Jason Miks is lucky enough to have had A Conversation with Bjorn Lomborg. He's still correct; I hope he's right that more climate scientists are becoming global warming catastrophe skeptics, at least for the next half century. I also applaud his efforts to attempt to get mankind focused on real problems like indoor air pollution caused by burning the wrong fuels to heat homes, lack of drinking water and encouraging responsible use of pesticides in developing countries to control disease.

Glenn links to Ronald Bailey's article in Reason Magazine in which he asks the question, "Brother, Can You Spare 22 Terawatts?: Big ideas for the future of energy."

The first sentence should hook you into reading the whole thing: "The flip side of the climate change conundrum is energy."

Where is the energy going to come from to feed the growth of not only the west, but the developing world? Can we trust government to make the right choices, or should government take a less activist role in terms of the technologies selected to produce the energy to meet our needs?

Move along, nothing to see here: "Hurricane predictions off track as tranquil season wafts away."

Betsy Newmark links to and expertly fisks a column in the Washington Post by Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska who seems to have lost his will. I commented beneath the article; I repeat my comments below for those who don't care to visit the WaPo.

Mr. Hagel, Mr. Hagel. I can't understand how members of Congress who supposedly understand American interests and geopolitics can spout this drivel over and over again.

1) "They will decide their fate and form of government." Mr. Hagel, the Iraqis have voted in election after election, with overwhelming support and in numbers greater per capita than our republic.

2) "Iraq is not a prize to be won or lost. It is part of the ongoing global struggle against instability, brutality, intolerance, extremism and terrorism." This is the only true statement in the article.

3) Apparently Mr. Hagel depends on the NYT headline writer for in-depth analysis of the news. Here are Dr. Kissinger's most recent and celebrated comments on Iraq in full,

"If you mean by 'military victory' an Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that the political processes of the democracies will support, I don't believe that is possible....A dramatic collapse of Iraq - whatever we think about how the situation was created - would have disastrous consequences for which we would pay for many years and which would bring us back, one way or another, into the region." It appears that Mr. Hagel and his allies would have argued against the occupation of Japan and Germany and against the many efforts in the Cold War that cost lives--including the Korean War--to restrain the Soviet Union. There were many setbacks during that period, and peaceniks and "know nothings" argued for rapprochement since the West could not defeat the Soviets and the ChiComs. Truman understood US national interests, as did Kennedy. Why can't today's Democrats?

3) "We are destroying our force structure, which took 30 years to build." This is high comedy. During the 90's, the "Clinton peace dividend" was used to shrink the number of troops, ships, air squadrons, etc. I think that counts as more deliberate destruction of force structure in my book.

4) While the cost of the war is high, and the loss of any member of the armed forces is one too many, the cost and losses compared to WWII is insignificant on a per capita basis. The bulk of our population carries on virtually untouched by the war. There are no war bond drives, no rubber drives, no gas rationing, no draft. The strongest argument against our policy in Iraq is that we are not fighting hard enough. We are lawyered up and in a politically correct straitjacket. During WWII, Patton's third army would bypass tough opposition and use artillery and air power to neutralize it. "Rubble causes no trouble."

If Mr. Hagel believes that validating OBL's assertion that America lacks the will to defend its interests over the long term, as Europe has shown, then he must be willing to spend fantastic sums at home to attempt to defend every possible avenue for attack and strengthen every possible vulnerability. If Mr. Hagel spent time listening to the speeches given by Islamofascist leaders and reading and watching their media, he would understand how badly that they want to follow us home. Utter defeat is the only lesson these people understand. We owe future generations of free peoples everywhere to defend liberty at all costs. We cannot defend it by running from the hot point of the conflict of ideas and ideals.

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Glenn compiles a list of interesting articles about outgoing Secretary of State Rumsfeld and the U.S. military's loss rate during the current war on terror versus historical loss rates since the beginning of the republic.

Here's an excerpt from a TCS daily article that Glenn includes in his post:

In the full sweep of U.S history, from the commencement of the Revolution on Lexington Green in April 1775, until the sunny morning of September 11, 2001, our average daily sacrifice has been between 14 and 15 military fatalities (1,217,000 fatalities/83,461 days = 14.6/day). Since 9/11, the average daily sacrifice has been 1.7 per day (3200/1900=1.68).

