Reading this is like a trip down memory lane:

A top Russian general said Friday that Poland’s agreement to accept a U.S. missile defense battery exposes ex-communist nation to attack, possibly by nuclear weapons, the Interfax news agency reported.

The statement by Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn is the strongest threat that Russia has issued against the plans to put missile defense elements in former Soviet satellite nations.

Ah, just like high school; the Russians perceive a “threat”, they respond with bluster and threats.

Of course, when I was in high school, the president was someone who caved in to those threats; who acquiesced to Communist expansionism around the globe; someone for whom audacity and hope were more important than security.

Twenty years ago, calling the Soviet bluff caused the house of cards to collapse.

Of course, the Soviets offered nothing to the west but a threat.  The Russians – while presiding over a crumbled, failing nation – have oil and natural gas as well as tanks and missiles.  They’re also not only institutionally paranoid about invasion (having been the stomping ground for invaders from Greeks and Huns through the Mongols and Germans), but they’re now surrounded by independent nations – Poland, Mongolia, Georgia, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria – that hate the Russians with a ferocity that can only come from centuries of history.

So are our kids going to have to live through another Cold War?  Is the the Russia/Third World axis of the Sixties and Seventies going to recap itself with the Islamofascists – possible in reverse, with Islamists using Russia as a conventional proxy?

Is our next president going to be a Carter or a Reagan?

Perhaps helped along by events in Georgia, Poland has finally signed the crucial paperwork to get a future US missile-interceptor base built on its territory.

The signing comes after Prime Minister Donald Tusk had been holding out for enhanced military cooperation with the United States in return for consent to host 10 interceptor rockets at a base in northern Poland.

Washington says the interceptors and a radar in the Czech Republic would form part of a global “missile shield” protecting the United States and its allies from long range missiles that could in the future be fired by Iran or groups such as al-Qaeda.

“We have crossed the Rubicon,” Tusk said just before the deal was signed.

“We have finally got understanding of our point of view that Poland, being a crucial parner in NATO and an important friend and ally of the United States, must also be safe.”

I have a number of friends in the armed forces in Germany who are very much looking forward to transferring to Poland. One of the most pro-American places in the world, a place where Ronald Reagan’s photo sits on mantelpieces next to Karol “Pope John Paul II” Wojtyła’s, it’d be a nice switch – say they – from Germany, which is constantly ambivalent about Americans.

On the other hand, from the “He Who Forgets His History…” department…:

Officials said the deal included a U.S. declaration that it will aid Poland militarily in case of a threat from a third country and that it would establish a permanent U.S. base on Polish soil in a symbolic gesture underlining the alliance.

“We are comfortable that we negotiated a strong agreement,” Rood said. “It elevates our security relationship to a new level.”

Given the chance of an Obama presidency and the Poles’ experiences in 1939, you’d think they’d be leerier about promises of aid if a bigger, gnarlier power attacks them.

Powitanie, dziękuje, i gratulacja, Polska!

I was a Fred Thompson supporter before I succumbed to the McCain train. I still like Thompson’s down home straight-talk style. He concurs that the situation in Georgia should give pause to those that would make Obama the leader of the free world.

While Obama might find the need now to visit Georgia for another celebrity world tour photo op, McCain has already been there; some time ago.

My mind goes back to August 2002 in Tbilisi, as I visited Georgia with John McCain. I remember it feeling rather dark and secretive, with the former-Soviet Union’s heavy hand still making its presence felt.

What has happened in Georgia since that time should not be surprising to anyone. Certainly Russia has tried to pretty itself up: it renamed the KGB and even gave its 21st century strongman Vladimir Putin a new title.

But for some time we’ve seen Russia sliding back to its authoritarian comfort zone. Murder, imprisonment and property confiscation are back in vogue for any perceived troublemaker. 

But the one thing we must not do is allow Russia to feel it can get away with (it)

All the while, in Eastern Europe some of America’s staunchest friends are watching to see what the reaction of the U.S. and the west will be to Russia’s latest gambit. The U.S. and others use the word “unacceptable,” undoubtedly with the same effect that we get when we use it with the Iranians.

But the one thing we must not do is allow Russia to feel it can get away with, let alone feel rewarded for, this invasion of a sovereign democratic nation that has also loyally supported coalition efforts in Iraq.

The world is devolving dangerously…and the Democrats are fueling the ambitions of those that would bring harm to the free world.

While this crisis plays out we should also note that these events give evidence of a larger reality: the next American President is going to face an international landscape that is more difficult and treacherous than we have ever faced.

Little help can be expected from our friends in Europe no matter how much it appears that their own interests are at stake.

