Common Sense

Everyone needs to read this and decide if John McCain and his stance on Article III of the Geneva Conventions makes sense. I'll go with Thomas Sowell almost everytime.

Unions for the working man???

I have long felt labor unions were primarily for losers. There was a time when they were a positive improvement for workers who let themselves be exploited, but since the workers were unable to perceive their situation correctly and respond accordingly, they were doomed to become exploited again by a different group. This has happened with modern unions. The Wall Street Journal recaps some of the ways in which the various unions spend the dues paid by the membership who actually work. The Bush administration a few years ago passed laws requiring unions to detail how they spend their money. Previously, they would lump big slugs of money in a category called "sundry expenses". As might be expected, the unions were not happy with this requirement. Now, the AFL-CIO is forced to report that $82 million of discretionary disbursements from July 2004 to June 2005 was divided in such a way that 36% went to represent its members in negotiations and 60% went to political activities and lobbying. The National Education Association spent only 33% on improving members working lot. Of course, most of the political money goes to losers like John Kerry and to such groups as Citizens for Tax Justice which works to raise taxes. Kinda sad, really.

Pelosi as Speaker??

Jonah Goldberg has a good essay today about how it might not be the end of the world if the dems won the House this election. He makes some sense. Here is a sample, but you can read it all here.

Republican control of the White House and Congress hasn't resulted in lights being turned off in Cabinet agencies or enormous garage sales of office furniture. Instead, Uncle Sam is still looking like Marlon Brando at the end of his career: bloated, sweaty and slow-moving. The GOP has become a Brando-like parody of its former self, reading its lines about cutting government without plausibility or passion.

I finally understand

Islam is a peaceful religion and if you say differently we will kill you.

Pity the Poor Pope

Well, the Pope quotes someone from centuries ago that seems to indicate Islam has a streak which seems to advance violence and a lack of tolerance. The reaction of the Islamists around the world is to protest this thought by acting to confirm it. It is obvious these illiterates have no ability to understand and act rationally since they are irrational and deluded losers.

As someone pointed out, it is akin to the situation whereby a white DC bureaucrat used "niggardly" in his speech to describe how seriously he took his responsibilities for the benefits of the taxpayers. Some illiterates misinterpreted that to be the dreaded "N" word. The poor guy apologized again and again for the following weeks, and finally lost his job.

ABC Mini-series

As we all anxiously await the airing of the controversial docudrama about 9/11, I can't help wondering if others find it strange to have Clinton lecturing one and all about how important it is for the network to tell the truth.....by ignoring his lies, I presume.

Clinton in crisis mode

The upcoming ABC docudrama about 9/11 evidently has something in it that suggests the Clintons did not do enough to capture and kill Osama in the 90's. Well, how dare they say his administration had any deficiencies in this regard. So, the pressure is on ABC to change its program and there is some evidence that the network is doing just that. Do they protest too much?

Newt nails it again

"The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. . . . As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves."

--Abraham Lincoln
Annual message to Congress
Dec. 1, 1862

Newt Gingrich used this quote from Lincoln to introduce his brilliant analysis of our current situation with respect to the war on terrorism and in Iraq. It is a must read and I find it terribly sad that one of the most critical thinkers in our political arena has been brought to a point where his brilliance will not be given the deference it deserves. It is also sad that our current President is no Abraham Lincoln. Read the entire essay here.

Election Season

The election season is now officially underway since we have Labor Day behind us and the concensus seems to be that the Democrats will take over the House of Representatives and probably the Senate if all the stars align correctly as the liberal media seems to think they will. As much as I think the Republicans deserve to lose, the best thing they have going for them is the extreme unliklihood that conventional wisdom will come to pass. It seldom does in anything and especially in politics.

Katie's Debut

I didn't watch it, of course, but it was hard to avoid the critiques of Katie's first effort on the internet today. Most were fairly neutral, but this one was pretty funny. Here is a sample:

For her very first night as CBS News diva, Katie spent a half-hour looking as if she desperately had to go potty. Her back was so stiff as she looked into the camera, pop-eyed and self-conscious, I feared it would snap.

Her face was Botoxed beyond normal human endurance, proving that even pampered, overpaid news babes possess the courage to suffer for their art.

And later.....

The best that can be said about Katie Couric was that she did not trip over her 5-inch stiletto heels when she toddled across the floor of the set, crossing her bare legs like some ridiculous tramp.

Santorem/Casey Debate

Here is the Democrats answer to the Iraq situation as expounded by Bob Casey on Meet the Press last Sunday in a debate with Senator Santorem.

Russert: Let's go right to it: the war in Iraq. Mr. Casey, you're the challenger, you told the Philadelphia Inquirer August 2005 the following:

"Casey said he would have voted for the war considering the evidence at the time, and supported the spending bills that funded the effort." Knowing what you know today, would you still have voted for the war?

Casey: Tim, before I begin my answer I just want to make a note of a loss in Pennsylvania. Mayor Bob O'Connor, in the city of Pittsburgh, passed away. We want to express--I think we share that here today--we want to express our condolences to his family.

Tim, on the war in Iraq, if, if, if a lot of Americans knew now--if they knew then what they know now, they would, they would have thought that this war was the war that shouldn't have been fought based upon the misleading of this administration.

Here's what I think has to happen in Iraq today.

Russert: So you would not vote for it today.

Casey: Based upon the information that we have now, I think that, that a lot of Americans would have serious doubts. I'm not sure there would have even been a vote on Iraq that early in the--

Russert: But in '05 you said you'd vote for it. Would you today in '06 vote for it?

Casey: Based upon the evidence that was presented then, yes, which I think has been--was misleading, and I think it was faulty. The intelligence was faulty.

Russert: But today, today is no. Today you would vote no.

Casey: Today--if we knew then what we know now, sure. I think there wouldn't have been a vote and I think people would have changed.

After all that, the only thing we know for sure is that Casey is sorry the mayor died.

Republicans Care

As the Republican-lead House of Representatives returns from a month long vacation and with a limited schedule before they adjourn to ask us to send them back to "represent" us; I read that they have decided that they will not even try to pass anything which will address the illegal immigrant problem and the porous borders both parties have tolerated for decades. What then, is on the schedule? The major legislation on the floor in the House this week is a bill that would ban trading in horses to be slaughtered for human consumption. Now, there is a problem we have all been clamoring to be addressed

The Steyn take on Centanni/Wiig conversion to Islam

While in captivity by the Palestinians a few days ago, the Fox News employees appeared in a video and claimed they had converted to Islam. Upon their release, they said they did this to appease their captors and Mark Steyn in an essay gives his take on the matter as it relates to current events. Read the whole thing here.


In the Muslim world, they watch the Centanni/Wiig video and see men so in love with the present, the now, that they will do or say anything to live in the moment. And they draw their own conclusions... It doesn't matter how "understandable" Centanni and Wiig's actions are to us, what the target audience understands is quite different: that there is nothing we're willing to die for. And, to the Islamist mind, a society with nothing to die for is already dead.

An easy prediction

The following item appeared in the news recently. The liberals in Congress from the America is always wrong party have opposed the concept of us having the ability to repel a missle attack since the Reagan years and I predict it will not be long before the Democrats again resume their call for a reduction in funding for this endeavor which "won't work" even though it did. The North Koreans will be pleased.

North Korea Saturday called a U.S. missile defense test a threat and vowed to strengthen its defense measures in response.

North Korea's Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland released a statement saying the U.S. test, which was conducted Friday over the Pacific Ocean, "was aimed at attacking us and intercepting our missiles," the BBC reported Saturday.

Pluots

I am not sure where they have been all my life, but I just discovered these things which are supposedly a genetic cross of plums and apricots. Find some which are still pretty firm and cool them in the fridge. Great.

No Child Left Behind

Our area just reported its results for the SAT and evidently our scores were down relative to the national average. The apologists in our education system were not smart enough to understand that when you are down relative to others who took the same test, it is not exactly an excuse to say the exam was harder and longer this year than last year.

Critics have long complained that the compliance requirements for NCLB puts too much stress on state resources and educators, many of whom say they must teach to the test at the expense of other learning. This might be better accepted if the test scores they are teaching toward were actually increasing.

