Monday, February 07, 2005

Snippets



Click here for AmazonThough Orkut began life a year ago as a venue for Silicon Valley's digerati, now nearly two-thirds of registered users are from Brazil. Google said one explanation for this seemingly inexplicable phenomenon was that Brazilians are quick to adopt new technologies.


Hate messages on Google site draw concern

Bruce Schneier: "Security is a chain; it's only as strong as the weakest link. Currently encryption is the strongest link we have. Everything else is worse: software, networks, people. There's absolutely no value in taking the strongest link and making it even stronger."


Quantum crypto firm charts way to mainstream

My Speculation on Gbrowser



Click here for AmazonThe G2 seems obvious: Google is building a browser. It's hiring Firefox developers and has acquired the GBrowser domain name. What I haven't seen is speculation on the sort of browser Google might build. Here are some quick, speculative thoughts:

  • Built on the Firefox platform and completely open sourced (all changes released back to Sourceforge)

  • Aside from the inherent support for Google search (i.e., the Firefox/Google toolbar), News, Groups and Shopping search will also be integrated from the default install

  • More importantly: complete integration with Gmail (i.e., toolbar icons to indicate a new message was received, etc.)

  • More importantly: new blogging wizards will provide the ability to instantly create a hyperlinked blog post to blogger.com and other Google blog-capable properties

  • Complete integration with Picasa and its data storage format (upload/download from various photo hosting and printing sites)


  • In other words, GBrowser will expose an integrated, thick-client desktop to all of the mostly browser-based services at Google's massive server farm.

    Will you even need Windows after you install GBrowser? Remember, GBrowser will run on almost any platform imaginable. So the answer is probably: no, you won't need to run Windows once you've been hooked on Google's server crack.

    That's why Microsoft is hitting back hard with their own extensive offerings patterned in the Google image. Too little vision, too late for Microsoft? Unlikely. Microsoft is nothing if not persistent, rich and combative. So it should be a heck of a war.

    I, for one, plan on sitting back, watching, and enjoying all of the free services while they last.

    Sunday, February 06, 2005

    The Chink in Google's Armor



    Click here for AmazonA little-publicized court ruling in France may have exposed a serious chink in Google's armor. CNet is reporting that Google lost a trademark infringement suit brought by Louis Vuitton Malletier. In a related, troubling development on January 24, Google also lost a similar case to Le Meridien Hotels and Resorts.

    The ruling in the Vuitton case was for about $250,000 in damages. A Vuitton spokesman issued a statement describing the company's position on Google's "leasing" of their trademarks:

    It was absolutely unthinkable that a company like Google be authorized, in the scope of its advertising business, to sell the Louis Vuitton trademark to third parties, specifically to Web sites selling counterfeits...


    He has a point. The unfortunate news for Google is that (a) the trend in international court rulings is clearly against the company and (b) LV and LM represent just the tip of the iceberg. And the problem is not simply that of an international nuisance. Here in the U.S., Google is facing a wave of similar threats beginning with that filed by American Blind and Wallpaper Factory.

    Click here for AmazonThe Google AdWords program accounts for 98% of its revenue. Of that, 35% is generated from international sources.

    Google's market cap is around $56 billion, exceeding that of General Motors and Alcoa combined. Investors in GOOG, already riding an extraordinary, gravity-defying premium (140 times trailing earnings) for their shares, have another reason to be cautious.

    Saturday, February 05, 2005

    Topics the MSM Should be Covering... but Aren't



    Click here for AmazonI've missed the mainstream media's stories on the following topics. Perhaps one of my kind readers could point me to a URL on any of the following:

  • The Iraqi election means that the people of Iraq have already rejected Wahabbism.
  • The Eason Jordan Affair (although the Captain points out that the dam is cracking)
  • John Kerry's bizarre assertions on Meet the Press that he was running guns to the Khmer Rouge
  • John Kerry's promise to sign his Form 180 to release his full military dossier

    I also haven't seen any reporting on Iraqi election commentary from the Arab world. Consider, for example, the Arab News' Dr. Mohammed T. Al-Rasheed:

    In spite of everything, the Iraqis voted. They did so with a passion and a seriousness that gives the lie to the cliché that Arabs are not ready for democracy. One myth down, a thousand to go.

    Everyone says that this is the first free elections in Iraq for fifty years. That is another lie. There has never been one single free election in the long history of the Arabs ever. This is the first one. It took the Americans to conduct it and force it down the throats of dictators, terrorists, exploding deranged humans, and odds as big as the distance between the USA and the Middle East...


    The breach between reality and the grist promulgated by the MSM continues to grow wider. By its own volition -- its refusal to cover major stories that happen not to align with its obvious agenda -- its relevance continues to fade. Senior management (no, not dimwitted moonbats like Eason Jordan, I mean the board members and executive leadership teams) are demonstrating continued irresponsibility. It's one thing to pursue a partisan agenda. It's another to blithely preside over a catastrophic destruction of shareholder value.

