XDA

Chilling are these words from the Democrat front-runner for President: There is no greater force for economic growth than free markets. But markets work best with rules that promote our values, protect our workers and give all people a chance to succeed [...] Fairness doesn't just happen. It requires the right government policies.

Hilary is promoting that the government decide what is 'fair' in order to control the free market. In other words, she's promoting a non-free market. Not good. How really does her statement differ from this? Social fairness is a vital issue in the building of a congenial socialist society. If social fairness is lacking, the building of such a society will be out of the question. In order to attack (sic) due importance to social fairness, the relationship between economic efficiency and social fairness must be properly handled. That's from Liu Guoguang of the State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs in the Peoples Republic of China.

Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, upon closing down a popular television station which was often critical of him, said he was democratizing the airwaves by turning the network's signal over to public use.

That rings a bell as well. Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) in his perennial quest to bring back the fairness doctrine says he would introduce a bill to re-establish the public's control of its airwaves. The Fairness Doctrine is as clear an example of Orwellian New speak as exists.

There's a Latin legal maxim for statutory interpretation--Noscitur a sociis (It is known by the company it keeps). If your statements are hard to distinguish from hardcore socialist dictators and bureaucrats, then perhaps you're a hardcore socialist yourself. Chilling, indeed.

Labels: Socialist statements

On this day in 1864, the two week Battle of Cold Harbor began on an old battle site of the Seven Days in 1862. This is my favorite battle of the Civil War. Lee had time to prepare defenses. Grant ordered a frontal assault anyway. Many of the Confederates were fairly safe in trenches behind a forward berm topped with a head log and they fired through the space between the log and the berm. Other soldiers loaded weapons behind them so they could keep a steady stream of well aimed rifle fire at the Yankees trotting towards them. During the centennial years in the early '60s, there was a big Civil War museum in Richmond and one of the things on display from this battle was a big tree stump with a conical top, the tree above having been felled with rifle fire. I was taught that at Cold Harbor the Army of Northern Virginia inflicted more casualties on the Norther troops than there were men in the Southern Army. That's not quite true, but it's close.

Labels: American Civil War

It is a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money.

Francois Rabelais

Labels: Francois Rabelais quote

The Politico is reporting that Fred Thompson, former Tennessee Senator and actor, will actually run for the office of President and announce on July 4, 2007. Remember that the Politico also reported that John Edwards would bow out of his waste of time run due to the turn for the worse health of his wife.

I'm just not that excited. Because I had seen a lot of Ronald Reagan's movies, I was not a fan and it has taken me years to come to grips with the fact that he was a pretty good President despite his limited acting chops (there's no doubt the man was very handsome--never more so than in Dark Victory when he was 27 years old). So I still have a prejudice against actors in politics. I've seen a lot of Fred's work too. I think I'd rather have a former governor as my President.

Labels: Fred Thompson

Just wanted to note the passing of anniversaries. Today one of us contributors has a birthday; he's now lived over half a century. Welcome to the party, pal, and Happy Birthday. And tomorrow is the second anniversary of the start of this blog, humble as it remains. Happy birthday, blog.

Labels: Anniversaries

When nothing works to treat the Tuberculosis a person has because of a very effective drug resistant evolution of the bacteria (Ann Coulter would merely say the bug had been working out or something) they call it XDR, Extensively Drug -Resistant (Wouldn't that be EDR?) Tuberculosis. That means if you get infected from him, you have no effective treatment either. So, like Camille and Doc Holliday, you too will be consumed.

There is a well-travelled guy under guard and a quarantine order in a hospital in Atlanta who has the XDR Tuberculosis; and they want to bring him to National Jewish Hospital in Denver (about three miles from here). What for? Do they have better quarantine facilities here? Do they have better anti-biotics here?

Hey, Mayor Hickenlooper, if that really is your name, do something!

Labels: XDR Tuberculosis

There were about a 1,000 cadets graduating about 60 miles south of here, just north of Colorado Springs. The try to time a flyover just as the ceremony ends and the cadets celebrate by throwing their hats in the air. Looks like they got it done.

I sure hope they put their names in their hats.

Labels: Air Force Academy Graduates

A conceptual artist, (which is what, really?) in England, Mark McGowan, has eaten a few bites of what he said was a recently deceased Welsh Corgi in order to protest that Prince Philip (the Queen's Consort) had allegedly beaten a fox to death during a hunt.

I have two comments: 1) Corgi is just not that good--way too fatty; and, 2) Prince Philip, aged nearly 86, must be a lot quicker than he looks. I couldn't catch a fox if you gave me rocket roller skates.

Labels: Man Bites Dog

On this day in 1431, Joan of Arc was burned at the stake in Rouen. She was 19.

Labels: Joan of Arc

I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it.

Terry Pratchett

Labels: Terry Pratchett quote

The Brown Bear Ursus Arctos lives here and there around the world in the northern hemisphere. In the lower 48, we call the Brown Bear the Grizzly Bear and it usually tips the scales at 450 full grown while the ones on Kodiak Island and on the coast in Russia and Alaska can stand 10 feet tall and weigh 1500 pounds, just as big as a Polar Bear, which like most animals at the poles, are giants compared to the ones lower down (Allen's Rule).


So what accounts for the huge disparity in size? Are the coastal northern bears a different species? (No, not even much of a different subspecies--the DNA is fairly homogeneous). Why are the coastal bears so much bigger then? The obvious answer is the amount of protein they get all their lives with the salmon runs they prey on.


So is that what's making for the giant pigs down south? A constant and ready supply of protein (through stealing catfish feed)? That's my guess.

Labels: Big Bears, Big Pig

Went alone to Pirates of the Caribbean: at World's End and three hours later, I left the theater. Nothing that happened in the meantime made any sense but what really was I expecting of a movie, third in a series, based on a ride at Disneyland?

I don't know if they ever identify when this thing is supposed to be happening. My knowledge of English uniforms is a little rusty, as is my sense of fashion through the ages. (I can identify Empire dresses). The pirates had weapons from at least two centuries. If pressed, I would say early/mid 1700s. So, supposedly at that time there were pirates all over the world who were in league with each other and who had the power to 'bind' a Goddess. That's not the Earth in the 18th Century I recognize.

Calypso, for the record, was a Naiad, a sea nymph, not quite a Goddess, who spent several years with Odysseus. The movie version Calypso did seem to have an affinity for crabs and a Jamaican accent you could use as a leather softener. I like the actress, Naomie Harris, very much--she was the tough as nails heroin in 28 Days Later and was down to Earth delightful in Tristam Shandy. However, what her role was in the story is difficult to detect. The story was often difficult to detect.

I'm reminded of the Matrix trilogy. The first good movie did not support a sequel but they pieced together enough ideas to get through it, but the third movie was incoherent.

You can't satisfy the discerning moviegoing public with a mere series of special effects. If we don't care what happens next, because we don't know what's happening now, there's no emotional impact. This was a very expensive sound and light show. Depp was pretty good, again, but Keith Richard must have thought he was in a serious historical drama. I guess his mere presence was the joke. Ha Ha Ha.

Labels: Bad Pirate Movies

On this day in 1453, the Byzantine Empire fell to Sultan Mehemet II, who captured Constantinople. This was the real fall of the Roman Empire although Rome had been sacked repeatedly and, at one time, all but abandoned a thousand years before.

