Worth A Read

Why I read Lileks, Part XXIV:

When I realized that the footage would be interesting only if a pair of eyes stared back at me, I shut off the camera, and looked up. To paraphrase Dave Bowman:

My stars. It’s full of God.

I went back into the cabin, got Gnat out of bed. She held my hand as we walked around to the front; I told her to look down. We got to the middle of the lawn between the cabin and the shore, and laid down and looked up.

She gasped.

It’s so beautiful, she said. We saw the clouds of stars, the bright ones burning a billion years away, the dim pricks in the firmament that probably represented an entire galaxy, or two, and as usual you remember the wise man’s formulation: either we are alone or we are not, and either is astonishing. Although each has its own implications.

We laid in the grass for a few minutes, holding hands, looking up at the stars. Your mind goes through moods quite quickly – they’re pitiless, indifferent; they’re somehow benevolent. They’re remote but tantalizingly close. They overwhelm with their numbers, yet you can ignore them all by studying one, and giving it the full force of your conjecture. A choir of light, a million silent voices, one great chord you cannot begin to imagine – but you’d know it if you heard it.

The man can write. Lordy, can he ever.

A Few Good Words, and a Lot of Mediocre Ones

A couple of updates to yesterday’s second post…

First, Rumsfeld vs. the Associated Press. The AP has changed its story, without indicating the original copy has been changed. The Q and O Blog notes:

AP has edited the original story. Yesterday the story had the following lead paragraph:

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Tuesday accused critics of the Bush administration's Iraq and counterterrorism policies of trying to appease "a new type of fascism."

Now the lead paragraph says:

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Tuesday the world faces "a new type of fascism" and warned against repeating the pre-World War II mistake of appeasement.

Additionally this paragraph has gone missing as well:

In unusually explicit terms, Rumsfeld portrayed the administration's critics as suffering from "moral or intellectual confusion" about what threatens the nation's security and accused them of lacking the courage to fight back.

To be replaced by these:

Rumsfeld alluded to critics of the Bush administration's war policies in terms associated with the failure to stop Nazism in the 1930s, "a time when a certain amount of cynicism and moral confusion set in among the Western democracies."

Without explicitly citing Bush critics at home or abroad, he said "it is apparent that many have still not learned history's lessons." Aides to Rumsfeld said later he was not accusing the administration's critics of trying to appease the terrorists but was cautioning against a repeat of errors made in earlier eras.

Well imagine that.

Indeed. Imagine that. The quotes above are an update to a good post that contrasted, once again, what Rumsfeld actually said vs. what the AP said he said. Very good stuff.

It doesn’t take a tremendous amount of imagination to visualize the Hard Left’s outrage shrieks about Rummy “stifling dissent” and “questioning our patriotism.” Oh, no, it ain’t hard at all; the Lefty blogs were chock full of it (pun intended) yesterday. And yesterday ended with the oh-so-cute Keith Olbermann delivering a “A special comment on his attack on your right to disagree” on his MSNBC Countdown show. Olbermann Watch has all the details and rather pointed comment. If you can stomach it, Crooks and Liars has the compete transcript of Olbermann’s “special comment.” The comment was indeed special… “short-bus” special.

Finally, this post at RedState is tangentially related to Rumsfeld’s speech, but goes even deeper to examine the administration’s approach to Information War. I think the President and his principal cabinet members (the Veep, SecDef, and SecState) have been waging an ineffective info war, characterized by its on-again, off-again approach. Charles Bird at RedState has, among other very good things, this to say:

Rumsfeld has been too late recognizing, addressing and responding in the Information War. It's within his power to change the communications set-up, yet little has happened (but give him credit for addressing it these past couple of weeks). In this War Against Militant Islamism, a Defense Secretary needs to have a competent media apparatus. Bush is also responsible for these lapses. This doesn't mean that we answer untruth with untruth, but we do have to answer. If not, false perceptions will continue to supercede in the Muslim world.

Bird’s article is also chock-full of great links on this important subject.

CBS comes clean, the Couric photo was Photoshopped. The linked article is from the AP, but I’ll believe ‘em this time. And just for the record, I’m completely ambivalent about Ms. Couric. I’ve never watched her, and the chances of me watching her in future are pretty slim, actually (no pun intended, honestly). I do admire the fact Ms. Couric struck an excellent business deal with CBS and wish her well. Couric, by the way, was quoted thusly on the brouhaha:

Couric, 49, said she hadn't known about the digitally reworked version until she saw the issue. The former NBC "Today" show host told the Daily News, "I liked the first picture better because there's more of me to love."

Heh. “there’s more of me to love.” Katie is right up my alley in that space!

The US Military Sees Iran’s Nuke Bomb Five Years Away (Washington Times):

The U.S. military is operating under the assumption that Iran is five to eight years away from being able to build its first nuclear weapon, a time span that explains a general lack of urgency within the Bush administration to use air strikes to disable Tehran's atomic program.

Defense sources familiar with discussions of senior military commanders say the five- to eight-year projection has been discussed inside the Pentagon, which is updating its war plan for Iran. The time frame is generally in line with last year's intelligence community estimate that Iran could have the capability to produce a nuclear weapon by the beginning or middle of the next decade.

But the sources said that while the five-year window provides President Bush additional time to decide on whether to launch military strikes, they suspect it underestimates Iran's determination to build a bomb as quickly as possible.

Yes, this explains the “general lack of urgency.” But…have we seen this movie before? From Wikipedia (emphasis mine):

Working under a stubborn and scientifically ignorant administrator, the Soviet scientists struggled on. On August 29, 1949, the effort brought its results, when the USSR tested its first fission bomb, dubbed "Joe-1" in the U.S., years ahead of American predictions. The news of the first Soviet bomb was announced to the world first by the United States, which had detected the nuclear fallout it generated from its test site in Kazakhstan.

Yeah, I know. Take the Wiki with a grain of salt. But American intelligence has a nasty habit of getting it wrong, perhaps more often than they get it right. And getting it wrong, in this case, makes the problem/issue a helluva lot more difficult than it currently is. Just sayin’.

A problem I don’t have… From the WSJ:

In the height of summer-holiday season, bloggers face the inevitable question: to blog on break or put the blog on a break? Fearing a decline in readership, some writers opt not to take vacations. Others keep posting while on location, to the chagrin of their families. Those brave enough to detach themselves from their keyboards for a few days must choose between leaving the site dormant or having someone blog-sit.

To be sure, most bloggers don't agonize over this decision. Of the 12 million bloggers on the Internet, only about 13% post daily, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project. Even fewer -- 10% -- spend 10 or more hours a week on their blogs.

Wow. I didn’t realize I was in such a small group of bloggers – the 13% that post daily, and the ten per cent that spend 10 or more hours a week on their blog. I don’t know if the reading required to keep up the blog counts (I think not), because I did about the same amount of reading both before and after I began blogging. I will admit, however, that the focus of my reading has changed somewhat. I find I ask myself “Is this ‘bloggable’?” when time runs short in the morning. There are times I’ll skip something if the answer to that question is “no.” Sometimes I go back, most often I don’t. Be that as it may, I have no compunctions at all about leaving EIP unattended while I go off somewhere. It’s sorta like what Dylan said: “When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose.” At the rate I’m going, it’ll take me eight years to get the traffic Sullivan gets in a single day. As I said: this is a problem I don’t have, or, in other words: “No worries, Mate!”

Today’s Pic: In the Japanese Tea Garden. Golden Gate Park, San Francisco. April, 2001

Now That I've Made the Rounds...

Rummy’s in the news, and not in a good way. Come to think of it, he’s rarely, if ever, portrayed “in a good way” by the media. And that’s what I’m on about. The SecDef gave a speech to the American Legion’s annual convention in Salt Lake City yesterday, and here’s what the AP had to say about the speech. Excerpts:

In unusually explicit terms, Rumsfeld portrayed the Bush administration's critics as suffering from ``moral or intellectual confusion'' about what threatens the nation's security. His remarks amounted to one of his most pointed defenses of President Bush' war policies and was among his toughest attacks on the president's critics.

Speaking to several thousand veterans at the American Legion's national convention, Rumsfeld recited what he called the lessons of history, including the failure to confront Hitler in the 1930s. He quoted Winston Churchill as observing that trying to accommodate Hitler was ``a bit like feeding a crocodile, hoping it would eat you last.''

The AP staff writer went on to quote several Democrats’ knee-jerk responses to Rummy’s speech, with a lead-in sentence that said “Rumsfeld's remarks ignited angry rebukes from Democrats.” OK, that’s real news, ain’t it?

So, what’s the problem, you ask? Context. It’s all about context, and the AP writer, using the time-honored “cherry picking” method of putting an individual in a bad light, strung together several isolated quotes from the Rumsfeld speech and built his negative story accordingly. Here’s the full transcript of Rumsfeld’s speech. You can compare and contrast what the SecDef actually said versus the way the AP reported the event. Or, you can go read Lex, who has an excellent post up on the subject; Outside the Beltway has another. The interesting thing about OTB’s post is he reads the Leftie responses to Rummy so you don’t have to.

This is interesting…Fun With Photoshop! Poor Katie Couric just don’t get no respect! But I find the examples of photo manipulation illustrated in the Hot Air article fascinating, as are the explanations of the techniques used. Is it any wonder we distrust photojournalism of late?

And this is FUNNY! Oops! CNN Airs Anchor's Girltalk Over Bush Speech.

Looking for a "passionate, compassionate, great, great" man? Well, according to CNN's Kyra Phillips, they do indeed exist. During CNN's live coverage of President Bush's remarks from New Orleans, Phillips was unaware that her microphone was on and picked up portions of a conversation she was having with another woman.

Transcript and video at the link. It could have been worse, much worse. I’ve heard women talk about men when said women didn’t know they were being listened to and it can get brutal. Funny, too.

Update: This is amazing! A 2:39 minute YouTube video. You won't believe your eyes. Hat tip: Cassandra.

Just a Quickie...

My bizarre sleeping habits have returned…Slept waaay late, and was up and drinking my first cup only minutes before 1100. Talk about late starts! So, here’s a pic and a quick read for ya until I really get going. Gomen.

ANOTHER Israeli atrocity! Via Iowahawk:

QANA, LEBANON - Israeli Defense Forces face fresh charges of war atrocities today, as international press agency Reuters released stark photos showing the devastation caused by a daylight IDF missile attack on a clearly marked Reuters press ambulance.

According to Reuters spokesman Martin Aldwyn, the vehicle was used by the agency's local freelancers to transport poignant war-ravaged street urchins to Lebanese hospitals. Although clearly marked with a red cross, "PRESS," fuzzy dice, and the international symbol for "Baby On Board," the flaming 1950 Mercury was left nearly unrecognizable by the attack. Photos show that the impact of the Israeli missiles slammed the vehicle to the ground, lowered its roof five inches, and left it with a pancaked hood, shaved door handles, frenched headlights and De Soto grille.

Ya gotta be into Hot Rods and the associated terminology to really appreciate this… Most Americans understand it, I think!

Today’s Pic: Speaking of cars… Pictured is a copper-bodied Rolls Royce displayed at The National Auto Museum in Reno. The copper is so highly polished it’s mirror-like. Most impressive, as is the museum itself. I’ve never been to a better automobile museum.

Bad News and a Couple of Blurbs

Bad news… The First Mrs. Pennington is in the hospital with a pretty serious ailment. Her doctors originally thought the problem was her gall bladder and had scheduled surgery to remove it yesterday, but further testing revealed her gall bladder is functioning within normal limits. Now the doctors don’t know what it is, and further testing (MRIs and such) will be done today. SN1 is in California taking care of Mom and keeping the doctors honest. Say a prayer…

The NYT: “Details Emerge in British Terror Case.”

“As you bomb, you will be bombed; as you kill, you will be killed,” said one of the men on a “martyrdom” videotape, whose contents were described by a senior British official and a person briefed about the case. The young man added that he hoped God would be “pleased with us and accepts our deed.”

As it happened, the police had been monitoring the apartment with hidden video and audio equipment. Not long after the tape was recorded that day, Scotland Yard decided to shut down what they suspected was a terrorist cell. That action set off a chain of events that raised the terror threat levels in Britain and the United States, barred passengers from taking liquids on airplanes and plunged air traffic into chaos around the world.

The ominous language of seven recovered martyrdom videotapes is among new details that emerged from interviews with high-ranking British, European and American officials last week, demonstrating that the suspects had made considerable progress toward planning a terrorist attack. Those details include fresh evidence from Britain’s most wide-ranging terror investigation: receipts for cash transfers from abroad, a handwritten diary that appears to sketch out elements of a plot, and, on martyrdom tapes, several suspects’ statements of their motives.

Interesting stuff, this. While it appears there wasn’t an imminent threat, as in measured in hours or days, it also appears the Brits had very good reasons to move when they did. But hey…this is the NYT reporting. One never really knows what to make of their stuff these days.

A short little blurb from Reuters, in the WaPo:

NAVAL AIR STATION FALLON, Nevada (Reuters) - U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warned potential adversaries on Monday that the United States remained capable of responding to military threats at home and abroad, despite its troop commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But, Reuters being Reuters (of course), the fourth paragraph in they say this:

More than three years into the Iraq war, the military is showing signs of stress. The Army and Marine Corps, in particular, must spend tens of billions of dollars to replace and repair equipment. Army officials have said the combat readiness of many units and their ability to take on new missions have suffered.

No sources or attributions for that generalized statement, just a well-crafted “on the other hand” sort of comment that calls into question Rummy’s veracity. A pox on your house, Reuters.

WaPo columnist Dana Milbank, commenting on an anti-AIPAC forum held in Washington yesterday:

Yesterday, at the invitation of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), they held a forum at the National Press Club to expand on their allegations about the Israel lobby. Blurring the line between academics and activism, they accepted a button proclaiming "Fight the Israel Lobby" and won cheers from the Muslim group for their denunciation of Israel and its friends in the United States.

“They” are University of Chicago political scientist John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt of Harvard's Kennedy School, co-authors of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, a highly controversial (understatement, that) paper Christopher Hitchins called "partly misleading and partly creepy." I watched the whole thing on C-SPAN yesterday and agree with the observations Mr. Milbank makes in his article. Of the two, Walt came off as the more rational actor, taking great pains to declare himself free of anti-Semitism and emphasizing the factual nature of his and Mr. Mearsheimer’s claims. Still and even, one can present “facts” in such a way as to distort their meaning, and this is exactly what these two academics have done. And one simply must wonder about the forum these guys used to present their arguments…the sponsor of this event was CAIR. Remember what Mom said: You’re known by the company you keep.

Today’s Pic Vanity Shot: I have absolutely no idea where this was taken, only the date: May 16, 2000. It has to be somewhere in Wyoming, given that the dates of my Yellowstone pics are between 5/18 and 5/25 of 2000.

On a More Serious Note...

Mary Katherine Ham, writing at Townhall.com, tells the MSM “Why We Don’t Believe You.” I’ve only lightly touched this subject, and usually in the context of the Beeb’s biased coverage. Ms. Ham provides 22 discrete links on the subject of doctored photos, staged news “events,” and other examples of biased or outright false reporting. If you’ve not been following this story previously, then Ms. Ham’s essay is a very good place to begin.

Most interesting… Tim Worstall, writing at TCS Daily, maintains “America: More Like Sweden than You Thought.”

If we accept (as I do) that we do, indeed, need to have a social safety net, and that we have a duty to provide for those incapable or unlucky enough to be unable to do so for themselves, we need to set some level at which such help is offered. The standard of living of the poor in a redistributionist paradise like Finland (or Sweden) seems a fair enough number to use and the USA provides exactly that. Good, the problem's solved. We've provided -- both through the structure of the economy and the various forms of taxation and benefits precisely what we should be -- an acceptable baseline income for the poor. No further redistribution is necessary and we can carry on with the current tax rates and policies which seem, as this report shows, to be increasing US incomes faster than those in other countries and boosting productivity faster as well.

Well, The Left, exemplified by Maha, one of my favorite Lefties, has this to say on the subject:

Righties pooh-pooh standard of living comparisons as so much socialist hocus-pocus; they prefer numbers. But I would really love to see a side-by-side comparison of how average working people live in several industrialized nations. Take some common occupations, both white and blue collar — e.g., truck driver, cashier, teacher, office administrator — and compare how people in those occupations manage in various countries. Take into account what kind of house they live in; how much of their income goes to pay for housing (mortgage, rent, property taxes); what major appliances they own; how they get around on an ordinary day (car, bus, bicycle) and how much time they spend commuting; how many hours a week they spend on the job; vacation and leisure (how much paid vacation they get, and what they do for fun); the quality of health care they receive and how it’s paid for; how much they spend on child care and education; etc.

Take your numbers and shove ‘em, in other words. Show me how ordinary working folks live. I suspect the U.S. would look pretty average in such a comparison — better in some ways, worse in others.

Actually, Maha has a lot more to say on the subject. Running into the realm of the verbose, even. I can only offer anecdotal evidence from my personal experience of living overseas for about, oh, 12 years or so: Americans are a helluva lot better off than any other nation, period. By a long shot. And the lengthy queues to obtain visas at our consulates and embassies around the world testify to that fact. But you can’t tell a Lefty that. Oh, no. The entire nation is becoming “Katrina-ized,” to hear them tell it. Go figure.

Another tale from Britain’s multi-culti wars:

There are no photographs of him pictured with his students. But that was all a long time ago now. Mr Honeyford, 72, "retired" more than 20 years ago as the headmaster of a school in Bradford. Or, at least, that was when he was vilified by politically correct race "experts", was sent death threats, and condemned as a racist. Eventually, he was forced to resign and never allowed to teach again.

His crime was to publish an article in The Salisbury Review in 1984 doubting whether the children in his school were best served by the connivance of the educational authorities in such practices as the withdrawal of children from school for months at a time in order to go ''home" to Pakistan, on the grounds that such practices were appropriate to the children's native culture. In language that was sometimes maladroit, he drew attention, at a time when it was still impermissible to do so, to the dangers of ghettoes developing in British cities.

[…]

Last week, 22 years on, he was finally vindicated. The same liberal establishment that had professed outrage at his views quietly accepted that he was, after all, right. Ruth Kelly, the Communities Secretary, made a speech, publicly questioning the multiculturalist orthodoxies that, for so long, have acted almost as a test of virtue among "right-thinking" people. As Miss Kelly told an audience: "There are white Britons who do not feel comfortable with change. They see the shops and restaurants in their town centres changing. They see their neighbourhoods becoming more diverse.

