Musings Archive May 2003
Saturday, May 31, 2003 MACKAY SAYS THAT HE'LL COMMISSION A STUDY!: I've just finished listening to Peter MacKay's first leadership address. It was pretty tepid (Prentice's concession speech was even more wishy-washy) with far, far too many applause lines. He's definitely sending out some mixed signals. First, some blathering about the Progressive Conservatives are the only national party capable taking on the Liberals before the inevitable "We must Unite The Right" moment, which surprised me given the Gentlemen's Agreement we supposedly had between MacKay and Orchard. The funniest moment came when MacKay profusely praised Free Trade before promising... a study of Free Trade's effects, positive and negative. A study, wow. Orchard is one easily satisfied guy. I'm surprised Orchard didn't go for the whole shebang and make MacKay place a demand for a Royal Commission on NAFTA on the campaign platform. There's a good reason why the theme song of the convention is "Don't Stop Believin.'"
Posted by Barton @ 11:22 PM EST [Link]
~ WELL, THAT WAS INEVITABLE:
Final Ballot
Peter MacKay 64.4%
Jim Prentice 35.6%
Such an exhausting day, such a predictable result...
Posted by Barton @ 10:48 PM EST [Link]
~ HAS MACKAY SOLD THE RIGHT DOWN THE RIVER?: Orchard's downright creepy supporters look like they're going to follow their leader right over to MacKay. Orchard and MacKay's Gentlemen's Agreement seems to consist of this:
1. An appointed Blue Ribbon commission from within the Progressive Conservative Party to systematically "review" NAFTA to determine both positive and negative effects with Orchard playing a "considerable role" in that review, whatever that means. MacKay points out that such a review is built into the NAFTA agreement itself and he seems convinced that the results of this review will vindicate Free Trade, something which will not make Orchard supporters very happy.
2. The placing of argricultural and clean environmental policies "front-and-centre" on the Progressive Conservative platform.
3. They were rather vague about it, but it sure sounds like Orchard is going to be running for a seat in the next election.
4. No merger with the Canadian Alliance and no breaking of the 301 rule, while means there won't be any running of joint candidates with the Canadian Alliance.
With the exception of the fourth item, I'd have to say that MacKay bought Orchard's support pretty cheaply. A Blue Ribbon panel appointed from within the very party that negotiated NAFTA is not exactly going to turn around and bash the agreement, especially when the new leader of that party has publicly stated that Free Trade is one of the greatest Canadian economic policies of the last century. You hate to break this to the Orchard people, but the results of this review are well, "fixed." The second item on the list is just vague. Having Orchard sitting around the Progressive Conservative Caucus table will be, uh, fun, but given the clear amount of very strong grassroots support he can elicit, I suppose it's fair enough to allow him a chance to win a seat in Parliament. I mean leftists who don't like the NDP and Canadians who admire the economic policies of Ross Perot and Patrick J. Buchanan should have at least one voice in Parliament to represent them, don't you think? As for the last item on the list, well, it's just idiotic that we're going to be vote-splitting again with the Canadian Alliance, especially against a formidable candidate who has considerable appeal to the economic right such as Paul Martin. That's all I have to say about that. This convention has resolved none of the contradictions that exist in the Progressive Conservative Party. It seems the party's supporters are taking their name a bit too literally again.
Posted by Barton @ 09:35 PM EST [Link]
~ THE ONLY THING I FEEL IS DISGUST: Iman Salih Mutlak made the news briefly earlier this year. You won't remember the name but you'll remember what garnered her headlines. She attempted to attack American soldiers in Iraq with grenades but was shot dead. Her family feels shame, but not for the reason you might think.
Their rage comes not because of her planned attack, but because the 22-year-old woman left the house alone and without permission from her father — thereby besmirching the honor of her tribe.
"When she left the house, she lost her innocence," said her 71-year-old father, Salih Mutlak. "Had she returned home, I would have killed her myself and drunk her blood."
What can you say in response? I know a lot of people don't like to hear this but huge parts of the Muslim world remind me of Germany in the 1920s: nihilistic and death worshipping. Argue with it if you want but this article is a stunning example of its veracity. Read on.
Posted by steve @ 08:38 PM EST [Link]
~ ORCHARD PICKS MACKAY: It's over.
Posted by Barton @ 08:30 PM EST [Link]
~ COOL, BUT DID IT HAVE TO BE THE GUARDIAN?: Salam Pax, the Iraqi blogger who became famous before the Iraqi war, will write a biweekly column for The Guardian.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 08:27 PM EST [Link]
~ THIRD BALLOT RESULTS:
1. Peter MacKay- 1 128
2. Jim Prentice- 761
3. David Orchard- 617As predicted, it's David Orchard's to decide. Brison pulled 72% of his delegates to Prentice, which is very, very good. Joe Clark just went over to give Orchard some fatherly advice. The Orchard people are apparently quite hostile to MacKay because Orchard delegates mostly gained their positions over MacKay supporters and MacKay is viewed as the Establishment Candidate.
Posted by Barton @ 08:22 PM EST [Link]
~ I'VE ALWAYS THOUGHT SHE'D WAIT UNTIL 2008: Hillary Clinton has once again ruled out a run for the 2004 Democratic nomination. But she did not rule out the possibility in the future.
Posted by antle @ 08:01 PM EST [Link]
~ NOT THAT RADIOACTIVE THOUGH: Of course, I also saw on CPAC, a MacKay organizer come over to Orchard and play the tempter. Orchard, who quite frankly has been looking rather bewildered all day (right after Brison dropped off, Orchard actually tried to waltz over to Brison to persuade Brison to swing over to him, but he was brutally rebuffed), listened to the MacKay's organizer's spiel about how MacKay was open to Orchard's ideas, how impressed MacKay was with Orchard's campaign and his ability to get grassroots support, blah, blah, blah. Just before he left, the Mackay organizer even promised to buy Orchard's book, which sounded well and truly like butt-kissing of the fakest sort. One awaits with grim amusement the spectacle of Prentice and MacKay trying to court Orchard supporters after the next ballot. I mean, gee, what can either of them say? "I was for trade liberalization, but now I change my mind" or "Let's emphasize the adjective and ignore the noun." If the Progessive Conservatives were actually a party organized along ideological lines, Orchard would be laughed at. However, with the party in disarray and with policy positions that all seem ever so slightly to the right of the Liberals, this William Jennings Bryan clone is going to decide who's going to be the next leader of the Progressive Conservative Party.
Posted by Barton @ 07:14 PM EST [Link]
~ GUESS WHO'S PLAYING THE KINGMAKER?: Well, it's 6:30 pm here in Toronto (no, I'm not typing from the Progressive Conservative Party convention floor) and Brison has just thrown his support over to the best candidate, Jim Prentice. Brison and Prentice combined can't beat MacKay, but they can vault over perennial second-place finisher David Orchard. That means Orchard going to be dropped off the next ballot and with a two-person race between Prentice and MacKay, he gets to decide who he wants to swing his support over to. Orchard's been described as "radioactive" and Peter Van Loan, former PC Party President, has just compared Orchard's supporters to the Jonestown Cult, so fanatic they seem to him. It's kind of hard to think of an American analog, but I think it'd be like Michael Bloomberg (the leftist who happens to have a membership card in a conservative party) getting to choose between George W. Bush (the Establishment Candidate) and John McCain (the Insurgent Candidate) at a Republican convention.
Posted by Barton @ 06:49 PM EST [Link]
~ NO MORE RINOS: ESR contributor Bernard Chapin argues in Toogood Reports that Republicans must shrink government. It shouldn't surprise anybody that I think he is absolutey right.
Posted by antle @ 05:18 PM EST [Link]
~ NR EXPECTS THE TIMES TO GET EVEN WORSE: A National Review editorial on Howell Raines' New York Times. Depressing.
Posted by antle @ 05:02 PM EST [Link]
~ GLOBALISM - A NATION-BUSTING IDEOLOGY: Robert Locke raises some interesting points about globalism in what I believe is his first feature article for The American Conservative, although we differ somewhat on trade policy. Incidentally, I think he and fellow FrontPage alumni J.P. Zmirak offer a better definition of "neoconservatism" than what you usually get in paleoconservative circles (any conservative who disagrees with me) or what Jonah Goldberg recently offered in a series of G-File columns (it doesn't exist and definitely doesn't describe me). The hardening of conservatism from a tempermanent defined by what it does not believe in - to borrow from John Derbyshire - into a concrete democratic capitalist ideology, something that came up in response to the Cold War, could plausibly be described as "neoconservatism."
But aside from the "conservative zoology" - a term I also believe I am borrowing from the Derb - angle, Locke makes an important distinction between globalization, the desirable economic fact, and globalism, the undesirable ideology. It's one that is too frequently ignored.
Posted by antle @ 04:26 PM EST [Link]
Friday, May 30, 2003 HOW TOMMY PUNK'D SADDAM HUSSEIN: Fred Barnes has a beautiful article in the Weekly Standard about how Gen. Tommy Franks won the war in Iraq. Along with the stuff we know about -- how the American military's tactics and equipments have changed in the Dubya era -- is an interesting (and unproven) belief that Barnes has that the fact that Turkey wouldn't allow ground forces to operate out of its terrority was planned for and actually a part of Franks' campaign.
THE NEW WARFARE wasn't the sole source of the success in Iraq, nor is it the only aspect of transformation. Old concepts carried out more efficiently played a part. One was deception. The Turkish gambit was Franks's boldest effort to deceive Saddam. There's no proof, but the best guess is it affected Saddam's expectations of when an invasion might occur.
Weeks before the war, American military officers learned from their Turkish counterparts that Turkey was unlikely to allow the U.S. 4th Infantry Division to invade Iraq from Turkey in the north. Such an attack was a critical part of the Franks plan. But absent a northern front, Franks wanted Saddam to think an invasion from Turkish soil was still likely and that the war couldn't begin until weeks after the Turkish issue was resolved. So Franks insisted ships with the 4th Infantry's tanks and equipment remain off the shore of Turkey for weeks, as if awaiting the Turkish okay to unload. In fact, disinformation that the Turks would ultimately permit American troops to operate from their soil was slipped to Saddam's inner circle.
If that's true, Franks deserves to be on the same list as men like MacArthur and Patton.
If you read nothing else today, make it this. Read on.
Posted by steve @ 06:48 PM EST [Link]
~ ANNIKA WHO?: I have to admit that like many of you I was well and truly tired of hearing about Annika Sorenstam weeks before she played at the Colonial last week. But now that the storm has passed Daniel Henninger wonders what was accomplished. Short answer? Nothing.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 04:36 PM EST [Link]
~ THOSE A*@!^#$! REPUBLICANS!: Willy Stern has a great piece about the casual bigotry that Republicans face from the supposedly tolerant left. He's able to pass for a Democrat because he is a Jew and in the simplified world of leftists, that means "he's one of us." Unfortunately for them, he's not and he's outing himself publicly as Republican and providing some observations about the left.
When somebody makes a prejudicial comment about Republicans in my presence, I play a private game. I replay the sentence in my mind—only I substitute a word like "black" or "lesbian" or "Mexican" in place of the word "Republican." In performing this verbal sleight-of-hand, it becomes increasingly apparent that the speaker of the sentence may harbor views not generally considered to be tolerant or open-minded.
Read on. Warning, some bad language.
Posted by steve @ 03:57 PM EST [Link]
~ DERBYSHIRE GIVES US A MENTION: After years of ignoring the mighty ESR empire, the National Review Online rarely goes a week without mentioning us now. Okay, enough of the ego building. John Derbyshire, who Bernard Chapin interviewed a couple of weeks back, mentioned in that interview that he was "a strong philosemite."
John explains what that means in a column that appeared today. Scroll down to "I don't care what kind of Semite you are" here.
Posted by steve @ 03:43 PM EST [Link]
~ I'D CHARGE YOU A MILLION IF I COULD: Just joking. MSNBC has an interesting report that the number of web sites that will charge you a fee to access them is growing rapidly...and the number of people willing to pay has exploded.
The fee frenzy is on. Consumers who rejected anything that wasn’t free on the Web are showing interest in paying for online content. In fact, online subscription revenue will jump over 500 percent in the next few years as Web companies steal market share from their offline rivals, according to new research.
I can understand why web sites are beginning to charge. It costs me more to host ESR than it does for you to surf the web and given that I'm unemployed that means this magazine's last month may be this month. That said, ESR shall remain free.
Posted by steve @ 04:51 AM EST [Link]
~ MY LEVEL OF CONTEMPT IS RISING TO NEW LEVELS: Former U.S. President Bill Clinton opined on Thursday that presidents should be allowed to serve more than two terms.
"It wouldn't affect me, but for future generations the 22nd amendment should be modified," Clinton said Wednesday during an appearance at the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum.
"There may come a time when we have elected a president at age 45 or 50 and then 20 years later the country comes up with the same sort of problems the president faced before, and the people would like to bring that man or woman back," he said. He added that he didn't feel strongly about the issue, though.
Riiiiight. I wonder who wants to be brought back in 20 years. Sorry, no chance.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 03:29 AM EST [Link]
Thursday, May 29, 2003 HAPPY BIRTHDAY BOB HOPE:"Bob Hope turns 100 on Thursday, and he's received an outpouring of birthday greetings and thanks from the veterans and others he's entertained over the last 75 years. Dolores, his wife of 69 years, said they would have a birthday cake with 100 candles, 'with a fireman standing by with a fire extinguisher.' Hope, who entertained troops during World War II, the Korean, Vietnam and 1991 Gulf wars, remains the only civilian named an honorary veteran of the U.S. Armed Forces. He adopted the golf world with such enthusiasm that a tournament is named after him. And last month, the Hollywood Walk of Fame added a plaque to Hope's fourth star -- one each for radio, television, theater and film -- proclaiming him the 'Citizen of the Century.' Hope is said to have marked his birthday with a new one-liner: 'I'm so old, they've canceled my blood type.'"
Hope remains the only man that I've written an obituary for. You'll remember a couple of years ago that a member of Congress announced on the floor of the House that Hope had died and the news spread quickly. At the time I was working for an online newspaper at the time and crafted a fine obit -- quite good actually -- and it ran for about an hour until the news was revealed to be a hoax. Plenty of people got hoaxed that day. I was quite happy to know I had been tricked and he hadn't passed away.
Posted by steve @ 06:23 PM EST [Link]
~ I STILL BET HE'S DEAD: "U.S. troops have found no sign of bodies or even a bunker at the site where intelligence had said Saddam Hussein was sleeping on the war's opening night, a senior officer said Thursday."
Acting on an intelligence tip, U.S. forces launched their campaign on March 20 by firing more than 40 Tomahawk missiles on Dora Farms, a neighborhood south of Baghdad where the Iraqi leader was said to be with his sons."
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 05:08 PM EST [Link]
~ HELP THESE SOLDIERS!: A fire at an American base in the Middle East resulted in 29 soldiers and 12 Marines losing all their personal possessions. Send along some money to help these cats out. They've raised more than $1 500 already!
More info here.
Posted by steve @ 04:58 PM EST [Link]
~ LET'S NOT PUMP THIS STORY TOO MUCH: CNN is reporting that Iraqi military maybe, could have, possibly destroyed the headquarters of the coalition ground forces with a missile on March 27.
The missile was intercepted and destroyed by a U.S. Patriot missile shortly before it could have hit its target.
A CNN crew embedded at ground forces headquarters witnessed the incident. At the time of the incident, the material from the crew was embargoed under an agreement with the U.S. military until major hostilities in Iraq were over.
"This was Saddam's decapitation strike," said CNN national security analyst Ken Robinson, part of the CNN crew embedded at ground forces headquarters.
I'm not downplaying the real danger that the coalition soldiers were in, but the American decapitation strike actually levelled the building it was believed that Saddam Hussein was in. The al-Samoud missile was shot down as it was supposed to be.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 04:50 PM EST [Link]
~ I'D LIKE TO KNOW WHERE MY REVIEW COPY IS: Christopher Hitchens reviews Sidney Blumenthal's The Clinton Wars. Perhaps I'm lucky I didn't read it judging by Hitchens' brilliant review. Read on.
Posted by steve @ 01:39 PM EST [Link]
~ WELL, YOU TOOK OFF YOUR VEIL BEFORE LADY: Little Green Footballs has a good blog entry about Sultaana Freeman, the lady in Florida suing to have her veil on during her driver's licence photo. It seems Ms. Freeman has a bit of a past.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 01:19 PM EST [Link]
~ BUT WHO ACTUALLY WROTE HIS RESIGNATION LETTER?: Rick Bragg has resigned as a New York Times reporter following the little brouhaha over filing a story taken from a freelancer's notes but with only his byline.
Bragg, a national correspondent for the newspaper and best-selling author of two memoirs, told CNN Tuesday that he would resign but said he had done nothing wrong and that he followed Times policy of using the work of freelancers without giving them credit.
Times spokeswoman Catherine J. Mathis told CNN: "Under The Times' dateline and byline policies, the journalist who did the principal reporting should have received a byline for his contribution to the story."
Bragg said the Blair scandal has led to a "noxious atmosphere" at the paper.
"I don't want to let this atmosphere, this kind of noxious atmosphere, become a prison for me," said Bragg, who has a contract to write two more books.
