Fausta's blog

Faustam fortuna adiuvat
The official blog of Fausta's Blog Talk Radio show.

Friday, June 30, 2006

SmadaNek's supporting the Shepherd Ocean Fours rowing race

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Effective July 11, 2006, Fausta's blog moved to http://faustasblog.com. Please update your bookmark and your blogroll.
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Friend of this blog SmadaNek has been following the progress of the Shepherd Ocean Fours rowing race. Take a look:
This is really a phenomenal race -- four teams of rowers (four men each) set out from New York on June 10th, bound for Falmouth, England. Twenty days into the race, three of the teams have covered over 1,000 miles. The fourth had a mechanical failure and is safely back in port.

The enormity of this task is really daunting -- take a look at this map to get a feel for what they've accomplished and what they have left to do (the rings are 500 nautical miles each!):

Send the rowers a message, or donate to charity. Go to Smadanek to find out how.

(technorati tags: Shepherd Ocean Fours, Rowing)

Judicial outrage of the day, money and happiness, and today's articles

The judicial outrage of the day, via And Rightly So!: Confession May Be Tossed in Fla. Slaying. John Evander Couey actually told investigators detectives he kidnapped, raped and killed , and where to dig up the body of his victin, a 9-year-old girl, and that it was sick and "stupid" to kill her. Now he may walk. In other sex offender news, Abdallah Ait Oud, a 38-year-old convicted paedophile, has been arrested for the murder of two stepsisters in Belgium. If Couey walks we know what will happen next.

At the blogs
Jawa is back

Money and happiness
Via Maria, here's another study saying that Money Does Not Buy Much Happiness. The study puts the cart before the horse by saying that
According to government statistics, men who make more than $100,000 a year spend 19.9 percent of their time on passive leisure activities such as watching television and socializing. Meanwhile, men whose annual income were less than $20,000 spent more than 34 percent of their time dedicated to passive leisure.
I dare speculate that the reason the guys are making $100,000+/yr is because they aren't spending more than a third of their waking hours loafing around.

Today's other articles from Maria
At Real Clear Politics, Bush's Decency Highlights Democrats Incivility while Rosa Brooks of the LA Times is asking Did Bush commit war crimes?

Call me Gilraen
Via Beth, Elvish Name Generator. That's Elvish, not Elvis.

Thursday, June 29, 2006

Breaking news on Supreme Court/Gitmo

The US Supreme Court has ruled that the Bush administration does not have the authority to try terrorism suspects by military tribunal.
also
here

(Hat tip Rosemary, who called the House of Representatives 888-355-3588 in protest.)

Declare them POWs and keep them jailed until there are no Islamists attacking the USA, then?

Swiss guys tourism

Milking the tourist cash cow for all it's worth: today's video
"Dear girls, why not escape during the summer's World Cup to a country where men spend less time on football and more time on you?"
Indeed!

Update: The Anchoress likes the mountain climber.

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Yesterday at the Church of Oprah

I wasn't feeling well yesterday afternoon (cold? allergies? flu?) and decided to have some tylenol and lie down. While lying down I turned on the TV and the Church of Oprah had a service on global warming, with Leonardo di Caprio as guest celebrant.

Leo's catchphrase was AlGore's "most pressing environmental issue of our time: global warming." bs:
Leo says global warming is not only the number one issue affecting the environment—it's one of the most important issues facing all of humanity.
Oprah was dazzled by Leo's brilliance and, I'm not making this up, asked him "You're so young. How did you learn so much?"

Now, Leo, who played Howard Hughes, one of the greatest aeronatical innovators of all time, was born in 1974. He's well into his 30s.
  • By age 27, Howard Hughes had formed the Hughes Aircraft Company division of Hughes Tool
  • By age 30, Howard had not only built and personally test-piloted the world's most advanced plane, but was already breaking speed records in it.
Leo is not a rocket scientist, he only played one on screen. I could only think of Keith Burgess-Jackson's article on the common fallacy about the transferability of expertise and authority (update the term for which is Argumentum ad Verecundiam).

I rolled my eyes, turned off the TV and listened to some Mozart, another young achiever.

The Church of Oprah: "your leading source for information about love, life, self, relationships, food, home, spirit and health"; but not for science. Stick to telling us HOW TO LOOK (AT LEAST) 10 YEARS YOUNGER, O.

Update: So if Oprah is a church, what is The View? Or do I even want to know?

(This week's previous posts on global warming here and here.)

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Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Again, there is no "consensus" on global warming

I posted on Monday the very words written by Richard S. Lindzen, Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with which he titled his WSJ article. The reaction to my post by the true believers of global warming, a contradiction in terms, was, as expected, rude, and the emailers' argument was focused on my intellectual attributes, specifically, speculation on what kind of moron I am, not on anything Richard Lindzen wrote.

I'd say that if I'm a moron, I'm an opinionated moron. At least I'm in good company. But I digress.

While my post was on how faulty science can be used as a political issue and lead to disastrous public policy, Dr. Lindzen specifically addressed in his article the issue of rising temperatures, a pillar of the alarmists' creed:
A learer claim as to what debate has ended is provided by environmental journalist George Easterbrook. He concludes that the scientific community now agrees that significant warming is occurring, and that there is clear evidence of human influences on the climate system. This is still a most peculiar claim. At some level, it has never been widely contested. Most of the climate community has agreed since 1988 that global mean temperatures have increased on the order of one degree Farenheit over the past century, having risen significantly from about 1919 to 1940, decreased between 1940 and the early '70s, and remaining essentially flat since 1998.
As you can clearly read from his own words, Dr. Lindzen contradicts Wikipedia's assertion that "There are no longer any such scientists who contend that the Earth is not warming"; Wikipedia even lists Dr. Lindzen among the scientists supporting the Wikipedia assertion, when he clearly doesn't. What Lindzen is saying is that (pay attention now, because I'm going to repeat it)
global mean temperatures have increased on the order of one degree Farenheit over the past century
and they have decreased or remained flat over the last 60 years.

A commenter at Babalu read the Lindzen article and still insists that there is a consensus on warming, but not on the causes. As a true believer, his faith is strong, yet his reading skills are weak.

(If instead you are not a true believer but are going to base your opinion on Wikipedia, you should read their section on the Maunder minimum; as a commenter in Kobayashi Maru's blog pointed out, there is adequate evidence that the earth IS approaching another Ice Age.)

But Dr. Lindzen is not alone: Scientists respond to Gore's warnings of climate catastrophe
Concerning Gore's beliefs about worldwide warming, Morgan [Dr. Dick Morgan, former advisor to the World Meteorological Organization and climatology researcher at University of Exeter, U.K.] points out that, in addition to the cooling in the NW Atlantic, massive areas of cooling are found in the North and South Pacific Ocean; the whole of the Amazon Valley; the north coast of South America and the Caribbean; the eastern Mediterranean, Black Sea, Caucasus and Red Sea; New Zealand and even the Ganges Valley in India. Morgan explains, "Had the IPCC used the standard parameter for climate change (the 30 year average) and used an equal area projection, instead of the Mercator (which doubled the area of warming in Alaska, Siberia and the Antarctic Ocean) warming and cooling would have been almost in balance."
So really, as the very title of Dr. Lindzen's article tells you, there is no "consensus" on global warming.