From the Revolutionary War until the American entry into World War I, the average daily rate was about 11 per day (578,000/52,231=11.07). From World War I through the break up of the Soviet Union, the rate was over 16 per day (636,000/38,811=16.39). Or in our long running confrontation with Soviet communism following World War II until the collapse of the Soviet empire, the rate was over between 6 and 7 per day (112,400/16,892=6.65).

As things stand, the conflict with Islamic radicalism involves the lowest average daily military fatality rate of any long run national security era. It may worsen, it may improve. If Congress had been asked on September 12, 2001, to endorse a national defense posture against Islamic radicalism that traded up to 2 military fatalities per day over the subsequent five years in return for no additional homeland attacks, the deposing of terror friendly regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq, the ending of Libya's nuclear program, what would they have done? Would Congress accept that bargain today?

As the man says, read the whole thing

An amazing story of a wake held for a Green Beret.

Excerpt:

On Nov. 3, a string of Blackhawk helicopters had been roaring across the desert on a nighttime counterinsurgency raid, carrying Special Forces soldiers to hunt high-value targets who had been making improvised explosive devices.

Flying over the desert at night is disorienting. Toz apparently believed the helicopter had touched down. He stepped out. It was more than 100 feet off the ground and thundering ahead at 100 mph.

His mother was impressed with the professionalism of the Army's presentation and took comfort in learning that the mission had been a success. Her son's e-mail precluded any resentment.

"Don't ever think that you are defending me by slamming the Global War on Terrorism or the U.S. goals in that war," Jeffrey Toczylowski wrote. "As far as I am concerned, we can send guys like me to go after them or we can wait for them to come back to us again. I died doing something I believed in and have no regrets except that I couldn't do more."

Toczylowski had gone through the Reserve Officers' Training Corps at Pennsylvania's Valley Forge Military College and then turned his Texas A&M criminal-justice degree into an assignment as platoon leader with the military police. He had completed the Special Forces training course in 2003.

After a sergeant in his company died of a heart attack, Toczylowski got serious about his mortality, fellow soldiers said. He earmarked money from his savings and insurance policies to assist friends and help cousins with college tuition and to fund a scholarship at Valley Forge, his mother said.

Honoring his wishes

The party was the challenge for the family. But Peggy and Pam say Toczylowski was wise, and they're convinced he knew that assigning them planning duties would keep their minds off losing a son and brother.

With the sadness that comes with the passing of Milton Friedman comes pleasure at reading tributes to him from those who knew him and from reading articles written by the great man himself.

It's unfair to excerpt from the second article since it is already an abridgment of longer works by Friedman. Still, this excerpt is among my favorites:

"The company town has been revived in one major area: medical care. It is taken for granted that workers should receive their pay partly in kind, in the form of medical care provided by the employer. How come? Why single out medical care? Surely food is no less essential to life than medical care. Why is it not at least as logical for workers to be required to buy their food at the company store as to be required to buy their medical care at the company store?"

--from "Pricing Health Care: The Folly of Buying Health Care at the Company Store," Feb. 13, 1993

A very interesting criticism of foreign policy during the administration of President George H. W. Bush (41) appears in the Wall Street Journal's OpinionJournal section.

Wow! The Israelis may have a process to convert oil shale into refinable oil at the equivalent of $17 per barrel.

The reaction of the environmentalists:

Amid various presentations on the nature of the fuel resource, problems unique to processing this fuel, emerging technologies, economic issues, etc. was a presentation by an attorney representing the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance that could be summed up in one sentence: "It is really bad - don't do it."

And of the wildlife advocates:

the observation of a Mexican Spotted Owl in a canyon nearby one of the reserves, which therefore qualified the area as a habitat for an endangered species.

The Israelis appear to be a couple of years ahead of the US in this field. Hopefully we will learn enough from their experience to alleviate these concerns by those who want alternatives to foreign oil as long as they're alternatives that are ineffective and don't address the actual need.

