Iranian border.

The bombs, designed to pierce the armour beneath coalition vehicles, are similar to ones supplied by Iran to Hezbollah, the Islamic militant group.

Pretty obviously, the Iraqi police force in Basra owes its loyalty to al-Sadr and his Iranian masters; not the new Iraq. The British have woken up to that fact and are now preparing to rebuild the security forces from scratch, according to this Scotsman report:

DEFENCE Secretary John Reid is planning to scrap the 25,000-strong police force in southern Iraq and replace it with a new military-style unit capable of maintaining law and order.

Reid ordered a root-and-branch review of security in the troubled province following last week's disastrous clashes between British troops and Iraqi police.

The Iraqi government could do its liberators a favor by executing the outstanding arrest warrant on al-Sadr. He certainly deserves to be arrested, given his rap sheet:

The al-Sadr group has drawn charges of involvement in attacks and intimidation in Al-Najaf that have highlighted political differences among Shi'a political organizations. The most notable of those attacks was a mob killing of a pro-US cleric, Abd al-Majid al-Khoi, shortly after his return from exile in London in early April. Al-Khoi was himself the son of another extremely powerful former grand ayatollah, Abolqassem al-Khoi. Al-Khoi was murdered as he emerged from the city's Imam Ali Mosque in a gesture of reconciliation with the mosque's custodian, who was popularly considered to have collaborated with Hussein's regime. The custodian was killed along with al-Khoi and it is unclear whether al-Khoi was an assassination target or was struck down because he tried to defend the other man.

Immediately after al-Khoi's murder, supporters of al-Sadr surrounded the house of another grand ayatollah in Al-Najaf, Ali Sistani, in what was taken to be a gesture of intimidation. Sistani -- who has said that Shi'a leaders should limit themselves to religious questions and stay out of politics -- went into hiding and only re-emerged after tribesmen loyal to him raced to Al-Najaf.

Al-Sadr's group denied it had anything to do with the April 2003 attempt on the elder al-Hakim, and said Hussein loyalists were to blame. But in 2004, an Iraqi judge issued an arrest warrant for al-Sadr in connection with the killing of Ayatollah Abd al-Majid al-Khoi in 2003.

The continued toleration of al-Sadr's existence can only help the mad mullahs of Tehran in their war against democracy in Iraq.

Fri Sep 23, 2005

Another great self-inflicted wound for Radical Islam

Guess who they blame

Haaretz reports that:

The explosions were believed to have been set off when a pickup truck carrying masked militants and laden with weapons blew up. Palestinian security officials said the blast was apparently caused by the mishandling of explosives
...
The chip, they claimed, strengthened their claim that Israeli missiles targeted the vehicle. Sources in Hamas claimed that an Israeli drone flying over the area fired several missiles at the rally.

Maybe it wasn't such a good idea to turn a synagogue into a museum of terrorist weapons. Personally, I hope the day Hamas opens that museum is the day they learn what JDAM stands for. When it comes to Hamas or Islamic Jihad or Al Qaeda or Fatah, inflicted wounds are even better.

What motivates the MSM willingness to support Jihad?

Because their one-sided reporting is supporting the Jihadists

Belmont Club linked to a Time Magazine article by Michael Ware that would give the impression that the Battle of Tal-Afar was a loss for the US. We know from more reputable sources, such as Bill Roggio at The Fourth Rail that the Battle of Tal-Afar has dealt the enemy, primaryily foreigh Jihadists, a dreadful blow. I googled Michael Ware and found an Australian Broadcasting Corporation (an organization modelled on the BBC) interview with Michael Ware and posted it as a comment at Belmont Club. That generated another post by Belmont Club and a discussion of the media's role in this war. The money quote by Ware from the interview:

They [the enemy] were saying, "We can maintain this, we can, we have, we can sustain this longer than your political will will last. Before your people call you home." Again, that's a part of it now, they're saying, "We're here and we're not going away," and they want to say that to the West. They can tell Arabic channels this until the cows come home, but to have it coming through an American iconic publication like Time magazine, people will listen.

And look, the fact is it's true.

Belmont Club's commentators discuss the issue of media bias. Mr X asks:

I'm not American, so forgive me if I make a stupid comment...
I mean, this journalist guy KNOWS that he is being used as a pawn, he knows that "the war will be won in the media"... and he plays KNOWINGLY for the other camp? For the Jihadis that want to destroy America?!?
I always thought, silly me, that the portrayal of terrorists as "insurgents" had more to do with political correctness or ignorance than plain bad faith... And the fact that there were so many terrorist atrocities shown instead of reconstruction news was due simply to the nature of television (death is more newsworthy than life).
But it baffles me that a person can be so articulate in understanding how the terrorists use the media, and still play their game...

sf provides the answer:

said...