Time to wake up

I was reading a news article yesterday about a motorist in San Francisco who went on a hit-and-run spree that involved trying to run over pedestrians, bicyclists, and motorists for a full hour. He injured 14 and killed 1. Press accounts centered on alleged mental illness and left out the fact that he was Muslim from Afghanistan who seemed calm, coherent and unrepentant when he was finally captured. The Jewish Community Center was a few blocks from where the rampage ended. Is this an isolated incident? Let's see.
A few months ago, a Muslim immigrant from Pakistan went on a shooting spree in a Seattle Jewish Center. The press ignored his stated religious motive (" I am a Muslim-American; I'm angry at Israel"). Again he was declared to have a history of mental illness.
In North Carolina last Spring at the University in Chapel Hill, another angry Muslim lashed out at infidels by hitting 9 people with a SUV he rented for the purpose. He was an Iranian who said he wanted to punish the U.S. for its actions around the world. The media played down the obvious angle as BestView pointed out at the time.
The Beltway snipers in Maryland were Muslim converts who stated their objective was to "terrorize" Washington. The news outlets at the time chose to ignore the fact that the leader's name had been changed to John Muhammed and instead used his previous name of John Allen Williams. Look it up.
Finally, there was the Muslim immigrant from Egypt who shot two at Israel's El Al ticket counter at LAX and the media were completely incapable to call it a terrorist attack. The FBI even demurred in that regard.
Soon we will have one which even the politically correct press will have to admit is a terrorist attack and the liberals will echo the current mantra of the Democrats that Bush has not done enough to protect America.

Common sense in the Mid-East

I ran across this today which indicates that everyone is not oblivious to the obvious in the Mid-East.

Arab leaders wasted billions of dollars to fund a war they can never win, a member of Jordan's royal family charges.

"Arab leaders stole billions of dollars from the Arab people in order to spend them on weapons to fight Israel, which they can never defeat, instead of using the money for health and education purposes to aid their people," Jordanian Prince Hassan Bin Talal told an international conference in Kyoto, Japan, according to the Israeli Ynet news.

Once in line for the Jordanian throne, Prince Hassan spoke to the world conference of the interfaith group "Religions for Peace," attacking Iran's nuclear development program and warning against nuclear armament, especially on Iran's part.

The prince warned that it must be made certain that Iran's nuclear project does not reach the point of building nuclear weapons.

Israel is learning a valuable lesson

A poll published on Friday in the Yedioth Ahrnonoth daily shows that 63 percent of Israelis feel that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert failed in managing the war in Lebanon and should resign.

Only 29 percent believe the prime minister is fit to continue leading the country.

About 74 percent of those polled said Defense Minister Amir Peretz mishandled the war and should resign his post. A mere 20 percent said Peretz should keep his post.

This is what happens when you elect a liberal Prime Minister or President. Netanyahu is on his way in to correct this situation, I predict.

Lose an election, lose your mind

From NewMax.com

Sen. John Kerry didn't contest the results at the time, but now that he's considering another run for the White House, he's alleging election improprieties by the Ohio Republican who oversaw the deciding vote in 2004.

An e-mail will be sent to 100,000 Democratic donors Tuesday asking them to support U.S. Rep. Ted Strickland for governor of Ohio. The bulk of the e-mail criticizes Strickland's opponent, GOP Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, for his dual role in 2004 as President Bush's honorary Ohio campaign co-chairman and the state's top election official.

"He used the power of his state office to try to intimidate Ohioans and suppress the Democratic vote," said Kerry's e-mail.

Kerry, D-Mass., conceded the election when he lost Ohio and its 20 electoral votes. A recount requested by minor-party candidates showed Bush won by about 118,000 votes out of 5.5 million cast. But Kerry's e-mail says Blackwell "used his office to abuse our democracy and threaten basic voting rights."

Fox captives released "unharmed"

From the OpinionJournal.

The New York Times reports that Centanni and Wiig "were released unharmed on Sunday after being forced at gunpoint to say on a videotape that they had converted to Islam." That is a curious way of putting it. Isn't a forced religious "conversion" a form of harm?

One suspects the Times would not describe as "unharmed" the al Qaeda prisoners who supposedly have endured insults to their religion by U.S. interrogators. For secular Westerners, taking religion seriously is an act of condescension toward "victimized" groups.

Solid Science???

One of the things BestView enjoys is pointing out bad science. There are a lot of examples, but this is one that I ran across today. I haven't had the time to delve into the study mechanics to see exactly how flawed it might be, but I suspect this is junk. The article is here.

While researchers have long shown that tall people earn more than their shorter counterparts, it's not only social discrimination that accounts for this inequality -- tall people are just smarter than their height-challenged peers, a new study finds.

"As early as age three -- before schooling has had a chance to play a role -- and throughout childhood, taller children perform significantly better on cognitive tests," wrote Anne Case and Christina Paxson of Princeton University in a paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

The findings were based primarily on two British studies that followed children born in 1958 and 1970, respectively, through adulthood and a U.S. study on height and occupational choice.

The French do it again

France pledged to supply troops to the U.N. force in the south of Lebanon in order to get the latest worthless resolution passed by the Security Council. Now, they have reneged on the numbers and it is impossible to be surprised by this. This is the slimiest country on earth and the one the liberals in the U.S. like John Kerry insist we co-operate with in order to show we care about what the rest of the world thinks about our activities. Sadly Bush and Rice have bought into this crap.

Back to the meditation, boys

For some reason, I found this amusing.

Protesters calling for an end to recent violence in Sri Lanka found themselves brawling with hardline Buddhist monks Thursday, after a rally dubbed a "peace protest" turned unexpectedly violent.

Organizers said there were around 1,000 people in a park in the capital, Colombo, listening to a range of speakers when hardline saffron-robed monks opposed to concessions to Tamil Tiger rebels mounted the stage and erected banners.

Some more moderate Buddhist monks, protesting for peace, were already on the stage when punches were thrown. Soon, monks' robes and fists were flying, although no one was badly hurt, witnesses said.

A good history lesson

One of the most brilliant men in the world has a wonderful refresher course on the Mid-east which can be found here.

Just as I suspected

Boy, the liberals won't like this. The ACLU types and Democrats like Russ Finegold who would rather see our country attacked again like it was on September 11, 2001 than be perceived by their kindred spirits in Europe as less than civilized when we question terror suspects are in for a case of the vapors. As I suggested obliquely in a previous entry, the terrorist captured by the Pakistanis who coughed up information vital to preventing the British attack on a number of planes bound for the U.S. was subjected to extraordinary interrogation techniques. He was tortured. You can read the liberal view of this here. Basically, if you think this is a legal matter, you are on one side of this and if you think we are at war, you agree with me that a few electrodes attached to testicles is justified when it saves American's lives is just fine.

Steyn's Got it Right

“You may not be interested in war,” said Trotsky, “but war is interested in you.” The Israelis have always grasped that. If war is going to come, why not ensure that it comes at a time and place as advantageous to one as possible? That’s a large part of what’s happening in the Middle East. If you try to avoid confronting Iran now, you’ll only have to confront them under worse circumstances later. Jimmy Carter, who embodied the west as a smiling eunuch, wanted to avoid confronting the newborn Islamic Republic three decades ago and now it’s a nuclear power. As I always say, there is no “stability”: behind the polite façade of the UN peacekeepers patrolling the stalemate, history is always on the move; the bad guys get new weapons, new rockets – and, as we’ve seen in Haifa, these bad guys use what they have to their full extent. So what will they have in five years’ time?

Read it all here.

Katy Couric

Well, the time must be drawing near. Katy Couric is on CBS doing promos for her coming stint as anchor for the CBS Evening News. If you haven't heard one of them, she says that they believe that you want not just the news, but also you want her to explain it to you and explain how it affects you. So, if you are too stupid to understand the news and want to hear the looney left spin, then Katy is on her way...just for you.

The Lou Holtz Philosophy

I read an article recently about Lou Holtz the football coach which profiled his philosophy of not only handling his football teams, but also life. At other times BestView has pointed out individuals who stated things in a way which greatly exceeded my limited ability to express them. Lou did this when asked about his previous dismissal of players who broke team rules. At times these players were unable to compete in important games. Lou explained that his actions were simply an enforcement of the player's own decisions. The players were told if you do this or that, you are not going to play and will be sent home. When they choose to break the rules, they choose not to play. He thinks people have to be held accountable and privileges packaged with responsibilities. He tells his players that just because they did not honor their word when they agreed to obey team rules, they should not ask him to break his word to send them home.

This is, of course, a common sense way to raise children and a great way to explain to children the way in which "punishment" is really just a consequence of choices they make. Once the child learns the validity of this concept, one might expect that later in life as a young adult, the relationship between choices and outcomes is not only understood but becomes fundamental in decisions on such things as education, job choices, marital relationships, saving for retirement, etc.

