Another UN success story
Once again UN "nation-building" leaves a nation in shambles and its "peace keeping" does nothing to prevent more war. Has there been even ONE UN success story? Rwanda? Jenin? Cambodia? Sierra Leone? To go further back, Katanga, Angola, Lebanon, Cyprus? The fighting peters out after millions of dead, the blue helmets come in and screw everything up by telling the local tyrants they are being oppressed by the western imperialists, fighting breaks out again and the UN promptly packs up and leaves. Great job, Kofi.

Update
"Who needs terrorists when you have a self-combustible democracy", an East Timorese military officer said. And a self-combustible economy, apparently. Now all they need is for the IMF to come in and lecture them on fiscal discipline. Combined with this story, I have to remember to make a note to myself not to invest in anything east of Suez. Or south of the Mediterranean. Or, come to think of it, in Europe or South America either. OK, so I'll keep it all in my savings account here.

Oh, Canada!
To continue the Canada-bashing, the vaunted medical system is running into some problems. To look on the bright side, this will mean much more business for American profit-making hospitals located anywhere near Canada. And more business for airports to accommodate the remaining Canadian Air Force plane so it can fly in high-ranking bureaucrats and politicians. And that darned population increase bugaboo that the lefties have been whining about since Paul Ehrlich shouldn't be a problem for our neighbors to the north as soon as all the patients who need anesthetists die off. Of course, it is godawful cold up there, so maybe they can lay patients out in the snow until they go to sleep and then operate on them.

More reader mail
A letter I wrote to Kim duToit and his kind comments:

December 4, 2002
Re: National Service

Kim,
Growing up as a service brat, I saw everything I needed to see about the military. It put a premium on mindless subservience, rewarded ignorance and punished innovative thinking. The Service is as much a womb as college or government work or a large corporation. It tolerates incompetence and sloth and brutality from those who keep their uniforms neat and their mouths shut. As a teenager, I assumed I would go in the Air Force, but then got converted by VietNam stories and Bob Dylan to stubborn opposition to military service, which conveniently coincided with opposition to my father, a USAF officer. I managed to stay out of the draft and thought I was doing something noble and modern. OK, maybe I was arrogant and elitist.

Looking back on it, I wish I had gone in so I could speak from personal experience. I have no illusions now about the nature of the Viet Cong or the North Vietnamese. But I still think US intervention was, as Talleyrand said, "worse than a crime, a mistake". And I still think compulsory military service is unAmerican. The draft riots in 1863 and in WWII certainly expressed a lot of men's opposition. Our new highly technological military needs fewer and fewer riflemen each year. Have you heard about the new anti-artillery laser system? If that's real it changes the whole battlefield to an exercise in mopping up.

What's wrong with a lost eighteen-year-old going voluntarily into the Peace Corps? Doesn't that still exist? You never hear of it much any more. "Compulsory service to the State" still sounds collectivist to me. The benefits of military service don't justify taking away freedom and inculcating the idea that you "owe" something to your country. That's not the way it works. Free men work for their own good, not for others. I believe jury duty is also equivalent to slavery and does NOT produce any result worthy of the name of justice. Grow up and face it. Men have to find their own way. No one can hand them solutions to life's problems.

Robert S.

[Excellent letter, although I disagree strongly with some of your points. Citizenship is NOT a free ride, and taxes should not be the only sacrifice asked of citizens. Without some degree of service, it just gets taken for granted. Good grief, the ONLY compulsory service we demand of U.S. citizens is jury duty, and most can get out of THAT. Note that I did not suggest sending draftees into combat (unless they volunteered, of course), so I suspect that most of the "draft riot" worries are misplaced.
Yes, men should grow up and find their own way. But 18-yr-olds aren't men yet (we don't trust them to buy or consume liquor, for example), and there's nothing wrong with a little helping shove in the right direction. I'm reminded of the old saw, "What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger." A non-combat draft would do just that, I suspect.]

I wrote in response to this rant (his word, not mine!)

Commenting vs. blogging
I've been doing a lot of commenting on other people's websites lately, when I should have been blogging, importing their controversies to the greater glory of Conundrum. It's hard to avoid getting caught up in intellectual duels though, what with all the shallow liberals there are out there. I guess the battles keep me up with the latest arguments, but most of the comments I run into seem clearly wrong or vicious. How many ways can one call Bush a "moron"? Maybe someday I'll find a website where people are really looking for the truth. Wait a minute. I'm running one!

I wrote a reply to an article Wendy MacElroy wrote for FoxNews Views that touched on one of my pet peeves: the use of anything other than "he, him and his" when the gender of the antecedent of a pronoun is unknown:

I noticed, in your interesting and well-written article "Stand up for Yourself" on Fox News Views, you use "her" or "she" consistently when the gender of an antecedent is unknown. This is a bit of a breath of fresh air. I remember recommending years ago in a letter published in the New Republic that men should use "he" and women should use "she" in this situation. This practice would satisfy those who feel awkward or offended by using "he" and "his" and "him" all the time. And it would avoid the equally awkward and, to me, offensive, "he or she" and "him or her", constructions that are almost impossible to maintain through a piece of writing of any length and that distract the reader from the substance of the writing. Some use an even more annoying tactic, alternating "he" and "she" throughout the piece so you never know where you are. The only problem I see with using "she" is that you give up the historical use of "he" to mean both "he" and "she". The sudden appearance of "she" then makes one think, OK, who's this woman and when was her identity established? Perhaps in another generation those feelings won't even come up. Or maybe we'll go back to "he" and "him" and "his". I think it's cool, though, for women not to be afraid to proclaim their womanity (hey, new word!) by using "she". Women don't have to adopt male-sounding first names to sell books any more. And they certainly don't have to worry about hurting men's feelings by appearing to exclude them. I'll be interested to see if your usage spreads.

Dour Power
John Tabin (via Instapundit)has some thoughts about why the press doesn't like John Kerry. So do I:

Why are Democratic candidates always so dour? Gephardt, Lieberman, Daschle, Kerry, Gore, could not raise one smile among all of them. Mondale, Carter, McGovern and Dukakis were all also rather sobersided. Only Carter was known for his smile, however frighteningly insincere it seemed. Maybe that's why he's the only winner. They're quite a contrast with Eisenhower and Reagan and the Bushes, pere et fils. Of course there's always Nixon. Should have stopped while I was ahead!

Sometimes it's just too easy

Here's something my sister sent me, hoping to score points:

From: David Pugh [mailto:dpugh@igc.org]

Sent: Thursday, November 28, 2002 11:14 PM
To: ISM/Bayan Muna
Subject: Canadians to lead weapons inspection team into U.S.


Toronto, Canada
November 21, 2002

Canadians to lead weapons inspection team into USA

A coalition of Canadian peace groups today announced their intention
to
send an international team of volunteer weapons inspectors into the
United States later this winter. The coalition, Rooting Out Evil, are
recruiting inspectors through their newly launched website,
www.rootingoutevil.org. "Our action has been inspired by none
other
than George W. Bush," said Christy Ferguson, a spokesperson for
the
group. "The Bush administration has repeatedly declared that
the most
dangerous rogue nations are those
that:

1) have massive stockpiles of chemical, biological, and nuclear
weapons;
2) ignore due process at the United Nations;
3) refuse to sign and honour international treaties; and
4) have come to power through illegitimate means.

"On the basis of President Bush's guidelines, it is clear that
the
current U.S. administration poses a great threat to global
security,"
said Ferguson. "We're following Bush's lead and demanding that
the U.S.
grant our inspectors immediate and unfettered access to any site in
the
country - including all presidential compounds - so that we can
identify the weapons of mass destruction in this rogue state,"
added
David Langille.

Visitors to Rooting Out Evil's website are invited to sign on as
honorary members of the weapons inspection team. Honorary inspectors
can participate in the action, or they can simply lend the support of
their name as they would on a petition.

The actual inspection team that crosses the border will be comprised
of
prominent individuals from Canada and other countries.

The Rooting Out Evil coalition includes Greenpeace Canada, the Centre
for Social Justice, and the Toronto Committee Against War and
Sanctions
on Iraq, and is supported by American groups such as the National
Network to End the War Against Iraq, Global Exchange and the US
section
of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. They
oppose
the development, storage, and use of weapons of mass destruction by
any
state.

For information:
David Langille or Christy Ferguson
info@rootingoutevil.org

Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada
Phone (306) 664-6071

And here's my response:

Dear Martha,

It would be entirely appropriate to send Canadians to look for weapons, since they appear to have totally defunded their military under Chretien and have doubtless forgotten what weapons look like or what it means to fight for your principles and deny terrorists the
right to murder you. They are now totally dependent on US military power, paid for by the US taxpayer, to defend them. Maybe the shame of realizing they are international parasites will affect their consciences, if they still have any. The only exception seems to be when they need to use military aircraft to ferry their premier's family to hospitals in the US for medical treatment they can't get in their moribund socialist medical system. See Colby Cosh's blog for details. Oh, and I caught the egregious misuse of "comprise". Savages!

