Wednesday, March 02, 2005

Conflict of Interest



Click here for AmazonI'm an Indiana basketball fan having grown up in the era of Bob Knight. I happened to watch the IU - Wisconsin game last night and was shocked at the horrid officiating. Sure, it's easy to claim you get jobbed by the officials when the calls go against you. But what happens if the announcers notice it, too? And not just once or twice, but multiple times throughout the game. Is something more insidious at work?

Before I get to the conspiracy theory, I'll give you an example. AJ Ratliff is an Indiana freshman who took a runner in the lane during the second half and was literally pulverized. The ball went over the backboard... limbs slapping other limbs... and there was no call. On the other hand, Wisconsin's talented forward Dan Wilkinson, drove against Robert Vaden, lost control, and stumbled into him. The announcers thought it was a travel or an offensive foul. Nope. Foul on Vaden.

What's my point? Just some bad officiating? Check out this bizarre conflict of interest as noted on, of all places, a University of Kentucky message board.

Now I'm not a big conspiracy guy, but take a look at this quote from the Philadelphia Daily News:

N is for Northern Iowa, which might be the first tournament school whose athletic director is an active referee (Rick Hartzell). So he won't be working any NIU games in the tournament, just as another elite official, Ed Hightower, won't be working any Southern Illinois games, seeing as how he is on the school's Board of Trustees.


Both of the officials mentioned in this paragraph, Rick Hartzell and Ed Hightower, officiated last night's "must-win" Indiana-Wisconsin game. Both of their schools, Northern Iowa and So. Illinois, are bubble teams for at-large bids. Indiana is the definition of a bubble team. Can we say "conflict of interest"?

Below is a link to the Hartzell's bio.

UNI Athletic Director and Referee


Click here for AmazonThis is an obvious, and completely unacceptable, conflict-of-interest. Many hundreds of thousands of dollars are riding on an NCAA bid... and the AD of a bubble team gets to officiate another bubble team's game.

And even ESPN's announcers noted the off-kilter officiating decisions.

CatsPause: Conflict of Interest

Hearts and Minds



Click here for AmazonTaranto notes the following contrast. The odds that any position Ted Kennedy takes will be proven wrong are about the same as those that William Hung will continue his "singing career". It's hard to argue with a series of miscalculations when you can still garner free PR.

"Our military and the insurgents are fighting for the same thing--the hearts and minds of the people--and that is a battle we are not winning."--Ted Kennedy, Jan. 27


"Thousands of mostly black-clad Iraqis protested Tuesday outside a medical clinic where a suicide car bomber killed 125 people a day earlier, braving the threat of another attack as they waved clenched fists, condemned foreign fighters and chanted 'No to terrorism!' "--Associated Press, March 1


Interestingly, the text of Kennedy's infamous speech seems to have disappeared from his Web site; the above link is to the Yahoo cache. We guess it's a good sign that he no longer stands by the speech, but we'd think more highly of him if he actually owned up to his mistake.

Mary Jo Kopechne could not be reached for comment.


WSJ: Taranto's Best of the Web
 

Bitter and Inane is No Way to Go Through Life, Son



Click here for AmazonThe inane and bitter Richard Cohen spewed forth a few days ago and -- shockingly -- he wrote of the Democratic movement rustling through the Mideast:

...something momentous is stirring: democracy, freedom, independence. Something. Or, as an Arab acquaintance just e-mailed me from the region, "I can smell the winds of change in the air wherever I go." ...


A gracious and glowing concession to the Reaganesque moves of the administration? Of course not.

Given what's happening, it's understandable that many eyes have shifted to Washington with a new sense of appreciation. Could it be that the neocons were right and that the invasion of Iraq, the toppling of Hussein and the holding of elections will trigger a political chain reaction throughout the Arab world? It would be the Middle East equivalent of what happened in Eastern Europe when the Soviet Union finally sank to its knees, took one last breath and crumbled.

Maybe... some of us may be prematurely celebrating the changes in the Arab world, possibly mistaking them for what has happened in quite different places. No doubt... "something's coming" -- but, believe me, it may not be what we expect.


Ah, there's the Richard Cohen I know! He's back! Willing to spin any good news for the administration -- and, therefore, the United States -- into foreboding visions of disaster.

And not a mention of George W. Bush.

Yes, Richard Cohen's unblemished record of constipated analysis and failed prediction remains intact. Here's a gem from September, 2003, courtesy of American Thinker:

In diplomacy, in foreign affairs, in the waging of war and maybe in protecting America, he [Bush] has made mistake after mistake. Like Henry Ford II, he may never complain and he may never explain. But when you look back, there's still a wreck in the road.


Richard Cohen's predictions contain all the accuracy of Mizz Suzanne's Psychic Hotline, only without the snappy patter nor the Jamaican accent. I think it's high time someone graded Cohen on his litany of failures, although I'm pretty sure the pathetic number of online visits to his column would plainly indicate just how useless he is.

