The Monkette2B wanted to see this farcical comedy/satire and the Monkette2B tends to get what she wants from The Monk. The movie is about a teenage girl who is brought up in a fundamentalist Christian home and goes to a fundamentalist Christian high school. She fears her boyfriend is gay, and after an accident has a vision of Jesus, which she interprets as Jesus telling her to try to cure the boyfriend by doing more sexual things with him -- ultimately they had sex and the girl got pregnant. Then the craziness ensues: including hiding the pregnancy, the actions of the nutter fundamentalist Miss Perfect friend, the Jewish misfit girl in the fundamentalist Christian school stirring things up against the school administration and befriending the pregnant girl, etc.
All told, funny unsubtle satire. Jena Malone starred as the teenage girl and unlike most 17-year olds in Hollywood, she looks like a high schooler. She was OK, more a leaf in the breeze of the movie than anything else. Mandy Moore played the Miss Perfect, Hillary Faye with some giddy excess. Better still, Eva Amurri as the Jewish troublemaker who stole most of the scenes she was in, and Macauley Culkin as Hillary Faye's embittered paraplegic brother. Years ago some movie reviewer, in his review of The Good Son, wrote that Elijah Wood was a better actor than Culkin, but Culkin had a better role. Today, that's simply not true. Culkin is at his best when understated and not given the melodramatic lead role -- see My Girl. In Saved, he was very good as the sardonic and quietly anti-establishment unfavored sibling.
Monday, June 14, 2004
Just freakish
That's the Yankees' proclivity for pulling out wins from losses. Today they wasted a good start by Javy Vazquez (8 IP, 2 ER, 8 K), couldn't touch their former teammate David Wells, and pulled even from 2-0 down with consecutive solo homers with two outs in the ninth off San Diego's closer, Trevor Hoffman (who's no stiff). Then, they cough up three runs in the 12th, trail 5-2 and string together a walk, double, RBI groundout, walk, RBI single, RBI double, intentional BB and sac fly to win 6-5. The posers who coughed up the lead, Rod Beck (who now has a high school level fastball) and Jay Witasick (a stiff the Yanks dumped a few years ago). The Yanks are 40-21 -- that's 32-10 since getting thumped by the RedSux in NYC in April.
Friday, June 11, 2004
Nice eulogy
From George H.W. Bush. Former Pres. Bush and Reagan were not friends like Clinton-Gore '92 or Clinton-Gore '96. Reagan defeated Bush in a somewhat feisty primary campaign and actually chose him to be VP because Reagan rejected Gerald Ford's major condition for accepting the VP post under Reagan -- Ford's control of foreign policy. Reagan rejected the semi-appeasing realpolitik approach that Ford and Kissinger preferred in dealing with the USSR because Reagan wanted a more aggressive and confrontational approach that challenged the USSR's legitimacys.
Some details of that are here in the New York Times archive in an article by Reagan's first NSA, Richard Allen (although Michael Deaver and Ed Meese later wrote a letter to the editor questioning Allen's memory of events).
Here is an excerpt regarding Bush, Reagan and their mutual respect from a Policy Review article describing the VP position and its evolution:
Although their respective staffs had not “meshed” as well as those of their predecessors, Ronald Reagan and George Bush devised a working relationship that, while not as personally close as the one between Carter and Mondale, exuded equal respect and trust. It began with Reagan’s willingness to set aside “voodoo economics” and other criticism Bush had leveled against him and his proposals when they were competing for the 1980 presidential nomination.
With Reaganites simmering over the influence of “Bushies” in Reagan’s administration, Reagan named Bush’s friend and former campaign manager James Baker his chief of staff and retained other Bush advisers . . . in high posts. Like Eisenhower and Ford, Reagan assigned Bush some line responsibility and called upon him during crises. Bush chaired Reagan’s Task Force on Regulatory Relief and served as foreign policy “short stop” between dueling Secretary of State Alexander Haig and National Security Adviser Richard Allen.
Bush earned the trust of Reagan’s inner circle through the dignity, reminiscent of Nixon’s, with which he comported himself while Reagan was recovering from a near-fatal assassination attempt. Mindful of Rockefeller’s experience, he avoided situations that placed him at odds with senior administration aides and conserved his time by delegating much of his line responsibility to trusted and competent aides such as his counsel, C. Boyden Gray.
Bush upgraded the vice president’s staff operation on Capitol Hill, where he actively lobbied on behalf of Reagan proposals. He regularly attended meetings of Senate committee chairmen, sat in on its Policy Conference, and kept up old ties with friends he had made through his years of service in the House.
Like Rockefeller and Mondale, Bush used his occasions alone with the president to share his views on policy matters. As a former CIA director, UN ambassador, and China envoy, he brought a unique perspective on foreign affairs. Nancy Reagan later remembered that her husband valued these meetings because he knew with certainty that nothing he and Bush discussed would be leaked.
Some details of that are here in the New York Times archive in an article by Reagan's first NSA, Richard Allen (although Michael Deaver and Ed Meese later wrote a letter to the editor questioning Allen's memory of events).
Here is an excerpt regarding Bush, Reagan and their mutual respect from a Policy Review article describing the VP position and its evolution:
Although their respective staffs had not “meshed” as well as those of their predecessors, Ronald Reagan and George Bush devised a working relationship that, while not as personally close as the one between Carter and Mondale, exuded equal respect and trust. It began with Reagan’s willingness to set aside “voodoo economics” and other criticism Bush had leveled against him and his proposals when they were competing for the 1980 presidential nomination.
With Reaganites simmering over the influence of “Bushies” in Reagan’s administration, Reagan named Bush’s friend and former campaign manager James Baker his chief of staff and retained other Bush advisers . . . in high posts. Like Eisenhower and Ford, Reagan assigned Bush some line responsibility and called upon him during crises. Bush chaired Reagan’s Task Force on Regulatory Relief and served as foreign policy “short stop” between dueling Secretary of State Alexander Haig and National Security Adviser Richard Allen.
Bush earned the trust of Reagan’s inner circle through the dignity, reminiscent of Nixon’s, with which he comported himself while Reagan was recovering from a near-fatal assassination attempt. Mindful of Rockefeller’s experience, he avoided situations that placed him at odds with senior administration aides and conserved his time by delegating much of his line responsibility to trusted and competent aides such as his counsel, C. Boyden Gray.
Bush upgraded the vice president’s staff operation on Capitol Hill, where he actively lobbied on behalf of Reagan proposals. He regularly attended meetings of Senate committee chairmen, sat in on its Policy Conference, and kept up old ties with friends he had made through his years of service in the House.
Like Rockefeller and Mondale, Bush used his occasions alone with the president to share his views on policy matters. As a former CIA director, UN ambassador, and China envoy, he brought a unique perspective on foreign affairs. Nancy Reagan later remembered that her husband valued these meetings because he knew with certainty that nothing he and Bush discussed would be leaked.
Final Public Farewell
I have been listening to Ronan Tynan sing Amazing Grace at the Reagan Funeral Service.
Here is the conclusion of Reagan's final farewell writing, from November 5, 1994, courtesy National Review:
In closing, let me thank you, the American people, for giving me the great honor of allowing me to serve as your president. When the Lord calls me home, whenever that day may be, I will leave with the greatest love for this country of ours and eternal optimism for its future.
I now begin the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life. I know that for America there will always be a bright dawn ahead.
Thank you, my friends. May G[*]d always bless you.
No, Mr. President. Thank YOU.
Here is the conclusion of Reagan's final farewell writing, from November 5, 1994, courtesy National Review:
In closing, let me thank you, the American people, for giving me the great honor of allowing me to serve as your president. When the Lord calls me home, whenever that day may be, I will leave with the greatest love for this country of ours and eternal optimism for its future.
I now begin the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life. I know that for America there will always be a bright dawn ahead.
Thank you, my friends. May G[*]d always bless you.
No, Mr. President. Thank YOU.
Reagan deficits and Milton Friedman
Hopefully, Milton Friedman's op-ed in the Wall Street Journal will be on-line this weekend (Opinion Journal's Saturday and Sunday offerings are usually pieces that appeared only in the print edition and the pay-service on-line WSJ only). But here's a glimpse of what Friedman said about Reagan, the deficits and the size of the Federal government:
The trend before Mr. Reagan is one of galloping socialism. Had it continued, federal non-defense spending would be more than half again what it is now. Mr. Reagan brought the gallop to a literal standstill. He did so in three ways:
• First, by slashing tax rates and so cutting the Congress's allowance.
• Second, by being willing to take a severe recession to end inflation. In my opinion, no other postwar president would have been willing to back the Volcker Fed in its tough stance in 1981-82. I can testify from personal knowledge that Mr. Reagan knew what he was doing . . .
• Third, and in some ways the least recognized, by attacking government regulations. Figure 2 . . . [showing fewer pages added to Fed. Register under Reagan than Carter, Bush I] plots the number of pages added to the Federal Register each year. The Federal Register records the thousands of detailed rules and regulations that federal agencies churn out in the course of a year. They are not laws and yet they have the effect of laws and like laws impose costs and restrain activities. Here too, the period before President Reagan was one of galloping socialism. The Reagan years were ones of retreating socialism, and the post-Reagan years, of creeping socialism.
The trend before Mr. Reagan is one of galloping socialism. Had it continued, federal non-defense spending would be more than half again what it is now. Mr. Reagan brought the gallop to a literal standstill. He did so in three ways:
• First, by slashing tax rates and so cutting the Congress's allowance.
• Second, by being willing to take a severe recession to end inflation. In my opinion, no other postwar president would have been willing to back the Volcker Fed in its tough stance in 1981-82. I can testify from personal knowledge that Mr. Reagan knew what he was doing . . .
• Third, and in some ways the least recognized, by attacking government regulations. Figure 2 . . . [showing fewer pages added to Fed. Register under Reagan than Carter, Bush I] plots the number of pages added to the Federal Register each year. The Federal Register records the thousands of detailed rules and regulations that federal agencies churn out in the course of a year. They are not laws and yet they have the effect of laws and like laws impose costs and restrain activities. Here too, the period before President Reagan was one of galloping socialism. The Reagan years were ones of retreating socialism, and the post-Reagan years, of creeping socialism.
Invaluable Resource of the Day
Andrew Sullivan's rundown on what contemporary chatterers thought of Reagan. Here are a couple of the most spectacularly stupid ones:
"A few years from now, I believe, Reaganism will seem a weird and improbable memory, a strange interlude of national hallucination, rather as the McCarthyism of the early 1950s and the youth rebellion of the late 1960s appear to us today." - Arthur "Always Wrong" Schlesinger, Washington Post, May 1, 1988.
"Are we rushing headlong into the next step of those 40 years of progressions by which we do something then they do something, by which we pretend that we're going to build this and it will somehow strengthen our deterrent then they do it, and low and behold, the next thing we know is, the President of the United States is addressing the nation saying, ‘My fellow Americans, I hate to tell you this, but the Soviet Union is deploying more of these, and we have to respond, and I'm asking the Congress for more money in order to respond.’ Star Wars is guaranteed to do that, and it's guaranteed to threaten the heavens -- the one line we haven't yet crossed with weaponry: the heavens." – Senator John Kerry, on SDI, the program that brought the evil empire to its knees, August 5, 1986.
"In his distaste for bilateral efforts to manage the superpower rivalry and his instinctive predilection for unilateral ones, Reagan is counting on American technological and economic predominance to prevail in the end. The most striking, and questionable, theme in his star wars speech was his apparent belief that the U.S. could mobilize its scientific community and its economic resources in quest of an impenetrable antiballistic-missile shield over the entire nation without triggering perilously destabilizing countermeasures, both offensive and defensive, on the part of the U.S.S.R. Reagan's views notwithstanding, there is little reason to hope that the many handicaps of the Soviet economy will be decisively advantageous to the U.S. in the long run, allowing the U.S. to ‘beat’ the U.S.S.R. in an arms race." -- Strobe Talbott, Time, April 18, 1983.
