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May 31, 2005
Geeks and Baseball
I went to the San Antonio Missions game on Friday and was disturbed by what I saw. It was "Star Wars Night" and as much as I like Star Wars, I know enough that when I became an adult it was wierd and slightly disturbing to dress up like the characters in public (or even in private). There were over twenty adults and about a dozen kids dressed up as different characters with a ratio of about nine males for each female. Almost all the males were dressed like Jedi and even the Missions mascot (a six foot tall jalapeno pepper) was dressed up like a Sith. At one point the whole lot of them gathered in front of home plate and at another point between innings they all stood together on the visiting teams dugout. I was impressed by the guy in the very accurate Boba Fett costume (OK I was impressed by the costume, not the guy wearing it) and I think I can understanding dressing up as a Star Wars character in public a bit more if you are wearing a mask.
Dressing up like Star Wars characters in a non-movie theater public event is a step lower on the geek hierachy than going to a Star Wars movie dressed up as a character.
The game itself was not that great. The Mission's starting pitcher gave up four earned runs and one unearned run in the first three innings. The high point of the game was the ninth inning when the Missions were down 6-0. They scored two runs with two outs to make it 6-2 with the basses loaded. The next batter hit a good line drive that was caught by the right fielder, but they came very close to erasing a six run deficit with only one out left in the game.
Posted by Pete at 10:31 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 27, 2005
Climate of Fear Part 24 / Minutemen Part 11
In Garden Grove, California a crowd of angry opponents of the Minuteman Project attacked people who attended a speach by James Gilchrist, the founder of the Minuteman Project. Here is the Los Angeles Times article about it:
The motorist had attended Gilchrist's speech and was leaving when protesters began hitting his van with placards and other objects, said Garden Grove Police Lt. David Kivler. The driver, who was not identified but spoke to a KCAL-TV Channel 9 reporter, said he gunned his car engine to get away from the crowd.
The anti-Minutemen protestors also attacked a group of police officers:
He said protesters began throwing filled soda cans at the assembled Garden Grove, Anaheim and CHP officers. At least eight people were arrested on suspicion of felony assault, while others were booked for disturbing the peace.A witness, Eric Garcia, 22, of Anaheim said the evening turned ugly about 9 p.m. after the talk.
He said some protesters were in a driveway when someone in a car tried to leave and made contact with the group. "Then all hell broke loose," Garcia said. "People started throwing things, like rocks and bricks and stuff."
Is it really a surpirse that people who have no respect for one law are so quick to assault the people entrusted to enforce other laws? What might be even more disturbing was how quick the minutemen opponents were to assault people who attended a speech they did not like.
Previous minutemen post. Previous Climate of Fear post.
Posted by Pete at 02:49 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Jimmy Carter Screws Up Again
One of the worst presidents ever has now messed up Ethiopia along with all of his other failures. Has there ever been another president so gutless in the face of tyranny? Here is the CNN report:
The EU report also said former U.S. President Carter, who led a team of 50 election observers, undermined the electoral process and EU criticism with "his premature blessing of the elections and early positive assessment of the results."Unless there is a "drastic reverse toward good democratic practice" the observer team and EU "will have to publicly denounce the situation."
"Otherwise, the EU jointly with ex-President Carter will be held largely responsible for the lack of transparency, and assumed rigging, of the elections."
Posted by Pete at 02:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
You Can Take My Carving Knife....
...when you pry it out of my cold dead hand.
Currently it is illegal to use leathal force to defend yourself, your home, or your family from attack in Britain and almost all privately owned firearms are illegal. Unsurprisingly gun crimes and robberies are rampant. The population is not vulnerable enough for some Britains who want to make most knives illegal to own as well, even if you limit their use to your private kitchen and have no criminal history. Here is the report, along with the BBC's take on it. As Dan points out criminals will either ignore this law like they have with other weapons laws or they will use another weapon.
Posted by Pete at 02:29 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 26, 2005
Europe Good News and Bad News
First the good news. It looks like the proposed massive EU constitution is going to be defeated in France. This is funny because some of the biggest promoters of the proposed constitution were French. Any natioanl constitution more than twenty or thirty pages long is too long. Even if the proposed EU is a good idea, which I doubt, a constitution works best when it says how a government will work, not what specific policies the government must enact. What Europe needs most is rule by its people, which it has never had to the extent the US has. The proposed constitution will continue to concentrate power in a bunch of unelected elites and that is not the most just solution for Europe's problems.
The bad news is that Oriana Fallaci is facing a blasphemy/defamation trial in Italy for her statements about Islam. I read The Rage and The Pride by Fallaci about a year ago and although I did not think it was that great, Fallaci should be allowed to say whatever she wants about Islam or any other religion or belief system. Fallaci lives in the US now and will probably ignore the trial.
Update 5/27: Go here for an English translation of the list of the 18 sentences Fallaci is on trial for.
Posted by Pete at 08:29 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 25, 2005
No Vacation
I was planning to go to Galveston next week for vacation because I did not yet have a start date for my new job. Today I found out that I will be starting next Tuesday so no vacation for me for a while. I may still end up going to Houston in two weekends. I have no idea how this will effect the blog as I do not know what my hours will be yet.
Posted by Pete at 02:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 23, 2005
Over 100% Turnout!
I have been meaning to an elections fraud update for a while and with the trial to overturn the fraudulent election of former Washington attorney general Gregoire beginning today it seemed like now is a good time to post. First let do the Washington state posts, which are all from Sound Politics. Recently the Republicans went on a disposition spree where their lawyers deposed many elections officials about how they improperly certified the election. The big problem addressed in the dispositions is the discrepancy between the total number of votes and the total number of voters.
The second problem has to do with provisional ballots, which are ballots cast by people who are not on the voting rolls. Provisional ballots are not supposed to be counted until the voter has proved they were eligible to vote, but in King County over 400 ballots were counted in violation of the law before it was proven that the voters were eligible. These ballots are now mixed with the others and we will never know if they were legitimate votes. Remember that the governors race was decided by less than 200 votes so these votes alone could have swung the election.
The second case of voting fraud has to do with Wisconsin. While in the end no overall elections were decided by this fraud it is likely that George Bush won Wisconsin, but fraudulent votes gave the states electoral votes to Kerry. Thankfully Bush had enough electoral votes in other states that this did not really matter this time. Officially Kerry won Wisconsin by around 11,000 votes, but with the fraud that occurred in Milwaukee it is likely that if only honest votes are counted, then Bush should have won. Milwaukee gave Kerry 71% of its 277,000 votes, but that is with 70,000 people registering on Election Day. If only a sixth of those votes were fraudulently cast for Kerry, then Bush should have won Wisconsin. Assuming a more realistic turnout of lets say 65% percent as opposed to the official turnout of 100% and being very, very generous in assuming that Kerry still got 71% of the vote, then Kerrys total Milwaukee votes drop from 197,000 votes to around 125,000 (a loss of around 72,000 votes). While Bushs 77,600 votes (assumes 28% went for Bush) would drop to 50,400 (A loss of 27,000 votes). This math would give Bush 34,000 more Wisconsin votes than Kerry.
The first problem with Wisconsin is that were 4,609 more cast ballots than voters. Here is the Milwaukee Journal Inquirer story:
Investigators said Tuesday they found clear evidence of fraud in the Nov. 2 election in Milwaukee, including more than 200 cases of felons voting illegally and more than 100 people who voted twice, used fake names or false addresses or voted in the name of a dead person.Officials said charges will be filed in coming weeks, as individual cases are reviewed and more evidence is gathered.