Well, as long as he did nothing wrong...
Posted by steve @ 02:37 AM EST [Link]
Wednesday, May 28, 2003 ERRR, THOSE ARE MOBILE BABY MILK FACTORIES!: The CIA has a report today -- completed with pictures -- on suspected mobile biological plants located during and after the war in Iraq.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 11:10 PM EST [Link]
~ THEY ARE ALREADY LOADED WITH ERRORS: But it turns out that school textbooks are combed over for any word that could possibly offend someone.
Oh heck: Hell hath no place in American primary and high school textbooks.
But then again you can't find anyone riding on a yacht or playing polo in the pages of an American textbook either. The texts also can't say someone has a boyish figure, or is a busboy, or is blind, or suffers a birth defect, or is a biddy, or the best man for the job, a babe, a bookworm, or even a barbarian.
All these words are banned from U.S. textbooks on the grounds that they either elitist (polo, yacht) sexist (babe, boyish figure), offensive (blind, bookworm) ageist (biddy) or just too strong (hell which is replaced with darn or heck). God is also a banned word in the textbooks because he or she is too religious.
These kinds of things are a good argument for home schooling. They are an even better argument for getting John Galt to finally create Galt's Gulch.
Posted by steve @ 02:42 PM EST [Link]
~ MAYBE THE ACU ISN'T THAT C: Ramesh Ponnuru has a good column taking to task the American Conservative Union for not being all that conservative, at least when it comes to who it's supporting in Pennsylvania.
Posted by steve @ 02:38 PM EST [Link]
~ J-LO PRAISES STEVE'S FAVOURITE MAGAZINE!: Jeremy Lott pens a nice little tribute to Modern Drunkard magazine, a journal that unabashedly celebrates the love of alcohol. Perhaps a little too enthusiastically mind you.
Given the self-help literature on the subject, it was fun to see denial was the first reaction most people had when they saw Modern Drunkard. Several asked if this was some sort of elaborate joke. With cover lines such as "The Lost Art of Staggering," "How to Beat an Intervention," and "In Defense of Dionysus," along with the long-running Dead Celebrity Drink Off contest, I could understand their disbelief.
But readers soon learned that, though they are usually happy drunks, the staff of Modern Drunkard Magazine are dead serious about their booze. In fact, that they were denied entry to the Absolut Vodka party at this year's Bar and Nightclub Convention. Shown the door on the hilarious grounds that they were promoting drunkenness, the Drunkards retaliated by passing out hundreds of copies to people going into the melee. Though the guards tried to confiscate the issues, they finally gave up "when a growing group of hasslees started wondering why the literature they were carrying was any of Absolut's business."
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 01:59 PM EST [Link]
~ HE'S RIGHT THOUGH, CORONA REALLY DOES SUCK: I noticed a long time ago that a certain type of person drinks Corona. James Lileks agrees in his latest screed, one labeling Corona as a horrible beer and throws in a funny bit about how bad feature writing, especially at the New York Times, is.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 02:44 AM EST [Link]
~ WHAT IS A ROCK AND ROLL CONSERVATIVE?: That's the question that was posed to me by a reader a couple of days ago. I've referred to myself as one a couple of times and W. James Antle III used the term recently in a story on the flavors of conservatism. I think Jim actually made a mistake including the term in his list of the types of conservatives because unlike crunchy-cons or con-cons, rock and roll conservatism refers to a mindset more than a set of beliefs. One can easily be a rock and roll con-con or rock and roll libertarian conservative. That, of course, doesn't answer the question does it?
I first became aware of the term in the late 1990s thanks to a now defunct web magazine called Journal X that I occasionally contributed to. One of the writers, who's name now escapes me, wrote a column which was filled with conservatism, partying, alcohol and drugs and he referred to himself as a rock and roll conservative. While I didn't approve of the drugs he claimed to have taken, I appreciated the rest of his lifestyle given that I'm Generation X myself and hardly free of the hedonistic impulses that young single men occasionally indulge in. So what is a rock and roll conservative? Some people tend to believe that rock and roll conservatism is just regular conservatism drenched with liberal amounts of alcohol and loud music. I don't think it's that simple. Then again, I can't precisely define what it is either.
A rock and roll conservative is the hot blond in the tight white T-Shirt dancing across from you who tells you at night she hopes that "Baby's Got a Temper" will be the tone of the upcoming The Prodigy album and tells you in the morning she wishes the tax cut Congress passed had been far bigger.
A rock and roll conservative prefers a mixed drink over milk.
Rock and roll conservatives appear to be hedonists but have limits.
Rock and roll conservatives tend to be socially liberal but still believe that some things shouldn't be done in public.
A rock and roll conservative is a blend of Frank Sinatra's desire for fun, William F. Buckley Jr.'s education and John Wayne's old-school values.
Many conservative students are rock and roll conservatives.
Rock and roll conservatives can sound contradictory.
Rock and roll conservatives love politics but don't need feel the need to discuss it all the time. They are rarely zealots but are quite passionate about the things that they believe in and will fight for them. Given the choice, they won't talk politics.
People who were rock and roll conservatives: George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan.
People who weren't rock and roll conservatives: George H.W. Bush, Richard Nixon.
Posted by steve @ 02:17 AM EST [Link]
~ THE NEXT WAR?: There are plenty of people who believed that Iran should have been ahead of Iraq on the targets list and they have some compelling arguments for it, such as the advanced state of Iran's nuclear weapons program. Well, they may get their wish, albeit belatedly. The United States stated Tuesday that it is continuing diplomatic negotiations to get Iran to deal responsibly with a number of al-Qaida terrorists that are currently in that country. We know they're there considering Iran admitted to holding a number in custody, an admission made after they denied it.
Officially, the White House says there is no change in its policy, as this CNN story states. I think the Bush administration, concerned about a war weary population, is probably not considering an immediate war. It's also probably hoping that the continued protests against the theocratic regime continues and that Iranian President Mohammed Khatami makes some headway in reforming the country, however unlikely that is. We may have to wait to see the next member of the Axis of Evil to fall.
There is one interesting piece of bright news for the hawks however. CNN's current poll asking "Is harboring al Qaeda members grounds for military action against Iran?" has garnered 61 per cent in favor of a war and 39 opposed. Perhaps America's population isn't that war weary.
Posted by steve @ 12:09 AM EST [Link]
Tuesday, May 27, 2003 THIS POLL RESULT MAKES ME SICK: Bill Clinton, a greater president than Reagan? Than Washington? Please.
Posted by antle @ 09:06 AM EST [Link]
~ AFFIRMATIVE ACTION DOUBLE-STANDARDS AT THE TIMES: Veteran freelance journalist and Toogood Reports associate editor Nicholas Stix takes an in-depth look at the egregious pattern of double-standards at the New York Times that enabled Jayson Blair's reign of error, showing why the arguments that racial preferences had nothing to do with it simply don't hold up.
Posted by antle @ 08:41 AM EST [Link]
~ SELF-PROMO ALERT: As you can see, I am on a bit of a tax cut kick. I have a piece on "reality-based" scoring versus static scoring and how these estimates impacted the tax cut debate over at Tech Central Station.
Posted by antle @ 12:44 AM EST [Link]
~ THE SUM OF THE PARTS WERE MORE THAN THE WHOLE: Monday night movie at Fort Sinatra, aka Steve's casa and let's see what we have here. Charismatic leading man in Jason Statham. Check. Babe hotter than magma two miles below the Earth's surface in Qi Shu. Check. Guns? Check. Fight sequences? Check. Name of movie? The Transporter.
It was definately a case of the sum of the parts totalling more than the movie's worth. The plot, if you can call it that, was written on onion paper and served to tie the fight scenes together. In fact, I'd keep cutting it up but someone from Victoria, British Columbia gave a pretty accurate roundup of the movie's problems. Well, I could be too hard on the movie...it was hardly the worst thing I've ever seen and the soundtrack was wicked good (especially Fighting Man by DJ Fone and Drixxxe -- you heard it when Statham's character breaks into Wall Street's home).
The lovely Qi Shu and some guy who starred in the moviePosted by steve @ 12:15 AM EST [Link]
Monday, May 26, 2003 THE NINE DWARVES - NO DEMOCRATIC FRONT-RUNNER: A candidate for new national paper of record reports that there is no Democratic front-runner. Whether Lieberman, Kerry, Gephardt, Edwards or Dean pull away from the pack depends a lot on whether their campaign strategies pan out. A tough primary battle with a weakened nominee is just what President Bush ordered...
Posted by antle @ 11:04 PM EST [Link]
~ ANOTHER NEOCON PLOT?: An interesting article on the alliance between Jews and evangelical Christians in defense of Israel. the report is heavy on the politics of the situation, especially as it pertains to President Bush, and light on the rational justifications for the pro-Israel position. But it does discuss a political marriage that is only going to make itself more prominent as the new "Roadmap" progresses.
Posted by antle @ 08:41 PM EST [Link]
~ SELF-PROMO ALERT: More from me on the tax cut for the Washington Dispatch. Pesky static revenue estimates.
Posted by antle @ 05:44 PM EST [Link]
~ DOING THE CON-CON. James, I am enjoying the constitutional conservative debate you started. I love the term and will adopt it to describe my political bent even if it is a lost cause. Maybe the U.S. Constitution will rise again.
Meantime, Happy Memorial Day to all. Please visit this page to read a brief history of the origins of this holiday.
Posted by izzy @ 02:06 PM EST [Link]
~ FRANKLY I'M SHOCKED THIS LEVEL OF STUPIDITY EVEN EXISTS: Syrian dictator...err, sorry...president Bashar Assad said in an interview published Sunday that he just plum doesn't believe that al-Qaida exists.
"Is there really an entity called Al Qaeda? Was it in Afghanistan? Does it exist now?" Assad asked, according to the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Anba.
Usama bin Laden, the Saudi-born Islamic extremist who heads Al Qaeda, "cannot talk on the phone or use the Internet, but he can direct communications to the four corners of the world?" Assad said. "This is illogical."
Everyone knows it was those four Jews with the white minivan taking pictures of the World Trade Centre just before the attacks....right Bashar?
Posted by steve @ 02:25 AM EST [Link]
~ THEY SET THE GROUND RULES SO THEY SHOULDN'T COMPLAIN: CNN reports that the Bush administration is considering taking a new approach to Iran. The hardline approach will see the United States attempt to destablize the Iranian government.
Senior Bush administration officials, including the deputy secretaries of defense and state, are scheduled to meet Tuesday to discuss Iran, the official said.
Iranian officials said Sunday that the United States has cut off discussions with the Tehran government that encompassed a range of issues, levying what the Iranians called false accusations that Iran provided a haven for al Qaeda members.
Last week, a Bush administration official told CNN that Lakhdar Brahimi, the U.N. special envoy to Afghanistan, met with Iranian officials Thursday in Geneva, Switzerland. During the meeting, the official said, the Iranians said they had several al Qaeda operatives in custody, including one who might have coordinated the recent terrorist bombings in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
About bloody time. The U.S. should have adopted a small carrot/really big stick approach to Iran years ago when the first signs of dissent by Iran's citizens were reported. That said, I'm reasonably sure that some bearded dudes in Tehran are pretty nervous right now.
Posted by steve @ 02:14 AM EST [Link]
Saturday, May 24, 2003 NY TIMES ADMITS THERE ARE CONSERVATIVES IN AMERICA: The NY Times has an interesting story on what the paper has dubbed Hipublicans, young people who are proud to be conservative.
The temptation, upon entering Charles Mitchell's dorm room at Bucknell University, is to assume that he's kidding. The doormat features a picture of Hillary Clinton and the injunction, ''Wipe Liberally.'' A vast American flag festooned in red, white and blue Christmas lights adorns one wall, along with a faded Reagan-Bush '84 poster and a small photograph of the cowboy-hatted Gipper himself. The sole concession to any interest outside right-wing politics is a wall hanging of an African jungle scene. ''My nod,'' says Mitchell, an intense 20-year-old history major, ''to multiculturalism.''
Of course, the reporter manages to draw in concerns that conservative activists could "stifle intellectual openness among students." It's the type of thing that only a conservative student could find hilarious to hear. We are marginalized, assaulted and threatened every day if we dare to raise our voices -- would you like me to tell you about the two professors at Laurentian University who announced in class that they were after me for writing a popular newspaper column? -- and we're the ones that threaten intellectual openness. Funny stuff.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 06:39 PM EST [Link]
~ MORE NY TIMES FUN: Jack Shafer reports on the latest integrity challenged New York Times reporter to be unmasked. This time it's Rick Bragg.
An editor's note in today's New York Times gently chastises Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Rick Bragg for what would be a firing offense at many newspapers, especially in the post-Jayson Blair era. On June 15, 2002, the Times ran a Page One article datelined Apalachicola, Fla., about the oystermen of the Gulf Coast. The byline credit went to Bragg, but that was wrong, the Times note explains. "[W]hile Mr. Bragg indeed visited Apalachicola briefly and wrote the article, the interviewing and reporting on the scene were done by a freelance journalist, J. Wes Yoder."
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 04:30 PM EST [Link]
~ IF THERE IS A HEAVEN, IT'S IN HAY-ON-WYE: Hay-On-Way in Wales is a book lovers paradise:
Hay is home to 1,500 people -- and about 40 used book stores.
"There are more books per head of population in this town than in any other town in the world," says Richard Booth, who opened Hay's first book store more than 40 years ago. "Put them all together, we offer a better service than the British Library."
For book lovers, Hay is seductive. The shops range from dusty paperback caverns to specialists in children's books, poetry, art, travel and languages. Murder and Mayhem concentrates on thrillers, Boz books on Dickens.
For those tired of browsing, Hay has cozy pubs, good restaurants, historic inns and a ruined medieval castle perched in the middle of town.
Books, pubs and restaurants? I could live there forever. Read on.
Posted by steve @ 04:16 PM EST [Link]
Friday, May 23, 2003 NOTABLE QUOTABLE: A busy week at work kept me from perusing my favorite blog websites as often as I would have liked. But I have been doing some catching up, and I simply have to point out this riposte.
Orrin Judd described this "offering" from Jimmy Breslin as "a column so incoherent that Jayson Blair wouldn't plagiarize it."
Posted by antle @ 11:25 PM EST [Link]
~ BOVARD ON THE PATRIOT ACT: A bit ago I mentioned James Bovard's cover story in The American Conservative on the USA PATRIOT Act. It is now available on-line. It seems that TAC waits for a new print edition to come out before posting articles on its website. I'm wondering if anybody else has noticed that.
Posted by antle @ 07:26 PM EST [Link]
~ DERBYSHIRE: A METROCON OR A DEVIATIONIST?: John Derbyshire kindly referenced Bernard Chapin's ESR piece interviewing him in The Corner earlier this week. James Fulford mentioned it on VDARE.com.
Posted by antle @ 07:18 PM EST [Link]
~ $500 MILLION IS A LOT: Members of the 3rd Armored Cav today seized what may be $500 million worth of gold that someone tried to smuggle out of Iraq into Syria.
Just how much of Iraq's wealth was stolen from her people we'll never know...
Posted by steve @ 01:32 PM EST [Link]
~ ANOTHER LEGACY OF SADDAM: Newsday reports that another plank in the leftist platform decrying American policy over Iraq has given way to the truth.
Throughout the 13 years of UN sanctions on Iraq that were ended yesterday, Iraqi doctors told the world that the sanctions were the sole cause for the rocketing mortality rate among Iraqi children.
"It is one of the results of the embargo," Dr. Ghassam Rashid Al-Baya told Newsday on May 9, 2001, at Baghdad's Ibn Al-Baladi hospital, just after a dehydrated baby named Ali Hussein died on his treatment table. "This is a crime on Iraq."
It was a scene repeated in hundreds of newspaper articles by reporters required to be escorted by minders from Saddam Hussein's Ministry of Information.
Now free to speak, the doctors at two Baghdad hospitals, including Ibn Al-Baladi, tell a very different story. Along with parents of dead children, they said in interviews this week that Hussein turned the children's deaths into propaganda, notably by forcing hospitals to save babies' corpses to have them publicly paraded.
Doctors in Iraq now say that Hussein was to blame for a majority of the death toll thanks to his spending on the military and his palaces. Read on.
Posted by steve @ 01:29 PM EST [Link]
~ IT'S COOL BECAUSE THEY DESERVE IT: Utah, the only state that permits the death sentence to be carried out by firing squad, will do that twice next month.
Exercising their right under Utah law, a serial killer, Roberto Arguelles, and Troy Michael Kell, a white supremacist who stabbed a fellow inmate to death, have chosen the firing squad over lethal injection and are set to die at 12:01 a.m. on June 27 and 28, respectively.
Unfortunately Kell has filed an appeal which means his execution won't take place. God willing, it will.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 01:54 AM EST [Link]
~ POTENTIAL OUTAGES TODAY: Interland will be physically moving all of its servers from Los Angeles to Atlanta today. The physical move is scheduled to start Friday, May 23rd at 9:00PM PDT and end on Saturday, May 24th at 12:00PM PDT. You will probably notice that ESR will be down for the most part. Please have patience, we will be back.
