Highway 99
Friday, July 30, 2004
A couple of weeks ago I wrote that I had seen commercials for the remake of The Manchurian Candidate that indicated the new version fingered corporate America as the enemy, rather than external totalitarianism.
Frederica Mathewes-Green has seen more than the commercials, she's seen the whole movie:I just saw another version of the Manchurian Candidate commercial. This one not only expanded on one of the tag lines above, referring to "the first privately-owned and -operated President," but it also threw in another line about the President being "controlled by a major corporation."
So that's it then. The greatest danger to America is not Islamofascism, the greatest danger to America is Corporate America. It must be true, because Hollywood says so. Got that?
Does it strike anyone else as ironic that Hollywood, which consists largely of some of the most powerful corporations on earth and which is constantly trying to affect American politics, seems to have such a problem with powerful corporations trying to affect American politics?
Ah, but the Hollywood corporations try to affect American politics in favor of the Democrats, whereas the evil corporations trying to affect American politics in Hollywood movies do it in favor of the Republicans. So it's completely different, and not ironic at all. Yes, now I get it.
That Frederica Mathewes-Green, she is one sharp lady.It's perplexing why an audience would believe that our greatest danger is from a corporation, when Americans are dying at the hands of terrorists on the other side of the world (and here). This is especially true considering that the film itself is the product of a great many corporations, who spent lots of money to make it, and hope to make more money from it in return. If we should hate and fear corporations, why should we even watch the movie?
Faking a patriotic orgasm. That's the way it looks to me when I watch a scene like last night's Democratic National Convention. When liberals are in full "Don't question my patriotism" mode, the blizzard of red, white, and blue is so thick and fast-moving you can hardly see the liberals themselves. (A lawsuit claiming blindness caused by confetti in the eye is surely just around the corner.) Surrounded by a dense forest of stationery flags, they wave their hand-held flags more hysterically than any conservative crowd I've seen. They cheer so hard I'm surprised nobody's suffered a stroke while I've been watching.
In short, they've got all the outward signs down pat. They make the right noises, they make the right movements, they try for the appropriate facial expression.
The only thing they lack is the actual sensation, the real emotion.
This is probably going to sound like a cheap shot, though I don't mean it as one.
There's been a lot of chatter lately about Andrew Sullivan's turnaround on supporting George Bush. I posted on it myself a few weeks ago.
One of the aspects of this situation that has bothered many people, myself included, is how sudden Andrew's change of heart was. He went from admiring Bush, almost idolizing him, defending him against all comers, to loathing Bush and believing the worst about him that the mainstream media could come up with -- pretty much overnight. It wasn't just a turnaround, it was a hairpin turn. Reading Andrew's blog in early 2004 was like reading the diary of a lover who felt he'd been betrayed.
Looking back now, I'm wondering if I missed the significance of a post Andrew wrote sometime during the spring or early summer. (He doesn't have a search function on his blog, so I can't track down the post for a link.)
The post concerned steroids and their potentially harmful side effects. Andrew was contrasting Arnold Schwarzenegger's easygoing attitude toward steroids, admitting he'd used them during his active bodybuilding days, with what Andrew saw as George Bush's anti-drug hysteria on the subject. Andrew mentioned how he himself used steroids as part of his therapy to combat the physical effects of his HIV infection. (I think he had blogged on his steroid use at least once before, but it was rather a long time ago.) If you've seen him on television in recent months, the idea of Andrew using steroids shouldn't come as a big surprise -- compared to the way he used to look, he's now remarkably pumped up.
I'm certainly no anti-drug puritan; quite the contrary, I'm in favor of legalizing all drugs for use by adults. But, although I think the harmful side effects have been exaggerated, I recognize that steroids do pose some hazards for vulnerable individuals, and that one such hazard is emotional upheaval.
I don't mean to reduce Andrew's opinions to a biochemical reaction. Gay marriage means a lot to him, and he had other problems with Bush, too, such as Bush's largesse with the taxpayers' money.
But, remembering how over-the-top a lot of Andrew's reactions have been during the year-and-a-half or so I read him regularly, I can't help but wonder whether some of the irrational highs and lows are due to, or aggravated by, physical factors such as HIV and the hormonal/steroid treatment he's been using.
Whatever happened to the worst of the photographs and video taken at Abu Ghraib? We were warned months ago both that it was horrific and that it would inevitably leak out. Are the Democrats planning an October surprise of their own?
Here's what I'm afraid of: that whoever the president is from 2004 to 2008, there will be a catastrophic terrorist attack on his watch, and that, if it's Bush, he and his philosophy about the War on Terror will be blamed. Is it possible to go on warding off such an attack? I'm surprised we've been able to do it this long. In a country as open as ours -- physically, socially, economically, technologically -- how long can this be maintained? And what will the political ramifications be if -- when -- the next attack hits?
Here's what I'm hoping: that Bush & Co. have been waiting until John Kerry was officially the Democratic nominee before unloading their full force against him. I'm hoping that Kerry is such a weak candidate -- God knows that's how he looks to me! -- that the Bushies were afraid they might actually undermine him to the extent that there'd be an upset at the Democratic convention and some stronger candidate (Hillary?) would be brought in. Now that Kerry is presumably locked in, if he starts sinking in the polls (knock wood), it'll be an irreversible problem for the Dems.
Watched John Kerry's acceptance speech last night. Thought it was only so-so. Mediocre speech, mediocre delivery. But of course I was seeing and hearing it through a partisan lens. What matters is how many of the undecideds see it, and how they perceive it. The next few days will tell the story. Most days I check out the Rasmussen poll (on my blogroll), and I'm going to hazard a prediction here and say that Kerry will get a temporary increase of 3-4% in his poll numbers as a result of the convention coverage and the big speech. A bounce, but nothing to write home about.
It's becoming more and more apparent that multiculturalism is failing. Theodore Dalrymple has an update on multiculturalism in Britain here.
Amazing speech by Michael Moore. You do know, don't you, that the word "amazing" is not always a compliment?
Thursday, July 29, 2004
Tuesday, July 27, 2004
Steven Stalinsky gives us a useful reminder that psychotic hatred of America in the Arab media certainly didn't begin when George W. Bush took office.
Like some ghastly maniac in an installment of the Halloween or Friday the 13th series, Cynthia McKinney is back from the political dead for a sequel.
First night of the Democratic National Convention:
There's a photo, too. Make sure you don't look at it right after eating.Towards the end of his remarks, President Carter asks the delegates to repudiate "extremism" and worried about "extremist doctrines" which are pulling America into dangerous waters. I'm assuming he was talking about Bush, but you never know. After his speech, Jimmy Carter repaired to small box behind my workstation. There, the former president of the United States and his wife, Rosalynn, sat down next to Michael Moore.
And to think, many years ago, I used to vote for the Democrats fairly regularly. Now you couldn't get me to vote for them if you paid me.
Dennis Prager does a superb job of shedding light on the Arab-Israeli conflict by engaging in some quantitative analysis.