Great observations from many.

Several commenters accused Ware (and by extension, similar members of the press) of being a willing tool. I think this is incorrect, and I believe we make a grave mistake if we fail to understand the true motives and motivation of people like Ware.

I think they truly believe that the U.S. is wrong to fight the WOT. To people who believe that, nothing is more important than righting the 'wrong' we've supposedly done.

People who have this worldview can easily overlook/disregard things like beheadings and driving car-bombs into crowds of civilians because they view such acts as insignificant compared to our own sins.

While it may be amusing to characterize journos as being too stupid to breathe (i.e. that they're dupes of the terrorists), such a characterization gravely underestimates their tenacity and dedication.

Yes, they also clearly hate Bush, but I'm pretty sure they see themselves as the true conscience of America. Scary stuff...!

The media and its left wing allies hate America so much they are willing to support any evil that is opposed to America. Had their views prevailed 65 years ago, the West coast would be speaking Japanese, the East coast German, and the American Jewish/Black/Indian/Slav problem would have been solved.

In my view, any journalist who consorts with terrorists and plugs their cause is a traitor and deserves the same fate as William Joyce, otherwise known as Lord Haw Haw. Their reporting is not neutral; it aids the enemy and encourages them to kill American soldiers and innocent civilians. The blood on their hands comes from the bodies of the children killed by Michael Moore's freedom fighters.

Thu Sep 22, 2005

Good faith negotiations versus hudna

Or, how do you negotiate with a terrorist?

There are many patriotic and decent American who believe we should negotiate with radical Islamic terrorists, rather than fight a military war against them. We should consider their list of grievances and modify our behavior to their satisfaction. In their view, a compromise agreement will bring a halt to war and the terrorists will modify their behavior in kind. The cycle of violence will stop.

The Weekly Standard reports a case in point:

After four long and bloody years of unresolved war, shouldn't America begin thinking about the possibility of an equitable diplomatic settlement with Osama bin Laden? Isn't it finally "Time to Talk to Al Qaeda?" So asks the headline on a Boston Globe op-ed piece published September 14. And so answers its author, Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou of Harvard University: Yes, he says. Let's make a deal.

(Hat tip: Power Line)

What kind of deal would this be? Is it possible to negotiate with someone who shares none of your core values, including basic trust and good faith compromise? The Koranic teachings themselves preclude Muslims from pursuing a negotiated peace, and recent reports from Iraq demonstrate not only the utter futility of such an approach, but also the inherent suicidal nature of it.

According to the Koranic teachings, it "is perfectly all right to make a treaty with an Infidel and then break it." This is the Islamic military tactic of hudna; the pious Muslim is instructed to lie, especially to the infidel (that would be us) and is further instructed to invoke the hudna when the battlefield chips are down. The hudna is merely a military tactic, a "temporary truce" (key word here is temporary) so that the terrorists can buy some time to re-arm and return stronger to destroy the enemy. You can read more about the hudna here.

So the teachings of Allah do not permit any good faith compromise with the infidels. The only thing Islam tolerates is submission to Allah, and in their world-view, that is non-negotiable.

Can Islamic terrorists be persuaded to live and let live, if we in the West will only meet their demands and modify our own wicked ways? Let's look at the mentality of the Islamic terrorist with whom the tolerant American would negotiate. From Col. McMaster's media briefing on Sept. 13, 2005 concerning the operation to destroy the safe haven near the Syrian border in Tall Afar:

The enemy here did just the most horrible things you can imagine, in one case murdering a child, placing a booby trap within the child's body and waiting for the parent to come recover the body of their child and exploding it to kill the parents.

Worse, this is not an isolated horror story, as this website reported.

Does anyone seriously think any American could be in a room with such persons and hope to "negotiate" anything, except perhaps to beg to leave their heads attached to their necks for a few more minutes? If a "hudna" were "negotiated" between the U.S. and its coalition partners on the one side, and Islamic terrorists on the other, just how long would it last?

Wed Sep 21, 2005

Who is going to get the credit for the timely Rita evacuations?

The local authorities and the state of Texas

Michelle Malkin has a great summary post on the precautions being taken as Rita approaches the Texas coast. She starts with a picture of a line of School Buses on a freeway evacuating people, followed by a shot of Mayor Nagin's drowned school buses.

In 1900, Galveston was devastated by a hurricane. More than 6000 people died. They know what a hurricane hit could do. The local authorities have been planning for the next category 4/5 hit for years.

Mississippi took the full brunt of Katrina. We don't read much about what happened there, but the local and state authorities were well prepared.

This brings us to New Orleans. The city and state failed to develop a workable evacuation plan and the poorest people in the city paid the price, while MSM, "stuck on stupid" assigned the blame to Bush.

