Tom Cruise

Moses has been on a bit of a jag about Tom Cruise as of late, having come to his defense as far as his behavior and his acting. I happen to think Tom Cruise is a pretty good actor in certain parts. I thought he was great in Vanilla Sky, pretty good in Collateral, good in Minority Report, and perfectly cast in Rain Man. Sure he's done some cheesy stuff earlier in his career, such as Days of Thunder (essentially Top Gun, but with stock cars instead of F-14s) and Cocktail, but they were moderately entertaining fare, and more than worth watching on a Sunday afternoon whilst nursing a hangover. And he takes chances, such as in Eyes Wide Shut (which was amusing in a kind of surreal way) and The Last Samurai (which to my mind was Dances With Wolves, with the samurai standing in for the Lakota as the ancient culture crushed by the forces of modernity, vis-a-vis the evil white man). As far as Tom Cruise's recent behavior, Moses thought that Cruise was perfectly within the bounds of normal behavior on Oprah (I thought he acted like a nut) but embarrassing on The Today Show with Matt Lauer. I actually think Tom Cruise was right to stand up to Matt Lauer and his politically correct, bland as oatmeal opinions. Far from even talking about Scientology on Lauer's show, Cruise brought to the fore something that should be discussed: namely that Americans are getting to the point of being over-medicated. Maybe picking on Brooke Shields wasn't the right thing to do, if only because it made Cruise seem like a bully and a cad. But Cruise was right about Ritalin, and drugging hyperactive children. Which child isn't hyperactive!?! I think Cruise was right, and he got buried under the avalanche of bad press because he dared to question the prevailing orthodoxy regarding medication. This columnist put things in perspective regarding Cruise on Lauer's show.

Lauer thought that Cruise was being judgmental, and that he should keep his opinions to himself. He also thought Cruise should stipulate that – while the actor didn't approve of taking antidepressants – those for whom the drugs had worked should be free to take them.
Why should Cruise keep his opinions to himself? Shields didn't keep her bout with mental illness to herself. She advertised it to sell books. Cruise is entitled to his opinion, just like anyone else.

You can read the rest here.

They Want You To Forget

There is no doubt in my mind that the events of October of 1917 could be the most disasterous, tragic, and far reaching in history, and we're still deeply affected by them to this day. Historians have put the number that perished under the godless weights of communism as somewhere slighty south of one hundred million. ONE HUNDRED MILLION executed, starved to death, or worked to death via forced labor. And unlike the Nazis after WWII, there has yet to be a full accounting of the crimes of communists in the former Soviet Union or the former Eastern Bloc. Gerhardt Shroeder's Socialist Democratic Party, along with the Green Party, rule Germany at the moment. That they are allowing a memorial dedicated to those who perished attempting to gain freedom by crossing through the Berlin Wall to be razed is execrable, but hardly surprising. After all, Shroeder put a dyed-in-the-wool former (or maybe not former) communist/terrorist in the person of Joschka Fischer in charge of his foreign policy. You can read all about the destruction of Checkpoint Charlie here. And you can read all about Joschka Fischer's violent, communist past here.

Christian Gueffroy was the last person murdered attempting to escape East Berlin. He was killed in February, 1989. The meme echoed by many anti-Reaganites these days is that the wall was going to come down anyway, and Reagan's arms build-up and rhetoric did nothing to shorten it. Christian Gueffroy never got the memo. He was 21, born the same year as I was. The wall came down in November of 1989.

1,065 people died over three decades attempting to gain their freedom. The socialist German government, infiltrated as it is by former communists, doesn't even want you to remember there was a wall in the first place, much less that these people, like Christian Gueffroy, died trying to breach it.

Oh...and one more thing. Destruction of Checkpoint Charlie and the Berlin Wall memorial commences on July 4th. Coincidence?

Use Your Illusion

Came across this website dedicated to optical illusions. Worth checking out. On a different note, I dropped my cellphone into a puddle yesterday, and it is still acting odd. Examples of its slight malfunction include making phone calls by itself and dialing the number 4 several times...again, by itself. Water, like everything else in this world, has both a beneficiary and destructive characteristic to it. Yesterday, I was reminded of the latter, as well as my penchant (inherited no doubt from my father) for smashing elbows into walls by accident (also happened yesterday) and other assorted acts of involuntary self-destruction, albeit minor. (Thankfully.)

A Brief History Of French Military Ineptitude

"Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without an accordion. All you do is leave behind a lot of noisy baggage."

OR

"What else can one say about a nation who's two most successful military leaders were a Corsican midget and 16-year-old girl in the throes of teenage dementia?"

Here's a blow by blow account of French military idiocy, ineptitude, and cowardice. Read up, cheese eating surrender monkeys!

Burning Ol' Glory

Mark Steyn is one of the most clever op-ed people in the business. In his latest column, he takes on the flag burning amendment that is currently up for approval on Capitol Hill.