WaPo: The Inane and Bitter Richard Cohen
 

Tuesday, March 01, 2005

The Left's New Meme: Democracy in the Mideast? Just a coincidence!



Click here for AmazonHugh Hewitt, once again, lays down a startling riff that should be required reading by everyone who votes. Including the felons and dead guys who apparently cast gubernatorial ballots recently in Washington state.

What gets Hugh started? The Left's new meme, starting with Ed Kilgore at TalkingPointsMemo, that the democracy movement in the Middle East has, well, absolutely nothing to do with President Bush! It's all a coincidence! Here's Kilgore:

...[it] never crossed my mind that Bush's fans would credit him with for this positive event, as though his pro-democracy speeches exercise some sort of rhetorical enchantment... Barring any specific evidence (provided, say, by Lebanese pro-democracy leaders) that Bush had anything in particular to do with Syria's setbacks in Lebanon, I see no particular reason to high-five him for being in office when they happened.


Hugh's retort eviscerates Kilgore, who has sufficient chutzpah to attempt to discredit Reagan's remarkable handling of the Cold War...

Here's Lech Walesa on Reagan:

"When talking about Ronald Reagan, I have to be personal. We in Poland took him so personally. Why? Because we owe him our liberty. This can't be said often enough by people who lived under oppression for half a century, until communism fell in 1989."

As with the Poles, so with the Lebanese --they are putting their lives on the line to face down their oppressors. But American policy stands with them and encourages them, and pressures the dictators not to strike back, and threatens the tyrants if they do. The refusal to recognize that American policy does indeed have consequences is yet another exhibit in the huge array of arguments as to why Democrats cannot be trusted to run the nation's foreign policy --- they don't think it matters. Kilgore's dissmissiveness of presidential rhetoric --"as though his pro-democracy speeches exercise some sort of rhetorical enchantment"-- isn't just a misguided slam at W, it is an admission of awesome ignorance of the power of the American president to shape a world through words, a failure of imagination and an admission of an inexperience with foreign affairs that makes you question his commentary on literally everything...

If you don't understand the power of the presidency, then you and your candidates ought not to be trusted with it, for it will end up a replay of the Carter experiment with presidential "small ball," where resignation to events is the dominant theme, and America's enemies to set the tempo and most of the rules.

Democrats have spent more than 15 years trying to deny Reagan his role in bringing down the Soviets. I suppose they will be trying to minimize Bush's role in introducing democracy to the Arab world for an even longer period of time. Both efforts ask the public to set aside the facts they have witnessed and watch the Michael Moore movie over here, with post viewing commentary provided by Howard Dean. It didn't work with Reagan and it won't work with Bush...


Hugh Hewitt: Reconnecting the Dots
 

Appeasement Redux



Click here for AmazonIt's like a really bad horror movie where the mummy keeps getting back up, even though it's been shot, set afire, run over with a car, and pulverized with a wrecking ball. The Europeans, insistent on continuing down their path of self-destruction are willing to give the Mullahs yet another pass. Let's trade some airplanes for a promise not to build nukes!

Yes, the Mullahs are just the guys that you want to play patty-cake with, given their unceasing support for terrorists of all stripes (including Al Qaeda) and their prior promises to nuke Israel into molten rubble.

I certainly can't say I understand the administration's apparent willingness to embrace, even temporarily, a soft line on Iran. But it's always worth remembering that the US recently sold Israel $320 million worth of bombs, including 500 BLU-109 warheads, one-ton "bunker busters"that can penetrate five meters of reinforced concrete.

Trusting the Mullahs, the world's foremost sponsors of terror, is a phenomenally bad idea. It's kind of like inviting Dennis Rodman to house-sit over Spring Break. The only surprises you're going to get won't be good ones.

The governing board of the International Atomic Energy Agency is in session this week in Vienna, and today it will review the latest batch of evidence concerning Iran's violations of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. These violations include:

• Refusal to allow the IAEA to inspect all areas of the Parchin military site near Tehran, which the U.S. suspects is involved in illicit nuclear research.

• Failure to disclose construction of a tunnel under the nuclear site of Isfahan.

• The unresolved question of how weapons-grade uranium was detected on Iranian centrifuges.

• A document describing technical assistance offers received from nuclear proliferator A.Q. Khan dating back to 1987.

Sounds bad. So what does the Administration intend to do?


WSJ: Carrots for the Mullahs - A surefire path to a nuclear Iran.
 

Monday, February 28, 2005

The U.S. can sit back and watch Europe implode



Click here for AmazonThe "great" Mark Steyn hits another fastball out of the park. No one is lobbing up hanging curves to the one-man global content provider, yet he is consistently pounding out longballs. And if I were a bit more worldly I'd use cricket, not baseball, analogies given Steyn's heritage.

