Pardon The Interruption

I've been feeling a bit "under the weather" for a while, and particularly in the last week. I'll resume blogging is soon as I am able to put together a coherent thought and not cough all over the keyboard every 30 seconds.

Hope you are all as well as I look forward to being.

Mojo

Yesterday I picked up the latest issue of Mojo Magazine, which features Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey on the cover. I guess I could consider myself a fan of Mojo, as well as a few other British music magazines like Classic Rock and Q, for a very simple reason: far from writing about the latest "hot" act, they look at music in a much broader, linear way. Thus, in 2006, they feature two ol' geezers in their 60's, Roger and Pete. In every issue I've ever bought of the aforementioned publications, I've always read something interesting about an act or acts that I'd never known, heard or heard of. In this particular issue of Mojo, for example, they have several features on The Who, but also the Strokes (who I'm not keen on, but they are a current, popular act), Dion (famous doo-wop guy from the late 50's), and Thin Lizzy (Dublin-based hard rock outfit who were much bigger in Britain and Ireland than here). Far from being snotty and elitist like Spin or Rolling Stone, Mojo celebrates music in a wider sense. It's pretty refreshing, albeit more expensive, but worth every dollar.

Random Thoughts 01/20/2006

Since I made the mistake of falling asleep at 9:00 pm, I'm now blogging at 3:00 am, as I've fulfilled my quota for sleep for the day/night and my biological schedule is now officially out of whack for the next twenty-four hours. C'est la vie.

Osama bin Laden supposedly released an audiotape within the last twenty-four hours, purporting any number of things. I'll not go into them, as they barely warrant much of a response. But one thing that is obvious about the message is that he's fully aware of what is going on within the United States and what people are saying about this war on Islamo-fascism. Last year, for example, he taunted Bush about his continued reading of 'My Pet Goat' even after being told by Chief-Of-Staff Andy Card that the World Trade Center had been hit on 9/11. I'm not sure what Bush would've or should've done in that moment, as he was essentially powerless at that moment to act in any meaningful way; nor was it clear at the time to his people that location that he was in at the time was secure, or that his path of movement was secure. But so it goes. Yet another ridiculous bone of contention from the barmy left, picked up and used by our mortal enemy bin Laden. Michael Moore followers must've taken great pride in themselves at that moment. (Note sarcastic tone.) Anyway, bin Laden claims he can and will hit the U.S. again at the time of his choosing. I don't believe him, and I think his operational ability to launch an attack has been sereverly compromised by any number of measures taken against him and his network, both domestically and internationally. More than that, I'm still wondering why Ayman al-Zawahiri can make videotapes of his speeches, but bin Laden now only makes audiotapes. I've previously posted that bin Laden is either seriously injured and/or disfigured or dead. I still hold to that theory.

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I've been a Macintosh person for most of my life, having learned to use one back when I was going to college. I don't think I'd be stretching it to say that having learned how to use a Mac enabled me to graduate from college, as I had a very paper-intensive major and concentration. (On any given week during my junior and senior year I had anywhere from three to five papers to write, some long-form, some short.) As a result, I've had an affinity for Macintoshes since that point in my life. (I'm currently writing this blog entry on a Mac.) That said, I'm not really sure the Mac is the most practical machine for uses such as blogging. For example, though this blog program is available in both Mac and PC formats, the Mac version doesn't let me italicize, bullet-point, or post links, whereas the PC version does. It's not the worst thing in the world, mind, but it does cramp one's style. A few years back I bought a Mac G4 (which I still currently use) specifically to run ProTools, a music recording software. The salesman at Sam Ash who sold it to me told me that the PC version of ProTools was substandard and that I'd be pulling my hair out in frustration if I went the PC route. (Which was a cheaper route, natch.) So I went the Mac route. I don't regret it, mind, but for things such as blogging, internet surfing, etc., it's just not as good. In all likelihood, I'll probably get a PC laptop and use the Mac strictly for recording.

