Shifting Sands Election 2006 - and 2008

"Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters."

Daniel Webster penned those words in a legal brief in 1819.
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It would be pleasant to think that Webster's caution is firmly imprinted on the minds of those participating on this last day of the biennial process of candidate selection. Not as pleasant as thinking of what one might do with the proceeds of a winning lottery ticket but the outcomes are roughly as likely. It would also be pleasant to imagine that the voters of Webster's day bore his admonition in mind as they marked their ballots and that our current situation is a form of degradation from a Golden Age of reasoned judgment by knowledgeable electors but that would be a monstrous lie were it to be asserted. The fact is that Webster became a Federalist Whig in precisely the same manner in which George Bush became a Republican which in turn is how some eighty percent of those who will cast votes in the coming election came to be affiliated with their party of 'choice'. If it didn't happen in the crib, it happened in the nursery and if it didn't happen in the nursery, it happened at the dinner table. That premise has held true for some 220 years and is unlikely to change any time soon.

Except - well, the shift that occurred around the time of the Civil War, and the shift that occurred following the '29 crash, and now, perhaps. When Daniel Webster declaimed "Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable." in 1830 he was already well engaged in the struggle which would not reach conclusion until some fourteen years after his death in 1852. By the time the question of federal unity was resolved the Federalist Whigs had disappeared and the Republicans were well launched upon an exercise of retaining power that would endure until its by then ossified leadership failed to respond to a catastrophe largely of its own making. Rigidity, rather than the hoped for wisdom, seems to have come as the party aged and the Republicans paid the appropriate price as millions of voters abandoned a party afflicted with sclerosis for a party which from its cradle had promised much to those who had achieved little.

The Democrats fulfilled their promises to such an extent that within fifty years the class of those in true need had practically disappeared. A remarkable achievement which some find truly laudable. Unfortunately (or very, very fortunately), the same ossification problem which afflicted the Republicans in the '20's has been afflicting the Democrats since the early '90's. Their largest client groups are declining either in size (the unions) or in potency (the segregation of blacks into politically meaningless enclaves). Having fulfilled its promises, the Democratic Party's reason for existence (other than to exercise power) is now in question.

Will the '06 election provide further evidence of the party's obsolescence? Perhaps not. The machinations of the last decennial reapportionment increase the probability that the Democrats will totter on for a bit. September 11, 2001 was not as transformative an event as that which occurred from October 24th through October 29th, 1929. The spending patterns of the Democratic National Committee and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee indicate that they expect to seriously contend the 2008 election. In fact, the spending patterns show that they are primarily focused on the 2008 campaign rather than upon actually attempting to secure a majority in either house. One might wonder where that particular spark of genius originated. Rahm Emanuel knows - but he ain't telling.

Tomorrow I'll take a close look at Iowa - home of the first indicator of a Presidential candidates viability.

The Freedom Tower Will Rise

Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, or SOM, the architects designing the tower, have taken that imperative literally: If terrorists pilot a fully-fuelled commercial jet into their building, they believe it will stand.

"Based on the identified threats there wouldn't be a disproportionate collapse of the structure," says Carl Galioto, SOM's technical partner. "In many cases there wouldn't even be a distortion; key elements of the tower would not be deformed out of place."
...
"It is generally impossible to assure that a structure will not collapse as we simply cannot predict what extraordinary loads may be put onto it," says Robert Woodbury, Scientific Director of the Canadian Design Research Network and a Professor at Simon Fraser University. "What is most important is to give people sufficient time to escape before collapse, and sufficient means of egress to leave."

H/T Wired.

That's what the core is all about. All the buildings' life-safety systems will be encased here, and the core will serve as the primary escape route in the event of a crisis. The core contains extra-wide emergency stairs, pressurized to push out smoke, and a dedicated staircase for fire fighters to use so rescue efforts aren't hampered if people rush down.

There are areas of refuge on each floor where people can await rescue and enhanced elevators that function in emergencies. Photo-luminescent strips will indicate routes in the event of a power failure and all communication and sprinkler systems are contained in the core.

In addition to interconnected exits all the exit pathways lead directly out on to the surrounding streets, totally avoiding the lobby, which will serve as a base for rescue operations. In the event of an emergency, Galioto says a fully occupied building could be evacuated using both stairs and elevators in under two hours.

What Terrorism Hath Wrought

Brought to you courtesy of Microsoft's VirtualEarth, which just went live this evening with a brand-new version and absolutely zero fanfare.

Golden Towers of Yore

LILEKS (James) :: the Bleat

LILEKS (James) :: the Bleat: "The news is never good. If the economy’s up, there’s an expert on hand from the Institute of the Possible Downside warning about unforseen pressure on the bond market, softening housing, hardening tensions, turgid wage growth, and explosive release of inflationary pressures. Have a cigarette. Was it bad for you?

TV news gives me the same impression, which is why I avoid it. All those earnest faces. Good evening, we’re deeply concerned, and powerless to do anything about it. Although we hope you infer from our brows the need to contact someone, and urge action on this issue. Now here’s a baby giraffe."

Crybabies

Democrats are crybabies. I just watched the Path to 9/11 and while it did not make the Clinton people look good, it was not that damn bad either. After years of listening Bush called Hitler and God only knows what else and having to listen to schmucks like Rockefeller whine about how much better off we would all be if Saddam was back in power...I thought this was pretty easy on Clinton.

Tomorrow night we will have the second part and Bush will be in office, so maybe they will have more fun with him. At least he won't beg and cry and threaten to sue people.

Who Stole My Wedge?

Remember the immigration issue? The Pew guided, Soros funded issue that was to split the Republican Party and provide the impetus for massive retaliation from hordes of Hispanics who would register and flock to the polls in November to turn out those dastardly Republicans who dared support actual enforcement of existing laws while at the same time providing an excuse for the weak minded single issue Republicans to refuse to vote for representatives who didn't strongly support a shoot on sight order's imposition along the border?

The balance of the post can be read by clicking 'Click here to read more' below.

Where did it go? Why did a planned rally in LA draw so few people in LA last week that AP even counted journos and organizers in its guesstimate of crowd size? Perhaps the most amusing paragraph within the article was this:

An Associated Press review this week of voter registration figures from Chicago, Denver, Houston, Atlanta, Los Angeles and other major urban areas that saw large rallies showed no sign of a historic new voter boom that could sway elections.

There's no delusion quite like self-delusion.

Just another Emily Litella moment for the Democrats, I suppose. A bit like the "Republican Culture of Corruption" which has engendered the hoped for effect of a tight Senate race in Montana and the forced retirement of a Congressman in a safe district in Ohio but has also left Congressman William Jefferson (and possibly the Sanchez sisters) wondering whether they will get a sentence for receiving a bribe as stiff as Vernon Jackson received for offering one. Democratic Congressman Mollohan will retain his House seat but is unlikely to regain his seat on the House Ethics Committee - which is just as well, considering that the Department of Justice is casting a cold eye on some of his rather lucrative associations with 'foundations'. Perhaps the same officals at Justice are involved in the recently announced investigation of the newly minted and immediately tarnished Senator Menendez of New Jersey? Will he turn out to be as cheap a crook as Torricelli? Will Lautenberg have to be called upon to hold both of New Jersey's Senate seats due to the unavailability of any other New Jersey Democrat without similiar problems?

Why has the New York Times become so tepid in its support of nutrooter Ted Lamont and his bid to unseat Joe Lieberman? In fact, why is the entire Democratic establishment sprinting from association with the nutroots? I thought they were the wave of the [Democratic] future? Perhaps it has something to do with the apparent buyer remorse that the Soros/Bing/Lewis consortium seems to be suffering over their purchase of the Democratic Party.

You can't really blame them, how would you feel if you opened the poke and found ten skunks rather than the nice healthy young pig you thought you were buying?

Election Year politicking

Pat Roberts of Kansas:

“These additional views demonstrate to me that Phase II has become a political exercise. The views have little to do with the facts in the two reports which were released. The reports are little more than a vehicle to advance election year political charges. That is not the purpose for which the Intelligence Committees were created, and just as important, it distracts us from the work we should be doing.

“Unfortunately, my colleagues continue to use the Committee to try and rewrite history insisting that they were deliberately duped into supporting the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime. That is simply not true and I believe the American people are smart enough to recognize election year politicking when they see it.

“Rather than perpetuating an ongoing effort to rewrite history, the Committee should be focusing all of its resources on a host of troubling issues: monitoring Intelligence Community reforms, balancing acquisition requirements with budgetary constraints, correcting the flawed tradecraft which led to the Iraq intelligence failure, and assessing collection and analysis of intelligence on Iran, North Korea, and al-Qaida.