For the time-hampered, here are the highlights. But, of course, try and read the whole thing.

A week ago, the conventional wisdom was that George W. Bush had seen the error of his unilateral cowboy ways and was setting off to Europe to mend fences with America's ''allies.''

I think not... at the end what's changed?

Will the United States sign on to Kyoto?

No.

Will the United States join the International Criminal Court?

No.

Will the United States agree to accept whatever deal the Anglo-Franco-German negotiators cook up with Iran?

No.

Even more remarkably, aside from sticking to his guns in the wider world, the president also found time to cast his eye upon Europe's internal affairs. As he told his audience in Brussels, in the first speech of his tour, ''We must reject anti-Semitism in all forms and we must condemn violence such as that seen in the Netherlands...''

...The ''violence in the Netherlands'' is a reference to Theo van Gogh, murdered by a Dutch Islamist for making a film critical of the Muslim treatment of women. Van Gogh's professional colleagues reacted to this assault on freedom of speech by canceling his movie from the Rotterdam Film Festival and scheduling some Islamist propaganda instead.

The president, in other words, understands that for Europe, unlike America, the war on terror is an internal affair, a matter of defusing large unassimilated radicalized Muslim immigrant populations...

...CIA analysts predict the collapse of the EU within 15 years. I'd say, as predictions of doom go, that's a little on the cautious side...

Europe's problems -- its unaffordable social programs, its deathbed demographics, its dependence on immigration numbers that no stable nation (not even America in the Ellis Island era) has ever successfully absorbed -- are all of Europe's making. By some projections, the EU's population will be 40 percent Muslim by 2025. Already, more people each week attend Friday prayers at British mosques than Sunday service at Christian churches -- and in a country where Anglican bishops have permanent seats in the national legislature...

...Until the shape of the new Europe begins to emerge, there's no point picking fights with the terminally ill. The old Europe is dying, and Mr. Bush did the diplomatic equivalent of the Oscar night lifetime-achievement tribute at which the current stars salute a once glamorous old-timer whose fading aura is no threat to them. The 21st century is being built elsewhere.


Mark Steyn, Chicago Sun-Times: U.S. can sit back and watch Europe implode
 

Good versus Evil



Click here for AmazonThe new Democratic chairman Howard Dean giving a speech in Kansas:

"This is a struggle of good and evil. And we're the good."


Oh. Interesting that he felt he needed to add that second sentence. Hugh Hewitt notes:

While political rhetoric can and indeed must become heated at times, the idea of tens of millions of Americans being "evil" is the sort of extreme, Michael Moore rhetoric which has taken the Democrats into the ditch and will keep them there. Will MSM follow up with the new DNC Chair and press him for details? Because Dean just labeled every Catholic Bishop and every major Evangelical figure "evil"...

...does Senator Clinton agree? Senator Schumer? Senator Reid? Minority Leader Pelosi? Shouldn't every Democrat in leadership be asked if those opposing them... are "evil?"


Methinks we won't be seeing those questions (a) asked by the MSM; or (b) answered by the usual suspects.
 

Iraq: All but Won



Click here for AmazonThe invaluable Jack Kelly of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette   nailed the mainstream media to the wall with his Sunday op-ed. His contention? The war in Iraq is all but won. He compares the situation to the battle of Iwo Jima: though the outcome was clear after five days, it took 35 days before the island could be declared secure.

Need proof? Well, when Hillary Clinton jumps on the bandwagon, you can be pretty sure the situation is safe. A politico with her experience wouldn't touch that kind of hot potato unless it was stuffed with green by John Huang (oops, did I say that out loud?). Hillary's remarks, including the fact that Iraq is functioning quite well, pretty much sums it up.

Blogger Austin Bay, a retired colonel in the Army reserve who served in Iraq last year, blames the public's disconnect on (surprise!) the MSM's unbalanced reporting. He notes that thousands of truckloads of material arrive in Iraq every day from Kuwait and Turkey and, once in a while, the insurgents get lucky and blow one up. That single flaming rig will dominate CNN's coverage for hours... without telling American viewers what's really occurring on the ground.

Lt. Col. Jim Stockmoe, chief intelligence officer for the First Infantry Division, roared with laughter as he recalled the increasing missteps of the resistance in Iraq in an interview earlier this month with British journalist Toby Harnden, writing for The Spectator.

"There were three brothers down in Baghdad who had a mortar tube and were firing into the Green Zone," Stockmoe said. "They were storing the mortar rounds in the car engine compartment and the rounds got overheated. Two of these clowns dropped them in the tube and they exploded, blowing their legs off."

The surviving brother sought refuge in a nearby house, but the occupants "beat the crap out of him and turned him over to the Iraqi police," Stockmoe told Harnden, "It was like the movie 'Dumb and Dumber.' " ...

