Interesting...

Was David Kelly murdered?

Thanx and a tip o' the hat to LRC blog.

That is all.

African-American

I am starting to think that "African-American" (or "of African descent" when referring to non-Americans) is a better term to use than "black," despite its origins in politcal correctness.

This is because it frames the issue of race more appropriately, as one of ancestry rather than one of one particular physical difference. So people can't keep saying "duh- so you are saying that having darker skin causes behavioral differences?" No, darker skin is just one marker for race - which is about who your ancestors were, not about skin color, or hair shape, etc.

That is all.

SubPrime Mortgages

Reading this, a cartoon came to mind that I read a few months ago on a liberal blog.

Looking at the cartoon, it is interesting to note the subtext: Everyone is entitled to a house and one cannot be secure without one, but not everyone is able to afford one under reasonable conditions (i.e. without paying astronomical rent). Therefore, everyone should be given a house, either in whole or in part (that is, subsidized), presumably by the government.

That's not exactly what is said, of course, but that is what the message amounts to.

The possibility that not everyone needs a house and that people ought to wait to get one does not appear to be the dominant mode of thought.

That is all.

Thoughts About the GOP Race

Accoding to this, Sen. Brownback is planning on dropping out of the GOP race.

I think that this is a good idea. Moreover, I think that Brownback ought to endorse Mike Huckabee, as they seem to be the closest on the issues.

As I see it, Brownback and Duncan Hunter are essentially lesser versions of Huckabee and Tom Tancredo, respectively, and they do not add anything to the race. Therefore, unless they can show significant polling numbers, I see no reason for them to keep running (whereas if they had unique interesting positions, I could justify their staying in the race despite low poll numbers because of what they added to the debate; for example, Tom Tancredo brings up the big picture on immigration in a way that no other candidate does and Ron Paul brings up monetary policy and non-interventionism).

Hunter should drop out and endorse Tancredo, in my opinion.

It is, of course, more likely that Brownback will endorse one of the big three in hopes of kissing up to power, which is sad, because I think that Huckabee would add something interesting to the race if he could consolidate the "compassionate social conservative" vote.

Update: Andrew Sullivan seems to be suggesting the same thing as I am about Brownback vis a vis Huckabee.

That is all.

Th Insipid Bill Richardson

Bill Richardson wants to overturn Bush's veto of the SCHIP expansion via a lawsuit.

Completely ignoring the issue of whether or not the SCHIP expansion is a good idea, ths strikes me as a totally asinine move.

The fact of the matter is, there is no legal requirement that the president let any SCHIP funding bill pass. Health care is not guaranteed as an inalienable right to be protected by the governemnt in our constitution.

So there is no legal standing for Governor Richardson to sue. It is not as if Bush signed the bill and then used executive orders and whatnot to undermine it. His power to veto legislation is enshrined in the Constitution, and ihe has the power to veto whatever he wants.

If you read the article, you will discover that nowhere in the article does Richardson explain the legal basis for his suit. That is becuase there is none.

So it is a totally asinine move. The obvious political reason is that he is running for President, and as a governor he does not have the power to directly counter Bush (by voting to override his veto) the way that Obama or Hillary do.

So he is trying to jump on the "me, too" bandwagon with this ridiculous lawsuit.

That is all.

Scott Lucas Cannot Understand the Arguments Against Gay Marriage

Because, you know, they want to live together and they screw each other, so isn't that what's it's all about?

Thanx and a tip o' the hat to Sully.

That is all.

Thoughts on Turkey's Genocide Denial

While I can understand that at this time we wouldn't want to alienate them by actually passing a resolution, if we are going to softpedal Turkey's mass-murder against the Armenians, I think we ought to shut up about Ahmedinejad's Hoilocaust skepticism, unless of course we are just intending to use six million dead Jews as a prop to launch an aggressive war against a country that was not involved in their killing. (In which case we are announcing to the Armenians that they might as well go and screw themselves).

That is all.

Ron Paul Shafted in Debate?

Interesting, considering that his fundraising has raised him to a pretty high level among the second tier.

That is all.

Intolerant Tolerance

Scary.

That is all.

McCain and the Magic Word

Not that I would ever vote for him, but McCain made a very important point in the economic debate on Tuesday.

As one of the main things I hope for with the Paul candidacy is that he will bring isues to the floor that no one else will touch (e.g. the Federal Reserve), I must give credit when someone else brings up a point that no one else wants to explain.

In the debate, when McCain talked about ethanol bio-fuel, he said the magic word that needs to be said whenever anyone wants to seriously think about ethanol as a supplement to our energy supply.

Sugarcane.

Any realistic attempt to get any benefit from ethanol bio-fuel will almost certainly require us to use sugarcane-based ethanol - which will almost certainly have to be imported. Corn is simply to inefficient.

That is all.

Liberty vs. Equality

And the beat goes on.

That is all.

Dinsingenuous Atheism

People who claim "I don't believe in labels" tend to strike me as rather pretentious. Generally it seems to me that this is a disingenuous attempt to avoid associations with an idea or categorization that is unpopular, rather than standing up an owning it.

In this vein, I find the speech by Sam Harris that Andrew Sullivan is quoting rather unimpressive:

Attaching a label to something carries real liabilities, especially if the thing you are naming isn't really a thing at all. And atheism, I would argue, is not a thing. It is not a philosophy, just as "non-racism" is not one. Atheism is not a worldview—and yet most people imagine it to be one and attack it as such. We who do not believe in God are collaborating in this misunderstanding by consenting to be named and by even naming ourselves.

Ah, but atheism is a thing.

It is a category.

While atheism is not a worldview or a philosophy, it is certainly a legitimate category of worldviews or philosophies. Atheism is a category of beliefs that share one common element: the denial of the existence of God. Not labelling "atheists" as such is a rather Orwellian way of trying to define the terms of the debate.

Certainly there are other categories comparable to atheism that, while not a philosophy or worldview, nonetheless do exist within clearly recognizable borders.

Monotheism and polytheism come to mind. Sam Harris himself offers one: non-racism. For that matter, fatalism, belief in reincarnation, pragmatism, and a hot of other things can also be called categories, even if they do not represent the entirety of a worldview or philosophy.

I am not sure where this aversion to naming one's self came from. But unlike Andrew, I find it intellectually dishonest to eschew labels (although it is perfectly sound to be opposed to a particular taxonomy of labels, e.g. the current understaning of "conservative" and "liberal").

That is all.

Not All Criticisms of the Surge Are Correct

This post by Andrew Sullivan on September 10 has him complaining that the surge only reduced attacks to the levels of eighteen months ago.

