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Chanting, "Stop the killing, stop the crime, Israel out of Palestine," up to 2,000 protesters waved Palestinian flags and posters reading "Free Palestine, no war on Iraq" on the grassy Ellipse in front of the White House.
As compared to the recent pro-Israel rally, which drew 100,000. So these objectively terror-supporting nitwits drew about two percent of what the crowd supporting the survival of the only free state in the middle east did. Sounds about right.
UPDATE: WaPo reports that police estimates of the crowd range from 35,000 to 50,000. If accurate, that's disappointing.
Democrats said on Saturday they were launching a national voter registration and education drive to encourage minorities, young people, the disabled and others to participate in upcoming elections.
"Three out of every 10 Americans who are eligible to vote are not registered," Rep. Charles Rangel of New York said in the weekly Democratic radio address. "The registration percentages are significantly lower among minority groups, young Americans, persons with disabilities and other underserved communities."
"Underserved communities?" What the hell does that mean? Groups of people who haven't sunk their greedy snouts deep enough into the piles of Other People's Money the Demos like to stuff their voter-boodle bags with? If so, we need a hell of a lot more "underserved communities," not fewer of them.
President Bush said on Saturday Israel must continue its withdrawal from Palestinian cities, stopping short of repeating earlier demands for an immediate end to its weeks-long West Bank offensive.
Could it be because all the diplomatic yelling and screaming about "immediate withdrawal" that accompanied Secretary Powell's leisurely amble through the Middle East was just so much smoke generated by the whirring ropes snaring the various dopes?
In a move that could help gays and lesbians gain the right to marry, Gov. Gray Davis confirmed Friday that he has formed a task force to examine whether the landmark civil union law in Vermont could work in California.
Funny how this turns up on Grayout Davis's agenda just prior to a tough election, isn't it?
If Davis wins, I expect that will be the last anybody hears of this notion, at least from "I Kept The Lights On (at an extra cost of billions) Davis.
In a strong message days before a summit of U.S. churchmen on a sex abuse scandal, Pope John Paul II said Saturday that priests must live celibate lives and avoid scandalous behavior. Bishops, he said, must investigate such behavior and take action to end it.
In comments to Nigerian bishops, the pope didn't directly refer to the scandal rocking the American Church. But the timing of his message appeared to be a clear signal of his position going into the summit and a firm policy statement that he doesn't tolerate the type of behavior shown by some American churchmen.
In terms of what is actually at issue in the United States (and now elsewhere in the world) this is a relatively meaningless, even defiant statement.
Nobody, especially nobody in the Church, is trying to pretend that child sexual molestation, of whatever sexual flavor, should be tolerated. The question is, what does the Churce intend to do to prevent or punish such behavior? Will the churce change its celibacy policy for priests? The answer is now clear: A defiant "No!"
Will the Church open its records to public agencies, or otherwise cease covering up such acts, even to the point of obstruction of justice? The Pope didn't address that question. My guess is that the Holy See regards all deeds - and misdeeds - by priests to be matters of Church, not public, interest. They will render unto Caesar what they feel is Caesar's - but I expect erring priests will still be considered the province of God. The Church is a world-wide organization. If they have to kiss off the American branch until this blows over, they will.
In case you weren't aware, Israel is indeed a democracy, but it is a liberal socialist democracy. Heaven forfend that those living on the dole should be forced to actually work for their government stipend.
The bell has rung for Round 2 of the fight between Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Pentagon brass. Rummy was decked last summer when the military services blasted his reform plans. Now, boosted by the antiterrorism war, he is set to cut pricey weapons like the Air Force's F-22. Still, the brass is confident of victory and will tell lawmakers that saving jobs is more important than bowing to Rumsfeld's rock-star status.
If this is true, those generals should all be fired. Their job is not to "save jobs" or otherwise help grease the pork-troughs that comprise the congressional vote-bribery scams. Their job is to defend the United States in the most efficient, effective manner possible. If they can't understand that, then it's time for them to go. The United States is at war. The time for this sort of business as usual, "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours" bullshit is well past.
The man named days ago to head the air force in the wake of a failed coup died in a helicopter crash along with three other generals, the military said Saturday, adding to the turmoil in Venezuela's armed forces.
Anybody who thinks this is either a coincidence or an accident probably also believes that the US anthrax attacks are the work of Christian right-wing anti-abortionists, or that the Bush administration allowed the WTC attacks to occur in order to enrich their corporate buddies.
