Shimon Peres is going to support Ariel Sharon and campaign for him

Talk about a changed landscape. Shimon Peres has left the Labour Party and is supporting Ariel Sharon and his new party. Fox News has a piece on the story. Ariel Sharon is onto something, and we can only hope that he succeeds. we have tended to be very hard line and supported the Likud, as there was no alternative. Ariel Sharon has been painted by the left as a monster, but he is the leader that is presently needed. Let us hope that his course works, as that is not a sure thing. It well could be a disaster, but the Likud is about to explode with the religious right dominating it.

So-called "patriotic Democrat" Paul Hackett

Paul Hackett served in Iraq, so now that makes him the great political and military expert. His main claim to fame is that the media wants to talk to him, since he is rabidly anti-Bush. David Adesnik writes about Paul Hackett:

CHICKENHAWK BUSH SNORTED COKE, SAYS PATRIOTIC DEM: Paul Hackett is the Marine vet of Operation Iraqi Freedom who came within a hair's breadth of winning an open congressional seat in Ohio earlier this year. He lost the race to Jean Schmidt, but his success has propelled him into a run for the Senate in 2006.

Last Wednesday, Hackett was on Hardball, where he denounced Schmidt and others for "play[ing] politics with the lives of young Americans" and avoiding the real issue of what to do about Iraq. In order to restore the proper level of dignity to American political discourse, Hackett promptly started talking about the President's alleged coke habit

Yeah, Paul Hackett is this great guy. He has nothing to say, so he talks maliciously about President Bush. He is the current media favorite, replacing Cindy Sheehan, who is destined for oblivion, along with Paul Hackett.

One point about leftist activists

When you saw the photos of a lonely Cindy Sheehan, they should not be surprising. Lefties generally don't have money of their own. This is an overgeneralization, but everything that they do is funded. If they travel, someone paid for it. There are certainly those with inherited money, or are funded by their parents or spouse. Almost certainly, Cindy Sheehan's book is of little interest, except as a souvenir for those who are into such things. If there were not crowds of lefties in Crawford, it was because the usual sources of money didn't find sending people there to be worthwhile. The locals are Texans, so there are likely to be very few people in Crawford who are sympathetic to Cindy Sheehan's message.

My cousin, the leftist activist, is or was funded by Ohio State University to do community activist things (whatever such a person would do). We should not be surprised to see upper Midwest universities pumping money into such activities. Just look at those hotbeds of revolution in Ann Arbor and Minneapolis (both U's of M).

If there was no money, leftwing activism would be reduced to the old women in sweats, with short haircuts, standing holding hand-lettered signs on overpasses in Minneapolis.

WMD's in Iraq

The Air Force Family blog has a post about WMD's in Iraq. The blogger's husband writes:

The following blog post was written for you by my husband, who posts under the name "airforceguy."

To get this out of the way early, you will not see any classified information in this post. Everything I will write about has been extensively documented in many other sources. Everything I say has been said by other professionals, both civilian and military. The importance of what I say actually lies not in the content, but in the speaker and the medium. Last thing first, the blogosphere is a new phenomenon, and a new medium which allows common guys like me as wide a broadcasting net as the mainstream media (MSM). If you did not know this already you would not be reading this entry. The real reason you are reading this has to do with the fact that I am not a reporter, sending news filtered through desks and editors. I am a simple soldier, writing what I saw, what I deduced and what I know to be true.

The conclusion says:

So, what is the moral of this story? The military can be inefficient? The intel community is short-sighted? Politicians are stupid? Yes, yes, and yes. But mostly, the moral of this story is that there was and IS WMD in Iraq. And the media could tell this story better then I can. But they don’t want to.

*More complete source information and detailed civilian-available bibliography for much of what I've discussed can be found in the book Disinformation by Richard Miniter. That is the only place I've seen a nearly complete accounting of what I saw and participated in while with the ISG.

Marc Cooper on Ramsey Clark

Marc Cooper's assessment of Ramsey Clark is that he is "visibily addled". Marc writes:

In the recent past I’ve written rather harshly about former Attorney General Ramsey Clark who, once again, finds himself in Baghdad as part of Saddam Hussein’s defense team. The right-wingers call him a traitor. Some intelligent leftist critics call him the best friend of war criminals. I, on the other hand, just think the poor old guy is visibly addled.

Reading yesterday’s reports of Clark standing on the Baghdad court steps and making lofty statements about the right to a fair trial in a duly constitued court, I paused to reflect…and, frankly, I tried to evoke a more charitable view of him. After all, I also believe in due process…be it in Gitmo or in Saddam’s court room. I also oppose the death penalty faced by Saddam; I oppose it for anyone. Especially for genocidal dictators upon whom I wish a long, long life and an even more prolonged and anguished death. In any case, anyone — even the most heinous criminal– deserves the best legal representation possible. And no lawyer should be condemned for defending the worst of criminals.

Marc concludes:

That Clark, instead, chooses to defend a war criminal already outfitted with literally dozens of lawyers and paid for the by vast fortunes he has squeezed from his victimized population, makes it impossible (at least for me ) to have any tempered view of him. I can only conclude that in helping Saddam, or in gesturing to help him which is more like it, Clark believes he is making some broader political statement about America’s role in the world. It’s a piss-poor platform from which to do that sort of political work. And it is marvelously counter-productive and I would say downright stupid when you have simultaneously positioned yourself as a major figure in an already struggling peace movement. And that’s the trouble with Ramsey. Big trouble.

Wretchard on Randy Cunningham

I just Wretchard's piece (at The Belmont Club) about Randy Cunningham's airbattle in the Viet Nam war. One thing that stuck out for me was the mention of Dwight Timm. As a captain in 1978 and early 1979, he was my commanding officer on the USS Nashville (LPD-13). Wretchard starts off by writing:

On the tenth of May, 1972 Lieutenant Randy Cunningham and his RIO, LT(JG) Willie Driscoll, flying a Phantom F-4J, ShowTime 100, would shoot down two MIGs, making them the first American aces of the Vietnam War. Then they would shoot down a third.

This is the reference to Dwight Timm:

.. VF-96 Exec, Cdr Dwight Timm had three MiGs on his tail, one being very close, in Timm's blind spot. ... After more maneuvering, Cunningham re-engaged the MiG-17 still threatening his XO. He called again for him to break, adding, "If you don't break NOW you are going to die." The XO finally accelerated and broke hard right. The MiG couldn't follow Showtime 112's high speed turn, leaving "Duke" clear to fire.

The main thing I remember about Captain Timm is that he and his wife collected Alfa Romeo cars and drove them.

Duane Patterson has the dope on Cindy Sheehan

Duane Patterson, at Radio Blogger, has the pathetic pictures of Cindy Sheehan at the failed book signing. Duane is Hugh Hewitt's producer on his radio show. The great thing about Radio Blogger is that Duane puts up transcripts from the Hugh Hewitt show. In this case, he has pictures. Duane writes:

One of the things I'm thankful for at this time of year is some of the people over at Free Republic.

Someone there saw an AP photo story of Cindy Sheehan back in Crawford, Texas, waiting for people to show up and have her sign autographs.

Cindy Sheehan had her 15 minutes of fame, and she doesn't realize that it is over. She just might have a clue of this book signing that no one is interested. I heard a tape of her on a conservative talk radio show, and she was really incoherent and unimformed.

Tom Maguire thinks that Andrea Mitchell is being evasive

Tom Maguire, of the heavily read JustOneMinute blog, is always on top of the Plame affair. He believes that Andrea Mitchell is hiding something and being deliberately evasive. Tom writes:

Is Andrea Mitchell The Next Bob Woodward?

The lady doth protest too much. Is Andrea Mitchell sitting on a Bob Woodward style revelation about Fitzgerald's investigation into the Plame leak? Does her nagging conscience want her to reveal that she had received an early leak of the news that Ms. Plame was at the CIA?

Twice now, Don Imus has asked Andrea Mitchell to explain why she said, back in October 2003, that among reporters probing the story of the Wilson trip to Niger it was "widely known" that Joe Wilson's wife worked at the CIA.