    Oh, there will be hell to pay.
  • The Blanket of Silence



    Click here for AmazonI'll point it out again: nary a peep from the mainstream media regarding CNN executive Eason Jordan's assertion that the U.S. Military deliberately targeted and killed journalists. In fact, the Washington Times is the only old-line media outlet to even mention the incident and it did so only in describing Hugh Hewitt's Weekly Standard column.

    In other words, the proverbial blanket of silence has been thrown on the Jordan fire and the MSM is doing their concerted best to stamp out any stray embers. And that's not the only interesting story being scrupulously and carefully ignored by the MSM:

    ...John Kerry's extraordinary interview with Tim Russert last Sunday. There's a lot to absorb here, including Kerry's assertion that he did indeed run guns and CIA men into Cambodia on secret missions--and to aid the Khmer Rouge no less!

    What is really remarkable is not Kerry's whoppers--he couldn't have meant the Khmer Rouge, right?--or his almost certain not-to-be-fulfilled pledge to sign the form 180. It is the set of questions Tim Russert posed.

    Russert is generally regarded as the toughest interview in television, and he did bleed Kerry a bit during the campaign; afterwards Kerry never again came close to Russert's set before November 2.

    But if the questions posed by Russert on January 30, 2005--on Kerry's fantasy life in Cambodia, on the sequestered records, etc.--were legitimate and useful inquiries after the votes have been cast, why then did no one pose them to candidate Kerry when they might have made a difference in the election? The blogosphere and the center-right media were full of such demands from August 1 forward, but not a single reporter from mainstream media bothered to pose even one of the Russert questions prior to the vote.


    Permit me to rephrase the question: if these questions were important enough to have been asked on Meet the Press this week, why couldn't a single journalist ask the same questions of Kerry prior to the presidential election? Or a single debate moderator?

    Because the media, to their detriment, is still very much in the pocket of the Democratic party. Hugh calls this skewed landscape a "lunatic imbalance". It is at least that. Activist cranks like Mary Mapes are permitted years to pursue partisan Democratic agendas while nary a reporter can be spared to ask Kerry about deliving weapons to the... Khmer Rouge? Or about his unreleased military dossier?

    Russert's questions highlight, in bold relief, old-line media's absurd disconnectedness from its audience. And that is why the blogosphere -- left and right -- continues to ascend, unburdened by myopia, and laying waste to what remains of the old guard.

    Weekly Standard: Media Notes

    Friday, February 04, 2005

    Passing Array Data through PHP 5's SOAP Engine



    Click here for AmazonI'd been looking hi and lo for an example of array passing using PHP 5's new SOAP engine. SOAP, for those of you non-techies who haven't passed out from boredom, is a standard protocol used for communicating from one system to another. Best of all, its underlying technologies are web-based, so devices like firewalls and routers usually don't interfere (too much) with these transactions.

    There are positives and negatives to using an XML-based transport. The obvious one is size. XML is an incredibly wordy language (and that problem is being worked by a separate standards committee) when compared to a binary protocol like, say, ASN.1. With verbosity comes potential performance issues: namely, a lot of redundant data gets passed over the wire.

    In addition, if you've got a couple of chatty systems, then you have the network overhead of TCP connections. TCP is the underlying IP protocol used by HTTP. TCP is a connection-oriented protocol, meaning packets have to be reassembled in the correct order on a destination machine. And the destination box may ask for retries if doesn't get a particular packet. UDP, a connectionless protocol, could have been used (that's what, say, voice-over-IP or VOIP uses)... but the firewall and router issue comes into play with UDP.

    The bottom line is that there are some significant benefits associated with SOAP, even though the drawbacks are obvious.

    So, how to overcome the drawbacks? Caching is one way. Let's say I wanted to transmit database data accumulating on one machine to another. I could do it rapidly - as fast as I could detect the tables changing. But the twin overhead issues of size and chattiness may hamstring the process. Caching helps address both issues.

    I let, say, 30 seconds worth of changes accumulate in the cache and then *boom*, every half a minute I flush the cache to the other box via a single SOAP call. I now have a single envelope (rather than many) and a single TCP setup and teardown. Problem solved.

    Problem was, I couldn't find a good example of array support compatible with PHP 5's new SOAP engine. It didn't seem to like the WSDL (definition of the service) files I'd copied from Java projects and such. Oh, it read them, it just didn't understand the complex array type.

    Anyhow, for those of you googling for an example of how to pass array data through a SOAP call, here's a simple WSDL file, client and server that demonstrates how you might do this.