There are a bunch more, each as ludicrous as those above.
In addition, see Max Boot's column regarding contemporary opinion, Reagan and Bush.
"A few years from now, I believe, Reaganism will seem a weird and improbable memory, a strange interlude of national hallucination, rather as the McCarthyism of the early 1950s and the youth rebellion of the late 1960s appear to us today." - Arthur "Always Wrong" Schlesinger, Washington Post, May 1, 1988.
"Are we rushing headlong into the next step of those 40 years of progressions by which we do something then they do something, by which we pretend that we're going to build this and it will somehow strengthen our deterrent then they do it, and low and behold, the next thing we know is, the President of the United States is addressing the nation saying, ‘My fellow Americans, I hate to tell you this, but the Soviet Union is deploying more of these, and we have to respond, and I'm asking the Congress for more money in order to respond.’ Star Wars is guaranteed to do that, and it's guaranteed to threaten the heavens -- the one line we haven't yet crossed with weaponry: the heavens." – Senator John Kerry, on SDI, the program that brought the evil empire to its knees, August 5, 1986.
"In his distaste for bilateral efforts to manage the superpower rivalry and his instinctive predilection for unilateral ones, Reagan is counting on American technological and economic predominance to prevail in the end. The most striking, and questionable, theme in his star wars speech was his apparent belief that the U.S. could mobilize its scientific community and its economic resources in quest of an impenetrable antiballistic-missile shield over the entire nation without triggering perilously destabilizing countermeasures, both offensive and defensive, on the part of the U.S.S.R. Reagan's views notwithstanding, there is little reason to hope that the many handicaps of the Soviet economy will be decisively advantageous to the U.S. in the long run, allowing the U.S. to ‘beat’ the U.S.S.R. in an arms race." -- Strobe Talbott, Time, April 18, 1983.
There are a bunch more, each as ludicrous as those above.
In addition, see Max Boot's column regarding contemporary opinion, Reagan and Bush.
Reagan from the East
This is the view from those who lived behind the Iron Curtain: Lech Walesa on Reagan. His key point:
When talking about Ronald Reagan, I have to be personal. We in Poland took him so personally. Why? Because we owe him our liberty. This can't be said often enough by people who lived under oppression for half a century, until communism fell in 1989.
Also, read Dan Henninger's piece on the battleground of ideas and Reagan's influence.
When talking about Ronald Reagan, I have to be personal. We in Poland took him so personally. Why? Because we owe him our liberty. This can't be said often enough by people who lived under oppression for half a century, until communism fell in 1989.
Also, read Dan Henninger's piece on the battleground of ideas and Reagan's influence.
Thursday, June 10, 2004
Debunking the bunkmeisters
Earlier this week I linked to the anti-Chomsky weblog. Today, I offer this in-depth take-down of Howard Zinn. A well-deserved whipping for the pacifist useful idiot.
Also, here's a noteworthy short essay by left-wing columnist Eric Alterman (about 22nd on the list) detailing why he is not a fan of Chomsky.
And here's an article blasting Eric Hobsbawm for wasting his sharp mind on a devotion to Communism.
Also, here's a noteworthy short essay by left-wing columnist Eric Alterman (about 22nd on the list) detailing why he is not a fan of Chomsky.
And here's an article blasting Eric Hobsbawm for wasting his sharp mind on a devotion to Communism.
Libya v. Saudi Arabia ???
Qaddafi and the Saudis are not friendly by any stretch. But did Qaddafi plan and/or finance the assassination of Crown Prince Abdullah -- a plan unearthed when two co-conspirators squealed to the US and Saudi authorities? Details of the (alleged) plot and reaction to it are in this article.
Hat-tip -- the wongdoer.
Hat-tip -- the wongdoer.
Reagan tribute of the day
This is from VP Dick Cheney yesterday, delivered at the Capitol. Here is the essence of the speech:
Ronald Reagan was more than an historic figure. He was a providential man, who came along just when our nation and the world most needed him. And believing as he did that there is a plan at work in each life, he accepted not only the great duties that came to him, but also the great trials that came near the end. When he learned of his illness, his first thoughts were of Nancy. And who else but Ronald Reagan could face his own decline and death with a final message of hope to his country, telling us that for America there is always a bright dawn ahead. Fellow Americans, here lies a graceful and a gallant man.
And for more fun, here is National Review's reaction to the "Ash-Heap of History" speech Reagan gave before the UK Parliament in 1982.
Ronald Reagan was more than an historic figure. He was a providential man, who came along just when our nation and the world most needed him. And believing as he did that there is a plan at work in each life, he accepted not only the great duties that came to him, but also the great trials that came near the end. When he learned of his illness, his first thoughts were of Nancy. And who else but Ronald Reagan could face his own decline and death with a final message of hope to his country, telling us that for America there is always a bright dawn ahead. Fellow Americans, here lies a graceful and a gallant man.
And for more fun, here is National Review's reaction to the "Ash-Heap of History" speech Reagan gave before the UK Parliament in 1982.
Reading assignment of the day
How US tax policies hurt US corporations' ability to compete internationally. A primer from Neal Boortz (second item); here's an excerpt:
Our draconian corporate tax regulations actually force companies out of this country for their own fiscal health.
We'll illustrate this by considering a fictional consulting company called BoortzCorp. . . . We'll consider two scenarios; one where BoortzCorp is incorporated in the United States, the other where BoortzCorp is based in Bermuda.
BoortzCorp, U.S. Since BoortzCorp is a U.S. corporation federal tax regulations will require BoortzCorp to pay federal corporate income taxes on every single penny it earns. It doesn't matter whether that money is earned in the U.S. or not. If BoortzCorp earns $15 Million in [for example] Belgium it will not only have to pay whatever taxes are due on those earnings in Belgium, but in the United States as well. Now the U.S. tax laws will allow a credit to BoortzCorp in the amount of the taxes paid to Belgium, but since U.S. corporate income taxes are generally higher than most other nations, there will be additional taxes due to Washington. In some enlightened foreign countries there are no corporate income taxes at all. In that case, the U.S. collects the full amount.
BoortzCorp Bermuda. . . . BoortzCorp reincorporates in Bermuda. The home office stays in the U.S., as do all but about five employees. But now the tax laws are different. The BoortzCorp subsidiary operating in the United States will pay corporate income taxes to the U.S. government on earnings made in the U.S. The BoortzCorp operation in Belgium, however, will pay income taxes on earnings realized in Belgium, but will owe nothing to the U.S. government for those earnings. That will leave BoortzCorp with additional cash that can be used to hire additional people, expand the business, or pay dividends to shareholders, many of whom, by the way, live in the United States.
Let's think about foreign corporations doing business in the U.S. Let's say there is a German company, KrautCorp, that does exactly the same type of work that BoortzCorp does. KrautCorp operates in the United States. BoortzCorp U.S. operates in Germany. KrautCorp will pay taxes to the U.S. government on earnings realized in the U.S., but not on earnings realized in Germany. BoortzCorp will pay taxes to the German government on earnings realized there, but will also pay taxes on its German earnings to the U.S. government. Since the tax burden to Boortz Corp U.S. is higher, KrautCorp has a competitive advantage. It can undercut BoortzCorp prices and still earn exactly the same profit. In other words, the U.S. corporate tax laws give a competitive advantage to foreign corporations. Now that makes perfect sense, doesn't it?
Our draconian corporate tax regulations actually force companies out of this country for their own fiscal health.
We'll illustrate this by considering a fictional consulting company called BoortzCorp. . . . We'll consider two scenarios; one where BoortzCorp is incorporated in the United States, the other where BoortzCorp is based in Bermuda.
BoortzCorp, U.S. Since BoortzCorp is a U.S. corporation federal tax regulations will require BoortzCorp to pay federal corporate income taxes on every single penny it earns. It doesn't matter whether that money is earned in the U.S. or not. If BoortzCorp earns $15 Million in [for example] Belgium it will not only have to pay whatever taxes are due on those earnings in Belgium, but in the United States as well. Now the U.S. tax laws will allow a credit to BoortzCorp in the amount of the taxes paid to Belgium, but since U.S. corporate income taxes are generally higher than most other nations, there will be additional taxes due to Washington. In some enlightened foreign countries there are no corporate income taxes at all. In that case, the U.S. collects the full amount.
BoortzCorp Bermuda. . . . BoortzCorp reincorporates in Bermuda. The home office stays in the U.S., as do all but about five employees. But now the tax laws are different. The BoortzCorp subsidiary operating in the United States will pay corporate income taxes to the U.S. government on earnings made in the U.S. The BoortzCorp operation in Belgium, however, will pay income taxes on earnings realized in Belgium, but will owe nothing to the U.S. government for those earnings. That will leave BoortzCorp with additional cash that can be used to hire additional people, expand the business, or pay dividends to shareholders, many of whom, by the way, live in the United States.
Let's think about foreign corporations doing business in the U.S. Let's say there is a German company, KrautCorp, that does exactly the same type of work that BoortzCorp does. KrautCorp operates in the United States. BoortzCorp U.S. operates in Germany. KrautCorp will pay taxes to the U.S. government on earnings realized in the U.S., but not on earnings realized in Germany. BoortzCorp will pay taxes to the German government on earnings realized there, but will also pay taxes on its German earnings to the U.S. government. Since the tax burden to Boortz Corp U.S. is higher, KrautCorp has a competitive advantage. It can undercut BoortzCorp prices and still earn exactly the same profit. In other words, the U.S. corporate tax laws give a competitive advantage to foreign corporations. Now that makes perfect sense, doesn't it?
Who's the best?
Opinion Journal.com coordinated a survey with the Federalist Society in 2000 ranking the US presidents. The survey attempted to strike a balance between conservatives and liberals and drew from the ranks of historians, presidential scholars and legal scholars. Reagan came in 8th behind Washington, Lincoln the Roosevelts, Jefferson, Truman, and Jackson. Here are the rankings. Here is today's Opinion Journal column on the book James Taranto (Opinion Journal's editor) edited regarding this project, Presidential Leadership: Rating the Best and the Worst in the White House.
And this is the essay by Stephen Calabresi arguing for Reagan's inclusion in the Pantheon of the greatest presidents in US history.
And this is the essay by Stephen Calabresi arguing for Reagan's inclusion in the Pantheon of the greatest presidents in US history.
Wednesday, June 09, 2004
Star Wars VII
Are you reading Mark Steyn? If not, why not? This is his take, from 2001, shortly after a successful missile defense test, on Reagan's SDI vision, Bush's actions, the liberal reaction against both anti-missile systems and in favor of the ABM treaty (with the defunct USSR) and more.
Naturally, there's a classic Steynism in there:
The politics of the Cold War have been precisely inverted: the bien-pensants in Europe and North America now want 'our children' to live under the shadow of the mushroom cloud for ever; conversely, the right-wing warmongers are the new unilateralists, determined to push ahead with a defensive system that will enable them to get rid of a vast chunk of their arsenals.
. . . On 14 July, science said an interceptor could shoot down an incoming missile. Science has yet to find anything proving a connection between the one-degree rise in temperature over the last century and that proportion of greenhouse-gas emissions for which Western industrial societyis responsible, nor anything to suggest that reducing greenhouse-gas emissions would reverse the modest warming trend. But, on the hunch that there just might be some connection, we're supposed to plunge the world into a massive global economic depression. On the other hand, missile defence is a delusion of the GOP's Dr Strangeloves. This is one reason why the Right has such a difficult job making its case: the politics of the Left is a secular religion, as impervious to rational, peerreviewed scientific truth as the most isolated Cargo Culters.