This lengthy and sad story is but a cautionary tale for our own brand of multi-culturalism that thrives in the Academy, among other places, today. One hopes that our illustrious academics can read the handwriting on the wall, but I doubt it. After all, aren’t these the same folks who make the argument that socialism failed only because the “right” people weren’t in charge? And continue to perpetuate the socialist myth, at the same time? Just sayin’, ya know…

Required reading: Shelby Steele, in yesterday’s WSJ, “Life and Death, Western Guilt Blinds Us to the Nature of Islamic Extremism”:

And, of course, it is not just Hezbollah's cause. There is Hamas, one more in a family of politicized terrorist groups spread across the Muslim world. Beyond these more conventional groups there is the free-floating and world-wide terrorism of groups like al Qaeda. In Europe, there are cells of self-invented middle-class terrorists living modern lives by day and plotting attacks on modernity by night. And around these cells there is often a nourishing atmosphere of fellow traveling. Then there are the radical nation-states in league with terrorism, Iran and Syria most prominent among them. From nations on the verge of nuclear weapons to isolated individuals--take the recent Seattle shootings--Islamic militancy grounded in hatred of Israel and America has become the Muslim world's most animating idea. Why?

[…]

White guilt in the West--especially in Europe and on the American left--confuses all this by seeing Islamic extremism as a response to oppression. The West is so terrified of being charged with its old sins of racism, imperialism and colonialism that it makes oppression an automatic prism on the non-Western world, a politeness. But Islamic extremists don't hate the West because they are oppressed by it. They hate it precisely because the end of oppression and colonialism--not their continuance--forced the Muslim world to compete with the West. Less oppression, not more, opened this world to the sense of defeat that turned into extremism.

This may be more “preaching to the choir,” I suppose, but I come from the “tell ‘em, tell ‘em, and tell’em” school of debate. And Mr. Steele eloquently states what should be obvious. Again.

Today is the anniversary of what just might be the most important event of my life. On this day, 43 years ago, I boarded an airplane at LAX and flew off to basic training in San Antonio. August 28^th, 1963, began at oh-dark-thirty at the Military Examining Station in Los Angeles and ended just shy of 24 hours later when I finally fell into my bunk, exhausted, at Lackland AFB. So, today is the anniversary of the beginning of a 22-year odyssey that took me to England, Germany, Turkey, Japan, Thailand, the Philippines, Hong Kong, and numerous other places, some of which I barely remember and others I would like to forget. Nonetheless, I always celebrate this day. The Air Force was very, very good to me. In more ways than one.

Oh…while we’re on the subject…the last thing my Dad (a retired USAF Lt. Col.) said to me before I got on the plane? “Remember: stay away from airplanes!” And the words he used to comfort my Mom? “Don’t cry. He’ll be back in a week or two.” Item One was good advice. As for Item Two? Fooled ya, didn’t I, Dad?

The Need for Speed and Mom Clean

Well, my ‘net connection is back up to speed today and I’ve spent my (abbreviated – I slept in quite late) morning trying to catch up on my reading, which was nigh-on impossible to do all weekend. One would think any connection is better than no connection at all, but I don’t subscribe to that point of view, at least when it comes to semi-serious reading. If the time it takes for a web page to load exceeds the speed of thought by, say, a factor of four or five, then the experience becomes an exercise in futility and frustration rather than enlightenment. Perhaps I’m impatient in the extreme. Or maybe I have a very minor case of ADD. Whatever the reason, I finally came to the conclusion that things weren’t going to get better, speed-wise, and I abandoned the ‘net for the duration... “duration” being defined as “until Monday.” Oh, and the speed I was getting? It varied from ridiculous (2400 bps) to abysmal (12 Kbps). You just can’t surf today’s web at those speeds. The experience truly becomes the “world wide wait.”

So…Given the lack of internet, I took the opportunity to spruce up El Casa Móvil De Pennington, among other things. Cleaned the bathroom, vacuumed, washed windows, dusted those places that normally don’t get dusted, purged the magazine pile… yadda, yadda, yadda. The bottom line is my abode now meets or exceeds my personal standard of order and cleanliness. And, as we all know, the standards for “clean” and “order” vary wildly. The hierarchy, as I know it:

1. Mom Clean
2. Microelectronics assembly facilities (“Clean” Rooms)
3. Surgical Amphitheaters
4. Military “Inspection Order”
…
39. Slaughter Houses
43. Health Department Standards
47. USDA Inspection Standards
63. Open-air markets in Southeast Asia
72. Any given college dorm room
96. Chicken Coops

And so on… I’m probably somewhere around 13 or 14 in the general hierarchy, and I certainly wouldn’t be ashamed to have my Mom visit today. Emphasis on “my.” Not all Moms are created equal, ya know, and I suspect the definition of Mom Clean depends on the Mom. The Second Mrs. Pennington defined “Mom Clean” for me on the occasion of my former mother-in-law’s first visit to our household back in 1981 or so, when we were living in England. That visit was preceded by a cleaning frenzy the likes of which I had never witnessed before, and it sorta mystified me, as we were the first tenants in brand-new Air Force family housing (see list item four, above) and I thought our home was very well-kept. But clean we did. For a couple of weeks. In the end our house was immaculate, and I’m surprised TSMP didn’t go out and acquire some of those “Sanitized For Your Protection” glass wrappers and toilet seat covers one used to find in motels, back in the day.

And so it continued all through the ‘80s. The in-laws never arrived unannounced, even when we lived within a two-hour drive of each other. We always had at least a week’s warning, and that week was marked with a cleaning campaign. I must also add that our day-to-day standards of cleanliness were quite good; I never had reason to complain about the way we kept house. TSMP eventually abandoned the whole concept of Mom Clean somewhere in the early ‘90s, to my great relief. I often wondered if TSMP’s Mom thought we’d gone into some sort of housekeeping tailspin. But she (my Mom-in-law) never said anything. But the concept of Mom Clean lives on in my mind, at least, if not in actual execution.

Today’s Pic: More Yellowstone, this time it’s a collage of four pics. Taken in May, 2000.

ANOTHER Placeholder…

I beg your indulgence, Gentle Reader. My ‘net connection has been erratic and slooow this morning, very slow. Surfing is a right-Royal pain in the nether regions when it takes 30 ~ 45 seconds to load a page, assuming said page loads at all. I’ve received numerous “connection time-out” messages instead of a functioning web page when trying to access various sites today.

I’ll be back when things improve.

I'm Baaaack....

Christopher Hitchens is my favorite liberal. While the man has more than a few chinks in his armor, his noisy and very public divorce from The Nation, and his on-going feud with George Galloway (spit!) endear the man to me. Chris’ raised his standing a couple of notches last night when he gave Bill Maher’s audience the bird after said audience repeatedly jeered the name of George Bush. From NewsBusters (sanitized by Your Humble Scribe):

Writer/author Christopher Hitchens on Friday night gave the finger to the Los Angeles audience of HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher. As he laid out the case for how it's Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who wants World War Three, not George W. Bush, Hitchens cited how Ahmadinejad “says the Messiah is about to come back.” Maher quipped: "So does George Bush, by the way.” That caused a loud eruption of audience applause and cheering, which led Maher to clarify: “That's not facetious.” The crowd continued to applaud as Hitchens remarked, about those in attendance who had earlier cheered and laughed as Maher called Bush an “idiot” repeatedly: "That's not facetious. Your audience, which will clap at apparently anything, is frivolous.” Loud oohs and groans emanated from the audience, prompting Hitchens to give them the finger as he castigated them, “F**k you, f**k you,” while the groans continued.

Transcript and short videos (Real and Win) of the event here. Oh, just for the record: I think Maher’s a twit.

Iran Updates…

From USA Today:

KHONDAB, Iran (AP) — Iran's hard-line president on Saturday inaugurated a heavy-water production plant, a facility the West fears will be used to develop a nuclear bomb, as Tehran remained defiant ahead of a U.N. deadline that could lead to sanctions.

[…]

Though the West's main worry has been enrichment of uranium that could be used in a bomb, it also has called on Iran to stop the construction of a heavy-water reactor near the production plant that Ahmadinejad inaugurated.

[…]

The spent fuel from a heavy-water reactor can be reprocessed to extract plutonium for use in a bomb.

Wow. What a surprise, eh? (I’m in full-sarcasm mode with that statement.) Returning to my straight mode…there are no surprises here. The NYT reports:

MOSCOW, Aug. 25 — Russia’s defense minister said Friday that it was premature to consider punitive actions against Iran despite its refusal so far to suspend its efforts to enrich uranium as the United Nations Security Council has demanded.

Although Russia agreed to the Security Council’s resolution on July 31, Defense Minister Sergei B. Ivanov’s remarks made it clear that Russia would not support taking the next step that the United States and Britain have called for: imposing sanctions against Iran or its leaders over its nuclear programs. The Council set Aug. 31 as the deadline for Iran to respond to its demand.

I’m still shaking my head. Russia knows all about terrorism. And yet they are persistent in their refusal to side with the West in the confrontation with Iran. Do the Russians lack the imagination to visualize nuclear weapons in the hands of Chechen terrorists? Or are their business ties with Iran simply too important to jeopardize? Talk about short-sighted…

And finally…this is very, very interesting. Chad, writing at The Jawa Report:

In my line of work I have come into contact with people in the IAEA who naturally are afraid to express their views in public. In conversations with them a short while ago, there was cautious optimism after the German newspaper 'Die Welt' published details about the dismissal of Chris Charlier, one of the senior IAEA inspectors in charge of the Iranian nuclear issue, simply because his conclusions were unsympathetic towards Iran. These people hoped that the details revealed in the media would force the IAEA to set its house in order, despite the person at its head, and thereby expose the relationship between Iran and El-Baradei, who has on too many occasions been Iran's savior. But nothing has come of this affair. On the contrary, El-Baradei did his utmost to prevent sullying Iran's name and to conceal the affair as quickly as possible. The resentment of my colleges in the IAEA and their astonishment only grew when it came out that in recognition of El-Baradei's conduct Iran sent him 'gifts' - including extremely expensive traditional carpets of the highest quality (one Persian carpet could be valued as high as 50,000 euros.)

I’m not sure what to make of this, as the source of the information wishes to remain anonymous. However, even a casual reading, backed up with some superficial wondering/thinking, leads me to believe the accusations have some substance. I mean, would it surprise anyone if there were dishonest bureaucrats working at the highest levels in the UN?

The WaPo provides an analysis of casualty rates in Iraq: “Service in Iraq: Just How Risky?”

The consequences of Operation Iraqi Freedom for U.S. forces are being documented by the Defense Department with an exceptional degree of openness and transparency. Its daily and cumulative counts of deaths receive a great deal of publicity. But deaths alone don't indicate the risk for an individual. For this purpose, the number of deaths must be compared with the number of individuals exposed to the risk of death. The Defense Department has supplied us with appropriate data on exposure, and we take advantage of it to provide the first profile of military mortality in Iraq.

Wretchard at Belmont Club analyzes the analysis. I recommend reading both…

Weather blogging… Thursday and Friday we returned to our normal summer weather pattern, which is to say temps in the low-to-mid 90s and lotsa brilliant sunshine (no clouds). I took advantage of the weather yesterday to do the Mini Grand Tour: P-Town – Big(ger) City^TM – Cannon AFB and return. All that rain has had a most amazing effect: everything, and I mean everything, is incredibly green. The weeds wildflowers are blooming in profusion and the overall effect is quite grand. I’m betting we’ll have a bumper crop of tumbleweeds next year, and that isn’t a good thing. Oh, well. Take the good with the bad…

Today we’re back in the “monsoon zone” and are supposed to stay that way for the next few days. The dominant high pressure dome has moved back to the east, setting the stage for more moisture flow up from the Gulf. We’re in no real flood danger here on the High Plains, but I can’t say the same for Albuquerque and other parts of New Mexico. All this rain, on balance, is good. I’m not at all tired of it. Yet.

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{Sigh} It’s another tale of network woe. I keep my computer on 24x7 when I’m home, turning it off only when I’ll be away for an extended period of time. So…with that in mind, I awoke just before 0600 this morning, lit off the coffee, and sat down to check mail and make my morning rounds. No net, and no net for the next three and three quarter hours. This is getting just a wee bit irritating, to say the least. My connection returned around 0940 and was intermittent (at best) until just now.

I’ll be back later after I make the rounds…

Hey! It's Friday!

Amir Taheri in today’s WSJ: “Hezbollah Didn’t Win.”

The way much of the Western media tells the story, Hezbollah won a great victory against Israel and the U.S., healed the Sunni-Shiite rift, and boosted the Iranian mullahs' claim to leadership of the Muslim world. Portraits of Hassan Nasrallah, the junior mullah who leads the Lebanese branch of this pan-Shiite movement, have adorned magazine covers in the West, hammering in the message that this child of the Khomeinist revolution is the new hero of the mythical "Arab Street."

Probably because he watches a lot of CNN, Iran's "Supreme Guide," Ali Khamenei, also believes in "a divine victory." Last week he asked 205 members of his Islamic Majlis to send Mr. Nasrallah a message, congratulating him for his "wise and far-sighted leadership of the Ummah that produced the great victory in Lebanon."

By controlling the flow of information from Lebanon throughout the conflict, and help from all those who disagree with U.S. policies for different reasons, Hezbollah may have won the information war in the West. In Lebanon, the Middle East and the broader Muslim space, however, the picture is rather different.

[…]

Politically, however, Hezbollah had to declare victory for a simple reason: It had to pretend that the death and desolation it had provoked had been worth it.

[…]

The tactic worked for a day or two. However, it did not silence the critics, who have become louder in recent days. The leaders of the March 14 movement, which has a majority in the Lebanese Parliament and government, have demanded an investigation into the circumstances that led to the war, a roundabout way of accusing Hezbollah of having provoked the tragedy. Prime Minister Fuad Siniora has made it clear that he would not allow Hezbollah to continue as a state within the state. Even Michel Aoun, a maverick Christian leader and tactical ally of Hezbollah, has called for the Shiite militia to disband.

“Rather different” is an understatement. Mr. Taheri cites and quotes dissident voices in Lebanon and elsewhere, many of them Shiite, to what has become the common wisdom in the West, i.e., “Hezbollah won,” “Hezbollah is popular amongst the Lebanese,” and so on. This op-ed is the perfect antidote to the “mainstream” analysis and aftermath reporting of the Israel – Hezbollah conflict, as seen on the Beeb and CNN and read in wire service reports. As a matter of fact, Mr. Taheri’s op-ed is so positive I became a bit suspicious, wanting to know more about him and his credentials. His Wikipedia bio is here. I’d say he’s qualified to express his opinion…much more so than the idiots reporters on the Beeb and elsewhere.

Iran plays the “moderate” card, and Captain Ed calls “Bullshit:”

For those who have studied the coordinated diplomacy of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy in the late 1930s, this sounds depressingly familiar. Some people compared UNSCR 1701 to Munich, but this is much closer to that infamous Western collapse. In 1938, Britain and France rushed to dismember Czechoslovakia -- a democracy with highly defendable borders -- in order to assist the "moderate" Mussolini in appeasing the radical Hitler and keep him from waging war. Italy got what it wanted by appearing to be a rational actor, while Hitler got the Sudetenland and the most formidable natural defensive barrier in central Europe.

This sounds almost exactly the same, even playing on the West's analysis of Iran as two separate entities. The mullahs and the hard-line Islamists comprise one portion of the Iranian ruling class, while men like Mohammed Khatami supposedly offer a more reasonable partner for negotiations. It's hogwash. The ruling class in Teheran all share the same goals: an Islamist Caliphate in Southwest Asia with its seat in Teheran. Some of them just happen to have a better sense of Western public relations than Ali Khameini and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but that does not make them more rational or less supportive of Islamist triumphalism.

I think the good Captain is spot-on. Unfortunately, a significant number of folks in the West will latch on to the “moderate” myth and urge us to go slow with regards to meaningful sanctions or other appropriate action. There’s nothing, nothing moderate at all about the regime in Tehran. To believe otherwise is indulging in magical thinking.

This makes me sad: Tower Records files for bankruptcy. And here’s an interesting column on the subject.

Readers of a certain age will remember the days of record stores with listening booths and the big downtown department stores having their own record departments.

Readers of a less slightly advanced age (that's you, baby boomers) will remember the emergence of national chains such as Tower, Peaches and discount, as well as the discount department stores that stocked records.

And readers still decades away from an advanced age may come to regard record stores only as a historic curiosity -- and may someday be asking, "What's a CD?" the way some now ask, "What's a record?"

Well, yes. I’m “of a certain age.” I remember, quite well, in fact, making the short trip from Torrance to Tower’s Hollywood store on weekend nights in ’61, ’62, and ’63 to listen to new releases in the listening booths…until the clerks kicked us out. My love of record stores began with Tower and it’s not ended yet. The best thing about my year-long sojourn in Berkeley was the great record stores, specifically Amoeba Music and Rasputin Music. I visited those stores, which were within walking distance of my apartment, on a weekly basis. And I actually bought music in those places, too, unlike the “listen only” forays to Tower during my high-school days. Record stores will always be with us, especially in college towns. But it looks like the days of chain music retailers are marked. And that’s kinda sad, isn’t it?

I didn’t mention the fact yesterday that SN1 was away from home on his birthday. He’s in San Diego, in fact… for another short boondoggle school. But he wasn’t alone. Buck celebrated his birthday by having dinner with his Aunt Jo (two years his junior), her family, and Grandma Pennington, who made the short trip from Hemet to San Diego for the birthday dinner. I’m told it was a great night out. Too bad I missed it!

Today’s Pic: Another shot from the Brownsville Air Show (03-2000)…this time it’s a B-17. I have a soft spot for the great old Boeing bomber, because my Dad flew in them in Big Bang II. That and the fact they are simply beautiful machines, arguably the “prettiest” bomber, ever. And there were two of them at Brownsville that year. It was a great weekend…

Slow Day...

Today brings two opposing views on the West’s Iranian options. First, the utterly defeatist (Anatole Kaletsky in the Times of London):

What then should America and its allies do in the face of Iran’s nuclear defiance? The answer is clear: concede defeat. Iran has won this tussle and there is no point in pretending otherwise. Instead of trying to stop Iran’s nuclear programme, the international community must bring Iran back into the civilised world. The only way to do that is to stop issuing empty threats and to start offering Iran real incentives for co-operative behaviour — non-aggression guarantees from America and Israel, removal of the residual US economic sanctions dating back to the 1980s and the prospect of steadily improving treatment in investment and trade. Of course, such a U-turn seems inconceivable while President Bush remains in office. But remember President Nixon’s historic opening to China as he was losing the war in Vietnam. To paraphrase Johnson, a politician’s mind can be concentrated wonderfully by the knowledge that he is faces defeat.

Yep, that’s the ticket. Give up. You win, Ahmadinejad. Have mercy on us, O Ayatollah Khamenei. Please. We beg you.

I’d laugh if this point of view wasn’t so damnably stupid. And dangerous.

I much prefer the approach laid out in today’s WSJ:

The obvious next diplomatic step is to show Iran that the world meant what it said by following through with the toughest achievable sanctions. A myth has developed in some circles that there are "no good options" available to pressure Iran, but that's more excuse than analysis. Iran's mullahs are unpopular at home and their citizens will notice if they are declared a global pariah state. Sanctions on travel by Iran's government officials, diplomats and sports teams may be largely symbolic, but such symbolism will not be missed on the Persian street.

