Posted
3/8/2003 11:24:13 PM
by Edward Driscoll
I THOUGHT ONLY THE FRENCH DID THAT: A dozen of Saddam's soldiers try to surrender...before the shooting starts!
No word yet if they were carrying copies of this magazine, however.
Posted
3/8/2003 11:21:16 PM
by Edward Driscoll
FROM THE HOME OFFICE IN WASHINGTON, DC: Human Events has a top ten list of the most outrageous government programs, as assembled by "a diverse group of 18 conservative public policy experts".
Human Events writes, "There were some interesting patterns":
President Richard Nixon, a Republican, helped create five of the programs on the list, including Number 1 LSC. Most of the listed programs also are relatively new. Republican President Herbert Hoover signed the oldest program, the Number 3 Davis-Bacon Act (which forces government contractors to pay higher wages), in 1931. But eight of the programs were initiated, wholly or in part, in 1970 or later."Hopefully, none will last as long as Davis-Bacon", they add. Sad to say, I'll bet more than a few of them will.
Posted
3/8/2003 11:06:30 AM
by Edward Driscoll
GIVEN HOW THICK THEIR SKULLS ARE, IT MIGHT JUST WORK... Rich Lowry looks at the silliness of the human shields in Iraq, or as he calls them, "the Western kids who flocked to Iraq hoping to stare up at the business end of B-2 bombers", but decided to come home, when Saddam actually wanted them to defend military targets:
About half of the 200 shields have quit after realizing, as one kid told The Washington Times, "No humanitarian sites were made available to us." Even the Iraqi government isn't stupid or anti-American enough to think that the United States will deliberately target hospitals, mosques and schools. For that sort of poisonously out-of-touch view of American power, you must turn to left-wing Westerners. Other shields are still stationed at electrical plants, water-pumping stations and oil refineries. Thus, the world gets the spectacle of the same people who complain about America's military-industrial complex trying to save parts of Iraq's.Lowry adds:
The operational theory of the shields never made much sense: that they could stop a war that would be heedlessly waged against civilians by presenting the U.S. military with the possibility that it might hit a few civilians. Top shield Ken O'Keefe, an American, addresses this paradox by arguing that only white civilians matter to the United States, so the shields can stop bombs even as Iraqi civilians are killed. So O'Keefe (reachable either at Baghdad's Palestine International Hotel or at the Daura Electrical Plant) has been guilty of discriminatory recruiting: treasonous black left-wing zealots need not apply. If there were justice in the world, O'Keefe would have to return home and report directly to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.Johnny Cochran, call your office! In the meantime, read the whole thing. And check out Tim Blair's recent post on the subject.
Posted
3/7/2003 08:30:47 PM
by Edward Driscoll
WAS IT P.J. O'ROURKE WHO SAID that you could tell which party was winning, based upon who had the better looking women? (Or something like that. See this recent David Frum post, and this John Derbyshire essay from a couple of years ago for the basic gist). If so, consider these two photos, taken, respectively, at recent pro-Saddam and anti-Chirac protests for a comparsion:
Posted
3/7/2003 03:41:05 PM
by Edward Driscoll
DID THE BBC LIE when they said "the educated are mainly anti-war"? Andrew Sullivan says yes, and has the stats to prove it.
Posted
3/7/2003 03:35:17 PM
by Edward Driscoll
INTERNET SPEED RECORD SMASHED: Be sure and check out our look at America's Internet2, and Canada's Canarie high-speed Internet projects, here.
Posted
3/7/2003 03:19:56 PM
by Edward Driscoll
GIANTS RELEASE JASON SEHORN: Angie Harmon couldn't be reached for comment.
Posted
3/7/2003 03:13:46 PM
by Edward Driscoll
DID PRESIDENT BUSH LOOK TIRED LAST NIGHT? Virginia Postrel weighs in, along with links to comments by David Frum, Glenn Reynolds, and Andrew Sullivan. Postrel's take? "Last night's performance seemed calculated to counter the 'Bush is a blustering cowboy' meme. He was firm and fatherly, not the smirking frat boy or the quick-on-the-trigger Jacksonian American of antiwar stereotypes."
Posted
3/7/2003 01:09:56 PM
by Edward Driscoll
NEW LED ZEPPELIN LIVE DVDs and CDs COMING IN MAY: I have details on Blogcritics.
Posted
3/7/2003 12:34:30 PM
by Edward Driscoll
ABOUT TIME: Helen Thomas snubbed during Bush's speech last night.
I guess he had more important issues on his mind than her rabid non-stop hectoring.
For our previous coverage of the woman who gives hobbits a bad name, click here.
UPDATE: Here's a few more details.
Posted
3/7/2003 11:41:18 AM
by Edward Driscoll
MARCH 17 is the deadline du jour.
Hans Blix of course, would prefer March 17, 2023.