Global Warming: it's worse than we thought--even other planets are affected.

H/T: Jerry Pournelle

Tim O'Reilly considers the hardware costs of the PS3 and the subsidization of hardware by long term commitment to software and services:

I forget who I heard ask me a year or two ago, "how long will it be before we can give away cars for a multi-year commitment to the information services embedded in them?" That question is increasingly on the horizon.

James Lileks points to an editorial cartoon that shows that Europe thought Camelot was not such a pretty place after all .

The National Center for Public Policy Research documents the distribution of "Kyoto Protocol Survival Kits" at a United Nations Global Warming Conference.

More examples of "environmentalists" following a "do what I say, not what I do" credo .

Google marches on. I am sure that I am late to the party, but I think that enabling Google Docs & Spreadsheets to be used as a blogging editor is very, very cool. This post is the first test of that capability.

OK, I've tried at least 4 times to input my blogger beta settings in order to post to my blog --no joy.


OK, I've tried another 3-4 times with the same result. At least I learned about advances in bulking up mice--and perhaps mankind to follow soon .

Finally, success. I signed out on my primary machine and signed into Google Docs on my test machine using IE 7. The blogger beta settings are saved, and I'm in business.

Apparently, all I need to do is copy my set of labels for my posts into Google Docs, and I won't need to use the old blogger editor any longer.

I enjoy these little quizzes.

Which South Park kid are you most like? Kyle You are clever, and often come up with intelligent and funny comebacks to other people's stupid remarks.

Click Here to Take This Quiz Brought to you by YouThink.com quizzes and personality tests.

One of my "check at least daily" sites is The Belmont Club. This post, entitled "The First Iraq," is a must read. It chronicles the history of America's involvement in the Philippines, and its short term parallels to the situation in Iraq and attempts to use guerrilla warfare and propoganda to affect US domestic politics.

Hopefully the long term outcome will be as positive for both Iraq and America as it has been for the Philippines and America.

"The team finds that the Arctic has been warming up, but that there are now some signs that it may be starting to cool down."

Nature just won't cooperate with the naturalists' agenda.

H/T: The Corner on National Review Online

"That means killing the bad guys. Not winning their hearts and minds, placating them or bringing them into the government. Killing them."

This military blog post is well worth reading. It concludes as follows, "Here's one soldier whose morale is not being ground down by the enemy he faces. If it's being eroded, it's by the people who putatively support him."

One of the giants of this or any other age, Milton Friedman, has died.

Godspeed, Milton.

Update: Instapundit posts a link to more praise here.

Schadenfreude at the expense of members of the Democrat party today. First we have former Senator and former Vice Presidential candidate John Edwards issuing a lame explanation for an attempt to obtain a Playstation 3 from...Wal-Mart, bane of the left's existence.

Next we have Speaker-in-waiting Nancy Pelosi failing in her first effort to place her loyalists in key positions that will be controlled by the Democrat party. "The Democratic caucus voted 149-86 for Hoyer."

Perhaps the other members of her party believed Rep. Pelosi when she promised the "most ethical Congress in history." They knew, apparently better than she, that placing an unindicted co-conspirator from the ABSCAM scandal in the 1980's in the Majority Leader's chair was not consistent with that promise.

An American woman learns that wearing the Abaya is not seen as just wearing a garment, but is an external indicator that the wearer obeys a set of religious laws that as far from feminism as can be imagined.

Multiculturalism, meet the rock and the hard place.

Two interesting posts on energy policy today. Iain Murray in The Examiner asks, "What will we do when America's lights go out?"

Tom Evslin's excellent Fractals of Change blog suggests that France (France?!) may have a workable policy idea to use trade and taxation to ensure that countries that adopt carbon sequestration and similar measures to reduce emissions are not at a disadvantage to countries that do not.

An excerpt from Iain's article: "Soon after the widespread blackouts of 2003, the Electric Reliability Organization was etablished, and it recently issued its first report. That report makes for grim reading because the nation’s electric power infrastructure is on the brink of collapse."