An excerpt:

Banning flag desecration flatters the desecrators and suggests that the flag of this great republic is a wee delicate bloom that has to be protected. It's not. It gets burned because it's strong. I'm a Canadian and one day, during the Kosovo war, I switched on the TV and there were some fellows jumping up and down in Belgrade burning the Stars and Stripes and the Union Jack. Big deal, seen it a million times. But then to my astonishment, some of those excitable Serbs produced a Maple Leaf from somewhere and started torching that. Don't ask me why -- we had a small contribution to the Kosovo bombing campaign but evidently it was enough to arouse the ire of Slobo's boys. I've never been so proud to be Canadian in years. I turned the sound up to see if they were yelling ''Death to the Little Satan!'' But you can't have everything.

That's the point: A flag has to be worth torching. When a flag gets burned, that's not a sign of its weakness but of its strength. If you can't stand the heat of your burning flag, get out of the superpower business. It's the left that believes the state can regulate everyone into thought-compliance. The right should understand that the battle of ideas is won out in the open.

This Guy Is An Idiot

I used to think Coldplay weren't terrible musically, which mean that I found something tuneful about them here and there. But their lead singer, Mr. Gweneth Paltrow, has killed whatever mild affection I had for their music. Dumb ass.


"I was wondering whether certain people's policies would change if they heard certain songs...Would it really be possible to start Nazi Germany if you'd just been listening to Bob Marley's Exodus back-to-back for the past three weeks and getting stoned? Would the idea of the Holocaust seem so appealing? I know this sounds really trite..."

--Chris Martin of Coldplay

Triumph!

Very funny video of Triumph the Insult Comic Dog interviewing Michael Jackson supporters. I can understand why Eminem wanted to kill him at one point.

Live Aid

Reading about the upcoming Live 8 concerts, which are set to coincide with the G8 conference in Great Britain, made me think back twenty years to Live Aid. It was a pretty amazing day, from what I remember, having watched a good chunk of it after coming home from working at Dunkin Donuts (and smelling like shortening, confectionary sugar, and honey glaze), as some of the performances were electrifying. I specifically remember U2, youthful and earnest, moving me through the television set. I remember Madonna was just awful. Led Zeppelin were even more awful, as I expected more of them. And above all of them, Queen simply lit up entire event; it was at that moment that I realized that if there was ever a guy that was a born star, Freddie Mercury was that guy. To this day, I've never seen anybody work a crowd better than Freddie Mercury, and Queen, while embodying all that was and is cliche within rock and roll (fist pumping the air, imploring the crowd to clap along, mucho power chords, and pompously triumphant lyrics) managed to employ all these cliches in a way that was truly inspirational and not the least bit cringe-worthy to even the most discerning of music listeners (which I was, even at the age of 16). I was never, and continue not to be, a huge Queen fan, although I like them very much, but they stole the day, and even U2's inspired performance didn't compare. But enough of music.

While watching Live Aid that long ago Saturday, I felt like I was watching something historic, something epic. Youthful naivete prevented me from understanding at the time that it was all for naught. It certainly was inspirational to see such an array of acts get together for such a noteworthy cause, namely the famine in Ethiopia. Rock and roll can change the world, right!?! And Live Aid did raise a boatload of cash from around the world, around $100 million. But in the end, it did nothing to stop the famine in Ethiopia. If anything, it elongated the misery.

You see, the famine in Ethiopia wasn't a famine. It wasn't on par with, say, the American Dust Bowl of the 1930's, where a confluence of economic and natural distasters destroyed or severely damaged the agricultural sector of a society. It was a famine similar to the one the Ukrainians in the 1930's endured, as in there being plenty of food, but the people, for political reasons only a psychotic gangster like Joe Stalin could understand, weren't allowed access to it and were starved to death. That was the famine that was going on in 1980's Ethiopia. And who was at the center of this forced starvation? A communist thug by the name of Mengistu. And where did over 90% of the 100 million that was raised by Live Aid go to? The Mengistu government, the very same government that was starving its people to death for political reasons. Live Aid didn't help the very people it sought to relieve one bit. It actively hurt and killed more of them. This fellow blogger put it best:

More aid was never the solution to the problems of the developing world. But it was always an easy way out, because all you had to do was to send (in most cases) somebody else's money without worrying too much about the consequences. The act of charity was an end in itself. But poverty is not a problem, it's a symptom of a problem, that being lack of democracy, freedom, transparency and sensible economic policies - and more money, like giving dope to an addict, only serves to be exacerbates these conditions.

