Matthew Burden from Blackfive is a finalist in the competition to win a $10,000 blogging scholarship. All you have to do is go HERE and vote for Matt. It's quick, it's painless and it is for a very good cause - support a great milblogger.
Hat tip to Bear Creek Ledger, via Gateway Pundit.
Blogosphere | Gaius Thursday, 18 October , 2007 | 
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Gerard Baker, writing in the Times of London, points out what some of us have been saying for a while now: the absolute safest place in the world to be anti-American is in America. It is a scathing look at the absurdity of the way the world sees America - because of the vitriolic rants of America's own worst critics: Americans.
Anti-Americanism is on the wane at last. All over the world, Americans are being fêted once again as farsighted, liberating heroes.
Al Gore has won a Nobel Peace Prize, an Oscar and an Emmy, the triple crown of recognition from the self-adoring keepers of bien-pensant, elite liberal, global orthodoxy. Michael Moore is treated like a prophet in Cannes and Venice, as he peddles his tales of an America that poisons its poor, sends its blacks off to war and shoots itself. Whenever a loquacious Dixie Chick or a contumacious Sean Penn utters some excoriating remark about the depravity of his or her own country, audiences around the world nod their heads in sympathetic agreement. Bill Clinton, of course, is a god. Though protocol dictates that he may not say things that are too unkind about the country he once led, a nod and a wink will suffice.
It has always amused me that the same people who denounce America as a seething cesspit of blind obscurantist bigotry can’t see the irony that America itself produces its own best critics. When there’s a scab to be picked on the American body politic, no one does it with more loving attention, more rigorous focus on the detail, than Americans themselves.
It has always been this way. The fiercest and most effective opponents of US foreign policy in the 1960s were not the students in Paris or the Politburo in North Vietnam. They were Jane Fonda, Bobby Kennedy and Marvin Gaye.
Today I can only laugh when I see the popular portrayal of George Bush’s America in much of the international media. Supposedly serious commentators will say, without evident irony, that free speech is under attack, that Bush’s wiretapping, Guantanamo-building, tourist-fingerprinting regime is terrifying Americans into quiet, desperate acquiescence in the country’s proliferating crimes.
Do read it - it is brilliant - yet terrifying at the same time. Because Baker points to a really ugly side of the anti-Americans that America shelters, protects and tolerates:
Al Gore wants the US to give up its economic autonomy and submit to rule by binding international obligations to curb its carbon emissions. Some of the Democratic candidates for the presidency want to tie down the American Gulliver under a web of global treaties. The British Government, if recent speeches by ministers are to be believed, is now apparently seriously committed to the idea that only the UN has the legitimacy to determine how nations should behave. In other words, that a system that gives vetoes to China and Russia and honours the human rights contributions of countries such as Syria or North Korea should be accorded a full role in the promotion of the dignity of mankind.
The United Nations seats Zimbabwe on the committee for sustainable development. Bobby's little slice of socialist utopia as a role model for the world. Syria guarding the human rights of the world. We here in America let our dissidents undermine our very nation. Burma does things a bit differently when it comes to free speech, does it not?
Yet some of our most vocal internal critics would make America subservient to the Burmas and the Syrias and the Zimbabwes and the Venezuelas and the Cubas and the Irans - you get the point. Yes, we have free speech. We defend that free speech, obeying the adage of Voltaire: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it’.” And we, as Americans must be strong enough to continue to allow it.
But we also must be smart enough not to follow it to our destruction.
Demented, yet completely inspired. Baum Squad Productions: Mara River Showdown: Crocodiles vs. Wildebeests.
Michael Malone writes a positively devastating autopsy of the New York Times. Oh, the paper is still technically alive, but the fire sale of every share of NYT stock by Morgan Stanley yesterday is a sure sign that the Times is a dead paper walking, so to speak.
Boom! And down goes the biggest newspaper name of all.
As you may have read, yesterday brokerage giant Morgan Stanley dumped its entire stake — $183 million worth — in the New York Times, in which it was the second largest shareholder. Not surprisingly, Times stock immediately slumped, bottoming at a nearly 3 percent drop to $18.28 — the lowest it has been in a decade.