    === texter.wsdl ===
    <?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
    <definitions name='texter'
      targetNamespace='http://127.0.0.1/texter'
      xmlns:tns=' http://127.0.0.1/texter '
      xmlns:soap='http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/wsdl/soap/'
      xmlns:xsd='http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema'
      xmlns:soapenc='http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/'
      xmlns:wsdl='http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/wsdl/'
      xmlns='http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/wsdl/'
      xmlns:xsd1='http://127.0.0.1/texter'>  

    <types>
       <schema xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
          targetNamespace="http://127.0.0.1/texter"
             xmlns:wsdl="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/wsdl/"
             xmlns:soapenc="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/">

             <complexType name="ArrayOfString">
                <complexContent>
                   <restriction base="soapenc:Array">
                      <attribute ref="soapenc:arrayType"
                      wsdl:arrayType="xsd:string[]"/>
                   </restriction>
                </complexContent>
             </complexType>

      </schema>
    </types>

    <message name='texterRequest'>
      <part name='code' type='xsd:short'/>
      <part name='text' type='xsd:string'/>
      <part name='arra' type='xsd1:ArrayOfString'/>
    </message>
    <message name='texterResponse'>
      <part name='text' type='xsd:string'/>
    </message>

    <portType name='texterPortType'>
      <operation name='texter'>
        <input message='tns:texterRequest'/>
        <output message='tns:texterResponse'/>
      </operation>
    </portType>

    <binding name='texterBinding' type='tns:texterPortType'>
      <soap:binding style='rpc'
        transport='http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/http'/>
      <operation name='texter'>
        <soap:operation soapAction='urn:xmethods-texting#texter'/>
        <input>
          <soap:body use='encoded' namespace='urn:xmethods-texting'
            encodingStyle='http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/'/>
        </input>
        <output>
          <soap:body use='encoded' namespace='urn:xmethods-texting'
            encodingStyle='http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/'/>
        </output>
      </operation>
    </binding>

    <service name='texterService'>
      <port name='texterPort' binding='texterBinding'>
        <soap:address location='http://127.0.0.1/texter.php'/>
      </port>
    </service>
    </definitions>
    === textclient.php ===
    <html><body>
    <?php
      $client = new soapclient("http://127.0.0.1/texter.wsdl");
      $aTemp = array(
        "This is a test",
        "This is, too",
        "So is this!"
      );
      print($client->texter(33, "This is a test message to be written", $aTemp));
    ?>
    </body></html>

    === texter.php ===
    <?php

    //    Write an individual line of text.
    //
    function writeText($nCode, $text) {
        $r = 0;
        do {
            //
            $sTextFile = $_SERVER["DOCUMENT_ROOT"];
            $sTextFile .= "/text/";
            $sTextFile .= "file.txt";
            if (($f = fopen($sTextFile, "a")) === false) {
                $r = 1;
                break;
            }
            if (strstr($text, "\n") === false) {
                $text .= "\r\n";
            }
            $text = date("Y-m-d H:i:s ").$text;
            fwrite($f, $text);
            fclose($f);
        //
        } while (0);
        return ($r);
    }

    //    Text demo (demonstrates writing of the simple string
    //        data type as well as the complex array to a file).
    //
    function texter($nCode, $sText, $aTemp) {
        $r = 0;
        do {
            //
            writeText($nCode, $sText);
            for ($i = 0; $i < sizeof($aTemp); $i++) {
                writeText($nCode, $aTemp[$i]);
            }
        //
        } while (0);
        return (($r) ? "Err" : "OK");
    }

    //
    ini_set("soap.wsdl_cache_enabled", "0"); // disabling WSDL cache
    $server = new SoapServer("texter.wsdl");
    $server->addFunction("texter");
    $server->handle();
    //?>

    Free Iraqi



    Click here for AmazonThe inimitable Ali of the Free Iraqi blog is complaining about the situation in Iraq. A citizen of Baghdad, he just discovered that a local newspaper ("Al Sabah") published a photo from his blog, without crediting or compensating him.

    The story, as an aside, was about the massive reconstruction efforts occurring in the area. Oh, also Ali reports that multiple parties have corroborated this story:

    Citizens of Al Mudhiryiah (a small town in the "death triangle") were subjected to an attack by several militants today who were trying to punish the residents of this small town for voting in the election last Sunday.

    The citizens responded and managed to stop the attack, kill 5 of the attackers, wounded 8 and burned their cars. 3 citizens were injured during the fire exchange. The Shiekh of the tribe to whom the 3 wounded citizens belong demanded more efforts from the government to stop who he described as "Salafis".


    It looks like the coalition and the Iraqi police aren't the only ones killing terrorists these days.

    Free Iraqi

    Scoble to Gates: Start Blogging!