Twenty years ago, Ronald Reagan foresaw a missile defence shield. By contrast, [the left] foresaw a global population explosion, the exhaustion of the world's oil resources, and the melting of the polar ice caps. Whose crystal ball would you bet on? In Bonn this week the Rest of the World was meeting to 'rescue' Kyoto - not rescue their beloved planet, mark you; only one of their sacred texts, and even then there's not exactly a stampede to join Romania in actually ratifying it. Meanwhile, 144 miles over the Pacific, the Pentagon blew a warhead out of the sky. So who are the fantasists and who are the realists?
Naturally, there's a classic Steynism in there:
The politics of the Cold War have been precisely inverted: the bien-pensants in Europe and North America now want 'our children' to live under the shadow of the mushroom cloud for ever; conversely, the right-wing warmongers are the new unilateralists, determined to push ahead with a defensive system that will enable them to get rid of a vast chunk of their arsenals.
. . . On 14 July, science said an interceptor could shoot down an incoming missile. Science has yet to find anything proving a connection between the one-degree rise in temperature over the last century and that proportion of greenhouse-gas emissions for which Western industrial societyis responsible, nor anything to suggest that reducing greenhouse-gas emissions would reverse the modest warming trend. But, on the hunch that there just might be some connection, we're supposed to plunge the world into a massive global economic depression. On the other hand, missile defence is a delusion of the GOP's Dr Strangeloves. This is one reason why the Right has such a difficult job making its case: the politics of the Left is a secular religion, as impervious to rational, peerreviewed scientific truth as the most isolated Cargo Culters.
Twenty years ago, Ronald Reagan foresaw a missile defence shield. By contrast, [the left] foresaw a global population explosion, the exhaustion of the world's oil resources, and the melting of the polar ice caps. Whose crystal ball would you bet on? In Bonn this week the Rest of the World was meeting to 'rescue' Kyoto - not rescue their beloved planet, mark you; only one of their sacred texts, and even then there's not exactly a stampede to join Romania in actually ratifying it. Meanwhile, 144 miles over the Pacific, the Pentagon blew a warhead out of the sky. So who are the fantasists and who are the realists?
Lies and half-truths about Reagan
The anti-Reagan spin has begun. Here are the most notable half-truths and misleading statements about Reagan: (1) he abandoned his principles, became "pragmatic" about what could be done, then tried to achieve his goals; (2) he did nothing viz. AIDS; (3) he trebled the national debt; (4) Iran-Contra is a stain on his legacy; (5) he was a racist.
Here are some facts and rejoinders:
First, Jonah Goldberg appropriately rubbishes the idea that Reagan was a pragmatist:
To call the Gipper a pragmatist is to confuse ends and means so totally so as to lose any comprehension of the difference between the two. It's one thing to say, "I have got to get to California, but I'm pragmatic about the best way to get there: car, boat, plane, train, mule, whatever." It's another thing to say, "I don't care where I go." Reagan was no hamster on a treadmill, marking time, going nowhere, waiting for events to come to him.
The facts show that Reagan was an idealist -- he spoke of winning the Cold War in 1977, before four years of Carter harmed the US position even more; he believed in American exceptionalism; he championed freedom and his efforts led DIRECTLY to the emancipation of 350 million (or more) people in Eastern Europe.
Second, Reagan's AIDS record is a target of intentional distortion by AIDS activists. As Deroy Murdock shows, every Reagan budget from 1983 to 1989 contained at least a 43% increase in AIDS research from the previous year and AIDS was not identified until 1982. No other disease received as much research financing from the government during Reagan's tenure, even though cancer, heart disease, diabetes and lung disease were all greater killers by large orders of magnitude than AIDS. And Reagan was no homophobe. Here's Andrew Sullivan (who is gay) on Reagan and gays (emphasis added below):
His biographer, Lou Cannon, wrote that Reagan was "repelled by the aggressive public crusades against homosexual life styles which became a staple of right wing politics in the late 1970s." In 1978, Reagan put his career on the line opposing the Briggs Initiative in California that would have barred gay teachers from working in the public high school system. In an op-ed at the time, Reagan wrote: "Whatever else it is, homosexuality is not a contagious disease like the measles. Prevailing scientific opinion is that an individual's sexuality is determined at a very early age and that a child's teachers do not really influence this."
Third, Reagan did not write the budgets that he ultimately enacted. He sent budget proposals to Congress and the Democratically controlled House of Representatives (and that means liberal Speaker Tip O'Neill) added to those budgets because the House, by law, must initiate all spending and revenue bills. As the Wall Street Journal has shown time and again, under Reagan the government's revenue as a share of the GDP was consistent with its share under Carter, Ford, Nixon, Johnson, Kennedy, Ike and Truman -- around 18-19%. That means that as the economy grew, the government took in more and more revenue DESPITE the tax cuts Reagan passed. Why? Because people stopped hiding their money in tax shelters from the former 70% tax rate and invested it while accepting the 28-31% tax hit.
Fourth, Iran-Contra is not Watergate, not the equivalent of being fella--d by a 20-year old intern in the Oval Office, not even close. The goal to help the Contras was laudable -- because of Reagan's help, the Sandinista Communists ended up capitulating and allowing an election in Nicaragua. They were clobbered and Nicaragua and Central America are now non-communist. Here's John Podhoretz on Iranamok:
The core issue involved the Reagan administration's effort to keep an anti-communist guerrilla movement alive and fighting against the Soviet puppet state in Nicaragua.
At the time, people thought it was bad because they didn't believe communist regimes should be challenged. Instead, they believed such regimes should be accommodated, wooed, played footsie with. (John Kerry, this means you.)
Such people have had their views invalidated by history. It was the very fact that the United States under Ronald Reagan sought to face down the Soviet Union at every major pressure point that helped lead to the collapse of that horrifically evil physical and ideological empire.
So eager were some of Reagan's staffers to ensure that the funding for the Contras continued after a congressional cut-off that they came up with a crazy scheme to skim off some money from an arms sale designed to help free American hostages in Lebanon.
That was stupid and nuts, and the people who thought it up were stupid and nuts. They did immense damage to the cause they were trying to help along. The arms-for-hostages swap was perhaps the greatest blunder of the Reagan presidency. But that sort of thing was really upsetting only to Reagan's hard-line foreign-policy friends. The people who turned Iran-Contra into a first-class Washington brouhaha didn't like the Contra part.
Finally, the canard repeated by every liberal black "leader" in the past 25 years, that Reagan was a racist. In 1967 Reagan (governor of California) and RFK met in a town-hall type of proceeding, shown by CBS and broadcast on the BBC. The whole transcript is here. This is Reagan on America and race -- it's just not a racist sentiment, but it is Reagan's own statement:
I happen to believe that the greatest part of the problem lies in the hearts of men. I think that bigotry and prejudice is probably the worst of all man's ills [and] the hardest to correct... Now we've found it necessary to legislate, to make it more possible for government to exert its responsibility to guarantee those constitutional rights. At the same time, we have much more that can be done in the area of just human relationships. I happen to bridge a time span in which I was a radio sports announcer for major league sports in our country, in athletics, many years ago. At that time the great American game of baseball had a rulebook whose opening line was: "Baseball is a game for Caucasian gentlemen." And up until that time, up until World War II, there'd never been a Negro play in organized major league or minor league baseball in America. And one man defied that rule--a man named Branch Rickey of one of the major league teams, and today baseball is far better off and our country is far better off because he destroyed that by handpicking one man and putting him on his baseball team, and the rule disappeared. Now I don't say this is the only answer, but we must use both, and I think the people in positions like ourselves like the Senator and myself, like the President of the United States, can do a great deal of good, perhaps almost as much as proper legislation, if we take the lead in saying those who operate their businesses or their lives on a basis of practicing discrimination and prejudice are practicing what is an evil sickness. And that we would not knowingly patronize a business that did such a thing, and we urge all right-thinking people to join us and not patronize that business. Soon we will make those who live by prejudice learn that they stand alone . . .
Ultimately, I don't care about Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather's Reagan fatigue (Peter Jennings probably had it shortly after Reagan passed away). For all their outward patriotism, they should smarten up and realize that not only was Reagan the best president they could have voted for (and didn't), but he was the best leader of the second-half of the 20th century. That calls for tribute.
Here are some facts and rejoinders:
First, Jonah Goldberg appropriately rubbishes the idea that Reagan was a pragmatist:
To call the Gipper a pragmatist is to confuse ends and means so totally so as to lose any comprehension of the difference between the two. It's one thing to say, "I have got to get to California, but I'm pragmatic about the best way to get there: car, boat, plane, train, mule, whatever." It's another thing to say, "I don't care where I go." Reagan was no hamster on a treadmill, marking time, going nowhere, waiting for events to come to him.
The facts show that Reagan was an idealist -- he spoke of winning the Cold War in 1977, before four years of Carter harmed the US position even more; he believed in American exceptionalism; he championed freedom and his efforts led DIRECTLY to the emancipation of 350 million (or more) people in Eastern Europe.
Second, Reagan's AIDS record is a target of intentional distortion by AIDS activists. As Deroy Murdock shows, every Reagan budget from 1983 to 1989 contained at least a 43% increase in AIDS research from the previous year and AIDS was not identified until 1982. No other disease received as much research financing from the government during Reagan's tenure, even though cancer, heart disease, diabetes and lung disease were all greater killers by large orders of magnitude than AIDS. And Reagan was no homophobe. Here's Andrew Sullivan (who is gay) on Reagan and gays (emphasis added below):
His biographer, Lou Cannon, wrote that Reagan was "repelled by the aggressive public crusades against homosexual life styles which became a staple of right wing politics in the late 1970s." In 1978, Reagan put his career on the line opposing the Briggs Initiative in California that would have barred gay teachers from working in the public high school system. In an op-ed at the time, Reagan wrote: "Whatever else it is, homosexuality is not a contagious disease like the measles. Prevailing scientific opinion is that an individual's sexuality is determined at a very early age and that a child's teachers do not really influence this."
Third, Reagan did not write the budgets that he ultimately enacted. He sent budget proposals to Congress and the Democratically controlled House of Representatives (and that means liberal Speaker Tip O'Neill) added to those budgets because the House, by law, must initiate all spending and revenue bills. As the Wall Street Journal has shown time and again, under Reagan the government's revenue as a share of the GDP was consistent with its share under Carter, Ford, Nixon, Johnson, Kennedy, Ike and Truman -- around 18-19%. That means that as the economy grew, the government took in more and more revenue DESPITE the tax cuts Reagan passed. Why? Because people stopped hiding their money in tax shelters from the former 70% tax rate and invested it while accepting the 28-31% tax hit.
Fourth, Iran-Contra is not Watergate, not the equivalent of being fella--d by a 20-year old intern in the Oval Office, not even close. The goal to help the Contras was laudable -- because of Reagan's help, the Sandinista Communists ended up capitulating and allowing an election in Nicaragua. They were clobbered and Nicaragua and Central America are now non-communist. Here's John Podhoretz on Iranamok:
The core issue involved the Reagan administration's effort to keep an anti-communist guerrilla movement alive and fighting against the Soviet puppet state in Nicaragua.
At the time, people thought it was bad because they didn't believe communist regimes should be challenged. Instead, they believed such regimes should be accommodated, wooed, played footsie with. (John Kerry, this means you.)
Such people have had their views invalidated by history. It was the very fact that the United States under Ronald Reagan sought to face down the Soviet Union at every major pressure point that helped lead to the collapse of that horrifically evil physical and ideological empire.