Two years without TV.

That will be me if this happens. I will just go find a cave and crawl in it. Investigations, impeachments. etc. Terrorism shmerroism they got bigger fish to fry.

While the Democrats have been playing down talk of radical shifts in governance should they gain control of the legislature, at least one report indicates they are privately planning a range of actions including: investigations of the Bush administration of a scale larger than Watergate; using the budget as a lever to dictate actual war strategy and leave Iraq; imposing a range of economic measures negatively impacting the Oil and Pharmaceutical industries; and the launching of a "boatload" of expensive social welfare programs while raising the minimum wage.

It appears some Democrats are more willing than others to talk about their plans, assuming they gain control of the House and or the Senate in the mid-term elections. Evidently, among other senior Dems, Rep.Henry Waxman has been talking to the Contra Costa Times.

Democrats will press to get out of Iraq. They'll mount investigations into the Bush administration's record that could rival those of Presidents Nixon in Watergate and Clinton in the Monica Lewinsky affair.

They'll push a boatload of social-welfare legislation, such as raising the minimum wage, that reflects their pent-up priorities, while blocking the Republican agenda on social issues such as gay marriage, abortion and religion.

Those are some of the top plans that Democrats would pursue if they won power, according to interviews with Democratic lawmakers, strategists, staff aides and lobbyists.

The tone and temper of the Democrats were reflected well by Rep. Henry Waxman of Los Angeles, the ranking Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee, in a conference call in late August. He'll become the panel's chairman if Democrats take the House.

H/T Riehl World View

This is pretty funny.

Go check out Riehl World View.

UPDATE: There is also a link to the scenes that have the Democrats howling.

Saturday Movie Review: Welcome to Manchester

Posted by Loner.
--------------------------------------

From Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story, screenplay by Frank Cottrell Boyle (as Martin Hardy):

Tristram Shandy, it was actually number eight in the top one hundred books of all time.

That was a chronological list.


From The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne:

Pray, Sir, in all the reading which you have ever read, did you ever read such a book as Locke's Essay upon the Human Understanding?—Don't answer me rashly,—because many, I know, quote the book, who have not read it—and many have read it who understand it not:—If either of these is your case, as I write to instruct, I will tell you in three words what the book is.—It is a history.—A history! of who? what? where? when? Don't hurry yourself.—It is a history-book, Sir, (which may possibly recommend it to the world) of what passes in a man's own mind; and if you will say so much of the book, and no more, believe me, you will cut no contemptible figure in a metaphysick circle.


Tristram Shandy is actually number 7 on The List. It is a list of novels. Novels are a subset of books. No author has more than one novel on The List (100 greatest?) and The List is chronological by publication date. Neither of these criteria is explicitly spelled out for the reader of The List....


I began reading another blog shortly after this list was published—something to do with an opinion guy (who knew?) losing his ESPN web site column for criticizing the man he worked for (name of Eisner) over where he opined on other things, primarily cultural, for a publisher (name of Peretz.) He later got it (the column) back. My one and only e-mail to a famous, as famous goes these days, blogger (name of Reynolds) was about this. This blog, new to me, was and is the property of a novelist-screenwriter-director whose name was not totally unfamiliar.

In reading The List—linked to from that blog—I was fully aware by the time I came to the novel where the Dormouse doesn't say feed your head (The List number now the name of a popular, as popular goes these days, television series about a rarity, these days,—an effective civil servant)— of what? Of what?—Why that The List is chronological and, as Great Expectations is missing, each author only gets a single spot and Dickens's is David Copperfield. That's okay by me. With the selection of Emma in preference to Pride and Prejudice, not to mention Persuasion, as the contribution of Jane Austen (a clue here on one of the criteria as the squib reads: Near impossible choice between this and Pride and Prejudice., but who reads the squibs when perusing The List? And who doesn't say to themselves the first time they look upon a list of 100 when only at number nine—ummm, Pride and Prejudice better be Top Thirty. I returned to the blog to post my first comment—a note to say that the list was chronological. The owner hadn't noticed this ([No slam? -ed. Song lyrics later. 'Nuff said. -ed]), but one of his other readers, commenting before I could, had.


That is my heroic flaw—my excess of civic pride.


Thus, thus, thus—my first comment on that blog was not a correction or a fact. I opined on whether or not we were/are in a War of Civilizations - weren't/aren't - a couple of weeks later. (More on something more or less related momentarily.) Had I not, you and I,— you being those of you who read this,—would probably not have known something of one another (for those of you whom I've read) and I'd not have gotten a treasured e-mail from "Brother Ledeen" in which he blows off a point of disagreement and answers a question by suggesting I buy and read his book. The subject was Democracy in America—a book that's not a novel.

The something more or less related (previous paragraph) is a VDH a/k/a Victor Davis Hanson essay(?) linked in comments here. War of Civilizations sort of stuff still (and evermore I fear,) but I was struck by this paragraph:

So we are in limbo — a sort of war, a sort of peace. Lulls of this nature are not such rare things in history. The Athenians and the Spartans between 421-415, or the Western Europeans between October 1939 and May 1940, likewise thought the squall had passed — the respite a sign that the enemy was satiated, or was occupied elsewhere, or had had a change of heart, or that times of transient calm might mean permanent peace

Go Tell The Spartans --- Vietnam War movie title taken from a translation of Simonides's Epitaph for the Spartans who fell at Thermopylae:

Go tell the Spartans,
Passerby,
That here, obedient to their laws,
We lie.

Not the lack of a "." at the end of the paragraph, but that bit about the Athenians and the Spartans. What the [expletive deleted] is the former(?) Classics professor talking about. A favorite historian (name of Durant) sums up those years:

Three factors turned this pledge of a half century of friendship into a brief truce of six years: the diplomatic corruption of the peace into "war by other means"; the rise of Alcibades as the leader of a faction that favored renewed hostilities; and the attempt of Athens to conquer the Dorian colonies of Sicily.

Athens; Athens; and Athens, and with the last came, per Thucydides:

This was the greatest Hellenic action that took place during this war, and, in my opinion, the greatest action that we know of in Hellenic history — to the victors the most brilliant of successes, to the vanquished the most calamitous of defeats; for they were utterly and entirely defeated; their sufferings were on an enormous scale; their losses were, as they say, total; army, navy, everything was destroyed, and, out of many, only few returned. So ended the events in Sicily.

When the news reached Athens, for a long time people would not believe it...


Must go.

Oh, no. Not David. No.

He goes.


This is a movie review. The one I'm writing on The Road Warrior—the one I've been writing for months—is complete save for the review part and has been for quite some time. I'll probably have to rewrite the framing should I ever write the review—hence my hesitation.

Why is Sterne's novel number seven on The List?

Because it was written early on in the history of the novel. As novels go there's nothing much like it until the novel at number 41. I read the whole of the novel at number 41, cover to cover as we say, this summer. I'm very proud of myself as I've been periodically trying to read it cover to cover for the past 30 years.

Early in the history of the novel?

The novel is a revolt.

A revolt against what?

This is important. A revolt against the contents of the library of the title character in the novel in the number 1 spot on the list and, by extension, the legacy of scholasticism.

Why is that important?

Because this is a movie review.

Is it a review of Tristram Shandy: A Cock and a Bull Story, a 2006 release now available on DVD?

No. It's a review of a movie the writer, director and some of the stars of Tristram Shandy: A Cock and a Bull Story made five years ago. It was released in 2002.

Why all the above?

Because The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, no more unfilmable as a feature film in my view than any number of other novels on The List, probably wouldn't have been, for lack of a better word, adapted had it not been for the earlier movie and, for reasons I may remember to state, the earlier movie works a lot better than Tristram which Alas, poor YORICK! omits(?) Yorick (a Hamlet reference brilliantly tied to a Don Quixote reference) who gets black pages (dramatized in the movie) after a description of what happens ten times a day at his grave to close Chapter XII and also manages to have the last line of the novel: A COCK and a BULL, said Yorick—And one of the best of its kind, I ever heard. in Chapter CXI.

What's a COCK and a BULL?

A fanciful tale.

And the movie Tristram Shandy?

Is not nearly as fanciful, in my view, as the earlier movie. Ask me about the movie quote with which I began and I'll do the review.

What quote? Welcome to Manchester?

No. That's from the movie I'm going to review.


I'm being postmodern, before it's fashionable.


So is that. No. Two guys are talking. One's a journalist. He asks questions...mostly. The other is an actor. He answers questions...mostly. The actor says that Tristram Shandy was number eight...and the journalist, not correcting two mistakes, points out that that was a chronological list.

