Confession Is Good for the Soul

→ Power Line | 2 Sep 2010 | 6:42 pm MDT

The first of Alcoholics Anonymous' famous twelve steps is to admit that you have a problem. The BBC did that today, acknowledging that it historically had a "massive bias to the left":

The director general of the BBC admitted Thursday that his organisation had been guilty of a "massive bias to the left" but said "a completely different generation" of journalists now works at the broadcaster.

Mark Thompson told the right-of-centre Spectator magazine that there was an institutional bias when he joined the organisation, reinforcing the findings of a 2007 internal report which concluded that greater efforts were required to avoid liberal bias.

"In the BBC I joined 30 years ago, there was, in much of current affairs, in terms of people's personal politics, which were quite vocal, a massive bias to the left," Thompson said.

"The organisation did struggle then with impartiality. And journalistically, staff were quite mystified by the early years of Thatcher. "Now it is a completely different generation. There is much less overt tribalism among the young journalists who work for the BBC," he added.

I like that phrase, "overt tribalism." It's a nice way to refer to the Journolist mentality. It leaves open, of course, the question whether left-wing bias at the BBC has been eradicated or has merely gone underground. In any event, the BBC's confession can only be a good thing. It would be nice to see American news organizations follow suit. We can see it now: "My name is CBS, and I'm a liberal."

Rosy Projections

→ Power Line | 2 Sep 2010 | 6:33 pm MDT

Larry Sabato, described here as "typically cautious," is, I think, a Democrat, but his "shock projection" for November is that the Republicans will capture the House and may well take the Senate, too:

Typically cautious Larry Sabato, head of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics, is rocking the political world with a new "Crystal Ball" prediction: The GOP will win the House, making Ohio's John Boehner speaker, might get a 50-50 split in the Senate, and will pick up some eight new governors.

"2010 was always going to be a Republican year, in the midterm tradition," Sabato said in his latest prediction, issued Thursday. "But conditions have deteriorated badly for Democrats over the summer. The economy appears rotten, with little chance of a substantial comeback by November 2nd. Unemployment is very high, income growth sluggish, and public confidence quite low. The Democrats' self-proclaimed 'Recovery Summer' has become a term of derision, and to most voters--fair or not--it seems that President Obama has over-promised and under-delivered."

Sabato on House elections: "Given what we can see at this moment, Republicans have a good chance to win the House by picking up as many as 47 seats, net. ... If anything, we have been conservative in estimating the probable GOP House gains, if the election were being held today."

Sabato on the Senate: "In the Senate, we now believe the GOP will do a bit better than our long-time prediction of +7 seats. Republicans have an outside shot at winning full control (+10), but are more likely to end up with +8 (or maybe +9, at which point it will be interesting to see how senators such as Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, and others react).

This, too, is an interesting point that I had forgotten: the House has changed hands six times since World War II, and every time the Senate has switched, too, whether that result was expected or not. That's hardly a rule of nature, but it is an interesting precedent as we look forward to November 2.

Happy Hour Links

→ The Weekly Standard Blog | 2 Sep 2010 | 5:28 pm MDT

John Podhoretz on Israeli/Palestinian talks: "What happened was nothing."

DOJ files suit against Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

A page not quite turned

→ Power Line | 2 Sep 2010 | 5:06 pm MDT

In the email reprinted below, Reader Daniel Mayes cuts to the heart of President Obama's refusal to credit President Bush for the Iraq surge. But it is the well-justified outrage Mr. Mayes expresses in the remainder of his email that really caught our attention:

President Obama is unwilling to grant any credit to President Bush because opposition to the war was the wave he rode to office, and, in fact, the wave the left rode to its current governing majorities. The financial collapse greased the skids, but President Bush's approval rating had collapsed long before, during times of low unemployment, solid growth, and low inflation. Support for Bush collapsed mainly because of the growing unhappiness about the war. Giving him credit now would put the lie to the whole left/liberal/democratic antiwar campaign.

As an aside, I will never forget or forgive the way the left behaved during this episode. For those who voted against the war (the majority of Democratic representatives and a minority of Democratic senators), I can at least credit them with consistency. But for those whose opposition came only after public opinion had shifted, I have nothing but contempt.

The antiwar wave did not arise spontaneously, but was the conscious effort of the left, including the Democrats, and for most, was opportunistic. They sacrificed the national interest in order to gain political advantage. Nothing is easier than building opposition to a war. Wars are appalling, whether necessary or morally justifiable. They create death and mayhem, last longer than most people anticipate, and are usually plagued by unanticipated difficulties and setbacks.

The left/liberal/Democrats took full advantage of all of these inherent difficulties in prosecuting a war. They cynically, opportunistically, and dishonestly carried out a campaign to undermine support for the war, attacking President Bush's honesty and motives in pursuing the war, and vilifying anyone, in fact, who continued to support the war.

The full page ad taken out by MoveOn.org during General Petraeus' appearance before Congress captures the spirit of this campaign perfectly. It is a miracle that President Bush, General Petraeus, and the US military perservered in the face of this vicious campaign of vilification and brought us to the point at which we now find ourselves. How can the left behave this way? Well, it helps to remember that many Democrats are internationalists anyway, and don't really care much about US national interests. For a "citizen of the world", patriotism is an anachromism, something we need to overcome.

Twitter War: White House vs. Stephen Hayes

→ The Weekly Standard Blog | 2 Sep 2010 | 5:05 pm MDT

WEEKLY STANDARD writer Steve Hayes got plenty of attention from White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs today, who used his Twitter account to carry on a long back-and-forth with Hayes over the small business bill the White House has been touting this week, but which stalled in the Senate earlier this summer.

It began when Hayes retweeted this Gibbs tweet about the bill:

Mark Levin Emails...

→ The Weekly Standard Blog | 2 Sep 2010 | 4:39 pm MDT

Mark Levin emails in response to my interview with Delaware GOP Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell:

Gearing Up For Quds Day

→ The American Spectator and AmSpecBlog | 2 Sep 2010 | 4:26 pm MDT

Quds Day, the last Friday of Ramadan, is a holiday invented by Ayatollah Khomeini to protest the existence of Israel. Funny thing, though: While the Islamic Republic is ostensibly preparing for the usual anti-Zionist festivities, they seem to be awfully worried about what kind of protest might erupt tomorrow. Green Movement leader Mehdi Karroubi finds his house under siege. Encrypted internet transmissions are being blocked (as are Gmail and Yahoo). Riot police are out in force in Tehran. The Iranian people have a bigger problem with the thugs running the country than they do with Israel, and the thugs know it.

And as the conflict simmers between the Iranian government and its own people, President Obama remains shamefully silent, refusing to voice support for the opposition that represents the biggest threat to a regime that is a serious threat to American interests.

Sarah Palin's New Defenders?

→ Hyscience | 2 Sep 2010 | 3:54 pm MDT

Liberal feminists finally defending Sarah Palin?

Pigs must be flying!

More on Just War and Preventive War

→ The American Spectator and AmSpecBlog | 2 Sep 2010 | 3:38 pm MDT

As Jim argues, preventative wars don't fit neatly into the traditional understanding of just wars. The complication, though, that right-wing preventative war supporters would bring up is that the traditional understanding of wars doesn't necessarily apply to today's conflicts. 

Specifically, in the times when just war theory was developed, wars were generally fought by nations that declared war on each other and sent conventional armies into the field against declared combatants. Today the combatants are "terrorists" and "insurgents" who aren't necessarily associated with a nation and don't have a unified command. Also, they don't have a centralized location and could launch a devastating stealth attack anywhere -- so we "fight them over there so we don't have to fight them here." 

Clearly the concept of a just war has to be updated to accommodate the reality of terrorism. For instance, it seems to be settled that the invasion of Afghanistan was justified under a modern just war theory, even though the nation of Afghanistan itself posed almost no threat to the U.S., because that's where the terrorists were. 

But stretching just war theory to fit today's warfare is not easy. The evidence that it's been stretched too far, as Jim mentions, is that, in hindsight at least, our ability to speculate about the threats posed by terrorists and their sponsors is limited. And, when an updated just war theory is invoked to justify tactics that were deplorable under the old just war definitions, it should be cause for concern. 

Independents, Health Care, and the Election

→ The Weekly Standard Blog | 2 Sep 2010 | 3:33 pm MDT

If there's any group you want on your side when approaching an election, it's enthusiastic independent voters.

The Delaware Conundrum, Part Four

→ Power Line | 2 Sep 2010 | 3:21 pm MDT

The Tea Party Express has announced the results of a poll it commissioned regarding the Republican Senate primary in Delaware. It shows that conservative challenger Christine O'Donnell is within six points of long-time at-large congressman Mike Castle. The poll has Castle at 43.7 percent and O'Donnell at 38.0 percent.

Like many others, I did not take the Tea Party Express' polling seriously enough when it showed Joe Miller catching up with Lisa Murkowski in Alaska. So I'm not going to dismiss this poll.

I will say the following, though: (1) Delaware Republicans aren't as conservative as Alaska Republicans, (2) O'Donnell seems like a less attractive candidate than Miller, and (3) unlike Miller, O'Donnell has little chance of winning in November, so Castle's defeat in the primary would likely mean that the Dems hold a seat they have been expecting to lose.

UPDATE: John McCormack at the Weeky Standard has a profile of O'Donnell. He reports that (not at all to my surprise) she won't rule out a third party candidacy if Castle is the Republican nominee. In a piece of monumentally willful blindness, she denies that there are any issues on which Castle -- who typically opposes Obamacare and supports extending the Bush tax cuts -- is better than a Democrat.

I hope that, in the event that Castle is the nominee, some of the more influential folks who are supporting O'Donnell will be adult enough to explain to her why she shouldn't run as a third party candidate, and that she will be adult enough to listen.

Coast Guard Backs Off Report of Oil Sheen, Can't Spot One

→ The Weekly Standard Blog | 2 Sep 2010 | 3:11 pm MDT

Well, this is heartening:

Coast Guard Cmdr. Cheri Ben-Iesau said Thursday afternoon that crews was unable to confirm the oil sheen. The Coast Guard says platform owner Mariner Energy reported a sheen about a mile long and 100 feet wide. But the company has said in a statement that an initial flyover didn't find an oil spill.

Just hours ago, the Coast Guard had reported a mile-long, 100-feet-wide sheen on the surface of the ocean near the platform fire. It's great news if they were mistaken.

What Goes Around Comes Around?

→ Hyscience | 2 Sep 2010 | 2:26 pm MDT

Call it Karma, but this tragic incident about the "green" madman that took people hostage, and terrorized the headquarters of the Discovery Channel yesterday, threatening to explode bombs, is the fringe effect of the eco-nuttiness propaganda that the Discovery Channel itself, and its satellite channels such as the Animal Planet Channel, promote (Lee is just the latest in a long line of eco-terrorists). Seems that, as that purveyor and Mentor, for twenty years, of our "Anointed Messianic" Obama's wisdom - the Reverend Jeremiah "Wrong" - put it once, the Discovery Channel's: "...chickens came home to roost".

Not withstanding, I have no doubt, given the warped eco-terrorist views of this SOB eco-terrorist- supported day by day by the Discovery Channel's "green" propaganda - those bombs were, even though as deadly, "Green, Organic, Bombs", such as made with ammonium nitrate fertilizer and Willie Nelson's "Let's starve the world" grain based "Biodiesel"!

It is not my intention to trivialize this most unfortunate happening, yet given the fact that the Discovery Channel and its satellite channels, such as Animal Planet, have been actively promoting, and giving a platform to, eco-terrorists such as Paul Watson and his Sea Shepherd Conservation (eco-terrorist) Society, to "peacenik" - commie "green" radicals, and that it panders to the "Global Warming" swindlers every chance it has in all of its programming of late, makes me wonder if they will not make of this "green" lunatic a hero, and make of this tragedy another unsavory "eco-reality" show out of it, to promote their Communist-Green agenda!

By the way, and talking about that eco-terrorist Paul Watson - who it wouldn't surprise me that he preaches Marxism and Socialism to the penguins in Antartica in his spare time - where the hell are the descendants of those indomitable Japanese Zero pilots of WW II, who committed Kamikaze and suicidally dived into our battleships back then, today???

As mad as the Japanese are at Watson, he's lucky that none of them are around today to climb into one of those vintage Zeros of their forebears (there are still plenty around), for the honor of their Ancestors and of Japanese Culture, and place a couple of well aimed torpedoes in the Steve Irwin - "Admiral" (LMAO) Paul Watson's Flagship - and his - "Tub-that-couldn't" - sidekick vessel, the Bob Barker (already rammed by Japanese whalers), deliver us all from this eco-terrorist misery, and open a slot in the programming of the Animal Planet channel, perhaps ( cross your fingers), for better programming?

