Question: "What are your "what-if" scenarios for US involvement in any or all of the following situations?
1. Israeli strike on Iranian nuke facilities.
2. Iran nuking Israel.
3. Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
4. Total economic collapse in North Korea." -- Mike_M
Answers: Out of order..
2) The Iranians will -- if we're lucky -- never get this opportunity. But, if the kooks who run that country ever launched a nuclear weapon at Israel, you could expect the Israelis to retaliate by nuking all of Iran's population centers.
Our role would be to stay clear of the fall-out, take in as many displaced Israelis as we could, and try to deal with the ramifications of having two nations in the Middle-East -- one that's a close ally and the other that has a lot of oil -- essentially annihilated. Not. A. Lot. Of. Fun.
3) War between China and Taiwan means war between the US and China with potential nuclear saber rattling. The economic and military consequences for all 3 nations would be staggering, which is why it's vitally important that the combined Taiwanese and America capabilities in the area should always be significantly greater than what China can muster. The day the Chinese become strong enough to win outright is the day they start seriously considering it. Better to let Taiwan have nukes than to ever get in that position.
4) North Korea is perpetually in sorry shape and a military coup or complete collapse is always possible. That would likely be much more of a problem for the Chinese and South Koreans than us unless it became so chaotic that their nuclear weapons became unaccounted for. In fact, this could even be a positive scenario for us because a new leader would likely be more reasonable than Kim Jung-Il. We should actually be more worried about Musharraf being assassinated or overthrown by Islamic radicals in Pakistan.
1) I saved this one for last because it's the most likely scenario in the near term. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the mullahs who run Iran are dangerous, fanatical, pro-terrorist fascists who might just be crazy enough to try to use a nuclear weapon on Israel or the United States.
Israel and for that matter, the United States, would be better off going to war with Iran than letting them get nukes -- and since the international community is doing nothing more than paying lip service to stopping Iran's nuclear program -- it's entirely possible things will come to a head sooner rather than later.
If and when Israel bombs Iran's nuclear facilities around the country, you can expect Iran to retaliate by firing missiles at Israel and calling on their terrorist allies in Lebanon and the disputed territories to step up rocket attacks on Israel. That will of course prompt Israel to respond with overwhelming force, the Iranian people to become more nationalistic and supportive of their regime because of the attack (which would make a coup less likely), and it could possibly even lead to another full scale Middle-Eastern war.
While that would still be preferable to letting Iran have nuclear weapons, it would be a very dangerous and unpleasant situation for everyone involved, including the United States. Unfortunately, it's entirely possible we may see exactly this sort of clash occurring in 2006.
*** Update #1 ***: Originally, in the last paragraph, this post said a clash between Israel and Iran could very well occur in 2007. That was a typo. It has now been corrected to read 2006.
Q&A Friday #29: What If You Were On A Desert Island And Had To Choose Between Books And Blogs?
Question: "Would you rather be trapped on a desert island with A)the collected written works of mankind but no net access, or B)no books but you have net access which lets read only your top 5 blogs, no posting or calling for help." -- oneisnotprime
Answer: If you're on a boring desert island, of course you'd want access to everything ever written instead of 5 blogs that probably have 25 posts of substance on them a day tops. If you took the 5 blogs, what would you do with the other 23 1/2 hours a day?
Besides, having that many books would not only be entertaining and informative, it would be useful. You could use all the books written by Chomsky for kindling, make paper airplanes out of the pages of books by New York Times columnists, make the word "Help" on the beach in giant letters with all the fawning books about celebrities and liberal politicians, and then fling books by animal rights advocates at random monkeys and birds in an attempt to kill dinner.
That's why the collected written works of mankind wins in a landslide.
Q&A Friday #29: If You Could, Would You Go Back In Time And Kill Hitler?
Question: "Would you go back in time and kill Hitler as a teenager if possible? As a baby?" -- oneisnotprime
Answer: Even if you could go back in time and kill Hitler, it probably wouldn't have prevented WW2 and it's entirely possible that it could have made things worse.
After all, Hitler did not rise to power out of the void. The Germans were a warlike people who were furious over the Treaty of Versailles and it seems likely that they would have eventually started another big war, with or without Hitler.
Furthermore, Hitler made a lot of really dumb military decisions. If let's say the war had started about the same time with a more competent leader in charge or even worse, a few years later, when it's entirely possible that Germany might have been the first nation to develop the atomic bomb, the Axis could very well have come out on top.
So even though World War 2 was a nightmare never matched before or since in the annals of world history, a victory for Germany would have plunged the world into a new Dark Age so I'd prefer to stand pat rather than risk it.
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Question: "How would you counter someone's argument that the Bible is liberal and Jesus was a liberal? This counteracts the "religious right" theory.
(A simple google search of jesus+liberal should yield enough hits that I don't need to list their arguments here)" -- Agent_Westy
Answer: Oh yeah, Jesus would approve of abortion, gay marriage, and banning his own name from being spoken at school plays. And who could ever forget when Jesus turned water into wine and then said: "Remember my children, thou shalt not drill ANWR!"
In all seriousness, Jesus wasn't a leader of a country or a politician and he simply didn't deal in any substantive way with many of the political issues we grapple with today. That's why trying to apply a political label to him is not only futile, it usually comes across as obnoxious and self-serving.
Question: "Do you ever get sick of politics?" -- Oneisnotprime
Answer: Only once.