While I believe that the surge will not reduce violence long-term, this is not exactly a fair attack, because it ignores the larger picture, which is not the number of attacks in a particular month, but the trends.

That is, his complain only has validity if the violence has stabilized at that level. As long as the violence is trending downward, there is always the possibility that it will bottom out at a level at or below what we saw in 2003 and early 2004, when the war was still fairly popular.

Certainly the trend in hostile coalition deaths is still downward - for now.

That is all.

Withdrawal Isn't that Hard

We keep hearing how it will take a year or more to leave Iraq even if we started getting out right now.

Greg Cochran explains that that is baloney and that we could get out in mere months.

The gist of the article is that most of the "logistical problems" come from the belief that (a) we cannot leave behind anything, including non-combat equipment (e.g. furniture) (b) that soldiers must be taken directly to America to be "out of Iraq," and (c) leaving by land is more dangerous than it actually would be.

The only presidential candidate so far to mention this is Kucinich.

That is all.

Pravda News and General Petraeus

Glenn Greenwald makes some good points about the Brit Hume "interview" of General Petraeus.

That is all.

A Laughable Line

While I can certainly understand why the top-tier candidates would have a problem going to the Values Voter Debate, and I am not outraged that they did not, I do find this quote in their defense, by Michael Barrett of Strattanville, Pa., hilarious:

They just see this 'debate' for what it is, a 'Christian' ambush of the top four candidates with Farah as the hired hitman/moderator. You want to have an honest debate with a fair moderator, such as [Sean] Hannity or Brit Hume, [then] they would have shown up.

Right. Hannity and Hume are known for even-handedness.

That is all.

Choose "Separation of Church and State" or Big Government. You Can't Have Both.

As Barry Loberfeld masterfully explains.

The way that liberals get away with pretending that they believe in "separation of church and state," as opposed to an atheocracy, is by defining atheism and secularism as inherently non-religious in nature and therefore immune to the First Amendment (e.g. it is perfectly acceptable for the state to annound atheism as the established church), or by defining "religion" so narrowly that "freedom of religion" is simply the freedom to claim a faith and to practice it in one's own head. The right to actually practice one's faith in one's life is dependent on its servility ot the values which the state wishes to impose.

So they pretend to believe in separation of church and state" while believing in big government, ultimately working toward the oppression and suppression of religion.

That is all.

Webb Amendment Fails

The "longer deployed than at home" policy is policy for the near future.

So the next time McCain or anyone like him talks about "support the troops," tell him to shove it and to say what he really means:

"BOW BEFORE THE GREAT GOD DUBYA!"

That is all.

Sorry for Light Blogging

I suffered a repetitive motion injury last week at work. It didn't really lay me out, but my shoulder blade hurt all weekend (as in, I couldn't turn my head or get comfortable enough to sleep for more than three or four hours). It's all better now, but I just haven't felt like blogging much.

That is all.

Troops in Vietnam

Most of the arguments that we were betrayed in Vietnam are based on the idea that Vietnamization worked and that all we needed to do was to provide funding and bombing runs to keep South Vietnam viable.

Proving that he in insane, Norman Podhoretz appears to imply in his latest bromide that Nixon should have kept U.S. ground troops there en masse:

In 1972, Richard Nixon was elected by landslide to a second term as president, but in campaigning against George McGovern's call for us to withdraw from Vietnam, Nixon did not sound an opposing call to fight on to victory. On the contrary: He too promised to get us out of Vietnam. The difference was that he also promised to accomplish this with our honor intact.

In other words, we should have kept fighting on the ground. I suppose that Podhoretz is disappointed that we didn't keep up the 1968 level of casualties throughout the 1970s.

That is all.

One Thing That Would Be Interesting to See...

...Would be 1 minute of the broadcast on September 11, 2001, right before the terrorist attacks and then see how the report first came out. All the videos I have seen so far start with the attacks themselves. I never saw the new break originally (I didn't hear about the attacks until all of the planes had crashed and both towers had collapsed) and think it would be interesting to see how it suddenly broke into the morning news reports.

That is all.

September 11 Sixth Anniversary.

And the 4th anniversary of the death of John Ritter.

That is all.

All Arabs/Muslims Are the Enemy

Stanley Kurtz makes a valiant attempt to equate the Sunni insurgency with Al Qaeda, largely in response to this piece by Andrew Tilghman.

Distilling his piece to its essence, he makes 3 points:

(1) The primary goal in Iraq is to stay there so as to fight entities in Iraq that will threaten us. There is no "victory point" that we are working toward. We are staying in order to stay. [Presumably he also wants Iraq as a forward base so that we can do the same with the entire Middle East].

(2) All Sunnis are the enemy and any Sunni who commits violence is Al Qaeda.

(3) Long-term bribing of various populations to be quiescent is an acceptable status quo.

The problem with most of his arguments is that he automatically assumes that any Iraqi who deals with Al Qaeda must have desires outside of Iraq. He assumes that anyone who is interested in the local conflict must also be interested in the global conflict of Al Qaeda vs. the U.S., or the broader conflict of the Muslims vs. the west.

This quote epitomizes his problem:

Although surge-supporting analysts say that AQI drafts Baathist insurgents to carry out terror attacks, Tilghman favors analysts who say it’s the other way around. The truth, says Tilghman, is that native insurgent forces are “coopting a steady stream of delusional (AQI) extremists seeking martyrdom” into their local feuds. What Tilghman doesn’t get is that this is how the tribal game is always played. Every player thinks he’s the one cleverly making use of his duller allies for his own ends. And of course, every player is in part correct. To a degree, AQI is using the locals to support global jihad, while the locals are also using AQI to support narrow tribal or sectarian ends.

Yes, to a degree Al Qaeda is co-opting the locals for its own ends. But those ends are local ends even for Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda's main goal in Iraq is to kill U.S. soldiers in Iraq - not necessarily to get us to leave, but to bleed us there and to take away resources. There is little to no evidence that the Iraqis using Al Qaeda for their own local ends have any interest in helping Al Qaeda beyond the mutual goal of hurting the U.S. military forces in Iraq (although some of the Iraqis almost certainly want us to leave, which Al Qaeda may not want). Put another way, the Iraqi involvement in "global jihad" is likely limited to the part of "global jihad" happening in Iraq - there is little Al Qaeda could use them for if our troops were not there.

A given players own primary identity or ends don’t necessarily stay fixed. A truly successful charismatic religious leader — and a militarily successful jihad — heightens a tribesman’s identification with pan-Muslim jihad.

But do we have much evidence of this? Do we actually see Iraqi tribal leaders becoming terorist leaders?

