Category: News

Michelle Malkin asks a question about vaccines:

Why on earth does the U.S. get virtually all of its flu vaccine supply from just two manufacturers?

Short answer: Because the government hasn’t nationalized it yet and left us with a single inefficient source.

Sure, some people might accuse me of wanting children to die; this is not the case. I do, however, not want the remote federal government to use its vast bureaucratic power to do its best to employee middle managers with poli-sci degrees whose goal is to perpetuate their own employment and budgets and save the children, only one of which they’re really good at.

With a story like this one, you knew the misplaced modifiers would be fun. And so they are:

Los Angeles County health officials have sent letters urging producers and directors to use condoms during filming, and vaccinate actors for hepatitis A and B.

Lileks, from his Newhouse News column yesterday:

The next time America is attacked, people will not want someone who can calculate pi to the 48th digit while reciting Latin maxims on the nature of war. They will want someone who says, “Hulk smash.” Inelegant as the sentiment might be, Hulk-thought works better than Captain Nuance striding into the United Nations waving resolutions and chastening editorials from Le Monde.

I feel clever in likening the purpose of a robust military in foreign policy as the same for criminal punishment:

• Deterrence. Opposing states are afraid to attack, because if they do, they will suffer consequences.
• Retribution. Oh, yes, Hulk smash.
• Rehabilitation. After Hulk smash, Hulk elevate people’s standard of living in the defeated country and leave behind something akin to a republic.

Perhaps I am too simplistic; after all, we’re talking about nation states and not individuals. But one would have to argue that nations are more than the sum of their rulers, and some rulers would disagree, even though Louis XIV’s time has passed. Some rulers just don’t know it yet.

Apparently, the new design has made the fifty dollar bill impossible to counterfeit, so the counterfeiters have had to turn elsewhere.

Apparently, in Georgia, they’re now counterfeiting dimes.

Friends, Romans, and those with differing political philosophies: I offer a sincere, heartfelt trade to you.

I shall not extrapolate the vandalism and thuggery of a few criminals galvanized by their support of John Kerry as a property of the whole Democrat party or anyone with liberal sympathies if:

People on the left do not extrapolate the actions of a few vandals and thugs as being an insurgency of the entire populations of Iraq or Afghanistan.

Do we have a deal?

No? I didn’t think so.

Former television critic and now the peter principled head of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial page Eric Mink asks a vital question:

Why would anyone who is concerned about the safety of his family, the security of our country and the fight against Islamist terrorism favor Bush?

Because Bush is responsible for 9/11:

Speaking in Des Moines last month, Vice President Dick Cheney warned that electing the wrong person in November could increase the danger that “we’ll fall back into the pre-9/11 mind-set. . . .” Bush owns nine months of that mind-set.

It’s not fair to blame Bush for those attacks, although six of the 10 “missed opportunities” to stop them identified by the 9/11 commission occurred on his watch. But it is fair to hold him responsible for the rigidity of his White House bureaucracy and the lackadaisical attitude toward al-Qaida, both of which made America more vulnerable before Sept. 11, 2001.

Is Mink admitting he’s unfair? He starts the second paragraph of that quote with “It’s not fair to blame Bush for those attacks” and puts that admission among:

• “Bush owns nine months of that [pre-9/11] mind-set.”
• “six of the 10 “missed opportunities” to stop them identified by the 9/11 commission occurred on his watch.”
• “it is fair to hold him responsible for the rigidity of his White House bureaucracy and the lackadaisical attitude toward al-Qaida, both of which made America more vulnerable”

In other words, Eric Mink is unfair.

Eric Mink must be a fat lady:

The U.S. military won a stellar victory in Afghanistan in 2001, but Bush failed to follow through on the pursuit of Osama bin Laden and, much more important, failed to fulfill commitments to secure and rebuild the country.

Because apparently he feels our commitment to Afghanistan has ended and he’s writing the post-mortem. Notwithstanding the coming elections there, notwithstanding our continuing partnership with the Afghan people, and notwithstanding that Afghanistan will soon surpass its condition before the war if it hasn’t already. Perhaps Mink expected that, two years later, Afghanistan would be a trendy gentrified urban hotspot.

Ah, screw it. I don’t have the tolerance to refute Mink line by line.

Go read it yourself if you have the stomach. Meanwhile, I think I’ll go back to reading Emily Dickinson and demonstrating unabashed Packer partisanship.