Another Federal Giveaway to Unions

→ The American Spectator and AmSpecBlog | 2 Sep 2010 | 2:24 pm MDT

HHS announced this week that 2,000 “groups” are eligible to receive money for “reinsuring” their retiree health programs. Only a third (32%) are private businesses, the rest are state and local governments (26%), unions (22%), “education” (I guess public universities) (14%), and non-profits  (5%).

For years these organizations have been giving in to union demands for generous retirement benefits, but they haven’t been funding their promises. Hmmmm. What to do? What to do? I KNOW! We’ll have the Feds bail us out. They’ve got plenty of money!

So, ObamaCare appropriated $5 billion to offset some of the costs for a few selected organizations. The Feds will pay 80% of the claims costs for expenses between $15,000 and $90,000 for retirees between the ages of 55 and 65. But only if the groups “have in place programs and procedures that generate or have the potential to generate cost savings for participants with chronic and high-cost conditions.” In other words, only if the group is pleasing to the Administration.

In explaining the program, HHS noted that –

“The percentage of large firms providing workers with retiree health coverage dropped from 66 percent in 1988 to 29 percent in 2009. Many Americans who retire before they are eligible for Medicare without employer-sponsored health coverage see their life savings disappear because of medical bills and exorbitant rates in the individual health insurance market. Health insurance premiums for older Americans are over four times more expensive than those for young adults, and the deductible these enrollees pay is, on average, almost four times that in a typical employer-sponsored insurance plan.”

Of course, this program does absolutely nothing for any of those folks. Instead it gives extra money to the fat cat unions and giant employers that are currently enjoying very rich benefits.

SOURCE:

HHS Fact Sheet with links to the list of benefiting organizations

The Massachusetts Model For Dismantling Obamacare

→ Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion | 2 Sep 2010 | 1:47 pm MDT

It is widely believed ... that entitlement programs are like a ratchet and can only increase in size rather than decrease. This conclusion is at odds with the experience of Massachusetts in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s during which the administration of Governor Michael Dukakis signed into law the nation’s first Universal Healthcare bill.

This bill, with its onerous provisions that established universal coverage on the backs of the small business community, was vigorously opposed even after it was enacted into law by Massachusetts. The ensuing battle by a few dedicated State Legislators serves as a model in our current situation for a strategy and tactics to delay, defund and ultimately repeal Obamacare.

In the "you've got to see it to believe it" department ...

→ Hyscience | 2 Sep 2010 | 1:45 pm MDT

Incredibly, in what has to be the most absurd case of the pot calling the kettle black (no pun intended), the NAACP, Think Progress, and Media Matters have launched a new website to "monitor" Tea Party "racists".

No surprise. This ties right in with the progressives' strategy for November. In other words, you're a bigot, now vote for me:

[...] Are you opposed to Obamacare or illegal immgration? You're a racist. Are you opposed to gay marriage? You're a homophobe. Did you oppose Elana Kagan's appointment to the Supreme Court? You're a sexist. After less than two years of complete Democrat control of government, there aren't many Americas progressives haven't accused of some sort of bigotry for simply having an opinion different from theirs. The politics of "hope" and "change" have devolved into exactly what those espousing them claimed they would end. Is this really Democrat's plan to win votes in November?

[...] The difference between right and left on these issues is the right attempts to change hearts and minds; the left simply accused opponents of bigotry. This makes sense when you realize how unpopular their initiatives have been; if you can't get people to vote for you, try to discourage them from voting at all. It's a strategy ... if you can't win someone's vote, convince them the alternative is a bigot, because who wants to vote for a racist, homophobe or sexist? They're hoping people will stay home on November 2nd.

Progressives show little concern for the will of the people. They have an agenda, and nothing is going to stand in the way of achieving it. They will lie, they will demonize, they will do anything to achieve it.

In their zeal to advance that agenda they've gone farther than they ever have before and thus exposed their true nature. Progressives have accused about 90 percent of the country of bigotry, in one form or another. On every one of the issues listed above polls show the American people are unambiguously not buying the spin and siding with their opponents. That's a fact progressives will learn the hard way when it comes time for these "bigots" to vote.

It's hard to understand how and why these people think the way they do and why liberals think it is OK to lie in order to get their policies in place. But it is indeed what they think and explains the actions they take and the accusations they make.

And besides, "Having one's opponent rebut charges of racism is far better than discussing joblessness."

Interestingly, liberals employ the same tactics that jihadists do. But liberals call it a strategy, the jihadists call it al-taqiyya. In a way, liberals are just following sharia' law.

Little wonder the Left finds such a love affair with fundamentalist Islam.

Related:
A Window Into the Progressive Mind
THE LIBERAL MIND:The Psychological Causes of Political Madness
Lt. Col Allen West: NAACP and Liberal Racism.
Seven Huge Flaws in the Way Liberals Think

Just War and Preventive War

→ The American Spectator and AmSpecBlog | 2 Sep 2010 | 1:42 pm MDT

Mark Tooley and John Keown have had an interesting exchange about whether the American Revolution was a just war. Tooley correctly argues that many people, especially on the religious left, employ Just War theory to effectively oppose any war. Some wars are definitely just (I would argue Afghanistan was such a war). But Just War theory is properly intended to restrain the use of force rather than to come up with elaborate justifications for its use.

That's what those of us who subscribe to Just War theory find so troubling about the right's recent embrace of preventive war. While preemptive wars can be just, it is difficult if not impossible for preventive wars to satisfy the criteria of Just War theory. Why? Because they tend to deal with speculative and hypothetical evils rather than actual, verifiable evils. In addition to muddying the concept of who is the aggressor, preventive wars cannot establish that the damage inflicted by the target is lasting, grave, and certain; it also becomes hard to establish that the evils resolved by the use of arms are in fact greater than those unleashed by the use of force.

Consider David Frum's recent defense of the Iraq war in hindsight. Nearly every argument he makes for it is speculative. While some of his speculation is perfectly plausible and reasonable, the fact is we don't know if he is right about all the evils he believes the war prevented or eliminated. We do know for sure what evils the war unleashed -- massive sectarian violence in Iraq, ethnic cleansing, the persecution of Iraqi Christians, an increase in the Iranian government's regional influence, not to mention the lives of thousands of brave Americans. Not everybody on the right believes Just War theory is adequate to deal with today's security threats in an age of terrorism. But when the logic of preventive war seems to counsel more war, it might be worth revisiting.

The Warmabomber Was An Aberration

→ The American Spectator and AmSpecBlog | 2 Sep 2010 | 1:30 pm MDT

He was just an outlier in the environmental movement, you see:

Copenhagen - Four Greenpeace activists who had clung to an oil rig off western Greenland with rock-climbing gear were arrested on Thursday after an Arctic storm forced them to abandon their environmental protest.

Police spokesperson Morten Nielsen said the four men - from the US, Finland, Poland and Germany - faced preliminary charges of violating a 500m security perimeter around the Stena Don rig and trespassing by climbing onto the installation.

The activists had been suspended under the rig since Tuesday to protest Scottish company Cairn Energy PLC's deepwater drilling in the area, saying it could spark an oil rush in sensitive Arctic waters....

"We stopped this rig drilling for oil for two days but the campaign is far from over," Greenpeace spokesperson Jon Burgwald said by telephone from the ship Esperanza, which is anchored off Greenland.

"Our activists hung there for more than 40 hours but last night, a freezing storm and high waves made them decide it was too risky. So we contacted the police to say we were stopping the action," he said.

Just another rational action to rally the masses to their cause. At least they didn't strap on bombs!

Earl not a problem for the Northeast

→ Maggie's Farm | 2 Sep 2010 | 1:23 pm MDT

Just got this private bulletin in:

What/When/Why: Hurricane EARL is a Category-3 storm, moving Northwestward through the western Sargasso Sea, on its way to parallel the East Coast. The very high Ocean Heat Content [OHC] of the southern Sargasso Sea helped Earl obtain low-end Category-4 status yesterday and Earl will continue to go through nocturnal rapid intensification cycles and structural intensity cycles. However, our research believes Earl may have already logged its peak intensity, with pending wind shear making it quite challenging to surpass 140 mph in the Western Atlantic this week. {While media/forecasters get excited about "Category-5" achievement, we believed this is a very unlikely scenario considering Earl's (future) increasingly abrasive environment (let alone the fact that sustained winds 160+ mph are required)}. The cooler ocean water temperatures of the Northwest Atlantic will almost certainly cause Earl to wane to Category-2 (or perhaps even Category-1) Hurricane status as he races up off the Northeast/England Coast.

 

Where: During periods of lighter steering flow (e.g. breaks in Ridge to its North), EARL had expectedly slowed down and had developed wobbles to its path trajectory occasionally, but now at the higher latitudes a more linear/smooth path is probable along with forward acceleration.  Regardless of what models may insinuate or what forecasters/media may want to hype, the Macro/Hemispheric steering regime this Summer (please see Basin/I.O.D. commentary below), makes mainland East Coast USA Hurricane direct landfalls very difficult/improbable.  Some small changes to this flow have started to appear this week when EARL will still be in the Atlantic, but this may be too late to force a direct mainland USA East Coast landfall (and rather more likely an offshore grazing of North Carolina Outer Banks and/or New England Cape Region). Interestingly, the fluid-dynamic physics create a lose-lose situation for those looking for a direct mainland landfall: (1) if Earl weakens substantially a more Northerly path paralleling the East Coast well offshore may evolve; (2) if Earl remains very intense, his subsidence outflow will create its own meso-ridge, thus perhaps creeping closer to North Carolina Outer Banks but then boomeranging out to Sea away from the Northeast U.S.  Keep in mind that Newfoundland Canada extends out into the Atlantic to almost 50°W Longitude (well East of even the Windward Caribbean Islands), so you may hear corresponding alerts of "Earl to make North American Landfall" (not to be confused with USA Landfall). We will continue to help you navigate through such scenarios, rationally.

 

Impacts: Hurricanes approaching the USA East Coast always garner Media & Public attention for obvious reasons and the population involved, but with Earl, a delicate balance needs to be struck between those will be directly impacted and those who will see little or no effects from the storm. Earl's closest approach to U.S. land will likely be no closer than 50 miles to both the North Carolina Outer Banks as well as the New England Cape Region (including Martha's Vineyard & Nantucket). According to our research, these coastal/barrier protrusions off the U.S. mainland are the only locations in which Hurricane-force winds (sustained 75 mph) have a chance to be briefly experienced. With Tropical Storm Force winds likely extending no more than 200 miles West of Earl's center, it is marginal whether the major East Coast Cities would even experience such sustained winds (40+ mph). An "East Coast USA Hurricane/Tropical Storm around Labor Day Weekend" may bring about recent memories of Hurricane ERNESTO [2006] and Hurricane HANNA [2008], but it should be reminded that those storms traversed inland across several States whereas Earl will have a coastal/offshore path.  This difference is critical for 2 reasons: (1) Unlike Ernesto/Hanna, Earl will still be a formidable Hurricane over water when peripherally lashing the Outer Banks/Barrier Islands/Capes of the East Coast, along with creating dangerous Ocean swells for the entire Atlantic Coast; but (2) as the weaker side of Hurricanes is the western flank,  the I-95 corridor Hubs [Raleigh, Richmond, D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York City, Hartford] should be largely immune from the effects (wind, rain) of Earl. Thus, outside of Thursday (Mid-Atlantic) and Friday (Northeast) when some scattered showers & thunderstorms may be experienced by these hubs, these locations should be mostly sunny & breezy for the Holiday Week/end, contrasted to the enormous flooding (please see attached graphics) and prolonged clouds/wind that occurred from Ernesto and Hanna.

 

Are Happy Meals Leading Our Kids Astray?

→ Maggie's Farm | 2 Sep 2010 | 1:23 pm MDT

FTC Subpoenas 48 Food Companies Regarding Marketing to Kids

NSFW photo below the fold.

The Israeli-Palestinian talks -- why the first hurdle ought to be insurmountable

→ Power Line | 2 Sep 2010 | 1:03 pm MDT

As Middle East talks commence here in Washington, President Obama is no doubt pressing Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to renew the West Bank building freeze that is set to expire on September 26. Indeed, Eli Lake of the Washington Times calls Netanyahu's agreement to this condition the key to the talks. And with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas threatening to leave the negotiations in the absence of a renewal of the construction moratorium, it's difficult to disagree with Lake.

So, once again, the "peace talks" amount, essentially, to extracting a concession from Israel.

