TMLutas contemplates a recent news development, and concludes that proliferation of WMD among non-state actors is inevitable, and that the current aversion of members of the modern Western intelligentsia to violence is only likely to lead, in the end, to far worse violence.

When the generals start getting restless, they do things like this preemptive nuclear strike proposal. But why are the generals getting restless all over NATO? Amerca’s Gen. Shalikashvili, Germany’s Gen. Naumann, the UK’s Field Marshall Inge, the Netherland’s Gen van den Breemen, and France’s Admiral Jacques Lanxade are all serious military players of varying politics. These are not brash, unthinking chest beaters. What possessed them to intervene in this manner and damage their societies’ moral standing in the world (and thus their vaunted ‘soft power’) by proposing an updated, in your face, first strike policy, coupled with a much more active NATO and explicitly decoupling military action from the UN?

I can see no other explanation than a profound, international vote of no-confidence in the political class of the West by heavily experienced military minds that live, breathe, eat, and sleep the problem of defending us all from violent threats to our liberties and very existence. I am not even sure that the presentation of the plan in Bucharest in April is coincidence. After all, Romania is a very good example of how even dead broke powers with unstable, highly repressive regimes can extract uranium and enrich it while nobody takes the threat seriously. Had Ceausescu managed his internal repression better, Romania would be a balkans “hedgehog” today similar to the Swiss except with nuclear armed Scuds and a sociopath’s hand on the button. Romania’s Ceausescu era relations with North Korea were always very good. They also had friends across the muslim world.

The ‘peace faction’ that does not look beyond its own nose will be shocked, outraged, and redouble its efforts to neuter the military so it cannot be used. It’s as if they have never heard of feedback loops or their own part in this very pernicious one. Spelling it out explicitly, the peace factions have neutered the political process so even vigorous peaceful competition is impossible. After all, to draw a caricature of Mohammad, write an insensitive book, or film a blaspheming movie draw death sentences from which we have little practical defense. The best we can do is a sort of life-long semi-imprisonment, insecure in our lives and our possessions, never knowing when the knife will fall.

The “peace faction” ensures that persistent, responding, violent escalations cannot happen so we end up implicitly enslaved because, in the real world, others are willing to persistently bring to bear more violence than we are. We shrink from exercising our freedoms because of justifiable fear. And thus we lose them in a practical matter because the muslims (and in their success they will draw imitators) are willing to tolerate periodic violent episodes that spasmodically, ineffectively lash out at them more as a sop to western domestic factions that demand “a response” because a durable majority in so many Western countries has shrunk back from the military buildup necessary to generate “a solution”.

The only thing that is left in modern Western political discourse is to make the spasmodic response so terrible, so violent, that in that short political window when the West permits itself to respond at all will annihilate our enemies and form a sort of “solution” after all. And thus the general staff rebellion in the making.

What the general staffs across the West see is the death of Western supremacy of violence…

Read the whole thing.

Hat tip to Glenn Reynolds.

David Shearman, co-author of The Climate Change Challenge and the Failure of Democracy, thinks democracy and individual liberty can get in way of the quick implementation of the kinds of measures experts like himself have decided are necessary. Calling people like himself “communists” is so unfair!

Liberal democracy is sweet and addictive and indeed in the most extreme case, the USA, unbridled individual liberty overwhelms many of the collective needs of the citizens. The subject is almost sacrosanct and those who indulge in criticism are labeled as Marxists, socialists, fundamentalists and worse. These labels are used because alternatives to democracy cannot be perceived! Support for Western democracy is messianic as proselytised by a President leading a flawed democracy.

There must be open minds to look critically at liberal democracy. Reform must involve the adoption of structures to act quickly regardless of some perceived liberties. It is not that liberal democracy cannot react once it sees a threat, for example, the speedy response to a recent international financial emergency. If governments can recognise a financial emergency and in an instant move heaven and earth (and billions of dollars, pounds sterling and euros) to contain it, why are they unable to do the same in response to a global environmental emergency? Quite simply our system is seen to live and breathe by the present economic system; the problem is that living and breathing within the confines of the world ecological systems is contrary to the activity of progress and development as defined within liberal democracy. …

We are going to have to look how authoritarian decisions based on consensus science can be implemented to contain greenhouse emissions. It is not that we do not tolerate such decisions in the very heart of our society, in wide range of enterprises from corporate empires to emergency and intensive care units. If we do not act urgently we may find we have chosen total liberty rather than life.

