Euphemism Update
Ladies and Gentlemen:---

Be sure to update your glossaries. Liberals are now progressives.

That is all.

Reconquering Andalusia
Lawrence Wright has written an excellent article in the 2 August 2004 issue of The New Yorker that certainly merits your attention. It is a very long and detailed examination of the al-Qaedist threat in Spain and elsewhere in Europe.

Muslim immigration is transforming all of Europe. Nearly twenty million people in the European Union identify themselves as Muslim. This population is disproportionately young, male, and unemployed. The societies these men have left are typically poor, religious, conservative, and dictatorial; the ones they enter are rich, secular, liberal, and free. For many, the exchange is invigorating, but for others Europe becomes a prison of alienation.

Wright's first focus is on the Madrid train bombings of 11 March 2004 and how they were carried out. And, in doing so, he paints Prime Minister Aznar's government as completely dishonest about the culpability of the Basque terrorist group, ETA. Aznar and his ministers knew early on that ETA had nothing to do with the atrocities, but did not want to pay the price of admitting al-Qaedist responsibility so close to election day. But, just a few days after the atrocities, the Spanish people rejected Aznar's government and capitulated to the demands of their own countrymen's murderers. There may yet be a lesson in that for our own country.

And, in light of Homeland Security's terror alerts of the past few days, read what Wright has to say about the long-term planning that these terrorists engage in (emphasis added):

One of the most sobering pieces of information to come out of the investigation of the March 11th bombings is that the planning for the attacks may have begun nearly a year before 9/11. In October, 2000, several of the suspects met in Istanbul with Amer Azizi, who had taken the nom de guerre Othman Al Andalusi--Othman of Al Andalus. Azizi later gave the conspirators permission to act in the name of Al Qaeda, although it is unclear whether he authorized money or other assistance--or, indeed, whether Al Qaeda had much support to offer. In June, Italian police released a surveillance tape of one of the alleged planners of the train bombings, an Egyptian housepainter named Rabei Osman Sayed Ahmed, who said that the operation "took me two and a half years." Ahmed had served as an explosives expert in the Egyptian Army. It appears that some kind of attack would have happened even if Spain had not joined the Coalition--or if the invasion of Iraq had never occurred.

That is to say, these atrocities are prepared for in the long-term and are independent of any particular political motive. The al-Qaedists --- Islamofascist sociopaths--- are not in the business of death because of some Earthly aspiration so much as they are seeking the paradise of martyrs. These are murderers without frontiers and without regard for Western man. Some day soon, we will all have to wake up to this reality and crush these roaches ---without equivocation or nuance. We will simply have to do it.

John of Gaunt
Tee hee.

Things You Can't Even Think of on Acid
John Kerry, the man who would be President, is going to supply Iran with nuclear fuel. As Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs sums it up for us:

John F. Kerry's senior foreign policy adviser, James P. Rubin, says that Kerry has a brilliant plan to deal with Iran's mad dash to obtain nuclear weapons.

First, Kerry will defer to the judgment of the United Nations.

Second, he will somehow magically secure nuclear materials in the former Soviet Union.

And third ... Kerry's going to give Iran nuclear fuel.

Yes, really.

And this isn't a joke, either. The following are Jamie Rubin's remarks taken from this week's issue of Newsweek (emphasis added):

John Kerry regards an Iran as a state sponsor of terrorism armed with nuclear weapons as unacceptable. He has a multiple-part strategy that is much more realistic than the Bush administration's. One is to rejoin and work through the international legal framework on arms control. That will give greater force to the major powers if they have to deal with violators. Secondly, he has laid out, I think in the most comprehensive way in modern memory, a program to secure nuclear materials around the world--particularly in the former Soviet Union but also in the places where research reactors have existed that could be susceptible to proliferation. The point is to try to prevent Iran from ever getting this material surreptitiously. Thirdly, he has proposed that rather than letting the British, the French and the Germans do this themselves, that we together call the bluff of the Iranian government, which claims that its only need is energy. And we say to them: "Fine, we will provide you the fuel that you need if Russia fails to provide it." Participating in such a diplomatic initiative makes it more likely to succeed.