What there is, instead, is the theology of global warming, as Kobayashi has discussed
the instantiation of environmentalism (and global warming specifically) as a kind of secular religion against which no fact-based heresy will be tolerated lest it erode the blind, unreasoning faith of true believers. Simply calling it a religion begins to explain much about how the 'debate' is conducted and how the word "science" is at risk of becoming merely a sound that people make with their mouths - signifying nothing.
The Anchoress knows that Yes, Global Warming is Hoo-Hah. She points out that the true believers in global warming
have way too much invested in other narratives
Flopping Aces has a movie you should watch, by Friends of Science. It's 1/2 hr and has no fake scientists. Now that we are in hurracaine season, keep in mind that there are more cyclones when there are cooler temperatures.

As for An Inconvenient Truth, which was playing downtown for the past 3-4 weeks, it's been replaced by Pirates of the Caribbean. Next thing you know, there'll be a consensus on the existence of ghosts.
Update Big Lizards checks out one survey, and finds that 81% of climatologists surveyed didn't see the movie or read the book. I think the Pirates will do better.

Update 2 Sigmund, Carl and Alfred are hitting hard today: 'Can We Verify That Falling Sky' And What Does A Past President Of The NAS Know, Anyway?. SC&A link to The Economist's 2001 article The truth about the environment.
Ignorance matters only when it leads to faulty judgments.
Bjorn Lomborg
Here's a lecture from Dr Art Robinson of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine
Overview
A review of the research literature concerning the environmental consequences of increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide leads to the conclusion that increases during the 20th Century have produced no deleterious effects upon global weather, climate, or temperature. Increased carbon dioxide has, however, markedly increased plant growth rates. Predictions of harmful climatic effects due to future increases in minor greenhouse gases like CO2 are in error and do not conform to current experimental knowledge.
How's that for consensus?

Update 3 Shrikwrapped explores Recourse to authority.
Talk about Inconvenient.

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Death taxes for us but not on Buffet's plate

Best of the Web points out that Warren Buffet, "an avowed supporter of the estate tax", is doing his outmost to make sure his estate isn't taxed:
As an avowed supporter of the estate tax, Mr. Buffett could have let the government take its share of his estate after he dies. But just as Mr. Buffett has accumulated his vast wealth without paying much personal income tax, he has found a way to avoid the tax man in this maneuver as well, even writing in his letter to Bill and Melinda Gates that a condition of the gift is that the foundation “must continue to satisfy legal requirements qualifying my gifts as charitable and not subject to gift or other taxes.”
As Taranto points out,
When billionaires back the death tax, keep in mind that they have no intention of actually paying it. They are being "generous" with other people's money. This is the way in which the superrich wage class warfare against the merely affluent.
You can bet on that.

Gulags on Ellis Island, and today's articles from Maria

Maria and her family, who were intimately familiar with the Soviets, are outraged at this, for good reason: Gulags on Ellis Island: A dissonant note of moral equivalence at an exhibit on communist horrors.
But then, abruptly, the spell is broken, and in a dispiriting if not alarming way. "Brutal systems have played a prominent role in many countries, including the United States," one of the exhibit's last panels tells visitors. By itself, that one clause--"including the United States"--would be bad enough. But the panel continues. "Although slavery ended after the American Civil War, its consequences persist. The repercussions of the Holocaust in Europe and apartheid in South Africa reverberate even today. Similarly, Russians face the legacy of the gulag. How can citizens in these countries face up to the horrors of the past?"
Just as it is the small details of the Gulag exhibit that lead one to consider the depth of the deprivation its captives endured, it is the word "similarly" that so effectively undermines what has just been shown. After all, if the Gulag is "similar" to anything in American life or history, does it teach us anything about the Soviet Union--or about anything at all? "If you cannot distinguish between levels of evil, you are a cause of evil." Such was the astute reaction of a man whose father spent a decade in the Gulag, when confronted with this moral equivalence in the paragraph above.

It is certainly true that learning about evils perpetrated in other times in other countries can too easily lead to a comfortable sense of moral superiority. That can, in its own way, undo what might otherwise be a teaching moment. All the same, however, things are not all the same. If the Gulag is interesting only as a means of turning a mirror on the injustices of our own penal system, it is arguably not interesting at all. The Gulag was, and is, a reductio ad absurdum of sorts of the Soviet system itself. It was where "counterrevolutionary" elements were sent to learn the virtues of work and of collectivism, but the lesson was predominantly that of man's inhumanity to man. All prisoners were slowly starved to death, and those too weak to work were starved faster than the strongest. Thus the weak grew weaker and the strong stronger. The overwhelming impression at the heart of the Gulag exhibit is just this--that cruel and arbitrary power lay at the heart of a system that purported to redress inequalities but instead etched them in stone.

The Soviet Union tried throughout most of its existence to forcibly prevent its citizens from seeking freedom in the West. The rest of Ellis Island tells a very different story about a quite different country and system. It's the story of a country that, for centuries, people have risked their lives to reach. No moral equivalence there.
Joanne Mandel's book review of While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within (emphasis added)
The fruits of a long-standing commitment to political, academic and economic cooperation between the European nations and Arab governments resulted in Europe achieving a steady supply of Arab oil and open markets for their exports. In return, Europe welcomed unprecedented levels of Arab immigration and enthusiastically joined Arab efforts to de-legitimize American and Israeli interests in the Middle East. Mr. Bawers explains that this relationship with the Arab world gave Europeans a sense of security, believing that they would be safe from terrorist attack.

The European media played a central role in maintaining this fantasy. The author tells us that most Europeans have “been pumped full of America-hatred all [their] lives by teachers, professors, politicians, and journalists.” That is why they ‘know’ that America is plagued by severe poverty and extreme inequality and has no system for helping those in need. Likewise, journalists demonize Israel’s treatment of Arabs to a shocking extent. Coverage of the “Jenin massacre” is a prime example. The fact that it never occurred did not matter.
New star Murtha is worrying Dems

Meanwhile, in Brazil, João de Deus has a following, Is 'John of God' a Healer or a Charlatan?

At the blogs
TigerHawk can't get the BBC's World News home page, Technorati, or blogs hosted on Blogspot while in China.

Today's video
From Spain, an ad (in Spanish, of course) about a talking post denting your car Linea Directa

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Piglet at the Palace

Piglet banned in Turkey this week. Or maybe not.

God save the Queen

Long-time readers of this blog would remember that Piglet was nearly banned in the UK; more here, and click on photo:

Wishing Queen Elizabeth II a very happy birthday,

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Saddam and al-Qaeda, and today's articles

AQ Leaders Negotiated With Saddam Regime For Training. The MSM had reported on this in January 1999.

At the blogs
Damned if he did, damned if he didn't: Jane Arraf tells Mike Fumento that he has no idea how bad a Baghdad hotel could be. If he doesn't, it's because he didn't exactly stay in the hotel.