Essentially, Kurtz wants to blur all distinctions so that all Arabs or Muslims are Al Qaeda, and so that completing crushing the entire Arab/Muslim world and holding it under our heel is the only way to protect us.

I think that this is a very foolish way of thinking.

That is all.

An Very Interesting Article on Ron Paul

From the Wall Street Journal.

That is all.

The Link Between Immigration and Poverty

Much of the "growing inequality" of the U.S. comes from the fact that we are importing poor people. This is true independent of whether or not increased immigration is a bad thing; if you add poor people to the country, the nominal poverty rate will be higher even if everyone is better off, because the new poor people's incomes are suddenly figured into the statistics, and their previous lower incomes in their home countries are not counted.

Roert J. Samuelson makes this point in Newsweek, which is terribly important at a time when we are being told how awful our growing inequality problem is.

Thanx and a tip o' the hat to the VDARE blog.

That is all.

A Liberal Appreciates Ron Paul

Richard Blari, though not a Ron Paul supporter, is nonetheless jazzed by the grassroots effort behind the Paul campaign.

I'm sure I found this via the LewRockwell.com blog, althoguh I don't have the permalink right now.

That is all.

Exactly

David Freddoso hits the nail on the head when it comes to Giuliani.

That is all.

Wow.

The highlight of the debate was the Huckabee-Paul exchange.

That is all.

Craig vs. Giuliani

Personally, I'd like to see Craig stay in office and the "resroom" business just go away. I don't care about his personal life as long as he doesn't flaunt any peccadilloes or peculiarities and try to normalize them.

Which is why I find Giuliani a lot more offensive than Craig. Giuliani's problems he airs out in public and wants us to accept them. He shows no shame, no sense of sin or repentance, or realization that he has done wrong. He is a pathetic little man, whose assault on traditional values is much worse than the alleged hypocrisy of Craig.

That is all.

Dave Mangan

Takes an utterly stupid (unless he is being consciously evil) position on the DNC's justified retaliation against Florida.

The reason for having Iowa and New Hampshire vote first is so that the candidates can actually campaign for a little bit in small, low-cost states, so that there is at least a chance for the little guys to compete against establishment, big-money candidates.

Obviously, folks like "Dumb (or devilish) Dave" just want us to be restricted to the establishment buffoons.

Of course, he seems to be excited about Giuliani potentially doing well in Florida, and if he's one of the "Giuliani'll kill the ragheads and that's good enough for me!" crowd, then that explains everything.

That is all.

An Inconvenient Truth

Summary:

The government should stop looking at links between obesity and health problems because we want to pretend that such links don't exist.

By the way, the person writing the report is pro-infanticide blogger Maia.

That is all.

On the Lighter Side

Best 1980s cartoon bad guy names:

Lord Darkstorm - Visionaries
Blackthorne Shore - Inhumanoids
Starscream - Transformers
Storm Shadow - G.I. Joe

That is all.

In Senator Craig's Defense

Lew Rockwell quotes Paul Craig Roberts on Larry Craig. Good point. It is possible that Senator Craig was set up by someone who didn't like his politics.

That is all.

Ron Paul First Tier?

These folks think so.

Thanx ad a tip o' the hat to Lew Rockwell.

That is all.

War Plans

If true, this is scary.

Thanx and a tip o' the hat to LewRockwell.

That is all.

A Glory Hole in Every Bathroom

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Pat Boone a Brown-Tonguer

Pat Boone is apparently the latest victim of a malady known as Bush anilingus syndrome.

Apparently the President is just too good for us poor benighted peasants.

That is all.

Good for the Democrats!

For fighting back against the earlier-and-earlier primary madness.

Stripping Florida of its delegates if it moves the primary up is just the sort of thing that needs to be done in this case.

Thanx and a tip o' the hat to WorldNetDaily.

That is all.

Ron Paul - Multiple Straw Poll Champ

Various sraw poll results produce exceedingly good new for those who like Ron Paul.

That is all.

Rhetoric Over Reason, and Emotion Over Accountability

Do you want to know why people hate the Bush administration so much? It's not because of some stupid "Bush Derangement syndrome." It's because Bush and his entire administration seem hell-bent on making a "friends" and an "enemies" list, and on using rhetoric and emotional appeals to avoid actually discussing the issues that we need to face. It is also their attempt to avoid accountability for anything they have done.

No better example of this is recent days than the interview of former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleishcher by Mike Barnicle (sitting in for Chris Matthews) on the August 22 episode of Hardball. See the transcript of the episode here, and search for "FLEISCHER" with case sensitivity on.

Among the things that upset me are his desire to avoid acountability:

Mike, it is not about the 2002 decision to go into Iraq. It‘s about terrorism that exists in Iraq today... The 2002 debate is an old, stale debate about why we went into Iraq with Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction... Mike, you‘re stuck in the 2001-2002 timetable and debate. It is so far beyond that debate.

In other words, "do not hold us accountable for past mistakes, and do not judge our present predictions by our accuracy in the past." No one tries to elide over the past as irrelevant unless they did something wrong. Does anyone thinks that he would trotting out the irrelevance of 2001-2002 if we had found WMDs?

When asked how to repair the "broken military," Fleischer offers no solutions as to how to deal with the stresses, instead saying:

Mike, I don‘t remember anybody—I wasn‘t alive, but during World War II, saying, We can‘t fight unlimited amounts of time. There‘s no limit. I don‘t remember in the cold war people saying, Let‘s quit because who knows how long this will go.

So he doesn't actually offer a plan except to elide over the problem. Presumably he would perfectly okay then with simply extneding tours to 18 or 21 months and letting the soldiers work themselves to death as long as they were willing to sign up.

Then comes this doozy:

Mike Barnicle, clearly annoyed tha Fleischer won't actually offer plans on how to solve the overextended military problem, asks Mr. Fleischer:

Ari, do you remember reading about Franklin Delano Roosevelt asking the country to make sacrifices for World War Two? Do you remember that?

Fleischer, unbelievably, responds:

I think everybody in this country is making a sacrifice.

We all do every time a soldier loses his or her life.

When pressed, he continues:

No, Mike. You‘re missing the point about this military is all of our military, both the people who oppose the war and the people who are for winning this war. And every time a life is lost, we all lose. We all have made a sacrifice, some more than others.

WRONG. This is stupid rhetoric, along the lines of "no one is free when anyone is oppressed." All of the soldiers in Iraq could be tortured to death, and it would still not hurt me in any way that I would consider to be a sacrifice on my part. Sacrifice by proxy is a ridiculous concept, and all that Fleischer is trying to do is to make Bush into an FDR-like inspiring war-time leader by declaring things to be true by mere rhetorical turns of phrases.