Iran is also vulnerable economically. Sanctions on banks that deal with Iran can limit the regime's access to global credit markets for trade and other financing. Despite its oil exports, Iran also imports some 40% of its refined gasoline. A ban on selling gasoline to Iran would surely lead to gas lines and other shortages there, with possible domestic political repercussions. And it is domestic discontent that the mullahs rightly fear the most.

The worry in the West is that Iran would respond to a gasoline embargo by playing its oil card in retaliation, withholding its supplies and sending world oil prices perhaps to $100 a barrel. But the mullahs can't eat oil. Amid other economic sanctions, they would need their income from oil sales more than ever. They are also watching closely to see if the world is serious when it says it won't allow them to go nuclear, and they know better than anyone that gasoline imports are their biggest political danger. They'll know a wrist slap from a serious policy.

The problem with the WSJ’s approach is two-fold: China and Russia. Both nations wield veto power in the UN Security Council, both nations are on the record as opposing sanctions and wanting further “negotiations.” We’ve been negotiating for three years now to no avail. Further from the WSJ:

Yesterday, the Bush Administration said it is still studying the Iranian proposal but that the reply "falls short of the conditions set by the Security Council." You can say that again. After three years of Iranian stonewalling since their nuclear deception was discovered, the June resolution was deliberately written to make an end to enrichment a first-order obligation.

[…]

And already yesterday, the mullahs' strategy was paying dividends as Russia and China took the bait and urged further negotiations. These countries have their oil or nuclear energy deals with Tehran, and they don't seem to worry all that much about Islamic radicals getting the bomb. Perhaps they figure that's America's problem, or Israel's, though how an Islamic regime with a nuclear arsenal helps Russian or Chinese interests is a mystery.

At least the French are standing firm, for the moment. What is it with the Russians and Chinese, anyway?

Slow news day, and that’s not all bad, I suppose. I’ve been surfing the Big Dog blogs and the news outlets all morning for things that I find interesting and/or strike my fancy. Aside from the stuff above I’ve basically struck out. Now that can mean one or perhaps two things…either it really is a slow day, or I’m slow. You decide!

Today’s Pic: One of two immaculate propellers on a Confederate Commemorative Air Force Douglas A-26, taken at an air show in Brownsville, Texas, on March 4, 2000. The CAF guys keep those old birds clean!

Happy Birthday, Buck!

SN1 and Grandson Sean with Friend

SN1 is 40 today. Depending on your point of view, life is either just beginning or Buck is starting that slide down the other side of the hill. I tend toward the former, rather than the latter. I’ll spare you the details about the wonderfulness of my life at 40, except to say it was good. Very, very good. I think Buck has a lot to look forward to!

Drop by his blog (updated quarterly!) and wish him a Happy Birthday!

Irony. ESL. A Plan. And Complaints!

Ann Althouse, writing in the NYT on Judge Anna Diggs Taylor and Taylor’s recent NSA eavesdropping opinion:

TO end her opinion in American Civil Liberties Union v. National Security Agency — the case that enjoins President Bush’s warrantless surveillance program — Judge Anna Diggs Taylor quoted Earl Warren (referring to him as “Justice Warren,” not “Chief Justice Warren,” as if she wanted to spotlight her carelessness): “It would indeed be ironic if, in the name of national defense, we would sanction the subversion of ... those liberties ... which makes the defense of the nation worthwhile.”

As long as we’re appreciating irony, let’s consider the irony of emphasizing the importance of holding one branch of the federal government, the executive, to the strict limits of the rule of law while sitting in another branch of the federal government, the judiciary, and blithely ignoring your own obligations.

[…]

For those who approve of the outcome, the judge’s opinion is counterproductive. It will be harder to defend upon appeal than a more careful decision. It suggests that there are no good legal arguments against the program, just petulance and outrage and antipathy toward President Bush. It helps those who have been arguing for years about result-oriented, activist judges.

Ms. Althouse’s blog is one of the best there is, and her editorial today is very good, as well. Kick it, Ann!

Thank you, Kathleen Parker, THANK You! For writing this article in Real Clear Politics:

"'Curiouser and curiouser!' cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English).'' -- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll

Bush-bashing for sport has never lacked fans in the blogosphere, but questioning the president's intelligence lately has gone mainstream.

Joe Scarborough, former Republican congressman and host of MSNBC's "Scarborough Country,'' recently tossed his beanie into the ring, running a 10-minute segment titled: "Is Bush an 'Idiot'?''

Scarborough wasn't calling Bush an idiot, mind you. He was just quoting that renowned American intellectual, Linda Ronstadt. Recently, Ronstadt had commented on the president's performance while attending an international summit of heads of state.

No wait, my mistake, she made those comments to reporters and audiences while touring in Canada. But never mind. When Ronstadt talks, people listen. Citing other leading American intellectuals -- The Dixie Chicks, Peter, Paul & Mary, and Joan Baez -- Ronstadt said:

I'm embarrassed George Bush is from the United States. ... He's an idiot. He's enormously incompetent on both the domestic and international scenes.

Scarborough said he felt compelled to explore whether the president is sufficiently intellectually curious, not just because of Ronstadt, but because there have been no shark attacks all summer. No, sorry again, I said that. What Scarborough said was that even conservatives had been making comments similar to Ronstadt's, as reported last week in The Washington Post.

Is there a living, breathing Republican who hasn’t wished, at least once, that Dubya had the oratorical prowess of say, a Tony Blair? I doubt it. My Lib-Left friends make the “But he’s such an idiot!” argument when all else fails, which is often. And it’s one of the more difficult arguments to counter. I usually use the “Stephen Hawking Defense,” which is to say “Do you think Hawking is an idiot simply because he’s inarticulate?” That defense is pretty weak, as defenses go, simply because the President doesn’t have Lou Gehrig’s disease. Ms. Parker has given me another defense, another tack to take. I hope Dubya reads her piece and abandons his contrived and ineffective Washingtonian mannerisms. Just be yourself, Mr. President, and damn the critics.

There is a plan… Zalmay Khalilzad, US Ambassador to Iraq, describes the Baghdad Security Plan in a WSJ article today. Further, Mr. Khalilzad goes on to say:

It is understandable that when the American people hear of new U.S. casualties and witness the images of bloodshed from the streets of Baghdad, they conclude that our plans for stemming sectarian violence in Iraq have failed. Yet, implementation of the Baghdad Security Plan has only recently begun. Iraq's national unity government has been in office barely three months, and its ministers of defense and interior have been on the job for less than 80 days. Iraqi ministers are still hiring key staff, and they are learning to work together, under the leadership of a new prime minister. The Committee for National Dialogue and Reconciliation, charged with overseeing implementation of the reconciliation plan, was formed only three weeks ago.

Moreover, as tragic and dangerous as the ongoing violence is to our shared vision of a free and prosperous Iraq, it is not representative of the Iraqi people's sentiments toward one another. In July, a poll by the International Republican Institute, a nonpartisan organization dedicated to democracy promotion, found that 94% of Iraqis said they support a "unity" government representing all sects and ethnic communities, with only 2% opposed. Some 78% of Iraqis opposed Iraq being segregated by religion or ethnicity, with only 13% in favor. Even in Baghdad, where the worst of Iraq's sectarian violence has occurred, 76% of those surveyed opposed ethnic separation, with only 10% favoring it. The challenge of the Baghdad Security Plan and its accompanying effort at national reconciliation is to realize the overwhelming majority of Iraqis desire to live in peace with one another against the violent minority who seek to impose their vision of hatred and oppression.

This is the kind of article the American public needs to see. More, please.

Miscellaneous Moans, Groans, Bitches, and Complaints Dept: I got a speeding ticket last year for doing 30 mph in a 25 mph zone. Yeah, it was a speed trap. That ticket was the first citation I’ve received since being busted for excessive speed on a motorcycle in 1982 while in the Isle of Man for TT Week. Which, come to think of it, was another speed trap. But speed traps ain’t the bitch or the complaint. No, my complaint is the fact my insurance company raised my rates by 60 frickin’ per cent!! And there’s not a thing I can do about it, other than switch companies. I had a fairly long conversation with my insurance agent last week about this, and she confirmed my suspicions: you can’t fight City Hall Big Insurance. All you can do is switch, and you have to wait a short while before you switch, too. So: the ticket cost me $50.00. The rate rise will cost me $300.00. American Justice.

In the course of the conversation with my insurance agent, she asked “Didn’t you get my e-mail?” Uh, no. No, I didn’t. A quick perusal of my spam folder revealed the missing e-mail. Oh, Goody. Another chore to remember. G-mail is very, very good about keeping the spam out of my inbox and I’m not complaining about that. No sir, not at all. I’m just wondering how many other communications have gone missing and unanswered because G-mail thought the message was spam. Now I feel like I’ll have to wade through the spam swamp at least once a week just to make sure.

My ‘net connection has been dead-slow for the past day and a half. Dead-slow is 12 ~ 20 Kbps. I pay for a 384 Kbps connection and it just p!sses me right off to get only 10% (or less, much less) than the speed I pay for! I’ve written about this before, and the slow-down seems to happen most often near the end of the month or the first of the month. I have no plausible reason for this… I most certainly will be glad when the P-Town fiber project is completed and I’ll have a fast, reliable network connection. At Last.

So. No pic today…I’m not even going to attempt an upload given the speed I’m NOT getting at the moment. This too will pass.

Just the Usual and... an Aardvark!

It’s August 22^nd; Do you know where the Iranian nukes are? Lileks:

Okay, it’s later. It’s now 5:40 in Tehran. Still a little too early to start the end of the world, but it depends whether you’re a morning person or not. Of course, if you’re hastening the chaos to bring the Messiah, you’d want to tidy up first. Fresh flowers.

I like whistling, personally. And gosh, this is a big graveyard.

I need to find some code for smilies, so in the meantime, {insert big ol’ grinning smiley-face here}.

And speaking of Iranian nukes… The mullahs have handed over a formal response to the UN’s ultimatum, nine days before the deadline. There are contradicting interpretations about the actual meaning of the response. Personally, I believe the answer we got yesterday is the definitive response:

"The Islamic Republic of Iran has made its own decision and in the nuclear case, God willing, with patience and power, will continue its path," Khamenei was quoted as saying by the broadcast.

Or, in other words, Khamenei is saying “Pound sand, Infidels!” Hmm. Not a bad idea. We pound sand pretty damned well, actually.

More Israel-Hezbollah fall-out… From The Telegraph (UK):

Hundreds of members of the Spearhead Brigade, a reserve unit that fought in south Lebanon during the month-long conflict, signed a petition published in a newspaper that attacked the "cold feet" of their commanders.

"There was one thing we were not and would not be willing to accept," the petition said. "We were unwilling to accept indecisiveness.

"The war's aim, which was not defined clearly, was even changed in the course of the fighting. The indecisiveness manifested itself in inaction, in not carrying out operational plans, and in cancelling all the missions we were given during the fighting.

"This led to prolonged stays in hostile territory, without an operational purpose."

In scenes reminiscent of the first demonstrations that ultimately toppled Israel's leaders after blunders in the 1973 Middle East war, about 100 people, many of them reservists, marched in Jerusalem.

But, on the other hand, when invoking the ouster of the Israeli government following the 1973 war, one should consider this:

Only in retrospect can the 1973 war be satisfactorily analyzed. Israel had been caught by surprise, because perfectly good Intelligence was misinterpreted in a climate of arrogant over-confidence. The frontal sectors, left almost unguarded, were largely overrun. The Egyptians had an excellent war plan and fought well. Syrian tanks advanced boldly and even where a lone Israeli brigade held out, they kept attacking in wave after wave for three days and nights. Within 48 hours, Israel seemed on the verge of defeat on both fronts.

[…]

It is the same now, with the Lebanon war just ended. Future historians will no doubt see things much more clearly, but some gross misperceptions are perfectly obvious even now.

Just being “fair and balanced,” ya know. Personally, I think Olmert and Co. should go. History may reveal parallels between the Hezbollah War and the 1973 War as well as lessons we’ve yet to learn. But for the moment I think it’s pretty clear that Olmert’s government botched it, and botched it badly. Your mileage may vary.

Oh, Spare Me! Reuters:

LONDON (Reuters) - Turner Broadcasting is scouring more than 1,500 classic Hanna-Barbera cartoons, including old favorites "Tom and Jerry," "The Flinstones" (sic) and "Scooby-Doo," to edit out scenes that glamorize smoking.

The review was triggered by a complaint to British media regulator Ofcom by one viewer who took offence to two episodes of "Tom and Jerry" shown on the Boomerang channel, part of Turner Broadcasting which itself belongs to Time Warner Inc.

"We are going through the entire catalog," Yinka Akindele, spokeswoman for Turner in Europe said on Monday.

"This is a voluntary step we've taken in light of the changing times," she said, adding that the painstaking review had been prompted by the Ofcom complaint.

The regulator's latest news bulletin stated that a viewer, who was not identified, had complained about two smoking scenes on "Tom and Jerry," saying they "were not appropriate in a cartoon aimed at children."

The original (“classic”) “Tom and Jerry” cartoons aren’t Hanna-Barbera products…they’re MGM’s work. H-B later resurrected the characters. But, other than that, further comment not required. Because of my blood pressure.

Today’s Pic: What you see when entering P-Town from the south. The F-111 known as “The City of Portales.” F-111s, also known as “Aardvarks” due to their incredible beauty, were based at Cannon prior to their retirement from the inventory. SN1 knows all about Aardvarks…

Let's Build an ARK...

I sorta phoned it in yesterday; Gomen nasai, ne? But it was, well…Sunday. And I had a lot of catching up to do. I’m also a bit surprised no one asked just how I was able to post the beer thing if the network went down and I subsequently rebooted 17 times trying to reestablish my connection. Usually, if you try to post and your connection goes away during the uploading process, your post vanishes into the ether, too. It’s happened to me more times than I’d like to admit. This time, however, I copied the HTML after the third “connection timed out” message and pasted it into a Word document, hoping I could re-use it when the ‘net came back up. It worked. And there’s the answer to a question you never asked.

I’m thinking about doing some serious googling for plans and a Bill of Materials for an ark. The rain continues unabated; yesterday it rained for over six hours straight, which is highly unusual for this part of the world. It was worse in Albuquerque, where there was serious flooding. Reader Reese suggests this is our “Summer of Seattle,” and I agree with him. The last time I saw this much rain was probably in the Philippines or perhaps Thailand…seriously. And it’s raining again as I write this morning.

Even though we’ve had three to four times our average amount of rain in the past week, we’re right at or slightly below our year-to-date precipitation average here in Roosevelt County. I found that just a bit surprising! I’m quite sure the current maps, as displayed this morning, do not include yesterday’s rainfall. It will be interesting to see what we look like by the end of today.

Saturday’s thunderstorms were just a bit too exciting, for more than one reason. The wind was violent, so violent, in fact, that it took a tree down in my neighbor’s yard and deposited it right across the road about 100 yards away from El Casa Móvil De Pennington, narrowly missing another neighbor’s parked cars. The tree was only about eight or ten inches in diameter, small as trees go, and not enough to stop my neighbors with the big-ass 4x4 pick ups who probably cackled out loud (Hey Burt! Watch me go right over this here tree!) as they motored across the thing. But it was enough of an obstacle to stop a Miata, however. Two hours later, after much chain-sawing and general hustle and bustle, the road was clear again. But that wind! It was enough to cause the RV to do some serious, and I mean serious, rocking and create serious apprehension in Yours Truly. After all, any resident of Oklahoma, Nebraska, Iowa, etc., knows trailer parks are tornado magnets. I prefer to do my flying in airplanes, not RVs, thank you.

Another thing I failed to mention this weekend, and should have, given my general dissatisfaction with my ISP/network situation, was some Very Good News: on Friday the fiber-optic cable contractors surveyed and marked beautiful La Hacienda Trailer Park for the fiber routes to all park spaces. Two gigabit service to the prem! By the end of the year! I’d have to buy a new network interface card (NIC) to take full advantage of the capabilities, as my current NIC only supports a 100 Mb connection. But, Hell…a 100Mb network connection is almost unimaginable and is certainly sufficient. But then again, wasn’t it Mr. Gates who said 640K of RAM was enough for anybody? “Too much” is just about enough in the IT Biz…

More (un)common sense in Britain… Muslim Labor MP Shahid Malik, writing in yesterday’s Sunday Times (UK):

I believe that as a Muslim there is no better place to live than Britain. That doesn’t mean that all in the garden is rosy; often Islamophobia is palpable. But my message is: whether you are white, Asian, black, Muslim, Christian or Jew, if you don’t like where you’re living you have two choices: either you live elsewhere, or you engage in the political process, attempt to create change and ultimately respect the will of the majority.

Mr. Malik’s comments were in response to a call from Muslim “leaders” for the implementation of sharia and granting of official Muslim holidays. Good news has been in short supply of late; it’s a good thing when a Muslim MP goes “on the record” for his society’s values. Yes!

Mark Steyn was good (as always) in his Sunday Chicago Sun-Times editorial:

Five years on, the United States seems to be back in the quagmire of perpetual interminable U.N.-brokered EU-led multilateral dithering, on Iran and much else. The administration that turned Musharraf in nothing flat now offers carrots to Ahmadinejad. After the Taliban fell, the region's autocrats and dictators wondered: Who's next? Now they figure it's a pretty safe bet that nobody is.

What's the difference between September 2001 and now? It's not that anyone "liked" America or that, as the Democrats like to suggest, the country had the world's "sympathy.'' Pakistani generals and the Kremlin don't cave to your demands because they "sympathize.'' They go along because you've succeeded in impressing upon them that they've no choice. Musharraf and Co. weren't scared by America's power but by the fact that America, in the rubble of 9/11, had belatedly found the will to use that power. It is notionally at least as powerful today, but in terms of will we're back to Sept. 10: Nobody thinks America is prepared to use its power. And so Nasrallah and Ahmadinejad and wannabe "strong horses" like Baby Assad cock their snooks with impunity.

It’s all about the will to prevail. In addition to taking the current administration to task, Mr. Steyn also makes the point, as so many others have, that it appears the Democrats are lacking in the “will to prevail” department. And that, to me, is the issue for the mid-term elections and the 2008 election. I simply do not trust the Democrat party with national security, based upon their words and deeds over the past four years. They just don’t get it.

I’ll leave you with that happy thought…

A Post From Yesterday and An Excuse

You Are Heineken

You appreciate a good beer, but you're not a snob about it. You like your beer mild and easy to drink, so you can concentrate on being drunk. Overall, you're a friendly drunk who's likely to buy a whole round for your friends... many times. Sometimes you can be a bit boring when you drink. You may be prone to go on about topics no one cares about.

What's Your Beer Personality?

No. No, I'm not.

