Jan 17, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
PIERCE COUNTY, WASHINGTON--Bushmaster Firearms, Inc. now finds itself looking down the barrel of one of the deadliest weapons known to man: a ludicrous lawsuit filed by irresistibly irrational plaintiffs backed by the agenda of America's most fashionably fascist. Bushmaster's "crime?" Manufacturing a product that performs as advertised, and legally selling it to an authorized distributor.
On behalf of the families of two victims of last year's Washington, D.C. snipers, the Brady Center to Prevent (non-government initiated) Gun Violence filed suit yesterday against the company in the Superior Court of Pierce County, Washington. The lawsuit claims that Bushmaster, who manufactured the Bushmaster XM-15 E2S .223 allegedly used by sniper suspects John Lee Malvo and John Allen Muhammad, has "intentionally and willfully chosen to sell and distribute firearms in a grossly negligent manner." Bushmaster sold the rifle to a legal gun dealer in Tacoma, Washington, who later reported the weapon stolen.
Paul Luvera, the clueless attorney who filed the suit, claimed that the rifle was a "very deadly weapon designed for combat use, highly lethal, military copy." [Please write in if you think of uses for a rifle that isn't "highly lethal."] Despite the many nasty adjectives he attached to the gun, most military snipers disagree; they prefer not to use a .223 caliber weapon because it is not sufficiently powerful to deliver potent long-distance shots against human targets. Most hunting rifles would have performed just as well, if not better. But Luvera also slapped the dreaded "assault weapon" label on the Bushmaster .223, which is sure to scare hordes of soccer moms into an anti-black-gun-with-pistol-grip-and-extended-magazine hysteria. In further condemnation of the inanimate object, he noted that the rifle had been "used for sniper purposes." Duh. So was Muhammad's car. We watched the news, too, Paul.
Hey, wasn't the Quran "used for sniper purposes?" Come to think of it, the Quran has historically been deadlier than all the Bushmaster .223s on the planet combined. Now THERE'S a lawsuit, Paul...
Jan 16, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
An anti-war group has recreated and will air one of the most deplorable political commercials in history: the Johnson presidential campaign ad called "Daisy" that said Goldwater would cause a nuclear war. (It was aired only once because of the strenuous objections it received.) Like the old one, this version shows a girl plucking petals off a daisy--and then a mushroom cloud.
"We wanted to run an ad that would highlight that very real possibility (of nuclear war) and help encourage a national discussion," said MoveOn.org's international campaign director.
This is left-wing paranoia. There is no attempt to argue this position; it's an arbitrary assertion. I have no doubt it, and the commercial, appeals to anti-conceptual, emotionalist dolts that dominant the Left. Thinking people dismiss these scare tactics.
The group's site wants people to sign a campaign to send a letter to President Bush that says, in part:The United States has made a commitment to approaching the danger that Saddam Hussein poses through the international community. The resumption of the inspections regime is a triumph for the U.S., international law and multilateralism. But the United States will lose all credibility with its allies if it appears that it will go to war regardless of the inspections' success. And by alienating and infuriating allies through unilateral action, the U.S. could throw the success of the campaign against terrorism into jeopardy. Mr. President, it appears that your administration is looking for an excuse to go to war, when a peaceful and just solution may be at hand. We ask that you live up to your word and give diplomacy a chance.
As of today, with weapons inspectors discovering chemical weapons artillery shells in Iraq, this weak argument is officially null and void.
Jan 16, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
ALEXANDRIA, VA--The Center for the Advancement of Capitalism (CAC) today filed a "friend of the Court" brief with the United States Supreme Court supporting the petitioners in Gratz v. Bollinger and Grutter v. Bollinger, a pair of challenges to race-based admissions policies at the University of Michigan. Gratz deals with UM's undergraduate admissions, while Grutter challenges the Law School's policy. Both cases are on appeal from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, based in Cincinnati."Race has no place in a university's admissions process," CAC Chairman Nicholas Provenzo said. "The University of Michigan's emphasis on race in admissions is so obviously irrational and illogical, it is almost beneath us to have to debate it. However, given the vast number of groups supporting the University, CAC felt it was necessary to emphatically state the case for individualism in education."