As Lake points out, however, one problem with Netanyahu making this particular concession is that it might well bring down his government. That's because key elements of Netanyahu's coalition have insisted that the constructive freeze end. Nor is it an anomaly that Israeli politics are constraining Netanyahu. A poll taken in July showed that a majority of Israelis favored an end to the freeze. And in the aftermath of the recent slaughter of Israelis by Palestinians on the West Bank, a new poll shows that two-thirds of Israelis want the freeze lifted.

It is fair to ask, what would Netanyahu receive in exchange for flouting Israeli public opinion and risking the collapse of his government?

Netanyahu would, I assume, gain the willingness of Abbas to remain at the table. But Abbas staying at the table just means he will seek more concessions. If pushed hard enough by Obama, Abbas might make some nice sounding utterances. Conceivably, these utterances might eventually take the form of promises. But even on the off-chance that the promises are sincere, Abbas will not be able to make good on them because, to a considerable extent, Hamas is the ruler on the ground. This doesn't sound like much of a pay-off for Netanyahu.

At a more concrete level, the extension of the moratorium might prevent the outbreak of violence by Palestinians come the end of September. But, given Israel's position of strength, there is little point in negotiating with a party whose demands for concessions are backed up by the threat of violence whenever the concession in question is withheld.

Finally, acceding to this concession might win Netanyahu the gratitude of President Obama. If so, the benefits to the Prime Minister, whom Obama plainly holds in contempt, and to Israel will endure for perhaps a month, or until Obama makes his next set of demands. Whichever comes first.

In short, Netanyahu should just say no. However, I agree with Lake's suggestion that he instead might very well try to find some middle ground position -- such as extending the freeze informally -- that will keep his coalition together while pacifying Obama, or at least giving the U.S. president a fig leaf.

Lessons From A Vietnamese Revolutionary

→ Maggie's Farm | 2 Sep 2010 | 12:49 pm MDT

The Preface to In The Crossfire: Adventures of a Vietnamese Revolutionary, by Ngo Van:

“The only historians I trust are those who risk getting their throats cut” (Pascal). Considering the present “Socialist” Republic of Vietnam and its official history, which is uncritically accepted virtually everywhere, I cannot read this maxim without a strong sense of how narrowly I managed to survive.

In Vietnam 1920-1945: révolution et contre-révolution sous la domination coloniale, I attempted to rescue that period from oblivion — a period that was marked not only by the struggle against colonial imperialism, but also by movements striving instinctively for an internationalist social revolution, movements that refused to subordinate themselves to the dictates of Stalinist Russia. In the present text I am going to speak as a direct witness of that period. Most of the others who took part in that struggle, if they were not massacred, imprisoned or sent to the penal colonies by the French colonial regime, or forced into exile, ended up being murdered by Ho Chi Minh’s “Communist” Party.

Scarcely eleven years had elapsed since the October 1917 revolution in Russia when I became fully aware of the oppressive reality of Indochinese society and fully determined to revolt against it. For me, like so many others, the Russian Revolution was a hopeful sign of possible liberation. Yet even then, during those early years of my apprenticeship in life and revolt, the rare news that reached us from Russia sometimes contained disturbing features. Oppositionist revolutionaries were being hunted down and Trotsky had just been forced into exile. Through the Third International, Stalin was imposing a totalitarian policy that seemed to us to betray the internationalism integral to every revolutionary struggle. Under these circumstances, confronted with the emergence of a regime whose full horror became glaringly evident with the Moscow Trials, it was natural that our critique of Stalinism was initially oriented around the ideas and partisans of Trotsky.

Since my departure from Indochina in 1948, if the hope and conviction of the necessity of overthrowing the despicable world order never left me, they were nourished by new reflections on Bolshevism and revolution. In France I found new allies in the factories and elsewhere, among French people, colonized people, and refugees from the Spanish Civil War of 1936–1939 — anarchists and Poumistas who had gone through a parallel experience to ours. In Vietnam, as in Spain, we had been engaged in a simultaneous battle on two fronts: against a reactionary power and against a Stalinist party struggling for power.

These encounters, along with rereading Marx (illuminated by the work of Maximilien Rubel), discovering the 1919 workers councils in Bavaria and the 1921 Kronstadt revolt in Russia, then seeing the resurgence of workers councils in Hungary in 1956, led me to investigate new revolutionary perspectives and permanently distanced me from Bolshevism-Leninism-Trotskyism. I developed a total distrust of anything that might turn into a “machine.” The so-called “workers’ parties” (Leninist parties in particular) are embryonic forms of the state. Once in power, these parties form the nucleus of a new ruling class and bring about nothing more than a new system of exploitation. “The existence of the state is inseparable from the existence of slavery” (Marx).

Orwell rightly noted that those who control the present control the past. When history adopts the discourse of the victors, concealing and dissolving all past struggles with a simplistic Manicheanism that obscures what was truly at stake, the present reality seems inevitable and inescapable. The future of human societies thus depends on our capacity to wrest this past from the cold grip of the present masters. Voices have been lost. We must try to bring them back to life; to rediscover the living traces of the relay of rebellion that traverses time; to restore them and to pass them on.

'A Tale of Two Songs' (What a hell of a difference just 2 years make)

→ Hyscience | 2 Sep 2010 | 12:27 pm MDT

Stupor: ... the lack of critical cognitive function and level of consciousness. (Wikipedia)

Back in 2008 there was this naive, misguided, stupefied, dumbstruck, bulls**t:

Now, in 2010, we've arrived at this:

Thank God, the country's finally wakin' up out of its deep stupor!

Related: Unpresidential Plummet

Re: Obama's 'Unpresidential Plummet'

→ Hyscience | 2 Sep 2010 | 11:55 am MDT

Kathryn Jean Lopez interviewed David Limbaugh about his bestselling book, Crimes against Liberty: An Indictment of President Barack Obama, and about what has been done and what can still be done to limit the damage. The book debuted at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list, and according to the nation-wide reporting service BookScan, which tracks retail sales at a majority of the country's retail outlets, Limbaugh sold more than 28,000 copies in the week that ended August 29 -- more than any other non-fiction book in the country. If you haven't read David's book yet, do take the time to read it; then pass it around to your friends.

Here's an excerpt from Lopez's piece at NRO on her interview with David Limbaugh:

David Limbaugh has a solid track record of writing comprehensive, damning indictments. He's gone after Janet Reno's Justice Department. He's exposed domestic crimes against religious freedom. Now, he has written Crimes against Liberty: An Indictment of President Barack Obama. The full brief is still, of course, a work in progress, but Limbaugh's timely, hot-off-the-deadline book comes just in time for the final stretch to the November elections -- just in time to limit the damage. He talks to National Review Online's Kathryn Jean Lopez about what has been done and what can still be done.

KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ: Is Crimes against Liberty a little bit of an I-told-you-so?

DAVID LIMBAUGH: I suppose you could say that, though I don't derive any pleasure from having accurately discerned Mr. Obama's character and ideology during the campaign. Many of those who didn't were permitting themselves to be blinded by fantastic hopes of deliverance from times that, in retrospect, were not as terrible as many claimed. Moreover, as much as I and countless others predicted this national nightmare, Obama has actually been worse, both personally and in terms of his agenda, than most of us anticipated.

The greatest challenge in writing this book was finally putting it to bed, as our president was steadily committing new outrages. I was adding new material every day, but eventually the printer refused any further additions. Still, in the end, I trust readers will find the book remarkably up to date, as both my publisher -- Regnery -- and the printer were quite accommodating.

LOPEZ: You were calling him a threat to liberty before he was elected, never mind inaugurated. What accounts for his "popularity freefall" now? Did people have to see him in action to believe it?

LIMBAUGH: A couple of things account for his plummeting popularity. First, Obama's agenda has been far more extreme than naive well-wishers assumed it would be. Second, his policies have already had disastrous results, which he can no longer credibly pawn off on his predecessor. And third, he has flagrantly thwarted the will of the people in foisting his policies upon us through abuses of power, legislative trickery, unseemly, unethical deals, and worse. He has acted decidedly un-presidential in slandering and bullying his opponents, has repeatedly played the race card, and has misrepresented his signature legislation for all to see. Even some of the conservatives who decided to hitch their wagon to him admitted at the outset they simply hoped he wouldn't govern according to his leftist ideology. What gave them this hope is beyond rational comprehension, but surely most of them have now seen the light. In fact, it's remarkable that Obama has any significant support at all. I daresay that most of his remaining supporters are probably among those not "contributing" income taxes to our general revenues.

Two books and a musician

→ Maggie's Farm | 2 Sep 2010 | 9:24 am MDT

- A reader reminded me of Salt. I cannot remember whether I read it, or just meant to read it. I'll check have to check my hard drive. Just combine Alzheimer's, ADD, and Asperger's: that's Maggie's Farm. A Triple A website. Please ignore any moderate and medicinal alcohol use, because Quadruple A doesn't work.

- Alejandro Zambra's The Private Life of Trees. h/t, Tyler Cowen - who reads a lot.

- Something got me wondering what good old Doug Yule is up to these days. He is building violins. I think this was him singing, but I'm not certain. Anybody know who that little drummer girl is?

Two Crazy Greens

→ Warning Signs | 2 Sep 2010 | 9:02 am MDT

Alan Caruba blogs daily at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com. An author, business and science writer, he is the founder of The National Anxiety Center.

Save This Tweet For Use In Political Emergency

→ Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion | 2 Sep 2010 | 8:49 am MDT

QQQ

→ Maggie's Farm | 2 Sep 2010 | 8:38 am MDT

The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Democrats Approach The Tipping Point

→ Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion | 2 Sep 2010 | 8:22 am MDT

Beck is attacking the enemy at the foundations of their power, their claim to race as a permanent trump card, their claim to the Civil Rights movement as a permanent model to constantly be transforming a perpetually unjust society.

He is nuking out the foundations of the opposition’s moral preeminence...

Jihad at the Cordoba Cathedral: Halfway to a Whole Mosque?

→ Most recent blog entries | 2 Sep 2010 | 7:40 am MDT

Photo: Inside the Cordoba Cathedral, the architectural legacy of its pre-13th century existence as Cordoba's Great Mosque, which was built from Cordoba's pre-8th century cathedral dedicated to Saint Vincent.

---

As noted in Andrew Bostom's essay debunking the just-can't-shake-it myth of Islamic "tolerance" in Muslim Spain, by the middle of the 8th century, the cathedral in Cordoba dedicated to Saint Vincent had been "converted" to a Muslim mosque. However, as 19th-century scholar of Muslim Spain (and Islamophile) Reinhart Dozy writes, this was "clearly an act of spoilation as well as an infraction of the treaty" between Cordoba Christians and the invading Arab Muslims.

All the churches in that city [Cordoba] had been destroyed except the cathedral, dedicated to Saint Vincent, but the possession of this fane [church or temple] had been guaranteed by treaty. For several years the treaty was observed; but when the population of Cordova was increased by the arrival of Syrian Arabs [i.e., Muslims], the mosques did not provide sufficient accommodation for the newcomers, and the Syrians considered it would be well for them to adopt the plan which had been carried out at Damascus, Emesa [Homs], and other towns in their own country, of appropriating half of the cathedral and using it as a mosque. The [Muslim] Government having approved of the scheme, the Christians were compelled to hand over half of the edifice. This was clearly an act of spoliation, as well as an infraction of the treaty. Some years later, Abd-er Rahman I requested the Christians to sell him the other half. This they firmly refused to do, pointing out that if they did so they would not possess a single place of worship. Abd-er Rahman, however, insisted, and a bargain was struck by which the Christians ceded their cathedral.

And so the single remaining church in the city became the Great Mosque of Cordoba. This mosque became a cathedral again in 1236 when King Ferdinand III of Castile recaptured the city from Muslim Moors.

Note, however, in these following thumbnails from recent news accounts of Muslim attempts to take the cathedral back for Islam (I'm not kidding), the fudging or complete omission of the cathedral's Christian origins preceding the establishment of the Great Mosque.

From the Times of London, April 3, 2010, "Muslims arrested for trying to pray in Cordoba's former Great Mosque":

The Great Mosque of Córdoba was converted into a Christian church in 1236 after King Ferdinand III of Castile recaptured the city from the Moors. The building later became the modern-day Cathedral of Our Lady of the Assumption.

Muslim organisations have long campaigned for the right to pray inside the building, which was once one of the biggest mosques in the world.

However, Demetrio Fernández González, the recently appointed Bishop of Córdoba, reinforced a ban on Muslims praying in any part of the 24,000sq m (260,000sq ft) building, saying that canon law did not permit it.

A statement from the bishop’s office said: “The shared use of the cathedral by Catholics and Muslims would not contribute to the peaceful coexistence of the two beliefs.”

