I'll comment on Bush's Iraq War strategy soon - but I have been very busy the past couple of days and so I haven't had the time to do too much in-depth reading or analysis of much of anything. When I heard on the radio today that Bush was laying out a strategy, it piqued my interest, but I haven't had time to read Bush's plan yet.

Stay tuned.

That is all.

Dennis Mangan has reported here about a Belgian suicide bomber in Iraq and here about Belgium not allowing its car dealers to sell American cars.

Unfortunately, he is not certain what Americans can boycott in order to retaliate.

There is, of course, an answer.

I can think of exactly one thing that Belgium has given us that we could boycott.

What is it?

Click here to find out.

That is all.

"It's got more of a rock tip to it," he said of [Shakira's] second English album. "It's a call back to the Cure and the Pretenders. It's definitely more of a rocker thing."

So I'm not alone.

That is all.

Previously, I said that Madonna's new song sounds like he Dr. Who theme.

See for yourself, the song plays at Madonna's website.

The Doctor Who theme (from Neal Abram's homepage).

Madonna's song isn't the Doctor Who theme, but it has a similar sound, doesn't it?

I also mentioned that Shakira's back-up band sounded like the Cure. Listen to this, particularly the part just after the seconbd verse, and before the part where she talks about moving to a communist country.

Then go to this page and click on any versions of the song (couldn't find the song except in midi format).

In fact, a lot of the background music from "Don't Bother" sounds similar to that of "Just Like Heaven." (I'm not saying it was taken from "Just Like Heaven," just that the styles are similar).

That is all.

I keep a fairly close track of coalition casualties in Iraq. In fact, other than the Iraq Coalition Casualties website, and the associated blog Lunaville, I am the only person I know who regularly discusses monthly fatality rate in Iraq, and, I think, the only person who discusses the hostile fatality rate for the entire coalition (as opposed to the total fatality rates for just the U.S.).

So maybe that is why I have noticed a trend that no one else has, to my knowledge, noticed. How come whenever there is an increase in fatalities, the articles about how fatalities are increasing tend to come out after we have had a few days of quiet?

For example, this article about U.S casualties climbing in Iraq would have been very, very contemporary a week ago, when the daily fatality rate for November was even higher than the high rate in October. But now that the coalition has averaged 1 fatality a day for the past four days, this article comes out.

Is the media trying to remind us that fatalities are on a general uptrend every time there is a temporary lull? Perhaps. It would lend support to the neocons' position that the media is out to get Bush on the issue of the war.

On the other hand, the only people who would notice that the trend in fatalities has been down over such a small time period (> a week) would be people like me, who meticulously check the fatality list every day. So very few people would have noticed the temporary lull and therefore there would be very few who "needed" to be reminded of the general trend (and anyone who keeps up with day-to-day fatalities is probably already aware of the general trends). So the "conspiratorial" theory of fatality rate reporting seems a little far-fetched because the payoff for antiwar forces is too small to be of much use (assuming that the media is reporting for antiwar purposes).

On a third hand, the people who report on such things probably look at the day-to-day figures and the long-term trends, so maybe they are working to prevent people from interpreting the lulls as long-term reductions in fatalities, not because there is a tremendous audience that would be influences by such reporting, but because the media people in charge of this think there is because, hey, they are interested in it, and everyone is just like them, aren't they?

That is all.

I suppose I should say something about the peace activists kidnapped by the "Swords of Righteousness".

They were stupid idiots.

Anyone who goes to Iraq to reach out to the insurgents or to "work for peace" is an idiot.

That's why I call myself "anti-war" instead of "for peace." Because I am not against the Iraq War because of some pie-in-the-sky airy-fairy idealism, but because I think that in most cases wars are stupid and don't serve the interests of the U.S. as a whole. I don't a priori think that all wars are unnecessary, I just don't think we should go and seek out trouble.

But anyone stupid enough to go to Iraq, and to assume that the insurgents are noble "freedom fighters" is an idiot.

Of course, anyone who thinks that Ahmed Chalabi is a noble freedom fighter, or that the Iraqis who allied with the U.S. did so because of a commitment to democracy (rather than because they thought that the U.S. could serve their own agenda or the interests of their particular sect) is also an idiot.

That is all.

Recently, over at Unqualified Offerings, I made this comment:

Also, when neocons say we can’t set a timetable because the insurgents will wait us out, he is implicitly suggesting that when we leave, the Iraqi security forces will not be able to take over. That is, we will not be able to train the Iraqi security forces to take over for us within any publicly acceptable timeline.

I have also written this on Glaivester:

The general argument against a timetable is that if we set a date to withdraw, then the insurgents will just hunker down and wait for us to leave so that they can take over.

What no one has retorted in response to this (or at least I don't remember anyone pointing it out) is that the deadline is presumably going to be set so that when the time comes to leave, we will leave behind Iraqi security forces capable of defending Iraq. Therefore, waiting us out ought not to be a succeessful strategy for the insurgents because even if we leave, they will have to contend with the highly-trained crack Iraqi security forces. Put another way, by rejecting even a contingent deadline, the Bush administration is essentially admitting that it does not really believe that it can train sufficient Iraqi forces to protect the country within any publicly acceptable timetable.

Now out comes this article in the Chicago Sun Times. Well, if you skip past all of the part about whether or not Bush lied, you get to this little gem of info:

Granting for the sake of an argument that we must train a functioning Iraq army, why will no one in the administration predict how long that will take? Why after several years of that effort is there only one fully capable Iraqi unit (of 750 men)?

James Fallows, in a long and careful article in the Atlantic Monthly, says that it would probably take 10 years, just as anonymous hints from the Pentagon assert. The alternative is set a strict schedule for withdrawal, which Fallows admits would be a loss of honor.

Ten years. Definitely not a publicly acceptable timetable.


In essence, the administration's goal in Iraq appears to be to hide the true nature of our commitment to Iraq for as long as possible, so that we don't know what we have gotten ourselves into for the long haul until the long haul has already passed. The administration hopes that by refusing to give a timetable, but constantly proclaiming that we are winning, he will get Americans, particularly loyalists, to assume that the troop drawdown is just over the horizon - even though that horizon keeps getting pushed further and further back.

Recently, pressure has made the administration hint more that troops drawdowns are on their way next year, but I agree with Seymour Hersh that we should be skeptical about this.

In short, I think I am being proven right.

That is all.

Jennifer Roback Morse has an excellent article dealing with the problems that come from the leftist dogma that men and women are not really any different at all.

That is all.

Michael Brendan Dougherty has an article up on AFFBrainwash about Sam Cooke and the recent fascination with Baby-Boomer music icons (Sam Cooke, Ray Charles, Johnny Cash, to nbame a few.

I don't really keep up with most of these biopics, as I tend not to listen to much music that isn't 70's rock (e.g., Boston), 70's-80's new wave (Devo, Duran Duran), or from within the last ten or fifteen years. Nonetheless, I found Mr. Dougherty's article to be interesting.

That is all.

I have to admit that I am not terribly worked up over the questions of how fair Saddam's trial will be. He has done enough that he ought to be executed for that in the end it will not make much practical difference if his trial is fair or not, he is going to die.

I also see no reason to move the trial to some international tribunal where the wimps will refuse to consider the death penalty, not to mention the fact that I am skeptical of the "international community" in the first place.

On the other hand, I am a little concerned that in the rush to get him convicted of some crime and execute him, that we will lose accounts of other, far worse crimes. And perhaps that is the intent - to get him tried and executed for one offense that has few connections to other countries, so as to avoid him testifying on any subject that might embarrass other countries (say, Russia or the U.S.).

That is all.

Earlier this month, I wrote:

There were four plausible ways that "The Emperor's New Clothes" might end:

...(4) The emperor might admit that he was naked but deny that he had been tricked; indeed, he had always planned on walking around naked in front of his subjects, and his decision to do so had excellent results!

I rest my case.

The problem here, of course, is that while, in broad strokes this drawdown plan is the President's plan, what the Senate (and mostly, the Democrats) have forced Bush to do is to actually begin to determine and provide dates and numbers. That is, the president is beginning to say, we expect to have benchmark (a) done by date (b), which will allow us to withdraw of redeploy (c) troops.

Whatever Dubya tries to tell, there is a tremendous difference between saying "when they stand up we will stand down" and actually providing metrics and timetables for the Iraqis "standing up."

On the other hand, what I read of the Biden plan sounds only marginally more detailed than the President's soundbites; of course, the actual plan might be more much more detail and metric-oriented than the Yahoo! summary.

In any case, even the Yahoo! summary of the Biden plan has more actual details than Dubya has ever presented us with. So at least we are getting somewhere.

That is all.

Third Party Watch.

As a supporter of the Constitution Party, I am in favor of anything that increases the visibility of third parties.

That is all.

On the one hand, Bush may be calling for a drawdown of American troops.

On the other hand, he may be trying to dealay the pullout of allied (i.e., non-American) coalition troops.

More on this as it develops.

For now, that is all.

Although this will add another thing to my already considerable list of undone projects, I am thinking about trying to come up with a blog post discussing interraical marriage - specifically, why it might be best for African-Americans in general if the most successful African-Americans (or partial African-Americans) were encouraged to marry African-Americans rather than whites, Asians, or Hispanics.

Once again, Steve Sailer is my inspiration on this; the general concern is that by marrying "outside the race," successful African-Americans will be diluting the presence of "success-oriented" genes in the African-American gene pool. This is a problem (for blacks, not so much for whites) in Latin America, a problem that Mr. Sailer has discussed.

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On the Mises Blog, D. W. McKenzie discusses whether or not personal crime prevention should be considered "socially wasteful".

Unsurprisingly, he finds that it is not.

One thing not counted for in the argument that protecting your yard in a visible way just makes other people more likely to be attacked is that making more cars or more houses harder to break into makes it somewhat costlier for a thief, who must spend more time determining which cars or houses he has the best chance of getting into.

This might seem a small price to pay for the criminal; if a criminal can't get into one car, there is usually another near by. However, this assumes that all cars would be equally attractive targets if not for, e.g., the club. Assuming that crime is not only directed at easy targets but at the most lucrative ones, then it is likely that car thieves or home robbers already spend some time checking out their targets; this means that being forced to forego robbing a particular car (home) may be somewhat costly in terms of a criminal's time and thus increase the expected opportunity costs from robbery (e.g., more time and energy spent scoping out cars/home, more time and energy devoted to determininng how to spot an easy car/home), decreasing crime in general. This is particularly true if the most valuable cars (homes) are the ones most likely to have security devices; this means that thieves might have to settle for much lower payoffs from stealing, and would thus make stealing a less attractive option.

That is all.

Can the psychological effects of war be good as well as bad? An interesting article talking about some theories I have not heard before.

That is all.

Connecting rap culture and the French riots:

here and here.

That is all.

The general refrain from the neoconservatives is that the public is losing faith in the Iraq War for one of two reasons:

(1) The U.S. public has a low tolerance for casualties, and people are getting faint-hearted about a steady stream of killings and woundings.

(2) The evil news media is blacking out the avalanche of good news coming from Iraq that would show how wonderful the war is going. After all, the soldiers over in Iraq (who we all know are perfectly free to speak their minds) say that things are going really, really great.

In reality, there are three main reasons that the Iraq War is losing public support:

(1) The metrics do not suggest we are winning. The estimates for the size of the insurgency are increasing; insurgents are carrying out a greater number of attacks per day than a year ago, coalition fatality rates have been in general increasing since the end of major combat operations, and the security situation appears to be getting worse (Thanx and a tip o' the hat to Jim Henley).

(2) Bush does not have any sort of clear plan for victory. Actual victory will be achieved when we can pull all of our troops out of day-to-day security operations without Iraq falling apart, and progress toward victory will have been made whenever we can reduce our troop levels permanently without the country falling apart.

Nonetheless, Bush has not offered any metrics by which we can judge whether or not the Iraqis are willing and able to defend Iraq so that we can reduce troop levels, and any attempt at a clear time framework is dismissed as "cutting and running," with the statement that we need to stay until the job is done (what that entails is not exactly clarified).

The U.S. willing to take losses, but not if they don't see any progress being made toward the goals for which those troops fought for. Losing troops so that we can keep treading water in Iraq is not acceptable to the vast majority of Americans.

(3) Bush and his administration seem completely oblivious to this. None of their talking points seems to acknowledge that the insurgency is growing nor do they seem to offer any inkling that the administration has determined some sort of parameters by which progress to victory can be measured. Indeed, all of the current talking points amount mostly to "trust us, we know what we're doing."

What Bush has not done, and what he needs to do, if offer some strategic framework for our involvement in Iraq, complete with our actual end-goals, benchmarks for success (benchmarks imply a reduction of troops when the benchmark is reached), and a tentative timetable for the meeting of different benchmarks.

Unless Bush shows the American people that he knows what he is doing, his popularity will continue to fall as longas it has somewhere to go.

That is all.

Review of Red Dawn.

Talking about blaming the CIA for bad intelligence.

Update to my post on "Citizenism."

I'll add to this list as I find things I said I would blog on but haven't yet.

I will add to this list a post dealing with "benchmarks vs. timetables," which Matt Yglesias discusses here. Done!

I will also talk some about the statement by Iraqi leaders apparently legitimizing he insurgency (Lawrence Auster discusses it here).

New addition A discussion of AIDS and Africa.

New addition The discussion of fatherlessness I mentioned here.

That is all.

Lawrence Auster makes a compelling point:

The Bush administration, and the neocons in general, seem to be more hostile to U.S. citizens advocating a drawdown, re-deployment, or withdrawal of U.S. forces than to Iraqis condoning the insurgency killing U.S. and other coalition troops.

Something is screwy here.

That is all.

In future cop-killing cases, execute the S.O.B.'s, John Bull!

That is all.

On the issue of white phosphorous.

That is all.

Third Party watch is a blog attempting to bring more publicity to American third parties.

Visit it, it's interesting.

That is all.

"Statguy," aka Scott Gilbreath, over at Magic Statistics has a post noting how the recent report in The Weekly Standard that the crime rate in Europe is exploding sort of undercuts the conclusions that many would like to draw from the Gregory S. Paul study claiming that religion was positively correlated with social dysfunction.

That is all.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. - Arthur C. Clarke

Has anyone else out there in Blogland read The Passing of the Technomages triology by Jeanne Cavelos? It's a book spin-off of Babylon 5, and deals with the cybernetic "wizards," their origins, their motivations, and most of all with the backstory of Galen, the young Technomage who iwas a major player in the Babylon 5 spinoff series Crusade.

Would you like to comment on it?

Anyone?

Anyone?

That is all.

Sources say that during a closed meeting, battalion commanders told Senator John Warner, Carl Levin, and Mark Dayton that troop levels in Iraq are not high enough to defeat the insurgency, according to
a report in Time magazine. Moreover, despite Rumsfeld's claim (and that of the Bush administration in general) that they would send in more troops if necessary, they had repeatedly asked for more and gotten rebuffed.

