Earlier post.

video

It’s today that the workmen come to drill a hole in the rock ledge of the mountaintop for that satellite Internet antenna.

We did visit the new house yesterday. It’s perched on the first ridge of the Appalachians. The mountaintop is quite narrow, and one can see into both Virginia and West Virginia even from the first floor of the house. It was cold up there. We are going to get snowed in for sure this winter.

The previous owners left us a John Deere lawn tractor with a snow plow attachment. But there are two problems: I have no idea how to attach it, and I can see no way to get that tractor with plow attached through either of two fence gates into the driveway to plow.

Can rumors that Nancy Pelosi intends to appoint Rep. Alcee Hastings to the Chairmanship of the House Intelligence Committee possibly be correct?

Anticipating the conclusions of the report of the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Survey Group, Daniel Henniger identifies the likely significance of that “new direction.”

after routing Saddam’s army in the south, President George H.W. Bush urged the Iraqi generals and people to “take matters into their own hands” against Saddam. Then on Feb. 27 came the White House order to Gen. Schwarzkopf to stand down and thus forgo the destruction of Saddam’s tank army. The Bush 41 team expected Saddam’s Baathist generals to finish him off and “stabilize” Iraq. That was realism. The secretary of state was Jim Baker and the deputy national security advisor to Brent Scowcroft was Robert Gates. Shortly, Saddam’s systematic, tank-led slaughter began of the Shiites in the south and Kurds in the north. In April, U.N. Resolution 688 said the attacks “threaten international peace and security in the region.” Mr. Gates acknowledged the miscalculation in the New Yorker last year.

The opinion of the American people matters, and this week’s election reflected fatigue with Iraq. We may be seeking a “way out,” but if the Iraq Survey Group proposes a solution with the merest whiff of selling out Iraq’s popularly elected Shiites, expect crudely realistic leaders in Russia, China, Nigeria, Venezuela, Bolivia, Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere to conclude they too can downgrade, or obliterate, their own U.S.-oriented democratic groups. Then we can roll back the real end to notions of democratic possibility to the end of World War II. And with Democratic Party assent.

Gateway Pundit looks at the comparative cost of US efforts in Iraq versus other American wars, and asks in the light of the results of the recent election

Warrior or Surrender Monkey?... When does a nation cross that invisible line?

When is it the right time wave the white flag?

How much sacrifice is too much sacrifice?

We have arrived in Virginia, but are currently camped out at a hotel near Washington, awaiting the arrival of the movers later this week. Blogging will be sparse for a few days, as the hotel wireless connection is not entirely reliable, and there are many errands.

A work crew arrives tomorrow AM at our Blue Ridge house to drill a base in the ledge rock for our satellite Internet antenna.

On November 11, 1999 Terry Kelly was in a Shoppers Drug Mart store in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. At 10:55 AM an announcement came over the store’s PA asking customers who would still be on the premises at 11:00 AM to give two minutes of silence in respect to the veterans who have sacrificed so much for us. When eleven o’clock arrived on that day, an announcement was again made asking for the “two minutes of silence” to commence. All customers, with the exception of a man who was accompanied by his young child, showed their respect.

His indignation at the man’s lack of respect led Terry Kelly to compose and record this song.

video

—from last year—

WWI came to an end by an armistice arranged to occur at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918. The date and time, selected at a point in history when mens’ memories ran much longer, represented a compliment to St. Martin, patron saint of soldiers, and thus a tribute to the fighting men of both sides. The feast day of St. Martin, the Martinmas, had been for centuries a major landmark in the European calendar, a date on which leases expired, rents came due; and represented, in Northern Europe, a seasonal turning point after which cold weather and snow might be normally expected.

It fell about the Martinmas-time, when the snow lay on the borders…

From Robert Chambers, The Book of Days, 1869:

St. Martin, the son of a Roman military tribune, was born at Sabaria, in Hungary, about 316. From his earliest infancy, he was remarkable for mildness of disposition; yet he was obliged to become a soldier, a profession most uncongenial to his natural character. After several years’ service, he retired into solitude, from whence he was withdrawn, by being elected bishop of Tours, in the year 374.

The zeal and piety he displayed in this office were most exemplary. He converted the whole of his diocese to Christianity, overthrowing the ancient pagan temples, and erecting churches in their stead. From the great success of his pious endeavours, Martin has been styled the Apostle of the Gauls; and, being the first confessor to whom the Latin Church offered public prayers, he is distinguished as the father of that church. In remembrance of his original profession, he is also frequently denominated the Soldier Saint.

The principal legend, connected with St. Martin, forms the subject of our illustration, which represents the saint, when a soldier, dividing his cloak with a poor naked beggar, whom he found perishing with cold at the gate of Amiens. This cloak, being most miraculously preserved, long formed one of the holiest and most valued relics of France; when war was declared, it was carried before the French monarchs, as a sacred banner, and never failed to assure a certain victory. The oratory in which this cloak or cape—in French, chape—was preserved, acquired, in consequence, the name of chapelle, the person intrusted with its care being termed chapelain: and thus, according to Collin de Plancy, our English words chapel and chaplain are derived. The canons of St. Martin of Tours and St. Gratian had a lawsuit, for sixty years, about a sleeve of this cloak, each claiming it as their property. The Count Larochefoucalt, at last, put an end to the proceedings, by sacrilegiously committing the contested relic to the flames.

Another legend of St. Martin is connected with one of those literary curiosities termed a palindrome. Martin, having occasion to visit Rome, set out to perform the journey thither on foot. Satan, meeting him on the way, taunted the holy man for not using a conveyance more suitable to a bishop. In an instant the saint changed the Old Serpent into a mule, and jumping on its back, trotted comfortably along. Whenever the transformed demon slackened pace, Martin, by making the sign of the cross, urged it to full speed. At last, Satan utterly defeated, exclaimed:

Signa, te Signa: temere me tangis et angis:
Roma tibi subito motibus ibit amor.’

In English—

‘Cross, cross thyself: thou plaguest and vexest me without necessity;
for, owing to my exertions, thou wilt soon reach Rome, the object of thy wishes.’

The singularity of this distich, consists in its being palindromical—that is, the same, whether read backwards or forwards. Angis, the last word of the first line, when read backwards, forming signet, and the other words admitting of being reversed, in a similar manner.

The festival of St. Martin, happening at that season when the new wines of the year are drawn from the lees and tasted, when cattle are killed for winter food, and fat geese are in their prime, is held as a feast-day over most parts of Christendom. On the ancient clog almanacs, the day is marked by the figure of a goose; our bird of Michaelmas being, on the continent, sacrificed at Martinmas. In Scotland and the north of England, a fat ox is called a mart, clearly from Martinmas, the usual time when beeves are killed for winter use. In ‘Tusser’s Husbandry, we read:

When Easter comes, who knows not then,
That veal and bacon is the man?
And Martilmass beef doth bear good tack,
When country folic do dainties lack.’