Labels: Fall of Roman Empire; Constantinople Capture

It's pretty clear now that what looked like it might have been some kind of counterculture is, in reality, just the plain old chaos of undifferentiated weirdness.

Jerry Garcia

Labels: Jerry Garcia quote

In his important essay, The Necessity of Atheism, the English poet Shelley said that if we sensed something, we were almost bound to believe it. I can, in a sense, notice the daily revolution of the Earth and its yearly procession around the sun by noticing night and day and the change of seasons, although plenty of people for hundreds of thousands of years noticed the same things I do but didn't know we were a rotating planet orbiting a sun. But noticing, for example, that it was 80 degrees today in Denver is hardly evidence of planetary climate change over more than a human lifetime.

Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, however, says that she has sensed, in some way, climate change. Here's her exact quote about her entourage stopping for a few hours in Greenland, where we saw firsthand evidence that climate change is a reality; there is just no denying it.

What? She was only there a few hours. Did it change in that time? Or did she see a glacier that had melted back a few miles from where someone told her its face used to be (and no doubt truthfully told her that)? The story doesn't say.

The story also says that President Bush rejected [the Kyoto] accord, saying it would harm the U.S. economy and unfair excludes developing countries like China and India from its obligations.

I think it would have been more accurate to say that President Bush continued the Clinton policy of rejecting that accord...

At least the reporter called him President Bush. The editorials in the New York Times usually call him Mr. Bush.

UPDATE: Nancy Pelosi also had two statements on the History Channel program regarding Star Wars. The statements were pro-Star Wars but I really can't remember anything she said. It was in politicalese. Hasn't she seen the last 4? Not quite my idea of good filmmaking.

Labels: Global Warming Hoax

On this day in 1940, the Belgian Army surrendered to invading German forces. It had been about 2000 years since Caesar praised them as the best fighting tribe in Gaul. They lasted almost as long as France.

Labels: WWII history; European theater

I look at what the phone company does and do the opposite.

Craig Newmark

Labels: Craig Newmark quote

On this day in 1910, (Heinrich Hermann) Robert Koch died at age 66. Although few know the name, there are few people in world history whose work has saved or led to the saving of more lives. He was a German doctor and a founder of the science of bacteriology. He discovered the tubercle bacillus in 1882, and the cholera bacillus in 1883. He studied bubonic plague in Bombay in 1897 and malaria and sleeping sickness in Africa on numerous occasions. Not only did his work save humans but he did work of exceptional importance concerning destructive tropical cattle diseases, such as rinderpest, Surra disease, Texas fever, coast fever in cattle and the trypanosome disease carried by the tsetse fly. He won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1905, "for his investigations and discoveries in relation to tuberculosis."

Labels: Bacteriology Founders; Good German Doctors

There is nothing more dreadful than imagination without taste.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Labels: Goethe quote

Byron York doesn't like the Wilsons any more than I do and he has a good piece at NRO about them, especially Valerie. What follows is a short version.

Here's what Valerie Plame said under oath at the show trial/House investigation a few months ago about one of her husband's serial lies, namely that his wife never suggested him for the job in Niger.

I did not recommend him. I did not suggest him.

Unfortunately for her, there was the 2004 Senate Intelligence Committee report, which said she did. Regarding that, Ms. Plame stated under oath that the Committee was wrong and about the memo the Committee quoted from, where she suggested and recommended Joe Wilson, she claimed that the Senate had taken the memo “out of context” to “make it seem as though I had suggested or recommended him.”

Now we have the whole memo, thanks to Senator Kit Bond (R-MO) who declassified it recently.

The report forwarded below has prompted me to send this on to you and request your comments and opinion. Briefly, it seems that Niger has signed a contract with Iraq to sell them uranium. The IC [Intelligence Community] is getting spun up about this for obvious reasons. The embassy in Niamey has taken the position that this report can’t be true — they have such cozy relations with the GON [Government of Niger] that they would know if something like this transpired.

So where do I fit in? As you may recall, [redacted] of CP/[office 2] recently approached my husband to possibly use his contacts in Niger to investigate [a separate Niger matter]. After many fits and starts, [redacted] finally advised that the station wished to pursue this with liaison. My husband is willing to help, if it makes sense, but no problem if not. End of story.

Now, with this report, it is clear that the IC is still wondering what is going on… my husband has good relations with both the PM and the former minister of mines, not to mention lots of French contacts, both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity. To be frank with you, I was somewhat embarrassed by the agency’s sloppy work last go-round, and I am hesitant to suggest anything again. However, [my husband] may be in a position to assist. Therefore, request your thoughts on what, if anything, to pursue here. Thank you for your time on this.

(Emphasis added).

York has a lot more on the prior testimony and interviews of others to whom Ms. Plame admitted that she suggested and recommended her husband for the job. Lots more.

Except that we have completely soured on the use of 'special prosecutors' I would suggest here is a perjury charge that could be pursued. Since our justice department, under the excellent leadership of Alberto Gonzales, hasn't been able to indict Representative Jefferson or locate a single leaker of classified material, I'm not looking for any justice coming from there either.

Labels: Valerie Plame liar

Labels: Big Pig

Senator Obama (D-Il) is getting some bad press for his attempt to put John McCain (R-AZ) down for his statements about how safe it was to walk in certain parts of Baghdad. McCain points out that Obama misspelled flak (Obama added a 'c' before the k). Flak is a mid 20th Century shortening/acronym for a German description of anti-aircraft weapons--Flugzeugabwehrkanone or Fleigerabwehrkanone. Just so you know.

Labels: Obama; McCain; Flak

On this day in 1865, the last Confederate resistance of the American Civil War ended when Gen. Kirby Smith surrendered at Shreveport, north of New Orleans. The Army of Northern Virginia, on April 9 at Appomattox C.H., Johnston's troops on April 26 in Durham, N. C., and all other Confederates had already surrendered. I can't tell if these guys wanted to hold out or if the news just traveled that slowly back then.

Labels: American Civil War

A diplomat is a person who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you actually look forward to the trip.

Caskie Stinnett

Labels: Caskie Stinnett quote

It was a beautiful day--hot with a cool wind--my daughter's car, a '94 Saab, was not doing well, so I dropped it off at the mechanics (who know me by first name), declined the ride to work and walked. It's about 2 miles. I saw that Cherry Creek was full but not above the banks. The story is that when the white men decided to build a town, Auraria, at the confluence of the Platte and Cherry Creek, the local Indians tried to warn them that the place floods badly every so often. They ignored them and proto-Denver was washed away a few years later in a big flood.

A school that has been abandoned for at least a quarter century has been stripped down to the brickwork and it is a jewel. Turn of the Century craftsmanship and decoration makes the Bauhaus butt ugly new buildings, stripped of all decoration, which is apparently deposited in a single incredibly ugly minimalist sculpture on the lawn in front, look like the architectural nothings they are.

The new art museum wing, the Libeskind wonder, is still under repair despite its multimillion dollar price tag and only 8 months of operation. I think we might not have gotten full value there.

