Monday, September 24. 2007
The cartoon below was posted at The Moderate Voice. In 25 words or less, deconstruct the verbal, visual and invisible text, taking into account gender roles, victimization, Marxism, Transgender Theory, the fact that "freedom" is a capitalist delusion, the Patriarchy, Imperialism, the Illegal and Immoral War in Iraq, Abortion Rights, the environmental crime of diaper use, George Bush's Psychology with special reference to his desire to kill women and children and his hypocritical unwillingness to kill unborn children fetuses, the U.N.-guaranteed Basic Human Right to Have Your Neighbor Pay Your Family's Medical Bills, and, of course, Everything That is Wrong With Amerika. On a serious note, though, I ask whether Bush is supposed to be the parent. I say "no." 
Totten interviews Lt. Col. Mike Silverman. One quote: “What’s the most important thing Americans need to know about Iraq that they don’t currently know?” I said. “That we’re fighting Al Qaeda,” he said without hesitation. “[Abu Musab al] Zarqawi invented Al Qaeda in Iraq. The top leadership outside Iraq squawked and thought it was a bad idea. Then he blew up the Samarra mosque, triggered a civil war, and got the whole world’s attention. Then the Al Qaeda leadership outside dumped huge amounts of money and people and arms into Anbar Province. They poured everything they had into this place. The battle against Americans in Anbar became their most important fight in the world. And they lost.”
h/t, Gateway
 A quote from the Columbia Spectator (h/t, Minding the Campus):
In the 1930s, the Columbia administration participated in what could be described as the coddling of the Nazi regime. In 1933, Nazi ambassador Hans Luther gave a speech on campus in which, according to a 2006 article in Spectator by Rafeal Medoff, he focused on Hitler’s “peaceful intentions” in Europe. Columbia maintained student exchange programs with Nazi universities throughout the ’30s, while, in 1936, our university sent a representative to the 550th anniversary celebration of the University of Heidelberg, even though, writes Medoff, it had “already had been purged of Jewish faculty members, instituted a Nazi curriculum, and hosted a burning of books by Jewish authors.”
Read the whole piece, which I feel is rather unfair. Columbia is hardly an anti-semitic institution. The failure is one of discrimination - of being unwilling to decide what is good and what is bad, or, as our NJ says, "what is worthy and what is not"... or, worse, in actually declaring that one thing - ignorant murderous scum - is worth welcoming into your home, but another (ROTC and campus recruiting) is not. In modern academia, Columbia is hardly unique in these failures of conscience, decency, honor, and vigorous adult judgement. Columbia is, in fact, an amazing place, but not so much so that the administration is immunized from Pomo Psychosis: they may even still believe that it is the "advanced" way of thinking. My message to Columbia today: Grow a pair, and stand for something. My old Mater has embarrassed me.
Sunday, September 23. 2007
They admit that the "Betray us" ad did not meet their standards, and that MoveOn was given a discount, confirming everything we think about the NYT. Enough said. Comments here and here (by fine people who should be outdoors today, enjoying a beautiful September).
Assistant Village Idiot, in his post Wisdom from a Liberal of Another Era, quoted this paragraph - among others - from a 1938 E.B. White essay in One Man's Meat:  I'm down now; the barn is tight, and the peace is preserved. It is the ugliest peace the earth has ever received for a Christmas present. Old England eating swastika for breakfast instead of kipper is a sight I had as lief not lived to see. And though I am no warrior, I would gladly fight for the things Nazism seeks to destroy. (Living in a sanitary age, we are getting so we place too high a value on human life - which rightfully must always come second to human ideas.)
I say "Old England eating Islam instead of kippers." (I love kippers for breakfast.) The New Yorker has always had an anglophilic streak. But AVI asks: Does anyone at the New Yorker think that today?
 Read his whole piece, which I have been thinking about for a week. AVI rightly observes that today's anti-war folks would probably renounce pacifism, but claim that Iraq is not a place for Americans to die. That is debatable, but it seems that the bad guys need to be killed somewhere. Why not there?