Read the whole thing.Number of times Jerusalem is mentioned in the Old Testament: over 700
Number of times Jerusalem is mentioned in the Koran: 0
. . . Number of terrorist attacks by Israelis or Jews since 1967: 1
Number of terrorist attacks by Arabs or Muslims since 1967: thousands
Percentage of Jews who have praised the Jewish terrorist: approximately .1
Percentage of Palestinians who have praised Islamic terrorists: approximately 90
Number of Jewish countries: 1
Number of Jewish democracies: 1
Number of Arab countries: 19
Number of Arab democracies: 0
Number of Arab women killed annually by fathers and brothers in "honor killings": thousands
Number of Jewish women killed annually by fathers and brothers in "honor killings": 0
. . . Percentage of U.N. Commission on Human Rights resolutions condemning an Arab country for human rights violations: 0
Percentage of U.N. Commission on Human Rights resolutions condemning Israel for human rights violations: 26
Number of U.N. Security Council resolutions on the Middle East between 1948 and 1991: 175
Number of these resolutions against Israel: 97
Number of these resolutions against an Arab state: 4
Number of Arab countries that have been members of the U.N. Security Council: 16
Number of times Israel has been a member of the U.N. Security Council: 0
Number of U.N. General Assembly resolutions condemning Israel: 322
Number of U.N. General Assembly resolutions condemning an Arab country: 0
Have I mentioned lately how much I hate the U.N.?
Sunday, July 25, 2004
In this post, I related my rapid conversion to Google News user after I gave up the headline services on Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, and Alta Vista, disgusted at how completely slanted they were.
Just a couple of days ago, InstaPundit e-mailer Robert Jacoby seconded my opinion of Yahoo's selection of headlines. He added that he had encountered the same problem with Netscape's headline screen (which I'm not qualified to comment on, since I've never used Netscape's news service).
And now That Liberal Media is highlighting the same problem on the headline service on America Online; the examples they've looked at so far can be found here, here, and here.
That Liberal Media also points out the not-irrelevant fact that in a recent survey of how much money various corporations gave to politicians and political parties, AOL Time Warner came in first place for amount of contribution money given, and it gave overwhelmingly to Democrats.
At the time I wrote the post on bias in the various headline services, I think I was using an earlier release of AOL, one which didn't have a home page with a news window. When I upgraded to the current version of AOL and started noticing the anti-Bush slant of the headlines, I tried to select an initial screen that didn't include news; unfortunately, all the configurations being offered included news headlines. (Conspiracy! Brainwashing! Mind control!) So I took the only alternative I could come up with, which was to program the QuickView window to initialize on top of the Welcome window with the ineradicable Bush-bashing headlines on it. If I couldn't eliminate AOL's version of the news, at least I could prevent it from hitting me between the eyes every time I connected to the internet. So when I switch on my computer to blog, the only bits of news I get on my AOL screen are the weather conditions in New York and San Francisco.
So that's why you haven't heard me griping about AOL.
I actually meant to put computer news services in the list of news sources libertarians and conservatives need to develop; I just forgot to include it.
I'd switch from AOL in a heartbeat if there were a fair-and-balanced service available; unfortunately, I don't know of any. If any bloggers do know of such a service, I hope they will publicize it. And if no such service exists, I hope some smart entrepreneur soon starts one. The pent-up demand would probably make for a notable success, similar to what happened when Fox News came along.
You have to pay to read the whole thing, and I didn't; so I could only read the first few words of a White House memo (go here and scroll down to July 8; because it's pay-per-view I can't give a direct link) entitled "Don't Say 'Kerry:'"
I thought I had noticed the Bush people avoiding Kerry's name whenever possible.pursuent to our discussion in senior staff today this organization is forbidden from mentioning the name of Sen. Kerry in the White House or ...
Scroll down a bit more, to July 7, and there's another pay-only memo, this time from Halliburton to its employees, titled "Relationships with Stanley (KBR Chairman) terminated." I'm surprised this wasn't a huge deal in the media. What, nobody could spin a good conspiracy theory to explain why a chairman of Kellogg, Brown & Root is leaving? (Sounds to me like maybe he knew too much!)
Fascinating memo put out to U.S. Navy personnel warning them that a sales-promotion contest being conducted right now by the Coca-Cola Company involves 120 Coke cans with GPS chips embedded in them which can act to locate the cans wherever they might be moved. Navy people are therefore warned that until the contest ends and all 120 GPS-transponder Coke cans are accounted for, no Coke cans should be brought into restricted or sensitive areas, including classified meetings, without first being opened and inspected.
Aside from the obvious Big Brotherish implications of all this, it's an eye-opening reminder of the unexpected complications of working in the contemporary high-tech military.
Friday, July 23, 2004
Eric Scheie over at Classical Values has some thoughts on how, in many social circles, Americans' love of their country is now the love that dare not speak its name.
Hope you didn't miss last week's big bash-America shindig! In case you weren't among the in-crowd of right-thinking people invited to this latest bullshit fest, allow me to clue you in on what took place:
THAT'S SURE AS HELL NOT WHAT THE EUROPEAN MEDIA WERE SAYING AT THE TIME!"The standing of America has never been in a more problematic state," said Tom Buhrow, Washington bureau chief of ARD German Radio and Television. . . . Anti-Americanism is not a new phenomenon, said Patrick Jarreau, Washington bureau chief for Le Monde newspaper in France. But a large part of the problem, he said, is undoubtedly [drum roll please] linked to Bush and his team. He cited the presidency of Ronald Reagan, who, he said, had his critics but also ardent fans.
GOT THAT? IT'S NOT THE ISLAMOFASCIST TERRORISTS WHO ARE LEADING US INTO A NEW AND DANGEROUS WORLD! IT'S THAT BORN-AGAIN CHRISTIAN TEXAS FASCIST BOOOOOOOOOSH!A principal problem, he said, is the feeling that we are all "in the same boat." Buhrow agreed. [I'm shocked, aren't you?] There is a sense, he said, that the Bush administration is leading us into a new and dangerous world.
OOOOOH, I THINK I HEARD A THREAT SOMEWHERE IN THERE, BOYS AND GIRLS! DID YOU HEAR WHAT I HEARD?"The president of the United States is also the president of the world," he [Buhrow] said. Now, he continued, everybody is looking to see what the choice of the American voters will be.
This is a "crucial and defining moment ... for relations that will prevail between America and the rest of the world," said Jarreau. If George Bush is re-elected, he said, people worldwide will feel that his choices have been "validated" by the American voter.
If that happens, he said, relations "will only get worse," and America's position in the world will be defined for years to come.
Yeah, Bush's choices will be validated, all right. Heh. Can't wait to link back to this story on November 3.
So, to summarize: If Americans don't do the right thing come November 2 and obey orders from the America-loathing foreign media and elect John Kerry, the America-loathing foreign media are going to be very very angry. Right. Glad they made that clear to us.
By the way, if you'd like to read comments on this article left by America-haters, you can find them here.
Only good thing about this little celebration of hate was that, unlike similar soirees sponsored by, say, the U.N., this one does not appear to have been put on with American taxpayer dollars. Although it does appear to have been put on with tax-deductible dollars:
Top-ranked possible solution: Get down on your knees and beg, America!At a Washington conference Thursday hosted by the New America Foundation and the Rockefeller Brothers' Fund, influential members of the media gave their perspective as to the cause of this rising [anti-American] sentiment, and searched for possible solutions.