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There was a story that I read about in Paul Fussell's 'Wartime-Understanding and Behavior of the Second World War' that I always found amusing involving General George S. Patton. Patton had a reputation as a "fighting general", and was nicknamed by the fawning American press "ol' blood and guts". He also had a reputation for being a martinet of the first order, and got himself into hot water at one point for slapping not one, but two GIs that had been infirmed at field hospitals in Sicily for combat fatigue. (One of the GIs that he slapped for, as he put it, "cowardice", had actually been involuntarily pulled off the line by his commanding officer not because he had lost his nerve, but because he'd been on the line for months and had become incontinent. He also had been previously wounded twice, and had received a Silver Star for bravery under fire.) Anyway, the story went like this:

General Patton pulls into a field hospital to "buck up" the wounded GIs. After talking to three or four wounded GIs, Patton comes to a fellow sitting in bed, minding his own business and reading a comic book. Patton bellows to the wounded man, "Soldier! Do you know who I am!?! You show proper respect and salute me!!!" The wounded man looks over his comic book, then says to Patton, "Hey, f*ck you, General. I'm in the Merchant Marine."

Too bad the story was apocryphal. But many GIs believed it to be true at the time. As the saying goes, never let the facts geet in the way of a good story.

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I haven't heard Howard Stern's new Sirius radio show, and frankly, I'm not that motivated or interested enough to make an effort to hear it. However, I have listened to David Lee Roth's show in the same time slot that Howard used to have on K-Rock (now re-branded as "Free Radio"), and I have to say...that I actually enjoy it. I've never been a fan of David Lee Roth, as I found him to be kind of clownish when he was in Van Halen. (I know there are alot of people who swear that VH went down the tubes when Roth left and Sammy Hagar took over, but I'm not one of them; I think there was some great music that came out of the "Van Hagar" era. But I digress.) I'm not sure he'll survive in his current slot, as Howard Stern is a tough act to follow. But I'm kind of rooting for Roth to succeed. Additionally, it is rather refreshing to listen to an enthusiastic, positive guy in the morning in the person of Roth than miserable, negative, and frequently cruel Stern. Sure, Stern was funny, but it was often at someone else's expense.


Consider me a nominal fan of Roth at this point. I might even forgive him for wearing pink spandex with furry boots when he was in VH. Here's to hoping for his success in this new endeavor of his.

I'm off to make a futile attempt at sleeping.

Benjamin Franklin Turns 300

Today marks the 300th birthday of Benjamin Franklin. Nothing I can write one way or another could either add or detract from the man's impact on American, and by extension world, history. Christopher Hitchens, in the Wall Street Journal, called Benjamin Franklin "the Socrates of Philadelphia". Franklin was a wit, an innovator, a bon vivant, a pillar of society, and a lovable con man, but more than that, he was indispensable to the cause of American republican democracy.

The George Foreman Grill

Appropo of nothing save my wonder for the device, I'd like to state for the record to all of you readers out there my extreme pleasure with the George Foreman grill. I'm currently grilling a few hamburger patties as I write this, and the tasty aroma is currently filling my apartment. I look forward to the delightful yield of the all-mighty George Foreman grill, as well as any future epicurean delights this ingenious contraption may serve up for my dining pleasure.

Quote

As for Borking — the smearing of conservative Supreme Court nominees through blatant dissembling about their character and thinking — it falls flat today because the American people have become largely immune to the strategy. It has been unleashed with such frequency and fury during the last 20 years that even a casual observer understands that every conservative nominee cannot possibly be a racist, sexist, and unethical pervert.

--Mark Levin

Mrs. Alito

Drudge Report has reported that Judge Samuel Alito's wife was so taken aback by the rough and sometimes humiliating treatment Alito received at the hands of Biden, Kennedy, Feingold, Schumer, etc. that she broke into tears. This was an interesting moment, potentially a watershed. I'm very interested to see how this plays out in the press the next few days/weeks/months, but as far as Spitfire's Hurricane is concerned, I can't see it being a net gain for the Democrats on the judiciary committee. Making a man's wife cry is....uh....kind of brutish and ugly, and certainly won't play well with women. Whether it is a factor during this mid-term election remains to be seen. (Mind you, we're only in January, and the elections are a long way away.) But it isn't good. At all.