...The number of insurgent attacks has fallen off significantly since the Fallujah offensive last November, and the attacks that are being made are less effective.

There are about 50-60 attacks a day on coalition forces, about half the pre-Fallujah level. Almost all are within the Sunni Triangle, and most are ineffective. "Most of these are ambush-style attacks that result in no casualties," noted StrategyPage...


Jack Kelly: All but won - The media can't see that Iraq is close to secure
 

The (Security) Hits Just keep on Comin'



Click here for AmazonThe hits just keep on coming. A flaw in the Paymaxx web-based W2 service may have explosed data on thousands of workers. The Bank of America may have lost control of more than a million customer records. And, of course, ChoicePoint permitted about 150,000 customer records to fall into the wrong hands, which will likely lead to a swarm of identity-theft cases.

And these are only the ones we're hearing about. What about the crimes that haven't yet been discovered by the victims, the companies, or the press? The ones that the crooks are still exploiting?

Rest assured, there are lots of them out there.

In each case, these situations could have been prevented. Some, as in the case of Paymaxx, may have been as simple as performing routine vulnerability assessment against a web application prior to rolling it into production.

These issues all boil down to combining processes, people and technology effectively: how are clients vetted before being permitted to tap into the corporate repository? Once they are vetted, is their behavior analyzed to determine whether it meets acceptable criteria?

These well-publicized cases, that translate into tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in market capitalization, point out a key facet of management in today's cyberworld of business: the security function is the cornerstone of today's business. If you try to operate any business, especially one tied to the Internet, without a serious approach to security, then you're driving around in the dark without headlights. Sooner or later, you're going to fly off a cliff or hit a bridge abutment.

Simply put, the CSO or CISO roles are paramount for businesses that link to the Internet. A pragmatic, not insignificant fraction of the IT budget needs to be apportioned to security each and every quarter. And assessments need to part of a regular process: vulnerability assessments, risk analyses, classification issues, process reviews, etc. The security organization needs to be stronger than ever. Because the risks are higher than ever.

Millions in market capitalization... and entire businesses... hang in the balance.

Friday, February 25, 2005

Big Blue backs PHP



Click here for AmazonIBM's announcement that it is backing the PHP programming language is no surprise to those who closely follow trends on the web. The proliferation of PHP-driven websites is astonishing: by every measure, it is the single most popular web application serving technology on the Internet.

The partnership with PHP creator Zend Technologies is built around a new bundle called ZendCore. It consists of IBM's Cloudscape embedded database and Zend's PHP development tools.

The telling quote:

One industry executive who requested not to be named said that IBM's push into PHP and scripting reflects IBM's disillusionment with the Java standardization process and the industry's inability to make Java very easy to use.


Given that Gartner has reported that more than 70% of J2EE web applications are utter failures, this should come as no surprise.

...To date, around 70 percent of initial Java implementations have been unsuccessful, according to new research from Gartner Group.

"An inordinately large number of large-scale Java projects have been failures," said Mark Driver, Gartner research director for Internet and ebusiness technologies.


News.com: Big Blue backs PHP for Web development
 

The Revisionists



Click here for AmazonThe always interesting Betsy Newmark recently noted that military history is frequently taught as social history.

...The textbooks will usually have a brief summary of the military progress of the war. But there are several obligatory sections for every war: how the war impacted women, blacks, and other minorities. For World War II, the section on Japanese internment is always a major curriculum point. The military history is a minor point in comparison...


Several years ago, my daughter came home from school. She was visibly upset that America had dropped the A-bomb on Japan. It was obvious the teacher's agenda included a careful rewrite of history to villify Truman and the U.S. Military as utter monsters, without a thimble's worth of historical context.

Reading Flags of Our Fathers or Flyboys provides a bit more perspective.

It is hard to overstate the strength of indoctrination programs with which Japanese soldiers were inculcated with a barbaric philosophy of "no surrender".

The battle for the island of Attu in the Aleutians illustrated [the philosophy]... in May of 1943, after two weeks of fighting, only eight hundred Japanese troops remained. [They] had no ammunition left, and there was nothing they could do militarily. Troops of any other nation would have surrendered. On... May 29, 1943 the surviving troops were ordered to attack. Fewer than thirty survived.


On island after island, the Japanese employed these same "tactics" of senseless suicide attacks. Iwo Jima, the first component of territorial Japan invaded by the Allies, took a horrible toll on both sides: 21,000 defenders and 6,821 Marines perished, all for a patch of volcanic ash in the Pacific. In fact, the last Japanese defenders of Iwo Jima did not emerge from the fortified depths of the island until 1949.