During my college years, I started doing some work for the Mecklenberg County Republican Party. I stuffed envelopes, did some minor league work on some campaigns, and even manned the headquarters solo, answered phones, etc.
I was new to politics back then, more than a little naive about how things worked, and I got a little disillusioned with how things worked.
I worked on a campaign for a candidate I really liked who was in a 3-way Republican primary. There was the unimpressive incumbent, my guy, and this other candidate who was a complete sleazeball. My guy would have had a decent shot of beating the incumbent, but only if he made it through the primary -- and it was going to be tight.
So, we come into possession of some dirt on the sleazeball and I want to have it leaked to the Charlotte Observer. My candidate, who proved the old adage, "Nice guys finish last," didn't believe in doing that sort of thing and he refused to put that info out there.
As it turns out, my guy lost the 3 way dance and then the incumbent, who had the same info we did, released it to the press and destroyed the sleazeball in the run-off. That bugged me because, in my opinion, the best man for the job -- by a longshot -- lost because he was such a decent guy.
I also got to see some nasty internal fights between Republicans over trivia, felt like the hours I spent licking envelopes and answering the phones were largely unappreciated, and the last straw was when I was told I'd need to wear nicer clothes on the afternoons when I ran things at the Republican HQ.
Not only did I not have very many nice clothes (I was a dirt poor college student), I didn't like dressing up, especially when I was coming in and spending one of my afternoons off from classes doing unpaid grunt work for the GOP.
In retrospect, as I mentioned earlier, I was more than a little naive. Of course, the best candidate doesn't always win. Furthermore, I really shouldn't have expected much more than a thank-you for doing that grunt work. Moreover, you certainly don't want someone wearing a t-shirt and sweats actually representing the GOP at the local headquarters. What sort of impression would that make on people who asked for a brochure?
But -- at the time -- it seemed like a big deal and it turned me off to politics in general and it took the Florida debacle during the 2000 election to get me, "turned on and tuned in," again. Since then, my interest in politics hasn't flagged in the least.
Question: "Do you play video games much, and if so, what are your favorite games and/or systems?" -- Clint
Answer: At one time, I really loved gaming.
Way back in the day in the arcade, I loved Heavy Barrel, NARC, and Samurai Showdown. I can also remember playing Nintendo games like All-Star Baseball and Tecmo Bowl for countless hours.
Once I got on the internet, I started playing Utopia with the same sort of zeal that I've since applied to political blogging and I was one of the top 100 players in the world for a couple of 3 month long ages.
After that got old, I tried a few other online games and then moved on to StarCraft. I was never an expert, but I played enough where I could demolish people who hadn't played a lot against other humans. In fact, I once won a 1 on 3 game vs. some people I worked with. Eventually, I got tired of Battlenet and just enjoyed 1 on 7 fastest/mega mineral games vs. the computer. StarCraft was definitely my all-time favorite game, but I don't even have it installed on the computer anymore.
I also enjoyed Doom, Diablo (1, not 2), Civ2, and the Ratchet and Clank and WWE series on the PS2.
I was going to try to get in a little more gaming time next year, so I signed up for Gamefly in order to get PlayStation 2 games by mail. Unfortunately, I didn't realize Gamefly mails out all their games from LA and since I'm on the right coast, I can already tell it's not going to work out. They mailed their first game to me 8 days ago and I still haven't received it. That's why today, I picked up a copy of Age of Mythology for the PC and figured I'd give that a whirl instead.
Unfortunately, I don't have too much time for games these days and as a general rule, I just play on Saturday afternoons and a little bit here and there throughout the week. So that means my hardcore gaming days are behind me.
Questions: "Do you read every post on every string in RWN?" -- Harry
"Hawkins, have you ever thought of putting up an RSS feed of your stories? It would be a nice feature IMO." -- bjlillo
"Do you plan on expanding RWN is any fashion? Thread formats? Bandwidth? Design? Navigation?" -- D-Vega
"1- Why did you shut off full articles in RSS feeds? This makes it harder for me to keep up at work. Malkin has full articles, come on man! Waahhhh..." -- oneisnotprime
"Question, John: What is the best way to search for and - more importantly - link to old comments? I've managed to find a way to link to old articles, but I can't seem to find their corresponding comment threads. It would be very handy to have a list of links to the threads where we've disassembled the various lib talking points so tha twe don;t have to recreate the wheel everytime a lib find this site believing he's the first to raise "amazing truths" that we "haven't considered". -- Grognard
Answers: To begin with, there is an RSS feed for RWN located at http://www.rightwingnews.com/index.rdf. The reason why there are no full articles on it anymore is because I wanted people to have to come to RWN to read my posts, instead of letting some other website serve up all my content for free while I received no benefit from it. =D
As far as the posts go, I read some of every thread, but I don't read everything because I'd rather be writing posts than reading 500-800 comments a day, especially since the liberal posters send almost every thread spiraling completely off-topic within 15-20 posts.
That's one of the reasons I tend to be fast on the trigger when someone breaks the rules, generally don't give 2nd chances, and don't respond to his/her emails. If you're a moron once, you'll probably be a moron a dozen times, and it's entirely possible that I won't see it every time.