Barnaby Googe’s translation of Neogeorgus, shews us how Martinmas was kept in Germany, towards the latter part of the fifteenth century

‘To belly chear, yet once again,

Doth Martin more incline,
Whom all the people worshippeth With roasted geese and wine.
Both all the day long, and the night, Now each man open makes
His vessels all, and of the must, Oft times, the last he takes,
Which holy Martin afterwards Alloweth to be wine,
Therefore they him, unto the skies, Extol with praise divine.’

A genial saint, like Martin, might naturally be expected to become popular in England; and there are no less than seven churches in London and Westminster, alone, dedicated to him. There is certainly more than a resemblance between the Vinalia of the Romans, and the Martinalia of the medieval period. Indeed, an old ecclesiastical calendar, quoted by Brand, expressly states under 11th November: ‘The Vinalia, a feast of the ancients, removed to this day. Bacchus in the figure of Martin.’ And thus, probably, it happened, that the beggars were taken from St. Martin, and placed under the protection of St. Giles; while the former became the patron saint of publicans, tavern-keepers, and other ‘dispensers of good eating and drinking. In the hall of the Vintners’ Company of London, paintings and statues of St. Martin and Bacchus reign amicably together side by side.

On the inauguration, as lord mayor, of Sir Samuel Dashwood, an honoured vintner, in 1702, the company had a grand processional pageant, the most conspicuous figure in which was their patron saint, Martin, arrayed, cap-Ã -pie, in a magnificent suit of polished armour; wearing a costly scarlet cloak, and mounted on a richly plumed and caparisoned white charger: two esquires, in rich liveries, walking at each side. Twenty satyrs danced before him, beating tambours, and preceded by ten halberdiers, with rural music. Ten Roman lictors, wearing silver helmets, and carrying axes and fasces, gave an air of classical dignity to the procession, and, with the satyrs, sustained the bacchanalian idea of the affair.

A multitude of beggars, ‘howling most lamentably,’ followed the warlike saint, till the procession stopped in St. Paul’s Churchyard. Then Martin, or his representative at least, drawing his sword, cut his rich scarlet cloak in many pieces, which he distributed among the beggars. This ceremony being duly and gravely performed, the lamentable howlings ceased, and the procession resumed its course to Guildhall, where Queen Anne graciously condescended to dine with the new lord mayor.

Richard Fernandez states the unpalatable truth.

Responsible redeployment… That’s just a dishonest word for the process of just giving the Iraqis notice, providing some funding and security support and getting the hell out of Dodge. Like we did in Vietnam. That lasted nearly three whole years after responsible redeployment. In many ways its more honest to leave some money on the night table, slip on your pants and push the car down the road before starting it so she doesn’t wake up. Let her dream a little longer.

A generative anthropologist (Eric Gans?) keyboards a deserved eulogy for what its author describes as “a courageous, novel, and, of course, risky strategy.”

We have just witnessed an epic battle between a courageous, novel, and, of course, risky strategy for transforming the very conditions that have made us powerless against victimary Islamist blackmail, on the one hand, and the forces of continuity with pre-9/11 policies (I would say “illusions,” but part of my argument here will be in favor of stepping back from these more immediate polemical stances), in particular foreign policy realism and transnational progressivism, the political form of White Guilt, on the other. The forces of continuity have won…

Read the whole thing.

Hat tip to truepeers.

Jack Palance as Jack Wilson in Shane (1953)

Jack Palance was the son of an immigrant Ukrainian miner, born Volodymyr Palanyuk (Ðu2019олодимиÑu20ac Ðu0178аланÑu017dк) in the coal patch of Lattimer Mines (the site of the famous Lattimer Massacre of 1897).

He began his career as a professional heavyweight boxer, fighting as “Jack Brazzo.” He won 15 fights, 12 by knockout before losing a 4th round decision to Joe Baksi on Dec. 17, 1940.

Upon the outbreak of WWII, he enlisted in the Army Air Force. He sustained serious burns, and required facial reconstruction, after the B-24 bomber he was piloting crashed off the coast of California. Some of his distinctive leathery appearance was attributed to the surgery.

He graduated from Stanford University in 1947 with an AB in Drama. He survived as an aspiring actor via the usual sorts of short-term jobs as photographer’s model, lifeguard, and short-order cook.

He got his big break in 1947, when he was hired as Marlon Brando’s understudy for the Broadway production of A Streetcar Named Desire. The NNBD article reports that

Brando invited Palance to work out with him in the theater’s basement. The actors were pounding a punching bag when Palance missed the bag and splattered Brando’s nose. Brando was taken to a hospital for medical attention, while Palance took the stage in the lead, and his performance drew a contract offer from 20th Century Fox. Palance always maintained that making his own “big break” was an accident.

He appeared in more than 100 films. He received an Emmy award in 1957 for Playhouse 90’s production of Requiem for a Heavyweight. He won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and the Golden Globe in 1992 for City Slickers. Upon receiving his Oscar, at the age of 72, he performed a number of one-handed pushups to demonstrate his fitness.

He is most commonly remembered for his role as the villainous gunfighter Jack Wilson in Shane, but sophisticated critics are more likely to mention his performance as film producer Jeremy Prokosch in Jean-Luc Godard’s Le Mépris (Contempt – 1963).

Variety reports his death at age 87.

Wikipedia

Film Tribute site.

IMdb

Palance and Bardot in Godard’s Contempt

We have left our California house, and are currently camped at a hotel, preparing to depart very early tomorrow for Virginia. I will be away from my keyboard after this evening until late tomorrow.

She’s not exactly a hard-core Republican partisan, but Ann Althouse writes:

I’m depressed about the election…

It’s the failure of Americans to support the war. It’s the folding and crumpling because things didn’t go well enough and the way we conspicuously displayed that to our enemies. They’re going to use that information…

What I’m concerned about is national security and, consequently, the way the election was fought and is being interpreted. I’m upset because I think we have sent a terrible message to our enemies: Just hang on long enough and continue to inflict some damage, and the Americans will lose heart and give up. You barely need anything at all. You might not be able to hijack a plane with a box cutter anymore, but you can take back a country—a country we conquered with overwhelming military power—merely by mercilessly and endlessly setting off small bombs in your own town day after day.

How much harder it becomes ever to fight and win a war again. Only pacifists and isolationists should feel good about the way this election was won.

Who can blame her?