On November 10, Ms. Mitchell was unprepared, and gave an answer that was comically absurd.

And last Wednesday, November 23, Ms. Mitchell delivered a Thanksgiving turkey. Her new explanation for her Oct 2003 statement is elegant in its simplicity - "I screwed it up". Hmm. Maybe Scooter could try that on at his trial.

Rob Port's Frappr map

Rob Port, at the Say Anything blog, had gotten a Frappr map in the last month or so. He averages about 1,500 readers a day, according to his Sitemeter listing. The last time I looked, he had about 42 people signed on Frappr, including himself and me. Frappr even can handle foreign locations, as Rob has a reader in Australia. In my family of blogs, I have many readers in Europe, Asia, South America, as well as the US. I had not realized this until recently, but Sitemeter now has a map, as well. From the sitesummary page, click By World Map, and you can see what they using. The URL looks like it is the wrong site, but I hope that it is correct, anyway.

The Teoma Meme Miner

The Meme Miner is worth your perusal. The use for such a thing is to see the current state of buzz for a particular topic. That is, you can see what is up and what is down, and when it started to move down in buzz level. An example of something on the way up, in buzz level, is Google's service Frappr, which I recently setup for this blog. Here is the Frappr graph:

Wretchard has an interesting post called "NetWar"

Wretchard, writing at the Belmont Club, has an interesting post about "NetWar", where hierarchical organizations and even nations are outmaneuvered by networked organizations that operate under looser and more decentralized control. He says that the trend is away from the "one world government" and towards these new structures.

One of the coolest posts I've read in a long time is Chester's Globalization and War. His reference links to Philip Bobbitt's The Shield of Achilles and the really nifty eMachineShop alone are worth the read. The fundamental issue he discusses is whether nation-states are in some sense being replaced by distributed networks of people. Many activities, from community building to earning a living have jumped over traditional boundaries. Criminal and terrorist organizations have been among the first to exploit this fact. Viewed from one angle, modern Islamic terrorist cells are not so much a return to the forms of the 8th century as new structures made possible by 21st century technologies.

I signed up for Frappr after seeing Rob Port's map

I was an early signup for Rob Port's map at the Say Anything blog. I finally decided to have a Frappr map for this blog and signed up. If you feel adventurous, add yourself to the map. I thought that the Frappr map was a fun thing to have.

Jonathan Schell looking at a wavy mirror: The Fall of the One-Party Empire

Jonathan Schell, writing at The Nation, sees this Administration and the Republican Party reflected in a wavy mirror. He is reveling in the damage that the MSM story line has done, as well as the collapse of the Republican majority due to the liberal Republicans "acting up". Jonathan Schell can only see bad, as he seems to have been a poor loser and now is showing elation at the Republican problems. I don't want to do anything but talk about what he wrote, rather than giving excerpts. He basically says that the Republican goal was to have one-party rule in the US and the US would rule the world, as a new Roman Empire. He sees the one-party rule in shambles and sees the world rule as a fantasy. My take is that his whole story line is a leftist fantasy. What we are seeing right now may well be the start of a major political realignment, along different lines from what he have previously known. I would not be surprised to have us move towards multi-party politics, rather than just the traditional two parties. As I have previously noted, the political fabric is starting to fracture along new lines.

Marc Cooper has a good piece about "The Two Fundamentalisms"

Marc Cooper has a really good piece called "The Two Fundamentalisms". Marc starts by writing:

Shortly after 9/11 and the war in Afghanistan, lefty Brit writer Tariq Ali produced a book that posited a "Clash of Fundamentalisms:" a growing battle between Al Qaeda’s Islamic purists and George W. Bush’s Christian primitives.

Ali’s was a nice gimmick. But it missed the broader point that is coming to define our own political debate and policy options. Twin fundamentalisms, indeed. But a juxtaposition between a Conservative Right that sees the worlds in a primitive, two-dimensional fashion. And a Western Left that is equally myopic.

This theory is ably spun out by Lebanese writer Hazem Saghieh, a senior commentator for the London-based Arabic paper Al-Hayat. Writing on the Soros-backed Open Democracy site, Saghieh takes us back to the 1960’s when it was in vogue to quote Chairman Mao on the dominance of "the principal contradiction" to which he said, all other questions were merely secondary. In the simplistic formula of Mao, this primary contradiction resided between U.S. Imperialism and The Peoples of the World and everything else was pretty much beside the point. Saghieh argues that while this expedient nostrum has faded in the East — with the Chinese more focused now on managing capitalist sweatshops rather than defending socialist ideological purity– this mancihean view has nevertheless been adopted by sectors of both the Western Right and Left.

Marc concludes:

This is truly incisive, frank and out-of-the box theorizing. It takes the simile of the "shoe on the other foot" to an elevated and enlightening level of political theory. We are moving ever away from the values of the enlightenment and perilously close to a situation in which partisans are no longer willing to hold two thoughts in their head at the same time. Instead, everything is reduced to a simple zero-sum formula: Saddam’s torture was evil but our torture isn’t torture. Israelis firing missiles at Palestinian cars is a war crime but Palestinian suicide bombers are merely frustrated youth. Globalization is a destructive process when it shreds American jobs and is unrecognized as a stimulus for Indian employment. American troops kill civilians in Iraq but Iraqi car bombers who target public schools would disappear if those troops retreated.

It’s a dark legacy the Great Helmsman has left to the rest of us.

Greg Cositkyan on "Zimmernan's Bill of Rights" for game developers

Greg Costikyan analyzes Zimmerman's Bill of Rights for game developers. Greg has relatively recently launched Manifesto Games, and he has an interest in things like this. He also has his own opinions that don't always align with what has been suggested. Greg says:

So Eric the Z has posted his Game Developer's Bill of Rights on Gamasutra; it's modelled on Scott McCloud's similar screed for comic creators. I thought I'd go through it and comment.

Greg's summary asssessment says:

But by and large, it sounds right to me. Not that EA is going to announce they're adopting it. But I think Manifesto will pretty much adhere to it.

Politics in the US is ripe for realignment

The last 6 months, if not longer, has seen a fracturing in the fabric of the political parties in the US. I don't see how two parties can realistically represent the various factions. We can list some of the categories and options:

Religion:
   # closely aligned with Evangelical Christianity
   # attend church but are not conservative Christians
   # Other religions than Christianity
       (Jewish-liberal or conservative),
      Islam, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, etc.
   # Atheists who actively attack Christianity
Abortion:
   # Strongly pro-abortion with no restrictions allowed
   # willing to accept some restrictions
Homosexuality:
   # Accepting of homosexuality and almost promote it
   # Accepting of homosexuality, but have reservations
   # Accept homosexuality, but don't want it to be visible
   #Opposed to homosexuality
   (there may be more options)
Immigration:
   # Open borders
   # Easy immigration with restrictions
   # Closed borders
   (other options?)
Government size:
   # Anarchists on the right and left want there to be none
   # Small government conservatives
   # Big government (conservative or liberal)
Government Spending (closely related to size)
   # fiscal conservatives
   # spend money to buy votes (left or right)
                 (congress or people)
   # invest in people by subsidizing them
   # Socialists
Economics:
   # "pro-growth" (in the sense of Lawrence Kudlow)
   # want less regulation
   # want more business regulation
   # anti-business
   # Socialists
Taxes:
   # Want as little tax as possible
   # Want a flat tax
   # Want some other system that does not tax success
   # Tweak the present system to increase "fairness" (whatever that is)
   # Tax the rich to give to the poor (take everything, if you can)
Guns:
   # no restrictions on guns
   # concealed carry with registration
   # restricted access to guns
   # take away all guns and sue the gunmakers
War against Islamic fascism
   # carry the war to the enemy overseas
   # Consult with the Europeans before taking action
   # We shouldn't fight back, as war is bad
   # We did something to cause us to be attacked

I could seem alignment along lines like this:

• Left
• Center-left
• Center-right
• Right

Beldar is like Bulgaria after the Balkan War in 1911 or so

Winston Churchill, in Vol.I of The World Crisis (1923) wrote of Bulgaria, after being beaten in the Balkan War: "brooding over what seemed to be intolerable wrongs" seems to describe Beldar in hiatus. Beldar has been silent after the Harriet Miers debacle, in which he had invested considerable capital.

