I just saw a commercial, sponsored by Anheuser-Busch, which touted beer-drinkers as “the nation’s best moderators.” Oh, give me a break.

Survey after survey has shown that, even among hard-core boozers, those with the greatest tendency towards moderation are those who drink it “straight”, or nearly so - “say, scotch-on-the-rocks, or a very-dry-martini.”

The fact is, the harshness of high-proof beverages produces a self-moderating effect. Save for a few real zoners, the hard-core drinkers consume at 30 proof or less.

There are so many conservatives taking so much objection to so many liberals taking such exception to the current administration’s policy, vis-a-vis Iraq, that one is driven to say: “yea, yea, what new do you have to offer?” I was just about to cite yet another liberal vanilla flavored opinion piece, but what’s the point? It’s time to say, “yea, fuck you, and your mother,” and get down to business.

And, history is with us: do you think The Revolution would have succeeded, where it up to popular opinion? How about Truman’s war against Japan? No, there are points in history where the bold must make bold moves. And these are those times.

At Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, Skippy objected to the term “blogosphere”, because nothing in the internet is truly “spherical”. I countered, with citations of “sphere of influence,” and “magnetosphere“.

Skippy still takes issue. But, as this point it is a digression from the main thrust of his (her?) thread, I thought we might take it up here. Oh, and BTW: anyone looking for a REALLY cool graphic of the magnetophere should go here: http://www.pparc.ac.uk/Nw/Magnetosphere.jpg

From: Sgt Mom
To: Assorted International Intellectuals of Note
Re: Choosing Your Sympathies and Your Allies

Item: “World Tribunal On Iraq Condemns US & Britian, Recognizes Right of Iraqis to Resist Occupation”

Item: “Eurolefties Fund Iraq Insurgency”

1. Well, watching the usual progressive, politically advanced, oh-so-enlightened international intellectual set embrace, intellectually and apparently financially, a coalition of neo-fascist, bitter-end Baathists, nostalgic for the mass-graves and torture of yore, and a set of nihilistic, head-chopping jihadi fanatics bent on joyless forced devotion to a deity that precisely dictates every jot and tittle of personal conduct… let’s just say I haven’t read of such a naked and cynically calculated coupling of ostensibly extreme political opposites since the Nazi-Soviet pact of 1939.

2. I cannot imagine what would inspire people and groups who have made a great display, over years and decades, of being against any kind of political and social oppression, of being against the abuse of the individual by the state and organized religion, of wanting to explore the boundaries of intellectual and artistic thought, who have reveled in sexual and political freedom, untrammeled by the constraints of former conventions. Apparently this is too good for the citizens of Iraq and Afghanistan. According to high-minded, international intellectual set, they out to be well-content with what they had before: brute political oppression, religiously-enforced ignorance, isolation from the rest of the world, the burka, the mass-graves, the lash, and poisoned gas rained down on Kurdish villages.

3. One lot is making an attempt to fund the insurgents in Iraq— to aid and assist them in their brave work of assassinating legitimately elected politicians, government employees, and blowing up policemen, grade school children and incidental passers-by — and the other merely confines itself to the intellectual embrace of those who would otherwise merit their pious condemnation, were they performing such sterling service elsewhere in the world. But of course, it is against the Americans, which makes any sort of outrage completely legitimate.

4. It surely must excite the professional envy of many an old retired tart from the Reeperbahn, or Rainbow Corner (whiling away a blameless retirement in a condo in Torremolinos, perhaps) at the professional speed with which a certain set of academics, activists and personalities went from administering intellectual fellatio on Uncle Joe Stalin and his heirs and switched over to neo-fascists and Islamic fundamentalists— without even swapping out the kneepads and taking a spritz of metaphorical Binaca.

5. I often wonder if such are not darkly attracted to it all: violence, the tremendous pull of authority exercised willfully and absolutely, the subtle glamour of the cult of personality: the dangerous hero in fatigues and kaffiyeh, or other “of the people” glamour, the super-man who is permitted and excused… every kind of abuse, corruption, atrocity and stupidity. The holy anointed, like a Stalin, an Arafat, a Castro, a Mao, get a free pass; everyone else puts up with smelly anarchists waving incomprehensible signs, and the occasional threat of summons to an international court.