The London Times reports that some Americans are not rejoicing over Donald Rumsfeld’s departure.

Half of America and the upper echelons of the US military may be cheering Donald Rumsfeld’s resignation from the post of Defence Secretary, but there was no rejoicing yesterday among those most directly affected by his decisions: the frontline soldiers in Iraq.
Troops expressed little pleasure at the departure of the man responsible for their protracted deployment to a hostile country where 2,839 of their comrades have died.

Indeed, some members of the 101st Airborne Division and other troops approached by The Times as they prepared to fly home from Baghdad airport yesterday expressed concern that Robert Gates, Mr Rumsfeld’s successor, and the Democrat-controlled Congress, might seek to wind down their mission before it was finished.

Mr Rumsfeld “made decisions, he stuck with them and he did what he thought was right, whether people agreed with it, liked it, or not”, Staff Sergeant Frank Notaro said. He insisted that Iraq was better off now than before the war.

Staff Sergeant Michael Howard said: “It’s a blow to the military. He was a good Secretary of Defence. He kept us focused. He kept the leaders focused. It’s going to be hard to fill his shoes.”

Hat tip to Captain Ed.

Member of the Fleet Marine Force, c. 1940

United States Marine Corps founded at Tun Tavern, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on November 10, 1775.

Jeff Babbin wrote a nice tribute:

Those of us who grew up in the 1950s knew them as a group apart. All my friends’ fathers had served in World War 2, and they all had the same odd reaction to my father. He never shouted or growled (well, not that often) but when the veteran of Guadalcanal, Tarawa and Iwo Jima spoke, his peers maintained a respectful silence. He was a Marine, and nothing trumped that credential.

Hat tip to Frank Dobbs.

VA Voter contends:

Humans originally existed as members of small bands of nomadic hunters/gatherers. They lived on deer in the mountains during the summer and would go to the coast and live on fish and lobster in the winter.

The two most important events in all history were the invention of beer and the invention of the wheel. The wheel was invented to get man to the beer. These were the foundation of modern civilization and together were the catalyst for the splitting of humanity into two distinct subgroups: Liberals and Conservatives.

Once beer was discovered, it required grain and that was the beginning of agriculture. Neither the glass bottle nor aluminum can were invented yet, so while our early human were sitting around waiting for them to be invented, they just stayed close to the brewery. That’s how villages were formed.

Some men spent their days tracking and killing animals to B-B-Q at night while they were drinking beer. This was the beginning of what is known as the Conservative movement.

Other men who were weaker and less skilled at hunting learned to live off the conservatives by showing up for the nightly B-B-Q’s and doing the sewing, fetching and hair dressing. This was the beginning of the Liberal movement. Some of these liberal men eventually evolved into women. The rest became known as girliemen.

Some noteworthy liberal achievements include the domestication of cats, the invention of group therapy and group hugs and the concept of Democratic voting to decide how to divide the meat and beer that conservatives provided.

Over the years conservatives came to be symbolized by the largest, most powerful land animal on earth, the elephant. Liberals are symbolized by the jackass.

Modern liberals like imported beer (with lime added), but most prefer white wine or imported bottled water. They eat raw fish but like their beef well done. Sushi, tofu, and French food are standard liberal fare.

Another interesting revolutionary side note: most of their women have higher testosterone levels than their men. Most social workers, personal injury attorneys, journalists, home interior designers, dreamers in Hollywood and group therapists are liberals. Liberals invented the designated hitter rule because it wasn’t fair to make the pitcher also bat.

Conservatives drink domestic beer. They eat red meat and still provide for their women. Conservatives are big-game hunters, rodeo cowboys, lumberjacks, construction workers, firemen, medical doctors, police officers, corporate executives, athletes, Marines, and generally anyone who works productively. Conservatives who own companies hire other conservatives who want to actually work for a living.

Liberals produce little or nothing. They like to govern the producers and decide what to do with the production. Liberals believe Europeans are more enlightened than Americans. That is why most of the liberals remained in Europe when conservatives were coming to America. They crept in after the Wild West was tamed and created a business of trying to get MORE for nothing.

Here ends today’s lesson in world history: It should be noted that a Liberal may have a momentary urge to angrily respond to the above before forwarding it.

A Conservative will simply laugh and be so convinced of the absolute truth of this history that it will be forwarded immediately to other true believers. And to more liberals just to piss them off.

The Times provides a typical story of fireworks misuse by an ordinary citizen illustrating precisely why we all need the nanny state to ban them in order to protect us from ourselves. After all, absolutely anyone might try this.

Victor Davis Hanson has some kind words.

Vaya Con Dios, Rummy!

Here is the record of Donald Rumsfeld. (1) Tried to take a top-heavy Pentagon and prepare it for the wars of the postmodern world, in which on a minute’s notice thousands of American soldiers, with air and sea support, would have to be sent to some god-awful place to fight some savagery—and then be trashed live on CNN for doing it; (2) less than a month after 9/11 he organized the retaliation against al Qaeda in the heart of primordial Afghanistan that removed the Taliban in 7 weeks, when we were all warned that the U.S., like the British and Russians of old, would fail; (3) oversaw the removal of Saddam in 3 weeks—after the 1991 Gulf War and the 12-years of 350,000 sorties in the no-fly-zones, and various bombing strikes, had failed. (4) Ah, you say, then there is the disastrous 3-year insurgency—too few troops, Iraqi army let go, underestimated “dead-enders” etc.?

But Rumsfeld knew that in a counterinsurgency (cf. Vietnam 1965-71) massive deployments only ensure complacency, breed dependency, and create resentment, and that, in contrast, training indigenous forces, ensuring political autonomy, and providing air and commando support (e.g., Vietnam circa 1972-4) is the only answer—although that is a long process that can work only if political support at home allows the military to finish the job (cf. the turn-of-the-century Philippines, and the British in Malaysia). He was a good man, and we were lucky to have him in our hour of need.

And Chris Lynch offers (an imaginary) interview:

ALR: Mr. Secretary – thank you so much for taking this time on what I’m sure is a difficult day. Can I ask if you are perhaps feeling a little bitter at the President right now?

Rummy: I always have time for my friends Chris. As far as feeling bitter towards the President – goodness no. I serve at the pleasure of the President and have offered my resignation a number of times. If truth be told – I’m a little bit in awe. I mean I don’t think I’ve seen such a fine piece of political Jujitsu in my whole time in public service.

ALR: Political Jujitsu? I’m sorry Mr. Secretary but I don’t follow you.