Ol' Sully feels that this helps bolster his belief that the failure to put more troops on the ground in Iraq early on was a tremendous strategic blunder.

However, the problem, as Matt Yglesias has pointed out, is that it assumes that there were more troops to be had, that we had the number of troops required to pacify Iraq. (btw, Yggy comments on the report here).

That is all.

And to Jill Hennessy, Joe DiMaggio, Joe DiMaggio, Jenna and Barbara Bush, Ben Stein, and Christina Applegate.

I am now 27.

That is all.

I have been thinking about the issue of an exit strategy from Iraq for a few days, and there are a few thoughts thaty I have come up with that I think would inform the debate. I should point out here that what I am discussing is what would be a responsible pro-war position. I do not necessarily endorse all of these ideas, but I think that they would be the proper ideas to endorse if one supports the War in Iraq and wants to plan for victory.

(1) There has been a lot of tut-tutting over the idea of an "exit strategy," either in terms of looking at it as another way of saying "retreat," or giving platitudes like our exit strategy is victory."

But the fact of the matter is that victory in Iraq is ultimately to be determine in terms of exiting it. That is, we will have won when we are able to withdraw all of our troops without Iraq falling apart or into chaos. That is not to say that we have to withdraw all our troops. Just that we would be able to. In practice, a victory would mean that at most we would keep a small contingent force in Iraq (say, 20,000-30,000 troops), but one that does not provide day-to-day security or protection from domestic threats, and exists mainly to deter or if necessary, defend against, external threats (e.g. bombing or invasion by Iran).

We will also know that we are making progress toward victory when we are able to draw down our troop levels over the long-term without Iraq falling apart or into chaos.

I mean, in essence, if our goal is a free and independent Iraq that can maintain its own security, then the proper test of whether or not we have won is whether or not we need to be there.

So "exit strategy" is another word for victory, so let's drop the posturing.

(2) Any plan for victory that will win the support of the American people needs specific metrics. That is, we need definite goals coupled to definite levels of troops necessary to maintain order in Iraq after the goals are met.

It is possible (very likely, in fact) that some of these goals will have to be revised at times, but we really need to have at least some idea of whether we are succeeding or failing in the all-important tasks of bringing security and stability to Iraq and of defeating the insurgency.

The best schedule would include all of the steps that would be necessary before we could in essence leave Iraq completely (i.e. reduce our presence to a small permanent force as spelled out previously), and include schedules of our troop commitments at each point.

This would be a far cry from what we have now, which is a series of political goalposts, some vague hope that reaching them will constitute victory or bring us closer to victory and the defeat of the insurgency, and to a great extent planning (or at least public planning) restricted pretty much to meeting the bext goalpost. If the anticipated trop reductions are not brought about by reaching a goalpost, Bush simply re-affirms his commitment to "stay until the job is done," accused anyone wanting troop reductions of cutting and running, and simply transfers all of the hopes to the next goalpost.

(3) There is a need for a contingent timetable. That is, we don't need a hard-and-fast deadline, but we do need some idea of when each goal is going to be met and of how many troops we will have to keep in Iraq after it is met. That means a date-based timetable, not just a "event-based" one. What we have now is a very open-ended commitment, with no clear dates. Such an open-ended time commitment tends to make people slower about getting things done. We need some temporal goals in order to "light a fire" under the administration, the troops, and the Iraqis.

One of the most interesting aspects of the current pro-war arguments about "staying until the job is done" is what some of the talking points actually reveal about the pro-warriors assumptions about Iraq.

The general argument against a timetable is that if we set a date to withdraw, then the insurgents will just hunker down and wait for us to leave so that they can take over.

What no one has retorted in response to this (or at least I don't remember anyone pointing it out) is that the deadline is presumably going to be set so that when the time comes to leave, we will leave behind Iraqi security forces capable of defending Iraq. Therefore, waiting us out ought not to be a succeessful strategy for the insurgents because even if we leave, they will have to contend with the highly-trained crack Iraqi security forces. Put another way, by rejecting even a contingent deadline, the Bush administration is essentially admitting that it does not really believe that it can train sufficient Iraqi forces to protect the country within any publicly acceptable timetable.

This is highly disturbing, because it indicates no real confidence on the part of the administration that we are actually planning how to win the war. What we are doing is simply trying to keep a lid on things and hoping that the insurgency will disappear on its own. This is a point that Lawrence Auster has often made. I think it is a point that bears repeating.

That is all.

To all my readers.

That is all.

This story seems to me to be likely to attract a lot of political interpretations.

The pro-war people are already blaming insurgents, while Sunni Arabs in Iraq tend to think that Shiite Arabs are the culprits.

I suppose that either story could be correct; it is definitely possible that Sunnis who reject the legitimacy of the coming December 15 elections attacked him as a traitor because his brother is running for office.

On the other hand, there have been a lot of reports of Shiite Arabs killing Sunni Arabs and there is definitely a lot to be gained by the Shia by frightening the Sunni Arabs into not particpating in the elections (thus handing the Shia an even greater majority in the parliament).

In any case, I doubt that most of the Sunni Arabs will blame the insurgents instead of the Shiites, regardless of what the truth is.

I recall hearing on some talk-show host on the radio (I think, I might have read it on the internet, but I seem to think I was listening to John Gibson on the Tony Snow Show) saying that the terrorists (in which he implicitly included the Iraqi insurgents) were finally alienating the Iraqi people enough that they would lose support (I think it was in reference to the bombings in Jordan). As their major supporters were Sunni Arabs, targeting coalition soldiers might not cost them support, and targeting Shiites might not cost them support, but now that they were targeting Sunni Arabs, ooo boy are they in for it now!

I have a feeling that a lot of people feel this way about such attacks as the one references in the article. Unfortunately, this assumes that the insurgents are the ones responsible, and more importantly, that the targeted Sunni rabs will assume that the insurgents are responsible. If in reality this is an instance of shiite retliation for the years of oppression under the Baathists, or even if the Sunnis just think it is, this is likely to increase, not decrease, support for the insurgency, or at the very least increase the animosity between the different factions in Iraq.

I think reports of the insurgents' alienation from the general populace are greatly exaggerrated.

That is all.

UPDATED: New portion is in red.

This article by Mark Steyn underlines the utter stupidity of the neocons.

Last week, the Republican majority, to their disgrace and with 13 honorable exceptions, passed an amendment calling on the administration to lay out its "plan" for "ending" the war and withdrawing U.S. troops. They effectively signed on to the Democrat framing of the debate: that the only thing that matters is the so-called exit strategy. The only difference between Bill Frist's mushy Republicans and Harry Reid's shameless Democrats is that the latter want to put a firm date on withdrawal, so that Zarqawi's insurgents can schedule an especially big car bomb to coincide with the formal handover of the Great Satan's cojones.

Put another way, we don't want Bush to set any actual goals or to propose a schedule for how we will make Iraq independent. We'll jsut keep doing what we are doing and keep looking forward to someday, you know, completing the job, but without any knowldge now of what "completing the job" means.

"Exit strategy" is a defeatist's term. The only exit strategy that matters was summed up by George M. Cohan in the song the Doughboys sang as they marched off to the Great War nine decades ago:
"And we won't come back
Till it's over
Over there!"
And that's the timetable, too. If you want it fleshed out a bit, how about this? "The key issue is no longer WMD or even the role of the U.N. The central issue is America's credibility and will to prevail.''

Translation: Our goal is to finish the job. Or, more pertinent to our discussion, "our goal is to meet our goal."

Has Mark Steyn ever heard the term tautology? What we want to know is what "finishing the job" entails. One might think that "fleshing it out a bit" would elucidate this, but no, "fleshing it out" simply means saying "Our goal is to meet our goal," with a bit more long-windedness.

Steyn then misrepresents the real issue by claiming that the real debate is over whether or not the U.S. plans on maintaining any forces in Iraq for the long-term:

But, even with full-scale Iraqification, America would be grossly irresponsible if not clinically insane not to maintain some sort of small residual military presence somewhere in the western desert.

As I pointed out in my previous post, the issue is not whether we will long keep a small military presence. The issue is that last month during the elections we had 161,000 troops there, the greatest number at we have had in Iraq at any time since the invasion. The concern is that our presence will have to be very large and very expensive, and be taking part in a lot of actual fighting, none of which is comparable to Germany, Japan, or South Korea. So his retort that we can reduce military costs by taking troops out of Japan and Germany, with the implication that they worked out without an exit strategy is not really relevant.

He also implies in passing that the insurgents are mostly foreigners:

I'm all for "Iraqification" — though those Democrats urgently demanding everything be done by the locals will be the first to shriek in horror once the Iraqis start serious score-settling with the foreign insurgents.

Can't he read? At all? Of course he can, but he is dishonest.

If you want it fleshed out a bit, how about this? Mark Steyn is a liar, liar, pants-on-fire. The issue is not whether or not Iran ever had troops or agents in Iraq prior to our invasion in 2003, it is how lying a liar Mark Steyn is.

So in short, Steyn is advocating an indefinite major military commitment to Iraq without clear goals (that clear goals would mean the terrorists win!), without any plan for even reducing the forces below occupation levels, and ll the time he does not accurately indentify whom we are actually fighting.

Sounds like a neocon wet dream to me.

That is all.

There is some talk of major reductions to U.S. forces in Iraq in 2006, depending on conditions.

What conditions would precipitate what level of drawdown has not really been made clear, but it is a start to a responsible Iraq policy.

Not that I necessarily think it will work, but at least things are being phrased in such a way as to make clear victory metricspossible.

More on this as it develops.

That is all.

For the link.

By the way, anyone who liked my piece on Race and IQ might also enjoy the sequel.

That is all.

Apparently, Chris Clarke has decided to start a "blog against racism" day. It is December 1, 2005.

Perhaps I will try my hand at a post on racism. And it will be anti-minority racism, not anti-white racism, too. Just to show that I do not deny that racism exists nor do I have no sympathy for folks of other races.

So what does a person who doesn't mind discussing racial inequality (e.g. racial differences in IQ) consider racist?

Stay tuned.

Thanx and a tip o' the hat to L.A. Mom.

That is all.

The Center for Advanced Sarcasm has some thoughts about ye olde tickin' time bomb scenario.

That is all.

I should try to get a comment up on the case of Abdullah Al Muhajir, who has been indicted on terror charges.

For now, suffice it to say that while I oppose our government subjecting Americans to indefinite detentions without trial, I have no sympathy for someone who planned to detonate a radiological disperal bomb (aka a "dirty bomb." If he is guilty of acts of terror, I say fry him.

By the way, if you haven't heard of Abdullah Al Muhajir, maybe you have heard of his more famous name: Jose Padilla.

And unlike Michelle Malkin, I have no problem with treating cases of terrorism as a law-enforcement issue.

That is all.

Have any of my readers used Virtual PC on a Mac? Anyone have any comments?

It seems really slow, but I hope that it will be a tad faster if I get a 1.9 or 2.1 GHz G5 at some point.

In any case, though, I still find it really cool to have a "Windows" window right there on my Mac desktop, and being able to toggle between the systems is fun.

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Matt Yglesias brings up an important topic: that the CIA was one of the least enthusiastic arms of the government for the Iraq War and for the idea that Saddam had large amounts of WMDs, George Tenet's "slam-dunk" comment notwithstanding. Which makes attempts to blame the CIA for convincing Bush that Iraq had WMDs rather strange.

I will try to do a longer post on this later.

That is all.

Lawrence Auster comments on a piece at The American Stinker, (which I call that for the way the Stinker's Thomas Lifson accused Mr. Auster of antisemitism for using the term "neocon") where J. Peter Mulhern says that we will need to keep troops in Iraq forever.

Although this is disturbing as a theory (as Mr. Auster points out), the problem is that this particular issue is rather beside the point. Most people are not concerned with whether or not we garrison a few dozen thousand troops there like we do in Japan or Germany. The concern is whether or not we will be able to draw down the forces to a truly post-occupation level and to let most of the actual lifting be done by the Iraqi troops.

Most people are less concerned with whether or not every last American is out in a year (or two years, or more) than with whether or not we will still have 130,000+ troops there in a year. Or perhaps we will need to increase the force to 200,000.

And the fact of the matter is, that the issue of troop drawdowns is driven as much or more by concern for the maintenance of our military as by concerns about the political aspects of "having an exit strategy." What will we do if the minimum troop requirement in Iraq is greater than what we have available? Take our troops out of Japan, Germany, and South Korea? Conscription? (Not likely, methinks). Or maybe decide that we need to keep order with a smaller troop force, and if that means exterminating recalcitrant towns, so be it?

One problem with this war has been the consistent refusal to look at actual metrics to determine success or failure rather than looking at public-relations friendly political goals. In fact, political goals have often been conflated with military goals, with each new step in the process lauded as a defeat for the insurgency, which nevertheless continues to keep on trucking.

If we are really lucky, soon we will at least get pep-talks from the administration that are grounded in reality rather than fancy. But don't count on it.

That is all.

(I'll explain the significance of the title later).

Note: If anyone doesn't like me linking to images on their website, drop me a line at glaivester at yahoo dot com or comment on this post and I will remove the link.

This post on AFFBrainwash by Michael Brendan Dougherty has inspired me to write a little about my thoughts on attractive women. (specifically celebrities).

First of all, I do not have a girlfriend, or any prospects of getting one soon (considering how often I blog, is anyone surprised?) So whether or not my girlfriend likes the same girls is not a consideration.

So how do I choose which celebrities I think are the most attractive?

Well, other than the obvious, I tend to look for people who are a little obscure, so that I can feel that my tastes are special (I mean, everyone thinks that Pamela Lee Anderson is hot, so where's the fun in that?).

I also tend to like women who have appeared in TV shows that I like.

Favorite actress: Lysette Anthony. She was hot in Krull (one of my favorite movies, I mean, look at the first six letters of my my pseudonym), and she's still hot. In fact, her presence caused made me watch a little bit of the steaming pile known as Look Who's Talking Now?.

Close behind is Marjorie Monaghan, who on Babylon 5 played the Free Mars terrorist leader "Number One," aka Tessa Halloran, who later became the head of Earth Alliance Intelligence.

Kristin Lehman, who played the timid and un-self-confident, but quite sexy vampiress Urs on the TV series Forever Knight is another pick of mine for "hotness" (here's another picture). She is also the person whose picture has brought in a lot of Google hits when I linked to it near the beginning of my entry into blogdom. (She is the one whom the title is named after in hopes of capturing more Google image traffic).

Jill Hennessey is pretty nice-looking as well. I also like her character of Jordan Cavanaugh in Crossing Jordan.

When it comes to comic book superheroines, no one else can compete with "her sexy blueness" Talia Josephine "T.J." Wagner, aka Nocturne. The daughter of Nightcrawler and the Scarlet Witch in another dimension, she is my favorite Marvel character and the entire reason I purchased Exiles in the beginning as well as the entire reason that I purchased The New Excalibur.

Mr. Dougherty also quotes Maurenn Dowd saying that "Deep down all men want a virgin in a gingham dress."