Robbie

Here's a reply I tried to send to a blogger on Ariana Huffington's site who maintained that corporations who move their headquarters to Bermuda or elsewhere to lighten their tax burden should be barred from getting government contracts. He didn't want me to know his email address, I guess. His logic approximated: All corporations receive benefits from government activities, and should therefore all pay. Another problem, aside from those I mentioned in my reply, with that thinking is that government does not only confer benefits, it causes harm, sometimes great harm, including overtaxation. And a corporation that pays greater taxes is going to have to charge more for its goods or services.

"This country is being slowly bled dry"!!?

I agree - by the government and its special interest freeloaders. Corporations are the ones who create value in the first place. Every penny for defense and the idiotic social agenda comes from corporate profits. How can you say corporations contribute nothing to the country? Ever got a paycheck? That's money that came from corporate profits. I oppose corporate welfare as well as that going, through huge bureaucracies, to individuals. I just think the government should buy what it needs where it can get the best deal. Is that so radical?

Robert Speirs

Duesberg
I've just finished reading Peter H. Duesberg's book Inventing the AIDS Virus. It's one of those life-changing books. It's temperate, convincing and totally damning. I don't ordinarily side with those who attack corporations in the way Duesberg attacks Burroughs-Wellcome for pushing poisons like AZT and ddI onto entirely healthy HIV-positives and converting them into dead AIDS victims. But the conjunction between the interests of the medical-PC complex and government is just too obvious a stimulus to exactly the kind of dissent-suppressing behavior Duesberg describes to ignore. Maybe the last straw is Clintoon's op-ed on "World AIDS Day" yesterday in the New York Times - no, I'm not going to link to it. The ignorant savage murdering ferocity of the pomo Left is almost certainly responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands in the US. Now they are moving to Africa and Asia, since the AIDS "pandemic" has petered out in the Western world. In a wider context, the acceptance of conventional wisdom, as in the global warming, ozone layer and fatty foods scams is once again exposed as the greatest threat to health and freedom in today's world, much more dangerous than AlQaeda, even though they are all pushed by the same people, motivated by hate and envy. It's hard to describe. Go read the book. Duesberg also has a website.

The Canadian protectorate
Several essays have emerged lately talking about the decline of Canadian independence from the US. The relationship is more like that of Monaco vis a vis France than a sovereign nation in its relationship with the US, given Canada's total abdication of responsibility for defending itself. The difference is that you have to imagine that France would put up with a Monaco whose officials call the leader of France a "moron" and an "idiot" and who constantly boast of how much more moral their social system and failed healthcare system are compared with France's and which harbors terrorists that have killed thousands of Frenchmen. How long would France put up with that?

Security?
OK, last hijack post. BBC has what looks to be the full story. And it raises a few questions. How the heck does a guy with a history of hijacking get onto an airplane in the first place? And this guy has so little upstairs that he once tried to hijack a TRAIN! What was he planning to do with it, tell the engineer to drive to Cuba? Also, the story says he got into the cockpit with his box that he claimed was a weapon. How in the world did he make it past the security door? What is going through the minds of the Europeans? Will anyone really be surprised if someone DOES take out the Eiffel Tower? Don't you think maybe bin Laden has been reading the same stories I have? Another point. BBC says the plane was a 737. The other stories had been calling it an MD80. So, how did they get that detail wrong? All in all, this story has been quite an education in the incompetence of reportage these days. And it makes one tremble to take an airplane originating from Europe. They haven't got a clue.

Bush invades the AARP
FoxNews is reporting that the AARP, bastion of Boomer orthodoxy, is getting behind the President's prescription drug proposal. Is that a good thing? Politically, it's a disaster for the Dems, who now have one issue fewer to rant about in 2004. But if the program can satisfy the AARP can it possibly be good for the taxpayer and the economy? It would be typical for the libs to make sure the slippery slope to universal coverage was well-greased and steep. If Bush really does tie the measure to Medicare reform, though, I might not be too afraid of it. Heck, just reducing the fraud committed in the name of Medicare by ten percent would save enough money to pay for drugs for all seniors who really need them. Which is probably far fewer than anyone thinks. But that's another story. I'm reading a book right now that's making me rethink the usefulness of medicines in general. Combined with my personal experience with gout medications, skepticism is the mildest term I can come up with for my attitude toward paying doctors to prescribe anything they want.

Finally!
The New York Post has a "breaking news" story, calling the incident an "apparent hijacking". Why did it take them half an hour after Bloomberg had the story? Don't they watch each other? No injuries, fortunately.

Update
NewsForum now has the hijack story. They label it "first reports". Hah! Not hardly. But they did come up with some funny comments, not the usual shrillness entirely.

Update
Bloomberg had, for a few minutes, an updated story saying the Alitalia flight hijacked after taking off from Bologna had landed safely in Lyon and the hijacker had been taken into custody. No one else yet has anything on the story, from LeMonde to the Tehran Times to the New York Post. Odd.

Bloomberg scoop
Why does Bloomberg have this story about a Bologna-Paris flight being hijacked and no one else does? Interesting how some outlets get news that others don't. Let's see, has Drudge got it yet? Back in a moment. Nope. NewsForum? Nope. Google News (auto-generated fifteen minutes ago!)? Nope. Hmm. Maybe it has something to do with corroboration. But does Drudge really bother with that? He could at least go with the "paper says" ploy. Wow. Now Bloomberg has taken the story down. The link still works, though. Hope the hijackers aren't headed for the Eiffel Tower.

Plague on both your houses
A poll on the front page of the New York Times is analyzed by David Frum of NRO. It purports to show that the public doesn't trust the Republicans on the environment, taxes or Social Security. It's a bit odd, though, that nowhere in the NYT article does it say that the people would trust the Democrats to take care of these matters either. Frum concludes that voters were mainly motivated by the war in voting predominantly for Republicans, and would have voted for the Democrats if the war hadn't been an issue. But couldn't it be that the voters weren't enthusiastic about either party's way of running the country? In that case, any small positive effect from the war on terror would be enough to impel voters toward the Republican side of the ballot. This view is buttressed in my mind by the reflection that if the NYT had found that people were as positive about the Democrats as they were negative about the Republicans, they wouldn't have hesitated to publish those numbers, up front and in BIG TYPE.

Cold War II
I've been struck lately by how much the War against Terror is like the Cold War. We face in Islamofascism an ideological foe that, like Communism, is intent on conquering the world, that insists on governing every aspect of man's thoughts and actions, that paints freedom as irrelevant and dangerous, that allows any means to gain its ends. Like Al Qaeda, the international Communist Party favored infiltration, subversion of the young and exploitation of racial and class hatreds to advance its agenda. It claimed the right to the body and property of every member of society. Refusal to serve the interests of "the People" was punished as harshly by the Communists as refusal to serve Allah is by the Islamofascists.
The Communists, before 1917, had no country to serve as a base from which to run their campaign of subversion and terror. But they claimed to have a natural base in the working class of every (industrialized) nation. Al Qaeda claims to have a natural constituency in every believer in Islam, spread through dozens of states, including large populations in Europe and the US. When they acquired power in Russia, the Communists immediately set out to use the power of the nation-state to spread Communism, perpetrating the myth that history inevitably would bring about the collapse of capitalism. When Al Qaeda established a base in Afghanistan, they immediately launched attacks throughout the world to fire the imagination of every Muslim with dreams of world domination and the inevitable collapse of Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism and secularism of every sort. They would dearly like to have control of another country, Iraq or Saudi Arabia or Pakistan, for example, to use as a base.

The accomplishment of the Bush 43 administration in destroying the power of the Taliban emerges as much more significant than any editorialist whom I've read has yet admitted. Imagine if in 1917 the Western powers had managed to crush the Bolsheviks (hey, they tried) and propped up the Kerensky quasi-democratic government until it was viable. Chances are good the Second World War could have been avoided, since Stalin's accomodationist policies toward Hitler would not have been necessary. Russia in 1917, despite the destruction caused by the war, had all the elements necessary to put together a strong capitalist economy. With wise policies, it could have been much stronger in the Thirties than Stalin's USSR was. Also, presumably, half the officers in the Red Army would not have been purged and shot. So Hitler in 1939 might have been forced to postpone indefinitely his plans to invade Poland. Such are the stakes involved in denying Al Qaeda a nation-state to use as a base. Perhaps a hundred years from now someone on that era's version of a blog will comment about how fortunate the world was to have a George W. Bush in 2002 to take the appropriate actions to forestall the triumph of Islamic fundamentalism. I hope.