The Roman Catholic Church cited archaeological reports that said before the Mosque was built in the 8th century remains of an earlier Christian temple had stood on the same spot.

The not-so-faint implication is that the source of these "archaeological reports" is somehow sectarianly non-objective, while the reports themselves don't merit mention in the recitation of the cathedral's history. And since when are "archaeological reports" dismissed so lightly? When they fail to match the PC narrative.

Oh, and by the way, the Times also reports (paragraph 9):

After being asked to stop praying,  [Catholic authorities] added, “they [two of the praying Muslims] replied by attacking security guards, two of whom suffered serious injuries.”

From CNN, August 17, 2010, "Muslims in Spain campaign to worship alongside Christians":

Muslims in Spain are campaigning to be allowed to worship alongside Christians in Cordoba Cathedral -- formerly the Great Mosque of Cordoba.

And what else? Nothing, according to CNN.

Today, at the original Cordoba mosque in Spain, there is no call to prayer, only the ringing of church bells. That's because the former mosque is now a working Catholic cathedral, performing a daily mass.

It's been a Cathedral since Spain's Christian monarchy conquered Cordoba in the 13th century and more than a million visitors walk through its doors every year.

Look, Ma -- no pre-Islamic history! This obliteration of the past is a traditional hallmark of Islamic conquest.

Meanwhile, note the Islamic good-cop, bad-cop routine, something I've been tracking at least since the foiled British Airplane  Plot of 2006 when it struck me that in the wake the jihadists' attempt to bring down passenger airliners (bad cop), British Muslim leaders followed up by lobbying the government to sanction more sharia in Britain to avoid future outbreaks of such "extremism" (good cop). Notice both sets of actors, the violent jihadists (bad cop) and the peaceful lobbyists (good cop), are after the same goal: extending sharia.

Anyway, to recap the situation in Cordoba: In April, violent "worshippers" (bad cop) seriously injured (knifed) security guards. In August the "peaceful" lobbying effort (good cop) to convert the Catholic cathedral into a half a mosque continues apace. They're both trying to achieve the same goal

And with CNN's implicit favor:

Depictions of Jesus' crucifixion hang underneath the distinctive red-and-white arches of what was once the Muslim prayer hall. Cordoba's dazzling "mihrab" -- the sacred alcove from where Muslim prayer is lead -- still stands as a separate part of the site and is one of the main attractions for tourists.

In fact, the site remains significant for Muslims as a symbol of Islam's golden age of learning and religious tolerance.

Ah, back to that fraud.

The Mosque of Cordoba was once famed for allowing both Christians and Muslims to pray together under the same roof.

Yes, as, Dozy tells us, as an act of "spoilation" and a broken treaty.

Now, some Muslims are trying to repeat that history. Mansur Escudero, a Spanish convert to Islam, is leading the movement that is pushing for the right of Muslims to pray at the Cordoba Cathedral.

"I don't think it's important for Muslims. I think it's important for humankind," Escudero says. "We think this is a beautiful paradigm of tolerance, knowledge, culture. People of different religions living together."

Uh-huh. Sounds beautiful so long as you block out the clanging echoes from the middle of the 8th century when, as Dozy tells us, Muslims broke their treaty with the Christians, "appropriating half of the cathedral and using it as a mosque."

The Next Time Someone Mentions the Golden Age of "Tolerance" in Muslim Spain, Andalusia or Cordoba ...

→ Most recent blog entries | 2 Sep 2010 | 7:38 am MDT

... pull out a copy of this slam-debunking by Andrew Bostom (via Pajamas Media). The fate  of -- in fact, the ongoing struggle over -- Cordoba Cathedral (photo above, story below) is particularly illustrative.

Andrew Bostom's "The Cordoba House and the Myth of Cordoba `Ecumenism'":

Imam Feisal Rauf, “founder and visionary” of the Cordoba Initiative, apparently sees the construction of a triumphal mosque within the 9/11 World Trade Center attack’s zone of destruction as a fulfillment of his vision for Islam in America. As Rauf stated in his 2004 What’s Right with Islam, a work limited to treacly Islamic propaganda:

For many centuries, Islam inspired a civilization that was particularly tolerant and pluralistic. … Great philosophers such as Maimonides were free to create their historic works within the pluralistic culture of Islam.

Rauf envisions this invented past as a model for the future “Sharia-compliant” America he desires.

Self-proclaimed “contrarian” Christopher Hitchens asserted his distaste for those in charge of the Cordoba Initiative, especially Rauf, characterizing the imam’s utterances about the 9/11 atrocities as “shady and creepy.” Yet even Hitchens upheld the Andalusian myth of Cordoba, calling it:

The site of an astonishing cultural synthesis, best associated with the names of Averroes ibn-Rushd and Moses Maimonides …

Hitchens gleaned this, apparently, from his reading of the pseudo-academic apologetics of María Rosa Menocal’s The Ornament of the World, which he insisted was “the finest recent book on the subject.”

Pace Hitchens’ uninformed praise, Menocal’s superficial hagiography ignores the mid-20th century studies of Evariste Levi-Provencal and Charles Emmanuel Dufourcq, and more recently Jane Gerber’s focused 1994 analysis debunking the “Golden Age” myth in Muslim Spain as:

[The] aristocratic bearing of a select class of courtiers and poets, [which consisted only of] garishly packaged … gilded moments.

Whitney Bodman, associate professor of comparative religion at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, has provided the most egregious misrepresentation of “Cordoban ecumenism.” He invoked it specifically to defend Imam Rauf’s GZM project and to condemn its opponents –who now represent 70% of both the U.S. and New York populations — for failing to understand “ … the difference between the Muslims of al-Qaeda and the Muslims of Cordoba.” Professor Bodman’s warped narrative was punctuated by the utterly ahistorical claim that the purported idyllic interfaith relations and glorious cultural symbiosis of Cordoba were abruptly terminated by the Spanish Catholic Inquisition:

The name “Cordoba House” is significant. It is named after the famed medieval Spanish city of Cordoba where philosophers, mystics, artisans and poets — Muslim, Christian, and Jewish — lived and shared together. … Its libraries were vast, and the translations of Arabic works into Latin changed Europe and Christianity forever. Among the resident luminaries were Maimonides, a noted Jewish intellectual, the poet Ibn Hazm, and Averroes, the Muslim philosopher and mystic. … With the coming of the Inquisition and Christian exclusivism, the brilliance of Cordoba faded, but its significance endures as a vibrant, inter-religious community.

Reinhart Dozy (1820-1883), the great Orientalist scholar and Islamophile, wrote a four volume magnum opus (published in 1861 and translated into English by Francis Griffin Stokes in 1913) titled Histoire des Musselmans d’Espagne (A History of the Muslims in Spain). Here is Dozy’s historical account of the mid-8th century “conversion” of a Cordoban cathedral to a mosque:

All the churches in that city [Cordoba] had been destroyed except the cathedral, dedicated to Saint Vincent, but the possession of this fane [church or temple] had been guaranteed by treaty. For several years the treaty was observed; but when the population of Cordova was increased by the arrival of Syrian Arabs [i.e., Muslims], the mosques did not provide sufficient accommodation for the newcomers, and the Syrians considered it would be well for them to adopt the plan which had been carried out at Damascus, Emesa [Homs], and other towns in their own country, of appropriating half of the cathedral and using it as a mosque. The [Muslim] Government having approved of the scheme, the Christians were compelled to hand over half of the edifice. This was clearly an act of spoliation, as well as an infraction of the treaty. Some years later, Abd-er Rahman I requested the Christians to sell him the other half. This they firmly refused to do, pointing out that if they did so they would not possess a single place of worship. Abd-er Rahman, however, insisted, and a bargain was struck by which the Christians ceded their cathedral.

Indeed by the end of the eighth century, the brutal Muslim jihad conquest of North Africa and of Andalusia had imposed rigorous Maliki jurisprudence (one of the four main Sunni schools of Islamic law) as the predominant school of Muslim law. Thus, as Evariste Lévi-Provençal (1894-1956) — the greatest modern scholar of Muslim Spain, whose Histoire de l’Espagne Musulmane remains a defining work — observed 75 years ago:

The Muslim Andalusian state thus appears from its earliest origins as the defender and champion of a jealous orthodoxy, more and more ossified in a blind respect for a rigid doctrine, suspecting and condemning in advance the least effort of rational speculation.

For example, the contemporary scholar J.M. Safran discusses an early codification of the rules of the marketplace (where Muslims and non-Muslims would be most likely to interact) written by al-Kinani (d. 901), a student of the Cordovan jurist Ibn Habib (d. 853) — “known as the scholar of Spain par excellence,” who was also one of the most ardent proponents of Maliki doctrine in Muslim Spain:

[The] problem arises of “the Jew or Christian who is discovered trying to blend with the Muslims by not wearing the riqā [cloth patch, which might be required to have an emblem of an ape for a Jew, or a pig for a Christian] or zunnār [belt].” Kinani’s insistence that Jews and Christians wear the distinguishing piece of cloth or belt required of them is an instance of a legally defined sartorial differentiation being reconfirmed. … His insistence may have had as much to do with concerns for ritual purity and food prohibitions as for the visible representation of social and political hierarchy, and it reinforced limits of intercommunal relations.

Notwithstanding Professor Bodman’s allusion, Ibn Hazm (d. 1064) was hardly just a Muslim “poet,” nor was he a paragon of ecumenism.

He was a viciously anti-Semitic Muslim theologian whose inflammatory writings helped incite the massive pogrom against the Jews of Granada which killed 4000, destroying the entire community in 1066. And Averroes — despite his “philosophical studies” — was also a traditionally bigoted Maliki jurist who rendered strong anti-infidel Sharia rulings and endorsed classical jihadism for the very same Almohads who eventually turned upon him.

Moreover, what Maimonides escaped in the 12th century — disguised as a Muslim — was nothing less than a full-blown Muslim Inquisition under the Muslim Almohads.

The jihad depredations of the Almohads (1130-1232) wreaked enormous destruction on both the Jewish and Christian populations in Spain and North Africa. This devastation — massacre, captivity, and forced conversion — was described by the Jewish chronicler Abraham Ibn Daud and the poet Abraham Ibn Ezra. Suspicious of the sincerity of the Jewish converts to Islam, Muslim “inquisitors” (antedating their Christian Spanish counterparts by three centuries) removed the children from such families, placing them in the care of Muslim educators.

Ibn Aqnin (1150-1220), a renowned philosopher and commentator born in Barcelona, also fled the Almohad persecutions with his family. He escaped, like Maimonides, to Fez. Living there as a crypto-Jew, he met Maimonides, and recorded his own poignant writings about the sufferings of the Jews under Almohad rule.

Ibn Aqnin wrote during the reign of Abu Yusuf al-Mansur (r. 1184-1199), four decades after the onset of the Almohad persecutions in 1140. Thus the Jews forcibly converted to Islam were already third-generation Muslims. Despite this, al-Mansur continued to impose restrictions upon them, which Ibn Aqnin chronicles.

Expanding upon Jane Gerber’s thesis about the “garish” myth of a “Golden Age,” the late Richard Fletcher (in his Moorish Spain) offered a fair assessment of interfaith relationships in Muslim Spain and his view of additional contemporary currents responsible for obfuscating that history:

The witness of those who lived through the horrors of the Berber conquest, of the Andalusian fitnah in the early eleventh century, of the Almoravid invasion — to mention only a few disruptive episodes — must give it [i.e., the roseate view of Muslim Spain] the lie.

The simple and verifiable historical truth is that Moorish Spain was more often a land of turmoil than it was of tranquility. … Tolerance? Ask the Jews of Granada who were massacred in 1066, or the Christians who were deported by the Almoravids to Morocco in 1126 (like the Moriscos five centuries later). … In the second half of the twentieth century a new agent of obfuscation makes its appearance: the guilt of the liberal conscience, which sees the evils of colonialism — assumed rather than demonstrated — foreshadowed in the Christian conquest of al-Andalus and the persecution of the Moriscos (but not, oddly, in the Moorish conquest and colonization). Stir the mix well together and issue it free to credulous academics and media persons throughout the western world. Then pour it generously over the truth … in the cultural conditions that prevail in the west today the past has to be marketed, and to be successfully marketed it has to be attractively packaged. Medieval Spain in a state of nature lacks wide appeal. Self-indulgent fantasies of glamour … do wonders for sharpening up its image. But Moorish Spain was not a tolerant and enlightened society even in its most cultivated epoch.

But far more alarming than the corrosive apologetics about medieval Muslim Spain are the expressed ideas and tangible behaviors of “moderate” Muslims actively promoting modern Spain’s re-Islamization.

