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If You've Come Looking for My Tip Jar...

2007-10-12T10:55:00.000-04:00

This is the place! Look to you right.

Responses? Thoughts? Please email them to me at soxblog@aol.com

STAY CLASSY, SAN DIEGO

2007-01-17T11:49:00.000-05:00

Responses? Thoughts? Please email them to me at soxblog@aol.com

MOVING DAY

2006-07-31T15:03:00.000-04:00

Big news! Humungous news! Ginormous news!

Probably for the rest of the year, I will be moving the obvious insights and lame jokes normally seen at Soxblog over to Hugh Hewitt’s site. Yes, it’s true – I have become Hugh’s new guest blogger. But wait, there’s more – I’ve already made my first post.

For those who have complained I don’t post enough, your time has come. With Hugh kindly granting me access to his very large audience, I plan to begin pounding the uninitiated with the bludgeon-like Soxblog wit that readers here have come to so adore.

There is some sad news. I know many of you have gotten very attached to the white-on-black format that I adopted at the start of the year. I’ve received countless letters saying they appreciated the challenge of deciphering the text and wishing that books were published in a similar format. Alas, Hugh’s site publishes in conventional black-on-white. Let us consider this a return to legibility.

So click over to Hughhewitt.com. That’s where I’ll be for the next five months.

Responses? Thoughts? Please email them to me at soxblog@aol.com

THE URGE FOR A CEASEFIRE

2006-07-21T11:45:00.000-04:00

I UNDERSTAND THE URGE. I just detest it. The usual suspects like the clueless masses at the United Nations act as if it is imperative that we end the shooting. It’s fair to ask, to what purpose?

If you think about it, the goal on December 8. 1941 wasn’t to figure out a way to immediately end the gunplay. Nor was that the goal on September 12, 2001. The only reason those who are clamoring for a ceasefire do so is because a ceasefire will allow them to once more bury their heads in the sand and deny the immediate and massive danger that Hezbollah, Iran and Syria pose.

The goal should not be a ceasefire. The goal should be victory. Victory means Hezbollah is sufficiently destroyed and their Iranian sponsors sufficiently chastened that they no longer represent any danger. Accomplishing this won’t be easy, and it certainly won’t be bloodless.

But I wish those urging a ceasefire would for once be asked what they think a ceasefire is supposed to accomplish. In the real world, all a ceasefire will do is give Hezbollah the breathing space it needs to recover from a grievous miscalculation.

But those urging a ceasefire are never required to explain themselves. After all, they are purportedly on the side of the angels, craving peace. The rest of us have to explain ourselves because we’re a bunch of bloodthirsty warmongers. It would be wonderful to see a widely public debate on the purportedly salubrious effects of a ceasefire.

I’ll volunteer to take the contrary position.

LAST NIGHT I READ Elie Wiesel’s “Night.” I’m not sure if that act makes me an adjunct member of the Oprah Book Club or not. Regardless, I can’t believe I let so much of my life go by without reading this masterful slim volume.

“Night” briefly chronicles Wiesel’s journey through the Holocaust. It is harrowing; it is not uplifting. There’s no happy ending, no neat little moral that makes the story easier to digest. It is a somber meditation on the evil man is capable of, and the effects that such evil have.

Roughly four decades after being liberated from his concentration camp hell, Wiesel received the Nobel Peace Prize. In his acceptance speech, he offered the following simple counsel that was the product of hard - the hardest - experience – “We must take sides.”

The world didn’t take sides when Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mugabe and others were doing their thing. Tens of millions died.

Right now, the stakes are similarly consequential. And much of the debate centers on how we can find a way not to take sides, how we can achieve a ceasefire and then go back to pretending that the time of choosing has not arrived.

It’s here – it’s time.

Responses? Thoughts? Please email them to me at soxblog@aol.com

RADICALISM AHEAD

2006-07-18T19:08:00.000-04:00

George F. Will wrote a column today that took some shots at my friends at the Weekly Standard. Before offering my thoughts on his piece, I should note that I don’t speak for the Standard nor am I authorized to speak for the Standard. Hell, I’m not even an employee of the Standard; I’m just a frequent contributor to their virtual addition, the Daily Standard.

But I am thrilled by my association with the Weekly Standard for a number of reasons. Foremost among these is that the intellectual leadership at the Standard has had the guts to take a hard-headed look at a disquieting world. While most of the American media and even more of America’s purported intellectual class has blushed at identifying the hard duties and long road that lie ahead for our country, the people at the Standard have not.

Will’s column today takes several gratuitous potshots at the Standard’s personnel. The ad hominem nature of the attacks are beneath Will. Will’s most scathing commentary is the following:

"The national, ethnic and religious dynamics of the Middle East are opaque to most people, but to The Weekly Standard -- voice of a spectacularly misnamed radicalism, 'neoconservativism' -- everything is crystal clear: Iran is the key to everything.

"'No Islamic Republic of Iran, no Hezbollah. No Islamic Republic of Iran, no one to prop up the Assad regime in Syria. No Iranian support for Syria ... ' You get the drift. So, The Weekly Standard says:

"'We might consider countering this act of Iranian aggression with a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. Why wait? Does anyone think a nuclear Iran can be contained? That the current regime will negotiate in good faith? It would be easier to act sooner rather than later. Yes, there would be repercussions -- and they would be healthy ones, showing a strong America that has rejected further appeasement.'

"'Why wait?' Perhaps because the U.S. military has enough on its plate, in the deteriorating wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which both border Iran. And perhaps because containment, although of uncertain success, did work against Stalin and his successors, and might be preferable to a war against a nation much larger and more formidable than Iraq."

Lets’ take some of Will’s points one-by-one:

1) “The national, ethnic and religious dynamics of the Middle East are opaque to most people, but (not) to The Weekly Standard."

It’s true that to most people the ethnic and religious dynamics of the Middle East are opaque. As Alan Jackson sang in “Where Were You When the World Stopped Turning,” there are no doubt a lot of people who “don’t know the difference in Iraq and Iran.”

But surely George F. Will is not one of them. Nor for that matter are the people who write about such things in the Weekly Standard. The people at the Standard can tell the difference between a Shiite and a Sunni. Speaking just for myself, I’ve made something of a study of so-called Radical Islam. I’m familiar with the principles that govern the pursuit of Jihad in Fundamentalist Islam; I think the people who fear the actions of Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas and Iran and are suggesting policies have likewise acquainted themselves with the facts on the ground.

The national and religious dynamics of the Middle East are anything but opaque. They are, however, new to the typical American who will have to do a lot of studying to get up to speed. Will’s comment is a ruse and a smear, a crude attempt to suggest that Standard writers have made suggestions while in a position of ignorance.

2) "The Weekly Standard (is the) voice of a spectacularly misnamed radicalism, 'neoconservativism.'"

He called us radicals. Ouch! Sticks and stones!

3) “'Why wait to (deal with Iran)?' Perhaps because containment, although of uncertain success, did work against Stalin and his successors, and might be preferable to a war against a nation much larger and more formidable than Iraq."

That’s Will’s opinion, and he’s entitled to it. He thinks if we could contain the Soviets, surely we can do likewise with the Iranian mullahs. As Michael Corleone might say, now who’s being naïve? And simplistic, for that matter.

I really don’t care to respond to the notion that Iran can be contained. Suffice to say that I disagree, but to respond to the argument and do it justice demands a few thousand words, something I don’t feel like writing today and you probably don’t feel like reading.

I do feel the need to make one key point, though. Will’s suggestion that we roll the dice and wager that we can contain Iran is an expensive gamble. If he’s wrong, the butcher’s bill will be in the millions. Dozens of them.

Care to belly up to the table and make a bet?

There’s one last point about this article that I want to make. Making it will require at least a semi-putdown of Will, something I’m not entirely comfortable with since I have little evidence for what I’m about to suggest and I admire him as a writer and a person.

But Will and Peggy Noonan (who I admire for her chic hairstyle) often beg the inference that they are as stuck in the past as some of the baby-boomers that we all have so much ridiculing. For these two writers, everything always seems to go back to Reagan and other Cold War heroes. Reagan deterred the Evil Empire, so certainly comparably courageous leadership could deter the forces of Fundamentalist Islam.

This is a senseless analogy. The current struggle bears as much relation to the Cold War as it does to the Mexican-American war. Such an analogy is both sloppy and dangerous.

You don’t have to be a radical to know that.

Responses? Thoughts? Please email them to me at soxblog@aol.com

THE HUNT FOR NOLAN RYAN

2006-07-13T13:16:00.000-04:00

Yesterday Mrs. Soxblog and I flew out to Santa Fe in Delta’s new Steerage Class ™. It was a wonderful way to spend the better part of a day, and it made me long for the inevitable day when the last of the traditional airlines die their long overdue death and are replaced with sensible value-oriented airlines like JetBlue and Southwest who actually make their customers feel appreciated.

The preceding is a long-winded way of saying I spent most of yesterday out of pocket. It wasn’t until around 9:00 E.S.T. that I learned that war in the Middle East had broken out. Only as I type am I reconnecting with my beloved internets, pecking away at a Santa Fe Starbuck’s.

Because I’m on holiday and have not long to write, I have time to make only a couple of brief observations on the latest “crisis” in the Middle East:

1) I always watch developments like this with a gleam of hope that at last the civilized nations of the world will do what they have to do with the likes of Hamas, Heezbollah, and their state enablers/sponsors. It is Israel’s fate to be on the front lines of any such struggle. Hezbollah’s pathetic missiles will be targeted at Israeli population centers, not Kansas.

But one hopes that America will realize that this fight will have to be fought eventually, and we might as well do it before Syria, Iran and Palestine develop the abilities to destroy Western society. I haven’t watched or read much news, but if I hear any State Department calls for Israeli “restraint,” I may well mount the highest foothill surrounding Santa Fe and attempt a dive of a 3.8 difficulty.

2) On a less significant front, I couldn’t help but notice that the Daily Kos’ front page is completely silent on the Middle East crisis. You see the normal pictures of Montana Senate candidate Jon Tester smiling in his Army fatigues and the details of Joe Lieberman’s most recent perfidies, but there is literally not a single word on what may be the first developments in the story that may well dominate the news for the foreseeable future. So benumbed are the blogosphere’s leftists, they couldn’t even manage a post blaming the whole thing on Bush!

This curious silence buttresses my theory that the modern left just can’t deal with reality, circa 2006. The left likes to think of itself as the reality based community, but when confronted with disquieting real world events they choose to behave as if Joe Lieberman is our greatest threat to a happy future.

I’ll be trying to post over the next few days. If I don’t, rest assured it’s just because of my travel schedule and my obsession with finding the man who makes Bill Richardson’s toupee. It has nothing to do with any sudden relapse in my physical condition.

(By the way, today I am officially 39 - it's my birthday! If you're a family member reading this and you've yet to call and wish me well, know that I'm keeping a list.)

Responses? Thoughts? Please email them to me at soxblog@aol.com

SPANNING THE WEB - 7/11/2006

2006-07-11T16:43:00.000-04:00

1) CRACKING THE POLITICAL MENDOZA LINE!!! – The latest Gallup Poll shows President Bush boasting a stratospheric 40% approval rating. Similarly, the eerily accurate Rasmussen robots show the President’s approval rating hovering at 43%. Both polls show Bush winning only something in the neighborhood of ¾ of the approval of self-identified Republicans. In other words, if Bush’s numbers were where they should be with his own party, he’d be above 50%.

Why the improvement? My feeling is that whenever the Democratic Party gets its moments in the spotlight, Bush’s numbers can’t help but go up. Just as Bush’s support soared as the country got to know John Kerry, Republicans will do better as the country becomes better acquainted with the Democratic Party, circa 2006.

Longtime readers here will note I never boarded the “2006 will be a GOP disaster” train, always happily convinced that Democrats would wrest resounding defeat from the jaws of seemingly likely victory. That’s been my story, and I’m sticking to it.

2) WHO WOULD’VE THUNK IT? It turns out that the Bush tax cuts and the roaring economy have generated unexpectedly high tax revenues. If they want to, Democrats could stop saying that the tax cuts are horrible. But they won’t. Democrats are convinced that the American people just love being taxed, and that any politician who gets himself on the side of higher taxes has himself a winning issue. Me, I just love writing out a check for excise tax or fishing for coins to pay some sales tax – makes me feel all warm inside.

According to the New York Times’ report on the matter, Democrats are carping that federal tax revenues are just now approaching their 1999 level. Never mind the fact that the 1999 numbers were wildly inflated by a bubble-icious stock market, a fact that even the likes of Nancy Pelosi is no doubt familiar with. Let the Democrats make a disingenuous plea for the need for greater taxation. Sounds like a ballot box winner to me!

3) THE ALL KNOWING JVL – Before he left for an extended holiday, Jonathan V. Last penned an article for the Philadelphia Inquirer that identified the real problem with soccer. I always thought the sport’s biggest problem was 0-0 games (er, matches) that were more boring than watching Astroturf not grow. But JVL labeled the real problem as the “flop and sprawl,” the act where soccer players mimic great injury hoping to get the other team penalized. Literally dozens of times a game, a player will hit the turf writhing in agony as if he had been impaled, only to bounce up shockingly unaffected after it becomes apparent that the referee will not punish his putative assailant.

Having watched more soccer in the past month than I had in the rest of my life, I could not believe how common this risible practice is. It also served as a wonderful metaphor for the difference between European football and real football. In real football, players carry on stoically in spite of broken bones. In soccer, players pretend to have the pain threshold of a two year old in the hope that they can swindle the referee.

Anyway, JVL took great delight in the Frenchman Zidane’s headbutt, an act of unrepentant savagery that provided the World Cup’s only recognizable sporting moment for those of us weaned on football and hockey. Zidane did what Dave Schultz would have done, or the great John Wensink who used to pummel Schultz with some regularity.

So Zidane’s act cost his country the World Cup. JVL seems to argue that it gave France some dignity, dignity it has lacked since World War II. If so, losing that puny little World Cup trophy is a small price to pay in such a trade.

4) MOONBAT MATH – You remember John Dean, the former Nixon counsel who wound up in prison over Watergate, right? You probably know that Dean has enjoyed a resurgence of fame thanks to his willingness to be an outspoken critic of George W. Bush (who he labels “worse than Nixon” without any apparent sense of irony) and conservatives.

Dean has a new theory: "23% of the populace falls into the follower category" said Dean. "These people are impervious to fact, rationality and reality. And their numbers are growing." Wouldn’t you know it? All 23% are conservatives which means basically half of George W. Bush’s supporters “are drawn into the Leader/Follower archetype, where the Leaders are considered infallible, and the loyalty of the Followers is completely unshakable.”

What I find hilarious about this “study” isn’t the ridiculous theory but rather the transparently ludicrous attempt at specificity. 23% of the population has blind fealty to a conservative leader, not 22% or 24%. How do we know this? The honest and reliable John Dean has done the math.

5) OLD NEWS – But I feel the need to touch on it anyway. In the past I’ve praised the Dixie Chicks. I like their new album, even though, judging by their lyrics, their disregard for free market principles evidences a shockingly childish naivete even by the entertainment community’s standards. These ladies really seem to think that they have the right to say things that will offend members of their audience, and yet their audience must remain obliged to support them in all their endeavors.

Alas, it doesn’t work that way; if my barber hosted an “Impeach Bush” sign in his window, I would get my hair coifed elsewhere. Most businesspeople know this, which is why unless they’re running a hemp shop, they don’t festoon their place of business with political manifestoes.

Anyway, the Chicks’ tour has been a huge bust in terms of ticket sales. They’ve had to move to smaller venues across this great land of ours. Not in Canada, though – their Bush-bashing has done nothing to harm their careers in the north country. One wonders if they’ll be able to connect the dots of how their foray into domestic politics has affected them in the domestic market. And one wonders whether they have any opinions on Canada’s affairs they would like to share with their Canadian fans.

6) AND CLEARING ONE THING UP – I’ve received a lot of mail over my “Salt Water and Other Miracles” essay. Some of it has come from the Cystic Fibrosis community, which has been extremely gratifying. I do feel the need to set something straight so everyone has their expectations in the right place – the inhaled saline treatment is not a cure. It’s likely not a control, either.

What it is, or may well be, is an effective treatment, something we haven’t had a whole lot of. Based on my experience (a study of one, which any good researcher will tell you to nothing to wager the farm on), it may well extend lives. This is great, but it’s very, very different from a cure.

Anyone in the CF community who wants to talk about this, please don’t hesitate to contact me directly.

Responses? Thoughts? Please email them to me at soxblog@aol.com

SPANNING THE WEB - 7/10/2006

2006-07-10T15:56:00.000-04:00

1) WORLD CUP RECAP – In brief, some bald French guy delivered a savage head butt to the chest of one of Italy’s players. The bald guy was some sort of well-known football player, engaged in his final match, and was ejected from the pitch for, as near as I could tell, the wanton stupidity of his actions more than anything else. Hockey fans everywhere asked themselves, “Why in the name of Dale Hunter did he head butt that Italian defender?”

A couple of serious notes about the World Cup: 1) I watched some of it and found it surprisingly entertaining. I think I may have even picked up some of the terminology; and 2) Was it not wonderful to see French perfidy directly lead to France’s defeat? If only the real world worked like that.

My favorite single moment of the Cup was in the aftermath of the head-butting Zidane’s ejection, when both he and his coach had the audacity to protest even though the replays clearly showed Zidane’s guilt. Some fine French whine it was.

In case you didn’t guess, I’m happy Italy won.

2) ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST – Chechen psychopath Shamil Basayev received justice today, being on the wrong end of some angry Russian Special Forces. The lead item on Basayev’s resume was the Beslan school massacre, perhaps second only to 9/11 in terms of barbarism and cruelty in the annals of Jihadist terrorism. The explosive laden truck that Basayev was riding in blew up; Basayev was identified by his prosthetic leg and his head, which apparently boasted a distinctive beard which is now sure to wow all the virgins in paradise anxious to service the new shahid.

Vladimir Putin was unrepentant regarding Basayev’s demise, declaring simply that it was “deserved retribution.” (I personally prefer Putin’s earlier rhetoric where he vowed to “wipe out in the outhouse” the likes of Basayev. I know it doesn’t make some sense, but it still rings of a certain poetry.)

3) A NEW LOW FOR THE GLOBE? - Maybe. In today’s edition, the Globe publishes an op-ed piece by one Mona El Farra titled “My Life in Gaza.” Get your violin ready because El Farra has a scoop for us – life in Gaza at the moment is pretty grim:

“Ostensibly, this bombing campaign started because of the soldier's capture. To the outside world it might seem like an easy decision for Palestinians: Let the soldier go, and the siege will end. Yet for Gazans, even in the face of this brutal violence, another decision comes, not with ease, but with resolve. He is one soldier who was captured in a military operation.”

There follows a lot of rubbish about how Israel was planning the attacks anyway and that Israel attacked “within hours of a national consensus accord signed by Fatah and Hamas, which could have led to negotiations between Palestinians and Israeli.” Darn the luck!

Actually, El Farra doesn’t understand how her obtuse op-ed clearly shows the justification for Israel’s actions. The Palestinian people elected Hamas, a government that they knew would wage such “military operations” as sneaking across the Israeli border, killing two soldiers and abducting a third. In El Farra’s piece, there is not a shred of condemnation or even regret regarding this act. One can infer from her piece that she supports the “military operation.”

The only part of the calculus that El Farra and her like-minded citizens failed to accurately gauge was the Israeli response. Apparently, they were quite certain that Israel would react with “restraint” as it has in the past when the Palestinian people have been subject to the whims of pseudo-populist strongmen/terrorists. Now, there is no denying amongst Israelis the obvious fact that they are facing a Palestinian government that reflects the popular will of the Palestinian people.

It would make much more sense if the popular will of the Palestinian people was to try to reach a settlement with the Israelis rather than stake everything on the pathetic little statelet’s ability to wipe the modern power off the map. Alas, that is not the path they have chosen, and judging by Al Farra’s op-ed, they’ve got a way to go before peaceful coexistence becomes the popular option.

4) RALLY BEHIND JEFF – Jeff Goldstein runs a hilarious and insightful blog at www.proteinwisdom.com. For some reason or another, he has a unique talent for getting under the skin of unhinged leftists. While surely this talent must be fun to possess, it no doubt has its downsides, too.

As it did this past weekend. An adjunct professor at the University of Arizona named Deborah Frisch commented on Jeff’s blog that she would not be sad if Jeff’s two year old child was “Jon Benet Ramseyed.” Believe me, after spending hours over the weekend monitoring this scandal, that’s about the nicest thing she said. There were also numerous comments of a frankly depraved sexual nature. I say that not as an uptight Republican, but rather as a true-blue American who thinks linking someone’s two year old child to sexual acts, as Frisch did with Goldstein’s, is unpardonably sickening.

Since the imbroglio, Jeff’s website has been under constant Denial of Service attacks. You don’t have to be an unhinged conspiracy theorist to question the timing.

This also brings me to a meta point I’ve been meaning to make for quite some time. Many of you have probably seen Markos Moulitsas on TV. During these appearances, he’s usually pleasant, laughing and smiling easily. He seems like a nice guy. But at his keyboard, he butches up. It’s all threats and bile and anger.

Markos is typical of a lot of people who have carved out on line identities for themselves. Many people who wouldn’t have the guts to challenge someone for stealing a parking space from them transform themselves into snarling virtual Clint Eastwoods while they troll the internets.

I can’t tell you how pathetic these people are. In my dealings with them, they vanish as soon as they know you’re reading what they write. Even a confrontation over the internet overwhelms their courage.

In Deborah Frisch, the potty-mouthed sick-minded University of Arizona wacademic, these people have a new champion, someone who perfectly exemplifies their nature. And mind you, these people are almost running the Democratic Party now.

5) LET’S PRAISE ‘DEADWOOD’ – Has there ever been a more compelling series than HBO’s “Deadwood”? Take it from a writer, the writing is super-sharp. But most impressive are the characters. Al Swearingen is certainly the most memorable TV character to come down the pike since Tony Soprano. At least.

By the way, for those of my fellow “Deadwood” addictees out there, most of the main characters (including Swearingen and Seth Bullock) were real people. Doing a Google search will reveal their ultimate destiny if you can’t wait to see how the show concludes. Warning though – it will diminish the suspense.

6) READER MAIL – I can’t tell you all how grateful I am for the outpouring of warmth you’ve sent my way over the essay, “Salt Water and Other Miracles.” There are several dozen readers I correspond with regularly – I think of them as friends and they do likewise. It was great hearing from them, and it was great hearing from a lot of other readers who have been out there the last few years but who have never written in.

By the way, if I haven’t responded to yet, give me a bit of time. I’ve got a backlog of a couple of hundred now and I’m getting to them. Each one has touched me deeply.

Thanks again.

Responses? Thoughts? Please email them to me at soxblog@aol.com

SIX YEARS OF MANNY

2006-07-08T19:16:00.000-04:00

In the Winter of 2001, spendthrift Red Sox General Manager Duquette signed Manny Ramirez to a seven year contract. Duquette wasn’t foolish for signing Ramirez; he was foolish for paying such a high price. Duquette so overpaid for Ramirez, in the 2003 off-season no team would take Manny for free, the only stipulation being that they would have to pay Manny what the Sox were paying him.

Okay, so the Duke overpaid for Manny, but my attitude about such things has always been pretty sanguine. It’s not my money, and I fully support the concept of Red Sox ownership spending its way into poverty so that I might have the pleasure of rooting for a great team.

Although he paid too much, Duquette gave Red Sox Nation an incredible gift. Besides, because Duquette was renowned as such an unlikable fellow, the only way he could bestow such a gift upon the Fenway Faithful was to pay way too much for it.

When Manny came to the Sox in 2001, there was a question as to who was the best right-handed hitter in baseball – Red Sox incumbent shortstop Nomar Garciapara or Manny. After a few weeks, even the most die-hard Nomar fans had to confess the obvious – there was no comparison between the two. As brilliant as Nomar was during that phase of his career, at the plate Manny was infinitely better.

Manny also quickly proved himself a fruit-loop. Oh, there have been times when Manny has made the Sox’ preternaturally cranky fan-base crimson with fury. There was the time he grounded to the pitcher and rather than trot to first he turned around and went back to the dugout. There was the time he was too sick to play in an important series with the Yankees but was well enough to do some late night carousing with one of the hated Yankees while the pinstripes were in town. And there were many, many more incidents of a similar nature.

It has been Manny’s great good fortune to play in Boston during an era when the Boston sports community is in a pretty good mood. Normally we give Philadelphia a run for its money as the country’s most misanthropic sports town. But since the Patriots won their first Super Bowl (in the first off-season of Manny’s tenure with the Sox), we’ve been a happy bunch in the Hub. Normally we’d be heaping opprobrium on the Bruins and Celtics for having dreadful decades. Instead, we’re just indifferent.

Manny also helped himself with some great play. I think Manny made even his gravest sins forgivable with two swings of the bat. The first came in Manny’s first plate appearance in Fenway Park as a member of the Red Sox. The Sox had spent the first week of the season on the road, and Manny had struggled. Predictably, the media was abuzz about what a bust the Manny signing was.

In the bottom of the first inning of the home opener, Manny came to the plate with two men on. He hit a bomb over the Green Monster for a three run homer. “This,” Sox fans said to themselves, “is how things should be. The high priced free agent signing is performing as God intended.”

The second swing came in the 2003 post-season and is now largely forgotten, but at the time it was huge. In the deciding game of the Red Sox and A’s five game series, the game was tied 1-1 in the sixth inning. Manny came up with two men on and hit a three run homer that propelled the Sox to the Championship Series. Again, this was things as they should be – the big bat producing when it was most needed.

One of the things I remember about that homerun against the A’s is the Fox announcers’ commentary regarding Manny’s reaction to his blast. As he does after every time he hits the ball solidly, Manny posed for an extended period of time. The broadcasters were scandalized; Sox fans were not.

It was around this time that Sox fans developed a way of dealing with Manny’s eccentricities – Sox fans all but officially announced a tolerance for “Manny being Manny.” This was a subtle but far reaching compact – so long as Manny kept producing like one of the greatest players in history, Red Sox Nation would indulge the lack of hustle, the annoying eccentricities, the trade demands, and a lot of other crap that literally no other athlete in Boston ever got away with. Remember, Boston is the city that booed Ted Williams, Carl Yastrzemski, Roger Clemens and Kevin McHale.

Now that there are unquestionably more days behind Manny’s Red Sox career than ahead of it, this deal with the devil can be called an unqualified success. Manny is an incredible athlete. Although the baseball world is rightly abuzz over the feats of Manny’s teammate David Ortiz, Manny is having a much better year than Ortiz. Manny’s on base percentage, batting average, and slugging percentage are all much higher than Big Papi’s.

An upcoming book on the Sox reveals that stats guru (and one of my intellectual heroes), Bill James, did a study for Sox ownership that showed that of 60 documented moments of non-hustle by a Red Sox, Manny authored 30 of them. I revere Bill James, so I don’t mean this as a criticism of him, but I can’t imagine why there was a need to research whether or not Manny hustles. One might as well conduct a study to determine whether the sun is hot or whether John Kerry is pathetic.

Manny doesn’t hustle. Manny does a wealth of other things that annoy the hell out of any serious Sox fan. But by tolerating his antics, we’ve been able to enjoy one of the best batting careers in baseball history. By focusing on the positive and ignoring the negative with the blithe dismissal, “It’s just Manny being Manny,” Sox fans have allowed themselves to have a better team and not kill that team with our often poisonous negativity.

Manny’s going into the Hall of Fame some time in the next decade. He’ll be wearing a Red Sox cap. And the Sox may win another championship or two thanks in no small part to Manny’s mighty bat.

The Manny Ramirez experience has been, to put it mildly, a good one.

Responses? Thoughts? Please email them to me at soxblog@aol.com

SALT WATER AND OTHER MIRACLES

2006-07-07T08:18:00.000-04:00

Okay, people are rightly annoyed/concerned over my recent paucity of postings. Here’s what happened.

To bring newcomers quickly up to speed, I have Cystic Fibrosis and the last few years have been something of a roller coaster ride. At one point, I had even made it to the top of the waiting list for lung transplants, which is pretty serious business. Anyway, as I’ve written in the recent past, I’ve been doing much better over the last several months.

Roughly two weeks ago, I had a regularly scheduled check-up. For people with serious conditions, such appointments are moments of truth – you take some tests and get some news. You hope it will be good news.

Going into this appointment, I was confident. I know my body well, and am usually not swayed by even by my most ardent efforts at self-deception. In other words, I felt well and was not just hopeful but confident that the tests would bring good news.

As regular readers of this blog know, I spend more time being right than being wrong. So if you were expecting this introduction was a lead-up to a boy-was-I ever-wrong-and-got-a-crushing-blow moment, you should be kicking yourself. Not only did the tests turn out well, they turned out better than I could have possibly expected. It turns out that I’m in the best shape I’ve been in for five years. Not by a little, but by a lot.

WHEN YOU HAVE A CHRONIC AND PROGRESSIVE disease, you really don’t expect anything like this to happen. So, inquiring minds must be asking, how did this occur?

It’s actually a pretty good story. In the interests of space and keeping this remotely interesting, I’ll go easy on the scientific stuff.

Some time probably about 18 months ago, a CF doctor in Australia noticed that his patients who were surfers were far out-performing his patients who weren’t. Although the mechanisms that make CF such a destructive disease aren’t completely understood, it is known that the root cause of CF’s problems have something to do with the patient’s inability to process salt.

As a matter of fact, the test to see if someone had CF was, in the days before genetic screening, called a sweat test. A few electrodes were attached to the patient’s arm to generate a little swath of sweat which the guys in white coats then analyzed for its salt content. I may not have the number exactly right, but CF patients have roughly seven times the amount of salt in their sweat as normal people do.

Anyway, back to Australia. The CF doctor there had a theory that his surfer patients were thriving because of their prolonged exposure to salt water. This gave him an idea – he wanted his patients to inhale an aerosolized form of salt water a couple of times a day.

In this tiny Australian study (fewer than two dozen participants), the results were amazing. The patients who inhaled the hypertonic saline (the SAT-word way of saying “salt water”) showed markedly increased lung functions. More importantly, they showed a dramatically decreased rate in exacerbations.

Word of this study soon spread stateside. In North Carolina, a larger study was done that showed a similarly dramatic decrease in the rate of exacerbations but no statistically significant increase in lung function.

This is when the news of the hypertonic saline treatment went public. In mid-January, there was a story about the Australia and North Carolina trials in the New England Journal of Medicine. For those who don’t read the New England Journal of Medicine, the story even made it into WebMD, CNN, and a certain major New York newspaper whose name I refuse to type.

Naturally, the New England Journal of Medicine editorialized that we needed to know more about the treatment and that no one should run off half-cocked eager to suck down some salt water. (Obviously, I’m paraphrasing.) Reading about all of this in Southern Soxblog Manor, and after talking about it with my doctor, I made a few inferences.

First, I had known from previous studies where I had inhaled a placebo that even inhaling a placebo has a positive effect on a CF patient’s lungs. The name of the game in CF well-being is airway clearance. We have lungs filled with junk; if we get that junk up we feel okay. I knew by empirical first hand knowledge that any kind of inhalation treatment provokes airway clearance, which strikes the rest of you as us coughing our heads off.

Additionally, my doctor told me that sucking down this salt water was a vile treatment, one that even hard-core CF patients like myself had trouble complying with. This got me to making some conjectures as to why there were the differing results between North Carolina and Australia. In Australia, the study was smaller so patient non-compliance with the program would be easier to address. Additionally, perhaps because of their surfing experience, the Australians found the treatment more tolerable. Either that, or their flinty Down Under nature made them more likely to stick with it than their American counterparts.

Whatever the reason, the differences between the Australian and American results struck me as an obvious case of a patient compliance disparity. In sum, I felt the porotocol, if followed, had an excellent chance of being extremely helpful. What’s more, being just salt water, there was no way it could be harmful.

IN MARCH I FLEW UP from Florida to Boston and became Massachusetts General Hospital’s first patient to begin the hypertonic saline regimen. The stuff came as advertised – inhaling it was awful. I compared it to inhaling an aerosolized version of lox. Also, it took forever – almost half an hour, twice a day.

Now remember, I was already starting this additional treatment from a relative position of strength. I was doing as well as I had in a while and was feeling good. But shortly after starting the treatment, I began doing better – a lot better.

I hadn’t done any medical tests to support this feeling, but I felt more energetic than I had in memory. Lifting weights, I felt almost the same in the gym as I had when I was in my 20’s. People who hadn’t seen me in a while almost uniformly commented that I looked extremely healthy. While people always say that to sick people, even if we look like death warmed over, I could tell that in these instances they meant it.

Two weeks ago I went to the doctor’s office to get the numbers. At these appointments, you blow into a device that measure how well your lungs are functioning. While they always say when the numbers stink that you shouldn’t worry too much, when you’ve been around this stuff for long enough you know the numbers don’t lie. For the past five years, each appointment like this has given me the same I feeling I had on the morning of the SAT’s.

I wish I did as well on my SAT’s as I did on these lung function tests a couple of weeks ago. As I said up top, my lungs are now in better shape than when they began to significantly deteriorate five years ago. I’ve reclaimed a lot of lost ground.

From my perspective, this seems like if not a miracle, something damn close to it. For years good people, the world’s best, have been pouring their hearts, souls and money into finding effective treatments for CF and generally coming up with very little. And all of a sudden, a super-promising new treatment comes along. And it’s salt water!

There’s also the additional minor miracle that being just salt water, the treatment didn’t have to spend the better part of a decade navigating the FDA approval maze before reaching the general CF public that so desperately needs it. If a similarly effective treatment had been a medicine hatched in the labs of Genzyme, the FDA would have kept it out of the hands of the seriously ill people (who would eagerly roll the dice on an experimental treatment) until those seriously ill people had become seriously dead.

As an additional benefit, because it’s just salt water and thus cheap to make, no one will make much money off of it which means the CF community will be spared the ghastly sight of our nation’s Ted Kennedy types demonizing the pharmaceuticals who just pioneered a life-saving treatment for being profit oriented.

In other words, everyone wins!

SO WHY THE LIGHT BLOGGING? Fair question, and a not obvious answer. I’m almost 39. For a few years, I had considered myself fairly well along in my golden years. I had made peace with that fact, and had allowed myself to truly enjoy the good times I had left. I was also dealing with my regrets and disappointments, addressing those I could, letting lie those I couldn’t.

Two weeks ago I got the shocking news that I may not be so far along in my golden years as I figured. I may get a second crack at bat. The situation would be analogous to a 70 year old in declining health going to the doctor and finding out that not only might he make it to 80, his 70’s will be a lot better health-wise than his 60’s were.

This is incredibly thrilling news. It’s also daunting, and a bit disorienting. This news has turned my life as I knew it upside down. Given that my “right-side up life” represented serious illness followed by imminent death, there are a lot worse than things having such a life turned upside down.

I may be in the process of receiving a remarkable gift. Although it probably seems like an ingrate’s reactions, I have felt considerable self-induced pressure not to blow it and to use it wisely. I’ve been very promiscuous with rhetoric the last few years that I wish I had a fraction of the health and energy I did when I was young now that I have the knowledge of an old man. Woops! Looks like I’ve sort of backed myself into a corner.

But it’s a happy corner to be in, especially when the alternative was a pine box. While I’m not over my minor existential crisis, I am back to writing. That’s what I most want to do with this amazing second chance I have. I think it’s where I have the most chance to accomplish something meaningful and lasting. It’s also something I love.

In short, Soxblog is now re-opened for business.

Responses? Thoughts? Please email them to me at soxblog@aol.com

LIBERALS BEHAVING BADLY

2006-06-26T09:17:00.000-04:00

In the late 1930’s and early 1940’s, there was a bunch of Americans who disgraced themselves in the run-up to World War II. Call them nativists, isolationists, nitwits – pick your term – but history has treated people like Father Coughlin and Charles Lindberg rather unkindly.

But compared to the modern day left, the America First movement et. al acquitted itself heroically. Within days after Pearl Harbor, America First folded its tents and joined the war effort. Having been proven catastrophically wrong by events, they aided the war effort rather than make a consistent effort to undermine it.

I’m convinced that we’ll look back at the New York Times’ latest choice to reveal a classified program for battling terrorism as the left’s bridge too far. In a way, this is unfair to the left. Being a religious reader of the liberal blogs (and what a week it’s been on that front!), I’ve found nary a word of support for the Times’ chosen course of action this time around. Normally these are people who relish trumpeting the Bush administration’s purported trampling of our civil liberties; this time, they’ve been curiously mum.

Alas, the Times is undoubtedly a creature of the left and is widely considered to be representative of the left. Some call it the house organ of the Democratic Party. It is universally recognized as the most prominent voice of liberalism. Fairly or not, the Times’ black eye is the left’s black eye. Liberalism and the left will inevitably be tainted by the Times’ actions, just as the efforts of Woodward and Bernstein 33 years ago gave them a halo.

