Judicious Asininity

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Sun Apr 30, 2006

Alcohol and Marathon performance

The good news and the bad news

Well, three teetotal months did me no good whatsoever. In fact, I ran worse than my last two marathons despite more training. So, based on a sample of one, that being me, I've concluded moderate alcohol consumption does not adversely affect marathon performance.

So, why can't I repeat my best performance of 2004? I've run four marathons since and not come close. There is one other factor to consider. In 2004 I was able to walk to work. I racked up 20 miles per week just walking to work. Then, our team was moved to another office 10 miles away, and I had to commute by car. Since then, I've sucked.

Next experiment: start walking 20 miles per week on top of 30-50 miles of running. If my times improve I'll be able to write a book with a catchy title like "Walk your way to marathon success".

Of course, there is another factor to consider. Age. I'm getting older. That factor, I can't do much about. I can slow the rate of decline a bit, but I can't stave off the inevitable.

Thu Apr 27, 2006

Light Blogging ahead

Off to run a marathon

I'm off to run a marathon and won't be back until Sunday.

Why would a middle-aged, un-athletic, former smoker and moderate drinker subject himself to 26.2 miles of torture? Actually, I've run 660 miles since December 11th last year in training. The race itself is just the icing on the cake. The bigger question is why would I commit to so much training just to run one race? The short answer is that it is a necessary prerequisite to running the marathon. The longer answer is that I find marathon training a very satisfying way to stay in shape.

This time I stopped drinking on February 1st. No wine with dinner. No beers after a run. No alcohol whatsoever. Strangely, it was incredibly easy to stop. My wife has continued wine with meals but I've not been tempted. I'm hoping my virtue will be rewarded with a decent time. My best marathon time is 3 hours 42 minutes set in 2004 after two months of abstinence. Last year I wasn't so virtuous and failed to break 4 hours in 3 attempts. So, this is a wildly unscientific experiment to see if moderate alcohol consumption adversely impacts marathon performance.

If I run a good time - say 3 hours 50 mintes or better, I'll be forced to conclude that not drinking is good for me. That would be a most unsatisfying conclusion.

Wed Apr 26, 2006

Climate Change Common Sense

versus MSM hype

James Hudnall has a great piece analysing the Global Warming hype.

In 2002 the National Academy of Sciences USA 99: 4167-4171 report by Dan H. Rothman, Professor of Geophysics in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences at MIT did a study of 500 million years of the Earth’s atmospheric CO2 concentration. This was done by examining the “chemical weathering of rocks, volcanic and metamorphic degassing, and the burial of organic carbon, along with considerations related to the isotopic content of organic carbon and strontium in marine sedimentary rocks”. What they found was: “Over the bulk of the record, earth’s atmospheric CO2 concentration fluctuates between values that are two to four times greater than that of today at a dominant period on the order of 100 million years. For the last 175 million years, however, there has been a rather steady long-term decline in the air’s CO2 content.”

...

A large part of the IPCC TAR report are based on computer models that have been peer-reviewed by many scientists, as above, who have pointed out the flawed math and jury-rigged computer models to support a largely absurd premise. e.g. It’s man’s fault that the climate changes.

In fact, you know the whole thing is a joke when they had to change the name from Global Warming to Climate Change. That way, they could say it’s happening no matter what. They’re using a non-falsifiable hypothesis. Anytime the weather gets weird, as it often does, they can claim it’s proof. But the climate is always changing. It always has.

Read the whole piece. A couple of years ago I did a long post looking at Michael Mann's bogus hockey-stick. I concluded:

Climate activists claim that human induced greenhouse gas emissions will lead to a catastrophic increase in global temperatures. In their view, recent warming trends over the last century are solely due to human influence and mans' burning of fossil fuels has disturbed a natural equilibrium that goes back at least a thousand years. Mann's hockey stick is their proof and they deny that there even was a MWP or LIA. Mann himself denies that there ever was a warmer period than the 1990s over the last 1000 years. But the weight of scientific evidence will eventually break Mann's hockey stick and the consensus view based on it

If you are worried about CO₂ emissions, just think of it as plant-food in the sky. Human CO₂ creation is simply returning CO₂ back to the atmosphere.