Reading Eric Alterman's daily leftist rage today on MSNBC's website, I was happy to see that he agreed with my previous contention that all this Democratic bloviating from Biden, Leahy, Kennedy, Schumer was actually helping Alito, not hurting him. The libs on the Judiciary Committee are spending the lion's share of their allotted question-time on throwing haymakers at Alito, and less time listening to his answers.

It's all over but the shouting. Alito is in, barring some unforeseen unearthed dirt on the man.

The Bigger Picture

Analysis of current events is a very tricky thing, and having read many, many, many books on history on subjects as diverse as World War Two, World War One, the American Civil War, and biographies of Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin, Mao, Robespierre, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Khruschev, etc., one underlying theme has revealed itself time and again: things are not what they seem at the time that history is unfolding. A few examples:

-It is common perception that Hitler violated the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact by invading the Soviet Union and betrayed his oath of non-aggression towards Stalin. As legend would have it, Stalin was placed into a state of catatonia for close to five days after the Nazi war machine had hurtled deep into Soviet territory, so shocked he was at this betrayal. This is only partially true. According to unearthed KGB archives that author Edvard Radzinsky, Stalin had every intention of thrusting westward to crush Hitler. Stalinists apologists in this country, peopled as they are in the academic cadres of our universities, have been peddling the "Stalin was a victim of betrayal" line for years. But the documents don't lie. In a document Radzinsky unearthed at the Historical/Military Archive of the USSR called "Reflections on a Plan forf the Strategic Deployment of the Armed forces of the Soviet Union in the Event of War with Germany and her Allies", a plan for an offensive was meticulously mapped out. Fifteen pages of the text discuss plans for a surprise attack on Germany.

Radzinsky's book was published in 1996. American academics had been teaching the lie of a peaceful USSR having been attacked by an aggressive Nazi war machine, in all likelihood, since the war itself. All Hitler did was beat Stalin to the punch, as Hitler got himself prepared for an offensive sooner than Stalin. (A sidenote: I was absolutely floored by this revelation in the Radzinsky book, and relayed my findings to my mother, who grew up in Europe during the war. Her response was even more surprising, when she said "EVERYONE in Europe knew that!")

-From 1943 on, Allied bombers flying from England, North Africa, then later Sicily and Italy (after Sicily and Italy had been taken) flew to Germany with the express goal of destroying the German military-industrial complex and its capacity to produce tanks, planes, guns, ball-bearings, etc. In May of 1945, after VE Day, the Allies had discovered that despite repeated bomber sorties and fighter plane strafings, the German industrial capacity was still operating at 80% of full capacity. German Armaments Minister Albert Speer had cleverly subdivided the factories into smaller, underground complexes, and thus, was able to maintain an unforseen (by the Allies) production resiliency. What the incessant bombing sorties DID accomplish was they burnt out the German Luftwaffe (airforce) staffs. So frequent were the bombing raids that the Germans lost all their best pilots over a two year period, leaving them with more than enough planes, but no one to fly them. Attempts at training fresh pilots were for naught because the skies were too dangerous most of the time, thus fresh pilots couldn't get enough air time to be effective.

-The Cuban Missle Crisis is generally thought of as a victory for Kennedy and a defeat for Khruschev. Psychologically this was true, but strategically the Soviets got the better of the deal. In return for removing intermediate-range missles from Cuba, Kennedy was forced to remove intermediate-range American missles from Turkey. He was also forced to give a committment not to attempt to invade Cuba again.

-Throughout the Cold War, liberals charged that there was an unnatural obsession amongst conservatives regarding communist infiltration in government, media, entertainment, and journalism. Alger Hiss, in particular, became the cause celebre of the liberals when he was named by the House of Un-American Activities as a Soviet spy. (Hiss, by the way, was the Undersecretary of State in the Roosevelt Administration and was a major player in the negotiation of the Yalta Agreement, an agreement that essentially sold all of central and eastern Europe to Stalin and condemned tens of thousands of Czech, Polish, Hungarian, etc. refugees to repatriation and death in Stalin's camps.) For decades, DECADES, liberals said that Hiss was the victim of a witch hunt, a great American slandered by the "fascist" right. And they kept it up until....the Venona files were opened up for public viewing. Venona, the code name for the secret program that J. Edgar Hoover started, was a secret group within the FBI that had cracked the Soviet codes and revealed many of the Soviet spies within government, entertainment, journalism, and the military. Hiss was revealed, beyond a shadow of a doubt, as a Soviet spy.

