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March 31, 2006
Circulation wars
New York City has the best newspaper fights. Today the surrender-monkey welfare gazette NY Daily News accused the war mongering NY Post of propping up its circulation numbers in a "ploy" yesterday that saw hundreds of copies of the NYP dumped here, there and everywhere. And to think the NYP's annual baseball preview is in there. For shame.
Posted by bill at 12:05 PM | Comments (0)
March 30, 2006
The state of things
Like the poltergeist, I'm ba-ck.
There were two "up yours" in the news today, one a harmless gesture by a prickly (and 70 year-old) judge whom the left believes is the anti-Christ, and another by Iran, which reminded the "international community" that "international law" often means something only once the United States says it does. Not surprisingly, the left is atwitter over Scalia, but thinks the Bush administration is exaggerating the threat from Iran.
Ho, hum.
Posted by bill at 09:08 PM | Comments (0)
March 21, 2006
"So Much for Sovereignty"
Mark Brennan sounds the alarm over Mexico's attempts to direct American policy. "No foreign nation should dictate how we should treat its citizens when they openly break American laws," he writes.
Thanks to Mark for contributing his article.
Posted by bill at 09:22 PM | Comments (0)
This just in...Pachyderms in the Mist are running the country
The Washington Post's newest hire, Ben Domenech, makes a splash with his first post at the WaPo's blog, titled "Red America." In it, he makes the point (new to some Post readers?) that red state values are "mainstream" and the present Democratic leadership -- not so much. Good points all around. But it's incredible that any could be considered novel -- granted, I'm guessing the idea was to introduce Ben to the paper's leftist sophisticates -- but for those who needed a Ben Domenech March 21, 2006 blog posting to believe the Democrats might be in trouble, and why, I wonder if it's worth the effort.
Posted by bill at 01:36 PM | Comments (0)
More bracket-ology
If you picked Bradley (Collge? University? Tech? A&M?) in the NCAA Sweet 16, your brackets look better than mine. And in that case, and since you're at this website, you might like this, a field of 64 Republicans potentially vying for the White House in 2008. It's silly, I guess, but for political wonks, elections can be way better than basketball.
Posted by bill at 08:37 AM | Comments (0)
March 20, 2006
"The canary in the coal mine"?
...as U.S. foreign policy. It's not the first time Bush has stated America's position quite so clearly, but the message seems more stark in the face of mortal threats from Iran. And yet so few, conservative or liberal, seem willing to question the wisdom of it all.
Posted by bill at 04:51 PM | Comments (0)
Le realite et toi, vous ne vous entendez pas, n'est-ce pas? (Part Deux)
Thomas Sowell offers a must-read on the France's newest riots, this time by socialist students who believe lifetime tenure and a job for life are their birthright:
Student riots in Paris remind us that education at elite academic institutions is not enough to teach either higher morals or basic economics....
Why are students at the Sorbonne and other distinguished institutions out trashing the streets and attacking the police? Because they want privileges in the name of rights, and are too ignorant of economics to realize that those privileges cost them jobs.
Posted by bill at 08:55 AM | Comments (0)
March 17, 2006
The right war in the right place at the right time
I have to apologize to the CJ faithful for being out of touch. I expect that on Monday I'll resume posting as before. Thanks to James Poulos for filling the void. No time at the moment to post much of substance, other than to note we're approaching the three-year anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq war. MoveOn et al. are planning a barrage of demonstrations and protests - but so are people like Kieran Lalor, who's planned a counter-demonstration Saturday in Westchester, New York. Spread the word, if you have a moment.
For more good news on Iraq, read this.
Posted by bill at 12:06 PM | Comments (0)
March 16, 2006
Against Old Spice
It's a buyer's market for a perversity that sounds much more casual than it is. These things come in waves, it seems. Anyone else feel ill?
Posted by James G. Poulos at 06:02 PM | Comments (0)
March 15, 2006
Remembering the "Falling Man"
Kudos to Michelle Malkin for reminding us of the 9/11 "falling man," thought to be Jonathan E. Briley. As Michelle reminds us, we can never let ourselves forget.
Posted by bill at 11:03 PM | Comments (0)
Against MySpace
It spreads, in viral style, the Los Angelization of the West. It refracts, endlessly, our teeming abyss of selves.
If I am the Guy Fawkes of the anticulture, this is my Gunpowder Plot.
V for Victory.
Posted by James G. Poulos at 09:53 AM | Comments (0)
What liberals want
The WSJ says Russ Feingold might be doing us a favor:
He's doing voters a favor by telling them before November's election just how Democrats intend to treat a wartime President if they take power.