I'm a Fat Tire!! But, yeah, I'll drink a Heineken when there's no Fat Tire available and the alternative is Bud, MGD, or other such swill. So much for "not being a snob about it."
Hat tip: Mike

So. I was in the process of posting this around 1600 yesterday afternoon...during a thunderstorm. I got the pic uploaded and then lost my network connection. I was down the rest of the night and all morning - until about ten minutes ago.

And I feel like a blithering idiot.

Here I was, cursing Yucca Telecomm for all I was worth. After multiple re-boots, cable wiggling, and other assorted semi-nerd attempts at trouble shooting I decided to swap out my ethernet cable with a new one I just happen to have laying around. Voila! Internet.

Like I said: blithering idiot.

Cool, Crisp, and Breezy

The title refers to the weather...not me. It's a wonderful morning, to put it mildly.

Victor Davis Hanson pokes around in the ashes of this month’s events in the GWOT, looking for something, anything, of value. He’s pretty good, as usual, but it’s his closing paragraphs that contain the message:

In an amorphous war of self-induced Western restraint, like the present one, truth and moral clarity are as important as military force. This past month, the world of the fascist jihadist and those who tolerate him was once again on display for civilization to fathom. Even the most timid and prone to appeasement in the West are beginning to see that it is becoming a question of “the Islamists or us.”

In this eleventh hour, that is a sort of progress after all.

Progress, any progress, is good. I think the key words in VDH’s close are “beginning to see.” It’s certainly taking long enough, and it isn’t happening fast enough for me.

In a similar vein, Ed Koch writes “Despite Setbacks, We Will Prevail.” Good stuff.

This is interesting: “'Cane Mutiny,” by Dr. Roy Spencer, the principal research scientist for the University of Alabama in Huntsville and the U.S. Science Team Leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR-E) on NASA's Aqua satellite. Excerpt:

What a difference one year makes. With the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's landfall (August 29, 2005) rapidly approaching, who would have predicted that we would now be in the middle of a near-normal Atlantic hurricane season? Weren't the global warming pundits' predictions for this hurricane season that it would be just as bad -- maybe even worse! -- than last year?

Yet, now at mid-August, we have had only three named tropical storms, compared to nine by this date last year. Normally, we would have had one hurricane by now, and we have not had any so far, so by that measure we are actually below normal.

Hurricanes require warm sea surface temperatures (SSTs), and last year the tropical Atlantic sea surface temperatures were running well above normal. Global warming was the explanation given by most 'experts' the media interviewed. And since global warming will only get worse, those SSTs were expected to just keep on increasing.

But now those same regions that had anomalously warm SSTs last year are -- gasp! -- near normal.

Yep, I recall the predictions that this year’s hurricane season would be just as bad as last year’s. And it’s good that those predictions are off the mark (so far). Dr. Spencer’s main point is “things aren’t as simple as they seem” when it comes to global warming. Point taken, Dr. Spencer.

The Schizophrenic New York Times… OK, I understand there’s a difference between editorial opinion and news. But I find this article amusing when juxtaposed with yesterday’s op-ed, if only for the fact that it makes the NYT’s editorial staff, or at least the individual that wrote the editorial, look like idiots.

Even legal experts who agreed with a federal judge’s conclusion on Thursday that a National Security Agency surveillance program is unlawful were distancing themselves from the decision’s reasoning and rhetoric yesterday.

They said the opinion overlooked important precedents, failed to engage the government’s major arguments, used circular reasoning, substituted passion for analysis and did not even offer the best reasons for its own conclusions.

Discomfort with the quality of the decision is almost universal, said Howard J. Bashman, a Pennsylvania lawyer whose Web log provides comprehensive and nonpartisan reports on legal developments.

“It does appear,” Mr. Bashman said, “that folks on all sides of the spectrum, both those who support it and those who oppose it, say the decision is not strongly grounded in legal authority.”

One can infer from the “faulty reasoning” arguments cited in the news piece that yesterday’s op-ed writer obviously doesn’t know his judicial ass from his elbow. But, Hey! Let’s not waste time analyzing the decision (or perhaps consulting with people equipped to perform a rational analysis)…not when there’s a chance to pile on and get our licks in. Time’s a wastin’! Git ‘r Done! Onward, Brave Keller! Strike while the iron is hot!

More: Orin Kerr has some excellent commentary and links to other posts by the Volokh Conspiracy crew on Judge Taylor’s decision.

Wild, Wild Weather Last Nite… Back to normal, sorta. We had massive thunderstorms yesterday afternoon that lasted for about an hour and a half, rolling through P-Town in waves and raising all kinds of Hell in the process. There were several very close lightning strikes of the sort that bring you right up out of your chair, with associated power bumps that required me to reset all the clocks in El Casa Móvil De Pennington. Twice. The power bumps knocked our local PBS station off the air, and either the power bumps or the lightning knocked me off the air, too. I lost my ‘net connection sometime after 1700 and was still down at 2130 last evening. Things are back to normal this morning. It could have been worse; last year a lightning strike on my ISP’s tower took my ‘net connection down for two days.

Today’s Pic: Barrel Cactus Flower, taken in Carlsbad, NM. June 2004.

Judicial Activism, Boomers, and More Prattle

Today’s Big Story, of course, is the NSA electronic surveillance program is unconstitutional and violates your civil rights, according to Judge Anna Diggs Taylor. Judge Taylor found for the usual suspects plaintiffs, described by the WSJ as “a group that includes the ACLU and assorted academics, lawyers and journalists who believe their conversations may have been tapped but almost surely weren't.” I believe that’s a fair and accurate description of the plaintiffs, who did a fine job of judge shopping. Big news today, but Judge Taylor will almost certainly be overturned by the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. The NSA program will continue to operate under a stay until the government’s appeal is heard.

For what it’s worth (and it’s not worth a whole helluva lot), the New York Times’ entirely predictable op-ed on the subject, replete with terms like “lawless administration” and “scathing condemnation,” is here. The WaPo writes that Judge Taylor’s decision is “is neither careful nor scholarly, and it is hard-hitting only in the sense that a bludgeon is hard-hitting.” In other words, the decision is full of sound and fury but lacks judicial substance. Judge for yourself: the entire 44 page opinion is here, in pdf format.

In a rather interesting coincidence (to me, at least), I happened to stumble on to a couple of Boomer-oriented TV programs yesterday. The first, and better of the two, was a five minute or so segment on BBC World (News) about British Boomers. I liked this segment because it featured a group of Brit-Boomer sport bikers…guys who’ve gone out and dropped significant sums of money on high-zoot sport bikes like the Bimota, machines whose capabilities far exceed the age-impaired reflexes of their riders. But, Hey!… good on these guys. I relate to these geezers in full road-racing leathers much more so than American doctors, lawyers, and Indian corporate chiefs in fringed vests astride their Hogs. A matter of taste, I suppose.

The second show was a puff-piece from a series running on PBS entitled “Boomers! Redefining Life After Fifty!” The show’s web site describes the series thusly:

Boomers! is filmed in communities across the country. Each program has three feature stories, and shorter segments on health, personal finance, and lifestyles. Boomer trivia questions will be woven into the mix. While some episodes use graphics and music to invoke memories of the 50s and 60s, Boomers! is forward-looking and substantive, exploring the central life concerns facing the Boomer generation.

“…exploring the central life concerns facing the Boomer generation.” You mean like…uh…growing old gracefully? Without being in denial? And without calling attention to the fact that you are, in fact, OLD? Forgive me, Gentle Reader, but I’m getting oh-so-tired of the self-indulgent pap generated by the Boomers. Go on out there and sky-dive, go bungie jumping, climb Mt. Everest if you want. But just shut the Hell up about it, OK?

Full disclosure: I’m not a Boomer, what with being born nine months before the official start-date of the Me Generation. Technically, I’m a member of the Silent Generation, described by William Manchester as “withdrawn, cautious, unimaginative, indifferent, unadventurous and silent." Maybe that explains my attitude towards the Boomers. Whatever. It’s a bitch being betwixt and between, ain’t it?

Just in case you don’t venture into the urbane drawing room that is the comments section of this blog, I want to bring the following comment from Reader Bec to the front page:

By the way, my youngest son captured this last night from one of his favorite sites (YTMND) on the size of the universe. (That's "You're the Man Now Dog" and if you don't know what that's all about, here's an explanation.)

That “size of the universe” link is very cool! And you gotta love the Wikipedia entry on YTMND…it’s “all that and a bag of chips,” ain’t it? There’s absolutely nothing you could possibly want to know on the subject that isn’t covered in detail at the link, coming perilously close to “more info than you need.” But that’s the Wiki for ya. I love it.

Another great sunrise this morning, but no pics. While I was up in time to savor the brilliant reds, golds, and deep blues of this morning’s show, I wasn’t quite ready to get out there and take a few snaps. Read that as: “the coffee wasn’t finished brewing.”

Today’s Pic: The colors of Yellowstone’s Porcelain Basin, taken in May, 2000.

Sunny, Wet, and Warm Thursday

Israel-Hezbollah post-mortems. There are a lot of ‘em, and they’re not pretty. Ralph Peters, in the New York Post, claims it’s “Hezbollah 3, Israel 0.” Haaretz, in “The Day After/How We Suffered a Knockout” is heavier on fact and less emotional than Peters, but scathing, just the same. It appears there were massive failures all around, failures in intelligence, failures in military strategy and tactics, and a failure of will on the part of the Olmert government. Yes, Hezbollah was bloodied; they suffered some tactical defeats and their infrastructure has been severely damaged. But they remain standing; they will not be disarmed by the Lebanese government, the UN, or any multi-national force; their prestige has grown immensely on the “Arab Street;” and their patrons’ self-confidence and belligerence has increased greatly. All in all, it’s not been a good month for the Good Guys. Paul Mirengoff of PowerLine has a good executive summary.

There are opportunities here. First and foremost, Israel and the US need to take a cold, hard look at the failures and immediately, not a microsecond later than immediately, begin to digest the “lessons learned” and initiate corrective action. The second thing is for the West’s leaders—specifically Olmert, Bush, and Rice— to quit acting like Baghdad Bob. As Mirengoff, quoting Bill Bennett, says “It does us no favor to declare a defeat a victory.” This defeat is a wake-up call, it’s not Armageddon. We need to get to work.

One of the best comments I’ve ever read, anywhere:

The thing that irks me is that liberals get their knickers in a twist about Guantanamo style "torture" which includes sleep deprivation, loud Christina Aguilera music, throwing books in the toilet, and the female guards forcing themselves sexually on the prisoners. They call that "torture," whereas a lot of college guys I'm sure would call a similar schedule of activities "the best weekend I ever had."

Posted by: caspera on August 16, 2006 06:25 AM

Caspera was commenting on Ace’s post about torture, in response to a Guardian editorial on the same subject. I’ve written on the subject of torture before; I won’t repeat myself. That said, Ace’s post is thought provoking, if nothing else. And the comments, as I’ve already noted, are good.

This is interesting: “Nine No Longer: Panel Declares 12 Planets.”

The solar system has 12 planets.

That is the conclusion, to be announced today, of an international panel formed to devise a scientific definition of a planet and settle an increasingly intense dispute over whether Pluto qualifies. The panel suggests retaining Pluto and immediately adding three new planets to the nine that are familiar to any schoolchild: Ceres, currently considered a large asteroid; Charon, now considered a moon of Pluto; and Xena, a recently discovered object that is larger than Pluto.

[…]

The proposal defines a planet as an object that circles the sun and is massive enough that its own gravitational forces compress it into a roughly spherical shape. Depending on its composition, a planet would have to be at least roughly 250 to 500 miles in diameter to qualify. It designates a new subcategory of planet, the ``pluton," a Pluto-like planet that takes at least 200 years to circle the sun. Pluto, Charon, and Xena are all plutons, and scientists expect many more to be discovered. Under the proposal, Ceres is an ordinary planet.

[…]

A number of scientists said in interviews that they expected the new definition would be accepted, but others, including Brown, opposed the idea. Calling it ``a big mess," Brown said he didn't like the complexity of the system, or the idea of a panel determining what new planets are.

Brown said he would have preferred to simply declare that anything as large as Pluto is a planet, meaning there would be 10 planets -- the existing nine and Xena -- with the possibility that a few more would be discovered. Also reasonable, he said, would have been to disqualify Pluto as a planet, because of differences like its small size and its different orbit.

Wow. Think of all those instantly obsolete textbooks, wall displays, models, and the like. I don’t think your average planetarium has budgeted for this…

Today’s Pic: Plane Pr0n from the Air Force Armament Museum at Eglin AFB, Florida. This is an F-101 Voodoo, a fighter-interceptor from the ‘50s and ‘60s. I had a close encounter with a Voodoo once upon a time…

Sunrise

Two views, same sunrise, taken a few yards outside my door. Both pics were taken at f 2.2, the top at 1/800 sec, the bottom at 1/400. There are some benefits associated with staying up all night (or rising early)!

Up All Night...

So. I just changed the channel to Washington Journal, lit off the coffee and decided to stay up after being awake all night. I’ll see the sunrise from the wrong side of the day this morning.

What a strange life.

Here’s a great link to many, many Palestinian, Israeli, and Lebanese bloggers. More than you can read in a month of Sundays.

Today’s Pic: Gray Day in Prague, Czech Republic …June 1999.

The REST of the Story...

Brought forward from the Comments to “Rain!”...

(Steve from) Fix4RSO said...

Kermie in the windscreen!!!

Gotta geek out on ya for a sec. All our systems in our SQA Lab (software quality assurance lab) are named after things. A meme I am sure you are familiar with, Buck? So, here's the breakdown:

RedHat Linux == muppets
Win2k/2k3/XP == computers
Sun Solaris == Buckaroo Bonzai "john"
IBM/AIX == more Bonzai "johns"

It really cracks me up when "corporate types" have to get a briefing and my VP says something like, "So, kermit is hooked up to piggy, with gonzo and zoot providing the middleware ..."

So, when they need info on the Solaris platform mixed with some PCs running Win, "For the hub bigboote is supported by smallberries and the GUI is found on VGER."

Seeing kermie, I just laughed ... ;)

And I replied:

Steve sez: Gotta geek out on ya for a sec. All our systems in our SQA Lab (software quality assurance lab) are named after things.

And I'll geek right back!! My database servers in Rochester were named "Fatman" and "Little Boy." I know all about geeky!

And... Kermit was a corporate hand-out from EDS. We had four "frameworks" on the Xerox account: compute (mainframe/legacy stuff), telecomm, applications, and "infrastructure," which was the desktop environment, its associated processes (change management, problem management, etc.) and the supporting architecture, primarily e-mail, network naming and addressing, etc. The "environment" was global, broken down into regions: i.e., North America, Asia, Europe, and South America. I worked in infrastructure.

So anyhoo...each framework was evaluated by the client (Xerox) on a "Red-Yellow-Green" basis, monthly. Infrastructure was either Red or Yellow, but never Green, for the first TWO YEARS of the contract. The situation sucked, to say the least -- I'll not go into details, but it wasn't all EDS' fault. Two-plus years into the contract, infrastructure finally went "green" and stayed there for three months, which was a contractual hurdle we had to overcome. After we made it we threw a BIG-ASS party in Rochester, and all the infrastructure folks were gifted with those little Kermie dolls, with a card that said "It's good to be Green!" And that's how Kermie came to live with me...I put him on the 'Vette rear-view that very day.

Paul Harvey Voice
…And now you know the rest of the story!
/Paul Harvey Voice

Evening Edition: You Can't Make This Stuff Up!

Why I Left San Francisco (and took my heart with me), Part XII: “San Franciscans honor the life of the world's longest reigning revolutionary leader.” You can’t make this stuff up…

Cuba's President Fidel Castro, the world's longest reigning leader, celebrated his 80th birthday yesterday from the confines of a hospital bed after undergoing surgery stemming from reported gastrointestinal bleeding.

In honor of Castro's achievements - a socialist revolutionary who overthrew the corrupt government of Fulgencio Batista in 1959 and led the transformation of Cuba into a one-party socialist republic - San Franciscans across the political divide paid tribute to Castro during a spectacular evening ensemble of music, song, dance and poetry, including poetic recitals from San Francisco Poet Laureate Jack Hirschman.

[…]

"When we asked artists to perform they clamored to the event because in San Francisco Fidel Castro and the Cuban revolution have a big place in peoples hearts in terms of their social activism. They recognize the contributions of the Cuban people and Fidel have made on behalf of all the people of the world."

You should see the pictures. I shall now flog a dead horse: “If you like Cuba so much, why the f!** don’t you MOVE there?”

Oh, Good Lord. Here’s Part XIII: ZombieTime has a large collection of photos from the “Stop the U.S.-Israeli War” rally, held in that self-same San Francisco, August 12, 2006. Hezbollah flags galore.

Wallace/ Amadinnerjihad Update: The All-Seeing Eye at The Jawa Report notes those Kwazy Kossacks think Mike Wallace was RUDE to Ahmadinejad. The horror! The HORROR! The ASE also gives us some enlightened comments from the Reality-Based Crowd Community, such as this one:

Let's see: the NPT specifically ALLOWS uranium enrichment as well as other technical research. There is no apparent evidence to date, according to the UN, that Iran has a weapons program. You seem to assume there is one because...the Bush administration says there is? What other assumptions have you swallowed from Bush?

In my view, Iran NEEDS nuclear weapons, if only to hold the US at bay - a government which has made clear threats against Iran, has a previous history in overthrowing Iran's democracy, and a recent history in waging unprovoked war against one of Iran's neighbors. Further, Iran is now bordered on two sides by the military forces of that same government.

Once again, you just can’t make this stuff up.

Hezbollah Weapons Update:

Hizbullah will not hand over its weapons to the Lebanese government but rather refrain from exhibiting them publicly, according to a new compromise that is reportedly brewing between Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Seniora and Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

The UN cease-fire resolution specifically demands the demilitarization of the area south of the Litani river. The resolution was approved by the Lebanese cabinet.

“…refrain from exhibiting them publicly”? Oh, that is just so frickin’ RICH!

I’m beginning to think ignorance must be bliss. Because "being informed" makes me crazy.

A Gray Tuesday

I watched the complete Mike Wallace/Ahmadinejad interview on C-SPAN last evening. All I can say is “What a tool.” Both of ‘em. Actually, Wallace did a credible fair job. And the CBS editing job was pretty good, too. I had read somewhere (no link) that one of the conditions Ahmadinejad had in granting the interview was that the entire interview had to be broadcast, not just an edited portion. Thus: enter C-SPAN. You didn’t miss anything if you only saw the “60 Minutes” version. Wait. You did miss something. “60 Minutes” doesn’t take viewer calls after the program is over; C-SPAN does. You missed a bevy (flock? covey?) of serious moonbats calling in to condemn US policy towards Iran. Those idiots upset me a lot more than Ahmadinejad…I knew Ahmadinejad was an idiot, going in. I’m never prepared for my fellow Americans who side with those who would kill us. I should know better.