So eager were some of Reagan's staffers to ensure that the funding for the Contras continued after a congressional cut-off that they came up with a crazy scheme to skim off some money from an arms sale designed to help free American hostages in Lebanon.
That was stupid and nuts, and the people who thought it up were stupid and nuts. They did immense damage to the cause they were trying to help along. The arms-for-hostages swap was perhaps the greatest blunder of the Reagan presidency. But that sort of thing was really upsetting only to Reagan's hard-line foreign-policy friends. The people who turned Iran-Contra into a first-class Washington brouhaha didn't like the Contra part.
Finally, the canard repeated by every liberal black "leader" in the past 25 years, that Reagan was a racist. In 1967 Reagan (governor of California) and RFK met in a town-hall type of proceeding, shown by CBS and broadcast on the BBC. The whole transcript is here. This is Reagan on America and race -- it's just not a racist sentiment, but it is Reagan's own statement:
I happen to believe that the greatest part of the problem lies in the hearts of men. I think that bigotry and prejudice is probably the worst of all man's ills [and] the hardest to correct... Now we've found it necessary to legislate, to make it more possible for government to exert its responsibility to guarantee those constitutional rights. At the same time, we have much more that can be done in the area of just human relationships. I happen to bridge a time span in which I was a radio sports announcer for major league sports in our country, in athletics, many years ago. At that time the great American game of baseball had a rulebook whose opening line was: "Baseball is a game for Caucasian gentlemen." And up until that time, up until World War II, there'd never been a Negro play in organized major league or minor league baseball in America. And one man defied that rule--a man named Branch Rickey of one of the major league teams, and today baseball is far better off and our country is far better off because he destroyed that by handpicking one man and putting him on his baseball team, and the rule disappeared. Now I don't say this is the only answer, but we must use both, and I think the people in positions like ourselves like the Senator and myself, like the President of the United States, can do a great deal of good, perhaps almost as much as proper legislation, if we take the lead in saying those who operate their businesses or their lives on a basis of practicing discrimination and prejudice are practicing what is an evil sickness. And that we would not knowingly patronize a business that did such a thing, and we urge all right-thinking people to join us and not patronize that business. Soon we will make those who live by prejudice learn that they stand alone . . .
Ultimately, I don't care about Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather's Reagan fatigue (Peter Jennings probably had it shortly after Reagan passed away). For all their outward patriotism, they should smarten up and realize that not only was Reagan the best president they could have voted for (and didn't), but he was the best leader of the second-half of the 20th century. That calls for tribute.
Thanks Mr. Olson
Last week, Walter Olson of Overlawyered.com linked my short blurb on his new book. I didn't notice until today. Thanks Mr. Olson for the publicity.
Mr. Olson also has a new on-line project he's working on through his fellowship at the Manhattan Institute -- a libertarian thinktank. Details are available at Overlawyered.com (scroll down a smidge).
Mr. Olson also has a new on-line project he's working on through his fellowship at the Manhattan Institute -- a libertarian thinktank. Details are available at Overlawyered.com (scroll down a smidge).
Back up and running
Blogger.com was down for a bit this morning so I have some catching up to do.
First, I'm liking Javy Vazquez. The Yanks made a nice trade to pluck him, a young hard-throwing pitcher, from the Expos and install him as a cornerstone of the Yankee future (immediately extending him contractually for four years). He's only 27 (Curt Schilling is 38) and is among the league leaders in lowest opponents' batting average and lowest ratio (hits + walks / IP). Yesterday, he tamed the Colorado Rockies -- a team with many good lefty hitters.
Second, congratulations to the Virginia Cavaliers baseball team. Virginia baseball has routinely been among the ACC's bottom-dwellers and had only one (I think) NCAA playoff appearance between 1987-2003. The ACC itself has many top baseball programs, Ga. Tech, FSU, UNC, Clemson, NC State and occasionally Wake Forest or Maryland will pop in with a good year. This season, the Cavs went 44-15 (tying the school record for wins) and 18-6 in the ACC under first-year coach Brian O'Connor, swept Ga. Tech in Atlanta (that accounted for 3 of GT's 5 ACC losses) and landed a #1 seed in the NCAA Regionals.
Alas, they started poorly by losing to Princeton and its top starter Ross Ohlendorf (who is a legitimate MLB prospect) and had to hack their way through the loser's bracket of the double-elimination tournament. They came up short Sunday, losing to SEC power Vanderbilt. Nonetheless, a fine season and fine performance for a team that essentially plays like the 1985 Cardinals -- pitches well, hits decently well, runs a lot, has no power (around 30 HR in 59 games, with metal bats!).
I had the baseball beat in 1989 for the Cavalier Daily (the UVa student paper) and the games were like sandlot affairs -- a few bleachers, a couple of reporters in the press box, one hot dog truck -- and a mediocre team. Now they have a new ball-field that holds nearly 2500 and that filled up when FSU came to town earlier this year. Not bad for what has historically been the No. 5 or 6 sport at the school (football, men's hoops, women's hoops, soccer, lacrosse). Good luck with continuing the success!
First, I'm liking Javy Vazquez. The Yanks made a nice trade to pluck him, a young hard-throwing pitcher, from the Expos and install him as a cornerstone of the Yankee future (immediately extending him contractually for four years). He's only 27 (Curt Schilling is 38) and is among the league leaders in lowest opponents' batting average and lowest ratio (hits + walks / IP). Yesterday, he tamed the Colorado Rockies -- a team with many good lefty hitters.
Second, congratulations to the Virginia Cavaliers baseball team. Virginia baseball has routinely been among the ACC's bottom-dwellers and had only one (I think) NCAA playoff appearance between 1987-2003. The ACC itself has many top baseball programs, Ga. Tech, FSU, UNC, Clemson, NC State and occasionally Wake Forest or Maryland will pop in with a good year. This season, the Cavs went 44-15 (tying the school record for wins) and 18-6 in the ACC under first-year coach Brian O'Connor, swept Ga. Tech in Atlanta (that accounted for 3 of GT's 5 ACC losses) and landed a #1 seed in the NCAA Regionals.
Alas, they started poorly by losing to Princeton and its top starter Ross Ohlendorf (who is a legitimate MLB prospect) and had to hack their way through the loser's bracket of the double-elimination tournament. They came up short Sunday, losing to SEC power Vanderbilt. Nonetheless, a fine season and fine performance for a team that essentially plays like the 1985 Cardinals -- pitches well, hits decently well, runs a lot, has no power (around 30 HR in 59 games, with metal bats!).
I had the baseball beat in 1989 for the Cavalier Daily (the UVa student paper) and the games were like sandlot affairs -- a few bleachers, a couple of reporters in the press box, one hot dog truck -- and a mediocre team. Now they have a new ball-field that holds nearly 2500 and that filled up when FSU came to town earlier this year. Not bad for what has historically been the No. 5 or 6 sport at the school (football, men's hoops, women's hoops, soccer, lacrosse). Good luck with continuing the success!
Tuesday, June 08, 2004
Propagandists
Do you really need someone like this teaching your kids? Beware who's indoctrinating your high-schoolers.
Good Blog
Here is a good new blog -- the Diary of an Anti-Chomskyite. Noam Chomsky is a linguistics professor at MIT, but his relatively obscure specialty did not hinder him in becoming one of the most influential far-leftists in America. Chomsky is an expert on nothing outside of linguistics, yet has written numerous essays and books decrying the United States, canonizing brutal Communist dictatorships (most famously his defenses of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge), exalting Palestinian and Arab terrorism and casting the US as the force of evil in the world. Chomsky's stock in trade includes blatant factual errors and slipshod conclusions combined with "many say that ___," "there is evidence of ___" types of unattributed (and untraceable) accusations and allegations.
He is not a researcher, not an historian, just a left-wing nutter whose beliefs have received entirely too much acclaim from disaffected 60s radicals now ensconced in America's universities and white suburban punk and grunge rockers who never received worthwhile educations (many notable rock groups have been influenced by Chomsky and his fellow traveler Howard Zinn [a World War II hero who, to this day, says the US was wrong to fight in WWII and is most famous for his communist-sympathizing history books]-- see Pearl Jam, the group Chomsky, etc.). It is the Chomskyite world view that provides the belief structure of International ANSWER, the antiglobalization movement, MoveOn.org and similar left-wing loonies. The Anti-Chomsky blog is a great resource to debunk and defuse these people.
He is not a researcher, not an historian, just a left-wing nutter whose beliefs have received entirely too much acclaim from disaffected 60s radicals now ensconced in America's universities and white suburban punk and grunge rockers who never received worthwhile educations (many notable rock groups have been influenced by Chomsky and his fellow traveler Howard Zinn [a World War II hero who, to this day, says the US was wrong to fight in WWII and is most famous for his communist-sympathizing history books]-- see Pearl Jam, the group Chomsky, etc.). It is the Chomskyite world view that provides the belief structure of International ANSWER, the antiglobalization movement, MoveOn.org and similar left-wing loonies. The Anti-Chomsky blog is a great resource to debunk and defuse these people.
More on a great man
Ronald Reagan was one of the most important people of the 20th Century. More evaluation of the man and his leadership today.
First lesson for historians and ivory tower types: don't get it wrong and then try to correct yourself 20+ years later because Dinesh D'Sousa does his homework and will call you on your stupidity. This means you, Arthur Schlesinger, Strobe Talbott, Lester Thurow and Seweryn Bialer. Thurow's comment in 1989 takes the DOPE prize: "Can economic command significantly . . . accelerate the growth process? The remarkable performance of the Soviet Union suggests that it can. . . . Today the Soviet Union is a country whose economic achievements bear comparison with those of the United States."
Orwell was right: some concepts are so stupid that only an intellectual could believe them.
Read D'Sousa's whole article. And then read Mark Steyn in today's Daily Telegraph on Reagan, small government and pan-Europeanism. Here's an excerpt:
'We are a nation that has a government - not the other way around.' Of all the marvellous Ronald Reagan lines retailed over the weekend, that's my favourite. He said it in his inaugural address in 1981, and it encapsulates his legacy at home and abroad . . . Reagan made small government a big idea.
* * *
But, in the broader sense, Reagan's line about nations that have governments is a good way to weigh up the world. Across central and eastern Europe, from Slovenia to Lithuania to Bulgaria, governments that had nations have been replaced by nations that have governments - serving at the people's pleasure.
The intelligentsia persist in believing this had nothing to do with Reagan or Thatcher: they maintain that the Soviet empire would have collapsed anyway, their belated belief in the inevitable failure of communism being in no way inconsistent with their previous long-held belief in the inevitable triumph of communism. And anyway, they continue, if anyone was responsible, it was Mikhail Gorbachev.
In fact, it was Reagan who was responsible for Gorbachev. The Politburo would have gone on rotating the same old 1950s waxworks - Brezhnev, Chernenko, Andropov - for another decade or three, had not Washington's military build-up so exposed the old guard's inability to keep up that, in 1985, it turned in desperation to someone new.
First lesson for historians and ivory tower types: don't get it wrong and then try to correct yourself 20+ years later because Dinesh D'Sousa does his homework and will call you on your stupidity. This means you, Arthur Schlesinger, Strobe Talbott, Lester Thurow and Seweryn Bialer. Thurow's comment in 1989 takes the DOPE prize: "Can economic command significantly . . . accelerate the growth process? The remarkable performance of the Soviet Union suggests that it can. . . . Today the Soviet Union is a country whose economic achievements bear comparison with those of the United States."
Orwell was right: some concepts are so stupid that only an intellectual could believe them.
Read D'Sousa's whole article. And then read Mark Steyn in today's Daily Telegraph on Reagan, small government and pan-Europeanism. Here's an excerpt:
'We are a nation that has a government - not the other way around.' Of all the marvellous Ronald Reagan lines retailed over the weekend, that's my favourite. He said it in his inaugural address in 1981, and it encapsulates his legacy at home and abroad . . . Reagan made small government a big idea.