The actual damage is probably even larger than that. The Morgan Stanley sell-off has been expected for some time now. Ever since April, after Hassam Elmasry, managing director of Morgan's Investment Management Group failed in his attempt to challenge the Sulzberger family's iron grip on the Times, the market has been expecting Morgan to pull out — and it is probably no coincidence that the stock has been in downward slide ever since.
Malone does an excellent job of explaining how - and how very badly - the times went wrong. A series of disastrous blunders and a total inability to grasp the realities of the internet and the new media have destroyed the Gray Lady.
Would this decline in reputation have occurred without the rise of the Internet? To some degree, yes. You can mark the turn in the Times' reputation from the early 1990s, when it began to put, on the front page, an increasing number of opinion pieces and feature reporting (most infamously, a glimpse into the apartment of William Kennedy Smith's purported rape victim).
At first, this was dismissed as a mere pandering to the changing tastes of a readership raised on television and gonzo reporting. But it was a first glimpse of the pandering to a supposedly hipper, more sophisticated audience that would become pandemic across the Times' pages under the threat of the Internet age.
At about the same time, I got an early glimpse of how the Times would mishandle the technology side of its business as well. One day, several years after I'd stopped writing my column for the paper, I received a letter from the Times demanding that I retroactively sign over all electronic rights to my stories and columns on file at the newspaper.
Then came the disaster of "Times Select" - a roaring failure that probably ruined most of the columnists that fell victim to it. Their voice and importance has been diminished as surely as the Times' credit rating. And the outright lies told to readers. Read it all. Malone is not triumphant here - he's unhappy that it has come to this. Had the Times played to its long-held strengths and become even better reported and more objective, it could have been a force to be reckoned with. Instead, it is on life support and sinking fast. It is only a matter of time until the plug is pulled.
Media | Gaius | Comments (6)
Democracy activists who have fled Burma to avoid arrest are now hiding from assassination teams sent by the military junta to pursue them in Thailand.
Burmese pro-democracy activists who have fled across the Thai border fear death at the hands of assassins sent to track them down.
Speaking in Mae Sot, a town on the Thai side of the border where unexplained deaths are common, a leader of the recent protests said he feared that Burmese government agents could pursue him.
"It's not safe because I am illegal," he said. "The Thai police can arrest me and send me back. And we are very close to the Burma border. A team can come and assassinate me. There are many spies here."
The smuggling of women, children, gems and drugs are big business in Mae Sot. The town is a key destination for those fleeing the Burmese military regime.
But the activist, Hlaing Moe Than, 38, who was a regional leader for Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy in the Mandalay area, insisted yesterday that he would not move further from his homeland before he had spoken of his experiences.
Hlaing Moe co-ordinated protests with the Buddhist monks' leaders in the days before they joined the anti-government demonstrations in their thousands last month.
He was a student leader in the 1988 democracy movement that was brutally put down by the junta. He spent eight years in prison, first in the notorious Insein jail then at Myingyen, which he calls "the worst torture camp for political prisoners".
For months on end his legs were shackled with an iron bar so he could not walk. Hlaing Moe's closest comrades in the democracy movement are a roll call of leading activists recently arrested. The family of one friend was recently informed that "the nervous system in his eyes" was "broken". Apparently he has been blinded during interrogation.
Junta-speak: the nervous system in his eyes is broken. Many others have reportedly been questioned to death. Meanwhile, the United Nations is busily celebrating potatoes. Perhaps potatoes are a miracle cure for broken eye nervous systems and the UN can bring in a case or two of tubers to save Burmese eyesight.
Two explosions near the truck carrying former Prime Minister of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto have killed more than 100 bystanders. Bhutto was unhurt, despite the explosions going off just a short distance from her vehicle.
KARACHI, Pakistan - Two explosions went off Thursday night near a truck carrying former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto on her celebratory return to Pakistan after eight years in exile. Police said she was unhurt, but hospital officials and witnesses said at least 108 others were killed and more than 150 wounded.
There were conflicting reports on the number of people killed in the blasts. The Associated Press, citing hospital officials, reported 108 dead. Reuters, citing witnesses and a police official, reported 115 killed. There was no way to immediately reconcile these differences.