One of the security guards in the Court of Appeal/Supreme Court building, who knows me by my money clip, was taking information from the license of a very shabby man standing next to the Chief Justice, who had walked to her car at the curb with the aid of a walker (that can't be good). Wonder what that was about?

Despite the hysterics about weapons of war at a new war memorial south of here a few months ago, I walked by a Korean War memorial with a BAR in bronze, a bronze statue of a federal soldier holding a Sharps Model 1859 Carbine and two bronze Napoleon 12 pounders. All weapons of war in my book.

There are two marks on the steps at the front of the capitol building both of which say 5280. So either the capitol building is sinking, or rising; the sea level is sinking, or rising; or there has been improvement in the methods of measurement.

Labels: Walking to Work

The Democrats did what we all expected, they folded on the idea of forcing a withdrawal of our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq by refusing to fund the war. They passed a bill with no time limits or other 'strings' but substantial extra pork--the vote was 280-142 in the House and 80-14 in the Senate.

The bill also includes the silly raise of the minimum wage, but it also gives tax breaks to small businesses, so there's the rough with the smooth.

On the whole, I have to put this in the Republican win column.

Labels: Democrat Defeat

On this day in 1521, the Edict of Worms was proclaimed, declaring Martin Luther a "criminal and permitted anyone to kill him without consequences." No one did, however, and the movement started by Luther (unnamed at that time) took root and flourished. Charles V, he of the big jaw, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, spared Luther to appease some powerful German princes who supported the anti-Catholic. The low point of the split in the Christian religion came in 1618 with the 30 Years War, when Europeans slaughtered each other just for being Catholic or Protestant.

Labels: Protestant History

The United States is a nation of laws: badly written and randomly enforced.

Frank Zappa

Labels: Frank Zappa quote

Labels: First Telegraph Message

We are not interested in the possibilities of defeat. They do not exist.

Queen Victoria

Labels: Queen Victoria quote

Labels: Democrat Defeat

Labels: Afghanistan; Taliban Spring Offensive

Here's a short clip from fair and balanced "Hardball" host Chris Matthews calling Rudy Giuliani and most Republicans liars and idiots for thinking the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 meant what it said.

Matthews states: The Iraq liberation Act had nothing to do with overthrowing Saddam Hussein...

Oh, really? It's codified at 22 USCA Section 2451. I'll quote the first paragraph following the Whereas clauses: It should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and to promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace the regime.

Matthews is correct that it didn't authorize direct military intervention to accomplish the stated policy. That authority came with the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002, which passed the House on October 10 by a vote of 296-133, and the United States Senate on October 11 by a vote of 77-23.

The Clinton policy statement was merely the sort of "Free Tibet," "Save Darfur" bumper sticker feel good statement with no possibility of actual action. President Bush gets the job done and he's the evil one. We right thinking types fairly read the policy statement and we're the idiot liars. I see. It's perfectly clear.

Labels: Chris Matthews Partisanship

On this day in 1533, Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer declared Henry VIII's marriage to Katherine of Aragon void and his marriage to Anne Boleyn legal. (Major spoiler for The Tudors). Katherine had been married to Henry VIII's brother Arthur and Henry, after one daughter and several stillbirths wanted a new wife who would produce a viable male heir, so he argued that the Leviticus prohibition of marrying your brother's wife should make his first marriage void. He was foiled by the fact Katherine had not consummated her marriage with Arthur. Henry VIII broke with the Catholic Church when it refused to grant him an annulment.

Labels: Tudor History

One is never more on trial than in the moment of excessive good fortune.

Lew Wallace

Labels: Lew Wallace quote

Labels: Plagues of the Past

I was not a fan of the Rambo sequels, but this one could be OK. It certainly has a kick ass trailer. In the first three, Stallone used an M-60, which is a .30 caliber machine gun. Here he uses the M-2 in .50 BMG which doesn't just put a hole in you but blows you up. (I always thought you had to cock it twice to make it work, but what do I know). Also it has the girlfriend from Dexter, whom I quite like.

There seems to be a Christian overlay to the plot this time. That could be interesting or go nowhere. The former Burma is run by a military dictatorship, so their soldiers make politically correct bad guys. Wouldn't want John to take on, oh, the Janjaweed in the Sudan. Too edgy.

Labels: Rambo sequels

Apparently we have adapted so well to Taliban tactics and are kicking their skinny butts every time they attack, they are changing tactics to be city centered suicide bombers. Some see this as a desperate and dead end move. I see it that way. There are only 30 days left in Spring. The Taliban has been pretty much absent from the offensive end of things.

I don't care how much opium is produced. That's not a measure of Taliban success. I don't care how many car bombs they blow up. No nation has solved the car bomb issue and it too is no true measure of success in fighting against the elected government and the coalition forces providing security.

Labels: Afghanistan; Taliban Spring Offensive

On this day in 1455, the first and completely minor Battle of St. Albans began England's 30-year War of the Roses. The Lancastrians (red roses) fairly soundly defeated the Yorkists (white roses). Ultimately the Tudors were the victors of this nasty little civil war, the most infamous of which, Henry VIII, has a very lame series running on Showtime.

Labels: War of the Roses

Satire is focused bitterness.

Leo Rosten

Labels: Leo Rosten quote

Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, and a bunch of other Democrat Representatives (and Ohio Republican David Hobson) are set to fly to Greenland on a Congressional junket to view an un-named glacier, before flying on to Europe to discuss the settled scientific fact of anthropogenic climate change. This is probably a good thing because few places on the planet are as representative, finger on the pulse of the World's climate, as an un-identified glacier in Greenland. Winter is pretty much over and the glacier will begin melting, as it no doubt does every late Spring. I'm not actually sure what they expect to learn from the visit.

But they might as well go; it's not like they're passing any laws or anything.

Labels: Global Warming Hoax, Wasted Congressional Junket

The Bubonic Plague, an enterobacteria which in its first vector blocks the stomach flow of the flea that has it, so that the flea, no matter how much blood it sucks, is always ravenous and ready to leave the host and hop to another, thus passing on the disease, has never really left. It lives on in rodent populations (like prairie dogs) and has been in the American West for a long time now. Since squirrels are just arboreal rats, they get it too; and one unlucky squirrel has passed on the Black Death, the scourge of 14th Century Europe, to some hooded capuchin monkeys in the Denver Zoo, or at least to the one that ate the infected squirrel.

No one is exactly running for the hills. I guess we don't need to. We have powerful anti-biotics.

UPDATE: I originally called the plague a virus. My mistake.

Labels: Bubonic Plague

On this day in 1941, seven months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt proclaimed "an unlimited state of national emergency." We weren't totally unaware, but we were blind to the particulars. Of course, only an idiot would have expected the Japanese to do nothing in response to our oil embargo of Japan, which was a response to their atrocities in China, by which we hoped to reign them in. That was a silly wanhope.

Labels: WWII pre history; Pacific theater

Brevis esse laboro, obscurus fio.

Horace

When I labor to be brief, I become obscure.

Labels: Horace quote

In the middle ages, Pride was not just one of the seven 'deadly' sins, it was the sin from which all others derived. Now we celebrate the concept and are constantly revealing that we have pride in one another. Who am I to argue with progress?