Along with other creatures of the left, the Times has given rise to the impression that its support for the America war effort is less than whole-hearted. Its tendency to publish every setback, its curious focus on the Abu Ghraib “atrocities” without any effort to put those “atrocities” in context, its recent coverage of the suicides at Gitmo again acting as if suicide in prison is an unprecedented phenomenon – all of these and countless other examples of the paper’s coverage have led not just wild-eyed conservatives but common Americans to ask, “Whose side is the Times on?”

Today, the Times shows two signs of making a hasty and ill-planned retreat. The first comes in Editor-in-Chief Bill Keller’s lengthy explanation for exposing the classified program. In his letter, Keller acknowledges the program is legal. More tellingly, he erects a straw-man for why people object to the story – Keller’s letter suggests that the principal objection rests on the fear that the Times’ exposure of the program will kill the program.

Alas, I have not heard a single Times’ critic use this as the basis for their critique of the Grey Lady. The issue obviously isn’t the continued existence of the program – it is its continued effectiveness, Tellingly, Keller spends only one paragraph dealing with his critics’ principal objection – that the Times’ expose will “lead terrorists to change tactics.” Amazingly, Keller waves this complaint away, saying without any basis in fact, “That argument was made in a half-hearted way.”

Keller’s main rebuttal to this line of argument is that the terrorists probably/sort of/kinda knew about the program anyway. “It has been widely reported — indeed, trumpeted by the Treasury Department — that the U.S. makes every effort to track international financing of terror. Terror financiers know this, which is why they have already moved as much as they can to cruder methods.” Regrettably for the interests of intellectual coherence, this point is belied by Keller’s earlier defense of his paper’s coverage of the story that insisted, “We cited considerable evidence that the program helps catch and prosecute financers of terror.”

Earlier I mentioned that the Times showed two signs of making a retreat this morning. The second one? Today’s edition has a front page story that begins, “Enrollment in Iraqi schools has risen every year since the American invasion, according to Iraqi government figures, reversing more than a decade of declines and offering evidence of increased prosperity for some Iraqis.”

Regular readers of the Times will note this as an oddity – the Times reporting good news from Iraq. What’s more, this front page piece contradicts the Times’ entire narrative that has been running for three years now – that America’s cowboy-like intervention ruined the sandy paradise that Saddam Hussein had created. If people begin saying things like “Iraq is better for the U.S. invasion,” what will the ever-sympathetic creatures of the left say? After all, do they not obsess over the fortunes of the less fortunate?

Today’s front page story sticks out like a proverbial sore thumb. Perhaps the Times as an institution is beginning to realize it backed the wrong horse on this one. The Times will be okay, insofar as a member of a dieing industry can ever be okay.

The American left will not be so fortunate.

Responses? Thoughts? Please email them to me at soxblog@aol.com

BACK AND SPANNING!

2006-06-19T10:00:00.000-04:00

First, I must apologize.

I write two essays that pertain to my health and then disappear for an extended period of time without word or explanation. Meanwhile, it never dawns on me that this might beg the inference that all is not well. This officially makes me an idiot. Anyway, my condition remains excellent, relatively speaking, which by my standards is pretty damn fine. I was even able to golf 63 holes this weekend in a tournament. Let me put it this way – I wish I played as well I felt. So does my patient and long-suffering partner.

An additional word about my absence – sometimes it just seems necessary to recharge the batteries. Some people sometimes observe that things seem stale around here. When they make these observations, they’re usually correct. My blog writings are dependent on outside events. When outside events keep repeating themselves, I tend to keep repeating myself.

Or, as one correspondent put it, “Your blog has become all Muslims and moonbats.” Clever alliterations aside, I think I always make a distinction between Muslims and fundamentalist Islam, two things that have an overlap – determining the extent of that overlap is one of the most pressing issues of our day, one that the mainstream media and both American political parties refuse to even acknowledge.

And, as regards the moonbats, I’m pretty sure I’ve been documenting their coming takeover of the Democratic Party longer than anyone in the media. In my first piece for the Standard almost 18 months ago, I forecast primary problems for Lieberman. At the time, this was far from conventional wisdom, but it’s growing more conventional by the day.

Anyway, I hereby pompously announce my battery is now officially recharged and that I’ll be back to being my relatively prolific self which is either good news or dreadful news depending on how you look at things.

Without further adieu, let’s span the web!

1) PHIL!!! - Long time readers will recall I am no fan of golfer Phil Mickelson. I don’t know what it is – the phony smile, the jiggling pectorals, the almost pathological need to convince America that his is the perfect family – but there’s something about this guy that really rubs me the wrong way. So it chagrined me when he won the Masters in April. I had to reluctantly concede that he was entering the halls of greatness.

So you can only imagine the feeling of nausea that swept over me as Mickelson appeared to be rolling to this third straight victory in a major yesterday. I had to leave my house to commence Father’s Day celebrations at 6:45 p.m. At the time, Mickelson was standing on the 17th tee with a two stroke lead. I feared all was lost.

So you can imagine my delight when I returned home to learn that he had lost the tournament in spectacular fashion, double bogeying the 18th hole. While I am of course riddled with despair that I missed Johnny Miller savaging Phil in real time, I take consolation in the fact that Phil will probably go down as one of those athletes more famous for the titles he lost than the ones he won.

Move over, Wilt Chamberlain. Slide down, Greg Norman. Make room for Phil.

2) WHY NO LINKS? - I’m still working on this Mac waiting for my freshly ordered Gateway to arrive. The Mac software doesn’t interact with the blogger software properly and it’s tough and time consuming to enter links. Because I’m convinced no one follows the links except for those stories that aren’t widely familiar, I figure it’s no big deal. I swear, I don’t know how you Mac users do it. Don’t you feel like you own a Betamax or something?

3) YEARLY KOS – One of the reasons I figured last week was a good week to take off was because I would have spent an inordinate amount of time commenting on the Yearly Kos, a subject that would no doubt have bored the vast majority of you.

Two related points: On the Weekly Standard’s site, Matt Labash has an account of his journey through the blogospheric Inferno that was the Yearly Kos. Yes, he was at Las Vegas attending the conference and wrote a great column on it, one that included a shout out to yours truly. On a related note, I had a piece in the Standard that documented the blogosphere’s latest loss and where the progressive blogosphere goes from here. Markos thinks they should reinvent themselves as libertarians, so it’s safe to say that everything is on the table.

4) “DON’T GET HIGH ON YOUR OWN SUPPLY” – That was the sage advice that Tony Montana’s criminal mentor gave Tony in the 1983 film “Scarface.” These quotes from Markos Moulitsas brought that advice to mind:

“I wouldn't want to be a senator or congressman. I'm able to influence politics much more effectively doing what I do. Now I can shape the national political debate. The only way I could exert more influence would be if I were president. But I’d never want that guy’s job. Never.”

”Joe Trippi contacted us about helping Howard Dean. And we successfully used our tools and methods to make him one of the election's more important candidates…It was a little scary to carry so much responsibility on your shoulders. And it still is. I daydream about turning things over to a younger generation, but people wouldn't allow it. Not yet.”

One thing I wonder about Markos, and I really hope to ask him in person someday – does he really believe his own bullshit? I know a lot of the liberal bloggers do, and that’s why in Wile E. Coyote fashion they continue to be shocked by election returns that stubbornly refuse to bow before the progressive blogosphere’s will. But Markos is kind of bright. Does he really think he’s shaping the national debate? Can he really believe it?

5) SPEAKING OF BELIEVING YOUR OWN B.S. – John Kerry last week “demanded” that the U.S. pull all its troops out of Iraq immediately if not sooner. I don’t want to debate the wisdom of the Senator’s “demand” nor do I care to hazard a guess as to what dark forces animated Kerry’s latest pathetic gambit. All I want to talk about is his choice of the word “demand.”

Where did he get the idea that he’s in a position to demand anything? What does he think, he’s in an upscale eatery and that he can demand his overcooked rack-of-lamb be sent back for one that is suitably red in the middle?

He’s a Senator and a member of the minority party to boot. Kerry has a reputation as being haughty and arrogant. He’s come by this reputation the old fashioned way – he’s earned it.

6) DWYANE WADE – I just have to say this: Last week I was out to dinner and insisting that Dwyane Wade is the best player in the NBA since Michael Jordan. This was when Miami was losing the series 2-0.

Predictably, my audience responded with a chorus of “Lebron! Lebron! Lebron!” I told them that living in Florida, I watch a lot of Heat games, and not just to marvel at the tautness of Pat Riley’s 63 year-old face. Lebron is fantastic and has an unlimited upside, but as of this writing, Wade does everything better than him – shoot, pass, ball-handle, rebound and defend. Literally everything. The only area where Lebron eclipses Wade is in the hype department. If half of Nike tirelessly slaved away to ensure Wade would be as famous as Jordan, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.

Do I feel vindicated by the NBA Finals? You bet.

Responses? Thoughts? Please email them to me at soxblog@aol.com

THE NEW NORMAL

2006-06-12T09:45:00.000-04:00

I don’t want to turn this into a blog that focuses on my health – I really don’t. Although the topic might interest you now, it would grow tired fast. Trust me. But there are lessons that I’ve learned from my health issues, and those lessons have helped make me the creature of the right that I’ve become.

About a year ago, I wrote about the man I once was. Although never a particularly good athlete (former basketball and softball teammates would consider that a rather generous assessment), I was always in good shape. My trademark athletic accomplishment was completing a race up the 50 Story Prudential Building in Boston in less than 8 minutes.

That race was in 1992. As my health situation eroded over the following decade, such achievements became an increasingly distant memory. At one point, Mrs. Soxblog and I lived in an apartment that was otherwise just about the coolest unit in greater Boston. I hated it. Why? Because getting to it required climbing two flights of stairs.

The process from where I could glide up 50 stories to where I couldn’t wait to move to escape two short flights was gradual. As the process unfolded, I’d often get angry. But at some point, a light bulb went on – I was entering a “new normal,” and I either could accept it and learn how to enjoy life in my new normal or be a miserable ass for the rest of my days.

Believe me, the choice was far from academic. Adapting to my new normal required accepting what I had previously considered unacceptable. And I’ve been around enough sick people to know that a lot of them refuse to accept their situation, and just wallow in misery and self-pity.

Actually, the latter course is the easier one. You get to put yourself on the cross, deny inconvenient realities, and spare yourself the bother of coping with a new normal that frankly sucks compared to the old one. I’m not trying to put myself forth as hero – finding my way required the good fortune of being suddenly struck with insight that it took me years to come by. I didn’t adapt to my new normal either quickly or painlessly.

I WAS THINKING ABOUT this over the weekend in the context of the war on terror. As some of you may remember, I spent a decade teaching at a Saturday program for 4th – 6th graders. On the Saturday after 9/11, two 6th grade girls were having a serious debate: One would have preferred to burn to death, while the other was adamant that she would instead have jumped out a 95th story window.

For days we had been hearing that 9/11 would change everything. Overhearing this exchange was a graphic illustration of that fact.

As a society, coping with our new normal has not been easy. Compared to our old normal, it stinks. On September 10, 2001, most of us were blissfully unaware that there were people who just couldn’t wait to savagely kill as many of us as possible. As the years after 9/11 have rolled by, it has become increasingly clear how rotten this new normal is. The people who want to kill us aren’t some strange fringe movement as we tried to convince ourselves in the days immediately following the attack. There are many millions of them, and there’s no doubt that they intend us harm.

What I’ve seen with people who can’t accept or refuse to accept their new normal are two primary techniques. One is denial, the other is misplaced anger. Denial is a concept you’re probably familiar with – we choose to sweep things aside that are too painful to deal with. The experts agree; denial is not a particularly effective coping mechanism.

But misplaced anger (as opposed to just ordinary anger/frustration over one’s situation) seems to get less attention. Last week, I was speaking with someone I’m very close with whose wife is dealing with some very serious health issues. He asked me, “Do you ever feel like screaming at people who are concerned about stupid stuff? When you here someone talking about how they’re angry about their golf score, do you just want to tell them to shut up and let them know what’s really important?”

The answer was yes. I used to feel that way. But at some point you realize the rest of the world is still spinning and is indifferent to your fate. And allowing yourself a righteous anger at the bozos in the Grille Room or the supermarket check-out line or at the next table over for complaining that their rack of lamb is medium instead of medium-rare just gives you the excuse to not deal with your very real challenges. It’s much more comforting to clamber up the Cross and assume a position of moral superiority. It’s also self-defeating. I’ve never seen anyone become a happy or productive person because they skillfully use misplaced anger.

WHAT I SEE ON THE AMERICAN LEFT is a ton of denial and misplaced anger. It would be swell if the left were correct, and the intrusion into our privacy by NSA wiretaps was the biggest threat to American society. It would be even more comforting if, as people of the left often proclaim, George W. Bush were the world’s worst terrorist. After all, we know he’s not going to set off a dirty-bomb in Midtown Manhattan.

But the sad new normal is that we’re at war, with a large, cruel and determined foe, Can the left acknowledge this reality?

I think it’s becoming increasingly apparent that much of what remains of the left cannot. Allow me to call your attention to this blog post by Jeralyn Merritt of Talk Left. A few words about Jeralyn – she’s not what right wing bloggers typically refer to as a moonbat. A practicing attorney, her left wing blog is thoughtful and devoid of the hysteria and juvenile patois that characterizes most of the left wing blogosphere.

So it’s particularly depressing when someone like Jeralyn pens a brief essay that refers to Zarqawi’s death as a “murder,” a “state sanctioned murder,” and an “assassination.” She is particularly upset over President Bush being thrilled that Zarqawi was “brought to justice.” “Since when,” Jeralyn asks, “is assassination bringing one to justice?”

Ladies and gentlemen, this is seriously obtuse stuff. Such an essay makes you wonder what it will take to bring some portions of our society around to the fact that we’re at war with some really bad people.

The question is rhetorical. But if you’ve got an answer, I’d love to hear it.

Responses? Thoughts? Please email them to me at soxblog@aol.com

NOT IN MOURNING

2006-06-10T18:57:00.000-04:00

No time for real blogging today, just a quick hit that struck me as pretty revealing. As you may have heard, three “detainees” at Gitmo killed themselves today. In case you’re wondering, we will not be sitting Shiva in Soxblog Manor. No need to plan a visit or to swing by some deli-meats.

At the Daily Kos, they are quite a bit more depressed about the incident. Weighing in from her parents’ house, law student Georgia10 can barely suppress her outrage. “Today's news is sad,” she writes, “but not surprising. When man manufactures hell on earth, it is not surprising that death becomes a tempting avenue of escape.” Death a tempting avenue of escape? Man, that’s so heavy! It’s tempting to dismiss Georgia10 as an arrogant youth who knows nothing about the way the world spins. It’s a temptation I personally cannot resist.

Occasionally I’ll get letters saying that I’m out of touch. But as Michael Corleone would say, now who’s being naïve? What percentage of Americans will register a scintilla of sadness over the demise of these men? If it cracked double digits, I’d be shocked. Come on kids, don’t you know there’s a war on?

Responses? Thoughts? Please email them to me at soxblog@aol.com

ANN COULTER CONTINUED

2006-06-09T21:07:00.000-04:00

I lack the time for real blogging today, what with the demands of keeping up with the goings on at the Yearly Kos. So what to do?

I’ve got it! As Andrew Sullivan would say in such a circumstance, I have the smartest, savviest, most intelligent and best-looking audience in the blogosphere. I will turn it over to them to forward our conversation on Ann Coulter. For what it’s worth, that single little piece produced more reader mail than anything I’ve written in the past month, including the essay where I poured my heart out regarding my physical condition. (Query: Are you people made of stone???)

In the spirit of this being the season of the Yearly Kos, I will assign all correspondents names that sound like they could belong to Kos Diarists.

“Longhorn Scribbler,” truly one of my favorite correspondents even though he has the maddening audacity to occasionally disagree with me, wrote this essay for another blog. He forwarded it to me in an email:

"I’ll say it again: Ann Coulter is a national treasure and I stand by her completely. What she said about those widows are the facts as she sees and believes them to be. Instead of being angry at Ann; why don’t you check out the activists that she is confronting? I have no sympathy for them or Cindy Sheehan. You all act like these people are the only people to have ever lost a loved one in a violent act. Those situations give NONE OF US the right to say whatever we want and not be challenged on it with the same vitriol. Wake the Hell up. And no… I don’t care if Ace or Allahpundit or Michelle or any other blogger is mad at Ann. Why in God’s name would THAT change my mind about her?

"Do you guys actually think that Ann’s supporters are that stupid? Do you think that we cannot think for ourselves? Sorry guys but I didn’t drink the “blog-aid”. Half of you are only angry because you don’t have the guts to actually speak the truth like Ann Coulter. The other half of you hated her anyway so why would I care what you think? Pathetic.

"Again, take a look at her targets and then come back and tell me how horrible Ann Coulter is. If you can do that then you are an idiot; but at least you would be a principled idiot."

I should note, it was other bloggers who got LS’s Irish up, not me. He’s normally a pretty temperate guy; his preface to the blog post evidenced the collegiality that always characterizes our correspondence.

“The Normster” amplifies Longhorn Scribbler’s point, and also puts some more meat on the bones of Ann’s argument:

"I do disagree with you about Ms. Coulter. I applaud both the tone and the substance of her harangues. She is a meticulous researcher and a talented writer. And yes, she is a quipster.

"With respect to (what is to you) her current "offensive" remarks about the "wider women" of New Jersey, consider this:

"Why are we seriously contemplating spending a billion dollars and devoting several acres of Manhattan real estate to memorialize the poor SOB's who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time? Since when did we build memorials to VICTIMS? (since Oklahoma City, btw).

"We build monuments to HEROS, not VICTIMS. I make it a point when I pass a memorial to try to stop and visit it -- to read the dedications and to try to imagine the feelings of the folks who felt obliged to spend the time and resources to commemorate their dead. I live in Greenwich and the the surrounding towns are filled with small memorial parks. And it's fascinating to visit them, to look at the architecture and the dedications.

"So, why are we about to build this monstrosity in downtown Manhattan? Why should we build a memorial to some of the victims of 9/11 that is bigger than all of the memorials to all of the heroes who fell in all of the wars this nation has fought -- put together? Why not a simple monument to the brave policemen and firemen who gave their lives to try to save others? Because of our current culture of victimhood -- the way our media exalts those with the most heartrending tales of woe -- the way the left wing pundits use these victims to advance their agendas.

"This was Ann's point -- that the left chooses messengers with whom it's impolite to argue.

"As it happens, I worked in the WTC and I was high up in tower 1 in '93, when they first tried to kill all of us. And I knew a great many people who were murdered in '01. And I think the proper way to honor our dead is:

1) By putting headstones on their graves -- commemorating their LIVES.

and 2) By killing the m********s who did this to our brethren.

"I heartily resent the Jersey widows and the Cindy Sheehans who claim the moral authority to run our country. I applaud Ms. Coulter who calls a spade a spade."

I actually like Normster’s argument about our culture’s unseemly tendency to exalt one’s victim status. I think it’s half Oprah’s and half Barbara Walters’ fault; they made public teariness not just acceptable but chic.

But the real issue with Ann, as I said yesterday, is her style. The Normster distills her rhetoric down to its substance; the only reason such an exercise is necessary is because her rhetoric is unnecessarily laden with ad hominem insults, personal invective and gratuitous bomb throwing. If Coulter wants her ideas to be taken seriously, she should cease burying them under the personal attacks that her work so prominently features.

That’s pretty much the point Steel Weaver makes in our final letter:

"Something that most adults learn is this: you don't say everything that comes into your head.

"Even if we have some agreement with Ann Coulter's take on the Jersey Girls, intelligent people know that there are strategic and tactical reasons why we should exercise a little discretion and keep our pie holes shut. Alternatively, we could address the issue tactfully as you suggested.

"Apparently, Coulter doesn't feel bound by the rules of good judgment to which most of us adhere. And I agree with you: the reason is because her method sells books.

"There was a time when Coulter was one of my favorite conservatives. Now, she's occupying some of the territory in which Pat Buchanan resides. (She's in the Buchanan territory not because she shares his anti-Semitism, because she doesn't. She's in his territory because she is an individual of great potential who has fallen out of favor with mainstream conservatives.) And if her latest book sells, I'm sure she will be quite happy to reside there.

"I'm disappointed. But our disappointment will not make Ann Coulter change her ways. I think we are just going to have to ignore her. She will always have a core of fans, just as Buchanan does. But among mainstream conservatives, I see her being marginalized."

Allow me to expand on one point for you youngsters out there: If your wife/girlfriend/date asks, “Does this outfit make me look fat?” I don’t care if the outfit in question makes her look like the Goodyear Blimp. The only possible answer is, “No, dear. You look beautiful.”

Does this make you intellectually dishonest? Does it make you a liar? Does it mean your relationship is built on a foundation of untruth?

In short, who cares? There are certain social niceties that must be observed in life. For those of you who think there is ever an appropriate time to offer a sober and unsparing assessment of your mate’s appearance, I wish you luck in your virginity.

Among the social niceties that we must observe is to not pick on widows, regardless of their opinions, appearance, whatever. You can question their substantive views; as I mentioned yesterday, Dorothy Rabinowitz wrote a much-discussed piece in the Wall Street Journal about the Jersey Girls whose substance was far more scathing and intellectually thorough than anything Ann Coulter ever came up with.

And guess what? There were no conniption fits on either side of the political spectrum. Such matters can be discussed, but when discussing them one must do so sensitively.

Responses? Thoughts? Please email them to me at soxblog@aol.com

SPANNING THE WEB - 6/8/2006

2006-06-08T16:31:00.000-04:00

1) SORRY FOR BEING AWAY the last couple of days. Believe me, it wasn’t by choice. My hard drive crashed and burned on Tuesday night. It now sleeps with the fishes. In retrospect, when I heard a sound coming from my laptop like there was a loose paper clip inside of it Tuesday afternoon, it probably would have been a good idea to begin backing up some important files. Oh well, live and learn.

As we speak, I’m working away on a Mac. Mac users keep insisting that I’ll fall in love with it. If I do, it will be like one of those implausible movies where the boy and the girl hate each other in the first reel but are wedded in the third. As of this writing, I can’t stand the frickin’ thing.

Then again, I had grown so attached to my old laptop, given that I had probably typed out close to a million words on it the past two and a half years, any new computer would come up wanting. Anyway, enough about me. There are wonderful developments to discuss.

2) STUCK CLOCK WATCH – Al Qaeda in Iraq has made the following pronouncement: "We announce the joyous news of the martyrdom of our warrior Sheikh Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq." It isn’t often when I feel groups like Al Qaeda get it right what with their urge to kill all the infidels and the rest of that crap. But this time they’ve hit the nail on the head. The death of Zarqawi is indeed joyous news. May the United States Special Forces continue to bring such joyous news with vigor and frequency.

3) BUT NOT EVERYONE SEEMS THRILLED – Daily Kos front pagers “Bill inn Portland Maine” and “Georgia 10” do a poor job of hiding what may be chagrin. Bill observes, “ For those of you keeping score at home, this is Iraqi Turning Point #697.” Meanwhile, the site’s resident shopaholic (who lives at home with her parents while attending law school in order to best satisfy her shopping jones) links to the news of Zarqawi’s death with only one word of commentary – “Finally.” Naturally, if you wished to wade through the site’s diaries, you would find far more, ahem, spirited opinions, but these front pagers are at the top of the Kossack heap. Is it just me, or does it seem like they were a lot more excited about Haditha than they are about Zarqawi being blown to smithereens?

4) SUPPORTING THE TROOPS – The president of The Hairclub for Moonbats, Hollywood Liberal, shows how his blood is not just red, but actually red, white and blue. To display his patriotic bona-fides, he offers the following uplifting appraisal of the American troops (who among other things defend the citizenry’s right to wear ill-fitting toupees): “The U.S. military needs to recruit very dumb, totally uneducated, and mostly southern cracker soldiers who are already racist bastards who have never left their hometowns and believe all the garbage they are taught in school about how we are the good guys, and everything we do is just and right. The Army can then brainwash them to treat other human beings in such a grotesque and inhuman manner.”

5) WHAT CAN YOU SAY? – Michael Berg, the father of beheaded hostage Mitch Berg, must deal with unspeakable grief on a daily basis. I’ve seen parents lose children before – there’s no pain like it.

But the sad fact is that in his current incarnation when he speaks publicly, Michael Berg is an embarrassment. Yesterday Berg addressed the death of Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, the man who had personally killed his son:

"Well, my reaction is I'm sorry whenever any human being dies. Zarqawi is a human being. He has a family who are reacting just as my family reacted when Nick was killed, and I feel bad for that…You shouldn't be surprised, because I have never indicated anything but forgiveness and peace in any interview on the air…

"Well, you know, I'm not saying Saddam Hussein was a good man, but he's no worse than George Bush. Saddam Hussein didn't pull the trigger, didn't commit the rapes. Neither did George Bush. But both men are responsible for them under their reigns of terror.

"I don't buy that. Iraq did not have al Qaeda in it. Al Qaeda supposedly killed my son.

"Under Saddam Hussein, no al Qaeda. Under George Bush, al Qaeda.

"Under Saddam Hussein, relative stability. Under George Bush, instability.

"Under Saddam Hussein, about 30,000 deaths a year. Under George Bush, about 60,000 deaths a year. I don't get it. Why is it better to have George Bush the king of Iraq rather than Saddam Hussein?"

A couple of thoughts spring to mind: 1) Given his loss, one wants to be charitable to Berg; and 2) What sort of sick game is the media playing, sticking a microphone in front of this obviously troubled man?

The eagerness with which the media enables Berg is perhaps more disturbing than the rantings of this very tragic figure.

6) THE INDOMITABLE SPIRIT…that characterizes the modern moonbat is almost inspiring. Inspiring in a pathetic sort of way, but inspiring nonetheless. After losing the race in California’s 50th District which brought the nutroots’ record to a truly Washington Generals-like 0-20, the leftwing blogs are all atwitter because Ned Lamont, Joe Lieberman’s primary opponent, has pulled to within striking distance. In the latest Quinnipiac Poll, Lieberman now leads 55-40 amongst likely Democratic voters. If liberal blogs were capable of being disturbed, they would find the fact that amongst all voters (running as an independent), Lieberman leads Lamont 56-18. So if Lieberman were to lose the primary and run as an independent, he would almost surely win and vote with the Republican caucus.

Does this mean the nutroots have yet another moral victory coming up? If political winners were determined by moral victories, the nutroots would now control the White House, the Congress, the Supreme Court and probably the Academy of Arts and Sciences.

7) THE AFTERNOON BRINGS MORE CANDOR – The Daily Kos’ resident shopaholic weighs in from her parents’ baement, “Understandably, there is a lot of media coverage on Zarqawi today. In all the hours and hours of coverage, has anyone mentioned that the President could have killed Zarqawi before the Iraq War but chose not to? Or that he was caught and then released to kill again by an incompetent Iraqi government?”

She should be careful. Comments like that almost lead one to conclude that the Kossacks are so addled with Bush hatred that they’re actually angry when good news comes out of Iraq.

8) ANSWERING SOME READER MAIL…I sometimes get letters asking me what I think of Ann Coulter. I always respond to those who write in with that question with a little personal anecdote about a tiny piece of personal history that Ann and I share and then get to my conclusion – I don’t like her.

My lack of fondness for her isn’t because I think she lacks talent. Oft-times she makes me laugh. And it isn’t because I get the sense that she’s a bad person. On that score, I’m agnostic.

I don’t like Ann Coulter because she’s a deliberate bomb-thrower who often brings embarrassment to my side of the political debate. I don’t like her for the same reason I wouldn’t like Al Franken or Markos Moulitsas if I were a liberal. She’s one of the most recognizable faces of conservative America, and she makes us look awful. Furthermore, I believe she does this because her bomb-throwing sells book. So in other words, she sells out her movement for personal gain.

As proof of this theory, look no further than her odious commentary regarding the 9/11 widows known as the Jersey Girls. The Jersey Girls and their agenda have been addressed politely but firmly by journalistic luminaries like Dorothy Rabinowitz and Holman Jenkins; I bring their work up only to show that a responsible conversation regarding the matter is possible.

Here’s what Coulter said: “These self-obsessed women seem genuinely unaware that 9-11 was an attack on our nation and acted like as if the terrorist attack only happened to them. They believe the entire country was required to marinate in their exquisite personal agony. Apparently, denouncing bush was part of the closure process…These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by griefparrazies. I have never seen people enjoying their husband’s death so much.”

What can one add. If you remain a Coulter fan, we’ll have to agree to disagree.

Responses? Thoughts? Please email them to me at soxblog@aol.com

SPANNING THE WEB - 6/6/2006

2006-06-06T15:33:00.000-04:00

1) THE REVOLUTION STARTS NOW? – It’s June 6, 2006, and that means a young blogger’s fancy turns to California’s 50th District where two aspirants are running-off to inherit Duke Cunningham’s congressional seat. You might recall that Cunningham, a Vietnam war hero, has been sent to prison by an ungrateful nation for using his office to enrich himself by several millions of dollars. If Cunningham had been smart, he would have invoked the cloak of inviolability that ensconces Jack Murtha, and instead of wearing an orange jump suit today he would be happily sobbing on Oprah’s couch.

Anyway, many political seers have declared the race in California’s 50th to be portentous with national implications. If Democrat Francine Busby wins, the conventional wisdom holds, it heralds an oncoming Democrat tsunami in November. If Republican Brian Bilbray wins, it means nothing.

While conservative pundits like Opinion Journal’s Brendan Miniter appear anxious for out of touch Beltway Republicans to finally hear the voice of an enraged electorate, Democrats seem scarcely more hopeful. Daily Kos diarist “sculi2000” (a handle that probably sounded really futuristic in 1995) is “pissed off” over what he/she/it considers the impending Democratic defeat that will run the nutroots’ record to a still unblemished 0-23:

Hell yea, we all want to win. And hell yea, we're all bummed out about what happened last week. But Jesus Christ...Francine is taking one for the team in this race, you know? Who among us would like to endure the Republican machine head on?

We're busy trying to get our fucking country back.

For those of you who haven’t been paying close attention to the race, “the Republican machine” ingeniously found a way to have Busby say in a speech last week, “You don't need papers for voting.” In a southern California district where illegal immigration is a major issue, this apparent plea for votes from illegals was something of a boo-boo. Even Busby’s compelling excuse that she misspoke has failed to arrest the damage. As the above-quoted Kos diarist suggests, the race (which seemed to be breaking to Bilbray anyway) was probably lost by Busby’s spectacular miscue.

So noteworthy was Busby’s boo-boo, no less an authority than that nice Alan Colmes suggested that we should all just accept her contention that she misspoke and let the race be decided on other factors. Alas, politics does not work in such a way. For Democrats who eagerly pounced on every Dan Quayle miss-pronouncement, this cry for mercy at the 11th hour of a combative campaign seems somewhat womanish. And not in the good sexy way.

If Busby does go down to defeat, (which given the support she has received from the nutroots seems all but inevitable), and her ridiculous “misstatement” is a leading cause for said defeat, then the entire episode should prove instructive for those of us in the pundit class. It is true that the Republican Party has become frustrating on a good day, pathetic on a bad one. But in order to win all the individual races out there, the Democrats will have to provide a superior alternative. Given the state of the Democratic Party, this promises to be no easy feat.

You’d have to say the California 50th race was a winnable one for the Democrats, even if it weren’t the year of a putative Democratic tidal wave. After all, the former Republican incumbent now sports an orange jump suit. And yet, it appears like it won’t work out because the Democratic candidate just wasn’t up to snuff.

Will it be different elsewhere, or will Republicans have the great good fortune to be opposed by weak opponents across this great nation of ours?

2) SPEAKING OF PATHETIC DEMOCRATS – Some of you might remember that the best person the Democrat party could belch forth to pursue the presidency in 2004 was an obscure Massachusetts Senator named John Kerry. Kerry has been back in the news in the blogosphere because of an off-the-record conversation he had with a slew of California bloggers; one of the bloggers in attendance dutifully blogged the off-the-record session for posterity’s sake.

This isn’t the first time such a thing happened. Back when Dick Durbin was in the soup over making the comparison between American G.I.’s and the Khmer Rouge, he sought succor in an off-the-record conference call with a bunch of nationally prominent left wing bloggers. Bloggress Annatopia of the MyDD site went to the bother of “live-blogging” the conference call. I brought her memorable blog post (since removed) to greater attention in a Weekly Standard article, whose thrust was the query, “How can politicians be so silly to trust these kids to act like full grown adults.”

History has repeated itself, although this time it was even more farcical than the first time around. A blogger named Hollywood Liberal documented many of Senator Kerry’s comments during the off-the record session. Among the more memorable lines in Hollywood Liberal’s post was that, “Kerry agreed completely with someone’s assessment that everything that Bush does is solely for the purpose of looting the country. He basically said that Bush and his cohorts are criminals and that history will judge them so.”

What makes this episode so embarrassing for Kerry is he doubtlessly does not believe that Bush’s principal goal in office is to “loot the country.” He might perhaps argue that Bush has recklessly and unconstitutionally pursued an expansion of presidential powers and an erosion of civil rights, but the looting comment is something that could only spring from someone in the full throes of Bush Derangement Syndrome. It’s a ridiculous non-sequitur.

And yet Kerry is so needy and so desperately craves the approbation of tin-foil hat wearing bloggers, he’s willing to yes them to death. Have I used the word pathetic yet today?

(By the way, while it is beneath this blog’s dignity to ridicule another person’s physical appearance, I do feel the need to note the following: In the photo accompanying this entry, the man standing next to John Kerry is Hollywood Liberal himself. I would be remiss if I did not point out that Hollywood Liberal’s “hair” has a striking resemblance to the toupee Joe Pesci wore in “JFK.”)

3) A TRUE PARTNER FOR PEACE? – Mahmoud Abbas is doubtlessly winning international plaudits for proposing a pan-Palestinian referendum that will IMPLICITLY recognize Israel. I am inferring that because the recognition of Israel will be implicit, it will not be explicit.

Such is the state of things in the Middle East that many people consider Abbas’ proposal a sign of progress. Almost 60 years into this thing, and only two Arab nations have been able to bring themselves to explicitly recognize Israel.

In considering Abbas’ latest maneuver, Western policy makers will want to recall that delusion is never a wise policy.

4) ON A RELATED TOPIC…Andy McCarthy of National Review has had the audacity to take notice of the elephant in the Canadian holding cell – that all the young men in said cell are Muslims. Also noteworthy is that none of the men have a connection to Al Qaeda. From reading the New York Times’ reports on the matter, I’m not sure if this news is supposed to make us feel better or worse.

5) THEODORE DALRYMPLE WOULD PROBABLY SAY WORSE – Writing in City Journal, Dalrymple reviews “Islamic Imperialism: A History” by Efraim Karsh. I really can’t summarize it without just reprinting it. So just go read the whole thing – it takes today’s prize.

Responses? Thoughts? Please email them to me at soxblog@aol.com

SPANNING THE WEB - 6/5/2006

2006-06-05T11:04:00.000-04:00

1) AT LONG LAST, HAS SHE NO SHAME? The New York Times editorialized yesterday on the Haditha investigation. Actually, it editorialized on the results of the Haditha investigation, which was passing odd since the investigation has yet to conclude. Nevertheless, the Times knows what happened there was “an apparent cold blooded killing.” Given the speculation I’ve heard, that a handful of Marines went on a rampage after one of their buddies was cut down, just the opposite would seem to be the case. But facts will not deter the Grey Lady from its tedious purpose – to pin this one on its political adversaries.

Taking its best we-told-you-so stance, the Times wags its bony finger, lecturing, “Critics of the war predicted that American troops would become an occupying force, unable to distinguish between innocent civilians and murderous insurgents, propelled down the same path that led the British to disaster in Northern Ireland and American troops to grief in Vietnam.” (Wait! Now they’re saying the soldiers were confused, “unable to distinguish between innocent civilians and murderous insurgents”? I thought it was cold blooded murder!)

Furthermore, the Times doesn’t want the “cold blooded kill(ers)” to be held accountable for their cold blooded killing. Not when the real blame lies in higher places: “This affair cannot simply be dismissed as the spontaneous cruelty of a few bad men.” (Wait! I thought they were confused and couldn’t distinguish friend from foe as the Times had so presciently forecast. My head is spinning!)

Even though the Times doesn’t seem to be thinking or expressing itself clearly, Haditha has given the paper a moment of apparent perfect-storm delight. It senses that it can trot out its ancient Vietnam analogies, and adopt a tone of moral outrage while opportunistically advancing its own political agenda. But, once again, the Times miscalculates.

One of the themes of the left’s anti-war stance has been that we shouldn’t care about Iraqis. You might recall a long ago Democratic nominee for president decrying the fact that we were building firehouses in Baghdad and under-funding firehouses in America. The underlying message was that Iraqis weren’t worth bothering with. First, they weren’t worth delivering from the depredations of Saddam Hussein. Next, their future wasn’t worth fighting Baathist dead-enders and Syrian no-goodniks over.