On to the old comments. It's kind of hard to link to the old comments, because I just had 200,000 of them vaporized as part of an effort to help take care of a resource issue related to the comments script. Ironically, I'm not sure how much that even helped. I actually believe massive behind-the-scenes spam attacks are causing the resource issue that Danny Carlton, my tech guy, is still working on.
As far as recent changes go, I've added on a number of new websites that allow me to syndicate their work on RWN and the guest bloggers experiment has been a real success on both occasions that I've tried it out.
The only other significant change in the works that I am definitely planning to implement sometime soon is to add a few moderators for the comments section to keep everything flowing smoothly. The changes to my script have already been made, so I can add the moderators in at any time I'd like.
The other three ideas I'm toying with (These may or may not ever happen) are a forum, weekly quotes from around the blogosphere displayed every Friday, and a secondary blog, set up on a sub-domain of RWN, sort of like the The Corner, where I'd have 30-40 smaller bloggers chattering back and forth. It would be good exposure for the other bloggers, would help drive traffic to their websites, and hopefully, it would become popular.
Hope that answers most of your tech and site maintenance questions.
So, if there's a subject you've been wanting me to tackle or an issue you want to hear my opinion on, just ask your question in the comments section. Your question can be about politics, ideology, history, blogging, RWN, from a liberal, conservative, or libertarian perspective; heck, it can even be about movies, music, literature, or TV. Then, I'll select some of the more interesting questions and answer them.
Americans Will Die Because Of McCain's Torture Amendment
How many thousands of Americans will end up dying because of this?
"President Bush reversed course on Thursday and accepted Sen. John McCain's call for a law banning cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of foreign suspects in the war on terror. Bush said the agreement will "make it clear to the world that this government does not torture and that we adhere to the international convention of torture, whether it be here at home or abroad."
"It's a done deal," said McCain, talking to reporters in a driving rain outside the White House.
Under the deal, CIA interrogators would be given the same legal rights as currently guaranteed members of the military who are accused of breaking interrogation guidelines. Those rules say the accused can defend themselves by arguing it was reasonable for them to believe they were obeying a legal order.
"We've sent a message to the world that the United States is not like the terrorists," McCain said earlier as he sat next to Bush in the Oval Office."
Because we've been able to use techniques like stress positions, sleep deprivation, and waterboarding on terrorists for the last few years, we have undoubtedly had a lot of success in getting information out of key terrorists that we've captured. In fact, the use of those sort of interrogation techniques probably has a lot to do with why Al-Qaeda hasn't been able to follow-up on 9/11 in the United States.
However, now that we've put political grandstanding above national security and completely handcuffed our military investigators, we can expect a big slow down in the amount of intelligence we're getting from captured Al-Qaeda operatives...
Which means that some day in the future, it may be a year from now, 5 years from now, 10 years, there will be a massive terrorist attack. Planes will be flown into buildings, some bioagent will be released, or God help us, a nuclear bomb will be set off, and there will be a terrorist we're holding who knew all about it, but didn't tell us anything because a bunch of hysterical politicians prevented our interrogators from making the terrorist, "sweepy," cold, or tired because those techniques were falsely considered, "torture."
Spin this however you want, but McCain's bill will be a huge help to Al-Qaeda and one day, down the road, it will probably cost an enormous number of Americans their lives. This was a very foolish decision...
Don't Start Making Those "Free Cory Maye" Signs Yet Part 2
Radley Balko over at his fine blog, The Agitator, responded to that last post on Cory Maye and you can read what he had to say here.
After reading Radley's post and few other comments about the Maye case around the blogosphere, let me add a few quick notes to what I said about the original case.
#1) In this case Radley, along with some others, are taking the word of the murderer and his defense lawyers, over the word of the cops. Why they're doing this, other than perhaps because of generalized dislike or distrust for police officers, I have no idea.
However, you simply cannot run a criminal justice system when the word of several police officers is considered to be less trustworthy than the word of a cop killer. Yes, there may be incidents where the police have lied or falsified evidence. But, I would suggest to you that the percentage of criminals who lie to try to escape responsibility for their crimes approaches 100%.
That's why, unless there are extenuating circumstances (which certainly don't appear to exist at present in this case), I always take the word of the cop over the word of the criminal.
#2) A lot of Libertarians seem to have a bee in their bonnet because this was a drug bust and they think all drugs should be legal. Well, I got news for you; drugs aren't legal and whether the police were there because of drugs, rape, robbery, or murder makes no difference. The officers had a warrant, were allowed to enter the house, and did so because they were investigating a crime. Whether it was drug related or not makes no difference whatsoever.
#3) This was not a, "knock, give the perp 2 seconds, and kick in the door." raid. The cops announced themselves at the front door, Maye turned on a light, so he certainly heard them and was awake, they announced themselves at the back door, and then they knocked the door down. It's worth noting that in the other duplex that was searched, the person there had time to simply go to the door and let the police inside.
#4) Some people are asking why Maye would deliberately kill a police officer when he had no criminal record? Maybe he hated cops. Maybe he thought he could beat the rap in court. Maybe he committed some other crime and thought the police were coming to arrest him for that. Heck, maybe he did something cataclysmically stupid for no good reason. Two examples from my high school years come to mind:
A friend of mine was speeding and a cop came up behind him and turned on the siren. Despite the fact that he had no criminal record and nothing incriminating in his car, he freaked out and tried to outrun the police -- which, quite frankly, was impossible in the car he was driving. He ended up crashing into a ditch and knocking himself unconscious.