An initial small explosion was followed by a huge blast just feet from the front of the truck carrying Bhutto during a procession through Karachi. The blast shattered windows in her vehicle. Neither Bhutto nor any of the others riding on the truck was hurt, police officer Hasib Beg said.
Authorities believe it was a suicide bomber at this point. Al Qaeda attempted an assassination of Bhutto in 1993. If it was a suicide bomber, that points more to al Qaeda than to anyone else. But this one is going to take some time to sort out.
World news | Gaius | Comments Off
I posted about Rush Limbaugh auctioning off the letter signed by 41 Democratic senators demanding that he be somehow punished by his employers for a phony "scandal" whipped up by Media Mendacity Matters for America. The letter is being auctioned on eBay and is attracting some amazing bids. As of this writing, the bidding stands at $142,100. What's more, Limbaugh has promised to match the winning bid and turn all the proceeds over to the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation charity that Limbaugh has supported for years now.
Benefiting the Marine Corps - Law Enforcement Foundation, which helps the children of fallen soldiers and federal law enforcement officers, the eBay auction will wrap up in just over a day. Limbaugh will match the final figure dollar- for- dollar.
And the event has been so successful that it seems certain others in talk radio will want to give this concept a try, should a similar opportunity present itself.
This is one sweet batch of lemonade. Lawhawk wonders (well, actually he really doesn't wonder at all) if the Democrats will rise to Limbaugh's challenge and meet his matching offer. As if.
Media, Politics | Gaius | Comments (9)
A heartwarming ending to our earlier moving story about the theft of the Crapster, a seven foot tall racing toilet. It was finally flushed out by alert police officers, having been dumped in a field.
A 7-foot-tall toilet that was swiped from a Seattle parking lot earlier this month after competing in a local soapbox derby race was found Wednesday in a rural King County field.
The white commode with a blue velour seat, outfitted with tires and seating for one inside the bowl, was in a truck that was reported stolen on Oct. 1. The truck was found several days later, but the soapbox-derby racer, nicknamed "The Crapster," was gone.
A group of co-workers at Hewlett Packard in Colorado Springs, Colo., spent 25 days building their first soapbox-derby entry. On Sept. 29 the toilet finished the Red Bull Soapbox Race in Fremont in 75 seconds and was awarded second in crowd-favorite entries.
Tom Valentine, driver of The Crapster, was shocked that the toilet was found with minimal damage. He and teammates are deciding whether to pay nearly $800 to have it shipped back to Colorado.
"The police said they found it out in a field covered with a blue tarp," Valentine said. "I'm surprised they found it. I was thinking if they found it, it would be all beat up and at the bottom of a lake."
Police still have no leads on the public enemy number one who took the commodious commode. But the owners are positively overflowing with joy and flushed with pride over the recovery of their asset. And you know what that means!
It's potty time!
Crime | Gaius | Comments (3)
A New Zealand brewery discovered that a laptop computer containing vital company information was stolen earlier this week. Desperate to recover the contracts, designs, and company financial data, the owners have announced a reward for information leading to return of the computer.
Local media said the laptop was stolen from the Croucher Brewing Company in the central North Island city of Rotorua earlier this week.
Owners were desperate to retrieve the computer containing designs, contact details and financial information, the Rotorua Daily Post said.
They have offered free beer to anyone giving clues leading to its recovery.
Co-owner Paul Croucher said the company would provide a lifetime supply of about 12 bottles a month to anyone who could name the thief.
Here's to justice! (One of my friends will get a kick out of this story. I wonder if he actually has a bottle of this beer stashed in his collection. Which is extensive.)
Crime, World news | Gaius | Comments (1)
No, nobody threw Mr. Spock off a bridge. The very last of the British Avro Vulcan bombers to fly is again airworthy. Retired in 1992, Vulcan number XH558 has been painstakingly rebuilt from the ground up - including a complete rewiring that used about 12 miles of wire. The long-awaited test flight lasted about 20 minutes. More testing is required before the plane is declared operational. It will be used in air shows, not military service. (James Bond fans will recognize this airplane right away.)
The Vulcan bomber - a warrior of the Cold War era and a decisive weapon in the Falklands War - took to the skies for the first time in 14 years today.
The Avro Vulcan XH558 was the last of the aircraft to fly in 1993 when it was hangared at an airfield in Bruntingthorpe, Leics.