So let’s recap: international terrorism; powerful nation states on a quest for hegemony, whether close to home or further afield and with a willingness to squelch freedom anytime the opportunity arises; less stable and no less dangerous countries with nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities; an alliance of democratic nations of questionable resolve and a debate at home over our future role in the world with a political party happy to create the impression of diminished resolve with little concern for the long term damage such an impression may cause.

McCain leads the way while Obama body surfs in Hawaii with 80 some days left until the election.

This is no time to elect a president whose international experience is limited to speaking to adoring European crowds who want to see the United States retreat from the world … until they require our help in the next crisis that threatens them.

It has been instructive for the country to see the candidates’ reaction to the equivalent of Hillary Clinton’s 3 a.m. phone call. While he was vacationing in Hawaii, Barack Obama’s advisors scrambled into action and initially came up with the expected liberal bromides which equated the actions of Russia and Georgia and only ratcheted up the rhetoric when they began to actually understand what was happening.

…long before this Georgian crisis, (McCain has) had the correct read on Russia, just as he’s had the right read on what we needed to do in Iraq.

This crisis half a world away confirms what I’ve been saying for a while: This election cycle, the traffic in the world is very heavy …and dangerous; it’s no time to give a kid with barely a learner’s permit the keys to the car.

McCain may be far from the perfect “conservative” candidate but he called the surge correctly and is exhibiting the leadership requisite for the times.

The Russian attack on Georgia is an unfortunate but illustrative trial run for those that would be President.

Obama is treading water.

McCain has revealed a clear, firm, but steady edict for the Russians; exactly what the world needs from America right now.

Hillary was right about one thing. We don’t want to be calling Obama at 3 a.m. or any other time.

Jay Reding sums up the Georgia War pretty capably:

Putin wants to ensure that Russia, and not those upstart republics to its southwest, gets the benefit of supplying most of Europe’s natural gas. The Georgian crisis was draped with the idea that Russia had to protect South Ossetia, but the truth of the matter is that these last few days have been about nothing but realpolitik. Putin and Medvedev are trying to get money and power—and that is all too easy when the Russian Army can act as private enforcers.

President Saakashvili made a crucial mistake in provoking the Russians over Ossetia, although it’s not clear how much the Georgians were themselves provoked by Ossetian agents working at the behest of the Kremlin. The Georgian Army can’t match the strength of the Russian Army, and the United States was not about to get themselves involved in any conflict between the two. The Georgians unleashed something they could not control, which in war can be fatal.

Russia has been invaded time and time again over the last thousand years – and their societal collective memory does go back that far.

It’s given them both a sense of paranoia about bordering powers, and a sense of entitlement – reinforced by seventy years of superpower status – about their means to deal with that paranoia.

History really didn’t end in 1991. it turns out.

I was reading a summary of a journal belonging to Hideki Tojo, one of Japan’s World War II era Prime Ministers, that described his disposition just after the incineration of Japan’s Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Tojo, executed in 1948 after being convicted of war crimes by the Allies, was prime minister during much of the war. The notes buttress other evidence that Tojo was fiercely opposed to surrender despite the hopelessness of Japan’s war effort.

The stridency of the writings is remarkable considering they were penned just days after the U.S. atomic bombs incinerated Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing some 200,000 people and posing the threat of the complete destruction of Japan. At the time, Japan had begun arming children, women and the elderly with bamboo spears, in addition to the aircraft and other forces it had marshaled, to defend the homeland against a ground invasion.

The mindset of the times and of this man seem to express a level of nationalism and kamikaze pride too extreme to exist today. To think that a nation would preemptively attack another to gain ground or extinguish another people is nearly unthinkable in this day and age.

Fifty years seems like a long time, especially for me, one generation removed. Names like Hitler, Mussolini, Hirohito and Tojo are just ink on a page in a history book. The evil they represent has been diluted by time, relative peace and prosperity in America.

…and then Russia attacks Georgia and we are faced with the fact that history repeats itself.

And that a stong national defense, and the proper use and maintenance thereof is of no less value now than in any time in the past.

Probably even moreso now as more and more nations, with our help, gain footholds in world commerce, capitalism and democracy, thereby becoming world powers if not superpowers.

One has to wonder if we weren’t in Iraq and gearing up for an attack or counter-attack on Iran, would our response to Russia’s attack on a burgeoning democracy and ally to the West be more than tough talk on the part of Bush and McCain?

Is our military as stretched as we keep hearing? …or do we have capacity to wage war that is kept up our sleeve?

It seems to me that the attack on Georgia should not have been a surprise, and even if it was, why are we (and I mean the whole Western world) not responding in kind while hundreds maybe thousands of citizens of a sovereign nation lose their lives and homes to a neighboring aggressor?

European leaders have criticized us for Iraq and yet I still get the feeling that those same leaders are looking to us for a reaction to the (now apparently reduced if not ceased) aggression on the part of the Russians.