I am proud of all my children and their individual talents and achievements but I'll just mention one here--my eldest daughter graduated magna cum laude and a member of phi beta kappa. I didn't get those. Well done, sweetie.

Labels: Family History, Pride as Non-sin

On this day in 1862 Congress passed the Homestead Act, giving 160 acres of land in the West free to homesteaders if they agreed to stay, live off the land, and improve it for five years. The Act excluded Southerners and non-citizens, but it was a boon to settlement of the West after the Indian Wars and helped to populate, such as they are, Montana, Wyoming and Idaho. Many of the current large ranches in those states have sections in them still named after the original homesteaders, whose decaying husks of first dwellings are still extant.

The purpose of education is to replace an empty mind with an open one.

Malcom Forbes

Diomedes' recent excellent post indicates that some prefer to keep the minds of the students empty and closed.

Labels: Malcom Forbes quote

One of my cooler relatives, my uncle Jim, (my mother's older brother) who is really named Glenn after his father and is a rather short but athletic retired doctor (OB-GYN), was born on May 19, 1917. So he's 90 and, as I wrote about him in third grade 45 years ago, still alive today. Happy Birthday, Jim. Thanks for the rifle.

Labels: Family History

I'm off to NY today to see eldest daughter graduate from SUNY Stony Brook. YEAH! With a major in English. Oh, well, that's nice, too! Take it away Mark and D.

Labels: Excuses

On this day in 1938, Congress passed the Vinson Naval Act, providing for a two-ocean Navy. We were horribly unprepared for WWII, but at least we had started to build a large enough Navy.

Labels: WWII pre history

A great city is not to be confounded with a populous one.

Aristotle

Labels: Aristotle quote

Labels: WWII history; European theater

Multa ferunt anni venientes commoda secum, Multa recedentes adimiunt.

Horace

The years, as they come, bring many agreeable things with them; as they go, they take many away.

Labels: Horace quote

Labels: Keane

Since the Viet Nam War was more than 35 years ago, it's tough to remember how bloody that was for us.

The graph I want to see is dead terrorists compared to our losses. Is that information impossible to obtain?

Labels: Viet Nam War; Gulf War II

On this day in 1765, the Quartering Act became law in the American colonies, requiring colonists to provide barracks and supplies for British troops. If this didn't lead to the revolution a decade later, it certainly led to the Third Amendment, my new favorite, because it proves that even the genius which produced our Constitution was not all seeing.

Labels: American History; Quartering Act

Nothing sways the stupid more than arguments they can't understand.

Cardinal de Retz

Labels: Cardinal de Retz quote

On this day in 1948, British rule in Palestine came to an end with the Jewish National Council, acting with UN approval (Resolution 181) proclaiming the State of Israel. Within hours Israel was under attack from Arab forces, ultimately fighting and defeating the armies of 5 Arab nations.

Labels: Israeli History

It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible to find it elsewhere.

Agnes Repplier

Labels: Agnes Repplier quote

An ambush has killed four American soldiers and their translator and taken three captive, we believe. 4,000 fellow soldiers are looking for the captured, but no luck so far.

Faith allows me to hope for the best but experience compels me to expect the worst. We treat the illegal combatants we capture as if they were real prisoners of war while our uniformed, obeying the rules of war guys are tortured and murdered, so far every time.

That asymmetry can't last forever.

Labels: Central Front Long War

One of Mullah Omar's top lieutenants, Mullah Dadullah, if you can believe that name, has been reported killed in Southern Afghanistan by combined NATO/Afghani troops. He had already lost a leg, so it's just possible that authorities have properly identified this one. There's video of the guy.

Way to go, our guys. Well done, especially after NATO or American troops aparently fired a lot of rounds during an attack on the road which took out a few Afghani civilians two months ago; and an airstrike earlier this week which is reported to have killed civilians as well.

Labels: Afghanistan; Taliban Spring Offensive

Went alone to Zwartboek (The Black Book) which is the new Paul Verhoeven film, mainly in Dutch and German (with subtitles) set in the final days of WWII in Den Haag. More about Verhoeven later. It starts with the near universal 'based on real events' which usually only means it's set on a historically recognizable planet Earth, but this film tells some fictionalized small 't' truths about some real people or real composites and it is helped enormously by Verhoeven's take no prisoners, non-Hollywood approach to sex and violence, and by outstanding performances by the leads. The girl lead is really outstanding, Carice van Houten, whom I've never seen before, but who I feel will be soon in a lot of American films. The boy lead (good guy on wrong side) is Sebastian Koch who was also outstanding in The Lives of Others, so he is on a roll. There is a bad guy on the right side as well, but I won't spoil it.

Most of the underground resistance movements in Nazi occupied Europe were just not that successful because the Nazis would round up, say, 50 people and shoot them if there was a successful resistance action, so the die hards who tried to do things had to fight not only against the Nazis but with most of the populace in opposition to their terrorist tactics as well. The collaborators on the other hand were numerous, ruthless and mostly effective. We don't usually get to see them (Lacombe, Lucien is the only example I can think of, but it's excellent). We don't get to see them here either--almost all the bad guys are Germans.

Young, pretty, talented, brave, resourceful Jewish girl (is there any other kind in WWII movies?) hiding out in a barn, a la Anne Frank, looses her hiding place and then gets into real trouble. Then it's a roller coaster ride and it takes place fast enough, it's difficult to see clearly what's ahead (but not impossible). War picture, spy picture, murder mystery, romance (kinda)-- it's pretty good. I liked it a lot more than the last time the Dutch took a hard look at their role in WWII in Soldier of Orange, also by Paul Verhoeven.

Here are some quibbles. The Germans were a little upset with the Dutch support of the Market/Garden failed (bridge too far) attempt to cross the Rhine and in retaliation they nearly starved all the Dutch to death the following winter ('44-'45). You get a hint of that with the soup kitchen and the hungry kids scrounging, but then there are flocks of sheep roaming about in the movie, and bunnies in cages. Not hardly in Spring, '45. There weren't a lot of dogs or cats either. Then there's the Kraut ambush after the Brit parachute drop. How do you sneak up on someone with a halftrack? Rogue element, they said. Yeah, I should say so; the markings on the track were from the Großdeutschland Division of Panzergrenadier, which was never in Holland. Quite rogue, I guess. How also do you let yourself be snuck up on by a halftrack. You think by the end of the war, they underground would be at least competent, given the price of failure.

I loved the detail that the lead girl, Rachel/Ellis, hiding in plain sight as a blonde, also dyes her pubic hair when she is to sleep with the SD head Müntze. But then she gets immediately found out by him by the black roots on her head; he guesses she is Jewish and she immediately confesses that she is; and it's all OK. Come on! Also, the Franken monster (based on a real guy) is circumcised. Maybe now most Northern European Christian men are circumcised, but not back then. Just a little startle on top of a rather gross exhibition. All the woman have really lovely bodies and aren't afraid to show them. That was part of the good things in the movie.

I also liked that the movie was honest enough to show that the Christians, even the ones risking their lives to help and hide the Jews, were very quick to believe and voice some rather harsh stereotypes. Of course nearly as many of the Christians were willing to consign the Jews to death for a cut of the profit. Verhoeven didn't flinch from showing that detail. Nor does he flinch from showing the detail of gunshot results to the face, skull, and aorta. It's a picture I can still see. Thanks a lot, Paul.