For example, events surrounding the completion of the new Granada mosque were marked by celebratory announcements on July 10, 2003, of a “return of Islam to Spain.” At a conference entitled “Islam in Europe” that accompanied the opening of the mosque, disconcerting statements were made by European Muslim leaders. Specifically, the keynote speaker at this conference, Umar Ibrahim Vadillo, a Spanish Muslim leader, encouraged Muslims to cause an economic collapse of Western economies (by ceasing to use Western currencies and switching to gold dinars). The German Muslim leader Abu Bakr Rieger told Muslim attendees to avoid adapting their Islamic religious practices to accommodate European (i.e., Western Enlightenment?) values.

Writing in the immediate aftermath of the Madrid 2004 train bombings, Islamic scholar Mordechai Nisan discussed the contention by the “moderate” founder of the Institute of Islamic Education, M. Amir Ali, that medieval Spain had actually been “liberated” by Muslim forces, who “deposed its tyrants.” Nisan extrapolated this ahistorical narrative line, and pondered:

Reflecting on March 11 [2004] as Muslim terrorism killed 200 and wounded 1,400 in Madrid, one wonders whether one day this event will also not be commemorated as a liberating moment.

We must also ponder whether Imam Feisal Rauf, whose 2004 What’s Right with Islam was published and marketed in Muslim Malaysia as A Call to Prayer from the World Trade Center Rubble: Islamic Da’wah [Proselytization] From the Heart of America Post-9/11, considers the cataclysmic acts of jihad terrorism on 9/11 a similarly “liberating” occasion.

Andrew Bostom (http://www.andrewbostom.org/blog/) is the author of The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims (2005/2008) and The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: From Sacred Texts to Solemn History (2008).

What Does The "Israel Lobby" Have To Do With The Discovery Channel Hostage Taking?

→ Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion | 2 Sep 2010 | 4:25 am MDT

For the better part of an hour this afternoon, during the hostage crisis at the Discovery channel HQ in Silver Spring, MD, CNN featured commentary by Aaron Cohen, who was described as a trainer of Israeli commandoes.  Cohen repeatedly explained how Israel handles such situations. When the anchor asked whether the police could just wait till the guy wears down, Cohen said that in "terrorist" situations people don't just wear down. So an advocate for one side in a terrible cycle of violence is given a platform on American television.

Through a Lens Darkly

→ Big Lizards | 1 Sep 2010 | 8:05 pm MDT

In a post published today on Patterico's Pontifications, Patterico highlights a pair of news stories that seem at sixes and sevens. Both relate to the two Moslem immigrants from Yemen to the United States who were arrested in the Amsterdam airport and charged with plotting a terrorist attack... but one story says the two were actually friends, while the other says they were complete strangers -- at least according to unnamed U.S. government officials. ("The officials spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss the investigation.")

Detroit News:

Both of the detained men are friends who lived and worked in Dearborn [Michigan], said Imad Hamad of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. The al Soofi and al Murisi families are prominent within the Yemeni-American community in Dearborn, Hamad said.

CNSNews.com reprinting an AP story:

The two men arrested in Amsterdam -- both traveling to Yemen -- did not know each other and were not traveling together, a U.S. government official said.

The point most important to the investigation is whether the two were connected; because if they didn't even know each other, they clearly weren't joined in a conspiracy to blow up planes, and this flight could not have been the "dry run" that many believe it may have been, including police in the Netherlands.

But the salient point to me is the simple fact that one story said the two were "friends who lived and worked in Dearborn" -- and relied upon Imad Hamad, who appears to be local to Dearborn, from the way he speaks of their neighbors; while the other that said they "did not know each other" -- and its source was a pair of anonymous federal officials, presumably associated with the FBI, which is conducting the probe.

Patterico goes on to say, "Who ya gonna believe? I think you know where I stand." But I'm less interested in the metaphysical truth of the terrorism allegation here -- any prosecution would likely occur in the Netherlands -- than I am in the epistemology of terrorist law enforcement. How does the FBI purport to know that the two are strangers to each other?

I'm not a philosopher, but I understand that classical philosophy is divided into three broad areas of study: metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics. (Though with modern philosophy being taken over by psychology and deconstructionism, I have no idea whether anyone else still uses these concepts -- save perhaps in an "archeology of philosophy" class.) Very roughly and glibly put, I define them this way:

• Metaphysics: What we know.
• Epistemology: How we know what we know.
• Ethics: What we do about what we know.

Most people seem to focus on ethics; most of the rest appear lost in metaphysics. But I've always been fascinated by how we "know" what we know -- or think we know; how do we try to answer Pontius Pilate's famous question, "What is truth?"

Problems abound everywhere. First, we must find evidence, which may require a lot of digging. Where is it? Who's got the evidence, and will he tell us?

Next, all that digging will invariably unearth conflicting evidence; how do we reconcile it when (as in this pair of stories) some evidence says one thing, while other evidence says the polar opposite?

Then the third problem: How much of the evidence can we believe? People lie, people forget, people misunderstand or misremember. People do all of the above when they write books, produce documentaries, or publish blogposts, as well. So who is persuasive, and why?

Finally, once we've found as much evidence as we can, and once we've reconciled the contradicitons as best we may, how can we put what's left into a narrative, a story that tells us what happened before, what's happening now, and what's likely to happen in the future?

But even when we've surmounted these general obstacles, there is another and larger hurdle to overcome: the filtering effects of ideology, expectation, face saving, faction, and interest.

• Ideology: Your belief system can determine what you can and cannot accept; for example, a person who, for deeply religious reasons, believes biological evolution doesn't happen will tend to disbelieve any scientific evidence supporting it. Similarly, a devout environmentalist may be ideologically incapable of considering evidence that global warming is natural and has many positive and benign effects.

• Expectation: The expression "seeing is believing" has it exactly backwards; it's more accurate to say believing is seeing. That is, we all tend to see what we expect to see.

  In the one psych class I took, we were briefly shown a drawing of a subway scene, then asked to write down everything we remembered. One mini scene was an angry encounter in one part of the car between a white and a black man; the white guy held a straight razor in his hand -- not threatening, just holding. Yet more than three quarters of the (very large) class "remembered" the black man holding the razor -- and remembered him threatening the white man with it.

  The misremembering seemed evenly divided among Left and Right in that class. Expectation can easily color (sorry!) one's perception and memory... we all tend to remember things, not as they happened, but as they should have happened.

• Face saving: Human beings don't like being embarassed or humiliated, and they will often remember things happening differently to avoid such painfulness. For example, if you were the guy who thought James Joyce wrote "Trees," and the other guy mocked you, then a month later, you might confabulate a memory where you were the one who correctly identified the author as Joyce Kilmer, and it was the other idiot who thought it was James Joyce!
• Faction: If you are a member of a political, business, social, or other faction that vehemently argues for one side of a contentious issue, you may have a very hard time even understanding the other side's evidence, let alone acknowledging it. This is true even if you, yourself don't particularly care about that issue; it's an important issue for your "side," and you identify with that side.
• Interest: If you have a financial or other personal interest in one particular side of an issue, you might not be trustworthy on that point; you may even lie to yourself! For example, if you have a huge investment in a company that sells carbon allowances, you may very well be incapable of fairly evaluating arguments against anthropogenic global climate change. For the same reason, trial lawyers can't see any benefit in tort reform, while even conservative politicians tend to drift into supporting more government control (they "grow in office"), thus giving themselves more power.

Now that we have the rhetorical tools we need, we can get to the point of this post... at last!

Let's assume that Imad Hamad either lives in Dearborn or knows many people who do, so he would actually know whether Ahmed Mohamed Nasser al Soofi and Hezem al Murisi were in fact friends. I suppose Hamad could have some obscure reason why he would either lie about it or be unable to imagine the two not being friends, but I confess I cannot think of any. Why would ideology, expectation, embarassment, faction, or interest hinge on whether those two were friends or strangers to each other?

But let's look at the other side: Members of the administration of Barack H. Obama have many reasons why they really, really wouldn't want to admit (even to themselves!) that this might have been a dry run for a terrorist attack, even if their own evidence implies it:

• The ideology of the Obamunists is that terrorism against the United States was caused by America's own wretched actions -- invading Moslem countries to steal oil, bullying the world, and of course, supporting those Zionist squatters in Palestine. Heck, the president won't even say the word "terrorism;" such events are just "man-caused disasters." Surely anything they do to us, we richly deserved!
• The expectation of the administration is that the election of Barack Hussein Obama, coupled with the wonderfully pro-Moslem and pro-Arab policies he has put into place, will absolutely resolve the "miscommunication" that led to all this violence (in the previous administration). But if guys named Mohamed are still anxious to attack America, then that means... But no, that just can't be.
• And think how embarassing to have a domestic terrorist attack while B.O. was president! Especially two or three years into his presidency, not eight months, as with George W. Bush. The One would never live it down.
• Too, his own ultra-liberal-verging-on-socialist party is absolutely committed to the idea that all we need is diplomacy. They're already looking askance at the Obama administration, what with not shutting down the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility, continuing the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and talking about possibly still using Bushitler's military commissions. To remain in good standing with his evaporating political allies, Obama simply cannot prosecute people before they actually set off a suicide bomb or murder some Jews; that could only be racial profiling -- just like W. used to do.
• Finally, the president must consider his own reelection prospects in 2012. If he ever admitted (even if he knows it's true) that radical Islamists continue to attempt massive terrorist attacks, it would immensely complicate his reelection strategy. What is Obama supposed to argue -- "Reelect me, and I swear I won't do as bad a job on national security as my first term?" His own power depends upon convincing voters that he has kept us safe, much better than did his predecessor. He cannot admit it's only sheer luck that we haven't been hit again, or he'll start seeing those "Miss me yet?" t-shirts on his own White House staff.

In other words, Imad Hamad has no obvious reason to lie or misremember that al Soofi and al Murisi are pals, no detectable "parsing filter;" but Obamunists have many filters pushing them to believe the pair were total strangers.

Which is yet one more reason to lean towards believing the Detroit News story over the Associated Press... at least until more and better data comes through.

That was my point, small though it may be. But hey, getting there is half the fun!

America Goes Buggy Over Bed Bugs

→ Warning Signs | 1 Sep 2010 | 6:37 pm MDT

Alan Caruba blogs daily at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com. An author, business and science writer, he is the founder of The National Anxiety Center.

Something I Will Not Do

→ Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion | 1 Sep 2010 | 2:02 pm MDT

Flash: 3-Star General (USAF Ret.) McInerney Files Affadavit at Court-Martial in Support of LTC Lakin

→ Most recent blog entries | 1 Sep 2010 | 5:19 am MDT

From Stand-Up America, the blog of Gen. Paul Vallely (US Army ret.):

Washington, D.C., August 31, 2010.

Retired Air Force Lieutenant General Thomas McInerney has supplied an affidavit in support of Army Lieutenant Colonel Terrence Lakin, who faces trial on October 13-15. The retired Air Force three-star is the highest ranking officer yet to lend public support to LTC Lakin. His affidavit acknowledges widespread concerns over the President’s Constitutional eligibility and demands the President release his birth records or the court authorize discovery.

McInerney’s sworn affidavit was filed in Court-Martial in support of Lakin’s motions for subpoenas for all of the president’s school records, and for a deposition of the custodian of Obama’s birth records in the possession of the State of Hawaii.

The Judge has set a hearing in the Court Martial on these motions for this coming Thursday, September 2nd at 11:00 at Ft. Meade, Maryland. All court proceedings are open to the public. The courthouse is located within Ft. Meade at 4432 Llewellyn Avenue, which is on the corner of Llewellyn and Ernie Pyle Road. At the first intersection after the Reece Road gate, you should turn left on to Ernie Pyle Road. The courthouse is approximately 1 mile south of the intersection of Reece Road and Ernie Pyle Road.

LTC Lakin is a physician, and is in his 18th year of service in the Army. He is Board Certified in Family Medicine and Occupational and Environmental Medicine. He has been recognized for his outstanding service as a flight surgeon for year-long tours in Honduras, Bosnia and Afghanistan. He was also awarded the Bronze Star for his service in Afghanistan and recognized in 2005 as one of the Army Medical Department’s outstanding flight surgeons.

In March of this year, he announced in a video posted on YouTube that he would refuse to obey orders until receiving proof of the President’s eligibility. So far, more than 225,000 people have viewed that video.

Affidavit

McInerney’s affidavit can be viewed at www.safeguardourconstitution.com. The following are extracts:

The President of the United States, as the Commander in Chief, is the source of all military authority. The Constitution requires the President to be a natural born citizen in order to be eligible to hold office. If he is ineligible under the Constitution to serve in that office that creates a break in the chain of command of such magnitude that its significance can scarcely be imagined.