If you can explain the logic of this, then you may just be smart enough to have worked on the Clinton-Carter North Korean initiative. Remember that one? The one where we bribed the Dear Kimchi Pot into laying off the nukes? Well, it didn't work:

Under the final terms of the Agreed Framework approved in October of 1994, Clinton agreed to provide the "Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea" (DPRK) with two light water nuclear reactors and a massive allotment of oil. The U.S. agreed to ship 500,000 metric tons of oil annually in response to the North's pretense that the energy-starved backwater had developed the nuclear facility to generate power. These shipments have cost taxpayers more than $800 million to date - a bargain compared with the $6 billion spent on constructing the nuclear reactors, which now empower North Korea to produce 100 nuclear bombs each year.

Maybe the wall-eyed sacks of delusional shit on the Left were so adamant about the threat of North Korea (as opposed to Iraq) because they were worried that their utter incompetence, to say no worse, was going to come back and sully the reputation of their Impeachee-in-Chief. Oh, and maybe get tens of thousands of our own soldiers on the DMZ killed.

John Kerry cannot be allowed to become President. He surrounds himself with people not to be trusted.

Fisking Daniel Maskit
A couple of days ago, I made a comment at Steve Soto's The Left Coaster in response to some Robert Fisk essay that the natives there thought was just great. Full of anti-American pessimism and terrorist-sympathizing defeatism. The essay is, too.

In fact, Fisk is such a self-loathing Leftist turd that his very own surname has become eponymous for being hoist with one's own petard.

So, in that spirit, I am reproducing here the response to my comment from one Daniel Maskit, beginning with my original comment, followed by my fisking in italics:

Fisk demonstrates the essential childishness of the Leftist position: all great tasks such as nation-building must be achieved immediately and painlessly. This may be attributable to an utter fucking ignorance of History, but it may just be partisan crapola. I am inclined to believe both. I could explain why, but no need: you nimrods know nuance.

Hey Toby, since you invoke "an utter fucking ignorance of History" I suggest you look in a mirror.

Uh-oh.

Read up on the history of Iraq under the British in the early 20th century. Frightening parallels, and ones which many of us on the left were invoking well before the invasion started. Start off with the problem faced by the British that the only people sufficiently educated to compose a competent civil service were the Sunnis.

If this is so, then one would think that it's a liberal enterprise worth pursuing by Left and Right alike to promote the majority Shiite claim to self-government, too. Unless you are such a determinist that you believe that they are constitutionally incapable of democratic practices; in which case, you aren't much of a liberal.

Sure the Shia had the numbers, as they do today, but the actual training in governance lies almost entirely within the Sunni, particularly the Ba'ath party.

Again, you are arguing from an illiberal position. You are saying that, because the Shia have no experience in self-rule (which isn't really true, anyway), then they should never have such an opportunity. You are also ignoring the fact that the Ba'athists have been the cause of Shiite repression and relegation to second-class status. It is only by virtue of American and Coalition power that this stranglehold has been broken, thus paving the way for Iraq's liberation as a whole.

The isolationist trend among the American Left is one of the most interesting (and hypocritical) developments of my politically-conscious life. You're no Wilsonian, Maskit. You don't have any faith in the self-determination of the world's peoples. That is, you have none so long as those peoples and countries are of some commercial interest to America. Which makes no sense. Intervene in Haiti or Somalia or the Balkans where the prospect of a return on our investment is nil. But intervene in Iraq and lay the foundations for a whole new Arab/Muslim World? You flinch. You bitch. You can't see the value in it. This makes you a fool.

Throw into this mix the disparate ethnic groups which the British essentially lumped into a country by drawing lines in crayon on a map.

More of your illiberal pessimism! What do you think our country is, Maskit? This is no homogenous, autochthonous paradise of naturally-peaceful people. What country in this world was not born in blood and destruction? Sometimes borders are arbitrary and inconvenient, but they're a logical manifestation of political being. I'm sure you want to do away with them, anyway, but we're not yet at the gates of your utopian level, so hold on.

Toss in the problem we have with the Kurds: we can't give them their own state without drawing the Turks into the fight.