    Click here for AmazonIn the tradition of Hugh Hewitt's Blog, famed Microsoftie Robert Scoble has told Bill Gates that he needs to starting blogging... now! Oh, plus, Windows Media Player needs to be open-sourced. And Microsoft needs to come up with an iPod killer.

    Hi Bill. I've been thinking about how to make Windows Media cool. You know, cooler than wearing white headphone cords. Open source the product development. Yeah, you're gonna be hearing a lot about "open source this" and "open source that" in 2005...

    We have five months to come out with a great new set of music players and get a great marketing campaign going. Why is that? It's called back to school. If we don't get something going by June then we lose another generation to the iPod. Do you want to let that happen?

    So, here's my idea:

    1) Start a weblog. NOW. Get the person who runs the team to start a blog. NOW. Or fire him/her. I'm serious...

    4) Get the blogosphere involved. Take advice from the leading podcasters. Adam Curry, Dave Winer, Dawn and Drew, Carl Franklin, Doug Kaye, etc. Make sure that at least five ideas from the online crew makes it into the product...


    Scobleizer: Open Letter to Bill Gates

    Thursday, February 03, 2005

    Fascist Halfwit



    Click here for AmazonThe imperial leader of Syria was pegged in Slate Magazine nearly two years ago by Chris Suellentrop.

    Whether you consider Bashar Assad an evil moron (per Suellentrop) or simply a fascist halfwit (my preferred term), there is no doubt that he was called out by President Bush last night in the SOTU. Suellentrop, writing in April of 2003:

    By foolishly providing moral and material support to Iraq during the war—and, the administration says, now by harboring high-ranking Iraqi officials—he's created an environment that makes it possible for a Democratic presidential candidate (Florida Sen. Bob Graham) to openly support war with Syria. Already some hawks are pointing to the tantalizing parallels between Saddam's Iraq and Assad's Syria. Weapons of mass destruction? Check. Support for terrorism? Check. Repressive domestic intelligence services? Check. The comparisons go further: Both countries were ruled by tyrannical men who are not members of the ethnic majority. (Saddam was a Sunni who ruled over a largely Shiite country, and Assad is an Alawite who rules over a Sunni majority.) To top things off, Syria even has a Baath Party and a Republican Guard. No one expects war anytime soon, but Assad's stupidity has put the subject on the table.


    There was hope for Assad when he took power in 2000. With an M.D. degree in Ophthalmology, granted in the U.K., there was hope Assad would throw off the shackles of fascism imposed by his father, the late Hafez Assad.

    Well, it's 2005 now and Syria has continued to do some very moronic things.

  • Since 1979, it's been a State Department All-Star, listed as a nation sponsoring terrorism
  • Provides material support to Hamas
  • Permits Iran to support Hezbollah in Lebanon
  • Rumored to have taken possession of Saddam's chemical and biological weapons, moves facilitated by the corrupt leadership of France and others, who were paid to delay the war in Iraq as long as possible
  • Occupying Lebanon with troops -- ostensibly to 'protect it from Israel' -- and has installed its own puppet government and infrastructure
  • Defying a UN order to restore Lebanon's sovereignty
  • Rumored to be harboring members of Saddam's old regime

    And no matter how hard the axis of stupidity squinches their eyes shut, it's crystal clear that Syria and its dimbulb leaders are facilitating some evil, evil activity.

    The hammer can't come down fast enough on the fascist halfwit and his handlers.

    Honest Reporting: Special Report: Syria
  • Blogosphere Ascendant



    Click here for AmazonIf you happened to miss it, Eason Jordan*, the chief news executive of CNN, recently accused the US Military of assassinating journalists. Seriously. But the interesting part is not the fact that a major media exec made some outrageous, anti-American remarks. It's how the rest of the mainstream media is ignoring the story, to their continued detriment.

    Here's a report from the World Economic Forum, the venue in which he made these statements:

    During one of the discussions about the number of journalists killed in the Iraq War, Eason Jordan asserted that he knew of 12 journalists who had not only been killed by US troops in Iraq, but they had in fact been targeted. He repeated the assertion a few times, which seemed to win favor in parts of the audience (the anti-US crowd) and cause great strain on others.

    Due to the nature of the forum, I was able to directly challenge Eason, asking if he had any objective and clear evidence to backup these claims, because if what he said was true, it would make Abu Ghraib look like a walk in the park... Eason seemed to backpedal quickly, but his initial statements were backed by other members of the audience (one in particular who represented a worldwide journalist group). The ensuing debate was (for lack of better words) a real "sh--storm".


    Charles at LGF made a quick observation, which is not only true, but also has ramifications for the future of the media:

    Good luck finding any mention of this story in mainstream news. It’s being deliberately ignored.