Another bogus crime: holocaust denial

Do we believe in free speech or what? I guess if your speech is considered offensive, you can be tried a criminal. David Irving's "holocaust denial", however misguided and wrong, can't be a crime for which you can be jailed, not in any country. There is a news piece on this craziness, which is pretty widespread. Am I missing something?

"Illegal websites"

My broadband provider sent me email about a virus that is sent by an email, supposedly from the FBI or CIA, saying that they know that you have been visiting "illegal websites". Obviously, if you do not have adequate anti-virus protection and you actually get the attachment, you should not open it. What caught my attention was the use of "illegal websites". I can believe that there are such a thing, by US law, but it seems a lot like living in Iran or China for such a thing to exist. So much for the constitution, individual rights, and free speech. Most are probably gay paedophile, so I am sympathetic to suppressing those in particular, but in general the concept of having "illegal websites" is problematic. (just like the Soviet Union, we have "prohibited" material) What will be banned next: anti-war criticism of the war on terror, pro-Christian speech, or speech critical of Islam?

Our favorite leftist intellectual still does not think much of George Galloway

I do not blame him and agree. Our favorite leftist intellectual, Marc Cooper, does not think much of George Galloway and does not approve of those who do like him. Marc writes:

One of my least favorite turkeys is getting mightily plucked today. Professional demagogue and con man George Galloway is getting skinned and stuffed by my good pal Douggie Ireland.

You’ll remember that Galloway is the British M.P. who — because of his alliance with the Islamic Right– opposes the war in Iraq for all of the wrong reasons. That he’s been a serial patty-caker with the likes of Saddam and Assad has not gotten in the way of some soft-headed Americans worshipping his every word and move. They as much as stripped down and tossed him their wet undies when he appeared in New York some weeks ago to debate Christopher Hitchens.

Turns out that Gorgeous George’s tiny Respect Party had their conference last week. And they were met by a grass-roots revolt from their own members outraged that Galloway and his cronies had vetoed the inclusions of gay rights in the platform of their "leftist" party.

Razib on the roots of man

Razib, writing at Gene Expression, says that the tree of man is very convoluted. I take that to mean that there is a great deal of mixing between the so-called races over time. There are also some things that make me look twice. I see a mother and her two sons. Are they Mexican or Indian? Perhaps Hugh Fox is right and his hypothesized interactions between other continents, in antidiluvian times (and since) are correct, and that we can account for what I saw that way. Razib writes:

This is a short post which I will elaborate on later in a broader biological context, but Richard Sharpe's comment is something I want to respond to real quick: "If Greeks are Caucasian, then...Just how do you designate yourself...."

First, I'm not white, my ass is a rich brown, ergo, I'm not "Caucasian." The nerdy amongst us though might be familiar with the term "Caucasoid," which shares a relationship with Caucasian (there were very few non-white Caucasian/Caucasoids in the country when these terms became common). Well, operationally I don't think South Asians should really be considered Caucasoid (though Middle Easterners should, Middle Easterners-Europeans are a monophyletic clade in relation to Brownoids). On a phylogenetic tree, if I had to make one, I would make Caucasoids and Brownoids (my term) a monophyletic clade in relation to other races of man.

Andrea Mitchell is desperately trying not to be noticed by the out-of-control prosecutor

Tom Maguire, the go-to-guy on the Wilson/Plame story, has transcripts of Andrea Mitchell trying to minimize her exposure to the out-of-control prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald. I find her inconsistencies amusing. When explaining about the timeline about Karl Rove, she has not confusion at all. When trying to explain away her remark about how everyone who covered intelligence knew about Wilson and his wife Valerie's role at the CIA. Tom has the transcripts and more links. He does write:

Andrea Mitchell, who caught the eye of the Huffington bloggers recently, tried to explain herself to Don Imus on Wednesday morning, and Crooks and Liars was there with the video.

The prosecutor seems bent on getting some Whitehouse scalps, regardless of how unreasonable the process. Tell me this is not a politically-motivated prosecutor.

The leftist adjunct professor is gone

A certain prominent Conservative talk show host mentioned the adjunct professor (John Daly) who had sent a harsh email to a young conservative woman about the war in Iraq. Ace writes about the subject and has a link:

Remember the adjunct professor at Warren Community College (NJ) who said "real justice will happen when soldiers turn their weapons on their superiors?"

Gone.

Who knows how long this link will be good, but this points to John Daly's bio on the Warren Country Community College site.

Paul Graham has a piece about Web 2.0

I have not taken the concept of the Web 2.0 seriously, and Paul Graham also had not thought much of the name. He has changed his mind, recently, and explains how he interprets the name. Paul says:

Google doesn't try to force things to happen their way. They try to figure out what's going to happen, and arrange to be standing there when it does. That's the way to approach technology-- and as business includes an ever larger technological component, the right way to do business.

The fact that Google is a "Web 2.0" company shows that, while meaningful, the term is also rather bogus. It's like the word "allopathic." It just means doing things right, and it's a bad sign when you have a special word for that.

Do you suppose that Andrea Mitchell is covering up her involvement in the Plame affair?

We can see that Andrea Mitchell was all around the Plame issue back in 2003. Tom Maguire, the go-to-guy on the Plame affair, has a post about Andrea Mitchell:

David Fiderer of the Huffington Blog takes a long look at Andrea Mitchell's involvement in the Wilson/Plame/Fitzgerald story, and does not like what he sees (and I thought I was a tough critic...).

And to get a sense of the political range from which Ms. Mithcell is drawing fire, consider this, from Mr.Fiderer/s post:

But first, a few things Mitchell chose not to mention. Then and now, the CIA's position, as set forth in Novak's original column and later confirmed by CNN and others, was that Plame had nothing to do with selecting Joe Wilson for the trip to Niger.

Ahh! Even the Wilson defenders (I am something of the opposite) are going after Michell!

Where will she find relief?

Emily Zanotti writes about the situation in New London

Emily Zanotti, writing at The American Princess blog, tells more about the events that have unfolded in New London, Connecticutt, after the "Kelo" Supreme Court decision:

After all of that hullabaloo over the Kelo decision that gave local governments the right to seize private property through Eminent Domain, if the stated purpose behind the grab was to confer a greater public benefit (of course this would rock the nation, Supreme Court. We get a little ansy when you start to talk about replacing our asphalt driveways with Wal-Marts and Home Depots. Although people who refer to the above mentioned driveway surface as "ash-phalt" should probably be fair game for a quick "relocation project"), it seems that the developers in charge haven't budged an inch.

Not on the policy--that's all cool with them now--but on the actual project.

This is a good thing for all of us. Even where Democrat politicians are concerned, they can be influenced in a positive way by public opinion, once they are in the spotlight.

We saw Sara Hickman at the Grenada last night

Sara Hickman came back to town, this time with a band, to perform at the Grenada theater. We went with my son, who is on Sara's mailing list. Sara was a major figure in the Dallas music scene in the 1990's (when there was a Dallas music scene). After the local Dallas NPR station, KERA switched away from folk music to the all-talk national feed, the local music scene went into rapid decline. The economic downturn starting in late 2000 also was a factor, I suspect. Many venues went through troubled times. Caravan of Dreams in downtown Fort Worth stopped having concerts (I don't know if that still is true). The Arcadia and the Grenada were effected.

As for Sara Hickman, we had seats within 25 feet of her, and we could see and hear her very well. The show was split into two sets. The first was more of her faster, louder music. My wife liked the second half better. She said that the songs Sara performed were better (more mature) and you could understand the words better. Sara's voice is excellent and she has a good range. She really put on a dazzling performance. Too bad that not that many people were there to hear her. You almost had to be on her mailing list to even know about the concert, as there was little or no promotion, otherwise.