Sad to say, the Times has won this aspect of the debate. Even on the right, there is a sense of “why are we bothering with these people.” When the Iraqi premier chastises the American troops who make his regime viable, he does little to dispel this sentiment.

But if you spent the last three years trying to convince America that the Iraqis’ well-being should not be an American concern, it becomes a tough sell to convince Americans to get outraged over alleged war time atrocities when the victims are the very people you’ve been so determinedly marginalizing. Americans will support their troops and give them every benefit of the doubt. Even if it turns out to have been cold blooded murder, the vast majority of Americans will view the situation through a prism most favorable to the troops.

And they certainly won’t rush to label something “cold-blooded murder” before all the facts are in.

2) WHAT ABOUT JACK? In the previous few paragraphs, I questioned the New York Times’ motives. I bet even the most hardened lefty wouldn’t begrudge me the right to do so. But Jack Murtha? Man, he’s off limits.

The reasoning goes something like this: Murtha served in Vietnam. Because he served in the shit 40 years ago while others in our current political class jerked around their ROTC commandants, had better things to do, or joined the state-side national guard, Murtha is deemed on a higher moral plane. Questioning his motives is strictly forbidden.

I have to be honest here – the logic escapes me. Every politician’s motives are inherently suspect, regardless of his background.

Let’s do a little thought exercise. Let’s say there was a young man who had performed heroically for his country in a previous war. Let’s say less than 15 years later that man sought his nation’s highest office. Would his moral purity be beyond question? If you said yes, then you just gave a pass to an Austrian Corporal who went on to lead Germany in a decidedly immoral fashion. At the very least, you said you could disagree with the man’s positions but you mustn’t question his character.

But if I write a negative word about Jack Murtha, my inbox fills with critiques that I’m “swift-boating” him. Since I’ve never done anything that event faintly smells of questioning his Vietnam service, I truly don’t follow. Besides, I have no interest in the Jack Murtha of 1966. I guess the argument is Jack Murtha is beyond reproach.

What’s next? A “Free Duke Cunningham” movement?

3) THE NYT HEADLINE READS... “In Paris Suburbs, Worrying Attack by Youths.” As you read on in the New York Times report, you’ll eventually discover about 12 paragraphs into the thing that a lot of the youths are Sub-Saharan and North African immigrants. No word yet on whether the youths might have anything else in common. Stay tuned.

4) THE NYT HEADLINE READS… “17 Held in Plot to Bomb Sites in Ontario.” Reading on, you learn that the “17 men were mainly of South Asian descent.” You also learn from a helpful Canadian official, clearly taking valuable time away from monitoring the Stanley Cup Finals, “They represent the broad strata of our society. Some are students, some are employed, some are unemployed."

Indeed. The names of ages of these representatives of the “broad strata” of Canadian society are Fahim Ahmad, 21; Zakaria Amara, 20; Asad Ansari, 21; Shareef Abdelhaleen, 30; Qayyum Abdul Jamal, 43; Mohammed Dirie, 22; Yasim Abdi Mohamed, 24; Jahmaal James, 23; Amin Mohamed Durrani, 19; Steven Vikash Chand, alias Abdul Shakur, 25; Ahmad Mustafa Ghany, 21; and Saad Khalid, 19. It does sound like these men ably represent all the swaths of the great Canadian mosaic.

The Times’ story is mute on what, if anything, could have brought these 19 spectacularly diverse individuals together to form such a nefarious plot. My theory is that the grinding poverty and hopelessness of Canadian life, what with that nationalized health care system and everything, drove them into a nihilistic and murderous world view. But only time will tell.

5) THIS WOULD BE THE BOTTOM STORY OF THE DAY…The Boston Globe headline reads, “Vt. state senator calls for troop withdrawal.” Alas, the state senator in question, one Peter Welch, is now a candidate for congress and actually gave the Democrats’ nationally broadcast radio address on Saturday.

Welch wants to leave Iraq, so we can focus on fighting terror. Specifically, Welch wants to fight terror by focusing on securing our own ports and borders.

With comments like this, Democrats reveal their soft political under-belly. As the left eagerly reminds the country at every chance, Iraq is now a haven for Al Qaeda fighters. If you want to fight terror, Iraq is where you have to be.

Sometimes I question whether or not people of the left really want to fight the so called war on terror. After all, if you can’t even bring yourself to identify the enemy...

6) FROM THE GET OVER YOURSELF DEPT. – Markos Moulitsas explains the poor functioning of the Daily Kos website by asserting that it’s tough to maintain “a site growing as rapidly as this one.” That line struck me as odd, since I had thought the Daily Kos’ growth had flatlined along with rest of the blogosphere’s several months ago.

Being the intellectually curious type, I clicked over to the DK’s sitemeter. Last October, the site had roughly 23 million visits. In May, the figure was around 16 million. What’s more, the “progress” between last October and May was pretty uniform. In other words, the graph of the site’s visits over the past eight months resembles a ski slope.

But Markos knows what he’s doing. Just like Hilary Clinton, he has to create an air of inevitability around his site’s ascendancy. This is do-able because most politicians have as much of a conceptual understanding of the blogosphere as they do about the ovulation cycle of a three-toed sloth. They see the blogosphere as a growing and soon-to-be-formidable force.

Actually, the opposite is true. The blogs are a mature force, just as the newspapers are. They are not growing more powerful by the minute. They are what they are.

But shush! Don’t tell the pols. If they ever get wind of this, there’s a good chance those fun conference calls will be a thing of the past!

Responses? Thoughts? Please email them to me at soxblog@aol.com

A VERY SPECIAL EPISODE

2006-06-04T22:35:00.000-04:00

I REALLY AM SORRY for the light posting the last couple of weeks. It’s now officially a rite of Spring – I return to Boston, become surprisingly busy for a spell, and the blogging rate declines to an unacceptably low level. The worst part of this syndrome is that my friends and family, in particular the long suffering Mrs. Soxblog, become the sole recipients of my non-stop and yet annoyingly repetitive analysis of world events. This is an intolerable situation for all concerned – you, me, and especially those who fall into my lair and become a captive audience.

But before returning to current events, I wanted to write a personal essay that hopefully will answer a lot of the questions readers send me and that will also be helpful to a few of you out there.

In 13 months, I’ll be turning 40. I don’t make that statement casually, like most almost-40 year olds do; four years ago, it didn’t look like I would make the milestone, and that if I did make the make the milestone I would do so with someone else’s lungs inside me.

To bring those of you not in the know up to speed, I have Cystic Fibrosis. I was always very healthy for someone with CF until 2002, when my condition suddenly and dramatically changed for the worst. Such turns of fate aren’t uncommon with the disease. By the end of that year, I was on the lung transplant list.

Lung transplants are what medical practitioners refer to as a treatment of last resort. The reason they get such a title is because lung treatments aren’t nearly effective as other organ transplants. The reasons for that fact aren’t really known, but the numbers are sobering. The odds of surviving one year after a lung transplant are 70%. If you make it the one year, you’ve got a 50% of making it five. Statistically, you have only a tiny shot of making it ten.

Thus, lung transplants have won the title of “treatment of last resort” the old fashioned way – they’ve earned it. For obvious reasons, you would have to be a pretty sick puppy to get in line for such a thing.

I don’t mean to pick on lung transplants. If you’re sick enough to warrant one, a potential lung transplant offers the one thing that you probably need the most – hope. Thus, I was excited not only to get on the list, but also to move up it. At one point late last summer, I made it all the way up to number one which meant I had to be accessible at all times to come into the hospital and collect my new organs if and when they became ready.

As I moved up the list, I became excited about having one last finite go at life. I looked at the transplant as a final chance that would give me a few years to get it right. One of the burdens of life is having to plan for a potentially limitless future; most of you are probably wisely socking enough money away in case you live until 100. Me, I didn’t have any such concerns.

I became excited about the prospects of a post-transplant life. According to the people I spoke with, there’s a limited window where after the transplant you feel great, literally better than you have in years. Before your body begins attacking the new organs, life is good indeed.

Because this time period is usually short, I decided that there was no time to lose. Before the transplant, I resolved to do everything possible to get the non-lung portions of my body in as good a shape as possible; I planned to practically spring from the operating room to the basketball courts once I had my new lungs.

I began hitting the gym with more seriousness than I’d had in a decade. I started to rehab my knees, which had been battered by the combination of a lot of running and virtually no maintenance. I even manned up and made frequent trips to the dentist who visited all sorts of depredations on me as a fitting retribution for what he considered a casual approach to flossing.

I considered the working out and the therapy and even the trips to my dentist’s dungeon as training for my transplant. Just like an athlete trains for the Olympics, I would train for the biggest challenge of my life.

A LITTLE OVER A YEAR AGO, I wrote that having a terminal illness is like being at the center of an ever-contracting circle. The circle represents all the things in your life; as you get sicker, the circle contracts and things that were in your life suddenly fall outside the circle. The smaller the circle gets, the smaller the contents of your life get.

While that may initially sound like a grim analogy, trust me, it’s an apt one. Besides, there’s a decided upside to it. At the innermost portions of the circle lays the things that are most important – your heart, your soul, your loved ones. As the circle gets smaller and more and more aspects of your previous life fall outside the circle, what’s really important makes up an ever increasing proportion of what remains. Suddenly, the things that should have always mattered most DO matter most because they’re all that’s left.

That doesn’t mean that having the circle contract is a ton of fun. In retrospect, the enlightenment that came with the circle’s contraction was terrific, but the day I realized I could no longer walk a hilly golf course was a rotten one. There were many such days of similarly painful realizations – none of them were enjoyable.

But something else was happening, too. Although I didn’t realize I was doing so at the time, I began expanding my circle in new ways as my physical abilities eroded. Without being able to spend all my spare hours playing sports (in a decidedly mediocre fashion, mind you) I began focusing on other things. I’d always been an avid reader, but I began reading a lot more. Just today, looking at my Amazon account, I saw I’ve read 119 books in the past year from Amazon alone. I’d be willing to wager I read twice as many as that in 2003.

But most of all, there was the writing. I started blogging in March 2004. I began writing for the Weekly Standard roughly 11 months later. I have found these activities far more rewarding than I anticipated. (Actually, I knew writing for the Standard would be a blast, but the blogging I was less certain of.) They have given me more satisfaction than dropping fly-balls on the softball field ever did. That previous sentence is a flippant way of acknowledging I really can’t express the difference writing has made in my life.

ANYWAY, FINALLY GETTING TO THE POINT, I’ve gotten a lot healthier. The precise reasons for my improvement can’t be scientifically determined – if they could, everyone with end-stage lung disease would have a new Rx.

But I can speculate. I think the promise of the new lungs combined with day-to-day activities that I found meaningful gave me what I’ll tritely refer to as a hope transplant. The introduction of fresh hope to my life in itself made me feel better. The hope plus the working out and doing all the other right things for my condition made me get better in a physically measurable way.

The improvement the past year has been dramatic. My lung function is as good as it’s been in five years. While of course the primary goal, as is always the case where lifting weights is concerned, is to look buff, I tailor my work-outs so they’ll help me function in a day-to-day more effectively manner. While I’ll never run five miles in 33 minutes again (not with these lungs anyway), I can walk across a long parking lot or up a flight of stairs without spending the next three minutes catching my breath. While these might seem like small triumphs, they’re not. Having such abilities makes every day life easier and more pleasant.

So things are good. As you’ve probably figured out, I’m now too healthy to be on the lung transplant list. That’s a good thing. Just between us, I’ve grown attached to these wheezing old lungs and I found the thought of parting with them disquieting. Although still chronically ill, I function a lot better than I have in years. That’s nice.

Four years ago, I didn’t think I’d live to see the Red Sox win the World Series. Against all odds, that worked out for all of us. Actually, a lot of things of even more importance have worked out these past four years.

AND I’VE LEARNED A LOT, TOO. For those of you who are ill or who have loved ones who are ill, here are some of the personal lessons that I’ve taken from my journey:

1) WANTING TO LIVE may be the biggest “x factor” in determining how long you’ll live. For those of you with a serious illness, this is the single most important observation I could share with you. Focus on the reasons that you want to live. Focus on the things that satisfy you – minimize the things that drive you nuts. If you feel your life is endless misery, it will end soon. Fill your days with the activities that make you happy to get out of bed. Eliminate from your days the things you dread. You’ll want to live longer, and you will.

And for those of you with loved ones who you would like to see live for a longer time rather than a shorter time, help them in this. From what I’ve seen in being around other sick people, loved ones can most readily accomplish this by focusing on not being burdensome. I can’t tell you how many seriously ill people I’ve heard say how their family is driving them crazy. Go to a support group meeting, and there’s a 30% chance that part of it will devolve into all the patients pissing and moaning how the people closest to them are driving them nuts. How sad is that?

If you’ve got a gravely ill loved one and you’re driving them nuts, you’ve simply got to find a way to stop doing what’s bugging them. What follows is harsh, but you’ve got to hear it – you’re literally killing them faster.

2) EACH DAY IS A GIFT, although sometimes it is as Tony Soprano says the equivalent of a pair of socks. What I’m really trying to say is tomorrow is guaranteed to no man. No person has gotten off this planet alive. None of us will be the first. Death is part of the deal. Living is pretty great – being seriously ill gives you a visceral appreciation of that fact. And that knowledge tends to make every day, and the little miracles that accompany every day like a glazed chocolate donut or a perfect cup of coffee, all the sweeter.

3) ON A RELATED NOTE, DEATH ISN’T THAT BAD. You look death close in the eye over an extended period of time, and you realize it’s just going to happen. Death will get you, sooner or later. It’s just a fact, and the price of living. One of the things that I’ve been struck by being around gravely ill people is, generally speaking, their lack of fear.

4) DOCTORS ARE GREAT, BUT…First of all, I’ve been blessed with incredible doctors. My CF doctor, in particular, is one of my heroes. He uses his considerable talents to tirelessly serve gravely ill children and young adults. I honestly don’t know how he does it. My only complaint regarding him is that his own life is so admirable, I can’t help but feel like an utter turd in comparison.

But…If your prognosis is imminent death, then by definition your doctors do not have all the answers. If they don’t know how to cure your disease, they don’t understand everything about how it functions. And, for what it’s worth, few doctors are in a rush to confess what they don’t know.

You’ve got to take control. Become an expert on your condition. While your physician will probably always know more about how your disease effects the general population, you know best how your disease is working inside of you. This is your fight – take control of it.

OKAY, ENOUGH ABOUT ME. I’ll be back early tomorrow with an excellent Spanning the Web (if I do say so myself) that’s mostly already written. I think the words “Haditha” and “Murtha”will be prominently featured. As if that weren’t enough, Carl has written an essay on his favorite TV show (no, not “Saved by the Bell – The College Years” as I figured it would be) that I’ll be posting.

Thanks for your patience.

Responses? Thoughts? Please email them to me at soxblog@aol.com

SPANNING THE WEB - 5/30/2006

2006-05-30T22:05:00.000-04:00

1) KNOWING JACK – A few readers sent me the comments made by Republican Representative John Kline in regards to what happened in Haditha. Kline said, “I was saddened, surprised and outraged that this could happen… (It was) a horrific aberration…This was not an accident. This was not an immediate response to an attack. This would be an atrocity.” Some of you wrote in demanding to know why I had attacked Murtha while giving Kline a free pass.

Without parsing Kline’s comments (i.e., note the word “would”), let’s just posit for the sake of argument that Kline meant to say exactly what Jack Murtha said yesterday. For those of you with short memories, Murtha said that troops shot one woman "in cold blood" who was bending over her child begging for mercy.

A couple of initial thoughts: If you’re a regular reader of this blog and just discovering that I’m somewhat partisan, your deduction skills fail to impress. Besides, for what it’s worth, I wasn’t aware of Kline’s comments until they were brought to my attention. This would be where Andrew Sullivan would salute his audience for being the smartest collection of people in the universe. Me, I’ll just confess to blogging while in a partial state of ignorance. Wasn’t the first time, doubtlessly won’t be the last.

As we move on, let’s leave Kline out of this since, as I’ve already confessed, I wouldn’t know him if I stumbled over him. He may be the finest voice of leadership in the House; he may be an irredeemable ass-hat. Not really knowing anything about the man, I can’t comment in an educated fashion, not that such a limitation has stopped me in the past.

But about Murtha – there are two aspects of his comments that are loathesome. First, there is his rush to convict the Marines in Haditha. I stand by what I said yesterday – until all the evidence is in, the Marines deserve both the benfit of the doubt and the presumption of innocence.

But there’s another aspect of Murtha’s comments that rankles. The left wing has been eager to discredit the Iraqi war effort by any means necessary since 2003. Yes, there were some people who legitimately felt Abu Ghraib was the biggest scandal in generations. But most of the people riding the Abu Ghraib hobby-horse (like seasoned veteran John Kerry) knew that even the worst accusations associated with Abu Ghraib were pretty tame as far as war-time atrocities.

That doesn’t mean they weren’t atrocious, but anyone with a passing familiarity with the history of warfare knows that even the “good guys” in wars past did stuff a lot worse than what happened at Abu Ghraib. For more reading on the subject, I urge you to check out Rick Atkinson’s “An Army at Dawn” that in a few passages deals with some of American’s atrocities from the second world war.

Murtha’s rush to judgment over Haditha and other signs of barely concealed joy from leftward precincts has shown that people like the erstwhile representative can’t wait to use Haditha to taint the entire war effort, blast the administration, and once again urge retreat. Murtha said this morning, “I will not excuse murder, and this is what happened…Now we've lost that war, and now it is time to redeploy…The reason we've lost the hearts and minds [is] these troops are under tremendous stress.”

What may have happened in Haditha is outrageous and disturbing. But it is not shocking. There has never been a major war without atrocities committed by both sides. Such events in war are sadly inevitable. Someone as familiar with warfare as Murtha doubtlessly knows this.
That’s what makes his shameless and cynical opportunism so stomach churning. Alas, Murtha’s actions also fail to shock. His antics have become as sadly predictable as they are pathetic.

2) FEEL GOOD BLOG ENTRY OF THE DAY – I know I said I’m a Dixie Chicks fan, and that the juvenile politics of pop-singers and other assorted deep thinkers have lost the ability to anger me in the slightest. Being a big John Mellencamp fan for 25 years I guess has effectively immunized me from show biz idiocy.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate it when a big star does something good. With very little fanfare, country superstar Toby Keith visited Iraq over the weekend. The blog entry I linked to is written by a soldier who got to see Keith up close and personal. Among his other virtues, this blogging soldier can really write.

His entry wins today’s “read the whole thing” prize.

3) HELL FREEZES OVER – The normally astute Wall Street Journal editorial board today writes a counter-intuitive piece in which it castigates the administration for having the audacity to barge into Representative William Jefferson’s criminal lair. Give the Journal credit, though – even when spectacularly wrong-headed, a single Journal editorial still possesses more wit than a month worth of the Grey Lady’s finger wagging. The Journal summarizes a portion of Jefferson’s criminal enterprises thusly:

“In the case of Mr. Jefferson, Justice clearly had reason to consider a search. The Congressman is suspected of taking bribes, individuals have already pleaded guilty to paying him and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors, and a search of his home found $90,000 in his freezer. Mr. Jefferson says he has done nothing wrong, but we doubt he has found the miracle of an icebox that pays interest on deposits.”

4) FOR THE OTHER SIDE OF THINGS…Be sure to check out Andy McCarthy’s summary of the matter on National Review Online. I haven’t seen a more informative or thorough discussion of the matter anywhere.

5) WISHING WON’T MAKE IT SO…Here’s the reason why I so enjoy the Boston Globe’s op-ed pages: The contributors (Jeff Jacoby excepted, of course) so believe in their fantasy world views, when the real world doesn’t provide supporting evidence they just make stuff up.

Writing today on Europe’s problems with its Muslim populations which include rioting, honor killing, and a failure to assimilate, the Globe’s H.D.S. Greenway nonetheless concludes, “The major problem that both Europe and America face, as far as their Muslim populations are concerned, is not to let vigilance against terrorism spill over into undermining civil rights and discriminating against the 99.9 percent of Muslims who just want to get along.”

Okay, let’s crunch some numbers: In Holland, the epicenter of Europe’s Islamic unrest, there are 750,000 Muslims. That means, according to Greenway’s “99.9 %” assertion, only 750 Muslims are a problem. Given all the rioting, hate crimes, the Theo van Gogh murder, etc., that sounds kind of low.

One wonders what aspect of Greenway’s reportage compelled him to arrive at this figure. Or was it just wishful thinking?

6) TOLD YOU SO – Last week I documented how a movement was bubbling up to commit enough troops to Iraq’s most troubled regions to finally rout the insurgency. This meant adding more troops when politicians across the political spectrum have been demanding a timetable for bringing the troops home. First Bill Kristol floated the notion, then Max Boot, and finally the WSJ editorial page.

Today it became official – a 3500 member brigade is re-deploying from the comfort of Kuwait to the hornet’s nest of the Anbar province. The Bush administration is often maddening, sometimes incredibly so. But admit it – this is the right thing to do, and few past administrations would have done it.

Responses? Thoughts? Please email them to me at soxblog@aol.com

SPANNING THE WEB - 5/29/2006

2006-05-29T18:44:00.000-04:00

1) DURANTY WATCH AT THE TIMES – On Saturday, the New York Times ran what appeared at first blush to be a frightening front page story on how Mahmoud Ahmadenijad is consolidating power in an unprecedented manner in Iran. But it’s not frightening at all; the Times points out that although sometimes rough-around-the-edges, Ahmadenijad is actually a pretty swell guy:

Mr. Ahmadinejad, who was elected last June, has adopted an ideologically flexible strategy. He has called for restoring the conservative values of the Islamic Revolution, yet at the same time has relaxed enforcement of strict Islamic social codes on the street. During the spring, when the warm weather sets in, young women are often harassed by the volunteer vigilantes known as the Basiji for their dress, but not this year. More music seems to be available in stores than in the past — small but telling changes, people here say.

If there is one consistent theme to his actions, it is the concept of seeking justice, reflecting a central characteristic of Shiite Islam.

So don’t be like one of those cold-war kooks, focusing on the otherness of the other. Set aside all that death-to-infidels talk and the pledge to wipe Israel off the map. All the man wants is justice. If we wind up having difficulties with such a clearly flexible humanist, it will be yet another testimony to the unilateral belligerence that so lamentably characterizes the Bush administration.

(By the way, the picture above is the one the Times ran on its website accompanying its story. So lovable is Ahmadenijad, doves flock to him. I guess if anyone still paid attention to the Times, this would be a scandal.)

2) “THE 8TH OF NOVEMBER” – I first heard this song by the country duo Big & Rich on the car radio a couple of days ago. It’s a moving tribute to a soldier who served in Vietnam, survived with scars, but lost most of his comrades. It’s powerful and memorable. It’s inarguably perfect for Memorial Day. Check it out.

3) WHAT HAPPENED IN HADITHA? – It sounds like something pretty bad. Until all the facts are out, though, I will give our troops not only the benefit of the doubt but also their legally and morally deserved presumption of innocence.

Predictably, Jack Murtha will do otherwise. The Duranty Times reports:

Rep. John Murtha, a Pennsylvania Democrat and former marine who has become a fierce critic of the Iraq war, said he had no doubt marines killed innocent civilians in Haditha and tried to cover up the deaths. Marine Corps officials, he said on the same television program, have told him that troops shot one woman "in cold blood" who was bending over her child begging for mercy.

To be perfectly clear, if that last detail doesn’t prove accurate to the letter, I hope that everyone in a position to do so will hold Murtha fully accountable for the calumny. This includes the members of the media who so enthusiastically enable Murtha.

The glee with which Murtha eagerly has pounced on his fellow Marines is nothing short of sickening. Jack Murtha may once have been a hero, but he is now just another congressman who has no moral bearings whatsoever. The media give him a pass because of what he did 40 years ago - they believe he enjoys moral infallibility because of those long ago heroics.

One doubts the men who currently wear the uniform that Murtha once wore view him with similar deference or fondness.

4) HOW JAMES CARROLL WON THE COLD WAR – James Carroll used to be a great writer and a decent thinker. Now, he’s just an addled anti-war agitator whose grip on reality loosens seemingly by the hour. In today’s Memorial Day column in which he predictably tells us to honor the soldiers but not the war, Carroll makes several breathtakingly stupid assertions. But beyond his habitual idiocy, I honestly don’t have the foggiest idea of what he’s trying to say in this column. It sounds like he’s saying those who are against war are always right and were always right. But then again, I may be wrong. Like I said, I can no longer decipher what the once gifted writer is trying to communicate.

If you want to read the column and explain it to me, feel free to drop me a line. Then again, don’t we both have better things to do?

5) READ THE WHOLE THING – When Christopher Hitchens has his mojo working, there are few better. Today he has a moving article on the Opinion Journal site about Memorial Day. His article concludes:

"Always think of it: never speak of it." That was the stoic French injunction during the time when the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine had been lost. This resolution might serve us well at the present time, when we are in midconflict with a hideous foe, and when it is too soon to be thinking of memorials to a war not yet won. This Memorial Day, one might think particularly of those of our fallen who also guarded polling-places, opened schools and clinics, and excavated mass graves. They represent the highest form of the citizen, and every man and woman among them was a volunteer. This plain statement requires no further rhetoric.

If for some reason you followed the link to James Carroll, Hitch will wash the taste right out of your mouth. Simply brilliant stuff. Whatever he drinks, I should begin trying it, also.

6) AND A WORD ABOUT CONGRESS…I was on my way down to New York on Saturday when I heard Bush-hating GWU law professor Jonathan Turley on CNN decry the threatened actions of Attorney General Gonzales and FBI Director Meuller, both of whom allegedly threatened to resign if the administration went wobbly and gave back the stuff seized in the raid of super-corrupt Congressman William Jefferson’s office. Turley viewed these threats as another sign of how reckless the Bushies are.

That means Turley is perhaps the only citizen in the Union beyond the congressmen themselves who seems inclined to see this thing Congress’ way – that Congress-people should be above justice. What I find especially rich about this story is how the Republicans in the House, led by the ever-increasingly obtuse Dennis Hastert, have shown an even larger tin ear than normal and have heaped scorn and abuse on the administration for the raid. Hell, even Bill Frist had the good sense to ultimately come down on the right side of this one.

Robert Turner writing in the Wall Street Journal aptly characterized the nature of this particular hubbub:

“It is increasingly rare to find a spirit of bipartisanship in Congress these days. So a display of the spirit would have been a good thing to see--especially in a time of war--but for the fact that the issue now uniting Republican and Democratic leaders is an outrageous assertion that members of Congress are above the law, and that the Constitution immunizes legislators who betray their public trust in return for bribes from investigation by the executive branch.”

It’s almost as if congressional Republicans are playing some perverse game to see how many seats they can lose in the midterm elections in spite of a booming economy. They seem so determined to make history, even mine and Hugh Hewitt’s combined efforts may well not be enough to save them.

Back to full-time blogging tomorrow. See you then.

Responses? Thoughts? Please email them to me at soxblog@aol.com

PENUMBRA HEADS

2006-05-25T10:51:00.000-04:00

SPECIAL TO SOXBLOG BY CARL BERNARD

There’s another penumbra emanating around the corridors of power in Washington, and it isn’t a pretty sight.

Denny Hastert and Bill Frist have their knickers in a constitutional twist over the recent “raid” on Representative William J. Jefferson’s office, the very same Mr. Jefferson who ignored Justice Department subpoenas for more than nine months. The “raid” was pursuant to a judicially approved search warrant.

Messrs. Hastert and gang have floated the vague notion that the execution of the warrant violates the “separation of powers” doctrine, a doctrine which, careful readers may note, is not actually mentioned in the Constitution. Proof of the lameness of Hastert’s argument is corroborated by the fact that even some Democrats are willing to defend it. Noted strict constructionist Rep. Hoyer has stated that "no member is above the law, but the institution has a right to protect itself against the executive department going into our offices." I’m not sure I agree with Mr. Hoyer’s logic, and am quite sure that the average pothead--his door just kicked down because of his hash stash--wouldn’t either.

Obviously, the Constitution implies the separation of powers. Law Professor Erwin Cherminsky—almost as reclusive as Alan Dershowitz-- has noted that “[t]he Constitution is based on the simple but elegant notion that checks and balances require that all important government actions require concurrence of at least two branches of government… Searching or arresting a person requires a request by the executive branch and approval by the judiciary.”

Cherminsky’s quote is from a column criticizing the Bush Administation, and for ignoring the separation of powers doctrine no less. Others like NRO’s Andy McCarthy have been less kind and called Hastert’s argument frivolous: “[A congressmen] can be investigated and prosecuted just like anyone else, with two exceptions: (a) they presumptively may not be placed under arrest during a session of congress — although arrest is perfectly proper if a felony (or treason or breach of the peace) is involved; and (b) the evidence used to prosecute them cannot include anything contained in a speech or debate during a session. So the privilege against arrest is limited, and the privilege against being investigated is non-existent (anyone out there remember Abscam?).”

Of course, after Roe v. Wade, we are all painfully aware that our nation’s founding document contains emanating penumbras lurking in the Constitution’s nooks and crannies, waiting for a Supreme Court justice to conjure them. Naively perhaps, I had hoped to pass through this life without being subjected to such conjuring from leading Republicans--leaders who, by the way, have also threatened that this issue “may end up in front of the Supreme Court.”

Let us hope and pray this issue goes to the Supreme Court, as that is about the only crew in Washington with its head screwed on straight nowadays. Denny Hastert may have searched the nooks and crannies of the Constitution and discovered his inner Harry Blackmun, but my guess is that Chief Justice Roberts will have no part of it.

Responses? Thoughts? Please email them to me at soxblog@aol.com

SPANNING THE WEB - 5/24/2006

2006-05-24T18:58:00.000-04:00

Al Gore fighting for the environment

1) ANGRY READER MAIL – Yesterday I beseeched you to send no more “you just don’t care enough about immigration” letters my way. Much to my surprise, everyone in the vast Soxblog Nation respected this wish save one plucky reader. I will reprint her letter in full:

If the rapid demographic transformation of a (once) great nation caused by the invasion of a people with irredentist aims and enabled by a corrupt elite at every institution of American society is "no big deal" to you, then you are the definition of someone who is either willfully ignorant or fearful of facing the truth. Does the term "hiding one's head in the sand" have any resonance?Your Harvard education notwithstanding, there are no insights that you could provide that would make reading this blog worth my time anymore.

While I hate to lose readers who can toss around big words like “irredentist,” life will go on. For the rest of you, can we not agree to disagree until the time comes where I come around to your way of thinking or you come around to mine? (Special note to William: “Irredentist” has nothing to do with teeth.)

The only thing about the letter that I found interesting was what I assume was the sarcastic reference to my Harvard degree. Since the writer won’t be reading this blog anymore, we’ll never know what he/she really meant, but it sounds sarcastic to me. Just for the record, I’m proud of having overcome my Harvard education. More on that below.

2) YOU CAN ALWAYS TELL A HARVARD MAN…Matthew Yglesias is a writer for The American Prospect, the nation’s leading liberal journal of opinion (which is a bit like being Antarctica’s leading falafel stand). He’s also a 25 year old graduate of Harvard. It seems like Yglesias hit the books with considerably more vigor than I did during my stay in Cambridge; he graduated with all sorts of honors and was able to land a hot gig at America’s leading liberal journal of opinion while I had to slink off to a law school across the river in order to feed my addiction to afternoon naps for another three years.

The problem with hot young Harvard grads like Yglesias isn’t that they process things wrong or have been indoctrinated into the professoriate’s intellectually exhausted brand of liberalism. The bigger problem is that, thinking they’re very bright and well read, they’re not conditioned to recognize what they DON’T know. Thus, they rush to make conclusions on important matters without possessing the fundamental knowledge necessary to make an informed analysis.

Very early this morning, Yglesias offered this view of the situation with Iran:

“It seems to me that this has been pretty clear for a while, but now it's explicit -- the Iranian government wants to engage in talks about the various US-Iranian issues, including Teheran's nuclear program. If you're concerned with things like America's interests, not getting lots of people killed, and preventing Iran from going nuclear you'd take them up on the offer. I honestly don't think this is even remotely a hard question. It might not work, of course, but even that would leave us better off than we are now as the weird kid sulking in the corner refusing to talk to Billy.”

You see what he did there? Not knowing the first thing about Ahmadenijad and the religion that he and the mullahs practice, Yglesias shoe-horned the situation into something he does know something about, in this case weird sulking kids. It would be hard to imagine a less apt analogy or a more frightfully wrong conclusion.

Yglesias goes on to conclude that Iran has been trying to “set the stage for possibly ratcheting tensions with the United States down.” Not surprisingly, he offers this assertion without evidence as there is none.

If he were willing to educate himself and not fearful of facing the truth, Yglesias would realize that Ahmadinejad’s letter was practically a declaration of war, not an overture for peace. If that’s ratcheting things down, what would ratcheting things up? Testing a long range missile?

3) IT’S NOT MATT’S FAULT – He’s only listening to the Boston Globe. Smart people think a response to Ahmadenijad’s letter would be a huge mistake in itself. It would irrevocably raise his prestige in the Islamic world. But not everyone.

“US officials who spoke on condition of anonymity said government specialists have exerted mounting pressure on the Bush administration to reply to the letter, seconding public urgings from commentators and former officials.”

“Government specialists?” Huh? What on earth is a “government specialist?” And why is the Globe always able to unearth such specialists when a Globe writer feels his view needs parroting? And why are these “government specialists” invariably never identified?

4) IT’S NOT MATT’S FAULT, PART II – The Opinion Journal site reviews the new book by Harvard Professor Harry Lewis on a Harvard education titled, “Excellence Without a Soul”:

Mr. Lewis finds American universities "soulless" and argues that they rarely speak as "proponents of high ideals for future American leaders." He bluntly states that Harvard "has lost, indeed willingly surrendered, its moral authority to shape the souls of its students. . . . Harvard articulates no ideals of what it means to be a good person."

And it costs way too much, also.

5) AND WHO ARE THOSE EXPERTS ANYWAY? – National Review’s Byron York has a must-read profile of the left’s favorite “terrorism expert,” Larry Johnson. Johnson became the left’s favorite terrorism expert not because of particular knowledge or Nostradamus like skills in forecasting the future. Indeed, quite the contrary – in a July 10, 2001 op-ed piece for the New York Times (who else?) Johnson chided his countrymen for their boobish ignorance:

Judging from news reports and the portrayal of villains in our popular entertainment, Americans are bedeviled by fantasies about terrorism. They seem to believe that terrorism is the greatest threat to the United States and that it is becoming more widespread and lethal. They are likely to think that the United States is the most popular target of terrorists. And they almost certainly have the impression that extremist Islamic groups cause most terrorism. None of these beliefs are based in fact.

Whoops! So why is Johnson the left’s favorite terror expert? Because he really dislikes the Bush administration. But here’s the punch-line – his government experience with terrorism and intelligence is remarkably slim. Although he’s routinely trotted out as an expert analyst, Johnson’s principal claim to expertise is the four years he spent working for the CIA between 1985 -1989. Studying Central America.

So why do the networks keep trotting him out as the possessor of some special knowledge? “He’s willing to say very bold things,” says a former intelligence official. “If you say things that are balanced and reasoned and calm, they’re less likely to ask you back than if you throw some bombs.”

6) AN AGE OF TERROR ROHRSCHACH TEST – As you’ve probably heard by now, some of the steel that collapsed in the Twin Towers has been incorporated into a U.S. Navy vessel, the USS New York. 24 tons of the destroyed buildings are going into The New York.

Some people will think this shows the indomitable will of the American people and is a fitting way to remember that day. And on the other hand, there are irritating European columnists. Martin Samuel of The Times of London writes, “The 2,800 souls that perished as an indirect result of an interventionist foreign policy that achieved the exact opposite of its stated aims can be honoured by a vessel built to ensure that this flawed cycle of violence continues. The USS New York will carry 360 soldiers and 700 combat-ready Marines. It puts to sea with the motto: ‘Never forget.’ Except they do. They always do.”

Aah, the cycle of violence. Which reminds me – Hamas and Fatah seem stuck in a cycle of violence, and yet it never seems to be referred to as such. One can only wonder why.

7) BUBBLING UP – On Fox News Sunday, Bill Kristol (a.k.a. The Boss) suggested that America commit more troops to Iraq to secure Baghdad and make a final push for victory. Juan Williams almost spit out his coffee. Today, May Boot who knows more than a thing or two about small wars and counter-insurgencies, makes precisely the same suggestion. Boot’s column is must reading. I’m not convinced that we actually need more troops to pacify Baghdad or, to be more precise, that we can’t get those additional troops from elsewhere in the Iraqi theatre.

Regardless of where they come from, putting more troops into Baghdad means putting more troops into harm’s way. If ever we needed political will for the fight in Iraq, now is the time.