In the earlier movie, 24 Hour Party People, the actor played the journalist, and that is, I think, the most interesting thing about Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story and something someone familiar with the earlier movie knows, but then this someone also knows the earlier movie and having seen the earlier movie, would, in my view, find Tristram something of a letdown, but then I've read the source material where I knew little about the source material from which the earlier movie was crafted—except for one scene about which I'm going to hold forth. Better do that while I'm thinking about it.

Early on in 24 Hour Party People, Steve Coogan, the actor, playing Tony Wilson, the journalist, takes part in a recreation of a historical event. The place: Manchester, England. The date: June 4, 1976. The event: The Sex Pistols play Manchester for the first time. They play to an audience of 42 (Sex Pistols footage is intercut) while Steve Coogan as Tony Wilson—one of the 42—begins our tour through a revolt in another art form as it played out in one place during the next 16 years. For what it is, epic history, it's fascinating in both content and style. It's not endlessly fascinating like the best movies, books and music, but it is well worth a second and a third look (with two DVD commentaries to listen to) and that dissection of the first Sex Pistols appearance in Manchester is storytelling at its best.


Buzzcocks can't play because we're not ready so it's just the Sex Pistols.


For some of you, no doubt, it will be a look at the kind of history from which, like Stephen, you are trying to awake. For me, in Berkeley, some self-identification was in the offing. The Sex Pistols played Winterland in San Francisco on January 14, 1978. Ever get the feeling you've been cheated? Johnny Rotten asked as the Sex Pistols left the stage for the last time. I was hanging out in a business (name forgotten) that sold only freshly-baked cookies (a novelty then) with the girl working late there (she may have been baking while I sampled the merchandise) when a friend (most knowledgeable music guy I've known, but damn if I can get beyond Bill) came in to describe the event. He knew he'd seen something that went well beyond the music being played. I'd imagine I saw something similar when I watched from the rafters—metaphorically speaking—Green Day play some hall in Oakland in, maybe, 1993. Talk about heat. The walls were drenched in sweat when the lights came up. I digress again. My answer to Johnny Rotten is an emphatic NO!!! The self-identification presented itself in the form of The Clash.

I'm the all night drug-prowling wolf
Who looks so sick in the sun
I'm the white man in the Palais
Just lookin' for fun

Strummer-Jones echoes Lennon-McCartney—the after and before of the revolt. They're that good. Those lyrics, from the greatest of all Clash songs, belong to Mick Jones. My mental state—ever after Rude Boy...We reply belongs, in no small measure, to Joe Strummer. He is ever in and on my mind. He saw The Sex Pistols, in London, on April 3, 1976. On July 4, a new band, The Clash, opened for The Sex Pistols in Sheffield. Exactly a month earlier the Sex Pistols were in Manchester to play before 42 people. Many of those 42 would come to see their names listed on all sorts of music packaging and in all sorts of publications.

You can catch a glimpse of The Clash in Martin Scorsese's The King of Comedy.

I'm gonna work 50 times harder, and I'm gonna be 50 times more famous than you.

Then you're gonna have idiots like you plaguing your life!


That is The Clash.

This was So It Goes... And as it goes, so it went. It's all over.


That's them in 24 Hour Party People. They're performing Janie Jones on tape as Tony Wilson brings his television music show to an end. He's off to find his destiny and—I'm not making this up—converse with his god.


It's my belief that history is a wheel. "Inconsistency is my very essence" -says the wheel- "Rise up on my spokes if you like, but don't complain when you are cast back down into the depths. Good times pass away, but then so do the bad. Mutability is our tragedy, but it is also our hope. The worst of times, like the best, are always passing away".


I'm not sure that I'd be sorry if any of you rented 24 Hour Party People and found it boring. Appalling? Well...maybe. Read a novel lately? The one at number 8, err 7, on The List is engaging. The one at number 48 is my favorite. Just because it's relatively short doesn't mean it's filmable. As a matter of fact, among the books on The List—well the many I've read anyway—I think it one of the least filmable. I haven't been shown to be wrong...thus far. Thinking on it *seriously* I am sorry about the punctuation. Apologies— ...and the holocaust was complete.

CYA

Some examples:

Zinni .

As Brit Hume implies, some of the pronouncements of the retired generals amounts to good old fashioned CYA.

Former Clinton CENTCOM commander, Anthony Zinni — the most prominent of the retired generals attacking Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld — now says that, in the run-up to the war in Iraq, “What bothered me … [was that] I was hearing a depiction of the intelligence that didn’t fit what I knew. There was no solid proof, that I ever saw, that Saddam had WMD.”

But in early 2000, Zinni told Congress “Iraq remains the most significant near-term threat to U.S. interests in the Arabian Gulf region,” adding, “Iraq probably is continuing clandestine nuclear research, [and] retains stocks of chemical and biological munitions … Even if Baghdad reversed its course and surrendered all WMD capabilities, it retains scientific, technical, and industrial infrastructure to replace agents and munitions within weeks or months.”

Yes well, like the man said consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds. Or something like that.

DNC Chairman Howard Dean: "There's no question that Saddam Hussein is a threat to the United States and to our allies. ... [I]f Saddam persists in thumbing his nose at the inspectors, then we're clearly going to have to do something about it." (CBS' "Face The Nation," 9/29/02)

Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE): "It would be unrealistic, if not downright foolish, to believe we can claim victory in the war on terrorism and a more secure world if Saddam Hussein is still in power five years from now, at least acting as he has the last five years." (Sen. Joe Biden, Remarks At Center For Strategic And International Studies Forum, Washington, D.C., 2/4/02)

Rep. Ford : "For anyone to suggest or pretend that Saddam Hussein is not a threat or a menace, I think he or she is fooling himself or herself, and is misleading the nation." (MSNBC's "Buchanan & Press," 10/8/02)

Yes, he or she certainly would be. I think the thing that annoys me the most here is the idea that there was no need to go to Iraq because AlQaida did not run the place.... Saddam did and he was just a harmless little homicidal maniac dictator with oil. And yet AlQaida is there right now and most of these folks have no desire to fight them, so what does it matter to them one way or another since reverse is the only gear they got that works?

My personal favorite :

Back on Feb. 17, 1998, Hayes notes, Clinton – speaking at the Pentagon – warned of the "reckless acts of outlaw nations and an unholy axis of terrorists, drug traffickers and organized international criminals." He said these "predators of the twenty-first century," who are America's enemies, "will be all the more lethal if we allow them to build arsenals of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and missiles to deliver them. We simply cannot allow that to happen. There is no more clear example of this threat than Saddam Hussein's Iraq."

And later the same spring, Clinton's Justice Department prepared an indictment of al-Qaida's leader, Osama bin Laden, in which a prominent passage located in the fourth paragraph reads:

"Al-Qaeda reached an understanding with the government of Iraq that al-Qaeda would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al-Qaeda would work cooperatively with the government of Iraq."

Thank God for Tony

I stole that from Syl, but it is true.

Tony Snow with snarky Press Corps :

Q Has the administration been briefed on the Senate Intelligence Committee report due out today on the run up to the attack in Iraq?

MR. SNOW: No. We'll see it when it gets released. Obviously, we've had some characterizations of what we're going to see. You're talking about phase two. We've had characterizations about it, and based on the characterizations we've seen, it's nothing new. And so it's, again, kind of re-litigating things that happened three years ago. It's worth noting, and I'll certainly be prepared to revise, extend and amend remarks upon seeing the actual report.

In 2002 and 2003, members of both parties got a good look at the intelligence we had, and they came to the very same conclusions about what was going on. And it's one of the things that I think drew Americans together. It's one of the reasons why you had overwhelming majorities in the United States Senate and the House for taking action against Saddam Hussein. Both sides were looking at the same intelligence and coming to the same conclusions.

But, more importantly -- if we have people who want to re-litigate that, that's fine, but the President's stated concern this week, as you've seen, is to think, okay, we'll let people quibble over three years ago; the important thing to do is to figure out what you're doing tomorrow, and the day after, and the month after, and the year after to make sure that this war on terror is won.

Q Are you devaluing the importance or significance of what we may see today?

MR. SNOW: No. Take a look at it, but you'll probably also -- I'm sure you'll be getting push-back from people who will remind you that every significant leader of the other party had made comments about Saddam Hussein that were substantially similar to those that were made by the administration.

When it comes to the national intelligence estimate, there has been an accusation that the Iraqi national congress had disproportionate impact. I direct you to the Robb-Silberman report that said, no. We've taken a look at it. There have been a number of reports looking at that, as well.

