I don’t have much of a green thumb with houseplants. There are some varieties I gave up on long ago—the Boston fern, for instance. A fern in the dry heat of a northeastern home in winter requires a degree of misty tender loving care I can’t or won’t supply.
I used to joke that my home was a hospice for plants, a gentle place where they came to be ministered to while they slowly—or in some cases, quickly (a particularly fragile specimen lasted only a day)—died. Continue reading →
That man of the people, Hugo Chavez, is up to his old/new tricks in Venezuela: using the democratic process to subvert the safeguards built into it (see this for my discussion of the perils involved). An upcoming referendum will let Venezuelan voters decide just how far they’ll allow Chavez to go in his so-far successful bid to assume long-lasting dictatorial powers.
Chavez is the darling of the Left, partly because he is one of the few ascendant Leftists of the old school, whose rhetoric of “let’s-nationalize-everything-and-make-the-poor-richer-and-the-rich-
poorer-and-stick-it-to-the-US-and-by-the-way-I’m-so-well-meaning -that-I-need-to-become-a-dictator-to-expedite-the-whole-process-so-
just-trust-me-I-have-your-best-interests-at-heart” rings true with those who are soggy with nostalgia for the days when Castro and Che seemed to be the wave of the future. Continue reading →
Commenter bunkerbuster speculated recently about the possible aftermath of a US troop withdrawal in Iraq:
How many people would die in such a withdrawal? There is indeed a risk that fighting could escalate, though predictions of mass killing of the kind that’s gone on recent years are surely overblown. Why are people who’ve been insisting for six long, brutal, deadly years that we’re meeting with “success” in Iraq now arguing that a withdrawal would occassion a bloodbath. Can’t they see the contradiction?
And, as any child could tell you, there is a big difference between bad things you make happen and bad things you allow to happen. It’s called responsiblity and supporters of this war spend more of their time evading it than anything else.
I’m not sure why bunkerbuster states that those arguing we’re meeting with “success” in Iraq have been insisting on this for six long, brutal, deadly years, since the US action in Iraq began in March of 2003, closer to four and a half years ago. How could we have been insisting actions in Iraq were successful prior to the war?
My guess is that bb is instead choosing to make 9/11 his (I’m using the masculine pronouns for convenience sake) starting point. Why do this, since this was not the beginning of the Iraq war? Perhaps because it was the start of our so-called war on terror, the first action of which was the war in Afghanistan, the beginning of our military campaign in reaction to the 9/11 attacks.
I’ve said before that most liberals and the Left are extremely concerned with keeping their own hands clean. Bunkerbuster demonstrates this here by seeming to be especially concerned with the sins of the US. Continue reading →
The headlines blared the recent Australian election news: “Bush Loses Another War Ally” (Chicago Tribune) and “Ally of Bush is Defeated in Australia” (NY Times) were typical.
And true, as far as they go. Prime Minister Howard was indeed a war ally of President Bush, and he was indeed roundly defeated. And there have been other such defeats, such as Britain’s Tony Blair and Italy’s Berlusconi.
Of course, this being the MSM. it doesn’t go all that far, just far enough to produce the effect of chastising President Bush, especially in the all-important opening paragraphs of both articles. There is not enough about Australia itself, and what factors may have combined to produce this particular victory for Rudd and his Labor Party.
Both articles contain lists of other Bush-allies who were defeated, but no list of their opposite numbers. When Sarkozy was elected in France the NY Times article on the subject was headlined “Sarkozy Wins in France and Vows Break With the Past,” with no mention that that past had involved a continual thwarting of US interests, and that Sarkozy was markedly pro-American in comparison with predecessor Chirac and opponent Royal. Continue reading →
Late last night the Sanity Squad interviewed the articulate and controversial Fatima Bhutto, younthful and US-educated niece (and harsh critic) of Benazir Bhutto and many others on the Pakistani political scene. Tune in and give a listen as Dr. Sanity, Siggy, Shrink, and I take turns questioning Ms. Bhutto, who was speaking from Karachi.