As a practical example from my background I recall commanding forces that were equipped with nuclear weapons. In my command capacity I was responsible that personnel with access to these weapons had an unwavering and absolute confidence in the unified chain of command, because such confidence was absolutely essential – vital – in the event the use of those weapons was authorized. I cannot overstate how imperative it is to train such personnel to have confidence in the unified chain of command. Today, because of the widespread and legitimate concerns that the President is constitutionally ineligible to hold office, I fear what would happen should such a crisis occur today.

In refusing to obey orders because of his doubts as to their legality, LTC Lakin has acted exactly as proper training dictates. That training mandates that he determine in his own conscience that an order is legal before obeying it…Indeed, he has publicly stated that he “invites” his own court martial, and were I the Convening Authority, I would have acceded to his wishes in that regard. But thus stepping up the bar, LTC Lakin is demonstrating the courage of his convictions and his bravery. That said, it is equally essential that he be allowed access to the evidence that will prove whether he made the correct decision.

For the foregoing reasons, it is my opinion that LTC Lakin’s request for discovery relating to the President’s birth records in Hawaii is absolutely essential to determining not merely his guilt or innocence but to reassuring all military personnel once and for all for this President whether his service as Commander in Chief is Constitutionally proper. He is the one single person in the Chain of Command that the Constitution demands proof of natural born citizenship.

This determination is fundamental to our Republic, where civilian control over the military is the rule. According to our Constitution, the Commander in Chief must now, in the face of serious – and widely held- concerns that he is ineligible, either voluntarily establish his eligibility by authorizing release of his birth records or this court must authorize their discovery. The invasion of his privacy in these records is utterly trivial compared to the issues at stake here. Our military MUST have confidence their Commander in Chief lawfully holds this office and absent which confidence grievous consequences may ensue.

Lakin is represented by military counsel, and by Paul Rolf Jensen, a civilian attorney from California who has been provided to him by the American Patriot Foundation, a non-profit group incorporated in 2003 to foster appreciation and respect for the U.S. Constitution, which has established a fund for Lakin’s legal defense. Further details are available on the Foundation’s website, www.safeguardourconstitution.com

For further information,

Contact: Margaret Hemenway (202) 725-7659

American Patriot Foundation, Inc.

1101 Thirtieth Street, N.W., Suite 500

Washington, D.C. 20007

www.safeguardourconstitution.com

All Wars Must End Sometime

→ Warning Signs | 31 Aug 2010 | 7:39 pm MDT

Alan Caruba blogs daily at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com. An author, business and science writer, he is the founder of The National Anxiety Center.

Were-Liberals of Alaska

→ Big Lizards | 31 Aug 2010 | 3:04 pm MDT

I've had a hypothesis for many years. Most libertarians are actually were-liberals: Every two years come November, they lurch to the left in the voting booth.

2010 is clearly no exception... for the Libertarian nominee in the Alaska U.S. Senate race, David Haase, has offered to "step down" and allow Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK, 68%) to take his place on the ballot as the "Libertarian" candidate -- if she will verbally embrace his plan to abolish the income tax and a couple of other things, which Haase dubs, with no hint that he understands the irony, the "People's Bailout":

Although Libertarian Party officials were dismissing the idea, Senate nominee David Haase said Monday that he would give Mrs. Murkowski his line on the ballot if the Republican senator would hoist his banner on behalf of nationalizing the Federal Reserve System, paying off the entire national debt with non-interest-bearing notes and abolishing the individual income tax.

"Would I step down for her? The right question is, first, will she take up my 'People's Bailout'?" Mr. Haase said, referring to a policy paper he has been circulating on how "to return to the banking system our Founders gave us."

"If she came out for my 'Peoples Bailout' plan, it would influence me a lot because the mission is more important than becoming a U.S. senator," he added.

I'm sure it is; but his comments beg the question, what exactly is the mission?

• First, there is virtually no possibility that Murkowski could possibly be elected running as a Libertarian in a race with both a Democrat and a Republican; she would come in a distant and humiliating third.
• Second, Haase must know that even if Murkowski mouthed the words, and even were she elected, she would never seriously push such a plan; she is not now and never has been a radical anti-income-taxer.
• Too, even if she did, there is no possibility it would pass either House or Senate.
• Fourth, even if it did pass by some deus ex machina, we would end up with a grotesque value-added tax (VAT) and a national sales tax... yet we would still have the Sixteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: You just can't get two-thirds of each chamber of Congress plus thirty-eight states to ratify a repeal of the amendment that allows an income tax. All of which means that in a couple of years time, we would have a VAT, a national sales tax, plus a brand new income tax as well!

Since I doubt that David "Schleppenwolf" Haase is an utter fool, he knows that getting Lisa Murkowski to "come out" for his "People's Bailout" would do nothing at all to implement it. Ergo, he has an ulterior motive, which I believe is threefold; in order of urgency:

1. Gaining notoriety for himself;
2. Positioning the Libertarian Party to receive a big batch of fundraising;
3. Splitting the Republican vote between Murkowski and "Average" Joe Miller, thus ensuring that Democratic nominee Scott McAdams wins the election.

When it comes down to it, most libertarians (and probably nearly all capital-L Libertarians) only pay lip service to free markets; in reality, they tend to be moochers who never grow up, live with their parents until they become fifty year old "orphans," and never really get past the "oral stage" of psychological development; they smoke too much tea and eat themselves into planetoid obesity.

They are really not libertarians at all; they are libertines. Their signature issue is far more likely to be legalizing marijuana than allowing us to succeed or fail by our own efforts (i.e., liberty). In fact, when the parental units finally kick the b., many self-described libertarians find a way to live on welfare! They substitute the Invisible Teat of Big Government for the nipple they never really let out of their mouths while Mommy still lived.

In the last election, vast numbers of these "libertinarians" voted for Barack H. Obama -- then concocted some Rube-Goldbergian verbal machination to explain why Obama was the most "free market" candidate running.

There are of course mature, adult libertarians worthy of the name -- think William F. Buckley, jr. or Milton and Rose Friedman -- who make their own way, support themselves and their families, interact in a mature way with real markets, and are less interested in oral fixations like dope smoking than they are in actual liberty issues. However, adult libertarians tend to vote Republican these days.

But back to the Final Frontier, the pending election of a Tea Partier as United States senator from Alaska.

Mind, this is the same election to which the National Republican Senatorial Committee sent its chief counsel, Sean Cairncross, to counsel Lisa Murkowski how to discover or manufacture sufficient votes in the absentee ballots to reverse her primary loss -- presumably by challenging as many Miller votes as possible, especially those from members of the military. Now the putative "Libertarian" candidate schemes to nullify the Republican vote by cleaving it in twain, hoping to install the minority Democrat in that seat. Democrats and establishment Republicans have merged, and their joint rebel yell is, "Anybody but 'Average' Joe Miller!"

More predictions:

• Miller will win the Republican nomination.
• Murkowski will not run as the Libertarian, nor the Independent (à la Charlie Crist in Florida), nor the write-in joke candidate.
• Scott McAdams will remain the Democratic nominee.
• Joe Miller will win the general election by at least ten points.

Remember Hugh Hewitt's aphorism: "If it's not close, they can't cheat." The Miller-Murkowski battle is close, but not close enough. And the subsequent general election won't even be close enough to tempt.

Cross-posted on Hot Air's rogues' gallery...

Carbon Dioxide Riches Disappear

→ Warning Signs | 31 Aug 2010 | 8:12 am MDT

Alan Caruba blogs daily at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com. An author, business and science writer, he is the founder of The National Anxiety Center.

Obama Speaks--As Usual Says Nothing

→ Warning Signs | 31 Aug 2010 | 7:55 am MDT

Alan Caruba blogs daily at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com. An author, business and science writer, he is the founder of The National Anxiety Center.

"Thank You" for What? Updated

→ Most recent blog entries | 31 Aug 2010 | 6:31 am MDT

I ask the question without tricks up my sleeve or gimicks of any sort. Conservatives are urging Obama to thank George W. Bush for his Iraq disaster -- sorry, policy -- in O's upcoming speech on the "end" of the war. Or combat. Or something. But why? What have we gotten out of Iraq?

"Nothing yet, but just you wait" is the latest pathetic mantra of Iraq war enthusiasts.

9.1.10: Here is the UPDATE, but it's really just an interjection, and an old one at that, one of the many entries I have written to dispute the assumption that the surge as a strategy was a successful one, an assumption that remains the lodestar of conservative thinking on American foreign policy, as seen in spades in conservative commentary on last night's presidential "turn the page" on Iraq speech.  

From October 2009:

There is a point in passing that requires comment because, while made in passing -- while always made in passing, tossed off as a given, an objective fact -- it is the faulty fulcrum of the entire nation-building argument. The point in question is that "surge" strategy in Iraq was a success, and that Iraq was a success.

I don't agree. As I've noted in "All Those Boots on the Ground But No Imprint" and elsewhere, the surge in Iraq left little more impression on the sands of Mesopotamia than the receding tide:

This, to clarify, is not the antiwar Left writing. I am writing from a pro-military, anti-jihad point of view that has long seen futility in the U.S. nation-building strategy in Iraq, and now sees futility in the rerun in Afghanistan. Problem is, the same blind spot afflicts both strategies: the failure to understand that an infidel nation cannot fight for the soul of an Islamic nation. This, in essence, is what President Bush and now President Obama have ordered our troops to do.

I don't suggest these missions are ever considered in such terms, which implicitly acknowledge intractable differences between Judeo-Christian-based Western cultures and Islamic cultures. Doing so, of course, is a taboo thing -- a grievous violation in the PC realm where decisions are made. But the omission helps answer my opening question. I seriously doubt Americans would approve of re-running the surge in Afghanistan if there were an honest reckoning of the religious, cultural and historical reasons why the surge failed to achieve its promised results in Iraq.

This is not to say the U.S. military failed. On the contrary, the U.S. military succeeded, as ordered, to bring a measure of security and aid to a carnage-maddened Islamic society. Given U.S.-won security, surge architects promised us, this same Islamic society was supposed to then respond by coming together in "national reconciliation." They were wrong. Not only did Iraqis fail to coalesce as a pro-American, anti-jihad bulwark in the Islamic world (the thoroughly delusional original objective), they have also failed to form a minimally functional nation-state. And the United States is now poised to do the same thing all over again in Afghanistan.

In other words, the surge strategy was a two-part deal. indeed, Part One was supposed to serve as the catalyst for Part Two. Part One, the part entrusted to the US military, was a success. But Part Two, the part entrusted to Iraqis -- indeed, the endgoal of the strategy -- was a flop. 

As a result, six years, untold billions, and immeasurable effort in Iraq did not "get" the US anything -- unless, that is, just another lousy Arab state  (OPEC-participating, Israel-boycotting, Hezbollah-sympathetic, Iranian-riddled state we can't even launch anti-jihad attacks from) counts as a prize package. And that description doesn't even consider what is worst about the US effort in Iraq: It was all, in effect, to stand up a sharia state marked to this day by extreme religious persecution, as perusing the 2009 report on Iraq by the US Commission of International Religious Freedom confirms.

Among the commission's recommendations to remedy the situation are several suggested amendments to the Iraqi constitution, including:

• deleting sub-clause (A) in Article 2 that no law may contradict "the established provisions of Islam" because it heightens sectarian tensions over which interpretation of Islam prevails and improperly turns theological interpretations into constitutional questions;

• revising Article 2's guarantee of "the Islamic identity of the majority" to make certain that this identity is not used to justify violations of the individual right to freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief under international law;

• making clear that the default system for personal status cases in Iraq is civil law, that the free and informed consent of both parties is required to move a personal status case to the religious law system [sharia], that religious court rulings are subject to final review under Iraq's civil law, and that the appointment of judges to courts adjudicating personal status matters, including any religious courts, should meet international standards with respect to judicial training; and

• removing the ability of making appointments to the Federal Supreme Court based on training in Islamic jurisprudence alone, and requiring that, at a minimum, all judges have training in civil law, including a law degree.

In other words, for religious freedom to become possible in Iraq, it is necessary to remove the sharia from the Iraqi sharia state.

Lots of luck with that. But the point here is how does fighting for, dying for,  supporting, enriching, encouraging, enabling such a state help the United States of America? And how does doing all of those things constitute a US win? And not just a win, but a successful strategy to be replicated elsewhere?

I don't entertain the fantasy that the Obama administration will retool foreign or war policy to achieve what could be understood as traditionally pro-American goals. These are questions for conservatives to consider, and with an eye toward the next power cycle.