* * *
But, in the broader sense, Reagan's line about nations that have governments is a good way to weigh up the world. Across central and eastern Europe, from Slovenia to Lithuania to Bulgaria, governments that had nations have been replaced by nations that have governments - serving at the people's pleasure.
The intelligentsia persist in believing this had nothing to do with Reagan or Thatcher: they maintain that the Soviet empire would have collapsed anyway, their belated belief in the inevitable failure of communism being in no way inconsistent with their previous long-held belief in the inevitable triumph of communism. And anyway, they continue, if anyone was responsible, it was Mikhail Gorbachev.
In fact, it was Reagan who was responsible for Gorbachev. The Politburo would have gone on rotating the same old 1950s waxworks - Brezhnev, Chernenko, Andropov - for another decade or three, had not Washington's military build-up so exposed the old guard's inability to keep up that, in 1985, it turned in desperation to someone new.
Monday, June 07, 2004
The Greatest Generation
That's an appellation that David Gelertner, Yale professor and Unabomber victim, despises. Why? Because it was coined by Baby Boomers who hated the military. In this editorial Gelertner discusses four World War II issues that should be taught in schools. The most notable to me are these two:
• The bestiality of the Japanese. The Japanese army saw captive soldiers as cowards, lower than lice. If we forget this we dishonor the thousands who were tortured and murdered, and put ourselves in danger of believing the soul-corroding lie that all cultures are equally bad or good. Some Americans nowadays seem to think America's behavior during the war was worse than Japan's--we did intern many loyal Americans of Japanese descent. That was unforgivable--and unspeakably trivial compared to Japan's unique achievement, mass murder one atrocity at a time.
In "The Other Nuremberg," Arnold Brackman cites (for instance) "the case of Lucas Doctolero, crucified, nails driven through hands, feet and skull"; "the case of a blind woman who was dragged from her home November 17, 1943, stripped naked, and hanged"; "five Filipinos thrown into a latrine and buried alive." In the Japanese-occupied Philippines alone, at least 131,028 civilians and Allied prisoners of war were murdered.
• The attitude of American intellectuals. Before Pearl Harbor but long after the character of Hitlerism was clear--after the Nuremberg laws, the Kristallnacht pogrom, the establishment of Dachau and the Gestapo--American intellectuals tended to be dead against the U.S. joining Britain's war on Hitler.
Today's students learn (sometimes) about right-wing isolationists like Charles Lindbergh [who eventually smartened up -- tkm] and the America Firsters. They are less likely to read documents like this, which appeared in Partisan Review (the U.S. intelligentsia's No. 1 favorite mag) in fall 1939, signed by John Dewey, William Carlos Williams, Meyer Schapiro and many more of the era's leading lights. "The last war showed only too clearly that we can have no faith in imperialist crusades to bring freedom to any people. Our entry into the war, under the slogan of 'Stop Hitler!' would actually result in the immediate introduction of totalitarianism over here. . . . The American masses can best help [the German people] by fighting at home to keep their own liberties."
Chinese-Americans whose parents were born in or before World War II know and remember the brutality of the Japanese and the Rape of Nanking, including the Japanese soldiers' practice of "catching" Chinese babies on bayonet points.
For more on the intellectual idiots who refused to confront the truths about Nazism, see if you can find a copy of Dr. Seuss Goes to War by Richard Minear. It's a compendium of Theodore (Dr. Seuss) Geisel's political cartoons in the 1930s and early 1940s as Dr. Seuss decried the Nazi regime, urged the US into World War II and derided the intellectuals who advocated isolation. Unfortunately, it's listed as out of print on Amazon.com.
• The bestiality of the Japanese. The Japanese army saw captive soldiers as cowards, lower than lice. If we forget this we dishonor the thousands who were tortured and murdered, and put ourselves in danger of believing the soul-corroding lie that all cultures are equally bad or good. Some Americans nowadays seem to think America's behavior during the war was worse than Japan's--we did intern many loyal Americans of Japanese descent. That was unforgivable--and unspeakably trivial compared to Japan's unique achievement, mass murder one atrocity at a time.
In "The Other Nuremberg," Arnold Brackman cites (for instance) "the case of Lucas Doctolero, crucified, nails driven through hands, feet and skull"; "the case of a blind woman who was dragged from her home November 17, 1943, stripped naked, and hanged"; "five Filipinos thrown into a latrine and buried alive." In the Japanese-occupied Philippines alone, at least 131,028 civilians and Allied prisoners of war were murdered.
• The attitude of American intellectuals. Before Pearl Harbor but long after the character of Hitlerism was clear--after the Nuremberg laws, the Kristallnacht pogrom, the establishment of Dachau and the Gestapo--American intellectuals tended to be dead against the U.S. joining Britain's war on Hitler.
Today's students learn (sometimes) about right-wing isolationists like Charles Lindbergh [who eventually smartened up -- tkm] and the America Firsters. They are less likely to read documents like this, which appeared in Partisan Review (the U.S. intelligentsia's No. 1 favorite mag) in fall 1939, signed by John Dewey, William Carlos Williams, Meyer Schapiro and many more of the era's leading lights. "The last war showed only too clearly that we can have no faith in imperialist crusades to bring freedom to any people. Our entry into the war, under the slogan of 'Stop Hitler!' would actually result in the immediate introduction of totalitarianism over here. . . . The American masses can best help [the German people] by fighting at home to keep their own liberties."
Chinese-Americans whose parents were born in or before World War II know and remember the brutality of the Japanese and the Rape of Nanking, including the Japanese soldiers' practice of "catching" Chinese babies on bayonet points.
For more on the intellectual idiots who refused to confront the truths about Nazism, see if you can find a copy of Dr. Seuss Goes to War by Richard Minear. It's a compendium of Theodore (Dr. Seuss) Geisel's political cartoons in the 1930s and early 1940s as Dr. Seuss decried the Nazi regime, urged the US into World War II and derided the intellectuals who advocated isolation. Unfortunately, it's listed as out of print on Amazon.com.
Bush Didn't Lie
You know that, I know that. Michael Barone explains why the "Bush Lied" screamers are as wrong as they are morally vapid.
Sensible Senator
Ben Nighthorse Campbell is retiring this year. Too bad. He is sensible and honest. The proof is in this column about September 11 and September 10 Americans.
More Reagan
This time it's Andrew Sullivan's self-titled "Mash Note" that he wrote in honor of Reagan's 90th birthday three years ago. Read it here.
Sunday, June 06, 2004
Mark Steyn on Reagan
Mark Steyn is one of the best conservative commentators in the business. Here is an excerpt from his salute to President Reagan:
Even politics attracts its share of optimistic, likeable men, and most of them leave no trace – like Britain’s “Sunny Jim” Callaghan, a perfect example of the defeatism of western leadership in the 1970s. [The '70s] was the era of “détente”, a word barely remembered now, which is just as well, as it reflects poorly on us: the Presidents and Prime Ministers of the free world had decided that the unfree world was not a prison ruled by a murderous ideology that had to be defeated but merely an alternative lifestyle that had to be accommodated. Under cover of “détente”, the Soviets gobbled up more and more real estate across the planet, from Ethiopia to Grenada. Nonetheless, it wasn’t just the usual suspects who subscribed to this grubby evasion – Helmut Schmidt, Pierre Trudeau, Francois Mitterand – but most of the so-called “conservatives”, too – Ted Heath, Giscard d’Estaing, Gerald Ford.
Unlike these men, unlike most other senior Republicans, Ronald Reagan saw Soviet Communism for what it was: a great evil. Millions of Europeans across half a continent from Poland to Bulgaria, Slovenia to Latvia live in freedom today because he acknowledged that simple truth when the rest of the political class was tying itself in knots trying to pretend otherwise. That’s what counts. He brought down the “evil empire”, and all the rest is fine print.
Read the whole column.
Even politics attracts its share of optimistic, likeable men, and most of them leave no trace – like Britain’s “Sunny Jim” Callaghan, a perfect example of the defeatism of western leadership in the 1970s. [The '70s] was the era of “détente”, a word barely remembered now, which is just as well, as it reflects poorly on us: the Presidents and Prime Ministers of the free world had decided that the unfree world was not a prison ruled by a murderous ideology that had to be defeated but merely an alternative lifestyle that had to be accommodated. Under cover of “détente”, the Soviets gobbled up more and more real estate across the planet, from Ethiopia to Grenada. Nonetheless, it wasn’t just the usual suspects who subscribed to this grubby evasion – Helmut Schmidt, Pierre Trudeau, Francois Mitterand – but most of the so-called “conservatives”, too – Ted Heath, Giscard d’Estaing, Gerald Ford.
Unlike these men, unlike most other senior Republicans, Ronald Reagan saw Soviet Communism for what it was: a great evil. Millions of Europeans across half a continent from Poland to Bulgaria, Slovenia to Latvia live in freedom today because he acknowledged that simple truth when the rest of the political class was tying itself in knots trying to pretend otherwise. That’s what counts. He brought down the “evil empire”, and all the rest is fine print.
Read the whole column.
Thank you D-Day veterans
Sixty years ago today the US and UK launched Operation Overlord to liberate France, provide a second front in World War II and, ultimately, free Western Europe (north of Iberia) from fascism. There is much that I can say, but it will all be too trite. So I will keep it simple: Thank you.
Another remembrance of President Reagan, Richard Perle's memory of how the Europeans and Reagan's rivals underestimated him is here.
Excellent obituary
Here is an excellent and very fair obituary of President Reagan in the Washington Post by Lou Cannon, the Washington Post reporter who wrote a semi-critical book about President Reagan (Role of a Lifetime). It is very long, and well worth reading.
More Reagan remembrance
For those who will parrot the liberal rubbish about President Reagan, read this on the Reagan history.
Also, a contemporary remembrance by Margaret Thatcher in 1988 ran in National Review.
And because today is the 60th anniversary of D-Day, here is the moving speech President Reagan gave on the 40th anniversary of D-Day, June 6, 1984.
Also, a contemporary remembrance by Margaret Thatcher in 1988 ran in National Review.
And because today is the 60th anniversary of D-Day, here is the moving speech President Reagan gave on the 40th anniversary of D-Day, June 6, 1984.
Saturday, June 05, 2004
Ronald Wilson Reagan, 1911-2004
The 40th President of the United States died at his home in California today. Ronald Wilson Reagan was simply the best president of the 20th Century. Yes, better than FDR (whose leadership in WWII is counterbalanced by his poor misjudgment of Stalin that consigned Eastern Europe to 45 more years of misery, and his establishment of the US welfare state), TR and Truman.
Reagan cured stagflation, jumpstarted a horrendous economy, presided over the best economy in the history of US peacetime, restored American greatness and exceptionalism, DEFEATED COMMUNISM, won the Cold War and did it despite hesitant allies (not including the UK), an unfriendly House of Representatives (where all revenue bills must be initiated under the US Constitution), and a dubious but hopeful populace. He appealed to the greatness of the American spirit, invoked the image of the US as a shining city on a Hill, declared that Communism would be consigned to the ash heap of history, unequivocally spoke the truth by declaring the USSR the Evil Empire, and challenged Gorbachev to TEAR DOWN the Berlin Wall. His words gave hope to millions of people trapped behind the Iron Curtain (read Natan Sharansky for proof) and his policies directly caused the downfall of the Soviet Union. No, of course he was not perfect. But he WAS a leader -- strong and secure in his beliefs, focused on the big picture, charismatic and intelligent (see here for some of his writings), and ALWAYS underestimated by his opponents.