I know this is a sick thought but it would be poetic justice if Rita hit New Orleans again. The damage has already been done, the people have been evacuated, and any thought of rebuilding the place below sea level, at great cost to the tax-payer, will be shelved.

THE MSM paints a false picture of the progress in Iraq

A well-read Colonel sets the record straight

LTC Tim Ryan, Commander of Task Force 2-12 Cavalry, First Cavalry Division in Iraq, writing in Frontpage Magazine takes the media to task for reporting the terrorists' acts of terrorism while ignoring the massive beating they have taken at the hands of coalition forces. I'm quoting nothing; go read his article.

(Hat Tip: Jim Miller)

Cox and Forkum have the pictorial version, although I doubt our intrepid MSM reporters would be brave enough to get so close to a US tank.

Dhimmitude Watch

Anglican Bishops want Christians to Apologize to Muslims for Iraq

Read this outrageous report from GOPUSA and weep for the state of Christianity in the West today.

I'd suggest the Bishops try apologizing to the families of the millions who died during Saddam's reign of terror. They could start in the Kurdish area of Northern Iraq or the Shi'ite strongholds in the South. Then there is the question of the wars that Saddam launched on Iran and Kuwait. I don't think they would be well received.

I haven't heard the same Bishops asking Muslims to apologize for their blatant attacks on Christians in Nigeria, in Sudan, in Indonesia and across the Arab world in general and in PLO territory in particular.

The mainstream protestant churches in Great Britain (Anglicans, Presbyterians) and their US brethren are actively supporting the enemy in the war on radical Islam. It is one thing to turn the other cheek; it is quite another to ignore the plight of your co-religionists and root for the enemy.

A friend of mine volunteered to fight against a 'terrorist' attack

The consequences could have been/may still be devastating

She is currently working with a large organization. Early this week a computer worm got into a workstation on the corporate network and spread itself through the entire network. It exploited a vulnerability for which Microsoft had recently issued a patch. The patch had not been applied in time. The network slowed down to a crawl and the routers crashed under the load as the worm spread itself over the nework. Computers were hijacked to do nothing but spread the worm.

The nature of the infection was such that it could not be cleaned up by pushing fixes out to work stations automatically. That meant every workstation had to be visted and cleaned in a time-consuming multi-step procedure. It took two days and nights to get on top of the problem. Although it was not her job, she joined one the teams that went out and cleaned work stations.

Almost everybody above the rank of janitor needs to use a computer to do their job. Imagine if the infection had hit a network of health care providers - clinics, hospitals and other facilities. Computer systems track things like what medications a patient is taking, when operations are scheduled, what operation is to be performed, test results, and so on. Without immediate access to that information, care-givers are flying blind and patients' lives are at risk.

Police departments, end emergency services departments could also have their effectiveness greatly reduced if a virus takes out their networks and communication systems. We've already seen in the response to Katrina what happens when communications fail; nobody knows what's going on and lives are lost.

While the hackers who create such malicious software are not usually thought of as terrorists, their actions are terrorism and the authorities should treat them as terrorists; the results can be the same.

Tue Sep 20, 2005

What the Left thinks about 2008

Hillary has a problem

Daily Kos has a poll asking readers to vote for their preferred presidential candidate. The results are here. The leaders are Wesley (moonbat) Clark, Russ (who is he?) Feingold , and John (foetus channeler) Edwards. Hillary finishes fourth.

She moves to the center; the angry left mobilizes against her; she moves to the left, and she has a heap of competition that already occupies that spot. Tough spot. I suspect she's the best the Dems can put up in 2008; but she has to get past her party.

BTW, my wife, a woman, is far more negative about Hillary than I am. Maybe she doesn't appreciate the significance of being named after the man who first climbed Mt. Everest, even though she was born some years before the event.

Mon Sep 19, 2005

Comments are back

You may now post comments

I added some code to try to filter out spam comments, one of the plagues that visits the internet.

Apparently, spammers have discovered that search engines go through blog comments. Post your spam as comments and the search engines waste resources indexing your crap. Then, if some moron searchs for "phentarine" or whatever the heck it is, they rank higher in the search engine rankings.

I got a bit too restrictive so nothing got past my filter. I was wondering why I wasn't getting any comments. Duh!

Clinton hits a new low

He had been doing a reasonable job as an ex-President; that's over

John at Powerline rips apart Clinton's gutless attack on the current President. All I can say is that Slick Willy has sunk to the bottom in my esteem. He's down there with Jimmy Carter.

But why should I be be surprised. He is a Democrat, after all.

Sun Sep 18, 2005

There were three elections this weekend

They all moved the world in Bush's direction

Afghanis went to the polls and the Taliban and Al Qaeda could not stop them. The results aren't out yet, but that hardly matters. The mere fact that Afghanistan can hold another free election is a victory in the War on radical Islam.