Well, when I get married, I'd like to think that my wife will have saved herself for me (I'm certainly saving myself for her, out of a combination of my moral code with the help of my sheer laziness when it comes to dating).

But Gingham? Well, I sort of like the idea of a sequined evening gown that goes all the way down to the floor and gets real tight around the ankles so that she has to pull it up a few inches to get up the stairs (well, as formal-wear, I'm not thinking of a girl wearing this while helping me ot put acidifying fertilizer on my evergreen shrubs and hydrangeas [yes, I have no life]). I have known this ever since I saw Emma Samms wearing such a dress on the episode of Newhart where Larry was dreaming that he was hosting the Tonight Show and she was the guest.

Speaking of Newhart, Julia Duffy is hot in a "cute" sort of way.

I also think that covering one's neck is sexy (see the pic of Marjorie Monaghan again). And I like it when a woman wears revealing footwear and painted toenails. Or I am getting into "too much information" territory here?

In any case, that's my opinion.

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This post on Gideon's Blog (Noah Millman) about same-sex marriage reminded me of some columns about same-sex marriage from a year or so back.

David Frum argued that same-sex marriage was a bad idea because it would lead to quasi-marriage partnerships that weakened the division between "married" and "single" and thus weaken marriage as it would not have any special status.

Jonathan Rauch and Andrew Sullivan
here
and here argued that that is why full marriage rights were necessary, because that would preserve the "special status" of marriage.

What they did not seem to realize is that by opening marriage to same-sex couples, one is inherently turning marriage into marriage-lite. Such a shift in what marriage would go a long way to diluting marraige as a social institution.

Of course, a lot of the leftists actually want to bring down civilization, so that may not bother a lot of the people pushing same-sex marriage.

But for most people who support same-sex marriage, I think the yare simply being naive as to the consequences.

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At the lack of publicity for safe, non-smoking, alternative methods of ingesting nicotine.

Thanx and a tip o' the hat to Dennis Mangan.

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(Warning: movie and sound files)
This video clip of Dubya (click here for the smaller version) demonstrates how the President's speaking abilities have deteriorated over the past ten to eleven years.

(You may need speakers to hear it, the sound is very very faint).

So this would seem to negate both the claims that Bush is just stupid, and the claims that he is being unfairly maligned for his poor speaking (as anyone can see by comparison how poorly he speaks now compared to how he spoke ten years ago).

Thanx and a tip o' the hat to The Center for Advanced Sarcasm.

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Colby Cosh has an interesting article on abortion rights in Canada. The central thrust: most Canadians (or most people in western cultures) really dislike abortion (I would argue that they know it is morally wrong) but secretly want it to be available for them.

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Mike Marqusee spanks the foremr Libido-in-Chief for helping to bring about the Iraq War that he is now trying to disown.

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H. Munroe raises an important question: Why does it matter how honest the basis of our going into war against Iraq?

Trish Schuh has a good answer:

Because we are trying to do the same to Syria.

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Ken Burns in the New York Times discusses reason why the coalition in Iraq did not respond sooner to reports of a Shiite-run torture prison.

He suggests that there were so many different rumors about things going on that the troops couldn't handle them all, and couldn't separate fiction from reality, and so this just fell through the cracks.

I wonder maybe if reports of Sunni Arabs (aka the ethnic group behind the insurgency) being tortured by Shiite Arabs just weren't much of a priority.

Now this is something that if I heard a report that Iran were involved in, I would believe it.

Another interesting note is buried at the bottom of page 2 of the article:

The American command then acknowledged, in the words of one high-ranking officer, that the earlier assessments were based on little more than prideful assertions by Iraqis that their fellow citizens could never do anything so crazy as to blow themselves up, and on "people who came to us after a bombing and said, 'That's not an Iraqi foot,' or 'That's a Syrian hand.'"

I have been operating under the assumption that the insurgency was mainly Iraqi, but that the suicide bombers were mostly foreign. If this is wrong, then it basically shoots to hell the argument that closing the borders between Syria and Iraq and between Iran and Iraq will do much to defeat the insurgency (although even if the suicide bombers are mostly foreign, there is the question of whether they are coming in through Syria and Iran, or through Saudi Arabia). I suppose one could argue that the weapons and cash are coming through those countries even if fighters aren't, but if the suicide bombers are domestic, that would bring into question any part of the insurgency that is supposedly foreign.

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Says Mayor Daley, after a visit to authoritarian China.

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Steve Sailer defends "citizenism" against Jared Taylor's white nationalism.

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Whenever I hear people talking about how they have hard from soldiers in Iraq how much they support the war, hate the media for lying about it, and think that everything is going so swimmingly that they cannot understand how people could think we are losing, I tend to be skeptical. After all, it's not like soldiers are free to speak their minds.

This post from TPMCafe neatly sums up my feelings on the topics of soldiers telling us how wonderful the war is going.

Of course, there is also the "Your Lying Eyes" issue. When the fatality rate is increasing, and all official reports show that the Iraqi casualty rate has increased compared to the beginning of this year, and some of the major roads have become unsafe to travel since 2003, it seems that there is a basis for worry about how the war is going independent of the media coverage. So reports that "things are a lot better than the media is reporting" seem to me to translate into "we are pretending that things are going a lot better than they are."

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Using the Brookings' Institute's Afghanistan index, Josh Narins has a post describing some of the problems that are growing in Afghanistan. War-related deaths are going up, as are people in need of food aid and the number of forgeign troops stationed in Afghanistan.
The U.S. casualty figures don't look so hot either.

There was an article in the American Conservative a few years back that predicted that things would go sour in Afghanistan, but I can't find it right now.

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This week's blog is the blog of a Calvinist Reformed Anglican statistician.

I first came across his blog while dealing with the issue of the Gregory S. Paul "religion correlates with social dysfunction" study.

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So what do Glaivester readers think of my new blog format (essentially, the addition of a second sidebar?)

Does it make it easier to find my sidebar stuff or not?

Feel free to comment.

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It appears that the official storyline that the Shiites, while being attacked in several terrorist incidents, have not struck back, is not entirely accurate.

I earlier suggested (in regard to the consequences of the constitution pasing or failing):

Of course, Sunni Arabs who feel cheated would probably attack in a more conspicuous way than would the Shiites and Kurds, as the latter could use the government and police forces to carry out revenge, whereas the Sunni Arabs would be limited to the much less covert insurgency.

While the specific instance I was referring to (the constitution failing) did not come to pass, the general idea that Shiites would take out their anger through more "official" channels than the Sunnis (who do it through insurgency) seems to have come to pass (the verdict on the Kurds is still out).

I also commented on an earlier story on revenge killings here a little less than two months ago.

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I think I posted something like this before, but here is what I mean when I say that the President needs an "exit strategy" for Iraq.

(1) We must determine what ur permanent goal is for Iraq. Do we want a completely independent state? Do we want Iraq to be somewhat dependent on the U.S. for its defense (like, e.g., Germany was during the Cold War). Do we want to form a major part of its foreign defense (i.e. against other countries as opposed to against insurgents and other home-grown malcontents) like we do in South Korea, or like we do in Japan, as a way to insure that its army does not get too aggressive?

If it should be completely independent, what amount of basing of U.S. troops, if any, are we shooting for it to allow as an ally?

If it should be somewhat dependent on us for its defense, like Germany, like South Korea, or like Japan, what sort of force do we want to stay in Iraq on a permanent basis? 20,000 troops? 30,000 troops? What level of drawdown will indicate that the war is over?

(2) We need a condition-based timetable. A REAL one, not some general idea like "as they stand up, we stand down." We need to know under what conditions we will reduce the troop level how much. For example, will we reduce the troops level by 3,000 troops for every 20,000 Iraqi forces trained? Reduce the troop level by 10,000 if the election goes by without serious incident? Withdraw 2,000 troops if a month goes by with fewer than some number produced by adding up some formula involving coalition, Iraqi military, and Iraqi civilian casualties?

Some idiot on Fox News Radio (I think), responded to Democrats' request for an condition-based timetable by saying that that was what Bush had been offering all along. (I think it was John Gibson, who if anything is a bigger blowhard than Mr. Vibrator Promoter). Well, no, he hasn't. Describing the general circumstances that you need to achieve before declaring victory and leaving (we will stay there until we have a democracy that can protect itself, as they stand up, we will stand down) or worse, providing meaningless rhetoric we will stay until the job is done) is not the same thing as providing actual metrics.

Maybe we finally have a bit of an exit strategy (or "victory strategy," if you prefer), but it sems to me that the Bush administration was forced into declaring it, and would have continued on their merry way had pressure not been brought to bear on them.

Of course, the plan for victory and subsequent withdrawal of troops is only half of the issue. The other half is actually figuring out how to achieve the goals that will allow for such a strategy to be put into place. Currently, Bush's strategy for defeating the insurgents is to keep having elections, set up a government, and train a lot of Iraqi troops.

Judging by casualty figueres, both of the Coalition, and of Iraqis, we are not having a tremendous amount of success at suppressing the insurgency.

I suppose the other part of Bush's strategy is continuously annoucing that the insurgency is losing support due to the large number of Iraqi civilians being killed. Although for some reason, the loss of support has not translated into a loss of ability to do damage.

Funny that.

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Steve Sailer has his famous definition of race:

An extended family that inbreeds to some degree.

I have decided that my contribution to this issue will be my definition of "nation:"

A race that allows for the existence of adopted members.

The U.S. is a good example of this; throughout most of our history, we have turned people from different backgrounds into "Americans." We're not as diverse as the liberals would have us belief, or as they would want, but a person's status as an American is not based on his biological race.

Of course, this is not to say that a nation is a synonym for a country (which is a land mass) or a state (which is the government). You can have nations without a state (e.g. the Kurds), and a state need not be a nation (Iraq). But the term "nation" as opposed to "race" does at least imply the possibility of someone "gaining membership" into the group.

I also decided to contribute a definition of "ethnic group:"

A collection of one or more races sharing some bond that allows for (a) the existence of adopted members, (b) for the adoption of new races into the collection.

Take the example of the Jewish people. The distinct subsets of Jews could well be more different from each other than each is from its Gentile neighbors, but they still are all united under the rubric of Jewishness. Moreover, a person of any race can convert, and therefore be considered Jewish regardless of race.

This is something I touched on earlier, but I thought I would make an explicit definition.

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Well, I am officially now a Windows XP AND Mac OSX user.

Virtual PC is quite slow, but when I buy my G5 IMac, I think it will speed up a lot.

I'm glad I have an entire Gig of RAM.

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According to this CNN article, General Casey has mapped out at least the beginning of an exit strategy and given it to Donald Rumsfeld.

The hopeful among us will likely see this as proof that the elections in December will be the ones that finally turn the corner for us and will lead to victory so we can go home. Update: Speak of the Devil.

Myself, I have a more distrustful attitude. I think that this is either a response to the Senate resolution that was recently passed (which substituted "significant transition to full Iraqi sovereignty" for "troop withdrawals"), or else a cynical move to prove that the administration really is interested in winning and then leaving, so that next year when we can'treduce the troop numbers without Iraq falling into civil war, Bush can say "we tried, and had a plan to leave, but circumstances changed." Put another way, this is to cover his Bush's hindquarters.

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The Makosi Musambasi story suggests all sorts of humor.

I wonder how many of the people on the people on the Central London Asylum and Immigration, which granted her asylum, were TV-watching males.

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Another interesting blog who has honored me by linking me in their sidebar.

I will return the favor.

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The Democrats who are now back-tracking on their support of the war, and who are claiming that they were fooled by Bush about the intelligence are(as opposed to thsoe who just admit they were mistaken or who claim that the war was good but Bush botched it), in my opinion, a sorry lot. They should have known better.

But the real interesting question is whether they were really fooled, or whether they voted for the war based on intelligence that they didn't really believe, because they thought that the war would have gone betrer than it did and that the question of how honest the rationale for war was would be forgotten amidst the flush of victory. Put another way, if Bush did lie, did the Democrats who voted for the war lie as well?

And then they are now back-pedaling furiously, not because they changed their minds about the intelligence, but because the war is not going well, and so they cannot rely on the good will generated by victory to justify their votes anymore.

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So the case for Saddam having WMDs rests on Clinton's truthfulness?

Well, Clinton said Saddam had them, and we all know how honest he is, so I guess Bush must have been right.

Riiiiight.

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Hilarious.

Virgin has some of the best ads.

(And that Branson's got his fingers in everything, doesn't he?)

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This column raises what I consider to be an important point.

There has been a lot of controversy over the years as to whether or not HIV causes AIDS, with respectable opinion usualy staying on the HIV does cause AIDS side. But what if this is the wrong question, and the real question is, how many cases of "AIDS" are really cases of AIDS?

In other words, let's assume that HIV is the cause of AIDS (which I firmly believe) and that we have proven that the long-term effect of HIV infection is AIDS. This does not mean that (a) everyone with HIV and other health problems has those other health problems because of the HIV, or (b) everyone displaying a weakened immune system has AIDS.

This is not so much a concern in the U.S., because we have the means to track the progress of HIV infection, and thus to tell whether or not a person's lowered immunity correlates at all with an increase in HIV. However, in countries such as Africa, the diagnosis is often made without any HIV-antibody tests, suggesting that a lot of Africans with "AIDS" could be ebing misdiagnosed.

This would be one explanation for the high rate of AIDS diagnoses in Africa, despite the fact that in the U.S., the disease is mostly restricted to IV drug users and homosexual/bisexual males. (Michael Fumento has another explanation here).

In any case, we ought to be careful how we define AIDS; an ever-expanding definition will increasingly snare people who have immune dysfunction for other reasons, and thus give creedence to the Peter Duesbergs of the world, and therfore make things more difficult for people with genuine AIDS.

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Liberals are shocked that Nathan Newman questioned the "one person, one vote" principle.

As a big fan of the existence of the U.S. Senate, I do not find that shocking at all.

Personally, I feel that "one person, one vote" should be the standard for the lower houses of state legislatures (or for unicameral legislatures), but the Senates should be apportioned on the basis of county.

There is also the issue of the fact that for smaller states, representation vareis widely in the House, because states with sizes ranging from 500,000 to 900,000 all have one Congressman.

The most obvious solution in my opinion is to increase the size of Congress.

More on that later.

For now, that is all.

Here and here are two blogs that linked to me as a result of my support of Michael Peroutka's presidential bid.

I'm not endorsing the sites (I haven't read them enough), but I thought it would be nice to throw a little traffic their way (and maybe put them in my links on my lefthand sidebar, who knows?)

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A.C. has an interesting post discussing the case of the female pedophile (yes, pedophile, not an ephebophile in this case).

I must confess that I have a bit of morbid fascination with female sex offenders in the abstract (by "in the abstract," I mean "no, if some female sex offender in prison is reading this, I do not want to contact you").

I think role-reversal has always been something that I have found to be fertile ground for good literatue (by which I mean TV shows).

I guess I'm just fascinated by a good "man bites dog" story.

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Good posting on the French situation and some interesting musings on the Iraq situation.

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This article by Jonah Goldberg somewhat echoes a point I made here.