Tue Apr 25, 2006

If Lewis Libby can be persecuted for not leaking actual secrets

Why shouldn't Mary McCarthy be prosecuted for leaking actual National Security secrets?

There seems to be a double-standard operating here. Sandy (Burglar) Berger got a slap on the wrist for stealing and destroying highly classified papers. Joe Wilson is a hero for lying about his mission to Niger. Nobody batted an eyelid when Senator Jay Rockefeller told the Syrians that Bush was going to invade Iraq. It's way past time for Clintonista leakers to be dealt with using the full force of the law.

Sun Apr 23, 2006

The Democrats still think the war is about Osama and nobody else

So they attack Bush for failing to get Osama

Well, the Allies never did get Hitler. It is unlikely that killing him once the war was underway would have stopped the war. Nazism had taken hold of the German nation and had its own momentum.

Here's what leading Democrats are saying, according to Fox News:

Democratic Rep. Jane Harman said the tape is a reminder that bin Laden is still at large four years after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

"We haven't been able to find him. Part of the reason is because we've been bogged down in Iraq," Harman said in a joint appearance with Hoekstra on FOX.

Democratic Sen. John Kerry said the emergence of a new tape reflects the fundamental problems that the Bush administration faces in the fight against terrorism, including an insufficient effort to commit American troops.

"It underscores the failure of this administration to capture him," Kerry said on ABC's "This Week."

Killing Osama won't stop radical Islam's war on us, either. It may even intensify as more Muslim fanatics try to avenge Osama's death. Osama is hiding out in the tribal border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan. America could flush him out with a full scale invasion of that region. But surely Harman and Kerry aren't recommending that course of action. The costs would be prohibitive. Pakistan, nuclear-armed Pakistan, would be dangerously destabilized by such an action. Thousands of tribal people would die as they took up futile arms against US forces. The US would be making exactly the same mistake as the Soviets made in Afghanistan. If we can't get Osama by the covert methods currently being employed, then we are doing the next best thing by keeping him bottled up and out of touch. His periodic tapes simply serve to remind us that we are still at war with radical Islam.

A Clintonista caught red-handed leaking National Security secrets

The counter-attack begins

The Bush Administration seemed powerless to stop the steady stream of leaks from the CIA, Foggy Bottom and the Pentagon throughout the 2004 Presidential campaign and beyond. Every leak was designed to undermine the President. The decision to take down Saddam was seen as a golden opportunity to destroy the Bush Presidency. It was not as if the Clintonistas didn't see Saddam as a danger to US interests; the Clinton administration had made it a national policy to replace Saddam but Clinton lacked the guts to do it. The Clintonistas simply think destroying Bush is more important than defeating radical Islam and the regimes that support the radicals.

The administration seemed to be forced into the decision to appoint a special prosector to investigate the Plame leak. Despite the fact that no one, least of all Fitzgerald, has produced any evidence that a crime was committed, the investigation went ahead. The MSM applauded the deal and the left, exemplified by Joe Wilson's vision of Karl Rove being frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs, salivated. But this investigation has had some benefits for the administration. Reporters found they were no longer above the law when it came to identifying leakers. The MSM is slowly coming to realize that leakers and those who publish national security secrets are in danger of prosecution. But, they cannot claim unfair treatment; it was, after all, the MSM that insisted on identifying who leaked Plame's identity.

Is the firing of Mary McCarthy related to the Plame Blame Game? Some bloggers have found intruiging links. Just One Minute notes that Wilson and McCarthy both served on the National Security Council from June 1997 to July 1998. Via Flopping Aces and Free Republic, we find that McCarthy was a member of Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Her bio, as it was published by CSIS, reads:

Prior to joining CSIS in August 2001, Mary O. McCarthy was a senior policy adviser to the CIA's deputy director for science and technology. Until July 2001, she served as special assistant to the president and senior director for intelligence programs on the National Security Council (NSC) Staff, under both Presidents Clinton and Bush. From 1991 until her appointment to the NSC, McCarthy served on the National Intelligence Council. She began her government service as an analyst, then manager, in CIA's Directorate of Intelligence, holding positions in both African and Latin American analysis. From 1979 to 1984 she was employed by BERI, S.A., conducting financial, operational, and political risk assessments for multinational companies and banks. Previously she had taught at the University of Minnesota and was director of the Social Science Data Archive at Yale University. McCarthy has a B.A. and M.A. in history from Michigan State University, an M.A. in library science from the University of Minnesota, and a Ph.D. in history from the University of Minnesota. She is the author of Social Change and the Growth of British Power in the Gold Coast (University Press of America, 1983).