The eight-page brief offers the Court a clear philosophical context for declaring Michigan's policies unconstitutional. CAC argues that race has no bearing on an individual's educational ability, and that any reliance on racial factors denies prospective students their right to be judged on individual merit.
"Michigan's undergraduate school gives prospective students 12 points [towards the required 105 points for admission] for a perfect SAT score, yet automatically awards 20 points simply for stating one is black, Hispanic, or Native American," says Provenzo.
"The message here is unmistakable--the University believes that an individual's race impacts their achievement, and then it grants their race more prominence than their actual abilities in evaluating them for admission," says Provenzo. "The University's position is patently false, racist and bankrupt. Under the Constitution, no government-run institution should be allowed to use race to judge for or against any individual."
The brief was drafted by Nicholas Provenzo and CAC senior fellow Skip Oliva, and filed by attorney David R. Burton of the Argus Group.
Jan 15, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Best-selling author John Le Carre wrote a letter to The London Times titled "The United States Has Gone Mad." Your humble editor comments herein.The imminent war was planned years before bin Laden struck, but it was he who made it possible. Without bin Laden, the Bush junta would still be trying to explain such tricky matters as how it came to be elected in the first place; Enron; its shameless favouring of the already-too-rich; its reckless disregard for the world's poor, the ecology and a raft of unilaterally abrogated international treaties. They might also have to be telling us why they support Israel in its continuing disregard for UN resolutions.
One word: arbitrary. Proof? Any attempt at proof? No. Thank you.
How Bush and his junta succeeded in deflecting America's anger from bin Laden to Saddam Hussein is one of the great public relations conjuring tricks of history. But they swung it. A recent poll tells us that one in two Americans now believe Saddam was responsible for the attack on the World Trade Centre. But the American public is not merely being misled. It is being browbeaten and kept in a state of ignorance and fear. The carefully orchestrated neurosis should carry Bush and his fellow conspirators nicely into the next election.
God, I wish this weren't true, but I think he might be right.
Care for a few pointers? George W. Bush, 1978-84: senior executive, Arbusto Energy/Bush Exploration, an oil company; 1986-90: senior executive of the Harken oil company. Dick Cheney, 1995-2000: chief executive of the Halliburton oil company. Condoleezza Rice, 1991-2000: senior executive with the Chevron oil company, which named an oil tanker after her. And so on. But none of these trifling associations affects the integrity of God's work.
If there were no reason to attack Iraq, e.g., if it were Canada, I would find this to be relevant. But the fact is the Iraq is a menace for many reasons. It is not Canada.
To be a member of the team you must also believe in Absolute Good and Absolute Evil, and Bush, with a lot of help from his friends, family and God, is there to tell us which is which. What Bush won't tell us is the truth about why we're going to war. What is at stake is not an Axis of Evil -- but oil, money and people's lives. Saddam's misfortune is to sit on the second biggest oilfield in the world. Bush wants it, and who helps him get it will receive a piece of the cake. And who doesn't, won't.
If Saddam didn't have the oil, he could torture his citizens to his heart's content. Other leaders do it every day -- think Saudi Arabia, think Pakistan, think Turkey, think Syria, think Egypt.
Not true. The U.S. customarily invades countries that are as worthless as latrines, such as Somalia, Serbia, and Afghanistan. To assert that the U.S. would act in its own alleged diabolical interest, such as to increase profits of oil companies--is a fantasy. The U.S. routinely sacrifices itself to every dirtbag county and enemy it has. Our 20th century history is replete with self-sacrifical foreign policy: the U.S. has never profited from any military effort. I defy anyone to challenge me on this.