Nearing the end of the war, the Japanese Imperial Headquarters -- in official communiques -- referred to 'Gyokusai of the One Hundred Million'... the "shattered jewel" (suicide attack) deaths of the entire population of Japan. Put plainly, the Japanese leaders were willing to sacrifice every man, woman and child on the island in the belief that divine winds (kamikaze) would prevent any invader from conquering Japan.

The result was the sober assessment by American military planners that utter devastation of the Japanese homeland was required, because surrender was untenable for the population.

A War Department report concluded that, "defeating Japan would cost [the Japanese] five to ten million deaths and the United States between 1.7 and 4 million casualties, including 400,000 to 600,000 fatalities." A postwar analyis indicated that these estimates were incorrect: they underestimated Japanese defenses.

To put this in perspective, D-Day required 175,000 invading troops. 7,000,000 American troops were in the Pacific by 1945 preparing for Operation Olympic, the first phase of invasion.

Put in these terms, there is no question but that the atomic attacks saved millions of lives on both sides.

The revisionists who discard history have no business teaching it.

Betsy's Page: Military History.

Thursday, February 24, 2005

Who capped Rafik Hariri?



Click here for AmazonThe Kerry Spot has provided yeoman service in relaying expert analysis of the Hariri assassination. His expert notes that:

  • The bomb used around 650 pounds of TNT

  • It was placed in the middle of the road, therefore likely under the street itself and not in a parked car

  • It was placed in a curve in the road and intelligence regarding Hariri's route and schedule would have had to have been exact

  • The motorcade had electronic jammers, thus either a wire-triggered bomb or sophisticated jamming countermeasures were employed by the assassins


  • Hardly the work of amateurs. In fact, the assassination has the hallmarks of a serious, state-sponsored hit. TKS notes that we can therefore dismiss Juan Cole's asinine supposition that Hariri had been involved in a business deal gone sour.

    This leaves three potential states that could have been responsible: Syria, Israel, and Iran.

    The Iranians, conceivably, could have done this to put the west’s attention and heat on Syria. But my guy is skeptical of this kind of bank-shot skullduggery. The risk doesn’t seem to be worth the reward.

    Israel could have pulled it off, but it’s not clear that they would really want to kill Hariri. He was leading an increasingly-impatient Lebanese people who were chafing under de facto Syrian rule...

    And then there are the Syrians. The strongest argument against Damascus ordering the hit is that they’re too obvious a suspect. On the other hand, Syria clearly feels as if Lebanon is its backyard or colony, and that they can act with impunity there. In fact, they’ve killed more than a few Lebanese political leaders before...

    ...while the Syrians didn’t like Hariri, he was surprised that they were willing to kill the goose that was laying the golden eggs. And the economic importance of Lebanon to Syria can’t be understated. About 1 million Syrians work in Lebanon, earning cash and sending it back home. Sending money transactions through Beirut is an easy way for foreign companies to avoid the notoriety of working with the Syrian regime.

    What’s coming next? Well, the Syrians clearly completely misjudged the Lebanese reaction. A people who were previously terrified of even mentioning Hafiz Assad’s name, (instead they would curse the town he was born in) are now protesting in the streets...


    TKS: Straight Stuff on Lebanon and Syria (hat tip: PoliPundit).

    Wednesday, February 23, 2005

    "The Berlin Wall has Fallen"



    Click here for AmazonTelling quote from the leader of the "Lebanese Intifada" (Hat tip: TKS):

    Over the years, I've often heard him denouncing the United States and Israel, but these days, in the aftermath of Hariri's death, he's sounding almost like a neoconservative...

    "It's strange for me to say it, but this process of change has started because of the American invasion of Iraq. I was cynical about Iraq. But when I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, 8 million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world. The Syrian people, the Egyptian people, all say that something is changing. The Berlin Wall has fallen. We can see it."


    WaPo: Beirut's Berlin Wall

    Barking Moonbats: Rove's Diabolical Plan



    Click here for AmazonTim Blair excoriates Congressman Maurice Hinchey, who on multiple occasions (most recently on CNN) has espoused the theory that Karl Rove created the bogus Rathergate documents.

    It doesn’t take an awful lot of imagination if you’re thinking about who it is that might have produced these false documents to try to mislead people in this very cynical way. It would take someone very brilliant, very cynical, very Machiavellian, and it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to come up with the name of Karl Rove as a possibility of having done that.


    This hysterical assertion possesses all the intellectual rigor of modern-day alchemy, performed by Jessica Simpson. In point of fact, this type of unhinged remark has been covered extensively by Charles at LittleGreenFootballs and Sounding the Trumpet, among others.

    But only the magnificent Blair has found and reported upon the only known transcript of the conspiracy in the making:

    ...Using contemporaneous reports and several eye-witness sources, this site is able to reconstruct the events of last August...

    (Rove enters the Chamber of Destruction and greets his assembled operatives)

    Rove: Gentlemen. Ladies. Mr. Gannon. Mr. Murdoch.