Republican representatives have forced a vote on Chuck Rangel’s bill to reinstitute a draft and voted it down 402-2. Of course, activists who like the sound of that particular drum when they beat it disagree with what the legislative defeat really means:

But congressional Democrats and activists elsewhere denounced the vote as an empty exercise that trivialized what many Americans believe is a real possibility.

“They have used gamesmanship to give a false sense that there is not going to be a draft. Nobody wants a draft. But if you don’t have the manpower to confront the need, then there is no option,” said Bobby Muller, founder of the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation, an international organization that addresses the causes and consequences of war.

Some might think that these fellows are remarkably disingenuous (depending on what that word means–remind me to look it up later–suspect it’s a synonym for pelfiful).

I, on the other hand, applaud the intellectual consistency in the position. Namely, that a legislator’s vote or record of votes has no bearing or reflection on the secret plans or inclinations of that legislator. Especially when a legislator runs for a position in the executive branch.

Because that’s one of the arguments for a Kerry presidency featuring military strength and, you know, that archaic concept of I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States without the asterisk and footnote except where conflicts with the directives of the United Nations as formulated by France, Germany, Ghana, Syria, or China.

(Link seen on Ranting Profs.)

Protesters attack Bush Cheney HQ in West Allis.

(Link courtesy of homie Sean Hackbarth.)

Courtesy of triticale – the wheat/rye guy:

If our action in liberating Iraq is creating so many new terrorists, how come all the actions taken in response to it are carried out by militants and insurgents?

In Minnesota, a 17-year-old prewoman (because girl is sexist nomenclature, donchaknow) is running for mayor. The biggest obstacle, aside from being only a write-in candidate and being unable to vote for herself:

Even so, state law says candidates must be eligible voters and at least 21 years old when they take office.

The plucky little prewoman remains undaunted, because she can tell which way the wind blows, and apparently the wind is the only constant in civic life in the twenty-first century:

Feehan-Nelson said that if she receives the highest number of votes but is not certified, she is prepared to take the matter to court.

“I doubt the judge would be able to say no to the popular vote,” she said. “The people’s right to choose prevails over (state law).”

Isolated incident? A small stone begins an avalanche.

(Link courtesy of The Spoons Experience.)

State Representative Frank Boyle of northern Wisconsin gives insight into the proper role of the citizen:

Boyle told the board he first met Leggate in 1984 when she was a secretary at City Hall. He said she costs the state $24,000 every year she’s in prison and she needs to get back into the work force and generate tax revenue, especially with the state facing a deficit in its next budget.

This person, a convicted murderer sentenced to life, should return to society so that she can generate tax revenue.

Government seizes private property to whomever it thinks will generate the most tax revenue for it. What logically stops it from next using its citizens in the best, most revenue-enhancing way?

More on the outrage at Boots and Sabers.

Those of you who didn’t start watching the debates at 6:30 on CSPAN missed their interview with the University of Miami president and her remarks from the lowered microphone that she’d arranged classes, other acadaemic stuff, and a voter registration drive to get students more involved in the carnival that took place at University of Miami yesterday.

Donna “I Am Not Bowzer” Shalala.

Former Secretary of Health and Human services under William J. Clinton.

Former head of University of Wisconsin (Mad).

Organizing voter registration drives.

Thanks, Shalalala.

Thomas Eagleton opines in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in a piece entitled IRAQ: One word says it all: disaster:

We do not need to recount yet again the history of the war in Iraq. It will go down as one of the most ill-conceived military undertakings in our history.

It doesn’t really get better from there. Instead, the former senator and even more former vice presidential candidate to George McGovern (for crying out loud) pontificates on how history will judge Iraq because Eagleton’s got the long range vision. Which he demonstrates by savaging George W. Bush politically and talking about the short term impact of the war.

Beg your pardon, Senator, but I disagree. I see differences between this war and the telewars of this century held up for cheap political points by forgotten (and hopefully, soon-to-be-forgotten) senators.

I expect that history will judge the Iraq war much like it judges the Spanish-American War, The Mexican-American War of 1848, the Mexican incursions in 1910, or more recently the invasion of Panama; a small war remembered by a few historians and unfortunately not many citizens. Or history will judge the Iraq war like the reckless Iwo Jima incursion: a small battle with its own costs in service of a greater war. But history will not, no matter how hard some self-appointed men of history try, judge Iraq as a carbon-copy of Viet Nam.