Bill O'Reilly pointed out three and a half years ago that the money raised by the 9/11 celebrity telethon featuring the likes of Julia Roberts and George Clooney wasn't getting to the people it was supposed to get to (namely victims' families of 9/11). Night after night, he grilled high ranking members of the United Way, March of Dimes, the American Red Cross, etc. to find out where the money was, when it was going, where it was going, and when the families would get it. Six months after the telethon, the money had still not been distributed. Needless to say, the Hollywood establishment went ballistic that O'Reilly questioned their humanitarianism. It wasn't their humanitarianism that O'Reilly was questioning; it was their commitment to see the their humanitarian effort through. Of course, once they put in their face time, looking earnest and sympatico, they showed no concern for where the money they helped raise went. But O'Reilly was right, and they were wrong. If Bob Geldof, the organizer of Live Aid had refused to hand over any money to the Mengistu government until it was ensured that the aid would get to the starving Ethiopian horde, it might've made a difference. But then, why would Mengistu feed his people with Live Aid money when he was actively trying to starve them to death in the first place? No one affiliated with Live Aid ever commented on that, to my knowledge. If they did, they would've prima facie rendered the whole enterprise a quixotic display of do-goodism, which in the end, it was. I commend Geldof and all the participants for their earnestness, but I condemn them for their ignorance of the true reasons behind this forced starvation, as they could've told us about it, instead of depicting it as a natural disaster. It's not like these people, many of whom participated in the Nelson Mandela concert, were averse to criticizing a repressive government. It's merely that criticizing a repressive, communist, indigenous African government led by a black thug just didn't seem like much of a juicy target. If there was ever a leader that has the capability of murdering by the thousands with nary a voice of dissent from the so-call activists, it's a black one. Mengistu was a case in point, the same as Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe is presently. I guess they only see evil through their right eye, but not their left.

That Scientology Weirdo

Here's the video from Tom Cruise's weirdly over-the-top antics on Oprah Winfrey's show a few weeks back.

Beware. It is cringe-inducing.

Proverb

"If you see a Bulgarian on the street, beat him. He will know why."

--Old Russian Proverb

(What it means, I have no idea...)

VDH

"If Japan was once experiencing bouts of anti-Americanism when its neighbor China was sleeping, then Europe was relatively friendly to us when we kept 300 Soviet divisions from its borders. The moral? Trashing the United States can be a fun sport for some when one nearby communist enemy disappears, but not so for others when another is ascendant and close by."

--From the always-brilliant Victor Davis Hanson (read the whole article here).

I'm Sure Mrs. King Was Simply Flattered

"I'm in love with my wife," he said. "You know when you're in love. It's like seeing pornography. You know it when you see it."

--Larry King, CNN's "Larry King Live"

Well, At Least We Know Where Bill Gates' Head is At

The new Microsoft Explorer being exported to China has built in detectors which will stop the offending internet user from getting hits on words like "freedom", "democracy", etc. How magnanimous of Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. There's a line from the movie Wall Street where Hal Holbrook's character takes Charlie Sheen's character aside and says, "One thing about money, Bud, it makes you do things...you don't want to do." One wonders whether Microsoft thought this through, or whether they didn't care. I'm with the latter theory. You can read about Microsoft's sordid deal with the devil here.

The irony of it all is that here's Bill Gates, at the vanguard of capitalism and a beneficiary of the fruits of this great democracy, prostituting the ideals of this nation for a buck. Awful. Just awful.

And In "The Road To Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions" Department....

I like Bono. I think he's a great rock star, and I think he has made some great, groundbreaking music with U2. His humanitarian efforts, particularly in regards to Africa's AIDS crisis, are laudable. He also has been harping on the issue of debt relief for African nations, armed with the theory that if only African nations could get a break, they could right themselves. In perfect world, maybe. But we don't live in a perfect world, or an uncorrupted one. In this corrupted world that we do live in, none is more corrupt and filled with kleptocracies than Africa. None.


The whole movement to save Africa gained tremendous steam in the 80's. It was the cause du jour. I even remember wearing a "Free South Africa" t-shirt in my college (quasi-lefty) days. Filled within our minds were visions of terrible European imperialists tearing through Africa, disemboweling its resources for their gain, brutally suppressing the indigenous populations, and then, starting at the end of the Second World War, withdrawing from Africa, leaving nary an institutional structure in place for which the indigenous population could effectively run a society. What a sad tale. And we all felt awful guilt over it. But this boilerplate observation about what happened to Africa in the last two centuries is devoid of a few very important details, namely what the First World has really been doing to help Africa since the end of the Second World War, and why it is coming to naught.

On David Frum's blog, he posted a letter from a citizen of Zimbabwe. It's worth reposting here, as it pretty much demolishes the theory that debt relief will put Africa on the right track. (Emboldened type mine):

This past week and the weeks ahead are likely to be dominated by discussionon the future of Africa and the role that aid, debt relief and trade reform can play in alleviating the devastating poverty in much of Africa. But I am afraid that this debate will miss the main obstacle to growth and development in Africa, which is weak and corrupt leadership.

In 1983 I traveled to Ghana to collect a debt. That alone caused much amusement in Ghana itself - they thought it was a joke that I would travel up over half the continent to try and collect a debt that could never be paid. The reason - Ghana had imploded, the International Airport had small trees growing in the runway and the hotel I stayed in had no water or electricity. Passengers getting off the aircraft with me looked like refugees carrying water and other "essentials". The famous local university looked as if it had been bombed, buildings vandalized and roofs stolen.