    (Various responses: “Hiya!” “Howdy.” “G’day.")

    Rove: People, you have done good work. You have tirelessly attempted to undermine John Kerry’s bid for the presidency. And yet the latest polling shows that Kerry may still win.

    (Murmured complaints: “Dang!” “This is soooo not happening.” “Can’t compete with a Magic Hat.")

    Rove: Silence! I cannot tell you how much this disappoints and angers me.

    (An assistant appears at Rove’s side with a baseball bat. He is waved away)

    Rove: But now is not the time for fault-finding, or skull-crushing. Now is the time for action. Serious action. In fact, the most serious action it is possible for us to undertake.

    Murdoch: You don’t mean ... ?

    Rove: Yes. It is time for us to deploy the Doomsday Device.

    (Several reel from the table in shock; two are ill)

    Rove: Mr. Gannon, please fetch the Device. And put some pants on, for God’s sake.

    Gannon: Y-yes sir. Right away, Mr. Karl, sir.

    (Gannon exits the room; the anxious conspirators listen as the sound of several vaults being sequentially opened echoes throughout the Chamber. Presently Gannon returns, carrying a briefcase)

    Rove: Open it.

    (Gannon enters the security code—DAILYKOS—and the briefcase springs ajar. Looking away in fear and torment, he nudges the briefcase towards Rove)

    Rove: And now it is time. Time to unveil our most hideous, most perfect plan. (Rove grips the briefcase with both hands) Do you people truly know of the evil that man can attain? Do you know of the Dark Lord’s majesty? Do you know of a terror so sublime that any lesser atrocity—Salem; the Holocaust; our coming assassination and cannibalism of the Pope—will from this point on make you giggle like little girls? Behold!

    (Rove removes from the briefcase several sheets of paper. He studies them intently; every eye in the room is trained upon him. Finally, Rove speaks ...)

    Rove: This is the frickin’ Doomsday Device? A bunch of bogus National Guard memos? What the hell?

    Clarence Thomas: Well, what we thought we’d do, see, was hand these over to the media and ...

    Rove: Oh, come on! These are dated 1972 but they’re in Microsoft Word! Hellloooo! You think anybody in their right mind will fall for these? Oh, look here; you haven’t even changed the default settings! Why, I could type these up at home!

    Ann Coulter: With respect, sir, the plan was to ...

    Rove: Plan? Plan? Listen, legs, this plan wouldn’t fool a Kennedy! Or a crack-addicted homeless person! This so-called plan wouldn’t rate a segment on Air America! This plan I’m looking at wouldn’t be posted at Democratic goddamn Underground! This half-assed, retard plan isn’t worth the ...

    Hugh Hewitt: Actually, we were thinking of giving the memos to Dan Rather.

    Rove: Proceed.


    Tim Blair: Rove's Diabolical Plan
     

    Belgian Waffles



    Click here for AmazonThose crazy Belgians are at it again. Under the guise of an addled brand of pacifism, a fair number of Belgians have objected to President Bush's visit. Unfortunately, they appear to burying their heads in the sand, ignoring the rise of Islamofascism in places like the Netherlands. Big Trunk at Powerline comments:

    Several readers have pointed out to us the Daily Standard column on the Belgian anti-Bush urinal: "Piss off." Let us recall that in December 1944 Belgium was the object of Hitler's last major offensive. Thousands of American heroes served and died to repel the offensive and to liberate Belgium. Click here for an excellent site devoted to the battle. Hitler's last gasp came shortly afterward in the lesser-known Operation Nordwind.

    Stephen Ambrose's terrific book Band of Brothers tells the story through the eyes of E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne Division -- a unit that served "from Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest" (as the book's subtitle states). The men of E Company served on the front lines in ferocious, almost unimaginably arduous and brutal combat for the last twelve months of WW II. Many died, many were horribly injured, some survived. God bless Stephen Ambrose for capturing their story before even those who had survived died natural deaths...

    At the very end of the book Ambrose briefly summarizes the postwar lives of those who survived. One of those who overcame a paralyzing injury suffered at Bastogne and survived was Corporal Walter Gordon. He went to law school and struck it rich through the exercise of great acumen in the oil business.

    In December 1991, Mr. Gordon read that the mayor of Eindhoven, Holland had refused to meet with General Schwarzkopf because as general of the forces that served in the Gulf War General Schwarzkopf "had too much blood on his hands." Ambrose recounts that Gordon wrote to the mayor of Eindhoven as follows:

    On September 17, 1944 I participated in the large airborne operation which was conducted to liberate your country. As a member of company E, 506th PIR [parachute infantry regiment], I landed near the small town of Son. The following day we moved south and liberated Eindhoven. While carrying out our assignment, we suffered casualties. That is war talk for bleeding. We occupied various defense positions for over two months. Like animals, we lived in holes, barns, and as best we could. The weather was cold and wet. In spite of the adverse conditions, we held the ground we had fought so hard to capture.