On July 20, 2003, almost exactly one year ago, I mentioned the website ThankYouTony.com for the first time. I noted that as of that date, ThankYouTony was recording 8,231 people who had written messages of gratitude to Tony Blair.
Good to be able to report that as of today, July 23, 2004, that number has risen to 40,991.
As I suggested in that post from a year ago: If you've appreciated what Blair has done -- for Britain, for America, for western civilization even though most of its inhabitants don't realize it yet -- why not add your message of thanks to the forty thousand? Why should the media nihilists and Islamofascist sympathizers be the only ones whose voices get heard?
Wednesday, July 21, 2004
Almost two weeks ago, Hugh Hewitt posted on something Barbara Boxer said that was so startling I found it hard to believe. According to Hugh,
Assuming that Hugh's account was correct, I expected to see some comment about it in the blogosphere. But no one even mentioned it. As the days went by I began to wonder: Was the story untrue after all?Today, on the floor of the United States Senate, Barbara Boxer referred to the Madrid bombings as a "rail accident." Honest. A rail accident. Boxer is a Senate accident. What an embarrassment.
I went to the Congressional Record website and looked up the Senate debate for the morning of July 8, 2004. And sure enough, there it was:
Now, to be fair, I should add that a few minutes earlier Boxer had referred to Madrid in far harsher terms:Mrs. BOXER. . . . In Madrid, 200 people died. 1,400 people were injured in that rail accident. And we go up to [Room] 407 up here and we hear all the talk about what we need to do. I am suggesting as a result of my unanimous consent requests today, both being objected to, when you have this majority party, it is very clear: there is a lot of talk, but there is no action.
I would be inclined to give Boxer the benefit of the doubt, to assume that the "rail accident" phrasing was just a meaningless and regrettable slip of the tongue that everyone makes now and then.That is why I am so proud to be on the Commerce Committee. I am so proud to have as part of the portfolio of the Commerce Committee, rail security, aviation security, and port security. These are key issues. Since Madrid, for example, and the horrible bombing of the train there, we need to be on our toes. That means we need to pass rail security legislation.
I would be, if we were living in different times. But we're not. We're stuck with these unfortunate times. And I cannot and will not give Boxer the benefit of the doubt.
It's because Boxer's phrase has to be taken in the political context in which we all find ourselves, in which the Democrats still do not seem able to take national security seriously, in which Boxer's strenuous calls for more rail security and aviation security and port security are hard to take seriously given the Dems' attitude toward the Patriot Act and racial profiling and George Bush's motives for going to Iraq.
Given the times, given the players, I will interpret Boxer's "rail accident" remark as just one more bit of evidence that liberals do not really believe that we are at war.
Monday, July 19, 2004
You might remember that a few months ago The Economist magazine fell for an internet hoax that purported to show that residents of Blue States that voted for Gore in 2000 have a higher average I.Q. than residents of Red States that voted for Bush.
Well, The Economist has done it again. On page 25 of the July 3, 2004 issue there appears this short item:
This all refers, of course, to a Bush campaign commercial that correctly points out that Democrat-affiliated 527 organization MoveOn.org had two "Bush = Hitler" ads on its website for awhile. For background info see OxBlog or InstaPundit.Heil Kerry
"This ad is the campaign equivalent of 'The Producers'--an idea so egregiously tasteless and stupid that it might just succeed as camp....I should be disgusted by the attempted association of Democrats and Nazis, but it's too funny to get upset about. Cue the goose-stepping Madchen of the Brooking Institution!"
Jacob Weisberg on the Bush-Cheney campaign website's use of pictures of Adolf Hitler between photographs of prominent Democratic politicians. www.slate.com, June 28th
There seems to be a certain pattern emerging here. Last August, The Economist reprinted an inaccurate, biased, very misleading paraphrase of something Tony Blair said at one of his press conferences.
Three egregious mistakes, and all in the same direction: condemnation of Bush and Blair.
What the hell is happening to The Economist, anyway?
International attention is focused on the Supreme Court -- again.
Older minors who commit heinous crimes should be eligible for the death penalty, depending on the circumstances.The U.S. Supreme Court is hearing from Jimmy Carter, Mikhail Gorbachev, the American Medical Association and 48 nations.
They're lobbying against the execution of killers who committed their crimes before age 18. They plan to file friend-of-the-court briefs before the high court on Monday, challenging the practice.
If you don't agree, let me ask you: Do you want to abolish the practice of the emancipation of minors? When confronted by unusual circumstances, a judge can rule to give a particular minor child the legal status of an adult, with the rights and control over one's own life that normally accrue to attaining (in most states) age 18. Done properly, on a case-by-case basis, it is a good and sometimes necessary legal practice.
And, in some states, when confronted by unusual circumstances, a judge can rule to give a particular minor child charged with a crime the legal status of an adult, with the responsibilities, including any potential punishment for that crime, that normally accrue to attaining (in most states) age 18. And so the "child" is tried as an adult, and is sometimes liable for capital punishment. Done properly, on a case-by-case basis, it is a good and arguably necessary legal practice.
So: If it can be moral and ethical to grant a minor child close to the age of majority the legal rights of an adult, why should it be considered immoral and unethical to force a minor child close to the age of majority, who has committed a violent felony usually committed by adults, to accept adult responsibility?
Sunday, July 18, 2004
Came across an article from the January/February 2003 issue of Columbia Journalism Review which, in light of later revelations, doesn't seem quite as innocuous as it must originally have.
Yes, and we now have a better idea of why they enjoyed it.. . . CNN's global reach is, in fact, far greater than that of any other TV news organization: forty-two bureaus, thirty-one of them abroad. CNN International, launched five years after CNN, is the world's only global, twenty-four-hour news network, reaching more than 160 million households in 212 countries and territories. For years, CNN has enjoyed pride of place in hotspots like Baghdad and Havana.
It does give you an idea of the kind of pressure that drove Jordan to the actions he took.The next real test of the power balance in cable news looms, as war with Iraq becomes more likely. CNN, with far greater reach and resources, wants to own the story, as it did in the Persian Gulf in 1991 before FNC and MSNBC were born. That conflict made CNN a major player in global news for the first time. If, as CNN expects, viewers defect to it in droves during the action, the network could once again become the cable news leader by holding onto a percentage of them when the war ends. Eason Jordan, the executive who oversees CNN's international newsgathering, is leading a full-court press in the effort to assure that the network will dominate in a war on Iraq. "It's a struggle every day to maintain our presence there," he says. Hard-line factions within the Iraqi government view all journalists as spies. On one of Jordan's dozen trips to Baghdad, a member of the so-called Revolutionary Command Council accused him not only of spying but of being the CIA station chief for Iraq. Wolf Blitzer, Christiane Amanpour, and Richard Roth are among CNN correspondents who've been banned from the country for coverage the Iraqis deem unfriendly.
But I don't think that, even now, Eason Jordan or the other true believers in the establishment media realize that they no longer have the "far greater reach and resources" they had only a short time ago. To a considerable extent they've thrown away one vital resource, public trust. And they seem to be in a complete state of denial about it.