Of course, Ol' Jonesy thinks that it would be a wonderful thing if Bush lied to get us to do the wonderful task of democratizing Iraq (he should talk to Orrin Judd, they have a lot in common).

I, for one, do not trust our leaders enough to assume that their lies are in pour best interests.

And I think that the "democracy's tangible progress in the Middle East" is vastly exaggerrated.

We will see.

Thanx and a tip o' the hat to Yggy.

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Devvy Kidd argues that the 16th Amendment to the Constitution, allowing the income tax, was never properly ratified.

She may well be correct, but does she honestly believe that any court will find in her favor?

The fact of the matter is, the courts have a vested interest in keeping the source of funding flowing. The conclusion (that the income tax is constitutional) has been made, and the facts of the case will have to be made to fit around that. The fact of the matter is, the courts will determine that "yes" means "no," and "up" means "down" if such is necessary for the income tax to keep existing.

So basically, it seems to me that Ms. Kidd is overly excited about her apparent finding. Even if she is correct, it means squat.

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Could the PATRIOT Act be used to bring national gun registration to the U.S.?

Disturbing.

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If you are viewing this site with Internet Explorer on a Windows OS, could you tell me if the second sidebar (the one on the right) is appearing?

On my Mac, IE puts the second sidebar at the bottom of the screen, below the first sidebar.

But then again, Internet Explorer for Macs is rather crappy to begin with.

I can see the sidebar fine on both Safari and Netscape, though.

Thank you very much.

That is all.

I have added a second sidebar to the right-hand side of my page.

I will soon be re-arranging my blog so that the sidebar links are distributed between the two sidebars.

Exciting new things for Glaivester readers!

Well, I'm excited, anyway.

That is all. For now.

Michael Brendan Dougherty has a piece discussing his admiration for actress Rachel McAdams. (Who once played a Rob Schneider character while Rob Schneider played her character).

I think the time has come to do another post on which celebrities I think are attractive, particularly seeing as my intial post on this topic has gotten me a lot of hits on Google image searches.

Stayed Tuned.

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You know how we are always hearing about how the number of Americans who can't afford health insurance is increasing?

Edwin S. Rubenstein points out that not all of these "Americans" are really Americans, but are actually foreigners.

More from James Fulford.

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Apropos of my previous post, my humble suggestion of a vast improvment to the chorus of this song.

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Does anyone else think that in her latest song "Don't Bother," Shakira's back-up band sounds a lot like the Cure?

Actually, this is the first English song that I have liked since "Whenever, Wherever." ("Underneath Your Clothes" and "Objection (Tango)" were crap.) I sort of liked her recent Spanish song, but I didn't understand it nor hear it that often.

A rule of thumb: I like songs that flow well. The chorus has to flow from the, er... whatever the part of the song that is not the chorus, that usually changes with each new verse, is. Songs that seem to be two different songs melded together (this would include Britney Spears' "Sometimes I Run") tend to grate on my nerves. I also don't like it when songs break their rhyme scheme or skip obvious rhymes that fit in with the beat.

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Steve Sailer has an interesting email that he has posted on his blog. The sender purports to be a Marine in Ramadi. While he cannot verify it, he believes it sounds realistic.

You probably should Read the email before reading to my thoughts on it.

While the stuff about the weapons seems good enough, I am highly suspicious of the claim that most of the insurgency is made up of foreign fighters, that the southern part of the insurgency is made up of Shiites, or that Iran is training the insurgents. This sounds like something straight out of the neocon propaganda handbook. I particularly question the veracity of this sttement:

Most enter Iraq through Syria (with, of course, the knowledge and complicity of the Syrian govt.)

This statement, on the other hand, sounds dead-on:

The Iranian Shiia have been very adept at infiltrating the Iraqi local govt.'s, the police forces and the Army.

Although it seems to me that these infiltrators are not generally interested in insurgency. In forming a sort of mafia-like control in areas like Basra, sure. In killing reporters like Steven Vincent who might be reporting on their corruption, certainly. In killing Iraqi Sunnis in revenge for the Baath Party's oppression of them in the past, of course. But most of southern Iraq has been relatively peaceful, despite the occasional incident, and we seem to be leaving them alone as long as they leave us alone.

Does this mean that I doubt the letter's authenticity? No, but I think that the writer is being fed the same lines we are, and presumably is being fed them by their superiors, not just by neocon columnists and the President.

Finally, this last paragraph sends up all kinds of red flags that we are getting propganda:

According to this Marine [apparently he is referring to himself in the third person- Glai.], morale among our guys is very high. They not only believe they are winning, but that they are winning decisively. They are stunned and dismayed by what they see in the American press, whom they almost universally view as against them. The embedded reporters are despised and distrusted. They are inflicting casualties at a rate of 20-1 and then see things like "Are we losing in Iraq" on TV and the print media. For the most part, we are satisfied with equipment, food and leadership. Bottom line though, and they all say this, there are not enough guys there to drive the final stake through the heart of the insurgency, primarily because there aren't enough troops in-theater to shut down the borders with Iran and Syria. The Iranians and the Syrians just cant stand the thought of Iraq being an American ally (with, of course, permanent US bases there).

I wonder, if the insurgency is on its last legs, why its ability to hit us and hit us hard has not decreased (indeed, one could argue that ut us stronger than ever, judging by the casualty metrics).

Also, there is the reference to Iran and Syria being the real source of the insurgency again.

Bottom line: the Marine may be authentic, but that doesn't mean he can't be drinking some of the ol' neocon Kool-Aid.

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Steve Sailer:

"It seems pretty obvious that after gay marriage wins, polygamy will be next. It won't be Mormon wackos who will be held up as role models but Third World immigrants who are having their rights to their culture abrogated by Western prejudices against polygamy."

Well, that's what is happening in France.

Thanx and a tip o' the hat to Mangan's Miscellany.

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One of the problems with much of modern liberalism is the "blank slate" assumption. The whole "science" of gender-theory or race theory, where gender and race are seen as social constructs without biological reality, are part and parcel of the "blank slate" ideology. This can be seen clearly, I think, in this post by Ampersand at Alas, a Blog.

Reading between the lines, it is ahrd for me to escape the basic conclusion that the argument here is thus:

(1) Rape is overwhelmingly committed by males.

(2) We all know that men and women are exactly the same except for their reproductive plumbing.

(3) Therefore, the fact that rape is overwhelmingly committed by males indicates a problem with the way that our culture socializes males, as if the crime were just part of the normal range of goodness and badness within humanity, both sexes would commit it equally.

Not that he doesn't make some good points. The part about rape in many cases not being about violence and power, but about sex and indifference to other people's feelings is spot-on, I feel. Some people definitely rape as a weapon; as a means of controlling people or of getting revenge (I would think that rapes of enemy women by soldiers during wartime would often have this sort of motive). But in many cases it appears pretty clear that the violence was merely a means for the rapist to get what he wanted rather than being an end into itself.

Nonetheless, I would wager that the fact that males have a greater propensity to rape (Amelia Chase notwithstanding) is almost certainly due mainly to biological differences between men and women.
I'll try to talk more on this topic later.

That is all.

Note: Not to be taken seriously.

Details on my other blog.

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I have just posted my first advertisement (if you don't count my plug for T9 Products) in my sidebar. It is for Randy Graf, who is running for Congress in Arizona.

Anyone else interested in posting an ad on Glaivester can contact me through email or post a comment on my donations page.

That is all.

The Ape Man is an interesting blog I have not read before today. I linked to his discussion of white phosphorus in my previous post.

I don't have much of an opinion on the ApeMan yet, as I have only read a few of his pieces. But I do like most of what I see.

That is all for now.

Here are two
places where I mentioned white phosphorus, which has been used by the U.S. military in Iraq.

Here is a short post by the "Ape Man" discussing the issue.

What it comes down to is that as an incendiary, the use of white phosphorus as a weapon (as opposed to as an illumination device, which is allowed) in areas with large concentrations of civilians is banned by Protocol III of the Geneva Conventions. However, the portion where it is banned has not been ratified by the U.S. Which means that the use of white phosphorus in Fallujah, to which the military has now admitted, is not technically illegal. On the other hand, that we have not ratified the treaty that bans it could be seen in and of itself as a bit of a scandal. (By the way, does anyone know how many countries have ratified it? If we are the last hold-out in the developed world, that would make this much more scandalous, although it would be immoral to the same degree regardless).

I am hesitant to condemn the use of white phosphorus as a weapon per se, because militarily there might be some circumstances in which it is necessary - when fighting a truly necessary war, one where winning, at all costs, was absolutely necessary. AS for the fact that other countries have banned it, I think that many of the other developed countries are a little too squeamish about death, and not willing enough to use violence when necessary. On the other hand, in an unnecessary war like the one in Iraq, the fact that we are using such weapons is inexcusable, because we are not in a position where "win at all costs" is morally justifiable.

So in other words, this episode does not speak well as to the standards which we are using to fight this war.

That is all.

See also: Thoughts on Race and Equality, Part I: What is it We are Dealing with?

Last week, I posted this piece about race and IQ, detailing the dimensions of what we would have to deal with if there is a real racial IQ gap (particularly in terms of blacks vs. whites) and if we cannot easily close it.

Obviously, the next aspect of such a discussion involves what policies should be put in place, either by government, or by society through private institutions (preferably the latter), in order to deal with a racial IQ gap and to prevent it from becoming disruptive to society or an insurmountable barrier to people’s aspirations.

I should point out right now that a large amount of this is simply the compiling of a lot of ideas that Steve Sailer mentioned. Thus, most of the links will be to relevant Sailer articles.

First of all, the whole education system needs to be overhauled as to the way progress is measured. This will help students with low IQs regardless of any racial correlations. There needs to be extensive aptitude and IQ testing at an early age and throughout the formative educational years (i.e. K-5 or K-6). The educational goals used to determine the success or failure of the school need to be somewhat influences by that. That is to say, if a school has students with an average IQ of 90, it should be judged by a somewhat different standard than one with an average IQ of 105 in terms of determining how successful it is. Or, as Sailer puts it, Schools should be evaluated on how much value they add to their students..

Moreover, the program of study for each student should be influenced by that. I am not saying that lower-IQ students should get crappy lesson plans. Rather, I am saying that students who have lower IQs need to have special attention paid to make absolutely certain that they get the basics (ability to read, write, use proper grammar, and do arithmetic). While I’m not against providing them with culturally enriching classes such as art and music, I think that for the first year or so (perhaps the first three years), science and social studies should be largely ignored except as they can be integrated into reading and arithmetic lessons. Not that such classes need not be taught, but the overriding goal should be to get these kids basic skills first of all. Without those, I doubt that history, science, etc. classes will be beneficial to any great degree. (Obviously, the more gifted students should be taught science, social studies, etc., at a much earlier age, as they can learn the basic skills more easily).

Throughout education, there should be a basic “basket” of skills that students need to be taught, and these should be most highly emphasized on the lower-IQ students. After they have sufficient skill to get by in those skills, then issues such as critical thinking, appreciation of literature, and scientific understanding of the world around them.

Any programs that temporarily raise IQ (e.g. Head Start) during these formative years can be pursued, with the understanding that during whatever period IQ is raised there will be a redoubled effort to teach the basic skills. In other words, the goal of such programs vis a vis education should not be to increase the kid’s cognitive function permanently so much as it should be to provide an extra boost during periods where learning would be particularly assisted by temporarily increased function.

In short, IQ ought to be used to determine how much emphasis should be put on learning the basics (lower IQ = more emphasis) and how much confidence we should have that the students have mastered the basics (i.e. students with lower IQs ought to have more attention paid to them on this issue). The first goal of education ought to be teaching kids the skills they need just to function in society. Aside from classes and activities that are designed to be somewhat recreational (including, at this grade level, the fine arts), most of the other goals of education (e.g. teaching kids science, social studies, how to think about history and interpret literature) should be considered secondary, particularly for kids who are going to have a hard time learning even the basics.

Second, there needs to be more of an emphasis on making certain that there are jobs available for those with lower IQs and that they are prepared to be able to do such jobs. Amongst other policies, restricting immigration, particularly of low-skill workers, is a very important step. Vocational programs need to be made widely available and high-quality, and if college-style training in vocational careers is helpful, its availability and quality ought to be increased.

It would also help to make certain that policies which are designed to make college more affordable are also expanded to include non-college training (e.g. apprenticeships). (There was a mention of this from Mr. Sailer, mentioning the fact that apprentices did not receive the same type of state aid as college students, for example, but I can’t find the link).

Moreover, there should be an attempt to determine what types of technology really do not need great intelligence to operate effectively, and training for such jobs should be made more available for low-IQ individuals; intelligence should only be a barrier to technological jobs where it is actually necessary.

Above all, there should be respect for jobs that do not require a college education, and while it is not wrong to want to increase the opportunities to go to college, we need to be careful not to make it so that college becomes a necessity; that is, that people who choose not to college (or who are unable to go) have good options in life.

Third, there should be service opportunities available to people whose IQs are not high enough to join the army. Steve Sailer’s idea of a disaster relief corps seems about right, but there seems to me no reason to create a new program ex nihilo. I think we could get such a program simply by expanding the National Guard; adding a new “wing” to it, so to speak, that is not eligible for use overseas as a military force (by overseas, I really mean anywhere outside the U.S.). This wing could handle all of the domestic issues that the National Guard currently handles, with the military-eligible National Guard also being called in to help when they are able. Presumably IQ would be less of a requirement in situations that do not require the mastery of complex weapons, of learning and combating enemy strategy, and of continuously shifting plans based on the actions of a sentient enemy.

[So far, all of the policies I have suggested are aracial; they are designed to deal with lower-IQ individuals regardless of any racial correlations. Now we come to the stuff that is more specifically aimed at improving the situation to the extent that it correlates with race.]

Fourth, if there are racial groups with lower average IQs (as in lower than the aggregate national average IQ), it would behoove society to make certain that the members of those groups who have higher IQs are given the same educational opportunities that would be given to a person of another race with the same IQ. To give an example, if a smaller percentage of blacks or Latinos are “Yale material,” then we should make the effort as a society to make certain that those who are “Yale material” are encouraged to go there and helped to succeed there. This sort of policy would be made vastly easier, of course, if we made certain that every minority who got into Yale actually was “Yale material.”

Fifth, it would also be a good idea to help those with non-academic talents to make money off their talents and to save it aside to provide for themselves later on in life (again, an idea floated by Steve Sailer). In Steve’s idea, people who, for example, can excel at college basketball but who are unsuited for the commensurate academic pursuits should be allowed to make money off of playing college basketball (or some sort of equivalent) in an explicitly separate program, and to save that money so that they will have a nest egg if they are unable to turn pro (as will be the case in the vast majority of instances).