The only real mystery here is which side - Chavez, or the people who tried to oust him earlier - arranged for the "crash."
Tony Woodlief has more than a few things to say about airports, airline travel, and security:
But last fall's tragedy has transformed this cheap grace into a scourge, and we each willingly accept it across the back because in our heart of hearts we want every male airplane passenger of seeming Middle Eastern descent to get a comprehensive rectal exam before boarding our plane. And this, of course, is one of the New Sins, right up there with believing that most of the homeless are drunks, and that Monica Lewinsky's parents raised a slut.
After failing to ban soda, candy and fatty fare from California public schools last year, the junk food fighters are back this legislative session with a new approach. A bill pending in the state Senate would tax all soda and high-sugar soft drinks sold in the state at about 2 cents a container and would use some of the $342 million collected each year to pay school districts to stop selling soda on campus.
These nanny-ninny busybodies who are absolutely certain the government can and should run every aspect of your life - right down to the food you put in your mouth - will never stop. The only thing one can do is keep on stomping their idiot proposals like cockroaches, and hope they eventually find some other cause - desert studies, perhaps - in Alaska.
''Elements in our society who are very opposed to the church's stand on life, the church's stand on family, the church's stand on education ... see in this an opportunity to destroy the credibility of the church,'' he said. ''And they're really working on it - and somewhat successfully.''
There's some truth to this. But there's more truth to the proposition that the Church itself is doing the most damage to its own credibility.
The JPOST's Washington Whispers column is often a source for juicy tidbits like this one:
The PLO is still homeless, a week after The Jerusalem Post reported it had been evicted from its office here. Several management companies have rejected its bid for new space.
Hmm. I wonder why? Worried about the rent? Or just accidental explosive damage to the property?
CNN State Department correspondent Andrea Koppel - Ted Koppel's daughter - is denying an American businessman's accusation that she made blatant anti-Israel statements at a conference in Tel Aviv. In an e-mail circulated yesterday, David J. Blumberg, head of New York-based Blumberg Capital Management, accused Koppel of telling him and others at a venture-capital conference that Israeli soldiers had committed "slaughter" against Palestinian civilians and that the current violence would lead to the death of the state of Israel, reports PAGE SIX's Ian Spiegelman. Blumberg claims that when an Israeli friend of his told Koppel, "We could lose our lives, or we could lose our country," she coldly replied, "Yes, you will lose your country." Blumberg asked Koppel if he had heard her correctly. "Yes," he recalls her saying. "I believe we are now seeing the beginning of the end of Israel." Blumberg relates that when the Israeli complained that CNN had compared the accidental killings of Palestinian civilians by Israeli soldiers to the murder of Israelis by suicide bombers, Koppel shot back, "So when Israeli soldiers slaughter civilians in Jenin, that is not equivalent?" Asked what proof she had of any massacre in the besieged West Bank town, Koppel allegedly said, "Palestinians told us about the slaughter."
In case you were wondering why Andrea Koppel comes across on the tube as very pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel. Blumberg says he has corroboration, too.
Editor -- My business is failing. Revenues are down. My customers are deserting me. What should I do? I've got it! I'll cut business hours. Or maybe I should raise prices. Stupid ideas? Yes. But aren't we hearing some of these same gems from the BART board (for dealing with a budget crisis caused by falling revenues)? SAUL D. FELDMAN San Francisco
Yes, Saul D. Feldman, but most businesses can't guarantee the bulk of their income through taxes ultimately gathered at the point of a government gun. If McDonald's could riffle through the wallets of nine out of ten of their customers and extract a buck before they even entered the door and actually bought anything, they'd probably use the same tactics.
Repeat after me: "A government 'business' isn't a real business. It only plays one at election time."
Editor -- Muni's proposal to spend $125,000 on an ad campaign is laughable. To think the people of San Francisco -- who have to wait endlessly for buses that are in varying stages of decrepitude -- would take kindly to this campaign shows just how out of touch Muni management really is. Commuters are too intelligent and unforgiving to buy into the drivel and nonsense that Muni is peddling. STEPHEN DOWNING Atherton
Your argument isn't convincing, Stephen Downing. By allowing the city to refuse to permit private competition to the gigantic public transit boondoggles, commuters have been stupid and forgiving enough they've bought into the drivel and nonsense Muni has peddled for the past forty years - not to mention the same stuff coming from the public transit advocates themselves.
Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al Faisal traveled to Moscow April 18 to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov. The three talked about Iraq, the recent Saudi-proposed Israeli-Palestinian peace plan and Moscow's involvement in the Middle East.
Saudi Arabia is seeking Russia's help to counter the U.S. agenda in the Middle East. Frightened by the potential consequences of a U.S. strike against Iraq, Riyadh hopes to reverse Moscow's waning support of Baghdad and revive its involvement in Middle East politics. But the Saudi government won't get much more than rhetoric from Russia, and this will leave it looking for allies among the same rogue nations already targeted by Washington.
The Saudi government is now turning to global powers like Russia and the European Union to offset U.S. hegemony. In addition to Faisal's trip to Moscow, Riyadh has also called on the EU to do more to end the violence in Israel. But this second attempt at coalition building is also doomed to fail.
One of the long-standing tactics used by smaller nations and regional powers, honed to a fine edge during the long decades of the Cold War, was to play the great powers off against each other, in particular the two super-powers, the USSR and the US. One of the slowest things to sink in around the globe is that such games are no longer possible. There are regional powers, nominal great powers, and maybe even a super power or two. But there is only one hyper-power, the United States, and there is nothing that powers like Saudi Arabia can offer that makes it worth a lesser power's time to undertake the risk of opposing American might.
If the Princes actually do align themselves with Iran and Irag, (the sub rosa threat du jour), they will only be fitting themselves into the slot already marked for them by George Bush's administration. Only the naive believe that the increasing marginalization of Islamic powers who support terror is an accident. The foundations of Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia's downfall were laid when George Bush met with Vladimir Putin and put the Cold War to rest, in favor of the hyper-power's promise to restore the fallen foe to super-power status.
Remember: when America wins, it raises its former enemies to even higher estates than they enjoyed before the battle began. Someday the Islamic world will be very glad that America destroyed their Islamofascist minorities and toppled the worst of their brutal tyrannies. Until then, it's the former Soviet Union's turn, and they won't risk that for the already marked-for-the-grave Saudi regime.
As for the EUniks, in this fight, they're irrelevant.
More overheated, baseless crap from yet another pair of hysterical Brit "journalists" (yes, those are sneer quotes):
Israel dispatched its army into Jenin refugee camp on 2 April on a mission to root out the "terrorist infrastructure". There is no doubt that the camp's warren of dwellings, home to around 13,000 people, was "a stronghold of Hamas, Fatah and Islamic Jihad – groups which have dispatched numerous suicide bombers to commit murder in Israel."
Look at this ridiculous paragraph. One the one hand, these scribblers concede that Jenin was " a stronghold of Hamas, Fatah and Islamic Jihad – groups which have dispatched numerous suicide bombers to commit murder in Israel." Yet in the very same paragraph, they enclose "terrorist infrastructure" in sneer quotes. So which is it, guys? Is a stronghold that dispatches suicide bombers to murder Jews a terrorist infrastructure, or not?
As long as the American penal system winks at apparently unfettered homosexual rape (with the concomitant threat of a virtual death sentence if exposed to HIV) then the people at Amnesty International who excoriate the U.S. for human rights abuses will be absolutlely correct.
Okay, so you're in your seventies, barricaded in a stinking, electricity-free, plumbing-free, half-collapsed "headquarters," half your bodyguard is dead, almost all your most effective subordinates are under arrest, and now Senators Want Economic, Travel Sanctions Against Arafat. You're not having just a bad day, you're having a bad life.
Couldn't happen to a more deserving guy. (Next? Death to Hamas!)
Without much fanfare, WaPo lays out the cold hard truth about the Palestinian invasion of the Church of the Nativity at Bethlehem:
Although each side has accused the other of desecrating the church and acting out of desperation, the standoff at the Church of the Nativity did not happen by accident. The decision by the Palestinians to seek refuge there was part of a calculated strategy, planned days in advance, to map out an escape route from their street battles with the advancing Israeli army, according to interviews with more than a dozen Palestinian officials and church leaders in Bethlehem and Jerusalem. "It was planned this way," said the Rev. Majdi Siryani, a Roman Catholic priest in Bethlehem who speaks daily with the monks and priests inside the Church of the Nativity and counts several of the armed Palestinian as his parishioners. "Everybody knew that if there was trouble, they would go to the church. They knew the Israelis would not storm the holy site. They'd be insane to do it."
Keep this in mind for the next person who wails to you about the terrible Israeli assault on "the cradle of Christianity."