Ari Fleischer is an a**hole.

That is all.

Way to Go, Threebs (Warning: Link Contains Strong Language)

One thing that annouys me about the health Nazis (and I say this as a celibate, non-drinking, non-drug-using, non-smoker) is the hypocrisy and inconsistency. I did a quick Google search of a few terms to find something that illustrates this point, and I think I've found it.

Dan Savage, a gay sex columnist, wrote a diatribe about smoking helping to spread HIV by weakening the immune system (warning: language, particularly in the comments section).

What I like about this article is the 3rd comment, where a person known as "threebs" points out other risky behavior that one could criticize for spreading HIV. Naturally, Dan goes ballistic at the idea that the pleasures indigenous to his community should be put under the same scrutiny as those indigenous to the smoking community.

What happened to tolerance, Dan?

That is all.

Funding for Paul going Up this Quarter?

That's the case according to this article. This sounds like good news, although there are no numbers on funding there to back it up.

On the other hand, it does mention his large number (36,000) of meetup groups. It would be interesting to see a campaign that rises from the bottom up rather than coming from the top down.

That is all.

Steve Chapman on Giuliani

Interesting.

Thanx and a tip o' the ht to AntiWar.Com.

That is all.

Brave New World Watch

This will soon be my new blog of the week this will be the first time in more than a year that I have a new one.

That is all.

Immigration and Inequality

This post on TPMCafe and the New York times article it is based on both neatly manage to miss the likely most important cause of our growing income inequality and our lowered average incomes: the immigration of poor people to the U.S.

Between 2000 and 2005, lots of new immigrants came to the U.S., disproportionately those of lower incomes. This is going to skew the statistics on average income even if no one lost any income.

To do a study like this fairly, either everyone who immigrated to our emigrated from the U.S. during those time periods needs to be removed from the statistics, or their incomes in the other country need to be included.

That is all.

The Seven Soldiers

While these seven soldiers denying that the surge is working are an interesting case, I do not think it is wise to accept their statements at face value immediately, any more than I take the word of someone who says how smoothly the war is going and how much the Iraqis like us.

If I have a little more time, I'll try to write down some more thoughts and a deeper analysis.

That is all.

But We Trust Our Propaganda

Jonathan Finer's editorial on Iraq visits by officials (Thanx and a tip o' the hat to Daniel Larison) reminds me of the dismissive attitude taken by many pro-warriors when Sean Penn wanted "to investigate the war for himself" and went to Iraq.

Yet we are somehow supposed to believe that when our country is in Iraq and when our Iraqi friends are in the goverenment, somehow we will be getting the unvarnished truth, without the facts being manipulated to serve the goals of the administration.

That these same people are now chiding people such as James Webb for not knowing what is going on because he has not visited Iraq personally is too much to bear.

That is all.

AntiWar.Com

While I disagree with Wendy mcElroy's anti-Ron Paul sentiment in this post (continuing a recent trend of my blogposts being defenses of Ron Paul), she is right about Antiwar.Com. It needs our help.

I've just donated $100.00, and I encourage all my readers to do the same.

That is all.

On Hiroshima

I do think that the information discussed in this post puts a much more positive light on Hiroshima.

On the other hand, this does not answer the question as to whether negotiating a surrender by the Japanese (rather than demanding an unconditional surrender) would have allowed Hiroshima to be avoided, which in the end is I think the great moral question and the one that has the most relevance to how we should conduct future foreign policy. (This is really the big question of Hiroshima, after all, not so much whether or not to beat our chests and wail over the Japanese civilians we killed, but to question what lessons we should learn for the future).

That is all.

The Draft

This is an interesting article detailing the draft issue(Thanx and a tip o' the hat to Antiwar.com).

All assurances about how much more effecdtive an all-volunteer military is are really moot if we need a bigger military than we can obtain voluntarily. No one who thinks a draft is coming thinks so because Bush or military has given indications of wanting a draft, they think it because of the enormous pressures that are currently being put on our military.

Stories of meeting recruitment quotas are also meaningless, because with 15-month deployments and 12-month rests, it is obvious that if we are meeting the quotas, they are much too small for the current demands that we are putting on our military.

We need to either expand the military or else reduce its duties. Do't get me wrong, I am not calling for an increase in the size of the military; however, I do think that those who support the war ought to be pushing for such an increase; because I think that they need to confront the public with the true costs of our current policy.

That is all.

Desperation

The traditional pro-war storyline to put out after incidents like these is that the terrorists are trying to make a disruption before the big report on Iraq (this time, the Petraeus Report), with the implication that we are winning but that they are going to get enough propaganda to offset it.

The implication is always that the terroorists are losing, but that they can make one last show of might in order to discourage us.

The problem with this storyline is that they have done this several times. Eventually, one has to admit that if they still have the ability to pull these things off, then pehaps they are not losing. This can't just be a lucky break or a last-ditch effort every time.

That is all.

Question about Wendy McElroy

More on Ron Paul:

And PLEASE don't give me the f*cking line that he believes this matter should be left to states as though that position is some sort of benign argument. States' rights or perogatives do not exist any more than federal rights and perogatives exist; only individuals have rights. What exists is my body and my right to everything that is beneath my own skin. I am not such a blithering idiot as to believe that a politician who wants a smaller government (a local or state government) to absolutely negate my self-ownership is a benign friend while someone who wants a larger government to do so is my vicious enemy. Both are morally equal as enemies, both are politically equal as dangers.

Is she saying that she objects to the fact that Paul wants the states to restrict abortion, or is she saying she objects to the idea that the federal government should not prohibit the states from restricting abortion (that is, she thinks it is legitimate to use a more global level of governemnt to restrict a more local level)? I will agree that while Paul's stated position (that the ferderal government should leave it to the states) is substantively the same as Harry Browne's, what they think that the states should do (Browne wanted, as far as I can tell, the states not to regulate abortion, although he didn't think that the federal government was the proper vehicle to prevent them, while Paul pretty clearly wants the states to outlaw at least most abortions) is obviously different. (I'm not dealing with the question of Paul's consistency on federal regulation of abortion here because it was not the issue brought up in Wendy's post).

So does she support the federal government tying states' hands on abortion, or does she simply disagree with Paul's idea of what he would like to see come next?

That is all.

Ron Paul and Good Timing

If there was ever a time, it is now.

Thanx and a tip o' the hat to the Lew Rockwell blog. (I'm not going to go back and see if I can find the specific post right now, though).

That is all.