New Zealand went to the polls and the result is still in doubt. The leftist Labor party may yet be able to form a majority government, but they lost significant ground to the conservative National party. New Zealand is odd in that the two major parties sometimes switch sides in the political spectrum. In the 1970's, the National Party, under Robert Muldoon, bribed their way to power by offering a pay-as-you-go pension scheme that makes the US inter-generational Ponzi scheme (otherwise known as Social Security) look like Fort Knox. In the 1980s, the Labor Party was taken over by free marketers who privatized with Thatcherite relish. By the 1990s, the parties had resumed their usual positions on the political spectrum. Unfortunately, the New Zealanders had adopted the German-style MPP system electoral system that gives minor parties more power. So, the major parties can only govern by forming coalitions with minor parties and compromising to the point of impotence.

Germany also moved towards the conservative side. But the final outcome is still in doubt, thanks to the MPP system. The NYT report illustrates the problem with MPP systems:

But with the combined Green/Social Democrat vote less than 44 percent of the total, it was unclear how Mr. Schroeder thought he could get a majority in the Parliament.

One possibility was that Mr. Schroeder would attempt to lure the Free Democrats, who got a surprisingly high 9.8 percent of the vote, to drop their alliance with the Christian Democrats and join with the Social-Democrats and the Greens.

This would have the effect of keeping Mr. Schroeder in power, but it would bring into the same government an extremely unlikely ideological combination of Germany's most free-market, antitax party, the Free Democrats, with the traditional leftists of the Social Democrats..

Guido Westerwelle, the Free Democrat chairman, indicated in a statement on Sunday night that his party would not agree to a coalition with Mr. Schroeder.

Another possibility is that the new Linkspartei, an odd combination of defectors from the Social Democrats and former East German Communists, would join forces with Mr. Schroeder and the Greens, but Mr. Schroeder emphatically ruled out that idea during the campaign and in his statement on Sunday he said he was willing to talk to all parties, except the Linkspartei.

In summary, the left lost ground again. The MSM and Democrats baying for Bush's blood over Iraq and Katrina should take note. Firstly, Bush isn't running for office again. Secondly, the game is far from over, and Bush has shown an uncanny ability to rebound. Thirdly, Bush is going to win on Katrina and Iraq; he has the power and the will.

More competition for the NYT

The WSJ is now published on Saturdays

Got the first this Saturday. Nice to get on a day when I have more time to read dead trees. One wonders if this is a competitive move against the Old Grey Lady, which has become increasingly senile since 9/11. I'm putting my copy in an air-tight plastic bag for a while. I hope to see the day when I can do the same to the last edition of the NYT.

Akaka would create a splinter state in Hawaii

The divisive Akaka Bill should not pass

The MauiTime Weekly reported in its Sept. 1 issue that the

U.S. Senate is finally going to vote on the controversial Akaka Bill. On Sept. 6, 2005, the Senate will say yea or nay to a cloture motion that will force a vote on S.147, which seeks to establish an office in the Department of the Interior. This office would then select a committee to oversee the forming of a Native Hawaiian Governing Council. Then the Federal Government would recognize this entity as the representative governing body of the Native Hawaiian people, putting their best interests in the hands of the Department of the Interior. Sound rather bureaucratic? It is.

Hawai’i Democratic Senators Daniel Inouye and Daniel Akaka—the bill’s chief sponsor—as well as Republican Governor Linda Lingle all love the bill, but it faces significant opposition, mostly from conservative Republicans. Opponents like Senator Jon Kyl (R, Arizona) and talk radio host Rush Limbaugh like to paint the bill as pitting Hawaiian against haole. They insist the bill is blatantly racist and would lead to Hawaiian independence.

There's a compromise amendment to the "Akaka bill" that would, in Betsy's Page's words

establish Native Hawaiians as a separate tribe with separate voting privileges and rights within the state of Hawaii.

At a time in U.S. history when national unity has never been more necessary, this legislation can only be viewed with dismay. Passage of the amendment is surely a recognizable step toward the fragmentation of America, an American that was once a strong melting pot, but now is in the process of being weakened by those who promote a politically correct social "mosaic" and a multiculturalism that celebrates diversity over unity. No good can come of this. It can lead only to fragmentation.

The generations before us stood united to fight the wars that have given us our freedoms and the way of life we enjoy today. My own parents dropped what they were doing to fight World War II, my dad in the Navy (first wave on Utah Beach), my mom in the Red Cross, mostly in France. My husband's father fought in North Africa and Italy with the New Zealand army. We owe that generation our profound thanks for the gift of freedom, yet as a nation, we seem to be, at best, taking our freedoms for granted, or at worst, actively and willingly destroying the strong foundation on which they were built.