And: "The ERO projects that U.S. demand will increase by 141,000 megawatts (MW) over the next 10 years. Supply, however, will increase by only 57,000 MW, and that assumes that all currently proposed new facilities are approved and built."

If the Democrats are serious about responsible environmental policy, they should encourage investment in practical solutions that reduce emissions while increasing our electrical supply in order to enable the continued growth and prosperity of the economy. More use of safe, modern nuclear power plants and innovative sequestration approaches like the Great Plains Synfuels Plant in North Dakota are available, economically viable solutions today.

Here's more on the Great Plains Synfuels Plant:

"At the Great Plains Synfuels Plant, North Dakota, some 13,000 tonnes per day of carbon dioxide gas is captured and 5000 t of this is piped 320 km into Canada for enhanced oil recovery. This Weyburn oilfield sequesters about 85 cubic metres of carbon dioxide per barrel of oil produced, a total of 19 million tonnes over the project's 20 year life. The first phase of its operation has been judged a success."

Betsy Newmark posts an excerpt from an interview with Mark Steyn during which Mark exposes uncomfortable truths for Europe. Once you read the excerpt at her site, you'll follow her advice and read the rest.

If you believe that democracy isn't compatible with Iraqi society, then how can it make sense for democracies to import incredibly large numbers of Islamic immigrants whose numbers grow to 20-40% of the population of major cities, if not the countries as a whole? What happens to democracies when non-democrats swell to near majority levels? What will happen to countries that were dictatorships not so long ago themselves?

Is anyone in Europe paying attention?

Various people continue to kick the Stern report and scientifically ignorant politicians around. To them I say, good.

I am quite pleased with the results of the two questionnaires that I answered recently. Does this mean that Obi-Wan is a Republican?

My results:
You are Obi-Wan Kenobi

Obi-Wan Kenobi 74% Qui-Gon Jinn 72% R2-D2 70% Chewbacca 68% Lando Calrissian 66% Mace Windu 66% Han Solo 66% Luke Skywalker 65% Yoda 63% Boba Fett 62%

You are civilized, calm, and have a good sense of humor, even when those around you don't. You can hold your own in a fight, but prefer it when things don't get too exciting.

(This list displays the top 10 results out of a possible 21 characters)


Click here to take the Star Wars Personality Quiz

Was this ever in question?

You scored as Republican. <'Imunimaginative's Deviantart Page'> Republican 92% Anarchism 83% Democrat 33% Socialist 33% Green 17% Communism 17% Nazi 0% Fascism 0% What Political Party Do Your Beliefs Put You In? created with QuizFarm.com

Earlier today, we again marked "The Eleventh Hour of the Eleventh Day of the Eleventh Month." Originally established to honor the veterans of World War I and remind us of a commitment to end war that proved impossible to keep.

Today the day is for the veterans who served in all wars, especially those who gave their lives in the defense of freedom for us all. My thoughts go to my own Father, gone now for a little over 14 years. He was one of the many thousands of infantrymen to land on the beaches of Normandy on June 6, 1944. He fought through the Battle of the Bulge. He lost some hearing, and was injured when a building he was clearing collapsed after being hit by shellfire. He returned home to Georgia, somehow found his way to Mobile, Alabama, and met my Mother in 1953. I came along in October of 1954 after they had returned to Georgia and started their lives together in Macon.

There are still thousands of such men alive today. They endured incredible danger and hardship to fight an implacable enemy who had swept all before him from the late thirties until mid-1942. They battled an enemy dug in on tiny nameless islands across the Pacific. Those that survived returned home and started us on a great adventure that exhibited the might of America. While scrimping to buy their own homes, to start families, to attend night school, to work one or more jobs, their taxes paid for the restoration of Europe, the occupation and restoration of Germany and Japan, and to hold back the tide of Communism. They were heroes on the battlefield, and loyal Americans on the home front. The enemies of America underestimated them time and again.

Today we honor these men, and veterans of other wars who have made sacrifices in other places and other times just as great. I honor them, but most of all, I honor my Father. I thank him for more things than I can possibly say; mostly for his love, his faith and encouragement, his example. I love you and miss you, Dad, and I hope to be able to say that and more to you one day when we're all together again.