Posted by steve @ 01:38 AM EST [Link]
Thursday, May 22, 2003 ICKY ALERT. I hope I am not breaking protocol but using one blog to advertise the contents of another blog, but my interview with Peter Brimelow, author of the Worm in the Apple, is available here.
Posted by izzy @ 11:31 PM EST [Link]
~ GOOD NEWS FOR SANTORUM AT LEAST: Sen. Rick Santorum seems to be in the majority, at least in Pennsylvania, in regards to his recent comments about homosexuality. According to a poll, Pennsylvanians not only don't want him to resign, a majority also agrees with him.
The vast majority of the state's voters -- 75 percent -- said Santorum should not resign as Senate Republican Conference chairman, while 58 percent said homosexuality was morally wrong, the Quinnipiac University poll said.
I guess the state founded by Quakers hasn't completely lost its religious beliefs...
Posted by steve @ 05:11 PM EST [Link]
~ WHY AMERICA FORKS OVER BILLIONS TO THE MIDDLE EAST ANNUALLY: On a request from a reader, Steve Den Beste lays out his thoughts on why the United States provides Middle East nations billions of dollars in aid.
I have a feeling that Richard was hoping for a rant by me about how this is a waste and how we shouldn't be doing it. But it's not that straightforward.
Actually, it is. Steve's reasoning for the continuing aid is hardly a revelation but it is an interesting post nonetheless.
Posted by steve @ 02:29 PM EST [Link]
~ AFTER THE JAYSON BLAIR THING I SAY SCREW THEM: The Libertarian Party of New York is circulating an online petition calling for the state to stop a plan to condemn properties just so the New York Times can build itself a new pad at the expense of the taxpayers, the landowners and their tenants.
We condemn a scheme by The New York Times to have New York State condemn property so that the media giant can erect a new building at the expense of the taxpayers, the landowners and their tenants. The Times wants a state agency, the Empire State Development Corporation's 42nd Street Development Corporation, to condemn the properties on Eighth Avenue between 40th and 41st Streets in Manhattan.
All land acquisition costs above $85 million will be borne by the taxpayers. The properties have been estimated by independent experts in the $150 million range.
Read and sign!
Posted by steve @ 02:24 AM EST [Link]
~ LUCKY I TURNED ON THE SWEARING FILTERS: The problems with ESR's email continues. I have about 95 messages trapped on my mail server somewhere in the United States. I can read it but can't respond so please be patient until this latest problem sorts itself out or I spend what's left of my money flying to wherever my provider is located and "talking" to them about it.
Posted by steve @ 01:41 AM EST [Link]
~ I'M NOT AS PRETTY AS TOM CRUISE BUT...: I won't finish that for fear of lawsuit. Nicole Kidman has been talking a lot recently about finding a man. She even stated during a press conference at Cannes a few days ago that she wouldn't act forever but looked forward to life after her craft. I'm hearby offering myself as a man willing to try and sweep her off her feet. Here's why:
Kidman's Puffing Has Anti-Smokers Fuming
Actress Nicole Kidman's televised cigarette puffing at the Cannes Film Festival has anti-smokers fuming. Anti-smoking campaigners say the Oscar-winning The Hours star is one of Australia's greatest success stories who, as a role model for young women, has a duty to not promote the habit. Anne Jones, of the Action On Smoking And Health group in Australia, says, "We accept that Nicole Kidman has a right to smoke, but with celebrity comes a responsibility to avoid promoting lethal and addictive products to young people. Mass media coverage of celebrity smokers, like Nicole Kidman, is priceless for the tobacco industry in their drive to addict new smokers, most of whom are children." At a media briefing while promoting her new film Dogville, Kidman took a cigarette from her co-star Stellan Skarsgard, only to be knocked by director Lars Von Trier in front of the world's press as he moaned, "Oh, Nicole, don't do that - you promised." But Kidman coolly kept puffing. The incident made major Australian news bulletins moments later, where an outrage has erupted.
I know you health nuts out there will slam me for this, but as a fellow smoker I can't help but love the woman more.
Posted by steve @ 01:31 AM EST [Link]
Wednesday, May 21, 2003 AMERICAN IDOL: JAMES WILLIAMS. What? You were expecting Ruben or Clay? Nah. James, age 14, hails from Washington state. He just won the 2003 National Geographic Bee, and he is a HOMESCHOOLER!!! Woohoo. (I'm so predictable.)
How he won: "Williams ultimately came out ahead by answering the following question correctly: 'Goa, a state in southwestern India, was a possession of which country until 1961?' (Answer: Portugal)." Last year's contest was also won by a home scholar.
Read more here.
Posted by izzy @ 08:48 PM EST [Link]
~ CAN WE STOP WITH "THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT" TAKE-OFFS PLEASE?: It's tiresome and hackworthy. That said, Joe Hagan has an interesting piece over at The New York Observer about the pitch Jayson Blair is sending out for a book deal. It's depressing in the sense that his pitch tells us everything we need to know about modern society.
But unlike Mr. Blair’s career-suicide doppelgänger, Stephen Glass—who has said he spent five years in therapy before publishing a work of fiction about his fabrications in The New Republic—the former Times reporter isn’t waiting around to get his head straight. He’s diving right in, not slowed down at all by the gummy ethical issues involved in exploiting his own bad behavior for personal profit. The memoir that Mr. Blair wants to write will either justify his actions or further damn them. Above all, the proposal claims, the book will have something to teach others: "I want to offer my experience as a lesson," Mr. Blair writes, "for the precipice from which I plunged is one on which many young, ambitious, well-educated and accomplished African Americans and other ‘minorities’ teeter, though most, of course, do manage to pull back from the brink. That precipice overhangs America’s racial divide; and the winds sucking us down into the chasm (cultural isolation, professional mistrust, and the external and internal imperatives to succeed, at all costs, to name a few) can be too strong for the troubled and unprepared—as I was—to withstand.
Oi vey. Read on.
Posted by steve @ 07:18 PM EST [Link]
~ FORGET SARS, WHAT ABOUT SAAR?: Matthew Epstein wants to know what's going on with the federal investigation in to the SAAR Network. Back in March 2002, terrorism investigators raided an operation in northern Virginia and carted away computers and documents.
Now over a year after the raids, many are asking whether the Justice Department will hand down indictments or clear the targets' names. While the government has revealed very little about the lengthy probe, documents recently made public in terrorism trials across the nation shed new light on the subjects of this ongoing terrorism investigation.
Too many times people want to rush a complicated investigation but it would be nice if the Justice Department made some sort of announcement. Read on.
Posted by steve @ 02:45 PM EST [Link]
~ LISTEN TO THE SPEECH: (Via I can't remember who) NY Times reporter Chris Hedges' speech is available on the Internet. Listen here. (MP3 format)
Posted by steve @ 02:38 PM EST [Link]
~ ERRR, I THINK I'VE USED THE WORD "SHEEPLE" IN THE PAST: For that I apologize. James Lileks has a marvelous post about people who use the word "sheeple" in relation to the BBC's recent story that the rescue of Pvt. Jessica Lynch was staged. The weapons fired (hint, there were none fired) in front of the camera were using blanks (hint, if you were in the military you'd know why that's idiotic) and the "rescue" was nothing more than some 'ole Rambo theatrics for the sheeple at home.
As it happens, I remember seeing the rescue footage the government released. I TiVod it for the video compilation I was making. No gunfire; no flashbangs; there was a shot of some soldiers going down a stairwell, a grainy green night-vision shot of a waiting room with a portrait of Saddam leaning against the wall, and an outside shot of the stretcher being prepped for extraction. I’ve seen news stories on paintball tourneys that were more dramatic.
Europeans are really beginning to bug me now. I mean really beginning to bug me. It's not enough they refused to send soldiers but now they question the bravery of other soldiers?
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 01:36 AM EST [Link]
Tuesday, May 20, 2003 IT'S ONLY FREEDOM OF SPEECH WHEN A LEFTIST TALKS: New York Times reporter Chris Hedges was booed off the stage during his commencement address at Rockford College after delivering an anti-war speech.
Hedges began his abbreviated 18-minute speech comparing United States’ policy in Iraq to piranhas and a tyranny over the weak. His microphone was unplugged within three minutes.
Voices of protest and the sound of foghorns grew.
Some graduates and audience members turned their backs to the speaker in silent protest. Others rushed up the aisle to vocally protest the remarks, and one student tossed his cap and gown to the stage before leaving.
One lady was angry at the audience's behavior because it was "not behaving as people in an academic setting, where you’re supposed to be open to a great many ideas." That almost made me laugh outloud. In an academic setting (especially for commencement addresses), there is no exposure to a great many ideas, merely liberal ideas. I'm frankly shocked that the audience didn't cheer.
At any rate, when a conservative has a chance to be booed off the stage at Harvard then I'll feel badly for Hedges. Conservatives don't get invites to many commencement addresses.
Posted by steve @ 11:45 PM EST [Link]
~ SOUTH CAROLINA PARDONS ESR'S PATRON SAINT: The State of South Carolina today pardoned James Brown for his past crimes in the state.
Brown, who served a two-and-a-half-year prison term after a 1988 arrest on drug and assault charges, and was convicted of a drug-related offense in 1998, was granted a pardon by the state Department of Probation, Parole and Pardon Services.
Brown, who appeared before the board, sang "God Bless America" after the decision, said his publicist, Dan Forman.
"God bless America on this beautiful day. I hope my pardon shows the youth that America is a beautiful country," 70-year-old soul legend said in a statement. "I feel good!"
If you didn't know it, the checkered past of Brown hasn't been enough for us not to name him our patron saint/spiritual advisor.
Posted by steve @ 11:33 PM EST [Link]
~ NOAH FELDMAN IS WRONG: Says Martin Kramer. If you remember, Feldman has written a book After Jihad: America and the Struggle for Islamic Democracy, one that argues that Islam and democracy are not incompatible. I reviewed the book for ESR and the Christian Science Monitor and was lauditory both times.
Kramer thinks that people like me might have been too lauditory. In fact, he points to my Monitor review as one example. Why are we wrong? Because we accept the basic premise that people like Feldman are advancing, one that rests on a shaky base.
The Esposito/Feldman idea goes like this: Islamists are really no worry at all. In fact, they are actually the best hope for democracy in the Middle East. Leading Islamist thinkers want democracy, and if Islamist parties were allowed to take power—which they certainly would do in free elections—it would be an improvement over the situation today. Even if Islamists declared "Islamic" states on assuming power, these regimes would probably be more or less democratic, provided you don't insist on a narrow, culture-bound definition of democracy. The United States is making a big mistake by allying itself with autocratic rulers in the region, and it's betraying its values too. It should encourage inevitable change in the Islamists' favor, which is really in the U.S. interest.
Kramer says that the only way that line of thinking works is if you claim that "jihad" is over, which you can certainly claim is far from reality. Of course, you can also claim that the spirit of violent jihad is diminishing, as Gilles Kepel did in his book Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam which I reviewed here.
At any rate, I'll let Kramer's thoughts speak for themselves because he's done a better job of laying them out than I can. Read on.
Posted by steve @ 03:15 PM EST [Link]
~ IRAN AND THE INTERNET: I have a natural inclination not to post anything that was in the Globe and Mail but there was an interesting article in today's paper about Iran and the effect that the Internet is having on it. The religious leaders are having a real difficult time controlling access to information and it's beginning to destablize their hold on the young population.
What's really got the mullah's beards in a knot? Weblogs, the very thing that the western press dismisses as vanity posting with little credibility.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 02:54 PM EST [Link]
~ GOLDBERG ON NEOCONSERVATISM: Jonah Goldberg continues his series on neoconservatism today here (you can find part one here). The funniest part can be found here:
Today, "paleoconservatism" has become the real "neoconservatism," in that it is literally the newest form of conservatism out there, resembling very little the conservatism of William F. Buckley or Barry Goldwater or the rank-and-file of the Republican party. An even funnier irony is that in many respects paleoconservatism is more left wing than what we call neoconservatism. The reason this is funny is that so many self-described paleos view themselves as "further to the Right" than those they label neocons. But they need to explain why Pat Buchanan's public policies sound so liberal.
I and ESR -- and I suppose its contributors by extension -- been savaged over the last few years for being one of those Jew-loving neocons. I plead guilty to the Jew-loving (in the sense that I don't hate Jews), but my neocon status is less certain. I prefer "rock 'n' roll conservative" or "tired and sleepy" as labels but you can't help what people call you. That said I always knew I was more conservative than paleocons. As Goldberg (oh no, another one of those Jews!) points out, some of the stuff that Pat Buchanan advocates wouldn't be out of place coming from Ralph Nader.
Buchanan now favors caps on executive salaries, expansion of Medicare benefits, and high trade barriers. He fumes about the excesses of Wall Street and the free market.
Well comrades, I guess paleocons are conservative. But seriously, I've long considered paleocons to be the left-wing of the conservative movement. It's not that I find neocons to be terribly conservative either, but they speak less nonsense than paleocons. Caps on salaries?
Posted by steve @ 02:49 PM EST [Link]
Monday, May 19, 2003 THE INFORMATION AGE SOLDIER: Steven Den Beste of U.S.S. Clueless fame has a good piece in today's Opinion Journal about the rise of the Information Age soldier.
One usually thinks of the paradigmatic soldier is the frontline rifleman, or maybe a guy buttoned up in a tank. Think of ancient armies and one imagines the Roman legionary, or a knight on horseback. Basically, we think of the guys who are doing the fighting. That's quite natural.
But in order for guys like that to be where they are, doing what they're doing to the enemy, there are other people elsewhere doing other less glamorous jobs. For every fighter pilot doing wing-overs and patrolling the air over the battlefield, there's a squad of mechanics on the ground responsible for keeping the aircraft flying. For every frontline platoon, there are other guys responsible for moving a steady flow of supplies to keep that platoon fed and watered and supplied with ammunition.
The usual term for these roles are "tooth" and "tail." The "tooth" part is all the guys who are actually in the position of being able to kill enemies, and the "tail" guys are the ones who may find themselves in the position of fighting but don't usually expect to do so. (But all of them can die; everyone is potentially a target even if they aren't all shooting.) We speak of the tooth-to-tail ratio, though it usually makes more sense to talk about tail-to-tooth: How many men must there be behind the front doing unglamorous work to make it possible to put one man directly into combat? In some cases it's greater than 10 to 1.
Posted by steve @ 03:04 PM EST [Link]
~ GOOD LUCK ARI: I'm sure you've already heard but Ari Fleischer announced today he's leaving the White House.
Posted by steve @ 02:59 PM EST [Link]
~ "IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH," ETC: So, there I was sitting in my uncle James' spanking-new, interior-designed to within an inch of its life, thirty-fifth floor downtown condo (typical exchange: Barton-"So how much did it cost to buy all this brand new furniture?" James-"A lot." Barton-"Yeah, I know that, but, uh, do you have some sort of, uh, round dollar figure?" James, pausing to think a bit-"...A lot."). James was standing on the balcony, staring out towards the east at a gloriously clear morning sky, thinking about the meaning and destiny of life. I was lounging around at his nearby direct-from-Denmark glass and steel mini-office (there was a new flat-screen iMac sitting on the desk, of course), languidly reading the gossip and resturant reviews from Toronto Life in an attempt to distract myself from the sub-Rothko and imitation-Frankenthaler prints that my uncle had insisted on decorating his walls with. A perfect setting for two cosmospolitan sophisticates like us to start trading quips like some mismatched couple in a screwball comedy, right? Well, instead of Woody Allenish witticisms or Wildean apercus or even Seinfeldean observations, I got this-
James (lost in reverie): You know, we've had such a long, cold winter. It felt like it would never end. And now it's May and it's like, we never had a spring! It's so cool today and it's May...it's like winter never ended... (trails off).
Barton (barely paying attention): Yep.
James : It's so cold! (walking back inside, shivering) You know, what I blame for all this?
Barton: What?
James: Global warming, of course.
Barton (rather taken aback): But, you said yourself that's it was colder outside than usual!
James: You have to look at the big picture... (trails off without elaborating).
Barton (very slowly emphasizing every word): You...said...it...was...cooler.
James: Yeah, but you have look at the big picture (wanders off, while I struggle to get my jaw off the floor).
My uncle is a geography teacher.
Later, an actual Rothko print he had ordered finally came in. Well, not an exactly a "print" per se. When my uncle took it apart, he found out that the guys had actually just cut out the back of a calendar that had happened to use Rothko's paintings and stuck the sheet into the frame. Nevertheless, my uncle decided to keep it and hung it up on a wall in the second bathroom where it accomplished its purpose of "filling space." Rather curious about his new-found treasure, my uncle decided to conduct some research on the painting using the Internet. He found out that the original, which is entitled "No. 61 (Rust and Blue) [Brown Blue, Brown on Blue]," was at The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, here it is. Staring at the image on his monitor, my uncle then realized that he had hung the Rothko print on the wall upside down. That discovery prompted this later dialogue-
Barton: So, have you fixed that Rothko print yet?
James: Nope.
Barton: And may I ask why not?
James: Well, I kind of think it actually looks better upside down.
Barton (playing the pompous windbag): But isn't that a, well, obscenity against the artistic work's integrity? Shouldn't we follow the artist's explicit purpose and intentions in how he wanted his painting to be presented? I mean, what would it look like if you bought a print of the Mona Lisa and decided to hang it upside down on your bathroom wall, huh?