Five years ago, a case like this would have provoked enormous sympathy for Canada among Americans. Now, after the way so many Canadians have treated the U.S. since 9/11, I doubt many Americans will give a damn.
Scott Ott gets serious. This might not have been the speech George Bush gave, but it is the speech George Bush should have given.
UN-BE-FREAKING-LIEVABLE. Craig Brett is reporting that the Canadian broadcast authorities are approving al-Jazeera for availability in Canada, while Fox News has yet to be approved. The reasons for Fox News being unapproved so far are generally believed to be political, even if they've never been officially acknowledged as such.
I'm not familiar with this website, so I can't vouch for the writer, but here's another piece expressing frustration at the enlistment of the American media in the cause of our sworn enemies.
So now Palestinians have burned down Arafat's offices in Gaza. This comes the day after the Palestinian prime minister (another one!) handed in his resignation to Arafat, saying he could not tame the "chaos" in Gaza since he did not have real control over the Palestinian Authority. (Haven't we heard this somewhere before?)
Meanwhile, the Israelis have been saying that suicide attacks within Israeli have dropped by 90% since the initial section of the fence/wall/barrier has been put in place.
It appears that Steven Den Beste is continuing his remarkable run of correct predictions regarding developments in the Palestinian territory as a result of the fence/wall/barrier going up.
A few news sources are reporting that video of Paul Johnson's beheading has been posted on the internet. When I checked Little Green Footballs a few minutes ago, nothing had appeared yet on the story. Men's News Daily has a thorough account. MND is reporting that the video was posted on the web under the heading "Learn How to Behead Paul Johnson."
Update. It's now about ten minutes after noon and, though I can find several pages of links when I search on Paul Johnson's name on Google News, I have not heard a word all day on TV about the beheading video surfacing on the internet, nor can I find a mention of the issue on other blogs. What's going on?
Saturday, July 17, 2004
The notion of distributing the income from Iraq's oil supply directly to the citizens of Iraq in the form of a periodic dividend was getting some good discussion about a year and a half ago. I was strongly in favor of it, and tried to keep an eye out for any further mentions in the media, including the blogosphere, but unfortunately the whole idea seems to have fallen completely silent. That's odd, because as of last summer, the Iraqi Oil Trust seemed to be an idea whose time had come.
So whatever happened to it? Will any Iraqi political parties be campaigning on the idea in the run-up to the January elections? Somebody ought to look into this -- it would make a great story.
By the way, if you've noticed that I favor laissez faire economics and are wondering what I'm doing endorsing a rather socialist-flavored idea like the Iraqi Oil Trust, let me explain. There are a couple of significant differences between the Iraqis' situation and that prevailing in the free world which, in my mind, justify the government distribution of a dividend.
First and foremost is that the Iraqi people have in effect for decades been forced at gunpoint to become shareholders in a corrupt nation state/corporation run by the Hussein family and policed by their Ba'athist accomplices. The Iraqis' wealth in myriad forms was taken from them by systematic, ongoing armed robbery. They were involuntary investors, shouldering financial risk they never asked for. Those who take financial risk should reap financial reward. The whole Iraqi people took the risk; the whole Iraqi people should get the reward.
There is also the vitally important issue of proving our good intentions to the rest of the world, and above all to the Iraqi people. We want them to know for certain that we did not come to the Middle East to steal their oil. Yes, oil is a factor in our need to stabilize and democratize the Arab Middle East; but we want to be their customers, not their overlords. What more powerful method is there to let the Iraqis know this than cash in their hand once or twice a year? Make the Oil Trust completely transparent; publish the whole financial statement at least once a year in the form of an Annual Report like the ones put out by publicly held corporations in the West. Let any organization that wishes to (within reason) audit the books -- the U.N., the Arab League, the IMF. And let the Iraqis look forward to receiving their dividend, knowing that none of this would have been possible without the regime change effected by the Coalition.
The Iraqis' individually-controlled money can help lubricate the economy, promote capitalism and self-reliance, enable prosperity, and create the democratic and prosperous Arab nation state that might, with luck, change the whole region. Payments should be sent to all adult citizens, male and female, as individuals, giving women a greater chance to control some wealth and thereby control their own lives. (I realize it's no longer fashionable, but, in case you couldn't tell, I still think the neo-cons were right.) Can't you imagine what the sight of Iraqis standing in line to vote, patronizing whatever media they like, and spending the profits from their national supply of oil in whatever way they choose would have on the other Arab populations? It would, I think, be a radicalizing sight -- and for once, the radicalization would be in the right direction.
Apparently receiving such a dividend doesn't necessarily steer you in the direction of collectivism, to judge by the example of Alaska. Alaskans as a group seem to be fairly capitalistic, Republican-leaning types.
I look upon the Oil Trust as a step backward that would eventually promote two or three or four steps forward in terms of individual freedom in the Arab Middle East. I once wrote a post about what I call Fabian libertarianism, a slow, steady movement toward greater individual responsibility and freedom that sometimes requires a few tactical retreats and lateral moves in order to achieve practical results. The Oil Trust is an example of that.
And there's nothing to prevent the Iraqis themselves from privatizing the oil industry one day, just as many countries have privatized various industries over the past two decades.
If you're not buying the idea, think about this real-world example: The idea of martial law makes my skin crawl; and yet I cannot deny that World War II, and the several years of military occupation and imposition of democracy that the victorious Allies forced upon the former Axis powers, ushered in one of the most dramatic surges forward in individual freedom and human rights in all of world history.
If a relatively small concession to collectivism in the form of an Oil Trust helps break the hold of tribalism and fascism in the Middle East, that's a price we should be glad to pay. Just as in the 1940s, we should be willing to compromise in the short run in order to win in the long run, by bringing to yet another portion of the globe the greatest and most powerful idea that Western civilization has ever offered to the human race: the idea of the self-directed life.
The scrawny-looking barrier meant to keep Palestinian terrorists out of Israel has always struck me as appearing pathetically inadequate to its stated function whenever I've seen it on TV. You could easily climb over it, dig under it, or, for the portions made up of fencing, cut through it. I hoped the Israelis were supplementing the barrier with other methods of keeping terrorists from crossing the boundary.
According to Patrick Cox, the Israelis most certainly are:
The article also looks at various walls currently going up along international borders; acoustical analysis to pinpoint where gunfire is coming from; and how such technologies can potentially reverse the advantages now enjoyed by terrorists using guerilla warfare techniques.Though media coverage has focused on the Berlin-style wall built in the few locations where sniper activity has posed a threat to Israelis, most of the boundary appears to be a rather insubstantial fence more suited to controlling goats than terrorists. Neither characterization, however, reflects the barrier's true nature -- which is a massive but largely invisible screen of electronic surveillance systems, employing a spectrum of sensors able to detect intruders in any light or weather condition.