Today, after a £6 million restoration project, it was returned to flight.
The plane, which can reach speeds of up to 645mph, was expected to scale heights of around 3,000 feet during the 20-minute test flight and burn in excess of £1,000 of fuel.
Project organisers were describing it as a "historic day for aviation".
It is the first time an aircraft of the Vulcan's complexity has been given an extended overhaul on such a scale and then returned to flight, meeting all current aviation standards, said the Vulcan to the Sky Trust.
With a characteristic screeching roar, the plane rose majestically into the sky to a cheer from watching supporters, sponsors and engineers before banking to the left.
I wasn't able to get a video of the new flight, but YouTube did have this footage of one of the last flights this aircraft took in 1992.
The website for the Vulcan to the Sky Trust is here.
History, Video, World news | Gaius | Comments Off
Interesting concept, although sales thus far are fairly dismal. A tiny, one-seater electric car with a 30-mile range that is actually pretty zippy (70+ mph). It would be a practical choice for many people who have short commutes and who normally do so all alone in a car designed to hold four or more passengers. It is the Myers Motors NmG - or No More Gas.
TALLMADGE, United States (AFP) - Tired of waiting for big auto to come up with a truly clean car, Dana Myers has developed a tiny solution to the carbon crisis.
Tucked into a corner of his family's factory, behind an industrial crane and giant transformers, sits a fleet of what look like three-wheeled technicolor shoehorns.
Unlike the hybrids currently on offer, his No More Gas runs entirely on electricity. And its engine is powerful enough to zip down the highway.
There is one rather large catch. It has a maximum battery range of just 30 miles (50 kilometres) and room for just the driver and some groceries in the trunk.
Which could be why he's only sold 35 of them.
Dozens of companies have tried, and failed, to switch consumers over to electric cars.
The most spectacular failure was GM's EV1, the subject of award-winning documentary "Who Killed the Electric Car?"
Failures among smaller companies are also legendary, said David Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research.
"The sheer complexity is just overwhelming," Cole said, explaining that while safety regulations are a huge hurdle, the biggest problem is finding drivers willing to compromise on comfort and convenience just to go green.
"It's really tough to do."
The Myers Motors website has a lot of information on the car - and a thoroughly annoying auto-play video (hint - get rid of that and allow people to start it themselves guys.) The video will play whenever you go to the main page. Argh. That aside, the car is interesting and would actually work for a lot of average commuters. But it is going to be a tough sell. The car is almost more of a replacement for a motorcycle, as the annoying video points out, but it has a closed cab, good impact protection, heat and a place to plug in your MP3 player. It's a geek's dream! Reportedly, they are working on extending the range to about 100 miles. They come in some eye-popping colors, too.
The question is, is this the right time for the car to catch on? The cars are built in Ohio and have an MSRP of about $35,000.
John Hawkins at Right Wing News has another of his periodic right-blogosphere temperature checks up today. Most of the results are pretty lopsided, but there are a few that might surprise you.
Daniel Henninger went beyond the media's delivered wisdom about what General Ricardo Sanchez had to say about the Iraq war over the weekend. Instead of just listening to the media spin the gatekeepers indulge in on a regular basis, he looked at the whole transcript. The conventional story line was that Sanchez had called the war a "nightmare". That was pretty much the entire story. But Sanchez had a good deal more to say:
• The media. "It seems that as long as you get a front-page story there is little or no regard for the 'collateral damage' you will cause. Personal reputations have no value and you report with total impunity and are rarely held accountable for unethical conduct. . . . You assume that you are correct and on the moral high ground."
"The speculative and often uninformed initial reporting that characterizes our media appears to be rapidly becoming the standard of the industry." "Tactically insignificant events have become strategic defeats." And: "The death knell of your ethics has been enabled by your parent organizations who have chosen to align themselves with political agendas. What is clear to me is that you are perpetuating the corrosive partisan politics that is destroying our country and killing our service members who are at war."
• The Bush administration. "When a nation goes to war it must bring to bear all elements of power in order to win. . . . [This] administration has failed to employ and synchronize its political, economic and military power . . . and they have definitely not communicated that reality to the American people."
