Saturday, November 5. 2005
Cuba and Venezuela: the best examples of why socialism and communism don't work. How can political systems be successful when egocentric megalomaniacs are in charge? They can't. See the new census and the destruction in Cuba from Wilma. And we thought New Orleans was bad. Downtown Caracas. A crumbling district, under dirt, garbage and lack of elemental maintenance, to the vociferous complaints of Chavez himself. Not to mention that street vendors occupy now all the main streets of downtown where tourists cannot go anymore. It smells now permanently of urine, even during the rainy season. From Venezuela News And ViewsVenezuela News And Views
| |  | | | Next time you hear Chavez saying that Cuba evacuates everyone before a storm, show him this (11/1) |
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Wednesday, November 2. 2005
More on The Religion of Peace, rioting, etc. Denmark too. Missed that. LGF
That's Funny - You Don't Look Anti-Semitic From the Foreward of Steve Cohen's 1984 book: "Steve Cohen's little pale-blue book on left wing antisemitism caused a rumpus in the colleges when it first came out. Helped by the arresting title, which still raises a smile, That's Funny You Don't Look Anti-Semitic appeared in the coffee bars, Labour Clubs and Jewish Societies during the Miners Strike of 1984-85. Back then there were lots of Jewish lefties and the campus battles between Jewish students and the operational antisemites were starting to hot up again." The book can now be read online, here.
Tuesday, November 1. 2005
American Exceptionalism Yes, I have thought it through several times and I do believe in it. Prager on the subject: "...as in nearly every other area of the Left-Right, blue-red divide in America, the attitude one has toward American exceptionalism ultimately lies in whether or not one wants America's values to remain Judeo-Christian." Read entire.
More on Alito. WSJ opinion site: "Meanwhile, liberal interest groups are massing for battle--though this is as much about raising money for the 2006 election as it is about defeating Judge Alito. Red state Democrats won't be eager to filibuster a man of his credentials, especially when polls show that the vast majority of Americans share his views on abortion and church-state issues." Read entire.
Monday, October 31. 2005
Who is Alito? And a Powerline view here.
Malanga on the cost of local government: "The pensions for which taxpayers must now foot the bill far outshine what many of those same taxpayers in the private sector receive. In New Jersey, for instance, a 62-year-old state employee who retires after 25 years gets 50 percent more in yearly pension payments than an employee retiring with the same salary from the Camden, New Jersey plant of Campbell Soup, a Fortune 500 company, according to the Asbury Park Press. In addition, the state employee receives free health insurance for life to supplement Medicare, while full health benefits for private-sector retirees are now rare. In California, a public employee with 30 years of service can retire at 55 with 60 percent of his salary, and public-safety workers can get 90 percent of their salary at age 50. By contrast to these rich payouts, the small (and shrinking) number of private firms that still provide “defined benefit” pension plans—instead of the now-common “defined contribution” plans that transfer all risk to the worker—pay on average 45 percent after 30 years of service." Red entire in City Journal
Thursday, October 27. 2005
Hanson, on 2000 deaths What a pleasure to see VDH in the NYT: "... like all wars against amorphous insurgencies, the current struggle requires almost constant explanation by the government to show how and why troops are fighting in a necessary cause - and for the nation's long-term security interests. Unless official spokesmen can continually connect the terrible sacrifices of our youth with the need to establish a consensual government in Iraq that might help to end the old pathology of the Middle East, in which autocracies spawn parasitic anti-Western terrorists, then the TV screen's images of blown-up American troops become the dominant narrative. The Bush administration, of course, did not help itself by having put forth weapons of mass destruction as the primary reason for the invasion - when the Senate, in bipartisan fashion, had previously authorized the war on a score of other sensible writs. " Read entire.
Wednesday, October 26. 2005
More Is Less John Kerry* gave a speech at Georgetown University today, in which he offered the following brilliant insights on Iraq: - "When they [the Bush administration] could have listened to General Shinseki and put in enough troops to maintain order, they chose not to. They were wrong."
- "General George Casey, our top military commander in Iraq, recently told Congress that our large military presence 'feeds the notion of occupation' and 'extends the amount of time that it will take for Iraqi security forces to become self-reliant.' . . . It is essential to acknowledge that the insurgency will not be defeated unless our troop levels are drawn down."