Dr. Sanity's post SHAME, THE ARAB PSYCHE, AND ISLAM, censored by the Beeb

Today's articles from Maria
Move over, Bob Dole: Limbaugh Detained After Viagra Found
As Ron White says, when life gives you lemons, find someone whose life has given them vodka and have a party. I suggest that Rush's people get together with Pfizer's people and get their vodka and lemons together.

Bring out the fireworks? I wonder how this will impact (pun intended, as always) global warming: Huge Asteroid to Fly Past Earth July 3

National Security Be Damned: The guiding philosophy on West 43rd Street
The Quisling Effect

Spinning Haditha

Implants Help Sleep Apnea

Microsoft takes partners for communications push

Smart Pill to Report from Inside the Body. Sounds better than having a colonoscopy. But will it clog the septic tank?

Market Forces Pushing Doctors to Be More Available. MARKET FORCES.

How to Get the Best Exchange Rate (and Avoid Fees)

'Breathtaking' Waste and Fraud in Hurricane Aid. As one would expect from a government agency.

THE CROSS-DRESSING DEFENSE. Did his shoes match that bag?

In memoriam



Please join me in a prayer for Rob Smith who passed away yesterday. My heartfelt condolences to his family and friends.


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Monday, June 26, 2006

Angelina wants to spend your money, Mark Steyn on defeaticrats, and today's articles from Maria

Angelina Jolie's in Forbes this week. Angelina, who makes $15 million per film, has pushed three bills in Congress "to protect children":
One would have the U.S. spend $500 million next year and $15 billion over ten years, to educate kids in the poorest regions. She plans to work with Senator Hillary Clinton of New York, who has proposed it. In April, to pique interest in the press, Jolie joined in a media conference call about education when she was eight months pregnant; it generated 243 stories.

A second bill would provide legal help to alien minors (she despises the term "alien") who are alone and pass through U.S. borders. The Senate passed it in December 2005, but it has languished in the House for six months. "It's caught up in the overall immigration debate," Jolie says, "but I just think it's un-American to refuse refugee children access to a lawyer." But in a private meeting, Representative F. John Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin scoffed at the cost of implementing such an idea, she says. "He didn't treat me gently--I left shaking in my heels." Her third bill, to aid 70 million "vulnerable" kids in the Third World, was signed by President Bush last November--but so far no funding has been okayed.
It's your tax money, folks. And it's great PR for Angelina.

At the blogs
Revolt at the ACLU.
ADD: The Mainstream Media Disease; and let's not forget Associated Press Deficit Disorder

Duquenal, Ozzie Guillen, the White Sox and the Chicago Tribune

Don't miss Hip Hop Republican's posts on Moorish Science Temple Cult and the Florida Cell, more here. Via Maria, Bizarre cult of Sears Tower ‘plotter’

24
I Am Jack Bauer. What 24 means for homeland security
Best line: "Jack Bauer, for example, could strangle you with a cordless phone".

Today's articles from Maria
Mark Steyn: U.S. can't 'redeploy' its way out of Iraq
The danger we face is not a Chinese superpower or an Islamist superpower: If it's a new boss, you learn the new rules and adjust as best you can. But the greater likelihood is of a world with no superpower at all in which unipolar geopolitics gives way to nonpolar geopolitics, a world without order in which pipsqueak thug states that can't feed their own people globalize their pathologies.
VDH: Despair and Hope: The short and long wars against radical Islam
Even more depressing for the Islamists is that their enemy is not the American or European West per se, but a far more insidious Westernism, something that has infected diverse peoples from South Korea and China to Central America and enclaves in the Middle East like Beirut and Dubai. Westernization — whether we define that as a C-SPAN televised gripe session on Palestinian rights at a Western university or navigating through 7,000 tunes on an iPod or flipping on the CD, air conditioning, and power seats in a Honda Accord or watching assorted bare navels on MTV — is insidiously seductive and ultimately subversive to the patriarchal world of the eighth century
A sign of the times

Memo to Bush: They were tortured!

U.S. firefighters in Mexico as American West burns

Revolutionary Hubble telescope stops working. I had a chance to see the unfinished Hubble several years ago before it was launched.

The Bishop of Rochester in the UK says Truth should be more important than unity
In the past, Anglican comprehensiveness has been grounded in acknowledging the supremacy of the Bible, the authority of what Christians have always and everywhere believed, and of the Anglican formularies, such as the Book of Common Prayer, the Articles of Religion and the Ordinal, which bear witness to this faith. Such foundations are more and more dispensable these days, and it is this which has produced our present crisis.
Mysteries of the Masons: THE SECRET SOCIETY RAISES $2 MILLION A DAY FOR CHARITY AND PREACHES BROTHERLY LOVE AND TOLERANCE - BUT WILL IT BE THE NEXT OPUS DEI? Nah, the Opus Dei doesn't have Shriner's conventions.

Foes of gulf drilling are losing ground

Identity- theft ring scored in Tucson

Because Jimmy is always bad news: Bin Laden family gave $1 million to Carter

Dirty great cloud hangs over Beijing Olympics. Pollution has put Yangtze on brink of catastrophe. I suggest that we ship Al Gore to China with his movie and a thousand Gorewarmers.

There is no "consensus" on global warming

Richard S. Lindzen, Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has an article in this morning's WSJ (by subscription) where he correctly states, again, that There Is No 'Consensus' on Global Warming: An inconvenient truth for Al Gore.

Dr. Lindzen is eminently qualified to discuss climate change, as you can see from his CV (lots of big words in there. Look them up if you question his qualifications.) One of the things he debunks is Gore's assertion that scientists "don't' have any models that give them a high level of confidence" on the supposedly rising sea levels. I can only imagine the reaction of Dr. Lindzen and his colleagues, considering how Lindzen himself
has developed models for the Earth's climate with specific concern for the stability of the ice caps, the sensitivity to increases in CO2, the origin of the 100,000 year cycle in glaciation, and the maintenance of regional variations in climate. In cooperation with colleagues and students, he is developing a sophisticated, but computationally simple, climate model to test whether the proper treatment of cumulus convection will significantly reduce climate sensitivity to the increase of greenhouse gases.
While right now the WSJ article is available only by subscription, you can read a siimilar article by Dr. Lindzen here. In this article Lindzen aks,
Why, one might wonder, is there such insistence on scientific unanimity on the warming issue? After all, unanimity in science is virtually nonexistent on far less complex matters. Unanimity on an issue as uncertain as "global warming'' would be surprising and suspicious. Moreover, why are the opinions of scientists sought regardless of their field of expertise? Biologists and physicians are rarely asked to endorse some theory in high energy physics. Apparently, when one comes to "global warming,'' any scientist's agreement will do.