My question is about late April, 1945. We're at the Elbe and capturing Berchtesgaden; the Russians are in Berlin; and the Brits haven't even liberated all of Holland yet. What were they doing? And the Germans are acting as if the war is almost won (for them) and they are very nearly eager to commit further war crimes? Where was the writing on the wall? Only Müntze is dialing it back.

You'll be happy to know, to counter the fact that the Canadians did allow some German on German executions, that the real Müntze, who was indeed a stamp collector, survived the war and only served 4 years while the real life putz, General Käutner (Hanns A. Rauter) was actually executed in Holland in 1949, one of only 5 German war criminals so executed.

If we forgive Verhoeven Showgirls (and since I didn't see it, I'm willing to) he's had a pretty good career. I still remember fondly his good work in Holland, Spetters and Turkish Delight, but despite a miss here and there, once in America (like Flesh+Blood and Hollow Man), most have been pretty good--RoboCop, Basic Instinct and Starship Troopers. He's particularly strong on right wing/libertarian science fiction and has a good eye for detail, sometimes telling detail. It's over two hours long, but it sped by. It's not in the pantheon of must-see movies about the war, but it's a darned fine film.

Labels: The Black Book

On this day in 1943, all Axis forces in North Africa surrendered. Although this defeat is not as well known as the German defeat in Stalingrad, in absolute numbers, it was almost as bad. Adm. Erich Raeder had been lobbying for four divisions to be placed into North Africa in June, 1940. Hitler put in one, under a good commander, Erwin Rommel. More troops were poured in after the Brits were up to speed and the Americans had arrived in force, that is, too late. This was a turning point, not the turning point--to paraphrase Churchill, it was the end of the beginning.

Labels: WWII history; European theater

I think I saw you in an ice-cream parlour
drinking milk shakes cold and long.
Smiling and waving and looking so fine;
don't think you knew you were in this song.

David Bowie in Five Years

Labels: David Bowie quote

On this day in 304 A.D., Saint Pancras was beheaded as a Christian martyr on the Via Aurelia in Rome for publicly proclaiming his faith. He is the Patron Saint of Germany (for no apparent reason) and against false witness and perjury.

Labels: Saint Pancras

The lion and the calf shall lie down together but the calf won't get much sleep.

Woody Allen

Labels: Woody Allen quote

The SciFi channel has a new Friday show called Painkiller Jane. I think it's more Paininducing Jane or, to be most accurate, Timekiller Jane. Uh-oh, Rexie, I don't think this one's got the distance.

Labels: Painkiller Jane

Surrender.

No matter how they phrase it, that's what the Democrats, who want to "bring our guys home" without regard to our enemies' ability and willingness to fight, are willing, perhaps eager, to accomplish.

And their leadership is proposing just that--both in the House and Senate.

Just because you refuse to fight, it doesn't mean the war is over. You end the war by making the other guys unwilling or unable to fight.

Labels: Democrat Defeatism

Near the end of the Soviet Union, all those who opposed the leadership, the entrenched nomenklatura, were declared insane and shipped off, not to Gulags in Siberia, but to state mental hospitals where they learned to get their mind right or stayed for the rest of their days.

That lesson has apparently not been lost on third string college Hamline University. When one guy voiced his concern, post Virginia Tech shootings, about the lack of safety in making Hamline a 'gun free zone' (and complained a bit about 'reverse discrimination') he was suspended and will only be allowed to finish his courses if his mind is right.

So Hamline officials took swift action. On April 23, Scheffler received a letter informing him he'd been placed on interim suspension. To be considered for readmittance, he'd have to pay for a psychological evaluation and undergo any treatment deemed necessary, then meet with the dean of students, who would ultimately decide whether Scheffler was fit to return to the university.

Apparently, conservative thinking is indeed an identifiable mental disorder. Can't wait for the signs and symptoms in the DSM V.

UPDATE: Tufts University does not allow free speech on campus if the subject is religion, in that a truthful but critical advertisement about Islam in the student paper was held to violate the University's speech code.

Labels: Stalinist Tactics; Hamline University

On this day in 330, Constantinople, named after Emperor Constantine and built over the ancient city of Byzantium, was dedicated as the new capital of the Roman Empire--the Eastern Roman Empire. Rome was still the capital of the Western Empire which was in semi-serious decline and would not last another 300 years (the Western Empire, not Rome). The Eastern Empire was going strong, albeit in a different form, a thousand years later.

Labels: Roman Empire

The environment is everything that isn't me.

Albert Einstein

Labels: Albert Einstein quote

The new version of a funding bill which gives money for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan with onerous strings attached passed 221 to 205. That's not quite by a razor thin margin, but it's close. The same two RINOs who voted for it last time--Jones of NC and Gilchrest of MD--voted for it again. Ten Democrats voted against it and a few were a surprise to me:

Lewis of GA; Stark, Waters, Lee, Watson and Woolsey of CA; Michaud of Maine; Tanner of TN; McNulty of NY and Kucinich of OH. Yeah, that Kucinich.

The President needs to veto this one too, assuming, as I believe it's safe to assume, that the Senate will pass a similar version. One would assume also that there will come a time when unfunding the troops will begin to have some political price. Let's hope it's the Democrats who have to pay it.

Labels: Iraq Funding Bill

Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), a real enemy of the Second Amendment, has introduced legislation, S 1237, the Denying Firearms and Explosives to Dangerous Terrorists Act of 2007. Sounds like a good idea, but I wonder how we know they are Dangerous Terrorists as opposed to, say, Nice Terrorists, and what about the Merely Menacing Terrorists? Can they buy a gun or some C-4?

It doesn't seem to add to the form 4473 for purchasing firearms through the Instacheck system any question about whether the purchaser is a dangerous terrorist or not. I guess they figured a bona fide dangerous terrorist would lie about it anyway. It just allows the Attorney General to veto the sale based on intelligence he needn't pass on to the Dangerous Terrorist waiting patiently at the gun store.

I fear this law will not be as useful and tough as its 'short' title implies.

Labels: Firearm Ownership Restrictions

On this day in 1607, the first permanent English colony in North America, the Jamestown Settlement, was founded near what is today Williamsburg, Virginia. Four hundred years old is nothing in Europe, where written history goes back thousands of years, but it's pretty impressive to us in the Western United States where written history generally starts post Civil War.

Labels: Jamestown

No change in musical style will survive unless it is accompanied by a change in clothing style. Rock is to dress up to.

Frank Zappa

Labels: Frank Zappa quote

In between The Unit (is the CIA really that evil?) and The Shield, I watched the majority of a Frontline special on convicted murderers doing life without parole in Colorado. It was pretty good, and I recognized a lot of people in it, like Mitch, Darren and Karen. I was long out of the prosecution business before any of the guys in the show were convicted and sentenced, but I did a lot of direct filings against juveniles I felt were soon to become adult career criminals. I'll get to that. Oh, that was the twist, that was the hook of the liberal concern, when the 5 murderers murdered, they were juveniles, 16 and 17 years old. It was called When Kids Get Life and you can apparently watch it on-line at Frontline's site (although it's 90 minutes long).