Remember when all those reports of damage to the White House offices by departing Clintonistas were "debunked" by other Clintonistas like the happy gang at Salon? Well, they were lying. Is anybody surprised?
Benjamin Netanyahu may be anathema to those who advocate that Israel open itself naked to the Arab world in a drawn-out act of suicide, but he speaks hard truths that are difficult to ignore:
But those who practice terrorism do not believe in these things. In fact, they believe in the very opposite. For them, the cause they espouse is so all-encompassing, so total, that it justifies anything. It allows them to break any law, discard any moral code and trample all human rights in the dust. In their eyes, it permits them to indiscriminately murder and maim innocent men and women, and lets them blow up a bus full of children. There is a name for the doctrine that produces this evil. It is called totalitarianism. Indeed, the root cause of terrorism is totalitarianism. Only a totalitarian regime, by systemically brainwashing its subjects, can indoctrinate hordes of killers to suspend all moral constraints for the sake of a twisted cause.
Bibi will be Israel's next Prime Minister. The prospect doesn't bother me at all.
Pretty much a fair description of almost all the latter-generation Kennedys - not to mention the Grand Old Lardbucket himself (speaking of hogs). (Link courtesy InstaPundit).
Jordanian Foreign Minister Marwan Muasher visited Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat in the latter's besieged compound in Ramallah yesterday. Muasher was accompanied by Arafat's personal physician, Dr. Ashraf al-Kurdi, who gave the Palestinian leader a clean bill of health.
"The Israeli siege has not undermined the determination of President Arafat and the heroic Palestinian people," Muasher said in Amman. Muasher said many Arabs were disappointed by the U.S. administration's inability to secure a complete Israeli withdrawal from occupied West Bank areas, despite its insistence that Jerusalem order such a step. "When the U.S. demands an immediate Israeli withdrawal and Israel doesn't respond, this has dangerous ramifications for the future," Muasher said.
And what might those ramifications be? It seems to me there are only two: first, that the United States could have forced Israel to respond, but chose not to do so, despite its public rhetoric - which means the Arab world can no longer trust that the US supports it and, in fact, may have become its enemy. The second is that the US could not force Israel to respond, which means that the Arabs must now deal with the fact that the greatest power in their region, one with full nuclear capability, has no restaints upon it at all.
Yes, that sounds dangerous. To the Palestinians and Arabs most of all. (Link courtesy VodkaPundit).
Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs links to a truly amazing article by one of the Palestinian fighters who escaped from Jenin. Evidently the miracle of Jenin is not that a few blocks were devastated. It is that the whole place wasn't leveled.
California state legislators are making their annual pilgrimage to the nation's capital this week, a trip with added importance this year because of the $17.5 billion budget deficit looming in Sacramento. ``We're here to beg,'' said Assembly Speaker Herb Wesson, D-Los Angeles.
California is the largest, richest state in the Union. Yet it regularly votes for federal representatives who strip it of tax monies that it somehow never sees the full benefits of. Sort of like an individual taxpayer in the top brackets, eh? Oh, well. "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." I hear that's quite a popular slogan in Berkeley and elsewhere. Why the whining now?
But Putin took the unusual step of seeking to distance himself from his own government's failures. And to do so, he resorted to an old trick from Russia's political playbook: the "good czar, bad boyars" routine. Problems aren't the leader's fault. They are the fault of the officials--in medieval times, the unruly nobles known as boyars; in contemporary Russia, bureaucrats and administrators--who fail to carry out his orders.
Well, yes. Russia inherited one of the most massive, inefficient bureaucracies in the history of the world. The inability of that bureaucracy to create or run a command-style economy was the principle reason the USSR could not respond to the US challenge, and collapsed instead. What Russia is trying to extricate itself from now is the legacy of all run-amok socialist systems. At the time of its collapse, the Soviet Union had a million bureaucrats at the federal level. Luckily, the United States has shown more restraint, and only has a federal core bureaucracy twice as large as the Soviets - around two million. Of course, that's only fair: the US has twice the population of Russia.
I would have gone to see the new Star Wars anyway. But now I'll do it twice, in hopes that Natalie Portman has a gross points profit participation deal.