The answer almost certainly lies in politics. For example, at the Earth Summit in Rio, attempts were made to negotiate international carbon emission agreements. The potential costs and implications of such agreements are likely to be profound for both industrial and developing countries. Under the circumstances, it would be very risky for politicians to undertake such agreements unless scientists "insisted." Nevertheless, the situation is probably a good deal more complicated than that example suggests.
In today's WSJ Lindzen concludes (emphasis added),
So what, then, is one to make of this alleged debate? I would suggest at least three points.

First, nonscientists generally do not want to bother with understanding the science. Claims of consensus relieve policy types, environmental advocates and politicians of any need to do so. Such claims also serve to intimidate the public and even scientists - especially those outside the area of climate dynamics. Secondly, given that the question of human attribution largely cannot be resolved, its use in promoting visions of disaster constitutes nothing so much as a bait-and-switch scam. This an inauspicious beginning to what Mr. Gore claims is not a political issue but a "moral crusade".

Lastly, there is a clear attempt to establish truth not by scientific methods but by perpetual repetition. An earlier attempt at this was accompanied by tragedy. Perhaps Marx was right. This time around we may have farce - if we're lucky.
The political issue can lead to disastrous public policy, and, as Dr. Lindzen well knows (pdf file),
Science, in the public arena, is commonly used as a source of authority with which to bludgeon political opponents and propagandize uninformed citizens.
I can only add that it is your duty, as a citizen, to not only understand the issues but also to understand the qualifications of the person explaining the issues. A source like Dr. Lindzen, because of his education, background, experience and research, is worth thousands, even millions of blind global Gorewarmers. Update: Keith Burgess-Jackson examines a common fallacy about the transferability of expertise and authority, and advises,
On matters that require expertise, either become an expert yourself or consult someone who is. On matters that require no expertise, such as morality, make up your own mind -- after gathering all relevant facts.
More on global warming:
At the blogs

The Anchoress looks at The media’s full-court press on Global Warming
Sigmund, Carl and Alfred has Environmental Reality, Round Two.
Bookworm room notices how there's Always an agenda
Update: There's a Dr. in the house.

Humor
A Terrifying Message from Al Gore

Immediate cause of cynicism
ABC wants you

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Sunday, June 25, 2006

Sunday blogging: Alonzo at the Publix

My sister, who lives in Miami and is a big Heat fan, yesterday went to the new Publix and realized that the reason for the long line was the very handsome Alonzo
.

We need a Publix in Princeton.

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(If you click on the photo you'll notice how their bio shows him as still playing with the Nets, but I love the photo anyway)

Saturday, June 24, 2006

The NYT and WMDs

NYT, June 23, 2006:
A vocal collection of Americans, mostly on the political right, have an unshakable faith that such weapons exist.
(hat tip neo-neocon)

Maybe the "vocal collection of Americans" remember what acting head of United Nations inspectors office said, and the NYT reported on June 18, 2004
"The United Nations has determined that Saddam Hussein shipped weapons of mass destruction components as well as medium-range ballistic missiles before, during and after the U.S.-led war against Iraq in 2003".
Article abstract:
Demetrius Perricos, acting head of United Nations inspectors office, tells Security Council that equipment and material that could have been used to produce banned weapons and long-range missiles have been emptied from Iraqi sites since war started and shipped abroad; says many of items bear tags placed on them by UN inspectors as suspect dual-use materials; cites discovery of engines from banned missile in scrap yards in Netherlands and Jordan
So much for vocal collections.

Update Does The Pentagon Suffer From 'MSM's Alzheimer's'?

Update, Monday June 26: Saddam's WMD: Why is our intelligence community holding back?, by PETER HOEKSTRA AND RICK SANTORUM
We believe that the decisions of when and what Americans can know about issues of national security should not be made by unelected, unnamed and unaccountable people.
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Friday, June 23, 2006

And all that gas . . .

No, not gasoline, but gas, specifically, sarin and mustard gas

As it turns out, some more WMDs were found in Iraq where coalition forces have recovered about 500 shells, canisters or other munitions that contain degraded mustard gas or sarin nerve agent. The story has gone mostly ignored by the MSM, while the NYT (along with the LA Times) for instance, leaks another national security program, again.

I say some more because just a week ago substantial evidence was found of more buried WMDs.

Then there's
Even the UN has determined that Saddam Hussein shipped weapons of mass destruction components as well as medium-range ballistic missiles before, during and after the U.S.-led war against Iraq in 2003.

Yet the Left continues to wallow in denial and repeat the "Bush lied" mantra.

However, this one takes the cake:
Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif), who is normally fairly level-headed about War on Terror matters, asserted on Fox News today the newly-reported chemical weapons discovered in Iraq were old and therefore no more dangerous than aging items one might find "under the kitchen sink."
Commenter Good Ole Charlie explains on sarin
This is the chemical agent that even Adolph Hitler refused to use during WWII (largely perhaps because Adolph was gassed himself during WWI [see Mein Kampf's opening pages for his description]).
The same impure (~1% pure) agent that raised a ruckus in the Tokyo subway system a few years ago. Even the decomposition products are nasty, but not as deadly as sarin itself.
The Husband, who also has a background in science, tells me that the main difference between fresh mustard gas and decayed mustard gas is that the decayed mustard gas doesn't burn the skin, lungs and eyes as badly as the fresh [clarification] yet remains lethal.

Jane Harman, along with her party, need to stop inhaling the toxic gas fumes of their own partisanship. And rather than look under the sink, they should examine their own consciences.

Update: Dr. Sanity
National security be damned. They have their own war to win. And they won't cut and run or redeply their forces until their mission is accomplished and Bush is defeated. Anything that furthers that specific goal, by their definition, is truly heroic.
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Education myths, debunked

Jay Greene researches education myths, namely,
The money myth
The teacher pay myth
The myth of insurmountable problems
The class size myth
The certification myth:
The rich-school myth
The myth of ineffective school vouchers
Greene finds that
One of the strongest and most consistent findings in the entire body of research on teacher quality is that teaching certificates and master's degrees in education are irrelevant to classroom performance.
I agree with that 100%; the two best teachers I had in school were a mathematician and a historian. Their understanding of the material and their enthusiasm for their subject made all the difference. Neither teacher had been to ed school, and to the best of my knowledge, never did.

Greene found that school choice improves all schools (emphasis added):
Another reform that can help overcome the educational challenges caused by social problems is school choice. Few question that vouchers help the students who use them to leave failing public schools for a private school. This positive impact for voucher participants has been found in five "random assignment" studies. Less understood, however, is the positive effect that school choice has on students who remain in the public schools as well. When school choice programs, such as vouchers and charter schools, are adopted, urban public schools that once had a captive clientele must improve the education they provide or else students, and the funding they represent, will go elsewhere.

High quality research shows consistently that vouchers have positive effects for students who receive them. The only place where results are mixed is in regard to the magnitude of vouchers' benefits.
. . .
In a study I performed of a voucher program in Florida, I found that when chronically failing public schools faced competition from vouchers, they made very impressive gains compared to the performance of all other schools. Similarly low-performing schools whose students were not eligible for the vouchers did not make similar gains. Many other researchers have found that school choice programs increase the performance of public schools. In fact, despite the frequent claims of teachers unions, I am not aware of a single study that has found that a school choice program harmed the academic performance of a public school system.
. . . . . .
The privately funded voucher programs spend less than half what public schools spend per pupil. Better performances, happier parents, for about half the cost: if similar results were produced for a method of fighting cancer, academics and reporters would be elated.
For more on school choice, I highly recommend Andrew Coulson's articles at the Cato Institute's Center for Educational Freedom, and the Center's many publications.