Baghdad represents no clear and present danger to its neighbours, and none to the US or Britain. Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, if he's still got them, will be peanuts by comparison with the stuff Israel or America could hurl at him at five minutes' notice. What is at stake is not an imminent military or terrorist threat, but the economic imperative of US growth. What is at stake is America's need to demonstrate its military power to all of us -- to Europe and Russia and China, and poor mad little North Korea, as well as the Middle East; to show who rules America at home, and who is to be ruled by America abroad.
The first sentence is laughable. Yes, Israel and America can wipe out Baghad within minutes. But: a) It would be after the fact of a horrible attack by Iraq, and b) we would never do it because we are moral cowards.
As for the need to wipe out Iraq for "US growth," this is absurd. All military operations cost the U.S. billions and we never get anything in return. Furthermore, we do not need Iraqi oil: we have lived without it for over a decade. We have more oil than we know what to do with--within U.S. borders.
The last thing the U.S. needs to do is to demonstrate its "military power." The U.S. is the unchallengeable superpower and everyone knows it.
As for the reference to a so-called "colonialist adventure," I again challenge anyone to say when, in the 20th century, the U.S. has profited from any military effort. This is Marxist diarrhea and nothing more.
John Le Carre is a fiction writer--even when he writes about reality.
Jan 15, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From the New York Times today:President Bush signaled a major shift in approach to North Korea today, saying for the first time that if North Korea abandoned its nuclear weapons program he would consider offering a "bold initiative" that could bring aid, energy and eventually even diplomatic and security agreements to the politically and economically isolated country. . . .
Mr. Bush's aides insist there are major differences between his approach and Mr. Clinton's. North Korea must not only refreeze its activities at the nuclear facilities in Yongbyon, they say, but it must actually dismantle them. "We don't ever want to be in the position again where the North Koreans can just flip this switch on again," said one senior administration official.
Mr. Bush seemed to hint at that today when he said, "What this nation won't do is be blackmailed."
A country threatens another with nuclear weapons and a world war, and the other country offers them lots of aid in exchange. Only in Doublespeak is that not blackmail.
The repercussions of this capitulation are frightening: every country hostile to the U.S. will learn that we will give in to any demands if they are backed up by a nuclear threat. So much for the practicality of pragmatism. What we desperately need is a morally principaled leader. It is a life or death situation.
Jan 15, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
IRVINE, CA--The accord Russia signed three weeks ago to accelerate the construction of a nuclear reactor in Iran and supply it with nuclear fuel is a direct threat against the security of the United States, said David Holcberg, a senior writer for the Ayn Rand Institute.
"According to our State Department," Holcberg noted, "Iran is the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism, financing, training and equipping terrorist organizations like Al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad."
"Iran's claim that the reactor will be used for civilian purposes is absurd. Iran has more oil to generate electricity than it could possibly consume in the foreseeable future. Moreover," Holcberg pointed out, "Iran's intentions towards the United States, which it calls the 'Great Satan,' have been made clear by 23 years of chanting 'Death to America' in Iran's state-controlled mosques."
"With this accord with Iran, Putin is effectively arming one of our most dangerous enemies, and thus placing Russia on the side of the Iranian regime and against the United States. President Bush," Holcberg suggested, "must pressure Putin to kill this deal."
"If Putin is persuaded to cancel the accord with Iran, other countries will get the message that in this conflict one must take sides--and one better take the American side. It is time for the Russians and everybody else," Holcberg concluded, "to choose the side they're on. They are either with us or with the terrorists."Jan 14, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Here's some of what the Saudis are spending that $14.6 million PR budget on:
When radio ads critical of Israel ran in 15 U.S. cities last spring, they identified the Alliance for Peace and Justice as sponsor. The alliance was described by its Washington p.r. firm, Qorvis Communications, as a consortium of Middle East -- policy groups based in the U.S. But when Qorvis reported its ad work to the Justice Department last month, it revealed that funding for the $679,000 media buy actually came from another source: the Saudi government. [Time, 1/20/03]
Meanwhile here's what else they're up to:
Fearing the impact of a U.S.-led war on Iraq, Washington's longtime regional ally Saudi Arabia appears to be trying to rally the Arab world against any "illegitimate" foreign attack on its neighbor.