Now, consider this: Hiss was convicted of perjury in 1950 for denying that he knew Whittaker Chambers, but not for spying. The Venona intercepts, now completely public, put to rest for all of history that Hiss was a spy, in 1997. The truth, as it really was, came to pass FIFTY SEVEN YEARS LATER.

Which brings me to my point:

Many on the left (all?) have claimed that the charge that Bush made to invade Iraq, the existence of WMDs, was deliberately bogus and designed to get us into a war with Iraq for the sole purpose of avenging Saddam's assassination attempt on "Daddy" (Bush's father). Pretty simplistic reasoning, I'd say, but whatever. But WMDs have not been found, so the casus belli for the war was not justified. Perhaps so, perhaps not. Sometimes history unfolds quickly, but most times, it takes years, perhaps decades, sometimes even centuries for the true nature of a historical event to actually reveal itself. It might be the case that Saddam had no WMDs. I doubt this contention profoundly, not because I have actual evidence that they existed, but a tremendous amount of anecdotal evidence. For instance, why all the oil-for-food bribes to all these significant people in the United Nations? Why the attempt to buy yellowcake uranium from Niger? (Yes, it did happen folks, Joe Wilson's prevarications notwithstanding; Wilson told one thing to the press, another to the Senate Intelligence Estimate, and the attempted buy was backed up by officials in Niger as well as Wilson himself. The false documents that the Italians provided were not the sole reason why the president used those fateful "18 words" in SOTU.) Why did the Clintonistas warble the same threats of WMDs throughout the 90's? Where did they go between the Bush and Clinton Administrations? Why did Italian, German, Israeli, Jordanian, Egyptian, Kuwaiti, and British Intelligence come to the same conclusions regarding the presence of WMDs as the CIA did? Is it beyond the realm of possibility that they were moved to either Iran or Syria? (He had plenty of time to move them!) And why is this such an impossible assumption for the anti-war lefties to make? And what of the Saddam terrorist links? We're only now getting around to translating those seized Iraqi documents, and they're showing MASSIVE support of jihadists. (Read Stephen Hayes at the Weekly Standard regarding that topic. You certainly won't see it on the front page of the New York Times.)

I'm taking the longview. There are too many unaswered questions on the whole Saddam/WMD connection for me to concede that it was an absolute fraud. If it took fifty seven years for proof of Alger Hiss's guilt to come to light, if it took fifty four years for Edvard Radzinsky to unearth a document that irrefutably proved that Stalin had every intention of attacking Hitler before Hitler attacked Stalin, and if it took over a decade for the truth to come out that Kennedy had actually strategically LOST the Cuban Missle Crisis face-off, I think I'll give it some time before the WMD question is settled. The study of history doesn't operate with a time expiration.

Where's Osama?

Good question. We've been hearing this query from the derisive left mostly, in a kind of semi-taunt at the Bush Administration, which supposedly "dropped the ball" at Tora Bora. (This taunt, by the way, is an intrinsic, if unintended, insult to our military brass and specifically to Delta Force, the most elite fighting force in the United States Military. But they're for the troops!) I've been saying for at least a year that Osama is, in all likelihood, dead. I might or might not have been wrong a year ago, but I did have good reason to think that OBL no longer walked amongst the living. For one thing, people like Osama are megalomaniacs: they love the sound of their own voice, they glory in the power they possess to move people to self-destructive acts, they take delight in their potency. But we haven't seen OBL for some time. Sure we've gotten some audio-tapes of him, but what happened to all those videos of him pontificating, clothed in a combined contume of drab military garb and Islamic head-dress, with automatic weapon to his side, haughtily taunting us western decadent types? I haven't seen a new video of OBL in at least two and a half years, which leads me to believe a few things. Either he is:

a.) Dead
b.) Critically injured or deformed by combat
c.) Deathly ill
d.) Laying low

Let's take choice d.) for starters. If OBL is "laying low", what good does that do for the morale of al Qaeda, or the wider jihad movement? The answer is...it doesn't. I fail to see how morale could be high in the jihadist movement or al Qaeda when the spiritual leader either can't or won't stick his head out of the caves just to say "hi!", even if it is on video. Ayman al-Zawahiri clearly is still alive...he's been communicating with Zarqawi in Iraq (we've intercepted his communications), and has made videos as well as audiotapes. He's still out there "selling" the jihad. But nothing of OBL. Something is afoot.