Liquid on planes

As I understand it, the response of the airline security forces to the most recent terror plot will be a prohibition against taking liquids onboard the plane. This will be done by several means including bans on bottled water, tooth paste, mouth wash, and even such things as cosmetics. I don't want to be unduly skeptical, but if someone wants to secrete liquids onto a plane it will take a complete body search to prevent them from doing it. I can think of several ways to attach non-metallic containers to my person in such a way as to avoid detection by metal detectors and visual inspection. If two or more passengers do this and then combine the components during the flight, other measures will be necessary to save that plane.

Grammar Lesson

One of my readers corrected a punctuation error in one of my offerings the other day. I admit I am often not as careful with spelling and punctuation as I should be, but this headline in an English newspaper makes me feel somewhat better. Here it is for those of you who want to actually read the article entitled "Pregnant woman arrested by terror police in her pyjamas." Don't expect to learn how the police got into them, however.

Pakistan Information

The Associated Press reports that a Pakistani intelligence official "said an Islamic militant arrested near the Afghan-Pakistan border several weeks ago provided a lead that played a role in 'unearthing the plot.' " I sure hope those intelligence officials in Pakistan were nice to the militant when they chatted with him about the plot to kill some 2,000 to 3,000 persons in airplanes.

The bomb plot

We are being told that this was a sophisticated plot and we must restrict liquids on planes to prevent future attacks. My information indicates the plot was not new or especially sophisticated. It also suggests we should have been enforcing a liquid ban a long time ago.

In 1994, Yousef and Khalid Sheik Mohammed started testing airport security...The two had already converted fourteen bottles of contact lens solution into bottles containing nitroglycerin, which was readily available in the Philippines. Yousef taped a metal rod to the arch of his of foot in place of the detonators...

The Bomb

The "Mark II" "microbombs" had Casio digital watches as the timers, stabilizers that looked like cotton wool balls, and an undetectable nitroglycerin as the explosive. Other ingredients included glycerin, nitrate, sulfuric acid, and minute concentrations of nitrobenzene, silver azide (silver trinitride), and liquid acetone. Two 9-volt batteries in each bomb were used as a power source. The batteries would be connected to light bulb filaments that would detonate the bomb. Murad and Yousef wired an SCR as the switch to trigger the filaments to detonate the bomb. There was an external socket hidden when the wires were pushed under the watch base as the bomber would wear it. The alteration was so small that the watch could still be worn in a normal manner.

The U.N. Again

I have long wondered if there was even a scant use for the United Nations. Certainly this has been a difficult search, but I finally have one. With Israel needing time to finally finish a war in an era when even the U.S. fails to pursue one to a logical conclusion, we are using the U.N. perfectly. By trying to construct a way to bring about a "cease fire" or an end to "hostilities", we are working with the French of all people to develop a Security Council resolution which can pass. This is perfect in terms of assuring that Israel gets all the time it needs. Then if they finally do get one sufficiently wishy-washy for the French, we can all be certain that it will not produce the desired result if it is acted upon at all. Perfect.

Blatant Thievery

Our beloved Congresswoman from Georgia was defeated in her bid for re-election last evening and she has a very specific explanation for her loss. You see, the election was stolen by the poll workers, the voting machines, and so forth. There was a plot to negate her votes and count only those of her opponent. All of this is just blather, of course, but once again we have a Democrat politician blaming Democrat county and district poll workers for incompentence which resulted in a loss. In Gore's case, the defeat attributed to defects in the Florida process in 2000 was close. Cynthia lost by 20%, so evidently the Georgia Democrats are better thieves.

The no job policy

Liberals from such blue states as Maryland and Illinois have lately decided that WalMart doesn't pay enough to push union wages up artificially so they are trying to force them up with idiotic laws. In Maryland they tried to construct a law which would force WalMart to pay more for health insurance, but it was batted down by the courts since it was only aimed at WalMart.

More recently the city of Chicago has tried to force WalMart to pay not what the job was worth but what they thought a person should make according to his lifestyle and size of family. When WalMart was told of these new rules they built a store two blocks away from Chicago in Evergreen Park and there were 10,000 applicants for 350 jobs. Now Evergreen Park gets the tax revenue from the store, but Chicago is not through by any means. Liberal democrats on the Chicago City Council recently voted 35-14 to force stores 90,000 square feet or larger to pay workers what their lifestyle requires....not what the labor is worth. As a result Target just announced that they would pull out of a planned 32 acre shopping center being developed in the depressed Southside and will likely cut out the 160,000 square foot shop underway on the Northside as well.

These big box opponents need to realize that zero is not a living wage. They should also consider that the average WalMart store saves families $2300 a year by slashing prices and forcing other retailers to do the same. The big lie of democrats is they represent the working man. If they did, they would subsidize the building of WalMart stores in urban areas where groceries, for example, cost more than anywhere else in America.

Women's Lib in Islam?

In the Islamic countries of Saudi Arabia, Iran, Sudan and Pakistan women who are raped face incarceration or execution. There are evidently laws called "Hudood" which legalize the prosecution of women for fornication if she can't prove a crime was committed. In Pakistan, the woman must have four Muslim men as witnesses who will testify she was raped in order to avoid conviction. If she can't produce those 4 men, she is charged with falsely alleging a crime. Penalties include stoning to death, lashing or prison. Stoning and lashing are not common, but more than 2000 women are in prison in Pakistan for Hudood crimes.

There is a women's lib protest going on in Pakistan to repeal these laws and considerable international pressure is being exerted on Musharraf to do this, but it hasn't happened yet.

The 9/11 tapes

This article in Vanity Fair is the first publication of the communication tapes from NORAD and civilian controllers of air traffic on 9/11. Very interesting.

More on the U.N.

As should be evident by now, I am not a big fan of the U.N. One of my very favorite columnists, Mark Steyn, being a brilliant and insightful fellow agrees with me on its worthlessness. He, however, is able to bring specifics from numerous directions to back up his opinion. Here is a really good one. Read it all.

Two years ago, you may recall, Sudan was elected to the UN Human Rights Commission at a time when the government’s proxies were busy slaughtering and gang-raping their way round Darfur. The last thing one needs when one’s got a hectic schedule of mass murder on one’s plate is a lot of tedious paper-shuffling committee meetings in New York, but Sudan’s ambassador, Elfatih Mohammed Ahmed Erwa, gamely rose to the occasion by announcing, upon joining the Commission, that he was very concerned about human rights abuses at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.

Let me see if I have this right

Six years ago the U.N. passed something called Resolution 1559 that called for Hezbollah to disarm, leave the area next to Israel, and defer to a "peace keeping" force put there 28 years ago by the U.N. Well, they did not disarm, did not leave, did not hesitate to invade Israel, and kidnapped the Israel soldiers and killed others. The response by Israel was "excessive", disproportional, caused the expected civilian casualties, and is now drawing the howls of cease-fire from nearly all countries. So, what is the solution to this "crisis"? Go back to the U.N. for another but differently numbered resolution. Give me a break.

Losing or not winning?

This is the summary paragraph of a pretty good editorial in National Review Online.

President Bush said on Monday morning that Syria and Iran “must” stop their support for terror. When a president of the United States uses such a strong word he has to back it up, or else he renders it meaningless and discredits himself. The fight has to be taken to Syria and Iran, which doesn’t mean imminent military action, but does mean more serious pressure on all fronts. Iran’s agents in Iraq currently don’t fear us — they should. And our patience with the current round of ineffective nuclear diplomacy should be wearing thin fast. As for Syria, there are still sanctions that can be levied against it, and Israel should make it clear that it considers Syria’s continued arming of Hezbollah a hostile act. The downward drift of events in the Middle East is eventually going to force the Bush administration either to tacitly admit defeat in the region or to accept the confrontation that its regional antagonists are forcing. And defeat is too awful to contemplate.

Cause and Effect?

The bias of the L.A. Times as it relates to the "conflict" in Lebanon is illustrated below. Here is something which might be related to their approach to news.

Anti-Israel Bias

The blog by the name of Patterico's Pontifications has a really good illustration of the daily bias exhibited by the L.A. Times against Israel. Read it here. Liberals seem to know exactly what they consider war crimes and abuses by the Bush administration as it relates to the Geneva Conventions. The media whine incessantly about our treatment of terrorists at Guantanamo, but they gloss over the fact that it is a war crime to target civilians with things like rockets lobbed indiscriminately into cities. It is a war crime to involve civilians in war activities by hiding among them and yet we read not a word about this on the part of Hezbollah in the L.A. Times and other liberal media. All we see is the result of inadvertant bombing by Israel. Keep in mind what Lebanon would look like if they INTENTIONALLY targeted non-military assets and individuals.