Her fellow experts at CSIS include Bush-hater Zbigniew Brzezinski, Rumsfeld-hater Anthony Zinni, former Republican Senator and Clinton Defense Secretary William Cohen, Sam Nunn, and Henry Kissinger. She moved in high-powered circles and that makes her a big fish. Perhaps the most delicious prospect is that she was hooked passing on bogus information, as Right wing Nuthouse explains.

Was she connected to the Plame Blame Game plot? Pobably not in the genesis of the plot, but likely in the referral of this bogus leak to the DOJ, as AJStrata notes. Whatever, the Mary McCarthy prison leak affair promises to be much more fun than the Plame Blame Game, much to the discomfiture of Clintonistas everywhere.

Thu Apr 20, 2006

Radical Islam's Weapons of Mass Deception

Endorsed by the Pulitzer Committee, no less

In no particular order, they are:

The New York Times
Associated Press
Reuters
The Washington Post
Los Angeles Times
Time
Newsweek
CBS
NBC
ABC
PBS

Powerline gets to the point with their post titled The Pulitzer Prize for Treason:

What about the Pulitzer Prize committee? When Walter Duranty won a Pulitzer Prize for the Times in connection with his mendacious coverage of Stalin's Soviet Union, he performed valuable public relations work for a mass murderer. He nevertheless did no direct harm to the United States. Today's Pulitzer Prize award to the Times brings a new shame to the Pulitzer Prize committee that builds on its disgrace last year via the award to the AP.

Mark Steyn, in reference to that post, writes:

This Powerline analysis is devastating and correct. One of the reasons "big" journalism is becoming ever more contemptible to the wider public is because it's so hicky and parochial: Journalistic institutions like the Pulitzers see the media as a world in and of itself rather than as merely observers of the real world. Whether or not to scuttle the NSA surveillance program is not about winning a prize but about winning a war - and the inability of the press to understand that reflects very poorly on them.
...
I'm ineligible. And, after the quasi-collaborationist AP photo awards and the national security-damaging NYT awards, that's just as well because I wouldn't want the thing in the house.

There we have it, folks. The terrorists strategy is very simple. Create enough headlines in the MSM and the American public will no longer have the stomach to continue the fight. So far they've won over the Democratic party, and that's close to half the electorate.

Tue Apr 18, 2006

Bomb here?

Just follow the links

James Hudnall links to Ogle Earth which has detailed before and after satellite images of some of Iran's nuclear sites.

Mon Apr 17, 2006

Inverting the immigration issue

If you put the shoe on the other foot maybe it will drop

Seen at The Cassandra Page:

Dear President Bush:

I'm about to plan a little trip with my family and extended family, and I
would like to ask you to assist me. I'm going to walk across the border
from the U.S. into Mexico, and I need to make a few arrangements. I know
you can help with this.

I plan to skip all the legal stuff like visas, passports, immigration
quotas and laws. I'm sure they handle those things the same way you do
here. So, would you mind telling your buddy, President Vicente Fox, that I'm on
my way over? Please let him know that I will be expecting the following:

1. Free medical care for my entire family.

2. English-speaking government bureaucrats for all services I might need,
whether I use them or not.

3. All government forms need to be printed in English.

4. I want my kids to be taught by English-speaking teachers.

5. Schools need to include classes on American culture and history.

6. I want my kids to see the American flag flying on the top of the flag
pole at their school with the Mexican flag flying lower down.

7. Please plan to feed my kids at school for both breakfast and lunch.

8. I will need a local Mexican driver's license so I can get easy access to
government services.

9. I do not plan to have any car insurance, and I won't make any effort to
learn local traffic laws.

10. In case one of the Mexican police officers does not get the memo from
Pres. Fox to leave me alone, please be sure that all police officers speak
English.