If there was ever any doubt that inside the environmentalist movement’s green, there lurked a bright pink core, Shearman is there to prove it.

Barack Obama and Tony Rezko superposed on the Obama mansion

better house photo here

In this 10:06 video of the second part of a speech made January 31, 2008 in Wilmington, Delaware, Michelle Obama is complaining about how “they move the bar.”

This is the reality, we’re told, for “regular folks on the ground,” people like Michelle Obama herself with what she calls “my simple, little life,” all this is not fair. It’s just not right.

Rather than being blocked by some moving and shifting bar, Michelle Obama has obviously experienced considerable upward mobility. She graduated from Princeton and Harvard, presumably receiving both racially-based admissions preference and scholarship assistance. If so, the latter did not prevent her from claiming that her father, a democrat party precinct captain coincidentally employed at the municipal filtration plant, had been able, in the good old days of the early 1980s (before “they” started moving the bar), to send two children to Princeton.

Neither has any bar kept Michelle Obama from occupying a $316,962-a-year position as vice president at the University of Chicago Hospitals.

Her simple, little life occurs domestically in a 96-year-old Georgian revival home that has “four fireplaces, glass-door bookcases fashioned from Honduran mahogany, and a 1,000-bottle wine cellar,” purchased in 2005 for $1.65 million.

Mrs. Obama’s lifestyle is additionally enhanced by an adjoining parcel of real estate, previously associated with her house but offered for sale separately in 2005, which was purchased for $625,000 by the wife of Obama campaign donor and long-time supporter Antoin “Tony” Rezko, who has been subsequently indicted for extortion.

The Reskos sold the Obamas a portion of the second property, all of which is only accessible via the Obama’s property, and also paid for the erection of a fence. “The bars keep moving.”

Sources:

Chicago Tribune 1-Nov-06

ABC News 10-Jan-08

Isn’t it wonderful that the consequences of changes in the world, all the inconveniences and dislocations produced by economic progress, can be repealed if we just give power to “regular folks” like Barack & Michelle Obama?

The (very faint) possibility of the loss of federal funds has the more-practical class of Berkeley politicians eager to retreat, but the real communists are not so easily intimidated.

NBC11 reports:

As six Republican senators devised a plan to yank $2.3 million in federal funding for Berkeley programs, the mayor of the famously liberal city apologized Wednesday for his hard stance against a Marine recruiting center.

Two City Council members vowed to soften their stance as well.

At their Tuesday council meeting, leaders will discuss scrapping a letter that might be perceived as targeting the center or the Marines.

The letter said that the recruiting center was not welcome on Shattuck Avenue and that the Marines were uninvited and unwelcome intruders.

“That letter will probably be pulled back and maybe more moderate language will be put in place which is appropriate I think,” said Berkeley mayor Tom Bates.

“Subtly stated in the resolution is perhaps an impugning of the soldiers fighting for us in Iraq and other places,” Berkeley City Councilman Laurie Capitelli. “And that was never the intention but that really needs to be cleared up. As I walked to my car that night I realized I regretted it and I had made a mistake.”

Bates said the city didn’t mean to offend anyone in the armed forces and the focus should have been on the war not the troops.

“There’s really no correlation between federal funds for schools, water ferries and police communications systems and the council’s actions, for God’s sake,” said Bates, a retired U.S. Army captain. “We apologize for any offense to any families of anyone who may serve in Iraq. We want them to come home and be safe at home.”

The letter was originally approved in January and has not been sent.

City officials said they got a flood of e-mails, many asking them to reconsider their position.

Councilmembers have said they would replace the “intruder item” with words expressing their support for the troops but not the war in Iraq.

The Republican plan would give the funds, intended for a school lunch program, UC Berkeley and ferry service, to the Marines instead.

