I saw the arrival televised on TV--it was magnificent as you could see the joy on the man's face as he raised his arms up in triumph.May 7, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
The New York Sun today begins its defense of Newt Gingrich's attack on the State Department with a quote:
More than ever before, the State Department cannot afford to have "clientitis," a malady characterized by undue deference to the potential reactions of other countries. I have long thought the State Department needs an "America Desk." [Warren Christopher, secretary of state under Clinton, at his January 13, 1993 confirmation hearing, quoted in New York Sun, 5/6/03]
Fat lot of good it did him. The Sun goes on to explain, "[T]here are a total of 10,017 full-time foreign service personnel. Against this President Bush--or a Democratic president like the one Mr. Christopher served--has perhaps a few dozen political appointees. Some of those appointments, alas, are used to reward campaign fund-raisers with ambassadorships in sunny climes, instead of on the Washington-based jobs with real policy clout."May 7, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
German Morality The strained relations between Germany and the United States took a turn for the worse yesterday after a senior Berlin diplomat was reported to have told Foreign Ministry colleagues that America was turning into a "police state". [London Times, 5/6/03]
Russian Morality Last month, the Russians were opposed to war on the grounds that there was no proof Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. This month, the Russians are opposed to lifting sanctions on the grounds that there's no proof Iraq doesn't have weapons of mass destruction. [Mark Steyn, Chicago Sun-Times, 5/4/03]
Belgian Morality Will the Belgian government approve the complaint against Tommy Franks for ''genocide''? The petition accuses the general of ''inaction in the face of hospital pillaging,'' which apparently meets the Belgian definition of genocide, unlike the deaths of more than 3 million people, which is the lowball figure for those who've died in the current civil war in the Congo.... [Mark Steyn, Chicago Sun-Times, 5/4/03]
North Korean Morality
This from an interview with someone the news agency calls a "propagandist for the Stalinist state":
Kim Myong Chol, who styles himself executive director of the Centre for Korea-American Peace, told Australia's Channel Nine network Sunday: "It's quite obvious North Korea may have minimum 100 nuclear warheads, maximum 300. "They all lock onto American cities." ... He claimed the nuclear technology used to produce the missiles had been tested in Pakistan and the weapons had been made before Pyongyang's non-proliferation agreement.... They did not therefore breach international agreements, he maintained...."If the US attacks North Korea, North Korea will definitely use those nuclear weapons against the US mainland," he replied...."North Korea will use those nuclear weapons against the US mainland if America imposes additional economic sanctions on North Korea." [Agence France-Presse, 5/4/03]
May 7, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
[O]n learning that her father had just died from the stab wound that she had inflicted upon him, a female parricide of my acquaintance exclaimed, "How could he do this to me!" It was as if, in dying, he were... deliberately trying to mess up her life. She seemed to think that her father might not have bled so torrentially had he tried just a little harder not to do so after she stabbed him in the spleen....
It was Aristotle who said that a man who committed a crime because of intoxication was doubly guilty: both of the crime itself and of bringing about his loss of self-control....
By now, Lemrick Nelson--a man caught holding the knife used to stab Rosenbaum, identified by the victim before he died as the attacker, and placed by witnesses in a crowd of young blacks baying "Get the Jew" at the victim before the killing--probably believes that for someone in a state of drunken excitement to stab another person to death is to be just as innocent of murder as someone who stabs no one to death. It wasn't me: it was the beer and the people I was with. Here moral irresponsibility hits bottom. [Theodore Dalrymple, City Journal, 5/2/03]
May 7, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
The more conservatives open their mouths on the "unfairness" of the judicial filibuster that's going on right now, the less I agree with them. Consider this defense of majoritarianism untrammeled by any conception of rights:
The essence of our democratic system of government is beautiful in its simplicity: Majorities must be permitted to govern. As our nation's Founders explained in Federalist No. 22, "the fundamental maxim of republican government ... requires that the sense of the majority should prevail." And as the Supreme Court has unanimously held, our Constitution is premised on the democratic doctrine of majority rule.
Today, a minority of obstructionist senators are forcing upon the confirmation process a supermajority requirement of 60 votes. They are using the filibuster not simply to ensure adequate debate, but actually to block many of our nation's numerous judicial vacancies from being filled.
The public's historic aversion to abusive filibusters is well grounded. These tactics not only violate democracy and majority rule, but arguably offend the Constitution as well. Indeed, prominent Democrats such as Lloyd Cutler and Sens. Tom Daschle, Joe Lieberman and Tom Harkin have condemned filibuster misuse as unconstitutional. [Sen. John Cornyn, Wall Street Journal, 5/6/03]
Filibuster "misuse" presumably means "use of the filibuster to oppose things I favor."May 7, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
According to a report in The Washington Times:The French government secretly supplied fleeing Iraqi officials with passports in Syria that allowed them to escape to Europe, The Washington Times has learned... it undermined the search for senior aides to Saddam, who fled Iraq in large numbers after the fall of Baghdad on April 9. "Now you have the French helping the bad guys escape from us." [commented a Bush administration official]..."France formally denies this type of allegation, which is not only contrary to reality but is intended to discredit our nation," [Nathalie Loiseau, a spokeswoman for the French Embassy] said...The intelligence on the French passports came after reports indicated that a French company covertly sold military spare parts to Iraq in the weeks before the war. ["France helped Iraqis escape", May 6th 2003]
All the more reason to pave France.
May 6, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From Cox and Forkum:
Related articles: The Geography of Palestine According to Arafat, U.N. Call for Palestinian State Spells Suicide for Palestinians, The Purpose of a Palestinian State, and We Are Either With Israel, Or We Are With the Terrorists. (For more great political cartoons check out Cox and Forkum's paperback: Black & White World.)