---

Back to 9.1.10 UPDATE: The same still goes for the Obama administration. But conservatives are failing to consider any questions about Iraq -- about the wisdom and effectiveness of the surge as a long-term strategy.  Here's the rest of yesterday's original post:

The Wall Street Journal editorial page offers [Obama] some speech tips:

The first is to give his predecessor credit for deciding on and sticking with the 2007 troop surge that turned the tide against the insurgency.

And then what happened? The surge, Part 1 of a two-part strategy, was designed to create the security conditions by which Iraq would become not just governable, but also an ally in the old war on terror (Part 2): in other words, we surge, Iraqis merge, all sing Kumbaya. This just didn't happen. (More here and here.) Why do we regard this colossal policy flopola predicated on a grotesque misunderstanding of Islamic culture as a historic American success story?

George W. Bush made that decision in the face of ferocious bipartisan opposition, not least from a certain Illinois Senator. If Mr. Obama wants to win some bipartisan goodwill, he'll admit he was wrong at the time and say he has learned from the surge's success in Iraq as he has planned his own surge in Afghanistan.

Learned what from the surge's success? His own surge in Afghanistan -- uh-oh.

We also hope Mr. Obama is candid in admitting to the American public that a substantial number of U.S. troops will need to remain in Iraq for many years.

Why? To guard the schoolchildren on their way to school to learn jihad and Islamic supremacism?

Many Democrats want to pack up every last armored Humvee today --

Ditto conservative me.

-- but Americans need to understand that our troops are needed to assist the Iraqis on security matters and to consolidate the strategic benefits of having a democratic ally in the volatile region.

"Strategic benefits of Iraq as a democratic ally" is a punchline right?

Meanwhile, we have such a strategic ally in the region; its name is Israel, and we don't need to station thousands of troops there to prop it up.

The U.S. kept hundreds of thousands of troops in Germany for decades after World War II, and it still has tens of thousands in South Korea and Japan.

This was a terrible idea, born of enormous and enormously costly miscalculations, that is nothing to emulate.

It would be a tragedy if after seven years of sacrifice, the U.S. now failed to assist Iraqis as they try to build a federal, democratic state in an often hostile neighborhood.

Seven years of sacrifice is ENOUGH.

Back to School Jihad in Iraq

→ Most recent blog entries | 31 Aug 2010 | 5:06 am MDT

Abeer Mohammed is a senior local editor based in Baghdad for Institute of War and Peace Reporting. Here's an excerpt from a post at the IWPR site about the story behind his sensational report (posted below) on how teachers in Iraq are schooling their students in jihad and Islamic supremacism:

For this story, I tried to interview sources in schools in several Baghdad neighbourhoods but the headmasters refused. So I waited for teachers, parents and students outside of schools in Sunni, Shia and mixed neighbourhoods. One day, I spent six hours in front of a school in a poor Shia-majority area of Baghdad.

I faced the most resistance from officials who gave me veiled warnings to not report on such a hot topic. One official told me I was pushing too hard on this issue, and another accused me of defaming Islam.

When I asked one official why there was no curriculum on Christianity, he became nervous and angry and told me I should not focus on the curricula.

A female Muslim legislator defended the textbooks and asked me, "What is your name again? And where do you work?" Because I always identify myself in any case, these were not questions I was comfortable hearing.

His report is also one that people, whether in Iraq or particularly in the US, are not comfortable hearing. Who in the US, now that the war in Iraq has "ended," wants to hear that in American-liberated Iraq, Islamic education class is Iraqi schools, many of which were rebuilt or built by US soldiers, is teaching jihad and Islamic supremacism? Certainly not Americans fond of claiming victory.

Mohammed Abeer's report from the Kansas City Star (via Islamization Watch):

Zuhair Jerjis and Ahmed Mohammed are both 10. They attend the same Baghdad school and often ride home together. After school, the two get together and play video games.

But Ahmed is worried. He wonders if some day he will have to murder his best friend.

The boys go to the same school and share a ride home to the same district of Baghdad, but their parents do not share the same faith.

Zuhair's family is Christian and Ahmed's is Muslim. Recent religious lessons at school have left Ahmed questioning what end awaits his friendship.

"Our teacher tells us it is forbidden in Islam to make friends with unbelievers," he said. "When I study that we have to fight the unbelievers in the name of jihad, I think, 'Will I kill Zuhair one day?'"

Ahmed's family in Muslim; Zuhair's is Christian. And it turns out that in Iraq's schools today, religious tolerance is not part of the curriculum.

Religious education is a regular feature of public schools in Iraq. Because Zuhair is a Christian, he is not required to attend religious classes. But because the vast majority of his classmates are Muslims, Zuhair said he often feels alone and isolated.

"When all of my friends are in the class, I have to stand outside," he said.

As students prepare to return to classes this fall, there is growing criticism of the recently introduced curriculum, which critics say fails to tackle the causes of religious and sectarian hatred that have fueled the violence of the last six years. Worse still, they accuse it of laying the foundations for future strife.

The main concerns about the school program are that it favors the Shia interpretation of Islam.

In addition, many are concerned that some teachers focus on subjects not directly addressed in the curriculum, such as the treatment of non-Muslims and jihad, or holy war.

From an internal Iraqi standpoint, teaching sectarian lessons to the young promises continued division and worse. From a non-Muslim standpoint, given that Sunni and Shia Islam agree on jihad and the treatment of non-Muslims, the main problem isn't sectarian. The main problem is jihad and the treatment of non-Muslims -- if, that is, religious tolerance is the point of the lesson. But in Iraq, as an Islamic culture, religious tolerance as Westerners conceive of it, is just not a core subject.

The reporter elaborates on the Sunni-Shia disagreement a while longer:

Before the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003, religious education reflected the beliefs of the minority Sunni population, which makes up roughly one-quarter of the current population.

The current curriculum places more emphasis on Shia Islam, a sect followed by the majority of Iraq's Arabs and by its most powerful politicians, including Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. ...

Alaa Makki, a Sunni member of parliament and head of a parliamentary committee on education, said the new curriculum was unbalanced.

"The current changes have a huge sectarian impact," he said. "The updating process should focus on the shared aspects (of Islam), not on a specific sect." Some of the areas of dispute are subtle and reflect the centuries-old schism within Islam.

For example, Iraq's former Sunni-accented textbooks followed all mentions of the Prophet with a traditional Sunni blessing, "Peace be upon him." In the new textbooks, the blessing is a typical Shia one, "Peace be upon him and his family."

Somehow, doesn't quite convey the impact of the two little boys at the top of the story, one wondering if Islamic teachings will compel him to murder his Christian friend. But here's more:

In addition, anecdotal evidence from schools suggests many teachers offer their own views on such topics as the treatment of non-Muslims or the obligation to wage jihad.

Sanaa Muhsin, an Islamic studies teacher in Baghdad's Shaab district, said she regularly instructs her students that "each Muslim had a duty to carry out jihad - namely to fight unbelievers." She identified unbelievers as those who did not follow Allah or the Prophet Mohammed.

Some students appear to be learning the lessons well.

Sajjad Kiayyad, 7, of Baghdad, said he plans to become a holy warrior when he grows up. "I will fight the Americans because they are Jewish and unbelievers," he said. "I will be victorious, or I will be a martyr in heaven."

Maryam Ali, 9, also of Baghdad, said she is carrying out her own jihad by calling on "unveiled female friends to cover their heads."

Freji, the education ministry adviser, insisted that teachers had been instructed to steer clear of issues that aroused conflict. The new curriculum, he said, focused on the fraternal aspects of Islam. "The Islamic religion, and therefore the Islamic curriculum, emphasizes forgiveness and mercy."

Must have gotten lost in translation.

Hell Gets Mildly Slushy

→ Big Lizards | 30 Aug 2010 | 5:04 pm MDT

Hades didn't exactly freeze over; but in addition to the permafrost at the ninth circle, the rest of the infernal realm has become sort of Margarita-like (or Slurpee-like, for teetotalers -- subglobal winter?) For an independent review panel, the "InterAcademy Council," which is associated with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has actually suggested that future IPCC reports should be (a) more transparent about their own conflicts of interest and how they may drive the IPCC's alarmist conclusions, and -- wait for it -- (b) more open to alternative points of view:

The scientists involved in producing the periodic United Nations reports on climate change need to be more open to alternative views and more transparent about their own possible conflicts of interest, an independent review panel said Monday.

Those were among numerous recommendations made by the panel appointed last March to assess how a few glaring errors -- including a prediction that the Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035 -- made it into the last such United Nations report, released in 2007.

The revelations about the errors contributed to the already highly charged debate about the science of climate change and gave added ammunition to critics doubting assessments that the earth is warming. Coming on the heels of the unauthorized release of e-mails written by some of the leading climate change researchers, which led critics to claim they were manipulating data, the mistakes contributed to what surveys showed were an erosion in public confidence in the science of climate change.

Be still my fluttering heart. (Well, not too still.)

It's a good beginning, but still only a beginning; we'll see whether the empire-builders at IPCC seize upon this report as their opportunity to hoist the entire project back onto the rails of scientific reason -- or their challenge to flam-flam their way to a mere pretence of reform, like the politicians they are.

In any event, it's remarkable that the InterAcademy Council even feels compelled to pay lip service to "alternative views" and the IPCC scientists' "own possible conflicts of interest," and perhaps even more remarkable that the New York Times, of all media venues, feels compelled to report it. The Times, they are indeed a changin'.

What's in Your Wallet... That Won't Be There Tomorrow?

→ Big Lizards | 27 Aug 2010 | 6:30 pm MDT

The Republican leadership still can't absorbed the new reality of the popular front for Capitalism and against statism; surprise, surprise on the Jungle Riverboat Cruise tonight. They're running away from the vital spending cuts offered by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI, 96%), afraid to embrace them -- unwilling to debate them. Once again, the people must lead their putative "leaders":

Rep. Paul D. Ryan's "Roadmap for America's Future" - which proposes major changes to taxes, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid - has attracted support from some of the GOP's most conservative members, but top leaders have kept their distance....

The plan has attracted just 13 co-sponsors in the House, and a handful of candidates running for the House and Senate have also embraced it. But no congressional Republican leader has signed on, drawing a rebuke from former Rep. Dick Armey, an architect of Republicans' 1994 electoral success.

"The fact that he only has 13 co-sponsors is a big reason why our folks are agitated against the Republicans as well as the Democrats," he said Sunday on NBC's "Meet The Press." "The difference between being a co-sponsor with Ryan or not is a thing called courage."

For those of you saying "roadmap... huh?" -- here's a pointer. The Roadmap for America's Future, developed by Paul Ryan, the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee, is a fully integrated plan for eliminating debt and sustaining economic growth via spending cuts and transferring some government and employer benefits to individual ownership. Here are the major planks; descriptions come straight from the website, where there is of course more detail:

• Health care - The plan ensures universal access to affordable health insurance by restructuring the tax code, allowing all Americans to secure affordable health plans that best suit their needs, and shifting the ownership of health coverage away from the government and employers to individuals.

• Medicare/Medicaid - The Roadmap preserves the existing Medicare program for those currently enrolled or becoming eligible in the next 10 years (those 55 and older today); [f]or those currently under 55 -- as they become Medicare-eligible -- it creates a Medicare payment, initially averaging $11,000, to be used to purchase a Medicare certified plan....

  The proposal also fully funds Medical Savings Accounts [MSAs] for low-income beneficiaries, while continuing to allow all beneficiaries, regardless of income, to set up tax-free MSAs.

• Social Security - Preserves the existing Social Security program for those 55 or older.

  Offers workers under 55 the option of investing over one third of their current Social Security taxes into personal retirement accounts, similar to the Thrift Savings Plan available to Federal employees. Includes a property right so they can pass on these assets to their heirs, and a guarantee that individuals will not lose a dollar they contribute to their accounts, even after inflation.

  Makes the program permanently solvent -- according to the Congressional Budget Office [CBO] -- by combining a more realistic measure of growth in Social Security’s initial benefits, with an eventual modernization of the retirement age.

• Tax reform - Provides individual income tax payers a choice of how to pay their taxes -- through existing law, or through a highly simplified code that fits on a postcard with just two rates and virtually no special tax deductions, credits, or exclusions (except the health care tax credit).

  Simplifies tax rates to 10 percent on income up to $100,000 for joint filers, and $50,000 for single filers; and 25 percent on taxable income above these amounts. Also includes a generous standard deduction and personal exemption (totaling $39,000 for a family of four).

  Eliminates the alternative minimum tax [AMT].