Kurdistan already exists in many respects. That would be due to our enforcement of the no-fly zones and our other, less visible support of their aspirations. Soon, all of Iraq will have what the Kurds have ---and it will be because of the essential optimism of the Bush Administration, and in spite of your perverted realpolitik.

We can't give them equal say in the new Iraqi government without giving the lie to our claims of democracry.

I don't know what you're trying to say here. How does advocating minority rights make our "claims of democracy" a lie?

Even people who supported the invasion, such as Thomas Friedman, urged caution around the question of democracy, and suggested that perhaps a strongman was necessary to keep these disparate ethnic groups from killing each other.

Neither Bush nor Blair nor any other supporter of this War for Iraq should apologize for trying to bring about democratic reforms there. Leftists often say that the root causes of terrorism are in the disenfranchisement and, indeed, violent represssion of human and civil rights in the countries that produce it, so what is your argument? I don't think you have one.

I said that Fisk and the rest of you are childish in your expectation that these great endeavors can be accomplished in an instant, and I am right. If we can stem the tide of terrorism in the Arab/Muslim World by democratizing and westernizing it one country at a time, why shouldn't we try? If we can kill many thousands of these savages on their own soil, we'd be fools to pass it by. And if we can eventually turn these countries into trading partners with an economic stake in our friendship, then all of the hypocritical blustering of the anti-war Left won't be worth a pile of Michael Moore.

As for "the essential childishness" of the leftist position, nice try, but no. First off, it is the conservatives these days who wander around in lockstep with synchronized talking points.

Hmmm. Lockstep, eh? What are you getting at? Are you talking about a situation where all dissent is crushed and all the stains are bleached out? Lots of choreography and flag-waving? For conscience-swallowing phoniness, I can't think of an example more perfect than the Democratic National Convention. Did you see that? People were actually waving American flags instead of burning them!

There may well be a conservative position, but there is no 'leftist position.'

Sure there is: Anybody But Bush. That is the sum total of your ideology. Anything that will discredit or undermine this President is what you stand for. Period.

Secondly, if you want to seriously go mano a mano and try to defend your claim about that childishness I say 'bring it on.' I challenge you. I want to see an intelligently written, nuanced, subtle and rigorous critique of your phantom leftist position.

This is a joke, right? You're actually denying that there is such a thing as an ideological Left in American politics? Hmmm. Better tell Steve Soto to find a better name for his blog.

I hope that you will begin by clearly defining the position that you are attacking.

I am attacking Leftists like you, Maskit. People like you do not know what American power is good for. You don't want us to intervene militarily anywhere in the world because you believe that it is illegitimate to topple tyrants and exterminate terrorists. You believe it is illegitimate to intervene in countries that have the oil that our own economic prosperity depends upon.

That is the measure of your stupidity: that you cannot conceive of a strategy that can accomplish multiple objectives simultaneously. We can liberate the oppressed and make them trading partners. We can promote democracy and pursue our oil interests with them. They aren't mutually exclusive; in fact, doing the latter will bring the former. Why aren't you able to appreciate that?

Then those of us capable of critical thinking can fairly judge your critique.

Gibberish. If I'm such a dumbass, then it wouldn't take someone of your [towering genius] to see that.

I'm sure that there are a fair number of positions held by people on both the left and right that can be characterized as 'childish' but if you want to try to dismiss an entire social philosophy on that basis you better have some hard-core analysis to justify your position.

Didn't you just say that there is no Leftist position? That it's a "phantom"?

And if you are going to invoke one trait as the unifying one I suggest to you that childishness is a very poor choice. Naivete perhaps, idealism, probably;

Right. Because when I said you people were childish, I somehow didn't mean naive. Now, as for idealism, I wouldn't accuse an anti-war Leftist of that these days. Especially not one as pessimistic as you have shown yourself to be.

but no less naive nor idealistic than the conservative belief that we should just trust corporations to behave properly and that the market will be an effective force to correct socially destructive corporate action.

No, I take T. Roosevelt's side on this.