Peter Brookes, sometime NY Post columnist and a representative of the conservative Heritage Foundation wrote about this in his column today. The indispensable Michael Ledeen, who has massive contacts within Iran, has also written about this, claiming that his Iranian contacts have told him that OBL died this past December of kidney failure. Might or might not be true, but I'd say the reasons for his absence are closer to the first three choices I posted above, and probably less about the last. In times of war, many in America, particularly on the left, lose their nerve easily and assume that the enemy (whoever that enemy may be) is superhuman, super-durable, and is immune to our ferocious barrages. Nothing could be further from the truth. Our enemies, like us, are human, subject to the same fears of injury and death, and I don't think the incessant incantations of "Allahu Akbar!" change that. (This is why I take great issue with the leftist contention that we've created "a million bin Ladens". For one, there's no way to quantify this, and two, I seriously doubt that potential young jihadists would find it greatly motivational when their older brothers or fathers come home from the jihad maimed or in a pine box. If anything, I think the opposite is true. They may be more radicalized, but they're not apt to take up arms when the prospect of their young lives ending within a month is a genuine inevitability.) So I don't think that OBL has walked away from his former headquarters in Afghanistan unscathed; I think he's at best "on the run", never sleeping in the same bed twice, and cut off from the world. At worst (for him, that is), he's disfigured (and is thus no longer "camera friendly"), or he's dead. If it is the latter, and the rumors are true that he died of kidney failure, it would be a case of the "law of unintended consequences" once again rearing its head. It would be fine by me. His inability to get proper medical treatment was probably the result of being on the run in places with little to no modern medical technology. Either way, dead is dead. And in OBL's case, dead is good.

In conclusion, I think it would be greatly in the interests of the United States and our allies in the war on Islamo-terrorists to make a big campaign to have OBL show himself to the world, if only on video. Let's demand "proof of life". Let's see if the "great man", the "strong horse" is still running the show, is in good health, and is operational. Bush and/or prominent members of his administration should make a point of mentioning that OBL is nowhere to be found, and that it is doubtful he is fully functional, if not alive. Force the hand of the jihadists. If OBL is alive, he'll come out of his lair and declare so. If he's not, it would be a big blow to the jihadist movement and a coup for the forces of civilization. Either way, we win.

Alito, Day Two

I spent the day at home attempting to get over a nasty cold ( I've been trying to beat it for five days), which meant I occupied my time sneezing, wheezing, and coughing in front of C-Span today watching the Alito hearings. A few observations:

I filched these numbers from NRO Bench Memos blog, which I think are indicative of the long-winded, torturous questioning technique of Joe Biden:

Biden: 3673 words
Alito: 1013 words

What these numbers mean? That Biden more interested in hearing the sound of his own voice than asking pointed questions to Judge Alito. It's not really about Alito, you see. Whether Biden is aware of it or not, he treats these hearings like they're about him, not the justice nominee in question. Can you imagine a job interview where the interviewer talks 260% more than you do? I will say this: if Biden wants to use up all his questioning time on himself, fine. It actually benefits Alito. If I were a liberal, I'd be very annoyed with Biden for wasting precious time making interminable observations and little time demanding responses from his subject. At one point, Joe Biden took TWELVE minutes to ask a question. Zzzzzzzzz.

Ted Kennedy did his Ted Kennedy thing. Reductio ad absurdum.

Senator Russ Feingold came off articulate, if partisan. He asked very pointed questions of Alito regarding presidential powers and seems in a state of high dudgeon over the NSA wire-tapping issue. I got the feeling he was using Alito as a proxy for his gripes against the administration. From what I understand, Alito has written very little (if anything) regarding the powers of the executive branch, so it might've been a bit off base asking these questions of Alito. But at least he was (moderately) polite.