One of the main problems in Wisconsin is same day registration which allowed 70,000 people to register on Election Day, which led to an extremely suspicious turnout of over 100%. As Ed at Captains Quarters writes:
Barrett wants this entire embarssment to go away, and the spin is designed for the national media to go back into silence mode. Having 4,500 more ballots than registered voters doesnt mean that 4500 extra votes were cast. It means many more thousands of extra votes were cast, unless Milwaukee normally gets 100% turnout for every election. Milwaukee had over 277,000 ballots cast in the election, and even if that accounted for 90% of the registered voters in the city, it would still mean 30,000 extra ballots before you even get to an overage.
Even with all of this fairly obvious fraud, Wisconsins Democrat governor vetoed a bill requiring voters to show a photo ID.
Posted by Pete at 05:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
England Can't Be That Boring
A few weeks ago I finished listening to In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson, which is his account of his travels around Australia. It was full of great stories and gave a good general history of Australia based on its different regions. My favorite story was of Harold Holt Australian Prime Minister from 1966-1967 who disappeared while swimming of the coast of Victoria and was presumed drowned. Another interesting story included what is known of the early history of the Aborigines. They appear to be one of the first people groups to master ocean travel, but then remained technologically stagnant for thousands of years afterwards. I was disappointed when the book ended and I wanted it to keep going.
After loving In a Sunburned Country I listened to Notes From a Small Island, which is a similar book based on Bryson's travels in the UK. Although parts of the book were good, I was not sad when it ended. Some of the more interesting parts of the book involved Bryson's job at an asylum and his arguments with different boarding house owners. His histories of different cities like Liverpool and Oxford were well written as well. I could still tell that Bryson was a good writer from this book, but did not want to see the places Bryson described. Part of it might be that Australia is such a new nation and is still growing, while England has fallen far from the heights it reached as recently as 70 years ago. Many of Bryson's histories of towns were based around the fact that an industry that used to dominate the particular city was now gone and the city was still trying to figure out what to do with itself without that industry.
The other book I actually read was The Anabasis (or The Persian Expedition) by Xenophon. I had long heard that it was a classic tale of Ancient Greek ingenuity and courage and it did not disappoint. To those of you unfamiliar with the story it tells the tale of a group of Greek Mercenaries who went to Persia only to have their side lose the war. They then had to fight and pillage their way across hundreds of miles of unfamiliar territory to get back home. They had to fight of various armies they met along the way as well as natural problems like frostbite and hunger. None of the book was that surprising although I still am sometimes shocked the casualness of many Greeks towards what would now be considered the molestation of young boys. Xenophon seems to think it almost cute how much one of his soldiers is willing to sacrifice in order to keep a handsome young boy he has found. It was also tough to root for the Greeks sometimes because of the pillaging. Xenophon makes it sound like the Greeks tried to be fair to some of the villages they encountered and the Greeks probably would have died had they not pillaged, but they still stole food and provisions from some groups that seemed to not be bothering anyone.
I have not decided what book to read next, but I am listening to Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman and am getting a lot out of it.
Posted by Pete at 04:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 20, 2005
Earle and DeLay
Earle is the prosecuter going after DeLay on supposed ethics violations. But it looks like Earle has someethics violations of his own. Prosecuters are not supposed to go out and publically criticize defenders before juries are even selected, but it appears that this is what Earle did. According to the Houston Chronicle Earle told a group of Democrats:
"This case is not just about Tom DeLay. If it isn't this Tom DeLay, it'll be another one, just like one bully replaces the one before," Earle said."This is a structural problem involving the combination of money and power," he added. "Money brings power and power corrupts."
Captain's Quarters thinks that Earle may need to lose his law license:
Clearly, Earle has violated DR7-107(A) as well as (B)(1). He also has clearly violated EC8-8, which states that lawyers who serve as public officers "should not engage in activities in which his personal or professional interests are or foreseeably may be in conflict with his official duties."Earle has made clear that his "investigation" of Tom DeLay is nothing more than a partisan fishing expedition meant to give rhetorical cover to Howard Dean and the rest of the Democratic Party leadership who fear DeLay's political skills. DeLay might have broken the law in Texas, but anything Earle turns up will necessarily be completely tainted by his naked partisanship in using his ongoing investigation for party fundraising speeches. The only investigation in which Earle should be involved is an ABA review of his Texas law license.
Dan thinks Earle is a hypocrite at the least:
Earle said, This is a structural problem involving the combination of money and power. Money brings power and power corrupts. The event to which I keep referring was a fundraiser for a new Democratic PAC. Earle helped raise $102,000 for the group.
Posted by Pete at 02:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Trump
I am not a huge Trump fan, but I liked his show. I also like his plans for the world trade center site and think that he might actually get it done:
Trump implored Governor George Pataki to discard the plans for the 'Freedom Tower' presently on the table, describing the design as 'the worst pile of crap architecture I've ever seen in my life,' according to a report published in 'Newsday.'Wednesday, Trump held a news conference at Trump Towers on Fifth Avenue to announce his support for a 'taller, stronger, more beautiful version of the World Trade Center.'
Posted by Pete at 02:55 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Pimped!
Dangerous Dan Pimped Me! And now I have to pimp someone else I think. Ill get him for this!
10 Things Ive Never Done:
1. Stepped inside of The Gap
2. Killed a man just to watch him die
3. Gone sky diving or scuba diving
4. Walked out of a movie in a theater
5. Been to an NFL game
6. Finished reading The Scarlet Letter
7. Broken any of my bones
8. Smoked crack
9. Shot craps
10. Bitten a penguin
So I guess I am going to pimp Lennox. Like Dan I hope I did this right.
Posted by Pete at 02:38 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Better Than Return Of The Jedi?
I saw the film this morning and think that Revenge of the Sith is definitely the best of the three prequals and possibly better than Return of the Jedi. I will need to see it again before I can render a final judgment on whether it ranks third or forth in the series (I think Empire Strike Back is the best, followed by A New Hope, Sith is probably Third, Jedi forth, Clones fifth and Phantom Menace is the definite worst). The acting was not as bad as many others have been saying and I actually cared about the characters, which did not really happen with episodes I or II. The dialog was also better than in the previous two episodes and Palpatines lines were especially well written and delivered. One of Lucas strengths is creating good villains and he does not disappoint here. I also thought CGI was fairly good and this movie had more action and light sabers than any other. The politics that some have complained about were not that bad and you had to go looking for it very, very hard to see an anti Bush type angle.
Here are examples of what some other blogs and sites are saying:
Will Collier at Vodkapundit (I agree with his assessment a lot)
Two geeks at slate (who I think are overly harsh, but whose "bros before hos" and mysticism reference were right)
Jim Geraghty at TKS (I agree with for the most part)
PunditGuy (like the Slate geeks he is reading way too much into these movies)
And Instapundit (good round up of links)
LOTS OF SPOILERS IN EXTENDED ENTRY SO READ AT YOUR OWN RISK
The actual path Anakin follows to the dark side was better and deeper than I expected and the Sith come out looking more complex than I thought they would. The Jedi are in a lose/lose situation: they try to overthrow the legitimate ruler of the republic because he is a Sith lord. The Sith are trying to replace what seems from Episodes I and II to be a very ineffective republic with a more efficient, secure, orderly, and responsive empire. (see this earlier post) I thought the end of the Jedi scene was very well done and had a good emotional punch with Jedi after Jedi after Jedi getting assassinated. When Darth Vader walked into the room of younglings and later when a youngling took on some storm troopers and then was killed I thought it was appropriate. If these are really Jedi in training the Sith would need to take them out and most movies do not have the guts to show children like that as dangerous warriors who kill and are killed.