Not only do they want to block his policies, they also plan to rebuke and embarrass him in front of the world and America's enemies. And they want to do so not because there is a smidgen of evidence that he's abused his office or lied under oath, but because they think he's been too energetic in using his powers to defend America. By all means, let's have this impeachment debate before the election, so voters can know what's really at stake.
Posted by bill at 08:41 AM | Comments (0)
March 13, 2006
Connecting the dots: Damned if you don't...
...and if you're a Republican president, damned if you do. Condemning the feds' anti-terror efforts directed at Muslim charities, two mucky-mucks at "KinderUSA" complain:
Since Sept. 11, 2001, six American Muslim charities have been shuttered in this fashion. The government still doesn't have a single terrorism conviction against any of the employees or board members of any of those charities. Similarly, the government has never been able to document a bona fide trail showing how money from the charity got into the hands of actual terrorists. Never.
Or then again, maybe it has. Nonetheless, the littany continues: "None of us is interested in engaging in illegal activity; it is immoral, unethical and un-Islamic, and it serves no useful purpose whatever.
Oh, well okay. If you say so.
(Via Freerepublic.com.)
Posted by bill at 01:57 PM | Comments (0)
Truth creep
Oh, that infatuation with WMDs. Well yes, of course.
Posted by bill at 09:34 AM | Comments (0)
Contract dispute or transitional revolution?
The U.K. Guardian has dropped Mark Steyn's columns and, as LGF notes, "there's very little doubt that it's because of his clear-headed, uncompromising writing about Islam" -- Steyn's own explanation makes this more than plausible -- in other words, unambiguous critics of the Islam "religion of peace" meme are at risk of being silenced, which is pretty much what Steyn (among others) has predicted will happen.
Posted by bill at 09:03 AM | Comments (0)
March 12, 2006
Gender Geopolitics
They say the US is from Mars and Europe is from Venus. Soft power, dialogue, and compromise are the hallmarks of the female that is Europe. But what about scheming, flirting, manipulative woman? Consider Russia...
Posted by James G. Poulos at 12:42 PM | Comments (0)
March 09, 2006
How to make the Winter Olympics more interesting?
Like this.
(H/T: RFDTH.)
Posted by bill at 08:50 AM | Comments (1)
March 07, 2006
And in the least surprising news of the week...
...Barry Bonds is a juiced up freak. No kidding.
UPDATE - The NY Post's Mike Vaccaro suggests Bonds should go quietly, and go now:
Bonds had any respect for decorum, for doing the right thing, he would announce his retirement immediately and vanish from sight. If he does that, perhaps those of us with Hall of Fame votes will be able to eventually delineate, in good conscience, Bonds' two careers: pre-juice, in which he hit 456 home runs and was the most complete player of his generation, and post-juice, when he became a cartoon character who helped bring the game to its knees.
Unlike Mark McGwire, whose entire legacy was supplied by a syringe, Bonds used to be a natural immortal. Go away now, we may remember that someday. Stay even one day longer, in the face of this new evidentiary mountain, and pay the piper - forever.
Posted by bill at 05:38 PM | Comments (1)
"Spaceplane" mothballed?
Reader Tom L. alerts us to an intriguing piece in Aviation Week:
facing the possibility that this innovative "Blackstar" system may have been shelved, we elected to share what we've learned about it with our readers, rather than let an intriguing technological breakthrough vanish into "black world" history, known to only a few insiders. U.S. intelligence agencies may have quietly mothballed a highly classified two-stage-to-orbit spaceplane system designed in the 1980s for reconnaissance, satellite-insertion and, possibly, weapons delivery. It could be a victim of shrinking federal budgets strained by war costs, or it may not have met performance or operational goals.
Tom writes:
I'm just an amatuer aviation buff, I have always had a suspicion that something was going on, or went on, because of the lack of discussion and testing of materials intended for the NASA spaceplane (since cancelled) that was to replace the Space Shuttle. Man rating such materials and powerplants is an exhaustive process, that such little time and discussion was given towards these areas, many others like myself suspected that the reason why was because they had already been proven via a "Black" program. Well, Aviation Week & Space Technology (aka "Aviation Leak") comes forth this week with a cover story on the subject. Say hello to "Blackstar" - I hope this thing is still operational... Can't wait to see the photos if it truly did (does?) exist.
More: Over at Newsweek, James Oberg finds some skeptics.
Posted by bill at 01:01 PM | Comments (0)
March 06, 2006
Kirby Puckett, RIP
Former Minnesota Twins centerfielder Kirby Puckett died today, and he was just 44 years old. I hope he will be remembered as an incredible ballplayer, and the kind of effervescent spirit that so often resides in baseball's centerfields. He was the kind of player, and personality we wish Barry Bonds et al. would have been.