6. I also wonder, if deep, deep down, the usual set are afraid, afraid of the vast irrational powers loose in the world, ancient powers long thought tamed by conventional civilized mores, powers that they sense cannot be controlled by any of the old means. I wonder if this is an attempt to control those powers by placating them; “I am being nice to you, I am not like them, I am giving you what you want— be nice to me!” And I wonder if— in their nice, morally-equivalent, post-modern way— they have ever heard of the axiom that the Devil cannot enter… unless he is invited.

7. Finally; who you ally yourself with — unless you make an ostentatious display of holding your nose, and making it obvious that it is a short-term and expedient alliance, says a lot— perhaps more than Ms. Roy, et al, have bargained for.

Sincerely
Sgt Mom

In a bit of intellectual disintegrity, right on the heals of declaring that government can seize the homes of private individuals, the Supremes pronounced that the cable lines of giant corporations are protected:

“Today’s ruling is bad news for millions of Americans who are overpaying billions of dollars every year in cable Internet service,” said Mehrdad Saberi, chairman of the California ISP Association. “The interests of American consumers and businesses have been sold out as the FCC and now the court have defined Internet service in such a narrow way that allows cable companies to escape proper regulation. Nearly every innovation in Internet service has come from independent ISPs. Now that source of Internet innovation, consumer choice and affordability is threatened with extinction as cable companies block the benefits of competition.”

Not that I really see this as a bad ruling, but I don’t see how the public is not better served by the lower prices and improved service that invariably comes from competition, than from a highly speculative community redevelopment project.

The two cases are No. 04-277, National Cable & Telecomm. Ass’n v. Brand X Internet Servs., and No. 04-281, FCC v. Brand X Internet Servs. I will be surfing the blawgs later tonight looking for other opinions on this.

Update: David Kopel at Volokh has an interesting post, in which he points to this policy study he did in 1999. He states that open access to cable systems would discourage cable providers from making improvements in infrastructure, as they would have to share the benefits of those improvements with companies which made no such investment.

I agree, and see an analogous situation with Kelo: Homeowners and small investors will be far less likely to make improvements and renovations in structures, particularly in less affluent areas most likely to be targeted for redevelopment.

After Timmer’s earlier post, I thought it might be enlightening to post some excerpts from the NYTimes’ David Brooks’ Sunday column:

Jeffrey Sachs, as you may know, is the Columbia University economist who has done more to put poverty in Africa atop the global agenda than anybody else. He has hectored and lobbied the developed world to forgive debts, set goals and increase aid to ameliorate the suffering of the extremely poor.

But Sachs is a child of the French Enlightenment. At the end of his new book, “The End of Poverty,” he delivers an unreconstructed tribute to the 18th-century Enlightenment, when leading thinkers had an amazing confidence in their ability to refashion reality so that it would conform to reason.

[…]

Sachs is also a materialist. He dismisses or downplays those who believe that human factors like corruption, greed, institutions, governance, conflict and traditions have contributed importantly to Africa’s suffering. Instead, he emphasizes material causes: lack of natural resources, lack of technology, bad geography and poverty itself as a self-perpetuating trap.

This gives him an impressive confidence on the malleability of human societies. Though $2.3 trillion has been spent over the past 50 years to address global poverty, without producing anything like the results we would have hoped for, Sachs is sure that with his insights, and most important, with more money, extreme poverty can be eliminated with one big, final push. “We can realistically envision a world without extreme poverty by the year 2025,” he writes. “Ending the poverty trap will be much easier than it appears,” he declares.

[…]

Instead of Sachs’s monumental grand push to end poverty, the Bush administration has devised the Millennium Challenge Account, which is not dismissed by Sachs, but not heralded either. This program is built upon the assumption that aid works only where there is good governance and good governance exists only where the local folks originate and believe in the programs. M.C.A. directs aid to countries that have taken responsibility for their own reform.

It has the faults of its gradualist virtues. I recently sat in on a meeting in Mozambique between local and American officials. It was clear that the program, while well conceived, has been horribly executed. The locals had been given only the vaguest notions of what sort of projects the U.S. is willing to finance. After two years of trying they had received nothing.

Nonetheless, the Bush approach, when reformed, at least builds on the experience of the past decades, while Sachs, as reviewers have noticed, repeats the 1960’s. If, à la Sachs, we assume money translates easily into growth, if we pour aid into Africa without regard to local institutions, we will do little good, we will exhaust donors and we will discredit the aid enterprise for years to come.

No, ending poverty in Africa will not be easy. There are entrenched interests there dedicated to continuing the impoverishment of the people. For Africa to prosper, those interests must be eradicated. And history tells us that seldom happens without the expense of blood, as well as treasure.