Apparently Kerry was for more troops before he was against it. * Should we have heard of this guy? Ya can’t make this stuff up!!
Guatemalans "Guatemalans working abroad, both legally and illegally, send more than $2 billion back to their families each year, according to the Guatemalan government. The amount is now the second-largest source of national revenue after tourism, having surpassed traditional exports of coffee, sugar and bananas. In the days after the hurricane, long lines formed at banks in Santiago, as wire transfers poured in."
Tuesday, October 25. 2005
The Left and the Military: Further Comments on Imperialism, re Yesterday's Post
Remarkable, that Anatol Lieven review of the Bacevich book on American imperialism and militarism, just remarkable.
Lieven cannot stand “American civic nationalism, with its quasi-religious belief in the universal and timeless validity of its own democratic system, and in its right and duty to spread that system to the rest of the world.” One wonders whether this is in intentional contrast with the failure of Marxism and Communism to do anything more than enslave peoples unfortunate to be contiguous to the Soviet Union, which most earnestly, but so far unsuccessfully, has tried to “spread that system to the rest of the world.”
Lieven writes, “Indeed, a portrait of US militarism today could be built around a set of such apparently glaring contradictions: the contradiction, for example, between the military coercion of other nations and the belief in the spreading of ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’.” I suppose he is referring to the coercion of Kuwaitis when Iraq had occupied their country fair and square; or maybe he means Bosnia and is suggesting we consider the Serbs’ notions of ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ when cleansing ethnics as having equal validity to America’s concepts. However, when someone with logic as pathetically shallow as Lieven’s refers to “the military coercion of other nations”, one longs to be able to ask for a list of just which nations we have “coerced”.
Lieven keeps on: “Historians of the future will perhaps see preaching ‘freedom’ at the point of an American rifle as no less morally and intellectually absurd than ‘voluntary’ conversion to Christianity at the point of a Spanish arquebus.” Right. Those Kuwaitis and Bosnians must just HATE their restored ‘freedoms’. One wonders which word he finds objectionable: “rifle” or “American”. And don’t you just love it when British and Europeans talk about American Imperialism in speeches that could have come out of Pravda in the 1960s? Imperialism is what the Russians did – taking countries and not giving them back. Names like Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan come to mind. Oh, wait! Maybe Anatol Lieven and Andrew Bacevich aren’t Russian (any more). Maybe Lieven is British! Does anyone in class remember that Britain was imperialist? Like, THE imperialist nation of all times (although Spain, Portugal, Holland, France and Germany did pretty well too)? Children, can you name a British colony (other than the 13 in the USA)? No? How about Aden, Antigua and Barbuda, Australia, Bahamas, Barbados, Basutoland, Bechuanaland, British Central Africa, British East Africa, British Guiana, British Honduras, British New Guinea (Papua), British Somaliland, Brunei, Burma, Canada, Cape Colony (South Africa), Ceylon, Cook Islands, Cyprus, Dominica, East India Company, Fiji, Gambia, Kiribati and Tuvalu, Ghana, Ionian Islands, Grenada, Heligoland, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Jamaica, Kenya, Labuan, Lagos (Nigeria), Leeward Islands, Malacca, Malaysia, Maldives, Malta, Mauritius, Mosquito Coast (Nicaragua), Natal, Nauru, New Hebrides, Newfoundland, New Zealand, Niger, Nigeria, Niue, North Borneo, Nigeria, Nyasaland, Palestine, Penang, Rhodesia, Saint Christopher, Nevis and Anguilla, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Sarawak, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Solomon Islands, South Africa, South Australia, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanganyika, Tasmania, Tonga, Transvaal, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos Islands, Uganda, Weiheiwei, Western Samoa, Windward Islands, and Zanzibar? Now THAT’s a KNIFE! Let’s see now, who did the United States conquer and keep? Hawaii and Puerto Rico, and neither of them are willing to go away. The other states (beyond the 13) as well. Who did the United States occupy and give back to their native peoples? The Philippines, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Japan, Italy, Panama, South Korea, Bosnia, Kosovo, Kuwait, and even Grenada. Add Iraq to the list - we're trying to give it to them, if they have the power to keep it. Who is the imperialist?
Monday, October 24. 2005
Leaving the Left Front Page held a symposium for those who have had second thoughts about their Leftist beliefs. Symposium here.
