Category: News

Wretchard at Belmont Club sums up the choice in worldviews offered this November:

Although the exigencies of politics and the need to attract away the conservative fringe (by playing Amazing Grace for example) may keep John Kerry from being forthright it cannot obscure the fact that two opposing, and therefore contradictory visions, are contending for the electorate this November. The first argues that despite the shortcomings of multilateralism, diplomacy and concession, it is still the best way to settle accounts with radical Islam. It will concede that more might have been done to prevent September 11 but it will maintain steadfastly that the alternative, which was to strike at enemies the way they have struck at us is fundamentally wrong and dangerous. And by exclusion it will maintain that whatever the dangers of Clintonian policy the world was safer then than it is today. Ths second point of view will argue that eight years of wilfull blindness; supporting Bosnian Muslims; ignorning the A. Q. Khan network of nuclear proliferation, buying North Korea its own reactors and receiving Yasser Araft at the White House; the whole policy of concession, bought not a whit of safety. It will argue that our enemies are even now on the point of obtaining nuclear weapons to turn against us, and will if we return to the policies of the past. It will concede that there have been disappointments in Iraq, but that by any historical yardstick our progress to victory — and here is the unique word — has been steady, irresistable and therefore inevitable.

Friends, I spent September 11, 2001, in a conference room, watching a grainy Peter Jennings demean the president while the World Trade Center crumbled like talc, while the Pentagon burned, and while the country wondered, “What next?” Every moment was a cliffhanger as we awaited word of how much further into the rabbithole we had fallen. In the days and weeks that followed, planes were grounded as a safety precaution and we wondered how much like Israel America would have to become to survive. I am damned, for I remember clearly.

Is Bush the perfect choice? No, of course not. But he’s the better choice.

Because I don’t think that a return to Clinton-era is what we need, and that’s the best for which we could hope with a Kerry presidency. The worst doesn’t seem all that bad, either; a Congress which hogties the lame president, opposing his crazy domestic policies and “overseeing” feckless foreign policy.

We would all enjoy a period of merry fiddling while Dark Ages II continues to cloud over, and most of us, or at least the important Baby Boomers, would be dead and lost to history before the Western books were burned and the Chinese ended Islam. The United States of America, the West? A footnote that might someday describe a failed experiment in human potential.

Networks Pull Plug on Teresa [Heinz-Kerry]‘s Speech.

(Link seen on Roger L. Simon’s and Little Green Footballs, in that order because that’s the way the blogroll’s ordered.)

Author Roger L. Simon commits the sin:

In fact, bloggers have one advantage over so-called professional journalists.

What’s the advantage? Obviously not a better vocabulary or instinctive sense to avoid annoying clitches.

Note to readers: In an attempt to sound less French, we’re officially pronouncing it clitches. Not only does it sound more manly, but I don’t have to look up the character code for the e with the accent on it. Thank you.

So Neil Steinberg, of the Chicago Sun-Times, is probably going to vote for John Kerry, but he sometimes indicates that he understands foreign policy:

So much emphasis has been put on the 9/11 Commission’s recommendation to overhaul U.S. intelligence that not much attention has been given its notions about winning the “struggle of ideas” between the West and Islamic radicalism.

We need to reach out to the Arab world, its argument goes, and make them understand what really good guys we are at heart.

This is a spin on the old “What did we do wrong?/Maybe if we were nicer to them” view that surfaced immediately after Sept. 11, and is complete nonsense. Islamic radicals hate America because: a) we aren’t Muslim; b) we support the country in their midst that isn’t Muslim, Israel; c) we are purveyors of a non-Muslim, flashy, sexualized culture where women aren’t dressed head to toe in black; and d) their governments encourage it.

They hate us because of who we are, and nothing short of an embrace of Wahhabism would make them happy (and even then it might be the wrong kind. Iran and Iraq, remember, lost a million soldiers fighting each other).

Digging wells and sending fruitcakes labeled “GIFT OF USA” is not going to do it. The United States gives more foreign aid to Egypt than any other country except Israel. And a recent poll found that 98 percent of Egyptians disapprove of the United States. The other 2 percent, presumably, haven’t heard of us.