Much a I Have No Use for Daily Kos...

...I gotta love this illustration.

What's that you say? Why do I read Daily Kos? I don't. But I caught a glimpse of this picture while watching a news channel (I think it was Fox) talk about Kos, and I had to get on to link to the picture.

That is all.

More on Wendy McElroy and Ron Paul

In the interests of giving time to the Paul skeptics, here is another post by Wendy McElroy, detailing an anti-Paul (or at least skeptical of Paul) email that she had received.

Her correspondent raises some good points about Paul from a purist standpoint, (together with some that I think are based on mistaken assumptions).

In any case, I'm still voting for him myself.

Reasons:

(1) I am not a libertarian when it comes to immigration and I am just as happy for Paul not to be libertarian on the issue as well.

(2) On the declaration of war - it was always my understanding that Paul's goal was less to get Congress to declare war because he would have supported a declared war than to force Congress to take an explicit position on the war. In this article he made it very clear that he was anticipating a "no" vote if Congress were to vote on declaring war. In other words, he was challegning the pro-warriors to commit themselves constitutionally. I will admit that he doesn't clearly say this in the speech linked to by McElroy's email corrspondent.

(3) I don't think Paul was calling gays a social problem as much as the question of whether or not to recognize marriage being a social problem, in the sense of a controversy that needs to be resolved. Having said that, I do not think that homosexuality is a net benefit to society nor do I think that the recent moves toward normalizing it socially are good. (If I were in control, society would sort of view it as a private vice or peculiarity, people would be more or less discreet in public, but harassing or picking on people for their sexuality would be condemned as boorish, rude behavior [and in cases where the law comes in to play to protect people from harassment and assault, these laws would be as vigorously enforced for those harassing gays as for those harassing anyone else).

(4) I don't know enough about Paul's absence for the FISA/Wiretap bill to comment.

(5) On the healthcare issue, I do not see his YouTube video as particularly offensive. I do see problems with "health savings accounts" as they would be managed under a governmental system, but they would be a lot better than what we have now. As for him intimating "that he agrees with Bush on health care," I think it is more accurate to say that he agrees solely on the issue of medical savings accounts (2:40-2:50 minutes in). The correspondent is explicitly mistaken in his assertion that "[Paul] says he doesn't want to cut the deficit." What Paul actually said is (3:35-3:50 minutes in) "I would tide people over by literally saving a lot of money from these overseas expenditures, enough to even cut the deficit, and at the same time not put people out on the streets." So he is in favor of cutting the deficit.

Why We Like Ron Paul

Watch his Iowa Straw Poll Speech.

By the way, that's a "Texas Longhorns'" symbol, not a "devil" symbol he makes at the beginning.

That is all.

CNBC on the War Ron Paul Wants to Fight

Against the Federal Reserve.

That is all.

HKtSNatGEfM

This acronym refers to a certain type of person, attitude, or statement about Rudy Giuliani that says something along the lines of "Sure, he's a liberal/phianderer/louse who doesn't agree with social conservatives anything, but he'll be tough on terror."

This doesn't necessarily mean anything about actually preventing terrorism, as Lawrence Auster points out, but rather refers to the fact that he will likely carry the neoconservative goal for empire even farther than Bush, as evidenced by his choice for senior foreign policy advisor. So they support him out of a believe that he will teach "those damn Muslims" a lesson by bombing more of them into oblivion and making "The Norman Conquest" Podhoretz's dreams come true.

More simply, what I always translate this attitude into is this:

"Who cares? He'll Kill the Sand-N*****s and that's Good Enough for Me!"

That is all.

Iraqis Making Their Own Weapons

Scott Horton compiles the evidence that it is not, in fact, all orchestrated by Iran.

That is all.

War Lies

Glenn Greenwald gets to some of the truth behind the O'Hanlon/Pollak "fraud".

It's Kenneth Joseph all over again.

Thanx and tip o' the hat to Mona at Unqualified Offerings.

That is all.

On Ol' Sully and "Christianism"

Reading posts like this or this by Andrew Sullivan tend to make his statements concerning "Christianism" risible.

It is obvious from the context that he considers any Christian who actually believes the Bible to be a "Christianist," one who perverts Christianity into his own political philosophy, whereas authentic Christianity, in Sullivan's mind, is apparently that which okays whatever his "personal experiences" tell him is okay.

I am less bothered by his "buffet approach" to Christian doctrine than by his constant desire to demonize those as "Christianists" who do not take his approach (or at least who try not to, we are all I think guilty of ignoring passages that put demands on us that we do not like).

This also relates to the term "Islamist," which one in the end could define as "a Muslim who actually believes in a straightforward interpretation of Islam."

The overall goal here seems to be to deny to each faith the truth of what it is, to warp the belief system into something that makes secualr moderns comfortable, and then to demonize those who have not seclarized into something other than true adherents of the creed that they follow.

That is all.

Unintended Consequences

They apply as much to laws regarding domestic abuse as to any other law. Perhaps mandatory arrest was not the best way to deal with the problem.

Thanx and a tip o' the hat to Feministe.

That is all.

Wesley Pruden is not Wesley Prudent

An interesting article on "progress" in Iraq.

My thoughts:

I find referring to pulling out of Iraq as "surrender" to be rather base propaganda. We would not be declaring that we could not "win" in the sense of crushing those in Iraq with whom we are fighting, nor would be be giving up our country to them. We would just be declaring that trying to create a client state or a democracy in Iraq is not worth the cost. As Justin Raimondo said:

The American people are not "defeatists" on Iraq: they realize that we could, if we wanted, station a million-man Army in Iraq, change the rules of engagement to permit much more "collateral damage" (i.e., war crimes), and pour half the Treasury into Bill Kristol's grand scheme to remake the Middle East. But you know what? They don't think it's worth it.

Pruden also only gets hald of the point in this statement:

Americans are fed up with the Iraq war not because they think resisting jihad is wrong, but because they think the leaders at the top may not necessarily be serious about winning without apology.


This is another Diana West moment, where he not so subtlely suggests that we just start killing those darn ragheads everywhere we find them in Iraq. Well, yes, a lot of Americans probably would love it if the government decided to go the genocide route. But there are a lot of others who just don't see Iraq as being central to our fighting against jihad. Very few people are saying "we must allow the terrorists to grow and take over the world." Most people just don't see fighting in Iraq as being especially helpful to defeating jihadists.