The Democrat party wins, and "Voters gain faith in American elections." Nice to see that in print.

The whole notion of attempting to accuse the other (winning) party of nationwide election fraud is ridiculous, and is dangerous to the republic. We still need to find out what ACORN has done, but this election appears to have been generally fair overall.

I hope that any efforts to circumvent the Electoral College have been put aside forever. Otherwise, we would have large groups of disenfranchised states and wholesale opportunities for voter fraud nationwide.

The post-election and Rumsfeld resignation aftershocks continue.

I am more concerned about the impact of Secretary Rumsfeld's departure on force morale and enlistment/reenlistment rates than on the possible political benefits during the just completed election cycle. Still, it appears that his departure was handled so badly that there is a distinct possibility of negative impact on both aspects of the issue.

I became a huge fan of the Oakland A's when I moved to the Bay Area in 1980. The Giants were just "OK"; the A's had it all.

Now on ESPN: "Athletics have deal with Cisco for Fremont site." What would Billy Martin say?

This will put Fremont on the map, and contribute to the continuing demise of the city of Oakland.

Ann Althouse has one of the best post-election takes I've read yet.

Read the whole thing. I especially like this part:

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

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

In The Register: "The myth of the home-bake terror nuke 'cookbooks': Who needs Iraqi A-bomb plans anyway?"

Now they tell us!

Here's an excerpt:

"Astute readers know that news organizations like the Times never have trouble finding experts who will attach the worst possible interpretation to security issues. This is part of the inescapable nature of the war on terror. Sometimes there is unvarnished truth from them. But quite often they are just an appropriate-sounding bleat of concerned noise out of the religious belief and slogan, '9/11 changed everything.'

Now, to further soil your underwear with demonical atomic menaces to America, let's take a trip to a news item in the Los Angeles Times a couple weeks earlier. The security problem: The US government's nuclear materials storage facility at Oak Ridge, TN, wasn't superheroically protected enough against potential terrorist assaults, terrorists who could assemble and detonate an improvised nuclear device in minutes. That's right, minutes. 'It is believed such a device could have a yield equal to that of the Hiroshima atomic bomb,' wrote the newspaper.

The reader should be left wondering why anyone needs plans to put together an atom bomb if terrorists under fire can lash one together in a relative moment.

But this, too, originates specifically from - guess where - the New York Times. Chasing the suicidal nuke bomber threat, Matthew Wald of the paper dug up the expert in 2002. In this instance it was Frank von Hippel of Princeton University, saying, as paraphrased by the paper, 'that a 100-pound mass of uranium dropped on a second 100-pound mass, from a height of about 6 feet, could produce a blast of 5 to 10 kilotons.' Which, you'll note, is less than the Hiroshima bomb although still a pretty big bang.

Von Hippel also seemed to indicate to the Times that any such improvised blast might yield as little as a kiloton and that actually finding the right kind of uranium would be 'a challenge.' Nevertheless, the story has been flogged by news organizations and a public interest group interested in security whoopie cushions and gotchas since then, conjuring the images of an al Qaeda team with atom scientists more expert than US atom men, jerry-rigging chunks of weapons grade uranium onto a hoist while machine gun fire envelops them.

Historically, Manhattan Project scientist Luis Alvarez's 1988 autobiography used to be the primary source for this idea. Alvarez wrote 'With modern weapons grade uranium the background neutron rate is so low that terrorists, if they had such material, would have a good chance of setting off a high yield explosion by dropping one half of the material on to the other half.' When citing Alvarez, other physicists used to tend to mention there was no guarantee this would work at all.

Mark, for example, claimed, 'What [Alvarez] meant by 'high yield' or 'good chance" are not explained...' You tend not to find such statements, however, in newspapers because they spoil the narrative.

And it would seem if North Korea had known how simple it all is, it could have saved itself the embarrassment over a botched first test shot.'

Democrat party takes the Senate, Senator Joe Lieberman welcomed back like the black sheep of the family during the holidays. The far-left nutroots will call for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq and endless investigations of the Administration. Are they prepared for the consequences of the former? Another episode like the Vietnamese boat people and the killing fields in Cambodia? Time will tell.