For Frontline, it was actually pretty balanced, almost as often as the outraged parents of the no longer juvenile murderers were shown, the grieving parents of the murder victims were shown. It was harrowing on many fronts. I think Eric Jensen actually got a raw deal, but his conviction was down in Douglas County where they are very strict.

As the show pointed out, Colorado was a pioneer in the formation of a juvenile justice system and I was part of that system, as a prosecutor, for 17 months in the late 80s. The juvenile system, as envisioned by Colorado, creates a separate system where juveniles, between 10 and 17 years old inclusive are adjudicated delinquent as opposed to convicted of a crime. When they turned 18, their juvenile record was sealed and they started their adult criminal career with a clean slate. It was, in a literal sense, real crime without real punishment. I didn't care what the sentences were; nor, after a few months, was I interested in getting a successful adjudication of a juvenile. There was a lot of information about each of them who had been adjudicated a delinquent, including counseling and reports about their family life, etc. Not just the facts of the crime, or crimes (and some of them had a whole bunch of them--one young man had 18 aggravated robberies). What I became interested in was tagging, with an adult felony conviction, the guys who looked like they were headed for a career in crime. If they were still sentenced as if they were a juvie--that was OK, at least we had the first strike of the three we needed to put them away for life (or most of it) if they persisted in their criminal ways. (That was the habitual criminal law, or the 'bitch' as we called it--there was the big bitch--life-- which took three felonies, ideally at least one of them violent (home burglary counted) and the little bitch (25 years), which took just two felonies). Most states have a grand jury which hears a case early on and delivers an indictment or no true bill, but most crimes in Colorado reach the Court system through the filing of an information which is an indictment by other means, the DA just writes it up. We could do the same thing to a juvenile by direct filing in the District Court. I believe I did the most of any deputy DA in Denver, but there may have been guys behind me who did more.

A direct file against a juvenile for any form of first degree murder (including felony murder) apparently takes away the ability of the judge hearing the case to give a juvenile sentence--the only sentence available for any conviction of first degree murder was life without the possibility of parole. (That's been changed lately for juvenile murderers to 40 years which automatically means at most 20 years under Colorado law). That's harsh, man, but then again so is murdering someone.

There's always the Executive Clemency Advisory Board.

Labels: Frontline; Juvenile Justice System

It seems like yesterday, but I'm sure it was a half decade ago, that the NYT had about 40 articles about how horrible it was that a male members only golf club (Augusta National Golf Club) could host a major tournament (the Masters). No one cared but the NYT and a handful of feminists.

I'm predicting a new campaign to which our collective response will be a big yawn--the Times will be pushing for a new law granting to federal courts jurisdiction to hear a habeas corpus writ request from a foreign illegal combatant. I'm sighing at the misguided waste of editorial space but soon, if the Times follows its precedent, I'll, like almost all of America, soon be yawning.

The second editorial on the subject this month starts with an idiotic statement:

Last year, Congressional Democrats allowed the Bush administration to ram through one of the worst laws in the nation’s history — the Military Commissions Act of 2006.

Worst law in the nation's history? Worse than the ones which were declared unconstitutional? (The Military Commissions Act of 2006 passed constitutional review in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals and cert. was denied by the Supreme Court). Worse than the Alien and Sedition Acts? Worse than McCain/Feingold? Smoot/Hawley?

Rewriting the act should start with one simple step: restoring to prisoners of the war on terror the fundamental right to challenge their detention in a real court.

Why? The anti-Nazi, conscripted Wehrmacht soldier captured in Tunis in 1943 was a prisoner of war for the duration, with absolutely no ability to get his case reviewed. He at least wore a uniform and followed most of the recognized rules of war. Why should today's un-uniformed, war criminal Jihadi have more rights than someone who followed the rules? Why should we reward those who target on purpose women and children and have a status similar to pirates--that is, we could execute them upon capture with minimal tribunal involvement? What are they doing that would get them greater rights than a real prisoner of war?

The NYT has nothing.

Suspending habeas corpus is an extreme notion on the radical fringes of democratic philosophy.

What? You mean the well recognized constitutional ability to suspend habeas corpus during times of invasion and civil war (U. S. Constitution, Art. I, Sec. 9)? You mean that extreme part of the radical fringe of the Constitution?

Here's their 'tit for tat' argument: As four retired military chief prosecutors — from the Navy, the Marines and the Army — pointed out to Congress, holding prisoners without access to courts merely feeds Al Qaeda’s propaganda machine, increases the risk to the American military and sets a precedent by which other governments could justify detaining American civilians without charges or appeal.

...feeds Al Qaeda's propaganda machine. Yeah, we know the one thing that really gets the average Jihadi's goat (figuratively) is the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus. How much more can they hate us?

...increases the risk to the American military. How? They try to kill us every chance they get. They kill and mutilate every soldier they capture, not necessarily in that order. What greater risk? This is idiotic, or worse, Joe Biden-like.

...sets a precedent by which other governments could justify detaining American civilians without charges or appeal. You mean like our Embassy personnel in Tehran or our citizens kidnapped in Lebanon, and in Iraq? If our citizens fight in another country as un-uniformed, illegal combatants and are captured, it's OK with me for the foreign government to detain them. Same thing if we're at war with that foreign country, because all prisoners of war are held for as long as the war continues.

Then there's the big finale: We are sympathetic to [the Democrats'] concerns about finding a way to revive habeas corpus that won’t die in committee or be subject to a presidential veto of a larger bill. But lawmakers sometimes have to stand on principle and trust the voters to understand.

This is one of those times.

It is because the Democrats do trust the voters that they will do nothing to grant to the undeserving this unprecedented 'right.'

Apparently there are 38 pointless, baseless, absolutely ignored screeds on this subject to go.

Labels: Habeas Corpus, NYT pointless campaign

Labels: Cate Blanchett; too skinny

On this day in 1737, Edward Gibbon (author of the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire) was born. His great work is still better reading than most historical novels on the subject.

Labels: Edward Gibbon

It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.

H. L. Mencken

Labels: H. L. Mencken quote

The three judge panel of the D.C. Circuit court of appeals which decided the Parker case recently, holding, in a divided opinion, that the Second Amendment provides a private right to keep and bear arms (remarkably, just as it states) will be the final word on the subject unless the Supreme Court grants the expected petition for Cert. and reviews the decision. The request for en banc rehearing was denied.

They just might.

Labels: Parker case; Second Amendment

On this day in 1846, the Battle of Palo Alto, the first major battle of the Mexican-American War, which set the standard for the rest of the war, took place; the Americans, under future President Zachary Taylor, soundly defeated the Mexicans.

Labels: Mexican-American War

Success is never final.

Winston Churchill

Labels: Winston Churchill quote

Went yesterday with daughter Alex to Fracture, the new Ryan Gosling/Anthony Hopkins crime drama vehicle. I thought it was slick but silly, with horrible mistakes about the law and guns (as usual). I'll get to that. Hopkins plays the smug, superior psychopath he took a few times to the bank in Hannibal Lecter movies. Gosling overplays, but I still like him, just for The Believer.

OK, here's the plot. Hopkins, who is a talented kinetic sculptor and system failure engineer for aircraft, has a cheatin' wife and Hopkins, who apparently is unfamiliar with California family law, decides to pull off her perfect murder. And as with all perfect murders, he very nearly gets away with it.

