Month: September 2004

The U.S. and Russia, Allies in the War on Terror?

Earlier, I used news of the grievous tragedy in Baslan, Russia, in making a point about civil-liberties extremists and their willingness to leave us exposed to terrorism. I did so because I am deeply affected by what happened in Baslan. It enrages me, just as the terrorist attacks of 9/11/01 in the U.S., the terrorist attacks of 3/11/04 in Spain, the continuing wave of terrorist attacks in Iraq, and seemingly countless other terrorist attacks enrage me.

President Bush has said he will never relent in the war on terror. Now Russia’s President Putin — unlike Spain’s socialist prime minister — has declared a Russian war on terror:

“What happened was a terrorist act that was inhuman and unprecedented in its cruelty,” Putin said in his televised speech later. “It is a challenge not to the president, the parliament and the government but a challenge to all of Russia, to all of our people. It is an attack on our nation.”…

He said Russians could no longer live “carefree” and must all confront terrorism.

He called for Russians to mobilize against what he said was the “common danger” of terrorism. Measures would be taken, Putin promised, to overhaul the law enforcement organs, which he acknowledged had been infected by corruption, and tighten borders.

“We are obliged to create a much more effective security system and to demand action from our law enforcement organs that would be adequate to the level and scale of the new threats,” he said.

Whatever Putin and the Russians actually do about terror, we should take to heart Putin’s diagnosis of what led to Baslan: “We showed weakness, and weak people are beaten.”

Imagine the strength of a true alliance between the U.S. and Russia aimed at encircling and destroying terrorists. Imagine the strength of a true anti-terrorist alliance among all major nations. Let us hope that it doesn’t take more 9/11s, 3/11s, and Baslans to make it happen.

Rational Irrationality

From fight aging!:

We humans are downright irrational beings – witness the fact that the possibility of a cure for baldness arising from stem cell based regenerative medicine garners just as much interest as a cure for heart disease using the same technology.

Let me guess: There are a lot more bald people than there are people with heart disease. So, where’s the irrationality? Oh, not everyone shares the website’s agenda. Tut, tut!

Nit-picking from a Knee-Jerk Libertarian

Gene Healy reacted to one of Zell Miller’s lines this way:

Senator Kerry has made it clear that he would use military force only if approved by the United Nations.

Kerry would let Paris decide when America needs defending.

I want Bush to decide.

Me, I want Congress to decide–you know, like it says in the Constitution and everything.

Gene, Gene, Gene, you know how it works. The president goes to Congress and says, “Please authorize the use of military force to do such-and-such” (which is tantamount to asking for a declaration of war). When Congress authorizes the use of military force, the president decides precisely when, where, and how to apply it.

Miller’s point is obvious to everyone but Gene and his fellow libertarian extremists. Here it is: Kerry is less likely than Bush to use authority already granted by Congress and less likely to ask for new authority, when it’s needed.

Gene and his ilk prefer the Kerry doctrine (wait until attacked) because it means military inaction, and libertarian extremists would rather die in a fiery building than have the president take pre-emptive action (military and otherwise) against anyone anywhere outside the United States. (Perhaps Gene and his friends are waiting for the enemy to bust down their doors, so they can shoot the enemy with their second-amendment weapons.)

Well, that’s what Gene and his ilk think they believe. They haven’t been mugged by reality yet.

If Only Patriots Could Vote

Kerry says Republicans questioned his patriotism because they challenged his Senate record on defense issues. He then seems to question Dick Cheney’s patriotism because Cheney didn’t serve in Vietnam. Mmm…

Let’s restrict voting to patriots. And let’s define patriots as those who have served as members of the armed forces of the United States in wartime. No, let’s say that a patriot is someone who has seen combat with the enemy while serving as a member of the armed forces of the United States.

I wonder how badly Kerry would lose.

Kerry needs all the non-patriot votes he can get. And I’ll bet he won’t reject any of them.

How Are Your Civil Liberties Today?