James (very patiently): First of all, it's not the Mona Lisa. Second, I'm the one who bought it and as the owner, therefore I should be allowed to decide how to present it in whatever way I want to. Finally, since it's not the Mona Lisa, but a Rothko print, people won't be able to tell that it's actually hung upside down, so it won't matter.
There you have it. My uncle now has a brand-new Rothko "print" costing over a hundred dollars, that isn't really a print, which he has decided to hang upside down on the wall of the second bathroom of his designer condominium, because he likes it better that way. Mark Rothko, my uncle James tells me, is his "favourite" artist. I'm not saying that my uncle James is foolish or anything like that, but I just found these two exchanges rather funny.
As well, the fact that James thinks (pretty accurately, I believe) that, as with so many modern abstract paintings, people will be unable to tell whether the Rothko "print" is upside down or not, tells us a lot about the state of contemporary art, but that's a rant for another day...
Posted by Barton @ 03:31 AM EST [Link]
~ HER NAME WAS MATHILDA MAY: James Lileks has a good blog on the New York Times and the Jayson Blair controversy. I'd quote some of it but it's worth going over and reading the thing for yourself.
He also praises the latest Simpsons episode, which I thought was horrifically bad, and expresses how stupid the 1985 movie "Lifeforce" was. It was Bad but the young lady that Lileks refers to is named Mathilda May who was...ummm....perfect for the role. If you've seen the movie, you know why.
Read on.
[Update - 4:51am] Rusty White has a funny review of Lifeforce which stresses May's nakedness and how bad the movie is. I'm almost tempted to buy it on DVD as a reference point for badness.
Posted by steve @ 12:37 AM EST [Link]
Sunday, May 18, 2003 MODERATE DEMOCRATS ARE RIGHT-WING EXTREMISTS: Or so that paragon of true moderation James Jeffords apparently believes. Note how this recent convert to the cause of Howard Dean still manages to get in a dig against the GOP.
Posted by antle @ 09:37 PM EST [Link]
Saturday, May 17, 2003 GOOD RIDDANCE TO FUSIONISM: Julian Sanchez, one of the libertarian bloggers whose missives contributed to my decision to write my piece on the libertarian-conservative clash, takes issue with parts of it.
Sanchez disagrees that conservatives and libertarians “will continue to hang together on the grounds of a shared commitment to ‘the dignity of man.’” That actually is not my position. I do argue for a continuation of libertarian-conservative cooperation, but I make no prediction as to whether this will happen. My guess is that those who can crudely be called right-libertarians will continue to align themselves mainly with conservatives with a focus on free markets while those who equally crudely may be described as left-libertarians will work with liberals with a focus on social issues. Recently, we’ve seen so-called “lifestyle libertarians” driven further away from mainstream conservatives over issues like gay marriage and cloning while paleolibertarians and paleoconservatives have drawn closer together. What ultimately will happen will depend in large part on what issues continue to claim public attention.
He also notes that most major political classifications have some kind of conception of the inherent worth of the individual and the dignity of man, including left-liberals. He’s right about this, but I still think there is some value to Ed Feser’s comparison of the libertarian and traditional conservative conception of man. The notion that man is a being created in the image of God, for example, is something that can just as easily have libertarian implications. It is also worth noting that the conservatism I am defending seeks to conserve the political legacy of the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. And while Sanchez is right that left-liberals want the individual to have the effective means to realize his potential and have a good standard of living, the left does have more of a tendency to view the individual as subject to economic and other material forces beyond his control.
Sanchez misreads my line about the need for libertarians to “understand the importance of virtue” as saying that a failure to endorse the promotion of virtue by the state is tantamount to denying virtue. Both in this article and in my piece about Bill Bennett, I explicitly criticized conservatives who take the position that values must be promoted by the state. But I also criticized libertarians who go beyond opposing such government policies to opposing moral criticisms of individual choices. My position is that libertarians need not inherently reject traditional morality, including aspects of it that Sanchez finds “stultifying.” This is a position that some libertarians would certainly agree with. Just because something is immoral doesn’t mean it should be legal, but just because something should be legal doesn’t necessarily mean its moral.
This is not to claim that Sanchez and I would be in complete agreement over what ought to be legal – or what government policy should be on a given subject generally – even as we differ on what is moral. I strongly disagree with most of the statements he makes in the final paragraph of his blog entry; in some cases these are philosophical disagreements, in others mere observational disagreements, and in others actual policy disagreements. Particularly, I think his “Stepford-wives-meet-Ozzy-and-Harriet utopia” reference is a gross distortion of the conservative position. But I think a conservatism that took more seriously the proper limits of government could work effectively with libertarians who are at least tolerant of traditional values.
So have changing social realities buried fusionism by ending any commonality of interests between conservatives and libertarians? I’m not sure. For starters, not all social trends are marching inexorably in the “progressive” direction, so it is not necessarily the case that all societal change is rendering traditionalist conservatism obsolete, whatever that even means. Is the tension between libertarians and conservative really worse than it was during the height of the sexual revolution, the Vietnam war, the draft and the legalization of contraception and abortion? Conservatives and libertarians also have very pronounced internal divisions. The war against Iraq divided libertarians at least as much as conservatives possibly more so, while open sniping between various factions on the right can be read in the pages of conservative periodicals.
Sanchez himself is moving from the Cato Institute, which often works with the conservative movement on policy issues, to an assistant editorship at Reason magazine (congratulations), which has tended toward a view of libertarianism as a “third way” beyond left and right. Both Reason and Cato are widely considered parts of the libertarian mainstream. Libertarians and conservatives have always had both differences and areas of common interest, and I don’t see much reason to believe that the former will cancel out the latter anymore than in the past.
Posted by antle @ 05:32 PM EST [Link]
~ NOTHING A SOLDIER LIKES MORE THAN FOOD...WELL, THIS IS A FAMILY RATED SITE YOU KNOW: Todd Melet has launched a new web site to collect money to buy meal gift cards for active members of the U.S. military.
We are not a charity, but a method for people to give a direct gift, with no charity overhead to deduct from the gift. I am not making money off of this either.
Users come to our site and purchase a gift card for Pizza Hut, or Darden Restaurants (Red Lobster/Olive Garden), and we ship it directly to Fort Bragg for our first card give-away. We have sponsored a party in the park on June 13th at Fort Bragg to achieve distribution, and we will do other military base give-aways after this event.
Pretty cool idea. Help Todd and a military person by buying a meal gift card at his web site.
Posted by steve @ 05:09 PM EST [Link]
~ RECLAIM YOUR SECOND AMENDMENT RIGHTS: The Federalist, through its Patriot Petitions web site, has launched a petition to reject legislation renewing the 1994 Clinton-Feinstein-Schumer Gun-Control Act. Unfortunately U.S. President George W. Bush supports the ban.
Make your voice heard here.
Posted by steve @ 05:04 PM EST [Link]
~ WHAT EXACTLY IS YOUR CORE MISSION?: University of California regents went on record Thursday to declare that they are opposed to Ward Connerly's push to stop state and local agencies from collecting race data.
University President Richard Atkinson had asked governors of the nine-campus system to take the public stand, saying Connerly's initiative could "adversely affect the university's ability to carry out its core mission."
Core mission? I hope that mission is education, which in that case you don't need to know anything about race, eh Mr. Atkinson? Silly me, I forgot, education is the beard for your real agenda.
Posted by steve @ 02:24 PM EST [Link]
~ GOTTA HATE THOSE "INTERNATIONAL TERRORISTS": At least 24 people have been killed in five near simultaneous explosions that shook the Moroccan city of Casablanca Friday night, the country's interior minister says.
About 60 others were wounded in the blasts, at least three of which were caused by car bombs.
Speaking in Morocco's capital, Rabat, Interior Minister Mustapha Sahel blamed "international terrorists" for the attacks and said some of the blasts were committed by suicide bombers.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 04:39 AM EST [Link]
~ JUST BLOWING SMOKE: More evidence that the conventional wisdom on secondhand smoke, used to justify nanny-state smoking bans in many cities, is bunk. Jacob Sullum elaborates in his latest column. Of course, the study is dimissed as Big Tobacco propaganda.
Posted by antle @ 01:45 AM EST [Link]
~ A PUNY TAX CUT: I suppose any tax cut is a good thing, and it was good to see that some portion of the president's dividends tax reduction remained intact, but the tax cut passed by the Senate is far from impressive. It fails to offer permanent tax relief, simplify the tax code or reduce marginal rates adequately to have a real impact on economic growth. Is this the best an all-Republican Capitol Hill can do?
Posted by antle @ 01:36 AM EST [Link]
~ LINDA BOWLES, R.I.P.: I haven't seen much coverage of this sad event, but the talented conservative columnist Linda Bowles has died. One prays that she and her beloved husband are together again.
Posted by antle @ 01:15 AM EST [Link]
~ A NEW NATIONAL PAPER OF RECORD: Stanley Kurtz made the case for the Washington Post replacing the New York Times as the national newspaper of record. While Howell Raines has taken the Gray Lady off into a left-wing never-never land, the Post has increasingly provided balanced and competent coverage of national events. Perhaps if it changed its focus to becoming more of a national paper it could become a real source of competition to the NYT.
Of course, as Jeremy Lott pointed out a while ago, there already is a national newspaper competing to the title of paper of record: Don't laugh, it's USA Today.
Posted by antle @ 12:44 AM EST [Link]
~ AFFIRMATIVE ACTION CAN BACKFIRE ON INTENDED BENEFICIARIES: There are many arguments against affirmative action, but one that does not receive enough attention is that these policies can hurt the very people they are intended to help. William Anderson makes this point very well with regard to the Jayson Blair case in LewRockwell.com.
Posted by antle @ 12:30 AM EST [Link]
Friday, May 16, 2003 NOT EVERYONE CAN BE IN THE "ELITE"
Gun Group Blasts Senator's 'Double Standard'
(CNSNews.com) - A pro-gun group says it's the height of hypocrisy for Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) - a strong gun-control supporter - to walk around with an armed guard. "Chuck Schumer has been working overtime for years to deprive honest, law-abiding Americans the means with which to defend themselves from violent crime," said Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. "Yet, here's Schumer unmasked, protected by an armed New York police detective, a luxury not available to average working class Americans. If Schumer is convinced that his fellow Americans don't need firearms, why does he feel the need for an armed bodyguard?" In the press release, Gottlieb called Schumer's actions "a deplorable double standard."
cb
Posted by clbloomer @ 04:49 PM EST [Link]
~ RECOMMENDED READING: Nevertheless, one must take advantage of one's idleness, so may I humbly recommend to our dear readers Professor Taki's Syllabus from the latest edition of The American Conservative in which he calls William Kristol "Attila the Hen" (hey, I laughed), suggests that President Bush should read Oswald Spengler's The Decline of the West, A.J.P Taylor's The Origins of the Second World War, and J.A. Hobson's Imperialism (anyone familiar with the contents of any of the above three will find these reading recommendations to the president hilariously weird), and writes assessments of books he hasn't even read. That Taki, what a card!
Meanwhile, Steve Sailer calls The Matrix: Reloaded with its mixture of action and intellectual posturing "My Dinner with Andre on the Hindenburg" and The Economist writes a serious and on the whole, balanced assessment of President Bush's fraying relationship with the religious right. I wouldn't say the same thing about the accompanying cartoon, however.
Posted by Barton @ 04:46 PM EST [Link]
~ VITA INACTIVA: One of the reasons for my light posting is that my grandmother (who's 80) recently moved in with us, so it's been pretty chaotic here. She's now living in my sister's old room in the basement. My dad, being the carpentry genius that he is, put-up a railing to help her climb up the stairs; two days later, when I reached up to grab it, the whole thing fell off the wall. Since my grandmother is completely unfamiliar with our neighbourhood, my mother won't even allow her to walk out of the backyard for fear that she'll get lost (which has happened before). So she's stuck in the house all the time with me, who's confined here because the summer job does not start until June. So what do we do all day? We watch television, of course. It's oddly pathetic really. The grandmother (who's forgotten all the English she's ever learned, even though she's lived here in Canada since after the Second World War) just sits around watching the images flickering around the screen. It doesn't matter what program it is, it doesn't even matter that she doesn't understand a thing that's going on, just as long as there's something to distract her on the television. So that pretty much leaves me with the choice of what to watch, which then led me to the absolutely horrifying, but in retrospect, mind-bogglingly obvious discovery that daytime television is..., well, there's just nothing there. Our afternoon viewing so far has consisted of:
1. Jacques Cousteau's Ocean Tales (a children's cartoon).
2. Sailor Moon (another children's cartoon).
3. An informercial for digital television channels.
4. A program that seems to consist purely of eurodance music videos.This has been going on for the last week. Gradually, a great fear of retirement has been growing in my mind and I'm not even out of university yet. In fact, I'm so idle, I've been reduced to writing blog entries like this...
Posted by Barton @ 03:37 PM EST [Link]
~ BLOODY EMAIL: I didn't even know it until today. My mail server...located somewhere in the United States...underwent some "changes" this week. Specifically Monday afternoon meaning I hadn't gotten any ESR related mail until just now when I fixed it. 290 email messages...if you mailed me, please be patient...I'll get to you sometime this weekend.
Posted by steve @ 02:25 PM EST [Link]
Thursday, May 15, 2003 REST IN PEACE JUNE: June Carter Cash, wife of the Man in Black and a talented singer/songwriter in her own right, has died of complications from heart surgery. She was 73.
The love that June and Johnny had for each other was legendary. Our thoughts go out to the family.
Posted by steve @ 08:50 PM EST [Link]
~ PROJECT FOR A REVOLUTION AT QUEEN'S PARK*: I must warn my American readers beforehand: the following long, long post has everything to do with both Canadian politics and Canadian history. You may skip it to your heart's content.
My apologies to all the readers of this humble weblog for my extended absence. While Steve was busy taking in the hits for his interview with the great Mark Steyn (if you're one of the two people left in the right-wing blogosphere who haven't read it yet, here it is), I was arranging for myself some summer employment working for that anti-democratic dictatorship otherwise known as the Government of Ontario. Anti-democratic dictatorship, you ask? Well, if Bruce Rolston says it's true, then it must be. Being the good lickspittle for my future employers that I am and a member of the governing Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario (who still haven't sent me my membership card yet), I feel somewhat obliged to defend those two grand institutions from the calumnies of Mr. Rolston. I'll try to ignore the image that troubles my mind of all those brave dissidents locked up in the rotting cells underneath Queen's Park as I write this defence.
Given the remarkable tone-deafness of the Eves government in the last few weeks, I will openly admit that such a defence is rather difficult. The most recent revelations that the provincial government authorized itself to spend up to $36-billion, half the government's annual budget, without seeking the approval of the provincial parliament is simply the icing on the cake of a so-far horrendous 2003. We must add to that Tory MPP John O'Toole's "flipping the bird" at the Opposition and then lying about it to the press before television footage forced him to recant, the Speaker's (a Tory MPP himself) recent charging of his own government with contempt for presenting the budget outside of Queen's Park in an auto-parts factory, and of course, that damned budget presentation itself, which simultaneously reinforced the images of the provinicial Tories as arrogant, self-congratulatory, and in the pockets of Big Bad Business. The list of sins by the Eves regime, both actual and perceived, is long and I do not propose to give the reader any half-witted sophistry in attempting to excuse them. Whether or not you believe the authorization of the money was to set-up a "slush fund" (as the opposition Liberals charge) or more charitably, an arrogant and underhanded way to pay to the bills for the day-to-day running of the provinical bureaucracy (as Christina Blizzard writes), I concede the government made a massive mistake for which it deserves to be whipped as much Mr. Rolston wants. Chris Stockwell's hysterical high-pitched squeals in response to the Liberals' attacks yesterday did not help matters much either.
That much said, does the list of above sins (egregious as they are) warrent placing us Tories on the same level of legitimacy as King George III on the verge of the American Revolution and the Family Compact in 1837 (with Dalton McGuinty playing the role of George Washington and William Lyon Mackenzie????). I wouldn't be so sure about using such comparisons, given that the response to the undemocratic entities named above was armed rebellion, but maybe I'm reading too much in Mr. Rolston's words. Mr. Rolston also states that:
The simple fact is that, while these Tories may claim that they will only use their new powers for good (lowering taxes on the elderly being their big and deeply cynical election promise) the removal of any restrictions on government power they have launched can inevitably be used the next time they, or anyone else in their place, wants to raise taxes, too. Never mind any requirement for public oversight over expenditure, either.
Fair enough, but let me say this. Given that both the Liberals and the NDP are endlessly slamming the government over this abuse of power, if and when the Liberals or (god forbid) the NDP do form the government in this province, wouldn't it be very, very hypocritical in a very, very obvious way if they then turned around and committed the exact same abuses of government power, this time in the name of raising taxes instead of lowering them, as Mr. Rolston seems to inevitably expect them to do? I don't think much of either Dalton McGuinty or Howard Hampton in terms of competence at governing, but even I believe that they're not so vile as to be so grossly deceitiful. Quite frankly, I'm surprised that Mr. Rolston appears to have a lower opinion of McGuinty and Hampton's moral consistency than I do.