A day after de facto ruler Crown Prince Abdullah said the kingdom was making undisclosed proposals to Arab states, Saudi officials said Monday that the ideas would be put formally to an annual Arab summit to be held in Bahrain in March.
"The proposal calls on Arab states to close ranks and totally reject any illegitimate foreign aggression on any Arab country," one Saudi official told Reuters. [Reuters, 1/13/03]
Of course if it's "legitimate" foreign aggression, then they're all in favor...Jan 14, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
An AP article "74-Year-Old Man Kills Would-Be Robber" (January, 10, 2002), documents the acts of a 74-year-old "Pac A Sac" convenience store owner, J.C. Adams, who confronted three would-be robbers in his convience store last Thursday: Cameron Lemont Glover, 17. Glover's 19-year-old brother, Leonard, and Tammy Crystal Jones. He ended up killing Cameron Glover, and injuring his brother Leonard:On a surveillance monitor, he saw two men and a woman hold up an employee at the cash register. That's when Adams pushed his walker to the front of the store and confronted the armed suspects, killing one man and wounding the other. An employee held the woman until police arrived.
"No need to let something like that live," said Adams, who had been wounded in a May 2000 robbery attempt in which he killed another intruder.
Police said Friday that Adams would not be charged in the shooting death Thursday...Adams' defense of the store has made him a legend in the neighborhood. "Everybody knows J.C.," said resident Nancy Pope. "Obviously (robbers) don't know who they are messing with."
Jan 13, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From the Houston Chronicle:A senior Bush administration official suggested Saturday that the nuclear crisis with North Korea was the predictable result of a flawed 1994 agreement signed by the Clinton administration with Pyongyang that "frontloaded all the benefits and left the difficult things to the end" -- for the next president.
The comments marked a sharp change of direction from the administration's insistence in recent weeks that only North Korea was to blame for the crisis. As recently as last week, Secretary of State Colin Powell said he gave "great credit" to the Clinton administration for freezing North Korea's plutonium enrichment program with the 1994 Agreed Framework.
We have seen this numerous times before: the Bush Administration policy versus Colin Powell's policy. Powell is a rogue and Bush is to blame for tolerating brazen dissension. The fact is that the Clinton Administration is to blame, and that the Bush Administration is a failure in dealing with the inherited crisis.
Jan 12, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From today's Washington Post,Over the past week, key U.S. allies have sent an unambiguous message to the Bush administration to give United Nations weapons inspectors in Iraq time to complete their work, even if it means delaying the onset of hostilities.
The allied opposition to an early war with Iraq has strengthened the hand of moderates in the administration who have been arguing against setting a firm deadline for Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to comply with demands for giving up his weapons of mass destruction, according to U.S. officials and allied diplomats. According to these sources, the odds of a February war appear to be receding, barring a major Iraqi misstep that would galvanize Western governments and public opinion.
"The odds have gone down for war," said a well-placed U.S. official. "We don't have a good war plan; the inspectors have unprecedented access to Iraq; we have just started giving them intelligence; we have to give them more time to see how this works. There is no reason to stop the process until it can't proceed any further."
The apparent relaxation in administration rhetoric contrasts with statements by President Bush late last year advocating a "zero tolerance" policy toward Hussein. After weeks of insisting that U.S. forces were poised to intervene in Iraq if Hussein failed to properly account for his weapons of mass destruction, administration spokesmen are now echoing their European counterparts, and saying the inspectors should be given time to do their work.
This is what happens when our President lacks the moral courage to act independently and instead relies on a coalition for approval. He has surrendered U.S. sovereignty and is now in the sorry position of begging for cooperation. Hopefully he will gain courage and go it alone. We will see.