8) AND FINALLY A WORD ABOUT AMERICAN IDOL – First off, I should come out and admit that this was the first season I had ever watched of American Idol. I loved it. Second, I must confess that I was distraught when Chris Daughtry was voted off the show. I hadn’t felt so ridiculous about being angry over nothing since I was actually saddened when Ricky “the Dragon” Steamboat defeated Macho Man Randy Savage in Wrestlemania III and the great Macho Man was pelted by garbage by the 90,000 Silverdome hooligans in attendance as he despondently left the squared circle.

Anyway, the New York Times has this interesting profile of Ryan Seacrest who is building an entertainment empire while showing a business acumen worthy of a Fortune 100 CEO.

And Taylor Hicks deserves to win tonight.

Responses? Thoughts? Please email them to me at soxblog@aol.com

NIX THOSE ILL-GOTTEN GAINS

2006-05-24T11:30:00.000-04:00

SPECIAL TO SOXBLOG BY CARL BERNARD

Just when I thought I had carved out a principled and well-reasoned position of breezy ambivalence about the Great Immigration Issue of Our Time, the Senate does its best impression of the Black Widows, the hapless motorcycle gang in the underappreciated classic film Any Which Way You Can, and awakens me from a cautious slumber.

I am referring to last week’s decision by the Senate to allow illegal immigrants the right to collect Social Security benefits relating to their past illegal employment. Proving himself to be the Steynway of all columnists once again, Mark Steyn has put the Senate’s action in proper perspective: “Well, I think that's the kind of moderate compromise ‘comprehensive immigration reform’ package all Americans can support, don't you? Some mean-spirited extremist House Republicans had proposed that illegal aliens should only receive 75 percent of the benefits to which they're illegally entitled for having broken the law. On the other hand, President Bush had proposed that illegal aliens should also be able to collect Social Security benefits for any work they'd done in Mexico (assuming, for the purposes of argument, there is any work to be done in Mexico).”

A point well made, but my concern with this provision is not just the fact that it is an idiotic idea, but relates more to the symbolic importance of this nation’s laws. Just for grins, this morning I ran a Westlaw (www.westlaw.com/) search relating to the terms “fraud” and “ill-gotten gains,” and, in about 30 seconds, came up with 346 court decisions that discuss the significance of this legal doctrine. Without putting too fine a point on it, the law generally does not allow somebody who cheats to be rewarded by their cheating. This principle, believe it or not, keeps people from having an incentive to cheat. This principle applies to churning stockbrokers, embezzling accountants, employees who compete with their employers, and any number of other possible wrongdoers who suffer, in the Senate’s eyes at least, from the legal defect of not being illegal aliens.

I happened to be in Little Rock last week, and toured the Central High School Museum, dedicated to the events of 1957 in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education. The Museum does an outstanding job of portraying the courage of nine black high-school teenagers who braved death threats, physical abuse, and national attention for the simple right to receive the same schooling as white teenagers. The Little Rock Nine did not want special treatment; they (merely) want to be treated equally. One cannot view that Central High School or tour its museum without having a deepened appreciation for the symbolic significance of the law. In the long run, our nation can live with laws that aim to treat everybody equally, even if the price is some tumult and chaos.

It is one thing to talk about a real compromise on the Great Immigration Issue of Our Time, but it is quite another to rub salt in the wound and confer illegal immigrants with benefits that American citizens would not even presume to think they are entitled to. The McCains and the Brownbacks ignore the symbolic significance of this issue at their peril.

Like our friends the Black Widows, the Senate is fast turning into a motorcycle gang that can’t shoot straight. Where is Philo Beddoe when you need him?

Responses? Thoughts? Please email them to me at soxblog@aol.com

SPANNING THE WEB - 5/23/2006

2006-05-23T18:46:00.000-04:00

1) MAKING SENSE OF THE WORLD, PART I: The Weekly Standard shoots and scores this week with a remarkable analysis of last week’s Ahmadinejad letter. It’s vital reading, and the winner of the first “read the whole thing prize” I’ve given out in a while.

It also brings up an interesting point. Few Americans have the vaguest conception of what we’re dealing with in Ahmadenijad and his fellow crackpots located in that part of the world. I’ve devised a little test, sort of along the lines of Jeff Foxworthy’s super-annoying “you know you’re a redneck shtick.”

If you don’t know the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite, you need to do some reading. If you don’t know what a dhimmi is, you need to do seem reading. If you don’t know how Khomenism transformed Shiism, you need to do some reading. If the Hidden Imam is a stranger to you, you need to do some reading. If you don’t know about the Koranic calls for Jihad, you need to some reading.

If you do know all of these things and you’re not gravely concerned or you think the Bush administration is the world’s biggest problem, you need to get some counseling.

Or a sabbatical from the New York Times.

2) UNDERSTANDING THE WORLD, PART II: My friend Andy Bostom, a.k.a Dr. Jihad, has an outstanding piece in the American Thinker in which he reproaches America’s Jewish leadership for insisting on analyzing Iran simply on a “how do does the situation in Iran compare to Nazi Germany?” basis. As Bostom points out, the history of Persia is unique to itself and Nazi Germany is an irrelevancy.

While entities like the American Jewish Congress rightly got their collective undies in a twist over last week’s speculated Iranian legislation that would require Jewsto wear identifying badges, the fact is that between 1580 and 1920, Iran had similar laws. The inapt comparison to Nazis omits the fact that other infidels like Christians and the Zoroastrians (who have really had a rough go of it with Islam the past 13 centuries) would also have humiliating dress codes, as they previously also had for centuries.

Bostom rightly chastises America’s Jewish leadership for heaving a sigh of relief because it doesn’t seem like Iranian Jews will have to wear badges just yet (although the planned annihilation of Israel remains on the table), while enjoying a blissful ignorance regarding Persian history. He concludes his article by directing five pointed questions to America’s leading Jewish organizations regarding their awareness of the uniqueness of the Iranian threat, saying “It is my fervent hope that I receive serious, informed responses to the five queries posed to the American Jewish Congress so as not to squander this ‘teachable moment.’”

As I said in an email to Andy, the only way America’s Jewish leaders will pay any attention to this fundamental matter is if Mel Gibson’s dad converts to Islam and becomes a prominent mullah.

3) A NOTE FROM THE REALITY BASED COMMUNITY – Scott Lehigh of the Boston Globe thinks John Kerry could be a serious contender for the throne in 2008. He likens his situation to that of Nixon’s in 1968. Lehigh is just a little off. Kerry’s chances are actually more comparable to Nixon’s in 2000 when Nixon had been dead for six years. Regardless, I’m sure this embarrassingly fawning effort on Lehigh’s part will get the Senator to return his phone calls for the foreseeable future.

4) ALSO FROM THE REALITY BASED COMMITTEE – The Daily Kos is doing one of its monthly straw polls and guess who has 68% of the vote. Al Gore! I believe this is the same Al Gore who ran such an inept campaign in 2000 that he was actually out-debated three times by the perennially tongue-tied George W. Bush, but maybe a new one has appeared on the scene while I wasn’t paying attention the last few days. Note to Scott Lehigh: Checking in with a robust 0% of the vote is John Kerry.

5) UNDERSTANDING THE WORLD, PART III: Everyone else is linking to this piece from Opinion Journal, and with good cause. I’m officially joining the party. The piece debunks the prime myths regarding the Iraq war, and does so effectively. It is must reading for your youthful relative who keeps showing up at family functions shrieking “Bush lied, people died” and then launches into an irrelevant and inappropriate defense of Oval Office fellatio performed by zaftig but eager interns.

The fact is, though, the half-truths and untruths told about the Iraq war have hardened into fact because they have been repeated so often and so forcefully. Such is the way with lies, especially when they’re not refuted in a timely manner

6) SPEAKING OF YOUNG FIREBRANDS – Take a look at these radical Boston College students who protested Condi Rice’s commencement address at B.C. yesterday. Apparently the spirit of the 60’s remains alive and well on our campuses.

Wait a minute! Look again – all those people are old. They’re actually faculty members. The Boston Globe’s report on the speech implies that the only people so classless as to turn their back on Rice as she spoke were members of the professoriate. The students, in spite of four years of apparent attempted mind-warping, behaved in a dignified manner.

7) DIXIE CHICKS UPDATE – They’re on the cover of Time Magazine, the New York Times had a fawning article on them on Sunday, and their politics remain as juvenile as ever. But, that being said, I’ll buy their new album – they’re a great band, and that obnoxious lead singer has a voice for the ages.

I’ve been able to tolerate the silly and half-informed (to be generous) politics of John Mellencamp, Bruce Springsteen and Steve Earle for the past twenty years; I can stomach pretty much anything the Chicks can dish out. So long as they’re not issuing fatwas, I’ll keep buying their albums.

If you restrict your artistic purchases to respectably conservative artists, then you’ll be playing a lot of Brooks & Dunn on your I-Pod. I take my politics pretty seriously, but there are some sacrifices that I’m just not willing to make.

8) LISTEN TO THE MAN – Unlike me, Ralph Peters detests Donald Rumsfeld. Also unlike me, he bears little goodwill to the Bush administration.

Continuing our lack of similarities, Peters also has been to Iraq. So when he says that we’re winning there and accomplishing some pretty amazing stuff, it warrants some attention:

Plenty remains to be done. We must see our Iraq mission through to the end - unless the Iraqis fail themselves. We must restore integrity and common sense to our foreign policy by ceasing to pretend that the Saudis are our friends and by living up to our rhetoric about support for democracy. And we need to take a very hard line on China's currency manipulation and cheating on trade.

Still, any fair-minded review of the last several years of American engagement abroad would conclude that, despite painful mistakes, we've changed the world for the better. The results have been imperfect, as such results always will be. But the bewildering sense of gloom and doom fostered my many in the media is as unjustified as it is corrosive.

Our global report card right now? A for effort. B for results. C for consistency. D for media integrity. And F for domestic political responsibility.

9) NOW ON A PERSONAL NOTE – I’m sorry for the relatively light posting the past couple of weeks. The transition from Florida to Boston is always a really busy time, and it left less time for Soxblog than I would have liked.

It’s really a shame. With the Sox spanking the Yankees and so many of you putting way too much emphasis on immigration (please, no letters on the matter, or at least no new letters that just repeat what you’ve already said), I’ve had a lot I wanted to say. Oh well.

Anyway, things around here should be back to normal, so let the good times roll.

Responses? Thoughts? Please email them to me at soxblog@aol.com

NEWSFLASH!! THE NYT DECEIVES!

2006-05-21T19:51:00.000-04:00

As careful readers may have noticed, the past seven days was the first-ever “Piss Off the Readers” week at Soxblog. Not satisfied with irritating only 80% of you by admitting a lack of passion over the immigration issue, I then proceeded to annoy the remainder of you by writing a piece on Bill O’Reilly that turned out to be insufficiently worshipful for the big guy’s fans

Trust me, all of this was inadvertent. Truly, I aim to please. With that in mind, please read on as I shift to more hospitable terrain – mocking the New York Times and, yes, openly questioning its editorial board’s patriotism. I have every hope that by the time I’m finished with this piece, all will be forgiven.

On Saturday, one Katherine Ellison wrote an op-ed piece for the Times on the encroaching menace that is global warming. Ellison, the author of “The Mommy Brain,” apparently has special standing to weigh in on environmental concerns being a mother and all. After all, those of us without children really don’t care whether this creaking planet can hold out for more than another generation or two.

In her piece, Ellison lamented the sad fact that “at last count, China, India and the United States were building a total of 850 new coal-fired power plants.” As every liberal “knows”, this is awful because coal wreaks more havoc on the environment than a Kennedy does on an innocent automobile.

Anyway, Ellison’s assertion about the collective harm being wrought by America, India and China got me to wondering what portion of the putative damage each country is responsible for. Ellison’s article doesn’t address the issue.

A brief Google search unearthed the column that I’m reasonably sure Ellison based her research on. It’s very timely – it appeared in the Christian Science Monitor a scant 17 months ago.

The 850 is a rounded off figure; the fact that Ellison and The Monitor use the same rounded off figure as well as the same careless (and irrelevant) lumping together of China, India and America is why I figure this CSM column was her source. If she used a more recent source, I’ll be glad to partially apologize.

Anyway, of the some 850 new-coal fired power plants being planned (as of December 2004), guess how many were to be America’s doing? 72. India was planning 213 such plants, while China was chipping in a mere 562, or roughly 8 times the amount contemplated by the U.S. according to the ancient CSM story.

I UNDERSTAND IT WOULD UPSET the world view of some people if the U.S. were not the root of all global evils. But since Ellison presumably read the Christian Science Monitor story, her reportage of it is disingenuous at best.

What the hell – let’s call a spade a spade. It’s a lie. Ellison’s clear insinuation is that the U.S., India and China bear comparable measures of culpability. This simply isn’t the case and, being a pro writer and all, she doubtlessly knew what she was doing with her careless wording. After all, if I told a blind date who knew little about baseball that Barry Bonds and I have combined for 715 career homeruns, while technically true the obvious purpose of such a comment would be to deceive the lass (and maybe get her to come home with me).

But let us not limit our wrath to Ellison. Ellison was just doing what dishonest pundits do – distorting facts to better fit a pre-existing worldview. She obviously doesn’t get a pass, but it does make one wonder where the Times’ editors were.

When I read the column, my first thought was to wonder how many of the plants were American, but not for a reason that the all-knowing Ellison would respect, presumably. I think it’s a scandal how America has under-invested in coal and nuclear power while our oil dependency funds our enemies in the Middle East, but I figured if we were building 1/3 of 850 coal plants we’ve been a lot more active than I had figured and that would be a good thing.

But the Times’ editors, if we give them the benefit of the doubt, never thought to ponder which nations were building how many. Why? Is it believable that they read the stuff that goes into their paper so credulously and with such a complete absence of common sense inquiry?

This Ellison op-ed piece shows the Times’ editors at their dishonest worst. The assertion that America is the root of some evil is so obviously true, no further questions need be asked.

Responses? Thoughts? Please email them to me at soxblog@aol.com

CASTOR OIL WRONG Rx

2006-05-18T15:35:00.000-04:00

WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT NEVILLE CHAMBERLAIN? I’d wager not much. You probably don’t have a clue as to where he stood on gay marriage, illegal immigration, tax policy, or pork barrel spending. Let’s face it – there’s even a possibility then when it came to such matters, Neville Chamberlain was the most inspired leader in the history of the British Empire.

Of course, none of us would be aware of such accomplishments by Chamberlain because he booted the big one. He thought he could have peace with Hitler. He was wrong. Millions perished as a result of this grievous error. Even if his leadership was the picture of perfection in every other regard, Neville Chamberlain remains the personification of a failed leader because he was entirely mistaken on the biggest issue of his day.

MY VIRTUAL MENTOR, the great and good Hugh Hewitt, has invited me to participate in a little on-line dust-up over whether rock-ribbed Republicans should make their callow and disappointing leadership pay at the ballot box come November. From what I gather, Mark Tapscott has been the most eloquent voice in defense of the notion that the bums should be thrown out, especially if they’re Republican bums.

Skillfully mixing realpolitik with idealism, Tapscott concludes that Republican losses in 2006 will likely be offset by gains in 2008. But wait, there’s more! The Republicans who are swept in by 2008’s tidal wave of pro-conservative/anti-moonbat sentiment will be more reliable conservatives than the pathetic Chafee-types that currently stalk the halls of the Capitol forever seeking out ways to stick their collective thumb into conservative America’s collective eye.

National Review’s Jim Geraghty ably represents the opposition to Tapscott’s theory. At the risk of over-simplifying Geraghty’s thesis, Jim suggests that conservatives acting to throw the Republican bums out would be the political equivalent of biting their noses off to spite their face.

FOR ME, THE ANALYSIS GOES TO basic principles. Namely, what is the biggest issue of the day?

The biggest issue of the day from history’s viewpoint will undoubtedly be civilization’s struggle with radical Islam. We are at war with Radical Islam. If you don’t believe that, let me offer a less controversial assertion – Radical Islam is at war with us.

How grave is the threat that the Jihadis pose? Existential. In other words, if Ahmadenijad has his way, America will cease to exist in any recognizable form. Of course, Ahmadenijad is just the most prominent dangerously deranged wacko of the week. Bin Laden remains deadly; so too do hundreds of thousands of Salafist Saudis. So does a fifth column already in America.

The goal of our foes is not to be a murderous nuisance. The goal is not to get Israel to fall back to pre-1967 borders. The goal is global conquest.

What I admire about this administration is it understands the threat, and it wants to fight it. If John Kerry were president, you just know he’d be looking for a way to jawbone the issue out to 2013 while applying global tests that would give him permission not to fight. If Al Gore were president, we’d still be looking for the root causes of 9/11 and consulting Bill Maher on where the “Why They Hate Us” pavilion should be located at Ground Zero.

But here’s what I suspect about Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney – the three of them are trying to figure out a way to strike Iran right now in a manner that will destroy the enemy and be tolerated by the American body politic. After all, we’re going to have to deal with this menace eventually. Better to do it now before the mullahs have nuclear weapons at their disposal. If I didn’t believe that Bush and company were willing and ready to fight, I would be indifferent to November’s results as well.

In some ways, I sympathize with Tapscott’s formulation. It would be tough to shed any tears if Lincoln Chafee were sent packing. Hell, I’ll go all in – it would be tough to weep if the Republican Party got as a reward for its incompetent twelve year stewardship of the House the demotion to minority party that it has so completely earned.

But unfortunately, we don’t have time for party purification at the moment. History’s moving too fast. We can’t take two years off for John Conyers to mount impeachment proceedings while the liberal blogosphere does multiple victory laps.

Just think of all the important committees Ted Kennedy would be chairman of. And consider two more terrifying words – Speaker Pelosi. Does that sound like a solid wartime government to you?

Our enemies will not be taking the next two years off – of that you can be sure. Friends, we live in consequential times. To paraphrase a great man, you go to war with the Party you have, not the Party you wish you had.

Responses? Thoughts? Please email them to me at soxblog@aol.com

MODEST IN VICTORY

2006-05-17T20:29:00.000-04:00

Blogger Chris Bowers, perhaps the brightest light in the left wing blogosphere, has won elective office. Not particularly high elective office, but elective office nonetheless. In Pennsylvania’s primaries yesterday, the voice of the people was heard – Chris Bowers is now officially a member of the Pennsylvania Democratic State Committee.

Showing the much-heralded modesty that the blogosphere is justly famous for, Bowers refuses to make much of his triumph. He settles for merely stating the obvious:

“I will now serve on the Pennsylvania Democratic State Committee. The city, the state, and the nation will change as a result. I promise everyone that.”

See, you benighted nimrods out there thought the president, congress and the Supreme Court have been running things. And yet, the Pennsylvania State Democratic Committee has been pulling the strings all along.

Seems kind of obvious now, doesn’t it?

Responses? Thoughts? Please email them to me at soxblog@aol.com

THE TAO OF TALKING POINTS

2006-05-17T19:27:00.000-04:00

You want to know my favorite part of the coverage of the President’s speech Monday evening? Come on – you’re just feigning indifference. You know and I know that now that I’ve raised the subject, the curiosity is nearly killing you.

As is my wont, I was watching the speech on Fox News. After the president had concluded, Britt Hume and the boys batted around the speech a little bit. And then Hume mused (and I’m quoting from memory here), “But what do the folks think about the speech? What are the folks thinking?” And with that he proceeded to query Bill O’Reilly, who Hume reminded us with a wicked glint in his eyes, is all-knowing in the ways of the folks.

If you’ve never watched O’Reilly before, O’Reilly refers to “the folks” as a shorthand for good American types who embody our nation’s virtue. O’Reilly is both the self appointed defender and spokesman for the mystical “folks.”

What I found thrilling about the exchange between Hume and O’Reilly is that they represent the two opposite polls of Fox news. Hume brings the network credibility; without the gravitas oozing Hume, Fox might well be all that its critics (who more often than not have hardly watched the channel) claim it to be.

Hume elevates the level of the discourse on Fox. There’s no doubt that he’s a conservative, but he’s also a newsman. Without the credibility that Hume (and a handful of others at Fox) provides, O’Reilly’s shtick never would have been able to take off.

So what exactly is O’Reilly’s shtick? Basically, the big guy has guests on who allow him to express his views. If the segment regards what should be done with child molesters, the guests’ presence merely serves as an aid by which O’Reilly can most effectively communicate his opinion on the matter.

It’s easy to underestimate O’Reilly given his occasional dips into blowhard territory, but consider this: He’s been doing his show for nearly a decade always walking a tightrope between speaking for the folks and falling into an abyss of self-parody. Sometimes he stumbles, but rarely. And he knows enough to keep you guessing. There are moments when you watch O’Reilly and can’t believe what an intelligent and fair conversation he’s just led.

Of course such times are the exception. O’Reilly’s true genius, and the reason why he’s so popular, is he speaks horse-sense that 80% of the public will agree with and yet no one else of his prominence is saying. Like when he said gay-pride parades that feature over the top flamboyance (to put it nicely) were inappropriate public displays – no one else with his TV audience says such things, and yet when he accompanies the assertion with the footage of the offending parade, the folks, indeed, almost unanimously support his position.

To some extent it’s an act – Bill’s in show business and he knows it. But it’s a really good act. If you’re a liberal and you’ve never watched his show, I guarantee you’ll be stunned at how many things he says that you agree with.

O’Reilly’s also a little hammy. All the talk of “the folks” and things like “Talking Points” which in O’Reilly-speak is a three syllable, two word substitute for “I”, are done a little tongue in cheek. And that’s what made it so funny to see Hume tweak O’Reilly on the matter.

When the camera swung to O’Reilly after Hume inquired what “the folks” might be making of the president’s speech, O’Reilly wasn’t amused but he wasn’t angry. He knows that speaking for the folks is his self chosen profession.

And he’s damn good at it.

Responses? Thoughts? Please email them to me at soxblog@aol.com

GOODBYE TO ALL THAT?

2006-05-17T18:44:00.000-04:00

SPECIAL TO SOXBLOG BY CARL BERNARD

Well, it turns out that a plane actually did crash into the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.

For some who may have missed it, certain factions within the Loony Left have been pushing the theory that the Pentagon was never really hit by a plane, but instead was hit by a “super-duper secret missile” or some other concoction from the D.C. equivalent of the Grassy Knoll. Just last week The Huffington Post gave prominent billing to a post about an Internet movie “Loose Change” on this subject [which, by the way, at least one blog has done an admirable job of debunking].

The implication of the movie, those who have pushed the movie, and those who have provided a haven for those who have pushed the movie is, of course, that 9/11 was a government conspiracy used to consolidate government power, enrich Halliburton, provide a pretext for nabbing our library cards, etc. As breathless HuffPo correspondent Mr. Jason Pollack stated:

“Another thing that has been hotly contested but virtually proven in this film is that the Pentagon was not hit by a regular-sized passenger plane. What did hit the Pentagon then? Was it a missile? I ask you to watch this [Loose Change] and make your own conclusions.”

Oops. In fairness to Mr. Pollack and his conspiracy theory, I guess he didn’t say “actually” proven, he said “virtually” proven.

Perhaps in another era, this sort of thing would not deserve attention of any kind, but there is a broader point here that speaks to the tenor of political discourse in this country, and in particular to those who have made a fetish of conspiracy theories, and especially those theories so dearly held by the Left.

In October 2002, Ron Rosenbaum wrote an article with the title “Goodbye, Left Wing Idiocy,” which is still one of the very best post 9/11 essays that have been written, and without question deserves a “read the whole” thing mention not just for today, but for this decade. In his essay, Rosenbaum renounces a number of the left wing idiocies that most of us are by now quite familiar with, and he gives them a good swift kick with the quote from Robert Graves’ Goodbye To All That:

“So, for my part, goodbye to all that. Goodbye to a culture of blindness that tolerates, as part of “peace marches,” women wearing suicide-bomber belts as bikinis…”

“Goodbye to the brilliant thinkers of the Left who believe it’s the very height of wit to make fun of George W. Bush’s intelligence—thereby establishing, of course, how very, very smart they are…”

“Goodbye to paralysis by moral equivalence…”

Rosenbaum then concludes his essay with probably the Left’s greatest blindspot, i.e., its unwillingness to adjust its worldview in the face of facts:

Goodbye to people who have demonstrated that what terror means to them is the terror of ever having to admit they were wrong, the terror of allowing the hideous facts of history to impinge upon their insulated ideology.

Goodbye to all those who have evidently adopted as their own, a version of the simpering motto of the movie Love Story. Remember “Love means never having to say you’re sorry”?

I would like to think that somebody at HuffPo will have the stones to disown Mr. Pollack’s anthem to “Loose Change,” or maybe even “Loose Change” itself, but I am afraid the Ron Rosenbaums of this world are far and few between. The hideous facts demonstrated by the Pentagon’s video will not likely impinge on anybody’s ideology in those quarters. There will be no Goodbyes, and there will certainly be no Goodbyes To All That.

As Rosenbaum concluded his essay, today “Left means never having to say you’re sorry[.]”

DEAN ADDS: Note how Carl has made himself at home here, feeling welcome to not only dole out a "read the whole thing" prize but a super-duper-special "read the whole thing" prize. I might consider enforcing some discipline on the young upstart, but the fact is he has recommended one of the finest essays of recent years. Read the whole thing indeed.

By the way, it's been a travel day for me, but I will try to return this evening with some thoughts on Bill O'Reilly. No promises, but I will give it my level best.

Responses? Thoughts? Please email them to me at soxblog@aol.com

PARTISAN(S)

2006-05-16T15:31:00.000-04:00

SPECIAL TO SOXBLOG BY CARL BERNARD

When they poured across the border
I was cautioned to surrender,
this I could not do;
I took my gun and vanished.
I have changed my name so often,
I've lost my wife and children
but I have many friends,
and some of them are with me.

Leonard Cohen, Partisan

Sometimes politics imitates Leonard Cohen. Having long ago given up on the jitters that accompany watching a live speech by President Bush, I decided to review the text of the speech, which can be found here.

I came away with the impression that this is a topic in which a little Cohen-esque incoherence is not only unavoidable, but perhaps even desirable.

There are, after all, two conflicting values woven into the immigration issue, and nobody has yet proposed a solution that does full justice to these values. First, there is the understandable goal of securing the border, which nobody in their right mind would dream of neglecting after 9/11, and which by the way, makes the following quote from Bush’s speech rather troubling: “we do not yet have full control of the border, and I am determined to change that.” [Hmmm…4+ years after 9/11, one might legitimately ask why not, Mr. President?] If illegals continue to “pour across the border” are we not in effect surrendering? This we obviously cannot do. There is enough blame to go around about the status quo, but the status quo must change.

The second value tied up on this issue is the recognition that most who have come to this country illegally are decent people, and we as a society have benefited from the labor of these decent people. Some literally have lost their wife and children to come to this country, and, when juxtaposed against the fact that we can barely produce 50% of our populace to vote in a Presidential election, one must ask whether America could ever withstand the scandal of deporting (mass or otherwise) such people. I am aware, for instance, of a person who literally swam the Rio Grande River to get to this country. She works hard as a maid, all day long. I would dare say this person has done more to prove her bona fides as an American than most of the rest of us. If we are going to “round up” such people out of sacred respect for the law, then let’s start rounding up all of the waitresses who haven’t paid taxes on their tips, and every carpenter who has ever done weekend work and been paid under the table.

I am not a fan of fences, especially those that get straddled, but it is a fact that any solution to the illegal immigration problem in this country is going to require a compromise. A compromise regarding legitimate but competing values is not something to be ashamed of, and the Bush is to be commended for his efforts in this direction last night. The President is not expecting anybody’s values to vanish. He’s just asking the Partisans to put down their guns.

This seems like a fair request to me.

Responses? Thoughts? Please email them to me at soxblog@aol.com

SPANNING THE WEB - 5/16/2006

2006-05-16T10:49:00.000-04:00

1) SO WHAT ABOUT THE SPEECH? – I liked it. I thought it was Bush at his best, one of those times where his basic decency was completely apparent.

When it comes to immigration, you should know something - I’m less passionate and less informed about immigration than I am about a lot of other issues. It just isn’t an issue that pushes my buttons. For those of you who are passionate about it, sorry. For any Minutemen in the audience, double-sorry.

What I saw last night seemed like a common sense approach to what’s become a big problem. For what it’s worth, the immigration conundrum is yet another issue that the neglect of previous administrations plopped in the current administration’s lap. It’s not like the border was impregnable before Bush took office.

The first step seems to secure the border. That’s a national security issue, but like protecting commercial airliners from shoulder launched missiles, it’s a national security issue that seems to have oddly failed to quicken the administration’s pulse. But better late than never.

What I liked most about the speech was the president’s good-hearted approach to our current 12 million or so illegal immigrants. Although I don’t generally give the subject much thought, it did have occasion to intrude on my consciousness yesterday afternoon. As we close Soxblog Manor South for the summer, we’re doing a busload of yard work. For those of you city folk, please know that things like transplanting a fully grown gardenia in the hot May Florida sun is hard work.

Or at least it seemed like hard work. I didn’t do it. I had a small army of Spanish speaking gardeners do it. Naturally given the political debate of the day, I couldn’t help but wonder if some of the guys toiling away in the heat yesterday possessed documentation that was on the wrong side of legitimate.

But regardless, they embody the America spirit. They didn’t come here to loaf; they didn’t come here to make demands of the U.S. government. They came here to find a better life and are willing to work their asses off to make it happen.

For a long time, American immigration policy has been the equivalent of our speed limits. While the speed limit sign says 55 MPH, everyone knows you’re not going to get a ticket for driving 56. Hell, everyone knows you’re not really in the danger zone unless you get above 65 MPH.

When the written laws don’t jibe with the enforcement they receive, the situation invites a certain amount of skullduggery. Stepping back from this situation has to by necessity be done compassionately and sensibly. Ranting at the border or going Tancredo in the House may satisfy some primal urge, but it’s not productive.

I thought the president found a sensible middle yesterday. The easiest thing would have been for him to take a hard line and spew some fiery rhetoric. This president doesn’t roll that way. Even if the public isn’t grateful at the moment, history will be.

Now can we get back to planning a war with Iran?

2) DID SOMEONE MENTION IRAN? Bret Stephens has a characteristically insightful piece on the Journal’s site today about the kind of more muscular diplomacy the U.S. should employ in dealing with the nutocracy over there. Stephens’ ideas are compelling, and the approaches he urges would doubtlessly be more effective than the current plan of subbing out the problem to our weak-kneed and callow European allies. But then again, how could they possibly be less effective?

While Stephens’ suggestions are worth a crack, the sad fact remains that Ahmadenijad is spoiling for a fight. Part of the problem in dealing with unhinged mental cases is that when they’re spoiling for a fight, no amount of sweet talk can make them have a change of heart on the matter. The storm continues to gather, and the chances of dissipating it are slim.

3) SEVERAL OF YOU HAVE SENT THIS TO ME…and with good cause. One Steve Almond, an “adjunct professor of English” at Boston College is resigning his post because Boston College had the audacity to invite Condoleezza Rice to speak at B.C.’s commencement ceremonies.

I don’t have much to add to the obvious idiocy of Adjunct Professor Almond’s stance, but there are a few things worth mentioning. “Adjunct Professor” in the university setting invariably means part time, usually very part time. In other words, in spite of the suggestions of courage implicit in Adjunct Professor Almond’s resignation, I suspect that the blow to his wallet will be considerably less than ferocious.

Adjunct Professor Almond’s letter insists that his stance is not motivated by politics or antipathy to the Iraq war. Rather, his “concern is more fundamental. Simply put, Rice is a liar.” He is quite agitated that B.C. “would entrust to Rice the role of moral exemplar…It is the content of one's character that matters here.” Given his taste, for heightened morality, one can be quite certain that if the moral pygmy Bill Clinton were invited in Rice’s stead, Almond would doubtlessly have written a similar screed. After all, this isn’t political.

Lastly, I found the following passage particularly edifying: “I would also urge (my students) to exercise their own First Amendment rights at her speech.” In other words, he urges his young charges to shout the Secretary of State down. And so thorough is his ignorance, he thinks they have a First Amendment to do so.

I understand that in the typical college, Adjunct Professor is a title as prestigious as (and less important than) assistant custodian. But nevertheless, if Almond is at all typical of the kind of man molding B.C.’s young minds, then Boston College definitely has some explaining to do.

4) THEY’RE OUT THERE – I know people who really liked “The West Wing.” I saw it twice, found the writing flabby and predictable. In my humble opinion, it was the state of the art for a late 90’s tele-drama – in other words, in my admittedly limited sample, it just wasn’t very good. I didn’t stick around long enough to get turned off by the liberal agitprop that apparently so dominated the show.

But I did find this nugget from the series finale funny. The first lady asked the President why Inauguration Day was in January; he responded that it was the will of the founding fathers. I would hazard a bet that at least a good portion of you know that Inaugural Day was in March until well into the 20th century.

Okay, writing a TV show isn’t the same as being a presidential scholar at Columbia. But given the show’s pretensions, isn’t it a rather embarrassing commentary that no one associated with the show recognized this glaring error?

5) DEMOCRATS’ INTRAMURAL FEUD CONTINUES – In the adoring eyes of the liberal blogs, Howard Dean can do no wrong. If Dean mugged an old woman and stole her purse, a bunch of Kos diarists would assume the woman was a Republican and pay tribute to Dean’s passion.

Dean’s commitment to running a 50 state campaign, however, has arched some eyebrows amongst the Democrats’ consulting class. After all, when a party like the Democrats has scarce resources, it wouldn’t seem to make much sense to expend those scarce resources building in infrastructure in places like Mississippi where liberalism is far from adored.

Paul Begala underscored the misguided nature of this policy, and did so with colorful if juvenile imagery. Decrying Dean’s spendthrift ways with hard-earned Democratic greenbacks, Begala piquantly concluded, “What he has spent it on, apparently, is just hiring a bunch of staff people to wander around Utah and Mississippi and pick their nose."

As day inevitably follows night, Begala’s comment has provoked a furious stream of commentary on the Daily Kos. Utah’s Democratic Party chief was clearly wounded, stating, “The ‘pick their nose’ comment is hurtful to Democrats who are truly on the frontline. An apology to my hardworking staff is in order.”

Let it be noted – they are not picking their noses. Contemplating their navels, maybe. But definitely not picking their noses.

6) THE MAN IS MAD – Bob Kuttner is angry because Hilary Clinton is allowing Rupert Murdoch to thrown a fund-raiser for her. Because Murdoch is right wing and Clinton is left wing, Kuttner simply cannot comprehend that the two might be able to share a room without spewing bile at one another.

Although Kuttner does most of his work with dead trees, this may be something of a non-sequitir, but I think his kind of attitude has become a lot more common since the advent of the blogosphere. I think the lay-person would be surprised by the amount of comity that usually exists between even the most determined political foes. That’s because most people, when you get right down to it, would rather converse amicably than spew bile at one another.

But in the blogs, where there’s no personal interaction, it’s easy to be on the non-stop offensive. It’s easy to be relentlessly hostile. But when you’re looking your opponent in the eyes, it becomes a lot harder to maintain such an angry edge.

In working for the Standard, I’ve interviewed everyone from Governors to a Nazi to James Carville to editors for the Boston Globe. In all that time, I’ve only had one unpleasant conversation and it wasn’t with the Nazi. (It was with a well-known mainstream media journalist in case you’re wondering.) In human interactions, civility is the order of the day.

The fact that Hilary Clinton would break bread with Rupert Murdoch after all his publications have said about her (including the Standard, I’m proud to say!) shocks Kuttner. That tells you a lot about him.

7) FOR WHATEVER REASON…there was a lot of talk about organ transplantation on the nation’s op-ed pages the last few days. Sally Satel, who just received a new kidney, boldly approaches the idea that people ought to be able to sell their organs (kidneys, lung-lobes, etc.) to help offset the gap between the need for organs and the availability. As Satel points out, 18 people die a day awaiting a new organ.

I have some skin in this game, seeing as I’m waiting for an organ or two myself, so I think I have the standing to say this is a simply wretched idea. Look, I love the free market, but if rich people were to begin to buy poor people’s organs, would that not be a clear sign of capitalism running amok? One can only imagine the fun John “Two Americas” Edwards and like-minded demagogues would have with such an arrangement. Oh, and that’s not even considering the poor people in need of organs who couldn’t afford to purchase them.

8) SORRY FOR THE LIGHT BLOGGING the last few days. Sometimes life intrudes. But it’s not like I left you completely high and dry. On Friday, I had a story in the Standard about a Harvard Business School professor who thinks we’re on the verge of a shooting Civil War. If you haven’t already, check it out

Responses? Thoughts? Please email them to me at soxblog@aol.com

BARRY'S GOT ONE FAN

2006-05-11T15:59:00.000-04:00

How is a fair person to react to the fact that “Reverend” Jesse Jackson has adopted Barry Bonds as one his pet causes? I think the only equitable response is to point out what a sad and pathetic figure Jesse Jackson has become. Take the following quote, which even by Jesse’s standards is incredibly idiotic:

''There are a lot of agendas here on this whole Barry watch. Hank had none of the perspective, or should I say the political baggage, of Barry in terms of how people perceive Barry to be. He faced the death threats. Somehow the magic mark of 714 had a lot of stuff in our culture all wrapped up in it. When he broke it, it was at least as dramatic a moment, at least as threatening as Jackie [Robinson] breaking in in 1947."