As I have said in a previous entry in this blog, if you are going to war, you need to pursue it to a point where one of the participants is utterly defeated and sues for peace via surrender.

Modern Warfare

Best View has opined on this subject before, but now is as good a time as any to repeat my theory of warfare. World War II ended when the Japanese were convinced by 2 atomic bombs that continuation of a war they started was not tenable. So, they surrendered and they are now an ally. Germany had cities like Dresden carpet bombed to oblivion and they too got the message. They also surrendered and now they too are allies of sorts. The thing to remember is civilians in both countries were killed in large numbers. There was no call to "play nice" and use proportionate measures and all the baloney we are hearing now. If you are going to war, go to war to win and to win quickly. We did not do that in Korea and it lingers as a problem 60 years later. We did not fight to win in Viet Nam and that is now widely viewed as a tragic experience. In Iraq, we are left with a festering mess because Bush I did not want to press Saddam to actually surrender. Now we are also just sitting there hoping all sides will play nice.
I think the reason for this is found in the widely expressed opinion of those on the left that if such and such happens the "world" opinion will turn negative and we must respect that. I say screw the opinion of those who will do nothing and are not affected by terrorism at the present. Until Israel eradicates those who have an expressed intention to wipe them off the map, there will be no peace and there might as well be an unpopular level of war by-product--civilian deaths and the destruction of infrastructure.

Congressional Silly Season

We are getting down to the end of the congressional session before our politicians take the month of August off for a well-needed vacation---with the French and Germans. Democrats are in full throat calling for a raise in the minimum wage and liberal Republicans don't want to be in an election race where they can be accused of not giving a man his full due for a day's work, so they want to at least be able to say they support a "living wage", also. In order to do this, the leaders of the Republican majority have devised a bill which would raise the minimum wage to $7.25 over 3 years, but it is combined with a decrease in the estate taxes which the democrats can't stand since this is a "tax break for the rich". Of course, there is no way you are going to take more from a rich man's estate than he wants to relinquish. A wealthy man can always find a way to protect his accumulated assets from being confiscated by the government. By the same token, you are never going to force an intelligent business man to pay more in wages than his circumstances will allow. Liberals seem incapable of understanding that if someone is being paid $6.00/hour in an environment like ours when there is essentially full employment, that is all that job or person is worth and all anyone will pay. Tell a businessman to pay more and a job is lost. The democrats in the senate now say they will kill the house-passed measure and not permit an increase in the minimum wage to prevent the estate tax from being lowered. This will leave the senate democrats in the position of denying a benefit to millions (in their rhetoric) in order to extract more in tax from almost nobody. The status quo is probably as good an outcome as we can expect. On to the beach.

Porn Radio???

KFYE-FM hasn't budged from the Fresno-area radio dial, but it's about as far as you can get from the Christian music, sermons and Bible stories it was broadcasting until about a week ago.

Now it calls itself "Porn Radio" — "all sex radio, all the time," with a suggestion that people under 21 not listen.

Songs with little in common except suggestive titles and lyrics fill the playlist, including "Why Don't We Do It in the Road" by the Beatles, "Sexual Healing" by Marvin Gaye and "Nasty" by Janet Jackson. Tamer songs are heated up by adding recorded moans and groans.

A liberal's view of democrats

Peter Beinart is a liberal editor of the New Republic who concludes a recent essay as follows:

The Democratic Party's single biggest foreign policy liability is not that Americans think Democrats are soft. It is that Americans think Democrats stand for nothing, that they have no principles beyond political expedience. And given the party's behavior over the past several months, it is not hard to understand why.

Read it all here.

More on "How True"

A reader is finally setting me straight on the letter referenced below and I now have a link to the original. I am not sure where I got the erroneous version, but you can read the letter posted by David Bogner here. Sorry about the failure to attribute it correctly in the first instance.

Friedman's Mid-east musings

Thomas Friedman thinks we should either go to war with Syria or start talking to it. He says this attempt to isolate them is not working and we are missing a chance, however slim, to separate Hezbolla from Iran. Read the whole thing here.

"How True" may be apocryphal

One of the readers of Best View sent a note to the effect that he had checked with the newspaper and the letter reprinted in the entry entitled "How True" did not appear there. I regret that, but I still agree with the message. Now I don't have to feel so sorry for the poor Marine.

Troops????

From the Opinion Journal.


Support is building quickly for an international military force to be placed in southern Lebanon," the New York Times reports:

But there remains a small problem: where will the troops come from?

The United States has ruled out its soldiers' participating, NATO says it is overstretched, Britain feels its troops are overcommitted and Germany says it is willing to participate only if Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia that it would police, agrees to it, a highly unlikely development.

"All the politicians are saying, 'Great, great' to the idea of a force, but no one is saying whose soldiers will be on the ground," said one senior European official. "Everyone will volunteer to be in charge of the logistics in Cyprus."

So let's see if we have this straight. The U.N. passes a resolution calling on Hezbollah to disarm. Then nothing much happens until Hezbollah enters Israeli territory to kill and kidnap Israeli soldiers, whereupon Jerusalem takes it upon itself to enforce that resolution.

Now the "international community" is calling on Israel to exercise "restraint" as rockets rain on Israeli cities and urging an "international military force" to impose a "cease-fire" without thinking through where that force would come from.

How True!

Nebraska Alliance - Times Herald Lincoln, July 19, 2006 Why the world should stand back and let Israel do what it has to do Dave Wilson, Capt. retired, US Navy When I was in the Navy, I once witnessed a bar fight in downtown Olongapo (Philippines) that still haunts my dreams. The fight was between a big oafish Marine and a rather soft-spoken, medium sized Latino sailor from my ship. All evening the Marine had been trying to pick a fight with one of us and had finally set his sights on this diminutive shipmate of mine. . . figuring him for a safe target. When my friend refused to be goaded into a fight the Marine sucker punched him from behind on the side of the head so hard that blood instantly started to pour from this poor man's mutilated ear. Everyone present was horrified and was prepared to absolutely murder this Marine, but my shipmate quickly turned on him and began to single-handedly back him towards a corner with a series of stinging jabs and upper cuts that gave more than a hint to a youth spent boxing in a small gym in the Bronx. Each punch opened a cut on the Marine's startled face and by the time he had been backed completely into the corner he was blubbering for someone to stop the fight. He invoked his split lips and chipped teeth as reasons to stop the fight. He begged us to stop the fight because he could barely see through the river of blood that was pouring out of his split and swollen brows. Nobody moved. Not one person. The only sound in the bar was the sickening staccato sound of this sailor's lightning fast fists making contact with new areas of the Marine's head. The only sound I have heard since that was remotely similar was from the first Rocky film when Sylvester Stallone was punching sides of beef in the meat locker. Finally the Marine's pleading turned to screams. . .. a high, almost womanly shriek. And still the punches continued relentlessly. Several people in the bar took a few tentative steps as though they wanted to try to break it up at that point, but hands reached out from the crowd and held them tight. I'm not ashamed to say that mine were two of the hands that held someone back. You see, in between each blow the sailor had begun chanting a soft cadence: "Say [punch] you [punch] give [punch] up [punch]. . . say [punch] you [punch]were [punch] wrong [punch]". He had been repeating it to the Marine almost from the start but we only became aware of it when the typical barroom cheers had died down and we began to be sickened by the sight and sound of the carnage. This Marine stood there shrieking in the corner of the bar trying futilely to block the carefully timed punches that were cutting his head to tatters. . . right down to the skull in places. But he refused to say that he gave up. . . or that he was wrong. Even in the delirium of his beating he believed in his heart that someone would stop the fight before he had to admit defeat. I'm sure this strategy had served him well in the past and had allowed him to continue on his career as a barroom bully. Finally, in a wail of agony the Marine shrieked "I give up", and we gently backed the sailor away from him. I'm sure you can guess why I have shared this story today. I'm not particularly proud to have been witness to such a bloody spectacle, and the sound of that Marine's woman-like shrieks will haunt me to my grave. But I learned something that evening that Israel had better learn for itself if it is to finally be rid of at least one of its tormentors: This is one time an Arab aggressor must be allowed to be beaten so badly that every civilized nation will stand in horror, wanting desperately to step in and stop the carnage. . . but knowing that the fight will only truly be over when one side gives up and finally admits defeat. Just as every person who had ever rescued that bully from admitting defeat helped create the cowardly brute I saw that evening in the bar, every well-intentioned power that has ever stepped in and negotiated a ceasefire for an Arab aggressor has helped create the monsters we see around us today. President Lahoud of Lebanon, a big Hezbollah supporter and a close ally of Syria, has been shrieking non-stop to the UN Security Council for the past two days to get them to force Israel into a cease fire. Clearly he has been reading his autographed copy of 'Military Success for Dummies Arab Despots' by the late Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt. Ever since Nasser accidentally discovered the trick in '56, every subsequent Arab leader has stuck to his tried and true formula for military success: Instigate a war. Once the war is well underway and you are in the process of having your ass handed to you. . . get a few world powers to force your western opponent into a cease fire. Whatever you do, don't surrender or submit to any terms dictated by your enemy. That would ruin everything! All you have to do is wait it out and eventually the world will become sickened at what is being done to your soldiers and civilian population. . . and will force a truce. Once a truce has been called you can resume your intransigence (which probably caused the conflict in the first place), and even declare victory as your opponent leaves the field of battle. This tactic has never failed. Not once. In fact it worked so will for the Egyptians in 1973, that to this day they celebrate the Yom Kippur War - a crushing defeat at the hands of Israel - as a military victory! No kidding. . . it's a national holiday over there! President Lahoud has already begun to shriek like a school girl to the UN Security Council to "Stop the violence and arrange a cease-fire, and then after that we'll be ready to discuss all matters." Uh huh. Forgive me if I find that a tad hard to swallow. He allowed Hezbollah to take over his country. He allowed the regular Lebanese army to provide radar targeting data for the Hezbollah missile that struck the Israeli destroyer. He has turned a blind eye while Iranian and Syrian weapons, advisers and money have poured into his country. And now that his country is in ruins he wants to call it a draw. As much as it may sicken the world to stand by and watch it happen, strong hands need to hold back the weak-hearted and let the fight continue until one side finally admits unambiguous defeat