I think what you'll see is a divergent views section that sort of repeats a lot of the critiques we've heard over the last couple of years. And I suspect that both parties are going to be busy sort of going back and forth about who said what, when. It's all well and good, but the most important thing is to figure out what you're doing today and tomorrow.

Q Is the fact that this is coming from a Republican-led panel of any moment?

MR. SNOW: No, because, as you know, the intelligence committee is -- they have generally been reasonably collegial and even though there have been some frayed nerves from time to time between Chairman Roberts and Senator Rockefeller, what you've got is the ability of Democrats on that committee to sort of state their views.

I think the parts most of you guys are going to be looking at are the Democratic views on this, because that will be the source of controversy. And all I can say is, been there, done that.

So, this is where we are. To even consider questioning whether or not Clinton really tried all that hard to get Osama or deal with AlQaida is a bad bad thing. Because hind sight is 20/20 and all that.

However, for a bunch of politicians to stick Bush out on that limb and start sawing three years after most of them voted for the war they are bitching about today, well that is just ok fine. After all how could they know that most of the information that was compiled when Bush was in Texas and they were in Washington was not "accurate".

One of the things I find so interesting here is the idea that Zarqawi and Saddam could not have had a "relationship", that Saddam was afraid of Zarqawi. Puhleaze, Saddam could have killed that maniac any damn time he felt like, just like he killed about a million other people. He was willing to try to kill a former President of the United States, but him was 'fraid of Zarqawi. What a load of crap.

Saddam operated like a Don. Finding evidence directly linking him to anything is almost impossible. But whatever the evidence was these same people came to the same conclusions...all the rest is bullshit.

UPDATE: For anyone who has not read it Joscelyn's article in the Weekly Standard is worth reading.

Improvement in Iraq

If you are looking for some good news about Iraq go check out Big Lizards . Unlike me he has worked hard on this and has two good posts complete with charts and graphs and numbers and commentary.

How valuable is public opinion,...

especially international public opinion? At ChicagoBoyz Helen and (commenter veryretired), in How Valuable Is Public Opinion?, does an excellent job of describing the issues involved with polling, unthinking (useful idiot) and intentional fith columnists, and just plain, muddleheaded "leave me out of it" and "if only there was a different US president" attitudes.

Compare the thoughtful and thought provoking essay by Helen to this bit of vacuous claptrap "commentary" (Lost Love) by Hendrik Hertzberg in that bastion of the Presse Ancienne, The New Yorker.

Then think about all this in the context of Samuel Huntington's famous assertion that Islam has bloody borders (evident in any number of reports from any number of spots on the globe, but let's pick Thailand out of a hat - ht StrategyPage via Instapundit). Islam doesn't only have bloody borders. Islam is spurting blood all over everything, everywhere.

Why am I supposed to care, let alone base my votes upon, what some vegetable hauler in Slovenia thinks about why Muslems kill people? Worse yet, why should I care about the opinions of murdering Islamofascists who blame their hatred and the misery they cause on "Jews" or "Israel" or "America". When's the last time some murdering Islamofascist in Thailand set eyes on a Jew or, for that matter, and American - or even their favorite excuse, a Palestinian? What are the chances that more than 5% of the murdering fascists in Thailand, of Sri Lanka, or Waziristan, or anywhere they bleat out their vile dogma, could find Palestine, or Israel, or the Unites States on a world map? How many of them have ever seen a world map or given a few minutes thought to anything about the world, other than the infidels available for killing, outside their own little slice of hell?

I don't give a rat's ass about "World Opinion", Mr. Hertzberg. Far too many "World Citizens" don't give anything any more thought than you do.

Oh, yeah, and thank you, Helen.

UPDATE: Thomas Lifson, with a bit of dark humor, has an article titled Now the truth about 9/11 can come out at American Thinker. The article is a short commentary on the Sweetness & Light article, 9/11 Hijackers Wanted To Avenge… Bosnia!

I have no way to ascertain the accuracy of such a thing, but S&L tells us that the Al Qaeda video recently shown by Aljezeera has footage of

[T]wo of the 19 Islamists who took part in the attacks, Saudi nationals Hamza al-Ramdi and Wael el-Shemari... said that their actions were inspired by an urge to avenge the suffering of Muslims in Bosnia and Chechnya.

To which S&L gives the oddly necessary response of:

That's right.

The hijackers claimed they were going to fly airplanes into important buildings in New York and DC to "avenge the suffering of Muslims in Bosnia and Chechnya."

It is necessary to read (or hear) it twice to overcome that squinting, "Huh? Say what?" feeling it provokes. Mr. Lifson then sums it all up wonderfully:

This is rather stunning. It is also nearly incoherent. The only conclusion I can draw is that there is a foul brew of hatred and envy, a melange of assorted grievances on behalf of Muslims from which various individuals draw their revenge fantasies.

Glenn Reynolds is a happy man

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: The Federal Funding Accountability and Transparancy Act, S. 2590 has unanimously passed the Senate.

I was not into this all that much. It has been my experience that people always think the government is wasting money unless it is spending it on them. That is why George Bush heard crickets chirping when he actually tried to reform social security.

Why things will get worse before they get better

Two items. First, a poll of our cousins to the north reveals that they believe we Americans are responsible for the 9/11 attacks. Blame the victims and all that. How dare those b**ds go to work that day in the World Trade Center?

A majority of Canadians believe U.S. foreign policy was one of the root causes that led to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, and Quebecers are quicker to criticize the U.S. administration for its international actions than other Canadians, a recent poll suggests.

Second, our cousins across the pond are also reaching the conclusion that the best way to avoid terrorist attacks is...distance themselves from the United States.

MOST people believe that the Blair Government’s foreign policy has increased significantly the risk of terrorist attacks and now want Britain to distance itself from America and set a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, according to a poll for The Times.

Iranian nukes, Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons? Never heard of 'em. It's those damn yanks.

Well, polls are nonsense and all that, but I have no doubt we're losing the battle for hearts and minds and we're losing it big-time. That's because we're the safe devil. The prospect of a nuclear-armed Mullah with a Seventh-Century mentality is really too much to bear. Don't think about it. Attack that darned Bush, those darned Republicans, those darned Americans! Nobody will lock you up for that and maybe you'll escape the next terrorist attack after all.

Unfreakingbelievable

The Democrats threaten Disney over movie's portrayal of Saint Bill. Now of course they are free to say whatever they want about Bush, people do that all the time without worrying about that whole truth/justice/fairness thing, but slick Willie and his legacy..well that is something else entirely.

Speaking of the first amendment I don't know if I feel comfortable with these people running things or not.

UPDATE:

The Captain has something to say about this new development.

The Democrats do not do subtlety, or do not do it successfully. They plan on using the power of the federal government to demand political changes to a program before it airs, a dangerous precedent and a completely different problem than what existed before. Presumably, this would become yet another fruit of their takeover of the House should they succeed in the midterms. It makes an excellent argument for extended Republican control.

If the Democrats do not like what ABC wants to broadcast, they have every right to protest it -- and in this case, they had a point. They can organize protests and boycotts, letter-writing campaigns and so on. What they cannot do is to threaten a broadcast license for political differences, regardless of the situation. It violates the spirit of free speech and makes the Democrats look like Big Brother.

Many people have pointed out that conservatives protested the factual deficiencies in "The Reagans" three years ago and wonder why they suddenly consider criticism invalid. The Democrats also appear to have completely changed their position as well. This is what they said about conservative criticism of CBS three years ago, and without a Republican threat against their broadcast license:

"No, there are no First Amendment violations here. The RNC protested the content of a program, which is its right, and CBS voluntarily pulled that program off the air, which is its right.

"But the decision makes it very easy to imagine a future where representatives for the Bush administration have the power to disapprove of any content that touches politics, policy, or history — including news programs."

These people are about as nuanced as a cement mixer. Now let's imagine them doing foreign policy.

Here or There

I just finished watching part of Kudlow and Co. on CNBC, a show I don't think I've watched before--though I've heard of it.

Larry O'Donnell was saying Bush's numbers are so low that his speeches on terrorism won't make any difference for the Rep candidates he's attempting to help. That was countered a bit by Kudlow who pointed out that Bush's Gallup numbers on terrorism are at 55%.

But then the consensus seemed to be that Iraq is the center of the election and since 'everyone' is negative about Iraq, the Reps will be in trouble in November. Bush's talk about terrorism and guarding against it here won't work--it's about Iraq.

Then it hit me.

They're wrong.

Terrorism is about here.