If I were Barry, I’d send Jesse packing and see if Al Sharpton is available.

Responses? Thoughts? Please email them to me at soxblog@aol.com

SPANNING THE WEB - 5/11/2006

2006-05-11T12:19:00.000-04:00

1) THAT’S SORT OF WHAT I SAID – How does the CIA get most of its human intelligence (or HUMINT as the New York Times editorial board refers to it when it’s really trying to butch up)? If you said by training high level James Bond types to stealthily steal the secrets of foreign powers, I hereby banish you to the Daily Kos for a week where you will be responsible for reading not only the front page but all the “recommended diaries.”

In reality, the CIA gets most of its intelligence by putting a handful of CIA agents in a country’s embassy and then having those guys wait for the phone to ring or the doorbell to chime. For real. If you don’t believe me, check out this Reul Marc Gerecht column that I’m linking to. It has ever been thus. If you believe otherwise, you’ve read too many Robert Ludlum novels.

The hole in this strategy is that in some countries like Iran today or Iraq of yesteryear, we don’t have embassies. In such places, we have virtually no intelligence gathering ability, at least as far as HUMINT is concerned. We can still gather intelligence with gadgets like satellites and bugs and other neat stuff, but having an intrepid James Bond-type sleuth around Iran to learn the secrets of the mullahs’ nuclear program is a juvenile fantasy.

Is it not a reflection of the pampered narcissism of some people that they find nothing odd in demanding perfection in an area that they don’t understand and where perfection is in fact impossible?

2) INTERESTING STUFF FROM PEGGY – Ms. Noonan today writes on how the administration and congress have lost their way. Some indeed have lost the way; others never knew the way in the first place.

If you’re a John Kerry-type politician, you ran for office because that’s what you were programmed to do since you were 11. If anyone thinks John Kerry, had he been born in Montana, would be a liberal Democrat, you just don’t know John Kerry.

Both parties are full of people like John Kerry, although to be fair, Kerry represents a certain evolutionary perfection of a politician fueled purely by ambition, with no other concerns like ideology ever polluting matters. But there are lots of elected officials in Washington who are there because they’ve done well in their chosen field of professional office-seeking. It should come as little surprise when such people prove ideologically unmoored.

Peggy represents the Fall of Republicans from Grace as a great morality tale, because when all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Peggy’s hammer is her own moral superiority and purity which she uses to bludgeon every nail in sight. That’s why she is often so gratingly preachy.

While she’s not completely wrong, the truth is actually far more banal. Many of our politicians were profoundly flawed people when they came to office. You want better office-holders, elect better people.

3) THE KENNEDYS ARE ASKING YOU…just how gullible are you? Okay, here’s the Kennedy account of things. Patrick Kennedy was on medication for gastroenteritis. He also took Ambien to help him fall asleep. Full disclosure: I love Ambien. Other than Mrs. Soxblog clubbing me over the head with a hammer (which I frequently deserve), it’s the most reliable way for me to get a good night’s sleep.

Patches’ Ambien and heartburn medicine had a toxic effect and combined to make him act like your typical drunken Kennedy. He then tooled around the Capitol at 3:00 a.m. without his lights on, almost hit a police cruiser, and concluded his journey by crashing into a jersey barrier. The Kennedy party line is that he did this purely because of the medication. And it’s true, some people have had bizarre reactions to the same meds; one guy began undressing on an airplane thinking he was the Incredible Hulk. (He wasn’t.)

But, purely coincidentally, Patches realized the day he crashed into the barrier that he has a completely unrelated substance abuse problem. Mind you, this substance abuse problem had nothing to do with the car crash – the Ambien and the heartburn medication were the culprits for that.

The Kennedys want you to believe all of this. So again – how gullible are you?

4) MUGGED BY REALITY – Richard Cohen of the Washington Post wrote a column that said Stephen Colbert wasn’t funny at the White House Correspondents dinner. This enraged the left wing blogosphere which sent him thousands of vulgar and vituperative emails to maturely express its disagreement with his sentiments. Cohen then wrote another column suggesting that he was shocked – shocked – at the nature of these emails and seemed profoundly wounded. He even went so far as to characterize his angry correspondents as a “digital lynch mob,” which is almost a Sullivan-esque phrase given the way it mixes self-pity with grandiose over-statement. Georgia10, the Daily Kos’ resident shopaholic, characterized Cohen’s second column eloquently with one word: “Yawn.”

The fact that the liberal blogosphere has given voice to the left wing’s inner child is not news. The further fact that the little brat now won’t shut up is also not news. The final fact that a ranking liberal poobah like Cohen seems shocked by these developments is perhaps newsworthy. Under what rock has he been hiding the past three years?

Not for nothing, I just feel like adding that as the Weekly Standard’s occasional beat-man on the Daily Kos, I am no stranger to hostile emails myself. I have perfected a response to these missives that is guaranteed to not only further anger the writer, but also provides me with hours of amusement. It has the added benefit of making the Moonbat in question soon disappear.

I have shared this secret with a few other bloggers who have also had great mirth with it. If you’re a blogger besieged by angry email, drop me a line. I’ll change your life.

5) CONSULTANT SPEAK FOR DUMMIES – Whenever the Boston Globe tries to write about the real world where actual commerce gets done, hilarity inevitably ensues. Take this passage from a story a couple of days ago: “While as yet little understood, micro-inequalities are an important challenge for companies seeking to diversify to become more innovative or better reflect their client base. Small wrongs help breed a hostile atmosphere and derail teamwork.”

What’s a micro-inequality? To fully understand the concept, you’ll have to have a consultant visit your company who charges $600 an hour. But it’s a bargain. After all, you wouldn’t want your teamwork derailed, would you?

6) HOW LOW CAN HE GO? The latest New York Times poll has President Bush’s approval rating at a Carter-esque (or Truman-esque, if you prefer the rose colored view) of 31%. I don’t put much stock in this figure; Rasmussen still has W. hovering around 40% and since Rasmussen has been a lot righter a lot more often than the Times, I’m more inclined to give Scottie’s robots the benefit of the doubt.

What is interesting in the Times’ poll is the fact that only 51% of conservatives approve of the president. That sounds about right. My inbox hasn’t exactly been flooded with tributes to the POTUS recently.

As far as how this will play out in November, a lot of people are trying to figure out how to relight the fires of the right. Bill O’Reilly wants to hermetically seal the border (fine with me); others want more tax cuts (also fine with me).

But it is my unshakable belief that events will motivate the right – events in the Middle East probably. And if that doesn’t work, surely the left will ride to our rescue and begin talking about impeachment and convictions and surrendering in Iraq. The Republicans’ best GOTV concept is to make sure they keep running against Democrats.

7) ANOTHER BOOK RECOMMENDATION – I read Mark Bowden’s lengthy account of the Iranian hostage crisis, “Guests of the Ayatollah” the last few days. It is truly spectacular and of course wonderfully timely. I’ll probably be back later in the day with a full length post on it. In the meantime, click over to Amazon and order the book. You’ll thank me.

8) TOUGH TO ARGUE WITH – Democratic blogger the Bull Moose says that “The left wing netroots (are) an infantile disorder.” Love to see what his inbox looks like today.

9) PROUD OF MY TOWN – If designer Philippe Starck thought he was going to breeze into the Hub of the Universe and dazzle us with his overdone designs and get us to lay out millions for condos so opulent they would make the Sun King blush, he had another thing coming. Evidence of what Starck was trying to peddle in the hub is nearby; he should have known our Yankee flintiness wouldn’t allow us to purchase an apartment with such a water closet. Even Boston’s surfeit of Eurotrash have apparently said “nón” to the units. According to the Globe, the condos are moving slower than Ted Kennedy at closing time.

Yet another reason to be proud of Boston, still the City of Champions.

Responses? Thoughts? Please email them to me at soxblog@aol.com

INTELLIGENCE DESIGN

2006-05-09T12:04:00.000-04:00

For kicks and giggles, let’s take a brief look at the recent history of our intelligence community.

Thanks to the efforts of certain well intentioned uber-moralists who once ran our government, we reached a national consensus on the need to debilitate our spooking abilities in the 1970’s. While the morality of this decision can be debated, its wisdom cannot. It was stupid.

This stupidity came back to bite us hard on 9/11. On that day, we came to realize not only our limitations regarding human intelligence (or HUMINT as those in the know prefer to call it), but that the analysts analyzing things for our intelligence agencies couldn’t analyze their way out of a proverbial paper bag.

As the CIA has progressively relaxed its standards for going public in order to better prosecute its war against the Bush administration, the reason for the Agency’s inability to insightfully deconstruct even the most basic fact patterns has become apparent. The CIA had and has in its employ an inordinate number of high ranking dolts. When you have guys like Ray McGovern and Michael Scheuer holding important positions, men who believe that all would be well if Israel would just have the common decency to disappear from the map, it is a sign that your Agency has hit the intellectual pits.

So woeful was the state of our intelligence agencies, the entire United States government basically threw up its hands and outsourced the problem to the former governor of New Jersey. After all, who would know more about building an intelligence agency from scratch than the former governor of New Jersey, especially when he’s being aided by wise and experienced espionage hands like Richard ben Veniste?

While the preceding may sound facetious, it accurately reflects reality. No politician had the guts to stand in the way of the all-knowing 9/11 Commission, especially after the media adopted any recommendation from the Commission as if it were wisdom handed down from Mount Ararat. So even if the Commission’s recommendation/decree would give birth to a bloated bureaucracy when everyone seemed to agree that what was most necessary was a greater facility for nimbleness, the political class rushed to embrace the 9/11 Commission’s Revelations.

The only lingering question regarding the folly of the 9/11 Commission is why the Bush Administration rolled over and played dead for this collection of former pols and current hacks (Lee Hamilton excepted). After all, the administration has never been known for doing things just to have an easy news cycle. Quite the contrary, this administration seems to go out of its way to do unpopular things.

Only now, the answer to the mystery has become clear. The introduction of an intelligence czar was the most expeditious way of finally putting the CIA out of its misery.

Putting the CIA out of its misery would prove to be a two-step process. The first step, still ongoing, is clearing the agency of its elements who consider themselves unanswerable to any authority other than their own none-too-powerful insights. Yes, the left has had a series of belly laughs the past few years as the agency has waged a pointy-headed Jihad at the White House, but if allowed to continue to exist in its current form, someday it will be the Democrats’ ox that gets gored.

The next step is to bring the Agency under capable adult supervision. This means the Agency must act in concert with the rest of the American government, not in opposition to it. In a sane world, the appointment of General Michael Hayden to run the CIA, an appointment which promises greater cooperation between the Pentagon, the Agency, and the Director of National Intelligence, would be universally hailed as a wise move. But certain parties have grown quite attached to the roguish nature of the 21st century CIA. Anything that promises to make the Agency a loyal member of the government when that government is being run by George W. Bush will displease the Bush bashers out there.

And then there’s the final critique about Hayden’s appointment, that he’s just not a true believer when it comes to HUMINT like the New York Times editorial board is. There’s this childish conceit out there that if we just put a little more elbow grease to it, we’ll be able to penetrate the highest ranks of our adversaries’ governments at will. A little more HUMINT, this fanciful thinking goes, and the Iranian nuclear program will no longer be shrouded in mystery.

This views betrays such a shocking ignorance of history, you’d have to be an editor for the New York Times to buy it. Even when the CIA was at its James Bond best, we still had very limited insight into the Soviet Union. Careful students of history will recall that the crumbling of the Soviet Union caught our intelligence agencies as much by surprise as did 9/11. So, for that matter, did the USSR’s foray into Afghanistan. The sad fact is, gathering intelligence on closed societies is pretty damn difficult. The difficulty is even greater when those closed societies refuse to communicate in English or to even have the common decency to look like us.

The fear with Hayden is that he’ll be too into gadgets and not enough into planting intrepid spies into the Mullah-ocracy. Alas, the two aren’t mutually exclusive, although one avenue is intrinsically more exciting while the more boring one is intrinsically more effective.

Is Michael Hayden the right guy for the CIA? Only time will tell. But we can all take some small measure of hope in the fact that the bar has been set very low.

Responses? Thoughts? Please email them to me at soxblog@aol.com

I READ 'EM SO YOU DON'T HAVE TO

2006-05-08T18:43:00.000-04:00

Chris Bowers of the MyDD site is continuing his perverse quest to make me look ridiculous for once calling him the brightest light in the entire left wing blogosphere. In a recent post, Bowers tells the tale of journeying to Connecticut to help the Ned Lamont campaign. Shortly after their arrival, Bowers and his girlfriend make the acquaintance of a Palestinian émigré named John. Guess what? Said Palestinian émigré named John doesn’t much care for Joe Lieberman.

Here’s the punchline: Bowers takes great succor from this encounter. He concludes his story by writing, “I shook John's hand, told him, ‘assalaam alaikum,’ and went inside the hotel. John was the first person I met in my trip, and even then for only ten minutes. If he is in any way representative of the rest of the state, this campaign is going to take off, big time.”

So true. If Connecticut is indeed composed of Palestinian émigrés, than Lieberman faces a decidedly uphill struggle.

Responses? Thoughts? Please email them to me at soxblog@aol.com

THAYER! THAYER! THAYER!

2006-05-08T14:09:00.000-04:00

As I’ve said a few times, the most talented contributor to the Weekly Standard’s on-line edition, present company included, is James Thayer. Today brings an embarrassment of Thayer-related riches.

First, in regards to the item I posted earlier today regarding the Boeing 787 Dreamliner (is it 2008 yet?), a reader sent me a link to this Thayer column on the same subject from December. As is so often the case, an independent journalist not only scooped the New York Times by several months, but wrote about the matter with far more skill than any of the turgid prose producers at the Grey Lady would ever be capable of. Seriously, if you’re into writing wonkery, read both stories and see how Thayer’s tells a clean and compelling narrative while the Times’ bounces all over the place while never producing a discernible theme or any trace of narrative thrust.

But wait – there’s more!. In the virtual pages of today’s Daily Standard, Thayer strikes again with a piece on Star Wars. Long story short, we may have to wait another couple of years to enjoy the splendor of the 787 Dreamliner, but we can enjoy the splendor or knocking a North Korean nuke out of the sky now.

I expect the Times to have an exhaustive report on the matter in, say, September.

Responses? Thoughts? Please email them to me at soxblog@aol.com

HUNDRED DOLLAR BILL

2006-05-08T13:05:00.000-04:00

SPECIAL TO SOXBLOG BY CARL BERNARD

There are individuals whose political savvy I respect that believe Bill “Hundred Dollar Bill” Frist is a formidable presence in the Republican Party. They even think he could become the party’s nominee in 2008. I have never understood such thinking, and thankfully, will never have to, given Hundred Dollar Bill’s missteps of the last political fortnight.

The first problem with HDB is the unfortunate Breck-girl haircut, for which--even when parted on the right--there can be no legitimate excuse. Give HDB a mole on his upper lip and he would be the spitting image of John “Let Them Get Up and Walk” Edwards. Perhaps more troubling, HDB reminds me of every senior class president I have ever met: yes, he uses the right terms and phrases, he has perfected the look of the “genuinely concerned,” and the cheerleaders seem to like him, but he cares way too much what others think. I just can’t see him get the nomination, let alone being elected.

Which brings me to the matter of gas bribes. By now, we all are aware of HDB’s notion that the best way to respond to the market price for gasoline having approached the market price for bottled water is to grant everybody a C-note, proving once again that when the going gets rough, some Republicans cannot help but don their WWJCD bracelets and ask, What Would Jimmy Carter Do? To his credit, Majority Leader Boehner—no stranger to that helmet-head look himself-- sent HDB’s idea into a well deserved oblivion:

“Asked about the previous week's talk of a $100 rebate to motorists to make up for $3-a-gallon gas, he said his constituents found it "insulting." The idea was "stupid," he said, not caring that it had come from the mouth of his Senate counterpart, Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee.”

Good for you, Majority Leader Boehner. Happily, you have saved us from the other HDB’s political miscue, and in the process, one hopes, you have spared us a presidential candidate.

Now please, go celebrate by getting yourself a real haircut.

DEAN BARNETT ADDS: Perhaps Carl is being a bit unfair here. There are lots of Democratic hair-don’ts that warrant discussion. Carl Levin’s comb-over and Joe Biden’s whatever-the-hell-it-is stand out as national disgraces.

But that caveat aside, can anyone deny the fundamental validity of Carl’s point? In regards to Frist and other Republicans, perhaps John Stewart put it best: They and their hair stand as cautionary tales of what can happen if you won’t allow gay men to touch your hair.

Responses? Thoughts? Please email them to me at soxblog@aol.com

SPANNING THE WEB - 5/8/2006

2006-05-08T09:39:00.000-04:00

CUTE DOG, LESS CUTE OWNER

1) THIS JUST IN…The Iranian President, that kooky Ahmadenijad, has sent a letter to President Bush suggesting “new solutions” for the two squabbling countries. This is the first such high-level communication between the U.S. and Iran since President Carter harshly punished the Iranians for taking over our embassy by cutting off diplomatic ties.

Just between us, let’s be honest. As conservatives, we’ve frequently had cause to be disappointed by George W. Bush’s presidency. Long time readers here know that several months ago, I called it (way ahead of the rest of the media, mind you) that Bush’s approval numbers were in the crapper not because he was losing the American middle but because America’s conservatives were increasingly puzzled (to put it nicely) by his administration.

But when push comes to shove, we’re happy we have him on that wall. We need him on that wall. More than any other modern politician, we trust him to not let Iran become a nuclear power. We know this; so does Iran.

2) MORE HARD-HITTING JOURNALISM FROM THE GLOBE – At a time when controversy once again swirls around Ted Kennedy (and that’s a long way to swirl!) over his son’s antics and the Senator’s refusal to allow Cape Cod wind farms to disturb the views from the Hyannis Port Kennedy Family Compound (more on that below), the Globe’s Washington correspondent Susan Milligan sat down for an extended interview with the Senator about his…dog! Talk about topical! It’s not like the interview didn’t reveal anything important. I found the following exchange quite illuminating:

What made you decide to write a children's book?

Do you want to see a trick?

Sure.

Splash, Susan would like to see the ball, if you would show it to her. Can you show me the ball? Will you show me the ball? Splash. Please. SPLASH. Will you show me the ball? Come on, come on, show me the ball. Thank you. You know I want that ball, and you know I want that ball now. SPLASH. Please. Now you know I want that ball, and you're not going to give the ball to me? Come on, come on. Look. Show it to ME. Where are you going with that ball? Why are you teasing me? You know I want that ball more than anything in the world. Well, I guess you won't let me see it.

Also noteworthy was the Globe reporter’s efforts, in the time honored Globe tradition, to carry water for the Kennedy family. Milligan informed the readers in a parenthetical that the regrettably named Splash was in fact “named by a previous owner.”

3) ABOUT THOSE CAPE COD WIND FARMS – Jeff Jacoby, the Globe’s lonely voice of reason, informs us about a plan to erect a wind farm off the coast of Cape Cod that would actually provide for 75% of the Cape’s and the Island’s energy needs. Kennedy poison pilled the wind farm in a Coast Guard bill, lest the turbines a mile off shore sully the view from his family’s Cape Cod Compound.

The fact that Kennedy is playing by his own set of rules that ignore conventional morality and common sense is fairly unremarkable. What I find astonishing is this wind harnessing technology. Surely we could set up one of those wind farms in the well of the Senate that would provide enough energy for the entire east coast. So long, foreign oil dependency!

4) I NEARLY FELL OUT OF MY CHAIR…when I heard Republican Pete Hoekstra on Fox News Sunday say that he was going to have major problems with the President’s nominee to run the CIA because the nominee’s a military man and thus his appointment would show the Pentagon making major in-roads in the continuing turf battle between the CIA and the non-rogue elements of the government. A few meta points about the intelligence debate:

- People, especially liberal people, childishly insist that we should know everything that’s going on Iran, just like we should have known everything that was going on in Iraq. Whether we’re at war with them or not, the Iranians are at war with us and have been since 1979. Thus, one would presume that they guard their classified secrets rather carefully. This constant harping that we “should” know what’s going on there is sort of like saying we should have known about Operation Barbarossa before the Nazis launched it.

- Since the CIA understandably doesn’t get good intelligence, what does it do? Two things: It performs generally speaking crappy analysis on the intelligence it does get, and it performs very effective military operations such as those that the agency performed in Afghanistan. Frankly, we can live without the former (we can rely on left wing blogs for bad analysis if we ever feel the need for such a thing) and there’s no logical reason why para-military operations should not be overseen by the Pentagon.

- Lastly, the CIA has become a rogue agency. It would be unthinkable and frightening to contemplate the military actively working to undermine a sitting president as the CIA has done for the past four years. But that’s exactly what we have with the CIA. The liberals love it because it’s Bush’s ox that is now being gored, but in the unlikely event that the Democrats ever win a future presidential election, I think their fondness for the Ray McGoverns and Michael Scheuers of the world will quickly evaporate.

In other words, the time for a radical restructuring/demolition of the CIA has come. Bush and Rumsfeld have two and a half years to get it done. Don’t bet against them.

5) IN LIGHTER NEWS – The New York Times Magazine yesterday had a profile of the brilliant character actor, Rip Torn. Torn is a huge talent, and his hilarious dead-on embodiment of a talk-show producer in “The Larry Sanders Show” created one of the most memorable figures in sitcom history.

The story also relives the ongoing controversy between Torn and the decidedly nutty Dennis Hopper. For the longest time, Hopper alleged that Torn had once pulled a knife on him when in fact Hopper had pulled a knife on Torn, which the former Marine Torn quickly relieved him of. Partly because of Hooper’s allegations, Torn developed the reputation as a crazy person who Hollywood-types feared working with.

When Hooper repeated the slander on a talk show in the 1990’s, Torn finally sued Hopper and ultimately collected a cool $1 million.

6) MY MAIN MAN…Jonathan V. Last had an excellent piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer yesterday where he looked ahead to the 2006 elections. As JVL points out, the Democrats enjoy a big lead at the moment, but the “Democrats have shown time and again that they can blow a lead like nobody's business.”

One additional point about the upcoming elections and the frequent comparison that people make between this year and 1994. The Republicans won so big in 1994 because they nationalized the election. That’s not an option open to the Democrats this year because, as unappealing as George W. Bush might be, the Democratic face opposing him will be even less attractive. If the Democrats nationalize the election, then their face will be that of a bloated Ted Kennedy, a screaming Howard Dean or a shrill Nancy Pelosi. None of those prospects can make a sane Democrat happy.

7) THE FUTURE IS NOW – Or almost now, anyway. As soon as 2008, we’ll all be able to do our air travel in a Boeing 787 “Dreamliner”. Friends, we live in an age of miracles. Who would have thought even five years ago that I would be able to fly from Boston to West Palm Beach while ranting at Lou Dobbs and shouting “questions” to Alex Trebek’s “answers?” Now Boeing is promising I’ll be able to do all of this with increased leg room, more head room and enormous windows. My goodness – will you look at that cabin! I can’t wait to fly!

For what it’s worth, the cabin will be pressurized to an altitude of 6,000 feet as opposed to the normal 8,000 feet in current jet-liners. This will make a big difference for those of us with breathing issues.

8) I NEED WORK…Also in the NYT Magazine yesterday, there was an interview with Cesar Millan, the so-called dog whisperer. Although I’ve never seen his show, I’m told his ability to relate to our canine friends is downright spooky. I learned something from yesterday’s column – as a dog owner, I’ve done just about everything wrong. I’ve sent all the wrong messages to my lovable pooch and have created a monster. (I take scant consolation that Senator Kennedy seems to be a dreadful dog-owner as well.)

But it’s not too late for this old dog to learn new tricks. Look out Stinky – there’s a new sheriff in town.

Responses? Thoughts? Please email them to me at soxblog@aol.com

BEING PATCHES, PART II

2006-05-07T09:16:00.000-04:00

Here’s some hard-hitting journalism from the Boston Globe describing one of Patrick Kennedy’s numerous brushes with infamy:

Meanwhile, the congressman suffered another mishap. The same year, Kennedy allegedly caused $28,000 in damage to a charter yacht off the coast of Connecticut, and the Coast Guard was summoned to collect a female companion who was on the boat and who had reportedly argued with Kennedy. His office at the time said the episode was overblown.

Can we be straight about something? Trashing a yacht is not “suffering a mishap.” Having your house broken into is suffering a mishap. Clumsily stepping off a curb and spraining your ankle is suffering a mishap. Being followed home from Au Bar by a bunch of hussies, one of whom later accuses you of wandering the house semi-nude in spite of being an elderly Senator, is suffering a mishap.

But getting liquored up and trashing your rented yacht is not suffering a mishap. Such behavior is the antics of a cretin who has grown chronically attached to the notion that he will never be held accountable for his conduct. It is not a random blow struck by fate. Rather, it was Kennedy being himself – an arrogant, out-of-control screw-up.

The entire Globe coverage of Patches is similarly hard-hitting. In one particularly riotous passage, the Globe asks Massachusetts Congressman William Delahunt his views of Kennedy’s collision with the jersey barrier. Delahunt opines thusly: “I don't believe he was drinking [when Kennedy crashed his car into a barrier early Thursday morning] but the memory lapse is a warning signal, and he's decided to do something about it.”

Those of you who aren’t from Massachusetts certainly wouldn’t recognize it from the above quotation, but before becoming Patches’ colleague in the House, Delahunt was a prosecutor renowned for his ferocity. One wonders if presented with the same fact pattern as Kennedy’s Thursday collision during his prosecuting days (slightly altered in that the car in the hypothetical fact pattern wasn’t being barely operated by someone named Kennedy), whether District Attorney Delahunt would have been inclined to take such a charitable view of the matter.

HERE’S THE IRONY OF THIS SITUATION, at least from my perspective. I have a fair amount of pity for Patrick Kennedy. It can’t have been easy being the son of an alcoholic mother and a father whose various pathologies are too numerous to even begin listing. Add to that then fact that Patches is the third generation of a family that defines moral conduct rather differently than the rest of us do.

In other words, it’s no wonder he’s a mess. My problem with Patches is that he should have had the good sense to stay out of the family business. A guy like this, so lacking in any obvious strengths and so abundantly stocked with obvious weaknesses, should not be putting himself forward as a leader. Now as a 38 year old man, he should at long last realize that a public life and a leadership role just aren’t for him.

Yes, the Globe will still carry water for him if that’s what he wants. Sympathetic Kennedy acolytes like Delahunt will willingly make total asses of themselves in order to ingratiate themselves with Papa Ted. If Patches wants to remain in Congress, he should be able to do so for as long as he wishes, so long as he doesn’t “suffer a mishap” even worse than Chappaquiddick.

But at long last, let us live to see a Kennedy take responsibility for his actions. If escaping his family’s shadow is something that really interests Patrick, this is his chance to accomplish something that to date has eluded his far more famous relations.

Responses? Thoughts? Please email them to me at soxblog@aol.com

SPANNING THE WEB - 5/5/2006

2006-05-05T14:03:00.000-04:00

1) BEING PATCHES – Let me be clear – I believe in an America where one is presumed innocent until proven guilty. But we must courageously face facts, even unpleasant ones. Patrick Kennedy’s excursion in the wee hours of Thursday morning sure doesn’t look very good. As James Taranto mordantly observed a couple of days ago in regards to Kennedy’s car accident of last month, a Kennedy car crash that doesn’t involve either the paralysis or death of a blonde hardly seems worth mentioning.

In the spirit of goodwill to all men, I was going to make no mention of Patches’ car being struck by a jersey barrier yesterday. But then Patches issued a statement where he blamed the wreck on a toxic combination of prescription drugs for his gastroenteritis that made him act in a manner oddly reminiscent of a drunken Kennedy. Needless to say, this tack forced my hand.

As was the case with Patrick’s April car crash, there’s nothing really new to say. The rules that apply to the rest of America’s political class (let alone the rest of America) do not apply to the Kennedys. So the fact that the line cops who made the bust after the jersey barrier blasted into the impaired Patches’ Mustang were soon ushered off the matter by their superiors who then gave Patches a ride home worthy of the Capitol’s finest limo service fails to shock.

The matter is pathetic, sure. But it’s nothing new. For more on the history of Patches, including striking himself with a hammer, trashing a yacht, and his youthful predilection for cocaine, check out this Weekly Standard article.

2) I WOULD BE REMISS…if I left the topic of Patrick Kennedy without first acknowledging Sean Hannity’s contribution to the coverage of Patches’ press release last night. Hannity expressed concern that Patches is in the grip of a terrible disease (I don’t think he was talking about his gastroenteritis) and the Capitol Police Force only enabled him by giving him a ride home and not giving him a breathalyzer test. According to Hannity, this is the worst thing anyone could have done for a person in the throes of such a disease. Again, I don’t think Hannity was talking about the gastroenteritis.

To Hannity’s credit, he made these statements with a glint in his eye that I’m pretty sure suggested we weren’t supposed to take them seriously.

3) A NOTE FROM THE REALITY-BASED COMMUNITY – Yesterday we spoke of the Quinnipiac poll that had Joe Lieberman leading his primary opponent Ned Lamont by over 40 points. Today, Markos Moulitsas headlines a post with the encouraging headline, “Lamont within Striking Distance.” The cause for this lifting of spirits? A Rasmussen poll that shows Lamont only trails by 20 points. Of course, Rasmussen has never polled in Connecticut, and Quinnipiac pretty much lives there. But regardless, twenty points doesn’t seem like “striking distance” anyway.

4) ANOTHER REASON TO LOVE RUMMY – I know Donald Rumsfeld isn’t particularly popular with most of you out there. I can only hope that a steady diet of Soxblog will help bring you around.

Anyway, when Rumsfeld was being hectored yesterday by yet another embittered former CIA analyst (by the way, I love the way the left lionizes CIA analysts even though it seems like as a class they’re correct less often than a stuck clock), security was going about its business in ushering the heckling former spook from the room. Rumsfeld insisted the man be allowed to stay and the two of them continued sparring.

When I attended that forum last month of the former military men who serve as cable analysts, one thing they all agreed on was that it’s good we have a Secretary of Defense who’s more embodied by a fighting spirit than the habitual political timidity that so often holds sway at the Pentagon. Rumsfeld’s a fighter, which is a good thing since we’re at war with countries like Iran, even if most of America doesn’t realize it.

5) GOD IS GREAT – But Allah is damn good himself. Allah the blogger that is. When I met the Ace of Spades last week, I told the other bloggers present that Ace is the most talented man in the blogosphere, so long as the Allah-Pundit doesn’t return to blogging.

All present agreed how much we missed Allah. Thank heavens, our prayers have been answered, and Allah is part of this new Michelle Malkin venture “Hot Air” and is once again sharing his wit and wisdom with his followers. Yesterday, Allah had a grand time with Howard Dean’s comment that the difference between Democrats and Republicans is that Democrats consider it their mission to make Jews comfortable living in America.

I don’t want to ruin all the fun. Follow the link. It’s today’s winner of the read the whole thing prize.

6) THAT WILL SHOW THEM! - At the Moussaoui sentencing yesterday, the judge cruelly tossed some T.S. Eliot at the Jihadist lunatic, crowing that contrary to Moussaoui’s wishes he will “die with a whimper.” I guess in Judge Brinkema’s view, the T.S. in this situation could stand for “tough shit.”

I do fear, however, that even our most butch poetry will fail to impress the Islamic fundamentalists with whom we’re at war. A first class hanging after a perfunctory military tribunal might have made more of an impression.

7) LISTEN TO DAN HENNINGER – Have I ever mentioned that Dan Henninger is the country’s best columnist, non-Krauthammer division? Not surprisingly, Henninger recognizes the Moussaoui trial for the national disgrace that it was:

Defenders of Moussaoui's life sentence say he will "rot in prison." Perhaps in a better world Zacarias Moussaoui would share a cell with Hannibal Lecter. But if our moral betters aren't going to let Saddam's torturers rot in Abu Ghraib, if they aren't going to let the CIA's most important al Qaeda captives rot in "secret" foreign prisons, they certainly aren't going to let Moussaoui rot in Florence, Colo. He will be treated more than well.

Not to mention the Moussaoui trial itself. We arrive at the end of these interminable trial circuses of procedural delay and then claim "the system works" and "justice" has been done. No, it has done damage to the normal idea of justice. He saw the game early on and made a mockery of it.

8) WHEN AN INSULT WAS AN INSULT – The Wall Street Journal has an editorial this morning where it suggests that the Senate is questioning President Bush’s manhood by sending yet another pork-laden spending bill to his desk. The president has yet to veto a bill during his tenure; the Journal is daring Bush to finally man-up, implying that a failure to do so will suggest a lack of cajones, as one might say in the president’s native Texas.

This editorial reminded me of a great slap-down Alexander Hamilton once delivered to Thomas Jefferson. During the Revolution, Hamilton was renowned for a surfeit of physical courage; Jefferson, on the other hand, was famous for an ignominious flight he undertook to escape the British.

During the 1790’s, Hamilton sparred over foreign policy with Jefferson who was a notorious Francophile. At one point, Hamilton said that Jefferson’s foreign policy betrayed “a womanish attachment to France and a womanish resentment to Great Britain.”

It was truly a golden age of rhetoric.

Responses? Thoughts? Please email them to me at soxblog@aol.com

"ANSWER" ISN'T PRETTY

2006-05-05T11:45:00.000-04:00

SPECIAL TO SOXBLOG BY CARL BERNARD

I suspect I may be like some readers of this blog as regards the Great Immigration Issue of Our Time that very mysteriously has been thrust upon us in the last month or two: I am regrettably agnostic on the topic.

A border wall sounds good, in theory, but I can’t shake that reverse “Shawshank” feel I have about it, with people tunneling their way to America, Mexican sand running down their pantlegs, etc. The deportation of 12 million people, well, that sounds bad in practice, notwithstanding that unfortunate little decision in Korematsu v. United States of America. And, with apologies to renowned immigration experts such as Sean Hannity, if there are crowds of unemployed American citizens trying their level but unsuccessful best to find employment in our nation’s laundry rooms and orchards, perhaps I have missed them; or perhaps, to paraphrase that famous song from Urban Cowboy, I have been looking for droves in all the wrong places.

Which is a long way of saying that reasonable minds can differ on the solution to the Great Immigration Issue of Our Time. Reasonable minds cannot differ, however, on the festering and underreported presence of that motley collection of woebegone hippies known as ANSWER., whose fingerprints are never far any “spontaneous” set of protests in this great land. If you aren’t acquainted with ANSWER, imagine the group as a reunion of all of the irritating True Believing Leftys you ever went to college or grad school with, assume they never “sold out” to become, say, journalists, and then give them a pooch, graying pony tail, and children even more irritating than their parents.

Lest there be any doubt about ANSWER’s role in this week’s protests, I refer you here, here, and right from the horse’s mouth there is this: “The A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition, along with other pro-immigrant organizations, has been working hard to build May 1 and the overall immigrant right struggle. We've passed out over 150,000 flyers for May 1, gathered thousands of petition signatures demanding amnesty for all immigrants and held public street meetings all over Los Angeles to promote the movement. Join the struggle for full equality and justice today!”

That’s in Los Angeles, where the LA Times called the protests “peaceful, mostly joyous,” [link] and the New York Times could only bring itself to make oblique references to a “broader social tone” in the marches than merely immigration.” [ link]

Fans of Christopher Hitchens will recall that, not so long ago, he took out a fresh set of leather gloves and slapped the mainstream media across the face for ignoring the role of ANSWER in last year’s war protests, and they are at it again. As my old pal Hitch—did I mention that he just recently was over at my pad watching the big game with me, right before he faxed Vanity Fair his latest article?—described the ANSWER folks in Slate a few months back:

"International ANSWER,"[is] the group run by the "Worker's World" party and fronted by Ramsey Clark, which openly supports Kim Jong-il, Fidel Castro, Slobodan Milosevic, and the "resistance" in Afghanistan and Iraq, with Clark himself finding extra time to volunteer as attorney for the génocidaires in Rwanda. Quite a "wide range of progressive political objectives" indeed, if that's the sort of thing you like. However, a dip into any database could have furnished [a reporter] with well-researched and well-written articles by David Corn and Marc Cooper—to mention only two radical left journalists—who have exposed "International ANSWER" as a front for (depending on the day of the week) fascism, Stalinism, and jihadism.”

The legacy media types paid no mind to being Hitch-slapped, but the fact remains that the ANSWER folks aren’t merely a gang of misguided “youths” unwilling to shave their legs or chins. They’re unreconstructed Communists.