11. I plan to fly the U.S. flag from my house top, put flag decals on my
car, and have a gigantic celebration on July 4th. I do not want any
complaints or negative comments from the locals.

12. I would also like to have a nice job without paying any taxes, and
don't enforce any labor laws or tax laws.

13. Please tell all the people in the country to be extremely nice and
never say a critical word about me, or about the strain I might place on
the economy.

I know this is an easy request because you already do all these things for
all the people who come to the U.S. from Mexico. I am sure that Pres. Fox
won't mind returning the favor if you ask him nicely.

However, if he gives you any trouble, just invite him to go quail hunting
with your V.P.

Thank you so much for your kind help.

Sun Apr 16, 2006

Revolting Generals, truly revolting

With their Carteresque loyalty in a time of war

In From the Cold rips each of them to shreds and puts them in their place:

Finally, officers like Shinseki, Riggs, Eaton (and others) are, in Rumsfeld's view, symbolic of an ossified Army leadership corps, that he has been fighting for the past five years. When Rumsfeld returned to the Pentagon, he discovered that the Army was well behind the other services in "transforming" itself for the 21st century. He also found Army leadership was reluctant to accept change--so much so, that when he was looking for a new Army Chief of Staff, he recalled an officer (General Peter Schoomaker) from retirement for the job. Rumsfeld's selection was viewed as a slap at the current generation of Army three and four-star generals. Now, three years after the invasion of Iraq, some of those generals are having their revenge, using criticism of the war as convenient cover.

And all we need to know about John McCain's fitness to be Commander-in-Chief is his willingness to pile on, as reported by the East Valley Tribune:

Sen. John McCain joined the ranks of retired generals who have said they have no confidence in Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
Or more precisely, the generals are falling in line with McCain’s long-standing assessment, McCain said Friday.

“I was asked a long time ago, I think a year and a half or two years ago, if I had confidence in Secretary Rumsfeld. I was asked that directly. I said, ‘No,’ ” the Republican senator said during a news conference at his Phoenix office.

Fri Apr 14, 2006

Do "Mainstream" Journalists Want The US To Lose?

Jim Miller asks an important question

They sure act as if they want us to lose. Miller concludes:

Now back to Barone's claim. Do I think that "major parts" of the "mainstream" media want us to lose? No, but they are acting as if they did. (For at least a few, seeing President Bush lose overrides any other consideration. They would be supporting the war if Bill Clinton were still in office.)

Actually, I think many on the left, including most of the MSM, do want the US to lose. They see the war against Saddam as Vietnam redux. Thanks to the "heroism" of the Vietnamese people and their allies on the anti-war left, the imperialist forces of the US were defeated and the world entered a long period of peace. The US itself benefited from getting its nose bloodied by heroic peasants fighting for freedom from capitalism. Now, under Bush II, Amerika is once again a war-mongering imperialistic power over-reacting to a fluke attack by a bunch of rag-heads.

In the left's view, radical Islam poses no real threat. Their religion is just as valid as Bush's Christianity and anything they do is a reaction to American provocation. If the US packed up and went home we could all go back to the world of Jimmy Carter and live happily ever after.

If the US is forced to retreat from Iraq, nothing bad will happen, just as nothing bad happened after the US withdrew from South-East Asia. They'll skip over the hundreds of thousands of people driven out of South Vietnam or sent to re-education camps, or the millions slaughtered by Pol Pot because, well, in the final analysis, it was all America's fault.

And that's the problem. The left thinks we can simply stop fighting this war and nothing bad will happen to the US. The attacks will stop, the evil oil will still flow and the bad guys will stop dreaming about killing us all. That's what makes the MSM so dangerous. It doesn't understand the stakes and shapes all its reporting and opinion making to support its simplistic view.