Bernard Goldberg (author of Bias, among other things) thinks Mike Wallace did a good job. He also thinks Ahmadinejad is media-savvy. I agree with Goldberg about Ahmadinejad.

Speaking of The Unhinged (Brit Division)…From The Independent (UK), this, on the US media’s Hezbollah War reporting:

As the conflict has gone on, the media interpretation of it has only hardened. Essentially, the line touted by cable news hosts and their correspondents - closely adhering to the line adopted by the Bush administration and its neoconservative supporters - is that Hizbollah is part of a giant anti-Israeli and anti-American terror network that also includes Hamas, al-Qa'ida, the governments of Syria and Iran, and the insurgents in Iraq. Little effort is made to distinguish between these groups, or explain what their goals might be. The conflict is presented as a straight fight between good and evil, in which US interests and Israeli interests intersect almost completely. Anyone who suggests otherwise is likely to be pounced on and ripped to shreds. (ed: emphasis mine)

Hmmm. Written as if the writer believes my bold bits aren’t true. I guess it’s only us neocons who have the intellectual capacity to recognize an organized, orchestrated threat when we see one. The “goals” of Iran and its proxies seem pretty damned clear to me. On the other hand, I suppose The Independent would prefer the American media cover the war in the same manner as the BBC’s “fair and balanced” approach, or, to cite another “correct” example, CNN International’s coverage. Yeah, that would be good. My ass.

C-SPAN televised yesterday’s Daily Rant from good ol’ Hassan, a 30-minute harangue that was hard to watch, but watch it I did. I don’t think Nasrallah has been to Hezbollah media “charm school” (if there is such a thing). To say he rambles is today’s gross understatement. I did take one thing away from his rant, however. It’ll be a cold day in Hell before Hezbollah disarms. Israel and Lebanon are in for a long hard slog vis-à-vis Hezbollah. One feels bad for the Lebanese, as there appear to be no good choices here. It looks like another civil war is brewing; that or the establishment of a Shi’a theocracy. Nasrallah is already beginning to act like a head of state. I’ll be totally surprised if this cease-fire lasts longer than 72 hours.

Today’s Pic: The Tetons, May 2000. It was flippin’ cold.

Just so you know…I finally (gasp!) did the frickin’ laundry yesterday. Based on this year’s Laundromat Schedule, I have enough clean clothes to last me until hockey season begins.

Rain!

So. It’s been raining non-stop for the past two-plus hours. I went looking in the archives for a rain picture and stopped when I found the collage above. You wouldn’t believe the huge collection of windshield panoramas I have in the archives! There is some rain in two pics of the upper row, but I couldn’t find any P-Town rain pics. That says something, in and of itself. As always, click the pic for the full-size version.

Like my lil green mascot? Kermit has been on the dash since I bought El Casa Móvil De Pennington back in 1999; he was wrapped around the ‘Vette’s rear view mirror for a couple of years before that. Every so often, in the dead of night, I can hear him saying “When are we gonna go on the road again? When? Buck?”

I never answer.

Finally.

From The Observer, a Guardian Unlimited (UK) paper:

The argument that terrorism is, in fact, a response to Western actions overseas has gained currency. It was voiced most recently on Saturday in an open letter by a number of influential British Muslim leaders to Tony Blair. The Prime Minister's policy in the Middle East, they said, puts British lives at risk. The implication is that the young Britons who last week were accused of plotting to blow up passenger planes in mid-air would have been less susceptible to al-Qaeda recruitment had Britain not fought wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Policy should be changed, they said, to avoid giving ideological 'ammunition to extremists'.

[…]

But even within the bleakest possible analysis of Mr Blair's foreign policy, it is still simply not true that the West is waging war on Islam. Just as it is not true that the CIA was really behind the 11 September attacks or any other arrant conspiratorial nonsense that enjoys widespread credence in the Middle East and beyond. It is also a logical and moral absurdity to imply, as some critics of British policy have done, that mass murder is somehow less atrocious when it is motivated by an elaborate narrative of political grievance.

If young British Muslims are alienated, that is sad and their anger should be addressed. But anyone whose alienation leads them to want to kill indiscriminately has crossed a line into psychopathic criminality.

From The News of the World (UK):

WHEN will the Muslims of Britain stand up to be counted?

When will they declare, loud and clear, with no qualifications or quibbles about Britain's foreign policy, that Islamic terrorism is WRONG?

Most of all, when will the Muslim community in this country accept an absolute, undeniable, total truth: that Islamic terrorism is THEIR problem? THEY own it. And it is THEIR duty to face it and eradicate it.

To stop the denial, endless fudging and constant wailing that somehow it is everyone else's problem and, if Islamic terrorism exists at all, they are somehow the main victims.

Because until that happens the problem will never be resolved. And there will be more 7/7s and, sometime in the future, another airplane plot will succeed with horrific loss of innocent life.

From The Times of London:

Why is Britain such a breeding ground for these young men, for that is what most of them are? Much can be ascribed to timidity on behalf of the authorities, wedded as they are to a multiculturalism that isolates many young men in ghettos and a reluctance to espouse British values through our schools and institutions. That appeasement was epitomised by the sanctuary offered to extremist Islamic groups in Britain — “Londonistan” — in the pathetic hope that it might offer some form of immunity from violence. The United States, with its intolerant attitude to those preaching hate, has been far more successful in integrating its Muslim citizens, offering them the ideals of patriotism and progress. Even France, which has a bigger Muslim population than Britain and has had its share of troubles with disaffected youth, has not seen the scale of Islamist treachery that we are experiencing here. MI5 believes up to 400,000 people in Britain are sympathetic to violent “jihad” around the world and that as many as 1,200 are involved in terrorist networks.

[…]

That is not to say that the government is not right to try to win over Muslim opinion. If terror is to be defeated, you have first to drain the swamp. Muslims have to be persuaded that we are on the same side, that there is no witch-hunt against Islam and that the wars involving British troops are about stopping Islamists and the corruption of their religion. This means Muslims being alert to extremists in their ranks and being prepared to identify them to the police. It means Muslims becoming intolerant of radical mullahs and hounding them out of their mosques. Equally the authorities have a responsibility to crack down on extremists in universities and in prisons, to close internet sites and bookshops that spread hatred and violence, and to take all reasonable measures to protect their citizens.

These editorials were precipitated, in large part, by this:

Prime Minister,

As British Muslims we urge you to do more to fight against all those who target civilians with violence, whenever and wherever that happens.

It is our view that current British government policy risks putting civilians at increased risk both in the UK and abroad.

To combat terror the government has focused extensively on domestic legislation. While some of this will have an impact, the government must not ignore the role of its foreign policy.

The debacle of Iraq and now the failure to do more to secure an immediate end to the attacks on civilians in the Middle East not only increases the risk to ordinary people in that region, it is also ammunition to extremists who threaten us all.

Attacking civilians is never justified. This message is a global one. We urge the Prime Minister to redouble his efforts to tackle terror and extremism and change our foreign policy to show the world that we value the lives of civilians wherever they live and whatever their religion.

Such a move would make us all safer.

The foregoing is the complete text of an open letter signed by Muslim organizations and politicians protesting that Tony Blair's stance on Iraq and the Middle East provided "ammunition" to terrorists. The letter was signed by 38 groups, including the Muslim Council of Britain, and three of the four Muslim Members of Parliament. The government’s reaction was cool, to say the least, and the public reaction, as evidenced by the editorials quoted above, was outraged. My interpretation, your mileage may vary.

Now, Mr. Blair, would you please do something about the BBC? Perhaps just a little housecleaning? (Sorry. Just had to get that in.)

It's a Beautiful Morning...

Today’s Pic: A snap from the USS Mason (DDG87) commissioning ceremony in Port Canaveral, Florida, April 12, 2003. The Mason is one of SN2’s former rides; he was the Mason’s Chief Engineer, or CHENG. The Navy really puts on a show when commissioning a new warship. I was definitely privileged to attend the ceremony and am still impressed, to this very day.

Ya know, it’s hard for me to let go when I hit on a topic. I’m really not an obsessive-compulsive sort of person, but I’ll forgive you if you think otherwise, given the narrow range of subject matter I’ve been focusing on of late. Things like Iran, the Hezbollah War, criminally-ignorant Lefties, and the BBC. I’ve written about little else lately. So let’s not break the mold. Here’s my latest “find” on one of my favorite subjects: the Beeb. It’s an op-ed in Real Clear Politics by James Lewis titled “The BBC and Home-Grown Terrorists.” Mr. Lewis articulates, quite powerfully, at that, the profound effect Auntie has on Britain’s disaffected Muslim youth.

If you were a young Muslim teenager growing up in Leeds, you too might be fertile soil for Islamofascism. The reason is simple: In a culture pervaded by the BBC, the message of the Labour Left would be drummed home to you over and over again: Britain is evil, America is evil, Israel is evil, capitalism is evil, democracy is a fraud. The education system would teach you a damning picture of the British Empire, which had its immoral side, but was also the greatest civilizing agent in the world for centuries.

[…]

So when some local imam starts to preach hatred of Britain, America, Israel, and Western culture, they are tilling fertile soil. British teens are all prepared to hate their country; it's the in thing to do. They are given a constant set of provocations: Guantanamo, and the "torture" of Muslims; the toilet-flushing of Korans by the evil Americans; the "imperialism" of America and its "poodle" Britain. Israel killing children in Qana. Just recently the BBC produced a "comedy" show with airplanes flying into Westminster, in imitation of 9/11. Is 9/11 the stuff of comedy? It is for the Bolshie Beeb. The show features guest appearances by the two main "news" anchors of the BBC. It's all a big joke to the Left, which secretly sympathizes with the fascists of Londonistan.

Like the United States, Britain is in bad, bad shape to fight a war for civilization. London Mayor "Red Ken" Livingstone and Oily George Galloway are constantly whipping up more resentment against the West. Muslims from pre-medieval places like Pakistan are easily winning the demographic race. The Jewish vote is now scattered and negligible, and Labour is not above using anti-Semitic cartoons depicting Jewish Conservatives as flying pigs.

I made note of the fact that a large part of the BBC’s Newsnight coverage this past Thursday was devoted to trying to assign blame for terrorism to American and British foreign policy and a justification of disaffected British Muslim “hostility.” And that was just one program. To think the British public is subjected to a constant, day in and day out bombardment of these asininities gives one pause. And you know what’s worse? We in America aren’t that far behind Great Britain. There is a critical difference, however. America doesn’t have near the same problems with unassimilated minorities as the British have. Thank God for that! But that doesn’t mean we’re getting off Scot-free in that regard; the rise of identity politics and the ever-widening culture of victimization create our own versions of disaffected and unassimilated minorities. And while we don’t have anything remotely comparable to the Beeb’s monolithic dominance of British airwaves here in the US, it’s not too much of a leap to compare the Beeb’s perspective with that of ABC/CBS/NBC and NPR. They have much in common. And don’t get me started on the New York Times, or, for that matter, the Academy. The Left is all about self-loathing, be it the British Left or the American Left. I detest that.

The West is at war with a radical ideology that wants nothing less than the destruction of our culture. Our culture needs defenders, not detractors. We most certainly don’t need the Fourth Estate functioning as a Fifth Column. One looks at Britain and wonders, seriously, if it isn’t already too late. And the BBC just prattles raves on, apparently oblivious to the damage they’re doing. What a shame.

While we’re on about recent topics, James Pinkerton, writing at TCS Daily, starts out with Joe Lieberman’s primary loss and discusses political heresy in “Why Political Heretics are Worse than Infidels.”

Joe Lieberman is a heretic. Please don't get me wrong. Nobody, not even Lieberman's enemies, questions the Connecticut Senator's abiding Orthodox Jewish religious faith. But as Tuesday's primary election shows, a majority of Nutmeg State Democrats see their senator as disloyal to the party line, which is increasingly dovish on Iraq. And a heretic, of course, is much worse than an infidel.

Here's the distinction: An infidel is someone who never believed what you believe; an infidel is a stranger, and so there's not much point in investing emotions in him. But a heretic is someone you know well, someone who once believed what you believe, but now has a different faith -- that's much more threatening. You often fight wars against infidels, and in those wars you seek to defeat, even destroy, the enemy. But with heretics, even tougher measures are needed, because the threat of heresy is so much more insidious, threatening to eat away the true faith. So you launch inquisitions against heretics, to eliminate even the thought of heresy. The proper anti-heretical strategy is to torture 'em, make 'em confess, make 'em repent -- and then kill 'em.

Happily, American politics isn't nearly so brutal, albeit still intense. And yet the basic heretics vs. infidels dichotomy explains why intra-party fights are so much more bitter than inter-party fights. To this day, for example, the Democrats know Which Side They Were On in big intra-party feuds -- even if they were too young actually to have been part of the feud.

We might consider, for example, one epochal feud-year for the Democrats: 1948. That was the year that lefty Democrats split off from the party, and from President Harry Truman, to join the pro-Soviet third-party candidacy of former vice president Henry Wallace. Six decades later, that sundering still echoes; The New Republic's Peter Beinart, himself born in the 70s, published a book that revisits 1948. Its militant title, The Good Fight: Why Liberals -- and Only Liberals -- Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again, signals Beinart's message for today: that the fight against hawkish heretical Democrats has gone too far -- and that the answer is to fight right back. He wants Democrats to draw inspiration from past struggles, from the days when Cold War liberals battled crypto-communists. And so Beinart supported Lieberman, of course, against the primary campaign waged against the incumbent by challenger Ned Lamont. Needless to say, Beinart's left-bashing has been reciprocated by plenty of Beinart-bashing from lefties, including The Nation's Eric Alterman. And so the guns of 1948 are still not silenced, and the wounds are still open.

Pinkerton doesn’t focus only on Democrats, he cites examples of heresy in Republican ranks also. As an example, the ideological underpinnings of the Reagan Revolution were, at one point in time, viewed as heresy by mainstream Republicans. One must be careful in organizing and carrying out political inquisitions of the sort that unseated Senator Lieberman, however. The Law of Unintended Consequences is terribly unforgiving.

Random Notes…

Our bodies are wonderful things. I’ve written all too often about how I hate housework. As an example, I vacuum on an “as required” basis, one definition of “as required” is when I observe the buildup of gray blond hair on my dark blue bathroom rug. As I was emptying the vacuum canister into the trash yesterday I noticed there was enough hair in there to knit a small dog, and it’s always so. It’s a minor miracle I’m not completely bald at this point in life, judging by the amount of hair I shed. My body must devote 25% of its physical energy towards hair production, and that’s a good thing for a semi-vain old man.

Ads that make me smile:

1. The current Mac-vs-PC ads. These ads capture perfectly the essence of what Mac-o-philes like about Macs and rail about PCs. I’m a PC kinda guy, always have been, always will be. But these ads are clever and they do make me smile. The ads won’t convince me to buy a Mac, but they DO make me smile. See ‘em all here.
2. The new Jaguar ads. The new XK is simply frickin’ gorgeous, and the “XK Launch” ad is my favorite in the new series of ads…especially the music used as background. The ads are all well crafted and are beautiful. Here’s an ad campaign that actually could convince me to buy…if I had the money. But…when it comes to the XK, “From $75,500.00” is a helluva lot of money; I’ve bought houses for less. That probably sez more about my age and less about the real estate market and cars, however.

And so it goes…

Looks Like a Good Weekend!

Newt Gringrich wrote an excellent op-ed for the WaPo yesterday titled “The Only Option is to Win.” The op-ed is fairly predictable in its content… in other words, it’s nothing new and basically reinforces Mr. Gingrich’s point that the US is engaged in what Newt calls “a third world war.” One could quibble with Newt’s numbering scheme, but that’s a minor point. The op-ed, however, focuses primarily on the threat of a nuclear Iran, to wit:

In fact an Iran armed with nuclear weapons is a mortal threat to American, Israeli and European cities. If a nonnuclear Iran is prepared to finance, arm and train Hezbollah, sustain a war against Israel from southern Lebanon and, in Holbrooke's own words, "support actions against U.S. forces in Iraq," then what would a nuclear Iran be likely to do? Remember, Iranian officials were present at North Korea's missile launches on our Fourth of July, and it is noteworthy that Venezuela's anti-American dictator, Hugo Chávez, has visited Iran five times.

It is because the Bush administration has failed to win this argument over the direct threat of Iranian and North Korean nuclear and biological weapons that Americans are divided and uncertain about our national security interests. (ed: emphasis mine)

Once again, not much new here for readers of this blog, especially the focus on Iran.

But.

Let’s focus on the “…Americans are divided and uncertain about our national security interests” bit. And, just for grins and giggles, let’s look at how one of the Big Dog Lefty blogs responds to Mr. Gingrich’s op-ed. Just a couple of excerpts:

This piece is explicitly coming out against any kind of containment. (Naturally, since containment worked in the cold war and is thus discredited as are all things that turn out in retrospect to have been right.) Note also how he says "if they can be disarmed with less violence that would be desirable." You can almost see the pinched, sour expression on his face. He is subtly backing up his silly WWIII rhetoric by saying we are simultaneously fighting "the terrorists," Iran and North Korea and there is no way to deal with them but "defeat" them militarily. (I particularly like his cynical use of the term holocaust in this discussion.)

[…]

I'm sure all this macho talk is emotionally satisfying to some people but there is no reason that Democrats should allow themselves to be trash-talked into another Iraq style debate where the only parameters that can even be discussed are the how not the why. That's what they are trying to do --- get us into a position where we will start saying "ok, yes, this is WWIII, but I don't think we are at war with Iran and North Korea --- just Iran." Or "of course this is an existential threat and we are in a global war against islamic fascism, but we should get the UN involved, don't you think?"

I can’t quite follow the logic used here, i.e., “since containment worked in the cold war and is thus discredited as are all things…” Mr. Gingrich didn’t even address “containment” at all in his op-ed, he spoke of the failings of non-stop diplomacy, that is trying to talk the mullahs out of acquiring The Bomb. None the less, containment was an appropriate strategy for the Cold War, where our principal enemy was (a) rational and (b) accepted, however reluctantly, the terrible logic of mutually assured destruction. I’m not the first to note that a regime with an institutionalized martyr complex isn’t exactly impressed with the specter of dying for their cause. In fact, they welcome martyrdom. After all, this is the regime that sent human waves of children to their deaths (with cheap plastic “keys to paradise” around their necks) during the Iran-Iraq war. The rest of Digby’s logic is similarly silly, especially his prospective response “of course this is an existential threat…but we should get the UN involved…”. The UN has been involved, to no effect or result, except to elicit sneers from Tehran.

Digby then goes on to raise the specter of American “first use” of nuclear weapons, resurrecting Seymour Hersh’s New Yorker piece on the administration’s first strike war plans with —are you ready?— tactical nukes. Strawman, Digby. But, since we’re on the subject, small tactical nukes, specifically bunker-busting tactical nukes, aren’t such a bad idea. We’re not talking multi-megaton city-busters here…we’re speaking of low-yield bunker busters. But, I digress.