Editor -- It's bad enough that cops harass our day-laborer neighbors ("S.F. cops crack down on day laborers," April 16). But to do this in the name of traffic safety is outrageous. I live a block from the corner of Bryant and Cesar Chavez. Our neighborhood has been trying for years to calm traffic on Cesar Chavez only to be blown off by the Department of Parking and Traffic and the police. I've never seen a cop stop the red-light runners who breeze through at every signal change, or the turning motorists who aim for crossing pedestrians. Our pleas for longer signals and walk lights at crossings near elementary schools have been answered with a cavalier, "Sometime in 2003." The rationalization behind this sweep of laborers is a lie. I see cops on motorcycles and in vans actually creating traffic hazards -- blocking crosswalks, turning at high speeds without signals and clogging intersections. Call it gentrification, call it ethnic cleansing, call it any honest name. But don't call it traffic safety. FRAN TAYLOR San Francisco
Fran Taylor, I was sort of with you right up until the moment the lid popped off your cranial pressure cooker and you threw "ethnic cleansing" into the multicultural stew that is your brain. Yes, you're absolutely right: Police enforcement of traffic laws to control large groups of illegal aliens milling about on a public street is just like the concentration camps and forced relocations of hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children in the Balkans. Why, Cesar Chavez Blvd. must be running with blood (instead of the puddles of urine that are usually in the vicinity). Thanks for alerting us to this threat against the freedoms and rights of illegal aliens in the United States. (What? They have no right to be here in the first place? Never mind....)
It's wall-to-wall on the cable news channels. The dreadful Greta is already rolling out the big guns. Geraldo has his oar half-buried in the mess as well. Gerry Spence and Johnny Cochran are pontificating on MSNBC. But for the life of me, I can't figure out why this is so much more important than, oh, this.
GORDON BROWN'S tax credits are turning Britain into a nation of benefit claimants, with nearly one in three adults soon to receive state handouts of one kind or another.
I wonder what the comparable number is here in the United States? I know that somewhere around fifty million Americans receive Social Security payments. But that is only the largest federal government payments program. There are hundreds of others. The individual states also have benefits programs of their own. All in all, I'd be surprised if the number of Americans receiving state or federal benefits of one kind or another doesn't at least approach Britain's "one in three." Or exceed it.
Reader Roscoe Shrewsbury writes with an interesting thought:
Let's not feel too superior to the trepidatious Europeans for half-consciously appeasing the simmering, festering Muslims in their midst while pretending that such actions are dictated by none but the highest motives. The U.S. has demonstrated exactly the same behavior toward its African-Americans and Hispanics for the last thirty years.
I don't know if I buy "exactly the same," but the comparison is just a little bit too close for comfort.
Israel Defense Forces arrested the head of the military wing of Hamas on Thursday, the IDF and Palestinian security forces said. The man, Hossam Atef Ali Badran, "was responsible for all the most difficult attacks carried out against Israel by the Hamas during the past few years," resulting in "more than 100 Israelis killed," the IDF said in a written statement. Among the attacks, it said, were "Sbarro [pizzeria in Jerusalem], Haifa bus and restaurant bombing, the Park Hotel in Netanya and the attack on the bus outside Emenual in the West Bank."
Now that Secretary Powell has left the Middle East - and left Yasser Arafat effectively exiled to a small office building without electricity, surrounded by armed guards - we can take another look at the supposed "cave in" by President Bush to the anti-Isreal forces of terror and aggression.
The trick of it is that you have to ignore everything that Bush said, and look only at what he did. It's fashionable to presume there are "factions" in the Bush cabinet who run around doing things on their own hook, in rebellion against the Big Boss. But the Big Boss is famous for not tolerating that sort of thing, and you may rest assured that a career military officer like Colin Powell is not cavalierly flouting his commander in chief's orders. In other words, everything said or done by Secretary Powell was said and done with the full agreement of President Bush. How do I know? Powell is still Secretary Powell, and he wouldn't be if it were otherwise.
There was a lot of talk, and here is the upshot of it all: The IDF continued its raids throughout the West Bank until they were satisfied they had pacified each target to their satisfaction. The raid didn't slacken when Powell (after an extended tour) finally arrived in Israel, nor have they stopped now. And those raids have been a success. Jenin, the physical heart of the bomber brigades, has been destroyed - in places, literally. Part of the destruction was the Palestinian's direct doing, with their booby-trap tactics. Another was an indirect effect of the Palestinians mining the streets - which was stupid, given that any sort of understanding of urban tank tactics dictates that tanks avoid the streets in such situations, and make their own passages through buildings adjacent to the streets. Unless it was diabolically clever, of course, and the Palestinian tacticians knew that was what the IDF would be forced to do, thereby creating scenes of devastation for a later propaganda victory.