    This vacuum of coverage, this banal acceptance of crackpot viewpoints from media royalty -- without ever reporting them -- is helping to reshape the mediasphere as we watch. A simple analysis will indicate that consumers will gravitate towards sources that deliver interesting, worthwhile news. We can rule out the dimwits at CNN, who are destined to continue their catastrophic ratings slide, so long as they employ dullards such as Jordan.

    The MSM's insistence on ignoring these big stories is equivalent to strapping on a weight-belt while learning to swim.

    * If you're looking for additional information about the Eason Jordan affair, Hugh Hewitt has some of the best coverage and link-farms going.

    Eason Jordan's Troubled History:

    Eason Jordan is also the same executive who admitted that CNN regularly covered up stories of Iraqi torture and atrocities, a Faustian bargain designed to keep the Baghdad bureau office open. It was all about money -- blood money, rather -- earned by CNN in return for its silence on crimes against humanity.

    Over the last dozen years I made 13 trips to Baghdad to lobby the government to keep CNN's Baghdad bureau open and to arrange interviews with Iraqi leaders. Each time I visited, I became more distressed by what I saw and heard — awful things that could not be reported because doing so would have jeopardized the lives of Iraqis, particularly those on our Baghdad staff.

    For example, in the mid-1990's one of our Iraqi cameramen was abducted. For weeks he was beaten and subjected to electroshock torture in the basement of a secret police headquarters because he refused to confirm the government's ludicrous suspicion that I was the Central Intelligence Agency's Iraq station chief. CNN had been in Baghdad long enough to know that telling the world about the torture of one of its employees would almost certainly have gotten him killed and put his family and co-workers at grave risk. ...

    Then there were the events that were not unreported but that nonetheless still haunt me. A 31-year-old Kuwaiti woman, Asrar Qabandi, was captured by Iraqi secret police occupying her country in 1990 for "crimes," one of which included speaking with CNN on the phone. They beat her daily for two months, forcing her father to watch. In January 1991, on the eve of the American-led offensive, they smashed her skull and tore her body apart limb by limb. A plastic bag containing her body parts was left on the doorstep of her family's home.

    I felt awful having these stories bottled up inside me. Now that Saddam Hussein's regime is gone, I suspect we will hear many, many more gut-wrenching tales from Iraqis about the decades of torment. At last, these stories can be told freely.


    Of course, during that same period of time, Jordan was lying through his teeth in interviews like this:

    BOB GARFIELD: I'm sure you have seen Franklin Foer's article in The New Republic which charges that the Western press is appeasing the Iraqi regime in order to maintain its visas -- to be there reporting should a war ultimately break out. What's your take on that?

    EASON JORDAN: The writer clearly doesn't have a clear understanding of the realities on the ground because CNN has demonstrated again and again that it has a spine; that it's prepared to be forthright; is forthright in its reporting.


    Taranto asks one of the best questions about this episode, “What are CNN and other news organizations failing to tell us about other thuggish regimes, from communist Cuba to the Palestinian Authority?”

    A manifesto for irresponsibility



    Click here for AmazonThere are many times in a politician's career that they feel they must take a stand against popular opinion for reasons of principle: Ford's pardon of Nixon, for instance.

    Today's OJ editorial asks: what if one party takes a stand that has neither popular support nor any fundamental principles?

    That is where some of the Democratic thought-leaders find themselves today. They are not hoping for victory for their country. Instead, they are hoping for some sort of vindication for themselves. It will be a long time coming.

    ...Mr. Kerry: "No one in the United States should try to overhype this election.... It's hard to say that something is legitimate when a whole portion of the country can't and doesn't vote."

    Mr. Kennedy: "While the elections are a step forward, they are not a cure for the growing violence and resentment of the perception of American occupation. . . . The best way to demonstrate to the Iraqi people that we have no long-term designs on their country is for the Administration to withdraw some troops now . . ."

    Minority Leader Reid: "We need an exit strategy so that we know what victory is and how we can get there. . . . Iraq is clearly important, but there are so many bigger threats to our national security . . ."

    So what is the Democratic Party's message on this inspiring exercise in Iraqi self-determination? First, that the election's legitimacy is questionable. Second, that its effects will be minor. Third, that America's presence in Iraq is doing more harm than good by generating terrorism and anti-Americanism where none previously existed. Fourth, that the U.S. has better things to do. Fifth, that American sacrifices in Iraq are best redeemed not by victory, but by the earliest feasible departure.

    As a matter of policy, this is a manifesto for irresponsibility...


    OpinionJournal: A manifesto for irresponsibility

    Wednesday, February 02, 2005

    Best of the State o' the Union Live-Bloggers



    Click here for AmazonHerein I present my perceived "best of the State of the Union LiveBloggers". Do you think 'evil moron' Bashar Assad is getting the picture? If the military ever gets the go-ahead to whack that SOB, it will be a happy day for the Syrian people, a bunch of their neighbors, and the GWOT in general.