“Patriotic American taxpayers won’t sit quietly while Berkeley insults our brave Marines,” said one of the senators.

The recruiting center opened about a year ago and quickly became a target of anti-war protesters including the group Code Pink.

Last week the council passed resolutions giving Code Pink a place to park out front. Some have said that meant the city giving was giving the group a place to continuously protest the Marines.

“What we’re doing is we’re announcing a bill that we intend to get on the floor to strip transportation from the city of Berkeley,” said East Bay Republican Assemblyman Guy Houston. “What they have done in Berkeley is they have set aside a parking spot and in my opinion a public right of way, a public transportation corridor, specifically for a private organization — in this case Code Pink — to harass and annoy the United States Marine Corps and their recruiting efforts. We think that playing around and having an agenda with the public right of way is subject to ramifications. There is $2.3 million in proposition 1B transportation dollars. We think that should be in jeopardy.”

Others on the Berkeley City Council seemed quite firm on their stance, NBC11’s Christie Smith reported.

Sen. Barbara Boxer and Rep. Barbara Lee said they plan to fight the Republican bill.

Earlier postings.

Provoked by snarky responses to a six-word-motto-for-America contest at the NYT’s Freakonomics blog, James Lileks gets a little testy about the characteristic reflex attitudes of the American elect.

Someone somewhere is a practicing Baptist and someone somewhere else is eating a hamburger larger than you’d prefer, and other people are watching cars go around a track at high speed. As your skinny unhappy friend said the other night: people are just too fat and happy. He bites his nails and plays WoW six hours a night, but he has a point. It doesn’t matter that these fascists-in-fetal-form never quite seem to accomplish anything; it’s not like they drove the gay Teletubbies off the air or had Tony Kushner drawn and quartered in the public square. But they’re preventing something. Something wonderful. And they’re driving large cars to Wal-Mart and putting 18-roll packs of Charmin in the back and they have three kids. Earth has withstood a lot in its four billion years, but it cannot withstand them. And even if it does, who wants to live in a world where these people don’t care that they’re being mocked by small, underfunded theaters in honest, gritty neighborhoods? (Which are being gentrified by upwardly-mobile poseurs who have decided it’s a great place to live because the theater is good and the restaurants are cheap. F*#*$ing interlopers. But we’ll deal with them later.)

ANYWAY. Bottom line: we will never be a great nation until we all realize how much we suck, and then we will also realize it is wrong to be a great nation. For that matter, nationhood are overrated. (The only nation that gets to be a nation is France.)

Nations are bad enough, but we’re something else:the only nation that has ever fought a war, acted in self-interest, had a good opinion of itself, permitted slavery, elected leaders who lacked a certain Olympian quality, had a popular culture that included simple catchy melodies and bright pictures, harbored racist attitudes, had a strong religious element, and contained a sizable amount of stupid people.

(Side note: the existence of stupid people in America is a touchy subject, and not easily explained away. It would seem to suggest that some people are smarter than other people, which could conceivably have an impact on their ability to succeed – but there are so many stupid people living in comfort that this almost implies that the bounty and opportunity of the country are sufficient to lift the leakiest dinghies if the occupants bail and plug, and that can’t be true. It is also unacceptable to suggest that some people do not succeed because they aren’t smart, since that suggests that merit is rewarded, and that can’t be true. Merit has nothing to do with America; it’s all about white male privilege. Do not be fooled by the rise of Hillary and Obama; put them together, and what do you have? White. Male.)

Anyway, America sucks except for a few parts of some cities if you ignore the Starbucks, and people in other countries are basically okay but no one in America knows it because they don’t have passports, and Dubya wants you to hate Islam which is ridiculous because I was backpacking in Tunisia for a few days and people seemed pretty cool. Hey, look at this, someone posted a video on YouTube that makes it seem like Huckabee is supported by the Flying Spaghetti Monster. What’s for supper? Thai? Again?

Rick Moran has written John McCain’s Conservative Political Action Conference speech for him.

Excerpt:

There are varying degrees of conservatism. I’m from the “Maverick Conservative” wing of the party. This is the wing of conservatism that believes anything the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the news nets will praise me for is probably conservative enough. If it’s not, tough. If you think I’m going to change my position on an issue and get the media upset with me, you’re dreaming.