  Promotes saving by eliminating taxes on interest, capital gains, and dividends; also eliminates the death tax.

  Replaces the corporate income tax -- currently the second highest in the industrialized world -- with a border-adjustable business consumption tax of 8.5 percent. This new rate is roughly half that of the rest of the industrialized world.

There are some other elements, but that is the gist.

The Roadmap doesn't just nibble around the edges of the federal budget; it sets its sites squarely on the real spending blockbusters, the so-called "entitlement" programs that comprise, all by themselves, about 40% of the budget -- and are responsible for many tens of trillions of dollars of unfunded liability. Every economist agrees that without somehow reforming entitlement programs, they will continue to grow out of control until they gobble up the entire federal budget, and sooner than most of us realize.

So naturally, you can see why Republican "leaders" seemngly have no interest in signing aboard the Roadmap for America's Future; heaven forbid they should actually take a stand, one way or the other, on the biggest economic calamity facing the United States today. I think Dick Armey has it pegged: "The fact that [Ryan] only has 13 co-sponsors is a big reason why our folks are agitated against the Republicans as well as the Democrats."

Among those afraid to embrace, but unwilling to debate are House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH, 96%) -- the man who would be Squeaker -- and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY, 96%), the man who would be president (in a sow's ear).

Just two more "profiles in cowardice." Time to light a spur under the pair of them, and the rest of the established Republican establishment. The goal should not be merely to "get more Republicans" into Congress; it should be to get more Capitalists, anti-statists, and defenders of individual liberty.

Most will surely be Republican, as the Democratic Party has been consumed and digested by its most radical wing; but sometimes, a lukewarm Republican is worse than a Democrat... if he's so "moderate" that he can cross the aisle and start caucusing with the Democrats at the drop of a primary challenge, a la Charlie Crist in Florida or the execrable Arlen Specter (R D-PA, 75%).

Miller vs. Murkowski: What If...?

→ Big Lizards | 27 Aug 2010 | 2:47 pm MDT

"Average" Joe Miller currently leads incumbent and establishment candidate Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK, 68%) in the Alaska Republican senatorial primary by 1,668 votes. Given the approximately 7,600 absentee ballots still pending -- they will be counted Tuesday -- Murkowski would have to win about 61% of them in order to prevail. (Full disclosure: While we have no money riding on this race, we both support Miller over Murkowski.)

Now she has lawyered up before the absentee count; she wants to make sure that she, not Miller, prevails in the absentee count, no matter what it takes... even if that means a recount and perhaps a lawsuit.

And guess who her attorney happens to be? The National Republican Senatorial Committee has sent Murkowski its chief counsel.

Republican officials confirmed Thursday that Sean Cairncross, the chief counsel for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, is traveling to Alaska to help Murkowski prepare for the absentee-ballot count on Aug. 31.

(Not that they're taking sides, or anything.)

This is what worries me: Suppose Murkowski prevails by a whisker after an ugly series of challenges of absentee ballots cast for Miller by military personnel, or following a "recount" (or covert revote), or after suing her way onto the ballot. If that is how this primary ends, then Murkowski will almost certainly lose the general election to Democrat Scott McAdams, Mayor of Sitka... because virtually none of Miller's voters would vote for Murkowski if she were perceived to have stolen the nomination.

So by trying to wrest the nomination away from Miller, who appears likely to have won it honestly, the GOP establishment could turn a near certain Republican hold into a Democratic pickup. But why are they doing this? What is so important about handing a primary victory, honest or dis-, to the Murkowski dynasty?

I can't shake the thought that it's not so much that the Republican establishment dearly loves Murkowski, a lame excuse for a Republican; her 68% rating from the American Conservative Union ties with Dick Lugar (R-IN) and Lamar Alexander (R-TN) for third worst among Senate Republicans; only the Maine Twins, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, score worse -- 48% for each. Joe Miller is much closer to the GOP mainstream, especially among voters, but even within the Senate itself.

Nor can the NRSC seriously believe that Murkowski will hold the seat but Miller would not. If Miller can surge to beat Murkowski in the primary, where 92,000 votes were cast (47,000 for Miller), then why wouldn't he go on to beat McAdams, who received only 15,000 votes in a Democratic primary in which only 30,000 total votes were cast, a third of the Republican count?

Alas, I think the NRSC intervened for a much uglier reason: They're desperate to stop Sarah Palin scoring a "victory" as kingmaker.

I cannot think of any other motivation powerful enough to prompt a late entry on the part of the National Republican Senatorial Committee -- on behalf of the currently losing Republican candidate. The move is inexplicable to me, other than the mean-spirited, low, underhanded explanation that they're trying to cripple Palin's popularity and respect, perhaps to prevent a future run for the presidency, and even at the cost of losing a Senate seat in Alaska.

What a sad commentary; the Republican establishment is fighting against Palin, against the Tea Partiers, against reform, and in favor of corruption, nepotism, and business as usual. And our next post may show the GOP in an even more pathetic and cowardly light... fighting against the popular front for Capitalism itself.

But one last point. Though the empire strikes back, that is not cause for us to abandon the Republican Party; there is no alternative. The idea that tea parties will take the place of the Republican National Committee is sheer fantasy, and third parties do nothing but divide and allow themselves to be conquered.

Rather, the spineless writhing of the GOP establishment is cause for "we the people" to recapture the party itself, to transform it from what it is now (yecch) into what it ought to be tomorrow. And the best way to begin is to continue to support common sense Capitalism and the resurgence of American liberty against the statist government class.

Found: an image that perfectly captures how I feel about Arlen Spector

→ The Annoyed White Male | 28 Apr 2010 | 2:10 pm MDT

Found in the FARK comment thread.  Go read 'em, they're great.

craigslist Post of the Day: free stripper pole

→ The Annoyed White Male | 19 Apr 2010 | 8:13 am MDT

FREE STRIPPER POLE (Manayunk)

Date: 2010-04-19, 9:44AM EDT
Reply to: sale-hcgmg-1699190262@craigslist.org ^{[Errors when replying to ads?]}

So, today at around 5 or 6pm there will be a brand new unused, unopened PROFESSIONAL GRADE STRIPPER POLE on the sidewalk in front of 127 West Salaignac Street in Manayunk. Looking for that perfect Mothers Day gift? Want to spice up an otherwise boring sex life? Help your daughter develop the skills necessary for a lucrative career. My EX-wife purchased this stripper pole for several hundred dollars because Oprah told her it would be good exercise. Her stupidity is your gain! Come and take this brand new unused stripper pole today for free!!!

FREE STRIPPER POLE!!!

FREE STRIPPER POLE!!!

FREE STRIPPER POLE!!!



Got crabs?

→ The Annoyed White Male | 15 Apr 2010 | 3:33 pm MDT

There's great news for everyone near the Chesapeake Bay, and the Bay itself:

The crabs -- bright blue underwater, pinkish-red on diners' tables -- held out the longest of the Chesapeake's iconic species before succumbing to over-fishing and pollution. The Chesapeake held 852 million of them in 1993. But, like oysters, shad, sturgeon and rockfish before them, their numbers dropped.

By 2007, the crab's population was just one-third what it had been.

In 2008, Virginia and Maryland lowered the number of female crabs that could be taken at certain times of the year, with the aim of reducing the overall harvest of females by 34 percent. Virginia also banned dredging crabs out of their winter burrows to sell -- a practice that captured pregnant females.

Officials said the recovery meant that the total crab harvest went up in 2009. Despite the limits on females, there were more crabs to catch.

Limiting the the number of females (the producers) removed meant there were many more crabs to catch and the harvest went UP.  Reducing the burden on the most productive meant more production and more harvest.

The EXACT SAME LAWS apply to taxation. Lower tax burdens allow more investment, building, hiring, and productivity and all that money flying around gets taxed a bit as it moves, ultimately producing more revenue.  If you just keep harvesting crabs at the same rate heedless of their numbers, the population will collapse and there will be none.  If you keep taxing money heedless of how little is flowing, you will eventually remove all the money and leave nothing to even maintain what you have, let alone invest in future growth. The collapse is inevitable.  We are headed directly for that that point.  Our current debt and taxation is unsustainable.

The farmer must have some seed left from the previous season to plant a new crop in the Spring.  If you tax that away from him, next year there will be no crop for anyone to eat.  This is the most basic economics.  The people currently running the country do not understand this, they think they can always remove the same percentage of crabs or seed no matter what's going on the system.

The far more terrifying prospect is that they do understand, and collapse is their goal.  We are left with only two possibilities: either they are incredibly incompetent or intentionally destroying us.  Either way, we loose.

I WISH my personal income had fallen by ONLY 3.2%

→ The Annoyed White Male | 13 Apr 2010 | 7:17 am MDT

My real figure is 100%

Real personal income for Americans - excluding government payouts such as Social Security - has fallen by 3.2 percent since President Obama took office in January 2009, according to the Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis.

For comparison, real personal income during the first 15 months in office for President George W. Bush, who inherited a milder recession from his predecessor, dropped 0.4 percent. Income excluding government payouts increased 12.7 percent during Mr. Bush's eight years in office.

"This is hardly surprising," said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, an economist and former director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. "Under President Obama, only federal spending is going up; jobs, business startups, and incomes are all down. It is proof that the government can't spend its way to prosperity."

Initial jobless claims increase unexpectedly

→ The Annoyed White Male | 8 Apr 2010 | 10:29 am MDT

You could just cut and paste every damned announcment from one month to the next.  Just make sure to work in "unexpectedly" so these idiots can keep getting their six-figure paychecks.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The number of newly laid-off workers seeking unemployment benefits rose last week, a sign that jobs remain scarce even as the economy recovers.

THERE IS NO RECOVERY.

The Labor Department said Thursday that first-time claims increased by 18,000 in the week ended April 3, to a seasonally adjusted 460,000. That's worse than economists' estimates of a drop to 435,000, according to a survey by Thomson Reuters.

WE'VE MOVED!

→ The Other McCain | 2 Jan 2010 | 2:29 am MST

TheOtherMcCain.com

How Carlsonism Was Averted, or The Making of TheOtherMcCain.com

→ The Other McCain | 1 Jan 2010 | 9:34 pm MST

New Site for a New Year: We're Now LIVE at TheOtherMcCain.com

→ The Other McCain | 31 Dec 2009 | 10:01 pm MST

Tweet of the Year Decade Millennium: My Quest for the Ultimate Re-Tweet

→ The Other McCain | 31 Dec 2009 | 11:11 am MST

Your quest to get re-tweeted by @Alyssa_Milano is the best non-porn thing about the internet.
-- Dave Weigel

She's the ultimate celebrity Tweep, with more than 500,000 followers but, as of noon today, was only following 499 people, whereas I've got about 2,700 followers and am following nearly 1,300 people.

This illustrates an enormous status disparity and ever since October, when Alyssa re-Tweeted a Slate column by Mickey Kaus -- who has about 1,700 followers -- I've been trying to reverse-engineer the Kaus magic: "Why Does Alyssa Milano Hate Me?"

Alyssa is to Twitter what Matt Drudge is to news, and what Professor Glenn Reynolds is to blogging. (On Twitter, Drudge has 46,000 followers and Instapundit has about 6,000 followers.) People tell me that my quest is hopeless, but as Vince Lombardi said, "A quitter never wins, and a winner never quits."

In addition to Lombardi's maxim, there's also the inspiration of my role model, Pepe Le Pew:

The wonderful thing about Pepe is that he cannot conceive that anyone would not love him.

Hit the tip jar! ROLL TIDE! Re-Tweet me, Alyssa!

2009 Year in Review: January

→ The Other McCain | 31 Dec 2009 | 9:50 am MST

Just as the conservative intellectuals once projected their hopes onto Dubya, now they project their disappointments onto Sarah. But the fault is theirs, not hers.

It is a very long post, but I think it got to the nub of some very important issues that are fundamental to understanding how the GOP reached its ebb in 2008. Some other highlights and lowlights of the month:

• January 2009 saw Israel at war with Palestinians, which prompted my reflection "Sonny Corleone in Gaza."
• Natalie Dylan offered her virginity online and was offered $3.7 million.
• Of course, January marked the official onset of the Obama Nation, which was inaugurated with puddles of hope. I compared it to the experience of taking my daughter to Bush's 2001 inauguration.
• The biggest problem of the new administration was its economic agenda: Unicorns, rainbows and wasteful neo-Keynesian nonsense.
• I covered the RNC meeting that culminated in the election of Michael Steele as chairman.
• January also brought news of the Hindenburg-at-Lakehurst implosion of Culture 11, a not-unexpected disaster that could be explained in two words: David Kuo. Or perhaps, Conor Friedersdorf.