Packing the van and heading West until we leave cornfields and run into soybeans and ‘taters and sagebrush and mountains and jackelopes and huckleberries and fields of mint leaves and jerked elk and pans full of breaded croppie and sunfish.

I might blog while we’re gone, but don’t count on it.

Wow…Connors can happy dance…who knew?

One might think that the viewership of C-SPAN would be made up of the most intelligent, urbane, and sophisticated individuals this society had to offer.

But I have been watching Washington Journal semi-regularly (I frequently wake at 4 am, but seldom make it to 7) for the past several months. And I must say: compared to my brief experiences with talk radio, this is far worse; by-and-large, these people are the dregs of political society.

And I have tried to call a few times (always on the “others” line). And, save for a couple of interminable rings, I have always been met with a busy signal. And I wonder if this doesn’t have something to do with those who actually get through, and get on the air. Perhaps the only ones with the perseverance are the real kooks?

With funding for public broadcasting an issue just now, and one big glaring facet of the controversy being political bias, you would think that PBS stations would shy away from such politically charged “documentaries” as what I am currently watching on KLCS: Oil on Ice. I mean, this is about as much of a documentary as Fahrenheit 9/11. This is pure propaganda. The actual facts presented are slim, generally twisted, and come only in short snippets. Between those are these long stretches of pap, designed strictly to appeal to the emotions - complete with a heart-wrenching soundtrack. There are all these Rousseauvian images of native peoples living quite primitively, hunting/fishing for subsistence, and (of course) “using every part of the animal.” There is a very brief mention of all the benefits these people have gotten as a result of Prudhoe Bay oil, all countered by the requisite “buts”. Nowhere is it mentioned that the strongest support for drilling in ANWR among any group of Americans, except perhaps oil company execs., is with those same native Americans.

Oh, I can’t even believe this, now they are talking about the evils of automobiles, coral reefs, rain forests, and (of course) global warming.

I think I have to go hug the toilet.

Update: Just came back from the bathroom to hear them proclaim the “declining fuel efficiency” of automobiles. Fact: the real “fuel efficiency” of automobiles running on Otto-cycle gasoline engines; that is, the amount of energy delivered, versus the theoretical total chemical energy of the fuel consumed, has been increasing steadily, and now exceeds 98% under optimum conditions. Another proclamation: “If everyone in America were driving vehicles as ‘fuel efficient’ as the ‘best’ hybrids, we wouldn’t need to drill in ANWR.” Fact: The Honda Impulse only meets the transportation needs of a tiny fraction of American consumers. And if you aren’t satisfying your needs, you are not being “efficient”; you are just depriving yourself.

Please translate the following: “Klaatu Barada Nikto.”

For this week’s winner: A free Kevin Connors action figure, as soon as I seal the deal on that marketing tie-in.

Oh, and of course, using search engines, or other automated means, would be cheating.

ONE Blog is up.

Who’s with ONE?

Watch the video.

ONE. The campaign to make poverty history. Add your voice.

Other voices.

This from OpinionJournal’s Best of the Web:

That Boy Ain’t Right, I Tell You What
You’ve heard of “South Park Conservatives,” those who lean to the right and enjoy the exuberantly obscene, and politically incorrect, Comedy Central series. (Buy the book here.) Matt Bai of the New York Times magazine is hoping there’s a counterpart, “King of the Hill Democrats.”

Bai interviews Gov. Mike Easley of North Carolina, who is “is so obsessed with the show that he instructs his pollster to separate the state’s voters into those who watch ‘King of the Hill’ and those who don’t so he can find out whether his arguments on social and economic issues are making sense to the sitcom’s fans.” Easley has a whole theory of main character Hank Hill’s political philosophy:

Easley told me that Hank would never support a budget like the one North Carolina’s Senate recently passed, which would drop some 65,000 mostly elderly citizens from the Medicaid rolls; Hank, after all, has pitched in to support his own father, a brutish war veteran, and he would never condone a community’s walking away from its ailing parents. Similarly, Hank may be a lover of the environment–he was furious when kids trashed the local campground–but he resents self-righteous environmentalists like the ones who forced Arlen to install those annoying low-flow toilets. Voters like Hank, if they had heard about it on the evening news, would have supported Easley’s ‘’Clean Smokestacks'’ law, which forced North Carolina’s coal-powered electric plants to burn cleaner, but only because industry was a partner in the final bill, rather than its target.