Will there ever be a time when America is not expected to shoulder the burden as well as the criticism of being the globe’s police force?

In any case, I think it wise for voters to consider their choice for President as it relates to their role as commander and chief of America’s military resources.

Talk is cheap and it is clear that we have given Russia exactly what they anticipated in planning this attack. At the same time, Iran is watching us right now and no doubt the world’s response can only be emboldening their irrational ambitions.

Speaking of cheap talk (guess who):

Chicago, IL — “I strongly condemn the outbreak of violence in Georgia, and urge an immediate end to armed conflict. Now is the time for Georgia and Russia to show restraint, and to avoid an escalation to full scale war. Georgia’s territorial integrity must be respected. All sides should enter into direct talks on behalf of stability in Georgia, and the United States, the United Nations Security Council, and the international community should fully support a peaceful resolution to this crisis.”

Not that George Bush’s response has been all that more assertive:

Mr. Bush, in an interview with NBC Sports, said, “I’ve expressed my grave concern about the disproportionate response of Russia and that we strongly condemn the bombing outside of South Ossetia.”The president called the violence in Georgia “unacceptable.”He said he did so directly to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who is in Beijing with Mr. Bush for the Olympics, and by phone to Russian President Dmitri Medvedev.“I was very firm with Vladimir Putin,” said Mr. Bush. “Hopefully this will get resolved peacefully.”   

I would have liked to have also heard:

In the mean time, I am working with other world leaders such as France, Germany, Great Britian and Japan to marshal and mobilize military resources to stand ready to defend our ally if Russia continues to defy our demands to stand down.

As costly as military action is, sometimes it is a necessary tool to act as a deterrent to those that would use it against weaker nations. It may be all that they are capable of understanding.

Sometimes the Good Guys need to kick some ass.

I often see “War is not the Answer” lawn signs and bumper stickers and in response I always say “It depends on what the question is.”

Russia (and Iran) may need to be answered soon. I hope we are ready.

US truckers are getting stopped, inspected, arrested and fined for buying diesel fuel in Mexico, at about half the price as in the US, with the intention of taking it back into the USA.

While filling a primary fuel tank isn’t illegal, Mexico prohibits additional fuel tanks (aka auxiliary tanks) to be filled and moved across the border, so many truck owners with long-range tanks are finding themselves breaking Mexican federal law. Truck owners are getting stopped on the Mexican side of the border and their trucks are confiscated while authorities run tests to determine the origin of the fuel. If found in violation, owners face stiff fines. The Mexican Consulate is offering a blanket warning for all truck owners equipped with secondary fuel tanks to not drive those vehicles into Mexico.

At the same time, the Mexican government objects when the US fortifies its border with Mexico to prevent Mexican citizens from overloading US healthcare facilities and schools.

Mexico confiscates trucks crossing border for cheap diesel

The march of our domestic economic policies deeper and deeper into socialistic territory is often justified by liberals who will site Europe’s success; they having scouted ahead for us.

You will hear such things as hight tax brackets and universal healthcare are working for them – they’re doing just fine.

So why is it that there are signs Europe is calling a retreat and marching back our way?

Europe Has an Economics Lesson for Obama

Over the last decade, much of Europe has very quietly embraced market-based reforms that either draw inspiration from American successes or — on issues like retirement security — are even more market-oriented than many U.S. Republicans support.

The cutting of corporate income- tax rates is an excellent example of European market-friendly bipartisanship. Germany’s right-left coalition of Christian and Social Democrats implemented a large rate cut earlier this year, reducing the top marginal corporate rate to about 30% from 39%. Spain’s Socialist and Britain’s Labor governments have followed suit, reducing their countries’ top corporate rates.

These traditionally left-of-center parties understand that in a globalized economy, wealth and investment are mobile, flowing to those countries that provide hospitable investment climates. As part of a European Union where center-right governments in Greece, Denmark, Ireland and Eastern Europe have dramatically reduced corporate tax rates, they understand that they cannot help workers if they drive away the capital that employs and pays them.

Read that last sentence. Now read it again. Thank Ronald Regan for that one.

Mr. Obama’s main solution to the looming Social Security bankruptcy is to raise taxes on the well-off. To date, he has eschewed other solutions such as raising the retirement age or creating private Social Security accounts. But European center-left parties have no such reservations.

Take Sweden, for example. In the 1990s, a series of center-right and Social Democratic governments reached agreement on wide ranging pension reforms that include a private account option not too different than the one proposed by President George W. Bush.

Yah, but they’ll never give credit to Bush for the idea.

This new European consensus is founded, like all political calculations, partly on conviction and partly on necessity. European center-left politicians have slowly come to respect the power of markets. Much like the so-called “Rubin Democrats,” they recognize that the energy and innovation of market actors can better produce wealth than more traditional social democratic economic theory.