Rummy: Nobody saw this move coming yesterday. Nobody was prepared. It was a brilliant shifting of weight. Yesterday was supposed to be the Democrats big day. They were all going to wear new suits and dresses and give speeches congratulating themselves and talking about how they were going to fix the country. Instead all the news programs spent that time speaking about my resignation and today all the print media will be talking about me and my successor. The Democrats can’t even complain because they have been practically begging for my resignation. By the time this dies down – nobody will want to look at their new suits or pretty dresses and they sure won’t want to hear their flowery speeches because the time would have been well past that. The bonus is that the Main Stream Media doesn’t even see how they were used. Brilliant move by the President.

Read the whole thing.

A rejoinder from me to gloating democrats:

Bush was incompetent at PR. The GOP got infiltrated by garden variety pols posing as conservatives.

You guys control the MSM, and when that hurricane provided impressive visual images to hang the media’s propaganda on, they finally sucessfully nailed Bush, convincing the general public that the President had failed to employ his god/king powers to still the fury of the winds, make the waters recede, overcome spectacular local incompetence and corruption, and cause vehicles and airplanes to travel successfully instantly over flooded roads and through hurricane winds to the disaster site.

There was far too much Congressional inertia and scandal. The MSM lovingly counted up every US casualty day after day, and Al Qaeda agreeably timed a Fall offensive to capture Congress. The Republican Congress deserved to lose. But your side only won by filling up your candidate team with conservatives. This Congress lost. Conservatism did not lose. You guys elected a lot of abortion and gun control opponents. I’m not sure we don’t have a better chance of killing the death tax, and confirming right wing judges now than we did before.

True, Bush is now certainly a lame duck, and we have to fear a degringolade in Iraq, if the House moonbats kill military funding. But after that happens, the terrorist bombs will go off in cities, and then there will be fewer liberals. C’est la vie.

They’re loading the trucks. I still have a PC, and have not yet moved to a hotel. We fly east Saturday. When we arrive, we’ll be camping in a hotel for about a week while the moving vans cross the continent.

Bill Whittle is avenging our electoral misfortunes by torpedoing a number of the left’s favorite talking points.

Part 1

Hat tip to LGF.

I don’t know if I agree with Defense Secretary Rumsfeld on everything, but I certainly have an enormously greater amount of respect for Rumsfeld than I do for his enemies, and I hate to see them get their way.

On the occasion of his resignation, it seems appropriate to me, by way of remembrance, to quote a few of his own rules for public service.

Enjoy your time in public service. It may well be one of the most interesting and challenging times of your life.

Don’t think of yourself as indispensable or infallible. As Charles de Gaulle said, the cemeteries of the world are full of indispensable men.

Let your family, staff and friends know that you’re still the same person, despite all the publicity and notoriety that accompanies your position.

Don’t be consumed by the job or you’ll risk losing your balance. Keep your mooring lines to the outside world—family, friends, neighbors, people out of government and people who may not agree with you.

Know that the amount of criticism you receive may correlate somewhat to the amount of publicity you receive.

If you are not criticized, you may not be doing much.

Be able to resign. It will improve your value to the president and do wonders for your performance.

Rumsfeld’s Rules

Victory is never final. Defeat is never fatal. It is courage that counts.
—Winston Churchill

I may lose my PC later today, and have to work on a laptop.

It’s awful moving, but at least I don’t have to pay attention to the election results right now.

Upload a photo of at least 100×100 pixels, register (pshaw!), and this program will tell you which celebrity you resemble. I got Topher Grace (who’s he?), Brendan Fraser, and Christopher Walken as results.

Greg Palast assures us.

You see, we nefarious Republicans will prevent dead and non-existent democrats (particularly those of color) from voting, and we are again going to go right ahead and fail to count all spoiled ballots as democrat votes.

Officials call it “spoilage.” I call it, “inaugurating Republicans.” Why? According to statisticians working with the US Civil Rights Commission, the chance your vote will “spoil” this way is 900% higher for Black folk and 500% higher for Hispanics than for white voters. When we do the arithmetic, we find that well over half of all votes spoiled or “blank” are cast by voters of color. On balance, this spoilage game produces a million-vote edge for the GOP.

All this just makes me think they’ve got some pretty racist statisticians working at that Civil Rights Commission.

A classic leftie blog post, this one is so ill-documented, irrational, and based on an extravagant series of self-indulgent assumptions that you wonder that they can be so stupid. But it is good for a laugh.

Hat tip to Memeorandum.

Mark Steyn discusses John Kerry and his party.

what (Kerry) said fits what too many upscale Dems believe: that America’s soldiers are only there because they’re too poor and too ill-educated to know any better. That’s what they mean when they say “we support our troops.” They support them as victims, as children, as potential welfare recipients, but they don’t support them as warriors and they don’t support the mission.

So their “support” is objectively worthless. The indignant protest that “of course” “we support our troops” isn’t support, it’s a straddle, and one that emphasizes the Democrats’ frivolousness in the post-9/11 world. A serious party would have seen the jihad as a profound foreign-policy challenge they needed to address credibly. They could have found a Tony Blair—a big mushy-leftie pantywaist on health and education and all the other sissy stuff, but a man at ease with the projection of military force in the national interest. But we saw in Connecticut what happens to Democrats who run as Blairites: You get bounced from the ticket. In the 2004 election, instead of coming to terms with it as a national security question, the Democrats looked at the war on terror merely as a Bush wedge issue they needed to neutralize. And so they signed up with the weirdly incoherent narrative of John Kerry—a celebrated anti-war activist suddenly “reporting for duty” as a war hero and claiming that, even though the war was a mistake and his comrades were murderers and rapists, his four months in the Mekong rank as the most epic chapter in the annals of the Republic.

Read the whole thing.

John Podhoretz notes the inscrutability of the will of the American electorate as this hotly contested electoral battle draws to a close:

November 7, 2006—THE screenwriter William Goldman changed history in Hollywood with three simple words: “Nobody knows anything.”

He was giving a simple and profound explanation for why some movies succeed and others fail. His answer: Nobody knows anything until the audience decides.

In the world of political punditry, it’s time to invoke the Goldman rule. There are dozens, maybe hundreds, of high-profile blabbermouths out there (me included) trying to tell you which way the electorate is going to go. Chances are, if you’re reading these words, you are the sort of person who pays attention to our blabber-mouthery.

And guess what? Nobody knows anything.

If you’d spent the year avoiding all the paid political prognostication and theorizing, you’d be as enlightened right now as if you had read every single word pundits have written this year.

Last week, everybody in the business was certain a huge Democratic wave was going to wash over America.

Then, over the weekend, three major national polls purported to show a Republican rally, and suddenly the certitude was gone. Maybe there’d be no wave. Maybe there never was one. Maybe there was, but John Kerry’s offensive remarks about being “stuck in Iraq” crashed the wave onto the rocks.