Tom Maguire thinks that Richard Armitage was probably Novak's source

Tom Maguire, writing at JustOneMinute, now thinks that Richard Armitage was probably Robert Novak's source about Valerie Plame Wilson. Tom writes:

Evan Thomas and Michael Isikoff of Newsweek review the bidding in the Woodward leak mystery, and single out former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage as a likely suspect:

So who is Novak's source—and Woodward's source—and why will his identity take the wind out of the brewing storm? One by one last week, a parade of current and former senior officials, including the CIA's George Tenet and national-security adviser Stephen Hadley, denied being the source. A conspicuous exception was former deputy secretary of State Richard Armitage, whose office would only say, "We're not commenting." He was one of a handful of top officials who had access to the information. He is an old source and friend of Woodward's, and he fits Novak's description of his source as "not a partisan gunslinger." Woodward has indicated that he knows the identity of Novak's source, which further suggests his source and Novak's were one and the same.

The latest hot buzz: Zarqawi killed in Mosul

We can only hope that the hot story about Zarqawi being blown up in Mosul is true. He is the source of much evil in Iraq and now Jordan. The go-to guy for hot scoop, Ace, has the story.

Unconfirmed Report: ZARQAWI KILLED IN MOSUL

Fingers crossed:

At least one Arab television media outlet reported that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the head of the al-Qaida in Iraq, was killed in Iraq on Sunday afternoon when eight terrorists blew themselves up in the in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.

The unconfirmed report claimed that the explosions occurred after coalition forces surrounded the house in which al-Zarqawi was hiding.

Eleanor Clift on John Murtha

As usual, I disagree with Eleanor Clift about something. This time, the subject is Representative John Murtha and his call to pull our troops out of Iraq. We already know that what is driving Mr. Murtha to his call for withdrawal is a lack of knowledge about what is actually happening in Iraq and partly his preconceived notions about the war. Fortunately for our country, what Mr. Murtha thinks is happening is not. All the Democrats and Eleanor Clift can see is that some seem to be questioning Mr. Murtha's patriotism, and with him being a decorated Viet Nam war veteran. All I am questioning is his judgement, which is a separate issue from his patriotism. In addition, Eleanor Clift seems to equate the Viet Nam war and the war in Iraq. There is a bit of difference. For example, compare the losses and what is at stake. We are not fighting to contain Communism. Instead, we are fighting our foes on the other side, who are Islamic fascists.

I just watched Tom Maguire (JustOneMinute)

I saw the short segment on the CNN show "On the Story" that featured center-right blogger Tom Maguire of JustOneMinute and the lefty blogger Jeralyn Merritt of TalkLeft. CNN seemed to be trying to further the claim that bloggers say whatever they want in some reckless way, while the sanctimonious Main Stream Media journalists somehow are not doing that very thing. I just want to add that I was impressed with Tom Maguire's ability to speak extemporaneously with whole sentences and make good points. UPDATE: I thought that the webcams were a goofy touch. I guess that they wanted to give viewers that somehow the Internet was involved. My wife says "he seemed very articulate".

I don't understand Ann Althouse's vendetta against OSM

Not only do I not understand why Ann Althouse is carrying on a vendetta against Open Source Media (originally, Pajamas Media), I find it offensive. OK, she did not like the deal that she was offered to join, and I can understand that, but why the attack dog attitude?

I hadn't realized that the Washington Canard was back in business

I had used to read the Armed Prophet and then the Washington Canard, when its owner started that blog. He shut down the Armed Prophet and I have missed it. Back in 2004, he was working for the Hotline (perhaps he still is). I was glad to see that he back at the Washington Canard (if he was ever gone).

Ed Morrissey live-blogged the vote in the House (403-3)

Last night, Ed Morrissey live-blogged the process of the motion and vote in the House. The result went better than I had expected. I could imagine that the motion might even pass. But, no, reason prevailed (403-3). Ed wrote last night:

I'm watching C-SPAN right now, looking at a procedural vote to allow a motion on withdrawing American troops from Iraq, as demanded by Rep. John Murtha yesterday. With two minutes left, it looks like the Democrats will successfully block the motion, keeping Congress from taking a vote and making the Democrats go on record about troop disposition. Instead of stupid suggestions about amendments to bills constituting no-confidence motions, the Democrats have been given a chance to vote on a real no-confidence motion. Unsurprisingly, they are running away like cowards.

What the process showed was that the Democrats were not serious about supporting Murtha's motion. It was a ploy to try to swing public support, but when put to a vote, the Democrats had to ignore their backers and play to the American people. Ed concludes:

10:35 - 403-3, the idea of immediate withdrawal gets hooted down. In another Profile in Courage, six Democrats voted "present".

What a joke. The Republicans made the right move -- instead of debating the issue through the media, they took the Democratic demands and introduced it as a resolution for debate where rhetoric actually counts, and where both sides get equal time. In the Democratic world, that equates to something vaguely unfair. They tried to hide behind a procedural block, and when that didn't work, they screamed and hollered in support of the idea of withdrawal -- and then promptly voted against it when it counted.

No honor and no shame have the Democrats in these times, to their everlasting discredit. So much for no-confidence votes. None will stand for one even when handed the opportunity on a silver platter.

David Adesnik thinks that Rep. Murtha misunderstands what is happening

David Adesnik, who we admire a great deal thinks that Rep. Murtha doesn't understand what is happening in Iraq:

WHO IS JOHN MURTHA? The top headline in this morning's WaPo reads "Hawkish Democrat Joins Call for Pullout." It doesn't say "Rep. John Murtha Joins Call for Pullout" because even those who read the paper every day probably have no idea who he is. So who is this unknown man whose change of heart is the biggest news of the day? I think Rod Dreher at NRO provides a pretty good answer:

Don't know how many of you caught Rep. John Murtha's very angry, very moving speech just now in which he called on the White House to institute an immediate withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. CNN didn't air the entire thing, but as I listened to it, I could feel the ground shift. Murtha, as you know, is not a Pelosi-style Chardonnay Democrat; he's a crusty retired career Marine who reminds me of the kinds of beer-slugging Democrats we used to have before the cultural left took over the party. Murtha, a conservative Dem who voted for the war, talked in detail about the sacrifices being borne by our soldiers and their families, and about his visits out to Walter Reed to look after the maimed, and how we've had enough, it's time to come home... I'm sure there's going to be an anti-Murtha pile-on in the conservative blogosphere, but from where I sit, conservatives would be fools not to take this man seriously. (Hat tip: KD)

David concludes:

And if terrorists -- Al Qaeda or Ba'athist -- can defeat a superpower, what possible incentive will they have to come to terms with the unprepared Iraqi army we have left behind?

Which brings is to an ethical question: What about our obligation to the people of Iraq? It would be nothing short of cruel to liberate them from Saddam only to abandon them now. Remember, they are also sacrificing their sons and daughters every day for the cause.

The Shi'ites and Kurds -- the overwhelming majority of the people of Iraq -- share our vision of Iraq's democratic future. That is the foundation of victory.

The New Donkey didn't like what Geoff Davis had to say

The divide between liberals, especially Democrats, and Conservatives who are largely Republican is huge. The size of the gap can be seen when observing how they react to things such as Geoff Davis's comment on Representative Murtha's statement. Representative Murtha has been a critic of the war in Iraq for at least 18 months, so it is not news when he denounces the war again and wants to withdraw our troops immediately. Our friend, The New Donkey blogger, did not like what Geoff Davis had to say:

You may have already read about the remarks made yesterday by Rep. Geoff Davis (R-KY) in response to Rep. John Murtha's call for an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. If not, here they are:

Ayman Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's deputy, as well as Abu Musab Zarqawi, have made it quite clear in their internal propaganda that they cannot win unless they can drive the Americans out. And they know that they can't do that there, so they've brought the battlefield to the halls of Congress.

And, frankly, the liberal leadership have put politics ahead of sound, fiscal and national security policy. And what they have done is cooperated with our enemies and are emboldening our enemies.

In case anyone needs a translation here, Davis basically charged Murtha (and unnamed "liberal leaders," since the label hardly applies to the quite conservative Pennyslvanian) with being an agent of Zarquawi and of al Qaeda, and of cooperating with our country's enemies.

