Shot In The Dark

Wrapped In War

In an earlier thread, I attacked the au courant lefty notion that democracy is inimical to non-western societies. I cited India as an example. An argument could be made that the 300 years of the Raj may have westernized India....

The Racism of No Expectations

Heard from some talking head interviewed on MPR's Keri Miller Show last week: TALKING HEAD (I'm paraphrasing closely): "We may have to come to terms with the fact that outside the Western world most human culture is not a fertile...

I Gotcher Dialog Right Here

Eduardo...:The school officials told me that I could not resign but that I would be fired if I did not withdraw my request. I said no. At a compulsory meeting of faculty and students, I was denounced as a traitor...

Missile Derangement Syndrome

Try to understand my dilemma here. I like Rew and Smartie from Powerliberal. I've met 'em a bunch of times at MOB events, Keegans, and at Flash's "Drinking Moderately" events. They're among the better regional leftyblogs. They did a great...

It's Midday on a School Day. Do You Know Where Your Kids Are?

The pro-Hussein movement is at it again**COLLEGE NOT COMBAT! Solidarity Against War and Anti-Immigrant RacismWhat? Not against Meat, too?TWIN CITIES STUDENT ** W A L K O U T ** Friday April 28 NOON RALLY at University of Minnesota, Northrop...

NWA Exploits Tall People

I'm 6'5. Middle seats at most airlines are cramped for most people; for me, they make flying a wretched misery. Northwest gives me yet another reason to teleconference or drive:If you don't want to get stuck in the middle seat...

WWFDDD?

According to this report in the Toronto Sun, twenty members of the Cuban National Chorus - an acclaimed state-run choir that tours Cuba-friendly western countries - have defected in Toronto.More than 20 members of Cuba's world-famous national chorus are singing...

Turnabout

Political news from Iraq:In what might be a sign of a new political landscape, a major Sunni umbrella group called on its members on Monday to register for the next round of elections and take part "despite our reservations." Adnan...

The Iraqi Army Meme

One of the lefty memes that's made me shake my head in mute, tired dejection has been "We were wrong to disband the Iraqi military". The meme was in full, depraved glory last night on the Hewitt show, when a...

Torture?

Let's think for a moment about the "torture" listed in the FBI memo that Senator Durbin used as the launching pad for his slander of the United States. Let's forget for a moment the definition of "Torture" that anyone in...

War Is Over?

Karl Zinsmeister, editor of American Enterprise, is one of the best reporters going when it comes to the Iraq war. And, says Zinzmeister, the war is over....

Two Wars

John Edwards yammered about "two Americas" during the campaign. It's when you talk about the war that you really notice it. To fantasy-based America, we're well into another Vietnam via Auschwitz. To the rest of us, it's slow but steady...

Note To The President

A group of Democrats, and a few "Republicans", have decided that what the world needs is to put a special, red-letter day on the "to do" lists of all the world's terrists: President Bush would have to start bringing home...

Bloodbath With Ignominy

Although I grew up plenty liberal, there were things that began my disenchantment earlier. Jimmy Carter, sure - but before that, even back in sixth and seventh grade I thought that our abandonment of South Vietnam was a wretched display...

Myopia Isn't Free

The other day, I chided the New Patriot blog, tongue firmly in cheek (or as every leftyblog in the world woul say, I "served" them) for its low output and infrequent posting, despite having nine contributors. Today, evidence that paucity...

End Of The Enmity

I've been amazed - but not surprised - by the depth of European emnity toward the US in the past few years. Especially their carping about the war, about Guantanamo - even if their worst accusations were true (and they...

Uncovered

Via Chenkoff, some some survey results from Iraq:As more Iraqis express confidence in their country's government, more help is needed from the international community to keep Iraq's progress on track, the general director of Iraq's National Security Agency said here...

Holocaust '05

Zimbabwe seems to be on the brink of a holocaust. The Mugabe regime is using starvation as a weapon:Zimbabwe is about ready to explode in a nightmare mass murder, or bloody revolution. It’s not genocide this time, but democide (government...

Truth To Former Power

George W. Bush, to the left, has crossed the line from "village idiot" (who keeps plastering them in elections) into the realm of "G-dless apostate" - the g-d in this case being the left's deity in chief, Franklin Delano Roosevelt....

The Chrenkoff Poll

Chrenkoff has the results of a survey on Iraq's immediate future, taken at Najaf University. Bear in mind that Najaf is the center of Shi'ite fundamentalism in Iraq; taking a poll on democracy there is like Move On doing push-polling...

Fascists! Fascists!