Necessity. Hey, soon we will have that in common!

Again, Sweden is an excellent example of this. Since 1932, Social Democrats have governed the country mostly without significant coalition partners, with the exception of the years when Sweden’s economy stalled and they had to cede power — 1976-82, 1991-94 and again in 2006 when the current center-right government took over. Even in egalitarian Sweden, voters will turn to the right if jobs are scarce and incomes stagnant.

Does this bode well for November? Does it hurt bad enough yet America?

I gotta confess, when I read about the Texas Polygamist flap last spring, this was the last thing I expected:

A new clothing brand may be born out of the Texas raid on a polygamous sect.

FLDS women for the first time are offering their handmade, distinctive style of children’s clothes to the public through the Web site fldsdress.com.

Launched initially to provide Texas authorities with clothing for FLDS children in custody, the online store now is aimed at helping their mothers earn a living.

The fun part will be trying to figure out a way to make them next year’s hot ironic fashion statement by dinkytown hypstrz.

From the Strib:

Club-hopping guys greasing up with Preparation H

No, it’s not what you think.

Well, not quite:

ABC News is reporting that New York bouncer, blogger and author Rob Fitzgerald has noticed that young men waiting outside his clubs are greasing up with the hemorrhoid cream to make themselves look “ripped” for the ladies.

Fitzgerald says bodybuilders and posers use it, and now the tactic is making the rounds on the Internet, ABC reports. And women have been known to use it to combat facial wrinkles

I thought about calling the post “smear tactics”, but thought better of it.

As I’ve written about in the past, there were many things that pushed me to the right, from the dozey McGovern-style liberalism (at least in terms of domestic policy) I believed in when I was in my late teens and early twenties, to voting for Reagan in ’84. Books (Modern Times, The Gulag, Crime and Punishment, Republican Party Reptile), events (the Iran hostage crisis, the Soviet chicanery over the SALT talks), personalities (the amazing Reagan versus the comical Carter, the room-temperature Mondale, the loathsome Gary Hart)…

…but the key log in the logjam was Jimmy Carter’s “malaise” speech, in which a fiftysomething who’d been rewarded far out of proportion to his talent personally (so it seemed to me at the time) told me that I, a fifteen-year-old kid in the middle of nowhere, that I was going to inherit a much crappier American than he’d gotten, and there wasn’t anything I could do about it.

And that bothered me; even though I didn’t really expect a whole lot at that time, being told to just go and suck it bothered me enough that my adolescent certainty about liberalism started to crack around the edges (although I chalked most of it up to Carter, not the movement itself, initially).

Of course, “The sky is falling” is a key mantra of liberalism – and Obama isn’t just the leader…he’s a client!

“We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times … and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK,” Obama said.

“That’s not leadership. That’s not going to happen,” he added.

Now, on the one hand I get the context here – he’s reacting to criticisms from India’s prime minister about American environmentalists and politicians demanding concessions on growth from their growing economy (and yet still highly impoverished society).

And yet behind it there’s still the sense of liberal guilt, that the US doesn’t really deserve its success; that the people who didn’t feel proud of America until Barack Obama became a candidate really do believe that the only thing holding back the still-socialistic economy, ossified social structure and corrupt government of India is American imperialism.  That they dont’ know that while the US does use much of the world’s power, its productivity per unit of power used is vastly higher than most of the world, and our pollution per unit of productivity is lower.
Oh, there’s some real context as well:

Pitching his message to Oregon’s environmentally-conscious voters, Obama called on the United States to “lead by example” on global warming, and develop new technologies at home which could be exported to developing countries.

Leaving aside Obama’s usual audacious vagueness (what “new technologies”?  Are you going to develop them by decree?  Or perhaps buck your own nutroots and embrace nuclear power?), it shows a stifling ignorance of the real issue; the only way to solve the problems of pollution and third-world economic stagnance is growth, not shrinkage.

Just as it was for the last cataclysmic problem India faced – forty years ago, when the likes of Paul Ehrlich predicted that overpopulation and famine would soon render India a wasteland.  Liberal politicians of the day suggested we needed to “triage” India and the other nations threatened with overpopulation – and, like the global warming crisis today, highly-publicized scientists were absolutely certain, and wrote libraries full of peer-reviewed papers proving that the world was doomed unless government took decisive action to limit population – although it was already too late.
Fortunately, the Indians “followed our example”, and embraced economic growth – which, inevitably, curbs population growth.  The only thing “triaged” was Paul Ehrlich, who went on to make a series of other absurd comments that were largely obsoleted by more economic growth.

So the examples that we need to set for the third world are:

1. Pelt Paul Erhlich with rocks and garbage
2. Respond to the ecological crises (real or manufactured) the best way there is – via the free market.
3. Send Barack Obama back to Illinois.