Digby’s piece is a perfect example of those folks on the Left who are in desperate denial, or, in other words, simply don’t get it. I’d like to refer him to a couple of old news items, here and here. A government campaign that organizes nation-wide chants of “Death to America!” by school children, and a parliament that chants “Death to America!” while authorizing the continuation of Iran’s uranium enrichment program. Yeah, we can reason with a government like this. In a pig’s eye.

I didn’t mention yesterday that one of the reasons I was so enthralled with the UK terror bust was the fact the town of High Wycombe was at the center of the story. I know High Wycombe pretty well; I lived there from 1980 – 1983. Of course, I’m sure much has changed in the 23 years since I left. But, still…

Today’s Pic: Just an old warmonger at the (since renamed) Strategic Air Command Museum outside of Omaha. May, 2000. The hair's a lot shorter these days.

Tee-Vee and the UK Terror Bust; CAIR-Bears

Every so often a story comes down the pike that grabs my attention, almost to the exclusion of everything else. Yesterday’s UK terror bust was one such story. I was glued to the TV, and to a lesser extent, the ‘net, from 0100 until 0400 Thursday morning and again for most of yesterday (once I awoke). I was struck by the fact we (Americans) had a wide variety of news sources on this story to consult and consume. As with most everything in life, there were both good and bad points where the news coverage was concerned.

First, the Good. PBS’ The News Hour had the best US coverage. To steal a line from Roger Ailes, PBS’ coverage seemed to be Fair and Balanced, as well as comprehensive. Last night’s program began with borrowed, and quite good, coverage from the UK’s Independent Television News (ITN), segued to an extensive interview (ten minutes or more) with Michael Chertoff, and followed that with a methods and procedures sort of discussion with two experts, one Danish, and one American. All of the foregoing segments were informative and factual, with minimum (if any) spin.

The US and UK governments’ press conferences were also quite good. Chertoff performed quite well on the News Hour, answering all questions put to him with a minimum of tap dancing. I was impressed. I found myself switching to C-SPAN off and on during the day and caught the entire DHS presser there, with Secretary Chertoff, AG Gonzales, and FBI Director Mueller. The briefings were short and to the point; the Q&A sessions were handled effectively, openly, and (in my opinion) honestly. Likewise, UK Home Secretary John Reid’s press conference (also carried by C-SPAN) was informative, direct, and to the point.

C-SPAN also carried last night’s edition of BBC Newsnight, which had its good and bad points. The best bits were the “man in the street” interviews in the High Wycombe neighborhood where several terrorists were arrested. One segment simply seethed with tension between two groups of neighbors, one group of 30-ish moms and a group of young Islamic men. There was considerable interplay between the two groups, with the men coming off as both aggressive and defensive. One wondered if a mini-riot was set to begin right then and there. Newsnight devoted a significant portion of the program to the undercurrent of hostility among British Muslims. The UK definitely has an integration issue, as in a failure of British Muslims to integrate into British society. The lack of Muslim assimilation in the UK is something that’s been written about extensively, but it’s something we Americans don’t often get to see first-hand.

A little bit of the Bad. Boy, did I ever have issues with Newsnight. Kirsty Wark, the Newsnight presenter, seemed completely ate up with the semantics of yesterday’s events, rather than the substance. There were multiple occurrences of the multi-culti, politically correct, and Lefty points of view throughout the program. One such example was an exchange Ms. Wark had during her interview with Christopher Shays, a Republican member of the house from Connecticut. Ms. Wark asked what Rep. Shays thought about “…critics who would say (terrorism) is partially a result of US foreign policy, specifically Iraq.” Shays, to his everlasting credit characterized that POV as “silly” and further stated “Gimmee a break. How do “critics” get away with that kind of garbage?” Wark then went on to ask Shays “Bush talks about ‘Islamic Fascists.’ Do you think that kind of language is helpful in all this?” Once again, Shays rose to the occasion, telling Wark she was “straining out gnats and swallowing camels” when it came to semantics. Offending the Muslim community, real or imagined, was high on Wark’s/BBC’s agenda last evening and the exchange with Shays was but one example. You can see the entire Newsnight broadcast on a 34Kbps Real Video stream at the BBC Newsnight link above.

While we’re on the subject of offending Muslims, CAIR released a statement last night about Mr. Bush’s use of the term Islamic Fascists.

"Unfortunately, your statement this morning that America 'is at war with Islamic fascists' contributes to a rising level of hostility to Islam and the American-Muslim community. Just today, Gallup released a poll indicating that four out of ten Americans feel 'prejudice' toward Muslims.

[…]

"The use of ill-defined hot button terms such as 'Islamic fascists,' 'militant jihadism,' 'Islamic radicalism,' or 'totalitarian Islamic empire,' harms our nation's image and interests worldwide, particularly in the Islamic world. It feeds the perception that the war on terror is actually a war on Islam ...

Say WHAT? So, what exactly are we supposed to call Muslim terrorists? Note that the President never said just plain old “Muslims,” he characterized the terrorist for what they are: Fascists. A spade is a spade. If CAIR doesn’t like the fact that Islamic Fascists are waging war on the United States and the West, in general, then I suggest CAIR get directly involved in combating Islamic Fascism and worry less about the terms used to describe the enemy.

Reuters has an article on this issue, as well. Here’s a laughable excerpt from that article:

Awad (ed: The CAIR-Bear) said U.S. officials should take the lead from their British counterparts who had steered clear of using what he considered inflammatory terms when they announced the arrest of more than 20 suspects in the reported plot.

Right. Let’s be more like the multi-culti sensitive Brits. Then we can have our own assimilation problem. That’ll work.

And finally, one last “bad”…Anderson Cooper, on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360, referring to “the alleged war on terror.” Alleged? How the F*! can a war be “alleged?” I have issues with this sort of crap, big-time. It’s a small, subtle, sort of thing, but language counts, words actually mean something. The use of terms like “alleged war on terror” implies the war is illegitimate, and that directly undermines the war effort. But then again, that’s probably the intent, isn’t it?

Just Wondering...

Frequent reader Bec sends along this link, via the comments, which falls right in line with the post I had planned for today until I was overcome by events. Anyhoo, it seems like Nasrallah has appointed one Imad Mughniyeh as the new Hezbollah military leader/commander for south Lebanon.

Military and counter-terror sources maintain that this appointment raises the conflict to a new and dangerous level on several counts.

Mughniyeh, wanted for a quarter of a century by the FBI for the huge bombing attacks he orchestrated on the US embassy in Beirut and American and French troops, as well as a spate of hijackings and murders, is important enough to take orders from no-one ranking lower than Iran’s supreme ruler, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Informed circles in the West have a high opinion of Mughniyeh’s military, intelligence and tactical skills. His hand was seen in the transformation of al Qaeda’s 2001 defeat in Afghanistan into a launch pad for its anti-US campaign in Iraq and many other ventures in the terror war against America. After the death of Abu Musab al Zarqawi, Mughniyeh is rated the world Islamic terror movement’s most outstanding field commander. Therefore, while the appointment is a measure of Israel’s belated military success in the Lebanese war, it also brings the conflict ever closer to two dangerous orbits – Tehran and al Qaeda.

So. Apparently we now have a direct command and control link from Tehran to south Lebanon, if one believes what is written in the referenced article. And there’s more, of course. YNet reports Iranian Revolutionary Guards are fighting alongside Hezbollah, and there have been many reports about Iranian long-range missiles (not the Katyushas), along with Iranian “technical experts” to man them, circulating about since this war began. You don’t have to be much of a conspiracy theorist to see the handwriting on this wall, now, do you?

There have been more than a few editorials and essays lately pointing out Tehran’s direct links to the current violence, and each of these editorials/essays wonders aloud just how long we’re going to continue to give the initiative to Tehran before we strike back. One of the better essays I’ve read on the subject appears in NRO (“We’re Losing World War IV,” by Barbara Lerner):

Despite all this and more, we have yet to admit that Iran is at war with us, or to seriously consider striking back at her, and, in speaking of our own war aims, we never dare use the v-word — victory — anymore. Instead, we make head-in-the-sand happy-talk about “peace,” “democracy,” and “ceasefires,” rejecting any military action against Iran for fear of “widening the war” — as if Iran were not already at war with us — and rely on the U.N. and “the international community” to thwart Iran’s nuclear ambitions and to prevent her proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, from continuing to bring death and destruction to our smallest, truest, and most vulnerable ally, Israel. In doing this, we ignore two obvious realities: rather than restraining Iran, U.N. heavyweights Russia and China are busy arming her, and the perfidious EU will not even recognize the plain fact that Hezbollah is a terrorist organization. Instead, these old-Europe “allies” join with our Islamofascist enemies in demonizing our brave soldiers in Iraq, and damning Israel for daring to fight back against unprovoked aggression, pursued with openly genocidal intent.

[…]

Most Americans are still unaware of Iran’s promise to light up the skies with a great surprise on August 22, but Muslims everywhere are keenly aware of it; most await the day with growing excitement.

[…]

We should not wait, passively, for the Iranians to unveil their surprise. We should light up the skies with our own surprise: a massive aerial bombardment that wipes out most of Iran’s nuclear facilities, and decimates the ranks of its mullahs as well as those of the Revolutionary Guard and Basij forces that keep them in power, defeating these monsters and decimating their fan base by shattering their image of invincibility.

Ms. Lerner provides background and history of this conflict to refresh the memories of those who haven’t been paying attention, and to support her right-wing saber rattling (my tongue is in my cheek. Obviously.). Her points are well taken.

And then there’s this op-ed in yesterday’s New York Sun:

Why is America waiting to be attacked by Iran? Why do we sit on the sidelines while Tehran makes war on our ally Israel in order to provoke America to join the fighting, first against Syria and then against Tehran itself? Why do we listen to the European appeasers as they pretend the Lebanon front is a regional conflict, a national liberation contest, when it is demonstrably the prelude to the wider war — the Spain 1936 to the continental war of 1939? What is the explanation for America's willful fiction that the United Nations Security Council can engineer an accommodation in Lebanon, when it is vivid to every member state that this is a replay of September 1938, when Europe fed Hitler the Sudetenland as the U.N. now wants to feed the jihadists the sovereignty of Israel?

The most threatening answer is that America waits to be bloodied because it has lost its will to defend itself after five years of chasing rogue-state-sponsored gangsters and after three years of occupation in failed-state Iraq against Tehran- and Damascus-backed agents. A grave possibility is that America is now drained, bowed, ready to surrender to the tyrants of Tehran.

Then again, perhaps America has been here before, and it is part of America's destiny as the New Jerusalem that we rarely start wars but that we are unusually good at finishing them.

What I want to know is…Is anyone, anyone at all, in Washington reading/listening to these voices? WHY do we persist in believing, accommodating, and participating in these terrible “willful fictions,” as Mr.Batchelor so aptly put it? Why do I feel like the guy with the fatal diagnosis who puts off treatment in the hopes that “it’ll get better?” Well, it never it gets better, it just gets worse. And worse, in this case, means that hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people will die at the hands of Khamenei and Ahmadinejad. And it’s not like we haven’t been warned, repeatedly and often.

It’s less than two weeks until August 22^nd. I hope that day comes and goes quietly. But, I wonder. I really, really wonder.

"Mass Murder on an Unimaginable Scale"

So say all the major news outlets. Just a little over two hours ago I was headed to bed and decided to switch over to Fox for a quick scan of the headlines before I turned in. I was surprised to see a live feed from Sky News, Ol’ Rupert’s UK version of Fox, and watched as this story unfolded.

Basically, commercial aviation into the UK is shut down following Scotland Yard’s arrest of 21 people in London and the West Midlands. Police are still looking for as many as 50 people. The Metropolitan Police say they have foiled a large-scale terrorist plot to take down up to 20 airliners in flight by detonating bombs smuggled on-board in carry-on luggage. Sky News and CNN are using the 20 aircraft number, the BBC is saying ten. Even ten aircraft would result in anywhere from 2,000 to 3,000 deaths if all ten planes were taken down. That really is mass murder on an unimaginable scale.

The Terrorist Threat Level has been raised to “Critical” in the UK, the highest category. British Airways has cancelled all flights “of short duration,” defined as three hours or less, from Heathrow until 1500 British Time. Air France, Lufthansa, KLM, and Olympic Airways have cancelled all flights into the UK. All flights originating in Brussels and destined for the UK have been cancelled. I’ve seen film of Heathrow and it looks like chaos. Temporary security measures have been implemented and no carry-on luggage is allowed on those flights leaving Heathrow aside from a very short list of permitted items such as wallets, medicine, and baby formula. Additionally, Heathrow’s management held a press conference and advised all people not to travel today unless “absolutely necessary.”

The US has increased its threat level for aviation only to “Orange,” according to CNN. Earlier both CNN and Fox were saying Red for aviation and Orange for the general threat level. Additional restrictions, such as prohibiting all liquids on-board aircraft, are being implemented in the US.

"Due to the nature of the threat revealed by this investigation, we are prohibiting any liquids, including beverages, hair gels, and lotions from being carried on the airplane," the (DHS) statement said.

This is pretty serious stuff and the disruption level is high.

One light moment in all this… I was watching CNN International around 1:30 or so and the anchor, a Brit, was interviewing a “security expert.” The anchorman opened his interview with a leading question, along the lines of “Isn’t this indicative of an intelligence failure, given the last-minute nature of these emergency precautions?” “That’s utter rot,” replied Trevor Somebody, the security expert. The anchor wasn’t fazed at all, but I burst out laughing. Finally, someone called a spade a spade. Stupid, and called out for being stupid. Good for that Trevor guy!

And now, I’m gonna go to bed. Pajamas Media has a pretty good roundup of the news links, memeorandum has a lot of good blog links. But most bloggers are still asleep, like I’m gonna be in about ten minutes.

Vintage Tees

Remember when I told you I had to do laundry coz I was down to “vintage” tee shirts? Well, I wore one of those self-same tee shirts out to the base yesterday, specifically this one:

And Boy-Howdy did I ever get some hard looks from some ol’ codgers. I felt like telling at least one of those guys “Hey, I’m not a Commie, it’s a souvenir.” And so it is…from one of my Moscow trips during the ‘90s. (I have NO idea what the text says, and I've asked around, too.)

I probably would have gotten approving smiles had I worn this one, instead:

The yellow font is hard to read: it says “Miller.” Make sense, now? I love this shirt; it was a gift from SN2 back when he was an enlisted sailor on a boomer...the USS James K. Polk.

Long Night, It Was

Wow, last night was a looong night. I slept fitfully once I finally went to bed, and as a result, stayed in bed until late, late this morning.

So. Lamont wins, and that’s all we’re gonna hear about for the next few days. In a way, this is a good thing. We need a break, however small, from all the stupidity going on in the Middle East and right here on the East River in NYC, for that matter.

It was a near-run thing. Lieberman will run as an Independent in November, and Lamont will run as the Fringe-Left Democrat. I watched both Lieberman’s and Lamont’s speeches in real-time last evening, and I was particularly struck by Lamont’s…uh… “stage presence.” John McIntrye at Real Clear Politics echoes my sentiments exactly:

Nationally, the images from last night are a disaster for the Democratic Party. Perched behind Lamont during his victory speech were the Reverends Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, grinning ear to ear, serenaded by the chant of "Bring Them Home, Bring Them Home." For a party that has a profound public relations and substantive problem on national security, these are not exactly the images you want broadcast to the nation.

Anti-war Democrats and much of the mainstream media continue to confuse anti-war with anti-lose. The incessant commentary that 2/3rd of the country is against the war completely misreads the American public, as much of the negativity towards the war isn't because we are fighting, but rather a growing feeling that we are not fighting to win or not fighting smart.

As I watched Lamont’s victory speech I thought about what Mom used to say: “You’re known by the company you keep.” I damned sure don’t want the likes of Sharpton and Jackson, not to mention the whack-o contingent of American society, running things in Washington. And the NYT describes these people as “moderates?” It is to laugh. Ace laughs about that, long, hard, and quite well.

The New York Times is here to inform you that "moderate" now means the more extreme, partisan, and ideological wing of the liberal/Democratic coalition.

[…]

They think you're that stupid. They really do.

Here’s one of those “moderates,” Christy Hardin Smith at Firedoglake:

At some point, the folks who report on politics and the folks who run for office will wake up and understand that bloggers are merely Americans who try to amplify the sentiment of thousands more just like them. And the overwhelming sentiment that I have been hearing for months and months is that people have had enough of the lies, the manipulation, the self-dealing, the egos, the idiocy, the selfishness, and the outright dereliction of duty and lack of accountability from so many in Washington, D.C. in this rubber stamp Republican Congress…we’ve had enough. (ed: emphasis mine)

Yep, that’s a “moderate” point of view. Hamsher is usually the one carrying the Lamont banner at fdl; I imagine Sweet Jane has one helluva hang-over this morning, which may be why Hardin is posting and not Hamsher.

Kos posted this about a half-hour after Lieberman’s concession and Lamont’s victory speeches were said and done:

Joe Lieberman is not an independent Democrat. He needs to be stripped of his committee assignments and have those handed to real Democrats. And then we need to buckle down and finish the job we started.

Note the royal “we.” Good ol’ Markos, while generally insufferable in the past, is about to become absolutely intolerable as he stakes his claim for being a prime mover in Lamont’s win. The same can be said for the other “netroots” folks, such as Hamsher.

Let’s hear from one more twit:

Let the resounding defeat of Senator Joe Lieberman send a cold shiver down the spine of every Democrat who supported the invasion of Iraq and who continues to support, in any way, this senseless, immoral, unwinnable war. Make no mistake about it: We, the majority of Americans, want this war ended -- and we will actively work to defeat each and every one of you who does not support an immediate end to this war.

Nearly every Democrat set to run for president in 2008 is responsible for this war. They voted for it or they supported it. That single, stupid decision has cost us 2,592 American lives and tens of thousands of Iraqi lives. Lieberman and Company made a colossal mistake -- and we are going to make sure they pay for that mistake. Payback time started last night.

“Resounding defeat?” It looks to me like it was a near-run thing, what with Lamont getting a “resounding” 51.8% of the vote. But, hey…truth was never The Fat Man’s strong suit.

The bottom line, as I see it, is the Democrat party is still digging, as in “What’s the first thing you do when you find yourself in a hole? Stop digging.” Conventional wisdom says primary elections are the provenance of activists, moderates don’t turn out for these events. One could make a case that yesterday’s Connecticut primary was an exception, and I’m open to that argument…after all, anything’s possible. But, I think not. There were too many carpetbaggers involved, there was a lot of Move-On (read: Soros) money flung around, and the election was close. The Left won one last night. But I think the ultimate result will be as the ol’ saw says: “They won the battle but lost the war.” It’s gonna be interesting, indeed.