Hastert still doesn't get it

Dennis Hastert was on Fox yesterday and was asked about the FBI warrant to search the office of Congressman William Jefferson. House Speaker Dennie Hastert did not rule out getting involved in disgraced Congressman William Jefferson's latest lawsuit, though he indicated that he would not do it in defense of Jefferson; rather, he thinks Representatives have certain "prerogatives" written into the Constitution which demand a procedure for searching beyond, evidently, the standard warrant. So, in other words Hastert believes that if the Executive Branch goes to the Judicial Branch to get a warrant to search the offices of anyone else in the U.S. except a congressman it is O.K. That is nonsense as anyone who can read the Constitution will readily understand. It is sad to see the Republicans get to the belief they are entitled to things the others of us are not within just 12 years of getting a majority. It took the Democrats 40 years to get there and they were turned out in 1994.

I didn't know this

"I'd always thought marrying a blood relative as close as a cousin was immoral, and certainly risky if you plan to have kids. Conventional wisdom says only primitive people who live in isolated places marry cousins. It leads to stupid children. But that's a myth.
It's the sort of myth that leads to stupid laws. Half the states in America have banned cousin marriage, but there's no good reason for it. You can marry your cousin and have perfectly intelligent kids.
Take Albert Einstein -- was he intelligent enough for you? His parents were cousins, and he married his cousin. So did Charles Darwin and Queen Victoria. Worldwide, 20 percent of all married couples are cousins. "
From an essay by John Stossel.
Read the entire article here.

Congress at Work

For some reason, I just switched over to C-Span and our House of Representatives was voting on whether or not to make this School Bus Safety Week. All in favor vote Aye and all opposed vote Nay. This is a 5 minute vote. Next will be do we love Momma's fried chicken?

Outrageous!!

I don't have time this morning to comment on this article, but it is so mind-boggling that I probably couldn't do it justice.

Just Wondering

If there is anything really important to address, is there anything more worthless than the U.N.?

I am not exactly clear on what it is, but wouldn't soccer be a more exciting game if there was no such thing as "offside"?

Is there a country anywhere which doubts that if Israel feels its existence is threatened it would use the nuclear option?

Is there a more disgraceful example of political corruption in the history of the U.S. than the Big Dig in Massachusetts?

Feel free to comment if you disagree.

The French Reaction

This was entirely predictable, but is almost humorous in a way. Israel is invaded and some soldiers are killed and others are kidnapped. This is on one front. On this front (Lebenon) and another one (Gaza), rockets are lobbed into civilian populations from a territory handed over with no strings attached and no Israeliis were left behind. So how should Israel respond? Well, that response should be proportional.

"I find honestly -- as all Europeans do -- that the current reactions are totally disproportionate," he said in a live television interview on France's national Bastille Day. So spoke Jacques Chirac.

Who could have predicted that Israel would respond in a way that exceeded that which France would adopt? Some things never change.

Crime and Guns

Florida has no state law restricting assault weapons or rapid-fire ammunition magazines. Florida also does not require background checks at gun shows, does not require child-safety locks to be sold with guns, does not have any handgun safety standards to limit Saturday night specials and even forces police to let people carry hidden handguns in public."
Naturally, the anti-gun groups rushed to claim that tourists should not go there because they would most likely be shot by the lawlessness sure to result. Well, the Palm Beach Post just reported the crime rate in Florida is at an all-time low. Governor Bush attributed some of that to the gun laws.
Meanwhile, there is the report from Washington, D. C. that a crime emergency has been declared in that area and maybe it is not a coincidence that D.C. has the most strict gun laws in the nation. Of course, liberals find this concept impossible to comprehend and accept. It is the same phenomenon as lowering taxes raises revenues. They don't get it and evidently never will.

Gotta obey the law

This just in: Now let's hope the idiotic Republican leadership doesn't persist with the notion that Congressional Offices are sanctuaries for illegal activity.

Chief U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan said members of Congress are not above the law. He rejected requests from lawmakers and Democratic Rep. William Jefferson to return material seized by the FBI in a May 20-21 search of Jefferson's office.

World Opinion

I was reading today that we need to close the detention facility at Guantanamo because of numerous calls internationally to close it. There must be something wrong with me since it would be hard for me to care less about the opionion of these other countries who would not hesitate to yell for us to come save their butts if military action was required. In addition, each of these countries have long lists of their citizens lined up to get into this country via the immigration route. I would tell them to go jump a stump. I am not even sure what that means, but we better keep this G-rated.

Liberals are so predictable

Last June 28 Bestview pointed out how the arrest of the home-grown terrorist in Miami would be challenged by those who would point out that they hadn't done anything wrong yet. Well, here is the New York Times first offering on this aspect of Bush's success which they can't abide.

The great Hollywood anti-war fast---Steyn

Here is some of Mark Steyn's take on the movie industries support for the Cindy Sheehan fast until the war is over. As mentioned in an earlier Bestview offering, some of our finest Hollywood stars will support her by not eating for an entire 24 hours. Read it all here.

At adjoining tables, other celebrities rushed to show their support for the anti-war movement: ''I'll not have what she's not having." Winona Ryder is telling waiters, ''Hold the haunch of venison.'' Keira Knightley is saying, ''Hey, I'll just go with the short stack this morning. And the low-fat simulated-maple syrup substitute.'' Ice T has given up iced tea. Disgusted by the callousness of the Bush war machine, William Powell and Myrna Loy have decided to go without the olive in their fourth martini. Willie Nelson is said to be gaunt and sounding croaky. Michael Moore, hovering dangerously at 300 pounds, has told friends, ''You can never be too rich but you can be too thin.'' Molly Ringwald's press agent has announced his client is starving for publicity. Tom Cruise was reported as looking physically shrunken, but then put his elevator shoes back on. Demonstrating yet again his strong personal commitment to political activism, George Clooney has delegated his rolling fast to his stunt double for insurance reasons. Yoko Ono has released a new all-star charity single of ''Give Peas A Chance.'' In the forthcoming Bond movie, 007 is tossed into a tank of ravenous sharks, but they refuse to eat him and, in a savage indictment of Bush foreign policy, sip their mineral water in a desultory fashion for 20 minutes before calling for the check. America's greatest living war hero and simultaneous anti-war hero, John Kerry, pledged his own passionate support for the crusade of his celebrity friends: ''I ordered the banana cream pie before I sent it back.''

Georgia Votes Finally Count

ATLANTA, Jul. 6, 2006 (AP Online delivered by Newstex) -- The state Supreme Court reinstated Georgia's constitutional ban on gay marriage Thursday, just hours after New York's highest court upheld that state's gay-marriage ban.

The Georgia Supreme Court, reversing a lower court judge's ruling, decided unanimously that the ban did not violate the state's single-subject rule for ballot measures. Superior Court Judge Constance Russell of Fulton County had ruled that it did.

Seventy-six percent of Georgia voters approved the ban when it was on the ballot in 2004.