Let’s get on it!

That “global consensus” that y’all have claimed for the hypothesis of Man-Made Global Warming? 

It does not exist. Never did. 

Not to say it couldn’t – but y’all are going to have to start acting more like scientists and less like brow-beating propaganda-whores to create it.

That is all.

The “Anti-War Committee” is hosting a pro-“Palestinian” march this Saturday, to commemorate the exile of the “Palestinians” from Israel.

Unmentioned, of course, will be the fact that this problem could have been solved sixty years ago; the Israelis have always been perfectly willing to co-exist with Palestinians Arabs, provided they weren’t all about throwing Israel into the sea.  Arabs in Israel are currently the only Arabs in the middle east who live under a functional, secure democracy.’

But that means nothing to the local  “peace” movement, who will continue to parlay the racist myth that the Palestinian “Diaspora” is a sign of Zionist racism rather than Arab-government dogmatic opportunism.

They are, as Neal from Loyal Opposition puts it, perpetrating a fraud on the spectators.  He describes the situation:

The Anti War Committee believes that “Israel as an illegitimate apartheid state, and we stand in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for justice and self-determination”. It requires no stretch of the imagination the AWC is calling for the destruction of Israel and murder of the Jews – the stated goal of Hamas, Hizb’Allah, Fatah, Al-Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade, and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

These are the useful idiots that will be marching in the streets of Minneapolis on Saturday: sympathizers to the slaughter of every Jew in Israel. By acting as mouthpieces and spreading their vile propaganda, the AWC, PSC, and the rest of their mob are complicit.

The progeny of Grand Mufti Haj Muhammed Amin al-Husseini will slither up Hennepin Avenue, with their Palestinian jihadist flags and kuffiyehs, bleating about how horrible it is for Israel to defend itself against the jihadist armies who would see the Jews expunged from the Earth itself. Again – and again – and again – they will spew their ahistoric slander upon our streets and pollute our eyes with their libels, until, at Loring Park, anti-Semitic excrement and obscurantists will retch their Jew hating venom.

Of course, there’s a short view, and a long view:

G-d will look down upon the blasphemers of civilization and decency and He will know what must be done.

G-d, in His infinite wisdom, shall eventually cause the rains to fall and the Park will be cleansed, and the Jew haters will be as dust in years hence.

The trees and flowers will bloom, the grass will grow, and the birds shall sing.

And the Jews will still be here.

Speaking of perpetrating frauds – the Minneapolis E-“Democracy” discussion forum, run by MinnPost writer David Brauer – allows the Anti-War Committee to post announcements for the demonstration, but refuses to allow Neal to expose the other side of the issue.  This is of a piece with E-“Democracy”‘s bigotry on issue after issue; suffice to say that if they get any tax money, it needs to be stopped.

“Summer Side of Life” is one of Gordon Lightfoot’s best songs.

The scandal of the “comfort women” – girls from Korea, the Philippines, Taiwan and other Asian nations (and a few Dutch internees as well) kidnapped to serve as sex slaves to the Japanese military during World War II – is one of the great human rights scandals of the 20th Century.

Somehow, it would never have occurred to me to combine the two.

And, I must say, it still does not.

A: “When someone you disagree with has an experience, and still draws different conclusions than yours”.

Fifty years ago, the great slander against Catholic politicians was that they’d have to take orders from Rome.

That might almost be preferable to the world Pope Benedict seemed to espouse last week.  He seems to be cuddling up to the UN:

Pope Benedict on Friday called for collective diplomacy, and not “the decisions of a few” to resolve conflicts and said human rights had to be based on “unchanging justice” and not the legal whims of the day.

At the United Nations, normally formal diplomats and bureaucrats snapped pictures of the pope with their cell phone cameras and jostled to get close as he moved through the institution’s corridors.Praising the founding principles of the U.N., Benedict said the world body should and does serve as an “active example” of how conflicts can be solved based on shared regulations and values.

Regular NARN caller Quentin from Zimmerman must be happy – or happier, anyway – today.  After thirty years of leading their mutual homeland Zimbabwe on a social and economic kamikaze ride, Robert Mugabe is calling it a long-overdue quits:

Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe is ready to step down after he accepted he failed to win the country’s presidential election, a senior source in his ruling party and diplomats told AFP Tuesday.

An official in Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party said the long-ruling president was prepared to step down but was still trying to win agreement from the army’s chief of staff Constantine Chiwenga.

Ed notes at Hot Air:

He took the former nation of Rhodesia and reduced it to pauper status. Zimbabwe had a booming agriculture industry and the beginnings of industrialization when he took charge. Thanks to a mix of statism, post-colonial petulance, and sheer stupidity, Zimbabwe cannot feed itself after being a net exporter, and all of the capital that promised to bring modernization to the country has fled to avoid confiscation.