No goodwill gesture, no slick Voice of America broadcast is going to change that. Rather than worry about radical Islam understanding our ideas, we need to master their central concept, which is this: Kill your enemies. Radical Islam understands killing and being killed. That’s why, at the end of the day, taking out Saddam Hussein was a good thing, even with no weapons of mass destruction found, even if the place is in turmoil for a decade. It was worth it as a cautionary tale to future enemies, and on the odd chance the United States makes it past the November election without suffering a big Madrid-style terrorist attack, it won’t be because we’ve charmed those who might feel inclined to do it. It’ll be because we’ve either eliminated them or because we’ve so scared their state sponsors that they’ve stopped supporting them.

Sometimes I wonder if two halves of Neil Steinberg war on each other, making him crazy, or if he’s got an attractive college intern who really writes his stuff and occasionally slips these bits into the columns when The Name is too hung over to notice.

Or it could be that he’s got a depth and breadth of convictions too simple to describe in a single snarky paragraph. But hey, snark is what the chicks dig, and one never chortles when one writes a well-reasoned argument, but snark? Oh, yeah, chortlechortlechortle.

Natalie Portman in a John Kerry t-shirt.

(Link courtesy of Michelle Malkin.)

Here’s a neat bit in the Washington Post: Taxes Cut, Not Saved: Assessments, Gas, Lost Profits Leave Some Gasping:

Jerry Bailey is precisely the kind of taxpayer President Bush had hoped to bestow his tax cuts on: an entrepreneur brew-pub owner, a job provider, not overly rich by Washington area standards but well off enough to pay a hefty sum to the federal government each year.

But after three tax cuts in three years, the part-owner of Loudoun County’s Old Dominion Brewing Co. is not exactly celebrating his gains. Sure, his federal tax bill was trimmed, by a healthy $5,600, according to a rough calculation by Clint Stretch, director of tax policy at the accounting firm Deloitte & Touche LLP.

But other factors having nothing to do with federal taxes have clouded Bailey’s situation. This year, the property tax bill on his Bethesda home will reach $6,725, a $950 increase over his payment four years ago. The annual cost of his 56-mile-a-day commute has jumped more than $300 since 2001, and the long, slow decline of business profits these past four years has left Bailey far behind, no matter what his federal tax payment may be.

“I’m not paying any taxes at all because we’re not making any money,” Bailey said with a sigh. “I loved paying taxes. It meant we were doing all right.”

As the Democrats converge on Boston this week to nominate their presidential candidate, the rhetoric around the economic policies of the past 42 months will doubtless be shrill. At first blush, the Democrats’ case may seem like a hard sell. Economic growth has returned. Job growth, while slow, has perked up over the past 12 months. Most of all, Republicans may expect some gratitude for cutting taxes by more than $1.7 trillion over the next 10 years.

But many Americans feel they have lost ground since 2001, and a solid 71 percent are convinced they have received no tax cuts at all. A poll by CBS News and the New York Times in March found that only 22 percent believe the policies of the Bush administration made their taxes go down; 25 percent said their taxes actually went up.

So let me get this straight: the Washington Post has found a real-life entrepreneur who has had his Federal taxes lowered, but his state and local taxes have continued to increase, as have his other costs of business while his profits have fallen in the last four years, which I would assume run from 2000 (when Clinton was in office) through 2003. For the journalist on the case, it’s Bush’s fault?

Please, blow more money on Public Schooling which fails to edumicate the children on the three branches of government and the role of this little bicameral legislature thing, particularly the House of Representatives, on taxes so that the newspapers may continue to blame whomever they feel appropriate, or whomever they want to see lose an election.

Below the fold, at least, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch offers this portrait of John Kerry: Vietnam etched Kerry’s outlook: War record points to leadership and strength; critics question his recollections, motives and decision making.

Let’s sum up Kerry’s Vietnam experience. In country for a couple of months, wounded three times and leaves. The dude is a walking, and unfortunately talking, shrapnel cushion, where Charlie put sharp edges to keep them safe. I mean, sometime in every episode, one of his crewmen would shout, “Oh my god, they’ve wounded Kerry!” Leadership? You’re stepping in it.