What had happened - nothing much. Aid had poured in; they had a wonderful start at independence with good foreign exchange reserves, a well-educatedadministration and rich resources. They had not fought a war for liberation;there were no internal conflicts, only rotten, corrupt, self-serving leadership. Ghana was a failed State - it scared me and I wondered, could this happen at home in Zimbabwe?

It could and it has. Zimbabwe was given every chance to succeed - open access to global markets on a preferential basis, massive foreign aid fromall quarters, technical assistance in whatever field was requested. We started out with an educated elite - many of whom had lived abroad for anumber of years. We had a diverse economy based on mining, agriculture,industry and commerce. We were virtually debt free. The world was at our feet but we blew it.

Today Zimbabwe is a basket case - we cannot feed our people, we have destroyed over half the formal sector jobs in the economy, our industry is in tatters, all other sectors of the economy either shrinking or stagnant.Our social services are a mess and life expectancy has halved. We are poorer than we were 30 years ago and there is no sign of an end to the decline and all pervading despair.

No amount of aid or debt relief or trade concessions are going to help this country get out of the hole it is in - only a radical change of direction and leadership will do that and I am afraid that this same analysis applies to many countries on the continent.

People talk of a 'Marshal Plan' for Africa, failing to recognize that countries like Zimbabwe have been the recipients of more aid per capita than was applied to Europe in 1945. People talk about debt relief - we are not servicing our debt at all at present, the US$7 billion in debt that we owe is virtually free money anyway. It's not even trade - African countries have had access to European markets on an extremely preferential basis for 25 years and yet only a tiny minority have taken up the opportunities
available.

Our collapse is self-inflicted, its home grown, and until this sort of nonsense is addressed by the global and the African community, there is no hope for countries like Zimbabwe, the Congo, Sudan, Somalia and so on. We are our own worst enemies and we must fix what is wrong here at home in Africa, before we can make effective use of the generosity of the developed world and the new global village that offers such marvelous opportunities and freedom.

The question is how to effect such changes without running the risk of being accused of neo-colonialism? How to ensure that when leadership fails acountry, the people can change them without violence and mayhem? We have tried here in Zimbabwe for the past 5 years - we have insisted on noviolence, no guns, we have worked to secure a democratic, legal transfer of power to new, popular leadership and we have not succeeded - why? It has been simply because African leaders pay lip service to the fundamentals ofthe rule of law and democracy.

When it comes to the wholesale theft of national resources and the subversion of the rule of law and democracy, our leaders are in a league all by themselves. We have become adept at manipulating the media and foreign governments and the multinational agencies such as the World Bank and the UN. To this long list we perhaps should now add the G8 leadership and Bob Geldof. We allow African leaders to strut across the platforms of the worldstage as if they were acting in the real interests of their people and not acting simply as self-serving tyrants.

Quite frankly until African leaders themselves put their own houses in order there should be no talk of assistance of any kind. It is ridiculous that Ethiopia with its rich agricultural resources has been supported by massive food aid for over 20 years. Just take a look at Nigeria - one of the oil giants of the world yet threatened with instability and rising poverty that belies its wealth and status.

Development and poverty alleviation take discipline, honesty, openness and democracy in national political life. It takes hard work and commitment and the strict observance of the rule of law and the guarantee of investor rights and business contracts. If African leaders applied these principles to their own and their public lives they would bring prosperity and freedom to their countries.

So what's to do? Simple. Tie all foreign aid and debt relief to democratic reforms, and respoect for the rules of law and business, as well as human rights. To do anything other than that is throwing bad money after good. To do anything other than that is not only counterproductive, it is downright inhumane. I hope and pray that Bono understands this.

Eric Alterman Responds (Finally...)

Correspondence Corner:

Name: C.J.
Hometown: NY, NY

Eric,

You've have stated many, many times that William Safire lied when he said that the meeting between Mohammad Atta and Iraqi intelligence took place. I'm assuming that you're basing this conclusion on the unnamed sources within the CIA (and other government agencies) that claimed that no meeting ever took place. However, you have repeatedly failed to address the contention, by the Czech government itself, that this meeting DID take place on April 8, 2001. Both Hynek Kmonicek (part of the Czech diplomatic delegation to the UN) and Stanislav Gross (Undersec. of Interior for the Czech government) have both gone on record as saying that BIS (Czech intel. agency) observed a meeting between Atta and Iraqi diplomat al-Ani, and have never backed off their statements. Vaclav Havel never backed off this contention either, and the Iraqi diplomat in question was ejected from Czech Republic for "activities incompatible with diplomatic duties." It stands to reason that these are things you should clarify on your blog in regards to Safire, because it is rather odd that the Czech government hasn't backed off their story, yet you charge that Safire has lied repeatedly in regards to it. Hopefully you can address this discrepancy and eliminate any confusion regarding this story once and for all.