You could see them on the news channels, sweating, worried that they’d gone out too far on a limb predicting the Democratic triumph, wondering if perhaps they could just pull it back a little . . . .

Because guess what? Nobody knows anything.

Read the whole thing.

The New York Times reports:

Separating anatomy from what it means to be a man or a woman, New York City is moving forward with a plan to let people alter the sex on their birth certificate even if they have not had sex-change surgery.

Should people be allowed to alter the sex on their birth certificate even if they have not had sex-change surgery? Under the rule being considered by the city’s Board of Health, which is likely to be adopted soon, people born in the city would be able to change the documented sex on their birth certificates by providing affidavits from a doctor and a mental health professional laying out why their patients should be considered members of the opposite sex, and asserting that their proposed change would be permanent.

Applicants would have to have changed their name and shown that they had lived in their adopted gender for at least two years, but there would be no explicit medical requirements.

Read the whole thing.

I tried using Just For Men just once to “get the grey out,” and got endless grief from my wife and friends for trying to fight reality.

Mauna Kea Volcano, Hawaii, April 2002

Launched in 2001, the Project for On Board Autonomy (Proba) satellite was designed as a technology testbed with a lifetime of a couple of years. Five years on, it has exceeded all expectations and has been used extensively as an Earth observation satellite, providing crucial pictures to environmental researchers across the world. The size of a small tea chest, Proba has taken more than 10,000 pictures of more than 1,000 places on Earth using a compact high resolution imaging spectrometer. The device, which was part-funded by the British National Space Centre, weighs 14kg and is the smallest of its kind to fly into space. It can see details on the surface of the Earth at a resolution of 17m and has helped scientists monitor landfill operations, track the role of woodland as sources and sinks of carbon dioxide, identify Roman buildings and assess different land use strategies in central Namibia’s savannahs.

13 photo slideshow at the Guardian.

Renowned rod-builder, angler, and bon vivant Hoagy Bix Carmichael (son of the famous songwriter) has fished for salmon on the Grand Cascapedia, perhaps the greatest of North America’s salmon rivers, for decades.

Hoagy is a Cascapedia fanatic, and he felt keenly the absence of a definitive history of the Cascapedia sport fishery, the personalities who fished there, and the great river’s record catches. Hoagy is also a writer of distinction. He personally codified Everett Garrison’s techniques into the definitive manual for building the split cane fly rod, and thereby single-handedly produced a split-cane renaissance. In the midst of his recovery from a dangerous illness a few years ago, Hoagy courageously undertook the formidable task of producing a history of fishing on the Grand Cascapedia, applying to his research the same painstaking perfectionism for which he is renowned. After five years work, the first of what will be two volumes appeared last spring.

Hoagy was interviewed this week for the Living on Earth radio program.

RealAudio interview

The book.

James Q. Wilson identifies precisely where, and by whom, the War on Terrror is being decided.

Once, powerful press owners dictated what their papers would print, sometimes irresponsibly. But that era of partisan and circulation-building distortions was not replaced by a commitment to objective journalism; it was replaced by a deep suspicion of the American government. That suspicion, fueled in part by the Vietnam and Watergate controversies, means that the government, especially if it is a conservative one, is surrounded by journalists who doubt almost all it says. One obvious result is that since World War II there have been few reports of military heroes; indeed, there have been scarcely any reports of military victories.
This change in the media is not a transitory one that will give way to a return to the support of our military when it fights. Journalism, like so much scholarship, now dwells in a postmodern age in which truth is hard to find and statements merely serve someone’s interests.

The mainstream media’s adversarial stance, both here and abroad, means that whenever a foreign enemy challenges us, he will know that his objective will be to win the battle not on some faraway bit of land but among the people who determine what we read and watch. We won the Second World War in Europe and Japan, but we lost in Vietnam and are in danger of losing in Iraq and Lebanon in the newspapers, magazines and television programs we enjoy.

Read the whole thing.

Christopher Moncton starts a series of two articles discussing the fallacies of the UN’s Stern Report on Climate Change.

First, the UN implies that carbon dioxide ended the last four ice ages. It displays two 450,000-year graphs: a sawtooth curve of temperature and a sawtooth of airborne CO2 that’s scaled to look similar. Usually, similar curves are superimposed for comparison. The UN didn’t do that. If it had, the truth would have shown: the changes in temperature preceded the changes in CO2 levels.

Next, the UN abolished the medieval warm period (the global warming at the end of the First Millennium AD). In 1995, David Deming, a geoscientist at the University of Oklahoma, had written an article reconstructing 150 years of North American temperatures from borehole data. He later wrote: “With the publication of the article in Science, I gained significant credibility in the community of scientists working on climate change. They thought I was one of them, someone who would pervert science in the service of social and political causes. One of them let his guard down. A major person working in the area of climate change and global warming sent me an astonishing email that said: ‘We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period.’ “...

Scores of scientific papers show that the medieval warm period was real, global and up to 3C warmer than now. Then, there were no glaciers in the tropical Andes: today they’re there. There were Viking farms in Greenland: now they’re under permafrost. There was little ice at the North Pole: a Chinese naval squadron sailed right round the Arctic in 1421 and found none.

The Antarctic, which holds 90 per cent of the world’s ice and nearly all its 160,000 glaciers, has cooled and gained ice-mass in the past 30 years, reversing a 6,000-year melting trend. Data from 6,000 boreholes worldwide show global temperatures were higher in the Middle Ages than now. And the snows of Kilimanjaro are vanishing not because summit temperature is rising (it isn’t) but because post-colonial deforestation has dried the air. Al Gore please note.

In some places it was also warmer than now in the Bronze Age and in Roman times. It wasn’t CO2 that caused those warm periods. It was the sun. So the UN adjusted the maths and all but extinguished the sun’s role in today’s warming. Here’s how:

• The UN dated its list of “forcings” (influences on temperature) from 1750, when the sun, and consequently air temperature, was almost as warm as now. But its start-date for the increase in world temperature was 1900, when the sun, and temperature, were much cooler.

• Every “forcing” produces “climate feedbacks” making temperature rise faster. For instance, as temperature rises in response to a forcing, the air carries more water vapour, the most important greenhouse gas; and polar ice melts, increasing heat absorption. Up goes the temperature again. The UN more than doubled the base forcings from greenhouse gases to allow for climate feedbacks. It didn’t do the same for the base solar forcing.

Two centuries ago, the astronomer William Herschel was reading Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations when he noticed that quoted grain prices fell when the number of sunspots rose. Gales of laughter ensued, but he was right. At solar maxima, when the sun was at its hottest and sunspots showed, temperature was warmer, grain grew faster and prices fell. Such observations show that even small solar changes affect climate detectably. But recent solar changes have been big.