I’ll leave the obvious Minnesota/DFL parallels to the rest of you.

UPDATE:  Not so fast, says South Africa’s Johannesburrg Mail and Guardian:

Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai and the Zimbabwe government both denied on Tuesday that they were in talks to arrange the resignation of President Robert Mugabe. At a news conference on Tuesday evening, Tsvangirai confirmed, however, for the first time personally that his party had won the elections.

Keep your fingers crossed.  Zimbabwe has suffered enough.

Angela Merkel begins what could be an avalanche of world leaders opting to skip the opening ceremony at the Bejing Olympics.

As pressure built for concerted western protests to China over the crackdown in Tibet, EU leaders prepared to discuss the crisis for the first time today, amid a rift over whether to boycott the Olympics.

The disclosure that Germany is to stay away from the games’ opening ceremonies in August could encourage President Nicolas Sarkozy of France to join in a gesture of defiance and complicate Gordon Brown’s determination to attend the Olympics.

Donald Tusk, Poland’s prime minister, became the first EU head of government to announce a boycott on Thursday and he was promptly joined by President Václav Klaus of the Czech Republic, who had previously promised to travel to Beijing.

“The presence of politicians at the inauguration of the Olympics seems inappropriate,” Tusk said. “I do not intend to take part.”

Question to ponder; would this have happened three years ago, before the conservative (by Euro standards) wave that swept Sarkozy and Merkel into office (and reinforced the  small-“l” liberal governents of Klaus and Tusk)?

If Merkel and others do not attend the opening ceremony, it is likely to reinforce a growing sense in China that the Olympics is being used to vilify the host.China had hoped to use the games to highlight its economic development and growing openness. But it is increasingly proving an opportunity for critics to bash China’s one-party political system, human rights abuses, treatment of minorities and tightly controlled media.

Wow, China.

Derb on the gathering wave of revulsion over China’s behavior:

All sort of other ideas for embarrassing the ChiCom gangsters are buzzing around. Some are suggesting, for example, that athletes simply not show up for the opening ceremonies…There is also the idea, which I rather like, that an entire national team might shave their heads the night before the ceremony to show solidarity with Tibetan monks and nuns, the bravest and most persecuted of Tibetan patriots.

And he notes that this is unfamiliar territory for Beijing:

At the Olympics, the Maoists will be dealing with free people from free nations, and there is only so much they can do to control them. It’s not clear they understand this. They’ve been living for decades in a bubble of unchallenged power, and are not very imaginative.

And this is important. While societies and markets are instinctively adaptible, governments are not. People coloring outside the officially-approved lines is hard for these systems to deal with. A simple thing like “conservatives voting conservative” has flummoxed the Minnesota DFL and Media (pardon the redundancy) for over 20 years; the Chinese, obviously, could have it much worse.

And speaking of the market:

The opportunities for embarrassment are endless, and the prospect of it very delicious to anyone who loves liberty. Personally, I hope their stinking Olympics is a huge fiasco, and I see encouraging signs it may be.

On the one hand, Derb is right; Communism is just not good at making big things happen. On the other hand, the American media has a huge investment in presenting a spectacle – not a news story. I don’t anticipate much light being shown on the cockroaches.

Now, if the attendees include bloggers?

George Clooney leaps into action over Tibet:

If his previous form is anything to go by, the Tibetans should soon be able to count on the support of Hollywood star George Clooney in their struggle for freedom. After all, the man anointed by the media as the “heartthrob with a conscience” must have been pretty outspoken about China’s indirect responsibility for the on-going genocide in Darfur, right?

Well, not really. Here’s Clooney’s latest attack on China regarding Darfur delivered in his capacity as “ambassador” for Olympic partner and official timekeeper Omega:

“I have talked with Omega (about China) for over a year and will continue to talk to Omega,” Clooney told BBC Sport.“I have and will go to the places I and China do business and ask for help.”

You hear that, President Hu? Not so brave now, are we, People’s Liberation Army? Gorgeous George is going to “continue to talk to Omega.” He’s going to “go to places” and “ask for help.”

We’ve yet to hear from Clooney on the specific issue of Tibet, but he’ll surely take an even stronger stance than he has over Darfur, given that this time Chinese are doing the shooting themselves, rather than merely supplying the ammunition.

We can perhaps hope for something along the lines of the blistering attack Clooney launched on Nestle last year, when it was politely pointed out that his commercial activities on behalf of a company that’s been criticised for its policies in the third world didn’t sit well with his self-appointed role as global crusader for the oppressed.

Here’s the full, unedited transcript:

“I’m not going to apologize to you for trying to make a living every once in a while. I find that an irritating question.”