The July 17th, 2004 issue of The Economist contains a supplemental section in the middle called "A survey of health-care finance." Two paragraphs pop out:
Doesn't bode well for the bottom line of the Medicare prescription-coverage plan, does it?Soon after Britain's NHS [National Health Service, the provider of socialized medicine] came into being in 1948, Aneurin Bevan, its political founder, predicted that an initial surge of demand would subside as the service caught up with the backlog. A year later he knew better: "I shudder to think of the ceaseless cascade of medicine which is pouring down British throats at the present time." In 1951, he resigned when the Treasury imposed minor health-service charges. Already, costs were three times higher than originally expected. [page 5]
. . . Britain's NHS employs 1.4m people, making it the world's third-biggest employer, surpassed only by China's Red Army and the Indian railways. [page 19]
Oman court sentences U.S. woman to death. Wonder what if anything is really going on behind the scenes in this one. Note the discrepancy in sentencing among the various defendants.
There had been doubts for several days concerning the story about the anti-Semitic attack on a French subway train. Apparently the alleged victim has now admitted that she made the whole thing up. The Israeli ambassador to France (yes, there actually is such a person) is now concerned that this incident will increase anti-Semitism in France, even though the woman who perpetrated the hoax is not Jewish.
I still stand by one aspect of this story. The image of a subway car full of French doing nothing to aid a Jew being attacked by anti-Semites is a perfect symbol for the last few decades of French history.
Update. The article on the confession by the perpetrator of the hoax has been moved from the breaking-news section to the archive; new link here.
Wednesday, July 14, 2004
LIVEBLOGGING: Watching Lord Butler give his summary of findings in the just-released Butler Report, and it's sounding extremely good for the Blair government. "Mistakes were made," but no deliberate wrongdoing, and Butler is repeatedly saying that even the mistakes were understandable under the circumstances! The Butler Committee hopes John Scarlett will go ahead and accept his new position!
Oh, the first reporter just asked a question: ". . . doesn't that mean that the public were misled?"
Butler is now saying to the reporter: NO.
Second reporter: ". . . devastating stuff . . . under enormous pressure . . ."
Butler is now telling Second Reporter NO, that's not at all what happened! Butler is great! The reporters are bound and determined to blame the Blair government, and Butler's not letting them do it!
Third reporter: ". . . surely the Prime Minister is responsible . . ."
Butler is telling her no, that's not quite right . . .
Fourth reporter: "You are very critical of John Scarlett . . ."
Butler's saying she isn't correct to say that . . .
Fifth reporter: ". . . Robin Cook . . ."
Sixth reporter: Blair government really did midlead the people didn't they?
Butler: ". . . the British government hadn't got the intention to mislead . . ."
Seventh reporter: Makes three points, all saying, you're not being critical enough of the government.
Butler: NO, we stand by our conclusions. [Butler is unflappable! He's calm, he's collected, and he's not giving these bastards an inch!]
Eighth reporter: Wasn't it clear the government asking the agencies to find the intelligence to justify a decision which had already been taken?
Butler: No, that wasn't clear at all. It had become clear a stand needed to be taken, and the place to take that stand was Iraq. NO evidence that the intelligence collectors were asked to supply any type of intelligence.
Robin Oakley of CNN: Who would you include on the list of those responsible for the failures? Jonathan Powell, Alistair Campbell, the Prime Minister himself?
Next reporter: To come back to the 45-minute claim . . . why haven't you singled out Sir Richard [?] for criticism . . .
Butler: . . . problem of the long reporting chain of intelligence sources . . . one link in the chain unreliable . . . when Sir Richard gave that evidence, he had no reason to know that . . .
Next reporter: 45-minute claim most sensational . . .
Butler: NO, we don't highlight it because it became highlighted in subsequent media coverage . . . some confusion of reports here . . . the government didn't highlight the 45-minute claim, the media did . . .
[Butler is terrific. Blair and his government are EXONERATED. This is what, the fourth? fifth? inquiry to clear Blair. From here on in he can and should tell his opponents to go to hell!]
Colin Brown of the Independent: Was Prime Minister acting in good faith when he made his statements? Has JIC been politicized?
Butler: We found no reason to question the Prime Minister's good faith. It would have been a foolish thing to do since the upcoming war would expose any untruths he would have been telling.
Mary Ann Seacart [?] of the Times: Your report is less devastating than the Senate report. How do you explain the discrepancy?
Butler: We believe the British intelligence agencies' conclusions were reasonable given the situation . . . [audience member calls out] Can I just finish this? . . .
Reporter: You say Iraq did not have significant stocks of weapons . . . do you mean inspections should continue and stocks may still be found?
Butler: Iraq Survey Group still investigating . . . Iraq a very big place, a lot of sand, weapons very small, unwise to reach conclusions that nothing will ever be found . . . may I just finish? . . . did not have stocks in a deployable state . . .
[audience member calls out]
Butler: To say there's nothing there would be rash and unfounded . . .
Reporter: Do you think war in Iraq was justified?
Butler: We were not asked to address the case for war. Case for war rested on Iraq's noncompliance . . .
Michael Evans from the Times: Do you not think the lack of time available to gather evidence was the main cause of the poor intelligence?
Butler agrees.
Reporter: Do you not think the appointment of John Scarlett to MI6 will damage the reputation of MI6?
Butler: No, quite the opposite . . .
THE REPORTERS ARE LEAVING NOW. THEY'RE DISAPPOINTED AND FURIOUS. BUTLER IS HOLDING UP THE REPORT AND SMILING FOR THE PHOTOGRAPHERS.
C-SPAN is going back to the House of Commons for Tony Blair's reaction.
Blair: We accept fully the Report's conclusions . . . supports the conclusions of the Hutton Report . . . No one lied, no one made up the intelligence, everyone tried in good faith to come to the best intelligence conclusions . . .
[Got to stop liveblogging for awhile, got to get ready for work.]
Michael Howard has just started talking now. He's still trying to knock down Blair's "good faith."
I was very prepared to like Michael Howard when he first became Tory leader. I am coming to loathe him. He reminds me of the Democrats.
[Still getting ready for work . . .]
A Tory named Robert Jackson has just asked a good question, noting that there is a great deal of good being done in Iraq that is being ignored by the media, who sometimes seem to be wishing for failure in Iraq as a way of justifying their opposition to the war. This was from a TORY. Good for him! I wish Michael Howard had the integrity to talk like Robert Jackson. If he did, the Conservative Party wouldn't be in such pathetic shape.
Update. A couple of clarifications, just in case they're needed. First, the quotes around "Mistakes were made" shouldn't be taken to mean that Butler actually said these words, because I don't think he did; but that was the general idea of what he was saying. I include the phrase in quotes only because it's become a standard expression. Second -- you did know I was paraphrasing the rest of the stuff people said, right? Third: Sorry about the profusion of exclamation points. The adrenalin really started running when I realized Blair and his government were being so thoroughly vindicated.
Sunday, July 11, 2004
They're still cheese-eating surrender monkeys.
Notice how they just cannot come right out and call them Arab?Anti-Semitic attack in France is condemned
. . . The woman was mistakenly identified as a Jew by six men of North African and African origin, who surrounded the victim in what at first appeared to be an attempt to steal her stroller, a spokesman for the national police said.
The IHT describes the attack as having taken place on "a commuter train north of Paris." Probably going through one of the cites, or suburban ghettoes, but the IHT would be too discreet to point this out.. . . About 20 people saw what happened, but none came to the aid of the victim, the police said, adding that only two passengers approached afterward.