The other battle scenes were well done and I liked general Grievous as an answer to why do only the Jedi have light sabers. The final confrontation between Darth Vader and Obi-Wan was both exciting and dramatic. There conversation had a good depth and the actual battle was about as good as a two former close friends dueling with light sabers over a river of raging lava can be. Vaders final demise and transformation into the machine Vader was appropriate and tragic. After seeing this film it is believable how the innocent Anakin from Episode I becomes Darth Vader and how Vader is later redeemed by Luke in Return of the Jedi.
The older characters made sense in this film as well and there were not too many loose ends. Some people have complained about things like why doesnt Vader remember C-3P0 and R2-D2 in episodes. If I remember correctly it is because they never meet face to face in any of those movies. Vader confronts every other heroic character up close at some point, but not the two droids. I assumed that C-3P0s memory would be wiped at some point after first seeing episode I and that is what happens at the end of Revenge of the Sith, which explains why he does not know much about Vader later on. Others have complained about potential plot flaws, but most of them seem fairly minor to me.
Chewbaca and the wookie battle were cool and did not feel out of place. Yoda was good and his battle with Palpatine was interesting. Count Dookus fight and eventual death was very well done and I liked his line of twice the pride, twice the fall. The brief cameo by Tofkin was good at least to those like me geeky enough to realize who he was. Mace Windu became an interesting character in movie and his last scene was well done and finally made his character worth including. I will probably go and see Revenge of the Sith again when it hits the dollar theaters.
Posted by Pete at 02:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 19, 2005
Top 100 List Part 3
Half Sigma has a good round up of who different bloggers think should be named to the top 100 list. Half Sigma suggests Frank McCourt, which I would not agree with. Other people suggested on her site by others include James Madison (who I would include), Juila Childs (who I would probably not include), and Eugene V. Debs (who I would put on the list before Cesar Chavez).
My original list with suggestions and follow up post.
Posted by Pete at 09:27 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Minutemen Part 10
The Wall Strret Journal has a good column on the dangers of life on the border today. It is now impossible to live in safety near some parts of the border with contant destruction of livestock and property along with tresspassing, repeated break ins and threats made against residents lives by illegal immigrants who are alos drug runners or otherwise part of organized crime. Meanwhile the federal government barely makes an effort to protect its own citizens from foreign invasion. It is no wonder that most Arizona residents supported the minutemen. Here is the column and the disturbing description of border crime:
These border residents are routinely snickered at and called racist vigilantes. But most are decent folks caught up in the daily invasion of illegals who tramp across their land. Ranchers in hard-hit areas spend the first hours of every day repairing damage done the night before. They find fences knocked down and water spigots left on, draining thousands of precious gallons. And then there's the trash: pill bottles, syringes, used needles, and pile after pile of human feces.Sometimes illegals hammer on residents' windows in the middle of the night, demanding to use the phone. Some even walk right into the ranch house and refuse to leave until the rancher pulls a gun and forces the issue. One rancher told me about illegals who rustled one of her newborn calves. The intruders beat the 12-hour-old animal to death with a fence post, then barbecued it on the spot.
How bad is it? In the Tucson Sector alone in January 2005, the Border Patrol arrested 35,704 people, seized 34,864 pounds of marijuana, and impounded 557 smuggling vehicles. In one month. High-speed chases and accidents on our back-roads are now common. Residents know to stay off certain roads at night because the smugglers--of people and drugs--own them, and if you're not careful they'll come around a bend at 100 mph and run you into a ditch or worse.
Previous Minuteman post.
Posted by Pete at 09:18 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 18, 2005
Star Wars Picture of the Day
You know Vader would not vote for that Kerry weenie.
That site also contains a link to one of my favorite columns of all time by Jonathan V. Last: The Case for Empire. Last argues that from what we know (from the movies alone) the galaxy was better off under the rule of the Empire than it was under the Republic or later rebellion. The rebels never bother to explain what they are fighting for, just what they are against.
The best part is Last's defense of Tarkin's destruction of Alderaan:
The destruction of Alderaan is often cited as ipso facto proof of the Empire's "evilness" because it seems like mass murder--planeticide, even. As Tarkin prepares to fire the Death Star, Princess Leia implores him to spare the planet, saying, "Alderaan is peaceful. We have no weapons." Her plea is important, if true.But the audience has no reason to believe that Leia is telling the truth. In Episode IV, every bit of information she gives the Empire is willfully untrue. In the opening, she tells Darth Vader that she is on a diplomatic mission of mercy, when in fact she is on a spy mission, trying to deliver schematics of the Death Star to the Rebel Alliance. When asked where the Alliance is headquartered, she lies again.
Leia's lies are perfectly defensible--she thinks she's serving the greater good--but they make her wholly unreliable on the question of whether or not Alderaan really is peaceful and defenseless. If anything, since Leia is a high-ranking member of the rebellion and the princess of Alderaan, it would be reasonable to suspect that Alderaan is a front for Rebel activity or at least home to many more spies and insurgents like Leia.
Posted by Pete at 06:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Possible Good News
Bush's democratization of the Middle East may be working in Syria. It is too early to tell for sure if these reforms will happen, but it looks like Assad does not want to end up like Saddam. Here is the Washington Post on the story:
Beset by U.S. attempts to isolate his country and facing popular expectations of change, Syrian President Bashar Assad will move to begin legalizing political parties, purge the ruling Baath Party, sponsor free municipal elections in 2007 and formally endorse a market economy, according to officials, diplomats and analysts.Assad's five-year-old government is heralding the reforms as a turning point in a long-promised campaign of liberalizing a state that, while far less dictatorial than Iraq under Saddam Hussein, remains one of the region's most repressive. His officials see the moves, however tentative and drawn out, as the start of a transitional period that will lead to a more liberal, democratic Syria.
Posted by Pete at 10:37 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Why Be Trusting? Part 2
Jonah Goldberg wonders why the US media is so reluctant to show Americans images that might make them lash out, but is fine with showing images that might make other people lash out at Americans. Here is the link and most relevant quote:
But what on earth was gained by Newsweeks decision to publish the story whether it was true or not? Were we unaware that interrogators at Gitmo arent playing bean bag with detainees? To me the similarities with the Abu Ghraib are greatest not in terms of the abuse but in terms of the medias unreflective willingness to undermine the war on terror. We saw the photos from Abu Ghraib on the nightly news and in the newspapers far, far more than we saw video of American leaping to their doom from the top of the Trade Towers. Why? Well, according to the Brahmins of the media, it would be irresponsible to stir American passions with such inflammatory images. But the relentless gray strobe light of images showing Arab men in dog collars and black hoods was necessary to inform the public even though the abuses were already being investigated by the proper authorities. In other words, American passions are to be feared and tamped down on whenever possible, while theres nothing too worrisome about inciting Arab and Muslim passions, even when that attitude plays perfectly into the hands of the people were fighting.