Advantage Conundrum!
John O'Sullivan, in the Chicago Sun-Times, has a suggestion that looks a lot like mine in my last post. You don't think he's been reading Conundrum, do you? I like his idea of including Norway and Switzerland. The ultimate goal is to absorb the EU completely, reducing the influence of France and Germany to levels commensurate with their production and the strength of their political and economic systems. They would be free to impose thirty-five hour work weeks and six weeks of paid vacation for part-time workers on their economies if they wanted to, but they should be aware no one would rescue them from the consequences of these insanities. A free-trade zone should be just that. No "sharing of the pain" so as to subsidize idiotic economic regimes with the productivity of hard-working free men will be countenanced. But new techniques and technology will be available, for appropriate compensation. I disagree in principle with his refusal to allow free movement of labor. That would be the best feature. Assuming reasonable immigration controls could be worked out to exclude terrorists and other criminals, why would we not want to open our job market to millions of hard-working and ambitious immigrants, and what Eastern European, Turk, even Schweizer, would not want to try working in America? Of course, no social welfare benefits would be available to such economic migrants. Also, American investment in member countries would be unimpeded, making it likely, after a reasonable time, that workers could find good jobs at home. Competition among countries for investment dollars would soon reduce and could eliminate the subsidies and foreign ownership restrictions that have handicapped so many of the world's economies. Win/Win!

I have a suggestion
The New Republic is bemoaning the EU's reluctance to let Turkey in. As I mentioned a few posts below, we could offer Turkey a clear alternative: Join an expanded NAFTA that would include a large swath of Eastern Europe. As a further inducement, the Turks would not have to be in the same economic community as Greece, their historic rival and enemy. Hmm. Then what would we do with Cyprus? Hey, it's not bigger than many of our states. It even looks a lot like West Virginia. I'm sure neither Greece nor Turkey would mind if we took Cyprus on as a new state, or, rather, two states. It's only been trouble for them. We could immediately resolve the Greek/Turkish split by having North Cyprus and South Cyprus, each with its set of politicians. After all, the Crusaders in the twelfth century used Cyprus as a base. Why can't we?

European deathwatch - or is Chirac smartening up?
In this Bloomberg article, the decline of France is chronicled, so I blithely linked to it, chortling internally about the firesale prices I would soon be able to get Beaujolais and Brie for. But, wonder of wonders, it looks like Chirac is actually trying to lower taxes and back off on that stupid 35-hour work week regulation. I don't have much hope he'll get past the collectivists' roadblocks. But at least he's looking at the right moves. Next, he should try a full scale assault on "La Zone", those largely Arab areas around the big cities where police fear to go. That might put some backbone into the average Froggie.

Biting the hand that feeds you, and brings you modern medical care
Maybe this will demonstrate to those who wish to see the futility of trying to help people who hate your guts and want so much to kill you and all people like you out of sheer spite and bitterness that they will keep themselves in poverty and disease rather than let you help. The murderous fool who did this is now, no doubt, passing out candy to Arab children. If he's caught and killed, he surely will have a great memorial service at which modern rational thinking will be blamed for his bloody-mindedness. Too bad his murderous hatred couldn't have been directed at someone who had actually done something to deserve it, like Robert Fisk.

Powell and Bush win again
William Safire and Newsday (via Realclearpolitics) agree that the inclusion, without conditions, of the Baltic trio of nations in NATO is a coup for the administration. The Russian Bear, as James Klurfeld of Newsday said, did not growl. Unbelievable, is it not, also, that Bulgaria, for decades the hardest of hard-line Soviet client states (remember Bulgarians Georgi Markov, killed by ricin and Mehmet Ali Agca, who shot the Pope?) is now a full military partner of the United States of America? And these countries joined NATO before the European Union would let them in! Maybe, as I mentioned in a comment on Sofia Sideshow, we should undercut the Common Market and induct Eastern Europe as a whole into NAFTA. And, what the heck, let's get Russia, Ukraine, everyone else, surround the darn Euroweenies. We could change the name to NAEEFTA. That would assure our supply of Russian oil and diamonds and gold. Maybe Putin would get some help resolving the Chechnya - and Georgian and Ossetian and Abkhazian - situations. Win/win!

Seriously, this is history.

Update
Charles Krauthammer, in WaPo, lays out the changed strategic situation. In short, America dominates. We can look forward to a future where Bulgaria and Rumania have larger, more efficient and better led military forces than France, Germany or Canada. Call me old-fashioned, but history still tells us that those with credible military options get respect. The American target for Islamofascist wrath has hardened considerably. So where will the bin Ladens of the world turn their attention? "Boom! goes London, boom! Paree," to quote Randy Newman. After all, we've got a lot of new friends who, unlike the Western Europeans, will put up with little nonsense from violent fundamentalists. Now THAT's "multilateralism"!

Hope
Perhaps we aren't fated to a future that includes a Canadian-style health care system. God knows our present system is riddled with enough government-induced inefficiencies already. This article relates the heartwarming story of how even in liberal Oregon the voters rejected totalitarian health care by a 79% to 21% margin. The big mistake the referendum pushers made was to try to do too much at one time. The real cost of the program was obvious. It would have bankrupted Oregon. And, of course, anyone in any other state who had a health problem and hadn't provided for his health care would up and move to Oregon to get his share of the goodies before it all went bust. Sometimes I am impressed by the wisdom of the people. Maybe voting's not such a bad thing after all.

Another memorial
You don't have to be a crypto-Communist Senator to get a big fancy memorial event. You can just murder innocent people who are waiting in their cars to go in to work, as this barbarian did. The only good thing is that now millions of Pakis know the penalty for killing people in Virginia is death. If that deters one or two from committing more acts of savagery, I'll put up with the stupidity of having the media treat the memorial polemics as news instead of senseless ravings. I hope Muhammad and Malvo were watching.

Perfidy
How long will it take the Republicans to realize that it is useless to be nice to Democrats? In the lame-duck session under way right now, the Republicans did not force a struggle on taking over full control of all committees immediately, which they could have done. They were being collegial and gracious, or maybe just plain stupid. And the Dems have now done their best to hold up the Homeland Security Bill, the passage of which was the whole point of the session. When are Republicans going to learn that politics is just war by other means? And that if you don't finish off your enemy (1991 in Baghdad, anyone?) he will just obstruct you any way he can? Who can remember the Wellstone "memorial service" without being absolutely enlightened about the way the Democrats approach politics?

Sure, I know, the bill's full of pork. Duh. They all are, especially any as assured of eventual passage as this one. Would that stop even one Democrat if it was pork sponsored by them? Duh.

Europe is doomed
So, growth is down to one percent or less, unemployment is at long-time highs, what does your government do? Get out of the way of the producers? Not if you’re a German, whose economy represents one-third of the Euro-area economy. You introduce a capital-gains tax and eliminate “tax breaks” and increase “social insurance” contributions – yep, that means taxes, too. Am I missing something, or is Al Qaeda now in control of the German government? Now if the US withdraws its troops from Germany, wouldn’t that just push the Bundeswimps into a spiralling recessionary downturn? And wouldn’t we just be so sorry to hear about that?

And Japan isn’t any better off.

Update
Gerhard Schroder's (sorry, I haven't figured out where the umlaut is hiding on this machine) hand on the tiller of the German ship of state is a tad wobbly, according to the Economist(via Instapundit). He apparently had made a campaign promise not to do anything really stupid, like, for instance, raise taxes or "social insurance contributions". Why that would be "economically absurd" during a downturn. Why does anyone listen to what a politician says during a campaign?

Synthesis

David Brooks has a great article in the Weekly Standard, via Little Green Footballs, about the ultimate collectivist regime, merging Lenin and Hitler, Trotsky and Goebbels. Surprise! It's Iraq! Historical inevitability and all. It only makes sense, then, that they should be crushed by the two hundred ton historical gorilla that is Capitalism, as exemplified by the United States Armed Forces, George W. Bush and Israel! Gotterdammerung time! Twinkle, twinkle!

We win - again!!

And this is better than the election. Robert Fisk is blowing his top, beside himself (no, not two of them!!) that the US has had its way with the UN Security Council. Maybe now the conservatives will concede that Colin Powell has some real skills - and some political instincts! I'm jumping to conclusions there. He may not get credit for the new resolution that in every way surpasses anything the US was able to get out of the UN about the Iraq mess in the last eleven years. But what the heck? He's Secretary of State. The combination of Powell and Bush has turned the world upside down. Does everybody realize that the vote for the Iraq war powers resolution was considerably more lopsided than the one Bush 41 got in 1990? That the unanimous Security Council resolution (including SYRIA!! I'm still boggled) was more unexpected than Max Cleland losing his Senate seat in Georgia, less probable than Walter Mondale losing an election in Minnesota? What a week. I need a bourbon. Wild Turkey 101.

We win!! - or something

Despite my inability to figure out a reason to vote, I still get that glow of satisfaction when the candidates I have backed publicly and secretly cheered for win. I found a fascinating bunch of comments on a Democratic-leaning website that give a well-rounded idea of the mess the Democratic party is in this morning. They literally haven't a clue. I'm not sure yesterday's results will make a difference, but at least it diminishes the possibility that I'll have to look at Al Gore or Hillary Clinton in the White House two years from the coming January 20.