Hmm. A train-car load of French people sit and watch and do nothing while fascist thugs launch an anti-Semitic attack right in front of them.
Kind of symbolizes much of the past century of French history, n'est pas?
On the subject of anti-conservative documentaries, following on from my last post: I noticed that Fahrenheit 9/11 is down to #4 at the box office this weekend. It seems to be fading fast, as I was hoping and more or less expecting it to. It appeared to be a preaching-to-the-converted phenomenon, and I had been hoping that appearances were not deceiving.
This hope was bolstered by a report from a friend of mine who had seen the movie a couple of weekends ago -- the first weekend after its release, when it was doing so well. My friend said that in the movie theater he went to, the crowd seemed to be attending a party rather than a movie. Everybody seemed to be talking the same way, dressing the same way, reacting the same way to each scene in the movie; people were preaching about politics, handing out flyers for various left-wing causes -- in other words, this was not a normal movie crowd at all. My friend seemed to be just about the only audience member who wasn't a Michael Moore conspiracy-theory enthusiast.
I was hoping -- I'm still hoping -- that F 9/11 doesn't have much crossover appeal, and it looks like that hope is a realistic one.
CableNewser has loads of material on the upcoming anti-Fox documentary Outfoxed, including this item on Carl Cameron's wife campaigning for George Bush. (You might have to scroll down to "The Infamous Carl Cameron Clip.") CableNewser quotes an e-mailer as pointing out that Cameron is considered a fair reporter, liked and trusted by Democrats as well as Republicans.
So. Got a question. How is the situation with Carl Cameron any different than the situation with Christiane Amanpour, whose husband Jamie Rubin, a Clinton State Department appointee, is now an adviser to John Kerry's campaign?
Actually, the situations are different in one way. While Cameron is considered fair to Democrats, Amanpour's stories for 60 Minutes (I seldom watch CNN) consist of almost nothing besides comparisons of Iraq to Vietnam.
One hell of a difference.
Prediction: If Outfoxed has any effect on Fox News's ratings, it will be to make those ratings go up, not down.
Saturday, July 10, 2004
The original version of The Manchurian Candidate featured American POWs who were, unknown to themselves, brainwashed by the Communist enemy and programmed to assassinate the U.S. President.
For the past day or two, I've been seeing TV commercials for the remake. I've noticed two versions, each of which ends with star Denzel Washington speaking a sort of tag line that apparently sums up the plot of the movie. I think I've got the wording correct on both quotes: (1) "This is rich people funding bad science in order to put a sleeper in the White House," and (2) "Somebody brainwashed you to be the first privately-owned President of the United States."
Hard to extrapolate an entire movie from a tag line, but it sounds to me from these quotes that the villains in the remake are not foreign enemies such as Islamists, but rather a wealthy elite (probably American, probably Republican) putting a puppet (anybody thinking Bush?) into the White House.
Assuming I am drawing a correct conclusion from two days' worth of commercials -- and it remains to be seen whether I am -- this is just one more reason to resent Hollywood's changed attitude and its determination to shove its politics down our throats by way of propaganda masquerading as entertainment.
There was a major subplot in the original concerning a Joe McCarthy-like senator and his wife, stepfather and mother of one of the brainwashed ex-POWs, that parodied right-wing politics of the 1950s. Even taking that into account, however, the movie overall was a story of good Americans vs. bad Communists, and portrayed Communism as an evil, aggressive, untrustworthy enemy that was genuinely out to harm America.
In other words, it's the kind of movie Hollywood doesn't make any more, that kind that correctly located the main threat to the U.S. as foreign totalitarianism rather than domestic conservatism.
If the remake is what I'm anticipating it is, I hope the word gets out, and people who want to avoid rewarding Hollywood for churning out this sort of crap can do so.
Update. Yup, looks like I was right. I just saw another version of the Manchurian Candidate commercial. This one not only expanded on one of the tag lines above, referring to "the first privately-owned and -operated President," but it also threw in another line about the President being "controlled by a major corporation."
So that's it then. The greatest danger to America is not Islamofascism, the greatest danger to America is Corporate America. It must be true, because Hollywood says so. Got that?
Does it strike anyone else as ironic that Hollywood, which consists largely of some of the most powerful corporations on earth and which is constantly trying to affect American politics, seems to have such a problem with powerful corporations trying to affect American politics?
Ah, but the Hollywood corporations try to affect American politics in favor of the Democrats, whereas the evil corporations trying to affect American politics in Hollywood movies do it in favor of the Republicans. So it's completely different, and not ironic at all. Yes, now I get it.
I wonder if The Manchurian Candidate's evil corporation will be depicted as a thinly disguised Halliburton.
Friday, July 09, 2004
Let's give credit where it's due on the subject of covering the Oil-for-Food scandal. Bloggers have been praising the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post for staying on top of this story, and appropriately so, because they've been doing a great job. Less noticed, however, is Fox News, which has also been fighting the good fight for the past several months.
In the beginning, the story seemed to be covered mostly in the sense that Fox would publicize the findings of the WSJ's Claudia Rosett. That in itself was a great public service; but in the past few weeks Fox has gone beyond that and assigned the story to Jonathan Hunt, who seems to be their main reporter on the New York City beat.
Hunt, I am glad to say, appears to have none of the tendency to worship at the shrine of the U.N. that many in Big Media display. In fact, he seems to be going at this story with the enthusiasm of a pit bull, and he certainly doesn't mince his words during his reports. I have no idea what Hunt's background is, but it wouldn't surprise me if he had spent some time at one of the British tabloids. In other words, a dose of Hunt is exactly what the U.N. needs, and I'm glad they're finally getting it.
The few newspapers that have been sticking with this story are admirable and important. They got the ball rolling. I regard them as on a par with the Washington Post in its Watergate days in pursuing an important story that others not only aren't interested in, but in some cases would like to bury.
But limited newspaper coverage isn't enough. TV news is what puts a story across to the public, especially the apolitical swing-voter types. Fox should be congratulated for its efforts at both investigation and dissemination of a very important story.
And on the subject of pre-war intelligence failures: I used to wish that Bush would put Condoleezza Rice in charge of the State Department in his second term. But lately I've been torn; I'm starting to think he should make Condi head of the CIA first, have her whip that place into shape, and then make her Secretary of State.
Watched the press conference a little while ago in which Pat Roberts and Jay Rockefeller presented the first part of the Senate panel's report on intelligence failures prior to the Iraq war. It keeps ticking me off that Pat Roberts is such a wimp when he goes up against Jay Rockefeller. Of course, I don't imagine Roberts would describe these conferences as him "going up against" Rockefeller; I think Roberts actually believes that stuff about Senate collegiality and so forth. The problem is that Senate Republicans keep being collegial and Senate Democrats keep aggressively spreading lies about the Bush administration. Roberts comes across as a nice, decent sort of guy, but he is completely outgunned by Rockefeller, who steamrollers over Roberts every chance he gets. I don't suppose it's possible to replace Roberts -- seniority system and all that -- but I do wish somebody from the White House would sit him down and have a talk about standing up with a little more vigor to Rockefeller's lies.