Given that some of the clearest identifying traits of the Republican ideology today are intolerance, bigotry, and selfishness, I believe that you will generally find those traits associated with lower levels of Emotional Intelligence than compassion and altruism.

All of that is just cartoon bullshit. But try this: Republicans are much more likely to be philanthropists and people of faith than the lower-class and secularist Democrats. Republicans pay more in taxes, give more to charities, and have a far stronger belief in the individual than do Democrats, who believe in the entitlements of the welfare state and the defeat of the property-owning ideology.

And which party is the one that seems to fear science and intellectuals?

Seems? Did you pull your punch because you know you're full of shit or do you actually think the Democrats' base of support is world-renowned for its intellectualism? Ha, ha, ha! Keep it real, Maskit.

If you can't do better than sly comments, shut up. There are a number of people on this board who are smart and articulate. Wouldn't you rather be the smart voice of the conservative viewpoint?

Yes, but only if you be the judge of it.

It Ain't Going Away
According to the New York Post, the investigation into Sandy Berger's thievery of Top Secret documents is going forward.

The criminal probe into how and why former Clinton national security adviser Sandy Berger illegally sneaked classified documents out of the National Archives is going forward despite a report that no originals are missing, officials say.

"The investigation continues. It's irrelevant whether or not there are originals missing. What matters is that removing classified documents without authorization is illegal," a government official said.

Packrats don't accidentally destroy documents that they've taken pains to steal. Berger is a liar.

But, before I retire for the evening, enjoy this:

At issue are multiple drafts of a review of the millennium threat that's said to sharply rap the Clinton administration and outline 29 steps for better national security. Sources say Bill Clinton as president took only one step out of the 29.

What?! Don't be confused, though. War profiteer Richard Clarke says that Clinton took the terrorism issue much more seriously than Bush. And you can trust Clarke on this because he's the same man who authorized the flights of Saudi Arabians and bin Laden family members out of this country in the aftermath of the atrocities of 11 September 2001. Remember, Moore-ons?

Richard Clarke, who served as President Bush's chief of counterterrorism, has claimed sole responsibility for approving flights of Saudi Arabian citizens, including members of Osama bin Laden's family, from the United States immediately after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

In an interview with The Hill yesterday [25 May 2004], Clarke said, "I take responsibility for it. I don't think it was a mistake, and I'd do it again."

Say, in a reasonable world, that would mean that the America-hater Michael Moore's insinuations in his film are unfair and chickenshit. But we know what goes these days.

"You Are My Sunshine, My Only Sunshine..."
Although it's only the sort of newspaper that the Flown-Over Proles read, USA Today is reporting on a poll that says

Last week's Democratic convention boosted voters' impressions of John Kerry but failed to give him the expected bump in the head-to-head race against President Bush, a USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll finds.

In the survey, taken Friday and Saturday, Bush led Kerry 50%-46% among likely voters. Independent candidate Ralph Nader was at 2%.

The survey showed Kerry losing 1 percentage point and Bush gaining 4 percentage points from a poll taken the week before the Boston convention.

The change in support was within the poll's margin of error of +/-4 percentage points in the sample of 763 likely voters. But it was nonetheless surprising, the first time since the chaotic Democratic convention in 1972 that a candidate hasn't gained ground during his convention.

Nevertheless, Bush is still struggling against some poor job approval ratings, which never seem to stay above 50 percent. The pundits say this is the biggest indicator of a President's re-election prospects.

But maybe enough of the electorate see that Kerry is using his Viet Nam record not like the proud achievement it is, but as a club to bludgeon Bush with and to pre-empt the notion that he is weak on defense and intelligence. The American people would've seen that fact had Kerry chosen to include something of it in that four-day infomercial last week.

Don't let him run away from his record, Mr. President. He's counting on a whole lot of collective amnesia to sneak past the wire.

November "Surprise"

(Courtesy of Allah.)

A Bad Idea
Be sure to read Mark Steyn's latest demonstration that he is one of the best conservative writers out there. On his merry way to shredding the idiocy of the Kerrion's hypocrisy, he raises an important point:

As for the home front, Kerry says: "As President, I will not evade or equivocate; I will immediately implement the recommendations of that [the 9/11] commission." Whoa, hold on there. There's a ton of recommendations, and some of us don't like the part about concentrating all US intelligence under one cabinet secretary who serves not at the President's pleasure but for a fixed term. That effectively institutionalises the groupthink resistance to alternative ideas that led to the 9/11 failures.