For more information, see The Heritage Foundation's excellent tribute to President Reagan, including a page devoted to his speeches, which includes reactions and retrospectives.
CNN's Special Report is very in-depth, and Fox has this fine list of witticisms and wisdom.
It is often said that no one man is indispensible. This is demonstrably untrue. In 1789, Washington was indispensible; in 1860, Lincoln was indispensible; in 1932, FDR was indispensible; in 1939, Churchill was indispensible and in 1980, Reagan was indispensible. The world is richer for President Reagan's contributions. Rest in peace.
Reagan cured stagflation, jumpstarted a horrendous economy, presided over the best economy in the history of US peacetime, restored American greatness and exceptionalism, DEFEATED COMMUNISM, won the Cold War and did it despite hesitant allies (not including the UK), an unfriendly House of Representatives (where all revenue bills must be initiated under the US Constitution), and a dubious but hopeful populace. He appealed to the greatness of the American spirit, invoked the image of the US as a shining city on a Hill, declared that Communism would be consigned to the ash heap of history, unequivocally spoke the truth by declaring the USSR the Evil Empire, and challenged Gorbachev to TEAR DOWN the Berlin Wall. His words gave hope to millions of people trapped behind the Iron Curtain (read Natan Sharansky for proof) and his policies directly caused the downfall of the Soviet Union. No, of course he was not perfect. But he WAS a leader -- strong and secure in his beliefs, focused on the big picture, charismatic and intelligent (see here for some of his writings), and ALWAYS underestimated by his opponents.
For more information, see The Heritage Foundation's excellent tribute to President Reagan, including a page devoted to his speeches, which includes reactions and retrospectives.
CNN's Special Report is very in-depth, and Fox has this fine list of witticisms and wisdom.
It is often said that no one man is indispensible. This is demonstrably untrue. In 1789, Washington was indispensible; in 1860, Lincoln was indispensible; in 1932, FDR was indispensible; in 1939, Churchill was indispensible and in 1980, Reagan was indispensible. The world is richer for President Reagan's contributions. Rest in peace.
George Tenet and the lost boys of the CIA
Mark Steyn with an instant classic on the state of the CIA and the resignation of Tenet.
Sports thoughts
First, the frivolous crap.
The Yankees had their fifth poor start in the last six games as Jon Leiber looked like a guy claimed off the ash heap of the DL when the Rangers whacked him around. Leiber now has an ERA of 5.01; Mussina has a 4.96 ERA; Contreras' is too high for print. That's 60% of the Yanks' rotation. Team needs to shape up because it cannot win a World Series by going through 7-6, 8-7 games in the playoffs and they cannot count on six-homer nights like they had yesterday.
Too bad that Smarty Jones got stupid. For some unknown reason, he started chafing at the bit with 1/4 mile left in the Belmont Stakes. If he hadn't, his trainer said (ESPN press conference) that he wouldn't have lost his stride and lost the opportunity to be the first horse in 26 years to win the Triple Crown.
The rest of the posts this weekend will be about important things: Ronald Reagan and D-Day.
The Yankees had their fifth poor start in the last six games as Jon Leiber looked like a guy claimed off the ash heap of the DL when the Rangers whacked him around. Leiber now has an ERA of 5.01; Mussina has a 4.96 ERA; Contreras' is too high for print. That's 60% of the Yanks' rotation. Team needs to shape up because it cannot win a World Series by going through 7-6, 8-7 games in the playoffs and they cannot count on six-homer nights like they had yesterday.
Too bad that Smarty Jones got stupid. For some unknown reason, he started chafing at the bit with 1/4 mile left in the Belmont Stakes. If he hadn't, his trainer said (ESPN press conference) that he wouldn't have lost his stride and lost the opportunity to be the first horse in 26 years to win the Triple Crown.
The rest of the posts this weekend will be about important things: Ronald Reagan and D-Day.
Friday, June 04, 2004
AzKaban'd
The Monkette2B is a BIG Harry Potter fan -- read all 5 books in hardcover, waiting in anticipation for Nos. 6 and 7, loves the three kids from the movies, etc. I read HP1 and HP3 after we'd seen Harry Potter and the Chamberpot of Secrets and she had devoured book 5. Because we guessed (rightly) that the number of eedjits who'd take their very young children to a semi-scary movie would be minimized for a midnight Thursday show, we saw the new Harry Potter movie, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Az-Kaban last night/this morning.
And here is the basic fact, what you've likely heard about this movie is true: the direction by Alfonso Cuaron is MUCH better than the ponderous set pieces by Chris Columbus, the look and feel is darker, danker and moodier, the plot is more complex and the kids' acting is generally better (especially Ron -- he was fine in HP1, awful in Chamberpot). Personally, I think the kooky older-brother connection Cuaron had with the kids (from reading on-location press reports) worked to get better performances from them than Columbus' semi-paternal relationship. Another note -- more cuts from the book. HP3 was over 400 pages long; the first two barely reached 300, so Cuaron and Steve Knowles (screenplay for all 3) had to abridge more of the less necessary details from the book.
There are other touches that Cuaron's direction brings, most of them subtle by nature, others subtle in comparison to Columbus. First, the backgrounds with the wandering ghosts and moving paintings in full action while the students are wandering the innards of Hogwarts adds a more natural feel to the shots. Second, the 5-second transition shots of the Whomping Willow that show what time of year it is instead of abrupt scene changes. Third, the running gags with Professor Lupin's cure-all for magic attacks and Hermione's out-of-the-blue appearances in class (more subtle than the book too, and well done). Fourth, reinforcing the interactions of the schoolmates with more natural group scenes (like the boys all BS-ing in the common room). Fifth, Cuaron's treatment of Malfoy and his henchmen is outstanding -- he portrays them all as sheep in wolf's clothing, cowardly imbeciles who derive their strength from others' fear or weakness -- a fine statement.
To the specifics of the flik itself: positives include the look, feel and pacing. Another positive is Michael Gambon's more whimsical Dumbledore as opposed to the great Richard Harris' kindly but aloof interpretation of the headmaster. There are also fewer goofy touches like the floo powder and flying car rubbish from HP2 -- the Knight Bus sequence is pure fun. Also a plus, David Thewlis' Professor Lupin -- a fine mentoring relationship with him and Harry is well-rendered in the film.
Finally, the books are about the students, not the teachers, and Cuaron captures this by ensuring that all scenes are from the kids' perspectives, not the omniscient observer or an adult's view. The drawback (from some folks' perspectives) is that Hagrid, Prof. McGonagall and Prof. Snape all have relatively small roles in this one. But the book and the film are about the kids' development, so the priorities are correct.
And here is the basic fact, what you've likely heard about this movie is true: the direction by Alfonso Cuaron is MUCH better than the ponderous set pieces by Chris Columbus, the look and feel is darker, danker and moodier, the plot is more complex and the kids' acting is generally better (especially Ron -- he was fine in HP1, awful in Chamberpot). Personally, I think the kooky older-brother connection Cuaron had with the kids (from reading on-location press reports) worked to get better performances from them than Columbus' semi-paternal relationship. Another note -- more cuts from the book. HP3 was over 400 pages long; the first two barely reached 300, so Cuaron and Steve Knowles (screenplay for all 3) had to abridge more of the less necessary details from the book.
There are other touches that Cuaron's direction brings, most of them subtle by nature, others subtle in comparison to Columbus. First, the backgrounds with the wandering ghosts and moving paintings in full action while the students are wandering the innards of Hogwarts adds a more natural feel to the shots. Second, the 5-second transition shots of the Whomping Willow that show what time of year it is instead of abrupt scene changes. Third, the running gags with Professor Lupin's cure-all for magic attacks and Hermione's out-of-the-blue appearances in class (more subtle than the book too, and well done). Fourth, reinforcing the interactions of the schoolmates with more natural group scenes (like the boys all BS-ing in the common room). Fifth, Cuaron's treatment of Malfoy and his henchmen is outstanding -- he portrays them all as sheep in wolf's clothing, cowardly imbeciles who derive their strength from others' fear or weakness -- a fine statement.
To the specifics of the flik itself: positives include the look, feel and pacing. Another positive is Michael Gambon's more whimsical Dumbledore as opposed to the great Richard Harris' kindly but aloof interpretation of the headmaster. There are also fewer goofy touches like the floo powder and flying car rubbish from HP2 -- the Knight Bus sequence is pure fun. Also a plus, David Thewlis' Professor Lupin -- a fine mentoring relationship with him and Harry is well-rendered in the film.
Finally, the books are about the students, not the teachers, and Cuaron captures this by ensuring that all scenes are from the kids' perspectives, not the omniscient observer or an adult's view. The drawback (from some folks' perspectives) is that Hagrid, Prof. McGonagall and Prof. Snape all have relatively small roles in this one. But the book and the film are about the kids' development, so the priorities are correct.
Whistleblower-free
That's what Kofi Annan is trying to make the UN. This is the story about how Annan wants to gag Heidi Postlewait and Andrew Thomson, two of three co-authors of Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures, a True Story from Hell on Earth. The authors chronicle their UN service in Cambodia, Somalia, Haiti, Rwanda, Liberia and Bosnia. Postlewait and Thomson are on the UN payroll, their third co-author is not.
If dissenters are fired and suppressed at the UN, what type of government does that remind you of?
If you said ours, go read Mother Jones and get a brain enema; if you said Soviet, China, fascist, anyone in the Mideast other than Israel, you're on the right track.
If dissenters are fired and suppressed at the UN, what type of government does that remind you of?
If you said ours, go read Mother Jones and get a brain enema; if you said Soviet, China, fascist, anyone in the Mideast other than Israel, you're on the right track.
Academic freedom and the thought police
John Yoo is a law professor at Berkeley and knows the Geneva conventions on POWs better than you or I. But he ran afoul of the liberal mind-set in academe and now some dopes at Berkeley want to run him out of town for a memo he wrote for the Justice Department because they claim he aided and abetted Abu Ghraib. Check out Debra Saunders' column. Truth is stranger than fiction.
Simply nuts
Neal Boortz is dead-on about this:
Do you realize that at this point the story of the abuse of some Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison has received more press coverage for a longer period of time than did the story of the capture of Saddam Hussein? And just why is that? Come on, haven't you been listening? It's because the media believes the story of Abu Ghraib hurts George Bush, while the story of the capture of Saddam Hussein helps George Bush.
What's more ridiculous is this statement from billionaire nutter George Soros (also courtesy Boortz): "Soros says that the pictures from Abu Ghraib ' .. hit us the same way as the terrorist attack itself.'"
Soros is mentally off the rails, but that is to be expected. Despite his seemingly inherent moral authority that is touted by the media constantly pointing out that Soros was a victim of the Holocaust in his native Hungary, Soros' claim to morality is nonexistent. First, Soros has likened the Iraq war to the Nazi invasions of Western Europe. Second, Soros has consistently reminisced that the summer of 1944 was one of the happiest times of his life (he was in his teens, no obliviousness excuse).
The Summer of 1944 was when Jews were shepherded into the Budapest Ghetto and the Holocaust finally arrived in Hungary -- and at an accelerated pace. As I pointed out in my Tony Curtis salute below (June 3 entry), the Nazi extermination machine worked on a fast track in Hungary -- the Nazis "only" began shipping Jews to death camps in mid-1944 but Hungary still had the second-largest number of Jews killed in the Holocaust -- 560,000 and 50% of its Jewish population.
Do you realize that at this point the story of the abuse of some Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison has received more press coverage for a longer period of time than did the story of the capture of Saddam Hussein? And just why is that? Come on, haven't you been listening? It's because the media believes the story of Abu Ghraib hurts George Bush, while the story of the capture of Saddam Hussein helps George Bush.