Jan 12, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
VATICAN CITY--According to a report released last Wednesday, Lord Jesus Christ's favorite terrestrial hangout has one of the highest per capita crime rates in the world. Vatican City's chief prosecutor, Mr. Nicola Picardi, reported that theft, embezzlement, and fraud are the three most common crimes in the "holy city."
The fraud rate is not expected to fall until the Pope stops inviting Jesus over.
Jan 11, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From a Boomberg article by David DeRosa, "Atlas shrugs Venezuelan style as banks close",Venezuela is beginning to sound like something out of Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged -- where the middle class and professionals literally walk off their jobs. Banks have started to join the 40-day-old strike paralyzing the country. Yet things are still at a stalemate with President Hugo Chavez's opposition demanding that he resign or at least hold a referendum on the continuation of his administration.
Rand's novel has workers and management refusing to work at jobs requiring more than manual labor skills because they know any wealth they create will be looted from them by an oppressive government. As Rand once wrote: "The man who produces while others dispose of his product is a slave." [...]
Jan 11, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
One reader asks, "[H]ow can a free or semi-free country with an open immigration policy protect itself from being taken over by alien anti-freedom ideologies?"The answer is that a country's government does not have to protect against ideologies, it only needs to protect against those who seek to violate individual rights. And that someone holds an anti-freedom ideology is not a violation of rights. As for the source of idelogies that are crippling America, it is the domestic anti-freedom ideologies (whether of the Chomsky's on the Left or the Buchanan's on the Right), and not the foreign anti-freedom ideologies, that are the problem. It is America's own intellectuals who are destroying it. The big problem is that when immigrants come to the U.S. they learn from Americans that America is evil, racist, imperialist, a robber-barron, etc. from 'European-Americans' (and their various non-European prodigies) in U.S. schools, the media, etc. The ideologies are here already and their source is domestic.
As for unproductive immigrants being attracted to the welfare state, perhaps that is a good reason to dismantle a system that rewards moochers and parasites. After all, a parasite is a parasite, and it is irrelevant to your pocket-book whether that parasite who is imported or home grown. After all if someone murders your mother does it make you feel any better that the murderer was from your own home town? The corollarly of this principle is that a producer is a producer, and whether that producer is an immigrant or a citizen is irrelevant to the fact that you are able to obtain values by trading with them. A productive individual is always a benefit to the economy they are in. The key to the immigration problem is not to look at individuals as members of a collective, but to judge them as individuals, i.e., by their virtues--productivity, honesty, rationality, pride, etc. On such a standard you want to attract as many freedom-loving immigrants into America as possible, while creating an environment that does not reward moochers or looters thus enticing them to leave. The best way to do that is to shut down the welfare state, i.e., laissez-faire capitalism.
Jan 10, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From the New York Sun,
One in six families seeking housing in the city's strained homeless shelter system is a recent arrival from out of town, out of state, or even out of the country, records show....
New York City is uniquely generous in offering a "right to shelter" to all comers....
The "right to shelter," established in a series of court rulings and consent decrees in the early 1980s, means that if a family has been in the city for a day, New York is obliged to find them a place to sleep by midnight of the night that they arrive in the Bronx intake center....
"The word must be getting out about New York City's unique housing policy: you come here, and the taxpayers will pay for you to have an apartment by midnight tonight or pay you $150 a day in fines," said George McDonald, president of the Doe Fund....
Repeat after me: No one has a right to anything just because he happens to need it.Jan 9, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Tony Blair, quoted in the Guardian (January 8th, 2003),
"I would never commit British troops to a war I thought was wrong or unnecessary. But the price of influence is that we do not leave the US to face the tricky issues alone.
"By tricky, I mean the ones which people wish weren't there, don't want to deal with and, if I can put it a little pejoratively, know the US should confront, but want the luxury of criticising them for it....
"I am not surprised by anti-Americanism, but it is a foolish indulgence... For all their faults--and all nations have them--the US is a force for good."
Jan 8, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Ratcheting up the debate over sport utility vehicles, new television commercials suggest that people who buy the vehicles are supporting terrorists. The commercials are so provocative that some television stations are refusing to run them.