But on to the bigger issues: Do we, today, tend to place too high a value on human life? Are there ideas we will die for, or communities we will die for, or will we only die for family? Is our precious selfhood, which some might term narcissism, more important than anything else to us and, if it is, what changed between 1938 (before the US was in the war) and today? Photos: Yes, we are E.B. White fans. Below is the Maine boathouse in which he wrote Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little. A favorite E.B. White quote: "I get up every morning determined to both change the world and have a hell of a good time. Sometimes this makes planning my day difficult."
Saturday, September 22. 2007
Where Bush Went Wrong in Iraq and How He Can Correct It Now, by Dan Friedman at American Thinker. I hope somebody in the White House reads it.
 I am trying to decide what term to use for the aggressive suppression of ideas and speech in Leftist academia. When will the book burning begin?
Now I see Stanford is fighting Don Rumsfeld's visiting professorship. As Protein says: Alas, we’ve surrendered liberalism for the kind of creeping totalitarianism whose resemblance to liberalism is limited to a familiar smile and wink.
"Behead those who insult the Party Line." Maybe Stanford is jealous that Columbia got Ahmadinejad and not them. Academia is beginning to look like this. It's sick out there, and getting sicker.
Friday, September 21. 2007
George Soros: The Man, the Mind, and the Money Behind MoveOn, at IBD (h/t, Buddy). The article asks "Who is this man and what is he up to?" Read it, because the guy owns the Democrat Party.
 Captain Ed:
It’s a particularly sad commentary on the Democratic Party that they cannot bring themselves to support the very commander they sent to lead American troops in battle by a unanimous vote. It’s not a case of a few fringe politicians like Bernie Sanders or Barbara Boxer, either. The Majority Leader, Harry Reid, and his chief deputy, Dick Durbin, refused to condemn the smear on Petraeus’ honor. Hillary Clinton and Chris Dodd, both of whom want to become Commander in Chief over the military, chose to endorse MoveOn’s smear campaign against a man who has dedicated his life to defending this nation and serving presidents in a nonpartisan manner.
A Commander in Chief cannot dishonor the military: they are the only thing between us and the barbarians. What more can be said? As Bob Grant often says on the radio, "It's sick out there, and getting sicker."
The al-Dura case, it seems to me, matters a great deal. Sarkozy seems willing to let the chips fall where they may, unlike Chirac. Pallywood and Jihad in general have become expert manipulators of Western media (and eager liars), but this piece of probable acting helped create a firestorm which the truth, when it emerges, will never have the power to extinguish. Update on the story at EU Referendum.
Raw humor in bad taste: Language is questionable for work - depending on where you work. Note: Posting The Guy from Boston should not necessarily be construed as an endorsement of any of his views, but rather as a vigorous rant from a regular fellow.
Thursday, September 20. 2007
Protein Wisdom begins with this quote from Hanson, What is stranger is why Columbia university tried to invite a terrorist to speak who denies the first holocaust and advocates a second one. This is not a matter of free speech but of common decency and the most elemental common sense.
and uses it as a starting point to lecture the great Hanson on his ignorance of Correct Pomo Thought. The amusing piece is here, in which it is clearly explained why Summers is banned and Ahmadinejad is welcomed.
I wonder. So does Dick Morris (who is often wrong about things). Right now we have three leading candidates - Rudy, Fred and Hillary - all of whom are celeb candidates, as I see it. Only one of them has ever done anything difficult or substantial, and that is Rudy. (This is not Mitt Romney's year, I think, even though he is a very fine, smart, decent, effective fellow who could probably run anything - and who should maybe, in a perfect world, get elected. But this is the Year of the Celebrity. Even the likeable Obama is just a newly-minted TV celeb with an empty resume.)
Star Parker was once a single mother on welfare, and knows whereof she speaks. Quote: The poverty that we see today is directly related to people having children outside of marriage and then not working to support those children. They started with the war on the Black family, and they totally destroyed this family. They spread this message of moral relativism and welfare dependency. Lots of liberals got hold of the Black community and started convincing them that there is nothing wrong with dependence on government — we started seeing the Black family destroyed. We saw welfare policy enter in with rules that say don't work, don't save, don't get married, and we'll fix all of your life problems for you.