Double Delusion

Despite all the ranting and threats from the pro-delusion factor, I persist in laying out my analysis of voting as a rational pursuit. Majoritarian democracy consists of two interwoven delusions. The first, as I have been saying, is the delusion that one vote counts. It doesn't. End of story. Oh, all right, if you want to go beyond that, if you are determined not to think about that topic, if you insist on taking the leap of faith and voting, because of stupidity or emotional fragility or fear of social disapproval or greed for power, let's pretend. Let's pretend you have enough political influence to sway the vote one way or the other. Should you vote Democrat or Republican? Does anyone delude himself to the extent that he thinks his political influence can make the Libertarians or the Greens or the Independents into a majority party? Let's ignore him. Does a vote - no, ok, we're pretending you've got thousands, what, maybe millions of votes? Does going for the Donks or Pachyderms make any real difference?

So now we get to the issues. What we care about:

Drug war. Democrats have to be better on this, right? The Republicans are the "social conservatives". Wrong. Bill Clinton doubled the number of people in jail for marijuana crimes. No powerful politician supports drug rights. Chucky Schumer and Joe Biden are some of the most ferocious drug totalitarians. Putting Dems into power would not change the drug war perceptibly. After all, it got going under Roosevelt - a Dem - and was cranked up tremendously under Kennedy and Johnson. The neo-Puritan consciousness purses its lips with disapproval at those skanky heroin addicts and tries to forget its hash parties in the Sixties.

Taxes Republicans, right? Sure. Under Reagan the government expanded as much as it did under any two-term Democrat. Whenever a Democrat tries to crank up taxes, as Clinton did in 1993, he gets hammered at the polls. But our wonderful democratic system allows a slow, inexorable increase in the money going to government, and therefore its power.

Political correctness Republicans will take care of this, right? Sure, they'll prevent the drift toward neo-Puritanism? They wouldn't , for instance, let a bill go through that mandates tens of billions of dollars of taxpayers' money for "disabled rights". Wrong. Bush 41 did, and he lent his support to the ridiculous Rio Summit. And the notion of "family leave" under penalty of law? Wrong again. Bush 41. The idiocies of recycling and wetlands confiscation and pollution controls never seem to get better no matter who's in power. They just keep ratcheting up, choking entrepreneurship and property rights. The present regime has not done anything to stop the war on smokers or the racism of "affirmative action".

Defense Well, surely, the Republicans will go after those Islamofascists like the Dems never would, right? Sure. Like Reagan did anything about the blowing up of the Beirut US embassy and the Marine Barracks. Like Bush 41 knocked off Saddam. Like Nixon crushed the North Vietnamese. Even Bush 43 has been hogtied by the hysterical UN-lovers and those in his own party who don't want to make the French or the Germans or the Mauritians mad. Oh, yes, Mauritius is on the Security Council this year. It's an island group in the Indian Ocean east of Madagascar with fewer than one million people. Think Orlando without Disneyworld. I have no confidence at all in the Republican vision of national defense. The Republicans are cheap isolationists. The Democrats are wimpy appeasers. Neither way works very well.

Abortion Now if abortion rights are your hot button, you'd have to vote for the Dems, right? Hmm. Roe v. Wade happened under Nixon. Since 1972 Republicans have had the White House for eighteen of thirty years. The result? No change at all in abortion rights. Anti-abortion terrorism has arisen and has not been dealt with any better by Democrats than Republicans.

Crime Both Dems and Repubs have fumbled around trying to blame crime on drugs, poverty or social incivility. The improvements of late haven't had much to do with either party's policies. The bipartisan impulse, also known as the bandwagon effect, makes sure that any effective measure is trumpeted by pols of both parties. Perhaps only capital punishment is identified more closely with the Republicans than the Democrats. And capital punishment is inflicted on so few of the monsters our wonderful system has produced that it's less than a joke.

I can find no key issue on which either party would be markedly better than the other, even in the vanishingly unlikely event that one party controlled the Presidency and the House and two-thirds of the Senate. And even if I could, that issue would no doubt be balanced by another just as important that the other party dealt with better.

There's another problem. Politicians lie for a living. Even if I could doubly delude myself into accepting the system as it is, I would not vote for a pack of liars. But go ahead, delusionists, vote away. It's your "right", after all. It makes you feel good. Just keep telling yourself, "It's only a game. It's only a game!"

Political rush

Despite my previous post, I have to admit I'm a political junkie. I can think of few thrills greater than watching numbers bounce back and forth election night and having the final tally come down on your side. Why - it's almost as good as football! The great example is, of course, 2000. Living in Tallahassee, Florida, election night was something special. The Capitol was surrounded by TV trucks from everywhere, from Cairo, Georgia to Tokyo. I had a trip planned for December 5, by which time I had every reason to think the election would be long over. Of course, it wasn't. The attention of the whole world was on Tallahassee, and Palm Beach. I jetted off to Cairo, Egypt, to see my sister still not knowing who won. It was especially poignant because on election night Bush had been declared the winner, Gore refused to concede, then wasn't Gore declared the winner by someone too? Ah, how quickly memory fades. So during my journey I would, every so often, see an English-language newspaper with a headline about the dramatic battle. I followed the punches and counterpunches on my sister's internet connection and CNN World. It was weird to see the Florida Supreme Court building in front of which I walked so often featured on Egyptian news. Even though I couldn't understand much of what they were saying, I did pick up references to "Al-Bush" and, of course, "Al-Gore"! Finally, I think it was on the steps outside the fabulous Egyptian Museum downtown, I saw the Cairo News with a second-coming headline, "Bush Wins". And it was just as good as if I'd been in Tallahassee jumping up and down in front of the TV screen. I looked around at the guys in dubious suits trying to get you to hire them to guide you through the museum - " A very big museum, sir!" - and watched the whirl of crazy traffic, including horse-carts and overloaded microbuses. I knew few of these people understood how much this meant to me. I knew it shouldn't, that it didn't make any sense. But the ancient victory song sang in my blood, just as when one's tribe pulled down a mammoth after losing many men to its tusks, as when the Nazi standard was blown from the Reichs Chancellery in 1945, the same feeling as when Armstrong stepped onto the Moon and when the Berlin Wall fell, hammer blow on hammer blow. We had won. Feasting and celebration!

Football, Who-ville, voting and the nature of Space


I put in a couple of comments on Rachel Lucas' blog about the futility of voting. They seem to have stirred up a bit of a hornets' nest. I swear I wasn't trolling. The principles are, to me, anyway, so clear I can't understand why everyone doesn't see them.

If you asked a football fan, "Does your individual cheering help your team to win?", he might say "yes".

"How about if you're watching the game on TV?"

Most fans would easily if somewhat ruefully admit, no, their individual cheers, however raucous, do not have any real effect on whether Randy Moss catches the critical touchdown pass if they're watching on a screen from a continent away. If you asked a fan at a game, though, he might contend that he was having an effect.

The appropriate cliché might be "The crowd is the twelfth man!!" or something more pungent if the beer were freely flowing. But even if you ran across a rational, thoughtful football fan -OK, no sarcasm - he might well say, "I am fully aware that my cheers, however hoarse they make me on the day after, do not really have any effect on the team, when thousands of other individuals are cheering. My one voice is drowned out. If I should suddenly go mute, no one would really notice. But that doesn't matter!" he might protest, "I don't really do it for that. I do it because it makes me feel good. I cheer because the team is doing well. The team isn't necessarily doing well just because I cheer." He would then walk away, looking back at you reproachfully with that look that says, "Party Pooper!!". The psychology of sports spectatorship is intricate and full of interesting angles. The point is, though, that it is easy to get caught up in crowd enthusiasm and make invalid judgments.

Our American mythos is full of such enthusiasms. The guru of our mythology is no doubt Theodore Geisel, the inimitable Dr. Seuss. And the crowning glory of his theology is, with even less doubt, "Horton Hears a Who". In this work, Horton the Elephant becomes aware that a thistle blossom contains a whole little town of "Who's", tiny creatures who are, none the less, human. The thistle is about to be eaten or burned or something by some awful creatures, no doubt Republican, who profess not to be able to hear the town full of creatures shouting "We are here!!" Horton tries his best to rouse the Who's to their loudest shouts, but is giving up in despair. The little Who-ville is about to become collateral damage. Every little Who is screaming at the top of its lungs. The Who-bureaucrats are frantically searching through the town for anyone who might not be contributing to the noise level. Then, finally, just before disaster strikes, one little sick Who-kid is roused from his bed and manages to utter a "Yawp!"

This one little sick "Yawp" did the trick. The noise passed a critical threshold and the awful creatures do hear it and do have a heart or enough of one to refrain from eating or burning or whatever the Who-ville thistle. The lesson is clear. Even your tiny sick little "Yawp" of a vote can save the entire community. So get out there and "Yawp!" or bear the guilt of being responsible for mass destruction. It's a nice story, but does it have anything to do with reality?