Okay, it wasn’t that blistering. However, Clooney has on other occasions been genuinely outspoken in his condemnation of perceived injustices — namely those he feels have been committed by the United States, and specifically by the Bush administration.

Not that this is anything new – or even confined to the past eight years.

The violence in Tibet piles on yet another to boycott the Beijing Olympics (a few months ago, we noted the gag order being placed on Olympic athletes forbidding them from criticizing China and its totalitarian policies).

And there’s finally some talk of doing…well, something:

Moves to punish China over its handling of violence in Tibet gained momentum Tuesday, with a novel suggestion for a mini-boycott of the Beijing Olympics by VIPs at the opening ceremony.

Such a protest by world leaders would be a huge slap in the face for China’s Communist leadership.

France’s outspoken foreign minister, former humanitarian campaigner Bernard Kouchner, said the idea “is interesting.”

Kouchner said he wants to discuss it with other foreign ministers from the 27-nation European Union next week. His comments opened a crack in what until now had been solid opposition to a full boycott, a stance that Kouchner said remains the official government position.

The idea of skipping the Aug. 8 opening ceremony “is less negative than a general boycott,” Kouchner said. “We are considering it.”

I’m all for negative, but it’s a start.

I don’t know if I was the only one who heard about the Administration’s plan for a “virtual fence” – sort of like a real fence, only hideously expensive and relying on unproven technology, and which provides no physical barrier to actually crossing it – and recalled the many other “virtual” flopolas of the dotcom era.

If you did, pat yourself on the back (virtually, if not physically); you were right. The virtual fence is to security what Pets.com was to investment, or what PowerAgent was to virtual scamming:

Technical problems discovered in a 28-mile pilot project south of Tucson prompted the change in plans, Department of Homeland Security officials and congressional auditors told a House subcommittee.

Though the department took over that initial stretch Friday from Boeing, authorities confirmed that Project 28, the initial deployment of the Secure Border Initiative network, did not work as planned or meet the needs of the U.S. Border Patrol.

The announcement marked a major setback for what President Bush in May 2006 called “the most technologically advanced border security initiative in American history.” The virtual fence was to be a key component of his proposed overhaul of U.S. immigration policies, which died last year in the Senate.

Investigators for the Government Accountability Office had earlier warned that the effort was beset by both expected and unplanned difficulties. But yesterday, they disclosed new troubles that will require a redesign and said the first phase will not be completed until near the end of the next president’s first term.

Those problems included Boeing’s use of inappropriate commercial software, designed for use by police dispatchers, to integrate data related to illicit border-crossings. Boeing has already been paid $20.6 million for the pilot project, and in December, the DHS gave the firm another $65 million to replace the software with military-style, battle management software.

How about a few hundred thousand dollars a mile to replace the “software” with railroad-style people-management hardware – a double row of chain link topped with barbed wire?

It’s not a new observation that the Olympics have become a joke; even when I was a kid, watching the ’72 games in Munich (before the massacre), I remember hearing complaints about the doping, the commercialism, the professionalization of the Eastern Bloc athletes, the jingoism the games spawned, and on, and on, and on.

But for anyone who thinks the Olympics’ shameful, politicized nature is a new thing, I present for your review this photo:

When the subject of the ’36 Berlin Olympics comes up, most Americans think Jesse Owens, the black runner who went toe to toe with the “master race” and said “you got no game, beeyotch” (or words to that effect).

Not all of the games’ spectacles were so ennobling. The photo above is a shot of the British soccer team, giving the Nazi salute at an exhibition game in Berlin’s Olympiastadium in 1938, on the orders of one of Britain’s Foreign Office and “Football Association”, who wanted to mollify Hitler in the interest of lace-undie diplomatic nicety.

Needless to say, it didn’t work. David Mellor writes for the UK Daily Mail:

    Was Hitler made more reasonable by that salute, or by the willingness of the world to offer him a massive propaganda boost two years earlier at the Berlin Olympics by turning up without a squeak of protest? Of course not, which leads to some interesting parallels with today.

    In 1936, persecution of the Jews was stopped briefly, dissidents were rounded up and kept out of the way and Nazi Germany put on its best face for the Games.

Why bring it up today?

Because it’s happening again – this time in China:

British Olympic chiefs are to force athletes to sign a contract promising not to speak out about China’s appalling human rights record – or face being banned from travelling to Beijing.

The move – which raises the spectre of the order given to the England football team to give a Nazi salute in Berlin in 1938 – immediately provoked a storm of protest.

The controversial clause has been inserted into athletes’ contracts for the first time and forbids them from making any political comment about countries staging the Olympic Games.

It is contained in a 32-page document that will be presented to all those who reach the qualifying standard and are chosen for the team…The clause, in section 4 of the contract, simply states: “[Athletes] are not to comment on any politically sensitive issues.”