 The Left and the Military
Lieven in his review of Bacevitch's new book: The New American Militarism, in the excellent London Review of Books, suggests an approach for the American Left in which they can be both pro-military, and anti-imperialism. Lieven assumes that the war in Iraq is an imperialistic enterprise, which I believe is an error, unless he seeks to re-define imperialism as intellectual or cultural imperialism rather than territorial: I do not believe that the US wants to occupy Iraq, but that we want outta there ASAP. And Lieven, and Bacevitch, see Iraq as evidence of American "militarism" - which I do not: one data point does not make a pattern. The US is in Iraq in an effort to stabilize and civilize the Middle East by creating a successful popular government which hopefully will not threaten the US, or aid enemies of the US. I believe that is an entirely justifiable and worthy and debatably moral use of force by a great power which is facing a global battle with an imperialistic Jihadist movement which has already made great inroads in Europe (via immigration/invasion) and around the world, but only time will tell whether the theory works. I hope it works: the Left hopes it won't. One further word about that "imperialism" word: When, since our own Civil War (definitely an imperialist venture), the Indian Wars, and the Spanish-American War, has the US Government behaved imperialistically? We have been mainly anti-imperialist in our military ventures: saving Europe from imperial Germany twice, defeating an imperialist and expansionist Japan once (with no thank-you from China), and attempting to save many parts of the world from an imperialist, expansionist Soviet Union. And now, we are anti-imperialistic against a multi-national Jihadist movement. The Marxist propaganda, or Marxist "interpretation", does not hold up to reality. Like many Leftists, Lieven concludes his piece by suggesting that the US reduce its military potency, which is of course what Bill (Make love, not war) Clinton did as President, and become isolationist. Why do "progressives" always want to disarm themselves in a dangerous world? I think that is the key question. Read the piece and see what you think. Update: See further comments posted on Tues, Oct. 25
Friday, October 21. 2005
The New York Times Keeps Fumbling the Ball In WaPo, by, guess who? Tina Brown: "You have to feel sorry for Sulzberger. Like every spirited young man who inherits a newspaper, he hankers after something more exciting than sitting in the front office fretting over the price of newsprint. He wants to feel as real in his role as valiant publisher as his reporters -- those driven, passionate, sometimes reckless seekers after truth -- feel in theirs. When he threw his support behind Miller's fight to protect her sources, he didn't think he was in a bad reality show. He thought it was an Oscar-winning movie -- "The Pentagon Papers 2."" I'd say that is exactly right. Piece here.
GuatemalaWomen matter little in Guatemala and as for the rest of Latin America, well let's just say most of those countries aren't very good on statistics. NYT investigates a scary situation: "At least a thousand women have been victims in the past five years, and only three killers are in prison. Guatemala is still a country where a rapist can escape charges by marrying the victim, and domestic violence cases can be prosecuted only if the victim can still show bruises 10 days later. Sexual harassment is not illegal. When the body turns up, the crime is often dismissed with comments that the dead woman must have been a gang member or a prostitute, or killed by her partner - as if these were justifications for failing to investigate." Full story here: Guatemala's Murdered Women - New York Times
Thursday, October 20. 2005
The War against Bush The Dems have been on a ruthless and relentless campaign to destroy the Bush administration since the first election. As unseemly as it has been, it's not much worse than the shameful efforts to destroy Clinton. In my opinion, there is loyal opposition, and there is war. Politics can be rough, but it shouldn't descend to war, because it is bad for the country, sets an ugly example, and turns people off to the issues. Steyn addresses this ongoing war, and its failures: Any port in a storm, especially after the storm has passed. I said in the Telegraph the other day that the minute Hurricane Katrina hit, the media started scampering around like Munchkins singing ‘Ding Dong, The Bush Is Dead’. They always do, and it always fails. In terms of destroying Bush and the Republicans, Katrina was a total bust. In so far as it has any political impact, it’s likely to make Louisiana less Democrat. That’s it. So the problem remains: how to slay Bush. And if this last week is anything to go by, it looks like Democrats are going to be denied that pleasure...
Read entire.