Thu Apr 13, 2006

Should Plame blame game Prosecutor Fitzgerald get three strikes

He's had two already

After years of investigation and millions of dollars of taxpayer's money spent trying to find who leaked the identity of super-secret, deep-cover, special agent Valerie "AK47" Plame, Patrick "Clouseau" Fitzgerald indicted Lewis Libby for allegedly lying to him. Well, Fitzgerald has aleady been caught telling two whoppers himself. He claimed Libby was the first person to leak Plame's identity. In the press conference announcing Libby's indictment he said:

In fact, Mr. Libby was the first official known to have told a reporter when he talked to Judith Miller in June of 2003 about Valerie Wilson.

Bob "Watergate" Woodward blew that claim out of the water when he disclosed that he'd received the same information from an official other than Libby at an earlier date. Maybe Fitzgerald didn't know he was lying when he made that statement. If so, then he is revealed as incredibly incompetent. He jailed Judith Miller for refusing to talk but didn't bother to interview Woodward?

Then Fitzgerald screwed up again. From the Washington Post:

Last week, Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald wrote that, in conversation with former New York Times reporter Judith Miller, Libby described the uranium story as a "key judgment" of the CIA's 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, a term of art indicating there was consensus within the intelligence community on that issue. In fact, the alleged effort to buy uranium was not among the estimate's key judgments and was listed further back in the 96-page, classified document.

In a letter to U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton, Fitzgerald wrote yesterday that he wanted to "correct" the sentence that dealt with the issue in a filing he submitted last Wednesday. That sentence said Libby "was to tell Miller, among other things, that a key judgment of the NIE held that Iraq was 'vigorously trying to procure' uranium."

Instead, the sentence should have conveyed that Libby was to tell Miller some of the key judgments of the NIE "and that the NIE stated that Iraq was 'vigorously trying to procure' uranium."

Put these two whoppers against the flimsy case that Fitzgerald is struggling to make against Libby, and it's pretty obvious there is a double-standard going on here. Fitzgerald can lie and and attempt to cover-up evidence yet he still gets to prosecute Libby for allegedly lying about a trivial issue.

Fitzgerald has had two strikes and whiffed both times. He doesn't deserve another. On the other hand, a lot of us want to see what would come out in a trial with all the major players -- Wilson and Plame included -- testifying under oath.

Tue Apr 11, 2006

Why Mexicans come to America illegally

The Mexican Government is exporting its poverty and crime to the US

From the Mexican government's point of view, emigration to the US is a great deal.

1. The US taxpayer picks up the tab for the emigrants' welfare and health care costs.

2. The US taxpayer picks up the tab (~$1.5 billion) for all the illegals (~50,000) who end up in US prisons.

3. US citizens rather than Mexican citizens suffer at the hands of Mexican criminals and gangsters that move to the US.

4. Mexican drug dealers focus on the more lucrative US market instead of the Mexican market.

5. Billions of dollars flow back to Mexico as remittances, unseen and untouched by the US IRS.

6. Emigration acts as a safety valve that releases any pressure on Mexico to reform its economy and deal with corruption.

7. Over the long-term the massive influx of Mexicans will change US voting patterns in Mexico's favor (and it looks like that's already happening, going by the proposals coming out of the Senate).

Any effective effort to slow the rate of illegal immigration needs to provide incentives for the Mexican government to control its side of the border. That could start by taxing the remittances that flow to Mexico to compensate the US for the costs involved in hosting millions of illegals. It could continue with the suspension of any aid to Mexico unless the flow is stopped. Finally, NAFTA could be terminated unless Mexico starts acting like a responsible neighbor instead of a free-loader.

Sun Apr 09, 2006

Secet killers stalk America's streets

And nobody much worries about the tens of thousands of victims

Strangely, the MSM and the public could care less. The losses in Iraq are tallied in the press until the public is convinced that 2,000 deaths represent a military disaster.

The fact of the matter is that there are a number of killers loose in America that are more deadly than our declared enemies. One of the secret killers stalking our streets is the drunk driver. He's been killing around 20,000 American every year for generations. Add in his ally, the sober driver, and you've got another 25,000 needless deaths every year. The common murderer knocks off another 15,000 American every year. The flu is slightly more effective with its 20,000 victims per year. So many needless deaths; so little public outcry.