Then there was Chuck Schumer. What an obnoxious guttersnipe. Asking questions with a tone of unmistakeable contempt for Alito, Chuck wouldn't even wait for a full answer before cutting in with more rudeness. I've written about this before and I still think it to be the case: this Roe v. Wade defense on the part of people like Schumer has done more harm than help to the Democrats. First off, it's ghoulish to be so passionate about such a thing. Secondly, Roe has severely damaged the integrity of SCOTUS by creating a constitutional right where none existed. But more importantly, had Schumer done his homework, he would've realized that Alito, whilst on the 3rd Circuit Court, actually ruled IN FAVOR of Planned Parenthood and voted to strike down the a ban on partial birth abortion based on the laws and precedents that he found were binding. In the end, I think Chuck and the rest of the Democrats on the Judiciary Committee are going to vote against Alito anyway, and use these hearings as a way to beat the crap out of a nominee while they're able to.

Prediction: Alito gets confirmed along party lines, with a few defections. The Dems won't filibuster in an election year, particularly since it would be construed as a violation of the "Gang of 14" agreement.

Something to remember: Justice John Paul Stevens is 86.

Alito

These confirmation hearings, even the edited versions that find their way onto the evening news, are painful to watch. There's nothing more cringe-worthy than watching superannuated drunkard Ted Kennedy pontificating and hectoring a man that is clearly his superior on every level. Then there's the pre-eminent pompous blowhard/plagiarist Joe Biden piping in with his long-winded and inevitably impertinent blather. Then there's Patrick Leahy, the quintessential nancy-boy/pain-in-the-ass weighing in. But the guy that takes the cake is Chuck Schumer. Ugh....pejoritive adjectives cannot describe or do justice to what an execrable presence this guy is. Makes me long for the days of Senator D'amato. Alphonse may have been corrupt, but at least he didn't come off like the human incarnation of a ferret. (Come to think of it, isn't Chuck Schumer's staff under investigation for attempting to gain access to the credit report of Lt. Governor Michael Steele (Md.)? Steele, by the way, is black, which certainly goes a long way in explaining why Chuckie's minions went on a mission to destroy him. (Nothing more offensive to a liberal than a black Republican! Diversity of opinion isn't for minorities, you know....))

I usually attempt to remain somewhat erudite and reasoned with these posts, but these Democratic senators on the Judicial Committee are too much.

All right. Enough mud thrown.

Random Thoughts 01/07/2006

A few things that have been going through my mind for the last week or so:

Since when did having military service under your belt (politically speaking) make one an expert on all things military? Since when did one's positions politically become unassailable due to military service? The answer to the questions are...they don't. However, for the last few years, having military service in one's resume has come to mean that one's political positions are unassailable. The silliness of staking this claim amazes me. Sure, Rep. Jack Murtha (D-Pa.) has a right to say whatever he wants about the war in Iraq. But the legitimacy of his critiques are no more and no less legitimate than anyone elses. Ditto John Kerry. They have a right to speak out in any way they so wish, as ridiculously as they wish, but their military experience adds little heft to their opinions. It also shouldn't preclude those who see their opinions, who lack the same military and combat experience, from saying that they're wrong, or that their integrity is without question. Consider this man's resume:

After beginning his career as a teacher and a coach, he joined the U.S. Navy and became one of the most highly decorated pilots in the Vietnam War. As the first fighter ace of the war, he was nominated for the Medal of Honor, received the Navy Cross, two Silver Stars, fifteen Air Medals, the Purple Heart, and several other decorations.

Some military record, eh? The above excerpt was from the biography of now-disgraced Pennslyvania Congressman Duke Cunningham (R). Is Duke Cunningham above reproach?

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During the DNC in '04, I was cringing at the ridiculously fatuous military posturing of John Kerry. There's little doubt that his service was honorable (although some of his former colleagues in the Navy would disagree), and there is little doubt that his opportunistic behavior was absolutely disgusting once he came back to the States, culminating in his mostly apocryphal and slanderous testimony in front of the Senate in '71. Just to remind, Kerry claimed that American forces in Vietnam "personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned on the power, cut off limbs, [blew] up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside." (It was later revealed that many of these events were conveyed to Kerry from bogus sources, and it is questionable that Kerry witnesses any of these acts himself.)But let's assume that the preceding excerpt from John Kerry's Senate testimony was correct. Why, then, would John Kerry stand up in front of the entire DNC, and by extension all of America, and proclaim, "I'm John Kerry, reporting for duty!"