There are many postmortems on the election out now, and there will be many more to come. I like the take of the Best of the Web Today so far.

We now return to the era of divided government. An era where there will be much heat, but less light. Perhaps that is best; as Thomas Paine said, "That government is best which governs least." We will certainly see fewer earthshaking changes at the Federal level.

Over the next two years, it will be interesting to watch the 50 states to see which of them produce the best results. Like 50 distinct laboratories, one of them may produce a leader--or may have already done so--who is worthy to lead the nation.

The House has swung to the Democrat party. The Senate is in the balance. There are three Senate races that are too close to call. There will be a recount in the VA race. MO looks like a Democrat pickup. Not enough returns are in as of 11:05 Pacific time to call, although the Democrat challenger is in the lead.

Click here to see the results for the WA races.

My old associate going back to the late 80s (when I was Apple's Networking and Communications Evangelist), Toby Nixon, appears to be going down to defeat in his race to return to the state senate. Toby is a terrific person, with a wonderful family. He is a legendary figure in the evolution of PC communications--he worked at Hayes Communications back when "Hayes modem" was the standard. I believe that he still works at Microsoft, and does important work there. I'm sure that he'll continue in public service in some capacity. He was a very good senator, and his defeat is a loss for the people of the state of Washington.

Eureka! Stem cell breakthrough to aid heart attack victims! Oh, it is based on the original adult stem cell breakthrough, bone marrow injections into the heart.

Nevermind, Michael Fox, nothing to see here...

I'm taking a different approach to "watching" the election results this year--at least at this point. I have two machines up. My laptop running Windows Vista RC2 is streaming Hugh Hewitt's program over on KKOL AM. By the way, Firefox 2 plus the common add-ins runs fine on Vista.

My main machine has Firefox up with 8 tabs. I am in love with Google Reader; I have all of the best bloggers in a category called "opinion" open in a tab that I refresh frequently. I have tabs dedicated to The Truth Laid Bear's wonderful election tracker, Fox News election page, and to CNN's Blog Party--at least for now.

Many pundits predicted a loss of both houses to the Democrat party. A smaller number predicted that the Republicans would retain both houses. I agree with Captain Ed that the Democrat party is likely to take the House--the only question is by how much--but the Republicans are going to hold the Senate--narrowly.

Hugh Hewitt's post reminds me that there is a corollary to the old saw, "beauty is in the eye of the beholder". This year, "insults are in the ear of the listener".

Here's an excerpt that includes Hugh's response to Jonathan Chait of the LA Times:
"Everybody in professional politics, conservative or liberal," Chait wrote, understands that Kerry was trying to make a joke about Bush. And yet the GOP has succeeded in convincing the country that he was denigrating American soldiers." Which means that those who disagree with Chait must be stupid or lying. That group includes a vast number of men and women in the military, as has been pointed out repeatedly across the web. MSMers like Chait refuse to acknowledge their opinions and judgments. They don't want those opinions and judgments to be counted, just like the military's votes in Florida in 2000.

Meanwhile, in geek news, George Ou paints Robert Cringely as a fool or worse for his lack of knowledge of the issues addressed by IPv6 in "Robert Cringely shows blatant ignorance of networking". The link contains the article that sparked George to smack down Robert. Here's a sample:

"As for your comments on NAC, you're sounding like a crackpot conspiracy theorist lunatic. NAC has absolutely nothing to do with charging for every PC in your house, it is an optional technology for corporate LANs. There is no secret plan to put an 802.1x NAC capable switch on to your home network. If anything, moving away from NAT and on to IPv6 would allow ISPs to see how many devices you have in the home and potentially charge you for every device on your home. As it stands now, the ISP can only see the single IPv4 address on your personal router."

While George is scathingly correct in his fisking of Robert, after reading Robert's original article and George's response, I'm reminded of this.

So do I, young war heroes, so do I.













H/T: Michelle Malkin.

James Q. Wilson pens a must-read indictment of "The Press at War". It is well worth your time to read, especially less than 48 hours prior to the closing of the polls in America.