Now, am I claiming that the May Day marches should be written off merely because the ANSWER people invited themselves to the party? Obviously not. I am merely claiming that the media continues to demonstrate a peculiar lack of curiosity regarding ANSWER’s involvement in these demonstrations. If the John Birch Society, if it in fact still exists, was a major sponsor of immigration marches throughout the nation, does anybody doubt that this fact would be prominently mentioned in the media coverage of such events? Why do so many journalists insist on giving a free pass to a bunch of commie crackpots?

One could become depressed about things such as The Great Immigration Issue of Our Time, but I instead choose to find a silver lining, and silver linings can be found in the oddest of places. For instance, our intrepid Times journalist referenced above asked one of this week’s protestors whether he was throwing his weight behind the economic boycott as well as the protest. The protestor’s response: “I was thinking about not buying things, but then I needed to buy stuff,”said Alex Sanchez, a construction worker buying an avocado, chilies and beer.

That is just the kind of answer the ANSWER people would never understand. Practical, no nonsense and well reasoned; three food groups; one America.

Me and Hitch, we’d party with Senor Sanchez any day of the week.

Responses? Thoughts? Please email them to me at soxblog@aol.com

ANDREW VERSUS HOWARD

2006-05-04T16:58:00.000-04:00

So who do you root for in this one, the hysterical ninny or the mean-spirited politician? One thing’s clear – when Andrew Sullivan and Howard Dean go toe-to-toe, it’s a bit like Alien vs. Predator. There’s no obvious side to root for. I’ll let Andrew tell the story:

Last week, a long time Democratic activist, Paul Yandura, criticized the pusillanimous way in which the Democratic party takes gay money and then fails to exercize even minimal courage in standing up and defending gay equality and dignity. According to the Washington Blade, Howard Dean responded by firing Yandura's domestic partner, Donald Hitchcock, from his position as DNC gay outreach adviser. Paul and Donald are friends of mine, for the record. And Dean denies any connection between the two events. But I don't buy it. I don't trust Dean for a second. He's an angry, petty man, whose support for gay people has always been transparently opportunistic. Yandura's criticism of the Democrats is dead-on, especially with respect to the Clintons. He deserves support from gay Dems and Republicans in our shared struggle for civil equality and simple moral courage.

Fellow gay liberal blogger John Aravosis agrees, averring, “Howard Dean would never fire a straight woman because her husband had criticized the DNC. But somehow when it's a gay couple, Dean has no problem giving the appearance of taking revenge on an employee who has done nothing wrong.”

Oddly enough, I feel compelled to come to Dean’s defense. Dean is a mean-spirited cretin, and he extends his mean-spirited cretinous nature to all comers, be they gay, straight, bi-sexual, or virginal. I have every confidence that if given the opportunity, Dean would be every bit as vindictive and petty towards a straight couple.

Responses? Thoughts? Please email them to me at soxblog@aol.com

SANTORUM WATCH

2006-05-04T14:05:00.000-04:00

Remember, you’ve been hearing it here first: Someway, somehow, Rick Santorum will find a way to win his re-election race. Don’t ask me about the specifics. Maybe it will be because on HBO, Tony Soprano referred to him as Senator Sanatorium and admiringly pointed to Santorum’s stance against human-on-dog sex. Maybe it will be because the dispirited Democratic base won’t show up for us his proudly pro-life opponent, Bob Casey Jr. Whatever the reason, Santorum will win.

The latest Pittsburgh Tribune poll confirms my hunch. Santorum once stood 30 points behind Casey Jr. Casey Jr.’s lead is now a slender 6 points.

In other news from the Tribune’s poll, Lynn Swann now trails Ed Rendell by 14 points. Naturally, I am quite torn by this race. Because of my long-standing feud with Steeler fans, it is hard for me to endorse Swann. Nonetheless, for the good of the Keystone State, I will put petty animosities aside and show the bigness of spirit that Boston sports fans are justly famous for. I hereby announce that I am pulling for Swann whole-heartedly.

Responses? Thoughts? Please email them to me at soxblog@aol.com

QUICK HIT - THE NEW YORK TIMES

2006-05-04T13:10:00.000-04:00

In today’s New York Times, the Grey Lady runs the following correction regarding its obituary on noted economist John Kenneth Galbraith:

An obituary on Monday and in late editions on Sunday about the economist and diplomat John Kenneth Galbraith referred incorrectly to his family at several points. He had a younger brother, William, who died several years ago; he was not an only son. A sister, Catherine Denholm, also died several years ago; she was not among his survivors. Mr. Galbraith had 10 grandchildren, not 6. Because of an editing error, the term for his wife's vocation was truncated in some copies. She is a linguist. A caption misstated the date of a photograph of the Galbraiths taken at their home in New Delhi while he was an ambassador. It was in 1956, not 1966.

Having gotten so much wrong, can we now even be certain that the Times got it right and Galbraith is indeed dead?

Responses? Thoughts? Please email them to me at soxblog@aol.com

SPANNING THE WEB - 5/4/2006

2006-05-04T09:57:00.000-04:00

1) BREAK ME A F*****G GIVE – I think we can all rejoice that a Virginia jury has postponed Zacharias Moussaoui’s date with a half dozen virgins. Moussaoui is happy not only because virgins tend not to know what they’re doing, but because he got to exclaim as he was led from the courtroom to begin a life of lifting weights, watching basic cable and recruiting Jihadis, “America, you lost.”

Indeed, America did lose, but it’s a defeat we can learn from. As I’ve said probably a thousand times, our courts (along with numerous other institutions) are in no shape to help us in an actual war. Thus, they have to be relegated to the sidelines. Yesterday proved the point.

I’m against capital punishment from our courts because they’re so larded with venal prosecutors and more benign forms of human failure, the ultimate sanction should be beyond their reach. But when it comes to war, inflicting capital punishment on our enemies is the very purpose of the endeavor. Now, if the courts had proven up to handling the Moussaoui trial competently, I would have revisited my prior commentary regarding their ability to play a role in the war against radical Islam. But the fact that this nutjob’s trial was a multi-month three ring circus that culminated in him correctly claiming victory means the courts have had their chance, and it is now time to move on. Military tribunals, here we come, but only in cases where summary execution on the battlefield proves infeasible.

One last thing. The jury found as a mitigating factor the harsh childhood that Moussaoui had to endure. So true – given such a rough childhood, what other choice could he have had but to plot to crash airliners into civilian centers? There’s you’re telling detail.

2) SPEAKING OF VENAL PROSECUTORS…The Wall Street Journal had a searing indictment yesterday of the practices of New York’s very own Torquemada, Eliot Spitzer. The story documents in some detail how Spitzer uses his office to forward his political career with only a coincidental concern for justice. As it becomes increasingly apparent that the Durham prosecutor played a similar game with the Duke lacrosse team, albeit in a far less adroit manner, this seems like a good week in general to reflect on what sorry shape our system of justice falls into when it rests in the hands of sorry men.

3) SPEAKING OF THE WALL STREET JOURNAL – The Journal’s online site is in the middle of a free sample period where you get to see what you’re missing at WSJ.com. I’ve told you many times you must subscribe to this site. There’s no better way for you to spend $5 a month. The Journal has the only newspaper site in the industry that makes money. Check it out – you’ll find there are many good reasons for that.

4) LETTERS, I GET LETTERS – Damn! I think I scared all the moonbats away by threatening to publish their rantings and by making an example of one of their rank and file. Not a single piece of leftist hate-mail came in yesterday. That hasn’t happened in months. There’s something about accountability that even the primitive mind of a Daily Kos community member seems able to comprehend.

I should also revisit in greater detail that essay by liberal blogger Chris Bowers that I mentioned yesterday. Bowers’ post came out of the Democrats’ increasingly bitter intramural spat between the party establishment and the nutroots.

Former Clinton spokesman Mike McCurry made the following observation regarding the nutroots: “You can see in blog commentary lots of great huffing and puffing that will get you to exactly 38% of the electorate. I don't see a lot of useful dialogue on how to get winning coalitions together that can win more than 50% in closely contested elections. As Juliet says, that is one reason we have gerrymandered safe districts and few contested races. It's also why we have lots of feel-good rants on the web and not enough dialogue about how to win close elections. I take this as a sign that I am getting old, but also that some newcomers in politics will need to get knocked around and lose a few before they understand that winning politics is not as easy as they think.”

In responding to McCurry’s comments, Bowers attempted to boil them down to their essence but instead set up a straw man. Bowers concluded that McCurry, by referring to the nutroots’ “rants” and “newcomer” status, was using coded language to suggest that the left wing blogosphere is full of “teenagers.”

That’s a reckless reading of McCurry’s comments, and perhaps says a lot more about Bowers’ own demons as an apparently semi-employed man in his 30’s than McCurry’s analysis. Anyway, I hate to break it to you kids, but the problem that political pros have with the nutroots isn’t your youth, perceived or actual. The problem that McCurry and other professional grade liberals like Joe Klein and James Carville have is that your actions are counter-productive. Spewing bile through your modems might be self-therapeutic, but McCurry is of the heretical view that it’s not good politics.

Given the nutroots’s record in actual elections, I’d say McCurry makes a pretty decent point and it would better behoove smart bloggers like Bowers to address the substance of such critiques rather than construct easily rebuttable straw men.

5) DID SOMEONE MENTION CHILDISH RANTING? - If you read the left wing blogs, you would have sworn that Joe Lieberman was hanging on by the skin of his teeth against his plucky primary challenger, Ned Lamont. Quite to the contrary, according to a Quinnipiac poll out this week, Lieberman enjoys a 65-19 lead over Lamont. It’s a nail-biter! In case you’re keeping score at home, this impending defeat will push the nutroots’ record to 0-21.

So with Lieberman likely to survive Lamont’s “challenge,” what’s an embittered left wing blogger to do? If you’re Markos Moulitsas, it’s time to search for a new windmill to tilt at. Markos is enraged (no news there) over the fact that Democratic House Whip Steney Hoyer had the audacity to criticize Stephen Colbert. Hoyer commented about Colbert’s routine, “I thought some of it was funny, but I think it got a little rough. He is the president of the United States, and he deserves some respect.”

Naturally, this ran afoul of the bloggers’ very mature demand for all-bile all the time. As Markos very maturely put it, “Colbert, like many of us, is crashing the gate in DC. The natives, not used to getting more than Jay Leno-style good-natured ribbing, don't like it when one of their own gets a serious dose of reality.”

Moulitsas is maturely threatening to find a primary challenger for Hoyer in ’08. Given the veritable hell that the nutroots have put Joe Lieberman through this election cycle, I’m sure Hoyer is terrified over the prospect.

6) I DO GET GOOD LETTERS – Lots of them. Yesterday I got one from a reader who works at Barnes & Noble and thus gets to see the various age-groups of lefties existing in one of their natural habitats. His letter was so funny, I was going to reprint it here, but then I saw he reprinted it on his own blog after deciding it was too good to waste on an audience of one (me!). A taste:

35 - 50: By far this is the group most responsible for reading books (anti-Bush) without buying them. They waver between feeling guilty for having missed the protests of the 60s and feeling guilty for being too old (or at least too locked into their 401k's) to just up and go all Martin Sheen on The Man. They sit in the store until closing time, reading or discussing philosophy with the weird and frankly oily professor who also spends all day at the store, every day, for longer than I've been there. In terms of pet fears, they're all over the map. They are rude and sarcastic in the cafe line, apparently preferring speaking truth to the underpaid kid making their mochachinos than speaking tuth to power.

This gets today’s “read the whole thing” prize. There is talent in the blogosphere after all!

7) FEMINISTS REJOICE – The “Massachusetts compensation experts Salary.com” did a study where they determined that a stay at home mom deserves over $134,000 a year for the services she provides. Duh! Didn’t we all know that live-in domestic helpers who do all the work of a stay at home mom make a median salary of $134,000?

Wait a minute – I just realized live in help doesn’t make a fraction of that. Hold everything! So far is the distance between the conclusions reached by the “compensation experts” at salary.com and reality, I fear there must be some error in their methodology.

Besides, as Clint Eastwood explained to Gene Hackman just before he blew Gene’s head off in “Unforgiven,” “Deserve’s got nothin’ to do with it.”

8) AND NOW A WORD ABOUT THE WAR – This article in Front Page Magazine addresses the likely counter-strike that Iran will have its proxies at Hezbollah unleash on America once we bury their nuclear program. While I think attacking the American homeland would be a grave strategic error on Iran’s part, Ahmanejidad does not strike me as a strategic wiz.

While a little dry, this is very important reading.

Responses? Thoughts? Please email them to me at soxblog@aol.com

SERENITY NOW

2006-05-03T16:03:00.000-04:00

I think I should clear this up, so as to avoid any confusion. As many of you know, I read all the emails that I receive and respond to the vast majority of them. If you’ve sent me an email and I didn’t respond, it was probably one of those occasions when I had fallen hopelessly behind on going through the mail and just couldn’t respond to the mass that still awaited my perusal. As I’ve said many times, and this feeling only grows stronger as the audience here grows larger, getting your emails and engaging in virtual dialogues is probably my favorite thing about doing this blog, and definitely my favorite thing about doing this blog compared to the other kinds of writing that I pursue. In other words, what follows is not aimed at the vast majority of you.

In addition to the mostly thoughtful emails that I get, I also predictably receive some tin-foiled hat correspondence from a fair amount of weirdos. Until now, I’ve considered having to trudge through such missives a burden without benefit, but no more! From now on, when anyone sends me a stupid email, I reserve the right to publish the contents of that stupid email. The goal here isn’t to embarrass anyone – I’ll publish the silliness without attribution. But when I get something that is a blatant example of nincompoopery, I hereby claim said nincompoopery as mine to do with as I please.

WHY BRING THIS UP NOW? Because I got an email regarding my Stephen Colbert essay from yesterday that was just so damn funny but also so pregnant with meaning, I just had to share it. The writer thought that I had underestimated Colbert’s contribution to the public discourse. In order to be simultaneously fair yet maximally cruel, I shall reprint the missive in its entirety:

You said: "Colbert definitely bombed. As a comic, presumably he was supposed to make the audience laugh. This did not happen."

Like everyone else in the room, you thought that the people present were the audience, and because they didn't react positively, Colbert "flopped."

Those in attendance were not the audience. America was the audience, and the attendees were the JOKE. Once you understand that, the rest falls into place.

In three days nearly 15,000 blogs have commented on Colbert, and the mail is running 100-1 in favor of what he said. His name shot to the top of the most searched for terms. The video of the event has already set records for the number of times it has been downloaded, all in the face of media silence.

Sure, he's "just a comedian," but so were Will Rogers and Mark Twain. Colbert got close enough to the president to tell him what America wants him to know, and the blogosphere is reflecting the hunger people have had for someone to call the president to account.

How does it feel to be so far out of the mainstream of American thought, that you think Colbert "bombed?"

Good lord, do you people now understand the amount of excrement I have to wade through to put together this blog? Does this make my decision to put up one of those tip-jar thingies any clearer? For the record, lest you think my correspondent got the best of me, my response to his letter, specifically his inquiry of how bad it feels to be so far out of the mainstream of American thought, was, “Truthfully, it feels awful. My sole consolation is that I am blessed with wise correspondents such as yourself to help me see the light.”

Anyway, in reviewing this letter, let’s start with the most innocuous yet strangely most important of the writer’s faulty assumptions. Because of his own addled world view, he thinks Colbert was at the White House correspondent’s dinner having a Joe- Welch-at-the-McCarthy-hearings moment, doing a 21st century rendition of “At long last, have you no shame?”

I am sure if my reader had been in Colbert’s place at the dais on Saturday night, that’s probably what he would have done. But, to the best of my knowledge, my reader has not nor has he ever been a nationally prominent entertainer. Thus, his chance to do as he thinks Colbert should have done is unlikely to ever arise. But, if you look at the tape, Colbert was trying to entertain. He was trying to be funny. He failed.

But so determined is my correspondent to believe that Colbert did something historically heroic by telling truth to power in the form of a bombed stand-up set, he marshals a set of facts carefully chosen so that they exclusively reflect his own conclusions. Yes, the left wing blogosphere has lionized Colbert, Yes, letters in favor of Colbert in the left wing blogosphere run about a zillion-to-one in favor of Colbert, who leftists have adopted as a sort of Cindy Sheehan with a sense of humor. But reporting from your own echo-chamber as if it’s the only part of the world that exists betrays an almost comical sense of blindness.

But the funniest part of the letter is where the writer scolds, “Sure, he's ‘just a comedian,’ but so were Will Rogers and Mark Twain.” Like I said yesterday, I’m a Colbert fan; I think he’s funny. But lumping him in with Will Rogers and Mark Twain is far funnier than anything Colbert has ever said. It is a measure of how far gone certain members of the left are that they think such a comment should be taken seriously.

Anyway, I don’t really want to take the time to rebut the notion that putting Colbert into the same company as Twain and Rogers is ridiculous. If you think the writer has a good point, it is here where we must agree to disagree. Frankly, the matter is not worthy of debate.

LET’S END WITH A SLIGHTLY CHILLING BUT SOMEWHAT COMIC CODA. The author of this letter is not a child; he’s not a post-adolescent living in his parents’ basement from which he spews forth angry diaries for the Daily Kos. He’s almost old enough to be my father.

Chris Bowers of MyDD wrote an essay yesterday effectively debunking the notion that the typical nutroots activist is a kid; quite to the contrary, the entirely believable Blog-Ads survey puts the average age of a nutroots activist at 46. So even though it feels like we’re dealing with a bunch of children there, we’re not. The Kossacks and their type are, generally speaking, not children.

Chronologically, anyway.

Responses? Thoughts? Please email them to me at soxblog@aol.com

A BUST OF A DECISION

2006-05-03T14:26:00.000-04:00

SPECIAL TO SOXBLOG, BY CARL BERNARD

What follows is the work of a new contributor to Soxblog Nation, Carl Bernard. Carl is an attorney (you probably would have figured that out from the first sentence), but he seems to have paid a lot more attention in law school than I did. It was actually quite a coup for me to land Carl’s ramblings; word is the Volokh Conspiracy was rather hot for him. I’m hoping to induce Carl into contributing frequently to Soxblog, so I’ll be sure to forward any emails to him that comment on his obvious greatness. Anyone in possession of compromising photos of him should forward those to me, also. Enjoy! - DB

On Monday, the Supreme Court stole the headlines from the nationwide immigration demonstrations with its unanimous decision Vicky Lynn Marshall v. E. Pierce Marshall 547 U.S. ____ (2006).

For those of you who have been hiding in caves on the island of Okinawa since 1945, Marshall v. Marshall involved a 26 year-old former playmate and “reality” TV star called Anna Nicole Smith who, in 1994, married a not-technically-dead-yet oil tycoon born in 1905.

Although it seems to have reached the right result, one might think that a set of facts with this many moving parts would lead the Supreme Court to say something interesting. One would think that with all the play the case was given by the media on Monday, this was a seminal matter, a case which may affect generations to come, or at least generations of law students to come. One would be wrong.

As a service to Soxblog Nation, I offer the following analysis of the case:

How did Anna prevail in Marshall v. Marshall? I have no idea. Justice Ginsburg’s opinion resembles, to quote a phrase, a bill of lading. At its climax, for instance, the rhetoric is thus:

“We read Markham’s enigmatic words, in sync with the second above-quoted passage, to proscribe ‘disturb[ing] or affect[ing] the possession of property in the custody of the state court...’ True, that reading renders the first-quoted passage in part redundant, but redundancy in this context, we do not doubt, is preferable to incoherence. In short, we comprehend the ‘interference’ language in Markham as essentially a reiteration of the general principle that, when one court is exercising in rem jurisdiction over a res, a second court will not assume in rem jurisdiction over the same res."

Incoherence indeed. In other words, the former stripper gets a second crack at the Old Coot’s oil money because federal courts shouldn’t lightly give away jurisdiction to those shrimpy state probate courts.

Meanwhile, William of Occam rolls in his grave over a bed of razors, and I feel like using one of them on my wrists.

Who gets credit for the victory in Marshall v. Marshall? Oddly, a man named Marshall.

I cannot tell whether Anna Nicole Smith’s lawyer-toady, the suspiciously named Howard Stern, was “on the pleadings” for 15 minutes of Supreme Court fame. You might remember Mr. Stern from Anna’s reality show, as he was the guy making appointments for her poodle and threatening her various landlords. No mere scrivener, he, but I didn’t find any mention of him or his lawfirm in the opinion. Perhaps I have overlooked a reference to Mr. Stern Esq., or perhaps the law gods at least spared us that particular indignity.

One indignity not spared was a reference to Chief Justice John Marshall, who is alleged to have “famously cautioned” against the result reached by the lower courts in Anna’s case. In fact, Chief Justice Marshall gets first billing in the opinion—one heavyweight pressed into service on behalf of another heavyweight, if you will. Not to be too hard on Ginsburg, but was it truly necessary to shoehorn history’s most significant Supreme Court Justice into this probate version of Hillbilly Hell, especially when, I am certain, an opinion authored by Roger Taney would have sufficed?

There was just no need to marshal Marshall for Marshall v. Marshall.

What are the lessons of Marshall v. Marshall? First, for the law students in the crowd, when proceeding in rem never split your res if you can help it. But I think we already knew that. Second, in the corridors of power in Washington D.C., the influence of John Marshall still trumps the influence of Howard Stern, proving there is hope for the Republic yet. And third, Anna Nicole has delivered, with one humble lawsuit, the great message that millions of marchers on Monday had hoped to convey: America truly is still The Land of Opportunity.

Responses? Thoughts? Please email them to me at soxblog@aol.com

REPORTING ON COLBERT

2006-05-02T10:16:00.000-04:00

I’m sorry for the light blogging – it’s been a busy few days. I’ll give you a few thoughts on Stephen Colbert this morning, and return with a Spanning the Web this evening. Does that make us friends again?

Stephen Colbert hosts the show that follows John Stewart’s Daily Show on the Comedy Central network. Before getting his own half hour, Colbert spent the better part of the decade being the funniest part of the Daily Show.

The following may outrage some of you, especially those of you who cherish your signed collection of the Complete Works of Bill O’Reilly: Colbert’s show is hilarious. His shtick is that he’s a right wing talk show host who believes passionately in all things Right, but does so in such a dunderheaded way that liberals squeal with delight.

Although Bill O’Reilly seems to be the target of Colbert’s show, the actual subject of mockery is a gentleman named Morton Downey Jr. Morton Downey Jr. hosted a talk show in the late 1980’s. An unabashed conservative and a pretty bright guy, Downey started off his talk show days playing it straight. But every now and then, he would lose his temper or commit actions of political incorrectness like calling liberals “pabulum pukers.”

Unsurprisingly, these moments became his signature and ushered him to great popularity. Soon he spent every episode spewing phony temper tantrums and juvenile rhetoric while basking in his audience’s undying adulation. And then there was of course his own obvious sense of self-satisfaction, something that became increasingly ludicrous as his conduct became progressively more vulgar and his show progressively more stupid.

Much of Colbert’s act, like high-fiving the audience and the unflinching flag waving, are lifted directly from the Morton Downey Jr. Show. Of course, he’s also mocking O’Reilly. But the show works, even for a conservative like me, for two reasons. First, Colbert is obviously playing a parody of a conservative, sort of like The Simpsons’ Montgomery Burns. Colbert is the butt of his own joke. You’re supposed to laugh at how clueless he is. Because of his skill and the normal strength of his material, his act usually works. You’d have to be a pretty thin skinned right winger to find his show offensive.

The second reason Colbert’s show works is that he seems like a genuinely nice guy. This is the reason Chuck Norris was a popular actor in spite of having no discernible acting skills; he seemed like such a decent guy, you had to root for him. While Colbert’s show is making fun of people, there’s a palpable gentleness to the show. It’s clear that the whole thing is a joke. You’d have to be a real nitwit to take the enterprise seriously, which explains why those who take Colbert’s show seriously largely come from the left wing blogosphere.

ALL OF WHICH MAKES THE CONTROVERSY over Colbert’s performance at the White House Correspondent’s dinner a perfect storm of left-wing stupidity. First off, I’ve seen the tapes – Colbert definitely bombed. As a comic, presumably he was supposed to make the audience laugh. This did not happen.

But don’t take my word for it. Take Keith Olberman’s word for it. Last night I was watching Olberman (I have my reasons!) and he had one of the 17 liberal columnists from the Washington Post named Dana on. They both agreed that Colbert’s performance was a veritable Hindenburg of an effort.

The first reason for Colbert’s flopping was his stuff just wasn’t funny. The fundamental joke behind Colbert’s routine – his own cluelessness – didn’t come through at all. Every performer who’s ever worked a room can sympathize with Colbert’s plight. He thought he had good material; he miscalculated. Thanks to this miscalculation, he spent 15 sweaty minutes in front of a hostile audience.

The second reason Colbert flopped was because he followed a show-stopping performance by the president. Bush did an inspired sketch where he stood side-by-side with a look-alike. Bush offered banalities, while the look alike said what the president was really thinking. He killed. And anyone in show business will tell you, you don’t want to follow a show-stopper.

The final reason Colbert flopped, and the smallest, was that his comments were inappropriate. Because he seemed to be poking fun at others, not himself, it seemed like his comments were politically loaded. They weren’t. It wasn’t that for an evening Colbert decided to become an even less funny version of Mort Sahl. It’s just that no one got the joke, primarily because he told it very poorly.

THE REACTION TO COLBERT’S PERFORMANCE has shown the left wing at its silliest. Left wing blogs, showing the actual cluelessness that Colbert only pretends to have, lauded Colbert for courageously telling truth to power. Sorry kids, but you’ve got it wrong. It was supposed to be a funny monologue, not a proud moment of political defiance. The fact that you’re confused on this is a testimony to Colbert’s maladroit performance and your over-arching Bush obsession.

And now comes the ultimate irony: Because the left has adopted Colbert as its hero of the week, it has latched itself to an unfunny and unsavory performance. The president, by comparison shines, and the left is once again raising issues regarding whether or not it has the requisite maturity necessary to govern.

This is pretty heavy stuff to come out of one stinker of a comedy performance. But then again, it’s no secret that conservatives are indeed blessed with inept foes.

Responses? Thoughts? Please email them to me at soxblog@aol.com

"UNITED 93"

2006-04-30T20:39:00.000-04:00

IT WAS A BEAUTIFUL SUN-SPLASHED afternoon in Boston. Temperatures hovered in the mid-60’s and in April in the Bean, you just can’t do better. So you know what I did – I went to the movies. I couldn’t wait any longer. I had to see “United 93.”

In writing about “United 93,” there’s an obvious temptation to treat the movie as something different than an ordinary movie because of its profoundly serious subject matter. As a consequence, most of the reviews I’ve read have offered polemics on courage or fully-deserved testimonies to the faithfulness and skill of writer-director Paul Greengrass in handling such a sensitive matter in such an adroit manner.

But what’s been lost in many of these reviews, and I hope I can say this without sounding like an insensitive lout, is that “United 93” is a spectacularly exciting movie. You won’t spend a more nail-biting, harrowing and ultimately inspiring 100 minutes in a movie theatre this year.

IN THINKING OF PARALLELS TO “UNITED 93,” two past movies spring to mind, both of them also great. The first is 1958’s “A Night to Remember” which was a spirited docudrama about the sinking of the Titanic. Unlike future disaster movies, “A Night to Remember” didn’t lard the very serious and inherently dramatic narrative with made-up characters to better dramatize the fact that the death of 1500 people at sea was a rather awful thing. Like “A Night to Remember,” “United 93” is appropriately about the disaster, not about fictional (or fictionalized) figures.

I don’t mean to pick on James Cameron’s 1997 version of the same story, the multi-Academy award winning “Titanic,” which tugged at our heart strings by getting us attached to people who never really existed. Cameron merely built on a generation of disaster movie conventions in which the film-maker would reduce a huge catastrophe to more comprehensible levels by showing the headlining disaster impacting characters that we had already come to care for. The movies in this genre usually came with stock figures like the star-crossed lovers or the touching old couple or the courageous but doomed hero.

When done well, as was Cameron’s “Titanic,” such movies were undeniably effective. But they were also in a way cop-outs. Cameron took 90 minutes to make us care about his leads; a combination of skillful acting, sharp writing and top-notch writing can make the audience care for a character in seconds.

But accomplishing such a thing requires real skill. And that’s what makes “United 93” such a small miracle. The moments of exposition for the ill-fated passengers are few and brief. But the characters are instantly recognizable, because they are us. They are businessmen, grandparents, college students and senior citizens. We don’t need to see them dancing in steerage to feel for them as fully human beings.

The other movie that came to mind was Mel Gibson’s “Braveheart.” In “Braveheart,” Gibson’s character, the real-life Scottish warrior William Wallace, was the embodiment of heroism and for his heroism he met a gruesome fate. And yet his example was uplifting. One finishes watching “Braveheart” saddened by the Wallace’s demise, but inspired by his example.

“United 93” leaves the viewer with similar emotions. You will find the movie powerful, but you won’t find it devastating. You’ll find it inspiring.

The last 30 minutes of the movie unfold in real time, beginning from the moment the hijackers take over the plane. In that span, we see incredible things. The passengers take a journey from abject terror to false hope to cool-headed realism. They realize that nothing will save them except for their own actions. They have to summon an almost unimaginable amount of courage to assault their captors.

Mounting the physical challenge could not have been easy. Nature has not programmed us to attack psychotics wielding knives and threatening to explode bombs. On the plane, there was a passenger urging dialogue with the terrorists. How much easier it would have been to listen to him than do what the passengers on Flight 93 did.

On the movie-goer’s part, there is a visceral satisfaction when the passengers launch their charge against the terrorists. Ultimately the passengers die, but they do so heroically and inspirationally. I have never felt so much like applauding in a movie theatre than I did at the end of “United 93.”

“UNITED 93” IS NO LESS dramatic for the fact that we know how it will end. From start to finish, the movie tells aspects of the story of 9/11 that we aren’t particularly familiar with, and does so in a thrilling way. You’ll be riveted, you’ll be excited, and you’ll be moved

But most of all, you’ll be entertained. There seems to be an understandable reluctance to discuss this aspect of the movie. I went to see “United 93” this afternoon out of a sense of duty and a sense of curiosity.

You can go for those reasons as well. But you’ll also get to witness a sublime piece of film-making in the bargain.

Responses? Thoughts? Please email them to me at soxblog@aol.com

SPANNING THE WEB - 4/27/2006

2006-04-27T21:54:00.000-04:00

1) UNITED 93, PART I: On the Wall Street Journal’s site, Todd Beamer’s father has an important article on the movie. First, it’s a relief that he finds the movie a worthy tribute to tribute to his son. The pressure on the filmmakers must have been intense; Stephen Spielberg used to refer to “Schindler’s List” as “the document” while he was filming it because he thought it was so important to commit an honest and unflinching look at the Holocaust to film (which makes his editorial decision regarding the little girl in the red coat really strange). While Paul Greengrass has apparently avoided any such public utterances of grandiose self importance, he no doubt felt history’s burden bearing down on him.

The second aspect of Mr. Beamer’s article that makes it a must-read is that he identifies the so called war on terror for the public relations sham that it is. We’re not fighting a tactic; we’re not even fighting Al Qaeda. We’re fighting radical Islam, and even where we’re not fighting it, it’s fighting us.

I am very somberly giving Mr. Beamer’s article today’s read the whole thing prize. Check it out.

2) UNITED 93, PART II: Over at the Standard’s site, John Podhoretz gives the film a boffo review. As an ad might say, the critics agree! JPod also points out the following historical fact that I discussed briefly yesterday:

ON SEPTEMBER 18, 2001, ABC News president David Westin decided that his network would no longer air footage of the attacks on the World Trade Center only a week before. The constant repetition of the images of the planes crashing into the buildings had become "gratuitous," a spokesman said.

Almost immediately, all other networks and news channels adopted the same policy, and ever since, it is only on rare occasions that Americans have been exposed to those indelible images. This extraordinary act of journalistic collusion followed another mysteriously unanimous decision to censor the photographs and moving images of those victims who had chosen to jump to their deaths rather than be burned alive.

At the time, these choices seemed tasteful and appropriate.

Like you, I was there, and I know we’re not supposed to discuss in polite company one of the main reasons the footage was removed. As you might recall, there was a great fear that the 9/11 images would agitate ordinary Americans into going wilding, searching for the nearest Muslim upon whom we might visit retribution. Even though nothing happened between 9/11 and 9/18 to suggest such a thing was likely or even possible, the networks bought this CAIR peddled notion hook, line and sinker. (If you click over to CAIR’s site, you’ll see they’re still peddling it.)

Another version of the same kind of warning came two and a half years later when certain leading intellectuals like Frank Rich and Abe Foxman cautioned that Mel Gibson’s “Passion” would turn America’s Christians into saber-wielding Cossacks looking for the nearest synagogue to burn down. Once again, ordinary Americans exceeded their so-called betters’ soft bigotry of low expectations.

Americans can handle the truth. And we’re at a point in time where Americans need to begin hearing it from their government, their entertainment community and from their so-called experts.

3) THIS IS NOT WHAT I HAVE IN MIND – Strangely, on the United 93 website, there’s a section devoted to answering the question, “Why Do They Hate America.” In that section, there’s an explanation of Jihad that takes the John Esposito line that Jihad is a form of spiritual yoga.

This is rubbish – pure, unadulterated rubbish. It’s too bad the film’s website has to be polluted with such nonsensical propaganda. For more information on Jihad, read Andrew Bostom’s “The Legacy of Jihad.” And for those of you in the Boston area, Andy will be speaking at Harvard tomorrow night at The Semitic Museum, 6 Divinity Avenue, Room 201. The lecture begins at 6:30 p.m. I may well be there, so if it’s a Soxblog meeting you crave (and if it is, please seek the professional help you probably need), this might be your big chance.

4) IN HIS DOME – Drudge printed another report pointing out what he considers to be the sluggish sales of Markos Moulitsas’ book. Markos again took the bait and responded with another embittered blog posting. Again, I think for a boutique book, Markos’ opus is doing pretty well, and if Drudge thinks it’s so easy to write the next “DaVinci Code,” he should just go ahead and do it. He would certainly become a far wealthier man for the effort.

The reason I once again call this stupid controversy to your attention is because of an exchange within the comments on Markos’ response post. Comment # 1 goes like this:

There are in excess of 80,000 dKos users (Ed. Note: Huh? Markos keeps telling me it’s over a million. Why are liberal politicians doing backflips to please a community of moonbats one fifth the size of Rochester?). I had my copy ordered before February. Methinks there are a few lazy kossaks out there.

Comment #2 takes umbrage at Comment #1. Please have a hankie or tissue handy before reading on. You may well be overcome with emotion as you read of a particular Kossack’s plight:

Sorry, but to assume all of us just have $15 kicking around (according to amazon's price) and that we're lazy if we don't spend it is really naive.

Eg, I'm getting my masters degree in May, it's not a terminal masters, I'll be continuing to the PhD hopefully in 1 more year. Just today I just found out Jon Stewart will be the commencement speaker so I want to walk in the ceremony. But I don't have the $85 to pay to buy (not rent but buy) the friggin' cap and gowns required.

I've already fallen into debt at the beginning of my grad school years, luckily I caught myself before getting trapped in debt, and took out a loan from my schools credit union to pay off my credit cards with a reasonable interest rate. I'm now very careful with extreanous (sic) purchases, I've got a basic budget going, and it's freaky how little room there is for excesses.

At least while the lad is getting his education, he’s learning about words like “extraneous,” if not quite buttoning down their correct spelling or usage. But let us all wish him good luck in finding some way to get to see John Stewart. Whoever you are, pathetic Kossack, I hope it comforts you that the prayers and sympathies of Soxblog Nation are with you.

5) THIS WOULD PISS ME OFF, TOO – Most of my readers know that I have no problem with gay marriage, although I don’t approve of it being mandated by judicial fiat. I know this puts me at odds with many of you, and I value the fact that we can disagree without being disagreeable.

But this is going to far: In the posh Boston suburb of Lexington, a 2nd grade teacher presented to her class a storybook celebration of homosexual romance and marriage. The book, “King and King,” culminates with two princes marrying and celebrating the day with a passionate lip-lock

Ick! Mind you, this tale in question was read to 2nd graders. Jeff Jacoby, the presumably lonely sane columnist at the Boston Globe, has all the gory details.

6) THE TAO OF RON – Every now and then, the perfect chance to wheel out my all-time favorite Ronald Reagan quote presents itself. As the Republican Party appears increasingly determined to out-dumb the Democrats on the non-issue of gas prices, I think we need to recall Dutch’s piece of wisdom regarding what government’s default position should be: “Don’t just do something – stand there!”

Sorry for posting so late tonight. I’ll try to be more punctual tomorrow.