I don't think so. One vote/yawp has never really saved any community from anything. The nature of voting is that of football. It feels good to cheer for your team. If your side wins, you glow with satisfaction, despite having contributed nothing, even if you're watching from a thousand miles away. You've taken a stand, you've put your yelling where your mouth is and by gum the tailback skittered through the metaphorical hole off-tackle and scored. Tonight I shall watch the Dolphins play the Packers at historic Lambeau Field and root for the Packers, for no very good reason except memories of Paul Hornung and Bart Starr and admiration for Brett Favre, none of whom I've ever met or am ever likely to have any real effect on.

Going to the ballot box isn't as exciting as passing through the hallowed doors of Lambeau Field. My memories are less glorious than those of the Packers. I remember Gene McCarthy, whom I wasn't old enough to vote for, but I worked for, or McGovern, whom I blush to admit I did vote for, even for Jimmy Carter, whom I voted for because I could have sworn I heard him promise something called "zero-based budgeting", which would return the government to zero expenditure every year, and which sank without a trace in the Washington morass. Since 1980, after reading Harry Browne's "How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World", I haven't even been tempted to vote. I was convinced that my one vote could not and did not matter as a political act. I was aware that voting had other benefits. My sister told me, "If you don't vote, you can't complain!" So there's a reason to vote, so people will let you complain!? And I knew that if I ever wanted to run for political office, or get a job from a politician, it would be better if I voted. And who should run for President in 1992 but Harry Browne, who had spurned voting for decades. And that didn't help him, not that he had a chance anyway, on the Libertarian ticket. I guess he just got bored being free.

So I could vote. It would be easy. People would approve. Maybe I could work in a campaign, meet women. But I would always know that what I was doing was nonsensical. And it would be hypocritical, given the way the system is set up. My problem always was that my vote/yawp was NOT going to be the one that pushed the Who-voice over the critical edge and saved the community. There was no chance. I'd have to vote Republican, because the Democrats are no better than failed Communists and voting for any of the small parties would make my hypocrisy even more obvious without the saving grace of allowing me to claim the benefits of being a partisan of a major party. The problem is not whom you vote for. The problem is voting.

But, as Rachel and duToit have pointed out, what else do you do? How do you govern a polity? And I don't know. I just know voting has proven incapable of preserving freedom and keeping the size of government to a reasonable level. So that brings me to the nature of space.

Somewhere in my lost blog-archive I talk about my problem, my insoluble dilemma relating to space. In a nutshell, space is supposed to be empty. And yet we say that it separates bodies. And this cannot be. It is and it is ridiculous. You have the moon, for instance, and 240,000 miles of emptiness and then you have the Earth. But why isn't that the same as saying that the Earth and the Moon are right smack dab together? The language is impossible. "Separated by nothing"? But that means "together". And yet, no, we see one body over here, one over there. And in the middle? Nothing but far away stars. So that little problem is as vexing as the impossibility of voting for a society that would do away with the idiocies of voting. I have no other interpretation to suggest, but I cannot deny the existence of a conundrum. And, who knows, maybe that's a good thing. If I thought I knew everything, I would be insufferable.

Ventura body-slam?
The so-called "memorial service" for Paul Wellstone which turned into a political rally may have backfired on the Democrats. In the following article,"Newsday.com - Ventura Upset Over Wellstone Service", Ventura talks about appointing an Independent instead of a Democrat to take the open seat until the new electee is seated. What if he appoints Tim Penny, who's behind in the race for Minnesota governor? When Penny withdraws, most of his votes will go to the Republican, Pawlenty. So the Democrats may lose a Senate seat, at least temporarily, AND a governorship for a full term because of their clownish and despicable behavior. When an ex-rassler sets the standard for decent behavior, the Democratic Party has truly "jumped the shark"!

Update
Don't miss Vodkapundit's right-on reaction. The comments rule, as well.

Last update - and last straw!
In this article on a Minnesota news site, the Wellstone campaign chairman "apologizes" for the tone of the "memorial service", but begs indulgence on the grounds of the recent death of Wellstone! This is like saying, "Sorry we didn't act like someone near and dear to us just died, but, you must understand, someone near and dear to us just died!!" I think it's telling that the campaign chairman had to apologize, not Kahn or Bubba or Mondull (yes, I know it's a cliche, but sometimes cliches are just so damn accurate!). He just doesn't understand how desperate the Democrats are and the lengths to which they will go to win. I don't always - or even usually - agree with Rush Limbaugh on things, but on this he's absolutely right. My eyes have been opened wide to the nature of the Democratic political killing machine. They will not rest until their collectivist agenda is implemented. And, as with Al Qaeda, they can only be resisted by those as committed as they are. And I now am as committed to freedom, capitalism and truth as they are to socialism, poverty and death.

My reaction, stimulated by this back-and-forth on The Light of Reason about Wellstone's death, is as follows:
My problem with the reaction to Wellstone's death is the implication that he set an admirable example of passion and loyalty. His principles were wrong, his passion was misplaced. His only possible saving grace is that he didn't really believe in the inevitable results of the collectivist ideology he espoused. So his defenders are reduced to denying that he would have let his country turn into the socialist hell his proclaimed principles make inevitable. But that makes nonsense of their claims that he "deeply believed in" his ideals. If he did, he was dangerous and it is good that he may be replaced by someone less collectivist. If he didn't, he was just another hypocritical politician and his death makes no difference. Many more of those are waiting to replace him.

Reparations for black crime

I was thinking about the whining about reparations for slavery and every other bump in the road of history. And it struck me, OK, if blacks can ask for reparations from whites for slavery, why can whites not demand reparations from blacks for the hugely disproportionate amount of violent crime committed by blacks in, say, the last fifty years? Just think of the amount of blood and money expended because of the lawlessness of a good number of, usually, young black men, aided and abetted and excused by their "leaders". Collective punishment works both ways. If it is right in one situation, it is good in another. Then we'd have to start deducting disproportionate welfare costs, the expenses associated with the health costs of improper diets and smoking and drug use, which produce a much higher death rate among blacks. Yes, it is imperative that we judge each citizen by the color of his skin, no matter what his individual history may be, and make sure he pays the same as every other member of his racial group, calculated according to the sins of that group. It's only fair.

Credit crunch

Was anyone else as disgusted as I was at the spectacle of the Montgomery County Sniper Task Force news conference, with half a dozen law enforcement agencies crowding into camera range to take credit for nabbing the sniper? What did they do except field a couple of phone calls? The idiot sniper practically gave himself up. "Check Montgomery" Oh, OK, Montgomery, Alabama. Hmm sniper-type murder, stolen credit card. "Wire ten million dollars to this credit card" Say, you don't think that might be the credit card stolen in Alabama?? What splendid police work! Moron sniper wants a stolen credit card (was it a debit card?) to show a balance of ten million dollars?? Right, he just marches into a bank and says, "Give me a cash advance. Oh, about nine million, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand dollars. In cash, please. And, I'd appreciate it if you didn't remark on the fact that the credit card is on the list of stolen ones. I embarrass easily." And this is the kind of brains we had defending Kuwait in the Gulf War?

Update

The police work seems to have been even more sloppy than I thought. This report has the police recording the license plate of the sniper car TEN TIMES! And nobody cross-checked, nobody thought it odd that the same car would be in the area of TEN of the shootings?!! The police in this case have been a net negative. They couldn't have done worse if they had been being paid by Al Qaeda. Disgusting.

Update with cheese

The FBI continues to come out looking bad. The article also shows how, like the Al Qaeda in Hamburg and Amsterdam and London, Muhammad in the USA lived off our freebie-laden social service system, not having to contribute to society, just assuming that people would let him live free in a homeless shelter while he was flashing wads of cash. What kind of system do we have when hard-working taxpayers making a lot less than Muhammad was flashing around have to pay for his room and board? Why were no questions asked? Why, even when he had been reported twice to the FBI, were no steps taken, no investigation opened? Too busy with the drug war, I guess.


I got some flak from an emailer who couldn't understand how I could criticize the wonderful police work done to solve this case. He called me a "joke" and said, "what is it about people like you?" I thought about whether I had blown a gasket, concluded I hadn't and fired back this response:

There's an easy explanation for my rant. Why would cops take down the license plate number of a car that had no logical connection to the crimes? How many cars showed up TEN TIMES on the cops' lists of vehicles, wherever they were? I don't know. Do you? How many cars' license plate numbers were taken down by cops? I don't know. Do you? My disgust was based on a feeling that no one even looked at the lists of numbers and correlated them. Maybe dozens, even hundreds of numbers showed up that many times. You think so? Is that what you believe? That seems even more unlikely than my conclusion. Even if dozens had shown up that many times, which I seriously doubt, they could and should all have been checked out. I'm not saying I could have done better. But I'm not a professional crime-solver with the entire resources of the richest country in the world behind me.