Sixth, I would argue that those in a lower-IQ racial community who have the higher IQs need to have a sense of noblesse oblige instilled in them, as well as being strongly indoctrinated (for lack of a better term) in the need for capital investment in their communities, and in the need for their intellectual resources to be used for their communities’ betterment. There also should be an effort to encourage a culture of saving amongst those who have enough so that saving is a possibility (that is, for those who would not likely think ahead enough to save, their should be a strong social pressure that saving is a moral imperative). By saving, I am including stocks, mutual funds, and all other sorts of investments as well as bank accounts; although most likely a relatively secure set of mutual funds would be the best for the lower IQ segments as those would require the least amount of conscious maintenance.

It is also of major importance to create a sense of noblesse oblige amongst celebrities and aspiring celebrities. In addition, we need to encourage those with lots of money (e.g. if we are talking about blacks, sports stars and rappers) to make large capital investments within the community. Particularly in the case of those who aspire to celebrity but have not achieved it yet, there is the need to drill into them a sense of responsible behavior, and for athletes, of modesty and teamwork.

I think the biggest element in all of this analysis is to realize that the goal ought to be not to use IQ as a way to excuse the existence of certain problems, but as a tool for solving them. Moreover, lower IQ people need not be dismissed as hopeless cases, but rather we may need to work harder on their education (as well as working smarter).

That is all.

Realizing that there are a few internet applications (including certain resume builders) that are not Mac-compatible, I have finally broken down - and put off buying a Mac G5 for another week or two in favor of spending some of my savings on a PC emulator ($219.00 for Virtual PC7 with Windows XP (home edition) and another $25.00 for an anti-virus program).

Technically, I haven't purchased it yet. I've ordered it and will pay upon receipt of goods.

I'll report on how I like it after it comes. Although honestly, PC emulators are probably going to become obsolete when the new IntelMacs come out and begin to take off.

I currently use Mac 10.2.8. Instead of buying Tiger, I think I am going to wait and get Tiger on the next Mac I buy. If Tiger is faster than Jaguar, and I get a G5 with at least 1 GB of RAM (the amount in my 733 MHz G4), hopefully that will help the emulator run faster than I am afraid it will run on my current Mac.

That is all.

Am I the only one who finds this hilarious?

It would probably be less funny if the male equivalent weren't the most frequently received spam message in all of emaildom.

(Warning: slightly off-color).

That is all.

(This is a paraphrase of a line from G.I. Joe: the Movie).

It strikes me that in the end, all that will matter in Iraq is failure or victory. The reason why the Bush scandals are getting so much play in the media is because the war is not going well. If casualties suddenly declined, terrorist attacks declined, and harmony broke out in Iraq, no one would care whether Bush lied or not.

That is all.

Lawrence Auster discusses how gay marriage (or its equivalent) really does impact heterosexual marriage.

The fact of the matter is, as I see it, is that when the left argues that gay marriage will not impact traditional heterosexual marriage, they are not so much being naive, or ignoring the issue of "marginal cases," as Jane Galt suggests. Rather, they have no respect for traditional heterosexual marriage, do not really care if it becomes obsolete, and so don't think that gay marriage will have "much of an impact" because they regard traditional marriagfe as so expendable that they don't see itas "much of an impact" if traditional marriage were to virtually disappear altogether.

That is all.

Every so often, we get a letter praising the Iraq War from a soldier in Iraq, that claims that things are going so wonderful there, if only themedia would tell us the truth.

I tend to be skeptical of such claims, particularly because the Army has the ability to punish any soldier who criticizes the war (if a soldier has to say nice things and only nice things, why should I take any nice things he says seriously?)

So with that in mind, and with the hope that Allan Wall won't get censured for his report, here is his latest "Memo from Mesopotamia," where he questions whether Iraq can stay together as a unified country.

Particularly important is the statement that 95% of Kurds support independence.

Eventually, we are going to have to choose between our Kurdish and Turkish allies.

We are screwed.

That is all.

This week's pick for blog of the week:

The Ambler, a blog by Canadian Kevin Michael Grace.

Interesting thoughts from a traditionalist Catholic (alas) perspective. But protestants can enjoy his keen insights as well.

Particularly insightful post: Grace's Law of the Counterintutive Response.

That is all.

Earlier I posted:

Like hell. I do tend to think that the riots are not part of an Al Qaeda plot, and are likely not Islamic per se (in that they are not about specifically Muslim grievances; it's not like they are rioting because France hasn't adopted the Qu'Ran as its national book, and I question how much the head-scarve ban really has to do with it).

To elaborate, I don't think that the fact that the people were Muslim is the precipitating factor in this sort of riot. It doesn't resemble jihad as I understand it, as there is little killing and, as far as I can tell, little demand for war against the infidel (which, I assume, would lead to killing). The fact that the rioters appear to be mostly Muslim (Steve Sailer mentions that liquor stores do not appear to be being looted much) is certainly relevant, but I suspect relevant more to the extent that it unites them into a single "perpetually agrieved minority" class than because it is the motivation for their actions.

I think that trying to blame Al Qaeda or to discuss this in terms of "Islamism" ignores the most salient fact about these riots: that they are being perpetrated by a perpetually aggrieved minority that has been taught to resent the majority culture while expecting handouts from it. Blaming Al Qaeda or "Islamism" is also counterproductive because it leads to people thinking in terms of political solutions; that is, to trying to "root out" terrorists or plant spies in mosques or to try and determine the people's views to see who is and isn't the likely ptoblem. (Which is fine, if the goal is to stop terrorists, but as a response to a semi-spontaneous minority riot is wholly inadequate). Worse, there may be a lot of money wasted on trying to apprehend the (non-existent) Al Qaeda members supposedly responsible for this or trying to trace back the (non-existent) terror network involved in the riot. Worst of all, this could siphon money away from programs aimed at interdicting actual terrorist threats.

This happened because the rioters knew they could get away with it (or suspected they could and had their suspicions confirmed when they were not stopped), because they have been socialized to expect that they are owed things and do not owe society, because so many have been allowed to live off the public teat, because theyt have been allowed to form Balkanized communities where the majority population in fracne is scared to go, because France has allowed them to intimidate the majority population, and because France has made it unacceptable to say or do things that offend the minority communities or to suggest that they owe French society anything or that certain behaviors are expected of them.

What France needs to do is to crack down on the rioters and to physically explain to them in no uncertain terms that such behavior will not be tolerated. They can be nice and polite at first, but anyone who continues to riot obviously will need a little extra persuasion of the kind I mentioned here.

If you exist in a society, you need to adhere to minimum standards. If you do not, the proper response of the government is to teach you the error of your ways. And to "teach you" good and hard.

That is all.

Clark Stooksbury provides an excerpt from a Jonathan Chait article on Christopher Hitchens.

My favorite quote about Mr. Hitchens would be from Alexander Cockburn of Counterpunch (although admittedly, it does not involve his politics and is a scurrilous ad hominem attack (so what? It's a great quote!)):

Here's what Hitchens wrote: "On the whole, observe the same rule about gin martinis--and all gin drinks--that you would in judging female breasts: one is far too few and three is one too many."

...As far as dry martinis go, there's been sound evidence in the past to take Hitchens as at least a six-breast guy, with the Artemis of Kybele as his beau ideal.

That is all.

I recently bought some 17W fluorescent light bulbs (60W incandescent equivalent), some 23W (100W equiv.) and some 42W (150W equiv.).

I plan to try to replace a large number of the lights in my home wiht fluorescent lights, but it will probably happen slowly. I think it is going to be really great getting more energy efficient and being able to spend less on electricity.

That is all.

His latest article might as well be titled "Those Dirty Frogs Had it Coming!"

First, he discusses his Schadenfreude over French misfortune. Then, after making yet another unsurprisingly irrelevant aside (Katie Couric is part of the "French establishment," presumably because she is liberal), he goes on to blame the rioting on France making the minority population "invisible" and on the fact that the French economic systme doesn't make it easy for people to get jobs.

Like hell. I do tend to think that the riots are not part of an Al Qaeda plot, and are likely not Islamic per se (in that they are not about specifically Muslim grievances; it's not like they are rioting because France hasn't adopted the Qu'Ran as its national book, and I question how much the head-scarve ban really has to do with it). However, the fact that the people come from a different culture that is very alien to France would seem to be a bigger issue in my book than the fact that the French government hasn't done enough to integrate these people into French society.

Put another way, what we are witnessing may not be a part of jihad, or part of a Muslim plot, but it is the result of France having let in large numbers of foreigners who are too numerous and too alien to effectively assimilate.

France's economic policy likely hurts, but as much because lack of jobs gives these people more free time to riot than because they are rioting due to a justified anger over their unemployment. (And, as Matin Kelly points out in the comments, because the high level of welfare creates a sense of entitlement and thus an excuse to resent everyone else if they aren't successful in life).

Putting Allowing all of these minorities in to form segregated communities where they can intimidate other citizens of France so that they are afraid to go there played a role as well, but more because it allowed the minorities not to assimilate and because it concentrated poorly-behaved people in one area where they could feed off of each other's violence than because it was an unjust policy producing righteous racial grievance.

In any case, the way to deal with these rioters is not to try to bend over backwards for them or to ask "what did we do to make htem hate us so?" It is to put down the riots, and hard. Then France can ask itself (1) how it got into this mess, and (2) how to get out of it. But the rioters need to be held to account, not just coddled with us all weeping over their grievances, real or imagined.

In any case, Jonah sounds rather foolish. But what else in new?

That is all.

Colby Cosh points out an important fact.

Fortunately, I never labeled it as such, not did Mark Rothschild in his article about it, to which I linked.

That is all for now.

Toronto Star.

That is all.

Ol' Sully discusses an email he received from the father of a marine stationed in Iraq in this post.

Most importantly, though, he brings up the question of why we are not dealing with the Syrian border:

I've brought up sealing the border directly with "senior administration officials." They all say it cannot be done. I say: it can. We have the troops and technology to stop the insurgent influx from Syria. Why are we not stopping it? More troops on the border wouldn't alienate the Iraqi population. It would be a sign we are finally protecting them. So why not more troops and equipment for that vital mission?

Obvious answer? Because there is little influx from Syria. Most reports indicate that the insurgency is primarily indigenous. So shutting he borders with Syria just isn't a priority. Granted, foreigners do a lot of the suicide bombings, but those mostly kill Iraqis and not U.S. troops, so they again, stopping them is less of a priority.

And besides, why would Dubya bother to close the Iraq-Syria border when he has abdicated control of the U.S. border?

That is all.

Ellen Goodman's article on the controversy regarding the cervical cancer vaccine.

Of course, from reading it, it would look as if the religious right objected to the vaccine being available. In reality, as this article indicates, they object to having it made mandatory.

Funny, how it's called "choice" when it comes to abortion, but when it is about anything else, the left is firmly on the side of coercion.

That is all.

Steve Sailer has kindly provided links to my aticles on race and IQ and on citizenism.

As a result, my traffic for today has shot up to > 300 visits, which beats my previous record of 129 (yesterday) and my record before that of 108 (September 30, 2005) by a wide margin.

So I will try to get my sequel posting. My posting on citizenism was a one-time post, but I think that looking at it I may want to make another post elaborating on how I understand the philosophy of citizenism as well as modifying or clarifying some points (for example, I do agree that the Founding principles are important principles and htat it is important to America's culture to uphold them, but I do not think that America (by which I mean the U.S.) as a nation (as opposed to America as a government) is defined by the Founder's vision, at least not in the sense that the Founder's principles are what make us a distinct nation. (As anb analogy, I am a paleoconservative with paleolibertarian tendencies, but that fact is not the single factor that most describes my entire life and distinguishes me as an individual).

My posting on race and IQ, on the other hand, was deliberately marked "Part I," indicating that a sequel ought to be in the works. So I will try to get Part II up this weekend.

Also, a thank you goes out to Randall Parker for noticing some typos and other errors in my posts, errors I have endeavored to correct.

That is all.

It's an interesting issue. I'd link t oa review, but I cannot find one yet, so her e is the preview.

Apparently, this new group is being brought together by the "decimation" of mutants brought about by the "House of M" storyline. Apparently, 90% of the world's mutants have been de-mutated (at least they have lost their powers, although in some cases, notably Polaris from no-adjective X-Men, it appears they lose their powers while retaining some strange features (e.g. green hair). In other cases, notably Beak from Exiles, they lose their weird features and become totally normal. Of course, "decimation" is usedi n reverse here, as usually decimatnion means reducing by 10%, not reducing to 10%.

In any case, my interest in the book is prrimrily due to the presence of Her Sexy Blueness, Talia Josephine Wagner (picture from the site with the preview), aka Nocturne, my favorite Marvel character.

If any of you have seen "The Season of the Witch" in Uncanny X-Men, where Captain Britain, Psylocke, Rachel Grey, Juggernaut, Meggan, and Nocturne had to work to stop a chaos wave that would have otherwise required the nullification of this universe, then you've seen what was apparently intended as the prequel to this comic. The storyline in "Season of the Witch" was horrible, in that the chaos wave was never explained (although it presumably was related to the House of M), 80% of issues 2, 3, and 4 (4-part issue) consisted primarily of filler, and what the heck they were doing to stop the chaos wave was never made explicit (although Juggernaut apparently jury-rigged a temporary solution to the "hole in reality" by stuffing Blob in there - I kid you not).

Of course, I'm not partial to "the whole universe will be destroyed" storylines anyway.

But it looks like The New Excalibur will likely be a lot better than what preceded it.

That is all.

The Center for American Progress suggests a need to reduce American troops in Iraq by 80,000 in 2006 (thgat would leave 50,000-80,000 troops there, depending on what their baseline is) in order to preserve the all-volunteer army.

James Dobbins of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at the nonprofit RAND Corp seems to be suggesting that it is a good idea, but Bush should not propose it directly.

"While the Bush administration is unlikely to announce a timetable for troop reductions, the CAP plan is probably similar to what Bush policymakers have in mind anyway, according to Dobbins, of RAND."

Ahmad Chalabi seems to be encouraging a U.S. troop reduction as well. I would wager he either thinks that such a move would require the U.S. to look to him for assistacne (and thus increase his political power), or he thinks that it is going to happen and wants to score points with Iraqis by making it look like he is the one who managed to convince the U.S. to give Iraqis more independence.

Personally, I am skeptical of any claims that the U.S. will be able to reduce troop levels anytime soon without significant damage to U.S. plans regarding Iraq, and without Iraq falling into a civil war (but this is going to happen sooner or later, so we might as well let it happen now; it will probably be more severe laer). There have been constant predictions that we will be able to reduce our troop levels once we turn the next corner, and yet last month our troop levels in Iraq reached the highest point they have been at since this war started.

I think that in the coming months, the U.S. will have to make some pretty tough choices. We may well be forced to reduc troop levels, but I don't think we can do so painlessly. As I have said several times, I am afraid that if we reduce troop levelsthe coalition will have to resort to significantly more brutality in order to put down the insurgency with the reduced numbers.

That is all.

I haven't really done any research on Jimmy Massey, but if this column is accurate, then he is a waste of space and the antiwar movement should denounce him. The antiwar movement has enough grist for the mill just using the truth that we don't need to make stuff up.

That is all.