Advice for the Democrats, from Clive Crook (love that name!) of the Financial Times:
Up to now, Democrats have been stinting in their recognition that the situation in Iraq has improved: “Yes, violence is down a bit, but .”‰.”‰.” That is the wrong posture. They need to celebrate the success, as long as it lasts, as enthusiastically as the Republicans…. Any suspicion that they are rooting for defeat in Iraq could sink them.
I’ve referred before to the growing—if somewhat begrudging—acknowledgment in the MSM that things are going significantly better lately in Iraq, and the fact that, if trends in that country continue in an upbeat direction, the Democrats may need to change course in their attitude towards our efforts there. But the advice in the Crook article demonstrates one of the flaws in that approach, and that is this: even if the Democrats ultimately take his advice, will they be seen as acting on principle, or merely as adopting a strategic new pose designed to further politics as usual—in other words, their own re-elections in 2008? Continue reading →
I’m back!
I noticed that in my absence this rather short and recent post engendered quite the heated and verbose discussion in the comments section, proving that the number of comments isn’t proportional to the length of the post.
I consider the comments section here to be an extremely important part of the blog, and I encourage and enjoy a lively back-and-forth exchange there, even if I don’t always get around to reading everything. I don’t even mind a certain amount of verbosity, since it would be fair to accuse me of giving in to that tendency now and then. But a warning: if you are going to quote from an article or other online source, please limit your cut-and-paste quotes to a couple of paragraphs max, and provide the link for the rest (or just provide the link). Anything more is spamming, and could earn you a banning. Continue reading →
I’m with my family, playing out the Thanksgiving weekend and relaxing—in the countryside this time, not the city. Today we’re finally ratcheting down the eating; all the leftovers are gone, which helps.
Winter seems to have made a sudden appearance (Thanksgiving Day was in the sixties and then it dropped overnight to the thirties with a bitter wind), after an autumn of such lingering beauty it seemed as though it would never end. I don’t have much internet access, or even a TV, and my cell phone works only sporadically.
I plan to thoroughly enjoy my time here and then get back to my regular longwinded blogosphere self on Monday.
…this:
…House Democrats passed an Iraq spending bill that would have required Gen. Petraeus to abort his successful strategy, limit operations to counterterrorism and training, and withdraw all troops by the end of next year. Democratic leaders acted as if nothing has changed in Iraq since January. Perhaps the most charitable interpretation of their initiative is that they knew it would never survive scrutiny by the Senate, which promptly killed it.
It’s a sign of the changing times in Iraq that the passage appeared in an editorial in last Sunday’s Washington Post.
Yesterday was Thanksgiving. But it also was November 22 and the forty-fourth anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy. Here’s a piece on the subject, summarizing some of the reasons it’s become clearer and clearer over the years that—despite the fact that the event has spawned countless conspiracy theories—the ever-mounting forensic evidence is that Oswald alone shot Kennedy.
That doesn’t stop conspiracists, who ignore the evidence they wish to in order to emphasize discrepancies that don’t exist. OF course, even if one is convinced Oswald shot alone, there’s no way to prove that Oswald planned alone. The book Case Closed, which I read when it first appeared, presented an exhaustively detailed and convincing argument for the fact that there was no conspiracy whatsoever involved in Kennedy’s death. If you haven’t read it, you may want to give it a try.
[See this for my reminiscence about Kennedy’s assassination.]
I wish all of you a wonderful Thanksgiving. Here’s some corny American pictorial propaganda in honor of the occasion, one of my favorite holidays:
This painting was not originally done for the holiday. It was part of Rockwell’s “Four Freedoms” series of 1941. Inspired by a post-Pearl Harbor speech of FDR’s about the war effort and why we were fighting, and designed to help sell war bonds, this particular one illustrated “Freedom from Want.”
So on this Thanksgiving Day I’ll reiterate the sentiment: may we all have freedom—of religion, of speech; from want, from fear.