Update, Saturday, June 24 Mamacita guest posts at Sigmund Carl and Alfred, and says “Our schools will not improve by having money thrown at them. Money just pays for the latest round of theories and the paperwork..”

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Thursday, June 22, 2006

Migraine relief, and today's articles from Maria

Electrical pulse to aid migraine. The migraine zapper device, however, looks scary enough to give me a headache:
At the blogs
Be Kind To The Factually Challenged

"He Wasn't In His Right Mind"

World Cup as revolution: Soccer—The World Upside Down

The X-Ray Project. More here.

The Middle Finger Salute To The "Bush Lied People Died" Hysterics

Just to be clear, I'm not questioning John Murtha's patriotism. I'm quesioning his ethics.

Civil Liberties For Terrorists But Not For Troops

Today's articles from Maria
Human rights groups silent on death of Americans

French PM Causes Uproar Over Airbus
Airbus deal in jeopardy

CUPE Ontario Votes To Boycott Israel; See Full Page Ad that Appeared in Canada's National Post Newspaper

China beats rivals to buy Russian oilfield

Wrong, defeated, humiliated: why the Left still hates Lady Thatcher
The fact is that a basic law of the charm factory [the BBC's drama department] has once again been proven: that no day is too short, and no opportunity too tangential, to vilify Lady Thatcher. To this, we might add another observation: that people with a certain cast of mind have come to see her as so inhuman that no act of vilification can be deemed too much.
On the one hand, the Beeb's drama presents Margaret Thatcher as "a bellicose drunk, demolishing whiskies and importuning other guests for refills"; on this side of the Atlantic, we have Ted Kennedy, Promoted from kid brother to family patriarch by BBC News.

Prison for you, but not for me

The Loneliness of a Conservative Librarian

Brit Guards' Bearskin Hats May Be Banned, which made the infantile exhibitionists naked protestors come out:
On Sunday, about 100 animal rights activists staged a naked demonstration in London to protest against the hats.
It would be a lot easier to take global warming seriously if 30 years ago the same gang hadn’t been warning us that global cooling was going to turn us all into popsicles

Iraq legacy will affect not only Bush, but Democrats, too

A few Historical tidbits on Marx, Engels, Carlyle and Dickens.

A slide show: Gladiator, American Style

Wednesday, June 21, 2006

The catfight over Londonistan

Melanie Phillips, whose blog I've had in the blogroll since I first started blogging, has published a new book, Londonistan

Here's the book description in the blurb:
The suicide bombings carried out in London in 2005 by British Muslims revealed an enormous fifth column of Islamist terrorists and their sympathizers. Under the noses of British intelligence, London has become the European hub for the promotion, recruitment and financing of Islamic terror and extremism - so much so that it has been mockingly dubbed Londonistan. In this ground-breaking book Melanie Phillips pieces together the story of how Londonistan developed as a result of the collapse of traditional British identity and accommodation of a particularly virulent form of multiculturalism. Londonistan has become a country within the country and not only threatens Britain but its special relationship with the U.S. as well.
She describes what it took to publish this book in her article The battle to publish Londonistan
I was taken aside by a senior editor at a big-name imprint who was well-disposed towards me. ‘Drop it’, he said. ‘No British publisher will touch this’. Why? Because it defended Israel, already well on the way to becoming a pariah state, and worse still levelled the charge of anti-Jewish prejudice against the British intelligentsia.
Now the reaction is that Melanie Phillips is an hysteric, at least according to the Grauniad's interviewer, Jackie Ashley.

Ashley's article reminds one of a catfight. It is to Ms Phillips's credit that there wasn't one.

The Daily Ablution was discussing the Grauniad's article and found that Guardian Attack on Apostate Staffer Misfires, and notices that
Unable to muster any argument against the points Ms. Phillips raises, she is reduced to criticising the means by which they're expressed. She's unsuccessful even at this, though; all she accomplishes is to provide an(other) example of a pervasive and willful blindness to a very real problem, inadvertently supporting Ms. Phillips' observations concerning her critics.
David Thompson comments,
At no point does Ashley even try to refute Phillips' statement in any meaningful way; she simply gasps in disbelief and encourages her readers to do the same.

This refusal even to entertain some theological connection between coercive Islamism and 'mainstream' Islam is remarkably widespread, and appears to be based almost entirely on ignorance and wishful thinking. Despite her emphatic tone, Ashley doesn't explain why this reassuringly total distinction is to be assumed as a given. At no point are readers told why they should suppose some clear ideological discontinuity between those who believe that the world belongs to Islam, and would be made perfect by submission to it, and those who try to further that end exactly as Mohammed demanded.
Ashley not only cannot refute Phillips' statements; when it comes to radical Islam, Ashley suffers from an error of Liberalism that Paul Berman has pointed out in his book Terrorism and Liberalism, and in an interview with Alan Johnson where,
If material factors (economic and sociological facts) are the only thing to consider, then everything that happens is rationally explicable…

Alan Johnson: …and we don't need to pay any attention to the specific ideological complexion of particular movements because it's all just a surface reflection of something deeper…

Paul Berman: …yes, but it's more than that. The presumption also means we end up distorting those ideas by converting them into ideas that we find more easily recognisable. So we end up saying, for instance, 'It's not true that Hamas has encouraged a cult of suicide and murder. People in the West Bank and Gaza are engaging in suicide bombing because they lack water rights, or because the Peace Plan offered by Clinton created a border which was inadequate'. In other words we end up attributing to people ideas that are not theirs, but which fit our assumption that everyone acts in accord with a rational calculation of their material interests.
Ashley would do well to read an article by an Iraqi Reformist on Arab Society and Social Schizophrenia (via Sigmund Carl and Alfred). She might learn a thing or two on rational or irrational assumptions.

As a post-script, Scott of the Daily Ablution tried to purchase Londonistan at his local store and it wasn't available. Thank goodness for Amazon.

Update, June 21 Melanie Phillips vs. MPACUK

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Chirac in the Comoros,and "his legacy to the nation"

Captain's Quarters notes that A Paris Criminal Tribunal ruling has pinned the government of Jacques Chirac with responsibility for a 1995 coup in Comoros. Outside the Beltway is also posting on the story.

In case you were wondering where the hey is Comoros, here's a map:


Here's what the Times UK has to say, Soldiers of fortune go free as judge denounces Chirac over island coup
The court refused a prosecution demand to jail the plotters and instead handed out suspended sentences after hearing them claim that they were acting with the backing of M Chirac’s Government.