What's more ridiculous is this statement from billionaire nutter George Soros (also courtesy Boortz): "Soros says that the pictures from Abu Ghraib ' .. hit us the same way as the terrorist attack itself.'"
Soros is mentally off the rails, but that is to be expected. Despite his seemingly inherent moral authority that is touted by the media constantly pointing out that Soros was a victim of the Holocaust in his native Hungary, Soros' claim to morality is nonexistent. First, Soros has likened the Iraq war to the Nazi invasions of Western Europe. Second, Soros has consistently reminisced that the summer of 1944 was one of the happiest times of his life (he was in his teens, no obliviousness excuse).
The Summer of 1944 was when Jews were shepherded into the Budapest Ghetto and the Holocaust finally arrived in Hungary -- and at an accelerated pace. As I pointed out in my Tony Curtis salute below (June 3 entry), the Nazi extermination machine worked on a fast track in Hungary -- the Nazis "only" began shipping Jews to death camps in mid-1944 but Hungary still had the second-largest number of Jews killed in the Holocaust -- 560,000 and 50% of its Jewish population.
Thursday, June 03, 2004
De-Clintonization
Pres. Bush must de-Clintonize the State Department. Read this. The US Fifth Column should not have jobs in its own government.
Happy Birthday Bernie
Happy 79th Birthday to Bernard Schwartz, now known as Tony Curtis -- yes, the movie star and father of Jamie Lee.
One of the most notable gifts Mr. Curtis (a Hungarian Jew) has bestowed (through his donations and fundraising), although it is not well known, is the Weeping Willow Holocaust Memorial in Wallenberg Park at the Dohany Street Synagogue in Budapest. The Weeping Willow is a metal structure with willow-like leaves that contain the names of the Hungarian Jews who died in the Holocaust. The Dohany Street Synagogue (aka the Tabac-Shul in Yiddish because Dohany is Magyar for "tobacco") is the largest in Europe. Wallenberg Park is named for Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who defied his government and forged travel documents that helped 20,000 Jews escape the Nazis. The Holocaust really only reached Hungary in 1944 -- before that the Nazi-collaborationist Hungarian government had avoided participating in the Final Solution. Nonetheless, approximately 50% of Hungary's Jews were killed in the Holocaust and Hungary had the second-largest number of Jews killed (560,000; Poland had 3,000,000) in the Holocaust.
Here is a picture of the Weeping Willow. Click his links to see more pictures, including the grave of Art Garfunkel's grandfather in the side yard of the Synagogue (which has gravestones of those who died in the Budapest Ghetto).
Here is a site that provides thumbnail history of the Holocaust. And here is another pic of the Willow.
One of the most notable gifts Mr. Curtis (a Hungarian Jew) has bestowed (through his donations and fundraising), although it is not well known, is the Weeping Willow Holocaust Memorial in Wallenberg Park at the Dohany Street Synagogue in Budapest. The Weeping Willow is a metal structure with willow-like leaves that contain the names of the Hungarian Jews who died in the Holocaust. The Dohany Street Synagogue (aka the Tabac-Shul in Yiddish because Dohany is Magyar for "tobacco") is the largest in Europe. Wallenberg Park is named for Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who defied his government and forged travel documents that helped 20,000 Jews escape the Nazis. The Holocaust really only reached Hungary in 1944 -- before that the Nazi-collaborationist Hungarian government had avoided participating in the Final Solution. Nonetheless, approximately 50% of Hungary's Jews were killed in the Holocaust and Hungary had the second-largest number of Jews killed (560,000; Poland had 3,000,000) in the Holocaust.
Here is a picture of the Weeping Willow. Click his links to see more pictures, including the grave of Art Garfunkel's grandfather in the side yard of the Synagogue (which has gravestones of those who died in the Budapest Ghetto).
Here is a site that provides thumbnail history of the Holocaust. And here is another pic of the Willow.
Freedom is for suckers?
Eamonn Butler in the Wall Street Journal Europe (link requires registration and fee) compares "Tax Freedom Day" in the UK, the Eurozone and the US. Tax Freedom Day is the day when you have finished working enough to pay your taxes. It is derived by measuring the total tax take of the country by its total income to derive a percentage, then translating that percentage to a day of the year. If the government takes 25% of the total national income in taxes, then Tax Freedom Day is around April 1 or 2 -- 90-91 days into the year.
In the US, Tax Freedom Day was April 11, the earliest Tax Freedom Day since 1967; in the UK it was May 28. In the Eurozone it is around June 28. In Sweden, July 29.
What's the point? The US predicted 2004 growth rate is 4.5%; the UK rate is 3.0%; the Eurozone = 1.7%. Notice anything? Indeed, the fastest growing economies of Europe (Ireland, parts of Eastern Europe) are the ones with the lowest and simplest tax rates. Remember this when you hear Europeans criticizing America for not taking care of its people: (1) the US growth rate far outstrips that of Europe, thereby providing numerous opportunities for Americans; (2) that growth rate is reflected in US per capita income ($35,400) -- compare that to the UK ($25,510), Sweden ($25,970) France and Germany ($22,240 and 22,740) [stats taken from World Bank 2002 data]. Seems like Churchill is right: socialism is characterized by equal sharing of misery.
In the US, Tax Freedom Day was April 11, the earliest Tax Freedom Day since 1967; in the UK it was May 28. In the Eurozone it is around June 28. In Sweden, July 29.
What's the point? The US predicted 2004 growth rate is 4.5%; the UK rate is 3.0%; the Eurozone = 1.7%. Notice anything? Indeed, the fastest growing economies of Europe (Ireland, parts of Eastern Europe) are the ones with the lowest and simplest tax rates. Remember this when you hear Europeans criticizing America for not taking care of its people: (1) the US growth rate far outstrips that of Europe, thereby providing numerous opportunities for Americans; (2) that growth rate is reflected in US per capita income ($35,400) -- compare that to the UK ($25,510), Sweden ($25,970) France and Germany ($22,240 and 22,740) [stats taken from World Bank 2002 data]. Seems like Churchill is right: socialism is characterized by equal sharing of misery.
New CIA head
George Tenet resigned today. See here for details. Those of us who thought Pres. Bush should not have kept Clinton's CIA Director in place now will have a new man to kick around. Out of all of Clinton's CIA people, I'd prefer to see James Woolsey back -- he seems to have more ability than Tenet or anyone else Clinton had in his intel posts (NSC head, DIA, etc.). A rumored replacement is Porter Goss, a Florida Republican Congressman and former spook (spy) himself.
Wednesday, June 02, 2004
VDH meets TNR
One of the most reassuring and straightforward writers to emerge since 9-11-01 is historian Victor Davis Hanson. He has his own website and is a regular contributor to National Review Online (Fridays). Today, his mental acuity is on exhibit at The New Republic in this piece. His ultimate point is clear:
A year ago, we waged a brilliant three-week campaign, then mysteriously forgot the source of our success. Military audacity, lethality, unpredictability, imperviousness to cheap criticism, and iron resolve, coupled with the message of freedom, convinced neutrals to join us and enemies not yet conquered to remain in the shadows. But our failure to shoot looters, to arrest early insurrectionists like Sadr, and to subdue cities like Tikrit or Falluja only earned us contempt--and not just from those who would kill us, but from others who would have joined us as well.
The misplaced restraint of the past year is not true morality, but a sort of weird immorality that seeks to avoid ethical censure in the short term--the ever-present, 24-hour pulpit of global television that inflates a half-dozen inadvertent civilian casualties into Dresden and Hiroshima. But, in the long term, such complacency has left more moderate Iraqis to be targeted by ever more emboldened murderers. For their part, American troops have discovered that they are safer on the assault when they can fire first and kill killers, rather than simply patrol and react, hoping their newly armored Humvees and fortified flak vests will deflect projectiles.
. . . In contrast, audacity is a force multiplier. A Sadr in chains or in paradise is worth more, in terms of deterrence, than an entire infantry division.
Read it all. If my link doesn't work, go to Instapundit and use his.
A year ago, we waged a brilliant three-week campaign, then mysteriously forgot the source of our success. Military audacity, lethality, unpredictability, imperviousness to cheap criticism, and iron resolve, coupled with the message of freedom, convinced neutrals to join us and enemies not yet conquered to remain in the shadows. But our failure to shoot looters, to arrest early insurrectionists like Sadr, and to subdue cities like Tikrit or Falluja only earned us contempt--and not just from those who would kill us, but from others who would have joined us as well.
The misplaced restraint of the past year is not true morality, but a sort of weird immorality that seeks to avoid ethical censure in the short term--the ever-present, 24-hour pulpit of global television that inflates a half-dozen inadvertent civilian casualties into Dresden and Hiroshima. But, in the long term, such complacency has left more moderate Iraqis to be targeted by ever more emboldened murderers. For their part, American troops have discovered that they are safer on the assault when they can fire first and kill killers, rather than simply patrol and react, hoping their newly armored Humvees and fortified flak vests will deflect projectiles.
. . . In contrast, audacity is a force multiplier. A Sadr in chains or in paradise is worth more, in terms of deterrence, than an entire infantry division.
Read it all. If my link doesn't work, go to Instapundit and use his.
UN dishonor
The UN is a reprehensible institution. Its latest transgression against all decency -- allowing Gaza terrorists to use a UN ambulance as a getaway vehicle after they ambushed and slaughtered six Israeli soldiers. Michelle Malkin has the details.
You want proof? Here's the video of the terrorists speeding away. And no US news outfit has sought a copy of the video to show on American TV.
What media bias?
You want proof? Here's the video of the terrorists speeding away. And no US news outfit has sought a copy of the video to show on American TV.
What media bias?
Moral equivalency or correct history?
Anne Applebaum is the author of Gulag -- an in-depth study of the Soviet concentration-camp apparatus for political prisoners. Today, her weekly Wednesday column in the Washington Post recounts the Warsaw Uprising, which began on August 1, 1944 and lasted for 9 weeks -- 50% longer than the French army lasted at the outset of World War II. At the end of her column, Applebaum drops this little bomb:
In fact, for millions of people, World War II had no happy ending. It had no ending at all. The liberation of one half of the European continent coincided with a new occupation for the other half. The camps of Stalin, our ally, expanded just as the camps of Hitler, our enemy, were destroyed. Not that you would know it, listening to Americans reminisce about D-Day, or the children welcoming GIs in the streets, or the joyous return home. Perhaps there is no such thing as an entirely "good war" after all.
Her dollop of moral equivalency is notable for its conventionalism. There is a large swath of historical theory that posits that the USSR and Stalin were as bad as or worse than Hitler and Nazi Germany. This concept is a dangerous fallacy on a number of levels, and deserving of more treatment than I can give on a weblog. Nonetheless, fighting WWII was an entirely "good war" -- it's the ultimate peace that had negatives.
The immediate criticisms: (1) Nazism was a government-imposed KKK -- a white supremacy conceit combined with centrally planned socialism that was popularly supported by (and indoctrinated into) the German people and not merely a construct put in place by a cadre of revolutionaries to impose a new rule upon an already subservient populace like the USSR (Read Daniel Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners re: the Nazi appeal to the Germanic volk and Richard Pipes' The Russian Revolution [the author's own condensed version will do] regarding the Bolshevik coup that created the USSR). The difference is tremendous -- systematic brainwashing of an entire people into acolytes of a supremacy movement based on an artificial concept of superior men and women versus the subjugation of vast populations for the communist elites. Which is worse? The one that works as a cult because the willingness of the people to join it infuses it with a legitimacy that is lacking vis-a-vis the leaders of the coup.
(2) Nazism endorsed the systematic destruction of millions of people because of its underlying theory of Aryan superiority; Communism did not contain such a concept, although it did justify deaths inflicted in the establishment of a communist state as a cost of revolution. The difference: again, an eagerness to cause destruction versus a willingness to endure it.