This notion of a Director of National Intelligence, whose term of service would be something like that of the Chairman of the Fed, is incredibly dangerous. The President, no matter what his party, must have, at the very least, veto power over any directives that might come down from a DNI if they are at cross-purposes with his own. For the first time in our history, the term czar would almost be an exact job description for such an office. A million times no!

But what's happening right now with the recommendations made by the Kean Commission? Bush has authorized his own Chief of Staff, Andrew Card, to head up a task force to see what can be done towards implementation. This is a good move, politically, because, somehow, the Report came out a lot more bipartisan than did the assholes who served on the Commission; Bush may as well make hay while the sun is shining.

But if Kerry is so gung-ho to get these recommendations implemented, why not start now? How about if the President gets everybody back to Washington for a month or two and have some good long debates about every one of them? Bush can give us updates in front of the cameras from the Rose Garden every few days and Kerry and Edwards can decide how to run a national campaign from the floor of the Senate. No? Too much competition with all the other hungry mouths? Hmmm. Maybe Lurch will have to do what Dole did in 1996 and either resign his seat or finally do his fucking job.

Let's have it, John. Let's implement it all!

Underwhelmed
You did see the Washington Post's review of Kerry's acceptance speech, right? They thought it was a missed opportunity:

Mr. Kerry [...] sought above all to make the case that he could be trusted to lead a nation at war, and rightly so; he and Mr. Bush must be judged first and foremost on those grounds. But on that basis, though Mr. Kerry spoke confidently and eloquently, his speech was in many respects a disappointment.

[...]

Mr. Kerry [...] elided the charged question of whether, as president, he would have gone to war in Iraq. He offered not a word to celebrate the freeing of Afghans from the Taliban, or Iraqis from Saddam Hussein, and not a word about helping either nation toward democracy.

But Kerry not only avoided the real issues of foreign policy and the related intelligence demands, which he has spent half a lifetime trying to thwart, but persisted with his lies about the economy. As the Post, with devastating politeness, says:

His promises to stop the outsourcing of jobs and end dependence on Middle East oil are not grounded in reality.

Neither is this bullshit about "creating 10 million new jobs." What, is he the Premier of the Soviet Union?

The guy is as phoney as his wife.

NO BILLIONAIRE POPULISTS IN THE WHITE HOUSE!!!

Baghdad Jim: Hypocrite, Urinal Puck
Courtesy of the Instapundit, we find that Washington Congressman Jim McDermott, who is a piece of Ted Kennedy, is a co-sponsor of a bill reinstating the draft. But McDermott is also going around, telling his college-aged fellow Moore-ons that

"everybody in this room who is 17 years old should know that the likelihood of a draft in a second Bush administration is almost a certainty."

Got that? McDermott pushes for the draft, then tries to scare young people even stupider than he is with the news that they might have to go fight in Iraq because of Bush.

What balls.

And be sure to read the rest of the article from the second link because it also shows that McDermott likes to take money from friends of Saddam's oil-for-food program.

The Effrontery of Savages
Reports Reuters, in the matter of the UN's toothless resolution over the Sudan:

Sudan's U.N. ambassador, Elfatih Erwa, accused the Bush administration of using the Darfur crisis to its political advantage in the election campaign. He condemned council members for the resolution and pointed a finger at the U.S. Congress for branding the crisis as genocide.

"The U.S. Congress should be the very last party to speak about genocide, ethnic cleansing and slavery. Let them go back to their history," Erwa said in a 25-minute speech.

Filthy fuck. Maybe Erwa can come over and be an election observer in Cynthia McKinney's district.

Why the Darfur Genocide Is Being Ignored by the United Nations
There's a lot of oil interests in the Sudan, but disappointingly for the Hate America crowd, virtually none of it's ours. Other, more reasonable and non-interventionist countries like Canada, Sweden, and China are the ones working the deal, making a killing (excuse the phrase, as you will) off of giant concessions in the south of the country. But no one begrudges them that because they're not the ones who invaded Iraq, thoughtlessly freeing millions of people from a life under tyranny.