Although France has long been accused of secret operations to maintain its influence in Africa, the ruling constituted an unprecedented, public condemnation of these practices. It was particularly embarrassing for M Chirac, who has sought to portray himself as one of the Third World’s greatest advocates in the West.
Captain Ed says,
Chirac used just that pose to protect Saddam Hussein from an American invasion in the early months of 2003, attempting to shield France from the revelations of the Oil-For-Food scam as well as protect its corporate interests in Iraq. The French made quite a show about their disavowal of violence in the service of regime change, skipping over the sixteen unenforced UN Security Council resolutions that Saddam defiantly ignored. Now we find out that the French have no problems with military intervention for regime change, and only differ in the level of honesty involved.
The Times continues,
“It is clear that the French secret services knew of the plan for a coup d’état conceived by Robert Denard, both its preparation and execution,” the court said.

“It is also evident that at the very least they did nothing to hinder it and that they therefore allowed it to reach its conclusion. As a consequence, that means political leaders must also have wanted it.”
Indeed. It didn't even need to have been the "regular" French secret service: Long-time readers of this blog will remember last year's story on how How Chirac 'ordered' his own secret, secret service, a story that surfaced during the trial of a former French secret agent acussed of receiving 1.3 million euros (£880,000, or close to US$1,600,000) in kickbacks from military contractors.

France2 news last evening was totally silent on the Comoros story; instead, they had a long feature on the opening of the new Jacques Chirac museum ("his legacy to the nation"), officially named the Musée du Quai Branly. No, the museum doesn't have an Oil-For-Food wing, a Clearstream room, or a lunch money cafeteria, but it is a "focus of accusation" since apparently many of the new museum`s artifacts, which include a large commission of Australian Aboriginal art in addition to a large African art collection, were obtained inappropriately.

How very fitting.

Update, June 22 Les Muslimerables Get Caught With Their Hands In The Cookie Jar

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How U.S.Trade Policy Can Overcome Doha's Failings

Leading the Way: How U.S.Trade Policy Can Overcome Doha's Failings
. . . increased trade does not require new trade agreements. Through unilateral liberalization, policymakers can achieve the U.S. objectives of the Doha Round: better opportunities for American businesses,more affordable products for consumers, improved prospects for farmers and producers in developing countries, alleviation of poverty, and greater international receptivity to U.S. policies.
. . .
U.S. tariffs and quotas are not assets to be relinquished only in exchange for better access abroad. In fact, they are liabilities that raise the costs of production for U.S. producers and the cost of living for American consumers.
Read it all (you'll find the pdf file at the above link). In today's WSJ Bernard K. Gordon writes on Plan B for plurilateralists: What to do if Doha goes down
The initial step would be to tie together these separate FTAs [General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade's artlce 24, Nafta, Cafta, and others] into a broader group of nations that share America's free trade goals. Some in Europe are in that category: Britain, the Netherlands, several in Scandinavia and very probably Germany. They seen hardly willing to continue supporting the French-EU insistence on agricultural policies that have stalled the Doha Round.. . .
. . .
Just as with the existing bilateral and regional FTAs, the new plurilateral free trade group would exist alongside, rather than substitute for , the multilateral system at the heart of the present Doha round, which has evidently come on hard times. The key advantage of plurilateralism would be to continue the widening trade liberalization, rather than being stymied by the split between what Robert Zoellick called the "can do" and the "won't do" nations.

But to get the ball rolling the U.S. must return to its traditional position of trade leadership.
I propose an even more drastic measure: the USA should abolish all trade tariffs. The resulting boom in trade will bring about a period of prosperity in our country and across the world that will outshine anything we've experienced.

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

The jihad capital of America?

Via Jihad Watch, British agents trace 7/7 terror links to smalltown America:
The British-led investigation has played a part in identifying a number of US-based terrorists and helped the authorities in Washington to break up an al-Qaeda cell operating in Falls Church, Virginia.

The agents are particularly keen to discover if the visitors included Mohammad Sidique Khan, leader of the July 7 suicide bombers, who is alleged to have travelled to America’s East Coast to meet fellow militants and stage a series of attacks on synagogues.
. . .
Neither the FBI nor police would comment on the investigations into Khan’s alleged visits to the US in 2002, but, in Falls Church yesterday, residents blamed “foreign agitators” for encouraging young men from the city’s Muslim community to join extremist groups linked to al-Qaeda.

In the Falls Plaza shopping mall, most preferred to chat about their historic city’s latest civic award for its floral displays and not its reputation as the jihad capital of America.

Over the past few months, 11 men who regularly attended the same Islamic Centre in Falls Church have been convicted of terrorism charges. Seven reportedly went to training camps in Pakistan, including one used by Khan
.

Their trials exposed a network stretching from this placid commuter belt serving the US capital ten miles away, passing through British cities and on to jihadi camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

A twelfth man from this city of barely 11,000 residents, Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, was jailed for 30 years in March for plotting to assassinate President Bush and being a member of al-Qaeda. FBI investigators claim in The One Percent Doctrine that Abu Ali, 24, was in regular e-mail contact with Khan.
. . .
The National Security Agency is accused of bugging mosques and private homes where al-Tamimi preached, including the Dar al-Hijrah centre on the edge of Falls Church. This glass-fronted mosque acquired its notoriety in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks when it was discovered that the imam, Sheikh Anwar al-Awlaki, was the spiritual mentor to two of the hijackers.
Gates of Vienna has a series of reports on Jamaat ul-Fuqra:
Virginia Part 1
Virginia Part 2
Virginia Part 3
HQ: Hancock, NY
In California
In South Carolina
See Gates of Vienna's sidebar for more.

I passed!

You Passed 8th Grade Math

Congratulations, you got 9/10 correct!

Only 9 out of 10?

Death in Gaza, and today's articles from Maria

Death In Gaza: Who is to blame for grief on a beach?
But there is an even larger question not asked. Whether the rocket bases are near civilian beaches or in remote areas, why are the Gazans launching any rockets at Israel in the first place -- about 1,000 in the past year?
Today's articles from Maria
Into the Fray: Christopher Hitchens responds to a former Iraqi official's missive. Hitchens addresses the Wilson lies,
If you now want to say that Joseph Wilson can't be relied upon even to tell the difference between you and the well-known Nizar Hamdoon, then you are taking a stand upon much firmer ground. (Except that you oddly rely on his account, rather than yours, to say that you don't recall the last meeting between Saddam and a U.S. ambassador. Have you no memory or diary of your own?) You are also wise to have avoided reading his ludicrous book. Wilson is one of the great clowns of our time, and proves it every day. By the way, he has recently spoken highly of you as "a world-class opera singer" who "went to the Vatican as his last post so that he could be near the great European opera houses in Rome." (See Craig Unger's piece in the July 2006 Vanity Fair.) If you think he doesn't know you well enough even to know your face, let alone to discuss your operatic accomplishments, then complain to him, not to me. I would love to be the one who put you two (back?) in touch. I certainly never said that you were actually an opera singer, though there's something minor-key operatic about your long moans and sobs of self-pity on the Wagner question. I took care to say that a liking for Wagner—which I share—is no condemnation.