The U.S. cannot possibly confront the life-or-death threat posed by radical Islamic terrorists if its citizenry does not place allegiance to the American flag over allegiance to one's ethnicity. Google your senators and e-mail them. Urge them to vote AGAINST this destructive legislation.

Sat Sep 17, 2005

The War on Radical Islam a week after the anniversary of 9/11

Are we winning or losing?

I was starting to write a comment in response to this Wind of Changes essay by Dan Darling and it turned into an essay itself.

As Darling notes, there are diverse views of just what sort of an organization Al Qaeda is. My personal view is that Al Qaeda is similar to McDonalds. There is a head office organization that sets policy, develops products, and directly controls some outlets. Alongside that are franchisees that operate independently. Head Office has suffered some attrition in senior personnel, so it has scaled back on the number of outlets it directly controls. But their "9/11 special" was a huge hit with their customers and attracted a lot of new franchisees. They opened or expanded stores in Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Pakistan, Kashmir, Chechnya, Turkey, Jordan, Iraq, Egypt, Morocco, Spain and England. The franchisees are focused on their own territories while Head Office is still working out how to crush their biggest competitor.

There are a number of ways to attack and cripple an open society like the US, as Katrina showed. Look at the havoc that Al Qaeda wannabes, John Muhammad and Lee Malvo caused and the time it took to catch them. A few dozen trained snipers operating across the country and killing at random would cause immense disruption, even though the attacks themselves would have minimal military significance. How hard would it be to repeat mass transit attacks, such as those in London and Spain, on US soil? Why haven't we seen car bomb attacks? The biggest surprise is that, apart from a few wannabe attacks, US soil has not been hit since 9/11.

This may not be a good sign. Al Qaeda goes for symbolic targets and they take their time. The first WTC attack took place in 1993; the second 8 years later. The plan should have failed, but in 1990s America, enjoying the 'peace dividend' delivered by victory in the Cold War, no one in government was much concerned about a few rag-tag terrorist attacks; it was a law enforcement issue. Things would have been very different had the first attack succeeded in its intent; toppling one WTC tower onto the other -- figure 40,000 dead in an instant. Unfortunately, human instinct is to ignore the attacks that failed or were prevented and focus on those that succeeded. Thus, the fall guys for the WTC attack were prosecuted when the correct response would have been to react as if the plan had succeeded. That had to wait until 9/11.

There is little doubt that the FBI and intelligence services have thwarted attacks and rounded up many potential attackers. Most of these have been under the MSM radar, but when you start adding up the number of cells broken up, sympathizers prosecuted and bad guys deported, you will see that there is an ongoing war against radical Islam taking place on US soil. So far, the home front has held, even though vast resources have been wasted preventing a copy-cat 9/11 attack. After Flight 93 went down in Pennsylvania, it would have been obvious to Al Qaeda that they would never again be able to hijack aircraft and use them as missiles. That was why they planned simultaneous attacks in the first place - it was a "use-once" plan. I'm assuming that we have resources devoted to figuring out what other "big bang" attacks could be executed by an Al Qaeda cell and defending against them. It is probably a good sign that patients who have had radiation treatment are being detected and detained by law enforcement personnel. This NYT report begins:

In one case last spring, a man being treated for an overactive thyroid gland was stopped by the authorities on two occasions while at a subway stop at Pennsylvania Station. In another case about a month ago, a woman who had undergone a diagnostic heart study was stopped while trying to drive out of Manhattan through a tunnel.

So, we are guarding against a dirty bomb attack (comparatively easy to execute) or a nuclear attack (much harder for Al Qaeda). The attacks on London have probably improved our security, because the British have now realized that harboring Islamic radicals does not buy immunity, and they are working hard to break up cells just an airline ticket away from our shores -- remember Richard Reid.

Overseas, we have had some major successes, although you would never know it reading the MSM. The Taliban has been defeated, apart from some mopping up operations, and Afghanistan is no longer Al Qaeda's Head Office. We know we've won in Afghanistan because the MSM has stopped reporting any news from there.

Believe it or not, the war in Iraq is nearly over. Bill Roggio at The Fourth Rail has been reporting on the successes of the current operations in the Sunni triangle. Three points are noteworthy.

1. US casualties are way down and Al Qaeda casualties are way up. Moreover, the quality of Al Qaeda fighter has fallen. Belmont Club says:

US casualties to this point in September have been a third of those for the same month point in time as last year, despite the Tal-Afar offensive. One possible explanation is as Iraq the Model suggests, "the poor training of the new recruits" as the more experienced enemy fighters are killed off.