But I doubt the PA thugs and murderers, Arafat included, expected what has happened to actually occur. I think Arafat believed that world opinion, or Arab opinion, or his successful human sacrifice attacks, would end up deterring the Israelis, or forcing the United States to pull the IDF back. None of that came to pass. Arafat himself has been humiliated, defanged, and effectively imprisoned. He is exposed to all of Palestine as being incapable of resisting Israeli force, despite all his brave claims otherwise. Now he's just another Osama bin Laden, scurrying like a rodent from the big bad western cat. Far worse, though, is that Israel is indeed doing what it set out to do: Destroy the terrorist infrastructure. They've captured arms caches, destroyed safe houses and bolt holes, killed hundreds of low-level fighters, and captured dozens of mid and high level leaders, including those at the very top. When Arafat is finally released from his incarceration (if he ever is) he'll come out into the sun, blinking like a mole, to find he has no organization left - except for shattered remnants, half of whom will no doubt, in the grand Arab tradition, be trying their damndest to murder him.
Say what you will about George Bush, but this outcome was no accident. In another month, the middle east will be a much quieter place, as the various governments contemplate in horrified awe what the "Zionist entity" is capable of by itself - and what the capabilities of its ally, the United States, must be on a far grander scale. George Bush, whether the world quite realizes it yet or not, has carefully planned and carried out the destruction of the Palestinian Authority and its terror brigades, and managed to do so without triggering anything more threatening from the Arab states than a few fundraisers.
As a former Bush opponent, Paul Begala, used to say: "Pretty cool."
UPDATE: Fred Pruitt at Rantburg has some things to say about my analysis.
A small plane with only the pilot on board crashed into the 25th floor of a landmark skyscraper today, killing at least two people and injuring at least 30. The interior minister said the crash appeared to be an accident.
Given that
On March 27, the State Department issued a warning for American citizens traveling in four Italian cities, including Milan, during Easter. The warning said the possible threat was based on information about "extremist groups." The announcement did not identify the groups or elaborate on the nature of the threats, but it warned that "these groups do not distinguish between official and civilian targets." A U.S. official said the warning was based on very specific information that was "developed in very close cooperation with Italian authorities."
this seems like an awfully iffy coincidence, but I'm willing to wait until they release the identity of the "Swiss citizen who lived in Ticino." If this guy turns out to be a devoutly Islamic Swiss citizen named Muhammed Mohamet, I may not buy the accident theory quite so easily.
Matt Welch and Ken Layne break the news of their involvment (conspiracy seems a bit strong, eh?) in the plans to launch a new LA broadsheet. Best of luck to you guys! And, uh, if you're looking for a very foreign correspondent from San Francisco ...
Croooow Blogger Henry Hanks writes me with news that noted wack-job conspiracy theorist and Congressninny Cynthia McKinney evidently has more supporters than you might think. Hmm. Is CAIR doing the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's polls now?
Editor -- The article, "Venezuelan turnabout leaves U.S. in lurch" (April 16), said President Hugo Chavez is "a populist strongman with leftist leanings. " These terms are loaded. To be consistent, newspaper writers should refer to President Bush as "an elitist oilman with far-right leanings who became president by political manipulation." I doubt that we will ever see such candor by U.S. newspapers. DONALD SCOTT Calistoga
Loaded, Donald Scott? Not as loaded as the truth, which is that Hugo Chavez is a self-admitted communist. Regarding your description of Bush, I expect you'd describe anybody to the starboard of Norman Thomas as being "far right," and otherwise, you are just still steamed that your guy's political manipulation didn't win out. By the way: What's in the water up in your neighborhood?
As for calling a commie a commie, yeah, I think you're correct: there'll be a wind-chill factor of forty below in hell before most newspapers, especially in San Fracisco, name that particular digging implement for the digging implement it is.
Editor -- Regarding the article, "Muni says grin, bear it" (April 15): I really don't know what there is to smile about. My daily trips on the J-Church line rather make me cry. The drivers don't even stop at all the stations. They just drive by and then you have to wait 20 minutes for the next one. In the meantime, 10 trains pass in the opposite direction. It's all computers, they say. I wonder. INGRID EGGERS San Francisco
No, Ingrid Eggers, it's not "all computers." It's all "public transit," which grows ever dirtier, more crowded, more expensive, more erratic, less safe, and doesn't give a damn about you because it doesn't have to, since it's yet another fine service of your fine government. Now shut up and enjoy it, because you're helping to save the planet, or save the children. Or something.
