Tuesday, July 17. 2007
National Press Club permits CAIR to ban press from panel audience. This is sick, shameful, cowardly, dhimmitudinous, and truly un-American. Story at Don Surber. The correct response to the CAIR complainers should have been "Sorry guys, but this is America." Thoughts about it at Riehl.
 From Timbro (h/t, No Pasaran):
If the European Union were a state in the USA it would belong to the poorest group of states. France, Italy, Great Britain and Germany have lower GDP per capita than all but four of the states in the United States. In fact, GDP per capita is lower in the vast majority of the EU-countries (EU 15) than in most of the individual American states. This puts Europeans at a level of prosperity on par with states such as Arkansas, Mississippi and West Virginia. Only the miniscule country of Luxembourg has higher per capita GDP than the average state in the USA. The results of the new study represent a grave critique of European economic policy.
In a funny kind of way, we Americans should be pleased that Euroland is so relatively poor. That way, it remains a lovely museum of the past to visit, just like Vermont.
 Bird Dog has already commented on the Left's upside-down understanding of economics in which it is assumed that the rich gain their wealth only through taking from others. While this "zero-sum" fallacy usually arises in the context of domestic issues, enterprising Leftists have employed it in an international context as well: see, for example, any of Bono's or Bob Geldof's commentary on Africa, or the lovable George Galloway, who recently remarked that India's economy is growing so rapidly only because it is making up ground that it was "not allowed to occupy" during colonialism.
Galloway is not worth paying any attention to, of course, but even The Dylanologist's old political science professor back in college gave a similar explanation for why the economies of Africa had failed to make any gains in prosperity since independence (it was because those nasty colonialists built railroads to serve resource exploitation rather than domestic growth, in case you were wondering. And no, do not ask how the countries would have been more productive without any railroads at all). The irony of the views of virulently anti-Western politicians such as Galloway is that they necessarily must cast the nations of Western Europe as all-powerful entities, capable of holding entire nations hostage to their will, while India and the nations of Africa are reduced to passive and helpless actors who can only be what the nations of Europe let them be. This point of view is hardly less patronizing than anything dreamed up by 19th century colonialists. The truth? As Bird Dog has mentioned, each nation must come to prosperity on its own terms: no poor nation ever grew wealthy through aid alone, nor have war and oppression ever been able to permanantly cripple an economically vigorous country. Photo: The splendid Masai, who do not welcome Western condescension or pity.
Bill Roggio's latest report (h/t, Jules C). Our folks are clearly very busy, and I know our young friend (a SEAL) who is over there is helping do the job. This is a very small war, as wars go - and not really a war at all, even though it receives the same level of negative press attention as bigger fights like Vietnam or Korea. Why? Pure partisanship, I believe. If Bill Clinton had undertaken the same project (he was in favor of regime change in Iraq), I suspect the Dems would be rallying their people behind the good and just cause of freedom and human dignity. Why are the Dems in a tizzy? I suspect that they are fearful that Gen. Petraeus will be successful, and they would like to sabotage it first. I pray that this effort will be successful, not for political reasons, but for the Iraqis and for the Middle East. And this from Wizbang, Why Liberals should love the war in Iraq.
Saturday, July 14. 2007
It's the perennial question. The "new" video seems to be from 2002. Wizbang. Is the video being used as a signal?
Friday, July 13. 2007
From a piece by Johannes at TCS: Since mid-2005, al Qaeda has aimed not to defeat the Coalition militarily, but to drain American public support politically. The strategy was forced on the insurgents by a string of failures in 2004 and 2005. The Baathist groups and their al Qaeda allies planned first to establish a geographic base of control within Iraq; second, to block Iraqi elections; and third, to prevent the establishment of the Iraqi Security Forces. They failed to achieve any of these goals. The ensuing strategy was dictated by weakness. Mass killings of Shi'ite civilians - a tactic designed by Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi over the initial protests of the al Qaeda leadership - replaced military confrontation as the insurgency's operational focus. Civilian atrocity is, by definition, easy to implement, as it targets what is undefended. The strategy does nothing to "win hearts and minds." Support for al Qaeda has dwindled to under 2% among the Sunnis of Iraq; among other groups, it doesn't register at all. Nor can atrocities advance a political agenda, or control real estate. But the mass killings were a boon to recruitment.
Read the whole thing.
H/T, Moonbattery. It could say "better men and women," but I know what is meant: combat. 
 A reader directed us to a 1998 essay by Victor Davis Hansen and Joseph Heath, of the above title.