Iraq is about there.

Americans live here.

FWIW

They can dish it out

But it seems they can't take it.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 6 (UPI) -- An upcoming TV mini-series about the origins of the Sept. 11 plot is provoking angry complaints from Democrats about the portrayal of the Clinton administration's response to terrorism.

"The Path to 9/11," a five-hour dramatization laying out the history of the Sept. 11 plot from the first bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, will be aired over two nights on the anniversary of the attack next week by ABC Television.

The movie is billed as a dramatization based on the report of the U.S. commission that investigated the events of Sept. 11 and circumstances leading up to it. According to a disclaimer shown at the beginning of each episode, it "has composite and representative characters and incidents, and time compressions have been used for dramatic purposes."

But a portion of the film showing an aborted effort to capture al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden before the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa has aroused the ire of some of the officials portrayed.

A statement from Samuel "Sandy" Berger, who was national security adviser to President Bill Clinton at the time, calls the scenes involving him "complete fabrications."

And Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., called on ABC to show disclaimers throughout each episode, not just at the beginning. "ABC has a responsibility to make clear that this film is not a documentary, and does not represent an official account of the facts surrounding the Sept. 11 attacks," she said.

In one scene, CIA operatives working with Ahmed Shah Masud, the charismatic Afghan mujahedin leader who fought al-Qaida and their Taliban sponsors, are assembled on a hillside above bin Laden's residence at Tarnak Farms. "It's perfect for us," says "Kirk," a composite character representing several of the CIA operatives and analysts involved in the hunt for the terrorist leader.

But the team is forced to abort the mission when Berger hangs up on them in the middle of a conference call, after telling them he cannot give the go ahead for the action.

"I don't have that authority," he says.

"Are there any men in Washington," Masud asks Kirk afterwards in the film, "or are they all cowards?"

As a matter of fact......

Their Day in Court

At long last the time has come when some of the people responsible for starting this war get to answer for their crimes :

Bush acknowledged for the first time the existence of secret prisons to hold terrorist suspects, and outlined how the CIA and the government's intelligence and law enforcement agencies were fighting a secret war against Al Qaeda to "stop attacks before they occur."

He detailed how the administration plans to legally try the more than 400 detainees held at Guantanamo Bay.The suspects will be transferred to Defense Department custody as a first step in preparing them for trial, a senior administration official. The suspects would be afforded some legal protections consistent with the Geneva conventions, he said.

In addition to Sheik Mohammed, believed to be the No. 3 Al Qaeda leader before his capture in Pakistan in 2003, the suspects include: Ramzi Binalshibh, an alleged would-be Sept. 11 hijacker; and, Abu Zubaydah, who U.S. intelligence officials believe was a key link between Usama bin Laden and many Al Qaeda cells. Zubaydah also was captured in Pakistan, in March 2002.

Now the President and Congress have to work out legislation to try these men which will no doubt be used for future trials as well. No doubt there will be lawyers from groups such as the ACLU looking for anything that can be construed as unconstitutional. Let's hope some of these Republican lawyers know what they are doing.

Bolten's response to Reid

Yesterday the Democrats came up with their usual lame unserious attempt at Iraq war policy, calling for a new direction.

Bolten responds on Bush's behalf:

Three of the key proposals found in your letter, then, are already reflected in current U.S. and Iraqi policy in the region.

On the fourth element of your proposed “new direction,” however, we do disagree strongly. Our strategy calls for redeploying troops from Iraq as conditions on the ground allow, when the Iraqi Security Forces are capable of defending their nation, and when our military commanders believe the time is right. Your proposal is driven by none of these factors; instead, it would have U.S. forces begin withdrawing from Iraq by the end of the year, without regard to the conditions on the ground. Because your letter lacks specifics, it is difficult to determine exactly what is contemplated by the “phased redeployment” you propose. (One such proposal, advanced by Representative Murtha, a signatory to your letter, suggested that U.S. forces should be redeployed as a “quick reaction force” to Okinawa, which is nearly 5,000 miles from Baghdad).

Regardless of the specifics you envision by “phased redeployment,” any premature withdrawal of U.S forces would have disastrous consequences for America’s security. Such a policy would embolden our terrorist enemies; betray the hopes of the Iraqi people; lead to a terrorist state in control of huge oil reserves; shatter the confidence our regional allies have in America; undermine the spread of democracy in the Middle East; and mean the sacrifices of American troops would have been in vain. This “new direction” would lead to a crippling defeat for America and a staggering victory for Islamic extremists. That is not a direction this President will follow. The President is being guided by a commitment to victory — and that plan, in turn, is being driven by the counsel and recommendations of our military commanders in the region.


Let us imagine that Harry Reid as the following choices to make, which would he prefer to see come about:

A} Iraq stabilizes and becomes an ally to the United States in the war on Terror. Bush gets the credit.

B} The United States abandons Iraq, it collapses, hundreds of thousands of people die and it becomes home base to terrorists from all over the world. Bush gets blamed.

Now class, tell me which is the correct response?

Fear of the Sacred in Trudeaupia

A Hasidic Jew was recently forced to leave an Air Canada flight from Montreal to New York because his praying scared fellow passengers:

The airplane was heading toward the runway at the Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport when eyewitnesses said the Orthodox man began to pray.

"He was clearly a Hasidic Jew," said Yves Faguy, a passenger seated nearby. "He had some sort of cover over his head. He was reading from a book.

"He wasn't exactly praying out loud but he was lurching back and forth," Faguy added.

The action didn't seem to bother anyone, Faguy said, but a flight attendant approached the man and told him his praying was making other passengers nervous.

"The attendant actually recognized out loud that he wasn't a Muslim and that she was sorry for the situation but they had to ask him to leave," Faguy said.

The man, who spoke neither English nor French, was escorted off the airplane.

Air Canada Jazz termed the situation "delicate," but says it received more than one complaint about the man's behaviour.

The crew had to act in the interest of the majority of passengers, said Jazz spokeswoman Manon Stewart.

"The passenger did not speak English or French, so we really had no choice but to return to the gate to secure a translator," she said.

The airline is not saying if the man was told he was not allowed to pray, but a spokesperson said the man was back on board the next flight to New York.

Now ask yourself, why would anyone be scared of a Hasidic Jew praying on a flight to New York City? Surely there are few more unlikely sources of terrorism. So, unless we wish to believe that the passengers or crew supposed, with no evident reason, that the lastest ploy of Al Qaeda may be to disguise themselves as pious Hasidim, we have to assume that this is a case of simple fear of unfamiliar signs of religious piety (and perhaps some queer, MSM-influenced misconceptions about orthodox Jews and violence).

And this, I think, is an interesting but disquieting sign of our cultural weakness. For on the one hand it shows that the people involved vaguely recognize, and fear, the power of the sacred over human minds; and yet, on the other hand, it suggests that these same people have little interest in the sacred and no idea what Hasidic Judaism is about. Indeed, we can confidently guess that only people who don't take prayer seriously - in the sense that they don't seriously practice it - would raise objections to a Jewish man praying. Such people would assume that pious, semi-public prayer is a sign of an unstable mind, and while they recognize its power, it may not be for the good.

In other words, if and when this type of person is indeed challenged by people motivated by the power of the sacred, people who see the secular North American as weak and decadent, the under-educated, secular-Gnostic, North Americans are going to run screaming if they can't find authority figures to complain to first. They are not going to be able to feel confident and very superior to the other. Sure they will think the other is crazy, but they will not have the courage to face him down in a fight. They will not be able to say "our faith is superior to yours", because they will only fear the power of faith and not be able to embrace it.

This kind of North American is simply buying time. They know the religious crazies are coming, but like the Spanish voters who responded to the train bombings by voting out a government that was willing to fight Islamic terror, they just want to do whatever it takes to avoid, but not face or understand, the supposed danger, and to keep the jet-settting and partying going for as long as they can, until the fearful power of the sacred triumphs in its return to the scene...

We need to learn again how to promote good faith, and so also an understanding of the sacred, that is suited to our times and needs.

Meanwhile, Concordia University continues to fear Jewish speakers

Before you read this...

Ask yourself, out of the Flares crowd, whose posting have you been expecting?

NORWICH (Reuters) - Many people have experienced the phenomenon of receiving a telephone call from someone shortly after thinking about them -- now a scientist says he has proof of what he calls telephone telepathy.

Rupert Sheldrake, whose research is funded by the respected Trinity College, Cambridge, said on Tuesday he had conducted experiments that proved that such precognition existed for telephone calls and even e-mails.