Some have argued that the death toll from the terrorist attacks of 9/11 are insignificant compared to the random deaths that strike far more people month in and month out. They ignore a crucial distinction. The random deaths are to the body politic as the wear and tear of daily life are to our bodies. While individuals bear the burden of such deaths, society as a whole can shrug them off as business-as-usual. The attack of 9/11 was like a bullet directed at a vital organ.

Fri Apr 07, 2006

Costs versus benefits of new drugs

The FDA and the Tort system give little weight to the benefit side of the ledger

Tigerhawk has a post discussing the case of Tysabri, a very effective drug for treating MS. He writes:

An example of this is the FDA's hanky-twisting over the multiple sclerosis drug Tysabri, which is orders of magnitude more effective against that nerve-killing disease than existing therapies. Unfortunately, Tysabri has been "linked" -- tenuously, at best -- with a rare brain infection in fewer than five patients out of the many thousands who have taken it. The FDA pressured Biogen and Elan to pull the drug last year, and it has not cleared the drug for relaunch notwithstanding the unanimous recommendation of a non-binding expert advisory panel. Why? Because it fears the quick death of one or two people more than it values the lifespans of hundreds of thousands of people.

Tigerhawk goes on to reprint a WSJ editorial on the subject. It concludes:

One lesson is that Tysabri should never have been withdrawn in the first place, when a "Dear Doctor" warning letter would have sufficed. But the possible side effects came to light at the height of the Vioxx panic (another relatively small risk, by the way), and then-acting FDA chief Lester Crawford wasn't going to take any difficult stands while he was awaiting confirmation. We hope Andrew von Eschenbach, the latest nominee to head the FDA, won't follow Mr. Crawford's lead. The FDA badly needs public leadership to explain that almost all live-saving and life-improving drugs do have some risks.

The Tysabri story is also further evidence of the need for Congress to pass "Kianna's Law" -- legislation introduced by Senator Sam Brownback (R., Kan.) that would require the FDA to move faster on drugs for terminal and degenerative disease. The tendency of FDA bureaucrats is always to delay decisions on drugs that might turn out to have some nasty side effects. But as Audrey Greenfield, Bartira Tibertius and thousands of other MS patients have had to learn over the past year, too much caution can have nasty side effects too.

It is strange how so much attention is paid to the possible deaths of a few people and so little to the lives lost that otherwise would have been saved. The same sort of lunacy has greatly reduced the number of vaccine manufactures, as this Wharton article notes:

Lawsuits filed against vaccine makers alleging their products have harmed patients are another reason drug makers have become wary of vaccine production, says Wharton health care systems professor Scott Harrington. With vaccines that can potentially reach millions of patients, the odds of a bad outcome in the courts could ruin a firm, he notes. In the case of widely distributed vaccines, "a firm is engaging in a bet-the-firm risk if things go bad. That discourages research and development on certain types of vaccines and discourages production and marketing."

In 1986, Congress created the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), which established a no-fault system for compensating those who may have been injured by routine childhood vaccines. The program was designed to streamline and limit vaccine makers' liability. But Harrington says lawyers continue to bring suit against vaccine companies by using opt-out provisions in the legislation that created the VICP.

The biggest obstacle vaccine makers face, Harrington adds, is little payback for their risk because many of their products are purchased in bulk by governments and other public health authorities, including humanitarian agencies. These large buyers are able to negotiate low prices. "In the U.S., the government is paying for over half of all vaccines for children, and vaccine makers are more or less forced to take prices that are very low. It might be difficult to pursue research and development without worrying that you could get a very low price," says Harrington.
...
David also suggests that some of the vaccine shortages in recent years may have come as a result of stepped-up Food & Drug Administration review of vaccine manufacturers' plants. "The more serious the FDA got, the more shortages we got."

According to Danzon's vaccine study, Wyeth produced influenza vaccine for the U.S. market for more than 20 years, but in October 2000 the company was fined $30 million for manufacturing violations and an additional $15,000 for every day that it remained out of compliance. In November 2002, Wyeth announced it would exit the flu market, leaving only two manufacturers of injectable influenza vaccine.

David says the role of government in the vaccine market cannot be overlooked. Assertions that a market-driven system has failed in the vaccine industry are wrong, he suggests. "We do have private firms providing vaccines, but it's not like we have ever given this market a chance to be a free market. This type of production is among the most heavily regulated industries we have."