I can understand why that he might not want to hear what was said. I believe that The New Donkey is overreacting to what was said. What Geoff Davis said, though, needed to be said, because our buddies in the Democratic party have driven their party over the cliff, egged on by the radical left anti-war crowd. Those of us who think that we are doing the right thing, and need to keep doing it ought to be able to say so, and should be able to criticize the Democrats when they are doing the wrong thing. The New Donkey has the burden of being a Democrat, even if he is one of the better sort, being a DLC kind of guy.

Tom Maguire continues to be all over the Plame case like a blanket

Tom Maguire is the guy with respect to the Valerie Plame Wilson case. He writes about the latest information in the wake of the Bob Woodward revelation. There is mounting evidence that the story was leaked from the State Department in their ongoing war with the CIA.:

In the post below, we reprise an abundance of current and former Bush Administration figures denying that they were Bob Woodward's source for his information about Valerie Plame. We also highlight two glaring "no comments" - Marc Grossman, former under-Secretary of State, and Richard Armitage, former Deputy Secretary of State (and a favorite Woodward source).

Might one of these two worthies be Woodward's source? Who knows?

But in the interests of preparedness let's urge John Podhoretz of the NRO to start drafting his "I told you so" speech: JPod, responding to a TIME magazine article about the INR memo, wrote this in July:

Time Magazine has a new story about the revelation of Valerie Plame's name -- a story that, despite Time's own bizarre spin, reinforces the claim that Karl Rove and others learned that Joseph Wilson was married to a CIA operative from the media.

Razib on receissive disorders

Razib writes about " Heterozygosity and vigor". Razib writes:

Steve points me to this piece which offers that:

...British Pakistanis account for 30% of all British children with recessive disorders, which include cystic fibrosis.

Why? See here:

The research, conducted by the BBC and broadcast to a shocked nation on Tuesday, found that at least 55% of the community was married to a first cousin.

I suspect that it is not just Pakistanis where husband and wife might have a close genetic relationship. A woman I worked with briefly in early October confided in me that she and her husband were relatives. I had worked with her husband in August and September. I assume that "relatives" could mean first cousins. That reminds me that when I was a teenager, my father had suggested I look at my first cousin, because as far as he was concerned, first cousins could marry. I didn't follow his advice, and was probably better off for it.

It is nice when John McCain is saying the right thing

John McCain has a commentary in today's New York Post. John Hinderaker, at Power Line, comments on what he has to say.

He's Not Always Right...

...but when he is, there is no one better to have on your side than John McCain. In today's New York Post, McCain eloquently demolishes the Senate's amendment on withdrawal of troops from Iraq:

Anyone reading the amendment gets the sense that the Senate's foremost objective is the draw-down of American troops. What it should have said is that America's first goal in Iraq is not to withdraw troops, but to win the war. All other policy decisions we make should support, and be subordinate to, the successful completion of our mission.

Morality, national security and the honor our fallen deserve all compel us to see our mission in Iraq through to victory.

A date is not an exit strategy. To suggest that it is only encourages our enemies, by indicating that the end to American intervention is near. It alienates our friends, who fear an insurgent victory, and tempts undecideds to join the anti-government ranks.

According to the conventional wisdom, anyone in the press who is not anti-Bush is a "stenographer"

Sorry to say, I am not a Howard Kurtz fan, although I used to watch his television show. He has a piece today on Media Notes Extra about Bob Woodward. As I have previously written, I have come to believe that for some reason, Patrick Fitzgerald is conducting a politically motivated witch-hunt. I say that despite all of his defenders. I put this somewhere near the Martha Stewart prosecution. All the lefties are criticizing Bob Woodward for saying anything that remotely might help the Bush administration. The assumption is that if you are not a lefty critic, then you are not correctly reporting the news.

Emily Zanotti has a piece about houseplants and dogs voting in Canada

Emily Zanotti, The American Princess, writes about dogs and houseplants voting in Canada (in Detroit, the count the test votes). She writes first about Detroit:

If you plan on voting in Detroit in any of the next several elections--and frankly, you are sorely mistaken if you believe that the fact that you live in another state (or, barring that, another country) might prevent you from doing so--its very good to know that, should you find the voting location a little stressful, you can always take your ballots home. And if you happen to be a vote counter, and don't finish right away, well, you can take the counter home, too.

They are even more progressive in Canada (Emily has this quote):

Some questions have arisen over the validity of the voting system used to select the leader. The PQ membership called in their votes using touch-tone phones, and at least one dog and a houseplant registered to vote, according to a source in one of the leadership campaigns.

Pixelle Daoust, a long-haired Chihuahua, and a plant called Gilbert Laplante were able to register as PQ members and received all the necessary credentials needed to cast a telephone vote, according to the source. The dog even received a birthday card recently from interim party leader Louise Harel. (For the record, Pixelle voted for former PQ cabinet minister André Boisclair, and the plant for the environmentalist candidate Jean Ouimet).

The Empire Strikes Back

Mixing metaphors, the "Axis of Evil" (NPR/PBS/APM/PRI) have struck a blow against the appointee who was trying to overturn their extremist left-wing bias. It looks like they have stopped the effort to reform them. Paul, at Wizbang, writes about what has happened:

Asking for political balance now a days is against the law:

Report: Ex-Broadcasting Chairman Broke Law

WASHINGTON -- The former chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting broke federal law by interfering with PBS programming and appearing to use political tests in recruiting the corporation's new president, internal investigators said Tuesday.

Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, a Republican, also sought to withhold funding from PBS unless the taxpayer-supported network brought in more conservative voices to balance its programming, said the report by CPB inspector general Kenneth A. Konz.

Tomlinson was chairman of the corporation until September and resigned as a board member earlier this month after Konz privately shared his findings with the board. The report was released Tuesday.

The "Open Source Media" launch

Pajamas Media is renamed as "Open Source Media" (a better name). This is their new site. Charles Johnson has the link:

Pajamas Media is launching today under our new name, and here’s an open thread for the occasion...

Charles wrote on Tuesday:

Psst. I have it on good authority that the lizardoid alien from planet Aidemydni who runs this site has left his secret nitrogen-filled chamber underneath Denver International Airport (a very rare occurrence) and is currently fending off hordes of crazed bloggers, somewhere on the east coast. This droid has been told that clues may be found here

Tom Maguire on the latest info from Bob Woodward

Tom Maguire, at JustOneMinute, has a post about Bob Woodward's revelation that he heard about Valerie Plame before Lewis Libby told Judith Miller. My take on Fitzgerald is that, despite his defenders, he is on a politically motivated hunt to indict people in the White House (for whatever reason). Given that, I was hearted to read this:

Bob Woodward tosses a spanner into the Plame leak chronology developed by Special Counsel Fitzgerald:

Washington Post Assistant Managing Editor Bob Woodward testified under oath Monday in the CIA leak case that a senior administration official told him about CIA operative Valerie Plame and her position at the agency nearly a month before her identity was disclosed.

In a more than two-hour deposition, Woodward told Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald that the official casually told him in mid-June 2003 that Plame worked as a CIA analyst on weapons of mass destruction, and that he did not believe the information to be classified or sensitive, according to a statement Woodward released yesterday.

As noted by Libby's counsel, that does not jibe well with the assertion made by Mr. Fitzgerald at his press conference that "In fact, Mr. Libby was the first official known to have told a reporter when he talked to Judith Miller in June of 2003 about Valerie Wilson." (But give Fitzgerald props for qualifying this with "known to").

Emily Zanotti: the American Princess

"E. M. Zanotti" (Emily Zanotti) is a student in the Ava Maria law school in Ann Arbor. This is her page on The Republican National Lawyers Association site. He blog is The American Princess.

Marc Cooper doesn't think much of the Bush counterattack

Marc Cooper rather dislikes being characterized as unpatriotic. He interprets the President's speech a referring to him.

If you are to believe the President of the United States, more than half the American population is now flirting with treason. In his new, and strategically disastrous, mode of ultra-polarization, the President is pushing back against war critics and, sadly, questioning their loyalty.