Then there's this little gem of offensiveness:
The Ontario government has, effectively, declared themselves an unelected tyranny. It's fair to say now that any self-proclaimed "conservative" who still works for or supports their extension at this point, is, as Orwell would have said, objectively pro-dictatorship.
Well, if you gotten this far, dear reader, then you know already that I, Barton Wong, am "objectively pro-dictatorship." How did Mr. Rolston divine my true motivations so clearly? Maybe they teach you how to read minds in the Canadian army reserves. Ascribing bad motives to your ideological enemies' actions is the cheapest rhetorical trick in the book. This is little different from Richard Hofstadter's attempt to characterize conservatism as a curious form of mental abberation way back in 1950s. Never mind that the Orwell quote is actually "Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist." Well, I suppose that I should not be too surprised at this, given that Mr. Rolston has compared the present provincial government to a bunch of Fascists before. What I'd like to know is how can a government, elected in 1999 and facing an imminent election now, be characterized as "an unelected tyranny" without laughter breaking out from the back of the room?
Finally, I do hope that the title Mr. Rolston gave to his post "IT'S GETTING TIME TO DO THIS, W.L. MACKENZIE-STYLE" is not to be taken too seriously. One of the most conspicious failures of the present Canadian education system is our persistant inability to gain a proper historical perspective on the Rebellions of 1837, especially the revolt led by the mayor of Toronto, William Lyon Mackenzie, in Upper Canada. Acknowledging the massive injustices of the Family Compact and the Chateau Clique is all well and good, but placing Mackenzie among the saints is simply historically myopic. One suspects that the real reason Mackenzie is now a great Canadian hero is that his rebellion failed, giving Mackenzie the good odour of martyrdom. Had this pocket-Robespierre actually taken Toronto in 1837, the resulting chaos and possible bloodbath (does Mr. Rolston actually believe that Mackenzie was really going to just imprison Sir Francis Bond Head, instead stringing up the Governor of Upper Canada from the nearest tree?) would have revealed Mackenzie to be the unstable incompetent he really was (just have a look at the "planning" and execution of the revolt itself, if you don't believe me). Mackenzie might be a patron of Canadian nationalism today, but our nationalists rather conveniently forget that one of the main planks of Mackenzie's political platform was the establishment of an American-style republic in Upper Canada or barring that, a joining of Upper Canada with the United States. His American supporters even ran guns to him during the disasterous aftermath of the rebellion. If that isn't the very definition of treason, then what is? In truth, the historic William Lyon Mackenzie was closer, if anything, to Joseph McCarthy than to George Washington: a sweaty, vindictive, at-times deranged, and ultimately rather foolish man who delivered long, windy speeches and capitalized on legitimate populist concerns in order to further his own political career. When the Family Compact tried to put an end to all that, Mackenzie attempted to play the revolutionary and failed badly. He led many of his aggrieved followers to their deaths and cowardly fled to the United States instead of facing the punishment he deserved. I suppose that given the demagogic means Mr. Rolston uses to characterize us Conservatives I shouldn't be overly surprised that he holds William Lyon Mackenzie up as his model. If Mr. Rolston really were seeking a Canadian reformer to model himself after, I'd have the perfect man: Robert Baldwin. The displacement of Baldwin by Mackenzie in the annals of Canadian liberalism is a disgraceful historical distortion which very much needs to be corrected.
Anyway, I don't hope Mr. Rolston isn't being too serious when he says do a "W.L. Mackenzie" on our present provincial government. If he is, however, I am more than willing to play Samuel Lount, if Mr. Rolston agrees to play William Lyon Mackenzie. I'll meet him at Young and Eglinton tomorrow armed with pitchfork and musket bringing along all the friends from OCAP that I can muster, Mr. Rolston can then deliver a lengthy harangue ranting about the "unelected tyranny" ruling over us and all that, and then we'll march down Yonge Street in order to intimidate the forces of law-and-order (I'm sure Mr. Rolston's military training will come in handy), before attempting to storm Queen's Park. If we fail, we probably won't be hanged. Heck, they might even declare a mistrial.
*If anyone can identify the literary allusion in the title of this entry without using Google, I'll buy them a pint. Or maybe Mr. Rolston can buy me the pint he owes me and I'll pass along that pint to you. That way, it all works out.
Posted by Barton @ 07:49 PM EST [Link]
~ WHAT IS SHE, THE THOUSAND TO COME FORWARD?: A woman confirmed today that she had an affair with John F. Kennedy after it was reported in a new biography.
When does this stop being news? It's like a woman confirming she had an affair Bill Clinton...ho hum.
Posted by steve @ 04:40 PM EST [Link]
~ ALL SMILES AND HANDSHAKES...AND THEN!: David Frum says that while Dubya and South Korean President Roh were all smiles and handshakes in the Rose Garden, the real story is a little different. Frum says the real news was contained in the communiqué released at the same time.
Read on for that and more!
Posted by steve @ 03:55 PM EST [Link]
~ NICE WORK: Heavily armed U.S. Army forces stormed into a village near the northern city of Tikrit before dawn Thursday, seizing more than 260 prisoners, including one man on the most-wanted list of former Iraqi officials.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 03:49 PM EST [Link]
Wednesday, May 14, 2003 THE REAL LAST WORD ON BENNETT: WFB has spoken.
Posted by antle @ 11:39 PM EST [Link]
~ THEY CAN'T SPEL BUT THEY ARE TEKNIKALLY SAVVY: In case you missed Jeremy Lott's latest for The American Specator On-Line, he has a bit of fun with spam. Or at least he finds a fun way to make the point that spam is not much fun. From Nigerian get-rich-quick schemes to anatomical enlargement programs, they can really clutter your inbox.
As somebody who has administered e-mail systems, I can tell you from experience that just because these people can't spell - they're first language isn't always English - doesn't mean they aren't clever in coming up with new ways to thwart anti-spam techniques.
BTW, wasn't there a "Weird Al" parody of R.E.M.'s "Stand" called "Spam?" Maybe it's time to revive, in a new context.
Posted by antle @ 11:26 PM EST [Link]
~ GOOD NEWS FOR THE FIREARMS INDUSTRY: "Rejecting a lawsuit brought by the NAACP, a federal jury Wednesday cleared 45 gun manufacturers and distributors of allegations their marketing practices have stoked violence in black and Hispanic neighborhoods."
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 11:19 PM EST [Link]
~ MARK STEYN, HOW DO YOU DO IT? INQUIRING DERBS WANT TO KNOW: John Derbyshire kindly linked to ESR in NRO's The Corner today and directed readers to Steve's interview with Mark Steyn. He just wishes that our dear leader had gotten him to share more writing tips. Ahh, but there can be only one...
Posted by antle @ 11:13 PM EST [Link]
~ GOOGLE SHOWS YOU THE DARNDEST THINGS: I appreciate that the good people at The Federalist quoted my piece on conservatism and libertarianism in the latest installment their excellent e-newsletter. But I was a little bit more surprised to see that dozens of progressive alternative news outlets associated with the Independent Media Center reposted it under the title "The Fault That Could Fracture the Conservative Coalition." When you write on the web, it is wise to do Google and Yahoo! searches on your own name to see who is using your stuff (usually without your permission). Sometimes the liberal alternative press and I are kindred spirits on civil liberties issues (that's the libertarian side of me, I suppose). Never thought that this particular piece would interest them, though.
Posted by antle @ 11:05 PM EST [Link]
~ WHEN SCHOOLS BECOME COMBAT ZONES: ESR contributor Bernard Chapin has a jarring piece over at Toogood Reports that shows what can happen in schools when behavioral standards decline. This is why virtue and shared values remain important.
Posted by antle @ 10:44 PM EST [Link]
~ Q&A WITH DORE GOLD: Kathryn Jean Lopez has an interesting interview with Dore Gold, former Israeli representative to the United Nations.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 01:39 PM EST [Link]
~
I LIKE LOOKS: I have to admit that I tend to fall for something that looks good. I don't mean women (well, okay, I'm no different than any single man) but rather...the style of things. I've been hooked, and I don't know why, by the trailer for upcoming movie Down with Love starring Renée Zellweger and Ewan McGregor.
If you've seen them, the movie and the characters have a very swinging 60s sensibility about them, not surprising considering the movie is set in 1963. McGregor looks colossally cool in a tuxedo and Zellweger looks absolutely fetching in those early 60s dresses. It's the Sinatra in me I admit. I pine for days I wasn't alive to enjoy -- days when men wore jackets and woman wore pearls. I fight that quiet fight my own way these days...I always wear a sports jacket when I go out on the town just to send a signal to all the backwards baseball hat wearing/sports jersey wearing yahoos that the man is in the bar tonight.
I have to admit that I'm also a sucker these days for romantic comedies. Not those cloying ones that star someone like Julia Roberts, but genuine romantic comedies like the ones with Cary Grant and Doris Day made. I'll have to wait until it comes on video or find a woman who'll want to go see in the theatre given I doubt any of my friends would be particularly interested given Rebecca Romjin-Stamos looks fantastic as Mystique and is a bigger draw but I do want to see Down with Love.
Yeah, yeah, keep laughing...I'm bigger than you.
Posted by steve @ 02:31 AM EST [Link]
~ GOOD LILEKS: "As I pulled into the grocery store parking lot the caller on the talk radio show had worked himself up into such a rant you expected spittle to start flying from the speakers. The show’s guest had written an editorial suggesting that the United States was close to becoming a Soviet-style state, a wretched gray land of domestic oppression. It made me think of a story I’d read in the paper that morning - the state is considering dropping a program that sends nurses to the homes of new parents, giving them valuable hints on childrearing such as “feed your baby” and “hold the child from time to time.” How we raised generations without this program, I’ve no idea, but the need is clearly there - one woman quoted in the article said that without the nurse’s words, she would have had no idea when to feed her baby. (Hint: when they cry.)"
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 02:12 AM EST [Link]
Tuesday, May 13, 2003 WHAT LINKS FROM INSTAPUNDIT, MATT WELCH, BROTHERS JUDD, NRO, HIT & RUN AND A TON OF OTHER PEOPLE ON THE SAME DAY MEANS: See that massive spike just above the place where it says May 12, 2003? That was yesterday. We jumped from a 60 000th place position to just over 15 000th. Our reach jumped 110 per cent to 10 956th on the web.
Thanks to all who linked to us...and now begins our inevitable decline...
Posted by steve @ 06:45 PM EST [Link]
~ WHAT A TRAGEDY THE AMERICANS INVADED: Dictators, like everyone else, have ambitions. Especially bloodthirsty dictators. Joseph Stalin set the bar with as many as 60 million Russians murdered during his tenure, making Adolph Hitler's genocidal campaigns look like a bush league stunt. The Khymer Rouge? Bloody dilettantes with only a few million dead. Idi Amin? Too busy eating his victims to put up serious numbers. Only Mao Tse Tung, with a total estimated at half of Stalin's murders comes close to challenging Uncle Joe.
Spare a thought for poor Saddam Hussein. He came from a relatively prosperous country with a massively intrusive security apparatus but he just wasn't able to murder as many Iraqis -- not even per capita -- as Mao or Stalin. He did his best but he just couldn't get the job done. That said, he did rack up some nice numbers, enough to get him into the Hall of Fame.
The Iraqi National Congress has announced that it has located a number of mass graves in Hilla -- located in central Iraq -- with the bodies of about 15 000 murdered Iraqis. That's in addition to the other mass graves the coalition has located.
The peace activists, many of whom are in Baghdad right now acting as relief workers but lecturing the Americans about their "brutal campaign" against Iraqi civilians, must be beside themselves. How can they inflate the number of civilian deaths during the war to be greater than the number of Saddam's victims? If they can do that, they justify keeping Saddam in power but by extension also make a mockery of all that work that he did to murder his own people. What a tough place for a ex-dictator to be in...
And what about the Americans? They went in to look for weapons of mass destruction but only stopped the murders of unknown numbers of people and the enslavement of millions of human beings. But then that's the difference between the two countries. As the peace activists love to point out, George W. Bush was selected to be president while Saddam Hussein was elected.
Posted by steve @ 03:58 PM EST [Link]
~ THEY AUTHORED THEIR OWN MISFORTUNE AND THEN AUTHORED THE REPORT DOCUMENTING THEIR MISFORTUNE: A French research group projects that Europe will become increasingly irrelevant economically (remember, the EU was formed to create precisely the opposite).
"The enlargement of the European Union won't suffice to guarantee parity with the United States," it says. "The EU will weigh less heavily on the process of globalization and a slow but inexorable movement onto 'history's exit ramp' is foreseeable."
By 2050, under this scenario, Europe's share of the world economy is only 12 percent, against 22 percent today, while the euro is a second class currency. North America maintains its "technological hegemony," Greater China, which includes Taiwan, grows to represent almost a quarter of the world's economy, and the Japan-Korea region's share of trade, along with the yen, declines sharply in importance.
Roughly a half century from now, goes the scenario, an EU of 30 member states will have a growth rate of 1.1 percent, the North American free trade grouping, 2.3 percent, and Greater China, 2.6 percent.
No one to blame but themselves unfortunately, though I'm sure some French bureaucrats are figuring out ways to blame the United States. The fact is, Europe has gone mightily down the road to create a semi-socialist super state and they are paying the price for it now. You can't expect to put your economy in cement shoes and then run as fast as everyone else.
Posted by steve @ 03:41 PM EST [Link]
~ HOW TO AVOID A FUTURE JAYSON BLAIR: Matt Welch brings up an interesting idea of how to avoid (or at least minimize the temptation) young reporters faking interviews and quotes.
Mailing the finished story to your sources -- which, I should emphasize, I personally don’t do nearly as often as I ought to -- changes this dynamic around entirely. One example: My wife, who is pretty diligent about doing this, is a frequent victim of careless and sloppy editing back at the home office (mangling the spelling of names, misidentifying captions, that kind of thing), and the way she expresses her anguish to me is "What do I tell these people when they see the story? It’s so embarrassing!" If her editors were mailing out copies to the people they were misquoting, they would feel the tangible pain of their own errors.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 03:32 PM EST [Link]
~ BALKO ON AFFIRMATIVE ACTION AND BENEVOLENT RACISM: When Radley Balko first found out about the Jayson Blair story, he had some thoughts that he was not proud of. Reflecting on the consequences of sacrificing merit to diversity, he made the following observation: "It is the well-intentioned - not the blatant racists - who today do the most damage to the prospects of black Americans."
Read the full piece here at Tech Central Station.
Posted by antle @ 08:52 AM EST [Link]
~ HATCH THE PATRIOT: FrontPage Magazine reposted a USA Today op-ed piece from Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) defending the PATRIOT Act. He argues that it is a necessary piece of anti-terrorist legislation that respects Americans' civil liberties. It's mostly rhetoric and I don't find it that convincing. An interesting contrary take, not available on-line, can be found in James Bovard's feature article on this legislation for The American Conservative.
Posted by antle @ 08:38 AM EST [Link]
~ FREEPER FEEDBACK: Pretty good thread on Free Republic on my piece about conservatives and libertarians. There was some sniping between the libertarians and the conservatives, but not nearly as much as usually takes place in these types of threads. It was an interesting discussion.
Posted by antle @ 08:29 AM EST [Link]
~ I USED TO LOVE STAR TREK: But then it turned completely socialist. It especially happened in Star Trek: The Next Generation with its repeated attacks on capitalism. Happy Fun Pundit has a hilarious list of the things he hates about Star Trek.
Posted by steve @ 04:14 AM EST [Link]
~ I WONDER WHY NO ONE MENTIONED THIS?: AP reported on Monday that the U.S. and Iran are holding secret talks in Geneva on the subjects of Afghanistan and Iraq.
The discussions began not long after the Afghan war started in the fall of 2001 and initially were largely limited to developments in Afghanistan. They have been expanded recently to include exchanges on Iraq, with which Iran fought an eight-year war in the 1980s. The talks have been held in Geneva, under auspices of the United Nations.
"This is not somehow a new opening of diplomatic relations. This is an opportunity to deal with some practical issues," State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said.
It's hardly the opening to full relations but I find it interesting nonetheless...
Posted by steve @ 12:13 AM EST [Link]
Monday, May 12, 2003 I WOULD HAVE BOYCOTTED HIM OVER LETHAL WEAPON 4 AND THAT HORRIBLE FISHING BUDDY MOVIE HE MADE WITH JOE PESCI: Fox News reports that MCI is getting worried by all the calls for boycott due to pitchman Danny Glover's idiotic remarks calling Geoge W. Bush a racist and praising communist dictatorship Cuba.
"We chose Danny Glover because of his high consumer appeal and ratings. In fact, these ads have produced some of the highest likeability scores for any of our spokespeople ever," the statement read.
But, added the company, "We are currently reviewing our options for new product campaigns that are more in line with our corporate brand advertising work."
The article goes on to say that MCI wasn't aware of Glover's radical politics before they signed him up. Excuse me? Fellows, the email address is editor@enterstageright.com. A few people here at ESR could have told you a while ago.
Posted by steve @ 08:57 PM EST [Link]
~ THIS IS PRETTY SICK: (Via Little Green Footballs) "Canadian MP Svend Robinson has nominated Rachel Corrie and the terror-supporting ISM for the Nobel Peace Prize—and he (or someone using his name) decided that the perfect place to announce it was IndyMedia."