Responses? Thoughts? Please email them to me at soxblog@aol.com

SPANNING THE WEB - 4/26/2006

2006-04-26T19:48:00.000-04:00

1) LET IT SNOW – Hugh Hewitt says something explicitly that I alluded to last night – that Tony Snow is serving his country and in doing so is showing great patriotism. His talents are needed (more on that below), and taking on this huge challenge can’t be an easy thing for him given the pay cut, his health issues and the time he’ll have to spend away from his family.

I do have one quibble with Hugh, beyond his historically silly claim that Rocky Colavito should have gone into the Hall of Fame twice before Carl Yastrzemski went in once. Hugh offers the following appraisal of the “hollowed ground” (as liberal bloggers Markos Moulitsas and Jerome Armstrong referred to it in their runaway best-seller “Crashing the Gate”) of the White House Press corps: “There are some smart folks in the WH press room, but there are plenty of pretty faces as well.”

It is not immediately apparent to me where Helen Thomas fits on this continuum.

2) …BUT DEFEAT IS AN ORPHAN – Because Snow has written a handful of columns that were critical of the White House and has still been welcomed into the administration’s inner sanctum, James Taranto (probably the country’s best blogger) suggests that the administration has been taking the advice of Peggy Noonan (probably not the country’s best columnist). Noonan wrote last week:

In the end it doesn't matter if White House staffers suddenly listen to critics, to non-pre-vetted policy intellectuals, to questioners, complainers, whiners, Wise Men, if you can find them, and people who actually have something to say. But it does matter if George Bush does.

It matters that he becomes his broadest self and comes to tolerate dissent, argument, ambiguity. That actually would be daring. It would mark not the appearance of change but change, not the appearance of progress but the thing itself.

When Noonan wrote this last week, I let it go without comment because I thought it sufficiently banal that it didn’t warrant any column space. But the suggestion that this president demands everyone march in ideological lockstep is a liberal canard that has gained widespread currency simply because it has been repeated so often.

Does anyone think that Donald Rumsfeld doesn’t speak his mind? How about Colin Powell? He was around for four long years. I would daresay you would have a far easier time identifying ideological outliers in the Bush inner sanctum than in the Clinton inner sanctum. In the Clinton inner sanctum, the only name that leaps to mind is Robert Reich, and he outlied in the wrong direction.

Yes, Ronald Reagan staffed his operation with a bunch of non-team players and free-lancers. But the Reagan cabinet has never been held up as a paradigm that future presidencies should seek to emulate.

3) YOU TALKIN’ TO ME? - Matt Drudge ran a little piece about what he calls the sluggish sales of Markos Moulitsas’ book. Drudge says that Nielsen’s book scan shows that only 3600 copies of the book have been sold, which for what was heralded as the blogospheric equivalent of “Gone with the Wind” seems a tad disappointing.

Markos struck back at Drudge with a furious blog post insisting that “Crashing the Gate” is hotter than Teresa Heinz Kerry in a silky negligee. For the record, contra Drudge, I think the fact that Markos’ book ranks # 25 on Amazon is pretty impressive. The fact that it’s apparently selling fewer copies at big box bookstores than the Collected Works of Helen Thomas seems rather contradictory.

Or is it? It’s hardly surprising that Markos’ core audience inclines to internet purchases. It’s also not very surprising that he doesn’t have much appeal beyond his core audience. Let’s face it – he’s an acquired taste. While I think “Crashing the Gate” provides a valuable and crisply written account of where the Democratic Party is today (a.k.a. Nowheresville), I can’t imagine anyone other than a political junkie purchasing the book.

What is sad is that Markos felt it necessary to respond to Drudge’s baiting. Drudge was obviously just trying to get under Moulitsas’ skin. Clearly, he succeeded.

4) GREAT MINDS OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY…I know no one ever follows the links when I link to Kos, but follow this one. Just trust me.

I have frequently called Chris Bowers the sharpest of all liberal bloggers. Bowers seems perversely intent on proving me wrong, as he continues on a strange quest to prove that he’s no sharper than the typical bowling ball.

You might remember after the primary for the Congressional seat formerly held by the orange jump-suit wearing Republican Duke Cunningham, Bowers assured us that it was bound to be a Democratic carry since Democrat Francine Busby picked up 43% of the vote and the combined 8 Republicans in the race picked up 57%. Even though the 43% was below the Kerry line, Bowers figured that pealing off 8% of the Republican vote would be easy enough come general election time. At the time, I confessed that I had obviously over-estimated Chris Bowers.

Well, Chris is still at it. In an internal Busby poll, the news of which Bowers triumphantly heralds, Busby is trailing the Republican nominee 45% - 43%, suggesting that to date Busby has picked up exactly 0% of the 8% she needs to secure the victory. Writes the chest-thumping Bowers, “One week after the primary election, Francine Busby and Brian Bilbray are locked in a statistical dead heat, with 45% for Bilbray and 43% for Busby, with 3% for minor candidates Libertarian Paul King and Independent William Griffith and 8% undecided. These data reflect the strength of Busby's candidacy for a number of reasons.”

Normally I would consider myself responsible for smacking down such nonsense, but guess who beat me to the punch. Seriously – guess. Okay, I’ll give you a hint. His name rhymes with Farkos Foulitsas.

It’s true. None other than Kos himself responded to this laughable nonsense in a withering fashion: “This is a district in which the former Congressman is in prison for corruption far beyond the usual ‘culture of corruption’ craziness, and our candidate's own internal poll doesn't have her above the Kerry line for the district? I don't think this poll looks all that hot for us, frankly. In fact, I think it looks terrible. If voters were ready to punish Republicans for their culture of corruption, what better place for that to manifest itself than in the district of one of the most corrupt of the lot?”

Now please, let’s keep this quiet because we don’t want the Democrats to figure this out: This “culture of corruption” may set bloggers’ hearts ablaze, but it falls flat with the rest of the electorate. So does this “competency” thing. Modern Democrats might want to ask Michael Dukakis how well a campaign based on the decidedly non-soaring ideal of competence tends to work out. In order to win anything, the Democrats will have to do a lot more than just show they’re really angry.

5) I’M GOING ON THE RECORD – Over at my friend Jonathan Last’s Galley Slaves site, JVL is presiding over an interesting debate about what kind of box office “United 93” is going to do. I’m chipping in my 2 cents now: United 93 will be the biggest box office hit since “Titanic.” Hollywood will be stunned; so will left wing pundits who invariably argue that either a) We should stop talking about 9/11, or b) It’s too soon to make such a film.

Largely because of a bizarre media campaign to not tell the entire gory and disturbing story of 9/11 and to prematurely yank the footage from the news stations, there’s a great pent-up desire across the country to talk about what really happened that day. By all accounts, “United 93” is a great movie and will provide such a moment not for healing, but more importantly for understanding. At the risk of venturing into Frank Rich territory, “United 93” will be a landmark cultural moment.

6) HONEST QUESTION – Precisely what portion of our dependence on foreign oil is due to our automobiles? Does anyone know? If you do, could you send me the information? I could do the research myself, but I’m looking for someone authoritative who knows this stuff like the back of their hand.

7) Today was a travel day, which accounts for the late and light post. But because you all care, I will share some fascinating details of a genuinely unusual flight.

I was seated on the aisle in the last row. By the way, Jetblue doesn’t board by rows anymore; all the computer modeling and everything else have shown that random boarding is the fastest way to fill the plane. I have a theory for why this is so. People who are inclined to get on a plane first (even though it obviously won’t get them to their destination any faster) are doers. They’re (we’re) Type A’s. In other words, we’re not the kind of folks who will dawdle endlessly searching for Row 14 and then take twenty minutes figuring out how to jam our carry-on into the overhead compartment. Because of this free-boarding system, we get on first (because that’s our way) and then the dawdlers who putter down the aisle saying to no one in particular, “I need a blanket and two pillows” don’t hold up the show because basically they’re amongst their own kind.

After I sat down, just such a dawdler came towards my row. She was sitting in the window seat. As I got out into the aisle to let her in (as a gentleman should), she told me I might want to consider staying in the aisle for a couple more minutes because her daughter who had the middle seat would be along presently. Sure enough, I looked up and saw about ten rows away a woman who was clearly the daughter in question. She was also carrying a duffle bag roughly the size of Shaquille O’Neal.

One of the flight attendants spied her and said there was no way the overhead compartment would accommodate that thing. The mother interceded, saying to her daughter, “Tell her what’s in it.” The daughter said, “It’s an urn.” The mother said, “It’s my husband’s ashes and we’re bringing them back to Boston. He died in Florida over the winter.” The flight attendant suggested they take out the urn, but that the rest of the giant duffel bag would have to go underneath. The urn in its velvet case rode back to Boston under the seat next to me. The daughter said to me, “I bet you’ve never had an urn next to you for a flight before.” She was correct.

Normally, that would be plenty of excitement for just one flight. But we had more in store. As we made our final approach to Boston, the plane began swaying violently. The pilot was obviously having some sort of problem with the yaw. Just before we touched ground, literally just a few feet before, the pilot pitched us upward and we zoomed away.

As we climbed back to 4,000 feet, several passengers became unnerved. I always take my cues from the flight attendants. They, too, were rattled. I decided to try to calm the flight attendants (who were sitting en masse right behind me) with a stupid joke. As panic swept over the cabin and strangers began holding hands, I turned to the flight attendants and said, “I know this might sound strange, but I really don’t want to die a virgin…”

Anyway, we landed safely. And my marriage vows remain unbroken.

Responses? Thoughts? Please email them to me at soxblog@aol.com

SPANNING THE WEB -4/25/2006

2006-04-25T15:39:00.000-04:00

1) LIBERAL LOGIC, 101: On Sunday, accused CIA leaker Mary McCarthy was lionized by the left as a heroine with the guts to speak truth to power. I saw it with my own two eyes: Juan Williams on FoxNews Sunday was making the breathtakingly obtuse assertion that as an American, McCarthy had the right to speak her mind, even if what was on her mind was highly classified matters.

Then last night, I was watching Keith Olberman (I have my reasons!) who was excitedly reporting the news that Mary McCarthy’s lawyer was denying the charges. In other words, McCarthy is innocent! This seemed to provide Olberman with no small amount of pleasure.

But here’s the problem: If she was a hero for revealing this awful program, does she not morph into a collaborator with the evil Bush administration for not shining the light on this grotesque exercise in government abuse? She then must be a villain, right?

Anyway, given the nature of today’s reports, it seems like we’ve achieved a consensus that whoever leaked highly classified data did a very bad thing, even if doing so damaged the Bush administration. So I applaud the left in reaching this realization, belated though it may be.

2) THEY HAVE A PLAN! Reading the Daily Kos today (again, I have my reasons!), I was pointed to this “plan” by the Democratic Party to grant us energy independence by 2020. Naturally, much of it has nothing to do with energy independence in 2020 but instead with political demagoguery in 2006. The Democrats plan to:

-Prevent oil company price gouging, market manipulation, and disaster profiteering
-Increase energy market transparency and consumer choice at the pump
-Expand the Earned Income Tax Credit to cover increased household energy costs
-Provide car buyers with accurate fuel economy information
-Protect pristine public lands from short-sighted oil and gas exploitation

I assume the “pristine public lands” in the last bullet point refers to the huge oil supply resting under the ANWR. Obviously to Democratic “thinkers,” the only way we’d exploit such a natural resource is if we found it underneath non-pristine lands like downtown Cleveland.

But what really caught my eye about this entire fatuous venture was the pledge to “Launch an Apollo Project for Energy.” We know what they’re talking about – a Manhattan Project. Yet such is the nature of their peacenik base and their obsessive focus group driven ways that they had to change “Manhattan” to “Apollo.” Just for the record, splitting the atom produced a lot more energy than going to the moon did.

3) BUT ARE THE REPUBLICANS MUCH BETTER? - My favorite futurist relative called the other night and suggested I do some muckraking regarding the oil companies and their price gouging. I told him that not only has the subject been covered rather exhaustively, but the FTC monitors these things pretty closely and we have a market-wide exacerbation, not an oligopolistic manipulation.

Anyway, it appears he got through to the Republican leadership in Congress which appears determined to not be outdone by their Democratic counterparts in demagogueing the oil company’s windfall profits.

The Wall Street Journal has an appropriately withering editorial on the matter, suggesting that a Nancy Pelosi fright-wig doesn’t look very becoming on Denny Hastert. Here’s what I’d suggest to Congress – nationalize the industry. After you’re done with that, maybe you can convince Hugo Chavez to come over here and serve as president-for-life.

4) FAREWELL, GEORGE MELLOAN – George Melloan has written a weekly column for the Wall Street Journal for fifteen years. He has always been a calm and dignified presence, a living embodiment of what separates the Journal from literally every other major U.S. daily. Today is his last column. He will be missed.

5) HMMMM…The Harvard undergrad with the rich book contract and the Doris Kearns Goodwin curse of having other authors’ words turn up in her work has spoken. I offer you her explanation without interruption:

''When I was in high school, I read and loved two wonderful novels by Megan McCafferty, 'Sloppy Firsts' and 'Second Helpings,' which spoke to me in a way few other books did. Recently, I was very surprised and upset to learn that there are similarities between some passages in my novel, 'How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life,' and passages in these books. I wasn't aware of how much I may have internalized Ms. McCafferty's words. . . . I can honestly say that any phrasing similarities between her works and mine were completely unintentional and unconscious. . . . I sincerely apologize to Megan McCafferty."

Internalized Ms. McCafferty’s words – that’s the ticket! Is it just me, or does the Ivy League seem to produce a fresh embarrassment every week these days? And just wait until Juan Cole joins the Yale faculty. Then the fun will really begin.

6) THIS IS A NEW ONE – Boston Globe columnist HDS Greenway has a beef – the history books are whitewashing the founding fathers. Seriously. “Do we Americans glorify our Founding Fathers too uncritically?”, asks the puzzled Globie.

First of all, the contention is ludicrous. For the past generation and a half we’ve heard nothing but Washington owned slaves, Jefferson slept with slaves, and Lincoln slept with men…On and on the litany goes. If this is a whitewash, I’d hate to see a cold-eyed look at things.

But Greenway thinks there’s a whitewash, and he knows who’s to blame. Bush!!! “Do Americans,” Greenway wonders, “in these morally ambiguous times of Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and the secret prisons into which our prisoners disappear without trial or hope, long for heroes and heroic times? Perhaps Americans feel a need to hang on to the glory days of our national youth, when all our leaders were brilliant, brave, and beyond reproach, even if it is not always entirely true.”

7) IF YOU DON’T WANT YOUR MOOD SPOILED…you might consider skipping down to Item #8. Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs calls our attention to this positively stomach-turning review of “United 93” written by some guy naked Keith Uhlich at something called Slant Magazine. My surmise is the “slant” in question goes well to the left.

“The families of those onboard gave it their full-on approval. Not all the families, of course. All evidence suggests that the terrorists' relatives were left entirely out of the creative process, an action which goes a way toward revealing the film's hagiographic bias (how easy it then becomes to turn victims into heroes and adversaries into monsters).”

Just so you can understand the kind of enlightened sensibilities required to reason one’s way out of the facts that the passengers on Flight 93 were in FACT heroes and the terrorists were in FACT monsters, consider this little snippet from earlier the review:

“People have been making "post-9/11" art of tremendously varied quality since at least the time American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the World Trade Center's North Tower. A filmmaker I knew back then rather callously bragged about how he intercut footage of the towers burning and falling with shots of him shrugging the whole thing off like it was no big deal. Standoffish? Yes. Adolescent? I think so. But per the maxim oft attributed to Voltaire, ‘I will defend to the death his right to say it.’”

I would bet if the author had lost a loved one in 9/11, he would be a little slower on the draw in invoking that Voltaire quote, which truly is becoming the last refuge of nitwits. One can almost sense the juvenile self-congratulation leap off the screen as you read this sublimely childish rubbish. I assume none of you subscribe to Slant Magazine, but if you do, you’d be well advised to cancel your subscription.

8) GOOD NEWS OF THE DAY – Tony Snow will likely be taking over for the gravitas-deprived Scott McClellan in the White House press room. This is very good news.

I should be clear that policy mistakes have not been McClellan’s responsibility, and obviously even the most gifted press secretary can’t turn a sow’s ear of a governmental blunder into a silk purse of a press briefing. But McClellan was in over his head dealing with David Gregory, Terry Moran, and that elderly bag-woman who always sits in the front row. The Bush administration has been doing consequential things. But when defended by the charmless McClellan, well…Let’s just say being a presidential press secretary wasn’t his true calling.

I also love the fact that Snow is following up his bout with colon cancer to take on the biggest and most important challenge of his life. Serious illness leaves one with the desire to do something consequential with the days remaining. Tony Snow will now be where his country needs him most doing important work.

Responses? Thoughts? Please email them to me at soxblog@aol.com

SPANNING THE WEB - 4/24/2006

2006-04-24T14:53:00.000-04:00

1) ONE MORE THING ABOUT KERRY…and then we’ll move on, to coin a phrase. It’s fairly remarkable that he keeps bringing up his Vietnam testimony. It’s even more remarkable that there is apparently no one on his staff with the standing or the stones to say, “Senator, we should probably let this one be.” In a public life composed of various acts of scumbaggery, Kerry’s Vietnam testimony is the unquestioned low-point. And yet he keeps bringing it up. It’s like if George W. Bush kept constantly bringing up that weekend he was tipsily tooling around Kennebunk with Rod Laver riding shotgun.

If Kerry apologized for the Vietnam testimony or at least the parts of it that are offensive, it might win him some points with some people. But more pressingly, what it is it about this man that he can’t just leave it alone? Why does he have to keep revisiting his own personal Waterloo and behave as if it were an unqualified triumph? It’s goofy. It’s weird. And it’s positively horrifying that this guy almost became president.

2) ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST…I honestly don’t know how stuff like this keeps happening. Some gullible publishing house paid a Harvard freshman $500,000 to write her first novel. That’s the good news. Here’s the bad news – there’s a pretty decent chance it will be her last novel.

According to the Boston Globe, it appears that the frosh-person in question plagiarized significant portions of said-novel for which she was so richly compensated. Still, a half million dollar score for a an 18 year old grifter is nothing to sneeze at.

I should mention the Soxblog policy on plagiarism: Everything here is original content, unless it comes from an especially insightful email that I decided to steal and pawn off as a fresh insight of my own. What percentage of Soxblog comes from these insightful emails? It’s impossible to say, but I can tell you Item 1 came partly from an email, but I added the Rod Laver crack and the snappy alliteration.

3) A DANGEROUS GAME – In its apparent never-ending quest to cripple this great nation, the New York Times over the weekend published a story titled, “Young Officers Join the Debate Over Rumsfeld.” The article breathlessly reports, “Junior and midlevel officers are discussing whether the war plans for Iraq reflected unvarnished military advice, whether the retired generals should have spoken out, whether active-duty generals will feel free to state their views in private sessions with the civilian leaders and, most divisive of all, whether Mr. Rumsfeld should resign.”

What ever could have provoked junior officer to engage in such a reckless and extra-constitutional debate? Glad you asked, because the Times has the answer: “In recent weeks, military correspondents of The Times discussed those issues with dozens of younger officers and cadets in classrooms and with combat units in the field, as well as in informal conversations at the Pentagon and in e-mail exchanges and telephone calls. To protect their careers, the officers were granted anonymity so they could speak frankly about the debates they have had and have heard. The stances that emerged are anything but uniform, although all seem colored by deep concern over the quality of civil-military relations, and the way ahead in Iraq.” In other words, the junior officers “joined the debate” because the New York Times called to interview them.

I know the Times thinks this is really cute, but the paper and the its fellow travelers in the Democratic Party and the blogosphere are playing a very dangerous game. Civilian control of the military is kind of important. Even more important than embarrassing President Bush, I’d suggest.

I would be remiss if I didn’t make a special nod to the Times for its remarkable creativity in reporting this “news.” The Times created this story, and then reported it as if it were a spontaneously generated happening. Just curious – does the paper automatically get a Pulitzer for that, or is there a prolonged and exhaustive process before it gets one?

4) A DANGEROUS GAME , PART II: Mary McCarthy is the CIA agent who thought revealing classified secrets was a worthwhile thing to do if it would embarrass the administration. Unfortunately for this Democratic partisan, she crossed the proverbial bridge too far. On FoxNews Sunday, even Jane Harman was cutting McCarthy off at the knees, making it perfectly clear that she did not support what McCarthy had done.

What Harman and fellow Democrats fail to realize is that McCarthy’s antics are a logical example of the chickens coming home to roost. The mindset on the left is that anything that damages the administration is worth doing, even if it damages the country. Hence, you have things like the Times’ insane campaign to undermine civilian control of the military. McCarthy did what she did, and found herself lionized by the usual suspects at the New York Times and the Washington Post.

But Democratic politicians who haven’t liberally imbibed from Howard Dean’s homemade Kool-Aid know that a Democratic partisan exposing highly classified and very important national secrets is bad news politically. Really bad news.

5) “UNITED 93” WATCH – The Times does have an excellent story on director Paul Greengrass’ unique challenge in making his movie of Flight 93. Because no one knows exactly what happened on the plane, no one knows precisely who the biggest heroes were. But there was a bigger problem than that – none of the victims’ relations wanted to see their loved ones graded as anything less than A+ in the heroism department.

It was an interesting conundrum Greengrass faced. After all, common sense would dictate of the 40 people on board, some were so stricken with terror that they were unable to function. There’s also the strong chance that some people wanted to do nothing and hope things would somehow work out. Of course, portraying any of the passengers in such a light would defame all of those who weren’t specifically identified as leading the charge to the cockpit.

The decision that Greengrass made was that Flight 93 was carrying 40 uniquely heroic individuals. That’s a fair summation. History is full of such fitting generalizations. Everyone who died at the Alamo is considered a hero, even though there was only one Davy Crockett.

6) UNITARIANS IN YARMULKES – A couple of weeks ago in describing the taxonomy of various sects of Judaism, I described Reform Jews as practically Unitarians in yarmulkes. As if to prove Soxblog is always a couple of weeks ahead of the news, the Boston Globe reported this weekend on actual Unitarians in yarmulkes.

There is a sect of Jews who have rejected all of the religious stuff about Judaism but still want to be Jewish in some sort of spiritual sense nonetheless. So they have become what they call Humanistic Jews who garb their non-belief in a lot of spiritual sounding mumbo-jumbo such as prayers that go, “Radiant is the light in each of us.” They even have rabbis, which frankly sounds like a pretty easy job since there are no rules to the faith. A bit like playing tennis without the net, no?

Anyway, far be it from me to ever question anyone’s belief system or lack thereof, no matter how silly it might be. As Tony Soprano would say, “God bless.”

7) BIG TALIBAN ON CAMPUS AND JUAN COLE – John Fund reports that Yale seems ready to part ways with its prized diversity student, the former spokesman for the Taliban. But the news out of the cesspool that is New Haven isn’t all good – Yale seems on the verge of hiring leftist Middle Eastern professor Juan Cole.

A word about Professor Cole, and you may not like this: I had occasion to interview him last week and he was a really pleasant, likable guy. He knew I was representing a viewpoint diametrically opposed to his own and he still couldn’t have been more polite. It just goes to show you – people whose political views you dislike or even detest can still be okay in most ways.

This is a fact of life that bloggers on the left are entirely unfamiliar with.

8) BIN LADEN’S BACK – Over the weekend, Osama bin Laden made an effort to keep his name in the news that was so pathetic it could be fairly called Kerry-esque. I don’t really have anything to say about the statement itself – I don’t even feel like dignifying it with a response.

But I do think worth noting is the commentary of some haircut (I think it was John Roberts) who was a guest on Howard Kurtz’s weekly CNN extravaganza yesterday. When asked for his reaction to bin Laden’s statement, the haircut responded with words to the effect that after umpty-zillion dollars, Osama bin Laden is still on the loose and thus the administration really sucks.

Again, more comments I don’t feel like dignifying with a response.

Responses? Thoughts? Please email them to me at soxblog@aol.com

A NEW LOW FOR KERRY

2006-04-22T18:58:00.000-04:00

John Kerry has an op-ed piece in today’s Boston Globe that is fairly stunning, even given Senator Kerry’s previously demonstrated ability to shock us.

Before getting to the meat of the piece, let’s start with a telling detail. Today, as you doubtlessly, know is Earth Day; that means environmentalists spend the day solemnly saluting Mother Earth while enjoying their own moral superiority. (I’ll admit to having an irrational hostility to Earth Day since my failure to summon adequate enthusiasm for the 20th Earth day resulted in the bitter end of a budding law school romance. I liked the girl, but I’d be damned if I was going to spend a beautiful Spring Sunday picking up trash in Brighton.)

While Senator Kerry’s fellow lefties are toasting the planet today, Senator Kerry is toasting…himself. Yes, it’s true. As if it weren’t even Earth Day, Kerry is giving an address at Boston’s Faneuil Hall today to commemorate the 35th anniversary of his congressional testimony regarding the Vietnam War.

Which finally brings us to Kerry’s op-ed piece. His op-ed is a salute to…himself. Kerry is apparently awed by the greatness he showed in 1971. Listen to the man:

“THIRTY-FIVE YEARS ago today, I testified before the United States Senate. I was a 27-year-old Vietnam veteran who believed the war had to come to an end…Many people did not understand or agree with my act of public dissent. To them, supporting the troops meant continuing to support the war, or at least keeping my mouth shut. But I couldn't remain silent. I felt compelled to speak out about what was happening in Vietnam, where the children of America were pulled from front porches and living rooms and plunged almost overnight into a world of sniper fire, ambushes, rockets, booby traps, body bags, explosions, sleeplessness, and the confusion created by an enemy who was sometimes invisible and firing at us, and sometimes right next to us and smiling.”

Oh, the children! Kerry was testifying to protect the children. Reading that passage, you would get the sense that the heroic young Kerry was defending his youthful comrades-in-arms who were innocents being slaughtered by the combination of a feckless government and a ruthless enemy. Just like in Iraq!

Alas, the actual words of the young Kerry took a different tone towards U.S. soldiers. 35 years ago, the word “children” didn’t enter the conversation, at least not in regards to the American troops. Here’s how Kerry began his congressional testimony 35 years ago this very day:

"I would like to talk, representing all those veterans, and say that several months ago in Detroit, we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged and many very highly decorated veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia, not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command.

"It is impossible to describe to you exactly what did happen in Detroit, the emotions in the room, the feelings of the men who were reliving their experiences in Vietnam, but they did. They relived the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do.

"They told the stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, tape wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the country side of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.”

The troops were bad children, apparently. Very bad children.

THERE WAS A SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE sketch in November of 1988 whose premise was that the Bush campaign had some money left over after the successful campaign against Dukakis and thus would run one more ad. The “ad” in question was a negative hit job on Dukakis and concluded with the following tagline – “George Bush – He Beat a Very Very Bad Man.” For some reason that skit sprang to mind this morning as I read Kerry’s op-ed piece.

If Kerry wanted to apologize for the parts of his congressional testimony that most people find offensive, he would earn some people’s forgiveness. Certainly not everyone would forgive him – Paul O’Neil and others (including me) consider his 1971 testimony a hanging offense as far as his character is concerned. But at the very least, the acknowledgment of some error would show a sign that the man doesn’t view his every action as unimpeachably perfect.

There was a humorous moment early in the 2004 campaign where Kerry took a dixie on the ski slopes and blamed his secret service agent, because in Kerry’s own words, “I don’t fall.” Alas, like the rest of us, John Kerry falls, stumbles, makes errors and shows signs of moral imperfection.

John Kerry’s biggest problem has always been that he doesn’t know it.

Responses? Thoughts? Please email them to me at soxblog@aol.com

SPANNING THE WEB - 4/20/2006

2006-04-20T22:25:00.000-04:00

1) CAN YOU SENSE HILARY TREMBLING? Well, she has good reason to. Political force of nature John Kerry today shocked the world by saying he will consider seeking the oval office again in 2008. This stunning development throws the entire Democratic nomination process into flux. With Kerry intent on tapping his rabidly passionate and numerous base of support, is he not the instant favorite?

2) ON ANY OTHER DAY…John Kerry confessing that he’s “thinking hard” about running for president again would be the funniest item. But today, my friends, is not just any day. Stand-out blogger Patterico has a nemesis in the L.A. Times’ in house blogger, the Pulitzer Prize winning business columnist and likely mental patient Michael Hitzlik. Today, Patterico cruelly pantsed Hitzlik in front of the entire blogosphere.

Hitzlik has the habit of commenting on blogs like Patterico’s under pseudonyms. His secret alter egos usually say something along the lines of, “Michael Hitzlik is both a brilliant and handsome man.” Patterico lays out his case in exhaustive detail. Like the prosecutor he is, Patterico has put together an air-tight case.

If I commented pseudonymously on blogs saying things like “Dean Barnett and Soxblog rock!,” it would be dishonest, sleazy and embarrassing. But most of all, it would be pathetic. If I were exposed as Hitzlik was today, I would apologize and then spend the next week in the bath tub curled up in the fetal position out of abject humiliation.

3) BUT HITZLIK IS CUT FROM A DIFFERENT CLOTH – In a stunningly obtuse and offensive blog post, Hitzlik responded to Patterico not by apologizing, not by denying the charges, not by even addressing the charges. Instead , he lashed out with a series of ad hominem insults. According to Hitzlik, Patterico: “has apparently worked himself into a four-star ragegasm...(has as) one of his defining characteristics the casual attribution of moral and intellectual faults to others that he exhibits in stupendous measure himself…(is trying to make his blog) a paradise of enforced harmonious thought.”

But nowhere does Hitzlik offer any defense for his habit of pseudonymously praising himself. Have I used the word “pathetic” yet?

4) ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY…Jimmy Carter survived his brush with a killer rabbit that tried to assassinate the then-president. The Ace of Spades reflects on the peril Carter faced, and the supreme courage that he showed. “I can almost see myself there,” writes Ace, “confronted by a swimming rabbit, fiendish nostrils a-flare, big teeth ready to nibble on your bum. And I wonder, as men often do: Would I have risen to the occasion, like Jimmy Carter did? Or would I have cowered in the boat like a, umm, coward?”

As funny as the story of Carter and the killer rabbit is, even funnier is one of the comments left by one Ace’s embittered lefty readers:

Oh, and Ace: The guy serves one ineffectual term in office a quater of a century ago, then devotes the rest of his life to social justice, homes for poor people, and world peace, and you folks can't stop making fun of him? You may disagree with his politics, but you can't fault his dedication and integrity (just as I admire Monty for jopining up for the same reasons) I can't understand why people think conservatives are mean-spirited haters, and not the upright, principled, compassionate people they claim to be.

Too snarky? OK, how about this: GIVE IT A FUCKIN' REST.

Or this: Save it, he'll die in a few years, then you can have a freaking 24 hour marathon mock-fest on the day of his funeral.

Seriously, have you no shame? Or sense of proportion? Or is the news so bad for your side that this is the best you can come up with? Pathetic.

Now go to your room and think about what you've done. Would your Mom be proud of you? Your grandma? Hmmmmm?

As one of Ace’s other commenters observes, letters like that could give one the impression that the type of people who gravitate to Jimmy Carter’s sanctimonious crapola might well tend to be humorless dweebs.

5) I DON’T SEE IT: The kids at National Review have an editorial today about the impending Republican disaster at the polls. Okay, I understand the logic. Bush has awful approval ratings and the Republican congress doesn’t’ do much better. But, as I tell you at least once a week, click over to Rasmussen Reports. You’ll see that all the individual races are trending in the Republican direction.

And that was before we dumped Scott McClellan!

6) STUCK CLOCK ALERT: Markos Moulitsas today on the Sierra Club:

This may very well be the most moronic move by any organization this election cycle.

U.S. Sen. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island is seen as one of the most vulnerable Republican senators in the country. But Wednesday, the national Sierra Club came out in support of him.

The Sierra Club is endorsing Chafee even though the group gave the senator only a 20 percent rating in its environmental scorecard in 2004.

The club said a vote for Chafee is better than a vote for a Democrat because of his position as a
dissident within the majority party.

Um, guys over at the Sierra Club? Yeah, you, Carl Pope? How has Bill Frist and the Republican Congress been for your agenda? You know, the guys that Chafee enabled? And how was his 20 percent rating? That's all it takes to get an endorsement these days? Are you really that easy?

Of course, the idea would be to make Republicans the minority party. But good luck seeing your agenda continue to be demolished by the GOP leadership Chafee will continue to enable.

This jibes with my general thesis about the upcoming elections. The Republican Party is in disarray, floundering both in the White House and in the Congress. But the Republican party has done one thing right: It has shown exceptional wisdom in picking its foes. With enemies like the Sierra Club, who needs friends?

7) BLUE DEVILS – According to the New York Times story I’m linking to and the timeline Sean Hannity just walked me through, this is looking more and more like a case of prosecutorial abuse every day. Mind you, that does not give Duke a pass for selling its soul for its athletic program. But at the end of the day, one arrogant and ambitious District Attorney is more dangerous than all the lacrosse players in the Atlantic Coast Conference. And the Big East, too. And the Pac 10.

8) AN AGE OF MIRACLES – Panasonic has announced the invention, nay, “creation” is a more appropriate term, of a 103” plasma TV screen. I can’t help but think of a ski weekend some 15 years ago with my favorite futurist relative who there announced that within 5 years every house in America would have an 8 foot television. My friend Steve and I scoffed; I still recall Steve acerbically remarking, “Oh, good news for the inner city.”

Well, similar to the way Back to the Future II erroneously predicted we would have flying cars and hover boards by 2015, sometimes progress doesn’t move as quickly as we dreamers hope it will. But the fact that a 103” television has been willed into existence should give every human (or at least every male human) cause to smile.

9) ANGRY INDIAN FAN MAIL – The same Indian fan who informed me that the Indians had more Hall of Famers than the Red Sox sent in an angry missive regarding the fact that I was unimpressed by this measure of putative Indian greatness. My observation that the Red Sox put team accomplishment ahead of individual accomplishment (as Al Capone would have it) elicited astonishment that I had made such a comment “without any apparent irony, about the team to which the delightful ‘24 (sic) players/24 (sic) cabs’ description was first applied.”

It is true that the Red Sox were renowned for their selfishness and their 25 players/25 cabs outlook when they were winning 95 games a season in the 1970’s but not winning titles. (Meanwhile, I believe the 1970’s Cleveland Indians were best known for the Human Rain Delay and Toby Harrah.) But we put that behind us and became
Champions. Learn from us, Cleveland.

Responses? Thoughts? Please email them to me at soxblog@aol.com

A MATTER OF FAITH

2006-04-20T15:47:00.000-04:00

FOR A GREAT UNDERSTANDING of the state of the anti-war left as far as Iran is concerned, look no further than this Matthew Yglesias essay for The American Prospect. TAP is the country’s sharpest liberal journal of opinion, and Yglesias is probably the publication’s smartest young voice. To Yglesias’ credit, he certainly doesn’t make you read between the lines to figure out where he stands. “Should we go to war with Iran?,” he asks. “The short answer is ‘no.’ The long answer is ‘hell no.” While I admire Yglesias’ clarity of expression, I nevertheless find reason to question his comprehension of the complex matter that he so authoritatively addresses.

For instance, take this passage: “The United States military is, for one thing, in much worse shape today than it was in March 2003 with far fewer resources at its disposal (see the Iraq War). The Iranian military, meanwhile, is in better shape than Iraq’s army was, since it hasn’t been subjected to more than a decade of stifling sanctions. Iran is geographically larger than Iraq.”

Let’s take the second assertion first. I find myself asking what exactly Yglesias knows about Iran’s military. It’s true that Iran’s military wasn’t crippled by sanctions; it didn’t have to be. It had already been basically destroyed by the mullahs’ war with Iraq.

Taking a hard headed look at Iran’s conventional military abilities leads to one inescapable conclusion – there aren’t, any, or at least not any to speak of. Iran doesn’t have a modern air force; without control of the skies, even an elite fighting force is defenseless. For a brief history on the matter, Yglesias might want to research the fate of Iraq’s Elite Republican Guard on the highway of death.

But then again, Iran doesn’t have a fighting force equal in any way, shape or form to the early ‘90’s version of the utterly unimpressive Elite Republican Guard. So when Yglesias writes a glib sentence that seemingly offers a sobering appraisal of Iran’s military strength, it’s fair to ask what on earth he’s talking about. I think it’s a fair inference that he himself doesn’t know.

Even more embarrassing is his crude assertion that “the United States military is, for one thing, in much worse shape today than it was in March 2003 with far fewer resources at its disposal (see the Iraq War).” Loyalty to an employer is a good thing, and it’s nice to see Yglesias is unthinkingly adopting even the most nonsensical of TAP editor Robert Kuttner’s nonsense. After all, in the Kuttner world view, Iraq has been ruinous to America on all levels imaginable.

But if the Iraq war has weakened the American military, Yglesias should be so good as to specify how. Does the military now suffer from a shortage of manpower that it previously didn’t? Materiel? Have the troops become demoralized? Shell-shocked? Is mutiny in the air? Have re-enlistments declined?