The FBI sought the Unabomber for eighteen years. They only caught him because his screed was published and his brother saw it and turned him in. The anthrax killer has never been caught. More and more evidence points to Tim McVeigh having had co-conspirators. As I said, the only reason Muhammad and Malvo were caught is because they directed the cops' attention to the Alabama murder. And Malvo was stupid enough to drop a magazine at the crime scene. And a disk jockey broadcast a license plate number the cops didn't even want to be out there. That's like having a fish jump into your boat when you don't even have bait on your hook. I am NOT going to congratulate anyone with a badge for that kind of resolution.

My frustration stems from the kind of police work I see happening, not the color of anyone's skin. I don't know whose fault it is and I don't blame Chief Moose particularly, any more than anyone else. My instincts tell me that the real problem was a lack of good coordination at the regional level, among the PD's and the Federal agencies. What was ATF even doing in this investigation?

I feel angry and ripped off. No one in this country can depend on the police to protect them from crime. And then the authoritarian utopians want to take guns away from the good guys, so they can chatter at cocktail parties about what great humanitarians they are. And Jimmy Carter gets a Nobel Prize for screwing up royally by trusting the North Koreans!! That press conference set me off. All these guys care about is their careers. It's all of a piece with Waco and Ruby Ridge and Elian Gonzalez. I thought things might improve with Clintoon gone, but not yet. My family is still at risk because of stupid bureaucrats and incompetent politicians.

I appreciate much that the government does to protect American interests overseas, at least since Bush got in. I appreciate much that our government, unlike most in the world, does NOT do to interfere with the economy, even though they still do way too much damage that way. I do not appreciate being told that I'm not supposed to criticize sloppy or non-existent police work.

Robert Speirs - oh, and just for your information, so you know the joke has a punch line, if I were king of the world, no one would even know my name.

What is this "people like you" stuff, anyway? How do you know what I'm like? That reminds me of the time in 1970 or so that I was at an anti-Nixon rally in Burlington, Vermont. It was the hippies vs. the locals. Then state troopers came in and pushed us apart and told me, who had long hair and a leather jacket, "get back with your people!" That shocked me. I didn't even like most of the hippies. They weren't "my" people. The trooper, like you, was jumping to conclusions.

Fondue, anyone?

Could it be that the French are really pushing for assimilation of their immigrant population? But, but, but, I thought the "melting pot" was an absurd reactionary Western oppressive idea calculated to destroy diversity and reinforce the hegemony of straight white male gunowners and Republicans!! Have the cheese-eaters discovered fondue is better without lumps? Or did they suddenly remember that "liberte, egalite et fraternite" are unaccountably absent from the Koran?

Penalty phase

Den Beste has a few thoughts on the sentence the sniper is likely to get. I have a terrible feeling, though, that he may get a Kunstler or Johnnie Cochran who will bring up his Gulf War service and invoke the "Gulf War Syndrome" defense, or at least some sort of post-traumatic stress defense. After all, he was a Muslim already when he was in the Army, I believe. And the Gulf War forced him to fight against fellow Muslims. What cognitive dissonance! I hope I 'm wrong.

Big Bad Europe?!

An article in the Atlantic(via Newsmax) warns that America had better watch out for Europe in the years to come, because it's really getting its act together and they're going to be totally strong and united and wealthy. The clear implication is that Europe must triumph over the nasty unilateral gun-totin' USA because it's on the right side of all the environmental and "social justice" issues. Where are these people getting their ideas? How could they possibly think that Europe poses any threat to anyone but themselves, with their maniacal mishandling of every issue from immigration to socialized medicine to workers' "rights" ? Now it appears even their beloved Euro, their shining symbol of togetherness, is imploding (via Instapundit). At least when the American colonies banded together, a Virginian didn't have to worry about speaking thirteen different languages to travel around the country and tolerating thirteen attitudes toward entrepreneurship, twelve of them bad, to start a business that operated in the whole country. What is it about a common culture that the Europhiles fail to understand? Besides, I don't want the Europeans to merge their cultures. I want them all to stay nice and distinct so when I visit they will all be interesting for different reasons. That's Europe's real future role: A museum for the edification of - and a horrible example to - Americans. Hey, don't worry, we'll pay mucho dinero for you to wear those stupid costumes and do your native dances.

Nukes away!

I had to make my position clear on Rachel Lucas' blog about the bombing of Hiroshima and the hypothetical bombing of Berlin. So, I left this comment:


Nuking Berlin, if we had had the bomb in time, would have been a splendid, close-up lesson to the Russians of the power of nuclear weapons. I am absolutely sure FDR or Truman would have authorized such a bombing. It would have saved hundreds of thousands of Allied soldiers, mostly Russian, if it could have been done in, say, March 1945. On the order of two hundred thousand Russian soldiers died taking Germany. Weirdly enough, most of those were killed by friendly fire, because three Russian armies converged on Berlin and spent days firing on each other, thinking they were the enemy. And the nuking of Berlin would have probably meant the capitulation of Japan as well, saving all the lives that an invasion of Japan would have cost, PLUS those killed in Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the firebomb raids on Tokyo and other Japanese cities, which killed even more than the nukes. Also, the nuking of Berlin would have made it much more difficult, if not impossible, for the Russians to overrun Eastern Europe. Don't think we wouldn't have taken that into account. So, tens of millions would have been saved from decades of bloody totalitarian autocracy.

Bah! It's ridiculous and offensive to say we wouldn't have nuked the Nazis because they were Aryans!!!

Hawaii news - all over the country

As I said before, to get news about a defacement of a synagogue in Florida, you have to go to Jerusalem. But if leaflets are merely left in a yard in a mosque in Hawaii, it's national news. Another Conundrum "you heard it here first". I could have said "I told you so" but that phrase was already taken by another media giant.

End of tolerance for terrorism in Indonesia?

Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri is finally getting the message. Not only have the terrorists trashed her country's economy, but now they're going after her personally, as reported in the Bangkok Post. So even though the Bali bombing killed mostly "infidels" no one is safe when fanatic Islam stalks the world. Her only safety lies in joining the War on Terror, with cheese!

Consensus Censorship
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler has an awesome post about censorship among the Democratic faithful and not-so-faithful. Is it a sign of desperation or a disturbing sign of strength that "mainstream" Dems are tightening up their "Democratic centralism" like the Bolsheviks just before the 1917 Russian Revolution? Next thing you know they'll be launching armed raids on Green Party concentrations and putting poison in the free-trade coffee of the loony left. Read it!

War weeks away?

Rees-Mogg thinks in the Times of London (via Realclearpolitics) that war is coming and soon. He seems to derive this feeling, however, from plumbing the attitudes of the average American coming to London. I'm not sure that's an accurate reflection of the Bush administration's policy. I have been struck over and over again by how determined and patient W has turned out to be. He will not attack before he's ready. I'm even drawn to thinking that he's got ideas about scaring Saddam right out of his regime. Maybe a plan is in the works. Would that be the biggest coup ever or what? The dictator flees to Libya and a popular democrat takes power, calling immediate elections and dissolving the Republican Guard. Hey, it could happen.


Update

Looks like the New York Times is climbing on board my hypothesis. Is Saddam really losing his grip? (via Andrew Sullivan) Is there something going on behind the scenes, the equivalent of Reagan's "the bombing begins in five minutes", that stimulated Saddam to loosen the reins? Maybe Saddam has heard how luxurious American prisons can be. My conception of Middle Eastern dictators does not include the idea of "going down with the ship".


Another straw

The Straits Times, via NewsForum, has this interesting tidbit about Saddam putting his affairs in order. Hey, maybe he's going to strap on some dynamite and ask for an in-person negotiation with Dubya!

Those who do not remember history ...

Victor Davis Hanson has an excellent essay in NRO Online(via LGF ) about how the lessons of history apply to the Iraqi - and now North Korean - situation. I'd add to his list of appeasers the Pollyannas in England and Prussia who thought that with Napoleon on Elba he could no longer pose a threat. And let's not forget the America Firsters. The ghosts of history come alive today in the persons of Noam Chomsky, Susan Sontag and Michael Moore. Doesn't it seem, though, that the smug appeasers of other years at least had some class?

News from Never-Never Land

Peter Pan's "top adviser on Korea", Wendy, denies that Peter ever knew anything about a North Korean nuclear program. He was too busy flying with Monica Tinkerbelle and fighting Cap'n Ken StarrHook and the crocodile Newt who swallowed the clock. So you can't blame him. He never grew up, after all. How could that be his fault? We'll just have to deal with the "very serious problem" that us grownups are so worried about. What IS Peter doing behind that bush with Princess Summerfallwinterspring? Oh, I see, another seminar on diversity. Multiculturalism always was his strong suit.

Get your Florida news - from Israel!