There's a subplot about Gosling leaving the LA DAs office to go to a mythical big private firm but it has the emotional impact of a falling leaf so we won't mention it again. Let's dwell on the negatives.

OK, at one point, the lead detective, a Maori looking kind of fellow calls Gosling and tells him the murder weapon is no good because it has never been fired. What? It's not like they have a hymen. There's no real way to tell if a gun has ever been fired or not. I guess an absolute lack of powder residue would be a clue, but couldn't that just as plausibly be the result of a very thorough cleaning? And I hate to break it to the million dollar a script earning Hollywood writer, but the Glock gesellschaft test fires its guns, all of them--once at least to make sure it works and once to provide a sample cartridge (which the buyer throws away). It would necessarily have had to have been fired. (The better way to go would have been to say the dents in the primers of the recovered cartridges did not match the firing pin of the murder weapon). It was a Glock 21 in .45 APC, in case you missed it.

The trial court's suppressing both of the two confessions was bull pucky. Hopkins is armed and not in custody when the detective first speaks--difficult to believe he needs Miranda warnings or is under duress. He tells the detective that he shot his wife before he is assaulted by the detective so that one should not have been suppressed and would not have been in the real world, where getting to trial on attempted murder within a week or two of the crime in a major city is also pure fantasy.

The double jeopardy thing was OK, but if Gosling took the second confession, there's no way he's prosecuting. You can't be a witness and the prosecutor in a trial. Nowhere, no how. Stupid.

I have to admit that I figured it out early on, (kinda--I didn't know what Hopkins was doing at the hotel, but I got all the rest). So it was not all that mysterious nor tense, but there are plenty of people out there who quite liked it. I'm just not one of them. It's one hour 57 minutes long and drags from time to time. Still, at least it tries to be clever. I have not ruined anything in this review. You knew he wasn't going to get away with it.

UPDATE: The movie was like the machines Hopkins made with clever twists and turns, going nowhere.

Labels: Fracture movie review

On this day in 1954, the famous 55-day Battle of Dien Bien Phu ended when Vietnamese forces overran the last of the French forces, beginning the end of French involvement in Indochina. Although it was the little known destruction of Groupe Mobile 100 in the central highlands in June 1954 which actually sent the French packing.

Labels: First Viet Nam War history

Charity is no substitute for justice withheld.

Saint Augustine of Hippo

Labels: Saint Augustine of Hippo quote

Based on Department of Defense releases, for the period April 3, 2007 to May 3, 2007, 8 American soldiers died in Afghanistan, and 98 died in Iraq, which is another bloody month (although just up 2 from last month). These are really unprecedentedly low combat death figures for wars this size, but still a concern. Each, of course, remains a personal tragedy for family and friends. Here are the breakdowns.

In Afghanistan, one person died from a land mine; two from non-combat causes, three from IEDs, one from small arms and one from combat operations. Still awaiting the dreaded Spring Offensive by the Taliban although the death toll is up from last month by 5.

In Iraq, the IED, as usual, killed the most--58--with the generic term combat operations a distant second with 15. Small arms (including grenades and RPGs) killed 14. That last is double last month so there must be some real fighting going on with the surge. Two were killed in accidents; four from non-combat causes; and four from indirect fire (which almost certainly is mortar fire, another tell tale for real fighting although not perfectly reliable). Finally one died from an unknown cause---the DOD just didn't put out enough information for anyone to tell. I believe no women died, unless they had absolutely masculine names.

If we could solve the IED problem, then the combat deaths would be only about one per day. I have no scientific training, but because there are so many different types of explosives and sealing them up would prevent the type of 'sniffing' we used to do more of in airports, I thought that a sort of radar beam which detects the kind of molecular structures which can be explosives would be the goal to chase, if indeed that's even possible. Someone, maybe the pentagon, should put up a big cash prize for the scientist or team of scientists who come up with a method for detecting explosives at no less than 50 meters.

Labels: Iraq; Afghanistan; American War Dead

On this day in 1942 , nearly 15,000 Americans and Filipinos, on the tadpole shaped island of Corregidor at the mouth of Manilla harbor, surrendered to the Japanese, including the highest ranking American soldier ever captured in battle (with foreigners), Lt. Gen. Jonathan M. Wainwright.

Labels: WWII history; Pacific theater

Religion is about turning untested belief into unshakeable truth through the power of institutions and the passage of time.

Richard Dawkins

Labels: Richard Dawkins quote

In this surprisingly optimistic, unsigned editorial today, the editors of the NYT come across as amazingly Pollyannaish. Here are my quibbles.

Yesterday’s report on global warming from the world’s most authoritative voice on climate change asserts that significant progress toward stabilizing and reducing global warming emissions can be achieved at a relatively low cost using known technologies.

I hear Unicorns can be located and captured at minimal cost as well.

Now to the pesky details:

[The new IPCC Report] warns that over the course of this century, major investments in new and essentially carbon-free energy sources will be required. But it stresses that we can and must begin to address the problem now, using off-the-shelf technologies to make our cars, buildings and appliances far more efficient, while investing in alternative fuels, like cellulosic ethanol, that show near-term promise.

Since when, even in the near newspeak of the NYT, does "major investment" equal "relatively low cost"? No sane person is against making things more efficient. But we've already been doing that for decades now and new appliances are indeed much more energy efficient than 1960s versions, for example. Am I the only person who recognizes that burning all but one alternative fuel (hydrogen) produces CO2? How is it a help to the reduction of CO2 gas emissions to switch from one CO2 producing fuel to another?

Final thoughts: Bills to increase fuel efficiency in cars and trucks have been introduced in both houses; Jeff Bingaman, the Democrats’ Senate spokesman on energy matters, is drafting a measure that would require utilities to generate 15 percent of their electricity from wind and other renewable sources; Barbara Boxer, head of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, has offered an ambitious bill to greatly increase investments in alternative fuels.

As stated above, greater fuel efficiency is good, but let's hope it's not at the price of less safety in the vehicles. Windmills would be nice, especially just off the Kennedy compound. But leave it to Barbara Boxer, a shoe-in for the title of dumbest Senator ever, to attack the problem with a non-solution. And notice the failure to mention one surefire solution to increased CO2 emissions, massive investment in nuclear power plants. The editors can't mention a relatively low cost off-the -shelf technological solution. Wonder why that is?

Labels: Global Warming Fixes

Labels: A-10

On this day in 1862, The Battle of Puebla took place where Mexican forces loyal to Benito Juarez defeated French troops sent by Napoleon III. France took advantage of the American Civil War to try for some late colonization, knowing our federal government could do little to stop them, the Confederates weren't interested in helping (and were in fact rooting for France) and the weak Mexican military was incapable of holding off mighty Second Empire troops. We had taken about a third of Mexico away in straight up battle just a decade and a half before. But France managed, eventually, to get kicked out of Mexico. It's weird--in most of Mexico, very few celebrate Cinco de Mayo while Mexican Independence Day (September 16--although the celebration starts at 11 pm on the 15th) is huge; in America, September 16 is very quiet and Cinco de Mayo is a noisy car parade and weekend long party. What's up with that?