In the worst sort of demagogy, President Bush – in a speech at an Alaskan air base on Monday —first feinted that his mind was open to discussion and then landed his sucker punch:

"Reasonable people can disagree about the conduct of the war, but it is irresponsible for Democrats to now claim that we misled them and the American people… some Democrats who voted to authorize the use of force are now rewriting the past. They are playing politics with this issue and sending mixed signals to our troops and the enemy."

My take is that the Democrats are still trying to appeal to their base, and that they are trying to say that their votes for the war in Iraq were because they were misled. In fact, no one was misled. It was the international common wisdom.

The best reason that I have seen for the use of habeus corpus at Gitmo

Kevin Drum posts on an example of what habeus corpus rights are needed for prisoners at Guatanamo Bay. There is a prisoner mentioned whose lawyer says that the Army agrees should be freed:

HABEAS CORPUS....P. Sabin Willett, a lawyer who represents Guantanamo Bay prisoners on a pro bono basis, writes in the Washington Post today about the Senate's decision to eliminate habeas corpus rights for prisoners suspected of being enemy combatants:

As I listened, I wished the senators could meet my client Adel.

Adel is innocent. I don't mean he claims to be. I mean the military says so. It held a secret tribunal and ruled that he is not al Qaeda, not Taliban, not a terrorist. The whole thing was a mistake: The Pentagon paid $5,000 to a bounty hunter, and it got taken.

Tom Maguire has the goods in Senators Kennedy and Rockefeller

Tom Maguire has a great post (JustOneMinute blog) where he quotes Senators Kennedy and Rockefeller from their past statements. This is just the flavor of what he has, and it is worth reading the rest for its entertainment value:

I haven't found Ted Kennedy's floor speech prior to the October 2002 vote on the war resolution, but here he is at SAIS on Sept 27, 2002. Early laugh lines include these:

But there is a difference between honest public dialogue and partisan appeals. There is a difference between questioning policy and questioning motives.

and

Let me say it plainly: I not only concede, but I am convinced that President Bush believes genuinely in the course he urges upon us.

Only later did Kennedy realize what a liar Bush was, and how important it was to question his motives. Well, Bush fooled 'em for a while....

Kevin Drum writes about children and sleep

I had forgotten how early we went to bed as children. Kevin Drum, writing at the Washington Monthly, is guessing that children may not be getting enough sleep and are staying up too late. I think that Kevin is on to something with what he says:

BEDTIMES....Sleep researchers say that sleep is important for kids:

Staying up an hour or two past bedtime makes it far harder for kids to learn, say scientists who deprived youngsters of sleep and tested whether their teachers could tell the difference.

....The teachers reported significantly more academic problems during the week of sleep deprivation, the study, which will be published in the journal Sleep in December, concluded.

Students who got eight hours of sleep or less a night were more forgetful, had the most trouble learning new lessons, and had the most problems paying attention.

So here's my question: do kids get less sleep today than they used to? When I was in third grade, my bedtime was 7:30. In fourth grade it was 8:00. In retrospect, that sure seems like an awful lot of sleep. But as near as I can tell, practically no one goes to bed that early anymore. Parents I know with kids that age typically don't put them to bed until 9:00 or 9:30 — or even a bit later depending on what else is going on.

This morning, I saw the modern equivalent of "Get Peace A Chance"

On the bumper of a worn compact pickup truck, there was a bumper sticker advocating something like the modern equivalent of "Give Peace A Chance". I had to wonder how we would reconcile that with terrorists who were blowing up hotels and wedding parties in Jordan. It is hard to even come up with a valid motive behind the bombings, other than a desire to kill people. The bombers seem to not be very picky about who they would kill.

The New Donkey blogger is a solid citizen

I appreciate having people like The New Donkey blogger in the Democratic Party. On Friday, he wrote about military service, and his close encounter with service, himself. One point, in particular, that he made was about how in certain generations, service was universal. That was true for my fathers and uncle in WWII. My father served as a signalman on PC-470 escorting convoys from Key West to Panama and other destinations in the Caribbean and South America. He ended the war on a YF in Leyte Gulf. Just like on the Eastern Front, at the end of the war, they fired off all of their pyrotechnics. In 1918, both my grandfathers served, my father's father was gassed and concussed in France while serving with the Michigan engineer battalion. The New Donkey blogger writes:

Veterans' Day, unlike Memorial Day, is not essentially a celebration of those who have died or been injured in war, or even of war itself: it's a commemoration of everyone who has "worn the uniform" and served his or her country. And in effect, it's a memorial service for those days when most male Americans, at least, did indeed "wear the uniform," even if they never fired a shot in anger or risked their lives.

I am still angry when I think of what Eleanor Clift wrote

When I think about what Eleanor Clift wrote, I feel very angry. She seems to think that insulting the President is acceptable, and that all her readers agree with her. My take is that she is living in some MoveOn.org fantasy world, where people believe that what she wrote is the literal truth. I used to be a fan of hers, back when I watched the McLaughlin Group. I gave up on McLaughlin when he started to become a little bit crazy, as well.

I took the test

I took the test to see what race from Lord of the Rings that I would be:

Rohirrim To which race of Middle Earth do you belong? brought to you by Quizilla

I have a problem with KODAK

In the last week, I have been having an ongoing bad experience with Kodak. Part of the problem is that I want to keep using my DC4800 camera. That shouldn't have been problem, except that their last software update for the so-called EasyShare software caused me to longer be able to access the camera from my computer. After 6 days, I got an email back, telling me to call a customer support number. I found out there that since I have an old camera, they will not give me support. I looked for an older driver on the Internet, but the only links are to Kodak, and they are all bad. My only hope is to either find an old installer that works (the one I found seems to be bad) or find my original CD, which I saw in the last year and a hald. I could pay Kodak $15 to talk to someone, but there is no guarantee that they would help me. That really makes me want to buy another Kodak camera (not). I found the original CD in about 2 minutes, so I hope to be back in business, no thanks to Kodak. I actually liked the Easy Share software pretty well. I have been using it for what seems like at least a year-and-a-half. I don't like it, when it doesn't work any more. UPDATE: By installing the driver from the original DC4800 disk, I was able to get to my camera. It doesn't let me use the Easy Share software, but "that's the breaks".

Democratic Politicians

Now that President Bush has broken his silence about Democratic politicians and the war on Iraq, it has emboldened Conservatives to finally speak on the subject. Glenn Reynolds wrote that, yes, we are questioning the patriotism of Democratic politicians over their behavior recently. Ann Althouse comments on Glenn Reynolds, as one law professor to another. She writes about and quotes Glenn:

Glenn Reynolds has that to say about Bush's Iraq speech. That provokes quite an outcry, as I'm sure he expected. He reports "hatemail" and responds:

[T]he Democratic politicans who are pushing the "Bush Lied" meme are, I think, playing politics with the war in a way that is, in fact, unpatriotic. Having voted for the war, they now want to cozy up to the increasingly powerful MoveOn crowd, which is immensely antiwar. The "Bush Lied" meme is their way of getting cover. This move also suggests that their earlier support for the war may itself have been more opportunistic than sincere, which I suppose is another variety of unpatriotism....

Ann also points out:

UPDATE: You know, back in the days of the Vietnam War, protesters and other anti-war folk didn't give a damn if you called them unpatriotic! In fact, "patriotic" was used as a slur. They called themselves unpatriotic. That's how I remember it -- from where I was at the time (the University of Michigan, 1969-1973).

The goofy thing is the Eleanor Clift really believes this garbage

Tom Elia, The New Editor blogger, writes about Eleanor Clift and the garbage she is spewing. I think that Eleanor really believes this stuff. She has a near fatal case of Bushitis. Tom writes:

The Newsweek columnist simply embarrasses herself in this pathetic piece of junk masquerading as passable thought.

It's passable all right: but it's just that it's the kind of passable stuff that typically gets flushed, or leaves streaks on undergarments, not something that is swallowed by sentient adults.

Rhetoric like this simply lives down to the expectations that many people have for many in the Washington press corps, and simply reinforces the cartoon image that many of these people have crafted for themselves over the years.