Oh! I almost forgot. More good news: McKinney lost. I looked all over for a transcript of her “concession” speech, but all I could find was a video. I watched the speech on C-SPAN in real-time and it was simply bizarre. Like the person giving it, I suppose. Good riddance and don’t let the door bang you in the ass on your way to court, Cynthia.

Just an Update...

Had to go out to the base this afternoon to pick up a prescription refill and do a little commissary run. My timing was perfect: two F-16s thundered off the runway in full afterburner just as I entered the turn on the perimeter road. In other words, the birds were about 300 feet in front of me and 50 feet overhead. What a glorious noise! And I’ll bet you a dollar to the proverbial doughnut that those Sidewinders on their wing tips were war-shots, and not “blue” rounds. Just sayin’. Dubya is in Crawford, ya know…

Liberal McCarthyism update. There were no Lefty blogs commenting when I put up that link this morning. Well, that’s changed. Forthwith a sampling… Here’s Kos his-own-self:

Where does this "liberal" (ed: Lanny Davis) go and cry about the mean scary bloggers (which he doesn't bother naming, of course)? The right-wing Wall Street Journal.

You go, Kos! (snicker-chuckle-grin)

And here’s one of my favorite twits, Oliver Willis (links removed):

Lanny Davis becomes another voice of the Dem establishment to attack Democrats in the pages of the Wall Street Journal. Whats the deal with these guys? I'm not a big "netroots" triumphalist (no, Virginia, the internet is not the panacea to all that ails), but the ease with which so much of the Dem establishment jumps into the arms of the neo-fascist WSJ editorial pages is pretty indicative of the downward spiral they've put the Democratic party in through their leadership.

“Like Kryptonite to Stupid,” Indeed.

And Digby, from Hullabaloo:

And, make no mistake, Lanny Davis is a Bush fan, just like Joe. He's a frat brother who, just days after the recount was settled, wrote an opportunistic brown nosing op-ed in the NY Times attesting to Bush's good character. (Talk about rubbing salt in the wound. I'll never forgive him for that.)

I, for one, am thrilled to finally have him pitching for a different team than mine. I hope the WSJ gives him a regular spot in the rotation. He only hurts the ball club.

They don’t like Lanny, now do they? Not much on the basic complaint, though, which was the fact the unbalanced-Left (as opposed to, say, run of the mill Democrats) writes and speaks in an intimidating, coarse, rude, and boorish manner. But Lanny? He deserves what he got, near as I can tell from reading these guys.

Favorites, Good Words, and Really?

The Right’s “Favorite People,” according to right-wing bloggers polled by John Hawkins at Right Wing News. The numbers in the parentheses are the votes received from the polled bloggers, my comments follow in italics. The list:

21) Glenn Reynolds (6) Agree
21) Laura Ingraham (6) Umm…sorta, but not really. She IS cute, though.
21) Sean Hannity (6) NO! Too damned strident for my tastes.
21) Milton Friedman (6) Interesting…an economist? But: agreed.
21) George Allen (6) Nope.
20) Antonin Scalia (7) Yes!
17) Hugh Hewitt (8) Good, but not a favorite
17) Ann Coulter (8) Absolutely frickin’ NOT. Over the top, and not in a good way.
17) Tom Coburn (8) Who?
15) Walter Williams (9) Who, again?
15) Tom Tancredo (9) Interesting ideas, but too jingoistic for my tastes.
14) Victor David Hanson (10) Ab-so-frickin’-lutely!
12) Jonah Goldberg (11) Yes.
12) John Bolton (11) Oh my, Yes.
11) Newt Gingrich (12) I hope he runs for President. He has MY vote.
10) Dick Cheney (13) I’m basically ambivalent about Dick, but I like his style.
9) Rush Limbaugh (15) No.
7) Donald Rumsfeld (16) Yeah! HELL YEAH!
7) Charles Krauthammer (16) Yep.
6) Michelle Malkin (17) She’s prolific and well-spoken. But, once again, over the top.
4) Mark Steyn (19) Yes. There are equal but not better pundits.
4) George W. Bush (19) Only Number Four?
2) Thomas Sowell (20) He’s good. Very, very GOOD.
2) Rudy Giuliani (20) Umm, can I get back to you?
1) Condi Rice (22) I don’t agree with her Number One ranking, but I DO admire and respect her. A lot.

There were “honorable mentions,” too. I find it interesting that my personal top three pundits (Steyn, Hanson, Krauthammer) made the list. But then again, that’s not too surprising, eh?

Here’s a few quotes, taken out of sequence, from an editorial written by Vin Suprynowicz, a guy who thinks as I do:

In Lebanon, Hezbollah is nowhere near ready to surrender. To end a war which has now been dragging on for 58 years, somebody's ass has got to, finally, be whupped.

[…]

Imagine now that America, finally stirred from her lethargy, had fought through that miserable year of 1942, American boys desperately throwing away their lives at places like Wake and Midway as they took on a superior foe while equipped only with inadequate pre-war weapons and supplies.

Now, in 1943, the tables are finally starting to turn. We have finally driven the Japanese from Guadalcanal. Our factories having run at full pace for a year, we now have enough materiel to start slogging our way up the island chains toward Japan ... when some vastly superior coalition of nations steps in and says, "Your response has been disproportionate. They only sank a handful of your ships and killed a few hundred sailors at Pearl Harbor. Look at the pictures of the suffering your bombs and torpedoes are causing. This is barbaric."

Imagine that a three-year cease-fire had been imposed, during which Imperial Japan had time to rest, refit and re-arm. Then, in 1946, when Japan was ready, they attacked us again, unexpectedly, sinking more of our ships in Australia and in San Diego. Back to war we go.

[…]

The defeatists cry that "Nothing can be accomplished by violence; war only breeds more terrorists who will fight forever."

Really? Sixty years later, is America still under attack by the aggrieved suicide-belted grandchildren of the Germans and Japanese whose cities we flattened and burned to rubble in '44 and '45?

No. Because wars usually do resolve these issues -- if one side is allowed to fight to a decisive victory. It's just that the pink petticoat gang shriek hysterically and threaten to faint dead away when confronted with the reality of how real wars really end.

Someone raises a white flag, and promises to fight no more if only you'll give the survivors some food and water and stop burning them out of their holes. Many of the conquered women marry the conqueror's soldiers and move home with them, giving up their native dress and learning to drive Buicks.

As I said, the man writes the way I think. Good on him. Although we appear to be in the minority, there are still a significant number of people left in America with the ability to call a spade a spade. We’re usually shouted down by the “the pink petticoat gang,” however. Or categorized as “unevolved.” God save me from evolving…please.

“Liberal McCarthyism.” You don’t say? No, really? Heh. I remember getting into one of those pointless arguments (I think it was at maha’s place…) where I maintained the Left was much more uncivil than the Right. And I was shouted down. Imagine that.

Lieberman and Deja-Vu All Over Again

I’ve not written about the acrimonious Democratic primary election being held in Connecticut tomorrow, but I’ve been following the story in an off-hand sort of way. Some bloggers, on the other hand, probably should have renamed their blogs along the lines of “IHateJoeLieberman.com” given that their focus has been almost entirely on defeating Senator Lieberman. If you follow the previous link, and if you’ve not been following this brouhaha, you might be a bit perplexed when you read “About That Graphic.” In other words, what graphic? Here’s the story, along with the PhotoShopped graphic originally posted, but since removed, on the Huffington Post. Amazing stuff, especially coming from the all-inclusive and oh-so-sensitive Left. But, I digress.

At any rate, here are the two best articles I’ve read concerning Senator Lieberman, one by Martin Peretz, in today’s WSJ, and the other by Robert Kagan in yesterday’s WaPo. First, Mr. Peretz:

Finally, the contest in Connecticut tomorrow is about two views of the world. Mr. Lamont's view is that there are very few antagonists whom we cannot mollify or conciliate. Let's call this process by its correct name: appeasement. The Greenwich entrepreneur might call it "incentivization." Mr. Lieberman's view is that there are actually enemies who, intoxicated by millennial delusions, are not open to rational and reciprocal arbitration. Why should they be? After all, they inhabit a universe of inevitability, rather like Nazis and communists, but with a religious overgloss. Such armed doctrines, in Mr. Lieberman's view, need to be confronted and overwhelmed.

Almost every Democrat feels obliged to offer fraternal solidarity to Israel, and Mr. Lamont is no exception. But here, too, he blithely assumes that the Palestinians could be easily conciliated. All that it would have needed was President Bush's attention. Mr. Lamont has repeated the accusation, disproved by the "road map" and Ariel Sharon's withdrawal from Gaza, that Mr. Bush paid little or even no attention to the festering conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. And has Mr. Lamont noticed that the Palestinians are now ruled, and by their own choice, by Hamas? Is Hamas, too, just a few good arguments away from peace?

Now Mr. Kagan:

If Lieberman loses, it will not even be because he supported the war. Almost every leading Democratic politician and foreign policymaker, and many a liberal columnist, supported the war. Nor will he lose because he opposes withdrawing troops from Iraq this year. Most top Democratic policymakers agree that early withdrawal would be a mistake. Nor, finally, is it because he has been too chummy with President Bush. Lieberman has offered his share of criticism of the administration's handling of the Iraq war and of many other administration policies.

No, Lieberman's sin is of a different order. Lieberman stands condemned today because he didn't recant. He didn't say he was wrong. He didn't turn on his former allies and condemn them. He didn't claim to be the victim of a hoax. He didn't try to pretend that he never supported the war in the first place. He didn't claim to be led into support for the war by a group of writers and intellectuals whom he can now denounce. He didn't go through a public show of agonizing and phony soul-baring and apologizing in the hopes of resuscitating his reputation, as have some noted "public intellectuals."

Jane Hamsher (she who I didn’t name in one of my links, above) has written that Senator Lieberman is better-liked and has more support among Republicans than Democrats. That may or may not be true, but “better-liked” is the wrong term. Republicans respect Senator Lieberman, and respect is a term that is completely foreign to Ms. Hamsher and other people of her ilk. Hamsher and her Buds prefer to vilify the opposition…after all, Rethuglicans are eeevil, ya know. And Lieberman, because of his support of the war, failure to recant same, and the fact he’s actually said a few good things about Dubya has revealed himself to be unworthy eeeevil.

Tomorrow’s election is the most closely watched primary in recent memory, and the results will be most interesting, no matter who wins. If Lamont wins, it’s a victory for the 21^st century variant of the “peace candidate.” If Lieberman wins, it’s a repudiation of the appease-niks, if I may coin a term. Either way, the country as a whole, and the Right, specifically, wins. A Lieberman victory will send the netroots back to the drawing board; a Lamont victory will turn the Democrat party upside down and will more than likely get us more candidates in the Lamont mold, a la McGovern. And McGovern-clone candidates will be very good news for Republicans, if not in this year’s congressional elections, but most certainly in 2008. Interesting stuff.

I meant to link this yesterday, but forgot. Victor Davis Hanson writes of the parallels between the appeasement of the 1930s and today. Excellent stuff, as usual.

But nevertheless it is still surreal to reread the fantasies of Chamberlain, Daladier, and Pope Pius, or the stump speeches by Charles Lindbergh (“Their [the Jews’] greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio, and our government”) or Father Coughlin (“Many people are beginning to wonder whom they should fear most — the Roosevelt-Churchill combination or the Hitler-Mussolini combination.”) — and it is even more baffling to consider that such men ever had any influence.

Not any longer.

Our present generation too is on the brink of moral insanity. That has never been more evident than in the last three weeks, as the West has proven utterly unable to distinguish between an attacked democracy that seeks to strike back at terrorist combatants, and terrorist aggressors who seek to kill civilians.

Mr. Hanson is right-as-rain, as Mom used to say. It remains to be seen if we’ll actually learn from history or be doomed to repeat it. “Doomed” is the operative word, here. The 21^st century is a helluva lot more dangerous than the previous century. We had the luxury of time to undo the mistakes made in the late ‘30s (although the outcome was far from sure in 1940-41); today’s weapons of mass destruction, and the means to deliver those weapons severely limit our options to undo mistakes. We’ll have to live with those mistakes, if push comes to shove. It won’t be pleasant.

Have a nice day!

Lazy Saturday, Followed by Lazy Sunday

As I noted in the comments to the post immediately below, this is indeed a lazy Sunday. Here it is, nearly 1400 (as I write) and I’ve not updated the blog. To say I’m lacking in motivation would be serious understatement. So…this will be sorta brief.

Interesting. I’m number two in a google search for “"public perception" +bbc +bias.” That search turned up more than a few interesting links. Thanks, Unknown Visitor from the UK!

I dunno if this is a good thing, or not. I still blush, quite visibly so, even at my (relatively) advanced age. The scene: A couple of nights ago. My phone rings, I glance down at the Caller ID screen as I pick up the phone to answer; it’s SN1. I answer the phone thusly:

“So, how was the chick-flick?”

(Brief pause)

“This is Erma.”

Blood rushes to my face and neck in an alarmingly rapid reaction. I know this to be true because I was standing in the bathroom and looked directly into the mirror as I heard Erma speak.

“Uh, Hi, Erm! I thought it was Buck!”

“Unh-hunh”

Back story: SN1 had told me Erm’s birthday was going to be a low-level affair; her “wish list” included dinner out, followed by a quiet evening at home with just the two of them watching a movie of her choosing, and said movie would definitely be a “chick-flick.” And SN1 was under instruction to enjoy it (the movie). I opined to Buck that that just might be beyond the pale…in other words, you can ask me to watch such a movie with you, but demanding I enjoy it is quite another thing altogether. Just my opinion, mind you. I’ll not divulge SN1’s thoughts on the subject. And that’s why I answered the phone as I did.

We both (Erma and I) got a good laugh out of this, Thank God. I told her SN1 had relayed her wish-list to me, to which she replied: “Obviously.”

Lesson-learned: Someone else might just possibly be using someone else’s phone. Just possibly.

I want to move this link from frequent reader Bec from the comments up to the front page, so to speak. While the article is somewhat depressing, it reveals the complexity of the problem we have to deal with in Lebanon. To say Lebanese politics are Byzantine is understating reality by half… As it’s said: “Read the whole thing.” Thanks, Bec.

Update: What the HELL is it with Blogger? This is the second post in a row where the word-wrap function around a photo doesn't work. No meaning is lost, it just looks clunky. And I'm all about aesthetics, ya know.

A VERY Lazy Saturday

Well. Another late night, another sleep-in kinda day. I was complaining to SN1 when he called (“I hate it when this happens… I feel like such a slug!”) until he reminded me that “it’s authorized.” Still, and even…

There are a few Brits who are just as pissed at the Beeb as I am, to wit: Prodicus and Political Crossroads. The new BBC logo Prodicus posted is oh-so-apropos. Interestingly, one of these guys claim the World Service is worse than the domestic news. I’ll buy that, based upon what I’ve seen this week… and ever since the Hezbollah War began, actually.

I watched a bit of the X-Games last evening, specifically the motocross bike “tricks.” Amazing stuff. The guy who took the gold did a double back-flip and pulled it off, sticking a perfect two-wheel landing. A double back flip. In mid-air. On an MX bike, not a bicycle. And he lived. You can see the video at the link above, scroll down and look for “Travis Pastrana double backflips into the history books.” Those guys have ‘em…of the BIG brass variety.

I don’t consider this to be good news. Not at all. Dan Riehl agrees; it’s the same ol’ movie and that movie has been in re-runs waaay too long.

It's being reported that the US and France have reached agreement on a proposed UN resolution for a cease fire. Last time I checked, neither France, nor the US are directly involved in hostilities.

Pardon me if I don't watch it, I believe I've seen this movie before. The UN couldn't stop arms sales into Iraq and there was even more support for those resolutions. All this is is a simple re-hash of previously passed resolutions. If the UN had enforced those in the first place, this war would never have taken place.

Who the hell are the feculent French to be negotiating anything for anybody? Everyone knows their strong suits are back stabbing and surrender. Israel needs to continue this fight until Hizbollah is all but destroyed and the world should be kicking sand in the faces of Syria and Iran as they helplessly watch from the sidelines, hoping they don't get their asses kicked next.

I agree completely. We all knew this was coming, however. Hezbollah’s gruesome PR campaign is bearing fruit. Surprised?

Ace notes that Richard at EU Referendum is insinuating a lot.

EU Referendum insinuates much that isn't remotely proven. There's an awful lot of assuming what's going on in the minds of "rescue workers" that sure doesn't seem obvious to me. A "smirk" is noted that I don't see, and even if I did see it, how the hell do I know precisely what my mouth looks like at every single 1/32nd of a second instant of the day?

But what is undeniable is that there was an awful lot of Hezbollywood corpse choreography going on here, and that "Mr. White T-Shirt," the second-most photographed "rescuer" after "Mr. Green Helmet," has an apartment that seconds as a shrine to Hezbollah.

Agreed. But, yes, there certainly was “an awful lot of Hezbollywood corpse choreography going on.” And that’s an understatement.

Lotsa Rain and Other Stuff

OK…I’m a day late and a dollar short with this. But, in case you just woke up and EIP is the first thing you read (I make a funny, eh?), the Seattle Post-Intelligencer writes that over a third of Americans believe the government had something to do with 9/11. Ah, but it’s not the article itself that’s the attraction here, all the action is taking place in the comments. While it’s possible to read all 300+ comments, it ain’t practical or even desirable…what with fruits and nuts of all stripes drawn to this article like, like, uh…a suitable analogy escapes me. But I agree with this commenter:

Posted by Sub-Odeon at 8/3/06 11:08 p.m.

I wish we had some psychotherapists working this thread. The level of mental health being displayed here is quite poor indeed. Some of you seem truly disturbed; detached either partially or totally from reality.

As with the other conspiracy thread, this one has gone down a long, dark hole to nowhere.

Scary, to think that roughly 30% of the nation might suffer similar mental instability.

Goodnight.

Conspiracy theorists never miss an opportunity. The comments thread features links to nearly every 9/11 wacko web site in existence, extensive quotes from same, Bush-bashing galore, and the odd Bush defender here and there. Bush defenders? Seattle? Ah, well, the article has had national exposure, so I’m sure Dubya’s support ain’t from the locals…

Speaking of waking up… I think it was about 0830 the first time my (internal) alarm went off this morning. It was raining (again), a steady moderate rain, and the sound of the rain on my roof put me right back to sleep for another two-plus hours. We’ve had a lot of rain lately, including a great, roaring thunder storm last night that lasted about an hour and a half and featured some very intense downpours. It looks like we’ve received anywhere from .5” to 1.5” of rain in the last 24 hours, as near as I can tell, but I’m sure this precip map hasn’t been updated to reflect this morning’s rain. (I’ve bookmarked that link, btw. Very cool.) The incredible amount of rain we’ve had lately is very good news, even though the entire eastern half of the state is under a flood watch. Sure has kept the dust down, though. And the rain has kept my car looking pretty spiffy, too, even though I haven’t washed it in ten days or more. The clean car is one of those Eastern New Mexico “you had to be there” kinda things…

Another interesting thing about our weather is the fact we’ve been relatively cool the last few days (mid-to-high 80s), waaay cooler than the East Coast. Who’d a thunk it?