Each person in the trials was asked to give researchers names and phone numbers of four relatives or friends. These were then called at random and told to ring the subject who had to identify the caller before answering the phone.

"The hit rate was 45 percent, well above the 25 percent you would have expected," he told the annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. "The odds against this being a chance effect are 1,000 billion to one."

He said he found the same result with people being asked to name one of four people sending them an e-mail before it had landed.

However, his sample was small on both trials -- just 63 people for the controlled telephone experiment and 50 for the email -- and only four subjects were actually filmed in the phone study and five in the email, prompting some scepticism.

Undeterred, Sheldrake -- who believes in the interconnectedness of all minds within a social grouping -- said that he was extending his experiments to see if the phenomenon also worked for mobile phone text messages.

Of course, how can you even trust an article from Reuters? Nonetheless, I might note that I have this kind of experience not infrequently - thinking of someone and then meeting them on the street, or receiving their call, or being told when I call that "I was just thinking of you..." but I've never been sure if these seemingly coincidental occurrences happen more than, statistically, they should.

Calderon Wins

But will the man on the left accept it?

His leftist rival, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, had said he won't recognize the ruling. His supporters wept as the decision was announced and the courthouse shook as protesters set off fireworks outside.

"Felipe Calderon didn't win. Fraud won," said Francisca Ojeda, screaming to be heard over protesters throwing trash at the court and screaming "Fraud! Fraud!"

The court found no evidence of systematic fraud, although it threw out some polling place results for mathematical errors and other problems that trimmed Calderon's 240,000-vote advantage to 233,831 votes out of 41.6 million cast.

"There are no perfect elections," said Judge Alfonsina Berta Navarro Hidalgo.

Calderon was staying out of sight at the ruling party's offices and planned to give a nationwide address Tuesday night. His first tasks: winning over millions of Mexicans angry that President Vicente Fox didn't make good on promises of sweeping change while fending off thousands of radicalized leftists who say they will stop at nothing to undermine his presidency.

Sounds familiar.

GUSHER!

Good news from Chevron :

Chevron and its partners have successfully extracted oil from a test well in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, an achievement that could be the biggest breakthrough in domestic oil supplies since the opening of the Alaskan pipeline.

The news sent oil prices lower, with U.S. light crude for October delivery sinking 69 cents to $68.50 on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Wholesale price of gas is $1.66.

I know this will not be in production overnight, but it might take the wind out of oil futures.

Don't Abandon Us

That seems to be the sentiment of the Iraqi government as midterms approach in the United States. This story from the Washington Post is not long so I will put the whole thing out there:

Not Wanted: An Exit Strategy

By Jackson Diehl
Monday, September 4, 2006; A19

The mostly bad news from Iraq this summer left a lot of people in Washington, including a few in the Bush administration, feeling confused, anxious and doubtful about whether the Iraqi government can deliver on its promise to stabilize the country. As it turns out, some of Iraq's most powerful leaders have had similar feelings as they have watched the news from Washington.

That was the message of a quiet pre-Labor Day visit here by Adel Abdul Mahdi, who has been one of America's key allies in the attempt to replace Saddam Hussein's totalitarianism with a democratic political system. Mahdi is now Iraq's vice president, but he called his meetings with President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and key senators and congressmen a "private visit."

In fact, he was here to deliver a message, and ask a question, on behalf of Shiite Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who remains Iraq's single most influential figure -- and the linchpin of the past 40 months of political reconstruction. Sistani's message to Bush, Mahdi told a group of reporters I joined last week, was that "Iraqis are sticking to the principles of the constitution and democracy." But the ayatollah wanted to know if the United States is still on board as well.

"It's a critical moment. We want to be sure that we understand perfectly what's going on, and what is the real strategy of the United States in Iraq," Mahdi said. "We read in the press about different perspectives and attitudes. That's why we want to be clear -- whether there is a Plan B."

Mahdi said he got Bush's commitment to stand by the government. But the uncertainty he expressed on behalf of Sistani was real. "When I read the [American] press, I'm confused," said the burly, bearded economist, who was educated in a Jesuit school in Baghdad and later in France and who speaks fluent English.

The worry goes deeper than that caused by growing calls for a speedy withdrawal of U.S. troops, or by reports that some even in the Bush administration are considering the abandonment of Iraqi democracy. As Mahdi sees it, American and Iraqi agendas are more broadly out of sync. Whether or not they support the government and the war, Americans are looking for ways to quickly reverse -- or escape from -- the deteriorating situation they see on the ground.

Mahdi, Sistani and other Shiite leaders in the government don't share Washington's perception of a downward spiral. They also don't buy the American sense of urgency -- the oft-expressed idea that the new government has only a few months to succeed. Consequently, the many ideas for silver bullets tossed around in the U.S. debate mostly don't interest them.

You could see this in the conversation I joined at Mahdi's suite at the Ritz Carlton hotel. We journalists peppered him with questions about why the formation of a unity government had failed to reduce the violence. We asked about all the options usually talked about in Washington -- from a rewrite of the constitution to a partition of the country; from an international conference to the dispatch of more U.S. troops.

For the most part, our queries were politely and somewhat laconically dismissed. Iraq is not in a civil war, Mahdi said, and doesn't need more U.S. troops. It has a constitution and elected government, and thus there is no need for an international conference. As for constitutional reform, the Shiite and Kurd parties that wrote the charter last year are waiting for proposals from Sunni dissidents. Mahdi added: "So far we have heard nothing."

So what is the solution? "Time -- that is it," Mahdi replied. "A nation like Iraq needs time. The elections for a permanent government happened eight months ago. We have been in office a few weeks. The people who we have in office have never governed. These people come from oppression and a bad political system. We can't import ministers to Iraq. There will be many mistakes. The Americans made many mistakes, and Iraqis had to support that."

"Our options as Iraqis are that we don't have an exit strategy or any withdrawal timetable," Mahdi said, somewhat bitterly. "We simply go on. . . . It is a process, and brick by brick we are working on it."

Mahdi is a brave man, with nerves of steel. Two years ago, while meeting with another group of journalists, he learned that his brother had been killed in an insurgent ambush; he stoically continued to answer questions. Though it's not clear that the government to which he belongs is capable of transcending the sectarian passions of its various parties -- who battle each other in the streets more than they bargain in the cabinet -- there's no question that Mahdi himself, and many other Iraqi politicians, remain deeply committed to the goal of Iraqi democracy.

Whether they can reach it will depend in large part on whether the political skills of leaders such as Sistani will be enough to stop the sectarian warfare before it destroys the political system they created. But it will also matter whether Americans are willing to go on believing in that project, and provide the time for which Mahdi asked.


I hope we see this through.

A Ray Too Far

It would seem that the Crocodile Hunter, Steve Irwin, has been done in by a stingray. Those who argue that Westerners lack bravery need look no further. I must admit that I never quite saw the point of his show and his antics. Yes, if you handle these incredibly dangerous animals in just the right way, you will probably live. Still, it's all about the odds. The odds are just slightly against you each time you play this game. Repeat that for long enough and, odds are, there will come a time when you'll bite the dust. Repeated success in beating the odds tends to make you believe you always will as the Bayesian system inside your head starts to assess things. And then you become complacent, and you forget to be careful. And for what purpose? To show the world that it's easy?, that everybody should go out and play with poisonous animals? I'm reminded of Voltaire's dictum: once is philosophy, twice is perversion.

Still I believe he lived a good life in his crazy way and somehow made this a better world. Rest in peace Steve.

Arrggghhhh!

The frost demon has visited my garden and left blackened ruin in his wake. Bye bye melons, bye bye peppers, bye bye sweet dreams of plenty.

Ah well, it's always a crap shoot here in Utah, sometimes things last through November, sometimes they go as early as August. I remember cold canyon winds painting fingers of black through the valley corn fields one July. Thank goodness I don't farm for a living.

Global, warming! Wherefore art thou freezing?

Likebetter

Which one do you like better, and what does it say about the inner you?

Cabin fever, November weather, silver linings and such like

The Presse Ancienne, desperate for a natural disaster, had made reports of Ernesto into the modern mass-media equivalent of Waiting For Godot. Too much and a week, however, is never enough and they continued to overplay it into the weather watch equivalent of waiting for the trumpets to sound (blow the freakin' trumpets already ferkryinoutloud!).

Well, anyway, 'round about mid-day on Friday Ernesto's advance team arrived and on the back of a solid week's worth of lousy weather pretty much nobody was looking for outdoor activities. Temperatures being downright Novemberlike that meant grill if you prefer but firing up the oven for the first time in a few months twarn't no big deal and keep the errands short and sweet.