I had another friend, a real nice guy -- again with no criminal record -- who was driving his ex-girlfriend to school on icy roads. In the middle of a big argument, he wrecked. He was shaken up, but the girl was seriously hurt. Well, a policeman shows up to help and my friend was so freaked out he actually took a swing at the cop for what he himself admitted was no good reason whatsoever.
Whatever the case may be with Maye, we're talking about uniformed officers, who announced themselves twice at the front and the back door of the residence, and Maye knowingly shot one of them to death.
#5) Some people seem to be taking the position that this was a righteous shooting by Maye just because he couldn't be sure that it was the police at the door. That position just makes no common sense, especially in a world where the police can actually get no-knock warrants and simply kick a door in. If uniformed police officers, with police cars in the background, with a warrant, announcing themselves twice before breaking down a door isn't good enough for you, then you're basically saying criminals should be allowed to take a free shot at the police if they bust into their homes.
Once again, what it all boils down to is that Cory Maye chose to murder a police officer, was convicted of doing so in a court of law, and is now scheduled -- and I hope destined -- to pay the ultimate price for his crime. If you're looking to dole out some sympathy in this case, I'd suggest you save it for the family and friends of officer Ron Jones, not for his murderer, Cory Maye.
Don't Start Making Those "Free Cory Maye" Signs Yet
Radley Balko over at his excellent blog, The Agitator, has managed to draw a lot of attention to the case of Cory Maye, a cop killer, scheduled to be executed for his crime. Unfortunately, Radley initially got a lot of important facts wrong about the case and although to his credit, he has corrected those mistakes, the egregious factual errors he made to begin with are the hook that has been used to draw people's attention to the case around the blogosphere.
This post at Battle Panda, which Radley approvingly linked to at one point, is a perfect example of the sort of misinformation that was taken directly from the original post at the Agitator and spread freely across the net:
Let's summarize: Cops mistakenly break down the door of a sleeping man, late at night, as part of drug raid. Turns out, the man wasn't named in the warrant, and wasn't a suspect. The man, frigthened for himself and his 18-month old daughter, fires at an intruder who jumps into his bedroom after the door's been kicked in. Turns out that the man, who is black, has killed the white son of the town's police chief. He's later convicted and sentenced to death by a white jury. The man has no criminal record, and police rather tellingly changed their story about drugs (rather, traces of drugs) in his possession at the time of the raid.
Let's take it step by step, using the corrected information Radley has now posted, shall we?
Let's summarize: Cops mistakenly break down the door of a sleeping man, late at night, as part of drug raid. Turns out, the man wasn't named in the warrant, and wasn't a suspect.
Actually, it wasn't a mistake. An informant had claimed drugs had been stored in Maye's home 24 hours earlier and the warrant the police attained gave them permission to search his residence.
The man, frigthened for himself and his 18-month old daughter, fires at an intruder who jumps into his bedroom after the door's been kicked in.
According to the prosecutor, uniformed officers announced themselves at the front door and then, only after Maye refused to open up, did they go around to the back door, announce their presence a 2nd time, and break the door down. That's when Maye shot officer Ron Jones, who hadn't even drawn his gun, to death.
Turns out that the man, who is black, has killed the white son of the town's police chief. He's later convicted and sentenced to death by a white jury.
It wasn't an all-white jury. There were two black jurors, which shoots the whole "you know how those racists in Mississippi are" angle, which is being subtlety introduced here, right out of the water.
The man has no criminal record, and police rather tellingly changed their story about drugs (rather, traces of drugs) in his possession at the time of the raid.
To claim that the police "tellingly changed their story" is really splitting hairs. From Radley Balko:
"Police clearly did change their story. Immediate reports said police found drugs in Maye's apartment. Police later say they found the "trace."
For all practical purposes, this is a distinction without a difference, especially since Maye wasn't charged with any drug related offenses.
Furthermore, although Maye had no criminal record, they did find drugs in his residence and he murdered Ron Jones with a stolen gun. So, even though he didn't have a criminal record, it certainly wasn't because he was squeaky clean.
What it all comes down to is that the cops had a warrant, identified themselves as police officers twice, and then Maye deliberately and knowingly chose to shoot one of them to death. For that crime, Maye deserves the needle, the noose, or the chair -- not sympathy.
I haven't gotten around to seeing the new King Kong movie yet and to be honest, I'll probably end up catching it when it comes out on DVD. The original was kind of a depressing story to begin with and The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe & Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire are both ahead of Kong on the "see at the theater" list for me.
Yet and still, I couldn't let this pass without comment:
"Most black men I know will think twice about going to see King Kong. First because of the story, second because of Peter Jackson's other recent blockbuster movies.
...The story also touches the raw nerve of the Darwin-based association between black men and apes. Though the monkey noises and the discussion about whether Africans are the missing link between apes and humans may be out of the classroom, it still has to be endured by black footballers when they travel to away games.
Peter Jackson used the same hackneyed stereotypes for the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The most fearsome baddies were big black and just a bit too Maori looking, the good guys - well white.
So when King Kong unfolded and the 1930s New York crowd scenes were almost devoid of black faces, rather than the 15 per cent you would have expected, and when the first black actors had small non-speaking parts - dancers and the only major black character was the strong caring second officer to the ship's captain - the good and dutiful slave stereotype - I was squirming in my seat. If I had not been at a premier with my transfixed son I would have been out of the door soon after the wide eyed, homicidal, half dressed, blacker than black natives of Skull Island started cavorting one hour in.