We’re pretty sure South Park conservatives don’t sit around trying to figure out what Eric Cartman’s position would be on tort reform or the Central American Free Trade Agreement. It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that Democrats take cartoons far too seriously.

As Hank Hill has praised both Ann Richards and George W. Bush, one must question what his political affiliation is.

Personally, I think Hank is a conservative learning to exist in an increasingly liberal world.

Yes, my favorite human piniata, of whom I wrote earlier
“I think they should keep him; for the sheer amusement value. Professor Churchill has inestimable value as the bulls-eye for metaphoric target practice; chained to the academic stocks as it were, focus for scorn, derision, for deconstruction of his fraudulent scholarship, vilely insulting writings and speeches, his questionable status as a “native American”, extremely thin academic qualifications, bullying demeanor, and general fuckwittedness. There is just so much good materiel to work with; we could go on laughing at him for years, picking him up in the intervals between bigger and more transient matters for a little more thrashing, much like my cats derive hours of amusement and exercise from batting around palmetto bugs. I’d rather go back and thrash him every once in a while for practice, than have him all over the media being a martyr.”

According to this, it seems that he would like to encourage the conscripted troops to “frag” their officers. No one seems to have pointed out to the dear professor that the forces have been all-volunteer for simply decades. I know that it is an axiom that the military is always fighting the last war, but it looks like the anti-warriors are fighting the one before that….

(PS— Courtesy of Rantburg the source for all things bizarre)

I don’t think everyone who’s against the way America is fighting the War on Terror is a traitor or an enemy but, like it or not, I believe they’re still aiding the enemy. Not intentionally. I’m not judged by my intentions, I’m judged by my actions and by the results of my actions.

Better?

I’ve been paying $10 for a haircut for the last 10 years. But my stylist has just retired. I shudder to think what I might have to pay now.

On May 18, 1999, Bill Clinton had his hair cut in Air Force 1 on the LAX tarmac, by one of Hollywood’s top stylists, Christophe, reportedly holding up air traffic (delays in air traffic later debunked). The word at the time was that Christophe got $300 for a typical haircut. Jose Eber was just on Cavuto, talking about “the $800 haircut” (he gets $400-500). On a recent episode of Bravo’s Blow Out, Jonathan Antin said he gets $500 for a haircut in his shop, and $5000 for a “housecall.”

OpinionJournal’s John Fund looks again at America’s deficiency in history education, with an eye towards Philadelphia’s recent requirement for an African-American history course:

Other critics note that schools already put on programs every February for Black History Month, something not done for other ethnic groups. They fear a separate course will diminish student understanding of the overall American experience. Back in the 1960s, novelist James Baldwin testified before Congress that the triumphs and tribulations of black history should be woven into all history courses, rather than segregated. Diane Ravitch, a leading education reformer, agrees that African-American history should be studied but hopes it will be “based on the best scholarship, not ideology or politics.”

Dream on. What’s more likely to happen is that the creation of a specific African-American history course will fuel demands from other groups, such as Hispanics or gays, for similar history mandates.

[…]

We are risking something very basic by failing to communicate the basic ideals of America and instead, as historian David McCullough told me, “raising a generation of students who are historically illiterate.” But many of those students will eventually become curious, and without a solid grounding in the past, they could easily fall prey to revisionist history, whether it be of the Confederate or Oliver Stone variety.

[…]

When Ronald Reagan delivered his 1989 farewell address to the nation, he noted there was “a great tradition of warnings in presidential farewells,” and he would make no exception. He told his audience that the “one that’s been on my mind for some time” was that the country was failing to adequately teach our children the American story and what it represents in the history of the world. “We’ve got to teach history based not on what’s in fashion, but what’s important,” he said. “If we forget what we did, we won’t know who we are. I am warning of an eradication of the American memory that could result, ultimately, in an erosion of the American spirit.”

As well-meaning as Philadelphia’s attempt to raise the self-esteem of black students may be, we should take time this coming Fourth of July to realize that our failure to teach America’s story demands far more strenuous solutions.

Philadelphia is notorious for having some of the nation’s worst schools. As is typical, the curriculum is being determined by political fad and fancy, rather than an objective look at what’s required to turn out successful graduates.

…who thinks moving the war on terror to Iraq is a traitor. They’re just wrong.