2. The Iraqis are due to vote on the new constitution, and this time the Sunnis will participate. The in-fighting between the Baathists and Al Qaeda shows that the Baathists no longer expect to be sharing the spoils of victory with their erstwhile allies. So, if they are going to survive in the new Iraq, they are going to have to compromise. Their ally was Al Qaeda, whereas the Shiites and Kurds have Bush with 3 years to go and nothing to lose. The propaganda value of a successful election this time around cannot be overcome by the MSM

3. Despite so many highly publicized attacks on Iraqi police and military personnel, the Iraqi forces in Iraq are now a force to be reckoned with. One is reminded of the scene in Jurassic Park II where Mr. Bad Guy ends up in the hold with Mrs. T-Rex and T-Rex junior. Instead of swallowing Mr. Bad Guy in one bite, Mrs T-Rex nudges junior towards Mr. Bad Guy to finish him off. If you can't figure out the analogy, you must be George Galloway. Junior is growing stronger every day, much to the dismay of the bad guys.

The Bush/Blair strategy of disrupting the Middle East appears to be working in the intended direction. The Iraq situation has steadily improved. Al Qaeda's strategy is now reduced to attacking school children and poor workers with car bombs manned by demented Saudi youths brainwashed by Wahhabi imams. That won't work, except in giving the NYT headlines. But people now understand that the NYT reports nothing but bad news from Iraq. Why else would the NYT put one day of bad behaviour by a bunch of undisciplined psychos on its front page for 32 consecutive days? (Memo to NYT: Nobody died that day).

It turns out that Al Qaeda's only strategy in Iraq is to get the NYT and its junior partner in Washington, the Washington Post, to convince America that Iraq is not worth the effort. This will not be a near run thing, despite the best efforts of Al Qaeda's media allies. Bush doesn't bend and time is clearly on his side.

We're winning despite the MSM traitors in our midst.

Fri Sep 16, 2005

Reutersgate?

That UN bathroom note looks a bit fishy

Here's Bush writing a quick note. It's obviously a quick, but personal response. But it's writing, not printing.

Now, back to the UN bathroom note, as presented by Little Green Footballs. That's printing. The guy has to go, but he does three pen strokes for each "I" instead of his efficient one stroke looped "I". Who would think Condi needs GW to print so she can understand what he's writing?

The note is a forgery designed to embarrass the President.

Update:

Seems it wasn't a forgery; just a gross invasion of the President's privacy.

The lost thought blog

It's late, you read something that would inspire a post, and then it's gone

So this post is empty, vacant, null, void, dead, depleted, useless, pointless and basically worthless. Sorry. I had it in my grasp and then it slithered away.

Update: I found it, click that "more" link: Read more »

This is the turning point in Iraq

The people and the enemy now believe that the Iraqi miltary is effective

Bill Roggio at the Fourth Rail analyzes the military operations in Anbar province. Key quote:

The pace and tempo of operations and negotiations have increased dramatically. The example of Tal Afar is forcing some Sunnis to reassess their position on supporting or turning a blind eye to the insurgency. The political pressure being exerted on Sunni leaders in Samarra would not be possible without the military pressure being applied by the Coalition. The involvement of the Iraqi Army crucial to this effort as it shows the fence-sitters that government has the capacity to apply their own force, and the political will to use it.

Combine this with the US military's assessment that Al Qaeda has basically exhausted its stock of trained fighters, and it becomes apparent that the US strategy in Iraq has been the right strategy, despite the MSM propaganda campaign on behalf of the enemy.

Thu Sep 15, 2005

What you'll never read in the New York Times

The truth about Iraq

Here's a DOD News Transcript the NYT will mis-quote or ignore. Read it all.

Blogs are great for analysis

Don't forget the comments - here's one from Belmont Club

I believe that American MSM has significantly affected public opinion of the war in Iraq. Reporting on the war is overwhelmingly negative. Even straight news reporting is accompanied by snide remarks from reporters. Still most Americans know that anything short of victory in Iraq is an American disaster. Victory is the establishment of a free and democratic Iraq capable of defending itself.

The media has a different definition of victory. To the MSM victory means no Iraqi disagrees with the current constitution, no Iraqi expresses dissatisfaction with the interim government, no Iraqi is involved in the terrorist insurgency, and no terrorist attacks are committed. This unrealistic measure of success is not one that should be used to gauge American effectiveness or lack thereof.

The terrorist insurgency is slowly, sometimes imperceptibly, being routed and crushed. One measure of the terrorist insurgency is its political status. The terrorist insurgency has lost the political struggle in Iraq. The terrorist insurgency wants to impose an authoritarian, nominally Islamic, political system dominated by the Sunni minority. If the terrorist insurgency was successful, there would be a clear split between former Bathists and Islamic fundamentalists leading to the suppression of the fundamentalists through overt force. A Sadamite government would reemerge with some new dictator.