...It left me thinking, that if censors look at violence, sex, and sexual violence when giving a certificate why do they not look at negative racial stereotypes?"
Setting aside the fact that this guy strikes me as the sort of hypersensitive ninnie who probably thinks 8-ball is a racist game because you use a white ball knocking a black ball into a pocket, there have been countless movies that feature Italian mobsters, buck toothed, inbred country folk, greedy businessmen, evil Republicans, crooked cops, dimwitted and excessively violent members of the military, etc., etc., etc., on and on and on. So why should black Americans -- or any group for that matter -- get a free pass on being portrayed negatively in the movies?
It may be irritating to identify with a group that isn't being portrayed positively on the big screen, but that doesn't mean it's racist, sexist, anti-Islamic, etc., to portray some people as members of a particular group in a less than positive light -- well, except in the case of Southerners. Any Yankee who makes a joke about Deliverance or Mayberry is obviously a bigot....just kidding =D.
Bush Admits He’s Trapped in Bubble -- Satire By Scott Ott
President George Bush today, confirmed a recent Newsweek magazine cover story, admitting that he’s “living in a bubble” — isolated and aloof.
“I confess that I don’t wake up each day on the same planet as Newsweek’s editors,” said Mr. Bush. “So, I guess I’m isolated from the world where the U.S. is always wrong, terrorists have legitimate rights, Cindy Sheehan formulates sound foreign policy, record employment figures and falling gas prices signal imminent economic doom, civil rights are endangerd by preserving heterosexual marriage, abortion is the most valued freedom for women and the federal government fulfills the role of the father, the mother, the church and the local government.”
Mr. Bush said he agreed with the Newsweek assertion that he “may be the most isolated president in modern history.”
“I admit,” said Mr. Bush, “that I’m almost completely isolated from public opinion pollsters and journalists who start with answers and craft questions to elicit them. I’m virtually cut off from believing the non-stop barrage of negative news about an emerging democratic nation that will have three legitimate elections this year after decades of dictatorship. I’m aloof from the world in which bitter critics with no vision are treated as diplomats and sages.”
Mr. Bush added, “When you see a shimmering, transparent bubble wall, you gotta ask yourself: which side of it am I on?”
This satire was used with the permission of Scrappleface.
This afternoon, I was invited to participate in a RNC conference call with Dan Senor. According to the intro Patrick Ruffini from RNC sent us:
"Mr. Senor served as the chief Coalition spokesman and senior advisor to Ambassador L. Paul Bremer III, and was one of the longest serving American civilians in Iraq, entering Iraq on one of the first civilian convoys after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime."
To be honest, it was kind of a so-so conference call because it was a little too fluffy and generalized -- at least for the audience that was there. The general message was, "These elections in Iraq are a really big deal."
But, do conservative bloggers need to hear this message? Not only do we know about the elections, but as a group we're very supportive of and gung-ho about the war effort. So, there's no need to try to sell us on the idea that the elections are important, because we already know that. What we're always looking for is new ammo to sell other people on the importance of the war and the elections and we didn't get quite enough of that.
Senor did make one pretty good point though.
He noted that polls show that a large majority of Iraqis say they want the American troops to leave, but when they're asked if they'd like the troops to leave immediately, a large majority says, "no." That's not all that surprising -- after all, who would want armed foreign troops standing on every street corner -- but it does add a little perspective. The Iraqis may want us to leave, but they also understand that we're still needed for the moment.
In any case, that's the long and the short of the conference call -- which, by the way, almost led to my completely embarrassing myself in front of everyone there.
You see, I always ask questions at these press conferences and normally, you do that by hitting *1. Then a voice comes on the line, asks you your name, you say your name, and then you wait to be called on. Well, this time I'm hitting *1 and nothing is happening. I try again, hit it about a half dozen times, and still, nothing happens. So, I figure it's busted and become mildly annoyed.
A few minutes later, we're getting close to the end of the meeting and I'm simultaneously listening to Senor talk, throwing a ball for the dog, and reading an Ace of Spades HQ post on the "gay cowboys eating pudding" movie, Brokeback Mountain, and I hear them say they have time for one more question. Then, in the background, I hear, " John Hawkins, ask your question."
Apparently, the system wasn't broken, they just changed how it works. Luckily, I didn't get caught napping and asked Senor (I'm paraphrasing), "When the Iraqi forces fully takeover security for their country, in let's say 2007, assuming that they're competent, what impact will that have on the insurgency?"
Actually, I was fishing for a little talk about strategy because I don't think the Bush administration does that enough. "As the Iraqi troops stand up, our troops will stand down," is a good line, but they need to go a step further and explain to the American people why the terrorists are caught in a no-win situation once that happens.
Instead, Senor just hit on the fact that the Iraqis are better at identifying foreign accents and that the Iraqi people will take pride in being able to defend their own country.
All in all, Senor is a really knowledgable guy, but it might have been nice if he'd given us a little more meat and a little less bread in the sandwich, if you know what I mean.
Others covering the call included...
Mary Katharine Ham over at Hugh Hewitt's blog (She apparently loves my accent)
The U.S. House today passed a bill to reduce federal spending on such programs as NCLB, health care, job training, and other so-called discretionary items.