Thursday, July 08, 2004
For a country with no WMD, Iraq sure has been producing a steady stream of suspicious objects and materials lately.
WMD-related item of the day:
GOOD FOR THEM.U.S. HAULED TONS OF URANIUM FROM IRAQ
July 8, 2004 - The United States secretly shipped nearly two tons of low-enriched uranium -- which could be used for making dirty bombs -- out of Iraq last month, officials revealed.
In addition to the uranium, approximately 1,000 highly radioactive items were transferred last month from Iraq to an undisclosed U.S. Energy Department laboratory for analysis.
The airlift ended on June 23, five days before the United States transferred sovereignty to Iraq's new interim government.
U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham called the secret airlift "a major achievement" in an attempt to "keep potentially dangerous nuclear material out of the hands of terrorists."
But U.N. officials squawked at the removal, saying the International Atomic Energy Agency never OK'd the move.[***]
"The American authorities just informed us of their intention to remove the materials, but they never sought authorization from us," an IAEA official said.
However, U.S. nuclear authorities said yesterday they had Iraqi approval and didn't need U.N. authorization.
*** (Cue violins.)
Yet another plot twist:
Okay, the New York Post may not be great at predicting Democratic Vice Presidential choices, but you've got to love their blunt choice of words in describing kidnappers who threaten to kill their victims. No militants, no insurgents, just three masked thugs. I wish Reuters would aim for such accuracy.The Navy is investigating the possibility the abduction of Marine Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun was a hoax, sources told The Post.
The Naval Investigative Service is probing entire case of Hassoun's disappearance from the Marines and his apparent capture by Iraqi militants -- and the hoax angle is "one of the things we are looking at," a military source said.
. . . Meanwhile, three masked thugs in Iraq released a videotape of themselves holding a Filipino hostage and threatening to kill him if the Philippines does not withdraw its small force from Iraq in three days.
Tuesday, July 06, 2004
Mark Steyn thinks Blair caved:
I admit that's the way it looks. I also admit to being one of those Bush warmongers and to having grown fond of (and downright slobberingly grateful to) Mr. Blair. But I hope I won't come across as stoned on wishful thinking if I suggest that there might be a lot more going on behind the scenes than we have any idea of, and that this whole incident might not be the climbdown it appears to be. I am hoping it's more of a tactical retreat on the order of Fallujah.We Bush warmongers have grown fond of Mr Blair: often, he's a better salesman for American policy than the President. But in the Shatt al-Arab incident for once he was on his own, and Britain's Number One seed was unable to return a single volley. Iran is emboldened, and that's bad news for everyone else.
Of course, tactical retreats can backfire and embolden an enemy as much as any real retreat (e.g., Fallujah). But for the time being, I'm giving Blair the benefit of the doubt. He has earned it.
Monday, July 05, 2004
CNBC is the Jekyll & Hyde of 24-hour cable news networks. And that might be a part of their ratings problem.
Until last year I was a fairly regular viewer of Kudlow & Cramer. Larry Kudlow and Jim Cramer (Republican and Democrat, respectively) both have an iconoclastic, broadly libertarian take on the news, and I would see guests and hear points of view on their program that I wasn't seeing or hearing anywhere else. (Kudlow & Cramer was where I first heard of Tech Central Station, for instance.) For several years, until I began watching Fox News regularly in the spring of 2003, CNBC was my main source of non-establishment TV news.
But there was a problem: the headline crawl along the bottom of the screen.
As far as I can tell, CNN and Fox generate their own headline crawls, so the stories featured there, and the way the headlines are worded, tend to fit in pretty well with the tone of each network. (I can't comment on MSNBC; my cable system has never carried it, and I've never seen it.)
The crawl on CNBC, however, was in jarring contrast to the generally pro-business, pro-capitalist, pro-Bush tone of most of CNBC's actual programming at the time. Certainly it was in jarring contrast to Kudlow & Cramer.
CNBC appears to get its breaking-news content straight from its parent network, NBC. The result is an ungainly hybrid: program content that is often libertarian and pro-War on Terror in attitude marred by a headline crawl that reflects the typical liberal anti-Bush agenda of the old dinosaur networks.
Presumably CNBC draws an audience that is more pro-Bush than that of most other news programming, if less pro-Bush than the Fox News audience (and recent polling by Rasmussen tends to bear this out).
The upshot is that CNBC spends time, money, and effort alienating with one part of the TV screen the very audience that it spends time, money, and effort attracting with the other part of the TV screen.
While I'm sure the bursting of the stock-market bubble is the main reason for the decline in CNBC's ratings, this split-screen split-personality issue can't be helping matters any. It was certainly the factor that drove me away from CNBC as a regular viewer.
The headline crawl was becoming steadily more irritating to me throughout the course of last year. It wasn't that it was reporting bad news -- Fox reports bad news too -- but rather that it reveled in the bad news, wallowing in the details in a typically NBC way. I would find myself flipping over to Bill O'Reilly for more and more segments. I even considered blocking the bottom of the screen with a piece of cardboard.
Some time last fall, it became more aggravating than it was worth to watch CNBC shows. Every single casualty out of Iraq was being listed as a headline -- indeed, each casualty was being given multiple sentences, not just a headline. The casualty list would go on not for seconds, but for many minutes, an eternity in TV air time. And virtually no other story was featured at all. I kept picturing some grinning, Bush-hating jackass sitting at a computer keyboard typing out all this biased crap. This went on day after day. I finally got sick of it and quit watching.
Since the ratings problems at CNBC continue, the network keeps adding new shows, shuffling its schedule, and tinkering with the formats of existing shows. And I've noticed that on some of the newer programs (Dennis Miller, Louis Rukeyser's Wall Street) they've dispensed with the headline crawl, probably a demand of the new program hosts. Wonder if the change will help.
When a poll was publicized last week saying that 40% of Iraqis believed Saddam Hussein should not be punished for any crimes he might have committed (a poll whose results I'm having trouble swallowing, by the way), my half-joking reaction was something like: Well, all that means is that 40% of Iraqis are insane. That's what comes of generations of cousins marrying cousins.
The subject came back to me today when the news was being talked about that a network of Saddam's cousins has probably been aiding the insurgents committing violent acts over the past few months. I was wondering, not for the first time: Is everybody in Iraq everybody else's cousin? Half-kidding, again, but only half.
These news stories got me thinking about the implications of a whole society based on intrafamilial marriage. The social implications are obvious, and, for our purposes, bad: It's difficult enough to replace a tribal society with a Western-style civil society without overwhelming and overlapping family loyalties complicating matters.
But what about the physical implications? There must be a well-defined set of physical maladies caused by harmful recessive genes that are expressed more frequently among children of consanguinous marriages. Has anyone done a study to see whether these illnesses do, in fact, show up more often in Arab societies than in Western ones? And if forms of mental illness or retardation are among these birth defects, might there actually be a physical or genetic basis for Arab societies being more prone to bizarre, irrational behavior?