Patterned after the commercials that try to discourage drug use by suggesting that profits from illegal drugs go to terrorists, the new commercials say that money for gas needed for S.U.V.'s goes to terrorists....
The two 30-second commercials are the brainchild of the author and columnist Arianna Huffington. [New York Times, 1/8/03]
Of course, these ads mean that not just SUVs, but every driver is supporting terrorism.
What, it's only "wasteful" use that counts as supporting terrorism? OK, then, anyone who drives more than is minimally necessary is supporting terrorism. The amount of gas "wasted" on "needless" driving is no doubt far more than is "wasted" by driving SUVs rather than economy cars.
In fact, by Ms. Huffington's logic, anti-nuclear protesters support terrorism as well, since by going nuclear we could significantly reduce our dependence on foreign oil.
Now it's true--buying oil sends money to oil-producing countries, some of whom support terrorism. But then the answer is to ban purchasing oil from those countries--or, better yet, to overthrow the governments of those countries and to return the oil to its rightful owners, the American and British companies who discovered and developed the oil.
These ads are not the product of concern with terrorism, but of hatred for SUVs, and more fundamentally, of hatred of selfishness--which SUVs supposedly represent. I say let's have more selfishness, more SUVs, and more intolerance of regimes that support terrorism.Jan 8, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
According to the Associated Press (January 7, 2003):
Foes of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, marching in their thousands in Caracas, tore up income-tax forms on Tuesday as they added a tax revolt to a five-week-old strike crippling the nation's crucial oil exports....
"We are not going to pay taxes until this government goes," 52-year-old housewife Belkis Soto told Reuters as she took part in the march....
The opposition, which has accompanied the strike with almost daily street protests, has called on individuals and firms to stop paying taxes, whether income or sales taxes.
[S]peaking at a school, [Chavez] warned his striking opponents their refusal to pay taxes was against the law. "They've tried to break the oil industry ... now they're trying to break the national treasury so there is no money," he said.
Tax authorities say offenders face fines and prison terms ranging from six months to seven years.
Jan 7, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
According to Deroy Murdock in National Review, "Dems Need to Houseclean" (January 6, 2003), "Before lecturing Republicans, Democrats should mop up their side of the political spectrum." Writes Murdock,Just this fall, Clinton praised Arkansas' late Democratic senator J. William Fulbright, a notorious segregationist who opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. He also signed the Southern Manifesto, which denounced the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark Brown vs. Board of Education school desegregation decision in 1954. Clinton called Fulbright "My mentor, a visionary, a humanitarian."
OK, all you African-hyphenatedCongressman--where is the outrage? But wait, Clinton's history is even
worse then Lott's:
During his 12-year tenure, Governor Clinton never approved a state civil-rights law. However, he did issue birthday proclamations honoring Confederate leaders Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee. He also signed Act 116 in 1987. That statute reconfirmed that the star directly above the word "Arkansas" in the state flag "is to commemorate the Confederate States of America." Arkansas also observed Confederate Flag Day every year Clinton served. The governor's silence was consent.
Arkansas' former governor, the late Orval Eugene Faubus, attended Bill Clinton's 1979 gubernatorial inauguration, where the two pols hugged, as Arkansas Democrat-Gazette editorial page editor Paul Greenberg recalls. Faubus, of course, resisted the integration of Little Rock's Central High School in 1957. He actually deployed National Guard soldiers to bar nine black students from entering. Republican President Dwight Eisenhower dispatched soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division to break that logjam and give the black teens a fighting chance to learn. Clinton once lauded that same Faubus as a "man of significant ability."
What was Lott thinking when he aped Clinton--of the Presidency perhaps? Alas for Lott, he forgot only Democrats can get away with being racist. Just ask former Klansman Robert Byrd who "remains the Senate's president pro tempore, the third in the line of presidential succession behind Vice President Dick Cheney and House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R, Illinois)." He's a Democrat.