The vote was 215-213, in favor of less discretionary spending by the federal gummint.
You think comparing Bush to Hitler is innapropriate? Well, you're right -- it is -- but, I can top it. Just wait until you see who The Huffington Post's RJ Eskow is comparing executed quadruple murderer and Crips co-founder Tookie Williams to....
"This season, America celebrates a holiday whose premise is that God himself came to Earth -- and was given the death penalty. Tookie Williams died at Midnight on the Feast Day for Our Lady of Guadalupe, Mother of God and patron saint of the Americas. How fitting that the GOP and the Religious Right lobbied for the execution -- and that Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Catholic whose church opposes the death penalty, made the final decision.
Celebrity executions, from Jesus to Tookie Williams, have whatever meaning human actions give them. And the meaning of Tookie's? That the Religious Right, that bastion of politicized pseudo-religion and hypocritical power-grabbing, pronounced its own spiritual death by shouting hosannahs for his execution -- as it has done for the anonymous dead before him.
No disrespect is intended by calling the Crucifixion a "celebrity execution." Quite the contrary -- the power and meaning of the Christ story as it was taught to me is just that: that God Himself would come to Earth anonymously and died despised and forgotten by all but a few, only to be redeemed on behalf of all. His celebrity came later, as a result of His sacrifice. The significance of the death lies in its affirmation of life, in the understanding of believers that it was an act of love -- love for life and the living."
Sure -- Tookie Williams was just like Jesus. Don't you remember Jesus and his gang, the disciples, busting caps on foos to teach them a little respect for the J to the E to the sus? Oh wait, that's not exactly how it went.
Also, you know, if Eskow was determined to compare someone to Jesus here, shouldn't it have been the people Tookie Williams murdered in cold blood? At least they were innocent victims and you could add that they've certainly been "forgotten by all but a few" Tookie supporters.
*** Update #1 ***:Zombietime was at the "Save Tookie" rally at San Quentin before the king Crip was dispatched and it sounds like the moonbats put on one heck of a show. This pic should give you a general idea of what it was like:
A lot of people, myself included, were panning the idea of using trailers to house Katrina victims because of the enormous cost involved. It turns out that not only are they expensive, but -- unsurprisingly if you think about it -- it takes too long to get the trailers set-up on a large scale to make them a practicable form of temporary housing:
"More than three months after thousands of people lost their homes in Hurricane Katrina, local and federal officials are trading blame over the slow delivery of trailer housing.
"We got a serious situation in St. Bernard Parish," its president, Henry "Junior" Rodriguez, told CNN on Tuesday.
"We got people living in tents and automobiles. We got people living in barns. We got people living in their houses -- in tents," he said on "American Morning."
"This is the beginning of winter. This is unacceptable."
...A site with 50 to 55 trailers is operational, Rodriguez said, and another may be able to handle 45 trailers within a couple days. But the 100 or so trailers fall far short of the 12,000 trailers needed for the number of people estimated to return home, he added.
...Adding to Rodriguez's frustration is the fact that 1,400 trailers are sitting unused in St. Bernard Parish. The parish ordered them from a private contractor days after the hurricane hit on August 29, but the Federal Emergency Management Agency has not agreed to pay for them.
There are also more than 5,000 FEMA mobile homes in Arkansas sitting unused, CNN has learned.
FEMA responded Tuesday, telling CNN it is ready to deliver 125,000 trailers to the area but that parish officials "still have to identify places to put them."
The agency said that St. Bernard Parish "has identified 1,000 sites for trailers ... 500 of them have already been installed, and the rest are in the works."
"It is understandable that the process can be frustrating, given that basic services, including electricity, were just recently restored," FEMA's statement read."
If it was pointless to roll in the trailers after Katrina instead of handing out hotel vouchers, it makes even less sense now. It has been more than 3 months since Katrina hit and quite frankly, the government shouldn't be providing more than another 3 months of free housing, tops.
After all, if your house burns down tomorrow or you lose your job and can't pay the rent, is the government going to give you a free trailer? No, you're expected -- and rightly so -- to take care of yourself. So, for the government to dole out free housing for 6 months to Katrina victims is more than reasonable.
That's why the Feds should forget about the trailers, grab the people living in "tents," "automobiles," and "barns" and hand them 3 months worth of hotel vouchers. It would be cheaper, more efficient, and it would save time...
50) Tom Cochran: Life is a Highway
49) Black Crowes: Hard to Handle
48) New Order: True Faith
47) Van Halen: Why Can't This Be Love?
46) Motley Crue: Home Sweet Home
45) Nixons: Sister
44) White Zombie: More Human Than Human
43) Kid Rock: American Bad*ss
42) Church: Under the Milky Way
41) U2: Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses?