Eric replies:

Dear C.J.,

Look, Safire’s “lie” was in calling the meeting an “undisputed fact.” Clearly it was at best, a extremely disputed fact. But of course it was never a fact at all, merely an unsupported allegation by a single Czech intelligence agent with a long history of alcohol abuse. (Not unlike, I might add, the single sonarman who mistakenly believed that an attack took place in the Gulf of Tonkin on August 4, 1964.) Alas, the information you offer -assuming it is accurate and regarding Havel, I don’t think it is— is well out of date. U.S. forces captured the head of Iraqi secret service who explained that no meeting took place. The 9/11 Commission concluded that no reputable evidence for a meeting could be found. Were it not for the fact that it is impossible to prove a negative, we could say with certainty that no such meeting took place. Or put it this way: there is as much hard evidence that the head of Iraqi secret service met with Atta in Prague to plan 9/11 as there is that Dick Cheney did.

My Response:

Vaclav Havel is on record as stating that he backs BIS contention that the meeting took place. The New York Times erroneously said that Havel quietly retracted the story, but Havel went, once again, on record as saying that he never "quietly walked it back" in private conversations with President Bush. Ergo, he's standing by his original assessment. As for Eric's contention that a Czech intel officer "with a long history of alcohol abuse" was the one who observed this alleged meeting, I've not come across one story that backs up this assessment. To my knowledge, it wasn't just one BIS agent, and if it was, why would they employ one in such a sensitive manner? Additionally, since agents are supposed to have anonymous identities, how would Eric know if this guy was a drunk or not? Have a name and a source, Eric? I know not what he's talking about on this one. His dismissal of Havel's observation as "out of date" is a cop out. Edward Jay Epstein has done some groundbreaking work on this story, largely ignored outside of the blogosphere.

However, I do agree with Eric on his first point, namely that Safire shouldn't be pedalling something as murky as the Atta-al Ani meeting as fact. Clearly, it is an opaque story and probably always will be. At least he gave this concession, "Were it not for the fact that it is impossible to prove a negative, we could say with certainty that no such meeting took place." Or we could say that it isn't beyond the realm of possibilities that it did take place. Given Saddam's history of animosity towards the US, the fact that a prior Iraqi diplomat was thrown out of Czech Republic for allegedly recruiting European muslims for jihad operations, that the bomb-maker of the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 sought and was granted asylum in Iraq, that Saddam gave refuge and support to two of the most lethal terrorists in the world throughout the 80's and early 90's (Abu Abbas and Abu Nidal), or that Saddam was writing checks for $25,000 to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers, that the fuselage of a 707 jet was found at what was purported to be a terrorist training facility at Salman Pak (18 miles south of Baghdad) and was used for training hijacking techniques, combined with Saddam's obvious sociopathic, murderous tendencies that he demostrated over the course of three plus decades, it is certainly not beyond the realm of possibilities that this Atta/al-Ani meeting could've taken place, nor that Saddam could've been, at least in part, responsible for the 9/11 attacks. To outright dismiss it as beyond any reasonable probability speaks more of Eric's (and a large chunk of the anti-war movements) refusal to even entertain the possibility more than it eliminates the possibility itself. Consider that to this day, despite overwhelming evidence in the form of decoded Soviet intercepts that came public via the Venona Files, Eric Alterman still says that he's "agnostic" on whether Alger Hiss was a Soviet spy. I respect the man's intellect, but I think sometimes his ideological bent gets in the way of his cognition.

Mike Tyson

Well, that's the end folks. Mike Tyson has officially entered the town of Palookaville. And what an ignominious end. And it started out so promising.

The 1980's were an interesting time, particularly for sports. Magic Johnson and Larry Bird were ripping up the NBA in ways not seen since, and you felt that even though statistically these guys were not the greatest ever, they certainly could be considered the greatest salesmen the game had ever had. To my mind, I don't think the Lakers-Celtics rivalry of the 80's has ever been equaled in terms of entertainment value. Wayne Gretzky came into the NHL via the WHA, and put up numbers that were so far ahead of anything anyone had ever seen before that it defied imagination. (Whereas the top scorers throughout the 70's would top out around 100-105 points a season, Gretzky was topping out at 200.) His Edmonton Oilers went on to win four Stanley Cups in six seasons, and though they can't be statistically considered the greatest team ever (that honor has to go to the New York Islanders 1980-83 run, folks), they certainly could be considered the most talented. Consider: Gretzky and Jari Kurri on line one, Mark Messier and Glen Anderson on forward line two, Paul Coffee Kevin Lowe on defense, Grant Fuhr in goal....take half those players away, and you still have a contender. Dwight Gooden was the hottest rookie pitcher I think I'd ever seen, and Darryl Strawberry was a Hall Of Famer with nothing but the years ahead of him to prove it. What an exciting time for professional sports. And then you had Tyson....