Pundit Ex Machina's Sean Kirby offers an interesting analysis of the implications of the United Nations Human Rights Commission's recent endorsement of terrorist violence, in view of the Bush Doctrine.
Senate Republicans said Wednesday that allowing oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge was a matter of national security, but Democrats vowed to defeat the Bush administration proposal, saying it would ruin an unspoiled wilderness for little gain.
Here's a picture, courtesy of Jonah Goldberg, of the "unspoiled wilderness."
I don't know about you, but I wouldn't be in any hurry to move to these pristine, gorgeous vistas - even if I were a caribou.
There is absolutely nothing in this article to support the inflammatory headline. Evidently a lust to vilify Israel has caused the Brit (and Euro) commentariat to lose its collective mind. Certainly its sense of decency vanished long ago.
The gun shop owner, who gave his name only as Daood, said one Afghan also was wounded. Another gunsmith, Mohammed Saleem, said the Americans left the scene quickly after the attack. He praised them for not opening fire on a street filled with children who had just left school for the day. "If they had been Russians, maybe they would have started shooting," Saleem said. "We were surprised that the Americans were armed but didn't shoot."
Remember this the next time some leftist peacenik nitwit starts blabbering about the brutal American invaders grinding helpless Afghans unders their jackboots for the hell of it.
These have to be the best maintained choppers in the world. Now imagine what's happening with the Apaches whirring about the mountains of Afghanistan, and you'll be a little less surprised when one of them crashes due to equipment malfunction.
Ron Brown, an assistant football coach at the University of Nebraska, was told in January his candidacy for head coach at Stanford would not move forward in part because of his staunch Christian convictions, according to a published report. Brown has been outspoken in the past about his views on homosexuality, calling it "dead wrong."
Stanford officials reacted quickly to deny the story, with athletic director Ted Leland and Glenn both writing letters to the editor -- Glenn saying his comments were taken out of context, Leland writing, "Religion played no role in our decision-making process."
Smarmy little backtracking weasels. I see absolutely no problem denying Brown a promotion on the grounds of his beliefs. And if Brown were the athletic director of a Christian school, I'd have no problem with him refusing to hand his football team over to an avowed atheist.
Repeat after me: You are free to believe anything you wish. Your beliefs, however, no matter how sincerely held, do not imply that anybody else should have to honor them, believe them, agree with them, reward them, or ignore them.
But an analysis of Gallup polls over the past decade and a half suggests that conservatives and Republicans in this country have persistently provided at least more verbal support for Israel than have Democrats and liberals.
The answer is simple: Republicans, conservatives (and libertarians) tend to support states that are actually free, rather than tyrannies like Palestine, Sandanista Nicaraugua, Cuba, and other liberal favorites that only claim to be free. Why so? R.W. Emerson, meaning to be derogatory, said:
There is always a certain meanness in the argument of conservatism, joined with a certain superiority in its fact.
That meanness comes from pointing out the real to the dreamer, who wishes to have nothing to do with such low, sludgy, inconvenient things as facts. Thus a liberal can value a "national health care system" that is so broke - and broken - it can only deliver aspirins (Cuba) over a "dehumanizing, capitalist" healthcare system that offers the highest standard of care in the world (the United States).
In San Francisco, the local newsrag's idea of a rousing, well-balanced liberal-conservative debate is opposing Norman Thomas with Norman Mailer, so one of the great joys of the Internet is that I get to read James Lileks when I otherwise wouldn't.
Glenn Reynolds citesa post from Slate's The Fray that asserts:
The group that sends a message, "You can trust no one in our population not to kill you," sends the message, "Unless you get rid of all of us, you will die." This is very dangerous; it's an invitation to genocide.
On the one hand, the people of Palestine seem to be saying that they have nothing to lose. This sends a message to the world to look at their situation. This is a definite benefit to them.
On the other hand, the people of Palestine also seem to be counting on Israel's personal morality (or at least Israel's need to appear moral before the world) not to commit genocide. They seem to be saying that the people of Israel will bow to world pressure and not wipe them out. At the very least, the message is that Israel is a good enough world citizen to follow certain rules of civilization.
There is another dangerous element to this for the people of Palestine. What if they are wrong? What if Israel says, "Damn world opinion. It's us or them, so it's going to be us"?