    The citizens of Holland at that time did not share your aversion to bloodshed when the blood being shed was that of the German ocupiers of your city. How soon we forget. History has proven more than once that Holland could again be conquered if your neighbor, the Germans, are having a dull weekend and the golf links are crowded.

    Please don't allow your country to be swallowed up by Liechtenstein or the Vatican as I don't plan to return. As of now, you are on your own.


    This is a message that badly needs to be delivered to our former Belgian friends.


    Powerline: Piss off

    Tuesday, February 22, 2005

    A Gun Only Smokes After It has been Fired



    Click here for AmazonTrodwell intimates that Koizumi and the government of Japan simply "get it". A recent BBC report suggests that draft legislation will authorize the defense minister to activate Japan's anti-ballistic missile defense system. This is a major change from the current system, which relies upon a relatively complicated beauracracy to engage defenses, even though Japan lies within spitting distance of certain maniacal crackpot dictators.

    Those who oppose missile defense, especially, need to read the whole thing. Or, as Trodwell says, "Go ye therefore hence, and suckle at the teat of wisdom":

    ...because it is assumed that North Korea has not yet contrived a nuclear warhead small enough to be delivered by ballistic missile, there is no urgency in establishing a ballistic missile defence system, and certainly no urgency in devolving launch authority below Cabinet level.

    The only people who would advance such an argument are those who fail to understand the Bush Doctrine; which, in a word, means NOT waiting until you are hit before taking appropriate measures. In other words, if you know that North Korea is working on a nuclear weapon (e.g. if they tell you they have one); if you know they are working on an inter-continental ballistic missile (e.g. if they fire one over your country); and if you suspect they might not like you (e.g. if they threaten to turn your country “into a sea of fire”), then waiting until the missile has actually been launched and is 7 minutes away from Tokyo (or 13 minutes from Anchorage) is not a viable policy option. This is not rocket science, and both Koizumi and Bush appear to get it. Some people, however, still do not. Many probably aren’t mentally equipped to get it.

    (It's not that they're dumb; it's just that they're liberals, and lack the capacity for rational thought necessary to connect cause and effect. I know, I know, redundant.... Put it this way: "Some are born stupid; some have stupidity thrust upon them.")...

    ...In a world where unstable dictators have ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons, anyone who waits for a “smoking gun”... could very well end up in a smoking hole.


    Right Thinking People: A Gun Only Smokes After It has been Fired

    Fisking SEDHE



    Click here for AmazonI wrote an editorial for one of the metro dailies a few weeks back. SEDHE is, I think, a group blog based in the Midwest that took issue with the editorial. In it -- written only days before the Iraqi election -- I reprised Joshua Muravchik's key points regarding the crucial onset of democracy among predominantly Arab countries in the Middle East.

    Rather than address any of the salient thrusts of the article, Mark (of SEDHE) pulled the Al Franken-esque trick of chipping away at the periphery in hopes of discrediting the larger argument. Let's take a quick, Fisky look at Mark's objections to my piece:

    "In 1776, there was exactly one country in the world with an elected government: the United States of America." Really, Doug? By my calculations, there were no elected governments in 1776, since the United States did not exist until 1789! Once again, we have confused the Declaration of Independence -- a persuasive essay -- for the Constitution -- a legal document.


    Yes, because we all remember celebrating the bicentennial in 1989... it was a glorious winter day, with just a hint of spring rustling through the Berkshires, ah... I remember it well. And, each year, of course, we celebrate the birth of our country on March 4.

    All that being said, Mark needs to go back to his seventh grade American History textbook. You know, the illustrated one with the picture of The Continental Congress. Yes, that Continental Congress, an elected set of delegates and the government for the United States during the American Revolution (1775-1783). Because Britain wasn't going to let the colonies form their own government, some people in the congress believed independence was their only alternative. It approved the resolution on July 2, 1776 and on July 4 it adopted The Declaration of Independence. Most observers -- other than SEDHE -- believe the date of July 4, 1776 marked the formation of our country.

    Aside from being flat out wrong, Mark in no way addresses the point of the article. Namely that from 1776, democracy as a form of government went from 0 to 117 countries. The tide of democracy is inexporably washing away authoritarian regimes.

    He then gives us a lesson in contemporary geo-politics. "Israel is the sole democracy among 18 states [in the Middle East]. The handiwork of George W. Bush is therefore astonishing: Afghanistan, the Palestinian Authority, and -- within days -- Iraq will have held elections." Not so fast there, Sunny Jim. What did George W. Bush have to do with elections in the Palestinian Authority?