It's a nightmare scenario; frustrated by their failure in the courts, and prodded by powerful special interests, an executive-branch official shops for tame judges and executive fiats to support a flawed policy that most Americans oppose - and, stymied, finally...

All Shook Up

Steven Vincent, author of "Into The Red Zone" (in which he toured Iraq, solo, for several fascinating months) continues to write the wonderful In The Red Zone" blog. He notes a number of new memes in the Middle East:We are...

More Marches

Residents of tiny Bahrain, a Gulf oil sheikdom, are marching for reform....

Bet Raised

Bush pushed a big pile of chips into the Lebanese pot today:President Bush (news - web sites) on Wednesday demanded in blunt terms that Syria get out of Lebanon, saying the free world is in agreement that Damascus' authority over...

Take Care Of The Big Things

Yesterday's post on the future of Syria drew some interesting discussion. Make no mistake - I think that the removal of Syria from Lebanon, and the eventual (or sudden, for that matter) fall of Assad can only be good things....

The "V" Word

The Guardian is Britain's wacky-left broadsheet. By wacky-left, of course I'm referring to overall outlook; they're a newspaper of some prestige, with some solid reporting. Being a European paper, they are honest about their political leanings - which are far...

Beneath Contempt

Are you, like many Minnesotans, tired of having your taxes jacked up endlessly by a legislature that cares more about feeding the state bureaucracy than about your family's bottom line? Did you send a buck or two to the Taxpayer's...

Turning Point

A commenter on a Mudville Gazette piece about CBS' coverage of the election noted:It's like 1989 all over again. The media has been forced to reluctantly acknowledge something beautiful and wonderful is happening: the birth of a new democracy. When...

"Why Do They Hate Us?"

Remember the eighties? Ronald Reagan called the USSR the "Evil Empire". The western intelligentsia pummeled Reagan; it wasn't nuanced enough. And people in the Eastern Bloc protested against Reagan in droves. And yet today in the former Warsaw Pact, Reagan...

Silence of the Shills

Surely the Strib Editorial pages will have some opinion about the single biggest story of the past week, won't they? Let's do check. [Crickets chirping However, the Strib duly notes that the French approve of the election. I was getting...

Scramble for Illegitimacy

Podhoretz on the Democrat reaction to the Iraqi election:Case in point: the junior Eeyore from Massachusetts, John Forbes Kerry, who had the distinct misfortune of being booked onto "Meet the Press" yesterday only 90 minutes after the polls closed in...

Voting Rights

Steven Vincent, author of "Into the Red Zone", one of the essential books about the situation in Iraq, also writes In the Red Zone, another of the essential blogs about Iraq today. After interviewing Vincent - who described himself as...

Midway, Kursk, El Alamein, The Atlantic, the Election

Let's tie the election to some history. Work with me here....

Just Imagine You're In Taos

Chris Allbritton is a roving journalist without portfolio who is in Iraq now, and blogging from Baghdad. He's been getting quoted on a number of leftyblogs:So far, not as much violence as everybody feared. The question is why? Is the...

The Numbers

Joe Carter (24-30 January '05)" href="http://www.evangelicaloutpost.com/archives/001174.html">breaks down the numbers from the election in Iraq that you probably won't see elsewhere:# Population of Texas: 22,118,509 # Population of Iraq: 25,374,691 # Percentage of eligible voters in Texas who voted in the...

The Goalposts Move Again

I watched, dumfounded, as Jed Babbin and Congressperson Lynn Woolsey (D-CA) had what may have been the most surreal segment I've ever seen. Family errands precluded my blogging about it until now - but fortunately Ed was on the stick,...

A Thousand Words In All Languages

Diary from Baghdad posts this: Maybe ten thousand words....

From The Front

Neil Prakash at Armor Geddon - a tank platoon commander in Iraq, by the way - writes:The soldiers of 2-63 AR BN are out there hardening the election sites and working around the clock to provide security for the Iraqis....

Start the Revolution Without Me

Iraq the Model has, naturally, some of the most moving coverage of the election. I loved this part, which verges on poetry:I still recall the first group of comments that came to this blog 14 months ago when many of...

Up All Night

I was up very late watching the Iraqi elections. Perhaps the most interesting piece I saw - for a couple hours, on Fox - was Geraldo Rivera, standing on the roof of a building in Baghdad that was apparently a...

Friends of Democracy

Friends of Democracy is providing Iraqi election coverage. According to Jim Hake of Spirit of America:This project has been to provide a ground-level view of the elections from the people and bloggers of Iraq (yes, I know, bloggers are people,...

Election Jones

The Times of London's Richard Beeston reports on something about which the American media is curiously silent: the enthusiasm with which Iraqis are approaching the upcoming election....