Actually, there is no "what if" involved in this theoretical question. I can think of no state in all of history, faced with the ultimate question of survival - "Us? Or them?" - that has ever chosen "them."
Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci spoke out powerfully at the time of the World Trade Center attack, bringing honor both upon herself and her country. Now, once again, she focuses her compelling rhetoric on another instance of great evil.
Expect to hear loud squeals from those offended by such ungentle treatment. Not from me, though. That Fallaci has been a woman of the left all her life makes her statements even more poignant, and more disquieting to those whose once-noble liberal spirit has utterly lost its way.
U.S. officials said the Bush administration pressed the Central European republic of Slovenia to halt the sale of gun barrels for Syria's fleet of T-72 tanks. The officials said the administration had determined that the delivery of 125 mm smoothbore barrels would have significantly increased Syria's ground attack capability. "We approached the Slovenian government and expressed our concerns that this sale could destabilize the Middle East," a U.S. official said.
At least until we get around to destabilizing the Middle East the way we want to.
A 12-year-old Sikh boy was given a police escort on Wednesday as he returned to school wearing a ceremonial dagger that is at the heart of a legal battle. Gurbaj Singh had to endure some insults from local residents upset with a judge's decison that cleared the way for the boy to bring his kirpan to school. Some parents also kept their children home from school Wednesday for safety reasons.
Evidently the US isn't the only nation possessing its share of blithering ninnies and school officials enganged in permanent and unthinking anilingus with The Policy. A police escort???
linked to Osama bin Laden and the Sept. 11 terror attacks Thursday despite criticism that the broadcast could increase hostility toward Arabs and the Palestinian cause.
But not criticism from the Arab masses, I'll bet. More likely loud cheers, warbling, and gunfire in the streets.
I-200, approved in 1998, banned state and local governments from granting preferential treatment on the basis of sex, race or national origin. It is "remarkably clear," the appeals court said, in barring policies such as Seattle's.
Evidently not to one of the stubbornest, stupidest species on the planet - school board members with an agenda.
Three Marine Corps helicopters arrived in the belly of a huge Russian transport airplane at Miramar Marine Corps Air Station on Tuesday, ending the Marines' two-month deployment to the Korean Peninsula and marking a first for the U.S. military. For the first time, officials said, Russian-built and -owned aircraft carried American military forces overseas, then returned them home.
Hayne Palmour/Staff Photographer Marine flight line mechanic Lance Cpl. Jonathan Barnes, front, helps push one of three Marine CH-46 helicopters out of a Russian An-124 Condor transport plane, the worlds largest flying plane, after the plane arrived carrying a portion of Camp Pendleton's HMM-364 Purple Foxes squadron at Mira Mar Marine Corps Air Station in San Diego on Tuesday. The squadron is returning from a two month stay in the Republic of Korea to participate in military exercises there.
The Russian An-124 Condor plane ---- the world's largest cargo aircraft in regular use ---- brought three CH-46E Sea Knight helicopters and nine squadron crew members from the Republic of Korea, stopping overnight at the Air Force base in Elmendorf, Alaska.
It's too damned bad that The Sarge has retired. I'd sure like to know what he thinks about all this.
The next time you see one of those spreads of pictures of devastation in Palestine, and read how it is all the fault of the "evil" Jews "stealing" Palestininan lands, remember why many of those Jews went to Israel in the first place:
And remember also that this is what men like Yasser Arafat, Saddam Hussein, Ayatollah Khamenei, Osama bin Laden, Moammar Ghadaffy, and Prince Abdullah, not to mention the pathetically brainwashed and brutalized Arab street, would like to see come to pass again. In case you wonder why Israel is so stubborn about resisting aggression, look at that picture again. Look hard.
What Bush Expects Michael Kelly exposes one of those rare points that is, upon examination, both startling and absolutely obvious:
The point of Bush's speech was not to deny these realities but to expose them. This government is doing something large and important that the preceding two administrations failed to do: It is defining the new American position in the new world. This world's essential fact is the revivification of the 19th-century cultural and territorial conflicts previously frozen in the hundred years' war of giants between democracy and totalitarianism.
It is easy to forget that at the dawn of the twentiety century, the world was still in flux. Old empires were crumbling; nationalist fervor was stirring. Populations were on the move. The mandarins of the great empires tried to lay down arbitrary lines to contain the uncontainable. In some cases, these
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