Does anyone else think that Madonna's new song "Hung Up" sounds a lot like the Doctor Who theme (warning: sound file) ? (Admittedly, the version I linked to isn't the best one for showing the resemblance, but the synth-heavy Who themes of the 80s seem ot have the same effect as Madonna's new song. If anyone knows of a site with a better version of he Who theme, please let me know).

That is all.

Bush came off okay in today's speech; at least in terms of how he sounded.

The biggest problem with Bush as a speech-giver or in any capacity where he has to talk (e.g., press conferences), is that he can only say five or six words before having to pause. It gives the impression that he is reading his speech directly off the teleprompter, and that he is a slow reader.

His brother Jeb is a much more natural speaker. For that matter, so is Tony Blair. I remember seeing him at a press conference or somesuch just before or just after hte invasion of Iraq, and he seemed like an eager boy just out of college who is prepared to take on the world. Not that his policies are that great, but at least he seemed to have true enthusiasm and interest in the subject at hand.

Bush, on the other hand, seems to give off the attitude that he is telling something very simple to small and not-exceedingly-bright children, as well as the impression that he is a schoolboy not prepared for his big oral exam, and is trying to B.S. his way through. So he winds up looking as if he doesn';t have a grasp of the subject, and is hiding this fact by getting angry at you for not understanding the answer to the question.

"Why yes, Mrs. Lewis. The capital of New York... is the city... where the state house is. Yes, it is where the state house is... anyone with a brain would know that."

So Bush does best in speeches where the speech consists of a lot of bullet points, and not much detailed explanation, as his pauses can be worked into the natural rhythm of the speech.

Of course, this is a very limiting style...

That is all.

Everyone believed that Iraq had WMDs, so the President was not lying at all! says Poddy Pater.

Kevin Drum comes up with a pretty good response.

Yggy has more thoughts in that vein here and here.

That is all.

I actually agree with Jack Kelly.

In particular, this line stands out to me:

A commenter on the Web log "Belmont Club" thinks this focus is a clever form of brinkmanship. Car burning is spectacular, but not serious enough to provoke lethal force, especially from a French government loathe to use it.

As it is sort of the other side of a pint I made:

It occurs to me that the reason that the French have rolled over so much in response to these riots is probably because so far, most of the damage seems to be to property, and there have been relatively few casualties (one or two deaths, I believe, and a smattering of woundings).

That is all.

To all those who have fought for the U.S. during war, I salute you.

That is all.

Lawrence Auster comments on this Kevin MacDonald articleon VDARE.

My thoughts:

As best I understand it, Kevin MacDonald has taken the behavior of some (mostly liberal and secular) Jews in the 20th and early 21st centuries (namely, encouraging the dilution of the majority culture, e.g., through increased immigration, because it makes the culture more tolerant of minorities, including Jews - yes, Tamar Jacoby, I am talking about you), and extrapolated it back to make such behavior be the defining characteristic of Jewishness.

I haven't read MacDonald's work, so I cannot comment directly on it, but I do think that MacDonald may be the seventh type of college professor.

That is all.

I have a relative who is involved in a new business venture called T9 Products. Their "signature product," if you will, is tapeless (i.e. self-adhesive) masking paper for use when painting cars, airplanes, etc.

If you have any interest in painting cars or if you know anyone who does, you might want to check out their website, either through one of the links above, or through the link in my sidebar.

That is all.

For Mac-fans, Organized Chaos is an interesting read.

If you like Macs or are curious about them, you might like to visit it.

That is all.

Jonathan Turley complains about the possibility of new segregated schools in Chicago, designed as a way to improve the graduation rates of black males.

Naturally, he is horrified by the idea.

But I ask, why not try it and see if it works?

It's hard to read such editorials without wondering if the writer is essentially thinking: Hey, Mr. African-American, you wanted to go to school with us back in the 50s, well, buster, now you're stuck with us!

Reading at the proposed school, the typical mainstream conservative response to said school (i.e., that segregation is eeeeeevil) brings to mind Zora Neale Hurston's words regarding Brown v. Board of Education:

Since the days of the never-to-be-sufficiently-deplored Reconstruction, there has been current the belief that there is no greater delight to Negroes than the physical association with whites.

And of course, Mr. Turley, being the grand man he is, would never wish to allow the parents of said black students to deny their children the boundless joys of association with white students by sending them to a school that is desigend to be primarily black. Or, perhaps, he believes that there is no greater delight to white students than the physical association with black ones, and is afraid of denying his children (if he has any) the benefits of their presence if black students decide that an all-black or almost all-black school is more conducive to their academic achievement.

That is all.

Steve Sailer posts a letter with a theory on why the French are having such problems: birthright citizenship. Anyone born on French soil is automatically French.

Boy, it's just like those stupid French people to have such a policy. Boy, it's a good thing I live in the U.S.A., where we don't stand for such... oh, wait a minute. Never mind.

That is all.

An article on its use by the U.S. military in Iraq.

More on this to come.

That is all.

Whenever someone denigrates evolutionary psychology, what they really mean is: "I thought the whole point of evolution was just to deny God. I didn't think it was actually supposed to tell us anything."

That is all.

I saw Crash last night.

I'm not sure if I have an overall review, but a few thoughts stand out:

(Spoilers ahead, so text is written in white. Highlight to read text, or copy and paste then alter color if necessary).

Chris "Ludacris" Bridge's character tries to make his carjacking a political statement against white people. But in the end, it's about thuggery; about getting something for nothing. He tries to carjack a black man, despite previously criticizing someone else for "stealing from his own kind" without even thinking about the irony.
His redemption comes when he gives up his pride; symblized by his riding on a bus (which he had earlier sneered at as a mode of transportation) and his apparent belief that everyone else owes him something.

The racist cop (Matt Dillon) was redeemed when he saw the black woman about to get killed in a fire. At that moment, he was able to see her as human; and when her fear of him (he had sexually groped her earlier during an arrest) made her resist his attempt to save her life, he realized for a moment how much damage he had done. His main flaw was that he had allowed the fact that his Dad was victimized by affirmative action (in his opinion) to turn into a resentment of all black people; he blamed them for what had happened to his father and saw them as mere objects on which to take out his rage.

The Farsi businessman was redeemed, presumably, by his realization that what he still had (his daughter) was more important than what he had lost (his store). This was prompted by his nearly shooting to death the daughter of the locksmith he blamed for the robbery (for not fixing the lock" properly, when in reality the problem was with the door, not the lock).

The one death in the movie was committed by one of the least-prejudiced characters. In fact, has he been less determined to show he wasn't prejudiced (by picking up a black man walking along the road next to him), he wouldn't have shot said black man.

Perhaps one message of Crash is that there is decency in everyone; and evil in everyone. You always have to look for the decency that remains in the bad person, and always be on guard for the evil in the good person. And you can stay who you are, or you can change who you are; but you cannot escape who you truly are, you have to deal with it one way or another (I know, that sounds like a terribly bad attempt at being deep, but there you are).

That is all.

Lawrence Auster comments on Simon Wiesenthal, particularly on this portrayal in the movie The Murderers Among Us.

What impressed Auster the most about Wiesenthal (as portrayed inthe movie) was his ability to seek truth and justice without getting side-tracked by political agendas.

Interesting posting.

That is all.

I'll comment on the UNESCO Cultural Diversity Treaty later, but a particular part of this post by Diana Moon is quite fascinating.

She theorizes, in essence, that Israel values its soldiers more highly than its civilians, due to the large amount of resources spent on training them. This. of course, is different from the calculus of most western countries, who view soldiers as more expendable, because, well, dying is what soldiers do.

According to Ms. Moon, this also has the effect of meaning that Israel values male lives more than female lives, as soldiers in combat tend to be male (in fact, the sex angle is what she is commenting on). This is opposed to most cultures, where male life is cheaper (because number of females is the limiting factor in the reproductive capacity of a tribe), but males are advantaged politically and socially.

This is an interesting thought that didn't really occur to me before.

That is all.

An excellent essay about the riots in France and how they relate to racial/immigration politics.

That is all.

Two good posts here and here.

Most important is Henley's analysis that the neocons assume that a regime change in Syria will make keeping order in Iraq easier.

On the grandiose side, if you believe that the only reason the US is having troubles of however mild a sort in Iraq - all that ramping up of violence by desperate opponents in advance of each new victory for democracy - because of support trickling in from other countries, then doubling down on the regime change hand looks like a smart play.

In other words, they fail to see the danger of occupying two Arab countries (particularly that it would be harder than occupying one Arab country) because they think that taking over the second will solve the problem of guerilla resistacne in the first.

I also made essentially this point back in August.

The neocons would probably retort that the insurgency in Iraq gets most of its strength from Iran and Syria, so if we attacked them, we wouldn't have any insurgency in any of the countries to worry about (i.e. expand the war and the need for troops diminishes)...

Henley also points out that Iran could make trouble for us in Syria, but as I pointed out in the comments, many neocons think that Iran can be easily defeated by covert action in support of internal rebellion.

In any case, the posibility that we might attack Syria is definitely not a cheerful one.

That is all.

The latest volley in the white nationalism vs. citizenism debate.

I'm still in favor of citizenism, and I see white nationalism as carrying with it a whole host of problems for the U.S., however, Taylor does make some interesting points, most importantly this one:

You don’t have to have black friends, you don’t have to have Mexican neighbors, you don’t have to send your children to schools where no one speaks English, and you don’t have to invite Hmong refugees to your dinner parties. You can be racially respectable without doing anything. Just gush about the things you, yourself, carefully avoid: integration, multi-culturalism, and diversity...

...People get away with it because everyone is in on the charade. By any real racial test, by any measure that requires sacrifice, everyone fails, so whites never apply real tests to each other. Mouth the right clichés and you’re on the side of the angels. Racial rectitude is therefore the most cheaply bought virtue in American history— and also the most easily forfeited. Because only words matter, not deeds, a single sentence can wreck a career.

I fin this interesting because of how it fits in with the charges of "institutional racism." In general, the goal of talking about "white privilege" is to makes whites feel guilty and racist and to convince them that nothing they do or say can take away from the fact that they are part of the evil white hierarchy (the general goal, it seems to me, is to suggest that because of their "privilege," they are so corrupt that their opinions ought not to count as much those of minorities, at least not on racial issues; meaning that all of our racial policies ought to be set by minorities).

But the parallel here is that neither the anti-racist nor Jared Taylor lets anyone off the hook for their "moral rectitude" when discussing matters of race.

What the import of that is, I'll have to consider more before making a longer post.

That is all.

The French have determinedly avoided multiculturalism or affirmative action. They have insisted that everyone is French together and on a "color-blind" set of policies. "Color-blind" policies based on "merit" always seem to benefit some groups more than others, despite a rhetoric of equality and achievement. In order to resolve the problems they face, the French will have to come to terms with the multi-cultural character of contemporary society. And they will have to find ways of actively sharing jobs with minority populations, who often suffer from an unemployment rate as high as 40 percent (i.e. Iraq).

Translation: Color-blind policies do not produce proportionate representation of all racial groups, so there must be racism going on. The solution is quotas.

Of course, Mr. Cole could never consider the possibility that the color-blind policies are achieving truly merit-based results, and that the groups disadvantaged by such policies may be so disadvantaged because they are not as qualified.

That would be a thought crime.

That is all.

I saw Red Dawn today on videotape.

I think I'll try to write a review later.

A quick synopsis of my impressions:

The movie was okay, but there were a few loose ends and it generally suffered from the fact that the clothing was such that it was sometimes difficult to distinguish the Russians from the guerillas in the scenes.

That is all.

Thiking about the last post, I wonder if part of Ellen Degeneres' charm is the fact that she seems a lot more like a female mirror-image of a gay man than like a stereotypical lesbian.

That is, she apparently feels she was born that way, she does not seem to have any trouble relating to the opposite sex, she seems more "pleasantly tomboyish" than threateningly butch; she's usually not the type of person to spout off long political diatribes on gender or feminism or whatnot.

I think that lesbians often seem more threatening than gay men, and Ellen doesn't.

On a similar note, it seems alternately approporiate and ironic that the first lesbian actress to come out of the closet made her name plaing a shrill, castrating, and often misandric, yet extremely heterosexual character.

I am, of course, talking about Amanda Bearse, aka Marcy Rhoades / Marcy D'Arcy on Married... with Children.

That is all.

Warren Throckmorton points out that Shheryl Swoopes actually turned gay, suggesting that it is not an inborn trait.

Only one problem: she's a lesbian, and as Steve Sailer has pointed out, the "born that way" thesis seems to be much more about gay men than about lesbians.

That is all.

Justin Raimondo on the blame that Billy Boy and his administration shares for the ascendance of Ahmad the Thief. Which, of course, suggests that Clinton may be as much to blame for Iraq as Bush.

Of course, as the Democrats want to exploitthe Iraq situation for political gain, they will try to paint everythign as Bush's fault and take pains to make meaningless distinctions between Clinton's and Bush's stances on Iraq (in reality, the difference is that Clinton didn't have 9/11 as cover, and perhaps that Clinton may have been a little too wishy-washy to act. I think that he would have gone to war with Iraq just like Bush did if he thought he could get away with it).

I am having none of it. There are a large number of Democrats who in the 1990s helped set up the institutions that have led us into this war, and let us remember that it was Clinton who appointed imperialist extraordinaire James Woolsey to the CIA.

The problem with the antiwar movement is that too many people want to turn it into a partisan issue, and to make it about getting the other side instead of about finding a way out of the war.

Antiwar.com, fortunately enough, has managed to keep its eyes on the ball.

That is all.

Sorry for light posting.

I spent much of today adding a donation feature to Glaivester. I am also trying to see if I can add a second sidebar (i.e., on the right).

In any case, my plan was to have a post on my blog with a number of different ways to donate listed, and to have the link on my main blog be to that page.

Here is the donations page.

So far, I am set up to take Amazon honor system donations. I have a text link; I am hoping to install an Amazon paybox, but for some reason I am having trouble with the html right now. I also plan to add other donation methods soon.

If I can figure out how to get a second sidebar, I will probably move donation links, blog statistics links, and ads (if I decide to get any ads) to the second (i.e., right-hand) one, and reserve the first for, e.g., my profile and my links to other websites.

That is all.

Here's Mac Thomas Owens' latest, explaining why the news from Iraq is actually quite good.

Let's have a little fun debunking, shall we?

"The good news in Iraq must start with the recent referendum on the new Iraqi constitution. While swamped in the U.S. press by the unseemly, indeed disgraceful, reporting of the 2,000-dead-Americans "milestone," the acceptance of the draft constitution by the Iraqi people indicates a real accomplishment."

Yes, the insurgents upped and gave up once they heard tha tthe constitution was ratified, so magical are its properties.

"The second bit of good news is the publication of a letter from al Qaeda's number-two official, Ayman al-Zawahiri, to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi... We are beholden to al-Zawahiri for reminding us why the stakes in Iraq are so high."