The boxing world had been in the care of boring boxers with no personalities. Gone were the days of Ali, Frazier, Norton, and Foreman. In were the days of the bland (though great) Larry Holmes. Gerry Cooney turned out to be a bust. As far as the heavyweight division was concerned, no better word could describe it than...boring. So when Mike Tyson came barrelling in, black boxing trunks, blank scowl on his face, with nothing but his fists to do the talking (he was barred by his manager Cus D'amato from talking to the press), it was electrifying. I became aware of Mike Tyson my freshman year of college, as there was a kid down the hall who put up a black and white photo of Tyson on his dorm room door. That summer in between my freshman and sophmore year, I had a high-school friend, famous for his numerous parties, who hosted a get-together (complete with 15-ft. sub and keg) and got a Tyson fight on Pay-Per-View. It wasn't much of a fight. I believe it might've been Marvis Frazier (clearly not in the same league as his dad fighter-wise) or maybe it was Michael Spinks that Tyson was fighting. It mattered not. It lasted about a round or two, and Tyson just leveled his opposition. It was a truly intimidating yet intoxicating thing to watch. It was at that point that I realized that this guy could be the most dominant heavyweight fighter ever. It was a very plausible conclusion, and everyone I knew that followed boxing peripherally or otherwise felt the same as I did. My friend subsequently hosted a few more of these parties, but after about two or three more, he stopped. It didn't seem worth it to get a keg, a long sub, and pay for a fight that was only going to end within two or three rounds...and often less than that.

Flash forward to my senior year at college. I'd stopped watching Tyson fights because they were a foregone conclusion. I was in a college bar called the Woodshed when I got word that Tyson had been knocked out in a fight in Tokyo versus some no-name called Buster Douglas. "Whaaah!?!" I thought. Couldn't be. But it was. Tyson was no longer invincible. Some tomato can knocked him out. And it's not like Buster Douglas was an up-and-coming fighter. He was a journeyman, a nobody. But it was a portent of things to come. Then Tyson became unravelled. There were lame-ass opponents he could still crush (Bruce Selden and Peter McNeally come to mind), but when Tyson came face to face with real boxers, real professionals, he wilted. Evander Holyfield destroyed him in the first fight, and would've in the second had Tyson not been gripped by a cannibalistic urge. Lenox Lewis absolutely pulverized Tyson. And then, it dawned on me: It wasn't that Tyson was so great to begin with; it was more that he came up at a time when the competition was weak, and he subsequently ducked difficult fights throughout his career. Wallace Matthews once did a comparison of Holyfield opponents versus Tyson opponents. Without a doubt, Holyfield fought much more difficult fights against much better opponents. Tyson was carried. Holyfield wouldn't even entertain the thought of fighting a guy like Peter McNeally. For Tyson, guys like Marvis Frazier, Peter McNeally, and Bruce Selden were meal-tickets. They were mice thrown into a snake tank. Tyson never had to contend with a mongoose, and when he did, the mongooses (Lewis, Holyfield) took him down without much of a fight. It was reminiscent of the Seinfeld episode where Kramer becomes the champion of his karate dojo because he fought 10-year-olds. Of course Tyson was dominant, given those odds.

And so, the only debate regarding Mike Tyson that could be made at this point is whether he was a casualty of poor choices and bad living like Dwight Gooden and/or Darryl Strawberry, or whether he really was the dominant boxer we all thought he was at the beginning. I'm starting to think this guy was a mirage. Last night might've proven it.

Catcalls

Walking through the streets of New York this week, I've become reaquainted with the catcalling phenomenon. Men, usually of the blue-collar variety (but not always), make lewd comments or sounds as attractive women walk by...this is what I'm talking about. I've always found this practice distasteful and crass. About a decade ago I made the mistake of walking down the street with a business colleague who would make ugly, sexist comments to women as they walked by or ahead of us. Attempts to get him to shut up proved fruitless. Fortunately, he was the one and only person (that I can recall) I'd ever been associated with who did this in my presence. But I still find it embarrassing even when I don't know the offending catcaller. But the question that I've always asked, that has never been sufficiently answered, is whether this approach has ever, ever worked. I mean, do these guys ever actually succeed in getting a woman's number with this approach, much less wind up hooking up with them?

Did Kerry Pull A Fast One?

Politics aside, I never really thought much of John Kerry as a candidate. He's lurch-like, stiff, has an air of haughtiness and superiority to him, and frankly, he seems like a dick. Conversely, whatever one may think of Bill Clinton politically, he has become the standard by which all presidential contenders are measured by. He's intelligent, photogenic, glib, and personable. GW Bush has a kind of halting, goofy charm about him that appeals to some people. (Not me, mind. I voted for him because I'm a Republican, not because of his personality.) But Kerry came off terribly. That said, much has been made about the release of Kerry's naval records, particularly in regards to his grades at Yale, which were slightly worse than Bush's (if you can believe it). There is some tasty irony in the whole affair, particularly since Kerry used his superior intellect as a selling point. The problem with that selling point is that it was bogus. The Northeastern intellectual turned out to be no more intellectual than the frat-boy C-student we currently have in the White House. Boo hoo.

More than that, it is looking like the much talked about records that Kerry finally requested the Navy release are really just copies of what was already out there. It is looking like Kerry pulled a fast one on the press and made it look like he released his full naval records, when in fact he still has yet to. For one, the full military records are not held by the Navy, but rather by National Personnel Record Center.

Washington Post reporter Michael Dobbs has already found a discrepancy confirmed by the Department of the Navy of "at least a hundred pages" missing from those already disclosed by Kerry.