The answer to all these questions is no. Now if Yglesias had said American prestige is in worse shape now than it was in 2003 thanks to the Iraq adventure, we might have something to argue about. Or perhaps he’s arguing that it would be impossible to shift troops from an Iraqi theatre to an Iranian theatre and therein lies the new weakness. If that’s the argument, Yglesias’ rhetoric is once again outracing his actual knowledge of military affairs. A significant force deployment mere miles from Iran makes an invasion more accessible than it would be if the troops in question were in, say, Fayetteville.

One further quibble: Yglesias specifically said the military is in “much worse shape” because of Iraq. Quite the contrary, the military right now is in better shape than it was in 2003 – America now has a lean and battle hardened military, something we haven’t had in over half a century.

But the folly doesn’t end with Field Marshall Yglesias’ military analysis. There’s also this penetrating insight into the Iranian frame of mind: “The idea that any Iranian leader would commit national suicide in order to harm Israel is ridiculous. Lots of ‘crazy’ leaders -- Stalin, Mao, Kim Jong Il -- have had nuclear weapons and they’ve never done anything like that. What’s more, if Iran wanted to start a war with Israel, kill a bunch of Jews, and get wiped out in the process they could do that with conventional weapons.”

There’s a lot of ignorance in that paragraph, and frankly I don’t have the patience to point out all of it. I do have a couple of suggestions for Yglesias for further study, though. First, he might want to research how many tens of millions of lives Stalin and Mao were willing to sacrifice to achieve their sick visions. Furthermore, neither man was particularly shy about sacrificing tens of millions of his own people.

Perhaps he should lump Hitler into his study since he was the great loser of the 20th century’s madmen. If Yglesias can find a surviving member of Germany’s 6th Army that perished in Stalingrad to prove how tough Hitler was, an interview with such an individual might be enlightening. He might also find that national suicide was not outside Hitler’s portfolio.

Lastly, Yglesias might want to look carefully into the psyche of the Iranian leadership and the fundamentalist form of Islam that animates it. What these men deem a worthwhile sacrifice and what Yglesias would consider a worthwhile sacrifice may well differ.

ONE OF MY FAVORITE READERS often writes me thoughtful letters in which he documents evidence for his theory that modern liberalism is like a religion. Faith, he argues, is substituted for rational thought. In the religion of liberalism, faith for false gods of environmentalism, give peace a chance-ism, etc., etc., must never be questioned or one becomes labeled a heretic.

I’ve never completely subscribed to his theory, but Colonel Al, this is your moment. Yglesias’ essay shows nothing so much as a willingness to suspend his powers of inquiry so he might better support liberal shibboleths that strike his fancy.

Yglesias, a 25 year old Harvard grad, is a smart guy and a good writer. But this essay shows a shocking inability to look beyond the Clausewitzian dogma that they dish out in such huge quantities in Harvard Yard. Once again, Yglesias and TAP represent the cream of modern liberalism.

More’s the pity.

Responses? Thoughts? Please email them to me at soxblog@aol.com

SPANNING THE WEB - 4/19/2006

2006-04-19T12:49:00.000-04:00

1) FINALLY – The gravitas-deprived Scott McClellan is leaving. McClellan may be a wonderful guy, a terrific husband and a joy to his parents. But as White House mouth-piece-in-chief, he was sadly overmatched. I used to dread watching the press briefings, knowing that McClellan was in over his head dealing with the decidedly non-brilliant likes of Terry Moran, David Gregory and that nutty bag-woman who inexplicably sits in the front row for every presser.

Best of all, there is speculation that Tony Snow may be McClellan’s replacement. If I knew how, I would literally be licking my chops in anticipation of the intelligent, well-spoken and gravitas-rich Snow running circles around the hapless White House Press Corps. If this is to truly happen and it represents a start of the program to actually revitalize the administration, I say give us more!

2) REALITY MUGS THE GREY LADY – The New York Times editorial board is disappointed and surprised by Hamas’ reaction to yesterday’s mass murder in Tel Aviv. Laments the Grey Lady:

After the Palestinian election, the burning question was which part of Hamas would dominate the new government: would it be the political organization that provides a desperate people with vital services, or the terrorist group that advocates the violent destruction of Israel? Now we have the answer, in Hamas's monumentally cynical and dimwitted applause for the bombing that killed nine people and wounded dozens in Tel Aviv on Monday.

Even on those rare occasions when a Times’ editorial makes some sense, I still find much to take issue with. For instance, for those who had followed the organization, it was not a “burning question” which part of Hamas would dominate – the do-gooders who provide meals-on-wheels or the Jihadist lunatics. Anyone who hasn’t spent the past generation pursuing willful ignorance knew that the meals-on-wheels side of Hamas was not a separate face, but rather part of an integrated approach whereby Hamas could gain more power with which it could wreak more havoc.

My other quibble with the Times is that it chooses to characterize Hamas’ response as “cynical” and “dimwitted.” While Hamas is of course both of those, a better word for the occasion would perhaps be “evil.”

3) TO PROVE MY POINT…Bloggress Meryl Yourish has a must-read post on the nature of these barbaric attacks and the wanton cruelty that is so much a part of the perpetrators:

Shrapnel is what killed Phillip Balhasan, who stayed alive long enough to realize his children had survived, and to hug them tightly before he collapsed.

But even this is not enough for the terrorists. They also soak the shrapnel in rat poison, because it causes hemorrhaging — victims may bleed to death before they can get to the hospital.

Remember all of this, when you hear the world tell Israel to “use restraint” in responding to this attack. Remember all of this, when you read about the innocent metal shop owners who insist their shops were only making nails and screws for construction purposes.

Remember all of this, when Israel is the nation that is demonized by the blind, hateful people who wear checked kaffiyehs at anti-war protests, and call Israel an “apartheid state” for building a separation barrier — to keep out the monsters who would use bombs like I have just described.

4) OUR FRIENDS AT CAIR – Here’s the deal with CAIR – it fills a vacuum. While CAIR no more speaks for Arab Americans than Jesse Jackson speaks for African Americans or the ADL does for American Jewry, it is the most prominent group of Arab Americans and thus its loathsome spokesman Ibrahim Hooper gets more media time than Angelina Jolie.

CAIR is also a simply odious organization, combining the race relations pimping of Jesse Jackson with a fondness for Jihad. Daniel Pipes has a must read column on some of the people who CAIR apparently has on its speed dial. If you read the story, even if you’re a libertarian by nature you might be inclined to judge the NSA snooping program a little more kindly.

5) DID SOMEONE MENTION JESSE JACKSON? - I forget where I read it, but I seem to recall he’s off to Durham to offer his unique form of camera chasing healing to the community. I should clarify something that I said about the Duke Lacrosse rape trial. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if much of this case is the result of an ambitious prosecutor pursuing a high profile case by which he hopes to further his political ambitions. Such is justice in the United States, and it’s a sickening thing. Those of us in Massachusetts who had a front row seat for the Amirault witch hunt know more than we want to on the subject.

But the prosecutor’s conduct and the defendants’ presumed innocence doesn’t mitigate the fact that Duke should have been ashamed of its lacrosse program for years now. If the university were capable of embarrassment regarding such things, the lacrosse team would have been a constant source of it for quite a while now.

6) I’M LOVIN’ IT – McDonalds’ sales have rebounded, but much to the New York Times’ horror, the increased sales aren’t due to the healthy new salads that now pollute the formerly pristine Golden Arches but are instead because of more purchases of all-American God-fearing foods like double cheeseburgers. The Times’ write-up of this development could have been prepared by Michael Dukakis, so redolent is it of nanny state put-on-your-galoshes hand-wringing. A couple of samples:

- Last May, the company ran a commercial featuring four African-American women talking about the McDonald's fruit and walnut salad and getting their "fruit buzz." The ad ran on BET, the Black Family Network and "Girlfriends" on UPN.

But Professor Williams at the University of Texas says the majority of McDonald's ads aimed at blacks feature Quarter Pounders With Cheese, Big Macs and French fries. McDonald's says that it advertises all its products equally across all markets and that over the last three years the most advertised menu items were Premium Chicken Sandwiches, McGriddles breakfast sandwiches and premium salads.

- Dollar Menu ads aimed at young blacks and Hispanics often focus on how much hearty food can be bought for just $1, a message many young consumers are eager to hear.

"The problem here is that you're dealing with a segment where you have these huge obesity issues and you're making eating Big Macs and double cheeseburgers look like it's fun and exciting," said Jerome Williams, a professor of advertising at the University of Texas, Austin, and one author of an Institute of Medicine report last year on the marketing of junk food to children and teenagers.

David Ludwig, director of the obesity program at Children's Hospital in Boston, calls marketing fast food to blacks and Hispanics a "recipe for disaster."

I have to say, if I belonged to one of these groups that the Times and its experts consider too weak-willed to resist the siren-song of a 30 second McDonald’s spot, I would almost be offended. Anyway, writing about this has made me hungry. I need a quarter pounder with cheese.

7) BUT WHAT ABOUT WES? The Times’ has another story about the beleaguered Donald Rumsfeld and his attempts to hold on to his job. I’m not going to rehash that debate (today anyway), but what I find funny is the Times mentions six retired generals who called for Rumsfeld’s resignation. Is Wesley Clark not a retired general? When he lumped himself on to the pile, did that not make seven? And yet the Times, as did other outlets, apparently froze the figure at six or didn’t consider the Falcon of the Balkans to be worthy of inclusion.

Well played, General!

8) THE SOX, AND THE SOX, AND THE SOX – While Red Sox Nation continues to patiently await Manny Ramirez’ first homerun, the Sox remain on fire. Even a brain fart by the manager last night couldn’t derail us. (Why did Francona bring in Timlin in the middle of an inning? Why do managers do such things? Every fan watching at home knows Timlin cannot enter a game mid-inning. It’s an immutable fact of life, like Cynthia McKinney playing the race card whenever she gets in trouble. And yet, remarkably, the one man in the world trusted with the precious gem that is the Boston Red Sox seems unaware of this fact.) But enough moaning – I’m sounding like a Cleveland Indian fan who hasn’t seen a team win a title since the earth was flat.

(Did you know the Cleveland Indians have more Hall-of-Famers than the Red Sox do? I do, thanks to helpful emails from embittered Indians fans who seem to think such things matter. We have a saying in Red Sox Nation – there’s no “I” in “TEAM”.)

Responses? Thoughts? Please email them to me at soxblog@aol.com

SPANNING THE WEB - 4/18/2006

2006-04-18T10:44:00.000-04:00

1) GREAT MORALISTS OF OUR TIME: In an interview with the Boston Globe, Ted Kennedy rejects the notion that the country has shifted to the right. ''People haven't lost their sense of compassion, they haven't lost their sense of decency, they haven't lost their sense of fairness," says Kennedy.

If asked to come up with three words that describe Ted Kennedy, I doubt I could do better than “compassion, decency and fairness.” Add it all up – Au Bar, carousing with the young ones, waitress sandwiches, Chappaquiddick, serial infidelities and what else could you come up with besides “compassion, decency and fairness?”

The fact that Kennedy and his party have convinced themselves that they are the exemplars of these virtues shows how sadly out of touch with reality they have become.

2) WHO’S TO BLAME? - In reviewing Joe Klein’s new book, the Wall Street Journal offers the following interesting quote:

"I am fed up," Mr. Klein writes, "with the insulting welter of sterilized speechifying, insipid photo ops, and idiotic advertising that passes for public discourse these days." Campaigns have become "overly cautious, cynical, mechanistic, and bland." Mr. Klein is bored, and Americans have tuned out. Who is to blame? The nefarious "pollster-consultant industrial complex."

Given the nature of the above passage, I think it provides me with an opportune moment to set something straight regarding my own past writings. When I wrote about the left wing blogosphere, a lot of people thought I was blaming the blogosphere for killing the Democratic Party.

Au contraire, my friends. While the left wing blogosphere is no friend to any liberal politician who might be inclined to pursue a responsible and mature path, the shenanigans of the Democratic Party must be laid at the feat of the party’s ostensible adults. When Dick Durbin goes into the Senate well and compares our troops to the Khmer Rouge, that’s his fault and his fault exclusively. While it would be fun to blame some chain-smoking, pathetically embittered Moonbat pecking away furiously on his or her keyboard, the political class is responsible for its own actions.

So mark my words – during the upcoming campaign season, a handful of Democrats from red states will be tarred by their willing association with left wing blogs. And they’ll have only themselves to blame.

3) STOP ME IF YOU’VE HEARD THIS ONE – There’s an old saying about the Palestinians – they never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. As you undoubtedly know by now, there was a savage suicide bombing in the contested territory of Tel Aviv yesterday, killing 9 and wounding 60. Hamas, the duly elected “government” running the Palestinian statelet, has announced its support for this little mission. So if you’re running Israel, can you deny that the situation with Palestine is anything other than war? While that’s not what anyone in the West wants, that’s what it is.

4) THE ADVANCE BUZZ – Last week the Ace of Spades linked to a sneak early review of the movie “United 93” that said the movie was spectacular. Today Dennis Prager writes an article with the same conclusion, imploring all Americans to see the film. Prager also takes on the ludicrous notion that the movie comes “too soon.” “If this is so,” writes Prager, “it is an ode to the weakening of the American people.”

One thing that I’m not sure Hollywood understands is that there’s a great human desire for heroism. That’s why people pack sports arenas – they’re searching for heroes. On Flight 93, there were heroes, and amazingly, they looked just like us. It’s hard to imagine a more inspiring or important subject for a film.

If the movie is any good (and all advance word suggests it is quite good), there is a real chance that it will prove to be a seminal cultural moment as Americans learn about our enemy’s nature as well of our own.

If “United 93” lives up to its potential, there will also be a delicious irony. “Brokeback Mountain” didn’t change the culture but instead became a national punch line for gay jokes, contra the dictates of Andrew Sullivan and Frank Rich. And yet the very differently (and far more traditionally) themed “Passion” already was the real deal as far as being a significant cultural milestones, and “United 93” seems likely to follow on its heels as a hit that shocks the industry.

5) THE GREY LADY STRIKES – The New York Times shines a bright light on a bunch of idiots who have adopted the sickening habit of protesting the funerals of fallen American soldiers with signs like “Thank God for IEDs.” But here’s the Times’ punch line – these protestors are from a church group who thinks American’s misfortunes are a result of God frowning on our permissive society. In other words, to decode the Times’ message, these are right wing kooks.

If the Times would like some example of left wing kooks offering up similarly loathsome conduct, I can help. Just off the top of my head, I even recall a Senator from Illinois comparing our troops to the Nazis and being lionized for his courage.

6) NOW YOU LOVE THEM! - It seems like not so long ago the left was rallying behind a presidential candidate who once had written a letter where he confessed that he “hated the military.” It seems like an even less remote memory where the left rallied behind a candidate who accused soldiers in Vietnam of behaving in a manner reminiscent of “Genghis Khan.”

And yet now, a half dozen generals have earned a strange new respect from a bunch of journalists who aren’t usually in the habit of granting General-types a wide berth. HDS Greenway sums up the new weltenschaung of the left nicely, writing, “But the provocation that brought these American generals to go public was intense. To my mind, none of the generals put it better than Lieutenant General Gregory Newbold when he told Time magazine that ‘the commitment of our forces to this fight was done with a casualness and a swagger that are the special provinces of those who have never had to execute these missions -- or bury the results.’”

Actually, the Newbold comment and the fact that Greenway selects it as his money quote gets closer to the heart of the matter than Greenway would dare confess. If you read carefully, you’ll note there’s nothing in the selected remark regarding military tactics or strategy. Quite to the contrary, the differences between Newbold and the civilian leadership seem to be personal in nature. Predictably, Greenway follows up the Newbold quote by bringing us the earth shattering revelation that neither Bush nor Cheney served in Vietnam.

Greenway spends much of his column defending the principle of civilian leadership of the military. I have little reason to doubt his fidelity to this concept, just so long as the civilian in question is someone he voted for.

7) TROUBLE AT DUKE – I don’t have the links handy, but whether there was a crime committed by members of the Duke Lacrosse team or not, there’s little doubt that they have a pronounced cretinous (if not criminal) element on the squad. This entire episode, even if it was just a bunch of innocent under-aged drinking combined with strippers illustrates how colleges are so often willing to sell their souls for the benefit of their athletic programs.

8) ON THE OTHER END OF THE SPECTRUM…We have the Boston Red Sox! Yesterday brought another remarkable triumph as the newcomer second baseman Mark Loretta hit a two-run, two out homer to turn a 6-5 loss into a 7-6 win. Loretta’s heroics were preceded by an infield hit by my lumbering luntzman, Kevin Youklis. Loretta’s father was in attendance, and noticed the stark differences between Loretta’s former team in San Diego and the Red Sox:

''I've been here six games now, I gotta tell you this is a totally different feel. This is really the major, major leagues. Red Sox Nation, you can't describe it. It's one thing to say 'Red Sox Nation' as a term, but it's another thing to just feel the vibrancy, the energy this whole thing has."

The senior Loretta also had some interesting comments about California (where he, his wife and teenage daughter still live) in general, observing, “(Unlike Boston) it doesn’t have the tradition, history, any of that stuff.”

Sounds a bit like the Cleveland Indians.

Responses? Thoughts? Please email them to me at soxblog@aol.com

SPANNING THE WEB - 4/17/2006

2006-04-17T10:55:00.000-04:00

Me and Stinky enjoying the Florida sun

1) MORE RUMMY – Oh, what a joy it must be to be a Democrat! Yesterday I watched half of the notorious Senate Waitress Sandwich team, Christopher Dodd, expound on why Donald Rumsfeld should be fired. What was interesting although hardly unique about Dodd’s criticism is that he had nothing constructive to offer. I can deal with a Senator saying that a Secretary of Defense is incompetent and thus should resign. I can also deal with a Senator or a whole raft of Senators saying that the Defense Department needs to “head in a different direction.”

Where they lose me is with their utter refusal to specify what that “different direction” should be. Also noteworthy is the schizophrenic nature of their complaints. They used to want more troops in Iraq in order to ensure success. But ever since Jack Murtha popularized and legitimized cutting and running in the eyes of the nutroots, that’s been their battle cry (if you will). But with an election season upon us, even the most obstinate Democrat realizes that defeatism is a sure loser in American politics.

So what we’re left with is a major party that has no agenda beyond pissing and moaning. It’s embarrassing. Sure, I’m embarrassed to be a Republican at times. The mere mention of the odious words “Lincoln Chafee” makes me blush. But I’d be a whole lot more embarrassed to be a Democrat.

2) ON THE BOOKSHELF – I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to mention this, but here goes. Embittered Cleveland Indian fan Hugh Hewitt’s best seller, “Painting the Map Red,” quotes me extensively. Not to act like a little kid seeing himself “on TV” on a closed circuit security system, but this delights me no end. In the book’s index, my name is listed right between “Fred Barnes” and “Michael Barone.” Truly – how cool is that?

Anyway, I just started reading “Painting the Map Red” this morning. I’ll be offering my thoughts later in the week. But obviously I’m biased towards an author who actually republished one of my blog posts in a best seller.

3) SPEAKING OF BLOGS…The Boston Globe has an article titled “Blogging ‘essential’ to a good career.” I don’t know exactly what the scare quotes around the word “essential” are supposed to signify, but I do think this assertion overstates things by quite a bit. Blogging is fun; it’s a good hobby that can lead to other things. But I think you can have a perfectly fine career without being a blogger.

Just one guy’s opinion.

4) HOW CAN THIS BE? - Remember the good old days last week when the New York Times editorial board assured us that Iran was ten years away from acquiring a nuclear bomb? And remember when all sorts of Pelosi-type politicians took to the airwaves to parrot this unsubstantiated assertion? Well, it looks like those good old days are gone with the proverbial wind.

Today the Times reports (in its “news” section, not on its editorial page) that we basically don’t have any frickin’ clue when Iran will get the big one. So thus, the decision boils down to whether or not we can afford to wait too long. Or, if you prefer a less muscular/defeatist course of action, the “battle plan” must now focus on determining how we can “manage” a nuclear Iran.

We know where the Democrats stand on this. Howard Dean explicitly stated (to a Jewish audience…hmmm) that the Democrats would never tolerate Iran becoming a nuclear power. So now all we have to do is wait for Dean and company to translate that rhetoric into a plan.

You may want to get comfortable while awaiting this development.

5) MORE RUMMY STILL – The piece I wrote on Rumsfeld being a fighting general and his critics being something else provoked a pretty heavy response. I should make it clear that I’m not saying that Rumsfeld’s critics are wimps (although I would consider making an exception where Wes “The Falcon of the Balkans” Clark is concerned. Regarding Clark, I find it especially noteworthy that he became the 7th general to speak out, waiting for all his former subordinates to take the initiative before exposing himself to any danger. Even though he’s now a partisan politician, excessive caution and naked self-interest still characterize the man’s every move.).

My point was that fighting wars requires a particular kind of general. Let’s just say that on one end of the spectrum you have Colin Powell and the other end of the spectrum you have U.S. Grant. The closer your leading generals are to the Grant end of the spectrum, the greater your likelihood of success. That doesn’t mean the Powell-types lack personal courage; it just means they’re the wrong men in the wrong place.

On a related note, this weekend I attended a forum featuring three of the military analysts you know from cable TV – Bill Cowan, Jack Jacobs and Ken Allard. Moderating was the brilliant Walid Phares.

All three analysts criticized Rumsfeld for not sending enough troops into Iraq, but all defended him as a fighter. Cowan explicitly made the point that most other Secretaries of Defense would be trying to avoid body bags and thus crippling the war on terror. None thought he should resign. All took an extremely dim view of the headline seeking generals. Their views on the generals ranged from chagrin to carefully calibrated outrage.

6) BIG TALIBAN ON CAMPUS, PART 10,732 – John Fund is back trampling over the same territory, explaining how Yale really messed up accepting that Taliban guy. If you read the piece, you’ll see that Fund went out in search of the “diversity student” Yale lost to Harvard that made the Yale admissions office so determined to land the Taliban.

A personal note: A while after this story first appeared, a reader sent me an email suggesting that I go look for the Harvard’s diversity student who had such a bearing on the Taliban winding up in New Haven. I thought it was a neat idea and pitched it to someone. This kind person, like a patient parent dealing with a six year old, walked me through the basics of why this was basically a non-story. He convinced me. Now mind you, this was over a month ago when the Taliban Man story was only a little moldy.

Let me be clear – Fund is completely right. Yale should be ashamed. But writing the same thing over and over again is less than scintillating journalism. For more information on the topic, please see the collected works of one Andrew Sullivan regarding gay marriage and Abu Ghraib.

7) THEY’RE BACK – A suicide bomber struck in Tel Aviv, killing five. (By the way, when I report the death tolls I do not include the suicide bomber. Some news agencies have different practices.) If I were the mad Mullahs or Hamas or Islamic Jihad, I would be spending my time laying low, trying to lull the west into a false sense of complacency that many both here and in Europe are only too eager to fall into. But then again, I guess part of being an unhinged fanatic is a general aversion to strategic thinking.

(By the way, one of the highlight’s of the weekend’s panel discussion was when a questioner asked the Colonels what they would do about Hamas. Jack Jacobs responded, “A low yield nuclear device.” It got a big laugh. It wasn’t clear that Jacobs was completely joking.)

8) AND NOW JAMES CARROLL: “An Iranian official dismissed the talk of imminent US military action as mere psychological warfare, but then he made a telling observation. Instead of attributing the escalations of threat to strategic impulses, the official labeled them a manifestation of 'Americans' anger and despair.’ The phrase leapt out of the news report, demanding to be taken seriously. I hadn't considered it before, but anger and despair so precisely define the broad American mood that those emotions may be the only things that President Bush and his circle have in common with the surrounding legions of his antagonists.”

Without stooping to shooting dead fish in a barrel, this passage nicely illustrates the failure of the left to even grapple with the big picture of the war on terror and the situation in Iran. If James Carroll thinks Iran should have nuclear weapons, he should say so. If he thinks Iran should not, he could offer guidelines of how far we can or should go to prevent the Iranians from acquiring such weapons.

But assuming either position would require some intellectual elbow grease. Calling Bush dumb, frustrated, Oedipal, whatever – that, on the other hand, is easy.

Responses? Thoughts? Please email them to me at soxblog@aol.com

FIGHTING GENERALS

2006-04-14T18:23:00.000-04:00

I SPENT SEVERAL HOURS this week reading a turgid book by a U.S. Army Colonel on “4th Generation Warfare.” If you’re unfamiliar with the term, don’t give it a second thought. The point of the book is there’s a relatively new kind of war being waged – 4th Generation Warfare. If that revelation fails to thrill you, try this one out – even as we’re just beginning to “discover” 4th Generation Warfare, 5th Generation is already in its initial stages of development. Page after page I read this dull book hoping it would contain a single fresh insight. No luck on that front, I’m afraid.

But in the author’s defense, he gave himself an impossible thesis to defend. Victor Davis Hanson’s “A War Like No Other” gets much closer to the heart of things. Written about the Peloponnesian War, Hanson titled his book ironically. Although “A War Like No Other” is a quote offered by Thucydides to describe the conflict, Hanson’s main point is that there’s nothing in the nature of warfare that can’t be found in the pages of Thucydides. To put it in a more colloquial manner, in spite of all the jargon military men are capable of formulating, there’s nothing new under the sun.

I WAS THINKING OF THIS CONFLICT between these two books as I was reading of the retired Generals’ campaign to discard Rumsfeld. Generals (and for the purpose of this argument let’s consider Rumsfeld a General) have a lot of reasons to disagree. But one of the things that separates Generals is the crude classification between fighting Generals and, for lack of a better term, more sensitive Generals.

In World War II, you had fighting Generals like MacArthur and Patton. One thing the fighting generals have in common is that they tend to be such hard men that they’re easy to consider brutish. We all know of Patton’s infamous lack of patience for soldiers suffering combat fatigue. Here’s a story about MacArthur in a similar vein: While in charge of operations on the Philippines, he awaited the Japanese forces that he knew would kill him. He also knew the invaders would kill his wife and toddler son. This didn’t bother him – they were a soldier’s wife and son and such things happen to a soldier’s family.

On the other hand, you have more sensitive Generals like World War II’s Bradley or the Civil War’s McClellan. Generals like this are always in their time easier to love because they take death more seriously. McClellan didn’t want to use his army because he feared needless death and destruction. He would often publicly scoff at the civilian leadership who with no apparent sense of guilt would command his soldiers into the Valley of Death.

One of the invidious legacies of the Vietnam War is that “body bag syndrome” made the armed forces much more hospitable terrain for sensitive generals. This syndrome reached its logical conclusionwith the Powell Doctrine. Not only were the U.S. Armed Forces in the early 1990’s being run by a risk averse man, his dubious wisdom was practically enshrined into policy.

THE DISPUTE BETWEEN RUMSFELD AND THE RETIRED GENERALS began when Rumsfeld came to the Pentagon in 2001. Rumsfeld knew the U.S. armed forces were structured to battle a giant conventional military like China. He thought this unwise. From his first day as Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld was talking about “asymmetrical warfare” as the great threat confronting our country. He wanted to transform the military. The Joint Chiefs scoffed; they wanted to keep preparing for Armageddon with China.

Prior to 9/11, it looked like Rumsfeld might be the first Bush cabinet member out the door, beating even the inept Paul O’Neil. But in stunning fashion, the 9/11 attacks proved Rumsfeld right. 19 guys with box cutters inflicted devastating damage on America; it was a horrific display of asymmetrical warfare, and one that brought home the nature of the immediate conflict (if not its terminology) to virtually every American.

Since then, we’ve been in constant state of war. The Bush administration considers itself to be racing the clock. Either we will remake (or devastate or annihilate) the Middle East before our malefactors cross the nuclear Rubicon, or the price we pay will be unspeakably high. This formulation means we’re at war and a war that we have to conclude successfully. It’s an existential challenge.

LITERALLY SINCE THE BEGINNING OF WARFARE, there has been a school of generals that has demanded more troops and more resources. They have instinctively pronounced every goal unattainable unless they received almost unlimited resources.

The names of most of these generals are lost to time. While most Americans have probably heard of George Patton and Ulysses S. Grant, comparatively few have heard of Omar Bradley and George McClellan. There’s an obvious reason why the sensitive risk-averse generals usually see their names lost to history – they seldom get anything done.

But their arguments are always persuasive at the time they’re making them. McClellan wouldn’t risk his army. As a consequence, he suffered far fewer casualties than Grant did. When he sought the presidency in 1864, McClellan ran as a man of peace who would seek an armistice with the confederacy. Were it not for surprising Union triumphs in the second half of 1864, he would have defeated Lincoln.

Similarly, the Generals criticizing Rumsfeld occupy the higher ground. They can hurl epithets like “reckless” and “indifference.” They can criticize the conduct of the war, without offering a viable alternative because they are the sympathetic ones wanting to save the lives of our soldiers and even the lives of the other guy’s soldiers.

Alas, if we had jammed Iraq with “several hundred thousand troops” as Rumsfeld’s military critics insist was necessary, it’s hard to imagine how that would have enhanced our strategic possibilities. But the argument is purely academic. There weren’t a half million men available for Iraq. Period.

So the decision comes down to one of policy. Either transforming (or subduing) the Middle East had to be done or it didn’t. If it had to be done, it would only (and will only) be accomplished by significant expenditures of blood and treasure.

And that brings us back to the inherent conflict between the fighting generals and the other guys. While the New York Times would like us to think the events of the past few days are unprecedented, Douglas MacArthur blasted the Truman administration from the floor of Congress and across the country. And MacCarthur had significantly more fame and prestige than the press’ current favorite half dozen generals combined. (Don’t hold your breath waiting for these six to get a ticker tape parade in New York attended by a quarter million people.)

Again, there’s nothing new under the sun. The pages of Thucydides are full of such stuff.

(SPANNING THE WEB WILL APPEAR SOME TIME TOMORROW)

Responses? Thoughts? Please email them to me at soxblog@aol.com

SPANNING THE WEB - 4/13/2006

2006-04-13T18:17:00.000-04:00

1) GIVE ‘PEACE IN OUR TIME’ A CHANCE, PART I: The Boston Globe editorializes this morning, “If there is a way to avoid a perilous confrontation, it may lie in Iranian suggestions, both public and private, of an interest in direct US-Iranian negotiations. If Bush has learned anything from past blunders, he will put aside any qualms he may have about the odious regime in Tehran and explore the possibilities of a deal that grants Iran security guarantees and economic benefits as compensation for halting its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Distasteful as such a deal may be, the alternatives are far worse.” This editorial puts the Globe in the driver’s seat to win this year’s Neville Chamberlain Profile in Spinelessness Award.

By the way, I happen to think the animus on the left towards doing what has to be done in regards to Iran has a lot more to do with the left’s fundamental make-up than Bush derangement syndrome. Sure there’s the gratuitous potshot at Bush that seems to have nothing to do with nothing, but I don’t doubt for a second that if they were in charge of things, the Morrissey Boulevard philosophes would recklessly pursue an ignominious peace until irreparable damage was done.

2) GIVE ‘PEACE IN OUR TIME’ A CHANCE, PART II: Brent Scowcroft writes today we shouldn’t be belligerent towards Iran, concluding, “Only by creating an international regime - and applying it without exception, across the board - can we hope to guarantee that all countries can enjoy the benefits of nuclear energy without risking the spread of the world's deadliest weapons.”

Mind you, Brent Scowcroft is what’s commonly referred to as a “realist.” And yet he acts like the Mullah’s desire for nuclear power is at the heart of the impending Iran imbroglio.

Which reminds me – where in the hell is the “No Nukes” crowd now that we finally need them. You young ones out there probably don’t remember this, but in the late 1970’s the Hollywood idiocracy settled on nuclear power as the ranking evil of the day. This was one debate Bruce Springsteen, Jane Fonda and Jackson Browne actually won. Much to our detriment, not a single nuclear power plant has been built stateside since Bruce was crooning against them.

Now the mad mullahs are professing to want to build such a structure, and I don’t hear a peep of protest from our entertainment community. Come on guys – remake “China Syndrome” or have another concert or do something. Don’t you remember – you hate nuclear power!

3) GET BACK, JACK – The right wing blogosphere has been rejoicing over this sharp editorial, and with good cause. Written by Wade Zirkle, a wounded Iraq war veteran, it takes Jack Murtha and his like minded colleagues to task in memorable and devastating fashion. In one particularly sharp passage, the author quotes a veteran addressing Murtha and the traitorous Jim Moran at a town meeting several months ago:

"And, Congressman Moran, 200 of your constituents just arrived back from Afghanistan -- we never got a letter, we never got a visit from you, you didn't come to our homecoming. The only thing we got was a letter from the governor of this state thanking us for our service in Iraq, when we were in Afghanistan. That's reprehensible. I don't know who you two are talking to, but the morale of the troops is very high."

What was the response? Murtha said nothing, while Moran attempted to move on, no pun intended, stating: "That wasn't in the form of a question, it was a statement."

There won’t be a more memorable op-ed piece this entire Spring. It walks away with today’s “read the whole thing” prize.

4) WHOSE CRACK-UP? Everyone says the Republicans are heading for their Waterloo. If so, how come I keep seeing bizarre polling trends like this one? In Washington state, Democratic incumbent Maria Cantwell’s lead has dropped to 8%. Four months ago, it was 14%. The Republican congress has been a fiasco this session, and the leadership from the White House has been disappointing on a variety of issues. But the donkey is a bigger albatross going into November than the elephant.

5) NOT THAT WE SHOULD BE HAPPY OR ANYTHING…The Wall Street Journal has an absolutely withering editorial on the Republicans running the House today. Focusing its ire on the delightfully named Rep. Jerry Lewis, the Journal writes:

If Republicans lose control of Congress in November, they might want to look back at last Thursday as the day it was lost. That's when the big spenders among House Republicans blew up a deal between the leadership and rank-in-file to impose some modest spending discipline…If Republicans lose the House--and they are well on their way--Mr. Lewis deserves the moniker of the minority maker.

The GOP congress has been a disappointment (to put it mildly) since 1994. I used to say if we can’t reign in the spending, then the Democrats might as well have the House and Senate. I stopped saying that after 9/11, and I’ve really stopped saying it since this impeachment talk began making the rounds. But that doesn’t make guys like Jerry Lewis any less of an embarrassment.

6) AMPING UP THE DRAMA…Also on the Journal’s site, Peggy Noonan tackles the issue of immigration. Remember what I said last week? When Peggy knows what she wants to say, few say it better. When she’s uncertain, the resulting column is more often than not a train-wreck.

Like a lot of us, Noonan doesn’t know exactly what to do about the immigration issue. She likes that we’re a nation of immigrants; she likes that people want to come here and usually make us stronger. But this amnesty thing rankles, and the “demand” for amnesty and other “rights” really rankles.

So predictably, her column today is awful, an overwrought, narcissistic meditation that says little beyond what a kind and sensitive person the author thinks herself to be. The column begins, “I love immigrants. That's not important or relevant, but it's where I start. I love them so much I often have the impulse to kiss their hands. I am not kidding.”

While it may seem unimaginable, it goes downhill from there.

7) SPEAKING OF NARCISSISTIC COLUMNS…I usually leave the Boston Globe’s Scott Lehigh alone. After all, between Derrick Z. Jackson, James Carroll and the paper’s editorial board, I have my hands full with Boston’s boring broadsheet. But Lehigh’s column cries out for attention. Today he takes a bold stand on behalf of civility. Does that take guts or what? A brief sample:

A couple of weekends ago, I was standing on Boylston Street, enjoying a day of unseasonably warm weather, when one of those horse carriages for hire came clippety-clopping along like something right out of a Childe Hassam painting. It was almost enough to induce a roseate reverie about Boston's horse-drawn past. Until the carriage drew near, that is, whereupon its driver looked over and excoriated a motorist who, in trying to parallel park, had temporarily blocked her lane.

Stop the presses! Scott Lehigh witnessed a moment of incivility.

8) IF WISHES WERE HORSES…Predictably, the New York Times has managed to unearth some “analysts” who bolster its view of the world. Writes the Times’ Chrstine Hauser:

Western nuclear analysts said Tehran lacked the skills, materials and equipment to make good on its immediate nuclear ambitions. They said nothing had changed to alter current estimates of when Iran might be able to make a single nuclear weapon, assuming that is its ultimate goal. The United States government has estimated that Iran could develop a nuclear weapon in 5 to 10 years, and some analysts have said it could come as late as 2020.

I’m sure you’ve noted that the passage above is just stinky with unidentified “analysts.” You’ll also note that using simple arithmetic, the estimates of these “analysts” for Iran getting the big one run between five and fourteen years from now.

It’s curious how the Times editorial was able to firmly pin the number at ten years yesterday, a full 24 hours before its reporters began rousting the “nuclear analyst” community. What odd behavior for an objective newspaper!

Responses? Thoughts? Please email them to me at soxblog@aol.com