Excessive government regulation and rapacious lawyers are a potent combination if your objective is to destroy the pharmaceutical industry. The price we pay for the few lives saved are a thousandfold more dying and suffering the ravages of diseases like MS.

Wed Apr 05, 2006

Saw a great old war movie the other night

The Man Who Never Was (1956)

It was on a high-def channel and I just stumbled onto it. My wife heard the opening music and yelled out "old movie" and rushed upstairs. The movie is based on a true WW2 intelligence operation designed to convince the Nazis that the allies were going to by-pass Sicily and invade Greece. It was engrossing and enjoyable and patriotic in that low-keyed British way.

In order to check-out the information that had been passed off to them, the Nazis sent a spy to England to check out the story. The spy was Irish. Why should I be surprised? Ireland stayed neutral in WW2 and some Irish nationalists had more than a passing sympathy for the Nazi cause.

Such movies are beyond Hollywood's grasp these days. We know who the enemy is but Hollywood is too anti-American or chicken or both to touch the subject. Instead it serves up drek like Syriana.

Tue Apr 04, 2006

The Democrat's National Security Plan

It's Smart and Tough...yes, really

You can get the inside dope at Iowahawk. Here's a snippet:

HARRY: You bet we can, Nancy. That's why we've purchase space on America's abandoned and neglected websites to present the Democratic vision for a smart, yet tough new national security concept that makes a clean break with the discredited and dangerous policies of this administration. As you can see by the American flags behind us, this is a smart and tough new approach, embodied in a comprehensive plan that was developed by some of America's foremost military minds: Madeleine Albright, Sandy Berger, Markos Zuniga, and former General Wesley Clarke -- the celebrated "Falcon of the Balkans." We call our plan "Operation Steel Gazelle" -- strong and tough like steel, but smart and agile like the gazelle, as it nimbly eludes its hungry predators.

NANCY: Tell, us more Harry.

HARRY: Well Nancy, the first phase of our multi-faceted plan focuses on the number one key to restoring national security: getting Osama bin Laden. Even as we speak, this dangerous fugitive is still on the loose. As the leader of a Democratic majority in Congress, I will make sure that the head Army and Navy generals get a clear and unambiguous message: "Get Osama" is "Job One."

Funny how parody comes so close to reality when you talk about today's Democrats and National Security.

The MSM splash 9 deaths in Iraq across the front pages

An antidote to decreasing US casualty figures?

Americans in Iraq Face Their Deadliest Day in Months screams the New York Times headlines. read on to learn that:

In the deadliest day for American forces since the beginning of the year, at least nine members of the military were killed in the insurgent stronghold of Anbar Province,

Reads like the insurgents are surging back. But wait, there's more:

including four in a rebel attack and at least five when their truck accidentally flipped over, the American military command said Monday.

The MSM has a nasty habit of conflating non-combat related deaths with combat deaths. That's one way to make the war seem grimmer than it really is. It turns out that the surge that flipped the truck was a flash flood. One kinda doubts that the insurgents could have organised that.

Sat Apr 01, 2006

Steyn cuts to the chase on the folly of trying terrorists in court

Let's hope the Supremes read him before the Hamdi case comes before them

From Mark Steyn's column in the Jerusalem Post:

"Edward Fitzgerald, QC, for the defense, said that Abu Hamza's interpretation of the Koran was that it imposed an obligation on Muslims to do jihad and fight in the defense of their religion. He said that the Crown case against the former imam of Finsbury Park Mosque was 'simplistic in the extreme.' He added: 'It is said he was preaching murder, but he was actually preaching from the Koran itself.'"

Well, it's ingenious, and, though Mr. Hamza was sadly found guilty, who's to say it won't work for the next A-list jihadi? If Koran permit, you must acquit. To convict would be multiculturally disrespectful. If the holy book of the religion of peace recommends killing infidels, who are we to judge?

Indeed, much of the developed world seems to have already internalized that rationale: Islamic mobs riot, loot, burn embassies and kill people around the world, and the fury of Western elites is reserved for those hapless Danish cartoonists for being so "insensitive."