Hang him high.

Austin Bay applies a coup de grace to John Kerry's pathetic and revolting vitriol and non-apology apologies.

H/T: Instapundit.

Fox News' Steve "Danger" Harrigan experiences waterboarding firsthand.

Interesting to hear his reactions during all three phases. It has a much happier ending than other videos that have been published from Iraq.

John Kerry, no one is laughing at your joke, no matter how many times your water-carriers try to explain it or edit it after the fact. This father's tale is worth your time to read.


Sadly, I expect to see stories about issues with military voting. I didn't have to wait long.

The Democrat party--they support the troops, you know. That is, until it comes time for those who preserve and defend the Constitution are about to take the opportunity to exercise their rights under it.

According to Wikipedia, schadenfreude is a German word meaning "pleasure taken from someone else's misfortune." Once the editors at the New York Times and their Democrat allies let this soak in--and after Rush and company trumpet it throughout the new media tomorrow--the schadenfreude is all going to be on the other foot.

Essentially, the New York Times story validates the pre-war worries about WMD. The Times and IAEA attempt to blame the Bush Administration for somehow leaking the information to help Iran.

As though A. Q. Khan, North Korea and China hadn't already gotten there first.

Here's Captain Ed with an especially large helping.

Update: Jim Geraghty's take is even better.

Arnold Kling posits "Operation Sunscreen" at TCS Daily as an alternative to Kyoto-like approaches to global warming. Photo accompanies the article.

Christopher Hitchens latest, "The indecent haste to exit Iraq," is another sterling defense of our mission in Iraq.

Excerpt:

"But the many disappointments and crimes and blunders (the saddest of which is the utter failure to influence Iran, and the corresponding advantage taken by Tehran-backed militias) do not relieve us of a responsibility that is either insufficiently stressed or else passed over entirely: What is to become, in the event of a withdrawal, of the many Arab and Kurdish Iraqis who do want to live in a secular and democratic and federal country? We have acquired this responsibility not since 2003, or in the sideshow debate over prewar propaganda, but over decades of intervention in Iraq's affairs, starting with the 1968 Baathist coup endorsed by the CIA, stretching through Jimmy Carter's unforgivable permission for Saddam Hussein to invade Iran, continuing through the decades of genocide in Kurdistan and the uneasy compromise that ended the Kuwait war, and extending through 12 years of sanctions and half-measures, including the "no-fly" zones and the Iraq Liberation Act, which passed the Senate without a dissenting vote. It is not a responsibility from which we can walk away when, or if, it seems to suit us."

The anti-war left that glories in what they call America's defeat in Vietnam ignores the consequences of our withdrawal of US troops and of support for anti-Communist governments in the region--the Vietnamese boat people, the Cambodian killing fields, to name two. I don't want our nation to go through years of guilt and self-doubt over a mission and a people that believed in America, only to see both abandoned to a terrible fate. This expansionist enemy wants to force America back as it expands, just as the Communists did. We cannot fail to show resolve now in a self deceiving hope to return to the "What me worry? 1990s.

Omar Fadhil (AKA Iraq the Model) has written a plea to America to remain by the side of Iraq; it's a far better case than I can make.

Once again, the Wall Street Journal's OpinionJournal section comes through with must read content. This time, there are two articles on global warming, both of which address the recent Stern report from the UK.

Here's an excerpt from the first article:
"Unlike the Stern report and its patrons, those of us who take a skeptical approach to these doomsday climate scenarios aren't trying to end the discussion. The Earth is warmer now than it was in the recent past, and this may be partly attributable to human behavior. But everything else--from how much warmer, to the extent of mankind's contribution, to the cost of doing something about it--remains very much in dispute.

Some of the Stern review's recommendations, such as carbon trading rights, are also worth debating. But most of its proposals are merely openings for government to expand its role in allocating investment, raising taxes and otherwise controlling economic decisions. Socialism was supposed to have died with the Soviet Union, but it is making a comeback under the guise of coping with global warming.

Meanwhile, there are far more urgent, and far less speculative, problems that we know how to solve with the right policies. That message may not get scary headlines, but it would improve the lives of more human beings around the world."