Posted
3/6/2003 11:10:41 PM
by Edward Driscoll
FOUR MIDDLE-CLASS WHITE GUYS WRESTLE OVER IRAQ, at Blogcritics.
Man, I hope they don't mess up the furniture!
Posted
3/6/2003 10:47:15 PM
by Edward Driscoll
THE ART OF STEELY DAN: My brief review of a new book about the classic 1970s rock/pop/jazz group of the 1970s is now up over at Blogcritics.
Posted
3/6/2003 10:28:45 PM
by Edward Driscoll
GNAT LILEKS, GENIUS FINANCIAL ANALYST:
“how much did it cost to fill up, daddee? Because if it’s over twenty bucks for the first time in a long time you’re less inclined to go inside the station to get some high-profit items like soda or jerky, or buy a car wash ticket, right? And since the profit margin for gas on the retail level is constantly miniscule, and since high-profit items help repay the loans to the oil company that fronted you money for pumps, upgrades, canopies and the like - then aren’t these high oil prices hard on the individual stations, increasing their likelihood of defaulting on their loans from the company? Granted, they can take the hit from losing a station here or there, but might not this continual erosion of the consignee’s profit margin tempt them to switch to another brand who’d pay off the old loan, leading to market-share erosion? I mean, people think high gas prices are great for gas companies, but that’s a rather simplistic take. Isn’t this side-effect of high gas prices on the stations completely ignored by the press, which sees Big Oil as a monolithic octopus yanking all the levers with ingenious synchronization?”Now that's one smart kid!
Posted
3/6/2003 03:05:42 PM
by Edward Driscoll
STALIN'S OBIT THEN AND NOW: Jeff Brokaw has a link to his 1953 obituary in the New York Times, which is as close to necrophilia as the Times as ever come.
And Andrew Sullivan has a link to The Onion's "1953" Stalin obit, which he describes--quite accurately--as "better than the New York Times'".
Meanwhile, ABC News' Peter Jennings yesterday, reported that "more than 3,000 people met today at the Soviet dictator’s grave adjacent to Red Square. Many of them said Russia could use a leader like Stalin again":
But at least Jennings described Stalin as “one of the world's most brutal dictators” and pointed out that “he murdered millions of his own people.” After relaying how a 14-year-old boy claimed that though “Stalin had many sins,” they “were justified,” Jennings powerfully concluded: “There are still no memorials to the people Stalin had killed.” Jennings concluded the March 5 World News Tonight: “Finally, this evening, a lesson about remembering. As the Bush administration contemplates trying to get rid of Saddam Hussein, who President Bush has always referred to as a brutal dictator, we take note of an anniversary. It is 50 years ago today that one of the world’s most brutal dictators died: Josef Stalin.”For Peter Jennings, I suppose, that's progress.
Posted
3/6/2003 01:08:37 AM
by Edward Driscoll
HOWARD OWENS SELF-BLOGS: Err, that sounds a bit icky doesn't it? But he's done an excellent job of rounding up the best of his posts on the coming-very-soon war with Iraq into one meta-post on Blogcritics.
Posted
3/5/2003 07:51:47 AM
by Edward Driscoll
IS THERE A LINK BETWEEN ENVIRONMENTALISM AND RACISM? Interesting essay by Ronald Bailey of Reason.
There certainly seemed to be more than a twinge of it at last year's U.N. Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg.
Posted
3/5/2003 07:25:36 AM
by Edward Driscoll
ON THE OTHER HAND, is Iraq merely a sideshow or tune-up for the coming war with North Korea, as Stanley Kurtz argues?
UPDATE: Or is this the next front?? (Link found via Team Stryker.)
Posted
3/5/2003 07:13:16 AM
by Edward Driscoll
"SHOCK AND AWE": Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is quoted by the The Washington Times as saying, "If asked to go into conflict in Iraq, what you would like to do is have it be a short conflict. And the best way to do that would be to have such a shock on the system the Iraqi regime would have to assume early on that the end is inevitable."
:Gen. Myers spoke to reporters during a breakfast sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor newspaper. He provided the first peek at the military's war plan for Iraq, which would involve massive strikes with precision-guided bombs and missiles. "It would not be the template of Desert Storm," said Gen. Myers, referring to the 1991 Persian Gulf war. "And we can't forget that war is inherently violent and people are going to die." Pentagon war planners will try to minimize civilian casualties and damage to nonmilitary structures, but that "will occur," he said. The four-star general said the war plan will employ a concept dubbed "shock and awe" to finish a conflict quickly. "Some of those techniques will be used," he said. Harlan Ullman, a former Navy pilot and National Defense University specialist is a key architect of the shock and awe concept, which calls for achieving "rapid dominance" on the battlefield. It calls for intense bombing that inflicts both physical and psychological damage on an enemy, including both high-explosive bombs and electronic-pulse weapons designed to cause widespread electronic failures. Gen. Myers did not provide operational details of the war plan but said a key difference is the goal of disarming Iraq and disabling the Iraqi leadership."Shock and Awe" rolls off the tongue quite nicely. And makes far more sense than the slow, grinding carrot and stick approach that bogged us down in Vietnam.