May 6, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
"Look, Colin Powell went to Damascus not because Colin Powell got up some day and decided he wanted to go Damascus," Rumsfeld said. "He went to Damascus because the president of the United States decided it made sense for the secretary of state to go to Damascus. "Now, if you don't like the decision, don't blame the secretary; blame the president." [Associated Press, 5/4/03]
So now we're supposed to abstain from criticizing the president? And who advised him that going to Damascus was the right thing to do, anyway?
May 6, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
James Taranto has this observation about the writer of the Reuters dispatch from Havana about the "artists and intellectuals" who are supporting Castro:The author of the Reuters dispatch was Marc Frank. So we're just wondering: Is it the same Marc Frank who wrote a piece of pro-Castro, anti-American propaganda called "TV Marti vs. the Cuban People"? Is this the same Marc Frank who wrote the 1993 book "Cuba Looks to the Year 2000," and who, according to this article from Communist Voice, "has spent a number of years in Cuba as the correspondent for the Soviet revisionist CPUSA's [Communist Party USA] newspaper People's Daily World"? ["Best of the Web Today," 5/5/03]
May 5, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Cirque du Soleil's newest is the damndest thing you ever saw--unless you've been before, and even then it's right up there among the damndest. And X2 is a worthy successor to X-Men. Yes, I have quibbles--and maybe I'll have time to write about them at some point--but I thoroughly enjoyed myself at both.May 5, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Here is a quote from an anonymous reader on Ernesto "Che" Guevara (1928-67), who was was captured and killed in the mountains of Bolivia in 1967 at the age of 39:...for all his violent exploits, Che seems to have accomplished relatively little. His campaigns in Africa and Bolivia were utter failures, and he wore out his welcome in Cuba not too long after the Revolution. In fact, it's hard to identify anyone in this book who ended up better off as a result of his actions. Perhaps this book documents something we've known all along: that Che's romantic image dwarfs his actual accomplishments, and that the myth was much bigger than the man.
Another reviewer from
BookList explains her fascination with Che, and how she:
...can identify with Che's concern for the poor and hungry, even if that identification is tempered in [her] rush to store up goods, even if giving alms to the poor is more fashionable than taking a heroic stance to elevate them.
Judging by the results for all of Che's liberal "concern" and his murderous "heroics," it looks like he has accomplished as much for the "poor" as the lefitist hypocrites who approve of his ends but not his "heroic" means. Judging by the results it would have been better if he never lived. For the life of a real hero see the Academy Award nominated documentary
Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life.
May 3, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
British Prime Minister Tony Blair... says he thinks the American leader's lightweight image is "complete bull." ... "I was about to say, 'He's not someone who will philosophize,' but actually that's not true, because he does. But 'directness' is the best way I can describe it. He has a very, very direct way of stating exactly what he feels about a situation." Blair added about Bush, "He is highly intelligent, and it's not clotted by so many nuances that the meaning is obscured. The good thing about (Bush) is that once he does really think that an issue has to be tackled he has big reserves of courage for doing it, and he won't really be diverted." [CNN, 5/1/03]
May 3, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
A committee of the NYC city council is holding hearings on whether to endorse making New York City the 51st state. Writes the New York Sun,MarySol Rodriguez of the New York City Partnership, a business group, presented some compelling statistics. If the city were to come its own state, she said, it could lower the tax burden on residents by 13%."
Here again, the left is arguing on our terms. If people keep thinking like that, sooner or later they will reach the conclusion that the government shouldn't be used to sacrifice anybody to anybody else.
May 3, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
"More than 160 foreign artists and intellectuals, including Nobel Prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez, have come out in defense of Cuba even as many of their peers condemn recent repression on the Communist-run island..." [Reuters, 5/1/03]
Those mentioned include Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Rigoberta Menchu, Aldolfo Perez Esquivel, Harry Belafonte and Danny Glover.May 3, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
"The two British suicide bombers who blew up a seafront bar in Tel Aviv, killing three people, had posed earlier as peace activists, acting as "human shields" for Palestinians.... A Western pro-Palestinian activist said the two... took part in a protest march in Rafah to commemorate Rachel Corrie, an American "human shield" killed by an Israeli bulldozer last March." [Daily Telegraph, 5/2/03]May 3, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Michael Kinsley writes like a typical rationalist: his focus is typically on others' contradictions, not on the truth--and even when he has something positive to say he has to do it dialectically. Nevertheless, he has a point here:
Republicans do give reasons for wanting to make big projected deficits even bigger. They say that tax cuts spur the economy and eventually will generate revenue to wipe out the deficits. They say that big deficits will force the government to cut spending. These arguments are contradictory and bogus. If the deficit will eliminate itself, it will not create pressure to cut spending. If tax cuts always spur so much growth that they pay for themselves, can we cut taxes to zero and still break even on revenue? If the trick stops working at some point higher than zero, how can we assume it will work for us? And if the purpose of tax cuts is to force spending cuts, why doesn't the governing party at least propose enough spending cuts to cover the cost? "I'm eating all this pie so I'll get fat and be forced to diet." Do you buy that one? [Michael Kinsley, Slate.com, 5/1/03]
Or another way to put it: The typical supply-side Republicans think that cutting taxes will allow them to avoid the moral battle over cutting spending--because they are fundamentally unwilling to challenge the altruistic premise behind the welfare state. But it's nothing but self-delusion.--Paul Blair
["I'm eating all this pie so I'll get fat and be forced to diet" is a poor analogy--a much better one is "I will be expropriating less pie, so I will be forced to diet." The only problem is that reduced taxation combined with no spending cuts will force the government into either increasing the deficit or inflation to pay for its prodigality.--Mark Da Cunha]