Labels: The Battle of Puebla

Everybody has the right to go to hell in their own way.

Gareth Jones

Labels: Gareth Jones quote

Iraqi police officers shoot their pistols (Glock 19s) during training at a range on Forward Operating Base Marez in Mosul, Iraq, May 1, 2007. The police officers are training with International Police Liaison Officers and the Civilian Police Assistance Training Team. (U.S. Air Force Photo by Staff Sgt. Vanessa Valentine). Good Weaver fighting stance, but not good thumb placement.

Labels: Iraqi police

On this day in 1886, the Haymarket Square Riot broke out as a result of a labor demonstration. The Anarchist and Communist inspired violence and backlash created a jumping off moment for the left leaning labor movement (and May day celebrations in the Communist nations). If ever there was a movement which morphed into a diminishing problem due to its success, it was the rise of Labor Unions.

Labels: Haymarket Square; Labor Movement

A system of ideas may be attractive, complex, self-consistent, widely-accepted, polished by the action of many minds, hallowed by tradition and expert opinion, and wrong in every detail.

Ian Jones

Labels: Ian Jones quote

Senators Clinton and Byrd want to revoke the Authorization for the Use of Military Force in Iraq Resolution of 2002. I see. They want to un-declare war in the middle of it. Yeah, that'll work. Are these guys completely idiotic? Even if they had the votes to pass the new legislation, wouldn't the President just veto it?

(h/t Instapundit)

Labels: Idiotic Democrat Ideas

After a pretty rough time late last year with Grave's Disease (which arises from a thyroid in overdrive and apparenlty ruins your whole day) semi local blogger sensation Steve Green at VodkaPundit is back. And funny. All the way back, I hope. He was liveblogging the so called debate.

Labels: VodkaPundit

Alexander Cockburn has had all he can stand and he can't stand no more. The idea of global warming as groundless religion and carbon offsets as Catholic indulgences is not new, but there's no scorn like a liberal vexed by the utter gullability of other liberals. His outrage is rather refreshing and I agree with nearly every word this guys writes. Highlights:

In a couple of hundred years historians will be comparing the frenzies over our supposed human contribution to global warming to the tumults at the latter end of the tenth century as the Christian millennium approached. Then as now, the doomsters identified human sinfulness as the propulsive factor in the planet's rapid downward slide. Then as now, a buoyant market throve on fear. The Roman Catholic Church sold indulgences like checks. The sinners established a line of credit against bad behavior and could go on sinning. Today a world market in "carbon credits" is in formation. Those whose "carbon footprint" is small can sell their surplus carbon credits to others less virtuous than themselves.

The modern trade is as fantastical as the medieval one. There is still zero empirical evidence that anthropogenic production of carbon dioxide is making any measurable contribution to the world's present warming trend. The greenhouse fearmongers rely on unverified, crudely oversimplified models to finger mankind's sinful contribution--and carbon trafficking, just like the old indulgences, is powered by guilt, credulity, cynicism and greed.

[...]

It's a notorious inconvenience for the Greenhousers that data also show CO2 concentrations from the Eocene period, 20 million years before Henry Ford trundled out his first Model T, 300 to 400 percent higher than current concentrations. The Greenhousers deal with other difficulties, like the medieval warming period's higher-than-today temperatures, by straightforward chicanery, misrepresenting tree ring data (themselves an unreliable guide) and claiming the warming was a local European affair.

We're warmer now because today's world is in the thaw following the recent ice age. Ice ages correlate with changes in the solar heat we receive, all due to predictable changes in the Earth's elliptical orbit round the sun and in the Earth's tilt. As Hertzberg explains, the clinical heat effect of all of these variables was worked out in great detail between 1915 and 1940 by Milutin Milankovitch, a giant of twentieth-century astrophysics. In past post-glacial cycles, as now, the Earth's orbit and tilt give us more and longer summer days between the equinoxes.

Water covers 71 percent of Earth's surface. Compared with the atmosphere, there's 100 times more CO2 in the oceans, dissolved as carbonate. As the post-glacial thaw progresses the oceans warm up, and some of the dissolved carbon emits into the atmosphere, like fizz from soda. "The greenhouse global warming theory has it ass backwards," Hertzberg concludes. "It is the warming of the Earth that is causing the increase of carbon dioxide and not the reverse." In vivid confirmation of that conclusion, several new papers show that for the last 750,000 years, CO2 changes have always lagged behind global temperatures by 800 to 2,600 years.

Labels: Global Warming Hoax

On this day in 1791, a liberal bill of rights reforming how Poland was governed, by setting up a constitutional monarchy, was signed by King Stanislaw Augustus. It was only the second written constitution in the world after the United States. Unfortunately, Poland ceased to exist just four years later, swallowed up by the Russian and Austrian Empires and Prussia.

Labels: Poland Constitution

A lie told often enough becomes truth.

Vladimir Ulyanov (Lenin)

Labels: Lenin quote

Labels: Khartoum Haboob

On this day in 1863, Confederate Gen. Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson was mistakenly shot by his own soldiers. His flanking march against General Hooker's much more numerous federal troops at Chancellorsville had taken a long time and although the battle was won by early afternoon, the fighting continued into the early evening when it was difficult to distinguish grey from blue. Jackson lost an arm and was recovering when he developed pneumonia which killed him nearly a month later. The general was so revered that there is a marker on the spot where they buried his arm.

Labels: Confederate Gen. Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson

In art, all who have done something other than their predecessors have merited the epithet of revolutionary; and it is they alone who are masters.

Paul Gauguin

Labels: Paul Gauguin quote

I started with this article about a Galapagos tortoise, then I went to bird extinctions and then back to the tortoise. It seems there were 14 different subspecies (or races) of Geochelone nigra. Some are on the same island, some on different islands. Three are extinct and unless there is a breeding female (or a first generation hybrid) out there, when Lonesome George (pictured above left) dies there will only be 10. George is from the Island called Pinta in Spanish (Abingdon in English) and he is a Geochelone nigra abingdoni. The difference between the subspecies is merely a visible but superficial changes in the shape of the carapace. The two two real distinctions are between domedback and saddleback, but there are intermediate types and some called tabletops. George is a saddleback. A domedback one (a Geochelone elephantopus) is pictured below right. If the shape change is extreme enough, perhaps mating between different subspecies will be impossible (and then we have moved from subspecies to species).

The bulk of the bird extinctions were on islands where a new species--rat, mosquito with avian malaria, brown tree snake, etc. was introduced. One of the big exceptions was the Passenger pigeon, here in North America, which went from being among the most numerous birds on the planet to extinct in just a few decades of commercial hunting. Of course, the pigeon was destructive to crops, and it is doubtful we could have co-existed with them in any numbers.

Labels: Species extinctions

On this day in 1945, Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, having killed with cyanide his 6 children, aged 5 to 12, the night before, shot his wife Magda before he committed suicide in the Führerbunker at the corner of Wilhelmstraße and Voßstraße in Berlin. His wife urged him on saying she did not want to live in a world without National Socialism. So that worked out for everyone.

Labels: Nazi leader suicides, WWII history; European theater

A ship in port is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.

Grace Murray Hopper

Labels: Grace Murray Hopper quote