Read on.
This has yet to be verified but it certainly wouldn't surprise me.
Posted by steve @ 08:25 PM EST [Link]
~ CONSERVATIVES AND LIBERTARIANS LINKING TO ESR: Who says there's no common ground between conservatives and libertarians? Stanley Kurtz kindly mentions my piece on conservatives and libertarians in The Corner at NRO; Reason editor Nick Gillespie linked to Steve's interview with Mark Steyn over at their Hit and Run blog.
Posted by antle @ 03:28 PM EST [Link]
~ CAN WE STOP USING "THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT" ALREADY?: I've noticed a lot of people being "clever" with the Jayson Blair story that way. Anyway, David Frum doesn't commit that error and he has a good column on the controversy today.
While he does praise the NY Times for exposing it's own ugly sores, Frum points out that there's a lot that their 7 500 mea culpa didn't do.
Neal Pollack tries to be clever and decry some people's reactions to the Blair controversy as racist and anti-black.
Since the legally questionable 1954 Supreme Court decision of Brown Vs. Topeka Board of Education, black people have displayed an increasing uppitiness that reached its final level of intolerability with the case of Mr. Blair, whose rise can only be attributed to a dated notion of "diversity". In an attempt to create a "racially-mixed" "newsroom," the so-called editors of the Times perpetrated a crime against humanity as bad as Treblinka, if not worse. The mistakes of the civil-rights era have really come home to roost at the Times, whose reportorial integrity has been so besmirched that I must wonder about everything it's ever published.
Pollack has a deserved reputation for being funny but here his gift completely fails him. The fact of the matter is, as established by no less than Howell Raines himself, is that the newspaper valued diversity over anything else. Blair got his job because he was black, the newspaper all but said so, and his reporting ability was less than important than the colour of his skin, Raines all but said so. I guess no one has noticed that's racism as well...except Blair was the victim as well as the recipient of favors.
As I said earlier, I could frankly care less what criteria the Times uses in hiring their reporters. It's a private enterprise and if they employ a diversity program, that's their choice. If that system breaks down, however, as it has done with Blair, you can't expect that the system itself doesn't come under criticism. I didn't hang my coat on Blair, the Times did. Pollack can be cute and snidely compare affirmative action to a massacre but the fact remains that Blair kept his job a lot longer than other people would have.
Posted by steve @ 01:46 PM EST [Link]
~ PERHAPS I SHOULD GET A PROPOSAL TOGETHER: Random House is launching a new imprint for conservative writers next month.
The company's senior vice president, Steve Ross, drew a parallel with the 1992 publication of Terry McMillan's novel "Waiting to Exhale," which he described as "awakening" the publishing industry to an African-American population that had not been well-served by the market. Crown hopes to do the same for conservatives with its imprint. The first Crown Forum title will be Ann Coulter's "Treason: Liberal Treachery From the Cold War to the War on Terror."
Posted by steve @ 02:46 AM EST [Link]
~ I FEEL LIKE I'M ON THE BEST DRUGS EVER MADE: Instapundit, Matt Welch, Natalie Solent, Brothers Judd and Colby Cosh have all linked to ESR's interview with Mark Steyn.
I'm on cloud nine folks...
Posted by steve @ 12:28 AM EST [Link]
Sunday, May 11, 2003 HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY: It's a manufactured holiday designed to make someone money -- I hate pretexts for removing money from me -- but I have to admit a certain soft spot for Mother's Day. I and my sister today paid homage to the woman who put up with entirely too much from me over the years by doing our impression of the Three Wise Men. It's always nice to do something for her especially given all that she's done for us over the years. Frankly, I would have left me by the side of a road years ago but she does have the patience of Job.
The "Summer of Steve", what I have dubbed the next couple of months, began in earnest last night. I've decided to write on a full-time basis and not seek employment until the fall. It's been going damnably well...I'm actually making good money and I now have an oral agreement to contribute with a major newspaper this summer for some rather fat cash. Today, my sister gifted me with a Cohiba (my taste for cigars knows no bounds, thanks Brian!) and a bag of pepperettes (mild unfortunately but still quite acceptable).
"Well, we both got something. You got a cigar and some pepperettes," said my mother.
"What else could a bachelor ask for?" responded my sister.
Damn right. But the best gift was my mother.
Happy Mother's Day to all the women of the world who do the most important job on the planet.
Posted by steve @ 06:13 PM EST [Link]
~ WE CARE...YOU DON'T: Jonathan Foreman has a stunning piece in today's New York Post about the work that the NGOs are doing in Iraq...or rather, what work the NGOs aren't doing in Iraq. Their staff sanctimonously judge the military and accuse them of murdering civilians but then do little relief work to aid the Iraqi people.
But if actions speak louder than words, then many of the international charitable organizations called NGOs (non-governmental organizations) here are less interested in doing good works than in moral posturing and haranguing the army that won a war most of them opposed.
Ask any soldier who patrols this city, and you'll hear the same thing: The NGOs have been here for weeks, but they're not out in the streets. They cite "security concerns" - though journalists and soldiers alike move around the city, using common sense and taking precautions.
(This absence is also true of the United Nations, which has a fleet of $65,000 SUVs sitting uselessly in the sun outside its headquarters at the Canal Hotel. One U.N. program is active - the food program - but on its first day on the job, one of its workers was caught looting and arrested by the U.S. Army.)
TO catch the NGOs in "action," you must go to the daily meeting at 1700 hours at the palazzo occupied by CMCC - that's the Civilian Military Coordination Center. (It used to be CMOC - the civilian military operations center - but the NGOs complained that the name implied that they were operating together with the military!)
At the meeting are NGO representatives, officials from the U.S. Organization for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Aid (ORHA) and Army officers from headquarters around Baghdad.
At the head of a long table in the middle of the room sits an army "facilitator," Maj. Tony Coleman - a man with the patience of Job. On rows of gilt chairs on all sides of the table sit about 30 civilians and a sprinkling of soldiers.
A few of the civilians are Iraqis. The rest are international bureaucrats, most of them shiny with privilege, all of them bursting with self-righteousness.
Army officers stand all along the walls. Compared to the aid workers (with their new clothes and expensive haircuts), they look dirty and tired.
The soldiers must doff their rifles and sidearms before they enter the area because the NGO folk - who depend on these men and women for their protection - object to the presence of firearms.
Mail this out to all your friends or print it out and hand it out. The real heroes aren't the ones you donate your money to, it's the ones paid for by your tax dollars.
Posted by steve @ 05:30 PM EST [Link]
~ ALL THE NEWS FAKED TO PRINT: The New York Times announced that one of its reporters routinely made up stories and plagiarised other people's work.
In a 7,500 word article published Saturday on its Web site, the prestigious newspaper accuses the reporter of making up reports from other cities while writing from his apartment in Brooklyn. The paper says the reporter invented quotes, wrote about scenery from published photographs and stole material from other news organizations.
The article, to be published in Sunday's print editions, details how reporter Jayson Blair, 27, was quickly promoted through the ranks from intern to the national desk despite a history of corrections, sloppy reporting and lectures from his editors.
You can find the NY Times story here.
Posted by steve @ 02:37 PM EST [Link]
~ BECAUSE I'M BORED, GUESS WHAT MOVIE THIS IS FROM: "Listen. You listen to me. You see that city over there? That's where I'm supposed to be. Not down here with the dogs, and the garbage, and the *#@)ing last month's newspapers blowing *back* and *forth*. I've had it with them, I've had it with you, I've had it with all this -- *I want room service*!! I want the club sandwich, I want the cold Mexican beer, I want a $10,000-a-night hooker! I want my shirts laundered... like they do... at the Imperial Hotel... in Tokyo."
If you guess right, you win a fabled Marvel "no prize"
Posted by steve @ 05:23 AM EST [Link]
Saturday, May 10, 2003 JUSTICE IS SERVED: A Yemeni court today sentenced a suspected al-Qaida militant to death for killing three U.S. missionaries.
Lawyer Mahrous Oqba said Abed Abdul Razak Kamel, 30, was sentenced to death over the December 30 shooting deaths of Kathleen Gariety of Wauwatosa, Wis., Martha Myers of Montgomery, Ala., and William Koehn of Kansas.
Posted by steve @ 05:53 PM EST [Link]
~ LARRY ELDER TO JOIN GOP?: There's an interesting discussion over at Reason's Hit and Run blog about Drudge's item reporting that commentator Larry Elder - the man Steve Martinovich has called "the libertarian Limbaugh" - has switched his party registration from (presumably) the Libertarian Party to the GOP.
Personally, I don't have much of a problem with this as long as he sticks to his small-government principles. The Republicans need more principled advocates of liberty and limited government. Ron Paul has shown that it is possible to be a consistent libertarian and remain a Republican. I've made many of the same criticisms of the GOP that Elder has in his books, columns and radio shows and I am a registered Republican. Elder has always known the GOP isn't perfect - he even voted for Harry Browne over George W. Bush in 2000- but as groups like the Republican Liberty Caucus argue, it may just be the most effective political force for shrinking government. Of course, they need to overcome both libertarian factionalism and big-government Republicans for this to be so.
Posted by antle @ 05:45 PM EST [Link]
~ EDGAR SAYS NO TO BUSH AND ROVE: This announcement by Jim Edgar will make it more difficult for Republicans to hold onto the Senate seat currently held by Peter Fitzgerald.
Posted by antle @ 05:17 PM EST [Link]
~ MEMORIES CAN'T BE REPLACED: A beautiful column by Michael Kelly's mother.
Posted by antle @ 04:47 PM EST [Link]
~ NO REASON TO DIE FOR NOTHING: An Iranian Shiite group operating in Iraq has surrendured to American forces.
"Surrounded by American military might, an Iranian opposition group under orders to surrender agreed Saturday to turn over its weapons and submit to the demands of U.S. forces, army officials said.
Representatives of the Mujahedeen Khalq operating near Baqubah, 70 kilometres northeast of the capital, struck the agreement after two days of negotiations with U.S. forces. Their capitulation was reported by the U.S. army's V Corps headquarters in Baghdad."
Posted by steve @ 04:04 PM EST [Link]
~ THE GUN HATERS ARE COMING, THE GUN HATERS ARE COMING. The new athletic director of UMASS/AMHERST has launched a campaign to change the Minuteman mascot to an animal logo. How PC (and boring) can you get? Please consider signing the pro-Minuteman petition. Click here.
Posted by izzy @ 10:42 AM EST [Link]
~ AS MUCH AS I DON'T LIKE HIM, HE MAKES SENSE: Former Canadian prime minister Brian Mulroney says that Canada should be sticking by its old friends, ie. the United States.
"I say, 'No thanks'," Mulroney said. "I want to stick with my old friends and allies."
Mulroney said that if he had been prime minister, Canada would have actively supported the United States in Iraq and would have been a major participant in the conflict.
Posted by steve @ 03:35 AM EST [Link]
Friday, May 9, 2003 TRADE DOES BRING PROSPERITY AND FREEDOM: George W. Bush used a commencement speech at the University of South Carolina this afternoon to promote his plan of creating a Mideast free trade zone.
Not the worst idea I've heard. I just wonder how well it will be received in the Middle East.
Posted by steve @ 06:56 PM EST [Link]
~ I'M SECURE ENOUGH IN MY SEXUALITY TO SAY THAT DUBYA DID LOOK PRETTY GOOD IN THAT FLIGHT SUIT: But Lisa Schiffren went nuts over Dubya. She waxes effusively about how hot George W. Bush looked in his flight suit onboard the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln last week...and a lot of other women seem to be agreeing.
I had the most astonishing thought last Thursday. After a long day of hauling the kids to playdates and ballet, I turned on the news. And there was the president, landing on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, stepping out of a fighter jet in that amazing uniform, looking--how to put it?--really hot. Also presidential, of course. Not to mention credible as commander in chief. But mostly "hot," as in virile, sexy and powerful.
I was on Little Green Footballs the day he was onboard the carrier and there was quite a discussion going on as to -- how do I put this delicately? -- how lucky Laura Bush was. If you get my drift.
That said, after a near decade of Bill Clinton's "sexual charms" it's refreshing to see that some women are still responding to old-fashioned virility. His critics can decry it as a photo-op but Dubya's visit to the Lincoln stirred up a lot of emotions in people. Americans have a president, whether you approve of him or not, who's strong in that old-fashioned John Wayne sense. He'll take a lot but you mess with his kin and he'll punish you.
Posted by steve @ 02:24 PM EST [Link]
~ LAST CALL!: David Janes' Toronto-area warblogger bash takes place tonight at 7:00pm. I am unfortunately unable to attend, I had dearly wanted to meet some of the faces behind those web sites, but there be plenty 'o others there. For more info, go to Janes' web site.
Posted by steve @ 02:09 PM EST [Link]
~ THE NANNY STATE'S LATEST ADVENTURE: Tommy Thompson warns fast food restaraunts to stop making people fat. I must have missed the constitutional amendment that authorizes this sort of federal government activity.
Posted by antle @ 10:09 AM EST [Link]
~ SLIP SLIDIN' AWAY: More awful news for the battered National Post. I was watching with somewhat desultory interest Studio Two's federal political panal on TVO (John Ibbitson of the Globe & Mail, Susan Riley of the Ottawa Citizen, and Paul Wells of the National Post), when at the very end of the discussion, host Paula Todd rather unctuously said to Wells that she was given to understand that Wells had just filed his walking papers with the Post and was now a "free man." Todd didn't even bother asking a question, but simply left this fact hanging in the air, waiting obviously for Wells to elaborate. Instead, Wells dodged any specifics and simply said that he'd continue writing, even if it was on "bubblewrap."
The Post has now officially bled columnists, left, right, and centre. First left-liberal Patricia Pearson resigned a few weeks ago, then the neoconservative David Frum, and now the invaluable and centrist Wells, the Post's parliamentary sketch writer. Wells' attitude towards the politicians he covered in parliament always struck me as being slightly sneering (though we are talking about the Chretienites after all) and as a consequence, he was hamstrung by an awkward style which veered in that narrow range between the frivolous and the sarcastic. Wells always seemed to be implying that he was not worthy of being stuck day-in and day-out covering the antics of the nincompoops we Canadians had foolishly elected to represent us in Ottawa. "Lord, what fools these MPs be!" was all too often the order-of-the-day with Wells. The sub-Mencken impression could get pretty tired, pretty fast. But he was never less than intelligent or sharply observent, and he always raised issues and asked questions which were awful hard to get around (his articles on the then-upcoming Iraq war were masterpieces of centrist equivocation). Wells' departure is yet another profound loss for the Post's starting line-up.
The Post has actually had a fairly awful week. Last Saturday in the Globe & Mail, former Postie Michael Den Tandt wrote an assessment of Ken Whyte's recently-terminated reign as Post editor. Den Tandt tries awfully hard to be fair, especially praising Whyte for his innovations in the newspaper's design, but you can just sense the resentment seething underneath Den Tandt's quite frankly, gloating, post-mortem. I managed to keep from gagging until I got to these sentences right near the very end:
Thus, the Post had little left to crusade on this year but the war in Iraq. Its coverage was marked by a frenzy of Canada-bashing and hair-tearing that drove one of the paper's best columnists, Patricia Pearson, to quit. She was the newspaper's only moderate of note, and therefore the only columnist in its pages whose views reflected those of most literate Canadians.
I think it was that deadly little phrase, "literate Canadians," that made me want to throw the newspaper across the room. Financial Post columnist Terence Corcoran quite properly ripped apart Den Tandt's article in a recent letter to the Globe & Mail, especially taking issue with Den Tandt's contention that Patricia Pearson was the Post's "only moderate of note." Unfortunately, one of the moderates Corcoran names in his letter happens to be... Paul Wells.
You want even more bad news about the National Post? Well quite naturally, the Globe & Mail's full of it. According to this story, Christie Blatchford, Canada's finest crime reporter bar none, is also considering resigning from the National Post. You can just imagine that they're breaking out the champagne down on Front St. even as I write.
In retrospect, I can see only a single upside to all this. If star columnists are resigning from the National Post left and right, I can just imagine what morale is like among the frontline journalists. Mr. Martinovich, I don't know how anyone can like living in northern Ontario, but I'd just love to have you down here in Toronto. There's probably no better time than now to resubmit your resume and portfolio to Matthew Fraser. You can just bet that there's going to be a lot of openings down at the National Post very soon, if not already, provided the newspaper is still around in a year, of course.
Posted by Barton @ 03:45 AM EST [Link]
Thursday, May 8, 2003 THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES: Mark Steyn on the great Bob Hope.
Posted by antle @ 11:49 PM EST [Link]
~ DERB ON METROPOLITAN CONSERVATIVES: John Derbyshire's latest column for NRO is interesting on many levels. I think it discusses a lot more serious mode of thought than the much-vaunted "crunchy conservatism" of Rod Dreher, it defies liberal stereotypes of conservatives and it seems likely to encourage the paleoconservative critique of National Review as a nest of milk-and-water neocons. I think we tend too much to compare political ideologies with lifestyles, but it is true that there are a lot of conservative pundits who are culturally distinct from the right's grassroots base.