Such a sad, sad story of the unintended consequences of efforts designed by naive intellectuals (who refuse, except for themselves, to understand the roles of incentive, perverse incentive, and disincentive in life) in league with self-seeking politicians. Whole piece at Moonbattery.
Wednesday, September 19. 2007
From Lee at Right Thinking: Here’s what I’d do if I was one of the candidates. We all saw John Stossel’s report the other night on 20/20 where he talked to the CEO of Whole Foods who, despite selling organic food to hippies and left-wing ...bags, is a staunch libertarian. He’s implemented a novel approach to providing coverage to his employees, and I’d come out with a comprehensive plan based on something along those lines. You could also have a bottom rung government health insurance coverage for the complete dickheads and morons of society who simply can’t manage their own lives. But every one of us knows someone whose lives have been adversely affected by our healthcare system. Hell, my own parents declared bankruptcy over my dad’s medical costs, so I know what this is like. So we have two choices. We can either get out in front of the issue with a superior alternative, or we can sit with our thumbs up our asses while the government takes over healthcare. If you like the service you get at the post office, you’ll LOVE government run healthcare.
I am waiting for Rudy and Fred to speak up on the issue eventually, but I know that Bush is already working on it. From a political-tactical point of view, it would seem almost essential to address the subject in some reforming manner which affords an alternative to the frightening systems of England and Canada.
"We can talk all we want about freedom and opportunity, about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but what does all that mean to a mother or father who can't take a sick child to the doctor?"
. That is Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, via Boston Globe via No Looking Backwards, glibly blowing off the foundations of the country. But heck, it's for the children. I guess children never survived until she decided to care about them. Is there a parent in America who "can't take a sick child to a doctor"? Show them to me, and we will have them arrested for neglect.
 Hillarycare 2.0. Details at Opinion Journal
Clinton fundraising scandals: A bad sequel gets worse. Anchoress
Tuesday, September 18. 2007
Rove on a Repub view of medical insurance, in Opinion Journal.  My view? Well, let me rhetorically ask one question: If we had fully-socialized medicine today (with government employees performing your surgery - when they get around to it, within union guidelines, and if you don't conveniently die first - performed by people who aspire to be government employees) what domestic policy issue would the Dems run on? I guarantee that it would be whatever the next industry is on their hit list. They would agree upon the target, then demagogue (I know it's not really a verb) that issue for a few years, then try to go in for the kill.
There is one thing of which I am certain: It won't be the legal industry. It won't be Big Soap or Big Furniture or Big Apricots or Big Books or Big Chicken or Big Appliances or Big Software or Big Music or Big Roofing or Big Computer or Big Tractor or Big Dildo or Big Hollywood either - all surely Evil Big Corporations, competing in countless evil ways to give you the stuff you want for a disgusting profit. It could be oil, following the Putin-Chavez path. By the way, ya want fries with that appendectomy? Comment from The Barrister: Just don't Biggie-size that surgery. For me it comes down to a simple question. To whom do I want to trust my health? Hillary Clinton or my doctor? I guess I want my doc, like my electrician, plumber, veterinarian, and lawyer, working just for me, not for the government. That is worth working for and paying for. Is anything more important to me? Not really...except maybe my vet. Photo: An example of Big Tractor, a nice '58 Ford, which is lower down on the Left's target list. They have probably never even used one.
The Iranian Inquisition. Dino. Sounds like the "conspiracy to keep you poor and stupid" - and in the stone age. I feel sorry for the Iranian people.
 The would-be socialist paradise that is Massachusetts wants even more of our money. Gov. Patrick is talking casinos. Viking:
Hey, why stop at casinos? Why not bring in some whorehouses which will also "create jobs" and "generate new government revenue." Aside from the social issues and crime that a casino invites, there's the new image of Massachusetts. Old and busted: Plymouth Rock, USS Constitution and Tanglewood. New and hot: slot machines and the "hard eight."