How do you feel about government data-mining efforts? For example, do you think that your library records should be beyond the prying eyes of the FBI? If you do, you have already forgotten 9/11 and its proximate cause: We were unable to find the murderers in our midst because cooperation between the FBI and CIA was thwarted by an artificial line between domestic and international security. Perhaps this well help you remember what happens when we lose track of the murderers in our midst:

Women take the body of their relative killed in a school seizure, in a makeshift morgue in Vladikavkaz, North Ossetia, Saturday, Sept. 4, 2004. The bodies were brought to Vladikavkaz for identification. More than 340 people were killed in a southern Russian school that had been seized by militants, a prosecutor said Saturday. (AP Photo/Sergey Ponomarev)

Where are their civil liberties today?

Now, how do you feel about your reading list? If you think it’s more important than catching terrorists before they kill you or your loved ones, you are hopelessly self-indulgent.

The FBI isn’t going to haul you off to jail for reading Das Kapital or Joy of Sex. Hell, you won’t be hauled off to jail for reading the Quran. The point isn’t to censor or question your reading, it’s to look for patterns of activity that might point to terrorists.

If you value your privacy so much that your reading list is sacrosanct, you must not have a driver’s license, a credit card, or a phone number. You must be paid in cash and pay in cash. You must never fly, because you won’t stand for the invasion of privacy that’s involved in airport searches and baggage screening.

Now tell me, again, how do you feel about your civil liberties today?

Never Relent

President Bush said it in his acceptance speech, on September 2, 2004:

…I wake up every morning thinking about how to better protect our country. I will never relent in defending America — whatever it takes….

And I said it here, on April 2, 2004:

Our thoughts for the next several hours [following the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001] were with our daughter, whom we knew was at work in the adjacent World Financial Center when the planes struck. Was her office struck by debris? Did she flee her building only to be struck by or trapped in debris? Was she smothered in the huge cloud of dust? Because telephone communications were badly disrupted, we didn’t learn for several hours that she had made it home safely.

Thousands of grandparents, parents, husbands, wives, children, grandchildren, lovers, and good friends — the survivors of the 3,000 who died that day in Manhattan, the Pentagon, and western Pennsylvania — did not share our good fortune. Never forgive, never forget, never relent.

That’s why George W. Bush should be re-elected. He will never relent. He understands that we are at war. And he will wage war, by many means and in many places.

The Election Comes Down to One Thing

The post-convention bounce for Bush — which began a week before the convention — leaves me with the following big questions:

1. Are there enough truly undecided voters left to make a difference in the outcome of the election?

Probably not, especially if the Republican base is energized to turn out in large numbers. And the base seems to be energized.

2. What — if anything — would change the minds of enough voters to swing the election to Kerry? Is there a scandal in the wings? Might Bush stumble so badly in the debates that his performance turns off borderline supporters? And how would voters react to a successful terrorist attack in the U.S. or against U.S. interests overseas?

Scandal-mongering at this point is more likely to backfire on Kerry than to hurt Bush.

Bush seems unlikely to stumble badly in the debates, if stumbles at all. He still misspeaks, but not as often as he used to. And his inarticulate directness is more impressive than Kerry’s grandiloquent circumlocutory style.

The real joker in the deck is terrorism. A thwarted attack would be a big plus for Bush. A successful attack might cut either way.

Absent a terrorist attack, the election is now Bush’s to lose.

Proof That "Smart" Economists Can Be Stupid

Ten recipients of the Nobel prize for economics have signed an open letter in support of John Kerry’s candidacy for president. These geniuses have resorted to the usual arguments of the economically illiterate: those big, bad tax cuts for the “rich”; those big, bad deficits underwritten by foreign investors; rising income inequality; and the rising costs of health care. Their views, in other words, are a combination of wrong-headedness, xenophobia, and welfare-statism.

Kerry, of course, is going to do things right because he’ll restore fiscal responsibility. I guess they missed The Washington Post‘s analysis of Kerry’s proposals, which shows that Kerry’s ideas, if enacted, would add more than $2 trillion to the federal debt over the next 10 years.

On top of that Kerry will “do something” about health-care costs. What, repeal the laws of supply and demand? Nationalize medical care so that Americans can go to Mexico for better treatment?

Well, what do you expect from a bunch of lefties like Paul Samuelson who can explain economic principles without understanding them? They simply don’t trust free people and free markets, because they (the lefties) are smarter than the rest of us. Just ask them.

Hellfire and Brimstone from Zell Miller

From Zell Miller’s speech to the Republican National Convention, quoted without comment:

In the summer of 1940, I was an eight-year-old boy living in a remote little Appalachian valley.