40) Motorhead: It's All About The Game
39) Rob Base And DJ E-Z Rock: It Takes Two
38) Our Lady Peace: Clumsy
37) Cinderella: You Don't Know What You Got Until It's Gone
36) Fun Lovin' Criminals: Scooby Snacks
35) Rob Zombie: Never Gonna Stop
34) Smashing Pumpkins: Bullet With Butterfly Wings
33) Seven Mary Three: Cumbersome
32) Radiohead: Creep
31) House of Pain: Jump Around
30) UB40: Red Red Wine
29) Modern English: Melt With You
28) Quiet Riot: Cum On Feel The Noize
27) Snow Patrol: Run
26) Type O Negative: Black #1
25) Berlin: Take My Breath Away
24) Survivor: Eye of the Tiger
23) Tesla: Love Song
22) Elton John: Still Standin
21) Chicago: Stay The Night
20) The Who: Behind Blue Eyes
19) Kid Rock: I Am the Bullgod
18) Geto Boys: Gangster of Love
17) Cypress Hill: Cock the Hammer
16) Offspring: I Choose
15) Loverboy: Lovin' Every Minute Of It
14) AC/DC: You Shook Me All Night Long
13) Insane Clown Posse: Hokus Pokus
12) Filter: Hey Man, Nice Shot
11) Dixie Chicks: Landslide
10) Rage Against the Machine: Bulls on Parade
9) Nine Inch Nails: Head Like a Hole
8) AC/DC: Back in Black
7) Lynyrd Skynyrd: Sweet Home Alabama
6) Disturbed: Down With the Sickness
5) The Cure: Just Like Heaven
4) Creed: My Sacrifice
3) Russell Watson: Faith of the Heart
2) Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash, And Kris Kristofferson: The Highwayman
1) Johnny Cash: Hurt
After reading this article on snitching, I'm well prepared to believe that there are serious problems with the way our nation's police forces use informers. But this seems a little bit crazy to me:
Finally, as the T-shirt controversy illustrates, snitching exacerbates crime, violence, and distrust in some of the nation's most socially vulnerable communities. In the poorest neighborhoods, vast numbers of young people are in contact with the criminal-justice system. Nearly every family contains someone who is incarcerated, under supervision, or has a criminal record. In these communities, the law-enforcement policy of pressuring everyone to snitch can have the devastating effect of tearing families and social networks apart. Ironically, these are the communities most in need of positive role models, strong social institutions, and good police-community relations. Snitching undermines these important goals by setting criminals loose, creating distrust, and compromising police integrity.
Call me heartless, but I don't feel like fostering stronger bonds between criminals should be a goal of our nation's policy.
Honorable Mention #1)Iran Works To Acquire Nuclear Weapons: A story that didn't get that much attention in 2005 could lead to a war in the Middle-East in 2006.
Honorable Mention #2)Bush's Social Security Reform: ...Wait for it, wait for it, goes nowhere.
Honorable Mention #3)The Political Battle Over Iraq Continues: The Democratic position has gone from, "We're reluctantly willing to go along," to, "Are we there yet?" to, "Let's turn around and go home."
10) Syria Withdraws From Lebanon: They say the neocons love it when a plan comes together.
9) London Subway Bombing: Al-Qaeda strikes back, but the Brits don't drop to their knees like the Spaniards.
8) Bush's Poll Numbers Tank: Bush's poll numbers fell like a paralyzed swallow but have started slowly rising again like a Koala Bear tangled in a hot air balloon.
7) Newsweek's Koran Down the Toilet Story: Newsweek lied (or at least got it wrong) and people died.
6) The January Iraqi Elections: The Iraqis give the finger to the terrorists -- a purple finger.
5) Cindy Sheehan: No one in recent memory has been quite so adept at exploiting the death of her child for profit and attention as "Mother" Sheehan.
4) The Harriet Miers nomination: An unruly mob of conservative bloggers, columnists, and talk show hosts got into a fight with the White House over a SCOTUS nominee. The White House lost.
3) Scooter Libby is indicted: Fitzmas came early for the Democrats, but all they got was socks as Rove escaped the noose.
2) Terri Schiavo: If she'd had the same sort of legal protections Tookie Williams did, she'd be alive today.
1) Hurricane Katrina: Huge hurricane hits below sea level city. Bush to blame.
Another Dangerous Criminal Taken Off The Streets By Ravenwood
Another dangerous criminal was caught in the act by Washington D.C.'s finest. The city may have one of the highest murder rates in the country, but that doesn't stop them from issuing $5 jaywalking tickets to the mortally injured.
Charles Atherton, a former secretary of the U.S. Commission on Fine Arts that advises the government on architecture and design in official Washington, was hit Thursday while crossing busy Connecticut Avenue. He died Saturday night at George Washington University Hospital.
Although witnesses said he was badly injured and unresponsive at the scene, police issued him the ticket. His family found it with his belongings when they went to the hospital.
Without regard to their ideological leanings, content, or quality, here's an unranked list of the 20 best blog names out there -- in my humble opinion of course....
Excerpt Of The Day: The Coming Israeli Strike On Iran
"What a perfect arrangement: The only country that every country has a right to condemn can be relied upon to do the world's dirty work. This is the underlying mindset as the West contemplates a nuclear Iran.
When push comes to shove, the Israeli air force will take care of the problem, so the world can go into spasms of righteous indignation while enjoying the fireworks.
...The irony here is that it is precisely those who claim to believe mot in a borderless world ruled by international law who are ushering in a new Hobbesian era. How is one to explain Europe's obsession with the United Nations on the one hand, and its emasculation of the principles on which that organization was founded?
...The nations that wrap themselves most tightly in international law are actually those responsible for turning that law, and its aspirations for the world, into a dead letter. As in the case of Iraq, by refusing to join the U.S. in effective non-military collective action against Iran, Europe is making military action or an Iranian victory inevitable.