Sumpin about tropical storms just screams Seafood! so the short errands inevitably include, "Yo, as long as you're out stop and get some fish filets. And maybe some shrimp."

Which brings me, finally (if you believe dat I got dis bridge...), to the point. Should you ever find yourself with a coupla tilapia or other mild, white fish filets on your hands and looking for a tasty dinner without much work or bother (30 minutes start to finish presuming you've got the fish and other rather ordinary ingredients) give a few moments' consideration to this recipe.

There are a few key points to be made here. The first is to serve it over rice. If you're married to a Swedish woman she might get a strange, homey hankerin' for some new potatoes (the little red ones which are delicious but not quite right for this purpose); serve it over rice.

Next... I fully admit to being an odd duck but I just love fresh asparagus with light fish. You want some vegetable with your light fish, try asparagus. Boil 'em or steam 'em just a few minutes with some butter and a little salt and, if you like, sprinkle 'em with parmesan.

Next... if I do this recipe again I'll cut down a couple or three gurgles on the soy sauce and replace that with a couple or three gurgles of the white wine.

Last... the recipe seemed just a tiny little tad boring so we peeled a few (6 or 8) of the shrimp and tossed 'em in there. Turn the fish and, if you use 'em, the shrimp. They need turning.

Ernesto finally arrived overnight. He was a classic Mexican brawler. Not that big, not that strong, but he just kept going... and going... and going. The Energizer Freakin' Bunny of worn out ol' remnants of tropical storms. All. Freakin'. Day.

Which means that presuming you took your four mile seaside walk through the sand-blasting, 20-30 mph winds, admiring the angry surf and building an appetite for later, here's what to do with the remaining shrimp (also 30 minutes, max, from start to snarfin'). Now that stuff is good! I had the leftover for lunch today and it was even better! I won't finish without commentary. Skip a teaspoon or two of the butter and go an extra splash on the tobasco.

Did I mention white wine somewhere above? Go find some Condesa de Leganza Sauvignon Blanc. It can be had for $8-$9 and is, IMHO, a darned good value. I'm no wine afficianado (nor am I much of a fan of white wine) and my choices would probably make an afficianodo choke, but that stuff worked well both with the food and in the recipes (both of 'em).

Oh! Before you eat the leftover scampi after two evenings of piggin' out, make sure you rearrange at least 70% of the storm debris into a pile roughly 25 ft. long, four feet wide, and three feet high. Why only 70%? In all honesty because at that point you might, like me, have had your fill of Blowers and rakes and brooms, Oh My! But even if you haven't you need to get up on the roof to finish the job (that's never a good idea if you are old and fat and a bit weary).

And that's not to mention that the grey squirrels - insanely inefficient builders - need to rebuild all their nests so you'll be doing this much work again next weekend. No point rushing it.

I'd hate to be this guy

Alqaida's number two man, al-Sayaddi has been captured by Iraqi forces. The man who blew up the Golden Dome is in Iraqi custody.

Chicken Martyrs

The Captain has a very interesting post up about the capture of Centanni and Wiig. It seems there are some people who think these men should have died for the cause.

David Schraub points to a strange column by David Warren that sounds like a demand for Christian or even Wsetern martyrdom regardless of one's own personal beliefs. Warren excoriates Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig for going through a mock conversion to Islam as a means of escaping their kidnappers:

Lately I have been looking at the large -- at how the West is proving unable to cope with a threat from a fanatical Islamic movement, that it ought to be able to snuff out with fair ease. (See my column last Sunday.) But the large is often most visible in the small.

The degree to which our starch is awash is exhibited in the behaviour of so many of our captives, but especially in these two. They were told to convert to Islam under implicit threat (blindfolded and hand-tied, they could not judge what threat), and agreed to make the propaganda broadcasts to guarantee their own safety. That much we can understand, as conventional cowardice. (Understand; not forgive.) But it is obvious from their later statements that they never thought twice; that they could see nothing wrong in serving the enemy, so long as it meant they'd be safe.

I assume they are not Christians (few journalists are), but had they ever been instructed in that faith, they might have grasped that conversion to Islam means denial of Christ, and that is something many millions of Christians (few of them intellectuals) have refused to do, even at the cost of excruciating deaths. Christianity still lives, because of such martyrs. Not suicide bombers: but truly defenceless martyrs.

I'm not going to do a point-by-point fisking here, because I doubt it would do much good, but Warren makes unsupported assumptions and then builds on them to a conclusion that seems almost as bad as anything radical Islamists say about suicide bombings.

Warren wants kidnapped hostages to die for Christianity and the West rather than jolly along their kidnappers to gain their own freedom. That may be a splendid sentiment, but it results in dead Westerners rather than dead Islamists, and I fail to see how that represents any kind of victory. One of the reasons why Western culture is superior to that of radical Islam -- and I say superior deliberately -- is that we value individual human life. Dying needlessly and purposelessly for the West doesn't gain us any converts in this conflict.

In his argument for martyrdom, Warren retells the story of the Italian hostage in Iraq that fought back rather than be beheaded. He leaves out the essential element of Fabrizio Quattrochi's story, however, which is that Quattrochi knew he was going to die. (He also makes an unsupported allegation that Quattrochi wasn't Christian.) Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's goons had gathered Quattrochi and his fellow victims for their execution. Rather than await the butcher's knife, the Italian charged his captors, who were forced to shoot him instead.

Brave, yes. Martyr ... not exactly. Quattrochi didn't die to defend the West; he died because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Warren complains about the image that Centanni, Wiig, and others who beg for their lives leave on the Muslim world. He says it makes Westerners look like wimps. That, however, is an indictment on their culture, not ours, that they place individual people in situations where they have to beg for their lives. Warren wants to play by Muslim rules, and he wants to do it with other people's lives. It's pretty damned easy to criticize hostages who have no idea how to stay alive except to cooperate and hope things work out well -- if the critic is heartless enough to do it.


I agree with the Captain. Warren is a chicken martyr.

I was amazed at the comments. It seems there are a number of people who think these men should be dead, for the West for Jesus, for them...I call them chicken martyrs. I mean come on the world is full of wacko Islamists, if one really feels the desire to die for God then rather than expecting someone else to do it for you, why not go confront a raving loon of fanatic for Islam and volunteer?

Years ago when I was young and real stupid I decided I would hitch hike to the other side of town. I was a student at Indiana University in Bloomington, In. I was picked up by a man in a big bronze car. He immediately locked me in and then we went for a ride. I thought I was going to die. He masturbated for me and terrorized me for quite some time. And then I got away. While I was in that car all I could think about was seeing my family again, one more time and I imagined what it would do to them if this man carried out his threats to kill me. I have to say unless you are in a position where you are helpless in the hands of a crazy person who is threatening you...well let's just say you have to be there to know what it is like. Someone who has not really does not have the right to pass judgment.

In other words, easy for you to say, it is no sweat off your ass.

UPDATE: Mark Steyn disagrees, I think. It seems his concern is about the ease with which western journalists are manipulated by the likes of Al Jazeera for a Muslim audience. That may be so, but it does not change the essential fact that this is about someone else's life.

Saturday Movie Review: Alphaville

Posted by Alistair.
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From the little I know of the director, it seems that Jean-Luc "Cinema" Godard's films work, when they do, when the director succeeds in precariously balancing American pop-culture with French existential and metaphysical philosophy. In Alphaville, the prolific director's tenth film in five years, Godard errs in both directions: by focusing too heavily on the philosophical and the pop, Godard replaces what could have been a classic film with one that is merely good.

The movie's title comes from its location. Alphaville is the name of a squalid dystopia ruled by a fascist computer, Alpha-60 (brilliantly voiced by a man without a voice box). In Alphaville logic rules everything, words like conscience and love are forbidden, and weeping is a crime punishable by death. The streets and interiors simultaneously capture the grime of the Forties noir and the impersonal, metallic, cold of the late Fifties, early Sixties sci-fi future. Godard deserves much respect for crafting a world that is familiar yet so uniquely alien out of nothing more than Paris in the mid Sixties (the film's exclusive shooting location).

The world of the future is not as bleak as it initially seems. Alphaville isn't the only city left in the galaxy, there exist the "Outer-Lands" populated by such cities as Tokyorama, Nuevo-York, and Florence. Although none of these cities are ever seen it is hinted that they still hold on to the old ways of love, self-expression, and everything else illogical. Out of Nuevo-York comes secret agent Lemmy Caution (Eddie Constantine). A brash American detective of the Sam Spade pedigree, Caution is intent on finding and liquidating Professor Leonard Nosferatu (once professor Von Braun) a man who fled the Outer-Lands to create and run Alpha-60 in typical evil scientist fashion. Along the way Caution meets and falls for Von Braun's daughter Natacha (Godard regular and wife, Anna Karina), a woman who has been in Alphaville so long she has forgotten the word love....