Wednesday, October 19. 2005
Jesse Ventura was elected so why shouldn't Argentina elect a cabaret star to their congress. Politicians are actors, aren't they?  (washington post)
Casan's current touring show is titled "The Fund Can Wait," a reference to the International Monetary Fund and its demands for measures to reduce inflation and debt. A Serious Message May Get a Serious Diva Into Argentine Congress
Iraq Summary Excellent summary of the elections, what is really going on there, and why Leftists want freedom to fail in Iraq. No Oil
Tuesday, October 18. 2005
Constitution: Dead or Alive? Balkin has a piece in Slate claiming that no-one really believes in a dead, or static, Constitution. I think he's made a straw man here to make some points, but it's an interesting piece: The specific metaphor of a living, evolving Constitution arose in the 1920s to explain how a broad view of federal power that came with World War I (and later, the New Deal) was consistent with the American constitutional tradition. The Constitution's words, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. wrote in 1920, "called into life a being" whose "development … could not have been foreseen completely by the most gifted of its begetters." Hence we must interpret our Constitution "in the light of our whole experience and not merely in that of what was said a hundred years ago."
Read entire.
Group-Think, In action A propos of the Barrister's piece yesterday on political correctness and thought police, here are two pieces: First, a pro-immigration piece from the San Diego Union-Tribune, in which the author makes no distinction between legal and illegal immigration: Click here: Nativism and the immigration issue | The San Diego Union-Tribune Second, a piece by Steyn pointing out the refusal of the MSM to call Islamic jihadists "Islamic jihadists": Click here: Media utters nonsense, won't call enemy out
Monday, October 17. 2005
Havana Nights "It is worth noting that the person most responsible in the past for subverting the will of Congress to end travel restrictions in Conference Committee, Tom DeLay, has his own problems these days--and Senator Frist and the White House are not in much better shape to influence what takes place on Capitol Hill.
We will see if the congress budges on this one or the battle of egos across the aisles and sea continues even the embargo no longer makes any sense. As for me, I have packed my bags and called Cubanacan."
The Thought Police Please imagine what would happen if the kinds of enforced thought codes, which crop up endlessly in the educational institutions, were of the conservative rather than the Leftist variety. Just for a few examples, what if schools required people to call illegal immigrants "illegal immigrants"? What is they required unmarried mothers to be called "unwed mothers"? What if they required Islamic Jihadists to be called "Islamic Jihadists"? What if they required "affirmative action" to be called "positive discrimination"? Or if radical Leftist organizations had to be labelled "radical Leftist organizations", specifying whether Trotskyite, Stalinist, or Maoist? How would the NYT react? The Left learned from Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, and Mao, that if you control the language, you can manipulate thoughts, and Orwell pointed this out for us a long time ago in "Politics and the English Language" - a masterpiece of thought and of the essay form. Fortunately, most people are not stupid. John Leo on the latest outrages against free thought and free speech. Town Hall.
Friday, October 14. 2005
The Mayan Civilization
From Roger Sandall: "Let’s take Jared Diamond by the horns. He would like us to believe that the decline and fall of the Maya was a tragic loss, and a sadly overgrown sculpture in the jungle ornaments the cover of his book Collapse. But I don’t care if the Maya civilization did collapse. I don’t think we should shed a single retrospective tear. It might be interesting to know how or why it fell—whether from war or drought or disease or soil exhaustion—but I don’t much care about that either. Because quite frankly, as civilizations go, the Mayan civilization in Mexico didn't amount to much."
Provocative and not politically-correct. Read entire. And more on the trials of modern-day Mayans in Guatemala, here.
Thursday, October 13. 2005
From Barone, on Dem Strategy (H/T, Instapundit): "It is one of the interesting things about today's politics that most Democrats seem to have forgotten the lessons that Bill Clinton taught. Clinton's brand of Democratic governance was not as successful as some Democrats like to think: He was re-elected with just 49 percent of the vote in 1996 and his vice president won just 48 percent of the vote in 2000. And during the Clinton years, the Democratic percentages of the popular vote for the House of Representatives fell to 45 percent in 1994, 48.5 percent in 1996, and 49 percent in 1998 and 2000. The Democratic vote for president and House converged, at levels just below 50 percent. But Clinton and Gore did win popular vote pluralities in three straight presidential elections—something it was by no means clear in 1989 that Democratic nominees would do. And they did it because they followed much of Galston's and Kamarck's advice. So it is worthwhile, for Democrats and all of us, to pay attention to what they have to say now." Read entire.
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