Recent polls show the majority of Iraqis do not want to return to a Sadamite government. The majority of Iraqis want to vote for a representative type government. The majority of Iraqis want an open society consistent with Islamic and local customs. The majority of Iraqis are not sympathetic to terrorist/insurgent causes. The majority of Iraqis see a bright future in the near term.

Another measure of the terrorist insurgency is its effectiveness on the battlefield. The terrorist/insurgents cannot operate openly in most of Iraq. When they do local citizens quickly turn them in. This has resulted in a series of battles near the Syrian border. Each battle has been a military disaster for the insurgency culminating with Tal Afar. The U.S. military has not been attrited in any significant way. The IDF grows stronger, more mature, and more battle hardened by the day. In contrast, the insurgency grows weaker. There are a finite and limited number of Bathists willing to take up arms against the new government. There are a finite number of jihadis willing to come to Iraq and be killed or commit suicide, and surely traveling to Iraq as a jihadist can only be described as a suicide mission. The reaction of the insurgency to its recent defeat at Tal Afar is to commit suicide attacks against soft targets of opportunity. How can this be interpreted as a sign of strength?

Another measure of the terrorist insurgency is its financial situation. I have no information on which to judge this aspect of the struggle.

Based on available information the insurgency will be defeated.

The critical aspect of the battle now is American will. Because this is not a life and death struggle for America, out-of-power politicians have politicized the war. The media is a co-conspirator in that politicization more interested in defeating the current administration than the enemy in Iraq. If any aspect of the American effort is in question it is the will of the American people to succeed.

Wed Sep 14, 2005

Roberts versus the Senate

No contest

John Roberts is a class act. He is being grilled by members of the United States Senate Judiciary Committee, most of whom cannot hope to compete with him in an intellectual contest. It is not a pretty sight. Most of the Senators are making themselves look like village idiots, attempting to parade their profound knowledge, grandiose eloquence, and stupefying skills at grandstanding. Judge Roberts responds by listening and then answering in succinct and informed answers - without referring to notes. This Judge is, if anything, overqualified for the job.

But here is what disturbs me. The United States Senate is a respected body of the government, but the Judicial Committee is not acting in a respectful fashion. Members of the committee are parading their ignorance, sometimes rather rudely. Captain Ed rips Senator Biden's obnoxious performance to shreds. It goes without saying that they are no match for Judge Roberts's prodigious command of his field. He runs circles around them. Shame on the Senate. They are producing a sideshow, not a qualitative and dignified interview of a qualified nominee. We're supposed to be able to trust our elected representatives to oversee the process of confirmation with integrity and substance. Not happening here.

But here's something. I began to notice in the televised hearings. Judge Roberts shows some subtle signs of being bored to tears with all of this. He listens intently, but gets the gist of the question in a second, and then his eye contact occasionally darts off, and he strikes me as having to make an effort to maintain his ear and eye-contact with the panel of Grand Inquisitors. He continues to listen intently, probably does a split-second retrieval from his memory bank, takes another second to formulate his response, and by the time the windbag question is articulated 10 minutes later, responds eloquently. Anyone with a modicum of intellectual capacity knows what it's like to debate or defend a position when challenged by a second grader. If you are a teacher, you are trained to do that. If you are a nominee for the Supreme Court of the United States, you expect better from the Senate committee.

The ACLU is involved in a paradoxical enterprise

Eliminating theism from public life would establish atheism as a state religion

Confucianism is often viewed as one of the world's great religions. It certainly provides a moral fabric for its followers, just as Islam, Christianity, and Judaism do. But Confucianism does not involve a spiritual aspect where adherents believe in one or more supreme beings. According to this account:

Although Confucianism became the official ideology of the Chinese state, it has never existed as an established religion with a church and priesthood. Chinese scholars honored Confucius as a great teacher and sage but did not worship him as a personal god. Nor did Confucius himself ever claim divinity. Unlike Christian churches, the temples built to Confucius were not places in which organized community groups gathered to worship, but public edifices designed for annual ceremonies, especially on the philosopher's birthday. Several attempts to deify Confucius and to proselyte Confucianism failed because of the essentially secular nature of the philosophy.

Bhuddism is the fourth largest religion in the world. According to this comparison of Bhuddism and Christianity:

[Bhuddist's do not believe in] a transcendent or immanent or any other type of God, Gods, Goddess, and/or Goddesses.