Austin Bay also wonders about why the American media operates the way it does. Why does the American media so quickly trust anti US military and anti-Republican sources. Bay writes:
But profit generated by a frantic "me first" quest isn't the only motive. The "Vietnam-Watergate" press template is also involved. "Vietnam-Watergate" is a tired and phony game, but for three decades it's been the spine of the New York-Washington-Los Angeles media axis. Its rules are simple and cynical. Presume the U.S. government is lying -- particularly when the president is a Republican. Presume the worst about the U.S. military -- even when the president is a Democrat. Add multicultural icing -- allegations by "Third World victims" are given revered status, while U.S. statements are met with arrogant contempt. (Yes, it's the myth of the Noble Savage recast.)
Previous trusting post.
Posted by Pete at 10:28 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
It Finally Happens
CBS cancels 60 Minutes II. CBS should still fire Dan Rather, who will now be moved to regular 60 minutes.
Posted by Pete at 10:26 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 17, 2005
The Germans
I have an internet based email account that is always full of sp@m, but I do not want to get rid of it because it is one of my oldest addresses. The other day I noticed that almost all of the sp@m in that account was in German. I turns out this is some sort of wierd trend and the sp@mmers are trying to convince people some revisionist pro German WWII history. I think the main problem with the allies bombing Germany is that we did not get to try out the A bomb on them first, but sp@mming people seems to be about the worst strategy the "pro-Dermany in WWII" side could come up with.
Posted by Pete at 11:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Why Be Trusting?
One of the biggest problems I have with "News"week and the recent scandal is how quick the media has been to trust detainies about torture allegations. Here is a pdf copy of a translation of an Al Quaida's training manual. Notice page 16's admonition to automatically complain about torture and mistreatment if captured. When this is the instructions that Al Quaida gives its members the media needs to learn to be at least as skeptical about detainies claims as it is when the US government or Republican politicians make claims.
Posted by Pete at 11:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Galloway Testifies
Galloway testified before the senate today. Levin and Coleman seemed to do a good bit of bipartisan team up. Unless you knew about Galloway already you would be surprised that he used words like "a group of Christian fundamentalist and Zionist activists under the chairmanship of a neocon George Bush who is pro-war" to describe Levin, who is anything but a Bush lackey. See this Anti-Israel speach where the crowd screamed out Jihad! Jihad! Jihad! in response to Galloway's condemnation of Israel.
Here is the Daily Ablution with a liveblog of the hearing.
Coleman wonders if Galloway may have lied under oath:
But Mr Coleman, accused by the MP of being "remarkably cavalier with any idea of justice", appeared unswayed by Mr Galloways testimony. "If in fact he lied to this committee, there will have to be consequences," he said afterwards.Asked whether Mr Galloway violated his oath to tell the truth before the committee, Mr Coleman said: "I dont know. Well have to look over the record. I just dont think he was a credible witness."
Meanwhile a Galloway defender has appeared in my comments section here and he uses a British email address.
Posted by Pete at 11:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 16, 2005
Newsweek Retracts Story
Newsweek has now retracted a false story that has led to at least 14 deaths. Now it is time for Newsweek to release the name of the source that gave them the false information and to fire the reporters and editors involved in the story's original publication. I think a good sign of repentance for Newsweek would be for it to set up a fund out of the money that would have gone to the fired peoples' salaries and use the money for the widows and orphans Newsweek's story helped to create.
Here is the retraction as reported by Fox News:
Newsweek on Monday retracted a story alleging interrogators at Guantanamo flushed the Koran down a toilet in front of detainees."Based on what we know now, we are retracting our original story that an internal military investigation had uncovered Koran abuse at Guantanamo Bay," editor Mark Whitaker (search) said in statement released Monday evening.
Several bloggers have started saying that "Newsweek lied, people died", which while close is not quite right. Malkin has a good roundup of links under that title. I doubt that Newsweek knowingly printed a false story. Instead I suspect that in their rush to bash the military and Bush they printed a story that they thought might be true even though by most basic journalistic standards it should not have been published. Newsweek never saw the report, the source did not witness the event, there was only one source, the event was questionable in the first place, and the source would not go on record. Given all this and the source's retraction it is time for Newsweek to say who the source was.
TigerHawk thinks Newsweek has blood on its hands from this and that misinformation in war can be deadly and intentional. He argues that they should not have published this story even if it was true.
That they published it on the basis of an anonymous source in the middle of war in which disinformation has figured prominently is almost beyond comprehension. Are the editors completely ignorant of the world? Or do they want to sabotage America's war effort? Is there a third, more benign explanation?
The damage Newsweek has done to the US relationship with Afghanistan based on this falsehood may not be fixed. Austin Bay says this may be the media's equivalent of Abu Ghraib and his comments say it has gotten dangerous for aid workers in Afghanistan. From what I have heard from people I know in that part of the world doing relief work it is more dangerous now in places like Kabul. Jim Geraghty (who lives in Turkey) has a good round up of related quotes and is not happy that he has one more reason to watch his back while he walks down the street.
Posted by Pete at 05:07 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
College Students and Hanoi Jane
My faith in the wisdom of college students was lifted a bit today. I was having lunch with a group of students today and one graduate student mentioned that she had gone to see Monster in Law and thought it was funny. Then one of the other students said she could not stand Jane Fonda and that Fonda was an idiot. Another student who is currently in the reserves (I do not know which branch) said that he thought Fonda was a traitor. About half the students did not know about what Fonda had done with the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam war (including the one who had seen Monster in Law), but the two that did know disliked Fonda. My dislike of Fonda is casual, but they really hated her.
Posted by Pete at 01:59 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Top 100 List part 2
Here is professor Bainbridge's take on the Top 100 American's list. (my take from a frew days ago is here) His list is a bit heavy on politicians and military leaders, but all of his choices make sense. They are: John Adams, James Madison, George Marshall, Andrew Jackson, John Marshall, Milton Friedman, US Grant, Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, John Muir, Robert Mondavi, Julia Child, Chester Nimitz, Raymond Spruance, Omar Bradley, John J. Pershing, James Monroe, Knute Rockne, Earl Warren, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Joseph Story, Thurgood Marshall, Louis D. Brandeis, and Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. Several of his picks mirror mine and others like Nimitz I thought about adding. Considering that the orginal list did not include a single supreme court justice he has some good ideas for names.
Posted by Pete at 09:14 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 13, 2005
I Am Starting To Like My Senator Part 4
Jon Cornyn seems to write a lot of articles for a senator. Earlier this week a wrote another article for National Review about judge confirmations. He writes:
The Senate judicial confirmation process has been at times emotional and politically divisive, and that is unfortunate. But all Americans of good faith should at least agree that we need a fair process for selecting judges — with full investigation, full questioning, full debate, and then an up-or-down vote. And all Americans should agree that, although nobody likes to lose, the rules should always be the same, regardless of whether the president is Republican or Democrat. Throughout our nation's more than 200-year history, the constitutional rule and Senate tradition for confirming judges has been majority vote. senators should uphold and restore that tradition — and giving Owen an up-or-down vote, after four years of delay, would be an excellent start.
Previous senator post.
Posted by Pete at 05:51 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
CBS Pulling Another Rather?
Powerline reports that Kenneth Starr is accusing CBS of Dowdifying two of his quotes about federal judge confirmations. So far CBS has refused to release the full tape of the interview. Ramesh Ponnuru at the Corner writes:
CBS, AP, and other outlets reported earlier this week that Starr had said that getting rid of the judicial filibuster would be a "radical, radical departure from our history and our traditions, and it amounts to an assault on the judicial branch of government."