Unfortunately for non-Arab peoples in the southern part of the Sudan, they have found themselves inconveniencing the Arab Muslims who have been running the country. The government at Khartoum has promised their guests in the oil industry a negro-free environment where they can drill and pump oil all day long.

As Dr. Eric Reeves of iAbolish, an anti-slavery organization, writes (emphases mine):

The regime's scorched-earth warfare centers around the destruction of villages to clear areas for oil development and to provide security for existing operations. Typical raids include the burning of all dwellings, often with inhabitants trapped inside; executions of the male population, sometimes en masse; the raping and enslaving of women; the killing and enslaving of children; the burning of all foodstuffs and the killing of cattle. Troops are sometimes ferried by helicopter gunships (some have been linked to the oil companies' airstrips) that strafe villages, cattle herds, and fleeing civilians.

The civilians who escape these attacks are often bereft of food and possessions, and join Sudan's staggering number of internally displaced persons - estimated between 4 and 5 million people since the outbreak of war in 1983. Indeed, the regime's scorched-earth destruction aims to make returning to the oil regions pointless and terrifyingly dangerous. The government hopes to secure tens of thousands of square miles of concession areas for present and future oil development.

The victims of this brutal campaign are overwhelming Nuers and Dinkas (the two largest ethnic groups in southern Sudan). In the racially-charged conflict of Sudan's civil war, deliberate military policies that destroy and displace the members of these particular ethnic groups constitute genocide under the 1948 Geneva Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

But is the United Nations going to call this what it is? No, because that might offend some of their best allies in the war against needless intervention and abrogation of national sovereignty.

Here's what Maina Kiai, Amnesty International's Director for Africa, had to say, as quoted in an AI report of May 2000:

"Respect for human rights should be the central issue for any company which is involved in a war-torn environment such as southern Sudan -- the silence of powerful oil companies in the face of injustice and human rights violations is not neutral."

The report goes on to say:

Around the town of Bentiu, government troops reportedly cleared the area using helicopter gunships, some allegedly piloted by Iraqi soldiers, and aerial cluster bombardment by high-altitude Antonov planes. In addition, government troops on the ground reportedly drove people out of their homes by committing gross human rights violations; male villagers were killed in mass executions; women and children were nailed to trees with iron spikes. Reports from other villages claim that soldiers slit the throats of children and killed male civilians who had been interrogated by hammering nails into their foreheads.

But not even Amnesty International is willing to piss off their powerful friends. They just wish that they would enter into "positive dialogue" with Khartoum "to promote human rights."

Yep. Positive dialogue often persuades fanatic Muslim governments to change their ways. Just ask the Iranian students and professors routinely silenced by the mullahs or moderate Israelis who try to work a peace deal with the Car Swarm People. Some animals don't have ears. And soon, no heads.

He's Using the English Language, But Sounds Like a Frenchman
Get a load of this lousy fuck writing for the Sudan Tribune (emphases mine):

[...E]ven if you accept the need for intervention of some kind in Sudan, whom would you trust to do it? To continue the medical metaphor, would you call on Jack the Ripper to carry out the operation? He was by all accounts an expert anatomist, and had an impressive set of instruments: but both his motivation and his post-operative care left something to be desired.

For most of the world, Bush has about the same credibility in the healing arts as the old London-fog night prowler. Not only has the invasion of Iraq raised the barrier against any serious international consensus for action in Sudan, too vigorous a push by the US for it would probably stiffen resistance.

One can indeed despair of the Arab world's tolerance for its own rulers' barbarities. But we have to admit that after the war on Iraq, the treatment of prisoners in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, the US's total protection for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's pogroms in Gaza, and the xenophobic anti-Muslim and anti-Arab outbursts in the US, it is hardly surprising that many governments and their people across the world will cut some slack for any Arab regime in the face of US "concern" at its behavior.