The rest of the article includes some interesting points, including Democrats who actually do seem to fear good news from Iraq (obviously, if the war goes well, it will be bad politically for those who opposed it and good for those who supported it). However, he also seems to place inordinate trust in anyone who claimsthings are going well and seems to reject the possibility of any pro-war bias by General Petraeus or by the Brookings Institute (although mercifully he did not imply that the two were antiwarriors forced to change their mind by the situation on the gournd, as so many columnists have either cluelessly or dishonestly done).

I do grate, however, at his implication that anything other than a willingness to do whatever it takes to achieve victory is disloyal, or that one cannot be patriotic and want to withdraw for prudent, if incorrect (in his opinion) reasons:

A loyal opposition could persuasively argue that the president erred in trying to do too much with too little, forgetting, as generals and presidents often do, that wars can't be fought on the cheap with airplanes and diplomats.

Also, let us remember that we have been hearing about how successful things were goiong in Iraq since the war started. Pardon me if some of us are skeptical now.

That is all.

Paul and New Hampshire

Could he win? What would happen?

Thanx and a tip o' the hat the The LewRockwell blog.

That is all.

Ron Paul and Partial Birth Abortion

This is the statement Ron Paul made back in 2003 concerning his vote in favor of the Partial Birth Abortion Ban.

I will try to analyze this in context with other statements he has made in a future post, but tonight it is Friday and I am too tired to do so. For now, let me say that, as far as I know, the only persons criticizing Paul's position on abortion who specifically referred to his votes on a federal ban are Wendy McElroy and one of her readers who brought the issue to her attention (I'll put up the links later). Most of the other libertarians have seemed to indicate that his opposition to Roe v. Wade was enough, making this article accurate for most cases.

(In any case, while this vote would not appear to be in keeping with Paul's general strict constructionism, I am not going to stop supporting him for occasional lapses of principle, of which there are not that many, in my opinion).

That is all.

Interesting Thoughts on Ron Paul

Here.

That is all.

TomDispatch on the Surge

The other side (as opposed to that of O'Hanlon and Pollak).

I also find the implications that the "good news" reports come from those who are looking at Potemkin villages to be interesting.

That is all.

That About Sums it Up

The American people are not "defeatists" on Iraq: they realize that we could, if we wanted, station a million-man Army in Iraq, change the rules of engagement to permit much more "collateral damage" (i.e., war crimes), and pour half the Treasury into Bill Kristol's grand scheme to remake the Middle East. But you know what? They don't think it's worth it.

-Justin Raimondo

That is all.

McCarthy is at it Again

Once again, Andrew C. McCarthy attacks the notion that the Constitution limits the President's powers. Indeed, only the opther branches of government can overstep their authority.

While he distracts people from the larger issue later in the article by talking about foreign-to-foreign communications (which I agree the President needs no warrant to intercept), in the first half of the article he makes clear that he believes that merely by invoking "national security," or a "foreign threat," the President has the unquestioned authority to spy on anyone at any time.

Why does anyone publish this clown?

That is all.

"Micromanaging the War"

If there is any aspect of this war that is a mess, it is the militarily stifling mess created by the micro-managing politicians who think they know something about warfighting and the classic principles of war
-W. Thomas Smith Jr.

This phrase apparently refers to doing anything other than bowing before the Great God Dubya and letting him do whatever he wants.

That is all.

Scott Adams, GO TO HELL

Or to Mexico, if you think that Mexicans are so much better than us.

Thanx and a tip o' the hat to VDARE.

That is all.

More on the Lies About O'Hanlon and Pollack

Here.

Thanx and a tip o' the hat to Brad at Wendy McElroy.com.

I still like 'em, even though I disagree vehemently on the immigration issue.

That is all.

Wendy McElroy on Ron Paul and Immigration

Listen, I like her, and I respect her decision to oppose Ron Paul, but on immigration she either doesn't think or is one of those "let justice be done, though the world be destroyed" types.

Read this:

Immigration is another issue. Perfect world is one where state welfare doesn't exist. But it does exist. So until one violation of rights is erased (welfare) Paul supports another violation of rights (immigration controls). A measure that is good is abandoned because it is not perfect.

Translation: allowing millions of people into our country who will use our welfare system, and who will eventually get citizenship status and then vote to expand the welfare system, is more libertarian than preventing these people to come until we can get the welfare system revoked. The idea that somehow we are to destory the welfare state while importing more people who will use it and support its expansion is stupid.

Those are the choices: restrict immigration or let the welfare state expand erxponentially.

Wendy has chosen to let the welfare state expand exponentially.

That is all.

Chuch Baldwin on Prophecy, Christianity, and America

Christians have a duty to stand up for what's right, not just for whoever's in power, says the pastor.
That is all.

Executive Privilege? It's a Lie.

Kevin R. C. Gutzman explains that this supposed Presidential power is not legitimate.

That is all.

Commander-in-Chief Versus Military Dictator

Mario Cuomo on the imperial presidency.

That is all.

War Lies

Ken Pollack and Michael O'Hanlon were never antiwar, as Glenn Greenwald points out here and here. They were always on the side agitating to keep us in Iraq. So all of the talk about how they were "war critics" who were convinced in spite of themselves that Iraq was winnable because of how wonderful things were going duing their trip is so much B.S..

That is all.

Ron Paul and Abortion

One thing I'm not certain I understand are the libertarians who look at Paul's pro-life stance on abortion as a reason not to support his candidacy.

Yes, he probably would favor laws restricting abortion, but only at the state level, and that's not the level of office he is running for. Yes, he would want to appoint Supreme Court justics who would overturn Roe v. Wade, because he believes that abortion should not be an issue to be decided federally, but then again that was also the position of Harry Browne, the 2000 Libertarian Party nominee for the presidency. (The major difference is that Browne did not want state-level regulation of abortion either, but he didn't think it was within the federal government's legitimate power to restrict a state from doing so).

For those who did not support Browne in 2000, that would make sense, but for people who supported Browne in 2000 to use abortion as an argument against supporting Paul suggests at least that they need to articulate why they differentiate the candidates.

That is all.

Raimondo on Paul

Here, here, and here.

That is all.

...And The Biggest White Lie Is

Leftists will be happy with anything less than the total eradication of white people.

That is all.

Voter Fraud and the U.S. Attorney Firings

Two things come to mind when reading this piece by John Fund:

(1) If the Bush attorney firings were due to the attorneys not pursuing legitimate cases of voter fraud (as opposed to charges being dreamt up out of thin air and the attorneys pressured to pull a Nifong, as the Democrats have implied), then the Bush administration ought to come out and make its case more forcefully. If it were to go on the offensive rather than try to cover everything up and not answer quetions, it could turn this thing around.