Read the whole thing.

Heavy packing day today. Movers arrive to pack books tomorrow. Our plane leaves next Saturday. I’ll be working from a hotel for several days after our arrival, waiting for the moving vans to cross the continent.

Procession of a Guy

From Robert Chambers, The Book of Days, 1869:

Till lately, a special service for the 5th of November formed part of the ritual of the English Book of Common Prayer; but by a recent ordinance of the Queen in Council, this service, along with those for the Martyrdom of Charles I, and the Restoration of Charles II, has been abolished. The appointment of this day, as a holiday, dates from an enactment of the British parliament passed in January 1606, shortly after the narrow escape made by the legislature from the machinations of Guy Fawkes and his confederates.

That the gunpowder treason, however, should pass into oblivion is not likely, as long as the well-known festival of Guy Fawkes’s Day is observed by English juveniles, who still regard the 5th of November as one of the most joyous days of the year. The universal mode of observance through all parts of England, is the dressing up of a scarecrow figure, in such cast-habiliments as can be procured (the head-piece, generally a paper-cap, painted and knotted with paper strips in imitation of ribbons), parading it in a chair through the streets, and at nightfall burning it with great solemnity in a huge bonfire. The image is supposed to represent Guy Fawkes, in accordance with which idea, it always carries a dark lantern in one hand, and a bunch of matches in the other. The procession visits the different houses in the neighbourhood in succession, repeating the time-honoured rhyme:

’ Remember, remember!
The fifth of November,
The Gunpowder treason and plot;
There is no reason
Why the Gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot!’

Numerous variations and additions are made in different parts of the country. Thus in Islip, Oxfordshire, the following lines, as quoted by Sir Henry Ellis in his edition of Brand’s Popular Antiquities, are chanted.

‘The fifth of November,
Since I can remember,
Gunpowder treason and plot:
This is the day that God did prevent,
To blow up his king and parliament.
A stick and a stake,
For Victoria’s sake;
If you won’t give me one,
I’ll take two:
The better for me,
And the worse for you.’

One invariable custom is always maintained on these occasions—that of soliciting money from the passers-by, in the formula, ‘Pray remember Guy!’ ‘Please to remember Guy!’ or ‘Please to remember the bonfire!’

In former times, in London, the burning of the effigy of Guy Fawkes on the 5th of November was a most important and portentous ceremony. The bonfire in Lincoln’s Inn Fields was conducted on an especially magnificent scale. Two hundred cart-loads of fuel would sometimes be consumed in feeding this single fire, while upwards of thirty ‘Guys’ would be suspended on gibbets and committed to the flames. Another tremendous pile was heaped up by the butchers in Clare Market, who on the same evening paraded through the streets in great force, serenading the citizens with the famed ‘marrow-bone-and-cleaver’ music. The uproar throughout the town from the shouts of the mob, the ringing of the bells in the churches, and the general confusion which prevailed, can but faintly be imagined by an individual of the present day.

The ferment occasioned throughout the country by the ‘Papal Aggression’ in 1850, gave a new direction to the genius of 5th of November revellers. Instead of Guy Fawkes, a figure of Cardinal Wiseman, then recently created ‘Archbishop of Westminster’ by the pope, was solemnly burned in effigy in London, amid demonstrations which certainly gave little evidence of any revolution in the feelings of the English people towards the Romish see. In 1857, a similar honour was accorded to Nana Sahib, whose atrocities at Cawnpore in the previous month of July, had excited such a cry of horror throughout the civilised world.

The opportunity also is frequently seized by many of that numerous class in London, who get their living no one exactly knows how, to earn a few pence by parading through the streets, on the 5th of November, gigantic figures of the leading celebrities of the day. These are sometimes rather ingeniously got up, and the curiosity of the passer-by, who stops to look at them, is generally taxed with the contribution of a copper.

Sci Fi author Orson Scott Card says there is only one issue in the upcoming election.

There is only one issue in this election that will matter five or ten years from now, and that’s the War on Terror.

And the success of the War on Terror now teeters on the fulcrum of this election.

If control of the House passes into Democratic hands, there are enough withdraw-on-a-timetable Democrats in positions of prominence that it will not only seem to be a victory for our enemies, it will be one.

Read the whole thing.

Large federal bureaucracies are often technologically reactionary or simply wrong-headed. One thinks of the famous how-many-billions? uncompleted FBI project to create the bureau’s very own operating system and other software.

But the Washington Post indicates that John Negroponte and Michael Wertheimer have actually already created an Intel Wiki which has been in operation since last April.

Imagine if, in August 2001, the U.S. intelligence agencies had dumped all of their information into one secure, online resource where it was searchable and accessible to anyone who had the proper clearance.

Who knows if the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 could have been averted? But one thing is clear in the documentation and reporting that has come out in the past five years: Intelligence agencies then were not talking to each other enough, owing to divisional rivalries, lack of trust and the bunkering of intel operations in their own “silos.”

Now the intelligence agencies are trying to remedy those problems with something they call Intellipedia, a model based on the popular online, user-generated encyclopedia Wikipedia.

U.S. intelligence czar John D. Negroponte discussed the database in Washington last week, saying it would allow analysts to collaborate, adding and editing intelligence to create a resource for all 16 U.S. agencies that have access to the top-secret version of Intellipedia.

Since its introduction in April, the classified version of Intellipedia has grown to 28,000 pages and 3,600 registered users, the government said. There are other versions of the database for “secret” and “sensitive but unclassified” intelligence.

The Marine Corps tells recruits in boot camp that pain is just the natural sensation of weakness leaving the body. We conservatives can look upon an electoral defeat as the sensation of opportunists and trimmers losing control of the Republican Party.

Success in 1994, 2000, and 2004 largely led to Republican cowardice, compromise, complacency, and SPENDING. If the GOP goes down in flames in 2006, let’s just hope many of the current pilots meet their political demise in the crash.

The Conservative Movement has come back, more than once, from grave reverses, each time stronger than before. We need to do now, as we did then: wage the battle of ideas; and, after winning, go on to govern on the basis of those ideas.

A democrat majority, resting on its hard left base, is a recipe for disaster. If we are forced to step aside, we will have the opportunity to recover ground with every democrat blunder, every democrat outrage, and every democrat scandal. And they may be relied upon to supply plenty of all three.

Moreover, there is reason to believe that any democrat majorities which occur will be built upon the electoral success of far more conservative democrat candidates than have been seen in a long time. If they win in 2006, the democrat party’s radical base loses anyway.

Douglas Ross thanks the Times for (implicitly, at least) changing its position on Saddam and WMDs yesterday.