Here's an excerpt from the second article:
"The report on climate change by Nicholas Stern and the U.K. government has sparked publicity and scary headlines around the world. Much attention has been devoted to Mr. Stern's core argument that the price of inaction would be extraordinary and the cost of action modest.

Unfortunately, this claim falls apart when one actually reads the 700-page tome. Despite using many good references, the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change is selective and its conclusion flawed. Its fear-mongering arguments have been sensationalized, which is ultimately only likely to make the world worse off."

Please read them both, especially the second article by Mr. Bjorn Lomborg.

That noted walking pantheon of justice, Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), breathlessly announces that the inspector generals for the Commerce Department and NASA had begun "co- ordinated, sweeping investigations of the Bush administration's censorship and suppression" of federal research into global warming.

"These investigations are critical because the Republicans in Congress have ignored this serious problem," Lautenberg said.

He said the investigations "will uncover internal documents and agency correspondence that may expose widespread misconduct." He added, "Taxpayers do not fund scientific research so the Bush White House can alter it."

Messages left Wednesday at the inspector general's offices, which serve as the agencies' internal watchdogs, and the White House Council for Environmental Quality were not immediately returned.

The forecast for Washington, DC tomorrow: high of 53; low of 34 degrees.

Isn’t it now undeniable that US Soldiers in the field
1) read and watch and listen to the media, and
2) are affected/have opinions about it, and
3) their morale is affected by what the media distributes?

The U.N. wants to take over control of ICANN from the US Government. This is not a promising start.

Contact Music quotes from an interview in Vanity Fair: (Sumner)Redstone concluded that his decision to axe (Tom) Cruise "sent a message to the rest of the world that the time of the big star getting all this money is over. And it is! I would like to think that what I did, or what we did, has had a salutary effect on the rest of the industry."

Hmmm. It would appear that moonbats everywhere are beginning to see that words and actions have consequences...

Captain Ed nails the Kerry flap.

Excerpt:

"I'm still pretty torn on this controversy. Had Kerry simply come out yesterday and said, Whoops, my bad -- I left out a couple of key words from the punchline and left the wrong impression -- my apologies!, I think the entire story would have died immediately. However, in his typically tone-deaf manner, he decided to brand the entire incident a Republican smear, despite the fact that he had been quoted accurately.

Now he's left with the argument that he misquoted himself while trying to show off his supposed intellectual superiority over George Bush, and that it's all Bush's fault despite being Kerry's intellectual inferior. Really, no one could have scripted a more hilarious scenario, and the longer Kerry continues this line of defense/offense, the more ridiculous a figure he becomes. It demonstrates clearly that the 'I was for the $87 billion before I was against it' gaffe was no fluke."

That's it in a nutshell: John Kerry misquotes himself and manages to make himself look even more ridiculous than ever.

Update: Drudge points out that the troops understand what Kerry meant.

Peter F. Schaefer writes "More MacArthur, Less Marshall" in TCS Daily that the approach taken in Japan versus that taken in Germany after WWII was more successful. Part of Schaefer's discussion includes the viability of the nation being rebuilt. He points out that the Sioux Indian nation is more of a nation that Tito's Yugoslavia.

This article is worth reading, and it inspired me to search anew for good books on the Marshall Plan and on MacArthur's plan for Japan.

Excerpt:
"Moreover, MacArthur's occupation plan was developed between 1942 and 1945 and then used during the occupation. It was produced by a large team working on the expectation of a hostile invasion and a process of pacification that would cost a million US casualties and millions of Japanese lives. MacArthur knew that he would not be welcomed as a liberator. His team knew there would be much hard work needed to keep the Japanese islands from descending into chaos and violence."

Update: it occurs to me that the Allies began planning for the post-war world long before 1945. Churchill discusses this in his fantastic six volume history of World War II. It would be interesting to know whether President Clinton or his cabinet directed planners in the government to plan for a post-war Iraq after passing the Iraq Liberation Act in October of 1998. If there were plans, why weren't they used? If there weren't, then why pass the bill other than as political theatre?