I sat on Saturday with Gloria Borger for 20 minutes approximately, had a wide ranging, on-camera discussion. In the piece that I have now seen, and which I gather has been lavishly quoted, CBS employed two snippets. The 'radical departure from our history' snippet was specifically addressed to the practice of invoking judicial philosophy as a grounds for voting against a qualified nominee of integrity and experience. I said in sharp language that that practice was wrong. I contrasted the current practice and that employed viciously against your father with what occurred during Ruth Ginsburg's nomination process as numerous Republicans voted, rightly, to confirm a former ACLU staff worker. They disagreed with her positions as a lawyer but they voted -- again rightly -- to confirm her.
Posted by Pete at 05:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Minutemen Part 9
The minutemen will be patrolling the Texas-Mexico border. The Laredo area is extremely dangerous with hundreds of unsolved murders in the area along with rampant drug trading and gang activity. A Laredo institution contacted me when I was looking for a job recently and it was the only place I did not interview with that contacted me, even though it was offering me the highest potential pay. Mostly that was because I do not know anyone in Laredo and my wife did not want to move there, but the fact that crime is out of control did not help either.
Here is the story from the Houston Chronicle:
Chris Simcox, the leader of the controversial Arizona group that is attempting to prevent the entry of illegal immigrants from Mexico, says he is considering October for the beginning of patrols along the Rio Grande in South Texas. Other patrols are being considered for New Mexico and California.But Simcox says there are serious logistical problems for patrols in Texas. Most of the land along the Texas border is privately owned, and some of it is urbanized, unlike the open land the group monitored in Arizona.
Unfortunately the Border Patrol has supposedly reacted to the success of the minutemen by not doing their job and have purposely not arrested people in the areas once patrolled by the minutemen. Situations like this are why I think the minutemen are a necessary evil. The Washington Times reports:
U.S. Border Patrol agents have been ordered not to arrest illegal aliens along the section of the Arizona border where protesters patrolled last month because an increase in apprehensions there would prove the effectiveness of Minuteman volunteers, The Washington Times has learned. More than a dozen agents, all of whom asked not to be identified for fear of retribution, said orders relayed by Border Patrol supervisors at the Naco, Ariz., station made it clear that arrests were "not to go up" along the 23-mile section of border that the volunteers monitored to protest illegal immigration.
If this story is true the persons who ordered the agents not to arrest people should be fired and permanently banned from any law enforcement activities. Meanwhile the Mexican government is mad because we are trying to protect our borders from foreign invasion. The Financial Times reports:
Mexico has reacted furiously to a bill signed into law by the US this week that would fund a border wall and prevent illegal Mexican migrants from obtaining US driving licenses.President Vicente Fox said he would lodge a diplomatic complaint, and was considering complaints to multilateral bodies if Mexico could not unable to resolve the problem bilaterally.
Previous minutemen post.
Posted by Pete at 05:18 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Not Moving
I thought for the past few months that I might have to move to Houston to get a job, but I got a preliminary job offer today in San Antonio so I will be staying here for now. Houston is ok because I have family there, but I have lived in San Antonio for nine years now and did want to leave. I have no idea what my work schedule will be yet.
Posted by Pete at 05:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Top 100 List
Part of the fun with Top 10 or Top 100 lists is tearing them apart for stupidity. With historical lists they tend to be very biased to the present, with major long dead people getting left off. A prime candidate for this sort of takedown is the discovery channels new Top 100 Americans list. The press release starts off asking such idiotic questions such as
Who will be the Greatest American? Political giant Abraham Lincoln or Bill Clinton? Sports legend Babe Ruth or Tiger Woods? Media mogul Oprah Winfrey or Walt Disney?How anyone could compare Clinton and Lincoln in this way is beyond me. Lincoln and Washington or Lincoln and FDR might be fine. So here is the list with my thoughts for each candidate followed by a shorter list of 20 people I think they should have included instead.
Abraham Lincoln (obvious choice, any president on Mt. Rushmore is)
Albert Einstein (another obviously correct choice)
Alexander Graham Bell (one of the best inventors)
Alexander Hamilton (not a bad choice, but not a great choice either)
Amelia Earhart (interesting, but not great)
Andrew Carnegie (industry is very American)
Arnold Schwarzenegger (I like Arnolds movies and would have voted for him if I still lived in California, but aside from being an immigrant success story he is not a top 100 American)
Audie Murphy (good choice as he killed lots of Germans and was otherwise an ordinary good American)
Babe Ruth (if you are going to include sports figures he is an obvious choice)
Barack Obama (and his accomplishments are what exactly? Maybe someday, but not yet)
Barbara Bush (I like her and all, but still she is not that great. She may deserve to be on the list more than her husband though)
Benjamin Franklin (probably my choice for # 1 on this list)
Bill Clinton (not to bash Clinton too much, but he would not make my top 20 presidents, much less top 100 Americans)
Bill Cosby (William Henry Cosby, Jr.) (If you are going to include entertainers not a bad choice, but I suspect present bias here)
Bill Gates (I am using multiple products made by him right now so it is hard to deny that choice)
Billy Graham (the most influential spiritual leader of the past 50 years)
Bob Hope (nice guy, but not that great. Does anyone today even watch his stuff?)
Brett Favre (Brett Farve? Brett Frave?!? If you are going to include a football player, make it Red Grange. Even Joe Namath or Johnny Unitas would be a better choice)
Carl Sagan (reasonable choice)
Cesar Chavez (Not a bad choice, but if you are going to start including labor leaders where are Eugene Debs and Samuel Gompers?)
Charles Lindbergh (like Earheart not a bad choice, he probably deserves to be on the list a bit more than she does)
Christopher Reeve (what the hell? I would put Superman on this list first and he isnt even real)
Chuck Yeager (ok choice. He had guts. But he is the third pioneer pilot on the list so far and we are still in the Cs)
Clint Eastwood (I am not necessarily opposed to Hollywood types making the list, but there are several other actors and directors I would put first such as Orson Wells)
Colin Powell (not that bad, but others who I would put first)
Condoleezza Rice (maybe some day after she has been in more powerful positions for a while)
Donald Trump (I like the Apprentice, but please! How did he make the list before JP Morgan)
Dwight D. Eisenhower (He deserves to be here more for WWII than for what he did as president)
Eleanor Roosevelt (Anna Eleanor Roosevelt) (Most influential of all first ladies possibly, but still not that great)
Ellen DeGeneres (The Brett Farve of the entertainers on the list. I had to read the name twice to make sure they had really put her here)
Elvis Presley (at least one Rock and Roll guy should make it and he is the obvious choice)
Frank Sinatra (I like the chairman and all, but he was not that great)
Franklin D. Roosevelt (I do not like FDR that much, but he won the war)
Frederick Douglass (good choice)
George H. W. Bush (I would have voted him if I was old enough, but like Clinton he would not have made my top 20 presidents)
George W. Bush (He may deserve it someday)
George Lucas (other directors belong here more)
George Patton (probably greatest 20th century American military leader)
George Washington (Rushmore + Father of the country)
George Washington Carver (Maybe. At least one farmer type is not a bad inclusion)
Harriet Ross Tubman (good abolitionist and like Carver a former slave)
Harry Truman (maybe. Better Choice than Clinton or H.W. Bush. Won one war, but almost lost another. Would make my Top 20 Presidents list)
Helen Keller (ok choice I guess)
Henry Ford (we all have cars because of him)
Hillary Rodham Clinton (I would put Barbara Bush or Eleanor Roosevelt on the list before her)
Howard Hughes (there are other more important industrialists like JP Morgan I might put first, but not a terrible choice)
Hugh Hefner (no pornographers need to be on this list)
Jackie Robinson (Jack Roosevelt Robinson) (might be most influential athlete in America)
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (Probably even below Hillary)
Jesse Owens (He pissed off Hitler. Good for him)
Jimmy Carter (Probably the worst president of the 20th century)
Jimmy Stewart (If you had to pick one movie actor for this list he would be my choice)
John Edwards (And he has done what exactly besides lose as a freaking VP candidate. Notice that John Kerry did not make the list.)