The Maverick Conservative wing of the party – both of us – want to be clear that we support many of the same issues that you “movement” conservatives support. All we ask is that you ignore us when we thumb our noses at you. You can’t expect us to maintain our status as “Mavericks” with the media without deliberately undercutting your agenda while hinting what barbarians you truly are. Therefore, I ask that you simply accept us for who we are.

And calling us “self aggrandizing media whores who care more for pleasing our liberal friends than in working to enact conservative legislation” may be accurate but please – keep it to yourselves.

We can do great things together – as long as you just shut up and vote for me. After all, if it’s between me and Hillary, are you really going to let the Democrats win in November by staying at home? (Try not to look too smug.)

Read the whole thing.

Maksim Maksimovitch has devised a vitally needed voter aid for members of the Republican base trying to win this one at any cost.

Hat tip to Michelle Malkin.

Admiral William Adama

Annalee Newitz proposes a better model for leadership than mere business executives.

I am finally getting around to linking a witty and highly perceptive article by Michael S. Malone, author of ABC News’ Silicon Insider column, writing in Monday’s Wall Street Journal, which I’ve been wanting to recommend to friends.

If you look at Microsoft with an objective eye, it becomes apparent that it is a giant company past its prime. It is big and rich, but increasingly toothless. It is able to use its money to put on a great show at the Consumer Electronics Show, underwrite an interesting market initiative — or buy another big company — but it no longer has the fire of ambition or the addiction to risk to ruthlessly execute on those desires any more. As has been noted before, once you look past all of the high profile moves (such as MSN, MSNBC, Zune and XBox), Microsoft has only really been as successful as it reputation would suggest in just two businesses: Windows and Office. Most everything else is flash.

Even Microsoft’s full-out assault on Netscape (which, ironically, will officially die on March 1) for control of the Internet browser industry — justly earning it the sobriquet “Evil Empire” — in retrospect was less a brilliant maneuver by Gates & Co. to capture a hot new industry and more a desperate (and questionable) scramble by a market leader caught napping.

That corporate somnolence, rather than its more-remembered ruthlessness, has far better characterized Microsoft over the past decade. Even the Vista operating system, the most recent upgrade of Microsoft’s core product line, managed to be so late that it almost crippled the personal computer industry. It finally arrived to a chorus of boos, most of them undeserved (it’s a pretty good operating system), but some dead-on (it’s a technological hop when it should have been a leap). Microsoft lost its killer instinct a long time ago. On the rare occasions when the mood resurfaces, the company doesn’t have the chops anymore to execute on its desires.

And that brings us to the Microsoft-Yahoo deal. For all of the excitement, this is just big, rich, but slow-moving giant looking to buy another slow-moving giant, the latter having stuck to an obsolete business plan too long and lost its way. The scheme is less predation than it is desperation: In the world of search, Google owns these two lumbering monsters.

Microsoft understandably covets the sheer size of Yahoo’s subscriber rolls, believing it can accomplish what Yahoo has failed to do: convert more of those 130 million monthly visitors into real, paying customers. But Microsoft has hardly shown it can do that at MSN. So, can it really find a solution to Yahoo’s structural problems?

That remains to be seen — and Microsoft’s one genius is as a late adopter. The real problem Yahoo — and perhaps soon Microsoft — faces is that those legions of Yahoo users don’t want to be stuck inside a small corner of the Web, not getting all of the experiences and services (like live TV and first-run movies) they were promised. Especially not when they can run around and find all of those things, in abundance, elsewhere on the Web. Microsoft is even less prepared to solve that problem than Yahoo.

That leaves search, which is probably the real reason Microsoft wants Yahoo. Combining the two search engines would, in terms of sheer numbers, represent the biggest challenge to Google to date. But the sum of two also-rans is almost never a winner — unless the newly merged is very, very lucky in its competitors. That’s what happened with HP and Compaq: Who’d have guessed that Dell would suddenly fall on its face?