I noticed this story in the Jerusalem Post about a Boca Raton synagogue that had been defaced by swastikas. Sounds like a big story, right? Hate crime. Discrimination. We demand Justice! So I figured I just missed it in the Florida newspapers, which I don't read since I found out I could get my news sooner and more fully from the Internet. So I checked the local Tallahassee paper, searched its recent archives. Nothing. A racist attack on Jews is a non-story. Gee, I wonder if they would have reported it if it had been the defacement of a mosque by Jewish extremists?

Don't shoot! We're coming out with our hands up!

Does anybody really think that North Korea would have made this admission if President Bush were not moving to invade and conquer the Iraqi government to stop them from producing nuclear weapons? How many good things have come from the readiness of the US government - which does so much stupid stuff, like the drug war - to at least defend its people with military force? I'm encouraged.

Update

The Brits seem to think as I do, that the North Koreans find a lot more to be scared about in the firm resolve of a George W. Bush when compared to the cowardly immorality of a Clintoon. Rush on the radio is saying that Carter was involved in negotiating the "promise" that the North Koreans never had any intention of keeping, in return for nuclear reactor technology. So now, of course, Carter will be giving back his Nobel Peace Prize, since his naive stupidity was responsible for allowing an insane totalitarian autocracy to get closer to having a nuclear weapon.

Counter-Counterpunch

I noticed this leftist hydrophobic courtesy of Colby Cosh, my favorite Canadian blogger. I just had to supply the following email:


Gancarski:

You blame the police for the sniper's reign of death. You blame President Bush for Saddam Hussein's reign of terror and autocracy that threatens each one of us each day. You equate death from terror to two winos beating each other up and say that a few more murders are not worth worrying about.

You say the conquest of Iraq will be to secure oil when oil can be much more easily secured by appeasement and kowtowing to Saddam.

You bemoan poll results while criticizing the government's lack of democracy.

You have nothing but contempt for common sense and for the people of this country who have to suffer events like September 11 and the sniper and then have to listen to ignorant "intellectuals" like you blame them for not being aware of their own government's tyranny.

Well, Garcanski, the people are on to you. They know what you're like. And they don't believe a single word you say.

Robert Speirs
Tallahassee, Florida

Gunfight - with a bullet

I sent the following comment to Spinsanity in a debate about the "ballistic fingerprinting" measure and a Representative Moran's thuggish blathering about the nasty Republican murder machine:

"Ballistic fingerprinting" will not show who a murderer is. At most it MIGHT show where the gun was purchased, if it was purchased legally in this country. Are the proponents of ballistic fingerprinting really asserting that a high percentage of gun thefts can be solved? What percentage is even reported? How is it relevant that "attempts to alter the markings are rare" when it can so easily be done by changing the barrel or simply cleaning it? Of course they're rare, since ballistic fingerprinting isn't possible today. If this measure is put in place, circumventing the intrusive and easily misused registration system may be just as common - and even easier - to alter the ballistic fingerprint as to erase the serial number. A terrorist like the DC sniper is extremely likely to be aware of any ballistics fingerprinting and how to avoid it.

And the reason why guns have more importance to our individual rights than automobiles is the Second Amendment. It's in something called the Constitution.

Speaking of Iran

DEBKAfile has some really interesting stories today. I love Debka. It's always on the cutting edge, like Drudge. OK, maybe now and then it falls off the cutting edge, but stories like this are worth it:

US-UK Aircraft Bomb Air Defense Command Center
Tuesday at Al Kut 100 m. Southeast of Baghdad Near IranianBorder

DEBKAfile Military Sources:
This is First Allied Raid from East, Made Possible by
Secret US-Iranian Accord for Over-flights from New
US Base at Herat, Afghanistan

That reminded me of something. During the Falkland War in 1982, didn't a British carrier come down the Pacific side of South America and fly bombers over Chile and Argentina to attack the Argies on the Falklands? I seem to remember some to-do about whether Chile would let them use their airspace. The Galtieri regime figured since they were a military dictatorship, the Chilean junta wouldn't betray them to the Brits. Wrong! Maybe we're finally starting to play it smart in the Mideast. Wouldn't take much to outdo Albright in manipulating the interests of these relatively poor, weak countries to get them to go along with our legitimate security interests. I have a feeling a great book is going to be written about these "interesting times".

I may have to move to Iran

I know there are too many things about the place to hate, so I could never live there, but this story tempts a dog-hater such as myself to at least consider whether it might be possible to put up with all the other garbage to live without dogs around all the time. But why short-legged dogs are particularly persecuted is still a mystery to me. BBC didn't see fit to explain that part of the Koran.

Update

In a Conundrum exclusive, Ms. Mavis Codswollop of Pekinese Close, SW1, London, has come out full force against the Iranian fatwa against our canine companions. We have it on good authority that her sentiments are echoed by millions of other half-witted British housewives. "It's barbaric!" she was quoted by the Conundrum London correspondent as saying, "I mean, we didn't mind when they were just killing Americans and Jews. But stopping people from walking their dogs, we just can't have that, can we? I mean, what do we have nuclear weapons for if we're not going to use them?" Hear hear, Mavis, you alcoholic old bint, or should I say, "Not arf!"?

My copy, right or wrong

godofthemachine started a discussion about copyright. So I just had to jump in:

My favorite law school professor used to tell me to suspect all "balancing tests". How do we balance intangibles and how do we know these are the right weights in the pans?

I agree with Aaron Hospel that intellectual property is the most suspiciously unproperty-like kind of property. However, one of the rationales for protecting any property is that a man will fight for his property, so the state must protect it to avoid violence. This applies to some degree to intellectual property, as anyone who has observed an author picking over unauthorized Chinese editions of his works in a remainder bin in Taiwan will testify. But the lack of physical reality to intellectual property makes its protection less important and less practical.

I have always suspected the constitutional argument that authors would not write without copyright. Graphomania is a well-documented illness. Perhaps it's the other way around. Without copyright, authors wouldn't be stimulated to grind out the reams of nonsense we see in so many bookshops these days and we'd only get works written for the love of it. That might be just as well.
Robert Speirs 10/15/2002 01:33 PM EST

Reading discrimination


This article in the St. Petersburg Times (via Flablog)sounds reasonable until you think about it a bit. Getting a high school diploma, with straight A's, without being able to read on your own? Am I missing something, or is it the height of idiocy to think you are preparing a kid for the real world by telling him he should be able to function perfectly well in society without being able to read or write? And does the author really think that "acquiring and processing information" is an unnecessary skill? Another odd thing: the kid's mother is a "special education paraprofessional" and yet "nobody seems to know how to help me get ..." a waiver of the FCAT to get his diploma!!? Something smells to high heaven here.

Happy Columbus Day!

This comment on Indymedia asking for info on events that didn't celebrate Columbus on Columbus Day (huh??) brought this response from yours truly. Wanna bet I get a reasoned, civilized response bringing up real facts and issues?
All pro-Columbus events are pro- "Native", since a great majority of the present residents of America were born here, which is what "native" means, from Latin "natus, -a, -um", meaning "born". As a native-born American, I urge you to consider what Columbus brought to the New World: writing, the wheel, glass, iron, the compass and the germ of the scientific method which brought at least North America out of millennia of savagery to host the greatest country in the history of the world.

Vote?

I have always been bothered by the notion of voting. Ever since reading Harry Browne's "How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World" I realized how useless it was. I continued voting for one election. I blush to admit I voted for Carter once. So I had the following exchange of emails with Emily of Emilysplace, started by a comment I made on someone else's post. Boy, it sure is easy to lose your way in the Blogosphere. Someone should make some software to make navigation easier.

Dear Emily,


Thank you for your kind words about Conundrum. I'm trying to think of ways to keep it fresh.

I'm afraid your reply does not address my point that whether a particular voter votes or not makes zero difference. Changing a landslide to a close election takes more than one vote. And when you join with others, even five others, to vote in a certain way, you dilute your interests. It's what Harry Browne calls the "Group Trap".

In this connection, when someone tells me, "If you don't vote, you can't complain!" I always think of one situation. What if you were in an auto accident on election eve and in a coma until the polls close? Would you still be able to complain? I have a sneaking suspicion that people who say you should vote - like my sister! - would be hesitant to say that the coma victim couldn't complain. I can just hear her saying, "Well, it wasn't his fault, the poor comatose thing, he intended to vote." I might very well be able to get her to admit that it isn't really voting that counts at all. It's intending to vote. SO it's really a matter of buying in (selling out?) to the system that counts, not the act of voting. And she'd be right. The illusion of voting, that they each have a real voice in political matters, keeps people from rioting in the street.

Well, I'm allergic to illusions. They make me break out in a huff. I contract terminal indignation. So I guess I better not vote. Hey, I'm not complaining! I can't figure out any way one man's opinion - mine, say - COULD make a difference. But, wait a minute. There was Einstein. And Newton. OK, I'll keep thinking about it.

I like your site, although I must be pretty far away from your political opinionplace. I remember, many moons ago, I talked to some Nichiren DaiShonin people in college. Let me see, nam myoho renggekkyo? Something like that, millions of times a day. That illusion soon dissipated.