If you really insist, I shall try to believe you when you say that your reappointment to the Iraqi Embassy at the Vatican was the result of a sentimental chat between his holiness the pope and the disgusting war criminal Tariq Aziz. (How one pictures that affecting scene!) Will you just remind me of what other full embassies Saddam's Iraq was maintaining in Europe in 1994? A time of international U.N. sanctions, no-fly zones, and the utter isolation of your government? A perch in Rome might have been worth having, arias or no arias.

Finally, I repeat my original question. You have claimed that you only went to West Africa in 1999 to try some ordinary sanctions-busting and to attempt to induce regional African governments to end the legal isolation of your genocidal chief. This seems discreditable in itself, but why on earth would such a lowly task fall to the Iraqi ambassador to the Holy See? Can you perhaps understand why Italian and British and French intelligence, given your IAEA background, raised an admonitory flag? Can you defend your assertion in Time magazine that you knew nothing of Niger's main product and export? Will you not admit that the awareness of your trip predated any attempt at any later forgery by whomever it was attempted or for whatever motive? Have you read the two independent British reports, confirming the validity of the initial intelligence? These are the real issues, and you only call renewed attention to them by your heavy efforts to be amusing.
Moscow demands immediate release of Russian hostages in Iraq
The claim of responsibility came two days after Chechnya's pro-Russian leaders claimed to have "decapitated" the rebel movement by killing its self-styled "president".
The kidnapping took place last Saturday.

It's an Islamic jihad, stupid

Two from the NY Post:
FRENCH TWISTED: DON'T HELP PARIS RAPE AFRICA. I agree with Ralph Peters 100%.

IT'S TIME FOR WRATH OVER KHAN PAKISTANI-PERSIAN PROLIFERATION PUZZLE
What makes Khan so critical to understanding Persia's nuclear puzzle? By all accounts, he's the only person outside of Iran capable of providing some of the missing pieces on the plans and capabilities of Iran's largely clandestine nuclear program.
Would you like 'queso' on that sandwich? Now imagine if Geno's had to translate every language spoken in Philadelphia . . .

Two from Town Hall:
The pursuit of gratification.
Something we don't hear enough of nowadays, Shame

Don't count on inheritance, warns AARP

What causes hurricanes? Republicans! If Bill Clinton said it, then it must be true.

Today's Brazil: Where Jesus trumps decadence. Jim Rutz sees number of churches in nation outpacing U.S. by 2010

Three articles with questions on ethics and medical techonology:
Genetic test delays: Mother chooses to undergo major surgery over years-long limbo
Revealed: UK set for first face transplants.
This is outright creepy: Mixing Animal, Human Cells Gets Exotic

Maria sent today's video, which should carry a medical warning as Connie Chung should NOT sing, period. As Maria said,
they would never dare to show it to prisoners at Guantanamo
Ex-anchorwoman warbles farewell song that has America in pain. It's horrible enough without the sound, but I love the pianist's expression.

Other articles
the real value of Cuba’s efforts, as well as the Craig/Flake bills, is that they highlight the absurdity of our own outdated offshore drilling policy.

Monday, June 19, 2006

New faculty CV:

And here's a photo from the olden days when Joschka pounded on a cop:

Former proponent of a European superstate, and ex-minister of foreign affairs Joschka Fischer joins the Princeton University Wilson School beginning in September 2006 as the Frederick H. Schultz Class of 1951 Professor of International Economic Policy, with the rank of lecturer of public and international affairs
In addition to his teaching responsibilities, Fischer will serve as a senior fellow at the Wilson School's Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination and as a fellow at Princeton's European Union Program.
Update, June 20 Fischer certainly looks like nothing more than the lunchmeat celebrity friend of Madeleine Albright

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VHD on Iraq, and Murtha on Okinawa

Betting on Defeat? It’s far from a safe bet
First, those who undergo the opportune conversion often fall prey to disingenuousness. Take John Kerry’s recent repudiation of his earlier vote for the war in Iraq. To cheers of Democratic activists, he now laments, “We were misled.”

Misled?

Putting aside the question of weapons of mass destruction and the use of the royal “we,” was the senator suggesting that Iraq did not violate the 1991 armistice accords?

Or that Saddam Hussein did not really gas and murder his own people?

Perhaps he was “misled” into thinking Iraqi agents did not really plan to murder former President George Bush?

Or postfacto have we learned that Saddam did not really shield terrorists?

Apparently the Iraqi regime neither violated U.N. accords nor shot at American planes in the no-fly zones.
. . .
The Iraqi army — well over 250,000 strong — is growing, and the much smaller American force (about 130,000) is shrinking. How do you call for a deadline for withdrawal when Iraqization was always predicated on withdrawal only after there was no Iraqi dependence on a large, static American force?
. . .
Seventh, the old twin charges — no link between al Qaeda and Saddam, no WMDs — are also becoming largely irrelevant or proving untrue. It must have been difficult for Time, Newsweek, and the New York Times, in their coverage of the death of Zarqawi, to admit that he had been active in Iraq well before the end of Saddam Hussein, along with a mishmash of old killers from Abu Nidal to Abdul Rahman Yasin, the Iraqi American who helped plan the first World Trade Center bombing.
Even CNN was saying last week that Zarqawi was hiding in Northern Iraq, where he had installed a sarin factory as an al-Qaeda operative, in 2002. Read the whole article.

Democrats keep betting on failure in Iraq, while Murtha is channeling Grandpa Simpson more every day, via Instapundit.

So while John Murtha thinks that Bill Clinton did the right thing by abandoning Somalia to its warlords and Islamist rebels, including al-Qaeda, now [Frank] Rich wants to blame Bush for its fall

Okinawa??
The other interesting thing about this guy is that he is literally the only Democrat in Congress that has actually put forward ANY kind of alternative military strategy in Iraq.
Did Murtha cut geography class in school? Here's the map:

Can't we just put him [Murtha] in the senile column with Byrd and be done with him?

Videos:
Murtha on Meet the Press
Thank G-d for Murtha!

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Get Elijah to the IHOP, and today's articles from Maria

Get Elijah to the IHOP, or Today's Idiot Celebrity
Earning the title of Today's Idiot Celebrity (TIC), France2 news showed a couple of days ago an interview with former hobbit Elijah Wood, who left the shire and went to France on a junket. Elijah was among the crowd of actors and directors who took part in Paris, Je t'aime, a film described as a pleasing romantic tumble. The tumble part comes from having 18 directors and I don't know how many actors in a 2-hr movie, but I digress. Elijah earned his TIC by gushing about France because, of all things,
"In the US when you go out to eat you have to get up and get your food in a tray and take it to your table. In France you sit at the table and they bring the food to you"
Elijah, get thee to an IHOP. They have waitress service.

Honestly, at times I believe that casting departments check applicants' IQs and reject all above the median.