Our country was not yet at war but even we children knew that there were some crazy men across the ocean who would kill us if they could.

President Roosevelt, in his speech that summer, told America “all private plans, all private lives, have been in a sense repealed by an overriding public danger.”

In 1940 Wendell Wilkie was the Republican nominee.

And there is no better example of someone repealing their “private plans” than this good man.

He gave Roosevelt the critical support he needed for a peacetime draft, an unpopular idea at the time.

And he made it clear that he would rather lose the election than make national security a partisan campaign issue.

Shortly before Wilkie died he told a friend, that if he could write his own epitaph and had to choose between “here lies a president” or “here lies one who contributed to saving freedom”, he would prefer the latter.

Where are such statesmen today?

Where is the bi-partisanship in this country when we need it most?

Now, while young Americans are dying in the sands of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan, our nation is being torn apart and made weaker because of the Democrat’s manic obsession to bring down our Commander-in- Chief.

What has happened to the party I’ve spent my life working in?

I can remember when Democrats believed that it was the duty of America to fight for freedom over tyranny.

It was Democratic President Harry Truman who pushed the Red Army out of Iran, who came to the aid of Greece when Communists threatened to overthrow it, who stared down the Soviet blockade of West Berlin by flying in supplies and saving the city.

Time after time in our history, in the face of great danger, Democrats and Republicans worked together to ensure that freedom would not falter. But not today.

Motivated more by partisan politics than by national security, today’s Democratic leaders see America as an occupier, not a liberator.

And nothing makes this Marine madder than someone calling American troops occupiers rather than liberators.

Tell that to the one-half of Europe that was freed because Franklin Roosevelt led an army of liberators, not occupiers.

Tell that to the lower half of the Korean Peninsula that is free because Dwight Eisenhower commanded an army of liberators, not occupiers.

Tell that to the half a billion men, women and children who are free today from the Baltics to the Crimea, from Poland to Siberia, because Ronald Reagan rebuilt a military of liberators, not occupiers.

Never in the history of the world has any soldier sacrificed more for the freedom and liberty of total strangers than the American soldier. And, our soldiers don’t just give freedom abroad, they preserve it for us here at home.

For it has been said so truthfully that it is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us the freedom of the press.

It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech. It is the soldier, not the agitator, who has given us the freedom to protest.

It is the soldier who salutes the flag, serves beneath the flag, whose coffin is draped by the flag who gives that protester the freedom to abuse and burn that flag.

No one should dare to even think about being the Commander in Chief of this country if he doesn’t believe with all his heart that our soldiers are liberators abroad and defenders of freedom at home.

But don’t waste your breath telling that to the leaders of my party today. In their warped way of thinking America is the problem, not the solution.

They don’t believe there is any real danger in the world except that which America brings upon itself through our clumsy and misguided foreign policy.

It is not their patriotism – it is their judgment that has been so sorely lacking. They claimed Carter’s pacifism would lead to peace.

They were wrong.

They claimed Reagan’s defense buildup would lead to war.

They were wrong.

And, no pair has been more wrong, more loudly, more often than the two Senators from Massachusetts, Ted Kennedy and John Kerry.

Together, Kennedy/Kerry have opposed the very weapons system that won the Cold War and that is now winning the War on Terror.

Listing all the weapon systems that Senator Kerry tried his best to shut down sounds like an auctioneer selling off our national security but Americans need to know the facts….

This is the man who wants to be the Commander in Chief of our U.S. Armed Forces?

U.S. forces armed with what? Spitballs?

Twenty years of votes can tell you much more about a man than twenty weeks of campaign rhetoric.

Campaign talk tells people who you want them to think you are. How you vote tells people who you really are deep inside.

Senator Kerry has made it clear that he would use military force only if approved by the United Nations.

Kerry would let Paris decide when America needs defending. I want Bush to decide.

John Kerry, who says he doesn’t like outsourcing, wants to outsource our national security.

That’s the most dangerous outsourcing of all. This politician wants to be leader of the free world.

Free for how long?

For more than twenty years, on every one of the great issues of freedom and security, John Kerry has been more wrong, more weak and more wobbly than any other national figure. As a war protestor, Kerry blamed our military.