North Korea

We need to do something to get the attention of these psychopaths. First we need to get our troops out of South Korea and then our options open up considerably. Next we need to see that Japan has nuclear capability. That would get China's attention which is the best vehicle to get Korea's attention.

Starving for Peace

Cindy Sheehan vows to not eat until the troops in Iraq are brought home. Some of the Hollywood idiots are supporting her by not eating for 24 hours. Bestview predicts Cindy will find a reason to eat before she starves to death.

My kind of Democrat

Governor Richardson of New Mexico was elected in 2002 and since then has cut the state's income tax to 4.9% from 8.2% and cut the capital gains tax in half. This has resulted in a 1/2 billion surplus fueled by a 27% increase in revenues. He says the Democrats need to be a party of growth rather than one of redistribution. If he gets the Democrat nomination for President, I may vote for him if John McCain runs against him. That would be a first for me.

Exaggeration? I don't think so.

A cycle of violence in the mideast??

Of all the conflicts in the world, the one that seems the most tediously and hopelessly endless is the Arab-Israeli dispute, which has been going on in much the same way, it seems, for 60 years. Just about every story you'll see will characterize Israel's invasion of Gaza as a continuation of the cycle of violence.

What is so remarkable about the current wave of violence in Gaza is that the event at the origin of the "cycle" is not at all historical, but very contemporary. The event is not buried in the mists of history. It occurred less than one year ago. Before the eyes of the whole world, Israel left Gaza. Every Jew, every soldier, every military installation, every remnant of Israeli occupation was uprooted and taken away.

How do the Palestinians respond? What have they done with Gaza, the first Palestinian territory in history to be independent, something neither the Ottomans nor the British nor the Egyptians nor the Jordanians, all of whom ruled Palestinians before the Israelis, ever permitted? On the very day of Israel's final pullout, the Palestinians began firing rockets out of Gaza into Israeli towns on the other side of the border. And remember: those are attacks not on settlers but on civilians in Israel proper, the pre-1967 Israel that the international community recognizes as legitimately part of sovereign Israel, a member state of the U.N. A thousand rockets have fallen since.

Read the whole thing here.

The Hamdan Decision

The best I can determine the chief result of this ruling will be to delay the trials of Guantanamo detainees until Congress or the Pentagon establishes a regime of military commissions that meets the court's approval. Now we have to listen to the liberals screech about how terrible it is that no terrorists will be let free and are being held without a trial for an unlimited period of time. Hopefully that time will be when the threat of terrorism is over.

Makes you go "Hmmmmm!"

Eleven insurgent groups, eight of which are being led by the 1920 Revolution Brigades, have issued a counter proposal to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's plan for national reconciliation. The insurgent groups have offered to quit the battlefield if the following conditions are met:

• The United States agrees to withdraw foreign forces from Iraq in two years.

• An end to U.S. and Iraqi military operations against insurgent forces.

• Compensation for Iraqis killed by U.S. and government forces and reimbursement for property damage.

As I read this we can make the following observations. First, the insurgents agree with the liberals in the Senate that there should be firm withdrawal date...albeit one further away than John Kerry wants. Secondly, we must be doing some good work on the military front if the insurgents want us to stop. Winners of a war seldom sue for a cease-fire.

Sad but true

"For too long the Palestinians have been protected from the natural consequences of their own brutality and bloody-mindedness, allowed by the Western world to make war while pretending at peace. This has only infantilized them, shielding them from the rightful consequences of their actions, encouraging them to become more vicious.

At some point there has to be a war to resolve this, a real war, with the other side fighting back. And one side needs to be decimated and humilated. That's how peace is made. Only when people truly feel the horrors of war are they willing to give it up."

This conclusion is offered by a blog that confirms what I have felt for some time. The terrorists in Gaza announced today that they shot a rocket tipped with a chemical warhead into Israel. It is doubtful that this is true, but the consequences of actually firing one intended to kill civilians in Israel would be profound enough to actually bring an end to the conflict in that region.

The Putin Solutiton vis a vis Guantanamo

President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday ordered Russia's special services to hunt down and "destroy" the killers of four Russian diplomats in Iraq, the Kremlin said.

Nikolai Patrushev, the head of the Federal Security Service _ the main successor to the Soviet KGB _ later said that everything would be done to ensure that the killers "do not escape from responsibility," the Interfax news agency reported.

"The president has ordered the special forces to take all necessary measures to find and destroy the criminals who killed Russian diplomats in Iraq," the Kremlin press service said in a brief statement.

Bush, Roosevelt and Treason

The battle of Midway Island was the turning point of the Pacific War. Victory at Midway was possible because the U.S. had broken the Japanese naval code. The Chicago Tribune spilled the beans in a story that ran under the headline: "NAVY HAD WORD OF JAP PLAN TO STRIKE AT SEA."

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was furious. He knew that if the Japanese read the story, they'd suspect their codes were compromised, and change them.

The president "initially was disposed to send in the Marines to shut down Tribune tower," wrote Harry Evans. "He was talked out of that, then considered trying (Chicago Tribune publisher Robert) McCormick for treason, which carried a death penalty in wartime."

A grand jury was empaneled, but prosecution was dropped because the Japanese were still using the Purple code, evidently having missed the story. The publicity from a trial would clue them in.

So Col. McCormick escaped prosecution. But with what the Chicago Tribune had done in mind, Congress in 1950 added Section 798 to the Espionage Act of 1917. It reads in part:

"Whoever knowingly and willfully communicates, furnishes, transmits...or publishes ...any classified information...concerning the communications intelligence activities of the United States...shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both."

Section 798 applies specifically to what the New York Times did last December, when it published a story revealing that the National Security Agency was listening in on calls from al Qaida suspects abroad to people in the U.S.

Read it all here.

Bush can't win

There are two recent stories now being digested which point up how the Bush administration can't win with the press and liberal columnists. The first is the arrest of the clowns in Miami who are being charged with planning attacks on the Sears Building and other targets. It turns out they are largely unable in either assets or intellect to carry out their plans in all probability so the mantra now being advanced is to the effect that Bush is not really protecting us and the announcement of the capture of the Miami blacks is shear hype. What is the alternative? Well, we could have continued to monitor them until they actually acquired the means, but that would have meant we had to tie up resources for maybe years. The decision to go ahead and arrest them, prosecute them and lock them up seems to make sense to me. The liberal media is uspet that Bush can claim credit for an undercover effort that did not involve an "eminent" threat. Sound familiar?

Another example of how Bush can't win is in the revelation that billions were dispersed to folks who falsely claimed to be victims of the Hurricane Katrina. The reason for this was the decision by FEMA to go ahead and pay those who claimed money and support rather than make a detailed investigation of each claim while the media screamed that the cruel Bush administration was needlessly delaying help to poor starving blacks. I am not at all happy with the way funds were wasted, but some of it was unavoidable as best I can see.

How true

"A bore is a man who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company."
Gravina (1664-1718)

Unsolicited Advice

The Democrats really have a problem which this Republican would like to see remedied, but that is not likely. As long as the liberals who control the dems persist in their opposition to our efforts to confront islamofascism, they will not get anywhere politically. The recent votes in the Senate pretty much show that the democrat Senators are divided into two camps---Out Soon or Out Pretty Soon. What they should do is revert to the Democratic posture of the 40's when they were the ones who advanced the idea of promoting democracy through the projection of force if necessary. The Republicans took the opposite position and a quick look back at their fate will help explain how futile the liberal dem stance is today, in my opinion. During the cold war the liberals were considered soft on communism because they were. They exhibited core sympathy with the idea that communists redistributed wealth, advanced the working class, etc. Now, the liberals are widely thought of as being soft on a religious fundamentalism that represses women, kills gays, suppresses dissent through decapitation, and has no problem killing civilians to promote fear. Americans know instinctively that if we leave Iraq too soon the jihadists will be imboldened and consider that a victory leading to more terrorism in places not now at risk. So, the effort in Iraq is being carried on with a split in our body politic which will only slow its conclusion. This fits the classical definition of incompetence whereby an action which is advanced to achieve an objective produces the exact opposite result. The fastest way out of Iraq is to support the President and the only way to recapture any political power is to support what the liberals now oppose. Those of us who are conservative (as opposed to Republican) would like to see a different party in power, but not one advancing the idiotic positions of John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi, and others who think we have a law-enforcement problem with some muslims and Bush lied.