...Perhaps it is pointless to appeal to European sympathies for Israel when these same nations won't even defend themselves. Most bizarre, however, is that Europe, by refusing to impose draconian sanctions on Iran, is guaranteeing either a huge victory for the terror network or military action by the US or Israel. In other words, under the cloak of international law, Europe is bringing either the aggression of its enemies or unilateralist defensive actions of exactly the sort it claims to most want to prevent." -- Saul Singer
At a certain point in the near future, if the current oligarchy cannot be removed via the ballot, direct political action may become an urgent and compelling mission. It may then be necessary for many people in many walks of life to put their bodies on the line. For the moment, however, although pressing and profound questions have arisen about whether the current government is even legitimate, i.e., properly elected, there still remains a chance to remove this government peacefully in the 2008 election. (Or am I living in a dream world?)
I do think this regime's removal is the most urgent matter before the country today. . . . This is all terrible and rather fantastic to contemplate. But what assurances have we that it is not all quite plausible? Having discarded the principles that Jefferson & Co. espoused, the current regime seems capable of anything. I know that my imagination is a feverish instrument. But are we not living in feverish times, in times of the unthinkable?
Let me underscore Instapundit's jab: when disaffected, no-account fantasy-race-warriors joined militia movements in the nineties, the media was all a-twitter at this dangerous threat to our nation's stability. Nevermind that the movement was decidedly fringe and small, and that a lot of the people involved weren't particularly hard-core politically. They just liked running around the woods with guns (which, I have to admit, sounds kind of fun).
But when mainstream left-liberals write of violent revolution in not-at-all-fringe left-liberal magazines, no one in the media seems particularly bothered.
Suggesting they're not bothered by the idea of violent revolution, so long as the right people wind up with their backs up against the wall.
The "extremists" of the 90's were a constant source of fretting and column-inches for our nation's media during the Clinton Administration. Just as the media decided that homelessness wasn't such a big deal when Clinton came into office, they seem to have taken a blase attitude towards fantasies of violent revolution now that Bush is in office.
The Palestinian State Pays Off Families Of Suicide Bombers
The guy at the top may have changed in the Palestinian territories, but the support for terrorists obviously hasn't:
"The head of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, has approved a new law, providing monetary grants to the families of suicide bombers.
Abbas gave his approval just six days ago, a day before a suicide bomber struck the HaSharon Mall in Netanya, killing five Israelis and wounding scores of others.
The legislation refers to the suicide terrorists as shahids (martyrs), a term generally applied to a person who dies in an operation fighting against Israel.
Under the new law, the terrorist’s family will be paid a base sum of $250 per month. The law takes into account extended family arrangements commonplace in Arab societies. The families of married terrorists are entitled to an additional $50 per month, and $15 are added for each child, $25 for each parent, and $15 for each brother who lived with the terrorist prior to his death.
The monies, to be paid out of the general budget of the Palestinian Authority, are significant sums for average Arab families living in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza."
The message here is obviously go ahead and blow yourself up because we'll make sure your family is OK. So regardless of what sort of lip service Abbas gives to stopping terrorism, he's putting the official state seal of approval on suicide bombing.
This move by Abbas is just the latest example of why it's futile to try to make peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians. That's because day in and day out, in dozens of ways big and small, the Palestinians keep showing that they have no interest in any sort of resolution to this conflict that includes the continuing existence of a Jewish state, no matter what they say publicly to the contrary.
The long and short of this under-400-word article is that conservative blogs have a bigger impact than liberal blogs because we don't tear into Republicans (Only someone who never reads conservative blogs could think that) and because stories broken on the right side of the blogosphere move from the, "pre-existing media infrastructure," conservatives have built up (as if ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post, etc., etc., aren't part of the left's, "pre-existing media infrastructure.")
The article is garbage, but it is correct when it notes that blogs on the right have a bigger impact than our counterparts on the left, despite drawing less traffic on the whole. However, the "why" is all wrong because of ideological blinders.
The reality is that liberal blogs aren't particularly effective because the liberal mainstream media beats them to every big story. The lefty blogs are like hyenas living off the scraps that lions leave over. The only stories they get to cover are ones that the MSM has already blown off because they're unimportant (See Jeff Gannon controversy) or because they're dry wells (See the Downing Street Memos).
On the other hand, conservative bloggers regularly get to cover stories the mainstream media has spun to the left, underplayed, or ignored completely. For example, MSM simply had no interest in giving a fair shake to the Swift Boat Vets for Truth or trying to debunk Dan Rather's fake memos so the field was wide open for conservative bloggers to pursue the stories.
That's why right-of-center blogs are likely to keep on making a bigger splash than the lefty bloggers: we're going after completely different game than the Mainstream Media while the libs have to compete with their more competent, more credible, more persuasive, better funded brethren in the MSM.
Family members of fallen highway patrol officers and their supporters are rallying in Utah to fend off a lawsuit from atheists claiming that crosses erected on public highways in honor of those officers are unconstitutional, according to the Salt Lake Tribune.
The state chapter of says the officers should be memorialized, but not with Christian symbols. "For so long, religious symbols and symbology have received special preferences and treatment. When we ask for a level playing field, they scream intolerance," says the group's Michael Rivers.
Doug Wright of KSL radio, who has championed the cause of family members who want the crosses to remain, said the suit egregious and insensitive. "This time they've crossed the line," he said.
This content was used with the permission of Tongue Tied.