    All that negotiation Bill Clinton did with thieving billionaire terrorist dictator Arafat worked out well for the peace process didn't it? Bush's refusal to speak with Arafat -- and support for democracy -- made the PA election process inevitable once the PA thug (thankfully) expired. But don't believe me. Ask the liberals in Israel:

    ..."There is a change in the atmosphere," said Amram Mitzna, a leader of Israel's dovish Labor Party...


    And SEDHE's post gets even better.

    ...let's talk about these elections in Iraq... Mark my words: tomorrow's election will be a bloodbath.


    I heard the Iraqi elections called many things: successful, a moving tribute to freedom, vindication for Bush. I think we can safely say it was not, however, a bloodbath. Much as Mark may have hoped for that.

    ...Let's go back to that statement that Israel is the sole democracy in the Middle East. What happened to Turkey? Last I checked, Turkey was a secular democracy and it was one of our good friends...


    The scholastic website Nationmaster ranks Turkey 34th of 36th European and North American countries in terms of civil and political liberties (only Bosnia/Herzegovina and Belarus rank lower). The measure of freedom is not simply holding an election... it is liberty, plain and simple.

    And what is this "18 states" thing? Did Mr. Ross pick 18 states at random? By my count (and by the Columbia Encyclopedia's), there are 12 states in the Middle East: Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates. Where did the other six states come from?


    Let's count, shall we? It's not very hard... really. Using About's Geography Guide: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Egypt, Georgia, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates, and
    Yemen. That's 19... if you assume that Lebanon isn't a puppet of Syria, which -- according to the United Nations -- it is. In which case, there are 18 sovereign countries.

    But I digress. There are major issues Mark could have attacked. Instead, he chips away at the edges, hoping for a victory in a minor skirmish. For, as we all know, on the big issues the Left's batting record ain't real good.

    ...So, in short, Mr. Doug Ross... has demonstrated that he knows nothing about the world except what he is told by the Bush administration... I loathe the Bush administration.


    'Nuff said.

    There will come a day

    Monday, February 21, 2005

    The John Kerry Form 180 Counter





    PoliPundit: The John Kerry Counter

    Eurabia



    Click here for AmazonFrom Townhall, Diana West reviews Bat Ye'or's Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis. Bat Ye'or is uniquely qualified to dissect the entangled links between Europe and the Arab League:

    ...the political, economic and cultural bonds between Europe and the Arab world... were designed to create "a global alternative to American power."

    How? ...by shepherding... war on Israel. This would come about in exchange for freely flowing Arab oil into Europe, which would come about in exchange for freely flowing Muslim immigration into Europe, which would come about in exchange for research and development and labor and education and tourism and cultural ties between the Europe and the Arab world ... which would all come about with an increasing independence of (and, indeed, hostility toward) America.

    This goes a long way toward explaining the behavior of Old Europe -- the heart of Eurabia -- since Sept. 11. It also leaves a question hanging when The New York Times pegs Muslim immigration into Europe to a simple "postwar labor shortage"...


    Diana West: Eurabia

    Sunday, February 20, 2005

    There Will Come a Day



    There will come a day when the Democratic Party will perform some serious, introspective analysis on itself. How has it moved so far Left? How has it lost all of the South and the Midwest -- and for that matter, a huge percentage of all counties in the country? How it also lost 97 of 100 of the the fastest growing counties? Where has it gone awry?

    And why does it, shockingly, continue to lose despite the "fifteen points" advantage that the mainstream media purports to offer the Democrats?

    Well, in my opinion, any self-analysis won't take much effort.

    No party has been more wrong, more often, on serious issues of national import than the Democratic party since 1972:

    * Wrong about the evil represented by Communism during the Cold War, concomitant with its estimated one hundred million civilian deaths.

    * Wrong about the best strategies to end the Cold War peacefully.

    * Wrong about fighting Communism aggressively in Latin America.

    * Wrong about revamping welfare, most recently by opposing the 1996 Welfare Reform Act, which has been a success story by nearly every measure (memo to self: if I don't hear about it in the MSM, the news must be good for the administration).

    * Wrong to think that peace in the Middle East was ever achievable by appeasing thieving terrorist dictator Yassar Arafat.

    * Wrong about the mantra that the administration waged a "War for Oil" (or to fill Halliburton's coffers, take your pick).

    * Wrong that the post-9/11 attack on the Taliban would turn Afghanistan into a quagmire.

    * Wrong about the need to postpone the Iraqi elections, despite their outcries that it would be impossible to hold elections with terrorism rampant throughout the country?

    The Left needs to revisit the biographies of great Presidents like Truman, Roosevelt, and Kennedy. These men were Democrats vested in the concept of liberty and willing to defend freedom. It is certain that all three would be considered hardline conservatives by today's standards.

    Today these great men would be either Joe Lieberman DINO's or would have simply have upped and moved to the GOP.