Posted
3/5/2003 07:05:15 AM
by Edward Driscoll
THE COMPLETE MILITARY HISTORY OF FRANCE, courtesy of Group Captain Lionel Mandrake.
Posted
3/4/2003 09:44:38 AM
by Edward Driscoll
MAN BITES DOG: Steven Den Beste agrees with Saddam Hussein.
No really!
Posted
3/4/2003 01:28:19 AM
by Edward Driscoll
BRILLIANT! Scrappleface reports that under extreme pressure from both sides of the argument, the " 9th Circuit Court Solves 'Under God' Debacle".
As athiest Michael Newdow is quoted as saying, "This ruling is the answer to all of our prayers!"
Posted
3/3/2003 08:45:56 PM
by Edward Driscoll
A LOVE SUPREME: My review of Ashley Kahn's new "making of" book, on John Coltrane's classic album, is up on Blogcritics.
Posted
3/3/2003 10:17:49 AM
by Edward Driscoll
THEN AND NOW: Gerald Posner writes:
Thirty years ago there was never a question of North Vietnam attacking America or its civilians around the globe. Our often-misguided peace demonstrations inadvertently assisted the communists in brutally reuniting the country. But today’s peaceniks, who seem to be more interested in protecting Saddam than in trying to prevent the massive loss of life on American soil if terrorists get their hands on weapons of mass destruction, are playing with much more dangerous consequences. They are deluding themselves to the post 9.11 realities, and in so doing, their success would put the country at considerable risk.Great essay. RTWT, as the TLA (actually FLA) goes.
Posted
3/3/2003 10:08:45 AM
by Edward Driscoll
THE TURKISH STOCK MARKET DROPPED TEN PERCENT in response to Saturday's vote, according to Steven Den Beste, who writes, "I think the Prime Minister is going to have some questions to answer. I must say that it's rather difficult to feel much sympathy for him."
(Love the URL on his post, by the way.)
Posted
3/3/2003 10:03:51 AM
by Edward Driscoll
SNUBBING TURKEY: Did US State Department missteps play a part in Saturday’s embarrassing vote? Joel Mowbray thinks so.
Posted
3/2/2003 08:53:26 PM
by Edward Driscoll
"PRESENT AT THE CREATION" Patrick Ruffini has first-person details about President Bush's landmark speech on Iraq at the AEI institute last week because he was there in the first person, personally.
Lots of other good material on his blog as well!
Posted
3/2/2003 08:20:51 PM
by Edward Driscoll
MISTER ROGERS, FAIR USE ACTIVIST: Nice post about the late Fred Rogers, by Eric Olsen.
And nice to Blogcritics.org working again!
Posted
3/2/2003 02:12:35 PM
by Edward Driscoll
SAY IT ISN'T SO! "Swedes trash myth of refuse recycling".
Yeah, right. Next you'll be telling me that the New York Times once ran an editorial titled "Recycling is Garbage".
It sometimes seems that for many, environmentalism, and the rituals that go with it, such as an obsession with recycling, have become a replacement for religion. It reminds me of this story told by Jay Nordlinger:
In his article for the forthcoming NR on the Jo-burg jamboree, Jerry Taylor of the Cato Institute tells a story about Julian Simon, the late and great economist. He was at some environmental forum, and he said, “How many people here believe that the earth is increasingly polluted and that our natural resources are being exhausted?” Naturally, every hand shot up. He said, “Is there any evidence that could dissuade you?” Nothing. Again: “Is there any evidence I could give you — anything at all — that would lead you to reconsider these assumptions?” Not a stir. Simon then said, “Well, excuse me, I’m not dressed for church.” I love that story, for what it says about the fixity of these beliefs, immune to evidence, reason, or anything else.Exactly.
Posted
3/2/2003 01:59:07 PM
by Edward Driscoll
IS THE VATICAN ANTI-SEMITIC? Glenn Reynolds has lots of links, letters from readers, and this photo, which he describes as "damning", and as a (somewhat lapsed) Catholic, I concur.
Posted
3/2/2003 12:24:08 PM
by Edward Driscoll
AP HEADLINE: "Iraq Links Missile Destruction to Peace".
If Iraq's referring to these missiles, for once, I agree with them.
Posted
3/2/2003 12:23:46 PM
by Edward Driscoll
YOU'VE PROBABLY READ THIS ALREADY (I found it via InstaPundit), but this post by Tim Blair on the human shields who are fleeing Iraq, because they were told "deploy to the 'strategic sites' hand-picked by the government or leave immediately"!
As Blair writes, "Betrayed by the Iraqi government itself! Who could ever have predicted such a thing?"
Blair also notes the shields' leader, Ken Nichols O'Keefe, took his mother(!) with him to Iraq.
Here's more on the human shields.
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