Here is a sampling of Ms. Clift's drivel:

Friends of the senior Bush are blaming Cheney for usurping too much power, but that’s why they wanted him there, as a minder for the man-child who should never have been made president.

There is much more about how Eleanor Clift is embarrassing herself. Our leftist buddies will respond "this is ALL true."

Chris Farrell shot down the idea that windfall profits have occurred in the oil industry

On Market Place Morning Report, Chris Farrell told Scott Jagow that there have not been windfall profits in the oil industry and that a tax on them would be a bad idea. Jimmy Carter already proved that. I was impressed that Chris Farrell had the right idea. I know that Scott Jagow fits the new NPR/MPR/APM pattern where as many as possible of the on-air personalities are radical leftists. Chris Farrell accrued some major positive points with me.

It turns out the land-grabbers in New London are Democrats

I was amused to see that the landgrabbers on the New London, Connecticutt city council are Democrats. BizzyBlog has the story:

In what appears to be a significant upset, an upstart party in New London grabbed two seats on Council

Marc Cooper laments the LAT laying off Robert Scheer

The LA Times has apparently let go Robert Scheer, the obnoxious lefty columnist. Marc Cooper likes him, and comments on the move:

My latest L.A. Weekly column looks at the continuing decline of newspaper readership and then focuses in on the case of L.A. Times opinion columnist Bob Scheer. The liberal stalwart, far and away the clearest, most distinct voice on the paper’s opinion pages, is getting his ticket punched by the suits at the Tribune Company. When this month comes to an end, so will Scheer’s column.

It’s a patently dumb move– one which will anger a broad swath of readers and cause a significant number of subs to be cancelled. Genius is as genius does.

Please take a moment to read my entire column. Here’s an excerpt about Scheer:

… As a columnist he’s built a loyal local and national following like few other Times writers. Sure, I know the whole rap against Scheer: His writing is loud, even crass. He’s stubbornly opinionated, a fierce and sometimes zealous partisan. A predictable defender of blue-state politics. He can be overbearing, cantankerous and obnoxious at times. Instead of going in with a finely honed scalpel, he’s prone to pounding his subjects repeatedly and relentlessly with a two-by-four.

Our luck, our politicians will probably take action that will limit our supply of energy

Those of us who survived Jimmy Carter's failed presidency know all about the effects of a "windfall profits tax". I expect that it will be a sure way to reduce our supply of gasoline and oil. Our good buddies in the Senate had a great time, today, demagoguing the subject.

E M Zanotti, The American Princess, is really down after the election

E. M. Zanotti, a young woman involved in the law profession, is based in Ann Arbor, Michigan (home of that hotbed of revolution, the University of Michigan). The elections yesterday went pretty badly, if you are a conservative. The American Princess is really down on politicians and particularly Republican politicians. She writes:

Continuing on a theme, I am ashamed to be a Republican today. Or to ever have voted Republican. Or to even have that business card that says I once worked for the Republicans.

I'm tired of politicians.

And I think that the rest of the country is with me on that.

I have never thought that so many politicians were scumbags. I have never really thought that politicians were nothing more than schills for the various organizations that funded their re-election campaigns. Some were. Mostly Democrats. Some weren't.

Sure there are some good ones. There are some politicians that truly believe in the principles that they spewed in their pre-election speeches. There are some politicians that really give their office their all: they fight for what they believe in, they give their all to their job, and they understand that their position isn't about being re-elected to their position.

But those are too few, and too far between. And it seems that way, more and more.

Particularly bothersome is that the buffoon-like Kwame Kilpatrick won the mayoral election in Detroit. The good people of Detroit got what they deserved, apparently.

I have to admit that I have been quite dissatisfied with the current Republican leadership. The Democrats are generally worse. My politics are center-right. I am pretty socially conservative, although I cannot relate to my friends from the south-east who are Baptists and Pentacostals. During the later 1990's, when I was running with them in business, I found where my limits were. They tend to be so rigid that they will not look at things that are good, such as Reiki. They would think it was the work of the Devil, and that was where they lost me.

Our lefty, elitist Democratic mayor in Dallas

Laura Miller, the leftist Democratic mayor in Dallas lost, in a sense, in the "Strong Mayor" ballot initiative. She is white, "Oak Lawn Democrat" (she gives the impression of being an atheist, pro-GBLT, and strongly anti-business). The Black Democrats are generally more pro-Business, as they like the money, and are almost uniformly people of faith who are not friendly particularly friendly to the GBLT agenda. Laura Miller's stock in Dallas is falling like a rock.

The Bush family in the 1960's

This is perhaps the most flattering picture that I have seen of Barbara Bush, the President's mother. The picture dates from the 1960's. I find it odd that Barbara Bush is one of the more hardball politicians around, unlike her husband.

Ed Morrissey says that we are seeing a Ramadan offensive, world-wide

Ed Morrissey thinks that there is a world-wide Ramadan offensive underway. The various incidents in different parts of the world are related, if he is correct. He writes about Australia:

The Islamists appear to have coordinated a worldwide attack plan for Ramadan celebrations this year. While France burns in riots originating out of mainly Muslim ghettoes, Australia barely escaped a large-scale attack on its transportation systems yesterday, making over a dozen arrests just after the passage of a new anti-terrorist law that made the detentions possible:

Police arrested 17 terror suspects in Australia's two biggest cities Tuesday in raids authorities said foiled a plot to carry out a catastrophic terror attack. A radical Muslim cleric known for praising Osama bin Laden was charged with masterminding the plot.

France had warning

France had warnings that they would be the target of Islamic extremists, before the riots started. Ed Morrissey writes about what is known:

The riots in France have little connection to the Islamist terrorist offensive against the West, if the American media coverage gives any indication. However, alert CQ reader Mr. Michael points out that both American and French media sources warned of coordinated Islamist action against France in the weeks before the riot. Agence France Presse even had a quote from the maligned Nicolas Sarkozy noting the imminent nature of the threat in its 9/27 dispatch:

An Algerian Islamist organisation, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), has issued a call for action against France which it describes as "enemy number one", intelligence officials said Tuesday.

"The only way to teach France to behave is jihad and the Islamic martyr," the group's leader Abu Mossab Abdelwadoud, also own as Abdelmalek Dourkdal, was quoted as saying in an Internet message earlier this month.

"France is our enemy number one, the enemy of our religion, the enemy of our community," he was quoted as saying. ... Interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy said Monday that the risk of terrorist attack in France is "at a very high level... There are cells operating on our territory."

France has descended into chaos

The feckless Chirac is reaping their harvest. The violence is spreading across France, and is only growing, not subsiding. What is happening has the look of the beginnings of outright insurrection. If the French want to keep their country, they must act. Wretchard, writing at The Belmont Club, has the details.

It's getting real interesting. CNN is reporting that churches, schools and police stations are going up in smoke.

"In the northern city of Rouen, a police barricade was set afire and a burning car was pushed into the police station; and in Strasbourg, near the German border, a school was torched. A church was set ablaze in the southern fishing town of Sete and another in nearby Lens, Pas de Calais; two schools in the southeastern town of Saint-Etienne and a police station in the central France town of Clermont-Ferrand were torched, as was a social center in Seine-Saint-Denis, near the border with Switzerland."

Here's a map of the French towns affected so far compiled from the Europe-based blog No Pasaran!

Austin Bay writes about the situation in France

Austin Bay ("hook-em, horns!") writes about the situation in France. He has considered himself an optimist about Europe, while Mark Steyn has been a pessimist. Austin Bay writes:

Poverty exacerbates all problems, but poverty in and of itself does not produce violence. Migrants from France’s former Muslim colonies initially came for jobs, not to assimilate or “become French.” But the migrants stayed. Now France’s “Muslim neighborhoods” are permanent “cultural islands.” The French government’s own duplicitous policy towards Salafist/Islamist terror has backfired. France has fought Islamist terrorism. For 15 years the French government has been supporting the Algerian government’s battle against the Armed Islamic Group (GIA, the French acronym). In the mid-1990s GIA set off several bombs in and around Paris. However, the French government’s rhetoric has been appeasenik and enabling. Ah yes, the source of Muslim outrage is…America! France was following its Cold War strategy of snaking between Washington and Moscow. Remember, Reagan frightened the USSR. In 1983 Reagan was going to cause a nuclear war in Europe. Etcetera.