Well, while one could argue that the letter proves why the war is necessary to fight, I don't exactly see how it amounts to good news about the direction in which Iraq is going... Moreover, even the idea that this shows how high the stakes are in Iraq and how important it is that we defeat the insurgency before Al Qaeda takes over is suspect. Even assuming that this letter is real and not fake, it does not follow that the majority of the insurgents we are fihting are part of Al Qaeda or have anything to do with Zarqawi. It is by no means clear that what Al Qaeda's strategy and concerns are mean a tinker's dam to most of the insurgents. Nor is it clear that Al Qaeda would take over if the U.S. left. It is possible that some insurgent factions might take control of the country, but it is dubious that such factions would feel any particular fealty to Al Qaeda or deign to let the Wahabists reign over Iraq.

Zarqawi's previous "this is suffocation" statement didn't pan out, or else it did so only for Al Qaeda which was not a large part of the insurgnecy; the insurgency has definitely not been suffocated.

"One of the reasons [i.e. for the successful elections in January] that Iraq is likely to establish a viable government is because the terrorists of Fallujah, deluded into believing they had won in April 2004, overreached, earning the everlasting enmity of ordinary Iraqis who were their victims."

I keep hearing about how ordinary Iraqis love us and hate the insurgents. Polls indicate otherwise. Plus, there is the assumption that we are talking about a unified "Iraqi people" and that attacks against Iraqi civilians will reduce the support for the insurgency in Iraq. Of course, in reality, I seriously doubt whether most Iraqis mind when Iraqis of rival ethnic or religious groups get killed, so we wind up with the mostly Sunni Arab insurgents only turning off Shiites and Kurds, and who don't like the anyway, so it seems unlikely that we will see the huge sudden groundswell of support for the coalition that Mr. Owens seems to be hoping for.

"When the Marines took Fallujah at the end of last year, they began the strategically important process of interdicting the "ratlines," the insurgents' infiltration routes from the Syrian border into the heart of Iraq."

Yes, obviously this has reduced the insurgency a great deal. As anyone can see, the insurgency is suffocating, which is why October had so many coalition fatalties.

"The increasing number of capable Iraqi units means that the Iraqi government can begin to extend the writ of the Iraqi government to Al Anbar province, the heart of the Sunni Triangle."

Yes, those increasing numbers, like one, which is bigger than three. And of course, those increasing number of Iraqi troops is why we have been able to reduce coalition troop levels so much and why we will continue to do so in the future.

"It may seem counterintuitive, but from a strategic standpoint, it is possible to argue that the spike in U.S. casualties actually reflects military success, not failure... he recent up-tick in casualties indicates not so much that the enemy is becoming more aggressive, but that we are. Casualties always increase when one side goes on the offensive... this means more Coalition casualties, but it also means that the insurgents are being killed and captured away from Baghdad."

If our troops were dying in firefights, that argument would have some merit.

But increasingly they are being killed by IEDs. Which would seem to me to indicate that most of the deaths aren't coming from us engaging the enemy in battle.

But I do have some good news from Iraq...

Jalal Talabani just saved a bunch of money on his car insurance by switchi...

That is all.

A large number of fatalities so far this month in Iraq, including 25 hostile coalition deaths and 3 non-hostile ones.

It is not entirely clear how many of these deaths are due to the recent offensive near the Syrian border and how many are just becausr the insurgents appear to be waxing for the moment.

But November is heading in the direction of being the deadliest month in Iraq since at least January, and the deadliest in terms of hostile deaths since November of last year.

This, of course, is my real concern with the fatalities in Iraq. It is not that the fatality rate (or overall casualty rate) is so high, it is that it keeps increasing.

That is all.

If this is true, it certainly looks to be a cheerful bit of news.

That is all.

Now this blog looks promising. Apparently a friend of the esteemed Michael Brendan Dougherty, Andy has some intereting thoughts from north of the border.

That is all.

It occurs to me that the reason that the French have rolled over so much in response to these riots is probably because so far, most of the damage seems to be to property, and there have been relatively few casualties (one or two deaths, I believe, and a smattering of woundings).

The French authorities are probably afraid that if they respond with lethal (or even damaging) force, that they will be the bad guys because they took a life and didn't just burn down property. Moreover, they will be the ones who escalated the violence if the riots start getting deadly for more than one or two people.

Typical behavior for a nation putting a very loose priority on property rights, if you ask me.

Moreover, though,that should not be a good enough reason. People cannot simply get up and attack society and produce anarchy on this scale and be allowed to do so because "they aren't killing people."

There are times that call for violence. This is one of them.

Sure, we can worry about "root causes," and how to make the Muslim populace more docile. But first we need to stop the riots. Now.

That is all.

Matt Yglesias suggests that the supposed use of torture for intelligence is really the use of torture the same way the Soviets used it, i.e. to get people to say what the Bush administration want to hear in order to justify what it wants to do.

He also links to this article by Laura Rozen, which talks about how confimation bias may have been a major factor in the intelligence distortions regarding Saddam.

The Rozen article includes this little nugget:

The imprisonment-by-assumption thesis [i.e. that we made the assumption of Saddam's WMDs unfalsifiable] might also explain another mystery historians will have to sort out: how the neocons managed to convince themselves and many others that controlling post-Saddam Iraq would be a cakewalk because virtually all Iraqis would welcome invading G.I.s as liberators. Talk about mirror-imaging!

Of course, the neo-cons would have us believe still that we are seen as liberators, that's why there is the emphasis on foreign fighters. It's only those dirty Syrians and Iranians who are fighting us!

As Gray Brecher says:

Beyond that, Bush policy is to blame Iran, or Syria, or Satan or whoever.

Iran? Maybe. Syria? No way. Syria's scared to death, ready to do anything to make Uncle Sam happy. And if it is Iran, what can we do about it? There are still a few neocons so totally out of their little gourds they want us to invade Iran. I have to wonder if they're agents of Dr Evil, programmed to destroy America. Because invading Iran would do it, it'd end us once and for all.

This blame stuff is a sign of frustration. .

That is all.

On how conservatvies should argue their points.

Of course, he is being sarcastic.

That is all.

See also: Thoughts on Race and Equality, Part II: How Do We Deal with the IQ Gap if it Is Real?

I keep promising to post some things, but I haven't seemed to be able get around to all of them, although I did post my defense of "citizenism" on Sunday morning.

Well, here is the first part of piece I have been meaning to finish about what should be done about the racial IQ gap if it exists:

So back to a point I touched on earlier: what if there are genetic differences in IQ between different races? In an American context, what if the IQ gap between blacks and whites is genetic? How should that affect policy?

Dennis Dale suggested encouraging the smartest in the minority community to have more children in order to have a "benign eugenic" effect.

Perhaps. But for a moment, let's assume that we cannot significantly narrow the IQ gap for at least a generation or two, at least not in a permanent way. The question then becomes, assuming that we are not going to change the IQ gap, how should it effect policy and what effects of an IQ gap are inevitable and what effects are a result of our choices?

Let's think first about why this topic is important and what the basic borders are for how it would shape policy.

First of all, IQ differences, innate or not, should have no effect on the moral worth of a person. Any gaps that exist ought not to be used as an excuse to deny people their rights or to claim any sort of moral superiority.

Second, any IQ racial gaps are averages, and should be treated as such; in general, individuals ought not to be judged by the average character of whatever group they belong to. As Steve Sailer has pointed out, 6 million African-Americans are smarter than the median white person (I think those are the numbers, I can't find the reference off hand; if anyone can help I would certainl appreciate it) even if we assume that the 17-18 point IQ gap accurately reflects differences in average intelligence.

Third, the biggest reason why IQ gaps are relevant is to see whether or not racial discrimination is the primary reason for disproportionate racial representation in various fields. It is also important to deal with differences in racial IQ or in racial behavior or the relations between races because it is important to see that this is one of the ways in which we are significantly different from most European countries - and thus may explain some of the vast differences in our societies (for example, why the U.S. has more violent crime or why our welfare policies are so different from those in Europe). That is, it can explain why we shouldn't assume that policies that appear to work in Europe will work here. Nor should we assume that Europe has some magic bullet that would make our stats comparable to theirs if we followed their lead.

Fourth, studying IQ gaps might indicate strategies for dealing with pathologies that disproportionately affect certain communities.

Fifth, even if there is no racial IQ gap, any strategy aimed at helping lower-IQ individuals live productive lives would still be useful; because there will still be low-IQ individuals who need to find a way to lead a productive life even if such individuals are evenly distributed amongst all races. Therefore, many of the policies designed to help deal with a racial IQ gap would likely be useful even if there were no gap, because many could be applied to lower-IQ people even without any racial correlation.

Sixth, all persons of whatever IQ are part of society, and any attempt at "dealing with" the issue of people of lower-than-average IQ, whether there is or is not a racial correlation, will be concerned with promoting their well-being as a part of society, not looking at them as existing outside of society or as an undesirable part of society and thus looking at the problem as how to insulate society from them.
For an example of the latter point of view look at Jason Lande. In a message to Lawrence Auster, Jason Lande accuses Steve Sailer of liberalism for wanting to use "race realism" as a way to help blacks. I can only assume that Mr. Lande thinks it should be used to justify keeping blacks ghettoized and away from "decent" society. or at least as a reason why white people should not lose any sleep over problems that befall black people. I personally think that Steve Sailer's attitude of trying to use whatever insights race realism has to offer to make life better for all Americans is far preferable to the idea of using it as an excuse not to care about Americans outside one's own race, because one feels that they are savages and barbarians.

Next, in Part Two, I will discuss actual policy proposals. The majority will probably be cribbed more or less from Steve Sailer, but I don't think he ever compiled a list of all of his ideas before, so this will still be useful, methinks.

That is all for now.

Dan's a lot more liberal than I am, (but then again, who isn't?), but his blog is fun to read, and darn it, I like sarcasm! Go ahead and visit it.

To see my previous Blogs of the Week, click here.

That is all.

Why do I blanch, you might ask, at the idea of the coalition committing brutality in Iraq, but I am all for the French using brutality to put down Muslim riots? (And indeed, were it happening here, I would be screaming to the hills for someone to shoot the rioters).

Because in Iraq, we are the foreigners.

In France, they are the foreigners.

Jed Eckert explained the principle best:

Matt Eckert: Tell me what's the difference between us and them!
Jed Eckert: Because we live here!

Murray Rothbard endorsed this concept of the difference, and so do I.

That is all.

Total coalition non-hostile deaths hit 500 (445 U.S.ers) on Saturday, Nov. 5.

That is all.

Could Vitamin D prevent flu epidemics?

Vitamin A has been shown to, if not prevent, at least reduce the severity of measles (another mention of this) (It should be noted that this appears to be effective only as a prophylactic measure, not as a curative - that is, once you have measles, taking vitamin A is not very helpful).

And omega-3 fatty acids are helpful for fighting rheumatoid arthritis (find more articles here), as well as osteoarthritis.

Which all boils down to this:

You need more of nature's best supplement.

I don't know about you, but I would start taking cod liver oil today.

And no, this ain't an ad, and I don't own cod liver oil stock (as far as I know, I'm not sure what my mutual funds invest in), and I have no financial interest in cod liver oil. I just happen to think that it is a good thing to take.

Thanx and a tip o' the hat to Dennis Mangan.

That is all.

(1) Shoot them.

(2) Shoot them.

(3) Shoot them.

That is all.

Ever notice how abortion is the only issue where being for keeping X legal is not considered being pro-X?

People who think abortion should be legal usually object to being called "pro-abortion" rather than "pro-choice."

So why is it that if you oppose making discrimination illegal, you are called pro-discrimination?

(See here, here, here, here, and here, for examples).

Or is it only pro-choice when it's an issue the left likes?

That is all.

Here is the first of the posts I have been meaning to write over the weekend:

Noah Millman and Nicholas Antongiavanni have both criticized Steve Sailer's promotion of "citizenism," that is, that the U.S. government should protect the interests of current U.S. citizens first and foremost, which Sailer in particular sets up against white nationalism here.

In both cases, the general idea appears to be that the U.S. should calculate national interest not on the basis of the collective interest, as it were, of American citizens, but on the basis of promoting the political ideas of America's founders. In other words, America is not a nation, but simply a political lobby.

The easiest way to understand citizenism, in my opinion is to understand what a nation (or a nationality) is and why it commands loyalty. If a race is an extended family, and that is why people feel racial loyalty, then a nation is a race which is allowed to adopt members (as opposed to a simply biological family). That a nation would put the interests of its current members first is no surprise. Almost any family with children is going to put the interests of their current children ahead of the interests of a child they may potentially adopt in the future; the calculation of course changes after the adoption when the child becomes their child. Similarly, the U.S. government and the citizenry would sensibly put the interests of those who are already citizens over those who may become citizens someday.

Noah Millman raises a few objections, each of which I will deal with.

First: How do we determine what is in the "aggregate interest" of the citizens of the United States? While he does have a point that an exact quantitative determination is impossible, well, so what? That we don't have an exact method of calculating "utiles" doesn't negate the concept of a common interest or a common good; people have to make such qualitative calculations all the time. What is in the best interest of the folks in this nursing home? What is in my family's best interest? etc., etc. Millman suggests that our poltical and economic sytem is the means by which we do the aggregation, and then points out the fllaw with such an analysis: how does one determine how the system is working in a way that does not amount to a tautology? His answer is that you do so by essentially defining the national interest by our political system and that immigration policy should be determined by how it affects our political values. But by that standard, there is nothing wrong with totally displacing all of the current population of America, as long as you replace them with another group of classical liberals.

I think that for the most part, one can get a sense of "aggregate interest" without complicated mathematical formulae. In general, an increased economic standard of living is a net plus, having cleaner water, land, and air is a net plus, having healthier citizens is a net plus, etc. While there may be some disagreement as to what policies and what outcomes are the optimum (depending on how competing interests are weighed), and thus elections and other such political manifestations may be necessary to determine how the U.S. will weigh its national interest, I think that all of these qualitative calculations (for lack of a better term) can be done with the goal of promoting the national welfare (i.e. that of the current citizenry) without needing to reduce the U.S. to nothing but a political movement. That is, all sides can agree that the most important issue is the welfare of the current citizens and all sides can attempt to argue their idea of how to do that, with the interests of non-citizens coming in a distant second, and with the general outline of what constitutes a better life for Americans being reasonably similar for all major political groupings involved.

Second, Noah Millman asks "Why is "the citizenry of the United States" the relevant body within which to do the impossible aggregation of citizens' utiles?" that is, why not argue for loyalty to one's city or state instead.

The answer here is that "citizenism," while Sailer on the immigration issue defined it as relating to national citizenship, actually can apply to all levels of government. At each level of government, the government should put the interests of those under its jurisdiction first. San Francisco should put the interests of San Franciscans first, California of Californians first, and the U.S. government of U.S. citizens first. If you believe in such organizations as the U.N., then those organizations should try to represent everyone's collective interest.