More from Squaring the Boston Globe. I do not approve of government-sponsored gambling of any sort, for any reason. The need to define the immoral trumps my libertarian instincts in this case. If MA needs honest jobs in clean businesses, all they have to do is to lower their taxes and the jobs will flow in. At present, they have an outflow of both jobs and people. You could term it a flight from socialism. Image: The wonderful concept of the Boston Tea Party has long been missing as a Massachusetts icon.
 Regardless of how she frames it, Hillarycare 2.0 entails a federal take-over of a large sector of our economy - a piece of our economy which is particularly important to us. Why doesn't she focus on the auto industry, and provide us all with government Yugos?
The mythical 47 million uninsured is the excuse. The reason is power, vote-buying, and the relentless need of the Left to control and socialize private enterprise, effort, and achievement - one industry at a time. The tactic is time-honored: Manufacture a "crisis," then propose an anti-market government solution which strips a citizen of one more piece of his autonomy. Or one more piece of his adulthood, as I often term it, because government-controlled medical treatment is truly the assumption of an "in loco parentis" role. As I see it, Hillary was humiliated with Hillarycare 1.0. If she is elected, she wants to have a mandate in hand to take over medical treatment this time around. Bruce Kesler, who is a blogospheric expert on the topic, in Snake Oil Reform - a few quotes: She proposes that all this will not come at increased government regulation, but ignores that her proposals would gut the private insurance industry while placing the remainder under tight government controls, in effect establishing a semi-private sham for nationalized health care. She, also, doesn’t mention the uniformity, sluggishness in keeping abreast of the latest developments and the squelching of the incentives to develop them, and ultimately treatment rationing that is inevitable when the overwhelming costs come due of the promises. But, by then, the promises' hollowness although seen and suffered will be virtually irreversible as the private market no longer exists.
Precisely. Isn't that what always happens? Government programs always create new problems, which then require further government programs to try to fix. He notes: She proposes expansion of existing government programs to guaranteed coverage for all, but doesn’t mention that the states that have instituted guaranteed coverage regardless of health condition, and community rating to provide the same premium regardless of age, location or condition, have seen sharp escalation in premiums for the younger and healthier, increased government costs, and have not reduced the number of uninsured. (See this multi-year study.)
The way I see it, vast federal programs like this never work, but once they exist, and fail, you can never get rid of them. ... she doesn’t mention that her and others’ figure of 47-million uninsured is inflated by at least double, as it includes a majority who are here illegally or who can afford coverage but choose not to be self-responsible. Even nationalized health care apologist Ezra Klein notes that all her promises almost sound like she “washes your car.”
Monday, September 17. 2007
Microsoft must share code with rivals. Quote from the piece at My Way News: LUXEMBOURG (AP) - Microsoft lost its appeal of a European antitrust order Monday that obliges the technology giant to share communications code with rivals, sell a copy of Windows without Media Player and pay a $613 million fine - the largest ever by EU regulators. The EU Court of First Instance ruled against Microsoft on both parts of the case, saying the European Commission was correct in concluding that Microsoft was guilty of monopoly abuse in trying to use its power over desktop computers to muscle into server software. It also said regulators had clearly demonstrated that selling media software with Windows had damaged rivals. "The court observes that it is beyond dispute that in consequence of the tying consumers are unable to acquire the Windows operating system without simultaneously acquiring Windows Media Player," it said. "In that regard, the court considers that neither the fact that Microsoft does not charge a separate price for Windows Media Player nor the fact that consumers are not obliged to use that Media Player is irrelevant."
A law professor of mine defined antitrust law as a horse race in which it was compulsory to compete, but illegal to win. Microsoft is guilty of succeeding while American. The interesting thing about this anti-American case, however, is the precedent it sets. Microsoft was found guilty of giving something away that a European wanted to charge for. Sears should now be able to sue Mercedes saying that the free batteries it includes with new cars hurt Sears’ ability to sell batteries to new car buyers. Japanese car radio manufacturers should be able to do the same.
Wrong about the Northwest Passage. Ignorant, or deliberate misinformation? Meanwhile, the arid UK may need to find a way to get used to rainy days.
Sunday, September 16. 2007
Remembering the 60s. Dino Remembering the 70s. Hog on Ice Yes, I guess those were two stupid decades in many ways.
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