In another scene out of a Carl Hiaasen novel:

ERO BEACH, Fla. — A 16-foot-long Burmese python was captured on a city street after a passing motorist spotted about three feet of it hanging over a curb and called police.

The brown-and-yellow snake was wrestled into a body bag and taken to the home of Vero Beach Animal Control Officer Bruce Dangerfield.

I want Knopf to publish my novel. They really pull out all the stops for publicity over there.

Speaking of Carl Hiassen novels, here’s a story you might find in one of his books:

A man hit his girlfriend with a 3-foot alligator and threw beer bottles at her during an argument in the couple’s mobile home, authorities said.

Two seemingly unrelated events:

• Less than a week ago, physicist Stephen Hawking maybe things can escape from black holes after all.
• Today, my Guinness bar towel arrives, over a year after I completed the survey for which I should have gotten it and long after “Guinness Bar Towel” became a Fark punchline:

  

Perhaps I have discovered the inspiration for Hawking’s sudden reversal.

Meanwhile, read this satire: Bush Labels Stephen Hawking a Flip-Flopper. The same joke crossed my mind, but I am too late to capitalize on’t.

From a Reuter’s profile of Teresa Heinz Kerry:

She is wealthy from her marriage to Heinz, the heir to the Pittsburgh ketchup empire who died in a plane crash and who, she said, was “kind enough to even introduce me to John (Kerry) the day before he was killed.” [Emphasis mine]

That’s an interesting turn of phrase to describe a plane crash, ainna?

(Link seen on Best of the Web Today.)

Roger L. Simon has a photo that warms the heart: a female Iraqi soldier on patrol in Iraq.

Now that’s the street rising up.

More photos on Centcom’s Web site.

Arm the women. That will change the Middle East, you bet.

Another law enforcement official proves that technology is only as good as the user:

A San Francisco police officer faces internal charges that he abandoned his traffic control duties at the airport so he could fiddle with surveillance cameras and ogle women as they walked through the terminal.

Officer William Rossi, a 25-year veteran assigned to the traffic company at San Francisco International Airport, is accused in departmental charges of using the closed-circuit surveillance system at Terminal One substation three different times Feb. 29 to “focus on women’s breasts and buttocks.”

Yessir, for every argument that cameras will prevent crime or keep us safer (as opposed to merely documenting our demises for posterity), there’s an argument that, given human nature, cameras merely allow security officials to engage their inner Porky’s.

Sir Reginald Dwight:

“There’s an atmosphere of fear in America right now that is deadly. Everyone is too career-conscious,” he told New York magazine, Interview.

…

“There was a moment about a year ago when you couldn’t say a word about anything in this country for fear of your career being shot down by people saying you are un-American,” he told the magazine.

The singer said things were different in the 1960s.

“People like Bob Dylan, Nina Simone, The Beatles and Pete Seeger were constantly writing and talking about what was going on.

“That’s not happening now. As of this spring, there have been virtually no anti-war concerts – or anti-war songs that catch on, for that matter,” he said.

…

“On the one hand, you have someone like Toby Keith, who has come out and been very supportive of the Bush administration and the war in Iraq – which is OK because America is a democracy and Toby Keith is entitled to say what he thinks and feels.

“But, on the other hand, the Dixie Chicks got shot down in flames last year for criticising the president. They were treated like they were being un-American, when in fact they have every right to say whatever they want about him because he’s freely elected, and therefore accountable.”

Elton John seems a little confused about the difference between the right to free speech, which exists, and the right to be loved, lauded, and underwritten by government grants when speaking in ways that people don’t approve, which exists only in his fevered flashbacks of 1960s utopian dreams.

Unintentionally ironically, undoubtedly, he voiced these concerns in New York City and was not immediately shot by government speech code enforcement officials.