Tribes in the Mideast

I read an essay the other day which I have been thinking about quite a bit. The problem is I can't find it now and don't even remember who wrote it so I can provide attribution. The point of it was to advance the premise that our attempts to bring democracy to Iraq is really a steep climb because these people are not constitutionally able to embrace it. His analysis was based on the historic reliance by these people on tribal society. He went all the way back to Alexander the Great, but the bottom line is these people are more comfortable with a tribal structure where they know their place and can rely on the fact that the others in the tribe will support them in all of life's endeavors from jobs to marriage to conflicts with others. Democracy requires more individual activity than these people with centuries of tribal loyalties can excercise. They need a strong man to rally around (like Saddam) and democracy as we know it does not encourage that. One General asked a tribal sheik what the U.S. military needed to do right after taking over Iraq. He was told to start reconstruction activity and get out as many pictures of George Bush as they could for the Iraqis to rally around. I am afraid the sheik was right and our go nice approach is doomed to a long insurgency conflict.

World Cup Soccer

I am really getting to like this soccer. Today Germany beats Sweden and the German fans proceed to have a riot with English soccer fans. Ghana beat someone the other day and the fans at home went crazy and as of last count there were 3 deaths during the celebration. This is going to get really good when someone actually wins something.

Kerry Does it Again

There are too many people watching our politicians now. In the good old days a comment meant to seem smart and insightful would not be remembered and used against a pol on some future date. Alas, poor John Kerry can't catch a break with the bloggers. Here is what ol' "I served in Viet Nam" Kerry said in 2003 to the Council of Foreign Relations:

I fear that in the run-up to the 2004 election, the administration is considering what is tantamount to a cut-and-run strategy. Their sudden embrace of accelerated Iraqification and American troop withdrawal dates, without adequate stability, is an invitation to failure. The hard work of rebuilding Iraq must not be dictated by the schedule of the next American election.

I have called for the administration to transfer sovereignty, and they must transfer it to the Iraqi people as quickly as circumstances permit. But it would be a disaster and a disgraceful betrayal of principle to speed up the process simply to lay the groundwork for a politically expedient withdrawal of American troops. That could risk the hijacking of Iraq by terrorist groups and former Ba'athists.

Kerry was against cutting and running before he was for it!

World Cup Soccer

I watched more soccer today than I ever have----cumulatively. This was only parts of 2 games, but it occured to me that some of the players have definite skills and admirable stamina, but one thing that was not obvious to me was the value of a soccer coach during a game. It doesn't seem to me that they do much actual coaching at this level. Another thing I quickly realized is Brazil has a better team than the U.S.

French Fried Nonsense

Most people have never heard of the Center for Science in the Public Interest but it is really worth learning about. It recently sued Kentucky Fried Chicken for using cooking oil containing trans fat. It is asking the court to make KFC use other types of oil and to inform its customers just how much of this is used. The suit says KFC's use of trans fat shows the company is beset with an "evil motive" and recklessly puts its customers at risk of a Kentucky fried coronary.

As you evaluate this situation to see which side you are going to be on, keep in mind that the reason KFC uses hydrogenated oils in the first place is because CSPI forced the company to quit frying their potatoes and chicken in beef tallow in 1988. Now the same group of idiots who harassed the company into switching to oils modified to remain solid at room temperature is suing to do the exact opposite. This is accompanied by a study by Dr. Scott Grundy who is director of the Center of Human Nutrition at Southwestern Medical School in Dallas which found the alleged link between trans fat and heart disease was too weak to warrant government controls or limitations.

I say bring back the old fries cooked in real fat.

Smokers

While on the recent trip, we spent a couple of days in Tunica, Mississippi at a casino. One of the things that I started wondering about was the high percentage of casino patrons who smoke relative to the number at other places where I find myself. I no longer go to bars, but I suspect casinos are maybe the last place where smokers are not discriminated against and treated like second class citizens. If that is so, smokers may go there to kill themselves without a hassle. On the other hand, it could be argued that a lack of common sense accompanies both smoking and gambling and persons who gamble against the house odds may also be inclined to gamble against the medical odds. I really wish there was such a thing as a smoke-free casino, but I have talked to managers of casinos about this and they all say there is no way any casino is going to alienate their smokers. I am sure that they know what is best for the gambling business.

Troop Support

On a recent trip we found ourselves in a large rotunda at the Atlanta airport waiting for a plane while I got on the internet. All of a sudden there was a chorus of applause and as I looked around the subject of the adulation was a group of our soldiers coming through on the way to a terminal. The applause was unanimous and continued until the last uniform was out of sight. Very moving.

Just when I thought it couldn't get more ridiculous

Take some nausea medicine and go read this article in the Washington Post whereby 41 high school students were actually named Valedictorian.

Ann Coulter is in the sweet spot

It is greatly amusing to watch the reaction to Ann Coulter's book on the Godless Liberals. As she pointed out in a recent article the fact that she called them Godless is not an apparent charge anyone wants to challenge. She called Bill Clinton a rapist. No problem. She made further charges relating to the shady acts by Hillary. No outrage. She called some liberal widows of the 9/11 terror attack "broads" and everyone gets an attack of the vapors. I just love watching the liberal media make her into a superstar when she should be ignored if their agenda is to be well served.

Something missing?

The Democrats have just issued their plan for "A New Direction for America" that never mentions al Qaeda, terrorism, or any aspect of national security. Is that a lack of ideas or a lack of interest? Maybe if we raise the minimum wage the terrorists will just go to work at the higher wage level and leave us alone. Here are their suggestions:

Democrats in Congress offer a New Direction, putting the common good of all Americans first for a change, and will:

MAKE HEALTH CARE MORE AFFORDABLE
Fix the prescription drug program by putting people ahead of drug companies and HMOs, eliminating wasteful subsidies, negotiating lower drug prices and ensuring the program works for all seniors; invest in stem cell and other medical research.

LOWER GAS PRICES AND ACHIEVE ENERGY INDEPENDENCE
Crack down on price gouging; eliminate billions in subsidies for oil and gas companies and use the savings to provide consumer relief and develop American alternatives, including biofuels; promote energy efficient technology.

HELP WORKING FAMILIES
Raise the minimum wage; repeal tax giveaways that encourage companies to move jobs overseas.

CUT COLLEGE COSTS
Make college tuition deductible from taxes; expand Pell grants and cut student loan costs.

ENSURE DIGNIFIED RETIREMENT
Prevent the privatization of Social Security; expand savings incentives; ensure pension fairness.

REQUIRE FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY
Restore the budget discipline of the 1990s that helped eliminate deficits and spur record economic growth.

Too much information

There was an article in the Wall Street Journal this past week about a scientist by the name of Bruce Lahn who is a Professor at the University of Chicago. The gist of the story is that he is a world renowned scientist in the field of genetics and spent several years analyzing DNA from various populations looking at how mutations over the past several thousand years might be linked to cultural development. Oops. The data did not suit the outcome desired by the politically correct crowd. Even though Dr. Lahn is of Asian descent, his findings that lead to maps showing mutations and brain size and accomplishments followed those who established themselves in Asia, Europe and the Americas exceeded those of the people who were analyzed in sub- Saharan Africa were not appreciated. The usual charges of racism were hurled at him and even his own school advised him to go into other pursuits rather than raise the ire of the critics who want nothing to confirm what we all strongly suspect--there is a genetic basis for behavior and intelligence. Dr. Lahn, who left China as a teenager, based his research on the premise that there was a small group of anatomically modern humans who left Africa some 100,000 years ago and once they reached the Eurasian land mass they continued to split up and became isolated from one another. Thus genetic analysis of these groups was undertaken to determine if various traits could be identified which developed differently. So, one finds lactose intolerance in Europeans, for example, is much less common than in the African gene pool. This could be explained by a theory which holds that drinking milk from domesticated dairy animals conferred a nutritional advantage which was not needed by those in Africa with different eating habits. Likewise, the African population has a resistance to malaria which is not observed in other populations to the North. These traits are perfectly fine to publish, but not theories which would hold that one gene Dr. Lahn found corellated with the appearance of art on cave walls and another appears in a group which occured 5,800 years ago and coincided with the development of cities and written language. It is not necessary to point out that none of this happened in the sub-Saharan African population left behind, of course.
Well, the uproar over this research is most interesting but not surprising. There is simply some research that the liberal establishment does not want done. The results could be awkward for these antiscientific protectors of African descendents and their argument is that the knowledge does not help anyone and could be "hurtful". As a scientist, I would like to see the results and doubt they should cause damage we can't handle. In any event, it is an interesting dynamic.