Appeasement and duplicity have once again failed as policy. Didn’t work for France in the Rhineland and at Munich, either.

UPDATE: A worthwhile article from Newsweek.

Here’s Mark Steyn on the “Eurarabian War” via radioblogger.

I also recommend readers look over the comments on my first French riots post. The level of denial exhibited by French readers is extraordinary…then again, perhaps it isn’t.

Here is some deep background, from the International Herald Tribune, October 17, 2005 — before the latest spate of riots. The subject: the decrepit, squalid living conditions European immigrants (legal and illegal) face.

Wretchard on the situation in France

Wretchard, writing at The Belmont Club, has a good piece on what is happening in France:

One of the frustrations about covering events in France is the lack of metrics. There are a few which can be used. The numbers of cars burned on a given night. The number of towns affected by disturbances. The numbers of persons arrested. But there is a lot of critical information that can't be captured in these figures. Here are two reports, one from a site in Brussels and another from a Dutchman which have been cool and collected in the past. Here is what they have to say. The titles are the authors and not mine. I have edited only to shorten the excerpts where necessary

The Brussels Journal

The Fall of France

From the desk of Paul Belien on Sat, 2005-11-05 13:41

If Nicolas Sarkozy had been allowed to have his way, he could have saved France. Last Summer the outspoken minister of the Interior was France’s most popular politician with his promise to restore the law of the Republic in the various virtually self-ruling immigrant areas surrounding the major French cities.

Peaktalk

France's Intifada

It’s hard to find some good reporting on the Paris riots, one of the newspapers here this morning claimed that the violence had abated somewhat. Well, that’s hardly the case. Below I’ve translated an excerpt from the Dutch public broadcasting organization’s report on night number nine, Friday night ... The term "Paris Riots" has become a complete misnomer. There's war going on in France and that is coming from someone who is not given to hyperbole, but the facts have made that conclusion inescapable. ...

Ann Althouse says that the Blogger outage was for a planned upgrade

I was bothered by Blogger being out of commission for several hours today, but Ann Althouse says that we shouldn't be bothered about what was apparently a planned outage for an upgrade. Upgrades are always welcome, so I guess that I can live with that.

This is bad

Ed Morrissey writes about the insurgent-like behavior at the CIA (my words). It makes sense that during the Clinton years, the power of the left within the CIA had grown. The nasty process had likely started during the 1970's when the Church committee had done its damage. A friend, who is rather into leftist and anti-business conspiracy theories, had said that the purpose of George H.W. Bush being President for a while was to fix the damage done by the left in the CIA. If that were true, it was immediately undone through the rest of the 1990's. Ed concludes:

Offered as further proof that it is the apolitical CIA that has our best interests at heart are stories of the draft-dodging, Zionist-loving, neo-conservative cabal based in the White House that set up its own intelligence apparatus to bypass the efforts of the CIA. The real story is actually the reverse: What is an administration supposed to do when those who are supposed to serve it fight, obstruct, and otherwise don’t deliver?

Conservatives roll their eyes at the “moonbats” who shout about “no blood for oil” and join the ranks of ANSWER, but there is little difference in belief and outlook between the nut-jobs waving signs and their fellow-travelers in the intelligence business; except of course that intelligence officers can actually help bring about change. The CIA made a name for itself destabilizing regimes, only this time the leader of the regime they are aiming to change isn’t named Allende or Pahlavi.

Joe Six-Pack and Molly Homemaker should care about this stuff because even if they didn’t vote for the current administration, I’m fairly sure that voting is how they want such decisions to be made.

Speed limits and selective enforcement

The Dallas area has a phenomenon that I suspect that widely occurs. There are 4 to 6 lane roads, well graded, that have 30 to 35mph speed limits. They also have areas that go from 40mph to 35 and then 30mph in a short distance. On Northwest Highway, in north Dallas, the speed limit is is 35mph west of Preston Road, but traffic moves at 40 to 45mph. The Dallas Country Constables are out in the early morning hours, in these spots where the speed limit drops. They essentially can make as much money as they want for the county, as the number of drivers who obey the speed limits is small to almost non-existent. I have turned into a mobile traffic hazard, in that my goal is to drive the speed limit, or as close to it as possible, without getting run over.

If the speed limits were consistently enforced, you would find that drivers would adjust to the new reality, just as they have adjusted to higher gas prices. They change their behavior, as conditions change. The goal of the current traffic law enforcement seems to be to generate speeding ticket income without actually consistent enforcement that would change behavior. The nature of the enforcement seems to be catching people who have not previously been ticketed. For example, my manager on my previous employment and my wife's friend and coworker at school. Ticket prices seem to have been jacked up, as well, so that they are a big financial burden and a boon to Defensive Driving schools.

Ann Althouse has become a star

It was inevitable. With the rising prominence of bloggers, Ann Althouse has become a star. Now, our buddies in the AP are quoting her!

AP's Gina Holland quotes me in this analysis of how Alito's replacing O'Connor might change the Court:

The Supreme Court's middle ground is disappearing. If Samuel Alito is confirmed, he could almost immediately begin to erase the court's balanced rulings on contentious social issues like abortion, religion and capital punishment.

The New Donkey says that more is at stake than just Iraq

The New Donkey blogger says that what is involved is not just Iraq. He thinks that the celebration on the left side of the blogosphere over the Lewis Libby indictment is misplaced, in that the leftists need to focus on the rest of the Bush policy rather than just Iraq. In case you are not familiar with him, the New Donkey blogger is a Democratic Leadership Council kind of guy. He writes:

I've generally assumed that the one thing that unites all Democrats today is the overriding desire to drive the corrupt and incompetent and ideologically bent GOP from power. That's why I implore Democrats to keep their eyes on the big prize, and not get dragged off into the self-defeating blind alley of making future elections nothing more than a retroactive referendum on why the country, and many Democrats, supported the decision to invade Iraq.

We have a more compelling case to take to the country, which includes, but is hardly limited to, the administration's failures in Iraq, and we need to make it.

Marc Cooper on Harry Reid

Marc Cooper takes a dim view of Harry Reid's antics in the Senate yesterday. Marc probably agrees with Harry on a good bit, but Marc is not a Democrat and doesn't like them any better than Republicans. Marc writes:

The Senate Democrats are now feigning great indignation and demanding a series of answers from the Republicans about how we got into this war in the first place. That sounds like a reasonable demand. But in many ways it’s a self-serving ruse. The Democrats know damn well how we got into Iraq on manipulated and even non-existent “evidence.” Instead of waiting around for some sort of half-arsed Republican response, maybe Reid & Company could construct their own counter- presentation to the country – explaining to us why so many Democrats were just plain wrong to have voted for war authorization. Why not add in the Democrats’ own analysis of events based on the narratives that emerged from the Fitzpatrick investigation?

This, of course, would require the Democrats to take an actual definable position on the war, God Forbid. It’s what they need to do. And ought to do. So far, it’s easier for them to run around with their hair on fire claiming they and we have all been lied to. Ok, Harry… tell us clearly what those lies were and let us know what you plan to do about it. It’s great to ask the Bushies all sorts of tough questions, though they are never going to answer. How about if the Democrats came up with some of their own answers instead?

P.S. Max gets it.

The Democrats in the Senate

Democrats in the Senate forced the body into a two-hour closed session. Depending who you consult, it was either a dumb move or a cunning ploy. John Podhoretz thinks it was a clever move. The Powerline guys think it was a mistake. Paul writes:

The Democrats must feel that they are losing momentum now that the Republicans have their act together on the Supreme Court, and Fitzgerald did not indict Rove. That the Dems see throwing a temper tantrum as a way to regain momentum, rather than as reminder to the public that they are unfit to govern, speaks volumes.

In any case, it is part of the Democratic plan to damage President Bush and the Republicans by demogoguing issues like the war.