Posted by antle @ 09:49 PM EST [Link]
~ EVEN WHEN HE WAS A LIBERAL I THOUGHT HE WAS COOL: The Washington Times has a little profile on Dennis Miller in today's edition.
"I am portrayed as the big anomaly in the community. But if you can't get behind your country at a time like this, what are you thinking? War in Iraq has only increased my patriotism," Mr. Miller said in an interview yesterday.
Mr. Miller was not in stand-up mode at the time, though his one-liners and rants had proved effective weapons in recent months.
"I would call the French scumbags, but that, of course, would be a disservice to bags filled with scum," he told Jay Leno on NBC's "Tonight Show" in February, after France refused to give its blessings to the war in Iraq.
"If you're in a peace march and the guy next to you has a sign that says Bush is Hitler, forget the peace thing for a second and beat his [posterior], because he is not Hitler," he added some time later.
Posted by steve @ 06:54 PM EST [Link]
~ BAD NEWS ON THE WAY?: London-based magazine Al Majalla reports in an issue to appear tomorrow that al-Qaida has a new spokesman and has completely reconstituted itself.
The claims were based on e-mail interviews conducted this week by the London-based magazine Al Majalla with al-Qaida spokesman Thabet bin Qais, the magazine reports in an issue to appear Friday.
The magazine provided The Associated Press with an advance copy of the story.
"The Americans only have predictions and old intelligence left," the magazine quoted bin Qais as saying. "It will take them a long time to understand the new form of al-Qaida."
The magazine quoted bin Qais as saying al-Qaida remains "way ahead of the Americans and its allies in the intelligence war, and American security agencies still are ignorant of the changes the leadership has made."
U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they were aware of the report and that bin Qais has been authorized in the past to communicate messages on behalf of Osama bin Laden's terrorist network. The officials cautioned, however, that e-mail interviews can be difficult to authenticate.
Posted by steve @ 02:17 PM EST [Link]
~ THIS SHOWS YOU SOME PEOPLE'S MENTALITY: (Via Brothers Judd Blog) You probably haven't heard of Magen David Adom. It's not a person but rather a group. It's Israel's version of the Red Cross. Even as it saves Palestinian lives, Arab nations refuse to accept it into the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
When a 9-year-old Palestinian boy needed complex surgery to save his leg from amputation last week, the Palestinian Red Crescent turned to a familiar partner: Magen David Adom, the Israeli equivalent of the Red Cross. A Magen David Adom ambulance rushed the boy, who'd fallen from the ninth floor of a building, from Gaza to a Tel Aviv hospital.
Such cooperation, coming even as Israeli and Palestinian leaders continue to struggle to find peace, embodies the spirit of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, which today celebrates World Red Cross Red Crescent Day.
Yet Magen David Adom has long stood outside the mainstream of the International Red Cross, a movement, founded in 1863, that works to alleviate suffering in war-torn areas and to provide aid to victims of natural disasters. For more than half a century, the Israeli organization has been refused full membership in the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, a snub that would seem to fly in the face of two of the group's pillars: neutrality and universality. With 178 members, almost every other nation in the world has been accepted.
The refusal can be traced to Magen David Adom's emblem--a red Star of David--and Arab opposition to Israel.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 01:57 PM EST [Link]
~ WHAT HAPPENS HERE, STAYS HERE: Las Vegas is beginning to shed its recently donned coat of respectability and embracing its racier past. You've seen it in the recent TV commercials announcing, "What happens here, stays here" and now the casinos and hotels are beginning figure out that what made Vegas cool before (besides the TV show Vega$) was Frank Sinatra and babes, not video game arcades and art galleries.
For years, the Treasure Island hotel-casino, with its pyrotechnic pirate show and skull-and-bones marquee, carried a reputation as a Disney-esque destination for families.
But the show, like Las Vegas, is sailing off into another, altogether naughtier direction.
Casino operators will replace the popular family attraction with the "Sirens of TI" -- sexy vamps who duel pirates in what Treasure Island calls a "sensual modern interpretation" of the old "Battle of Buccaneer Bay."
I'm not sure that "Sirens of TI" meets my standard of art but I'm sure Bill Bennett will agree with me that Las Vegas is a city for adults. I'll admit that I'm a bit libertarian in these matters -- not to mention a single 31-year old guy -- but I think even conservatives will agree that it's occasionally fun to have fun. Not that I've ever been to Vegas of course...
Posted by steve @ 04:01 AM EST [Link]
~ SELF-PROMO ALERT: I have a review of After Jihad: America and the Struggle for Islamic Democracy in the Christian Science Monitor different from the one currently running in ESR. As I like to say, I think it's damned good...
Posted by steve @ 01:50 AM EST [Link]
Wednesday, May 7, 2003 SO WHAT DID HAPPEN TO THE REPUBLICAN GUARD?: Time Magazine had a good story on May 4 that I only just found. After an investigation the magazine's correspondents have determined that few were actually killed in the fighting around Baghdad -- though the armor was positively decimated -- instead most just fled.
Saddam Hussein must have known that the Republican Guard could not stop the advance of the U.S. military on Baghdad, but he might have imagined it could slow the onslaught. As U.S. forces swept through Iraq from Kuwait, the Iraqi command deployed four divisions—the Baghdad, Medina, Nebuchadnezzar and Hammurabi—south of the capital in two defensive arcs. The outer arc, about 100 miles long, stretched roughly from Karbala to Kut. The inner one, some 30 miles long, extended from Yusufiyah to Suwayrah. Just how many troops this involved is unclear. On paper, each of the four divisions had roughly 10,000 men, but according to U.S. intelligence, all were undermanned. Pentagon officials and outside experts estimate that the Republican Guard forces arrayed south of Baghdad that clashed with invading U.S. troops totaled somewhere between 16,000 and 24,000 men.
For the most part, the U.S. hit these forces first from the air. In many cases, drones were used to locate Iraqi armor, then bombers were called in to destroy it. Of the 28,000 bombs and missiles that American pilots dropped during the war—70% of which were smart—about half were directed against the Republican Guard. Judging from the look of the battlefields today, the bombing was largely surgical. In the open market in Mahmudiyah, five tanks were hit from the air while they were parked in alleyways so narrow that their gun turrets could not be turned. The storefront windows a few feet away were blown out, but otherwise the surrounding buildings are intact. In some cases, the Iraqis attempted to hide tanks and trucks from U.S. planes by parking them underneath freeway overpasses, and even though the vehicles were destroyed by laser-guided munitions that entered from the side, the bridges above were untouched. In other places, trucks lie demolished under scorched trees; the Iraqi soldiers apparently did not realize that palm fronds hide nothing from modern thermal-imaging devices.
Posted by steve @ 09:19 PM EST [Link]
~ I'M NOT SURE EXACTLY HOW TO COMMENT ON THIS: Democratic hopeful John Kerry made it his business to trash George W. Bush for visiting Bob Jones University back in 2000, a school you'll remember didn't much like gays, Catholics and interracial dating (a ban since dropped). Well it turns out that Kerry wants to speak at BJU.
While in South Carolina last weekend, Kerry spontaneously announced that he would visit the school and speak (if asked).
The New Republic, which described BJU as "a symbol for Republican intolerance" to Democrats since 2000, seems unsure how to editorialize.
Posted by steve @ 04:28 PM EST [Link]
~ HAPPY 55TH BIRTHDAY: To the State of Israel.
Israel Independence Day is celebrated annually, according to the Hebrew calendar, on 5 Iyar, the anniversary of the establishment of the State of Israel. This year it will be celebrated on Wednesday, May 7. The day preceding this celebration is devoted to the memory of those who gave their lives for the achievement of the country's independence and its continued existence.
On Yom Hazikaron, Remembrance Day, which will begin on Monday evening, May 5, the entire nation remembers its debt and expresses eternal gratitude to its sons and daughters who gave their lives for the achievement of the country's independence and its continued existence. It is a day of collective and personal anguish mingled with awe and honor for the fallen.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 03:26 PM EST [Link]
~ MY SISTER'S WEDDING TAPE WASN'T LIKE THIS: CNN has obtained a videotape of a wedding that occurred in October 1999 that shows several of the 9/11 hijackers.
The video -- received by CNN on Tuesday -- shows a reception at the October 1999 wedding of Said Bahaji, who is wanted by German authorities for suspected involvement in the attacks. He is believed to have fled to Pakistan shortly before they occurred, and is still at large.
At one point on the 30-minute tape, a wedding guest -- Ramzi Binalshibh -- speaks out against Israel and, in a possible reference to the attacks, says, "We are still in Arabic class and, at the end of the class, there will be a test and the test is the meal, God willing. There will be those who pass and those who fail."
Posted by steve @ 03:24 PM EST [Link]
~ CONDI WILL HAVE TO WAIT UNTIL 2008: U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney has announced that he will be George W. Bush's running mate in 2008.
"The president has asked me if I would serve again as his running mate. I've agreed to do that," he said Tuesday in an interview with The Dallas Morning News.
No reason to bust up something that works.
Posted by steve @ 02:56 PM EST [Link]
~ NOT ANOTHER BIN LADEN HUNT: A new audiotape has been released purporting to contain the voice of Saddam Hussein exhorting Iraqis to resist the coalition forces.
"Through this secret means I am talking to you from inside great Iraq and I say to you, the main task for you, Arab and Kurd, Shiite and Sunni, Muslim and Christian and the whole Iraqi people of all religions, your main task is to kick the enemy out from our country," the speaker said.
He's dead. Whether he's actually dead or not, he's dead. Please, no new Osama bin Laden hunt. They're both dead. Let's move on. I'm convinced I could make an audiotape and it'd be reported that Hussein is still alive...though if I was creative I'd try and fake Qusay Hussein....
Posted by steve @ 01:30 PM EST [Link]
~ SALAM PAX IS BACK: Diana Moon announces on Salam Pax's blog that she has received a bunch of blog entries from him and spoke to him on the phone. The result? Salam's blog has been updated with a wack of posts he wrote over the past couple of weeks. Internet access has been a little spotty there lately if you hadn't heard...
Read the new ones here...
Posted by steve @ 01:27 PM EST [Link]
~ UC BERKELEY PROGRAM FUNDED BY TERROR PAY MASTERS: (via Little Green Footballs) The California Patriot reports that UC Berkeley's Middle East Studies Program has received significant money from groups and people linked to terrorism.
The Center for Middle Eastern Studies runs two programs whose stated missions are to increase “understanding of Islam and of Muslim peoples and cultures in the United States and around the world.” But those programs are funded by a Saudi businessman and a member of the Saudi royal family who the State Department maintains are responsible for funneling money to groups that sponsor terrorism.
The center’s Sultan Program is named for and funded by Sultan bin Abdulaziz al Saud, the second deputy prime minister of Saudi Arabia. Al Saud has been implicated as having a direct hand in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and is currently a defendant in the $1 trillion class action lawsuit filed by the families of the attacks’ victims.
The universities' response? Silence.
Posted by steve @ 01:20 PM EST [Link]
~ ANOTHER MOVE TO BUILD AN EMPIRE RIGHT?: The Americans are looking at ways of at least restoring part of the marshes in southern Iraq, the same ones drained by Saddam Hussein during his campaign to crush the Shiite Marsh Arabs in the 1990s.
Andrew Natsios, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, told Reuters that research showed "we could probably restore maybe 25 percent of the marshlands with the existing water flows."
"...We are looking at what is hydrologically feasible given the current technology and water flows," Natsios said.
The Iraqi marshes between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers were home to a unique culture and complex ecosystem that lasted thousands of years. The wetlands were largely drained by Saddam to punish the population for supporting a Shi'ite uprising against his rule that erupted after the 1991 Gulf War.
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 04:13 AM EST [Link]
Tuesday, May 6, 2003 DAVID BROCK: BLINDED BY THE WRONG: Perhaps inspired by his fine interview of R. Emmett Tyrell, ESR contributor Bernard Chapin offers some insightful observations on David Brock's controversial memoirs in Toogood Reports.
Posted by antle @ 10:38 PM EST [Link]
~ REPEAT THIS TO YOURSELF IF NECESSARY: FRANCE IS NOT AN ALLY OF THE UNITED STATES: Bill Gertz reports in today's Washington Times that the French government provided Iraqi government officials with passports in Syria that will allow them to escape to Europe.
The French passports allow the wanted Iraqis to move freely among 12 EU countries that are part of the Schengen agreement on unrestricted travel. Britain, Denmark and Ireland are not part of the Schengen pact.
And believe me, Gertz has more in this story than just French passports. Read on.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: France is no longer an ally of the United States. Both sides may say they continue to be friends, but France's actions clearly show that it is not. The American government can continue to believe in the fiction of friendship or they can begin re-ordering their global chums list. Remove: France and possibly Germany and Belgium. Add: India, Eriteria and a number of smaller African Third World nations. You know what? I'd rather have them than the French on my side.
Posted by steve @ 02:58 PM EST [Link]
~ EVERYONE NEEDS SOME MAD MONEY EVERY NOW AND THEN: The New York Times has reported that Qusay Hussein withdrew $1 billion from Iraq's central bank just hours before the U.S.-led coalition began its attack.
The amount of cash was so large -- $900 million in American bills and $100 million worth of euros -- that three tractor-trailers were needed to carry it, the newspaper reported, citing an Iraqi official.
The good news is that much of the money may have already been recovered. Remember that American troops found $650 million in US$100 bills in one of Saddam Hussein's palaces.
I wonder what kind of withdrawl slip you have to fill out to fit the number $1,000,000,000 on it...Read on.
Posted by steve @ 05:09 AM EST [Link]
~ BENNETT ROUND UP: There was a fair amount of news and comment on the Bennett gambling story today. Here are a few highlights:
Hunter Baker argued in The American Prowler that in the context of his public career, Bennett’s gambling mattered. The comparison between the social pathologies that attend gambling and drugs is too great, as is the impact of any perceived inability to walk the walk for moral conservatism. He cogently made the case that conservatives ought not give into “the instinctive desire to protect Bennett because he has been the most articulate and successful mass-market spokesman for social conservatism during the past two decades.” (Which when you think about it is an apt description of Bennett – the only other social conservative of his stature with a significant reach beyond evangelicals and traditionalists of other faiths is the distinctly more polarizing Dr. Laura.) Jonah Goldberg demonstrated this desire in a not-altogether-convincing column for NRO.
Of course, some liberals and not a few libertarians took a bit too much joy in Bennett’s travails. They view him as an irritating national scold who deserves his comeuppance. Now, I too disagree with him on a number of policy issues, as he has an unhealthy taste for statism. But where is it written that to speak out criticize behavior, especially as it relates to a community’s shared values, one must be a saint? Few if any of these people really believe gambling to be a vice, as apparently the Roman Catholic Church does not. (Though I would imagine many Catholic theologians would consider the reported scope of Bennett’s gambling sinfully wasteful.) The fact is, they don’t have a problem with an advocate of morality hypocritically committing an alleged vice as much as they have a problem with him making moral judgments. Many liberals and – as Stanley Kurtz has learned- libertarians have a problem with the concept of shared values altogether. Liberals don’t like judgmentalism and anything that might derive from transcendent moral teachings. Libertarians don’t like anything they believe subordinates the individual to the collective. (I could argue that this isn’t necessarily what shared values are all about, but that’s for another day.)
As Steve’s post shows, Bennett has announced that he has been a bad example and that he is giving up gambling. Good for him. I think if he follows through with this, conservatives should regard that as an acceptable apology. The only other thing I would hope that he could learn is to be more reluctant to criminalize vices, but perhaps that is too much to expect. I doubt the story is over, but I hope Bennett's involvement is.
Posted by antle @ 12:48 AM EST [Link]
Monday, May 5, 2003 NO MORE GAMBLING: No, not me silly. William J. Bennett announced today that he will no longer gamble.
"This is not an example I wish to set," he said in a statement responding to news reports.
"It is true that I have gambled large sums of money. I have also complied with all laws on reporting wins and losses," Bennett said in the brief, written statement issued through Empower America, the conservative think tank he runs with former Rep. Jack Kemp, R-N.Y.
"Nevertheless, I have done too much gambling, and this is not an example I wish to set," Bennett added. "Therefore, my gambling days are over."
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 11:35 PM EST [Link]
~ TAKE BACK THE NIGHT. Dudes, your big chance to learn what happens at one of these man-bashing fests.
Posted by izzy @ 04:59 PM EST [Link]
~ COUGH, THEY NEVER HIRED ME: David Frum explains today why he left the National Post, Canada's only real conservative daily.
For most of my working life, Canadian journalism was a dreary bog of left-liberal conformity. By the time I began my journalistic career in the late 1980s, it was obvious to most people under 40 that the old nostrums and dogmas were collapsing--but brute fear deterred most journalists from saying what they knew: In a country in which media jobs were scarce and media ownership was both tightly concentrated and carefully regulated by the government, dissenters faced swift and merciless marginalization.
The launch of the National Post in 1998 upended the old conformist cartel. Nothing like it had ever been seen before in Canada--or just about anywhere else. Yes it was conservative and unashamedly so. But it was also far and away the best-looking paper in Canada, the best-written, and the most amusing. It gleefully defied the old dogmas--and broke stories nobody else dared touch, from Prime Minister Jean Chretien’s financial scandals to the Jenin massacre hoax.