    PL: 8:10--Interesting--he includes the Palestinian territories and Ukraine along with Afghanistan and Iraq. Blue fingers in the air.

    PL: 8:13--He recites the economic record of the last four years. Might as well; viewers won't hear it anywhere else.

    CQ: 8:17 - After the usual handouts that get the pork rolling, Bush memtions tort reform and health care adjacent. He's just delivered the message to the Democrats -- if you want to talk health care, it comes with tort reform attached. Get used to it or shut up.

    VP: 8:27pm Smart, smart, smart. Bush just mentioned three Democrats who endorsed some sensible SS reforms, and which reforms they suggested. Not huge applause, but maybe enough. Powerful politicking there.

    CQ: 8:30 - Good for the President -- he pointed out that federal employees already have privatization.

    VP: 8:33pm So, no selling kidneys of aborted fetuses to gay couples. Or did I conflate a few things?

    PL: 8:37--The thing I always hate about these speeches is how they reveal the obsolescence of the concept of limited government. It's one damn program after another.

    PL: 8:48--A few years ago it was the Axis of Evil. Now it's Syria. Iran, too. And finally: a message for the Iranian people. "As you stand for your own liberty, America stands with you." I've never understood why we don't do more of this.

    PL: 8:56--The stuff on the benefits of Iraqi freedom is powerful. Back to back shots of Hillary and John Kerry applauding, but not looking happy. Kerry looks sick, too.

    CQ: 8:58 - Sgt. Bill Norwood's parents get hugs and handshakes, and it's not easy to type through this ...

    VP: 9:00pm If you're not tearing up a little right now, you're not watching. Again, words fail. Back in 90 seconds.

    CQ: 9:01 - A terrific and inspiring finish to one of George Bush's best policy speeches

    Captain's Quarters, PowerLine and VodkaPundit

    MemeWatch: The Case of the Moving Goalposts



    Click here for AmazonI'm waiting for the next "reasons Iraq will fail" meme to emanate from the mainstream media. A couple of candidates are emerging:

    1) A successful election won't stop the insurgency
    2) The Iraqi leadership will create a theocracy
    3) The insurgency will win and Iraq will become Lebanon

    Let's check out the track record of the MSM and the International World Community (IWC), with a major hat tip to New Sisyphus:

    The ICW said that the President could not possibly transfer power to an interim Iraqi government in June. They were wrong.

    * April 2004: International Doubt on Iraq Transfer of Power Deadline ("Annan Questions Iraq Self-Rule Deadline")


    The ICW said that the President could not possibly succeed in getting the parties in Iraq to agree to a mutually-acceptable framework for that interim government. They were wrong.

    * May 2004: Iraq's Post-Handover Worries (BBC, Global Policy, ...)


    The ICW said that getting people registered to vote by Jan. 30 was unrealistic. They were wrong.

    * January 2005: Calls to postpone Iraqi elections (List: ABC, USA Today, CBC, ...)


    And the ICW said that the Insurgents were winning and had the Sunni areas of the country so terrified that even if an election were held, it would have no validity. They were wrong.

    * January 2005: Voter turnout won't be enough to legitimize elections (BBC, Sydney Morning Herald)


    Maybe the MSM and the ICW will get one right someday, but I wouldn't hold my breath. Unless I was being driven around on Martha's Vineyard by Teddy Jo Kennedy.

    Tuesday, February 01, 2005

    Bloodsport: Humiliating the Mainstream Media



    Click here for AmazonClick here for Amazon
    Just when you thought the MSM couldn't possibly do any more damage to itself... in their zeal to find something, anything, with which to humiliate the President, AP and CNN are reporting that a US soldier has been captured by insurgent forces. Ooops, make that... a GI Joe doll has been captured. By fake insurgents. Holding a tiny, plastic M-16 rifle. With a backdrop composed of something that suspiciously resembles clip-art.

    What do we get from the MSM? The proud traditions of Murrow, Cronkite and Rather? The legacy of careful news-gathering, analysis, editing and publishing? The crack investigative journalists, vetting every lead and running down every angle?

    No, we get "fake, but accurate" memos and a freaking GI Joe Doll being held hostage in a toy store in Sheboygan. You know, it's not just the bloggers that are better news sources than the MSM these days. It's about anyone with a lick of common sense.

    Taranto: "A group calling itself the Al Mujahedin Brigade claimed Tuesday it captured a U.S. soldier in Iraq and threatened to behead him unless prisoners are released," CNN reports from Baghdad. But some have raised doubts about the authenticity of a photo posted on an Islamist Web site:

    In the photograph, the assault rifle--either an M-16 or an M-4--is pointed at the man's head, said CNN military analyst James Marks.

    Marks, a retired Army general, said he has several questions about the photograph's authenticity.