Far from exonerating Kerry from some of the charges made by the SWIFTees, the release of these documents (to the Boston Globe, but not to the general press) has only further ramped up the contentions made by the SWIFTees that Kerry was not what he said he was in Vietnam: a war hero. He might well be, but Kerry's ongoing refusal to release ALL of his military records to the general press still does not give the answers to the questions that many have asked regarding his time in Vietnam (or Cambodia, as Kerry has claimed), much less whether he was honorably or dishonorably discharged.

More than anything, it seems as though Kerry attempted to hoodwink the press by sending his SF-80 to the Navy instead of NPRC. It is the equivalent of calling someone at home when you know they're at work, or vice-versa, so that you can say that you called, even though you had no interest in talking. Also, this quote is telling:

"There is nothing magic about signing a SF 180," said former Naval Judge Advocate General Mark Sullivan. "It is sort of like your checkbook. You can fill out a check for one dollar or a million. It is the same check form."

Why is Kerry persisting in stonewalling? Enquiring minds want to know.

Boy, When She Gets Wind Of This, Bill....

If I were Bill Clinton right now, I'd be trembling every time my phone rang, because God knows, if this is true and Hillary gets wind of it....:


In their release (PDF) announcing Evan Bayh’s visit this Friday, the Democratic Party of Wisconsin includes the following passage on Bayh:
“A testament to Senator Bayh’s commitment to working for all Americans, President Bill Clinton commented, ‘I hope and expect some day I'll be voting for Evan Bayh for President of the United States.’”

Ripples Of Battle

The following are the estimated casualties sustained on D-Day, June 6, 1944. The names Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword were code names for the landing beaches:



U.S. AIRBORNE
2,499
U.S. / UTAH
197
U.S. / OMAHA
2,000
U.K. / GOLD
413
CAN. / JUNO
1,204
U.K. / SWORD
630
U.K. AIRBORNE
1,500
CONSERVATIVE ESTIMATE
8,443
REASONABLE GUESS
9,000 total (of which 3,000 may have been fatalities)

W. Mark Felt/Deep Throat

I'm not a huge Ann Coulter fan. She can be funny, but usually she comes off extremely mean-spirited, and in the end, I'm not sure she's advancing the cause of the Right very much. Much in the same way that Howard Dean elicits laughs from extremely partisan audiences by feigning a coke-snorting Rush Limbaugh (which is weird, as Limbaugh as addicted to oxycontin, not cocaine), Coulter says and writes similar low-blow stuff about liberals. Like a meal at McDonalds, it can be gratifying at the moment that you're eating it, but makes you feel regretful and slightly sick thereafter. That said, she's made some interesting and insightful observations regarding W. Mark Felt in this week's column. To wit:

-That without Mark Felt leaking pertinent info to Woodward and consequently bringing down Nixon, we would've never had a president like Jimmy Carter enter into the White House. Ford was seen as an extension of the Nixon Administration, and Carter's election was a whipsaw reaction to the Watergate scandal. Where the irony of this comes into play is that Carter's Justice Department turned around and prosecuted Mark Felt for authorizing the FBI to break into the houses of members of the violently radical Weather Underground terrorist organization. Who happens to testify in his defense? None other than Richard M. Nixon. Felt is convicted; he gets a full pardon from Ronald Reagan.

-I found this one to be rather amusing; I'll post it in Ann's own words:

Also ironic is that Felt's free-love, flower-girl daughter was estranged from her father for decades on account of her rejection of conventional bourgeois institutions like marriage. Now she is broke — because of her rejection of conventional bourgeois institutions like marriage. (Too bad she didn't follow Pop's advice to "follow the money.")


There's obviously more to this than these two blurbs, but sans the cheap shots, there's some substance to her observations regarding this W. Mark Felt/Deep Throat story. You can read it here, if you want the full article.

Jimmy Carter...Will Never Get It

Jimmy Carter, a man who never hesitated in kissing the ass of every communist despot from Bucharest to Havana, thinks the U.S. should shut down Gitmo. According to Carter, this would show that the U.S. adheres to human rights. This from a guy who spoke of Nicolae Ceaucescu thus: "Our goals are the same. ... We believe in enhancing human rights. We believe that we should enhance, as independent nations, the freedom of our own people."