Alphaville has every detail down pat. There are abundant pop-culture refferences and in-jokes from the evil professor's name to lab technicians named Heckle and Jeckle (after the cartoon ravens) and a secret agent with the unlikely nomen cloture Dick Tracy. All the actors carry themselves perfectly—Constantine holds himself like a Bogart Proust love child, simultaneously tough and poetically tender, while Karina pulls off seeming confused and seductive in such a way that the traits complement each other, her confusion becoming a seduction and her seduction a confusion. Caution looks like noir itself while running down a hallway with a drawn gun in a beautifully chosen hat and trench coat. Shots like this are cross-cut with shots of neon signs that advertise E=mc², and other physics slogans, as well as endless hallways with futuristic doors, and neon signs denoting the city's north and south zones. Through these details Godard is able to create his unique vision of a world that is equal parts past and future. And since the super-computer Alpha-60 insists that past and future are one and the same, Godard has succeeded in creating a hellish imaginary world in both form and content.


The film's philosophy is equally perfect in its details. With brilliantly enigmatic quotes from the computer such as: "Once we know the number one, we believe that we know the number two, because one plus one equals two. We forget that first we must know the meaning of plus." There are some amazing exchanges between Alpha-60 and Mr. Caution, such as when the computer asks the man what the privilege of the dead is and the man replies "To die no more." Or when the computer tells him, "I shall calculate so that failure is impossible". To which the reply is, "I shall fight so that failure is possible". These lines come in between images of men being shot by machine guns into swimming pools for behaving illogically, ruminations on art and poetry, and the struggle by Natacha to overcome logic with feeling.

And while all of these details are presented in crisp, perfect fashion, the big picture becomes blurred. Godard focuses so heavily on capturing good dialogue, referencing the pop-culture of his youth, and telling us which metaphysics of time he calls his own that he utterly forgets the film's plot. No—perhaps "forgets" isn't the right word—it is more as if the plot is shunned. And while shunning a film's plot (or at the very least severely relegating it) is a brave move and worthy of some respect, it must only be done when it is replaced by something even better. Unfortunately for Godard, his vague theories of time, and laughably naive ideas about the badness of math and logic and goodness of poetry and art, do not do the trick.

This film ends—as do most Sixties movies about evil super-computers that rule the world—with the computer destroyed (it uses all its power trying to decipher a riddle about love [groan]), Alphaville and all its brainwashed denizens dying off, and the two heroes speeding away in a car while Natacha forgets all the logic she learned and begins to feel love. That she has absolutely no reason to love Lemmy Caution is, in the face of everything else going on, hardly noticeable. I was unpleasantly surprised by this film's general naivety and dated ideas regarding the subject of love; a subject I have always found the French New Wave to warmly embrace and understand without sacrificing the emotion's more subtle and complex points. Here love seems both cold and misunderstood. I am not trying to fault this film too heavily. It is, of course, a science fiction film of the 1960's and one of the best and smartest ones at that. It fails, however, to transcend the boundaries of its genre—although it plays with them quite masterfully—and never becomes, as 2001 later would, something more than a science-fiction film made at the height of the froth of Sixties ideology and confusion.

Saturday Links

How is that search for WMD in Iraq going? For the latest go check on the newly unclassified National Ground Intelligence Center report. We are currently up to 700 weapons found.

Dafydd over at Big Lizards has a very thought provoking post up on the possibility of civil War in Mexico. It seems the left true to form can not accept defeat. The leftist candidate Lopez Obrador is promising a fight in the streets if conservative Felipe Calderon is named President. People worry about the socalled civil war in Iraq that never quite seems to happen while south of the border the real thing might be brewing. I will say this to the American nativists out there: there are worse things in Mexico than Vincente Fox, and one of them is Obrador. I have to wonder... we gave sanctuary to Cubans running away from Fidel's regime, well we do the same thing if there is a communist style take over in Mexico? To see where that could lead go check out Gateway's post on Hezbellah in Venezuala.

The plot thickens. AJ has some thoughts on the seeming abandonment of Fitzgerald by the New York Times:

I posted on the deceptions in Fitzgeralds press conference, where he announced the indictments of Scooter Libby, his falsehoods in his submission to the United States Supreme Court, and those in his submission to the District Court of Appeals where he forced the testimony of reporters under the threat of jail and actual jail time for the NY Times Judith Miller. So is Fitzgerald now in trouble because he not only did not deliver on Fitzmas, he duped the media and forced them to give up too much for his lame investigation? The NY Times does not seem to be impressed with what they bought for the price of losing some media perks.

Ahh, the irony of it all.

Powerline has a post up on the liberal snuff film depicting the assasination of George Bush. I have to agree with him, if Republicans are such fascists, why aren't all these people running for their lives?

Ed Morissey has a post up on Democrats refusing to pay minimum wage to canvassers. I worked for a liberal group many years ago, before I saw the light that is, and it is true, they make you beg for your keep. You go door to door with your little clip board and ask for money. At least that was my experience.

A Curious Admission

In an email posted at the Democratic Underground, Joe Wilson said the following to the gang:

I know many of you are better versed in Plamegate than either Valerie or I and I also know that some of you will be addressing the editorial.

A little too busy to keep up with the news?

ABC to do 9/11 Special

In spite of reported grumblings on the part of certain Clinton administration officials ABC is doing a special on 9/11, that includes a trip down memory lane to the 90's. Remember them? It seems certain people would like to make sure you never do.

Michael Barone :

It starts off with actors portraying the September 11 hijackers boarding the planes that morning, interlaced with actual footage from security cameras, and then flips back to the February 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. Much of the focus is on John O'Neill, the legendary CIA agent who later retired and was killed in the WTC on September 11. We see the arrest of the '93 bomber Ramzi Youssef in the Philippines and then his arrest in Pakistan; the Northern Alliance fighter Massoud and Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan; the arrest of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman in Brooklyn; and the apprehension by customs agent Diana Dean of the would-be LAX millennium bomber in Port Angeles, Wash. The terrorists are each presented as clearly defined individuals, evil in intention and deed. One gripping scene shows Massoud's forces--and CIA agents surrounding bin Laden's encampments and then being called back when National Security Adviser Sandy Berger refuses to give a go-ahead for the operation. That scene, according to 9/11 commission Chairman Thomas Kean, an adviser to the film, is a conflation of a number of events; during the question period, commission member Richard Ben-Veniste, perhaps the most partisan member of the commission, said that it misrepresented what actually happened. But, as Kean pointed out, the Clinton administration did decline a number of opportunities to get bin Laden.

The film was shot with 16-millimeter cameras and is edited in an edgy style suggesting hand-held cameras. The fascinating footage of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Sudan was actually shot in Morocco; most of the rest of the film was shot in Toronto, with some scenes shot in Washington and New York. Here's an interview with the writer of the script, Cyrus Nowrasteh.

Roger L. Simon: Mystery Novelist and Screenwriter

Roger L. Simon: Mystery Novelist and Screenwriter: "[W]hat interests me is how the Plame Affair fits into the whole framework. It may be opera bouffe, but it is far from unrelated to the way the press has conducted itself in recent years. Is it so different from Pallywood and the Mohammed Al Doura case, the Reuters photographs, the Jenin 'massacre' and so forth - all lies swallowed whole by a gullible Western media? At first glance they would seem far apart, but in this small world one concept draws them all together - narrative. The truth is less important than the weltanshauung of the publication."

Small News Item Circa 2011

(Entertainment Weekly) Washington, DC. TV spkoesperson and model Valerie Plame filed for divorce from her husband, former Ambassador in the George H. W. Bush Administration, Joe Wilson. Ms. Plame cited irreconcilable differences as the reason for the divorce. Anonymous sources suggest that former Ambassador Wilson became envious of his wife's popularity and high profile appearances. Many Hollywood insiders, unaware that Ms. Plame was even married, referred to Amb. Wilson as "the covert hubby". Mr. Wilson is remembered for his controversial television appearances associated with his brief stint as the campaign manager for the ultimately failed presidential campaign of Connecticut businessman Ned Lamont. Algore broadcasting announced that Ms. Plame would be the lead correspondent for the network's forthcoming documentary about worker response to recent cooling trends in the climate, titled, Get Out From Behind the Desk. Amb. Wilson is said to be exploring offers to write opinion columns for the Washington Post.