Kirty Puckett is a baseball immortal, but was a mortal soul and flawed like the rest of us. The world may never know what it meant to him to lose baseball so suddenly; it may never know why Puckett behaved like he did, descending so fast. I'm not making excuses for Kirby Puckett but I always had the sense the guy lost his way that morning he woke up and couldn't see anything out of his right eye. I also didn't know the man and might do better than to speculate but his bizarre behavior - see Frank Deford's article - always struck me as the product of despair, rather than anything sinister or corrupt. We know that Puckett degenerated, but we'll never know enough about the guy to know why.
In the end, we're baseball fans because we like to believe those players still see the game the way we do, and play it knowing every last one of us would be out there if we had the chance. In that sense Kirby Puckett was everything a fan could hope for in a player. We should be grateful we had a chance to see him play. May he rest in peace.
UPDATE: Minnesota's John Hinderaker offers his perspective.
Posted by bill at 08:46 PM | Comments (1)
NOLA's other legacy
In September I noted a piece by David Workman that exposed unlawful, widespread firearms confiscations in New Orleans in the post-Katrina chaos, motivated by what Workman noted was the "infuriating" sentiment that, "Only law enforcement are are allowed to have weapons." I also wondered why even conservatives seemed to be ignoring the issue, and still wonder the same thing.
Today Dave Nalle reminds us what happened, and why it matters:
At the height of the chaos in New Orleans, when gangs were ravishing the city the government decided to help out. Not by protecting neighborhoods and arresting looters. Instead they went after private citizens whose only crime was trying to defend themselves and their property.
Acting under an emergency statute which had never been used before, and on the orders of the Governor and Mayor, police in New Orleans, later supported by National Guardsmen, began going house to house and confiscating privately owned firearms in direct violation of the Second Amendment, leaving honest citizens who were already without water, food, electricity and decent shelter at the mercy of looters and other criminals. All these citizens wanted to do was to defend their homes and instead having already lost everything, they lost their last freedom, the freedom to defend themselves.
...this incident remains as an object lesson to all of us in how vulnerable we are in the face of government abuse of power, and how the interests of government are not always the interests of the people.
Read the whole thing.
Posted by bill at 12:15 PM | Comments (0)
March 05, 2006
Editor's Note
I've been a little bogged down, not paying too much attention to the news, and not blogging, either
...but will be back in business this week.
Posted by bill at 09:05 PM | Comments (0)
March 03, 2006
What clever blog application will they think of next?
Karol at Alarming News always finds the best Internet stuff. Today's installment brings us the Citizen Journal "word cloud":
Posted by bill at 09:24 AM | Comments (0)
March 02, 2006
Not that there's anything wrong with that
Gay marriage, gay divorce, and untapped millions for the legal profession.
Posted by bill at 08:14 PM | Comments (0)
Star Wars: The Empire Brokeback and other lunchtime viewing
More Star Wars ("A long time ago, I had a Ford Galaxy...far, far away").
Posted by bill at 01:13 PM | Comments (0)
Do you know what your kids are learning?
Teachers are liberals, mostly, and that's fine. One Social Studies teacher of mine used to tell his classes, "I'm a non-Marxist economic determinist; and I'm the only non-socialist in the Social Studies department." Many of us despised him, for other reasons, but most of his colleagues despise him, too, precisely because he would constantly remind us to be on guard for political rants. But that's so 1990's. Today there's nothing like some prostelitizing tripe to go along with geography lesson. Here is the audio of teacher Jay Bennish in front of his 10th-grade class, but hitting the MoveOn anti-everything talking points instead of teaching much to do with "World Geography." Let's see whether the NEA has anything to say.
Posted by bill at 12:55 PM | Comments (0)
March 01, 2006
Long live the blogosphere
Having been in a perfect storm lately of work and personal distractions, for about a week I've found myself in a 1990's-style MSM cocoon, relying on free daily newspapers, occasionally seeing late local news etc. Based on those sources, I had the feeling Iraq is degenerating, and fast, toward civil war, and that President Bush's approval ratings were heading toward the freezing mark. Thankfully this isn't the 1990's, though, and while I've never been thrilled with Bush's problems in Iraq, I went to Realclearpolitics.com to see what the chattering class was chattering about. And would you look at that! Sure, some people believe Iraq is a disaster, but maybe the "accepted fact" "headed to civil war" storyboard is just a touch overstated, even "hysterical." And maybe not all hope is lost.
There are other stories in this "is this a war or isn't it a war" war, too. Like the developments in the investigation of Joel Hinrichs, the would-be Sooner bomber, which gets weirder and weirder. And the anti-Islamism manifesto, which suggests more people are acknowledging we do have enemies, and many of them are Islamic.
Posted by bill at 04:52 PM | Comments (0)