Via Dean Esmay who’s got a lot of other links debunking the things that “everybody knows.” Oh…and where did the WMD go? I don’t know either, but it’s coming from somewhere.

…The Al-Arian trial in Florida is perhaps the biggest yet in the Islamofascist War. Yet only hard-core news junkies even know about it. The MSM attitude is typified by the NYTimes’ Eric Lichtblau:

Clearly the Mississippi trial warranted that coverage, but one can make the case that Islamic Jihad is to the 21st century what the Klan was to the 20th and that the trial of Al-Arian is every bit analogous to Killen’s.

The Times, however, after three stories covering the opening of the Al-Arian trial has decided to take it off the daily beat.

Eric Lichtblau, the Times reporter on the case, wrote in an e-mail to The Jewish Week, “It’s uncertain when I’ll be back in Tampa, but we’ll be monitoring the trial and probably doing occasional stories along the way on key witnesses, the start of the defense, closings and the verdict. That’s the norm for a case of interest like this one. There are very few trials that we or other national media cover on a day-to-day or even weekly basis, and the slow start for the prosecution in Al-Arian didn’t suggest there would be enough to warrant frequent coverage. But if you hear of something interesting on it, let me know.”

Hat Tip: Roger L. Simon

The raging debate over the use of Guantanamo prison to hold detainees such as those who are there now, whom the government calls enemy combatatants, lacks perspective. There is no sense of judgement on the side of those who oppose Gitmo, as to what we should do with the detainees. According to our military authorities, the 550 or so prisoners there are dangerous, and would kill Americans if released. At least one case of this has been confirmed, with one raghead found on the battlefield who had been released, and there are probably more instances that we ordinary citizens just don’t know about. So, what do we do?

All I hear, coming from the left and from various other America-haters, is that we should close the prison. No one that I’ve heard from, has suggested what we should do with the detainees, and that is the question that must be answered before the controversy moves even one inch from its present position. Unless we put these folks on some uncharted south sea island, with no means of escape, perhaps the best idea is to leave them right where they are. Torture? I don’t think so. The evidence indicates that, from the food they eat, to the deference shown their so-called “holy book,” the qu’ran, they seem to be treated far more humanely and even with more respect, than they deserve. These guys are prisoners for Pete’s sake! And here we are, putting on display just how good they have it, better than the soldiers guarding them. And reports are, that all of them have gained weight! ARRRGGGHH!

Let’s let the President end the debate, leave them at Gitmo, with a few changes: (1) a little less appealing food in the prison diet. I think PBJ sandwiches a couple of days a week for the evening meal, might be appropriate — replacing the fish almondine. (2) Hard labor. Get them out of their cells, put them in a deep rock pit, and give them hammers with the order to make little ones out of big ones. A six-day work schedule of 12-hour days, somewhat like I had to work in Southeast Asia a few years ago, might be the ticket. (3) No TV or radio. Get rid of the luxuries, let them be a bit less informed, and with them tired out from the work schedule, they might not be so interested in starting trouble. (4) Let them have some hope of going home. At the age of eighty-five, provided they have not caused any trouble for the past 20 years, they could be released. Any detainee released, who gets back into trouble fighting against the US, would face automatic execution, no appeals, just fry ‘em.

Maybe, with less pampering and more prison-like environments, these idiot camel jockeys might feel a little less inclined to make jihad against us, and they may quake in their boots instead of grinning when the name of America is mentioned. Just a few ideas, maybe somebody has a few more?

I am currently watching A Few Good Men, on TCM. And there is little to be ashamed of with this. After all, in-and-of itself, this is, arguably, Tom Cruise’ best movie - after Rain Man.

But what gets me is: this is a classic? Man - it’s only thirteen years old!?!?! I mean, this certainly has more substance than, say, Mister Roberts. But it doesn’t have the gravitates which comes with age.

Is it just me?

Update: Perhaps what makes this a classic is Nicholson, as Col. Nathan R. Jessep, and the fact that this was released eleven years before Gitmo became a POW camp. I can just see him spitting out in Dick Durbin’s face; “you can’t handle the truth.”

Update II: After watching this movie again, in full, including the loathsome and anticlimactic ending, I must say, it is strictly the questioning of Col. Jessep which makes this film a classic. In an instant, this rises from a petty legal who-dun-it, to high courtroom drama, on a par with To Kill A Mockingbird or Inherit The Wind. Yes, for those few minutes, this film certainly deserves a place among the pantheon of classics.