At this point I'm fairly certain that all the hubbub about Gitmo is nothing more than disinformation from the far-left (who else?) and the Islamists themselves, both of whom are not above lying for the sake of undermining this current war against Islamo-terrorism. Much as the Left claims they're just as "for the troops" as the Right, it does strike one as curious how vehemently they go after "the troops" who guard these "people" at Gitmo. That there have been isolated abuses I do not doubt. (Charles Krauthammer noted the other day that the US Navy, which has authority over Gitmo vis-a-vis the Marines, reported some 24,000 complaints from inmates, only six of which had any validity.) That it is widespread and is a matter of national policy to abuse and torture, I catogorically dispute and dismiss. One must remember that lying about torture and mistreatment is part of the Al Qaeda playbook...literally. Given the choice between the words of our own troops and their commanders versus the ACLU and/or Al Qaeda inmates, I'll take the latter over the former every time, particularly since the ACLU is an organization dedicated, as their founder Roger Baldwin once said,"[To] socialism, disarmament, and ultimately for abolishing the State itself as an instrument of violence and compulsion. I seek the social ownership of property, the abolition of the propertied class, and sole control of those who produce wealth. Communism is the goal." In other words: we're dedicated to undermining and ultimately destroying the United States of America. Incidentally, that quote was from 1988....one year before the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The bogus abuses at Gitmo and the fuss that it has raised is nothing more than another club with which to beat this president, his administration, and the war effort. It is nothing more. Even the head of Amnesty International, who's recent report hyperbolically called Gitmo "the gulag of our time" (?!?) admitted that he couldn't say that these abuses were going on "for sure". (Translation: we made it all up.) The Marines are the most highly trained and disciplined fighting force in all the United States Armed Services. It benefits them not, nor the government that they serve, to perpetrate the kinds of abuses for which they have been accused thus far. That Jimmy Carter has said that Gitmo should be shut down is more the reason to keep it open and functioning. After all, if Jimmy Carter thought that Josip Tito, Nicolae Ceacescu, Erich Honecker, and Fidel Castro were at the vanguard of the international human rights movement, how the hell would he know humanity from brutality?

SCOTUS Rules On Weed

I've only peripherally followed the story line about SCOTUS voting 6-3 to uphold the current laws regarding marijuana use, even for medicinal purposes. I haven't gotten a breakdown of who fell where on the voting roll; I can well imagine where, say, Ruth Bader Ginsburg (by far the worst SCOTUS judge sitting on the bench) voted, but that's about it. But for what it's worth, I'll throw in my two cents on this issue.

In the same manner that no one, be they Republican or Democrat, has the balls to rattle their sabre about the porous southern border of the US for fear of alienating latino voters, the same holds true for the medicinal marijuana issue. Rare is the politician, be they in the House or the Senate, that has the cojones to actually push for legislation making medicinal marijuana legal with a prescription. Having witnessed first hand the hallucinatory effects of prescribed pain-killers, could marijuana stimulate any more illusory experiences than what is already out there legally? The answer is clearly no, but again, no politician wants to be the one to stand up on the floor of the House and Senate and say that this is wrong and it should change. The reasons are obvious, but it does highlight the fact that our elected representatives suffer from a deficiency in principles. Sure, they stand for something. But that something is remaining in office. In the end, they all look to the courts to make rulings on uncomfortable and controversial issues; that way, they never have to worry about taking unpopular stands. For some time now I've strongly objected to this whole "living document" philosophy of constitutional adjudication. The most salient reason is because it is anti-democratic and carries with it an element of judicial fascism. But more than that, what I object to is that it does the dirty work for elected officials that have neither the guts nor the principles to push for changes in laws, even when they're outdated and, in the case of medicinal marijuana, unfair.

SCOTUS voted correctly on this issue, not because they're right, but because it is the law. It is up to the legislative branch of the US government to change this law. I'll not be holding my breath waiting for the "parliament of whores" (as PJ O'Rourke put it) to deconstruct this statute. After all, no one would want to be accused of being a pot-head hippy-dippy stoner in the next election cycle. Not even Barbara Boxer.

Gen. Eisenhower's D-Day Message

Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force!


You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have
striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The
hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you.
In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on
other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war
machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of
Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.
Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well
equipped and battle hardened. He will fight savagely.

But this is the year 1944! Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of
1940-41. The United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great defeats,
in open battle, man-to-man. Our air offensive has seriously reduced their
strength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the ground. Our Home
Fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions
of war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men.
The tide has turned! The free men of the world are marching together to
Victory!

I have full confidence in your courage and devotion to duty and skill in
battle. We will accept nothing less than full Victory!

Good luck! And let us beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great
and noble undertaking.
SIGNED: Dwight D. Eisenhower

Beck on SNL

I liked Odelay and I found "Loser" to be mildly entertaining. But let's face facts, folks. This guy isn't very talented, and he makes unserious music. He's not a very good guitar player, songwriter, or singer. What's the big deal about this guy? Because he's slightly weird and unkempt? After watching his performance on Saturday Night Live tonight, it is fairly obvious that there's nothing compelling about this guy at all.

Deep Throat

This is one of those issues that a few people have asked me about. However, I have very little to offer to what has already been said. I think at this point anyone who's anyone has contributed their two cents to the debate over whether he's a hero or a rat. I think there are fair points to be made on both sides of this debate, but what's done is done. I did want to comment about those pics from the 50's of Felt...you know, the one's where he's posing. They're kind of arty in a kind of pulp fiction way, aren't they? The hat tipped to the side just so, the left hand held diagonally, suspended at chest level, as if to say, "By the power vested in me by the United States government, I order you to surrender and put your hands up in an orderly manner!" The right hand holding a six shooter from the hip. The (somewhat) thin tie. Very Elliot Ness, no?