Ethanol

We are now passing laws which require U.S. motorists to use at least 7.5 billion gallons of ethanol by 2012. This is being touted as a measure which will reduce our dependence on foreign oil. We subsidize ethanol to the tune of 51 cents per gallon, in addition. All of this is mostly a sham. First, we need to realize that it takes 1.29 gallons of fossil fuel to produce one gallon of ethanol. This was recently found by research conducted by scientists from Cornell and Berkley. That is because it takes considerable fossil fuel to produce ethanol in the form of fertilizer to grow the corn, transportation of the crop to the distillery, transportation of the the ethanol to the blending sites, and so forth. So, the liberals who claim that if we use ethanol it will keep us from supporting the Saudis and the nasty oil companies who support George Bush are full of it.

Election Results

The election of Brian Bilbrey to take Duke Cunningham's seat in the 50th district of California on Tuesday is being greeted with a sigh of relief by the Republicans and I am only semi-happy. It would be pretty much a doom-like scenario if the democrats had taken this seat which is in a pretty solid Republican district. I would like to see the clowns in Congress get a wake-up call and do such things as pass some meaningful border control measures, some restrictions on earmark inserts into the budget process which waste money, make tax cuts permanent, and confirm some more appeals court judges. I am afraid they will read the California results as an "all clear" sign and go back to their business as usual mode. That could be all it takes to lose the House this fall.

A warning from the U.N.

"The prevailing practice of seeking to use the U.N. almost by stealth as a diplomatic tool while failing to stand up for it against its domestic critics is simply not sustainable....You will lose the U.N. one way or another."

These words were offered this week by the number 2 man in the U.N. He is Mark Malloch Brown and I have never heard from him. I just hope he is prothetic and that our loss of the United Nations comes sooner rather than later. I say send them to Paris.

Haditha Context

One of the most keen observers of the war in Iraq is a young man named Michael Yon. He has been imbedded with our troops over there for years now and his reports have been linked in this blog several times. His new report is a must read as we consider the yet to be revealed details of the so-called massacre being discussed in the liberal press ahead of the facts.

Ann's new book

Ann Coulter has a new book out and if you are wondering whether to buy, here is a sample.

Throughout the 2004 campaign, the Democrats were looking for a Democrat who believed in God—a pursuit similar to a woman searching for a boyfriend in a room full of choreographers. The religious outreach coordinator hired by the Democratic National Committee was Brenda Bartella Peterson, who had signed a brief to the Supreme Court advocating the removal of “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance. Apparently, Madalyn Murray O’Hair was unavailable.

The religion adviser to John Kerry’s presidential campaign was Mara Vanderslice. She had previously been the religious outreach coordinator for Howard Dean—an assignment that would have required the patience of Job, whoever the hell he was. Vanderslice had spoken at rallies cosponsored by the radical gay group ACT UP, famous for a protest at St. Patrick’s Cathedral at which its members spat the Eucharist on the floor. She had been an organizer of violent protests in Seattle and Washington, D.C., when liberals reacted as any normal person would by smashing Starbucks windows and torching police cars because some bankers had come to town for a meeting. Vanderslice majored in “peace studies” at Earlham College. There she was a member of the Marxist-Leninist group that supported convicted cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal. That’s devoutly religious for a Democrat. In fact, by Democratic standards Vanderslice was a veritable C. S. Lewis.

The Silver Solution?

If I were still making even the slightest effort to maintain my credentials as a microbiologist, I would be on top of the latest news on antimicrobial products and technology rather than reading about it in the newspaper. But, I don't so I wasn't and I did. I would always mention in my beginning lectures on antimicrobials that heavy metals had antibacterial properties and would use such examples as organic mercury, gold, and silver to achieve disinfection.
Well, they have moved on in this area using a new science called nanotechnology to produce some really neat sounding new products. Silver nanoparticles are being incorporated into soaps and other consumer goods such as socks. The soap is called Cor and is the next in way to keep microbes off the skin. It had better work, however, since it costs about $115 a bar. My Dial would have to fail me mightily to induce me to switch, however. Toothpaste is said to be the next product to look for. Other products, however,are already here. Sharper Image sells a set of plastic food containers with imbeded silver which are intended to keep food fresher for longer. One owner reported keeping strawberries fresh for 14 days in such containers. Samsung has a washing machine launched in the U.S. which uses silver ions to sanitize laundry. The washer has a grapefruit sized drum which uses electrical currents to nano-shave two silver plates each time the washer is turned on. The resulting ions interact with the bacteria to disrupt membrane functions and very effectively reduce the bacterial count in your laundry ( hospital usage here?). The silver plates will last 10 years according to Samsung and even though they cost $1200 at Best Buy, for example, you don't have to use hot water to kill 99.9% of the microbes in your wash.
If you want to try the product and have a special need, you can go to WalMart and buy some sports socks with E47 (element 47 or silver which has an atomic number of 47). Supposedly they keep your feet warm in winter, cool in summer, and your feet don't stink.
We will be hearing a lot more about nanotechnology in general and disinfection products in particular.

Amen, Brother Sowell

When it comes to racial and ethnic minorities, liberal politicians and judges can make it literally a federal case to give IQ tests to black children. Among the facts that we would never have known if some people did not find ways around this taboo is that black IQs have risen in recent times.

The greatest danger to the liberal vision are facts about the consequences of liberalism itself and the laws, policies, and ways of life that the left has spawned.

That the black family, which survived centuries of slavery and generations of discrimination, has disintegrated in the wake of the liberal welfare state is only one example.

Liberals have been driven to the desperate expedient of attributing this and other social pathology in today's ghettos to "a legacy of slavery" -- even though black children grew up with two parents more often under slavery than today.

Blacks only a generation or two out of slavery also had higher rates of employment and lower rates of crime than today.

The illogic of the "legacy of slavery" argument only illustrates the desperate attempt to salvage the liberal vision.

Read the whole thing here

Terror Plot in Canada

Canadians have broken up a terror ring which was planning on blowing up a target in Ontario. Consider the identity of this group the next time you see a grandmother being wanded in the line at the airport. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service confiscated three tons of ammonium nitrate -- the same fertilizer ingredient that Timothy McVeigh used in the Oklahoma City bombing, only three times as much. Of the seventeen, 12 have been publicly identified, while five are apparently underage. The identified suspects are:

1. Fahim Ahmad, 21, of Robinstone Drive, Toronto, Ontario;
2. Zakaria Amara, 20, of Periwinkle Crescent, Mississauga, Ontario;
3. Asad Ansari, 21, of Rosehurst Drive, Mississauga, Ontario;
4. Shareef Abdelhaleen, 30, of Lowville Heights, Mississauga, Ontario;
5. Qayyum Abdul Jamal, 43, of Montevideo Road, Mississauga, Ontario;
6. Mohammed Dirie, 22, Kingston, Ontario;
7. Yasim Abdi Mohamed, 24, Kingston, Ontario;
8. Jahmaal James, 23, of Trudelle Street, Toronto, Ontario;
9. Amin Mohamed Durrani, 19, of Stonehill Court, Toronto, Ontario;
10. Steven Vikash Chand alias Abdul Shakur, 25, of Treverton Drive, Toronto, Ontario;
11. Ahmad Mustafa Ghany, 21, of Robin Drive, Mississauga, Ontario;
12. Saad Khalid, 19, of Eclipse Avenue, Mississauga, Ontario.

Yes, they are connected to al-Qaeda. The group has been under surveillance since 2004. I sure hope their civil rights weren't violated by anyone.

Was this a message to Pat?

Tammy Bruce recalls that Pat Robertson attributed Ariel Sharone's stroke to God being unhappy with his Jerusalem policy. Now that Pat's airplane just crashed into the water up in Long Island it is only fair to ask if this is a wake-up call of some kind.

I agree with this

It's time for Dennis Hastert to go.

Rep. Hastert, R-Ill., ought to announce sooner rather than later that he will not be a candidate for re-election as Speaker of the House when the next Congress convenes in January, 2007. He should do so for reasons both principled and purely political. He should do so because, in practical terms, his effectiveness is reaching -- or probably has already reached -- an end.

Read it all here.

I have wondered about this

Cosmic Thoughts

I wonder if it is part of God's plan for old people to get so disillusioned with the changes in their world that they are not all that unhappy when the end of their time on earth comes around. An article in the paper today got me to thinking this may be so. It seems the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference has decided that, as of this fall, coaches whose teams win by more than 50 points will be suspended for the next game. This is so silly and depressing at so many levels that it's hard to know where to start in listing them. Suffice it to say that this score management scheme is concocted by the same morons who want to just hand out grades in school or pay people based on factors other than merit. We must avoid hurt feelings in some even if it means it makes others of us just want to take a bullet to get away from this idiocy.