I'm still trying to figure why, if John Kerry himself admitted that he's a "war criminal", he would make such a militaristic spectacle out of his nomination. If John Kerry was "reporting for duty", does that mean he was reporting for duty to "cut off ears, cut off heads...and shoot cattle and dogs for fun"?

I guess it doesn't matter at this point. Kerry is a busted flush, and the closest that he'll ever get to the White House is if he is either invited to it, driving by it, or becomes a cabinet member in a Democratic presidency.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin has been showing his true colors as of late, threatening to cut off gas to Ukraine if they don't pay significantly higher prices for it. (Price gauging would be the word to use.) Me thinks that he's not too happy to see an emerging democracy in Ukraine, much less Georgia. There is little doubt in my mind that Putin, old KGB officer that he is, is aiming to reconstitute some semblance of the old Soviet empire. It might not be as strictly dogmatic ideologically as the USSR, mind, but the man certainly has imperial ambitions to take back the pieces of what was once traditionally Russian imperial territory, which would include Ukraine, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, among others.

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One of the biggest misconceptions of American history is that Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal policies got America out of the Great Depression. The numbers don't support this theory in the least. If anything, it elongated it, and the only thing that pulled the United States (and the world, for that matter) out of the Great Depression was, ironically, the Second World War. Herbert Hoover can take lion's share of the blame for precipitating the Great Depression, but not for the reasons that Lefties would like you to think. Modern day leftist thought likes to depict Hoover as a "do-nothing". If only! Hoover, despite being a Republican, was no conservative. Calvin Coolidge, who employed him in his cabinet for political reasons, once said of Hoover: "That man offered me unsolicited advice for six years....all of it bad ." Hoover was a social engineer, a socialist in the classic sense. When the economy took a hit after the Crash of '29, Hoover started meddling with the economy to get it back on track. As is always the case when government gets involved in the commercial aspects of America, it didn't work. Hoover's Secretary of Treasury Andrew Mellon gave Hoover the best piece of advice that unfortunately was never used. "Liquidate, labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate...purge the rotteness from the economy". Historian Paul Johnson postulates that "by allowing the Depression to let rip, unsound business would quickly have been bankrupted and the sound would've survived. Wages would have fallen to their natural level". Instead of agreeing with Mellon, Hoover did just the opposite: he raised taxes on the highest bracket from 25% to 63% (!?!), he approved the Smoot-Hawley Tariffs, which ignited a trade war with the rest of the world and turned the Depression into an international malady, and of course, went on a bender with social programs. By the time Hoover left office in 1933, unemployment was over 30%. Not that Roosevelt was any better. Unemployment never went below 18% on his watch, and there was still little to no GDP growth. At one point Roosevelt's agricultural policies included paying farmers for CUTTING BACK on production or for producing nothing at all. By decreasing supply, Roosevelt postulated, he would raise produce prices. As for the existing surplus, he had, in the midst of the Great Depression mind you, had ten million acres of cotton destroyed and six million pigs slaughtered. Agriculture secretary (and Soviet spy, by the way) Henry Wallace called it "cleaning up the wreckage from the old days of unbalanced production". Unbelievable.

In 1974, New Dealer and Roosevelt Administration official Rexford Tugwell said, "We didn't admit it at the time, but practically the whole New Deal was extrapolated from programs that Hoover started".

If only Calvin Coolidge had run in 1928, we could've avoided all of this. Coolidge was the last true laissez-faire president America has had. Coolidge and his oft-slandered predecessor, Warren Harding, went through a similar economic downturn in 1920-21. (Coolidge was Harding's VP.) Instead of jumping into the U.S. economy with both feet and screwing up the works as Hoover and Roosevelt did, they did nothing, save cutting government spending. The net result was the greatest economic upsurge in American history up 'til that point, the "Roaring 20's". Far from being the gluttonous, profligate era that Lefties depict it to be, with little to no enjoyment of wealth beyond an elite few, the 20's saw personal savings of Americans quadruple, and 11 million new homeowners spring up. The wealth was far more widely distributed than leftist historians would have you believe.