• Congress and politics. "Since 2003, the politics of war have been characterized by partisanship as the Republican and Democratic parties struggled for power in Washington. . . . National efforts to date have been corrupted by partisan politics that have prevented us from devising effective, executable, supportable solutions. These partisan struggles have led to political decisions that endangered the lives of our sons and daughters on the battlefield. The unmistakable message was that political power had greater priority than our national security objectives."
• The bureaucracies. Gen. Sanchez argues that "unity of effort" was hampered by the absence of any coordinated authority over the war effort of the bureaucracies: "The Administration, Congress and the entire interagency, especially the Department of State, must shoulder the responsibility for this catastrophic failure."
The partisan sniping began before the troops set foot in Iraq and has not let up since. The media also downplayed the fact that Sanchez does not see any way to leave Iraq and that we have no choice but to stay. But Sanchez did not just damn the administration - he denounced the media, Congress and the bureaucracy just as much. The undermining of civilian support has had many contributing groups. Henninger points out that a lot of insiders are almost immune to the effects of these corrosive activities. The public at large is not.
And that is a problem for America going forward.
Media, Politics, War | Gaius | Comments (4)
Ronald Cass has an interesting analysis up over at Real Clear Politics that looks at that oddly unquantifiable gut instinct about character that people have about politicians. Many politicians - especially among Democrats - just do not understand this oddity.
Elections are not just about platforms but character. Republicans were shocked by Harry Truman's election as President, certain that the Missouri ward politician had neither the intellect nor the expertise needed for the presidency. The public, however, wasn't looking for someone polished or intellectual. They responded to Truman's no-nonsense style, his sense of personal responsibility, and his instinctive grasp of the essence of his charge. Harry Truman didn't duck hard decisions and didn't shy from asserting the power of his office or his nation.
Likewise, Democrats were - and remain - perplexed over Ronald Reagan's popularity. They underestimated Reagan's intelligence and misunderstood key aspects of what he stood for. But most of all, they missed that he was popular as much for who he was as for what he did. Reagan radiated optimism, faith in America, and conviction that he could spread a gospel of liberty and freedom through a combination of good humor and military might. Americans trusted him and his vision, even when they might not have chosen all of his policies.
Voters still want to know if a candidate shares their views and values, if he seems like "one of us," and if he - or she - is likely to respond to a crisis in a way that gives us comfort in his or her leadership. Those are more matters of gut instinct than analysis. In today's scripted and staged political world, it's especially difficult for voters to get a fix on the character issues they care about. When a misguided comment or look can de-rail a candidacy, it's no surprise that an entire profession now exists to coif, dress, coach, and produce the candidates' appearances, as well as to tell us afterward what we saw and heard and what to make of it.
But sometimes, you can still see a glimpse of who the candidates really are.
From there, Cass goes on to discuss Sandy Berger's elevation by Hillary Clinton as part of her national security team. This despite (or maybe because of?) the fact that Sandy Berger is a convicted felon who stole and destroyed classified documents from the National Archives. (We also point out that Berger is a verb). Sandy Berger is a thief, a liar and a disbarred lawyer (he surrendered his law license rather than face an inquiry). He is also hand-picked by Hillary Clinton as a close and trusted adviser. Cass has a bit to say about that:
Hillary has had to renounce associates before. She's had numerous fund-raising scandals involving criminal wrong-doing by people she should have known to be criminals, Norman Hsu being the most recent and notorious. But in all of those instances, she has had the plausible excuse that she didn't know what they had done wrong.
In Sandy Berger's case, there is no excuse. Hillary's inclusion of Sandy Berger in her circle of advisers demonstrates that, notwithstanding her law license, she really doesn't care about the law. She doesn't care whether someone violates the law if they're on her team, if the violation in some way helps the Clintons. Hillary's indifference to criminal wrong-doing suggests that she sees herself as above the law, breezily ignoring law when it's an impediment to something she wants……
……Picking Sandy Berger tells us something important about Hillary's character. We should listen now - while it can do some good.
Indeed it does. There is a certain amount of tin-eared contempt of the electorate in Hillary's choice of members of her inner circle. And nobody will be more surprised than Hillary Clinton if that odd little gut instinct of the American electorate kicks in.
Crime, Politics | Gaius | Comments (2)
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