Sir Francis Drake at The Edge of England's Sword provides needed context for a story I'd seen references to on a number of occasions: that Bill Clinton had interrupted campaigning in 1992 to make sure that the scheduled execution of a mentally retarded man was carried out. The most pertinent bit of information was one that, strangely enough, I'd never seen mention of in any other news item on the subject:
Even before learning this, I had not had a problem with Rector's execution. A murderer would have to be profoundly retarded before I would let him off the hook for his crimes; mildly retarded just won't cut it.Ricky Ray Rector was indeed brain damaged in 1992 when Governor Clinton (rightly) refused clemency, but the only reason for that was that immediately prior to capture the then non-brain damaged Ricky Ray Rector put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger, blowing half his brain away.
What struck me most about the story when I first heard it was the complete flip-flop the liberals did on the notion of I.Q. For decades, liberals had proclaimed that I.Q. tests (and related items such as SAT and ACT tests) were meaningless and measured nothing real. That's because standardized tests have an inconvenient habit of helping certain groups of people into colleges and jobs, and helping keep certain other groups out, and the groups that get helped (mainly whites and Asians) are ones liberals don't like, while the groups that get hurt (mainly blacks and Hispanics) are ones liberals do like.
The minute a low test score figures in an anti-death penalty case, however, it requires a fraction of a second for a liberal to decide that, hey, maybe this whole concept of intelligence has some meaning after all . . .
Looks like I spoke too soon when I wrote on Saturday that Blogger was back to normal. Actually it went down while I was posting on Saturday and I haven't been able to get into it until now (and then only because I got into it through a side door, after e-mailing Blogger's tech team. I still couldn't get into it the normal way).
I don't want to gripe too much about this because I'm getting Blogger's services essentially for free so I figure I should be grateful for whatever they give me.
I suspect this past week's problems with Blogger (and I've seen reports that other people have been having difficulties too) have something to do with the long holiday weekend. I was still a kid when I noticed that TV stations seemed to suffer many more technical glitches than usual on holidays, and I guessed that the station employees with the seniority got first dibs on taking the holiday off, leaving less experienced employees in charge of running the show. I still notice the same pattern of TV-station mistakes on holidays today, and I still suspect the same cause.
I wonder if Blogger's more senior people didn't take time off last week, and a combination of inexperienced techies plus increased demand by Blogger users hitting the keyboard while home from work themselves didn't cause system overload.
Oh well, I've notified the customer service department, so there's nothing to do now but wait out the problem.
Saturday, July 03, 2004
Karen Hughes, phone home. And by "home" in this case, I don't mean Texas, I mean the Bush campaign.
I've been struck by how many people in the Bush White House seem rather estranged from pop culture. Not just cutting-edge pop culture; these are middle-aged people, after all, and I wouldn't expect them to be up on the latest and the hottest. (I'm sure not.)
Rather, I'm talking about the pop culture of the past several decades. You might hope their familiarity would be greater with the mainstream culture of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. But that familiarity is seriously open to question.
Bush himself seems conversant with sports and country-western music, but otherwise distant from the media. This was made much of in one of the Bush biographies from a few years back, Ambling into History (check out some amusing info along those lines from the Brothers Judd).
Condoleezza Rice's cultural accomplishments began when she was just a kid, but they don't seem to have included much in the way of average childhood and teenage activities.
Back when Donald Rumsfeld was getting good press, I remember it being mentioned in a generally favorable profile (though I was unable to find an on-line reference) that he had not seen a movie literally in years.
I like and admire each one of these people, but I can't help thinking that this distance from the mainstream culture is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, I'd bet it has allowed them to maintain an independence of thought and attitude that has helped them to pursue the War on Terror more wholeheartedly than strictly mainstream types could ever do. On the other hand, I'd bet it has contributed to the Bush White House's difficulties in putting their side of issues across to the public via the media. Of course the media themselves are a huge problem; but the Bushies haven't exactly been optimizing their opportunities, media-wise, an ongoing source of aggravation for those of us who'd like to see them succeed.
A few months back I started wondering if part of the problem with the media was that Karen Hughes had left the White House to spend more time with her family. It seemed that the media problems had worsened after she left, which led to my hope that she could ameliorate them if she came back.
When Hughes resurfaced in the spring to promote her book, Ten Minutes from Normal, she mentioned in an interview that she planned to continue the book tour into June, at which point she would join the Bush campaign full-time. Hallelujah! I was glad to hear it, and started looking forward to media matters improving come June.
But June started drawing to a close, and there was still no sign of Hughes in silhouette on the horizon, riding like the cavalry to the political rescue. I started googling, trying to figure out what was going on. Had there been an illness or injury, to Hughes or in her family, that I somehow hadn't heard about?
That's when I came across this story from CBS News, in which it was stated that Hughes was coming back to the Bushies full-time in August. (August???) Why so late? What happened to June? I'm still looking for an explanation, and I'm still impatient for Hughes to get back full-time (though part-time is sure better than nothing). When it comes to a more perceptive take on the use of the media by the White House, we may see a silhouette on the horizon yet.
I'd been meaning to write for some time on the subject of Pim Fortuyn, the Dutch politician who was falsely labeled a "fascist" in many quarters and who was murdered by a radical environmentalist.
Since I started reading Peaktalk last week, I've discovered that I don't need to write about Fortuyn because Pieter at Peaktalk has already done an excellent job of it. And since Pieter was born and raised in Holland, his knowledge of the subject is a lot more authoritative than mine.
The smear job done on Fortuyn reminds me of the one that's been maintained against Barry Goldwater for decades. The more people who learn the truth about these honorable men, the better. Read Pieter's take on Fortuyn's career, and gain a lot of good information.
I'm back. For several days there, I was posting, but Blogger wasn't publishing. Things seem to be back to normal now though.
Friday, July 02, 2004
William Sjostrom had a telling encounter the other day:
Another bit of evidence of Ireland's resurrected economy. The booming economy of recent years has reversed the flow of people, from the chronic emigration of job-seeking young people out of Ireland to an influx of job-seekers into Ireland. Naturally, the consequences have been as much cultural as economic.Changing Ireland
Today I was in Cork city centre tending to a few duties, and stopped in a small shop on the north end for a Coke (my drug of choice). The shop clerk was an African immigrant, and all the customers clearly were as well. I am quite used to being the only white guy in a place, but this is the first time it ever happened to me in Ireland.
Thursday, July 01, 2004
Monday's less-than-optimal election results yielded one good side effect: I ended up reading a couple of very good Canadian blogs I'd never looked at before. Trudeaupia and Peaktalk are now on the blogroll.
John Derbyshire's got a post at The Corner that's notable for two reasons: (1) It shows that you can mine some pretty good humor out of the Mark of the Beast, and (2) it doesn't mention homosexuality! No really, I mean it! Not even once!
Andrew Stuttaford gives a surprisingly enthusiastic review of the re-release of Monty Python's 1979 movie The Life of Brian. It's surprising because I believe -- is my memory playing tricks on me here? -- that back in 1979 Bill Buckley panned The Life of Brian as offensive and blasphemous. In fact, I seem to recall that Buckley mistook the last scene of the movie for an actual, capital-C Crucifixion scene, with Christ being executed rather than the poor schmuck Brian.
Striking bit of timing that Stuttaford's review appears in the same issue celebrating Buckley's tenure as editor and announcing the end of Buckley's owenership of NR.