Likewise, Nick Griffin, leader of the highly non-multicultural British National Party, is also on trial, "accused of using words or behavior likely to stir up racial hatred" - and, unlike Mr. Hamza, he's unable to avail himself of the but-I-got-it-straight-from-the-Koran defense.

The English jury was sternly reminded that its role was not to consider the truth or otherwise of Mr. Griffin's remarks: The criminality thereof was not mitigated by factual accuracy. One of the offending observations was this, made a year before the July 7 bombings at a meeting in Leeds:
"We all know that sooner or later there's going to be Islamic terrorists letting off bombs in major cities, and it might not be London, it could just as easily be the White Rose Centre" - which is in Leeds. Mr. Griffin ventured that the bombers would prove to be asylum seekers or second-generation Pakistanis "living somewhere like Bradford."

Note how PC inspired hate crimes legislation undermines the ability to explain the nature of the enemy. We know who's doing all the hating. We have thousands of murdered innocents as evidence.

The Supreme Court is due to hear the Hamdi case inlate June according to Opinion Journal. The piece concludes:

Every wartime President has had to strike a balance between protecting civil liberties and national security. Whether the tradeoff was proper can only be known after the conflict has ended. Considering the all-too-real threat from dirty bombs, anthrax and other weapons of mass destruction that can kill hundreds of thousands, this Administration has done a notable job of protecting liberties overall. In any case, its policies and methods are answerable to the voters in the way that Supreme Court judgments are not. Hamdan is a case where the Justices would do well to defer to the elected branches of government.

It is not a good sign that the Chief Justice had to recuse himself.

Steyn cuts to the chase on the folly of trying terrorists in court

Let's hope the Supremes read him before the Hamdi case comes before them

From Mark Steyn's column in the Jerusalem Post:

"Edward Fitzgerald, QC, for the defense, said that Abu Hamza's interpretation of the Koran was that it imposed an obligation on Muslims to do jihad and fight in the defense of their religion. He said that the Crown case against the former imam of Finsbury Park Mosque was 'simplistic in the extreme.' He added: 'It is said he was preaching murder, but he was actually preaching from the Koran itself.'"

Well, it's ingenious, and, though Mr. Hamza was sadly found guilty, who's to say it won't work for the next A-list jihadi? If Koran permit, you must acquit. To convict would be multiculturally disrespectful. If the holy book of the religion of peace recommends killing infidels, who are we to judge?

Indeed, much of the developed world seems to have already internalized that rationale: Islamic mobs riot, loot, burn embassies and kill people around the world, and the fury of Western elites is reserved for those hapless Danish cartoonists for being so "insensitive."

Likewise, Nick Griffin, leader of the highly non-multicultural British National Party, is also on trial, "accused of using words or behavior likely to stir up racial hatred" - and, unlike Mr. Hamza, he's unable to avail himself of the but-I-got-it-straight-from-the-Koran defense.

The English jury was sternly reminded that its role was not to consider the truth or otherwise of Mr. Griffin's remarks: The criminality thereof was not mitigated by factual accuracy. One of the offending observations was this, made a year before the July 7 bombings at a meeting in Leeds:
"We all know that sooner or later there's going to be Islamic terrorists letting off bombs in major cities, and it might not be London, it could just as easily be the White Rose Centre" - which is in Leeds. Mr. Griffin ventured that the bombers would prove to be asylum seekers or second-generation Pakistanis "living somewhere like Bradford."

Every wartime President has had to strike a balance between protecting civil liberties and national security. Whether the tradeoff was proper can only be known after the conflict has ended. Considering the all-too-real threat from dirty bombs, anthrax and other weapons of mass destruction that can kill hundreds of thousands, this Administration has done a notable job of protecting liberties overall. In any case, its policies and methods are answerable to the voters in the way that Supreme Court judgments are not. Hamdan is a case where the Justices would do well to defer to the elected branches of government.

It is not a good sign that the Chief Justice had to recuse himself.

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Steyn cuts to the chase on the folly of trying terrorists in court

Steyn cuts to the chase on the folly of trying terrorists in court

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