Best advice of the week:
In the July issue of BBC Music Mag, page 18:
What they've said . . .
"When I'm 40, too old to be a rock star, I plan to go back to college to study classical music"
Coldplay's lead singer Chris Martin should get started on his audition pieces.
One for the You're young only once, but you can remain immature forever file:
Wag the Blog
The divide between the partisans and the ideologues is generational. In addition to being white and wealthy, the average Daily Kos reader is about 45 years old, which is clear from all the gray hair at the Riviera. What emerges from the weekend is that the leadership and public faces of the liberal blogosphere are young, while the rank and file is middle-aged. The twenty- and thirtysomethings have created a space for the forty- and fiftysomethings of the old New Left to reconnect with the political activism of their youth. The young, tech-savvy pioneers of the actual blogs tend to be pro-partisan, while the baby-boomers are pro-ideology.
At the blogs
Are New Jersey Democrats Trying To Hide Another Scandal?

NY Attorney General Warns ACLU About Restricting Speech Of Their Own Members

Via Instapundit, A high school with 41 valedictorians? To me, 41 valedictorians means that the school administrators must have gone through the casting director's IQ criteria (see above) to qualify for the job. While some believe that the X-Men movies are about being gay, I believe they are about being extraordinarilly talented in a world of mediocrity. Someday I'll post on that.

New website (in Spanish) Organización por la Democracia Liberal en Venezuela

Today's articles
Martin Peretz on Larry Summers and his enemies
The most astute constituency at Harvard, it turns out, is the cohort of undergraduates. They called him Larry from the beginning, a genuine sign of affection and a proper sign of esteem. The fact is that Summers spent more time with students than most professors, few of whom grade their students' papers or even know their names. Is he haughty? No. Ask the students who cheered whenever they encountered him. So who was intimidated by him? Only those who couldn't answer his questions.
U.S. Marines Build Shrine To Islam

. . . from Maria
Two from TownHall.com
Immoral equivalence
Why strike Canada?

Americans for Prosperity Announces Statewide TV, Radio Ad Blitz Against NJ Gov. Jon Corzine’s Proposed $1.8 Billion Tax Hike

Host of new species found worldwide: Fly, shark, frog, fish among fresh discoveries by scientists

The Doc has the Carnival!


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Friday, June 16, 2006

One for the road: The Ocks Menne

Back from Kalamazoo, and right on time for the weekend, Geoffrey Chaucer tells the Canterbury version of the X-Men.

Have a wonderful Father's Day weekend.

Venezuela: Goodbye, free press; hello Hugo t-shirts

I opened the newspaper this morning and found Move over, Che: Chávez Is New Icon of Radical Chic. The article (by subscription) starts by saying "Venezuelan Populist Inspires Groups of U. S. Supporters; To Do: 'Boogie for Bolívar'"
To a slice of the American left, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has become a revolutionary hero, nearly on a par with Che Guevara and Fidel Castro.
To me, he is that, too, but for different reasons: while the Left sees Hugo and Fidel as charismatic-leader-helping-the-poor-offering-free-health-care-education-adult-literacy-and-job-training-initiatives-that-help-millions-of-Venezuelans/CubansTM, I see Hugo as a wanna-be of murderous criminals.

Last year I predicted that Hugo would become the next t-shirt icon. What the WSJ didn't mention today that I mentioned last year is that The Miami Herald had found that
the Fort-Lauderdale based Venezuelan Information Office keeps track of what's mentioned against the Chavez administration in the American media and in Congress. According the the Department of Justice, the VIO keeps track of reporters writing on Venezuela for The Washington Post, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune and The Miami Herald. In addition, the VIO has contacted some thirty senators and canvassed at least four Democrat representatives, among them Raúl Grijalva (Arizona), Dennis Kucinich (Ohio), Barbara Lee (California) y Jan Schakowsky (Illinois), for support against the referendum against Chavez, plus it counts on the support of Jack Kemp and former Attorney General Ramsey Clarke.

According to the article, the VIO has reached out to other areas, including Utah, Chicago (where the Armada Libertad - Armed Freedom - group's slogan is "Defendiendo a Venezuela desde las entrañas del monstruo", "Defending Venezuela from within the entrails of the monster"), and Canada.
While the American Left worships its new icon, Chavez Threatens to Shut Down Venezuelan TV Stations for criticizing the government. Hear him say it in his own words (in Spanish, via VCrisis).

Publius Pundit points out,

Amid all the Chavista propaganda reported here in the States, suggesting that Venezuela is not a dictatorship because of an existing free press, the fact today is that the media has been threatened with total destruction.

It's not just TV stations: it's also the NGOs
The latest pet project by the autocratic and dictatorial Government is a law to control NGO’s. Whether they are political, defenders of human rights, against AIDS or the environment, this new law would impose absolute government control over NGO’s, which would make them subject to Government inspection and supervision.
Sigmund, Carl and Alfred posts that
Even as they left celebrates Hugo Chavez, they do not extend any effort into helping impoverished Venezuelans. They, like the victims in Darfur, are only an impediment to achieving their agenda, a 'people's paradise.' That kind of irony is not lost on any of the psychosphere bloggers.
For good reason: the WSJ article quotes Jake Irwin, a Chavez supporter, saying, "My political belief is that the U.S. is a horrendous empire that needs to end". A shrink can have a field day analyzing the kind of self-loathing one finds among what Carlos Alberto Montaner's named the Chávez-'banana left' alliance.

Send Jake and London mayor Ken Livingstone a Hugo t-shirt.

While Jake and Ken and their friends indulge in their form of idolatry, others in South America aren't exactly doing the same. Hispalibertas reports today that Bachelet invita a García a Chile para fortalecer la democracia en la región [Chilean President Michelle] Bachelet invites [Peruvian President-elect Alan] García to Chile to strenghten the region's democracy. García's victory was a defeat to Chávez; Bachelet clearly has no interest in becoming a part of Chavez' unified socialist Latin American state.

The plain fact is that Hugo wouldn't amount to much without the oil money. Today Forbes has a report on how Venezuela's Oil Policy Has Risk Premium
A number of factors contribute to the high degree of uncertainty about the Venezuelan oil industry:
1. Oil production.
2. Reserves.
3. OPEC.
4. Contract and fiscal terms.

Despite the attractiveness of Venezuela's resource base, its oil industry faces a range of uncertainties. These include the obvious reluctance of international oil companies to invest further until the rules of the game are clearer and being followed, as well as the fact that available data may be insufficient to manage risk effectively. Uncertainty creates a risk premium, and Venezuela may eventually have to pay this cost.
For the time being, Hugo continues his shopping spree, and the rifles just arrived. Hugo's $3bn deal to buy more Russian weapons and 24 Su-30 jets is seen as 'waste of money' from either the military or financial points of view. The article says,
The official added that while the acquisition would raise concerns in neighbouring Colombia, a close US ally, the deal makes little military or financial sense. "Advanced fighters are more of a prestige item than a military necessity," the official said. "This system can give them an edge in air superiority, but against whom?"
It may not make sense if one only looks at Venezuela, but it might if one places China and Russia in the picture.

Having committed $500 million towards a Chinese-made Simón Bolívar satellite, will a $336million Russian floating nuclear power plant be next?

Or will the money and the oil run out?

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