Incredibly, the same may happen with a Microsoft-Yahoo deal if it happens. If you look at the stock market, peruse the industry gossip blogs, follow the departure of key employees, or read about the various new initiatives (energy?) the company is pursuing, it becomes increasingly apparent that Google is a company about to have an early midlife crisis. Microsoft-Yahoo may turn out to be a pedestrian idea with absolutely brilliant timing.

If that is the case, and the merger proves successful, it will have more to do with Google than Microsoft and Yahoo. Which is why the feds should stay out of it.

So, Yahoo: Take the deal (unless a better one comes along). Microsoft: Let this be the first of many high-risk moves. Treat Yahoo as a heart transplant, not a skin graft. And Google: This new competition should be a warning to stop fooling around and get back to business.

Rodger Kamenetz (a liberal resident of New Orleans) writes on our class list:

Since I’m in sabbatical, I may — may– get up at 7 so I can wait in line
at 7:45 (when doors open) to hear Barack Obama on the Tulane Campus
(a few blocks away from me.)
I may…
I am skeptical about Obama– hugely.
But I understand he will be dropping a lot of g’s and I thought I’d collect some…
Hillary is more like a very familiar annoying relative you have to include because she’s family.
McCain.. he’s grandpa by the fireplace telling war stories…
Ron Paul is a nutty uncle… Huckabee is like a door to door salesman
who ends up not only selling you a vacuum cleaner but sponging a meal.
Romney is clearly not of the human species, & I wonder if there’s a way to replace his batteries.

O America I love you but how did we get here…

Barack Obama and all his rivals have done an excellent job of getting Americans on both the left and the right sides of the political spectrum to get beyond their differences and share nearly identical low opinions of the available candidates this year.

Military Motivator is a blog devoted to motivation poster designs with military themes.

Tony Blankley explains how we got into such a fine mess.

Assuming John McCain gets the GOP nomination, it will show how whimsical history can be. It would be the first time in living memory that a Republican presidential nomination went to a candidate who was not merely opposed by a majority of the party but was actively despised by about half its rank-and-file voters across the country — and by many, if not most, of its congressional officeholders. After all, the McCain electoral surge was barely able to deliver a plurality of one-third of the Republican vote in a three-, four- or five-way split field. He has won fair and square, but he has driven the nomination process askew.

This result reminds me of a nursery rhyme: “For want of a nail the shoe was lost. For want of a shoe the horse was lost. For want of a horse the rider was lost. For want of a rider the battle was lost. For want of a battle the kingdom was lost. And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.”

In the current instance, the lost nail was a viable conservative candidate. And despite the crabby, orthodoxy-sniffing, slightly over-the-hill condition of the conservative Republican majority, it still could easily nominate its candidate. In fact, we had two strong conservative candidates, either of whom almost surely would have unified the party early, as George W. did in 2000. But through accidents of history, neither ran.

Consider the recently very popular, tall, attractive, smart, eloquent, conservative, successful two-term Republican governor of one of our most populous swing states — married to a beautiful Hispanic woman, no less. In fact, he is the son of a former president. Unfortunately for him and the party, he is also the brother of the current president. If Jeb Bush’s name were Jeb Smith, the former Florida governor easily could have kept the conservative two-thirds of the Republican vote united and won the nomination. But fate made him a Bush in the only election in the past 20 years when no Bush need apply.

Or consider the cheerful, handsome, solidly conservative Virginia senator expected to run as the son of Reagan. Unfortunately, he uttered three little syllables: Ma-ca-ca. He lost his re-election, and so adieu, Sen. George Allen.

These two quirks of history have nothing to do with the fundamentals of the conservative hold on the GOP. But what was left after the two strongest candidates couldn’t run was one venerable candidate (McCain), one suspiciously newly minted conservative (Romney), one not-quite-plausible factional figure (Huckabee), one social liberal (Giuliani), a quixotic anti-war candidate (Paul) and an older Southern gent with a smashing younger wife for whom he seemed to be saving most of the energy he should have used in what was risibly called his “run” for president (Thompson).

So, the mischievous gremlins and elves inside the wheel of history have served up John McCain to lead Ronald Reagan’s party into November battle.

Read the whole thing.