(3) Nazism's death camps and mass slaughter was a systemic government-run program; the Ukraine famine and numerous deaths attributed to Stalin were the work of a government apparatus controlled absolutely by a megalomaniac -- in other words, Hitler used his best acolytes (Eichmann, Himmler, Heydrich, Goebbels, Mengele, Goering) in a manner similar to a mafia boss and his capos; Stalin killed those closest to him.
In addition, Applebaum's column is too harsh (by far) on Churchill and too easy on both Roosevelt and Truman (and Truman is my second-favorite 20th century president). First, Churchill deferred to Roosevelt in Yalta and in many other respects after the US entered the War because the US had superior numbers and resources, the UK was spread so thin, and the power the UK would have AFTER the War would be so small relative to the US and USSR. But Roosevelt offered more to Stalin at Yalta than Stalin himself expected and FDR's ill-health made him a poor negotiator. Second, FDR and the US did not comprehend the USSR's territorial and ideological avarice; Britain had a better understanding but FDR continued to treat Stalin as the avuncular "Uncle Joe" portrayed in the US press. Third, Truman did not show resolve against USSR-inspired coups in Romania, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland after the War -- he only announced the Truman Doctrine in 1948 (which saved Greece and Turkey), after Eastern Europe had fallen under Soviet domination.
Nonetheless, Applebaum's article is a worthy read to understand the heroism of the Warsaw combatants, what they sacrificed and why they should be honored.
In fact, for millions of people, World War II had no happy ending. It had no ending at all. The liberation of one half of the European continent coincided with a new occupation for the other half. The camps of Stalin, our ally, expanded just as the camps of Hitler, our enemy, were destroyed. Not that you would know it, listening to Americans reminisce about D-Day, or the children welcoming GIs in the streets, or the joyous return home. Perhaps there is no such thing as an entirely "good war" after all.
Her dollop of moral equivalency is notable for its conventionalism. There is a large swath of historical theory that posits that the USSR and Stalin were as bad as or worse than Hitler and Nazi Germany. This concept is a dangerous fallacy on a number of levels, and deserving of more treatment than I can give on a weblog. Nonetheless, fighting WWII was an entirely "good war" -- it's the ultimate peace that had negatives.
The immediate criticisms: (1) Nazism was a government-imposed KKK -- a white supremacy conceit combined with centrally planned socialism that was popularly supported by (and indoctrinated into) the German people and not merely a construct put in place by a cadre of revolutionaries to impose a new rule upon an already subservient populace like the USSR (Read Daniel Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners re: the Nazi appeal to the Germanic volk and Richard Pipes' The Russian Revolution [the author's own condensed version will do] regarding the Bolshevik coup that created the USSR). The difference is tremendous -- systematic brainwashing of an entire people into acolytes of a supremacy movement based on an artificial concept of superior men and women versus the subjugation of vast populations for the communist elites. Which is worse? The one that works as a cult because the willingness of the people to join it infuses it with a legitimacy that is lacking vis-a-vis the leaders of the coup.
(2) Nazism endorsed the systematic destruction of millions of people because of its underlying theory of Aryan superiority; Communism did not contain such a concept, although it did justify deaths inflicted in the establishment of a communist state as a cost of revolution. The difference: again, an eagerness to cause destruction versus a willingness to endure it.
(3) Nazism's death camps and mass slaughter was a systemic government-run program; the Ukraine famine and numerous deaths attributed to Stalin were the work of a government apparatus controlled absolutely by a megalomaniac -- in other words, Hitler used his best acolytes (Eichmann, Himmler, Heydrich, Goebbels, Mengele, Goering) in a manner similar to a mafia boss and his capos; Stalin killed those closest to him.
In addition, Applebaum's column is too harsh (by far) on Churchill and too easy on both Roosevelt and Truman (and Truman is my second-favorite 20th century president). First, Churchill deferred to Roosevelt in Yalta and in many other respects after the US entered the War because the US had superior numbers and resources, the UK was spread so thin, and the power the UK would have AFTER the War would be so small relative to the US and USSR. But Roosevelt offered more to Stalin at Yalta than Stalin himself expected and FDR's ill-health made him a poor negotiator. Second, FDR and the US did not comprehend the USSR's territorial and ideological avarice; Britain had a better understanding but FDR continued to treat Stalin as the avuncular "Uncle Joe" portrayed in the US press. Third, Truman did not show resolve against USSR-inspired coups in Romania, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland after the War -- he only announced the Truman Doctrine in 1948 (which saved Greece and Turkey), after Eastern Europe had fallen under Soviet domination.
Nonetheless, Applebaum's article is a worthy read to understand the heroism of the Warsaw combatants, what they sacrificed and why they should be honored.
More Stephen Hayes
Today National Review Online has an online interview with Stephen Hayes, author of The Connection: How al Qaeda's Cooperation with Saddam Hussein Has Endangered America. Most notable fact from Hayes: the Clinton Administration itself believed that Saddam had intimate connections with al-Qaeda. Hayes also traces the Saddam/al-Qaeda links mentioned in the press in the late 1990s; in contrast to the media's stock-in-phrase that al-Qaeda would not work with Saddam because he was secular and they are religious nutters (a crock if ever one existed).
UT goes PC
The latest attack by the politically correct: at University of Texas, one prof. proposes to FORCE students to study another culture for a semester. Not many details, but the story is here.
Tuesday, June 01, 2004
How d'ya like me now?
The Monk has a new look, courtesy Doug Bowman at Stop Design.com. I think it's easier on the eyes thanks to the muted colors and dark background and less of a SCREAM from the growth-hormone infused font size. Plus, I'm pretty pleased that I was able to figure out how to reconfigure things after some brief instruction from Doug.
Another good read
Walter Olson of Overlawyered.com now has his book in paperback. Title: The Rule of Lawyers: How the New Litigation Elite Threatens America's Rule of Law.
Taking stock
This is from Andrew Sullivan a frequent critic of President Bush and Secretary Rumsfeld's handling of the Iraq reconstruction:
JUST A QUESTION: If someone had said in February 2003, that by June 2004, Saddam Hussein would have been removed from power and captured; that a diverse new government, including Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, would be installed; that elections would be scheduled for January 2005; and that the liberation of a devastated country of 25 million in which everyone owns an AK-47 had been accomplished with an army of around 140,000 with a total casualty rate (including accidents and friendly fire) of around 800; that no oil fields had been set aflame; no WMDs had been used; no mass refugee crises had emerged; and no civil war had broken out... well, I think you would come to the conclusion that the war had been an extraordinary success. And you'd be right. Yes, there are enormous challenges; and yes, so much more could have been achieved without incompetence, infighting and occasional inhumanity. But it's worth acknowledging that, with a little perspective, our current gloom is over-blown. Stocks in Iraq have been way over-sold. I even regret some minor sells myself. Now watch the media do all it can to accentuate the negative.
JUST A QUESTION: If someone had said in February 2003, that by June 2004, Saddam Hussein would have been removed from power and captured; that a diverse new government, including Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, would be installed; that elections would be scheduled for January 2005; and that the liberation of a devastated country of 25 million in which everyone owns an AK-47 had been accomplished with an army of around 140,000 with a total casualty rate (including accidents and friendly fire) of around 800; that no oil fields had been set aflame; no WMDs had been used; no mass refugee crises had emerged; and no civil war had broken out... well, I think you would come to the conclusion that the war had been an extraordinary success. And you'd be right. Yes, there are enormous challenges; and yes, so much more could have been achieved without incompetence, infighting and occasional inhumanity. But it's worth acknowledging that, with a little perspective, our current gloom is over-blown. Stocks in Iraq have been way over-sold. I even regret some minor sells myself. Now watch the media do all it can to accentuate the negative.
Mark these words
A must-read interview with the last surviving fighter in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising of the Jews against the Nazis. His name is Marek Edelman, and his comments are translated from a Polish newsweekly transcription of a TV interview he gave. The Chrenkoff blog has additional information (click link above). Here are some excerpts:
Interviewer: But there are people who say it's [Iraq, the war against Islamofascism] not our business.
Edelman: And whose business is it? Every war with fascism is our business. In 1939 there were also many people who said that the war in Poland was not their war, and what happened? Great nations fell because politicians listened to those who were saying that it's not worth dying for Gdansk [Danzig]. If only we'd intervened militarily after Hitler re-entered Rhineland we probably would not have had the war and the Holocaust.
Interviewer: Many people do understand that, but they don't understand why the Americans have to go to the other side of the world and fight over Iraq now.
Edelman: And why did they go to Europe then? Who defeated Hitler and saved Europe from fascism? The French? No, the Americans did. We thanked them then because they saved us. Today we criticise them because they're saving somebody else.
* * *
Interviewer: But the Spanish withdrew their troops from Iraq after the terrorist attack in Madrid.
Edelman: Please don't tell me what the Spanish did. So what? Do you seriously think that it will save them from further attacks? No. The weak just get punched in the head. Pacifism lost a long time ago.
Interviewer: There are more and more voices saying that Poland shouldn't work so close with the Americans and that instead we should get closer to France and Germany.
Edelman: France used to be a great power, culturally and intellectually. And what happened to them? They didn't want to fight for their own democracy, they thought it wasn't really their war [in 1939]. And they lost everything, because when you bend over and take it - even once - then you're finished. And what's that whole talk about the difference between American politics and European politics? There is no other politics but international democratic politics. If we withdraw from Iraq now, what do we have left? Cosying up to Iran and Saudi Arabia? ...
Interviewer: But there are people who say it's [Iraq, the war against Islamofascism] not our business.
Edelman: And whose business is it? Every war with fascism is our business. In 1939 there were also many people who said that the war in Poland was not their war, and what happened? Great nations fell because politicians listened to those who were saying that it's not worth dying for Gdansk [Danzig]. If only we'd intervened militarily after Hitler re-entered Rhineland we probably would not have had the war and the Holocaust.
Interviewer: Many people do understand that, but they don't understand why the Americans have to go to the other side of the world and fight over Iraq now.
Edelman: And why did they go to Europe then? Who defeated Hitler and saved Europe from fascism? The French? No, the Americans did. We thanked them then because they saved us. Today we criticise them because they're saving somebody else.
* * *
Interviewer: But the Spanish withdrew their troops from Iraq after the terrorist attack in Madrid.
Edelman: Please don't tell me what the Spanish did. So what? Do you seriously think that it will save them from further attacks? No. The weak just get punched in the head. Pacifism lost a long time ago.
Interviewer: There are more and more voices saying that Poland shouldn't work so close with the Americans and that instead we should get closer to France and Germany.
Edelman: France used to be a great power, culturally and intellectually. And what happened to them? They didn't want to fight for their own democracy, they thought it wasn't really their war [in 1939]. And they lost everything, because when you bend over and take it - even once - then you're finished. And what's that whole talk about the difference between American politics and European politics? There is no other politics but international democratic politics. If we withdraw from Iraq now, what do we have left? Cosying up to Iran and Saudi Arabia? ...
Saddam -- Al-Qaeda, the links are there
Your initial reading list for the day:
Andy McCarthy describes some of Saddam's links to al-Qaeda in this piece.
But a more detailed rundown has been pieced together by Stephen Hayes, a Weekly Standard reporter who has been investigating the Saddam connections to al-Qaeda for years. Here is his latest article. And here is a link to his new book.
Andy McCarthy describes some of Saddam's links to al-Qaeda in this piece.
But a more detailed rundown has been pieced together by Stephen Hayes, a Weekly Standard reporter who has been investigating the Saddam connections to al-Qaeda for years. Here is his latest article. And here is a link to his new book.
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