John Glenn (He orbited the earth, but was also part of the Keating 5)
John F. Kennedy (Might make my Top 20 presidents list. A bit of present day bias got him on this list)
John Wayne (I love John Wayne, but he should not be on this list)
Johnny Carson (John William Carson) (He was a good TV guy, but TV is not that important)
Jonas Edward Salk (I dont have polio. Thanks Mr. Salk!)
Joseph Smith Jr. (He may have been a loony cult leader who died over a hundred years ago, but his followers are still opening up new temples)
Katharine Hepburn (I never liked her acting that much)
Lance Armstrong (hopefully this is a typo and they meant to type Louis instead of Lance)
Laura Bush (I like her, but she needs to be about the same place on the list as Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis)
Lucille Ball (If I had to pick one TV person for the list it would be her.)
Lyndon B. Johnson (Would not make my Top 20 presidents list, but he got a lot of stuff done)
Madonna (Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone) (Some people seem to think that she is talented. I am not one of those people)
Malcolm X (Malcolm Little) (Interesting choice. His autobiography may make him worth including)
Marilyn Monroe (Pretty, but not that important or great)
Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens) (Of course. His stuff is still funny)
Martha Stewart (I think her parole should include staying away from lists like this)
Martin Luther King Jr. (Good spiritual and civil rights choice)
Maya Angelou (Her poetry never did anything for me. Where is Henry Longfellow on this list anyways? Everybody read him in the 19th century)
Mel Gibson (even less worthy than Schwartzenegger)
Michael Jackson (better choice than Madonna, but Elvis was enough. Maybe for Top 100 Freaks he would be a good choice)
Michael Jordan (I guess if you are going to include basketball he is a good choice, but why include basketball? I might put Wilt Chamberlain first)
Michael Moore (He is not that talented or great)
Muhammad Ali (Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr.) (He is actually a pretty good choice although the list is starting to be a bit over represented in athletes)
Neil Alden Armstrong (He walked on the freakin Moon)
Nikola Tesla (zap)
Oprah Winfrey (If you are going to do media tycoons, where is Hearst?)
Pat Tillman (Gave up NFL and life for country, but not that influencial)
Dr. Phil McGraw (Oprah I can kind of understand, but this guy?)
Ray Charles (It seems like a lot of people on this list have been in the news lately doesnt it?)
Richard Nixon (my other candidate besides Jimmy Carter for worst president of the 20th century)
Robert Kennedy (Baby Boomer nostalgia, although he did take on the mob)
Ronald Reagan (Probably should be on Rushmore)
Rosa Parks (Not that great)
Rudolph W. Giuliani (Maybe if he gets elected president someday, but not that great)
Rush Limbaugh (El Rushbo deserves to be on list about as much as Oprah does)
Sam Walton (Never actually made anything, but he still became richest man in America)
Steve Jobs (I am writing this on MS Word. Sorry Steve)
Steven Spielberg (Deserves to be on the list more than Lucas although I am still mad about how he ended A.I.)
Susan B. Anthony (good feminist choice)
Theodore Roosevelt (Rushmore and roughriders)
Thomas Edison (Best inventor ever)
Thomas Jefferson (Rushmore, Declaration of Independence and Louisiana Purchase)
Tiger Woods (May be the best golfer ever, but it is still just golf)
Tom Cruise (Lots of more important artists out there)
Tom Hanks (see above)
Walt Disney (we still watch his movies)
Wright Brothers (Orville & Wilbur Wright) (invented the plane and deserve to be on the list more than some of the other pilots)
Here are some names I might have put on the list first (I may keep updating it as I think of more people):
Herman Melville
William Jennings Bryan
Clarence Darrow
Aaron Copland
Cotton Mather
John Paul Jones
Lewis and Clark
P.T. Barnum
Boss Tweed
Alfred Hitchcock
Orson Wells
JP Morgan
William Randolph Hearst
Louis Armstrong
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Wyatt Earp
Elliot Ness
John Adams
Scott Joplin
Andrew Jackson
Edgar Allan Poe
George Gershwin
Posted by Pete at 12:49 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
May 12, 2005
Galloway - Still Evil
More evidence that Galloway was a lackey for Saddam. Here is the Times Online report:
A US Senate committee published evidence from Iraqi documents and interviews with Iraqi officials that the former Labour MP, re-elected to Parliament for his Respect party, received allocations for millions of barrels of oil.
Galloway seems to have funneled the money through a charity formed to help pay for a four year old girl's leukemia treatment. The Telegraph reports:
Norm Coleman, the committee chairman, also said that it had uncovered new evidence which suggested a children's leukaemia fund set up by Mr Galloway was used to conceal the transfer of three million barrels of oil.The Mariam Appeal was the charity the ex-Glasgow Kelvin MP founded to help four-year-old girl Mariam Hamza.
FrankJ thinks it time for Galloway to be sent to Iraq for punishment. He writes:
Now, I can't speak for all of IMAO, but, personally, I'm against helping an evil, murderous dictator for one's own financial gains. I know in this modern world with our steam shovels and iPods and whatnot, old fashion values just aren't the "hip" thing anymore. No one looks twice when unmarried couples live together, cheerleaders dress provocatively, or millions of barrels of crude oil are funneled through a charity meant to help a little girl with leukemia, but maybe it's time to stop and take a look at ourselves. Maybe it's time to say enough is enough. And the simplest way to do that is to send some black-ops guy like Sam Fischer from the Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell videogames (soon to be a major movie) to secretly kidnap Galloway and a number of French officials (doesn't matter who; their all dirty - figuratively and literally) and give them to the Iraqis to be put on trial since it's the Iraqis who suffered most and because they can execute them more viciously than our law allows. It's a small gesture, but big things start with small gestures.
The UK does not execute people anymore, but I think a good case can be made for Galloway to be executed if he is guilty. If these accusations are true, than he committed an act of treason that resulted in innocent Iraqis not getting the food and medicine they needed (possibly resulting in their deaths) and which resulted in money going to weapons and troops that were used against British and other allied troops. I think treason (especially treason that gets innocent people killed) is one of the crimes that most merits execution. FrankJ may be right in that extradition to Iraq may be the best solution here.
Previous Galloway post.
Posted by Pete at 04:24 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
Typology Tests
Here is an interesting link to a political typology test. It lays out what it thinks are the nine major political typologies in America today with three on the right, three in the middle, and three on the left. It labeled me as an "enterpriser", one of the small government right types which is what I would have picked for myself based on the descriptions.
Here is another interesting morality scale test that deals with taboo, but I found the questions to use terms that are a bit too undefined. The test asks you about actions that are generally considered immoral even though they do not physically harm anyone. The problem is that it uses terms like "punishment" without defining what that means, which leaves people like me not knowing what to pick as I think there are many actions that society should punish through shame and ostracizing, but that should not be punished by spciety through things like fines or jail. Also the test is almost a bit too empirical. Even though it allows for non-empirical bases for morality (morality based on divine law for instance) it implies that morality and harm are almost always empirically related.