This stupid fuck, Ian Williams, is saying that the actions of George W. Bush and Tony Blair in executing the will of the UN with respect to Iraq (some 17 resolutions' worth) actually justify the cynical inaction of Arab governments in condemning the genocide being perpetrated by the Khartoum-backed Janjaweed militias. Get it? Condoning the slaughter of innocent villagers who live over some choice drilling spots is actually a protest vote against the Crusaders. A protest vote! Like voting to authorize force against a tyrannical regime and then voting against the funding that would rebuild the society being liberated. Ahh, the nuance of it all!

But this probably self-loathing journalistic refugee has one more bit of wisdom that must be read (emphases mine):

So the question of support or opposition for intervention is a genuine quandary, but it is surely important that we do not let people die in Sudan just so we can feel vindicated in our stand against interventions. A credible threat of intervention has to be made soon - but kept within those "precautionary principles".

It seems that Williams recognizes the moral rot of his position, but is unwilling to overcome it. He and his fellow anti-war Leftists don't want to get snared in the trap of their own hypocrisy, but they have read enough of their manuals to know that they can't really excuse genocide, so what to do? He believes that intervention cannot be credibly led by those evil Americans and Britons, but that the "threat" of intervention, carried out by other African countries (with American money behind them, of course) will be enough to deter these Arab guerillas on horseback. Right. Intervention is bad if done by white Crusaders, less bad if done by black Africans with white Crusader money and logistics behind them.

I know. Williams is the Wise Voice of Internationalism, drunk on its ass and ashamed of looking Uncle Sam in the eye.

Default Setting
In an interesting column on why black Americans vote so disproportionately Democratic, Joseph Perkins points out one area that I think should of especial interest to black parents who want more for their kids educationally:

[...] Bush has increased K-12 funding by a whopping 49 percent since he took office. And on his watch, funding for historically black colleges is at an all-time high.

The Republican also signed into law legislation creating a taxpayer-funded voucher program for disadvantaged students in predominantly black Washington, D.C., who are mired in the city's underperforming public schools.

If Bush were a Democrat, many if not most blacks would find his record commendable. But because he is a Republican, he gets no credit for the positive initiatives he has undertaken that have benefited black Americans.

If Bush wants a chance at winning more of the black vote than just the "Uncle Tom" segment, he needs to play up the potential for vouchers as a way of breaking the stranglehold of unionized public schools on the lives of inner-city children. I know it for a fact: if you give a single black mother the option of either sending her child to a smaller, more disciplined school where the chances for personal attention are high ---or to an overcrowded playpen where casual violence, drug-pushing, and sexual harrassment is the norm, you might actually see some competition for the black vote.

Monopolies atrophy and corrupt all.

Some Good Words for Francis Crick
The New York Times has a very nice obituary on Dr. Crick here and the BBC has a decent one here.

One of my favorite books from my college days was The Double Helix, James Watson's account of his and Crick's days together at Cambridge when they discovered the structure of the DNA molecule. Crick comes across as an absolute force of nature. What a curious mind! What a great man of Science.

Thank you for your good work, professor. You're a credit to the species.

Kerry's Hypocrisy, Example No. 2
Jonathan V. Last of the Weekly Standard points out another example of Kerry's hypocrisy:

In the low point of the speech, Kerry says, "You don't value families by kicking kids out of after-school programs and taking cops off our streets, so that Enron can get another tax break." The irony, of course, being that Enron profited wildly--and quite fraudulently--under Bill Clinton. It was only under Bush's Justice Department that the crooked company's executives were exposed and prosecuted.

See, the Democrats want to taint the President by association with thieves like Kenneth Lay, never minding that Lay also had ties to the Heinz-Kerrys:

Kerry and Teresa Heinz Kerry reported more than $250,000 in Enron stock ownership before the firm's 2003 collapse. Kerry also was forced to return a campaign contribution from an implicated Enron executive.

And Heinz Kerry served on a charity board with Lay, even after he was implicated in the alleged fraud, records show.

[...]

A Heinz family trust bought between $250,000 and $500,000 of stock in December 1995, just days before Heinz Kerry announced Lay would serve as a member of the Heinz Center philanthropy, Kerry's Senate financial disclosure documents show.