Now I'm into victory over terrorism, or at least going in the right direction. This "peace" idea is another illusion. Victory or defeat are the two possibilities. Remember, Islam means "submission". And we've had quite enough bended knees lately. Sorry to be so lengthy.

Robert Speirs
Tallahassee, Florida

From: Mark Shorette
Date: Mon, 14 Oct 2002 08:54:28 -0700 (PDT)
To: robspe@paris.com
Subject: voting...does it matter?


> Robert:
>
> I was looking at your weblog and read the following:
>
> How can you say my vote counts? When was an election last decided by one vote? If this ever happens, then one vote will count. In every election decided by more than one vote, a single vote does NOT count. Do I have to spell this out? It makes no difference to the outcome. Whether I vote or not changes nothing. Nobody gets into office, no referenda are passed or defeated based on whether I vote or not. I have no reason, whatever, then, to vote. Why should I?
>
> Do I hear you saying, "But what if everyone thought like that?"? Well, what if they did? Each would be right, with reference to his own vote. The illusion that one vote counts has only one consequence: it gives power to politicians who make their living by swaying more than one vote, that is, by "making other people's decisions for them." But, hey, didn't your intro say we didn't want people to do that?
>
> *********
>
> OK, I do think you are correct if we limited the argument to the effect in that one particular election. Howe
> ver there is an effect that goes beyond that. Almost all politicians in the country are considering a move up the food chain. (The exception being the president, who is already at the top) Let us imagine there is an open seat in Congress and there are two state representatives who are interested in the vacancy. They are competing for the nomination of the same party. Fred has won his last election by only 30 votes, and is by no means a sure thing even to be renominated for the seat he currently holds. Letitia, on the other hand, has never received less than 75% of the vote. Those who have challenged her nomination in the past are dead meat. I think we can safely say that, all other things being equal, party learers will encourage Letitia to run, and discourage Fred. To sum, party leaders want strong candidates to seek higher office, and each vote does determine that.
>
> Next, wide or narrow vote totals influence officeholder behavior. My own representative (a Republican)lwon a very close race to a progressive Democrat a few years ago. Previously she had trounced all comers. Well, what do you know? All of a sudden, the unions who would not have gotten the time of day from her, had all their calls returned. She posed with Democrats to have her picture taken to show her support for pro-labor bills. This election, she is running against her own party's Social Security plan. Is it likely that she would have done the same thing if she had won another landslide? Perhaps. I think not, however.
>
> While I never have been involved in an election which hinged on a single vote, there have been some which have come down to as few as six. That is extraordinarily close. If a handful of voters had stayed home, we would have no new firehouse or middle school in our town.
>
> Finally, I would argue that democracy does not end with the ballot, it is where it begins. When was the last time most Americans have ever written a letter or called the office of their representatives?
>
> I like your site quite a lot, and do hope you will visit mine.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Emily

Oceania joins the war

"Tom Paine" at Silent Running cites NZPundit as expressing hope that the latest terrorist outrage in Bali will expand the sphere of realism towards fundamentalist Islam to include Australia and New Zealand at least. I contributed the following comment:

Excellent! By spreading their war to Indonesia, the Philippines, France, and possibly Finland, the Islamofascists are just reducing the number of places they can hide. Before too long they'll all be cooped up in the West Bank. We in the US have always known we could trust the men of Australia and New Zealand when the going got tough. It feels good not to be alone in the fight for freedom.

Wrong Italian

Instapundit says that on Columbus Day we are celebrating the wrong Italian and links to a UPI story by Jim Bennett, who tells of being in Argentina for Columbus Day, where Columbus is widely celebrated as a hero of Hispanic America. Our hero in Anglo North America, Bennett says, should be John Cabot (Giovanni Caboti) who, in 1497, landed on Newfoundland. Even though the Vikings had a settlement at L'Anse au Meadow in Newfoundland, Cabot's landing marked the real beginning of the settlement of North America that gave the world so much political and scientific progress. So, OK, I can see celebrating Cabot Day. But Bennett fails to mention what that day should be. My trusty encyclopedia tells me it was June 24, though perhaps the landing was on what is now Cape Breton Island, not Newfoundland. Whatever. In any case, June 24 in Conundrum-land is now Cabot Day! No wonder they only talk to God.

"France will not be intimidated"
Of course not. Who could ever have imagined they would have been? Why would such a thought ever cross anyone's mind? France, our loyal ally for all these years, always first to support our actions against terrorism and to help root out Islamic radicals wherever they might be found, would never let anyone blow up a French oil tanker without the severest of penalties attaching. Would they? Boy, I bet those Al Qaeda death merchants are quaking in their boots right now!

One job

The state has one legitimate job - to defend its people from threats internal and external. Looks like one country isn't doing the second job at all. How many other countries, in Europe and South America and elsewhere, rely entirely on the United States to defend them? And, in the name of "stability", we even defend Egypt, Syria, Jordan and, yes, Iraq, from attack by Israel, who could many times in the past have razed them flat, with good reason. And then they think they can savage the US rhetorically in every available forum. Perhaps it's time to openly declare that we will not lend any military or financial aid or assistance to any country that does not make a reasonable effort to defend itself and to root out terrorism. A sort of anti-terrorism alliance could replace NATO, whose usefulness is obviously at an end.

I like it

The Jerusalem Post has a logical suggestion which would have lots of good consequences. Funny thing is, I thought we already used Israel as a staging area and base for our operations in the Mideast. Guess not. The only possible objection I can see is that Israel has made a lot of compromises with fundamentalist Judaism which would not be allowed to any US state. But the overall point is great. If we're being blamed for siding with Israel all the time, why not go all the way and get all the benefits as well as all the harm from such an association?

Vote?

I sent the following email to "yourvotecounts.org":


How can you say my vote counts? When was an election last decided by one vote? If this ever happens, then one vote will count. In every election decided by more than one vote, a single vote does NOT count. Do I have to spell this out? It makes no difference to the outcome. Whether I vote or not changes nothing. Nobody gets into office, no referenda are passed or defeated based on whether I vote or not. I have no reason, whatever, then, to vote. Why should I?

Do I hear you saying, "But what if everyone thought like that?"? Well, what if they did? Each would be right, with reference to his own vote. The illusion that one vote counts has only one consequence: it gives power to politicians who make their living by swaying more than one vote, that is, by "making other people's decisions for them." But, hey, didn't your intro say we didn't want people to do that?

The site has a slick flash intro obviously aimed at the younger set. I worry about being so anti-voting. I don't really have any other system to suggest to replace voting, but that doesn't allow me to ignore its irrationalities. Maybe the best point I can make is that, because voting is so irrational, a government selected by such a system should have as little power as possible.

Somebody's not paying attention

This NYT article (via Jane Galt) chides the administration for not forcing the Turks to "address undemocratic practices" when we are enforcing a "democracy agenda" on Iraq by military means. Did the editorial writer ever hear of the "war on terror"? I could have sworn I'd seen it mentioned, even in the Times, that we were primarily interested in changing the Iraqi regime because they might attack us with WMD and could hand off these weapons to Al Qaeda, who we know would have no compunctions about using them on us. Reforming their political system is a definite minor objective of this long-delayed war. And however democratic Turkey might be, if it were threatening to use WMD on us, we would attack it as well. The idiotarians are blinded by their hallucination that America is only out to build an "empire" by imposing its version of democracy on everyone who opposes them. If they admitted for a moment that Iraq might actually pose a threat, their vision would evaporate.

And for the editor to say that 9/11 underscored for Americans the dangers of embracing pro-Western autocrats in the Islamic world without regard for how they rule at home makes no sense at all. Does this mean if we had invaded Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Jordan, Egypt, Syria et al., and converted them to democracy earlier, 9/11 would never have happened? Can anyone actually believe such nonsense? Was our big mistake after the Gulf War not failing to continue to Baghdad but failing to force the Kuwaitis to change to a real democracy? Does bin Laden have ANY respect at all for democracy? Who writes this stuff?

Aggresseur Musulman

LeMonde is reporting that the guy who stabbed the gay Socialist Mayor of Paris was a Muslim who didn't like "politicians" or "homosexuals". Gee, I've heard of people being anti-gay but, hating politicians?? Weird. Of course everyone jumped to the conclusion the "attentat" was carried out by one of those "LePen rightists". You don't think there could be some reason to think that Islam had something against gays, do you? Certainly they would never, for instance, kill them by pushing walls over on them or anything. It'll be interesting to see how Chomsky, Sontag, Fisk and Said blame this on the US. Oh, and that little matter of blowing up an oil tanker in Yemen. I'm sure C,S,F &S will come up with a perfectly good reason why terrorists should target a FRENCH tanker. Time to crank up the appeasement machine, Chirac. You must have been slacking. Remember, don't make them mad! Say, wasn't Chirac also shot at during the Bastille Day parade and weren't eight - EIGHT - city councilmen killed in Nanterre recently? Time to pass another gun law!!