It then refers competitors to Section 51 of the International Olympic Committee charter, which “provides for no kind of demonstration, or political, religious or racial propaganda in the Olympic sites, venues or other areas”.

In other words, Beijing is putting all Olympic athletes under a gag order.

Oh – and for what it’s worth, my opinion of Prince Charles just jumped from “Hold” to “Buy”:

Prince Charles has already let it be known that he will not be going to China, even if he is invited by Games organisers.

His views on the Communist dictatorship are well known, after this newspaper revealed how he described China’s leaders as “appalling old waxworks” in a journal written after he attended the handover of Hong Kong. The Prince is also a long-time supporter of the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan leader.

Why is the US participating in this sham, which serves only to legitimize the brutal, lethal Beijing regime?

The Bad News:  Al Quaeda is using mentally-handicapped people as involuntary suicide bombers.

The Worse News:  According to the Britain’s environment minister, their tradition of arranged marriages between close relatives – even first cousins – might create a bumper crop:

A government minister has warned that inbreeding among immigrants is causing a surge in birth defects – comments likely to spark a new row over the place of Muslims in British society.

Phil Woolas, an environment minister, said the culture of arranged marriages between first cousins was the “elephant in the room”. Woolas, a former race relations minister, said: “If you have a child with your cousin the likelihood is there’ll be a genetic problem.”

The minister, whose views were supported by medical experts this weekend, said: “The issue we need to debate is first cousin marriages, whereby a lot of arranged marriages are with first cousins, and that produces lots of genetic problems in terms of disability [in children].”

Ew.  Just…ew.

Two Iranian sisters face death by stoning after a Sharia conviction for adultery.

The two were found guilty of adultery — a capital crime in Islamic Iran — after the husband of one sister presented video evidence showing them in the company of other men while he was away.

“Branch 23 of the supreme court has confirmed the stoning sentence,” said their lawyer, Jabbar Solati.

The penal court of Tehran province had already sentenced the sisters identified only as Zohreh, 27, and Azar (no age given) to stoning, the daily said.

Solati explained that the two sisters had initially been tried for “illegal relations” and received 99 lashes. However in a second trial they were convicted of “adultery.”

No word yet if Minneapolis Community Technical College will carry the stoning live on a jumbotron.

As I’ve pointed out on this blog since its very first day, I started out as a liberal.  I’d probably have called myself a liberal into my early twenties; I voted for Reagan in secret in ’84.

But I remember pretty keenly when I first started having serious questions about liberalism.  It was Jimmy Carter’s infamous “Malaise” speech.  I remember the speech – reading, hearing, watching, I don’t remember exactly how I remember it, but I do – and thinking “so that smug little bastard’s got his, and now he’s telling me I gotta assume I won’t get mine?  Screw him”. 

It took me a few years to realize that Carter was not the aberration – that Carter and his malaise were the rule, not the exception; that liberalism was all about patiently, politely asking those who had theirs – the money, the jobs, the medical care, the information, the security, the power – if you could have yours, your post-tax income or work or CAT scan or news or police protection or motivation or whatever.  Pretty please?  If I promise to be happy to pay for a better Minnesota?

And I have to hope that every time someone, somewhere, hears this deeply stupid remark by Bill Clinton, that a new conservative gets his or her wings:

In a long, and interesting speech, [Clinton] characterized what the U.S. and other industrialized nations need to do to combat global warming this way: “We just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions ’cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren.”

At a time that the nation is worried about a recession is that really the characterization his wife would want him making? “Slow down our economy”?

Reading this, I think we need to start by taking a moment to thank God or ineluctible fate or biology or whatever for Newt Gingrich and the ’94 Revolution; between Hillarycare and this sort of attitude, the United States could have come out of the nineties with an economy the size of Bulgaria.

Bill!  Slapnuts Mr. President?   Let’s accept, hypothetically, that global warming is both real and significantly driven by human activity (and I am being hypothetical).  It is only through economic growth that humankind will develop a rational response. 

Economic growth slows population growth, as people develop the ability to feed themselves, curb child mortality, and need to have fewer kids to ensure survival.

Economic growth funds and eventually drives the innovations that allow society to perpetuate itself. 

If humankind indeed does need to save itself from itself, it will be through economic growth and the innovation that it drives.  Not through stagnation.

Not through Tic conceits like “slowing the economy down”.

Note to President Clinton:  the right stage door is calling.  You’re late for your exit.

UPDATE AND CORRECTION ADJUSTMENT: Commenter “Terry” notes that I took the quote out of context (see first comment, below). 

So Clinton’s not advocating economic shrinkage.  My bad.

Of course, his former Veep and most of the Green movement are, so my overall conclusions don’t change.