So, it looks like, on precedent, you don't need to have a belief in God to have a religion. In fact, one could claim that Confucianism and Bhuddism are atheistic religions. And, if they are religions, then atheism itself is a relgion. In fact, some atheists organize themselves as Humanists with all the trappings of a religion. The site notes that:

During 2000-JUN, a federal court of appeals ruled that Humanism is a religion. Federal prisoner Ben Kalka attempted to form a humanism group as part of the Religious Services Department at a federal prison in Jesup, GA. He was refused when the Religious Issues Committee determined that Humanism was not a religion; it was "more philosophical and educational in nature." They decided that he could freely practice his humanism and could organize a group within the prison's Education Department. In 1998-SEP, a federal district court ruled that Humanism is a religion. But they decided that denying Kalka access to the prison chapel did not prevent him from practicing his humanist beliefs. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia agreed with the lower court. They agreed with the lower court that Humanism is a religion. However, they decided that "A reasonable official would not have believed that excluding Kalka's humanism from the prison's Religious Services Program was unlawful. There was neither precedent declaring humanism in general to be a religion nor any prior ruling on the religious nature of Kalka's beliefs." Thus, the prison officials were entitled to qualified immunity, and are not liable for civil rights violations.

So, if the ACLU succeeds in driving God out of public life, then it will have succeeded in establishing atheism as the official religion of the United States. That would seem to contravene modern intepretations of the Establishment clause of the First Amendment , that states "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof".

Every time a judge agrees with the ACLU and removes a theistic symbol from public life, they are taking a step towards establishing atheism as the state religion. I doubt that most Americans, including non-believers like myself, think that was what the First Congress intended or what the American people wants.

Tue Sep 13, 2005

Lets hope junior Assad is listening to Bush

He delivered a warning today that the MSM ignored

During the press conference with President Bush and President Talabani, Bush said:

And the Syrian leader must understand we take his lack of action seriously. And the government is going to become more and more isolated as a result of two things: one, not being cooperative with the Iraqi government, in terms of securing Iraq; and two, not being fully transparent about what they did in Lebanon.

I'm fairly certain Assad jnr. can figure out that shipping Al Qaeda terrorists into Iraq and assassinating al-Hariri does not please the liberator of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Who else was responsible for the mess in New Orleans?

Maybe it was Major General Bennett C. Landreneau, head of Louisiana's Department of Homeland Security.

D J Drummond at Stolen Thunder makes a good case that Landreneau was the official responsible for many of the failures in New Orleans. He concludes:

Mayor Nagin depended on Landreneau to move and feed and protect the citizens of New Orleans. That did not happen. Nagin depended on Landreneau to give people good answers on how to find shelter and food. That did not happen. Governor Blanco depended on Landreneau to keep her informed on the next step to restore order and help the victims. That did not happen. Blanco depended on Landreneau to coordinate with the Red Cross and Salvation Army to get people what they needed. That did not happen. President Bush depended on Landreneau to do his job. That did not happen.

Everyone was worried about climate change in the 70's

Doom and gloom was just around the corner

The Daily Demarche has the quotes from the pundits back then:

Meteorologists disagree about the cause and the extent of …[the] trend… but they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. Newsweek- April 28 1975

The threat…must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind. International Wildlife- July 1975

[It] has already killed hundreds of thousands of people in poor nations…If it continues and no strong measures are taken [it] will cause world famine, world chaos and probably world war, and this could all come by the year 2000. Lowell Ponte, 1976

The continued rapid [change] …since WWII is also in accord with increased global air pollution associated with industrialization, mechanization, urbanization and an exploding population. Global Ecology: Readings toward a Rational Strategy for Man 1971

At this point the world’s climatologists are agreed… how carefully we monitor our atmospheric pollution will have a direct affect on the arrival and nature of this weather crisis. The sooner man confronts these facts… the safer he will be.

If you haven't guessed what they were worried about, head over to The Daily Demarche to find out.

Mon Sep 12, 2005

The Katrina relief operation has been a tremendous success

MSM coverage has been a colossal failure

Columnist Jack Kelly puts the recovery effort in perspective:

Journalists who are long on opinions and short on knowledge have no idea what is involved in moving hundreds of tons of relief supplies into an area the size of England in which power lines are down, telecommunications are out, no gasoline is available, bridges are damaged, roads and airports are covered with debris, and apparently have little interest in finding out.

So they libel as a "national disgrace" the most monumental and successful disaster relief operation in world history.

I write this column a week and a day after the main levee protecting New Orleans breached. In the course of that week:

More than 32,000 people have been rescued, many plucked from rooftops by Coast Guard helicopters.

The Army Corps of Engineers has all but repaired the breaches and begun pumping water out of New Orleans.

Shelter, food and medical care have been provided to more than 180,000 refugees.

Journalists complain that it took a whole week to do this.

It's been two weeks and very few journalists have figured out the respective roles of the mayor, the governor and the president in responding to a natural disaster. Talk about slow.

Rebuilding NO

Look at what structures survived

High-rise buildings. Well engineered high-rises survive hurricanes and earthquakes.

But we hit a strange cont

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