Neither Kerry nor his wife seemed to be bothered by Lay's ethical and criminal status:

The Bush campaign said [...] that Lay attended a dinner at Kerry's Georgetown home "10 months after Enron went under" and that Lay had been on a board, the Heinz Foundation, overseen by Kerry's wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry.

Kerry spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter said Kerry wasn't at the dinner, the foundation was philanthropic, and Lay is no longer on the board.

Ahh, who cares? If there's anything that Kerry learned from the Kennedys, it's that multimillionaires have a right to pretend to speak for the common man. And the common man has an obligation to excuse his betters when they preach a different game from the one they're playing.

Kerry's Hypocrisy, Example No. 1
As Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard asks of Kerry's new meme that we shouldn't go to war because we want to, but only because we have to:

Should Kerry have elaborated on his view that our nation's "time-honored tradition" is that "the United States of America never goes to war because we want to; we only go to war because we have to"? Yet he might then have had to explain not only why he voted for war in Iraq, but also why he supported our military efforts in Somalia, Haiti, and the Balkans--surely not instances where we "had" to fight to "protect against a threat."

Will anyone ask him this question? Or, to put it another way, is there any journalist out there masochistic enough to take down his answer? It is sure to be [nuanced].

Maggot Sued
The anti-American agitpropagandist Michael Moore is being sued by a small Illinois newspaper for falsely portraying a headline they ran in the aftermath of the Election of 2000.

The (Bloomington) Pantagraph newspaper in central Illinois has sent a letter to Moore and his production company, Lions Gate Entertainment Corp., asking Moore to apologize for using what the newspaper says was a doctored front page in the film, the paper reported Friday. It also is seeking compensatory damages of $1.

A scene early in the movie that shows newspaper headlines related to the legally contested presidential election of 2000 included a shot of The Pantagraph's Dec. 19, 2001, front page, with the prominent headline: "Latest Florida recount shows Gore won election."

The paper says that headline never appeared on that day. It appeared in a Dec. 5, 2001, edition, but the headline was not used on the front page. Instead, it was found in much smaller type above a letter to the editor, which the paper says reflects "only the opinions of the letter writer."

True, it's not a crime on the scale of stealing Top Secret documents from the National Archives, but it's entirely typical of Moore's modus operandi. And since there's dozens of such examples of his outright lies and distortions, one hopes that the news of them will continue to discredit him in the eyes of his gullible worshippers.

An Insomniac Concern
We might expect that the outcome of this election depends upon the resolution of specific issues, but that is an intellectual expectation. And it is false. Instead, as it too often does, it will come down to impressions and emotions. And I do not believe that there is enough time to effectively counter a year's worth of Leftist lies about the War for Iraq or a whole term's worth of their lies about the circumstances of George W. Bush's election. That is a function of Big Media's pervasive influence.

I will continue to make the argument for Bush's re-election and believe in its rightness for our country's sake, but I have no confidence that the mere exposure of the lies of the anti-war and Democratic parties is going to accomplish anything.

Can the GOP and the organs of the Bush campaign turn this around, after having done such a poor job of justifying the war when perceptions turned against it and failing to counter the worst of the demagoguery and hypocrisy of our domestic enemies? I am not hopeful.

But I doubt one other thing also, which is that the electorate doesn't respond well to negative campaigning. Big Media and pollsters may find all the evidence they wish to that people are turned off by this approach, but I do not believe it.

Burn every bridge, Mr. President. If you go down, take as many with you as you can. The War for Iraq is right, even if you have failed to make the case that you should have. History will prove you right. But these useful idiots on the Left should be brought down and humiliated. They have lied and they have turned their coats. They have bought into the worst sort of propaganda and they have sickened themselves on everything from Abu Ghraib to the Patriot Act and from the agitprop of traitors to the self-serving sedition of embittered fools.

If John Kerry wins, it will be a victory for terrorists and the decadent old shells of Europe. It will be a victory for Kofi Annan and Jacques Chiraq. Hatemongers and Moore-ons. Dhimmicide and American self-loathing.

That is enough pessimism for now.