Classics is about dead. You object that the disappearance of a tiny world of cloistered professors is not intrinsically significant. Must you suffer once again through some petty turf-war between pampered PhDs, a mock-epic struggle of nocturnal creatures croaking and scratching at each other for their tiny pad on an evaporating pond, one final Battle of Frogs and Mice? Who cares? Yet every American should care. The demise of classics means more than the implosion of an inbred academic discipline, more than the disappearance of one more bookosaurus here and there. For chained to this sinking academic bureaucracy called classics are the ideas, the values, the vision of classical Greece and Rome. These are the ideas and values that have shaped and defined Western civilization, a vision of life that has ironically come under increasing attack here in the elite universities of the West just as its mutated form is metastasizing throughout the globe. Very few in America now know much about the origins of the West in ancient Greece -- and our citizens are moving further from the central philosophical and ethical tenets that are so necessary if we are to understand and manage the leisure, affluence and freedom of the West. This ignorance of Greek wisdom should be of crucial interest to every American -- not because the West is being supplanted by some global multiculturalism (as so many academics proclaim), but quite the opposite: because its institutions and material culture are now overwhelming the world. The Greeks -- and the Greeks alone -- bequeathed us constitutional government, individual rights, freedom of expression, an open economy, civilian control of the military, separation of religious and political authority, private property, free scientific inquiry and open dissent. And for better or worse, these are the things most on this earth now desire.
Read the whole thing. VDH and Heath wrote a book of the same title.
Thursday, July 12. 2007
From her computer in Montana, she did quite a bit. My Cyber Counter-Jihad. That is some lady.
Wednesday, July 11. 2007
It's about freedom and compulsion - one of our favorite topics. At RCP, via a piece at Blue Crab. A quote from Stossel: He knows I defend limited government, so he tried to explain why I was wrong. He began in a revealing way: "I gotta believe that, even though I know you're very much for the individual determining his own destiny, you also have a heart." Notice his smuggled premise in the words "even though." In Moore's mind, someone who favors individual freedom doesn't care about his fellow human beings. If I have a heart, it's in spite of my belief in freedom and autonomy for everyone. Doesn't it stand to reason that someone who wants everyone to be free of tyranny does so partly because he cares about others? Wishing freedom to one's fellow human beings strikes me as a sign of benevolence. But Moore and the left don't see it that way. Moore thinks respecting others' freedom means refusing to help the less fortunate. But where's the connection? All it means is that the libertarian refuses to sanction the use of physical force (which is what government is) to help others. Peaceful methods -- like voluntary charity -- are the only morally consistent methods. I give about a quarter of my income to charities because I've seen that private charity helps the needy far better than government does.
Here. With an interesting interview. Baqubah sounds much better, but Baghdad still sounds like a mess. The only people who can "win" this thing are the Iraqis, but if they fail, we fail. Weak sisters, I am afraid.
Tuesday, July 10. 2007
Red Mosque update. Telegraph
Nanny State: How Food Fascists, Teetotaling Do-Gooders, Priggish Moralists, and other Boneheaded Bureaucrats are Turning America into a Nation of Children - by David Harsanyi. Great subtitle. Denver Post columnist Harsanyi has a new blog, too. (h/t, Ed Driscoll). The piece on Food Addiction is amusing. I have had a lot of trouble giving up food too.
 As the Feds gradually gain power over everything that used to be left to the states and to localities - not to mention to the individual citizen himself - the wonderful Federalist concept of states as "laboratories for democracy" has been whittled away.
But the arrogant and power-intoxicated Feds still cannot control state and local taxation. Willisms has one of his excellent graphs demonstrating the out-migration from high-debt states. High-debt states are, inevitably, high-tax states, because they run their government on a credit card. Good piece at Cato on the subject of soaring state and local debt. Some localities are spending 30-40% of their tax revenues on debt service. That is no way to run a railroad. Image: The Commonwealth of Massachusetts, famous for being a laboratory of incremental socialism
Monday, July 9. 2007
 A story the MSM will not print. Powerline. Rush always says "Follow the money," but with the news it always makes sense to "Follow the Narrative." The narrative always determines the "news."
 A note at Villainous led me to the Paragraph Farmer's essay on "snark," defined as "snidely derisive".
I went to prep school with a kid named Snidely P.Q. DeRiseve lll from Locust Valley, Long Island. It must be the same guy. Wore an ascot, family had a place in Quogue, a nice pied a terre on Park Avenue and a flat in Paris? And that piece led me to an old piece by our hero P.J. O'Rourke from Parliament of Whores about a Farm Bill. Everything O'Rourke said about Farm Bills then is still true, except that the farmers are much wealthier today.
Sunday, July 8. 2007
 Is Iran on the path to self-destruction? Forbes
Jihadists on the police force. Riehl. Yes, that is suicidal. The newest line on Iraq: "The Iraqi government let us down." Blame them. Of course, there is some truth to it. Alan Johnson's ransom paid by the BBC: 5 million dollars and a million bullets. Where does one buy a million Kalashnikov bullets? And does the Beeb care who those bullets end up inside of? Samizdata quotes a Telegraph review of The Islamist, which is written by Ed Husain, former terrorist: Mr Husain, whose book, The Islamist, exposed the workings of Hizb ut-Tahir, is contemptuous of the idea that the latest plots were inspired by the West's intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan. "This is just an excuse. They reject Western culture full stop, not just 'slags in night clubs'. They would have supported the bombing of Muslims attending the cinema in Cairo in the 1950s. They do not want Muslims to enjoy social freedoms. If it was not Iraq they would cite Chechnya. Or Palestine. These are angry men. Accommodation is not an option. It has to be containment or annihilation." A quote from Augean Stables, re dealing with the Moslem manipulations to which some are so foolishly susceptible: ...isn’t it time we stopped being condescending racists, treating them as children even as we loudly proclaim our respect for them? The conflict right now divides along two mutually exclusive lines. The hawks say, “let’s get tough, only force will work.” The doves say, “let’s be nice, only talk will work.” How about some verbal confrontations? How about every Western newspaper publishing the Danish Cartoons (with the three fake ones identified as psy-ops incitement) so that Muslims the world over are embarrased by the revolting behavior of their co-religionists, rather than we and decent Muslims are subject to the temper tantrum of the touchiest and most violent of the lot? How about the Pope saying “you’ve got to be kidding!” when the Muslims violently insist he apologize for calling them violent? How about the Brits saying, “We take this level of self-criticism as part and parcel of a decent and tolerant society. If you can’t stand the heat, a) get out of the kitchen, and b) don’t expect us to take your criticism of us seriously until you can take the heat?