Well, you didn't think I would quote the bit why he quit did you? Go and read it for yourself. That said, I understand what he means. I had such high hopes about Ken Whyte's term as editor that I sent my resume to him personally. Unfortunately the Post wasn't interested but he later helped give birth to a dynamic newspaper. His firing is unfortunate and tells me a lot about what the Aspers plan for the paper. I'm afraid the imminent death of a fine newspaper is near...it'll still publish but it won't be the same.
Posted by steve @ 02:03 PM EST [Link]
~ SO YOU MIND IF I BLAST SOME WEED THEN BILL?: Bill Bennett, the gambling moralist that W. James Antle III discusses in a story this week, said this weekend that gambling isn't a moral issue and that "If you can't handle it, don't do it." As Jacob Sullum points out in a blog entry on Reason Online, why doesn't Bennett hold that same opinion about smoking marijuana?
If I'm capable of engaging in activities that Bennett finds anti-social without causing harm to society, who is he to judge me? By his code of morality, or at least how he justifies his behavior, I'm in the clear.
Doubtless, some quick-witted readers out there will remember that I gamble and have discussed in passing my football gambling activities (which extends to very rare money on games and regular participation in a football pool). I've never hid that and I'm no moralist.
I know a lot of conservatives are trying to brush this aside as a private issue that doesn't concern the rest of us, and they're right. The reported $8 million that Bennett lost gambling is his business. But he also made it his business to tell us what our business should be. That makes his private behavior fair game.
[Update - 1:54pm] Glenn Reynolds also has a blog entry about another moralist who isn't being hounded by the media. Probably because this moralist isn't a conservative and he promoted a pet cause of the media.
Posted by steve @ 01:50 PM EST [Link]
Saturday, May 3, 2003 I DISAGREE WITH YOU POLITICALLY AND YOU'RE AN S.O.B., TOO: A longtime reader e-mails to take issue with my most recent ESR article. Specifically, he disagrees with my contention that everyday life disproves the centrality of politics.
"The manifestation of politics as conducted by the influence of the state in our lives is simply something that people are used to and where they don't make the connection between their elected leaders and the effect of their policies. The political vanguard however does.
This is not a trivial but rather a most important point.
Even in the totalitarian states like the Soviet Union and the Nazi Germany, there was a feeling that state doesn't get involved in everyday people lives as people still have friends, attend films and sporting events, date and fall in love, create families, etc."
This is a valuable and important point. The main reason government has been able to grow in size and reach to the extent that it has is that most ordinary people don't see its growth as injurious to the liberty of people like them. They are free to live their lives mostly as they choose while the government does what it does to drug dealers, "corrupt" business executives, etc. Those who do get riled up about big government tend to have had catalyzing experiences, like paying a massive tax bill, starting a small business, running afoul of the IRS or the EPA, owning firearms or losing property due to assett forfeiture. Other than that, people get used to big government, especially when it grows gradually, and view the less desirable things that it does as either a theoretical proposition or something that happens to other people. But that doesn't mean that it isn't doing undesirable things and more of them as it grows more powerful. My correspondent notes that politics is thus as important as the pot of boiling water the frog finds himself sitting in, in that often-quoted parable about the gradual loss of liberty.
I don't think this is actually incompatible with my argument that the most important things in life have nothing to do with politics and that politics is only important insofar as it affects those other more important things (family, faith, friendships, etc.). But the point that people who are concerned about freedom should not ignore the substantial impact of politics is well taken.
Posted by antle @ 06:24 PM EST [Link]
~ I DON'T REMEMBER READING ABOUT THIS IN THE BOOK OF VIRTUES: The Associated Press has picked up stories from Newsweek and The Washington Monthly reporting that William Bennett, the former Reagan-Bush Cabinet official and conservative activist best known as an advocate of family values, is a high-stakes gambler who has possibly lost millions over the past decade.
Certainly, Bennett's ideological opponents are likely to have fun at his expense given that a man who has so publicly campaigned for a more virtuous America now is reported to have this vice. It doesn't sound like Bennett owes anybody any money, has done anything illegal or bankrupted his family. When Paul Cellucci, now U.S. ambassador to Canada, was governor of Massachusetts, he was dogged by controversy over his debts, which some critics alleged were attributable to gambling (a charge he denied). I'm not overly outraged by this news. But I would imagine a lot of Bennett's conservative Christian fans - the people who buy his books, listen to his speeches and have even in the past urged him to run for president - would not approve.
Posted by antle @ 05:19 PM EST [Link]
~ HE'S FALLEN AND HE CAN'T GET UP: Sad news from the state of New Hampshire. The famed Old Man of the Mountain collapsed last night or early this morning.
It wasn't immediately clear what caused the fall, but Amy Bahr, president of the Franconia Heritage Museum, said she has long been aware that the natural profile could slide.
"I knew it would go sometime, I just didn't think it would happen in my lifetime," she said.
The ledges that made up the profile were perched above a slope covered with other fallen granite, and for years many feared it would join the pile.
Posted by steve @ 04:58 PM EST [Link]
~ THE DEBATE OVER WOMEN IN COMBAT CONTINUES: The undeniable heroism of Jessica Lynch has helped bolster many commentators' arguments for women in combat. Nicholas Stix over at Toogood Reports is having none of it.
Posted by antle @ 04:57 PM EST [Link]
~ TORONTO AREA BLOG BASH: Blog? Like to bash? David Janes of Ranting and Roaring is organzing a Toronto-area blog bash set for May 9 at 7:00pm.
More info here.
I'd love to go but I just can't afford it at the moment. If David is lucky our lone Toronto blogger, Barton, will make the trip and represent for ESR.
Posted by steve @ 03:29 PM EST [Link]
~ THE STAR. Tonight is the finale of Nashville Star. (My family grooooans whenever I bring up this topic.) I don't like reality shows or prime-time television. But I have become a "fan" of John Arthur Martinez, 41, one of the three finalists. He's sweet and sincere; croons about marital love and sings bits of his country songs in Spanish. He also talks about his faith; and says, without apology, that he lives in a double wide. This, no doubt, could all change in a New York minute if he wins the Sony recording contract. But during the Eminem era, it's refreshing to see a man like this receive national exposure. Go John Arthur!
Posted by izzy @ 10:18 AM EST [Link]
~ BUT I THOUGHT SHE DIDN'T WANT TO RECITE THE PLEDGE: "San Francisco, California (Reuters) -- The California schoolgirl whose father sparked a major court battle against the Pledge of Allegiance has been saying it even though she could opt out of the daily ritual, a school official said Thursday."
Read on.
Posted by steve @ 03:35 AM EST [Link]
~ IT DOESN'T MATTER WHO THEY SERVED: The Chinese government has announced that 70 men serving aboard one of its non-nuclear submarines died during a training exercise.
The vessel -- identified as submarine 361 -- has been recovered from eastern Chinese territorial waters east of Neichangshan and towed to an unidentified port, the agency said.
The area is in the Yellow Sea between China and North Korea.
In a telegram of condolences to the families of the victims, Chinese Central Military Commission Chairman Jiang Zemin expressed sorrow over the "big loss" and described the crew as "the good children of the people and loyal defenders of the motherland and that their heroism and contributions will not be forgotten by the people of the country."
Communist or not, the men of Submarine 361 will be remembered for all time. Rest in peace our brothers. I know Charles will agree....
Posted by steve @ 03:31 AM EST [Link]
Friday, May 2, 2003 THIS DOESN'T SOUND LIKE AN IMPRESSIVE TRACK RECORD TO ME: Scott Peterson may have a new high-profile attorney, but his roster of clients sure includes a lot of legal losers: Winona Ryder, Robert Downey, Jr. and Susan McDougal. Disgraced former congressman Gary Condit probably made out the best.
Posted by antle @ 02:21 PM EST [Link]
~ SELF-PROMO ALERT. I've been writing about lots of "stuff" lately but here's a column where I pick on the intolerant progressives who live in Amherst. Always a fun topic.
Posted by izzy @ 12:07 PM EST [Link]
~ SELF-PROMO ALERT: I have a piece on President Bush, the economy and 2004 today in The American Prowler/American Spectator On-Line.
Posted by antle @ 09:28 AM EST [Link]
~ SUPPOSE YOU WERE A HOLLYWOOD TYPE AND SUPPOSE YOU WERE AN IDIOT...BUT WAIT, I REPEAT MYSELF: Cold Fury goes absolutely ballistic over news that the William Morris Agency managed to get the web site Boycott Hollywood shut down. The web site documented actors and actresses who complained about being criticized for airing their political views, you know, the sort of thing that goes on in free societies.
This is just about as disgusting an example of the trampling of free speech as I’ve heard of in my life. I mean it, folks, no joke. I’m pissed off about this one. Really, really pissed. A perfect example of the little guy getting stepped on by a big, bad, thin-skinned bunch of.…well, a bunch of hypocritical pussies, that’s truly the best way I can think of to put it. As Reynolds says, these guys have now officially stifled more free speech in this country than John Ashcroft has, or most likely ever will. And yet they whine on and on.
Read on. Strong language because Mike, to put it politely, is real angry about this hypocrisy.
Posted by steve @ 12:14 AM EST [Link]
Thursday, May 1, 2003 DOES HE CONTRADICT HIMSELF? VERY WELL, THEN HE CONTRADICTS HIMSELF: So I was reading Russ "Mugger" Smith's column from last week, when I came across this reference to how, in a recent profile, Eric "Alterman was crucified by the New York Observer’s George Gurley, who was ostensibly interviewing the author for his bunkum-loaded book What Liberal Media?." Apart from noting the oddness of using crucifxion imagery in reference to Mr. Alterman (especially in a column written right after the Easter weekend), I quickly salivated in anticipation at reading this supposed knee-capping of our good friend Eric. Well, here it is. It's very interesting, since you get to learn a lot of intimate details about Mr. Alterman's personal life, though it's definitely no "crucifxion" of him in print. However, Alterman does come across as well, slightly incoherent.
Neither tribune of the people nor proletarian stiff, Alterman is pure limousine liberal, stuffing himself full of foie gras and Kobe beef and drinking pinot gris during his interview with Gurley at one of Manhatten's swankier eating establishments. Beginning his life in the upper-middle-class New York City suburb of Scarsdale, Alterman (B.A. Cornell, M.A. Yale, P.H.D. Stanford) has never lived an uncomfortable day in his life. He's also a relentless name-dropper, though the type of name-dropper who can get George Stephanopoulos as his best man at his wedding, the type of name-dropper who has E.L. Doctorow come up and hug him at lunch.
Alterman's also not exactly a paradigm of modesty. Of his very first book, Sound and the Fury: The Making of a Punditocracy, Alterman says he expected that it would make other pundits like George Will "afraid to show their faces in public again, because I had so humiliated and revealed them for the charlatans that they were-but in fact, nothing changed at all. Everything went back to the way it was." Of course, Alterman hastens to add that at present, "I'm not that impressed with myself." Boasting about your own self-modesty is typical Eric Alterman.
As for incoherence, well, Alterman claims that he's neither ambitious nor, if you can believe this, "very political." About George W. Bush, Alterman thinks that the president is "honestly misguided," which apparently puts him on a moral level above that of Alterman's mortal enemy, the "disgraceful writer" Alexander Cockburn. Of course, given that just a few lines earlier, Alterman had declared that he wanted the "honestly misguided" George W. Bush "to resign in ignominy," like Richard Nixon, one wonders what even more horrible fate he wishes upon Mr. Cockburn. And for someone with a doctorate in American history from Stanford, he seems strangely clueless about how the New York City public education system works. Alterman thinks that Governor George Pataki is responsible for "destroying" the public schools, even though it's Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his New York Schools Chancellor Joel Klein who have the direct control. At least Alterman puts his children where his mouth is and actually sends his daughter to public schools, unlike some other prominent Manhatten limousine liberal I could name.
At the very end of his lunch with Gurley, Alterman makes the truly bizarre declaration that "Another thing I do that liberals don't do is, I admire the beauty of waitresses," before adding "That's a beautiful waitress." Russ Smith thinks that this is proof that Alterman is some sort of libertine hypocrite. I'm a touch more charitable (though not by much). It reads more like the famous, high-living pundit is not-so subtly trying to convey the message that he's a normal everyday human being, that he's not some dessicated, puritanical leftist who's lost all sense of humour or joie-de-vivre. In other words: ERIC ALTERMAN IS JUST ONE OF THE GUYS!
Everyone of Alterman's friends whom Gurley talks to agree that there are two Eric Altermans. To quote one of them, "an unbelievable *** and a really, really great person." After reading this profile of him, I'm afraid I'm rather inclined to give more weight to the former Eric Alterman than to the latter. But maybe those are just my political prejudices getting in the way, so why don't you read the profile right now and judge for yourself?
Posted by Barton @ 08:17 PM EST [Link]
~ THE ROMANTIC- The ever-intriguing Mr. Sailer has some rather interesting views on feminism, courtship, and marraige:
A reader wonders how feminists could have so badly misjudged and helped usher in a popular culture where women are constantly portrayed competing for men like whores in a bordello's parlor. The key thing to remember is that the more fanatical the feminist, the less she understands what it feels like to be a woman. The feminist is outraged by the "male gaze," while the typical young woman craves it. The fundamental problem facing most young women is not men looking at them, but how to convert those looks from a spot market asset into a long term investment from one man that will keep bringing her returns even when she's no longer at her most attractive -- e.g., when pregnant, dealing with children, or old. To do that, women traditionally ran a cartel that restrained just how far "respectable" women would go to compete for men. The feminists are clueless about that sort of thing.
One wonders what Mrs. Sailer (for there is indeed one) thinks of all this. Do Mr. and Mrs. Sailer really think of their marraige in terms of conversion of a "spot market asset into a long term investment?" You can just imagine the kind of conversations that went on during their dates...
Another Steve Sailer mystery: when the heck is he going to put up links on his site, so I can directly link to his blog entries, instead of making his readers scroll down? Steve, your fans are getting a bit frustrated here.
Posted by Barton @ 06:41 PM EST [Link]
~ CORRECTION: Looks like everyone was wrong. Dubya actually landed a Navy S-3B Viking onboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, not an F-14D as was reported earlier.
Over at National Review Online, Kathryn Jean Lopez is jumped over by her readers for agreeing with Dubya's decision to do so.
Posted by steve @ 06:25 PM EST [Link]
~ UMMM, WE PREDICTED THIS LIKE YEARS AGO: The National Review is congratulating itself for identifying junk food as the next target of class action lawsuits now that the tobacco war is complete.
We first discussed this in 1998 in an editorial I wrote and I think we've run five pieces in the last two years on the issue. Lesson? Read ESR for the latest in thinking.
Posted by steve @ 06:19 PM EST [Link]
~ HOLLYWOOD AIN'T ALL LIBERAL: Damian Penny has a nice little blog post about Hollywood celebrities who aren't reflexively liberal or anti-war.
[Update - 6:00pm] - Grumble, it appears that Blogspot ain't working so good. To read the entry, go to Damian's web site and then scroll down to "Conservative celebrities speak out".
Posted by steve @ 05:54 PM EST [Link]
~ LUCKY THE FOX NEWS TEAM LEFT WHEN THEY DID: Otherwise the number of items stolen from the National Museum of Iraq might have been greater. According to the New York Times, the losses from the museum are considerably less than previously thought.
Col. Matthew F. Bogdanos, a Marine reservist who is investigating the looting and is stationed at the museum, said museum officials had given him a list of 29 artifacts that were definitely missing. But since then, 4 items — ivory objects from the eighth century B.C. — had been traced.
"Twenty-five pieces is not the same as 170,000," said Colonel Bogdanos, who in civilian life is an assistant Manhattan district attorney.
Well, now what will the media complain about? They latched onto this story because the civilian casualities thing didn't pan out and now they've been stripped of this too.
Read on. (Free registration required)
Posted by steve @ 05:48 PM EST [Link]
~ SELF-PROMO ALERT: A review I wrote of Bill McKibben's Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age is now up at the Christian Science Monitor. If I say so myself, it's not bad...
Posted by steve @ 03:18 PM EST [Link]
~ WAIT, DIDN'T THIS HAPPEN IN THAT MOVIE INDEPENDENCE DAY?: U.S. President George W. Bush, when he arrives aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln later today, will co-pilot the F-14D Tomcat he'll take there.
The plane will make what is known as a "tailhook" landing, when the craft, traveling at about 150 mph, hooks onto a steel wire across the flight deck and comes to a complete stop in less than 400 feet.
Capt. Kevin Albright, the commander of Airwing 14 aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, said Bush will be equipped with an air sickness bag, but he doubts the president will need it.
"I suspect (with) his previous flight experience, he'll do just fine," Albright told CNN's Kyra Phillips aboard the carrier.
Bush was an F-102 fighter pilot in the Texas Air National Guard after graduating from Yale University in 1968.
I appreciate that Dubya is a former fighter pilot but isn't a little risky to have the leader of the free world co-piloting an airplane during a carrier landing? It's not like he's leading a squadron of F-15s against alien invaders like in Independence Day...then it'd make sense.
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