(2) I can't help but notice that no voter fraud involving non-citizens voting was mentioned. This could mean that this was not a big issue, or that Bush did not pursue such cases, or that the Wall Street Open Borders Journal doesn't want to talk about it.

That is all.

G.O.P. YouTube Debate - Who Will Come?

Reading the LewRockwell Blog and Sully, I came across some links about the upcoming G.O.P. Debate on September 17.

Apparently there is a good chance the Giuliani and Romeny won't participate. Only McCain and Paul have said definitely that they will.

Here are some articles on it:

GOP: YouTube too Scary for Us
Running Scared
Scared, Stampeding Elephants
More articles at PrezVid

That is all.

Absolutely the Best Book Series About 23rd-Century Biocyborg Wizards There Is...

Has anyone who reads my blog read The Passing of the Techno-Mages trilogy by Jeanne Cavelos? (It's a Babylon 5 tie-in, by the way). It's apparently very difficult now for people to get their hands on the second book, but I got all the books and read them all when they first came out.

Anyone else know the series? Anyone else want to discuss it with me?

That is all.

From the Health Care Front

Illegal immigration - a victimless crime?

That is all.

Third-Party Candidate Endorses a Republican - if He Can Get the Nomination

Steve Kubby endorses Ron Paul for President.

Thanx and a tip o' the hat to Tex MacRae and to Lew Rockwell blog.

That is all.

Crossover Appeal?

Alexander Cockburn on Ron Paul.

That is all.

Diana West Wants Us to Commit Genocide

Looking at her account of her talks with Arlen Specter that is my conclusion.

She certainly nowhere indicates that it would be unacceptable, and appears to look at any concern for Iraqi civilian casualties as to be a sign of being "impotent." note that she never sets a number of civilian casualties that would be too high for her.

As Lawrence Auster points out, the course of action she is promoting would ultimately mean wiping out the entire Sunni population of Iraq (and probably a lot of Shiite and maybe some Kurdish areas). But I suppose Ms. West thinks it makes me a wimp to be squeamish about killing ragheads.

That is all.

Productive Discussion with Mr. Carafano

At this post and its comments.

That is all.

LadyJade3 - Far More Impressive than Silly Crushes

I think that this simple video is far more interesting than the silly little song and dance routines by Obama and Hillary supporters.

Of course, if you must have music, try this - and it's far more compelling a video than some tart inserting herself digitally into his media appearances and cooing over him while making Lesbian jokes.

That is all.

Yes, Fatalities are Down in Iraq this Month

So far, 31 hostile and 12 non-hostile fatalities for July (for the entire coalition, not counting Iraqis) (or 57 hostile and 22 non-hostile fatalities for the month if we assume a steady fatality rate - actually, the numbers could be lower than that if the relatively low death rate of the past few days prevails).

This is down from the highs of the past three months, and if the predicted data is correct will be the lowest hostile death toll since July of last year.

On the other hand, July tends to be a lower fatality month compared to the ones surrounding it.

Nonetheless, this is good news, even though it is likely temporary.

That is all.

Revealing...

While I have no reason to believe that this video, supposedly of soldiers who served at Abu Ghraib, is genuine, I think it is interesting in that the people in this video clearly articulate the crude case for war.

By "crude case for war," I mean the sound-bite, bumper sticker arguments that most of thge warriors use, such as "Don't you realize that if we leave, they will follow us here?" (They?) or "They attacked us first," or "Will it take anoher September 11?"

All of these arguments for us staying the course in Iraq assume that our presence in Iraq is somehow preventing a terrorist attack, and that those who are fighting us in Iraq are largely people who want to follow us home rather than PO'd Iraqis who just want to get us out of their land.

In the end, it all boils down to

(1) The terrorists killed innocent Americans, so we have the right not to worry if we kill innocent Arabs
(2) A lot of Americans were killed by Arabs, so we need to retaliate by killing Arabs (not necessarily the Arabs who were behind the attack, any Arab country will do), and
(3) Anyone who identifies themselves as a Muslim is automatically a terrorists and can be treated as an enemy combatant.

One can make a coherent argument against withdrawing from Iraq. But too many simply conflate Iraqis and all Arabs with the 9/11 hijackers and Al Qaeda and then try to drum up support for the war by fearmongering on this basis (fight them over there so we won't fight them over here) or else a desire for racial vengeance (the people who casued September 11 were Arab Muslims, so attacking any Arab/Muslim country is legitimate retaliation.

This clip is valuable in that it explicitly states the premises that are in a lot of pro-war rhetoric.

That is all.

Some Links on WMDs

Here are some links suggesting that not everyone believed that Saddam had WMDs:

The Independent, Road to Surfdom, Harper's, Andrew Wilkie on Wikipedia, John Quiggin.

That is all.

Paul Craig Roberts Has Gone Batty

Okay, I agree with Lawrence Auster that Paul Craig Roberts has gone off the deep end.

While I would not put it above Bush and Cheney to lie us into a war with Iran, or to deliberately provoke Iran into striking our armed forces to justify war, I cannot see either of them staging a terrorist attack in order to get a chance to attack Iran.

I do think that VDARE would probably be better off dropping Roberts' column, particularly after he said that he would be willing to take in the entire population of Mexico if he could get rid of the neocons.

That is all.

Good News on CotP (Candidates Other than Paul)

Tom Tancredo, as the only GOP candidate to appear at the NAACP forum, has a chance to expose blacks to the immigration issue and to the anti-open borders position. Read about it here,
here, and here.

Huckabee suggests a non-socialist reason why France has better health statistics than we do. (Hint: Michael Moore is a part of the problem - a big fat part of the problem).

That is all.

Thoughts on Military Tribunals and Detentions

My recent post on this James Jay Carafano column brings to mind an interesting issue.

In defending the taking and holding of prisoners without a trial and in defending the attempts to prevent any judicial review of these detentions, there are two arguments that one can use.

(1) These defendants' rights are not being violated because the processes we have in place to deal with their guilt or innocence (e.g. military tribunals) constitute due process.

(2) Anyone accused or suspected of acts against the U.S. does not deserve due process.

What is interesting is that most of the arguments seem to take the second position.

Even Mr. Carafano took the second position in his column, and only defended the procedures we have in place as due process in his response on my comment board.

It seems to me that this is a curious way to argue, by eliding over the major issue until directly challanged.

That is all.

(UPDATED: Okay, Now Those are Fair Points) What Carafano Means: The Ragheads Have no Rights that Americans Are Bound to Respect

Updated: James Jay Carafano has responded in the comments. The points he makes are fair, in my opinion, and form a very legitimate argument. Nonetheless, his original column is still a bad one in that it doesn't address the issue of the proper way to determine guilt or innocence but simply assumes guilt in all cases. It really would be good if in future writings of this sort if the people arguing against civilian trials for terrorist suspects emphasized why they believe that military tribunals are a better system for trying these cases rather than simply eliding over the question of guilt or innocence.