However, on issues of immigration the national level is the relevant level, because it is the lowest level of government at which there is control over its own borders. That is, California cannot legally prevent people from migrating from other states, nor can San Francisco prevent migration from other cities. The only level of government at which border contorl is allowed is the federal government, so it is the relevant entity here. Moreover, due to the open borders between states and between cities, the U.S. citizenship is more stable than the citizenship of any of the smaller units, so in general citizenism will apply more to issues at that level. That is, the list of current citizens is too fluid at the state and local levels for it to take hold the way it does at the national level.

But why, one might ask, is citizenism a good thing? Millman writes:

Citizenship is not just membership in a club; it's allegiance to a flag and the Republic for which it stands. And hence, debating the conditions of citizenship and how they should be extended is not just a debate about the interests of the club members in a bigger or smaller membership, or what class of new members they want to associate with, but about the meaning of the entity to which allegiance is pledged and how that meaning will be shaped either by accepting new allegiants or rejecting them.

So is citizenism simply allegiance to a club? Why is supporting fellow citizens in itself a noble activity, if not to promote a political and social ideology?

For the same reason that it is a good thing that people in a geographic region support the sports teams associated with that region. Because they are our family, even if adopted rather than biological, and family is necessary for a healthy society. And we need to regulate whom we let into our families, not just for the sake of maintaining a particular philosophy, but for the good of the members of our family and thus of the family itself.

Millman may somewhat derisively look at citizenism as reducing citizenship to membership in a club, but I look at his philosophy as reducing it to membership in a political party. The best paradigm here, and the one which causes the whole thing to make sense, is that of family.

That is all.

As of most recent count:

15 hostile and 2 non-hostile deaths for coalition troops in Iraq.

10 of the hostile deaths are from IEDs.

That is all.

This is odd:

LOS ANGELES - A Jewish Defense League activist imprisoned for his role in a plot to bomb a California mosque and the office of a Lebanese-American congressman was killed at a federal prison in Phoenix, an FBI spokesman said Saturday.

This is exactly three tears after Irv Rubin, the late JDL leader, in prison for involvement in the same plot, died in prison from an apparent suicide.

Something is fishy here. And I say that as someone with no particular affinity for the JDL.

That is all.

Why does anyone think that calling the U.S. (or those portions of the U.S. with whom they disagree) "AmeriKKKa" (ooo... KKK as in Ku Klux Klan) is clever? Doesn't that get pretty stupid pretty fast?

That is all.

Republicans in the house are working toward ending "birthright citizenship," that is, the idea that anyone who manages to be geographically inside the borders of the US when she gives birth automatically gets her child U.S. citizenship. There is also increasing popularity for creating a barrier between the U.S. and Mexico.

Lawrence Auster and Dennis Mangan are pleased by this.

I must say that I am too.

Keep up the good work, immigration-reduction-supporting conservatives, keep up the good work.

The War Nerd discusses the IED situation in Iraq.

I previously discussed the rise in IED attacks here.

Gary Brecher also points out something that I have been concerned about and have been talking about for a while, and that he has also brought up previously:

"The only effective CI techniques are torture, reprisal and, ultimately, genocide.

"My guess is that genocide will come back one day. That was how the Ancients dealt with rebellious towns: wiped 'em out. One of these days some first-world country is going to get impatient and a problem child like the Sunni Triangle will be a big, radioactive ghost town.

"If we don't do it, the Kurds may end up doing it the old-fashioned way they learned from the Turks: one bullet, one village at a time."

Of course, this is not to say that this is as important as, or should detract from, all of the good news from Iraq, like this kid getting a soccer ball, but still.

That is all.

More on the case of the alleged lesbian statutory rapist.

(Technically, it appears that if the charges are true, she is either bisexual or went through a "lesbian/bisexual phase," as "Police say Wallace broke off the relationship last August because the teacher had just gotten married and wanted to have children.")

That is all.

Troop levels in Iraq not going down any time soon. Maybe going up.

Surprise, surprise.

B-b-but I thought that getting the constitution passed would make it easier for our troops to leave!

That is all.

A Mr. Rocco Martion has been named as the source of the forged Niger documents claims Italy's chief of military intelligence, Gen. Nicolo Pollari.

That is all.

Here's a post from more than a year ago.

I am going to make some additions:

When someone says "this is the last you will hear from me," it often means you're winning the argument and they are too cowardly to admit it. Yes,
Thomas Lifson, I'm a -talkin' 'bout YOU.

There were four plausible ways that "The Emperor's New Clothes" might end:

(1) The subjects might stone (or otherwise hush up) the little boy in order to avoid admitting they were duped.
(2) The emperor might frighten the little boy into recanting and the subjects into submission.
(3) The subjects might wise up, but the emperor and his entourage refuse to admit the truth.
(4) The emperor might admit that he was naked but deny that he had been tricked; indeed, he had always planned on walking around naked in front of his subjects, and his decision to do so had excellent results!

The universe cannot constantly be in danger of blowing up.

Research has shown that everyone loves a picture of a sexy vampiress.

Once you have found a catchphrase, go with it. Paris Hilton has "that's hot," the "Military Thoughts" blogger has "This is coolbert... coolbert." Michael Ledeen has "faster, please." I have...

That is all.

Ron Jacobs urges the US public to work to stop the war epidemic from spreading to Iran and Syria.

In his article, he also makes some good points about how even a lot of the supposedly antiwar Democrats (think Barack Obama) and Republicans (Think George Voinovich) really aren't antiwar. They just want the UN rather than the US to be in charge.

Which of course complements those GOPers (think John Bolton) who pretend to hate the UN but really just want it to be more willing to be a vessel of US imperialism.

That is all.

A. C. Kleinheider discusses the implications of an immigration-reform movement strategy suggested by Scott MConnell.

Namely, he feels that immigration-reform supporters do not need to go out of their way to prove their anti-racism.

I agree.

That is all.

I am certain that with the Samuel Alito nomination, we are going to hear lot more about filibusters during confirmation hearings and the dreaded "nuclear option" (i.e. eliminte the judicial filibuster from the rules of order).

I think this would be a good time to review my proposed solution: "the bioweapon option." That is, none of these "pocket filibusters," where 41 votes means "move on to the next thing." No, the GOP should demand a real, talk-till-you-drop filibuster. A 24 hours a day filibuster. And shut down all business until the judge receives a vote.

That would take some guts, and guts is whatwe need right now.

That is all.

I will try this weekend to put up some of those posts that I have been talking about doing.

In the meantime, let me regale with link. Or, rally, a link.

Here is an interesting blog.

That is all for now.

Juan Cole writes in his blog:

The mainstream press doesn't seem to be connecting the dots here, but the continued marginalization, high unemployment and discrimination faced by the large French Muslim community could help push them toward Salafi radicalism.

My thought:

The continued presence of a large French Muslim community could help to enable Salafi radicalism.

That is all.

Apparently "warren cuccurullo gay rumors" (type it in without the quotation marks) is a Yahoo! search that brings up Glaivester as a result. (Found it going through "referrals" on my Sitemeter stats)

Among the results, I also found this article about the band's 2000 album Pop Trash.

All you Duran Duran fans out there might like to read it.

That is all.

From some of the discussions I have had commenting on Alas, a blog, I have come to a realization about many liberals:

They essentially have the mentality of teenagers:

I have the right to do whatever I want with my life, and if it costs money and I can't afford it, my parents (i.e., society) has the obligation to support it. But the fact that they should pay my way doesn't mean that they have any say over what I do.

Granted, the liberals tend to transfer this into a more universal belief system (i.e. it doesn't apply just to them, or even primarily to them), but there is a very strong sense that because property rights are highly expendable, and personal rights (i.e. the right to do what you want with your own body) are not, that it is perfectly acceptable to expect society to finance irresponsible behavior.

Of course, the problem is what to do when the responsible people get tired of getting hosed and decide to pull an Atlas Shrugged, but I don't know if most liberal think ahead that far.

That is all.

Gene Healy and Justin Logan question exactly what our Iraq strategy is.

I remember listening to Rush Limbaugh when he said that the exit strategy in Iraq was "victory." Of course, he didn't give a specific idea as to how that would be achieved, other than something to the effect that we would set up a democratic government.

I think that that is the real problem in Iraq. We have some vague, fuzzy outlines of a goal (train Iraqis to handle their own security, set up a democratic government) but no actual metrics by which to define actual victory (as in, how many Iraqi troops have to be trained before we can significanlty draw down our forces.

Moreover, if anything, we seem to getting deeper into the war with the slow creep upwards of the number of soldiers getting committed to Iraq.

And the casualty figures just keep on' chuggin' along...

That is all.

I won't claim to agree with Andrew S. Fischer's belief that drunk driving should not be illegal, but he does have a point abou tthe civil liberties that we are giving up in the current push t ostop drunk driving.

And, as was pointed out before, there is a danger when the main anti-drunk driving organization is run by crazed fanatics, who have even turned off the group's founder.

That is all.

Back in August, A. C. Kleinheider had a post on the double standard in terms of sentencing and censure for statutory rape committed by females against males vs. that committed by males against females.

In a discussion on the Nashville Channel 2 News website,
(link no longer exists) I pointed out that the double standard, to the extent it exists (whether in terms of punishment or just in terms of the societal attitude) is probably based on the sex of the perpetrator rather than the victim (technically, I said it depends on whether the teacher is the penetrator or the penetratee). That is, one would likely respond to a male teacher having sex with any underage student more negatively than a female teacher having sex with any underage student. The sex of the victim doesn't matter. (Kleinheider agreed that I might be right).

Well, my theory is about to be tested. Apparently, WorldNetDaily has posted an article about the case of Jaymee Wallace, a math teacher and girl's varsity basketball coach who is accused of having sex with an underaged teenage girl (I'm not certain whether or not she was one of Ms. Wallace's students).

If the allegations are true, then this would be a useful example of a case where the victim and the perpetrator are both females, and so would indicate whether whatever double standard exists is due to a greater value eing placed on the virtue of teenage girls than teenage boys (Kleinheider's initial theory), or due to greater damage to one's virtue being inflicted by a penetrating male than a (non-penetrating) female (my theory).

That is all.

Public schools should be the parents. The real parents should shut up and take it.

So says the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

That is all.

The first poster I bought when I was in college (perhaps the only poster I bought, come to think of it), was "Peter's Laws: the Creed of the Sociopathic Obsessive-Compulsive."

Here is a listing of the laws if you are interested. They are fun to read and express a can-do attitude that I love (although, as a conservative, I do temper it with realism).

Enjoy.

That is all.

Muslims riots have shaken Paris for six nights in a row - so far.

Now, I am all for the right to peacefully demonstrate, but when people continually riot, there should be mass arrests.

If this looks to be impossible, then the police should get a bullhorn and demand that the rioting stop. If anyone still rioting after five seconds, then the plice should pick a few particularly bad apples and shoot them. If the rest of the rioters turn on the police, the police should begin shooting them, too, until they (a) decide to stop or (b) stop because they are all dead.

That is all.

Lawrence Auster discusses the possibility that Bush is a genius moving us back to the days of realpolitik.

Of course, as Mr. Auster says, it is ridiculous to think that Bush has that elaborate a plan worked out, and if things work out that way (i.e. realpolitik takes over), it is more by accident than design.

That is all.

Or it should be.

Joshua Frank explains how both parties were responsiblr for the Iraq War and why those opposed to the war ought to keep the war in sight, not the partisan squabbling and positioning.

That is all.

Rumsfeld suggests that we may need an increase in U.S. forces.

As of last count, there were 158,000 U.S. troops (not counting the rest of the coalition) in Iraq, down from a high of 161,000 during the Iraqi election on October 15.

So there is a good chance that we are going to see the number of U.S. troops in Iraq hit another new high fairly soon.

UPDATE: Sort of makes postings like this one seem a little naive, doesn't it?

That is all.

Jorge Hirsch suggests a reason for the strange timing of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's anti-Israel remarks.

Namely, they want to make certain that any U.S. attack on Iran in the near future is seen as being in retaliation for threats against Israel, thereby making it difficult for the U.S. to attack (as it would look to much of the world as if we were simply Israel's lapdogs).

Interesting thesis. And he supports it by showing how restrained the U.S. response to the statement has been.

That is all for now.

Dipsatches from the Hogtown Front has been added to my blogroll. It's a blog about immigration issues - in Canada.

It's nice to see that it's not only the U.S. where there is concern about the government's policies and the "national question."

Go visit it.

That is all.

How powerful and effective is the insurgency in Iraq at damaging our war effort? Is it in decline or strengthening?

Using hostile coalition fatalities as a metric, let's compare 2004 to 2005.

Total hostile fatalities in 2004: 755
Hostile fatalities Jan. 1 - Oct. 31, 2004: 568

Total hostile fatalties Jan. 1 - Oct. 31, 2004: 579
Annualized: 695

Comparing this to my earlier graph, two trends become apparent:

First, the "background" number of deaths in a "typical" month was higher in 2005.
Second, 2005 has not had any "hostile death spikes" of the sort there were in 2004, in April and November, where hostile deaths rose dramatically for a month and then fell again. This is presumably due to the fact that the insurgents are no longer confronting us (or we them) in large battles in Fallujah (I was going to say "in cities such as Fallujah, but then realized that both of these fatality spikes came from Fallujah itself).

Now using American wounded-in-action (stats are not available for the rest of the coalition or for non-hostile wounded) - Stats for October 2005 are not complete yet, so I am not including October stats in year-to-date calculations)

WIA in 2004: 7987
WIA Jan. 1 - Sept. 30, 2004 (Stats for October are not complete yet): 5372

WIA Jan 1. - Sept. 30, 2005: 4513
Annualized: 6017

Wounded stats are generally slightly lower than in 2004, and there have been no "spikes."

As for Iraqi deaths, I don't have statistics to compare 2004 to 2005, but during 2005, the statistics would indicate that hostile deaths of Iraqi police and military increased during the first half of the year, then declined (so far) during the second half, whereas civilian deaths in general increased up to August, and then started to decline somewhat.

Based on these stats, the insurgency appears to have remained pretty stable throughout 2005.

This may be good news; if this means that the insurgency has peaked, it is possible that it will start to decline next year or in 2007.

On the other hand, it may just stay stable for another five or six years. This could put us into a waiting game, where the issue is how long we would be willing to "stay the course" until things improve - but we would have to "stay the course" for quite a while.

Or, it might go up, but likely slowly and without too many "spikes" in fatalities, which would be the worst-case scenario.

Being a pessimist on the Iraq War, I think the increase in fatalities scenario is the most likely one. But we will have to wait and see.

That is all.

William L. Anderson expresses distress at the way that Mr. Libby is being indicted. Not that he probabl doesn't deserve it, but arre we really witnessing the rule of law, or a "the ends justify the means" attempt to find something to charge him on in order to try to pry open the scandals of the Bush administration?

Even if this indictment helps us to get to the bottom of the scandals, does it really help the nation in the long run if it leads to further disregard for the rule of law if whenever it becomes an impediment to a desired outcome?

Not that Bush or much of what passes for conservatives these days would care as much about rule of law if someone else's ox were being gored, but shouldn't Bush's opponents want to be better than we accuse him (accurately, in my opinion) of being?

That is all.