Re the above, Cal Thomas: "I'm going to keep pointing it out until they blow me up"
Being a black lesbian. We must always remember that Victim Points accumulate exponentially, not arithmetically. A white guy treated the same way gets 0 Victim Points, and thus ends with 0, and therefore no cash award. And, under the updated rules, even white gay guys start with 0 points: the white part plus the testicles are the problem and white testosterone is, of course, the main obstacle to world peace and happiness - except for the crisis of Globalistical Warmening, of course. Proof of AGW: it's darn hot today in CT. QED. Absolutely beautiful, with every Happy Hydrangea in Yankeeland shouting the Sabbath news that God Lives. Tennis (off the TV and onto the courts - inspired by the great Federer and the young Nadal), then maybe a drink by the pool - and not one more second for me today in the internets.
 A letter from Canon Andrew White, an anti-war "liberal's liberal", as quoted in a piece on the subject of the medical bombers by Rick Moran:
Dear Friends, Just over two months ago I wrote in my Update that I had the worst meeting in my life. I said I have seen the Devil today. I met this awful man in Amman prior to our last major meeting in Baghdad. I referred to him as the Devil and I even refused to continue the meeting and told the Sheikh who had brought him to me never to let me meet him again. He told me that they were going to start killing in the UK then the USA. One sentence I remembered but did not understand was “those who cure you will kill you”. I did not understand this then but in the last two days since the terrorist activities in the UK were brought to a head I was not surprised when there were reports that those arrested were all involved in the health services. Those terrible words “those who cure you will kill you” suddenly made sense. The litany of planned killing was horrendous. I do not know why I was told this by an Iraqi Sunni living then in Syria. I passed on this information to our FCO. I then learned that this person was a senior Al Qaeda figure and so was indeed bent on the destruction of innocent lives. I will never forget this meeting. It remains the worst I have ever had. I hope I never have one like it again.
Saturday, July 7. 2007
Cartoon on temporary loan from Theo: 
Friday, July 6. 2007
Re Mayor Bloomberg's Learning for Dollars scheme, Heather MacDonald notes (my bold print): Give the Bloomberg policymakers credit for one thing: The cash-for-responsibility plan violates the greatest taboo in the poverty industry. It implicitly recognizes that the long-term poor are held back more by their own behavior than by social inequities. Talk to any inner-city teacher and you will hear how difficult it is to get parents involved in their child's education, or students to bother with homework. Countless schemes for tutoring and job training sit on the shelves unused because the "clients" never show up. Free medical advice is wasted because patients don't return for follow-up visits, if they bother following the doctor's instructions at all. After the urban riots of the 1960s, political scientist Edward Banfield observed that the central trait separating the poor from the prosperous is future orientation. His insight has never been improved upon. The middle and upper classes defer gratification and invest effort in self-improvement, Banfield wrote in The Unheavenly City: The Nature and Future of our Urban Crisis; were the underclass to do so, they would not long stay in the bottom economic tier. In unveiling his "conditional cash transfer" scheme on June 18, Bloomberg predictably eschewed Banfield's bracing honesty. The poor fail to "plan for the future," the mayor said, because they are "so focused on surviving." The idea that the residents of Brooklyn and Central Harlem are engaged in a "struggle," as Bloomberg put it, against starvation and depredation is a fantasy. Many teens who will be enrolled in "Opportunity NYC" likely wear the latest sneakers and carry pagers and cell phones. Their problem is motivation, not the unforgiving demands of a subsistence economy. Nevertheless, Bloomberg should be congratulated for implicitly acknowledging the behavior issue, however misleading the rhetoric in which he couches it.
She goes on to explain why, despite the above, it's a bad plan. Whole thing at The Weekly Standard.
 Good clean fun!
We already know that those Islamists are fun people with a great sense of humor, and the gift of being mature enough, and emotionally secure enough to laugh at themselves, so our cuz across the pond Theo has a contest. If you have time, give it a whirl your own self. Image of the now- famous Rage Boy (he is very very angry) borrowed from Snapped Shot.
Thursday, July 5. 2007
Shhhh. Don't let them know about the EU Treaty. It's ultra ultra secret.
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