I’ll leave you with links to a couple of good reads. The first is from perennial favorite Charles Krauthammer, writing in the WaPo:

America finds itself at war with radical Islam, a two-churched monster: Sunni al-Qaeda is now being challenged by Shiite Iran for primacy in its epic confrontation with the infidel West. With al-Qaeda in decline, Iran is on the march. It is intervening through proxies throughout the Arab world -- Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine, Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army in Iraq -- to subvert modernizing, Western-oriented Arab governments and bring these territories under Iranian hegemony. Its nuclear ambitions would secure these advances, give it an overwhelming preponderance of power over the Arabs and an absolute deterrent against serious counteractions by the United States, Israel or any other rival.

The moderate pro-Western Arabs understand this very clearly. Which is why Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan immediately came out against Hezbollah and privately urged the U.S. to let Israel take down Hezbollah. They know that Hezbollah is fighting Iran's proxy war not only against Israel but against them and, more generally, against the United States and the West.

Krauthammer’s very critical of the Israeli government, and justifiably so. Olmert simply doesn’t seem up to the task of leading what has become a war-time government. None the less, this op-ed captures the essence of the conflict and why it is so damned important.

The second link is an essay by Victor Davis Hanson, another favorite pundit of mine. Writing in a Real Clear Politics essay, Mr. Hanson steals a riff from Bernard Lewis (What Went Wrong?) that is none the less pertinent and timely. Excerpt:

For about the last half-century, globalization has passed most of the recalcitrant Middle East by -- economically, socially and politically. The result is that there are now few inventions and little science emanating from the Islamic world -- but a great deal of poverty, tyranny and violence. And rather than make the necessary structural changes that might end cultural impediments to progress and modernity -- such as tribalism, patriarchy, gender apartheid, polygamy, autocracy, statism and fundamentalism -- too many Middle Easterners have preferred to embrace the reactionary past and the cult of victimization.

At one time or another, they have welcomed all the bankrupt ideologies that traditionally blame others for prior self-induced failure: fascism, communism, Baathism, Pan-Arabism and, most recently, Islamic fundamentalism.

While Hanson is good, Lewis is better. But that’s simply the difference between an essay and a book. If you haven’t read What Went Wrong?, you might want to.

And now I have to attend to life. I haven’t visited the laundromat in two months (just prior to the Maine trip) and I’m down to vintage tee-shirts and other assorted odds and ends of clothing. Damn. I hate doing laundry…

Just a Few Random Thoughts...

Feeling a bit older today. My daughter-in-law Erma turned 40 yesterday and SN1 turns 40 later on this month. SN1 pointed out to me while we were talking Tuesday night that at some point in the past I had defined “old” as that point in time when one has offspring that are 40 years of age. I’d forgotten about that, but it’s true. That, and having a granddaughter of child-bearing age. I’ll really feel old when I become a great-grandfather. Today I’m feeling a just a wee bit aged, but it’s nothing that’ll drive me to drink.

Miscellaneous Moans, Groans, Bitches, and Complaints Dept:

1. You are more than likely aware, Dear Reader, that I have an affinity for C-SPAN’s Washington Journal. I watch the program whenever my erratic sleep-cycle permits, which is more difficult than it sounds, given the program airs from 0500 MDT until approximately 0800 MDT, points in time that usually find me fast asleep these days. But the oh-dark-thirty program timing ain’t the problem. Oh, no. Here’s what gets my knickers in a twist: Every whacked-out point of view, no matter how ridiculous, gets a polite hearing from both the host and the expert guest of the moment. Every single one. Case in point: During a segment about the Middle East this morning, a caller began reciting talking points from the discredited, shopworn, and tiresome “It’s the Jooos…” school of so-called-thought. “Israel controls American foreign policy,” “Zionist controlled media,” and so on, ad nauseaum. Instead of summarily dismissing this claptrap, said expert-of-the-moment responded as if the caller was making a valid point. We’ve become SO politically correct that every idea, no matter how ludicrous, apparently deserves a hearing. Well, some points of view should be dismissed immediately, as in “What a crock of shit. Do you actually believe what you’re saying?” with accompanying eye-rolls and smirks, followed by “Next call, please.” There once was a point in time in the not so distant past when stupidity was widely recognized as such and was greeted with derision, rather than “Good points, but I don’t agree. Here’s what I think…” Your average whack-o is validated when one treats their arguments with respect rather than dismissing them as what they are: stupid bullshit. We need to get back to that time when shunning was deemed appropriate, rather than “insensitive.” Peer-pressure works.
   
   
2. Pointless encounters with bureaucracy…Did you know you cannot send a bubble-pack envelope as Registered Mail? S’true. I had to mail SN1 a bill of sale, title, and spare keys to the bike, important stuff, in other words, so I wanted to send the package registered mail. Given that I was mailing keys, which have a habit of exiting any container that isn’t padded or otherwise well-insulated, I used a bubble-pack. Well, that was a deal-breaker. Registered Mail? Couldn’t do it. When I protested to the clerk, the USPS Guy-In-Charge came over and said “Yeah, we know it’s stupid, but it’s the rule.” So I sent it Certified Mail. Institutionalized stupidity. You can’t fight it, either.
   
   
3. Have you seen that ad for the analgesic you “apply directly to the forehead?” It’s a 15-second ad, with a visual of a woman with what looks like one of those old roll-on deodorant bottles rolling it back and forth on her forehead while another woman does a voice-over that says only “Head-On! Apply directly to the forehead!” THREE frickin’ times! God, how irritating. I can’t find/hit the mute button fast enough. And I can’t believe I actually linked it. But, it’s just in case you haven’t been irritated enough today…

Speaking of ads… Have you seen any of the new GEICO ads featuring Charo, Little Richard, and Burt Bacharach? Off-the-frickin’-wall, they are! But in a good, no, great sorta way. I just love the “customers” dead-pan expressions while the celebs do their schticks. I don’t know how one keeps a straight face while in the company of Little Richard, but…it can be done. And I agree with the writer at the link above: the Bacharach ad sorta creeped me out, but it does make me smile.

Rue, Britannia

I had the opportunity to watch an hour-long talk by Melanie Phillips on C-SPAN a couple of months ago while she was doing a US tour promoting the release of her book, “Londonistan.” The talk, which was both impressive and scary at the same time, focused on excerpts and anecdotes from Londonistan. Now, thanks to neo, I’ve been made aware Ms. Phillips has a web site. The day before I wrote my screed on the BBC, Ms. Phillips had this to say:

The BBC in particular has turned into the Beirut Broadcasting Corporation, reporting the war almost entirely from the perspective of a Lebanon that is entirely innocent and victimised (as opposed to Sky which is far more even-handed). All this with scarcely a nod at the scores of Israeli dead and hundreds of casualties, or the thousands of Israeli refugees being taken in by families in the south of the country. And this despite the fact that those Israeli casualties are being specifically targeted for death, whereas the Lebanese casualties are the inadvertent victims of attacks directed against Hezbollah terrorists and their infrastructure. The Israelis are leafleting Lebanese civilians in advance of their raids to ensure that as many as possible leave the zone of fire. Unfortunately it doesn’t always work, but the intention is patently there to avoid killing civilians because this is a war of self-defence against a terrorist army. The Hezbollah, by contrast, is firing its rockets tipped with ball-bearings — designed to murder and maim as many as possible —in order specifically to kill Israeli civilians.

[…]

There is not the slightest doubt in my mind that the cumulative effect of the BBC’s poisonous distortions is to incite hatred of Israel in anyone who knows little about the region and is exposed for long enough to its TV and radio bulletins. The impact this is having on the general population is bad enough. The likely effect on those Muslims who are already prone to a hysterical sense of grievance against Israel and the Jews as a result of the propaganda pouring out of the Arab and Muslim world – and who believe that the BBC is to be trusted, heaven help us, as the voice of truth and objectivity – cannot be exaggerated in its potential for fomenting yet further evil. The BBC has now become one of the most potent weapons of the enemies of civilisation. It is the most prominent cultural symbol of a society that has turned upon itself and is hell-bent on committing collective suicide.

But the moral crisis in Britain extends far wider and deeper than the wretched BBC and other media. The surreally distorted response by so many to Israel’s attempt to destroy the would-be purveyors of genocide raises the question of whether Britain will ever again support a just war — because it no longer knows what a just war is, and no longer has the intellectual capacity to know. This is in large measure because moral agency has disappeared altogether from the analysis. Intention, the essence of moral actions, is now tossed aside as of no significance. All that matters are the consequences of an action. This is in accordance with the prevailing amoral consensus which has negated moral agency altogether in order to remove the burden of personal responsibility. What someone intends to do is therefore held to be of no account. All that matters is the consequences of their action.

So the fact that Israel is at war solely to prevent the deaths of innocents is dismissed. All that matters is that the consequences of its actions are that Lebanese civilians are dying. The fact that the Israelis do not intend them to die is irrelevant. Those deaths are deemed to be the equivalent of the deaths caused by Hezbollah. The fact that Hezbollah deliberately sets out to murder innocent Israelis is irrelevant. Thus the only thing that matters is which side has more dead people. The fact that there are more dead Lebanese than dead Israelis settles the matter. The Israelis are in the wrong, are behaving disproportionately, are committing war crimes, are the villains of the piece. The fact that they are actually the victims of unprovoked genocidal aggression is deemed irrelevant. Thus the moral bankruptcy of Britain’s post-modern cultural desert.

That’s a pretty big excerpt, but believe me, there’s a lot more. Ms. Phillips is sufficiently alarmist, to be sure. But she does find hope in the fact the British “man in the street” seems to be more aware of the realities of the current Israel – Hezbollah situation, regardless of the arguments and rhetoric put forth by the intelligentsia and the British media, particularly the BBC. And she is right on point when she identifies Iran as the crux of the problem. I hope a majority of the British people are reading what this woman has to say, and more to the point, I hope they agree with her. Her voice needs to be heard in America, as well.

By the way… there’s much more on her web site than just the one essay I’ve linked. Ms. Phillips’ site is well worth browsing at length.

(Up early or late? You decide...)

No Rest for the Wicked

I was going to give it a rest today, “it” being politics in general and the Hezbollah War specifically. That was until I read Gerard’s essay of July 31st. Here’s a teaser:

After all, who among us is not moved by endless images of dead babies sheathed in blood, body parts hanging by a shred of gristle, with the blank stare of eternity glazing their eyes? What "civilized" person secure in their happy world of languid summer days, mall festivals brimming with second-rate food and third rate crafts, concerts on the lawn with wine and traveling minstrels, could not want this distant tribal slaughter to stop, stop, stop this very instant?

To see the Bloody Shirt, as the Hezbollah in Lebanon drag their children from the rubble and parade them before the world, is to want all replaced with the Rainbow Flag immediately -- no matter who must suffer, no matter how many Jews must die in that distant country where, "After all the Israelis aren't so much Jewish as they are Zionist oppressors who, if they just gave up a little more, would be left in peace. I mean, look at that. Children are dying every minute there. Have you no compassion, sir? Have you, at long last, no compassion?"

Have I no compassion?

That was a fair question the first time it was posed to me, oh, several decades back. I think I had a lot of compassion back then. I must have had oodles. I must have been soaking in it. At least that's what I conclude when I read the things I wrote and remember the things I did. For awhile, every cause on Earth, every injustice from Cape Horn to Belfast called upon my bottomless well of compassion. The church burnings and bombings in the South during the Civil Rights struggle. The napalmed girl on the road in Vietnam. The carnage of apartheid. And, of course, the 50 years of ceaseless exposure of their dead by the Palestinians.

Powerful and highly unusual stuff. You don’t read this sort of op-ed every day, in fact, I’d venture to say you’ve never read anything like it.

No cease-fire. The war continues until every last one of them is DEAD! And it’s NOT what you might think. Oh no, this is better! (via Feisty)

One of the many reasons I like James Lileks is the sheer quality of the man’s writing. Here are a couple of examples from today’s Bleat. On Raymond Burr:

Man, Bunny could be nine feet of stones, no? He made a great heavy, and for those of us who grew up with him as (trademark quick intake of breath) Perry Mason, seeing him in bad-guy roles is always a treat. The Wikipedia entry says he had a relationship with Natalie Wood, which surprised many people, due to his homosexuality. Really? He was gay, not stupid. If she made a move on him, he probably realized he was obliged to respond – if not for himself, than on behalf of all men. If he’d turned her down, and told the story at the gayest party in Gaytown in the state of West Gayginia in the nation of Gaydonia on the planet Gay, everyone would fall silent, and someone would say you turned down Natalie Wood? What is wrong with you?

On Jane Russell:

Jane Russell. Born in Minnesota of North Dakota parents: that’s my gal. In her “Outlaw” period she was the reason the Society for the Incoherent Reactions to Bosoms added the second “Hubba.”

LitCrit is as far removed from my core competencies as astrophysics, which is to say I have neither the formal training nor the professional standing to be considered a “qualified” writing critic. But, when it comes to good writing I’m like Justice Potter Stewart — I know it when I see it. I feel most of us are in that same boat.

So. I was going to launch into a “what IS good writing, anyway?” type of post but got distracted while making my rounds. I’ll save that for another day, just as I’ve saved so many other things “for another day” and have yet to get around to actually doing it. I am SO lacking in discipline…

Was it something I said? Or didn’t say? As of 0930 this morning I’ve had exactly two visits. I know Blogger isn’t down coz I’ve made my usual rounds and more than a few of my daily reads are hosted on Blogger. I’m hurt. Hurt, I tell you!

/attempt at sardonic wit

It Is to Worry

The knives are coming out… Bret Stephens, in today’s Wall Street Journal:

Israel is losing this war.

This is not to say that it will lose the war, or that the war was unwinnable to start with. But if it keeps going as it is, Israel is headed for the greatest military humiliation in its history. During the Yom Kippur War of 1973, Israelis were stunned by their early reversals against Egypt and Syria, yet they eked out a victory over these two powerfully armed, Soviet-backed adversaries in 20 days. The conflict with Hezbollah--a 15,000-man militia chiefly armed with World War II-era Katyusha rockets--is now in its 21st day. So far, Israel has nothing to show for its efforts: no enemy territory gained, no enemy leaders killed, no abatement in the missile barrage that has sent a million Israelis from their homes and workplaces.

[…]

Harder to understand is a military and political strategy that mistakenly assumes that Israel can take its time against Hezbollah. It cannot. Israel does not supply itself with precision-guided bombs; it does not provide its own cover at the U.N. Security Council; it does not have 130,000 troops at risk in Iraq of an uprising by Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army. It should be immensely worrying to Israel's leaders that Iraq's Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani is calling for an immediate cease-fire. Ayatollah Sistani--unlike, say, Kofi Annan--is the sort of man who can get George W. Bush's ear.

And, a “key Republican” “breaks with Bush” on the Mid-East.

"The sickening slaughter on both sides must end and it must end now," Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel said. "President Bush must call for an immediate cease-fire. This madness must stop."

The Bush administration has refused to call for Israel to halt its attacks on southern Lebanon, joining Israel in insisting that Hezbollah fighters must be pushed back from the Israeli-Lebanese border.

Note the language used by CNN in the supporting paragraph immediately following Hagel’s quote. I use scare quotes on purpose; Hagel’s position seems to be more about playing the opinion polls than sticking to principles. But then again, he is a politician, one with presidential aspirations, at that… Silly me.

Nearly every op-ed I’ve read this morning cites Sunday’s bombing incident at Qana and the loss of civilian life as the prime mover in the increasing calls for “an end to the violence.” David Horowitz, writing in FrontPageMag, has the following comments (among others) on this phenomenon:

The appeasers of Islamofascism, who have been calling for a ceasefire and bewailing “civilian casualties” in Lebanon and Gaza, will succeed. Hezbollah will agree to turn over its arms to the pro-Hezbollah Lebanese army. The pro-Hezbollah UN will establish a security zone on Lebanon’s southern border to keep the area clear of non-government militias, of which the Hezbollah “militia” is the only one. The credulous in the Western camp will greet this as a victory for the peacemakers. But exactly the opposite will be the case.

According to a recent poll in Lebanon eighty percent of the Lebanese Arabs support Hezbollah. In other words, just as Hamas, which was created by the same Muslim Brotherhood that spawned al-Qaeda, is now the Palestinian government, so Hezbollah will emerge as the government of Lebanon. The Lebanese army will become the new Hezbollah “militia.” Only it won’t be a militia. It will be the terrorist army of a sovereign power, with the right to openly negotiate its arms deals with Syria and Iran. The next battle with Iran, in other words, will be World War III.

Horowitz gets a bit hyperbolic in his rhetoric, but his points are well-taken, in general. The bottom line is Hezbollah and its sponsors are fighting this war with the gloves off. They are expertly exploiting the weaknesses of the Western world, chief among them being our concern for innocent non-combatants. They are winning the propaganda war, that much is obvious.

Related: In an op-ed for Examiner.com, “Edward Morrissey: This is the soft nihilism of low expectations”:

Those who argue that Israel has occasionally violated the Geneva Conventions in its attacks casually ignore the blatant violations of Hezbollah, whose combatants wear no uniform, deliberately hide in civilian populations and fire weapons from residential areas. Hezbollah conducts none of its operations within the rules of war — and yet world leaders and the media never mention it.

Why? Because no one expects terrorists to follow the rules. This is the soft nihilism of low expectations.

This creates an impossible double standard for Israel and political victories. In order to defeat terrorists, Israel will have to engage them when they attack, wherever that happens to be. In their effort to zealously apply the rules of war to only one side, the global community doesn’t act to reduce the tragedies of civilian casualties, it increases them by encouraging Hezbollah’s tactics. The terrorists counted on precisely this response, which dictates their tactics and strategy to this moment.

Writing at his blog, Mr. Morrissey adds the following to his op-ed:

Quite frankly, this double standard will eventually destroy Western civilization by rendering us incapable of defeating our enemies. Those nations wishing to destroy us have watched carefully over the last several years while our own people obsess -- and I do not think that too strong a term -- over anomalies like Abu Ghraib and Qana, and they note the lack of outrage over the fact that their proxies have deliberately launched 2,500 missiles at Israeli civilians. No leaders or media make a peep about the butchery of our enemies as displayed in the torture and beheading of our troops, except to somehow make it our fault for fighting terrorism in the first place.

What lessons do you think Iran, Syria, and the rest of the terrorists draw from these observations?

A rhetorical question, that. We know the answer; at least some of us know and understand, but apparently those of us who do understand are in the minority. Others simply don’t get it, and we see evidence of that fact each and every day. Warning: that last link takes you to a WaPo op-ed by Jimmy Carter.

I worry. My God, how I worry.