Starting in 1994—and lasting at least until 1997, but probably longer—Saddam Hussein’s Intelligence Services had multiple, direct contacts with Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda.

And, just four days after 9/11, Hussein’s Intelligence personnel issued written warnings that their connections to Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda might be discovered by the U.S.!

In 2003, an Iraqi government memo testified that a convoy of fifty (50) tractor-trailers entered Syria just before the invasion. What cargo would have been shipped into Iraq just before the invasion (for which each driver was paid $200, a very generous sum in 2003 Iraqi terms)?

Also in 2003, another official memo describes where chemical weapons and delivery systems (missiles) were hidden to prevent their destruction in the invasion.

In 2002, Hussein’s government was actively manufacturing the bioweapon ricin.

Also in 2002, Iraqi Intelligence Forces were actively engaged in the design of bioweapon delivery schemes, including the use of airplanes to spread toxic materials.

In 2001, Hussein ordered mass grave sites to be tested for radiation. What exactly about these graves would require testing for radiation?

In 2001, Hussein’s government actively recruited suicide bombers to attack American interests either in the U.S. or abroad.

In 1999, Uday Hussein ordered a series of assassinations in London, Iran, and Iraq.

• * *

And – there’s more where those documents came from. The net result, though, is that the Times has confirmed several critical facts regarding Iraq:

1. Saddam’s government had mature WMD programs just prior to the invasion (bioweapons, chemical, and nuclear).

2. Saddam was only months away from building an atomic weapon.

3. Saddam’s government had multiple, operational ties to global terror groups, including Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda.

Thank you, New York Times!

The MSM is gleefully pointing to an editorial scheduled for publication in Army Times, Air Force Times, Navy Times, and Marine Corps Times on Monday demanding Donald Rumsfeld’s ouster as Secretary of Defense, treating its publication as devastating evidence of non-confidence within the services.

What the MSM is not telling the public is that the publications in question are not produced by the US military, but are an independent group of weekly newspapers owned by the liberal Gannett newspaper chain. Their editorialist is not a soldier, a sailor, or a marine. He’s just another pinhead liberal journalist, whose personal opinion is not worth the paper it’s printed on.

Rumsfeld ought to reply to this editorialist, as Max Reger once did to an unfavorable reviewer:

I am sitting in the smallest room in my house. I have your review in front of me. Soon it will be behind me.

Arthur Herman, in Commentary, has a plan for dealing with the Iranian nuclear threat.

The first step would be to make it clear that the United States will tolerate no action by any state that endangers the international flow of commerce in the Straits of Hormuz. Signaling our determination to back up this statement with force would be a deployment in the Gulf of Oman of minesweepers, a carrier strike group’s guided-missile destroyers, an Aegis-class cruiser, and anti-submarine assets, with the rest of the carrier group remaining in the Indian Ocean. The U.S. Navy could also deploy UAV’s (unmanned air vehicles) and submarines to keep watch above and below against any Iranian missile threat to our flotilla.

Our next step would be to declare a halt to all shipments of Iranian oil while guaranteeing the safety of tankers carrying non-Iranian oil and the platforms of other Gulf states. We would then guarantee this guarantee by launching a comprehensive air campaign aimed at destroying Iran’s air-defense system, its air-force bases and communications systems, and finally its missile sites along the Gulf coast. At that point the attack could move to include Iran’s nuclear facilities—not only the “hard” sites but also infrastructure like bridges and tunnels in order to prevent the shifting of critical materials from one to site to another.

Above all, the air attack would concentrate on Iran’s gasoline refineries. It is still insufficiently appreciated that Iran, a huge oil exporter, imports nearly 40 percent of its gasoline from foreign sources, including the Gulf states. With its refineries gone and its storage facilities destroyed, Iran’s cars, trucks, buses, planes, tanks, and other military hardware would run dry in a matter of weeks or even days. This alone would render impossible any major countermoves by the Iranian army. (For its part, the Iranian navy is aging and decrepit, and its biggest asset, three Russian-made Kilo-class submarines, should and could be destroyed before leaving port.)

The scenario would not end here. With the systematic reduction of Iran’s capacity to respond, an amphibious force of Marines and special-operations forces could seize key Iranian oil assets in the Gulf, the most important of which is a series of 100 offshore wells and platforms built on Iran’s continental shelf. North and South Pars offshore fields, which represent the future of Iran’s oil and natural-gas industry, could also be seized, while Kargh Island at the far western edge of the Persian Gulf, whose terminus pumps the oil from Iran’s most mature and copiously producing fields (Ahwaz, Marun, and Gachsaran, among others), could be rendered virtually useless. By the time the campaign was over, the United States military would be in a position to control the flow of Iranian oil at the flick of a switch…

Obviously, no plan is foolproof. The tactical risks associated with a comprehensive war strategy of this sort are numerous. But they are outweighed by its key advantages.

First, it would accomplish much more than air strikes alone on Iran’s elusive nuclear sites. Whereas such action might retard the uranium-enrichment program by some years, this one in effect would put Iran’s theocracy out of business by depriving it of the very weapon that the critics of air strikes most fear. It would do so, moreover, with minimal means. This would be a naval and air war, not a land campaign. Requiring no draw-down of U.S. forces in Iraq, it would involve one or two carrier strike groups, an airborne brigade, and a Marine brigade. Since the entire operation would take place offshore, there would be no need to engage the Iranian army. It and the Revolutionary Guards would be left stranded, out of action and out of gas.

In fact, there is little Iran could do in the face of relentless military pressure at its most vulnerable point. Today, not only are key elements of the Iranian military in worse shape than in the 1980’s, but even the oil weapon is less formidable than imagined. Currently Iran exports an estimated 2.5 million barrels of oil a day. Yet according to a recent report in Forbes, quoting the oil-industry analyst Michael Lynch, new sources of oil around the world will have boosted total production by 2 million barrels a day in this year alone, and next year by three million barrels a day. In short, other producers (including Iranian platforms in American hands) can take up some if not all of the slack. The real loser would be Iran itself. Pumping crude oil is its only industry, making up 85 percent of its exports and providing 65 percent of the state budget. With its wells held hostage, the country’s economy could enter free fall.

Read the whole thing.

Early sound era (1930s) British clip of young lady demonstrating some techniques on larger male opponent.

2:51 video

Lord knows I like and respect Michelle Malkin.

Nobody on the right side of the Blogosphere works harder than Michelle, and she is the most spirited fighter we conservatives have.

But every once in a while, I feel obliged to reflect that Michelle’s performance could be improved if her brakes were upgraded.