As a Senator, he voted to weaken our military. And nothing shows that more sadly and more clearly than his vote this year to deny protective armor for our troops in harms way, far-away.

George Bush understands that we need new strategies to meet new threats.

John Kerry wants to re-fight yesterday’s war. George Bush believes we have to fight today’s war and be ready for tomorrow’s challenges. George Bush is committed to providing the kind of forces it takes to root out terrorists.

No matter what spider hole they may hide in or what rock they crawl under.

George Bush wants to grab terrorists by the throat and not let them go to get a better grip.

From John Kerry, they get a “yes-no-maybe” bowl of mush that can only encourage our enemies and confuse our friends….

This election will change forever the course of history, and that’s not any history. It’s our family’s history.

The only question is how. The answer lies with each of us. And, like many generations before us, we’ve got some hard choosing to do.

Right now the world just cannot afford an indecisive America. Fainthearted, self-indulgence will put at risk all we care about in this world.

In this hour of danger our President has had the courage to stand up. And this Democrat is proud to stand up with him….

Iran, Praying to Allah for a Kerry Win?

“Watchdog: Iran Plans to Process Uranium.” Dumb, dumb, dumb. The only question is who bombs first, Israel or U.S.

Don’t Back Down, Governor

I’m not referring to Governator Schwarzenegger, who needs no counsel on that score. I’m referring to Governor Robert Ehrlich of Maryland, a Republican (oddly enough for Maryland), whose Lieutenant Governor, Michael Steele, happens to be black. Ehrlich, in the course of defending Steele against the usual “Uncle Tom” charges from black Democrats, pulled a reverse and played the race card against Democrats. Here’s some of the story from The Washington Post:

High-ranking Maryland Democrats yesterday denounced Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.’s remarks this week that the Democratic Party is “racist” in the way it appeals to black voters.

Ehrlich told members of the Maryland delegation to the Republican National Convention in New York on Monday that the “message” conveyed at last month’s Democratic National Convention is that “if you have black skin, you have to believe one way. You have to. Or you’re a traitor to your race.”

Ehrlich’s statement was intended as a defense of Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele (R), an African American who addressed delegates last night.

“That’s the message we’ve seen from a number of conventions,” Ehrlich said. “That’s why it’s important that this lieutenant governor speak to this country. That’s racist.”…

Precisely. The presumption that the only “good” black is a Democrat black is blatantly racist. It implies that blacks can’t think for themselves. And it’s sad that some blacks — partisan Democrats all — live up to the stereotype of blacks as “Uncle Toms” to the Democrat Party’s condescending white, liberal “massahs”.

Here’s a Bait-and-Switch Opportunity

Joanna Glasner at Wired News reports on this year’s vote-swapping schemes:

Supporters of third-party candidates, be they save-the-spotted-owl Greens or trim-the-government Libertarians, are finding themselves in a similar quandary this presidential election year.

They dislike both George W. Bush and John Kerry, but not equally. The dilemma: By casting a vote for a third candidate, they fear they’ll inadvertently boost the campaign of the major-party candidate they despise most.

Help is on the way. While their methodologies may not be legal or even tested, a number of websites are cropping up to allow backers of presidential wannabes from alternate parties to vote their conscience without draining support for a preferred major-party candidate in a crucial swing state.

So-called vote-swapping, or vote-pairing, efforts under way for November’s election largely mimic those that cropped up in 2000 to minimize the impact of Ralph Nader on Democrat Al Gore’s chances of victory. Through such websites as like VoteSwap2000, Votexchange2000 and Nadertrader.org, Nader supporters in swing states agreed to vote for Gore if a voter in a solidly pro-Bush or pro-Gore state agreed to vote for Nader in their stead.

This year, with fewer votes expected to go to Nader, some want to make it more comfortable for voters of all stripes to withhold support for the Democratic and Republican candidates….

Who’s more gullible, Nader supporters, Bush supporters or Kerry supporters? Let’s put it to the test. I live in Texas, a sure win for Bush. I’ll honor the request of the first person who asks me to vote for Nader, under two conditions: (1) That person must live in a state in which the Bush-Kerry race is very tight. (2) That person must agree to vote for Bush. Come on, let’s hear from you gullible Naderites out there.