All the cool bloggers are, about an account in Women’s Wall Street that apparently details a dry-run of some sort of terror attack in a flight from Detroit to LA:

When I returned to my seat I was unable to assure my husband that all was well. My husband immediately walked to the first class section to talk with the flight attendant. I might be overreacting, but I’ve been watching some really suspicious things… Before he could finish his statement, the flight attendant pulled him into the galley. In a quiet voice she explained that they were all concerned about what was going on. The captain was aware. The flight attendants were passing notes to each other. She said that there were people on board higher up than you and me watching the men. My husband returned to his seat and relayed this information to me. He was feeling slightly better. I was feeling much worse. We were now two hours into a four-in-a-half hour flight.

Approximately 10 minutes later, that same flight attendant came by with the drinks cart. She leaned over and quietly told my husband there were federal air marshals sitting all around us. She asked him not to tell anyone and explained that she could be in trouble for giving out that information. She then continued serving drinks.

About 20 minutes later the same flight attendant returned. Leaning over and whispering, she asked my husband to write a description of the yellow-shirted man sitting across from us. She explained it would look too suspicious if she wrote the information. She asked my husband to slip the note to her when he was done.

After seeing 14 Middle Eastern men board separately (six together, eight individually) and then act as a group, watching their unusual glances, observing their bizarre bathroom activities, watching them congregate in small groups, knowing that the flight attendants and the pilots were seriously concerned, and now knowing that federal air marshals were on board, I was officially terrified..

The author of the piece followed up with the proper authorities and the airlines:

Through a series of events, The Washington Post heard about my story. I talked briefly about my experience with a representative from the newspaper. Within a few hours I received a call from Dave Adams, the Federal Air Marshal Services (FAM) Head of Public Affairs. Adams told me what he knew:

There were 14 Syrians on NWA flight #327. They were questioned at length by FAM, the FBI and the TSA upon landing in Los Angeles. The 14 Syrians had been hired as musicians to play at a casino in the desert. Adams said they were scrubbed. None had arrest records (in America, I presume), none showed up on the FBI’s no fly list or the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists List. The men checked out and they were let go. According to Adams, the 14 men traveled on Northwest Airlines flight #327 using one-way tickets. Two days later they were scheduled to fly back on jetBlue from Long Beach, California to New York — also using one-way tickets.

I asked Adams why, based on the FBI’s credible information that terrorists may try to assemble bombs on planes, the air marshals or the flight attendants didn’t do anything about the bizarre behavior and frequent trips to the lavatory. Our FAM agents have to have an event to arrest somebody. Our agents aren’t going to deploy until there is an actual event, Adams explained. He said he could not speak for the policies of Northwest Airlines.

Here’s what Hugh Hewitt had to say:

If this account is true, the plane should have been obliged to land upon the first indication of concern among the flight attendants and passengers. Calling the Homeland Security Department: Is this a true account, and if so, are you happy with the actions of the pilot/marshalls etc?

How easily the simple solution eludes us, Hugh.

Ladies and gentlemen, if you are on a plane, witness suspicious activity, communicate with the authorities in the air, and although they’re afraid and suspect something might be amiss but cannot act because protocol indicates they cannot until an event occurs, make an event.

Stand up in your seat and say, “There is a bomb on board this plane.”

They will land the plane, my friends, and they will take you into custody. You’ll face a felony charge or more if they actually find a bomb or bomb-making components on the plane, but if the people around you are crying into their husbands’ shoulders and you’re facing death, you are not impotent.

You just have to work the impotent system to survive and achieve your goals. Why shouldn’t you? They will.

Bear in mind this tactic is something to use only if you are honestly afraid for your life and the lives of those around you. It carries a high penalty, regardless of if you’re crying wolf when there’s a wolf around or not.

UPDATE: More good ideas here.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the latest felony that has come to my attention courtesy of a news spot on the radio and confirmed by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

The suspect, Dennis A. Hobson, 43, was charged with first-degree murder and armed criminal action in the death of Maxine Cheeks, 55. Police say Hobson led them to her badly beaten body on a vacant lot off South 14th Street near Soulard Street.

Hobson’s son, Antoine M. Ward, 26, of the 3000 block of Walton Place, was arrested Wednesday. He was charged with abandonment of a corpse, a felony.

Abandoning a corpse is apparently a felony. Because sometimes accessory after the fact just won’t do it. My goodness, why aren’t all murderers charged with this secondary crime that often succeeds the first?