Yesterday, Michelle fell for an indignant posting from an easily alarmed busybody named Winfield Myers (who monitors Middle Eastern Studies on college campuses), all about the president of the University of Pennsylvania posing with a student named Saad Saadi Halloween-costumed as a suicide-bomber-cum-terrorist.

I must confess that I was taken in briefly myself, and started writing up my own outraged posting, until I followed up the photo links (Mr. Myers’ posted images were of poor quality) to the student’s facebook page (the Halloween photos have since been removed), and discovered no evidence of Islamicism or political intent whatever. Saad Saudi, a senior at Penn majoring in Engineering, was obviously just a nerdy college kid, blowing off steam at Halloween by trying for a topical and outrageous costume.

There was no endorsement or support from Penn President Guttmann. She was simply acting in her presidential role as hostess of a seasonal party for Penn undergraduates, attended by more than 700 students. Along came Mr. Saudi, who posed beside her for a picture. Posing for pictures with students, and remaining affable and unflapped in the face of harmless undergraduate tomfoollery in terrifically bad taste is a basic part of her job description.

President Guttmann deserves kudos for her good humor and sense of perspective. Mr. Myers needs to get a life. If he is too obtuse to differentiate undergraduate monkeyshines from meaningful political statements, he shouldn’t be blogging.

Our fierce and valiant Michelle needs to be a bit more careful of her sources.
————————————————-

Unfortunately, all this ado over nothing attracted other leading conservatives.

And Michelle is still swinging away with her broadsword at an undergraduate’s Halloween.costume.

Gentlemen and ladies, there are far more significant issues infinitely more worthy of your valuable attention.

The democrats made a political ad, titled Because of Iraq, featuring Retired General Wesley Clark.

And the inimitable Scott Ott replies with Because of Iraq II.

The attention of the Netherlands has been riveted for several days on the plight of a herd of about 100 horses trapped by the North Sea on an earthen mound in a wilderness area outside the town of Marrum. Storms flooded the area and trapped the horses for three days.

AP

Dutch firefighters waded into the waters and staked out an escape route. 19 horses died from drowning or exposure before today’s rescue, in which four female volunteers on horseback led the herd to safety.

BBC

From the Friday New York Times, we learn that some of the captured Iraqi documents, recently made available for public scrutiny on the Internet, contained technical details of atomic weapons production whose availability on-line alarmed arms control officials.

The Times published all this as an indictment of the public release of captured Iraqi documents.

The director of national intelligence, John D. Negroponte, had resisted setting up the Web site, which some intelligence officials felt implicitly raised questions about the competence and judgment of government analysts. But President Bush approved the site’s creation after Congressional Republicans proposed legislation to force the documents’ release…

Some intelligence officials feared that individual documents, translated and interpreted by amateurs, would be used out of context to second-guess the intelligence agencies’ view that Mr. Hussein did not have unconventional weapons or substantive ties to Al Qaeda. Reviewing the documents for release would add an unnecessary burden on busy intelligence analysts, they argued.

But the Times overlooks the fact that this kind of detailed technical information about an Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction Program specifically confirms the Bush Administration’s causus belli, against which elite media (like the Times), and the most influential sectors of the Intelligence Community have so successfully waged a campaign of denial.

Does not the very existence of documents providing factual information of the highest relevance to the most vital public debate of the last three years, concealed by powerful elements of the Intelligence Community, perhaps prejudiced on policy issues, or possibly motivated (as some suspect) by partisanship, demand “second-guessing?”

Hat tip to Matt Drudge.

Sky News:

British Paratroopers have filmed themselves fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan and posted it on the internet.

The video – set to an Eminem track – features fierce firefights, a helicopter dropping supplies and a soldier firing a rocket launcher.

It starts with an expletive-filled warning to “Terry Taliban” which concludes with the lines, “So do one Terry, you’ve plenty to fear, we run this town, the Paras are here”.

The video, which has become a hit on YouTube, was made by members of the 3rd Battalion of the Parachute Regiment (Wikipedia), whose motto Utrinque Paratus means “Ready For Anything.” The troopers involved in the video returned home to Britain last month after a six month tour Afghanistan.

The rap song is Eminem’s Lose Yourself.

3:34 min. video

With Google and Yahoo playing ball with the Communist regime in China, Microsoft (of all companies) is talking about possible non-cooperation.

A senior executive for Microsoft has said the firm could pull out of non-democratic countries such as China.

Fred Tipson, senior policy counsel for the computer giant, said concerns over the repressive regime might force it to reconsider its business in China.

“Things are getting bad… and perhaps we have to look again at our presence there,” he told a conference in Athens.

“We have to decide if the persecuting of bloggers reaches a point that it’s unacceptable to do business there.”

“We try to define those levels and the trends are not good there at the moment. It’s a moving target.”

BBC

Daniel Gross performs a little back-of-the-envelope analysis of just how much liberal big government adds to the cost of living in New York City.

Personally, I think his estimate is far too conservative. The housing differential is much, much higher than 14%.

A 2002 study by Michael H. Schill, then a professor at New York University Law School, concluded that a host of factors—regulations, zoning, unions, the building code—made the cost of building a home one-third higher in New York City than in 21 other cities. Nationwide, housing and shelter eat up 42 percent of a typical consumer’s disposable income. For a buyer to acquire New York housing that’s equivalent in quality to the same type elsewhere, he would have to use 56 percent of his disposable income. The New York dollar loses 14 cents: 86 cents.

An annual study by the city of Washington, D.C., compares tax burdens in large cities. A hypothetical family of four living on $150,000 in New York would pay the nation’s highest combination of sales, auto, income, and property taxes: about $22,635, or 15.1 percent of income. By comparison, the national median is $14,219, or 9.5 percent. That’s another $8,416 extra per year here, or another 5.6 cents. Our dollar is down to 80.4 cents.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics says overall prices here are 9.9 percent higher than the rest of the country. Remove the premium New Yorkers pay for housing and the currency is debased another 4.4 cents, to 76 cents.

But you can buy a dishwasher at 3:00 AM! And there’s home delivery Vietnamese!

Read the whole thing.

Hat tip to Frank Dobbs.

John Kass, writing from Chicago, pays due homage to John Kerry’s unique personal contribution to this Fall’s electoral contest.

“Is Kerry getting paid by the Republicans?” asked the young, cat-hating liberal who helps me with the column. “Did [White House strategist] Karl Rove pay him or what?”

What would you pay a guy to slice off his party’s feet in the last week of a campaign that is the Democrats’ to lose?..

Kerry’s ridiculous elitism, burbling out of him as if he lives, as I suspect, entirely on a diet of lentils and club soda, is what the Republicans needed. It’s a big chunk of wood floating just above Republican hands in deep water.

Read the whole thing.