    A flak jacket the man is wearing in the picture has an unfamiliar kind of piping or trim along its edges, Marks said. The man's open-legged pants, as opposed to gathered hems, seem odd, he said.

    Marks also questioned what appeared to be camouflage paint on the man's face. "We have not used camo paint with conventional forces serving in Iraq," Marks said.


    Based on the photos the Drudge Report has uncovered, we'd say this looks like the work of the archterrorist Muhammad al-Sluggo.


    Click here for AmazonYou read that last part right... in another shocking development, Mr. Bill also appears to have been taken hostage.

    Bloodsport: Humiliating the Mainstream Media

    Update: Rumor has it that the Senior Bloviating Moonbat from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Teddy Jo Kennedy, issued a statement *hic* condemning the capture of "Joe". He also promised to use every available means to convince the president to withdraw US troops from Iraq, within the next 30 days, in order to secure Joe's release.

    Click here for AmazonStop the presses, we have a Second Update: the AP and Al Jazeera are reporting that a US operative may have captured Osama Bin Laden. This grainy photograph is the only evidence thus far, but both AP and AJ are running with the story.

    Third Update: One astute reader indicates that this news is exceedingly bad: it means Al Qaeda has linked up with C.O.B.R.A.!

    Fisking Bill Moyers



    Click here for AmazonEnjoy this vicious fisking of Bill Moyers by the brilliant James Lileks in the bleat. Based upon his most recent column, I fear Moyers will soon strip naked, run to the zoo, and join a family of sea otters to become "one" with the environment. If you happen to visit, please don't feed the Moyers.

    “For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power. What that means for the environment is frightening.”

    Well, it depends on your perspective. We all remember how 270,000 people were killed in a day when the environment demonstrated that it had a monopoly of power over plate tectonics.

    Below the words, a picture of cracked parched earth, which had once no doubt been green & verdant farmland before the Right Rev. Bush got out his joystick and sent his 900 foot tall Jesus robot to blast the crops with his death-beam laser eyes.

    Did I mention that the shadow of a cross falls across the parched land?

    ...It contains the usual terrors to come, and provides copious succor for those who believe the earth is doomed. (Sometimes I think these people would be annoyed if Jesus did return, because it would play hell with their fundraising. Jesus would have to hold a press conference: yes, the whales are coming to heaven. Most of the primates, too. All dogs. Mice? No. Look, I’m sorry, but no.) On one hand, it’s annoying, because articles like this make id difficult sometimes to have reasonable conversations about the necessary issues of environmental protection, because you don’t know if you’re dealing with someone who secretly thinks everyone who bought a “Left Behind” novel goes to bed chortling over the thought of a turtle strangled by a six-pack ring...


    Lileks: Fisking Bill Moyers

    Sun-Times: What if Bush has been right about Iraq all along?



    Click here for AmazonIn this era of unadulterated partisan politics, one of the rarest commodities is intellectual honesty.

    When Limbaugh, for example, harshly criticizes the spending and immigration policies of the Bush administration, he deserved credit because he is doing the right thing. When those on the left point out the ridiculous tax-breaks and boondoggles that result in only tiny improvements in fuel economy by Detroit, they are doing the right thing.

    On the other side of the aisle, Mark Brown, the liberal, anti-war columnist of the Chicago Sun-Times, is giving voice to what many on the left must be feeling. Kudos to Mr. Brown and others on the left who are recognizing what the much-maligned team of Bush, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz realized long ago:

    Suppressing terrorism requires a policy that removes authoritarian governments, empowers people, and spreads liberty. Anything else is simply short-term thinking packaged at best, precariously, and at worst, fatally, as a "solution".

    It's as big an idea, if not bigger, than Reagan's arms buildup that bankrupted the Soviet Union without firing a shot. History will record whether the risk was worth the lives and expenditure. But those who say that we are not safer than we were on September 12, 2001 are fooling themselves. And they can't be called intellectually honest.

    Maybe you're like me and have opposed the Iraq war since before the shooting started...

    ...By now, you might have even voted against George Bush -- a second time -- to register your disapproval.

    But after watching Sunday's election in Iraq and seeing the first clear sign that freedom really may mean something to the Iraqi people, you have to be asking yourself: What if it turns out Bush was right, and we were wrong?

    ...Maybe the United States really can establish a peaceable democratic government in Iraq, and if so, that would be worth something.

    Would it be worth all the money we've spent? Certainly.

    Would it be worth all the lives that have been lost? That's the more difficult question, and while I reserve judgment on that score until such a day arrives, it seems probable that history would answer yes to that as well...


    Sun-Times: What if Bush has been right about Iraq all along?