It’s Time for James Carville to Go Home

“Mysterious signals from 1000 light years away.”

Nailing the Nanny State

Occam’s Carbuncle — operating in high-irony mode — has the perfect prescription for the nanny state:

Ban danger and unpredictability. Ban cars. Ban alcohol. Ban cigarettes. Ban harm. Ban guns. Ban variability. Ban bodychecks. Ban slingshots. Ban mean people. Ban sex. Ban hate. Ban religion. Ban disagreement. Ban boxing. Ban bicycles. Ban Alberta. Ban hurting. Ban straight pins. Ban sewing needles. Ban shouting. Ban whispering. Ban being born without a helmet. Ban birth. Ban tripping and falling down. Ban elastic bands. Ban scissors. Ban mortality. Ban fallibility. Ban indigestion.

The proprietor of Occam’s Carbuncle is Canadian. Thus “Ban Alberta.” What he has for or against Alberta, I don’t know. But I’m sure he has a good reason for it.

UPDATE: From the proprietor himself, “I love Alberta and all things Albertan (well, actually I’m not a huge fan of Anne McLellan). My attempt at irony might have had one too many layers.” But it’s great irony, nevertheless.

I Blame TV

Q&A at The Corner:

Reader: …When did the voices of American young women get to be so universally, gratingly, nasally flat, all across the country? And why? Who stole away the huskier voices, the rounded deep-southern tones…the ability to use any vocal range and inflection at all?”

John Derbyshire: …There is, in fact, a very distinctive American-female voice developing. It’s the “Valley girl” voice basically — even though the Valley in question is 3,000 miles from where my daughter grew up….

It’s true, and it’s because kids watch too much TV, which has homogenized America’s once-rich variety of regional accents. Turn off the damn TV and read to your kids in the accent you grew up with. Well, just turn off the TV. Your kids will be the better for it.

The Doctor Diagnoses Another Case of Simplistic Socialism

Dr. Henry I. Miller is a physician and a fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Competitive Enterprise Institute. He was an FDA official from 1979 to 1994. And he understands economics. It’s too bad that most other medical insiders aren’t as savvy as Dr. Miller. Writing today at Tech Central Station he delivers a deadly diagnosis of Dr. Marcia Angell’s The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About, a compendium of simplistic, socialistic nostrums. Miller’s bottom line about Angell’s book:

Dr. Angell’s proposals to, in effect, nationalize the American system of drug development reflect almost inconceivable naiveté. They are reminiscent of economist Milton Friedman’s example of a flawed syllogism: Capitalism has worked everywhere it has been tried; socialism has failed everywhere it has been tried; therefore, let us try socialism.

A spirited diatribe can educate and entertain, but in The Truth About the Drug Companies, Dr. Angell does neither. Her diagnoses are wrong, and her remedies — which are reminiscent of the government controls and centralized planning of the old Soviet Union — are far worse than the disease.

Don’t bother to read the book, but do take the time to read Dr. Miller’s article, and anything else by him that pops up on the web.

Psychoanalyzing Peace Protesters

NYTimes.com headline: “Hundreds Are Arrested as Protests Escalate”

Scene: A psychiatrist’s office in Manhattan

Patient: Please tell me, Dr. Spielvogel, why do I become so violent when I protest for peace?

Shrink: Vy not? Unlike zose against whom you protest, you haff no responsibility for defending ze nation. You are venting your feelings of powerlessness.

Patient: But vy — why — do I become violent when I vent?

Shrink: Vell, ven you vere an adolescent, and you rebelled against your parents, you had to do it by nonviolent means because you depended on zem for your bed and board.

Patient: So, you think I’m really acting out my adolescent rebellion against my parents?

Shrink: Vell, zince you are only capable of shouting mindless slogans — ven you aren’t doing zomesing violent — it is clear to me zat you haven’t advanced beyond adolescence. In fact, I sink you have regressed into childhood.

Patient: I’m not going to take this lying down.

Shrink: Lying down, zitting up, makes no difference to me. Zat will be $200. And no protesting or I’ll cut off your prescription of Thorazine. Next patient…

Al Franken — leftwing nutjob, alleged comedian, and front man for Error America — sharing his wit and wisdom with a political opponent, at the Republican National Convention.