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"Nothing is easier than the expenditure of public money. It doesn't appear to belong to anyone. The temptation is overwhelming to bestow it on somebody."

-Calvin Coolidge

(How I wish every politician on both sides of the aisle would remember this!)


Enjoy your weekend, readers.

Europe and the Jews

Despite contentions to the contrary from some kooks on the far-left (is there another kind?) and the far-right, not to mention the mainstream press and academia of the Middle East (not counting Israel, natch), the wholesale genocide of the Jews in Europe DID happen. The proof is in the pudding, specifically in regards to the meticulous records the Nazis kept. Though I've not been there, there are voluminous records at places like Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Treblinka, etc. that document every person that came through the gates, save the weak, the elderly, and the crippled, who were dispatched on the spot. Either the Holocaust is the greatest, most meticulous, enormous fraud ever perpetrated, or the records the Nazis left behind are real. Why this is of any question to anyone is beyond me, and it never ceases to amaze me that the more execrable elements of the world deny that it happened, YET wish that it WOULD happen. In one fell swoop, they deny it happened, yet wish for it. Amazing. But more than anything else, the thought that crossed my mind this week was this: did Europe snuff out its greatest minds? Consider the scientific, medical, technological, and artistic achievements of the Jews; as a people, I can't think of too many that rival them in regards to being at the vanguard of human progress. Europe snuffed them out. A few went to Israel before and after 1948, a few stayed in Europe, but a large portion of them came to America. Is it just happenstance that America has been the pre-eminent world power since the Second World War? Is it happenstance that the vast majority of medical breakthroughs, technological breakthroughs, artistic breakthroughs, and engineering breakthroughs all seem to derive from the United States these days, particularly since WWII? Does one need to wonder why our economy trumps all others? Was it luck? IS it luck?

Before WWII, America was a sleepy little nation; Western Europe was at the front of the upward surge of humanity. Now America is. Coincidence? Or is it the European Jewry, who were lucky enough to flee before the war, or lucky enough to survive the war, got to America, and contributed to its present-day pre-eminence? I'm not saying that they account for ALL of America's great 20th Century achievements, but one cannot discount their significant contribution to American supremacy in so many important fields of endeavor either. If one cares to debate this point, one can simply think of Albert Einstein (Swiss Jew who left before WWII), Edward Teller (fled Hungary prior to WWII), Jonas Salk (parents were Russian-Jew refugees from Czarist pograms), Milton Friedman (Hungarian Jewish parents), Henry Kissinger, Andy Grove, and Yitzhak Perlman. All of them either emigrated from Europe, or had parents that did. In all likelihood, all of them were fleeing for reasons of persecution. This is just a partial list; I can spend the next fifty sentences plugging in the names of Jewish-Americans who can count their emigration, or their parents, to the United States in the last hundred years.

Europe let the Holocaust happen...no, they ENCOURAGED the Holocaust to happen. Now Europe, particularly Western Europe, is a backwater with 12% unemployment, stagnant economic growth, and unsustainable welfare states.

Jeez....if only they didn't chase Milton Friedman's parents out the door, they might have someone with some economic sense.

Geddy Lee Interview

Cool interview with Geddy Lee on the Fender Guitars website. It's a good read, even if you're not a Rush fan. (As I am a huge Rush fan, I'm obviously partial, but...)

"You're My Boy, Blue!"

Patrick Cranford, the superannuated pledge from the movie Old School, passed away at the age of 86 of natural causes. Accordingly to this article, Cranford's daughter claimed that he had "become like a rock star in his 80's", with people calling out "You're my boy, Blue!" when they recognized him.

Author Frank McCourt, his latest memoir Teacher Man, said, "F. Scott Fitzgerald said there were no second acts in American life. He was wrong. He just didn't live long enough to know he was." Patrick Cranford, a character actor for most of his life, reached the apex of his fame whilst in his 80's. Proof once again that Fitzgerald was, as McCourt observed, wrong.