That's essentially the point he is making here.

The thing that annoys me about all of this talk about whether or not terrorists have rights is htat he nowhere acknowledges the possibility that any of the people detained may not actually be guilty. From the arguments he uses, one would suppose that those who capture people are allowed to act as judge and jury.

And talking about POWs and how they do not have rights of habeas corpus, etc. is misleading, because the rules for POWs assume an actual conventional war with armies and a defined ending point. Referring to an attempt to stop such a nebulous force as "Islamic extremism" or "terrorism" as a war is in essence an excuse to suspend civil; liberties indefinitely, which is why looking at our fight against terrorism as a war rather than as law enforcement is so wrong-headed. Of course, the neocons will oudly bray that looking at this as law enforcement is wrong and was a huge problem of the 1990s. But is creating in effect a permanent state of emergency any better?

Even the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are no longer wars in the conventional sense, and so using the old POW rules allowing detention for the duration no longer apply.

Do not get me wrong, unlawful combatants ought ot be punished. But we need to make certain that they are unlawful combatants first, which means in essence that we need to try them.

Also, statements that unlawful combatants do not deserve Geneva protections or the protection of their rights is also fallacious, because it begs the question of whether the people on trial are guilty. This is particularly true when one makes a big deal about how the combatants dress to blend in with civilians and so forfeit their rights. The obvious point missed here is what if the people you captured actually were innocent civilians?

That is all.

Andrew McCarthy is Insane

Based on a message by Zawahiri, McCarthy has concluded that none of the sectarian violence in Iraq stems from internal problems.

He is not, as Lawrence Auster once called him, "the resident adult at National Review" (which essentially translates to "he is willing to say that Islam is bad)" He is delusional.

First of all, even if Al Qaeda fomented the sectarian fighting, this would be hard to do if there were not already sectarian tensions.

Secondly, after the events during Saddam's reign, the idea that there would naturally be no Sunni-Shia carnage without outside interference is MIND-NUMBINGLY STUPID.

Thirdly, even if Al Qaeda sparked the violence, only an idiot would think it not self-sustaining.

Fourthly, it is possible that the messages do no more than indicate that Zawahiri and Zarqawi knew that a civil war was going to happen (anyone familiar with the ethnic divisions of Iraq and who was honest worried about this) and wanted to take credit for it.

That is all.

Commander-in-Chief, NOT Military Dictator

Apparently James Jay Carafano is too stupid to know the difference.

For starters, it would fundamentally alter how America fights wars. The Constitution pegs the president, and only the president, as our nation’s commander-in-chief. Decisions on how we fight our wars — both in terms of grand strategy and in the details concerning troop deployments and rotation schedules — are to be made in the Oval Office, not under the Capitol dome.

Plus, statements like this:

In April, Defense Secretary Gates told reporters that, if he hadn’t been able to extend the standard tour length to 15 months, he would have been forced to send five Army brigades to Iraq before their year at home was up. The 15-month tour length, he said, was a fairer approach, one in which all soldiers share an equal burden.

reveal the truth that Jim Webb's bill was trying to address. We cannot fight the current war with the current army. If we are going to fight it, we need a a bigger army. Otherwise, we need to go home.

That is all.

Libertilitarianism

Dinesh D'Souza attacks Ron Paul for not being a true libertarian because he does not support the Iraq War:

So here is question for Ron Paul: shouldn't the United States do what it can to promote liberty worldwide? I posed this question and Paul answered that America should be an example of liberty and not try to impose freedom by force. Alas, where freedom has come to countries it has usually come by force.

This reminds me of a post a long time ago that I read (I forget where) where someone angry at the libertarian dissent on the Iraq War, asserted that the goal of libertarianism ought not to be the avoidance of initiating force, but the promotion of liberty.

Assuming that the absence of the initiation of force defines liberty, I think that this position could be best described as "libertilitarianism" (a portmanteua of libertarianism and utilitarianism). As opposed to the libertarian principle that one should not initiate force, the libertilitarian believes that the goal should be to reduce the initiation of force as much as possible with the belief that it is a fair tradeoff to initiate force if in doing so there is a corresponding decrease in the initiation of force.

Of course, like all utilitarian philosophies, there is not only the assumption that the ends justify the means, but the assumption that the desried ends equal the actually achieved ends. That is, that one can easily quantify liberty so as to make tradeoffs calculable ahead of time.

That is all.

Falling for Fallacies

Over at View From the Right, commenter Tom S. really displays his ignorance, and his ability to fall for neocon fallacies. Assuming that he is "tommy," he also makes an ass of himself at Rnadall Parker's site.

Now, I agree with both Lawrence Auster and Randall Parker that it would be folly to let Iraqi refugees come into the U.S. We'd be inundated with unassimilable Arabs of various stripes (and perhaps a few Kurds) who would likely bring a lot of their resentments and rivalries with them.

But Tom, however, needs to get in little digs to emphasize how pure U.S. motives were and how much the entire problem was in the Iraqis for not living up to our goodness.

The Iraqis had every chance to make a better life for themselves. We've spent billions on them. All the major factions in Iraq have chosen to fight with one another.

The U.S. did not destroy Iraq, the Iraqis did. The U.S. got rid of a monsterous tyrant, poured billions of dollars of aid into the country, and gave the Iraqi people every opportunity to build a peaceful, prosperous society--and they decided that their ancient ethnic and religious hatreds came first, and proceeded to rip their "country" to pieces.

Apparently we had no obligation to learn the culture of the country we were invading and to base our plans on who the Iraqis actually were. No, we should assume that they are New Hampshire-ites, and then when they're not, put all the blame for our ignorance and the resulting mishandling on them for not being whom we wanted them to be.

Then he hits us with this gem:

Besides, haven't people like Bacevich been telling us that if we pull out of Iraq, Al Quaeda WON'T take over? If this is true, why should there be any refugees at all?

WHAT THE HELL?

IS THIS GUY STUPID ENOUGH TO THINK THAT AL QAEDA IS THE ONLY FORCE CAPABLE OF MAKING IRAQIS LIVES MISERABLE?

Is he stupid enough to think that for there to be a threat to Iraqis that would compel them to leave there would necessarily need to be somethign that would threaten the U.S.? Or does he just lump in all Muslims who behave badly as part of Al Qaeda?

Some assertions are so stupid that they need to be answered. These were two of them.

That is all.