My results were Your Moralising Quotient is: 0.47.
Your Interference Factor is: 0.20.
Your Universalising Factor is: 0.75.
Posted by Pete at 03:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
More Gun Thoughts
Some of my commentators ask "why do I need a handgun" and what do I think about "turning the other cheek" and "thou shall not kill".
I want a handgun because Tommy guns are illegal for people like me to own and the targets won't shoot themselves.
My opinions on guns were set pretty firmly during the LA riots when I could see the smoke from burning homes and businesses from my back yard. I could then turn on the TV and see people defending their homes and businesses from looters with their own guns while the police stayed away from huge sections of the city for several days.
I am in favor of turning the cheek most of the time, but if someone comes into my home or otherwise is threatening innocents than the time for cheek turning is over. If you believe that we should have police or a military than you agree with this sentiment as both institutions function as a way to outsource socially accepted violence. Even Jesus used violence some of the time. I also know the police can not be there all the time. Just the other day I had to call the police to have some people arrested and even though the police arrived in about three minutes, that was still three minutes where my wife and I had to hope the people eventually arrested did not notice us or the minors we were responsible for. The only weapon I had for defense at the time was my car, which while potentially dangerous is not as precise as a handgun.
Posted by Pete at 03:24 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
May 10, 2005
Shooting
I got to go to a shooting range with a friend yesterday. I had not shot for five years, had only shot a revolver once, and had never shot a semi-automatic pistol before. We brought a Smith and Wesson .357 magnum and a Taurus 9mm semi-automatic to the range. I fired off around 60 rounds from the 9mm and around 40 rounds with the .357 from 25 and 50 feet away. I was a lot more accurate with the .357 and my shots from the 9mm tended to drift down and to the left most of the time. My friend's shots were just as accurate with both guns, so I think I was having trouble lining up the sites on the 9mm. We were using .38 special ammunition in the .357 until the end when we tried out some high power .357 ammunition that was painful to shoot. I have not made up my mind about what type of gun to buy, but I am now leaning toward a .357. The clips for the 9mm were annoying to fill, the casings flew everywhere, the gun jammed on me three times, and I was less accurate with it. I did not have any problems with the .357 and they tend to be less expensive.
Posted by Pete at 04:32 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
May 09, 2005
Minutemen Part 8
One of the worst things about our current border policy is the number of dangerous criminals that constantly enter this country across our unsecured border. Life can be very dangerous for normal families that happen to live near the border with almost daily trespassing by drug smugglers and other criminals. If it was only people looking for honest work who illegally crossed the border, it would be far less of an issue than the massive criminal invasion we are subject to instead. Here is a report by one of the minutemen, who talks about the high number of drug smugglers they reported to the border patrol:
A common misconception about illegal aliens is that they are all peasants looking for work to support their families. Not so. Most of the 335 apprehensions resulting from reports by the Minutemen were of drug smugglers, men in their late teens to early 20s dressed in black and wearing cut-out black stocking caps.
Previous minutemen post.
Posted by Pete at 05:13 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
I Voted Part 2
I may have voted last Saturday, but hardly anyone else did. San Antonio has a population of around a million people, with almost 650,000 registered voters. Of those just over 115,000 cast votes, which gives us a turn out under 18% of registered voters (see this pdf file for details). To top it off the two people I voted for lost and the three propositions I voted against all won. There will be a run off election for mayor next month and I bet my new candidate will also lose, but I am still going to vote.
Posted by Pete at 05:00 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
May 07, 2005
I Voted
Today was San Antonio's election for mayor and city council. This is probably only the first round since no one will probably win a majority. There will probably be a runoff between Castro (who recently made national news by having his twin brother stand in for him at a fiesta event) and either Schubert or Harberger. I voted for Schubert, but would not be too disappointed if Hardberger makes the runoff instead. I also voted against the two sales tax hikes and against the tax freeze for old homeowners, but did not care too much about the tax freeze. Our sales tax is too high already in San Antonio so I hope both of those increases lose.
I voted for Weston Martinez for city council and was disappointed in the Wolff supporters near the poling place who tried to get me to vote for him instead. Most of them did not seem to know how to read people's body language as I intentionally avoided eye contact with them, yet one woman still tried to give me literature. I wonder how many people make their decision on who to vote for by who gives them literature two minutes before they vote. I bet some do, but others may be turned off by it.
Posted by Pete at 05:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 06, 2005
UK Elections
I did not know who to root for in the latest British elections. None of the parties are that great on most issues. I like Blair on most international issues even though I disagree with him on the motivations. Blair seems to think that the UN is a noble institution and that international law needs to prevail, which is why he was in favor of overthrowing Saddam, who had a long history of defying the international community and invading countries without provocation. But Blair also likes the EU (which seems like a bad idea to me) and is overly in favor of international institutions in general.
The worst part of the election is that George Galloway, possibly the most evil politician in Britain, was elected again after being expelled by the Labor party. Galloway is suspected of being on Saddam's payroll during the oil for food scandal.
Posted by Pete at 05:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Franklin the Traitor
Hopefully Larry Franklin will get a longer prison sentence than Sandy Berger did. I would bet that most people who go into national security work are loyal enough to their country that giving out classified info to other countries is not even a consideration for them. Newsday has the details:
An analyst in a controversial Pentagon intelligence office was charged yesterday with passing top-secret information to two staff members of a pro-Israeli lobbying group here.Charged was Larry Franklin, an Iran specialist who worked in the Office of Special Plans, established by Pentagon Undersecretary Douglas Feith in order to give Pentagon civilians an independent source of intelligence that could bolster the case for war with Iraq.
Michelle Malkin has more details on how serious Franklin’s crimes are. I think the death penalty is appropriate in cases like this, but I would need more information to see if this case warrants it.
Posted by Pete at 04:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Star Trek and Child Abuse
Ernest Miller has details about an LA Times story that claims that an abnormally high percentage of child molesters in Toronto are also Trekkies (or as they like to be called "Trekkers")(via kausfiles). He writes:
Last week I wrote a post about a claim in the LA Times that of the more than one hundred arrested in the past four years by the Toronto Sex Crimes Unit Child Exploitation Section "all but one" were "hard-core Trekkie[s]". I thought the claim was improbable, so I called and spoke to an officer in the unit, who denied the specific accuracy of the claim, but not the high percentage of pedophiles arrested who were Star Trek fans
In cases like this is it is important to define your terms. I probably like Star Trek more than the average person and would even consider myself a Star Trek fan and have seen most of the original series and next generation episodes. However, I am definitely not a Trekkie as I have never gone to a convention, watched more than handful of the post Next Generation episodes, and have never bought any Star Trek items. Trekkies fall a bit lower on the Geek hierarchy chart than I would place myself. I suspect that to define someone as a hard core Trekkie they have to spend a significant portion of their time and money on Star Trek.
Some of the criminals described in this story seem to dress as Klingons. This is always a bad sign. One night I went to see one of the Star Trek movies in the movie theater and several audience members were dressed as klingons. I was wearing normal human clothes, while the usher (who had been forced to dress in a Star Fleet uniform) was very disturbed by all this. I recommend the documentary Trekkies for a good look at how some people use Star Trek like a religion. For these geeks it gives them meaning, purpose and an ethical system for their otherwise fairly pointless lives.