    Brave, Brave Sir Harry Reid



    Click here for AmazonHugh Hewitt has this delightful snippet on Harry Reid, who combines the wisdom of Barbara Boxer with the backbone of Teddy Kennedy:

    Harry Reid, visionary: "But most of all, we need an exit strategy so that we know what victory is and how we can get there." Actually, most of all what we need is an end to the threat of Islamist terror against the United States and the rest of the world, a far-off goal that requires the resolve and patience that Rid and his party utterly lack. The run-away caucus remains fundamentally irresponsible in the face of the threat.


    Hugh Hewitt: Brave, brave sir Harry Reid

    Prager: The Worth of the Left



    Click here for AmazonIt took a Polish rescuer of Jews in the Holocaust, cited this week 60 years after the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration and death camp, to best describe those people who cannot or refuse to know the difference between good and evil. They are "worth nothing."

    ...Since the 1960s, with few exceptions, on the greatest questions of good and evil, the Left has either been neutral toward or actively supported evil. The Left could not identify communism as evil; has been neutral toward or actually supported the anti-democratic pro-terrorist Palestinians against the liberal democracy called Israel; and has found it impossible to support the war for democracy and against an Arab/Muslim enemy in Iraq as evil as any fascist the Left ever claimed to hate.

    There were intellectually and morally honest arguments against going to war in Iraq. But once the war began, a moral person could not oppose it. No moral person could hope for, let alone act on behalf of, a victory for the Arab/Islamic fascists....

    It brings me no pleasure to describe opponents of the Iraqi war as "worth nothing." I know otherwise fine, decent people who oppose the war. So I sincerely apologize for the insult.

    ...That most Democratic Party leaders, union leaders, gay leaders, feminists, professors, editorial writers and news reporters have called for an American withdrawal and labeled this most moral of wars "immoral" is a permanent stain on their reputations.

    ...Leftists do so for the same reason they admired Ho Chi Minh and Mao Tse-tung and condemned American arms as the greatest threat to world peace during and after the Cold War. The Left "does not know the difference between good and evil." And that is why it is worth nothing.


    Dennis Prager: The Worth of the Left

    Monday, January 31, 2005

    The Prevaricator



    Click here for AmazonI just noticed that Captain Ed recognized something important that had been floating about the comments section of several blogs since John Kerry's appearance on Meet the Press. No, not the hilarious hijinx involving the CIA man and the magic hat (although both were mentioned... seriously). Just consider the following snippet of transcript:

    MR. RUSSERT: And you have a hat that the CIA agent gave you?

    SEN. KERRY: I still have the hat that he gave me, and I hope the guy would come out of the woodwork and say, "I'm the guy who went up with John Kerry. We delivered weapons to the Khmer Rouge on the coastline of Cambodia [emphasis mine]." We went out of Ha Tien, which is right in Vietnam. We went north up into the border. And I have some photographs of that, and that's what we did. So, you know, the two were jumbled together, but we were on the Cambodian border on Christmas Eve, absolutely.


    Ed points out that the Khmer Rouger were Cambodian Communists that devastated the country after the US pulled out:

    Why Kerry would think that we ran weapons to the Communists in Cambodia while battling them in Viet Nam is beyond me. It's apparent that he's making this story up as he goes along. Every time he's asked about Christmas in Cambodia, he changes the story. This time, he came up with a name that fits with the subject matter, but he's so clueless that he either didn't know or couldn't remember exactly what the Khmer Rouge were.

    It's yet another marker of the dishonesty we've come to expect from the junior senator from Massachusetts. He won't sign the Form 180, either, even with his promise to do so in the same interview. His prevarication has become pathological.


    You heard that right. At the end of the program, Kerry promised aaaagain to sign his Form 180 so that all of his records could be released. Don't hold your breath. We've got a better chance of seeing Dennis Rodman as a Supreme Court Justice.

    CQ: The Prevaricator

    This is al-Qa'eda Rule 18...



    Click here for AmazonThose who work themselves into a tizzy about alleged torture at Gitmo need a bit of education. Specifically, they need to acquaint themselves with the Al Qaeda training manual's "Rule 18": claim you were tortured. A lap dance is many things, but I've never heard it called torture before. The Boys from Brazil must be chortling into their soup about now. They knew what torture was.

    The men's claim that they were tortured at Guantanamo should also be set in the context of the al-Qa'eda training manual discovered during a raid in Manchester a couple of years ago. Lesson 18 of that manual, whose authenticity has not been questioned, emphatically states, under the heading "Prison and Detention Centres", that, when arrested, members of al-Qa'eda "must insist on proving that torture was inflicted on them by state security investigators. [They must] complain to the court of mistreatment while in prison". That is not, of course, proof that the Britons were not tortured in Guantanamo. But it ought to encourage some doubts about uncritically accepting that they were – which seems to be the attitude adopted by most of the media.


    The Telegraph: This is al-Qa'eda Rule 18: 'You must claim you were tortured'