Posted by Pete at 04:22 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 05, 2005
UN Backed Kerry
Apparently at least one employee of the UN was actively campaigning for Kerry. No wonder Kerry was so eager to obey the UN. The New York Sun reports:
The investigation at the United Nations Development Program, a well funded program that oversees distribution of aid in developing countries and operates around the globe, calls into question the significance of the circle of Americans with ties to the Democratic Party that surrounds Secretary-General Annan at the top level of U.N. management.Twelve UNDP staff members filed an official complaint with the internal investigative arm of UNDP. The document alleges that involvement by the agency's internal communication chief, Mr. Leites, in Senator Kerry's presidential campaign places election advisers and other U.N. operatives worldwide in jeopardy.
Posted by Pete at 05:07 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Climate of Fear Part 23
Cafe press encourages the killing of Republicans. (via LGF)
Previous Climate of Fear post.
Posted by Pete at 05:04 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
May 04, 2005
Sp@m Gone
I have not had delete a comment or trackback sp@m for a couple of weeks now so I guess this means that MT Blacklist is doing its job.
Posted by Pete at 05:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Bad Obstructionism
Obstructionism is not always a bad thing in government, but obstructionism by itself is not enough. The Democrats in Washington still have a lot to learn about being an opposition party. Opposing stuff is a good start, but you need to have some new ideas as well. The Democrats look like they are starting to get the idea, but for huge chunks of public policy the Democrats still have no practical response to Bush and the Republicans. Dangerous Dan had a long post about this a while back.
Related to this is this column by Steven Pearlstein, who is typically a fairly liberal writer. He complains that the Democrats do not know how to act like a mature minority party:
You might think, therefore, that this would be the ideal time for a minority party to take the lead with its own plan to ensure solvency of this popular program, based on those and other progressive principles. Guess again. The Washington Democrats have decided, instead, to press their advantage by demanding that the president agree to trade all consideration of private accounts, as well as his income tax cuts, plus one Supreme Court justice to be named later, before they will even pull up to the negotiating table. Apparently, they'd rather have an issue to demagogue than actually rescue a vital program.
There are lots of different ways to fix social security, which needs to be fixed because it was not designed with present day demographics in mind. Private accounts are a good very long term solution, but will not be enough on their own. Other options like means testing, tax increases, benefit cuts, and raising the retirement age are also good options. There are also other proposals like not requiring people old enough to get benefits and who work to pay social security taxes, thereby encouraging them to put off getting benefits which cost more than they would pay in taxes. Unfortunately the Democrats have decided to pretend like there is no problem and are not proposing any of these solutions, while they try to stop the Republican solution, thus screwing over everyone under 50 in this country.
Posted by Pete at 05:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 03, 2005
Communism = Hunger
One of the worst effects of Communism on the people enslaved to it is the starvation. It is quite possible that Communism has killed more people through starvation than through other forms of violence and oppression. Two of the biggest episodes of Communist caused starvation were the great leap forward in China and the forced starvation of Ukraine by Stalin. I recently finished reading We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History by John Gaddis, which discusses the first half of the cold war, but uses recently declassified documents from the former Soviet Union to do so.
One of the stories in the book that I had not heard of was about how wasteful the Great Leap Forward was. Mao had families set up furnaces in their back yards to forge steel to beat the West in industrial production. Of course most families did not know how to forge steel, did not have the supplies to forge good steel, and this was probably the least efficient way to make large quantities of steel. On one train trip across China Mao's handlers made sure everyone who lived near the train track had fires burning to make it look like everyone across the country was forging steel. One of the many problems this caused was that instead of working on crops like they knew how to, farmers had to waste time and energy on collective farming and other wasteful projects that were never productive anyways. Untold millions died as a result.
Christopher Hitchens has a similar story in Slate about how Communist imposed starvation has effected present day North Korea. Hitchens writes:
Concealed in that pitch-black night is an imploding state where the only things that work are the police and the armed forces. The situation is actually slightly worse than indentured servitude. The slave owner historically promises, in effect, at least to keep his slaves fed. In North Korea, this compact has been broken. It is a famine state as well as a slave state. Partly because of the end of favorable trade relations with, and subsidies from, the former USSR, but mainly because of the lunacy of its command economy, North Korea broke down in the 1990s and lost an unguessable number of people to sheer starvation. The survivors, especially the children, have been stunted and malformed. Even on a tightly controlled tour of the place North Korea is almost as hard to visit as it is to leave my robotic guides couldn't prevent me from seeing people drinking from sewers and picking up individual grains of food from barren fields. (I was reduced to eating a dog, and I was a privileged "guest.") Film shot from over the Chinese border shows whole towns ruined and abandoned, with their few factories idle and cannibalized. It seems that the mines in the north of the country have been flooded beyond repair.
Previous reports of North Koreans have shown them to be stunted in growth and several inches shorter than South Koreans on average. There are also reports that there are no more elderly or handicapped people because there is no food for them and that younger people are lucky to eat every other day. Even basic supplies that the Soviet Union always had (like paper) are absent. Hitchens suggests an underground railroad, which is not a bad idea, but it will take semi-Communist China to take the initiative (or else a coup against Kim) in solving the North Korea starvation problem. One of the saddest parts of all of this is that many people still believe Communism is a solution to hunger, not a cause of it.
Posted by Pete at 09:54 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
May 02, 2005
Speeding Sgrena
New satellite photos supposedly show that Sgrena the communist was speeding at least 60 miles an hour towards a checkpoint when US troops fired upon her. The report is from CBS so it is obviously not automatically true, but it seems to make sense. This seems to make Sgrena's earlier inconsistent stories makes sense if you only believe the ones she told about her speeding car almost losing control.
Posted by Pete at 07:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
UN Problems
More allegations of UN abuse of innocents in Liberia. The Jerusalem Post reports,
UN peacekeepers sexually abused and exploited local women and girls in Liberia and more accusations are expected, a UN spokesman said Friday.Stephane Dujarric said a preliminary investigation by the UN mission in Liberia indicated that some allegations against its personnel could be substantiated, while others could not.
In related news an editorial in The Japan Times (via junkyardblog) argues that
So the goal of all free countries should be that only other free countries are allowed seats on the Commission for Human Rights. Regimes that are "partly free" or "not free" should never be elected or appointed, for the only governments with the moral legitimacy to review and criticize human rights records are those that came to power through free elections and that can lose power when a new election defeats them. Those who have attained power through violence and fraud are not legitimate and should never cast more shame on the U.N. by belonging to this commission.
I am not sure if it is possible to fix the UN, but I think we should make an effort to drain this cesspool of corruption before completely giving up on it. The reforms the editorial suggests are a good start, but are way short of what is needed to completely fix what is wrong with the UN. Forinstance they will not stop the systemic abuses talked about in the Post article because there are currently no real consequences when UN troops abuse civilians. Brian Preston argues that it is too late and we need to instead just give up and start again with a new institution. He writes,
we're too far down that track for the UN to be meaningfully reformed--at least, without dismantling just about everything it does and starting over. And as long as we're doing that, why not just make it a Council of Democracies instead? Free people in, tyrannies out.
Posted by Pete at 07:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Minutemen Part 7
The other Texas senator now is praising the minutemen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson says that the minutemen show the need for more border patrol agents and as Michelle Malkin quotes,
This is not a matter of illegal aliens coming here to work, although that is a major issue in this country. It is a matter of national security.
First California governor Schwarzenegger came out in praise of the minutemen saying
They've done a terrific job. And they have cut down the crossing of illegal immigrants by a huge percentage.
and now potential Texas governor Hutchinson is following in his steps.
Previous Minutemen post.
Posted by Pete at 06:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack